What Does Anyone Want But To Feel A Little More Free?, Part II

An essay I read this week for a course about "global civil society" broadly placed movements within civil society into three categories, based on their relationship with globalization: those that support it, those that oppose it, and those that try to reform it from within. While reading about the political protests sweeping across Arab states, I've wondered which category these uprisings fall into, and think an argument could be made for all three. Globalization can be partly defined by promoting liberal, democratic governments, which is certainly what every protestor, from Algeria to Iran, is demanding. Yet global capitalism also produces greater income inequality, and thousands are in the street to oppose the capital networks so many countries have joined, largely to ruling families' and their friends' benefit. But then, many aspire to be part of an educated middle class, much like what fills Europe and the U.S. (and other parts of the world), so perhaps people want the economic growth but reformed regimes.

None of the Gulf states that have become the locus of 21st-century capital flows, largely because of oil, finance and/or real estate, have experienced the same protests so far. Perhaps this is because these states have so much wealth that it can be redistributed handsomely enough to citizens, migrant labor can't organize, and their emirs have in the past several years spent lots and lots of money on higher education, infrastructure and urban development, to support a more liberal culture. But should Qatar, Saudi Arabia or Abu Dhabi find itself in the same position as Egypt, I wonder how all of the U.S. universities who've spent lots of money and planted their reputation there will respond. Cynically, NYU et al are there because emirates have showered them with money to place their name on the university and because the partnership represents a good opportunity to expand their donor bases. Optimistically, they want to be part of the Middle East's liberalization. However, should these governments turn out to be even more repressive than suspected, their administrations' policy will start to look a lot like U.S. foreign policy in the region.

Finally, it's worth noting that the Times is now identifying by name its reporter and photographer in eastern Libya (but keeping its photographer in Tripoli anonymous). This is a strong sign that Qaddafi's regime will fall or the country will at least split in two. Kareem Fahim, the reporter, is one brave guy to carry around a notebook there. That one of the Sulzbergers died yesterday is worth noting in conjunction with this minutiae about reportage because the Times is only one of two U.S. newspapers that invests in this risky work. Think about this when choosing how to consume your news.

Thanks to Godspeed You! Black Emperor for the post's title, which has appeared in these pages before. Unfortunately, they're bypassing Boston on their reunion tour.

On Buying Records

Last November, I bought four records, the newest ones by Belle and Sebastian, Sufjan Stevens, Wolf Parade and Robyn. All are veterans and all the albums but Robyn's ranged from OK to quite underwhelming. Two weeks ago I bought Twin Sister's debut EP, Lower Dens' first LP, the new LCD Soundsystem record, and the reissued editions of "Wowee Zowee" and "Hollywood Town Hall." While these are a mix of new bands and established, if not retired, ones, except for Pavement they have a common thread: I owned very few, if any, of their albums before these purchases. And all of the albums are quite good. Well, "Wowee Zowee" is pretty bad, but in a good way.

My bandmates and I often talk about professional bands' career arcs. One common question: Whose most recent album was better than its last? The answer gets significantly tougher when the question becomes: Whose most recent album was better than its last and has already released three records? Building a long-lasting, satisfying career in art is astoundingly challenging. Revelations are fleeting and the fans and the critics are fickle. This has important implications for the hard-won amounts of money one spends on music. (My answers to the second question: LCD Soundsystem, Beach House, the Sea and Cake, Do Make Say Think and maybe the National. At least they're who quickly come to mind.)

There are many bands I love. These days, the start of most of their careers dates to the 1990s, meaning the chance that they're still producing exciting records is, unfortunately, small. Yet, after so many years together, I still want to buy their record. I mean, how could I not buy the new Belle and Sebastian record? Belle and Sebastian is practically ingrained in me -- the band helps explain my personality ever so slightly. On the other hand, I know that my odds of enjoyment are much higher when I buy the EP from Twin Sister, a young and rising Brooklyn quintet. And, yes, I think the record is very good. But then, I don't want to have a record collection whose ranks only consist of one or two albums by each band. That suggests disloyalty, not a trait I honor.

All that said, while wandering in Newbury Comics last Tuesday, killing 15 minutes, I decided to buy Mogwai's new record, defying convention. The band started in the mid-1990s, its creative peak is at least nine years in the past and its three previous albums were viewed as mediocre. But then, I love the album's title -- "Hardcore Will Never Die But You Will" -- and its art -- evocative photos of some international city. The reasons why I spend money are strange. Or maybe I should've titled this post: The Incredibly Mild Dilemmas of Being Young and Having Some Spending Money.

