Just checking in ...

these posts weren't working for awhile, but I'm hoping this test post will fix that.

Fourth of July party was incredible, check the book for pics.

A More Perfect Union

Amazing.

Amazing.

Yes We Can.

Posts - more life being thrown my way

It's been months and months and months since I've worked up the energy to post anything here. Call me a slave to trends - I guess the blogging thing ran its course with me when my real job began and reality intruded. I have to get stuff done now, and that's serious.

The Wire's new season is about 5 episodes in, and although it started with such promise, it's dragging at this point, and I can see all the journalists' points - their criticism is ringing true to me. David Simon's crusade is bitter and angry - which I love - but so far lacks a little depth and realism. But I have faith he'll right the ship yet, I just want it to happen fast.

Daily "Wire" commentary on Slate.com ...

... and a great article on David Simon on The Atlantic Online.

Went ahead and bought David Simon's heralded book "Homicide" too, thought I could get to it after all of these Graham Greene books. Man, my eyes are always bigger than my stomach/time/energy. I guess that could be considered a good thing, I dunno.

I need to get back to work, but quickly -

The Shipwrecked, or England Made Me, was decent ... but raw, and the ending was unsatisfying. Not sure if Greene was trying to write the "pop" novel, but it moved too fast adn was too obviously a dig at Disney and other coporate men, without an ultimate message. It started off grand and just metered out.

The Man Within - his first novel ever - was idealistic and overwrought and melodramatic. But I'm still glad I read it - you can hear the 21-year-old Greene coming out through it, and it's comforting to know that the 21-year-old Greene was as much of a romantic fool as I was at that age (and maybe still am).

Back to work.

-J

Westerns

The most recent genre of movies I took advantage of was westerns. I watched a bunch of the samauri films on the list below, and most of these, the ones I saw are in italics.



Top Rated "Western" Titles
Rank Rating Title Votes
1. 8.9 Buono, il brutto, il cattivo, Il (1966) 74,653
2. 8.7 C'era una volta il West (1968) 38,266
3. 8.5 The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) 18,699
4. 8.4 The Wind (1928) 1,173
5. 8.3 The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) 4,305
6. 8.3 High Noon (1952) 20,689
7. 8.2 Per qualche dollaro in più (1965) 21,043
8. 8.2 Unforgiven (1992) 54,618
9. 8.1 The Wild Bunch (1969) 18,514
10. 8.1 3:10 to Yuma (2007) 12,579
11. 8.1 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) 34,297
12. 8.0 The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) 13,364
13. 8.0 The Searchers (1956) 17,814
14. 7.9 Per un pugno di dollari (1964) 19,918
15. 7.9 My Darling Clementine (1946) 4,437
16. 7.9 Rio Bravo (1959) 11,776
17. 7.9 Grande silenzio, Il (1968) 1,828
18. 7.9 Hud (1963) 4,315
19. 7.9 Red River (1948) 6,652
20. 7.9 Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) 4,149
21. 7.8 Stagecoach (1939) 8,868
22. 7.8 The Magnificent Seven (1960) 16,933
23. 7.8 Dances with Wolves (1990) 45,959
24. 7.8 Way Out West (1937) 1,706
25. 7.7 Destry Rides Again (1939) 2,567
26. 7.7 Winchester '73 (1950) 3,053
27. 7.7 Little Big Man (1970) 9,508
28. 7.7 Blazing Saddles (1974) 28,802
29. 7.7 The Gunfighter (1950) 1,776
30. 7.7 The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) 12,877
31. 7.7 3:10 to Yuma (1957) 1,702
32. 7.7 Shane (1953) 8,847
33. 7.7 The Mark of Zorro (1940) 1,898
34. 7.7 The Big Country (1958) 3,124
35. 7.6 Lonely Are the Brave (1962) 1,255
36. 7.6 Giant (1956) 7,343
37. 7.6 Giù la testa (1971) 4,419
38. 7.6 Fort Apache (1948) 3,382
39. 7.6 The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005) 9,469
40. 7.6 The Shootist (1976) 5,419
41. 7.6 Dead Man (1995) 18,937
42. 7.6 Viva Zapata! (1952) 1,555
43. 7.6 El Dorado (1966) 4,321
44. 7.5 Ride the High Country (1962) 2,870
45. 7.5 Tombstone (1993) 28,006
46. 7.5 Lone Star (1996) 11,132
47. 7.5 McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971) 4,260
48. 7.5 High Plains Drifter (1973) 8,193
49. 7.5 Open Range (2003) 16,516
50. 7.5 The Proposition (2005) 9,405

Obviously, I've been doing mostly John Ford movies, with the occasional Spagetti western thrown in. NOTE: The movies in italian are spagetti westerns - the first being "the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," and the second being my all-time favorite, "Once Upon a Time in the West."

