Tina Turner to play Hindu goddess
After drawing massive crowds with her high-voltage rock performances, Turner will now swing to a new tune: she will play a Hindu goddess in a spiritual Merchant-Ivory musical for which she will also sing classical numbers in Latin and Sanskrit."I could think of no one but Tina Turner to play this part," said Ismail Merchant who will direct "The Goddess."
And all this time I thought Tina Turner was a goddess...
I know I'm supposed to be closed for the day, but I just had to jump in with this one thought:
Will someone please put Camille Paglia out of her misery? Because watching her long but not-so-slow decline into babbling insanity is getting way too painful.
The decline of the intellectual left can be seen in the fact that in the '60s we had Susan Sontag, and in the '90s we had Camille. And now all we've got is Camille babbling about what a hero Rush Limbaugh is.
It's just pitiful.
And wanted some "mood music" up there in heaven:
R&B; Singer Barry White Dies at 58
Farewell, big guy. Back here on earth, seduction just won't be the same without you . . .
1944 - 2003
Rick: How can you close me up?
Renault: I am shocked, shocked to find there is gambling going on in there!
(This display of nerve leaves Rick at a loss. The croupier comes out of the gambling room and up to Renault. He hands him a roll of bills.)
Croupier: Your winnings, sir.
Renault: Oh. Thank you very much . . .
I realize that makes a rather predictable intro for a post about a certain former Education Secretary's gambling addiction. Almost as obvious as the head the Washington Monthly put on the story:
Few vices have escaped Bennett's withering scorn. He has opined on everything from drinking to "homosexual unions" to "The Ricki Lake Show" to wife-swapping. There is one, however, that has largely escaped Bennett's wrath: gambling.
If Bennett hasn't spoken out more forcefully on an issue that would seem tailor-made for him, perhaps it's because he is himself a heavy gambler. Indeed, in recent weeks word has circulated among Washington conservatives that his wagering could be a real problem. They have reason for concern. The Washington Monthly and Newsweek have learned that over the last decade Bennett has made dozens of trips to casinos in Atlantic City and Las Vegas, where he is a "preferred customer" at several of them, and sources and documents provided to The Washington Monthly put his total losses at more than $8 million.
Now as someone noted on a previous post, being a high roller in AC or Vegas isn't quite as politically embarrassing as (I will try to put this more delicately) being videotaped with a large sexual device inserted in one of your more important bodily orifices.
But you still have to admit: When somebody has set themselves up as the national nanny, it's not exactly good PR to be revealed as a compulsive gambler, which -- if I recall - is listed as a vice in the religious conservative dictionary.
Maybe it depends on your definition of "is."
Given that throwing stones at other people's sins is Bill's chosen profession, you have to wonder why he didn't have a contractor replace those residential glass walls with something more substantial -- not to mention less revealing.
But what's worse: being exposed as a shameless hypocrite (as if there's any other kind) or as a mathematical illiterate? I mean, the guy was a college professor. He has a PhD. He was the Secretary of Education, for Christ's sake (or at least, that's what Bennett thinks).
Then he goes and does something like this:
(Bennett) prefers the high-limit room, where he's less likely to be seen and where he can play the $500-a-pull slots.
He's plays the slots??? Like the old ladies out in Laughlin with the cups full of change and the golf gloves on one hand, pumping away like oil wells underneath the sign that reads "Social Security checks cashed here"?
That's Bennett's idea of being a high roller???
I understand Bennett was an English major, but didn't he take any statistics classes? Hasn't he ever heard the term "house odds"? Does he know why they call them "house" odds?
From now on, Bennett might do better to stick to the "low stakes" poker games he occasionaly likes to play with his fellow conservative moral giants:
In 1998, The Washington Times reported in a light-hearted front-page feature story that he plays low-stakes poker with a group of prominent conservatives, including Robert Bork, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, and Chief Justice William Rehnquist.
Scalia: (puffs his cigar.) I'll see your $500, Bennett, and raise you all of Florida's electoral votes.
Bork: Shit. I'm out.
Let's just be thankful (or at least hopeful) they weren't playing strip poker.
The timing on the Bennett story is actually very good, because last night a friend of mine sent me a link to this piece in the Guardian, which suggests Virtue Man doesn't have anything close to a corner on homegrown hypocricy:
America's black economy is flying high
(obviously, the Guardian is talking about the black market economy, not the latest unemployment figures for the African American community.)
Marijuana, pornography and illegal labour have created a hidden market in the United States which now accounts for as much as 10% of the American economy, according to a study.
Despite laws that punish marijuana cultivation more strictly than murder in some states, Americans spend more on illegal drugs than on cigarettes. And despite official disapproval of pornography, the US leads the world in export of explicit sex videos, according to Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs and Cheap Labour in the American Black Market, by Eric Schlosser.
