iPhoning it in

I was a late adopter for a cell phone.  I got my first only a year ago or so. I cheap LG without many features, cost about $20, and in all fairness, I only got it so that I could get in touch with my daughter while I was out in Phoenix.

I upgraded to an iPhone with some trepidation.  Gal I was dating waited in line for hers, and she loved it with a glee that was frightening to behold. Aps galore, a camera, movies on demand.

It seemed all a bit too much.

When I was realized I was bound for Mesa Verde this summer, and the 3G was coming out, said iPhone gal poked and prodded me to taking her phone, and upgrading her to a spiffy new one.  I put the iPhone in my pocket, and pretty much didn't use it all that much, except to call my little girl.  Didn't really use the aps all that much, and I didn't really get into the text habit.

A summer on the mountain changed that.

Mesa Verde is pretty a damned isolated place.  Internet connection, even through the company was spotty, at best.  Even the machines that Aramark provided in our little basecamp only had occasional internet connection.  If you were in camp and had a computer, WiFi signal was an on again, off again, and mostly off again, sort of premise.  Being thoroughly  addicted to teh Interwebz, this was not exactly ideal.  Save, that pesky iPhone DID allow me to connect. And I grew to love that heavy little rectangle since it not only let me call my little girl, and text her, and get my news fix too.

The relationship with the gal who got me hooked on the phone went south, but that phone kept me hooked.  As time went on, it was pretty much my conduit to the world--despite losing signal when we went up to 5000' or so.  Made good friends, started texting more, and before I knew it, the iPhone was a constant companion.  Google maps. YouTube. Texts beyond all reason. Skype on the dang thing.  Thesaurus. Dictionary. Books upon books.  Scientific calculator.  More and more science and math aps than you could shake a stick at.  Even got my feet wet with the goofy games.  Before I knew it, my phone was absolutely one of those things I put into my pocket, even before I found my keys.

So, when my phone finally decided to stop charging, it left me with an unsettling feeling.  A disquiet that I really had no idea would ever descend.  Without a phone, without this phone, I am now all bereft.  For someone who, up until this year, didn't even own a cell phone, now I find myself all kinds of antsy.  No contact numbers to browse through.  No quick finds for addresses.  No Google Maps to prop up in the cup holder to find odd places. No quick note to friends on stuff that made me giggle.  No fast camera to take a pic of goofiness on the road.

Yes, I am addicted.  Never saw it coming, until I went to sign into Skype today, and saw that nasty red line on the battery life, and the phone defiantly refusing to charge.

Tomorrow I'm heading to the AT&T store, and see what wonders they'll put before me. 3G? 3GS?  Maybe something entirely different?  All I know is that somewhere between January and now, I got hooked on a goody that I never knew you couldn't do without.

Dammit.

Zen and the Art of Cooking

Some time ago, the the blog Why is it Evil addressed the question of Why Chefs are Evil.

Not terrible funny, but it got me to musing.

We aren't evil.

We aren't always very nice. Because we work in a high stress job, that is part craft, part art, part mind numbing paper work, dangerous, repetitious, and filled with some of the most marginal personality motherfurkers you'll ever have the pleasure of meeting, and most of us love the profession.

We aren't good people. Mothers, don't let your daughters date a chef. She may love the after hours, she will love the food and the drink and the parties, but we WILL do bad things to her, that she will probably really enjoy.

Bourdain touches on a bit of the life in his books, but he doesn't do it justice, because most of the public simply won't believe it. Doing rails off a waitresses' bewbs in an office, while you have a full dining room and a patron locked in one of the bathrooms is, in some places, called Friday.

It is equal parts art, craft, and skill. And love for your fellow cooks. You bond as a team, and even if you hate the night, you're in there because the guy across the grill is your boy. Or girl depending on the kitchen, and that means they're family. It is a Zen profession, because the best you can hope for at the end of the night, are empty plates, and smiling patrons. And hopefully some good memories of your place.

The idea that one can't get into a routine is garbage. Cooks multi-task, we like to multi-task, we take it as a point of pride that we can do an 18 hour day, with a pot of coffee, half a pack of smokes, never sit once, clean hundreds of pounds of meat, fish, and more, and then actually prepare it, carve it into delicate and edible art, and at the end of the day, all we've got to show for it are some folks who are giddy and heading to their cars, and the knowledge that we'll do it again tomorrow, and most folks faced with that will run for the farking hills.

