Official Song of the Althouse/Goldberg Diavlog.

I'm assuming you watched the whole diavlog, which they called "Solstice Edition," my second choice for a title. My first choice was "Life with Robots," but I concede that would have been unfairly skewed to my side. Since they didn't use my title, I forgot that I wanted to say this diavlog has an official song. Here it is. (Or here, for low resolution.) [Low-res recommended if you at all think you might need it!]

If you can't take the time to watch the whole diavlog -- or have trouble getting through the scary fight at the beginning (which I unleash with the innocent question, "What's the deal with the right-wing conspiracy, Jonah?") -- at least watch the part about the robots. Then enjoy the song.

ADDED: Volokh Conspirator Orin Kerr links to the diavlog and gets a discussion going about whether someone promoting federalism today needs to pay attention to the way it was used 50 years ago. (In the diavlog -- and elsewhere -- I say they do.)

"In terms of practical politics, the reality is this: We have to be on good behavior so we have a chance to win the presidency."

Says Jim Cooper, one of the 44 conservative Democrats in the the House "Blue Dog Coalition." I think he's right, but I also suspect that the Democrats' talk about "fiscal responsibility" is just a setup to demagogue about the war.

"The appeals court approved the verdict..."

"... to hang Saddam."

"The feelings are very bad, very confusing -- everywhere, it's confusing."

Mogadishu.

MORE: Here:

The Islamist fighters, who had seemed invincible after taking Mogadishu in June, now seem powerless to stop the steady advance of the Ethiopian-backed forces of the transitional government.

By this afternoon, the transitional government troops were within 60 miles of Mogadishu and calling for the Islamists to surrender. The Islamist leaders refused, saying they would take their fight “everywhere,” which some people viewed as a veiled threat to expand the guerilla tactics and suicide bombs they have already used.

The fast-moving developments seem to confirm what United Nations officials and witnesses in Somalia have been saying since the fighting erupted a week ago: that the young forces of the Islamists, however religiously inspired, were no match for the better trained, better equipped Ethiopian-backed troops who have tanks and fighter jets.

Still, the conflict is hardly over. Thousands of people continue to march in the streets of Mogadishu, rallying behind the Islamists, and analysts are unanimous that an Ethiopian occupation of Mogadishu, a city thick with weapons and xenophobia, could become a bloodbath.

IN THE COMMENTS: Paco Wové writes:

"All this could have been averted," Prendergast said. "If the U.S..." {snip}

Ahh, yes. I knew it had to be all our fault somehow.

The number of Americans who have died in the Iraq war...

... has now surpassed the number who died in the 9/11 attacks.

ADDED: A key question -- with an unknowable answer -- is: How many Americans would have died in post-9/11 attacks if we had not chosen the path of fighting back?

MORE: So many people -- in the comments and on other blogs -- are attributing things to me that I did not write here. Reading with comprehension has, apparently, become optional. Amusingly, the blundering blowhards out there keep calling me and idiot. Mirrors are in short supply these days.

Post-Christmas musings about a real necklace and a virtual tiara.

Hi, everyone. Hope you had a nice yesterday, whether you experienced it as Christmas or Monday or anything else. Things were swell here. Other than that I received a necklace as a gift and then immediately proceeded to lose it! Since I didn't leave the house, the occasions for saying "It couldn't just disappear" and -- the classic -- "It didn't just get up and walk away" -- were many. It got to the point where it wasn't clear whether we were repeating the old clichés for humorous effect or whether it was nothing but the sincere expression of frustration. And now I'm blogging about it as if I think maybe my readers might have some idea where the thing is.

But you can help in another way. Start entering daily votes for me in the final round for Grande Conservative Blogress Diva. They've narrowed it down to four, not just two, which means it's not just me against Michelle Malkin. I think this is an advantage, since the vote for real conservatives is split among three, and the eccentric votes -- mine -- may be enough to beat any of three. I think I would have lain low and let Michelle have the tiara if it had been a contest between just us two. I mean, really. She's so much more the Conservative Blogress Diva than I am, don't you think?

(I'd much rather find the necklace!)

Highly praised movie...

... that really was not very good: "Little Miss Sunshine."

My, our standards have fallen, if this was critically praised.

Kubrick.

Bloopers:

That conversation about a whole lot of blood.

Another one of Jack Handey's "Deeper Thoughts," read aloud...

You know what's probably a good thing to hang on your porch in the summertime, to keep mosquitoes away from you and your guests? Just a big bagful of blood.

... stirs up memories of a question in another book, "Innumeracy," by John Allen Paulos: What would be the size of a cube containing all the human blood in the world?

I tried to answer, using a reasonable method, thinking about the amount of blood in one person times the number of people in the world, divided by the number of gallons I believed to be in a swimming pool, times what I guessed to be the length of that swimming pool reimagined as a cube. I came up with 40 miles, which was way off, caused in part by getting the first number wrong. (It's 4 quarts, not 4 gallons... obvious now.) The right answer is 870 feet. Amazingly small, yet still insanely huge. Don't worry. If all the blood were in a cube, there would be no human beings to get upset by looking at it.

