What I'm Watching

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
This is what I call a "stunt film." It gets so caught up in its tricks that it forgets to be about anything. Granted, the tricks are good ones -- i.e., the aging/de-aging of Brad Pitt, and so on. But the premise of the film is merely a sterile conceit, and one that negates the emotions that it should have worked harder to elicit.

One of These Things Is Not Like the Others

I don't know why I was reading Tim Goodman's column in the Chron today about new shows on the CW, which I never watch and am not even sure how to find on my DirecTV feed. But I came across this sentence in its account of the new revival of "Melrose Place":

But L.A. still corrupts: Someone dies in the pilot; a med student has to essentially become a hooker; there are drugs, mean publicists, bisexuality, infidelity and the world's least believable art thief.

I was reminded of the old "Sesame Street" bit, "One of These Things Is Not Like the Others." That is, death, prostitution, drug abuse, "mean publicists," infidelity and art theft can all more or less legitimately be considered "corrupt." But in this day and age, and especially in San Francisco, isn't bisexuality just another orientation?

Old prejudices die hard, I guess.

Straight to the Point

Straight talk from John Cole and John Harwood:

Someone not named Taibbi went on television and told the truth. I’m kind of shocked:

This can not be stated enough, and we now have Tapper and Harwood on record that this is nonsense. The rest of the media is still in he-said/she-said mode.

For a while, I’ve been trying to come up with three questions that you could ask anyone and determine if they were a wingnut. Up until now, the list was:

1.) Did we find WMD in Iraq?
2.) How old is the earth?
3.) Was Obama born in the United States?

I may have to add “Is it a bad thing if the President tells school kids to study hard?”

Steve Benen puts it well, too:

Conservatives don't want school kids to hear a message from their president. Those who claim superiority on American patriotism have decided to throw yet another tantrum over the idea that the president of the United States might encourage young people to do well in schools.

This is what American politics has come to in 2009.

I Think I've Found a New Hero

Al Franken -- calm, cool, collected, and informed.

Rachel and Ridge

If you missed Rachel Maddow's interview with Tom Ridge tonight, you should go watch it all. But here's the highlight: her stern riposte to Ridge's claim that invading Iraq was the right thing to do. The whole interview is remarkable for her politeness and good humor in the face of some pretty unconscionable double-talk on Ridge's part, but also for doing one thing that TV journalists too seldom do: sticking to her guns and speaking truth to power.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

What I'm Listening To

Benjamin Britten, Billy Budd. Philip Langridge (Vere); Simon Keenlyside (Billy Budd); John Tomlinson (Claggart). London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by Richard Hickox.

I've never seen Billy Budd onstage, but I'm told it can make a powerful impact. This recording, however, seems dramatically slack. Langridge, Tomlinson and especially Keenlyside make solid efforts to bring the characters to life. But Langridge is handicapped by one of those high, thin, grainy English tenor voices that make you wonder why Vere is held in such awe by his crew, and Claggart's menace is undermined by the wobble in Tomlinson's voice. This is also one of those opera recordings that are stingy on the dynamics, so that the quiet opening is almost lost unless you bump the volume up.

That said, the recording is almost worth it for the power and nuance of Keenlyside's singing and acting. His version of "Look, through the port comes the moonshine astray" is heartbreaking. Keenlyside's Budd doesn't seem to be available on YouTube, but here's a fine version of "Look, through the port" by Dwayne Croft from the 1997 Met production. In the second part, the Dansker is Paul Plishka.

What I'm Reading

The long assignment drought has ended: I have three reviews in the works. So for the time being I will spare you my thoughts on what's next on my leisure-time reading list, namely Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey.

"The Gift of Obviousness"

Rachel Maddow and Sen. Bernie Sanders do a bang-up job of explaining why health care reform is urgent and how it might be achieved.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Killing the Mood

Everybody who's taken a foreign language has encountered the dread subjunctive mood. We anglophones can pretty much dodge it -- we get tripped up by it only in forms of the verb to be. I learned the rule as "condition contrary to fact" -- you write, "If I were king" instead of "If I was king," unless at one time in your past you really ruled the land. As Jan Freeman observes, “ 'I drove fast' and 'If I drove fast' use the same verb, and we have no trouble telling indicative from subjunctive." But as Jan shows in her latest column, it's not always easy to decide whether you want to write "was" or "were." And then she goes on to spread the good news -- it really, really doesn't matter which you write. Or at least it won't for much longer. The subjunctive is on its way out, and we can all breathe a sigh of relief. (Now if they'd only get rid of "whom," I'd be happy.)

Eke and Eye

John McIntyre on the cliche beat:

Two articles in this morning’s Baltimore Sun reach for the same cliche with reference to the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy:

BOSTON — In an extraordinary outpouring of public emotion, thousands of people in Massachusetts solemnly lined highways, overpasses and city streets Thursday to pay their last respects to Sen. Edward Kennedy, the last patriarch of America’s most storied political dynasty.

And:

And with the loss of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and his storied ability to eke out bipartisan compromises, lawmakers are eyeing those consensus proposals. ...

The advice sometimes given to aspiring writers that they should avoid adjectives is like a fad diet — Atkins or South Beach — that rules out a whole class of foods. But it is true that some adjectives are empty calories, and storied is surely one of them. Like prestigious and legendary, two other adjectives that crop up in the work of unimaginative writers, it says merely, “I’m writing an important story about somebody you should have heard of.”

Of course, the first example is constructed almost completely from prefabricated material. Extraordinary outpouring of public emotion turns up whenever a crowd gathers, especially if they are outdoors to pay their last respects. And if this storied figure is also a patriarch, then he must be part of a dynasty.

It pretty much writes itself.

The other article — after revealing that Mr. Kennedy was a Democrat from Massachusetts — refers to his storied ability to eke out compromises. The phrasal verb to eke out, which originally meant to supplement by meager increments or to stretch out a small supply, has come to mean to accomplish with great difficulty, and no one has any business insisting on the older sense. But I thought that compromises were hammered out in the smithy of the Congress.

Sometimes the writer reaches for the wrong cliche. But eyeing, at least, is pure journalese.