Three hours left to argue politics: DLD 052909 ← FREE KRAUT!

Three hours left to argue politics: DLD 052909 43

29 May 2009  |  monkeyball  |The Grill

Tags: · ·

  1. Slusser fluffer on Woooozuki
  2. It’s against my better judgment to provide a link to this idiot, but Ostler has a not-half-bad (albeit all-stupid) feature column on Breslow
  3. I never realized I was a libertarian (OK, yeah, there’s an article somewhere on this once every 2 years or so … but it never stops being entertaining)
  4. Via Neyer, yeah, this is wicked cool
  5. I heartily endorse this
  6. Is this really Fred Ward?!?

    7. you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come

43 thoughts on “Three hours left to argue politics: DLD 052909”

  1. nevermoor May 29,2009 11:13 am

    Speaking of politics, I still haven’t had time to actually do this but I plan to.

    "There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want"
    • monkeyball May 29,2009 11:33 am || Up

      { adds instructs FK interns to add “explores own morality” to euphemism directory }

      you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
    • mikeA May 29,2009 11:52 am || Up

      Tricking people into giving their information/wasting their time in the name of science or whatever is immoral.

      • nevermoor May 29,2009 11:54 am || Up

        Just because you are the new FK GoG champion doesn’t give you the right to sneer at “social ‘science.'”

        "There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want"
        • mikeA May 29,2009 12:35 pm || Up

          It is my ability to refrain from filling out online forms that keeps me vigilant in not being caught napping and missing the gog.

          • nevermoor May 29,2009 1:13 pm || Up

            Low blow.

            GoGs are something I check at work. Monday was the first time all season (and a rare example) of a series starting on a non-work day.

            But don’t worry, I’ll reclaim my title soon.

            "There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want"
      • monkeyball May 29,2009 11:56 am || Up

        < neglects to have mikeA sign informed consent paperwork for massive DoD-funded **/FK Milgram-style experiment >

        you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
  2. mk May 29,2009 11:39 am

    1. Actuary fiction.

    2. I put some tofu in my fried rice last night, and felt exactly the same urge. Eerie.

    3. monkeyball, if you disparage Mad Men as you have disparaged The Wire, I will tie a stuffed rally monkey to the end of a thunderstick, hunt you down, and beat you with it.

    • monkeyball May 29,2009 11:52 am || Up

      3. I’ve only seen 15 minutes of one show from (I think) s2 — and in my amateur (and mrs mb’s professional) judgment, the costumes and set design were so catastrophically/laughably wrong (and the lighting and cinematography so inapt and tastefully artless) that we couldn’t bear to watch.

      you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
      • nevermoor May 29,2009 11:56 am || Up

        Careful, that’s the best show on TV you’re hating on.

        More importantly, why don’t you like smart well-written tv?

        "There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want"
        • monkeyball May 29,2009 12:02 pm || Up

          I dunno — everything I’ve seen and read indicate to me that MM is verrrrrrrrry Sam Mendes.

          you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
          • mikeA May 29,2009 12:30 pm || Up

            Very apt. I would actually say verrrrrry Alan Ball (even worse.) Not a good show. I don’t particularly enjoy being manipulated.

            • monkeyball May 29,2009 12:35 pm || Up

              I’d buy that analogy as well.

              I have no problem being manipulated, though — a finely crafted manipulation is one of the joys of life. What I don’t care for with Mendes and Ball is the smugness, the sanctimony, the cant — it’s actually a lack of manipulation (of the audience) and an overabundance of manipulation (of the characters) merely to score points.

              (Whereas, say, The Wire disdains the latter, it sure embraced the former. I don’t much care for “truth-telling” [or, far worse, ST2P] in my art.)

              you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
              • mk May 29,2009 1:12 pm || Up

                You’d buy that analogy, after seeing 15 minutes of one episode?

                Rigorous.

            • mk May 29,2009 1:10 pm || Up

              I don’t particularly enjoy being manipulated.

