But What About “Canadian,” You Ask?

Subject: Poisonous insults. They’re used both to signal to your own ideological troops or to tar your critics with an invidious brush. If you can tell me what the hierarchy of venom, let me know. (Whatever the ranking, I think the whole world needs to take a freakin’ time out, or their mothers will be called.) Here are some options:

  • “Zionist neoconservative cabal” [Pat Buchanan, in the American Conservative, via robot wisdom] *
  • “Jewish leaders” [Rep. James Moran of Va., via Slate] *
  • “Anti-semitic” [Pat again. What the neocons call critics of its Israel-positive positions. cf., to Mickey Kaus] *
  • “Terrorist” [what Richard Perle called Seymour Hersh for busting him on his blatant conflict of interest dealings with Adnan Khashoggi )
  • “Communist” [Hersh’s retort, given at Harvard: “Forty years ago I would have been called a Communist…”
  • “Jew” [ibid., “…and 70 years ago I would have been called a Jew…”]
  • “French” [I think this has been covered enough. Ditto, “American.”]
  • “Canadian” [I think I have covered this enough**.]
    * Nick Denton has been writing more about this (pretty serious, considering weblogs apparently “are not media“).
    ** One summer, Katie, a girl at college with me, worked at Nordstrom in DC. She said at that store, the salespeople used “Canadian” in place of “Jew,” (specifically, “Potomac Jew”) so that they could “make fun of ‘them'” without getting in trouble. So. Whether we’re repeating 1991, 1941, or 1914, it’s a cold freakin’ bucket of water in the face of anyone who thinks we’ve made any progress as human beings in the last 100 years…

  • On Remembering Or Repeating History

    Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, image: bbc.co.ukHistory shows that a war which follows on the heels of a Serbian assassination doesn’t go well for anyone involved.
    As I’ve written before, one reason I chose a WWI battlefield as an object of my first film, Souvenir (November 2001), was because it had been “forgotten.” Practically speaking, there is no one left alive who has direct experience or memory of WWI in general and the Battle of the Somme in particular. At best, it’s taught, analyzed, considered, memorialized, but it is not remembered.
    Generally, in the US, if WWI’s known at all, it’s as dim, dusty, unfortunate history, where “history” translates as “has nothing to do with what’s going on right now.” In this absence of memory, attempts to liken the current political/military situation to WWI are countered with pious promises to “never let such a horror happen again.” But those promises are almost never accompanied by an understanding of why or how WWI unfolded, or even what such a horror actually comprised.
    Thiepval Memorial, image:firstworldwar.comSuch benign ignorance afflicts the New Yorker protagonist in S(N01), whose “search” for The Memorial to The Missing at Thiepval is driven by his own involvement in the “most horrible violence ever.” He ambles in a naive daze across the modern era’s first “most horrible violence ever,” and finds not just one memorial, but hundreds: countless markers and cemeteries; fields still yielding up remains; razed and rebuilt towns; and rare, preserved sections of battlefied What’s more, though, as he drives his German car across France, he finds people–French locals and British caretakers–who show the 80-years-on effects of the war, which–they’re painfully aware–are nigh-unbearable, even when your side “wins.” They also show the New Yorker a welcoming-but-pained sympathy, as if he’s rushed home with bad news, only to find a passel of neighbors and friends waiting to tell him something even worse.
    Lochnagar Crater, image:firstworldwar.comLutyens’ Memorial to The Missing of The Somme is powerful; visiting can be an overwhelming experience. But its power pales in comparison to the concerted efforts to teach about WWI that take place in every school in the UK. The Lochnagar Crater now sits alone as a souvenir in the landscape, a scar that–according to those who visit it or live around it–still aches, recalling them of old wounds. But its influence pales compared to the effect of a lifetime where every errand you run in your entirely-post-war village takes you past half a dozen cemeteries, and where, spring after spring, you turn up mortars and rotted boots when you plant your flowers.
    When I made S(N01) exactly a year ago, I was nervous about drawing false parallels between the attacks on New York and an “actual” war. Tragedy was tragedy, loss was loss, but a terrorist attack was not The Somme. 2001 wasn’t 1914, I mean, how could it be, when the civilized world was united? I expected the need for S(N01)‘s solace would pass: we’d learn to deal with the loss of September 11th, and move gingerly toward a safer, more peaceful future. The movie’d become a time capsule, a sad-but-nostalgic reminder of the moments of our resolve. Instead, I wonder if I’ve unintentionally remade someone’s film, Souvenir (July 1914).

