He Knew All The Words

Archive for September, 2009

Christopher Stout: Open Studio

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[nonmobile]Christopher Stout in his Bank Street studio, NYC, 2009
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[mobile]Christopher Stout in his Bank Street studio, NYC, 2009[/mobile]

My friend Christopher Stout had an open studio exhibition recently. It was my first encounter with his work, and as always with these things one approaches them with some trepidation. What if I don’t like my friend’s work? What if I have nothing to say about it? I try to tamp down those kinds of thoughts. First of all, if you don’t like a friend’s creative output there’s still always something nice that can be said. I mean, I go to such events as a friend, not as a critic. If I didn’t like the work itself, I’d still love the ambition, the risk-taking, the bravado of standing up as an artist and announcing one’s presence with an event such as this well-thought-out open studio. And as for having nothing to say, well, that’s not really ever a problem for me, is it?

All that’s to say that any trepidation was unfounded. For I took an immediately delight in Christopher’s paintings, and I welcomed the chance to see a bunch of them together and to have him tell me some of the background and inspiration for them. He showed a recent body of work, arranged around the freslhy-painted white walls of the apartment he shares with his partner. This body of work was punctuated with a few examples of his previous body of work, which provided a sense of continuity and a nice bit of contrast in scale (the few older works were significantly larger).

[nonmobile]Black, White, Gold, and Gray paintings by Christopher Stout, 2009
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[mobile]Black, White, Gold, and Gray paintings by Christopher Stout, 2009[/mobile]

The paintings are monochromatic, in four colors: black, white, gold, and gray. Made of cement, oils, pigments, and shredded corporate documents, the paintings are thick and dense, and at 20-inches square they look so solid that one supposes they weigh a ton (they don’t). Christopher is a rather intellectual artist, who thinks deeply and broadly about his work, which is evident both in the informal lecture he presented to me and in the statements to be found on his website. But it’s deceptive to read these statements too closely because the works have an intuitive feel to them. I believe this comes from the profound manipulation of the materials that Christopher must go through in creating these works. The shredded corporate documents, of course, stripped of their thematic meaning are, when mixed with cement and oils and other media, more or less simple paper pulp. Interestingly, the large works on display from a previous body of work had (perfectly readable) shredded paper making nests of the works’ surfaces. And yet despite the paper in the new works being absorbed and abstracted these smaller, denser works had a rather papery feel to them (especially, of course, in the examples that did not have shiny gloss coats).

The gray works, the artist tell us, take economy of scale as their theme. These works are the freest and texturally the most interesting. The golds had a prickliness, the blacks a glossy voluptuousness, and the whites a very painterly feel to them. But the grays were varied, papery, and mysterious to me. With the artist applying consistent themes for each color, it was not surprising that the paintings hung well in groups, and that anyone acquiring these works would do best to buy four of them. Christopher’s installation of so many paintings in this small apartment had a wonderful sense of visual rhyme and reason, with subtle shifts in mood, tone, and sculpted surfaces leaping from painting to painting as one circled the space.

[nonmobile]Detail of black painting by Christopher Stout, 2009
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[mobile]Detail of black painting by Christopher Stout, 2009[/mobile]

Anyway, as I mentioned at the beginning of this, I’m a friend not a critic, so Christopher will forgive me if I’ve got this all wrong. But one thing I know I’m right about is that it takes a good sense of self-worth, of get-up-and-go, and of deliberateness to get one’s act together enough to strip a living space of its homey stuff, paint it all white, make a condensed gallery space for oneself, and invite the world over to see. So not only did I love the paintings themselves, but I have a newfound respect for Christopher as a professional who can see the bigger picture that isn’t always so clear to many artists. Well done.

Written by David Zaza

September 30th, 2009 at 12:21 am

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Hellhole Ratrace

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Girls speak for me:

i work to eat and drink and sleep just to live,
feels like im never getting back what i give.
ive got a sad song in my sweet heart.
and all i really am is needing some love and attention.

Written by David Zaza

September 28th, 2009 at 2:39 pm

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Some Good Arguments for a Trigger-Free Public Option

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Some netroots activists have compiled a solid video showing lots of good reasons for this country to include a public option in its healthcare reforms. And yes, it must be a trigger-free option — the insurance companies have already proven their failure to help. Waiting for further proof is idiotic.

Anyway, watch for me at about the 40-second mark. I’m doing my usual bellyaching about my small business woes.

