-
sponsorship
June Thomas is out of the office today, so Torie Bosch is filling in for this week's Project Runway recap.
Is it almost time for Bryant Park yet? Everyone seems to be running low on fresh material this week. The bad-tempered designers are accusing one another of swiping ideas, and the challenge itself is to "create a new look based on your best look." That's "best look" as defined by the judges, and a dreary collection of garments it is. There's not a single vibrant outfit, as each is gray, black, or brown. Surprisingly, no contestants quibbled with what the judges determined to be their best work of the season. I expected more whining.
Althea's high-waisted black pants, which bloused out before hugging the calf, gave her the win. Logan's attempt to complement his silver-and-black gown from Episode 1 resulted in something from a bad sci-fi movie, and he was booted.
Stats
Number of times Tim Gunn said, "Make it work!": Nada! Though we did get a clipped "Use your time exceedingly well." Maybe he's testing new catch phrases.
Number of crying contestants: None! Carol Hannah spent much of the episode looking on the verge of bursting into tears at any moment, but perhaps her eyes were just irritated by mounds of liner and eye shadow.
Was Logan shown sans shirt? Nope! The PR gang didn't even give us a chance to say goodbye to the pecs.
The Contestants
Each voices some variant of the phrases "The pressure is on" and "It would be awful to make it this far and be sent home," which is a bit of a head-scratcher. Hasn't the pressure always been on? In the early episodes, doesn't everyone say how terrible it would be to get auf'd before showing what they can do?
Our designers can barely stand the sight of one another at this point. Althea and Logan bicker about whether her pants look like the jodhpurs that got Malvin canned. (They do, a little.) Irina asks of Christopher's look, "Why is one dress throwing up the other?" Althea accuses Logan, without actually saying it to his face, of copying the zipper collar she created for the Christina Aguilera challenge. During a meal break, she and Irina engage in a low-voiced hate-chat about how much they loathe Logan while shoving food in their mouths, but Althea apparently realizes later that she overreacted. In a talking-head, the fury seems to have passed: "I was a little annoyed, but I personally like how I used it better anyway, so. ..." Later, Irina complains that Althea stole her idea for a voluminous sweater and refuses to help Gordana locate a hook-and-eye.
It's clear Gordana is going to be at the bottom from the moment pictures from her childhood in the former Yugoslavia are flashed on the screen. Those forays into the designers' personal lives are a clear indicator that someone's struggling. Touching back story = weakness.
The Judges
The game of musical chairs continues. Michael Kors is nowhere to be seen, but Nina is in town and cranky as ever. Sitting in for Kors is Season 2's Nick Verreos, whose orange face I'm happy to see again. And as guest judge we have actress Kerry Washington. Her critiques are thoughtful and on point, but she can't match Nick, who's been practicing his zingers. Gordana's black skirt and gray blazer, he says, would look right on "an office worker in Warsaw, Poland." Yikes.
In a heated exchange, Nina and Heidi disagree on Irina's luscious brown outfit, with a brocade dress and oversize cardigan. Nina thinks the dress is too tight, making it look a bit cheap; Heidi would beg to differ. While the exchange was perfectly polite, their faces were chilling. Perhaps the tension was merely an expression of how fed up they were with the crabby designers: Althea and Irina made veiled, passive-aggressive references to the Great Collar and Sweater Idea Theft of ‘09, and Logan committed the fatal error of admitting, before being asked a single question, that his look was "on the brink of costume." Have you learned nothing, Logan? Don't feed the judges their lines!
The Results
Garment of the week: Irina's. I'm a sucker for that warm brown, and the too-snug brocade dress was pretty. Plus, the other five looks were drab, ugly, or both. The fatigue from sleep deprivation, total isolation, and constant demand to come up with new ideas-and the awful challenge of revisiting old looks-is showing on all of them.
Should Althea have won? No, those pants were dreadful. While the judges praised Carol Hannah's little black dress as something "we all could wear," perhaps a dozen people in the world could sport Althea's look without appearing foolish.
Should Logan have been eliminated? While his look wasn't quite as "innovative and out there" as he claimed, Gordana should have gotten the boot for her "sad, drab, and dated" creation, as Heidi said.
Bold prediction for who'll be auf'd next: Gordana. She seems to have given up-just let her go home.
Previous Project Runway Recaps: Week 1, Week 3, Week 4, Week 5, Week 6, Week 7, Week 8, Week 9, Week 10
Click here to comment on our Project Runway recaps.
-
sponsorship
-
sponsorship
I’m one of those arrière-garde types who still occasionally flips channels on cable instead of streaming videos on Hulu or YouTube. And being a film-lover, I flip to the Turner Classic Movies channel first. TCM is greater than a cinephile’s wildest dreams. Classics, obscurities, silent films, retrospectives—TCM is like a 24-hour repertory cinema, film school, and archive all under the same unlikely shingle. The awful truth, though, is that I love the idea of TCM more than I love to watch it. Several Thanksgivings ago, TCM devoted an entire day of programming to Andy Hardy films—the white-bread movies that made boy next door Mickey Rooney a top box-office draw during the ’30s and ’40s. I get off on completism as much as the next guy, but an entire day? Ten minutes of Andy Hardy is more than enough. Trust me. So where do I turn? To the obscure heights of Channel 257 on Brooklyn’s Time Warner Cable, where the Fox Movie Channel humbly waits.
If TCM is like a gleaming, impeccably restored movie house, then FMC is a scattershot, haphazardly outfitted video store in a strip mall. The overriding vision of FMC is something like: “Well, we’ve got a lot of time to fill ...” Programming with Fox’s vast back catalog at its disposal, the channel empties the library in gonzo spurts. Bonnie and Clyde goes toe-to-toe with Harvey Keitel and Raquel Welch in Mother, Jugs & Speed; a Martin Ritt curiosity from 1974 (Conrack) leads into Matthew Broderick’s chimp-sympathy weepie, Project X; John Wayne westerns are followed by Hot Shots! Part Deux. Yes, these are actual examples. If you don’t believe me, tune in Wednesday, when FMC will show three rarely screened, vintage ’60s comedies in the daytime, capped by Weekend at Bernie’s during prime time.
In a too-manicured, micro-managed advertising-dominated television landscape, such slipshod programming is positively thrilling. FMC may be the anti-TCM, but it’s also anti anything else on basic cable. It doesn’t show what my demographic, or any demographic, expects. It just sets up shop and lets you wander around inside. There’s no real design or quality control. The word “classic” isn’t invoked in the channel’s name or mission. Fox is just movies, all day long, commercial- and pretension-free.
Click here to comment on this post.
-
sponsorship
We all know that Law & Order rips its stories from the headlines, but which headlines? Every week, Brow Beat matches L&O's plot points to the events that inspired them.
Oct. 23, 2009: "Dignity"
These Are Their Stories:
Dr. Walter Benning is shot and killed in church. As one of the few doctors who performs legal late-term abortions in New York, Benning had been shot before and was wearing a bulletproof vest. The man who shot him is a loner unaffiliated with any pro-life groups.
This Is the Real Story:
On May 31, 2009, Dr. George Tiller, described by the Washington Post as "the nation's most prominent provider of controversial late-term abortions," was shot and killed while attending church in Wichita, Kan. He had been shot in both arms in 1993 and sometimes wore a bulletproof vest. Scott Roeder, the man accused of shooting him, is an unaffiliated loner. (Roeder's trial is set to begin in January 2010.)
Click here to comment on this post.
-
sponsorship
Was Martin Heidegger Hitler's most willing executioner or the 20th century's greatest philosopher? Is it possible he was both? Imagine what it takes to answer that question honestly. Heidegger's prose is notoriously difficult. To his critics, wresting clarity from Being and Time is like trying to inhale the proverbial smoke from the mirror. (His admirers reply: Heidegger's prose is difficult because his truth was difficult, as was Kant's, as was Hegel's.) Now add to that the morally repugnant details of Heidegger's biography. Heidegger joined the Nazi party in 1933, and he helped instill Nazism at the University of Freiburg, where he was (not coincidentally) made rector that same year.
When is a reader free to dismiss a difficult writer as an obfuscatory charlatan? To what extent is a work of literature tainted by the total moral failing of its author? I don't pretend to know the answer to these questions. Addressing them strikes me as the better part of a life's work. So I was surprised to discover a critic I admire treat them as not only settled but so settled that only an attitude of ridicule is necessary to dismiss them forever.
Carlin Romano's review-essay on several new books on Heidegger was featured on Arts and Letters Daily late last week and was the most-e-mailed story on the The Chronicle of Higher Education Web site. He begins with what sounds to me like a conclusion:
Overrated in his prime, bizarrely venerated by acolytes even now, the pretentious old Black Forest babbler makes one wonder whether there's a university-press equivalent of wolfsbane, guaranteed to keep philosophical frauds at a distance.
Romano recounts the details of Heidegger's Nazism while assuring the reader that his academic peers regarded him as a fraud and that, over time, he will be seen as nothing more than a punch line. Jokes, Romano believes, are what will eventually do Heidegger in. "His influence," Romano writes "will end only when ... the broader world of intellectuals, recognize that scholarly evidence fingers the scowling proprietor of Heidegger's hut as a buffoon produced by German philosophy's mystical tradition. He should be the butt of jokes, not the subject of dissertations."
One problem: I don't recognize the Heidegger I loved as undergraduate studying philosophy in Romano's jokes. I saw Heidegger then as one of many thinkers who believe humanity took a wrong turn of thought or action that distorted its true nature. Science takes space and time, the framework of all possible reality, and in studying them as formal entities, disenchants them, destroying them forever as home to belief. What if, Heidegger asked, another more primal way of knowing, one that accords with our status as humans—that is, as the only creatures whose being (what am I? why am I here?) is a question—has been hidden by purely rational or instrumental modes of thinking?
Heidegger was born on the border of the Black Forest near the turn of the 20th century, and almost everything about his lived reality was pre-capitalist. He did not live in a city; he was surrounded by woodlands and peasants and horse power in its original sense. He felt a deep affinity for nature and an instinctive revulsion toward cities. The university he taught at was a late-medieval institution, founded by the Hapsburgs. Social intercourse was uninteresting to him, but a dialogue across the millennia, with Aristotle and Epictetus, with Kant and Nietzsche, was his life's vocation. Heidegger believed only the intercession into history of something more powerful than technology could bring modernity to heel. He made a tragic and finally disgusting error in thinking Hitler was that intercession.
Here is what you would not know if you encountered Heidegger only in Romano's review. You would not know that, though no-name colleagues (typically not disinterested judges of peer reputation, as Romano no doubt knows) thought Heidegger was a quack, his philosophy was admired and studied by Edmund Husserl (his mentor), Hannah Arendt (his protégé and lover), and the philosophers Karl Jaspers and Hans-Georg Gadamer. You would not know that almost all of Sartre's existentialism is based directly on Heidegger, that the American uber-liberal and Pragmatist Richard Rorty admired Heidegger deeply—as does the great Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor and as did the pioneering genius of quantum mechanics Werner Heisenberg. You would not know that the poet Paul Celan, whose Jewish parents were exterminated, and whose most powerful poetry commemorates the death camps, took a pilgrimage to visit Heidegger in his Black Forest hut in 1966. The two men shared a love of nature, and of the German romantic poetry of Holderlin and Trakl. (For a moving account of Celan's visit, please read this.)
Here is what you would also not know if you only read Romano's essay: that Arendt—a Jew, of course, who wrote the standard-bearing consideration of totalitarianism and gave us Eichmann in Jerusalem—visited Heidegger after the war, then wrote a parable in her notebook about the encounter, which begins, "There was once a fox who was so utterly without cunning that he not only constantly fell into traps but could not even distinguish a trap from what was not a trap." Arendt, if I read that right, is saying Heidegger was a kind of innocent, a man who should never have never left his hut, his Epictetus and his Nietzsche, to trifle with a world he could not possibly fathom.
This may be letting a Nazi off with a tut-tut. But what are we to make of, not simply a campaign to educate readers as to Heidegger's infamies, but to make sure no one—I mean "make sure" and "no one"—even discusses his work? Karl Popper once said "I appeal to the philosophers of all countries to unite and never again mention Heidegger or talk to another philosopher who defends Heidegger"; and I am told that the volume Romano is reviewing (I haven't read it but plan to) ends with an appeal to criminalize the teaching of Heidegger in France.
