fancy ride in a free car

in this week's new yorker (a decent issue so far, much to my relief), there is a cartoon of a man standing in front of his burning house. he's holding his hand out to stop the approaching firefighters and the caption reads, "no thanks, i'm a libertarian." it's a fairly typical new yorker cartoon, minus the dog on the therapist's couch and aggravatingly precocious kids.

well, except that there are people who really believe this. if you know me at all, you know i spend more than my fair share of time wondering about people who really distrust the government. i view them like a different species because they fascinate me in an unironic and not-too-judgmental way.

a few days ago, the journal featured an eye-opening story on colorado springs, the second largest city in colorado. voluntary labor and donations are taking over the administration of community centers, garbage collection, street lights and even the police force:

Taxi drivers have been recruited to serve as a second set of eyes for stretched police patrols. Residents can pay $100 a year to adopt a street light. Volunteers are organizing to empty the garbage cans in 128 neighborhood parks. The city is asking private swimming programs to operate its pools, and one of the city's four community centers soon will be run by a church.

granted, colorado springs is the home of focus on the family, not exactly a bastion of progressivism. and yes, colorado springs represents a trend of sorts. like most other cities in america, colorado springs must confront the twin problems of decreasing tax revenues and inflated budgets left over from rosier days (and, in the case of california, a third problem: the inability to raise tax rates). the numbers are not adding up, and more and more drastic measures are being introduced as a result. in fact, new york city just floated a proposal to charge the working homeless rent for shelters. in addition, unemployed homeless people (or at least one individual in a homeless family) will be required to obtain a job before qualifying for a shelter subsidy.

i definitely do not idealize government. it can be and is often inefficient, bullheaded and wasteful. and like in virtually every other aspect of life, many have figured out elaborate ways to game and manipulate the system. even though i've been tempted on more than one occasion to remind government workers that my tax dollars are funding their salaries, i don't really think i'm getting my money's worth when i'm arguing with time warner for the umpteenth time or the asshole at the apple genius bar rolls his eyes at my "problem." so what do people want?

"Let's start cutting stupid programs that cost taxpayers a pot of money," says Tim Austin, a 48-year-old former home builder now looking for a new line of work. "It's so bullying and disrespectful to take money from one man's pocket and put it in another's."

ok fine. but you know, while it's nice to believe that a group of local residents will convene to collect trash in the surrounding area, good luck with that. i'd much rather have a group of people with some degree of accountability and monetary incentives dealing with something as important as basic sanitation. and who's to say what's stupid?

then it makes me think, am i cynical for not believing in voluntary collective action or are the others cynical for eschewing government? is cynicism the issue? are we all mistaken about others' motivations? is there some public/private sweet spot?

music blogs i like

i read somewhere that NPR is the most popular source for non-top-1o new music. is this true? i guess i agree, since 3 of the 4 blogs/podcasts i like are affiliated with public radio of some sort.

1. all songs considered: good blog and podcasts of concerts in their entirety, usually out of DC. mostly indie bands, but every once in a while they'll throw in other stuff like mavis staples.

2. monitor mix: carrie brownstein of sleater-kinney (why did you break up? i never even got to see you live, boohoo) writes an amusing blog on music and other randomness. her breezy, chatty tone surprised me. i guess it's the pacific northwestern friendliness in her, but s-k's music made me think she would be less lighthearted. i don't think she has a podcast yet (?). she should get on that.

3. sound opinions: a talk show all about music with the music critics of the chicago tribune and chicago sun-times. they bicker over best-of lists, invite guests for concerts, and geek out. it's by american public media--is this different from national public radio? anyway, good podcast, if only to yell at them for choosing yoshimi battles the pink robots as best album of 2002. (foreal?)

