It's OK, bob. The important thing is what you call yourself.
Buckley's cover is really more of a cover of John Cale's cover.
As, for that matter, is Wainwrights, IIRC.
That's funny. I've heard the same of Wainwright's.
I used to think this was a great song, until I started noticing it every-fucking-where, in particular in the background of every teen romance TV show. Does that affect the actual quality of the song? Anyway, it's been at least subjectively ruined for me. I guess the objective dimension could be that the cheap melodrama of the various pop culture settings highlighted whatever aspect of cheap melodrama aspect there is in the song, which could be more easily ignored when you thought of it as all artsy and underground. Like all drugs, music is affected by set and setting.
kd lang's cover isn't really a love song to her cock. Or maybe it is.
kd lang's cover isn't really a love song to her cock. Or maybe it is.
I think you owe Jesurgislac an apology.
As long as we're talking about John Cale, was everyone aware that he had hoped that Sinatra would perform his tune "Close Watch", whose chorus (of course) consists of a line from "I Walk the Line" with a new melody? It's true! And it's a really good song, to boot; I like the performance on Fragments of a Rainy Season. And of course Cale's cover of "Heartbreak Hotel" is a classic.
Cale's cover of "Heartbreak Hotel" is a classic
Word.
Seriously, though, let's please not police gender norms quite so vigorously.
Every so often, there is a post on unfogged which reminds me of its glory. This is one such post (even though you are wrong).
Every time I hear this song I laugh out loud. Its appearance in "Watchmen" is going to go down as one of the worst and most incongrous movie mistakes, up there with Jar Jar Binks. Maybe 20 years from now I can view it objectively again.
I am interested in hearing more about this "thereby".
(even though you are wrong)
Convince me. I tried to like it, I really did.
Incidentally, in the UK this song was (within the last year or so) quite spectacularly massacred by a contestant (or maybe even a winner) in one of those reality Pop Idol / X-Factor type shows in a way which made it exponentially more omnipresent, and in a version which rendered the song not even interesting enough to be accused of onanism. Brilliantly, this was exactly the point at which my mum, who had spent my teenage years moaning about the "dirge"-like Cohen and Buckley versions emanating from my room, told me on the phone that she had decided that it was a "fantastic song." It was generally agreed by my mother and the gutterpress that constitutes 90% of British newspaper output that he or she (I think she) had given the song a "powerful" or "heartfelt" rendition. We are all doomed.
Not that we did not just have a pretty extensive discussion of "Hallelujah" covers this past December. Start here and read down. Prompted by its ascension to England's Cristmas Number One:
Cowell, the music impresario known here for his snide comments on the British equivalent of American Idol, called The X Factor, selected Cohen's classic ballad "Hallelujah" as the first single for recording by this year's winner. The song immediately captured Britain's most coveted musical accolade: it is, as of yesterday evening, the official "Christmas Number One" or "CNO." The good news doesn't end there. A 1994 version of the song by the late Jeff Buckley, championed by music fans who rebelled against the rendition by X Factor winner Alexandra Burke, is No. 2 on the chart. And that's not all. Cohen's own version came in at No. 36. "Chart placings at 1, 2 and 36 are remarkable for a 25-year-old song which has never previously reached the top 40," said Martin Talbot, managing director of the Official Charts Company.
I is definitely time for a Chipmunks version of "Hallelujah".
I am interested in hearing more about this "thereby".
Thereby is what you need when you're depressed and have a cold.
Convince me.
Well, taste is taste... It's not my favourite song (or version of a song) ever or anything, and I don't have it handy. These are the caveats to my attempt at a defence of why I always liked it. I suppose I've always found it just feels more "genuine" than "affected". I like the hollow. reverby production with just the trebly guitar and his voice. I love the way he suspends things in such a way that the move from arpeggio to sharp chords works powerfully. At the time I first heard it, I only knew Cohen's version, so the contrast between two differently-silky productions and renditions was pretty striking. Since then over the years I've heard all these other "one wo/man and his/her guitar" versions and now of course it doesn't seem so extraordinary. But it still rings nicely in the air, whether or not it is in fact about his cock.
I contest 15 and offer the alternative opinion that the scene in question is the most exquisite moment of high camp in any popular film in decades. Did I laugh aloud in the movie theatre? Yes, but it was an endorsement and not a condemnation.
I don't think it sounds affected, but I can see how someone might not like it.
15: Alan Moore is still spinning in his grave basement shrine to the snake-puppet Glycon.
As to the song itself, it's a beautiful song that's been done to death. It seems like everyone wants a version to add weight to their repertoire. Rufus seems like a natural for it so his version doesn't grate like others do but even when I hear his I'm left thinking that surely he had a song of his own just as good to sing that day, y'know?
ALL THOSE CHIMPOSTERS ARE JUST RIPPING ME OFF.
The idea that Rufus Wainwright grates less than others when singing a song is, to me, hardly creditable.
I do like the instrumental performance, and the timbre of his voice is not unappealing. But I'll go back and listen to it, and each time there's that yuh-uh-uh again, and I barf.
Yeah, from what I hear, you have to learn to suppress the gag reflex when leaning in closer to Buckley's cock.
29: RacistBassist.
All other opinions aside, I'd be just as happy if Rufus' version were an invitation to look at his cock.
31: Putrefaction will do that, I hear.
Putrefaction will do that, I hear.
If I am not cremated, and if my body is not divvied up and given to science/the hungry, I sincerely hope that I am buried in a coffin that is not airtight, because (and I acknowledge that this is irrational) I do not want to decompose anaerobically.
I used to think this was a great song, until I started noticing it every-fucking-where, in particular in the background of every teen romance TV show
Avoiding teen romance TV shows is an effective remedy for this problem.
The Vandals' cover of "Heartbreak Hotel" is also excellent. I can't find it on the intertubes for your listening pleasure, so here's video of a deer bathing a kitty instead.
Rufus' voice sounds like a cross between that of John Lennon and Gordon Gano (Violent Femmes). It doesn't grate on me, but that might be because I think of him as singing in character.
Next, I suppose, you'll tell me you don't find the character grating, either. You liberals are all alike.
neb would be wise not to read this Brief description of putrefaction of a human body with respect to time of death.
Hey, I'm putrescible!
Is the point of the link to demonstrate that everyone putrefies? But this is not so.
I'm pretty sure you could do a fresh mash-up of hallelujah and major tom.
Or space oddity or whatever the fuck it's called you knew what I meant.
Planet Earth is blue,
And there's nothing I can do, oo-oo-oo, jah.
Well, there is a song called "Major Tom", and there is also a song called "Space Oddity"; one is by Peter Schilling and the other is by David Bowie.
TRUE FACT: The Schilling version exists in both German and English, and the last lines of the two are highly discordant with each other, semantically ("mir wird kalt" vs "I'm coming home")—you could claim that "home" here is, you know, death, but Schilling gives one no reason elsewhere in the song to make such a supposition.
45: I thought the Schilling song was called Major Tom's Wild Ride or Major Tom: Back In The Saddle or Major Tom Goes To Nicaragua or something, and was kind of a sequel to the Bowie?
It is kind of a sequel to the Bowie, but its title is simply "Major Tom".
For me, Jeff Buckley was nearly killed when the flat below me in a split house a few years ago had a party. Braindead early-20s hipsters in to a man. At about 3am, this girl led a guy out for a cigarette in the garden, directly below my window, where I was engaged in a curmudgeonly attempt to get some sleep for something important the next day. And I couldn't help but hear every word they said.
