Shawn Macomber

Just When You Thought Things Couldn't Get Any Worse....

...for the GOP...

Stripping Away Free Expression

In defense of strip pole aerobics. 

"The Erotic Beauty of You Holding Yourself..."

I'm as gobstopped over the Sanford affair as anyone. Nevertheless, of all the things we can now say about him, who among us would dare suggest the Governor doesn't have game? Although he used that game for badness and naughty mistress email, fairness requires we recognize Sanford's obvious talent for erotic verse. Thus, I do.

Tragically, Sanford was unable to channel that sly finesse into his press conference repertoire where, as he so ably demonstrated a couple days back, he really could have used it!  

Beware the Blob!

My entry in the BlobFest 2009 short film contest....

In Praise of the Author Who Loves to Say, "So What?"

I'm a little late linking this essay I wrote for the Weekly Standard on sixties metafiction icon John Barth...

My Benchside Manner, Of Course, Was More Inspired By "Night Court"

From the Huffington Post's "Sonia Sotomayor, Supreme Court Nominee: All You Need to Know":

She left for the U.S. District Court in 1992. At the time, Sotomayor told the New York Times that she was inspired to become a judge by an episode of "Perry Mason."

"I thought, what a wonderful occupation to have," Ms. Sotomayor said. "And I made the quantum leap: If that was the prosecutor's job, then the guy who made the decision to dismiss the case was the judge. That was what I was going to be."

Well, just because "The Decider" wasn't popular doesn't mean "The Dissmisser" will face the same fate. Best of all, Sotomayor wouldn't have the same ethic or gender disabilities that plagued Mason's career. And, despite what Jeffery Rosen's sources may tell The New Republic or the Almanac of the Federal Judiciary, we've seen--as previously alluded to in this post's title--that people can change for the better once in a hallowed courtroom.  

Pop Princess Has New Cross To Bear

Okay, so I can only imagine it's bad enough being saddled with the latent guilt of playing a major part in resurrecting the mega-mulleted career of Billy Ray Cyrus--even if he is your father and the two of you are unnaturally close--but now Miley Cyrus is supposed to sit idly by while an investment analyst (ab)uses her as an analogy for our achy-breaky economy? Here's Doug Kass of Seabreeze Partners on CNBC today:

“I think stocks are ahead of fundamentals. I would call the [rally] a 'Miley Cyrus' recovery. It’s very popular now, but in both cases, Miley Cyrus and the stock market may not have much talent underneath, which is reflected by prices. And perhaps, it won’t be enduring.”

You're about as talented as an economic apocalypse seems like a lot to throw at a teenage girl, even if you're not a fan!

What Would Jefferson Leave Out?

I review Bill Gertz' latest over at the Journal of International Security Affairs.

The Latest Intermittent Update

1. Reviewed Andrew Mueller's I Wouldn't Start From Here, a very fun and intriguing book.

2. An essay in this week's Weekly Standard on Flannery O'Connor.

3. A few bits in the new issue of Decibel hitting stands now.

Murder! Mutilation! Cannibalism!

Last year I wrote a piece for Radar about the surrealism and weirdness that accompanies regularly writing about heavy metal. (You can read my stuff currently in America's greatest extreme music monthly, Decibel.) Well, Radar went under and their website just dumped the piece from its archives so I thought I'd post it here for posterity. Enjoy!

In Memoriam

I recently published remembrances of my pal and colleague Lawrence Henry, as well as a woman who refused to be forced into marrying a lawyer, doctor or Indian chief. 

Who's Shouting 'Free Popcorn!'?

No, silly, we're not talking no-cost popped corn, but, rather, getting Marvin "Popcorn" Sutton, author of the apparent American classic Me and My Likker, released from the clutches of The Man. Otherwise, looks like Popcorn's going to prison on federal weapons and distillation of illegal spirits charges--that is, one presumes, unless Bo and Luke show up in the General Lee.

The Wall Street Journal's Law Blog describes Popcorn as "a legend of Appalachia." Always good to see stereotypes disproved, no?