4. itunes celebrity playlist. is that embarrassing? i have no idea how to link to them, so here's stereogum's running list. if you ever wanted to know what clint eastwood's been listening to (or what his PR person told him he's been listening to, y'know), this is the right podcast for you.

did you read the profile or whatever of vampire weekend (sorry, subscription required, although here is a bizarre excerpt featuring some guy from blink-182) in the new yorker? they sound kinda insufferable. oh well, maybe i'm just jealous since all i got with my pretentiously latin columbvs unversitvs degree were some dog-eared copies of civilization and its discontents. you go, boys.

but will i like a blaffair to rememblack?

i was on the phone with my mom the other day and i said something along the lines of, "i still have a hard time believing i'm 30; i forget my age sometimes." my 60-plus-year-old mom replied, "oh, that doesn't stop. i do that to this day."

sure, we all know the common signifiers of Bona Fide Adulthood, like child-rearing or homeownership, but nobody tells you whether Adults should enjoy bacon'd! (which i did. immensely. and felt kind of guilty about it afterward) or watch gossip girl (which i do not, only bc i feel a little lech watching such young-looking guys, but i think i'm alone in this). bc y'know, this stuff isn't productive. Adults belong to kiwanis clubs, know how to fold fitted sheets, make their own kimchi, figure out tax deductions, etc.

anyway, do marketers know any better? we all know we're being manipulated even though we'd like to think we can rise above it. the new yorker this week has a detailed and sometimes unnerving article about the marketing of movies. i think the studios' mantra is,

“If we weren’t making decisions based on marketability, John Malkovich would be in every movie,” a top studio marketer says. “Great actor, but not someone you want to see half-naked in the sheets next to Angelina Jolie.”

yowza. they don't have to be so mean about it. i'm sure some people would love to see that.

and man, they've got all of us pegged:

Marketers segment the audience in a variety of ways, but the most common form of partition is the four quadrants: men under twenty-five; older men; women under twenty-five; older women. A studio rarely makes a film that it doesn’t expect will succeed with at least two quadrants, and a film’s budget is usually directly related to the number of quadrants it is anticipated to reach. The most expensive tent-pole movies, such as the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise, are aimed at all four quadrants.

women above twenty-five are automatically OLDER WOMEN? dear lord. well, i'm game. let's see whether they can put baby in a quadrant. here's what young women like, according to marketing experts:

friendship - check
pop music - check
fashion - check
sarcasm - duh-really?
sensitive boys who think with their hearts - omg check!
and romance—but not sex (though they like to hear the naughty girl telling her friends about it) - it's like they interviewed me for this shit.
They go to horror films as much as young men, but they hate gore; you lure them by having the ingénue take her time walking down the dark hall. yeah i hate gore, but i also hate horror movies. i'll pretend this is me, though, since who doesn't like dark halls?

whew. so it appears that i'm not a total hag as of yet. but what about the OLDER WOMEN? what do they (we?) like?

feel-good films and Nicholas Sparks-style weepies - hell no
they are the core audience for stories of doomed love - maybe?
triumphs of the human spirit - ugh, no again
They enjoy seeing an older woman having her pick of men - who doesn't?
they hate seeing a child in danger - i can take or leave this one.

but just when i'm feeling good about myself, i read this:

Particularly once they reach thirty, these women are the most “review-sensitive”: a chorus of critical praise for a movie aimed at older women can increase the opening weekend’s gross by five million dollars. In other words, older women are discriminating, which is why so few films are made for them.

maybe this is why i've been hating so many movies of late. bring on the Form 1040.

what the fuck is david brooks yapp--

i started reading today's column for the "newest" platitude plus requisite eyeroll, but brooks stymied me with this opening:

My first thought on the running mate question is that to balance his ticket, Barack Obama should pick a really old white general. Therefore, he should pick Dwight Eisenhower. John McCain, on the other hand, needs to pick someone younger than himself. Therefore, he also should pick Dwight Eisenhower.

hahaha! you can't go wrong with a good "just how old is mccain" joke in my books. so maybe i don't hate george packer for his repeated references to brooks in his otherwise engaging article.

in any case, i stopped reading after that opener bc i just didn't want to ruin a good moment. next time, brooks. next time.

don't have a cow, man

c4ts, sugarpockets, avert your eyes: this post focuses on pork. well, david chang, who specializes in making pork-related korean-esque dishes. in the interest of full disclosure, i've been to momofuku noodle bar and i think the pork buns are fantastic. it's fine if chang isn't trying to make authentically korean dishes or whatever and that's not what annoys me. people fall all over themselves praising the noodle dishes, while i find them to be...lacking. what can i say? there is a korean word that describes the taste, which can only be translated to, uh, "meaty." there is nothing offsetting the overwhelming pork-y flavor and the noodles lack the nuance and balance that i think a good meat-based dish should have. i haven't tried his ssam bar because, well, it's pretty impossible to get a seat there.

