Airplanes

Air traffic over a 24-hour period:

Thanks to Flynn for the link.

How long, Punxsutawney Phil?

(If I get this post up while it is still Groundhog Day, it counts.)

How long does Bill Murray's character spend reliving Feb. 2 in the movie Groundhog Day?

This guy comes up with 8.7 years. This guy says 4 years. Harold Ramis says 10 years -- except when he says 30-40 years.

I like the writer's (supposed) original concept, that it could have gone on for more like 10,000 years.

Personally I am going to say: 150 years.

I think the criminally undercounted portion of Phil's stay in Punxsutawney is the first stage, which he spends living out his every hedonistic fantasy. Phil is a phenomenally shallow person, and he is what, 40 years old? If existential boredom and despair about his life's meaninglessness haven't set in yet, they could take a very long time indeed to appear. I would think a guy like that would spend quite a bit of time in the eat-every-cake-and-dessert-in-the-diner phase.

Also indicative of a very long timeline is not just learning French or learning to play the piano, but a.) the sequence where he tries to save the old man and b.) the fact that he learns to catch the boy falling out of the tree. To me those things are not just a matter of practicing skills -- they're matters of complete awareness of the town of Punxsutawney. Hard to quantify, but probably a very long time.

Last but not least: "I have been stabbed, shot, poisoned, frozen, hung, electrocuted, and burned." I am guessing that some of these things did not happen on consecutive days. And even though we know that at certain points Phil tries to kill himself, the clear implication to this line is that at least some of these things were done to him -- which makes them even less likely and therefore probably spaced further apart.

The Fourth Hand by John Irving

The Fourth Hand by John Irving


My rating: 2 of 5 stars
First book I've read by this guy. It is funny and stuff, but I guess I did not connect with the characters or the story all that much. I feel like that's somewhat intentional? The voice of the narrator is always intruding, half-bemused, in a way that lets us know not to take any of this too seriously. Which to me at least had the effect of sort of lowering the stakes in a way that was not necessarily desirable.

My other impression was that as a media satire, the book's 1999 vision of cable news as "the disaster channel" is pretty far-removed from the all-partisan-all-the-time cable environment of today. That's not really the book's fault, necessarily. But it does have less bite today.

View all my reviews >>

Unified Theory of Ke$ha

What you have to understand about Ke$ha is this:

a.) Ke$ha is incredibly popular. Her song has been No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for weeks. As I type this, she is #3 on iTunes.

b.) Ke$ha is omnipresent. "TiK ToK" was played on the radio 11,224 times last week -- the most of any artist ever. She was just on Jimmy Fallon. She is going to be a presenter at the Grammys. Like it or not, we live in a world where Ke$ha is an enormous celebrity.

c.) Ke$ha's rap skills are not tight. Her voice is incredibly annoying. Her lyrics make no sense. And yet, the lines do kind of stick with you. They do.

d.) Ke$ha once appeared on "The Simple Life" as one of the hicks that Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie went around insulting. Later, she vomited in Paris Hilton's closet. I learn this from Wikipedia. Also, she considers herself "the antithesis of (Paris Hilton)." That's obviously an insane thing to say -- really? the antithesis of Paris Hilton is a mega-popular blonde pop rapper? -- but it does tell you an awful lot about Ke$ha's cultural positioning, especially as regards social class.

e.) In some sense, Ke$ha is out-Gagaing Lady Gaga. The two artists have exactly the same narrative: Girl obsessed with fame confronts a grotesque celebrity culture, etc. etc. But Lady Gaga's game is to put a bit of performative intellectual distance between herself and her Gaga-ness. Ke$ha has zero intellectual distance. She is just doing the thing Lady Gaga is performing or sort of enacting.

But also:

f.) This is why Lady Gaga will have a longer shelf-life than Ke$ha.

And:

g.) It is very, very difficult to see what Ke$ha's second act is.

And those are the things you have to understand about Ke$ha.

Spoon on Conan

doing the best song off the new Spoon album, which I think is good but not as good as Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga.

