Props

Managed to catch the new Australian Western The Proposition at the head of the week and it's an excellent, brooding, bloody picture in the cinematic tradition of The Wild Bunch and even Unforgiven, and the literary tradition of Cormac McCarthy circa Blood Meridian.

Basic plot is that it's 19th century wild west times in the outback and a proper family has been slaughtered in their home by members of The Burns Gang. Ray Winstone (Sexy Beast) plays the frontier-taming Captain Stanley. At the start of the picture he captures middle and younger Burns brothers, and declares his intention to publicly hang the cowering baby bro nine days hence on Xmas, unless the moral-compass middle brother (the protean Guy Pearce of L.A. Confidential, Memento and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert) kills his homicidally psychopathic older brother (Danny Huston, recently seen in The Constant Gardner). Emily Watson puts in great work as the Captain's wife, as does John Hurt as an Irish-hating bounty hunter other performers leaning on Winstone or carrying out fiendish orders for either side, but the three men are the core of the drama, as you might imagine.

Winstone is simply one of the finest actors working in the English language. Captain Stanley is actually a liberalizing influence, come from England with his cultured wife to this desolate (and ungodly beautiful) landscape. He want the elder Burns dead because it's the next crucial step to civilizing this frontier, not for vengeance or any arbitrary punishment. Thanks to Winstone we feel Stanley's pain, how it separates him from a wife he so longs to be close to, how he's burning up inside fighting the political head of the settlement.

Meanwhile the (to my mind) perennially underrated Guy Pearce makes his way to the baddest of the badlands, the place the Aboriginals won't even go, where his brother and his band of cutthroats and rapists are holed up. The question behind Pearce's steely gaze is whether he'll betray his older brother, clearly the prime mover behind the slaughter, in order to save his fear-crazed but innocent younger brother. If blood is thicker than water, who's blood do you choose?

And there's plenty of the red stuff. Like the classic Sergio Leone Westerns, there's long, languid stretches or slow-burn suspense and awful contemplation, punctuated by bravura violence scenes that leave faces, fists and other implements soaked in the red stuff, dripping off. Nothing phony or forced, just the raw brutality of frontier life at a time of heightened moral conflict.

The director, John Hillcoat, has clearly studied his masters, and achieves a terrific look, even when we're watching men with flies clinging to the backs of their heads and necks in the noonday sun. The constant insect infestations are a stark reminder of how unfriendly these lands were, how inhospitable to civilized life.

But the big props go to second-time feature film screenwriter (both with music video graduate Hillcoat) Nick Cave, leader of The Bad Seeds, musician extraordinary. I'm not as educated in Cave's work as I might be, but one of my favorite of his albums is Murder Ballads, which explores the English and early American tradition of extremely graphic, morbid barroom songs telling homicide stories; brides losing their minds, bartenders shooting down customers, matricide and patricide, you name it.

The Proposition clearly benefits from Cave's earlier research and emotional connection to our homicidal history. Nation building at its finest. Consequently despite the pleasures of myth-making and classic movie pacing, there's a reality at the heart of the story, and it's the perennial John Ford question of what kind of man you need to break the frontier.

There's the tough but liberalizing force of Captain Stanley -- repping society and the law. There's the rough allegiances and resourcefulness of the outlaw, the man borne of the landscape and somehow trying to break free but hellishly captive to it. Then there's the transfixed stare out into the Outback of the older brother, the bad man, his mind a thousand unsettling worlds away, his actions frighteningly unpredictable, a self-styled patriarch in a psycho ward world.

It's a great set-up and the picture feels like top of the genre, a great big-screen experience. If it's a genre you've enjoyed in the past, go and have yourself a memorable experience.

Pop

I don't like to dis entertainment acts or movies or shows on this blog and don't do so now, but I have to say that after watching tonight's American Idol final sing-off, the first episode I've watched this year after a number of years getting into the whole Idol rollercoaster, I just don't care if blue-eyed soul boy or knockout hard-workin' brunette wins.

Last year I got hooked when Bo performed "Whipping Post" by The Allman Brothers, the biggest never-expected-to-hear-that-on-Idol moment to that date. Bo continued to be the most interesting twist on the show's formula but lost to sweet-innocent Country singer Carrie Underwood, a talented singer but the most bland choice "America" had crowned so far.

That kind of took the oomph out of my willingness to invest my rooting interest, and I didn't watch this year, although I did hear good things about Chris, the bald rocker.

The fact is I was set up for a fall last season because the previous season is unlikely to ever be topped. The winner, Fantasia Barrino, was Gospel-trained single mom who sang like a more rebellious Aretha Franklin and advised the following season's contestants to "Get out there and get uuuug-ly!" right after taking one of the pop-safe engineered Idol-written songs and climaxing it with the most beautifully ugly screams and howls ever heard on the show.

A couple weeks ago the Hollywood trades reported that her NY Times bestselling dictated autobiography, Life is Not a Fairy Tale, which covers the poverty, sexual humiliation and illiteracy in her life, will be made into a Lifetime cable network movie where she'll be playing herself. (Who else could?)

From her first audition Fantasia was the real deal, with real depths of emotion and real talent. Her rendition of George Gershwin's "Summertime" is legendary; she brought herself and everyone watching in the theater and at home to tears, a song she had never heard of before that rehearsal week, but which she said spoke directly to her.

Her win was a real triumph and while I never bought her first Idol Factory album, I'm hoping that sometime soon she breaks away like Kelly Clarkson did, but comes out with an album that is anything but teenybopper pop.

Fantasia has it in her; just you watch.

Superduperman

I'm very interested to see how the new Superman Returns movie does. Bryan Singer is certainly the premiere choice for Director, as the first two X-Men movies are top-of-the-line comic book adaptations. I thought #1 was the first Hollywood movie to feel like it was happening in the same world as the actual Marvel comics. Costumes may have been updated but the atmosphere was all X-Men, translated seamlessly into film.

Meanwhile, there's Superman is a Dick.

These are vintage DC Silver Age (early 1960's) Superman family covers, Curt Swan and Kurt Schaffenberger classics (plus a smattering of other artists), all of which are a little bit sicko.

Superman wants to short circuit Pat Boone's pop star career. Like Peter in the New Testament, he denies knowing Jimmy Olsen, and on other covers punishes him uncompassionately to "teach him a lesson". He's cruel to Lois Lane as well, mocking her when she's old and he and Lana Lang are still young, arm-in-arm, laughing. He makes Lois think he's a blackmailer and blindfolds her. He prosecutes Lois for murder while Batman thought-bubbles, "I'm save Lois from the death house!"

The old covers all strive to have great, arresting concepts, the kind that would make a ten year-old pick it up off the news rack and plunk down his ten cent allowance. What's odd isn't just the irony of taste change over forty years, it's that some of the attitudes -- Superman looks on smiling, Lois unaware as she's forced to be Cinderella, scrubbing the floor in tears -- they just seem kinda...'50's berserk.

Is Superman the slim/trim Brandon Routh of the new movie, or is his the berserk '50's dad musclehead?

Or is he just Superduper?

Funhouse

Crooks & Liars has the Fun with Real Audio: Presidential Outtakes from last night's Saturday Night Live.

Is it getting too easy to take potshots at Bush and even Cheney and (we already know it is with) Rumsfeld? Even using their very own lying words?

Every once in a while I get the feeling Bush and Co. are going to rebound, and then they get hit with another sleazy scandal or split their own base on their cross of gold.

I'm not sure the wheels can completely come off unless Karl gets indicted and Dick gets a heart attack. The whole point of "W" is to have a front man for installing the most arch-conservative crony couple, no accident, going back to when Rumsfeld hired Cheney to join the Nixon White House. With Karl hobbled and Cheney out, could the Bush/Rumsfeld axis survive to 2008?

Will George Bush be walking out of the White House with Donald Rumsfeld on his arm when he turns over the keys on Tuesday, January 20, 2009?

Music

Between the Dixie Chicks, Neil Young, Pearl Jam and a host of others, pop music is finally getting political again in a big way. Oddly enough, the movies might have actually been ahead this round, thanks to George Clooney and a host of documentarians. Back in the 1960's, when our government lurched Right, it took a lot longer for the movies to catch up to the musicians, as the only Hollywood picture made about the Vietnam War while it was actually happening was John Wayne's ignominiously off-base The Green Berets.

