DICK MOVE OF THE DAY...AND MORE...

DICK MOVE OF THE DAY:

Just saw the headline pop up on Yahoo: “Cheney accidentally shoots, injures hunter.” I couldn’t help but laugh. The thought of this consummate schemer doing anything by accident is inherently funny. I also immediately wondered what the name of the other hunter was: Michael Moore? Al Franken? George W. Bush? (After all: Dick is one bullet from the presidency.) Also, it seems to me that these guys who are obsessed with hunting game in trapped, controlled environments are precisely the kind of sado-masochistic weasels who do everything possible to avoid serving in the military and anything possible to start a war. You don’t hear about battle-sobered veterans like McCain or Hagel or Kerry spending all their free time hanging out in duck blinds and stocked ranges. No, that's for Dick and his ilk (including the victim of friendly fire he mistook for an elk) who thrive on uneven playing fields.

SINGLE SENTENCE PORTRAIT OF THE DAY:

The draft dodging Commander-in-Chief exulted in the might of his military.

AD RANT OF THE DAY:

The new VISA campaign. Life takes Visa. Annoying, pretentious nonsense. And speaking of which: Enough with the Citibank ads. It was ok to be cleverly philosophical and anti-materialistic for a few months after the market cash and the events of 9/11. But not only are the executions getting cloying and wearing thin, but I really don’t want to be receiving philosophical reminders that life isn’t about money from my bank! That’s the one institution uniquely unqualified to be talking to me in this fashion. Making money for me is YOUR JOB! I could imagine tolerating this kind of thing from my coffee shop, my jeans store, my cola company. Whatever. But not from my bank. Thank you. Enough!

CULTURAL COMMENTARY OF THE DAY: BHL at the NYPL. (Actually of a few weeks ago, but I forgot to post it).

A friend invited me to join her to hear French icon/philosopher/ journalist/fashion plate Bernard Henri Levy speak about America at the New York Public Library-as part of their seasonal lecture series. I had been there with her on one previous occasion, to see Harold Bloom speak about Walt Whitman a few months ago. The two crowds couldn't have been more different-each reflecting the ethos, aura and aesthetic of the featured guest. Whereas the rumpled, corpulent Bloom's talk on the messily big-spirited poet attracted a mottled crowd of academics, artists and misfits (many of whom carried awkwardly folded newspapers and looked like they were wearing bathrobes), the handsome, elegantly coiffed French-tellectual attracted an extraordinarily good-looking, celebrity-studded crowd that looked like it had arrived from Barneys via Balthazar. Where Bloom's reading had no evident press coverage, BHL's (pronounced BAY-Aash-El) had a media presence befitting opening night at Cannes. It was half philosophical dialogue, half fashion show. In other words, it was 100% French. While we in the U.S. have no real sense of the intellectual as rock star (an idea almost as comically oxymoronic in our culture as the notion of a French rock star), BHL is truly like the French Bono. Dashing. Passionate. Bigger than life. Anyhow, I arrived and watched the crowd gather, heard various reports of celebrity sightings (Adam Gopnik, Lauren Bacall, Judith Miller etc.) and watched the hordes of cameramen follow an ostentatiously dolled-up blonde--dressed in a white haute couture jump suit and oversized 60s retro sunglasses--who turned out to be BHL's wife. Looking at this cartoon of glamorized sexuality, I couldn't help but think that the presence of a spouse like her completely undermined whatever moral and intellectual authority the philosopher might presume to have. Then, celebrity sightings over, he spoke--with a mixture of earnest grandiosity and uninhibited passion that was simultaneously insufferable and charming.

CASTANZA-LIKE MOMENT OF THE DAY:

Finding out that my boss wasn't coming to work because his son was being tested for some grave genetic condition (which, he happily, turned out not to have). Being torn between real heartfelt sympathy for my boss's predicament and real heartfelt gratitude that, since he wasn't going to be around, I could now take a much needed nap.

OLYMPICS OBSERVATIONS OF THE DAY:

I don't really get the whole luge thing. It seems to me nothing more than an extended excercise in butt flexing. Indeed, I was just watching it and I fully expected the color commentator to say “He tightened his butt perfectly there on the last turn…and now he relaxes it in the straight away...ok, into the next turn...tensing again perfectly...oh this is a triumph of glutimal maximal steering.”

Ohno stumbled. Of course, he did. Just look at his name. “Oh No!” Not an auspicious name for a competitor.

So far the theme of the Olympics seems to be Europeans getting revenge for our anti –internationalist arrogance.

ANALOGY OF THE DAY:

The Rolling Stones decrying the Superbowl censorship after agreeing to it is a bit like the democrats decrying war after voting for it.

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY:

I was recently forwarded an e-mail called something like “The Most Beautiful Sights in the World.” It was comprised of a series of stunning photographs with little identifiers” The Lavender Fields from France, Ice Floes from the Arctic Circle, The delta of the Nile, The Fjords, Some extraordinary castle from Russia, A monastery in Bhutan etc. As I watched the procession of transcendent images, I only had one thought: Ok, what's the punch line? Perhaps it's because I'd been conditioned by countless jokey group e-mails…or the general ironic, quip-addled tenor of our times, but I truly saw the this sampling of the world's most dazzling vistas as nothing but a huge set up for some kind of a quip. When it ended with a sincere reminder that we live in an amazing world and so we should remember to see as much of it as we can…it caught me by surprise. I'm not sure what was my stronger emotional reaction: Disappointment that there was not some laugh aloud visual payoff. Or shame about feeling this disappointment. It's sort of like we have (or I have) reached a point where experience itself is not sufficient without the supplement of commentary or comedy. At least any experience forwarded on e-mail.

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Posted on 2/12/2006 ( Permanent Link )
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