If Popcorn was your supplier, though, and you're looking for something to help you make it through the jittery hours of detox, may I suggest losing yourself in imaginative play with a $150 bling-flashing Bernie Madoff action figure? It doesn't come with any plastic dupes, but take a cue from ol' Popcorn and...adapt.

Oil City is Well Again

A report from Pennsylvania's shattered-but-improving oil country from the December/January print edition of The American Spectator. 

Meatloaf Road

My review of Sam MacDonald's The Urban Hermit begins:

As a former editor of libertarianism's flagship magazine Reason, Sam MacDonald presumably has some familiarity with the Austrian school of economics and, thus, the concept of recession as a necessary corrective to excess. But you will never find anything in a theoretical economics textbook (or most memoirs, for that matter) as shockingly hilarious or graphically honest as what transpires over the course of "The Urban Hermit," the story of Mr. MacDonald's personal bubble bursting after an extended carefree boom comprised of too many years spent trolling "roads to hell paved with good intentions and meatloaf."

Anti-capitalist zeal has turned some mad-at-their-dad pseudo-anarchist types into quasi Christian proselytizers

On Christmas Eve it seems appropriate to throw out a link to a column I wrote last year arguing that perhaps my fellow secularists shouldn’t be so eager to throw out the materialist baby with the Jesus bath water when it comes to the latter’s wayward birthday party. In part: 

No less a self-described "dedicated secular humanist" than Barbara Ehrenreich has declared the War on Christmas over. "Christmas is not the exclusive property of those who think God came to earth 2000 years ago as a baby in Bethlehem," she sniffed. It's true, if hardly for the reasons Ehrenreich thinks, although I nevertheless look forward to reading the biting piece of investigative journalism detailing her time as an undercover mall elf trying to organize the workers against a cigar-chomping, red-suited bossman with a little round belly that shook when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly.

One has to wonder what exactly Ehrenreich, who compared "consumer culture" unfavorably to drug addiction in her 1989 book Fear of Falling, expects the end result of a simultaneous embrace of Christmas and scuttling of consumerism will be. She and other secular humanists might hope Christmas will eventually morph into a paid national holiday for circulating global warming petitions and unionizing Wal-Mart workers with gift buying limited to items praised on NPR programs and wine from fancy vineyards. It is consumerism, however, not class war enthusiasts and pretentious do-gooders, that has made the holiday one that transcends, without overshadowing, our religious differences. Leave behind capitalism with its multitude of niche markets and we will almost certainly be left with a much more Christ-centric holiday. Do secular humanists not remember how much they hated it when all anyone could talk about was The Passion?

Cross-posted at When Falls the Coliseum. 

Yes, Virginia...

...there is such a thing as Mario Van Peebles.

The Wages of Sin...

...got nothing on the price of bad karaoke. 

Election 2008

I've fallen a bit behind in linkage, so here are a few catch-up bits:

1. Obama secured the zombie vote. And I take a whack at his Department of Early Indoctrination. 

2. I just realized my review of Ben Wattenberg's Fighting Words from a few months back appeared online. 

3. Vote if you like. Trumpet it in your Facebook status even. Just don't get too pleased with yourself, okay? Because you really aren't that much better than everyone else.

4. I feel like I've been covering this election for eons. Mostly because I have. And I'm having trouble believing it's actually going to be over. Not out of a desire for it to continue on, but a skepticism that purgatory will release us so easily.

Four (Paws) On The Floor

I'm in the Wall Street Journal today--with cats.

Palin Day

Two bits today: First, I took part in a symposium on the VP debate today over at Culture 11. And, second, in my first post for the wonderful When Falls the Coliseum blog, I offer some solutions for those who would rather dictate the debate than sit helplessly watching it.

