Never trust a skinny tie

Been back on Long Island for about a month now, and have come to the deeply frustrating conclusion that there are no good bars within a half-hour of my parents' house. Despite this, I decided to go bar hopping with a friend of mine from high school in Port Jefferson on Saturday--I figured a nice area like Port Jeff must have at least one or two joints with a decent selection of something.

I'm not going to name the bar I'm about to complain about, because I don't want to be one of those bitchy Yelp people, and when all's said and done, I got what I ordered, and didn't pay nearly what I should have for it. But my experience there really... funny? disappointing? Another excuse for me to write about alcohol?

Disclaimer: This is a bar snob post. I am going to sound very pretentious. I'm particularly judgmental of sub-par bartending because it's a dream of mine to pour someday, so it irritates me when I see others do it worse than I think I could. I didn't tip the guy badly, if it makes you feel any better.

It was around 9:45pm on a Saturday night when we walked in. The place seemed like your typical not-quite-sports-bar: heavily lacquered wood framed by television screens and bar stools; nothing very distinctive.

My friend and I grab a seat at the bar, and I get up to see what they've got-- given the decor my expectations weren't very high, and I don't mind a simple bar, but sometimes places can surprise you. First thing I notice: about fifteen different flavored vodkas (and we're talking Smirnoff Raspberry Twist, here, not a respectable Van Gogh); not very encouraging. Then I see a bunch of whiskeys I don't recognize and quickly realize it's because they're all Irish (sorry, Jameson fans). Beyond that it's all your typical stuff. I'm trying to decide whether I want to settle for a Jack and (diet) coke or the bland IPA they've got on tap when two things catch my eye: on a lower shelf, cloaked in shadow, sit bottles of Pernod and St Germain. My standards for this bar immediately go up-- no one would carry stock they don't know how to serve, right?

It's pretty crowded so there are three guys behind the bar: two of them are dressed casually in ill-fitting polos and shorts, but the third was wearing a dress shirt, skinny tie, and proper trousers-- he's the one who took our orders. "Awesome," I thought, "we got the guy who knows what he's doing."

My friend orders a beer and I ask for a Pernod rocks. The beer he gets right away, but he spends about two-and-a-half minutes scanning the shelves trying to find the Pernod (I thought it'd be pretty obnoxious for me to point it out to him). When he finally finds it, he grabs a rocks glass, shovels in some crushed ice, and then completely fills it with Pernod-- way more than I was expecting to get, and not how I imagine it's typically served, but what the hell, I wasn't about to complain about that, and I wasn't really expecting proper ice at that kind of bar.

Normally when bar-hopping I like to switch after one drink, but I couldn't leave before having something with the St Germain.

"Could I have a gin and tonic with St Germain?"

"You want a single or a double?"

"Uh... double, sure."

"What kind of gin do you want, rack?"

And that's when I knew this guy had no idea what St Germain was. Personally, if I'd been tending and someone asked for that, I'd probably suggest a couple of our top brands, but certainly wouldn't assume they wanted the absolute worst thing we carried. For those unfamiliar with bar lingo, "well" or "rack" booze is the default you'll get served if you don't specify a preference, and usually means the stuff that's too cheap to display; they're often literally kept beneath the bar, hence the names.

St Germain and the kind of gin one one ought actually mix it with.

St Germain is a relatively expensive, high quality (notoriously delicious) liqueur, so a patron ordering that probably doesn't want to ruin it with a crap base liquor. They're also probably looking for some balance in their cocktail, so while I'm an alcoholic and will never shy away from a double, it was a pretty strange question to ask, especially because I'm a relatively petite young woman, and he'd just given me heaven-only-knows how many shots of Pernod (although maybe once he saw how I knocked that back he made some [correct] assumptions).

Still, because I am awkward as hell and didn't want to waste his time while I mulled over my gin options, I agreed to the rack gin. I also kind of figured it couldn't have been that bad. Hoo boy.

He grabs one of the mason jars they serve their beers and mixed drinks in (a cute touch, I'll grant), scoops in some ice, pulls a bottle of gin I have never before seen in my life from beneath the bar, pours in about two-and-a-half shots, and just about tops it off with tonic. Then he stares dumbly at the shelves behind him again for about two minutes before giving up and going into the back to find someone who actually does know where the St Germain is (again I was too awkward to just point it out for him). For all I know he didn't even know what it looked like. He pours maybe 3/4 oz on the top, squeezes a lime wedge over it, shoves it on the rim, throws in a bendy straw, and without giving it so much as a swish pushes it across the bar to me.

