Friday, June 30, 2006

Commie Hollywood Bastards! (or not)

Does Superman hate America? Does Hollywood? Do screenwriters Michael Dougherty and Dan Harris (writers of the new - yawn - Superman movie)?

Much is being made of the fact that in this latest movie, Superman says he fights for "truth, justice, and all that," when clearly he ought to say, "Truth, justice, and the American way." Superman, unpatriotic? Say it ain't so!

Well, first of all, I've got to think that the real Superman might choose not go around spouting a phrase that, to most of the world, would come off more like a bad joke than a rousing slogan... or, say, a list suitable for Sesame Street's "one of these things is not like the others" game. (I'm not saying it's a good joke, but don't blame Superman: blame the ones who made the joke. Hint: they're not from Hollywood.)

Secondly, Superman may embody the current version of "the American way" - that is to say, winning through overwhelmingly superior force - but didn't the American way used to have something to do with hard work and ingenuity? Just asking.

Thirdly, I don't know who besides myself would be so very old as to have seen the Christopher Reeve Superman movie... but when Reeve said, ever so earnestly, to Lois Lane that he fought for "truth, justice, and the American way" - it got a laugh. No kidding. Not a mean laugh, or a disbelieving laugh, but the kind of laugh the line deserved for sheer corniness. (This, by the way, was not in godless, America-hating California - no, this was in Idaho, that reddest of all red states. You got something to say about that?)

Finally - dare I say, conclusively? - I have it on excellent - one might almost say, canonical, irrefutable, or unimpeachable - authority that "Superman fights a never-ending battle for truth and justice." Nothing about "the American way," whatever that jingoistic phrase might signify. And that was way back in the day, when America really was the global good guy. (I'll save you the trouble - the particular movie I'm talking about, "Electric Earthquake," was one of a series directed by Dave Fleischer and produced by Max Fleischer in 1942. There are more on Internet Archive. They're good. Go watch them.)

Now go back to baiting Clinton and leave Superman alone. Haters.

Issue Stealing

Damn those Republicans! Stealing traditionally Democratic ideals and... well... you know... I mean, there must be something wrong with that, is all.

In an op-ed piece in today's LA Times, Representative Dan Lundgren of California's Third District, wherever that is, proposes "a $1-billion prize for the first American automaker to sell 60,000 midsized sedans that could travel 100 miles on one gallon of gasoline." His stated rationale? "We must conserve.... Replacing our cars with prize-winning vehicles would reduce consumption to about 1.8 million barrels a day. It would also slash carbon emissions.... Our economic lifeblood must be immunized against the dictates of a global petroleum cartel...."

And finally, "Our energy, environmental and national security interests are all converging."

This is a Republican? Sounds more like a conservative.

Thursday, June 29, 2006

The Silly Season

Lawmommy at (where else?) Law and Mommyhood pointed me toward this story, about a mysterious rain of money in Aberystwyth, Wales. And it's a perfect little 'silly season' story:

"Someone around the corner said he saw a man get out of a car, go to the pedestrian crossing and throw a huge bundle of money into the air," according to a shopkeeper.

But what caught my attention was this bit of information:
Police ... stressed that most of the money had been recovered.
On what grounds did the police "recover" the money? How come the people who picked it up didn't get to keep it? Is there some law in Wales about taking money from an eccentric stranger?

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Google Challenge Update

A few preliminary results:
  • Kristine is way smarter than I am.
  • Murky Thoughts and my friend Kim are also way smarter than I am.
  • My sister and her husband give up too easily, probably because they have small children and little time to waste. Of course, that didn't stop me.
And a few points:
  1. Kristine notes that Google Images search was worthless, and she's quite correct. When it comes to search - to information, really - text is king. And queen. And jack. In fact it's hard to believe that text will ever not be king. Someday there may be a way to search photos without first reducing them to text... but I can't really imagine how that could be done.
  2. Google is kind of stupid. By that I mean, that it requires its users to be far smarter than they should have to be, to root out things that are just a little bit obscure. (A more charitable way of putting it would be that Google is lousy at sorting the wheat from the chaff.) I must admit that this is the first time I've got better results from Clusty than from Google, but I haven't played around with Clusty all that much, and I don't really have a solid sense of how to use it to best advantage. Still, Google seems to me very vulnerable to competition, perhaps not the Internet superpower of the popular imagination.
  3. The Internet's usefulness is still, in large areas (the arts and culture come to mind), mainly due to the efforts of fans, hobbyists, and dilettantes. This is not to denigrate fans, hobbyists, and dilettantes - I happen to be one myself - but it does give you some idea of the structure and causes of the Internet's limitations, as well as its strengths.
  4. Note that the photograph in question is under copyright, and that at least the majority of instances that are accessible on the web are pretty clearly not licensed. Me, I would call every instance that I've seen an example of fair use. The copyright holder might not agree, and I would guess the courts would side with the copyright holder if it came to a test.
Anybody else?

