Have you ever found, in looking up the phone number of someone with a very common surname, that the letters forming that name gradually tend to lose their resolution and sense of being letters, instead falling back to a state of pure black ink, blank graphics on the page? Something similar happens to words as conceptual objects: in its most extreme form, we call the result a cliche, which ultimately is a phrase that evaporates thinking in lieu of hardwired thought-associations. It's not only cliches that shunt thought into these grooved ruts of mental habit; words and terms we normally think of as merely descriptive can also fall into them. Such words or phrases need to be retired, or re-employed in ways to refresh their capacity to bear meaning - a process much harder to accomplish than to describe.
Such a fate seems to have overcome the word conspiracy - which now primarily evokes anxious folks in the darker corners of libraries, scribbling to the very edges of the pages of faded notebooks or fulminating in a public square about the nefarious dealings linking the Knights Templar, Elvis, and the judges on American Idol. Hillary Clinton was having a rhetorical bad-hair day when she uttered her infamous line about the "vast right-wing conspiracy" - had the proper neural conditioners been applied, the tangling of her mental circuits that allowed her to use the word conspiracy would have let her know that, to be taken seriously, nearly any other word would be better suited.
And predictably, the media - which never met a cliche it didn't like - jumped all over her. Yet, words aside, it should be perfectly obvious that what she described is real. Because all a "conspiracy" really is, is an organized effort to get something done, with an accompanying effort to keep others in the dark. That there was an organized effort against Bill Clinton is numbingly obvious and impossible to deny; that it was "vast" depends on your definition, but certainly that effort involved more than a small handful of people. And that it was primarily drawn from the right (despite the existence of a significant anti-Clinton bloc on the left) again is ox-stunningly obvious.
Yet (old-school Variety headline to follow) the "vast conspiracy" remark became a frequently returned-to landmark in the game of Pillory Hillary, Grill Bill so popular in those years. And the simplest way to shut down discussion of any action that isn't solely down to one person (that is, discussion of nearly everything that matters) is to accuse the speaker of buying into "conspiracy theories" and claim that, hey, it's not as if all those people got together one day in a smoky room and unilaterally decided to, say, fail to mention labor history in nearly every school textbook. The assumption is that the only way things happen, other than flowing inexorably from the will of one individual, is through a movie-stereotype, secret, all-controlling, never-seen agency. Note also that results achieved by the organized efforts of your side are never described (by you) as a "conspiracy" - even if a degree of confidentiality (i.e., "secrecy" to everyone else) made those results possible.
"Conspiracy," in other words, is another term by which the discussion of large-scale social and historical forces is ruled out of court.
(Still and all, for those of you who wonder why specific facts somehow never get talked about, here's a good one: what happened to WTC7 on 9/11/01? See The Tris McCall Report of November 24 for details.)
11.25.2003
11.20.2003
can you hear me...now!
We're thinking of getting rid of our landline telephone. We make and receive very few calls anyway; most of our communication with friends takes place via e-mail, and the few folks we know who don't regularly use e-mail (parents, for the most part) can be called on our cell. Through Rose's work, we have cheap access to two cell phone numbers, and at this point I see no reason not to designate one of them our main line, and keep the other one for "personal" or private usage.
I happened to mention this to a co-worker (at my part-time non-academic job), and we recognized that part of the plausibility of this move for us has to do with our particular lives: no kids, most people we know with online access, etc. At one point, though, the co-worker said she didn't think she'd do it even in our situation: she'd hate the idea of having to carry the cell phone everywhere just so she'd have it with her to answer whenever anyone called. I responded, well, we never answer our phone anyway; we just let the machine get it and call the person back later. She blanched, and went off on a diatribe about how irritating that was and how arrogant we were, that we were "making a statement that our time is more valuable than anyone else's." I was a bit taken aback at the vehemence of her opinions (even though it was clear they weren't really directed at me - it's not as if she calls us often), and the difference between my perspective and hers got me thinking of how radically different our attitudes toward an apparently simple thing like phone calls can be, and where those differences might come from.
I think the chief difference is that our main mode of communication by now is, by an enormous margin, e-mail. And the communicative philosophy underlying e-mail is very much a non-timebound philosophy, a philosophy which then colonizes the rest of one's non- face-to-face communications. (I should say also that we seldom receive or make calls that require immediate action or response. In part, this is the no-kids thing, plus both our parents are in reasonably good health - and neither of us is in a business that requires constant and immediate access and response.) So to me, e-mailing someone means that at some point, sooner or later depending upon the recipient's convenience, they'll get back to me. I know that; I know, usually, about how often the person checks their mail, so I know about how long I can reasonably expect to wait for that response (if indeed my message is the kind that requires any response at all) and how much later a follow-up might make sense. Similarly, I know that most people e-mailing me have similar expectations and awareness.
What I hadn't thought of until today is that, really, I approach phone-calling the same way. When I call someone, I really don't expect that person to answer. First, the odds are generally good that the person isn't home (and I certainly don't think, "are they home?" before I call - precisely because it doesn't matter: I can just leave a message); second, I know that most of our friends also don't answer the phone. Telemarketers are partially to blame for this - but not wholly, and the number of telemarketers has dropped dramatically since the onset of "do not call" lists. (Ironically, they still call, quite frequently, at work. And there, of course, especially since it's my job to answer the damned things, I can't just ignore the phone. I'm more irritated by marketing calls there than at home.) But the expectation makes a huge difference - and because I simply don't expect a person to answer the phone when I call, it flabbergasted me that not only would someone else expect people to answer but would be offended that some people don't.
In fact, my model of telephone communication pretty much reverses that time-valuation formulation my co-worker alluded to. When I don't answer the phone, it's not so much that I think my time is more valuable than someone else's, it's that I don't assume they'd expect me to answer the phone - since such an expectation in fact assumes that their time is more valuable than mine. They know what they're doing at that moment, and that they have time to call me - but they can't know what I'm doing. So it seems, in my perspective, unreasonable to expect me to jump up from whatever I'm doing to answer the phone, just because they've decided it's time to call me. It seems far more reasonable to assume that, in fact, the expectation isn't that I'll answer now, but only that they want to communicate with me. Depending on the nature of the call, that might require co-temporaneous conversation (you know: talking back and forth at the same time), but most likely, that isn't even the case. And this, once again, is a direct translation from the e-mail model: it's far easier for everyone's time to jot messages back and forth (and now that most everyone pays a flat fee rather than a time-based fee for e-mail, time's no longer an issue of money) than to attempt to coerce a co-temporaneous event into existence.
But yeah: twenty years ago - or more so, longer ago, prior to the invention of the answering machine - it would have been the height of arrogance to refuse to answer the phone. (And in a business setting, I suppose, it still is. But I'm most definitely not in a business setting when I'm at home.) But now? I don't know...I've never been a fan of extended telephone conversations - and if it were practical, I'd probably have no phone at all. That, I recognize, is weird. But then, I'm still one of those people who just can't figure out what the hell all those public cell-phone babblers are talking about, or who they're all talking to.
