Programming Note: I'm off to Oregon until Thursday to visit kin, and then New York. Please don't e-mail unless it's important, and know that I won't have time to respond to comments, etc.

08/22/2004 07:17 AM  |  Comment (10)

Here Is What You Should Be Reading a Week From Now: Hey, readers and blog-folk, if your soul can handle such things, I'd be tickled if you could pay attention to, and even link to, our handy-dandy Reason convention weblog broadcasting live from the NYC. Not only will I and Tim B. Liar be staging a thrilling reunion, we will be joined by hot-blooded (i.e., vaguely Spanish) Reason philosopher/heartthrob Julian Sanchez, and a rag-tag army of technologically over-stocked "friends." There are at least 43 reasons why our New York coverage will beat Boston like a cur; here are four:

* There will be actual human conflict, both inside and outside the convention.
* I won’t have to spend five hours a day trying to figure out how to plug in my own computer.
* We will have photographs -- and photographers -- galore.
* New York bars "close" at 4, instead of the subhuman 1:30.

Anyway, enough with the cheap insults -- What would you like me to cover? Who would you like me to interview? Where do I go for the top hat and monocle The New Yorker was always promising me about? And if you are a New York pal, drop me a private line, and let's get busy. I'll be there from the evening of the 26th to the morning of the 3rd.

08/20/2004 11:38 PM  |  Comment (4)

A Final Convention Look-back, More for Me Than for You: I wanted to put all my Democratic Convention posts in one place, with some minimum explainers. This is that place, and these are them 'splainins. I'd only recommend skimming over the list if you didn't read all the stuff at the time.
* Have You Really Got a Friend? (Wrap-up prediction that temporary Dem unity would lead to eventual gridlock).
* ‘What the American People Need To Hear’ (Judy Woodruff-bashing, mixed with old tension between strategical concerns and ‘where’s the beef’).
* Softballs for Gray (Interview with Gray Davis).
* Hey, Media Personalities! What Did You Think of the Speech?
* The Alan Colmes Exception (Why the Fox punching bag was allowed into the locked-down Fleet Center).
* The Botox Candidate (A Philadelphia delegate spills the beans).
* Great Moments in the Freedom Cage
* All Tomorrow’s Parties (Asking This Modern Tom about his reception as a 2000 Nader vet).
* Benedict Arnold Hawaiians? (Independence-minded Hawaiian delegates bro out with the Kucinichites).
* Clark: I’m Ready for Prime Time, Dammit! (Overheard trivialities from Our Wes).
* Please, John Kerry, Save the Internet From Hype! (An absolutely frightening bit of nonsense from Kerry’s campaign book).
* Benedict Arnold’s Two Americas (A longish look on the ticket’s trade rhetoric vs. projected policy).
* Hey, Senior-Citizen Washington Delegates! What Do You Feel About of Ralph Nader? (Mistah Nader? He dead).
* The Picture of Kerry Enthusiasm (A funny why-do-you-like-the-guy response from California delegate).
* Interview With Dave Barry, Convention Columnist (Watch out for that beer can!).
* The Deaniac’s Dean (Howie talks to faithful the day after his lukewarm Convo speech, and explains how the Deaniacs moved him to the left).
* Confusing Professional Politics With ‘Service’ (Longish rant against a Democratic tic).
* Maybe Comedy Is Pretty (Everybody hearts The Daily Show).
* Party Discipline, Up Close and Personal (California delegate rants about Jerry Brown).
* Second Davio's Anecdote (or, Why Mitt Romney Is Such an Asshole) (Mass guv blows a fuse whilst refusing booze).
* Cheney as a Verb (Funnyish third-hand Patrick Leahy anecdote).
* Pink Alert: Medea Benjamin Arrested
* Jerry Brown Interviews Me (This & the Dave Barry Q&A; were my two favorite bits).
* One Exceedingly Trivial Thing You Probably Didn’t Know About Larry King (And you still wouldn’t know, if I was adhering to the Andrew Sullivan business model).
* One of Those Kerry-Okies (In the flesh).
* The European Leap of Faith (Cross-examining the woe-is-the-Transatlantic-Alliance set).
* Foreign Policy: Blowin’ in the Wind (Divining Demo War on Terror ideas from 35-year-old protest songs, since there’s no substance to chew on).
* Potent Readables (What a terrible headline….)
* Partying Like it’s 192004 (Making fun of people’s speech impediments).
* The Security Paradox (It’s like, security isn’t much of a hassle).
* Forgive Me Father for I Do Not Know Who Dealt it (Guido Sarducci hassles me).
* Goodie-goodie Ho-hum (Goody bags, and how Gilette pissed away $1 million like a bunch of mo-rons).
* The Daisy Chain (Thrilling news about me being interviewed).
* Nader Accuses Dems of ‘Mini-Watergate’ (Dirty tricks to keep Ralphie off various state ballots, especially Oregon’s).