A turn of thought was taken; man repudiated his own essence; and we have lived henceforth as fallen beings. Many thinkers, from Jesus to Blake to the free market utopians, have believed this. Man in his search for mastery is a kind of fool. Many writers, from Marcus Aurelius to Montaigne to Melville, have believed this. Is there something about Heidegger's formulation, with its longing for a return to a premodern way of being, that necessarily sets us on the road to Treblinka?
I don't know the answer. But I never thought the answer to illiberalism was more illiberalism. That the essence of philosophy was that, if a question is thorny or unpleasant, don't ask it, cutting off dissent at the pass with a code of silence, a legal injunction, or if all else fails, a volley of snotty jibes.
Click here to comment on this post.
-
sponsorship
For the "Michael Kors challenge"—so named because the assignment was handed out in Kors' Rodeo Drive boutique—the designers had to choose one of seven possible locations and design a look that "embodies who you are as a designer and also embraces that locale."
Irina won for an outfit fit for an Aspen ski lodge—brown jersey pants; a knit top with three-quarter sleeves, a huge cowl neck, and an open back; and a faux-fur vest. Nicolas was eliminated for a wrapped white shirt and tight gray pants that evoked nothing whatsoever of Greece.
Stats
Number of times Tim Gunn said, "Make it work!": Zero. That phrase is, like, so Bravo!
Number of crying contestants: Christopher is perpetually on the verge of tears, but guest judge Milla Jovovich came closest—she broke down at the very thought of sending someone home.
Logan sex object watch: This week, there were way too many design disasters to waste screen time on a silly subplot.
The Contestants
The judges didn't see Santa Fe in Christopher's ensemble, but they also failed to spot the subconscious inspiration for the white shirt, blue top, and beige skirt that he produced: Snow White. Meanwhile, the contestants turned into the seven dwarfs: Bitchy, Peroxidey, Greasy, Raccoony, Sexy, Self-Deprecating, and Lost.
The Judges
Hallelujah! For the first time since Week 2, the dream team of Klum, Kors, and Garcia reassembled. In the guest spot, actress and designer Milla Jovovich was constructive and informed.
The designers must be physically and creatively exhausted, because many of them sent very basic, uninspired clothes down the runway. And the judges certainly noticed. Nina asked Nicolas, "Why would I want to go into a store and spend my money on this?" Faced with Logan's bland white jeans, tank top, and vest ensemble, Michael Kors declared, "They're clothes. They're not fashion." The same outfit drove Jovovich to declare, "Listen, if this was called Project I Didn't Mind It, he would win."
The Results
Garment of the week: Carol Hannah's Palm Beach look was striking, though I liked that dress even better the first 10 times Uli made it on Season 3.
Should Irina have won? Eh. Her symphony in camel was a very literal interpretation of Aspen luxe, but she produced three well-fitted and impeccably finished location-inspired pieces, which is at least two more than the other contestants managed.
Should Nicolas have been eliminated? For sure. He completely ignored the assignment. Michael Kors was right when he told him, "You got the wrong Greece. [This was] Grease the movie."
Bold prediction for who'll be auf'd next: Christopher. Even with this season's wackadoodle judging, a string of four consecutive bottom-three finishes has got to be considered foreshadowing.
Previous Project Runway Recaps: Week 1, Week 3, Week 4, Week 5, Week 6, Week 7, Week 8, Week 9
Click here to comment on our Project Runway recaps.
-
sponsorship
Slate's pop critic, Jonah Weiner, published an article Wednesday arguing that Creed—a band dismissed by "critical gatekeepers" as "derivative blowhards with a self-righteous Christian agenda"—is severely underrated. This contrarian take has outraged the gatekeepers of conventional wisdom. And even fairly unconventional members of the commentariat, like Ezra Klein and Matthew Yglesias, have roundly condemned Weiner's—and Slate's—taste. Klein suggested yesterday that Slate "should be burned to the ground," and Yglesias called the take "ridiculous."
Did Weiner's Creed defense also set off a new twitter meme? About 15 hours ago, tweets with the hashtag "slatepitches" started circulating. These tweak the magazine for its contrarian bent, suggesting story ideas like "Suicide: Why it might not actually kill you." Maybe it's contrarian for us to say so, but some of these are quite brilliant. A few of our favorites so far:
brianbeutler: The New York Yankees deserve to be loved, but not for the reasons you think.
gabrielroth: Wings: Better than the Beatles, or just different?
gabrielroth: What's the giraffe's most distinctive feature? Hint: It's not the neck.
JohnJMcG: Hitchens: What all the obituaries about the beloved figure who recently died fail to mention.
Have an idea for a Slate headline? Use the hashtag #slatepitches. Be careful what you wish for!
Click here to comment on this post.
-
sponsorship
-
sponsorship
Just as we're surrounded by a world of microorganisms—some good, some bad, many imperceptible—our culture is continually under siege by small perversions of the written language. There are errors that help us digest meaning (Boyz n the Hood, Inglourious Basterds), errors that we educate ourselves against (the deli's offering of "sandwichs" could never lead astray a stalwart English major), and errors that, for the most part, go unnoticed (when did you last catch a flubbed subjunctive?). Occasionally, though, disaster strikes. Some of the nastiest errata of our times show up on marquees and in bookstores, burrowing into the innards of an unsuspecting nation. Which crack team of aphasiacs let loose movies with the titles Two Weeks Notice and The Kids Are Alright? What are we to make of Bill Cosby and Alvin F. Poussaint's 2007 opus, Come on People?
Recently, while lamenting these and other matters over a pot of coffee and a dish of Weetabix, your culture copy editor flipped open his morning paper and felt the blood drain from his face. Law Abiding Citizen is a new movie starring Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler. It is also—reader, need I really say it?—a grammatical atrocity. Its crime is simple but insidious: no hyphen. Law-Abiding Citizen would have been a movie about good behavior (or, perhaps more likely, an ironic sendup of that conduct). Law Abiding Citizen is a movie about—what? Can law abide a human being? What, exactly, would that look like? Given the movie's vigilante-justice theme, could this be some kind of oblique pun attempt? (Ancillary question: Do oblique pun attempts belong in Jamie Foxx movies?) The ambiguities grow like pathogens across a petri dish. One thing we can be certain of: If any laws are being abided in this action flick, they're not grammatical.
Spot a grammar clunker in the cultural limelight? Send it to copyeditingtheculture@gmail.com.
Click here to comment on this post.
-
sponsorship
In a new Browbeat feature, Slate critics Jody Rosen and Jonah Weiner discuss a recent pop song that has caught their attention. This week, they take on the new single from Shakira.
Jody Rosen: Hi, Jonah. Coming to you live from a cafe in brownstone Brooklyn where, needless to say, some sad-sack indie balladeer is whimpering away on the hi-fi. Hardly optimal conditions for contemplating Shakira's gale-force pop, but I'll do my best.
I'll say right up front that I'm pretty bummed out by "Give It Up to Me," a collaboration with Timbaland, who wrote and produced, and Lil Wayne, who raps a bit. Look, the song is catchy. Nice beat—Timbaland in fine form. Wayne phones in his rhymes but is, as always, endearing.
What depresses me is how un-Shakira—almost anti-Shakira—the song is. I gather "Give It Up to Me" was cobbled together by Epic Records execs who were freaked out about the prospects of Shakira's forthcoming album after the lead single, "She Wolf," tanked. I've heard the album (also called She Wolf), and it's terrific, one of my favorite records of the year. It's Shakira's most blatant overture to Anglo-American audiences—most of the tracks were produced by the Neptunes, with their usual flair for club-pop catchiness. But Shakira co-wrote all the songs, and stamped them with her irrepressible kookiness. She's the weirdest pop diva out there. Take "She Wolf." It's a neo-disco barn-burner about a gal on the prowl at a bar: the same territory, more or less, as "Give It Up to Me." But "She Wolf" is crammed with allusions to Greek mythology and lyrics about coffee machines. Shakira howls like a werewolf; she sings the word "lycanthropy"!
Compare that wackiness with the new song. "Give It Up to Me" is drearily generic—it sounds like a Nelly Furtado song. Now, I happen to like Nelly Furtado, but personality is not her strong suit. Seems to me Timbaland (and Epic) are doing the near impossible here: making Shakira boring.
Jonah Weiner: Awooo, Jody. This song does come off as a weak follow-up to "She Wolf." Thematically, it makes for a nice counterpart, because it introduces a new ravenous appetite to match the She Wolf's: That of Lil Wayne, who has nicknamed himself not just the Rapper Eater but the Pussy Monster (in homage to the Cookie Monster)—these two are hungry. But you're right: "Give It Up To Me" isn't the feast you'd hope for. I like the Timbaland beat, even though I feel I've heard that exact drum track in another song of his. But whatever; it's a great drum track. Wayne's toss-away rhymes delight me as always—just the way he chuckles off a line like, "My flow is a dog, down boy." Remember those boom times when we could expect four Lil Wayne cameos a day?
I guess what ultimately irks me is the same thing that irks you: Shakira's idiosyncrasies, so abundant in the first single (between the odd quasi-malaprops about coffee machines and being a student of the moon) are drained here. Part-and-parcel with that, her assertiveness is drained, and the gender parity is unconvincingly askew: She sounds like the one who gets chewed up and spit out. I guess Shakira has played with themes of submissiveness before, but I suspect that if I, by some fabric-of-time-and-space-rending miracle, found myself in a bedroom with her, I'd be the one who wound up “in a cage,” as she envisions herself here.
J.R.: No offense, but I'm not sure I want to contemplate a Shakira-Weiner coupling—or the apocalyptic scenario that would produce such a coupling. I'm trying to eat breakfast here.
You're right about the drum track. Very close to "Promiscuous," is it not? Timbaland's pretty serious about this Nelly Furtado-ization program. The song does make a couple of perfunctory concessions to Shakira's musical personality, at least. I'm thinking of the orientalist turn the melody takes at the 1:48 mark ("Hey, can we go by walking/ Or do you prefer to fly/ All of the roads are open/ In your mind")—a staple of Shakira’s music. (She’s a Columbian of Lebanese extraction.) But there are 11 songs on the She Wolf album better than this one. And the She Wolf album has 12 songs.
J.W.: Right. That Eastern-scaled interlude aside (a relic of the "Get Ur Freak On" and "Big Pimpin'"-era Timbaland, in a way), the song seems a bit cynical, color-by-numbers in the appeal it’s making to the American pop market. And, to be clear: I'm sure neither of us cares if a song is color-by-numbers and cynical, so long as it still works. This one feels perfunctory, unconvincing, dull. Who could have expected that? Shakira is one weird pop diva, as you write, and she's not the only weirdo here. Both Lil Wayne and Timbaland have highly bizarre ideas about what pop can sound like. This song isn't worthy of them.
Click here to comment on this post.
-
sponsorship
Perhaps the only thing the Shame Index is more ashamed to love than How I Met Your Mother is Kenny Rogers. The Shame Index may or may not own Rogers's 25 Greatest Hits on vinyl, cassette tape, and compact disc; may or may not have once accompanied his mom to see Rogers perform at the South Shore Music Circus in Cohasset, Mass.; and may or may not have called attention to himself with his enthusiastic reception of Rogers's heartbreaking ballad "Coward of the County." Suffice it to say, the Shame Index found this week's cameo by The Gambler nothing short of legendary.
Shameful:
—Too many Canada jokes: As Barney notes, Robin's Canadian heritage has been a source of great amusement over the years. But this episode leaned too hard on material about our neighbor to the north. A throwaway line about curling or Tim Horton's or Bryan Adams can be quite funny, but the citizenship subplot returned to the well too many times. The same goes for Barney's jingoism—it's funnier in small doses.
—The absurd notion that somehow the threat of deportation hanging over Robin due to an assault charge could somehow be remedied by her becoming a U.S. citizen.
—The Tim Horton's scene. The Shame Index detected a whiff of product placement: Barney makes a point of twice complimenting the coffee, and the Canadian chain does have 500 locations in the U.S. This summer, it opened a dozen stores in Barney Stinson's hometown of New York City.
—Marshall and Lily as "married glob": Special effects wizardry is not a specialty of HIMYM, nor should it be.
