Ali G and Andy K

The Chairman of the Arts Council of England Gerry Robinson was flummoxed when Ali G began an interview with the question Why is it that everything you fund is so crap? — wikipedia

We've been renting the Ali G Show DVDs at the same time Larry Charles Of Seinfeld is releasing an Ali G (as Borat) movie, which looks very funny in the clips.

If the theatrical arts require a willful suspension of disbelief, Ali G asks you to welcome discomfort. Alternately funny and unnerving, Ali G follows simple logic to its final sputtering incoherent roots. He gets people to say things they don't mean to say, and sometimes to say things they think, but would never say in polite company, because he puts them at ease: he presents as a non-aggressive imbecile.

Ali G reminds me of the discomfort / fascination which I felt in watching Andy Kaufman, whose brand of performance-art-mental-instabiliy-which-is-it-? was pretty much unique at the time. People and societal strictures can be so weird, but social conventions and the sympathy inherent in communal politeness, keeps us from admitting it to ourselves; when you see the weirdness of the everyday burble to the surface, it makes Ali G's goofiness seem not that far out at all.

From the Andy Kaufman site linked above here is the description of an incident @ SNL in which mid-sketch, Andy announced, “I feel stupid (doing this sketch)” :

…(You don't stop a sketch in the middle of a live telecast!) Michael Richards stood up, walked offstage, grabbed the cue cards and tossed them in front of Andy. Andy responded by throwing a glass of water on Richards. Exasperated, Chartoff and Burrell began throwing bread and butter at Andy as stagehands and cast-members moved to jump into the fray. Jack Burns shouted (to Director Bob Bowker), "Bob cut to commercial!!" as Andy began yelling at Chartoff for throwing butter in his hair. Burns, after moving Chartoff and Burrell aside, lunged at Andy. People everywhere began pushing and pulling at Andy…and Andy was terrified. Finally, cooler heads prevailed and Kaufman was escorted off the stage as the studio audience sat in stunned silence. After a commercial break the final two minutes of the show became an improvised farewell. Brandis Kemp quipped, “We'd like to thank the portion of Andy that showed up tonight.”

Sarah Silverman and Johnny Knoxville also inhabit this corner of the sideshow. Knoxville rides the fascination of masochism as exhibitionism. Silverman said when she was very young that her parents thought it was a hoot if she uttered an obscenity; Silverman is still chasing that shock-attention. In different ways this theater of distraction, of discomfort, is rooted in despair and nihilism.

Don't Blame Me

From the AP:

[Clinton] told Wallace, ''And you got that little smirk on your face and you think you're so clever, but I had responsibility for trying to protect this country. I tried and I failed to get bin Laden. I regret it, but I did try and I did everything I thought I responsibly could.''

Clinton's meltdown on Fox is begging to be an emblem of ideological excess and its costs. Memories of the assaults of Fox, which the Clinton's decided was a “vast conspiracy” involving the right wing media, probably built up as he approached the studio, expecting a confrontation. Chris Wallace was the least likely target on which to unleash his ire — Tony Snow or Brit Hume would have made more sense, once long ago. The spin machine was whirring — the Democrats said Clinton was just energizing the troops — Democrats have to get angry to win. Of course, Clinton was clearly not his self-possessed self, making the outburst seem worse because it needed to be justified by such blatant misdirection, a sign of nervousness and embarrassment in the ranks.

But it is understandable that Clinton feels unfairly targeted — a very serious charge of negligence at the cost of lives — at a time that Bush's own incompetent administration [via Rumsfeld] of post-war Iraq has led to maniacs in failed lands on the march, feeling the winners, as determined by their depraved standards of victory; it's easy to understand why the Republicans want to blame someone else.

Chaos and Evolution

From an article by Timothy Ferris about complexity theory and evolution:

Much of the excitement about complexity theory has to do with the view that living systems dwell “on the edge of chaos,” which is to say that they retain a degree of order while flirting with chaotic nonlinearity.

The system requires enough order to preserve some continuity, yet enough disorder to jolt species out of fitness wells from time to time, forcing them to innovate or perish…

How Do They Find One Another?

Hugo Chavez, self-parody of a South American dictator, urged Americans to read Noam Chomsky. Chavez The Demagogue has accomplished what Karl Rove couldn't: Chavez has managed to rally the political elite in the United States, even the president's critics, around Bush. Nancy Pelosi showed character, as described @ wikipedia:

In response [to Chavez calling Bush the Devil], House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, an ardent critic of President Bush, called Chavez an “everyday thug” and not the “modern day Simon Bolivar” that he “fancies himself to be”. “Hugo Chavez abused the privilege that he had, speaking at the United Nations,” said Pelosi, a frequent Bush critic. “He demeaned himself and he demeaned Venezuela.”

Meanwhile, Chavez may be more interested in deflecting from a looming national strike in his narcissistically run dictatorship than in Bush. After riding into office in what is alleged to be electoral fraud, Chavez needs to have lots of deflections at hand. Chavez did manage to increase the sales of Chomsky's books — Chomsky's deeply repressed inner capitalist is no doubt purring with delight.

