Something about the fim "Invincible"

This Werner Herzog-directed film tells the true-ish fable of Zishe Breitbart, a Jewish strongman who performed for Berlin audiences circa 1932 before returning to his Polish Jewish village to warn of the growing Nazi menace. The plot: after his strength is noticed by a talent agent, Breitbart journeys from a humble blacksmith's son to brief stardom as a sideshow in a successful clairvoyant's act that caters to Nazi-friendly audiences. The clairvoyant is Hanussen, an intense showman who claims mystical powers.

The film makes a motif of identity. Breitbart briefly loses himself, allowing Hanussen to "Aryan-ize" him to best appeal to the Berlin audience. After briefly reconnecting with family, Breitbart publicly rejects his fictional identity, revealing himself as Jewish. Breitbart's strength--originally imagined by Hanussen as a draw to the humiliated, identity-less German people, remains in the show as a draw for threatened Berlin Jews.

Hanussen is revealed as a con-man. Though born Jewish, he has adopted a series of identities through his life in pursuit of status and power. By trying to ingratiate himself with the rising Nazis menace, he has become the very caricature of the stereotypical Jew--sneaky, dishonest, and money hungry.

I enjoyed this. The acting is mostly terrible except for Hanussen, played by a reliably intense Tim Roth.

A thing about "Conquest of Abundance" by Paul Feyerabend

In the posthumously released Conquest of Abundance: A Tale of Abstraction versus the Richness of Being, philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend conceptually explores reality. This might be a poor introduction to Feyerabend because the tract veers from his usual writing style and was unfinished when he died. Maybe because it was unfinished, the man's thoughts didn't often process readily on the page despite its sequentially numbered points and other organizational strategies. Still, putting in the effort to read was worth it.

Feyerabend promotes relativism and the importance of worldviews and perspectives; he says animism, objective realism, etc., are all just different ways of understanding the World. He is, though, softly critical of the kind of objectivism found in "hard" sciences which, characteristic of the Modern Age, have minimized interpretive possibility (and, possibly, ability) via extensive categorization, modeling limited sets of alternatives, and narrowing any given subject to either this or that.

But Feyerabend isn't longing for the ancient past--at least, not openly. I enjoyed it enough to look into him more later on. Someday.

Something on the autobiography "It’s So Easy (And Other Lies)" by Duff McKagen

Duff founded and played bass in Guns N' Roses. But while that may be his autobiography's top billing, events before and after life in that seminal band offer comparable value from the side stages. Humbled by experiences and anchored in the spiritual and physical disciplines that brought him sobriety, Duff offers an uncomplicated version of a band's rise and unsatisfying end (more of a suspension, really). On Guns' demise, Duff faults the band's inability to confront each other about problems rather than the problems themselves--everyone's drug use and lead singer Axl Rose's volatility and musical takeover.

Maybe it's a result of his singular drive to make and play music, or maybe it's the functional result of his focused narrative, or maybe it's a social strategy employed to fit in the scene, but on paper Duff exudes a real simplicity of character, despite his having since undergone a kind of spiritual and physical rebirth. The pre-soberiety Duff is a former self whose problems, in his words, "seems to have hinged on a failure to grapple with a few basic definitions--of what it meant to be successful, of what it meant to be an adult, of what it meant to be a man".

Although much less lurid and infinitely less indulgent than Nikki Sixx's autobiography The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star, I found It’s So Easy (And Other Lies) to be the better read.

Young love

They came to a settle on the sidewalk there in front of the house. Freshmen, maybe sophomores. He held her hand walking home from school and now, having reached her block, they look around bashfully to figure their discretion in saying goodbye. I keep still and watch from the couch, wanting them to express things I will not. He was readily handsome, trim, and rightly confident; she was cute, unworried. They extend their hands, press palms, spread arms out to the sides, keeping the most gentle resistance; she gives. They hug, then their lids drip downward, their vision extinguished for better understanding the other's breath, their kiss flavor, better learning how the tip of her nose finds his cheek and the urging of his hand on the small of her back. Fade in. They negotiate a goodbye, just for now, and let go, parting dandelion snow in the breeze. Their love was the vampire's, relived through the ages, unburdened by its persistent reflection in these two mirrors, only reckoning its passing on waking with a heart chiseled in half.

About a so-so book review in "The New Yorker"

"The Disconnect" gives a sloppy discussion while reviewing Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone by Eric Klinenberg. First the writer hazards that "Few things are less welcome today than protracted solitude". Whoa--what about people with kids they can't afford, or medical bills from ailing children and spouses? Wrecked and loveless marriages, and stifling alimony and child support payments? Or even smaller, more subtle miseries, like silent, nightly dinners with children you can't relate to, who hate and resent you? Are those things more welcome than protracted solitude? What about never being alone? How is that liked?