I happened to mention this to a co-worker (at my part-time non-academic job), and we recognized that part of the plausibility of this move for us has to do with our particular lives: no kids, most people we know with online access, etc. At one point, though, the co-worker said she didn't think she'd do it even in our situation: she'd hate the idea of having to carry the cell phone everywhere just so she'd have it with her to answer whenever anyone called. I responded, well, we never answer our phone anyway; we just let the machine get it and call the person back later. She blanched, and went off on a diatribe about how irritating that was and how arrogant we were, that we were "making a statement that our time is more valuable than anyone else's." I was a bit taken aback at the vehemence of her opinions (even though it was clear they weren't really directed at me - it's not as if she calls us often), and the difference between my perspective and hers got me thinking of how radically different our attitudes toward an apparently simple thing like phone calls can be, and where those differences might come from.
I think the chief difference is that our main mode of communication by now is, by an enormous margin, e-mail. And the communicative philosophy underlying e-mail is very much a non-timebound philosophy, a philosophy which then colonizes the rest of one's non- face-to-face communications. (I should say also that we seldom receive or make calls that require immediate action or response. In part, this is the no-kids thing, plus both our parents are in reasonably good health - and neither of us is in a business that requires constant and immediate access and response.) So to me, e-mailing someone means that at some point, sooner or later depending upon the recipient's convenience, they'll get back to me. I know that; I know, usually, about how often the person checks their mail, so I know about how long I can reasonably expect to wait for that response (if indeed my message is the kind that requires any response at all) and how much later a follow-up might make sense. Similarly, I know that most people e-mailing me have similar expectations and awareness.
What I hadn't thought of until today is that, really, I approach phone-calling the same way. When I call someone, I really don't expect that person to answer. First, the odds are generally good that the person isn't home (and I certainly don't think, "are they home?" before I call - precisely because it doesn't matter: I can just leave a message); second, I know that most of our friends also don't answer the phone. Telemarketers are partially to blame for this - but not wholly, and the number of telemarketers has dropped dramatically since the onset of "do not call" lists. (Ironically, they still call, quite frequently, at work. And there, of course, especially since it's my job to answer the damned things, I can't just ignore the phone. I'm more irritated by marketing calls there than at home.) But the expectation makes a huge difference - and because I simply don't expect a person to answer the phone when I call, it flabbergasted me that not only would someone else expect people to answer but would be offended that some people don't.
In fact, my model of telephone communication pretty much reverses that time-valuation formulation my co-worker alluded to. When I don't answer the phone, it's not so much that I think my time is more valuable than someone else's, it's that I don't assume they'd expect me to answer the phone - since such an expectation in fact assumes that their time is more valuable than mine. They know what they're doing at that moment, and that they have time to call me - but they can't know what I'm doing. So it seems, in my perspective, unreasonable to expect me to jump up from whatever I'm doing to answer the phone, just because they've decided it's time to call me. It seems far more reasonable to assume that, in fact, the expectation isn't that I'll answer now, but only that they want to communicate with me. Depending on the nature of the call, that might require co-temporaneous conversation (you know: talking back and forth at the same time), but most likely, that isn't even the case. And this, once again, is a direct translation from the e-mail model: it's far easier for everyone's time to jot messages back and forth (and now that most everyone pays a flat fee rather than a time-based fee for e-mail, time's no longer an issue of money) than to attempt to coerce a co-temporaneous event into existence.
But yeah: twenty years ago - or more so, longer ago, prior to the invention of the answering machine - it would have been the height of arrogance to refuse to answer the phone. (And in a business setting, I suppose, it still is. But I'm most definitely not in a business setting when I'm at home.) But now? I don't know...I've never been a fan of extended telephone conversations - and if it were practical, I'd probably have no phone at all. That, I recognize, is weird. But then, I'm still one of those people who just can't figure out what the hell all those public cell-phone babblers are talking about, or who they're all talking to.
11.19.2003
shocked...shocked!
And in tonight's lead story: water accused of being wet. Details after these messages.
11.17.2003
Stumbling white elephants, or nonpareil elegance?
Last Sunday, we drove to Madison to celebrate my sister's and brother's birthdays (they were born six years and one day apart), and as we usually do, loaded up a couple of CDs to make the utterly boring (but short) stretch of I-94 a bit more interesting. Jenny Toomey's CD of Franklin Bruno's songs (Tempting) was directly followed by the first installment of the Robert Pollard/Tobin Sprout collaboration Airport 5 (Tower in the Fountain of Sparks), and the juxtaposition revealed the artists' very different approach to pop song construction, and how those approaches affect the way listeners react to those songs.
Bruno, of course, is a classicist in terms of popular song construction, and the joy of his work is largely the way he rings changes on the sort of pop-song structure that's nearly encoded in our DNA. In his case, much of that pleasure arises from the cleverness of his lyric-writing - in that field, he's almost without parallel: I'd pay to see a rhyme-off between him and Stephen Sondheim - including his play with the plasticity of word-endings when heard as opposed to read. Take the title of Bruno's most recent album, A Cat May Look at a Queen. Hear the rhyme in it? You will when you hear Bruno sing it. Or (back to the Toomey set), consider the way "diamond" is rhymed with "time and time again" on one song here: not obvious on the page, but out loud, particularly when sung, it's a perfect fit.
Contrasting with Bruno's sense of song structure, the Airport 5 CD, for which Sprout wrote the music and Pollard the lyrics, finds Sprout altering his usual pop-song habits in deference to or anticipation of Pollard's more elliptical approach. As is the case with any number of Guided by Voices songs, these tracks do not necessarily proceed in orderly parade from verse to chorus to verse then over the bridge to verse and chorus again.
Here, the pleasure (or, for some listeners, no doubt the frustration) lies in the unexpected: the songs are close enough to the pop-song template to arouse its expectations, but their deferral and sometimes outright thwarting gives them a very different affect compared to the satisfaction brought forth by Bruno's classic structures. What's most fascinating is how potent a mode of time alteration Airport 5's more fanciful structures can be. One song distends the present, forestalling the expected forward motion, by presenting verse after verse after verse, while another fades unexpectedly in the first chorus, rocketing us forward. Still another suspends us, with two different passages competing as to which is the chorus and which a repeated bridge. For me, these time alterations are a key to the emotional character of Pollard's songwriting (as I said, even though Tobin Sprout wrote and performed the music here, he's writing in more of a Robert Pollard-like vein than his solo work or even his songs with GBV), since different emotional states also alter our sense of time. The songs reproduce or at least approximate that plasticity of experienced time, and so evoke the emotional experiences associted with that plasticity.
