On not being a completist

Richard Linklater's a gifted director of actors and a master of light comic timing. Billy Bob is one of the great actors. But why am I more motivated to plunk down $10 to watch the Butterscotch Stallion and his buddy crash weddings than to behold a collaboration of two modern American masters? Likewise, Tim Burton and Johnny Depp are both visionaries, but the buzz does not make his new movie enticing.

Last few years, I've really stopped being a total zombie completist. Avoided Spielberg's crappy looking The Terminal, the Coens' unpopular The Ladykillers (first C Brothers pic I've missed, ever), Bertolucci's The Dreamers (though I've always planned that as a rental). Burton's last movie, Big Fish, was the first of his I've missed. Ever.

So the question is, is it my problem for not demonstrating more Bush-like loyalty to filmmakers who've brought me comfort and joy my whole life? Or am I right to not reward esteemed filmmakers for putting out obvious mediocrity, or for casting Tom Hanks? It's a question I'm pondering as I decide on what to watch this weekend. (Answer: Tropical Malady a 2nd time most likely, and maybe a couple of Don Siegel movies at UCLA.)

Could it be that the answer is neither? One problem with completism is that the older you get, the more fan-fetish objects you start accumulating, and they eventually end up swamping you. I own every R.E.M. album up to New Adventures in Hi-Fi. Before I purchased Hi-Fi, I hadn't been too impressed with the bits I've heard. But at the time, I told myself, well, I'm a fan. I gotta support. And it might grow on me, like Out of Time did. (It could still be the case, since I haven't spun that disc in 5 years.) But in retrospect, I realized my reasoning was pure rationalization. What compelled me to pick up the R.E.M. album wasn't so much dutiful fanboyism as trying to avoid that vague, irritating feeling of incompleteness, the kind of you might have when you discover that they're out of Daiquiri Ice at Baskin-Robbins, even though you'd planned on getting Rocky Road anyway. Or being displeased that the Oxygen Network is not on your basic cable package, even though you'll probably never watch that a minute of programming on that channel, ever. It's not that you need to experience what you're missing; you simply need it not to be missing. When you grow up collecting comics, as I did, the completism becomes hard-wired into you: you end up devoting way more time to plotting out ways to score that hard-sought near-mint copy of X-Men 121 to complete your Claremont/Byrne run of X-Men than is healthy for a fourteen year old. As with that R.E.M. album, you're bound to pick up the latest fill-in-the-blank simply because it'll gnaw at your insides if you don't have it.

That impulse towards completism hasn't quite changed. But it's just too damned hard to keep up. It's one thing to pick up all the Impulse-label original-issue Coltranes or watch every Bresson picture, since there's only a handful of those. But staying on top of contemporary pop culture is basically a full-time job, especially if you have to juggle following your old heroes *and* trying to discover new acts/directors/writers. I'm not really sure what R.E.M. is up to these days. I haven't seen the last four Woody Allen movies. I've dropped Abbas Kiorastami but picked up Claire Denis. And I'll probably drop Denis for someone else five or six years down the line. At some point you can't watch everything your 50 favorite current filmmakers put out and have time for that lesbian movie playing at Laemmle. One has to choose. And I guess I choose to drop Linklater and Burton for the time being.

Also: Adam, back from his trip, posed an interesting question for me down in the Pascal thread which I hope to answer soon. Thanks for waiting, Adam.

SCOTUS: No $

Dammit. Bush fucked me over again. Roberts instead of Luttig. Aren't these two the same guy, for all intents and purposes? As for the nominee, John G. Roberts, Supreme Court expert Jeffrey Rosen's piece (on potential nominees) makes him out to be someone tolerable, someone with a judicious temperament, and not someone likely to be a wild-eyed right-wing judicial activist or a constitution-in-exile looney. Obviously he's quite conservative, but it's not as if Bush is gonna appoint Laurence Tribe.

Today's one of those days where I'm reminded of the old pre-Bush days, when knee-jerk lefties would drive me batty. The majority of commenters on the Daily Kos are already girding themselves for a fight to death on Roberts, demanding a fillibuster. Do they not realize that Kerry lost the election, and that of the potential nominees, Roberts is actually not among the worst? You only torpedo candidates that are truly outside the mainstream, and given how far right this country is at the moment, Roberts, from what I can tell, is not in Freeperland. Unless he's got skeletons in the closet or completely botches the confirmation hearings, let him go. There's bigger fish, or rather turd, to fry. Will nuking this nomination help the Dems win in 2006? Somehow, I don't think so, unless a dead male Russian ice skater is found naked in his bed.

