tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-54759584965841604152012-02-01T10:15:36.805-08:00"Benjamin was the oldest animal on the farm, and the worst tempered. He seldom talked, and when he did, it was usually to make some cynical remark—for instance, he would say that God had given him a tail to keep the flies off, but that he would sooner have had no tail and no flies." - Animal FarmBenjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.comBlogger5511100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-8664575280447809442012-02-01T10:15:00.000-08:002012-02-01T10:15:36.827-08:00

A female fan once asked Ayn Rand if the "wonderful" love scenes between Howard Roark and Dominique Francon were based on life experience. Rand's response would seem a rare instance of humor on her part: "Wishful thinking." It's a useful summary of her fiction more generally, "the world not as it is, but as it ought to be," but a look at just what these love scenes entail, however, reveals an

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-68293150063124518082012-01-27T21:38:00.000-08:002012-01-27T21:40:02.617-08:00

Before discussing the niggling fascism of The Fountainhead and its seductive portrait of a self-willed hero, it's best to begin with a definition of an infamously slippery term. Susan Sontag's definition, in reference to the films in photography of Leni Riefenstahl, will guide our way: Fascist aesthetics include but go far beyond the rather special celebration of the primitive to be found in

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-44870208379509354542012-01-14T21:31:00.000-08:002012-01-27T21:40:32.687-08:00

One need but read the opening paragraphs of The Fountainhead to understand how it ended up selling a zillion copies: Howard Roark laughed. He stood naked at the edge of a cliff. The lake lay far below him. A frozen explosion of granite burst in flight to the sky over motionless water. The water seemed immovable, the stone—flowing. The stone had the stillness of one brief moment in battle

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-77544815497600616512012-01-14T17:42:00.000-08:002012-01-14T17:42:24.123-08:00

I'm now over a third of the way through The Fountainhead. I've debated whether or not to post my responses as I go along, or to put them all under one post. There's simply too much ground to cover, however, my notes are getting much too long to adequately condense into one entry, so I'll be summarizing my thoughts thus far and jotting down anything that comes to mind, and then will review the

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-90589163181786837032012-01-05T10:09:00.000-08:002012-01-07T12:33:03.619-08:00

With royalties from Night of January 16th providing a steady income, Ayn Rand set about writing what would become The Fountainhead. In writing it, however, especially when it came to devising a climax to tie everything together, Rand found herself blocked for the first time in her life. To occupy her time and free her mind she turned to various side projects; she spent months writing and working

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-4123901512648589302012-01-04T17:29:00.000-08:002012-01-04T17:29:00.461-08:00

The play that would come to be known as Night of January 16th is not Ayn Rand's only play, but it is the only one, outside of a failed adaptation of We the Living entitled The Unconquered, to be produced. For an established popular novelist, a single play might seem no more than a curiosity. Yet Rand's body of fiction is quantitatively slight, and moreover, the play would have a significant

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-83282779058112306222011-12-31T15:35:00.000-08:002012-01-04T09:28:18.716-08:00

Ayn Rand is best known for The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, titanic volumes that respectively depict, in totalistic detail, her ideal man of action and her all-encompassing Objectivist philosophy. They were her last fictional works published, though to say this is somewhat misleading; Rand died in 1982, Atlas Shrugged was published in 1957, and The Fountainhead was published 14 years earlier

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-75485287963947427322011-12-25T21:16:00.000-08:002011-12-25T21:16:00.205-08:00

War Horse's publicity presents it as an immaculately crafted piece of horse-love entertainment calculated to make you weep with Pavlovian efficiency, and that's basically what it is. I went in expecting it to jerk my tears, and I got it. But expecting to cry at something, the anticipation of it, threatens the effectiveness, which is largely based on surprise. (Seeing the musical Billy Elliot

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-82508610455618099272011-12-24T18:25:00.000-08:002011-12-24T18:25:17.475-08:00

I've never been a fan of Christmas, mostly due to the hideously tacky commercialism that comes with it, but also because of its manic and mandatory cheer. Like Valentine's Day, it's always struck me as a time to flatter the vanity of the well-to-do and to rub the noses of the less fortunate in their own bad circumstances. The lovey-dovey couple really doesn't need any more congratulation than,

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-20154440623527450632011-12-22T07:24:00.000-08:002011-12-22T07:24:41.302-08:00

That an American adaptation of Stieg Larsson's Millenium trilogy was going to happen was probably a foregone conclusion by, oh, January 2009. Mere days before I left on my school trip to London, one of my of my neighbors gave me some money and asked me to buy him a copy of The Girl Who Played With Fire, which had been published in the U.K. but would not be out stateside for several more months.

