Minor spoiler alert. I just saw The Last Jedi today, and I'm gonna tell you, it's all splash and no heart. Never a big J.J. Abrams fan, I was excited to see Rian Johnson take a turn at the helm. I enjoyed his twisty sci-fi Looper a few years back, and his quirky little indie film Brick is one of my favorite hat-tips to noir style and dialog.
Sadly, eight movies in and we're still slavishly following these same characters around -- Leia and Luke, Chewbacca, even Yoda shows up. But it's Luke in particular that drags the pic down. He's always such a buzzkill with his brooding self-seriousness, and without a cynical rogue like Han Solo around to balance the force, as it were, you're left with a big lemon-suck.
All the new characters we met in The Force Awakens are back, but they are cardboard cutouts, moving the plot along but providing no depth, no emotion. Even Kylo Ren's brooding (and, oh, does he brood) over a supposed betrayal by his onetime Jedi master feels perfunctory. What could have been a great conflict is handled with trickery and shortcuts that steal the power of the relationship. Rey is much blander than last time, and Finn and Poe seem to be there only to complicate the plot.
Interestingly, on their sideplot to nowhere, Finn's sidekick Rose steals the goddamn movie. A new character, she is genuine in a way that we haven't seen in this franchise since the early days, even if her love for the resistance is a little meta. (She's like a rebel alliance fangirl. You almost expect her to bust out original trilogy action figures.) But she's cool and gets one of the better scenes of herism.
Speaking of what was genuine in the early pics, why all the fawning over the raggedy old humans but no love for our favorite droids? I've always believed that the original arc of the Star Wars universe necessitated a series in which R2D2 and C3PO were the through line, the real main characters. The rebellion revolves around them almost as if they were narrators. They speak the first lines in the films. And they can continue on as the other characters lived and died, just as it is implied that they have a history with the rebellion before they ever meet up with Luke. (I think this was addressed in the second trilogy. Frankly, who cared.) And they are perfectly picaresque characters, uncannily showing up in the middle of every major moment in the rebellion like little Forrest Gumps.
Until now, that is. Sadly, they are no more than window dressing here -- appearing for a momentary cliche, and then being brusquely shunted aside like last year's iPhone for the bouncy and bubbly antics of BB-8, who is nowhere near having a personality. C3PO gets one chance to be an officious protocol droid and R2D2 gets a quick reunion with Luke. Done, and done. (Anthony Daniels's lines sound like they were literally phoned in -- on a flip phone, from his sofa, perhaps, on some or other Monday afternoon.)
Look, Star Wars was a big enough moment in my life that I had to see this one -- just as I will see the next. But it's all getting a little threadbare. My favorite thing about Rogue One was that they broke so fully away from the canonical characters into a self-contained story. More of that, please. Perhaps the ninth movie will be the charm. After all, everyone we knew from the earlier trilogies is now dead.
Maybe now we can move on, for god's sake.
Saturday, December 16, 2017
Friday, December 15, 2017
Expert, Schmexpert
Why does the American faith in education experts persist?
If you went looking for the foundations of the electromagnetic field concept, who would you expect to find there – a famous scientist and Royal Society member, or his self-taught valet and sometime lab assistant?
If you were searching for the person who kicked off the public health revolution in mid-1800s England, you might look for a forward-thinking doctor. But you’d be wrong. Instead, look for a philosopher and his assistant, both trained in the law. And the mental health revolution, half a century later, was launched not by a physician, but by a former inmate of a mental hospital.
In the late 19th century, if you wanted to perfect an efficient incandescent light bulb, you might have gone to the best educated scientists for help, but probably not to a semi-educated tinkerer in New Jersey. Why?
Someone interested in an economical operating system for the emerging personal computer market might also have asked the experts, perhaps at IBM. But IBM themselves got theirs from a college dropout whose software business was barely out of his garage.
When nobody bought the electric cars coming from the teams of experts at GM and Nissan, Elon Musk, a software businessman and PayPal investor, pushed them aside with the Tesla.
What about something big, like the moon shot? Didn’t it take experts to do that? Well, it certainly took a pile of money that only a government (big fan of experts) could provide. But once the technology was democratized and the costs came down, true innovation in space travel came not from NASA, but from a guy with an online bookstore.
And yet we still believe that the experts will give us the education (or health care!) system that we want.
The fact is, there’s a tried and true paradigm for getting what we want for our money: A few years ago, Apple put out their latest iPhone, but everyone bought the Samsung instead because of the big screen and a great camera. Can you guess what features Apple put on its next phone? If you said a bigger screen and better camera…
Imagine if this was how schools worked. They offer possibilities, and we respond by buying what we want. Foreign language immersion? Project-based learning? STEM-focused curriculum? If you want it, schools will provide it (and more schools will provide it if they see consumers rushing to schools that already do) – but only if the experts stop dictating what schools can do and where all the education money goes.
The common refrain is that education is too important to leave “to the market.” That case can be made for nutrition, too. But still we let corporations provide our food. Hell, we let parents decide what their kids eat. Where are the cries for a government-provided, thrice-daily gruel – exactly how many calories you need to clear the bar and no more? After all, in educational terms, that’s what our government schools serve up, day after day.
“Expert advice is indispensable to the democratic process,” wrote Harry Rosenfield in the Spring 1949 Antioch Review. “But it is not a substitute for that process.” The best illustration of that process would be millions of Americans voting … with their pocketbooks.