Addendum: Today's NY Times gives a triple blow job to Roberts. But taken together, Rosen's piece and this lengthy profile make Roberts sound like as good a nominee as any non-wingnut could've hoped for from Bush, someone who has a healthy respect for the limits of the courts, and who has no history of being a radical activist ideologue. But will someone please hand David Brooks a tissue? Thanks.

SCOTUS: $$$

After missing out on the $20 Clement buy last night (she shot up to $70 before landing with a thud at $15 just now), I bought Luttig at $5 and Gonzales at $4, while the price was heavy on wingnut Edith Jones. (I am talking about possible Supreme Court nominees, which Bush will make tonight.) I can make a cool $200 if the pick is Luttig. Let it be so.

Tradesports. Day trading for info-junkies. Wishful thinking hot tip: Rove resigning by September 30th contract is at about $20.00.* If grand jury indictments are handed down by then, that'll be a smart buy. Another good gamble: 3rd party candidate winning the presidency in 2008. It's selling for about $1, meaning you can make about $1,000 on a $10 investment if McCain somehow makes a 3rd party run and wins.

* Here's how Tradesports works: It's like the stock market, except the contracts offered expire when the event predicted either comes to pass or doesn't. If it comes to pass, the contract will mature at $100.00. If it doesn't, than zero. For example, if Rove has resigned by September 30, you'll make $100.00 per share on a $20.00 per share purchase. If Rove hasn't resigned by then, it goes to zero and you lose your "investment". In the meantime, you can, of course, sell your contract for a profit if the price goes up. If rumors fly that Rove is about to be indicted, that contract will surely shoot up in price. I made a little money on Phil Ivey's WSOP contract when it went from $10 to $30 when I sold it on Day 5, but lost all of my profits when I used that money to buy John Juanda WSOP contract.

the politics of abortion

As usual, Will Saletan's right on the money: overturning Roe v. Wade is bad politics for the GOP, but putting greater restrictions on abortion is good politics. As the court stands now, adding an anti-Roe justice to replace O'Connor will only move the court towards more abortion restrictions, not an outright reversal of Roe. Only if John Paul Stevens steps down during Bush's term will Roe really be in danger. The math being what it is, Bush can keep nominally pro-choice Alberto Gonzalez on the backburner until his hand is forced.

The Democrats are cleverly triangulating, hoping to provoke a Gonzalez nomination with the atteendant wingnut outcry. But really, nothing would be better politically for Democrats than to have Roe overturned by some right-wing judicial activist (yes, judicial activists tend to be the right-wing guys) that Bush is likely to nominate. When I canvassed in Ohio in November, folks would go up to Ben, who was running for Congress, and immediately ask him where he stood on abortion. No questions on health care or jobs in a state coughing up jobs by the thousands. It's all about one issue. Right now, you have many more one-issue pro-lifers than pro-choicers; their intensity is based on the injustice of living in a country that condones the killing of fetuses. That intensity helps the Republican Party, which uses the religious right as "foot soldiers" to gain votes while pursuing an agenda bent on crony capitalism. The wildly successful exploitation of the religious right by the business elite is at the heart of the GOP's electoral success the last four years. Roe gets overturned, and all of a sudden it's a free for all. The pro-choice forces get their intensity back, and the moderate (largely pro-choice w/ restrictions types) will care about the issue again.

Roe isn't great law to begin with. Let it go and organize to get pro-choice legislation passed instead.

Pascal's The Wager

One idle moment a week or so ago, I sat around pondering Pascal's "The Wager". For those unfamiliar with the idea, the Wager is an attempt by Pascal in his Pensées to prove that belief in god is more reasonable than nonbelief. His argument has an elegant simplicity, which can be summed up with the following box (forgive the crude formatting):

God Exists :::::::: God Does Not Exist

Win infinity ::::::::: Status quo ::::::::::::::: Believe in God

Eternal misery ::::: Status quo ::::::::::::::: Do not believe in God

Basically, if you believe in God and God does exist, you win eternal happiness in the afterlife. If you believe in God and God doesn't exist, no harm, no foul. And if you don't believe in God and God doesn't exist, still no big deal. But if you don't believe and God exists, you will be severely punished. It's a clever argument, basically, he's saying that you should play 7-2 offsuit since you're playing a game where you're putting in $1 to win $3 gazillion if you hit.