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-58079086191146499802011-12-21T09:34:00.000-08:002011-12-21T09:34:56.538-08:00

I go to the bar with a friend, J. We meet up with his roommate, A, who’s with his brother and his brother’s friends. They’re all decked out in Capitols gear and give off a distinct douchebag vibe. By the time we leave they’ve had plenty to drink and are stamping and cussing and shouting down the road, at 12:30 AM on a wee Wednesday morning. One of them, hereafter referred to as Dickweed, is

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-36688469770266187732011-12-16T21:08:00.000-08:002011-12-16T21:08:58.627-08:00

God, Christopher Hitchens. A more erudite and cantankerous SOB the world will probably never again see. I was extraordinarily saddened to hear of his death today, though hardly surprised. His final missive on his cancer treatment, which put to lie the idea that "what doesn't kill me only makes me stronger," in painful detail. Deathly musings from those who knew him best suggested too that the

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-31080436750982885142011-12-14T16:37:00.000-08:002011-12-14T16:37:55.700-08:00

This is my family's older dog. Her name was Mocha, because back when we got her my brother and I liked mocha cake, but not coffee. She was a black lab/huskie mutt filled with an endless nervous energy she applied to chasing tennis balls and whining for attention. She was 15 years old, which is well over half my own life thus far. We got her at some McCall animal shelter, in a time before McPaws

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-34167443962693476492011-12-10T17:50:00.000-08:002012-01-07T12:37:16.502-08:00

Concurrent with my ongoing Ayn Rand fixation is an interest in exploring works that bear some relation to her, whether directly (I'm tempted to dig into Les Miserables, her favorite novel and a conscious influence on We the Living, which actually isn't too shabby) or more obliquely, which is the case with Notes from Underground. Rand, having grown up in Russia, was familiar with Dostoyevsky and

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-65977076914431231892011-12-04T21:50:00.000-08:002011-12-04T21:50:56.719-08:00

"The life of Ayn Rand was the material of fiction. But if one attempted to write it as a novel, the result would be preposterously unbelievable." Truer words, the first that appear in The Passion of Ayn Rand, were never spoken. Rand's story--filled with adventure, philosophy, tragedy, lurid sexuality, politics--is absolutely compelling: a ridiculously intelligent social misfit escapes Soviet

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-9857020997824997262011-11-24T12:28:00.000-08:002011-11-24T12:28:35.105-08:00

Ours is a time of nostalgia, of man-children, of, well, arrested development. Technology has made it ever easier to revisit the formative media of our youth, leading to a decade defined less by the new boundaries charted in popular culture as it is the repackaging of the old: the mash-up, the homage, the reboot, all of it done with a knowing self-awareness. Few pop culture sensations were ever

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-10271581383388456162011-11-21T21:24:00.000-08:002011-11-21T21:27:21.562-08:00

It feels like years have passed, but Troy Davis was only executed two months ago. His was one of the highest-profile death row cases in years and touched off considerable media discussion over the wrongfulness of the death penalty. Though the debate has tapered off in the time since, questions of law enforcement continue to be asked, largely prompted by brutal police responses to the various

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-55278694076289572652011-11-20T21:12:00.000-08:002011-11-21T19:20:52.160-08:00

I suppose it would have behooved me to have read and commented on Anne C. Heller's Ayn Rand and The World She Made before Jennifer Burns' Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right. Burns' book states right in its subtitle it's focus on Rand's influence in the conservative movement and its libertarian offshoots. Heller keeps her eye on Rand's life and so paints a more detailed

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-4050388937375520442011-11-14T22:51:00.000-08:002011-11-14T22:51:26.638-08:00

Funny things, critics. In the theater world they're widely loathed for their ability to kill a show with bad publicity, while in the cinema they are by turns ignored by the populace at large and used by the discerning to figure out what (not) to throw down $12 for. A 90+% "Fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes is usually a good indicator of quality, and I have no doubt that the 3% afforded Adam

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-84337810377947780702011-11-09T19:10:00.000-08:002011-11-09T19:10:50.766-08:00

Within evolutionary biological circles there was some controversy, decades ago, on the speed at which evolution and variation can occur. The late Stephen Jay Gould proposed his hypothesis of Punctuated Equilibrium, which said that in the Cambrian explosion (in a typical example), the sudden-seeming appearance in the fossil record of lifeforms considerably more complex than what came before, was

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-25596441611491598892011-11-06T19:48:00.000-08:002011-11-06T19:48:29.327-08:00

My alarm clock squawks at me at 6:38 AM, a particular minute selected to leave me just enough time to get dressed, eat, and brush my teeth and be out the door to catch the three-minutes'-walk-away Metro to work at 7:05. I dress and I eat and I brush and I'm gone. And I get to the Metro, and the escalators aren't working. And the metal gating is shut across the entrance at the bottom. It's

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-19122721838570222302011-11-05T18:40:00.000-07:002011-11-05T18:40:25.617-07:00

I'm ashamed to say that before Wednesday I had never actually seen a Woody Allen film, no, not even Anne Hall. Given that Midnight in Paris is one of Allen's best received movies in a good while, this puts me in an odd position, unable as I am to comment on the film in the broader context of Allen's body of work as a whole. This certainly doesn't mean it can't be taken on its own, however. It

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-58460459231629913212011-11-01T10:59:00.000-07:002011-11-01T11:01:01.344-07:00

I just got patted down at the airport. Twice. My mum's vacationing in the Cape Cod area, and I'm going to spend a couple days in Provincetown visiting. I arrived at Reagan Airport, ate some lunch I had brought with me, and then got in line at the security checkpoint. I opted out of the body scanner machine with the vague idea that on some level seeing a fellow passenger treated like a criminal

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-22467578322834159722011-10-31T16:58:00.000-07:002011-10-31T16:58:40.487-07:00

Few have driven the Tea Party drama of late so much as the nearly thirty years dead Ayn Rand. With the jump in sales in her work following Obama's election, the "Going Galt" posturing, and the anti-government rhetoric of the past three years that, due to Occupy Wall Street, only now is beginning to wane--this has been an explicitly Randian era. Her beliefs and their consequences are a natural

