All-American Girl

Yep, Sarah Palin appears to have snorted cocaine with her addict husband, cheated on him with his best friend business partner, and she had a spate of jungle fever -- which she consummated, prior to marriage.

If she ran on all that, even I might vote for her.

But, then again, she's a quitter.

Meltdown Approaching

On another day it would make sense to write about the the economic injustice in Michigan, where newly elected Gov. Rick Snyder (R) has given his corporate buddies an 86% tax cut and is making it up with, I kid you not, a 31% middle class tax hike. You know, class warfare.

Or maybe I'd write about newly elected Gov. Scott Walker (R) being heckled by large crowds everywhere he goes in Wisconsin. Or about newly elected Gov. John Kasich (R) in Ohio whose approval ratings are now completely upside down. Get ready for another seesaw election in 2012.

I wanted to write about the wussy National Rifle Association, who's Chief Executive, Wayne LaPierre, declined to meet with President Obama to discuss a sensible approach to gun control. He's probably a birther.

Then there's the news that the king of all LSD makers, Owsley Stanley, just died in an auto accident in Australia. Flashback while driving, perhaps?

But all that news is dwarfed by the nightmare of multiple nuclear reactor failure in Japan, radiation leaks, plant evacuations and impending meltdown:

Japan faced the likelihood of a catastrophic nuclear accident Tuesday morning, as an explosion at the most crippled of three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station damaged its crucial steel containment structure, emergency workers were withdrawn from the plant, and a fire at a fourth reactor spewed large amounts of radioactive material into the air, according to official statements and industry executives informed about the developments.

...

They initially suggested that the damage was limited and that emergency operations aimed at cooling the nuclear fuel at three stricken reactors with seawater would continue. But industry executives said that in fact the situation had spiraled out of control and that all plant workers needed to leave the plant to avoid excessive exposure to radioactive leaks.

If all workers do in fact leave the plant, the nuclear fuel in all three reactors is likely to melt down, which would lead to wholesale releases of radioactive material — by far the largest accident of its kind since the Chernobyl disaster 25 years ago.

...

“It’s way past Three Mile Island already,” said Frank von Hippel, a physicist and professor at Princeton. “The biggest risk now is that the core really melts down and you have a steam explosion.”

And expect that radiation to travel - around the world...to us:

We’re all exposed to a certain amount of radioactivity from natural background sources. Americans old enough to have lived during the era of atmospheric nuclear tests have some amount of radioactive residue from those tests. Today, tiny amounts of radioactivity from Chinese nuclear tests can still travel to the US on the wind.

“The question is not can it reach us. The question is, in what concentration,” says Daniel Hirsch, a lecturer in nuclear policy at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and president of the Committee to Bridge the Gap, a nonprofit that works to expose what it says are the dangers of nuclear power.

Prevailing winds in Japan blow west to east, notes Mr. Hirsch. Radioactive materials released by the current crisis would take about four days to reach Alaska and another day or so to reach the continental US.

Prayers welcome.

Good as (Acapulco) Gold

Over on Andrew Sullivan's blog, they're comparing the price of marijuana to the price of gold. Fun stuff, including:

Pot retails for about $300 an ounce IN CALIFORNIA. West Coast pot (I'm from Eugene, Oregon - whaddup!) is famous throughout not just the US but the world. If I take an ounce of medical grade pot, put it in my trunk, and drive it to Texas or the East Coast, I could charge $500 or $600 for the ounce and sell it in hours.

Most useful, this handy chart compares the price of weed across the continental U.S.:



Once again, as Jim Morrison once said, "The West is the best."

And Canada looks pretty green.

Proud to Be CA

If I knew he was going to do something like this, I would have supported Gov. Schwarzenegger a long time ago:

Yesterday, outgoing California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed Senate Bill 1449 —which reduces adult marijuana possession charges from a criminal misdemeanor to a civil infraction...

...Senate Bill 1449 amends the California Health and Safety Code so that the adult possession of up to 28.5 grams of marijuana is classified as an infraction, punishable by no more than a $100 fine — no court appearance, no court costs, and no criminal record.Passage of this bill will save the state millions of dollars in court costs by keeping minor marijuana offenders out of court.

