perfidy

Writing on the death of punk icon(oclast) Robert Quine, Phil Dennison asks "[w]hat the hell is it with these guys – Quine, Dee Dee Ramone, John Entwhistle – who lived through the worst the 70s and 80s had to throw at them, only to OD as old men? Cripes!"

Cripes, indeed.

Not being a big ol' druggie myself, apart from a few desultory stabs at self-medication here and there (nothing hard, nothing to write home about, nothing even that fun), I have a hard time understanding, much less identifying with, folks who fail to die before they get old, then manage to go and succeed at the end of a needle. This is particularly so when it's someone unexpected. Dee Dee Ramone isn't that surprising, actually, if you've ever listened to the lyrics to "Warthog Boy" or "Fifty-Third and Third." But John Entwhistle was a rock, the trillion-ton black hole that kept the Who from flying apart. Was he a tortured soul, or did he just like to get high a lot? And Robert Quine? What the hell?

And why Quine and not Keef, Iggy, Ozzy, or Phil Lesh? The more I muse on the vicissitudes of mortality and the decisions people make, the less I understand.

Maybe I'll write a little more on this tomorrow when I've had time to think it over. But for tonight... cripes.

NDR helpfully pointed me to Sabernomics, a weblog which combines a love of baseball with the rigorous statistical modeling of a dedicated economist. Actually, more an econometrician. But still. Cool as hell!

Check out author JC's analysis of why and whether perfect games have been more common in recent decades.

Tacitus has this story down so I won't add anything. The short version is this; some DoD lawyers wrote up a brief arguing that the President can do anything he wants, including order torture and indemnify subordinates from swinging if caught allowing torture. One part reads, "In order to respect the president's inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign ... (the prohibition against torture) must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his commander-in chief authority." In other words, if we aren't getting good information playing by the rules, well... the President can say there are no rules!

The NY Times has more.

The memo, prepared for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, also said that any executive branch officials, including those in the military, could be immune from domestic and international prohibitions against torture for a variety of reasons.

"One reason, the lawyers said, would be if military personnel believed that they were acting on orders from superiors "except where the conduct goes so far as to be patently unlawful. "[my emphasis]

Didn't work sixty years ago. Won't work now. But rest easy! "'The April document was about interrogation techniques and procedures,' said Lawrence Di Rita, the Pentagon's chief spokesman. 'It was not a legal analysis.'"

"Not a legal analysis," my shiny metal ass.

I'm not saying the President has sanctioned torture. But some pointyheaded wonks somewhere in the Pentagon were told to start with the assumption that "authority to set aside the laws is 'inherent in the president'" and work backward from there.

Take it tacitus:

Two possibilities present themselves: either the finest legal minds in the Department of Defense are terrible scholars (hardly an impossibility), or they were presented with a conclusion and told to construct reasoning from which it derives. My guess is the latter. You don't typically see this sort of thing emanating from the American legal profession absent strong compulsion to produce it..

Yeesh.

Robert Quine, one of the finest guitarists of the New York City punk movement, has died of a heroin overdose at age 61.

Owing more to Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground than to the Rawk chaos of the Ramones, Stooges, or Dolls, Quine joined with peers Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd of Television, David Byrne of the Talking Heads, and Richard Hell (his counterpart in the the Voidoids) in bringing nervous, angular, thoughtful musicianship to the punk scene. With his balding pate, beard, sport jacket, and ever-present dark shades, he was certainly nobody's idea of a rock star. Indeed, the cerebral, almost anti-rock style Quine and his corevolutionaries pursued shows itself to be the true legacy of the New York punk scene, once you step away from the deafening buzzsaw of the Ramones. All the major bands of the era-- Blondie and the Talking Heads as well as lesser lights like Mink Deville, all owe huge credit to Quine's sound.

Although Richard Hell and the Voidoids are unfairly forgotten, remembered mainly by punk enthusiasts and then mainly for their great single "Love Comes in Spurts," Quine's career after the Voidoids ably demonstrates the breadth of his talent and influence. He made a guest appearance on Tom Waits' 1985 masterpiece "Rain Dogs," played with spiritual father Lou Reed, is largely responsible for Matthew Sweet's career, notably "Girlfriend" and "Altered Beast," and had long associations with iconoclasts Lloyd Cole and John Zorn. His spidery leads and angular attack were unmistakeable, and his tasteful contributions improved every record he appeared on.

