Bama
Posted: February 8, 2016 Filed under: America Since 1945, Louisiana, music, Texas Leave a comment
Did not know this is like a DC semi-slur/term for dummy? via NY Mag via cuz.
By the time Costa got fired for using it, ’Bama had been around for quite some time, and its meaning and use had changed. Most likely, the word was first used to put down recent arrivals to D.C.’s black neighborhoods from southern states—especially Alabama, says cultural anthropologist and long time Smithsonian staffer John Franklin. “It’s had currency over several generations,” Franklin says. It was a way of calling someone a black hick: “There was some disdain for people who didn’t live in the city and weren’t sophisticated.” The word had particular weight during the Great Migration, when many African Americans left the rural South for northern cities. Then, the point was to differentiate the newer arrivals from the longtime Washingtonians—who worried that the countrified Southerners flooding the District would reflect badly on the whole community. It was, essentially, the way D.C.’s black residents called one of their own a redneck. (Around the same time, German Jews who had already been in the U.S. for a few decades coined their own slang term to put down their less sophisticated Russian and Polish cousins—and thus, “kike” was born, only becoming a generalized ethnic slur afterwards.)
Eventually, ’Bama lost most of the geographic connotations it once had, and melted into just another piece of regional slang. Even white kids like Costa learned what it meant, picking it up by osmosis from the culture around them. Costa says his own definition of ’Bama is that it refers to a person who is “stupid.” He spent most of his life in the Baltimore-Washington area, and says he and his friends grew up using “the B-word” all the time.
Twerps vs. Bullies
Posted: February 8, 2016 Filed under: America Since 1945 Leave a comment
Really crazy how schoolyard this is:
Have become strangely absorbed with rooting for Jeb to stand up to his bully.
Control Your APE
Posted: February 3, 2016 Filed under: America Since 1945, sports Leave a commentReader Kayla in Colorado writes,
Enjoyed your take on Bill Belichick and Pete Carroll last year. Would love your read on this year’s Super Bowl vis a vis coaches (Kubiak vs. Rivera)
Thanks for writing Kayla! As should be noted, I don’t know much about football but I’m interested in coaches and coaching philosophies. So let’s take a look at Super Bowl Fifty: The Coaches.
In this year’s Super Bowl L, we have Ron Rivera of the Carolina Panthers:
Photo Credit: Reginald RogersParaglide Carolina Panther head coach Ron Rivera, left, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and former Carolina Panthers player Mike Rucker sign autographs and photos for Soldiers at the 1st Brigade Combat Team dining facility Friday during their visit to the post.
against the Broncos’ Gary Kubiak:
DENVER, CO – AUGUST 29: Denver Broncos head coach Gary Kubiak wasn’t happy when the team had to call a timeout on defense in the second quarter of the preseason game against the Arizona Cardinals at Sports Authority Field at Mile High on Thursday, September 3, 2015. (Photo by Steve Nehf/The Denver Post)
Neither of them has written a book, nor have their personal philosophies been as parsed and examined as those of Belichick and Carroll. Still, from what we have available let’s take a look.
Ron Rivera was born on Fort Ord, right here in California, and he went to Seaside High in Monterey.
Fort Ord
His dad was a Puerto Rican born Army officer and his mom is Mexican. He’s not the first Hispanic head coach in the Super Bowl, though – that honor goes to Tom Flores of the Raiders:
Every week during team meetings, the 56-year-old Rivera chooses one pivotal play from the previous week’s game and plays the Spanish broadcast version for his players. Most don’t have a clue what the broadcasters are screaming about, but they holler in delight upon hearing the call.
So says this article in Citizen-Times. Everyone seems to agree Rivera is a decent, focused dude.
“On one side I’m getting a strong and deep sense of family, tradition and culture,” he says. “On the other side I’m getting this discipline and pride that you get growing up and living on Army bases.”
He won a Super Bowl himself with the ’85 Bears, a game I myself watched with disappointment during, if I remember right, a snowstorm.
He could’ve been in the famous “Super Bowl Shuffle” video but missed his chance:
Rivera could have been a part of the video, and gone down in music video (and YouTube) history, but he chose to sleep in instead.“Half the team showed up for it,” Rivera said. “Half stayed home and slept because it was a Monday night game. We didn’t get home until 4:30-5 o’clock in the morning.”
