Monday, December 30, 2019
A new year
It must be a sign of aging, how a new year is no longer this celebration of forthcoming possibility, but this solemn acknowledgement of time passing, and of what could've been.
Sunday, December 15, 2019
osita 1
It shouldn't be a given that our inner lives are more important than our outer lives merely because they're more interesting. In the first place, they often aren't. And, in any case, the idea of the truer inner self is a particularly handy tool for moral obfuscation.
Thursday, December 12, 2019
On hating Trump since Day One
Donald Trump is obviously awful; you'd only believe otherwise if you were Trump himself, one of his awful associates, one of his defenders on Fox News, or a frequent viewer of Fox News. And he's awful not just because he's vulgar or because he says mean things-- he's awful because he doesn't demonstrate a single quality that is possessed by humans who are good. He's awful because he's consistently used his obscene wealth and power for evil. The notion of giving such a man "a chance" as president... What did he do, ever, to deserve that chance?
I hated him before he was elected, I hated him on election day, I hate him now. When his administration appears to do something that benefits real humans, I'm immediately, righteously skeptical, and begin looking for (and usually find) the way that said beneficial thing is actually self-serving nonsense. I don't want to find any ways to redeem this man who is irredeemable. If Trump does something and somebody who is not a billionaire or racist or rapist (Trump is all three things, of course) gains something by it, than I assume it was an accident.
Democrats shouldn't be ashamed to hate Trump. Hating Trump isn't "hate," like the "hate" he and his supporters espouse on a regular basis. Hating Trump is perfectly rational. Why would you not hate someone who mocked the family of a fallen soldier? Why would you not hate someone who used hundreds of millions of taxpayers dollars for a political bribe? Why would you not hate someone who calls his shitty resort "The Southern White House" and uses his time, as the most powerful man in the world, to advertise it on Twitter?
He just sucks so very much. It's so painful to see people like him. If you're a fan of the Pittsburgh Penguins, you like a team that sucks. But there's a good chance that you didn't have a choice. Also: none of the Pittsburgh Penguins has a sexual interest in their daughter.
I hated him before he was elected, I hated him on election day, I hate him now. When his administration appears to do something that benefits real humans, I'm immediately, righteously skeptical, and begin looking for (and usually find) the way that said beneficial thing is actually self-serving nonsense. I don't want to find any ways to redeem this man who is irredeemable. If Trump does something and somebody who is not a billionaire or racist or rapist (Trump is all three things, of course) gains something by it, than I assume it was an accident.
Democrats shouldn't be ashamed to hate Trump. Hating Trump isn't "hate," like the "hate" he and his supporters espouse on a regular basis. Hating Trump is perfectly rational. Why would you not hate someone who mocked the family of a fallen soldier? Why would you not hate someone who used hundreds of millions of taxpayers dollars for a political bribe? Why would you not hate someone who calls his shitty resort "The Southern White House" and uses his time, as the most powerful man in the world, to advertise it on Twitter?
He just sucks so very much. It's so painful to see people like him. If you're a fan of the Pittsburgh Penguins, you like a team that sucks. But there's a good chance that you didn't have a choice. Also: none of the Pittsburgh Penguins has a sexual interest in their daughter.
Wednesday, December 11, 2019
On change and pop music
I understand the reactionary mind, a least a little bit, every time I look at a Pitchfork list of the best songs or albums of the year. Everything about those lists-- the artists, their stupid names, their stupid album covers, the stupid way the music is written about, the stupid pat conclusions-- seems designed to piss me off: to make me long for a "good old day" when Lana Del Rey was not someone you were supposed to respect. The guitar days!
Of course it's very easy to make fun of that time now-- the backward age of white guys forming "bands" and playing "rock and roll." But come on. You put on the Melvins' "Houdini" and you get awesome, creative, abrasive but consistently fascinating music. You put on Solange's "When I Get Home" and you get... Mumbling. Half-formed melodies. A total lack of dynamics.
And I fucking loved "A Seat at the Table"!
