Speechless.

Via the guy formerly known as Juan Gato:

Denmark to accept Norse god marriages

By JAN M. OLSEN
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

COPENHAGEN, Denmark -- Home to the Vikings of yore, Denmark said Wednesday it will let a group that worships Thor, Odin and other Norse gods conduct legally-recognized marriages.

Ok. We're sliding back into the Stygian darkness of paganism, but if the people are determined to worship a golden calf, that's their business. But then there's this:

"To me, it would be wrong if the indigenous religion of this country wasn't recognized," Tove Fergo, the minister for Ecclesiastic Affairs and a Lutheran priest, told The Associated Press.

Under Danish law, the state Evangelical Lutheran Church has sole authority to recognize other religious communities.

The 240-member Forn Sidr, which worships Odin, Thor, Freya and the other members of the Norse pantheon, sought recognition in 1999, said Tissel Jacobsen, the group's president.

Last year, an Ecclesiastic Affairs panel of scholars recommended that Forn Sidr, whose name mean "Old Custom" in old Norse, be approved, but only if their rituals were clearly detailed in its bylaws.

"At a general assembly, we added and described our four annual heathen rituals - spring and fall equinoxes, and the summer and winter solstices, and our marriage ceremony," Jacobsen told the AP. "We then returned our application and the panel approved it."

Fergo said she would give her final approval "in a few days."

About 1,000 people worship the ancient gods in Denmark, Jacobsen said.

Since 1998, the panel of theology, law and history scholars have advised the government on which groups seeking to become religious communities, should be recognized.

"It was not up to me to evaluate whether they are telling the truth or the quality of their religion," Fergo said. "Based on the commission's evaluation and what I have read, I consider it a good religion."

Officially recognized religious communities can marry people and exempt their members from the 1 percent income tax that is imposed on members of the state church.

People born in Denmark are automatically made members of the state church, but can choose to leave it if they want. Members of other recognized religious communities, such Catholics, Muslims and Jews, are also exempt from the tax.

So what you've got, in an apparent attempt to dodge a 1% tax, is a Lutheran Priest being forced to recognize a pagan religion as legitimate. There's a system crying out for the separation of church and state.

The Shadow of Your Smile.

Larry Miller on the Ralph's/Von's/Albertson's grocery worker strike in California:

ABOUT A MONTH AGO Ralphs, Albertson's, and Vons--three large supermarket chains here in California--told the union they were taking back something they had already given, health care. They said they'd still pay for the bulk of it, but that costs were so high the workers would have to chip in part of the money, five dollars and change per week for a single employee, fifteen dollars and change per week for a family.

I know, that doesn't sound unreasonable, does it? Costs are high for companies in general, millions of Americans have no insurance at all, and millions more have to pay inflated rates for their own coverage (and it usually stinks, too). In fact, one of the reasons costs keep going up is that companies have to make bulk deals for their workers like this one. All right, you may say, so the supermarket employees will have to chip in a couple of bucks themselves. So? What are they complaining about? It's just a gallon of milk and a carton of eggs a week (as management has said in a very clever newspaper ad).

This is how I see it: It's never, ever in a million years going to wind up being just five bucks a week. After the union caves in and the stores are full again, the company will quietly say, "Oh, you know what? Turns out it's thirty bucks a week and eighty for families." Three months after that it'll double, and so on, but it'll be too late. The world will have moved on, and no one will have a prayer.

Now, a reasonable person might ask, "Why should a company have to pay for health care in the first place?" That's a fair discussion, and I guess any issue is on the table during negotiations, but the main thing to me is that, in this case, it had already been settled. They had given it to them years ago, and they just want to take it away because they think they can. The company is doing very well, and it's not right for them to precipitate the whole thing by saying, "Um, you know that thing you already have? We want it back."

A reasonable person might also ask if the price of healthcare has remained stable since the chains agreed to pay for said healthcare "years ago." In point of fact, a reasonable person would already know damn well it hasn't. But that's not important to Larry Miller, because there's something so much more important than the solvency of the chain at stake here:

I've been in that Ralphs twice a week for the past ten years, and I know the people who work there. I knew when Mary got married and had her first kid. A nice guy with a mustache named Chris sometimes tells me a joke, and I laugh no matter what it is, and I forgot my wallet a couple of times and the manager smiled and said, "Oh, just bring it on your next visit." Audra recently got promoted. She exchanged some eggs for me once when they were cracked, and we've laughed many times about how easy it is to be forgetful at the end of the day. There's a cashier with the prettiest smile in the world, and I always look for her, and a slightly built lady who's a little disabled, and we chat every time as she bags, and she loves working there very, very much.