More: To paraphrase Michael Strong, imagine if the education system we had now was something we had paid an education company to build for us – think of an education Halliburton. Be honest: wouldn't we look at that system ... and call for that company to be fired?
If you went looking for the foundations of the electromagnetic field concept, who would you expect to find there – a famous scientist and Royal Society member, or his self-taught valet and sometime lab assistant?
If you were searching for the person who kicked off the public health revolution in mid-1800s England, you might look for a forward-thinking doctor. But you’d be wrong. Instead, look for a philosopher and his assistant, both trained in the law. And the mental health revolution, half a century later, was launched not by a physician, but by a former inmate of a mental hospital.
In the late 19th century, if you wanted to perfect an efficient incandescent light bulb, you might have gone to the best educated scientists for help, but probably not to a semi-educated tinkerer in New Jersey. Why?
Someone interested in an economical operating system for the emerging personal computer market might also have asked the experts, perhaps at IBM. But IBM themselves got theirs from a college dropout whose software business was barely out of his garage.
When nobody bought the electric cars coming from the teams of experts at GM and Nissan, Elon Musk, a software businessman and PayPal investor, pushed them aside with the Tesla.
What about something big, like the moon shot? Didn’t it take experts to do that? Well, it certainly took a pile of money that only a government (big fan of experts) could provide. But once the technology was democratized and the costs came down, true innovation in space travel came not from NASA, but from a guy with an online bookstore.
And yet we still believe that the experts will give us the education (or health care!) system that we want.
The fact is, there’s a tried and true paradigm for getting what we want for our money: A few years ago, Apple put out their latest iPhone, but everyone bought the Samsung instead because of the big screen and a great camera. Can you guess what features Apple put on its next phone? If you said a bigger screen and better camera…
Imagine if this was how schools worked. They offer possibilities, and we respond by buying what we want. Foreign language immersion? Project-based learning? STEM-focused curriculum? If you want it, schools will provide it (and more schools will provide it if they see consumers rushing to schools that already do) – but only if the experts stop dictating what schools can do and where all the education money goes.
The common refrain is that education is too important to leave “to the market.” That case can be made for nutrition, too. But still we let corporations provide our food. Hell, we let parents decide what their kids eat. Where are the cries for a government-provided, thrice-daily gruel – exactly how many calories you need to clear the bar and no more? After all, in educational terms, that’s what our government schools serve up, day after day.
“Expert advice is indispensable to the democratic process,” wrote Harry Rosenfield in the Spring 1949 Antioch Review. “But it is not a substitute for that process.” The best illustration of that process would be millions of Americans voting … with their pocketbooks.
More: To paraphrase Michael Strong, imagine if the education system we had now was something we had paid an education company to build for us – think of an education Halliburton. Be honest: wouldn't we look at that system ... and call for that company to be fired?
Thursday, December 14, 2017
Housekeeping
Wow, Blogger has changed a lot since 2002, no? Back then I could kind of figure it out as I went, since there were rather fewer features. But to log back in and not know where to start is disconcerting. I'm going to try to figure out how to update the blogroll. Hell, or just delete it. Nobody is really out there anymore.
I hate to say I told you so, but blogs were indeed the CB radio of the 2000s. I bet Razor will get all over my case for being purposely contrarian about this now (if he's even out there), but in a way I am sorry to come back and see the blighted landscape of what was once a lively and independent medium. (One that I railed against with some real venom about 10 years ago, yes. But still...)
The best bloggers turned pro. Radley's got a real job at the Washington Post, where he has made himself a widely cited expert on policing. Mike Totten is still in the Middle East, writing for a serious foreign policy outlet. And good for them. They deserve to be in that world of pro journalists; they enrich the conversation, and they got in (to one degree or another) because they showed their stuff on their blogs.
Meanwhile, Instapundit is still out there, but it turned into a Trumpista group blog so slowly I hardly noticed. It's all layered and nuanced and couched with the usual "Trump is not perfect, but" sort of language. But it's clear there is an editorial slant to the PJ Media sites, and they link to one another relentlessly. (Also as I predicted.)
What are we to make of the smoldering remains spread before us, the dead links to once entertaining or thought-provoking voices, the mass exodus to Twitter, where nuance goes to die? On our own site, there's a mixed bag to be found, of passionate statements on issues that turned out to be not so momentous after all, dismissals of the ones that were -- but also some writing that stands up after many years, opinions that forced me to reconstruct my worldview, and things that just made me laugh my ass off.
I am reminded, too, of Razor's impassioned railing against the blog phenomenon of "fisking," of launching a series of zingers at your opponents' arguments. I found it entertaining at the time, but it turned out that Razor was right; fisking was simply Twitter culture in nascent form.
Anyway, this is a long-winded way of me saying I'm not here to get nostalgic or try to recapture something. I really just missed the daily exercise of putting my thoughts in order, on whatever subject, and seeing if I agree with myself.
One thing I will miss about that moment: there was an army of folks out there willing to explain why I was full of shit. (And I was lucky enough to have two of them on the same site.) If there is one thing I'm convinced of, it's that I don't have enough of that in my life. Sure I have plenty of people willing to tell me I'm an asshole. (Take a number, folks.) But can they explain it? Will they? Despite what some will say is a particularly intemperate cultural moment, the truth is that it's always been easier to shout "bigot!" or "fascist!" and walk away.
So, once again, here I am pecking away at a keyboard that I have never fully mastered, despite the millions of words I've written. Here goes nothing.
