Art bikes.

Tulips and politics.

Today, in the public square, it's all tulips and politics.



Closeup on the politics:



Respite:

"It creates a habit of fluency that pours right over the surliest block."

The surliest writer's block, that is. So says Amba, talking about blogging, in response to -- thanks! -- my little "pseudo-blog" of an essay (written for next week's "Bloggership" conference). More from Amba (about my piece):

Even though it's written to coax a specialized audience off its safe shore of stodginess, timidity and pomposity and into the fast-moving waters of blogging, it's one of the best all-round blogging manifesti yet, especially for any blogger who does other kinds of writing for a living and/or calling.

Read the whole thing. Hers, I mean. Which will perhaps send you over to mine.

And read the other conference papers too. Here's a tribute to the other papers, received via email, from one of our regular commenters (not Amba):

OK, I'm a nerd. I ended up spending quite a chunk of this afternoon and evening reading the papers, and I'm very glad I did. It has literally shifted my thinking about the way I should be, well, thinking about certain things. I'm very open to learning to new information and do that all the time, but it's not so often anymore that I feel this sort of "stop and think" (in a good way), outside of encounters with art and other non-info-oriented things.

I'm very much hoping that your commenters--in particular those who are also bloggers, but small, and not lawyers, and perhaps without other sorts of useful backgrounds--go over and read some of those papers and think about them.

I love the free-ness (more potential on my part, but I'm working on that) of blogging and of the blogosphere. But like any morphing and maturing media, there are certain caveats -- and most especially as/if people start thinking of themselves as citizen journalists. I'm not sure that those caveats come under consideration as much as they should, at last not by bloggers not in the "higher ranks", or not lawyers, or whatever. Some day, that may come home to roost for some poor blogger who's ill-equipped to deal with it.

ADDED: The commenter who wrote the email is Reader_Iam, who actually wrote a post on here about it.

The naked carpenter.

Percy Honniball. (Love the name!)

He told officers he stripped before crawling under the client's house to do electrical work because he didn't want to soil his clothes, police said.

Honniball said Thursday that working in the nude gave him a better range of motion and that a skilled craftsman can work clothing -- and injury -- free....

Honniball was caught working naked in Berkeley three times in the last six years and put on probation for violating a city ordinance.

Oh, come on. You're allowed to do things like that in Berkeley aren't you?

But really, naked carpentry? It sounds dangerous -- though somehow I'm not getting a mental picture of the precise accident I'm afraid of. And I'm not believing the cleanliness argument. He's got to put his clothes back on to leave the job, right? And he's not showering on the job, presumably. So he's just getting the insides of his clothes dirty. If you're going to say then he preserves the appearance of his clothes by keeping the outside clean, the simplest solution is wear the clothes inside out on the job.

Oh, my lord, I'm thinking way too much about the naked carpenter!

What I hate about movies.

I've been avoiding going to the movie theater for a while. After years of weekly attendance, I've cut down to perhaps five times a year. Recently, I developed the suspicion that what keeps me away is the sound.

My sudden decline in attendance coincides with dramatic sound enhancements made at the local theaters. Movie sound had been bothering me for years. This 1997 movie had sound effects that drove me up the wall. No one could walk anywhere -- even when they are sneaking up on someone -- without tromping footsteps. I avoided seeing the movie "Gladiator" after I heard the trailer: the clanking sound effects were absurd and distracting.

Worst of all is movie music. Are you supposed to be able to ignore it? The music is terrible, loud, and intrusive. It is constantly ordering you about, telling you when to feel what. You don't have the chance to have your own feelings based on what is happening on the screen.

Yesterday, I was flipping channels on the television, and the movie "Troy" came on. There was a big battle scene, with spears and shields and burning arrows. It was semi-ridiculous. Still, I might have been able to imagine what it would have been like to be there, fighting like that. They went to a lot of trouble to depict the battle techniques. But the blaring, insane music made that kind of engagement with the story utterly impossible.

I know "Troy" is supposed to be a bad movie. But looking at it yesterday crystallized my thinking about what I hate about movies. It's the sound. What torture "Troy" would have been in a theater with all those oppressive speakers bearing down on me!

Making movies into an intensely physical auditory experience has ruined them.

"A remarkably beautiful woman who was surprisingly shy, yet spoke her mind fearlessly... who thought little of herself as an actress..."

Peter Bogdonovich on Ava Gardner.

I must confess that I've never understood why people -- is it just men? -- are enthralled by Ava Gardner. Was she ever good in a movie? Is she really so especially beautiful? I don't see it in the stills, and maybe I've never seen one of her movies. She made a hell of a lot of them, but look at the list. What a shocking lot of crap!

Anyway, I like that she was good with the snappy remark. Bogdonovich quotes this crack about Clark Gable: "Clark is the sort of guy that if you say, 'Hiya, Clark, how are you?' he's stuck for an answer."

Photos from the set.

Rick Lee has photos from the set of the movie "We... Are Marshall." The movie is set in 1970s, so the costumes are horrifying, especially on Matthew McConaughey. It's one thing to have to look like a guy in 1970, quite another to have to look like a coach in 1970. That's a truly humbling hairstyle and a frightening mixture of stripes and plaid.

An evening walk.

It's nice to make it to the end of what was a grueling week here in Madison, Wisconsin, but let's step outside for a little walk. There is beauty just outside my door. Within three blocks of home:

"Be Ashamed, Our School Embraced What God Has Condemned/Homosexuality is Shameful."