The number of misdemeanor pot arrests has surged in recent years, reaching 61,388 in 2008.

Fiscally responsible, libertarian in nature, socially evolved...bravo, Governator!

And especially for calling out the oil companies trying to gut our new environmental laws by throwing major dollars at a dastardly proposition on the ballot in November:

I wonder what will be next for Arnold after his term ends this year. A position in the Obama Administration?

Atlas Toked

So it turns out that Kentucky GOP Senate candidate Rand Paul was a stoned-out kidnapper in college:

The strangest episode of Paul's time at Baylor occurred one afternoon in 1983 (although memories about all of these events are understandably a bit hazy, so the date might be slightly off), when he and a NoZe brother paid a visit to a female student who was one of Paul's teammates on the Baylor swim team. According to this woman, who requested anonymity because of her current job as a clinical psychologist, "He and Randy came to my house, they knocked on my door, and then they blindfolded me, tied me up, and put me in their car. They took me to their apartment and tried to force me to take bong hits. They'd been smoking pot." After the woman refused to smoke with them, Paul and his friend put her back in their car and drove to the countryside outside of Waco, where they stopped near a creek. "They told me their god was 'Aqua Buddha' and that I needed to bow down and worship him," the woman recalls. "They blindfolded me and made me bow down to 'Aqua Buddha' in the creek. I had to say, 'I worship you Aqua Buddha, I worship you.' At Baylor, there were people actively going around trying to save you and we had to go to chapel, so worshiping idols was a big no-no."

Not surprisingly, Rand's memory is foggy on this event. However, he's still able to whine about being treated unfairly by the media, as all modern rightwing nutjobs do when being challenged by anyone other than their Fox News support system:



If Atlas is looking at Rand Paul right now, he's certainly shrugging.

Don't bogart, Rand!

Daddy's Home

There are entertainment careers and then there's the career of Dennis Hopper, just passed at 74, who was an actor, director, photographer and headcase with the biggest ups and downs imaginable. Having hit Hollywood in the late 1950's he acted beside his idol, James Dean, in both the landmark Rebel Without a Cause and the blockbuster, Giant, then got himself banished due to Method acting on the set of a Henry Hathaway movie. Later reinstated by Hathaway himself, Hopper went on to ignite the Hollywood youth movement with his independent release, Easy Rider, which was not only Hopper's directorial debut but also made the long-struggling Jack Nicholson a star. No doubt directors like Scorsese and Spielberg have Hopper to thank for getting their breaks, but with his second film, the ill-fated The Last Movie, Hopper trashed it all in a drug-fueled orgy of endless principle photography and long-gestating over-editing that again made him a pariah.

After getting kicked out of the town of Taos for his psychotic behavior and pulling a gig on Apocalpyse Now -- like Giant, the over-budget scandal of its time, he went on to accidentally direct the low-budget Out of the Blue when the original director crapped out, doing a terrific job also acting as a ne'er-do-well dad just out of jail, mirroring his own struggles. He lobbied hard for and secured the indelible role of Frank Booth in David Lynch's 80's milestone, Blue Velvet, breaking some unknown gas and murmuring, "Daddy's home..." as he molested Isabella Rossellini. Colors was probably his biggest-budgeted directing effort, also in the 1980's, and he had the lead villain role in -- again the most expensive Hollywood picture to date -- Waterworld.

Along the way his accomplished photography and art world cred included a long friendship with Bruce Connor, in the very top tier of mid-20th century underground filmmaking pioneers.

A few months ago, Matt Zoller Seitz put together this terrific docu-video on Hopper. Enjoy:



I'd say, "Dennis, we hardly knew ye." But I think we did.

420 It Is

The myths dispelled legend explained, why 420 has become a universally accepted connotation:

The Waldos do have proof, however, that they used the term in the early '70s in the form of an old 420 flag and numerous letters with 420 references and early '70s post marks. They also have a story.