"My mother was a whore from Alamedia and the finest woman who ever lived. Whether for an hour or a month, my father must've been a happy man."


http://www.imdb.com/chart/western

New Posts, Bad Analogies

A blog post is like an orgasm ... it's generally too long between them, and when too many come at once, you're overwhelmed and need a break, but when you get one and it's been awhile, it's really, really good, because you forgot how good they really are.

Huh? I gotta stop reading Phillip Roth and trying to use metaphors, I'm obviously no good at them, like a creative-writing teacher with too much vocabulary and metaphor rolling around in that empty head of theirs.

Again? Damn.

Reading: The Twenty-Seventh City
Finished: Huey P. Long
Listening To: The People Under the Stairs
Playing: Halo 3
Watching: Rio Grande
Quoting: Neil Gaiman. "Perfection is a horrible lover to have, because once you've had her, just ok or adequate or better than average is never good enough again."



Just wrapping up the book, and I dunno, I love it. I read the reviews - a lot say it's great because it's a rookie attempt, that it doesn't focus enough on the characters individually, but I love it because it's not about the characters - even though people need characters in order to function, or to listen to someone for 500+ pages - but it's about cities in the midwest, about gentrification and urban renewal and how fake it all is/was, about downtown Denver and the Detroit casinos and it does a wonderful job making the city a vital character.

The plot is a bit far-fetched and again, underdeveloped. But it's not really about the plot. It's about the city. And while it left me feeling unsatisfied, and a little worried about his other book, the one that didn't get good reviews, and which I've put on my list next, it was a great break after the 900+ pages of Huey P. Long. Biographies are tough, because they're real - I mean, it's not made up - and the people's lives are so damn interesting - great men always are - but there's just so much DETAIL, so much MINUTAE ... so many names and places and not enough concept. One reason I liked Rising Tide so much (apart from how engineering-heavy it was) was it brought everything together without making some sort of moral judgement, but it was written with a bit of flair and as an event, but without overdoing it (like Dyson's "Come Hell or High Water ... only so much hyperbole and plays-on-word for me.).

So I give it an A - in my book. Having read The Corrections first, it's hard to not find fault in any other work by Franzen, because you know he's capable of such an amazing book. It's like ... watching a Jordan come back after retirement. He would still score 12 points a game in the NBA, but it wasn't nearly the same, it was almost sad, after knowing what he once was capable of (only reverse that cronology ... because Franzen has obviously become more capable the older he's gotten ... and having 19 years to write The Corrections didn't hurt).

I also get the sense that the only parts of the Twenty-Seventh City that are really even slightly autobiographical are the parts about the high school and college students. Franzen was 26(?) when he wrote it, and he wouldn't really (emphasize REALLY - he does a pretty amazing job) know what was going on in these older people's heads.

That's why the Corrections was so great - you knew that, like Phillip Roth, he was revealing himself, in all his horrible flawed reality.

A-

Ninja Lurve.

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Samurai movies ... the next three months of my life

Here is a list of Notable Samurai films, of which I'll be partaking in as many as possible as soon as I'm through my Netflix "Oscar-winning movies I've never seen" queue.