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-14938018082183556322011-10-27T19:50:00.000-07:002011-10-27T19:50:39.102-07:00

So I'm going over an idea for a writing project, a play, that deals with the current economic climate, class warfare, and Wall Street, and have started doing some reading along those lines. Simon Johnson and James Kwak's 13 Bankers made the financial crisis about as digestible as a lay person as possible, yet the Byzantine quantity and workings of such "innovations" as derivatives, Credit Default

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-37323959025841717872011-10-26T22:25:00.000-07:002011-10-26T22:27:57.479-07:00

Tonight I attended a lecture by the new director of the Folger Shakespeare Library, Michael Witmore, on using data-mining technology on the works of Shakespeare. The use of quantifying technology, typically associated with the sciences and other "real world" pursuits, with something as subjective as literature is novel, and offers many insights, not the least of which has to do with its own

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-7755057570754385312011-09-20T08:05:00.000-07:002011-09-20T09:46:18.858-07:00

Netflix's decision to split its DVD-by-mail and streaming video services into two completely separate companies is... vexing, to say the least:...What is Reed Hastings smoking? As far as anyone can tell, he seems to have rolled up pages from The Innovator's Dilemma, Clayton Christensen's influential 1997 book about the ways that successful companies die at the hands of upstarts. Christensen, a

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-28675575947042263552011-09-10T15:33:00.000-07:002011-09-10T18:25:28.936-07:00

It was a school day. I was a high school sophomore. After waking up and showering, I got ready for class. My high school operated on the block system, whereby instead of seven or eight classes of less than an hour each were crammed into one day, three or four classes roughly an hour and a half long were spread over A and B days. The B days had a kind of study hall period in the early morning, so

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-16242970129386981562011-08-24T17:18:00.000-07:002011-08-24T18:05:45.299-07:00

Alyssa Rosenberg looks at Rise of the Planet of the Apes through the prism of contemporary anxiety about cultural institutions: It makes sense that movies like these — and their hopeful, escapist alternatives, like Captain America — are so appealing right now. Whether you think it’s unemployment rates, or partisanship, or you embrace Drew Westen’s rhetorical theory of the Obama presidency,

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-66147703366514893942011-08-18T09:15:00.000-07:002011-08-18T09:20:33.710-07:00

Nashua, NH--Texas Governor Rick Perry apologized Wednesday for comments that implicitly threatened Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, saying they were not violent enough. At a Tuesday campaign stop in Iowa, Perry had described the possibility of the Fed printing more money before the 2012 presidential election as “treason,” and that “I dunno what y’all would do to him in Iowa, but we would

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-89836004499616473042011-06-30T17:37:00.000-07:002011-06-30T17:47:52.589-07:00

A number of pieces I wrote for the Washington Fancy before their launch, went online today. There's too many to take the time to cross-post them all, so one can either go to my author directory to peruse them all, or click any of the links below:Anthony Weiner, Tired of Crude Jokes, Changes Name to NedDC Under Siege by Roving Segway GangsBachmann Presidential Run Shocks, Shocks NationMitt Romney

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-62715999562036368362011-06-30T17:31:00.000-07:002011-06-30T17:36:56.725-07:00

According to Ezra Klein, bipartisanship, like sex, is a matter of consent:But after writing this morning’s post on the Republican report that recommended the exact deficit-reduction package that the Republican leadership ultimately walked out on, I realized that even that definition of “bipartisan” doesn’t quite get it right. Rather, a “bipartisan” bill is a bill that the opposing party treats as

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-58786903381192946022011-06-29T19:38:00.000-07:002011-06-29T19:42:05.581-07:00

NEW YORK—As retribution for the New York state legislature’s legalization of same-sex marriage, New York City Friday night experienced cataclysm and biblical tribulation that left almost no survivors.A tense vote on a contested gay marriage bill resulted in a 33-29 victory for same-sex marriage proponents. Upon the bill’s passage New York City—whose destruction many have remarked would be more

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-64378939659164155082011-06-29T19:23:00.000-07:002011-06-29T19:27:37.808-07:00

ANNAPOLIS, MD— President Barack Obama abruptly left a Department of Education picnic on Saturday, and in the process deserted some of the country’s most cherished principals.The event, held at Annapolis High School, was organized as a means of celebrating American learning and wisdom and the people who help to cultivate it. After meeting with the nation’s standout students, parents, and teachers

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-74546951909623573652011-06-29T19:18:00.000-07:002011-06-29T19:23:49.939-07:00

It strikes me that there's no reason for me not to cross-post the material I write for my other gigs, so I'll be doing so with my Washington Fancy pieces as they're published. My contributions can be found in one convenient place here.

