Posted 9:45 PM by Gene

"I DIDN’T MAKE THE WORD THE 'BILBAO EFFECT,' THE REPORTERS DID THAT!!! AS THEY CREATED THE WORD 'STARCHITECT' — REPORTERS DID THAT!!!!" he said. "REPORTERS NOW TRY TO TEAR PEOPLE DOWN FOR BEING PART OF THE 'BILBAO EFFECT' OR BEING 'STARCHITECTS'!!!!! I’M NOT A STARCHITECT!!!!!!!!!!" (Well-designed overemphasis added)

...he said, preparing to stare lovingly in the mirror, checking the top of his head for leaks.

Posted 6:15 PM by Gene

There's a new biography of Peter Jennings, and it's hard to believe he died over two years ago -- or really that he died at all; when you invite someone electronically into your home every weekday he almost becomes family, indeed he comes to live permanently with you; and Jennings' handsome presence has with time covered up his warts, and though too many of our memories are TV-related, and we must break the habit to assume lives of our own, we duly confess to miss him.

Posted 6:08 PM by Gene

Perhaps if Hugo makes enough of the Spanish diaspora angry -- then again they've lived with Fidel so long, what's another dictator?

Posted 2:16 PM by Gene

Meantime another formerly big movie star confirms he too can make movies no one wants to see.

Or: SECOND AND GOAL.

Posted 11:16 AM by Gene

Deaths Mark GRIM Afghan, Iraq Milestones [Overemphasis added]

Now the hacks get to smile in TWO countries!

Posted 10:39 AM by Gene

"It was a very cooperative crowd, they even cleaned up after themselves," said LAPD Det. Paul Bishop.

Unlike with their masterworks, which they usually leave for US to clean up.

"We are in the process of being left behind," he added, noting that the AMPTP has made the same arguments in the past over videocassettes, DVDs, cable and reality TV. That assertion prompted many in the crowd to chant, "Bullshit" in unison for the next half minute.

What's the difference between working and not working except they didn't get paid for it?

Posted 8:03 AM by Gene

As Maryland's local legisla-TORS narrowly pass a courageous tax increase, we remembered something we came across quite by accident in Forbeslist -- the way it was buried hints that the rag was almost embarrassed by it:

The Laugher Curve?

Bucking conservative orthodoxy, two UC, Berkeley economics professors suggest in a new study that lower taxes do not in fact curb government spending. Christina D. Romer and David H. Romer write that the big federal tax cuts in 1948, 1964, 1981, 2001 and 2003 tended to be followed by spending increases and, within a few years, tax increases. They call their findings consistent with the "shared fiscal irresponsibility" theory, which holds that neither tax-cutters nor spenders care about deficits. Noteworthy conclusion: "No evidence of a starve the beast effect." --W.P.B.

HMMMM.

Posted 7:51 AM by Gene

Shucks, the roustabouts (or whatever they call them) who run the rides at Branson East's theme parks are striking after all, presumably to get their relatives discounted tickets.

Posted 7:49 AM by Gene

Norman Mailer, who screamed in print for 60 years, dedicating his career to the proposition of making the crank respectable, has died. RIP.

Or as somebody named Pyle at the ASSPRESS says:

...the country's literary conscience and provocateur....

...which is saying the same thing I said in code words, which is why an outfit like the CLATCH has gone from 75 to 15.

P. S. When the TWXSTERS initally posted the news on a banner they said his literary agent announced it. Not likely; that would have been the late fraud Scott Meredith, the perfect rep for a crank.

P. P. S. at 5:10 P.M. A NEW! member of PAJAMASMEDIA (and thus an honorary VOLOKHHEAD) uses 5,319 WORDS to say what I said in 23, and his radical shtick becomes tiresome after the second graf -- but that's what you need to be a SUPERDUPERMEGAGIGABLOGGER. (Via Arts & Letters Daily, which links to too many such effusions)

P. P. P. S.

...Its author, the man to whom the Lord spoke from out of the doughnut....

Not wanting to further research why so many of the SUPERDUPERMEGAGIGABLOGGERS have a word addiction we note this TNR essay from Leon Wieseltier, published five days ago; that line is far more memorable than 5,319 WORDS, and we've no doubt none of Mr. Kimball's 5,319 WORDS are equally such.