For some listeners, I suppose, emotional frustration arises from a lack of felt wholeness - and in conventional terms, many of these songs aren't whole (some of them are more than whole, actually, in that they contain more parts than a typical pop song structure can accommodate). It's Pollard's tendency to play games with song structure that causes so many critics to describe his songs as "fragmented": they're fragmented only if one assumes songs must have a particular structure. And of course, if you alter that structure, your song might seem fragmented, less than whole...even if it's four minutes long - whereas a traditionally structured song that says its piece in a mere minute feels complete, unified, and not fragmented (I'm thinking of many of the songs on The Residents' Commercial Album)...despite being one-fourth the size of the oddly proportioned track.
Bruno, of course, is a classicist in terms of popular song construction, and the joy of his work is largely the way he rings changes on the sort of pop-song structure that's nearly encoded in our DNA. In his case, much of that pleasure arises from the cleverness of his lyric-writing - in that field, he's almost without parallel: I'd pay to see a rhyme-off between him and Stephen Sondheim - including his play with the plasticity of word-endings when heard as opposed to read. Take the title of Bruno's most recent album, A Cat May Look at a Queen. Hear the rhyme in it? You will when you hear Bruno sing it. Or (back to the Toomey set), consider the way "diamond" is rhymed with "time and time again" on one song here: not obvious on the page, but out loud, particularly when sung, it's a perfect fit.
Contrasting with Bruno's sense of song structure, the Airport 5 CD, for which Sprout wrote the music and Pollard the lyrics, finds Sprout altering his usual pop-song habits in deference to or anticipation of Pollard's more elliptical approach. As is the case with any number of Guided by Voices songs, these tracks do not necessarily proceed in orderly parade from verse to chorus to verse then over the bridge to verse and chorus again.
Here, the pleasure (or, for some listeners, no doubt the frustration) lies in the unexpected: the songs are close enough to the pop-song template to arouse its expectations, but their deferral and sometimes outright thwarting gives them a very different affect compared to the satisfaction brought forth by Bruno's classic structures. What's most fascinating is how potent a mode of time alteration Airport 5's more fanciful structures can be. One song distends the present, forestalling the expected forward motion, by presenting verse after verse after verse, while another fades unexpectedly in the first chorus, rocketing us forward. Still another suspends us, with two different passages competing as to which is the chorus and which a repeated bridge. For me, these time alterations are a key to the emotional character of Pollard's songwriting (as I said, even though Tobin Sprout wrote and performed the music here, he's writing in more of a Robert Pollard-like vein than his solo work or even his songs with GBV), since different emotional states also alter our sense of time. The songs reproduce or at least approximate that plasticity of experienced time, and so evoke the emotional experiences associted with that plasticity.
For some listeners, I suppose, emotional frustration arises from a lack of felt wholeness - and in conventional terms, many of these songs aren't whole (some of them are more than whole, actually, in that they contain more parts than a typical pop song structure can accommodate). It's Pollard's tendency to play games with song structure that causes so many critics to describe his songs as "fragmented": they're fragmented only if one assumes songs must have a particular structure. And of course, if you alter that structure, your song might seem fragmented, less than whole...even if it's four minutes long - whereas a traditionally structured song that says its piece in a mere minute feels complete, unified, and not fragmented (I'm thinking of many of the songs on The Residents' Commercial Album)...despite being one-fourth the size of the oddly proportioned track.
11.15.2003
'_'
My day job (and night job, and weekend job: it just never stops) as a teacher of college writing means I'm exposed to far more student writing than any sane person would desire. One curious aspect of student writing: certain words, phrases, and even punctuation seem to fall in and out of vogue. Of course, there are the perennials ("in today's society" being among the more notorious), but the way certain words or phrases suddenly flock forth from every other student paper (partake in lieu of participate, for example) suggests a cabal of Mr. Blackwell-like high school English teachers, attempting to inculcate this season's styles in a resistant and error-prone student populace.
Among the more curious of these trends is the spontaneous rise of a new punctuation mark, or rather, a particular usage of a particular punctuation mark. Standard American usage reserves single quotation marks for indirect quotation (there's an obscure corner of Chicago that allows them to designate philosophical concepts under discussion), but almost all of my students have decided that they should be used to designate words or concepts under question generally. That "under question" can simply mean "as words" (for which usage I prefer italics, as with partake above...and for that matter, in this parenthesis), but more often it means "as potentially inaccurate usage," "as non-specific quotation," or "as concept." For example, here's a phrase from a recent student paper:
So when one goes to visit this 'spectacle of nature' they expect that it is going to be wonderful.
The sense seems to be that the phrase is to be regarded as a common or stereotypical description, which the writer is disavowing to some extent. Or this:
I change my 'voice' for each of these people: my boss, parents, brother, friends, teachers, and other students.
(The writer is using Simon Frith's notion of "voice" as developed in his essay of that name.)
What's interesting is that, even though in most cases either (standard double) quotation marks or italics could accomplish the same thing, these students organically evolved the distinction under which single quotation marks mean something a bit more specific than either double quotes or italics. And actually, I think it's a logical distinction worth making, following from that obscure proviso in Chicago I mention above.
Now if only I can get the language to treat non-specific they as it has evolved to treat non-specific you (numberless, genderless)....
Among the more curious of these trends is the spontaneous rise of a new punctuation mark, or rather, a particular usage of a particular punctuation mark. Standard American usage reserves single quotation marks for indirect quotation (there's an obscure corner of Chicago that allows them to designate philosophical concepts under discussion), but almost all of my students have decided that they should be used to designate words or concepts under question generally. That "under question" can simply mean "as words" (for which usage I prefer italics, as with partake above...and for that matter, in this parenthesis), but more often it means "as potentially inaccurate usage," "as non-specific quotation," or "as concept." For example, here's a phrase from a recent student paper:
So when one goes to visit this 'spectacle of nature' they expect that it is going to be wonderful.
The sense seems to be that the phrase is to be regarded as a common or stereotypical description, which the writer is disavowing to some extent. Or this:
I change my 'voice' for each of these people: my boss, parents, brother, friends, teachers, and other students.
(The writer is using Simon Frith's notion of "voice" as developed in his essay of that name.)
What's interesting is that, even though in most cases either (standard double) quotation marks or italics could accomplish the same thing, these students organically evolved the distinction under which single quotation marks mean something a bit more specific than either double quotes or italics. And actually, I think it's a logical distinction worth making, following from that obscure proviso in Chicago I mention above.
Now if only I can get the language to treat non-specific they as it has evolved to treat non-specific you (numberless, genderless)....
11.14.2003
content-free!
Today, Fight Club poetry:
Bob is dead.
They shot him in the head.
I'm fuckin' Lou -
Who the fuck are you?
Bob is dead.
They shot him in the head.
I'm fuckin' Lou -
Who the fuck are you?