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-86164417781174367852011-06-22T21:38:00.000-07:002011-06-22T22:25:45.147-07:00

So it's going on nearly three weeks since I last posted here, and all I have to offer is naval gazing.From inception this space has been prone to inconstant atrophy, which has almost always been contingent on my having a job. When I had just graduated and was unemployed, I spent a month writing limericks about headline news. When my theatre world was crashing down around me (or at least I thought

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-75478404555224852662011-06-08T20:55:00.000-07:002011-06-08T21:19:40.420-07:00

William Saletan explores whether Anthony Weiner's dick pics qualify as cheating:In the annals of lust and sin, Weiner is just another straying husband. But in the unfolding story of information technology, he's a milestone worth thinking about. The trajectory of political sex scandals—Clinton, Mark Foley, Kwame Kilpatrick, Mark Sanford, and now Weiner—has taken us from phone sex to chat rooms to

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-81995717708097325792011-06-06T22:01:00.000-07:002011-06-07T06:54:44.444-07:00

Andrew Sullivan posted an excellent and moving poem, "Reverse: A Lynching," accompanied by a photo of the Duluth Lynchings. I hadn't heard of this event and so followed the Wikipedia link, and there came across this photo, of the lynching of Henry Smith, used in the Lynching portal:The imagery is stunning: a sea of Paris Texans come to elevate the dejected only to debase and destroy him. Behind

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-34726022066041317472011-05-31T16:34:00.000-07:002011-05-31T16:54:40.969-07:00

Again with David Mamet, who's doing more publicity to promote his book on why liberals are stoopid. He pulls off quite a feat here, attacking stupidity while at the same time defending it:Years ago, you described “American Buffalo” as being about “how we excuse all sorts of great and small betrayals and ethical compromises called business.” In this book, you defend enormous payouts to C.E.O.’s

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-86502934624562859032011-05-30T18:38:00.000-07:002011-05-30T19:08:54.268-07:00

George Orwell was onto something in his description of how Dickens reads as comedy or terror based on the reader's age:I must have been about nine years old when I first read David Copperfield. The mental atmosphere of the opening chapters was so immediately intelligible to me that I vaguely imagined they had been written by a child. And yet when one re-reads the book as an adult and sees the

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-49747237405280935612011-05-29T20:00:00.000-07:002011-05-29T21:00:28.796-07:00

As part of another project I've been reading through Dickens's David Copperfield; Blood Meridian will have to wait. Thing is, I'm actually enjoying it. My only previous Dickens exposure, Great Expectations in high school and Bleak House a couple years back in college, left me bewildered by the man's long-winded prose and wide-net plotting. Such was Bleak House that my college classmates and I

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-88415898816264768892011-05-26T20:35:00.000-07:002011-05-26T21:03:42.141-07:00

Today I saw a poster for the upcoming Mr. Popper’s Penguins film starring Jim Carrey.The poster didn’t make me think much on the film itself, but rather a different film, Me, Myself, and Irene, and its attendant publicity material.This led me to consider other similarly framed posters in Carrey's ouvre.I know a star close-up isn't at all unusual for movie posters, but it's still a little odd to

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-21355952761909568902011-05-23T06:12:00.000-07:002011-05-25T11:56:37.600-07:00

This Weekly Standard piece on David Mamet's conversion to conservatism is an interesting read, in that it unwittingly reveals Mamet has learned the wrong lessons:Mamet mentioned a screenplay that he hopes will soon be produced involving a young rich girl who applies to Harvard. When she’s rejected she suddenly declares herself an Aztec to qualify for affirmative action. Presumably high jinks

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-39420732584376947312011-05-19T20:27:00.000-07:002011-05-19T20:32:52.458-07:00

Joshua Green called for a David Brooks photoshopping meme earlier this week and today tied it into the Newt Gingrich implosion. I propose an alternative. A little obvious, but, yeah.

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-47618832835123934992011-05-19T08:31:00.001-07:002011-05-19T08:36:37.852-07:00

One of James Fallows's readers provides an Orwell quote that dovetails nicely with Follies's downtrodden spirit (emphasis mine):An autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-2301468969926425902011-05-18T19:28:00.000-07:002011-05-19T07:21:41.749-07:00

The curtain rises. A ramshackle facility: crumbling columns, dingy brickwork, and piles of discarded chairs, onto which enter a multitude of brightly colored, ethereally lit Vaudevillian shades, clad in giant headpieces, scandalist skin-tight garments, and other ornate regalia. Normally their appearance would suggest exuberance and emotional buoyancy. But in these digs, and in the ghostly silence

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-13555275096751831362011-05-17T22:03:00.001-07:002011-05-17T22:31:15.357-07:00

I've lately started reading Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. Thirty-four pages in I'm still not sure where the extraordinary violence of thus far is leading--Mexico, by the looks of it--but I am enjoying the ride, if "enjoying" is the proper word for it, for McCarthy wields a mighty pen:Toadvine was four steps above him and when he kicked him he caught him in the throat. The clerk sat down on

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-56507935159006943112011-05-15T18:24:00.000-07:002011-05-15T19:32:02.453-07:00

In the politics of the Paul family, like son, like father:Just about a year after his son Rand Paul stepped in it when he told Rachel Maddow he was opposed to provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) told Chris Matthews Friday he wouldn't have voted for the law in the first place had he been in Congress at the time...."Yeah," he told Matthews when asked if he would have voted

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-36707713379288090682011-05-10T06:02:00.000-07:002011-05-10T06:14:51.712-07:00

I'm not the first person to notice the similarity between Muammar Gadaffi and Carlos Santana. I did do a double take yesterday when I glanced up at a CNN special on Baby Boomer music and seemingly saw the Colonel being interviewed. "Oye Como WHA...?"

