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Shrek 4: What's Forever For?

Virtually anything with a "4" after it's name is an exercise in disappointment - it's a sure sign of a tradition being carried on too long. In books and films (though not television, where a fourth season often means a show hitting its creative stride), it's generally an idea stretched too thin, characters with nowhere left to go, and plots that feel forced.

So, knowing that, why did I go to Shrek 4, a/k/a Shrek: This Has Gone On Too Long?

I have to admit, it's mostly the trailer. With its scattershot jokes at all sorts of modern, up to the minute trends and refusal to follow the fairy tale formulas, Shrek films were a somewhat subversive delight, the mass marketing of jaded cultural cynicism (a near perfect contradiction). And occasionally - more in the first two than the second two - the randy bits of humor wer enough to overlook the safe, reined in parts, and the fairly threadbare plotting that barely held it together.

Shrek: Forever After has little of the payoff of the others. It's not that the cultural commentary isn't there... it's just clear that no one, especially, tried very hard.(which is especially unfair to Eddie Murphy's still inspired turn as Donkey - all that puffed up showmanship has nowhere to go). But, in retrospect, the latest Shrek doesn't necessarily sit all that far from the others: and perhaps the real problem with the whole series is that the Shrek films have never, ever believed in real magic.

[And though I rarely do this, I feel it's only fair to say in this case, the review deserves a Spoiler Alert. I'm going to bring it key plot points of all four films]

It Will Also Help if He Could Produce A Two Headed Pony. Or, Alternatively, A Unicorn

From a book review we should never have finished reading, Jacob Heilbrunn's otherwise reasonably interesting take on Jonathan Alter's The Promise:

Whatever the case, it seems unlikely that the cautious Obama, a true conservative at a moment when the term has become soiled by its current representatives, will preside over a new era of resurgent liberalism. Still, if he outflanks his opponents, winds down two wars and, above all, revives the economy, he will surely more than fulfill his abundant promise, and the dream of change that his campaign so skillfully evoked.

General Announcement

My cell phone number has changed. I am in the process of updating my new phone (I am now a Crack-Berry owner! Wheeee!!!), but, generally, if you can't find me by phone... it's not you, it's me.

If you need my number (and you don't think you're already in my contacts), please reach out via e-mail. Thanks!

Friday Evening First Beach Peek of the Season

jinb
 

If You Love This Planet... You're Still Helpless To Save It

I haven't been writing about the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico for a couple of main reasons: I'm generally on the sidelines when it comes to environmental issues, and frankly, I have no idea what to do about oil spilling out of a giant hole in the ground. And I don't like to write a lot about what I don't know.

That latter point, though, is apparently no reason not to write something: since the spill "I don't know anything about how to deal with a giant hole under the sea where oil is spilling out" appears to be the main qualification many writers and TV personalities share when discussing it.

There's a profound sense of helplessness watching the oil spill disaster unfold; though I don't necessarily agree with Rachel Maddow's high dudgeon on the subject, I do agree with the point she made last night: there just isn't much known about dealing with the risks posed by oil spills, and we've made a bad compromise worse by "improving" drilling technology so it can be done in deeper, more risky areas.

I share the frustration of many, if not most, people watching the horror unfold: this is a spectacular disaster, one cannot avoid feeling helpless in the face of it, and I wish, heartily, that something could be done to stop the leak and catch the oil before it does serious damage. I do also wish we didn't engage in wildly risky exploration for oil... but I'm also realist enough to say they'll stop drilling when we stop needing it.

And if we really loved this planet... we'd be trying harder to end the addiction to oil. All of us.