Posted 9:12 AM by Gene

Bad news: The Three-Headed Dog may be cheaping out on Chrysler. We half expected such; what do these clowns know but buying and selling?

Posted 8:59 AM by Gene

TRANSLATION: The CLATCH has already written off almost a third of its KNIGHTRIDDER purchase.

Business GENIUS!

Posted 8:19 AM by Gene

HOO-boy:

Some of those gags, many of which are lifted from the movie, are pretty funny. (O.K., let’s be honest: I laughed exactly three times.)

Don't get us wrong -- given the other not-so-rave reviews this is...well, not a BOMB, but not a great big capital-H hit either. We suspect the ad-blurbists are no so much downplaying this masterwork as they up-played the last one. And that show, despite hosannahs worthy of the Messiah coming, has all but vanished from the landscape. Now we understand why ELVIS! Sillerman's keeping the B. O. secret. Nonetheless we remember how Monty Python's Blazing Saddles is going and going, and the Branson East clientele is nothing if not indiscriminate. Still, we wonder if they're that indiscriminate.

Posted 8:15 AM by Gene

The housing market is horrible in most parts of the country, says the chief executive of the luxury home builder Toll Brothers, and he fears it will not get better until the newspapers stop saying how bad it is.

Con-SER-va-tives all over America say AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMEN!!!!!

(Via the usual Romy)

Posted 8:14 AM by Gene

One of the show-biz reporting brigade admits the millionaires' strike may be a good thing.

Exasperating that this must come after only five days of mourning.

(Via MediaBistro)

Posted 3:21 PM by Gene

NYC Eatery Offers $25,000 Dessert

Is that anywhere near the amount of free face time NYC eatery and the Guinness Book have gotten for this publicity?

A NEUHARTHISM OF THE WEEK AWARD TO ASSPRESS!

Posted 1:53 PM by Gene

NIKKI WANTS THE STRIKE SETTLED!!!!!!!!!! NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We think we know why the hacks are agitated: they fear if this lasts much longer they'll suffer too -- as well they should, being part of the show-biz industrial complex with their endless plugs and fawning and synergy. They may not be members of the union but they're in the brotherhood -- which is why we should hold them all in contempt, and not least for their superiority over mere people.

(Via MediaBistro)

Posted 1:48 PM by Gene

Looks as though the old smelly flatulent gang will be back with Drunken Slob, and they will act as though nothing's changed.

Posted 1:34 PM by Gene

THE LANGUAGE MUSHARRAF USES TO JUSTIFY HIS STATE OF EMERGENCY SEEMS LIFTED FROM REPUBLICAN TALKING POINTS!!!!!!!!!! [RNC EEEEEEEEEEVIL overemphasis added]

THE NEW YORK TIMES CALLS TOBACCO COMPANIES "SHAMELESS" FOR NOT LYING DOWN AND ALLOWING THEMSELVES TO BE LOOTED BY THE STATE OF OREGON!!!!!!!!!! [Free-enterprise-is-always-good overemphasis added]

SHUT UP, BOTH OF YOU.

Posted 10:59 AM by Gene

Another immortal achievement for the late King Denny:

Bankruptcy Law Backfires on Banks as Foreclosures Offset Gains

HARDY HAR HAR!

Posted 10:28 AM by Gene

The Babbitts have taken care of the self-indulgent AHT world too.

Posted 10:01 AM by Gene

Panel to discuss Time's 2007 Person of the Year candidates

Oh, no! Does it have to be that time of year again?

Posted 9:34 AM by Gene

Ron Paul faces $1.1 trillion budget shortfall

So that's why he's been busy raising money!

Posted 8:52 AM by Gene

What does this hed mean?

News Corp. Earnings Off 13% -- But Dow Jones Deal Still On

It means GREG's still daydreaming.

Posted 8:34 AM by Gene

We understand this shellacking of Book TV, but any fault lies not so much with Brian Lamb (who after all invented it as an extension of the late lamented Booknotes) as with the publishing conspiracy, which is dead in the water with exquisitely boring non-fiction, and the Goddess Oprah, who if She did not invent the notion of reading as a penance, helped perfect it.

