The Return of One Theodore Vegas

NOTE OF THE DAY:

Back from LA.
Sorry for the delay.
Lots of technical difficulties.
What can I say?

AMBIGUOUS SIGN OF THE DAY:

On the back of a truck. "Finnish America." A statement of Scandinavian ethnic pride or a slogan from an illiterate Al Qaeda Jihadist?

CURIOUS EXPERIENCE OF THE DAY:

Seeing a Hollywood Video sign that was actually in Hollywood.

OBSERVATION OF THE DAY:/CRUEL BI-COASTAL IRONY OF THE DAY:

In LA, people have really nice spacious apartments. But the traffic is so bad they spend half their time trying to get home from work and so have almost no time to enjoy them. In NYC, we have crappy little overpriced apartments, but we have great public transportation, so we can get home quickly to our dank little hovels.

MEDIA META-COMMENTARY OF THE DAY:

Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen (hailed far and wide for his unedited, straight from the hip, tell it like it is approach.) made a disparaging comment about one of the Chicago sports reporters that was deemed newsworthy because it contained a slur against homosexuals. But it became blogworthy because of the way it was reported. The quote, shown on the screen in a written form, was “He’s a (expletive) fag.” What was curious and noteworthy was the way they felt comfortable showing the quote in its written form but refused to utter the three letter term of sexual derogation in question. It was as if the unspoken text constituted objective news, but the utterance of said text would have constituted an editorial legitimization of the statement. There was an almost magical distinction made between the respective powers accorded the written and spoken word. If it were a racial epithet, they might have been able to make use of the phrase “The N word”—a term which has an associated written form (“N--) and manages to clearly say without saying, It wasn’t quite hypocrisy. It was just a fascinating little liminal moment—at the socially constituted boundary between the admissible and the taboo.

HOMELAND INSECURITY MOMENT OF THE DAY:

The revelations of al qaeda plans for a cyanide attack on NYC subways really makes the government's refusal of homeland security funds to NYC (allegedly for failure to fill out the forms properly) look all the more enlightened. Inspires confidence in the wisdom and competence of our leadership. Gives one that cozy happy feeling.

TALKING (COUNTER)POINT OF THE DAY:

BTW: When Cheney and Rove pull out the old absurdity that the Republicans should be re-elected because there have been no additional terrorist attacks on their watch, it must instantly be pointed out that the original--and entirely unprecedented -- terrorist attacks of 9/11 happened on their watch and on no one else's. The Bush administration: A legacy of contempt for our memory and our intelligence.

NOTE TO SELF OF DAY:

OK, Vegas. Dial down the righteous indignation. And dial up the entertainment.

COMEDY IDEA OF THE DAY:

Accidentally offending the deaf. Some innocent series of hand gestures you use to communicate with someone (simple gesticulations to supplement your verbal narrative) turns out to mean something insulting or pejorative in sign language. “You’re fat and ugly” or “What a bad nose job!” Larry David style hijinx ensue.

(UNCHARACTERISTICALLY SNARKY) CELEBRITY OBSERVATION OF THE DAY:

NIcole Kidman looked really happy in the wedding pictures I saw in the NY Post. I guess her first marriage really helped her figure out what she wanted in life. Like, for example, a heterosexual husband.

EMPATHIC EXERCISE OF THE DAY:

Consider the sad fate of the displaced starter dog—marginalized with the birth of the first child after being used for a parental test run.

QUOTE OF THE DAY:

“For our viewers, let’s recap what we don’t know.” --Anderson Cooper on 360. I am impressed with this attempt to define the negative space of our collective knowledge (or to summarize the totality of our collective ignorance), but think he would need to have much longer than a 2 hour programming slot to essay such an ambitious project.

MEDIA OBSERVATION OF THE DAY:

Someone I know was remarking that Maxim has really lost its mojo. Evidently (I am not a regular reader/ogler), men turned to Maxim to see hot erotic shots of scantily clad models and actresses they couldn’t see virtually naked anywhere else. But this month they have porn star Tera Patrick on the cover and posing for a spread. The guy was lamenting how this is a clear sign that the magazine has lost its way. I mean why would anyone want to pay to see a woman posing in Maxim if he could easily see her totally naked doing all kinds of explicit sexual things on a porn video or on the web? I suggested that he was missing the point. And the point is novelty. Just as readers can go to Maxim to experience the novelty of seeing a pop star they normally see fully clothed posing in a scantily-clad suggestive fashion, now they can see a woman they’re only used to seeing totally naked in the novel guise of merely partial undress. Maxim offers novelty from both directions. The fully dressed are transformed into the titillatingly underdressed. The fully naked are transformed into the titillatingly semi-clad. It marks the crossing point where the clothed objects of desire can reveal and the naked objects of desire can at least partially conceal. It’s an opportunity for image transformation under the careful observation of the spankerishly sophisticated male gaze.