11.12.2003
How to Write an Early R.E.M. Song
It seems fairly to easy to write a parody of someone else's style: as clever as Weird Al Yankovic can be, no one would mistake his song parodies for the real thing, or for an actual song by the band. But it's probably more interesting, more challenging, and in many ways more fun, to try to write a song (or at least lyrics) that sound as if they might be an actual song by a particular musician. Get good enough, and you might actually write one of their songs...or so Borges might say.
Anyway, a friend of mine has taken to forwarding some of the more interesting and intriguing alt-texts from spam. (This is a sort of productive recycling, pulling at least amusement out of the trash of the internet.) One in particular reminded me very much of the sort of thing Michael Stipe might have sung in the early days of R.E.M. - and it joined up with a few stray phrases that had been rattling around my brain for quite a while to become the kernel of the idea to try to write a pseudo-R.E.M. lyric. The goals were obliqueness, suggestiveness, and a certain kind of truncated, telescoped diction in which certain words or phrases are elided, either because they're almost obvious (and therefore unnecessary to include) or because leaving them out allows for other possibilities. At first, proceeding in this way, I had no idea what the song was "about." Curiously, at some point I realized that everything I'd written, borrowed, or stolen cohered for me - and I knew what I was writing about. Perhaps more curiously, finishing the song after that became much more difficult, because it was tempting to become obvious and direct (which, given the stylistic constraints suggested by my inspiration, would have ruined it). I found the composing process worked best if I didn't think too hard about it, if I sort of let phrases pop into my head. I also decided that I wouldn't try to work things into any regular meter: one of the charms of Stipe's phrasing back then is the way he staggers his rhythm to fit varying syllables into the same sonic time-space.
Aside from the spam alt-text (themselves borrowed from H.G. Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau and Orestes A. Brownson's The American Republic: I did some googling), lines are from a Robert Johnson lyric in that two-disc Columbia box from a few years back (I think they got it wrong, but the wrong lyric is more interesting than the right one) and an illustration in the latest issue of Magnet magazine. I rather like the results - now all I have to do is dust off my guitar and pretend to be the rest of the band... Instead, I used a phrase as the title of a mix CD, and scrawled most of the rest of the lyric as a visual element on the cover: results are posted here at the Art of the Mix site.
Intriguingly, when I went back to the original forwarded spam alt-text, I realized that I shouldn't use all of the Brownson quote: even though the song began with what seemed like random phrases, the original context of the Brownson passage proved to be relevant enough that quoting it in full nearly gave the game away (i.e., turned it into a later R.E.M. lyric), so I chipped away half of each phrase. (Curious readers are directed here, for the full spam alt-text.)
ANNOTATE THE CAPSTONE AND PREPARE
THREE DAYS WALK
MILK SCATTERED COWS
MARCH TO GROTTO
BANJO FENCE
WHO NEEDS CALAMINE
AIR TO BLUR AND SETTLE
I CAN STUDY RAIN
TESTIFIED TO THE PUMA
I SAW MONTGOMERY WINCE
NAIL THE WIND TO THE WATER
TIE THE FLAME TO THE GROUND
SIGN YOUR NAME ON THE SHATTERED
CART BEFORE
SWEPT BEHIND
MARCH TO GROTTO
BANJO FENCE
WHO NEEDS CALAMINE
AIR TO BLUR AND SETTLE
I CAN STUDY RAIN
TESTIFIED TO THE PUMA (STATE WHO
I SAW MONTGOMERY WINCE (UNDER THE OLD
NAIL THE WIND TO THE WATER (I CAN STUDY
TIE THE FLAME TO THE GROUND (STATE WHO
Anyway, a friend of mine has taken to forwarding some of the more interesting and intriguing alt-texts from spam. (This is a sort of productive recycling, pulling at least amusement out of the trash of the internet.) One in particular reminded me very much of the sort of thing Michael Stipe might have sung in the early days of R.E.M. - and it joined up with a few stray phrases that had been rattling around my brain for quite a while to become the kernel of the idea to try to write a pseudo-R.E.M. lyric. The goals were obliqueness, suggestiveness, and a certain kind of truncated, telescoped diction in which certain words or phrases are elided, either because they're almost obvious (and therefore unnecessary to include) or because leaving them out allows for other possibilities. At first, proceeding in this way, I had no idea what the song was "about." Curiously, at some point I realized that everything I'd written, borrowed, or stolen cohered for me - and I knew what I was writing about. Perhaps more curiously, finishing the song after that became much more difficult, because it was tempting to become obvious and direct (which, given the stylistic constraints suggested by my inspiration, would have ruined it). I found the composing process worked best if I didn't think too hard about it, if I sort of let phrases pop into my head. I also decided that I wouldn't try to work things into any regular meter: one of the charms of Stipe's phrasing back then is the way he staggers his rhythm to fit varying syllables into the same sonic time-space.
Aside from the spam alt-text (themselves borrowed from H.G. Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau and Orestes A. Brownson's The American Republic: I did some googling), lines are from a Robert Johnson lyric in that two-disc Columbia box from a few years back (I think they got it wrong, but the wrong lyric is more interesting than the right one) and an illustration in the latest issue of Magnet magazine. I rather like the results - now all I have to do is dust off my guitar and pretend to be the rest of the band... Instead, I used a phrase as the title of a mix CD, and scrawled most of the rest of the lyric as a visual element on the cover: results are posted here at the Art of the Mix site.
Intriguingly, when I went back to the original forwarded spam alt-text, I realized that I shouldn't use all of the Brownson quote: even though the song began with what seemed like random phrases, the original context of the Brownson passage proved to be relevant enough that quoting it in full nearly gave the game away (i.e., turned it into a later R.E.M. lyric), so I chipped away half of each phrase. (Curious readers are directed here, for the full spam alt-text.)
ANNOTATE THE CAPSTONE AND PREPARE
THREE DAYS WALK
MILK SCATTERED COWS
MARCH TO GROTTO
BANJO FENCE
WHO NEEDS CALAMINE
AIR TO BLUR AND SETTLE
I CAN STUDY RAIN
TESTIFIED TO THE PUMA
I SAW MONTGOMERY WINCE
NAIL THE WIND TO THE WATER
TIE THE FLAME TO THE GROUND
SIGN YOUR NAME ON THE SHATTERED
CART BEFORE
SWEPT BEHIND
MARCH TO GROTTO
BANJO FENCE
WHO NEEDS CALAMINE
AIR TO BLUR AND SETTLE
I CAN STUDY RAIN
TESTIFIED TO THE PUMA (STATE WHO
I SAW MONTGOMERY WINCE (UNDER THE OLD
NAIL THE WIND TO THE WATER (I CAN STUDY
TIE THE FLAME TO THE GROUND (STATE WHO
11.07.2003
Upon the My-oh-My
On the list of things to complain about, the spreading "my" meme is pretty low-priority...but then, on the list of things that solve problems, a website is even lower. So.