    Freedom Fries Are Not Enough! Get Rid Of Your Mercedes

    Is this you?

  • Did a thorough find and replace with “French” and “Freedom” (cf. fries, toast, kiss, dip)? Yet still harbor feelings of exasperation toward those ingrates in “Old Europe,” such as:
  • “After all, we saved France’s butt and kicked Germany’s butt, twice, and then we rebuilt their whole countries. Marshall Plan? Hallo?? And carried and protected them for years…Cold War?? Guten tag?”
  • And especially, “I even bought this car from those potato-lovers, garaged it exclusively, drove it only rarely, maintained it religiously for 18 years, kept all the records for it, loved it like a member of the family, even, and this is the thanks we get?”
  • The car those potato-lovers sold you is an original red (not burgundy) 1985 Mercedes Benz 300D turbodiesel, 4-door (or wagon), with leather (not MBTex) interior, with 150k documented miles +/-, similar to the photo below:
    For reference only. This is an earlier 240D.  For your protest to be effective, you must have a 1985 300D. image: sveinn

    Then you’re in a unique position to stick it to Old Europe and demonstrate your support for Bush’s war. Here’s what you do. Don’t sell it, that’s what Arianna’d do. Not the message you want to send. Instead, give it to me, keys, title, maintenance records and all. Just give it here. Then I’ll take it, and park it prominently in Manhattan and DC. You’ll sleep easy, knowing that your once-embarassing Mercedes is poised to be blown to smithereens in a terrorist attack, an attack that’s only a matter of time now, thanks to those Germans, who sided with the rest of the world (minus Bulgaria) to oppose Bush’s war.
    [Note: If you’d like to be notified if/when your former car gets what’s coming to it, please include a self-addressed stamped postcard.]

  • On Bar Codes And Profiling

    Creating an army of shopping clones, one Safeway Club Card at a time, image: cockeyed.comA NYT article about Cockeyed‘s great barcode hack, written by David F. Gallagher (the Lightning Field one, not the shirtless one. “F.” must stand for “fully clothed.” David, you have my sympathies. At least you’re going up against a real person. I’m still being out-Googled by an ad-agency caricature, an off-the-air bunny puppet, and a friend of Dharma, two if you count Greg Louganis.)
    Rob Cockerham is distributing clones of his Safeway card online, thereby commenting on/thwarting the supermarket’s tracking him and and “his” purchases (which “he” now makes in stores all over the country, as far as Safeway knows, anyway).
    Interesting that this article appears in the Times. Whenever I’m traveling and airdrop into a netcafe, or login to nytimes.com from someone else’s computer, I’ve always saved my login info on that machine. Over the years, I’ve wondered what the Times thought of my appearing in dozens of places at once. (They had enough, I guess; a few months ago, they started expiring their cookies after 30 days.)
    Other barcode links: Peter Coffin’s Free Biennial art project, Scott Blake’s Barcode Art site [both via Wooster Collective] And in the view of many End Time pundits, barcodes are the “mark of the beast.” Left Behind’s 8th book was called The Mark, as this Australian

    Deepak Chopra Must Have A New Publicist

    And they’re hitting for the fence. For years, silence. He’s over, you think. Like oxygen bars and impeachment hearings. Then in 24 hours, BAM! three completely different press mentions. Can you find the level of Deepak’s room?