Yet again, heroin does its rock and roll thing and kills one of the good ones.

See you in hell, Quine.

[wik] I should note that Quine is an Ohio native, of Akron specifically. Northeast Ohio is criminally under-appreciated as the birthplace of some great music. Chrissie Hynde, Lux Interior of the Cramps (KNIF!), DEVO, Joe Walsh, me, Rocket from the Crypt, Pere Ubu, and the Dead Boys all hail from that corner of the country. Good stuff!

[wik] Let's not forget Phil Dennison or Miz. B, wife of Buckethead either. I tell ya, Northeast Ohio has a serious talent pool.

Perfidious crony Brdgt has a cool twist on the whole great movie list thingy.

[N]ame your favorite movie that these actors have been in. Not necessarily their best performance, just your favorite.

Some of these were rather hard, especially the really great ones and the really bad ones, you really had to focus on the film, rather than their performance.

Brdgt has some interesting choices, though unsurprisingly many overlap with mine. Here's my pix:

Sigourney Weaver: Aliens
Robin Williams: Good Will Hunting
Clint Eastwood: A Fistful of Dollars
Mel Gibson: Mad Max
Paul Newman: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Brad Pitt: Fight Club
Goldie Hawn: Death Becomes Her
Audrey Hepburn: Breakfast at Tiffanys
Diane Keaton: The Godfather
Halle Berry: X-men
Kevin Bacon: Animal House
Ewan McGregor: Trainspotting
Sean Connery: Goldfinger
Anthony Hopkins: The Silence of the Lambs
Jack Nicholson: One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
Harrison Ford: Blade Runner
Tom Hanks: Bachelor Party
Robert DeNiro: Godfather, Part II
Al Pacino: The Godfather

Brdgt is right; some of these are haaaard. How do you choose between the Sigourney Weaver picks Ghostbusters, Alien, Aliens, and Galaxy Quest? Much less the De Niro or Connery picks, or even little ol' Robin Williams, who was in The Fisher King and (yes, yes) Aladdin? Perceptive readers will notice that I chose Tom Hanks in Bachelor Party over Saving Private Ryan, Philadelphia, or Suburban Everyman Cries Again for Redemption. That's only because a donkey on 'ludes is comic genius of a rare and wonderful sort.

I had a 1000-word post all ready to go on how good the new Harry Potter movie is when my browser crashed, taking everything with it. I lack the energy and will to recreate my masterpiece at this time, so I will just say this: 's great. Go see.

[wik]...and here it is.

Last Friday night my wife requested that we go see the new Harry Potter movie, "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban." I'm glad she did. Even sitting in an un air-conditioned theater with a busted speaker with a drunken woman in the next row up vomiting loudly into a plastic bag every few minutes, I enjoyed "Azkaban" far more than the other Harry Potter films.

I don't know Alfonso Cuaron's previous work except by reputation. This is partly due to a self-enforced five-year moratorium on arty movies, and partly due to the fact that the only video store within walking distance of my house is totally ghetto. On Saturday I observed that they were carrying two copies of direct-to-video gorefest "Chupacabra," on DVD, the same number of copies as "Shattered Glass," the film we came to rent. Sadder yet, both copies of "Chupacabra" were out, and I was still able to rent "Shattered Glass." So, although I had heard plenty of good things about "Little Princess" and very badly want to see "Y Tu Mama Tambien" (also outnumbered by "Chupacabra," 2-zilch), I didn't know what to expect.

Cuaron reportedly didn't know much about Harry Potter when he agreed to take on the project, and that's probably a good thing. A major weakness of the first two films, directed by "Home Alone" auteur Chris Columbus, was their slavish adherence to the books they drew upon. I felt that they work okay as unified films, but didn't hang together cinematically. They were okay, even pretty good, but not up to the massive potential the source material presented.

