1. "Family of faggot fans fly the flag": There are no words... (Hattip: John Lichman, a sick, sick man.)
[" A West Midlands family is playing a central role in the quest to raise the profile of a forgotten British dish - faggots. The Doody family from Wolverhampton has been crowned The Faggot Family in a national competition, and to kick off their reign they will launch National Faggot Week."]
2. "Justices Rule for Individual Gun Rights": From The New York Times.
["The Supreme Court on Thursday embraced the long-disputed view that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own a gun for personal use, ruling 5 to 4 that there is a constitutional right to keep a loaded handgun at home for self-defense. The landmark ruling overturned the District of Columbia’s ban on handguns, the strictest gun-control law in the country, and appeared certain to usher in a fresh round of litigation over gun rights throughout the country. The court rejected the view that the Second Amendment’s “right of the people to keep and bear arms” applied to gun ownership only in connection with service in the “well regulated militia” to which the amendment refers."]
3. At Tomato Nation, Sars reflects on the new documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired.
["His artistic output doesn't lessen the seriousness of the crime, or make him more eligible for forgiveness or leniency; neither does the stupidity and carelessness of the victim's mother. Nothing does. It cuts both ways, though, and the standing ovation Polanski got at the Oscars surprised me — not least because of the snotty pouting that greeted Elia Kazan a few years earlier; I guess it's okay to sulk at a guy who named names, because that put Hollywood people out of work, but if you rape some no-name, all is forgiven?"]
4. "Getting lucky with Dirty Harry": Whitty on Callahan at The Star-Ledger.
["At one point or another, nearly everyone -- Steve McQueen, Robert Mitchum, John Wayne, Paul Newman -- was considered. Finally the studio went to Western icon Clint Eastwood who, eager to get out of the saddle, agreed. He just had two suggestions -- use Don Siegel, the director on the movie he'd just finished, 'The Beguiled,' and switch the action to the San Francisco Bay Area, the actor's long-time home. The changes changed everything. Start with the choice of director. Siegel was a no-nonsense Hollywood veteran -- he'd done the montages for 'Casablanca' -- but he specialized in anti-heroes, and relished ambiguity. "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," his '56 classic, worked as a parable of left-wing subversion or of right-wing conformity; 'The Beguiled' toyed with audience sympathies. Eastwood was complicated, too. Although he had voted for Nixon, he wore his hair long, played jazz piano and sported jeans and open-necked shirts. The actor may not have liked everything about the times, but he was clearly of them; his presence made the movie vital in a way an older star couldn't have. And then, finally, there was the setting. The movie could have worked in New York; it had all the big parks and urban streets the script demanded. But San Francisco, with its curving roads and voluptuous hills, had a feminine feel; it was also seen as the bleeding heart of political permissiveness and 'alternative lifestyles.' It was precisely the contrast, and challenge, a man like Inspector Harry Callahan needed."]
5. "In new Web names, .sky is the .limit": From the L.A. Times.
["In addition to the likes of .com and .net, the Internet might soon have Web addresses ending in .fun, .cars and .prettymuchanythingyouwant. Heralding the most dramatic expansion of virtual real estate in 40 years, the international group controlling Internet addresses decided Thursday to let anyone apply to be in charge of new last names for the Web. The Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers -- which is as close as the Internet gets to a governing body -- opted to open up the process to companies, individuals and coalitions. That means that any word or name approved by ICANN could follow the dot in a Web address. Big corporations and Web address sellers -- as well as scammers looking for new places to lure unsuspecting Web surfers -- are expected to make bids for some of the new classes of Web address. The application procedure is still being hammered out, but it won't be cheap or hassle-free."]
Quote of the Day: Afranius
Image of the Day (click to enlarge): So it is.
Clip of the Day: The latest dance craze, The Seagal, is sweeping the nation.
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"Links for the Day": Each morning, the House editors post a series of weblinks that we think will spark discussion. Comments encouraged. Suggestions for links are also welcome. Please send to keithuhlich@gmail.com.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Links for the Day (June 27th, 2008)
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8 comments:
As if having the surname "Doody" wasn't enough to get those kids stuffed into lockers at school already.
