Friday, September 12. 2008
There's a glut in the tiger market. People can't give 'em away. One or two might be good for catching mice around the barn? Or maybe not.
This came in over the transom: .
At VANDERBILT: It takes two, one to change the bulb and one more to explain how they did it every bit as good as the bulbs changed at Harvard. At GEORGIA: It takes two, one to change the bulb and one to stabilize the rolling beer cooler the bulb changer is using for a ladder. At FLORIDA: It takes four, one to screw in the bulb and three to figure out how to get stoned off the old one. At ALABAMA: It takes five, one to change it, three to reminisce about how The Bear would have done it, and one to throw the old bulb at an NCAA investigator. At OLE MISS: It takes six, one to change it, two to mix the drinks and three to find the perfect J. Crew outfit to wear for the occasion. At LSU: It takes seven, and each one gets credit for five Semester hours. At KENTUCKY : It takes eight, one to screw it in and seven to discuss how much brighter it seems to shine during basketball season. At TENNESSEE: It takes ten, two to figure out how to screw it in, two to buy an orange lamp shade, and six to phone a radio call-in show and talk about how much they hate Alabama. At MISSISSIPPI STATE: It takes fifteen, one to screw in the bulb, two to buy the Skoal, and twelve to yell, "GO TO HELL, OLE MISS". At AUBURN: It takes one hundred, one to change it, forty-nine to talk about how they did it better than at Bama and Georgia, and fifty to get drunk and roll Toomer's Corner when finished. At SOUTH CAROLINA: It takes 80,000, one to screw it in and 79,999 to discuss how this finally will be the year that they have a decent football team. At ARKANSAS: None. There is no electricity in Arkansas
Now, at the Metropolitan Museum. I will go. The show is titled Beyond the Portait Studio. This is Man and Pool, Florida, 1917. 
Thursday, September 11. 2008
Gerry Vanderleun's notes from 9-11, as he watched it unfold from Brooklyn Heights. Monet: 
Wednesday, September 10. 2008
Vanderleun's American Digest is one of our favorite and most-admired websites. Thus sibling rivalry drives us to try to make him insane, permanently if possible. He apparently is neither a fan of the outer Cape nor of the t-shirt, kite, and beach towel stores along Route 6 - which is his loss. This t-shirt image might do the job, for good (sorry, it's soiled from farm chores and kinda stinky): 
Tuesday, September 9. 2008
 Over the transom:
Planning for the fall football season in the South is radically different from up North. For those who are planning a football trip south, here are some helpful hints. Women's Accessories: NORTH: Chap Stick in back pocket and a $20 bill in the front pocket. SOUTH: Louis Vuitton duffel with two lipsticks, waterproof mascara, and a fifth of bourbon. Money not necessary - that's what dates are for. Stadium Size: NORTH: College football stadiums hold 20,000 people. SOUTH: High school football stadiums hold 20,000 people. Fathers: NORTH: Expect their daughters to understand Sylvia Plath. SOUTH: Expect their daughters to understand pass interference. Campus Decor: NORTH: Statues of founding fathers. SOUTH: Statues of Heisman trophy winners.
Continue reading "Sociology of Football"
Monday, September 8. 2008
Went to see a preview of the new production of The Tempest at the Classic Stage Company on E. 13th st. in NYC yesterday, with the great Mandy Patinkin. We like the 41 year-old CSC so much that we have become supporters, and it's always good to see Mandy. However much presence he has, he had a little trouble bringing the sorcerer Prospero to life, in my humble opinion. Ariel is perfect. 
Here's the firehouse down the street. My crappy camera cannot pick up that the image painted on the door is a flaming WTC with an eagle, or that the banner above welcomes a member of the station home from his tour in Afghanistan. Way past time for a new mini-camera. 
Saturday, September 6. 2008
 Looks like we have some hurricane residue headed our way. I am always happy to see that up here - a little visitor from Africa and the tropics. Some left-over Gustav or whatever today, and Hannah on her way up here.
