Surprised the hell out of me, too.

Happy birthday to me.

And Lileks, apparently.

Loose canon.

Via Andrea Harris: Starting with East of Eden, Oprah Winfrey is throwing her considerable cultural influence behind some literary works with at least debatable status as classics; the only question seems to be whether she has the standing to choose which works can be designated as such.

"I hope you know that you are stepping into the middle of what the '90s called the campus 'culture wars,'" said University of Louisville English professor Dale Billingsley.

(Gratuitous quote included because it's by one of my two favorite professors at the old alma mater, and a man of considerable sense.)

I spent some years at U of L during the early/mid 80s in pursuit of an English BA, sorting through both canon literature and the hot contemporary writers at the time (mostly ChickLit and PoMos, with all the attendant axe-grinding everyone pretended to find so terribly interesting.) If Oprah wants to uphold some semblance of literary tradition and actually gets the people who normally wouldn't touch Steinbeck with a ten foot pole to want to read him--I'm all for it. Even if East of Eden isn't really part of the canon, it's still well written. And the more good writing you get people to read, the better able they're going to be to decide for themselves what is and is not worth their time.

Idolatry.

Matt Labash in the Weekly Standard covers all the reasons why I despise American Idol (and its ilk) in one snarkily hilarious column:

I'M NOT SURE exactly when I began feeling myself turning from "American Idol" friend to "American Idol" foe. Perhaps it was when I got a good look at the kind of company I was keeping. When Ruben sang his smash hit, "Flying Without Wings," many in the audience began sticking out their arms to make soaring motions (the song says "flying without wings"--keep up, people).

Or maybe it came with the ill-advised he said/she said gang war. The fellas sang a swinging version of Frank Sinatra's "The Lady is a Tramp," while the girls kept interrupting with Destiny's Child's "Bootylicious," singing "I don't think you're ready for this jelly." Indeed, I wasn't. Or perhaps the show's nadir came when Ruben and Clay pretended they were quarreling while crooning the Paul McCartney / Michael Jackson song, "The Girl Is Mine." Like Jackson before him, it's hard to imagine Clay even liking a girl, let alone fist-fighting over one.

Or perhaps it was when all of the Idols took the stage for a hokey, pyrotechnic shooting rendition of Lee Greenwood's "Proud to Be an American." It felt a bit like the Icecapades without the ice. Whenever it was--maybe during the Bee Gee's medley--I decided I'd finally had enough.

The horror. The horror.

Must see tv.

Ladies and gentlemen, set your VCRs (or Tivos, if you're more technologically advanced than I am.) JKRank of Sofia Sideshow has a project airing on SciFi this Saturday night: Deep Shock. Features giant, evil electric eels, melting polar ice caps, nuclear warheads, and a villain named Chomsky (near-choked on my diet root beer over that one.) Critters gone bad!

Update 8/8: spelling correction. Gentlement?

Enterprise.

Just saw my first episode.

1) Theme song sucks. Words fail me in describing just how much.

2) They have turned the Klingons into a culture of lawyers, and forced them to operate their "tribunal" according to the rules of modern American jurisprudence. If I may be permitted a descent into full geekdom, I would like to point out that a Klingon trial of an outsider would probably more closely resemble either a Soviet show trial or Judge Roy Bean, trial to be followed by execution and lunch.

3) I was told this was supposed to be closer in spirit to the original series. I didn't realize this was limited to recycling old TOS plots with a patina of TNG socialism.

And I still hate those fucking prosthetic foreheads.

This show sucks.

True confessions.

Ok...I have to come clean. I'm not actually reading any of the books at the bottom of the page right now because I took a fiction break to read the entire Flashman series by George Macdonald Fraser. Then I kind of got distracted by I, Claudius. And I'm still in the middle of Livy's Early History of Rome, but I've been messing around with that for six months.

Phew, that's better. I was starting to feel like a fraud.

Britain's mass bastardy.

Theodore Dalrymple's phrase, not mine. But I like it. Dalrymple looks at the revolution in British manners and the erosion of restraint in modern culture in general.

Buzzword of the day: Peterpandemonium.

I had a pretty good childhood, but I don't want to relive it, and this is just creepy:

London has become a magnet for young men and women determined to relive their childhoods. Every weekend thousands of twentysomethings dress up in school uniforms, to go clubbing at School Disco. People from all walks of life - doctors, computer programmers, hairdressers, lawyers - enthusiastically embrace this retro nostalgia. The young men in white shirts and blazers and the young women in short 'school' shirts take great delight in pretending that they are naughty teenagers having a snog on the dance floor. The School Disco scene has spread northwards, to Newcastle and Leeds; in February 2002, the School Disco Spring Term album went to number one in the charts.

