A Pretty Good Paragraph

"There's an art to being a good wingman. We here at "Entourage, the blog" will attempt to put forth a few good rules to help you perfect your skills at helping your friend get the girl." #

I Wrote a Thing

Following up on my exploratory but slightly inaccurate Vonnegut post from a few weeks ago, which I have conveniently deleted even though it was probably the wrong thing to do.

"Blue and Red, Like I Don't Know What the Big Deal Is..."

A few excerpts from an incredible article on the drug trade in South Africa (subscription only), written by WSJ reporter Mark Schoofs, whom I had the honor of serving as translator and library scout a few years ago:

Welcoming a visitor to his apartment on the outskirts of this city, Igshaan "Sanie" Davids wore only silky maroon boxer shorts festooned with brightly colored ducks and the slogan "Totally Quackers," his ample belly sloping out far beyond the waistband. Tattoos of the Statue of Liberty, the American flag and the U.S. dollar adorned his arms and back. Knife and bullet scars pitted his body.

Mr. Davids is a leader of a Cape Town street gang called the Americans, South African law-enforcement officials say. The gang initiates its members with rites that twist the meaning of U.S. symbols. Its motto is, "In God we trust, and die we must," members say. Their handshake ends by placing the right fist over the heart, in what they describe as a variation on U.S. citizens reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

"We're businessmen, always rolling," Mr. Davids said. These days, he said, about the best business going is tik, South African slang for methamphetamine. Gangs can obtain the drug or its ingredients from Chinese sources in exchange for abalone poached from South African waters, say South African officials and Mr. Davids.

More on the Americans, who are, I remind you, real:

Law-enforcement officials describe the "Americans" as the largest of the Cape Flats street gangs and Mr. Davids, who is colored, as a powerful gang lord. He regularly appears in gang stories in the local tabloids, often on the cover. Headlines or photo captions frequently refer to him simply as "Sanie" or "Sanie American." In interviews, Mr. Davids at times declared he has abandoned all illegal activity and now earns his living through a construction business. But at other times he described in detail how he trafficked in methamphetamine, and when pressed on his largest current source of income, he said, "tik is bigger than everything."

The Americans gang has its own interpretation of the American flag. According to Mr. Davids and other gang members, the red stripes on the flag stand for blood and killing, whereas the white stripes symbolize the clean work of making money. The stars stand for the gang's "senators," leaders in the Cape Flats' many neighborhoods.

Naturally, they are not the only ones:

"Abalone is quick money -- I like it more than anything else," says Mujahid Daniels. He and his brother-in-law, Raqeeb "Ricky" Oaker, are reputed leaders of Junior Mafia, another gang in the Cape Town area, but they couldn't be more different from Mr. Davids. Also in their mid-30s, Messrs. Daniels and Oaker dress like models. They operate a trendy nightclub, Barmooda, where they say they don't allow any illegal drugs. In an upstairs office, they monitor patrons on sleek computers hooked up to surveillance cameras. When they see someone suspicious -- or an attractive woman -- they click on the image to magnify it.

In conclusion:

xxmidnightxx: So, American iconography is officially just trappings of a dead god, like Christmas stuff
xxmidnightxx: how the snowmen all have little feet now

The Wisdom of Crowds: Pulling the Long Tail?

One thing I don't get about the Long Tail theory: in his book, Anderson writes that the Tail continues to grow fatter (that is, each niche product is being consumed by more and more people) because 1) distribution costs have sunk to nothing online, allowing individual merchants (people selling obscure things on eBay) to reach an audience no smaller than Wal-Mart's, and 2) various technologies are driving people to these niches more effectively than ever before, exposing consumers to tons of new, obscure stuff.

Anderson writes: "This can take the form of anything from Google's wisdom-of-crowds search to iTunes' recommendations, along with word-of-mouth, from blogs to customer reviews."

Now, I am okay with most of that. Yes, the proliferation of super-specialized blogs means there are that many more platforms from which people can find new things to be interested in. And yes, you can get iTunes to give you recommendations in the narrowest of sub-genres with ever increasing precision thanks to the streams of user input that continuously shape their catalog.

Generally speaking, I agree that niches are easier to reach than they used to be, and it makes sense that their increased visibility makes for a more substantial population of consumers gnawing on the end of the Tail.

However: it seems somewhat unfair to say that Google's search technology—which encourages users to visit the ten websites most frequently visited by other users in search of the same thing—unequivocally nurtures the Long Tail in this way. Certainly, Google makes niches easier to explore by providing newbies with tons of information—i.e., it used to be really hard to orient oneself within a tiny, unfamiliar subculture, but now we can just ask Google and get a pretty accurate/informative understanding of any culture system regardless of its size—but doesn't the "wisdom-of-crowds" thing also have the effect of making the popular more popular and leave the unknown unknown?

