McCain in (Slight) Trouble

per today's New York Times, Arizona's senior senator faces a primary challenge from tea partying local media figure J.D. Hayworth, a man who "spends the better part of the day [on his radio show] denouncing, in no particular order, illegal immigrants, all things Barack Obama, those who are insufficiently patriotic and, his favorite mark, one John McCain."

It goes on:

Yet Mr. McCain now finds himself jammed, moving starkly — and often awkwardly — to the right, apparently in an effort to gain favor among the same voters whom Mr. Hayworth, a consistent voice for the far right, could pull toward him like taffy come summer.

Mr. McCain now sharply criticizes the bailout bill he voted for, pivoted from his earlier position that the Guantánamo Bay detention facility should be closed, offered only a muted response to the Supreme Court's decision undoing campaign finance laws and backed down from statements that gays in the military would be O.K. by him if the military brass were on board.

Whether he's remaining silent on his own bill being ruled unconstitutional or partaking in some old fashion race baiting, no one exposes themselves under pressure quite like John McCain. There's nothing unusual about shifting a few positions as election time nears, yet when McCain makes these moves towards the conservative base he not only comes across as disingenuous  but exposes his entire political persona for the fraud that it is.

If you haven't been following politics for the last twenty something years, McCain, at select moments, breaks votes against Republican leadership, thereby strengthening both his personal brand and the brand of the party itself. Essentially, with these departures he becomes known as maverick or even, apparently, an iconoclast--someone who tells it like it is. Then, when the party needs him most, he uses this perceived independence to support the party more than would have ever previously been possible.
So instead of lamenting the loss of the real John McCain, can we finally admit that the John McCain who compromises his centrist positions during close campaigns in fact closer to reality than the John McCain who strategically compromises the base's positions at a few choice points in the year, or rather, that his electoral scrambling is as politically calculated as his senate floor straight talk?

Blame the Poor People...

and thank god for rich people!

Taylor Swift and Post-Guilty Pleasure

this will appear in tuesday's the paper.

In the three and half years since the release of her eponymous debut album, Taylor Swift has crossed-over in just about every way possible. From country to pop, from pop to indie, audiences of both genders and all ages and all but a few contrarians have sung along to You Belong With Me’s monster hook at least once. Perhaps more remarkably, Swift has transcended the guilty pleasure category even moreso than Kelly Clarkson did with 2004’s Since U Been Gone. In fact, it might be appropriate to call the Swift, along with her polar opposite Lady Gaga, the first stars of the post-guilty pleasure era.

Before I continue, I should take a moment to talk about this thing we call a guilty pleasure. At this point in time it has become even more cliché to dismiss these phenomena (“Why should I feel guilty about the things I like?”) than to use them to justify the fact the fact that you find the latest song penned by Dr. Luke or Max Martin catchy. Thinking about this subject more than any sane person should, I’ve come up with three explanations why people might feel embarrassed to enjoy a pop song.

The most obvious answer—and probably the most relevant in the case of the particular strand of pop music I’m discussing here—has something to do with a fear of deviating too far from heteronormative standards of gender and sexuality, particularly those concerning masculinity. It’s not a coincidence that when you hear someone describing a song as a guilty pleasure, that someone is usually a guy and the song is usually teenpop (read: gay). For whatever reason, “ironically” liking Party in the U.S.A. protects one’s masculine identity more than just admitting that it’s a great song and catchy and energetic and fun.

The second reason is slightly more ubiquitous but slightly more complicated, and more or less still in the hypothesis stage. To put it in as few words as possible, the guilty pleasure is an extension of class struggle. Ultimately, this has the same effect and allows one to slum in the tastes of the masses by liking say, Toby Keith’s “Beer for My Horses,” yet maintain a distance by acknowledging that it isn’t really good music (as opposed to Grizzly Bear or Kid Cudi or whomever). The last explanation is largely an extension of this class struggle and takes the form of a reactionary response to an anti-intellectualism the guilty pleasure-holder believes to be held by the masses who listen to pop music. By association, this anti-intellectualism comes to be seen as a quality of the music itself. If nothing else, it’s punished for not having the self-congratulatory surface intellectualism of your favorite backpack rap.

But I digress. The success of Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga (together their 2009 album sales easily surpassed 5 million) suggests that the growing number of people claiming not to have guilty pleasures may be serious. The success of these two artists may have something to do with Swift’s super-earnestness and, conversely, Gaga’s endless posturing, but for today’s purposes it seems fair to say that it’s simply because both make great music.

Still, being the first post-guilty pleasure pop stars is sometimes not all it’s cracked up to be. Sure people will find enjoy your music and find your tweets adorable and feel bad for you when Kanye West upstages your VMA acceptance speech, but those people will often still maintain a certain amount of distance from your songs, probably the last grasp of that anti-anti-intellectualism (Gaga somewhat avoids this by inviting overanalysis of just about all of her actions). Although a large number of people will finally admit to liking Taylor Swift, many of these pop dilettantes almost justify their pleasure as if it comes in spite of the music, or more particularly, in spite of the lyrics. “They’re dopey,” they’ll say (actually, no they won’t, because no one says “dopey” anymore), and they’ll be half right.

