Las Vegas Nightlights

Posted on September 10, 2012 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

I have just returned to reality after spending four days in the bizarre, whacked-out, sublime, insane, trashy, sacred, profane, dreamy place known as Las Vegas. After this my 5th trip there, I left convinced it is truly one of the great American cities/creations/institutions/whatever-you-wanna-call-it. I took over 300 pictures on my trip using my trusty iPhone4 and Canon PowerShot, so expect a number of photo montages and essays over the next week or so. To whet your appetite, here’s a little sampling of the city’s wonderful signage.

UPDATE: Las Vegas’s Neon Museum will have its grand opening October 27th.

Posted in Commercial art, Photography | Tagged , , , , , , | 11 Comments

White Boy Blues Update

Posted on September 10, 2012 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

ZZ Top have a new album coming out on Tuesday, and it’s getting raves.

Guitarist Billy Gibbons in the New York Times:

“It’s a real uphill challenge to battle the white-guyness,” Mr. Gibbons said of himself. “White people get nervous and speed things up.”  But, he suggested, “you don’t have to be in a hurry because you ain’t got nothing to gain and you ain’t got nothin’ to lose. And that’s where the groove lies. Consider that as a mental concept for a second!”

Listen to the first track from the album here. It’s a cover of a 1999 hip-hop song.

Previously.

Posted in Music | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Question Lady Question

Posted on September 9, 2012 by Question Lady

The Question Lady writes:

What would you say to tapas including crispy fish tacos and chicken satay tonight? Recipes below:

Tyler Florence Chicken Satay and Crispy Fish Tacos.

Posted in Uncategorized | 7 Comments

Linkathon

Posted on September 9, 2012 by Paleo Retiree

Paleo Retiree writes:

Posted in Linkathons | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

“The Mercenary”

Posted on September 8, 2012 by Paleo Retiree

I found this 1968 spaghetti western from action legend Sergio Corbucci pretty entertaining, if in a relentlessly hyperbolic, showboating way. It’s an amusing mix of the buffoonish, the witty, the visually spectacular and the stirring. A group of Mexican miners revolts against their decadent overlords; their leader (Tomas Milian) enlists the help of a blond-haired mercenary (Franco Nero) known as, so help me, “The Polack,” to help turn them into a revolutionary army. Meanwhile, government forces collaborate with ultra-bad sadist Curly (Jack Palance, smoking reefers and wearing a hilarious wig) to squelch the rebellion.

All that said, it’s mainly a buddy film, and the main focus of the movie is on the relationship between the Milian character and the Nero one: the clueless but shrewd dark brute vs. the suave blue-eyed cynic — they bicker, they bond, they feud, they stab each other in the back …

The plot delivers a few well-engineered twists, but its main purpose is to serve as an excuse for picturesque, macho overacting; brilliantly staged action; awe-inspiring scenery and glorious horses; and a lot of over-the-top Ennio Morricone music. Like all the good spaghetti westerns, it’s so off in its own cartoonish, make-believe world that it might as well be a sci-fi movie.

Here’s a review of the film from 10K Bullets. Like “Django,” another Corbucci-directed spaghetti western, “The Mercenary” has had its influence on Quentin Tarantino.

Posted in Movies | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

“The Kissing Bandit,” Frank Sinatra, and Ricardo Montalban

Posted on September 8, 2012 by Fabrizio del Wrongo

Image

Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:

I’ve been going through some of the lesser-known MGM musicals of late. There’s a lot of dreck hiding out in that celebrated body of work. But one of the things you quickly realize is that even the turds tend to encompass a tasty morsel. (Yes, I just mixed a shit metaphor with a food metaphor.) The 1948 “The Kissing Bandit” is one such turd. It’s like a banalized version of the studio’s MacDonald-Eddy operettas, themselves banalized versions of the operettas made by Ernst Lubitsch at Paramount during the early ’30s. (Lubitsch made a great one for MGM, the 1934 “The Merry Widow,” but it was mostly in the Paramount mode.) Here, the young, marionette-like Frank Sinatra plays a Yankee just arrived in Spanish California; he’s hoping to inherit his dead father’s hotel business. But it turns out the old man had moonlighted as a thieving Lothario, and Frank’s less enthusiastic about assuming that particular mantle. (Where women are concerned, he’s hapless.)

Playing a naif doesn’t come naturally to Sinatra. Worse, the screenplay denies you the pleasure of witnessing the materialization of the magnetic, tough-guy Frank; he’s a nebbish right ’til the last scene, when he finally succeeds in putting the lip to lead mannequin Kathryn Grayson. Prior to that the movie is a concatenation of scenes in which Grayson and Sinatra clumsily attempt to work up some heat. They also occasionally sing, though not memorably. It’s like watching cardboard woo tagboard.