Awesome:
—The idea of going on a 22-hour roadtrip from the Tri-State Area to Chicago to get pizza so bad that looking at it while consuming it is considered a "rookie mistake."
—The traditions associated with these roadtrips: namely, drinking the hilariously-named Tantrum soft drink and singing along to The Proclaimers' "I Would Walk 500 Miles."
—The havoc Gazola's (sp?) pizza visits on Ted and Marshall's gastrointestinal systems.
—Crumpet Manor.
—The "shrimp fried rice" chant.
—Everything about Goodbye, Sparky: The pitch-perfect send-up of maudlin doggy lit, matching Kenny Rogers's honeyed drawl with the text, actually getting Rogers to do the voice work, Marshall and Ted's reconciliation after learning a valuable lesson from Sparky's story. A brilliantly conceived and executed gag.
The greatest Kenny Rogers-themed sitcom episode remains "The Chicken Roaster," from the eighth season of Seinfeld, in which Kramer becomes addicted to chicken from Kenny Rogers Roasters. But kudos to HIMYM for crafting a fine part for one of our finest musical talents.
Previous Shame Indices: Episode 1, 2, 3, 4
Click here to comment on this post.
-
sponsorship
In Janet Maslin’s New York Times review of a new oral biography of Robert Altman, an ambiguous portrait emerges of the renegade director. Depending on who’s testifying, Altman comes off as expansive and moody, generous and chiseling, an exacting artist, a freewheeling stoner, a skirt-chasing husband, and a painfully indifferent father. But one sentence of Maslin’s review rings out with unequivocal clarity: “He tattooed Harry S. Truman’s dog.” First of all, let it be stipulated that every eulogy should contain this sentence. Who among us can honestly say that at one time or another, we haven’t tattooed a president’s pet? And secondly: Huh?
Michael Zuckoff’s 500-plus-page brick of a book could use some editorial pruning, but it does serve as an adequate clearinghouse for all of your Altman-anecdote needs. (Just how well did Bob's aunt Annette play the harp, anyway? His sister has your answer: “Beautifully.”) But when Altman himself speaks (he collaborated with the author before his death in 2007), the quality of the storytelling radically improves. The dog-tattooing tale appears on Page 58: After serving as an Army pilot during WWII, Altman found himself back in the United States with no prospects for work. He hooked up with “a guy named Skimmerhorn,” who sold him a bulldog and then recruited him into a three-person dog-IDing operation—a low-tech predecessor of today’s pet microchipping.
We would shave the area on the inside of the right hind leg, up near the groin … then I would write in these numbers. … We got through to someone who knew Truman. Truman had this dog he didn’t even care about, a little dog of some kind. They sent it over to us and we tattooed it. That was part of our promotion of Identi-Code.
There’s so much of Altman the future filmmaker in that story: his ability to talk his way into anything, his disdain for authority (love the dismissive detail about Truman’s attitude toward his pet!), and his matter-of-fact approach to trying something new (Inscribe digits on a dog’s inner thigh? Sure. Open a movie with an eight-minute-long, logistically astounding tracking shot? Why not?) Just as the Identi-Code business was about to go big-time with an endorsement from the ASPCA, one of Altman’s partners disappeared to Ireland with the company’s entire earnings. It was then, Altman says, that “I went to California and declared myself a writer.”
In this interview at the British Film Institute in 2001, Altman reminisced about his youthful foray into canine tattooing. “Do you regret having given that up for filmmaking?,” asked the interviewer, Geoff Andrew, no doubt sure he was being very British and wry. But Altman’s response was a topper: “Well … they’re both about the same.”
Click here to comment on this post.
-
sponsorship
We all know that Law & Order rips its stories from the headlines—but which headlines? Every week, Brow Beat matches L&O's plot points to the events that inspired them.
Oct. 16, 2009: "Reality Bites"
These Are Their Stories:
Larry Johnson, the father of 10 adopted special-needs kids, comes home to discover his wife, Joy, dead in the living room. On the afternoon of the murder, a "bouncy Hispanic woman" was seen leaving the house; she is Belinda Alvarez, the mother of 10 children—three singles and a set of septuplets—and the Johnsons' main rival in the competition to star in a reality TV series about large families. Helped by the publicity surrounding the murder, Johnson gets the show, Larry Plus 8. But after the police discover that Larry was having an affair with one of his babysitters and that Joy had refused to sign the TV release forms, he becomes a suspect in the murder case.
This Is the Real Story:
If you need to be told what inspired this episode, your television, if you own one, must be stuck on C-SPAN. Indeed, America's most famous megaparents were name-checked in the episode. Belinda Alvarez (Nina Lisandrello), who bears a striking physical resemblance to Nadya Suleman, says the show she hopes to star in will be "like Jon and Kate, you know, only less depressing." She also confesses, "I was hoping for octuplets, but God decided to bestow that blessing on Nadya Suleman."
As of this writing, Jon and Kate Gosselin are both alive and well, though after revelations about extramarital affairs, their marriage is coming to an end. On Sept. 29, the Hollywood Reporter broke the news that Jon & Kate Plus 8 was also a thing of the past, to be replaced by Kate Plus 8. Late last week, however, the New York Times reported that Jon had "banned the camera crews from his property, effectively halting production."
Unlike the fictional Belinda Alvarez, Suleman got her reality show (check out the promotional materials for My Life as the OctoMom), though filming is currently on hold, pending court approval of the contracts.
Click here to comment on this post.
-
sponsorship
This week's challenge was to design an extravagant stage look "in the style of Bob Mackie" for Christina Aguilera. Mackie—the designer of over-the-top costumes for Cher, Tina Turner, and many more—told the designers to create a "staggering" look that could be seen from "miles away."
Carol Hannah won for a long black dress that combined sequins and feathers. Shirin was eliminated for a long black dress with white sheer and sequin inserts that Tim Gunn dubbed "Guinevere meets Vampira."
Stats
Number of times Tim Gunn said, "Make it work!": Zero.
Number of crying contestants: Zero. Shirin was too stunned to so much as sniffle.
Logan sex object watch: Carol Hannah admitted to being distracted by the man at the other end of her work table. She gushed, "Logan's my friend ... who's really hot." (If only he had a personality to go with those looks.)
The Contestants
Apparently, excessive exposure to sequins and shiny fabrics can be detrimental to designers' judgment. Only Nicolas and Irina seemed to realize that Aguilera's performances might involve dancing. Nina accurately pegged Christopher's bustier and sparkle pants as a tame retread of Aguilera's 2001 "Lady Marmalade" look.
Nicolas' first nondeluded observation of the season: "Irina's a really good designer. The problem is she's such a bitch."
The Judges
Qué alegria, Nina Garcia was back! Bob Mackie warmed Michael Kors' chair, and Christina Aguilera was a gracious guest judge.
Most passive-aggressive compliment of the evening: Nina to Althea, "It's a nicely made dress. I don't know if you thought if she might have to move and that a train might be cumbersome?"
Bob Mackie's philosophy in brief: "Onstage, a short dress can go right up to the crotch and be perfectly fine. Put diamonds on the crotch, and you're home free."
The Results
Garment of the week: This challenge played to Nicolas' costuming strengths. He clearly understood Aguilera's taste and needs, and after a parade of somber, black numbers, Aguilera seemed grateful for his "fun" outfit. Mackie praised Nicolas for making a dress suitable "for a singer who needs to get around the stage fast and dance and move."
Should Carol Hannah have won? No. Her dress was too dark, too heavy, and too figure-concealing. The combination of textures Mackie enjoyed so much wouldn't be visible three rows back, much less from the third level of a stadium.
Should Shirin have been eliminated? No. Her dress was completely inappropriate for Christina Aguilera, but this was her first stumble in the competition. Christopher's cheap, poorly fitting, ill-conceived ensemble marked his third consecutive appearance in the bottom three.
Bold prediction for who'll be auf'd next: All those bottom-of-the-pack finishes would suggest Christopher is doomed, but recent eliminations have been so random, the judges may as well be pulling names from the button bag.
Previous Project Runway Recaps: Week 1, Week 3, Week 4, Week 5, Week 6, Week 7, Week 8
Click here to comment on our Project Runway recaps.
-
sponsorship
Mommy, Santa's scaring me! Just in time for Halloween, Bob Dylan's Christmas album is here, its arrival harkened by the 68-year-old legend's fearsome wheeze—a sound more Beelzebub than Jolly Old Elf. Christmas in the Heart is being called a goof, the latest of Dylan's many efforts to épater la bourgeoisie, confound his worshipful fans and exegetes, and generally mess with people's heads. There's something to the theory. The trickster behind "Talkin' Hava Negeilah Blues" surely relishes taking his place in a lineage of Jewish yuletide music that stretches from Irving Berlin to Barbra Streisand.
But to dismiss Christmas in the Heart as mere mischief is to misunderstand Dylan—and Christmas songs. In recent years, Dylan has been less folk singer than folklorist. On albums like Love and Theft (2001), Modern Times (2006), and Together Through Life (2009)—and on his fabulous satellite radio show—Dylan has been dipping further into America's musical back pages with an expansive vision of roots music that takes in not just blues and gospel and country but 19th-century parlor songs, vaudeville ragtime tunes, Tin Pan Alley's Hawaiian ballads, and other products of the ye olde pop industrial complex. Dylan's love for crooners like Bing Crosby is evident in Modern Times' "Beyond the Horizon," a note-for-note homage to the 1930s hit "Red Sails in the Sunset."
For decades, of course, Bing was "Santa Cros," Hollywood's Father Christmas, and his blithe spirit hangs over the new record. Dylan's croak is miles from Crosby's honeyed drawl, but he has a Bingian gift for sly phrasing and subtle swing. The arrangements, meanwhile, pay tribute to mid-century Christmas pop, right down to the backup vocalists who chirp in close harmony through numbers like "Winter Wonderland." Those flourishes, like the Currier and Ives-inspired CD cover art, have struck many as another high-concept Dylan jape. "Dylan plays things beyond straight, adhering to the syrupy, schlocky pop sounds of the pre-rock era," writes the reliably dense Chicago Sun-Times critic Jim DeRogatis, who awards the album zero stars out of a possible five.
Dylan, though, knows that holiday schlock is a profound tradition in its own right. Most yuletide standards are of relatively recent provenance, cooked up by pop tune-smiths during and just after World War II. But it was the special genius of those (mostly Jewish) composers to create songs that feel as if they have always existed, that can sit comfortably beside the ancient "O Come All Ye Faithful (Adeste Fideles)" and "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" as icons of that bizarre civic-religious rite, the American Christmas—the one time each year when the country's consumerist and spiritual excesses merge in a mass celebration of the enchanted and uncanny. Even the silliest Christmas tunes are surreal—cheerily, unblinkingly narrating tales of flying reindeer and talking snowmen. Then there are songs like Berlin's titanic "White Christmas," which fuses Stephen Foster's antebellum nostalgia, Jewish schmaltz, and Broadway melodicism into a secular hymn that is as dark and blue as it is "merry and bright."
Dylan gets this, and that's why Christmas in the Heart is less a joke or a provocation than a polemic. He's harnessing his unrivaled cred to remind us that Christmas ditties are as deeply American—and often, as just plain deep—as anything Alan Lomax ever recorded in an Appalachian holler. Singing (or rasping) "Silver Bells" and "Do You Hear What I Hear?" and "Here Comes Santa Claus," Dylan is the haggard, haunting voice of the musical collective unconscious—our Ghost of Christmas Past.
-
sponsorship
Next month would have been James Agee's 100th birthday, and although he came nowhere close to seeing it, he might have liked the peace and retrospection old age brought. Agee was a Deep Southern romantic tempered by the harder climes of New York literary life; he was also self-destructive, manic, and overwrought, dying in a taxi from his second heart attack at 45. To commemorate his anniversary, Penguin recently reissued his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel A Death in the Family, first published posthumously in 1957. Set in the mid-1910s, Death follows the family of Rufus Follett, a 6-year-old in Knoxville, Tenn., through the crisis of his father's fatal car accident. But the book's real achievement is to give voice to subtler relationships among the people left behind.