Swift is probably on her dopiest on “Fifteen,” Fearless’s fifth single, when she sings, “And then you’re on your very first date and he’s got a car/ And you’re feeling like flying,” yet such lyrics stand up in comparison to similarly-themed tunes such as The Replacement’s “Sixteen Blue” and look remarkably strong when compared to canonized camp like The Beach Boys’ “Be True to Your School.” In reality, there’s probably no other honest way to talk the middle teenage years of one’s life. Still, such minor complaints are a small price to pay when Swift’s singles still on the radio over a year after the release of Fearless, and she’s still posting those adorable tweets.

Movies of 2009

A few notes:
-As I see other 2009 releases in the next few months I'll add them and tweet about it, but I won't rework any of the rankings.
-The three groupings are based roughly on quality.
-The distinction between the top and middle group is giving me the most trouble. Consider the best of the top group to be movies I liked with serious reservations and the worst of the middle group to be movies I liked with, umm, less serious reservations.
-This year's best picture nominations are such shit.
-My favorite part about each movie is in the parentheses.



#48-32
Friday the 13th (unexpected Night Ranger on iPod)
Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire (random white kid clarifies the difference between insects and incest)
District 9 (self-congratulatory surface-intellectual allegory)
Year One (total disregard for historical plausibility)
Notorious (big finally matures just three hours before he dies, angel puffy, "oh shit she got o.g. status," someone in the theater yells at the faith evans smackdown)
GI Joe: Rise of Cobra (lack of any plausibility, babes)
Capitalism: A Love Story (come on Michael, you can do better)
Avatar (the forests were purrty)
Up in the Air (it was a good idea)
The Boat That Rocked (fuck the new title)
An Education (anyone want to go to Victoria's Station next time I'm home?)
Sunshine Cleaning (something good happened under some train tracks but I forget what exactly)
Brothers (Jake Gyllenhaal is dreamy)
Sherlock Holmes (Sherlock Holmes)
Whatever Works (larry david, obviously)

#31-12
Extract (people can be dumb in the present too!)
Food Inc. (not just about meat)
Crazy Heart (from Bruce Wayne to washed-up drunk)
The Carter (it's a documentary. about lil wayne.)
2012 (when the plane flies between the two buildings)
Zombieland (mill burray)
500 Days of Summer (bangs)
State of Play (lotsa issues)
Knowing (RUNNNNNNN)
Away We Go (george harrison song, trampoline a good spot for a deep convo, should have been a lot worse)
The Hangover (its soundtrack will double as the new Now! cd)
Public Enemies (he robs banks, shoots ppl, etc)
Julie and Julia (are you looking for an earnest, down to earth, somewhat naive, good but not great looking female lead? then amy adams is for you)
Paranormal Activity (mood)
The Road (boy's ab-ex artwork)
Where the Wild Things Are (reviewer in the paper: "i find any criticism of this movie to be condescending")
The Girlfriend Experience (capitalism minus the love story)
Sugar (miguel sees a crack of yankee stadium on the 4 train)
Funny People (sandler/simmons sees an old video of himself on mtv)
I Love You, Man (paul rudd jerks off to his gf)

#11-1
The White Ribbon (black and white)
Goodbye Solo (understated)
Drag Me to Hell (raimi's camera work, sense of humor)
Bad Lieutenant (nic cage, obviously)
Up (travel movie about the fantasy of travel)
Inglourious Basterds (red lipstick)
Coraline (i should be too old to find this sort of thing scary, am not)
A Serious Man (what's in these parentheses could not possibly do the movie justice, how about (view from the roof))
Fantastic Mr. Fox (just an old fashioned great movie)
The Hurt Locker (i explained my thoughts on this movie to ben while we walked to our tee shots on the 15th hole, have since forgotten everything i said)
Summer Hours (party time!)

Howard Zinn

For I think my fifteenth birthday, my aunt Caroline, a community organizer in central Massachusetts, gave me a copy of Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, her inscription saying something to the effect of "this book changed my life, now it will change yours." No, it wasn't nearly that corny--only memory could create something so sentimental--it was closer to "this book got at something I always knew existed but had never been explained to me before." If that's what she said, then she was right. The book stands as one of those rare works in which every page feels like a revelation, where every word, sentence and chapter deserves to be remembered. Although the effect of the work as a whole still remains with me, I have forgotten most of those details in the five or six years since they first passed my eyes. Still, I'll likely never forget the the shock of the passage below.
At dinner tonight I was thinking about how cynical I've become over the past 6 months, so this excerpt Zinn wrote last May seems like a good place to end.

People say, “What, are you a dreamer?”

And the answer is, yes, we’re dreamers. We want it all. We want a peaceful world. We want an egalitarian world. We don’t want war. We don’t want capitalism. We want a decent society.