I bring up musicians because I've just read McCain face-melter Jean Rohe's piece in Huffington Post on how she came to write her New School commencement speech (including the text of the speech itself) and accompanying bio. Turns out, she earned a degree in Jazz with some impressive stats for someone her age:

Since she transferred to the New School in 2002, Jean has sung in venues throughout New York City, including the Birdland, Sweet Rhythm, the Cornelia Street Cafe, Detour, Barbes, and others. She also teaches and performs music for young children at the Third Street Music School Settlement and at venues throughout the city. She recently completed her senior work at Eugene Lang, an audio documentary about her trip to Israel/Palestine during the Gaza disengagement last August. In July she will be performing at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland.

From McCain to Montreux -- not too shabby.

I'm assuming Jean knows she's probably opened a big can of whup-ass on herself, and I'm expecting some odious professional partisan like Bill O'Reilly or Ann Coulter to lead the sliming. But musicians always have their talent to fall back on, and an audience that doesn't really care what the crumbling old finger-waggers say.

So here's to Jean, who may seem a little impetuous in her youth, but who's heart -- and axe -- seem to be in the right place. As Jean writes:

I think we must remember that as big as this moment may seem to me today and perhaps to other supporters who are reading this article, this is a very small victory in a time when democracy is swiftly eroding under the pressure of the right wing in this country. We all have much work to do, and for the most part the media do not represent us, the small people who don't hold any special titles but who feel the weight of our government's actions on our backs each and every day. I never expected to get the opportunity to speak the way I did yesterday, but I'm so glad that I did. I hope that other people found strength in my act of protest and will one day find themselves in my position, drawing out their own bravery to speak truth.

Play it, sister.

Schooled

It's a safe bet that John McCain learned a lesson on Friday, when he was roundly booed, heckled and protested at NYC's New School graduation. It was all truth-to-power (Colbert!) starting with:

The first student speaker, Jean Sara Rohe, 21, said she had discarded her original remarks to talk about Mr. McCain.

"The senator does not reflect the ideals upon which this university was founded," she said, to a roaring ovation. "This invitation was a top-down decision that did not take into account the desires and interests of the student body on an occasion that is supposed to honor us above all."

You can read the rest in the link, but she had a strong climax:

"I am young, and although I don't profess to possess the wisdom that time affords us, I do know that pre-emptive war is dangerous and wrong," she said.

She added, "Osama bin Laden still has not been found, nor have those weapons of mass destruction."

There are only 100 U.S. Senators serving at any one time, out of, like, three hundred million Americans. And Jean Sara just spoke up to one of them in public.

Bring on the cajones!

It's easy to get all 1950's and wag the finger at the protestors -- I'm not talking about Ms. Rohe so much as about the students and faculty members who stood up, shouted or jeered. I consider standing silently with your back to the speaker a more polite and acceptable choice, since you're not trying to shout down or verbally disrupt a speaker.

Then there's the issue of John McCain's media fable role as having been smeared out of the 2000 GOP Presidential nomination in South Carolina by Bush and Rove. A racial smear, against McCain's very own adopted daughter. The lowest (modus operandi).

But the Straight-Talk Express of that campaign era has been replaced by McCain's campaigning not just for but with Bush in the crucial final days of the 2004 debacle. His criticisms of the Administration have only been remarkable by the standards of strict party loyalty, never going far enough into effective action against the spiteful deterioration of America's infrastructures by the power-grubbing BushCheneyCo GOP machine.

I'd be much happier were McCain the 2000 nominee than Bush. I don't believe we would have gone into Iraq, certainly not so recklessly, if at all. I'm sure if either Gore or McCain had been President, we'd have taken out Afghanistan, as we should have, but also stayed to finish the job.

But none of that matters because McCain did not stand up, did not make a contrary voice known, hid behind the good soldier routine just like Colin Powell and is just as stripped bare because of it. McCain harbors dreams of being the 2008 nominee, and I think he's the only GOP figure who has any real chance, a good one if Hillary Clinton buys or steals the Dem nomination (because there's no way by now with her unrepentence on her Iraq War vote that she'll ever do enough to earn it), but I think he's toast against Gore, looking like an old man next to Clark, Edwards, Warner, maybe even Joe Biden. And I'll lay odds they're all running.

It's much like that old '60's phrase, which tends to apply in stressful times: if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. In this case, since McCain has definitely not been part of any current solution, he's just another cog in the machinery. Remember, Bush is a rich guy, and for him everyone is either a partner or an employee. McCain has acted for hire.

Look, I sympathize. If he wants to win the nomination, he's got to peel off some lunu fundamentalist votes, so he goes and speaks at last week's Jerry Falwell's Liberty University commencement, up at the podium big photo op with Jerry tall and huge-bellied in his kingly university robe. McCain looked small and frail next to the man he had just six years ago called an "agent of intolerance" and a figure who exercised an "evil influence" in the Republican party.

But it's times like these, like with McCarthyism in the 1950's, like when Nixon was using your Constitution as toilet paper, that true character stands the test. And McCain (like Powell) have flubbed it. Why should I rally to the side of a man who, as a Vietnam Vet and POW survivor should know more than anyone the cost of war and why not to be profligate with it, yet publicly supported the Iraq War right from the get-go.

Now the conundrum is worse for St. John. His oratory at the New School was the same as at Jerry Falwell U, something he had originally advertised so folks wouldn't think he's curtailed his tougher "straight talk" for Falwell U. ears. He received a hearty welcome by his friend and fellow Vietnam/Senate veteran, Bob Kerrey, but he reportedly didn't win over the crowd:

The Senator spoke in a dull monotone, without his usual charisma or charm. He was noticeably deflated by the crowd's harsh reception towards him. Remarks such as "I supported the decision to go to war in Iraq," were met with loud boos.

"I stand that ground because I believed, rightly or wrongly, that my country's interests and values required it."

"Wrongly!" one student boomed from the back. Sitting directly behind us, Maureen Dowd and Adam Nagourney of the New York Times, chuckled.

And then some walkouts and I mean, harsh! I remember him with Chris Matthews on a college stage with students enthusiastically, organically, cheering him. The last thing I would have imagined in 2000 was a pair of lead New York Times reporters chuckling at McCain's humiliation at a goddamned college graduation.

So what does the Senator do now? He's lost the students, they're not coming back unless he does some Delta Force action on Bush in his bed with a hunting knife. This President is rapidly becoming pariah, and I doubt many world leaders want to be photographed with him. It's fascinating when someone voted by half the country to run it morphs over a year or a summer into untouchable, unwantable, mass scale detested, but that's what's happening to rich idiot George. Why take responsibility for vomititious 29% approval ratings when you can blame everyone else. Literally, everyone else.

I can't imagine what it's like for David Gregory to interview this President at this time. Was it like talking to a sociopath in prison?

And there's John McCain, still after all this time propping up a bankrupt ideology led by a remote, unrepentant killer.

So if you don't have the kids and you don't have me, you won't ever get me anymore, do you just dance with the date that brought ya and you're hopin', pretty soon, will have bought ya? And that's the GOP religious right, my friend, that's who you've been targeting so they better be who you got. Because independent does not mean "without followers" it means respected for your independent thought and action.

If you're McCain, do you use the student protest as a rightwing rallying cry? Do you trot it out at key press or public moments?

Or do you revamp your rap to include staunch support for free speech, what you fought for and spent five years in a deadly Vietnamese POW camp for?

Either way, I don't want anybody who so unequivocally supported the Iraq War to be my President. I don't trust that person to make perhaps an equally or more crucial national security decision in the future.

I want someone who is his own man. I think that's what the country will be looking for. Whether that's what the stratagems of men or Gods deliver is still so very clearly, so very dearly up for grabs.

Unlike our President, McCain is not by nature a foolish man. He's a guy who knows how to learn. So I wonder, what lesson did he learn at the New School?

Did he learn it might be tough? Did he learn not to come back to this crowd?

I'm hoping he learned how very real, how very deep, and how very contagiously now the people of this great nation are angry with this President and every mechanism that supports him. It is boiling over at the points where the two worlds collide. People are more aware than ever, and they don't want any more Karina or Abramoffs or Plames or NSA transgressions or Iraqs.

For everyone's sake, I pray that the lesson John McCain learned today was to stop being part of the problem.

Like, right now.

Treats

A little break from the political world, the infuriating Hayden confirmation dance, the hatred of the world due to our U.S. soldiers' massacre of an innocent Iraqi family, Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter holding non-public hearings where he cast the decisive vote to allow an anti-homosexual marriage Amendment to hit the Senate floor even though he claims he's against it.

There. Relaxed?

