2010 July | Periscope Depth

From the Blog

Jul

rooftop, like we bringing 88 back

Posted by Perich at 9:38 am

I love the man, but seeing Nas at House of Blues this week was one of the worst concert experiences I’ve ever had. The tickets claimed doors at 7:30, show at 8:30, but there was still a line around the block at 8:15. A third of the second-story mezzanine had been blocked off to form a “VIP Section,” meaning the rest of us had to cram against the railing in a space 2/3 the size of normal. If they had A/C, it wasn’t strong enough: twenty-four hundred college kids generate a lot of AXE-tinted body heat on a summer night. And Nas and Damian Marley didn’t go on until 10:45. When they did, I could see them in glimpses.

Nas gave plenty of shout outs to the recently departed Guru and covered a broad sampling of his eighteen-year career: “Represent,” “If I Ruled the World,” “Hate Me Now,” “Nas is Like,” etc. The entire venue, despite having put their hands up for peace earlier at Damian’s request, went wild for “Made You Look,” one of those delightful ironies that hip-hop often asks us to confront. Damian Marley, though a talented artist, wasn’t the one I came to see. I like the way he jams, don’t get me wrong, but the usual middle-class complaint re: hip-hop (“it all sounds the same to me! you can’t make out what they’re saying! they’re singing about violence all the time! and drugs!”) resonates for me with reggae. I checked out whenever he was alone on stage.

Reading the defenses of the draconian immigration law in Arizona, the one consistent refrain I’ve seen is that sure, illegal immigrants might not actually be killing citizens in record numbers, smuggling bombs in for al-Qaeda or costing citizens a lot of jobs that they’d otherwise be entitled to by sacred birthright. But it’s the rule of law that matters! If you live in a culture that doesn’t respect the rule of law, everything falls apart, for reasons that are never specified. I saw unimpeachable evidence of that at the Nas/Marley concert. There were three different pockets of weed smokers within spitting distance of me: furtively lighting a joint, crouching down below the crush of bodies to take two deep puffs, then passing them to anyone within arm’s reach. The security guards could smell it – you’d have to be anosmic not to – but did nothing. With such flagrant disrespect for the rule of law, I don’t need to tell you what happened next: three-hundred and fifteen people died. They were flung over balconies, rent by teeth and bludgeoned by drunken anarchy. “Oh, if only we’d cracked down harder on harmless drug use,” lamented one security guard before an Emerson sophomore kicked him in the back of the skull, blood drenching her Crocs.

Jul

I know the drill; got cells to burn

Posted by Perich at 7:00 am

Sandbaggers: A delightful bit of late 70s British TV. Roy Marsden (of the Inspector Dalgilesh Mysteries) leads as Director of Ops Neil Burnside, a cold, cynical man who oversees the daily functions of Secret Intelligence. He also has operational command of a small – as in, three guys – unit of field operatives codenamed the “Sandbaggers.” But the show has very little to do with them. Most of the show depicts Burnside walking in and out of offices: talking to the Deputy Head of SIS, or to their boss “C”, or to the Permanent Undersecretary of State – Burnside’s ex-father-in-law – or to his friend Jeff Ross at the CIA. This show’s about politics, not sexy sexy danger.

In the first episode, the head of Norway’s fledgling intelligence agency asks Burnside for help in retrieving a crashed spy plane inside Russian territory. Burnside denies him, civilly but without much compassion: there is no demonstrated intelligence benefit for his Sandbaggers to risk their lives for a Norwegian foul-up. Then he’s told, by the Undersecretary, that he doesn’t have a choice: the Norwegian ambassador has already pressed the Prime Minister into helping. After protesting to “C,” Burnside has to coordinate with the CIA to make sure they don’t stray into the op, then with the RAF to use a spy plane. All the while, the Norwegian secret service is pressuring Burnside to hurry up.

Then, things get complicated.

