Gawker reports that the NYT may have challenged the macho quotient of its Superbowl watching fans by printing a recipe asking for one to two CANS of fiery chipotles chiles. Ay Caramba!
I would have loved to have been there to witness the first bite of the unsuspecting poor soul that followed the recipe to a T...
Although I hail from the land of the jalapeño, my mother always berated me as being from Switzerland because, unlike her, whose Aztec lineage extends to a shtetl in Belorus which is not in any map, I refused to bite into raw serrano chiles with my bare teeth.
You can attempt the correct recipe, which actually doesn't sound half bad, by clicking on the link.
Tip from the Grande Enchilada, Selfproclaimed Foremost Expert on Mexican Food in New York and Perhaps the Entire Cosmos: if you want it mild use one chile; hotter, two. Three is muy macho. And I'm Swiss.
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Monday, February 06, 2006
Super Bawl
So Bob Garfield at Ad Age hated the Toyota Hybrid ad, which has the distinction of being the first Super Bowl ad to be conceived by a Hispanic agency. I can already imagine the scores of mentadas de madre he'll be getting from here to eternity from outraged, misunderstood Hispanics who were feeling real proud we finally scored a Super Bowl ad. Not so fast.
I was not as disgusted with the ad as Mr. Garfield, who was particularly enraged by it, and who did not seem to get the point -- that the car runs on two languages, gas and battery power, like Hispanics speak in English and Spanish and seem to run just fine. I don't think this spot was intended to appeal only to Hispanics, but had it been more clever and lived up to the promise of the concept, it would have appealed to everybody, like that effective Salma Hayek ad for Coca-Cola a couple years back. As it is, it's a huge disappointment. It's sappy and it's lazy and it's boring. It wouldn't have hurt to have some humor in the spot, some clever writing, some good acting, instead of an overly eager, grating kid and a dad who seems made out of cardboard, like a cutout version of Ricardo Montalban. Then when one expects a nice little punchline, the kid asks a question I'm still trying to understand the meaning of. He asks his dad, in perfect English: "papá, why did you learn English?" Why does he ask that question? What is that about? Is this an ad for Toyota or an ad to get Hispanics to sign up for ESL classes? At first I thought Bob Garfield was exaggerating by saying the ad is condescending, but the more I think about it, the more I agree.
I was not as disgusted with the ad as Mr. Garfield, who was particularly enraged by it, and who did not seem to get the point -- that the car runs on two languages, gas and battery power, like Hispanics speak in English and Spanish and seem to run just fine. I don't think this spot was intended to appeal only to Hispanics, but had it been more clever and lived up to the promise of the concept, it would have appealed to everybody, like that effective Salma Hayek ad for Coca-Cola a couple years back. As it is, it's a huge disappointment. It's sappy and it's lazy and it's boring. It wouldn't have hurt to have some humor in the spot, some clever writing, some good acting, instead of an overly eager, grating kid and a dad who seems made out of cardboard, like a cutout version of Ricardo Montalban. Then when one expects a nice little punchline, the kid asks a question I'm still trying to understand the meaning of. He asks his dad, in perfect English: "papá, why did you learn English?" Why does he ask that question? What is that about? Is this an ad for Toyota or an ad to get Hispanics to sign up for ESL classes? At first I thought Bob Garfield was exaggerating by saying the ad is condescending, but the more I think about it, the more I agree.
Friday, February 03, 2006
WWIII,cont'd...
Lest anybody think that I'm blaming the Europeans for everything, let's consider Muslim anger. Imagine if the citizens of New York City, London, Madrid, Amman, where a bomb in a hotel killed most of the Jordanian members of a wedding party, were to display the standards of Muslim outrage leveled at some unfunny, stupid caricatures in a Danish newspaper. Imagine.
I remember right after 9/11 when the streets of New York were quieted by shock and disbelief, there were some scattered incidents of bullies threatening people who looked like Arabs. They were few and far between and promptly condemned, not only by the media, but by average citizens of every stripe. Pleas for tolerance were immediately unfurled. But we happen to live in an open, pluralistic society.