I'm not sure when the whole "my" thing started - perhaps with Windows' "My Documents" default folder - but it's everywhere now: My Yahoo, My Amazon.com, etc. On the one hand, the urge to "personalize" the supposedly cold, gray surface of the computer is understandable...but there's something offputting, even infantile, about the nomenclature. Never mind the irony that at least where websites and the like are concerned, "my" generally results in a program tabulating your existing likes and dislikes and attempting to guess what else you might like - most often by matching those likes and dislikes with those of others: in other words, it's "my" amazon.com to the exact extent "my" tastes match a particularly chosen collective other.
The infantile aspect of the meme is its implicit positioning relative to you, whose tastes, files, or what have you are being delivered. It would seem most accurate for "My Documents" to be renamed "Jeff's Documents," or whoever's machine the file dwells on...but third person is harder to specify in advance (thankfully, no one's thought to gender computers or OSs and equip them with "His Documents" or "Her Documents"). The next best solution, I'd argue, would be "Your Documents": you are not your computer; when you're looking at its screen, it is, at best, communicating to you, and so a second-person mode of address makes sense. But "My Computer" - in the first person - is, at least to a Mr. Spock, somewhat baffling: is the computer asserting ownership of itself? No...in fact, the "my" meme asks you to internalize the computer, to imagine it as an extension of your own senses, in a sort of crude crayon sketch of a Gibsonian cybermatrix. It somehow reminds me of the way young kids employ a fluid sense of identity in play, alternating between being themselves and voicing, say, that "Teddy the Bear is my bear." Even that habit of including the generic animal name in a specific doll's or character's name - Teddy the Bear, Eddie the Rabbit, MacHeath the Shark - speaks to a sort of splitting-off of identity, almost in a totemistic way - as if Teddy the Bear is the "bear" aspect of the child. And of course, pretend-play - where the child acts out being a puppy, for example - is the most obvious instance of this phenomenon. (Human characters are seldom so-named: who's ever heard of a doll called "Bobby the Human"? I would, though, be worried if the kid started talking about his stuffed animals directly in the first person: "I am Jack's teddy bear"...)
More simply and directly, the "my" meme marks ownership. It's marketing mojo in action: you internalize and take possession of the machine. It's also another aspect of the territorial pissing instinct, marking off something as one's own - even if it's overpriced, prepackaged piss that's EULA-hedged and DRM-protected.
I'm not sure when the whole "my" thing started - perhaps with Windows' "My Documents" default folder - but it's everywhere now: My Yahoo, My Amazon.com, etc. On the one hand, the urge to "personalize" the supposedly cold, gray surface of the computer is understandable...but there's something offputting, even infantile, about the nomenclature. Never mind the irony that at least where websites and the like are concerned, "my" generally results in a program tabulating your existing likes and dislikes and attempting to guess what else you might like - most often by matching those likes and dislikes with those of others: in other words, it's "my" amazon.com to the exact extent "my" tastes match a particularly chosen collective other.
The infantile aspect of the meme is its implicit positioning relative to you, whose tastes, files, or what have you are being delivered. It would seem most accurate for "My Documents" to be renamed "Jeff's Documents," or whoever's machine the file dwells on...but third person is harder to specify in advance (thankfully, no one's thought to gender computers or OSs and equip them with "His Documents" or "Her Documents"). The next best solution, I'd argue, would be "Your Documents": you are not your computer; when you're looking at its screen, it is, at best, communicating to you, and so a second-person mode of address makes sense. But "My Computer" - in the first person - is, at least to a Mr. Spock, somewhat baffling: is the computer asserting ownership of itself? No...in fact, the "my" meme asks you to internalize the computer, to imagine it as an extension of your own senses, in a sort of crude crayon sketch of a Gibsonian cybermatrix. It somehow reminds me of the way young kids employ a fluid sense of identity in play, alternating between being themselves and voicing, say, that "Teddy the Bear is my bear." Even that habit of including the generic animal name in a specific doll's or character's name - Teddy the Bear, Eddie the Rabbit, MacHeath the Shark - speaks to a sort of splitting-off of identity, almost in a totemistic way - as if Teddy the Bear is the "bear" aspect of the child. And of course, pretend-play - where the child acts out being a puppy, for example - is the most obvious instance of this phenomenon. (Human characters are seldom so-named: who's ever heard of a doll called "Bobby the Human"? I would, though, be worried if the kid started talking about his stuffed animals directly in the first person: "I am Jack's teddy bear"...)
More simply and directly, the "my" meme marks ownership. It's marketing mojo in action: you internalize and take possession of the machine. It's also another aspect of the territorial pissing instinct, marking off something as one's own - even if it's overpriced, prepackaged piss that's EULA-hedged and DRM-protected.
11.03.2003
Sting: Imminent Suckitude Prefigured
Okay, okay - easy target. But still: on a mailing list I'm on, someone asked why there was such animosity toward Sting. Well, let's see...there's his cloying sense of righteousness, a predilection toward facile New Age philosophizing, and a tendency to think of himself as much smarter and more well read than he actually is (see also: Lou Reed). And there's his way of bringing all the enormous powers of his ego to bear in tediously berating everyone all about the third world and solar power and saving the whales and loving someone and letting them free.
Oh - and the tantric sex bragging.
Still, the first few Police albums had their moments, even if they seem a bit dated by now. And for the most part, Sting kept his excesses in check. However, they were there from the very beginning, if only one looks for them. For an example, let's look at the band's very first single, the immensely popular "Roxanne." The lyrics begin (cleverly, with what will prove to be the words of the song's chorus) Roxanne / You don't have to put on the red light. So immediately, we know the character's name, her occupation, and that the narrator's addressing her directly. We continue: Those days are over / You don't have to sell your body to the night. We begin to wonder, who is the narrator that he can be so positive about Roxanne's career change? And "sell your body to the night" is a classic Reg. A "Reg" is a word or series of words that add no meaning to a lyric but are there solely to create a rhyme. (It's named after lines from Robyn Hitchcock's "Brenda's Iron Sledge," which uses the name "Reg" pretty much because it rhymes with "sledge": "Please don't call me Reg / It's not my name." Hitchcock, though, gets a pass, because he's quite obviously aware of what he's doing - and also because, according to certain Hitchcock conspiracy theorists, "Reg" isn't meaningless at all, but short for "Regina," i.e., the Queen, and the song is an allegory of Britain's decline. Anyway.) "Sell your body" is fine; but "to the night" is pointless anthropomorphism, if it's even that (it's a Reg, dammit).
Next verse: Roxanne / You don't have to wear that dress tonight / Walk the streets for money / You don't care if it's wrong or if it's right. Kind of a limited rhyme scheme here, no? And "or if it's right" is another Reg: the point is made by "you don't care if it's wrong." Also, a bit of confusion: We might have thought Roxanne was a relatively high-class hooker, with a place of her own (thus, the red light), but now, she's out on the streets. Uh, Gordon? If she's out on the streets, the red light on at her place isn't going to do her any good: what, she's going to leave a message, "Roxanne is with another client right now. Your business is very valuable to us; please hold"? No, Sting's not really addressing a person here, he's throwing out a bunch of cliches, assuming that his audience might not get the "prostitute" idea by the red-light image alone. Condescending little bastard, isn't he? You ain't seen nothin' yet...