So yesterday, into last night, was for me the last straw. Being tired of listening to a rondelay of similar complaints, I just have to point out a few of the things that are just not worth saying and repeating as this mess unfolds... becaiuse someone should. These are my faves:

• "We need to know just how much oil is spilling into the Gulf" - this was Anderson Cooper's refrain all last night, Cooper having positioned himself, yet again, in a warm climate with a tight tee-shirt, to play the impassioned truth teller in the face of sure disaster. He's still my secret boyfriend (it's the t-shirt, and that hair...)... but the sanctimony is starting to grate. So here's the thing: knowing how much oil has been spilling out would be a "nice to know" but it isn't really a "need to know." It's not as if there's some "70,000 Barrel A Day" piece of equipment they'd pull out as opposed to a "5000 barrel a day" alternative" The bottom line is... there's a lot of oil out there. "A lot" covers most of what we need to know, and gives a good indication of the problems we face mopping it up.
• "BP is failing to stop the leak, and the government should step in and take over"... because the Coast Guard knows how to drill for oil? This fairly ludicrous argument, in many forms, suggests that there's some mysterious "expert" person or company who, if we only just brought them in, would magically stop the leak, right now, and make it all better. Talk about Deus Ex Machina! (Yeah, I went to college... I love throwing that in. Best thing I ever learned. Ever.) I've been trying, very hard, to keep my discussions of what the experts think to actually watching experts - which is not easy, these days, when reporters like to do a lot of interviewing each other - and the experts do seem to agree: the people who know about oil drilling and plugging leaks are working on this... and they don't have a lot of good answers. Because... there aren't a lot of good answers.
• "The cleanup is badly managed and going too slowly!" Granting, for a moment, that a massive operation stretching from the Louisiana coastline all the way to Florida (and possibly affecting the entire Florida panhandle at that) is bound to have logistical nightmares... we should remember something more obvious: it's really hard to a) stop oil that's floating in water, and b) clean up oil that hits land. The "let's stop the oil before it makes land" plan amounts to this: wrap the sea in a giant baggie, and either pick up, or disperse it. "We don't have a baggie big enough" only begins to cover it. Second, cleaning up the spill as it hits the coast just won't be pretty. That's especially true in Lousiana's marshland, where the local officials are screaming - literally - that nothing's being done. And perhaps more could be done... I'm not entirely convinced... but there is a reason we call that terrain a "swamp", and it's because the buildup of mud and crud is hard to prevent, and hard to remove... without, well, draining said swamp. And this, really, does back to remembering that Louisiana's problem - aside from being really dependent on, you know, the oil industry - is about what happens when you build a civilization based on living and working in below sea level swampland. There's only so much that can be saved, or fixed.
• "The dispersents are dangerous chemicals! Where's the EPA?" I have to admit, I'm concerned about using the huge amounts of disperents on the oil that they've used... but it does seem pretty clear that pretty much all chemical dispersents are, well, dangerous. So it seems like the choice is... trying to decide which of the dangerous petrochemical treatements is less bad, or don't use them and have more oil issues... or use them, and see what develops. Isn't science interesting?
• "They won't let us build a giant sandbar to protect the coast!" Louisiana officials seem to have two ideas when it comes to public projects: complain, often quite emotionally, about feeling abandoned and mistreated... and propose enormous boondoggle projects to solve their problems. They have been abetted in this, a lot, by having the largest office of the Army Corps of Engineers in their state, mostly because of the (er, somewhat boondoggle-ish) projects of levee building that never seem to end. Last year, they were all about chasing down enormous sums of money to build a new hospital downtown, which they claimed was a way to address the closing of Charity Hospital after Katrina (and which community activitists insisted could be solved by renovating Charity; both ideas being problematic). Now, the President of Plaquemines Parish says he just wants billions of dollars and thousands of man hours to build... islands to protect the... er, islands that are meant to protect the marshes that are not sufficiently protected from oil that's already hittting the coast. Never mind that there probably isn't enough sand for it. Never mind that no one actually knows if it will work. Never mind that it's just the sort of, well, enormous boondoggle that Louisianans seem to know best: lots of federal dollars thrown at dubious solutions which involve enormous amounts of labor and earth moving. Again... you built your lifves and livelihoods around swampland. I'm not saying you should suffer because of it... but there are limits to what's feasible to fix that.