It sounds boring from the way I’m describing it, but if you’re into high-stakes politics it’s fascinating. The Sandbaggers doesn’t have the virtue of a high budget, forcing its creators to rely on sharp dialogue and tight plotting to keep the tension high. Most of it takes place in Westminster offices. If you thought The Wire stinted on exposition, imagine how your mind will reel the first time someone answers a phone with, “P.A. to Dee Ops.” And the show doesn’t flinch from the toll that its depicted occupation – the secret intelligence of a Western power – takes on the lives of the people employed. It’s a John le Carre novel – one of the good ones – brought to the small screen.

Of course, it takes Marsden’s personality as Neil Burnside to make the whole thing work. Burnside is a quiet, cold man, infuriating in his belief that he’s the smartest person in the room. And he’s right. He’s not cocky – just cynical and calm. Burnside can be wrong, of course: “Is Your Journey Really Necessary?” shows him mistaking how far an agent can be pushed and the tragic consequences. He can also be deceitful, hypocritical and treacherous to his allies. He’s the likely inspiration for some of the better anti-heroes of 00s television: Al Swearengen, Tony Soprano, Walter White, Don Draper. Good thing he’s on your side.

Jul

hallucinating, chasing, changing, racing

Posted by Perich at 7:00 am

Every now and then, the media juggernaut wrings its hands in the fear that the media juggernaut will go bankrupt. Newspapers are closing up. Nobody watches the news. This year’s biggest stories in Afghanistan have been broken by a non-profit website and the magazine that panned “Layla.”^*

But, as IOZ reminded me just yesterday, mainstream media will never go out of business. When the news cycle gets slow – as it always is when you need to fill 24 hours of programming a day – all you need to do is interview each other.

the principle American organ for reporting on a cache of tens of thousands of leaked, formerly secret documents makes the principle line of inquiry the potential effect that the reporting of said documents by such paper will have on the public, as speculated upon by government officials, and how this will in turn affect the actions of these same, speculative officials. In other words, the newspaper asked the government how it would be affected by the way it imagined the public might react to information that the newspaper itself is about to report. (Take a note, [Chris] Nolan.)

I guess it would be simpler to report the information contained in the document, observe the resultant public reaction and the subsequent government response, and then report on what you’ve observed, but it wouldn’t be nearly so much fun.

And he’s not exaggerating. Tell me you haven’t turned on the TV in the gym and heard the following:

“Tonight! Public reaction to leaked documents diverges from White House predictions of public reaction to leaked documents, according to our recent poll of Washington, D.C. journalists! Could this affect the Democrats in the midterm elections? Markos Moulitsas and Andrew Breitbart join us live in the studio; plus, your e-mail and comments.”

Really, the only shocking thing is that it’s taken as long as it has for cable news to get this vapid. The Chicago Manual of Style template for professional journalism tells everything you’d want to know – who, what, when, where, why, how; witness reactions; the history behind the event – in four or five grafs. How long would that take to read on the air – two minutes? Five? There simply aren’t twenty-four hours of interesting news in a day.

_______
* They have since recanted their error, a skill Tom Friedman could learn.

Jul

let him feast; my heart is big

Posted by Perich at 7:00 am

Buses remain America’s strongest link to the past. Sure, technology has dragged them forward some distance: you can pay for a bus ticket with a credit card, many buses offer seat-back outlets and WiFi, etc. But you can still show up at a bus terminal fifteen minutes before departure, buy a ticket, board the coach, and arrive in a new city four hours later. Try doing that at an airport. In a few years, it’ll be impossible to do that at a train station. But buses remain proletarian.

A stocky young man in line ahead of me crooned Italian opera while we waited. He was either singing into his Bluetooth headset – soothing an abandoned child back to sleep, perhaps – or keeping in practice. He spoke in a thick New York accent, however. “You dropped something,” he said to the man behind me – a man of sagging face and faded jacket, seventy at least, fumbling through his wallet. A folded scrap of looseleaf with a name and a 212 phone number had fallen out. “You dropped something,” the tenor repeated. I stooped, picked it up, and handed it back to the old man. He nodded his thanks. He would drop this scrap of paper at least once more while we waited in line.