Pulling up his weekly presentations to the team, Rivera showed me how every one of them starts with a slide that says “Control Your A.P.E – Attitude, Preparation, Effort.” This emphasis on self-empowerment and responsibility has created a team culture of positive attitude, intense preparation and maximum effort.
On to Denver:
Gary Kubiak:
Photo by Eric Lars Bakke, AP
That’s the perspective behind this article, “Gary Kubiak and the Tao Of the Backup Quarterback” by Footbyballs over on SI’s The Cauldron.
As a backup Kubiak was on the sidelines for three Super Bowl losses. (He also won three as an assistant coach for the Broncos and 49ers). Elway as GM/EVP of the Broncos is still Kubiak’s boss.
Says Footyballs:
I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Gary Kubiak is a Broncos’ franchise cornerstone. He played out his quarterback career. He did his job, stayed ready, and waited. Now, it’s his team to lead. The Broncos are doing just fine with the professional backup in charge, uneven seas and all. Maybe he’ll have a third career, as a writer, in which he gathers all his accumulated wisdom into a book of sorts. He could call it “Precepts of the Tao of the Backup Quarterback.”
I would definitely read that.
The more dynamic coach on the Broncos might be defensive coordinator Wade Phillips, himself a former head coach
and the son of NFL coach Bum Phillips:
can’t find source
whose Quotes section on his wiki page is worth a look:
- (20 years after playing Pittsburgh six times in two seasons) “Don’t take long to spend all the time you want in Pittsburgh.”[7]
- (referring to Miami Dolphins coach Don Shula) “He can take his’n and beat your’n and take your’n and beat his’n.”[8] He also said the same line about Bear Bryant.[9]
- (referring to Houston Oilers quarterback Warren Moon) “That boy could throw a football through a car wash and not get it wet.”
- (when asked about Oilers RB Earl Campbell’s inability to finish a one-mile run in training camp) “When it’s first and a mile, I won’t give it to him.”
- (when asked by Bob Costas why he took his wife on all of the Oilers’ road trips) “Because she’s too ugly to kiss goodbye.”[10]
Here’s a little trivia coworker Zack calls to my attention: who did both Ron Rivera and Gary Kubiak replace when they took over their current job?
Answer?:
John Fox
All things considered, this doesn’t seem like nearly the coaching duel of last year.
I give the psychological edge here to Rivera, and predict based on my patented Coaching Analysis System the Panthers will defeat the Broncos (and cover the six point spread).
As you can see here, my system has me at 1/3 total, but 1/1 on Super Bowls.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar talks to Tyler Cowen
Posted: February 2, 2016 Filed under: America Since 1945, sports, the California Condition Leave a comment
Great interview. Kareem talks about how his love of Sherlock Holmes made him a better basketball player:
About that action scene above:
Mora update
Posted: February 1, 2016 Filed under: art history, the California Condition Leave a comment
Peter Hiller, curator of the Jo Mora Trust, writes in with a few points and corrections, duly incorporated on our post about Jo Mora. Thanks so much, Peter!
Co-worker Charles picked up a reproduction of the Salinas rodeo poster. So many fantastic details:
Jo Mora could’ve done a fantastic Where’s Waldo I bet. (Why did they feel the need to change the American title from the original English “Where’s Wally?” I wonder?”
Jo Mora probably would’ve been good at wimmelbilderbuch of all kinds, a term I just learned from the Where’s Wally? wiki.
Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Brueghel the Elder and Hans Jurgen Press are regarded as the fathers of the format.
Brueghel the Elder’s Netherlandish Proverbs. Can you spot all 112?
Boyd, Trump and OODA Loops
Posted: January 28, 2016 Filed under: America Since 1945 Leave a comment
This very long article and this shorter one both talk about Donald Trump in light of the theories of fighter pilot/Air Force Colonel John Boyd, and specifically his idea about the OODA Loop.
OODA stands for:
Observe
Orient
Decide
Act
Boyd says, whoever cycles through this loop faster wins the dogfight (or battle, orbusiness competition, or whatever).
It’s more complicated than that: see, for example, this version of Boyd’s own chart to describe his ideas:
For one thing, the goal isn’t just to get through your cycle faster. It’s to screw up the other guy’s ability to get through his cycle.
