Author: greg

Who, then, is this Michael Wolff person?

Because people are asking. From his online bio:

“[I’m/He’s] a seasoned pianist/composer with a wealth of straight ahead jazz credentials as well as an impressive body of movie soundtrack work…
In 1975, [I was– I mean] Wolff was hired by the great alto saxophonist Cannonball Adderley, who also enjoyed a wide appeal at the time. “When I was with Cannonball, Miles would come to check us out. Everybody checked us out. There was a real scene surrounding that band. It was like you were on a wave of forward motion.” …
Taking his talents to television, Wolff became the musical director for the popular “Arsenio Hall Show.”

TJVGIF

Help me with Netflix, help yourself with GreenCine.

Only a couple of weeks after Agent Smithing my brother’s early adopter, $10/month-for-life Netflix account, I’ve run out of movies I want to rent. Or more precisely, movies I want to rent that Netflix actually has. (Note: if you’re reading this from Netflix, my brother lives with us now. As do his wife and their two lovely children. Coincidentally, after tiring of Pooh’s various adventures, my four-year-old niece suddenly developed an interest in Ozu and Tarkovsky.)
So, please help me fill my Netflix queue with films I haven’t thought to rent.
And in the mean time, sign yourself up at GreenCine, the San Francisco Pink Dot to Netflix’s Kozmo. They have everything and a great film weblog. While you’re at it, read this fascinating analysis of Netflix’s DVD allocation system to see just how unprofitable my brother is for them.
[Update: thanks, Sacrifice is actually already in the mail, and Bottle Rocket‘s on the list. Paul Krugman recommends Wag the Dog. Here’s my rental queue: Koyaanisqatsi, Dancer in the Dark (finally. I walked out of the theater after 10 min.), The Manchurian Candidate, Rashomon, Sokurov’s Mother and Son. Watched and mailed back: Badlands (again), Hedwig & the Angry Inch, In the Bedroom. ]
[Unrelated: can anyone explain why I have the song, “Come on, be my baby tonight,” from idiot David on The Real World: New Orleans stuck in my head? Whitney, where are you when I need you?]

Note: Despite appearances, this is not a Matrix plot point

Short Cuts, 2003, Elmgreen & Dragset, image: Fond. Trussardi

“After an imaginary trip through the center of the world, a white car and its caravan have appeared at the center of the Galleria, cracking the floor and destroying its precious marbles.” It’s by some friends, the artists Elmgreen & Dragset, and was installed in the center of the Mall of Milano by the Nicola Trussardi Foundation.
Some merchants complained about the piece and damage to the “precious marbles.” I think the bigger worry is that the piece’ll get subsumed by the guys on Jason’s Matrix thread. I mean, the Merovingian may swear in French, but he clearly buys his marble in Italy.

Whew. Observations from the WTC Memorial public forum

The LMDC held a forum for the public to tell WTC Memorial Competition jurors what kind of memorial they want, and how to make it relevant to future generations. [Check here for an archived webcast.] In the 1,000-seat auditorium, approximately 500 seats were filled, 300 by firefighters and their families, who clearly came to the meeting with an impassioned, cohesive message: rescue workers must not go unrecognized in the memorial. Let me come back to this.

  • This, my first-ever public WTC event, was emotionally exhausting. Whatever effects I may still feel from the attacks, it pales in comparison to the formalized anguish that is central to Ground Zero Process veterans. It plots somewhere on the scale between consuming and addictive.
  • Nearly everyone was representing, reading from prepared (and, once their affiliation was known, largely predictable) statements. Twice, though, when rancor seemed ready to spill over, unscripted and wrenching comments from a family member silenced the room.
  • What can sometimes seem like another bullet point on the Memorial Guidelines suddenly felt like the memorial’s very essence: for at least a quarter of the families the WTC site will be the only grave they will ever have. “Give us somewhere to go.”
  • Because of the nature of their daily lives, firefighters and their families are more pre-something…prepared, I guess, for sudden (but not entirely unexpected) loss. Their culture is fiercely attuned to it. Other such “cultures” can learn from them how to come together and mourn and remember. But I think the ultimate unifying factor for all the people killed is not victim, target, rescuer, hero. It’s daily life. These people were killed (or injured, or they made it out or sacrificed themselves for others) while living whatever lives they chose, and the memorial should reflect that.
    [I said as much when I decided to make an impromptu statement; it’s a little over two hours into the stream. Details later.]

    • Puttin’ the W into WMD

    W as in Whitney. Houston. She met with Ariel Sharon while visiting “family and friends” in Israel.
    Houston’s no stranger to Mid East politics. Last fall, while the US was cookin’ up wild reasons for invading Iraq, it ignored the horrors Saddam Hussein inflicted on his people during sham elections: non-stop playing of his campaign theme song, Houston’s “I Will Always Love You.” I give Sharon six months, max. [thanks (?), Gawker]

    That Elephant in the room just won the Palme d’Or

    Gus Van Sant, protege and DP accepting the Palme d'Or, image:festival-cannes.fr

    Swearing may be better in French, but teen shooting? That’s best en anglais, mon ami. Gus Van Sant just won the Palme d’Or and Best Director awards at Cannes for his latest film, Elephant, which is Columbine-esque, but actually based on the late Alan Clarke‘s last film, a 1989 short about killings in Northern Ireland.
    Check out a review from Elvis Mitchell, wild, anti-american reports from those lushes at the Guardian, and an interesting theory of Cannes’ gunloving esprit at the GreenCine weblog.

    If you Google me do I not bleed?

