"Unlike a lot of self-help gurus, yogis and crackpot messiahs who rose to prominence in the early-1970s age of weird, Mr. Geller endured..."

"... and his cultural impact proved both singular and lasting. Ikea produced a Geller stool, which had bent, wavy legs. Nintendo made a spoon-wielding Pokémon character, Kadabra, who could cause clocks to run backward. References to Mr. Geller, or mangled silverware, have appeared in songs by R.E.M., Toad the Wet Sprocket and Incubus, and made a memorable cameo in 'The Matrix.' 'It’s not the spoon that bends,' a bald tyke in a robe tells Neo, Keanu Reeves’s character. 'It is only yourself.'..."

From "The End of the Magic World’s 50-Year Grudge/In 1973, Uri Geller claimed to bend metal with his mind on live television. Skeptics couldn’t beat him. Now they’ve joined him" (NYT).

"If Mr. Geller can’t actually bend metal with his brain — and civility and fairness demands this 'if' — he is the author of a benign charade, which is a pretty good definition of a magic trick. Small wonder that the anti-Geller brigade has laid down its arms and led a rapprochement with the working professionals of magic. He is a reminder that people thrill at the sense that they are either watching a miracle or getting bamboozled."

Behold the entertainment (from 1973):

"[W]atching the Geller haters now is like watching people run into nursery schools shouting that there is no Santa Claus."

"You’ve got boys coming to these communities and saying, ‘I don’t know how to talk to a girl,’ and the response is, ‘Rape it.’ It tends to be completely under the radar of teachers and parents. They aren’t aware of this as a form of radicalisation at all."

Laura Bates, "a researcher and author who went undercover in incel groups," quoted in "Plymouth shooting: Incel groups radicalising boys as young as 13" (London Times).

“This is an extremist group advocating for women to be massacred, but at every level we don’t treat this in the way that we would any other comparable form of extremism and hatred,” she said.... 

“The presence of a small but significant minority of children that are very clearly being sucked into this is concerning,” she added. Adherents of the incel subculture describe having taken the “black pill” — a reference to the Matrix films — which means they believe that no matter what they do, they have no chance of establishing sexual relationships with women.

There's no "black pill" in "The Matrix," just red and blue pills, but it's a term in incel talk, as Wikipedia explains here:

Blogger is talking like a robot.

Here's a message that's been appearing lately on the pages I'm seeing as I work on Blogger:

In late June, the new Blogger interface will become the default for all users. The legacy interface will still be optionally available. We recommend trying the new interface by clicking “Try the New Blogger” in the left-hand navigation. Please file any critical issues encountered.

Please file any critical issues encountered? Is that any way to talk to a human being? It sounds like they're saying if you don't like it, shut up about it. I mean, I feel like adopting that phrase as a jocose way to tell someone not to bother me about their problems: Please file any critical issues encountered.

"In 2020, among political controversies, Elon Musk and several political figures, including Ivanka Trump made a reference to the red pill concept."

That's the last line of the Wikipedia article "Red pill and blue pill" — which is full of great stuff. In addition to explaining the original meaning in the movie "The Matrix," there's the earlier movie, "Total Recall," in which the Schwarzenegger character is offered a red pill and told "it's a symbol of your desire to return to reality." And:

The choice between taking a blue or red pill is a central metaphor in the 2011 Arte documentary film Marx Reloaded, in which philosophers including Slavoj Žižek and Nina Power explore solutions to the global economic and financial crisis of 2008–09. The film also contains an animated parody of the red/blue pill scene in The Matrix, with Leon Trotsky as Morpheus and Karl Marx as Neo.

Ha ha. I want to see that. Aha!



I love cartoons. Are they real life? Are they just fantasy?

Anyway, yesterday, Elon Musk tweeted: "Take the red pill." That's the whole tweet. What did he want to take the red pill about?

And Ivanka was right there:

Taken! https://t.co/Ng0S2OFC93

— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) May 17, 2020

Does she know? I mean, there is no pill to take to get you exactly to reality. If you use the metaphor, you're simply insisting that YOU know where reality is and that other people are living in a fantasy world. It's just a pop-culture, cheeky way to assert that YOU know what is true and those other people are wrong. But Elon Musk's tweet doesn't specify the thing that is asserted to be true. And Ivanka is signaling that she's in on the truth and it's the same truth that Elon Musk is pushing.