Anyway, to the good times: Above is Twin Sister performing my favorite song on its EP, "Lady Daydream," in Philadelphia.

Us v. Them

In the past week, LCD Soundsystem sold out its final show ever, at Madison Garden, which seats about 13,000 people, in less than three minutes (though scalpers apparently had something to do with this). Two days later, I was sitting in the Newbury Street store of Boloco, a local chain offering mediocre burritos, when "Two Weeks," the popular song from Grizzly Bear's most recent album, came on the sound system. That night, the Arcade Fire won the Grammy award for Album of the Year.

Any indie band's crossover into the mainstream can be difficult to swallow because of the inevitable questions about artistic integrity and commercial dilution. But as odd an experience as it is to hear the near-doo-wop harmony of "Two Weeks" on Newbury Street, I still believe Grizzly Bear deserve it, as do these other bands for what they accomplished. Why shouldn't the public at large listen to good music when it has the option? And why shouldn't LCD Soundsystem et al have the opportunity to make money from being excellent at what they do? Excellence should be rewarded.

I wrote a friend that the Arcade Fire's victory made me feel 17 years old again because it reminded me of how excited I used to be when a band broke through to the next stage and how I would think that finally the general public might start listening to good music. It made listening to music seem very important, almost political -- proselytizing about a band was thrilling. Unfortunately, I've since learned the wave never truly washes ashore and cultural taste is so often defined by us and them, the insiders and the outsiders, the obsessive and the casual, the discerning and the nonchalant, the elitist and the accepting. Obviously, I'm the elitist, though I try hard not to be one. I still get excited about bands and sometimes gush about them, but not quite in the way I did about seven years ago.

Thanks to LCD Soundsystem for the post's title. Above is the end of the Arcade Fire's acceptance speech at the Grammys and their launch into the ceremony's final song of the night. Now I really should buy "The Suburbs," considering how much I've written about it.

Me And My Clothes Down By The Schoolyard

Another momentous wardrobe change happened earlier this week: I gave away a pair of six-year-old brown pants so beloved and worn so often that each side pocket had such large holes that my keys usually slid down my leg when I put them inside. For the past year or so, I'd only worn them around the house when I didn't have to carry anything, but I still couldn't bring myself to throw them away.

Just like Jerry and his "Golden Boy," I have lots of trouble letting go of my clothes. They're legends who I just can't bring to throw in the trash, no matter how used they are. Discarding them among tissues and vegetable rinds is too profane a way for their time to end. The compromise I've reached is bringing them to the donations bin at school, reasoning that perhaps someone will see a new use for them and if not, the Goodwill staff can determine whether it's truly time to put them in the trash. The idea of my clothes as trash is too hard to comprehend. Clearly I develop oddly emotional relationships with inanimate objects, though I'm not the only one. When I thought about giving away two of the classic faux-cowboy shirts in my repertoire -- both also with holes in them -- my fiancee objected on the grounds that they're too ingrained in the memories of our closet.

Above is that pair of brown pants, though they look very rumpled here because they'd been hanging in the closet for months until I finally decided to donate them. Trust me, in their prime, they fit extraordinarily well and were a great shade of brown that's very hard to find in pants.

1 + 1 = 11?

AOL, which is in its third corporate incarnation, bought the Huffington Post on Sunday. "Fa fa blip blip" is what I wish could write. But this deal, valued at $315 million, was the counterlede story in the next day's Times, indicating how prominent a place the Huffington Post now occupies in the media industry and how ingrained AOL is. That both are so closely watched reveals quite a bit about the state of the news business.

Very few people still use AOL's dial-up service to connect the Internet, so for the past several years, the company has re-fashioned itself as a content provider, publishing news and blogs. After scouting the results in a recent, prescient company profile, Ken Auletta, the New Yorker's media reporter, wrote that the quality of AOL's reportage and analysis is uneven and regularly vapid. One of its largest endeavors is Patch, a network of intensely local news sites focused on wealthy suburbs in major metro areas. The Boston version was one of the first to start and I like and respect the people I know of who are involved in it. The quality is good enough, but these sites represent a general retreat from the public sphere that is troubling. Instead of policy, politics, culture, sports and other facets of life that are widely important, we have the lemonade stand on your neighbor's front lawn. This isn't much of an exaggeration, based on the items on today's home page at the Watertown Patch: the state tree warden association, the father-daughter dance, the library and snow removal appear. Provincial suburbia replaces cosmopolitan urbanism.

