August 21, 2008
TROUBLE IN PARADISE
5 Years Ago
August 22, 2003 | Michael Bronki explored Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville’s "complex, sexually fraught relationship," which, he says, bloomed one summer while the former was caring for his son in the family home in Lenox.
"But lurking within this family romance of nature walks and berry picking is a darker story — possible material for another version of The Scarlet Letter — which critics seem to want to avoid: the complex, sexually fraught relationship that summer between Hawthorne and Herman Melville. The 31-year-old author of the soon-to-be-published Moby-Dick (it would be released, and critically dismissed, in November of that year) visited Hawthorne and Julian several times over the course of their summer idyll. But as felicitous as Melville’s cameo appearances were in Hawthorne’s retelling, they were in reality complicated by the younger writer’s idealization of the distinguished author 15 years his senior. What is only hinted at in Hawthorne’s memoir — which, after all, was intended to be read principally by his wife — becomes more clear in correspondence. We have only Melville’s letters to Hawthorne (the older man’s responses were destroyed or did not survive), but boy, are they letters." Read Full Article
LEAGUE OF THEIR OWN
20 Years Ago
August 19, 1988 | While observing a tribute to Boston’s ‘other’ team, the Braves, at Boston University, writer Mark Jurkowitz said that the former players taking part "returned not so much as triumphant heroes, but as dusty curios of a time gone by."
"One by one, they amble self-conciously across the stage in the Jacob Sleeper Auditorium inside Boston University's College of Basic Studies. They are nine men -- some hobbled by their years, others looking remarkably fit — between the ages of 64 and 76 who, two generations earlier, authored a small chapter of Boston history. As they take their places behind the podium, the decidedly less-than-capacity crowd rises out of their seats with a round of earnest, if not raucous applause. After all, the men they are offering tribute to, a handful of members of the 1948 pennant-winning Boston Braves, are not exactly the hallowed immortals who leap out from old newspaper clippings or the halls of Cooperstown. There is no Ted Williams or Joe DiMaggio here, and the most famous player on that club — pitcher Warren Spahn — had other commitments."
LEAGUE OF HIS OWN
25 Years Ago
August 23, 1983 | With Bowie Kuhn leaving his post as commissioner of baseball, Michael Gee nominated himself for the job.
"[M]ine, sports fans, would not be a do-nothing administration (except on those days nice enough to play golf). No, I have ideas, ideas I am convinced would revolutionize baseball both on and off the field and would initiate a new era of peace, prosperity, and good feeling among owners, players, and fans — except, of course, for those miscreants who I intend to kick out of the game.
"Few fans would be so designated. Only those convicted of improper behavior — things like running onto the field..., yelling ‘balk’ every time an opposing pitcher tosses to first, and so on. And only a few players would suffer...Originally I had thought to curb baseball’s inflation rate by increasing unemployment--namely, by dissolving the hapless franchises in Seattle and Minnesota and thereby leaving a sensible setup of two 12-team leagues. Those 10 or 12 Mariners and Twins capable of finding employment on real teams could get rich, and the others — well, perhaps we could make them all eligible for the pension plan no matter what...
"Or so I was counselled by some of my closest advisors...But my fellow baseball citizens, it would be wrong.
"Unemployment for its own sake is an unacceptable philosophy for this commisioner. The social cost of having third-string catchers roaming the streets is incalculable. No, the Gee Baseball Recovery Act of 1983 would not a cost a single player his job."
FIERY IRONY
35 Years Ago
August 21, 1973 | The Phoenix published the following poem, entitled "Son," by Norman Dukes.
"
HE went away sane
and came back mad.
They took him in.
He ate their food,
slept, broke things.
They kept him in.
Finally one night
he burned down the house.
They stood in the yard.
and watched the fire.
They were weeping.
He put his arms
around them: he felt
like a father
to these two children."
August 19, 2008
Prince Edward Island is about the nicest place I’ve ever visited. There, I’ve said it.