When people speak of Agee, they tend to speak first about the prose, and with good reason. Reading an Agee sentence is like settling into a water bed: The language comes in waves, throbbing and doubling back till you feel weightless and a little tight around the stomach—
These realizations moved clearly through the senses, the memory, the feelings, the mere feeling of the place they paused at, about a quarter of a mile from home, on a rock under a stray tree that had grown in the city, their feet on undomesticated clay, facing north through the night over the Southern Railway tracks and over North Knoxville, towards the deeply folded small mountains and the Powell River Valley, and above them, the trembling lanterns of the universe, seeming so near, so intimate, that when the air stirred the leaves and their hair, it seemed to be the breathing, the whispering of the stars.
But churning virtuosity only goes so far. Death is a masterpiece because of its unidealized portrait of the Folletts' behavior under pressure. Agee inhabits the consciousness of every major character—Rufus' 3-year-old sister and drunkard uncle alike—to build a narrative mosaic of family manners and miscommunication. Within hours of his fathers' death, Rufus' grown-up relatives fall into passive-aggressive discussion about what should go on the gravestone. His mother struggles with the politics of who should manage what. His grandfather and uncle despair for the religious "hocus-pocus" that she turns to for support. Piece by piece, Agee teases out the weave of affection, self-interest, and petty judgment that holds the family together.
The novel's authenticity was forged out of experience. Agee went by "Rufus" in childhood, and his father, also eponymous in the book, indeed died in a car accident en route to Knoxville. The loss changed Agee's trajectory, setting into motion the events that led him to New England, then Harvard, then New York. It may have made a writer of him, too. Whether in Death or in the 1938 prose poem that serves as its prologue (set to music by Samuel Barber as the exquisite Knoxville: Summer of 1915), Agee kept returning in fiction to the childhood landscape he'd lost in life. "[N]ostalgia for much that I remembered very accurately," he called it. More than half a century after his death, that accuracy still shines through on the page.
Click here to comment on this post.
-
sponsorship
Jody Rosen: Hello, Jonah. Today we'll be discussing the new Bruce Springsteen song "Wrecking Ball," which the Boss debuted during his recent five-night stand at Giants Stadium in New Jersey. The Springsteen shows were the last concerts scheduled to take place at the big colosseum in the Meadowlands prior to its demolition. (They're building a spiffy new home for the Giants and Jets next door.) I have mixed feelings about "Wrecking Ball."
Pro: The song is narrated by a football stadium. How can you not respect that? As far as I know, this is a first in the history of rock 'n' roll, possibly a first in world literature. Now, granted, the stadium sounds suspiciously like Bruce Springsteen. (It says "mister" a lot, and waxes grandiloquent about hopes and desires and rust and dust and wind.) But no matter. Also, the E Street Band just plain roars. What a group! I can feel Giants Stadium buckling and heaving through my YouTube.
Con: This wrecking ball conceit doesn't really deliver the emotional gut-punch that Springsteen wants. I get what he's going for: stadium-facing-the-wrecking ball-as-metaphor-for-60-year-old-rock-titan-staring-down-Father-Time. Bring on your wrecking ball; take your best shot, lemme see what you got, etc. I dunno—it seems too tidy. This has been a problem with a lot of recent Springsteen songs: The metaphors are either too on-the-nose or too maddeningly vague. (What, exactly, are "devils and dust"?)
Jonah Weiner: Hi, Mister! This song didn't hit me in the gut, exactly, but it did manage to stir the emotions of this patent nonwatcher of sports, not to mention noncarer about 60-year-old rock titans. I see what you mean about the metaphor being a bit too-on-the-nose—another way of saying it's obvious, right? When he delivered the line about running down the clock I groaned. But the line about Meadowlands mosquitoes, for instance, was a bit more surprising. And I think "bring on your wrecking ball" is a pretty damn good put-up-your-dukes hook—on the nose in exactly the way a wrecking ball should be! Perhaps, though, it was the anthropomorphic narrator that really got me: It reminded me a bit of Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, a classic in the literature of workhorse institutions put out to pasture.
"Queen of the Supermarket," from Bruce's Working on a Dream album, struck me as dead-in-the-water working-class-fetishism—Springsteen parody at its most ridiculous. This strikes me as Springsteen parody at its most grand.
J.R.: I love the line about the airplane-sized Meadowlands mosquitoes. That's not poetry, by the way. That's reportage.
I guess I wish that self-parody, whether ridiculous or grand, wasn't the only option left for Bruce. I'm convinced he lost his songwriting touch the day he began reading all those professors of Springsteenology and started believing that he's a littérateur. Even in this big dopey rock anthem, the poetastery creeps in: "I was raised out of steel here in the swamps of Jersey, some misty years ago." Misty years!
J.W.: "Misty years" is an earsore—maybe the clunky, clanging metaphor is meant to evoke the sound of steel being raised above the Jersey swamps? Yeah, listening again, a few infelicities piled up. He rhymes "balls" with "ball" in the first verse (although when Rick Ross rhymes a word with itself I love it, so, hey). In the third verse he's either mixing the stadium metaphor with a de trop "hold on to your anchor" refrain or, if I'm mishearing it that way, singing "hold on to your anger," which undercuts the bravado. And when he tells the crowd, "raise your glasses," has he forgotten where he is? To be fair, "Raise your plastic, nonweaponizable bottles of Bud Light" wouldn't have quite the same ring to it. Perhaps the most affecting part of the song is when the words stop altogether. Around the 5:40 mark, horns come in, and it sounds like the most poignant Saturday Night Live curtain call ever, with the whole group breaking into a big, fat, wordless wail.
But I think there are plenty of affecting lines—and, moreover, I didn't notice many of these gaffes the first few times around, probably thanks to the force of Springsteen's singing. Re: self-parody being his only option—it's funny how his would-be heirs have contributed, in a way, to this impression. When Brandon Flowers of The Killers or Win Butler of Arcade Fire pens a song about highways or the working man and calls it a Springsteen homage, is there a sense in which they rewrite/ossify him as a cliché merchant?
J.R.: Funny you should mention Springsteen's heirs. The money-shot moment you point to—"the big, fat, wordless wail" toward the end of the song—sounds to me like a straight Arcade Fire bite. The flow of influence has reversed!
Anyway, my verdict. C+ song; A- performance. Clarence Clemons' tasseled smock coat earns an A+. The Big Man's still fashion-forward, after all these years.
J.W.: The performance rocks. I wonder whether the drama the group musters at the scene of the crime will feel slight or canned if/when they record this in a studio. We agree the Clemons get-up was the real star, though—very haute Outlaw Josey Wales or something. Enjoy the rest of this misty day.
Click here to comment on this post.
-
sponsorship
We can't trust academics to tell us how to eat, says Michael Pollan in the latest issue of the New York Times Magazine. At best, the nutritional experts get it wrong—like when they told us to eat margarine instead of butter. At worst, they're colluding with food marketers to mislead the American public. So how might we find the path to healthy eating amidst a treacherous food landscape populated by lab-coated eggheads? By trusting in the "accumulated wisdom of the tribe."
It's an idea Pollan has been pushing for a long time. In a Times Magazine article from 2007, he proposed that traditional ways of eating—the ones we learn from our mothers and grandmothers—have evolved over many generations to optimize health. Now he's compiling some of these tried-and-true dietary folkways for a new book, Food Rules: An Eater's Manual. To that end, he invited readers of the Times' Well blog (written by Tara Parker-Pope) to supply their own homespun aphorisms about eating, and then published 20 of his favorites in the magazine on Sunday.
What about the other 2,703 suggestions made by Times readers? You can find them all on the Well blog, but only a few will make it into Pollan's guide for healthy eating. His aim, he tells us, was to collect "genuinely useful, and nutritionally sound, examples of popular wisdom about eating," but some of the tips provided "made little, if any, nutritional sense (and therefore didn't belong in the book)." Wait a second, how does Michael Pollan know the difference between what's nutritionally sound and what isn't? Is he—God forbid—-depending on the expertise of academics rather than the accumulated lore of the tribe?
Some tips from Mom, it would seem, are more correct than others. Quite a number of readers shared Mom's favorite dinnertime dictum: "Clean your plate." But that tip, passed down through the ages, does not make "nutritional sense" to Pollan. It certainly doesn't jibe with his cardinal rule to "eat less."
If we need someone with special knowledge to arbitrate among all these food-related traditions, then why bother with any of them? It all reminds me of something my mother used to say: "If you already know the answer, then don't bother asking."
Click here to comment on this post.
-
sponsorship
Episode 4 finds How I Met Your Mother still wrestling with how to handle Barney and Robin's relationship—and still not quite finding the right formula.
Shameful:
—The sexless innkeeper: Doggerel. Period costumes. HIMYM was trying too hard, probably because the idea of the sexless innkeeper just wasn't that funny to begin with.
—The couples courtship: There were elements of awesomeness in this plotline (see below), but the joke about the parallels with singles courtship ran out of gas well before the episode came to a close. Here, too, the writers seemed to be straining for laughs.
—The tweed jokes.
—Marshall's obsession with photo montages set to music. The Shame Index has historically been obsessed with Marshall's obsessions, but this one was just silly. It was also the second time in this young season that HIMYM has relied on a woman's deep love of cats for comedy. Felt lazy.
—www.itwasthebestnightever.com: A funny idea, having Marshall make a Web site to commemorate the couple's night with Barney and Robin, but the execution was off. It didn't look anything like a Web site, which distracted from what was a great original musical composition by Marshall.
Awesome:
—www.itwasthebestnightever.com: Now this is funny. Not only did CBS register the domain, but it also ponied up for a video of Marshall performing his song about the couples night—accompanied by Extreme's Nuno Bettencourt! Indeed, the video turns out to be a remarkably faithful homage to the video for Extreme's classic ballad "More Than Words." Best HIMYM Easter egg ever?
—Marshall's overeager retelling of his story about Sammy Hagar and the waffle. Also: The fact that Marshall's Sammy-Hagar-and-the-waffle story turns out to be that he once saw Sammy Hagar eating a waffle.
—The glimpses of Marshall and Lily's previous failed couples nights: "If you leave now, Colonel Mustard just gets away with it!"
—"Don't sleep on the gouda"—and pretty much all the gouda jokes. The Shame Index is a sucker for a nice aged gouda, especially when presented with "sturdy cheese-bearing crackers."
—The sexless innkeeper produced one funny line. "Don't charge for wifi," Barney admonishes Innkeeper Ted. "It seems greedy." So true.
Even accounting for the legendary Easter egg, this episode was on balance more shameful than awesome. It needed something stronger than the sexless innkeeper to take pressure off of the couples plotline. But chin up, HIMYM fan—there are reasons to be proud of your sitcom this week. Viewers who also enjoy NBC's The Office might have noticed that the much ballyhooed wedding of Jim and Pam took a page out of the HIMYM playbook. Overwhelmed by the events leading up to their wedding, Jim and Pam steal away from the church, elope on the Maid of the Mist, and then return for the wedding ceremony. Sound familiar? In Season 2 of HIMYM, Marshall and Lily, overwhelmed by the events leading up to their wedding, steal away from the church, elope in a quiet park, and then return for the wedding ceremony. A case of borrowing, or just great minds thinking alike? If Michael Scott makes a "Tabooty call" later this season, we'll have our answer.
Previous Shame Indices: Episode 1, 2, 3
Click here to comment on this post.
-
sponsorship
In August, National Public Radio's flagship music program All Songs Considered published "The Best Music of 2009 (So Far)," a rundown of the top 30 songs and albums of the year-to-date as voted by the show's listeners.
The results of the survey suggest that the All Songs Considered audience has a fuzzy understanding of the word "all." "The Best Music of 2009 (So Far)" consists almost entirely of indie-rockers: acts like The Decemberists, Wilco, Grizzly Bear, Neko Case, Andrew Bird, Regina Spektor, and Animal Collective, the Brooklyn art-rock group that took the top spot in both the best songs and best albums tallies. On the Best Songs list, there are no songs that cracked the Top 40 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts, and none by African-American performers. Two black artists, Danger Mouse and Mos Def, made the Best Albums list, at numbers 20 and 23, respectively.