Monday, June 26, 2006

Take the Google Challenge

So a friend and I were in a bookstore, and we found ourselves in the photography section, looking for a famous photograph she remembered - a famous photograph that, for some reason, we couldn't find in any of their books. (Blame Barnes & Noble.) "But of course," we told each other, "we can find it on the Internet." So, when we got to a computer, we looked for it...

And... well, we found it. But, to our surprise, it was actually very difficult to find. So here's what I want to know: is my pride in my Internet searching prowess badly misplaced, or was it really as hard as all that?

Yes, it's a contest. Anyone can enter - anyone who would like to satisfy my curiosity, and who has some time to kill, dead, with a stake through its heart. You're on your honor, but if you can do it in under thirty minutes, I for one will not consider your honor tarnished. I'll give you the same information (from my friend's memory) that we had when we started our search:

We were looking for a famous Life Magazine picture from the 50s, of a woman who had committed suicide by jumping off the Empire State Building. She had landed on a car, smashing it, of course. Possibly because the photo was in black and white, there was no visible blood, and she actually looked quite peaceful, as if she were sleeping... on a crumpled car.

That's it. I'll post results, impressions, gratuitous insults if any, and, eventually, a link to the answer. (My answer, that is.) Ready?

Begin.

Change of Symbol

Most of our illustrious senators seem to be in favor of a Constitutional amendment banning flag-burning. Oh, free speech, you are so bad, you must be restrained in this midterm election year!

I'm with Norman Thomas, who suggested -
If you want a symbolic gesture, don't burn the flag; wash it.
Let's go.

Why I Hate the Police

Oh - oops - I mean... oh, hell, now I'll never get to be a judge. But really, that's not what I meant at all.

This is what I meant:
Another working day has ended
Only the rush hour hell to face
Packed like lemmings into shiny metal boxes
Contestants in a suicidal race
Words cannot easily express how much these lyrics irritate me. "Packed like lemmings"? A very close second in badness, from the same song, is the line "Every single meeting with his so-called superior is a humiliating kick in the crotch." Bad, bad, bad. But oh, so earnest. And then to couple these first-draft images of suburban misery with scenes from a mysterious "dark Scottish lake" just makes it worse.

So why, you may well ask, didn't I just turn off my radio? Because this was the only station playing music, I didn't want to hear about what my "elected" legislators were doing now, and I hate drive-time djs even more than the Police. That's why. Plus, because I listened to that song, I get to complain about something that doesn't matter a whit, and what's more fun than that?

Sunday, June 25, 2006

Time Pressure

Painters coming tomorrow. Frenzy of taking things off the walls and pushing all our furniture into the middle of the room. Also patching holes in walls so spackle will be dry in the morning. Also filing and paying bills and trying to get paid for my last two jobs so no checks bounce. Wishing I had Tuesday back.

Friday, June 23, 2006

I'll Take That Under Advisement

I just completed my required loan counseling, so I can get my required loans. Handy to be able to do it online, and they offer excellent advice as well on how to manage your debt. This, for instance:
Part-time jobs, summer and holiday seasonal work, tutoring, and baby-sitting all provide an excellent source of extra money and valuable work experience.
I shall certainly try to apply that to my situation.

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Face Whating?

Oh, those Brits. Facedancing - the newest craze? Sure, if you're interested in watching people pretend they're not excruciatingly self-conscious while being videotaped performing a ridiculous act. Me, I got plenty of that in film school. (Cast your friends in your film? Bad idea.)

However, to what's-his-name's credit, at least he's not trying to get tenure out of it. Anyway, far more tedious things have caught the interest of millions.

Thank you, KK, wherever you are.

The Truth of the Matter

Christianity has long since been downgraded to a political affiliation. The real American religion is Property Rights.

What?

Understanding Understanding Comics

I loved Scott McCloud's comic book, Understanding Comics.