Unfortunately, when I’ve traveled there (in 2006 and 2008), I have also discovered that, despite the fact that it looks like paradise, it has problems just like other places. In particular, the provincial newspapers have had quite a few stories about local pot growers. So, I got interested and wrote an article for the Phoenix about this aspect of PEI that is not well known to outsiders and which, in fact, probably should worry islanders. The article was not meant to suggest that PEI has become a giant exporter of pot or a major narcotics haven north of the border. Rather, the point was to contrast an ongoing and seemingly worsening situation vis-a-vis drug consumption and, in particular, illegal marijuana production, with PEI's well honed (and well deserved) image as a clean, peaceful, and serene destination. And though I was writing for “home folks” here in New England, the World Wide Web ensured that my article had just as many readers in PEI almost as soon as it was posted.
My article paid homage to the beauty of the island, but gave visibility to one of PEI’s problems — and that provoked a flurry of angry mail, news reports on the CBC (including a retort from PEI's tourism minister), and articles in newspapers across Canada. In general, these pieced boiled down to anger that a dumb American would have the audacity to find fault with anything Canadian (it is tough, I’ll admit), let alone anything having to do with Canada’s garden spot, PEI.
Folks up north also nailed me on a couple of reporting errors — like my statement that PEI imports “cheap” electricity from Quebec (it actually comes from New Brunswick). I was also told repeatedly by Canadian critics that I had named the wrong person as director of the PEI Federation of Agriculture. After rechecking my facts, however, I found that I was indeed right and my friends in Canada were wrong: the holder of the title is in fact Mike Nabuur (though I did miss the last consonant on his name in my piece — sorry Mike!).
And I’ll repeat one salient fact: police seized 250 pot plants through May of 2008, which is 50 more than they nabbed in all of 2007. In a nutshell, PEI is a swell place — to visit or to live — but if the island can’t figure out what to do about pot, it may find it shares far more with those of us south of the border than it would wish.
August 15, 2008
THE UNSEEN
5 Years Ago
August 15, 2003 | Chris Millis took note of a photography exhibit at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts called "Harvard Works Because We Do."
"Halpern has set out to capture both the dignity and the oppression of Harvard’s underclass; he’s partly succeeded. His best work shows these people at work: the barely contained scowl of a young black woman in her wait-staff garments; the hand and arm of a custodian wiping a urinal; a powerful triptych of the two tables of union and university contract negotiators separated by a reproduction of the university’s tax form for that year (it took in just under a billion dollars). Less convincing are the portraits of the sous-chefs and the various custodial staff — the sympathies seem stretched, the compositions comparatively flat-footed. Guys on cigarette breaks are not loaded guns. Still, Halpern deserves credit for daring to photograph those we’re all trained not to see." Read Full Article
FOUL PLAY
15 Years Ago
August 13, 1993 | Bill Marx reported on the allegations of sexual harassment that were being brought against playwright Israel Horovitz, artistic director of the Gloucester Stage Company.
"The actress who came forward this week said that when she worked for Gloucester Stage, in the fall of 1987, she found Horovitz ‘particularly friendly.’ He would often try to kiss her on the mouth and she frequently felt him rubbing her shoulder. As a naïve young actress, she said, she chalked it up to the affectionate nature of theater people, though she did her best to stay away from Horovitz. On the closing night of the season, he asked to walk her to her dressing room, where she had to pick up her things.
" ‘It seemed a little odd,’ she said, ‘but his two-year-old son was in tow, so I just walked along. And as soon as we went backstage, and it was a dark, closet-like area, he pulled me to him and kissed me full on the mouth and pushed his tongue into my mouth. I screamed and stumbled into his two-year-old." The theater never hired her again."
DOG PERSON
25 Years Ago
August 16, 1983 | In her review of Wanda and Her Dog at the Alley Theater, Carolyn Clay praised the performance of the poor thespian playing Wanda’s abused pet.
"Lucky for Wanda that Clone, her canine alter ego, is played in this production by a female homo-sapiens; otherwise we’d have to report the dog’s mad mistress to the SPCA. Not that she doesn’t love the mongrel — it’s just that Wanda is the quintessential nihilist, a thwarted artist who’s been sucked dry by the modern world and who vents her frustration on the pup waiting at home...This classic S&M exchange between woman and beast takes the game of kick-the-dog to its outer limits: watching Wanda vacillate between caresses and blows, we’re squirmingly conscious of the power-tripping that goes on in trans-species relationships--not to mention human ones.