Treat #1 is datajunkie, by a guy named Hyperdave in S.F. As in Science Fiction/San Francisco. His pleasing yet disturbing online collection of pop geek memorabilia includes Outer Limits episode/monster trading cards, covers of vintage Popular Electronics and Psycho Comics.

Go, enjoy. Me, I'll sit here alone. In the dark. With the heat off. But don't you feel guilty, you, go enjoy yourself.

I'll wait.

Now if you really want a geekgasm check out Comic Book Cover of the Week Club. If you happen to go the week I'm writing this, the choice of the week is the bizarre and omnisexual Boy Comics No.9. Don't stop there, be sure to enjoy the touching nuclear tableau (boy, dog, A-bomb), the classic Dell comics Brain Boy cover, or "Buckskin Battles the Banshee" in Super-Mystery Comics.

Treats for the treat.

Snowdumb

Some members of the press are fawning over newly installed White House Press Secretary Tony Snow because he came in wearing his vulnerability on his sleeve, but he's just another overachiever in the Bush Administration, just like El Presidente, but instead of connections and guile to get promoted he had looks, height and some actual experience in his chosen field. I just can't help feeling Snow is something like a Republican contemporary version of the handsome-but-empty newsman played so vulnerably by William Hurt in Broadcast News.

Yesterday Press Secretary Snow fell into the briar patch. I gave him two weeks. But then I thought, hey, if he entertains the Press Corp, they'll help to keep him around. Better than whoever's the next douchebag they cajole into the job. And if Tony Snow feels the good vibes from us, he'll go stronger. Get increasingly engaged. In this completely meaningly sideshow debate we call the White House Press Briefings.

I flexed. Maybe he'll be the star who rides it out to the end. And then...

At the Press briefing today he reveals that, beyond whatever mere coordination some of us had ever expected, it turns out Fox News and the White House are one and the same organization (hat tip as always to Crooks & Liars):

Tony Snow confirms: FOX News is the White House Network

Thank goodness we don't have think about that anymore. Settled.

Now I'm thinking, maybe he makes a gaffe a day, maybe we even wait for it, press corp catching up a bit later, of course, but even then enjoying the daily anticipation and sudden release when he pops that day's boner. One of the complaints has always been how inaccessible they've made el Presidente. We only get one of his gaffes when he has some other big thing for which he's been scheduled and has to talk to the press, but it's right after one of those freak mountain-biking, perch-catching accidents and his face has these funky bruises with bandages hanging off. Now it's like having a handsomer, more idealized version of el Presidente Hombre Blanco doing that surrogate boil-popping (gaffe) every day.

Or maybe Fox's Tony Snow is just Baghdad Bob for the twilight of the Bush Administration. I mean, they're under siege, people are still a little bit scared of them but not nearly as much as a year ago, and whatever information Baghdad Snow gives out is untethered from any real policy, or pathology, that is actually being practiced anywhere else in the building.

It's where the GOP tend to win on entertainment, the theater of politics. We cringe when our guys do something stupid. They act like it's all okay, you only have a problem if you try to point it out, and then they go ahead and promote their dummy because they've got a place they need him to stand. For now.

Stagemanaged.

Nothing of any real importance is likely to ever happen at any Tony Snow press gaggle. You'll get more out of a Paris Hilton newsflash in People.

So even if Silly Tony lasts, I'll just say, "Move along folks, nothing to see here."

Nada.

Yul Love It

Here's another reason God created YouTube:

Ten Commandments

SnowNo

I'm giving the new White House Press Secretary, Fox News' Tony Snow, two weeks.

Anther nod to Crooks & Liars for this footage of his first on-camera press gaggle. Snow's earnest, I'll give him that, but absurdly tries to "reason" his way through the lies rather than just stonewall like his predecessor Scott McClellan. See how it's akin to watching one of those Broadway musicals based on, like, Stephen King's Carrie, where everyone kind of already knows it's a crazy idea but the property is big enough you just might take a chance opening night. Then it's just embarrassing in the theater, train wreck jollies at best.

Sadly yet humorously, Snow made what might charitably be called a verbal gaffe when he said:

Having said that, I don't want to hug the tar baby of trying to comment on the program... the alleged program, the existence of which I can neither confirm or deny.

Hug the tar baby?

Y'o.k., Unca Remus.

So it's disaster after scandal for BushCheneyCo, today featuring Tony Snow's unintentional racism, i.e. ignorance At least he's not willful, like Confederate flag fetishist Senator George Allen (R-Va.). And you know nobody wants Snow's job anyway. Who would?

Who in their right mind would want any job with this Administration?

Elites

I love when Conservatives bash Liberal as "elites". Especially the wealthy Conservatives:

Bushes' Assets May Top $20 Million; Cheneys', $94 Million

That's the headline from an article in the Washington Post that states:

President Bush and his wife, Laura, had assets valued between $7.2 million and $20.9 million last year, up from as much as $18.1 million a year earlier, annual disclosure forms released last night showed.

And, on the Cheneys:

The couple's total income in 2005 was $8.8 million, largely as a result of stock options Cheney, 65, received before stepping down as chairman of Houston-based Halliburton Co., the world's largest oil-field services company, to run for vice president in 2000.

Nice how those options worked out. Glad he had no vested interest in starting a war to add to Halliburton's coffers. Thank goodness no one is holding him accountable for that conflict of interest.

And Praise the Lord that the President and Vice President are not among the elites.

Comedy

Devo is back with a new album of their old songs but performed by children, the ingeniously titled Devo 2.0. Tonight, I'm thinkin' El Presidente George Bush is going through some devolution of his own.

With blogs suddenly influencing the mainstream media, particularly the center-to-left bloggers, there's a Mahatma Gandhi quote that's been popping up here and there around the blogosphere, "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." You could actually say that about the post-Goldwater U.S. Conservative Movement. At least on the East Coast they used to laugh at Ronald Reagan. Then they helped elect him President, twice.

Now Darwin seems to be working in reverse, in double-time. Bush gives a speech on immigration and the only people who take it seriously are entrenched in that very same Conservative Movement, the ones who hate whatever it was he said he was going to do. Don't ask me -- I've stopped listening, watching, whatever it was we used to do with Presidents back when they talked to us like adults.

These outraged Right Wingers range from the xenophobotic Michelle Malkin (ironically the daughter of Filipino immigrants) calling Bush's troop show "theater," to the World Net Daily "Christian libertarian" referencing Hitler for immigration solutions:

If it took the Germans less than four years to rid themselves of 6 million Jews, many of whom spoke German and were fully integrated into German society, it couldn't possibly take more than eight years to deport 12 million illegal aliens, many of whom don't speak English and are not integrated into American society.

And they say young people today have no sense of history.

In a brilliant column today Glenn Greenwald exposed the hypocrisy of the Conservative came which screams bloody murder over Democratic calls for Bush's impeachment should they win in November (a complete straw man, as no prominent Dem has done so) but is hyperventilatiing to impeach Bush over immigration.

So tonight Bush goes on the air and I'm far from the only American ignoring him. Nobody believes his act anymore, not the Left in 4 years, not the Middle in 2 and not the Right as of this year. Nobody thinks he's going to say anything where he'll do a damned thing about any domestic issue -- after all, it's his first Oval Office address on a domestic policy issue in the entire six years of his Presidency.

No commentator has to tell most Americans that Bush is out of touch.

Wait, I did, I did watch a little of the President's address tonight. Actually, that's not exactly true, I just watched a few seconds of his rehearsal. Maybe not a perfect substitute, maybe not as >chuckle< substantive, but undoubtedly the only part that will be remembered.

Crooks and Liars has it up, as always. Oh, SPOILERS, what happens is in the middle of Wolf Blitzer's scintillating pre-speech panel the pool camera or CNN accidentally switches on Bush rehearsing, but Bush is somehow cues that he's on live and freezes; yes, that "My Pet Goat" deer-in-the-headlights look. You can tell he's wanting to drop the mask but being just smart enough to keep fixed, wannabe fierce, same old smug.

I'll bet that a sizable percentage of the population will be with me. Bush has been completely Colbert-icized. While he was once a winner, while we used to fight him, we're mainly just laughing at or ignoring him. There's a lot going on around the President, the Rove/Cheney Plame Affair, the Rumsfeld squandering, the Delay/Abramoff/Cunningham/Foggo corruption daisy chains, daisy figure-eights, but unless he's ginning up another war, we don't want to hear what comes out his piehole. By now we all know, even the Conservatives: it'll always be a lie.

It's the Devo "Are We Not Decider?" George Bush devolution.