anyway, chang's a skilled chef and he has some innovative ideas on how to run a restaurant, but holy cow is he overrated. in his new yorker profile last week, he came off somewhere between earnest/likeable and psychotic/self-important. i'm sure he's some of both, as most people are.

apparently he's a james beard award finalist? and proving that bloggers know nothing, listen to this ignoramus's opinion on who should win:

Steve Plotnicki, Opinionated About Dining: “Chang: I'm torn between him and Dufresne, but Chang's Bo Ssäm, which could be the single greatest casual dish ever invented by an American chef, tips it in his favor”

hey moron, korean people have been eating the dish for years and it's offered by many other korean restaurants. chang didn't "invent" it, he just made it that much pork-ier.

while we're on the subject, frank bruni managed to make it out to park slope to try out moim, a korean restaurant. he wrote a fairly glowing review, but the menu made me pause: what kind of self-respecting korean restaurant charges for banchan? $4 for kongnamul! my mom would weep. not to mention, what are these "korean desserts" they serve?

average white band

c4ts, i know you started a new job and all, but have you read this week's new yorker? aka the "arts" issue? anyway, i direct your attention to two articles in particular: your fave sasha frere-jones yet again fretting, this time about the state of indie rock, and the profile of david simon. hmm, now that i think about it, did you edit this issue?

no matter. the simon profile managed to combine all of my interests in one neat package: a temperamental protagonist (simon), a dramatically decaying city (baltimore), and rare insight into how the "vows" column works (connections). yeah, i know, virtually everyone i know is freaking obsessed with the wire. why aren't i on board? what can i say. i'm often a late adopter (and have pretty pedestrian tastes) when it comes to tv. indeed, confession time. i've never seen a single episode of the sopranos, yet this onion article made me reminisce like nobody's business.

oh uncle jesse! remember the time your girlfriend rescued DJ from her imminent eating disorder? i do!

now to turn my attention to frere-jones' article. i know that most critics just sound like people lamenting the days of yore (to wit, yet another whiny piece from david denby), but he really aggravates me. i can't disparage his article entirely since i've been rather bored by the music scene of late myself, but he essentially blames the whitewashing of indie rock on pavement? really? what about nirvana? kurt cobain certainly wasn't "miscegenating" in his albums and nirvana are far more influential and widely imitated than pavement.

second confession time: i love pavement. no doubt. and i'm definitely going to raise c4ts's ire here, but something about malkmus' brilliant privileged-white-man-insouciance just got to me. when i read in the table of contents that sasha frere-jones was gonna write on why indie rock was so white, i thought he was referring to its target and actual audience. bc they're white.

but you know, what the new yorker taketh away with one hand, they giveth with another bc the same issue managed to rescue me with its article on the internets and classical music. i don't like schoenberg much, aside from transfigured night. who the eff actually listens to pierrot lunaire? be real, snobs. who doesn't like a little tonality. anyway, how can you not love the fact you can find archived letters of him writing to the ford motor dealership about his car's failing cooling system? i wish there were a blog devoted to brilliant people doing quotidian things. i'd totally read that.

while researching something else altogether, i came across this wikipedia entry. one of my favorites will be posted in a bit.

[Ed note: an apt and hilarious image will be uploaded later. blogger issues.]

update: apparently this sasha frere-jones article annoyed many in the (gag) blogosphere.

yet another update: you know i had a dream last night (for real) that someone commented on my posts? HINT HINT. anyway, this slate article sums up my frustrations at SFJ better than my own post.

what are these bears doing?

is this a bidet?

what about the one lying down? it's making me cross all kinds of davidson lines.

please, enlighten me.

also, did anyone else read david denby's commentary on the state of romantic comedies? i didn't realize knocked up was ripe for such exegesis.

the case of the stupid movie review

what in god's name is anthony lane yapping about? how could they print this in a national magazine? la latina and i did a better job over IM back in the day.

also, did anyone else think mr. lane was a portly older gay gentleman?