But towards the end of the movie something wonderful happens. Right in the middle of all that tepid wooing, the tempo picks up, the lighting becomes more expressive, and the staging suddenly becomes energized. The camera dollies in on a group of dancers, there’s a cut, and then the head of Ricardo Montalban rises into frame. He directs a leer to the right of the camera, gives his hand a little jiggle, as if to shake off the banality of the proceedings, and then slowly begins to turn his body while dancing in place. And as he turns women appear from beneath his cape, first below his left shoulder, then below his right, each of them falling in with the turning as the camera dollies back out. The dancers now in full frame, Montalban briefly sets the women free with a flourish, then catches them by the arms and swings them around with abandon. They’re like satellites in thrall to Planet Montalban.

This bit, fittingly known as “The Dance of Fury,” was choreographed by Stanley Donen, still one year away from making his directorial debut with “On the Town.” One presumes Donen directed the sequence too, as it puts everything else in the movie to shame. (The bulk of the film was helmed by the prosaic Laslo Benedek.) It’s either a great argument for the Auteur Theory or evidence that MGM, aware that it had a turd on its hands, pulled out all the stops in giving the audience at least one moment to thrill to.

Here’s the clip:

How about Montalban? His performance has all the masculine bravado and raciness that’s missing in Sinatra’s. He’s sexy. He’s suave. He even manages to make his befuddlement in the face of female over-attention seem like an outgrowth of his affability, his confidence. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the gals fighting for him happen to be Ann Miller and Cyd Charisse, two of MGM’s most vivacious (and leggiest) female commodities. Lord knows it’s hard to look impotent when those two are after you. (In comparison, Grayson is like a tarted-up Pekingese.) Can you imagine how Frank felt while watching this? You can almost see him sitting there at the premier, mentally comparing his starring role with Montalban’s cameo (a cameo!), and scrunching down low in his seat. How emasculating.

Watching Montalban here (and he seems to be having a lot of fun, doesn’t he?), I can’t help but recall Pauline Kael’s terrific review of “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan,” in which she framed Montalban’s performance as the triumphant validation of a too-long-overlooked bit player. Of course, as a performer Kael was every bit as flamboyant as Montalban. Maybe she saw a little of herself in his performance?

Here’s the best part:

Montalban is unquestionably a star in “The Wrath of Khan” (and his grand manner seems to send a little electric charge through Shatner). As a graying superman who, when foiled, cries out to Kirk, “From Hell’s heart I stab at thee!,” Montalban may be the most romantic smoothie of all sci-fi villains. Khan’s penchant for quoting Melville, and Milton (which goes back to “Space Seed”), doesn’t hurt. And that great chest of Montalban’s is reassuring — he looks like an Inca priest — and he’s still champing at the bit, eager to act: he plays his villany to the hilt, smiling grimly as he does the dirty. (He and his blond-barbarian followers are dressed like pirates or a sixties motorcycle gang.) Montalban’s performance doesn’t show a trace of “Fantasy Island.” It’s all panache; if he isn’t wearing feathers in his hair you see them there anyway. You know how you always want to laugh at the flourishes that punctuate the end of a flamenco dance and the dancers don’t let you? Montalban does. His bravado is grandly comic.

“If he isn’t wearing feathers in his hair you see them there anyway.” Not a bad epitaph, if you ask me.

Posted in Movies, Performers | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Question Lady Question

Posted on September 7, 2012 by Question Lady

The Question Lady writes:

Why do people think that breakfast is an essential meal? When I was a kid everyone said I had to eat breakfast or I’d 1) get fat, 2) be under-nourished, and 3) my sugar levels would go haywire and I’d be cranky and disruptive in school. But I learned by my late teens that if I skipped breakfast most days I felt better. I lost weight when I skipped it, I felt healthier and I was way less cranky than when I ate it. As for disruptive — well, I was always disruptive regardless of what I ate. What about you? Is breakfast something you can’t wake up and get through the day without?

Posted in Food and health | 6 Comments

Can “Good Enough” be Good Design?

Posted on September 7, 2012 by Fenster

Fenster writes:

A theme found regularly on this blog (or is it a preoccupation? or an obsession?) concerns the shortcomings of much of contemporary architecture.  Do some of the same issues hold for design, in a broader sense?

Some years back, I was in conversation with the Dean of Design at a high-toned art college.  She had just shown me her etchings–well, no.  Rather it was a spread in a high-toned design publication in which her work was showcased, having won a design award.  I liked her work a great deal but could not escape the impression that a fair amount of what passed for great design in terms of awards smacked of snobbery, elitism, conspicuous consumption and–here comes that word–“theory”.

Now, some of my reaction comes from the fact that at heart I remain solidly middle class.  A great sage once remarked that society would be better off with 90% of the populace bourgeois and the remaining 10% rebels of one or another stripe.  I think that is true of individuals as well as societies: I am happy to be about 10% rebel myself, and am willing to concede the balance to solid bourgeois values.

