Friday, April 29, 2005

I wanna rock! No, scissors!

Sorry I haven't been posting, end of semester, blah blah blah.

I've been trying to keep up to date with current events regarding the federal judiciary, including the ongoing Tom DeLay fit, negotiations over Senate confirmation votes and the Court's decisions and oral arguments, but haven't had any time to put thoughts in writing. I'll get back to it.

Just spotted this, though, and thought it was worth a minute. The article describes how Christie's acquired the sale of an art collection worth more than $20 million (estimated) by winning a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors against Sotheby's. Christie's went with a strategy devised by the 11-year old daughters of the director of their Impressionist and modern art department.

The story reminded me of a paper I read a few years ago using RPS to demonstrate the unlikelihood of learning mixed-strategy Nash equilibria in chaotic games. The paper is mentioned in this Forbes article and you can download it (I think) here (pdf).

Tiny Douglas Adams spoiler after the jump.

Well, it's a tiny spoiler about a Douglas Adams novel, not a spoiler about a tiny Douglas Adams... oh nevermind.

This RPS episode also reminded me of a bit from Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, probably my favorite Adams book. Gently can't figure out how a certain magic trick (circumstantially central to the plot, as it turns out) is done and eventually asks a child, who replies (correctly, of course): "It's bleedin' obvious, innit, he must've 'ad a bleedin' time machine."

Monday, April 25, 2005

Blowing my cover

Scott over at Messages from the Ether has posted some thoughts on cover songs responding to the CBC article I discussed previously. I cut my discussion short before, distressed at how much like an old man I sounded for contrasting the "good old days" when people did good covers with the present, when "kids these days are doing god knows what that sounds like a bunch of noise... hrmph..." (I didn't really say that, but the thought was there.) I remember a bit in American Heritage magazine from some years ago, in one of their "most overrated/underrated" issues, declaring Stephen Sondheim the most overrated songwriter in history, but not before the writer making the choice said that, in this day and age when most pop singers write their own songs, they all qualify. Now THAT'S a grumpy old man.

Anyway, several of Scott's points of dispute with the article, especially some of the overbroad assertions made in the course of the piece, are well-taken. It takes a bit of grappling with the purposes of song performance to distinguish the "insincere" cover from the "genuine." The author never does address the question raised after the title of how this state of affairs came to be. It also takes a lot of thinking about what one likes and doesn't like about various cover versions to figure out what one thinks about covers generally. I'm a long time fan of jazz, where spending time with songbooks is a necessity to distinguish yourself, so the idea of covers itself can't be the problem. At the risk of turning into the guy from American Heritage, I don't see what was wrong with letting songwriters write songs while talented performers perform them. Nowadays (there's that word) it seems like everyone needs to write all their own songs or they're not real artists. Like Billie Holiday or Frank Sinatra weren't real artists. Still, with the strong creative element inherent in the good cover, the line between writing and interpreting songs gets a bit hazy.

To gripe a bit about current trends in popular music for just another minute, why do pop singers feel the need to create the transparently false pretense of offering millions of people access to their most intimate thoughts and feelings? Do I really want to listen to The Diary of Alicia Keys or Ashley Simpson's Autobiography (I'm talking about the concepts raised by those titles, not the albums themselves)? Good artists create a sense of intimacy or sincerity without explaining to me on the cover that that's what they're doing. Anyway, some artists are capable of creating work that conveys depth and feeling without the illusion of verisimilitude. I know, hip-hop is the guiltiest of them all, with nonsensical gangster fairy tales passed off as The Documentary.

OK, enough of that. On a more positive note, there are covers of a sort out there now that I really dig. I've mentioned MIA's "Sunshowers" before. It's a song that isn't quite a cover of, but refers back to Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band song "Sunshower." I still don't have MIA's album, but that song is neat. I'm thinking I'll have to pick up the last Trick Daddy album as well, since I've been liking the latest radio cut, "Sugar (Gimme Some)" featuring Cee-Lo singing the hook. I almost couldn't believe it at first, but it's straight from the Talking Heads' "Sugar On My Tongue," which first appeared (as far as I can tell) on the Sand in the Vaseline collection. Sure, it's not obscure at all in DJ Shadow terms, but for a radio thug like Trick Daddy, it's pretty deep."