It turns out that Cuaron was an inspired choice to direct. Eschewing Columbus' approach Cuaron and screenwriter Steve Kloves cut the material to the bone, relying on the audience already having read the books or seen the first two films. Very little is explained, and newcomers to the series will doubtless end up confused as to who is who and what is going on.

spoilers abound below the fold

On the other hand, dedicated fans of the book might object to some of Cuaron's omissions, such as the scene between Draco Malfoy and Ron Weasley in Diagon Alley, just who "Wormtail, Mooney, Padfoot, and Prongs" are, and the long arc of the relationship between Harry and Sirius Black, but these cuts are necessary if J.K. Rowling's overstuffed tale is going to make it as a film at all. Besides, we've all seen plenty of Quidditch by now, thank you very much. Mainly, Cuaron makes Rowling's story into a movie, with a film's attention to character development and pacing, using the book merely as source material, doing for Rowling what Kubrick did for Steven King with "The Shining" and Coppola did for Mario Puzo with "The Godfather."

Curaon, who is blessed with a very Mexican eye for magical realism, has also overhauled the look of the film. His Hogwarts is a warren of half-ruined courtyards and dimly lit passageways clinging to a sheer mountainside, as tortured and dangerous as his suburban London is plain. Magic is a matter of fact thing, part of life, and rather less wondrous than in Columbus' treatment. The sole exception to that is the long opening shot when we discover Harry under the covers late at night playing with his wand. (Did I mention puberty is a main theme of both the book and film?) The evil Dementors are brought to terrifying life, and Curaon employs a sort of smearing, stretching effect to the faces of people upon whom the Dementors are feeding. Cuaron also earns major points for making full use of the animated paintings on the walls of Hogwarts (with the hilarious Dawn French perfectly cast as the Fat Lady), and for making the film in general seem lived-in. Hagrid's shack, in particular, with its muddy pumpkin patch, swarms of raucous crows, and grubby interior, looks great. It's not how I pictured it when I read the book, but it just might be better. "Azkaban" was the best of the Potter books so far, and Cuaron's sets, shots, and lighting choices underscore the main themes of the story: puberty's a confusing, scary bitch of a time; and people aren't always what they seem.

One effect of the relentless trimming is that relationships between the characters unfold somewhat differently than they do in the novel. David Thewlis (last seen in Timeline, and as "renowned video artist Knox Harrington" in The Big Lebowski) plays Professor Lupin as a rumpled, sympathetic British boarding-school instructor, much as in the book, but his rage at Peter Pettigrew and his subsequent enwolfening speaks to more and darker impulses beneath the surface than Rowling suggested. Since the film can devote so little time to the character of Sirius Black and Harry's relationship with him, most of the important bonding must take place in about five minutes. Harry's feelings about his parents, ever-present in the books, fade here to the background. Since Harry's relationship with his dead parents, and their connection to the Big Evil Guy, is a central feature of the story of Harry Potter, I miss the development. But for the purposes of this film, that's just not such a big deal.

Some scenes stand out as especially remarkable. The confrontation in the Shrieking Shack pits top-flight actors against each other (David Thewlis, Gary Oldman, Alan Rickman, and Timothy Spall as the rattish Peter Pettigrew), and Cuaron just lets them do their thing. The constantly rocking set, which calls to mind the forced-perspective nightmares of "The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari," echoes the tumult between the characters. Ditto the showdown by the lake when Harry must stop the Dementors killing himself and Sirius Black. Although the acting isn't much compared to the generous use of CGI, Cuaron's handling of the FX-laden scene is lyrical, beautiful, and scary. Other nice touches were the Marauder's Map, some funny interclary scenes with the Whomping Willow, the Knight Bus (with stops called by shrunken head), and some excellent crowd actions in the Leaky Cauldron.

Emma Thompson hams it up as Divination professor Sibyl Trelawney, and her over-the-top comic turn underlines the creepiness of her one moment of actual prophesy. Michael Gambon plays Dumbledore as an avuncular aging hippie, a treatment I like better than the late Richard Harris'. The aforementioned David Thewlis and Timothy Spall are perfectly cast as Lupin and Pettigrew.