Oddly enough, the plight of the MTA mechanics doesn't strike the same chord of noble suffering with ol' Lar':

The MTA mechanics went on strike at the same time (I disagree with that one) and took a lot of attention away from Ralphs.

Odd. Just "I disagree with that one", no reason given. The MTA mechanics were likewise promised company-paid healthcare bennies in an earlier agreement; why the hell is their plight any different from that of the grocery workers? Is it possibly because Mr. Miller doesn't ride on public transportation, and his conscience rests easy on their behalf because he's never had a mechanic smile at him?

Kingdom update already.

From Empire Online:

'I'd wanted to do a film with knights in armor,' Scott tells Variety, 'but thought why do some homogenous story when screenwriter William Monahan (who's currently working on the screenplay for Jurassic Park IV) came up with such rich history? He based this drama on accurate research, which he spent 19 months compiling and writing.'

Oh, yes, certainly the guy who writes about dinosaurs jumping about and eating people has impeccable credentials as an historian. My, yes. I can certainly see why you'd think so. God, I wish you'd just done a homogenous story, whatever the hell that means. If there's an actual historical basis for a) a peasant becoming a knight or b) said Euro-peasant-knight thwarting the Crusaders, I will eat my hat. He'd goddamn well better be French, at the very least.

Nope. Never too early to start bitching.

Chiefly of interest to Loraine. And me, of course.

SCOTT GIVES BLOOM KEYS TO ‘KINGDOM’
By Josh Spector, Hollywood Reporter, 10/29

Orlando Bloom, hot off his recent success in a trio of epic films, has signed on for the lead role in director Ridley Scott’s period epic “Kingdom of Heaven” for 20th Century Fox.

In the story set in 12th century Europe and the exotic Far East, Bloom will star as a young peasant who becomes a knight, saves a kingdom and falls in love with a princess.

And here I thought he was tired of buckling swashes.

The film was penned by William Monahan and is being produced by Scott through his Fox-based Scott Free production banner. Branko Lustig is executive producing the project, which has a January production start date planned and will shoot in Morocco.

At Scott Free, the project is being overseen by Lisa Ellzey, while TCF topper Hutch Parker is overseeing for the studio.

The roles marks the latest epic undertaking for Bloom, who is coming off a trio of successes in the genre including the first two installments of the “Lord of the Rings” franchise and this past summer’s blockbuster hit “Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.” Bloom can next be seen in the upcoming third installment of the “Rings” franchise due out Dec. 17, as well as starring opposite Brad Pitt in “Troy”.

I love a good period epic. Of course, the last time I watched Scott take a stab at it (Gladiator) he completely bitched up Roman history and infuriated me to no end in the process, so I'm not entirely sure this bodes well, especially given the Cinema Confidential plot precis:

The epic drama taking place during the Crusades is set in the 12th century, and tells the story of a young blacksmith who leads the people of Jerusalem in a fight against the Crusaders.

O...k. Reading both descriptions between the lines and reconciling this with Scott's slapdash approach to history--without access to better info as yet--it looks like a peasant/blacksmith going to war as a Crusader and then siding with the Saracens against his fellow Europeans, "saving" Jerusalem. If so I hope it ends with Richard the Lionheart sticking his head on a bloody pike within sight of the walls of the city.

And remember: it's never too early to start bitching.

[Thanks, Paula!]

It needed to be said.

And Lileks has addressed it:

Back to the house. Get to work. Call up browser. Learn that Howard Dean temporarily called himself a “metrosexual.” Shudder. Do they have that on tape? Lee Atwater would have the commercial in production already: Split screen. On the right, Bush in flight suit, walking on the deck, waving, giving the thumbs up. On the left, Dean in a loop: “I’m a metrosexual. I’m a metrosexual. I’m a metrosexual.” Nothing more. Tagline: Bush. He doesn’t moisturize. He doesn’t tweeze. And he never had a pedicure.

Klass.

With a capital K:

Jurors in the corruption trial the former Tyco chairman [Dennis Kozlowski] on Tuesday watched PG-rated scenes of debauchery as prosecutors tried to sway them with video of his wife's birthday party on a Mediterranean island.