I wouldn't even be surprised if some technician flipped it on for a gag. Or maybe everyone's just getting sloppy around him -- he doesn't care about collateral damage, why should some guy in a switching room?

I'd like to think that the regular America worker is a heckuva lot better than Bush's heckuva-job cronies. I'd like to think it was actually on purpose, someone's idea so we could once again see what a clown his is, with duty on his face.

It's your turn, America. Whip it good.

Paranoia

Last night I received an email from a regular reader that he has kindly permitted me to excerpt.

This reader is particularly knowledgeable about where Wall Street meets D.C., and was warning me for years about how the major brokerage firms have been backing Social Security privatization because it would be the biggest boost in brokerage fees since the creation of the stock market. He also predicted the dotcom crash from reading books about the stock market...the stock market of The Panic of 1893.

Here's his take on the NSA database leak, beginning with his well-earned, uh, modesty:

1) Since you know I'm always right about these sort of things, understand that I offer the following as something i believe to be true: the USA Today story yesterday about the huge nationwide wiretapping effort was INTENTIONALLY leaked by the admin.

Yes.

This is their last-ditch Hail-Mary attempt to stop the inside info being passed from insiders to the press (commonly referred to as leaks). As the Cheney Junta becomes vulnerable, the flow of sensitive & damaging info from patriotic whistleblowing insiders, disgruntled civil servants, and ax-grinding careerists has become a tidal wave that Cheney & Co can't stop, and the info is becoming hugely damaging, both in scale and scope. (Forget about mere impeachment: we're talking about treason & war crimes -- hanging offenses and Hague/Nuremberg kind of stuff.)

Their only hope is to make sure everyone everywhere knows their communications are being tracked, and that every insider must consider the possibility that s/he can be tracked down, arrested, and disappeared. (PS: ask yourself: when's the last time USA broke any kind of story that didn't involve a celebrity or a rogue housepet.)

I'm wondering what the Nettertainment readers think. Whistleblower or intentional leak?

At this point, I'd believe anything, as I often say that when the truth comes out (if it ever does) it will be much, much worse that whatever you're already imagining.

The email continues:

2) I'm beginning to think that Cheney is actually "Yuri", the mole placed inside the US gov't by the russkies who would rise in power & ultimately destroy the country.

Back in the early 1970's my father used to say, only half-joking, that Nixon was actually a Commie agent, since he had done so much wreckage to our Constitution starting with his big role in the anti-Communist witchhunt of McCarthy era. Dad explained how that made him the perfect mole, giving Nixon the most perfect unassailable cover. Then the opening of the door to China and subsequent visit was Tricky Dick returning for regrooving, new orders.

Funny how the big four Constitutional crises of the past sixty years have all been GOP powergrabs:

1. McCarthy - Red Scare
2. Nixon - Watergate
3. Reagan - Iran Contra
4. Bush - NSA

Have to admit, they've got a knack.

Prayer

In the Truthout site tonight Jason Leopold, former Los Angeles bureau chief for Dow Jones Newswire and author of the book News Junkie, writes: Karl Rove Indicted on Charges of Perjury, Lying to Investigators.

Bush is evidently speaking to the nation Monday night, and new White House Press Secretary Tony "Fox" Snow is doing his first press conference on Tuesday, rather than the expected Monday, so maybe Monday, May 15, 2006 is really the day where Karl gets his frog-march as Joseph Wilson has requested for two and a half years.

Here at Nettertainment we take stands but try to avoid wishful thinking predictions. While we occasionally get a little excited over possibilities like an Al Gore Presidency, we rarely expect the best, as it is against our nature. We may hope for it, but expectation is presumption, and pride goeth before a fall.

However, with this salivation-inducing story from Truthout, maybe it is time for prayer. After all, our President does it.

Nettertainment prays as he expects many readers do, i.e. when he's really worried and wants something to pretty please go right. It can be momentous, like praying for a family friend to recover from dire illness. It can be self-serving, i.e. please let my family be able to eat through the end of the year. We hope, however, that it is never prayer for something petty.

With this in mind, and our commitment to diversity of religious belief, along with the desire to cover all bases in case one religion really is the one and only true path to getting cut a break in the afterlife, we offer the following prayers to a few different major deities:

Dear Jesus,
I may be a Jew but I still believe in your basic teachings regarding peace, brotherhood, charity, love, and keeping usury capitalism out of our houses of prayer. So I think we're on the same page, not to mention that you're Jewish like me. Please, Jewish Jesus, please make it true that Karl Rove is indicted and, if it is indeed true that he helped lie to America in order to bring war, death and destruction to innocent civilians in an irresponsible manner all completely antithetical to your teachings, please make sure that he is removed from the field of U.S. political power and influence forever.

Dear Buddha,
I may not be the most peaceful man on earth, especially when I yell at one of my kids for really getting on my nerves and I know I know, empathize then problem solve together, but I've rubbed the belly of your surrogate icons more times than I can count and think you're a really cool religion, maybe the one I'd switch to if Jewish guilt didn't prevent me from leaving the Jewish faith, plus I like that you enjoy a good laugh. So in that spirit and, again, the spirit of peace and enlightenment that I've admired in your teachings, I ask that you please pretty please help send Karl Rove to a not-so-nice prison for at least a few years, okay ten, although I don't want to be greedy in your beneficent presence, and let's nail Cheney as well don't you agree. Thanks, Buddha, peace out.

Dear Allah...
I know you may be the most problematic of the deities I'm praying to tonight, but I hear from my Islamic friends that yours is actually a message of peace, it has just been perverted by some violent types in order to inflame the Islamic masses to their purpose, much like some corrupt evangelical ministers have hijacked the Christian faith. Plus...I'm a Jew, and we both know our peeps have issues. However, I offer this prayer in the spirit of reconciliation. While some of those who have perverted your message may actually be wishing Mr. Rove well in order to keep the foolish Bush regime strong and able to make more inanely radicalizing moves around the globe (how else to explain Osama Bin Laden dropping a videotape on us the weekend before the last Presidential election, giving Presidente Bush a boost that may have been just what he needed to defeat Senator Kerry), I'm thinking that you'd rather see more of your adherents live rather than die or watching their families get blown up, and want this Rove guy out as much as I do. So with that in mind, Allah, please help make this Truthout article the God's honest truthout, and inshallah to you, my new friend.

Dear Adonai,
You know I've said your name thousands of times just counting Bar Mitzvah's alone. You're my guy (or gal or "presence") and you know it. We go way back. May the words of my blog and the meditations of my html tags be acceptable to you, oh Adonai, and for the sake of the country, for the sake of the world, for old times sake, please oh please take Karl out with the big Patrick F-bomb straight to perjury city and obstruction-of-justice landfill. Thanks in advance, and see you at Yom Kippur.

As Mario Cuomo once said, back when he nominated Bill Clinton for President in his electrifying 1992 Democratic Convention speech:

Prayer is always a good idea; but our prayers must be accompanied by good works.

There's the prayers. Now work it, Patrick.

Smokin'

Here's the smoking gun indicating that U.S. Vice President Richard B. Cheney is at the center of the CIA covert agent Valerie Plame outing affair, and that he has a good chance of being a subject of investigation by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who filed it in court yesterday, May 12, 2006.

Thanks and props to the Talking Points Memo Document Collection.

Yes, that is Richard B's handwriting the top margin of the New York Times op-ed by Joseph Wilson that so infuriated the Administration by popping the lid off their keynote State of the Union Presidential Address lie.

This means not only did Cheney know about the treasonous effort to smear Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, the specific idea about how to smear Wilson came from him. Which now implies that he directed the entire scumbag operation.

Does the "B" in Richard B. Cheney stand for "B student"?

Because he's sure doing a heckuva job...

100

It's been almost two months since I started Nettertainment, and am proud to say I've posted at least once daily. This is actually post #100, tra-la-la.

To our consistent readers as well as the casual visitors I offer thanks for making it all worth it.

In honor of this dubious event, I've added a way for readers to email me with feedback, leads, suggestions, rants, burnt (lingual) offerings in the sidebar. Please note that the address is provided with a little spam protection, so you'll need to carefully remove CUT and OUT to make it reach me.

E3

For the uninitiated, E3 is the Electronic Entertainment Expo held every may for a week in Los Angeles. Today was the last day, and I'm exhausted. I had two days at the three-day expo, and saw some brilliant stuff. Only have time for a short observation, which I share as it was passed to me by the actual observer on this:

Three console makers at a game of high-low poker.

This week was final declaration.