I hate to say I told you so, but blogs were indeed the CB radio of the 2000s. I bet Razor will get all over my case for being purposely contrarian about this now (if he's even out there), but in a way I am sorry to come back and see the blighted landscape of what was once a lively and independent medium. (One that I railed against with some real venom about 10 years ago, yes. But still...)
The best bloggers turned pro. Radley's got a real job at the Washington Post, where he has made himself a widely cited expert on policing. Mike Totten is still in the Middle East, writing for a serious foreign policy outlet. And good for them. They deserve to be in that world of pro journalists; they enrich the conversation, and they got in (to one degree or another) because they showed their stuff on their blogs.
Meanwhile, Instapundit is still out there, but it turned into a Trumpista group blog so slowly I hardly noticed. It's all layered and nuanced and couched with the usual "Trump is not perfect, but" sort of language. But it's clear there is an editorial slant to the PJ Media sites, and they link to one another relentlessly. (Also as I predicted.)
What are we to make of the smoldering remains spread before us, the dead links to once entertaining or thought-provoking voices, the mass exodus to Twitter, where nuance goes to die? On our own site, there's a mixed bag to be found, of passionate statements on issues that turned out to be not so momentous after all, dismissals of the ones that were -- but also some writing that stands up after many years, opinions that forced me to reconstruct my worldview, and things that just made me laugh my ass off.
I am reminded, too, of Razor's impassioned railing against the blog phenomenon of "fisking," of launching a series of zingers at your opponents' arguments. I found it entertaining at the time, but it turned out that Razor was right; fisking was simply Twitter culture in nascent form.
Anyway, this is a long-winded way of me saying I'm not here to get nostalgic or try to recapture something. I really just missed the daily exercise of putting my thoughts in order, on whatever subject, and seeing if I agree with myself.
One thing I will miss about that moment: there was an army of folks out there willing to explain why I was full of shit. (And I was lucky enough to have two of them on the same site.) If there is one thing I'm convinced of, it's that I don't have enough of that in my life. Sure I have plenty of people willing to tell me I'm an asshole. (Take a number, folks.) But can they explain it? Will they? Despite what some will say is a particularly intemperate cultural moment, the truth is that it's always been easier to shout "bigot!" or "fascist!" and walk away.
So, once again, here I am pecking away at a keyboard that I have never fully mastered, despite the millions of words I've written. Here goes nothing.
Monday, December 11, 2017
For Sandra Bullock, however chance may find her (a dream interlude)
I was in a bar with friends, and Sandra Bullock was there too. (It wasn’t a sex thing, though. She’s very attractive, but she’s the epitome of not-my-type. Not sure why it was her.) She had just finished explaining how we are destroying the planet with our wasteful and polluting ways, the horrible inequality and poverty, and the general hopelessness that a thinking person must feel in America today.
Shaking my head, I said to her, “We are so close.” Then, with some sketches on the back of a paper menu to help show the timelines, here’s what I said to her.
We’re so close. So, so close to all the things we dream of.
Think about history for a moment. Take your mind back to the ancient civilizations that gave us the foundations of law and philosophy and politics, the social templates that shaped the world for thousands of years. Think about the technology that built their civilizations: domestication of plants and livestock, irrigation, the wheel, and writing. That’s about it.
Moreover, giving or taking a few marginal changes, the life of an Egyptian in 1700 BC was not all that different from your great-grandfather’s life. Both were lives characterized by backbreaking labor, rampant disease, and mortality. People in both times mainly tilled small plots of land, farming first to feed themselves, with some surplus to trade for specialized goods – but they often still made their own clothes, from shearing sheep to spinning wool to stitching the garments themselves. Preserving food through smoking, drying, pickling, and canning wasn’t merely hobby time for hipsters. It was all that stood between them and winter starvation.
John Tyler was president in the 1840s, just around the time the changes were beginning, and as of 2017 he still has living grandchildren. Pretty recent. Back then, even the president of the United States lived like a peasant. True, he would have had servants to ease things a little. But the White House was cold, drafty, and smoky, heated only by fire, with no running water or electricity. Three generations ago, the most important man in America lived in a manner that we would abhor if we saw the poorest person today enduring.
Even later, in 1875, John Harvey Kellogg was studying medicine in New York City, the most modern place in the nation, and at Bellevue Hospital, the medical epicenter of America. He lived in a cold attic, trundling downstairs and outside to stand in line waiting his turn to shit in a freezing, insect-infested outhouse. Even in Rome, more than 2000 years before, public latrines had running water (recycled from the public baths, no less) to flush away the waste. Moreover, Kellogg would be taught almost nothing about sanitation in medicine. Advocates of washing hands after touching a sick patient were still voices in the wilderness, bloodletting was still common.
Until very recently, the improvement in the work, health, and comfort of a typical person was so slow as to be nearly non-existent. Perhaps the magic moment was in 1869 when Leland Stanford drove the golden spike that opened the Union Pacific transcontinental railroad. Goods and people could now move cross country with speed. (A horse drawn wagon of goods making good time could cross the continent at roughly 20 miles per day, or roughly five months.) Even so, it would take many years for the average person to make use of this mobility. At that moment, more than half of the people in the country still worked as farmers.
It is less than 150 years later and our world is unrecognizable. In the U.S., decent sanitation is nearly universal, as is the comfort of clean heating in even the poorest homes. Technology that would have been indistinguishable from witchcraft is ubiquitous. When I sat down at a computer for the first time, it was likely the only one for miles and miles. My friend’s father worked at IBM, and he had a computer at home. Now nearly everyone has one in their pocket.