You can look at his Twitter feed and try to get a sense of what he's talking about. My previous post is about another Elon Musk tweet — one that rages against the extenuation of the coronavirus lockdown — but this "red pill" tweet isn't close to that in the feed. The lockdown protest was back on May 14th and this "red pill" business was on the 17th.

Now, maybe he's just saying, Let's all look at what's really real. Turn away from the fantasy life that might make you feel good, but the truth is better.

That makes me think of the Jesus catchphrase: "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."

ADDED: The director of "The Matrix" responds to Elon and Ivanka: "Fuck both of you."

"With the race looking more and more likely to grow bitter and messy, and maybe even wind up in a contested convention, the former president..."

"... and those around him are increasingly sure he will need to play a prominent role in bringing the party back together and calming its tensions later this summer, including perhaps in Milwaukee, where the party’s meeting is scheduled to be held in July. So he is committed to not allowing his personal thoughts to dribble out in the meantime, directly or via leaks, conscious of how any sense that he’s taking sides in intraparty disputes could rock the primary in the short run and potentially undermine his ability to play this larger role in the months ahead.... While he’s following the race by reading newspaper reports, he’s been disengaged with its day-to-day dynamics, sure that he’ll have to catch up on them later this year anyway — he doesn’t even make a point of watching the debates... Even if he felt like speaking out against Sanders specifically, he knows such a statement would likely ruin his standing on the left and almost certainly divide the party just when it needs uniting, according to multiple people who’ve spoken with him about the race. Obama and those around him 'have a very clear understanding that if they put their finger on the scale right now, all of a sudden half of the Democratic Party hates him,' an influential Democrat who keeps in touch with Obama explained.... This time around, Obama has sought to make sure the full field of Democratic candidates understands his intention to be both neutral and passive.... Obama’s aversion to TV news hasn’t abated now that he has enough time on his hands that he’s compared himself to Neo, the time-slowing Keanu Reeves character from The Matrix, say people who’ve been spending time with him. If he’s in front of a television, they say, he’s probably watching sports."

From "What Obama Is Saying in Private About the Democratic Primary" (NY Magazine).

ADDED: I feel like Obama — I have an aversion to TV news and I am taking a position of cruel neutrality.

On the new "Late Show" last night, Stephen Colbert facilitated an anal rape joke told by Elon Musk.

Colbert invites Musk to talk about the Tesla, and a clip is shown of a device — a "snake charger" — that plugs itself into the car.

Musk chuckles, the first nudge to notice how phallic it is. As the tip of the snake approaches the insertion point on the car, Musk says, "This looks a little wrong." Colbert takes us away from the genitalia metaphor:  "That really looks like the thing that jacks into the back of Neo's head in 'The Matrix.'" Musk says: "Right."

But then Colbert sets up what you'll be able to tell is a planned joke: "Is that thing going to attack me in my sleep?" Watch Musk slimily squirming as he feels the approach of the joke. Musk struggles a bit — "Uh, it's, well, I wouldn't, for the prototype, at least" — then gets out the line I'm sure was planned: "I would recommend not dropping anything when you're near it."

That's a variation on "don't drop the soap," the overused (and should never have been used in the first place) prison-rape joke.

The entire interview was awkward and creepy, especially for anyone who isn't a sci-fi/hi-tech fanboy/girl sort of person and predisposed to embrace the smarmy, self-satisfied Musk. Colbert owns a Tesla, and he's interviewed Musk before. He's got him on the second episode of the new show, right after Scarlett Johansson — and he even made Scarlett Johansson talk about Elon Musk. Colbert needed to try to draw in those of us who are outsiders to Musk love.

Perhaps the thinking was: Let's show the lovable nerdy side of Colbert. He loves Tesla. Let's have a weird Steve-and-Elon nerd fest where they make quick references to sci-fi movies and enthuse about relocating to Mars and we can work in a titter over the penis-y movement of a robot. Figure out how to do that well! It's your new network show and you're trying to keep/win an audience.

How is it possible that nobody nixed the anal rape joke?

"One family. One room. Four screens. Four realities, basically."

"While it may look like some domestic version of 'The Matrix' — families sharing a common space, but plugged into entirely separate planes of existence through technology — a scene like this has become an increasingly familiar evening ritual. As a result, the American living room in 2011 can often seem less like an oasis for shared activity, even if that just means watching television together, than an entangled intersection of data traffic — everyone huddled in a cyber-cocoon."

It's a NYT culture article.