It was basically an attempt at her chatting him up, where everything that could make you cringe occurred in short succession. She started out with some unbearable nonsense about how much she just, like, loved smoking. Then she asked him the killer question, "what kind of music are you into?" And he said "well... anything... been listening to some old Jeff Buckley today." Suddenly the air was sucked from the garden, and she went:
"OH.... MY GOD. You like Jeff Buckley?"
"Yeah."
"I've never met anyone else who likes Jeff Buckley."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
"OK."
"Can I tell you something personal about Jeff Buckley?"
"Sure" *puffs on cigarette*
"OK... well like... OK... the thing is... when I listen to Jeff Buckley... I think... I love you Jeff. Cos you can see into my heart. But you know what else?"
"What?"
"I think... I hate you Jeff. Cos you saw into my fucking heart. And I hate that he did that. You know?"
"...."
"Fucking Jeff Buckley man."
One word in addition to this story: verbatim. I didn't listen to "Jeff" again for about 18 months. And I never gave them the misdirected post we'd received.
48: Have you ever looked at Jeff Buckley's hands? I mean really looked at them?
Elton John's "Rocket Man" almost certainly owes something to "Space Oddity" as well, given that both songs had producer Gus Dudgeon and arranger Paul Buckmaster in common. Although Taupin supposedly claimed, We didn't steal that one from Bowie, we stole it from another guy, called Tom Rapp. In fact, I heard Rapp complain about just that at a Pearls Before Swine concert a couple of years later.
I prefer Buckley's "Last Goodbye" and "Lover, You Should've Come Over" to "Hallelujah" (though in my teen years I did love it). As for Rufus, as far as I am concerned the best thing he's ever done is "One Man Guy," for which I love him for but can't really stand most of his other music. Finally, Leonard Cohen is awesome, and I don't care what Sifu thinks about that. (Especially, "I'm Your Man" and "Chelsea Hotel" and "Everybody Knows.")
And this concludes our segment of Parenthetical's Random Music Opinions for today.
I have several Rufus songs, none of which excite me much, but one of which - and I think I got it from you lot - is just awful. Every time I hear it I think that it's some sort of gag, or will only last a few bars, but no, it goes on and on, with this horrible drag-queen* keening. Before that, I always assumed that RW was more or less OK.
* nothing at all against drag queens; it just sounds to me like a drag queen who wishes he had a tenor voice, but doesn't
||
Ugh. This shooting occurred in a sort of quasi-public housing block that I've walked through before, trying to gauge whether it was actually dangerous or if I was just being paranoid. Evidently actually dangerous.
Right near a great hot dog shop, incidentally.
|>
RW does some good numbers on the McGarrigle Hour album.
I am pretty sure that song is popular because of the first Shrek movie:
It was John Cale's version in the movie (Rufus Wainwright on the soundtrack album).
Hmmm, I like the Jeff Buckley version too. Had to hear some of the Pop Idol woman's one over the weekend - absolutely appalling - the kids put Now 72 on in the car. Jesus, call me a grumpy old woman, but I really couldn't listen to most of the songs - we skipped through CD1 in about 5 minutes. And then went back to Tom Lehrer, who seems to entertain all 6 of us.
56 and 57 remind me that for many months we (i.e. the children and I) enjoyed the Shrek 2 soundtrack as our driving music.
As for Rufus, as far as I am concerned the best thing he's ever done is "One Man Guy," for which I love him for but can't really stand most of his other music.
I also like "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk" in general though, I agree, I've never gotten that excited about Rufus Wainwright. I want to like him since my brother, who's tastes in music I respect quite highly, really likes Rufus Wainwright, but I just haven't been able to get into his music.
Right near a great hot dog shop, incidentally.
Just don't ask who's what's in the hot dogs.
Alarming close to Whole Foods.
That would seem to cast serious doubt on ogged's theory of apartment hunting.
61: He may still be right. I can't figure out the specific corner because I can't find Station Street on either Google or Mapquest.
I don't think there is such a thing as Station Street. Follow Larimer Ave. as far as you want on any map, and you won't see one.
Station Street Hotdogs, which is basically next door to the post office where most of us Shadysiders pick up packages, is actually on Broad Street. In fact, it's basically at the corner of Broad Street and Larimer Ave. That might have confused the reporter
Basically basically Ave. Ave. .. . . . .
64: I did that on a map, so I'm glad to know it was not just meet. Not finding anything, I guessed that Station Street was on the Shadyside end of East Liberty because that's where they dicked-up the grid (so a street could go missing) and because that's where the railroad is.
Seriously, I think the reporter was confused by the name "Station Street Hotdogs" into thinking that Broad Street was called Station Street. We'll see later on.
I can't think of any way there would be a Station Street that isn't on that map. Maybe Station Street was removed in order to pursue some urban renewal policy. This seems to suggest that part of Station Street remains, but it is unclear. It also says the original Station Street Hotdogs closed "24 years ago", which is exactly the time that the East Busway was built, so maybe this so-called "Station Street" was replaced by the East Busway.
1. buckley's 'last goodbye' is his best song.
2. hey, do you know what good song you probably haven't listened to in a long time or ever? iggy pop's 'don't look down' from new values. lindsay buckingham's 'don't look down' is also not a bad song, it it's confected, synth-pop way.
3. I have horrible jet lag, just horrible. I always forget how bad it is to go east the full 12 hours. fuck this. I have decided to combat it by getting puking sick and then eating particularly nauseating foods like veal liverwurst, reading infinite jest even though my eyes hurt, lying with my children to help them sleep even though I am awake in the hot night, and stopping taking all my medication including anti depressants suddenly, just because I don't know where they are in my tick-like unpacked suitcases. you are not supposed to stop them all, all of a sudden like that. writing this out it occurs to me that this is stupid and I should just go get the fucking pills.
There's a shop near me called "Shop on the Bridge". It's not on a bridge. It used to be, before it moved, and was called something else, but everyone referred to it as the shop on the bridge, so when they moved, they kept that.
OK I found one pill, good enough for now and I'll find the rest later when it gets light. that sounds weak, really, but whatever, it's an improvement.
this phenomenon of retaining former names is very pronounced among singapore hawker stall proprietors. thus one must frequently go to amoy st to encounter 'old airport rd stall #17 nasi padang', and the like.
I have decided to combat it by getting puking sick and then eating particularly nauseating foods like veal liverwurst....
This course of action seems misguided.
I loved Wainwright's eponymous album, which he has since disavowed for being wanky. He has since written some nice pop songs and done some interesting performances, but the only thing of his I keep coming back to is that first one.
At the risk of sounding like a character from an LCD Soundsystem track, I saw Buckley do it when he was still touring bars as a solo performer. He played the Art School in Glasgow in 1993 to an audience of about 10 people. It was OK, quite affected and over-the-top, but OK. Much thrashier because it was just one guy and a trebly guitar.
If Rufus adopts a kid he should name it Furrfu.
Totally OT: I have a two-day meeting this week that I've been really grumpy about, as it's an unpaid thing in which they're telling us to restructure everything about the class I'm teaching just two weeks before the semester starts, and it was really hot and muggy and I was super-annoyed with everyone for not being clear about the departmental objectives back when it would have been really handy to have them, and I would like to confess that I was a total cunt to everyone all day, culminating in making somewhat of a scene. The woman running the meeting sort of barked at me, and I barked back, and then the whole thing was over and we all rushed out with our heads down, fuming. We've emailed each other and both apologized, and she said some really kind things about my passion and commitment, and I admitted to her that I need to be more flexible, and all that. There is another whole day of meetings tomorrow. Should I apologize to everyone, or somehow make it clear that this woman and I are cool or that we've figured things out? Or should I just go down in the annals of department history for being a total cunt and take my licks?
There are worse things than being a cunt and taking licks.