  • Hm. Nice grouping. “Deepak Chopra proposed Wednesday that the Pope, the Dalai Lama and himself serve as human shields to avoid bombing in Iraq and to rid the world of Saddam Hussein.” [GoMemphis, via BoingBoing]
  • Aladdin, ambassador of peace. Just a minute ago on the CBC’s As It Happens, they mentioned Chopra’s proposal to build a Disney theme park in the Middle East, to “help the children relax and understand Western Culture.”
  • “Gina de Franco, who organized the [Quest Magazine Mardi Gras] festivities [at Man Ray], wore tropical flowers in her hair and Halston couture. She chatted over dinner with Deepak Chopra about his four new book launches for 2003.” Ahh, four book launches. Now I get it. [See “downtown diva” Deepak en masque at NY Social Diary. via the estimable Gawker]
  • …And I Feel Fine (Except For This Gnawing Sense Of Dread)

    Yes, I was glad to see you, and that was a Bible in my pocket. As I tee up to write what appears below, I just realized my schedule yesterday (aka the Sabbath)–church in the morning to the Armory Show (similarities to Gilligan’s Island: began as 3-hour tour, saves self with pleasantly endless supply of special guest stars) to a friend’s dinner for a visiting artist–and my increasing revulsion at politicians’ Christian justification for war, left me toting the Good (but not tiny) Book around all day, and unselfconsciously reading on the train about “blessed are the peacemakers,” “wars and rumours of wars,” and the end of the world as we know it.
    I remember being advised, soon after moving to NYC in 1990, that reading the NY Times or the WSJ on the train was a surefire invitation to be mugged. And The Wall St. Journal? Forget about it. The only way to protect yourself, I was told, is to be a less attractive target than other passengers: you can either talk loudly to yourself (i.e., act insane, and thus, unpredictable, possibly dangerous, not worth the hassle) or read the Bible. It’s the pickpocketing equivalent of The Club, self-centered public religiosity that really says, “mug my neighbor.” What would Jesus do, indeed.
    WWJD? How about WWGWBD? Bob Woodward in Hendrik Hertzberg‘s New Yorker commentary: “‘[Bush’s] instincts are almost his second religion.’ And if the commandment of his first religion is peace, that of his second, it seems clearer than ever, is war.” Not so fast. Bush’s flavor of Christianity has little to do with the Bible (King James Study Bible , Amazon sales rank: 3,598), and everything to do with Left Behind (Armageddon: The Cosmic Battle of the Ages vol. 11, Amazon sales rank: 67).
    With over 50 million copies in print, the Left Behind series is the Harry Potter of the Apocalypse, (If God doesn’t call the authors home soon, there’ll be 12 books total; never seen onr on the subway, though). It the end of the world as its authors (Tim Lahaye and Jerry Jenkins, evangelical ministers/ex-political aides/anointers of John Ashcroft) know it. After millions of True Believers are suddenly caught up in The Rapture, the world stops slouching toward Gomorrah and starts lurching toward Armageddon. Plagues and war ravage the unbelieving earth. After a feckless Democratic president sells the US out to international organizations (it’s not one of heaven’s mysteries that the series began during Clinton’s tenure), the Anti-Christ steps in, seduces shocked citizens with pleas of global tolerance, uses the UN to establish world government, and settles down to rule and reign. From Bahghdad. Oh, and before the world ends, Israel gets all the land it wants. Oh, and the Jews convert to Christianity, etc. etc.
    Articles appeared last year (in Salon and the Guardian, for example) after Left Behind took over the NYTimes bestseller list, causing lamentation in the mainstream publishing houses, and Infidels.org (you have been warned) got ready for Y2K with a veritable Baskin-Robbins (31+ flavors) of End Time culture. But as Zachary Karabell writes in last week’s LA Times, “The response of some in the U.S. government to the crises of the last year and a half feels ripped from the pages of the Left Behind books.” If Bush were a straphanger, he’d be doubled down, flaunting the Bible and acting insane, thinking he’s safe (yet somehow unaware that all the other passengers are nervously switching cars).
    Frankly, Left Behind strikes me as gratuitous vengeance porn, designed to feed the smugness and self-satisfaction of “Christian” readers, who want to have their cake (their own seat on the Rapture train) and eat it, too (the details of their critics’ impending, gruesome suffering). Is Bush taking his war script from the Gospel according to Left Behind? Is he gonna have a lot more to answer for than he thinks? Is the Pope Catholic?

