Cobb

Derelict: The Coolest Thing I Seen In Years

Gourmet Films Presents "Icons & Derelicts" Part 2 from Gourmet Footwear on Vimeo.

Stoned in Dearborn

It's difficult for me to think of another example that demonstrates the pathetic state of affairs in multicultural America than this. 

 

The video has entirely too much Obama in it, and I would advise you to skip forward to the 12th minute to get to the crux of the dilemma. In the scene that unfolds, you have what is essentially a reactionary police department which is responsible to politics which supercede the law. The result is an Orwellian interpretation of what causes public danger backed by a pleading for more police.

I do hope that this incident receives more publicity because I really want to know what kind of surveillance was placed on the missionaries, and under whose direction was it established. There is something very sour in the higher-ups of the municipality. It might very well end in Dearborn itself, because it certainly doesn't issue directly from Obama, but somewhere in the Michigan government is a smoking interest whose consequences are perfectly obvious. Mob rule wins if it's the right mob. 

All of the underpinnings of this fiasco are expected and predicted by my Peasant Theory. This is a perfectly squishy democracy under the rule of illiterate populism as contrasted with the expectations of a righteous republic under the rule of clear and present law. 

Wonking in the Agoras

Wonking in the Agoras

---

Framers Wonk and Polish. 

Hunting & Gathering
i find it difficult to imagine being able to Wonk alone although many might be
drawn to it. since Credibility is established by the Weight of Arguments, one
would expect some slick purveyor to be able to spin something nebulous into
getting lots of approval. 

but the way the voting process works, things should be weighted in favor of
Partisans working in cooperation, thus Wonking should favor those able to
deliver votes and those able to respond to disagreement with their
Arguments. this drama should play itself out in the Agoras. 

the concepts that stick in my head are the PeanutGallery and the YakPool.
these are roughly equivalent - hell they are equivalent i just can't tell which
name i like better. the point is that they would be the equivalent of what all
webchat is today - unmoderated, free-for-all flame-baiting masses of blather
trying unsuccessfully to gain concensus. 

however, it is often in the fray where provocation works best. an original idea
will stand out every once in a while and people will say 'hey - what he said'.
so it is this grass roots thrash (MoshPit - that's the other name i had for it)
where consensus starts. WarpandWoof. OK how about if we have several
free-for-all Agoras (WarpAndWoof, MoshPit, YakPool, PeanutGallery). There
any thread may generate Gravity (yeah) and Citizens, especially those
unattached to any Partisan group, can generate Facts & Premises, construct
Arguments and have them attached to Issues. 

But in order to attach an Argument to an Issue there must be some level of
consensus. so let's set an arbitrary threshold of 5 for Attachment. i think
that the threshold for Attachment should be relatively low, or it should vary
depending on how many Arguments are already Attached to an Issue -either
Pro or Con. (let's not forget TalkingPoints/amicus briefs). 

OK so Arguments generated from the GrassRoots (the collective free-for-all
Agoras) are Floated by individual Citizens. I'm in the YakPool talking current
events and the subject of discussion is Clinton's sexuality, I post something
and an option on my Reply Message Form is a checkbox to Float this as an
Argument/Premise/Fact. I can Float any previous comment I own. 

In come the Citizens who are a-Wonking. Thread by thread they can take a
quick survey of Floated comments. A comment floats for a week. It can Fly
or it can Sink. These are then constructed and Attached to Issues. That's
(part of) Wonking.

Polishing

The other part of Wonking (beside the Hunting and Gathering described in
post 7) is Polishing. it seems to me that an Argument must have its own
integrity before it can be Attached, because once Attached to an Issue it is
subject to WeighIn. There may certainly be some gems which just work
straight outta beta, but most would probably need some spell-checking etc. 

So the well supported Argument should stand to be Polished a bit all at the
behest of the Citizen who originally Floated it. certain Premises and Facts
should be associated with the Argument, or they can be considered
'axiomatic' - a kind of take it or leave it Argument. Onced Polished, an
Argument still belongs to the originator, but there may be some quid pro quo
negotiated in the Polishing. 

So the Polished Argument is given an official number and Version and
submitted for Attachment to an Issue. It is likely that all those who show an
interest in the Issue will have a say in Argument Attachment. the trick is that
with non-controversial Issues how the unpopular Pro or Con might get
attached (oh wait, there's a lower threshold if there are few significant
Arguments). 

The Attached (Polished) Argument is then ready for WeighIn and announced
somehow. Citizens may then WeighIn on the Argument and its relative
Significance to the Issue is calculated relative to the
Weight(Agreement,Reputation,Intensity) it receives from Citizens as
compared to other Attached Arguments.

 

Lux Et Veritas

For the past couple of days I have been entertaining the odd notion that I want to learn Latin. My young nephew has impressed his teachers and so they have sent him off to the state championships. I figure that I'm the only one in the family who might care enough to correspond with him and keep that light burning. But also I am thinking of the crypto fun I might have by employing a basic facility with it. As I keep breaking my fingertips on the bass guitar, I may come to admit after 30 years that I'm just not going to be good enough to play in a roadhouse band, but my language skills are still strong. 

And in another way, I find more reasons to be disturbed and cranky with people. This past week gave an interesting combination of impressions on me as I went to San Francisco. I am beginning to see myself, as I know more people who die and disappear every year, closer to old and more alienated from youth. And while I still often entertain paramilitary and doom thoughts at the unraveling of sense in society I'm a lot more likely to become a monk than a horse archer in the coming dark ages. 

So I look to Latin as a possible last language of logic, expecting perhaps that the same sort of wonderous diction I find in audiobooks narrated by Simon Prebble might be found somewhere in what remains of the Latin literate.

The prospects appear dim.

The only Latin Meetup groups are all about salsa dancing, and the few local professors I looked up seem hopelessly devoted to useless arcana. Outside of perhaps being able to read what all that Lorem ipsum stuff is, I am coming to believe that Latin is more dead than a little. Alas, my father bequeathed me this disease. O curiosity, you're killing me.