Most folks can't do the job that a professional chef does. Can't. Physically nor mentally. It is a hard life, it takes its toll on your body and mind, and yet, I love it. I love my crew. I love to cook, and being there for folks' celebrations. My art does that. My craft makes it affordable.

Yes, people cooked for their families for generations--but I cook for hundreds a night, night after night. My hands have touched an average of 150 dishes a night, 320 some odd nights a year, for better than 20 years now. I do things with food that your Grandma can't. Because I have more experience than she's had cooking. She does things well, and she is a master of several dishes. I have to be the master of a rotating menu, executed exactly the same, night after night, and in conditions that would make most folks flee. Professional cooks are just like any other professional. There are indeed talented amateurs who can do nice things. And that's fantastic. Prove it to me, by replicating it two dozen times a night, and a few dozen times for a few more different dishes, and do it on command.

Evil? Sometimes, but we kinda like it that way.











These are restaurant folk, in our natural environment.

The art of cooking is an odd one. It is very much a Zen profession. My craft gives me a lot of satisfaction. I love to cook. And I love to cook for people. But at the end of the day, not matter what, no matter how artful my plates are, not matter how long I take to prepare and play in the kitchen, the best I can look forward to are empty plates.
That's a good thing.

Empty plates means that people got fed. People don't necessarily remember the sauce that I did with their chicken, or the slight chocolate note--because I use cocoa, coffee, and dark beer--in my chili. They remember the time that they have with folks at the table. They remember Bob ordering the Four Alarm Penne, and him gulping water, and the laughs around the table. They remember the look in their wife's eye when she shared her truffle cake. They remember Grandma getting a little misty when the Steak and Tatty Pie was finished, and the memories of her mother's cooking getting shared around the table. If I get to spark those sorts of memories, that's exactly what I hope for. Mine is an ephemeral art. It is a Zen profession, because it doesn't last. The memories, the times shared, the people you're with, those last. I just facilitate things a bit.

We celebrate with food, and hopefully, meals are a celebration. Of time together, of people you love, of good times, or bad. We bring food to those who are in need, because we not only feed them, we share of ourselves. We may not have the words to help someone with the loss of their parents, but we can put together a meal for them. That shows our love and affection, and our care.

That's my profession. That is what I love to do.  I feel enormously blessed that I can share some of the things that I've learned over the years, after hundreds of thousands of meals going through my hands.  It's hard to have some pride in the skill and the craft, and you want to do what you do well, and that leads to some ego, but the one thing that handling food teaches you, is to be humble in that.  Not because there is some new hotshot coming up, but because no matter what we do, ours is a basic sort of skill. 

The best fish that I've ever had was in Jamaica. Fresh off the boat, right on the dock. Fileted right in front of me, slapped onto a grill with a little oil, salt and pepper, and a squoze of fresh lime, and handed to me in a paper boat, with some hot sauce in a blob on the side.  Nothing fancy about it. I remember that fish, because it was perfect. Crisp skin, sweet flesh, fiery sauce, tang of the lime, it all blended together with the tired of swimming and fishing, a sweet young thing whose name I cannot remember, but she smelled of sun tan oil, the rum drinks we'd had, and maybe a hint of strawberry lip gloss.  We had ice cold beer, and ate on the dock, tired, and sore, and that fish was the most pefect thing in the world. That moment is cemented in my mind because of that amazing fish.

I am grateful to that guy on the dock, because his fish made me a perfect moment. One I hope to take with me to the grave. We help cement moments in time. THAT is our professional skill. Not necessarily the cooking.  Our vehicle is the food. The presentation.  Food alone isn't going to do anything though. We need to share it with people. That's when it matters.


Cooking is craft. It's physics, it's chemistry, it's art, it's business, it's your life. It's not for everyone, but cooks get to bridge a lot of areas of expertise. A good cook should have some mechanical skills. Should have a good eye for color. A good nose. Ability to taste and judge how flavors will evolve is essential. Chemistry of cooking is amazingly important. Understanding of basic physics helps a lot. Understanding economic theory comes in handy when you run a joint, and you'd better get hip to HR, PR, alcohol service, licensing, food safety, a bit of biology, a bit of anatomy don't hurt, and even a little botany. For all those skills, it comes down to making memories. That's our real product.

My advice for the hobbyists?  Share what you do. Don't get lost in "right way" or "wrong way."