A lot of that I could forgive given the nature of the bar, but between not stirring it even once and the straw I sincerely had to keep my mouth from gaping. Who puts a straw in any kind of high ball? And what kind of bartender is in such a rush they can't stir a damn drink, especially when he's making it directly in front of the patron? I also found the lime distracting given the elderflower, but some folks will take a lime with their St Germain g&ts, so I can't really complain about that.

The rack gin was so flavorless that it let the elderflower really take the lead, which I didn't mind at all, so it did work out, but for goodness sake, bar owners: don't stock shit your staff doesn't understand.

He only charged me $8 for each of the drinks, which is actually a phenomenal deal, all things considered-- I don't know whether he was being nice or really had no idea what he'd served me, but, like I said, I tipped him well. I wouldn't have been half as nitpicky if they hadn't carried such nice things! I guess they just bought them to look nice on the shelf. A dangerous game, my friends.

In other news, I've decided that if I can't be a bartender, I'd be a great mystery drinker. Hire me to assess your bar! I'll do it for free if you catch my tab.

Well, you did put the "try" in "try too hard"

In these winter days of my undergraduate career I find myself with ever increasing frequency bouncing around Youtube like it was some sad nocturnal music festival in the outskirts of Atlanta. I went through a brief Hank III phase one night last week (I think?) but felt uneasy about it even then. He's pretty emblematic of what's known in some circles as "rebel/outlaw country"-- country punk redneck motorcycle gang, if you follow. Here's "Dick in Dixie", to familiarize ya (I don't need to warn you of vulgarity, do I?):

Well some say I'm not country
and that's just fine with me
'Cause I don't wanna be country
with some faggot looking over at me
They say that I'm ill-mannered
that I'm gonna self-destruct
But if you know what I'm thinkin'
you'll know that pop country really sucks 

So I'm here to put the "dick" in Dixie
and the "cunt" back in country
'Cause the kind of country I hear now days
is a bunch of fuckin' shit to me

Well we're losing all the outlaws
that had to stand their ground
and they're being replaced by these kids
from a manufactured town
And they don't have no idea
about sorrow and woe
'Cause they're all just too damn busy
kissin' ass on Music Row

This is, in fact, a more sophisticated example of the genre (I will spare you Whiskeydick's "Drunk as Hell", among other things). Now I have nothing against vulgarity, simplicity, or even lazy songwriting-- there's a very important place in this world for barn stompers, lullabyes, banal melodies sung over a sink full of dishes-- but I just don't believe a damn word he's singing. He's not pop country, sure, and he may in fact be a badass (I've never met the guy!), but, well, as Zorba says: 

"...I live all those mysteries, as you call them, and I haven't the time to write. Sometimes it's war, sometimes women, sometimes wine, sometimes the santuri: where would I find the time to drive a miserable pen? That's how the business falls into the hands of the pen-pushers! All those who actually live the mysteries of life haven't the time to write, and all those who have the time don't live them!"

This might be the long way round to saying "show, don't tell," but the particularly sad thing in this instance is the audience for this stuff. If the "outlaw country" musicians are heavy handedly carving their own one dimensional mythology, the concert goers and juke boxers are even more pitiably alienated from whatever pleather studded, whiskey stained heroism the songs are venerating.

I'm a 22 year old Yale student (from Long Island) majoring in Karamazov, Crazy, & Christ, and even I, in my feeble alcohol-ism and "hard living" shadow plays, recoil from this as peasants did from Communist agitators preaching the commune's utopian perfection. It rings of cheap tin and something pathetically foreign, and leaves me quite confused.

How I feel during primary season

"A very handsome young man had come up to our table in a state of extreme anger; he was even angrier than any of the angry young men in Dalmatia. He evidently knew Constantine and the judge and the banker, but he did not give them any formal greeting. Though his hair was bronze and his eyes crackled with blueness, and he might have been brother to the two Moslems we had seen talking politics in the park that afternoon, he cried out, 'What about the accursed Turks?' 

The judge and banker made no reply, but Constantine said, 'Well, it was not I who made them.' 