Alameida, am glad you found one pill at least. God knows if I skip a day I get the worst freaking headaches, even without jet lag.
Could someone please tell me why I consistently want to substitute "Cigarettes and chocolate cheese" for the correct lyric? WTF is chocolate cheese?
79: I wish that hadn't led me to this.
The best put-down I ever heard someone give a typeface was to call it "Velveetica".
The title led me to expect cream cheese.
76: I'd let it slide -- particularly if you're going to be in a room together, body language should make it clear that you're cool with each other.
Aha! It comes from a Four Bitchin' Babes song:
Butter, I remember Butter
We were once like lovers
We were quite a teamI'll take some butter smothered pasta please
In a vat of chocolate Cheese.
(Via.)
69: you are not supposed to stop them all, all of a sudden like that.
No, you're not. Don't do that, please.
I've listened to / watched the Jeff Buckley. I'd never seen him before. The man is sexy, drips of sex. It strikes me that listening to his rendition of the song without watching the performance might be a different experience. He does carry on, though, doesn't he?
I should also watch Rufus Wainwright's version, given that he gets a pass in my universe for pretty much anything he does, and I've never actually viewed him either. His voice is pleasing.
I don't understand what Standpipe means in 13 upthread.
80: The Trappist monks at Gethsemani make very nice cheese and fudge, but they keep them separate, as Jesus would.
Yesterday at the fair there was a food booth advertising "CHOCOLATE COVERED BACON" real big, like that.
I didn't try it, though I admit I was slightly tempted, just for Apo's sake.
I don't understand what Standpipe means in 13 upthread.
I was referring to Ari's comment about k.d. lang's putative penis.
putative penis
Now who owes the trans community an apology?
The man is sexy, drips of sex.
You're not allowed to masturbate to him, parsimon.
parsi, you should check him out, he's actually hot also. unrelatedly, you know who is the queeniest goddamn queen in the world? lindsey fucking graham.
Can we masturbate to Zombie Jeff Buckley? What's the deal with the undead?
99: That's rank lurchery.
Oh, and Kobe!
97: Why? Heavens, has he died? Anyway, he's just supposed to stand for something -- I imagine that's the point. Mind, this is just based on having watched that one video that SB linked. I didn't really know who he was.
I hope he hasn't died. He seems rather young. I'm downloading the Wainwright now, so I can't check.
I am also curious about whatever ari might mean about Ezra's decline.
Well, I've said all this before, so I'm reluctant to get into too much depth, particularly because I don't know Ezra Klein, Handsome Jew Blogger™, and also because I'm speculating, but anyway, here's the short version. My sense is that EK is very smart, and my opinion is that he writes quite well. I also think that if I did get to know him, like if he decided that he wanted to make me a savory vegetarian dinner or something, we'd probably get on quite well. And in addition to all that, he actually knows something about something -- health care policy, in his case -- and that's a virtue. But I've always had the nagging suspicion, and really it's little more than that, that his screaming ambition* will force him to make compromises that, in retrospect, may well lead him to a Broderian position as a very safe centrist, always palatable for those in power but never quite as interesting as the rest of us had once hoped he would become. Again though, I have no idea what I'm talking about.
* You know how those people (sotto voce: the Jews) are.
Why? Heavens, has he died?
More than 10 years ago, I'm afraid. Drowned in a river.
Yes, you have said that. But that's a prediction regarding decline, and you recently pointed to a piece which you said was evidence of decline.
101: Yeah, he's dead. He, like, walked into the fucking Mississippi River while in Memphis, or some such nonsense. He was, by all accounts, supposed to have been a great guy.
parsi, I thought you meant wainwright, who is both alive and hot.
104: I found the Graham piece, coupled with his decision to go to WaPo, emblematic of his decline. He seems to have compromised in order to land the interview with queenie Lindsey. But it could be that I'm just reading too much into the lack of bite in the questions he asks, including, for example, his failure to follow up about Graham's newsworthy claim that the public option is already dead.
Shit. I apologize for being so clueless. I didn't really know who he was.
It's okay, really. Just as long as you're not still masturbating. We have standards, you know.
I would like to hear Pink Floyd songs covered by a Richard Nixon impersonator. Can anyone arrange this?
110: No. Having listened to the Wainwright version -- I've heard it many times before, I realize. Can I snatch (save) that song from youtube?
Rufus, if I may call him that, sings with respect. Damn, I like his voice. I want to say: he's a folksinger. Like his dad and the rest of the family.
Ari, I'm agreed with neb that you are being predictive of any possible decline on Ezra's part. It may happen, but despite his youth, he's first-rate still.
111: If you believe, you can achieve! Also, there is probably pr0n of it somewhere.
I like parsimon just a little more for not knowing Jeff Buckley was dead.
Jeff Buckley, the Jackson C. Frank of his generation?
111: "One of These Days" is pretty much already there.
112.3:It may already be happening. On a hunch I went back to an interview/piece he had done with Mac Baucus back in March at the Atlantic. EK said then that Baucus would be the father of whatever health care bill we got. Absolutely critical, central, determinative Baucus was.
I went back because last week Ezra as much as said we just need to ignore whatever comes out of Finance. It won't matter, we can dump everything Baucus does when we get to conference.
114: bob, I'm apparently very seriously out of it, since I didn't know who Jeff Buckley was in the first place. It's not really something to be proud of.
I will say this: a Canadian friend of mine recently asked, "Who the hell is Jon Stewart?"
So there you go.
The Curious Cultural Journey of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah". From Michael Barthel's Experience Music Project presentation.
On the Buckley version:
The effect was to flatten the song emotionally, to take out all the different Hallelujahs Cohen depicted and reduce them to one: the cold and broken, which appears here twice. Even the "you don't really care for music" dig sounds more wronged than cutting, and the sex is now the ecstasy of the brooding artiste, an image Cohen always seemed careful to subvert.
Can I snatch (save) that song from youtube?
http://www.mediafire.com/?wtzjnyzv4lm
122: Thanks, apo. Much appreciated.
Rufus, if I may call him that, sings with respect. Damn, I like his voice. I want to say: he's a folksinger.
I was going to say, I just listened to the various versions and, of those, I liked the Rufus Wainwright version the best because it didn't try to up the emotional intensity. It just treated it as a good song. I like parsimon's use of "respect." He doesn't claim ownership of the song, he just tries to do it justice.
I'm not sure I think that, in general, he's a folksinger, but that's a nice performance.
I like the original Leonard Cohen version better than the version linked.
121: Thanks, interesting read, especially in light of the whole "Christmas Number One"/three versions on the charts simultaneously phenomenon from last December. I'd be interested to see both the charts and the narrative updated.
The Curious Cultural Journey of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah". From Michael Barthel's Experience Music Project presentation.
I also enjoyed that. I haven't listened to all of the samples yet, but I particularly appreciated that somebody set out to answer the question, "why did this particular Leonard Cohen song suddenly become so popular." And he does a good job.
It isn't my favorite Cohen song.
This post and the Cover post keep sounding to me like Saw and Saw II. Is it a franchise?
Wait a second, Ezra drowned himself in the Mississippi?
||?
Doin Pandora tonight, "stuff like Azure Ray".
Either they are very good, or I have no taste, but they never fail me. 1 dislike in 20.
|>
Better Than Ezra ran through the wet grass, fell a step behind, and then drowned in the Mississippi.
Oh wow. Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah is wonderful. Thanks, Standpipe. I'd never heard it before, for some reason.
The cover by the author of the essay linked at 121 is an impressive departure.
The song will be embedded in my musical head throughout the day tomorrow, I fear, which may not be for the best. Standpipe is beginning to remind me of ogged. I hope there's some dancing somewhere along the way.
