perfidy

I went to a friend's birthday party on Saturday (yeeees... I have friends) in Boston. The venue was a Chinese restaurant near Government Center, replete with muted decor, muted house music, and an extensive menu of tropical-themed novelty drinks. My unfailing instincts led me to order a "Suffering Bastard," which I can say with all confidence is the worst drink I have ever not enjoyed. Which is to say there are a great many bad drinks out there that I enjoy very much, but the "Suffering Bastard" was not among them. Perhaps I should have let the name be my first warning.

The recipe should have been my second:
1 oz Gin
1 oz Bourbon
1/2 oz Lime juice
1 dash Bitters
Top off with Ginger ale
Serve with pineapple slice, cherry, and lime slice

Yes, yes, Devil Gin in there mixing with Old Man Whiskey. A smarter man would have stuck with the Sake Martini or Kumquat Mojito, but I, not being the Sake Martini or little-umbrella type, am not smart. Luckily, the bartender reedemed himself with a perfect Sidecar (thanks to Spiral Dive for the pointer!) and I was able to stagger away unharmed.

Which brings me to my question. What is the best bad drink you have ever had?

Mine is the

Screaming Nazi:
1 oz Rumple Minze, ice cold
1 oz Jaegermeister, ice cold
Pour together in frozen cordial glass and shoot. Repeat. Stagger heaving for the garbage can. [n.b. This drink nearly killed me once. Your mileage may vary.]

though I am also fond of this drink, the name of which I shall not repeat here. The taste is great, though the... erm... texture... leaves something to be desired:

1 oz Bailey's Irish Cream
6 oz Orange Juice, chilled
Combine in Collins glass without ice. Drink, enjoy, then grimace.

I'm not even thirty, and I have already been left behind by the great carousel of hipness. 

(Is hipness a carousel? If so, what an excruciating ride that must be. Hundreds of painfully skinny young people in ironic t-shirts and expensively dirty hair, riding the zebras and lions while trying their best to look bored, stealing looks at the brass ring as it floats by-- brass rings, how quaint, they think, but nobody (else) actually wants it, do they? Do they? A carousel does suggest the proper frivolity to describe hipness, and the circular insularity of the carousel is as good a metaphor as any for the self-referential scene-making intrinsic in any hipster activity. (Some days I really miss grad school, where shit like this was taken dead seriously and I could get away with spinning horseshit and snoozing.))

I am not yet thirty and have been left behind by the great carousel of hipness. I mean, seriously. Low-cut jeans? When I see asscrack peeking out of a women's jeans, I don't think sexy thoughts but rather ardently hope the wearer of the jeans has remembered to wipe thoroughly. Her message of sensuality unleashed translates to me as a plea for personal hygiene.

The ten-minute trucker hat craze left me totally bewildered... I know lots of places where you can pick up a mesh hat and a quart of oil for $1.25, yet in Manhattan it may yet be chic to pay $225 for the thing. Ashton Kucher is going to have a lot to answer for, some day.

And yet I still know funny when I see it.

Via Boston blogger Bradley's Almanac and Fear of a Female Planet comes this gem: Hipster Bingo! Where I work, I would win at this game every day. Damn kids.

That phrase once made me think of Forrest Whittaker. Now, I have to admit that I actually like the new show on Bravo, Queer eye on the straight guy. (Is Bravo now the queer network?) (You can't say that. - ed.) (Shut the hell up, nancy boy. - me) The episode with the artist guy Butch (seriously?) was quite fun. The fashion queer is over the top; snarky, bitchy and fun. The cooking queer is anal, like Phil Hartman's anal retentive chef. And I got a hair care tip from the grooming queer. Good all around.

I've been meaning to write about this all week. On the music network Fuse, which I was not even aware of until last Tuesday, they have a show called Kung Faux. It is hard to even begin to describe it, but it is kick ass, ass-whuppin' funny.

Basic concept: Take old kung fu movie. Remove soundtrack. Replace with hip hop. Redub movie with a new script, and all the actors sound like Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction. Add psychedelic special effects whenever something gets hit.

Net effect: I fell off my couch and startled my 2 1/2 month old son he started crying. And I still couldn't stop laughing.

Check your local listings. 
 

From last year, I think:

"Andre, a simple peasant, had only one thing on his mind as he crept along the east wall: "Andre creep ... Andre creep ... Andre creep."

The winners of the 2003 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest have been announced. ("Huh?", you say with slackened jaw? The history of the contest is here, you clod!)

