mushinnoshin

Back when I was just a smart teenage nerd with a budding anti-authoritarian streak, The Manhattan Project, a film a about a teenager who builds an atomic bomb, was a natural and instant favorite. Hell, I eventually even sampled the damn thing:

Chaos Dreary

But of course, whatever real merits the movie may have had, I was also just totally hot for the sexy bad-girl (hey man, she smoked cigarettes and everything!) who partnered up with the deviant genius. I mean, well, she was no Ally Sheedy, but she was absolutely a defining and important celebrity-slash-fictional-character crush

So then it was a weird moment when, maybe a year or so ago, I saw the movie again, and realized — holy shit! That girl went on to become Miranda on “Sex and the City”!

And maybe that was especially weird because I was always uncomfortable with my reaction to Miranda as I watched that show — because while I always found her the most intellectually attractive of the four friends, I never actually found her all that appealing on balance, and I couldn’t place why.

But then tonight I saw her guest starring as the patient in a 2nd season episode of House, and despite the fact that she’s clearly beginning to show her age, I found something very sexy in her once again.

So, I don’t know, maybe it was just something about the Miranda character. Or maybe it was still completely shallow and I just didn’t like her with short hair. I don’t really have any deep analysis of all this prepared, it just seemed like something to write about.

I of course completely agree with Aunt B that anyone who thinks Bush is Batman is a moron of well, comic book proportions. A supermoron, if you will.

But beyond that, it occurs to me, isn’t Batman partly a tale about a hopelessly ineffective government ripe with corruption and crony-ism, and particularly plagued by a broken Justice Department? Do the Bush cheerleaders really want to start looking for analogies here?

I don’t really have much to add on the new Ted Stevens mess, but Rex pointed us to this Gawker post which introduced us to:

which is just awesome in its own right. Of course I think it’s the lolcats that make it ring true. Well, that and His Noodly Appendage, of course.

No spectacular new ideas or information here, but as a fan of San Francisco, and a fan of Henry George, I do enjoy Fred Folvary using the term San Francisco School as another name for Georgist economics.

That reminds me, I never did finish my travel diary from my trip. I can’t believe it’s been more than a year already. Well I will finish it up eventually. I think we were about to go see DJ Shadow at the Fillmore?

Apparently it was August 20, 1991 when I drove up to Orlando for the first lollapalooza, which I bring up to tell again about the pre-show activities, when I ate some acid with a random hardcore freak I met in line — who actually said his name was Gonzo — who gave me a copy of Fear and Loathing and told me it would change my life.

Of course that’s just one of the weird anecdotes I’ve got stored in the old files. Have I told you about the time I pedaled around through one of Ft Lauderdale’s roughest neighborhoods at some ungodly hour of the morning with a crack whore on my handlebars trying to help her find her, umm, provider? Yeah. When I later got jumped in that same neighborhood, I mostly just felt betrayed because I thought the word was out that I was cool. I guess not.

Anyway, I stuffed Gonzo’s book in my back pocket and worked my way towards the front of the crowd, to wait for the festivities to open with the blues-punk growl of Mr. Rollins and friends. And by the time I left, some god knows how many hours later, that quiet, unassuming paperback in my back pocket had turned into a brick of dried sweat and garden hose relief. So, Dr. Gonzo, I’m sorry to say I didn’t get to read that book.

But I most certainly read another copy some time later. By which time I suppose it was too late to say that it might change my life, as I wast most assuredly already living the life less normal. I did enjoy it of course, but it probably wasn’t until I read Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail and The Great Shark Hunt that Hunter Thompson would really worm his way into my soul.

Well really all this is just to say that the Belcourt’s currently running a biopic called Gonzo: The Life And Work Of Hunter S. Thompson, which I saw last night. Eh, I’m not going to tell you it’s some amazing movie, I mean, fuck, it’s a documentary about Hunter Thompson. If you like Hunter, and you like documentaries, or can find some reasonable median between the two, you’re going to love it. Otherwise, maybe not. All our lives will go on.

Well, except Hunter’s of course. He had the sense to get out while the getting was good. It’s sad though. I wonder what the man who may have had more to do with both the nomination of McGovern and the election of Carter than history will ever credit might think of Obama? I really don’t know, that’s why I ask. Would the mantra of hope we hear today rekindle the glimmer of optimism that kept Thompson going all those years? Or would the good doctor be the first in line calling shenanigans when the Senator strays? Or, as with myself and so many others — both? We’ll never know.

