slight correction and apology

In the vulgar post immediately below, I called the Republican Party "douchebags." I apologize. Douchebags, of course, can be useful, though the perceived benefits are disputed according to Wikipedia. In any case, I won't besmirch the good and fine douchebag users and manufacturers by comparing them to the Republican Party, who are more like genital warts, unhealthy, unsightly blights with no possible benefit to society.

As if (updated)

there is another reason to hate the fucking Republican Party, the evil, incompetent, hypocritical douchebags that they are.

These fuckers snuck in language banning online gaming into the port security bill. The leading poker site, Party Poker, has just announced that it will not allow US players to play money games. Poker Stars, the second biggest site, is expected to follow suit. For more, check out the threads here.

Thanks Bill Frist, you maggot-brained, money-grubbing, insider-trading, TV-diagnosing, moron pandering, sheep-fucking turd.

It's pretty trivial compared to, say, squandering billions of dollars, causing tens of thousands of people to die, ignoring environmental disaster, etc. But I guess this one stings me personally more than most. Whatever the case, can we get these fucking bitches out of power? Now?

Also, PartyGaming, you dumb fucks. You have billions of dollars and a motivated base of people. You guys are printing money. Your opponents, the religious right, regard this as a low-intensity issue. How in the fuck did you get gamed by Bill fricking Frist, a man who can be outmaneuvered by a cement block? Nice way to squander billions of dollars.

Update: This write-up by Bloomberg is the most comprehensive article on the legislation that I can find thus far.

Burning the Constitution

Five years down the line, people will look back on the last two weeks and the passage of the Right of the President to Detain and Torture Whomever He Pleases Act and shudder at what could have been if it had not been repealed two years later. Or we'll look back and take note of the delicious irony that this bill, so ardently championed by the far right, legally justified President Hillary Rodham Clinton's order to round up a number of fringe right-wing militia members and detain them indefinitely. Don't believe me? Check out the frightening analysis from one of the country's foremost constitutional scholars, Bruce Ackerman. We're slouching towards fascism, one compromise at a time.

For more, check out Sully or Greenwald. Here's Sullivan's take:

How do I put this in words as clearly as possible. If the U.S. government decides, for reasons of its own, that you are an "illegal enemy combatant," i.e. that you are someone who

"has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States,"

they can detain you without charges indefinitely, granting you no legal recourse except to a military tribunal, and, under the proposed bill, "disappear" and torture you. This is not just restricted to aliens or foreigners, but applies to U.S. citizens as well. It can happen anywhere in the U.S. at any time. We are all at potential risk.

As for the way the Dems played it politically, I'm not confident in taking a stand. Kevin Drum, not a reflexively confrontational guy, thinks the Dems blew it. Liberal stalwarts like Ohio Senate hopeful Sherrod Brown have disappointed the rank & file by voting for this odious bill. It's dispiriting, but I see the rationale of appeasers like Brown: win back control of one or the other chamber and the days of Bush/Rove's power-grabbing are over. Vote against this bill now and immediately you'll be faced with a flurry of ads accusing you of putting "the rights of terrorists above the security of the American people." Is the fear of getting "Max Clelandized" justified? Polling data from the beginning of time has shown American people don't go to bat for abstract rights. Majorities are perfectly willing to sell out constitutional guaranteed principles if they don't think it applies to them (separation of church and state, Fourth Amendment rights). Having waged highly successful campaigns attacking Democrats' concern for "rights of criminals," the Republicans understand the American mentality very well. Until white, middle class Christians get detained for no good reason by authorities, the GOP can always cast their attack on civil liberties and the Bill of Rights as a battle between middle America and unpopular groups. Vulnerable GOoPers are already charging that Dems care more about the rights of terrorists and illegal immigrants than the security of the American people. Given this context, I'm not sure it's entirely wrong to try to avoid a political battle where you put all your chips on the enduring need for the writ of habeas corpus.

On the other side, this is a crushing degree of cowardice. We have the values of the country at stake here. And one reason the Democrats have been losing election after election is their habitual fear of being outplayed by Republicans. The Democrats, in poker parlance, play weak-tight. Always on the defense, the quivering Democrats play their cards with the assumption that Republicans are holding the stronger hand. Instead of taking control of the table, they will meekly call a couple of bets before folding. They don't play up Bush's failure and lack of effort in catching bin Laden for fear that Karl Rove will pull Osama's decapitated out in an October surprise. They don't want to come out against the trampling of the Constitution for fear of being tagged weak on security or "more concerned with the rights of terrorists." Only when they're holding a monster hand will they start playing aggressively.

