Month: June 2006

Albany touts award-winning writer William Kennedy, who wrote Ironweed, among many other works. Not quite at his stature (yet) is Gregory Maguire, pictured above, who has written a number of books, some for children, others for the general reader. The most famous of these is Wicked, which was turned into a Tony-award winning musical. Wicked is the story of the Wizard of Oz from the Wicked Witch of the West’s point of view, and fairly sympathetic at that.

Gregory Maguire spoke at the Albany Public Library a couple months ago. He was very funny, engaging, witty. One of the things he discussed was the inspiration for Wicked, which was the first Gulf war in the early 1990s. He was living in Britain at the time and was reading the press reports that Saddam was as bad as Hitler. Hitler: that brought him short. For Hitler is the touchstone by which all others can be measured. (Recall, if you will, the suggestion by some that W’s policies, and the public reaction, or lack, was like Hitler in 1933 – most responses were viscerally intense.)

Well, Maguire didn’t want to write about Hitler anyway. He’s not a historian. Besides, lots of people had already documented him. Well, who else epitomized evil nearly as well?

But I never understood the term “red, white, and blue”. Sure, it’s the color of the flag, but it’s also the color of the British Union Jack. Look at pictures of flags of the world,
and you notice lots of them in that basic color scheme, in places like France, and our good friend, Cuba, not to mention Chile, the Czech Republic, Iceland, Norway, and, of course, Liberia.

Likewise, when the AFI came out with 100 years, 100 movies (1998) or 100 years, 100 legends (1999), I was interested, but when they went after laughs (2000), thrills (2001), passions (2002), heroes & villains (2003), etc., the formula started to wear on me. The one exception was the movie quotes in 2005, only because they have so influenced the language. (The whole AFI list of nominated films and winners can be found here.) There’s a new one tomorrow night on CBS, “100 years, 100 cheers”. Eh. Maybe I’ll record it to watch later in the summer when even JEOPARDY! is in reruns. BTW, “Due to licensing restrictions, the telecasts of the AFI 100…100 Series are not available for distribution or purchase on DVD or VHS.” In case you were looking.

Entertainment Weekly came out with the 25 most controversial films last week. I saw the cover on the floor and tried to guess some of the choices. Interestingly, the first two I thought of were “Last”: “Last Temptation of Christ” and “Last Tango in Paris”, both of which were on the list, and neither of which I have seen. My third was “The Life of Brian”, which I saw, but which was not on the list.
The full list, with the few I’ve seen in italics:
1. The Passion of the Christ (2004) – directed by Mel Gibson
2. A Clockwork Orange (1971) – directed by Stanley Kubrick
3. Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) – directed by Michael Moore
4. Deep Throat (1972) – directed by Gerard Damiano
5. JFK (1991) – directed by Oliver Stone
6. The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) – directed by Martin Scorsese
7. The Birth of a Nation (1915) – directed by D.W. Griffith
8. Natural Born Killers (1994) – directed by Oliver Stone
9. Last Tango in Paris (1956) – directed by Elia Kazan
10. Baby Doll (1956) – directed by Elia Kazan
11. The Message (1977) – directed by Moustapha Akkad
12. The Deer Hunter (1978) – directed by Michael Cimino
13. The da Vinci Code (2006) – directed by Ron Howard
14. The Warriors (1979) -directed by Walter Hill
15. Triumph of the Will (1935) – directed by Leni Riefenstahl
16. United 93- directed by Paul Greengrass
17. Freaks (1932) – directed by Tod Browning
18. I Am Curious (Yellow) (1969) – directed by Vilgot Sjoman
19. Basic Instinct (1992) – directed by Paul Verhoeven
20. Cannibal Holocaust (1985) – directed by Ruggero Deodato
21. Bonnie and Clyde (1967) – directed by Arthur Penn
22. Do The Right Thing (1989) – directed by Spike Lee
23. Kids (1995) – directed by Larry Clark
24. Caligula (1980) – directed by Tinto Brass
25. Aladdin (1992) – directed by Ron Clements and John Musker
I was glad to see this list, if only because it reminded me of films that had slipped my mind (Freaks, The Message), or that I did not know about at all (Baby Doll, Cannibal Holocaust).

I can’t help it. When my wife got home after school Friday, I had had a bit of an enervating day with Lydia. So I did what I seldom do anymore, since we’ve had the DVR; I channel-surfed. When I hit C-SPAN 2, which was listed as the Senate, I found myself at the “First Year of the YearlyKos convention, which brings together bloggers and elected officials”, according to the overlay, held in Las Vegas, NV. Moreover, it was being shown LIVE.
My comments are impressions of the event, as I wasn’t taking copious notes; since C-SPAN is forever rerunning stuff, you might be able to catch it yourself sometime.

As you might be able to tell from the name, four of the five panelists were from the Daily Kos, including the Kos himself, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga. The fifth was from My DD [direct democracy].com.

I came in at the very end of the prepared remarks, but in time for the extensive Q&A. The Daily Kos is trying to figure out a culture code of civility. That said, they would like to concentrate on the writing, not on bylaws.

A great deal of the discussion was how to take a lurker to the Daily Kos, e.g., and turn that person into a political activist. At least one panelist noted that of any 100 people who go to the site, 10 will post, and one will do the diary. This has been a constant number over the last few years. Moreover, as Markos noted, the the “old-timers”, who might have been on the site for a year, have always complained about the newbies. The site was compared to a city, where some people leave, sometimes for greater glory, and others come on board.

The conversation about keeping upwith one’ss reading wassuccinctlyy phrased: “How can anybody read all that stuff?” This lead to conversations about “high-impact diaries” and technologies that I was not quite following.

There was an extensive discussion about having a pseudonym online. A Daily Kos writer referred to as Hunter, addressed this. He believes some people operate with the “politics of division,” and he was quite perturbed about it. Having a viewpoint that is outside of the mainstream, or even having a point of view at all can lead to nasty recriminations, with people calling employers of bloggers, etc., etc.

So as a blogger who uses his own name, how do I feel about that? Well, let me put it this way: if I had it to do over again, I might have done it differently. But not for my sake. I remember this former fellow choir member of mine named Holly, who, on her 50th birthday, went out and bought the car she really wanted. The reality is that I probably have fewer years in my future than in my past, so I don’t really care for myself if I might tick someone off. Conversely, I do care about the well-being of my wife and daughter, so it’s a tricky wicket.

Some bloggers who use their own names write terribly specific things in their posts: “the family and I will be in Milwaukee all next week,” which presumably means that their house in Appleton is vulnerable. I never put out that I am away, only that I’ve been away, the credo of another named blogger I know.

Then there’s the case of GayProf. GayProf is a gay, Latino history professor in a college or university in Texas. (“A gay, Latino history professor in Texas” – can there be more than one, or is his/my Longhorn bias showing?) Recently, a couple of his colleagues found his site. Apparently, as a result, he’s been forthcoming enough to actually put his picture on his site, which I stole for this in-joke post.