Stop The Spirit of Zossen 2.0

WHAT: Focus Film’s Clooney vehicle based on Brit Martin Booth’s 1990 novel ‘The American’.

WHERE: A state-of-the-art multiplex theater nested in the heart of an Imperial City suburban enclave teaming with massive defense contracting presences and nearby government installations.

THE AUDIENCE: Theater 45% filled, average age probably mid 50s, three or so younger couples in 20s to early 30s.

THE REACTION: A few sniggers and guffaws erupted during the movie (more on that below) followed by sustained booing. Yes, sustained booing from a 50-60 year old demo in mannered D.C. One woman in her later 50s yelled out ‘I want my money back !!’ She got energetic applause and more laughs. People jeered the credits, muttered to themselves, and left mocking it all.

We doubled back to the theater for other reasons and caught the last 5 minutes of a late showing. This younger crowd, mostly couples in their 20s, didn’t boo. But they did laugh at and during the ending. Departing they cheerfully chatted ‘wow that was really bad’ and so on. Perhaps it’s true, the young can shake off unpleasantness more easily.

ALL OF THEM TOOK THE HIT FOR YOU, DEAR READER. It’s really awful. And no, MSNBC, Clooney is not the American James Bond.

‘The American’ fails on so many levels, it’s hard to know where to begin. It’s really three movies: (i) about Clooney (“Edward”), a vague assassin without institutional or professional context; (ii) a bizarrely reverential tribute to a dull blue Fiat auto; and (iii) a sketchy romance between Edward and the winning Violante Placido.

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Everyone knows books and long form reading in general are in a slow fade. The Chronicle of Higher Education asks if the book will survive:

Three years ago, Weidenfeld & Nicolson launched its Compact Editions series of classics such as Vanity Fair and Moby-Dick. The publisher explained that they’d been “sympathetically edited so that most of them are under 400 pages,” but that the cuts “in no way detract from the spirit of the original.” Surgery simply rendered such classics less “elitist.” Dripping drollery in The Times of London, critic Richard Morrison opined that truth in advertising behooved the publisher to adjust titles as well, perhaps to Vanity Off-Peak Fare, and Mini-Dick.

Any wonder that last year, two cheeky University of Chicago undergrads with literary parents—Alexander Aciman and Emmett Rensin—published Twitterature (Penguin), boiling down classics of world lit to 140-character bone? Here’s their speed-read version of The Epic of Gilgamesh: “@UrukRockCity—Great. That’s it. I’m leaving Uruk. My best friend in the world is dead, all because the gods couldn’t handle our bromance.”

The signs of readerly surrender pop up everywhere. Princeton student Isia Jasiewicz, reviewing a book for Newsweek this summer as an intern, admits in her last paragraph that she bothered to read only the first 10 pages. Linda Nilson, director of the Office of Teaching Effectiveness at Clemson University, posts a piece titled, “Getting Students to Do the Reading” on the Web site of the National Education Association, advising: “Look for readings with graphics and pictures that reinforce the text, and pare down the required pages to the essentials. The less reading assigned, the more likely students will do it.”

Science fiction author Neal Stephenson is putting his action where his fiction is. He’s created a company to help re-invent the book for our fractured times.

[He's] been credited for inspiring today’s virtual world with his novel Snow Crash. Now he’s launching a startup himself: Subutai, where he is co-founder and chairman.

The company, based in Seattle and San Francisco, has developed what it calls the PULP platform for creating digital novels. The core of the experience is still a text novel, but authors can add additional material like background articles, images, music, and video. There are also social features that allow readers to create their own profiles, earn badges for activity on the site or in the application, and interact with other readers.

One can’t help but be encouraged that Stephenson is trying. Still, we wandered through a largely empty Barnes & Noble this evening, marveling again that the vast majority of items on display were really products, so-called ‘books’ in masquerade. As the Chronicle article cited above observed, the book’s demise is separate from the sideshow of ebooks vs. bricks and mortar/Big Box-Style Outlets. Imagine all this same ‘merch’ enriched with shouting, braying, linking, tweeting multimedia technology ala PULP and Subatai or some other approach.

Scary innit?

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Here’s a hope that everyone enjoys the weekend. That you, Dear Reader, can tune out the media led fixation on the ankle biters downtown.

It’s an unholy brew. A rootless media seeks any form of self-generating narrative for lazy producing, story selection, Nielsens and click throughs. And the Movement? It follows centuries of Counter Enlightenment impulsive tradition using public theater to create false narratives and communal identity. All fodder for the 15 minute news cycle and shallow tweets.