Gone Nuts, Pot O' Gold

The McCain camp needs to fire that pink unicorn. (Delegate the deed to Palin, she seems to be immersed in a long blood feud with all cute and innocent creatures, anyway.) You go to leprechauns in a financial crisis, not unicorns. That's leadership 101, people. Even with McCain's admitted lack of economic knowledge, he must know where pots o' gold come from, no? Somebody put Darby O'Gill on his team of economic advisors, pronto

Retire DeNiro! Bring Back The Flesh Eaters!

Boy, did I ever love this Michael Antman piece on the terrible new DeNiro/Pacino flick Righteous Kill (the true twist ending now would be no twist--ask David Mamet), the unadulterated joy of experiencing the 1964 schlock-fest The Flesh Eaters as a boy and the relative joylessness of modern cinema:

When I was in college, I worked nights as a typesetter for a publisher that distributed television programming guides, and part of my job was to type in the descriptions of old movies. In the off hours, usually around three or four in the morning, I would count the movies I had already seen, and even then my list was more than a thousand movies long. I can only imagine how long it would be today, if I had the time to count.

But lately, I’m starting to fall behind in my movie-going. The predominance of CGI, the utter falsity of emotion on display in most Hollywood product, and the joyless, stultifying sameness of scripts (thanks to those screenplay consultants that tell you every movie “has” to have three acts, and must have a precipitating event on page 17) have taken most of the pleasure out of the movies, as have the soulless multiplexes where they’re shown. If I were a nine-year-old kid today, I wouldn’t even bother flicking Ju Jubees at the necks of the automatons in front of me, watching Matthew McConaughey and Kate Hudson play-acting their way through whatever detestable nonsense they’re getting paid millions for; I doubt they’d feel a thing.

I personally think there is plenty of great filmmaking going on today if you seek it out. (It might be a matter of taste. I did pen an appreciation of "torture porn," after all.) Still, Lord, in a general sense, all I can say when I see someone attacking CGI--no, I haven't seen The Dark Night or Iron Man, I prefer other Christian Bale vehicles and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath--and formulaic soullessness is Amen!

A Word On David Foster Wallace, As Remembered

The suicide this weekend of one of America's greatest contemporary writers is tragedy enough—I'd place his Consider the Lobster alongside the best of Wolfe, Thompson, Orlean, (insert name of your favored literary nonfiction author here)—but having to read all the interpretations of What Wallace Meant barely a day after he can no longer explain it for himself is maddening. Michiko Kakutani’s “remembrance” in the New York Times was typical of these self-serving and shallow pieces, alternately crediting Wallace for creating “a series of strobe-lit portraits of a millennial America overdosing on the drugs of entertainment and self-gratification, and to capture, in the words of the musician Robert Plant, the myriad ‘deep and meaningless’ facets of contemporary life” and conjuring up the “metastasizing absurdities of life in America at a precarious hinge moment in time.”

Lord, what a snob that makes Wallace sound--and an unreadable one at that. No major newspaper piece on Wallace's death I've yet read has done much better. There almost seems to be a inexplicable conspiracy being waged by the author's fans to keep the uninitiated uninterested in his work. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Wallace spoke better on his own behalf in this 1996 Salon interview. It’s worth quoting at length, then, how Wallace answered when asked, “What's it like to be a young fiction writer today, in terms of getting started, building a career and so on?”:

Welcome to the (Media) Madhouse

I recently interviewed James Bowman--author of one of my favorite books on culture, Honor, A History--about his new book Media Madness.

It Came From Outer...Phoenixville, Pennsylvania?

The Blob is now 50, as old as poor Steve McQueen was when he died. Not long ago, I attended the eccentric birthday party a small Pennsylvania town held for the (retired?) amorphous space alien screen star.

Uh Oh...

...somebody's not ready for Thunderdome.