It goes like this: One day in the Fall of 1971 - harvest time - the Waldos got word of a Coast Guard service member who could no longer tend his plot of marijuana plants near the Point Reyes Peninsula Coast Guard station. A treasure map in hand, the Waldos decided to pluck some of this free bud.

The Waldos were all athletes and agreed to meet at the statue of Loius Pasteur outside the school at 4:20, after practice, to begin the hunt.

"We would remind each other in the hallways we were supposed to meet up at 4:20. It originally started out 4:20-Louis and we eventually dropped the Louis," Waldo Steve tells the Huffington Post.

The first forays out were unsuccessful, but the group kept looking for the hidden crop. "We'd meet at 4:20 and get in my old '66 Chevy Impala and, of course, we'd smoke instantly and smoke all the way out to Pt. Reyes and smoke the entire time we were out there. We did it week after week," says Steve. "We never actually found the patch."

But they did find a useful codeword. "I could say to one of my friends, I'd go, 420, and it was telepathic. He would know if I was saying, 'Hey, do you wanna go smoke some?' Or, 'Do you have any?' Or, 'Are you stoned right now?' It was kind of telepathic just from the way you said it," Steve says. "Our teachers didn't know what we were talking about. Our parents didn't know what we were talking about."

It's one thing to identify the origin of the term. Indeed, Wikipedia and Urban Dictionary already include references to the Waldos. The bigger question: How did 420 spread from a circle of California stoners across the globe?

See also the Do You Party? books by Mike Durgan.

That Stiletto Crowd

Could the opening video of this piece be any squarer for 2010? Stoner movie clip, duh-uh? Hidden identity and having to explain common grown-up discretion?



At least the two professional women in the interview, particularly the psychiatrist, appear smart, calm and experienced.

Carroll Who Died

One of the last of the downtown NYC underground stars to make a record, a poet by trade who was first noted in his teens by the surviving Beat poets, joined the Andy Warhol Factory crew and wrote The Basketball Diaries, Jim Carroll, has just died at age 60. Not a shock in the sense that he always looked somewhat dead in large part due to a heroin habit, but certainly an inevitable irony considering that the one song he'll always be remembered for is, in fact, "People Who Died," which starts like this:

Teddy sniffing glue, he was 12 years old
Fell from the roof on East Two-nine
Cathy was 11 when she pulled the plug
On 26 reds and a bottle of wine
Bobby got leukemia, 14 years old
He looked like 65 when he died
He was a friend of mine

Those are people who died, died
They were all my friends, and they died...

NYC in the late 60's and through the 1970's was rife with danger and death, self-inflicted, crime-inflicted, overdoses being a big factor. Carroll's song was a litany of grotesque two-line tableaus mainly spoken within a rollicking rock 'n' roll number, the two or three hooks good for a lifetime of repeat listening. The song came on the radio a few months ago and still had that have-to-turn-it-up feel, before it gets away from you.

Back in college we used to play the song over and over and goof on it as well, satirizing the tidal wave of bad news and lines with way too many syllables jammed in. But you could still dance to it.

The passing of Carroll, like the deaths of Joey and Johnny and Dee Dee Ramone, the closing of CBGB and the inability of Talking Heads to regroup is just one more nail in the coffin of the psychotically vibrant mid-to-late 1970's New York City punk rock scene. Many of the scene makers had their roots in Warhol, others came from the boroughs or the burbs, but it was sharp, spiky, oppositional, original and thrilling. I'm not sure where the next one is going to happen. Beijing?

Here's what appears to be the music video for the movie version of The Basketball Diaries, which starred a young Leonardo DiCaprio in the autobiographical Jim Carroll roll and features the album version of "People Who Died" although an older Carroll than when the song was originally released, by about fifteen years:



I guess with the passing of Jim Carroll that, in the metaphoric rather than literal sense, "I salute you brother."

What a Rush

I remember when the phrase, "rush," first came into vogue back in the 1970's. It referred to drug use, of course, that first over-the-top-of-the-hill feeling that users reportedly experienced when they got high. It also came to mean any sudden, positive excitement, like the first Indiana Jones movie or mega-roller coaster ride or performing onstage in a rock band for the first time. As in, "What a rush!"