Tim Buckley was astoundingly hot. And then he died.
This thread inspired me to go back and listen to "One Man Guy" (and the rest of Poses). I don't know why but I can listen to that song over and over again. In general, I like Loudon's songwriting better than Rufus's, but Rufus's singing, so perhaps that is it. And then there's the tickle of knowing that Martha (who created a so-so album that I also seem to own) is doing back up. A family affair that I appreciate.
Standpipe is beginning to remind me of ogged.
Odd. I don't even have a Whole Foods.
I have a Whole Foods, but I don't go any more. The neighborhood is getting rough.
P.S. Is it bad that, of all the people named in the OP, I've only heard of Cohen.
My Whole Foods is eight miles wide.
I like the song "Poses" a lot.
Is it bad that, of all the people named in the OP, I've only heard of Cohen
Yes and no. He should be the most famous out of the three based on his body of work. But Buckley and Wainwright are hardly obscure! Get out there more.
I confess that I too was unclear on whether Buckley was alive; it never occurred to me to masturbate to him, so it wasn't an issue. Anyway, I get all those guys mixed up. Buckley, dead. Elliott Smith, dead. Beck is still alive, right?
It costs a whole dollar to buy new music. So, I'm just listening to Foreigner most of the time.
139: Approved wording is, "I confess that, of all the people named in the OP, I've only heard of Cohen."
But William F. was the sexiest one of all.
Now that I've clicked the link, I realize I had no idea about Leonard Cohen either. I was thinking of Bernstein.
What about Jeff Beck, is he alive?
Now that I've clicked the link, I realize I had no idea about Leonard Cohen either. I was thinking of Bernstein.
I was going to ask how old you were, but then I realized I should just remark as to how I did not realize Pittsburgh was completely cut off from the airwaves.
"I've only heard of Cohen."
Actually, "I've heard only of Cohen" is probably more accurate.
"[Dead or Alive?] tracks whether famous people are still alive or whether they have passed away."
Claude Lévi-Strauss: alive!
Tom Lehrer, who seems to entertain all 6 of us.
Lehrer's "Irish Ballad" put Iris into tears, and she begged us never to play it again.
Beck and Jeff Beck are alive, but are they, you know, living the life? Isn't that the most important question?
Okay, NOS, how about Olivia de Havilland? Is she alive? What about Vivien Leigh?
155: This drove me to tears as a kid. The only sadder song was "Tell Laura I Love Her".
Generalissimo Francisco Franco: Dead!
It's unable to tell me if Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, is dead. The Internet fails me again.
155: I'm really tempted to play that whole album for the girls, but it would upset my wife. As it is, I introduced them to Doc Watson's classic debut album last week, and they made me play "Omie Wise" over and over again until they had it memorized.
149: I think it is more 'me' than 'Pittsburgh' that is musically cut-off. I did go hear people play rock on cellos the other week. It was pretty good. Also it was free, if a bit rainy.
It's also unable to determine if nosflow is alive. Intriguing.
I'm dismayed to not find an entry for myself in there. Am I dead or alive? What if I'm like Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense?
It doesn't know pseudonyms. Try using your real name, "Steve McNair".
What if I'm like Bruce Willis in The Sixth Sense?
Then you've like had sex with Demi Moore probably!
Am I the only one who hears/reads "Steve McNair" and thinks of the depilatory product? "Hoots mon! Ye'll be as smooth as Glesgae haggis!"
155: This drove me to tears as a kid.
Interestingly, to cheer her up after the Lehrer, we sang that song to her! I don't know why that worked, but it did.
||
This is almost on-topic for the other thread, but that seems to be dead.
Anyhoo, when I checked Facebook this morning, there was a message from a former colleague who was complaining about his housemate and the big fight they had had. Said former housemate is my current colleague. Former & current had an on-again/off-again relationship for a few years, moved in together, broke it off for good, but still lived together. (Le fucked-up, n'est ce pas?) So I casually asked current colleague (who happens to be scorchingly hot and 12-15 years younger than former colleague) about it, and she had not heard about it. Former colleague had taken down the FB update in the meantime. Current colleague was totally scandalized to hear that her dirty laundry was being aired. In the course of our conversation, I shared with current colleague that former colleague had said fucked-up things about her at a party a couple of months ago (this I heard 3rd-hand from Former Colleague #2). Which made her even more upset.
So Mineshaft, did I commit an ethical blunder? "It was like that when I got here" seems to be the Homer Simpsonism* that applies.
*Played by Donald Sutherland in the 1975 film version, but he seems like J.K. Simmons, does he not?
||>
OMG I just remembered I totally have had sex with Demi Moore! And I keep meeting Olivia Williams for dinner at this fancy Philly restaurant, but she doesn't talk to me the whole meal! This is going to make Thanksgiving awk-ward.
This is going to make Thanksgiving awk-ward.
If "already dead" isn't an excuse to blow off tiresome family Thanksgiving, I don't know what is.
So Rufus Wainwright would be the exact person to call if you wanted to fix someone's little red wagon.
And I keep meeting Olivia Williams for dinner at this fancy Philly restaurant, but she doesn't talk to me the whole meal!
Maybe that's how she had you programmed at the Dollhouse.
172: Said former housemate is my current
Sorry this was really confusing to obfuscate.
175: Per Google, I am the first person to think of this.
I wish I knew in what respect minnie's remark was clever.
Rufous. You take it from there.
There is no denying that that is clever.
Wait, it just occurred to me that the title of this post might be a riff on the Tampa defense under Monte Kiffin. Is that even possible?
Among the zillion covers of the H song on YouTube, I did like this one from Arooj Aftab, a young Pakistani woman (it not 10 minutes long, it seems to be simply repeated). Some other cover lore, apparently the one by the Norwegians mentioned in the link in 121 is the most viewed YouTube of a cover song ever. There are a few Lucy Lawless covers as well (searching them out left as an exercise for the motivated reader).
Google searches seem to continue to disappoint linkwise.
Don't know why, but I've started skipping past the murder ballads recently. For the past few months, I haven't wanted to hear Omie and her sisters murdered one more time. I always thought Clementine was a sad song too. I take lyrics literally.
"I take lyrics literally."
And then you found out that mountains weren't really purple.
And then you found out that mountains weren't really purple.
But they totally are.
187: I'm with you: Clementine is indeed a sad song!
did I commit an ethical blunder?
Depends on who you owe loyalty to to whom you owe loyalty. And your sense of ethics.
There's a general principle of "First do no harm/interference" which I would apply in cases of colleagues, former or current. Not everyone would agree.
However, since you did decide to speak up, the question becomes whether you owe particular loyalty to one person or the other -- like, for example, one of them is a much closer friend. Or whether you have a general guiding ethical principle, such as "It's not kosher to talk trash about somebody behind their back, and posting Facebook updates to mutual friends totally counts as talking trash."
If you want grounds for ignoring this, remember that I'm on record as going to extraordinary lengths to avoid this kind of personal entanglement in the lives of my colleagues.
Yeah, Clementine always bothered me a bit as a kid as well. But it seems to have nothing on its apparent precursor which is full on creepy in a number of different ways.
Her lips were like two luscious beefsteaks
Dipp'd in tomato sauce and brine,
And like the cashmere goatess covering
Was the fine wool of Clementine.
Clementine always bothered me a bit as a kid as well
One of the most creepy and horrible experiences of my adult life was having a train conductor with whom I'd had a single, casual conversation track me down at my workplace. When I picked up the phone, he started singing that song.