(Via ArtsJournal)

Posted 8:28 AM by Gene

The MENSA men of show-biz come up with a few more excuses:

"It's a hugely unpopular war, and there's a staggering amount of depressing coverage," says producer Steven Bochco. Bochco's 2005 TV series "Over There," about a platoon of soldiers fighting in Iraq, lasted just one season. "TV is fully saturated with this war," he adds, "and I don't know if you can do a serious drama about this war and locate any angle that would overcome the negativity about it."

It would appear Steve and company have located their own angle: obtuse.

Adds Dennis Rice, president of worldwide marketing at United Artists, which is releasing "Lions for Lambs": "Anytime you believe a movie is going to be the same story as what you get for free on CNN 24 hours a day, people will ask, 'Why spend $10 to go see that?'"

WILL YOU IDIOTS STOP SAYING YOU'RE SORRY FOR ALL THE DOGGIE-DOO YOU SMILINGLY DISCHARGE?!?

Posted 6:56 AM by Gene

Goshdarnit, you mean even Governator can't settle it?

Posted 6:53 AM by Gene

I'd like to see Mr. My Business is My Business reassigned as a mo-VIE cri-TIC. That way he'd make an ass of himself even more often than he does now, and be chased from the profession. However, as Lenny and St. Warren inevitably know, you do not chase someone with his salary out of the profession.

Posted 6:50 AM by Gene

Anonymous, again:

As I've watched Clinton perform over the past year, it has been hard not to admire the sheer effort she's made — to know the issues, to become a more effective speaker on the stump, to be more personable, to loosen up a little. It is also hard not to admire the sheer, pellucid quality of her intelligence. She has already proved herself an indefatigable campaigner and a deft debater, with a personal confidence that Bill — who always seemed desperate for approval — never had. Rather than collapse under the pressure of what promises to be a tense and thrilling campaign, she seems more likely to break free from the cocoon of her stereotype and emerge from the shadow of her husband's brilliance.

And how will She let you down, A?

Posted 6:46 AM by Gene

Shucks, Little Jeffy and Ms. Warmth can't come to a deal.

How about Frank Rich? He's good at angry -- and comedy.

Posted 7:12 PM by Gene

When the EHDYUKAYSHUNAL ESSTABLESHMEANT admits out-of-wedlock births are a problem, they're a problem.

(Via NRO's Phi Beta Cons)

Posted 7:04 PM by Gene

Bank write-offs forecast to top $60bn

See, here's the fun part: these bad assets are but a fraction of the financial world's total; but once the Wall Street Casino gets in its adrenaline-pumping panic mode it can turn any number of billions into pennies.

Posted 6:55 PM by Gene

Given the shenanigans in Tulsa it is quite proper for Sen. Grassley to investigate the wealthiest televangelists. No church should hide money grubbing behind a holy veil, but it seems the current generation of fundraisers never heard of Jim Bakker.

Posted 6:19 PM by Gene

We can only hope Hugoland has its own Saffron Revolution -- and must regret that mankind's oil addiction will help bring it down too.

Posted 5:59 PM by Gene

We know if we had a following it would quickly grow tired and resentful of our constant praise of show-biz, but having not viewed a prime-time series regularly in nearly forty years (we have an explanation, which will emerge in due course) seeing the YouTube exhumations of old TV commercials we can assure ourselves the medium's stayed bad. Perhaps they're not the highest quality specimens, but as the SONS OF NEUHARTH made a inescapable cliché of the notion that the SUPER BOWL'S ADS are among the GEMS OF CIVILIZATION they surely must be. Heck they're produced by the same people; they've become a proving ground for tomorrow's genius fillum directors. And yet even the best are cheesy and dated, and while some of it owes to the bad transfers and YouTube's unlimiting video limits too much of it owes to the commercials. At least K-Tel's notorious poundings were never intended as high art and deliver the low laughs old pop-culture generates in that annoyingly ironic away, but these artifacts must remind us of the permanence of television's BAD, and how the boob tube, now minus the tube, will nonetheless stay bad forever, which is why we are not the least sympathetic to the striking millionaires.