God save us from the people who peaked in high school and don't ever want to leave. It gets worse:

Retro nostalgia is not just an Anglo-American phenomenon. 'Hello Kitty', a white kitten whose trademark is a flower or red bow, is hugely popular among Japanese adults. Female professionals and office workers bring Kitty stationery into the office; when they hit the bars they chat on their Kitty mobiles and offer cigarettes from their Kitty cigarette cases to businessmen wearing Snoopy neckties.

I do not get the whole "Hello Kitty" thing. There's something wrong with having a cartoon themed cigarette case. Personally it gives me sort of a combination Norma Desmond/pedophilia case of the willies.

Our society is full of lost boys and girls hanging out at the edge of adulthood. Yet we find it difficult even to give them a name. The absence of a readily recognised word to describe these infantilised adults demonstrates the unease with which this phenomenon is greeted. Advertisers and toy manufacturers have invented the term 'kidult' to describe this segment of the market. Another word sometimes used to describe these 20- to 35-year-olds is 'adultescent', generally defined as someone who refuses to settle down and make commitments, and who would rather go on partying into middle age.

Give it a snazzy label and it's mainstream. This would seem to be part and parcel of the neo-barbarian youth culture that believes in the twin virtues of piercing and unemployment. Or maybe I'm just reacting to this with horror because I'm hitting middle age and these are the people who were supposed to keep society going when I'm old. That's going to be difficult to do if you can't pry the fucking Nintendo controllers out of their pudgy little fingers before 40. Three pieces of advice for the 20 somethings:

1) Buy clothing that covers all your private parts. Nobody wants to see that shit.
2) Take that bone out of your nose, Shaka. This ain't Borneo in the 1800s. Nobody wants to see that shit either.
3) Move out of your parents' basement, even if it means leaving the big screen and the Playstation and selling off your mint condition Star Wars figures.

You'll thank me later.

[via Arts & Letters Daily.]

Cultural backwater, or Irony, USA?

So Sunday I'm here watching Key Largo on the big screen from the balcony. On the way out the elderly ladies next to my friend Jim and I start chatting about the movie.

Lady A: So did you like it? I know you don't care for these shoot-em-ups.

Lady B: Well...it was ok.

Lady A: You'll like the one next week better.

I checked the schedule. Next week is Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Better than Key Largo.

You make the call.

Huzzah.

Courtesy of Andrea Harris, all hail the return of Sine Qua Non. Adjust your links accordingly.

More casting from What The Hell, Inc.

I already have a problem with Tim "Underlit" Burton directing the remake of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (aka Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory to non-readers.) Now he's in the process of killing whatever hopes I might have cherished of it not becoming another ill-conceived Burton Gothfest through his possible choices for the lead (well...if you think of Wonka as the lead, anyway): Michael Keaton, Christopher Walken, and--most likely at the moment--Johnny Depp. Now, it's not that I don't think all three are fine actors. And God knows, they're all quirkily charming enough to pull off the character. But none of them are British. For a project they're touting as an attempt to be faithful to the story, and therefore "not a remake" of the 1971 movie, shouldn't they start with an English cast?

But when can I actually see the movie here in Dullsville?

Bubba Ho-Tep trailer.

Fuckwits of the month.

MSNBC, for naming Mike Piazza as their "whiner of the week", based on a widely-discredited (and vehemently denied by Piazza himself) Pete Caldera article from Sunday that alleges that anonymous sources "close to him" said that Mike Piazza said he didn't want to play for the Mets anymore:

There should be a rule that only athletes who are actually playing can complain about the way their team is going. One of the most annoying things to hear is a player who’s been injured since the Reagan administration crying about how he doesn’t want to play anymore for the team he’s not playing for anyway.
Mike Piazza, our Whiner of the Week, hasn’t played for the New York Mets since May, when he tore a groin muscle that will keep him out until sometime in August. The Mets have been awful in his absence, but that’s not Piazza’s gripe.

According to The Bergen Record, Piazza has begun crying that he doesn’t want to go into the Mets’ clubhouse and he wants to be traded. Apparently, part of his animosity dates back to New York manager Art Howe mentioning off-handedly to the media before Piazza was hurt that maybe it was time for the catcher to start taking ground balls at first base.

Howe wasn’t breaking news. Piazza is one of the worst defensive catchers in the game,

Wrong. Granted, he throws like a girl. If that were all there was to catcher defense, this jackass might have a point.

and last year his offensive numbers fell drastically as he battled injuries.

Yeah, and he still ended up at the top of the catcher heap offensively. Gee, at this rate of decline he might hit like a league average catcher in another ten years or so.

He’s in the line-up for his bat, and many have long said he should either move to first or be traded to the American League, where he can DH.

"Many" have also said Jorge Posada's a great catcher. "Many" are idiots.

The problem is that Piazza wants to break all the offensive records for catchers so he can go in the Hall of Fame.