(You wouldn’t think opera singers need to take the bus. But I know at least one soprano, and the money’s not great)

Greyhound and Peter Pan have merged services. Peter Pan buses have outlets; Greyhound buses don’t. I got a Greyhound bus, luck of the draw, so I only had as long as the laptop’s battery to work on my writing during the ride. I spent the rest of the time watching TV shows on my iPod (more on those later) and reading. The bus stopped at a Roy Rogers in northern Connecticut. The bus driver got out to negotiate with the manager, pointing at his coach and indicating the number of people aboard. They reached a compact, as the driver returned and told us we had fifteen minutes. I bought a sausage egg and cheese sandwich, which came with a “homestyle” biscuit, and a bottle of water. Carbo-loaded, I dozed until we rolled into Harlem.

Our sister dojo in Manhattan sits underneath the corner of Broadway and Bond in NoHo. There’s an expansive open mat where students practice American jiu-jitsu and Brazilian jiu-jitsu, plus a studio off to the side where more esoteric arts are taught. There’s a counter where you can buy bottled water or an official dojo T-shirt. There are locker rooms with showers and an on-site laundry service. There’s air-conditioning. I wandered around, introducing myself to the other instructors and marveling at their Manhattan opulence, until the time came for the test.

Michelle, one of our students in Boston, trained to brown belt in New York before moving. She returned to New York to test for her black belt promotion. I’m proud that the Boston dojo sent about a dozen members to watch Michelle’s test and support her. I’m also proud of how Michelle performed, demonstrating her techniques with confidence, skill and intensity^*. And, on a personal note, I was proud to stand and watch the test with the other instructors. I never forget that I’m a black belt, but it’s only when I stand up there with O’Sensei Joe Puleio that I remember that I’m representing a tradition that’s bigger and older than I am. These other people with black belts, whom I’ve never met, all took the same journey that I did.

And now Sensei Michelle’s one of us.

photo courtesy of Emily Y. using my camera

* Even after she broke her foot near the end of the test. Fortunately, the only things she had left were groundfighting and ki demonstrations.

Jul

now don’t drown in your tears, babe

Posted by Perich at 7:00 am

The apartment complex posted several notes reminding us that they’d be resurfacing the parking lot this Wednesday, and that our cars had to be out by 7am. So on Tuesday night, I parked on the street a block from my apartment. Wednesday evening, coming home from work, I stopped by the spot where I’d left it. It was of course gone. Cutting to the good part: I had parked on the one street in North Cambridge that does street cleaning on the third Wednesday of every month, as opposed to the third Thursday. The officer I spoke to was very helpful, especially since I wasn’t waving a cane and being black at her, and told me where to find my car.

Slouching through Harvard Square for the #69 bus to Inman, I worked up a good head of quiet surliness. I drummed my fingers on benches with impatience. I ground my heels into the floor. I scowled. I had one of the best kinds of anger going: the anger that bleeds over into the rest of the world when you have no one to blame but yourself. Double checking street signs would have saved me $120 worth of trouble, but that wasn’t my fault. No, it was the fault of the city of Cambridge, and my apartment managers, and this bus driver, and the humidity, and I’m dehydrated, and …

You don’t have to be mad about this if you don’t want to, something said in my head.

And that punctured the bubble. I even recall feeling a little disappointed. Why can’t I be mad? Why can’t I blame the world for my mistakes? People do it all the time. Why don’t I get one night of the year where I can drink myself into a stupor at a local bar, then go make poor life choices?

But that’s the power of an idea. Once you process it, you can’t overlook it.

So I had to spend the rest of the evening gradually cheering up. It didn’t help matters that I went to the Asgard, where all my friends spend their Wednesday evenings. It also didn’t help that they were sympathetic to my plight. Or that I had a beer and sang. That’s the problem with the real world: it keeps getting in the way of my bad time.

Jul

I’m on a World Serpent

Posted by Perich at 7:35 am

New post up on Overthinking It today, in which I analyze how Isaiah Mustafah’s insanely popular Old Spice commercials evoke the Norse myth of Loki.