In the longer version above about Trump, Dan McLaughlin makes the point that Trump, mainly via Twitter, is constantly messing with Bush and now Cruz’s abilities to observe, orient, decide and act. Before they’ve even oriented he’s changing the whole landscape with some new outrageous thing like declaring he’s not gonna show up to the debate or whatever.
These guys, with their lumbering organizations of consultants and campaign managers, and their political limitations, just can’t orient, decide, or act with the speed and freedom Trump can.
Boyd is a fascinating dude. I read once that he lived on basically a cot with no furniture because he decided the only ways to be truly free were either to be very wealthy or to have no material needs, and since he wasn’t gonna be wealthy he went full Spartan.
Seeing these articles convinced me it was finally time to pick up this book:
This book is fascinating, hats off to Robert Coram. Let me tell you a bit about Boyd:
- Boyd was considered the best fighter pilot of generation. He could supposedly defeat anybody in forty seconds. He was not humble about it either.
- He had an insane appetite:
- Although Boyd fought in the Korean War, he never shot down a MiG. This was considered kind of a knock on him by other fighter pilots who had shot down MiGs. But then again, everyone seems to agree Boyd was still the most badass or at least equally badass pilot around.
- He proved this during his time at the Air Force Weapons School at Nellis Air Force Base outside of Vegas. In Boyd’s heyday pilots looking to test their stuff would meet over “the green spot,” a rare patch of green in the Nevada desert, and practice dogfighting. Corum says the green spot could easily be found by any pilot. I went looking for a picture “green spot Nellis AFB” on Google, and in a development that would no doubt be distressing to Boyd found only medical marijuana stores. Maybe it was something like this?:
- Boyd was not really one for going along with the chain of command:
- Boyd did indeed believe in living in super Spartan fashion. This was not always easy on his wife and five children, nor on his youngest son’s collection of dangerous spiders and snakes:
- Boyd became obsessed with designing planes that would give the pilot the most possible options . He spent huge amounts of his own time developing Energy Maneuverability charts for various airplanes.
- He was infuriated and frustrated by the bureaucratic stupidities he discovered in the Air Force as he fought for what he believed to be superior airplane design. Reading Coram’s book, you can’t help but agree with Boyd and get outraged right along with him. For example, I did not have any idea that in the Vietnam War US planes were often found to be inferior to North Vietnamese planes:
- Boyd also had strong opinions about pilot training:
- There were a group of admirers/pupils/younger officers around Boyd called his Acolytes. He would regularly call them at 2am and talk about Clausewitz and so on:
- Sometimes Boyd could be weird: “When Boyd talked to someone at a party, he gave them 100 percet of his attention. He did not look over the person’s shoulder to see who else was in the room. But there were times at a party when Boyd might sit down and sleep for an hour or so.”
- and:
Dick Cheney was impressed with Boyd, and says of him that Boyd “clearly was a factor in my thinking” about strategy in the first Gulf War.
On YouTube, you can see Boyd give the “Patterns Of Conflict” presentation that became famous in the military. It’s hard to look at this and see this guy as the amazing badass he must’ve been. Perhaps it was more compelling in person or the guy was no longer at the height of his presenting powers:
Maybe he just wasn’t made for YouTube.
There’s lots of bros obsessed with Boyd online, and he definitely seems like a real hero, a kind of American samurai. All the Boyd acolytes talk about a speech Boyd would give about whether you want to “be somebody or do something”:
Something for all our candidates to think about!
Here’s another bit of advice for Trump’s opponents, especially:
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The Deaths Of Great Inventors
Posted: January 25, 2016 Filed under: America Since 1945, science Leave a comment
In this NYRB wrapup on the movies about Steve Jobs, Sue Halpern gets to talking about public expressions of grief at Jobs’ death:
Yet if the making of popular consumer goods was driving this outpouring of grief, then why hadn’t it happened before? Why didn’t people sob in the streets when George Eastman or Thomas Edison or Alexander Graham Bell died—especially since these men, unlike Steve Jobs, actually invented the cameras, electric lights, and telephones that became the ubiquitous and essential artifacts of modern life?