"Now, young Skywalker, you will die..."

Rather than remark on the already-played-out similarity between the new Pope and the Emperor from the Star Wars saga, I offer some Google figures (call it metablogging):
Google hits on terms [Ratzinger Palpatine] = 178
Google hits on terms [Benedict Palpatine] = 1,240
Google hits on term ["Pope Palpatine"] = 128


The extremely high figure for "Benedict" and "Palpatine" is undoubtedly inflated by false positives, probably message board discussions of Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica (starring Dirk Benedict).

UPDATE

The above was posted Thursday, April 21st. New figures (as of Monday 4/25):
Google hits on terms [Ratzinger Palpatine] = 645
Google hits on terms [Benedict Palpatine] = 869
Google hits on term ["Pope Palpatine"] = 2,420


Wow. The jumps for the first and third result are impressive, but the drop in hits for the "Benedict" and "Palpatine" terms is interesting as well.

Quick, check out the Wikipedia page for Pope Benedict XVI.

Gone to study bugs...

Guys, if you've ever considered entomology, go for it. The Sci Fi channel started off the weekend Saturday with their redhead entomologist series, Bugs and Threshold, starring Angie Everhart and Jamie Luner, respectively, as entomologists fighting some sort of deadly insect infestation. Then, last night, CBS broadcast Locusts featuring Lucy Lawless as a government entomologist facing a swarm of, well, locusts.

Of course, this follows Mimic, the 1997 theatrical release with Mira Sorvino as an entomologist. My interest was initially piqued in 1996 by the X-Files episode "War of the Coprophages" in which Bobbie Phillips plays an entomologist named "Dr. Bambi Berenbaum", of all things. Going back even further, you can find Tiffany Bolling as an entomologist in Kingdom of the Spiders (also starring William Shatner!)

Friday, April 22, 2005

The Friedman's bureau

I can't say I'm proud of it, but I was left asphyxiated by laughter reading Matt Taibbi's piece on Tom Friedman's new book. If that's not enough, he's written a couple other hysterical columns on the same subject.

Ripping the covers off

Like this much-blogged-about article says, there's some irresistible compulsion that bloggers have to post when they have little or nothing to say and even to apologize for lack of substantive content. I haven't been posting too much recently and what I have hasn't been much connected to law and politics. I've started a bunch of posts about cultural stuff that remain as drafts, as well as a few bits abandoned as repetitive (another post about how weak David Brooks is) or trivial (a post criticizing NYT Ethicist Randy Cohen, but defending him against readers). Of course, triviality is what blogs are for, so I don't know what I was thinking.

I spotted this piece about song covers this morning. One of my alarmingly grumpy-old-man rants is about the decline of the good cover song. Some of the covers mentioned in the article aren't familiar to me, but I recall hating the "Smooth Criminal" and "I Will Survive" covers. The latter, murdered by Cake, is not only bad, it's also not very original. Tony Clifton did a similarly "ironic" version in the mid-80s (revived for the Man on the Moon soundtrack.) Chantay Savage did a good version of "I Will Survive" about ten years ago, though, so it's not impossible. The "Boys of Summer" cover by whoever they were was incredibly bland, practically anonymous, but I did find it interesting that they changed the Grateful Dead reference to Black Flag. To me, this just proved that post-punk bands think that being "post-punk" means it's OK for everything they do to sound exactly alike.

In my pantheon of great covers, Isaac Hayes looms large. Not all of Hayes' covers are excellent; indeed after awhile they started to sound compulsory, as if Hayes thought it necessary that every album contain a pop standard given the "Ike treatment." Still, it's hard not to be awed by what Hayes found in Bacharach and David songs. Actually, Bacharach songs are a good measure of how effective a cover artist can be, separating the Ron Isley's and Mike Patton's of the world (check out his versions of "She's Gone Away" and "This Guy's in Love with You") from the Luther Vandross's (see his "Anyone Who Had a Heart", "A House is not a Home" or "What the World Needs Now is Love"). Vandross has made a second career out of doing flimsy, superfluous covers of songs done better before. Heck, Vandross and Mariah Carey's cover of "Endless Love" makes you appreciate the original, if you didn't already.

