SansPoint

Wes Anderson^[1] is one of my favorite directors, and watching Hotel Chevalier, his new short film/prologue to the upcoming The Darjeeling Limited hits all but one of the right notes. It’s a standard Wes Anderson bit through and through, from the slightly desaturated colors, shots with near perfect lateral symmetry, detached dialog, and Futura titles. It’s 13 minutes of concentrated excellence, and has me pretty excited about Darjeeling Limited.

The short itself features Jason Schwartzman (Rushmore), and Natalie Portman^[2] reuniting after a dismally failed romantic relationship, while Schwartzman hides in an expensive French hotel room. I’m not sure how it connects to the main attraction, but as a little dose of Wes Anderson, it’s excellent.

If it’s missing anything, it’s the requisite Mark Mothersbaugh score, but the music in it “Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)” by Peter Sarstedt suits it excellently.^[3] The film is available from iTunes for free, and I highly recommend it.

1. No relation ↩
2. I don’t know what it is, but this is the second Wes Anderson film that features an actress I have sexual interest in presented in a way that drives me batty. In The Royal Tenenbaums, Wes Anderson managed to do the same thing with Gwyneth Paltrow, who does not interest me at all. Her character Margot Tenenbaum, however, is bizarrely attractive. Cate Blanchette in The Life Aquatic, though didn’t work for me in that way. ↩
3. Mark’s apparently sitting Darjeeling Limited out, which is a shame. His scores are what got me interested in Wes Anderson to begin with. ↩

Devolution: Nature’s U-Turn is a new viral video by the band Korn^[1], presenting a mockumentry on Devolution, the idea that humanity is regressing, not progressing. It seems kind of familiar… as if some other band had been making this same claim before.

And yes, Devo, the De-Evolution band themselves have been made aware of this. I have to approve of the statement by Gerald Casale on the Club Devo front page:

“We denounce this as imposters playing with fire.” Gerald V. Casale

My major problem with this is not that Korn is making fun of humanity’s decline, but that they’re essentially ripping of an idea, wholesale, from another band without credit. The video, as presented, lacks both the intelligence of Devo’s take on the subject and the quality. It feels like, in a way, a dumbing down of a creative and unique concept in order to sell to a larger populace. In the end, something gets lost in the translation: in this case, the joke.

Ultimately, Devolution: Nature’s U-Turn fails to provide anything beyond a bit of pointless humor, and no real concrete criticisms. It works on one level: people are doing stupid stuff, and that’s scary and funny. There’s no major point, as far as I can tell. Devo’s videos and music provide context, criticize, and even offer solutions in some cases.

Comparing the two products, I’d take the original, and so should you.

1. which I refuse to link to on general principle ↩

A recent post on the Freakonomics Blog on whether someone could start a library system from scratch today^[1] has me thinking. Stephen J. Dubner argues that if such an attempt were started today, there would be a huge pushback from book publishers to prevent these new-fangled libraries from freely distributing books. After all, one copy of a book being read by twenty people means that the publishing companies are missing out on twenty potential sources of revenue.

Dubner guesses that “Perhaps they’d come up with a licensing agreement: the book costs $20 to own, with an additional $2 per year for every year beyond Year 1 it’s in circulation. I’m sure there would be a lot of other potential arrangements,” but I don’t think this would go far enough for the publishers. They’d try to milk money out of the library, and the reader, and possibly the reader’s mother if they could. It would be more like joining a video store: you pay per title, and a portion of that payment goes towards the store, and another goes back to the movie studios. The store pays the studio for a copy of the movie, and so the studio gets double profits. In a library system, the publishers get the money per copy of the book, and then that’s it.

It wouldn’t stop there, either. With concerns over intellectual property, there would probably be some attempt to ensure some form of ARM on the books: paper that could be read but not photocopied, books that are encrypted requiring a code to read, or some other absurd technology to prevent redistribution and unauthorized reading. Perhaps, at the utmost extreme, libraries would sell you an e-book reader, and distribute books digitally, with enough DRM to choke a horse. If these things seem somewhat far-fetched, the music industry has pulled the same crap on music sales for years.

