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Phoning It In

In April 1986, I was at home in New York, half watching 60 Minutes, the CBS news programme, when a piece came on, called The Defector. It was about a pop star named Dean Reed. He was handsome. He was American. He was singing Heartbreak Hotel and Tutti Frutti and he was doing it in the Soviet Union, and this was only the earliest days of glasnost when rockers in Red Square were not at all commonplace. I'd never even heard of him; I sat up.

Gwen pointed me to this article in the Guardian about Dean Reed, the "red elvis," and it reminded me of Dean Reed, who he? one of the all time great rW threads.

I wish I had more time update my web page with text. I have been enjoying reading about the election and posting snarky sidebar links over at randomWalks. Also, all that Baseball was exhausting.

The Resurrection

The Resurrection
Originally uploaded by david.

Blog this photo

iredsoxny
Originally uploaded by david.

I Love it When You Call Me...

Big Papi
Originally uploaded by david.

45 minutes after the game started, I left work for a twenty mile run. Over my three hours and forty minutes, I got the score from three Yankees fans on the street, two pizza shops, one guy in a convertible on the Brooklyn Bridge, and four text messages from Adriana. I saw Tony Clark's almost game winner at Farrell's in Park Slope while I was taking a Gatorade break. I saw the last four innings with Adriana.

Finn Lives!

Finn Lives!
Originally uploaded by david.

Don't Fight it, You Will Become Your Parents

By the way, how do I go about replying to comments? I wanted to reply to an anonymous parent, but when I hit "send" it was one of those airplane things that just flies around and around the computer and never gets sent. (Do you know what I'm talking about? Smtp or something.)

One of my Mom's student's parents was checking their browser history, they found TeacherTalk and left a comment with a bad e-mail address. My Mom has been blogging, and so we've been emailing more than ... well more than we ever have, partially because of tech support questions such as the above. She's always known about hello, typepad, and she's known about randomWalks since 1999, but she never really understood blogs until she started writing her own. I don't think this is unique to blogging, since reading and writing are complimentary skills.

Anyway, my Mom has been reading the archives. Her favorite posts are the same as mine - Serena Williams on Law & Order, and Defending Derrida. She never knew I read Derrida, even though she's the one who sent me to Oberlin! If anything, I read him by osmosis. More importantly, we've got things in common that we may have never known.

"Remember Diana Rigg?" my Mom asks. We also used to take pictures of the TV. "Also, what's that cactus called?" "The Crown of Thorns," I answer. "We used to grow that, I loved it."

I love it too. More recently, I received a scolding email for my Seabiscuit review, "Even my Mom, who couldn't care one way or the other about horses, loves this book." My mom writes:

to set the record straight, Joanie and I were OBSESSED by horses when we were growing up. We went to horseback overnight camp two summers in a row (a month each summer) and went riding every single saturday morning in either Golden Gate Park or along the beach---which would be deserted. I still remember the thrill of galloping along the hard part where the waves had packed the sand.

Who knew? I'll leave my original review for posterity, but please consider the record straightened. I'm eagerly anticipating her post about rooming with Laurie Anderson in college. Also, she once had pet rats.

Dead Finn

It could have been worse, it could have been 19-18.
Originally uploaded by david.

George Bush / Issues

"After standing on the stage, after the debates, I made it very plain: We will not have an all-volunteer army," Bush told a rally in Daytona Beach.

George Bush rarely slips up, he just says what he's really thinking. Rock the Vote has been all over the Draft issue, and I applaud them for it. It's clear to me that Bush is going to reinstate the draft if he wins - why wouldn't he?

Many of my liberal friends, including almost all of my co-workers, pause before they identify the key issues motivating them to vote for John Kerry - this is a sad byproduct of the campaign for Anyone But Bush. For me, it's because of his strong stand on the Death Penalty. Over at Deadline, Katherine wrote about Scott Turow's analysis of the issue. Basically, Kerry doesn't want to alienate pro-death penalty voters in the middle, and Bush doesn't want to lose anti-death penalty voters on the right.