...
"The dialogue in Wanda and Her Dog is sometimes splendid and crisp, sometimes overambitious...One soon tires of the world-through-quantum-mechanics theorizing, and of profoundly pretentious lines like ‘Fate and fortune get fulfilled or I’m fucked forever!’ (wailed by Wanda in a mawkish, morbid moment). Clone has few such insipid speeches and so must convey his feelings solely through wags, whimpers, and body language. And though there’s not much of a market for human pups these days, even Off Off Broadway, Karin Grace Trachtenberg may have found her calling. This woman is one good dog-- and that’s meant to be a compliment. God knows, rolling around on the floor, begging for tummy scratches, and eating out of a plastic bowl is bound to be a humbling thespian experience, even without the physical abuse."
NIGHT TRIPPING
30 Years Ago
August 15, 1978 | Michael Matza followed a group of New Yorkers who had come to town to sightsee in the wee hours of the morning.
"...a perplexed cabbie sat by, engine idling, as a seemingly endless string of jabbering sightseers passed his windshield. Did he have any idea what was going on? we had to ask him.
‘I think they’re Christian Scientists,
’ he said without hesitation.
‘It’s kind of early in the morning but they’re probably on their way to a prayer meeting or something.
’ When we told him who they really were, his tone changed dramatically.
‘Are you shitting me?
’ this regular on the graveyard shift responded.
‘Sightseeing in the dark? From New York? What the hell are they gonna see? Hookers?
’
"
In truth, the desolate streets were made for touring. Passing the new building of the Public Library, on Boylston Street, a fat woman from Flatbush fell out of line to admire the ornate wrought-iron entrance to the inbound Copley subway. She stood awestruck at the care that had gone into the construction of this piece of the workaday world, a monument that commuting Bostonians no doubt take for granted. She fingered the thick black metal gingerly, a look of religious submission on her face. To her, this square black entrance building was tantamount to the monolith in
2001."
August 12, 2008
Although we love to brag about the Pulitzer that our classical editor LLOYD SCHWARTZ won a few years back for his music criticism, we've always had to share Lloyd's prodigious talents with his first love, poetry. Over the summer, another Pulitzer Prize-winner -- the Israeli composer Shulamit Ran -- chose to have her students at the Tanglewood Music Center set some of Lloyd's verse set to music. (You may have heard: we've been told former Phoenix lackey Geoff Edgers has been very excited about it.) Lloyd's been blogging about the experience over at the Best American Poetry, and thankfully someone threw up a selection of the performance on YouTube. Check it out: first vid is Lloyd's intro, the second is the piece.
August 10, 2008
CORRECTION: In a previous version of this post, we mistakenly identified the cable provider whose users NBC is blocking from accessing its full online content. The correct provider, now accurately identified below, is Cablevision. We apologize to Comcast for the error: Comcast's Olympic coverage can be accessed online here.
Surprise, surprise -- if you want to stream live coverage of the Olympics from NBCOlympics.com, there's a catch or three.
Step one: download a Microsoft video-streaming plugin (the one they're hoping will compete with Flash). Step two: enter your zip code and confirm your local NBC affiliate station (supposedly so that they can provide "targeted TV listings" -- a patently disingenuous claim, unless they've decided NOT to use that information for ad targeting).
Step three: enter your cable provider? Why does NBC want to know your cable provider? The site claims it's because they've worked out deals with many local cable providers to provide "exclusive" coverage -- which strikes us as a very odd strategy. Weird that a broadast television network would presume you've got cable, first of all; and also odd that thye'd prioritize its online offerings this way, since the internet is potentially the networks' biggest hedge against the encroachment of cable in decades.
IN any case, it turns out there's only one wrong answer to the provider question: Cablevision.
Even if you're willing to download software and give away your location, you still can't stream live coverage if you tell NBC you've got Cablevision. Which, as Mediaweek points out, screws a bunch of the Northeast -- unless, of course, you just lie and say you live somewhere else and report you've some other brand of cable.