Is there a problem here? If a family of 4 were sitting around together reading books, it would seem better than if they were all watching the same show on TV. And yet, with books, you wouldn't be able to IM stuff to each other.

With either books or computers, if you're with other people, you can easily read something out loud to the people in the room and start a conversation. My grandfather used to do that with the newspaper, and I've come to think of it as a kind of proto-blogging.

These days, if I'm reading something and finding it interesting, I might blog it to the whole world and try to start a conversation on line, but we still interact in real space. Meade might read something out loud to me, and that might lead to a long conversation, or it might get one of my all-too-typical responses: 1. "IM me the link," 2. "I already blogged that." 3. "I'm blogging that right now."

Tina Brown entices Robin Givhan...

... to leave the Washington Post for the new Newsweek. What a coup!

Ms. Givhan spent 15 years at The Post, most notably as fashion editor, the job that earned her a Pulitzer in 2006 for criticism....

Her writing was famously provocative and punchy. She once described Vice President Dick Cheney’s outfit at a solemn Auschwitz memorial as “the kind of attire one typically wears to operate a snow blower.”

(Link added. Picture of Cheney in his embarrassing parka at the link.)

In a column about  Condoleezza Rice, then the secretary of state, Ms. Givhan wrote about the images of sex and power that Ms. Rice’s  high boots and fitted dresses conveyed. “Rice looked as though she was prepared to talk tough, knock heads and do a freeze-frame ‘Matrix’ jump kick if necessary,” wrote Ms. Givhan.

(Link added. Pic of Condi at the link. Hey, let's see the new Secretary of State try that.)

When First Lady Michelle Obama’s sleek attire turned heads at the 2009 Inauguration, Ms. Givhan declared “the era of first lady-as-rectangle had ended.”

(Link added. With pic — showing that the era of first lady-as-Glinda had seemingly begun.)

ADDED: Above are the examples of Givhan's writing that the NYT selected. Law folk are most interested in this one about John Roberts — on the occasion of George Bush announcing his nomination to the Supreme Court. Givhan took a shot at Roberts's wife and children —  "groomed and glossy in pastel hues -- like a trio of Easter eggs, a handful of Jelly Bellies, three little Necco wafers."

There was tow-headed Jack -- having freed himself from the controlling grip of his mother -- enjoying a moment in the spotlight dressed in a seersucker suit with short pants and saddle shoes. His sister, Josie, was half-hidden behind her mother's skirt. Her blond pageboy glistened. And she was wearing a yellow dress with a crisp white collar, lace-trimmed anklets and black patent-leather Mary Janes.

(Who among us did a double take? Two cute blond children with a boyish-looking father getting ready to take the lectern -- Jack Edwards? Emma Claire? Is that you? Are all little boys now named Jack?)

The wife wore a strawberry-pink tweed suit with taupe pumps and pearls, which alone would not have been particularly remarkable, but alongside the nostalgic costuming of the children, the overall effect was of self-consciously crafted perfection. The children, of course, are innocents. They are dressed by their parents. And through their clothes choices, the parents have created the kind of honeyed faultlessness that jams mailboxes every December when personalized Christmas cards arrive bringing greetings "to you and yours" from the Blake family or the Joneses. Everyone looks freshly scrubbed and adorable, just like they have stepped from a Currier & Ives landscape.

Yeah, that was mean — but deliciously so. (Mmmm.... Necco wafers.)

Yeah, it was political. Note that Cheney was underdressed, the Robertses were overdressed, and First Lady Michelle Obama was just right.

I hope that, teamed with Tina, Robin gets even meaner and more political. I love the fashion-politics-culture genre, and I want to see Givhan do her thing. And stop fawning over Michelle Obama!

"God came to earth and saw people sticking it wherever and doing it with whatever, and he just cleared it all out. He was, like, 'Enough.'"

Said Prince, as told by Claire Hoffman in The New Yorker:

Prince padded into the kitchen, a small fifty-year-old man in yoga pants and a big sweater, wearing platform flip-flops over white socks, like a geisha....

Limping slightly, Prince set off on a walk around his new bachelor pad. Glass doors opened onto acres of back yard, and a hot tub bubbled in the sunlight. “I have a lot of parties,” he explained....

Seven years ago, he became a Jehovah’s Witness. He said that he had moved to L.A. so that he could understand the hearts and minds of the music moguls. “I wanted to be around people, connected to people, for work,” he said. “You know, it’s all about religion. That’s what unites people here. They all have the same religion, so I wanted to sit down with them, to understand the way they see things, how they read Scripture.”