Getting lost in minutia? It happens with a hobby. I tend to think of folks in the nerd vs geek categories for most hobbies. Be that a football stat nerd versus a football geek who paints his face and gets involved. I tend to separate folks out like that. Nerds collect--be they facts, movies, stats, they immerse themselves in the details, and love the knowledge that brings. Take pride in that knowledge. Not a bad thing. Geeks get involved. Be that dressing up, making their own films, writing their own stories, building a shrine to their favorite team, a working model of their favorite mecha. Not a bad thing either. Unless of course, it turns to obsession that divorces you from contact with folks. Be that getting so lost in stats and figures, that you lose sight of the game that you love, and instead get focused on tiny details and rules, or so lost in your creations that you don't connect with people, and get lost in your own fantasy.


Ideally, your interests help you connect, and give you a greater appreciation of skills and people. You get lost in them, then it gets weird.

Love food? Then share it. Share that love, because that's what it's about. Sharing your passion and love, with those you love. Not dunning folks who don't do it "right." It isn't up to your standard? Don't go back. Don't make that mistake in your own cooking. There is nothing wrong with being passionate about cooking. But losing sight of the connections that good cooking should bring, that's a weird and lonely road, and if you constantly harp on things done "wrong" then folks aren't going to connect with you. You alienate folks with constant tirades, then you're missing the point.

It's food. It's hopefully great. Be it a great hot dog with a home made giardinera and chili that brings tears to the eyes, or a silky smooth alfredo that you get extra bread to sop up every last drop, or a falling off the bone tender beef rib, or a galatte that melts your soul. It's food. It's basic.

It IS love, but only when you share it.

Crossposted to The Motely Moose

The Best of Cookbooks...

As a chef, I often get asked all sorts of things.  What's your favorite dish?  What do I do with arugula?  What's the best sauce?  How do I cook X?  Who's your favorite chef?  What's the best cookbook?

These are questions that are often complicated. Favorite dish changes on a whim, because what you're in the mood for depends on the season, depends on who you're with, depends on how you feel that day.  Arugula has lots of uses.  Best sauce with what?  Lots of ways to prepare a lot of things, so it's sort of a loaded gun sort of question.

But the last two are fairly easy for me.  Hands down, it is Jacques Pepin.  No question. No equivocation. Jacques is THE man in my book. An amazingly skilled chef, he is likewise a gifted teacher, an advocate for the profession, someone who loves food, and has an attitude that is generous and wide when it comes to cuisine. La Technique was a brilliant and accessible way to bring the fundamentals of French cuisine to the masses.  His work and his passion earned him France's highest civilian honor, the Légion d'honneur. He is very much one of my culinary heroes.

Not surprisingly, he also wrote the cookbook that reccomend to folks who want to get their feet wet in cooking.  Jacques' Art of Cooking is easily the most accessible, and best cookbook that I can recommend for beginners and enthusiasts alike.  Jacques is very much a teacher, and this pair of books is not only lavish with illustrations, it is a course in cooking. From stocks to patisserie, from fish to meats, from various cutting techniquest and presentation, it is very much a course in cooking that leads one recipe at a time to teaching the fundamentals of cooking, and with step by step instructions, and each recipe builds skills to take to the next. They are an investment in skills, and when I recommend them, it isn't just for the recipes, but for what amounts to an education in the craft that I love. His enthusiasm and joy for that craft is evident, and it is a joy just to look through, and for beginners and enthusiasts alike, the pair of books are an ode to the craft and art in the kitchen, and done with simplicity an elegance.

Get these first, and take the time to sit down with them. Not just for the recipes, but for the technique and the skills that are presented.  For the joy and the artistry.  For the basic fundamentals that will build your own skills and develop your own eye and taste.  I cannot recommned these books enough, and for the beginner, they are gold. Far more so than The Professional Chef by the Culinary Institute of America--which is far better suited as a text for the burgeoning professional, than for laymen looking to improve their skills.  The key to Pepin is always the joy of sharing, and that is what good cooking is about. Sharing with those you love, sharing good times, sharing something that is basic and commonplace, and elevated by the company.

Crossposted to The Motley Moose

The Cape and Supers in General

Mike Brotherton  posted up a quick thought bubble on why do superheroes on TV suck ass recently. I popped him off a quick reply, and then realized that the subject is an interesting question.

