Densely populated cities: Not so great after all

Posted on April 5, 2011 | Leave a comment

Urbanization enthusiasts gush about the benefits of dense development, or about the remarkable, low-carbon-footprint survival skills of the citizens of megacities like Lagos.

However, urban theorist Joel Kotkin makes the case that many people who live in those places would rather be living somewhere else:

But essentially megacities in developing countries should be seen for what they are: a tragic replaying of the worst aspects of the mass urbanization that occurred earlier in the West. They play to the nostalgic tendency among urbanists to look back with fondness on the crowded cities of early 20th Century North America and Europe.

Kotkin points out that during the past 50 years, Americans have steadily moved away from heavily populated urban cores to more manageable, human-scaled suburban areas. Why, he wonders, do the experts think things should go differently in the developing world?

If you like urbanism — and contrarian thinking — give Kotkin’s piece a read.

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Was Steinbeck’s ‘Travels With Charley’ a fraud?

Posted on April 4, 2011 | Leave a comment

That’s the surprising thesis of this article from Reason that raises some serious questions about the artistic integrity of one of America’s greatest writers.

The author, Bill Stiegerwald, doesn’t say John Steinbeck never went on the 1960 cross-country road trip he documented in Travels With Charley in Search of America. Instead, Stiegerwald asserts that Steinbeck fabricated much of what happened on that 11-week journey from New York to California and back. An excerpt:

From what I can gather, Steinbeck didn’t fictionalize in the guise of nonfiction because he wanted to mislead readers or grind some political point. He was desperate. He had a book to make up about a failed road trip, and he had taken virtually no notes.

Stiegerwald is blogging about his experiences retracing Steinbeck’s steps at Travels Without Charley. Check it out.

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Editing: ‘One of the great inventions of civilization’

Posted on March 8, 2011 | Leave a comment

That terrific line is found in James Fallows’ ode to the wonderful, terrible world of online journalism in the April issue of The Atlantic:

“It’s not so much that American public life is more idiotic,” Jill Lepore said, referring to both press coverage and the public discussion it spawns. “It’s that so much more of American life is public. I think that goes a long way to explaining what seems to be a ‘decline.’ Everything is documented, and little of it is edited. Editing is one of the great inventions of civilization.”

I wish to associate myself with Jill Lepore’s remarks.

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Oscars predictions based on movies I’ve seen

Posted on February 26, 2011 | Leave a comment

Oscar opinions are like Weinsteins — everybody’s seen one, but you’d better like mine or you’ll never work in this town again.

That’s the spirit in which I offer my picks for the 83rd annual Academy Awards.

Have I seen all the best-picture nominees, or all the films that feature nominated performances? No. Will that stop me from sharing my thoughts on the subject? Absolutely not.

The Internet lets anyone broadcast ill-informed opinions to the world, so here are mine. Call them the first annual Academy Awards Based On the Handful of Nominated Movies I’ve Seen This Year:

BEST PICTURE:  The King’s Speech. Despite the veddy posh backdrop (the royal family, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey and the like), it’s an accessible, well-paced film with great performances. If I gave an Oscar for second place among movies I’ve seen, I’d go with The Social Network. Black Swan and Winter’s Bone would be next, then the movies I haven’t seen (The Fighter, 127 Hours, True Grit, Toy Story 3), and then Inception. (Yes, it’s unfair to rank Inception behind the movies I haven’t seen. I don’t care.) While Inception‘s premise was fascinating, the film was surprisingly boring despite the non-stop action and dazzling special effects, and a lot of the dialogue was fence-post dumb.

BEST ACTRESS: Just give the trophy to Natalie Portman for Black Swan. Her portrayal of a high-strung ballerina slipping into insanity is pure trophy-bait. Besides, it’s like Kate Winslet said that time on HBO’s Extras: “Seriously, you are guaranteed an Oscar if you play a mental.” A solid runner-up is the young Jennifer Lawrence for Winter’s Bone, a movie about poor, violent hillbillies that makes you respect the quiet dignity of poor, violent hillbillies. (I can say that because I come from a long line of poor, violent hillbillies.)

BEST ACTOR: Colin Firth for The King’s Speech. He deserves all the accolades he’s gotten for this moving, nuanced performance.  Plus, he’s English, and they kick our butts at acting as easily as they do at cricket. Jesse Eisenberg from The Social Network is the default runner-up for me here, of course, because I haven’t seen any of the other performances (Jeff Bridges in True Grit, Javier Bardem in Biutiful and James Franco in 127 Hours).