I think it's a mistake to completely align modern movements toward social justice with modern popular music. Modern movements toward social justice aren't calculatedly constructed to appeal to teenagers. They're real, and good-intentioned, and hoping to remedy actual problems. A great deal of modern popular music soundtracks these movements, and in many ways could be said to resemble these movements, what with the emphasis on the voices of women, people of color, the queer community, marginalized groups, whatever.
I think the resemblance is superficial. A social justice movement is successful to the extent that it isn't propping up the powers that be. But man, what modern music isn't propping up the powers that be? It's just all such bullshit.
And it sounds bad!
Musical reactionary, social revolutionary. That's me, sitting at home.
Of course it's very easy to make fun of that time now-- the backward age of white guys forming "bands" and playing "rock and roll." But come on. You put on the Melvins' "Houdini" and you get awesome, creative, abrasive but consistently fascinating music. You put on Solange's "When I Get Home" and you get... Mumbling. Half-formed melodies. A total lack of dynamics.
And I fucking loved "A Seat at the Table"!
I think it's a mistake to completely align modern movements toward social justice with modern popular music. Modern movements toward social justice aren't calculatedly constructed to appeal to teenagers. They're real, and good-intentioned, and hoping to remedy actual problems. A great deal of modern popular music soundtracks these movements, and in many ways could be said to resemble these movements, what with the emphasis on the voices of women, people of color, the queer community, marginalized groups, whatever.
I think the resemblance is superficial. A social justice movement is successful to the extent that it isn't propping up the powers that be. But man, what modern music isn't propping up the powers that be? It's just all such bullshit.
And it sounds bad!
Musical reactionary, social revolutionary. That's me, sitting at home.
Wednesday, December 4, 2019
Connoisseurs of shit
The need to pay constant attention to the services rather than the works turns critics into connoisseurs of shit, comparing one mediocrity against another in order to be able to assemble a list of what’s barely recommendable with a straight face by contrast with what’s even worse. In the process, critical taste is inevitably shifted toward a new aesthetic (or anti-aesthetic) that leaves the best filmmakers of the time looking like backsliding conservatives clinging to ivory-tower traditions rather than what they are: audacious and forward-looking resisters to corporate production, not defenders but advancers of individual creation and conscience who overcome the redefinition of art as content—regardless of how their films may be marketed. -i frickin love richard brody
Hockey Culture
Your white parents love hockey because of its "culture," because of its "classy" "class-act" players who put "the team before themselves," because of its unrelentingly self-effacing public image, because of its emphasis on "tradition," because if a skater is not skating hard enough, they won't be skating for much longer. Your white parents love hockey because it's, basically, not basketball, with its "egos," its "thuggery," its "selfishness," its "bling," its "disrespect," its "classlessness."
The contrast is clear as day, at least to the eye of the average, probably otherwise decent baby boomer. Hockey culture stands for teamwork, discipline, perseverance, grit, humility. Basketball culture embraces the wild (black) individual who alternates between whining about calls and bragging about dunks.
It would be perhaps too easy to characterize one of these games as conventionally "conservative" and the other as the conventionally "liberal." And yet, the NHL's contemporary #metoo moment, with several players and ex-players telling stories of abuse from coaches, of insults and violence, of a top-down culture of constant hostility, truly bears out that dichotomy. The men of the NBA-- "narcissistic" as they might be-- respect each other as equals. The men of the NHL have a hierarchy: there are managers and coaches, who treat their underlings like children-- who kick players on the bench, who ask stars to rank their teammates, and then surreptitiously share those lists with teammates-- and there are players, who accept this treatment as part of the "culture of hockey."
What the NHL has been advocating for years is the nightmare Republican ideal of a clean and functional family. From the outside, everything looks peaceful and harmonious, with a wise but firm patriarch figure directing his spawn toward purpose and success. But those on the inside know that this apparently delightful arrangement is actually based on fear, coercion, intimidation, and physical abuse. The leader here does not earn his (and it's always a "he") authority through a careful understanding of and constant communication with his followers, but rather treats his authority like something God-given and unquestionable, something that must be accepted by others at any cost, something that he will happily use as a cudgel (if he has to).