The young man insisted, 'But you serve our precious Government, don't you?' 

'Yes,' said Constantine, 'for the sake of my country, and perhaps a little for the sake of my soul, I have given up the deep peace of being in opposition.'" (BLGF)

This one goes out to all my radical libertarian friends who are too good for the GOP, too pure for anyone but Ron Paul, and too utopian to be meaningfully invested in this country, this government, this year. I love you, but grow up, and stop using ideological rigor to justify your ignorance and detachment. You can bellow from within or snark from without. You tell me which one got Rand Paul elected Senator. The party ain't gonna come to you.

The GOP's come a long way in the past few years-- libertarianism has too. We're not just the War Party anymore, whether we're talking American culture or the Middle East. Hell, there are more elected Republicans openly questioning and opposing the drug war and advocating marijuana decriminalization/legalization than there are Democrats-- one of our guys got Willie freaking Nelson's endorsement; even Glenn Beck and Andrew Napolitano are pro-legalization! Prominent Republicans like Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor have said time and again that they're willing to cut defense spending, and even that worthless pile of hair spray and Vaseline Mitt Romney is leaning on federalism (or, to use a more taboo phrase, "state's rights") to explain his horrendous legislative record. We have Scott Walker making himself one of the most hated men in the country (well, certain parts of it) fighting for a responsible budget in Wisconsin and Chris Christie telling policemen their union contracts are "obscene" in New Jersey. Tim Pawlenty signed an executive order forbidding state agencies from applying for federal funding for programs tied to Obamacare, and then went on television and likened the federal government to a drug dealer. There are worse times to be a libertarian Republican.

This is Former Governor of Minnesota Tim Pawlenty being adorable with children. He gets higher ratings from Cato's fiscal policy report card than Mitch Daniels. Wake up.

Even if you think a lot of this is just talk, what does it tell you that putting a small gov't spin on things sells? You don't have to look farther than Newt "I love the 90s" Gingrich to see that nowadays we're dealing with a different breed of elephant. How'd we get here? Well, let me tell you, the best thing Ron Paul ever did for this country was keep an R next to his name.

Do we have a long way to go? Hell yes, of course we do, and I'm still in favor of all manner of ballot access and electoral reforms. But if you want to take what little momentum we have and keep it going, if you're tired of having nothing to differentiate Rs from Ds but the size of their American flag pins, if you understand that the State is harder to pare back than the Lernaean hydra and we don't have time to waste waiting for Barry Goldwater 2.0, then make sure you're a registered Republican.

And for the love of God, don't vote for Mitt Romney.

PS: In case any of you have lingering hopes for "liberaltarianism" (though I do so hope that my readers are more intelligent than that), check out Mother Jones, noted "progressive" publication, attacking our boy Ron.

Just promise me we won't nominate Adlai Stevenson

By the time I finish writing this, Huckabee will probably have announced his decision already, but I couldn't let the most recent FiveThirtyEight pass by without comment.

Mr Silver is apparently attempting to divine who benefits the most in the event that Mr Huckabee keeps his hat firmly on his head. He breaks down Mr Huckabee's appeal pretty well (SoCon, evangelical, Southerner, "outsider", runs well in Iowa, works for Fox News-- though he forgot "guitar BAMF" [I'm very partial to bassists] and "jowly as all hell"), but when he starts evaluating everyone else I started to get confused.

This may be adorable

but he ain't got nothin' on Thad.

As if I needed more reasons to hate Rachel Maddow.

1. He seems to be reducing social conservatism to a vaguely traditionalist stance on marriage. If this is the metric, everyone but Ron and Gary is a strong social conservative! What about abortion and the drug war (which doesn't have to be a social issue, but would likely be spun as one if anyone came out firmly against it, Johnson's best efforts to sell it as a budget problem aside)? Gun rights? Prostitution? Sin taxes? The death tax (which Gingrich seems to be spinning as a social issue, which I think is kinda cool)?

2. I just want to register my immense frustration with the level of attention Herman Cain and Donald Trump have been getting by serious pundits while Gary Johnson and Ron Paul continue to be almost completely ignored. Really? Really? I can't even deal with you people.

3. Silver counts Daniels as an "evangelical Protestant". He's a Presbyterian-- you know, a descendant of Calvinism? Maybe I don't know enough Presbyterians, but Huckabee/Bachmann/Palin types they ain't.