 

Gaming Update

It has been a while since I've done much gaming, but now that I'm a bit more secure and deeper into my new discipline, I'm creeping back. 

I am certainly a snob when it comes to the games I care about, and they are reduced to a fewer few. Even given all of the new stuff announced at E3 for this year, all I need for the next year, I already know.

Old Dogs
First and foremost, let me make one crack about three people including myself. Thin ice. The other two are Adam Sessler and Peter Windsor. Windsor, who was as far as I knew in my introduction to F1, the premeir gadfly when it came to wrangling soundbites from pit row just before the race. His attempt to start an F1 racing team flubbed and now he seems to be behind the mic again, but way off the broader mainstream - which aint particularly broad here in the states. Will Buxton, that young whippersnapper has taken over at Speed. And similarly, Blair Herter has pushed old Adam Sessler aside in an unfortunate succession. Did I sense that one coming? Hmm. Well, the other crap on G4 TV is crap and Herter has seemed to ditch his ambiguously gay asides as he stepped up. He still seems genuinely more happy (especially when it comes to Batman) about games and gamers, then did Sessler and the new stage and new vibe is established. Morgan Webb is, by the way, irreplacable. She is the perfect straight man, which is probably going to become more evident. The change may actually be welcome in retrospect because it's obvious that the n-year running joke about wierdness behind the curtain of X-Play is running thin, ALTHOUGH, the parody of getting the Skyrim sword was the best ever. And so where will Sessler land? Windsor, I don't care. Sessler should organize the best gaming podcasters and replace the young snarkers. Gaming crit is damned difficult, and Sessler is literate and deeply experienced. Nobody else comes close - even the MMO Report should be dropped and let Herter and Webb get shiny on the air, with the occasional faces that were at E3. 

So there it is, Sessler should ratchet up to Machinima / Satellite Radio quality, his own 90 minute weekly podcast with a new partner or three. That would be the only force to be recognized. If he shows up on another TV channel, I won't watch. Speaking of which, it is only through a podcast that Sessler can let his snark through in which he gives a more righteous savaging of what has recently been hinted as 'brutally honest' reviews on XPlay. As soon as he said 'brutally honest' we knew the game was going to be shite, but he still has to smile for the camera. No more. Go PG-13 Adam. Hell, go R. Now's the chance.

Watch_Dogs
The unqualified hit of E3 was Watch_Dogs. Once it happens, we will wonder how we lived without that style of gaming for so long. I wondered all along. I mean I didn't want to do LA Noir, and I got nice and bored with Alan Wake's flashlight after a dozen hours. I like an urban sandbox where I have badass powers, but not necessarily strictly destruction. While it's very difficult for me to choose between Mercenaries 2 and Saints Row the Third where that was concerned, the more realistic games were more problematic. GTA Four, for example. It did the narrative perfectly and gave me a character I liked to be, but... Stealing cars and shooting people and running from cops, it's so tired. Somebody give me a sword or some other weapon. Which reminds me, the *next* Assassin's Creed will be the best one - when Ezio is in today's time, and then next when he's in the future. But Watch_Dogs is going to be the first one to do this super nice with cyber powers of the sort we kind of expected from Splinter Cell Double Agent, but more nicely got from Conviction ..yet.. downloading all that cyberbadness to a man in the field is badass. Can't wait.

Future Soldier
The best thing about GRFS is that there is a cover system and you can go indoors. Basically that was the difference between Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon. Ghost Recon could only do outdoor battles, covering large distances in big maps, which made more sense finally when vehicles were added. Rainbow Six added the cover system and made a giant leap forward in setting up marking targets and blasting doors. My preference went to R6 for the close quarters and multiplayer - loved blowing up those slot machines and the control was marvelous. Meanwhile Gears was owning the outdoors (no matter what MW folks said). Speaking of which, I have to say that Battlefield 3 has really become the game that I want to play instead of Modern Warfare.

Call of Duty was best, best, best, when there were huge 16 on 16 battles with WW2 weapons and people used mics. Something went wrong and now the battles seem cartoony without being a fun as Halo. The objective battles on Future Soldier are the right combination with the sprinting and cover system as good as Gears (better in some respects) and the necessity for teamwork and using mics. Anyway I think I'll stick with Battlefield 3 DLC and Future Soldier. Yes I'll have to play the new MW Black Ops 2, but...

Forza Horizon
Forza realizes that racing games are social? Well duh. I can't tell you how well it may actually work, but I kinda like the idea that there might be car clubs rolling in that game.  That will make it a winner - the idea will be inevitable and I think it's going to work. You can't beat Forza control, and although I still prefer Codemasters Grid for damage and realism, Forza is just as perfect. Yes I'd try one more Project Gotham, but what we need for all of these is Next Gen stuff - especially for the Clancy brand.

Next Gen
So let me say what I want to see for Next Gen, now that XBox 720 rumors are all out.

1. I don't give a crap about 3D, and neither should anybody. I won't pay extra for it at home. It's crap - just like those 5.1 systems they were selling 8 years ago.

2. The XBox controller is one of the greatest UI inventions ever. They should Arduino the hell out of it. If it wasn't Microsoft, that would already be a $50 million business. 

3. Multi-voice recognition is more important than multi-gesture recognition. That should be the focus of Kinect tech. Siri will know this and it will be a big differentiator. 

4. Everything depends on three things. XBox, Playstation, AppleTV. I cannot imagine that Nintendo does any settop integration - and too bad, but. they want to play with kids. Fine. 

5. Microsoft cannot brand streaming content. Forget about it and just be a platform. Metro suffices. Netflix was a huge win. Now get Time Warner and MGM and those guys before it's too late. Speaking of which..

Whomever partners with Amazon in the living room wins. This is so bloody obvious. If Amazon makes a set-top the market is going to stay interesting and volatile for another five years. So even though Apple could own music and movies, they are nowhere near getting sophisticated PC and console gamers. So yes, there is yet another chance for a Netflix/Amazon/Tivo entry into the market where Roku and Vudu are still minor players. This is the future, not MSNBC.