And in our opinion, unless you've got relatives in the games or something, it may not be worth all the hassle to watch this stuff on the internet. Video quality's not great -- try watching badminton and see if you can make out the shuttlecock -- and the scheduling can be hard to follow once you get past the homepage, and while NBC does provide an archive of its broadcast events for time-shifting purposes (which in some cases have been time-shifted already to get 'em into prime-time), their real-time coverage streams without audio commentary.
August 08, 2008
GROSS OUT
5 Years Ago
August 8, 2003
| Tony Giampetruzzi explored a new film genre, gay horror. "...as I sit speaking with Gonzalez about his involvement in this bizarre undertaking, a member of the crew arrives from a trip to Hannaford with a bag full of detergents.
" ‘We got a little too much blood on the wall during the last scene,’ he muses.
"It’s true that Zombie isn’t getting nearly as much mileage in the press as, say, the proposed filming of Empire Falls in Waterville (a project that has me admittedly star-struck since it is happening in my hometown). In fact, Zombie and the many similar films that have preceded it have flown well below the radar, something I find a little unusual. I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but when it comes to gay culture, well, let’s just say I’m up to speed. Besides, just about everything gay is chic these days, even if it involves gore, and the films that Dove and Gonzalez are making are essentially Interview with a Vampire, except this time, Brad and Tom are actually having sex and the yuck level is elevated — just check out www.deadguyscinema.com; there’s little left to the imagination.
"Still, despite the somewhat disturbing nature of the films made by Dove (the short Physical Education is tagged with ‘this movie is not rated and contains graphic images of implied rape and murder’), he says that he is doing nothing more than providing a product to a niche market. His product? Scream kings, a tongue-in-cheek answer to the scream queens genre that began in the ’50s and remained popular right up through the low-budget, but very high visibility, ’80s." Read Full Article
TRAPPED IN THE CLOSET
15 Years Ago
August 6, 1993 | Gary Susman found Mark Rappaport’s Rock Hudson’s Home Movies to be a particularly enlightening look at the long-time closeted gay actor’s career.
"Now that it’s well-known that Rock Hudson was gay and died of AIDS, it’s hard not to look at his filmography in a new light, though no one has taken the process as far as Mark Rappaport in his hour-long video Rock Hudson’s Home Movies. This revisionist retrospective suggests that Hudson was constantly subverting his own image in his movies, blandly revealing the truth about his sexual identity while acting in character, if only one knew to listen. Deconstructing an exhaustive compilation of familiar clips in this context, Rappaport finds either hilariously campy innuendo or poignant sublimation in every coy line of dialogue or stoic glance that made Hudson such an icon of self-effacing virility. It becomes easy to believe that in all those pseudo-sophisticated ‘50s sex comedies, Rock was secretly relieved to have his attempts at romance with Doris Day repeatedly thwarted, preferring instead the company of Tony Randall."
CHECK, PLEASE
30 Years Ago
August 8, 1978 | Kit Rachlis listened to Bob Dylan's new album, and hated it
.
"Listening to Bob Dylan's Street-Legal (Columbia) is like running into an old friend who has gone fat and corporate in the two years since you'd last seen him. Had you heard? He and Sarah finally separated. There is going to be a hell of a lot of alimony to pay. She's probably going to get the house. And he flashes his gold lighter and tells you about all his new girl friends. After 20 minutes you're trying to find an excuse to get out of the conversation. After 50 minutes (the approximate length of the album) you're numb. All you want to do is go home, cross his name out of your address book and pour yourself a drink. Quick."
CREATING JUSTICE
35 Years Ago
August 7, 1973 | Sharon Basco discussed Mattapan business owners’ attempts to form a vigilante crime patrol.
"
The early morning gun duel that killed James B. Miller in his Fish and Chips Store in Mattapan was not the only impetus for the area businessmen. They'd been planning to find better protection for their stores before the shooting occurred. Miller was to have been among the group of businessmen who'd been planning to meet with police to demand better protection. His death spurred the community into action, and that was why they were meeting in Bollings's Blue Hill Avenue office that night. There were close to 50 store owners crowded into that room, some in a miscellaneous collection of chairs pulled in for the occasion, others standing near the door at the far corner of the room where the sign-in book was being passed around.