The 70s was a great era for covers, though. Beyond Hayes, you had tremendous covers coming from Donny Hathaway (whose covers of certain songs are so good he ends up "owning" them for all intents), Bryan Ferry and several others. Lots of people did great covers back then, moreso, it seems, than now. The contemporary scene sees covers, as the article says, as a free pass, rather than a challenge.

On that exceedingly grumpy note, I'll leave this for now.

Monday, April 18, 2005

Huh?

Am I the only one who found this article (about the "man date", an outing between two men defined more by its exclusions than anything else) tenuous? Reading it over, I couldn't figure out why it was written, let alone given such prominent placement in the NYT Sunday Style section. Thankfully, a quick look at the Forum page yielded this quote from a reader: "The article is either a pathetic attempt at trend spotting/naming ala 'metrosexual,' or sexualizing every last interaction."

Yeah, that's it.

UPDATE

Apparently, I wasn't the only one, going by these letter.

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Amusing

Spotted this in an edited volume on the Warren Court, in an essay entitled "The Warren Court and the Press" by John MacKenzie:
On December 4, 1967, the Court denied review to two topless, and by definition newsworthy, young ladies from Los Angeles, whose petition claimed first amendment protection for their chosen form of expression.1 The ladies sought relief from the toils of prosecution by means of a petition for a writ of habeas corpus--a remedy that was intriguing in itself--but had been spurned by the lower courts.

The dashed phrase didn't make sense until I thought about the Latin. I believe habeas corpus literally means "you (should) have the body" and the Great Writ in its entirety is habeas corpus ad subjiciendum, which translates "you should have the body for submitting." Intriguing indeed.

MacKenzie notes that only William O. Douglas voted to review the case. Justice Douglas had just entered his fourth and final marriage in 1967 to a woman 40 years younger than himself, but apparently hadn't lost his enthusiasm for have young ladies' bodies submitted to him.

1. Bennett v California, 389 U.S. 985 (1967).

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

Anybody need a professional hater?

I would want to be film critic if I could do nothing but write these. Reverse Shot have published their 2nd year-in-review page of sniping directed at films, film critics and audiences (see the 2003 entry). I'm much more enthusiastic trashing stuff than praising it, so this type of thing appeals to me.

Several of their attitudes are spot-on, including the opening shot at Armond White, who writes the most readable gibberish I've ever seen in film criticism. Of course, as often as I slap my forehead at the nonsense that appears regularly in White's pieces, I also share his reactions to certain movies on occasion and sometimes find myself actually sounding like him in agitated moments. When I say that White writes nonsense, I don't mean things that I disagree with. I'm talking about sentences that don't mean anything specifically. Few people can reduce words to epithets or exclamations as Armond White can. He tends to use words more for the forcefulness of their impression than for their referential value, which is why the Reverse Shot award is so aptly named.

Of course, one person's "wrong-headed hyperbole" is another person's cogently incisive observation. Last year, Reverse Shot published a best film of the year writeup of Kill Bill, Vol. 1 that includes the sentence: "Kill Bill: Volume 1, more than any film released in 2003 screams 'now.'"

Meme

Having been threatened with exile if I don't contribute to this meme, so here it goes.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
Can't think of one

The last book you bought is:
Hmm... I don't recall. Lately I've been reading library books and stuff I get sent for free. The last book I checked out of the library was Applied Bayesian Modeling and Causal Inference from Incomplete-Data Perspectives. It's a collection of articles on statistical issues marked by the contributions of Donald Rubin.

The last book you read:
As I haven't read all of the above (and probably won't) the last book I actually read all the way through was Taking the Constitution Away from the Courts, which I've read before, but needed to review.

What are you currently reading?
I'm in the middle of The Dante Club and The Politics of Constitutional Review in Germany.

Five books you would take to a deserted island
Finnegans Wake; I've read it twice before, but I still can't give you a strong account of what it's about. The notion of returning from a deserted island speaking a private language appeals to me, though.

Econometric Analysis; I'd also like to come back with a huge list of errata for the next edition

Humboldt's Gift, Saul Bellow; I took an English class for which it was the only text. I recall thinking that it was a bit much to spend a whole semester on this novel, but I carry related and fond memories of the book and Chicago, the city it is set in and in which I lived at the time.

