An alert reader in our LIC office

Points out Tyler Cowen’s review of “Mirror, Mirror,” published here in its entirety.

*Mirror, Mirror* (paging Leo Strauss)

“Amusing Ourselves To Death” by Neil Postman

Reading doomsaying screeds from awhile ago is strangely comforting, because either a) things didn’t happen as the author direly predicted or 2) they DID happen, like 1000x worse than what the author predicted, but I guess we just deal.

File Neil Postman’s 1984 Amusing Ourselves to Death in category 2.

Postman’s book is worried about the rise of TV.  He holds out for special, extended, outraged scorn The Voyage of The Mimi, which is a pretty amazing thing to be mad about.

Towards the end, Postman wonders what we can do about the stupidity of TV:

The nonsensical answer is to create television programs whose intent would be, not to get people to stop watching television but to demonstrate how television ought to be viewed, to show how television recreates and degrades our conception of news, political debate, religious thought, etc.  I imagine such demonstrations would of necessity take the form of parodies, along the lines of “Saturday Night Live” and “Monty Python,” the idea being to induce a nationwide horse laugh over television’s control of public discourse.  But, naturally, television would have the last laugh. In order to command an audience large enough to make a difference, one would have to make the programs vastly amusing, in the television style.  Thus, the act of criticism itself would, in the end, be co-opted by television.  The parodists would become celebrities, would star in movies, and would end up making television commercials.

You called it, buddy.

Q: What year did Brazil abolish slavery?

A: 1888.

WHAT?

Learned from this fantastic article by the amazing Charles C. Mann.

Yank’s A Million

Friend Of The Blog and exceptional human YankAmerica reviews one million albums!  

Abandoned places, from The Atlantic

Yes to this.  #30 is cheating but other than that.

Small Fates

Enjoying reading these on Teju Cole’s Twitter feed.

Is the opposite of cool also cool?

Exhibit A:  Stan Rogers (and friends).

1:06-1:09 a particularly rich subject for study.

Fate of course intervenes – from our friends at Wikipedia:

Rogers [age 33] died alongside 22 other passengers most likely of smoke inhalation on June 2, 1983, while travelling on Air Canada Flight 797 after performing at the Kerrville Folk Festival. The airliner was flying from Dallas, Texas to Toronto and Montreal when an in-flight fire forced it to make an emergency landing at the Greater Cincinnati Airport.

Smoke was filling the cabin from an unknown source, and once on the ground, the plane’s doors were opened to allow passengers to escape. Approximately 60 to 90 seconds into the evacuation of the plane, the oxygen rushing in from outside caused a flash fire.^[1] Rogers was one of the passengers still on the plane at the time of the fire.

Ten Stone Baby

Huge HT to the great MCW.

Interview with Steve Martin in The Believer

This may be a character flaw in me, but I’d rather read a book of anecdotes about Faulkner’s life than Go Down Moses or whatever.  Maybe I’ve got “reality hunger,” to quote a useful title from an infuriating book.  What I enjoyed most about this interview was less the stuff about Shopgirl and more this stuff

BLVR: You’re a movie star. How are you able to write about regular people with regular problems?

SM: Well, half my life I’ve been a celebrity and half I wasn’t. I do have knowledge of what it means to live on a dime.

BLVR: You have an aura about you that makes you seem more normal than many celebrities. Somehow you’ve managed to live a fairly normal life.

SM: I don’t know. I made two decisions that I suddenly recall for no reason. One was, when I was like eighteen and had a car, I said, “I’m never not going to go anywhere because of the price of gas.” And the other thing I remember thinking, when I was starting to become famous, was, “I am never not going to go anywhere because I’m famous.” Although I do choose not to go some places because I’m famous. But I travel alone. I don’t have an entourage. I don’t want that.

BLVR: I guess that makes your life easier.

SM: It’s really easier. You know, there’s a moment when you’re famous when it’s unbearable to go out because you’re too famous. And then there’s a moment when you’re famousjust right. [Laughs] And then there’s kind of a respect or distance or something, but you have a little bit more grease.

BLVR: When did the “just right” occur for you?

SM: I would say mid-eighties. There’s a kind of heat fever that just dissipates. You’re not someone who’s constantly being followed.

BLVR: Where can’t you go?

SM: It’s not where I can’t, it’s where I don’t want to.

Charlie Chaplin on roller skates

An argument broke out about whether Charlie Chaplin was all that great or not.  Somebody settled it quickly by directing us to this clip:

SOLEMN PLEDGE: There will never be a video here longer than three minutes unless there’s also an apology.

Art Decade

Sometimes people ask me, “Steve, how come you know so many great songs from the ‘long 1970s’ and beyond?”  The answer is simple! it’s because of my friends at Art Decade.  [WARNING clicking this link will cause a song to start playing.  Prefer to control when your songs play?  here is quieter link.]

Good Mistress Name I Read

Brenda Montenegro