This year's winner:

They had but one last remaining night together, so they embraced each other as tightly as that two-flavor entwined string cheese that is orange and yellowish-white, the orange probably being a bland Cheddar and the white . . . Mozzarella, although it could possibly be Provolone or just plain American, as it really doesn't taste distinctly dissimilar from the orange, yet they would have you believe it does by coloring it differently. Ms. Mariann Simms Wetumpka, AL

Mmmm... outrageous fiction....

God, do I love that headline.

Much as I dislike George Voinovich (who is stalking me), the Springer cure is far worse than the disease. Btw, Springer only got busted in the writing checks to prostitutes incident after the check bounced. This apparently pissed off the hooker.

The New York Times, all the news that's print to fit.

My favorite old-timey disease name of all time: dropsy.

My favorite made-up disease: the staggers. As in, Q: "Buckethead, you look a little rough. What happened to you?" A: "Oh, I'm ok. Just a fifth of Beam and a case of the staggers." Of course, I made this one up shortly before our cat died to describe her inability to walk straight, so it's not really that funny when you look at it that way. *snif* I really miss little Iron Chef Chen Kenichi.

I think, Buckethead, you shouldn't ask for too much in the way of excellent disease names. Just look at the last few years. Sure, "I got the SARS" doesn't sound half as good as "Poor Jim's got a case of the hoof-and-mouth," or "I had to put down grandpa like a cow with the aftosa," but "ebola" is a great name for a disease that eats your flesh and makes you die, and likewise, Monkeypox is a perfect name for a disease that comes from pet prairie dogs. MONKEY POX! And it's FATAL! HAW!

I knew a prairie dog once. His name was Stinky. Guess what he did?

I leave you with this: Ten cases of the bubonic plague in Algeria, two of them the almost certainly fatal septicimic variety. Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice. I say it will end coughing blood, weeping, and cursing God for his twisted sense of humor. But me, I'm an optimist.

Buckethead-- totally agreed. There are, however, certain exceptions. Prince, one of the great musical geniuses of the last twenty-five years, rarely uses a traditional bassline. "When Doves Cry" has no bass of any kind, and few of his songs have a funk bass line like one might expect from the direct heir to Sly Stone and Rick James.

[moreover] His recent work notwithstanding, Prince is a genius. Anyone disagreeing with me is not only foolish, but cruising for a world-class ass-whipping. I'm a pretty big Prince fan, as is Goodwife Two-Cents.

I have noticed that whenever a band comes along that has interesting bass lines, I really like it. And most music that I don't like, lacks good bass. Substantial overlap. Big exception is a lot of the blues and (very) early country that I listen to - a lot of that is voice/guitar, voice/banjo, or something equally sparse.

Having spent the morning today exploring the outer limits of my caffeine tolerance (verdict: 12 oz. premium drip coffee not enough, 24 oz. of same far, far too much), I have been in no condition to read, much less string words together in a clear, engaging, and trenchant fashion such as my dear readers have come to demand. I think I may be dying.

But whatever. I'm a wuss.

Be assured I am working on a giant, blockbuster post about the role of the bass player in modern rock music. The Boston Globe had an article this weekend about the decline of the electric bass in pop music that simply cried out for me to respond, so I'm-a-gonna. I shall attack Nu-Metal as a tool of satan, and compare bassless pop music (the White Stripes, the Black Keys, most things these days) to the porn industry. Also be assured I shall proceed with the utmost taste and discretion in my dissertation on same, yeah right.

For now, I will just offer this screed.

Nu-metal is terrible and nu-metal musicians are monumentally stupid [nothing like an easy target, eh? -ed. [stop that, a-hole! -kaus]] I might be old, and I might not be "hip" or "jiggy," but these are immutable facts. In fact, nu-metalers are so stupid, they even get their own lineage wrong. Ask them and they will cite Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, etc. as heavy bands to copy. They claim these bands as their fathers. Well, that's wrong. Know how you can tell? Listen to the bass. Metallica (ver. 1.1, featuring Cliff Burton), not to mention Megadeth, Anthrax, Slayer, Motorhead, Iron Maiden, Sabbath, Deep Purple, Alice In Chains, etc. etc. featured competent-to-excellent bass players who frequently played lines distinct from the guitar parts (no!!). Moreover, the bass contributed swing and what I like to call "thwack" to the sound.