Sony and Microsoft both go high (graphics and interconnectivity battle on PS3 for $600 and Xbox for $400). Their games have to look the best. Sony has the much more powerful chip, but it's two years before we'll see the first games that are correctly programmed to take advantage of it. Microsoft has an extablished, robust online service structure, Xbox Live.

Nintendo said fine, we'll take half the pot, and just went low.

Their new Wii (rumored) at $250 (all of these numbers are before peripherals and a first real game), a cost roughly 60% less than the PS3. It de-emphasizes graphics, since theirs are the weakest of all on advance over current gen (Gamecube), in favor of innovative gameplay designed to bring a whole new audience to gaming.

The Xbox guys are breathing a sign of relief and feeling like winners this week. The Sony teams are likely getting hardest to work on Monday morning.

Nintendo, as a company, is about to have a helluva lot of fun.

Nedlines

Two More GOP Culture of Corruption Scandals Thursday
Rep. Lewis Subject of Federal Probe
The House Appropriations Committee Chairman, no less.

Fletcher indicted
Governor of Kentucky. Nice one.
What on deck for Friday?

Shame on Us
U.S. Marines go hungry
You know, private sector charity, to our, like, soldiers in this, like war, you know, Compassionate Conservatism.

Moron Administration
President's Itinerary Ends Up In Trash
Paging Maxwell Smart.

Nobody Likes Bush, Dwindling Base
Bush, GOP Congress Losing Core Supporters
Some Americans may be slow to catch on, but once you've lost the benefit of the doubt, they can't get rid of you fast enough.

Bush Doesn't Care What You Think
Froomkin: Bush Blames Polls on 'Battle Fatigue'
Bush takes no personal responsibility.

Now, back to the news.

V for Vendetta
Security issue kills domestic spying inquiry
NSA won't grant Justice Department lawyers required security clearance
F for Fascism.

Um, This Doesn't Help
On Domestic Data Collection
We Americans like our privacy. We may argue over the definition of reasonable, but we give a lot less latitude if we think we're personally affected.

Would any other Administration ever try this? Would they maybe do it slightly differently, more transparently, and get away with it? Is there a strong enough national defense argument for tracking overall calling trends, or do we just not trust that these guys didn't use it to spy on anyone who disagrees with them?

It's Actually Illegal
Glenn Greenwald: Legal issues governing the Administration's newly disclosed surveillance program
No, really.
Former NSA lawyer Johnathan Turley at ConyersÂ’ NSA Hearing: Bush Committed a Crime
Fourth scandal of the week, counting the HUD contracts only to GOP supporters revealed Monday.

Not Everybody's Crazy
Ford Rejects Motion To Remove LGBT Benefits
Buy American.

Using Nixon Against Nixon
America's new "silent majority"
Catch the meme, make it so.

Resistance is Futile
Bush’s Approval Rating Drops
Twenty-nine percent.

29%

29%

Comments fix

I received some notifications about comments not getting posted immediately, which I believe is now corrected.

As always, comments are highly welcomed -- thank one and all for contributing your thoughts and reactions to my postings and each other's comments!

Soup?

There was a Campbell's soup ad years ago where this kid kept asking “Is it soup yet?” while his mom cooked up the Campbell's soup. Finally she goes, "Yes, it's soup."

I often ask the question in this blog, "Is this fascism?" I'm not trying to be glib, I'm just trying not to jump to conclusions. So I ask you, gentle reader, that question again tonight.

The headline says it all, and in USA TODAY, not the Workers Daily:

NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls

Lede graf:

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

So the article says they're not really listening, they're just creating the largest database in the history of the world, to analyze for trends (reasonable, right?),

"to create a database of every call ever made" within the nation's borders...

And it's not like they're collecting additional personal information about us:

With access to records of billions of domestic calls, the NSA has gained a secret window into the communications habits of millions of Americans. Customers' names, street addresses and other personal information are not being handed over as part of NSA's domestic program, the sources said. But the phone numbers the NSA collects can easily be cross-checked with other databases to obtain that information.

Well, not exactly.

So how much do you trust those who have the authority to yank all the big levers these days?

50 percent?

31?

Is it soup yet?

Freefall

That's the new meme, the new catchword in the media.

I'm extremely cautious over whether the Democrats can win back either house of Congress in the fall. There's too much that can happen between now and then, too many button-pushing moves that Karl Rove has planned, too many chances for the D.C. Democratic elite to snub the growing grassroots/netroots radical middle that threatens to actually bring common sense and accountability back to U.S. government.

Yet...did something happen while I was out of the country over the weekend?

Here's ABC New with "Bush Presidency Floundering":

According to a new Gallup/USA Today poll, that capital is dwindling. The poll found that the president's approval rating stood at 31 percent — a record low. His disapproval rating is 65 percent, just a point away from President Nixon's days before his resignation in 1974.

Hellooo, ABC, it's my job to compare this Administration to Richard Nixon's.

Democratic stratigist-pundit Paul Begala gets heavily quoted in the second half of the article, after Bay Buchanan lies that Nancy Pelosi keeps talking about impeachment on TV. (Pelosi doesn't, she just talks about investigations, but the GOP is hoping to scare the Dems off of that tactic because it just might get people out to vote.) Begala on the man Bush once dubbed "Boy Genius", Karl Rove:

Rove may be facing indictment in the CIA leak case, he said, and he "is the guy that brought Bush down from 91 percent to 31 percent."

I guess Bush's other appelation for Rove, "Turd Blossum", is finally starting to...bloom?

Again, with Colbert as the turning point, now none of us have to pretend to listen to this fool, as Begala closes out the article:

"The question, I think, is the fear that the guys in the White House and the gals and the White House have. I think the risk is the fear for the Republicans that the country is trying to tune out this president," Begala said. "The fear is that people are looking at this guy and saying he's a failed president."

Failed President. Think about it.

The relatively unanimous call by historians is that (in order) Abraham Lincoln (R), Franklin Roosevelt (D), George Washington (Federalist/Non-partisan), Thomas Jefferson (D-R) and Theodore Roosevelt (R) were "Great" Presidents, and we were lucky to have them.

At the bottom are James Buchanan (D - failed to prevent the Civil War -- ruined his Party) and Warren Harding (R - corrupt administration -- big oil).

Worse than Nixon?

Nixon...Nixon...Nixon. Why is former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough putting Richard Nixon's photo in the middle of his Scarborough Country earlier this week?

Oh, it's because he's doing a report entitled, "Free Fall".

It opens with, "But first up tonight, the President in meltdown mode." Joe tells us Bush as a 45% disapproval rating among Conservatives, and that "1 in 3 Republicans want their Party to lose control of Congress."

Bush is under 50% approval with stock investors, NASCAR fans and gun owners.

Holy fuck, he's lost the NRA rank and file membership?

Joe brings up the problematic nomination of Gen. Hadyn to run the CIA (it's a civilian agency, what are they living in at the White House, 24?) and the gathering storm over Karl Rove's central involvement (mastermind?) of the Valerie Plame covert status leak.

Holy fuck, am I going to have to start watching Scarborough Country?

Joe acknowledges the old adage that a week is a lifetime in politics, but he also calls the poll numbers unprecedented, particularly the 1/3 GOP deathwish stat.

And speaking of 24 and deathwishes, I'm finally realizing the genius of this season. They're doing the cover-up, not the crime! And here's Tricky Dick again -- actor Gregory Itzin as President Logan is made up to look crazy close to President Nixon.

Even Fox is getting it right?

The climax of this week's episode was President Logan, fearing that his complicity in the cover-up of the assassination of President Dennis Haybert is about to be revealed, spends the last fifteen minutes of the show preparing to blow his own brains out -- to commit suicide.

For the record, Warren Harding was the only President ever rumored to have committed suicide while in office.

It's all getting a little heady.

I've always said that Bush wasn't stupid, he understands brass knuckle electoral politics. What he has no clue about is how to govern. He never had to. Governing involves making decisions, but in a funny way it's not actually about being "The Decider", not in a real democracy. That's only for monarchies.

There's a zeitgeist in the air. Maybe 30% or 31% of all Americans want things to stay the way they are, but the other 69% to 70%, I think they've woken up.

I think they want their government back.

That makes the big question:

Freefall through November?

Colbertism

Finally, someone in the traditional mainstream media, in this case print journalism, finally gets it.

Doug Elfman at the Chicago Sun-Times has more than a clue. His May 7th article, Did media miss real Colbert story? is a perfect explanation of why I can go to a club and every young person I meet not only knows about Colbert at the White House Correspondents Dinner, not only loves it, but they actually compare notes about which site they watched it on.