              Please explain. (with respect to Mad Men, not Six Feet Under or American Beauty)

              • mikeA May 29,2009 1:42 pm || Up

                I generally find didactic art to be grating. If I want to engage with some point or argument, I’d rather read the point or argument than have it expressed as a tv show or movie. There is also a certain smugness of a somewhat Alan Ball type. Watching the show brings to mind the image of both the writers and the viewers sitting in their cushy 21st century seats sadly shaking their heads at the folly of 50s culture/the perniciousness(and emptiness!) of the ad business while simultaneously patting themselves on the back. It also leads to many of the characters being caricatures/vehicles for show’s points. The wife is more or less a stock character, same with the gay guy (he writes fiction!). I think it’s very similar to American Beauty in that the main guy has an outwardly ideal life, but beneath the surface…. I find those types of plots tiresome. Random things I didn’t like: all the stuff with the cigarette ads, the bigwigs all rooting for Nixon (I don’t see any point to that at all besides smugness.)

                • nevermoor May 29,2009 1:59 pm || Up

                  The wife started that way, but has since been significantly developed.

                  Two martini lunches and drinks at 3:30 are an accurate stereotype of the 50’s era business world.

                  Who did you think was supporting Nixon if not successful businessmen?

                  You’re certainly right that there’s an element of “look at the cavemen” sad head shaking, but I don’t see it as such a negative. Especially when things like sexism in the workplace are pretty accurately depicted. Furthermore, I think the point of the series is to show how attitudes changed through the 60s, so there’s a larger point than “the 50s sucked” which would get boring.

                  "There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want"
                • mk May 29,2009 2:03 pm || Up

                  Fair enough.

                  I think you’re not giving the show enough credit for the complexity of many of its characters (Don, Peggy, and Joan especially), and are perhaps allowing the atmospherics to piss you off a bit too much, but I see your point(s).

                  the main guy has an outwardly ideal life, but beneath the surface…. I find those types of plots tiresome.

                  Those are precisely the sorts of narratives I find interesting, as I think much of American life can be described in that way. I’d go so far as to say this is the most jarring/surprising “lesson” I’ve learned from working in the land of meeting rooms and cubicles — that there is a rather glaring gap between the things people have and the happiness that is supposed to (but often doesn’t) result from possessing those things. People still build their lives around trying to become Don Draper, basically, and I think it’s quite a worthwhile endeavor to explore the contradictions/conflicts/disillusionments/etc. inherent in that aspiration.

                • mk May 30,2009 7:04 am || Up

                  I knew your perspective sounded familiar … here it is, verbatim practically, in the hallowed pages of the LRB. (they are stealing your shit, mikeA!)

                  I disagree with most of it (or rather, I think the writer mistakes winks for clumsiness, then blows that all out of proportion), but you’ll be shaking your fist and shouting “yes! exactly! f*** Matt Weiner!” every fourth sentence.

                  I think how one views Mad Men probably has a lot to do with how cynically one perceives the trappings of – cliche alert! – modern life (and by “modern” I guess I mean post-WWII). If you identify with Draper’s alienation/disillusionment, you will like the show. If not, you will think the show is chastising you.

                  Coates on Draper and “passing”.

                  … and now I’ll stop. You may return to analyzing all the ways in which Breaking Bad rules the universe.

                • monkeyball May 30,2009 9:36 am || Up

                  So where’s your temporal cynicism cutoff, and what’s the technological “trapping” trigger? Dishwashers? Automobiles? Escalators? Zippers? Glass-wall high-rises? Steam power? Writing? The inclined plane?

                  you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
                • mk May 30,2009 10:56 am || Up

                  I’m equating modernity more with lifestyle and aspiration, in particular the distance between American Dream mythology and actual lived lives (even among the achievers), than technological advance, if that’s what you mean. But maybe that’s not what you mean. What do you mean?

                  Earnest plea for assistance to the dimwitted (e.g., me):

                  You and xbhaskarx are always firing off questions that 90% of the time I only partially understand, but nevertheless convey the sense that you consider the answers to be bloody obvious, if only I’d double-majored in Cold War geopolitics and the French New Wave. It’s like arguing with Socrates by way of Bill O’Reilly (though you have to picture O’Reilly wearing dark glasses and a tight-fitting Godard t-shirt). Which is fine, I guess, and admittedly my comprehension difficulties probably have more to do with the thinness of my intellect than anything else, but it makes it hard to, like, respond. I don’t mind (at all) if you tell me I’m a nitwit … I just want you to tell me I’m a nitwit in a way that a nitwit such as myself will understand.

                • monkeyball May 30,2009 5:55 pm || Up

                  I’m just curious what it is about the modern lifestyle that you dislike (or that you theorize others dislike) — the increase in life expectancy? The decrease in disease? The improved nutrition? The expansion of the franchise? The increasing open acceptance of LGBTs into mainstream Western society? The increasing embrace of the multiculturalism and pluralism in society?