    So Friday, when I responded to a friend I haven’t seen for a while, a friend who, after guessing incorrectly on my email/domain format, spammed every possible combination of greg@, gregallen@, greg.org, greg.com, gregallen.com, gregallen.org, etc., I somewhat haughtily included a this URL in my coordinates: http://www.google.com/search?q=greg. Somewhat haughtily and somewhat hastily.
    When I sent the email, I was at #5, but yesterday, when I showed off to a good friend, Haniel Lynn, I’d dropped below 20. (I’m back at #6 now, so I don’t know what’s going on.) What we do know: I’m superficial (i.e., I cared enough about a one-name Google ranking to show-and-tell people), and relying on Google for any sense of your own self-worth is dubious at best.
    [update: Read Jeremy’s discussion of how other first-name-search-obsessed people fared in Google’s recent PageRank machinations. Misery loves company. (Thanks, Tyler.]
    That’s when Haniel showed me his own Google-induced folly. Somehow, the Wharton Usenet servers attached his name to someone else’s lameass 1995 review of the 90’s Manchester band, Stone Roses. (Haniel Lynn’s graduate class of 95; the reviewer is an undergrad, class of ’96.) Whenever he’d show up at a new client’s office, or interview someone for a job, they’d try to work Stone Roses into the conversation. Or if they didn’t, they’d quiz his colleagues after he left, impressed but confused at how an X’ed up groupie could find his way to McKinsey. All they really did, though, was blow the cover on their Googling.
    My advice to Haniel: be on more panels, get quoted in articles more, and (obviously) get a weblog.

    A newer, easier Bloghdad.com

    “Winning the war’s easy, it’s winning the peace that’s hard.” Even in this season of sequels, the media seems uninterested in the Iraq followup story, even when it was so heavily foreshadowed in the first script. Eh. Nothing to see here, folks, keep moving.
    In a service to fans of the original GWII, though, and in hopes of keeping interest alive until the sequel, I have consolidated all the Bloghdad.com posts into one spot–what do you call it, a sublog? Makes for easy readin’. Now how about them tax cuts?

    Lessons from Pearl Harbor; Designing the Pentagon Memorial

    USS Arizona Memorial, image: nps.gov

    In today’s NYTimes, Sam Roberts looks for Lessons for the World Trade Center Memorial” in the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor. I don’t know what he finds, though. Opened on Memorial Day, 1962, four years after Eisenhower authorized a memorial at the site, and more than 20 years after the actual attack, the Arizona Memorial is more the product of inertia and circumstance than of design. The Arizona remained in place partly out of respect, but also because technology didn’t exist to raise her. Honolulu architect Alfred Preis’ design was selected from among 96 submissions in a public competition.
    Over 6,000 people have registered for the WTC Memorial competition, Roberts reports.
    And on the front page of the Washington Post, Timothy Dwyer profiles Julie Beckman and Keith Kaseman, the young NY architects who won last year’s Pentagon Memorial competition [see related posts and links here.]

    Cremaster Roundup

    The Cremaster Cycle is now playing in LA, Berkeley, SF, and Chicago. Wider exposure goes hand in hand with wider discussion, as these two very interesting links show:
    Mario and Matthew, image: gamegirladvance.comWayne Bremser’s article, “Matthew Barney versus Donkey Kong”, for the video game magazine GameGirl Advance takes a look at video game character, mythological, spatial and narrative elements in Cremaster 3. That’s the one where Barney’s character scales the levels of the Guggenheim, passing various obstacles along the way. The hermetic logic of Mario’s quest stacks up well against the esoteric, Freemason-inspired obstacles the Entered Apprentice confronts in C3. Bremsen loses me a bit, though, in his critique of the current Guggenheim installation-as-interface.
    I once compared Mario to Gerry, Gus Van Sant’s nearly dialogue-free desert movie, which is similar to C3 in another way: some people had a hard time staying until the end. Anyway, the idea that everything we need to know, we learned playing Super Mario holds great appeal for me.
    For a very thoughtful, engaging, film-savvy discussion, check out Scott Foundas’ interview with Matthew Barney on Indiewire. While all the hype’s about finally being able to see the Cycle in “proper” (i.e., numerical) order, Foundas puts forward an interesting argument for watching them chronologically. The ambition and production values evolve, obviously, but you can also see shifts in the visual language Barney references, from sports broadcasting (C4, C1) to narrative film (C2, C3).
    Once the films are done, the tendency is to see them as the objective; their form overpowering their function (at least for Barney). His discussion here of the films as object generators sounds more persuasive and interesting than in any other interview I’ve read. And this explanation of the limited edition laserdisc distribution model puts the horse back in front of the cart

    Barney: Part of it had to do with figuring out a way to fund it. Looking to the thing we knew best, which was how to edition and distribute artwork, that’s what we did. We made an edition of 10 out of the [first] film, divided the budget by 10 and sold it for that. So, at least the film would break even and the work that was generated out of it could start to fund the following film.

    Whaddya gotta do to get a fair trial in this country??

    Hmm. In order to run them through military tribunals, the guys (and kids) at Guantanamo are finally getting defense lawyers, which means they may finally be charged with something. Sounds like progress. On Google News, the link reads, “Prosecutor says tribunals will be fair,” but when you click through, the actual Wash Post headline reads, “Both sides say tribunals will be fair trials.” Of course, you’d expect them both to say that, since they both report to the Pentagon’s general counsel’s office.
    What I didn’t expect is the chief defense attorney, Col. (I swear) Will A. Gunn, saying, “I immediately recognized the glamour position was that of chief prosecutor, the opportunity to be America’s hero.”
    And speaking of glamour in the courts (and glaring shortcomings in the justice system), over at The Morning News, glamblogger Choire Sicha does a play-by-play of his stint on jury duty. Alas, he didn’t get picked for a trial.
    I realize now, too late, that if only I’d been reading W, not The Believer, my own jury duty report and reflection would’ve been much spicier. Not that it’da been much use for the fellas in Guantanamo, though.