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-77486598492761487202011-05-08T19:53:00.000-07:002011-05-09T21:15:19.530-07:00

In thinking about the Osama bin Laden hit my mind keeps coming back to fiction. There was much of it to go around during those heady hours following the initial announcement: fictitious firefights, fictitious human shields, even fictitious Martin Luther King and Mark Twain quotes that spread among social networks and blogs in response to the news of bin Laden's death. Twain's adage about a lie

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-58368364072211261712011-05-03T05:54:00.000-07:002011-05-03T06:32:32.556-07:00

I draw your attention now to a subject only slightly less depressing than international Islamic terrorism: Alien3. I don't think I'd call it my favorite in the series--I'm not that masochistic--but it is certainly the most underrated and, thanks to a truly hellish production, the most damaged. This makes it interesting in a way that the merely awful Resurrection and Alien vs. Predator cannot

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-23656389301231142582011-05-02T19:27:00.001-07:002011-05-02T20:59:51.973-07:00

Time will tell if the death of Osama Bin Laden will have any decisive impact on what used to be known as the War on Terror. For now, however, his death should be enjoyed as a greatness unto itself. This is an admittedly morbid stance, and whether we should celebrate the bloody end of the September 11th mastermind in the same manner as the Palestinians who celebrated September 11th, is a fair

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-15630300360402479052011-05-01T20:25:00.001-07:002011-05-01T20:34:09.199-07:00

There are a lot of things wrong with U.S. policy regarding Islamic terrorism, but the death of Osama bin Laden is not one of them. That is all.

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-44279896321275171332011-05-01T16:24:00.000-07:002011-05-01T17:05:03.847-07:00

Because there's a lot of good material. First, Maggie Antrobus's kiss-off to her cheating husband is just some really great feminism:Before I go, I have a letter.... I have a message to throw into the ocean.... It's a bottle. And in the bottle's a letter. And in the letter is written all the things that a woman knows.It's never been told to any man and it's never been told to any woman, and if it

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-30644930171566681012011-04-30T18:30:00.000-07:002011-04-30T19:56:47.830-07:00

I've been digging into Thornton Wilder some more, swishing Our Town around and revisiting The Skin of Our Teeth. The two plays are his most famous works, for which he won two of his three(!) Pulitzer Prizes. The accolades are well-deserved, for in very different ways the two pieces pull off something theatre has boundless potential for, but is rarely done, and done well more seldom still: a truly

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-23726722246066074812011-04-28T20:32:00.000-07:002011-04-28T20:57:03.633-07:00

This whole Birther episode has been infuriating enough on its own, but Fallows' guarded optimism at the end of his follow-up to his initial angry post--"Perhaps the media types who have been paying attention to Trump and his braying will stop to think about what they've actually been doing. Conceivably there will be a moment of recoil about the unworthy, irrational indignity of this stage of

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-34506174347257669642011-04-28T07:34:00.000-07:002011-04-28T08:46:04.670-07:00

Like many others, I like seeing Jim Fallows get righteously angry:This alone disproves Donald Trump's crock-of-shit* insulting and preposterous assertions that Obama was an affirmative action or charity admittee to the Ivy Leagues who couldn't really cut it on his own IQ or test scores, as if there weren't already evidence enough: It is his use at time 0:50 of the word "bemusement" in its proper

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-4635145878642798652011-04-23T19:23:00.000-07:002011-04-25T06:31:18.564-07:00

I don't think I can say anything about Aristotle's Ethics without looking foolish, so instead I turned a few days ago to Thornton Wilder's Our Town. I only ever saw it for the first time last year in a stunning production in New York, and so I don't have the distasteful associations with saccharine nostalgia that others have.Accordingly, in revisiting the play by reading it for the first time,

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-26627345727565226432011-04-21T07:26:00.000-07:002011-04-21T07:37:56.606-07:00

Since yesterday, Lady Gaga has given her blessing for "Perform This Way" to be included on Weird Al Yankovic's upcoming album. Reports differ on who started the fracas, but in any case the matter is settled. I'm glad she approves, as the song is a funny one that reminds me of Al's "Smells Like Nirvana" in the way that it makes fun of the stylistic tics of the artist in question.

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-12586212853735301152011-04-20T11:36:00.000-07:002011-04-20T12:50:03.357-07:00

Andrew Sullivan doesn't much care for Lady Gaga's new single and its Catholic League-baiting, nor Gaga herself:This latest "diva" is a costume in search of musical innovation. And what's dismaying about this latest stunt is not its bravery (ha!) or its wit (please) but its dumb derivative barrel-scraping predictability. Madonna was sometimes prey to this, but a song and video like "Like A Prayer"

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-84658337105231316062011-04-17T20:02:00.000-07:002011-04-17T20:36:14.393-07:00

This Rumpus piece posits an interesting reason why Washington politicians's fictions are less successful in literature than politics:It’s a running joke that politicians tend to do a poor job of writing fiction, and for the most part, the joke holds true. But I think there may be something more to this failure than just the fact that many of them are trained in legalese or that they’re busy. I

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-6652390693642666362011-04-16T16:45:00.000-07:002011-04-18T05:54:24.208-07:00

Few figures of the modern stage are as revered as Samuel Beckett and Peter Brook. Both figures challenged and broadened the concepts of what theatre could be (the former with the anti-play Waiting for Godot, the latter with the landmark text The Empty Space); both work by ruthlessly stripping away all they find unnecessary to get at the essence of their art; for this both have amassed in drama