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[mobile]YouTube video link[/mobile]

Written by David Zaza

September 25th, 2009 at 2:21 pm

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An Open Letter to Stephanie Zaza

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Stephanie, I’ve been biting my tongue for over a week because I just had to be sure about this before I said anything. Deep breath.

I’m moving on from Maker’s Mark as my preferred whiskey for Manhattans.

I know!

And here’s the kicker — and don’t be mad because history’s on my side! — I’m switching to rye.

I know!!

At Clover Club I asked the bartender to make me a Manhattan with a whiskey of his choosing. He informed me of what I already knew: that Manhattans were traditionally made with rye, not bourbon. (I let him think he was schooling me, but in cocktail culture even neophytes know that…). He said he likes the “booziness” of Rittenhouse rye. (I love it when bartenders get all technical!). The Manhattan was superb. Another bartender there that night, my current “bartender crush” actually, was taken aback when I told him his colleague was giving him a run for his money in the Best Manhattan departments. He asked his friend what he did to make it so good and we were both delighted with the response: “I used a secret ingredient. Unicorn tears.”

So last weekend I invited some friends over for Manhattans. I had some Makers in the bar already, but I also bought a bottle of Woodford Reserve bourbon and a bottle of Rittenhouse rye. In back-to-back tastings, I had to confess that my two bourbon stand-bys were just not living up to the Rittenhouse. And you know why? “Booziness.” Seriously.

But that night I was playing host and had numerous drinks — not to mention that I only had maraschino cherries not big black bings soaking in brandy — and I didn’t trust myself to make a final commitment on such a momentous life change. So tonight, in the privacy of my living room, with hulu.com blaring at me for entertainment purposes, I made myself a single Rittenhouse Manhattan, hold the cherry.

It’s true. It’s the booziness. Or it’s the unicorn tears. Or it’s the relative straightforward bluntness of rye compared to the coy playfulness of corn. Or it’s that having reached the scarily mature years of my [ahem] 40s I am simply having a midlife crisis. Whatever it is, I’m here to tell you, change has come to America. Or at least this little second-floor two-bedroom part of western Long Island.

Please, Stephanie, back me up here. Buy yourself a bottle and do us up a little experiment, all scientific-like. Do a back-to-back taste test. And then some subsequent night, alone, in front of a movie, make one more nice well-chilled one for yourself. And then report back here. I’d hate to think I’m either crazy or that I’ve fallen victim to a sinister spell of unicorn tears. I must know if it’s the booziness that makes it so right.

Love, David

Written by David Zaza

September 25th, 2009 at 1:06 am

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And I’m not being sarcastic. At all.

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Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

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[mobile]Sorry. It’s a Flash video which won’t work on your mobile device.[/mobile]

Written by David Zaza

September 23rd, 2009 at 12:09 am

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35 Rhums, by Claire Denis

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Claire Denis makes movies that inhabit the viewer from the inside out. These are not movies that start on the screen, enter the eye, and take the mind on a linear journey. They reflect from the screen, enter the chest, and then take the heart on a journey that blossoms outwardly like a flower. From her first feature, 1988′s Chocolat, to her newest, 35 Rhums, which was completed in 2008 but is only now receiving its American distribution, these films create their own worlds and sustain their own tensions by departing from conventional storytelling — the fictions that most films are made of — and embracing instead a narrative structure that is more poetry than fiction and a visual composition that is more painting than photography. These works are round, organic, and intuitive, instead of linear, bordered, and logical.

35 Rhums begins with a long sequence of moving images: point-of-view shots of Parisian commuter rail lines, filmed from the train’s engine, showing a winding progression of tracks and wires and tunnels. These tracking shots reminded me of Marguerite Duras’ Aurelia Steiner (Melbourne), which places its camera at the front of a boat as it navigates the Seine, its eye wandering to the shores and the bridges it passes under. The slow pacing of this opening sequence allows the audience to acclimate to the hypnotic rhythms that will unfold over the next 100 minutes.

We enter the action in the middle, getting to know the four main characters, all residents in the same modern apartment building. A father and daughter and two of their neighbors, who together form a post-modern family, move around each other mostly in silence. Friends and colleagues come and go. The pacing remains slow and mysteriously intimate, filled with real-time accountings of individual moments in these people’s lives.