So it looks like a stormy-weather working weekend. Insty picked up a Joyner piece, Rich Work More than "Working Class." No kidding. I guess I qualify as rich although you wouldn't know it: I have only one house, no time-share Citation, and not enough dough to retire at my current manner of living (nor would I want to, because I like being useful). The quoted NYT piece in the above link begins: What’s different from [Max] Weber’s era is that it is now the rich who are the most stressed out and the most likely to be working the most. Perhaps for the first time since we’ve kept track of such things, higher-income folks work more hours than lower-wage earners do. Since 1980, the number of men in the bottom fifth of the income ladder who work long hours (over 49 hours per week) has dropped by half, according to a study by the economists Peter Kuhn and Fernando Lozano. But among the top fifth of earners, long weeks have increased by 80 percent. This is a stunning moment in economic history: At one time we worked hard so that someday we (or our children) wouldn’t have to. Today, the more we earn, the more we work, since the opportunity cost of not working is all the greater (and since the higher we go, the more relatively deprived we feel).
Read the whole thing. I work about 55 billable hrs/week - sometimes 60+, except during July and August when things slow down and clients aren't around much. Thank God we barristers aren't unionized. Unlike the Euroweenies and the socialists, we Americans like to work. Not everybody admits it, but we do. BTW, read Dr. Bliss' piece below about Seduction, if you missed it (scroll down). Interesting.
Friday, September 5. 2008
On my site, I have a post about my adventures with Hurricane Charley. It opens with this:
First, let us establish my credentials. Do I have the right to opine on hurricanes? A fair and legitimate question.
I used to live in Lakeland, Florida. Granted, Lakeland's not very big, and most people wouldn't be able to locate it on a Florida map.
It is, however, relatively easy to find, depending upon just which type of Florida map you use. Using the following map, simply follow the dotted lines:
Any other questions about my hurricane credentials?
Well, times have certainly changed. A year ago I bought a boat to live aboard and moved (floated, actually) down to the Florida Keys and the Tropical Island Paradise™ of Key Largo.
Granted, Key Largo's not very big, and most people wouldn't be able to locate it on a Florida map.
It is, however, relatively easy to find, depending upon just which type of Florida map you use. Using the following map, simply follow the dotted line:
 (The idea for this post grew out of a conversation with a colleague, who thought that Obama - and occasionally other politicians - successfully apply these techniques. She suspects that Obama has read Greene's best-seller because of his stated awareness of the effectiveness of his mirroring role, but that's not my motive for this post.)
Robert Greene's book, The Art of Seduction, is the sort-of sequel to his The 48 Laws of Power. Greene is a student of the dark arts. Both books are applicable to politics, business, relationships, and daily life - especially by those with sociopathic inclinations. However, reading these books can help one understand how some people approach their lives. (This has nothing at all to do with Freud's seduction theory, by the way.) The game, or art, of seduction is, at its core, not mainly about physical sex. It is not about earnest courtship, nor is it plain old trying to get laid. In its most artful form, sex doesn't occur (although it is indeed generally difficult for guys to refuse an appealing offer). The art of seduction is a game of deception and subtle psychological manipulation. Here's a bit from Ovid on "Promise and Deceive" from The Art of Love: Don’t be shy of promising: promises entice girls:
add any gods you like as witness to what you swear.
Jupiter on high laughs at lovers’ perjuries,
and orders Aeolus’s winds to carry them into the void.
Jupiter used to swear by the Styx, falsely, to Juno:
now he looks favourably on his own example.
Gods are useful: as they’re useful, let’s think they’re there:
take wine and incense to the ancient altars:
indifferent calm and it’s like, apathy, don’t chain them:
live innocently: the divine is close at hand:
pay what you owe, hold dutifully to agreements:
commit no fraud: let your hands be free from blood.
Delude only women, if you’re wise, with impunity:
where truth’s more to be guarded against than fraud.
Deceive deceivers: for the most part an impious tribe:
let them fall themselves into the traps they’ve set.