4. He also counts Gingrich as an "outsider". In fact, the only people he doesn't list as "outsiders" are Romney and Huntsman. I'm sorry, but if Newt is an outsider, the inside must be somewhere literally up Reince Priebus's ass.

5. I get why people keep talking about Daniels-- they want him to run. Why are we still talking about Bachmann? Can we stop now? Please?

So, it's 8:07pm and Huck still hasn't announced. I've got my fingers crossed it's a big fat no-- here's hoping!

Cos see when I was younger I would say

In the spirit of introspection and honest self-evaluation (and because I'm finally starting the reapplication process so I can finish my degree...), I present:

TEN JOBS I WOULD LOVE TO HAVE

(and some inspirational factors)

1. Carny maquilleuse: RuPaul's Drag Race, various Youtube makeup tutorials, Carnivàle, Waits's "Circus"

Shannel (Bryan Watkins), who was totally robbed in Season 1

2. Godbeat journalist: the complete ignorance of huge variations in structure and hierarchy of religious institutions and inability to understand the most basic relationships between religious thought and politics among the educated class,  GetReligion.org

3. Tabagisme curator: Cigarettes are Sublime, the entire Tobacciana category on eBay, The Cigarette Book, this Lynn Barber column on the symbolic nuance brought to classic cinema by cigarettes, this cigarette dispenser from Mad Men:

It is nigh impossible to find cigarette dispensers like this, anywhere, nowadays.
I shudder to think how many hours of my life I've wasted looking.

4. Bar singer: there's just too much.

5. Early Russian history professor: Paul Bushkovitch.

6. Something with the Office of External Affairs and Interchurch Relations or Pension Board (OCA): any number of posts GetReligion has had to write because the religious institution in question left entirely too much open to misinterpretation by the media.  Also, the Pension Board helps parish treasurers understand the US tax code (among other things), which is a noble endeavor if ever I've heard of one. Perhaps inexplicably various scenes in A Canticle for Leibowitz and In This House of Brede. 

7. Smoking rights activist and/or PR rep: Nick Naylor,  NYC CLASH (particularly their seeming inability either to design a proper website or understand why such a thing is necessary), Freedom2Choose, Tobacco Truth, TobaccoHarmReduction.org, Michael Siegel and his courageous battle against the overt abuse and politicization of "science", Simon Clark (of FOREST, among other praiseworthy organizations),  Dick Puddlecote, Velvet Glove, Iron Fist: A History of Anti-Smoking, the Owl Shop and Shelley's shared (and endangered) status as the only legal cigarette-friendly bars I've ever been to in the US, despite much searching.

8. Anything at the Hillwood Estate: Who wouldn't want to work at their favorite museum? I would clean its toilets-- hell, I would do worse than that-- if I could wander through those grounds every day. Marjorie Merriweather Post (Close Hutton Davies May), daughter of C.W. Post and founder of both General Foods and Hillwood Museum and Gardens, was not only a millionaire with a sense of philanthropic duty, but an heiress who grew her father's company, kept it in the family, and took seriously her role as an arbiter and patron of culture. She briefly lived in the Soviet Union with her third husband, Ambassador Davies, and while there not only grew to love Russian decorative and liturgical art, but saw it as her responsibility to salvage as much of it as possible from the brutal environs of Stalin's Russia, where all remnants of the old order, aristocratic and religious, were being melted down, ritualistically destroyed, or sold into black markets. Russianists everywhere owe her a great debt-- the Estate is also a center of scholarship and grants access to its various libraries and archives to researchers by appointment, in addition to having an online database. You can take a brief virtual tour of the museum (that in no way does it justice) here. Really, if you're around DC, whether you're a Slavophile or not, make it out to the Estate sometime-- the gardens are magnificent in the warmer months. 

9. Tom Waits roadie: Actually I think if I ever saw him in person I'd spontaneously combust, so this might not be wise.

10. Professor of Orthodox Church-State relations/ government advisor on the same: the "Conflict and Cooperation in Post-Communist Europe" seminar I took last spring. The inability of many political scientists and theorists to wrap their heads around sincere religious belief and the many troubling implications of this failure. Ivo Banac (whose course, "Eastern Europe Since 1914", I was lucky enough to take while he was still lecturing!) and much of his writing. Daniel Larison.