We chose to visit Annapolis to start off the weekend. Sure, it’s long been a tourist trap. And like nearby D.C. it’s self-satisfied, bloated and keenly aware of its wealth. Still, it’s not far up Route 50. The Severn River retains echoes of boating memories many decades ago. Plus, traffic to the overcrowded (and even more overbuilt) Delaware beaches too daunting. One notable thing – young men in their twenties lounging around the Naval Academy entrance wearing the old ‘Blackwater’ paw t-shirts and Oakleys. Without irony, too.

Where were we? Oh right. The high school play downtown.

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‘They’ used to say (incorrectly) the Wehrmacht never did winter offensives. ‘They’ now could say (correctly) Democrats can’t do offensives at all.

Facebook burps and random tweets send allegedly professional politicians and paid talking heads into hissy fits. Rightists play Democrats and much of their AgitProp infrastructure like a piano. Badly, of course.

Democrats seemingly learned nothing from 2001-2008. None of them, individually, their AgitProp allies or their (moribund) institutions demonstrate any understanding of ideological politics in today’s disassociated society of ambient social connections. It’s doubtful they will learn in time to forestall Revanchism. Such congenital failure suffocates aspirations and hopes of all non-Rightists. In retrospect 2008 was indeed a fluke, made possible by economic catastrophe, a failed presidency and timely story rather than anything inherently ‘Democratic’.

A feckless Administration addicted to expediency of course undermines meme cohesion and focus. Still, it’s no excuse for others purporting to be our Thought Leaders and Meme Givers to act like it’s still 2005 and the Movement controls all branches of government. Yet that’s exactly what they do every day, hyperventilating over a random Facebook burp or tweet airball. One insignificant flick and an entire news cycle is given to the Rightists on their terms on their issues. Over time, the cumulative impact is that what began as some trivial Rightist gesture dictates framing of our simulacra of consensus reality. The hysterical overreactions cascade like a signal chain in an amplifier until what emerges is nothing but distortion.

Democrats and their AgitProp allies truly don’t understand that the Movement could never have coalesced and reformed without their essential – and hapless – complicity.

Of course the economy is in ruins. A failed war is inescapable. We’re not unmindful of the political terrain. Faith in government competence and legitimacy at historic lows. Not all Democratic AgitProp allies are addicted to victimhood. Some focus on identifying new candidates and new funding for the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. Until their time, we are presented a false choice. In the end, whether on the more gentle accomodationist curve of this current Democratic clique or with the spasmodic inchoate raging of the Rightists, we eventually arrive in essentially the same place. One just offers the scenic route.

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If you remember . . . had fun this weekend with old friends.

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After playing with a new iPhone 4 for some time here’s our take. It’s a wonderfully designed portable multi-media device that needs a new phone. Phone problems go beyond the well-known antenna flaw.

We got ours just by walking into an Apple Temple and simply asking for it. They handed one over, no wait time, no pre-order. Apple and AT&T still usually quote a 3 weeks wait. We upgraded on the spot because of Apple’s 30 days no questions asked return policy. Like everyone, we’ve seen the antenna stories.

Our earlier iPhones worked well with AT&T in the D.C. area, unlike NYC or SF. This new phone drops calls more often than wide open Redskins receivers. It’s not the ‘kung fu’ grip antenna problem, either. Even when a call is going well with the phone sitting untouched on a table using speakerphone, it drops a call more often than not. Untouched.

At home, earlier iPhone 3 series reception with AT&T was flawless. Now, walking down a hallway 10 feet will drop a call repeatedly. Moving from one end of a room to the other will drop a call. No matter how delicately one holds the jewel-like device. Rocking in a rocking chair (seriously) suddenly dropped a call with the first rocking movement. All while holding the phone awkwardly with just two fingers on the top and bottom to placate radio propagation deities.

It’s one thing to read frustration like this in say Engadget comments. Experiencing it another. A call to AT&T technical support confirms we’re near 4 network towers. The iPhone 3 series worked flawlessly with them. Out of all the phone calls we’ve made on the new device, maybe 5 didn’t drop, requiring a call back with the other party saying ‘that was weird’. Whether to a landline or cell. We’re careful holding the phone to avoid antenna problems.

It’s a shame. The other functions of the device are beautifully executed. Build quality as always is excellent. Web surfing using WiFi is noticeably faster as well. The pixel density provides a truly crisp, readable display. The camera, Face Time, and hi def video capture are easy to use.

AT&T says they can roll back to the earlier 3G phone (but not give back unlimited data, naturally – no surprise). One AT&T customer service rep earlier tried to talk us out of trying an upgrade, urging wait for a new iteration. He was right. Who knew?

Well, Steve Jobs, we tried. We are, after all, a 99% Apple shop across the board. The sole hold out? A second Xbox 360 at home (first one, RIP due to Red Rings of Death). Just didn’t feel the magic or revolution.