We see a plethora of comics to movies today. The obvious successes like Sam Raimi's Spiderman films. del Toro's great spin on Hellboy.  Jon Favreau's Iron Man.  Then you get into the lesser knowns, like The Losers. 30 Days of Night. Road to Perdition. Ghost World. A History of Violence.  There are high profile faves that have hit the screen, like Scott Pilgram and The Green Hornet, and then you have barely recognizable adaptations like Wanted that threw out the original comic premise for something that might be called "inspired" by the comic, while pretty much just tossing out the original. Then you have Zack Snyder doing essentially a frame by frame recreation of 300, and the same can be said for Robert Rodriguez doing much the same for Sin City--even including Frank Miller in the directing credits.

The thing Mike's blog touched on, was that TV superhero series have a spotty record.  While I still have fond memories of Lynda Carter's Wonder Woman--and to be entirely fair, the woman made those big ol' granny panties work for her, so how can not love the show--and I'm old enough to remember Legend of the Superheroes.  Yes, there was The Hulk. The Shazam/Isis Hour on Saturday mornings--and let's not forget Electra Woman and Dyna-Girl. The Greatest American Hero as a sort of deconstruction of the genre. The terrible Flash adaptation. Later we had a re-imagined Lois and Clark. Now, we have the almost unrecognizable Superboy in Smallville. There have been a ton of superhero series. Some fair, some not so great. Some terrible. Some, like Heroes started off with high hopes, and then sort of fell into mediocrity if not eventual collapse of anything resembling sense or structure.

Series like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and its spinoff Angel, fared better. Better writing was a start, and to be fair, TV has been kinder to fantasy series, and urban horror fantasy, than to straight up stories about guys and gals in capes and costumes.

In part, because, as cool as the costumes may seem on paper, when you put a grown man into spandex, you realize, that the physiques that the heroes of comics have are impossible. Not just the wasp waisted and titanic bewbs that most comic heroines have, but the men as well.  Even Olympic gymnasts and swimmers fail in comparison to most superheroes.  Put a costume on folks, and it gets silly fast.  Even super high tech costumes like MANTIS.

TV just doesn't have the budgets to work with that del Toro and Favreau have. Or Zack Snyder can pull in.  That isn't lost on TV producers either.  They want the demographic, but often don't understand the audience. Yes, I'm looking at even the Sci-Fi Network. Or the SyFy Network.  When a network programming lead says that she doesn't really like all that science talk or goofiness with aliens, you know that you're pretty much boned for good science fiction, and that sort of puts a damper on things like superhero spins as well. Producers who are looking to capitalize on a fad, but without understanding of the genre produce things like SuperCroc vs Gatoroid or the fifty brazillion disaster variations and the Mythological Beast Attacks of the month that SyFy has gone for in their TV movies. Or adapting straight up fantasies and slipping them in on a network supposedly devoted to science fiction. It is that lack of understanding of the genre that leads TV supers down an ugly and odd road.

Most often, it's a move to "deconstruct" the genre.  Greatest American Hero. Heroes. Lois and Clark turned Superman into a romance. Smallville turns Supes into a teen angst soap opera. Why?  Because those are things that the producers understand.  Just give the outer veneer of a man who can fly, or a girl who can heal anything, and then turn loose the monkeys to churn out scripts filled with pregnant pauses, dewy looks that are rife with longing--which sadly usually looks like our Dear Heroine sat on a pin--and they call it a success.

This is why I chose to take a look at The Cape.  I am a fan of another comic inspired series, The Human Target, though, the producers don't really tout it as a "comic series." The Human Target has been fun, and while it is a departure from the comic, in that our Beamish Boy isn't replacing his client so much, as a team related exercise in bodyguarding in a similar vein to the odd turns that Burn Notice has taken to, it is still a serviceable series.  Like many comic inspired properties, the producers threw out the original, and just use the title and character names, and roll on like a big wheel. I understand this, and I've pretty much resigned myself to it.

Which is why The Cape sort of captured my attention.  It's about half way through its first season, and it's taken some decent names and put them on camera. Keith David, Vinnie Jones, Summer Glau, all have some street cred for their chops on geeky franchises. It's a series that is unabashedly about a guy in a cape, and with a suitably genre background of a cop turned acrobat and stage magician, with a tricked out cape and a lot of parlor tricks he learned from a carny to fight crime, and clear his name, to rejoin his family who thinks him dead.