List of Notable Samurai Films

1949 The Quiet Duel - directed by Akira Kurosawa
1949 Jakoman and Tetsu - directed by Senkichi Taniguchi
1949 Stray Dog - directed by Akira Kurosawa
1950 Rashomon - directed by Akira Kurosawa
1951 Conclusion of Kojiro Sasaki-Duel at Ganryu Island directed by Hiroshi Inagaki - This was the first, but not the last, time that Toshiro Mifune played Musashi Miyamoto
1952 Vendetta for a Samurai - directed by Kazuo Mori
1954 Seven Samurai - directed by Akira Kurosawa
1954-56 Samurai Trilogy - directed by Hiroshi Inagaki
1954 Musashi Miyamoto
1955 Duel at Ichijoji Temple
1956 Duel at Ganryu Island
1957 Throne of Blood aka Spider Web Castle - directed by Akira Kurosawa
1958 The Hidden Fortress - directed by Akira Kurosawa
1959 Samurai Saga - directed by Hiroshi Inagaki
1960 The Gambling Samurai - directed by Senkichi Taniguchi
1961 Yojimbo aka The Bodyguard - directed by Akira Kurosawa
1962 Chushingura - directed by Hiroshi Inagaki
1964 Three Outlaw Samurai
1964 Harakiri - directed by Masaki Kobayashi Won a prize at the Cannes Film Festival
1965 Samurai Assassin aka Samurai - directed by Kihachi Okamoto
1965 Red Beard - directed by Akira Kurosawa
1965 Sanshiro Sugata - directed by Seiichiro Uchikiro - this is a remake of Kurosawa's films Sanshiro Sugata and Sanshiro Sugata part 2
1966 The Sword of Doom - directed by Kihachi Okamoto
1966 The Adventure of Kigan Castle - directed by Senkichi Taniguchi
1967 Samurai Rebellion - directed by Masaki Kobayashi Rebellion won the Fipresci Prize at the Venice Film Festival
1969 Samurai Banners - directed by Hiroshi Inagaki
1969 Red Lion - directed by Kihachi Okamoto
1969 Band of Assassins - directed by Tadashi Sawashima
1969 Watch Out Crimson Bat
1970 Mission: Iron Castle
1970 The Ambitious
1970 Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo - directed by Kihachi Okamoto
1970 The Ambitious - directed by Daisuke Ito
1970 Incident at Blood Pass - directed by Hiroshi Inigaki
1977 Intrigue of the Yagyu Clan - directed by Kinji Fukasaku
1979 The 47 Ronin - directed by Kenji Mizoguchi
1981 The Bushido Blade - directed by Tsugunobu Kotani
1984 Legend of the Eight Samurai
1988 Zatoichi - Directed, written and starring Shintaru Katsu
2002 Twighlight Samurai - directed by Yôji Yamada and nominated for a best foreign film Oscar.
2003 Zatoichi - directed and starring Beat Takeshi and Silver Lion award winner at Venice Film Festival

A twister just barely misses Tulane, but scrapes through the old 'hood, barely missing some key bars, churches and homes. By the looks of the graphic, this thing went right by Bruno's and Alek's old place.

Hat tip to TBON, a much better blog for all you New Orleans lovers. http://thethirdbattleofneworleans.blogspot.com/

Spending a little time together in our nation's capital.

... so I'm staying in DC, after all, everyone ... which means a redoubled effort to participate in all things Tulane Alumni, a new push to welcome the summer intern crew and a new set of roommates, Adam Morris and Chris Paddock. I can't tell you how excited I am.

It feels like my life is starting over a little. I'll have a government job, a steady paycheck, I've got a good base of friends in the city and it only expands every day. I'm finding churches, coffee shops, diners and bars and settling in here in DC, which has pretty much been my number one goal since I left Tulane: try and recreate the community I felt there. I'm so pumped I get to stick around DC it's not even funny.

I got lucky and got a trio of good job offers, but man, was I cutting it close, as always. Savings running out, dicking around town working at bars, it all helped me put my priorities straight, and here it is, working out like it always has. I'm looking forward to getting back in the action - the last few months have felt more like a holding pattern than a life, but now, I can focus, move forward and be proud of myself.

That, of course, means that I'll be planning numerous trips this year. Los Angeles, Michigan and New Orleans are high on my list; San Antonio, Vegas and the perennial New York are riding high as well. Looking forward to seeing all of your faces again, hopefully soon, and remember; if you're ever in our Nation's capitol, there's an open invitation to crash on my couch, eat my food and drink my beer.

See you soon.



www.askaninja.com
"Do ninjas need love?" asks my wife. Sure, once you go black, you never go back ... ALIVE."

Sleet sleet sleet sleet sleet

Well, it's sleeting in the nation's capital, which means that the roads are sure to be fraught with danger tonight. Sorry to readers; it's been too long. Here's a link to an amazingly well-reported story about that high school killing in Vegas ... definitely worth a read. Salon is still doing good journalism; that's nice.