The problem with fanatical Muslims is that they can't imagine that the rest of the world may be a little sore at them for turning it into a paranoid nightmare where you can't get on a plane without thinking of it slamming into a tall building, or on a subway, metro, bus or tube for fear of dying a horrible death. So excuse me if the cartoons offend your sensibilities. The civilized world is uncomfortable with you and it is afraid of you. Perhaps you should stop your cries of bloody jihad for a second and ponder why.
But then again, many Muslims live and practice their faith under repressive, undemocratic regimes and societies that keep them shrouded in ignorance and poverty. They have not been exposed to the ways of democracy and a free press. Many of those regimes exploit hatred of Israel, the Jews and the West to distract their citizens from their own dismal conditions, further alienating them from the rest of the world, while at the same time boasting hypocritically that they're our allies.
Many of those regimes, like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan or Syria, are themselves in mortal fear of the tide of Islamic fundamentalism threatening their stability (enforced by iron rule) so they let people vent the hatreds that they themselves help fan.
I remember right after 9/11 when the streets of New York were quieted by shock and disbelief, there were some scattered incidents of bullies threatening people who looked like Arabs. They were few and far between and promptly condemned, not only by the media, but by average citizens of every stripe. Pleas for tolerance were immediately unfurled. But we happen to live in an open, pluralistic society.
The problem with fanatical Muslims is that they can't imagine that the rest of the world may be a little sore at them for turning it into a paranoid nightmare where you can't get on a plane without thinking of it slamming into a tall building, or on a subway, metro, bus or tube for fear of dying a horrible death. So excuse me if the cartoons offend your sensibilities. The civilized world is uncomfortable with you and it is afraid of you. Perhaps you should stop your cries of bloody jihad for a second and ponder why.
But then again, many Muslims live and practice their faith under repressive, undemocratic regimes and societies that keep them shrouded in ignorance and poverty. They have not been exposed to the ways of democracy and a free press. Many of those regimes exploit hatred of Israel, the Jews and the West to distract their citizens from their own dismal conditions, further alienating them from the rest of the world, while at the same time boasting hypocritically that they're our allies.
Many of those regimes, like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan or Syria, are themselves in mortal fear of the tide of Islamic fundamentalism threatening their stability (enforced by iron rule) so they let people vent the hatreds that they themselves help fan.
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Let's start WWIII on account of some cartoons, why don't we.
I'll tell you what offends me: religion offends me. Religious zealots from the dark ages offend me. I'm an equal opportunity fundamentalist loather, I don't care what religion a zealot belongs to, for they are all the same: narrowminded, primitive, bigoted and stupid. A pox on all of them!
The secular majority of people in the world are very wrong about their laissez faire, what-ever, attitude towards religious intolerance. We should be fighting tooth and nail against it, but nobody gives a damn because they are too busy watching American Idol. Well, we are well on our way back to the darkest ages of persecution and massive mental retardation, so we are reaping what we've sown. Happy now?
Now, is it any wonder that this cartoon debacle happened in Europe? No, because they are a bunch of racists even as they scream like banshees about their love for democracy. These are societies that were racially homogeneous for very long (they were happy to kick Jews around and enslave darker people in other continents) and who have not allowed their immigrants to assimilate or even adapt to their beloved democracies. They raped, plundered, humiliated and brought disease, chaos and destruction to Africa and Asia in colonial times and now they're crying. They are still as arrogant and clueless as before, and as unrepentant of the disasters they unleashed upon the world, but now they're shitting in their pants about their new boarders.
I loathe political correctness probably as much as I loathe fundamentalism, but I will say this in its defense: it trains people to be sensitive to others. This means that you can still be a prejudiced, bigoted racist, and you can have ignorant ideas about certain kinds of people or groups in the privacy of your own brain, without being stupid enough to advertise them to the entire world. We may still be a land of prejudice and increasing inequality, but we score way better than Europe in that respect (Elton John's wedding notwithstanding).
As for the cartoons... if you want to check out what the fuss is about, they are not easy to find. Is the decision not to publish them on national and international newssites based on respect or on fear? I bet that option b plays a big role.
I leave you with a Randy Newman song:
The great nations of Europe had gathered on the shore
They'd conquered what was behind them and now they wanted more
So they looked to the mighty ocean and took to the western sea
The great nations of Europe in the sixteenth century
Hide your wives and daughters
Hide the groceries too
The great nations of Europe coming through!