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, Philip K. Dick; among my favorite PKD books and probably the one that bears rereading best

I can't think of a fifth. Besides, if I have too much to read, I'll never get to marking up Greene.

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?
Scanning my blogroll, I see people who have already done this, people I don't want to burden with such responsibility, and Richard Posner and Gary Becker.

Kravitz v Lady

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES DIVISION


LENNY KRAVITZ,

Plaintiff

vs.

LADY, AKA "LITTLE LADY", "SUPER LADY", "SOPHISTICATED LADY",

Defendant.


PLAINTIFF'S MOTION TO COMPEL DEFENDANT TO HAVE PLAINTIFF'S BABY


TO THE HONORABLE JUDGE OF THIS COURT:

Introduction

I'm crazy for this little lady
I'm freaking for my little baby
'Cause she makes me feel good
She's so fine

Standard of Review

Don't need all my other ladies
I'm beggin' for this little lady
'Cause I tell you she's cool
She's divine

Argument

1. Defendant is a Super Lady and Plaintiff is relatedly weak and has gone hazy

I know she's a super lady
I'm weak and I've gone hazy yeah

2. Defendant is chic, sophisticated, and fine, but not shady, and makes Plaintiff feel good

I'm crazy for that lady
She's chic but she's not shady yeah
Sophisticated lady
And she makes me feel good
She's so fine

Prayer for Relief

Never knew there was such a lady
That would make me want to straighten
Out my life at this time but I find
I'm thinkin' 'bout this pretty lady
I would love for her to have my baby
'Cause you know she's no fool
She's refined

Background

1. Restatement of Facts for Judicial Notice

I know she's a super lady
I'm weak and I've gone hazy yeah

2. Defendant is chic, sophisticated, and fine, but not shady, and makes Plaintiff feel good

I'm crazy for that lady
She's chic but she's not shady yeah
Sophisticated lady
And she makes me feel good
She's so fine

3. Defendant blows Plaintiff's mind, continually, and makes Plaintiff feel good, which is as a real woman should, and belongs to Plaintiff

Yeah
Don't you know she blows my mind
All the time
'Cause she makes me feel good
Like a real woman should
Yeah
She's so mine
Yeah

Prayer for Continuance

I'm weak and I've gone hazy yeah

Restatement of Argument

I'm crazy for that lady
She's chic but she's not shady yeah
Sophisticated lady
And she makes me feel good
And she makes me feel good
And she makes me feel good
She's so fine

Conclusion

Yeah
Don't you know she blows my mind
All the time
And she makes me feel good
Like a real woman should
Yeah
All the time
Yeah
Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah

Tuesday, April 05, 2005

Seem to have fixed it

I finally got fed up with the "Read more" links at the bottom of short posts that have no more text and it looks like I fixed it. Thanks go to No Fancy Name for the hack, supplementing the annoyingly incomplete blogger help entry.

Movie futures, and a bit of trivia

The Guardian offers an article previewing the summer blockbusters, including Sin City even though it has already opened here in the states. Doesn't sound too promising.

One item caught my attention, however. In the write-up for Revenge of the Sith, the author asserts that "this is surely the first film in history that has been designed to bridge two others." Since the word "surely," to my ears, sounds like "please pay attention for a claim that may be entirely false," I began trying to think of a predecessor.

The only thing that has leaped immediately to mind is Alien v Predator. It's obviously a prequel to the Alien movies, but also appears to be a sequel to the Predator films, if we are to believe that the Predator movies are roughly contemporaneous with their releases. If nothing else, the technology of AvP seems to set it after the first Predator. I seem to recall something happening in AvP confirming that it took place after the other Predator movies, but I can't remember what now.

That said, I'm not sure AvP really accomplishes the role described in the article. Several things about the Alien franchise are elaborated upon in the new movie, but again, I can't think of any way in which AvP continues the stories of the Predator movies. So, it doesn't exactly "bridge" the two series.

If I think of a more fitting precursor, I'll update. Any suggestions?

Amusing promotion war

I just read about this entertaining twist on The Apprentice last week. Apparently Domino's Pizza served as show sponsor and product placement of the week, "hiring" the random collection of telegenic sycophant-aspirants to make pizzas. According to this story, Papa John's heard about the promotion and quickly bought a spot for an ad shown during the episode spoofing their competitor's appearance on the show.