"
Bollings finished his speech advising his constituents of the possibilities of protection by police, by private patrols, and by vigilante-type groups. ‘I'll just tell you this one last thing,’ he said. ‘If you ask me what has to come first, I say organize! You gotta have an organization to get police to listen.’ "
August 08, 2008
That's really the first page of it.
About a month ago, there was a leak of Quentin Tarantino's script for his World War II opus, Inglorious Bastards. We have it, but we haven't read it yet or anything. From what we hear, though, it does sound like the usual Tarantino fare - references to the history of filmmaking, violence, conversation, strong women, and, apparently, the spelling and grammar of an ADD middle-schooler. He misspelled the title on the main page!
Anyway, the movie's set to begin shooting soon, and there's quite a cast lined up. Brad Pitt was reportedly Tarantino's choice to play Aldo Raine, a southern Lieutenant who says things like this, and now Pitt has officially signed on, his first film with Tarantino (they seem like they'd work well together, don't they? Or is that just us?) Joining him, according to reports will be the great Simon Pegg (of Hot Fuzz, Shaun of the Dead, and Spaced fame), the great David Krumholtz (who's appeared in lots of stuff), Nastassja
Kinski, The Office's BJ Novak (really? Mr. Blank Slate?), and horror-porn director Eli Roth. Tarantino wanted Leonardo DiCaprio to play one of the Nazi officers, but changed his mind and determined a German actor should play the role instead.
August 07, 2008
Feeling emboldened, perhaps, by Mad Men's weeklong success (not surprising, we suppose, but that's a different story for a different time,) AMC is now working on its third original television series, a TV version of Francis Ford Coppola's amazing film The Conversation. According to the report, the show would follow Harry Caul (played on film by Gene Hackman) on surveillance assignments that are self-contained - meaning one per show - but also with a longer plot arc tying them together about the people who are following Caul because he's hearing things he shouldn't be hearing (those of you who've seen the film will recognize this and how it ties in to the photo above.)
Were this in the hands of, say, ABC or Fox, we could see it going horribly wrong. But in part because of how well AMC has delivered thus far (Breaking Bad was also not bad), we're oddly intrigued by the idea, even if we feel that the way the film ends is the perfect way to leave that character.
August 01, 2008
DEATH FROM ABOVE
5 Years Ago
August 1, 2003 | Jess Kilby interviewed Bruce Gagnon, of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, about the imperialistic aims of our space program.
Phoenix: Can you tell me a little bit about your organization?
Bruce Gagnon: It was created in 1992, to essentially build a global constituency around the space issue. Most people haven't been and still aren't aware of how space has really become the linchpin of all warfare on earth . . . The recent Iraq war was all coordinated with space technology.
And then, more importantly, [we're concerned with] the plans for putting weapons in space -- and having the US ‘control and dominate’ space is really the agenda of the future.
...
Q: It’s my understanding that your organization views both the mining and the weaponization of space as harmful things. Are there any uses of space that you advocate, or that you're okay with?
A: Well, actually, there are quite a number of our members around the world who are very much interested in space. Some of them have actually worked in the space industry, at one time or the other. So we're really not opposed to the exploration of space. But our clear position is that, right now, the military industrial complex has taken over the space industry.
If you listen to the new director [of NASA] under Bush, Shawn O'Keefe...he said everything we do at NASA from now on will be dual use — meaning every single mission will be both military and civilian at the same time. Because all space technology now really is dual use. So there really is no separation any more between civilian and military. And so to say, ‘Well, we support civilian [uses], but we don't support the military,’ is almost impossible anymore. Because it's all the same thing.
THE RIVER MILD
25 Years Ago
August 2, 1983 | Renee Loth swam the Charles River and lived to tell the tale.
"And last Tuesday at about 1 p.m., at least, the water from Forest Grove to Fox Island...was cool, placid -- and delightful. It did not smell. It did not cling to my skin after I climbed out at Fox Island. It did not, to my knowledge, inflict upon me rare jungle diseases or discoloration of my fingernails. It was rather like swimming in a leafy country pond, with the lilies and ducklings and all, except for the everpresent knowledge that my idyll was just a few miles away from an outflow that last year dumped six billion gallons of raw sewage into Boston Harbor. A few miles upstream, of course."