None of this is a surprise, of course. NPR's audience skews white and college-educated; so does Animal Collective's fan-base. In matters of musical taste, everyone has a God-given right to provincialism and conservatism, even those NPR listeners who consider themselves cosmopolitan and liberal. The numbers, of course, tell a different story. The NPR list leans not just white, but male—dudes with beards and guitars. So far in 2009, the No. 1 song on the Billboard charts has been by a black or female artist—or by groups featuring both blacks and whites or men and women—a total of 41 out of 42 weeks. (The exception is the current No. 1 hit, "Down," a collaboration between an Anglo-Asian R & B singer, Jay Sean, and an African-American rapper, Lil Wayne.) Who are the progressives again—the public radio crowd or the Top 40 great unwashed?
In the weeks since the publication of the All Songs Considered list, I have been puzzling over NPR's musical coverage—in particular, its approach to black music. I wondered: Could NPR's musical taste be as lily-white as the "The Best Music of 2009 (So Far)" list? After scouring NPR's Web site and studying its broadcasts—All Things Considered profiles, Fresh Air interviews, even the music interludes played between segments on NPR's marquee programs—I can report that the answer is no. It's not that NPR doesn't like black music. It merely maintains a strict preference for black music that few actual living African-Americans listen to.
NPR's taste in these matters may be best represented by something called the DORF Matrix. DORF is an acronym for Dead Old Retro Foreign. With a few rule-proving exceptions, the black music heard on NPR falls into one or more DORF Matrix categories:
Dead: artists who have shuffled off this mortal coil. There was a significant spike in this category this summer with the passing of Michael Jackson. In general, though, NPR prefers its dead black musicians decades dead. Bonus points are awarded to performers present at the 1963 March on Washington, and to Bobby Short.
Old: musicians of advanced years. Crusty soul-belters on the comeback trail, gray-bearded jazzers, Motown legends, defunct rap groups.
Retro: musicians, young or old, performing in styles two or more decades out of fashion. Sixties soul revivalists; old school rappers who "[stick] with the puns, jokes and silly one-upsmanship that once defined hip-hop ...Thank goodness"; Lenny Kravitz.
Foreign: black folks who live in far-flung places. And/or the children of Bob Marley.
NPR's commitment to DORF can be neatly tracked by examining the archives of its "Song of the Day" feature, which highlights a new song every weekday. To date in 2009, black artists have been chosen for the "Song of the Day" no less than 25 times, and these comprise a nearly unbroken sequence of DORFiness: Booker T. (O,R), Little Jackie (R), Oumou Sangare (F), and so on. The Malian singer-songwriter Rokia Traoré would appear to be a straight (F), but the Traoré "Song of the Day" selection, a version of the Gershwins' "The Man I Love," earns her a bonus (R). Similarly, although Finale, an obscure rapper from Detroit, is, as of this writing, alive, he slips onto the DORF Matrix as a stealth (D): His "Song of the Day" entry "Heat" features a beat by the late producer J Dilla, to whom the track pays tribute.
Listen closely, and other peculiarities of DORF taste emerge. NPR is fond of rockers like Living Colour (R), BLK JKS (F)—black performers with the good sense to embrace a musical style associated with whites. (The 1970s power-trio Death qualifies for an improbable [D,O,R] on account of the untimely demise of two of its members.) NPR is fascinated by black musicians with sensational human-interest back stories and physical handicaps, like "Song of the Day" honorees Staff Benda Bilili (F), "a group of paraplegic street musicians who entertain from their base near the ... zoological gardens" in Kinshasa, Congo. It is tempting to expand the DORF formula to "DWORF" to encompass NPR's blanket coverage of white soul revivalists from the U.K. But that subject merits a separate study.
NPR is not the only bastion of DORF, of course. DORF reigns in the pages of the New York Times Magazine. DORF tinkles out from the speakers at your local Starbucks. There is evidently a clause in the city charter of Northampton, Massachusetts mandating the promotion and maintenance of DORF.
But now I turn to you, Slate readers. What are other media outlets where DORF presides? What is the DORFiest record ever made? Who is the ultimate DORF icon? Write to me at slatemusic@gmail.com with your suggestions and insights, and I'll report back in a future post. Special props to the reader who provides rules for a DORF drinking game, to be played during Morning Edition broadcasts.
-
sponsorship
As fans of Elvis Presley and Tupac Shakur are aware, death is no impediment to a prolific career as a recording artist. Michael Jackson's posthumous run kicks off today with the release of "This Is it," which popped up overnight on Jackson's Web site.
"This Is It" was originally recorded by Jackson in a spartan piano-and-vocal version, fleshed out here with strings and swooping backup vocals courtesy of Jackson's brothers. It's a sweet, swaying, rather pedestrian number. It is also, to Jackson aficionados, eerily familiar, bearing an uncanny resemblance to "I Never Heard," a song co-written by Jackson and Paul Anka that appeared on a 1991 album by the R & B singer Sa-Fire. In fact, the two songs are identical.
In other words, "This Is It" is not, as Sony Records maintains, a new Michael Jackson song, exhumed from the dusty vaults. It is a demo of "I Never Heard" that was renamed "This Is It" for the purpose of launching the forthcoming Jackson documentary and double-CD package—both titled This Is It. Even by the dubious standards of necrophiliac pop, it's a tacky move.
And a comical move. Listen closely to "This Is It"—or, for that matter, to "I Never Heard"—and you'll hear a simple confession of newfound love. But Sony evidently wanted more: grandiosity worthy of a martyred pop sovereign. Thus the string-slathered arrangement, an attempt to juice a modest song into something epic and windswept. Everyone knows that Jackson had a weakness for, and excelled at, inspirational kitsch. But "This Is It" isn't "Man in the Mirror"—even though it lifts the synthetic finger-snaps straight off of the "Man in the Mirror" rhythm track.
Today's New York Times reports that Sony has unearthed "at least 100" Jackson songs from its archives, "in varying stages of being finished." Undoubtedly, these will eventually be packaged in shiny box sets and gobbled up by insatiable fans. Previously-released demos have provided fascinating glimpses of Jackson's raw brilliance as a vocalist and craftsman, and one hopes that Sony will give us his song-sketches in their bare-bones form, without added jiggery-pokery, or angelic choirs rearing up in background. There's already a genius on those records—who needs a god?
-
sponsorship
We all know that Law & Order rips its stories from the headlines—but which headlines? Today Brow Beat launches a recurring feature that matches L&O's plot points to the events that inspired them.
Oct. 9, 2009: "Great Satan"
These Are Their Stories:
The first act involves "virtual kidnapping," in which extortionists steal cell phones from well-dressed young people, then call up the parents and claim their beloved children are tied up in a basement. Next step: Demand a speedy ransom.
This Is the Real Story:
On April 29, 2008, the New York Times reported that "virtual kidnapping" was Mexico's "latest crime craze." One day in November 2007, "more than a dozen members of Mexico's Congress received calls saying that their children had been taken." (Stealing the victim's cell phone so that parents see their child's caller ID seems to be a smart L&O flourish.)
These Are Their Stories:
When detectives Bernard and Lupo interrogate one of the virtual kidnappers, they discover he has links to a possible terrorist organization. The perp, Sameer Ahmed, agrees to help the police gather evidence against a group of Muslims who are planning to bomb a synagogue in Queens. But after the sting operation, the authorities wonder if Ahmed egged on the conspirators rather than simply passing along information about their plans.
This Is the Real Story:
In May, four men were arrested after they parked cars that they believed contained explosives outside synagogues in the Bronx. As in the Law & Order version, the bomb-making materials, which the FBI had supplied via the informant, were fake. The Associated Press later reported that the alleged plotters claim they were "lured into the conspiracy with gifts including cash and fried chicken."
Click here to comment on this post.
-
sponsorship
As of December 1996, Tiger Woods had yet to win a major tournament. The amateur golf legend had just turned pro a few months earlier, instantly snagging megabucks from Nike and winning a pair of low-wattage tournaments before the year was out. In those days, it was still unclear whether Woods would live up to the hype. Would the phenom burn out, or would he become the greatest golfer—nay, the greatest athlete—any of us had ever seen? Sports Illustrated didn't wait to find out. The magazine named Woods its 1996 Sportsman of the Year.
An award bestowed on a galvanizing figure who'd yet to realize his potential—sounds a lot like how some have characterized Barack Obama's winning the Nobel Peace Prize. While Oslo's Nobel committee and SI's editorial team aren't usually mentioned in the same breath, the institutions played the same notes in their celebratory write-ups. The difference: Sports Illustrated went way more overboard with the wishful thinking.
"Tiger will do more than any other man in history to change the course of humanity," says the golfer's father Earl Woods in Gary Smith's Sports Illustrated essay. "I don't know yet exactly what form this will take. But he is the Chosen One. He'll have the power to impact nations. Not people. Nations. The world is just getting a taste of his power." SI's Smith was also happy to play along. "[S]omething deeper than conventional stardom is at work here," he wrote, "something so spontaneous and subconscious that words have trouble going there."
While others have called Obama the Chosen One, the Nobel folks didn't get as carried away as Earl Woods. And the Nobel committee, unlike SI, didn't invoke its honoree's race. "Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future," the Nobel Committee explained. "His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population."
Sports Illustrated looked prophetic when, four months after handing Woods the Sportsman award, he crushed the field in the 1997 Masters. Woods still has some work to do to change the course of humanity—I mean, he wasn't even able to save General Motors. Still, the Nobel Committee would be thrilled if its pick turned out as well as SI's. For Obama to live up to the Nobel, he'll need to score the political equivalent of a 12-stroke Masters victory.
Click here to comment on this post.
-
sponsorship
If you are fortunate enough to have some discretionary income on hand and the time in which to spend it, then maybe you will pass your Columbus Day weekend somewhere scenic in the sticks. It is fall-foliage season, and those leaves aren't going to ooh and ah at themselves. Maybe you will become inexplicably preoccupied with the haphazard book collections found in rental houses, country lodges, guest-ready spare bedrooms, and floral-print-ridden B & Bs. Mysterious ad hoc bookmarks. Enticingly cryptic inscriptions in perfect Palmer Method penmanship. Fantastic randomness!
The paradigmatic vacation-place library combines a best-seller archive, a storage bin, a lost-and-found office, a remainder table, and a graveyard of high aspirations. Good detective novels rub covers with bad Booker Prize-winners. All the beach books of recent decades wash up on these shores—too much Ludlum and not enough Danielle Steel and the perennial Bonfire of the Vanities. There should be a complete Uncle Wiggily for the kids and a dog-eared Fear of Flying for teens. In the matter of literary fiction, expect maybe a misguided Updike purchase (Brazil), a Song of Solomon (with a caution-tape-yellow "used" sticker), maybe even a minor classic worth stealing (Nightwood). Note the William F. Buckley spy novel on the lower left, sending just the right message: escapist but classy. No such collection is complete without some local-color stuff, be it a dairy-farm memoir or a coffee-table number, The Historic Lighthouses of Kansas, say.
Remember this: The fancier the lodgings, the schlockier the shelves, a rule that follows from an observation on in-flight reading made by Martin Amis in The Information:
In Coach the laptop literature was pluralistic, liberal, and humane: Daniel Deronda, trigonometry, Lebanon, World War I, Homer, Diderot, Anna Karenina. As for Business World...they were reading trex: outright junk. Fat financial thrillers, chunky chillers and tublike tinglers: escape from the pressures facing the contemporary entrepreneur. ... And then [Richard] pitched up in the intellectual slum of First Class, among all its drugged tycoons, and the few books lying unregarded on softly swelling stomachs were jacketed with hunting scenes or ripe young couples in mid swirl or swoon. They all lay there flattened out in the digestive torpor of midafternoon, and nobody was reading anything—except for a lone seeker who gazed, with a frown of mature skepticism, at a perfume catalogue. Jesus, what happened on the Concorde?
Click here to comment on this post.
-
sponsorship
Finally, the designers were untethered from their models. They were tasked with transforming the wedding dresses of recently divorced women into hip, cool outfits. (Tim Gunn's announcement, "Designers, I'm sending in your divorcées," was funny only the first three times he said it.)
Gordana won for a pieced dress made from the lining of her client's gown, which she dyed gray. Epperson was ejected for a garment that looked like a shortened wedding dress with a few strips of black binding sewn in the middle—it reminded one of the judges of "a pirate's wench."
Stats
Number of times Tim Gunn said, "Make it work!": Two. (Shirin said it twice, too.) This episode's theme was recycling, after all.