    On Other Issues, Less Pressing, Perhaps

    Boogie Nights promo photo, image: ptanerson.com
    image: ptanderson.com

  • If my mother ever gets around to seeing Boogie Nights, and asks me if she should listen to the DVD commentary tracks, I’d be obliged to warn her that, even though they’re informative and fun, Paul Thomas Anderson swears quite a bit. Of course, the probability that she’ll ask about such a film (her dealbreakers: the whole pr0n thing, Burt Reynolds) is roughly zero. For the rest of you, though, start clicking on that Amazon link. [There are moments where PTA pulls a Bingham on a drunk-and-trying-to-flee-the DAT Mark Wahlberg, asking him to “tell me that story where you…” and proceeds to tell the story. Credit where it’s due: Bingham occasionally pulled a PTA.]
  • To replicate today’s Amazon delivery perfectly, add Krzysztof Kieslowski’s trilogy, Blue, White, and Red, which was just re-released last week as a boxed set. [I bought mine from Jason Kottke’s Movie Hut.]
  • The problem with Pringles: you keep eating them, even though there are technically six servings in a cannister. More a way to deal than a solution: the last 2.5 servings are just hard enough to get out of the can, logistics eventually overtakes lack of will.
  • Other Noteworthy Events (From Different

    Other Noteworthy Events (From Different Ends Of The Creative Spectrum)
    From the LA Times, Mark Swed’s rather lyrical article about “See Here, A Colloquium on Attention and the Arts,” held at Pomona College. Alumnus James Turrell and others spoke, and works by once-attention-trying composers like Anton Webern were played. [via Peter Johnstone’s Revelator.org]
    Something I never thought I’d see – a broadcast version of Paul Verhoeven‘s classic, Showgirls, the first NC-17 film released by a major studio. I kid you not, it’s on VH-1 right now, complete with thoroughly dubbed dialogue and low-budget, digitally inserted bikini tops in the scenes they just couldn’t cut out. [Or settle for the original on DVD.]
    What VH-1 should do, is Showgirls: Behind the Music. Space Ghost up some clips from Saved by the Bell, throw in some childhood home-style footage, and interviews with former classmates, and explain to me why Nomi’s so angry.

    Big Art Events (Now and

    Big Art Events (Now and Upcoming)

    Boiling study, Ricci Albenda, at Momenta's silent auction 3/15, courtesy Andrew Kreps Gallery
    Untitled (Boiling Study), 2002, Ricci Albenda, at Momenta Art’s Benefit Auction 3/15

    Now
    The Armory Show (through Sunday)
    Scope Art Fair (through Sunday, including Bill Previdi’s always-interesting collector panel Saturday afternoon)
    Upcoming (Saturday, March 15)
    Momenta Benefit Auction and Art Raffle, at White Columns, bid on/buy some great art and support the program of a pioneering Williamsburg gallery.

    You Are So (Colorful, Devalued, Looks Like Monopoly) Money

    Vince Vaughn, image: ecalos.com
    Vince Vaughn, US Marshall (Plan evangelist) image: ecalos.com

    My dad is in town for a meeting, and he brought his free USA Today down Via IP: This USAT article about Americans abroad feeling burned by Bush’s wildly unpopular unilateralist “megalomania.” The punchline stars Vince Vaughn:

    But one incident really stung.
    “Man, it was bad,” says the Rat Pack-y star of Swingers. “These girls saw us and were kind of flirting, and they kept asking us if we were American. Finally we said, ‘Yes,’ and they just took off.
    “One girl turns and says, ‘We were hoping you were Canadian.’ Canadian? Since when was it cooler to be Canadian?”