Again, wikipedia:

Human Rights Watch expressed concern in a personal letter to Chávez over the safety of human rights defenders in Venezuela. Human rights organization Amnesty International has catalogued a number of human rights violations under Chávez's administration. As of December 2004, Amnesty International had documented at least 14 deaths and at least 200 wounded during confrontations between anti-Chávez demonstrators and National Guard, police, and other security personnel in February and March 2004, and continuing reports of unlawful killings by the police.

Iran

John Bolton's current appearances in the media in response to Iran's recent actions and inactions have been bracing. Iran has been humilating the UN, transparently jerking it around to gain street cred amongst failed states; meanwhile France returns to its default appeasement-mind-meld and China sees profit to be made; China could care less. Strange you hear no voices from the ranks of those in the US, whose favorite phrase previously was, “its just for oil”, decrying China for its greed and cynicism. So much for international and political solidarity in a moment of crucial moral reckoning.

David Brooks powerfully notes in his 9/21 NYT op-ed that the public grasps the threat the West faces and that the public also recognizes the enervated response of many in leadership positions to that threat:

…millions of Americans believe the pope has nothing to apologize for. They regard the vicious overreaction to his speech, like the vicious overreaction to the Danish cartoons, as another sign that some sort of intellectual disease is sweeping through the Arab world.

What these Americans see is fanatical violence, a rampant culture of victimology and grievance, a tendency by many Arabs to blame anyone other than themselves for the problems they create. These Americans don’t believe they should lower their standards of tolerable behavior merely for the sake of multicultural politeness, and they are growing ever more disgusted with commentators and leaders who are totally divorced from the reality they see on TV every night.

… we are drifting toward a policy that does not match the threat we face. Extremism is not an isolated cult in the Muslim world. It is a diverse and vibrant movement…

Reason

On Science Friday EO Wilson offered his favorite quote by Abba Eban:

When all else fails men turn to reason.

The Matrix of Grief

I once read a story about Mick Jagger reading a poem by Shelley at an open-air concert. The poem Jagger read to the crowd was Adonais, an elegy written by Shelley for his friend, the poet John Keats. Jagger dedicated Shelley's elegy to his drummer Brian Jones, who had drowned:

Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep,
He hath awaken'd from the dream of life;
Tis we, who lost in stormy visions, keep
With phantoms an unprofitable strife…

Jagger then startled the crowd by releasing thousands of shimmering butterflies.

Shelley drowned in a storm at sea in 1822, at the age of 29.

[based on a story told by Richard Holmes in the NYRB]

Rube Goldberg Lives in Japan

Here is 13 minutes of inexplicably fascinating diversion.

Surface to Substance

VS Naipaul wrote in his essay On Being a Writer:

I felt it as artificial, that sitting down to write a book. And that is a feeling that is with me still, all these years later, at the start of a book—I am speaking of an imaginative work. There is no precise theme or story that is with me. Many things are with me; I write the artificial, self-conscious beginnings of many books; until finally some true impulse—the one I have been working toward — possesses me, and I sail away on my year's labor. And that is mysterious still—that out of artifice one should touch and stir up what is deepest in one's soul, one's heart, one's memory.

The beginnings of creative works are inevitable and obscure. Creative works are waiting to form up, to overflow into expression which then shapes itself, with the aid of editing and understanding of what is evolving; but those expressive acts don't act directly, or through cajoling or pre-conceptualization. It is more like allowing, stepping out of the way, being open and aware; relaxed but aware.

Katie Hath Come

Did you see Katie Couric in her inaugural? The hype was so heavy this highly experienced TV performer was nervous, her voice gripping, her tension palpable. They layed such a trip on this poor woman she hardly had a chance. “They” is the producers, who are the worm in the apple in the media. Behind the scenes, not open to scrutiny, the on-air types get the flack, but it is the producers who enrage the public with the paper thin quality and bias of news reports.

This wasn't the installation of the Katie, rather it was a drastic, wrongheaded format change of the best of the national news shows. The people behind the scenes, wanting to be the stars, came up with all sorts of “ideas” that weren't ideas at all. With all the hype about Couric, the CBS evening news didn't even look like a news show, it looked like a compilation of the work of novice TV news producers and their very special “concepts” — a mishmash of shallow TV magazine stories and a gimmicky “free speech” segment. You can see what it has done to the art world — now self-centered conceptualism has come to TV news.

Jonathan Franzen

Jonathan Franzen comes pre-approved. Michiko Kakutani's default approval in the NYT and literary success in general has come to him. He was just interviewed on Fresh Air — my first impression of who he is, as opposed to the buzzing, blooming publicity around his name. He is an interesting person, an interesting interview. I don't think he answered a single question Terry Gross asked. It was because he was trying to tell the truth, to feel out what he thought and that involved a journey, a journey that often wandered. The sure signature of a real writer — trying to figure it out. Unlike the typical media icon, he wasn't trying to find the apposite euphemism — to the precise contrary — he wanted to say what he felt, and tried to lasso it in words. He lost himself in his verbal searches, the audience the better for the indirection. There is a small chuckle underneath his interviewee personality — very different from the calloused cackle — the default tone of many in the public eye.

Norman Mailer once said that Franzen writes good sentences but they don't add up. Franzen presents in the same way — but there is something to be said for the additions even if they don't total precisely.