Prince had his change of faith, he said, after a two-year-long debate with a musician friend, Larry Graham. “I don’t see it really as a conversion,” he said. “More, you know, it’s a realization. It’s like Morpheus and Neo in ‘The Matrix.’ ” He attends meetings at a local Kingdom Hall, and, like his fellow-witnesses, he leaves his gated community from time to time to knock on doors and proselytize. “Sometimes people act surprised, but mostly they’re really cool about it,” he said....

When asked about his perspective on social issues—gay marriage, abortion—Prince tapped his Bible and said, “God came to earth and saw people sticking it wherever and doing it with whatever, and he just cleared it all out. He was, like, ‘Enough.’ ”

Back when Prince was much more popular, his music powerfully enticed us into what he now considers sin. If God is keeping score, Prince should be worried. I think he'd need to go door to door for millions of years to undo all that damage (if damage it is).

Via Gawker, which notes:

If Prince wants to get attention for his views, airing them amid nationwide demonstrations against the passage of a California anti-gay-marriage initiative will probably do the trick. What that does for the "celibate" musician's sales and popularity is another matter.

Celibate, eh?

Tonight, that mood of isolation permeates Prince's luxurious 30,000-square-foot Tuscan-style villa, perched high in a gated Beverly Hills enclave. The royal one, clad in a filmy white sweater over a black shirt and slacks with (shocker!) flip-flops, lives solo in the nine-bedroom home, where a cook is upstairs preparing food for a post-midnight gathering with friends and bandmates.

"I'm single, celibate and sexy," he says with a laugh. "I feel free."

No one promoted sex more than Prince, and now he's celibate. That's rich.

There's lots to talk about here, but don't overlook the assertion that the music moguls of L.A. "all have the same religion." I hope that means that commerce is a religion for business folk.

UPDATE: Prince retracts!

What are the new classics?

Entertainment Weekly does a very nice job of ranking the new classics — movies, TV, etc. — from the last 25 years. From the movie list:

1. Pulp Fiction (1994)
7. Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
10. Moulin Rouge (2001)
11. This Is Spinal Tap (1984)
12. The Matrix (1999)
13. GoodFellas (1990)
14. Crumb (1995)
15. Edward Scissorhands (1990)
16. Boogie Nights (1997)
17. Jerry Maguire (1996)
18. Do the Right Thing (1989)
19. Casino Royale (2006)
23. Memento (2001)
24. A Room With a View (1986)
32. Fight Club (1999)
33. The Breakfast Club (1985)
34. Fargo (1996)
44. The Player (1992)
77. Sid and Nancy (1986)
91. Back to the Future (1985)

From the TV list:

1. The Simpsons, Fox, 1989-present
2 The Sopranos, HBO (1999-2007)
3 Seinfeld, NBC (1989-98)
5 Sex and the City, HBO (1998-2004)
6 Survivor, CBS (2000-present)
12 South Park, Comedy Central (1997-present)
14 The Daily Show, Comedy Central (1996-present)
17 The Office (U.K. version), BBC2 (2001-03)
18 American Idol, Fox (2002-present)
21 Roseanne, ABC (1988-97)
22 The Real World, MTV (1992-present)
28 The Larry Sanders Show, HBO (1992-98)
30 Late Show With David Letterman, CBS (1993-present)
38 Beavis and Butt-head, MTV (1993-97)
39 Six Feet Under, HBO (2001-05)
43 Late Night With Conan O'Brien, NBC (1993-present)
45 Curb Your Enthusiasm, HBO (2000-present)
49 Twin Peaks, ABC (1990-91)
55. Pee-wee's Playhouse, CBS (1986-90)
63. Mystery Science Theater 3000, Comedy Central (1989-96), Sci Fi (1997-99)
64. The Osbournes, MTV (2002-05)
69. The Colbert Report, Comedy Central (2005-present)
75. Project Runway, Bravo (2004-present)
79. The Comeback, HBO (2005)
83. Absolutely Fabulous, BBC2 (1992), BBC1 (1994-2004)

From the book list:

4. The Liars' Club, Mary Karr (1995)
5. American Pastoral, Philip Roth (1997)
7. Maus, Art Spiegelman (1986/1991)
11. Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer (1997)
28. Naked, David Sedaris (1997)
33. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion (2005)
66. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace (1997)
72. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon (2003)

(The book list is heavily weighted toward fiction.)