None of this, even the sly sarcasm, is meant to suggest that I think people should suffer, that our fisheries along the Gulf Coast should be destroyed, or anything like the idea that I don't care, deeply, about the terrible events that are unfolding. But what's unfolding there is defined most, and best, by the reality that it is, enormously, out of our control. The problem with oil drilling - and coal mining, and foresting and all the other detsructive things we do to have our way with he planet's natural resources - is that we are fairly helpless in the face of the consequences of our acts. Mines collapse. Forests burn. Oil wells leak. Gas explodes. If we loved this planet... well, we'd love it more and molest it less. But we don't, and we do... and no matter how much some of us want to love the planet more or better... we are, collectively, kind of helpless in the face of enormous natural disaster.s we can't control. The illusion, really, is that we'd like to think we have more control than we actually do. It's no use, really, crying overspilt oil, wailing that someone, somehow should have a way to clean this up. We just don't have that level of control. Realizing we don't, and figuring out how to live with that... much harder.

Morning Morsels: Time To Clean The Metaphorical Fridge...

I keep a lot of tabs and windows open on Firefox; too many, really, which makes things often unstable and prone to crash. Many of them are pieces which I think, abstractly, woud make a good basis for a blog post... but never quite get done. So, since Firefox just crashed - again - this morning, let me try and clear the backlog out a bit:

• I've been interested in the developing narrative around the President, trying to sort out who he is, what makes him tick, and who he has around him. I'm not entirely persuaded that anyone's figured him out fully yet (fans or foes), but I think people are finding pieces of thngs that contribute to the picture. For instance, I think this John Judis piece in The New Republic from a while back, gets at the thing a number of us said all along: there's a class difference between Obama and working class voters that explains a lot. 
• Meanwhile, this, now old, Steve Clemons piece at HuffPo on the problems with Obama's core team of Chicago cronies as his key advisors tends to reflect my feeling about what's really wrong with the White House - too insular and too few people in the inner circle who all think alike. I don't, though, think this explanation really does enough to fully explain all the mistakes the White House has made thus far.
• Via Lambert at Corrente, I was brought to this Yves Smith piece that looks at the internal tensions in the Obama White House from a different angle, namely Lambert's view, shared by many, that the Obama folks are trying to marginalize progressives. It's not a view I share, but the Smith piece is interesting, if a bit baroque in its attmepts to tie all the storylines into one game of 11 dimensional chess.
• I've been fascinated by the still-simmering Ayn Rand revival that bubbles on the edges of our national discourse. While I was living in Boston and spending too much time at the nearby Barnes and Noble, I bought copies of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged... but didn't read them. I still mean to. This article by Jon Chait at TNR is an interesting examination of Rand, and Rand-ian politics on the right. I never figured out what piece I meant to write about it.
• In the last week or so, I've been a little interested - but only a little - in the unfolding discussion of the sales pitches for gold investing that mark a number of prominent advertisers on right wing TV and radio. Like many, I think the ads are kind of decpetive and for suckers... but then, that's advertising in a nutshell, if you ask me. Stephen Spruiell over at National Review tries to make excuses for the attacks being all about politics... but as this followup post at The Corner shows... even rightwing financial advisors tend to look askance at the gold sales.
• I tend to not read - and not write about - Megan McArdle over at The Atlantic; she's not very good, as a writer or an analyst, I find, and her points are usually kind of dopey. Still, knowing the residual anger that simmers over healthcare "reform" as passed by Congress and arguments about whether it will be ruled unconstitutional do generate some interesting discussions. McArdle's piece isn't one of them, but for a minute, I thought about wading in with a theory of my own - which is, mainly that I think the mandate is probably constitutional, but even if it isn't in the form they passed, it wilill be in some other form or fashion. But I can make that a sentence... not a full piece.
• This may be a little old, but I liked the points in this "10 things you don't know (or were misinformed) about the Goldman Sachs case." I knew most of them, and reached pretty much the same conclusion as the author. I also tend to think that Goldman will pay a fine and settle the case without admitting guilt... which will pave the way for further action.
• Jonah Goldberg, in his hacktastic way, makes a fair point from the right about critics of Obama being labeled "racist." I kept hoping for other, better examples to contrast him with... but never really found any worth pursuing, and the piece I would write, really, wouldn't say much more than "I wish we used 'racist' less, and 'predjudiced' more"... and there, I've said it.

