Ouch

"The difference between LA and Vegas is that in LA, when you crap out, you don't leave town."

-Seinfeld on Comedians in Cars with guest Jon Stewart

Wow

A's trade Cespedes for Lester (and Gomes).

I'm a little bummed by this trade. Cespedes is my favorite player on the A's and the one hitter who you don't change the channel when he's up to the plate. Plus, one of their strengths this year was having a 3-4-5 of Cespedes, Moss, Donaldson, which is quite solid. Sure, our pitching staff is totally nasty now. I mean, we have four guys who could conceivably be aces. Or maybe a better way of thinking about it -- we have four #2 guys who are better than any other #2s in the game.

In Billy we trust...I guess...

Logging

Book: The Jugger by Richard Stark

I could read Parker books all day.

Density in Los Angeles

Joel Kotkin thinks LA is making a mistake by becoming more dense and adding in more public transportation.

Transit has limited effect in Southern California because this region functions best as a network of “villages,” some more urban than others, connected primarily by freeways and an enviable arterial street system. Inside our villages, we can find the human scale and comfort that can be so elusive in a megacity. This arrangement allows many Southern Californians to live in a quiet neighborhood that also is within one of the world’s most diverse – and important – cities.

These villages span all the vast diversity of Southern California. Some areas, like Downtown Los Angeles, increasingly appeal to young professionals who seek a version of dense urban living. They share a universe with cohorts found in many older cities: young hipsters, a small sample of empty nesters and a sizable population of homeless who live on the edges of the gentrification zone.

But Downtown hardly provides a template for the rest of the region. Mostly we live in lower-density villages, many of which – in the San Gabriel Valley, East Los Angeles, Santa Ana, Westminster and L.A.’s Leimart Park, for example – reflect largely ethnic cultures with deeply established roots.

Even newer areas, like Irvine – which still ranks among America’s fastest-growing cities – are now majority Asian and Latino. Irvine’s appeal is largely the much- dissed suburban virtues of clean streets, good parks and excellent schools.

His description of Los Angeles as a series of villages accurately describes living here. I see all these new dense, urban type of townhomes going up all around Mid-City, Hollywood, and Silver Lake. They don't exactly capture the California dream home experience, which involves a little yard, but they do offer a nice in-between option for young families.

I think the best thing Los Angeles could do for families is to bust up the LA Public School system and create smaller districts by neighborhood. Explain to me how that would make things worse?

Logging

Film: This Is The End

Watching this movie was like eating a rice crispy treat. It tastes good for a bite or two and then you realize there is nothing to it but rice crispies and marshmallows and butter and think to yourself "why am I eating this?" Then, for another moment you think, "oh, it's kinda cool that's all this is." But by the time you finish eating it, you regret it and realize why you don't eat rice crispy treats all that often -- because they don't make you feel good.

This movie was a rice crispy treat.

Finally, Something Intelligent...

...is written about the current flare up in Israel-Palestine.

But when the Muslim Brotherhood government fell, the military leaders cracked down. They sentenced hundreds of the Brotherhood’s leadership class to death. They also closed roughly 95 percent of the tunnels that connected Egypt to Gaza, where the Brotherhood’s offshoot, Hamas, had gained power. 

As intended, the Egyptian move was economically devastating to Hamas. Hamas derived 40 percent of its tax revenue from tariffs on goods that flowed through those tunnels. One economist estimated the economic losses at $460 million a year, nearly a fifth of the Gazan G.D.P. Hamas needed to end that blockade, but it couldn’t strike Egypt, so it struck Israel. 

If Hamas could emerge as the heroic fighter in a death match against the Jewish state, if Arab TV screens were filled with dead Palestinian civilians, then public outrage would force Egypt to lift the blockade. Civilian casualties were part of the point. When Mousa Abu Marzook, the deputy chief of the Hamas political bureau, dismissed a plea for a cease-fire, he asked a rhetorical question, “What are 200 martyrs compared with lifting the siege?” 

The eminent Israeli journalist Avi Issacharoff summarized the strategy in The Times of Israel, “Make no mistake, Hamas remains committed to the destruction of Israel. But Hamas is firing rockets at Tel Aviv and sending terrorists through tunnels into southern Israel while aiming, in essence, at Cairo.”

A continuing flaw in how we think about about the Middle East is that we think it is about us. And by us, I mean the West and our only proxy in the Middle East, Israel. But the truth is, the conflicts exported by various Arab groups is about them -- and inter-Arab conflicts that having be raging for centuries. Even Al Queda declaring war against the US is really just a side proxy battle for Wahhabist control over Saudi Arabia.