Hell, even Marvel and Ubisoft have a shot. Who is going to learn first from cinematics and the Next Gen console on how to make more mergey content gamey-movies? OK that's all.

 

 

The Snobs Do Not Retreat

There is an idea that youth culture holds some meaning, or that it is even compelling. I know that this is an illusion but there are times when I forget. And so I have picked some difficult hobbies to remind me that the snobs do not retreat. One of these hobbies is history and historical fiction. And since I have given up my public spiritedness for the time being, I am trying to put what may be the illusion of democracy at arms distance as well. 

I spent some time with my daughter yesterday, reminded that she very much enjoyed that fraction of 'Man on Fire' that she was able to stay awake for the other night. She told me that the film reminded her of how much most movies 'try to baby me'. My little girl remains mine, but not so little is she. 

History is the story of power. We tend to forget that and behave as if people are as nice as they appear. American political partisanship is clear-eyed distrust of the other guy and projection. I have a little to do with that as possible, retaining the bad rightward habit. We pretend that nobody today is as bad a Gengis Khan. We pretend that smrgols don't do man in the middle attacks. We forget about the sewers beneath our suburbs, that shit does indeed roll downhill. We forget these things so that we can enjoy the little that we do understand, giving ourselves the comfort that our perceptions of the various melodramas presented for our amusement are true intellectual gifts. 

What are we to make of the society that allows us such conceits? 

I told my daughter that the British of Empire seem to know everything merely because they were connected to those who knew quite enough. When a first class berth on the P&O was what it was, perhaps they did know. Some of us pretend that we know of liberty better, but that may be the fool's luxury afforded to us by snobs who simply don't desire to mix it up with us. 

And so is born a new rule. Snobs do not retreat. They are only beaten down and retire from the field with some honor. 

When you know what you know, you have no reason to retreat. You have to manage your knowledge and your face. This is the lesson I will be teaching my daughter, because she admitted that she, like I, doesn't like to take anyone's word for it. She wants to know everything, and she hates the idea that she doesn't. Except she acts nice around people who don't. I'll try to teach her how not to - how to insist on what she knows to be true no matter what - how to survive the ostracism of the peasant class. How not to look too good nor talk too wise while being both. 

I think that it is a private enterprise - like knowing your own and daily improving, yet hiding your kung fu. Once you know. Know that you know and do not retreat. 

Facebook = AOL + Tentacles

'Forest Boy' is what German officials are calling a 17 year old who claims to have been living in the wild with his father for the last five years. He has been in Berlin for a year since walking there on a five day trek, but still nobody can figure out who he is or where he's from. I found this out from the Guardian UK.

Well, that's not exactly true. I found this out from my Facebook feed. But when I clicked on this interesting story, Facebook blocked my path to the Guardian and asked me to confirm that I was adding a 'Guardian App'. Why? Because Facebook is ethical and they want you to know that when you click on something they can trace, that they are tracing you. And why do they trace you? Because they want to deliver targeted advertisers to YOU. Hmm. That business model seems vaguely familiar.

There once was a guy named Steve Case. You might have heard of him. People like me couldn't stand him and were amazed that so many millions would live in his walled garden. We wanted freedom, he couldn't deliver. But, he was a zillionaire and he had enormous clout in the world of online. Check out this story from Business Week in 1996:

Dressed in trademark khakis and open-collar shirt, Steven M. Case is the star attraction at the PC Forum. This annual March gathering of the digital elite, held at a resort near Tucson, is a combination of a three-day free-form think tank and schmooze-athon where the latest trends are dissected and, in the corridors or on the golf course, deals are hatched. The first time Case attended, a decade ago, he was an unknown 27-year-old entrepreneur pushing a chat service for owners of Commodore computers. He was, he recalls, lost in a crowd obsessing over which microprocessor would dominate. ``I felt like I was from another planet.''

Now, everybody wants to be on Case's planet. The ballroom is packed when he gives his opening-day speech, and wherever he appears, a knot of reporters, industry heavyweights, and wannabes gather. At this moment in high-tech history, Case is the man whose opinion is sought, the person everyone wants to make a deal with.

For it is Case's America Online Inc. that has shown how to turn a community of cybernauts into a mass market and how to successfully turn a computer network into a new medium for entertainment and news. With more than 5 million customers and 75,000 more joining every week, AOL is the most potent force in cyberspace.

So powerful, in fact, that the two greatest forces in computers and communications--Microsoft Corp. and AT&T--have handed Case lucrative deals aimed at boosting their own cyber plans. In exchange for pushing Microsoft's Internet browser software to AOL's millions, Microsoft has made an unprecedented concession: to bundle AOL software with every copy of Windows 95. Under an agreement with AT&T, the phone giant will provide a link to AOL from its new WorldNet service. That gives AOL an in with 80 million AT&T customers being offered WorldNet on a free trial. (Rivals Prodigy Services Co. and CompuServe Inc. quickly announced they are negotiating similar deals with Microsoft, and CompuServe on Mar. 3 signed a deal with WorldNet.)

``He's done a masterful job. Steve Case walks on water as far as I am concerned,'' says Roger B. McNamee, a general partner with Integral Capital Partners, a venture-capital firm. Indeed, given all the experts and rivals who have predicted AOL's great fall, its continuing rise is sort of a miracle. Ever since 1993, when the company launched the bold drive for market share that has brought it to this point, naysayers have predicted that Case would falter and AOL spin out of control.

So what is that? That's Zuckerberg. And who are the Facebook people? They are the AOL people of today. All of Zuckerberg's technology accomplishes one thing, which is to harness more millions of people in the same way AOL did for the previous generation. I don't know why it took me this long to realize it. But it won't change me, or my use of Facebook. I like what Facebook does for me, which is to keep me in touch with 600 or so folks who occasionally show up there. There is no way in hell, however, that I will click on anything in Facebook, and if I do, I will remember to make it counter-intuitive, ie, when Z's digital minions do their affinity probes, I'll be sure that it's spam. On the other hand, there's almost nothing I buy because of advertising so I'm rather immune anyhow. 