Posted 5:22 PM by Gene

Onward and upward in political discourse:

Barack Obama complained on Wednesday about an Internet photo that claims the Democratic presidential candidate didn't hold his hand over his heart during the Pledge of Allegiance.

"This is so irritating," Obama said when asked about the photo in Muscatine, Iowa.

You can say THAT again.

Posted 5:19 PM by Gene

Are Pakistan's Nukes in Safe Hands?

Safe, of course, being a relative term.

Posted 5:16 PM by Gene

We did not wish to discuss THE GREATEST MUSICAL EVER II, especially this close to the theme park's opening, but we suspect BRANSON EAST's ad-blurbists have a solution to their peculiar conundrum in their hard drives: RAVE!!!!! the show -- and PAN the creator. This way they can blast the $10,000 seats while selling them. More BRILLIANCE from BRANSON EAST!

Posted 5:13 PM by Gene

Clinton, Bob Villa Talk Energy Policy

Had it been the SLICKSTER we could have used a cute pun that involves what people do with hammers, but given it isn't the SLICKSTER we can avoid the double entendre.

Posted 5:10 PM by Gene

Given how often people scream at their computers is a sound-sensitive mouse such a great idea?

Ohhhh, it's for the handicapped. My thought still stands.

Posted 5:08 PM by Gene

Who endorses who in the primaries will be a distant memory when we face the preordained candidates next November, and heave a sigh.

P. S. at 7:40 p.m. As we were saying about preordained candidates....

Posted 5:03 PM by Gene

And to be sure WaMu, like the Jack Valenti of Mortgages, deserves a recession, having no sense at all.

Posted 5:01 PM by Gene

We wonder, however Mr. Samuelson can phrase it, if we can expect a "just" recession, one that would take the air out of the Babbitts and the G000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000GLEMANIACS without puncturing the rest of us. Oh well, we can hope.

Posted 4:58 PM by Gene

Without being a chest-beater about it, one can say Sarko knows who pulled Europe out of its morass after the war. If only the continent's leaders could keep that occasionally in mind neither we nor Europe would have to worry about our relations.

Posted 9:56 AM by Gene

Columbinitis spreads to Finland, which thankfully is a long ways away.

Posted 9:52 AM by Gene

Laughter on the seven-digits' picket line:

David Mamet found an immediate outlet for his creativity during the Hollywood writers strike.

In a cartoon published Tuesday on the op-ed page of the Los Angeles Times, Mamet played the labor dispute for laughs, appearing to lampoon Writers Guild of America strikers.

The cartoon, drawn in a rough scribble, shows two men, each wearing a "WGA on Strike" button. One, with sunglasses and a palm tree-decorated shirt, says: "Whaddaya think, will we end up on the breadline?"

"I don't touch carbohydrates," the other cartoon figure responds.

This industry cannot stop talking to itself -- and its psychotic jabber is starting to infuriate us. Maybe people will grow so annoyed at all the mourning talk the sides will settle. We doubt it -- and we don't want them to.

Posted 9:17 AM by Gene

What is with SUMNER showing his softer side? (We didn't know he had one.) Is he reading his obituaries in advance?

Posted 9:12 AM by Gene

Continuing TRAGEDY from the rich persons' walkout:

Strike impacting film marketing
Latenight reruns mean stars can't plug movies

That "impacting" must have caused Sime Silverman to lay an egg in his grave.

Worries have risen that without reviving the WGA talks, the scribes' work stoppage could easily bleed into the middle of next year.

That sounds too optimistic.

Posted 9:01 AM by Gene

Complaining about loudmouths "fracturing the political discourse" has become almost as tiresome as the loudmouths fracturing the political discourse.

(Also via MediaBistro)

Posted 8:51 AM by Gene

Paramount Pete takes the studios' side? Heaven forfend!

(Via MediaBistro)

Posted 8:44 PM by Gene

The Newsrag of the Zeitgeist evidences an -- understanding of publicity, it being one of America's most exasperating PR organs:

Though we'd like to do more, there's ultimately only so much we can do to punish people for having ideologies we don't approve of. Lavishing attention on every bigot and provocateur is counterproductive. The technique of exposing hatred to sunlight to kill the germs simply doesn't work, especially in the case of celebrities who can easily replace the fans who abhor their hatred with fans who secretly applaud it.