Perils of ping-pong

Democrats are making it clear that a Coakley loss in Massachusetts will not derail health care reform -- the House will just "ping pong" the Senate bill. I think this is probably true. White House and Democratic leadership have shown a willingness to expend a tremendous amount of political capital on the bill, and at the end of the day Speaker Pelosi can probably muster the votes for passage.

The "we'll play ping-pong" message coming out of Washington today could demoralize Mass. Republicans, who were fired up by the idea that a win for Brown would kill the whole enterprise. And I assume this is part of the reason that we're hearing about it now -- as an attempt to tamp down at least some portion of Republican enthusiasm.

Just asking: Couldn't it also give Massachusetts Democrats less reason to turn out tomorrow? By all accounts, nobody is excited about Coakley. And if health care reform isn't truly in peril, why not sit this one out?

UPDATE [1/18 8:16pm] ... Why it is probably over for Coakley: Nate Silver says so. And why it might not be over for Coakley: Nate Silver says so.

R.I.P. Teddy Pendergrass.

Leno Victims Unit

"A movie whose human sympathy is enormous"

Hey look, NYT columnist Ross Douthat agrees with me about the best movie of the aughts. It's The New World, which Douthat sort of interestingly calls "the anti-Avatar."

So are they or aren't they?

The problem with the he-said-she-said style of reporting. This just landed in my inbox, from NBC's First Read:

Are health insurance mandates constitutional? NBC's Doug Adams rounded up opinions from conservative legal scholars (who say they aren't) and liberal scholars (who say they are). http://bit.ly/4Trmfw

Great, very helpful. There is some more information at the link, but not much, really.

Best book of the decade

The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño, published in English translation in 2007. Easily, easily the greatest work of literature I've read in the last 10 years. I haven't read 2666 yet but I kind of can't imagine it's better.

Blogging up a storm

Uncharacteristically heavy blogging lately. Here's your guide to getting to where you want to go:

• My TRUE LIFE ACCOUNT of bad juju in O'Hare Airport. Lightly fictionalized
  
  
• Best music of 2009
  
  
• Some cultural odds and ends of 2009
  
  
• Best music of the decade
  
  
• Best movies and television of the decade
  
  
• Mini-review of Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon
  
  
• A new Insophisticate podcast
  
  
• Epic audio documentary on the Wausau Tweetbus Project
  
  
• And of course My New Year's resolutions

New Year's Resolutions, 2009

One decade ago, on NYE 1999, as the clock struck 12 a.m. I was running down the street at full speed with my friends Mike Perillo, Bob Alstrum-Acevedo and Bryan Preston. I am scheduling this post in advance, and I am hoping to be doing exactly the same thing, with new friends.

10. Learn a lot about tax policy, in reasonably fine detail
9. Read more books
8. Drink less alcohol
7. Get more freelance work
6. Make more audio stories**
5. Take more and better photographs**
4. Use more pretentious French, German and Latin phrases in everyday speech. I already use some, but I believe I could use more.
3. Lose weight**
2. Wear a tie underneath sweaters
1. Write a novel. (Seriously.)

These are not all of them. I have some other resolutions I can't tell you about.

** Denotes also a resolution in 2009.

Robert Mentzer's Certified Finest Musicks of the Aughts: 50+ songs & 35 albums

Well, this certainly was a lot of work, and almost certainly not worth the effort. Please argue your own point of view vehemently, quibble with my rankings shamelessly and nominate your own most slept-on favorites! That will make it all worthwhile.

SONGS

Honorable mentions: Beyonce, "Irreplaceable"; Rich Boy feat. Polow da Don, "Throw Some Ds"; Christina Aguilera, "Ain't No Other Man"; Bright Eyes, "Old Soul Song (For the New World Order)"; M.I.A. feat. Bun B and Rich Boy, "Paper Planes (Diplo Remix)"; Burial, "Archangel"; Crooked Fingers, "New Drink for the Old Drunk"; Kanye West, "Can't Tell Me Nothing; Loretta Lynn feat. Jack White, "Portland, Oregon"; Jay-Z, "Dirt Off My Shoulder"

50. Jay-Z, "Izzo (H.O.V.A.)"
You could have been anywhere in the world tonight, but you're here with me. I appreciate that.