I loved Dylan Horrocks's essay about it, too; not least the quotations sprinkled throughout:
...like all boundaries, even those meticulously surveyed, terms are social and arbitrary, not natural and inevitable. What divides my property from my neighbor’s is not a natural boundary but a social system within which certain functions of property prevail. It is important to remember that terms function in the same way...
(Thomas McLaughlin, in Critical Terms for Literary Study,
ed. Lentricchia & McLaughlin)

and especially this -
‘If any single caveat can alert map users to their unhealthy but widespread naivete, it is that a single map is but one of an infinitely large number of maps that might be produced for the same situation or from the same data.’
(Mark Monmonier, How to Lie with Maps)

... and that's what the law means to me.

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Time for a New Paradigm

What's the big deal about "speaking truth to power?" I do that all the time. Problem is, power doesn't care about truth. No, what we should really be concentrating on is "telling lies to power." Now that might get us somewhere.

So Much Time, So Little to Do

Wait...

Day 2 with no kids and no spouse, day 1 with no work. So today, all morning long, I got to sit at the kitchen table and write. Luxury!

I got up, made breakfast, read a book while I ate, then made a modest list of things I thought I might be able to accomplish today. I have learned from bitter experience that overloading a to-do list is fatal, so I set my sights low, as follows:
  1. go to bank
  2. copy keys
  3. return videos to library
  4. return videos to Blockbuster
  5. buy dinner
  6. buy crickets for Boy's lizard
I accomplished all of these things, and I got to ride my bike into the bargain. And I didn't get hit by a car, even though it was well into rush hour by the time I got home.

And there was an auxiliary list, in case I got bored and wanted to do something here at home:
  1. laundry
  2. bills and filling
  3. remove molly bolts and expansion anchors from walls and find (not even apply) patching compound
  4. figure out why Rita Mae Brown named a character after a type of wall anchor
I accomplished none of these things - well, I managed to pry one molly bolt from the wall - but still I am well pleased with myself.

Tomorrow I may or may not be called upon to go in to work, I still don't know. I still don't care. I plan on writing again in the morning. O bliss! O quiet! (except for the chirping of the crickets, as it will take the lizard about a week, I guess, to eat them all) O being able to put something down and have it still be there when next I look for it!

Next time: more about how much I miss SW and the kids. I do, really I do. But I never get to sit down and just write anymore. One of the reasons I'm so looking forward to starting law school.

More Low Budget Filmmaking Hints

One of the best reasons to have a great script is that it will give people a reason to work on your film for free.

Anything can be fixed if you have a time machine and a gun. If you don't, it's best to do things properly in the first place. If you have no money, it is particularly important that you do things right, because you are too poor to pay someone to fix it.

Don't mix up your shooting formats. Especially, don't mix up your shooting timecode. Pick one frame rate and stick to it. If you don't, you will be sorry, and so will anybody who tries to help you.

Feed your crew. If you don't, the ones who are doing you the biggest favors - that is, the ones who could actually be working for real money - will get pissy. You don't want a pissy crew. Believe me.

Spring for a good microphone. Crappy picture quality, you can pass off as an artistic choice; crappy sound, never. A radio mic, by the way, is not a good microphone. Radio mics are something you use when you're desperate. Also, it's really important where the mic is placed. Don't give the job of holding the boom to the one grip you can spare because he's not smart enough to help with the lights.

Spring for a good camera, too. You can't really get away with crappy picture quality. I just said that because I care more about sound. (Well, actually, you can get away with it. But be sure you mean it - don't shoot crappy picture just because you don't have money. That's not a valid excuse anymore.)

People will do you favors because they like you, they like your project, they want the experience, they're bored, or they expect you to return the favor. I'm just saying.

I've found that when I'm working for free, the person I'm working for tends to act like they own me, like they can always ask for one more thing, one more favor, one more day, one more... something. Same thing if I'm working for a flat fee. If I'm being paid for my time, though, people become a lot more reasonable, and deadlines tend to get met. A little money keeps people honest, especially when they only have a little money - and, as a bonus, the answer to the question, "How can I ever repay you?" becomes obvious.

It's not that poverty necessarily makes you smart, but money does make you stupid. I'm just saying.

Sunday, June 18, 2006

Alone

SW, Boy and Girl are gone to Grandmother's House, over the burning sands (or whatever) of the central valley, leaving me on my own for a week and a half. Time to pack, read, catch up on my sleep, try to finish a few projects before law school drives everything permanently out of my mind. Or else just waste a lot of time surfing the Internet, there's always that. Oh, and watch Martin Scorsese's series on The Blues, which I got from the library the other day.