    Welcome to the New World Order, baby.

    At Least Some Americans Are Doing OK Abroad


    A very good, long Guardian interview by with Julianne Moore and Todd Haynes at the National Film Theatre in London.

    And I have to say, I look back on Lindsay Law, who was from American Playhouse and was our producer on Safe, and David Aukin, who worked at Channel 4; those guys are so rare, I realise in hindsight how much courage financing producers had to have to stand back and trust you. Now I would look at these dailies from Safe, where Julie was a speck on the screen and the whole film would be played out in a single shot. And he was like, “I don’t get it. I don’t get it.” But he would never talk to me and never say, “Oh, more coverage” or put in his two cents just to make himself feel more creatively esteemed. That’s so unusual, that kind of courage and I just now realise the extent to which that helped me. So we were really lucky and although we had just under a million dollars to make Safe, which isn’t amazing to think of, but it felt like it. It was tough. But I still had the freedom to do what I needed to do.

    On Fashion On War

    From Guy Trebay’s column in the NY Times:

  • My prediction: Canadian flags on YSL backpacks. “I am not a politician,” Mr [Tom] Ford said, “but at this point I’m embarrassed to be an American.”
  • Majed al-Sabah, who owns Villa Moda, the Barney’s of Kuwait: 1) gets all testy over the anti-war rainbow flags on display during the shows (“I thought that Milan had turned totally gay.”), 2) Comissioned Prada and other designers to make him some caftans (see them here), and 3) wears a diamond-and-ruby pin that says “I love Bush.” Verdict: Gay.
  • Who’da thought? Famous-for-poufs, Pucci designer Christian Lacroix turns out to be a philosopher statesman. Note to all other designers: Be quiet and let, um, Lacroix..lead the, um, crusade.

    During the Second World War, Mr. Lacroix went on, his mother was a girl of 16 living in occupied Arles. To signal her own resistance, she incorporated a fragment of color from the forbidden French flag in her clothes every day. “A little bit of blue, red or white in each outfit,” Mr. Lacroix said, adding that if there was anything that decades in the design world had taught him, it was that symbols, however small, can sometimes surprise you with their weight.

  • Design Selected For Pentagon Memorial

    model for Kaseman Beckman Pentagon Memorial design, image: defenselink.mil

    And the winner is: A proposal by Keith Kaseman and Julie Beckman, two recent Columbia grads, to build 184 “memorial units” in a grove of maple trees. Interesting details: All benches are aligned with the flight path of AA77. Memorial units for those who died on the plane cantilever away from the building, while units for those who died in the Pentagon cantilever away toward it.
    Read the Wash. Post article, including comments by the designers and jury chief/MoMA architecture curator Terence Riley. Read Post critic Benjamin Forgey’s generally positive review. Read my greg.org posts about my frustration with the hyper-individualization of memorials, follow competition links, and see my rash design response.

    On Collecting Art, On Collecting Taxes

    04MART.easel_large.jpg
    US Attorney/curator with posters of Rothko, Bacon, deKooning and either Twombly or Clemente,
    purchased by Sam Waksal with an 8.25% discount, at least.