Denis’ longtime collaborator, cinematographer Agnes Godard, has created a mood that is tenuous and lightly floating — with a mixed use of fixed and hand-held camera work, but which is consistent in its alternating between hesitations and actions, a pulsing visual approach to familial subject matter that is alive with emotions and the characters’ own heartbeats. There are some singular images that are among Agnes Godard’s best: a line of children carrying lanterns on the beach; a formal shot of a man on a sofa; and the motif of winding tracks disappearing under a moving train.

As always in a Claire Denis film, music is central to the construction of 35 Rhums. The score is once again provided by Denis regulars, the Tindersticks. And once again, there’s a set-piece that is central to the story and characters that takes place with a pop-song underscore — in this case, almost unbelievably, Commodores’ 1985 Marvin Gaye tribute, Nightshift.

The actors are also wonderful, especially Alex Descas, who plays the father. He says little, but conveys much. It helps that he has the kind of beautiful face that one could look at for two hours without really needing much more. Mati Diop is a newcomer, but fits right in, with her shy smile and her quiet beauty. She seems to be on the exact same page as Descas, and the intimate moments they share are so authentic and so deep that one begins to feel intrusive by even observing them. And Gregoire Colin seems to expand his abilities with this film. His posture and facial expressions are unlike what I’ve seen him do in other films (including Denis’).

Late in the film the narrative leaps forward twice in a row, accelerating both the movie’s pacing and its emotional impact. In giving us a slow character study, capped with a sudden road-trip, and finally a ceremony of love, Denis seems to be smiling at us, although we might have tears in our eyes. In fact, the film itself could be described as the cinematic equivalent of an enigmatic smile — just mysterious enough and just melancholy enough for us to want to look at it forever.

Distribution is limited. If it’s playing near you, don’t miss it.

Trailer:
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[mobile]35 Rhums[/mobile]

Written by David Zaza

September 22nd, 2009 at 12:51 am

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My sister, my music, and Mary Travers

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I had the sweetest text message this morning from my sister. It read:

Listening to Summer one last time then switching to Water in honor of the biblical rain we’re having this week! Tomorrow, Autumn. Thx for my life soundtrack!

Well, I’ve always been one of those music nerds who makes lists. Mixtapes for friends, mixtapes for myself. I’ve made big 4-CD boxed set mixes as Christmas presents, which is what Stephanie is referring to. Summer and Autumn, are mixes obviously from a set called Four Seasons. And Water is from Four Elements, which was naturally boxed along with Earth, Fire, and Air. It’s odd sometimes to see where songs overlap mixes — Simon and Garfunkel, for instance, are extremely versatile and play a big role in autumnal mixes as well as spring, in lonely mixes as well as love, in mixes made for the most old-fashioned of friends as well as the hippest. Of course, “mixtapes” began as tapes, and what a relief it was when we could finally burn CDs and make CD mixes. Oh that obsolete medium! It’s all playlists all the time now…

For me, and for most people I think, certain music goes with certain weather, season, time of day, level of stress, whatever. My sister says she’ll play the Water mix for all the recent Atlanta rain, but when it rains I immediately turn to Everything But The Girl’s 1985 album Love Not Money. And while I do listen to my own seasonal mixes, I also have favorite albums and artists for each season. For me, nothing is as summery as Prince’s 1986 LP Parade. And for fall Jane Siberry’s operatic opus called The Walking is just the thing. Now, for September, that moody month that tips summer into fall, I naturally listen to Sinatra’s brilliant 1965 concept album September of My Years. I rarely listen to that album when it isn’t September.

For stress, lately I’ve been turning to Morrissey’s later solo albums. If I can’t sleep I try early music — Josquin or Tallis. When I’m feeling industrious Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier (lately, played by Till Fellner) gives me both the mathematical and artistic fuel I need to keep my nose to the grindstone. When I’m feeling frisky there’s a whole slew of 00s indie music that makes me feel like the 16-year-boy I never felt like when I was a 16-year-boy. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart are the best of that lot, but Girls, Ash, and Vampire Weekend are right there with them.

And then there’s the opposite category, a category (and iPod playlist) that I call “Perfect Songs.” The rule for this category is that it can only contain songs that I want to hear no matter my mood, the season, the time of day, etc. So even though Rosemary Clooney singing When October Goes is a perfect song for Autumn, it’s not a “Perfect Song” as I really want only to lean on it when I need that wistful melancholy of fall turning to winter. Compare that to, say, Beck’s Lost Cause, which is on the Autumn playlist, but which could be played in any of the four seasons, at any hour of the day, on any continent, and I will thrill to hear it each and every time — it’s that perfect.