                  I just find the whole “Yet the savage in his hut was happier than I” thing to be silly and indulgent.

                  you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
                • mk Jun 3,2009 8:35 am || Up

                  1. It seems to me that you can almost always say things are better now than they once were, and you’d almost always be correct. But I’m not sure why that means people (even middle class Americans!) can’t be unhappy, or that the cultural architecture of expectation/aspiration has nothing to do with that unhappiness, or that art ought not to explore any of it.

                  2. This exchange has helped me inch closer to a Unifying Theory of the monkeyball Aesthetic, which, depending on how elegantly the remaining gaps cohere, I may or may not rename the Unifying Theory of the monkeyball/mikeA/xbhaskarx Aesthetic. I have been stitching this theory (which will override and/or explain all theories that came before it) together since the day you proclaimed your abiding affection for Law & Order on the heels of deriding The Wire as unsophisticated hooey. I’ve had to navigate through bewilderment, shock, suspicion, and indignation along the way, there have been many twists and turns and (apparent) contradictions, but I’m almost there, I can see the finish line.

                • monkeyball Jun 3,2009 9:20 am || Up

                  deriding The Wire as unsophisticated hooey

                  I never did. If anything, I’ve criticized it for being oversophisticated.

                  you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
                • nevermoor Jun 3,2009 9:26 am || Up

                  monkeyball: The Wire of critical retractions

                  "There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want"
                • xbhaskarx May 30,2009 3:23 pm || Up

                  +1

                  Fondness for Mad Men -1 with each episode.
                  The intro is cool, though.

      • mk May 29,2009 11:58 am || Up

        If this wasn’t a family website steel-cage deathmatch of hortatory imprecations, I would maul smother you with invective stuffed teddy bears right now.

    • monkeyball May 29,2009 11:53 am || Up

      2. Chomsky: The Wire of political cranks

      you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
      • mikeA May 29,2009 12:33 pm || Up

        2. commenter snetzky: { confetti streams down } Congratulations. You are the billionth person to make that joke. You win a ride on the Blow-up Clown-Mobile.

        • monkeyball May 29,2009 12:40 pm || Up

          I prefer the Blow Out clown mobile

          you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
          • xbhaskarx May 30,2009 3:40 pm || Up

            You, Tarantino, and probably not many others.
            (also, was that a lousy acting performance or was Nancy Allen just acting like she can’t act? I’ve seen it like four times and I still can’t tell.)

            • monkeyball May 30,2009 5:24 pm || Up

              Well, you know me, I’m (like QT) a big BDP apologist — I’m pretty well convinced of my friend’s thesis that De Palma always gets precisely the performance he wants out of every actor.

              you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
  3. monkeyball May 29,2009 12:00 pm

    I refuse to endorse any package of concessions that doesn’t include QUALITY KRAUT SINGLES.

    you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
    • Leopold Bloom May 30,2009 11:12 pm || Up

      Speaking of, you get yours yet?

      • monkeyball May 31,2009 12:46 pm || Up

        nope

        you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
        • Leopold Bloom May 31,2009 2:06 pm || Up

          son of a bitch!

          • monkeyball May 31,2009 2:17 pm || Up

            Did you drop it in the W.A.S.T.E. box?

            you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
            • Leopold Bloom May 31,2009 7:24 pm || Up

              I had no idea what your acronym meant, so I did a search on it, which revealed the following:

              WASTE We Await Silent Tristero’s Empire
              WASTE we are sensibly talking endlessly

              Both confused and angered me, so I’ve gone and let all the air out of the neighbor’s auto. I think this is a reasonable, sane response.

              • monkeyball May 31,2009 9:08 pm || Up

                My god — your neighbor will asphyxiate in the morning when he tries to drive to work!

                you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
                • Leopold Bloom May 31,2009 9:15 pm || Up

                  I know. It was difficult, from a completion standpoint, but they’ll never trace it back to me…

  4. lenscrafters May 29,2009 1:42 pm

    Omar Minaya apparently not satisfied with the suck currently in his outfield, resolves to make it worse

    • monkeyball May 29,2009 2:16 pm || Up

      Even better/more apt: the trade was broken via Twitter.

      you better hope to God you don't show up in this little community, because you'll wish you had never come
  5. green star oakland May 29,2009 2:37 pm

    A Buck sighting – and a homer to boot!

    If this is His will, He's a son of a bitch.

Leave a Reply