A lot to process?  It always seems like it with superhero properties. The stream of minutia and characters and all the odd plot pieces, but then again, try distilling down the relationships and sub-plots in NCIS sometime.  Comic series have their conventions, and motivations to be a hero is part of that. Our Vince Faraday has his own demons to fight, even as Bruce Wayne, or Frank Castle do. Revenge is always an easy one to understand.

The effects are not amazing. Vinnie Jones has an odd makeup as the sort of Killer Croc inspired Scales as an oddly disfugured dock boss.  James Frain's Chess is a diabolical planner, and the concession to showing his ebbil is his mask on occasion, and some odd contacts when he is wallowing in his own crapulence. Faraday's cape is an odd blend of bungi effects, CGI whipping around, and folding back into his cowl.  But the action isn't bad.  And the story is refreshingly open as a comic series go on TV. Not lost in trying to shed being a comic inspired series, it doesn't take the angst filled road that bogged down both Lois and Clark and Smallville, punctuated with melodrama.  Instead, The Cape follows a cop who wants to clear his name, and is getting used by his Circus of Crime mentor Max Malini, and Summer Glau's cryptic Orwell.  He's tortured by not being able to reach out to his wife and son who think him dead, and he breaks to see his son in the guise of The Cape, inspired by his son's favorite comic.

The one thing that I like about the series is that it doesn't shy away from the comicdom it comes from. It is at least honest with itself on this, and while it isn't the quality of writing that we saw in HBO's Rome--and to be fair, there are few shows that can be held to that standard--it is at least honest about where it comes from, and the material.

Great television?  Maybe not, but it doesn't suck necessarily, because it's not actively trying to be anything else than what it is. Which is actually kind of nice for a change.  It gives me hope that TV producers might eventually get the concepts that make a decent superhero concept. 

Perfect?  Far from it, but servicable and if you like the genre, it might be worth giving a spin, at least on Hulu to try it on for size.

Al, at this point...

Al Gore recently responded to Bill O'Reilly's question:  “Why has southern New York turned into the tundra?”

It was a reasoned response, if you understand the issues.

“In fact, scientists have been warning for at least two decades that global warming could make snowstorms more severe. Snow has two simple ingredients: cold and moisture. Warmer air collects moisture like a sponge until it hits a patch of cold air. When temperatures dip below freezing, a lot of moisture creates a lot of snow.”



“A rise in global temperature can create all sorts of havoc, ranging from hotter dry spells to colder winters, along with increasingly violent storms, flooding, forest fires and loss of endangered species.”


The problem is that Al Gore has tainted this issue with his insistence on framing the issue of climate change in terms of "Global Warming." It is a branding issue largely, once you dip into the science of climate change.

The problem lies in that most folks aren't dipping into the science. In framing things under the rubric of
Global Warming it not only allows misconceptions to bloom, it gives folks who reject climate change as a matter to latch onto this particular phrase.  Common sense folks, who look upon these blustery, blizzardy conditions hear "Global Warming" and short circuit to themselves, "How in the hell can this man be talking warming when it's so goddamn cold?" 

To be clear, the evidence that we are seeing climatic changes as a result of man made conditions is mounting. The loss in the polar caps, and the large amounts of fresh water dumped into those seas affects energy transfers across the globe.  That shift in energy transfer has growing evidence of climatic shifts that do much more than simply warm or cool. It shifts energy patterns and transfers that affect weather formation, and throw off climatic systems.  Moreover, the warming aspect carries with it its own dangers to throw things far enough off kilter, that the massive dump of fresh water into the poles, that it could even throw off the Great Ocean Conveyor. That would be catastrophic to current weather patterns, and the agriculture that we base our food supplies on, across the globe as a side effect. Stretches of arable land turned to desert, growth of the ice caps as fresh water is locked up, and that mass of ice furthering the size of the caps, creeping us into a return to conditions that the have more typified the Earth as of late, at least geologically speaking, with a return to another Ice Age.  Currents that drive the oceans, and massive amounts of energy, as well as the oceanlife that thrive in these currents and use them shutting down would be catastrophic to more than just human life, but cause extinction events in the seas as well as on land.

That's hard to grasp, when you only talk about Global Warming.

Al Gore did a great deal to promote the idea of responsibility for our actions, and understanding of the issues at hand. Save that his insistence of the branding of the problem as Global Warming, it now serves as an umbrella to attack him for hiding behind.