As someone with aspirations of writing professionally, who wants people to read his work, and believes in open distribution of information, the idea of rights-managed, pay-to-read libraries scares the hell out of me. Fortunately, we have free libraries, which allow people to read for free, without worrying about paying for anything, except late fees, and open access to the written word. It has also provided us with some absolutely beautiful library smut. These pictures are simply beautiful.

1. At the time of this post, the site is suffering heavily under the Digg effect, so it might not load. ↩

I recently picked up the audiobook of Al Gore’s The Assault on Reason, as read by Will Patton. Though I’ve not completed it, it’s been an interesting listen, albeit one which has repeatedly increased my blood pressure. At first, the blood pressure rise came from Gore’s continual assault on television as a medium, or to be more accurate, his half-hearted attempts to persuade the reader that he doesn’t think TV is all bad^[1]. They just feel like a vain attempt to not have the regular TV watching portion of his reading audience throw the book across the room and go back to watching The Simpsons. Once the semi-ad hominem attacks on the boob tube stop, though, the book really gets roaring.

Ultimately, Gore’s TV bashing does work towards a valid point: TV-based politics does not allow for real debate. It doesn’t allow for nuance, fact-checking, comparison, or logic. What passes for political debate in this country boils down to, “Hey! Let’s go bomb us some Ay-rabs!” versus “Uh, let’s not.” without any supporting facts, just pleas to emotion, and catch phrases like “If you’re not with us, you’re with the terrorists,” or “Bring it on.” This sort of debate has allowed the Bush Administration, and its gaggle of talking heads^[2] foaming at the mouth and aiding in the replacement of debate with an echo chamber, talking points, and the manufacture of consent. Once this initial premise is established, much of the book goes into ripping apart the idiotic, half-developed, utter failures of the Bush Administration to defend our country, win wars, prevent terrorism and nuclear proliferation, establish an energy policy more complex than “drill for more oil”, etc., etc., etc., etc.

Face it, if you’re a progressive/Liberal, and even the slightest bit informed, 90% of the charges that Gore makes, you know about already.^[3] It’s these things that have me on the verge of arterial hypertension. Largely, that hypertension comes about from the sense that all my moral and ethical outrage is useless. I am a mere citizen. This is a representative democracy. All I can do is vote for the candidate I want, and hope they get the damn job done, if elected. After that, I can make the occasional phone call to their office^[4], or write letters. Even these tools are rendered dangerously futile thanks to astroturfing campaigns by lunatic groups like the American Family Association. Signing petitions and protesting in the streets are worthless; they both will get ignored. When, after all, was the last time an anti-war protest made national headlines? The only way a protest will make waves is if the government kills someone during it^[5], or it turns into a riot.

Perhaps, that’s the ultimate point Al Gore wants to make. Before the television age, we citizens had a bit more of a voice in political debate than we do now. We could write letters to the newspapers—and have them actually read! Before Reagan, radio stations were forced to provide equal time for opposing viewpoints. People could self-publish, post fliers and pamphlets, and protests were noticed by the people in charge. To be fair, I suspect Gore paints a rosier picture of pre-television democracy than actually happened. Newspapers have editors, who cherry pick the “best” of the letters and opinion columns, and work to maximize ad revenue and subscription sales first. Promoting the free exchange of political ideas comes in at, perhaps, eighth. Still, Gore seems to think the days of pre-TV democracy will come again thanks to the power of the Internet.^[6] The Internet is much like the golden age of print media that Gore waxes poetic about, only more so.