In The Cultural Doghouse

In today's New York Times David Brooks sums up the patterns of the cultural period I've spent my entire life in:

The old hierarchy of the arts was dismissed as hopelessly reactionary. Instead, any cultural artifact produced by a member of a colonially oppressed out-group was deemed artistically and intellectually superior. During this period, status rewards went to the ostentatious cultural omnivores—those who could publicly savor an infinite range of historically hegemonized cultural products. It was necessary to have a record collection that contained “a little bit of everything” (except heavy metal): bluegrass, rap, world music, salsa and Gregorian chant. It was useful to decorate one’s living room with African or Thai religious totems — any religion so long as it was one you could not conceivably believe in.

Emphasis, of course, added and this strikes me as fairly accurate. Crikey! I'd like to believe our cultural arbiters were just trying to save us from the looming monstrosity of rap-metal and Fred Durst, but I can only assume there is virtually no difference between Carcass--see you at the Sept. 10 reunion show in Baltimore with Pig Destroyer!--and Limp Bizkit. At least 2 Live Crew were classy enough to make the cut. Oh well. Radar gave me a chance to cement my apparent outsider status a few months back.

Bad Blood/Big Success

I've perhaps never felt more out of touch culturally than when every magazine and newspaper I picked up over the course of several days last month suddenly had huge features on the ultra-mega phenomenon of Stephenie (not-sic) Meyer's Twilight series. The books were flying off shelves at near-historic rates, her signings were mobbed, stores were holding midnight releases for the latest installment. What? When did all that happen? Don't get me wrong: I loved the delicious irony of a suburban mother nonchalantly having an idea for a vampire novel and it inexplicably turning into the biggest thing in the world, especially while MFA creative writing types simultaneously sat in cafes across the nation talking and moping about writing. There's a degree of purity and justice to that I find irresistible, even if my ignorance of the result proves how disconnected from the zeitgeist I truly am.

Do I care enough to connect? After The Da Vinci Code, alas, probably not. And thanks to Tegan Millspaw, I don't have to. She's reviewed the first volume. Best line: "Call me crazy, but I don't think there's ever been a time in my life where I've wished men were obsessed with the scent of my blood." Oh, and there's also this rule-of-thumb hardly anyone could disagree with: "As far as rocking her like a father would, that's only sweet when 1. It's REALLY your father and not your boyfriend who is struggling not to devour your blood and 2. you're a little kid. I think I'd find it pretty creepy if my dad picked me up and rocked me like an infant....because, you know. I'm an adult."

Yes. Right.

Rage Against The Principal

That's right, before Zach de la Rocha fell into a lucrative career as a corporate messenger of communism, he hit up his senior prom. What, you thought he was born into a Zapatista village cleaning rifles between bottles?

In Preparation For My Upcoming...

...dinner with Hillary Clinton, under the stars!

Quick! Say Nuke the Fonz...

...before it jumps the shark! Also, meet Mean Martin Manning.

Metal Militia, Eastern Division: The Gathering

Iranian heavy metal fans, persecuted in their own country, cross over into Turkey to see Metallica perform. Sadly, Acrassicauda does not open.

Talula Does the Hula From Hawaii Doesn't Live Here Anymore

A judge in New Zealand recently made nine year-old “Talula Does the Hula From Hawaii” a ward of the state so he could change her name. From ABA Journal:

''The court is profoundly concerned about the very poor judgment which this child's parents have shown in choosing this name,'' he wrote in an opinion released today. ''It makes a fool of the child and sets her up with a social disability and handicap, unnecessarily.''

In fairness, the abbreviated version of the name, "Talula," is pretty and fine, isn't the business of a judge to...well, judge, and at any rate, could be easily changed by the child when she reaches adulthood. The name itself can't be anymore of a social disability than living for eighteen years with the parents who gave it to her. Speaking of the parents, I'd love to see a transcript of their testimony, if one exists. I imagine it as the sort of thing we should beam into space to convince hostile aliens we are too crazy to mess with.

Is There Couple's Therapy In Heaven?

Dale Leo Bishop's execution-eve endorsement of Barack Obama is clearly newsworthy and shows just how deep the audacity of hope has penetrated American society, but I thought this bit further down in the story was probably more telling:

Though Bishop eight years ago had asked a judge for the death penalty, officials said he had changed his mind.