Yesterday was a birthday party for Boy's Best Friend, J... whom he will not soon see again. By the time Boy gets back, J will be summering in Montana; by the time he and his family return, we'll have moved. We're going up to Idaho for a couple of weeks this summer, and have invited them to fly over and visit - yes, they have their own plane - but for some reason they won't commit to it. Maybe they'll come, though. And SW and the kids have to come down to LA every couple of months, so the contact won't be completely broken, but... I think Boy is going to have some hard times ahead. We're leaving the only home he's known, most of the people, virtually all of the friends. He and J have so colonized each other's lives that it's strange to think of them apart... Not only that, but J's family has a swimming pool, and we only have a wading pool. I'm going to miss that, too.

Wednesday was Boy's last day at his school, too. (If it weren't such a violently countercultural sort of a school, I guess they might have said he was in pre-kindergarten, but they call it "house group" instead.) And it's interesting, since he was there for three years, and he liked it, and we liked it... but I'm pretty sure he won't miss it. At all. The next year may prove me a liar - though will that really be so bad, if I'm to be a lawyer? (Sorry, residual knee-jerk anti-lawyer sentiment, soon to be purged, I'm sure.) - but he really doesn't seem much of a one for school. Doesn't like groups, doesn't care for authority, at least the sort of countercultural passive consensus-style authority practiced at his school. And I misdoubt he'll be any fonder of traditional rule-based, do-what-I-say-because-I-say-so, time-to-do-this-now authority. We'll see what happens in the fall.

Boy's turning points are our turning points. (Girl is too young to have a tribe outside our own little family, so she's not losing hers; her transitions are not so clear.) We've begun saying goodbye to friends, because so many of those friendships have been formed around Boy's school and Boy's friends, and even though we'll see them over the summer, things have begun breaking up. SW and I are leaving our home behind for student housing - which doesn't even sound like home - and something completely different. I've lived in LA for twenty years now, she's been here seventeen, and even though neither of us has ever been too keen on the city itself... we are, more or less, Angelenos. Two decades, that's a long time to bake in the relentless sun. Can we even take the rain and cold anymore? Time to find out... soon.

Thursday, June 15, 2006

Danger: Undirected Browsing.

I'm too, too tired to think about it, but maybe someday I'll come back to these posts about DOPA, librarianship, privacy, social networking, intellectual property and so on and so on.

Why so fascinated with libraries?

Cause what else is there?

Monday, June 12, 2006

If They Hadn't Done What I Told Them Not to Do... They'd Still Be Alive

Sanchovilla has an interesting post on Internet search engines as an investigatory tool - in the context of public defense work, but the implications are broad:
...we had a huge discussion on the ethical/legal implications of using Myspace.com, Blogger, and every other personal blog creator out there as an investigation tool.

I told him I had been having a lot of success recently using Myspace to collect background information on several key witnesses and even a victim on a few cases I had been assigned in the last 6 months. He said he did not find the sites useful or easy to use, he felt that it was infringing on the individual's privacy, and he felt it was leaning towards unethical using information culled from a personal (Adult or Juvenile's) website.

I told him he was an idiot.

Nahh, of course I didn't tell him that...

Sheesh.

The rest of the post is a case study in Internet searching... and it's obvious and simple. In fact, the shocking thing is just how obvious and simple it is. If that makes sense.

In Which Our Hero Succumbs at Last

In vain I struggled. The pull of it was too great. I have joined the ranks of all the other law students to be, past, present and future: I rented and, yes, watched, The Paper Chase. And...

Wow. If I thought for a moment that was an accurate depiction of law school - past, present, or future - I would quit right now. Out of sheer boredom, frankly. Only duty, and the forlorn hope that there would turn out to be a point after all, or that at least something interesting would finally happen, and also the fact that I was too tired to turn it off and go to sleep, kept me watching until the end. Even John Houseman's storied performance I thought was largely wasted in portraying a tediously one-dimensional character; that might have been forgiveable, had the main character possessed even as much depth as that, so that Houseman could have had a worthy protagonist to his antagonist. But no: the character played by Timothy Bottoms ... what was the name again? Katz? Moss? I can't even remember... seemed to possess not even a single dimension. Certainly he had no quality to make me believe, or care, that Lindsay Wagner would fall in love with him, or he with her.