On Israeli Constraint

Does anyone think Hamas doesn't want civilian casualties? Isn't it commonly understood that a major tactic of Hamas is to actively encourage civilian casualties by placing weapons caches and military operations systems near and underneath hospitals and schools? Seems to me anyone who preaches for Israeli constraint must factor in "the how question" and address the morality of Hamas' military conduct -- otherwise, the words seem pretty hollow.

Israel-Hamas

Doing my best to pay as little attention as possible to this "crisis," but couldn't help but overhear some criticism of Israel's actions and this old term "proportionate response." Apparently, people think Israel has a right to defend themselves, but only "proportionately." And I guess that means...what exactly? If one Israeli is killed, then Israel is allowed to kill one Palestinian in response? Is that the basic moral calculus? Absurd. Utterly absurd. The point to war is to win. Not to have equal losses on both sides. It surprises me to hear "intelligent" Americans saying such things -- we haven't ever had equal losses on the battlefield -- in any war. Imagine saying in WW2, "let's fight the Japanese, but only kill one of theirs for every one of ours that were killed in Pearl Harbor."

Hamas chooses perpetual war -- their reason for being is perpetual war against Israel -- and so every now and again Israel fights them and then is criticized for it. The international community puts pressure on Israel to hold back and allow Hamas to rearm and the cycle continues. Very strange.

Edelstein

I never liked this film critic ever since he praised the ridiculous film Margaret. But in his brief review of A Most Wanted Man he slips in an absolutely horrific sentiment:

Part of me wishes that Philip Seymour Hoffman’s final lead performance, in A Most Wanted Man, wasn’t very good. I know that sounds perverse. But if he’d been flailing as an actor at the end, it would make his loss easier to bear from an artistic—if not a human—perspective. The thing is, though, the actor we see in this movie is at his absolute peak. This might even be my favorite Hoffman performance of all, damn it.

Whaaaaat?!? Edelstein is a monster. What a dick! His cardinal sin is conflating Hoffman's skill and performance as an actor with Hoffman as a person, as a soul, as a human. His death would be more tolerable had he been in a slump? Had he not been as talented? I can't even wrap my head around someone who have such a thought...as if other people on this planet are here merely as a source of amusement or a source of art or to do performances worthy of criticism. What a disgusting little pretentious piece of shit.

Statistics

From this LBN news report I get via email:

In the course of a lifetime, the average man has had 6.1 sexual partners and the average women has 3.6 sexual partners.

Can someone explain the gender of the 2.5 sexual partners difference? Who are these guys hooking up with? Space aliens?

This stat suggests what I already know: both men and women lie.

Logging

Films: A Most Wanted Man, Lucy, and Force of Evil

A triple feature...almost. More like a double feature with an old film noir DVD cherry on top. A Most Wanted Man was what we can now expect from a LeCarre adaptation - stylish, cool, ponderous, well-acted, and poor movie storytelling. I can say this about LeCarre because he is one of my favorite authors, but the best screen adaptations of his work are long over. Richard Burton's A Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Alec Guiness' Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy are both his two best books and two best adaptations. The truth is, LeCarre's one big insight was that the West's tactics in the Cold War were no worse than the Soviets, but it was in defense of something better. His insight was so true and so ahead of its time, it is now widely accepted. He is not likely to make another such insight anymore than Mark Zuckerberg is likely to invent another Facebook. Book reviewers praise some of his newer work, A Most Wanted Man among them, but he has no bad guy to work against. Sure...his premise is now that we defeated communism, we must work to defeat capitalism. But come on...capitalism has endured the criticisms he lobs at it for longer than even LeCarre's been alive - that it is cold, it sacrifices the weak, and so forth. It just isn't very original. Still, there was a great Phillip Seymour Hoffman moment at the end that was perhaps a tad too subtle for the movies in this day and age where he jumps out of the car, slams the door, and yells "Fuuuuucccckkk" before flopping around the street like an injured sea lion.

Lucy. Yikes. I cannot believe the man who made Leon The Professional also made this film. Does Besson do drugs? This movie was seemingly conceived out of a bad drug trip after binge watching True Detective and Her. I know that probably didn't happen, but is it so unimaginable that Besson had this idea and Scar Jo lined up, took some weird drugs, binged watched and decided to do a last minute rewrite? Anyhow...a bad sign in your action movie...when your final sequence involves your protag sitting in a chair building up a computer flash drive in her mind (don't ask me)...while the bad guys attack the building.

Force of Evil. Simply put, back in those days the writing was better. It has a lame voice over, but there are snippets of little aside dialog in this film that tops anything I see on film or tv today. Funny that.

New Homebuyers

Non-existent in California. I don't know many.

Logging

Film: Boyhood

The film of the year thus far. (Although, I re-watched part of Snowpiercer on Demand and it gets even better on 2nd viewing). What can I say other than Linklater is the man. He rejuvenates my sense of cinema and what can be accomplished with the basics: writing, acting, vision, originality. There is a total absence of cynicism in this project. I watched it right after seeing Planet of the Apes, which embodies the best Hollywood can offer at the moment (and it isn't much).

