"Carol of the Bells"... the iPad version.

(In case you were offended by yesterday's ding dong dong ding version. I'm afraid some of you thought I'd taken sides in The War on Christmas, but come on, mummies aren't warriors.)

"Carol Of The Belts" by Here Come The Mummies.

"She’s like the ominous blob in the horror films: the more you shoot at it, the bigger and stronger it becomes."

If a conservative columnist had come up with that image to describe a liberal politician, liberals would gasp and scold about the violence seething in the conservative brain.

But this is the liberal NYT columnist Charles Blow, complaining about how attacks on Sarah Palin aren't doing what they're supposed to do. His idea is lefties need to stop talking about her:

People on the left seem to need her, to bash her, because she is, in three words, the way the left likes to see the right: hollow, dim and mean. But since she’s feeding on the negativity, I suggest three other words: get over it.

So the reason for calling off the attacks is that they're not working. Whatever happened to the "restore sanity" movement that briefly bubbled up — the idea that civility was a free-standing value? I assume the idea that moderate discourse is an end in itself was always only a pose. That is, the idea that civility was an end was a means to an end. When that end wasn't achieved — liberals lost the elections — the means was abandoned. Attacks flared. But attacks failed. At least Blow isn't pretending to believe in civility as an end in itself.

"How do you like to go up in a swing/Up in the air so blue?"

How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!

Up in the air and over the wall,
Till I can see so wide,
River and trees and cattle and all
Over the countryside--

Till I look down on the garden green,
Down on the roof so brown--
Up in the air I go flying again,
Up in the air and down!

"The Swing," by Robert Louis Stevenson...



... from "A Child's Garden of Verses." I've known that poem by heart as long as I've known... anything.

Stevenson was born 160 years ago today, something I learned after noticing the Google-doodle, which is completely pirate- and not swing-oriented.

Bonus Stevenson material:

Dino De Laurentiis, "the high-flying Italian film producer," has died.

He was 91. His name is attached to some of the greatest films ever — notably "La Strada" and "Nights of Cabiria" — and some all-out trashy pop entertainment — like "Bararella" and "Mandingo."

Here's a list of his 166 movies. How many of them have you seen? I've got to say I've managed to steer clear of de Laurentiis films. Other than "La Strada" and "Nights of Cabiria" — 2 of my favorite films, directed by Fellini — the only one I've seen — and we watched it for a laugh — is "Conan the Barbarian."

I never saw the de Laurentiis remake of "King Kong," which was filmed in New York City in 1976. I was living there then, and I remember the open invitation to anyone to come down to Lower Manhattan to be in the crowd scene. I considered going but didn't. I read this article in the NYT on June 22, 1976:

Drawn by 1930's nostalgia and 1976 excitement, a horrified crowd of more than 5,000 New Yorkers surged past police lines at the World Trade Center last night on cue and fought its way to the spot where a giant gorilla lay dead after a 110-story fall from the North Tower.

The ape, constructed of styrofoam covered with horse hair and bleeding a mixture of Karo syrup and vegetable coloring was of course King Kong, the resurrected star of the 1933 thriller being remade by Dino de Laurentiis.

Ah! The unreachable past! When the the death was fake and not even human. What absurd fun we had!

The extras cheered when a technician climbed on the chest of the fallen 40-foot ape to replenish its oozing "blood."

Was Art Nouveau "the clumsy process of trying to 'dress up' the inorganic forms of modern construction in the false clothing of the natural world"?

That's what Walter Benjamin thought.

If Benjamin was right about Art Nouveau in general, then Jean Carriès was a dissenter from the movement who refused to play along with the lie. Carriès did not carry the prettifying gene. He had an eye for the monstrous, for the contortions of nature and its abnormalities. If Carriès accepted the idea that the modern city is an extension of the natural world, he did so with the proviso that the extension was a malignant tumor.

The dissent from the lie looked like this:

"Have you never wanted to do anything that was dangerous?"

That's a montage I happened upon while looking for something else. Make of it what you will, but there's some truly fabulous female (and male) beauty to be gawked at. Tallulah is the most beautiful, is she not? And there she was, in that least glamorous setting, the lifeboat, of Hitchcock's "Lifeboat," which is what I was Googling for, looking for that scene with William Bendix (as "Gus") drinking sea water, a propos of lemondog's comment in the "Irony pursues Barack Obama" post.

"The Call of Cthulhu in Under 2 Minutes."

"I like that Lovecraft's brand of cosmic horror can be summarized as humanity being 'way harshly insignificant.'"

"The Tea Party is a Frankenstein movement — an odd collection of factions, loosely stitched together, where the head, to the extent that it exists, fails to control the body."

Says Charles M. Blow, apparently longing for political parties with powerful leaders who tell all the little people what to do. Grassroots democracy is a monstrous thing... to Blow.

Oh, and also, per Blow, you're a big bunch of racists. 

Let's read "The Lifelong Single Gay Virgin."

This is another episode in a NY Magazine series, presenting, each week, a 7-days diary from a different anonymous individual. (I assume these are not fiction. Am I wrong?)

We're told the diarist is "27 years old, male, single, Upper West Side, gay":

DAY ONE
6:30 a.m.: Consume oatmeal, orange juice, and coffee while watching Remains of the Day. Anthony Hopkins manages to inadvertently seduce Emma Thompson despite being a sociopath. What am I doing wrong?