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-48256672491620245912011-04-14T20:13:00.001-07:002011-04-14T20:52:54.050-07:00

One of many new experiences I've had from the culture shock of working in a DC kitchen has been regular exposure to rap music by way of a communal iPod player. I've never much cared for the stuff myself, but hearing it day in and day out, I can't help but come to appreciate some of it.I'd heard plenty about 50 Cent, for instance, and had in fact heard several of his songs here and there, without

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-13354927543165757472011-04-13T18:49:00.000-07:002011-04-13T19:23:23.548-07:00

I'm having trouble responding to the first book of Aristotle's Ethics--it is markedly more disjointed than those that follow it, with countless instances of "Enough of this" or "We will return to this later"--but I would like to bring attention to his early mention of the political sphere:[The good] would seem to be the supreme and most authoritative art; and that appears to be politics. Politics

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-4254640171409567492011-04-11T19:35:00.000-07:002011-04-12T19:43:21.464-07:00

And here I thought I was done writing about C.S. Lewis and politics.Barack Obama ran for president on a platform of principled opposition to the Bush administration's gross abuses of executive power: its secrecy, torture, extraordinary rendition, ill-conceived wars. His conduct on these fronts as President have been a grim disappointment: Guantanamo is to remain open indefinitely, Khalid Sheik

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-5886748776819516832011-04-11T11:50:00.000-07:002011-04-11T12:09:38.735-07:00

“These are strange times to be a Jew.”This remark, a frequent refrain in Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, is both an understatement and something of a banality. For yes, the times of the book’s proceeding’s are most unusual: 60 years after the Israelis were pushed into the sea by the surrounding Arab nations, the Jewish people are about to lose the corner of Alaska granted them by

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-72951533128182219212011-04-09T19:13:00.000-07:002011-04-09T19:26:53.525-07:00

The Yiddish Policeman's Union writeup is going to be a bit longer than I expected, and so is my workweek, so no dice for tonight. Instead I'll mention that I've started Aristotle's Ethics both for a book club and to hopefully generate some material here. C.S. Lewis offered a lot of food for thought, and I can approach a work of philosophy from a lot more angles than fiction. Further down the pike

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-47553921084413270312011-04-08T03:45:00.001-07:002011-04-08T03:48:38.008-07:00

Circumstances in the real world plus a haphazard internet connection prevented me from posting anything yesterday, and I won't have time to write today. Tomorrow evening is more like it. Until then, here is what Sean Paul's "Temperature"'s lyrics sound like:

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-41912034098204315082011-04-06T20:33:00.000-07:002011-04-06T21:01:22.315-07:00

How does one describe Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? to the uninitiated? Synopsis does no good: a middle-aged married couple invites a younger couple over for some very late drinks and proceeds to use them as foils in their marital power struggle. That's what the play "about," I suppose, but does little to explain its power, its appeal, success, and endurance. It's the words.George: You take the

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-37500822514325297532011-04-05T19:27:00.000-07:002011-04-05T20:13:35.886-07:00

My brain has been scrambled throughout this long day, so how about some music selections to change things up? I've just downloaded (for $5.99!) Carter Burwell's score for True Grit, and I feel like putting up some my favorite pieces to come out of his many contributions to the Coen Brothers' films.The themes for Miller's Crossing and Fargo are endlessly listenable, and yet such odd pieces: quite

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-11993450504698512482011-04-04T19:58:00.000-07:002011-04-04T20:18:51.532-07:00

I don't have anything terribly important to say, but in the Unofficial Month of Blogging I'm rather obliged, aren't I? I ended up being wrong wrong wrong about today's weather, as it was not only sunny but the hottest day DC has had this year, at a freakishly summer-like high of 85 degrees.I'm also nearly done with The Yiddish Policeman's Union and ought to have my big-picture say of it soon

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-68552426339432378332011-04-03T18:29:00.001-07:002011-04-03T19:04:50.831-07:00

After several days of cold and wet weather, today presented a good opportunity to get out and see the cherry blossoms. Most of them haven't peaked yet, but after a season of grey and and murk, the white blossoms are a welcome sight anyway.They make the Washington and Jefferson monuments more picturesque than they already are.Along the way I stopped to check out the George Mason monument, which I

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-47762854595920859012011-04-02T18:47:00.000-07:002011-04-02T20:52:19.467-07:00

I've always wanted to use this metaphor, but Michael Chabon beat me to it:"In every marriage, there are things," she begins. She shakes her head once, and the veil trembles. "One of my grandsons was at my house today, before the funeral. Nine years old. I put the television for him in the sewing room, you're not supposed to, but what does it matter, the little shkotz was bored. I sat with him ten

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-24853347482829719492011-04-01T04:50:00.001-07:002011-04-01T04:54:41.446-07:00

Fellow Golden Horder Andy is inviting others to join him in an Unofficial Month of Blogging, in which the participants post at least once a day. I've gotten back up to a decent output in recent days, but it can always be improved. To that end I'll be tossing something up here daily, even if it is just a little note or video....Or an FYI informing my readership of such.