And so when I see, say, a watch like this winning an award I have to wonder, this is good design?

It is not easy, for me at least, to make out the time from those two small green thingies.  And you have to touch it to activate it, adding effort to what is ordinarily a simple matter of looking.  On what grounds is this “good design”?  Or is it just a fashion accessory for some urban wannabe?

And here’s an $80,000 Tag Heuer.

According to the company, the design “is more shock-resistant and requires less maintenance because of the belts and micro ball bearings.”  Yum!

How good does a watch have to be, really?  Skin divers will want them to work underwater and some folks somewhere I suppose will worry about the errant second or two missing from time to time.  But for me Timex, generically speaking of course, is just fine.  For me, in this instance, good enough is good design.  There is such a thing as design for living.

My friend the Dean took great offense when I used this phrase.  Good enough?  Good design?  Egad man, get a hold of your philistine self!  We debated the issue for a while, long enough for me to realize discretion was the better part of valor, and that I needed to concede the point, set and match.  She seemed to grasp something of my main idea, but it was clear I had strayed into matters intensely theological.

Now, do I believe a lot of what passes for great design is actually great design?  I surely do. Especially when market forces are at work, there is a ton of pressure brought to bear on squaring market appeal, functionality and cost.  The ongoing fight between Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Google for primacy, especially with mobile devices, will continue to yield great design dividends.

But the high-toned awards aimed at a cognoscenti? Of that I am far less sure.  Perhaps it is just my middle class bias.  Feel free to pass along your opinions, natch.

Posted in Commercial art | 8 Comments

A Cardinal at the Conventions

Posted on September 7, 2012 by Fenster

Fenster writes:

The Archbishop of  New York, Timothy Dolan, finds himself in the unique position of addressing both of the national party conventions, supplying the benedictions to both Democrats and Republicans.

Here is a link on a Catholic political blog to both addresses.

I found them interesting and instructive.  You may too.  The blog owner asked for reactions to the two addresses.  Here are mine.

First, a comment on the practice of benedictions at such events.  While it is tempting to ask how the tradition of benedictions at political events squares with the separation of church and state, I will refrain from that easy hit.  My take is almost the opposite.  IMHO, there really can be no true wall between church and state.  If religion were just a matter of private belief such a wall would be entirely feasible.  No one should hear the knock on the door while privately praying.  But religion is inevitably social and value-laden, and it concerns itself by necessity with matters of practice and behavior.  Accordingly, conflicts will always exist between dominant values in a political collective and dominant values in a religious collective.

To say religious freedom must entail the primacy of the latter cannot be true. You have only to consider the many practices around the world that are offensive to our sensibilities as a political collective–practices that we rightly condemn and limit–to realize that religious practices do not hold a trump card on account of their origins in religious doctrine or belief.  Further, given the inevitability of values overlap, no such thing as a wall can truly be said to exist.

Which is not to say we should do without the idea of a wall.  All social ideas are adaptive more than they are true or false, and the idea of a wall is a helpful one.  Most of the time.  But we should not delude ourselves into thinking there is some sort of objective truth about it.

So as far as I am concerned, let Dolan speak in a political context.

But let’s also see what he has to say.

And that is also interesting.

Given the Church’s position on social issues such as abortion (and given Dolan’s reputation for conservatism in such matters), it is hardly surprising that he should make specific reference to the unborn in both settings.  And that’s fine.  I think it is part of the bargain when you invite a Cardinal to speak.

But he seems to handle questions of social justice and the poor in very different ways.  In his address to Democrats his very first sentence after invoking God is as follows:

Bless all here present, and all across this great land, who work hard for the day when a greater portion of your justice, and a more ample measure of your care for the poor and suffering, may prevail in these United States.  Help us to see that a society’s greatness is found above all in the respect it shows for the weakest and neediest among us.

You have to get to the third paragraph before the unborn make an appearance:

We ask your benediction on those waiting to be born, that they may be welcomed and protected.

When we get to the Republican address, the unborn are in the lede.  The first sentence after invoking God is:

We ask your benediction upon those yet to be born.

But what of social justice?  Here is Dolan’s second paragraph:

We lift up to your loving care those afflicted by the recent storms and drought and fire.  We ask for the grace to stand in solidarity with all those who suffer.  May we strive to include your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, in the production and prosperity of a people so richly blessed.

Here, the poor and suffering consist of two kinds of people: those put out by natural calamities (we stand in solidarity with them), and the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” (i.e., the poor of the rest of the world that look for a better life in this land of opportunity).  What about those who are . . . actually poor and suffering here, in the United  States?  They make a brief appearance at the very end of the benediction, in passing:

We pray for all those who seek honest labor, as we thank you for the spirit of generosity to those in need with which you so richly blessed this nation.