DANCING AROUND THE LAW
30 Years Ago
August 1, 1978 | At 3:30 on a Saturday morning, Dave O’Brian was sipping on a beer he brought to The Other Side (no relation to the current Newbury Street café), a disco which was operating as a nonalcoholic "juice bar" in order get around closing ordinances.
"...Boston bars are not supposed to be open all night. But the rules that require 2 a.m. closings have specifically to do with the serving of alcoholic beverages, and since June 16 The Other Side has been operating as a non-alcoholic ‘juice bar,’ a type of establishment that is entirely new to the Boston nightclub scene. And while clubowners and licensing authorities differ over whether such clubs can or should adhere to the same rules that govern taverns, The Other Side and an adjacent, smaller room called Penny’s Arcade have been operating under an obscure state statute controlling dance halls. And the only thing that that law prohibits is admitting kids under age 15 if they are not accompanied by adults."
BLAMING THE VICTIM
35 Years Ago
July 31, 1973 | With attacks on gay men in Boston on the rise in the summer of ‘73, Charley Lerrigo talked to local gay activist Charles Shively about why so many these crimes were going unreported.
"For Shively, there is an unwritten gay law not to report beatings and robberies. ‘First of all,’ he said, ‘the police aren’t going to do anything except maybe beat you up or hassle you. Secondly, even if the attacker could be found, it’s your word against his, and he can always say you solicited or molested him and he was only defending his manhood.’
"Also, Shively noted that reporting the place of a beating or robbery--if it’s the Block, Fenway, the Other Side, or Esplanade--can result in getting the place closed down. The apparent consensus within the gay community is that while the bar and open-air cruising aren’t the ultimate possibilities for making contact, they’re what does exist, and for the interim, are necessary for the gay life.
" ‘It’s very much like the rape ‘problem,’ ‘ Shively commented. ‘Men have assumed that the best way to prevent rape is by locking women up and have concluded that any woman assaulted is at fault if she isn’t accompanied by a guard or locked up. With faggots, the assumption is first that we are not daily threatened with assault and murder. Secondly, that if we are, it’s our own fault.’ "
July 28, 2008
Incidentally: Please keep Zack Snyder away from Dark Knight Returns.
Andrew Klavan wrote a controversial essay in the Wall Street Journal saying that The Dark Knight is, in fact, a thinly-veiled tribute to President George W. Bush, who, in Klavan's mind, is another leader who, like Batman in this film, has done what has been right instead of what is popular, and is willing to exchange taking the heat now in exchange for ultimately being validated by history:
There seems to me no question that the Batman film
"The Dark Knight," currently breaking every box office record in
history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral
courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror
and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting
terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes
has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency,
certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency
is past.
And like W, Batman understands that there is no moral
equivalence between a free society -- in which people sometimes make
the wrong choices -- and a criminal sect bent on destruction. The
former must be cherished even in its moments of folly; the latter must
be hounded to the gates of Hell.
There's been loads of discussion on this in plenty of places (like here, for example,) but we'll add our two cents: looked at a certain way, there's an element of conservative fascism to just about every vigilante superhero, whether it's Batman, Iron Man, or conservative icon Dirty Harry (and yes, some may see some Dirty Harry references in TDK.) Also, the themes of doing what's right as opposed to what's popular and suffering for your own cause are not without precedent in literature.
But at the same time, the claim is flimsy, and falls apart under even cursory examination. The Nolan brothers (who co-wrote the script) don't strike us as particularly interested in political themes, even if the cell phone sonar system seems eerily reminiscent of our modern culture of snooping. Ultimately, if Bruce Wayne really was like George W., he probably would have fired Lucius Fox (rather than trusting him to correct his abuse of power.) And does it really seem to anyone like Bush is choosing to play the villain as some sort of rallying point for the American people or anything like that?
The film doesn't exactly celebrate Batman's deeds; it casts them as something horrible he was forced to do. He catches the Joker, but it hardly feels like a victory. And really, on top of it all, as has been pointed out elsewhere, it's really only nominally a Batman film. The story the Nolans seemed more interested in telling was that of Harvey Dent, that of a fresh-faced idealist brought down by circumstances. And that tale is the same across all party lines.