I sure hope Patricia Arquette wins an Oscar for this (oh damn, is she going against Tilda Swinton! Hopefully PA is best actress and TS is supporting). She is a terrific actress and utterly lovable on screen. She plays sexy and matronly. She has flown under-the-radar for too long as her attractiveness makes her seem not serious. But let's not confuse what seems effortlessness with a lack of skill. In many ways, I prefer actors who "make it look easy" rather than this Meryl Streep phenomena where it needs to feel like such a gargantuan task.

Anyhow, Boyhood should also be considered for editing awards. The time transitions were terrific - elegant, easy-to-follow, emotional. What a film. I must read how he filmed it. It would not surprise me to discover a very minimal crew and apparatus.

A Worthy Endeavor

538 seeks the greatest burrito in America.

Logging

Film: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Technology for making ape good. Writing and story not so good. Same idea as X-Men franchise. Can species live together?

Tom Cruise Weekend

The wife watched Risky Business the other night and Collateral was on the TV late last night. Of course, I watched the whole thing. Got me thinking of Tom Cruise and what if he had only done his roles in Risky Business, Top Gun, Mission Impossible, Magnolia, Collateral, and Tropic Thunder. You'd think - Jesus Christ - this guy is a fantastic actor.

He plays a vulnerable, sexually naive teenager, who blossoms into a young man in one of the greatest high school movies of all time. He carries two massive Hollywood blockbuster movies as a charismatic leading man -- in one, playing sexy pilot and in another, a badass team leader. And then, he plays scene-stealing villains in several different types of movies. In PTA's Magnolia, he arguably gives the most standout performance in an ensemble of some of the greatest living actors at the time: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Phillip Baker Hall, Julianne Moore, etc. In Collateral, which might be my favorite of all his roles, he plays a sociopathic hired killer, draped in a tight grey suit and dyed grey hair, doing a Terminator impersonation. And then, the comedic turn in Tropic Thunder, which was much more clever than any of the DeNiro self-spoofs if you ask me. He basically makes the movie, which isn't very good, but the performance could be up there with Terry Crews in Idiocracy and Dudley Moore in Foul Play, where these single side performances elevate the films into worth watching.

All I'm saying is that there are many actors who get more critical "respect" who can't match these five performances, methinks.

Obama Has Lunch

With a struggling single mom. This is nice and paints a picture of Obama's true calling: an inspirational ex-President for the less-advantaged in America. I'm serious. I think Obama will be a great ex-President.

While Vlad Putin does his best Tywin Lannister impression in the Ukraine by having airlines shot down and Israel invades Gaza and ebola breaks out in Nigeria and the BRIC countries make the first strategic move to wrestle the American dollar out of the position of the world reserve currency, our President is going to inspire a single mother to stay in school.

I honestly don't mean to be snarky, because I do think this is a ground-up, not top-down world. And inspiration for people to improve themselves should not be mocked. But as an executive - which is what the President IS - Obama doesn't really seem to have a grasp of priorities. He's more of a Ghandi or MLK figure with a good political apparatus to get people out of vote. Strange, this 21st century.

Grading By Race

A plan to give grades by racial background at University of Wisconsin.

First of all, I think this happens already in some classes. I had a history professor (the class and teacher will remain unnamed) in college who I believe gave grading advantages to students by race.

The problem with "diversity"is the rabbit-hole factor. The purposefully amorphous word is used so as to make anyone opposed to the idea seem like a racist fool, but the meaning - and actions by institutions  - can vary to the whims of any unskilled administrator or flunkie who weasels their way into a position of power.

Diversity - as used by institutions - means nothing. It means whatever the people saying it choose it to mean in their present emotional state. It means quotas, basically. But what's worse, it won't actually spell out the quotas it is trying to impose -- and will move and shift at the whims of the politically correct consensus. I dare to think this whole idea of diversity might be one of the most poisonous elements of American culture and could be one of the major causes of our bigger social and political problems - a stagnant economy, unemployment, failing education, lack of trust amongst the citizenry, destructive family structures in the lower classes, disagreements on immigration policies. It is breaking up the core idea of American identity by playing favorites and handcuffing the most competent people in our country and further, doesn't truly help those it purports to. If you want to talk about American decline, you could start in a worse places.

The End of Old Movies?

Netflix is moving away from subscription services. Fox is trying to buy Warner Brothers. Movies are going pure digital and from what I can tell, old movies are going to be forgotten. At least half of movies I want to watch are not available on streaming. I wonder if they ever will.

Not Good For America

BRICS set up bank to counter Western financial influence.

If the dollar loses status as the reserve currency, our economy is going to tumble and be revealed as a pyramid scheme in many sectors.