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-53912383384222372312011-03-29T19:22:00.001-07:002011-03-29T19:38:57.114-07:00

The hard-boiled detective story comes with an expectation of clipped, world-weary narration, and Michael Chabon doesn't disappoint:The knot of his gold-and-green rep necktie presses its thumb against his larynx like a scruple pressing against a guilty conscience, a reminder that he is alive.Another example, shortly thereafter:The Sitka Saturday afternoon lies dead as a failed messiah in its

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-5407169108594272332011-03-28T17:11:00.000-07:002011-03-28T18:14:41.516-07:00

Even 150 pages in, it's obvious The Yiddish Policeman's Union is a mighty feat in world-building. Essentially a Jewish murder mystery, it takes place in an alternate universe where the Arabs actually did drive the Israelis into the sea in 1948, and the Jewish refugees were given a godforsaken stretch of coastal Alaska to live in for 60 years. It's a great historical what-if, and that's just the

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-33135361745136373632011-03-27T17:57:00.001-07:002011-03-27T18:10:48.923-07:00

I'm in danger of flogging a dead horse on the God issue, so I'm going to back off of C.S. Lewis and Christian apologetics for the time being. My latest read, already over a hundred pages in, is Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union, a decidedly different animal. I'm sure I'll have plenty to say on it.

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-5636602481484194042011-03-27T08:59:00.000-07:002011-03-27T10:18:30.757-07:00

I've been coming down pretty hard on C.S. Lewis the past couple weeks, so in this last entry I'd like to come back to what it was I found so attractive about his writing in the first place. This takes me mostly back to The Screwtape Letters, for in flipping between Screwtape abd Miracles, I find that Lewis, like many a great thinker, is at his best posing questions rather than answering

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-53275377872852681062011-03-22T18:57:00.000-07:002011-03-23T05:12:35.961-07:00

Up to this point, C.S. Lewis has been ostensibly building an argument in favor of miracles, but at book's end he seems to have given up trying. Having made the case (or tried) for such events, Miracles's final chapters deal with the particular miracles of the Christian faith: the Virgin Birth, the various acts of Christ, and the Resurrection and Ascension. They are less justifications than

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-40036405046662312842011-03-20T06:01:00.001-07:002011-03-20T06:01:28.522-07:00

The last true argument in Miracles concerns probability, with the vaunted skeptic David Hume serving as C.S. Lewis's foil. The results, however, fail to convince. They do so for some of the same reasons as before, as well as their inability to come up with a satisfying alternative. Hume, we shall recall, had no place in his metaphysics for the miraculous:'...[N]o testimony is sufficient to

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-91205072314992421882011-03-17T20:05:00.000-07:002011-03-17T20:25:32.726-07:00

I've got a long entry on Lewis and Hume in the works, but I want to take the necessary time on Hume. I do want to throw up this curious nugget, from earlier in Miracles:All records of miracles teach the same thing. In such stories the miracles excite fear and wonder (that is what the very word miracle implies) among the spectators, and are taken as evidence of supernatural power. If they were not

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-13808329051504445662011-03-15T17:56:00.000-07:002011-03-15T19:20:03.095-07:00

Debates over the rightness and wrongness of theism are well-worn, and even for one who likes to engage in them they can be occasionally tiresome. Kudos to C.S. Lewis for taking stabs at an original argument. Having once been an unbeliever himself, he is aware of how much his book makes the unsympathetic reader's eyes roll:'I know exactly what this man is going to do,' he murmurs. 'He is going to

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-5009113891875088632011-03-13T07:53:00.000-07:002011-03-13T09:15:37.909-07:00

And still I write on Miracles. Part of what makes C.S. Lewis compelling to me--were he not so, I would not still be writing about and reading him--is seeing what is obviously a first class intelligence so misdirected. He can be so wrong and so right at once.Take his approach to objections to Christianity based on the makeup of the universe:If the universe is teeming with life other than ours,

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-65791376947422933932011-03-12T18:19:00.001-08:002011-03-12T21:08:52.499-08:00

The reasoning of C.S. Lewis's Miracles is a frequent annoyance, and given the number of books I would like to read, I don't know how much more time I will invest in one that I want to less and less. But disagreeing with something is a lot more interesting than choir preaching, so I'd like to say a bit on what about this mighty apologetic grates so. Perhaps its chiefest failing comes near the

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-55476486775848809322011-03-10T19:42:00.000-08:002011-03-10T19:44:55.233-08:00

Apropos of the sarcasm post, here is one of my favorite ever Simpsons quotes, which in its fashion makes the same point I did:

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-2700740590245994172011-03-10T05:05:00.000-08:002011-03-10T05:11:13.512-08:00

Yesterday I cracked open Lewis' Miracles to see what else he had to say on the subject of faith, and three chapters in the results are not encouraging. I'll have more to say when I've finished, but for now I'm of the opinion that his philosophy is much more engaging when filtered through the eyes of a cynical Hell-demon.

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-14302936701180683792011-03-08T05:03:00.000-08:002011-03-08T19:05:03.010-08:00

I can't think of any good way to start this other than to say that C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters, in only a few days' time, has hit me like no other book has. Accordingly I'll try to be as analytical as I can, with the caveat that I'm still sorting out what I actually think.The Screwtape Letters is exactly what its title purports it to be, letters from a high-ranking demon of Hell, Screwtape,

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-57232449272155256302011-03-06T19:25:00.001-08:002011-03-06T20:15:02.619-08:00

I've a piece on C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters that I should have up soon. It's a fascinating book, if fundamentally mistaken in its theology. Before tackling that, I would like to bring attention to one of its most astute oservations, concerning sarcasm. It's not referred to as such, but the definition is unmistakable:But flippancy is the best of all. In the first place it is very economical.