49. Amy Winehouse, "Rehab"
Great song, though pretty sad and hard to listen to knowing what we know now.

48. Rihanna, "Russian Roulette"

47. Radiohead, "Nude"

46. Justin Timberlake, "My Love"

45. Gnarls Barkley, "Crazy"

44. Usher, "Yeah"

43. Franz Ferdinand, "Take Me Out"

42. Missy Elliott, "Work It"

41. LCD Soundsystem, "All My Friends"

40. Brad Paisley, "Then"

39. R. Kelly feat. T.I. and T-Pain, "I'm a Flirt (Remix)"
Let me remind you that I am the king of R&B.

38. Lupe Fiasco, "Kick, Push"

37. The Dixie Chicks, "Not Ready to Make Nice"

36. The Gaslight Anthem, "High Lonesome"

35. Jay-Z, "Takeover"
One of the great battle raps in rap history.

34. Outkast, "Bombs Over Baghdad"

33. Kanye West, "Stronger"

32. Kylie Minogue, "Can't Get You Out of My Head"

31. The Roots, "Get Busy"
I just love Questo's drums on this track.

30. Three 7 Mafia, "Sippin' on Some Syrup"
I eat so many shrimp, I got iodine poisoning.

29. The Hold Steady, "Your Little Hoodrat Friend"

28. Spoon, "The Way We Get By"

27. Britney Spears, "Toxic"

26. Wilco, "Jesus Etc."

25. Young Jeezy feat. Kanye West, "Put On"

24. Dizzee Rascal, "Fix Up, Look Sharp"

23. Mike Jones feat. Paul Wall & Slim Thug, "Still Tippin’"
I had them play this song at my wedding reception, at night after the grandparents had gone home. Badass driving music has never been so relaxed.

22. Brad Paisley, "Alcohol"
Sung from the perspective of alcohol!

21. Rihanna, "Umbrella"

20. Lil Wayne "A Milli"

19. Outkast, "Hey Ya"
An obscure, little-heard track, but I thought I'd include it here just to confuse people.

18. Dr. Dre feat. Eminem, "Forgot About Dre"

17. R. Kelly, "Ignition (Remix)"
"After the show, it's the after-party. After the party it's the hotel lobby." This song also, if I'm not mistaken, introduced the favorite Kells habit of announcing that you are listening to a remix version.

16. Lil Wayne, "Shooter"

15. Sufjan Stevens, "The World's Columbian Exposition/Carl Sandburg Visits Me In A Dream"

14. Kelly Clarkson, "Since U Been Gone"

13. Kanye West, "Gold Digger"
One of pop music's greatest exercises in disingenuousness. "I'm not saying she's a gold digger..." Really? What are you saying, then, Kanye?

12. Justin Timberlake, "SexyBack"

11. Beyonce feat. Jay-Z, "Crazy in Love"

10. The White Stripes, "Seven Nation Army"
Going to Wichita, to work the straw.

9. The Hold Steady, "Chips Ahoy!"

8. Eminem, "Stan"
One of the great story-songs ever, with beginning, middle and end. And, as has been pointed out, it's the only love song on the Marshall Mathers LP.

7. Radiohead, "Idioteque"

6. Flaming Lips, "Do You Realize?"

5. Outkast, "Ms. Jackson"

4. Jay-Z, "99 Problems"

3. Modest Mouse, "Float On"
One of my personal favorite songs, and I think still the most frequently played songs in my iTunes library. Drifter pop with an optimistic twist.