Pollution of air and water is down dramatically, which no one ever mentions. The poorest wage worker lives better than John Tyler did. For every unit of fossil fuel we use, we go further, do more work, provide more overall benefit. Of the top 10 causes of death just 100 years ago, 6 of them – pneumonia, tuberculosis, cholera, diphtheria, bronchitis, and meningitis – are either virtually eradicated or easily treated. And one more cause of death, violence, is nearing a historical low (roughly tied with the 1950s).
How can we look at this and feel hopeless? Think what we could be tomorrow.
Shaking my head, I said to her, “We are so close.” Then, with some sketches on the back of a paper menu to help show the timelines, here’s what I said to her.
---
We’re so close. So, so close to all the things we dream of.
Think about history for a moment. Take your mind back to the ancient civilizations that gave us the foundations of law and philosophy and politics, the social templates that shaped the world for thousands of years. Think about the technology that built their civilizations: domestication of plants and livestock, irrigation, the wheel, and writing. That’s about it.
Moreover, giving or taking a few marginal changes, the life of an Egyptian in 1700 BC was not all that different from your great-grandfather’s life. Both were lives characterized by backbreaking labor, rampant disease, and mortality. People in both times mainly tilled small plots of land, farming first to feed themselves, with some surplus to trade for specialized goods – but they often still made their own clothes, from shearing sheep to spinning wool to stitching the garments themselves. Preserving food through smoking, drying, pickling, and canning wasn’t merely hobby time for hipsters. It was all that stood between them and winter starvation.
John Tyler was president in the 1840s, just around the time the changes were beginning, and as of 2017 he still has living grandchildren. Pretty recent. Back then, even the president of the United States lived like a peasant. True, he would have had servants to ease things a little. But the White House was cold, drafty, and smoky, heated only by fire, with no running water or electricity. Three generations ago, the most important man in America lived in a manner that we would abhor if we saw the poorest person today enduring.
Even later, in 1875, John Harvey Kellogg was studying medicine in New York City, the most modern place in the nation, and at Bellevue Hospital, the medical epicenter of America. He lived in a cold attic, trundling downstairs and outside to stand in line waiting his turn to shit in a freezing, insect-infested outhouse. Even in Rome, more than 2000 years before, public latrines had running water (recycled from the public baths, no less) to flush away the waste. Moreover, Kellogg would be taught almost nothing about sanitation in medicine. Advocates of washing hands after touching a sick patient were still voices in the wilderness, bloodletting was still common.
Until very recently, the improvement in the work, health, and comfort of a typical person was so slow as to be nearly non-existent. Perhaps the magic moment was in 1869 when Leland Stanford drove the golden spike that opened the Union Pacific transcontinental railroad. Goods and people could now move cross country with speed. (A horse drawn wagon of goods making good time could cross the continent at roughly 20 miles per day, or roughly five months.) Even so, it would take many years for the average person to make use of this mobility. At that moment, more than half of the people in the country still worked as farmers.
It is less than 150 years later and our world is unrecognizable. In the U.S., decent sanitation is nearly universal, as is the comfort of clean heating in even the poorest homes. Technology that would have been indistinguishable from witchcraft is ubiquitous. When I sat down at a computer for the first time, it was likely the only one for miles and miles. My friend’s father worked at IBM, and he had a computer at home. Now nearly everyone has one in their pocket.
Pollution of air and water is down dramatically, which no one ever mentions. The poorest wage worker lives better than John Tyler did. For every unit of fossil fuel we use, we go further, do more work, provide more overall benefit. Of the top 10 causes of death just 100 years ago, 6 of them – pneumonia, tuberculosis, cholera, diphtheria, bronchitis, and meningitis – are either virtually eradicated or easily treated. And one more cause of death, violence, is nearing a historical low (roughly tied with the 1950s).
How can we look at this and feel hopeless? Think what we could be tomorrow.
Is Kevin Bacon America’s greatest actor?
As a general heuristic, if the headline to an article asks a question, the answer is bound to be “No.” Why? Because headlines are simplistic, needing to capture a thought, and idea, an opinion, within a breath. By contrast, an article necessarily needs to explore with depth and nuance, to shun the short answer – and especially the short answer in the affirmative. There is only one route to yes, after all, and a universe of ways to get to no.
In this case, though, let’s not be too quick to find that no.
Nearly forty years since his debut in Animal House, Kevin Bacon has done big budget, small budget, leading man, ensemble, action, schlock, and nearly everything in the cracks. But the early brush with star status following Footloose led down a bumpy road to his unusual current status as an extraordinarily recognizable character actor.
Footloose as a sensation is difficult to overstate: a hit film that made a pile of money on a comparatively small budget; a popular soundtrack that threw off multiple #1 singles; a Tony-nominated stage musical 15 years after the film; a bigger-budget remake more than a quarter century later whose failure to live up to the original only adds to the lightning-in-a-bottle phenomenon. All this adds up to a solid place in the American cultural consciousness. And it made Bacon a household name.
It is hard enough for any actor to walk away from the leading roles that follow the “overnight” success, and even harder to choose ones that might sustain that success. Bacon was a victim of both pitfalls. Some of his roles soon after Footloose – Quicksilver, White Water Summer, She’s Having a Baby, Criminal Law – show casting directors (and Bacon himself) trying on the various “lead” types: rebel, action hero, romantic, even psychopath.
