As always, click to enlarge. For more Pat Oliphant, Tom Toles, Ben Sargent, and Calvin and Hobbes, click here, here, here, and here...
Rushbo Stupidism of the Week:
Empathy is nothing more than spirit or feelings or what have you, so based -- and -- but there's one caveat to this: empathy is a code word when Obama talks about judges having it. All he means by it is, "I want people who are racists and bigots on my Supreme Court who are always going to find for minorities and the underprivileged simply because they've gotten the shaft all their lives. I want people on my court who are going to rule against the so-called rich and the so-called powerful because they have carried the day for too long. So I -- empathy is just a code word for somebody who has sympathy for the downtrodden...
Miles Davis plays Michael Jackson's "Human Nature", with Kenny Garrett on flute and tenor sax:
As always, click to enlarge. For more Tom the Dancing Bug, Ben Sargeant, Funky Winkerbean, Calvin and Hobbes, Mother Goose and Grimm, Tony Auth, Tom Toles, and Zippy, click here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here...
Though lawful, the bicyclists were offensive to some observers. Out for a stroll on Frenchmen Street, Jason Price, 40, grew enraged as the riders passed him.
"All I saw was a bunch of indecent people and perverts," he said.
In New Orleans?...
Yesterday, Wolf Blitzer had this edifying exchange with Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH):
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I had a serious health problem when I was unemployed in France. I was able to choose all of my doctors, all of my treatments and my health care was covered at nearly 100 percent. If this had happened to me in the United States, I would have had to declare bankruptcy.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: All right, Senator. What do you say to Sally?
GREGG: Well, first off, I have no interest in turning the United States into France. We're not going to Europeanize this country, even though I regret to say that the policies that this government right now appear to be moving us down that road, toward the nationalization of an awful lot of stuff.
I believe that we produce the best health care system -- delivery system in the world. We're on the cutting edge of technologies, we're on the cutting edge of procedures. And the reason we're able to do that is because we have a private health care system in this country.
Now, set aside for a second that Judd Gregg, scion of a wealthy mill-owning family, son of a former governor of New Hampshire, and educated at Phillips Exeter, Columbia, and Boston University, has never had to sweat out health care access in his life. When he claims that the United States has the best health care system in the world, he's patently wrong. By the most basic of measures -- life expectancy -- our health care system ranks 45th in the world, behind every country in the European Union. (France, for the record, is eighth.) On the other hand, no one denies that the United States spends more on health care than any other country. By any definition, the bang for the buck here is terrible -- a scandal, really...
After hearing Gregg denigrate France, my father and I began listing the things about France that we would like to see in this country:
French food
French wine
cheese
mass transit
art
cinema
health care
Paris
Provence
Oh, and the language: You have to admit that French is a great language. Anyway, it turned into a real What Have the Romans Ever Done For Us moment...
As always, click to enlarge. For more Tom the Dancing Bug, Ben Sargent, Calvin and Hobbes, Doonesbury, Tony Auth, Tom Toles, and Zippy, go here, here, here, here, here, here, and here...
JUST A SONG: Woody Guthrie's "Deportee (Plane Wreck At Los Gatos)":
To Guthrie it is the "they" who took the money, who "chase us like outlaws," who are the anonymous ones, hiding behind legalisms to rob and exploit the migrants until there is nothing left but "dry leaves to rot on my topsoil." The use of the word "my" implicates all of us in the fate of the migrants, for it is we who eat "the good fruit."
Friday, Premium T. and I watched Robert Altman's Nashville. It was her first time and my sixth or seventh. As one of the top movies of the Seventies, arguably the best and most important ten years of American cinema, Nashville's place in film history is secure. I won't try to review it here because there's little I could add. But...
...talk about an opportunity to watch the hand of a master at work: Nashville is Altman at the absolute top of his game. Too often today, post-production is where movies go to die: A mediocre soundtrack and literally hundreds of cuts a minute mask a weak script and pedestrian direction. With Altman, though, post-production is where rough cuts became art. The overlapping dialogue is carefully mixed and the editing brings to bear his myriad abilities to direct everything from sprawling set pieces -- such as the opening of the film when all of the characters arrive at the Nashville airport and wind up in a mult-car highway crash -- to intensely personal moments such as Barbara Jean's (Ronee Blakely) on-stage breakdown. Most impressive of all is the club scene in which Altman distills a multi-character set piece down to Keith Carradine singing "I'm Easy" to Lily Tomlin while three other women think he sings to them:
Now watch the scene again. Notice how the slow, nearly unnoticeable zooms and almost casual pans set up the one quick cut towards the end of the scene. This cut enables the impression of Carradine and Tomlin looking at each other across a crowded room as if no one else were there. It is brilliant, meticulous film-making, the kind that most of today's directors have neither the skill, emotional insight, or artistic courage to pull off...
Here's the scene where Blakely, as a Loretta Lynn type, follows her heartbreaking song "Dues" with the on-stage breakdown:
Incidentally, the actors in Nashville wrote and sang their own songs. Blakely was the only real singer of the group, but whatever price Altman paid for that was more than made up for by the
immediacy of the various vocals. It certainly had a way of committing the actors to the scenes in which they sang...
Citizen K.'s all-time favorite Calvin and Hobbes strips:
As always, click to enlarge. For more Tom the Dancing Bug, Ben Sargent, Calvin and Hobbes, Pat Oliphant, Tony Auth, and Zippy, go here, here, here, here, here, and here...
Star Trek.D: J. J. Abrams. Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Leonard Nimoy, Eric Bana, Bruce Greenwood, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg, John Cho, Anton Yelchin. Not bad at all. A renegade Romulan war ship captained by a vengeful Bana threatens the existence of the Federation and the job of stopping it falls to Starship Academy cadet James Kirk (Pine). The film deploys the tried-and-true Star Trek milieus of accidental time travel and alternate universes to move the plot along and show how Kirk, Spock, Bones, Scottie and the gang first met. A little long on the slam-bangery and a bit short on Trekkie philosophizing (the Prime Directive doesn't merit a single mention) but the movie treats its rich context respectfully and with a gently satirical wink. Long time fans will appreciate such touches as Captain Pike's wheelchair and the explanation (finally!) of why Kirk and Uhura never got together. Nimoy's commanding presence predictably steals the show...
Hank Williams writes some of the first rock-and-roll lyrics. John Waugh's intriguing essay shows how "Hey Good Lookin'" was one of the first songs to celebrate the youth culture:
Everything that rock and roll became, aside from the protest phase, is right there.
This is youth culture. This is mobility. This is freedom. This is rebellion. This fun for its own sake pure and simple. Its soda pop not beer. The dancin’s free. There’s escape. But at the same time innocence, youthfull exuberance and and joy.
Santana lovers won't want to miss Michael Caroff's Guitar Info Bytes blog. Far from a blathering fan, Caroff writes with insight and wit about everything from Carlos' guitar tone to his line of women's shoes, with stops along the way on such topics as why "Jingo" and not "Soul Sacrifice" epitomizes Santana's early sound...
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