davidkin hollywood

My friend Peter Short points out that Richard Cohen's op-ed in today's Washington Post speaks to the same sentiment I mentioned yesterday. That is, the strong current of anti-intellectualism in American culture often renders the simple, blue-collar working man as the ultimate hero, and the thinking man as less important or, worse, suspicious. Cohen's article is a good one.

Well it seemed like it was about that time of year again... school is starting again in the U.S. and the timing was ripe for yet another episode of "Dem Crazy Dumb Southerners." The Washington Post has a front-page story on the lawsuit against University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill for assigning a reading about Islam.

Dem Crazy Dumb Southerners -- some thoughts on this most recent development in the struggle for an anti-intellectual America.

Chick Hearn died last night. I heard the bad news on the radio as I was preparing dinner. Of course, there are and will be for days to come eulogies aplenty for the crusty, vigorous voice of the Los Angeles Lakers who established the vernacular of professional basketball, but I figured I'd at least put my perspective on the whole thing.

Chick Hearn's Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, covered in flowers, candles, notes, and Laker bric-a-brac.

For the past year and a half I've been living without a television. I'm not fanatically morally opposed to it; I just don't have one and it's not important for me to get one. On the other hand, I love the Lakers and love basketball. I grew up listening to Hearn call the games, and even if he wasn't on the telecast, we'd listen to the radio feed. So it was no big deal to continue to follow the Purple and Gold in the past two seasons with nothing but a radio tuned to AM 570. Hearn's descriptions, so vivid and familiar, fill the imagination with mental images that dunk and leap, pick and roll over, around, and through the course of the game. If you listen to Hearn long enough, his vocabulary and nuances are familiar to the point of rote, but fresh and exciting nonetheless. You trust his judgement and his opinion. He's a fan but a hard critic as well. Kobe cuts and fakes through the popcorn machine. Fisher pulls up for a three. Horry burys one at the buzzer. Fox from fifteen. The Shaw-Shaq Connection. It was impossible to miss a game as long as I was in receiving range of AM 570 and Chick Hearn.

When I was little I used to play basketball with my dad. Typical driveway/garage/backboard configuration. He played when he was in high school and had a few moves and a good shot. Every once in a while when we were playing, he'd goof up and, as he would say, "the mustard came off the hot dog." That's a Hearn term, but my dad's used it as long as I can remember. My dad has been listening to Hearn call the Lakers since he first began.

Little more from me need be said. This last season Hearn missed 56 games, and my friends and I drew collective sighs of relief when he returned for the playoffs. It just wasn't the same without him. And it never will be again.

Kevin Werbach posted his thoughts on Chick Hearn's passing as well.

Arianna Huffington rips George and Dick new ones in her Salon commentary today.

Let's start by looking at the problem of the vice president and Halliburton. During the No. 2's time as the company's No. 1, the number of Halliburton subsidiaries registered in tax-friendly locations ballooned from nine in 1995 to 44 in 1999. The result? A dramatic drop in Halliburton's federal taxes, which fell from $302 million in 1998 to less than zero -- to wit, an $85 million rebate -- in 1999.

At the same time they were hard at work stiffing U.S. taxpayers, Cheney and Halliburton were happily feasting at the public trough -- the company received $2.3 billion in government contracts and another $1.5 billion in government financing and loan guarantees.

During the vice presidential debate, Cheney scored points responding to a Joe Lieberman zinger about the millions Cheney had made during the Clinton-Gore years by boasting that "the government had absolutely nothing to do" with his burgeoning bank account. Only someone fully immersed in the corporate culture of our day could view $3.8 billion as "absolutely nothing."

Huffington continues to be one of my favorite political commentators.

Walking around Hollywood this afternoon I found Weenie Dog Gallery, an installation that's been around for six months or so. The gallery/studio belongs to Lynne Margulies, an artist and teacher. Some of her work is displayed and for sale, from angular/impressionistic black and white photolike street scenes painted on found wood to portraits in ink and chalk to prints of watercolors of various tourist perspectives of the Hollywood sign.

I talked with John Bainbridge, the genial fellow who runs and curates the gallery. He lived in the Lido too, six years ago, when the area was truly scary rather than just shitty. He showed me some of the photos that he collects, pictures of jewelry he does, and his press kit for his band.