--

I spoke to my prom date the other day. I haven't seen her in many years, probably once since 1997 when I moved back to LA. She's one of the up-out-of-the-way, which is to say that she has the kind of penchant for privacy of black American Old Money, although I'd have to check with Lawrence Otis Graham to see if she's still in the Boule. At any rate, she was prepared to lash my face with an undercooked fettucini when she heard that our prom picture from 1978 was up on Facebook. I had to protest that it was our pal Stewie who put it there, not I. Besides, my fro and glasses are so huge nobody would recognize her or the Minnie Ripperton -style Baby's Breath in her hair. Nevertheless, I was reminded of her and a number of other people I know who would rather rather attend a Klan rally than put their information on Facebook.

Many of them happen to be in the dark business, so that's perfectly understandable. If you have certain security clearances, you cannot be promiscuous with anything you know or do. Facebook just invites fly-by-night attention. But others perceive something sinister about it - even though the way they pass around smiley emails defies even half-baked security policy. 

How do you use Facebook and what do you care about what they track?

Ellis Cose: The End of Anger

Ellis Cose - 18 Years Ago

(from the archives - Jan 1994)

Finally read the book. 
Definitely a precise one to put next to Ishmael Reed's "Airing Dirty Laundry"
Cose is a well measured writer and not prone to excess. The matter of fact
way he writes this book almost makes me think twice about the title. He
seems to be one that wouldn't even care to use that one. Of course, 'rage' is
necessary.

He comes from the perspective, it seems to me, of a man who you might
think of as a buddy of Earl Graves in that there seems to be no indication
or question on his part that the middle class and the upper middle class
as traditionally defined is the place to be, and quite naturally that 
respectablility comes from that, period.

His employment of examples such as this well recognized journalist or
that highly successful (in wall street journal terms) attorney is quite
the last person who should feel any anxiety about their place in society.
These types tend not to be extraordinarily articulate about their existential
dilemnas and some of the dialog left me somewhat unmoved. Nevertheless,
the degree to which their case is made left me with an unshakeable 
conviction that these folks are indeed suffering. This is not some relative
suffering which could be called a disaffection, rather it is an intense
anger and dread - a haunting feeling - they possess that clearly goes
to their core as employees and often spills over into their personal life.

As he spells this out clearly, it becomes more and more evident that a
number of myths Americans hold about the workplace are simply false and
that the passage of blacks through this maze makes it clear.

Cose does a fine job of separating this from a general spiritual crisis
I would have expected this book to be about, but this is very much about
how blacks feel as *citizens*. Cose names names, quotes figures and goes
around behind what less painstaking posers have passed on as fact. He 
takes no moral high ground rather speaks politely about the lack of
intelligence normally intelligent people display. This is a particularly
effective way to deal with people whose influence doesn't go away. For
example, he deals with the popular assertion that blacks in the middle
and upscale classes should be responsible for black criminals and that
racism will not go away until (justifyably) until white folks are not
afraid to walk the streets. This held by Koch, who goes on to justify
white fear of black men.

(largely borrowed without permission)

Moynihan read James Q. Wilson into the congressional record as he said
that the "best way to reduce racism... is to reduce the black crime
rate"

'Koch contend that "eventhous who feel deeply about discrimination 
against blacks...feel estranged from the black community" as a consequnce
of "black violence." According to Koch's [and Jared Taylor's] calculations
blacks, who make up 12% of the poplation are committing 45 percent of
violent crimes. And since "for the most part only maels are committing
the crimes of violence...roughly 6% of the population is committing 45
percent of the crimes." Even if one accepts Koch's statistics, one must
judge his conclusions perposterous, for it would mean that every black 
male in America - the 6 percent in his equation - is engaged in acts
of mayhem. In other words, even black lawyers, accountants, teachers
and salesment who put in long hours at work are apparently getting their
jollies (during their lunch breaks, one supposes) by cracking hapless
innocents of the head or "wilding" in big city parks.

It is true, as Koch indicates that blacks account for about 45 percent
of those arrested for America's violent crimes. But it is not true that
most black males are vicious. FBI statistics show that blacks were
arrested 245,437 times in 1991 for murder, forcible rape, robbery and
aggravated assault. The country's total population then was just under
249 million, including nearly 31 million blacks and roughly 15 million
black males. If we assume that each arrest represents the apprehension
of a separate individual, blacks arrested for violent crimes made up 
less than 1 percent of the black population 1n 1991 - and just under
1.7 percent of the black male population (less, in fact, since the
aggregate figure of 245,437 includes [arrests of] females). In other
words, less than one-tenth of a percent of the population - not 6
percent - is committing 45 percent of violent crimes. These numbers are
not completely accurate, since the FBI population base is somewhat
smaller than the entire US population, and since it is not correct to 
infer that thoses arrested in any one year make up the total population
of violent criminals. But they are accurate enough to show the inanity
of implying that most black males are sociopaths.

To many thoughtful people, certainly to many blacks, arguments like 
Koch's seen not only absurd but fundamentally unfair. For they suggest
that discrimination against an entire race, if not exactly sanctioned
is acceptable because of the sins of a relative few. They also suggest
that blacks who do not commit crimes bear a special responsibility for
those who do.

...These days, no serious thinker in the field of criminal justice would
propose that the answer to violent crime among whites is for up-and-
coming white executives to make crime prevention their special mission.
Nor would anyone propose, for instance, that until the murder rate
among twenty-something whites was made equal to the murder rate among
seventy-something whites, all young whites deserved to be ostracized
and scorned...yet that is precisely the the approach many reputable
people are now recommending in regard to blacks. And it is a most
percnicious proposition. To contend that we should penalize all members
of a racial or ethnic group because some members are engaged in egregious
behavior is to enter into a pact with the devil whose evil has no end."

(end of borrowing)
That's one of my favorite set of paragraphs...

