Superbowl AMIRITE?

As a fan of lost causes, I’ll be pulling for the Giants this Sunday.  And if the underdogs can manage the unthinkable, I imagine Eli will get to take up the 5% of American TV advertising that doesn’t currently star his brother Peyton.

Teh Funny

Simon Rich’s “The Wisdom of Children.”

Five Actual Songs Over-Played on a Canadian Classic Rock Station

1) Rush, “In the Mood”

Nationalism is a powerful force, and quite probably the only reason this song gets played anywhere.  It’s early Rush, so it’s about scoring with a chick instead of Ayn Rand or anti-music techno-fascist societies of the future.  It’s cute hearing Geddy Lee sing about being horny, because this is the only rock band that nobody has ever lost their virginity to.  (In the interest of full disclosure, I have attended a Rush concert.  And I enjoyed it.  But I enjoyed a lot of things at 17 that you wouldn’t want to know about.)

Longinus, Kant, Stereolab, Etc.

I can understand why Stereolab’s Emperor Tomato Ketchup (1996) is often thought of as their best work — parts of the album are absolutely beautiful.  But Dots and Loops (1997) is utterly sublime.

Here’s the video for “Parsec,”(yt) probably my favorite SL track of all.

What can I say?  I’m on a mid- to late-90’s kick.

Hard Boiled

I enjoyed Judith Freeman’s The Long Embrace, (essentially an intimate biography of Raymond Chandler) especially the first half of the book where she spends a lot of her time driving and walking around L.A. going to many residences once occupied by the master of American noir.  He lived modestly for most of his life, and for all of his cultured tastes he and his wife Cissy seemed to enjoy the ease of apartment living, only rarely taking the plunge and actually buying a place (even after his fame when he could easily have afforded it).

Freeman is at her best revelling in the sheer materiality of L.A. — the streets, the hot sunshine, the bums, the prostitutes. the tackiness, the occasional glory of it all.  I was less excited by her attempts to analyze Chandler through various (and somewhat tired) lenses regarding his drinking, his poor familial relationships, and his possible homosexuality.  Granted, these are all significant to his work, but The Long Embrace loses some of its steam in these digressions.

Still, it’s a fun read that manages to highlight some of the complexities of Chandler as a human being (the foremost being his marriage to a woman 18 years older than him that was, by almost all accounts, quite loving).

It also gives me a chance to quote my two favorite consecutive sentences in all of English literature: “It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.”  (From Farewell, My Lovely.)

Hollywood for Ugly People

It’s getting to be old news by now, but I’m somewhat curious as to how long pro-Hillary Democrats will allow the utterly transparent “Good Cop/Bad Cop” kabuki theater to go on into this primary season.  As someone who isn’t her biggest fan, even I have to admit that on paper Bill is an asset to her larger campaign.  But bringing him out to do the anti-Obama hatchet work while simultaneously shielding her from criticism?  Tedious.

Santayana LOLs

Drunk history (yt, via).

Peaceable Kingdom

There’s nothing funny about an escaped tiger mauling and killing someone.  But there is something a little funny about the good people of San Francisco erecting a memorial at the zoo for the animal and, as an afterthought, for the people involved.

(And if they were taunting the creature, as has been alleged, I guess it makes sense.)

Get Yr Caucus On

So it begins in Iowa.  A year ago I would have said something nice about John Edwards.  I guess I still could, since I do respect the guy, but he’s run such a blase (and arguably flawed) campaign that it’s hard to be all that psyched.  I kind of like Obama.  I don’t dislike Hillary as much as I thought I would once she took the national stage.  Ultimately, I hope the Dems can get through this process with as little damage to their future nominee as possible (call it the wages of fecklessness).

That’s hardly the sort of excitement that gets a person fired up for November, but it’s all my party seems to be capable of right now.

Meanwhile, Hitchens pretty much nails the absurdity of Iowa casting such a large shadow over every presidential election here in the States.

Update: Obama ftw.  Good on him, and congratulations.  Still, let’s try not to get too far ahead of ourselves Arianna.  He’s smart enough to know that if he wants to win, he needs to play ball (i.e., run towards the middle/right if he manages to get the nomination).

At the very least, it’ll keep things interesting for a while.  Just how does America’s “first black president” effectively go on the offensive against the man who might actually become America’s first black president?  (Or at least its first viable national candidate for the office.)