So what will BIGMEDIA and its new friend BIGINTERNET do? Natch: turn into an even BIGGER petri dish to grow MORE GERMS.

Posted 8:06 PM by Gene

But many analysts argue that there is nothing underlying the skyrocketing valuations - or, sometimes, that the companies' obscure finances make it impossible to know. And if the Chinese stock market is a bubble, the new billionaires will disappear as quickly as they rose, since much of their wealth was generated by the stock markets, as well as by the Chinese real estate boom and the Chinese economy, the fastest-growing in the world.

I think we've heard this song before.

Posted 5:12 PM by Gene

TRANSLATION: Somebody like Zell Miller's bad unless the guy's OUR Zell Miller.

Posted 4:55 PM by Gene

SELIGISM's lords want instant replay -- but Selig doesn't:

"I don't like instant replay because I don't like all the delays."

Yeah -- a five-hour nine inning game, complete with ten minute breaks. You've done pretty well delaying the game, SELIG.

Posted 2:28 PM by Gene

We could have FORESEEN something like this would happen:

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is suing renowned architect Frank Gehry, alleging there are serious design flaws in the Stata Center, a building celebrated for its unconventional walls and radical angles.

The school alleges the center, completed in spring 2004, has persistent leaks, drainage problems and mold growing on its brick exterior. It says accumulations of snow and ice have fallen dangerously from window boxes and other areas of its roofs, blocking emergency exits and causing damage.

What did these eggheads expect with unconventional walls and radical angles? And it doesn't have the advantage of being good-looking.

Nope -- we FORESAW something like this would happen:

Anyone want to guess which comes first -- MIT folks demanding this be torn down, or the thing having to be demolished because it won't stand up?

Oh well, better to be right than popular.

P. S. at 5:10 p.m. HEAVY THINKING in PINCHDOM:

Robert Campbell, an architect who is a critic for the Globe, said it is inevitable that there will be problems in any unconventional building like the Stata Center, which has roofs colliding at different, odd angles.

"It looks like something out of a Disney cartoon," Campbell said.

Like THE THREE LITTLE PIGS?

Posted 9:28 AM by Gene

Oops: Ah-NULT has to GOVERN!

I guess this means holding off on saving the world for awhile.

Posted 9:19 AM by Gene

If "media buyers" are unhappy because the Fantasy and Profanity League is on strike, I'm happy.

Posted 9:13 AM by Gene

For God's sake what is Jerry Yang going to do but fulsomely apologize and continue as usual?

Posted 9:10 AM by Gene

NO SNITCHIN'!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! being what it is we really thought this accused cop killer would remain free forever; that police could nab him in Miami proves there's at least one crime you can't get away with.

Posted 8:54 AM by Gene

Having a prime-time lineup that tilts ever more demonstrably to the left could be risky for General Electric, MSNBC’s parent company, which is subject to legislation and regulation far afield of the cable landscape. Officials at MSNBC emphasize that they never set out to create a liberal version of Fox News.

“It happened naturally,” Phil Griffin, a senior vice president of NBC News who is the executive in charge of MSNBC, said Friday, referring specifically to the channel’s passion and point of view from 7 to 10 p.m. “There isn’t a dogma we’re putting through. There is a ‘Go for it.’”

Fox News consistently denies any political bias in its programming....

WILL BOTH OF YOU SHUT UP?!?!?

(Via the usual Romy)

Posted 8:50 AM by Gene

2007 is deadliest year for U.S. in Iraq

It's still OUR spin! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA!!!!!

The GRIM milestone.... [Overemphasis added]

WILL YOU STOP LAUGHING?

Posted 8:43 PM by Gene

That blithering imitation of the NO-SPIN SPIN SPIN SPIN SPIN SPIN SPIN ZONE with a best-selling "book" penned by his seventy writers announces he's "withdrawing" from the presidential race -- the day HIS WRITERS AND 12,000 OTHERS WENT ON STRIKE.

JACKASS.