"He wants to live, at least that's what he indicated to us," [state Corrections Commissioner Chris] Epps said a few hours before the execution. "He said when he asked to be sentenced to death he was at a low point in his life. He was getting separated, and his wife was taking their three kids."

I don't want to diminish the stress of a marital separation. You would think, however, memories of holding a friend in a headlock while your other pal beats him to death with a hammer might make one a little blue as well. Then again, I don't speak from experience. Should the situation arises in my own life--if you had friends like mine, you'd leave all options on the table, too--perhaps I'll feel differently after the fact. Also, I reserve the right to use this method of thought as a way to express love to my long-suffering wife: I'd rather help a friend beat another friend to death with a hammer than ever lose you, dear. Happy anniversary!

File Under: Not A Mental Recession

Here's an above the fold, front page headline from the New York Times today: WOMEN ARE NOW EQUAL AS VICTIMS OF POOR ECONOMY.

I thought initially this was a victory--Hey, Raul Castro may have recently declared egalitarianism dead, but not us! Go America!--but, as the article quickly demonstrates, this is actually a hitherto undiscovered strain of bad equality. To our political consultant friends, trust us, Equality of Opportunity...To Fail remains a losing campaign slogan. Or is it?

After moving into virtually every occupation, women are being afflicted on a large scale by the same troubles as men: downturns, layoffs, outsourcing, stagnant wages or the discouraging prospect of an outright pay cut. And they are responding as men have, by dropping out or disappearing for a while.

While losing a job is certainly not the best case scenarios, surely being in the position to be affected by downturns is better than being kept out of those positions during good and bad times, no? And, since this post title provides an opportunity as equal as any other, I've been meaning to post a link to James Poulos' typically outside the box take on Phil Gramm's now (infamous, I guess) pegging of ours as a nation of whiners:

The point is that Americans are whiners, but also sometimes not whiners. They are sometimes whiners about bad actual things they can't affect, and sometimes whiners about stupid things (my gas is going up! It'll cost so much to drive to Starbucks!) but not about much less stupid things (I won't be able to afford heat this winter!). Gramm's rhetoric is so troublesome because it's so falsely polarizing -- in a world where there are two types of people, whiners and nonwhiners, a redress of grievances is impossible, because there are no grievances worthy of the name.

So, yes, my initial glee at Gramm saying the unsayable has been somewhat tempered by the explications of two of my much smarter, well respected colleagues--Jim Antle, being the second--even if, I must admit, it has not yet been extinguished. Maybe it's a personal failing or just a soft spot for free-market orthodoxy espoused by those who resemble melancholy woodland creatures.

It's anyone's guess, really.

When Pollination Crosses The Line Into Ejaculation...

Too much information?:

Sexually deceptive orchids, as biologists have long known, look and can even smell so much like a female insect that males will try to mate with the flower in a sometimes vigorous process that can result in pollination. But scientists now report that the tongue orchids of Australia are such thoroughly convincing mimics of female wasps that males not only try to mate with them, but they actually do mate with them — to the point of ejaculation. “It’s always been described as pseudocopulation,” said Anne Gaskett, a graduate student at Macquarie University in Australia and the lead author of the study. “But it looked like true copulation to me.”

I can only hope Gaskett's superiors read this and give her what is clearly a long overdue, flower & wasp free vacation!

What Happens When You Take The Guns Away

From the New York Times:

Every day, it seems, there are more victims. Shakilus Townsend, 16, stabbed to death by a masked gang. Ben Kinsella, also 16, fatally stabbed during an argument outside a pub. Victims in Bristol, Manchester and Glasgow. Four people fatally stabbed in London in one 24-hour period alone last week. In a country where few people have guns or access to them, a spate of knife attacks, many involving teenagers, has forced the issue to the top of the domestic agenda. The Metropolitan Police are so concerned, they said recently, they have made knife crime their top priority, along with terrorism. Government and law enforcement officials are scrambling to produce plans to allay public fears.