TEN JOBS PRE-COLLEGE ME WOULD'VE LOVED TO HAVE

(anytime prior to matriculation, not just immediately prior)

1. Political speech writer: the knowledge that I was a very good writer and a very bad communicator. My mother's obsession with the Clintons.
2. Fiction author and/or Vanity Fair contributor: latent narcissism misdiagnosed as vocation. Issues of Vanity Fair laying on the bathroom floor. Reading at "college level" by 10 or 11. Being treated like an actual prodigy, instead of a slightly advanced student, by several of my teachers, and the resulting assumption that I had interesting things to say.
3. Diplomat: peculiar fondness for airports. Faux intellectual disdain for America. Europhilia. Hans Gruber. Acceptance to the Georgetown School of Foreign Service.

4. Physics/math historian: attempt to balance my love and appreciation for the beauty of math and physics with the realization that I was probably not smart enough to pursue either field directly. The University of Pennsylvania's History and Sociology of Science Department, Mark Adams in particular. Copernicus, Brahe.

Contains neither plums nor pudding.

5. History professor: My 11th grade American history textbook. Orlando Figes's Natasha's Dance. Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII. The vague notion that I wanted to be an "academic" and an "intellectual" (though I had no real idea what either of those words meant). A very eerie History Channel documentary I saw when I was 8 or 9 about some relatively early English king who had a series of unfortunate and mysterious diseases and whose death both left me profoundly unsettled and forever imbued the study of history with an air of mysticism and danger. The Cloisters.

For a long time after I visited the Cloisters (sometime in elementary school), I assumed the word had something to do with death and the dead because of how dank, tenebrous, and otherworldly it was. 

6. Lawyer: Law & Order's fixed presence on my mother's television. Winning some "debates" in summer camp in fourth grade. The assumption that lawyers are a thing smart people tend to become. My phenomenal bullshitting skills (in 7th grade I convinced my entire home ec class that I had been born and partially raised in the UK, and the teacher that my mother had gone to school with her sister in England).

7. UN translator: The Interpreter. Having a better French accent than my teacher (who I later learned spoke French so poorly that she frequently made up words and grammatical constructions. We did not have AP languages in my district). Being really good at memorizing things.

8. Mathematician: spending hours staring at my calculus textbook, finally understanding a concept, finding that more beautiful and rewarding than memorizing dates of Supreme Court cases.

9. Psychiatrist: Frasier. John Katzenbach's The Analyst. The Dali Museum. Hannibal Lecter. The first Artemis Fowl book. Dostoevsky's White Nights. Ivan Karamazov. "Antisocial" tendencies.

10. Neuroscientist/neurologist: Society for Neuroscience Brain Bee. Fondness for the orderliness of hospitals. Flowers for Algernon.

Speaking of no-fault divorce...

Tonight the YPU debated R: Abolish no-fault divorce with Mr Glenn Stanton of Focus on the Family. Sadly the motion failed, though the affirmative gave a decent fight, but regardless I thought I'd commemorate it with Nina Simone's positively brilliant version of "Love Me or Leave Me", which has a fascinating piano solo (starts about a minute in) that beautifully and smoothly incorporates her classical training. Well worth the listen for that alone.

Love me or leave me and let me be lonely
You won't believe me but I love you only
I'd rather be lonely than happy with somebody else

You might find the night time the right time for kissing
Night time is my time for just reminiscing
Regretting instead of forgetting with somebody else

There'll be no one unless that someone is you
I intend to be independently blue

I want your love, don't wanna borrow
Have it today to give back tomorrow
Your love is my love
There's no love for nobody else

As for my thoughts on the divorce epidemic in this country: I chalk it up to the common misunderstanding that love is an emotion, not a virtue.

R: Bring back the stocks

I delivered this speech last night at the Yale Political Union's annual Gardner-White Prize Debate on the topic, Resolved: Bring back the stocks, and took second place. Miss Libresco of Unequally Yoked took first!

“In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. ... The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it—and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.”

Ladies and gentlemen, we've heard much tonight about shame and humiliation, but I stand before you now not to outline some “high embarrassment theory”, nor to indulge some quasi-medieval fantasy of communal accountability, but to remind us all of the profound disgrace we have let befall our country. Ladies and gentlemen, I am here to shame you.