From the style list:

1. Madonna at the MTV Video Music Awards (1984)
2. Sarah Jessica Parker in the opening credits of Sex and the City (1998)
3. Michael Jackson in the ''Thriller'' video (1983)
4. Sharon Stone at the Oscars (1996)
5. Kurt Cobain and grunge style (1991)
7. Amy Winehouse's frocks, bold bras, and sky-high bouffant (2007)
13. Tom Cruise's Ray-Bans and tighty whities in Risky Business (1983)
16. Courtney Love's vintage slip dresses, Mary Janes, and home-grown dye jobs (1995)
17. The leather trenches and Neo-style shades in The Matrix (1999)
48. The goth look of Robert Smith and the Cure (1987)

From the tech list:

3. TiVo (1999)
4. iPod (2001)
5. YouTube (2005)
7. Digital Video Cameras for Consumers (1995)
9. Satellite-Radio Stations (2001)

From the video games:

1. Tetris (1985)

Ha ha. Sorry, I'm old!

From the stage list:

21. Hedwig and the Angry Inch (1998)

Sorry, I've seen a lot of these — the most expensive of these cultural pleasures — and didn't like them very much.

Romantic gestures (these aren't numbered for some reason):

• John Cusack blasts Peter Gabriel outside Ione Skye's window in 1989's Say Anything...
• Ewan McGregor breaks into ''Your Song'' while wooing Nicole Kidman in 2001's Moulin Rouge (2001).
• After her beloved Pedro (Marco Leonardi) dies making love to her in Like Water for Chocolate, Tita (Lumi Cavazos) eats matches, literally igniting her inner flame and burning her whole ranch to the ground.

Movie posters (pictured here):

The Devil Wears Prada
The 40 Year-Old Virgin
Jungle Fever
The Silence of the Lambs

Death scenes:

• Steve Buscemi + a woodchipper + the pure white snow of 1996's Fargo = arguably the most hilarious ooky death on film.
• Mel Gibson, sans intestines, bellows ''Freeeeedommmmmm!'' in Braveheart (1995).
• Warring exes Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner fall to their doom on a chandelier in 1989's The War of the Roses.
• Jack telling Rose not to say her goodbyes before freezing to death in Titanic (1997).
• Lucy Liu losing her head to Uma Thurman's blade in Kill Bill Vol. One (2003).

More lists at the link, but I'll stop here.

What movies have you walked out on?

This is a topic that came up in the comments thread here. Rather than add my own contribution to what was — let's be honest — a thread hijack, I'm starting a new thread.

For reasons I can no longer recall, I walked out on the 1968 movie "Petulia." Trailer:



The walk-out took place circa 1970, and I just wasn't in the mood for that sort of thing. I can't remember why. Oddly, I stopped walking out on movies, so for many years, this was the only movie I'd ever walked out on. I was giving everything a chance, or maybe I felt like I was wasting money if I didn't consume the whole bad/boring/pointless thing. And I must have averaged a movie a week for the next 30 years.

Then in 1998, I went to see "Antz" — a computer-animated movie voiced by Woody Allen, Sharon Stone, and others. The giant closeups of the ant faces were literally making me ill — even angry. I walked out, and I have never viewed another computer-animated movie, even on TV. Channel-surfing, I've occasionally glanced at a few minutes of some highly praised thing like "Finding Nemo" or "Shrek," but it has only reconfirmed my visceral hatred of the medium (which extends to live-actor movies with a lot of CGI).

The other movie I walked out on was Spike Lee's "Summer of Sam." This was 1 year after I walked out on "Antz." I was watching an opening sequence with a couple of ordinary people in a car, and I knew the story was that they were going to be murdered. I didn't want to sit there and watch. I'd paid good money to watch a movie I thought was going to be good and to my taste, but I suddenly felt that I didn't want to be subjected to it, and without wasting any time thinking about it — I had to decide quickly or I'd see the murder — I got right up and left.