That comes to mind as I originally intended to take it very easy tonight and just write about the latest total moron in the news, someone so inept that they put their cat in their bong to calm it down and (this is where the story gets, uh, fuzzy) appeared to have smoked the bong with the cat in it.

It's a new Dr. Seuss book: The Cat in the Bong Comes Back. "Would you smoke it with a cat? Would you smoke it in a hat?"

How stoned was that guy? I mean, smoking out of a cat bong...what a rush!

But the real Rush of the week is the gift that keeps on giving:



Per one of Josh Marshall's equally entertained readers:
You know what's great about all this Rush nonsense? It looks like the Democrats, from Robert Gibbs to Rahm to the DCCC, are finally using some of the techniques of bitch-slap politics against the

Republicans. If GOPers are put on the spot and agree with Rush, they're taking an unpopular position about the direction of the country. If they disagree, they're immediately forced to grovel and look weak doing it. Only in this case it's sort of like the bitch-slap theory combined with jujitsu, because the Dems are actually getting Rush to administer the slaps. I'm about your age, and I'm not sure I've ever seen the Dems have the confidence to make Republicans look weak like this.

The Dems have put up the "I'm Sorry Rush" apology widget. How fast was that? And just in case anyone thinks that "Drac" Limbaugh is somehow cuddly, Media Matters has a historic library of Rush's nasty mouth, going back to when he called 13 year-old Chelsea Clinton the White House dog.

But Rush was right about one thing. There was a great desire among maybe almost 50% of the country to want George W. Bush to fail, starting with a desire for him to lost the post-election shenanigans to Al Gore, since he had lost the popular vote. DeRosa World has a nice endorseable list. My personal faves:

I wanted President Bush, Jr. to fail to steal the surplus the Clinton Administration left him.

I wanted President Bush, Jr. to fail in raping our tax code.

I wanted President Bush, Jr. to fail to privatize Social Security.

I wanted President Bush, Jr. to fail in mocking climate change.

I wanted President Bush, Jr. to fail in letting Osama Bin Laden escape.

I wanted President Bush, Jr. to fail getting re-elected in 2004.

I wanted President Bush, Jr. to fail in shredding the Constitution.

I wanted President Bush, Jr. to fail in sanctioning torture.

I wanted President Bush, Jr. to fail causing a second Republican 'great depression'.

I wanted President Bush, Jr. to fail in looting the Treasury days before he left office.

There's more goodies. In fact, this may be the most entertaining week in non-election politics since Bill Clinton called Newt Gingrich's bluff and turned the tables on his smugness.

There is no star in the Republican Party the equal of Rush. Palin, Jindal, Steele, Romney. I mean, c'mon; Huckabee is the smartest, Paul (i.e. some descendant of his) is the future. Christ and Huntsman and Flake and maybe Owens all show promise. Cantor is a joke, McConnell is relatively toothless (and lucky to still have a job), Boehner doesn't seem very bright. Coleman is dead man walking, Santorum is over, Delay is over, Gingrich is a legend in his own mind, Giuliani is over. Thompson... McCain...

Jeb?

Gotta wonder what they're smokin'.

But of course

Chris Bowers overstates the obvious and provides the data to back it up:

Here is a political realignment for you: legalizing marijuana is now more popular than Republicans.

41-31%. Duh.

Picaresque

Per Wikipedia:

The picaresque novel (Spanish: "picaresca", from "pícaro", for "rogue" or "rascal") is a popular subgenre of prose fiction which is usually satirical and depicts in realistic and often humorous detail the adventures of a roguish hero of low social class who lives by his or her wits in a corrupt society. This style of novel originated in Spain and flourished in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and continues to influence modern literature.

Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay is an instant classic Early-21st Century picaresque tale made for the Jason Castro set. It takes two rather than one hero, one more roguish than the other, not born low of economic class but saddled with the distraction of physical ethnicity (Korean, Indian) in an upside-down society, early-21st Century U.S.A.