That is to say: sure, a search for "third wave ska" will pretty reliably guide you towards Less Than Jake, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Reel Big Fish, etc., but what about all the bands on page 10 of the results? Won't they continue to languish in obscurity, since no one ever gets that far when they're searching? I'm not actually so worried about ska, but it seems to me that at a certain level, the wisdom-of-crowds technology quite systematically hides prevents users from seeing certain niches, rather than helping them get exposed to things they would never have heard of or had access to 20 years ago.

A non-ska-related example of what I mean: imagine a person who is looking to buy some car insurance. He/she searches for "car insurance," and Google spits out a list of 10 companies: Geico, Progressive, State Farm, a couple other big ones. But what if there were a million other car insurance companies, among them one that would serve this particular individual better than any of the others? Isn't the whole principle of the Long Tail that all of us now gets exactly what we want instead of conforming to a narrow handful of available options?

I understand that people who know exactly what they want—and know the search terms they must type in order to properly describe it&dasmh; can use Google to find what they're looking for. But the wisdom-of-crowds algorithm (the thing that made Google so revolutionary) does not serve the people who don't know those things. In other words, it doesn't help drive demand down the Tail at all. That seems important, since one of the foundational observations Anderson makes about the Tail is that it gives everyone access to niches, instead of just the specialists who have the resources and expertise to pursue them.

...Keyhole, thoughts?

"He Had a Painter's Cap / It Had Flaps On the Back"

The Crimson has a long-standing tradition whereby everyone who serves as president gets his or her portrait drawn by this old caricature artist named David Royce. Royce was a member of the staff in the 1950s and from what I hear he is a pretty cranky dude. He makes everyone wear a hat in their portrait, and he apparently corresponds with whoever he's drawing for weeks in advance trying to decide what kind of hat best represents their personality. (WCM '07, a dedicated patriot, chose a three-corner cap in the style of Paul Revere, etc., and Royce almost didn't let him do it because he didn't think it was a vivid enough encapsulation of his personality.)

All of which makes me wonder: who will be the first Crimson president to wear a trucker hat in their portrait? I hope alumni are informed.

Parallel Structure

Craig Finn from the Hold Steady has a lot of lyrical ticks, that is, he often repeats little jokes, images, and ideas song after song.

One of these is the phrase "almost killed me," as in "The eighties almost killed me, let's not recall them quite so fondly" from "Positive Jam," and "Killer parties almost killed me," from "Killer Parties." The phrase describes things we've lived through, in other words—things we've lived through but just barely.

There's nostalgia in this phrase, as well as wisdom and not a little bitterness. As it happens, it also shows up in the title of the band's first album, The Hold Steady Almost Killed Me. Why? Because one day we'll look back at that album and realize that along with all the other stuff, we lived through the Hold Steady. It's a prediction of sorts. I for one would bet on it.

Update From Yan-ski

xxSTxx: i cant figure out where this kibbutz is
xxSTxx: i guess ill have to come home
xxVanBeethxx: haha seriously?
xxSTxx: no
xxSTxx: no
xxSTxx: no
xxSTxx: no
xxSTxx: um excuse me

She Shoots, She Scores

Sarah: fyi my friend went to middle and high school w/ lil wayne
me: whoa cool!!
Sarah: yeah
he was real little then

A Disturbance in the Force

I woke up this morning feeling unmistakably disappointed. I don't know why—probably a dream or something, who knows. But there it is. I spent the next ten minutes trying to figure out what caused it, and though I couldn't scratch the itch that started it, I did think of like six things worth being disappointed about. :'(

"Call Me Out On Cowardice But I Guess That's Your Business..."

Jessica Hopper on R. Kelly and The Game:

Maybe you’re like me and you have a long-running internal dialogue about whether it’s OK to like R. Kelly. From all available evidence, he seems to be a real-deal sketchball. But then lots of male celebrities are probably bad people—he just got caught. And when a song like “The Zoo” comes on WGCI, you turn it up, thinking, This song is so funny! R. Kelly is singing about being a sex dinosaur! If it’s a joke, then he’s a joke, and if he’s a joke, then I don’t have to feel super awful about enjoying his product. Here’s my solution: a penance system. Every time you willfully partake of R. Kelly, you have to listen to the Game’s “Wouldn’t Get Far” twice in a row. Don’t bother with the vague radio edit, which could be confused for a song about video vixens and the high price of trying to love a rap star. Listen to the dirty version, where he checks women by first and last name and implies that they’re whores, and see if your humanity doesn’t shrivel a bit. Lines like “If you could keep your legs closed, girl” are the sort of thing some scenery-chewing stepdad says in a Lifetime movie of the week before he backhands the teenage girl.