As I understand it, the art of seduction in its most evolved form involves becoming a mirror to an innocent or vulnerable female, to engage her narcissism. The mirror is the seducer's tool. The innocent fills in the blank with her own hopes and dreams and fantasies. She cannot know that she - or part of her her unconscious self - is being mirrored: the trick is to engage her into entering an exciting false reality consisting mostly of her own projections and fantasies, and the seducer dances to that music. That mirror becomes the stage for her narcissistic, grandiose, and regressive self. This game is slick, slimy, and rather evil, but it can work.
When the game is played in its purest form there is no consummation: the seducer disappears in victory, leaving the innocent in despair, holding nothing but a cracked mirror. If the seducer falls in love with his mirrored creation, as in Pygmalion and My Fair Lady, the seducer has failed in his game by entering the looking glass world rather than remaining a disengaged puppeteer. The chosen victim must be either innocent or vulnerable in some way, because a sophisticated victim might very well be playing her own game - and beat you at it. The art of seduction, when done "right," is about the enactment of a subtly homoerotic dynamic wherein the seducer guy reflects back an image of the female as she wants to be, or as she regressively is. Thus the best seducers can be those men with "sensitive," "feminine" sides - "metrosexuals," or even the sexually ambivalent, because they are the best at reflecting the feminine. The classic writings on the art of seduction, besides Ovid, must include Les Liasons Dangereuses, written in 1782 by Pierre LaClos, to which the expression "revenge is a dish best served cold" has been often erroneously attributed. They must also include Soren Kierkegaard's Diary of a Seducer. That review begins: His preparatory remarks follow Ovid, the most famous of his literary precursors, when Johannes writes, "the fishing is always best in troubled waters. When a young miss is agitated, one can successfully risk much that otherwise would miscarry." One could also see thematic parallels between this and Laclos' Dangerous Liaisons', although it is uncertain Kierkegaard had opportunity to read that work. He also strikes a major theme of Ovid's Amores' when he writes, "A rendezvous is usually regarded by lovers as the most beautiful moment."
There are even internet communities that teach and practice the seductive arts. Here's one such site. A cursory view of their sites makes the accurate point that success in seduction has nothing to do with a fellow's appearance or background - just his skill at the game. However, for these people online, unlike the classic form of the game, consummation seems to be the trophy. Scoring, but not stupid drunk scoring - deftly engaging the lady emotionally first with the "bold move" carefully planned and timed. Greene's book goes through the essential tactics of the art, which he lists as the following: Choose your victim well
Create a false sense of security
Send mixed signals
Appear to be an object of desire - create triangles
Create a need by stirring anxiety and discontent
Master the art of insinuation
Enter their spirit
Create temptation
Keep them in suspense
Use the demonic power of words to sow confusion
Pay attention to detail
Poeticize your presence
Disarm through strategic weakness and vulnerability
Confuse desire and reality - the perfect illusion
Isolate your victim
Prove yourself
Effect a regression
Stir up the transgressive and the taboo - they are exciting
Use spiritual lures
Mix pleasure with pain
Give them space to fall - the pursuer is pursued
Use physical lures
Master the art of the bold move
and
Beware the aftereffects...
Image: Picasso's Girl Before a Mirror, 1932.
Wednesday, September 3. 2008
From 1964, Sylvie Vartan, Petula Clark, and Francoise Hardy do a medley of hits. How ya like that 60s production style? Best: Francoise at 2:20 on the tape singing a bit of Je n'Attends Plus Personne. Pop gets no better than that:
Monday, September 1. 2008
Labor Day is more about unions and marking the end of the summertime mentality than anything else. But, on Labor Day, I like to remember all the folks who are working today like cops, doctors, nurses, pilots, firemen, lifeguards, EMS crews, farmers, mini-mart clerks, chefs and cooks and dishwashers, junior financial analysts, soldiers - and, today, plenty of service folks and National Guardsmen are on duty down on the Gulf Coast. None of those folks is doing burgers and beer today (except maybe the farmers, once their chores are done). Since Labor Day is not, for me, any sort of patriotic day, I'll do two photos from our Brit farmer friend (and honorary Maggie's Farmer) who has just finished his harvest in our ancestral homeland: 
and will be heading back to the office job: 
A friend brought me this CD of Rosa Passos this weekend. Excellent. Here's a duet with Henri Salvador:
Sunday, August 31. 2008
Not her best song by any means, but it might give you a sense of why she was my pop favorite in 1964 - before I had heard of Joanie Baez. Note to you youts - they made films like this long before MTV existed:
Thanks for this photo from yesterday, reader: 
Wednesday, August 27. 2008
This is where Duck Creek empties into Wellfleet Harbor. 