Next, the article poses the question: "as a rule, do people live alone because they want to or because they have to?" Subsequent passages suggest aloneness is usually a choice: (1) "Things changed when she made the decision to buy an apartment, committing to a future alone." (2) "Some people remain single out of a disinclination to settle." But the idea that aloneness is a a choice is casually abandoned in the next section, wherein the piece's most interesting part is revealed:

In a landmark study, “Bowling Alone” (2000), the Harvard political scientist Robert D. Putnam noted a puzzling three-decade decline in what he called “social capital”: the networks of support and reciprocity that bind people together and help things get done collectively. His work considered the waning of everything from P.T.A. enrollment to dinner parties and card games, but the core of his argument was declining civic participation. Between 1973 and 1994, the number of people who held a leadership role in any local organization fell by more than half. Newspaper readership among people under thirty-five dropped during a similar period, as did voting rates. Why? Putnam pointed to cultural shifts among the post-Second World War generation; the privatization of leisure (for example, TV); and, to a smaller extent, the growth of a commuting culture and the time constraints of two-career, or single-parent, family life. “Older strands of social connection were being abraded—even destroyed—by technological and economic and social change,” he wrote.

That last sentence is key, where the emphasis should fall on economic changes--changes so huge we can only begin to appreciate them. For starters, economic changes now mean people move around more, spend less time in one city or neighborhood, work several, maybe dozens of jobs in their lifetimes rather than one or two, and that unions have been dissolved, and on and on: all this, just for starters, is related to economic change. But this significant nugget, contained in a single paragraph, goes painfully unexplored by the author, who sums up the aforementioned study, saying, "Putnam, in other words, saw public institutions as a casualty of the same forces of individuation driving modern aloneness."

So now the rise in aloneness is driven by larger forces, and is no longer a choice. The original question, do people live alone because they want to or because they have to?, is now sort-of rhetorical. From here the article briefly, un-insightfully discusses online social interaction, confusing the original topic, aloneness, with something else--loneliness. But then the author pretty much dismisses the entire conversation by saying, "The truth is that lonely people at home typically contact friends, loiter in bookstores, work in cafés, take on roommates, open OKCupid profiles, or dance Tecktonik at a rave."

Oh, ok. Then what the hell are we talking about?

... but not on this one

About "Rampart"

Woody Harrelson exudes simmering, desperate rage as David Brown, a formidably intelligent but sparsely controlled bad cop living and working and risking and cratering in 1999. Our window into this volatile character's folding life rattles in the wake of the abuse and corruption scandals that shook the real LAPD at the time. When not in pursuit, Brown is at the ready because he knows he and conflict are joined at the hip. He welcomes it, he's a risk-taker. But when he unravels and we see him cracking and haunted, it's still tragic.

Notes:

• Woody Harrelson is why I saw this.
• I saw "Rampart" and "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" the same day. Both these movies show an investigation, a quest for the truth. Both have characters whose quest arises from suspicion, and whose suspicions cause others to doubt the sanity of the quest.

About New Music

I enjoy the album "Put Your Back N 2 It" by Perfume Genius (Mike Hadreas), it has a few good sad songs. Also, parts of "Days" by Real Estate is agreeable, probably best suited for poolside. However, "Port of Morrow" by The Shins is not so good, I thought.

Something on "The Late Shift: Letterman, Leno, & the Network Battle for the Night" by Bill Carter

In the early 1990's, late night television is owned by NBC's staple "The Tonight Show" starring Johnny Carson. But as the much-revered host neared his 30th year, the program's static offerings and rapidly aging audience sent murmurs of discontent through NBC's corporate offices. Carson, for whatever reasons, offered no resistance and abruptly announced his retirement just ahead of his anniversary season. Meanwhile, Jay Leno, with his unmatched work ethic and consistent performance, rose from leader of the new generation of stand-up comedians to frequent guest host of "The Tonight Show". And David Letterman, with wits and an innate and cultivated gift for entertaining, earned his way to hosting a late show that aired after Carson. In The Late Shift, Bill Carter details--and I mean details--the personalities and the drama, decision-making, and the consequences surrounding "The Tonight Show" hosting change of 1992.

Carter seems to respect Leno, but it's Letterman he admires as a talent. Leno comes off as a nice but also very repressed, complicated guy who excels at stand-up and had a pit bull for a manager. Letterman sounds like an under-appreciated star who's also stubborn, fickle, and plagued by self-doubt.

I mostly enjoyed The Late Shift, though the first half is better than the last. This story includes a lot of characters and the audit of who said and thought what can be exhausting.