The problem with Pascal's formulation has always been for me the Christian cosmology that's assumed by Pascal (why must belief in God automatically lead to eternal afterlife? Why must an all-powerful God, if one exists, be so vain as to assign their eternal place based on belief rather than, oh, doing good works? Essentially the main flaw, after thinking about it is the insistence that God here necessarily means belief in a Christian God. I thought, "what if God was my Chinese-made imitation Patek Phillipe watch"? What then? If I don't believe in my cheapo watch, I'm forever damned to eternal hell? There are infinite possibilities of "God" manifesting itself, and the Christian model appears to me no more likely than God taking the form of Ted Williams' bat from the 1946 All-Star game. Even assuming that Vanity God exists and cares about a subject's faith, there's no basis for choosing the Christian God over the 4 zillion other possible Gods, at least on a rational level.

While I was pretty impressed with my own debunking of The Wager, I knew there were far better rebuttals out there. Today, I Googled "Pascal Wager" and found this article, which not only discusses my rebuttal, but advances a dozen more. Quite interesting -- the reasons laid out basically demonstrates that faith in God defies reason. Which is why Kierkegaard has it right: if you're a Believer, faith has to be a wholly different (and higher) category distinct from reason.

On a related note, I recently picked up Richard Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker after its appearance on several book memes. In this book the hardcore atheist Dawkins apparently presents a strong case against the idea that universe manifests "intelligent design" (i.e., God). I've only read the forward thus far, but in reading it, I realized that I am not very interested in proving or disproving God's existence. What's far more interesting is the question of values. Is God the source of values and meaning, or can one find better values in the absence of a God? Nietzsche pretty much answers this one for me. It makes far better sense to me to derive values from a respect for the natural world and civil society rather than from some supernatural machination that inspires its believers to aspire to non-worldly goals. There are obviously many positives that can come from devotion to the otherworldly, but the latter thinking can also lead down a path of destructive, anti-worldly fanaticism of the sort which is motivated by thoughts like "God told me if I blow up Americans 72 virgins will blow me 24 hours a day in the afterlife." Think about the real world, motherfucker, and maybe you'd make better choices.

Also: I've been very impressed with most of the Wikipedia entries I've read. The Nietzsche entry linked above avoids many of the common mis-interpretations of his work and describes the main tenets of his thought succinctly and correctly. And this guy clearly knows the history of the World Wrestling Federation/WWE.

The Supremes break up

Rumors were going around about Justice O'Connor retiring, but it was still a shock to see the screaming headline. Man, oh, man. We all knew Rehnquist was on the verge of retirement. But the fight over Rehnquist's spot was never really a big deal, because the fundamental complexion of the court wouldn't have changed. The Chief Justice is easily the worst justice on the Court, a right-wing, results-oriented hack with a particularly atrocious view of defendants' rights. He's a conservative judicial activist, and his replacement, whomever he or she is, can't be much worse.

O'Connor's retirement is a completely different matter. She is *the* critical swing vote on a myriad of cases ranging from states' rights to 1st Amendment issues to abortion. O'Connor's not really a "moderate," but political labels could never completely describe federal judges, who are guided by judicial philosophy and other concerns.[1] But her judicial philosophy, which is fundamentally pragmatic, moderated her conservative politics. In law school, some of the more intellectually rigorous types (there were a few who actually cared about judicial philosophy) would dog on O'Connor for her unprincipled, ad hoc opinions. True, she belonged to no well-defined school of jurisprudence, but in this Court, that's preferable to the hypocrisy of would-be originalist Antonin Scalia. O'Connor's always grappling with the facts of a case. Her chief legacy will probably remain Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the case that reaffirmed and refined Roe v. Wade, where she carved out areas various boundaries for state infringement of a fundamental right under an "undue burden" test. Parental notification and 24-hour waiting period laws are okay under this rule.

Personally, I find the entire line of "right to privacy" cases to be rather sloppily argued, including Roe and Casey. But the court isn't academia, and when you need to carve out a compromise solution with real life consequences, you can count on O'Connor to draft an opinion with a narrow scope. So even though she has a legislator's temperament for Frankenstein law, O'Connor tries to limit the reach of Supreme Court decisions, which, on balance, is a good thing, regardless of what the composition of the court is. Judicial restraint is usually a good thing.