Nu-metal on the other hand, devalues the bass player. There are several reasons for this. First is the bassiness of modern production. Rather than elevate the role of the bass to prominence, modern production combined with detuning allows guitars to take up the frequency range formerly inhabited by bass players. This same detuning hedges bass players in. If the guitars are chunking along in C#, a mere major sixth above the bottom of the bass' range, this leaves no room to break out, and requires the bassist to double the guitars. Additionally, even with a low-B string, any deviation from the guitar line would result in sonic sludge at such low frequencies. Second, modern basses with their newfangled low-B strings don't sound as good as older 4-string models. As a matter of physics, low-B strings are flappier and less tight-sounding than the EADG strings. Pickups designed to compensate for these shortcomings seem to detract from the overall sound of the bass. Third, "heavy" music places a premium on unison playing to increase the "heaviosity" of the riff, and also tends to value unison stops. Hence, the bass follows the guitar.

These sonic and musical considerations are only half of the story, though. The other half is this. When you listen to nu-metal, the bass tends to play very simple figures over and over. It may as well not be there, but for the need for increased heaviosity. This was NOT the case when Bruce Dickinson fronted Iron Maiden, my friend!! But this WAS the case when Kip Winger fronted, er, Winger. All that has changed is the musical vocabulary. Whereas hair/glam metal bands would have had the bassist play a pedal tone eight hundred times underneath the intro riff to song (for example Judas Priest's "You Got Another Thing Coming," or Van Halen's "Running With The Devil," or almost every Poison song ever) while the band sings about guitars, women, parties, or touring, nu-metal bassists play E-F-E-Bb over and over while the band sings about fury, rage, anger, or angst. New wine, old bottles. Bo-ring. Nu-Metal bands are nothing but Poison in a post-grunge world. Except without the hair or entertainment value. Or quality.

I don't know why I care so much; and I can't think of why you should. I actually LIKE hair metal, a lot. A lot a lot. But hair metal bands labored under no illusions that they were making art, much less a statement. It was fun! Nu-metal, on the other hand, tries hard not to be fun. And, as Lisa Simpson once said, "making teenagers feel angst is like shooting fish in a barrel."

Up next: the death of the bass in indie rock: the porn connection.

espite the derivative nature of your post, there is a reason why many people do it. Its fun. (Except for ripping off Kaus, which is annoying. -ed) I have had little time to read lately, which is painful as I have read three books a week for most of the last twenty years. The addiction is strong for me.

Nevertheless, I have managed to read a couple books this summer.

• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay Johno has been bugging me to read this since the dawn of time. I should not have waited so long. (btw, this book got the record for most comments from other people who see me reading a book, at five. The previous record was for Huntington's Clash of Civilizations. I do live in DC.)
• The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler. I read this book about once a year. I still don't know what the plot is, but what is plot when the writing is this beautiful?
• A Princess of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs. I love, love, love this book. Thoats, Zitidars, and Calots, oh my.
• Heaven on Earth, by Joshua Muravchik. Still reading this one. A history of socialism by a red diaper baby who lost his faith. He still has sympathy for the figures involved, and it seems a balanced account. It is amazing how everything in modern communism was prefigured in Babeuf back in the French Revolution. Good book.

Johno is right, I do like the hard sf. One reason I stopped reading fantasy was the depressing sameness of it all. The engineering/scientific outlook on life does lend a certain flavor to hard sf. But it certainly doesn't suppress the imagination. Working under the constraints of hard sf forces some writers to greater flights of imagination than more open formats might.

[btw]My favorite part of killing star was the central park analogy. Read the book, it is one of the more chilling things you'll read. Because it could be true.

It's well known that we do things our own way around here.

(Actually sir, that's not so well known. Nobody reads this blog. And you're about to do something that everybody's doing. Not to mention you're ripping off Kaus. -ed.)

Well, whatever. Since I've been reading at the steady clip of about three books a weeks for the last few months, I thought I'd share some recommendations.

• Jarhead, Anthony Swofford. Is to the Gulf War what The Things They Carried was to Vietnam, in every way possible, including being much easier to read.
• Founding Brothers, Joseph Ellis. Joe Ellis might be a liar and a cheat, but his history is good. For all of my degree-having and claimed expertise, it was this book that really made me begin to understand the men who shaped the United States' destiny.
• The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakame. The only points of comparison I have are Thomas Pynchon, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and perhaps Milan Kundera. Wierd, masterful, and breathtaking.
• The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler. I read this book about once a year. I still don't know what the plot is, but what is plot when the writing is this beautiful?
• Everything on Buckethead's Science Fiction List. I'm almost through it, and have not been disappointed yet.