For those of us who have long ago realized that any liberal bias the media might have, as endlessly whined about by conservatives, is long gone thanks to corporate news consolidations and rampant "journalist" careerism, here's Elfman with the 411:

The media's implosion of silence could be one of the final reasons many liberals use to not turn on TV news. It's not like they feel a vested interest in the industry anyway, since it has been bought and parceled by conservatives.

There is Rupert Murdoch's Fox News, that Pravda of GOP propaganda and breeding ground for Bush appointees. There are the networks' Sunday news shows that give more face time to Republicans. There are cable news channels like MSNBC, where Republicans have programmed the shows and hired on-air Republicans and conservatives-lite, from Tucker Carlson to Joe Scarborough and Chris Matthews.

Ouch!

Elfman is primarily doing the media critic's job of telling the media he covers why they are losing business and what they might do to correct it. Since liberals and open-minded moderates are generally big consumers of National Public Radio, newspapers and potentially televised news, why isn't the traditional media covering stuff like Colbert properly? Must be ideological or power-driven, because even Elfman doesn't know:

To liberals, this must be somewhat puzzling, since the rest of the conservative media primarily sides with a president whose approval ratings stand at 32 percent, a whisker better than Nixon's before he resigned in disgrace.

Someone please tell Chris Matthews that el Presidente is not actually well-liked. Except by maybe a die-hard 31% of Americans.

Most importantly, Elfman nails why the rest of us are so happy, relieved, rejoicing about Colbert's breakthrough huevos grande performance:

It was perhaps the first time in Bush's tenure that the president was forced to sit and listen to any American cite the litany of criminal and corruption allegations that have piled up against his administration. And mouth-tense Bush and first lady Laura Bush fled as soon as possible afterward.

He fucking chased them out of the room.

Weenies!

Fascism

So it is fascism when el Presidente Bush tells even the supposedly non-political agriculture department is forced to include positive "War On Terrorism" spin in their announcements?

Radio

One of the pleasures of radio has always been the unexpected. Kind of like pre-Internet blogging, a radio D.J. is ideally someone whose personality you like and whose taste you like even better. That way, when you get the unexpected, it's more likely to be something you'll enjoy.

There's a new (to me, at least) Web-based radio service that I am happy to recommend. It doesn't exactly deliver that same kind of unexpected pleasures described above; it actually is part expected and part unexpected. It's called Pandora.

The way Pandora works is that you enter in the name of a band with the idea that you want to hear some music by that band and some similar music. Then Pandora builds a "radio station" for you.

I don't know all the details behind the music linkage, but assume it emanates from some sort of affinity program, like how your rating of DVDs on Netflicks leads to a surprising auto-appealing suggestion list.

There's some bands Pandora can't play, like the Rolling Stones, although they'll tell you why if you want to click there. However, you'll still get a radio station with a lot of Stones-esque music. And you can always skip a track you can't stand.

As for what they're now calling terrestrial or free radio, everyone in Los Angeles knows the best D.J. currently broadcasting is Steve Jones, founding member and lead guitarist of the Sex Pistols, whose Jonesy's Jukebox plays on Indie 103.1 FM Monday through Friday from Noon to 2pm PST.

Figure out what time that is in your neck of the woods and listen to the man with the greatest taste and awesome interviewing technique streaming live here.

Worse

A friend and reader writes:

I remember the day after the 04 election, you told me that the scandals would overwhelm the administration even without any Dems making it happen, and I didn't believe you.

Hats off, man.

Your devoted blogger always appreciates being told that he's right about something. In fact, being right may be his greatest pleasure in life. And there's some worthy competition for that #1 spot.

Here's one more for you, and by now it may not be a surprising prophecy:

If and when the truth ever comes out about all of the dirty dealings of the BushCheneyCo Administration, if will be worse, much much worse, than anything that you currently imagine.

For example, from MyDD.com's February 6th post, "Bush Is Spying on His Political Opponents", with examples for each:

Bush Administration uses U.S. Army to spy on war critics.

Bush Administration uses FBI to spy on war critics.

Bush Administration forced to turn over records revealing FBI is spying on Bush critics.

Bush Administration uses Pentagon to spy on Bush critics.

The Bush Administration may have wiretapped a CNN reporter.

And best of all, Dick Cheney's new man slated to run the Central Intelligence Agency:

Gen. Michael Hayden refused to answer question about spying on political enemies at National Press Club. At a public appearance, Bush's pointman in the Office of National Intelligence was asked if the NSA was wiretapping Bush's political enemies. When Hayden dodged the question, the questioner repeated, "No, I asked, are you targeting us and people who politically oppose the Bush government, the Bush administration? Not a fishing net, but are you targeting specifically political opponents of the Bush administration?" Hayden looked at the questioner, and after a silence called on a different questioner. (Hayden National Press Club remarks, 1/23/06)

Remember, this last one like the others is from early February, so it's not like some sudden hatchet job on Gen. Hayden. The guy is part of the whole machinery -- in the lead up to BushCheneyCo screwing the U.S. into an upcoming, pre-election October Surprise war with Iran.

It's especially imperative for the Admin to shift attention as an actual sex scandal starts raining down. Have to stop what Steve Gilliard calls the scandal free fall.

These crooks and liars will stop at nothing to keep these scandals from toppling them, no matter my kindly noted prediction back in November 2004, even if it means ginning up World War III.

Like I said, much, much worse.

Locking

With Bush appointed CIA Director Porter Goss suddenly stepping down on the eve of what may be a significantly embarrassing scandal (I guess purging and politicizing the CIA isn't enough), Time reports that Cheney crony Air Force General Michael V. Hayden is likely to get the job.

Which means far from being slowed by the massive public disapproval of the Administation and Cheney himself (last reported, to my knowledge, at 19%), the puppet-string pulling Vice President is getting total control over the main arm of our international intelligence apparatus.

I guess this means he won't have to create his own competing internal group to falsify intelligence going forward.

He'll own the whole goddamned machine.

Laughter

The Bush Administration tries to scam more wiretapping power and provides a U.S. Appeals panel with comic relief:

"Your argument makes no sense," U.S. Circuit Judge Harry T. Edwards told the lawyer for the Federal Communications Commission, Jacob Lewis. "When you go back to the office, have a big chuckle. I'm not missing this. This is ridiculous. Counsel!"

The FCC lawyer representing BushCheneyCo is told that the Admiargumentsents are "gobbledygook" and, get this, "nonsense."

Interestingly enough:

The third judge on the panel, Janice Rogers Brown, did not comment or ask any questions during the arguments.

Possibly because Judge Brown is always reported to be on the short list for Bush Supreme Court appointments, and doesn't want her someday chances of confirmation by the Senate (could be Dem controlled soon) to be ruined if she helps her patron on this?

Bricks

If you're an auteur buff and you enjoy following the career of a great filmmaker, either a classic one where you start going through all of their films, collection by viewing, or one you can watch from the start of their career knowing great things are ahead of them, you have a terrific bet in Rian Johnson. Last night I saw his first feature, Brick, a brilliantly crafted very low budget independent feature that takes the film noir genre, founder Dashiell Hammett style, into the high school, like John Hughes on speedballs.

It would be criminal to divulge too much of the plot, so let's go with Brendan, bespectacled quiet outsider who knows when to explode with his fists, gets a phone call from his ex-girlfriend who's in serious, serious trouble. He starts investigating with only one ally, his Rubik's Cube solving nerdfriend, The Brain, who gets the skinny and feeds it to Brendan whenever needed to advance the plot. Along the way we meet femme fatales and their lapdogs, tough guys and losers, and a drug kingpin who lives with his mom.

Johnson has impeccable taste, and I recommend this interview with him on the Suicide Girls site to know just how well-prepared he is. This is a young filmmaker who knows Fellini and Scorsese, not just Lucas and Spielberg (whom he also enjoyed being raised on much like the rest of his filmmaking generation), and who spent $30k of his sub-$500,000 budget to license The Velvet Underground's "Sister Ray" (White Light/White Heat, side 2 track 2) to run over his end credits.

I'm searching for my mainline
I couldn't hit it sideways

Everything is good about this movie, save for the occasional underlit shot, but first and foremost the camera is always in the right place and reveals the story beautifully as it goes along. The pictorial values are very, very strong, with some classic noir ultra close-ups of loaded objects; a cigarette butt, a written symbol with a time beneath it, a trunk that won't stay shut.

