Shook the Spot

There's a new blog in town.

BOB DYLAN: THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE

Oh, come on . . .

We all like records that are played on record players, but let's face it, those days are gon-n-n-e. You do the best you can, you fight that technology in all kinds of ways, but I don't know anybody who's made a record that sounds decent in the past twenty years, really. You listen to these modern records, they're atrocious, they have sound all over them. There's no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like -- static. Even these songs probably sounded ten times better in the studio when we recorded 'em. CDs are small. There's no stature to it. I remember when that Napster guy came up across, it was like, 'Everybody's gettin' music for free.' I was like, 'Well, why not? It ain't worth nothing anyway.' "

Anyone want to try agreeing with this?

WAS THIS REALLY NECESSARY?

On the front page of today's Times . . .

They forgot . . .

Dumbfounded
Looking at front-page Times graphic depicting obvious facial expressions.

CASE CLOSED.

 #  hustle hard on the block (1) 10:08 PM

[President Bush] read Albert Camus's The Stranger, triggering a discussion about existentialism with his aides. "He found it an interesting book and a quick read," said Mr Snow. "I don't want to go too deep into it, but we discussed the origins of existentialism."

—"Bush's ranch split over his record," The Financial Times

PRESIDENT BUSH: So I just finished this fucked up novel about a dude who kills an Arab, and is sentenced to death for it!

TONY SNOW: Yeah? Crazy!

KARL ROVE: What kind of crap is that?

BUSH: It's called existentialism, apparently.

ROVE: Existen—what?

BUSH: Ex-i-STEN-tial-ism.

ROVE: Sounds like some cut-and-run bullshit to me.

BUSH: It's all about "the gentle indifference of the world" . . . whatever the fuck that means!

SNOW: Jesus.

BUSH: No, they don't believe in God.

REJOICE!

"John Tierney has the day off." #

US President George W. Bush quoted French existential writer Albert Camus to European leaders a year and a half ago, and now he's read one of his most famous works: "The Stranger."

White House spokesman Tony Snow said Friday that Bush, here on his Texas ranch enjoying a 10-day vacation from Washington, had made quick work of the Algerian-born writer's 1946 novel — in English.

—"Bush reads Camus's 'The Stranger' on ranch vacation," Agence France-Presse

It occurred to me that all I had to do was turn around and that would be the end of it. But the whole beach, throbbing in the sun, was pressing on my back. I took a few steps toward the spring. The Arab didn't move. Besides, he was still pretty far away. Maybe it was the shadows on his face, but it looked like he was laughing. I waited. The sun was starting to burn my cheeks, and I could feel drops of sweat gathering in my eyebrows. The sun was the same as it had been the day I'd buried Maman, and like then, my forehead especially was hurting me, all the veins in it throbbing under the skin. It was this burning, which I couldn't stand anymore, that made me move forward. But I took a step, one step, forward. And this time, without getting up, the Arab drew his knife and held it up to me in the sun. The light shot off the steel and it was like a long flashing blade cutting at my forehead. At the same time the sweat in my eyebrows dripped down over my eyelids all at once and covered them with a warm, thick film. My eyes were blinded behind the curtain of tears and salt. All I could hear were the cymbals of sunlight crashing on my forehead and, indistinctly, the dazzling spear flying up from the knife in front of me. The scorching blade slashed at my eyelashes and stabbed at my stinging eyes. That's when everything began to reel. The sea carried up a thick, fiery breath. It seemed to me as if the sky split open from one end to the other to rain down fire. My whole being tensed and I squeezed my hand around the revolver. The trigger gave; I felt the smooth underside of the butt; and there, in that noise, sharp and deafening at the same time, is where it all started. I shook off the sweat and sun. I knew that I had sharpened the harmony of the day, the exceptional silence of a beach were I'd been happy. Then I fired four more times at the motionless body where the bullets lodged without leaving a trace. And it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness.

LOLROTFL #

PAGING KURT VONNEGUT

Shades of ice-nine . . .

The most common peroxide explosive is triacetone triperoxide or TATP, which is made from two liquids: acetone, the primary ingredient of most nail polish removers, and hydrogen peroxide, commonly used as an antiseptic when diluted. TATP, which can be used as a detonator or a primary explosive, has been used in Qaeda-related bomb plots and by Palestinian suicide bombers.