Mr Speaker, what do China, Belarus, and Iran have in common? I think the body already knows! All of these countries-- and many more besides-- have lower incarceration rates than the United States of America. Our country: home of the fire that would light the world, the shining city upon a hill, the last, best hope of earth-- where 748 of every 100,000 residents wake up in jumpsuits instead of pajamas and in cells of iron and concrete instead of homes. Let me stress how phenomenally high that number is: the United States comprises less than 5% of the world's population, but nearly 25% of the world's prisoners are American.

How did we get here? How did the land of the free become the land where, despite relatively constant rates of violent crime over the past three decades, our prison population has quadrupled? The culprits are many, including mandatory minimum sentencing, “three strike” rules, and, of course, the War on Drugs.

However, to blame our legislators would be to ignore our complicity: through unforgivable apathy and willful ignorance, we, too, are guilty. Guilty of perpetuating “a society of captives”, and guilty of sitting idly by while American ghettos feed overpopulated prisons like some diseased vulture regurgitating its last meal into the throat of its chick, fatally poisoning it thereby.

Now Mr Speaker, I do not mean to imply that our nation's inmates are without guilt, or undeserving of punishment, but I think it is by now clear that we as a society are wholly unaware of what I deem to be the most pressing issue facing modern America.

To the fiscal conservatives: in 2005, it cost an average of $24,000 to imprison someone for one year. States vary wildly, however-- in Rhode Island, they managed to spend $45,000 per inmate. We could've sent them to Brown for 39.

To those concerned with justice: there has been more significantly more legislation about banning smoking in prisons than about collecting data on rape and sexual assault, much less doing anything to prevent it, but according to Human Rights Watch, 140,000 American inmates are raped each year. I refuse to believe that that is a price any of us are willing to pay for “justice”.

Are you worried about safety? Since 1980, the number of drug offenders in our prisons has increased 1200%. But aren't most drug offenders violent criminals? Only 1 in 10 federal crack offenses involves violence, or the threat of violence. Whether you think cocaine in vending machines is the American way or not, I think we can all agree that pedophiles, rapists, and murderers take precedence.

The absurdity of the resolution aside, tonight's debate is far from a joke. I apologize for not having paid sufficient lip service to tonight's conceit, but the criminal justice system in this country is an abomination, and it is a black mark upon all of our souls that we pay more attention to unions, and guns, and charter schools, and whatever drivel Sarah Palin or Keith Olbermann said last night, than to prison reform. I stand here tonight in the affirmative because there is nothing more shameful, nothing that goes more against the noble spirit President Kennedy alluded to in his inaugural address, than the family-destroying, spirit-crushing, agency-erasing, hellholes of drug addiction, violence, and rape into which we so nonchalantly throw thousands upon thousands of American citizens every blessed year.

Whether you care about freedom, or justice, or equality, or the strength of the economy, or the legalization of drugs, or the spread of AIDS in inner cities, or all of the above and then some, you must vote in the affirmative tonight. Yes, the stocks are primitive, cruel, barbaric, and exposed prisoners to all kinds of verbal and physical abuse—but compared to what we have now, they are downright progressive.

Thank you.

My thanks to Professor David Wagner, who helped me research this speech (here I note that it was originally much longer, and had to be cut rather significantly to come in under four minutes). He blogs about legal issues at Ninomania.

Organizations and blogs that deal with prison reform and related issues:

The Innocence Project

The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

The Prison Fellowship

The Justice Fellowship

After Prison: Roadblocks to Reentry

Citizens United for the Rehabilitation of Errants

PrisonReform.org

Right on Crime

A tobacco roundup

CIVILIZATION REQUIRES ASHTRAYS

Smoking bans lead to more indoor fires!

AND YOU THOUGHT JIM MORRISON WAS A REBEL

Alt-rock band/mellifluous troupe of conspiracy theorists Muse was very nearly banned from performing anywhere in Australia for smoking during a show last week.

I'M ONLY GONNA BREAK, BREAK YOUR PSEUDO-SCIENTIFIC ANTI-SMOKING CONCEIT

"In contrast with smaller regional studies we find that smoking bans are not associated with statistically significant short-term declines in mortality or hospital admissions for myocardial infarction or other diseases. ... An analysis simulating smaller studies using subsamples reveals that large short-term increases in myocardial infarction incidence following a smoking ban are as common as the large decreases reported in the published literature," (emphasis mine).

