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Proving that things do go in streaks, there’s enough stuff attracting my attention this week to justify a midweek installment of marginalia:
- The first winner of my new award: letter to the editor of the month (or whatever interval works best for me).
- It’s impossible for to resist a blog truthfully named How I Am Becoming An Astronaut. (Via.)
- As might have been expected, Rolling Stone‘s article on “the ethanol scam” is generating some energy of its own.
- On the music front, Rolling Stone reports that it appears that hell freezes over again. Given the number of “farewell” tours and appearances, though, it looks like its only in the studio that hell has been frozen.
- A lot of people are linking to the piece but I’m moving into Paul Witcover’s camp (although he links to it also) and “getting a little tired of mainstream critics who suddenly discover [Philip K. Dick], or even more annoyingly, profess a long-standing familiarity with his work which for some reason has never been reflected in their writings until this coincidentally trendy moment?”
- “[O]ne would not expect complete candor.” I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked!
- SF becomes reality as the NYT says that “if you accept a pretty reasonable assumption . . . it is almost a mathematical certainty that we are living in someone else’s computer simulation.”
Hey vibes man, hey jazz man, play me your serenade
Any deeper blue and you’re playin’ in your grave
“New York City Serenade,” Bruce Springsteen, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle
The rumors that have been circulating for a while are reportedly going to be confirmed this week. Supposedly, Bruce and the E Street Band are hitting the road later this year following the release of a new studio album. October has been the rumored date for an appearance at Xcel Energy Center. (From October 11 through October 31, the Minnesota Wild and the Gophers are using the facility a total of four times and there are two other concerts).
Once again, this is supposedly the last E Street Band tour ever. Just in case, I’m not only going for tickets for the Xcel, I’ll probably go after two or three other shows this tour (and/or the supposed world tour next year).
In what may be excellent timing, AmericanHeritage.com posted a piece considering this week in 1975 was “the week that made Bruce Springsteen.” I think that’s probably hard to argue from a popularity standpoint and I was surprised to discover that the WNEW show mentioned in that piece is not amongst my Springsteen bootlegs (so I have a mission this week). While I consider The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, released two years earlier, to be a notch above Born to Run that 1975 version of the E Street Band was hot and tight. Any doubt of that is erased by the November 1975 performance at Hammersmith Odeon that is a DVD in the three-disc 30th anniversary Born to Run release. I know that concert gets a lot of play on my iPod and I may have to add the WNEW show — once I locate it.
So I bought a .44 magnum it was solid steel cast
And in the blessed name of Elvis well I just let it blast
‘Til my TV lay in pieces there at my feet
And they busted me for disturbin’ the almighty peace
Judge said “What you got in your defense son?”
“Fifty-seven channels and nothin’ on”
“57 Channels”, Bruce Springsteen, Human Touch
- The SD blogosphere this week reminded me why I do politics so infrequently around here. My GOP friend PP is referring to former U.S. Sen. Tom Daschle as an “STD” (sexually transmitted disease for the uninformed) “that we can’t get rid of.” The commenters to at least one of those posts are doing little better. Meanwhile, Epp and Schaff are going back and forth (with others occasionally chiming in) on whether the left or the right is playing politics with Sen. Tim Johnson’s health. Is the August heat getting to them?
- Looks like Google is going to provide a method for people mentioned in news stories to comment on the story. It will be interesting to see how this experiment in a variation of corrections will do.
- It appears the casting call requirements preclude me from being a Bob Dylan video star.
- Does our psychology help determine whether we read SF? (Via.)
- The most concise license agreement I’ve seen.
Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.
Albert Camus
When it rains, it pours. While we’ve just recently seen something in the way of actual rain around here, the book front seems to have produced a recent downpour.
Some used and discount book purchases here and there occurred about the same time a couple books showed up from publishers and publicists. Perhaps not coincidentally, most of the books fall in the recent international fiction and armchair traveling interests I’ve developed lately — even though I still haven’t finished all the books I brought home from Readercon. The combined result means a seemingly ginormous (now officially a word) growth on the TBR list. And the list doesn’t include three books I’ve placed holds on at the public library. Fortunately, the books I need to read for reviews have September and October street dates, giving me a bit of time on them.
Yet as I “complain” about all the books stacking up, I couldn’t resist looking at the summer reading sale at the New York Review of Books I learned of today via Three Percent. Unless I can maintain my resistance to the “Proceed to checkout” button (I quickly caved to the “Add to Cart” button to see what type of monetary damage I was contemplating), we’re talking five more books going on the TBR list in the near future. That did, however, make it easier to ignore a book club e-mail I read shortly after visiting the NYRB site offering free shipping on orders totaling $35 or more.
The TBR bookcase is in desperate need of expansion, as are the regular bookshelves. As I told my wife last night, I feel like I need to take some time off just to read. As that’s not realistic at this point, beginning tonight I hope to ensconce myself in the recliner under my reading lamp for the weekend.
I have lived so long amongst books I cannot but believe they do have souls.
James Morrow, The Last Witchfinder
I saw at the end of my daily e-mail from the NYT that this is the 34th anniversary of Richard Nixon announcing his resignation. I remember exactly where I was when watching his speech and that the owner of the place bought beers for the house at its conclusion.
Nixon was an essential player in my formative years: Vietnam, the 1972 presidential election (not the least of which was George McGovern’s candidacy), Watergate, and the role of the press (influencing not only my decision to pursue a journalism education but part of the future of that career). The press served an admirable and beneficial function for America but, in hindsight, perhaps it initiated too much “gotcha” investigative journalism and a political cynicism that remains today.
The anniversary also brings today into sharp contrast. Today’s press not only failed its function in the the run-up to the Iraq War, it essentially kowtowed to the Bushies. Nixon avoided impeachment by resigning for what were undoubtedly impeachable offenses. Today’s Congress doesn’t have the cojones to take the Bush Administration to task for its actions. Set aside the lies prior to the war and just consider torture and extraordinary rendition, illegal detentions of U.S. citizens and foreign nationals, or the NSA spy program. Of course, Congress made sure it showed its lack of will lask week when it (including our supposed Democrat Rep. Herseth-Sandlin and, of course Sen. Thune) endorsed warranteless spying on U.S. citizens.
Thus, it’s a bittersweet anniversary. It recalls a day when the rule of law and the Constitution not only meant something, they prevailed. Yet in my wildest imagination, I never thought I would look back and think that Tricky Dick looked good in comparison to another president.
Nixon was a professional politician, and I despised everything he stood for — but if he were running for president this year against the evil Bush-Cheney gang, I would happily vote for him.
Hunter S. Thompson, “Fear and Loathing, Campaign 2004“
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