What’s your reaction? Have you had similar experiences?

[UPDATE] Apparently our experiences above, like Tugg Speedman in a POW camp, are a ‘rooster illusion’. An August 5th survey tells us all that the new phone means *fewer* dropped calls. Odd given that Jobs himself admits that the new 4 drops more. We just didn’t realize what Jobs’ ‘only 1% more calls dropped’ meant in real life: a functionally unreliable device.

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A beautiful and finally tolerable day in the Imperial City. Call them ‘surrender monkeys’ all you want, but when Pierre L’Enfant in 1791 began designing Washington, D.C., he’s not the one who decided the capital should be on a swamp. Here’s an open thread.

We’re tuning out for a day or two all the click-baiting, ankle-biting meme chihuahuas (Gore and Portland, this person is or is not a racist, etc.) in favor of a new book. “The Windup Girl” by Paolo Bacigalupi. We recommend it.

People seem to think Bacigalupi is the next William Gibson (after all, it says so in the blurbs). Perhaps he is, but so far we find him closer to Murakami’s excellent Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Also highly recommended.

Reviewers suggesting it’s a new ‘Neuromancer’ aren’t completely off. That book’s now oft quoted “The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel” doesn’t convey the richness of “Windup.” And Murakami’s textured (and structurally clever) “Hard Boiled Wonderland”, although not as well known to most Amerikuns, while of the same early 1980s era as Gibson went beyond just ‘jacking into the net’ and explored some of the biological themes fully developed in “Windup.” What we get with “Windup” is a more richly created dystopian world.

Is Bacigalupi another Vance as others suggest, a ‘world builder’ without peer? That’s for another post, perhaps. “Windup” is a great read filled with wry observations about a future with mindless American-Davos consumerism/branding triumphant. Dystopian to be sure but always entertaining and at times witty as well.

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The question came about 5 minutes into utterly trivial ‘Salt.’ Americans grovel before a larval Counter-Intelligence State (a term the deservedly respected, former DIA veteran John Dziak so aptly used for the Soviet Union). America’s tolerance for militarization and threat-addiction is so high now it shrugs off formerly toxic-level dosages without notice. So why can’t it make a good spy movie?

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One central conceit of Chris Nolan’s movie ‘Inception’ is that an idea, once planted, is unstoppable. No direct spoilers below – unless you follow links. Providing spoilers requires more cognitive commitment than just watching it.

‘Inception’ is supposed to pass for ‘high concept’ science fiction these days. Some compare it to Fellini’s ’8 1/2′ – seriously. (Bonus points if you knew before Googling where CHUD came from). Remember all those now tenured faculty launching careers ‘revealing’ hidden subtexts in the first three Star Wars movies? Same deal, geekier arena.

People playing the pundit game these days are no different. We remember leaving ‘Attack of the Clones’ with a national security type and spouse. The spouse — whom you may even read on the Interwebs now — was crestfallen, bemoaning all those years studying the VHS tapes . . . wasted. So one might want to wait before writing off the ‘Inception’-Fellini meme. It may have a long half-life.

If it’s not Fellini, what is it? It’s doing good business for one thing. The movie boasts a remarkable 85% ‘fresh’ rating from Rotten Tomatoes. New Yorker critic David Denby doesn’t buy it. We’ll let you decide. Despite the ads, this movie works as well on a big screen now, Cinemax later or even computer monitor.

We do think Fellini Chris Nolan is on to at least one thing. A week ago we read this review declaring ‘Inception’ to be a calamitous pitch of Clooney’s self-admiring ‘Ocean’s 11′ meets ‘The Matrix’. Clever, actually – and funny if you remember Buck Henry’s pitch meeting in ‘The Player.’

The relevant point? The reviewer kept mocking Di Caprio as ‘fetus face’. Childish. Dismissible.

So it’s a week later. In a movie theater surrounded by people who subscribe to AARP magazine (we ignore the direct mail). They really do reach and turn off their cellphones when told to do so before the previews, etc. Then the movie. And from scene one all we could do was keep thinking ‘fetus face.’ Scene after scene. Until final credits. You see, an idea, once planted really is unstoppable. We were . . . incepted, if you will.

Someone could just say ‘Hey Stiftung, check out this queen of hearts, yo!’ More succinct. Ten bucks saved. No fetal imagery. If ‘Inception’ is the price for at least one future greenlit good sci-fi movie ‘to cash in’, a reasonable down payment. A shame it couldn’t ever plausibly be compared to ‘Satyricon’.

But did you know you are being incepted now as you read this? You *will* remember this exact moment years in the future. When someone turns to explain the deep subtexts within the first ‘Inception Trilogy’. You will wake up. In America.

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