All the child actors have grown up and matured. Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson are great as Harry and Hermione, and even Rupert Grint has toned down the Keanu-ish mannerisms he employed in the first two films. With the onset of puberty, some characters are barely recognizable-- Matthew Lewis' Neville Longbottom is about a foot taller than before, and Jamie Waylette and Josh Herdman as Crabbe and Goyle look less imposing now that they're the same size as everyone else. Radcliffe in particular is maturing as an actor, and manages to capture Harry's conflicted inner life in glances, reactions, and understated readings. Cuaron allows the actors to hint at their characters' growing maturity, bringing out confused emotions, halting romantic advances (between Ron and Hermione), and underscoring the characters' growing realization that the world is a complicated place and not even friends will always remain who they seem to be.

While it's not easy to make the case that Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is outstanding cinema in its own right, since much of Cuaron's interpretation depends on having seen the first two films, but within the bounds of the series, Azkaban is by far the best one so far. Children's movies don't get much respect, but this one stands with The Iron Giant, Princess Mononoke, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as nuanced, completely entrancing tales that don't condescend to the viewer.

The only black mark against the series so far: 3 movies, 0 boobies. Get to work, people!

Tomorrow night, Venus will make a transit of the Sun, the first such event in 122 years.

The most recents sets of Transits, in 1761 and 1769, and 1875 and 1882, were cause for massive scientific effort and public interest worldwide. For the 1761 show, the English Royal Society dispatched astronomers to all corners of the globe to record the exact date and time the Transit began and ended, a key step in finding the exact distance between the Earth and the Sun, and from the Sun to Venus. Among the many luminaries who made observations then were Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, later famous for tracing the exact boundaries between Delaware, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, a line we know today as the "Manson-Nixon Line" separating the patrician and cultured Northern states from the toothless, slackjawed South.

The Baltimore Sun, appropriately enough, has good coverage of the event and its history.

If you are lucky enough to be a resident of Europe, Western Asia, or Africa, you will have a prime view of the entire Transit. Residents of the Eastern US will be able to catch the last few minutes of the event. Don't forget to use a pinhole camera, no. 14 welding goggles, or some other device to stave off blindness. Also, please remember not to run with scissors, always wear a sweater if it's cold out, wipe your nose, and for pete's sake, close the door! Were you born in a barn?

A final note. The Reuters news agency, who have been catching a lot of flak recently for how they spin their news stories ("Gazillions of innocent women, children, and puppies perish as US 'captures' beseiged Hussein") are at it again! Although in recent weeks the agency has run stories titled, "Venus to cross the Sun in celestial spectacular," and "Scientists Prepare for Rare Astronomical Event," Reuters staff writer Patricia Reaney helpfully reminds us that the Sun is not our friend with the pre-Transit filing, "Venus crossing of Sun could harm eyes." The only thing that could make this better would be for FOX News to run a story titled, "Solar system mourns passing of Reagan; Venus is the tears of the Sun."

From Crescat Sententia

At Books-a-Million tonight (no, I don't normally go there, but it was next to the wine store), I could not find a copy of The Federalist Papers, though I searched in American politics, philosophy, and the other likely categories. When I asked the store clerk where I'd find it, he said, "Oh, I shelved that yesterday. It's in fiction."

what?

"It's in fiction and literature. It's been declared a classic."

[continued look of skepticism]

"I agree it makes no sense, but that's where it is."

[figures the guy has to shelve things where he's told to shelve them]

Wal-Mart is making changes to its employee policies, starting with a half-assed attempt to hire a few women in management roles. The article is sketchy on details, but this seems like Wal-Mart are pursuing pretty much half a solution to one part of their many problems.

These small concessions nothing compared to what a wildcat strike would accomplish (to the barricades! *sings* "Arise ye workers from your slumbers, arise ye prisoners of want!") Except, of course, that hourly retail employees aren't unionized and the labor movement of the 20th century has done its job and is now guarding its gains, at least where it's not run by crooks.
Even if that weren't the case the old-school labor movement cannot address the needs of today's service workers, who are more replaceable, economically marginal, and diffuse than ever before.

Well, it's good to know that in the absence of a labor advocacy group working on behalf of retail and service employees, a good old publicly humiliating corporate auto-da-fe can make things happen.

Creed have broken up, and the band's members are starting new projects. At least two albums by Creed alumni are due out by the end of the year.

The tragedy of cancer is if you don't kill it, it will eventually metastasize. Then you're really screwed.