We face not just global warming, but climate change on a massive scale. Weather patterns thrown off kilter, energy transfers that fuel storm patterns that we have yet to accomodate and understand.  Shifts in pelagic poputions of various forms of life that affect fishing and the life cycles of many species. Framing the issue as climate change is a far more accurate form of terminology. It also gives the folks who are heavily invested in technologies and processes that fuel the problem less ground to push against, and less arguments to frame by disingenuously attacking the issue on "common sense" grounds and pointing to every blizzard and storm as asking the question of how can global warming explain these tundra conditions?

At this point, maybe Al Gore needs to step aside.  Allow the argument to be framed in the way that it should have been framed from the first.  Not as a matter of "warming" or "cooling" but as a matter of systemic climatic change.  Yes, Climate Change is less catchy and fear-mongery, but fear mongering is not what we need. Nor pithy catch phrases.  What we do need is understanding that our actions are causing shifts in global weather patterns.  That will mean some folks get colder, or warmer. That rain falls that they expected will change. That the storm systems they are used to will change. That lands that were arable thanks to seasonal patterns will be affected. That the investment in infrastructure around these arable lands may become outdated, if not useless.

Gore's insistence on framing things in terms of Global Warming as a brand is hurting his own cause. And the cause of scientists who are doing good research.

Crossposted to The Motley Moose.

Bewbs in Mah YouTubes?

To be entirely fair, I haven't paid much attention to YouTube for a while.  Hulu and other streaming sites have kept my attention for watching stuff.  Yes, there were the occasional links to the ridiculous and strange, but YouTube's takeover by teh Google, pretty much passed me by.  Yes, that is old news, but I pretty much ignored the limited licenses that folks like CBS, Lion's Gate, and MGM made to offer up films. My connection has been spotty at best for a while, and this summer at Mesa Verde that connection was almost non-existent.  Which explains the bareness of my post history here too.  Mea culpa.

So, now that I have a strong connection, my old and slow computer is back, and my TV habit sharply curtailed by a lack of interest in sitting down with the big screen, save to play games and movies, I was surprised to see the various channels for films.  Not the uploaded anime in 10 minute snippets, or films chopped to channels, but full length films that are licensed.  For me, a wealth of Shaw Brothers movies makes me a happy guy.

Imagine my surprise when going through, and lo, there were boobs in mah tubes.  Not porn or cam girl nudes, but the usual mild sessy that many HK films went for.  Then in browsing for movie channels, realizing that there were a host of the old "nudist" films that went for the sessy stuff that tried to get around the censors in appearing to be about the nudist lifestyle.  Likewise, a whole raft of the Spaghetti Westerns, and without suffering the cutting room floor.  Let's not even get into the huge pile of detritus that masquerades as horror movies, made straight for video, and some of which doesn't even qualify for airing on Cinemax late at night.

I have to say, that it was a pleasant surprise.  Not so much because I am starved for boobs.  An American male, with an Internet connection, let's face it, I can see boobs on demand, even from my phone.  Finding porn isn't exactly a difficult thing.  If anything, thanks to Google, it's often a matter of making sure your Search Settings are set to at least Moderate to avoid finding out exactly how often Rule 34 is invoked.  (Or how many folks apparently are really into Pokemon porn.  Seriously, people, WTF?) The surprise was nice, because, let's face it, there are a lot of great films out there. Not all of them are for kids, and not all of them were just softcore dressed up for cable.  I am a fan of cheesy horror.  Goofy action films.  Spaghetti Westerns.  And in looking to finally compete against other streaming film sites, YouTube has finally become a stop for me.  Because it's finally treating me like an adult.

Grown people can handle the boobs, and I don't mind a mature content warning.  I'm not looking for YouTube to become a Consumption Junction clone by any means, but by providing content that isn't all PG rated, I finally have a use for the service--because before, let's face it, the sessiest you got on YouTube was aspiring camwhores practicing before heading elsewhere to monetize their assets and finding their way to a Gentlemen's Club near you. Other than seeing some kid rack himself on a skateboard.  Or seeing Julia Nunes do another ukele based song.  Speaking of which:



Is this an endorsement for bewbs and softcore?  Well, maybe a little, because bewbs are a good thing. But less an endorsement, than a thank you to YouTube for treating me like a gottverdammt adult after so long.  Bewbs aren't going to curve our spines, and keep us from winning the war, and treating the public like adults on occasion might actually keep the service relevant and useful, even to cranky bastiches like myself.  Who are actually going to YouTube to look for more than just the occasional video to link into emails to woo gals with pretty gray eyes and mobile kiesters. Speaking of which, YouTube finally got some folks who revere Kyu Sakamoto.  Sukiyaki was one of those tunes my mother used to sing when I was a wee boy, and finding this original video, apparently kicked up a lot of dust in the room.