Number of crying contestants: One. Shirin, who had the least yardage to work with and a fabric that couldn't be dyed, wept through Tim's pep talk.
Logan sex object watch: This week no crushes were revealed or flesh exposed, but the only possible explanation for Logan avoiding elimination is that his pheromones befuddled the judges.
The Judges
Hallelujah, Michael Kors was present for the second week in a row! Marie Claire's Zanna Roberts and Jimmy Choo founder and president Tamara Mellon rounded out the panel.
Heidi must be feeling homesick: Epperson's and Logan's outfits both made her think of Oktoberfest.
The Results
Look of the week: The most striking outfit from this challenge was a bad one: Nicolas created green trousers, a brown top, and a white vest: an ensemble that would've looked passé at a Mormon Relief Society supper in 1975. He called his look "a hideous thing," and for once his self-assessment was accurate.
Should Gordana have won? Yes. As the judges said, her look was "edgy and chic," and her divorcée adored it. (So much for recent complaints that she's "just a dressmaker.") Shirin's dress, which used stitching to create a pattern, was creative and flattering, but her client found it a little too safe.
Should Epperson have been eliminated? No. His design was boring, but it was the least offensive of the bottom three. Logan's trouser look was poorly made and ill-conceived, and Michael Kors was dead on when he described Christopher's monstrosity as looking like "a metallic garbage bag tied in the middle."
Bold prediction for who'll be auf'd next: Nicolas. We're past the stage where contestants can be kept around for their loose lips.
Previous Project Runway Recaps: Week 1, Week 3, Week 4, Week 5, Week 6, Week 7
Click here to comment on our Project Runway recaps.
-
sponsorship
On Dec. 27, 1999, Sean "Diddy" Combs, Jennifer Lopez, and Jamal "Shyne" Barrow—Combs' protégé at the time, who purported to be the disowned son of the prime minister of Belize—went to a Manhattan nightclub. When they left, three people had been injured by gunfire (one had been struck, nonfatally, in the face), and Combs, Lopez, and Shyne were placed under arrest.
A witness said that Combs and Barrow had waved pistols in an argument with another patron, and that Barrow had fired his. A stolen 0.9-millimeter handgun was found in Combs' SUV, though police determined it hadn't been discharged in the club. (Combs' driver claimed his boss had tried to bribe him into taking responsibility for the weapon.) Lopez was released that evening, and after a short trial in which Combs was represented by Johnnie Cochran, so was he. Barrow, arrested with a gun that matched shell casings found in the club, was found guilty on three counts of attempted murder and sentenced to 10 years in prison. He claimed he'd been acting in self-defense.
This past Tuesday, after serving about nine years of his sentence, Barrow—who has since changed his name to Moses Michael Leviy, in an apparent Jewish conversion—was set to be released. There was a snag, however, when it was reported that officials were considering deporting Barrow to Belize—official word has yet to come on their decision. There's a fair amount of anticipation for Shyne's next move—his seething, gold-certified 2000 self-titled debut is something of a gangsta-rap cult classic.
Shyne isn't the only mushmouthed Diddy charge to have fallen from the limelight, though he is, of course, the only one who can blame his sudden change in music-biz fortunes on imprisonment. Here, a quick look at Diddy's four most prominent protégés (not counting the greatest of them all, Notorious BIG, nor the least interesting, Da Band) and what they're up to now.
Protégé No. 1: Ma$e
High point: 1997
Signature songs: "Feel So Good," "Lookin' at Me"
Where is he now: He's alternated between retirements (during which time he became a pastor) and would-be comeback albums.
Protégé No. 2: Shyne
High point: 2000
Signature songs: "Bad Boyz," "That's Gangsta"
Where is he now: An undisclosed facility in western New York state, it seems, as his immigration status is determined.
Protégé No. 3: G-Dep
High point: 2001
Signature songs: "Special Delivery," "Stay Up"
Where is he now: Still rapping. His MySpace page has several new songs worth hearing, including "King of Harlem" and the poignant "Stay Up." Enough to make you hope for a comeback, though it's not likely.
Protégé No. 4: Loon
High point: 2003
Signature song: "How You Want That"
Where is he now: He has quit rap to become a student of Islam.
Click here to comment on this post.
-
sponsorship
With all due respect to Herta Müller, whoever she is, if the folks over at Nobel were set on giving Barack Obama a prize this year, they should they have given him the Nobel in literature instead. Nine months into a presidency with as many setbacks as successes, Obama has a thin CV for a Peace Prize winner. At this point in his administration, isn't he still a more accomplished author than president? Dreams From My Father is a remarkable memoir that played a significant role in Obama's rise to prominence in American politics, and eventually to the presidency. If the idea of giving him a Nobel was about acknowledging that historic achievement—of becoming America's first black commander-in-chief—recognizing Obama as a writer is more fitting than praising his "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples," as the peace citation does. Could Obama have won the White House without his talent for writing? Without the memoir, the speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention, the speech on race during the 2008 campaign?
Giving Obama the prize in literature also could have gone a long way toward repairing the committee's reputation for being anti-American. Not to mention its reputation for picking obscure authors very few people have actually read. There are over 7 million copies of Dreams From My Father and The Audacity of Hope currently in print. This was a rare chance for the committee to award writing that is at once widely popular and of real merit. Sure, Obama's oeuvre isn't as large or varied as those of past winners. But throw in some of the great speeches—the speech on race, the inaugural address (which was published in book form, after all)—and you've got a compelling if untraditional laureate.
Click here to comment on this post.
-
sponsorship
The Swedish Academy picked Herta Müller as its 2009 Nobel laureate for literature this morning. Here in the Slate offices, we greeted the announcement with a resounding "Who?"
Joyce Carol Oates and Philip Roth were among the early favorites, but the Nobel Committee has a habit of ignoring American authors (as noted in Adam Kirsch's 2008 Nobel takedown) and celebrating obscure ones (Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, Elfriede Jelinek, Imre Kertész, etc.)—especially when they come from third-world countries or nations formerly under Soviet rule. The Romanian-born German author, who has written largely about the brutality of life under Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu, saw her odds soar on the British betting markets in recent days. So maybe someone on Slate's staff should have seen this victory coming and read Müller's books in translation. Because no one did, Müller's initial reaction had a special resonance: "I am very surprised and still cannot believe it. I can't say anything more at the moment."
We're hoping that you, Slate readers, are not quite so tongue-tied. Are there any Müller fans out there? If you've read any of her books, essays, or poems in English, German, Romanian, or any other language, and have a take, any take, please e-mail SlateBrowBeat@gmail.com. The best responses will be excerpted here in a future post.
-
sponsorship
Sunday's New York Times cover story on the hamburger patty that paralyzed a young woman in Ohio awakened even the least neurotic eaters to the hazards of ground meat. But to those who—OK, those of us who—have long been wary of E. coli and "trimmings," the piece offered an extreme (and extremely well-reported) version of the kind of thing we terrify ourselves with all the time. Such stories are the bread-and-butter of food-safety blogs.
Food-safety blogs will not appeal to foodies: In order to appreciate them, you can't be too much of a snob to order a hamburger well-done. Or, more precisely, to ask that your burger be cooked to 160 degrees. To verify that your burger has reached that temperature, you'll need a thermometer—specifically, a "tip-sensitive digital thermometer" of the kind Barf Blog publisher Douglas Powell has with him at all times. (His favorite refrain is "Stick it in.") Powell, a professor of food safety at Kansas State University, presides over a team of "barf bloggers." The blog's name accurately reflects the sometimes lighthearted tone: This week, for example, one post features a fan's photo of a place in Budapest called "Fatal Restaurant." Scroll down for the more serious mission: a proposal for food-safety stickers on takeout (finish your Pad Thai within two days) and Powell's rant about what he believes is an exorbitant speaking fee collected by Michael Pollan. One of Powell's major themes is that being a locavore won't protect you from food poisoning. Knowing that a tomato came from your neighbor's backyard doesn't change the fact that your neighbor's dog likes to poop right next to the tomato plot.
Powell frequently links to Marler Blog, which is run by Bill Marler, the country's best-known food-borne-illness lawyer. Since representing a 10-year-old girl sickened by a Jack in the Box hamburger in the early '90s, Marler has gone up against Odwalla (apple juice), KFC (coleslaw), Dole (bagged spinach), and others. On his blog, Marler offers medical horror stories (which are both gruesome and extremely sad), weighs in on politics (USDA, here's what you should do), and links to his miscellaneous tweets (watch this video before drinking raw milk). There are so many pathogens in Marler's world that he has sub-blogs for each of them: Listeria Blog, Shigella Blog, Enterobacter Sakazakii Blog, etc.
What did Marler make of the Times piece? He posted reactions from Cargill, which made the burger, and from Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. He told the story of an 11-year-old girl also sickened by a Cargill patty. But as far as a solution goes, he warned in a tweet: "Grinding your own hamburger is NOT any safer that buying hamburger—it is an E. coli fairy tale."
Why do I keep returning to these blogs if there's never a happy ending? The best way to explain it is that years ago, I collected little stories like these in a file labeled, Proof that things like this do happen. Acquiring the proof makes you feel less crazy and also, irrationally, protected. And against E. coli, perhaps magical thinking is the best defense.
-
sponsorship
In a new Browbeat feature, Slate critics Jody Rosen and Jonah Weiner will discuss a recent pop song that has caught their attention. This week, they take on Vampire Weekend's "Horchata," which the band has made available for free download.
Jody Rosen: I'm predisposed to like this song because of the title. I do love horchata. Such creamy, cinnamony goodness. We should really be having this conversation at Casa Vieja in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, with bucket-size goblets of the stuff in hand. Although maybe Vampire Weekend chose that title just so they could shoehorn in some other cutesy rhymes: Balaclava, Aranciata, Masada ...
Jonah Weiner: I'll confess I've never had Casa Vieja's horchata, though I love that place. In fact, the first and only time I had horchata was 10 years ago at a tiny Mexican restaurant in Ojai, Calif., visiting a friend's fancy boarding school—a very Vampire Weekend place to drink horchata, as it happens! The sugar made my teeth scream, first in pleasure, then in pain. Balaclava, Aranciata, and Masada are cute words, and they fall into a great tradition of cute Vampire Weekend rhymes—I'm thinking of kefir-keffiyeh, Benneton-reggaeton; there are other examples. I think Ezra Koenig is pretty great at sketching his world—populated largely by the globetrotting and affluent young—with these sorts of name-drops.
J.R.: I like Koenig, too. Good songwriter. I can't quite fathom the criticism leveled at Vampire Weekend for being, you know, too Ivy League, too effete. That's the point! They're owning it. And I think there's more intentional self-parody in Vampire Weekend's songs than they're given credit for. There's an ironic distance between the well-heeled, hyper-verbal post-collegiates who populate VW songs and Koenig himself. Although, of course, he fits that description. Come to think of it, there's a bit of Whit Stillman in the posture—the lovingly detailed, amused depiction of, as the Metropolitan director would have it, the Urban Haute Bourgeoisie. In any case, what I really like about this band are the hooks and the nifty arrangements.
J.W.: I was corresponding over e-mail with Ezra recently (I've known these guys a bit since they were undergrads), and he pointed out that it's very infrequently mentioned in pieces that catalog the band's penchant for deck shoes, Cape Cod shout-outs, etc., that the chief songwriters in the group—Ezra and Rostam Batmanglij—are of Jewish and Persian descent, respectively. Gatecrashers at the blueblood boating party. He wasn't disavowing or trying to cred up the band's Ivy League provenance so much as saying what you're saying: there's distance between the band and the world it narrates. I think that distance—ironic, critical—becomes apparent on the new album in subtle but important ways, if not on this song particularly.
One last bit about the songwriting, before we talk about the nifty arrangements and hooks. Something seems new here in terms of the lyrics—the "here comes the feeling you thought you'd forgotten" refrain. Whereas the lyrics and choruses on the first album were often very specific (singing about rules of grammar here, rich girls in sweaters there), this line strikes me as painting with a broader, more "universally" evocative pop brush.