On Monday, Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced a series of measures that he said would make it “completely unacceptable to carry a knife.” The plan includes automatic prosecution for anyone over the age of 16 caught with a knife and doubling the maximum sentence for knife possession, to four years. It also sets up a $6 million advertising campaign to discourage young people from committing crimes with knives and a program to force perpetrators to confront their actions by, for instance, attending courses that describe what happens to stabbing victims.

I don't want to insult our British allies, but, mates, any criminal class that can be wowed into submission by an advertising campaign is displaying a woeful lack of dedication to its craft. But, then again, that's what the late, great comedian Bill Hicks told us long ago, isn't it?

Quote of the Day

“I would meet Einstein because he never washed his hair, and nobody ever listened to him when he talked about a lot of important things that the military could have used in the United States,”--a contestant on Queen Bees, the new reality show where Mean Girls hang with Tyra's shrink and compete for the $25,000 prize given to the girl who best reforms herself, when asked which historic figure she'd most like to meet. Surprisingly, the show isn't nearly as fun (yet) as the concept, although producers did do a great job of uncovering terrible people.

Mametfest Destiny

The American Spectator was kind enough to post my June cover story on the art and political conversion of writer-director David Mamet online. My review of his latest film Redbelt is here.

Quit Laughing, I Said It's Not Funny

The New York Times has a front page story today on the kid gloves approach late night television hosts have been using on Barack Obama, explaining it away as a natural product of Obama's lack of "buffonish" qualities. Hence, the absurd headline, "Want Obama in a Punch Line? First, Find a Joke."

Why? The reason cited by most of those involved in the shows is that a fundamental factor is so far missing in Mr. Obama: There is no comedic “take” on him, nothing easy to turn to for an easy laugh, like allegations of Bill Clinton’s womanizing, or President Bush’s goofy bumbling or Al Gore’s robotic persona.

Really, New York Times? That's your honest assessment? Or would you like to try again in, say, a few paragraphs?

There is no doubt, several representatives of the late-night shows said, that so far their audiences (and at least some of the shows’ writers) seem to be favorably disposed toward Mr. Obama, to a degree that perhaps leaves them more resistant to jokes about him than those about most previous candidates.

Yes, perhaps. Perhaps also grass is green and Saturday Night Live was onto something. Alas, it seems even the New York Times does not fully understand the phenomenon it strives to explain. After noting John McCain punch lines frequently end with some variation of "He's old," the article adds, "But there has been little humor about Mr. Obama: about his age, his speaking ability, his intelligence, his family, his physique."

I suppose the dig the New York Times is waiting for is not a knock at the senator's demigodish view of himself, but bits beginning with something along the lines of "Barack Obama is so buff..." or "Barack Obama is so eloquent..." or "Barack Obama is so young and vital..." Which, in a strange way, makes this the treatment for the never-launched sitcom based on Obama's life.

Best Ever Death Metal Band Out Of Baghdad

Meet Acrassicauda, Iraq's sole thrash band.

Actually, It's Clearly A Fantasy About Dick Cheney

Robert Thurman--Columbia University prof, father of Uma and the first American to be ordained a Tibetan monk--got a little too detailed in this New York Times Q&A this weekend about his meditation fantasies:

What do you think about when you meditate?

Usually, some form of trying to excavate any kind of negative thing cycling in the mind and turn it toward the positive. For example, when I am annoyed with Dick Cheney, I meditate on how Dick Cheney was my mother in a previous life and nursed me at his breast.

You mean you fantasize about being breast-fed by Dick Cheney?

It’s a fantasy of releasing fear and developing affection. It’s a way of coming back to feeling grateful toward him and seeing his positive side, finding the mother in Dick Cheney.

I'm sure Cheney is touched by the gesture!

I Guess We Start Respecting Rights At No. 2?

John McCain, May 2006: "I would rather have a clean government than one where, quote, First Amendment rights are being respected, that has become corrupt. If I had my choice, I’d rather have the clean government."