    In the grand tradition of deposed CEO’s, but with downtown sensibility (and far better taste), Sam Waksal pleaded guilty to evading sales tax on $15 million in paintings he purchased through a major New York dealer. It was the old, “send it to my factory in NJ, nah, just fax the invoice there” ploy, which has been tripping up art world naifs since the 80’s, at least. (Clearly, it’s worth it to work it and get your 10% discount from the dealer instead.) Waksal’s lawyer tells the Washington Post that his client was “not the architect of the scheme.” Yow.
    Since no report names all nine works involved, here it is, a greg.org exclusive:

  • Mark Rothko, Untitled – Plum and Brown – $3.5m. Didn’t reach $2-3m estimate at Sotheby’s last May. Pic above, or buy a painted copy of it online for $275 [!!?].
  • Francis Bacon, Study from the Human Body – $3m. Also unsold at Sotheby’s, against a $2.5-3.5m estimate. City Review has the war story of the failed sales.
  • Franz Kline, Mahoning II – $3m (via the Posts. Mahoning is in the Whitney.)
  • Willem deKooning Untitled V – $2.4m (via NYNewsday and AP/ABC).
  • Roy Lichtenstein, Landscape with Seated Figure – $900k. (via AP/ABC)
  • Cy Twombly, Untitled (Rome) and Solar Barge of Sesostris – $1.3m and $800k. (via Boston Globe. The first was exhibited at Knoedler in 2000, and the second was shown in 2001 by the Dealer.
  • Francesco Clemente, Lovers – $60k. (via The Post.) Eh. For a Clemente, you risk jail? A definite Koslowski moment.
    That adds up to $14,960,000. Any guess what the last, $40,000 work could be? According to the Times, it’s Richard Serra. His sculptures can go for more than $1m, but $40k for a painting is doable. What’s more, these last three artists show with the Dealer. Waksal can brag about the sweet deal he got on them, all while paying the Dealer super-retail for what amounts to personal shopping.
    [Update: The NYPost pegs Waksal’s total at $15.31 million, which means the Serra was $350,000. That sounds like Sam didn’t even get a discount on the in-house stuff. No wonder he’s fingering The Dealer. Update #2: Turns out the Serra was titled, The American flag is not an object of worship. Don’t let FoxNews get wind of that sale.]

  • On Relieving Payne, On Power And Behind-The-Scenes

    alexander_payne_moma_dor.jpg
    from r: Jane, David, Nancy, Swoosie
    First, the good. Star photographer-to-the-stars Patrick McMullan has posted Billy Farrell’s party pics from the Alexander Payne event last week.
    Then, the lame. In a bit they call House of Payne, the Daily News pretends that Alexander Payne was a pain in the ass and that “he should get over himself,” slamming him for his “snippiness” toward good friend and interviewer, UA chief (and legendary indie film producer/distributor) Bingham Ray. But it’s totally not true. Here’s the deal: Rush & Molloy are too afraid of upsetting a studio head by saying he talked too much or sometimes inadvertently cut Alexander off; instead, they’ll take lame shots at an extremely friendly, self-conscious director.
    Ray and Payne had gone off earlier in the day to discuss what themes and ideas they’d talk about on stage. During the rehearsal, their back-and-forth conversation was both animated and fascinating. Both are behind-the-camera guys; performing for a crowd doesn’t come naturally to either of them. When the lights went down, Alexander was much more self-conscious, and Bingham was much more talkative.
    Many people told me they found the whole conversation very interesting. Some found it interesting, but thought Ray talked too much, at least for an event about Payne. And a couple of people wondered, who was that guy? If that’s you, you’re not in the film industry. But if you know Bingham Ray, you want to work with him, and so you’re probably not going to tell him he talked too much. It’s the paradox of power.
    My take: Ray said several times that night he’d never spoken in a one-on-one format like that, and he’d be mortified to think he messed up Payne’s evening in some way. So if he talked over Alexander’s answer, or told some story of his own, it was with the best of intentions. But hold a position of power and be sought out for your vision, for a long time, and you can become accustomed to being listened to. Bill Clinton was the same way. And Payne was a combination of polite, nervous and self-effacing; he’s not gonna call a friend on something in front of a crowd, and his own reluctance to analyze his work beat out any fleeting desire to spoon-feed the crowd.
    As these two brilliant behind-the-camera guys gamely put on their best show, the producer sitting next to me had quickly figured it out. She leaned over to me at one point and whispered, “I want to hear the DVD commentary track for this.”