The Grand Canary Islands, first land to which they came,
They slaughtered all the canaries which gave the land its name
There were natives there called Guanches, Guanches by the score,
Bullets, disease, the Portuguese, and they weren't there anymore.
Now they're gone, they're gone, they're really gone,
You've never seen anyone so gone
They're a picture in a museum, some lines within a book,
But you won't find a live one, no matter where you look.
Hide your wives and daughters
Hide the groceries too
The great nations of Europe coming through!
Columbus sailed for India, found Salvador instead,
He shook hands with some Indians and soon they all were dead
They got TB and typhoid and athlete's foot, diphteria and the flu,
'Scuse me, Great Nations coming through!
Balboa found the Pacific, and on the trail one day
He met some friendly Indians whom he was told were gay
So he had them torn apart by dogs on religious grounds they say
The great nations of Europe were quite holy in their way
Now they're gone, they're gone, they're really gone,
You've never seen anyone so gone
Some bones hidden in a canyon, some paintings in a cave,
There's no use trying to save them, there's nothing left to save.
Hide your wives and daughters
Hide your sons as well
With the great nations of Europe you never can tell.
From where you and I are standing at the end of the century
Europes have sprung up everywhere as far as the eye can see
But there on the horizon as a possibility
Some bug from out of Africa might come for you and me
Destroying everything in its path from sea to shining sea
Like the great nations of Europe in the Sixteenth Century.
The secular majority of people in the world are very wrong about their laissez faire, what-ever, attitude towards religious intolerance. We should be fighting tooth and nail against it, but nobody gives a damn because they are too busy watching American Idol. Well, we are well on our way back to the darkest ages of persecution and massive mental retardation, so we are reaping what we've sown. Happy now?
Now, is it any wonder that this cartoon debacle happened in Europe? No, because they are a bunch of racists even as they scream like banshees about their love for democracy. These are societies that were racially homogeneous for very long (they were happy to kick Jews around and enslave darker people in other continents) and who have not allowed their immigrants to assimilate or even adapt to their beloved democracies. They raped, plundered, humiliated and brought disease, chaos and destruction to Africa and Asia in colonial times and now they're crying. They are still as arrogant and clueless as before, and as unrepentant of the disasters they unleashed upon the world, but now they're shitting in their pants about their new boarders.
I loathe political correctness probably as much as I loathe fundamentalism, but I will say this in its defense: it trains people to be sensitive to others. This means that you can still be a prejudiced, bigoted racist, and you can have ignorant ideas about certain kinds of people or groups in the privacy of your own brain, without being stupid enough to advertise them to the entire world. We may still be a land of prejudice and increasing inequality, but we score way better than Europe in that respect (Elton John's wedding notwithstanding).
As for the cartoons... if you want to check out what the fuss is about, they are not easy to find. Is the decision not to publish them on national and international newssites based on respect or on fear? I bet that option b plays a big role.
I leave you with a Randy Newman song:
The great nations of Europe had gathered on the shore
They'd conquered what was behind them and now they wanted more
So they looked to the mighty ocean and took to the western sea
The great nations of Europe in the sixteenth century
Hide your wives and daughters
Hide the groceries too
The great nations of Europe coming through!
The Grand Canary Islands, first land to which they came,
They slaughtered all the canaries which gave the land its name
There were natives there called Guanches, Guanches by the score,
Bullets, disease, the Portuguese, and they weren't there anymore.
Now they're gone, they're gone, they're really gone,
You've never seen anyone so gone
They're a picture in a museum, some lines within a book,
But you won't find a live one, no matter where you look.
Hide your wives and daughters
Hide the groceries too
The great nations of Europe coming through!
Columbus sailed for India, found Salvador instead,
He shook hands with some Indians and soon they all were dead
They got TB and typhoid and athlete's foot, diphteria and the flu,
'Scuse me, Great Nations coming through!
Balboa found the Pacific, and on the trail one day
He met some friendly Indians whom he was told were gay
So he had them torn apart by dogs on religious grounds they say
The great nations of Europe were quite holy in their way
Now they're gone, they're gone, they're really gone,
You've never seen anyone so gone
Some bones hidden in a canyon, some paintings in a cave,
There's no use trying to save them, there's nothing left to save.