More here and here.

NOW THIS IS THE KIND OF ADVERTISING I OBJECT TO

I Love You, Phillip Morris is in no way about cigarettes.

THIS IS A PRO-SMOKING CIGARETTE SONG/

SO EVERYBODY LIGHT ONE UP AND FUCKING SING ALONG

"More intelligent American children are more likely to grow up to consume more tobacco, while more intelligent British children are more likely to grow up to consume more illegal drugs." This is because Americans are inherently superior.

SECONDHAND SMOKE AND MIRRORS

A one-time niconazi is converted! Also, John Banzhaf continues to be the worst person in the world.

YOU MANIACS, YOU BLEW IT UP! AH, DAMN YOU! GOD DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!

What has become of NYC that police officers can not only mistake a man smoking outside a window for a potential jumper, but bring him in for a psych eval against his will? Have New Yorkers already forgotten what cigarettes look like?

A SONG

"Ashtray Heart" - Captain Beefheart (RIP)

"You used me like an ashtray heart

You picked me out, brushed me off

Crushed me while I was burning out

Then you picked me out

Like an ashtray heart"

A PICTURE

Money never sleeps, but the audience, well...

(This is a review of Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps. There are no spoilers, but you shouldn't care even if there were, because no one should pay to see this movie.)

The line was long, extending through the lobby, down the stairs, out the building and along the sidewalk of what serendipitously happened to be New Haven's own Wall Street, which, in lieu of the world's largest stock exchange, is home to the Yale Law School (take from that what you will).

We arrived a half hour early and were literally the last two people to get seats in the packed auditorium. Before sitting down we were wanded by an overwhelmed-looking security guard to make sure we had no cameras or cellphones with us, which were strictly forbidden from the advanced screening somehow secured by the Yale Film Society.

Two hours later, as we emerged back onto Wall Street, bitchily dissecting the film's vapid preachy tone, inattention to character development and/or depth and/or symbolism, sloppy and inaccurate references to "moral hazard" and butchered summaries of the American financial situation, we paused, not even a block from the theater, having realized that neither of us could remember the protagonist's name.

We knew it started with a J and was probably monosyllabic. I offered to bet on the name with my friend. Though I couldn't remember a single line or scene where any character addressed our protagonist anonyme, my intuition screamed "Jake!", and I'm rarely the type to ignore my screaming inner gypsy.

My friend was leaning toward Jack, but he wouldn't take me up on the bet. Only 20 years old, he's already a tax and finance wonk, and as such (or maybe the causation flows the other way?) he's prone to bouts of "rational decision making," "cost-benefit analysis," "risk management," and other such soulless WASP affectations. Of course, he was right not to- the wailing old Slovak that is the voice of my subconscious hadn't let me down (the protagonist's name was the incomparably forgettable "Jake Moore").

See what I did there, drawing on personality and cultural archetypes to help make what is essentially a non-event into a vaguely engaging narrative whose conclusion largely allows you to draw your own?

If you are looking for anything even vaguely resembling that kind of storytelling, send me the $10 you would've wasted on Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, because at best, that's what it could've been, and it failed to achieve even that.

It was 133 minutes long, roughly 120 of which felt like window dressing for what seemed to be the only two scenes Oliver Stone cared about: Moore's pseudo-scientific babble explaining the wonders of fusion energy to a Chinese investor (accompanied by CGI animations a la first season House- you know, before they realized it was a cheesy gimmick that distracted from the storytelling), and Gekko's bizarre lecture montage explaining the financial crisis, which, y'know, failed to really explain anything, but the hamfisted editing and musical score might trick someone into thinking it does if they don't bother listening.

The Whitney Humanities Center auditorium seats 242 people. Over 200 of my fellow audience goers that night were college students, so I'm not sure if WS: MNS will get quite as many laughs in future showings, but I'm also not sure that Stone didn't intend for some of the more "intense" scenes to garner outright laughter.

"Do you realize what you're asking for here?" asks some suit behind a conference table in the NY Federal Reserve. "The biggest bailout in history." Soap opera-confrontation quality line delivery. Serious Eyes! Serious Forehead! Serious Voice! The laughter begins. "Nationalization. Socialism." The audience loses it. The villainous Bretton James replies, with equal levels of 'I am being so earnest you should call me Jack', "If we don't do this, there won't be any more history."