“Awww hell no!” I giddily squealed, aflame with the joy-fire of Internet Outrage. I was good and hot because I knew I had this Sue Halpern in my crosshairs. I’d just been reading, in Paul Johnson’s Birth Of The Modern, about the death of steamboat inventor Robert Fulton.
Says Johnson:
By then Fulton was dead, of a neglected cold which became pneumonia. The day of his funeral, the legislature went into mourning, and the New York shops shut — they respected inventors in those days.
stud.
Johnson’s doing the reverse version of Sue Halpern: “they knew how to act in the old days” vs. “we’ve gotten so weird” but it’s the same conservative (right?) point: things used to be better, more appropriate, whatever. It’s a point that I love getting mad about, because a quick inspection of the messy, insane past will usually prove it wrong.
“Ugh, Sue Halpern,” I thought, warm in smugness, “Don’t be such a presentist. There’s nothing new under the sun, babe. The style might be different, but they made a big show about the deaths of inventors (or maker/producer/facilitator whatever Jobs was) in the past, too. Did you not know that at the conclusion of Alexander Graham Bell’s funeral they suspended phone service in all of North America in mourning?! Did you not take two minutes to see if there’s footage on YouTube of people crowding the streets for Edison’s funeral?”
“Hell,” I thought, “when Edison died they preserved his last breath in a tube!”
Imagine my disappointment then when I got to work and discovered the NYRB had already dealt with this in a footnote:
When Bell died, every phone exchange in the United States was shut down for a moment of silence. When Edison died, President Hoover turned off the White House lights for a minute and encouraged others to do so as well.
Darn it, ruined a real satisfying chance for an “ACTUALLY.” But I’m glad the whole thing happened because it got me reading about the death of George Eastman, founder of Kodak. Here’s how he went out:
On March 14, 1932, Eastman invited some friends to witness a change of his will. After some joking and warm conversation, he asked them to leave so that he could write a note. Moments later, he shot himself once in the heart with an automatic pistol. The note found by the household staff read simply: “To my friends, My work is done–, Why wait?” When his casket was carried out of the Eastman House, the accompanying music was *Marche Romaine*.
That’s from this site related to the PBS American Experience about Eastman. They go on:
If there is one thing that can be said about Eastman, it is that he was a rational man. Throughout his life, he sounded the same themes again and again — adventure, happiness and control, and the greatest of these was control. The early death of his father and his family’s subsequent poverty stamped him with an insatiable need for stability, which he found in bachelorhood and a financial empire and held close ever after. As far as he was concerned, there was no world beyond the one he could dominate. Even when he punctuated his labors with travel, his drive for order went with him in his compulsion to plan out every last detail of his itinerary. In this light, Eastman’s career can be seen as act of self-sacrifice. With one of his cameras in hand, it became possible to capture an instant of abandon, even happiness, and so we came to possess, as part of our human heritage, images of people smiling on adventures large and small. Of course, Eastman was often caught in camera in far-off locations as well, but in the end one fact is inescapable: one must look long and hard to find a picture of George Eastman smiling. In harnessing his impulses, he gave the world an experience that he never permitted himself.
Sure enough:
About Halpern’s original point tho: maybe there’s something to public expressions about Jobs’ death that have to do with what people use Apple products for: music, photos, videos, social media, personal expressions of themselves.
If we’re talking about the emotional meaning of Jobs, couldn’t we see him as the guy who did the most to take cold computers and turn them into facilitators of human connection and self-expression machines? Isn’t that what all Apple ads end up being about, from the 1984 ad to the Think Different ones to this?:
In doing that, wasn’t Jobs not just a tech pioneer but a part of a social revolution? Who more than Jobs made it as easy to be the star of your own movie and the spectator of everyone else’s? Is that why we care about him?
And is caring about Jobs wildly exaggerated anyway except among Silicon Valley bros? Nobody really saw the movie.
Great headline sent by our Rhode Island office
Posted: January 25, 2016 Filed under: New England Leave a comment
New book coming in June!
Posted: January 24, 2016 Filed under: books, the California Condition Leave a comment
You can pre-order it here on Amazon, and on 6/14/16 your postman or woman will deliver this nice present to you.
Or start gently nudging your friendly indie bookseller to order a pile!