It's not Candide or Tom Jones, and it won't be known for it's brilliant visual design or Oscar-calibre performances, its defense as filmmaking relies solely on it's entertainment capability, in this case with a title making a rather bolder claim than the average Up in Smoke or Half-Baked, that there's a political edge as well.

Having seen it this past week, I have to say that while it's still (thankfully) a dumb stoner comedy at heart, it is funny, funny, funny.

Once the boys get on the plane for Amsterdam, the one that with confusion of "bong" and "bomb" will actually get them to Guantanamo, the movie gets more warped than gross (the opening flatulence joke may break the ice, but it's a drag). The set pieces build from moments to extended scenes of anarchic laughter-- the abuse in Guantanamo, the punchline at the end of the eye-opening party in Miami, the KKK rally, the three-way with the human-sized bag of weed, Neil Patrick Harris at the roadblock, and what is truly the gold that must be reached for a traditionally satiric picaresque with Guantanamo Bay in the title, the visit to Crawford, TX. Blowing out with the man.

It's Bob Hope and Bing Crosby updated with reefer and powered by an almost apolitical, anarchic sensibility. But taken as a series of tableaus and noting Daily Show alums Rob Courdry (big part) and Ed Helms (one very, very funny scene with Courdry), they get bonus points for targeting homeland security Bush style, how it fits into a mosaic of racism throughout America, and even Bush's motivations: things are so fucked up...this President just has to be high.

Here's the boring standard trailer that gives you barely a tiny taste of the outrageous flavor of the movie:



Click here for the not-for-childen R-rated "red band" trailer that almost gives you too much.

Here, here for freedom of speech.

Especially the kind you're still laughing about the following day.

Albert in the Sky

Albert Hoffmann, notable Swiss chemist and creator of LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide), died yesterday at 102. His world-rocking epiphany:

Dr. Hofmann first synthesized the compound lysergic acid diethylamide in 1938 but did not discover its psychopharmacological effects until five years later, when he accidentally ingested the substance that became known to the 1960s counterculture as acid.

He then took LSD hundreds of times, but regarded it as a powerful and potentially dangerous psychotropic drug that demanded respect. More important to him than the pleasures of the psychedelic experience was the drug’s value as a revelatory aid for contemplating and understanding what he saw as humanity’s oneness with nature. That perception, of union, which came to Dr. Hofmann as almost a religious epiphany while still a child, directed much of his personal and professional life.

Per James Joyner, "Just think how long he might have lived were it not for his drug experimentation."

Without going into the dissertation of this mind-expanding drug, which should only be used voluntarily under strict medical supervision for approved therapeutic purposes in countries where it might possibly be legal, the fun fact is that there's no other drug which has inspired it's own artistic medium.

I speak, of course, of the blotter.

Goodbye, Albert.

We'll think of you the next time our faces are melting.

Smear

Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) has been forthright in his autobiography about his mid-teen drug use and his regrets over that abuse. It's not a story in his run for the Democratic Presidential nomination...unless his leading rival for that nomination, or her highly placed advocates, decide to resurrect the story for flagrant and desperate use against him:

A co-chairman of Mrs. Clinton’s national and New Hampshire campaigns, William Shaheen, raised the question in an interview with The Washington Post. He said voters should study Mr. Obama’s background as they chose a candidate, warning that Republicans would scour for new details about a period of Mr. Obama’s life more than 20 years ago when he admitted using marijuana and cocaine.

According to The Post’s Web site, Mr. Shaheen said, “It’ll be: ‘When was the last time? Did you ever give drugs to anyone? Did you sell them to anyone?’ There are so many openings for Republican dirty tricks. It’s hard to overcome.”

This is not some slightly connected wannabe. This is her national campaign co-chairman! So while the Clinton campaign has disavowed the remarks (while not condemning them) and Shaheen himself has apologized, it's cold comfort. Per BarbinMD on DailyKos, it looks like the sign of a deep problem -- and not in the Obama campaign:

So, the comments were not authorized or condoned, but then again, they weren't condemned, were they? And will Billy Shaheen, who is no political innocent, pay any price for his comments? Or was this a directed hit from a floundering campaign?