Actually, weak-tight dudes are often winning players, but they're easily manipulated by good aggressive players, who are the ones taking control of the pot and the betting. And to be fair, the Democrats have been trying to control the debate a little more. Bill Clinton's Fox News outburst and the party's ever-mounting attacks on the Iraq debacle are two hands that are being played right -- or at least aggressively. But overall the Democrats are still folding the best hand way too much.

In this instance, I'm not sure pocket 7s is a hand you want to reraise with. But when you see the player fold good hand after good hand to big bets, you kinda start hoping that player will make a stand somewhere. Maybe on the very next hand the Dems will pick up pocket aces and trap the Repugs for all their chips, but being a poker player myself, I wouldn't bet on it.

Obama on Webb

Let's just settle it now. This man will be the first black president one day.

Here Obama is introducing the most compelling candidate of this cycle, Jim Webb. The rugged Webb, war hero and novelist, is running against "pond scum" George Allen, a racist, pretend cowboy with the IQ of Dubya's asscheeks. He is that bad. Webb, like my man Wesley Clark, hits that sweet spot of brawn + brain: highly credentialed military men who were smart enough to oppose the War in Iraq from the start. If only either of them can absorb just a fraction of Obama's political skills...

blog update

I just installed a nifty del.icio.us bookmark javascript which will provide a linkroll of tagged articles posted on the right sidebar. This little upgrade is done in the hopes of (1) curing me of the temptation to post a link to a good article about which I have nothing to say; and (2) making me a tad more motivated and systematic about tagging and archiving interesting articles. Learn how to create a linkroll on your blog here.

For those of you who use Firefox, I recommend this del.icio.us add-on. Also, do not use the Google Accelerator, aka the web decelerator.

know your audience

Since I rarely view homemade vids on YouTube, I never got sucked into the lonelygirl15 phenomenon. And from the professionally-edited clips I did see, can't say I'm surprised that it turned out to be a hoax. Actually, let's call this ambiguously mimetic performance art, or maybe something catchier, like "postmodern kabuki," describing the artistic strategies of creators as diverse as Andy Kaufman, An(thony) Coulter, and the sockpuppetry of Lee Siegel (now with hilarious new site!). It's even possible the brilliant outlaw movie critic Vern is also one of these performance artists, though I can't be sure.

Back to lonelygirl15. Now exposed, we see it for what it is: a stroke of marketing genius.[1] Millions of hits, throngs of fans and addicts and now news stories on the front pages of major dailies. You can't buy publicity like this, and all to launch some mysterious indie movie. And the reason it worked? Let me direct you to the punchline at the end of yesterday's NY Times lonelygirl expose:

On learning that Ms. Rose was an actress whose interests, unlike the scientific and religious issues that fascinated Bree, ran to parties and posing, one fan wrote, “Very cute, but she’s really not into Feynmann and Jared Diamond! (I’m heart-broken ...But a wonderful actress, had me fooled into thinking she was a geek like me.)”

Schhhwwing! Ah yes, the good ol' cute-but-parentally-oppressed nymphette who adores Richard Feynmann. With a bit of luck, maybe I can find a Maria Sharapova-look-alike on YouTube who digs Alan Moore, Walter Benjamin, and Edward Yang and who's just dying to reach out.

What's the old H.L. Mencken saying? Nobody has ever went broke exploiting the sexual frustrations of nerds who spend all their time on the internet?

[1] But wait. Didn't the box office disappointment of the net-hyped Snakes on a Plane demonstrate that an internet phenomenon won't necessarily translate into "mainstream" success? Weren't we treated to a gaggle of articles pronouncing the irrelevance of bloggers?

Two important distinctions must be made here. One, this lonelygirl thing is likely a small-scale movie, and the filmmakers would suck goat balls for a 30 million gross. Let's look at what the viral exposure from the YouTube clips accomplished: it cultivated a core fan base who were totally hooked. And now news stories make non-fans curious. This is an incredible coup. I'm sure some fans feel betrayed, but I bet most of 'em still plunk down their $10 to see the movie. Second, from all accounts, the legion of lonelygirl fans appear to be transfixed by the teen's persona and problems. They're into the text. Contrast that with Snakes' internet appeal, which is always been something of a collective meta-joke. The title tickled culture maven/info junkie/blogger types who loved that the title reduces the movie to its one sentence studio pitch -- which is essentially what these high-gloss b-movies are: a concept movie that can be summed up by one phrase. We're tired of studios laboring to class up these offerings with a generic title ("Terminal Velocity" or "Flight 893" or whatever). "Snakes on a Plane"! How refreshingly honest! You see how the appreciation is snarky and ironic, with the content of the movie itself nearly irrelevant? (Not for everyone, though. A small element of cultists loved the old school purity of the title, and demanded an old fashioned b-movie to match (which is what they got).)