He said he thought Hollywood was moving in a positive direction, and that the rising rent may push out some of the crummier establishments. I sometimes wonder just how gentrified Hollywood will become; certainly the influx of people like me (young, white, not addicted to anything, college educated) already indicates a major shift in the character of the neighborhood from just a few years ago. Time will only tell, though rents continue to rise, even in this (recession? dip? prelude to depression?). A one-bedroom in this leaky-piped, undermanaged building with no parking just went for $1100/mo., which is what you'll pay (if you're alert and lucky) for a place in WeHo with a pool and an underground spot.

On the way back, I stopped in at The Green Room café and talked with someone from the Church of Scientology.

See Church of Scientology Personality Test for an account.

Jeff Tweedy Saves Rock and Roll

Tonight I saw I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, a documentary on Wilco, and the trials visited upon the band in its effort to release a fourth album. While I enjoyed it overall, the strokes that they continued to receive throughout the movie from manager Tony Margherita, from a writer at the Chicago Sun-Times, from Rolling Stone senior editor David Fricke, and finally the filmaker, Sam Jones, wore me to the point of nearly bursting out laughing. The first fifteen minutes are the worst. Perhaps Jones thought it would be necessary to hammer home early to folks watching this chronicle who don't know the depth of musicianship, invention, and scope of the band just how wonderful they really are. I can't disagree with much of what any of them are saying, but so much of the interview dialogue orbits around the focus of unrecognized genius that a skeptical viewer without adequate exposure to the Wilco catalog may begin to wonder if they doth protest too much.

Yes, they were dropped by their label, Warner Bros./Reprise. Yes, Reprise was stupid and didn't know what they had. And yes, the occurrence was a flashpoint in the rising stream of consciousness of the unfortunate state of the record industry. And yes, Wilco is a fantastic band. But it is their fourth original album. They are much where they should be, at least creatively. They are on the road to greatness. They're on the road.

David Fricke comments towards the end of the film on the phenomenon of shortening attention spans, contrasting his experience with the music -- ambiguous, considerate, appreciative, and iterative -- to that of a hypothetical record executive who listens at a desk in his office surrounded by gold records, allowing himself thirty seconds to get it -- or not. Fricke then extrapolates to society in general. I agree with him very much that "instant" has become the way of life and that art, music, poetry, literature and technology exigent patience and time. What this bodes for all these things in society is hard to say, but I believe that this film may succumb to that very urge to rush things along. Wilco is a good band. It is a very good band, and consistently so. But predictions of their stature twenty years from now feel a bit overdone. It's as if Sam Jones is rushing to fill the void that's been living in the land of good music for too long, creating out of Wilco some savior for rock and roll. I'm not sure rock and roll needs a savior, and I don't think it's fair to Wilco to insist that they take on that role.

L.A. Times today: "Music Pirates Delivering Loot Via AOL Public Sites"

The word "pirate," or some variation thereof appears 18 times, representing 1.76% of the words in the article.

The article quotes AOL reps, the RIAA and a piracy expert. No "pirate" was interviewed for the article.

Missing from this article is context. Just who are the pirates? Why is what they do so bad? The piracy expert says that pirates have been hijacking (there's a completely neutral word, eh?) computer networks for years.

Somewhat related to this is Apple's rechristening of their free iTools, which included 20MB of free disk space, as a subscription-based suite of services cleverly named ".mac". As several people pointed out on the TidBITS Talk mailing list, a large part of the decision to go to a for-pay service was the unmanageable amount of illegal software trading (warez) happening on the free iDisks. I don't doubt that AOL is experiencing the same thing, many orders of magnitude worse.

Still, the tone of the article is very monochromatic. It's the pirates who are the problem. No attention to a record industry that is doing its best to legislate its artificial existence in an age where its prime utility, distribution, is a solved problem. It is L.A. after all, the Detroit of entertainment.

Well, that was a bust. Bad grade on test. Bad grade in class. Drop likely. One of these days I'll figure out the whole "focus" thing. Until then, my approach to science will be strictly on my own terms. Working a full schedule and trying to enjoy the summer at the same time surely didn't help. See yesterday's entry and corresponding story.

Time to plan something new: work on bod. Write every day. Read some fiction. Plan for Argentina. Learn graphs. If I can get through most of the Sedgewick book in my spare time, I'll feel like I accomplished something.

A weekend at the river is fun if you're with friends. It's even more fun if those friends know people with a boat. What's not so fun is having the boat and the jet ski break down, and waiting by the dock as they get fixed. Interesting nonetheless.

Saturday night I experienced my first dance in foam. Lots of flesh, bikinis, gyration, and soapy foam. Then a day spent baking in the sun, on the water, trying to keep the 110-degree air from broiling the bod too much. Makes something 'normal' like the dinner at McDonald's on the way home seem absolutely surreal.