After the chorus, we're onto verse 3: I loved you since I knew you / I wouldn't talk down to you. Oh, really? Just what exactly are you doing here? I have to tell you just how I feel / I won't share you with another boy. Sorry, Gordon: such rights are not included with your purchase. I know my mind is made up / So put away your make up / Told you once I won't tell you again / It's a bad way. I suppose that whenever someone says "I wouldn't talk down to you," it's a guarantee that they're about to do so - sure enough. It would seem that Sting is recruiting Roxanne for the Amish or some group that prohibits makeup - surely, he wouldn't be guilty of clumsily wielding synecdoche? Roxanne, in the narrator's mind, is pretty stupid - since she apparently needs to be told (and be told that she's being told, and been told, but won't be told again) of the narrator's disapproval of her occupation.
Who the hell is this guy? I mean, I'd give Sting points if he even hinted the narrator was, say, a clueless, abusive pimp - but as far as the song suggests, he's actually some shnook who's been gullible enough to fall in love with a prostitute (cliche alert level has been raised to RED)...and thinks that he can tell her what to do on that basis. Well, hey - I guess if you're Sting, surely Roxanne's going to listen to you. You're a local face; you're a former schoolteacher; you've got this record contract with a creepy American with unsavory business and political connections (who's related to your drummer yet!) - so of course she'll obey his every whim.
Okay, okay - it's just a pop song. But I'm thinking, you'd have to have a certain frame of mind to write such a song, to create such a character, to imagine that such a situation isn't worthy of comment. But this shouldn't be surprising: the Police were every inch a completely calculated act. (That shouldn't be held against them, to the extent they made good music for a while.) Punk was the thing; what could be more "punk" than a love song to a whore? (British radio duly followed suit, and banned it for a while, if I recall.)
To be fair: the song's cleverly put together, and the chorus is catchy. The band already had mastered the art of subtraction, with much of the music's impact coming from what isn't played. (Listen for Andy Summers' part on the chorus, for instance: it's barely there, because it doesn't need to be.) And if the stories are true - that Sting knew so little about reggae that Stewart Copeland had to tell him where to play and where not to - well, he didn't quite get it right in terms of traditional reggae, but in so doing he creates a part that's rhythmically more interesting than a "proper" reggae bass part would have been anyway. The chorus has clever vocal harmonies, and the rhythm of the changes is a nice variation on that bass guitar part's rhythm. So yeah, they knew what they were doing...or knew when what they were doing worked. But the overbearing, self-regarding jerk that Sting became is already evident here in the lyrics.
Oh - and the tantric sex bragging.
Still, the first few Police albums had their moments, even if they seem a bit dated by now. And for the most part, Sting kept his excesses in check. However, they were there from the very beginning, if only one looks for them. For an example, let's look at the band's very first single, the immensely popular "Roxanne." The lyrics begin (cleverly, with what will prove to be the words of the song's chorus) Roxanne / You don't have to put on the red light. So immediately, we know the character's name, her occupation, and that the narrator's addressing her directly. We continue: Those days are over / You don't have to sell your body to the night. We begin to wonder, who is the narrator that he can be so positive about Roxanne's career change? And "sell your body to the night" is a classic Reg. A "Reg" is a word or series of words that add no meaning to a lyric but are there solely to create a rhyme. (It's named after lines from Robyn Hitchcock's "Brenda's Iron Sledge," which uses the name "Reg" pretty much because it rhymes with "sledge": "Please don't call me Reg / It's not my name." Hitchcock, though, gets a pass, because he's quite obviously aware of what he's doing - and also because, according to certain Hitchcock conspiracy theorists, "Reg" isn't meaningless at all, but short for "Regina," i.e., the Queen, and the song is an allegory of Britain's decline. Anyway.) "Sell your body" is fine; but "to the night" is pointless anthropomorphism, if it's even that (it's a Reg, dammit).
Next verse: Roxanne / You don't have to wear that dress tonight / Walk the streets for money / You don't care if it's wrong or if it's right. Kind of a limited rhyme scheme here, no? And "or if it's right" is another Reg: the point is made by "you don't care if it's wrong." Also, a bit of confusion: We might have thought Roxanne was a relatively high-class hooker, with a place of her own (thus, the red light), but now, she's out on the streets. Uh, Gordon? If she's out on the streets, the red light on at her place isn't going to do her any good: what, she's going to leave a message, "Roxanne is with another client right now. Your business is very valuable to us; please hold"? No, Sting's not really addressing a person here, he's throwing out a bunch of cliches, assuming that his audience might not get the "prostitute" idea by the red-light image alone. Condescending little bastard, isn't he? You ain't seen nothin' yet...
After the chorus, we're onto verse 3: I loved you since I knew you / I wouldn't talk down to you. Oh, really? Just what exactly are you doing here? I have to tell you just how I feel / I won't share you with another boy. Sorry, Gordon: such rights are not included with your purchase. I know my mind is made up / So put away your make up / Told you once I won't tell you again / It's a bad way. I suppose that whenever someone says "I wouldn't talk down to you," it's a guarantee that they're about to do so - sure enough. It would seem that Sting is recruiting Roxanne for the Amish or some group that prohibits makeup - surely, he wouldn't be guilty of clumsily wielding synecdoche? Roxanne, in the narrator's mind, is pretty stupid - since she apparently needs to be told (and be told that she's being told, and been told, but won't be told again) of the narrator's disapproval of her occupation.
Who the hell is this guy? I mean, I'd give Sting points if he even hinted the narrator was, say, a clueless, abusive pimp - but as far as the song suggests, he's actually some shnook who's been gullible enough to fall in love with a prostitute (cliche alert level has been raised to RED)...and thinks that he can tell her what to do on that basis. Well, hey - I guess if you're Sting, surely Roxanne's going to listen to you. You're a local face; you're a former schoolteacher; you've got this record contract with a creepy American with unsavory business and political connections (who's related to your drummer yet!) - so of course she'll obey his every whim.
Okay, okay - it's just a pop song. But I'm thinking, you'd have to have a certain frame of mind to write such a song, to create such a character, to imagine that such a situation isn't worthy of comment. But this shouldn't be surprising: the Police were every inch a completely calculated act. (That shouldn't be held against them, to the extent they made good music for a while.) Punk was the thing; what could be more "punk" than a love song to a whore? (British radio duly followed suit, and banned it for a while, if I recall.)