New York prosecutors showed about 20 minutes of video footage from the 2001 party that cost $2.1 million -- about half paid by Tyco -- and featured singer Jimmy Buffett, gladiators, chariots and an ice sculpture of Michelangelo's David spewing vodka from his penis.

The footage, edited from four hours of film, was a welcome departure for jurors who have sat through three weeks of often tedious testimony. One juror on Monday nodded off in the courtroom. Money 2004.

But Judge Michael Obus ruled that jurors wouldn't see footage of the ice sculpture or a birthday cake in the shape of a woman's breasts with sparklers mounted on top.

After all, what's a $2.1M party without a sparkler-adorned titty cake and an ice sculpture of David pissing vodka? And the worst part isn't the waste of the money...it's the waste of it on stupid, vulgar things without a trace of subtlety or wit. I mean, **damn**, you blow $2.1 million dollars on a party in Sardinia and the best band you can book is Buffett?

Welcome back to the 80's, folks. Unpack the parachute pants and kick back with a cold one, it's going to be a weird few years.

[Thanks to Paula, who knows the good stuff when she sees it.]

Navel-piercing as navel gazing.

Sticking bits of metal into one's skin goes utterly mainstream, as people try to stand out as individuals by doing exactly the same thing everybody else is doing. The fifteen minute timer is ticking on the coolometer, kiddies.

One girl, who had just had her tongue pierced, writes: 'I've always been kind of quiet in school and very predictable…. I wanted to think of myself as original and creative, so I decided I wanted something pierced…

How original. How creative.

'Now people don't think of me as shy and predictable, they respect me and the person I've become and call me crazily spontaneous.'

Then again, one man's "crazily spontaneous" is another man's "dangerously unstable".

which art movement are you?

this quiz was made by Caitlin

[Via Sheila O'Malley.]

The Sixties AGAIN.

The WSJ taste page declares that the 60s are back. Frankly, to those of us who follow hard on the heels of the ubiquitous boomers, the whole decade feels more like the Thing That Wouldn't Leave. And after all, how can I miss you if you won't go away? This particular nostalgic wallow is brought on by an art exhibit in Montreal, gagnaciously titled "Global Village: The 1960s."

[M]any pieces are trivial or bizarre. A work by Christo marking the construction of the Berlin Wall consists of a pile of oil drums between the walls of a street. The wall text says the wall divided the world between the "egalitarian utopia of the communist regimes" and "the 'free world' of the capitalist societies." (Note the scare quotes around free world.)

A video monitor showcases "Meat Joy," a 1964 film by Carolee Schneemann featuring nude performers writhing about in a sea of raw fish, uncooked chickens, paint, plastic and rope. (A PETA ad before its time?) Other pieces feature "celebrities" from Yoko Ono to Charles Manson and Ho Chi Minh. Ho is gone and Manson is behind bars, but last month, in Paris, Ms. Ono reprised "Cut Piece," a 1960s performance art effort in which audience members are invited to cut away her clothing one piece at a time.

No surprises there. Last week I attended an exhibit of pop art at the Guggenheim in the Venetian in Vegas; the first room had a number of 'multimedia' pieces which consisted pretty much of apparently random groupings of crap you'd find in your garage, plus some nice Lichtensteins, some pretty good Warhols (4 soup cans, 2 Liz Taylors, and "Orange Disaster #5", with its interesting repeated images of an electric chair); though I admit I'm a bit skeptical about the artistic value of silk screening, the soup cans are nice), three Dines (mostly lame, particularly "shoe", seen here in a small black and white that really doesn't do justice to the nasty color and overall slapdash feel of the original), a really annoying Rauschenberg black-and-white silk screening of, again, seemingly random images ("Barge"), and my favorite, Rosenquist's "The Meteor Hits the Dreamer's Pillow" (with actual bedsprings!)

And I know why that piece is my favorite: I like commercial art. I like the colors Gain and the other detergent manufacturers use in their packaging, which may mean I've been successfully brainwashed by the admen of the sixties and seventies. (They also had the Rosenquist with the giant sub sandwich, pack o' cigs and can o' Budweiser; I like that one too, and "Barge", with its presumed buckets o' symbolism, left me utterly cold.)