And finally, beautiful irony. I think Buckethead likes more than I do science fiction written by scientists and science-advocates, e.g. Gregory Benford, Jerry Pournelle, Charles Pellegrino. Their writing tends to share a certain cant, much as police procedurals, outbreak novels, and spy novels do. It doesn't appeal to me too greatly, but I read it for passages like this one, from a point in the Pellegrino/Zebrowski novel "Killing Star" after the aliens have found Earth and tried to wipe it out but before anyone knows why:

"Got it!" he announced triumphantly. "The Intruders seem to be rebroadcasting what remains to this day the loudest, most highly synchronized electromagnetic shout ever sent out from Earth. On April 5, 1985, as part of a publicity effort to bring aid to the starving children of Africa, every radio and television station on every continent began brodcasting the same message at the same moment-- a composition called "We Are The World," by one Michael Jackson. I'm not trying to sound ironic, but I think the Intruders are trying to tell us what first drew their attention to our species."

"So this Michael Jackson became the first definitive sign of intelligent life on Earth," Sargenti said acidly. "And the Intruders are throwing it back at us. Whatever for?"

"To mock us?" General Stoff asked. "But of course that can't be true."

"So what did they do all these years?" Sargenti said. "Just wait around replaying this tune to themselves until they could build starships and come finish us off? They must be insane!"

"Or very determined music critics," Isak said.

I appreciate cruel symmetry wherever it exists.

Just reading through all the blogging goodness that I missed while being exploited by my capitalist, uh, exploiters; and working hard to become a dirty capitalist landlord; I noticed Johno's post on whiteness studies.

That is the most asshatted, fuckwitted, nozzleheaded bugfuckery I have run across in a goodly long while. Although - just think if some sneaky bastard used the banner of whiteness studies to hide a return to the study of the classics? Just thinkin', is all...

No, not those Weasels. Screeching Weasel! Ben Weasel, erstwhile singer of that celebrated, beloved smartasspunkrock band, now has a 'blog. It's a good one, found at http://weaselmanor.blogspot.com. Ben recently weighed in with a long essay about file sharing, and it's full of greatness, wit and wisdom. His thesis in a nutshell: "don't lie to yourself: it's stealing, a-hole!" Excerpted: 

"Musician" is the only job title in the world other than "monk," "nun," or "priest," where those who benefit the most from your work expect you to do that work for cost, or free. At least monks and priests get health benefits. But to the music fan, musicians should be martyrs for their art. Believe me, it's scary to realize that your financial future rests in the hands of a demented child who really, really loves you - as long as you behave according to a stringent set of creative and financial rules, that is. 

Music fans - again, the true fanatics, the bellowing minority - seem to have two personalities: plodding, overly affectionate lummox, and hyper, shrill arbiter of musical correctness. The music fan is constantly checking up on us to make sure that we know we're adored as well as to ensure that we're suffering properly and sufficiently. The reason we keep the fans at arm's length is because if we don't, we're liable to end up playing Curley's wife to their Lenny. . . . 

Legally and ethically speaking, of course, you have no right to steal from anyone. Justifying your theft with "Oh, they're all rich" or "Well, the major labels are crooks anyway" might make you feel better about yourself, but you're still a thief. Yet in a way, I don't blame you, at least not for wanting a little revenge. You've been ripped off. The majors gouged you - they were busted for it, for crying out loud - and it's not the first time they screwed you. They've been doing it since rock and roll began. They are the reason that quality and success are unrelated concepts in rock and roll. They are in the business of bullying, lying, cheating and stealing. 

But as wrong as they are - and let's not forget that they've screwed musicians right along with fans - as wrong as they are in practically everything they do, they are right about stealing music. I don't like to agree with the RIAA - they certainly don't represent any musician I know - but they are right. Stealing IS wrong, and Internet theft of music IS killing the industry. Maybe the industry deserves to die - I don't know. But is it worth putting so many people out of business (not to mention losing their creative voices) to get back at what amounts to a handful of very wealthy, very powerful people who, regardless of what you do, will remain very wealthy and very powerful? I don't think so - working towards an alternative would seem to make more sense. . . . You'll be left, for all practical purposes, with two groups of musicians. 

The first will consist of musicians who aren't any good and never were and were formerly engaged primarily in attempts to convince suckers in Estonia to download the dopey love songs and experimental art-rock they recorded on their four-tracks; these self-indulgent, pretentious rank amateurs will be your new alternative and they will rule the college radio charts. In the second group will be the musicians you'll be hearing on commercial radio and seeing on TV. They will be the Survivors Of The Fattest. . . . 