2. UGK feat. Outkast, "Int'l Players Anthem (I Choose You)"

1. Missy Elliott, "Get Ur Freak On"
Released in 2001, this is the song that announced the new millennium. And while this decade did not exactly turn out the way it should have, this is still the sound of how things could have gone. And it's a weird pop masterpiece. The Timbaland beat is masterfully multicultural, and Missy does a start-stop rapping thing that is just ... impressive. This is future music, still.


ALBUMS

35. Fugazi, The Argument
34. Three 6 Mafia, Most Known Unknown
33. Madvillain, Madvillainy
32. Josh Rouse, 1972
31. Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III
30. Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
29. Outkast, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
28. Sufjan Stevens, Illinois
27. Brian Wilson, Smile
26. Kanye West, Late Registration
25. Arctic Monkeys, Whatever People Say I am, That's What I'm Not
24. UGK, Underground Kingz
23. Spoon, Kill the Moonlight
22. Jamie Lidell, Multiply
21. Ghostface, Fishscale
20. Radiohead, In Rainbows
19. Dizzee Rascal, Boy in Da Corner
18. J Dilla, Donuts
17. The Streets, A Grand Don't Come for Free
16. R. Kelly, Double Up
15. Modest Mouse, Good News for People Who Love Bad News
14. Missy Elliott, Miss E ... So Addictive
13. The Hold Steady, Boys and Girls in America
12. Amadou & Miriam, Dimanche a Bamako
11. Justin Timberlake, FutureSex/LoveSounds
10. Clipse, Hell Hath No Fury
9. Gaslight Anthem, The '59 Sound
8. Lil Wayne, Da Drought 3
7. The Flaming Lips, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
6. Brad Paisley, American Saturday Night
5. Radiohead, Kid A
4. Kanye West, Graduation
3. Eminem, The Marshall Mathers LP
2. Outkast, Stankonia
1. Jay-Z, The Blueprint

Bad juju in O'Hare Airport on the day after Christmas

Late at night, things began to get weird on the F Concourse of O'Hare International Airport. December 26, 2009. Snow outside. On the F Concourse, children roamed unsupervised, giving wet willies to stranded passengers who were sleeping on the floor. I saw a stooped 90-year-old lady win a fistfight against a Mexican teenager. I think she may have had a knife. She pivoted on a heel in front of the Departures/Arrivals screens, asking "Who else wants a piece?", ready to level all comers.

At one point an eagle swooped through the concourse in pursuit of a team of white laboratory rats, causing travelers to trip over their luggage to get out of the way. The fact that there were rats running through the airport was easy enough to explain -- they could, for example, have escaped from the luggage of some traveling experimental scientist. But where did the eagle come from?

*

In fleeting moments, there was a sort of camaraderie among the passengers, us against the airlines. (Which reminds me: DO NOT FLY UNITED. DO NOT GO TO O'HARE. Those are my pieces of advice to you.) But we also turned on one another, Lord of the Flies-style. I am guilty myself, though I am not the only one. A reasonably nice guy bound for Stevens Point, Wisconsin, started talking about how United ought to open more customer service stations and I said, somewhat snidely, "Yeah, you should really say something about that." As if his perfectly reasonable complaint were just too stupid an observation to verbalize.

*

Hours earlier, a group of people bound for Fort Wayne, Indiana, were marched out through the snow, put in their plane, where they sat for hours. Then they all came back inside. Then they sat at the gate for hours longer. Then their flight was cancelled. And they were shocked that they would not make it to Fort Wayne, Indiana that night. I watched it happen. This was the essence of the experience of that day.

I saw a young woman with curly hair sobbing as she walked through the concourse pulling her bags behind her, tears streaming sideways across her face.

*

They opened a third customer service station and a murmur went through the line, as if things were finally beginning to look up. A group of teenage girls tried to cut in line -- pretending they were just starting a new line in front of the new service station instead of joining the one long line we'd all been shuffling through like dead-eyed zombies for more than two hours. As if they had discovered a secret the rest of us didn't know. They got a lecture over the loudspeaker from a bearded customer service worker. Not that it would have mattered, anyway. The new station saw exactly one passenger before the bearded man disappeared into the back room again.