Posted 5:40 PM by Gene

What is more useless than a vote for "best" blog? Not just because we have as much selection as with presidential candidates -- worse as the same names always come up -- but as Jo-NAH's brilliant post makes clear it's all about ballot-box stuffing. Ever since SAM LITTLE got his maniacs to proclaim him Best Blog West of Japip or wherever it was we have paid no mind to such contests -- and because there's so much to pay no mind to on the Web we're coming to ask whether we shouldn't pay any mind to the Web.

We're sour too because something has recently interfered with our ability to get hits. So much of the Web's traffic patterns are just plain arbitrary.

Posted 5:08 PM by Gene

Stale.com cannot stop sending out adolescent writers into the world -- Effete Edelstein, that TV ad-blurbist for the Paper of Re-CORD, this guy:

Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels is not quite the gaming equivalent of the missing reel of Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons. But it's close.

Was ever an opening sentence more tiresome? It's so arch it could cross a river. If the Web's emcees want to turn people away from their sites (and if Alexa.com is right -- a very hard to thing to know -- they've succeeded brilliantly in recent months) they'll hire more typists like Chris.

Posted 11:14 AM by Gene

The many faces of Charles Prince:



The Cat that Swallowed the Canary;



Thinking;



Mr. Hyde.

That does it for now. He's outta there anyways.

(Photos restored 9/4/2010; period substituted for semi-colon in fourth graf. I don't believe the second photo is the same but it's from the Reut and will do.)

Posted 8:31 AM by Gene

The WGA represents 12,000 writers — the people who make Jay Leno's jokes laughable and "24's" plotlines implausible.

ERRRRRRRRRR....

Posted 8:17 AM by Gene

It is always exceptionally pleasing to us when richie-rich media bigshots who should know better like Larry "Seinfeld" King get swindled -- not that Larry would know better.

(Via MediaBistro)

Posted 6:53 AM by Gene

Well look at it this way, Wall Street Casino dealers: the dream hasn't ended in China -- and if it can spawn a $1 TRILLION MARKET CAP COMPANY -- well, just buy more G000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000GLE and the other tech outfits! They'll ALWAYS go up.

When does the PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC of WAL-MART get ITS comeuppance?

The Chinese government holds 157.92 billion PetroChina shares indirectly through the state-owned China National Petroleum Corp. PetroChina's 4-billion-share sale last week represents about 2.5% of the oil giant's total shares listed there.

About two-thirds of the shares on Shanghai market are held by state entities and classed as inactive.

Is this another variation of the dotcom bubble?

Posted 6:47 AM by Gene

No, LALA, stop dreaming, this ISN'T going to be a boon for conventional TV shows that happen to run on the Web. People may be tired of the same old same old whatever its source.

Posted 6:43 AM by Gene

STRIKE! STRIKE!! STRIKE LONG, STRIKE HARD, STRIKE ANGRILY!!!!! STRIKE UNTIL HELL FREEZES OVER -- OR YOUR BANK ACCOUNTS SHRINK!!!!!

Posted 7:01 PM by Gene

Caryn pulls the daily double: she LOVES all these blood-drenched serious movies -- AND she quotes PAUL DRECK! And if they're not what the public wants -- well, they're what a PAPER OF RE-CORD AD-BLURBIST wants, and who knows better?

A NEUHARTHISM OF THE WEEK AWARD TO CARYN!

Posted 6:40 PM by Gene

...another $8 billion to $11 billion in write-downs....

Then what?

Posted 5:09 PM by Gene

TRANSLATION: Suddenly cast in the role of heavy, eclipsing GM in global sales, making enemies of environmentalists, faced with a spate of recalls, Toyota does what any good American megabusiness does: it puts out POTEMKIN ADS.

With this sort of thinking maybe our guys have a little hope.

Wiser thinking: It's sponsoring Meet the Press, the show that has the kind of audience least likely to be moved by such touchy-feely folderol. Don't these clowns remember how ADM-GE sponsored This Week in its Golden Age? They made one think the two companies had merged. (Which, given their despicable CEOs, they rather had.)

Posted 5:03 PM by Gene

Here we think teacher-student sex plumbs the depths of stupid, but this torrid affair achieved new depths: this...lady was in love with an illegal immigrant.

Plus she evidently ran out of money to feed her love slave grapes.