That's clever on Papa John's part, but not as clever as George Jefferson. I recall an episode of The Jeffersons where George, in a promotion war with one of his competitors (I can't remember whether it was Cunningham or Big Sky Cleaners), comes up with this contest idea where the customer bringing in the largest order of laundry gets theirs done for free. He "accidentally" allows his competitor to overhear and steal the idea and it appears to be a huge success, leaving Jefferson Cleaners' future uncertain. But, George takes all the clothes received by his stores in to his competitor, winning the contest and a bunch of free publicity, and it turns out that was his plan all along. Now that was marketing genius.

Another post about William Shatner

I started this post as a weekend wrapup yesterday, but blogger was giving me grief, so I did something worthwhile instead. I'm leaving for a conference tomorrow and should be preparing now, but I'm blogging instead.

Boston Legal wasn't on last night, but I was thinking about Shatner anyway this weekend as I reflected on the enduring wisdom and deep knowledge contained in his last album. I couldn't help it; events (aren't they always at fault?) kept conspiring to bring Shatner's observations and predictions to mind. The Pope died, just as Shatner said he would (in "You'll Have Time"). I filled up my car with gas on Sunday, paying $2.10 per gallon, up from about $2 a few days ago just as oil crept toward $60 a barrel (and futures exceeded that) recently. I passed the same station yesterday and saw that a gallon of unleaded leaped up nearly another $.10 between Sunday and Monday. Of course, as Shatner (with Henry Rollins) remarked in "I Can't Get Behind That", "I can't understand why the price of gas suddenly rises when oil goes up, but takes months to go down long after oil falls."

I haven't seen Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous yet and will probably wait for its inevitable USA Network premiere. With any luck, that will prevent this page from becoming some sort of weird "Bill Shatner tribute blog" that would invariably end up as Cruel Site of the Day at some point.

Friday, April 01, 2005

Sagittarius, and my name is Isaac

Eating dinner at a pub last night while the last Modest Mouse album played in its entirety over the system, I wondered once again why no one had done a mashup of their ubiquitous single "Float On" and the classic 1970s track of that name by the Floaters. I've searched in vain for such a thing online and still haven't been able to find it. I'm not too technically savvy, or I'd do it myself.

I'm not sure which approach would work better, putting the Floaters' smooth talking over the Modest Mouse music or to lay Isaac Brock's David Byrne-ish vocal over the ethereal Floaters music. I'm inclined to go with the Floaters vocals over the MM track. Incidentally, I don't really know when Isaac Brock was born; I just picked Sagittarius at random. So if you know, drop me a line.

The Floaters' song is an entertaining tune, but undeniably funny. It's proven to have lasting appeal as well, redone in the 80s by Stetasonic and not too long ago by Full Force (with a bunch of high-profile guests). You can't knock the Floaters' game, either. They know what they want and they have a plan to get it.

Ralph (Aquarius), the women's libber in the crew, likes a woman who loves her freedom and can hold her own, although the latter may just be an indication that he likes heavy drinkers. Charles (Libra) has the most vivid, fully realized play. He wants a quiet, dignified woman (a Miss Universe-type), but interestingly, his is the only ideal woman who actually says anything. True, what he imagines her saying is "Charles, yeah" but it's more subjectivity than any of the other women are permitted.

Paul (Leo) strikes me as the poet of the group. His vocals suggest shyness and perhaps because of that he's not terribly picky, claiming to like "all the women of the world," which presumably includes my aunt whom I've never thought of as a wildflower. Skylark reference noted, however. Larry (Cancer) is obviously the group's star and it shows the confidence of the group that he sings last. Larry's tastes are inclusive as well, but he's a bit opportunistic. He's looking for a woman who "loves everything and everybody," so we figure Larry wants to know up front what he can expect from any relationship. But, Larry's up front about it and he let's women know what they can expect: "sharing your love with Larry." All of the guys know their way to Love Land, something they must have learned from Charles Wright.

It's really a classic song and if the mashup community can be bothered to paste Jay-Z rhymes on everything from the Beatles to Pavement, certainly they can find time to bring the "Float On"s together.