The acting is uniformally good. There's no flinching, no winks, nothing that says, "This is a parody." It's played straight as can be, with lead Joseph Gordon-Levitt erasing any memory of his stretch as a teen actor on the silly sitcom Third Rock from the Sun and great support from everyone else. I think all of the nine or ten young actors who carry the movie have terrific careers ahead of them, that this will be seen as a seminal pic just ten years down the line, but I have to say that three performances in particular hit me the hardest.

It seems hilarious to say it, but Lukas Haas proves that his performance in Witness (okay, he was nine years old at the time) was not a fluke. He is funny funny smart as the Mr. Big, and while he seems to work very regularly, he deserves a big boost in role quality coming out of this.

Emilie de Ravin, who appears to be an Australian transplant and has done a good amount of U.S. TV is rock-solid as Emily, the ex- in trouble. She's got one big scene and she nails the movie to the cross, the kind of scene that if she blows it, we just don't care going forwards. It would seem likely that she has leading lady capabilities for the future.

The guy everyone seems to love the most is Matt O'Leary as The Brain. (In one shot late in the movie he actually appears to metaphorically walk out of and back into Brendan's head). The Rubik's Cube is an ingenious film noir touch, as aren't all noir plots twisty cubes that risk never being solved, but O'Leary brings so much more to the role. By IMDB he seems to be the youngest performer in the picture, under twenty when it was shot, but he's like a seasoned pro character actor. Fave exchange (of many):

Brendan: I told you to stay away from her.
Brain: Did you tell her to stay away from me?

But the bedrock of the picture is the brilliant script, which not only infuses the dread, desolate high school and environs (seaside San Clemente, CA) with the crackle of classic remix noir dialogue, but has a story suspenseful enough to take us along. It's all there, the gumshoe who won't give up no matter how many knuckles eaten, the shifting allegiances and hidden motivations, the moments gone bad, tragic if only the danger would abate.

There's a meaning to the title revealed before too long in the picture (not too soon, either) and I don't want to spoil it. However, it's clear that Johnson has "br" on his mind as it seems a motif -- Brendan, The Brain both start with it, not to mention rich kid Brad Bramish. I haven't broken the code yet myself, first question I'd ask Rian if I met him, but it's clear that our lunchroom loner-cum-shamus, Brendan, is as much of a brick as anything. His girlfriend left him because he was impenetrable and he soldier on relentlessly like a big red brick himself. There's more going on than just stylistic ambition, and as the haunting Asian-esque theme signals us, Johnson is going for a very real sadness at the heart of the high school experience, or maybe the noir experience of puberty.

The last movie I saw that impressed me this much was Primer by and starring Shane Carruth. While Johnson has crafted more of a crowd pleaser, Carruth created a noir sci-fi atmosphere of dread in the setting of Dallas-area suburban outlands, all young engineers in white buttoned-down shirts and ties, speaking in their own high-tech incubator argot. Both pictures take themselves seriously but have scripts packed with wit, both create a convincing noir world on very little money, both have precision screenwriting and visual storytelling, both auger well for future works from their young auteurs. Think Christopher Nolan, who parleyed his no budget contemporary black & white London noir Following into Memento and eventually Batman Returns. Either of these guys could end up in that league, should they have such ambitions, or even more independent, like a Coen or Kubrick.

The signature scene in Brick features a cameo by Richard Roundtree (yes, the original Shaft) as Assistant V.P. Trueman, who's interrogating Brendan right after our gumshoe has gotten a beatdown. The two worlds of the movie collide in an upliftingly hilarious exchange climaxing that has the unyielding Brendan heading out the door with, ""I'll see you at the parent conference," like Humphrey Bogart spitting out lines at coppers Barton MacLane and Ward Bond.

It's a moment of affection for the genre from a film that is filled with love of noir, but this is the right kind of love, the smart and sensible one that eschews self-parody and instead uses irony the way it was meant to be used -- as a gat, as a shiv...as a brick.

Structure

With the 12 or 13 episode HBO series you sometimes have a three act structure and I'm trying to figure out which one of the plots this season is the driver.

The Vito homosexuality-to-New Hampshire plot is clearly a reflecting subplot, so obviously now if you agree with my previous argument that the theme of this season is "The Different Man" and the cost to Tony of all that. The Tony/Carmela stuff seems settling in, and A.J.'s story is more reflective stuff, and the big arc about the decline of the Mafia families at the turn of the century. There's the overarching story of whether Tony will ever find some sort of redemption, but that's not a hard season plot, it's the "A" theme but not the "A" plot.

Gangster movies are all ultimately about the drive to power and attendant battles. Even The Godfather, which many have called a family saga or a capitalism metaphor, each of the movies had a specific central plot that drove the action, even if Francis Coppola was able to hide or enshadow those plots with his artistry. For example, in the first and most brilliant Godfather movie, the main plot is not Michael's rise to power; that's a result of the main plot, which is a brutal battle for influence between the Barzini and the Corleone families.

Taking that this type of "A" plot is central to a compelling organized crime story, then the real plot of this season has to do with Tony's continued rise to power in the organization. Which would make the first turning point, back in Ep. 5: "Mr. & Mrs. John Sacrimoni Request...", when Tony agrees to do the favor of hitting a rival mob boss for Johnny Sack, nicely played at Johnny's daughter's wedding.

Now that the hit's been done, the repercussions have to be assembling in the background, getting ready to blowback in some future episode.

I'm starting to wonder if Tony may make a play for NYC, to be boss of both that and his NJ mob. It would be perfect mob movie grammar ("Top of the world, ma!") for this to be where the series is going. The idea Tony might have of himself as a newly enlightened king.

Just a thought.

Because when you look around the backroom at the Bada Bing, or Johnny's men, you wonder who is left who can lead? Sylvio goes asthmatic at the chance, Pauley is a petty crook, A.J. doesn't have his father's cunning and Meadow is going straight. Everyone else, even Carmella, is too far along or dumb to do it. The most natural heir, Christopher, does have a deep understanding of the code, after all he gave up his fiance for the outlaw society, but he continually reveals himself as a numbskull.

The only other guy on the show who seems like any kind of rival to Tony as mob boss is Phil, played so well by classic character actor Frank Vincent. If Phil ever decides to step up from acting boss while Johnny's in jail, or something comes to a head and Tony has to defend himself by getting aggressive, I could see those two crossing swords.

Of course, I could be dead wrong on all counts. Part of the beauty, and occasional frustration of the show is that creator David Chase usually takes it some place you weren't expecting.

Hey, maybe Vito will even live.

Bond

I'm hoping that the new upcoming James Bond picture, Casino Royale, actually reinvents/reinvigorates the series as the pre-release publicity suggests. For the record, I'm fine with Daniel Craig as Bond, and loved his Bond-like moments in Munich.

In fact, with Spielberg's picture shooting early last year, they had to have been thinking that Craig would likely be the new Bond, and there appear to be clever Bond references (I didn't catch it, but reportedly a 1970's Bond movie poster) laced into the picture.

Here's a very nice looking teaser trailer so you can start judging for yourself.

Mmm, Stephen

I think it's going to take a distance of time, maybe three months, maybe a year, maybe more before Stephen Colbert's performance at last Saturday night's White House Correspondent's dinner is seen in true historical perspective as the turning point for some many different threads.

First off, we'll never look at Stephen the same way again. It's the turning point of his career, a show less than a year old and suddenly he's being covered (finally, if begrudgingly) by The New York Times. Not bad for a guy who couldn't support his family on his comedy career just before the turn of the century

It's a brilliant career move for the White House Correspondent's Dinner. Public interest in the stupid goddamned dinner is at an all-time high, and I'll bet they can sell the television rights (maybe extended DVD deal as well?) to a major network next year, fuck those public access rubes at C-SPAN. We're talking long green.

It's the turning point for speaking truth to power, to the most insulated President in living memory. After all those staged campaign and Social Security events with pre-screen, choreographed crowds or soldiers, here's someone who got through the filter -- the George Bush reverse filter that keeps all news that doesn't match The Decider's lethal obstinacy.

And I think it's maybe a turning point in how the public views the President with regards to his power, his self-vaunted "political capital". The way you really bring someone down in the eyes of others is ridicule; witness the A-bombing of Howard Dean after his "scream" was e.q.'ed to remove the crowd and played enough to bury any mainstream thought of taking him seriously. It happened to Nixon as well.

Once you're President fool, there's no coming back. Bush will always have at least a 29% floor in popularity (it's the number Nixon hit when he looked the most malignantly guilty) but even that last 3% to 5% of Americans can't take seriously except as a disaster anymore.