A great Thompson line, used well in the movie —

“The Edge… There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others- the living- are those who pushed their luck as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later. But the edge is still Out there.”

Yeah, I remember the days when I pushed my luck and peered into the precipice. I swore I’d be dead by thirty and just figured that’s how it was, that’s the way it was meant to be. But I slowed down, and I pulled back, and I survived — but at what cost, for what point? To live the ordinary life that Thoreau says masses lead in quiet desperation? Well actually I’d be ok with that, if it were still possible. But it’s too late for that, for me. So I just live here, barely on the wrong side of the tracks, too close to the edge for convention, but too safe and far away to find greatness.

I guess I’m just sad. Sometimes we meet people with the capacity to see what we see, and in our loneliness we convince ourselves that they see it.

But maybe they just haven’t eaten enough acid.

Or maybe I’ve eaten too much.

Either way, it’s all the same.

how do I explain
when I in pain
fail to refrain,
as even yet
it remains,
that I at best can claim,
to be insane?

No, the gaping whole, the vacuum abhorred,
the discipline — bored;

Oh sure, I agree, superficially –

I just wish I knew
how to share with you

the frozen crystal tear to which I cling,
my only rock within this thing.

No, I’m not surprised by Obama’s shift to the center, and particularly the capitulation on FISA. I am disappointed, not because he went to the center, but because he went to the wrong center.

And more to the point — it was completely unnecessary. The “let’s take a quick piss on the wall between church and state” thing? Yeah, that’s both trivial and shrewd. But does anyone really think there’s a significant block of citizens whose potential swing votes hinge adamantly on the feds being granted unprecedented new powers to spy on us while AT&T and friends are given a free pass to circumvent the courts? Please.

And compared to the number of independents who might have come out of the shadows had they for once seen a leader actually do something extraordinary and stand up for what’s right?

No, there’s only one reason for him to take the position he took — he wanted the bill to pass. Read into that what you will. And that’s why you’ll find so much discouragement now among his supporters.

Anyway, it’s not yet enough to lose my vote. But it can’t be allowed to go by without comment. He has to take the lumps he’s asked for. “My Candidate, Right or Wrong” is how the last regime worked — no thanks.

And it’s worth pointing out that this sort of thing is precisely why the ACLU will continue to get more of my money than any politician.

Update — Feingold FTW:

I just saw a clip of an Access Hollywood interview with Obama’s children, and one of his little girls revealed this shockingly unpatriotic fact:

“I enjoy decorating, so I get this whole new room to do whatever I want,” said Malia, according to excepts provided by “Access Hollywood.”

For the good of our country, I do hope that Bill Hobbs and the TNGOP are working on a press release stressing that McCain’s children think the White House bedrooms are fine the way they are.

• Success! I sampled the first bottle of my homebrew tonight, and it turned out quite tasty. Well, the shitty thing is that it’s a standard issue golden pilsner-style lager, since that’s the mix that came with the kit — will have to brew a good stout or something for the next batch. At which point I’ll be able to properly dub it “JonathAle”.
• Saw Ghandi tonight, and well, just wow. I mean it’s not like I didn’t already know what he did, but seeing it dramatized can really, perhaps ironically, sometimes make you better grok the reality of something. One interesting tangent was seeing him in a meeting with some of the Brits, and hearing them explain that Britain couldn’t possibly withdraw because India needed them to protect the religious minorities and that chaos would ensue if they left. Gosh, where have we heard those excuses among more recent events?
• w00t! It looks like Prison Break is coming back for another season. That last episode really felt like a “we’re going to clumsly wrap things up so we can end the series” thing. Happy to find out otherwise.
• From the “you know you spend too much time on Teh Internets when” files, I saw a breathtaking trailer for a new film about Antarctica. And when they showed a clip of some walruses, all I could do was try and imagine a caption regarding their search for a “bukkit”.
• I think I had more, but I don’t remember them. I think I’m just going to call it an early night and wrap up the holiday weekend on a quiet note for once.
• Oh, wait, another thing that popped into my head while watching Gandhi — it’s striking how often those people who have been important agents of great social change have been assassinated. Which made me wonder, has Obama really been acting like a douche lately just as a matter of political triangulation … or does he figure that if he reveals himself to just be yet another scumbag politician, his chance of survival goes up exponentially?