But: perhaps we're wrong - feel free to rebut in the comments.
July 25, 2008
Go ahead. Stare into those dreamy eyes.
Thank you for being a friend, Estelle Getty.
Calling out of work, Manny?
Phoenix editor Lance Gould, Boston Globe scribe Meredith Goldstein, and WFNX-er Henry Santoro tell you what's news and what's not. Don't worry - they won't mention that New Yorker cover. Well, not more than once.
Listen: "Cares or who cares?" on WFNX
July 24, 2008
Someone here has never read me...
Inspired by a post on New York mag's Vulture blog, we tried to find out: what is the Phoenix staff's secret shame? What book are we most embarrassed to have never read?
We got quite a few good replies, including Huck Finn and Wuthering Heights, but it turned out that there are a few of us here who have managed to miss those two. Somebody said Moby Dick, which prompted Nina MacLaughlin to pull out her copy and start quoting from it. We thought we had a winner when Deirdre Fulton copped to never having read 1984, a book that we can't picture resonating quite as well with anyone who's past high school age. But then Will Spitz trumped us all with his confession to having never read The Great Gatsby, a book that everyone has read, and was probably required to read at some point.
What about everyone else? Can anyone else top that?
July 23, 2008
Jon Reiss’s new graffiti documentary takes us waaay back in time — we’re talking prehistoric cave paintings here — but BOMB IT is far from a cut-and-dried history lesson. Reiss talks to big-time bombers across the globe, from New York graf pioneers Taki 183 and Zephyr and “Andre the Giant Has a Posse”-sticker-dude-turned-Obama-campaign-poster-designer Shepard Fairey to Brazilian twin mural artists Os Gêmeos and Barcelona fish tagger Pez. He also looks at how artists are adapting as street art becomes increasingly mainstream in the wake of being co-opted by marketing and advertising firms, video games, clothing companies, and the high-art world. You can catch a screening at the official Boston-area DVD-release party at Church, 69 Kilmarnock St, Boston | 8:30 pm | $10 | 617.236.7600 or www.futureclassic.net. Not convinced? Watch this:
July 22, 2008
Today, the front page of the New York Times declares boldly:
“Across the country, women in their prime earning years, struggling with an unfriendly economy, are retreating from the work force, either permanently or for long stretches.
They had piled into jobs in growing numbers since the 1960s. But that stopped happening this decade, and as the nearly seven-year-old recovery gives way to hard times, the retreat is likely to accelerate.”
Initially depressing? Yes. But not quite cause for despair - it doesn’t sound like we’re entering some sort of strange 1950’s timewarp, wherein we’ll need to consult our guide to being a good housewife and learn how to set a dinner table properly, just yet. In fact, it’s the opposite: women are realizing that they deserve better jobs and better pay.
The interesting thing about this article is that, while some women are giving up working to spend time with their kids, for many that’s not the reason (though it makes for a good cover). The current state of the economy has lead to stagnant wages, so many women are quitting to go to school, so they can find a better job, or quitting because they think they deserve a higher-paying job, and they refuse to settle. Even more interesting, the Times says, “the pattern is roughly similar among the well-educated and the less educated, among the married and never married, among mothers with teenage children and those with children under 6, and among white women and black.”
“Joyce Call, 39, of Howell, Mich., near Detroit... took an accounting job in January 2006 at Forming Technologies, which supplies plastic to auto companies.
The pay, $14 an hour — more than $25,000 a year — was acceptable, she said, but not the raises, which came to only 28 cents an hour over two years, or the Christmas bonus: $150 the first year and nothing the second.
‘I was treated poorly,’ she said, explaining her departure.”
So, it’s sort of an unintentional, unorganized strike, and it’s also sort of awesome - women are willing to pull out of the workforce if jobs can’t live up to their standards. But will it work? We’re not experts on the economy, but the prospect of better jobs turning up for women (or men, for that matter) anytime soon seems bleak. But what do we know?
Read: Women Are Now Equal as Victims of Poor Economy
July 21, 2008
SOCIAL STUDIES
5 Years Ago
July 18, 2003 | In an interview with Zadie Smith, Camille Dodero asked the author about her anti-social tendencies.