So where the hell was I going with all this? Not really sure. I think about the sixties fairly frequently, but most of my positive non-musical associations are reserved for the period prior to the so-called Summer of Love; it just seemed to me that by 1968 a large segment of the population had decided to wear bad clothing, let their hair go and stop bathing, and I couldn't figure out why. Then the long, slow nightmare ride through the seventies until we hit the cultural nadir during the Carter administration (by which time the Grease soundtrack constituted about 3/5 of AM radio playlists, alternating with Disco, causing the desperate flight to FM radio. Pity those of us with no FM radio in the family car. Feel my pain.) Then Reagan and the eighties; got my license, put an AM/FM/cassette deck in the car, Elvis Costello and Warren Zevon brought sweet musical relief to my ears, and off to college. People bathed again. Skinny ties, straight leg pants, and styled hair came back (not for me personally, but in general.) And then the 90s brought back the self-absorbed angst of the late sixties, the oughts resurrected the ghastly fashion mistakes of the early seventies, and now here we are again, theoretically poised to dive back into the early sixties, possibly via the eighties. When are we going to get off the boomer treadmill and do something new that doesn't depend on ironic inversion and post-modern revisionism? As Buz said when he and Tod were kidnapped and forced to be schoolteachers, it's a new day, the world has turned on its axis, and we'd like to hear something a little more "real" than the voice of the Turtle.

RIP, Rerun.

By now I'm sure you know Fred Berry died Wednesday at the age of 52. This just struck me as incredibly sad:

He wore his red beret and suspenders in real life, and it was unclear whether he originally brought his own style to the character of Rerun or whether he was forever mimicking the character that made him famous.

Damn, I hope it was the former.

Dead at 52. 2003 has been a hell of a hard year for celebrities. Somewhere out there, Rodney Allen Rippey is probably starting to sweat.

I'd just like to reiterate:

UPS is the worst fucking delivery service on the planet. In the five days since I dropped something off in LA to be shipped back to Ohio the package managed to make it all the way to Van Nuys.

[Via Dean Esmay.]

Ring-a-ding-ding.

Which Ratpack member are you?

I'm Dean Martin. Eat your heart out, Paula.

[Via Allah himself, the 14th (links not working for me), who got it from Red Sugar.]

Full disclosure.

The album to the left, at the top of the navigation bar, is my younger brother's newest, freshly pressed and only available on his website and at the live shows (Dates on the website--see him live! He's funny and talented.) Personal favorites from this one: "Redneck Love Gone Bad" [She had trailerpark charm/He carved her name in his arm/Then he slept with a waitress from the bar/So she took a chain to his car/And broke the windows on the love they had/Now it's redneck love gone bad] and "You Can't Make Love to Bluegrass".

This album is as stripped down as the first one was overproduced, using only the acoustic trio he uses on the road, and he's re-recorded four of the tracks from that first one ("Bad Bad Bad", "Goodbye on a Bad Day" [goodbye, gloppy string arrangement], "Chase the Sun" and "This Old Heart") and bettered them in the process. Those familiar with his work with the Galoots in Louisville will appreciate the new versions of two of their staples, "Banjo Queen" and "Heaven Hill" (written to commemorate the burning of the old Heaven Hill distillery in Bardstown) [both from the 1998 CD "Record", now difficult to find.] The rest are new, except for a surehanded cover of Leadbelly's "When I Was a Cowboy". Highly recommended to anyone with a fondness for acoustic music and powerful voices.

Freak Magnet redux.

Back from vacation. Spent 4 hours on a plane from Phoenix to Louisville sitting next to an ersatz cowboy who consumed 6 beers in that span and announced that he was capable of blowing up the airplane with his mind (Claimed to be an ex-Green Beret. Also former member of the CID. It was like the Pizza Guy followed me on vacation.)

Envy me.

I got to see Bubba Ho-Tep on the big screen, which almost-but-not-quite makes up for failing to nail LOTR trilogy tickets. Bruce Campbell did a knockout job as the aging King; if the face wasn't quite right, at least the voice was all there.

Culture notes.

Overheard at the LACMA exhibit on French masters from the Pushkin museum:

Man: "Have you noticed how many of these paintings are French? It's like they're all Francophiles here or something."

Woman: "That's because it's...a collection of French masters. From Russia."

Man, insistently: "No...it's the whole collection. They're all Francophiles here."

Off to the races. It's like they're all hippophiles there.

There's a lesson here.