God, that is a singularly awful memory. I can still remember the total free-fall in the pit of my stomach, and the terror of how on earth he had managed to track down my last name and exact location.
||
Has anyone ever read "Literacy Among the Ruins", by Frank Gannon? It's a first-person account of Gannon trying to teach a remedial English class (with little success). I've just discovered, thanks to the Internet, that it has met to the cruelest fate imaginable -- it's regularly assigned as reading in remedial English classes.
|>
192: I owe the most allegiance, by far, to the current colleague (younger, female, more aggrieved). The stuff she told me today about what former colleague has been doing was pretty scary: classic mind-fuck tactics.
I had been trying to adhere to the Hippocratic principle, but it's just getting out of hand. Former colleague gets creepier and creepier with every interaction. The last girl I saw him with was clearly stoned out of her gourd. And he was apparently putting the moves on her. Squick!
I don't know what else to do other than offer current colleague my unqualified support and a place to crash if she can't stay at home. (No ulterior motives, plenty of people at my house to chaperone.)
I probably shouldn't have said as much as I did, huh?
Holy crap, Lucinda. That's terrifying. I'm hoping that it only happened the once and then he disappeared again.
Naw, WHT, I think you did the right thing. It's on FB; it's public. If it were just some drunken comments at a bar, I'd let it slide, but you don't pull that shit on FB.
Yes, thank God. I don't remember what I said to him, only that he asked if I was upset by what he'd done and I said yes, and told him not to contact me again. And he didn't.
Although somewhere in the back of my mind is the awareness that I am extremely Googleable -- presidential pseudonym not withstanding -- and the weird fear that even years later he might decide to track me down again.
It's somewhat mitigated by the fact that I think he was severely socially awkward and tone-deaf more than actively malicious.
(Further to 198, I'm assuming it wasn't like "'s bitch roommate ate all the salsa >:-(.")
Eating all the salsa is right out. Capital offense in my household.
So, what, you always have these little jars of salsa that no one can finish?
'Cause they've got a word for that, and that word is wasteful.
202: Those are the ones you combine to make nachos for the band that just showed up at 3am. It's like you've never lived, neb.
It seems this thread has been cleverly designed to demonstrate that no one here reads my blog.
205: That would explain why you don't show up in the Dead or Alive site.
206: No one reads mine either. It's what's supposed to happen with your blog.
Yeah, I don't actually care. I mean, I don't even link to it under my name anymore.
Still, it's interesting that the thread has so far wandered through three topics on which I have relevant posts.
211: Well, you shouldn't. It's complete drivel, and my cob-logger has seemingly abandoned me again to make wine. What a jerk.
So many blogs go unread. Such a waste.
Eh, most of those blogs are drivel.
215: I believe essear was making a funny about a particular blog, teo.
Not very funny, really, but it's the best I can do.
I don't read that one either, of course.
In other news, Roswell kind of sucks.
I mean, it's not terrible, but it's not great either.
I read teo's blog! (All of them, even.) And neb's, though I confess to often being confused. However, I'm not sure I was previously aware of Stanley's.
224: Hold out for Ryan's posts. He's the real payoff.
I just looked at the stats for my blog for the first time in a while, and I think my mom's reading it now. Maybe she'll wander over here. Hi, Mom!
Everyone is no doubt wondering to whom they can expect to listen tomorrow. They can listen to the following big bands/large ensembles/jazz orchestras:
Brotherhood of Breath
Otomo Yoshihide New Jazz Orchestra
Never Enough Hope
Mucca Pazza
Darcy James Argue's Secret Society
Territory Band
Adam Lane's Full Throttle Orchestra
Motor Totemist Guild
Keefe Jackson's Project Project
New York Underground Orchestra
Szilárd Mezei Ensemble
Vinny Golia Large Ensemble
As well as music for theater by FM Einheit. And some other stuff.
Where is your cob-logger making wine these days, Stanley?
229: It's a small outfit, and he just got the nod as head winemaker. Also: its name is bad enough that I should e-mail you, which I will do forthwith. Anyhow, I'm curious to see what comes out of this very wet summer.
228: Not even a post this time?
Even I have shame enough to assume that a weekly post about me me me isn't going to be of lasting interest.
But I don't have shame enough not to mention it at all.
232: I've enjoyed the show when I can listen along and reiterate my desire for mp3 versions after the fact. But you still suck eggs.
I actually did make a recording of the 7/14 show, but I wasn't aware that they were generally wanted and haven't done any since then. Too bad, since the last two were (IMO) really good. I can record the next one, if you want.
Stanley supports me in email. Anyway, good for Ryan. Wet summers are a challenge we don't have to face out here. Mildew! Rot! Horrors. Incidentally, anyone who's in Portland August 27 should come to the fermentation festival; we'll be pouring.
234: You should, I have two on my iPod that show up randomly via shuffle and tend to stay on.
Hey, teo, that post you linked to about Hallelujah was interesting, and yet demented.
And that comma splice was like your bonus gift, neb.
You sure do know how to treat me right.
Yes to a recording. I'm never able to hear much of the show.
237: Uh, thanks. I believe it was also linked somewhere in this thread.
I confess to reading the post title in a John Madden voice as a football strategy I don't understand.
241: Years of experience has taught me not to follow any link found in the comment section here.
240: That's because most of it is out the range of human hearing. Very experimental.
You know, neb, my daughters' duet the other day wouldn't have been out of place on your show.
243: Probably a good strategy in general. In any case, it's comment 121 of this thread that links to that post.
Clementine is indeed a sad song!
No way, man. There's a sad interlude in the middle when she drowns and all, but it totally ends on a happy note ("...till I kissed her little sister / and forgot my Clementine").
243: Years of experience has taught me not to follow any link found in the comment section here.
I came for the swimming posts and stayed for the links in the comment section
247: I don't recall ever hearing that particular verse which I read about last night. Apparently I was a protected child, The verse about the little sister was often left out of folk song books intended for children, presumably because it seemed morally questionable.
249. Like the lesser known third verse of "Bobby Shaftoe":
Bobby Shaftoe's gettin' a bairn
For to dangle on his airm;
In his airm and on his knee,
Bonny Bobby Shaftoe.
249: As a teenager, I once got to attend a meeting of the fraternal organization of which my father was a member (I think they invited the local Boy Scout troop or something). I learned that one of the regular activities at the meetings was a group sing. When the song-leader solicited suggestions for songs, a certain senior member piped up and said "We haven't sung 'Clementine' in a long time. Let's sing that."
So the assembled membership (which corresponded almost precisely to what the electoral rolls would have looked like back when there was a property qualification) belted out Clementine. There was a notably enthusiastic crescendo when it came to the stanza about the little sister--the existence of which came as a revelation to me at that moment.
Afterwards, my father confided to me that the aforementioned member suggested "Clementine" at every group sing, always with the preamble that "We haven't sung Clementine in a long time."
Holy crap I never knew the lyrics to that song. NO MORE MASTURBATING TO HUGGING DARLING CLEMENTINE!
Freaky, man.
As opposed to the new, rational, much admired from afar America?
Thanks. We're very fond of Scotland on our end.
Mostly just the whisky, but Edinburgh was very nice.
Everyone everywhere is a bit crazy, but the current US [the post 2000 US] does seem pretty out there by global standards of public irrationality.*
* everywhere probably has the 30% crazification factor, but in most places the ancien regime keeps the lid on 'em.
ttaM is thinking of the New, Terrifying America. Bastard offspring of the Recent, Stifling America and the Now, Open-Minded America.
Also, to clarify, 254 was just supposed to be a flippant joke, rather than a 'die America, die!' comment.
Years of experience has taught me not to follow any link found in the comment section here.
In that folk music can be argued to feature the stories and perspectives of otherwise underrepresented or misrepresented strata of society, I submit that Wainwright is very much a folk singer. Many, many of his songs are accessible to anyone who's had drama, yes, but much of his work reflects queer or otherwise culturally borderline experiences in a way much popular music does not.