Those are words on the front and back of a T-shirt, worn to school by a student reacting to the school's Gay-Straight Alliance events. At Volokh Conspiracy, there is a vivid discussion of the Ninth Circuit's decision upholding the district judge's denial of a preliminary injunction to the student, after the school's principal required him to remove the shirt. (PDF.) I don't have the time right now to read the decision, but I wanted to give readers a chance to talk about this very interesting free speech problem.

The majority is concerned about what it calls "speech that intrudes upon the rights of other students." Judge Kozinski, dissenting, cares about that too:

I ... have sympathy for defendants’ position that students in school are a captive audience and should not be forced to endure speech that they find offensive and demeaning. There is surely something to the notion that a Jewish student might not be able to devote his full attention to school activities if the fellow in the seat next to him is wearing a t-shirt with the message “Hitler Had the Right Idea” in front and “Let’s Finish the Job!” on the back. This t-shirt may well interfere with the educational experience even if the two students never come to blows or
even have words about it.

How different is that hypothetical shirt from the one the principal banned? Did the principal disapprove of the shirt because it was disruptive or because it contradicted the school's official message?

"Bullet and teardrop shapes and parallel 'speed lines'..."

Streamlining -- "the paring down of shape until it presents the least possible resistance to the flow of air or water" -- is a modernistic design trend that belongs to the 1930s and 40s. Do you love the futurism of the past? Or does it make you feel sad? If you get a bad twinge from it, is it nostalgia or disappointment? That is, that we live in this place that was once called the future, and we see that it doesn't have that exciting futuristic look we once imagined? We got tired of the future before it ever arrived, and we decided to preserve the look of past, except that part of the past that was the futuristic vision.

Getting some words written.

Today was the deadline for the papers for next week's "Bloggership" conference. Here's a list of the words in my essay least likely to appear in any of the other essays: oblivion, lollipop, Sopranos, bloxxing, psychotic, whore, squishy, gooey, strumpet's, ankle, fairy.

UPDATE: The papers will be posted here. Some are up already.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Mine's up.

The hill warms up.

At dawn, Bascom Hill is austere:



Later, warm springtime firms up its grip on us, and some feel it more than others:



Ah, the boyfriend -- as supportive as a chair!

"Theme Time Radio Hour With Your Host Bob Dylan."

I'm glad Bob Dylan's XM Radio show is finally going to debut (on May 3rd), but what's with the title? Well, he is going to have themes. The first one is "weather" -- which seems like some vague nod to "you don't need a weatherman" and "blowin' in the wind." Then on to such startling topics as "dance," "police," "cars" and "whiskey."

Bootlegged whiskey in his hand...

The whiskey's in the jar and the money's in the bank...

Don't need a shot of whiskey, help me be president....

I'm gonna buy me a barrel of whiskey - I'll die before I turn senile...

Might like to drink whiskey, might like to drink milk,
You might like to eat caviar, you might like to eat bread,
You may be sleeping on the floor, sleeping in a king-sized bed...

You're going to have to play something.

UPDATE: I have a lot more to say about the show -- which I love! -- here.

The 100 unsexiest men in the world.

Surely, there's someone less sexy than Gilbert Gottfried, but when you're making a list, you've got to put famous people on it. But anyway, Gottfried is funny, and don't all those surveys about what women find sexy always put humor near the top? I know... but still... There's got to be a guy who looks and sounds like Gottfried but isn't funny.

I'm not going to pick over this whole list. I'll just focus on #38, Larry David. I've had spontaneous discussions with women on the precise subject: Larry David is sexy.

And let me single out one choice to agree with: #45, Nick Nolte. I don't know exactly what it is, but I have a physical aversion to him. (Which makes me want to ask: why isn't Michael Douglas on the list?)

And what's with throwing in Osama Bin Laden -- at #8. (And why 8, specifically? Just to stick it to guys like Alan Colmes, who fared worse?) If the list is open to the likes of bin Laden, this guy springs to mind.

"She makes her entrance in the first act and freezes with the unyielding stiffness of an industrial lamppost...."

Julia Roberts is in a Broadway play.

Ms. Roberts often gives the impression that she is parsing her lines, leaving lots of dead air between fragments.

And yet, and yet. I found myself fascinated by the way her facial structure (ah, those cheekbones!) seems to change according to how the light hits her. In repose, her face seems impossibly, hauntingly eloquent.

Well, maybe that is exactly what works in film: having an amazing face and giving people lots of time to gaze upon it. Loving the film idol, you're drawn to the theater where you can be in the presence of the star. Does that ever work right?

"A lot of birds are nesting inside the sarcophagus."

Chernobyl as paradise, for animals.

As humans were evacuated from the area 20 years ago, animals moved in. Existing populations multiplied and species not seen for decades, such as the lynx and eagle owl, began to return.

There are even tantalising footprints of a bear, an animal that has not trodden this part of Ukraine for centuries....

There is nothing to disturb the wild boar - said to have multiplied eightfold between 1986 and 1988 - except its similarly resurgent predator, the wolf....

[T]he benefits to wildlife of removing people from the zone, have far outweighed any harm from radiation.

Does this story make you ashamed of what human beings have done to the world? For the animals, a nuclear disaster is preferable to life with us.