And that lesson is, stop fucking around with dangerous animals:

A California author and filmmaker who became famous for trekking to Alaska's remote Katmai coast to commune with brown bears has fallen victim to the teeth and claws of the wild animals he loved.

[...]

Treadwell's films of close-up encounters with giant bears brought him a bounty of national media attention. The fearless former drug addict from Malibu, Calif. -- who routinely eased up close to bears to chant "I love you'' in a high-pitched, sing-song voice -- was the subject of a show on the Discovery Channel and a report on "Dateline NBC." Blond, good-looking and charismatic, he appeared for interviews on David Letterman's show and "The Rosie O'Donnell Show" to talk about his bears. He even gave them names: Booble, Aunt Melissa, Mr. Chocolate, Freckles and Molly, among others.

Ok, stop right the hell there. The high-pitched chanting alone is enough to warrant a swift end; what the hell would make this idiot think they like that kind of thing? The cutsie-poo names show he failed to respect the essentially dangerous nature of the bears.

A self-proclaimed eco-warrior, he attracted something of a cult following too. Chuck Bartlebaugh of "Be Bear Aware,'' a national bear awareness campaign, called Treadwell one of the leaders of a group of people engaged in "a trend to promote getting close to bears to show they were not dangerous.

Except that they are! They're extremely fucking dangerous!

[...]

Despite that, Treadwell refused to carry firearms or ring his campsites with an electric fence as do bear researchers in the area. And he stopped carrying bear spray for self-protection in recent years. Friends said he thought he knew the bears so well he didn't need it.

Ah, yes. He knew them so well. If only the bears who ate him had been aware of how well he knew them.

U.S. Geological Survey bear researcher Tom Smith; Sterling Miller, formerly the Alaska Department of Fish and Game's top bear authority; and others said they tried to warn the amateur naturalist that he was being far too cavalier around North America's largest and most powerful predator.

"He's the only one I've consistently had concern for,'' Smith said. "He had kind of a childlike attitude about him.''

Those are the people I really despise, the ones who view all of nature as a kind of petting zoo and themselves as gloriously in tune with same. Hopefully his demise will serve as an object lesson for the next would-be natureboy.

"I told him to be much more cautious ... because every time a bear kills somebody, there is a big increase in bearanoia and bears get killed,'' Miller said.

Damn you. Damn you for coining that word.

"I thought that would be a way of getting to him, and his response was 'I would be honored to end up in bear scat.' ''

I hope he remembered that quote as the bears started to eat him.

[There's more. Via the Midwest Conservative Journal.]

Baldwiniana.

Alec Baldwin feels it incumbent upon himself to intercede in Texas politics: he took a box of dog biscuits to a Democratic fundraiser, announced they were for Texas Governor Rick Perry, whom he designated Tom DeLay's "lap dog" (note the extreme cleverness of the whole "lap dog"/dog biscuit thing. Now, that's quality political commentary.) As reported by the AP, he then launched into a tirade about the Texas redistricting strategy, the CA recall, the evil Republicans, and BushBUSHBUSH! But the money quote is the reply from 'Perry spokesman' Gene Acuna:

"Mr. Baldwin's political views against President Bush and Republicans in general are well known and documented. I have no doubt that Texans will give the comments made by the star of 'Beetlejuice' all of the attention they are due."

[Via the invaluable Charles Austin.]

An atheist by any other name.

The Bright movement protests when people accuse them of a certain level of smugness, then they say things like this:

However, since we're now at the beginning of a presidential campaign, it's reasonable to ask not only President Bush, but also each of the ten contenders for the Democratic nomination to state their attitude toward Brights (designated by whatever term they choose).

We might also speculate about which of these candidates might be closet Brights? Which would evince anything like the free-thinking of Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln? Which would put forward a Bright Supreme Court nominee? Which would support self-avowed Brights in positions of authority over children?

Which of them would even include Brights in inclusive platitudes about Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and Muslims? Doing so might be good politics. Although unorganized and relatively invisible, Brights constitute a large group to whom politicians almost never appeal.

Maybe because you're unorganized and relatively invisible.

Moreover, it would be interesting to see and hear the squirming responses of the candidates to the above questions.

(Interesting that the author gloms onto Jefferson and Lincoln as would-be Brights. It puts me in mind of a number of famous people who always claim to have been Cleopatra in a previous life. Funny how ditchdiggers and sewer workers don't ever seem to get reincarnated.)

Just what the hell is this need for public approbation, anyway?