I kept going to movies in 1999, which turned out to be one of my all-time favorite years: "The Matrix," "Being John Malkovich," "Fight Club," "Man on the Moon," "Election." I thought we were entering a golden age. But the next year seemed entirely different to me. Was CGI leaking into everything, making me sick? That was the year of "Gladiator" and "The Perfect Storm" (which I avoided). I saw some things that were praised that I hated, like "Traffic" — which I didn't walk out on. After that, I became a lot more selective, and I haven't had to walk out on things. In fact, I force myself to go through with the experience once I've selected a movie. For example, this past year, I saw "Into the Wild" and "Across the Universe." (I'm a sucker, apparently, for titles that begin with a preposition and end with "the [something vast].") With both of them, I had to struggle not to give in to my urge to escape, and there were some good things I would have missed if I'd indulged my ever-present desire for flight.

What have you walked out on? When did you conquer a strong urge to flee and did you regret your submission? Oh, I'm only talking about movies, you know. Unless you want to hijack this thread too.

What if we had to choose a President based on knowledge of pop culture?

What Stephen Bainbridge would want:

• Knows which wine to match with the foie gras-stuffed quail being served at a state dinner
• Won't wink at the Queen
• Doesn't hunt, fish, or go with girls who do
• Smokes cigars
• Is sometimes accused of having a metrosexual streak
• Only drinks beer with foods that would score at least 10,000 on the Scoville scale
• Can credibly debate the relative claims of The Matrix, Star Wars, Bladerunner, and Star Trek II to be the greatest science fiction movie of all time
• Can credibly debate the relative claims of the Who and Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band to be the world's greatest rock and roll band

(More items at the link.) I'm going to assume these are all things that are true of Stephen Bainbridge, who is mainly sick of all the Southern pop culture in presidential culture. But, frankly, he's got a few in there that would be disqualifiers for me. "Claims of the Who and Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band to be the world's greatest rock and roll band"? And you just know he means the 70s Who. I want my President to take a firm stand preferring pre-"Tommy" Who to post-"Tommy" Who. And I don't care if he -- Bainbridge's character is clearly a guy -- winks at the Queen, but I do want to see him do a karaoke performance of "We Are The Champions."

ADDED: Speaking of metrosexuals, this is pretty funny.

I'm glad to see that Robin Givhan won a Pulitzer Prize.

Here's the report in her newspaper, The Washington Post. The category is Criticism. Criticize all you want, but she's my favorite bloggable columnist. There was that column on Condoleezza Rice's stiletto boots:

As Rice walked out to greet the troops, the coat blew open in a rather swashbuckling way to reveal the top of a pair of knee-high boots. The boots had a high, slender heel that is not particularly practical. But it is a popular silhouette because it tends to elongate and flatter the leg. In short, the boots are sexy.

Blogged here:

Robin Givhan... heavy-breathes about the sexuality of Rice's clothes, even though all we're really talking about here is that the outfit was all black ("The darkness lends an air of mystery and foreboding"), that the boots had high heels ("Heels … alter her posture in myriad enticing ways, all of which are politically incorrect to discuss"), and that women often dress much less attractively ("She was not wearing a bland suit with a loose-fitting skirt and short boxy jacket with a pair of sensible pumps").

Women with power easily unleash ideation about sex -- and sex and power. If the woman can't be contained by the thought that her powerfulness has removed her sexuality altogether, then the thought becomes that her sexuality has merged with her power. In the case of Condoleezza Rice, who has a high position of power and is distinctly attractive, she seems to become a strange new being -- a superhero – like Neo in "The Matrix"!

Is it wrong to talk about powerful women this way? I say no. Image, fashion, and beauty are all important. And we certainly didn't refrain from talking about how the male candidates for President looked in 2004. We obsessed over their ties, their hair and their makeup, and the bulges under their clothes. So go ahead and spout your theories about the meaning of Condoleezza Rice's high-heeled boots.

Mine is: these boots are made for running for President.

There was the one about John Bolton:

The fulsome silhouette of the mustache makes for a particularly dreary distraction and seems to pull his whole face downward. It makes Bolton, who is only 56, look hoary and dour. For a man who has shown little evidence of a capacity to charm -- an ability that can come in handy for an ambassador -- the mustache makes him appear unwelcoming. For all of the testimony about his spiteful dealings with both colleagues and underlings, and his denials of such behavior, he managed to look mean.

Blogged here:

Well, that goes along with my longtime opinion of mustaches: they make men look mean. Charlie Chaplin might be the only exception. Please men! Let us see your philtrum! Nothing makes a man more adorable than a well-shaped philtrum. And nothing uglifies like a mustache!