O'Connor's routinely described as the most powerful woman in America. That's probably right. She's the most powerful figure in the Court simply because she's the justice that both sides often end up vying for. Stories abound about how justicies try to craft first drafts of opinions specifically tailored to Sandra Day's taste to try to win her over. Her late-breaking swing into the majority in Casey essentially saved Roe v. Wade. But should Roe v. Wade be saved at all costs? That seems to be the standard progressive position. A pro-Roe justice has just retired, as some may take nothing less than O'Connor II.

That's a bad idea. Dubya owes his base, big time, and if he wants to wait until Rehnquist goes to nominate a wingnut activist, he's still not going to use this slot to nominate anyone who may potentially become David Souter II. I'd be happy with Alberto Gonzales, the current Attorney General. Or guys like Luttig or McDonnell, who at least sound like principled conservatives. Why have a one-issue litmus test when the Supreme Court rules on so many matters of great importance? And on non-abortion issues, Justice Kennedy has become a swing vote himself, so not all is lost.

Someone made the argument that the progressives have lost their political instincts because they don't ever try to make their case to the public anymore. Instead, they go to courts. I agree. Abortion should've always been a congressional matter, and had it remained there, I expect that progressives would have been kept on their toes, organizing and mobilizing to insure the right to choose, rather than sit back and let the one swing justice decide the matter. O'Connor wasn't an abortion rights true believer. Court watchers think she reaffirmed Roe because she was loath to overrule precedent, especially one of defining as Roe. Abortion rights advocates won't be so lucky next time.

[1] Two recently handed-down opinions, both controversial, show the inadequacy of political labels. The moderate-liberal bloc struck down a state's legalization of medicinal marijuana due to their expansive reading of the commerce clause (which gives Congress broad powers to regulate commercial activities). Then that moderate-liberal bloc (give or take one or two justices) then expanded the government's eminent domain powers, to the consternation of many liberals on the lefty blogs I frequent. "Liberal" and "conservative" really don't fit the reasoning behind those decisions. Bush will nominate a "conservative", but it's possible his nominee will be governed by something other than just wingnuttery. I'd settle for a principled state's rights guy. Someone who won't betrays his principles for political expedience a la Bush v. Gore.

Book meme

Was kinda slacking off on picking up the baton left by the sometimes insane, sometimes brilliant Del Angelo, but now that Matt Prigge has tagged me with this meme, all the more pressure to come up with a few perfunctory words.

1. Total Number of Books I Owned

Anyone who can answer this question with any kind of precision clearly needs help. My best guess is that I own about 800 books. About 4,000 if you include comics.

2. Last book I bought

I believe it's Austerlitz by the late Winfried Sebald from Abebooks online, though I can't be sure. Man, it's been a while since I bought a real book.

3. Last book I read

Besides the NL hold'em chapter in Doyle Brunson's Super System? Erm, The Great Gatsby a second time (the middle chapters contain some of the most exquisite prose in American literature), though I'm sorta working on Wodehouse's Code of the Wooster now. Also always reading random bits of nonfiction, like revisiting passages from Robert Wright's The Moral Animal, which is a very useful general treatise on evolutionary psychology. And I should get crackin' on that borrowed copy of Haruki Murakami's Sputnik Sweetheart. The gulf between my reading ambitions and my actual accomplishments remains a constant source of shame.

4. Five books that mean a lot to me

• The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner. This notoriously "difficult" read is, most obviously, a staggering display of literary style. For those who don't know anything about Faulkner's masterpiece: the four chapters of the book are divided into three stream-of-conscious narratives that jump back and forth in time, told from each of the wildly different Compson brothers, Benjy the retard, Quentin the Harvard undergrad romantic (I used to read the Quentin chapter over and over), and Jason the hardened, cynical brute, with the last chapter a Faulknerian requiem to the Old South. But it's Faulkner's soul-shaking genius in expressing my favorite subject, the yearning for something that now only exists in memory, that's at the heart of why The Sound and the Fury is not only my favorite book, but my favorite work of art period. Or, to put it another way (in the booming voice of the movie trailer guy): "In a time of [cultural change]. A world that is [on the verge of vanishing]. Three [brothers] fight for the love of one woman [who happens to be their sister] and that shared memory that haunts each of them. For poor Benjy, she offered love and hope. For the haunted Quentin, she represented all that's noble and pure about his world. For Jason, she was the South corrupted and emasculated. Now! Each must grapple with... Love! Family! Betrayal! And a world they cannot come to terms with! Academy Award winner..." Alternate favorite modernist opus dwelling on the twin themes of time recaptured and love lost: Swann's Way, Marcel Proust; The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald.
  