Obviously, the Game is a no-talent knuckle-dragger who’s probably mad that the dancers in Busta Rhymes videos have more of a career than he does. Thinking that way, you could argue that he’s not even worth taking seriously. But I don’t think you can excuse pop music by prefacing it with a “just,” whether it’s about sex dinosaurs or hating women

I liked this riff better when it was on her blog two weeks earlier, but "w/e," as they say. Good blog, btw! My favorite post is the recent one about dignity:

I was walking to my car and some pricks in their office clothes were eating outdoors at revolting Dunlays, and they took a break from their chewing to make some kiss-kiss noises at me and look me up and down and I was on the phone with Matt and told him. He was about to drive up to where they were. So he did. He got out of his car and went and stood by their table and stood there making kissy noises at them while they stared at the ground and then yelled at them a little while the other diners watched on. I dunno why I didn't walk back and do it myself. Sometimes it's nice to see someone else defend your honor.

Jessica Hopper hates women, pass it on!

This Guy Right Here

This guy's got it.

Ground Zero

For anyone interested in this Transformers business, the guy who wrote the original script has a blog over here where he talks a little bit about the process that led to the finished version. He seems to be happy with it, strangely. Stranger still, considering the science issues, he holds an advanced degree in physics.

Watch that space, though! In his latest post, he promises that "Once the weekend is over, we can have a nice general chat -- without going into contract-breaking details -- about what some of the differences in the story are, and how they were executed, and put this process in context for the spec monkeys."

Lights out

It's weird: yesterday evening there were hundreds of fireflies in my backyard, flying around and flashing their tale feathers and energetically lighting up the air. Just now I went out and there are none. I saw a couple on the porch though, crawling slowly around, in darkness. I wonder if that is their equivalent of like, getting ready for bed. Or maybe something happened...? The electricity on our block went out earlier tonight—I wonder if that is related.

Yan, direct from Paris, assures me that they are still there. "You can find them in the day," he says.

I'M TRANSFORMING!

Keyhole wrote extensively about the Transformers movie a few days ago, saying some things that ended up sparking a pretty bloody AIM fight between me and a dear friend of mine from Oak Park. After that I felt obligated to actually see the thing, so tonight I did. Now some notes:

Going that extra mile. Shane's main complaint about this movie was that whoever wrote it refused to put any effort into fitting the story with any rich or even vaguely coherent science. "Quantum mechanics" somehow is asked to stand in for incomprehensibly advanced technology, references to DNA are thrown around carelessly, etc. The typical response to this sort of beef is "Who cares about that, it is just a cartoon movie," but Shane believes pretty fiercely that if it wasn't for this kind of complacency—if people didn't look the other way when they encountered such brazen lapses in effort, the world would be a much better place. I agree with him. That said, sloppy science was not the biggest problem in Transformers—not just because there were much, much bigger ones, but because it just didn't take up a lot of screen time. Apart from the one brief conversation about quantum mechanics and DNA, there were only a few instances of the sort of empty/showy/rotten gesturing that Shane is talking about: one at the very beginning, when Air Force command tries to ground an unidentified aircraft and addresses it over the radio as "unidentified aircraft," and again during most of the computer hacking scenes, when you see lights flashing and things like "VIRUS UPLOADING" and "HACK IN PROGRESS" displayed on the monitors. Those aren't exact quotes, but it should be familiar to most people because that's what computer hacking always looks like in movies (see the new Die Hard, for instance, which was terrific). Besides those, I dunno! The whole third of the movie about trying to figure out what the robots are and how they work took up like 20 minutes total, and I actually thought the bit about how all modern technology had been derived from Megatron was pretty neat. It should also be noted that Shane was wrong to say that the "secret files" that were podslurped from the government computer on Air Force One were just New York Times articles. Most of them were classified papers about the discovery of Megatron; while there was one newspaper in the file, it was the New York Record or something, not the Times.

Everything happens for a reason. One of the "much bigger problems" I mentioned above has to do with the fact that there are whole stretches when the plot is advanced by way of characters making piles and piles of decisions without any apparent motivation. Why, for instance, do Sam and the girl try so hard to hide the robots from Sam's parents while they're looking for the magic glasses? Why is this an important thing to do? Why is Sam so mad at the girl when the mean Sector Nine guy reveals that factoid about her father's criminal record? Why would he possibly hold that against her?