The world Mustafah lives in continually changes. First he’s in a shower. Then he’s on a boat. Then he’s riding a horse. In the most recent commercial, he’s on a beach, then is rolling a log, then is walking through a kitchen into a rocky river, which he dives off of into a hot tub. Mustafah displays power over his own appearance as well. He starts off wearing a towel, then wearing a sweater, then wearing a bathing suit, then jeans. The one constant seems to be that he’s shirtless and grinning. He can even transform objects with a word. “It’s an oyster with two tickets to that thing you love. Look again! The tickets are now diamonds!”

Like Loki’s feud with Baldr, Mustafah attacks masculine vanity. “Sadly, [your man] isn’t me. But if he stopped using lady-scented bodywash and started using Old Spice, he could smell like me.” That’s as unapologetic a slam against the viewer’s appearance as I’ve ever heard. “You’re ugly. Your only hope of looking as good as me is to smell like me.” Baldr couldn’t stand up to an assault like that.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-check it.

Jul

I wear thirteens, know what I mean?

Posted by Perich at 7:00 am

I asked the same thing yesterday, but now I open it up to the sphere-o-blog as a whole: anyone have anything to say, pro or contra, about the Acer Aspire 532h? They’re on sale at Target for a song. I’ve been considering a netbook for some time and this might be the price point. I’d use it primarily to blog while on the road, checking out occasional documents or streaming videos while away from my desktop computer.

My one lingering doubt: how well does it work for someone with giant hands? Will I give myself premature carpal tunnel? Can’t quite palm a basketball, but something much smaller than a regulation keyboard might induce some cramp.

acer-aspire-532h

Jul

whether it’s two weeks, two years or just tonight

Posted by Perich at 7:00 am

Inception: this past Friday, Overthinking It marked its thousandth post with a survey of why the writers read so deeply into pop culture. I talked about the need to treat pop culture seriously and with a literate eye – especially among geeks, who aren’t known for a lot of notches on the spectrum between “SQUEE!” and “worst movie ever.” I want to raise the bar for genre movies.

So that’s why I overthink. I want to give geek culture—video games, RPGs and sci-fi movies—the language of sober analysis. I want to turn the Coke-bottle lenses back in on themselves. I want to teach people that mere enthusiasm is not enough to make something Good Art. I want people to start thinking about their passions.

And then Chris Nolan comes along and proves me right.

Inception is the smartest action movie I’ve seen in years. The concept within – questioning layers of reality – won’t shock anyone who’s read some mid-tier science fiction. But I have never seen a big-budget action movie that treated that concept with as much honesty as Inception has. It’s baked it into the characterization, the plot, the cinematography, the editing, the soundtrack – all of it. This is an action movie that does not ask us to “turn off our brains” for a few hours, but demands that we give it our full attention through its running time and then for several hours afterward. As fellow Overthinker Pete Fenzel put it, you’ll profit more not from trying to figure out definitively What Did Happen, but by stretching your brain through the possibilities of What Could Have Happened.

And it’s a great movie, besides! While so many action movies struggle to build tension, Inception keeps the suspense at the edge of the throttle for essentially the last forty-five minutes^*. The exposition, so necessary for a sci-fi movie, unfolds in a way that plays with the special effects and reveals bits of character. Leo DiCaprio plays big, as he is wont to do, and lets Joseph Gordon-Levitt be the grounded presence that keeps him honest. Ellen Page is the voice of the audience: curious about the process our heroes use, but not so skeptical as to plant her feet and keep from being dragged in. And the action scenes play with the conventions of reality – gravity-bending brawls, snowy mountain shootouts – without losing us in the melee.

I’ve said this before, but: I will never again accept a movie that asks me to stop thinking before I can enjoy it. That’s no longer an option. A genre which is capable of Inception, to quote Raymond Chandler, is not by definition incapable of anything. I want films about redemption and betrayal and ambition and dishonor and memory and reality and time and space. And I want them full of chases and gunfights. And I want them to star good actors who deliver good dialogue. Inception proves it’s possible. Christopher Nolan has planted the idea in my mind, and it’s never getting out.

* Immediately after seeing the movie, I described Christopher Nolan as “this generation’s Hitchcock.” It’s not a comparison I made by accident. I haven’t seen a big director who plays tension quite as well since Hitchcock died. Consider the “prisoner’s dilemma” scene in The Dark Knight. Or, well, the entire third act of this movie.