On tonight's show Colbert re-ran the pre-recorded video with which he concluded his Dinner presentation. It begins as Colbert's audition tape for the job of Press Secretary (and why not -- it was awarded last week to a Fox News commentator, Tony Snow), answering questions (stolen from actual press gaggles) on the impending Karl Rove criminal investigations. How brutal must that be for Bush and Rover to be reminded of on an ostensible party night.

Then, more fun for all the President's men, wife and other women, it turns to Iraq, specifically the last of specific reason why we're over there like Misery Claus. First it's with cut-in clips of five-decade White House journalist Helen Thomas from when she was actually asking George Bush himself, then in obviously staged footage of her stalking Colbert who's running away in sheer terror of having to definitely answer the question of, "Why did we go to war?"

Behind the mask of "Stephen Colbert" Colbert was just laughing at the President, as so many of us have done these past six years when not rending garments, in his face.

Well, who knows what Bush feels. If someone were rubbing my face in the most colossal, maybe catastrophic errors of my life, I'd be mortified. Colbert even parodied that famous moment on Bush's weak and pathetic China tour when he tried to leave and found the door locked.

Perversely, I don't think anything gets through to this guy. I mean, check out the photo in the NY Times article. With Colbert in rare form, and Bush right under him with that same smug expression he gets whenever having to endure something that doesn't agree with his underdeveloped dendrites.

Save it to your hard drive, because I get a sense off that photo like it's already a phenomenal historical document that will define this era. Colbert's performance that night is certainly a landmark in the history of comedy, perhaps the biggest stake in the ground since maybe since Richard Pryor got censored by NBC.

So while some so-called serious journalists and square old politicians in D.C. try to shed the still stinging barbs by acting like entertainment critics and claiming Colbert got a chilly reception because he somehow wasn't funny, remember that this moment is bigger than any of them, and Colbert will be remembered long after they have all faded out.

Ford

A filmmaker friend of mine emailed me recently with the following question:

Driving today by the Larry Flynt building at Wilshire and La Cienega I took note of a giant statue of John Wayne in cowboy attire (circa Rooster Cogburn, I'd guess) astride a steed. Hadn't ever seen it before.

It reminded me, though, of a conversation not long ago in which I posited that perhaps John Ford et al. may have done more harm to this nation than anyone could ever have imagined by perpetuating their mythic and myopic vision of rugged westernhood and gung-ho Americanism.

When you consider the current leadership of this country, and observe our cranky and indignant CEOs on the witness stand in their own fraud trials, you really gotta wonder. Where did all this macho bravado come from? Are those movies merely reflective of our culture or are they affective? Did our leaders act like this before John Wayne did?

Could this be a tog (topic for blog) relevant to both of your stated platforms?

As readers as recently as yesterday know, I'm a sucker for blog topics, especially if you've gotten a sense of my tastes in politics and entertainment. It's especially nice to be responding to a "tog" (a coinage worth disseminating) that, while having some political reference, is less wearyingly about a fine filmmaking artist from our nation's great filmmaking past.

John Ford, born John Martin Feeney in Maine 1894, had probably the greatest directing career in the history of Hollywood, if not the world. He was considered a primary influence by both Orson Welles and Akira Kurosawa. No John Ford, no Seven Samurai. He started working in the silent era as a propman for his older brother, who ended up too unfocused to have a directing career after 1928. Ford was an alcoholic and could be very tough, but what's most blow-away is that he actually directed feature films in each of six decades. If Steven Spielberg lives another twenty active years, he'll match Ford's temporal range, and even with his tremendous output he will have match John Ford's 145 directing credits on IMDB (currently Spielberg has 48).

But I wouldn't respect Ford if I didn't love his movies, the fraction that I've seen, and here's my response:

When I was a kid I hated John Wayne and I'm still pretty much against what he represents. That said, I'm a big fan of his performances in Stagecoach (especially -- wild to see that young talent get introduced), The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Which leads right to John Ford.

I used to feel the same way about Ford, that he was another Indian-killer racist fascist bastard. But starting around film school and then when I moved here and watched a ton of Westerns for Bad Girls which I was working on, I got to appreciate Ford bigtime. He's kind of the gold standard for Hollywood filmmaking, and the crispness of Stagecoach and My Darling Clementine is kind of unmatched. He also treated Westerns as historical pictures rather than shoot 'em ups, and although he's obviously mythmaking, he's also in touch with something real about that era. I like the story he told about Wyatt Earp visiting his brother's sets because he was old pals with the stuntmen, and telling Ford how the OK Corral really went, which Ford says he put into the Clementine picture. I also love pics like Wagonmaster, which feels more like a real pioneer tale than any other I can think of.

I also think Ford acquitted himself well against Cecil B. DeMille during the Blacklist Era. I'm guessing you've read about that. It speaks well of Ford that he hated DeMille's movies as much as his politics.

Ford's politics are a kind of great Americanism, and as he got some sort of honorary tribal membership out there in Monument Valley, I'm guessing he was pretty good on race for his time. Like when he told Woody Strode he could make him a movie actor and did, although he knew the limits of how far he could go into stardom. And I get very choked up every time I watch the classroom scene in Liberty Valance, the whole common man understanding of democracy and what this nation strives for.

When my grandmother on my mom's side was on her last wheelchair in the nursing home, I asked her if she believed America was really "with liberty and justice for all". She had been a schoolteacher for several decades after her husband died, and her reply has always stuck with me. She said it wasn't, not exactly, but it was something we were always striving for; the founders had laid out the ideals and it was up to us to keep working towards them, even if we never reach a perfect place.

That's kind of how I imagine Ford. He famously made 1 pic for himself, 1 for the studio. He controlled his vision by cutting in his head and going on remote location. He made you pay money into a cookie jar if, at one of the set meals, you mentioned the movie you were working on or any of his past work. He had maybe the best pictorial sense of any American director ever. Orson Welles used Stagecoach as his textbook and took Gregg Toland (the cinematographer on Stagecoach) for Citizen Kane. That's a big tribute. And How Green Was My Valley is a very moving picture, even if we all wish Kane had beat it for the Oscar.

So I think there's a depth of feeling and humanity in Ford, an understanding of time passing and regret, of the heroes left behind, the drunks, the democracy that is very much the big vision. To reduce it all to an advertisement for machismo or jingoism is a major disservice.

His last two pictures were about female empowerment and a story similar to the tragic Native American Trail of Tears, so I think you've got kind of a Franklin Roosevelt Democratic liberal in Ford, which may not be as warm and fuzzy as the post-Vietnam liberals, but maybe that's what's missing on the middle-left today. I can't imagine Ford would approve of any of these scoundrels running things now. He may have been a booster of dominant culture, but he was never a company man. A drunk, maybe. An artist but one who would never ever let on about that. The old kind of modest strength that doesn't get celebrated in our Fox News world of today.

How's that for an answer?

My buddy responded kindly, but not exactly in agreement.

Your points are all well-taken. But I can't help feeling something went awry between his printing the legend--or the truth as he saw it--and what's going on in the heads of the American chest beaters of today. I agree that he wouldn't much appreciate them, any more than they can appreciate a good artist.

Since I can get the last word on my blog, I'll end with a message of hope. I disagree that folks would have a hard time appreciating a good artist like John Ford. Back in his day he was well-loved by audiences, not always the biggest but with some breakout hits, including Liberty Valance late in his career. He's the #1 Academy Award winning director, with 4 wins -- on 5 nominations (nice percentage; lost his Stagecoach nom to Victor Fleming for Gone with the Wind) with all the wins for his social conscience pictures, not his Westerns.

And, when given a chance, some of his movies still work for audiences today. About four years ago I brought a DVD of Stagecoach to a warehouse in San Francisco where a group of normally Battlefield 1942 playing dudes sat rapt. The story is still sharp and the images exhilarating. John Wayne was only 31 when it was made and Ford was 44. It more than holds its own.

Low-Ho-Ho

It's no surprise that George Bush's approval rating has sunk to yet another all-time low on the latest CBS News poll (33% Approve, 58% Disapprove). The ho-ho-ho astonishingly funny part is:

DOES BUSH ADMINISTRATION HAVE CLEAR PLAN FOR KEEPING GAS PRICES DOWN?
Yes: 8%
No: 82%

I guess that means that over 75% of the folks who do approve of the job he's doing as Presidente are actually onto him anyway.

I've said it before: anytime he opens his mouth, a lie comes out.