Cose inputs his own experience in a manner that doesn't pander, very much
to his credit. Unlike some other writing commentators on the scene, Cose
seems to keep his wits about him and doesn't extrapolate his own experiences
to project psychological states onto would be perpetrators and victims.

Cose handles with some wit and steadfast aplomb a number of scenarios we
have all (at least in this forum) heard of and dealt with...

Affirmative Action, redlining, Stephen Carter, Shelby Steele, the next
generation(s) of racial gridlock, Marge Schott, Derrick Bell, the glass
cieling. But most critically and importantly, Cose lays to rest the myths
that race doesn't negatively affect blacks who are not 'underclass' and
that 'things are getting better'.

mo' later

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
[email protected]                                                    harambee!
[email protected]
                   'When I was in the torture chamber, my thoughts were fixed
                    on my own campaign for liberation and not on what to me
                    seemed the idiotic fixations of my oppressor. Thus all
                    their questions and comments are obscure to me now.'
                                                          -- Samuel R. Delany

 

 

Prometheus

My mind is only half blown, but quite a film. And now I know what I like about films most. Make no mistake, Prometheus is a great movie, but not the greatest.

Last week I watched a video of two guys deconstructing the extended trailer of Prometheus, Ridley Scott's latest film. And it reminded me of the fact that no matter what kind of sparkly dialoge you put into a film, it is still mostly a visual medium - and filmmakers attend to visual details more than anything, especially when they speak about greatness. And so from what a couple of college kids could speculate by freeze framing through a trailer, about 50% of this film was revealed. 

So I still have to say that Inception is the best movie of the past few years. Why? Because it has a main plot, several subplots, a backstory and three or four things that go wrong in the protagonist's plan for which he must improvise. That's what I like in a film. 

Prometheus starts off with a decent backstory, and subplots, but then lets them fade into short scenes that resolve in a few minutes. For a crew of 17, there sure isn't a whole lot of real human interaction. So in that regard, Prometheus compares disfavorably to Event Horizon, my favorite space horror and even to 2010. (Panting in space-suits has been done, Ridley). But all of that may fade in significance with a second viewing. 

Spoilers ahead. All the things that make Prometheus great lie unrevealed in everything you can guess about this film. So seeing it is extremely rewarding. 

Reiteration of My Biggest Props to Obama

Stuxnet, baby!

I'm going to make a prediction about the future, like in 10 years of Barack Obama. Homeboy is going to be fat, stinking rich and chilling with Bono. Barack Obama is going to be a painful, awful reminder to the professional class of whiners, exactly how power moves and shakes. He will be as large as Bill Clinton. Do you know why? Because he's crafty. 

I don't think I'm ever going to be able to hear that Beastie Boys song again, and not think of Barack Obama. Dude has an ego on him worthy of the Sphinx at Cheops. And it is from that perspective, that I take a latent quantum of solace from him from a black man perspective. I like him in the same way I once liked Ed Lover and Dre - absurd, ridiculous, confident and rollin'. I wish I loved him like IceT, but he's a bit too much like Ice Cube. Anyway, if you don't get the metaphors, here's my point from a black existential point of view.

There used to be, well there is for my generation and cohort, a term called 'The Bogard', and it works rather like the metaphor of Chris Rock pretending to know kung fu. You know it's bloody unlikely, but if he's bold enough to say he does, maybe you don't throw the first punch. It's loud screamy talk that works. It's the Cheney Bus. And just like Eddie Murphy in 48 Hours in the honky tonk bar, sometimes you have to just bogard your way through whatever life throws you. OK for you younger folks, just think in Chris Tucker in Rush Hour. When the black guy gets away with it, you cheer. Barack Obama got away with it, big time. He won the lottery and at a certain level, he made it work. Is he actually presidential? No. Of course not. But there are certain aspects of his genuine personality that would inevitably work just perfect given the opportunity. And, he has sat in the big chair for about 4 years. That grey doesn't come from the stylist alone, and there is a nation of millions that can't afford a complete wackjob in charge.

In other words, and to use yet another movie metaphor, if you're Brad Pitt and you're going to make 'Troy' it's in everybody's interest to make you look like you can actually leap 10 feet in the air and chuck a spear faster than a Nolan Ryan fastball. In other words, the people of America who work for the President are duty bound to give him their utmost, and when he gives the word, then the beast is unleashed. You might question his judgment from time to time, but you've got to admit that his crafty ways work under particular circumstances.

So how do you make noise about diplomacy and kick Iran's ass anyway? You get crafty, and Barack Obama gets my highest props for doing just that. Now that it's out there that Stuxnet was America's doing, (and I really ought to check out the blather at Schneier). I have to wave the flag in the air like I just don't care. The Islamic Bomb is the world's number one problem. 

Now it must also be said that the consequences of this brave attempt to pursue war by crafty means will eventually backfire - even if we want the Oliver Norths of the world to carry on the American purpose. And it is from that perspective that I stand with Bush's geopolitics of blatant Army action, without giving a rats about what other countries think. The covert is always going on, and so what - but I find it difficult to believe that when there are 20 Seal Teams, that they are all as good as when there were 'six'. Sometimes you need an armored battalion or two. 

But I don't want to give any impression that I'm hedging what is without question the single most impressive thing I think our President has sanctioned in his term of office. The hunt for Bin Laden was old policy... Yay Olympic Games.

 

 

So That's What's Up with Jasmyne

I liked Jasmyne the first time I saw her. I can't remember exactly the circumstance, but on another occasion we happened to be in the same place at the same time. It was the end of the seminar and we were headed in our own separate directions but still on the same path at USC's campus. We shared some brief reflections on the event and suddenly she stepped into character and gave me an honest opinion. Most of the time ordinary people have to step out of character to blurt out some truth, but with us writers it's different. We have a mode that we go into where we are compelled to say exactly what we think and to describe exactly what we sense. We get all documentarian, and we know that we have to or else we'll be stuck with the burden of handling the truth alone. 