Nothing worked. Perhaps Footloose was a fluke; perhaps Bacon couldn’t really carry a film. But here’s where it gets interesting. After failing to gain traction as a lead in big-budget productions, many erstwhile A-listers (Brendan Fraser comes to mind) have been content to take the lead in smaller and less serious films. But Bacon didn’t set his sights on lower-budget leading parts. He jumped into secondary (and even tertiary) roles in vehicles for other stars like A Few Good Men, and smaller roles in ensemble pictures like JFK.
And he was brilliant. His role in JFK, his first big leap, is small but memorable, and thoroughly against his previous “type.” Playing a male prostitute, he steals his big scene from Kevin Costner with equal parts bravado and profanity. Then, in A Few Good Men, Bacon excels as the one JAG neither cowed nor confused by Tom Cruise’s legal bluster. As Cruise’s adversary, he brings a gravity to the role as a young prosecutor, and humanizes the face of the opposition despite the fact that we are rooting against him.
Neither film is a showpiece for him, neither role is terribly complicated, and any character actor could have “done” the role. But Bacon turned both into standout performances in small roles. What he did next was a bravura moment. In Sleepers, a film with a young male ensemble cast that might have featured Bacon 10 years earlier, he instead took the unsympathetic role of a horrifically abusive guard in a boys’ juvenile home who is murdered by former inmates in revenge for his crimes against them. In his choice to play this role, and the choices as an actor that construct the character, Bacon is bold and fearless – and he plays an unredeemed monster chillingly.
Similar supporting roles followed in films like Apollo 13, Frost/Nixon, and Black Mass, along with some indie roles in The Woodsman and Digging to China. And in each, he took on complex roles, historical characters, and touchy subject matter that would have been untouchable right after Footloose.
To be fair, missteps followed as well, including the execrable The Air Up There. But a spin through the Bacon filmography, rather than cementing an impression of bad choices, seems to indicate an actor hungry for challenges. Like Gene Hackman (who used to be America’s greatest actor), Bacon seems to simply relish working. The list of films he’s appeared in is so long and diverse, it’s no mystery why he found himself at the center of a Hollywood connectivity parlor game, Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.
None of this is to suggest that Bacon is without competition for the crown of greatest actor. His contemporary Sean Penn (who has a Bacon Number of 1, by way of Mystic River) might have the best critical reputation, and Tom Cruise (Bacon Number of 1, through the previously mentioned A Few Good Men) is the hands down winner at the bank. But Bacon has a charisma that is unique, he presents an everyman charm the other two lack, and he projects a star quality that still leaves us seeing his minor roles as A-list cameos.
Look, I’m just going to say it. The answer is yes.
In this case, though, let’s not be too quick to find that no.
Nearly forty years since his debut in Animal House, Kevin Bacon has done big budget, small budget, leading man, ensemble, action, schlock, and nearly everything in the cracks. But the early brush with star status following Footloose led down a bumpy road to his unusual current status as an extraordinarily recognizable character actor.
Footloose as a sensation is difficult to overstate: a hit film that made a pile of money on a comparatively small budget; a popular soundtrack that threw off multiple #1 singles; a Tony-nominated stage musical 15 years after the film; a bigger-budget remake more than a quarter century later whose failure to live up to the original only adds to the lightning-in-a-bottle phenomenon. All this adds up to a solid place in the American cultural consciousness. And it made Bacon a household name.
It is hard enough for any actor to walk away from the leading roles that follow the “overnight” success, and even harder to choose ones that might sustain that success. Bacon was a victim of both pitfalls. Some of his roles soon after Footloose – Quicksilver, White Water Summer, She’s Having a Baby, Criminal Law – show casting directors (and Bacon himself) trying on the various “lead” types: rebel, action hero, romantic, even psychopath.
Nothing worked. Perhaps Footloose was a fluke; perhaps Bacon couldn’t really carry a film. But here’s where it gets interesting. After failing to gain traction as a lead in big-budget productions, many erstwhile A-listers (Brendan Fraser comes to mind) have been content to take the lead in smaller and less serious films. But Bacon didn’t set his sights on lower-budget leading parts. He jumped into secondary (and even tertiary) roles in vehicles for other stars like A Few Good Men, and smaller roles in ensemble pictures like JFK.
And he was brilliant. His role in JFK, his first big leap, is small but memorable, and thoroughly against his previous “type.” Playing a male prostitute, he steals his big scene from Kevin Costner with equal parts bravado and profanity. Then, in A Few Good Men, Bacon excels as the one JAG neither cowed nor confused by Tom Cruise’s legal bluster. As Cruise’s adversary, he brings a gravity to the role as a young prosecutor, and humanizes the face of the opposition despite the fact that we are rooting against him.
Neither film is a showpiece for him, neither role is terribly complicated, and any character actor could have “done” the role. But Bacon turned both into standout performances in small roles. What he did next was a bravura moment. In Sleepers, a film with a young male ensemble cast that might have featured Bacon 10 years earlier, he instead took the unsympathetic role of a horrifically abusive guard in a boys’ juvenile home who is murdered by former inmates in revenge for his crimes against them. In his choice to play this role, and the choices as an actor that construct the character, Bacon is bold and fearless – and he plays an unredeemed monster chillingly.
Similar supporting roles followed in films like Apollo 13, Frost/Nixon, and Black Mass, along with some indie roles in The Woodsman and Digging to China. And in each, he took on complex roles, historical characters, and touchy subject matter that would have been untouchable right after Footloose.
To be fair, missteps followed as well, including the execrable The Air Up There. But a spin through the Bacon filmography, rather than cementing an impression of bad choices, seems to indicate an actor hungry for challenges. Like Gene Hackman (who used to be America’s greatest actor), Bacon seems to simply relish working. The list of films he’s appeared in is so long and diverse, it’s no mystery why he found himself at the center of a Hollywood connectivity parlor game, Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.