Q: After those periods of isolation [spent writing her books], do you find it hard to relate to people?
A: Yes. If I'm let out to go to a party, say, and I haven't been out for three or four weeks, I don't realize that most people have colleagues and they know how to smooth things over [in conversation]. You don't always have to tell the truth, for instance, about how you're feeling every second of the day.
"When I first finished White Teeth and had to start doing press, I would always say the wrong thing. I didn't know how to be a person with other people. And there's all kinds of linguistic things, tics, to make a conversation smooth and natural, and I really didn't know what I was doing because I never saw anybody.... I think [writing] sometimes has a bad effect on your social skills." Read Full Article
DIE EASIER
20 Years Ago
July 15, 1988 | While watching Die Hard, Charles Taylor found himself wishing the film’s lead baddie would take the day.
"Whatever appeal Bruce Willis's wiseguy-prole routine once had is gone. What's left is a smug, smart-ass muscle flexer. He also has a gloppy, regular-Joe side; at one point he radios his cop buddy to tell his wife, 'She's the best thing to ever happen to a bum like me.' When the head of the gang (Alan Rickman) tells Willis he's 'just another American who's seen too many movies...a product of a bankrupt culture who thinks he's John Wayne or Rambo,' the screenwriters don't know how right they are. Rickman performs the nifty feat of upstaging the star throughout the movie, and he does it without trying. Complimenting a victim on his choice of tailor, announcing to the hostages that one of their number has been murdered (as he calmly picks at some grapes), he has a cultured, diffident air that's removed from all the macho histrionics; I even found myself rooting for him. And you've got to love a hood with the temperament of an artist. When a hostage calls him a 'common thief,' he corrects her: 'I'm an exceptional thief.' Rickman shows enough flair to earn that line."
IN GOOD COMPANY
25 Years Ago
July 19, 1983 | Felice J. Freyer covered a “nude whale watch.”
"Among the 100-odd people aboard the Cape Cod Princess, which sailed from Plymouth on June 26, a flawlessly sunny day, were a 44-year-old roofer from South Boston, a 29-year-old engineer from Windsor, Connecticut, and a 40-year-old data processor from Marshfield. There were contingents from greater New York City, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Massachussetts. The group's age range was from the 20s to the 60s. The individuals defied typecasting; they seemed to have little in common besides a desire to soak up rays, smell the ocean, see some whales romping, and share the company of people who were, well, stripped of all pretension.
"Compared with bathing suits, nudity allows a few more inches of knowledge about the bumps and curves of your fellow humans' physiques. That's not what the naturists say they're interested in, though: they enjoy what you don't know about a naked person. For example, you don't know -- and can't guess-- his occupation, how much money he makes, or his favorite color. You start a conversation with fewer preconceptions and prejudices. 'Everybody's the same here. There's no class distinction,' explained Carolyn Elson, 38, a social worker from Watertown."
MELANCOLONY
30 Years Ago
July 18, 1978 | D.C. Denison profiled two artist colonies — New York’s Yaddo and New Hampshire’s MacDowell -- and found that some artists reacted differently to their surroundings than others.
“...no one knows (or, presumably, cares) what the artist does with his or her time in the studio: neither colony demands progress reports or finished projects at the end of a stay, and there is an unwritten rule in both dining halls that the question ‘How is your work going?’ is never asked. Not surprisingly, all this freedom has an effect on the artistic temperament. Some colonists have been know to sit for days in their studio, watching the grass grow. Others start drinking; at MacDowell, one well-known artist had to be dried out every week.
“Even the most industrious artists, in fact, sometimes have trouble adjusting to the colony experience. ‘It was stark at first,’ Bobbie Carrey, a Cambridge photographer who was a Yaddo guest last fall, tells me. ‘I had thought I was a hermit, a recluse — but when I got to Yaddo and confronted the silence, I was surprised by my reaction. The walls were bare and unfamiliar, there was no mail, no phone calls — nothing to bounce off, so to speak. For the first few weeks I spent a lot of time taking self-portraits just to confirm that I was still there...’ ”