As soon as she did that, I had one of those very rare impulses which tells me, hmm, I could be with this woman. And so I tilted my head and jumped into character with her all the time wondering when I might see her again. It has been at least two years and I haven't seen her, nor have I been looking for her, but I do remember the moment. For some reason, Iyanla Vanzant was mixed into the moment as well. Either I had just met her or was just about to meet her. 

At the time, I was most definitely on the downslope of my media career. I had concluded that I didn't want to be spending my spare time climbing political and social ladders in order to make some impact on.. well that whole edifice of black edutainment of which Steve Harvey is King and TVOne is the institution of choice. Other people want it more than me, and I know how ethically difficult it is to navigate those pathways. I must confess that this is a Talented Tenth dilemma I have dealt with before and I essentially see no future in it for me. So I needed to stop dabbling and be serious about what I truly want to be serious about, which is my actual career. 

Jasmyne is for real in the dimensions of a few of my other black media pals, Jimi Izrael, Lester Spence and Jennifer Longmeyer - of the most well known. In particular, they have genuine hearts and are in no way the sort of opportunists who prey at the hopes of the black Americans. These are people who walk into a room and see individuals, not 'a people in need of leadership'. I am proud to call them friends because I know how rare people with charismatic talents of the sort those three possess and wreck havoc in today's media climate. I would summarize it this way. There are not many people on this planet who can get onto the national broadcast media and not make a fool of themselves, and fewer still who can make a positive impact. Do not be fooled, that is a death-defying business. As one of Cobb's Rules states, never underestimate the intelligence of people in power. The long knives are everywhere.

Now I'm going to say something that I believe most people would think I have no right to say, but it is true about me in a way that Michael Jackson once sang, I can't help it if I wanted to I wouldn't help it even if I could. But I do not care about the personal pain of individuals. I'm a stoic, and I have always been prepared to be one. Like Spock, perhaps, and certainly as a writer as I have described above, I possess a certain emotional detachment from the sort of personal emotional drama that has grown into the minds of America. And it is that facility, plus my age and experience that finds me moved ever so slightly (enough to write this post, but not a whole lot more) by the tale of Jasmyne Cannick's that I think is going to make it's impact felt on a lot of people. You see I have had a best friend die of AIDS back when people basically died of AIDS. And I have had a brother die before his 30th birthday. I've gone through the process. And since 07, it seems, almost every year, someone close to me has died.  

So for most of my adult life, since the age of 30, I have had the experience of dealing with grief and much of my personality is tempered with that. Who died and why? That's what I want to know. And I say that most of human activity that counts for something requires that grown ups are dealing in life or death decisions. Everything else is just shopping. 

So let me jump then, directly into the drama that Jasmyne had to deal with. Here, she speaks of a turning point in dealing with an ex-lover who was withering away in a hospital:

What I did find out was that apparently her right leg basically went numb and I guess her mom had stopped by to visit her—because she was keeping herself basically hidden away from everyone.  Her mom saw her and took her to the nearest hospital—again under the illusion that her daughter was suffering from “stress-related” health problems. 

At the hospital my friend never told them her status, so while they were wasting time testing for this and that, she just let them knowing all along what was wrong.  Why?  Because she couldn’t let her mother, her “up in the front pew, every Sunday church going, sanctified and holified” mother know.  She would rather die first, and was well on her way to doing so if you ask me.

Well, sorry, I can’t play that game and I told her that I was going to tell the doctor and the nurses immediately.

She almost had a heart attack. 

I had to explain to her that they couldn’t tell her mother anything because of patient confidentiality.  I had to explain that they weren’t going to treat her like a leper and that she wasn’t going to be shipped of to some remote area of the hospital and left to die alone. 

She didn’t believe me. 

If it was me, I'm hard pressed to say that I would remain engaged. I would struggle with it. People who are ill-prepared to handle the truth - even of their very own condition? Is every such death a slow suicide? 

I am reminded of Sex Panic. There was a clique of gays who were so enamored of their own sexuality that even knowing that their riotous ways were a high-wire act, they would rather be so engaged until death, rather than grow old, boring and unsexy. But at least they had the bold sort of stupidity that understood the consequences. Self-conscious lemmings are, in that way a bit better off - they leap from the cliff with a 'Whee'' rather than a 'What?'. Jasmyne roping in her friend halfway down the cliff from a position of strength is admirable from the close up perspective. A life, after all, is a life. But how complicit is the person who runs with that pack of lemmings?

One of the reasons I excel at my solitary pursuits is that I understand the value of what I do, whether or not anyone else does. There are a number of parts of my life that simply need no ascent or recognition. This is not unusual - many altruistic people express the same conviction, with the exception that their actions are pointed to individual intervention. "If what I do makes the difference in just one life, then it's all worth it.", they say in defense of their seeming folly. So there is a carefully constructed edifice of thought I've been building here at Cobb and elsewhere and it has led me to certain unavoidable conclusions. One of these is that is that grim outlook. 

I'm glad that there are lucky people. There are lucky people just like there are exploding stars, and the effects of the inevitable gift of chance gives us all a reason, like the birth of a nebula, to consider the eternal forces that mock our plans. But for the most part, the Universe remains constant with rules in effect that can be ignored but not avoided. As a stoic, I align myself with that which cannot be avoided, with the constant in the mainstream of the forces of life. And these alignments tell me that saving the life of a fool can make a lucky difference, but 99% of the time it is merely an act of individual choice. No monumental significance, no butterfly effect. Nevertheless, we humans are social creatures who are profoundly affected by certain types of drama. Awaiting Taleb's or Ariely's perfect term, I call them mental illusions. Like optical illusions, they are tricks and traps that lead us to believe that the true meaning of something is what we immediately perceive. 

There is no way to percieve Jasmyne's heartbreaking quest as anything but noble. Unless you're me and you have the habit of jumping into the character of a writer who is compelled to say something else. Something not obvious but evident. Yes, I am the grim faced crank who plays video war games for entertainment. I am the hardcase who has figured out how we all go soft in peacetime, how in this new wonderful Twitter-filled world of Instagrams, nobody is showing photojournalism of screaming naked Vietnamese refugees any longer. 