Thanks YouTube for not devolving, and for becoming more useful as time has gone on.  Unlike some social networks, you're actually keeping up, and that's nice to see.  Some sites ARE slicker and more polished, but it's nice to see the old girl has a few new tricks, and some fun licensed content.

The TEA Party and Historical Fundamentalism

Jill Lepore released The Whites of their Eyes: The Tea Party's Revolution and the Battle over American History recently, from the Princeton University Press.

That news alone might not get folks terrible excited.  While a contributor to the New Yorker, her work tends to be of a scholarly nature, grounded in early American history, and that is unsurprising given her credentials as a Harvard professor.

What she has done is shed some light onto the historical revisionism, if not outright Historical Fundamentalism that the TEA Party and their fellow travelers are now engaging in to back not just shoddy scholarship, but to make political cases for action, based on a somewhat dubious historical perspective.

My own take on the TEA Party has been one of some bemusement.  Taking the name of an action where American colonists struck a blow against both the East India Trading Company, and the British Crown, who was heavily invested in said corporation, and using that name to protest, by buying tea to throw away, to be cleaned up by municipal workers, paid for by their own taxes.  It is an odd disconnect.

No more so, than their own cries against what they feel oddly as "Taxation without representation!" while ignoring the sad fact that they ARE represented.  The Tea Act that brought such ire, was opposed vehemently by the Colonists in that they felt that they should be taxed by their own representatives, and the British Parliament did not have any Colonists sitting.  Not to mention the monopolist stance for the importation of many goods, that profited the East India Trading Company, and the British Crown who held a large interest.  It is odd, since our own Representatives and Senators, and President who signs and executes the laws of our land, are all elected.  The Tea Party and their fellow travelers have representation, they simply don't like the representatives that their fellow citizens have put into office.

There lies the rub.  It is an odd sort of time, where folks whose candidate feel that they no longer have a voice, which says something more about how they feel representatives should operate.  Representatives and Senators represent the citizens and interests of their districts and states.  Not simply the ones who put them into office, but all of them. Which is sort of why we made addendum to the Constitution to guarantee protections for minority voices in the Bill of Rights.  It is a telling assumption that if your side loses an election, that you will have no say, on how you and yours will operate in the majority.

That has been my impression of the TEA Party.  Jill Lapore takes on the historical revisionism and new Historical Fundamentalism that is used as the basis to support stances that, to be honest, take a distorted view of history, and the intentions of our Founding Fathers.

From the separation of church and state--which the Texas School Board have taken on as an enemy of the people, and who reject the principle--to rebranding capitalism with "free trade" and slavery with the more antiseptic "Atlantic triangle trade."  Likewise, the TEA Party likes to invoke the Constitution as its guide for a vision of the future, while ignoring the very Preamble to the document where the Framers put forth in clear language their purpose.

"to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity."

Those words are particularly telling.  The Preamble clearly laid out what the People ordained the Constitution to address.  Yet, we have a movement that tends to ignore the capitalized portions of the Preamble as being irrelevant...

Mind you, this is not the first time the Founders and our Revolution have been invoked for political profit. Both the Federalists and Anti-Federalists jiggered with interpretations to support their causes. Both the Union and Confederacy bolstered their cases by invoking the Founders.  Even Martin Luther King, Jr. invoked the Tea Party as a massive act of civil disobedience.  Andrew Jackson portrayed his Democratic Party as the true Sons of Liberty.

It isn't just Jefferson, who has now become persona non grata, save when convenient, whose words have been taken sometimes out of context.  Many use Franklin's The Way to Wealth as a base on which to found cases that we must have an aggressive defense of laissez faire policy, ignoring the fact that Poor Richard's Almanac was often a pointed satire, and full of bold and often reckless japes.  Instead, we have folks who portray Franklin as a stolid supporter of things that he openly mocked.  Mind you, it is not entirely surprising that his role has been reinterpreted by folks who hold that the Green Dragon Tavern, the "Headquarters of the Revolution" is no longer in Real America, as Boston is now firmly in the hands of the enemy.