FLUFF NEWS ITEM OF THE DAY:

A researcher recently looked into the question of what is the happiest day of the year. After about 3000 interviews and an algorithm that factored in all kinds of variables like length of day, abundance of childhood memories, weather etc., he determined that the happiest day of the year is June 23. Which is today. Judging from my very limited sample of 1 person’s experience, I’d say he might be onto something. I had a really nice, quiet relaxing day that included a brief jog in the Hollywood hills and a Salad nicoise by the hotel poolside. And I’m now enjoying a crisp Tecate beer as the sun begins to set on my last day in LA. Hope you’ve had a good one. I wonder if the day will soon become known as Happiest Day Day or Happiness Day? That might really put a lot of pressure on people to be happy and hence have the ironic effect of making lots of people feel depressed.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY:

That while the Internet narcotizes most of the world (via porn, sports scores, stock prices, chat rooms and celebrity gossip sites), it is being used by a small network to plan and organize terrorist attacks. It would be interesting to take a true snapshot of the life of the web. To get a sense of—at any given moment—how many people are using it for porn, how many using it for gossip, how many using it to get their sports or stock fix, how many are using it for practical business matters and how many are using it to research or organize a terrorist attack. I find the simultaneity of all those uses fascinating. At the moment that one person is refreshing the page that holds his stock portfolio, another is pressing 'send' on a letter to his mother, another is booking a flight to his best friend’s wedding, another is looking up a recipe, another is thrumming himself while watching an internet blow job and yet another is posting instructions for a do-it-yourself terrorist bomb. The various uses and abuses of a single global technological entity--a web that brings us all together and in which we are all ensnared.

CONFIRMATION OF THE DAY:

When people wonder (as they often do around New York or at least among my circle of morbidly curious friends) why there have been no terrorist attacks since 9/11, I have always maintained that it’s because they are waiting to do something even more spectacularly devastating than the WTC attacks. It has seemed obvious to me that anything as pedestrian as a suicide bomber in GCT would feel puny and disappointing after the events of 2001; that the bar was set really high and, working in Allah time as they are, they are patiently waiting for a plan that will exceed that nefariously lofty standard. While I am no Nostradamus and (as any reader of this blog knows) am often wrong in my hunches and predictions, this one has always really seemed like a no-brainer to me. Anyhow, I got confirmation of this while reading in Newsweek about how El-Zawahri evidently vetoed the planned cyanide attacks on the NYC subways precisely because they were insufficiently spectacular. It felt both confirming and bit creepy that both of my most acutely felt terrorist-related intuitions (that the next attack would be on the subways and the the only reason there had not been further attacks was that they hadn’t met the requisite spectacular devastation criterion) were both confirmed in the same story. It made me think that I was doing a very good job of thinking like the terrorists who are trying to kill me. Which means, in a sense, they had already won. But of course they haven’t fully won. I still spend a heck of a lot of time using the internet for fun, idling stuff like sports and blogging-- blissfully oblivious to the fact that as I do so, they are busy using it to network and plot their next attack.

MOVIE/MUSIC REC OF THE DAY:

The Documentary “Leonard Cohen. I’m Your Man.” Based on a concert in tribute to this artist of singular gravitas, humor and dignity –a songwriter so dedicated and gifted that he puts to shame pretty much everyone else who even presumes to practice the craft. As someone (U2’s Edge or Nick Cave) says of him –in one of the movie’s many statements of extravagant praise to the nattily attired Montreal-born “Jewdist”: “Hey the guy can actually write. That gives him an unfair advantage.” Musical highlights included Antony’s rendition of “If It Be Your Will”, a gorgeous duet version of “Anthem” by two Canadian women whose names escape me, a nice version of “The Chelsea Hotel” by Rufus Wainright and a stunning version of the breathtakingly beautiful “Hallelujah” by the self-same baritone diva. It was striking that there was not a single American among the many people who came to Australia to sing in honor of this musical legend. I will not suggest that this is because Americans lack the lyrical sophistication and seriousness of spirit to appreciate his music. But, frankly, I cannot think of any more plausible explanation. (Or maybe this is hogwash and it is simply a consequence of the fact that no American singers were invited.)

LEONARD COHEN LYRIC OF THE DAY:

“Ring the bells that still can ring/forget your perfect offering./There is a crack, a crack in everything/That’s how the light gets in.”

SHAMEFUL (ASTOUNDING) NATIONAL SNAPSHOT OF THE DAY:

In the same week, congress effectively extended almost all of the inheritance tax benefits of the very rich and denied a raise in minimum wage to the very poor.

A PROPOS LEONARD COHEN LYRIC OF THE DAY:

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

And everybody knows that it's now or never
Everybody knows that it's me or you
And everybody knows that you live forever
Ah when you've done a line or two
Everybody knows the deal is rotten
Old Black Joe's still pickin' cotton
For your ribbons and bows
And everybody knows.

HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY:

Leonard Cohen performing “Tower of Song” with U2. An obviously humbled Bono hums along to his lead like a Pipp to Gladys Knight—until offering a truly beautiful (paradoxically restrained yet soaring) version of the bridge. Aside from world poverty, Leonard Cohen is the only force or entity or presence I have ever known to truly humble Bono. This attitude of respect bordering on reverence made me like the pop star in the wraparound shades more than I ever had before. And the unreadable blankness on Leonard Cohen’s face as he sang—suggestive alternately of mild amusement and complete indifference—was worth the price of admission.

LAUGHABLE UTTERANCE OF THE DAY:

“Scooter Libby—one of the finest men I have ever met.”

Dick Cheney, during a CNN interview,, although it was possible that his asymmetrical smirk was an indication that he was speaking in geste.

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Posted on 6/27/2006 ( Permanent Link )
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