TATP itself is a white powder made up of crystals that form when acetone and hydrogen peroxide are mixed together, usually with a catalyst added to speed the chemical reactions. But there is no need to wait for the crystals. Acetone and peroxide is “an exceedingly reactive mixture” that can be easily detonated by an electrical spark, said Neal Langerman, president of Advanced Chemical Safety, a consulting company in San Diego.

CAN THE TIMES REALLY NOT AFFORD THAT EXTRA LETTER?

"Lieberman and Rival Near End of Key Primary" #

Rival is running ten points ahead, is he not?

UPDATE . . . Shoulda screen-shot that shit. New headline: "Lieberman and Lamont Battle to the Wire." That's contradicted by some reporting in the color story: "Mr. Lamont, by contrast, spent the day in virtual seclusion, campaigning before dawn and then reappearing for a low-key news conference at dusk outside his office in New Haven." And the Times' penchant for "Rival" over "Lamont" has been noted before.

Romenesko notes that a two-graf item in The Washington Post merited a 22-graf article in the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel. Tori Daugherty, a 15-year-old in Fort Wayne, Indiana, asked the Post's ombudswoman, Deborah Howell, if journalists actually curse as much as Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford in All the President's Men (rated PG, it should be noted). Howell said yeah, pretty much, but "don't think that cursing is a prerequisite to be a journalist." Yes, yes, fucking bullshit. And the News-Sentinel article is more of the same, but read it for this . . .

NACS school board member Ron Felger declined comment about Daugherty to protect the privacy of the family, but he said he could talk about a hypothetical scenario.

“I think anytime a student has a problem, working through the different channels and getting to the source – that’s commendable,” Felger said.

Craptastic.

In fairness, having just seen World Trade Center, one redeeming value of Miami Vice . . .

It is not about 9/11.

ÜBERSOCIALITES

Adjectives and adjectival phrases used to describe the boldface names in the current Improper Bostonian's "Last Scene Here" column, by Jonathan Soroff . . .

arts booster
arts patrons
babealicious wife
Back Bay socialite
banking behemoth
blonde cutie
blonde-about-town
BPL honcho
brunette bombshell
Cambridge art collector and MFA board chair
caterer extraordinaire
celebrity chef
Channel 2 personality
charming son
Chestnut Hill doyenne
City Hall hipster
department store heiress
eminence grise
entrepreneur
eternal ray of sunshine
etiquette expert
fashion plate
fashionisti
first lady
formidable group of grand dames
hairstylist-to-the-Old-Guard
harbor mistress
hat designers
his excellency the ambassador of France
honoree
impossibly debonair
Ipswich lovebirds
Isabella Stewart Gardner head honcha
lovely
lovely young things
media bigwig
megabenefactors
Milton socialites
museum head
oh-so-suave son
Old Town Trolley honcho
party pair
perfectly lovely (2)
philanthropist
PR guru
sibling duo
silver fox
smoking hot
snap, crackling Pops conductor
social lionesses
supermarket moguls
übersocialities
Vincent board chief
WCVB babe

IN 25 YEARS, MTV'S GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT: MILDLY ENTERTAINING BABYSITTERS

"The Ever-Changing Eternal Youth of MTV, Now 25 Going on 11," Viriginia Heffernan in The New York Times . . .

At 11, though you still have no vote or cash, you begin to want to adorn your
identity as a citizen and a consumer. You still can’t do or say or buy, but
(with the right baby sitter) you can watch and learn. And speaking of baby
sitters, 11 is also the age when you can finally talk to those baby sitters,
when you’re almost a baby sitter yourself and when you need to be able to
converse about Busta Rhymes, Beyoncé and “Laguna Beach,” and fast.

"25 Years Down the Tube," Hank Stuever in The Washington Post . . .

Those of us first labeled "the MTV Generation" would now like to apologize
to all the parents with basic cable who hired us as babysitters in those days.
You should know this: Your small children went unsupervised, unless they
happened to pass between our eyeballs and Adam Ant's.

"'The First Time I Saw MTV . . . '," Gretchen Williams in the St. Paul Pioneer Press . . .

Babysitting gigs were gold back in junior high if I knew the parents had
cable TV. Watching hours of MTV in their basements gave me hope that one day I
could be as cool as some of the people I saw dancing in the videos.

Whether or not, after considering it for a few days, Miami Vice is really that bad . . .

Yes, it is that bad.

After collecting more information this evening, a ranking of Miami Vice, Clerks II, and a hypothetical movie that really, really blows, in descending order of quality . . .

Clerks II
A hypothetical move that really, really blows
Miami Vice