I'm pretty much a fanboy, though, so if someone popped up and said, "You know, I think Wainwright would be a pretty shite astronaut," I would immediately begin formulating a defense of his career as a decorated aviator and scientist.
So many blogs go unread. Such a waste.
We're just saving them for when the internet comes over at 3am, at which time we'll pour them all together to make one big blog.
How the hell are we supposed to read your blog, teo? It's in Arabic.
258: On some level it's point-and-laugh funny, and on another it's fucking terrifying.
263: The Islamofascist conspiracy to dhimmify America is, alas, running a few years behind schedule, but don't you fret, we'll have you speaking reading Arabic real soon. If you know what's good for you, that is.
264: Our % of the world's spending on military and % of working nukes is the terrifying part. If you have a big gun there is a lot of prssure to shoot it. (As apo surely knows.)
Everyone everywhere is a bit crazy, but the current US [the post 2000 US] does seem pretty out there by global standards of public irrationality.
Doesn't square with my experience at all. With rare and noble exceptions (I'll concede the Netherlands and maybe parts of Scandinavia), other countries are every bit as crazy as we are. The major difference is that they aren't economic and military superpowers. I don't believe for a moment that if, say, Brazil or Australia had the wherewithal, they'd screw up just as spectacularly. Our crazy is on display for all the world to see, that's all.
That said, you could certainly cherry pick examples to show that the American public is an outlier on certain measures of irrationality (e.g. global warming denialism). That's a product of our particular political fissures. I contend that you find an analogous example to condemn just about any country, e.g. % of the population that believes that GMO's and cell phone towers are proven carcinogens, or % of the population that believes that a Zionist conspiracy controls global finance.
267: "they's" s/b "they wouldn't".
re: 267
Really? I think you're wrong on that one. Quite hard to prove who is right, though!
Quite hard to prove who is right, though!
Indeed. We can both only extrapolate from experience. My experience tells me that every nation I've gotten to know has certain blindspots in their perception of empirical reality, certain received wisdom that seems bizarre to the international observer, certain political sacred cows that are unique to their situation, and certain consensus views that conflate national self-interest with universal moral truths.
It's easy to tut-tut about the ignorance or irrationality of Americans because our characteristic flaws are so well publicized, and because they are so incomprehensible to a certain sort of European who takes contingent features of their contemporary society as normative for any civilized people.
/defensive
the American public is an outlier on certain measures of irrationality
The American public is an outlier on most of these (compared with the rest of the industrialized first world, anyhow) because of the dogged persistence of primitive superstition and belief in magic religion here. That's the key to American exceptionalism: 2/3 of the country or more is still stuck in the 18th century. Which is, indeed, exceptional.
And yet, the UK is the country that has maintained state-run Christian schools until the 21st century, and responded to Christianity no longer actually being the state religion in any meaningful way by starting to maintain state-run Muslim schools as well.
because of the dogged persistence of religion a particularly obscurantist form of religion and a cynical political organization prepared to take advantage of it.
Thus, the US shows up as an outlier (again, among First World countries, i.e. a fraction of the global population) on questions like the age of the earth and the origins of life.
Go to another country and find an issue where a powerful political constituency sees an opportunity to exploit ignorance, and you will see rampant ignorance. Examples abound: Japanese who believe that their intestines are biologically incapable of digesting foreign rice; French who believe that displacing the French language around the world is a conscious and salient objective of Anglo-American foreign policy; Germans who believe that the typical Turkish family in Germany actively prevents their daughters from learning German so that they don't marry a local, etc. etc.
re: 270
You'll note that in my 258, I'm fine with the idea that everywhere has crazy people. The point is about the _public_ culture, and I think it's pretty indisputable that the US is an outlier compared to most other wealthy first world nations.
Actively prevents its daughters.
The rice thing and the language-of-diplomacy thing strike me as much weirder than the last one.
The point is about the _public_ culture, and I think it's pretty indisputable that the US is an outlier compared to most other wealthy first world nations.
And "the public culture" is synonymous with "what I perceive as an outsider", correct? It's even harder to disagree with something taking place in Ttam Ntargacm's brain!
Oh come on. If you think the right-wing US media is like the right-wing media in other countries you are sadly deluded.
Oh come on? Aren't there a ton of countries who are trying not to be hijacked by extremists, and one of the battlefronts is the media?
that the US is an outlier compared to most other wealthy first world nations.
Never mind.
In a way, I no longer think of the US as being fully first world anymore.
I'm not saying other countries don't have huge numbers of loons, or that people don't have all kinds of wacky beliefs, but in most of these countries those nutjobs haven't hijacked a major political party and a large chunk of the media.
277: Well, yeah, if by public culture you mean what comes through the media, then we're totally nuts. Then again, Japanese television.
The point is about the _public_ culture, and I think it's pretty indisputable that the US is an outlier compared to most other wealthy first world nations.
Since you've just walked back the claims in 258 significantly (viz, "global standards" becomes "most other wealthy first world nations"), I should probably declare victory and drop it. But I'm still not convinced that the claim is true in any meaningful sense except the sense that our public irrationality is more visible and has more capacity to do harm outside our borders.
America has its version of crazy, which is quite jarring to a secular, left-leaning European. But other countries have their version of crazy, too. Look at the squabbling between linguistic groups in Belgium. Or the deference given to riotous farmers in France. Or the recission of Germany's Article 16 protections for asylum-seekers in the face of neo-Nazi violence. Or the insistence of successive UK governments on maintaining a domestic arms manufacturing industry. Or the election and re-election of Silvio Berlusconi. None of it would be possible without a heaping helping of public irrationality.
in most of these countries those nutjobs haven't hijacked a major political party and a large chunk of the media
So we're omitting Russia and Italy from the sample?
re: 283
Yeah, because by global standards in 258 I was clearly implying Turkmenistan and Haiti, rather than Canada, France, Germany, the UK, etc. Never mind.
272: Belief in God, UK 38%, US 92%.
re: 284
Russia, definitely.
With Italy, on the other hand, you have a point.
I no longer think of the US as being fully first world anymore.
Word.
Our crazy is on display for all the world to see
Hovertext
Our crazy is on display for all the world to see
All the federales say they could have had us any day. They only let us slip away, out of kindness, I suppose.
I really think, however, that there is a qualitative difference in the craziness of thinking things like "we must maintain a domestic arms industry in the UK" and "French farmers deserve large amounts of public support and subsidy" and "social equality demands that we have quotas of French-speaking civil servants in all government departments" on the one hand, and "the earth was created 6,000 years ago" and "Barack Obama is the Antichrist" on the other.
The first set are arguably bad policy but I don't think they really count as actually insane in the way that the second set do.
283
But I'm still not convinced that the claim is true in any meaningful sense except the sense that our public irrationality is more visible and has more capacity to do harm outside our borders.
But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?
Yeah, I think the US wins the crazy race due to (1) the religious thing apo keeps pointing to; and, (2) simple signal-to-noise ratio compared to any other country.
It would be funny if, owing to a handful of agnostic Swiss guards or something, the US ended up with higher believe-in-God numbers than Vatican City.
294
It would be funny if, owing to a handful of agnostic Swiss guards or something, the US ended up with higher believe-in-God numbers than Vatican City.
It would only take 45 of them. That's almost half the guards, but apparently there are also 43 "other lay persons" who have Vatican citizenship. It's not impossible. (This also assumes that being agnostic is sufficient to count as disbelief in god, but...)
In that folk music can be argued to feature the stories and perspectives of otherwise underrepresented or misrepresented strata of society,
Oh, good lord, no.