There was the one about what Judith Miller and Li'l Kim wore for their sentencing walks:

The women seemed acutely aware that the sentencing walk -- like its predecessor, the perp walk -- defines them in the public's mind. In its execution, it is not enough to stand straight and hold one's head high. This is a powerful visual image capable of conveying subtleties and broad strokes. Both women were playing to their fans.

Blogged here:

Givhan goes on to describe the effect serving time will have on the two women's careers. Since Li'l Kim is a rap artist, according to Givhan, it can only help. For rap fans: "The prison term seems less an ordeal than a right of passage." Well, you can argue about whether that's politically incorrect, but it sure is a usage error. Where are the WaPo proofreaders?

(Whoops.)

There was the one blogged here:

"Why dress in 'ho gear' and risk being treated like a hooker?"

Oh, come on. You're not going to blog every single essay Robin Givhan writes, are you?

Well, I don't know, maybe I should. You know she does ask some pretty tantalizing questions:

If clothes function as semiotics, where does the power lie -- with the sender or the receiver? And what happens when the sender is purposefully offering up misinformation?

Yeah, you find those questions tantalizing?

Uh, no, I guess not. Now that you mention it.

There was the one about Lisa Kudrow as Valerie Cherish:

All of ["The Comeback"]'s nuances are reflected in Cherish's most distinctive physical characteristic, her long red hair with its painstakingly organized curls that have been flipped back and away from her face. That hair is gloriously thick and the waves fall with an unnatural precision. The hair appears Breck Girl clean, devoid of the styling products now used to give hair an informal, slightly messy appearance. Hers is hair meant to be tossed in slow motion during the opening montage of "Baywatch."

In constructing the character, Kudrow has said that Cherish's hair color was a calculated decision. In Cherish's mind, "blond is dumb comedy, red hair is smart, sexy comedy." And, presumably, brunette isn't funny at all.

Blogged here:

Givhan doesn't mention it, but red hair and comedy are indelibly associated with Lucille Ball. But of course, Cherish is wrong about a lot of things, so Kudrow's analysis of how Cherish thinks must be understood in that light. But I have a feeling Lisa loves Lucy....

Why is red hair so meaningful?

There was the one blogged here:

"Standing alone, Mrs. Bush looked lovely."

"But next to Camilla, whose Robinson Valentino blazer and skirt made her look like a large rectangle, the first lady reminded one of a radiant bride shining brightly next to a dutifully bland bridesmaid." That's the description from WaPo's Robin Givhan, who also takes note of the President: "The president looked handsome in his tuxedo. For once he didn't have the body language of a kid with a bad sunburn forced to wear a wool suit."

The one blogged here:

Saddam on trial -- in a Western suit with a pocket square but no tie!

Robin Givhan wonders what that means:

The pocket square was a particularly distracting flourish. Paired with a tie, a pocket square tends to make a man look more formally attired. But without that accompaniment, it can look almost jaunty and rakish -- like Sinatra or Dino in Vegas.

Hussein's style choice throws the viewer off balance. Is his modest paean to the Flamingo a simple reflection of his hair-dyeing, gold-leaf-loving, frightful vanity? Or has he decided to beat the "occupiers" from within their own system? Take it over, or mock it?

There was the infamous slam at the Alitos, as blogged here:

"They often looked as though they had coordinated their ensembles in the manner of a family heading off to the Sears photo studio."

WaPo's Robin Givhan analyzes the Alitos from the fashion standpoint:

He and his wife of almost 21 years wore similar wire-rimmed glasses. His were only slightly more angular than hers. They both have short-cropped brown hair....On the first day of hearings, her red suit with its contrasting piping matched his red tie. On the second day, she echoed his pale blue shirt with her blue sweater, which fell discreetly to mid-thigh. On the fourth day, her white jacket over a red dress mirrored his white shirt and red tie.

Givhan skirts very close to sneering, but in the end, she seems rather admiring. Or is that patronizing?

Earlier she'd written about the more perfectly dressed John Roberts family, in a column called "An Image a Little Too Carefully Coordinated":

Dressing appropriately is a somewhat selfless act. It's not about catering to personal comfort. One can't give in fully to private aesthetic preferences. Instead, one asks what would make other people feel respected? What would mark the occasion as noteworthy? What signifies that the moment is bigger than the individual?

But the Roberts family went too far. In announcing John Roberts as his Supreme Court nominee, the president inextricably linked the individual -- and his family -- to the sweep of tradition. In their attire, there was nothing too informal; there was nothing immodest. There was only the feeling that, in the desire to be appropriate and respectful of history, the children had been costumed in it.