Vegas Story

Sick Daze

A nasty bout of the flu (round 2) took me out this weekend, and the weekend before that was Mardi Gras in exile, so you know how that goes. There's not much to talk about, as evidenced by the INCESSANT AND UNENDING MADNESS THAT IS THE ANNA NICOLE SMITH SPECTACLE.

How in God's name is this news? Geraldo can cover it, fine, it makes him look like the unserious journalist he is, but when CNN, the blogs and MSNBC can't seem to stop talking about ridiculous details about a nonceleb who no one in their right mind should care about, it makes a guy want to retreat from the world and ignore the media for awhile. It also makes some of us really, really angry ... because it's just something we have to put up with.

Props to Forrest, Scorsese and the rest. I think after they gave Three Six Mafia an Oscar last year, the Academy must've said, "Well, whatever Martin does next year, he wins the Oscar for it." I for one didn't think he deserved it for this. I didn't really enjoy The Departed. Maybe that makes me shallow. I dunno.

SNOW DAY in DC: Nat'l Portrait Gallery, Piratz

Work was cancelled yesterday due to the 2-5 inches of accumulated snow and ice that forced me to use my snow chains to dig out, so I could drive to a job interview. After a couple cups of coffee and the interview was over, I headed over to the National Portrait Gallery - apparently the National Spy Museum was closed due to inclement Weather. (what kind of a spy outfit IS this?)

By the way, I believe the word "inclement" is an example of an exclusive modifier, that is, an adverb or adjective that is used almost exlusively in common speech with the associated noun (weather). I mean, can you use the word inclement without using the word weather? I doubt it, at least not effectively.

The National Portrait gallery is amazing, I can't believe I haven't been yet. They had a wing for "American Landscapes" and "Folk Art" in an attempt to end-run around their primary cause and show some real non-portrait art (using the word portrait liberally, as in, "a portrait of American landscape and culture), but I wasn't complaining because they had a couple of Edward Hoppers, so I got to see my first real, live Hopper, in the flesh. I'm a dork, I know, but he's my favorite painter. I did a paper on him in High School and he continues to be my favorite, with Nighthawks being my favorite painting of all time and #6 on the list of things I need to see before I die.

They didn't allow flashes, but they DID allow photos, and my new cheapo digicam took a great one.

They didn't allow photographs in the American Presidents portrait gallery, but we got to see the whole exhibit, which is spectacular, and free. All 45(?) former presidents accounted for, and it really brought history viscerally into focus for me, along with the various portraits of the patriots (Henry Knox, Thomas Pain) and historical figures (John Brown, Walt Whitman + lover). It was the perfect appendix or compendium for my readings of 1776. Can't wait to read Team of Rivals now.

Oh, and we went to a pirates-themed restaurant in Silver Springs for Rachel's 23rd. It was a blast.

So tornadoes swept through New Orleans a couple of nights ago - my good friend Kier was sleeping, and her house got hit, tearing the roof off of her home. She's fine, thank God. My sister Sandi's house was missed by 10 blocks, too.

Quote/link/news clip of the day: Fox News is starting a "Daily Show" copy that has a conservative slant, based ont eh concern that the Daily Show is just too dang liberal... which, of course, is ridiculous. ... remember the Clinton years? I have nothing really to say, this clip speaks for itself ... which is to say, I don't care about bias, as long as it's funny. And this, well, isn't. It's like Dennis Miller. The Daily Show might do more jokes about Bush than it does about Hillary (maybe, dunno about that one ... if she was president I'm sure she'd get it BAD), but thing is, this new show probably won't do ANY jokes about Bush at all. And that's just not good comedy. Once politics intrudes as a motive, it loses a lot of humorous credibility. Or something. Whatever.

http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/fnc/a_preview_of_the_12_hour_news_hour_53094.asp

A picture is worth ....

Ms. Mae's in New Orleans - a 24-hour bar with $1 drinks. I have no explanation for this picture, but I can tell you, it's definitely not staged.

Uncle Bill

So amongst more bad news, my uncle Bill was diagnosed with prostate cancer just after Christmas, and is now recovering from his first surgery. The cancer had metastasized to his bone, so the doctors wanted to do a prophylactic surgery on his femur, in order to strengthen it and prevent future breaks ... what I'm guessing is the first step in a very long process.