Hide your wives and daughters
Hide your sons as well
With the great nations of Europe you never can tell.
From where you and I are standing at the end of the century
Europes have sprung up everywhere as far as the eye can see
But there on the horizon as a possibility
Some bug from out of Africa might come for you and me
Destroying everything in its path from sea to shining sea
Like the great nations of Europe in the Sixteenth Century.
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
I loooove the The New Yorker
Dudes: sometimes I am at a loss for words, believe it or not. So I leave you with this week's New Yorker charming Shouts & Murmurs piece by Zev Borow on the kind of evil people the government intends to wiretap for our collective safety. I usually don't find that section as amusing as they do at The New Yorker, but this time they nailed it.
By the way (words are coming back to me, it seems), I will never pretend to be hipper than thou by dumping on The New Yorker. Everything I know lately comes from the New Yorker. If you are ever at a loss for words at a social event, you can count on The New Yorker to provide the most fascinating conversation topics such as pit bulls, Hamas, Ariel Sharon, Beethoven's Grosse Fugue, Alan Turing, the man who broke the Enigma code, saved Britain, almost invented the computer and was convicted of gross indecency and given hormone treatments for being a homosexual, or if this is too depressing, you can talk about the increasingly unfunny winners of the cartoon contest, which stumps me every time. It's fascinating stuff to stuff your brain with.
Yesterday, for instance, I went to hear the admirable Dr. Oliver Sacks at a free talk with Larissa McFarquhar, sponsored by The New Yorker. Dr. Sacks is a remarkable human being. He's funny, self-effacing, eloquent and extramegasmart. He has an insatiable curiosity and awe for the way nature works, but most impressively, he has true empathy and hope in the face of darkness (something I find almost impossible to muster, being the misanthrope I am). Hearing him speak I thought he would have been a great Rabbi, in the best sense of the word, a great teacher and moral guide. A man whose life is about finding the transcendent in everything human, not through dogma and intransigence but through tolerance, joyful curiosity and investigation.
He spoke about synesthesia, aphasia, agnosia, tourette's, stereovision, and many other quirks of the brain. He's a serious scientist with the soul of a writer, therefore he is lucid and compelling and accesible. He said imagination is our most precious faculty. He spoke forcefully about the mishandling of religion being the most dangerous force in the world today (hear, hear!). He was aghast that 80% of Americans think the Bible is a geology book. He recently won a prize as Best Atheist (where do I sign?). I propose we give Oliver Sacks a prize for Best Human Being All Around.
By the way (words are coming back to me, it seems), I will never pretend to be hipper than thou by dumping on The New Yorker. Everything I know lately comes from the New Yorker. If you are ever at a loss for words at a social event, you can count on The New Yorker to provide the most fascinating conversation topics such as pit bulls, Hamas, Ariel Sharon, Beethoven's Grosse Fugue, Alan Turing, the man who broke the Enigma code, saved Britain, almost invented the computer and was convicted of gross indecency and given hormone treatments for being a homosexual, or if this is too depressing, you can talk about the increasingly unfunny winners of the cartoon contest, which stumps me every time. It's fascinating stuff to stuff your brain with.
Yesterday, for instance, I went to hear the admirable Dr. Oliver Sacks at a free talk with Larissa McFarquhar, sponsored by The New Yorker. Dr. Sacks is a remarkable human being. He's funny, self-effacing, eloquent and extramegasmart. He has an insatiable curiosity and awe for the way nature works, but most impressively, he has true empathy and hope in the face of darkness (something I find almost impossible to muster, being the misanthrope I am). Hearing him speak I thought he would have been a great Rabbi, in the best sense of the word, a great teacher and moral guide. A man whose life is about finding the transcendent in everything human, not through dogma and intransigence but through tolerance, joyful curiosity and investigation.
He spoke about synesthesia, aphasia, agnosia, tourette's, stereovision, and many other quirks of the brain. He's a serious scientist with the soul of a writer, therefore he is lucid and compelling and accesible. He said imagination is our most precious faculty. He spoke forcefully about the mishandling of religion being the most dangerous force in the world today (hear, hear!). He was aghast that 80% of Americans think the Bible is a geology book. He recently won a prize as Best Atheist (where do I sign?). I propose we give Oliver Sacks a prize for Best Human Being All Around.