That’s the Internet’s strength… and it’s weakness. Though I haven’t reached the point where it comes up, I can’t help but wonder if Al addresses the problem of the signal-to-noise ratio in Internet discussion. Everyone has a voice, and the Internet gives everyone the chance to make their voice heard, whether a 85-year-old grandmother from Palookaville, Kansas, or a 15-year-old high school freshman^[7]. Everyone has something to contribute, but whether it’s worth contributing is another matter entirely. With all the voices screaming this, that, the next thing, and the other, it’s easy to get burnt out on outrage. I’ve found myself trying to unsubscribe from e-mail lists pushing “Action Alerts” on Net Neutrality, increased royalty rates for online radio, changing media ownership laws, and political rallies for Democratic candidates in your area. It’s overwhelming. It’s too much.

Ultimately, it all comes down to the question of what I, or anyone else, can do in their limited capacity as a voter and citizen. Admittedly, it’s not much, but it’s better than passivity. I do hope the Internet, as Al Gore predicts, becomes a new way for us, the citizen, to engage in democracy and the “marketplace of ideas”^[8], and to have an impact on the way the country, and the world is run. I’m just afraid that we’re all stuck until the technology, both in terms of its reach and its breadth, catch up with the vision Gore has for America, and the world. I’d like to wait and see, but all the horrors of the past seven years have left me wondering if we have time to wait.

1. I’m convinced that Gore is one of those people who has a digital cable package, but only gets a handful of channels: His local network affiliates, PBS, CNN, FOX News (gotta watch the enemy), C-SPAN, and perhaps the Science Channel, and Sci-Fi. ↩
2. Please do not confuse this with the band Talking Heads, who—at least David Byrne at any rate—are decidedly liberal, and much more pleasant to listen to. ↩
3. This still, of course, leaves a good 10% that caught me off guard. For example: Bush and his cronies, for all their talk about keeping nukes out of the hands of rogue states, haven’t even tried to secure the loose fissile material floating around. You’d think that would be the first step, right? ↩
4. This always results in speaking to an intern, who—at least in the case of former PA Senator, Rick Santorum—likely forgot my petition by the time he hung up the phone ↩
5. e.g. Kent State, 1970 ↩
6. Insert “Al Gore created the Internet” joke here. ↩
7. or a 23-year-old college undergrad with too much free time… ↩
8. I’m going to be honest. I hate that term. ↩

I discovered POLYSICS back in 2001, around the time their first US release, Hey, Bob! My Friend! came out. I’d read about them on the alt.fan.devo newsgroup, and after downloading a handful of tracks, I was hooked. I’ve been following the band ever since, even having the pleasure of seeing them live twice^[1]. They’re second only to DEVO when it comes to the intensity of a live show.

Recently, I got my hands on their newest single, Catch on Everywhere. I’d previously seen the video on YouTube, and heard a live B-side, Shizuka is a Machine Doctor performed on KEXP^[2]. Having heard the entire single, though, I have to say it’s very impressive, and along with the previous singles You-You-You, and Electric Surfin’ Go Go!, speaks well of what the new album Karate House may hold.

The song itself is a very fun, poppy piece that would almost fit on For Young Electric Pop. Though the bizarre chipmunks-esque vocals are a bit of a shock, you quickly get used to them. It’s very danceable, upbeat, and quirky - POLYSICS in a nutshell. Shizuka is a Machine Doctor is more typical POLYSICS, with harsh buzzing guitars, chirping synthesizers, and a supersonic tempo. I think I like it even more than the title track. The third track translates, apparently, to A Guitar Pick Murder Case, and is a quirky synth-heavy piece of fluff. Of course, fluff from POLYSICS is better than most bands’ best material. Finally Dance Dance Dance is a quick, fun, little instrumental.

If you have the scratch, track down an import copy of this single^[3]. It’s fun, quirky, and will stick in your brain for weeks on end.

1. The first time was at the Knitting Factory in New York, seeing them open for some shitty ska bands. Poor ska kids didn’t know what the hell they were seeing! The next time was in Philadelphia at the Trocadero Balcony Bar, where Hiroyuki Hayashi actually climbed on my shoulders! ↩
2. Albeit someone’s recording of the broadcast. ↩
3. Or download it like I did. ↩