What's going on with the much-vaunted Clinton Presidential election machine? Is it rot at the top?:

On the eve of the final Iowa debate before the Jan. 3 caucuses, Clinton campaign insiders are increasingly questioning the cautious, poll-driven approach taken by Mark Penn, Hillary Rodham Clinton's top political aide, sources familiar with the situation say.

With Clinton barely holding her own against Barack Obama and John Edwards in Iowa, dissatisfaction is growing with Penn, who some say has mistakenly run Clinton as a de facto incumbent.

"There are two people who have come up with this strategy -- one Hillary Clinton and one Mark Penn," said a top Clinton ally, speaking on condition of anonymity. "Mark wanted to run her, basically, for re-election, and we are seeing what happened."

If she does not come in first in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, expect a campaign shake-up.

Meanwhile, the Obama campaign responds in a rather devastating fashion:

“Hillary Clinton said attacking other Democrats is the ‘fun part’ of this campaign, and now she’s moved from Barack Obama’s kindergarten years to his teenage years in an increasingly desperate effort to slow her slide in the polls. Senator Clinton’s campaign is recycling old news that Barack Obama has been candid about in a book he wrote years ago, and he’s talked about the lessons he’s learned from these mistakes with young people all across the country. He plans on winning this campaign by focusing on the issues that actually matter to the American people."

I'm not saying I'm for one or the other, and at this point am still most in agreement with former Sen. John Edwards. However, for those arguing that Obama most represents change, this is great fodder.

Shaheen and, if involved, any other leadership from the Clinton campaign behind him, have taken a page from the Karl Rove playbook, albeit clumsy in execution. Americans, and Democrats above all, are starving for change.

Based on the series of attacks by her campaign this past week or so, it's hard to see how Clinton brings it.

Pervasive

American Gangster is my kind of mainstream Hollywood movie. Money well-spent on a sprawling cast of fantastic actors and successfully recreating a fascinating time in the late Twentieth Century. Add some quality shoot 'em up. Stir.

Although build around an arguably obvious rise of a drug lord/pursuit by a cop plot, it scores by depicting how thoroughly drugs permeated U.S. culture from the 1960's through the entire 1970's setting, and how so much of it was fueled by the Vietnam War -- both the desperate degradation bourne by the constant images on the television screen and the actual opium highway via U.S. military transport.

But the real story the rides like a bandit throughout American Gangster is that of corruption. American was a drugged up nation by that time, what with all the legal speed, barbs, alcohol and cigarette society that developed from WWII through to the 1980's, then LSD developed by the CIA and released to the streets (legal in the early 1960's), pot (although not as widespread as today, treated like a narcotic), some coke (more late 70's-late 80's, Reagan era drug including it's bastard child, crack), and a whole influx of heroin. While this movie doesn't show every single person on some sort of mood alterer -- Denzel Washington's drug boss Frank Lucas doesn't partake in more than the social drink -- it chooses instead to portray a variated landscape of corruption.

Early in the picture we learn that Russell Crowe's Det. Richie Roberts, is a mess with his personal life -- the exact opposite of family man Frank -- but scrupulously honest as a cop. Lucas, of course, is supplying the city and northern New Jersey with life-sucking heroin, but we just get a couple of horrific, passing junkie montages, nothing following a junkie character all the way to empathy. And at the far end of the moral scales is brazenly corrupt Detective Trupo (a second great turn this season for No Country's Josh Brolin), who moves around with a posse of corrupt coppers in suits.

The movie implies that virtually all of the NYC/NJ metro area police force was on one take or another, hence the physical danger to Richie for not taking money. The resultant facts bear out similarly. But the question is always asked, what's the price for that character. How much money, how much respect, how much self-respect, how much hero worship to come aboard. How much family.

And for almost every character, it's not a tough decision. Whether it's already being corrupt or entering into the family business, it's just everyday evil. In some cases it's the blind eye tolerance, most notably with Frank Lucas' mother, played by Ruby Dee.

