"Wordplay."

I finally got around to watching the movie "Wordplay," the one about crossword puzzles, especially the New York Times crossword puzzle, especially the annual tournament where crossword puzzlers convene in a Marriott hotel in Connecticut so they can hug each other and compete to see who can do the puzzles the fastest. Almost all the big critics loved this movie, and it's okay, but as a documentary it's way low on my list of favorites. (My list has "Crumb," "Grey Gardens," "Fast, Cheap and Out of Control," and "Grizzly Man" at the top.)

My main problem is that I'm interested in crosswords — for many years, I had to do (and did) the NYT crossword every day — but I don't care about rushing through it trying to get it done as quickly as possible. To me, it ruins the pleasure to become so concerned about time rather than words and the structure of the grid. So I wasn't fascinated by the guys in the movie who were obsessing about their speed. I loved the scene where Merl Reagle constructs a crossword before our eyes. Constructing a puzzle — now there is a mystery to unfold! Solving puzzles — well, almost anyone can solve a NYT puzzle (especially if it's Monday).

But the tournament hands the filmmaker — Patrick Creadon — something to photograph, something with a built-in narrative arc. And so — in an open confession of lack of creativity and artistic vision — that's where Creadon went with this.

The movie is padded with sequences showing celebrities doing the NYT puzzle. It's fun enough to see Bill Clinton and — not in the same room — Jon Stewart doing crosswords on camera and talking as they go. But how much do you want to see of the crossword puzzlings of former NYT public editor David Okrent? Enough with the Indigo Girls! And who gives a rat's ass about Ken Burns? Oh, you love his documentaries? Then you shouldn't take my reviews of documentaries too seriously, but really, even if you love Ken Burns's documentaries, surely, you're not fascinated by Ken Burns, the man. Are you? Because that would be very sad. Not sad enough to be the subject of a film as profound as "Grey Gardens" or "Crumb." Just routine sad. Get-a-life sad.

What I think of the "SNL" spoof of Hillary's "3 a.m." ad.

Here's the video.

In typical "SNL" fashion, it goes on way too long — and that's especially glaring when you're spoofing an ad — because it's inherent in the nature of an ad to be short. You're not spoofing an infomercial. But it's mildly amusing if you think the topic is unfair commercials, and it's substantially intriguing if you think the issue is whether "SNL" is in the tank for Hillary.

Think about it. We're seeing her long, completely unfair ad — and, yes, they've told us to think about how unfair it is. But the ad really does push us to think that Hillary Clinton has a lot of experience and Barack Obama is a neophyte. The fact that we know it's an exaggeration doesn't prevent it from stimulating our anxieties about the underlying truths. And if we're disposed to look at a comedy sketch and find it funny, then our minds slip into the place where we perceive the thing that is being exaggerated. Our defenses are down. Don't you love Amy Poehler? In the tank!

There's a break in the clouds for sunset.

It's stormy again now.

ADDED JUST BEFORE MIDNIGHT (on the verge of springing ahead to 1 a.m.): This seems to be an especially popular sunset, so let me fill in the sequence. First, I noticed the break in the clouds, and I thought this looked subtly pretty and possibly a sign that things would shape up especially well this evening, so I got out the camera:



This is next. It's taken before the 2 pictures in the original post, and it's zooming in much closer to the Statue of Liberty (from my terrace in Brooklyn):



And this is the last one. It's zoomed in, but the clouds were already closing up:



It wasn't long after this that a storm rolled in, and that storm is still howling out there now.

NEXT MORNING UPDATE: The night of vigorous rain cleaned my windows!

Obama wins the Wyoming caucuses.

It's the smallest state, but there was a big turnout, and it looks like Obama won by a lot.

Complicating and transcending institutional parameters with oblique, allegorical, uncertain sociopolitical themes...

Why do museum curators post such nonsensical texts on the walls next to the artwork they want us to take seriously? I went to the Whitney Biennial today and there was the usual mishmash — lots of artists, lots of artworks — and you can look at it all and make what you can of it or you can stop and read the museum's explanation of what it thinks it's doing assembling these particular artists and artworks. Here's some text I wrote down:

The artists consider each of these multiple platforms equally valid even as they seek ways to complicate and transcend institutional parameters.