This discussion, of course, was brought on by my sister’s text this morning, and some music is so evocative of certain people in our lives that there’s no way to ever separate it from them, good or bad. There are songs and albums that remind me of old boyfriends (Seal’s song Show Me = Joe Smitherman), certain friends (Bye Bye Pride by the Go-Betweens = Chris Conti; Louis Prima’s drunken Pleeza No Squeeza = Sheri Kuchta Briggs; Bowie’s perfect song “Heroes” = Patsy Cline), and family. For Mom, although she might not remember this, Prince’s Play in the Sunshine will forever and always throw me back to Saturday morning teenage house-cleaning and dancing with my mom in the kitchen. For Dad, Una Furtiva Lagrima, an aria from Donizetti’s L’elisir d’Amore is something my sister and I heard him singing the opening lines of so many times throughout childhood that we were stunned and awed to learn it was a real song when it came pouring out of our television while watching, of all things, Goonies. And for Stephanie? Well I think most people with a close sibling will recognize that there are just too many musical associations to mention. I mean, we saw Eurythmics together! We played in orchestras together. We used to divvy up the roles of Jesus Christ Superstar and sing along with the 2-disk LP start to finish. We danced on a table in the basement while listening to Kiss, The New Seekers, and The DeFranco Family. Stephanie is also responsible for introducing me to two musicians who have become iconic for me: John Denver (I still have the live album Stephanie received for her 10th birthday!) and Philip Glass, whose Songs From Liquid Days, brought home from Stephanie’s graduation trip to NYC, opened my 15-year-old ears and 15-year-old heart to something so completely unlike anything I’d ever heard before. But this week I thought about the time Stephanie and I were lying in the sun at the man-made swimming lake where we spent many of our Ohio summers, and we were listening to Peter, Paul & Mary (on cassette! on our boombox!). In the live recording of Puff The Magic Dragon there’s a funny bit where they sing “And if you do not know the words…. you’d better learn them!”. Some creepy guy on a nearby blanket joined in — quite loudly — at that point, and then when we, startled, turned to look at him, gave us a laugh and said “I didn’t know which version of this song you were listening to. Now I know!” Sigh. Peter, Paul & Mary.

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[mobile]Peter, Paul & Mary live[/mobile]

Of all the celebrity deaths in recent months, Mary Travers’ death makes me the saddest. That live recording of PP&M was in my parents’ record collection from before my birth, so that music is as deeply rooted in me as any. Over the decades I’ve been listening to it, I’ve shifted from childhood favorites (Puff, of course, and Car-Car) to teenage rebellion (If I Had My Way!) to the seriousness of adulthood (Three Ravens, and Jesus Met The Woman). As a college student I finally began to expand my PP&M collection when, in a moment I will always remember, in a mix made for Sunday mornings by another friend, Jet Plane came on. I hadn’t heard it in many years and it was such a perfect musical moment I cried. I saw PP&M in concert twice, and I saw Mary Travers perform solo once at some festival in a park near the University of Cincinnati. I met her at that performance, and she autographed my CD copy PP&M’s first album. I’ve been sad all week with the news of her death, and I’ve been playing PP&M constantly on my iPod. It’s natural to immediately turn to 500 Miles or There Is A Ship to get the slow, clear call of Mary’s voice, but I’ve found myself more turning to Early In The Morning, the opening track of that first album, where their three voices are blending perfectly and the go-get-’em quality of rousing folk music really shines through. I think it may be a “Perfect Song.” Take a listen.

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UPDATED TO ADD:
Here’s an amazing clip Christopher Santos pointed me towards. Watching it, all I can think about it that unthinkable future of being on the earth without Joni Mitchell… Let’s hope that’s a long time away. In the meantime, here’s a supergroup for you — Joni, Mama Cass, and Mary:
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[mobile]Mama Cass, Mary Travers, and Joni Mitchell[/mobile]

Written by David Zaza

September 19th, 2009 at 12:48 pm

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No shit.

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I keep getting emails from Organizing for America, formerly known as Obama for America, aka the Obama campaign. They keep sending messages about how I have to be the one to get health care reform pushed through Congress. Sorry, but that’s the president’s job. I mean, we all have to play a part, and lord knows I’ve been dialing my fingers to the bone and asking you all to as well. And I feel strongly the President needs to start some serious arm-twisting on our behalf, not the other way around.