He's already smashed so many of them, the catcher HR record is just a cherry on the cake of his career. He's going to the HOF, like it or not. And he says the record isn't as important as the team, so why are you crediting someone who won't attach his name to the story over Piazza himself?

Some might call it selfish.

"Some", like "Many", are mouth-breathing morons.

Piazza and the Mets issued predictable denials of the story, with the Mets catcher whining more about the coverage. "I guess I’m the monkey this week?," Piazza asked. "That’s pretty funny.

"You’ve got to fill lines with something, right? It’s like I’m not even playing and I’m the monkey. It’s kind of cute. I guess it’s flattering, really. It’s kind of like, how do you answer something so far-fetched? It really makes no sense."

Then there's the idea that Caldera and his anonymous "sources" are just muckracking for all their pitiful lives are worth.

He’s had little to do with the team all year, and he’s in no position to cry about having to play for a team that’s done nothing but treat him like a baseball deity.

Nor has he. MSNBC hasn't done shit about covering the team, either, but that doesn't stop them from having their idiotic--and, tellingly, anonymous--say.

Not long ago, he was saying he wouldn’t move to the American League and wouldn’t move to first. Now he’s saying he’ll move anywhere. If we were a Mets fan -- if any such animals even exist -- we’d help him pack.

You don't have the nuts, guts, or brains to be a Mets fan, pisher. I'm guessing your tastes run more to soccer.

Note that there's no way to leave MSNBC feedback for this irresponsible dreck. Sports journalism--the biggest oxymoron since jumbo shrimp.

Exorcism.

Rumor has it the Reds are going to fire both The Devil and his right-hand imp (Bowden and Boone) at noon-thirty today. Three cheers and a tiger.

Of course, the attendant implication that they're going to let Ray Knight manage the team in the interim is like a dog returning to its vomit.

Amazon shipment.

On the viewing schedule for tonight: The Master of Ballantrae (1953) and Zulu (1964).

Satisfactory.

Uday and Qusay are dead.

Feeling vaguely uncomfortable now.

I just added a link to my bloated Amazon wishlist over on the left. I feel like I just asked strangers for money.

Newly identified ethnic group migrating north.

Identified as "Dismayed Americans" (Americanus Disgruntulus?) in this CNN article, at least four US citizens ["A husband and wife in Minnesota, a college student in Georgia, a young executive in New York", as the sentence fragment identies them.] are planning to move to the Great White North in order to glom onto "free" healthcare and officially sanctioned gay marriage.

"For me, it's a no-brainer," said Mollie Ingebrand, a puppeteer from Minneapolis who plans to go to Vancouver with her lawyer husband and 2-year-old son.

Oh, dear God. We've already driven most of the mimes north. What are we going to do when all the puppeteers have gone? Who will be left to mock?

"It's the most amazing opportunity I can imagine. To live in a society where there are different priorities in caring for your fellow citizens."

What kind of puppets does she work with, I wonder? I mean, are we talking about full-blown marionettes, or is she climbing into a big latex dinosaur suit or something? Finger puppets? Punch & Judy? Kukla and Ollie? What?

For decades, even while nurturing close ties with the United States, Canadians have often chosen a different path -- establishing universal health care, maintaining ties with Cuba, imposing tough gun control laws.

Saddling Alberta with paying for everyone else's healthcare, supporting that twisted fuck Castro in his quest to keep his entire populace dumb and miserable, and interfering with the rights of their populace to defend themselves. Ahh--paradise.

Two current Canadian initiatives, to decriminalize marijuana and legalize same-sex marriage, have pleased many liberals in the United States and irked conservatives.

I wouldn't say I'm irked, really. Just indifferent and quite glad I don't live there. Skipping a bit.

Mollie Ingebrand, 34, said she has felt an affinity for Canada for many years, fueled partly by respect for its health care system.

Health care pop quiz: which of the following countries recently experienced a serious SARS outbreak:

a) Canada
b) the US

Answer: not the US.

Her doubts about the United States go back even further, to a childhood spent with liberal parents in a relatively conservative part of Ohio.

"In school I was always told this is the best country on earth, and everyone else wants to be American, and that never really rang true to me," she said.

Because your liberal parents told you otherwise?

"As I got older, it occurred to me there were other choices."

Of course there are, you ninny. As long as you don't mind lowering your standard of living.

At Georgia State, Hodges [the college student--K] said some conservative schoolmates have challenged his proposed move to Canada, saying he would be abandoning his homeland.

Conversely, Mollie Ingebrand says some of her friends -- people who share her left-of-center views -- argue that she should stay at home to battle for changes here.

"I've been there and done that," Molly said. "I don't want to stay and fight anymore. I can have that bittersweet love for my country from somewhere else."

Snark. Yeah. Right.

Morning spit take.

Courtesy of Silvio Berlusconi in Time magazine [via The Corner]:

What do you really think of German tourists? Ich bin ein Berliner.

Don't ever change, Silvio.