The reality is that relatively few consumers evince this second level of appreciation. Most products that operate on some secondary level end up as niche items. Take satire. There's a reason the Colbert Report won't ever come close to the ratings of Jay Leno, even if they put Colbert on CBS opposite Leno. And there's a reason why satires don't ever hit $300 million at the box office. The fact is there are far more consumers who want face-value entertainment, and who are largely uncritical of marketing concepts and advertising strategy directed at them. Think of product placement. A lot of people snicker at obvious product placement, but it works. It works on the majority of the population who don't disseminate information with a critical eye on advertising/marketing, etc. (I don't work in advertising, but I'm confident Weiden & Kennedy or whatever big ad agency will have tons of research data supporting my contentions.)

To use another example, consider those obnoxious Apple commercials, with a casual Mac guy lecturing the dweeby PC man about viruses and such. They've spawned a collection of spoofs on YouTube, with this being the most popular series out there. In Apple's ad campaign, they take the basic "sell the lifestyle" adage (perfected by Apple) to a whole new level, with actors actually personifying the product. The Mac is cool, casual, urban, young, confident, creative and stylish. Dude's attractive, fun-loving, yet on top of it (he doesn't get viruses). And he's tall. The PC is a humorless, bumbling company man. He's overworked and uptight, yet doesn't have it together. The underlying strategy is pretty obvious to anyone who's remotely sophisticated about marketing practices.

The spoofs basically adopt Apple's ad concepts except they invert the players. Instead of the attractive hipster representing the Mac, the funniest spoof showcases an actor who completely captures the urban hipster's less attractive qualities: he's an obnoxiously smug and unkempt child-man with an infantile obsession for pop ephemera. And a trust-funded layabout. Dude's basically Jack Black in High Fidelity. Plus, he's short. In the same ad, the PC guy is sober, serious, uncool, but confident and competent. You may not want to borrow his CDs, but you'd hire the guy to manage your money. Plus, he's tall. The contrast being established here is just as pointed as the one in the real Mac commericals, except reversed. As with the real commercials, the spoofs aren't exaggerating the PC's virtues and the Mac's flaws; what all these ads are saying about their products and the competition are true (or at least unfalsifiable). It's all about manipulating brand image and playing to the viewer's lifestyle and values biases -- the bread and butter of advertising.

If you show every American these spoofs, many will get it. A greater number won't, because in order to get it you have to be appreciate the second-level nature of it. In order to make big money, you have to attract these face-value consumers, the same ones who see the title Snakes on a Plane and think "how stupid is that". In The Tipping Point, Gladwell identifies "connectors" as super-popular social hubs who are able to fan out the ideas first identified by "mavens" to a larger, more general populace, to turn a niche item into a fad. Gladwell's ideas can't work here. With second level products, the connection stops at mavens. Hence Snakes on a Plane, the internet geek joke that stayed an internet geek joke.

Too bad. Catching Snakes on opening night with an amped up crowd at the Mann's Chinese was one of the highlights of my moviegoing season. Scott Foundas', too.

The Most Awesome Movie of the Year In Two Years Time

The title is Synecdoche, New York. The creator? Any nerd with two connecting synapses can figure it out from the title alone. It's Charlie Kaufman's new movie, and reportedly it is one for the ages:

If this film gets made in any way that resembles what's on the page — and with the writer himself directing, it will likely gain even more color and potency in the translation — it will be some kind of miracle. "Synecdoche" will make "Adaptation" and "Eternal Sunshine" look like instructional industrial films. No one has ever written a screenplay like this. It's questionable whether cinema is even capable of handling the thematic, tonal and narrative weight of a story this ambitious. [emphasis added]

Wow. Okay. Since Eternal Sunshine was itself one of the all-timers, this supposed exponential advance in Kaufman art will obviously have to supplant the nerd fantasia version of The Black Dahlia, the new Hong Sang-soo, or the new Assayas as the Most Awesome Movie Playing in My Imaginary Kiddie Corner. DVDs of my imagined versions of Demonlover, Not on the Lips, and Purple Butterfly are available upon request.

NB: The Net and the Traditional Media, Part LXII: Curiously, this breathless fanboy missive is fronted on the LA Times Calendar section, lodged in between Patrick Goldstein's interview with the director of the super-controversial Bush assassination mocumentary, and Tim Rutten (the Ikea-grade Frank Rich) annointing Frank Rich as the conscience of our nation. A few years ago, this sort of scoop -- no reporting, just sweaty, gleeful anticipation -- would be left to the likes of Moriarty or Twitch. Now a net-geek piece is given the same prominence as pieces from the LA Times' two most visible columnists. Hmmm....