Friday, January 27, 2006
Grand Ole Oprah
I'm glad you apologized, you cunning, masterful Goddess of Media. However, why is it you always get it wrong? Now every time somebody writes a memoir, and apparently there is one born every minute, including Nicole Ritchie's, the already verminlike, abominable, spineless, publishing industry is going to be in mortal fear of lawsuits and is going to investigate every colon and every comma in selfrighteous self-defense, thanks to you, you idiot. If somebody writes a memoir, (like I aspire to do one of these days), it's not the publisher's responsibility to put it through a congressional investigation.
Memoirs are not documentaries and they are not news reports, but personal recollections, told through the interpretive voice of the subject, and as memory is famously unreliable, all we can trust is that the author will have enough INTEGRITY not to lie and invent stuff that didn't happen to aggrandize his sorry, needy ass.
I'm sick of everything in this country being put through the hysterical, nonsensical, legal finetoothed comb, from fucking TV commercials, to hot cups of coffee in junk food dumps, to sprained ankles on the street, and apparently, thanks to Oprah now, literary memoirs.
You know, in Berlin and Prague, the public transportation system; that is, the buses, trams and subways, are based on a HONOR system. You buy your pass and you are supposed to validate it. True, it's easy to cheat. True, you may never be caught and ride for free till you kick the bucket. True, there may be ex-SS who may demand to see your pass or else. But people abide by and trust THE HONOR SYSTEM in the freaking subway!!!!
I don't believe we can expect that from this culture of attention-starved hucksters, snakeoil salesmen and greedy bastards, who apparently prefer to have a fact checking thought police instead.
Click on the title for a fun Oprah treat.
Memoirs are not documentaries and they are not news reports, but personal recollections, told through the interpretive voice of the subject, and as memory is famously unreliable, all we can trust is that the author will have enough INTEGRITY not to lie and invent stuff that didn't happen to aggrandize his sorry, needy ass.
I'm sick of everything in this country being put through the hysterical, nonsensical, legal finetoothed comb, from fucking TV commercials, to hot cups of coffee in junk food dumps, to sprained ankles on the street, and apparently, thanks to Oprah now, literary memoirs.
You know, in Berlin and Prague, the public transportation system; that is, the buses, trams and subways, are based on a HONOR system. You buy your pass and you are supposed to validate it. True, it's easy to cheat. True, you may never be caught and ride for free till you kick the bucket. True, there may be ex-SS who may demand to see your pass or else. But people abide by and trust THE HONOR SYSTEM in the freaking subway!!!!
I don't believe we can expect that from this culture of attention-starved hucksters, snakeoil salesmen and greedy bastards, who apparently prefer to have a fact checking thought police instead.
Click on the title for a fun Oprah treat.
I have opinions about opera too...
...even if I don't know dick about it. Yesterday I saw Osvaldo Golijov's Ainadamar at Lincoln Center. He's supposed to be the cat's pajamas in modern classical music today. The opera is about the memories of actress Margarita Xingu of the murder of her friend, poet Federico García Lorca in the Spanish Civil War. It's about the attempt by totalitarian forces to murder art and freedom, with a libretto By David Henry Hwang. I loved the music of Ainadamar, a very accessible blend of flamenco and Spanish and Latin styles with beautiful, powerful melodies, and the use of tabla and a fantastic Flamenco "cantaor" and laptops and sound effects. Surprisingly, I expected something a little bit more challenging musically. Ainadamar really uses a lot of popular musical idioms, so it sounds relatively easy to digest. Still, it is very rewarding. Dawn Upshaw, in the role of Margarita, sang and acted her heart out with a magnificent soaring voice. So did Jessica Rivera, as Nuria, her student. Kelly O'Connor, the mezzosoprano in the role of Federico García Lorca, sang amazingly but I was hoping they would kill her off and fast. The problem, I believe, was in the staging by director Peter Sellars, who is also supposed to be, like we say in Mexico, the last Coca-Cola in the desert. The stage was empty, surrounded by a painting with Guernica overtones (pretty old hat, if you ask moi). There were no props. There is lots of jumping ahead and backwards in time and space, from Spain to Uruguay, to a dream of Havana in the plot but it's not easy to figure it out if you don't read Sellars explanatory notes in the program. Dude, if you have to explain that much, you're not doing your job, which is to communicate the story clearly to the audience. The one saving grace I saw in this interpretation is that the lack of conventional storytelling with the aid of scenery and props allowed the audience to really connect to the music, because not much was happening on the stage. There were a couple of nice images, like the women in the choir evoking pealing bells with their bodies, but most of the time the singers were just standing there or embracing each other, which has got to be the most boring thing an audience can see on a stage. In the little opera I've seen there always seems to be something ridiculous going on. In this case, most of it came from Ms. O'Connor's demeanor on stage. She was wearing what looked like a crumpled, ill fitting, seersucker suit, that distracted me to no end. The short jacket seemed to creep up her very wide hips, rendering useless the illusion that she's supposed to be a gay male poet, and an elegant, fastidious dresser at that. Her slicked back hair came undone after a few jerks of her head, so that didn't help either. Would it kill her to get a proper haircut for the role?