They displayed their fanaticism for the delicacy during quizzes, role-plays and mock commercials.
It...it is just too good.
I may be in love with John Lichman ... sight unseen ... just by his internet aura.
#2. I have a feeling the Supreme Court, and the United States, will come to seriously regret this decision. Municipalities should be able to set their own rules regarding whether or not guns, or certain types of guns, are allowed within city limits. Back in the Wild West days, Tombstone enacted a gun ban in its own streets, and there was a famous shootout tangentially related to its enforcement; yet a good many of us blanch at the very idea that a similar measure could be good for modern cities, particularly ones that have long histories of serious street violence.
I believe in the Second Amendment, but it has to be very closely regulated; there are a lot of improperly trained or untrained, impulsive, childish, drunk, mentally ill and/or hateful people out there, and too many of them have guns already. Society has much higher standards for credit card ownership than it does for gun ownership, yet a huge sector of the population gets much more worked-up over the latter than the former. That just seems crazy to me. And even the regulations we have now don't seem exacting enough. I know a number of people with permits to carry concealed handguns. A good number of them are righteous interventionist types who purposefully go looking for confrontations.
#3: Sars deftly examines the issues I obsessed over when Elia Kazan's special Oscar got the cleaning-gloves treatment from the liberal Hollywood establishment, then Polanski got a best director Oscar and a standing ovation. The hypocrisy was incredible, and I do think it had to do with the fact that Kazan's self-serving political choices (which, to be fair, he openly tried to justify/grapple with/explain in films and novels throughout the rest of his life) affected colleagues' paychecks, whereas Polanski's criminal act didn't affect the lives of anybody except those intimately involved with the case.
I think you have to bifurcate your opinions of artists and art, otherwise you can't like almost any art without being some kind of hypocrite, because artists, by temperament, often have social outcast, rebel, even criminal tendencies. James Brown was a drug abuser and a wife-beater, and pop music still depends on his hooks and beats and has no compunction about adoring him. Sinatra was close friends with many bloodthirsty gangsters who were personally responsible for murders, money laundering, prostitution rings, and all sorts of other crimes, and was known to use those connections for advantage in romance, real estate and getting certain pesky peoples' asses kicked, yet how many times have brides and grooms danced to Sinatra at their weddings?
#4. A great overview of Dirty Harry, the character and the series. This should be linked to on Wikipedia, if the Ledger didn't allow its links to expire after a couple of weeks.
Clip of the Day: That was way scarier than "Cloverfield."
#3: The Polanski documentary not only downplayed the seriousness of his crime, but barely made clear the details of it. This weakened the film's primary -- and legitimate -- message, that the judge on this case was beyond unethical; he was criminal himself.
For me, the weight of Polanski's brutally unfair and tragic life is much more powerful as a painfully ironic counterpoint to the mockery of justice he received in a country where he should have been protected from that, rather than as an explanation/excuse for committing a serious crime.
#1: OOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLDDDD MEME!
Namely, FIVE years old.
Come on, the date's right there, above the headline.
@Seitz: Don't forget the tax evasion.
@Lubin: A number of my commenters felt that the doc should have gone into the crime itself in more depth -- and because 1) it didn't, except to explain why the judge was an unethical dillweed, and 2) it also featured many interviews with Polanski friends and sympathizers talking admiringly about his darkness, that that let him off the hook a bit.
My feeling from a strictly organizational storytelling standpoint is that the filmmaker had to put the boundaries where she did, or the movie would have been six hours long. I wouldn't necessarily have minded that, because it was well done and interesting, but when it comes to Polanski and the amazing bloody tapestry of his life and the things he's witnessed and done, I think she had no choice but to circumscribe the subject.
I agree that some of the central point got lost, but I do think it was from trying to do too much in the time allotted.
bunting: I suppose one could argue that the actual nature of the crime becomes secondary because of the deal that was struck -- reduced charges, no jail time. It was this legal and above-board deal that the judge was repeatedly disregarding.
I still think though that the film would have been stronger if the actual seriousness of Polanski's crime was fully acknowledged. I'm not sure that time constraints explain the choice not to do that.
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