08/20/2004 11:33 PM  |  Comment (0)

Question -- When, Exactly Did You Become Aware of the Abbreviation 'MSM'?: For me, it was something like 10 days ago, and now I see it all over the damned place (or at least, all over the damned place where people are trying to convince other people about why the Magic Hat will tear down the Mainstream Media as we know it). But I assume, like LOL, that this has actually been around awhile, and I'm just a moron.

08/20/2004 09:43 PM  |  Comment (14)

New Daily Star Column From Me -- 'On War, John Kerry Is All Vietnam and No Iraq': Headline more absolutist than what I would have written, but you get the idea. It's actually an attempt to read the foreign policy/Middle East tea leaves based on the Democratic National Convention. The lede:

Ever since the Democratic Convention in Boston last month, the John-John ticket has been grumbling about having to fend off accusations that would-be president John Kerry previously fudged vivid details of his war record in Vietnam and (most controversially) Cambodia. There is indeed considerable merit to the notion that a nation at war should be focusing on 2004 instead of 1968, but if Kerry's convention performance was any guide, his go-to selling point for taking the reigns of the "war on terror" is the fact that he was piloting swift-boats up the Mekong back when Osama bin Laden was busy trying to grow his first beard.

08/18/2004 02:34 PM  |  Comment (8)

A Reading You Need to See, a Book You Need to Buy:

This is This Is Burning Man, Brian Doherty’s fantastical new book about the crazy annual anarchy in the sun-blasted desert a ridge or two away from Pyramid Lake. As Brian puts it in the “What’s it All About?” section of his schmancy new book website, he first went to Burning Man in 1995, because

I was told marvelous tales of adventure about this mysterious setting where people with very strange minds could do whatever they wanted, and because anarchy -- a human culture built around something other than force and violence -- is my deepest intellectual interest. And I went, and I saw the fires and the pulse jet cars and the people -- the people! -- and a fire was set in my brain, kindled by the setting, brought to roaring life by the people and the objects and the scenes they created. That fire never went out.

At any rate, Brian will be reading tonight at the world-famous Book Soup on the Sunset Strip, at 7 pm. He is a funny fellow, and I understand the readings are quite amusing. Also -- don’t forget to check out his This Is Burning Man weblog!

08/18/2004 11:35 AM  |  Comment (3)

Does Anyone Else Remember Opposing Illegal Aid to the Contras While Not Loving the Sandinistas? That seems like a common (and reasonable) enough stance in my memory, but everywhere I stumble across the topic these days, they make it seem like it was an Ortega love-fest there in the mid-'80s. That's certainly not how we ran it in my admittedly narrow neck of the woods. It was Sandinista, not Sandinistas, and no amount of middle-aged I-was-wrongism should ever rehabilitate daffy crooks like Oliver North, or all those other Republican hacks who were punished for mocking the Rule of Law by landing key jobs in the Bush Administration.

08/18/2004 02:20 AM  |  Comment (50)

Poor Hungarians: Listening to the Angel game this afternoon from sparsely attended Tropicana Field, you can hear a belligerent single fan with the pipes and personality of John Herbold. The announcers made note, and sport, of the name on his baseball jersey. "It's spelled S-z-a-s-z (both laugh). Maybe that's what's made him so upset! He's never been able to pronounce his own name."