I believe the F Concourse of O'Hare International Airport was only hours away from devolving into a sort of post-apocalyptic universe of powerful warlords, robust trade in sex and illicit drugs, violence and contagion throughout the land. And I was prepared to fall in line with any charismatic leader who could promise me things. Not so much promises of escape -- it was too late for that, we would be in the airport forever -- but rather the promise that we the passengers could rise up to punish our oppressors. I would have been down for that.

*

Luckily, I have a permanently reserved private suite at the O'Hare Hilton, to which we now retreated. We were pursued by a pack of filthy travelers pleading to share our bed, offering inducements -- sex, chocolate, a controlling interest in various major companies. Laura had to mace a number of them as we ran for the elevator.

In the room, I opened the curtains and looked out across the snow and the parking lot on the other side of the airport, and I saw vagrants gathered around a fire they had started in an oil drum, and in the snow on the top level of the parking deck, in tremendous letters visible only from above, the message was spelled out: DO NOT FLY UNITED. DO NOT GO TO O'HARE.

Laura and I sprawled across the silk sheets, ordered two of every item on the room service menu and two bottles of Dom Perignon and then fell asleep without eating or drinking a thing.


[Note: This account has been lightly fictionalized.]

Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon

Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon


My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Short version: I liked it better when it was called The Big Lebowski. Stoner detective, stumbling his way into an elaborate conspiracy. That is fine as far as it goes, but Pynchon seemed to be spinning his wheels a bit. The SoCal post-hippie thing is straight out of Vineland, and I really didn't sense much of an emotional connection between the author and these characters.

Worse, it just wasn't that funny. A lot of "far out" and "groovy" and funny names for different strains of weed -- not exactly the stuff of hilarious satire, to me.

So, whatever. I still love love love Gravity's Rainbow and Mason & Dixon and especially V. God knows the guy has earned the right to write a clunker here and there. But this is one.

View all my reviews >>

Robert Mentzer's Certified Finest Movies and Television of the Oughts

Remember, the point of these things is to argue about them. Here goes:

MOVIES
Runners up: Gosford Park, Borat, Capturing the Friedmans, Punch-Drunk Love, Wall-E, Erin Brockovich, Syriana, Y Tu Mama Tambien, Far from Heaven, No Country for Old Men, The Royal Tenenbaums

20. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
19. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
18. Requiem for a Dream
17. Up
16. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
15. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
14. Elf
13. Lost in Translation
12. Spiderman
11. Being John Malkovich
10. Grizzly Man
9. Serenity
8. Ratatouille
7. Iron Man
6. The 40-Year-Old Virgin
5. A Mighty Wind
4. There Will Be Blood

3. O Brother Where Art Thou
This and The Big Lebowski are still for my money better than anything the Coen brothers have done since. Perfect synthesis of kitschy stoner comedy and archetypal detective story.

2. The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
I am counting them together as one film. One of the great achievements in all of movie history. If I have to choose a favorite, I choose "The Two Towers."

1. The New World
My second-favorite film by my favorite director, Terence Malick. (Favorite would be Days of Heaven.) I love the way this movie really lets you see through the eyes of the first American settlers as they encounter the hopelessly alien "Naturals," their word for American Indians. Later, the film captures the same sense of strangeness for Pocahontas on her first encounter with Europe. It's also a disquisition on the (sometimes false) idea of paradise and the (sometimes prosaic) nature of love. And its nature photography is absolutely gorgeous.


TELEVISION
I am not quite sure why, but I think my taste in television shows is much closer to the critical conventional wisdom than is my taste in music or movies. Arguably that makes this my most boring list. Still, these are all great shows:

15. The Colbert Report
14. Futurama
13. The West Wing
12. Mad Men
11. The Sopranos
10. Angel
9. 30 Rock
8. Veronica Mars
7. Battlestar Galactica
6. The Daily Show
5. Deadwood
4. The Office (American)
3. Arrested Development
2. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
1. The Wire