You can see this scenario play out in nearly every facet of "hockey culture": in its disparagement of its adult players expressing anything but solemnity about their individual achievements ("a bunch of jerks"); its blatant refusal to engage in any question that has even of whiff of "politics" (coach John Tortorella joked that he would "bench" any player who tried to "take a knee," a la Colin Kaepernick); its reflexive unease when confronted with "the other," especially in the form of black and female athletes (see the abuse leveled at "cocky, trash talking" P.K. Subban throughout his career); its defensive posture about fighting, which is regarded as a noble clash of fearless warriors, and not two young people volunteering to inflict permanent brain damage on each other; in the sometimes hilarious (and now, we might say, ominous) terseness of its players, reticent to give any information about their team's performance other than "we've got to stick to our game."
It's a curious phrase, "sticking to your game." Players will use it when they are taking a three goal lead into the third period, and they'll use it for three-goal deficits, too. It's a strategy for success that couldn't possibly be endorsed by any credentialed expert in, say, mental health. You wonder how many times a player has really wanted to say, "You know what? Fuck our game. We've got to change it up. We need to do things differently. This current system is garbage." How many times they might have wanted to, and didn't, because in the NHL, father knows best. And father doesn't give a single little shit, stop complaining, or else.
The contrast is clear as day, at least to the eye of the average, probably otherwise decent baby boomer. Hockey culture stands for teamwork, discipline, perseverance, grit, humility. Basketball culture embraces the wild (black) individual who alternates between whining about calls and bragging about dunks.
It would be perhaps too easy to characterize one of these games as conventionally "conservative" and the other as the conventionally "liberal." And yet, the NHL's contemporary #metoo moment, with several players and ex-players telling stories of abuse from coaches, of insults and violence, of a top-down culture of constant hostility, truly bears out that dichotomy. The men of the NBA-- "narcissistic" as they might be-- respect each other as equals. The men of the NHL have a hierarchy: there are managers and coaches, who treat their underlings like children-- who kick players on the bench, who ask stars to rank their teammates, and then surreptitiously share those lists with teammates-- and there are players, who accept this treatment as part of the "culture of hockey."
What the NHL has been advocating for years is the nightmare Republican ideal of a clean and functional family. From the outside, everything looks peaceful and harmonious, with a wise but firm patriarch figure directing his spawn toward purpose and success. But those on the inside know that this apparently delightful arrangement is actually based on fear, coercion, intimidation, and physical abuse. The leader here does not earn his (and it's always a "he") authority through a careful understanding of and constant communication with his followers, but rather treats his authority like something God-given and unquestionable, something that must be accepted by others at any cost, something that he will happily use as a cudgel (if he has to).
You can see this scenario play out in nearly every facet of "hockey culture": in its disparagement of its adult players expressing anything but solemnity about their individual achievements ("a bunch of jerks"); its blatant refusal to engage in any question that has even of whiff of "politics" (coach John Tortorella joked that he would "bench" any player who tried to "take a knee," a la Colin Kaepernick); its reflexive unease when confronted with "the other," especially in the form of black and female athletes (see the abuse leveled at "cocky, trash talking" P.K. Subban throughout his career); its defensive posture about fighting, which is regarded as a noble clash of fearless warriors, and not two young people volunteering to inflict permanent brain damage on each other; in the sometimes hilarious (and now, we might say, ominous) terseness of its players, reticent to give any information about their team's performance other than "we've got to stick to our game."
It's a curious phrase, "sticking to your game." Players will use it when they are taking a three goal lead into the third period, and they'll use it for three-goal deficits, too. It's a strategy for success that couldn't possibly be endorsed by any credentialed expert in, say, mental health. You wonder how many times a player has really wanted to say, "You know what? Fuck our game. We've got to change it up. We need to do things differently. This current system is garbage." How many times they might have wanted to, and didn't, because in the NHL, father knows best. And father doesn't give a single little shit, stop complaining, or else.
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