Jul

nothing is better than this

Posted by Perich at 7:50 am

There’s a bald guy with a scraggly beard who sits at the bus station outside the Boston Public Library most afternoons. He makes popping and clicking sounds with his mouth. He doesn’t appear to me making them at anyone – not the ck-ck of the cartoon wolf leering at a dame in a checkered skirt. He just sits there and makes sounds. It’s something we’ve all done as four-year-olds or in the privacy of our bathrooms: experimenting with the sounds that the human body can produce. But this guy does it every day. The man’s clearly mentally challenged in some way. You can tell because he spends all afternoon making noises that entertain him, instead of putting on a tie and going into and out of an office.

I thought of this when I saw David Byrne on the big screen in the Somerville Theater‘s showing of Stop Making Sense this past Wednesday. Byrne plays his music without the conscious affectation of other artists. The look on his face as he bounces and bops through his music straddles the line between religious ecstasy and animal terror. He’s continually amazed at what he sounds like. And what’s amazing is that the results aren’t garbage. They are, in fact, catchy and moving and good. How do you come up with a song like “Psycho Killer”? What musical tradition does that tap into? How do you convince yourself that “fa-fa-fa-fa, fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa” is a legitimate chorus? And how did you convince me of that?

That lack of self-consciousness translates to the rest of the band as well. Steve Scales sticks his tongue out at the camera. The backup singers jog in place. Tina Weymouth bops back and forth in tune with her bass rhythm. Everyone experiments with what feels right. Everything is weird and exploratory. Nothing seems to have a Grand, Implicit Purpose behind it. David Byrne doesn’t don an oversized suit as some deep metaphor about the hollowness of corporate America. He dons an oversized suit because a skinny guy in a big suit looks weird. The most casual movements become stylized.

Not all art needs to be this trippy. But I’m glad there is, or was, a place for it.

Jul

you know the escape. you know the escape.

Posted by Perich at 7:00 am

The best forms of exercise almost never come in a gym. This is because you really have to work to master them.

Sunday morning was the monthly black-belts-only class at jiu-jitsu. We ended the class with some freestyle grappling: start off mounted, then reverse your opponent. Once you end up on top, switch roles. After five minutes of this I was completely drained. I was soaked through to the skin in sweat; my arms and legs hung like rope. I drove to the nearby BSC to take a shower before I offended anyone with my stench. Once I got to RJ’s for our weekly Burning Imperium game, I flopped onto his couch, a glass of iced tea before me and a whirring fan on my right. I was loose and calm.

I’ve never been to a hammam, but I understand Turkish massage is somewhat similar. You warm up first by lying on a heated marble slab until everything’s loose. Then a burly Moroccan rolls you onto your stomach, stands between your legs, and lifts you by your wrists until your spine cracks. The combined stretching and heating loosens your shoulders. I apply a similar pressure when I’m cranking on a juji gatame, only I’m not as nice and I don’t charge you money.

You couldn’t offer grappling as an eight week, 8-hour class at the fitness center, though, and expect the same benefits. It’s taken me almost ten years of training to get to the point where I’m sort of competent. I know some holds and escapes, I know to keep my center of gravity low, and I can use my freakishly long limbs to post out like a pavilion tent. But I’m still mastering the chessboard mentality of grappling: the feint within the feint within the feint. Anyone who did 4 years of high school wrestling could still make me look foolish.

My point: when a 240-pound man kneels in your armpits and sits on your stomach, the natural inclination is to just give up. It takes a trained grappler to realize that you have escapes from there – several, in fact – and to work for them. The process of working for an escape builds your core, arms, legs and cardio conditioning. I can’t think of anything better for it. Swimming, perhaps, or a yoga routine executed with force and precision. Kickboxing. Carrying a 40-lb backpack and a rifle up a hill.

It takes years of practice to learn how to effectively work your body as a whole unit, however. The body isn’t meant to be sculpted in isolation, one muscle at a time. That’s not evolutionarily useful. And anything which takes longer than a 12-week class won’t make it at the local gym.