Angela points out that "...keeping the death penalty out of the mind of the public makes the work of abolitionists so much more difficult. It really provides more evidence that people are afraid to have any real dialogue around this issue." I think a strong third or fourth candidate's presence would encourage all the candidates to be more honest, but America can hardly generate two acceptable Presidential candidates, much less three, four or ten.

Knight Potter! Harry Hasselhof! Wizard Rider!

Every once in a while one of those Internet rumors comes along (usually courtesy of the UK tabloids) that is just too ridiculous to not report.  The latest comes via The Mirror, which is apparently trying to hint that Baywatch and Knight Rider star David Hasselhoff may appear in the next Harry Potter film.  As completely ludicrous as it seems (and we believe it is), the paper goes on to assert that "insiders" working on Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire have told them that Hasselhoff is "up for a part in the wizard adventure."

IGN just got bookmarked. I was wondering why I saw Lia camped out at the Ziegfeld Theater.

Spoilers!

Which movie is it where the President orders New York nuked?

Defending Derrida

Jonathan Kandell’s obituary for Jacques Derrida is mean-spirited and uninformed. To characterize Derrida, one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century, as an "Abstruse Theorist" is to employ criteria which would disqualify Einstein, Wittgenstein, and Heisenberg.  

With scarcely concealed xenophobia, Kandell describes deconstruction as another of those "fashionable, slippery philosophies that ... emerged from France ... undermining many of the traditional standards of classical education." In fact, Derrida wrestled with central works of the Western tradition, including Plato, Shakespeare, and the Declaration of Independence - none of which he slighted.

Remembering Jacques Derrida, signed by over three hundred academics, is an answer to the patronizing New York Times obituary from last week. You can add your name to the list.

Judith Butler wrote a second, more direct letter:

Jonathan Kandell's vitriolic and disparaging obituary of Jacques Derrida takes the occasion of this accomplished philosopher's death to re-wage a culture war that has surely passed its time.  Why would the New York Times assign the obituary to someone whose polemics are so unrestrained and intellectual limitations so obvious? ... Why would the NY Times want to join ranks with American reactionary anti-intellectualism precisely at a time when critical thinking is most urgently required?

Why indeed. I wish I could sign this letter. I once saw Judith Butler getting coffee in Oakland.

Elsewhere, Judith Zissman posted a picture the New York Times headline, and Caterina pulled out a funny quote from the Washington Post's story: "The lack of fixed meaning in a text did not keep Mr. Derrida from publishing hundreds of books."

Like Angela and Adriana, I recommend Kirby Dick and Amy Kofman's documentary on Derrida, which our friend Kirsten Johnson also worked on.

Let's do it again

iredsoxny
Originally uploaded by david.

It's that time of the year, when fans of the 24 teams that aren't in the playoffs fall into line and start rooting for the Red Sox. Last night some friends and I returned to the Riviera, which must be one of the loudest places in Mahattan when any play - even a called strike, a passed ball or a bloop hit - goes the Red Sox way. Here's an eight second video (from my phone) of the celebration when Manny Ramirez forced in the first run of last night's game with a walk (i.e. he did not even hit the ball).

If the Red Sox go all the way this year, I'm afraid the Riviera's glass facade along Seventh Avenue is going to shatter.

Unbought and Unbossed

Republican Bill Manger wants to represent Long Island in Congress. His TV ads end with the catchy tagline "Unbought and Unbossed." Hmmm... Where have I heard that before?

Apprentice Notes #2

"It was those two old, Jewish fat ladies," she told teammates. "Really. They were like the pinnacle of the New York jaded old bags."

Jennifer Crisafulli made anti-semitic comments on this week's episode of The Apprentice, and was fired from her day job after the episode's air date. This is just two weeks after her career at Douglas Elliman seemed to be skyrocketing. The google cache of her profile shows upwards of ten million dollars in property. Today, her broker profile is no longer available.

A quick gance at the news reveals national and local media coverage. No commentary at all on Stacie J's firing or the blatantly homophobic comments made by Chris.