I mean, yes, that describes a compelling feature of folk music, but that would be a terrible definition of folk music.
It's funny, I've been thinking about writing a post trying to work out a definition of folk music and realizing that it's difficult to find a good working definition (particularly one that doesn't automatically exclude all contemporary music). But I still think there's an important distinction to be made between singer/songwriters and folk music, and that what you're describing sounds much more like a description of singer/songwriters.
I do like the quote at that link, "If I sing something not the way you're used to hearing it, and you think I've got the tune or the words wrong, then it isn't folk. On the other hand, if you think I'm singing a variant-then it's folk."
Quite hard to prove who is right, though!
It's like you've never even seen Trading Places.
The Eddie Murphy one or the house pr0n one?
Re: Other people's crazy
Jorg Haider. Jean-Marie LePen. Ian Paisley. Plus all those ultra-nationalists in the former East Bloc countries. Bad as the US is, we do not currently have roving gangs of right-wingers who go into train stations and beat up anyone who looks "leftist", as many of my friends report seeing happen in western Europe.
I think the US wins the crazy race
We're number one! We're number one! USA! USA!
I mean, yes, that describes a compelling feature of folk music, but that would be a terrible definition of folk music.
Quite true, and it's indisputably a quandary. I honestly wouldn't know where to begin with an all-encompassing-and-accurate definition. I'm just slicing it one specific way to the advantage of my fanboydom. This is, after all, the internets.
I love that quote you pull from the link.
I'm just slicing it one specific way
Arguably, I realized after I posted my comment, Rufus is a "folksinger" in the same way that Loudon is -- they're both singer/songwriters.
Also, Dick Guaghan really is a great live performer (I was looking for Leon Rosselson songs, because I was thinking about that quote from him, via the linked post, "[T]hey are not folk songs. ... These songs are self-conscious rather than class-conscious, self-centered rather than community-centered, personal rather than impersonal.").
299: The one where a couple of old guys throw the USA out into the street and give all of its wealth and power to Brazil. Hilarious hijinks ensue, with Costa Rica in the Jamie Lee Curtis role.
we do not currently have roving gangs of right-wingers who go into train stations and beat up anyone who looks "leftist"
That's just because no one takes the train in the US.
I honestly wouldn't know where to begin with an all-encompassing-and-accurate definition.
I was going to suggest "Music that either was composed, or plausibly could have been composed, in a house without electricity", but upon further reflection, I realize that would capture the works of Beethoven and Wagner as well.
Alternatively: "Music that can be best appreciated when the listener is sober and the musician drunk."
This made me think of Apostropher:
prince live in columbia, nc, 1981
It is pretty sweet.
306 annex: Maybe the Wiggles, but only because their audience shouldn't drink.
The one where a couple of old guys throw the USA out into the street and give all of its wealth and power to Brazil
The scene where Brazil invites the whole favela to party in the White House is priceless.
we do not currently have roving gangs of right-wingers who go into train stations and beat up anyone who looks "leftist", as many of my friends report seeing happen in western Europe.
No, US rightwingers just go straight to firearms.
297: particularly one that doesn't automatically exclude all contemporary music
I was puzzling about this a bit the other day when I was going through our CDs and came across a Phil Ochs concert CD that I had forgotten had been put out by Folkways. Not necessarily inappropriate, but it did make me stop and think.
307: Pretty sure that must be Columbia, *South* Carolina. Columbia, NC is less than 1/100th the size of the one over the border.
Maybe the Wiggles
I'm pretty sure they're on amyl nitrite, not booze.
313: Could be. At least when they picked dancers and costumes, it's clear they didn't forget about dad. Unlike Elmo.
At least when they picked dancers and costumes, it's clear they didn't forget about dad.
(Anglo-American) folk music = Child's Ballads, other such antiques and curios (e.g. sea shantys). and the direct imitators.
That is all
Pete Seeger singing "If I Had a Hammer" is not folk.
Bob Dylan singing "Blowiin in the Wind" is not folk.
Steeleye Span doing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" is not folk.
317: Play this right, Bob, and you can pivot the thread to a discussion of the Chicago Seven trial!
But Fairport doing "Tam Lin" even with an electric guitar & violin jam is folk.
Bad as the US is, we do not currently have roving gangs of right-wingers who go into train stations and beat up anyone who looks "leftist", as many of my friends report seeing happen in western Europe.
I'd be extremely sceptical about this. I suspect you'd search long and hard to find accounts of violent gangs in train stations that weren't descriptions of football violence.
320: Isn't 'football* violence' evidence of one type of crazy that is more common in places that aren't the United States? Not that we don't have the occasional riot over sports.
* or soccer. Whichever.
re: 321
Yeah, possibly. It, football violence, is still a fairly persistent problem in some countries. Not so much in the UK anymore, though, although it does still go on it's not at the level it has been in the past.
321: I think of so-called "Hockey Dads" when I think of sports violence in the US.
Dude. I read about football violence in a book and thought it was utterly bizarre and horrible and completely outside anything I'd expect to exist.
324: I read that book too ("Among the Thugs"). That doesn't happen anymore in the UK. Maybe in Croatia.
I mean, I've been close to riots a couple times, but it wouldn't have occurred to me to be a common thing that happens after sporting events. They should be a special occasion with someone you love, like championships or something. And more flames than beating people up.
Just push the flaming object off the roof.
Dutch friends have shown me opinion sections in major newspapers where folks were calmly discussing whether non-Dutch people ought to continue to be able to live there. Clearly xenophobic funtime is a game we get to play in the US too, but they at least have to be indirect about it. I also remember talking with European friends back in 2003 about Austria's exciting new fascist prime minister. They were saying things like "Well, the prime minister in Austria isn't really that powerful." Dude, why are you equivacating? Fascist prime minister!
That said, Ttam's original point was clearly correct, though I think that has to do with a) the size and visibility of our public sphere, b) this particular moment of desparation manifesting as especially crazy right-wing freakoutery.
Part of it is the sheer size and diffusion of the crazy market here. In order to achieve the economy of scale necessary to turn a profit nationally, you really have to be Big Crazy. Little regional crazies may prosper, but they can only string together a couple tottering newspapers.
Little regional crazies may prosper, but they can only string together a couple tottering newspapers.
Thanks to clustering and network effects, you still have particular regions of world-beating crazy, where the heritage of centuries of crazy sustains a competitive local manufacturing base, e.g. the Balkans and Ulster. Their success in the export market has been mixed, though.
folks were calmly discussing whether non-Dutch people ought to continue to be able to live there
Of course I won't remember any of the specifics at this point but a couple-three weeks ago I heard NPR interview the guy behind a ballot initiative in California that would strip access to public services (including schools?) from the US-born children of illegal immigrants. He said, in the interview, that those kids aren't citizens since their parents weren't citizens, another variation of this bizarrely retro grandfathering that the chief birther lady keeps wanting to do to Obama whenever she's interviewed. (I gaped when she told Colbert that Obama couldn't be a citizen since one of his parents was not a citizen, which raises the question of how she, herself, is a citizen or, in fact, anyone, ever, if one goes back far enough.)
When the NPR reporter pointed out the Constitution's use of "natural born citizen," he said that does not mean that just being born here makes one a citizen. When the NPR reporter pushed back and said that has certainly been the way it's been interpreted for, at this point, an extremely long time, he was extremely aggressively condescending in his rejection of this notion - well, aggressively condescending by the standards of otherwise polite conversation.
I was stunned that he'd get out there and say something so patently crazy. I mean, the Citizenship Clause is right there in the 14th amendment, right off the bat, with absolutely no wiggle room that my admittedly unlawyerly mind can find.