John McCain, today: "This ruling does not mark the end of our struggle against those who seek to limit the rights of law-abiding citizens. We must always remain vigilant in defense of our freedoms."

Have the scales fallen from his eyes? If so, I look forward to McCain's amicus brief in the next challenge to McCain-Feingold--or maybe he'd just rather slightly alter his hero Teddy Roosevelt's famous maxim, and teach the country to speak softly and carry a little gun.

What To Do After You've Lost It All In A Hooker Scandal

Go to Cambodia!

Perhaps not the best place to take a man with a well-documented proclivity for young prostitutes, but it's good to hear the guy will have a chance to get away from it all and better Southeast Asia than the Governor's office.

Kaboom!

It's not everyday I get to write about classic Twilight Zone episodes, imaginary militia-peoples and coloring books designed to teach kids about suicide bombers, but Friday was one such day.

The Guy Peddling Change I Can Believe In...

...can't quit smoking.

Now I'm just sad. Even if this does prove he won't go along with everything Michelle says, I was also depending on Obama to change, as promised, so many of my bad habits--like resisting my incorporation into the statist collective (H.O.P.E.), for example. I fear his failure to control his own habits might mean he will indeed  allow me to go back to my life as usual, leaving me leaderless, living my imperfect life as I see fit. And like the rest of my herd, this is what I fear more than anything else.

Noooo! Baaaa!

Always A Popularity Contest

You may or may not have heard about the recent Mothers Against Drunk Driving Gone Wild debacle, wherein a uniformed police officer was sent into several classrooms at a California high school to inform students one of their classmates had been killed in a drunk driving accident. No one actually had died, but local police, school administrators and MADD crusaders believed leaving these kids to stew in hysteria and sorrow for an hour before resurrecting the "dead" students at an assembly was in clearly their best interest. It was not without controversy, however, and so this weekend the California Highway Patrol sent Officer Paula Todd onto television to defend the event. The host, whom I didn't recognize, opened with what I believe is the most  pertinent question: "I'm curious, how do they decide which students to kill?"

"Well," Officer Todd answered, "we try to pick the more popular students, for impact on the student body."

Somewhere right now, a band geek is writing a heartrending letter to the producers  of MTV's Made--"I want to be made a dead student in next year's student faux drunk driving massacre!" God bless the people who know what's right for our children--pandemonium, hysteria and a blood-soaked popularity contest. 

Where You At, Son?

I'll be guest blogging the next two weeks for one of my favorite people, James Poulos, at his wonderful Postmodern Conservative site. Visit me and leave some comments if you get a chance.

UPDATE: My interview with Gene Healy, author of The Cult of the Presidency, lives here. AND a dual review of two novels on art and power in The Weekly Standard.

Is Dissent As Patriotic As Screaming Fits?

The New York Times euphorically recounts the scene this weekend at Wesleyan University when word came down that Barack Obama would "pinch hit, Indiana Jones-style"--the reporter's balanced interpretation of the heroic nature of Obama stepping up to a mic in front of a crowd of college kids (!)--for ailing Ted Kennedy. Here's a snippet:

Let's face it, Wesleyan's getting Mr. Obama as a last minute graduation speaker, even if under trying circumstances, was a little like Notre Dame getting the pope. "Everyone found out at the same time after we put it on our web page," said Holly Wood (yes, but she's actually just a working-class kid from the Poconos), co-founder of a widely read student blog, Wesleying. "I got out of my car and everyone was screaming, and my phone went off and someone told me, and I screamed. It was like this relay effect of people on the campus, all screaming."

Summation: New York Times on Barack Obama--bigger than the pope, hot as a young Indiana Jones and able to make the kids--even working-class kids from the Poconos!--scream like the Fab Four combined Volton-like into one giant hope-spewing machine. It's settled, I think. He's got all the right qualifications. Let's make him president.

Fire, of course, burns in the distance...

...and the penis’s cavalier attitude toward the mini-apocalypse is disturbing on several levels.