Well, that should keep you busy for a while. Kept me busy for weeks. :)

Discriminating Tastes

Honestly, I don't care if Rand Paul has issues with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, or not.

If you asked me what would be guiding my choice in Kentucky - which is not off the consideration set for places I might yet choose to live - the "R" attached to Paul's name would be Reason #1 not to vote for him; "crazy libertarian views on government's role in our lives" is really much further down the list (with "would work with Mitch McConnell on stuff I don't like" well ahead of it).

In all the dudgeon over what Rand Paul might have thought in 1964, had he been a Senator, the hypotheticals stretch to the sky and back... and really, most of it is wildly irrelevant. Which, really, is the difference between savvy candidates and the kind of campaign operatives who exist, mainly, to steer their bosses away from messes like Paul dug himself into: it's neophytes like Paul who don't know well enough to say "Rachel, that question is way too hypothetical for me to get into; right now, I'm focused on the needs of Kentucky, and the people I will represent."

But, you ask, don't you find the idea of government taking a hands-off approach to private discrimination concerning?

Kind of, yes (don't worry... Mom is roundly appalled); but I think Paul has a point, one which defies all our best efforts to deal with - and fail to deal with - racial issues, among others, in our culture.

Um... What Were We Talking About Again?

In the wake of Tuesday's primary results, and a slew of political developments in the past few days (I do, as well, plan to talk about, um, ...Rand Paul? Is that his name?... in a separate post), I've been struck by the resumption of a familiar aspect of the recent deep partisan divides: that there are multiple conversations happening, each largely ignoring the others.

As a lefty, I notice it especially in the right's determined silence, and fleeing from, most discussions of Rand Paul, and more specifically, refusing to touch the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I mean - Christ - even Jeff Sessions (that's Jefferson Beauregard Sessions) came out to say the Civil Rights Act was basically a good thing and Paul was wrong about the regulation of private business. And that's more than most people on the right did.

The relative silence on Paul and his fairly pure approach to libertarian ideals (I even slogged my way through multiple pages of the usually nutty Redstate bloggers to be sure), seems to be a tacit admission that initial cheering for Paul's solidifying Tea Party power was premature. Cooler heads that long predicted Paul was a disaster waiting to happen turned out - sooner than I think anyone expected - to be more than a little accurate.

Saturday Singalong: Wannabe

For those moments when the song remains the same... or pretty darn similar:

• Alisha, Baby Talk. It's hard to remember what those early, heady moments of Madonna Madness were like... not when "Holiday" exploded, but when, say, my sister was fascinated by the newfangled MTV thing and that blonde girl who lay in the middle of the road, rolling around like it was sexy dancing. A number of women were billed as Madonna looking or sounding (there was a moment, hard to fathom entirely now, when Madonna and Cyndi Lauper seemed to be in ptched battle), but none captured Madonna's quality quite as eerily accurately as Alisha, a nice girl from Long Island with an interest in synth driven dance sound. Baby Talk is pretty DIY and low budget... and brilliant  (it's "baby, talk to me" not talk like a baby). And while Alisha had some limited success, it didn't last; mostly because she didn't share Madonna's chameleon like quality of morphing into something else 5 minutes later. But the track remains a gem.
• Le Roux, Bulletproof. In this weird, eighties synth revival that's going on, someone was bound to find their way back to those early Madonna-like moments of a mechanical beat, a bleepy melody line, and a slightly tuneless girl bleating over them... and not wind up with Miley Cyrus. Le Roux has that Madonna-like quality, though this hard as nails song ("this time, baby, I'll be... bulletproof" rather than fall in love) keeps calling to mind, well, Alisha. And not in a bad way; it's a reminder that part of what the eighties were about were about cheap, quickly produced songs that blew away big, overblown efforts (it's why, I think, people aren't entirely remembering that Thriller was, in its way, slightly out of step with the musical trends happening around it) by cutting through the glossy, finished, sheen. It's something Madonna herself ought to do these days... but I'm pretty sure she never will.
• Lady Gaga, Alejandro. After the fairly blah, overplayed Telephone, Gaga's back with midtempo near-ballad, which seems to have drifted to our shores from somewhere near... La Isla Bonita, where the Spanish guitar and percolating samba beat sound cheerfully artificial. Not content to stop there, Gaga also plays to the pan-European Spanglais of ABBA and their heirs, Ace of Base, with the mangling of multiple foreign tongues - taking it so far as to blur "Alejandro" into "Fernando." All that she wants... is another baby, yeah.
• Rihanna, Rude Boi. Not everything is about aping Madge - hard to believe, but true. Listening to Riahnna's latest - when I can manage to not be so bored or annoyed to switch in the middle - I'm surprised at the conscious aping of Beyonce's singing style and subject matter.. Not just because Rihanna has carved out such a strikingly unique position of her own, but because I'm not sure even Beyonce  can make the Beyonce sound work that well, just now (it's a sweet dream... and a beautiful nightmare, all in one). Still, as proof that this is Rihanna's moment, and she can do anything... well, she's not wrong about that.
• Christina Aguilera, Not Myself Tonight. And how... I'm torn putting this in - the song is nearly a Worst Song Ever, partly because Xtina seems to be so desperately chasing the electro-dance sound meant to camoflage vocal weakness... which is really not her problem; it is the problem shared by Madonna, Kylie and a number of others, and Aguilera doesn't so much sound out of her depth as terribly tamped down and limited (much as she did on that go-nowhere single from her Greatest Hits album). Still, the video, with it's arresting combos of bondage lite gear, super sexxy dancing and porny aspirations amps up almost every Madonna/Kylie/Britney image out there approaches near Gaga-like levels of bondage porn as fashionista revenge. Christina's a fighter, so I'm sure she'll get it back together, but she shouldn't try to straitjacket herself into another lady's outfit - she's no wannabe. Nor should she be.

The Sacred Reverence For The Untouchable Veteran

It's easy to make Dick Blumenthal's flame-out yet another chapter in our endless rehashing of Vietnam; I think the interesting thing is that such an approach really did have the feel of going through the motions, and may indeed be Blumenthal's lucky break - the distraction of re-arguing all the pros and cons of the Vietnam era tends to obscure just what it is about Blumenthal's selective approach to retelling his story that's problematic.

We'll see if there's more to the "five deferments followed by enlisting in the Marine Reserves and not being sent overseas" story; it certainly seems... well, convenient that Blumenthal, like so many nice upper middle class men of the era, had a fairly charmed path others did not have. But the more central problem with his actions - the puffing up of his past and recounting a story that wasn't his as if it was - is both another sad example of why lying gets you nowhere, and an interesting question of just why Blumenthal thought he needed to over state his record of service in the military.

On that latter point, I think Blumenthal's move to salvage his campaign gives a good insight into why Blumenthal tried to sell his record as more "VFW" than it actually was; draping himself in a group of decorated veterans, speaking of all the ways he supported veterans, and angrily defending an "impugning" of his record that didn't really happen, Blumenthal probably saved himself. There's just about nothing, right now, that's less assailable than the reverence given to veterans.

And if Blumernthal succeeds in riding sacred reverence for veterans to the Connecticut Senate seat, I think it's going to be that much harder to try and untangle what's helpful, and not helpful, in the near religious fervor around supporting veterans and military service.