None of this is to suggest that Bacon is without competition for the crown of greatest actor. His contemporary Sean Penn (who has a Bacon Number of 1, by way of Mystic River) might have the best critical reputation, and Tom Cruise (Bacon Number of 1, through the previously mentioned A Few Good Men) is the hands down winner at the bank. But Bacon has a charisma that is unique, he presents an everyman charm the other two lack, and he projects a star quality that still leaves us seeing his minor roles as A-list cameos.
Look, I’m just going to say it. The answer is yes.
Out of Touch
So I have to say for the sake of my erstwhile co-bloggers (long may they hit refresh!), I'm not reading the news anymore, so don't expect fresh insights on current events -- or even links to those who have them. I only have an opinion on the wild world of gay cakery because literally 85% of the people I know, from friends to coworkers, are ... well, ginger beer, as they say.
No, my current one-line manifesto is "Uninformed, dammit, and staying that way." Having grown up within smelling distance of New York City, before it gentrified, I knew what a putz our president was back when he was a near-daily Page Six item. All I will say about that matter before I close it for good is this: The worst thing about suffering this administration is that Lou Reed isn't around to write spittle-flecked songs about it, the way he did about Rudy Giuliani and Jesse Jackson back in the 80s.
Hmm. So why the hell am I here? A great question, for which I don't have an easy answer. A couple of partial answers:
1. Uninformed or no, I have lots of opinions.
2. I miss writing. A lot.
3. I realize that the squishy Flyer and pinko Razor kept me laughing and thinking no matter what.
Now both of them have daughters (and Flyer's in particular arrived well after we gave up this homely project several times), so they likely don't have the time to do like they used to. However, perhaps a place for me to ramble alone might be nearly as sanity conserving. And who knows? Maybe I can get them to chime in from time to time.
I've been blogging on my own a little as Enobarbus on another site for the past few days. I'll try to round up some of the interesting stuff there and repost over here. It's been fairly abstruse stuff.
So what's up? My wife (that's Mrs. Enobarbus) asked me to dangle (in the nicest way!) a couple years ago. I've been a bachelor since. It worked out pretty well. I quit teaching English and went to work running a small charity -- a lateral move if there ever was one. My 16-year-old dropout son lives with me.
Jesus, it all sounds like a sitcom pitch, doesn't it?
Oh, and I'm going to visit Flyer for Christmas. Feliz Navidad, y'all!
No, my current one-line manifesto is "Uninformed, dammit, and staying that way." Having grown up within smelling distance of New York City, before it gentrified, I knew what a putz our president was back when he was a near-daily Page Six item. All I will say about that matter before I close it for good is this: The worst thing about suffering this administration is that Lou Reed isn't around to write spittle-flecked songs about it, the way he did about Rudy Giuliani and Jesse Jackson back in the 80s.
Hmm. So why the hell am I here? A great question, for which I don't have an easy answer. A couple of partial answers:
1. Uninformed or no, I have lots of opinions.
2. I miss writing. A lot.
3. I realize that the squishy Flyer and pinko Razor kept me laughing and thinking no matter what.
Now both of them have daughters (and Flyer's in particular arrived well after we gave up this homely project several times), so they likely don't have the time to do like they used to. However, perhaps a place for me to ramble alone might be nearly as sanity conserving. And who knows? Maybe I can get them to chime in from time to time.
I've been blogging on my own a little as Enobarbus on another site for the past few days. I'll try to round up some of the interesting stuff there and repost over here. It's been fairly abstruse stuff.
So what's up? My wife (that's Mrs. Enobarbus) asked me to dangle (in the nicest way!) a couple years ago. I've been a bachelor since. It worked out pretty well. I quit teaching English and went to work running a small charity -- a lateral move if there ever was one. My 16-year-old dropout son lives with me.
Jesus, it all sounds like a sitcom pitch, doesn't it?
Oh, and I'm going to visit Flyer for Christmas. Feliz Navidad, y'all!
Sunday, December 10, 2017
5 "Unsung Hero" Albums
Plenty of albums are overrated. Sweetheart of the Rodeo, for example. Fine album, yes. But any student of country music sees that it was mainly homage, and fairly studied homage at that. Songs of the genre were done better, earlier.
Most of Nirvana is overpraised as well. A lot of the Stones 70s stuff is a blur of filler. Clapton, too, when he wasn't ripping off J.J. Cale, was an amazing guitar player spinning his wheels on mediocre material. And, nearly 35 years on, who can stomach both platters of London Calling? There is one great album on there.
But what about those albums that slip through the cracks, get little to no attention, or are even dismissed outright as second-rate efforts? Maybe they carry a minor hit or two, but they quickly go into the clearance bin. Here are five to consider on your next spin through the record shop (hip place that it is now) that are worth digging into:
5. ELO, Time. Coming during that 80s period when many 70s monster bands were faltering, this album went almost unnoticed -- aside from "Hold on Tight," a decent hit single, but hardly the best song on the album. ("Twilight," for example, is among their best songs.) Moreover, it is a concept album whose theme is both interesting and not necessarily intrusive. You can enjoy the album with or without the concept in mind.