So... they are united in their belief in the equal validity of the multiple platforms? I love the way that's completely, incomprehensibly amorphous but also patently untrue — because of all the many artists in the show, there must be at least one who considers at least one of the platforms at least a little less worthy than the other platforms.

Anyway, surely, I'm being unfair by withholding the antecedent for "platforms." Let me correct that seeming unfairness. The "multiple platforms" are: "music and other performance, movement workshops, radio broadcasts, publishing projects, community-based activities, film screenings, culinary gatherings, or lectures." Come on, I'll bet anything one of those artists thinks "culinary gatherings" aren't equal to film screenings or "movement workshops" don't quite measure up to music performance.

Then there is the tiresome tendency — it's been going on for decades — to claim that art is "political." It's so sad and needy the way the assertions are made. There's a reference to "uncertain sociopolitical themes" and:

Much work in this year's Biennial concerns politics although its mode of address is often oblique or allegorical.

Like it's our fault if we don't see politics in the art. Maybe you should stand over there and look from an angle or consult your imagination and hear the political argument that large distressed block of styrofoam is trying ot make. It's allegorical — it's Al-Gore-ical.

Either the politics aren't there and the curators wish they were, or they're barely there and the curators are anxious for us not to miss them. But why is getting politics into the art so important? And if it's subtly there, shouldn't we be teased and left wondering what it is we're really seeing? Am I projecting my own thoughts or perceiving the artist's message? Musing about that, we form a relationship with the artist. It might have been interesting if the curator hadn't nagged us to see politics everywhere.

Projects... explore fluid communications structures and systems of exchange that index larger social, political, and economic contexts...

Projects explore structures and systems? And structures and systems index contexts? I think this is trying to say something political about art, something about how art challenges capitalism – because, of course, if art must be political, it must be left wing. The text goes on to credit the artists for producing objects that cannot be bought — that have "an ephemeral, event-based character." But there are plenty of big, chunky objects all over the museum that hardly look as though they are about to evanesce.

IN THE COMMENTS: Palladian writes:

The Whitney Biennial is a massive, smelly expulsion of all the hip, tiresome shit that's built up in the bowels of the New York art scene for two years, racing artwork from the cradle of the studio to the crypt of that ossified institution without waiting to see whether it could even survive a life on its own. It's a parade of all the embarrassing fashions of the previous two years, all the simple-minded trends and gimmicks that came and went, the hangover the morning after a drink-and-drug binge where one surveys the wreckage and the carnage around them and moans "What did I do last night?!"

"Curators" are also an interesting breed, generally academics not smart enough to be scholars in any actually useful discipline, nor creative enough to be artists themselves, nor attractive enough to be models nor rich enough to be hedonists, they make their living as parasites who, unsatisfied with simply sucking the life out of you, feel the need to explain it to you in the most uninteresting terms while they're doing it.

Art is attractive to people like this. Being at its core interpretive and ultimately unexplainable, it invites these lackluster pedants to simply make shit up. Hence also the gravitation towards postmodernism and its jargon, elevating making shit up into a religion.

Here's what gets me. Their writing proves they lack taste. So it is irrational to accept their aesthetic judgment.

Speaking of writing though, Palladian, that's one hell of a mixed metaphor in your first sentence: shit ≈ baby.

"I’m not really familiar with that."/“You don’t seem to be familiar with anything."

Dick Cavett encounters William F. Buckley.

This is not about Hillary.

Why did Obama let Clinton jerk him around over Samantha Power?

Here's the revolting and ridiculous conference call, in which Clinton campaign hacks pretend it's a giant outrage that the brilliant Samantha Power applied the word "monster" to Hillary Clinton. Power withdrew herself from the campaign, but where was Barack Obama? Why didn't he support her?

Here's Matthew K. Johnson:

For those of us who follow foreign policy and human rights policy in particular, Samantha Power is a fascinating and inspiring figure - a brilliant woman who has lectured and written equally from her heart and her head. Her Pulitzer-prize winning book A Problem From Hell is a passionately argued and beautifully written description of America's at times shameful and always complicated history during the genocides of the 20th century - it remains my favorite non-fiction book; the first one I will recommend to friends and colleagues and has inspired more than one of my own written works.... Her profession, and her approach to it, makes her a somewhat undiplomatic politcian, but I was still absolutely thrilled that she joined Obama's campaign, and was one of the first reasons that I became an Obama supporter - clearly he was attracting the top minds, many of whom were critical of the practices of the past (Power, like myself, is very critical of the Clinton years - the inaction on Rwanda, the ignorance of the power of strong leadership in the Balkans).