(On preview, and with Google, I see that his name is Ted H/lt/n and his theory is that illegal immigrants are not "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States and thus their US-born children aren't citizens but it seems to me that argument would raise the question of by what right the US government does anything to illegal immigrants, including deporting them, if they aren't subject to US jurisdiction in the first place. However, I imagine that there are complex judicial parsings of the words being used that I miss at my Rockford Files level of legal literacy.)
Arlo Guthrie singing Can't Help Falling in Love is folk music.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSF89swJ9IU
332: The epistemology of political crazy is an under-explored area.
332: The only silver lining on that whole stinky turd is that the Orly Taitz has a really funny name.
In my optimistic moments, I believe that Obama has this figured out, and he's doing a rope-a-dope all through August, letting the crazy build to a frenzied crescendo, and preparing to split and/or tarnish the opposition with them, as Nixon did with the disorder of the late 1960s. But then I recall my Rick Perlstein, and remember that right-wing violence was equally prevalent in that period, but the arbiters of political narrative determined that only the excesses of the DFH's would be remembered.
So I dunno. I'm still holding out hope that Obama will be an FDR-like figure who will leave the opposition sputtering with impotent rage while he builds a commanding majority for his party. If he gets health care passed this autumn (and doesn't get sucked into an Afghan quagmire), I'd still give him decent odds on the FDR thing.
I never know how to harvest the silver lining from my stinky turds.
Another donation for the boys at the sewage treatment plant.
JRoth, you let them dry, then burn them. The silver will be left behind.
I'm trying to guess whether the crazy anger will burn itself out. How long can they make signs and t-shirts and attend rallies? What sustains them? Is it source-based, does it need constant inputs like rage from talk shows? Does it require other fuels, like having authority figures respond to them? If authority figures ignore them, will they stop feeling rewarded?
I mean, if the history is something like "for a year after Obama was elected, reactionary crazy people shouted a lot at rallies, but then it died down", I'm not so worried. But I don't know whether this stuff builds or fades out. In the small town I watched closely, crazy people raged and fought at meetings for three years, but now that energy has died out.
What sustains them?
The president of the US is not white.
re: 341
Yeah, although I'm sure that's part of it, I think it was more or less inevitable. It seems, after Clinton (and the way Gore and Kerry were spoken of, too) that any Democrat elected would be on the receiving end of a fair bit of hate.
How long will that keep them mad enough to attend meetings? Attending meetings is hard.
332: There's still some wiggle room, surprisingly.
I mean, if the history is something like "for a year after Obama was elected, reactionary crazy people shouted a lot at rallies, but then it died down", I'm not so worried.
The rage at FDR burned on for 30 years, circling ever tighter around a superdense core of deranged loathing, sucking bystanders into its gravitational tug and warping the orbits of distant politicians, until it exploded in a supernova of crazy in the election of 1964. (The remnants, of course, later coalesced into Planet Reagan.)
The president of the US is not white a Democrat.
Fixed that for you.
Nah, the not white problem is part of it. They fear that their country and their culture is being taken away by people who don't understand, respect, or care about them. Clinton was bad enough but at least spoke plausible Bubba. Obama, not so much.
All they need is the air that they breathe and to love you their hatred of evil bogey men.
But I don't know whether this stuff builds or fades out
Given that angry people seem to be increasingly turning up at town-hall meetings with weapons, I'd say that the lunatic fringe is in a building rather than fading phase.
This is a continuation of the McCain/Palin rallies, isn't it? Is it down from that? How many times can people make new t-shirts and signs before they think that maybe they'll skip the next event and spend the evening at home?
I asked about historical instances of demagoguery over at EotAW back when the McCain/Palin rallies were getting all that attention on Youtube, but they told me that historians don't study useful things.
In my optimistic moments, I believe that Obama has this figured out, and he's doing a rope-a-dope all through August....
When a politician's defenders start running the rope-a-dope roll through the player piano, that politician is about to lose something.
350:I asked about historical instances of demagoguery over at EotAW
Signer may not be a historian, I think he is International Relations or Political Science. He discusses Aristotle, Strauss, Arendt. And the book focuses more on current demagogues like Chavez, tho it does look at the past like Huey Long. And Signer is a squishy centrist, part of the Anne-Marie Slaughter crowd.
But it's a very good book.
340 How long can they make signs and t-shirts and attend rallies? What sustains them? Is it source-based, does it need constant inputs like rage from talk shows?
This from "I can hold a grudge forever and would have to actively work to stop being angry" Megan?
No offense intended, of course, I just would have thought there behavior was more comprehensible to you than to me.
Requested from the library, Bob. Thanks.
Heh. But that is, like, personal. I can't maintain that kind of energy over something that the radio told me was an outrage.
Really?
Maybe you can get me an apt at her swank house to talk about health care.
Arlo Guthrie singing Can't Help Falling in Love is folk music.
The introduction he gives in that clip is fantastic.
Never! I cut them out of my life when I learned.
361: You mean you didn't even consider this option?
Does it require other fuels, like having authority figures respond to them?
Yes, to a large extent. The Ulster Unionist brand of crazy - that is the organised culture of intimidating Catholics and wearing silly clothes on marches - has lasted generations because for generations it was actively supported by the Tory Party. Now that the Tory Party no longer gives a shit, they're feeling the squeeze and having to compromise (although the BNP is getting stuck in there).
What worries me about the current round of crazies in America is that as long as it's profitable, in the bottom line sense, for Rupert Murdoch and his heirs to encourage it in order to keep their viewing figures, they probably will. And let's face it, feedback on Fox News is more immediately rewarding than feedback from some dim bulb in Washington.
The thread has moved on, but I want both teo and Stanley to know I read both their blogs. I follow AWB's link to teo, teo's link to Stanley, Stanley to heebie, and from heebie's almost anywhere!
The thread has moved on, but I want both teo and Stanley to know I read both their blogs.
Hmmph, I don't read your blog either.
She doesn't read your blog, she listens to it.
One is supposed to read before one listens.
YOUR READING/LISTENING OPPOSITION UNDERMINES ITSELF
Hmmph, I don't read your blog either.
B-b-but... Stanley and Teo were directly lamenting that people don't read their blogs!
B-b-but... Stanley and Teo were directly lamenting that people don't read their blogs!
I'm sorry; I was just teasing. I was trying for light snark, realized it didn't work, but didn't feel like it made sense to amend my own comment at the end of a dead thread.
On the other hand 367 is funny, so I don't feel bad.
I did link to my blog in this thread, but mostly I responded that way because I had just been thinking about the fact that my blog very much feels like an exercise at this point (one that is still interesting to me, despite the fact that, of course, it is similar to most blogs in being utter drivel). I have enough invested to feel a sense of obligation, but not enough to feel a sense of accomplishment.
I'd say there's an awfully tenuous connection between blogging and 'sense of accomplishment'. For me it was always putting the argument somewhere so I could stop thinking about it, or interacting with friends.
Maddeningly, while I never felt much of a sense of accomplishment when I was blogging more, I now feel guilty about not blogging enough. It's amazing what I can manage to feel guilty about.
For me it was always putting the argument somewhere so I could stop thinking about it, or interacting with friends.
Well, then, I would say, I'm not convinced that the blog is, at this point, a more productive way to think through the issues I'm interested in than just talking with friends.
On the third hand, the conversation in this thread is a good example of what's nice about having a blog. It was fun to be able to look at a post from last year and find a number of good quotations that I had forgotten.
I do think that the virtue of a blog is that it accumulates. The other reason I do it is because I do want to force myself to practice writing about music. The times when I am trying to say something insightful is the part of the blog that both feels like work and does generate a sense of accomplishment if I like what I've written.