  
• Watchmen, Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons.
  Every two years or so, I'd flip open this book to check out something and all of a sudden four hours would've elapsed, and I'd still be totally transfixed in Moore's alternate reality, where superheroes helped Nixon win the Vietnam war only to find themselves the victims of an elaborate conspiracy. As utterly convincing a dystopic (and utopian) vision as you'll find, with all the little details -- a pirate comic-within-the-comic that echoes and foreshadows the narrative proper, excerpts from the first Nite Owl's novel, the "New Frontiersman" (a National Review knockoff) fragments -- coming together in a way that never ceases to amaze and shock, even on the twenty-fifth reading. What makes it the best comic ever, though, is the characterization. Specifically, in twelve 25-page issues, Moore borrows from superhero archetypes and mythology to both comment on those archetypes and create characters that are more flesh-and-blood than superheroes who've survived four hundred issues: Rorschach (the vigilante anti-hero as sexually frustrated Fascist), Nite Owl (a lonely, insecure gadget freak), the Comedian (thug, rapist, would-be-hero?), Ozymandias (liberal-utopian-as-neocon), etc. Even if the six other different levels at which this book operates elude you, Watchmen's a whale of a yarn and a superb read. Alternate amazing comic books that can't work as anything other than as comics: Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, Chris Ware; "Days of Future Past," (Uncanny X-Men 141-142) Chris Claremont and John Byrne.
  
  
• The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt.
  I studied political theory in college, and did my thesis on four books by Hannah Arendt, one of great modern political philosophers. This is my favorite work of hers, the best expression of Arendt's political thought and demonstration of her Wusthof-sharp analytical intelligence. In her philosophy treatises, Arendt's categories are too rigid, her strict division of the public and private spheres too draconian and abstract to work. Not the case with Origins. In this more concrete study, Arendt discusses, with her usual clarity and sobriety, the rise of 20th century totalitarian regimes from the ashes of European anti-Semitism, and the philosophical horror these regimes wrought. Arendt's ideas take on greater force here because she's able to explain the consequences of her ideas -- what happens when the sanctity of a wholly private and a wholly public sphere gets annihilated by one another -- by engaging with the real world. An illuminating study that unfortunately remains relevant today. Other favorite political philosophy tracts: The Genealogy of Morals, Frederich Nietzsche; Politics, Aristotle; Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville; The Dialectics of Enlightenment, Adorno and Horkheimer.
  
  
• I Lost It At the Movies/Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Pauline Kael & Confessions of a Movie Cultist/American Cinema, Andrew Sarris. The yin and yang of film criticism. Not much to add to Kent Jones' glowing tribute to Sarris, except that more than any other person, he helped turned me on to the "ineffable" cinema of the pantheon gods back when I was a fledgling film buff trying to go through the canon in sixty days (now I know it'll take sixty years to get through everything worth watching). Kael, Sarris' eternal foil, is just a blast to read, and her passion infectious. Like many cinephiles, Kael's the first critic I really got into, but unlike most others, I haven't yet renounced her. Kael, more any other critic, makes the case that one's fresh response to a movie can be as honest and vital as re-watching Rivette thirty times. Caricatured by certain eggheads as a heedless anti-intellectual, I think Kael's personality-oriented approach, whatever its failings, gets one important thing right: she doesn't divorce a movie's surface pleasures from its merits. Other movie criticism books that mean a great deal to me: Negative Space, Manny Farber; A Biographical Dictionary of Film, David Thomson; Alternate Oscars, Danny Peary; Foreign Affairs: Nat'l Society of Film Critics' Guide to Foreign Films; Movies and Politics, Jonathan Rosenbaum.
  
  
• The Modern Gentleman: A Guide to Essential Manner, Savvy & Vice, Phineas Mallod & Jason Tesauro. Because a man cannot survive in this rough and tumble world devoid of such vital skills as superior flaskmanship and jukebox savvy.

Never been much of a tagger. So anyone who wants an excuse for some navel-gazing blogging (is that redundant?), go for it.