J.R.: Yeah, and that "here comes the feeling" bit is the part of the song that I like the best. (A lot more than the horchata and the balaclava.) The melody takes a lovely wistful turn there, and there's a pathos in the sentiment that grabs me, even if I'm not quite clear what, exactly, is being expressed. Then there's the bridge, which has the best lyrics that Koenig's written yet: "Years go by and hearts start to harden/ Those palms and firs that grew in your garden/ Falling down and nearing the rose beds/ The roots are shooting up through the tool shed/ Those lips and teeth that asked how my day went/ Are shouting up through cracks in the pavement." He's a poet, forsooth!
J.W.: I love those lines. And when he practically yells, later on, "You understood so you shouldn't have fought it!" it's emotive in a way their music hasn't been—at least not typically. In terms of arrangements, I love this one—the little plinking melodies (thumb piano and synth?) are more syncopated; the beat gets clattering and stompy. There's a lot more going on, but it all still feels taut and airy. (Hmm. Realizing that if there's going to be criticism of this track, it'll have to come from you—much like Bored to Death and the movies of Spike Jonze, I might be culturally programmed to enjoy this band.)
J.R.: God, I hate Bored to Death. But that's another story. Musically, "Horchata" is a kind of echt-Vampire Weekend song, isn't it—with the Afro-pop sounds and all those plinks and plonks? People get confused by the world-music flourishes, but Vampire Weekend is really a very traditional indie pop-rock group. But they're unusually skilled—excellent at slotting together pieces of rhythm and melody to build exciting arrangements. The songs are very well-calibrated little gizmos. They remind me of the Strokes in that respect. Very meticulous. And I like meticulous in my whimsical white boys.
J.W.: Yes—and I think there are even more moving parts to the gizmo this time around. This has been fun, Jody. I'm going to strap on some Top-Siders and go eat a Banh Mi. Which, if I were writing a song about my lunch, I'd rhyme with Bun-B.
-
sponsorship
For the Bruce Springsteen fan who has everything: The Long Branch, N.J., home where the Boss wrote "Born to Run" is for sale. (You can read about the birth of that seminal record here.) It's small (828 square feet) and rather run-down looking, but the asking price is a cool $299,000, about $50,000 more than comparable houses in the neighborhood. That means the famous musician's mere presence nearly 35 years ago adds about 20 percent to its value.
This isn't the first instance of pop culture inflating real estate prices. In 1988, Bob Dylan's childhood home in the northern Minnesota town of Hibbing was up for sale at $84,000, a whole lot more than the appraised value of $46,000. (Relatedly, Dylan may have been looking at the Springsteen house—yes, the same one—when he was detained by police this summer and has recently visited John Lennon's childhood home, as well as Neil Young's.)
And over in San Francisco, the house that hosted the Party of Five is about to be listed. No word yet on the asking price, but it went for $5.4 million in 1999, well above market value. Just around the corner, the house where Arnold Schwarzenegger got knocked up in Junior is also on the market—and went for $55,000 more than asking price last time it was listed, in 2007.
I wonder how the poor New Jersey guy who drops $300,000 for the privilege of walking on the boss's floor will explain the purchase to his wife. "Honey, you don't understand! Springsteen wrote 'Born to Run' surrounded by these very walls! It's like we're living in the song!" But as memorabilia go, at least it's bolder than a T-shirt or a poster.
Click here to comment on this post.
-
sponsorship
Last week's dud of an episode had the Shame Index expressing concern that Barney and Robin's nascent romance might be problematic for this season of How I Met Your Mother—could these two be funny together? This week's solid effort answered the question with a reassuring yes.
Shameful:
—Robin's opening of Barney's briefcase with a sledgehammer. A shade too broad. Plus, would that even work?
—Marshall's beloved barrel, which felt like an afterthought—something to keep Marshall busy in an episode that didn't have much use for him.
—Barney's Twitter joke. Twitter jokes will surely be popping up all over sitcoms this fall. Prediction: Zero of them will be funny.
—Barney's Barack Obama Jr. pickup line. Another strained attempt at unnecessary topicality.
Awesome:
—Lily's declaration that Robin Scherbatsky is many things: "friend, confidante, occasional guest star in some confusing dreams that remind me a woman's sexuality is a moving target."
—Lily's professed allergy to barrel resin. The only good thing to come of the barrel plot.
—Pretty much all of the Robin Scherbatsky 101 bit. Kudos to the HIMYM writers for taking two plot strands that had the Shame Index concerned about this season—Robin and Barney's relationship and Ted's teaching gig—and combining them for quality comedy. Of particular merit:
—The three ways of distracting Robin from being mad at you, especially her soft spot for the mating rituals of empire penguins.
—The top five things never to do around Robin. Occasionally, HIMYM will leave some of its best material as an Easter egg for the close viewer. Last season, when Marshall became obsessed with Goliath National Bank's graphics department, he commissioned a chart ranking the U.S. presidents in order of how dirty their names sound. He only announced the top four—Johnson, Bush, Harding, Polk—but the list was printed big enough for viewers to see that Bush was also ranked ninth, which took the joke to a whole new level of hilarious complexity: Why is one Bush's name dirtier than the other's? Last night, a bonus item not to do around Robin was scrawled on the chalkboard but never read aloud: "mention hockey's lack of popularity in the U.S."
—Ted's hypercorrect pronunciation of Beaux Arts, which came out sounding like "bozarts."
—Shin Ya, who is auditing Robin 101. Just on the right side of the thin line separating amusing and harmful stereotype.
—You know an episode is more awesome than shameful when even Ted's sappy moral has some bite: "When you're dating someone, it's like you're taking one long course in who that person is. Then when you break up, all that stuff becomes useless. It's like the emotional equivalent of an English degree."
So: A fine return to form this week. In other HIMYM news, Rachel Bilson, late of The OC, has been cast in what executive producer Craig Thomas touts as a pivotal role in the series' upcoming 100th episode, raising the possibility that she is the one for Ted. Knowing how HIMYM's producers love to milk this mystery for all it's worth, however, the Shame Index hereby pledges to eat its shoe if Bilson turns out to be the eponymous mother.
Click here to comment on this post.
[Update, 5:18pm, Oct. 6th: Corrected the spelling of Scherbatsky. The Shame Index must have cut that class of Robin 101.]
-
sponsorship
In his epic 2006 broadside, "Why I Hate Zach Braff," Slate's Josh Levin made a desperate plea: "If Zach Braff is the voice of my generation, can't someone please crush his larynx?"
No such luck, Josh! In fact, although Braff's acting career seems to have stalled out in the past few years, we're now confronted at every turn by his intact larynx. Braff's voiceover work can currently be heard in two TV ad campaigns, one for PUR water filters and the other for Cottonelle toilet paper.
The celebrity voice-over craze is among the major advertising trends of the 2000s. For the most part, these star VOs have been subtle and professional. (Much of America likely doesn't even realize, for instance, that Jeff Bridges is the voice of Duracell and Hyundai or that Gene Hackman is the voice of Lowe's.) Braff's vocal performances, however—particularly in these Cottonelle ads—are so over-the-top annoying that they call attention to themselves. Not good attention.
Listen to Braff's supremely irritating take on the Cottonelle puppy. I recognize that the ad is meant to play on the viewer's soft spot for adorable house pets. But images of the puppy do that well enough. There's no need to have Braff hammily voicing the canine thought process.
Never has adorableness sounded so effortful. Never have an adult male's vocal cords issued so many cutesy sing-songs and plush purrs. Everything I dislike about the schmaltzy, doofus-y Braff seems to have been compressed into this single 30-second performance.
I also can't understand what possessed PUR to settle on Braff as the voice of water itself. Wouldn't water's personality be calm, centered, ancient, and powerful? Braff's vocal work here sounds bouncy, insecure, and less like a big dog than ... a puppy.
Click here to comment on this post.
-
sponsorship
Condé Nast announced today that it's closing Gourmet, the almost 70-year-old food magazine. Over the course of its illustrious history, the magazine has been the publisher of legendary food writers like MFK Fisher and James Beard, and its editor, Ruth Reichl, possesses a status in the foodie world akin to French Laundry chef Thomas Keller. It celebrated itself just three years ago with the publication of the Gourmet Cookbook, a collection of about 1,000 of its most useful and popular recipes.
In her introduction to that tome, when relating why she decided against including step-by-step instructions for how to "glove bone" a chicken, Reichl explains: "This is not, after all, a historical document, but a book that wants to live in your kitchen. We did, however, put in hundreds of recipes for nights when you need to get dinner on the table in a matter of minutes."
Gourmet magazine would have been better off if it has pursued the "live in your kitchen" approach of the Gourmet Cookbook. Instead, the editors stressed aesthetics (the magazine is beautiful) and high-wire cookery. There is, certainly, a foodie movement afoot that enjoys involved projects like making and jarring one's own fresh elderberry jam, but there's a far larger audience for quick, simple meals. Bon Appetit, Condé Nast's other food title, is not perfectly suited to this task, but it is certainly more suited to it than Gourmet. And it has seemed as if B.A. has been moving toward the Rachael Ray end of the spectrum for some time now. Its November issue reads a lot like the cover of Family Circle: "68 Recipes to Mix and Match," "Thanksgiving Made Easy," "Leftovers Done Right!"
It would have been difficult for Reichl to follow her own advice entirely; doing so would have abandoned Gourmet's essence. Hopefully, though, with Gourmet out of the picture, Bon Appetit will be able to straddle the two food worlds—some Gourmet and some 30-Minute Meals—a bit more easily.
For more on Gourmet, read Laura Shapiro's review of The Gourmet Cookbook.
-
sponsorship
A petition has been circulated on behalf of Roman Polanski—henceforth, to my mind, "RoPo"—and signed by A-list movie directors (Pedro Almodovar, Wes Anderson, Martin Scorsese, Wong Kar Wai, David Lynch). Here it is, briefly annotated:
We have learned the astonishing news of Roman Polanski's arrest by the Swiss police on September 26th, upon arrival in Zurich (Switzerland) while on his way to a film festival where he was due to receive an award for his career in filmmaking.
[We the undersigned constitute a special class of persons. We are both intensely sensitive and intensely well-connected. If we worked with, partied with, and celebrated the film director Roman Polanski, it cannot be that he is guilty of anything meaningful. Our astonishment constitutes prima facie evidence of the unjustness of his being unceremoniously nabbed—and on his way to a lifetime achievement ceremony!]
His arrest follows an American arrest warrant dating from 1978 against the filmmaker, in a case of morals.
[A "case," mind you—a still-open state of affairs, not a conviction, in which guilt has been established and admitted to. "Of morals"—oh, those American prudes!]
Filmmakers in France, in Europe, in the United States and around the world are dismayed by this decision. It seems inadmissible to them that an international cultural event, paying homage to one of the greatest contemporary filmmakers, is used by the police to apprehend him.
[A film festival, in other words, is like base in tag.]
By their extraterritorial nature, film festivals the world over have always permitted works to be shown and for filmmakers to present them freely and safely, even when certain States opposed this.
[The right to freedom of expression for artists in the face of totalitarian interference should be extended to include asylum for convicted criminals in free countries; for example, if Klaus Barbie showed up for a screening of Hôtel Terminus we would offer him a seat and peace of mind.]
The arrest of Roman Polanski in a neutral country, where he assumed he could travel without hindrance, undermines this tradition: it opens the way for actions of which no one can know the effects.
[Roman always traveled freely in Switzerland—party in Gstaad!—therefore he should always be allowed to travel freely in Switzerland.]
Roman Polanski is a French citizen, a renown and international artist now facing extradition. This extradition, if it takes place, will be heavy in consequences and will take away his freedom.
[You mean, like, jail?]
Filmmakers, actors, producers and technicians—everyone involved in international filmmaking—want him to know that he has their support and friendship.
[In the name of freedom of conscience we speak with one voice, no exceptions, especially the technicians.]
On September 16th, 2009, Mr. Charles Rivkin, the US Ambassador to France, received French artists and intellectuals at the embassy. He presented to them the new Minister Counselor for Public Affairs at the embassy, Ms Judith Baroody. In perfect French she lauded the Franco-American friendship and recommended the development of cultural relations between our two countries.
If only in the name of this friendship between our two countries, we demand the immediate release of Roman Polanski.
[Do you see now what an abomination this is? The woman spoke perfect French. Permettez-moi de le répéter: Français. Parfait. Subjunctive and everything. (The grubs of California officialdom—do they even speak perfect English?) We demand the immediate release of Roman Polanski, or else you risk affirming that justice truly is blind.]