We better hold on to that dream—because if we don’t, we’ll sink closer and closer to this reality that we have, and that we don’t want.

Blogs over Bullshit 100th Post Retrospective

I. The Birth of Blogs over Bullshit

Northeast Connecticut, June 23, 2008

7:12:50 PM Nick Murray: i want to have a blog
7:13:15 PM im a manatee 187: what do you want to blog about
7:13:21 PM Nick Murray: i dont know
7:13:25 PM im a manatee 187: webdesign?
7:13:31 PM im a manatee 187: that'd be handy
7:13:39 PM im a manatee 187: because joel seems to HATE blogging
7:13:41 PM im a manatee 187: i've been on his case
7:13:48 PM Nick Murray: haha
7:13:52 PM im a manatee 187: sitelyblog.blogspot.com is so cool
7:14:00 PM Nick Murray: ya i check it daily
7:14:05 PM Nick Murray: well i checked it today
7:14:09 PM Nick Murray: because ive been bored out of my mind
7:14:10 PM im a manatee 187: fuckin' joel

18 Minutes Later...

7:32:48 PM Nick Murray: im gonna make a blog
7:32:53 PM Nick Murray: and i need a cool title
7:32:56 PM music311hive: hm
7:33:04 PM music311hive: what's the general content of said blog?
7:33:16 PM Nick Murray: i havent got that far in the planning stages
7:33:39 PM music311hive: ah
7:33:41 PM music311hive: gotya
7:34:08 PM music311hive: well as an engineering student i have to tell you that they frown on us undergoing projects based on a name
7:34:21 PM Nick Murray: theyre stupid

Meanwhile...

7:33:29 PM Nick Murray: im gonna make a blog
7:33:32 PM Nick Murray: and i need a cool title
7:35:31 PM NotBad034: bloggle
Changed status to Offline (7:35:40 PM)
Changed status to Online (7:35:54 PM)
7:38:49 PM Nick Murray: not bad
7:38:56 PM Nick Murray: i was thinking a multiple word title
7:39:10 PM NotBad034: Pussy ranch

Back to Alan...

7:39:07 PM Nick Murray: this is tough
7:40:42 PM Nick Murray: nick's blogplace
7:40:50 PM im a manatee 187: i like that
7:40:51 PM im a manatee 187: tagline me
7:41:02 PM Nick Murray: after mario's showplace
7:41:06 PM Nick Murray: i can do better i feel
7:41:23 PM im a manatee 187: haha oh right
7:41:26 PM im a manatee 187: didn't get the reference
7:41:30 PM im a manatee 187: yeah you can
7:42:51 PM Nick Murray: im gonna try to find something in old long lyrics i think
7:43:33 PM Nick Murray: Thief's Blog
7:43:57 PM im a manatee 187: haha
7:44:14 PM Nick Murray: nas's songs make great blog names
7:44:17 PM Nick Murray: made you blog
7:44:22 PM Nick Murray: surviving the blogs
7:44:26 PM Nick Murray: blogs over bullshit
7:44:29 PM im a manatee 187: WHOA
7:44:30 PM Nick Murray: oh i like that one
7:44:31 PM im a manatee 187: made you blog
7:44:35 PM im a manatee 187: blogs over bullshit
7:44:50 PM Nick Murray: hahahaha i think blogs over bullshit might be the one
7:44:58 PM im a manatee 187: yeah that's good hahah


II. The 100th Post

So here I am, two and a half years and one hundred posts later, still sitting in my room, still writing these blogs, and still bored out of my mind. Considering the whim I started this thing on, I'd say it has turned out okay. Here's a few notable posts from the archives:

1. If a Blog is Posted in a Forest and No One is Around to Hear it, Does it Make a Sound? -- The first post. My statement, "Maybe I'm one of those hipsters trying to make it cool again" now seem remarkably prescient.

2. Small Town -- The kind of reflection post I haven't written in a while. I guess I've been leaving them to Seoultry Words.

3. Connecticut Defenders vs. Portland Seadogs -- An early peak for B.o.B. This story still cracks me up.

4. Top 10 Lines From Ice Cube's "It Was a Good Day" -- I expected this blog to include more top ten lists. This is the best of the few that I did.

5. Night of September 27th -- True story, after I wrote this post I attempted to sleep on a bench.

6. Manny Ramirez is Clutch: A Story in Three Parts -- Because he is.

7. My (Now Open) Letter to Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. -- Without him KARA's victory wouldn't have been possible.

8. A Review of "Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans" -- Eric's favorite post, which counts for something.

9. From Africa to the Bronx: A Historical Justification of Sampling in Music -- Most famous commenter and longest post in blog history.

10. Up in the Air -- Sorry Ben, it's just not a good movie.


III. If You're Still Reading...

...then thanks. Seriously. I mean that as much as anything I've written in the ninety-nine posts preceding this one.

-Nick