Something about Robyn's "Dancing on My Own" on SNL

I am pleased when I watch Robyn's Saturday Night Live performance of "Dancing on My Own" because what I see of her compliments what I hear. When I watch I detect a smidgen of awkwardness in her dancing, as if these moves are unpracticed, everything being improvised in unfamiliar space. And that fits the lyrics, which speak of a woman dancing alone in a night club, where it might be a little weird that she's dancing alone, emotionally, trapped between desperation and powerlessness; and it should be a little weird, noticeably so, that she's alone while the other dancers have paired off and bystanders drink among friends. She sings,

Yeah, I know its stupid, I just gotta see it for myself
I'm in the corner, watching you kiss her, Oh
I'm right over here, why can't you see me? Oh

Had the dancing looked choreographed, the effect would not be the same.



Notes:
It may be that these moves are not improvised, and that she's actually dancing flawlessly, comfortably (no doubt passionately). But this is just what I get out of it. And there's no way that Pete Townsend windmill move is choreographed.

Roses are in bloom

About "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy"

As most reviews mention, "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" is a bit hard to follow. You may not miss anything, but you will feel like you did. No matter. The confusion is kept within a single episode near the end. Otherwise, events makes sense.

Circa 1970, the reputation of British Intelligence is in decline. Now rumor circulates that one of the inner circle of agents is a mole. To find the mole, the British Government employs Smiley (Gary Oldman), the retired former right-hand man of the recently passed intelligence director. Smiley proceeds quietly, always thinking, his inner life never stirring the calm of his waters. In one brief scene at the climax, Smiley coolly takes out and lights his cigarette, capturing in a moment the staid bearing with which he's managed this whole affair.

All the actors nailed their performances and made for great characters; the sets and costumes and makeup were flawless; and the cinematography and direction supplied ample polish. I only wish (1) the screenwriters had been more careful (or the producers more patient) and (2) the film had a few more extended scenes.

Watch your step at the office

At first I thought it was the screen: its glow embeds in your eyes, numbs your vision, warming your brain to a soft buttery spread only later to gel, caking your cranium with useless residual. But, no, it was not the screen. So I thought next, maybe the desk and chair. Spreading out before you a kingdom's worth of shrugged off, passed over trivialities to rule over from your wheeled, anonymous, adjustable office throne, a Bic Round Stic, your scepter. But it wasn't this, either. Although the sitting there, propped in front of the monitor didn't help. In the end it was me--the inevitable bend in the path I soldiered on, that path that affords such double 17-inch kingly views as this. As pointless the navigation, as mindless the destination.

A thing on Paul Goodman's "Growing Up Absurd"

The full title, Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society, explains it: this is writer and intellectual Paul Goodman's inventory of social ills leading kids to rebel, drop out, and be generally dysfunctional in the 1950s. Nothing escapes his criticism: poor city planning, the lack of meaningful work, kids' intellectually starved education, churches born of hierarchy and dogma rather than community--he calls out each and every failed institution and stunted revolution as he defends the angry and resigned.

I read Growing Up Absurd at the same time I took an interest in "Leave it to Beaver" reruns. Watching June Cleaver fret over young Theodor arriving home from school ten minutes late or Wally changing his hairstyle shows, I think, the kind of anxiety Goodman was responding to--anxiety egged on by starched social pundits in horn-rimmed glasses cautioning middle class parents about the troubled young man in the black leather jacket that might emerge from their own child. To these parents Goodman essentially says, Of course you don't understand them; they reject everything you've spent your life dealing with, negotiating, rationalizing, and accepting. And for good reason!

Goodman assumes the audience shares his progressive views, and some sections are confusing, as if written hastily. Plus, the negativity made this a pretty tough read. I found greater value in its being a historical document more so than spot-on social criticism.

She died, her wing on her young

Bon Iver's 4AD/Jagjaguwar Session

 

I Figured

Exercising offered no incentive. Nothing immediate, anyway. She had tried less orthodox kinds, like climbing trees and using the Hula Hoop. Stretching, walking, bowling: it all came to naught. Until yoga. Well, not so much yoga as one specific pose that she thought of as yoga; she would stand, back straight, twisted at the hips some 15 or 20 degrees with her head turned the same direction so her chin closed in on the shoulder. She struck this pose more than a dozen times a day now. No, this wasn't exercise, she knew, but it felt good anyway, which was more than could be said of jogging in place or trying a push-up.

On a Saturday evening when the air was dusting windshields with baby drops the meaning went silent and her body contracted from the pose at first through some strange cowardice of the knees, but then from loss of concentration because concentration had turned towards the words which bore traces of a philosophy but sounded a recrimination. She figured she could answer "No, you're right" with either the confidence of a determinist or the shame of a busted teenager, but what she wanted now was to inscribe her name in the mist that sedated all the shatter-proof glass.