They inserted a titanium rod to strengthen the bone, and (I'm guessing here) exculped or "excavated" the area, removing the weak, cancer-damaged bone. As a load-bearing bone, it makes sense to strengthen it by adding a titanium rod, which I'm guessing was serrated with microbeads or some other rough matrix, which, after a time, will allow his bone to grow into it, making his femur much stronger.

I need to research this a little and find out more of what they're doing, but for now, he's fine, in the hospital.

Prayers asked for. More information later.

Net Neutrality, and more

Quote du jour: "Kevin, you're what the French call "les incompetents"."

Movies: His Girl Friday, High Noon
Books: 1776, Team of Rivals

Political hot-topic of the day: Does the Iranian government really have anything to do with the use of E.F.P.'s? And why was the briefing anonymous? And who was the mysterious "unnamed senior defense analyst" at the Pentagon? I believe Rumsfeld still has a desk there, according to Pelosi.

http://www.savetheinternet.com/

Read all about Net Neutrality, learn about it, know it through and though - and then explain it to all your friends, join the petition and call your Senators and Congressmen. Let's make this happen before it's too late.

FROM THE VAULT: Vintage Stroud

Snowstorms after Christmas aren't so strange - Opinions

Talk about navel-gazing

The quote du jour is one by your favorite writer - me.

"Why is it so funny that the word for people who use big words that no one else knows is sesquipedalian?"

Quote - Cleveland Free Times

http://www.freetimes.com/story/4785

This is a link the the Cleveland Free Times about Lester Lefton ... once the Provost at Tulane University. I wrote an article at the time calling for his resignation - which is explained below.

Here's the very innacurate part of the story that is about the incident:

Before taking over at Kent State, Lefton was provost of Tulane University in New Orleans. In 2003, after Lefton changed housing policies to require any senior who was writing a thesis to live in a dorm, the Tulane student newspaper The Hullabaloo published a blistering editorial titled, "Fire Lester Lefton: The Provost Must Go."

"You're rude, and what's more — you lied to us," wrote then-editor Jonathan Stroud.

"I was upset at the time because I didn't think he showed proper respect to students, so I answered in the only way I knew how — because students have such little power at a private university," Stroud says in an interview. "But the core of the message is accurate. I didn't think he was good for our university, and I don't think he's good for any university."

Another former Hullabaloo editor, Jaclyn Rosenson, says the newspaper's dealings with Lefton were strained after that.

"Our views editor took a point-blank attack at him and it just led to a very adversarial relationship where Lefton was not forthcoming with any information," Rosenson says. "There were pleasantries exchanged, but almost never information. But he was always there for the sound bite that made Tulane look good."

Here's my letter-to-the-editor response:

Dear Cleveland Free Times,

I'd like to clarify a couple of major errors you made in your "chatter point" piece on Lester Lefton, for the record.

The problems at Tulane arose from an unannounced withdrawal of almost $2,000 a semester from a specific scholarship - the Founder's scholarship - which many underprivileged Tulanians were recipients of. There was no guaranteed off-campus housing, so certain students - friends among them - lost almost $2,000 in scholarship money, with no student vote, no real action or announcement. It was done over winter break, while the students were away.

My actions at the time were acerbic and hyperbolic - but like I said, I didn't know what else to do. I stand by my article, and my quote, but would like to make the point - which I made to your reporter - that if I had the chance to handle it differently I would have. It was a proper forum for my opinions, but the word "liar" should not be thrown around so lightly.

I was not the editor, but rather, the views (editorial) editor. And afterwards, I enjoyed a more collegial - if strained - relationship with Lefton and the administration. That being said, his actions were wrong - and it appears, continue to be so. Example - the closure of the prestigious (but unprofitable) School of Engineering in the face of Hurricane Katrina's budget shortfall, shortly before Lefton left the university. But overreaction is not the answer. Meaningful debate is.

-Jonathan Stroud
BSE, Biomedical Engineering
Tulane University School of Engineering
former views editor, Tulane Hullabaloo
504-813-2171
jonrstroud@gmail.com

Sigh. Anyway, there I am, in print, for better - or worse. You decide.