That reminded me of something I read today about the movie "The Shining":

Stanley Kubrick, known for his compulsiveness and numerous retakes, got the difficult shot of blood pouring from the elevators in only three takes. This would be remarkable if it weren't for the fact that the shot took nine days to set up; every time the doors opened and the blood poured out, Kubrick would say, "It doesn't look like blood." They had tried shooting that scene for an entire year.

Yeah, well, check out this feminist performance art -- NSFW -- "Red Tide."

Not Christmasy enough for you? Eh... it's red.

"When this girl at the museum asked me whom I liked better, Monet or Manet, I said, 'I like mayonnaise.'"

"She just stared at me, so I said it again, louder. Then she left. I guess she went to try to find some mayonnaise for me."

-- Jack Handey. "Deepest Thoughts."

Oh, and...

Merry Christmas!

"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."

You can see that last night we came up with a choice of four movies to watch and -- you should be able to tell from my set of favorite quotes -- we chose "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Is that a Christmas movie? If I had to argue it was, I'd point to the party scene. It's a Christmas party. The music playing is "Jingle Bells," and we see some Christmas decorations, including a little Santa Claus. And you could say -- cornily -- that it's a movie about the triumph of the human spirit, and you could contend that that's Christmasy. Or do you think it's a movie about the triumph of the masculine spirit over the feminine? McMurphy arrives to show all those mere shadows of men how to be men. That's what the book -- which I can't stand -- was about.

IMDB has a lot of interesting "trivia" -- their word -- about the movie. I knew that many of the extras were real mental patients. I didn't know Will Sampson got the role of Chief Bromden because he was the only person they could find who had the two qualities they needed (Native American and physically huge). [NOTE: He wasn't an actor.] I didn't know that Jack Nicholson and Milos Forman (the director) were at odds with each other:

...Nicholson and director Milos Forman had very different ideas about how the narrative should play out; for example, Forman thought that the ward should be in bedlam when McMurphy showed up and Nicholson posited that his character would have absolutely no effect on the mental patients if they were already riled up, which would have negated the purpose of his character and therefore much of the plot. Nicholson and Forman both refused to give an inch, both believing they were right and the other was wrong. The two months that Jack Nicholson disappeared for was more like two weeks, and he didn't disappear. In actuality, Nicholson spearheaded a coup among the other actors and refused to let Forman run rehearsals, running them himself instead.

Wow. Nicholson got it right. Other evidence of how wrong Forman could be: He wanted Burt Reynolds to play McMurphy! But he was right -- I think -- not to want the fishing scene. He thought -- I agree -- it interfered with the claustrophobic atmosphere of the rest of the film. I detested the fishing scene in the book. It's exactly where I stopped reading. I liked the movie McMurphy as an anti-authoritarian, counterculture guy. The McMurphy in the book was Mr. Masculine Energy. Let's fish, let's watch baseball, let's play basketball, let's drink, let's have sex with prostitutes... and isn't the nurse a bitch?

Other evidence of how much credit Nicholson deserves:

Most of Jack Nicholson's scene with Dean R. Brooks upon arriving at the hospital was improvised - including his slamming a stapler, asking about a fishing photo, and discussing his rape conviction; Brooks's reactions were authentic.

Brooks actually was superintendent of a mental hospital. This scene reminded us of the office interview scene in "The Shining," which Nicholson made 5 years later.

Kirk Douglas owned the rights to the book for a long time and wanted to play McMurphy. When I read the book -- which was after I saw the movie and knowing Douglas wanted the part -- I fell into picturing Kirk Douglas. He was much more the sort of person (the author) Ken Kesey had in mind. Nicholson made the movie into something that resonated in 1975. The book was published in 1963... and feels like it.

Ken Kesey was pissed:

Ken Kesey wrote a screenplay for the production, but Forman rejected it because Kesey insisted on keeping Chief Bromden's first-person narration....

[Kesey said] he would never watch the movie version and even sued the movie's producers because it wasn't shown from Chief Bromden's perspective (as the novel is)....

Author Ken Kesey was so bitter about the way the filmmakers were "butchering" his story that he vowed never to watch the completed film. Years later, he claimed to be lying in bed flipping through TV channels when he settled onto a late-night movie that looked sort of interesting, only to realize after a few minutes that it was this film. He then changed channels.

"After a few minutes"... hilarious.

Watching the movie last night, I had to stop and think who Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher) was reminding me of. Something about that voice. Then I realized: Condoleezza Rice! Oh, no! So steady, so calm... so infuriating. And I like Condoleezza Rice! Louise Fletcher did a fine job with her role. Has anyone ever won an Oscar for showing so little expression? She was not -- as Nurse Ratched was in the book -- an embodiment of matriarchy and women's repression of men. She was horrible, cold, and controlling, but she also had some humanity. She was in a predicament trying to deal professionally with some very trying individuals. She made all the wrong decisions, but she was recognizably human.