Everybody wants to be a lifeguard, because every once in a while, you get to save the drowner up close and personal. But...

Obligatory Seriousness on the Zombie Apocalypse

So I hear that a naked man was found lying on top of and eating the face of another naked man in the middle of a highway in Florida. The officer who found them demanded that the eater get off the eatee, who by the way was already dead. The eater stood up and charged the officer who needed to shoot him twice. If none of this sounds bizarre to you it is because you understand the concept 'zombie', for this is what zombies do.

The funniest movie in the past 10 years is Zombieland. It narrowly edges out Snatch, but that's another story. What I find compelling to the point of perhaps 500 words, is the extent to which our popular cultural producers have prepared American peasants for the Zombie Apocalypse. There are excellent television dramatic series, first rate videogames and scores of movies playing out the scenario in our collective addled brains. The best movie of the sort would be chilling 28 Days Later followed on by the hilarious Shawn of the Dead. We're all infected by the meme. 

I keep hoping that our so-called rational atheists would really come up with some logic that they might use to persuade us all of 

LQP-79 is scientistic meme. We peasants have been prepared to believe. 

What's your favorite zombie movie?

Happy

What it feels like to be me.

These days I am thankful for all of the people who, despite my willfulness or seeming indifference, have pushed me in directions I didn't necessarily want to go. I know that I am mostly what I wanted to be because I have spent so much time in places I didn't want to be. All of those places gave me a more complex life, but none of those places was home. Today, I am home. I am home with my family and I am at peace with myself. But I miss you all, as I usually do knowing finally that you all have your own lives to live; all the small stuff that takes up our time - that I never liked talking about anyway. 

I have completed, at long last, the journey that led me to writing. I have not emerged as a writer, per se, but as someone with a sense of how everything fits together. I was fortunate enough to have the kind of youth that put two things together for me, a sense of self and a sense of what I wanted to do for work. So I never had to do much searching for those two things - only to get in touch with people who appreciated them the way I did. I had a headstart with my family who loved and appreciated me for myself, and I was fortunate enough to amble into Xerox who had a clue as to the kind of work I most enjoyed. But what was missing for me during the eight years out of highschool was any sense of how ideas and writing worked in the world and what it meant to know things - how to be worldly I guess. There seemed to be a conversation going on about America, about life with winks and nods and references I only obliquely understood and wanted desperately to live and feel. It was like half-understanding the dialog in a Woody Allen movie. Yes, I thought, I think I'm like that expression and I don't know how to have that conversation with anyone. And so I had to begin writing so at the very least, I could have that conversation with myself. 

It took me all of my life thus far to develop that sense of how ideas work in the world, and I no longer feel as if I have to expend any efforts to be philosophical. I have arrived at a comfortable plateau of something akin to wisdom and accomplishment. And while I expect that I would be a bit too self-indulgent, I am at the "I could die happy if I never did anything futher" stage, as far as that goes. I know enough things so that I am no longer a slave to curiosity, not so much dragged behind the wagon in shackles as comfortably sitting in the hay bales. 

What lies before me is living and working as ends in themselves, rather as means to the end of achieving enlightenment. I believe I will find a new kind of satisfaction from things I no longer need to put into perspective. I more clearly see the virtue of those simple pursuits. It gives me such great pleasure to be able to give cover to those so dedicated. 

As ever, I am a defender. Well, as I have been in fatherhood and as a big brother during the first part of my life. As a young man, I was all about me. But now I am more thoroughly some sort of sheepdog with that kind of inviolable sense of purpose, if not duty. I still like going out beyond the treeline and finding the bears. 

I am also a witness - a story teller and an explainer. It is my gift and the one I will give more often and freely. I will do thing in life and in work because I cannot cook. I can't talk about baseball and I can't run for 15 miles, but I can tell stories and talk a blue streak about something I know. I can answer questions and tell you the moral of the tale. I can tell you how it used to be and maybe what it's supposed to be. I can use my words and be a comfort. 

I think I am on my way to being a bit more selfless, or perhaps I am just anticipating what little I'll have left for myself in a few years with three kids in college. There's a bit of mystery around that corner but I hope to negotiate it reasonably, if not reasonably well. 

That's about it. I wish people I knew didn't die before we had another good meal together, but people die anyway. I feel sad about the fact that there are so many people I have known that I never will see again. I never will know who they really were except for what they seemed to me at the time - when I probably wasn't paying that much attention. I will go on unsatisfied that we didn't have all the transcendent conversations we might have.

Every day gives me another opportunity to fulfill the roles I've accepted. Dad. Architect. Writer, Entrepreneur. I will be more present in the moment and more focused on the now. There will not be so much of the complex implicated future in my occupied present. I will be available. And I intend to use my body up, and use my mind up, and use my life up on my way to my grave - to express it fully and not hold back so that I will make my impact felt while I'm here. 

So if you are wishing me a happy birthday today, I say thank you for thinking of me. I'm thinking of your part of me and telling you that my happiness today is part of your doing. It feels pretty good out here at milepost 51. 

Courtney Goes To Prom

The Man With the Horn

As Black As A President Gets

Back when I was a baby, there was some controversy over the Irish Catholicism of Candidate Kennedy. I didn't participate in that sort of thing, obviously, but I heard enough about it so that it was a big deal. Eventually, Kennedy was shot, and so finally was his brother Robert. I suspect that if I read whatever the most notable Irish newspaper in America at the time, I would hear all over the editorial section how blatantly anti-Irish it all was. And the chorus says 'huh?'

I do read the headlines from The Root every day, and they serve to remind me of a number of things. Primarily however they remind me that the American Left is at odds with itself with regard to its multiculturalist principles and priorities. That comes out as frustration with its racial narrative and the actual way that successful ethnics express their power in America. 