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Geoffrey Rush for The King’s Speech. It might be the best thing he’s done since winning an Oscar for playing a mental in 1996’s Shine. A surprising — and satisfying — runner-up in the movies-I’ve-seen sweepstakes goes to John Hawkes of Winter’s Bone. His last notable role was as Kenny Powers’ brother  Dustin in HBO’s hilarious Eastbound & Down. (Jeremy Renner is nominated for The Town, which we also saw, but I don’t think he’ll win.)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: The only one of this group I’ve seen is Helena Bonham Carter of The King’s Speech, so she wins.

BEST DIRECTOR: David Fincher for The Social Network. The younger academy voters probably “like” it well enough to give it at least one major award. Black Swan is the runner-up. 

OTHER CATEGORIES: Who cares, really? I did enjoy Hans Zimmer’s score for Inception, so I guess they can give it a trophy for that.

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Snark, the herald angels sing: ‘Spy’ is now online

Posted on February 21, 2011 | Leave a comment

Google (informal motto: “don’t be evil”) has just done something very good:  it has scanned and posted the entire archives of  Spy magazine.

If you’re not familiar with Spy (and far too many people weren’t, even in its 1986-1998 heyday), think People written and edited by the staff of National Lampoon. It skewered the celebrities, media and politics of its time in a tone of withering sarcasm and irony that’s instantly recognizable — and today, nearly inescapable.

That’s right: Before there was an Internet for Al Gore to invent, Spy took the initiative in creating the double-edged sword we call “snark,” without which the Web as we now know it would probably shut down.

Its high-profile pranks made news. In the most famous one, a Spy writer posed as a talk radio host and called first-year congressmen in 1993 to ask them “Do you approve of what we’re doing to stop what’s going on in Freedonia?” (Freedonia is a fictitious country best known to fans of the Marx Brothers movie Duck Soup.) Being politicians, they all tried to answer the question as if they were jockeying for the chairmanship of the House Select Committee on Freedonian Affairs:

Representative Corrine Brown, Democrat of Florida, said she approved of what the United States was doing in Freedonia, and added, “I think all of those situations are very, very sad, and I just think we need to take action to assist the people.”

Another memorable stunt compared the star power of two fictitious celebrity brothers (“Michael Baldwin” and “Tito Wayans”) when it came to securing spots on the guest lists at big social events. A sample:

SPY: This is the personal assistant for Tito Wayans. I wanted to sneak Tito onto the list for the Mariah party

COSMO: The list is closed; the party has started. You’re quite late

SPY: I am. But Tito’s brother is Keenan Ivory Wayans.

COSMO: I know that.

SPY: Well, then maybe you also know that Mariah and Keenan are friends. He would be upset if his little brother couldn’t go to the party.

COSMO: I’m sorry. I apologize. Tito is on the list.

Spy could also do serious journalism, albeit with an edge. In 1996, Mark Ebner’s first-person expose of the secretive, manipulative world of the Church of Scientology caused a huge stir and inspired threats of legal action.

Whether it was being funny or serious, Spy was always  an enjoyable read, and I always felt smarter after finishing an issue. One of my Facebook friends, Bill Walsh, a copy editor at The Washington Post, put it succinctly in a posting on my wall:

Spy was to me in my early 20s what Mad was in my adolescence — funny but in many ways beyond me, and not talking down to me. An immersion teacher of pop culture.

Wonderfully said, Bill.

Check out Spy‘s archive. You can come back here later and leave a snarky comment.

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Snowmageddon II: This time it’s personal

Posted on January 28, 2011 | Leave a comment

We survived another Snowmageddon here in the D.C. area this week.

It was “only” about eight inches, not the three feet that dumped on us last February, but in many ways this storm was worse. It was a wet, heavy snow that came down at a rate of about two inches an hour, and it started falling right at the peak of the evening commute. Hundreds of trees broke under the weight of the snow, which led to massive power outages all over the region, and traffic was tied up for hours on most major roadways. A nightmare all around.

Here in Fairfax, we lost power for about 24 hours — and it went out while we were working from home. Not fun, but we were lucky compared with the thousands in the area who still don’t have electricity as I write this. (How mad are people about this? Well, in a live interview that just aired on News 4 at 6, a visibly angry Jim Vance tore into Thomas Graham, the president of PEPCO, a utility in Maryland that has a reputation for gross inefficiency when it comes to fixing outages. Vance used the phrase “pissed off,” perhaps forgetting it was family TV time.)

On the upside, we did avoid the commute from hell.

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Blog emerges from long dormant period

Posted on January 18, 2011 | Leave a comment

OK, so I haven’t updated this thing since August. I made a New Year’s resolution to try to do more with this site, and I’m going to. Not right now, though.

But please, dear reader, stay tuned.

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