What's great about her performance is that at first you think maybe she's in this very small role just because she's the valedictorian, the long beloved breakthrough career with her husband, the late great Ossie Davis. Then, late in the picture, there's a scene where you realize why she was hired. It's because she can stand up to Denzel. No problem. And not many can.

You can see what it does for him to be opposite her, where with everyone else but Crowe, with whom he spends most of the movie separate, he's the mature, esteemed, royal guy in the room, the motor completely driving his half of the movie, star power.

Crowe, on the other hand, does another one of his chameleon performances, channeling a very boyish, unpretentiously earnest working class cop who's striving to make a little more of himself. As with Michael Mann's Heat, these are two equivalent leading men (Washington gets his name first in the titles, fittingly as the title character) each owning half the movie building up to finally meeting, what we're waiting for, the two facing off, even a showdown.

With Heat is was the scene in the restaurant between DeNiro and Pacino, which was engaging without being cathartic. In American Gangster, it's a much bigger release when they first appear in a shot together, and the ensuing act-off is almost less important.

Very cinematic, very big screen stuff. And what may be director Ridley Scott's greatest accomplishment is that he's subsumed his more obvious trademark stylizations. You'd be forgiven for thinking this might have been directed by any one of a dozen other directors, but it's his confidence to just "shoot the story" this time (no doubt eased by service to the pro Steven Zaillian script) that makes it work. The movie benefits from his gift for big images, big performances and iconic performances, but the movement is so fleet, without feeling either jumpy or overly graphic, that it feels unforced, as hip like the era.

I even forgave the play of "Across 110th Street" after it was on both the original 1972 classic and Tarantino's Jackie Brown, because that Bobby Womack song is so damned cool.

With any resonating period piece one has what the metaphoric connection to our times, what element of our contemporary psyche is it stroking, what's the reflection of. I do think analogies can be too stretched (is No Country for Old Men really construable as a metaphor for the Iraq War? ) but I can also see how we believe the world of Scott's movie, even our hollowed American Past, because of the rife corruption of the current Administration and the GOP Congress that was so long working in tandem. We've had those months this year, last year, the year before, when it seemed like a country of a scandal a day.

Sure, all those cops were on the take. America was on the take. And we want that celluloid catharsis because we're trying to convince ourselves that somehow, someday, we'll clean up our collective act.

For a moment.

Veterans Day Blues

The worst Veterans Days are always the ones where there's a war going on. And while all wars seem to engender some degree of patriotic censorship, even the ones going well, the chaotic banning of anti-Iraq War vets from V-Day parades is just, well, un-American:

Members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans for Peace and Military Families Speak Out were prevented from joining the annual parade down Atlantic Avenue and restricted to a nearby parking lot, officials said. Organizers said the groups were trying to push a political agenda at an event to honor veterans. Earlier this week, the Veterans Day Parade Committee rejected their applications to participate, according to the Long Beach Press- Telegram. "This is not a political event, this is a time to come and just say thank you to all veterans," said Long Beach City Councilman Val Lerch, who also was on the parade committee.

Here's Val. I'm hoping he means well, but you just don't know these days, with such a dissent-averse rightwing as we have now. The partisans in charge.

Keith Olbermann had on a very compelling Paul Rieckhoff, Executive Director and Founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), where they covered the stifling of veteran free speech, the 1 in 4 stats of Iraq & Afghanistan war vets currently homeless, and a recent case story in the L.A. Times by a photographer who got closer than usual to his Marlboro Marine.

Oh, and they cover Bush not pausing in his war council to attend the annual wreath-laying at Arlington National Cemetary.

Meanwhile our very own Admiral William Fallon, head of Central Command, says:

None of this is helped by the continuing stories that just keep going around and around and around that any day now there will be another war which is just not where we want to go.

Getting Iranian behaviour to change and finding ways to get them to come to their senses and do that is the real objective. Attacking them as a means to get to that spot strikes me as being not the first choice in my book.

Getting our government to change its behavior is not even possible until January 20, 2009.

It's enough to drive one to absinthe.