Oh, yes, "Hart," that was his name. God help us.

Maybe if the movie had been cut to an hour in length and shown as a tv pilot, it would have held some promise. As it was, I had to go out the next night and rent Inherit the Wind, with its good old-fashioned purple prose, sledgehammer-between-the-eyes subtlety, and scenery-chewing performances, to recuperate. Geeze, at least it was about something.

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Blog, Blog, Blog

One Tom Mighell writes on ABANET on "The Next Stage of Lawyer Blogging." He's bullish on blogging, and why wouldn't he be? He's got a gig, writing about it. What's not to like?

And I agree, I guess, with his analysis, as far as it goes. Only... where does it go? It goes to extolling "the ease with which larger professional networks are developed," "all sorts of benefits—new clients, speaking engagements and job offers," "the collaborative opportunities that blogs provide to lawyers." And, intriguingly, he predicts "the creation of 'virtual law firms' between groups of lawyer bloggers."

It remains to be seen, though, what we shall ever do with all the damned blogs? I can't even keep track of all the copyright blogs out there now, let alone the law student blogs, and what if there's something important that I want to get right? The notion that the Internet provides a self-correcting, fact-checking system is clearly fallacious... which is why it leaves a lot to be desired as a research tool.

I foresee, not only the continued proliferation of blogs, but the rise of directory services - a combination of fact-checkers, trustworthy gatekeepers, and clipping services. Kind of what the yahoos who founded Yahoo might have had in mind, way back before they began trying to be all things to all people. Something, perhaps, very like... well, newspapers. The signal-to-noise ratio on the Internet is too low for it to be otherwise; the "every man his own gatekeeper" model that Google encourages doesn't work very well now... and it's only going to get worse.

So says my crystal ball.

Surely You're Not Serious, Mr. Zywicki

Wow, sounds like politics. Pettiness, obfuscation, backtracking, endless debate over who "really" meant what...

Todd Zywicki, complaining about being accurately quoted. Oh, but the accurate quote was "really" a misquote.

Um... no. At best, he said something in a way that he now wishes he hadn't... cause it makes him look like a schmuck.

Too bad, so sad. But blame yourself, Professor.

DOGMA

If we make it as easy for gays and lesbians to marry as it is for straight people... won't gay marriage soon be just as meaningless as regular marriage? Maybe the self-styled "social conservatives" are trying to do us a favor - by keeping it ridiculously hard for at least some people to marry, they really are preserving the sanctity of one kind of marriage. Gay marriage.

So thank you, Senators, for trying.

Monday, June 05, 2006

I Have No Advice to Give

... cause I'm just a no-L at this point, who wants to know from me? But I do have experiences to recount. In case anyone's ever trolling the Internet in search of the experiences of someone who decided to change careers in his 40s, leave Hollywood behind, move to another city hundreds of miles away with partner and young children in tow, and go to law school.

Oh, what the hell, let's call it advice. And let's assume said person is serious about going to law school, not just doing it because he's bored and has no better ideas. And because I'm still undergoing my first career, and it's bad form to spend too long on the Internet when you're at work, especially when there's a mix in the morning and you haven't finished cutting the ADR yet, I'll just tackle the LSAT first, and then if I get bored enough later on this week I'll think of something else to say.

First LSAT Advice

Study. Take the LSAT seriously. Even though it's just a test, and a standardized test at that, and even though standardized testing is a really, really stupid way to choose law students - or any kind of students - not to mention that it's an asinine way to determine who gets to be a lawyer. Take it seriously because it's the only game in town. Don't take a class if you don't think it'll help, because it won't. (But do take a class if you think it will help, because it will.)

Don't just take the LSAT to see if you do well enough to get into a good law school. (I'm told people actually do this.) Because - what if you do? Or worse, what if you do, but you wish you'd got a better score? They don't take your best score - they take, if you're lucky, your average score. So... study.

Second LSAT Advice

Practice on the real thing. I bought a "master the LSAT" book, and checked out lots more from the library. They were helpful mainly in giving me a quick start on recognizing and categorizing different types of questions, especially the different sorts of logic games I might encounter; and some of the strategies were useful. Note I said "strategies," not "tricks." I know, there are supposed to be ways of "gaming" the test, "psyching out" the test-writers, using internal hints to eliminate obviously wrong answers so you can concentrate on the few that might be right... or, failing that, have a better chance of guessing correctly. I think that approach is a waste of time better spent practicing on actual tests.