To be fair: the song's cleverly put together, and the chorus is catchy. The band already had mastered the art of subtraction, with much of the music's impact coming from what isn't played. (Listen for Andy Summers' part on the chorus, for instance: it's barely there, because it doesn't need to be.) And if the stories are true - that Sting knew so little about reggae that Stewart Copeland had to tell him where to play and where not to - well, he didn't quite get it right in terms of traditional reggae, but in so doing he creates a part that's rhythmically more interesting than a "proper" reggae bass part would have been anyway. The chorus has clever vocal harmonies, and the rhythm of the changes is a nice variation on that bass guitar part's rhythm. So yeah, they knew what they were doing...or knew when what they were doing worked. But the overbearing, self-regarding jerk that Sting became is already evident here in the lyrics.
11.02.2003
the twilight's last gleaming
You think your country needs you, but you know it never will - Elvis Costello
A few months ago, at the height of the patriotic frenzy inspired by the then-new war in Iraq, I noticed a selection of flags at a locally owned department store. The flags were anchoring a display of red-white-and-blue items consumers could buy to reassure their neighbors that they weren't one of those dangerous, scary, un-American types. Looking a bit more closely at the flags, I noticed they were, in fact, manufactured in South Korea. I don't suppose I need to say much about the appalling irony of that fact alone - but its implications disturbed me even more.
Did the folks buying those flags realize that they were furthering the ongoing forced exodus of labor to offshore locations? Did their unemployed neighbor - the one who used to work at a factory whose owners decided that it would be cheaper to subcontract to have its products made elsewhere, by workers being paid pennies a day - realize where that flag came from? Did the workers who made the flag - most likely, either very young girls desperately trying to support their families in ways that didn't involve prostitution, or prematurely aged women equally desperate but lacking even that other, unpleasant option - think about what it's supposed to represent, and the gap between that ideal and the reality: that the government for which that flag stands was complicit in their immiseration, by encouraging the brutal bottom-line policies that further corporations' race to find the cheapest, most desperate workers? What must they think of the Americans mounting those flags on their oversized, overpriced SUVs? And the brothers, husbands, and sons of those workers - who aren't hired in the sweatshops because in a masculinist culture they're not as docile, not as physically intimidated, and not as useful in the occasional exercise of floor-managerial droit de seigneur - how much shame, degradation, and abuse can they take before they're driven by hatred and crushed pride into the welcoming arms of terror? And for us consumers: how much cheaper were these flags as a result of these cost-saving exportations of labor? Or - far more likely - how much of those savings instead further fattened executive compensation packages, including those derived from the value of shares whose prices shoot upwards with every American worker pink-slipped?
It's doubtful most purchasers of those flags gave any of this a moment's thought. It's sadly doubtful that if they did, they'd care. Which is another layer of irony, since, supposedly, they're buying the flags in the first place to show that they care about and support this nation. But what kind of support is it to buy a product whose circumstances of manufacture are directly implicated in probably the main reason American wages are so low, American workers so vulnerable in their jobs, and American unemployed so numerous? They are, in essence, tromping over to that unemployed neighbor's house, breaking in, stealing whatever they can find, and stuffing it in the pockets of his former employer's CEO to help him buy another yacht.
But again: no one thinks any of that. What's important is the symbol, the gesture, the words written in (someone else's) blood above the door, telling those angels in the Great Father Ashcroft's employ to pass over this house with their high-resolution spyplanes, their PATRIOTically authorized phone taps, their electronic vision that knows the thoughts written in our souls - or at least in our e-mails. So long as we wave the flag, wear the right clothes, have a nice tan, shine the right shoes, and vote for the party whose votes are actually counted, we're okay. The reality? Lighten up - don't be such a drag.
A few months ago, at the height of the patriotic frenzy inspired by the then-new war in Iraq, I noticed a selection of flags at a locally owned department store. The flags were anchoring a display of red-white-and-blue items consumers could buy to reassure their neighbors that they weren't one of those dangerous, scary, un-American types. Looking a bit more closely at the flags, I noticed they were, in fact, manufactured in South Korea. I don't suppose I need to say much about the appalling irony of that fact alone - but its implications disturbed me even more.
Did the folks buying those flags realize that they were furthering the ongoing forced exodus of labor to offshore locations? Did their unemployed neighbor - the one who used to work at a factory whose owners decided that it would be cheaper to subcontract to have its products made elsewhere, by workers being paid pennies a day - realize where that flag came from? Did the workers who made the flag - most likely, either very young girls desperately trying to support their families in ways that didn't involve prostitution, or prematurely aged women equally desperate but lacking even that other, unpleasant option - think about what it's supposed to represent, and the gap between that ideal and the reality: that the government for which that flag stands was complicit in their immiseration, by encouraging the brutal bottom-line policies that further corporations' race to find the cheapest, most desperate workers? What must they think of the Americans mounting those flags on their oversized, overpriced SUVs? And the brothers, husbands, and sons of those workers - who aren't hired in the sweatshops because in a masculinist culture they're not as docile, not as physically intimidated, and not as useful in the occasional exercise of floor-managerial droit de seigneur - how much shame, degradation, and abuse can they take before they're driven by hatred and crushed pride into the welcoming arms of terror? And for us consumers: how much cheaper were these flags as a result of these cost-saving exportations of labor? Or - far more likely - how much of those savings instead further fattened executive compensation packages, including those derived from the value of shares whose prices shoot upwards with every American worker pink-slipped?
It's doubtful most purchasers of those flags gave any of this a moment's thought. It's sadly doubtful that if they did, they'd care. Which is another layer of irony, since, supposedly, they're buying the flags in the first place to show that they care about and support this nation. But what kind of support is it to buy a product whose circumstances of manufacture are directly implicated in probably the main reason American wages are so low, American workers so vulnerable in their jobs, and American unemployed so numerous? They are, in essence, tromping over to that unemployed neighbor's house, breaking in, stealing whatever they can find, and stuffing it in the pockets of his former employer's CEO to help him buy another yacht.
But again: no one thinks any of that. What's important is the symbol, the gesture, the words written in (someone else's) blood above the door, telling those angels in the Great Father Ashcroft's employ to pass over this house with their high-resolution spyplanes, their PATRIOTically authorized phone taps, their electronic vision that knows the thoughts written in our souls - or at least in our e-mails. So long as we wave the flag, wear the right clothes, have a nice tan, shine the right shoes, and vote for the party whose votes are actually counted, we're okay. The reality? Lighten up - don't be such a drag.
11.01.2003
complain, complain, complain...
It's been a somewhat disappointing week for the TV shows I watch. I'm one of those people who only watches a handful of shows (as opposed to people who watch TV: whatever's on), but I make up for that small handful by paying too much attention to the shows I do watch.