The actors who played those patients did a fine job portraying seriously ill men and making them dramatically effective and immensely entertaining. We felt free to laugh at them a lot without getting the nagging guilty feeling that we weren't showing enough respect for the mentally ill. There's bonus entertainment in the fact that two of them are actors we came to love in bigger roles: Danny Devito and Christopher Lloyd.

"If they made this movie today, they'd ruin it with music," I said halfway through. There was scene after scene with no music, other than the occasional record that a character in the movie played. Jack Nitzsche got an Oscar nomination for the score, and his music is memorable and evocative, but I think it only plays over the opening credits and at the very end. There was never any of that sort of movie music that instructs us on how to think and feels our emotions before we get a chance to feel them for ourselves. When Nurse Ratched puts a syrupy, soporific version of "Charmaine" on the record player for the ritual of dispensing the psychotropic drugs, what we feel is in counterpoint to the music. (With all the special features on DVDs today, I wish there was one that let you turn off the score.)

Such are my scattered thoughts on Christmas morning about "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," watched on Christmas Eve.

''James presented obviously the best grooves. To this day, there has been no one near as funky. No one's coming even close.''

Said Chuck D about James Brown, who has now left the stage:

Along with Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan and a handful of others, Brown was one of the major musical influences of the past 50 years. At least one generation idolized him, and sometimes openly copied him. His rapid-footed dancing inspired Mick Jagger and Michael Jackson among others. Songs such as David Bowie's ''Fame,'' Prince's ''Kiss,'' George Clinton's ''Atomic Dog'' and Sly and the Family Stone's ''Sing a Simple Song'' were clearly based on Brown's rhythms and vocal style.

If Brown's claim to the invention of soul can be challenged by fans of Ray Charles and Sam Cooke, then his rights to the genres of rap, disco and funk are beyond question. He was to rhythm and dance music what Dylan was to lyrics: the unchallenged popular innovator.

There are some sad things in his story. You can read them at the link. I'm not going to bring them up here. The man is dead. Goodbye to a brilliant artist.

Yes, yes, I'm blogging on Christmas. And I'm suffering from Timeslessness.

It's well established: I blog on Christmas. Haven't you noticed? I blog every day, every day for almost three years. I'm up long before anyone else, and it would be my normal thing to go outside in the dark to bring in the New York Times and to sit here at the dining table reading it for an hour or two. Naturally, blogging ensues.

Unfortunately, I suspended delivery of the Times because I was planning to leave town -- I was going to drive across the country crosswise, instead of my usual lengthwise -- but then I made a different plan, and I forgot to restart delivery. I didn't realize the desperately Timesless situation I'd set myself up for until the first day came with no delivery and I went to the website to complain about it and saw I had that suspension. Despite the speed of the web, there's still a lag time restarting, so I can't get the paper back until the 27th. It throws off my whole momentum.

Yes, I know they have a website. Why not read it on line? Obviously, I read all sorts of other things on line, and I go to the NYT website to get the links for the articles I write about. So why is there any problem at all? Why not use this lapse as an opportunity to wean myself from the paper paper? No! Some things are permanent! Something must have substance and solidity. I need a real newspaper to see what's happening. And spare me the attacks on the NYT. There is no alternative. I said a "real newspaper." Nothing else that I can get delivered here has the equivalent substance.

Nevertheless, this little lesson in Timeslessness is teaching me something. It's showing me the different path I take into blogging if I don't have the paper Times to anchor me. I'd be more about my own little observations. I'd be writing way more posts like this one and this one.

Christmas Eve movie decision.

The nominees are:

"It's a Wonderful Life"

"One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest"

"Slacker"

"Some Kind of Monster"

What did we choose?

ADDED:

"Your hand is staining my window."...

"I'm talking about form. I'm talking about content. I'm talking about interrelationships. I'm talking about God, the devil, Heaven, Hell. Do you understand?"...

"Play the game, Harding. Play the game. Play the game. Play the game, Harding."...

"I don't think he's overly psychotic, but I still think he's quite sick."...

"What do you think you are, for Chrissake, crazy or something? Well, you're not. You're not. You're no crazier than the average a**h*le out walking around on the streets, and that's it."...

"Time spent alone only increases the feeling of separation."....

"The best thing we can do is go on with our daily routine."

Christmas Eve.

It's the third Christmas Eve for this blog, and I was just looking back to see what I did last year for the occasion, and I see that I looked back to the previous year and saw that I decided to repeat this photo I put up the first time I blogged Christmas Eve:



There, now, it's definitely a tradition.

Which child is me? The more skeptical one.

ADDED: And remember Palladian's version?