Note as well they only make the back half of the sentence, after praying for those seeking honest work.

Again, I am not sure I can fault Dolan for these rhetorical devices.  The Church does seem to be more concerned with social issues like abortion than social justice.  And so the institution of the Church tilts right, even as the Nuns on the Bus tilt left.  But it is at least revealing of priorities that Dolan would have chosen his words as carefully as he did.

For the record, my own views on abortion-style issues are to the left of Dolan, just as my views on social justice are to the right of progressives and the Nuns on the Bus.  I do find it odd, though, that both progressives and the Church hierarchy seem to think that abortion and gay marriage are the most important issues in play. I don’t.

Posted in Philosophy and Religion, Politics and Economics | 3 Comments

Is Anyone Cool Anymore?

Posted on September 7, 2012 by Brundle Guy

Brundle Guy writes:

A couple of years ago a friend of mine, for the purposes of this article we’ll call him Ryan, was being transferred by his job. He was regaling another friend and I with the story of a meeting he’d had about the office transition. He works, as I do, in the entertainment field, so his office had a very casual vibe. However, the new office they were moving into was a little nicer, a little more corporate, so they were being asked to make a few adjustments.

They were told not to eat lunch at their desks. Some coworkers flew into a tizzy. “We can’t eat in the office?!?!” No, there would be an area for eating, they were just being discouraged from eating at their desks. A barrage of questions followed. “How many eating areas are there?” “Where is there to eat around the office?” “Is snacking at desks OK?” “What about drinks?”

Next was the new dress code. Nothing extreme, just business casual, so no t-shirts, shorts or flip-flops. “What about dresses?” “What if they’re NICE t-shirts?” “Do Crocs count as flip-flops?” “Is what I’m wearing ok?” “Is what I’M wearing ok?” A man leaned over to my friend and grunted, “UNGH, dress codes are total bullshit.” The man, according to my friend, was wearing something unquestionably acceptable by the new, but still fairly lax, dress code standards.

The meeting, which was supposed to be a quick little affair, had stretched on interminably. When hearing this my other friend, we’ll call him Andy, went on to tell us a number of similar experiences he’d had with people who seemed to live to get their panties in a twist. When, he wondered, did it become cool to be so damn uncool? Then he said words that have echoed with me ever since: “Why can’t everyone just be the fucking Fonz?”

It seems to me that there used to be aspirational figures in our cultural that exhibited a sought-after style of cool. John Wayne, James Dean, Cary Grant, Steve McQueen, James Bond, Shaft, The Rat Pack, and yes, The Fonz. They were all COOL, and a big part of being cool was being unflappable. Things didn’t bother them. They kept their head at all times, they never flipped out, ranted, raved or lost their shit. At least not in their public personas, the personas that made them “cool.”

Being “cool” isn’t just about doing your own thing and saying “Damn the man,” either. Remember The Fonz? He may have been a tough guy biker, but he still called Mrs. Cunningham “Mrs. C” and obeyed the Cunningham house rules when he was a guest, not because he was some goody goody. He was cool. He didn’t want to start shit or get in anybody’s face or flaunt cheap rebellion or any of that stuff, because that wasn’t cool. Most of the people mentioned above weren’t just cool for the cool kids, they were cool with EVERYBODY.

Who is “cool” nowadays? Real or fictional, I’ll take either one. It seems like everyone’s got a chip on their shoulders and it’s become the hip new thing to go ballistic over every single slight you can find, and even some that you outright fabricate.

As much as it seems completely antithetical to the very nature of “cool,” the first person who came to mind as I was mulling this over was Obama. I’ve certainly got a number of issues with the guy’s presidency, but in a time where being a whiny, temper-tantrum-throwing baby is the fashion, and no one has perfected that more than politicians, the current POTUS seems to have invested in being the only cool, calm and collected guy out there. When the guy talks he radiates “cool.” He seems to constantly be saying “Don’t worry, I’ve got this,” whether or not you may actually believe he’s got it.

This can’t be true, can it? Is the coolest person in our country not just a politician, but THE politician? That’s like saying the coolest person in school is the principal, right?

Is part of it the much-reported Rise of Narcissism? Is nobody out there even looking for new/current Icons of Cool because most people are so narcissistic they can’t imagine anyone being cooler than they are?

Ever since that conversation with my friends, whenever I’ve gotten into situations of stress or felt the need to lash out, whenever I want to go on Facebook and rant about politics or cultural or what-have-you, I’ve thought to myself, “Be the fucking FONZ,” and I’ve found that it actually helps. But then again, I’d never claim to be cooler than the Fonz.

Not to step on The Question Lady’s territory, but what say you all? Are there other people in the public conscious who are “cool” that I’m forgetting? And who are your Icons of Cool?

Posted in Personal reflections | Tagged , , , , | 14 Comments