Hardcore pornography in the shape of videos, the internet, live sex acts and cable television is now estimated to generate around $10bn, roughly the same amount as Hollywood's US box office receipts.
Imagine that. Maybe the porno guys should demand seats in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. That could make the Oscars show a lot more interesting.
And it's not just those hedonistic Democrats who are getting in on the act, so to speak:
Nina Hartley, a porn star, told Schlosser: "You'd be surprised how many producers and manufacturers are Republicans."
The Guardian might; I wouldn't. If Bennett is looking for another hobby, one where he could actually make a few bucks, there it is.
The Guardian article doesn't even get into legalized gambling, which has been around so long and grown so big that Wall Street regards it as just another boring consumer play -- like toothpaste or cosmetics. Like Bennett, gambling is practically a has-been -- yesterday's vice, in a society where modern pharmaceuticals and genetic design could open up far more exciting avenues of sin and decadence in the decades to come.
Do I like this? Am I indifferent to the threats my children will face -- and their children (whether test-tube raised or not)?
Of course not. But excuse my pagan soul if I don't believe calling the world back to Jesus is going to solve the problem. And real solutions -- like decriminalizing and regulating the drug trade -- will take more honesty and will than this country is ever likely to have.
Meanwhile, as Nelson Algren observed a long time ago in A Walk on the Wild Side (the book, not the Lou Reed song) all that bible thumping makes great cover for what the do-right daddies like to do on Saturday night.
Will that ever change? Dunno. But if you want to put some money down on it, talk to Bennett. I'm sure he'll give you good odds.
The Concorde is on death row. Sentence to be carried out later this year. British Air and Air France both say they will ground the supersonic gas hog forever, citing rising costs and falling demand.
This raises some important questions, such as: What will Madonna do with her frequent flyer miles?
But it's also the obituary for a certain mid-20th century vision of what the 21st century would look like. So I'd like to take this opportunity to say Kaddish -- not so much for the Concorde (which really won't be missed), but for the era it represented, which was my childhood.
With its swept-back wings and tapered tail, the Concorde was an icon of post-modernist design -- kind of a flying version of a Bauhaus office building or an Alexander Calder mobile. This is the future as it was supposed to be: cool and abstract, sleekly minimalist -- and above all, functional . No emotional frills, no vulgar symbols of power and status. Just pure form, suspended in the stratosphere.
Now the postmodernist vision was always a bit of a fraud -- as the Concorde itself demonstrated. It was in fact, all about power and status, right from the start. Here's a good summary of the plane's history.
Born of an incestuous deal between the French and the British, intended as a political challenge to American supremacy, and of little practical value except as a toy for wealthy elites, the Concorde was anything but functional. It was loud, dirty and expensive -- a case study in lemon socialism.
But that's not how I remember it. For me, the Concorde was the thrill I felt as a 12-year old boy, standing in the parking lot at Washington's Dulles Airport, watching it soar over Eero Saarinen's equally post-modernist main terminal building. It was the same thrill I got from watching Neil Armstrong's one giant leap on the moon. Or from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Or from my first trip to Tomorrowland.
Now that was a future worth waiting for.
Today, though, the Concorde seems as sad and pathetic as the remains of the 1964 New York World's Fair or the Seattle Space Needle. Bizarre relics of a future that never came. Instead we got post-post-modernism, then post-post-post-modernism: the repetitive afterbirths of a high culture stuck in a very deep rut.
Even the computer world -- post-modernism's last bastion -- seems to have lost its ideological elan since the Internet bubble collapsed. Lately, Wired is just a pale shadow of its former hubristic self.
Actually, the cybernerds can claim a better track record than most post-modern visionaries. Watching 2001: A Space Odyssey recently -- for the first time in years -- I was struck by how many of its wonders never came to pass: No space planes, no orbiting Hiltons, no moon bases. But one of its innovation did make it, and made it on time: the notepad computer.
Still, that's pretty small beer for an age that was supposed to transcend the boundaries of time and space. Smaller and smaller microprocessors certainly are a marvel, but they seem less and less of a barometer for progress back in the meat world. I mean, when was the last time you heard Moore's Law cited as the model for all future human evolution?
The M1 tank, not the supersonic transport, is the symbol of the age. Instead of Dick Cavett, we've got Rush Limbaugh. Instead of JFK, Shrub. Low culture rules; the rednecks have come into their inheritance. It may not be cool, it may not be sleek. But it is functional: Lethally functional.
And what about the future? I think this item, from Disney's history of Tommorowland, captures it:
In the year 2000, Chevron sponsored the new Autopia. The Fantasyland and Tomorrowland tracks were connected, and new cars, a new queue area, and a new show building were installed. Announced in April of 2001, The Rocket Rods would not be returning after a long downtime. High expense and unreliability were the blame.