4. Freedy Johnston, This Perfect World. I nearly called the major crimes unit when Rolling Stone (more abysmal year after year) didn't include this in its top 500 albums. A gem of an album, without a shred of filler, each song a glistening facet of tainted pleasure ("Delores"), bleak heartbreak ("Across the Avenue"), or mysterious pain ("Evie's Tears"). In a just world, Freedy would be walking next to Dylan and people would nod sagely.
3. Sugar, Copper Blue. Suddenly, back in the early 90s, one of the founding fathers of hardcore started writing impeccably catchy, melodic pop music. The guitars were still grinding, the beat still heavy, but the songs bristled with hooks like a square foot of velcro. "The Act We Act" is one of the great openers, and "If I Can't Change Your Mind" is a mini-masterpiece, the way good pop should be.
2. Jayhawks, Rainy Day Music. Beyond ignored, this album is treated dismissively. But it's the best thing they ever did. There's not a false note on the album, and several of the songs, like "Tailspin" and "Madman," are as good as the genre itself ever got. Why should bands like Whiskeytown and Uncle Tupelo hog all the praise? Jayhawks were thoughtful alt-country before the label even existed, and they prove it here.
1. Neil Finn, Try Whistling This. Neil Finn suffers critical neglect the way Paul McCartney does. Most of his stuff sounds so damn good, but critics are always swooning after the bad boy whose output is objectively crap (look out, Lennon!) and dismissing those "easy" melodies as silly. But easy as the melodies may come from his brain, this album is so deep in songcraft, it seems like a masterclass -- and very little of it is "sweet" in the way Crowded House often was. From a banging workout like "Loose Tongue" to the trip-hop tinged "Sinner" to the meditative "Faster Than Light," this is an adventurous, exploratory album that would have been on every critic's best-of list -- if it had been released by a bad boy.
Most of Nirvana is overpraised as well. A lot of the Stones 70s stuff is a blur of filler. Clapton, too, when he wasn't ripping off J.J. Cale, was an amazing guitar player spinning his wheels on mediocre material. And, nearly 35 years on, who can stomach both platters of London Calling? There is one great album on there.
But what about those albums that slip through the cracks, get little to no attention, or are even dismissed outright as second-rate efforts? Maybe they carry a minor hit or two, but they quickly go into the clearance bin. Here are five to consider on your next spin through the record shop (hip place that it is now) that are worth digging into:
5. ELO, Time. Coming during that 80s period when many 70s monster bands were faltering, this album went almost unnoticed -- aside from "Hold on Tight," a decent hit single, but hardly the best song on the album. ("Twilight," for example, is among their best songs.) Moreover, it is a concept album whose theme is both interesting and not necessarily intrusive. You can enjoy the album with or without the concept in mind.
4. Freedy Johnston, This Perfect World. I nearly called the major crimes unit when Rolling Stone (more abysmal year after year) didn't include this in its top 500 albums. A gem of an album, without a shred of filler, each song a glistening facet of tainted pleasure ("Delores"), bleak heartbreak ("Across the Avenue"), or mysterious pain ("Evie's Tears"). In a just world, Freedy would be walking next to Dylan and people would nod sagely.
3. Sugar, Copper Blue. Suddenly, back in the early 90s, one of the founding fathers of hardcore started writing impeccably catchy, melodic pop music. The guitars were still grinding, the beat still heavy, but the songs bristled with hooks like a square foot of velcro. "The Act We Act" is one of the great openers, and "If I Can't Change Your Mind" is a mini-masterpiece, the way good pop should be.
2. Jayhawks, Rainy Day Music. Beyond ignored, this album is treated dismissively. But it's the best thing they ever did. There's not a false note on the album, and several of the songs, like "Tailspin" and "Madman," are as good as the genre itself ever got. Why should bands like Whiskeytown and Uncle Tupelo hog all the praise? Jayhawks were thoughtful alt-country before the label even existed, and they prove it here.
1. Neil Finn, Try Whistling This. Neil Finn suffers critical neglect the way Paul McCartney does. Most of his stuff sounds so damn good, but critics are always swooning after the bad boy whose output is objectively crap (look out, Lennon!) and dismissing those "easy" melodies as silly. But easy as the melodies may come from his brain, this album is so deep in songcraft, it seems like a masterclass -- and very little of it is "sweet" in the way Crowded House often was. From a banging workout like "Loose Tongue" to the trip-hop tinged "Sinner" to the meditative "Faster Than Light," this is an adventurous, exploratory album that would have been on every critic's best-of list -- if it had been released by a bad boy.
Bake the Damn Cake, Already
I'm not sure how much more split it is possible to be on the issue before the Supreme Court on the baker who refused to bake a special cake for a gay wedding. On instinctive principle, I say good for him. In a free society, a citizen should be coerced as infrequently as possible -- and then only as a last resort. If the government tries to force him to do something, he should damn well fight back.
On the other hand, what a stupid point of principle to stand on. If you fear that baking a cake for some gay folk is going to send you to hell, violate your conscience, or otherwise cause you moral conflict, you are clearly taking the whole cake thing too seriously. Would this fellow bake a cake for a hetero couple interested in swinging? Anal sex? Shellfish for dinner? Those things are pretty strongly frowned upon by some religious folk, too. Let me guess: when it's a straight couple, the baker's attitude is, don't ask, don't tell.
All that said, there are a couple of points of principle that are clearly at stake. First, I want to distinguish this from the segregated lunch counters the left has taken to analogizing. The reason we needed the civil rights movement, the civil rights act, protected classes, and all that jazz was not because some peckerwood restaurateurs down south wouldn't let blacks eat at the counter. It was because those states and municipalities had enshrined segregation into law. A blunt tool was needed because there was no legal remedy available locally.