Postscript: The age of your friends' anxiety

Wednesday I went on about the New York magazine piece "Listening to Xanax", calling it weak and intellectually lazy. I thought I'd pile on. The author of that piece wrote, "When news outlets began reporting that a cocktail of alcohol, Valium, and Xanax might have caused Whitney Houston’s death, it felt oddly inevitable. Coke binges are for fizzier eras; now people overdo it trying to calm down." Well, as reported everywhere yesterday, "Singer Whitney Houston's use of cocaine combined with a heart condition contributed to her accidental drowning, coroner officials said" (Los Angeles Times).

A manner of speaking (at NPR)

A lot of the hosts and contributors on NPR have acquired that speaking quirk of frequently beginning sentences with the word so. So is now a discourse marker or discourse particle.

The age of your friends' anxiety

The author of the New York magazine piece "Listening to Xanax" declares this the age of anxiety and, therefore, of anti-anxiety medication: "If the nineties were the decade of Prozac, all hollow-eyed and depressed, then this is the era of Xanax, all jumpy and edgy and short of breath." How did an editor at a major, reputable publication think something was being said here?

First we learn of a kind of situational (as opposed to compulsive) anxiety:

“Situational anxiety” today stems from threats that are both everywhere and nowhere at once. How will the debtor nations in the eurozone ever manage to pay back what they owe? How can Israel disarm Iran’s nuclear program without inciting the messiest international conflict since World War II? How can you be absolutely, 100 percent sure the cantaloupe you had for lunch wasn’t contaminated with listeria that will make you or your kids or one of your guests deathly sick?

Oh, anxiety can be scary, she confesses, but it also lives this "second life as a more general mind-set and cultural stance, one defined by an obsession with an uncertain future." Nevermind that the future is always uncertain, flashing warning signs up ahead--more to the point, nobody in the society she's talking about has suffered an anxiety attack or even lost a wink of sleep worrying about the kind of macro political and economic issues she describes. Nobody thinks, "Oh, Lord, what's Iran gonna do? I need a Xanax!"

Because this one was so weak, she quickly switches to another intellectually weak premise, focusing now on what is called functional anxiety--something she acknowledges that everyone has and has always had:

But functional anxiety, which afflicts nearly everyone I know, is a murkier thing. Its sufferers gather in places like New York, where relentlessness and impatience are the highest values, and in industries built on unrelenting deadlines and tightrope deals.

This obliterates her initial premise--that there's something unique about this age in terms of anxiety. But she soldiers on. Her sample functionally anxious subject says,

“I use my anxiety to be better at what I do,” says an executive at a boutique PR firm. “A certain amount of anxiety makes me a better employee but a less happy person, and you have to constantly balance that. If I didn’t constantly fear I was about to be fired or outed as a loser, I’m afraid I might be lazy.”

So, her overly dramatic but otherwise mentally healthy, motivated, ambitious, and competitive friends she describes in the language of mental illness. Here, she extinguishes all hope of having made a point: "Not quite a disease, or even a pathology, low-grade anxiety is more like a habit." In other words, something so ordinary I shouldn't have brought it up at all.

And from much ado about nothing, she explores what to do about nothing. First, she briefly describes folks who resist the drug-first approach, completely misconstruing them as shooting to "cure" her successful friends of their healthy habits:

A cure isn’t what the PR executive with the occasional Klonopin habit wants. “My own personal experience is that there’s a healthy level of anxiety, and I don’t believe ‘healthy’ is the absence of anxiety,” she says. “I live in a world that puts unreasonable demands on me, and sometimes I need help. I wish I could do it without the pills, but I can’t.”

Exactly--you're already healthy, and not this imagined poster sufferer in an age of anxiety.

Besides, no one wants to cure you or your stupid friends.

Notes:

• In the meantime, she ignores obvious related issues: differences in drug use by class (and hers is an upper class, to be sure), the history of anxiety and its treatment (in and out of psychology), the rise of diagnoses, the increase in medications and prescriptions, the trend of first prescriptions causing need for a second, exterior sources of existential dread over time, and on and on.

• Worst anecdote she gives: "A friend of mine had dental surgery recently, a procedure she both hates and fears. So proud was she that she’d sworn off Klonopin that she decided to forgo the medication ahead of her dental appointment. “I thought, Don’t be a baby. That’s just weak. You should be able to handle things.” She had a panic attack in the chair and was “a total bitch,” she says, to the dentist. “Oh, wait a second,” she reminded herself as the drill whined and the tooth dust spattered, “there’s a medical reason for these things.” "

• "Its sufferers gather in places like New York"? In places like ... New York?