I am not making this up.

Michael Douglas is largely a pleasure to watch, except in scenes with Carey Mulligan, who plays Gekko's spoiled brat liberal activist Elektra blah blah blah daughter Winnie. All the lines I remember because I liked them (and not because they reminded me of the self-serious bathos of Ed Wood) were his. Bud Fox briefly reappears. It wasn't particularly entertaining- all I remember is that Charlie Sheen's nose has somehow acquired a vaguely Nixoneqsue bulbousness since 1987.

The costuming was also fantastic, and I might recommend this film to aspiring sartorialists just because of the incredible attention to detail. When Jake first confronts Bretton James (played by Josh Brolin), having interrupted some kind of latter day bacchanal/fundraiser of his, Bretton is wearing a sumptuous burgundy suit jacket with a tie that matches in all the right ways, somehow faintly evoking a Doctor Faustus vibe. Gekko more than once wears an absolutely gorgeous jacket with a plaid so subtle it might be missed on the big screen- but look for it, and revel in fabrics and tailoring the likes of which you didn't know existed.

One final note, because this "review" is already too long and I don't feel like getting into the fifty other reasons why this film is vacuous at best: in the original Wall Street Gekko is never seen smoking a cigar, only cigarettes. I, being me, read a lot into this- everyone else in Wall Street who matters smokes cigars- Bud Fox, his father, and Gekko smoke cigarettes. To me this said something interesting about tobacco-as-class-marker, and about Gekko's unwillingness to let go of his lower class past in particular.

In Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, I don't think I saw a single cigarette, and Gekko smoked plenty of cigars. I actually think this makes sense- destabilized, insecure, and with a fraction of the money he did prior to incarceration, he no longer has the luxury or the confidence to play himself down- there's a scene where he greets some other financial bigwig only to be awkwardly brushed aside and ignored- now, he needs every superficial wealth-and-power-signalling accessory he can find, for himself, probably, more than for anyone else.

Civil Rights are Neither!

Everything old is new again?

The apparently unconquerable Civil Rights Act Question continues to rear its slippery head, this time in Nevada:

"'It’s a simple question, but it’s a ‘gotcha’ question,' [Nevada Republican candidate for Senator Sue] Lowden, a former state Republican Party chairwoman, said on the show “Face to Face.” 'Frankly, I wouldn't even know Rand Paul if I saw him on TV.'"

How the hell has this become a meme? The '64 Civil Rights Act is a thought experiment you throw at naive libertarians their freshman year of college, not a goddamn campaign issue. What's even more frustrating than the repeated asking is the complete inability of Republicans to address, brush off, and get back on message. Aren't y'all supposed to be career politicians?

Look, I'll do you a favor and tell you what to say: in an ideal world, such heavy-handed state involvement in civil society wouldn't be necessary, and given the social and economic inequalities we see between races even today it's clear that the Civil Rights Act was a less than perfect solution, but there are clear instances where imperfect state intervention is better than none. But the United States today isn't a country wanting for government intervention! In fact... [get the fuck back on message].

It's not like the Tea Party is looking for ultra-libertarian rigor and consistency, here, folks, unless there's a secret GOP Plan to finally repeal the Civil Rights Act that no one told me about (there aren't even any prominent Republicans with mustaches ornate enough to twirl evilly, so what would be the point?).

And seriously, Sue, what's with the bus hailing over Rand Paul? Touchy much?

Here's how I'd explain the fascination of the cryogenic pod people apparently running 2010 political season coverage: libertarianism, though older than the baby boomers it currently horrifies, has never gotten much attention on the national stage. Unlike Republicanism and Democratism, it's an ideological system, meaning that consistency is possible, and in consistency-friendly soil strange verdure blooms. The triple-headed dog called Bush Derangement Syndrome, the Campaign for Liberty, and the Tea Party Movement tore away enough old meat to make room for libertarian candidates, who, used to never having a snowball's chance in hell at being serious contenders for anything significant, never really learned how to talk the talk. And now we all get to relive the same old conversations libertarians have been having since way before there even was a Madonna for Gaga to imitate because apparently the Democrats can't find anything more substantive to attack the new wave GOP on?

Oh, and one more thing: isn't race like, still a huge issue, and stuff? Pray to the devil you know, I guess.