The fourth wall. There are two movie references in Transformers: one to the 40-Year-Old Virgin, and one to Armageddon. I guess fundamentally this is just the "Smack That" issue—"he's the one singing the song that's playing!"—but I wonder how far movies/books should go toward convincing their audiences that they are occupying the same world as the characters. In Transformers it actually worked really well, since the ending is supposed to give us the impression that maybe, you know, THEY ARE LIVING AMONG US AND WE WILL SEE THEM WHEN WE LEAVE THE THEATER, but what about like, The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud or The Third Brother by Nick McDonnell, both works of fiction that force their characters to grapple with September 11th. I wonder: is that really any different than throwing in a reference to the 40-Year-Old-Virgin, or loading your prose with references to actual brand names like they do in most chick-lit? I say no, which is what I was trying to get at when I asked Messud at an Advocate reading last semester why she felt so compelled to incorporate real history into her plot. She said something about how it was a really important event, and well, OK, I guess. But to me there is a qualitative difference between a work that situates itself in real history and one that ignores it or makes up its own. I won't use the word "topical" but let it be known that I'm thinking it.

"I know a guy who can help us." What does it say about the old zeitgeist that both Transformers and Die Hard featured a wise man-type figure in the form of a legendary master hacker who lives with his mom/grandma? In Die Hard this figure is portrayed by a curmudgeonly Kevin Smith who keeps a command center in his basement; in Transformers he is a young black boy who likes to play Dance Dance Revolution with his cousin.

White noise. By far the worst thing about the movie were the oppressive, hollow "glimpses of humanity" that were peppered throughout the carnage. You know: robots are stomping around killing stuff, explosions are exploding, then... cut to a little girl in her bed checking under her pillow for the tooth fairy. Or a boy turning to his mom and exclaiming, "Cool, mom!" as robots do battle in front of their car. After a while these interruptions start to feel like some version of a laugh track. There were tons of these little shots, and taken together they evoke a deep, cynical blandness, one that makes you wonder whether the world being portrayed is even worth saving.

It is funny when. It is funny when the girl refers to aliens as "an urban legend" when the secret police are asking her questions and she's trying to pretend like she doesn't know anything about the Transformers.

My World is Different

When I got out of bed this morning, there was a man working on the roof, reinforcing the wood, stripping the old tiles, and hammering industriously. My grandmother, meanwhile, was in the basement darning a pair of jeans on the sewing machine.

When I got out of bed this morning, I found my home transformed into a bustling workshop from the 19th century!

I Am a Proponent of the "Many Words" Theory

There are many words...

Related: according to an n+1 obit for Richard Rorty, a 1989 conference on epistemology and objective truth at Rutgers drew some people wearing shirts that said “No Reality Without Representation” and others wearing ones that said “Get Real.”

Inventing Traditions

I was talking to Lisa tonight, live via satellite from Barcelona, and thought of a funny thing: what if every Fourth of July American families got together and watched Independence Day, like they watch It's a Wonderful Life on Christmas? That would be funny!

Nice

When I was in sixth grade our classroom library included a thick book on Hitler, in which the teacher had carefully Scotch-taped two pages together so that none of us kids would know what was written on them. Somehow or other the rumor got out that these pages described Hitler's genital deformity. Something about "one nut."

I heard this story again several times over the years and the other day it came up in Ron Rosenbaum's Explaining Hitler, a great book so far that examines all the different ways scholars and history buffs have tried to make sense of the Fuhrer's evil deeds. According to Rosenbaum, "one nut" originated with a German private named Eugen Wasner, who was in Hitler's class when the two of them were in grade school. During a 1943 "bull session" in the barracks Wasner told his buddies that the reason Hitler was such a psycho was that, as a kid, he had tried to pee in a billy goat's mouth on a dare and gotten his penis chomped in the process.

To the people who believe this story, Rosenbaum says the billy goat's fateful chomp was like "the single bite of the apple in Genesis--an act of appetite from which whole histories of sorrow and tragedy would ensue."

An Unenviable Fork In the Road

Reading Nick McDonell's The Third Brother and actually enjoying it a lot more than I expected to. I haven't figured out quite what I think about it yet--the only word that comes to mind is "draining," and that can be good and bad. For all I know by the end of this I might agree with En-dasher.

One thing has jumped out at me so far, on page 197:

Mike's father carried a silver flask and Mike grew up thinking it was not an outlandish thing to do... Lyle, oddly, had the flask on him when he ran out of the burning house. It traveled to Pine Hill as his sole personal effect. Mike was surprised when Lyle took it out of the bedside table in the hospital.

[...]

"This is half full," said Mike, opening the flask. "Have you been drinking this stuff?" he said, smelling it.

"Yeah. It was full when he gave it to me. No one emptied it..."

The line that sticks out is "This is half full." Why? Because in order to write it McDonnell had to make a certain choice, and that is a very funny choice to have to make.

If it had been me, I would have just rephrased it and tried to forget the decision had ever confronted me.

Mack Maine Has Read the Story

From "I Know the Future": "That's a hint to you Davids / throwing shots at Goliath / This the new testament / where the victor is the giant."

He knew he had to qualify it, is my point.