It is 102 short chapters about everything interesting I could find, learn about, or experience between Los Angeles and Patagonia. Topics include:
- sloths
- rocks & ice
- the Aztecs
- the Amazon
- Peru
- Mexico and how Mexico City was the Western Hemisphere’s first metropolis,
- Inca math rope
- the history of travel writing
- how scholars, eccentrics, archaeologists and gum entrepreneurs figured out how to learned to read ancient Mayan
- the crazy violent nightmare adventure of Bernal Diaz
- Boston
- Hollywood
- and hallucinogenic plants.
I hope you enjoy it!
How about that rad cover designed by Anna Laytham?
Triggerfish selfie
Posted: January 23, 2016 Filed under: New England, the ocean Leave a comment
via this blogpost, “25 Creepiest Creatures of Narragansett Bay,” ht Sis.
Why wear clothes?
Posted: January 23, 2016 Filed under: America Since 1945 Leave a comment
From this NYT obit of constitutional scholar Forest McDonald:
Interviewed by Brian Lamb on C-Span’s “Booknotes” in 1994, Dr. McDonald revealed that he typically wrote in longhand on a yellow legal pad and in the nude. (“We’ve got wonderful isolation,” he said, “and it’s warm most of the year in Alabama, and why wear clothes?”)
Ridiculous
Posted: January 22, 2016 Filed under: actors, film, Hollywood, the California Condition Leave a comment
Amazing letter from The Academy. Imagine sending out an email in which you described your own organization’s action of slightly adjusting membership rules as “courageous.”
Experimental film
Posted: January 20, 2016 Filed under: America, America Since 1945, film Leave a comment
I made a one minute experimental film of Trump watching Sarah Palin talk.
Jo Mora
Posted: January 19, 2016 Filed under: art history, the California Condition 3 Comments
Jo Mora has to be in the conversation about top Uruguayan-Californian artists, yet I’d only heard of him a few weeks ago when co-worker Charles called my attention to the cover art for The Byrds’ Sweetheart Of The Rodeo album:
drawn from a Mora poster of a rodeo in Salinas:
Here is Mora’s 1946 book Californios: The Saga of The Hard-Riding Vaqueros, America’s First Cowboys:
Look at these fucking hipsters.
“He won added renown for his beautifully executed and historically accurate dioramas.” What a thing to say about a man! Let’s have a look at the dioramas for his friend Will Rogers:
These dioramas look so great, and there aren’t many photos of them online. This one is fantastic, and so is this one. And don’t miss this one! I didn’t copy them here because Flickr user Todd Carr has all his rights reserved. I feel pretty ok about reproducing most widely-available photos, but I dunno, Todd went to the trouble of going to Claremore, Oklahoma, and since he’s pretty much the only source on these,and he did a great job, it doesn’t feel quite right. Still, I hope Mr. Carr doesn’t mind me showing just this one, of what must be the plane crash that ended Will’s life:
Hope you don’t mind Todd, you are a great photographer!
Mora was also a gifted sculptor — he made, for instance, these guys for the Pacific Mutual Building, right here at 6th and Grand in downtown Los Angeles:
Here’s a list of Mora’s public artworks. The list was put together by Peter Hiller, curator of the Jo Mora Trust Collection, and we thank him for his help and great work! You can see and learn more about Mora over at their website, and Peter Hiller tells us he has the Los Angeles map for sale.
Mora began his career as a cartoonist in Boston. Here’s an early cartoon, The Foolish Walrus:
How about his map of Los Angeles?
Or this menu?
Mora visited many Spanish missions in California that summer by horseback. He followed the “Mission Trail”, also called the “Kings Highway”.
What a boss.
What.
Posted: January 17, 2016 Filed under: America Since 1945, food, New York Leave a comment
Can’t front like I was the world’s biggest David Bowie fan in life, but reading about him after his death I’m getting more and more into the guy! From The New York Times:
After he became Ziggy Stardust, and a huge star, Mr. Bowie found refuge at the West 20th Street apartment of his publicist, Cherry Vanilla. In her memoir, “Lick Me,” she recounts how he would do brain-sizzling amounts of cocaine and drink milk for nourishment (no solid food in those years), and they’d rap about “power, symbols, communication, music, the occult, Aleister Crowley and Merlin the Magician.”