Monday, August 25. 2008
Sunrise in the Catskills, 1826 
Saturday, August 23. 2008
We'll recycle things from the archives, but nothing new during vacation break.
Here's my final big batch of Wellfleet architecture photos. Our prayer is that Wellfleet be never yuppified, and that it remain ramshackle, weather-beaten, weedy, and perfectly imperfect. Like Nantucket, before the Beautiful People discovered it in the 1980s as an alternative to the Hamptons.
Hatch's has been there since before I was a little kid, with the same sign with a Striper eating a lobster. If you ask them to keep some Toro (Bluefin tuna belly), they will have it for you the next day, if not sooner. It's the best food in the world (flash-grilled over charcoal, not as sushi).
This grand old boathouse on the harbor is a great place to rent for the summer, but it's booked years in advance, and it ain't cheap. Yes, that is�low tide. There is water against the pilings at high tide:
�Lots more photos below the fold on continuation page -
Continue reading "Our final batch of Wellfleet photos"
Friday, August 22. 2008
That piece we posted on semi-colons this week reminded me of this one from 2 years ago: It seems like a fine thing to have a debate raging which has nothing to do with politics. Where do you stand on the pressing semicolon issue? Some love 'em, some hate 'em, and, difficult as it may be to believe, some people are actually indifferent to the subject. I happen to enjoy colons, semicolons, ellipses, dashes, parentheses, and any other things on the keyboard, but I sometimes wonder whether some of that is pure laziness, or lack of time for editing. From a piece by Butterworth in Financial Times: Big deal or not, there is really only one use of the semicolon that is “more or less mandated”, says Ben Yagoda, professor of English at the University of Delaware and author of About Town, a monumental account of The New Yorker magazine (whose history is marked by fractious debates over the placement of commas). And that is to separate series elements containing commas (for example, “The cities represented were Albany, New York; Wilmington, Delaware; and Selma, Alabama). The other principal uses, says Yagoda, are discretionary: “That is I might, with total grammatical correctness and without changing my meaning in the slightest, choose any one of the following: 1. ‘The book under review is utter hogwash; and that is why it is worth examining.’ 2. ‘The book under review is utter hogwash, and that is why it is worth examining.’ 3. ‘The book under review is utter hogwash; that is why it is worth examining.’ 4. ‘The book under review is utter hogwash. That is why it is worth examining.’” Deciding which of the four to choose is strictly a matter of sound and rhythm, says Yagoda - that is to say, personal style. “Writers who like (consciously or unconsciously) to stop and pause, and/or who are under the influence of Hemingway, choose 4. Those who like balanced rhythms might choose 3. Those aiming for a ‘transparent’ style might choose 2. And those who are a little bit enamoured with the sound of their own voice might choose 1.”
Read entire.
Thursday, August 21. 2008
A sight for sore eyes, from Chequesset Neck in Wellfleet, looking across to Great Island: 
Forever young? Does American pop culture deny mortality? Gates wonders, with reference to Diana West's book.
Wednesday, August 20. 2008
You can thank Isabella Stewart Gardner. She knew what she liked. The Tragedy of Lucretia (1501): 
"Real men, goes the unwritten rule of American punctuation, don't use semi-colons." That makes me feel insecure because I like to use semi-colons. Story at the Globe.
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