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-26222722126098365582011-03-02T19:02:00.000-08:002011-03-05T19:47:30.976-08:00

When it comes to film adaptations of books, I generally try to steer clear of the original. The book is often better, richer in content at least, and I want to be fair to a movie and enjoy it on its own terms. When it comes to The Men Who Stare at Goats, however, I missed out on the film when it was first released and hadn't much intention of seeing it until I read the book and decided to see it

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-19392916490407540472011-03-02T16:42:00.000-08:002011-03-02T16:55:13.495-08:00

Today the Supreme Court made the obvious decision to uphold the First Amendment by siding with the odious Fred Phelps and his borderline-comically fanatic brood, known for protesting at gay and military funerals. Free speech includes hateful speech, after all, and any effort by the government to curtail unpopular expression, no matter how justified it feels, is gravely wrong-headed.There remains,

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-40350977477865811882011-02-27T20:39:00.000-08:002011-02-27T21:44:01.591-08:00

11 for 24. Yikes.I was surprised to see The Social Network win as much as it did--and slap-happy to see the scribe of "I want to fuck you like an animal" walk away with a statue for his incredible score work for it--as well as Academy's snubbing of Roger Deakins for Cinematography. I thought they might throw a bone to The Kids are Alright and really didn't think anyone cared about Alice in

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-73910480479640366362011-02-27T14:50:00.000-08:002011-02-27T15:55:09.380-08:00

I've seen scant few of these movies--The Social Network, Inception, and True Grit--and my predictions last year were a fairly awful 12/24. But naval-gazing is even more fun when you don't know what you're talking about, so here I go again. My take is vaguely informed by these predictions, which boil it down to a Social Network/King's Speech race that has a lot to do with the generation gap.

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-62138397722969865432011-02-21T18:33:00.000-08:002011-02-23T19:33:30.874-08:00

The opening passages of F. Scott Fitzgerald's semi-autobiographical This Side of Paradise were discouraging. They're not bad--to the contrary, they are quite well-written. But there is a self-consciousness, a smugness to their quality, that occasionally bordered on the insufferable. Take the opening line:Amory Blaine inhereited from his mother every trait, except the stray inexpressible few, that

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-75041977865958622112011-02-06T19:54:00.000-08:002011-02-06T21:41:36.795-08:00

Instead of watching the Super Bowl I ended up streaming Exit Through the Gift Shop, a riotous documentary of sorts "by" English street artist Banksy. Ostensibly the product of 10,000 hours of footage obsessively shot by eccentric L.A. Frenchman Thierry Guetta, it follows a number of notable street artists at work before zeroing in on the ever mysterious Banksy, and then flipping when Guetta

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-6922208647845890862011-01-30T15:36:00.000-08:002011-01-30T15:52:37.789-08:00

So I've fallen off the blogging horse once again, and this time it's half-excusable. I started a full-time restaurant job last week that sapped a lot of time and energy, and (more notably) I've been looking for lodging and, for the past couple days, have been couchsurfing.That's all stabilizing now, and so posting will hopefully resume. Hopefully. I really hope I don't have to resort to a

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-40679620227116264552011-01-17T18:49:00.000-08:002011-01-17T20:56:32.571-08:00

Tonight I finished reading Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. It's a terrific read, an epic story of the origins of superhero comics with generous dashes of Jewish culture, romance, escape artistry, horror, childhood, parenthood, World War II, tragedy, anti-Semitism, homosexuality, and more besides. Rather than traipse the well-trod ground of the book's many virtues,

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-36751206347309082442011-01-13T06:10:00.000-08:002011-01-13T07:15:44.845-08:00

Barack Obama got all the media attention at the Tucson memorial service last night, but the real, and reluctant, star of the night was Daniel Hernandez Jr, lauded as a hero in the days since the attack on Gabrielle Giffords that killed six and wounded several more. There was a back-and-forth on Hernandez' hero status throughout the night. It was first conferred, gratefully declined, and then

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-33280801631452529652011-01-12T19:48:00.000-08:002011-01-12T21:13:20.963-08:00

As is often the case, President Obama had to pull off a great deal with tonight's speech. Not just because of the subject at hand, the shooting of Gabriel Giffords and several of her staff and constituents, but because of all the meta-commentary on discourse and root causes that's led up to the speech, climaxing today with Sarah Palin's "blood libel" whine. It ran a bit long, yes, but it served

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-49475616294109152732011-01-11T14:17:00.001-08:002011-01-11T14:31:12.846-08:00

What is it with Swampland and juxtaposed photos?

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5475958496584160415.post-66547384763554271922011-01-08T17:35:00.001-08:002011-01-08T18:11:51.329-08:00

Facts are painting a clearer picture of Gabrielle Giffords shooter Jared Loughner. Instead of a Tea Partier he's just a deeply disturbed individual. Jim Fallows provides some useful historical comparisons with other assassinations, attempted and successful, and their often political murkiness:1) anything that can be called an "assassination" is inherently political; 2) very often the "politics"

Benjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14709333325776591295noreply@blogger.com0