Says Cherry Vanilla:
David liked my apartment on 20th Street, and he also liked Norman Fisher’s coke, something for which he’d recently acquired an insatiable appetite and for which I had, of course, hooked him up. And since my days were winding down at Mainman, I guess David felt comfortable getting high with me and opening up about anything and everything that was on his mind. He spent many an evening, often an all-nighter, sitting in one of my canary-yellow enameled wicker chairs, doing lines, drinking milk (he never ate at all during this period), and telling me one crazy story after another — Defries and Adolf Hitler were buddies . . . Lou Reed was the devil . . .he himself was from another planet and was being held prisoner on earth — going on and on about power, symbols, communication, music, the occult, Aleister Crowley, and Merlin the Magician. I never did any of David’s coke (and, what’s more, he never offered). I just sat there, smoked my pot, sipped my Café Bustelo, and got totally into his rap. This was probably the period when I was most in love with him.
Sometimes David would busy himself with my record collection — Duke Ellington’s Live at Newport and the Ohio Players’ Skin Tightamong his favorite LPs. And occasionally he and I would have sex in my mirrored, mosquito-netted, dycro-lit, pink-satin bedroom, taking everything a bit further than we had that first time in Boston, and utilizing the many new sex toys I’d since acquired. One time, after I’d arranged for him to shop privately at the new Yves Saint Laurent boutique on Madison Avenue and get the most fabulous black wool overcoat, he came up the five flights of stairs to my apartment, and fucked me without ever taking off the coat and then left immediately to hang out with Mick Jagger. Bowie liked my bedroom so much, he even brought Claudia Lennear and Jean Millington (the other sister from Fanny) there for sex on occasion. I didn’t participate, but I got off on how much he appreciated the setting.
photo from Cherry Vanilla’s website attributed to Arlene Pachasa
The Dilbertito
Posted: January 17, 2016 Filed under: America Since 1945, food, the California Condition Leave a comment
Dilbert creator Scott Adams has many interesting ideas. Reader Mike Yank put me on to his analysis of Trump:
The $10 billion estimate Trump uses for his own net worth is also an “anchor” in your mind. That’s another classic negotiation/persuasion method. I remember the $10 billion estimate because it is big and round and a bit outrageous. And he keeps repeating it because repetition is persuasion too.
I don’t remember the smaller estimates of Trump’s wealth that critics provided. But I certainly remember the $10 billion estimate from Trump himself. Thanks to this disparity in my memory, my mind automatically floats toward Trump’s anchor of $10 billion being my reality. That is classic persuasion. And I would be amazed if any of this is an accident. Remember, Trump literally wrote the book on this stuff.
Over the holidays I read Scott Adams’ book:
which was full of interesting stuff as well as plenty of boring stuff. Scott Adams practical, experienced-based ideas on what you should eat, for instance: he talks about how he has found that white starches and potatoes (my two favorite foods) are nothing but energy saps. Adams also suggests you drink as much coffee as you want. He also makes a good case for “systems instead of goals.”
On Friday at work I got into an argument because I brought up Scott Adams, and a female co-worker was like “that crazy misogynist”? And indeed Scott Adams has written some stuff that could justifiably make steam come out of ears:
Women have made an issue of the fact that men talk over women in meetings. In my experience, that’s true. But for full context, I interrupt anyone who talks too long without adding enough value. If most of my victims turn out to be women, I am still assumed to be the problem in this situation, not the talkers. The alternative interpretation of the situation – that women are more verbal than men – is never discussed as a contributing factor to interruptions. Can you imagine a situation where – on average – the people who talk the most do NOT get interrupted the most? I don’t know if the amount of talking each person does is related to the amount of interrupting they experience, or if there is a gender difference to it, but it seems like a reasonable hypothesis. My point is that men are assumed guilty in this country. We don’t even explore their alibis. (And watch the reaction to even bringing up the topic.)
It’s an ongoing issue in his writings.
I can’t and don’t want to defend everything Scott Adams has written, but I tried to make the case that maybe Scott Adams isn’t a misogynist, he’s a nerdy weirdo who’s working out ideas and we should cut him some slack. I read all kinds of weird thinkers, it’s healthy. I follow The Federalist on Twitter — they like Ted Cruz over there, but sometimes they make some interesting argument I’ve never thought about before. You can read The Federalist and Mother Jones and subscribe to Ann Friedman’s newsletter and go see the Entourage movie.