Mind you, the TEA Party--Taxed Enough Already--is far from the first invocation of the imagery. In the 1970s Jeremy Rifkin's People's Bicentennial Commission formed their own TEA Party--Tax Equity for Americans.  His words were that the nation needed "a new party, a movement that will treat tax reform as one aspect of a fight for genuine equality of property and power against taxation without representation."  There has been a proliferation of trash thrown into the Boston harbor in protest--from the Boy Scouts dumping a cask labled "CRACK" in 1988, the Teamsters dumped beer and water and empty cases four years later in their own protests. In 1997 doctors and nurses boarded the Beaver and threw out HMO's annual reports "launching a campaign against market-driven health care."  Dick Army himself unloaded a copy of the US tax code in 1997, and in 2007 Senators from Massachusetts, Texas, Georgia, and Virginia went to dump boxes bearing labels of unfunded federal mandates, like No Child Left Behind--though, to be fair, they didn't actually dump them as it is illegal to do so, but they pretended to.  Which shows how far folks are willing to go to appear to be making a useful protest...

There is a move towards Originalism within our current incarnation of the TEA Party.  One that carefully picks and chooses its interpretations.  You have the National Center for Constitutional Studies founded in 1967 to promote the idea that the Founders had fixed and final word on the intent of the Constitution.  Seemingly to flout the words of Madison in Federalist 14:

"Is it not to the glory of the people of America, that, whilst they have paid decent regard to the opinions of former times and other nations, they have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for names, to overrule the suggestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their own situation, and the lessons of their own experience?"

And whilst trying to reinterpret the intent of the Framers, they live that lively statement, while rejecting that they are doing so, wholecloth, in trying to determine what that original intent might  be.

Let's not even get into the reenactment of the Boston Massacre to promote antibussing, in 1974.  The riff of using imagery of the Revolution to invoke an appeal to authority and validity of actions is not exactly a new thing.

Not just on tax policy, do we see a want of Historical Fundamentalism, but certainly, we have a renewed interest in promotion of religion by the State.  From Mitt Romney's address on faith, to the renewed attacks on the separation of church and state in Texas and beyond. Mind you, flouting Madison's 1785 "Memorial Remonstrance against Religious Assessments"

"The Religion of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man."


Jefferson's own, "our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry."

Article VI of the Constitution itself: "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust in the United States."

And the addendum to that, in the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."


Mind you, those are all foundations to protect religion from the state, as much as protect the state from religion.  The tides of religious fervor wax and wane, and while one faith may take public precedent, years and shifts in population can take that faith from being in the majority.  That our Founders rejected the practice of the establishment of religion--as nearly every British North American colony had an established religion--is telling.  Not just to protect the state, but to protect faiths. In seeking to promote faith in our state, we commit ourselves to a road that veers steadily away from those protections.

The revisionism is particularly marked when you see TEA Party advocates recite the Pledge of Allegiance.  Not only forgetting the "Liberty and Justice for All" portions, but as a line drawn in the sand against the perceived socialism of our current President. If for no other reason that the Pledge was written by Francis Bellamy--former pastor of Boston's Bethany Baptist Church--who was himself a Socialist. Vice President in fact of the Society of Christian Socialists.  Written for children. But, I've touched base on these forgotten pledges before.

Then again, we have seen Reagan invoking Thomas Paine, and many rushing to quote him on his beliefs on religion, whilst ignoring his equal belief in taxation and its purpose to alleviate suffering and for public works. Apparently The Rights of Man was not as popular reading as The Age of Reason.  The invocation of Common Sense is sometimes mixed as well. Reagan took up that mantle, as did Ralph Reed, Jesse Helms, and Jeremy Rifkin's Peoples Bicentennial Commission against corporate tyranny, and we have Glenn Beck railing against an out of control government as well.

Ultimately, we see the forces of a Historical Fundamentalism engaging in a practice to impose their own views of history, and looking to excise views that might contradict or oppose their interpretations. Fairly modern interpretations as well.  The interpretation portion I can agree is healthy. Our Constitution is a flexible document intended to flex and bow to a certain degree to the needs and will of the people. No provisions were made for women to vote, or for slavery to be ended.  We have changed as a society, and that flexibility goes in tandem with Jefferson's view that "Large institutions must go hand in hand with the Progress of the human mind."  What is dangerous is attempts to stifle education and dissent of other interpretations.  To vilify those who have a knowledge of history, and likewise use it to counter the revisionist attempts to impose only their view of history onto not just the public, but coming generations.

Crossposted to The Motley Moose.