America is a melting pot, but only the Civil War made it hot enough to melt Africans into citizenship. The Civil Rights Movement, often interpreted as a grass roots revolution, demonstrated a different kind of heat that melted glass ceilings and second-class citizenship. But between you and me, it was the triumph of Thurgood Marshall's legal practice and that of his amicus partners.  I've always expressed my interpretation of the progress of the African in America as one of human rights to civil rights and continuing on towards social power. But I am rather convinced these days that there are only civil rights in law and the rest requires old fashioned clout of the sort that is never arrayed for the masses outside of revolution. In other words, the only people who get 100% Civil Rights - the only kind of rights there are, are the rich and powerful. Everybody else gets a gentleman's C, and as such they follow the prerogatives of class, education and general human fitness. Nevertheless certain aspects of these rights and privileges accrue through the example of those who amass social capital, of which African Americans have a goodly share, and quite frankly have enjoyed since society girls started dancing Uptown. You could ask Sir Duke or Marion Anderson if they were still alive. 

None of that changes the fact of the Black Power Struggle which always and everywhere refused the very idea of assimilation. America is no melting pot to them, but a lumpy salad and they like it lumpy, with a particularly tart flavor of relativist salad dressing called multiculturalism. But everybody knows a black olive is fundamentally different from egg whites... 

You must keep this in mind when reading contemporary accounts of the complaints of the so-called 'African American' and discussions of 'race' attending such debate. I was reminded of this starkly last week as I tuned in to some of my old favorite reggae albums, notably that of Steel Pulse. Their music provides a very useful insight. 

 

I won't belabor the point of the following lyrics:

They took us away captivity captivity
Required from us a song
Right now man say repatriate repatriate
I and I patience have now long time gone
Father's mothers sons daughters every one
Four hundred million strong
Ethiopia stretch forth her hand
Closer to God we Africans
Closer to God we can
In our hearts is Mount Zion
Now you know seek the Lion
How can we sing in a strange land
Don't want to sing in a strange land no
Liberation true democracy
One God one aim one destiny

Except to point out that they come from an album entitled True Democracy. If you ask a certain type of black American if they are patriotic you will find that they are, contingent on America's ability or willingness to produce True Democracy. I leave it to your curiosity to determine what degree of multicultural salad dressing that is, or more pointedly if there is sympathy with Marcus Garvey, Franz Fanon or Black Liberation Theology. 

That is a very critical question that must be pointedly raised when certain assumptions about 'the' black polity's satisfaction with the purported black agenda of Barack Obama. I understand him very well to be exactly the sort who like me, loves to play the dub version (without lyrics) of that Steel Pulse song, (yes it is very popular). Unlike me, I happen to think Barack Obama would enjoy tweaking our democracy towards the 'True' in service of a lumpier multiculturalism. 

The Washington Post's editorial by Frederick Harris reflects the disappointment anyone in search of 'True Democracy' must have with real political power in America. Him say:

After winning office, such race-neutral politicians don’t normally embrace issues and positions that black voters might prefer. Instead, the imperatives of reelection take over. To maintain their winning coalitions, these politicians usually need to govern in a racially neutral manner as well. (Black Americans understand this: In the 2008 ABC News-USA Today-Columbia University Black Politics Survey, nearly half of all black respondents believed that African Americans must play down their racial identity to get ahead in the United States.)

Obama has followed this pattern. During the 2008 campaign, the most significant moment when race hit the national stage was when controversy broke out over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, forcing Obama to deliver a much-heralded speech on race in Philadelphia. During his presidency, racial discussions have been largely limited to his reactions to unexpected public debates, such as the arrest of Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. and the shooting of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin.

In theory, these two episodes offered opportunities for Obama to discuss reforms to the criminal justice system — an issue he’d raised early in his campaign — but instead, he limited his response to tamping down potential racial conflicts, then quickly moving on.

I take this complaint as one typical of the racially minded who can never be satisfied that America is talking enough about race - when the fact of the matter is they themselves can never shutup about race. 

But I saw all this coming back when Obama proved his charm to the American electorate years ago. All of his black politics were a fiction, and then he made all black politics into a fiction - both the traditional and the newly opportunistic. Because it was all about Barack Obama, not about any real continuation of 'The Struggle'. Nevertheless, Obama played the right background music, gave fist bumps onstage and did those things that suited the styles of the revolutionaries and radicals. A suit he wore very well. I believe my characterization of him was 'Barbara Boxer in a black man suit', which is to say a typical Lefty American with no real loyalties but to the prerogatives of Left rhetoric as usual and win, win, win, elections. His agenda was indistinguishable from that of John Edwards basically until Shepard Fairy made the famous poster. And then he went on to raised more money in his campaign than any man in American history.

I understood, as much as I found Obama to be disagreeable, that he would not paint the White House black and that he would fit, one way or another, into the President Suit - that giant robot that says Made in America and Leader of the Free World with the stars and stripes on its chest. And in several ways he has done so admirably. But some fraction of his black electorate has reason to be disappointed in themselves for following a racial line that turns out not to be the doctrine they were expecting. And thus they have to be asked about their definitions of True Democracy.

Well actually they really don't, because if Barack Obama ain't black enough for you, then perhaps you take blackness not only too seriously, and in dubious directions. But the real news is that the next US President of African descent will have much less to prove about his blackness or the color of his skin indicating something about 'race relations.'

You see, the Civil Rights Movement is over. It is as over in 2012 as the Civil War was over in when those society girls were getting their Charleston on up in Harlem. We are fast approaching the day when all Civil Rights Movement veterans will be as dead as Thurgood Marshall. Perhaps Steven Speilberg or Clint Eastwood will direct the movie that has the last word on Thurgood. I'd like to see that movie.  And if the idea that it won't be Spike Lee makes you uncomfortable - well then you just peed your own pants on that one, brother. And every day we will bury with another layer of abstraction those stories that retain their racial purity, as if only Africans can tell the story of Ocean Hill - Brownsville, only gays of Stonewall, only Chicanos of the Zoot Suit Riots. Because it will be America's history, and Americans will only tell themselves the stories that they feel comfortable with. That's not because the truth doesn't matter so much, but because race doesn't matter so much.

When the truth is told, that's what America wants.