Reading about the Pulitzer Prize reminded me first of that column, which I was suprised to see I didn't blog about. Didn't everyone blog about that one? Looking back at my blog from that time, I can see why I didn't get to it. I was incredibly busy dealing with the nomination itself.

Givhan put down Hillary Clinton too:

After eight years as first lady wearing innumerable skirt suits that did little to flatter her physique, she now wears pants almost exclusively. As a matter of personal style, this is a good thing. The senator looks more streamlined and elegant.

Oh, don't say that's not a putdown. No woman wants to hear a compliment like that! Blogged here (getting to the subject of men in skirts).

Most recently, she caught my eye with this one about the way they dress on "American Idol," blogged here.

So congratulations to Robin Givhan! Keep up the richly bloggable work.

"Elevator to the Gallows."

Today, I saw this brilliant poster:



This 1957 film will play at the Orpheum soon. Here's an NPR segment from last summer about the newly restored film. They've got the original poster over at that link. Here it is:



Don't you love Jean Moreau? Don't you love Louis Malle? This is one of his first films. An early Malle film that we love chez Althouse is "Zazie Dans Le Metro." A later Malle film, which happens to be my favorite film ever, is "My Dinner With Andre."

By the way, this is a pretty great poster too:



Would you see a film on the strength of the poster? I wouldn't. But the poster could be a strong factor. If "V for Vendetta" were playing in a theater here, I would have gone out to see it today, based on the poster and the fact that I still have enough love left over for the Wachowski brothers, even though I suffered through "The Matrix Reloaded." "Bound" and "The Matrix" were quite something. But, alas, "V for Vendetta" is not playing in Madison, and by the time it comes around, I'm sure my feeling for seeing it will have dissipated. That's either a good or a bad thing about living in Madison.

CORRECTION: "V for Vendetta" is playing in Madison now. The website I checked this morning was pathetically un-updated.

Judge Posner is blogging!

Over at lessig blog. So far it's all about copyright. Copyright and "The Matrix" is his favorite movie. It's "a portent of one of the directions in which technology is moving us."

About those movies....

Tonya's talking about my profile: she hasn't read any of my favorite books and she hasn't seen any of my movies. She thinks I may even have made up a fake title in "Grave of the Fireflies." And she thinks the profile function would be a good way to find a boyfriend ... except that clicking on my movie links either gets you only me or gets a bunch of 18 to 21 year old guys. Guys younger than my sons. Guys who like geocaching, which actually sounds like fun but about which Tonya says "What the hell is that? Is Mark into some freaky stuff?" I think we can safely say Googling is not one of Tonya's interests.

If I wanted to use my profile to search for boyfriends, would I come up with this as a list of favorite movies? Note that it looks like I have a taste for madmen (My Dinner With Andre, Aguirre the Wrath of God, Crumb, 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould, Dr. Strangelove) or maybe just geeks (Fast Cheap & Out of Control), or lovable old clowns (Limelight, It's a Gift), and I am a feisty outcast (Grey Gardens, The Nights of Cabiria) who enjoys immersing myself in the saddest movie ever made (The Grave of the Fireflies).

Several of those movies make it part of the way into my heart with music: My Dinner With Andre, Crumb, 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould, Fast Cheap & Out of Control, Limelight, The Nights of Cabiria. To a lesser extent: Aguirre the Wrath of God, Dr. Strangelove.

Several of them affect me because they are about a person profoundly dedicated to art: My Dinner With Andre, Crumb, 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould, Limelight.

Three of them are about war, but very different aspects of war, all very moving in different ways: Aguirre the Wrath of God (delusional conquest in the jungle, looking for an unknown city, attacked by an unseen enemy), Dr. Strangelove (horrible, hilarious mistakes and nuclear weapons), The Grave of the Fireflies (the struggle to survive in the aftermath of firebombing and defeat).

Anyway, those really are my movies. (If I wanted to seem more serious than I really am, I wouldn't blog about American Idol all the time.) Of Tonya's recent favorite movies, I also love Election and Memento. (A couple other movies I love that are Memento-like are Fight Club, 12 Monkeys, and The Matrix.)

Tonya mentions Wonder Boys, but I have to steer clear of that because I loathe Michael Douglas. Why don't you like Michael Douglas, you might ask, but the question really should be: What is it about everything else you don't like that reminds you of Michael Douglas?