Today’s email from Organizing for America really takes the cake:

[nonmobile]Big (Bowel) Movement In Congress[/nonmobile]
[mobile]Big (Bowel) Movement In Congress[/mobile]
Let’s start with the subject line and first sentence of the email:

Subject: Movement in Congress
There’s big movement in Congress: Just a week after President Obama laid out a comprehensive plan for reform, the fifth and final congressional committee has unveiled its health reform legislation.

Um, that “final congressional committee”? That would be the the Senate Finance Committee. I cannot but help to find the missing word in the subject line: BOWEL Movement in Congress. Yes, it’s Max Baucus, that asshole, taking a big steaming dump on the people who put this Democratic president in the White House and gave him humongous majorities in both houses of Congress. His idea of health care reform is to create individual mandates forcing almost every American to buy shitty insurance from private companies, without providing a public option that will actually help to lower costs. Oh sure, he’s put in nonprofit co-ops — but that is a fake solution. And it does not fit in with either the President’s campaign promise (public option) or with the President’s stated goal of a public option or other alternative that provides real competition to insurance companies and “keeps them honest.”

So as part of my own activism on this issue, I’ve taken to answering all these emails I get from the White House, anyone in Congress, or Organizing for America. My reply to the above email is pretty straight to the point:

Dear Organizing for America,

I am already calling my senators on a weekly basis. And the White House too. How about the President stop tiptoeing around the public option issue and DEMAND that Congress include it in the final bill FROM BOTH HOUSES?! We cannot do his work for him. He needs to stop the nice talk and start twisting some arms. I know he doesn’t like to be “disagreeable” but why is it okay to break his campaign promise for a public option but not okay to break his promise on disagreeing without being disagreeable? The Senate Finance bill is crap. Stop emailing me about how I should get my Senators to support the President’s plan, when what’s actually being considered is totally different from the plan the president laid out during the campaign.

The President needs to hear this message loud and clear: NO PUBLIC OPTION=NO REELECTION DONATIONS. Period.

David Zaza

I suggest you join me in this effort if you too are on the receiving end of Democrats’ solicitous emails.

Written by David Zaza

September 17th, 2009 at 4:31 pm

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On A Clear Day (You Can See Forever)

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On A Clear Day (You Can See Forever) is one of my favorite popular American standards, written by Burton Lane with lyrics by the always great Alan Jay Lerner. Over the years I’ve developed a great love for a few different versions of the song, namely Sinatra’s, which is the first I knew, as well as Lou Rawls’, Robert Goulet’s, and Streisand’s, if only for the insanity of her over-the-top take.

Today I listened to them back-to-back-to-back-to-back and reveled in the differences, as well as in the great flexibility the song has (which is, of course, the sign of a good song in the first place).

Lou Rawls sets his version in motion with a loose swing — a nice walking tempo and a nice breezy and ever-soulful vocal. Halfway through he starts bending his rhythms and putting a jazzier inflection in his vocal stylings. Take a listen:

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Buy Lou’s version here

Robert Goulet decides to set his sights on the sky itself, with an easy-listening, easy-arranged shuffle through the sunny side of singing. He’s got those crazy white-voiced backup singers that sang behind so many of the great pop singers of the 50s and 60s, and he’s got his always-reliable schmaltzy, slightly pinched voiced to remind us of his musical theater background. Here it is:

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Buy Bobby’s version here

One of the great laws of recorded music in the 20th (and 21st!) century is that when Barbra Streisand stars a song at a near whisper it is a certainty that by the end she’ll be taking this number out over the top. Her version of Clear Day clocks in at a rather short 2:11. She, um, makes the most of it. Oh Babs!

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Buy Barbra’s version here

Ladies and gentlemen, The Chairman of the Board has called to order a meeting of sunshine, maturity, depth, and just a twinge of melancholy. Frank’s voice is so open in this wonderful 1962 recording. Frank always worked with great arrangers, and the Strangers in the Night album may be the very peak of his work with Nelson Riddle. The full-band horn break in the middle matches Frank’s inflections perfectly. And as he wraps it up, Sinatra’s sense of gravity and, yes, clarity are pitch-perfect. Here:

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Buy Frank’s version here

So, what do you think? Frank by a mile? Or do you like the sexiness of Lou’s version? Are you a Camelot fanatic who melts at the very first note of Bobby’s distinct timbre? Or are you a gay man of a generation slightly ahead of my own, who simply refuses to put Barbra behind the boys? My vote’s still with Frank.