Somebody somewhere on Twitter directed me to this piece by Ryan Holiday:
Any publicist will tell you this. A scandal is awful while you’re in it, almost unbearably awful as the headlines from bigger and bigger outlets pour in. But as time passes, whatever those headlines said begins to blur, the pointed words lose their potency and the residue that’s left, that residue is raw fame. And fame is a precious resource that most people, companies, and causes will never have but always seek.
And while people have always been willing to debase themselves to get famous, this mindset has metastasized through our more important institutions—from journalism to government.
The Gawker’s of this world publish the most vicious and shameful story of 2015, and as long as their writers can successfully pretend they didn’t do anything wrong, they can get right back on their high horse and blog like it never happened. A Donald Trump can make serious—even alarming—progress towards the nation’s highest office so long as he refuses to laugh at the joke of it all.
One can imagine these folks surfing a large and monstrous wave of attention. It looks dangerous and indeed it is, but they know—having been on or watched others on such waves before—that if they can just ride it out they’ll emerge intact, ever the more famous for it, since so few have.
Anyway this all a long way of getting to the interesting trivia that in the late ’90s Scott Adams used his Dilbert money to try and launch an all-in-one superfood product called the Dilberito:
First announced in The Dilbert Future and introduced in 1999[1] the Dilberito came in flavors of Mexican, Indian, Barbecue, and Garlic& Herb and was sold through some health food stores.
Said Fortune in 2001:
Adams’s invention, the Dilberito, is sober and utilitarian. It’s a tortilla-wrapped comestible consisting of vegetables, rice, beans, and seasonings that contains all of the 23 vitamins and minerals that nutritionists say are essential.
The product was not a success.
All Roads
Posted: January 15, 2016 Filed under: America Since 1945, heroes, music, the California Condition, war Leave a comment
Happening to watch half of Jarhead on TV (Saarsgaard so good! *) leads to reading screenwriter William Broyles Jr.’s Wiki page, which leads to reading his essay “Why Men Love War”:
A lieutenant colonel I knew, a true intellectual, was put in charge of civil affairs, the work we did helping the Vietnamese grow rice and otherwise improve their lives. He was a sensitive man who kept a journal and seemed far better equipped for winning hearts and minds than for combat command. But he got one, and I remember flying out to visit his fire base the night after it had been attacked by an NVA sapper unit. Most of the combat troops I had been out on an operation, so this colonel mustered a motley crew of clerks and cooks and drove the sappers off, chasing them across tile rice paddies and killing dozens of these elite enemy troops by the light of flares. That morning, as they were surveying what they had done and loading the dead NVA–all naked and covered with grease and mud so they could penetrate the barbed wire–on mechanical mules like so much garbage, there was a look of beatific contentment on tile colonel’s face that I had not seen except in charismatic churches. It was the look of a person transported into ecstasy.
And I–what did I do, confronted with this beastly scene? I smiled back. ‘as filled with bliss as he was. That was another of the times I stood on the edge of my humanity, looked into the pit, and loved what I saw there. I had surrendered to an aesthetic that was divorced from that crucial quality of empathy that lets us feel the sufferings of others. And I saw a terrible beauty there. War is not simply the spirit of ugliness, although it is certainly that, the devil’s work. But to give the devil his due,it is also an affair of great and seductive beauty.
Which leads me to decide to finally read Chris Hedges’ book War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning:
Chris Hedges was a graduate student in divinity at Harvard before he went to war. He spent fifteen years as a war correspondent for the Dallas Morning News, theChristian Science Monitor, and the New York Times, reporting on conflicts in El Salvador, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Iraq.