Posted 4:35 PM by Gene

Every three months (really, these days, every weekend) comes a new cultural sensation that blinds the hacks into thinking it's cured cancer. Back in 1958 it was something at the Met called Vanessa, an opera written by two lovers, Samuel Barber and Gian Carlo Menotti, that from the sounds of it was HERR DOKTOR SONDHEIM before its time -- i.e., lushly appointed gloom. The ad-blurbists raved, the wuhk won the P-Ulitzer...and it vanished from the earth. Peter G. Davis (good to have his byline back somewhere) blames all those ultra-learned piano bangers practicing what they called twelve-tone, but he gives a hint it might have been more than the dogma of the moment when he says "The Met brought the production back the next season, but few tickets were sold" -- and despite the opera phreaks' rep for reactionism they generally know a good tune when they hear one. Irony is it was designed by Cecil Beaton -- who did My Fair Lady, now a staple of the opera house (and which, for its enduring excellence, is not quite a snug fit there, given the notion of slumming, not to mention the industrial-strength voices doing a musical; but at least you can still hum the tunes leaving the hall). The intervening decades have seen many masterwuhks-- Willie Stark, Nixon in China -- extravagantly praised, only to die in the archives, or in the withered bosoms of those who must program filler among the inevitable Verdi and Puccini. No, the "small repertory of viable American operas" is Porgy and Bess -- and that is it.

P. S. on Willie Stark, which has evidently been staged only twice in 26 years:

The original production was dedicated to the American radio journalist Lowell Thomas.

...co-founder of the religious cult known as CapCities, who did more commercials than any other broadcast newsman until Paul HarVEH came along. How fitting.

P. P. S. on 11/8: Thomas did a prerecorded cameo in the original production, whose music Donal Henahan praised as "a remarkably thin score, in a style that could be heard as a parody of Britten and Menotti. Possibly in an effort to achieve dramatic clarity, he has written a kind of strident, prosaic recitative that tears at the listener's patience - and, no doubt, sears the vocal cords." Could a Paper of Re-CORD reviewer write such nowadays without PINCH calling the police?

Posted 2:34 PM by Gene

The limits of language

Information, on the other hand, is much less generally accessible than words. When the process of determining the facts of a situation has been intentionally corrupted by people in power (whether, let's say, Saddam Hussein had the ability to produce nuclear weapons, or whether a new drug has harmful side effects), there often is no corrective mechanism at hand. Intellectual honesty about the gathering and use of facts and

[SIC]

How Orwellian.

Posted 2:29 PM by Gene

I don't know which is worse; Seinfeld "thinking" or Ron Rosenbaum thinking.

Call it a draw.

Posted 2:18 PM by Gene

Someone named Fred Siegel at CommentaryMagazine.com gets to the heart of why Gekko Kudlow is so often full of it:

The aggregates, as Larry Kudlow points out, are looking very good. But people don’t live in the aggregate economy.

Posted 9:40 AM by Gene

Speaking of Web rankings, I note that Alexa (keeping in mind its flaws) puts FreeRepublic.com at something around 10,000. A few years back it was briefly around 500. Cutting and pasting news stories isn't what it used to be. It is tedium enough to do it for your own blog. Besides, the site does have an aura of...intemperateness. I don't attribute this supposed decline to the alleged surge of the left (its mirror image Democratic Underground hasn't caught up very much); face it, most Web sites have a short shelf life, and a lot of yesterday's favorites are approaching relative senility.

Posted 9:31 AM by Gene

And now we're in one of those polling spasms where a couple of thousands have decided things have suddenly gotten worse. My contempt for polls is beyond words, but because we don't have decent intellectuals or even columnists anymore we must let this flatulent guesswork pass for national thinking.

Posted 9:27 AM by Gene

A nation that produces G000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000GLEs and untold addicts is not a good nation.

Posted 9:24 AM by Gene

Just because the Japanese are "abandoning" PCs doesn't mean much; in some ways they're a peculiar people -- after all, they're the ones who come up with beverages with names like Inky Sweat, or whatever they call them. But most people don't need PCs, certainly not to annoy others with ring tones or yak all day or type semi-literately, and while the PC constitutes too much of our economy to be discarded outright what with all the new ephemeral gadgets the future is not necessarily in its direction.