What do we learn from this incident? I don't need to learn that Clinton will do whatever it takes to win, and perhaps that does earn the label "monster," but let's not ignore the deficiencies in Barack Obama. How does he intend to win by shrinking away when her people pull their tricks? Where is his vigor? And, more importantly, where is his courage? It was cowardly to allow the Clinton campaign to savage Power and rip her away from him.

And now I'm wondering whether there is anything courageous about Barack Obama. Obama supporters, please: Make the case to me that the man has courage. And don't say that he opposed the war in Iraq, because I don't think, in the position he was in at the time, that it took courage to oppose the war. That served his political ambitions. Tell me something he did that was difficult to do, that took some risk to do what was right.

IN THE COMMENTS: Balfegor said:

I've read speculation that he may have used the "monster" kerfluffle as cover for tossing her overboard because in that same interview, she claimed he wasn't actually serious about getting out of Iraq in 16 months or whatever his plan was -- once he was president he'd discard his campaign plan and take a new look at the situation.

If this is the reason he let her go, it's a defense against the charge that he let Hillary push him around, but it only makes me worry more that he lacks courage. And ironically, Power's statement about how he would handle Iraq reinforced what I've been assuming, and this assumption was central to my decision to vote for him in the Wisconsin primary.

So what am I to think now that he let Power go? That what she said about Iraq was wrong or that it was right? If it's wrong, I like him less on policy. If it's right, then I'm more upset about the estrangement of Power and concerned that Obama is dishonest, saying things to get elected that he's never going to do in office. And yet — this is so troublesome for me! — I'm hoping that, if elected, he'll listen and reassess and exercise the good judgment that he now applies to the task of getting elected and the results of his presidential decisionmaking will be much more to my liking.

Iceland as "a desolate, magical place where human beings have little right to trespass."

So maybe you shouldn't travel there, but you can watch the documentary "Heima" ("Homeland") with the music of Sigur Rós — offered for streaming here on YouTube. It's also supposedly downloadable free on the band's website here, but I couldn't figure out where to click after I'd entered my information and received my code — so that was a little too desolate and magical for my taste.

Talk about Iceland, talk about traveling and not traveling, talk about majestic, other-worldly, ethereal music.

"McCain flips out..."

Is this flipping out? Josh Marshall thinks it is.



Maybe a better question is what sort of person views that as "flipping out"?

Let's talk about the new McCain ad.

I think this is a brilliant ad. It seems to be speeding into the future, with flashy visuals that remind me a little of the last episode of "6 Feet Under," when Claire drives off into the desert toward her future and the whole future of all the characters unfolds. But we aren't shown things that will happen in the future, even as futuristic music seems to tantalize us and make us a little anxious about things to come. We see images from the past (intercut with views of the galaxy). Images of Churchill and Roosevelt seem to embody a mystical sense of tradition. Even though I was trying to look at this ad with a critical eye, I kept getting chills. At one point — TR looking out onto a crowd — I thought: This is the feeling of being conservative — it is a deep emotional sense that the past matters and flows into the present and makes sense out of the future.

Time is the expressed theme of the commercial: The first words we see are "The Time Has Come." We know the candidate is old — to me, it's a big problem — but the commercial makes the long stretch of time seem profound and important. Because McCain is old, he is anchored in the past, there, where he is a young man. We see him looking dashing, but also suffering as a POW. In the voice over, he is saying that he felt that he owed more to his country than his country owed him. We hear him say that there was never a day when he was not proud of his country, and, as used in the ad, this must be heard as an allusion to Michelle Obama's statement that for the first time in her life she is really proud of her country.

