Friday, August 29, 2008

Portrait of an unhappy man, brought to you by TIME

OR:

John McCain and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

An excerpt of his Time interview, 8/28/08 (see the article here or read the full transcript here):

Time: There's a theme that recurs in your books and your speeches, both about putting country first but also about honor. I wonder if you could define honor for us?
JM: Read it in my books.

Time: I've read your books.
JM: No, I'm not going to define it.

Time: But honor in politics?
JM: I defined it in five books. Read my books.

Time: [Your] campaign today is more disciplined, more traditional, more aggressive. From your point of view, why the change?
JM: I will do as much as we possibly can do to provide as much access to the press as possible.

...

Time: Do you miss the old way of doing it?
JM: I don't know what you're talking about.

Time: Really? Come on, Senator.
JM: I'll provide as much access as possible ...

Time: In 2000, after the primaries, you went back to South Carolina to talk about what you felt was a mistake you had made on the Confederate flag. Is there anything so far about this campaign that you wish you could take back or you might revisit when it's over?
JM: [Does not answer.]

...

Time: You do acknowledge there was a change in the campaign, in the way you had run the campaign?
JM: [Shakes his head.]

Time: You don't acknowledge that? O.K., when your aides came to you and you decided, having been attacked by Barack Obama, to run some of those ads, was there a debate?
JM: The campaign responded as planned.

It goes on like that for a while. Of course if I were McCain I'd be unhappy too. Because of my extreme oldness. That and I would be coming from a party utterly bereft of ideas to confront the various problems facing my nation. But mainly because of the oldness thing.

Monday, August 18, 2008

Olympic commercials that are slowly driving me insane

Oh, and by the way, that was a literal doughnut Darcy requested for her anniversary. Not some euphemism for sex. Got them at Donut and Burger on Fair Oaks. (Seriously, that's the name of the place. I've also heard that they have good burgers as well. Yum.)

Before the Olympics started I don't believe I've sat down and actually watched television since the season finale of The Office (comes back on 9/25). I dunno, something about that vast wasteland of second-rate-crap for drama and derivative gameshow/reality programming just didn't manage pique my interest. So this is the first time that I've been bombarded every 15 minutes with commercials in several months, and things haven't been going well for me. Here are a few that I find particularly loathsome:

1) That inane GE spot that takes place in ancient Greece where the wind blows the discus into the temple and knocks everything over. Utterly senseless and remarkably unfunny. An aside: this ad was also ineffective, at least for me, because this is the only one of the six here where I had to look up what was being sold. After an estimated 5 viewings. Money well spent, GE.

2) AT&T Phelps Phan commercial. Anyone else think that Michael really dodged a bullet here? Yeah. She's annoying.

3) Granted, this is some fairly low-hanging fruit, but how can I resist McCain's first major nationwide buy, his "Family" ad? I quote: "The real Obama promises higher taxes, more government spending. So, fewer jobs." It's dangerous to engage in this sort of endeavor in a campaign season, but let's take this claim at face value. The single easiest way for the government to create new jobs is to increase spending. The prosperity of the 1950s was predicated upon the nascent, yet still massive, Cold War spending apparatus commonly known post-Eisenhower as the military-industrial complex. The aerospace and defense industries amount to an obscene amount of our GDP and are almost entirely dependent on government contracts. Large-scale government financed building projects (and eventually WWII mobilization) are what brought the US out of the Great Depression. So cutting back on that can't help but improve things, right? And higher taxes! Thanks for promising not to take us back to the high-tax-induced recession of the 1990s, John. Let's make sure to continue the Bush tax policies that have been so very successful in helping the middle class to date. Good call. Nice to see your head's in the game, John. Quick exercise: compare and contrast this ad with Obama's "Hands." Despite being a craven attempt to convince working class (see also: white) middle America that an Obama administration really won't look like that New Yorker cover, at least it benefits from having an actual message. And mentions actual policy proposals. From the actual candidate. I take it as a bad sign for the state of the race that McCain is already this desperate. This is going to get a lot worse before it gets any better.

4) That Coke commercial that tells me how awesome I am for drinking Coke. I never even knew that I was a major supporter of the Olympics, both special and otherwise. Good for me.

5) Then there's the remarkably well-executed Audi spot over the ethereal Sigur Ros music that shows all kinds of stuff being replaced. The text of the commercial: Progress is beautiful. The subtext of the commercial: Replacing expensive shit with other expensive shit helps you to ignore the gnawing vacuum at the center of your existence. Buy our shit.

6) Finally, thanks to that mytimetoquit.com ad for teaching me that smoking is a treatable medical condition like prostate cancer and not a lifestyle choice like every other bad habit or addiction that people struggle with. Informative.


Note: As much as I find the Visa "Go World" ads to be manipulative, sentimental drivel, Morgan Freeman completely knocks it out of the park and barely keeps Visa off my list of insanity provokers. Coke should go with him next time.

Saturday, August 16, 2008

5 years


Bon anniversaire, mon amour. Cinq ans - C'est enorme.

Now let's get you that doughnut.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Further thoughts on the Olympics

Some reflections on last night's games:

1) I realized that the post-routine hug in womens (girls???) gymnastics is roughly analogous to the between-free-throws high five in the NBA: obligatory and utterly meaningless.

2) I think that, in this Olympics, the more remarkable occurrence is when a world record doesn't get broken in swimming.

3) Despite having a relatively small sample size (American women who competed in the floor routine last night), I feel confident in asserting that, as a society, we need to do a better job of teaching our young ladies boundaries.

That's all for now.

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Go World (brought to you by Visa)


The Olympics are upon us again, and I really enjoy getting to watch relatively obscure sports on TV. I mean, when was the last time you saw a decent water polo match on TV? And how many people were relieved that the sport is actually much more horse-friendly than it initially sounds? I'm guessing quite a few. And womens saber! What percentage of Americans woke up Saturday morning knowing that this was an Olympic event? 2%? .0002%? Good times.

Yet as I've observed the various events unfolding over the past couple of days a fundamental paradox of the American experience was brought right to the surface (and it has nothing to do with Coke's numerous attempts to make me feel like a philanthropist for using its product). Here it is: America is unequivocally the greatest superpower in the world, and has been for some time now. Nevertheless, Americans are always drawn to root for the underdog. How else do you explain the legion of supporters that the Cubs have managed to gather for themselves over their past century of losing? This is America. We like to confront third world dictators with shock and awe campaigns, while still fancying ourselves to be the scrappy little band of ruffians who somehow managed to upend the British Empire in 1781. Is the guy from Azerbaijan who never even saw a swimming pool until he was 16 really on the same level as Michael Phelps? Of course not, but we like to pretend that he is so that we don't have to cheer for him instead. So I guess I have to say "go USA - and go everyone else too."

Monday, August 4, 2008

Two things that are awesome

1: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. It's kind of like Arrested Development without any of the redeeming/innocent characters. I'm trying to get all caught up by the season 4 debut on 9/18. I have to say that I like my chances.

2: Hulu, through which I've been watching a whole mess of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. There's a lot of other stuff in there as well, some old and some new, and all of it absolutely free. Sweet. Check it out ... right here (thanks, Darcy, for helping me embed my first video):