Yes, actual tests. They're not cheap, but spring for the LSAC's books of real tests that have actually been administered, and do your most serious practice using those tests. The questions are just like the questions you'll get. The other books... they must make up their own tests, because the questions just don't seem quite right. Close, some of them, but not the same. In a sense, of course, questions are questions, and the made up ones are close enough to provide useful practice. But the LSAC tests are the real thing, and there is a real difference. When you do timed practice tests - and you should do lots of timed practice tests - use the real tests. Almost every single one of the LSAC tests I did, I used a clock.

When I did my first practice test - a genuine test, straight out of the LSAC booklet - I didn't even manage to finish the logic games section. It was an unexpected result, because I was a math major in college, and I do well - I used to do well - on that sort of thing. So that section is what I mostly practiced. Not only because I wanted to improve my score, but because I took it as a personal affront that something that should have been right up my alley was too hard.

Ironically, when I took the LSAT, that section felt a little like I was doing the silent movie gag, where the guy tries to break the door down just as someone opens it. The logic games section for that particular version of the test was apparently the easiest anyone had seen in years. I not only finished it, I had time to go back through every one of the four sections and check my work; which I did, because I was afraid I had to have really, really messed it up, because it seemed too easy.

Which leads to the last piece of advice I have...

Third LSAT Advice

Don't forget to practice the easy sections. I coulda probably got another 3 to 5 points, if I'd spent a few hours practicing the things I thought were too easy to bother with.

Friday, June 02, 2006

76 Days and Counting Down...

What am I doing to prepare for law school? Listening to folk music.

I know, I'm supposed to be reading A Civil Action, or a biography of a supreme court justice, or watching Paper Chase or working on a political campaign or touring Europe by bicycle. But for some reason I'm more interested in Clarence Ashley even than in reading about the latest atrocity George Bush's country's army has committed over in ... wherever the hell they are.

So interested, in fact, that I'm wading through Greil Marcus's overwrought and barely comprehensible book, The Old, Weird America. This, at least, should be good practice for law school.

In Marcus's vision of ... whatever he happens to be talking about... the words take over. It's a tradition, seemingly, of rock criticism, that it be all purple and cosmic and that it build so elaborately upon both the music and the critic's idiosyncratic perception of the music that the two become one in the mind of the reader... so that if one hasn't actually heard the music in question, if it is not fresh in one's mind, one runs the risk of being sucked down in the purple quicksand. And quicksand takes forever to get out of your clothes and hair.

Here's Marcus on the fragmentary nature of some folk lyrics:
What appears to be a singer's random assemblage of fragments to fit a certain melody line may be, for that singer, an assemblage of fragments that melody called forth. It may be a sermon delivered by the singer's subconscious, his or her second mind. It may be a heretic's way of saying what could never be said out loud, a mask over a boiling face.
Holy shit. A boiling face? And then -
The banjo could be from another song or another world. The music seems to have been found in the middle of some greater song: it is inexorable. The opening and closing flourishes on the banjo seem false, because the figures in the music make no progress, go from no one place to any other; the sound was here before the singer started and it will be here when he's gone...
And so on, and on, until Clarence Ashley looms up in your mind, archetypal, almost demonic, beyond good and evil, picking on the strings of his banjo as if they were the strings of your soul, if your soul had strings, only it doesn't.

Oh, but then - to your great relief - you listen to the song. And it's just a song. Thank God. Maybe my sleep tonight will be untroubled.

It's not just him, though - it's Lester Bangs, everyone on Rolling Stone's staff (past, present, and future), in fact seemingly it's everyone who writes about music. Here's Robert Cantwell, quoted by Marcus:
Listen to 'I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground' again and again... learn to play the banjo and sing it yourself over and over again, study every printed version, give up your career and maybe your family, and you will not fathom it.
Oooh... spooky. Deep. Even true. Though of course the song is also - and perhaps more signficantly - just a song, in a world of songs, about any one of which one could say the same thing.

Hundreds of pages of this may be more than I can stand.

It's good, though.

Thursday, June 01, 2006

... To Amuse Lawyers

It's nice to have something to look forward to.

Observation #2 about Hollywood

It is a well, but not widely, known fact, that all movies are fundamentally metaphors for Hollywood.

From the same stripper/ghoul movie:
"It may not be pretty... but it's a lot better than being eaten alive."
A lot.