We see some evocative children in the end — they are young, if he isn't. What do they have to do with him? They vaguely connect to the theme of time. We dipped back into the past, and we swirled around in outer space, but outer space isn't the future, is it? It's all of time. For the future... I believe that children are our future. But that one girl... we see a little black girl pausing over some purple wildflowers. ("I think it pisses God off when you walk by the color purple in a field and don't notice it.") Is she there to suggest that Michelle Obama — like her husband — is a mere child? The girl plucks at the petals of one flower, so it brings to mind — it must be intentional — the famous LBJ commercial with a young girl plucking at a flower, counting down to a nuclear holocaust. We don't see a mushroom cloud, but some of those galactic images — notably the one at 0:08 — look like powerful explosions.

At 0:26, we see McCain saying "We're Americans, and we'll never surrender. They will." I confess that I first thought "they" meant the Democrats, and only in typing out the quote did I realize that, overtly, he had to mean our terrorist enemies. But to use that line in the commercial is to play with our brains and make us think — even though he didn't say it — that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are offering to surrender. If that is what Americans don't do, then, implicitly — and I know he doesn't say it — Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are not Americans.

I'm just sketching out my first thoughts on the commercial. Add to this. Argue with me. I certainly think that many people — probably people who would never vote for McCain — might experience this commercial as scary warmongering and think I'm pretty creepy to get chills from it. Let's talk about all that.

IN THE COMMENTS: Revenant said...

"The Time Has Come."

My soul has been psychadelisized!

Yeah, I was thinking about that too. "Now the time has come (Time)/There's no place to run (Time)/I might get burned up by the sun (Time)" — explains some of those shots of the galaxy — "But I had my fun (Time)/I've been loved and put aside (Time)/I've been crushed by the tumbling tide (Time)/And my soul has been psychedelicized (Time)." A Vietnam song, isn't it?

AND: One commenter, Sandy Shoes, sees the allusion to this, "Koyaanisqatsi"...



Which made me realize it reminded me of this:

"It’s a gossip site and we never said that it’s not. I guess we didn’t realize how mean some people can be."

And I guess he did but wants his distance from the ugliness he supports.

"You should be outside, far, far away from here, right this minute, visiting Machu Picchu ..."

"... or a former Hungarian brothel that's now a cute artisanal bakery run by tiny singing lesbians, or visiting a giant musty old castle in Leipzig, or maybe taking lousy digital pictures of that Amazonian tribe that makes cute little earrings out of dried capybara testicles. Do it. Do it now."

A publishing trend about lists of 1,000 things you need to do "before you die."

Personally, I don't understand why getting all in people's faces about their impending death is going to get them going. I see those titles and think: Oh, I'm going to die? Well, then why make all the effort? I do these 1,000 things, and then it's not that I'm some wonderfully complex and enriched human individual. I'm just a corpse. Yes, yes, I know, you're about to tell me about the afterlife. But if there's an afterlife, I should be praying or doing good works, not galavanting around the globe or reading hundreds of novels or whatever these books want death to stimulate me into doing.

Too much Hillary and Obama?

What's going on here this morning? I need to look at other things. Surely, there are other interesting things in the world!

"She is a monster, too - that is off the record - she is stooping to anything."

Obama's foreign policy advisor Samantha Power says something hot and then hopes the reporters will cut her a break by saying "off the record" afterward. Come on, that's like saying "Mother, may I?" after you've taken 2 giant steps forward or "No takes" after the cootie girl has touched you. Are my cultural references old enough? They're so old that only Hillary voters understand them.

AND: David Corn gets it almost right:

The Clinton people do deserve chutzpah points for trying to turn this nothing-burger into a full-course feast. During a conference call with reporters yesterday, Clinton's top spinner, Howard Wolfson, compared Obama and his aides to Kenneth Starr because they dared to question Clinton's refusal to release her income taxes.... The comparison was ridiculous. But in Democratic circles, there's not much of a bigger slur than, Hey, you're Ken Starr! For Democrats, Starr is the functional equivalent of a monster.

So the Clinton crowd does not have the moral high ground in this round. Yet what was the net result? Power, a talented journalist and thinker who gives a damn about genocides (certainly more so than Bill Clinton did during the Rwanda nightmare), was forced off Obama's campaign.

What's missing? Obama deserves criticism for letting Clinton make something out of nothing and not standing up for Power.

"Does anyone want this nut answering the phone?"

Larry David proposes an anti-Hillary ad.