But most of all, in her suffering, she seemed to squirm like a clam under lime juice. She seemed pathetic, instead of dignified. Now, Garcia Lorca may have been a major faygeleh, but he is a heroic figure, and I don't appreciate watching him run aimlessly around the stage, bumping into the walls, crouching with his ass in the air, whimpering for mercy. I do not blame Ms. O'Connor, who does have an otherworldly voice, but the director. Another detail like something out of a high school production, was that the Spanish Civil Guard soldiers were dressed in flashy camouflage fatigues like bored Marines in Iraq. Really, that kind of symbolism seems to me infantile and heavy handed.
I was so bored with the production that I thought that maybe the truly radical idea would be to stage this opera in a conventional way, with more theatrical resources that could better evoke the painful sense of loss, and give the powerful, emotional music the dramatic impact it deserves.
But most of all, in her suffering, she seemed to squirm like a clam under lime juice. She seemed pathetic, instead of dignified. Now, Garcia Lorca may have been a major faygeleh, but he is a heroic figure, and I don't appreciate watching him run aimlessly around the stage, bumping into the walls, crouching with his ass in the air, whimpering for mercy. I do not blame Ms. O'Connor, who does have an otherworldly voice, but the director. Another detail like something out of a high school production, was that the Spanish Civil Guard soldiers were dressed in flashy camouflage fatigues like bored Marines in Iraq. Really, that kind of symbolism seems to me infantile and heavy handed.
I was so bored with the production that I thought that maybe the truly radical idea would be to stage this opera in a conventional way, with more theatrical resources that could better evoke the painful sense of loss, and give the powerful, emotional music the dramatic impact it deserves.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
A dark day for Israel
It's a dark day for Israel that Hamas won the Palestinian elections. Hamas organizes suicide bombings, the murder of its own citizens, to achieve their means. How can one trust people who do that to their own children is beyond my comprehension. Hamas also does not recognize Israel's right to exist and claim they won't negotiate with it. Many in Israel probably will take this as a sign to retrench in the hard line and continue provoking Palestinian unrest. Others probably will live in fear of renewed violence from both sides. Hamas won not only because of its pure hatred of Israel, which unfortunately is shared by most of the Palestinians in the occupied territories, but it also won because it has offered more social services and in a terrible, misguided way, more hope to the Palestinians than the corrupt and ineffective Fatah. They won because the area has steadily become more radicalized on both sides for years, Sharon's withdrawal of Gaza notwithstanding. Is the rise of Hamas' Israel's own fault? Perhaps. Is it Ariel Sharon's fault? Read Ari Shavit's fascinating, deeply ambivalent article in the New Yorker this week. Click on the title of this super serious blog entry to read an interview with Shavit about Sharon.
In a way, Sharon is lucky he's not conscious anymore to see what he has sown.
Hamas has won and I hope in my heart this will not bring a new era of violence and disaster for both peoples.
In a way, Sharon is lucky he's not conscious anymore to see what he has sown.
Hamas has won and I hope in my heart this will not bring a new era of violence and disaster for both peoples.