As for the Huffington Post, I can never move past its unabashedly political reporting. It still largely relies on punditry and news aggregation rather than original reporting, as do most online news sites, because the first two are significantly less expensive than the third -- one of the reasons why the Times and its peers routinely lose so much money. Of course, the Times loses money for lots of other reasons -- the expense of increasingly anachronistic home delivery; its inability to productively monetize its Web presence -- but it also spends millions annually on bureaus in Iraq and Afghanistan, which most others, especially AOL and the Huffington Post, don't.

That these two companies' merger somehow creates an equation where "1 + 1 = 11," as AOL Chief Executive Tim Armstrong said Sunday, is a disappointing summary of today's news business. Neither is a serious news provider but yet, they're taken quite seriously and occupy a spot in the industry that they don't yet deserve.

If It's In The Times It Must Be True, Part II

Someone pass Sam Sifton the (parsley-infused) butter because he's on a roll, with another top-notch insight. This one is in last week's review of the new restaurant in the Ace Hotel, the John Dory Oyster Bar, and it ventures beyond the cultural to the philosophical. Complaining about the restaurant's no-reservations policy, Sifton writes the extremely lengthy wait nearly overshadows the food's quality, which is probably why the restaurant didn't receive more than two stars. He recommends it might be better not to go until figuring out when one can actually be seated, and then delivers this:

"In the meantime, though, that tariff rankles. It leads to exclusivity disguised as populism. Manhattan in a nutshell."

This is as sharp as it gets and rightly captures Manhattan's swing toward becoming the world's largest gated community -- "You're welcome to come but not to stay," or maybe "You're welcome, but truthfully, you're not," or maybe, "You really don't know what you're talking about." I've been thinking about Sifton's line since I read it. You should too.

"Head To The Bank And Greet The Mets!"

Name your stadium after Citigroup in 2009 and you're bound to find yourself in the same position as Citigroup in 2009 -- precariously solvent and in urgent need of raising cash. The Wilpon family, which owns the Mets, is searching quickly to sell a minority stake in the franchise after Bernard Madoff's estate sued the Wilpons' investment funds for about $300 million, to recover the money they made from their investments with Madoff, who was a close family friend. If they lose the suit -- or settle, which is more likely -- they won't have enough cash on hand to pay the estate without selling some assets.

(The Wilpons have repeatedly said they were victims as much as anyone from Madoff's Ponzi scheme, not condoning participants. Given the amount of money they lost as a result, that's probably true. They've also repeatedly said those losses wouldn't affect the financial condition or competitiveness of the Mets, but now they're selling an ownership stake, the team has been terrible the past two years and it hasn't made any moves of note.)

The Times reports the Wilpons have been casting for a business partner for several weeks now, with no takers. Essentially, the Mets are a distressed asset -- their underlying, long-term value is solid, but in current market conditions, the value is hard to pin down and their owners tough situation means suitors will only drive the price lower to snap up a bargain. After building a new stadium in the heady days of the middle of the previous decade, when finance drove New York's (and the country's) economy, that now seems to recall faded collateralized mortgage-backed securities, it's very ironic that the Mets now resemble a collateralized mortgage-backed security.

As George Vecsey noted in his recent column about this affair, the Mets used to be known for their bumbling charm, dating to their 40-120 record in their inaugural 1962 season, punctuated by moments of triumph, such as the 1969 and 1986 World Series victories. In the past five years, they've fallen apart again and again on the field. Now that their management extends from generally poor personnel decisions to financial distress, they seem to represent the country in a more deeply symbolic way: Wealthy investors, making lots of money with their friends, only to learn that they've lost lots of money because of flimsy assumptions and a general lack of interest in questioning their business decisions or examining their level of responsibility. At least it's Major League Baseball that might bail out the Mets, not the Treasury.

Thanks to the Mets' theme song, "Meet the Mets," for inspiring the post's title: "Head to the park and greet the Mets!" C'mon, you know the words.