To start with the most disappointing: at one point in last week's episode of Angel, Angel says something to the effect that he doesn't do parties well. What's true of Angel the character is apparently true of Angel the show. First, I love Andy Hallett's character - but I think I'm realizing I may like him better in smaller doses, and certainly a head-clattering disco soundtrack, however appropriate to both the character and Lorne's situation last week, was a loud reminder of that fact. Second, the main plotline was a straight ripoff of a Buffy plot from a few seasons ago (geekazoids can supply the episode number and title, I'm sure), in which everything Willow said literally came true. Third, the manifestation of Lorne's subconscious just plain looked stupid - and if the Hulk movie hadn't been a Universal product, I would have strongly suspected Big Green of being an embarrassingly obvious cross promotion for the DVD release of the Hulk movie. It would have been far more effective, I think, had Lorne's subconscious manifested non-corporeally. Finally, the offstage reconciliation between Lord Goathead and the Angel crew was just weak: do we really believe they just shook hands and made up? (And was the blood-slave a nod to the only decent part of David Lynch's Dune - the heartplugs?) I had serious doubts about the whole Angel-takes-over-Wolfram-&-Hart plotline when it surfaced last year - and it just isn't providing much in the way of motivation for this season's plots, and the constant crisis-of-conscience rap is getting as old and dead as Angel himself.
A little less egregious was last week's episode of Gilmore Girls. I will note that writing for these characters, in the style the show's established for itself, requires precision balancing so as not to make them just plain annoying (cuteness helps...). But nearly every character this week was pitched just a bit too high, to the extent that I just plain didn't like them. I mean, an episode where one of the most sympathetic characters is Kirk? The subplot with Rory and the tree was particularly lame - I mean, yeesh, use the other damned side of the tree. And the guy reading trucking magazines (I suppose there are such things): is he supposed to be a Yale student? I got the impression he wasn't...in which case Rory's offering to buy him off the spot would only confirm for him the worst stereotypes he might hold of Yale students, that the only solution they ever see to anything is to buy it. The worst, though, was the ending. Okay, let's see...Lorelai finally sees how much the cancellation of the party hurts Emily, and is properly chastened at having assumed that everything revolved around her. So at that point, she's about as sympathetic to Emily as she ever is in the series. So why then would the writers make a point, five minutes later, of having her actually consider going out with Slime Jr. - solely because it would make Emily angry? I don't think she'd do that in any event: Lorelai may consider angering Emily to be a fringe benefit, but she's not going to do something unpleasant, like spend an evening with a creep, solely to do so. She likes herself too much to put herself through that.
Finally, a couple aspects of the season premiere of 24 were, shall we say, highly dubious. Okay, I know - lots of 24 is highly dubious - but usually they at least give us a few weeks to get into the plot before asking us to suspend our disbelief by a narrow thread from a scraggly twig sixty feet up a sheer cliff wall. First: Kim as an intelligence agent? I mean, I'd normally avoid puns on the two meanings of "intelligence" - but Kim's character in the first two seasons strongly established her claim to be pictured next to "clueless" in the dictionary. And what, they have a special accelerated three-year degree at Nepotism U. she graduated from? Even if she were eminently qualified, no way would they have her in the same office as Jack - that's just crazy stupid, especially knowing the extent to which Jack will bend, break, and explode into tiny pieces any rule that gets in the way of his family. Also, did you notice? The Mystery Disease, featured on the season premiere of 24, which has 24 episodes that take place over 24 hours, develops over a 24-hour period! What a coincidence, that! Do you think the writers might use that fact for, say, suspense? At least they could have saved that bit of Plot Convenience for a few episodes in, when it wouldn't have been quite so glaring.
To start with the most disappointing: at one point in last week's episode of Angel, Angel says something to the effect that he doesn't do parties well. What's true of Angel the character is apparently true of Angel the show. First, I love Andy Hallett's character - but I think I'm realizing I may like him better in smaller doses, and certainly a head-clattering disco soundtrack, however appropriate to both the character and Lorne's situation last week, was a loud reminder of that fact. Second, the main plotline was a straight ripoff of a Buffy plot from a few seasons ago (geekazoids can supply the episode number and title, I'm sure), in which everything Willow said literally came true. Third, the manifestation of Lorne's subconscious just plain looked stupid - and if the Hulk movie hadn't been a Universal product, I would have strongly suspected Big Green of being an embarrassingly obvious cross promotion for the DVD release of the Hulk movie. It would have been far more effective, I think, had Lorne's subconscious manifested non-corporeally. Finally, the offstage reconciliation between Lord Goathead and the Angel crew was just weak: do we really believe they just shook hands and made up? (And was the blood-slave a nod to the only decent part of David Lynch's Dune - the heartplugs?) I had serious doubts about the whole Angel-takes-over-Wolfram-&-Hart plotline when it surfaced last year - and it just isn't providing much in the way of motivation for this season's plots, and the constant crisis-of-conscience rap is getting as old and dead as Angel himself.
A little less egregious was last week's episode of Gilmore Girls. I will note that writing for these characters, in the style the show's established for itself, requires precision balancing so as not to make them just plain annoying (cuteness helps...). But nearly every character this week was pitched just a bit too high, to the extent that I just plain didn't like them. I mean, an episode where one of the most sympathetic characters is Kirk? The subplot with Rory and the tree was particularly lame - I mean, yeesh, use the other damned side of the tree. And the guy reading trucking magazines (I suppose there are such things): is he supposed to be a Yale student? I got the impression he wasn't...in which case Rory's offering to buy him off the spot would only confirm for him the worst stereotypes he might hold of Yale students, that the only solution they ever see to anything is to buy it. The worst, though, was the ending. Okay, let's see...Lorelai finally sees how much the cancellation of the party hurts Emily, and is properly chastened at having assumed that everything revolved around her. So at that point, she's about as sympathetic to Emily as she ever is in the series. So why then would the writers make a point, five minutes later, of having her actually consider going out with Slime Jr. - solely because it would make Emily angry? I don't think she'd do that in any event: Lorelai may consider angering Emily to be a fringe benefit, but she's not going to do something unpleasant, like spend an evening with a creep, solely to do so. She likes herself too much to put herself through that.
Finally, a couple aspects of the season premiere of 24 were, shall we say, highly dubious. Okay, I know - lots of 24 is highly dubious - but usually they at least give us a few weeks to get into the plot before asking us to suspend our disbelief by a narrow thread from a scraggly twig sixty feet up a sheer cliff wall. First: Kim as an intelligence agent? I mean, I'd normally avoid puns on the two meanings of "intelligence" - but Kim's character in the first two seasons strongly established her claim to be pictured next to "clueless" in the dictionary. And what, they have a special accelerated three-year degree at Nepotism U. she graduated from? Even if she were eminently qualified, no way would they have her in the same office as Jack - that's just crazy stupid, especially knowing the extent to which Jack will bend, break, and explode into tiny pieces any rule that gets in the way of his family. Also, did you notice? The Mystery Disease, featured on the season premiere of 24, which has 24 episodes that take place over 24 hours, develops over a 24-hour period! What a coincidence, that! Do you think the writers might use that fact for, say, suspense? At least they could have saved that bit of Plot Convenience for a few episodes in, when it wouldn't have been quite so glaring.
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