08/17/2004 04:59 PM  |  Comment (2)

Olympic Entitlement: Sgt. Styrker:

The vibe that I'm getting from these athletes is a sense of entitlement. It's not as obvious and overt as it is from Team NBA, but it's there in the performances. It's a sub-conscious thing, I think, that becomes obvious during the events. I watched a women's volleyball match between the US and China that made it clear. The Chinese were diving for the ball and going the extra mile to get the save and the digs, while the Americans just kind of stood there, as if expecting the ball to magically come to wherever they were standing. I didn't see any hustle or desire to win from the Americans like I did from the Chinese, and that's been the story in almost every event so far. I root for the teams and individuals who act like they want to win and dig deep down to make it so. So far, I've been doing little rooting for Team USA.

08/17/2004 04:29 PM  |  Comment (23)

Layne vs. Blair on the Swifties, and John Kerry as a ‘War God’

08/17/2004 12:39 PM  |  Comment (9)

Tony Pierce on Bukowski: Always a good thing.

08/17/2004 12:18 PM  |  Comment (0)

Birth of a Nation, 1915 and 2004: Some excellent comparative stuff from Geitner Simmons, who's working on a fascinating research project comparing the historical self-narratives of Southern California and the South. The timely hook, in case you didn't know, is that a local art-movie house here tried once again to show D.W. Griffith's racist classic the other week, and was again convinced otherwise by protesters.

While you're over at Geitner's consistently stimulating website, also take a gander at Rosa Parks' California Predecessors; and, for you Slavo-trash out there, enjoy watching Geitner stumble across the horrifi-comic culture-blending wonder of Central European injun fave Winnetou. (And whoever's got a good Winnetou story, please leave it in the comments.)

08/17/2004 10:17 AM  |  Comment (4)

Look Who's Writing a Book About Rock & Roll! It's our very own Dr. Frank! From the press release:

Dr. Frank, the songwriter behind one of punk's most influential bands, has just announced that his novel, "King Dork" will be published by Delacorte, a young adult division of Random House. […]

Quite unusual for the publishing world. Dr. Frank was inspired to write his first novel, "King Dork," after being approached and encouraged by a literary agent who was also a fan. He wrote and sold the book in rapid-fire time, within a few months.

"King Dork" follows the picked-upon and wry Thomas "Chi-Mo" Henderson and his only friend, Sam Hellerman, as they fight their way through the demoralizing, mysterious, ridiculous experience of high school. Tom and Sam have each other, and their band, with its ever changing name; Baby Batter, Tennis With Guitars, Liquid Malice, Green Sabbath, Balls Deep, (to name a few.) The book is funny, and sad, and filled with observations about starting a band and being young, with thriller/mystery elements as well as larger observations about the nature of life. Dr. Frank said, "What I'm going for is an amalgam of Judy Blume, P.G. Wodehouse, Philip Roth, Agatha Christie and Behind the Music."

08/17/2004 09:37 AM  |  Comment (1)

I Agree With Just About Every Word of This Excellent Jesse Walker Review of Outfoxed

08/16/2004 06:21 PM  |  Comment (11)

Prescient? Obvious? Wrong? All of the Above? From this here website, on Jan. 20, 2002:

I am detecting some stronger-than-usual Euro-bashing and unilateralism coming from people more typically associated with Woodrow Wilson-style multi-lateralism. By whom, of course, I mean myself. Seriously, though, the European disdain for the rampaging Yank was an amusing and infrequent distraction pre-Sept. 11; now it is starting to annoy the hell out of people here. A domestic backlash against the Continent would have interesting implications … could the crude stereotype of the gunslinging, my-way-or-the-highway American become a self-fulfilling prophecy? Are mainstream European commentators and politicians expending their moral and diplomatic capital willy-nilly? Will isolationism gain a foothold in the Democratic Party?

08/16/2004 03:23 PM  |  Comment (7)

Hi! What are you doing down here?