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
I'm stepping into the Frey
It's bad enough that the guy is a liar and a cheat and beneath contempt. What is truly galling is that his publisher and Oprah, (talk about the road to hell being paved with good intentions) instead of showing some backbone and admitting having being duped, instead of saying that outright lying and embellishing what is supposed to be a real story is unacceptable, DEFEND this bastard and spin themselves silly because all they want to do is save face and keep collecting their millions.
I am appalled, shocked, dismayed and frightened at the levels of spin, which is nothing but lying and distortion of the truth, the powerful in America are willing to engage in, from our moronically malevolent president, to the Grande Dame of TV and the publishers of A Million Little Pieces. But hell, that's how things in America work today: an editor told Mary Karr, who wrote a great memoir, The Liars Club, to insert a sappy goodbye scene with her mother, even though it never happened, to sell more copies. She refused. Read her opinion of this farce by clicking on the title.
People have no shame anymore, and that is accepted. It is accepted that in the name of money and fame, you can lie and cheat and grovel and debase yourself for your fifteen minutes of glory. And people understand; Oprah, in her all encompassing magnificence, has the power to forgive and so will many morons who watch her dreadful show. It's only natural. Everybody wants to be famous. Everybody wants to make it. It doesn't matter how. It's revolting.
I am appalled, shocked, dismayed and frightened at the levels of spin, which is nothing but lying and distortion of the truth, the powerful in America are willing to engage in, from our moronically malevolent president, to the Grande Dame of TV and the publishers of A Million Little Pieces. But hell, that's how things in America work today: an editor told Mary Karr, who wrote a great memoir, The Liars Club, to insert a sappy goodbye scene with her mother, even though it never happened, to sell more copies. She refused. Read her opinion of this farce by clicking on the title.
People have no shame anymore, and that is accepted. It is accepted that in the name of money and fame, you can lie and cheat and grovel and debase yourself for your fifteen minutes of glory. And people understand; Oprah, in her all encompassing magnificence, has the power to forgive and so will many morons who watch her dreadful show. It's only natural. Everybody wants to be famous. Everybody wants to make it. It doesn't matter how. It's revolting.
Sunday, January 22, 2006
A nose for trouble
Perhaps somebody wants to tell some of our European male brethren that if they are going to get on a plane for 9 hours, they may want to take a shower before departure. An antiperspirant may also come in handy. On top of every other indignity of tourist class, one has to endure a unique kind of Eastern European B.O which is pungent with notes of wrinkled salami, old and new sweat, digested garlic seeping through the epidermis, the sweet, cloying smell of years of the inhalation and exhalation of stale cigarette smoke and a top note of regurgitated beer, plus, the piece de resistance, stinky feet. I think it is criminal the way airlines cram 8 seats where there is really room for four and 40 rows where there is room for only 30. I hope people start having strokes on planes, so somebody does something about this horror. I'd like to put the chairman of Skyteam on coach on a transatlantic flight, preferably coming back, see how he likes it. It's inhumane.
As you may have surmised, I have a sensitive nose and can tell you that, compared to the homeless of Prague, our homegrown variety smells like eau de cologne. The bums of Prague have a smell of ancient rotting flesh cured in vinegar.
The beggars kneel on the hard cold stone and bow their bodies to the ground, hiding their faces, as if they were doing penance for being poor. They dress only with a light sweater and ratty canvas sneakers and they stretch their hands out on the pavement, which look like they're about to fall off from the cold. It looks very medieval, and at least in my case, fails to provoke more sympathy. I much prefer our jaunty, wiseass, confident panhandlers.
As you may have surmised, I have a sensitive nose and can tell you that, compared to the homeless of Prague, our homegrown variety smells like eau de cologne. The bums of Prague have a smell of ancient rotting flesh cured in vinegar.
The beggars kneel on the hard cold stone and bow their bodies to the ground, hiding their faces, as if they were doing penance for being poor. They dress only with a light sweater and ratty canvas sneakers and they stretch their hands out on the pavement, which look like they're about to fall off from the cold. It looks very medieval, and at least in my case, fails to provoke more sympathy. I much prefer our jaunty, wiseass, confident panhandlers.
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