This revolution of theft is having an effect on the industry, no question. But it's not taking out the big guns. They aren't going anywhere. You're killing the little guy. You're ruining the very people that make music interesting, exciting, and vital. I hope you can manage to enjoy what will be left over, and when that day comes – and it's coming fast - at least don't insult our intelligence by blaming Metallica or the RIAA or Warner Bros. At least try to be honest enough to admit that it was your own willingness to rip off your heroes - whether out of greed, or misplaced moral outrage, or both - that drove us out of the business. Don't blame the big, bad corporations for killing rock and roll. Blame yourselves.

Mike, it occurs to me that the one arena where your argument about class being more important to Americans than race is affirmative action. I was partially mistaken in arguing the contrary, and I apologize. 

In fact, affirmative action illustrates your point perfectly. If it weren't for class, AA would not be as widely considered as necessary because class-derived performance issues (including those attributed to the legacy of segregation, i.e. race) would be less of a concern. In fact, I remember writing something to that effect a while back, so I am doubly remiss in contradicting you. 

Ahhh... here it is. On April 1, I wrote (slightly edited):

[W]ithout dismissing several hundred years of history and systematic repression, there are many social, cultural, economic, and geographic factors aside from race that determine how a child's education goes. [In fact], affirmative action stands in its own way [by focusing the discussion solely on race rather than other related matters]. Now, when we want to talk about race-based issues in education, we talk about affirmative action. Unfortunately, AA doesn't even address the [real educational questions attributable to lingering racial issues]. 

For example, take the high incarceration rate among young black men. A felony rap means not being eligible for federal student aid, a Clinton policy that cut off a large swath of society from easy access to higher education. Affirmative action can't touch that, though it's partly a race-based education issue. It's my sense that economic factors influence more about a person's educational path than does race, yet colleges do not consider economics[ that is, class differences] when deciding admissions policy. . . . Public schools are in [deep trouble] all over the place, and students advance grades without learning basic skills. Affirmative action can't compensate for that either, even though that's what it was meant to do. Instead, the debate remains narrowly confined [and cuts] the real problems out of the picture.

Calpundit asks a very good question.

Every time there's a big trial the media names it the "Trial of the Century." But it occurred to me the other day that now that the 20th century is over, we should be able to decide which trial really was the Trial of the Century (American version). Leopold and Loeb? Sacco and Vanzetti? The Lindbergh baby kidnapping? Julius and Ethel Rosenberg? The Chicago 7? Patty Hearst? OJ?

A reader also mentions the Scopes trial, which would probably get my vote, and I would have to add in more: the Debs trial; Nuremberg (though a military tribunal); Roe v. Wade. 

The problem with choosing just one trial of the century is that all the standouts are so iconic, and for different reasons. Anti-communism. Xenophobia/Anti-immigrant sentiment. Racism. Anti-Semitism (repeatedly). Class. Culture. Morality. The damn anarchists. If nothing else, an interesting mind exercise which illustrates what you believe to be the single dominant theme in 20th century US-weighted history. 
 

Upon discussions with Goodwife Two-Cents (who knows about such things), I find I was wrong about something yesterday (no!). While I was correct that public libraries generally do not receive operating money from the Federal Government, they do receive lots of Federal funding in the form of grants. That's how they buy computers. With library budgets slashed to the bone, libraries have two options to buy new computers for patron and administrative use: federal grant money, or Bill Gates' largesse. The first comes with strings attached, the other is rather rare. As a result, the Supreme Court's decision yesterday to uphold the CIPA will have an immediate, and unfortunate, effect on public libraries.

Well, I had an extended post on the subject and I lost it. I'll be brief. First, I'll reiterate my intense hatred for Noel Ignatiev and his so-called book that is really a big pile of crap. Second, whiteness studies, including Noel Ignoramus', argue that the Irish were racially distinct in Anglo-Saxon America and then tried to become white. Really? All the Irish Americans in all of America all got together at a meeting and voted unanimously to become white? In order to do so, they also voted to hate African Americans and be mean, evil, racist, awful terribly people. Where are the minutes of that meeting? There was no meeting. Irish Americans, like every other ethnic group, have simply wanted better for their children than they had. That's it. End of story. I've touched on this in previous posts so I won't belabor it here. I'll just say this. Sure. Members of the Irish-American ethnic group have, and some still do, prejudged others. But other ethnic groups are exempt from this? Hardly. In a previous post I wrote that my mother used to tell me that there's good and bad in all kinds, and that most American ethnic historians weren't paying attention if their mother told them the same thing. 

Thus, whiteness studies are another way for the IT to browbeat Irish Americans. They decided to become white by hating African Americans. They are evil horrible people. 

Oh, go sit on your Ivory Tower and spin.