Click here to comment on this post.
-
sponsorship
Watching Letterman's strange confession last night, I was reminded of something I'd read earlier this week in Nancy Franklin's scathing review of The Jay Leno Show in the current issue of The New Yorker:
Leno's and the rest of the nighttime comedy shows are bizarrely lacking in women writers. Did a bomb go off and kill all the women comedy writers and leave the men standing? The other night on the Emmy Awards broadcast, the names of the nominees for best writing on a comedy or variety series were read, and, out of eighty-one people, only seven were women. Leno has no women writers on his show. Neither does David Letterman, and neither does Conan O'Brien. Come on.
I'd assumed that late-night comedy was a boy's club, but I was shocked to learn there isn't one female writer working on any of these shows. Letterman didn't betray many details about office life at The Late Show, and, who knows, maybe the program has made real efforts to hire women writers over the years. If so, they haven't been successful. Here's one way to atone for your hinky behavior, Dave: Put your eye for female talent to better use.
Click here to comment on this post.
-
sponsorship
Troy, while I agree with you that Letterman ultimately won over the Late Show's studio audience, the dominant emotion in the crowd (and on my couch) was confusion. The strangest thing about Dave's confession was that in his repetition of the phrase "creepy things," he left it entirely unclear whether he actually believed that he had done any "creepy things." The segment—coming as it did after a monologue packed with bad skunk jokes—was so unexpected and internally incoherent that it was impossible to tell what was supposed to be a laugh line and what wasn't. The crowd, understandably addled by the tragicomic proceedings, perceived Letterman's use of "creepy things" as a running gag, and Dave didn't make any attempt to tamp down the laughter. Yet by the end of the segment, he was asking why everyone was guffawing.
Does Letterman think he committed a serious transgression? The main reason it was hard to tell whether he was taking it seriously—and whether we should take it seriously—is that he stayed mum about how many of his female staffers he'd slept with and when the affairs had taken place. When the Late Show host said that the admission was embarrassing and that he needed to protect his family, the implication was that it was a big deal. When he followed that up with a crack about how it was more embarrassing for the women, it seemed like he was popping a balloon he'd just spent 10 minutes inflating.
Click here to comment on this post.
-
sponsorship
Drew Barrymore’s Whip It, which opens this Friday, marks the return of a long-neglected, gloriously low-rent genre: the roller derby film. Roller skating exhibitions and competitive marathons date to the 19th century, but it wasn’t until the 1930s that sportswriter Damon Runyon and promoter Leo Seltzer created the “roller derby”—a full-contact spectacle. Like professional wrestling, which similarly straddles the line between entertainment and athletics, roller derby fell into and out of favor over the years. But popular interest spiked during the late ’60s and early ’70s, with breathless talk in the press of “America’s fastest growing sport” and a legacy of derby-themed films. Herewith, a brief history of the roller derby in cinema:
The Fireball (1950)
Tag line: Rooney Runs Riot in the Toughest Game of All
Mickey Rooney plays Johnny—a tough-luck street kid who escapes from an orphanage to become a roller skating star. Suddenly the toast of the town, Johnny carouses with gold diggers like Polly (Marilyn Monroe) while neglecting the good girl who loved him from the beginning. In a grim twist, he contracts polio, and his high-skating days come to an end.
Unholy Rollers (1972)
Tag line: A Locker Room Look at the Toughest Broads in the World!
1970 Playboy Playmate of the Year Claudia Jennings stars as a cannery worker who quits her job to join the roller derby. Her dangerous curves and rebellious ways alienate her teammates, guaranteeing that her path to stardom will be lined with hard knocks and flying elbows.
Kansas City Bomber (1972)
Tag line: The Hottest Thing on Wheels
The tag line says it all. Brunette bombshell Raquel Welch stars as K.C. Carr, a classy lady by day and skate-stomping firebrand by night. A rivalry between teammates Carr and Jackie Burdette (saucy statuette Helena Kallianiotes) culminates in a heated race.
Rollerball (1975)
Tag line: In the Not-Too-Distant Future, Wars Will No Longer Exist. But There Will Be Rollerball.
The roller derby genre here graduates from mildly titillating sports romp to brutal, dystopian action film. In 2018, with corporations ruling the world, crime and wars have been replaced by a controlled bloodsport: Rollerball. James Caan plays leather-clad baller Jonathan E., a veteran of the game who refuses to hang up his wheels and thus incurs the wrath of team/league/world CEO Bartholomew (John Houseman). This derby is all about testosterone, and is punctuated by bearded motorcycle marauders, fierce jai alai action, and giant pinballs.
Prayer of the Rollerboys (1990)
Tag line: In the Future, the Streets Will Belong to the Rollerboys
Rollerball meets Gleaming the Cube meets License to Drive in this neo-futurist skate odyssey. Corey Haim plays an honest pizza delivery boy recruited by the police to infiltrate a rolling Los Angeles gang. Will a young, sultry Patricia Arquette hook up with goofy, neon headbanded Haim? Will Haim earn his stripes as a Rollerboy and save the world from slicked-back mullets?
Rollerball (2002)
Tag line: Get in the Game
All you need to know about this pointless remake of the 1975 exploitation classic is that protagonist Jonathan, originally portrayed by seedy hunk James Caan, is played here by bland nonstarter Chris Klein. Hyperactive editing and nonsequiter pyrotechnics obscure the in-line skate action, but professional amateurs LL Cool J and Rebecca Romijn gamely summon the spirit of '70s camp.
Click here to comment on this post.
-
sponsorship
After a run of vague challenges, this week's assignment was pleasingly precise: Design two looks that are blue and consistent with Macy's INC International Concepts brand. The designers worked in teams of two—but unlike Week 3's tempestuous pairs challenge, the collaborations were relatively drama-free.
Irina won for a blue-and-white dress that Heidi declared "flirty and feminine." Louise was sent home after she and Nicolas—who had immunity—sent two ruffle-heavy garments down the runway.
The highlight of the show was the return of much-missed judge Michael Kors, which is a sad commentary on the bland designers.
Stats
Number of times Tim Gunn said, "Make it work!": Zero. That old, tired catchphrase is but a distant memory.
Number of crying contestants: One. Christopher was so verklempt that he couldn't defend his garments against Michael Kors' vicious onslaught. Louise's eyes were slightly damp, but she seemed relieved to make her exit.
Logan sex object watch: Mr. Neitzel didn't get much air time—but enough for Gordana to confess: "We all think he's hot. The boys like him as well." At this point, Epperson is the only human being in greater Los Angeles who hasn't declared his lust for Logan.
The Contestants
Strangest revelation: Louise makes chicken noises while she works.
Irina's audition for the role of "bitchy guest judge": "[Carol Hannah and Shirin's] stuff looks like it was bought in a discount store. It's very '$10 shirt on sale for $5.99' kind of thing."
The Judges
Michael Kors was back and oranger than ever! Sitting alongside the top American designer were Marie Claire's Zanna Roberts and Macy's executive Martine Reardon.
Those five weeks in spray-tan seclusion brought out Kors' mean streak. But give the man his due: Every barbed arrow was right on target.
How Kors saw the outfits: "looks like a bridesmaid's dress with a shower loofah ruched up the front of it"; "looks like a tablecloth"; "looks like a librarian's shirt dress from 1979"; "looks like a teal charmeuse disco pumpkin."
Not to be outdone, Heidi harshed out. Her most devastating critique was of a detail at the neckline of Christopher and Epperson's disco pumpkin top: "It's kind of like she was eating lobster, and she put this in there, and she forgot to take it out." (For me, it was more like the ruffs that Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg pulled from the Supreme Court accessories wall.)
The Results
Garments of the week: Althea and Logan were ignored in the workroom, so it was clear they were safe, but why? The tarty business suit with the skirt that slowly insinuated itself into the model's butt crack was the tackiest and most inappropriate outfit of the challenge, and their ill-fitting trouser look stretched the dictionary definition of blue.
Should Irina have won? Absolutely. She combined textiles and fabrics to create a gorgeous pattern, and she made a well-cut dress that looked fresh and seemed appropriate for the INC brand.
Should Louise have been eliminated? Yes. Her designs didn't reflect the brand aesthetic. After noting that the line was simple almost to the point of austerity, she produced a ruffle-fest.
Bold prediction for who'll be auf'd next: Gordana. The "next week on Project Runway" teaser showed her on a tearful phone call with her family, which is often a foreshadowing of doom. Nicolas deserves to go, but the producers love his demon dishing.
Previous Project Runway Recaps: Week 1, Week 3, Week 4, Week 5, Week 6
Click here to comment on our Project Runway recaps.
-
sponsorship
But what was it like to be in the studio audience yesterday at the Ed Sullivan Theater? One moment you were inhaling brisk fall air out on Broadway, and then, privy to a blackmail plot, you were witnessing a fat, juicy footnote to TV culture. At home, it seemed like the audience was negotiating some kind of acute stress response. The key moment sounded like this:
Dave: The creepy stuff was that I have [breath] had sex with women [beat] who work for me [beat] on this show.
Audience: [Awkward silence, as if thinking, "Is this joke? If so, is it at our expense?" and also imagining, "What does Dave look like having sex?"]
Dave: Now, my response to that is, Yes, I have—
Audience: [Cathartic laughter and extended nervous applause, the latter all the more fascinating because the producers couldn't have been so indecent as to light an applause sign.]
Dave (speaking under the extended idiotic applause): I have had sex with women, and—and would it be embarrassing if it were made public?
Audience: [Hearty titters.]
Dave: Perhaps it would. Perhaps it would—especially for the women.
That last line was beautifully turned, a great release of tension, never mind that its dry heat curdled some of the laughter for it. Letterman is often best when, dying badly on stage, he turns his parched sarcasm back on himself. This was deadpan candor and ace crisis management. He had something to say, but this was not a confession. I notice that the first comment on Bill Carter's NYTimes.com report on this story was blurted out by an entity calling itself "tomb": "He did not even say he was sorry. Jerk." Say sorry to whom? To his public? Why do we deserve an apology? What does he owe us beyond a bit of entertainment at bedtime and something to talk about in the morning?
Click here to read more on David Letterman's confession.
-
sponsorship
In my review of Zombieland, I alluded to the movie's fantastically enjoyable, out-of-nowhere cameo appearance. Not wanting to ruin the surprise for people planning to see the movie, I left out the juicy details. But considering that the secret is all over the Web, it seems a shame to leave the beans unspilled. Herewith, a Zombieland spoiler.
SPOILER WARNING: Don't read any of the text below if you want to stay in the dark about what happens in Zombieland!
OK, here we go: Halfway through the movie, our heroes arrive in Los Angeles. While searching for a luxurious place to stay in post-apocalyptic L.A., they scan a map of the stars' homes and set off for a mansion with "BM" engraved on the gates. Once inside, they discover memorabilia belonging to one of the great comic actors of modern times ... Bill Murray.
As the crew prepares to stay the night, presuming that Murray is long gone, the comedian appears in undead form. But it turns out he's not a flesh eater after all—he's just wearing zombie makeup to blend in with his surroundings while he plays golf. Woody Harrelson's character, Tallahassee, on discovering that his hero is still alive, unspools a great monologue about his reverence for Murray's work—even the dramas. (There's no mention of the movie Harrelson and and Murray starred in together, Kingpin.) Tallahassee and Wichita (Emma Stone) then join Murray to re-enact a scene from Ghostbusters with vacuum cleaners standing in for proton packs.
Murray's appearance shines in all four categories of the Cameo Matrix: star power, surprise factor, absurdity, and internal funniness. There are moments within the Murray sequence that are a bit slack, but the scene ultimately scores extra points by going on and on and on, delivering punch lines and surprises after the initial novelty and strangeness have worn off. The kicker comes when Tallahassee and Wichita and Bill decide to put a scare into Jesse Eisenberg's Columbus, who is oblivious to the fact that Murray is alive. Columbus—who's secreted away in Murray's home theater watching Ghostbusters (the real version, not the one with vacuum cleaners)—gets surprised by the zombified-via-makeup Murray and shoots him in the chest. Murray milks the death scene, making funny breathing noises as he's about to expire. Wichita starts laughing at his performance before catching herself. "Also, it's really sad," she adds.
Click here to comment on this post.