Look at it this way: If a gay couple can get a cake at pretty much any other baker, then society has already provided the remedy to for the problem -- and, I'd argue, will probably mete out a penalty to those who would refuse to serve all. Thus, the suit against this particular baker is egregious and probably vindictive.
However, if the law in Colorado stated quite clearly that gay people could not be served by any baker, and that a violator of this ban would be subject to sanction or fine, a court case would be only the start. (Tar and feathers for the Coloradans, to say the least.)
But that is not the case here. What did the gay couple suffer? They had to take their business elsewhere. But really, why not sue? Make the bigot take your money!
Also at stake here is the idea of protected class, as I mentioned. Can you make the baker serve you despite sexuality, gender, race? It appears so. But the baker would be within his rights to deny you if you wanted, let's just say, a MAGA cake, yes? Again, it appears so. So some animals are more equal than others. When North Carolina voted down transgender bathroom rights, Springsteen canceled his concerts there. Now, this isn't like baking a cake. North Carolinians can't go to that other Springsteen down the street. But being a citizen of a state with retrograde views isn't a protected class.
Look, I'm with The Boss on this one. Fuck 'em. But other people making a living by the sweat of their brow or the art of their fingers should be able to say fuck 'em as well -- as long as society is providing a remedy, ideally through good old competition, to that denial of service. (I'd even be inclined to suggest that North Carolina's problem could be remedied by the competition of an electric guitar hurled down a long stairway to the accompaniment of a baying, laryngitic hound dog.)
What I'm fearful of is that we will drift away from a governing principle. Like I said, I could go either way (pun intended) on this case. But whatever way we go, I want an articulated principle on which we may proceed once this is over. It can't simply be that we may deny service to people who hold views we find distasteful -- as long as those are pre-approved distasteful views.
The left would like to hold that, of course you could deny service to Nazis, say, because they are bad and wrong. End of story. But keep in mind that the left will not always be in charge of what views rise to that level of wrongitude.
One final note: Gays across the country were willing to wait patiently as Obama evolved on the issue of gay marriage. Remember that he was as retrograde as our Denver baker for the majority of his time in office. (And he was the only president we had, after all. We could choose another one down at the dollar store in mid-2014.) Is it crazy to suggest that we can spare a few more moments of evolution for bakers, florists, eyebrow threaders?
On the other hand, what a stupid point of principle to stand on. If you fear that baking a cake for some gay folk is going to send you to hell, violate your conscience, or otherwise cause you moral conflict, you are clearly taking the whole cake thing too seriously. Would this fellow bake a cake for a hetero couple interested in swinging? Anal sex? Shellfish for dinner? Those things are pretty strongly frowned upon by some religious folk, too. Let me guess: when it's a straight couple, the baker's attitude is, don't ask, don't tell.
All that said, there are a couple of points of principle that are clearly at stake. First, I want to distinguish this from the segregated lunch counters the left has taken to analogizing. The reason we needed the civil rights movement, the civil rights act, protected classes, and all that jazz was not because some peckerwood restaurateurs down south wouldn't let blacks eat at the counter. It was because those states and municipalities had enshrined segregation into law. A blunt tool was needed because there was no legal remedy available locally.
Look at it this way: If a gay couple can get a cake at pretty much any other baker, then society has already provided the remedy to for the problem -- and, I'd argue, will probably mete out a penalty to those who would refuse to serve all. Thus, the suit against this particular baker is egregious and probably vindictive.
However, if the law in Colorado stated quite clearly that gay people could not be served by any baker, and that a violator of this ban would be subject to sanction or fine, a court case would be only the start. (Tar and feathers for the Coloradans, to say the least.)
But that is not the case here. What did the gay couple suffer? They had to take their business elsewhere. But really, why not sue? Make the bigot take your money!
Also at stake here is the idea of protected class, as I mentioned. Can you make the baker serve you despite sexuality, gender, race? It appears so. But the baker would be within his rights to deny you if you wanted, let's just say, a MAGA cake, yes? Again, it appears so. So some animals are more equal than others. When North Carolina voted down transgender bathroom rights, Springsteen canceled his concerts there. Now, this isn't like baking a cake. North Carolinians can't go to that other Springsteen down the street. But being a citizen of a state with retrograde views isn't a protected class.
Look, I'm with The Boss on this one. Fuck 'em. But other people making a living by the sweat of their brow or the art of their fingers should be able to say fuck 'em as well -- as long as society is providing a remedy, ideally through good old competition, to that denial of service. (I'd even be inclined to suggest that North Carolina's problem could be remedied by the competition of an electric guitar hurled down a long stairway to the accompaniment of a baying, laryngitic hound dog.)
What I'm fearful of is that we will drift away from a governing principle. Like I said, I could go either way (pun intended) on this case. But whatever way we go, I want an articulated principle on which we may proceed once this is over. It can't simply be that we may deny service to people who hold views we find distasteful -- as long as those are pre-approved distasteful views.
The left would like to hold that, of course you could deny service to Nazis, say, because they are bad and wrong. End of story. But keep in mind that the left will not always be in charge of what views rise to that level of wrongitude.
One final note: Gays across the country were willing to wait patiently as Obama evolved on the issue of gay marriage. Remember that he was as retrograde as our Denver baker for the majority of his time in office. (And he was the only president we had, after all. We could choose another one down at the dollar store in mid-2014.) Is it crazy to suggest that we can spare a few more moments of evolution for bakers, florists, eyebrow threaders?