Nothing Was Delivered

We have a weird political system in America. And without a doubt, the US Senate is the strangest of the bunch. One particular issue is the fact that each issue gets two votes. The first is the procedural vote. Basically this is the vote that allows the bill to come to a vote. The second is the “real vote”. This allows weasely politicians to allow something to become law while still claiming that they voted against it.

So it’s the case with things like the Patriot Act that Republicans and Democrats alike can come together and vote to allow the worst provisions to endure for another 4 years. Of course, this was the procedural vote that paves the way for this to go on and become law. And damn near every Democrat voted for it.

When the time comes for the final vote, many good “progressive” Senators will vote no, then release a carefully worded statement to the press about the necessity of protecting civil liberties.

It’s all part of the game. But it doesn’t get any less upsetting seeing it happen.

Superhero comics were going through a bit of a crisis when I started reading them in the late 80’s and early 90’s. For the previous 30 years, comics had mostly consisted of heroes in brightly colored spandex fighting villains bent on personal enrichment at all costs. Each issue was a modernized variation on an old Western, with each side wearing white or black.

Eventually, the kids had read those comics started growing up, and they demanded that their comics grow up with them. By this time the stories started to reflect real world that doesn’t dress protagonists up in bright colors to make it easy to tell one side from the other.

As a superpower, the US had been acting like an 80’s comic book hero. We were often dragged into impossible situations. Our actions were ambiguous. Actions that many in the US see as good, or at least as defensible (especially by those in the largely white, upper-middle class power structure that controls both political parties) were seen around the world as bullying at best. It was hard to say that that we were every doing right simply because it was the right thing to do.

For the last decade, though, we had one yardstick to measure ourselves against. Osama Bin Laden was something truly rare: an unambiguous bad guy. He was practically a cartoon supervillain. For once, and unfortunately at a terrible cost, the US held the moral high ground by any measure. We should have realized that the true test to was get as far away from him, morally, as possible. We had the chance to prove ourselves his opposite.

And we blew it. For the past decade we have taken what could have been a an opportunity to rededicate ourselves to being a force of good in the world and have instead allowed our nation to become a funhouse mirror version of itself. And every one of us is responsible. We’ve turned on each other by allowing our civil liberties to be eroded. We’ve turned on others by claiming the right to invade other countries and treat their citizens as non-entities.

I don’t have much to say about the death of Osama Bin Laden. I wish that he had been taken alive to answer for his crimes, but we all knew it couldn’t end that way. What I do know is comic books. And in comics, once the bad guy is killed, everything goes back to the way it used to be. I hope that is true. I hope that, now that this chapter in US History is over, we can stop being afraid of the bad guy for a bit, and start worrying about our soul.

Johnny Thunders died 20 years ago today. So take a moment to remember one of the greatest punk/rock guitar players to ever turn 2 chords and a sneer into pure fucking magic.

Japan becomes all robot economy.

Missed this by a couple days, but check it out, this is awesome. I’m totally going to print this out so I can keep score for the next 90 years.

My favorite movie series is the James Bond franchise. Sure they have their goofy moments. We’re not exactly talking about the well crated realism of The Wire here. Still, I think at their best they try to at least trick you into believing that they’re somewhat plausible.

Most of the little things I can overlook. The guy who can throw a hat so hard it’ll cut the head off a marble statue? No problem. Christopher Lee building a laser powered by the sun, and run by a machine that needs vats of coolant no warmer than absolute zero, or the whole thing blows up? Sure, why not? But what gets me is that our hero, James Bond, and his team of crackerjack spys at British Military Intelligence never seem to have any idea what these bad guys are doing.

It’s a weird ritual at the beginning of most Bond movies that M calls 007 into his office to brief him on his target. Then Bond makes a show of already having this character’s case file memorized. He knows plenty of intimate details about this guy (and it’s always a guy), like what his vices are and where he vacations. But for some reason something like “he’s spent the past 3 years working on a team of dozens of engineers and hundreds of lackies building a supertanker that can swallow nuclear submarines” or anything to that effect.

So how are we to believe that this great, almost omniscient spy organization can consistantly miss something like this being built in the waters off Sardina:

This is the sort of thing that would cost millions of dollars! Involve hundreds of subcontractors. Use metric tons of steel. Necessitate some of the worlds best engineers. And MI6, the KGB, and the CIA were all caught off guard?

The net effect of years of Bond movies has been that I now see the world’s great architectural masterpieces as potential supervillian hideouts. The pyramid outside the Louvre? Obviously where they are creating an army of zombie/vampire hybrids. CN Tower in Toronto? Can transmit death rays at the drop of a hat. You laugh now, but do you really think that was built just to pull in the rubes? Who’s crazy now?

It’s been over a month since this thing started melting down and they’re just now setting up a perimeter. Is this good news or bad?

The Rolling Stones new track Including Bill Wyman. Covering Dylan in tribute to founding member and eventual road manager, piano player Ian Stewart.

I once heard Keith say that whenever they played Wild Horses live, Stu would defiantly lift his hands above his head at every minor chord. Because there should be no minor chords in rock and roll.

Kind of an interesting article about the history of apartments in NYC, as seen mostly through the eyes of the fabulously wealthy. This being NY Magazine, of course, the way the common folk lived is referenced only insofar as it relates to how the top 5% or so. But the article is interesting none the less, mostly because the New York described seems so foreign.

There are still plenty of people who genuinely prefer living in single family homes, but we sort of take it for granted that to live like that, you have to get out of the city. Many years ago we divided our world up into Urban, Suburban, and Rural, and we don’t really recognize any grey areas. The demarcation we use is density. You get to choose between sprawl and life in a box. In what has been a pretty big reversal, many people are generally moving towards little boxes, and away from cookie cutter ranches and opulent mini-mansions. I’m too lazy to Google the actual demographics, but it seems pretty clear that people of my generation have found the last vestige of rebellion against our hippy parents. We moved to the city en-masse.

Anyone my parent’s age who’s been payment attention for the last 50 years must be pretty cynical by this point. There’s not much they haven’t seen. We’re talking about a generation that was responsible for the Weather Underground, key parties, and Ronald Reagan. If there is a way to piss off a parent, then someone I know must have tried it. From drugs to tattoos to joining a cult, nothing seems to phase these people (unless you’re lucky enough to have a type A parent who goes ape shit about everything). The only thing that could possibly get them is to reverse what I think they see as their greatest achievement: getting the fuck out of the city.

The Baby Boomers didn’t invent the suburb, exactly. But they honed them into a lean, merciless culture destroying machine. Neighborhood shops were bulldozed in favor of Costco’s and Walmarts. Soccer practice became America’s pass time. Kids learned to drink and to drive at approximately the same age.

Even those who don’t plan on moving to Manhattan can dip their toes in the water. A lot could be said, both positive and negative, about the recent redevelopment in some growing parts of NJ but part of the reason that it’s exciting is that these towns are allowing walkable urbanism. They’re creating mixed use areas, where someone can walk downstairs from their apartment and find places to right there, so close you could spit. For years that was a foreign idea in most places. That was what the people who ran these town councils were trying to get away from. They wanted their front doors to open on bland, cookie cutter America.

Now making areas designed so that you don’t need to power a couple tons of steel just to go pick up some Slim Jims is a good idea in and of itself. It’s better for the environment, and it’s safer in a lot of ways (cars are dangerous).  The question is, once the last generation is too old to care, will we have the stamina to keep moving forward?