While on Amazon their robot recommends to me Ernst Jünger’s Storm Of Steel —
that’s a pass for now, but I will check out Ernst’s Wiki page:
Throughout the war, Jünger kept a diary, which would become the basis of his 1920 Storm of Steel. He spent his free time reading the works of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Ariosto andKubin, besides entomological journals he was sent from home. During 1917, he was collecting beetles in the trenches and while on patrol, 149 specimens between 2 January and 27 July, which he listed under the title of Fauna coleopterologica douchyensis (“Coleopterological fauna of the Douchy region”).
a leatherhead beetle in Death Valley illustrates the wiki page on coleopterology
which leads me to the wiki page for Wandervogel:
Wandervogel is the name adopted by a popular movement of German youth groups from 1896 onward. The name can be translated as rambling, hiking, or wandering bird (differing in meaning from “Zugvogel” or migratory bird) and the ethos is to shake off the restrictions of society and get back to nature and freedom.
which leads us both to the Japanese pastime of sawanobori, which looks semi-fun:
a bit silly but in the best way
and to History Of The Hippie Movement, subsection “Nature Boys Of Southern California” and thus to Nat King Cole’s song Nature Boy:
which has maybe the longest wiki page of any of these, culminating in
The song was a central theme in Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge! “Nature Boy” was initially arranged as a techno song with singer David Bowie’s vocals, before being sent to the group Massive Attack, whose remix was used in the film’s closing credits. Bowie described the rendition as “slinky and mysterious”, adding that Robert ‘3D’ Del Naja from the group had “put together a riveting piece of work,” and that Bowie was “totally pleased with the end result.”
And just like that we’re back to Bowie.
*Saarsgaard on Catholicism:
In an interview with the New York Times, Sarsgaard stated that he followed Catholicism, saying: “I like the death-cult aspect of Catholicism. Every religion is interested in death, but Catholicism takes it to a particularly high level. […] Seriously, in Catholicism, you’re supposed to love your enemy. That really impressed me as a kid, and it has helped me as an actor. […] The way that I view the characters I play is part of my religious upbringing. To abandon curiosity in all personalities, good or bad, is to give up hope in humanity.”
Treated myself to a couple
Posted: January 14, 2016 Filed under: books Leave a comment
from Bowie’s top 100 books. Will report! He was a fan of Jaynes and Chatwin as well.
In my limited experience musicians are always reading a lot!
RIP Red
Posted: January 14, 2016 Filed under: America Since 1945, music, the California Condition Leave a comment
It’s not just Bowie — this week music also lost Red Simpson, writer/performer of the above song (discussed briefly in this book).
From his NY Times’ obituary I learn that he performed regularly at Trout’s:
pic from this interesting blog: https://wayfarenotes.wordpress.com/ “Stories of Music Towns you Haven’t heard of yet”
Joseph Cecil Simpson was born on March 6, 1934, in Higley, Ariz., the youngest of 13 children, and grew up in Bakersfield, where he learned to play guitar as a child. His red hair earned him his nickname.
He enlisted in the Navy during the Korean War and served on the hospital ship Repose, where he played with a shipboard group, the Repose Ramblers.
Speaking of Simpsons, I can’t hear about a ship like this without thinking of the Simpsons’ landing on the USS Walter Mondale:
but the Repose had a dramatic history:
Arriving on 3 January 1966, she was permanently deployed to Southeast Asia and earned the nickname “Angel of the Orient.” Operating mainly in the I Corps area, she treated over 9,000 battle casualties and 24,000 inpatients while deployed. Notably, USS Repose was on station during the 1967 USS Forrestal fire that killed 134 sailors and injured 161.
the Forrestal fire. Future Senator John McCain’s plane was destroyed in the fire — one of many exciting events in his not-boring life.
According to Wiki Red’s last release was “Hey Bin Laden” but I cannot find that tune on YouTube.
I wonder if Red liked Bowie.
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Travel Tips From Bill and Tony
Posted: January 8, 2016 Filed under: America Since 1945, politics, presidents, travel 1 Comment
Bonn
Fascinated with these recently released transcripts of convos between Tony Blair and Bill Clinton.
There’s not a ton of chitchat, aside from some travel discussion.
Tony also likes Vienna:
Bill likes Siena:
Billiam does most of the talking. One takeaway is how insanely expansive and versatile BC’s mind is as he pivots from topic to another:
He thinks highly of Bono:
The only other cultural figures I found mentioned are Spielberg and Tom Hanks:
Bill reminds Tony Blair of the importance of taking time for young people:
Talking about IRA splinter groups, Bill Clinton raises a problem that’s still all too relevant:
Bill sums up Central America:
But as they mention often, they’re not on a secure line. Who knows what they say there?!
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