P.S. Sorry, theater queens, I couldn’t bring myself to include Ethel Merman’s rendition!

Written by David Zaza

September 13th, 2009 at 8:37 pm

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Amity Street Horror

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The weather is nice, which means I sleep with the air conditioning off and the windows open. Which means every single god-damned morning I am awakened by the horrid incessant screeching of a blue jay. Today there were two — the usual screecher and then every now and then a companion screecher whose shrill shriek was about half an octave higher than the first.

I’d like to take this opportunity to affirm my belief in the Second Amendment, although unfortunately, I myself do not own a gun.

[nonmobile]The only good blue jay is a dead blue jay. Photo by <A HREF="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kim-bur-lee/3373640852/" target="_blank">Kimberly Robyn</A>.[/nonmobile]

[mobile]The only good blue jay is a dead blue jay. Photo by <A HREF="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kim-bur-lee/3373640852/" target="_blank">Kimberly Robyn</A>.[/mobile]

Written by David Zaza

September 13th, 2009 at 12:52 pm

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NYT headline: In Speech, Obama Will Not Insist on Public Option

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Well at least he’s taking it lying down.

Written by David Zaza

September 9th, 2009 at 5:31 pm

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More Reich, more Public Option, less Trigger

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Over at Salon.com, Robert Reich explains why all a trigger does is kill the public option, not enable it:

The problem is twofold. First, it’s impossible to design airtight goals for coverage and cost reductions that won’t be picked over by 5,000 lobbyists and as many lawyers and litigators even if, at the end of the grace period, it’s apparent to everyone else that the goals aren’t met. Washington is a vast cesspool of well-paid specialists who know how to stop anything resembling a “trigger.” Believe me, they will.

Second, any controversial proposal with some powerful support behind it that gets delayed — for five years or three years or whenever — is politically dead. Supporters lose interest. Public attention wanders. The media are on to other issues. Right now the public option is very much alive because so many Democrats care deeply about it, with good reason. But put it off for years, and assign it to the lawyers and lobbyists I just mentioned, and you can kiss it goodbye forever.

If the idea is to have a public option waiting in the wings in case private insurers blow it, why wait for it at all? If it gets lower costs and wider coverage, it should be included right from the start.

May I please ask the president what part of reality he doesn’t understand??

There are two other helpful articles right now at Salon to help us prepare for tomorrow night’s speech:

First, Jacob Hacker, who is basically responsible for the public option idea being part of the current conversation, explains in an interview why the public option is key, and why co-ops are wrong (he says they are “a political solution to a political problem, rather than a policy solution to a real world problem.”). Exactly.

Then we also have Mike Madden writing about the politics of all this, and the what-if? scenario of just passing anything in order for Obama to claim victory. Needless to say, I think that will do more to disenfranchise all those new voters Obama brought into the system than anything else.

And to that last point, if you gave any money or time to Obama’s campaign, please take a minute to sign the petition that his supporters are circulating to put press on him to hold fast to the public option.

Written by David Zaza

September 9th, 2009 at 12:25 am

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Robert Reich makes it simpler and succinct

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I’ll write more about this and next steps later from home.

Written by David Zaza

September 8th, 2009 at 2:56 pm

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Routine Fortune

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I hope this one comes true.

[nonmobile]I hope this one comes true
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[mobile]I hope this one comes true[/mobile]

Written by David Zaza

September 6th, 2009 at 11:54 am

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I hate computers

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I like to record videos of myself reading my poems. It helps me. And you know, I have a fancy expensive computer with a built-in camera. And I bought a fancy USB microphone that sits on a little stand in front of me and makes me feel like I’m a 1930s radio star. But for some god-damned reason, and don’t ask me why because I am sure I cannot tell you, Apple’s program Photo Booth sometimes records the audio and sometimes doesn’t. I mean, two videos right in a row — one will have audio and one won’t. I’ve checked my audio preferences and my mic is recognized by the system and is properly selected. At first I thought it was due to length — you know, I record a six-minute video and there’s no sound, so then I do a ten-second test and there’s sound. But that’s not it because I recorded two short tests back to back and one had sound and one didn’t. SO WHY THE HELL DO I HAVE THIS EXPENSIVE COMPUTER IF I CAN’T RECORD VIDEOS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT?!

Written by David Zaza

September 6th, 2009 at 2:26 am

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