Ha. Answer: Life isn't a movie. Imagine how different it would be if it was. Little random details would pay off big a few days/scenes later. Deja vu! I said Life isn't a movie to someone... yesterday. Ah, yes! A neighbor was describing her fight against gypsy moth caterpillars. Once she poisoned a tree full of them, and zillions of them fell to the ground and were writhing and bloody looking. (The juice that oozes out of them looks like human blood.) Later, she went out to clear the carcasses off the walkway, and they were all gone. She had a vision of them off somewhere gathering strength and plotting their revenge. Actually, her neighbor had swept the walk. But if it were a movie, the enraged caterpillars would be back — enlarged and superstrong as a result of the poison, Toxic Avenger-style — ready for human blood.

Back to the virgin:

7 a.m.: Lest anyone forget, Christopher Reeve was devastatingly handsome. Super. Smoking. Hot. Playing a principled American congressman doesn't hurt, either.

8:30 a.m.: Commute to nonprofit job. No one on my trains are cute enough to tear me away from my crossword puzzle. Thomas Edison's middle name: Alva....

Ah! This is exceedingly charming. Have you never experienced extended virginity/celibacy? I'd say this captures the vibe brilliantly. Was Thomas Edison — little Alvy — ever cute?

Maybe. In 1879.

DAY TWO

5:30 a.m.: Commute to Penn Station. Dear day laborers who crowd the early morning trains, please touch me with your rough, dirty, work-worn hands. Much obliged.

7:30 a.m.: Business trip to New Jersey. This state is worse than I remembered. My penis is inverting....

6:30 p.m.: Call non-boyfriend and tell him not to visit. He is upset. I feel like a jerk. Perhaps I am a jerk.

8 p.m.: I wonder if being single forever is the curse that everyone says it is. I'm single, have always been single. I used to think that despite a dearth in sexual partners and romantic relationships, I was genuinely happy. But now I think that because of a dearth in sexual partners and romantic relationships, I'm genuinely happy.

And that is the dangerous thought. But what is more seductive than dangerous thoughts? Did you recoil from that idea as from a bloody, enraged gypsy moth caterpillar? Did you shrink from it like a penis reacting to New Jersey? Do you immediately assume this young man is deluded and pathetic? He could be right. What would the world be like if he were right? Take a moment to imagine it. Did you imagine the world we are in? If not, why not?

"Earth Hour"... and other revealing "climate change" hypocrisies.

"Some of the lights the state Capitol were turned off Saturday night as part of Earth Hour a worldwide effort to get people, institutions and governments to shut off their lights for an hour to bring awareness to climate change."

Oh, I'm getting some awareness out of this, all right. This is heightening my awareness that the people who do stunts like this do not actually believe in the "climate change" emergency. Anyone who actually believed would oppose — among many, many other things — all the decorative illumination of the exteriors of public buildings. Just turning it off for an hour? Do you think we are idiots?

***

This reminds me of those churchgoers who pray for an hour a week — in public — and spend the rest of their time engaging in whatever nasty behavior they please. Why do they do this? Do they think they'll get absolution? Eh. You have to actually believe to think there's absolution. If they really believed, they wouldn't behave like that.  I think they, in their selfish interest, hope to gain favor and to prompt other people to believe and behave virtuously.

***

Some illumination of public buildings is required by the FAA, as noted in the linked article. But that reminds me: Why are people flying all over the place anyway? If we really believed in the touted emergency, we would limit flying to the truly essential. And what would be truly essential?

Business and government meetings can be done by video conference. Close down that that government building altogether! Think of all the carbon emissions that would save. (I will concede that in a representative democracy, officials really may need to mingle together in the flesh)

Recreational travel is a monument to disbelief in the seriousness of the climate change alarm. How can you go jaunting about to Europe or wherever and turn around and expect other people to buy tiny tin-can cars?

***

How about if everyone stays home and reads. Read until you figure out how to write English (or whatever language you think you know). The Wisconsin State Journal writes "to bring awareness to climate change." Like "climate change" is an entity that could be jolted into conscious thought.

Is this a fair description of the way Obama looked at the summit?

I've put some effort into defending Rush Limbaugh this week, so I want to balance that with some criticism. I didn't watch the summit yesterday. I had other demands on my attention. I don't watch Daytime TV. I could have watched the rerun at night, and I can still watch some clips. I just didn't and haven't. But I did listen to the podcast of some of Rush's show yesterday. At one point, he was running the audio of the summit and commenting in real time. He had some descriptions of how Obama looked, and it had me crying out loud that it was over-the-top:

Obama was sitting there and his lips were pursed. There as tight as he could be. He had one finger over his mouth and he was shooting Boris Karloff eyes.

So, something like this?

Or this?

More Rush:

He just looked like, "How dare you do this! This is not going the way I had it planned. I'm the one being embarrassed here! They're the ones are supposed to be made to look like a bunch of mean-spirited extremists, and now they're throwing my own words and my own plan right back at me and they don't even know how to respond to this." So he had to come over some help. Some aide had to come over and give him some advice on how to respond like he was a witness in front of a congressional committee, like a mob guy and his lawyer whispering. "Psst, pss, pss, pss."

There was utter panic.

Utter panic? Really?

"I'm easy. I'm strongly inclined to vote for the thing, even though I don't like the health care tax thing."

The Thing.



You said it was dead, and now it's back.

Cloris Leachman had epic sex with Gene Hackman and would have had sex with Ed Asner if he'd lost 3 more pounds.

The secrets, revealed at long last.

And by the way:


via videosift.com

Today's blogging has a theme... I see.

Racism and primates. Purely by chance. 2 completely different stories, blogged for independent blogability. Did I ever tell you about the time I blogged to this "Infamous Monsters of Filmland" post and because of the bit about Al Sharpton, some concerned citizen emailed what I think was every high administrator and every black professor on campus to alert them that the university had a terrible racist law professor?