A Grand Illusion

“stop your farcical aquatic ceremonies.”
From The Waco Tribune-Herald:

Mourners filled the pews of First Baptist Church on Sunday night to grieve the death of the Rev. Kyle Lake, who was electrocuted earlier in the day as he prepared to baptize a new member at University Baptist Church.
Lake, 33, was stepping into the baptistery, a small pool used for baptisms, as he reached out to adjust a nearby microphone, which produced an electric shock, said Ben Dudley, community pastor at University Baptist Church. Several doctors attending the service because of Baylor University’s homecoming rushed to help Lake, who collapsed, Dudley said.

Kate Bush’s Aerial, her first album in 12 years, is, according to a New York Times profile, “split between a group of individual songs (the first CD, subtitled ‘A Sea of Honey’) and a suite (the 42-minute ‘A Sky of Honey’).” It reminds me of her best — and most uneven — album, Hounds of Love. I love my favorite Kate Bush songs to death (the aggessively feminine ones), and have no interest in many others (the aggressively witchy ones). I wish she had cleared more songs for dance-floor finagling a la “Cloudbusting” for Utah Saints‘ “Something Good,” which is the greatest song ever written.

What say you?

I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, is formally indicted by the grand jury. The charges: one count of obstruction, two counts of perjury, and two of making false statements in the course of an investigation.

In my first published film review in 6 years, I praise Capote for being almost everything In Cold Blood is not: searching and compassionate. Watching this movie did not make me like Truman Capote’s writing appreciably, by the way.

Some of my earliest music listening memories involve Jeff Lynne productions: that magical first Traveling Wilburys album, George Harrison’s Cloud Nine, Roy Orbison’s Mystery Girl. I knew even then that Lynne was a shitty dresser, and it was no surprise when Paul McCartney, eight years too late and three after bad-mouthing him, hooked up with him hoping for a hit (it kinda worked); but as long as I didn’t have to listen to any ELO hits beside “Evil Woman” and “Xanadu” I could forgive his missteps. Here’s my attempt at justice.

I’m back. Awakening Sunday morning around 5:30 after a fitful sleep, I turned on the TV just as Hurricane Wilma was making landfall. Then the shit really hit the fan — a fan which kept spinning for almost four hours. At one point I sought refuge in the bathroom, afraid that one of my bedroom windows was going to blow. No damage to my property, but the storm’s effects are unexpected, enormous, and slightly wearying to recount in this post-Katrina world. This is a pretty good recap.

Finally, I must be the only one in three county area of which South Florida is composed who has power.

Finally: a review of Liz Phair’s Somebody’s Miracle as sharp as mine. Hee hee.

Finally: a review of Liz Phair’s Somebody’s Miracle as sharp as mine. Hee hee.

Thanks to Hurricane Wilma, posting will be light for the next couple of days. It’s only appropriate that a hurricane season this absurd requires a name most commonly associated with a cartoon character.

The always reliable David Thomson on A History of Violence, still my favorite movie of the year. Favorite excerpt:

Quite deliberately, I am not telling you the story of A History of Violence. That’s because it employs a formula you’ve seen before, but gives it a radically new rhythm, one in which the atmosphere of the title is not just the energy that renews the country and which makes it safe and dangerous again. This film is a preparation for the uncertainty of the last few shots.

The always reliable David Thomson on A History of Violence, still my favorite movie of the year. Favorite excerpt:

Quite deliberately, I am not telling you the story of A History of Violence. That’s because it employs a formula you’ve seen before, but gives it a radically new rhythm, one in which the atmosphere of the title is not just the energy that renews the country and which makes it safe and dangerous again. This film is a preparation for the uncertainty of the last few shots.

Then there’s Madonna’s new single, “Hung Up,” about which I’ll say little, except it’s much more irresistable than it has any right to be, since it’s, in essence, a sample of my favorite ABBA song* dolled up in club beats, mixing-board fader nonsense appropriated from Kylie Minogue’s superior “Love At First Sight,” and Maddie’s increasingly helium-centric vocals. Is it better than “American Life’? Well. It’s the difference between soy lattées and a bad hit of ecstasy.

*The ABBA song is “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight).”

My colbertphilia continues. Dana Stevens has a slightly-too-automatically-cautious-but-still-good review of The Report’s first episode.

Last night’s show opened with a funny, if slightly overlong, segment called “The Word”—an obvious spoof of Bill O’Reilly’s nightly “Talking Points,” in which bulleted summaries of Colbertian wisdom appeared down the right-hand side of the screen as the fake anchor enjoined his audience to stop thinking so darn much. “Check gut,” read one directive, as Colbert raged against not only the “word police over at Webster’s,” but against knowledge-gathering in general: “I don’t trust books. They’re all fact, no heart.” Colbert concluded this segment with a kind of mission statement for the show to come: “Anyone can read the news to you—I promise to feel the news at you.”

And.

The interview will be a tough segment to pull off on an ongoing basis; it’s neither a sincere one-on-one conversation, as on The Daily Show, nor an Ali G-style stunt in which the interviewee has no idea he’s being mocked. Where will Colbert’s bookers go to find interesting and willing guests? Celebrities looking to promote a new book, record, or film may fear being made fools of, and even the most oblivious of self-loving blowhards (the real-life versions of the character Colbert himself plays) will get that the show’s aim is satirical, and likely refuse to appear. Tonight’s guest, Lesley Stahl, will presumably be as game to ridicule her own profession as Phillips was. But once The Colbert Report has cycled through the roster of self-deprecating news anchors, where will it go from there?

Also, check out Phoebe’s blog for more Colbert links, followed by some nonsense about hockey–ignore that part.

Well, now they’re having trouble scaring off the Norwegians.

After reading this and Dennis Lim’s essay, I got curious about Joan Didion’s new A Year of Magical Thinking, “a meticulous chronicle of a wretched spell that began on December 30, 2003, when her husband, John Gregory Dunne, died of a massive coronary in their Upper East Side apartment while their only child, Quintana Roo, lay unconscious in an ICU nearby, stricken with pneumonia that had quickly developed into septic shock.”

Didion helpfully includes her husband’s autopsy and daughter’s CT scan.

Since Didion’s prose is at its best rather steely, I doubt the results are as morbidly exploitative as it sounds.

I’ve circled Didion for years; the only recent book of hers I’ve finished is the essay collection Political Fictions (the home of the most unruffled, meticulous account of how the right-wing conspiracy created Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr and eventually impeached Bill Clinton I’ve read). A recent essay, “The Case of Theresa Schiavo,” is also impressive. Miami remains a pungent read, a reminder of just how grisly living in South Florida was in the 1980’s. Anybody read A Year of Magical Thinking yet?