radosh's blog

As amusing as it is to see Bush running for re-election on a "bring the troops home" platform, there's something very frightening about all this, and I'm saying that as someone who would like to bring the troops home (my brother in law is out safely, btw, for those who recall my previous Balls of the Eagle posts. Paraphrasing a couple of bloggers I read yesterday but don't have time to properly re-find and link to right now (sorry), there's a difference between doing something carefully, with a plan for the future and from a position of strength (intellectual and moral), and doing the same thing haphazardly and under the gun (literal). There is nothing in the Bush plan for withdrawal that indicates any concern whatsoever for what happens to the people of Iraq once we're out. It looks like he's counting on the possibility that once Americans are no longer dying, voters at home won't give a shit about the mess we left for the people who live there.

Try to contain your laughter.

1:42 PM

Francis Heaney has a very important announcement:

My musical, "We're All Dead" plays Thursdays-Sundays, November 15 - December 14 at Chashama (135 W. 42nd Street, bet. 6th and Broadway). If you saw it the last time we produced it, back in 2001, you will hardly recognize it. (It has grown a mustache.) If you didn't see it last time, why not? Were you working out some issues about musical theatre?

You can buy tickets at SmartTix or at the box office on the night of the show, if we're not sold out or you don't mind hanging from the ceiling in the "dangling room" area.

Reviewers are coming. And we know of at least one producer that will be attending. It's all pretty exciting. Come and see if you can feel the waves of tension emanating from me through all the layers of curtain between the audience and the band.

I saw an earlier low-fi production of We're All Dead, and it has my personal seal of approval. Why? Because it's a musical comedy adaptation of three classic tragedies — Oedipus, The Metamorphosis and Hamlet — with original toe-tapping rock/pop tunes such as "It's Baby-Killin' Time," "That Darn Sphinx," "The Gods Must Be Lazy," "I Am the Very Model of a Guy Who Makes a Horrible Faux Pas and Then Does a Bad Job of Covering It," "Bug Medley (I'm a Giant Bug / Are You Really a Giant Bug? / I lost My Job Because I'm a Giant Bug)," "Oh, Oh, Ophelia", and "The Ballad of Why I'm Here and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Aren't," among over 30 others. (Listen to a solo version of Fate, the Oedipus Rocks finalé.)

The mighty Choire Sicha is urging me to drop lame-o Blogger and get one of them hip Moveable Type site with the RSS feed. Since this seems to be exactly the kind of project to sustain my state of denial for the next week or two, I'm on it.

11:12 AM

Google News, now with less news. Five (maybe six) of the first ten Google News entries for Prince Chalres are fake stories, parenthetically identified as "News Satire."

Prince Charles Collapses; Hospitalized, Dennis Kucinich Considers Email Proposal from Prince Charles, etc.

I've got nothing against news satire (though it's pathetic that so many places now think they're the Onion) but I don't want to have to slog through it when I'm searching for real news. Also, someone at the office was already briefly taken in by that first story, which is what happens when real news is so much like a bad joke to begin with.

BTW, the sixth story, which is not labeled satire, but I've got my suspicions, is Prince Charles totally straight, claim Chicago women he's wooed

Update: Among the many things I love about Google is that they actually reply when you send them feedback. In this case, the reply was inadequate, but here it is:

Google News strives to provide access to as many news sources as possible. As you've noticed, we do include some sources which are intended as satire. However, we feel it is important to display the term "News Satire" next to the name of these sources so that you can choose whether or not you wish to access them. If you find a news source in Google News which offers only satirical or non-factual stories, but does not display a "News Satire" tag, please send us the name of that publication.

Bush I on the problems with occupying Iraq: "Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in "mission creep," and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under the circumstances, there was no viable "exit strategy" we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different — and perhaps barren — outcome." -- A World Transformed, by George H.W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft.

Sid Caesar, Straight man. Gersh Kuntzman tries to engage the comedy legend in some banter, only to find that Caesar no longer recognizes (or doesn't care to dignify) cornball humor.

CAESAR: Anger is just a habit. I remember I had this great meal in Paris. I was on cloud nine. I walked down the street and a minute later, I just stopped. And suddenly, I was angry about something.

GERSH: What happened? Did you see a mime?

CAESAR: (Ignoring mime joke) Nothing happened! I just fell back into the anger habit. I always pressed my own buttons. And drinking was the punishment. Why did I punish myself? I never killed anyone. I never hurt anyone? I just couldn't accept who I was.

9:48 AM

Joel Silver on Matrix Revolutions: "At the heart of these films is the hope of integration; the synthesis of our finite knowledge of what is with our infinite beliefs of what might be."

At the heart of publicity (and fan apology) for the Matrix series has been just this kind of pronouncement, with the subtext that if you don't like it, you're just not smart enough.

But I've seen Matrix Revolutions, and I'm not unsophisticated, and I feel confident in saying that at its heart is a great heaping pile of dog turd. Unlike Reloaded, which was just boring, Revolutions is aggressively obnoxious. Without giving away anything (not that I'd encourage anyone to see it) the ending only works if the ENTIRE PREMISE of the series is simply false. And not in a clever we-had-you-thinking-one-thing-but-something-else-was-going-on way. Just, we-changed-our-minds. As someone who kind of liked the premise of the Matrix, I took this as a big fuck you from the Wachowski Siblings. (Some Slashdotters are trying to find explanations for the ending that don't suck, but I'm not convinced. Feel free to e-mail me if you have a better idea; I wouldn't mind being wrong about this).

I'm no longer surprised when I get an e-mail that begins, "In case you'd like one more reason to blog on Gregg Easterbrook..." A lot of people, it seems, are fed up with the man's witless ramblings and have decided that Radosh.net should be the repository for their complains. Who am I not to oblige them?

The latest e-mail comes from Andrew Perny who has just read Easterbroken's complaint about "the once-promising Matrix series." It's odd, first of all, that Easterdick -- who infamously thinks film violence can be linked to the real thing -- admits to enjoying the first Matrix, a film that some people have blamed for Columbine and the DC snipers. Could it be that he only disapproves of violent movies that other people enjoy?

Anyway, here's Eagershmuck's problem with The Matrix series:

Just consider that the underlying premise of the Matrix flicks makes no physical-law sense.

Supposedly in the future, evil intelligent computers keep all humanity strapped into chairs, dreaming a simulation of ordinary life while attended by medical droids, because the evil computers want the heat given off by human bodies as an energy source. "This is what we are to them," the rebel leader Morpheus intones in the exposition scene of the first Matrix flick, holding up an Eveready battery.

Guess those yellow ribbons are coming down. According to a new Fox News poll, a plurality of Americans (49%) say the best way to show support for the troops is "Bringing them home as soon as possible."

But when asked "What do you think is the right thing to do -- bring the U.S. troops home now or have US troops stay in Iraq and finish the job?" Only 32% say bring them home, 62% say stick it out.

How can both those results be accurate? The only possible conclusion: Americans believe that "the right thing to do" is not support the troops!

Sure it could just be another poorly worded poll -- define "as soon as possible" and "finish the job" please -- but I prefer my interpretation.

1:24 PM