To brag for one post, this is easily one of the coolest things I've ever done: Above is the cover art for my band's first record, an EP we call "The Home Front." I like to think we sound like a beach house on a sunny fall day -- crisp and wonderful but also bittersweet when you realize those beautiful summer days have slipped away. Our friend Allison designed the incredible art and we wrote and played the songs, which you can hear here. Let me know if you're interested in a copy.
Among all the items in the Times that I overanalyze, its obituaries probably rank the highest. I sometimes make my friends play a game evaluating whether someone's death will merit an A1 obituary above the fold -- one of the highest forms of respect, in my opinion, because it demonstrates a truly lasting impact. That the Times wrote a midsize obituary for Nate Dogg upon his death earlier this month is a good harbinger that hip-hop's place in Americana is secure. In 2011, probably only the elderly or the ignorant would question hip-hop's legitimacy as a cultural force. The genre established itself long ago and has dominated music, fashion, language, lifestyle and commerce as much as rock has for the past 20 years. Nonetheless, the Times chooses the subjects of its obituaries carefully. One has to have had a meaningful impact on politics, science, culture, sports, commerce and so on to merit the copy.
If Nate Dogg, who was mostly famous for singing the hooks on West Coast gangsta rap from circa 1993 to 1999, meaning he occupied a very specialized niche in the genre, merits an obituary in the Times, then there will be many more to come. He died young, at the age of 41, but for long-running medical reasons, not in sensational controversy and not at the height of his powers, so the timing didn't amplify the reason for writing it. The justification was perhaps only slightly stronger now than it would've been in another 20 years. At this rate, when Snoop Dogg dies in about 40 years, his obituary will be quite long and Dr. Dre's has a good chance to be on A1, below the fold. This is a very interesting reflection of how American (pop) culture and the mainstream shift with time.
Nate Dogg was a role player, but a very good one. As the Times wrote, he "was the first male singer whose fame was predicated almost completely on his appearances on the songs of other rappers." Bill Simmons compared him to the NBA forward Robert Horry because both were perfect complements on a team; Horry hit many clutch jump shots during his career, especially during the playoffs, and Nate Dogg stepped up to deliver marvelous hooks, most especially on "Regulate," his brilliant duet with Warren G. He sang during a time when rap was still menacing and gritty but quite misogynistic, and not yet totally infatuated with vapidity. The music was relatively smooth and uncomplicated, but it also had an eerie tone, as though it might've come from space. Is Nate Dogg's death of the profile that it can join Elizabeth Taylor's and Geraldine Ferraro's as further proof that famous deaths come in threes?
Anyway, to the good times: The video for "Regulate," one of the first I remember watching on MTV, is above. It comes from the era when the production was still relatively low-fi, the video's plot tried to follow the song's lyrics, scenes appear from the obscure movie for which the song served as the single, and there's always a party at a motel. Nate Dogg also delivers one of the most confounding lines ever sung: "The rhythm is the bass and the bass is the treble." Think about that for awhile.
Circa 1981 to 1986 is full of all these wonderful, forgotten pop nuggets. The guitars motor along, the synths take over the chorus and the lyrics get too melodramatic about love that was never going to be anything but brief. But slow these songs down by at least a third, simplify the chord progression, make the synths drone a bit longer and isolate the vocals, and suddenly these aren't pop hits any longer -- they're something much sadder and wistful, longing poking through a pile of sugar. Did you realize that the first line leading into the chorus of "Take on Me" is "It's no better to be safe than sorry"? Turn its meaning into whatever you want it to be.
Above is the video for the latest example I discovered, via, of all places, the radio at the gym. It's called "Goodbye to You," by Scandal, who unexpectedly enough, were led by Patty Smyth (no not that Patti Smith!), who's now John McEnroe's wife. This is one of Scandal's biggest hits, apparently, boosted and then forgotten by MTV's early days. In 20 years, music historians will sift through these years' videos, just as paleontologists do for fossils, for treasures like this. Listen closely because this song is perfect.
Thanks to LCD Soundsystem for the post's title. Their song lyrics and titles routinely make for good blog post titles.
Three months ago, few outside of Wisconsin knew of Scott Walker, the state's Republican governor. But now that he shepherded to approval the strongest anti-union legislation since Ronald Reagan busted the air traffic controllers' union, Walker may be one of the most important people in American labor history, which is remarkable.
While it's difficult to side with public sector unions' intractability on removing clearly subpar employees or implementing new proposals for operating governments, the idea that a union's collective bargaining rights should be shattered is ridiculous. Sure, states' unfunded pension mandates cast a gigantic shadow over their fiscal health, which creates the possibility of higher taxes at some point, abstractly dissuading businesses from investing. However, the idea that states' precarious fiscal positions stem from the $70,000 that Sandra in accounting earns annually in salary and benefits is also ridiculous. (Instead, this highlights that a painful debate is needed about the way government operates and collects money -- one that probably won't happen because it's too painful for politicians on two-year election cycles and the general public, including me. See, most recently, the fate of the Bowles-Simpson commission.) Furthermore, if corporate tax policy dictated business decisions, everyone would've left Boston and Cambridge a long time ago; somehow, they keep coming.
Gov. Walker said as often as he could that his bill was necessary to save Wisconsin's finances. Yet, if prudent budgets and long-term fiscal health were truly his chief concerns, he wouldn't have pushed this bill only a few weeks after approving large tax cuts for businesses. The two measures aren't worth the exact same dollar amount, so the state probably saves some money in the end, but if there were any further proof needed that Republican policy favors well-off executives over the middle class, Walker's policies are a perfect example. As some money arrives in the state's coffers from tackling union expenses, it heads right back out.
The track record of using taxes to induce companies to hire new employees is dubious. Just this week, Fidelitydecided to close its offices in Marlborough, a Boston suburb, where 1,100 employees work, and move the jobs elsewhere in the country. Fidelity, though, gets to keep the tax breaks provided when it added those workers. The Globe has also reported that over their life span, Massachusetts' corporate tax breaks have often yielded very few of their promised jobs and migrated to wealthy municipalities from the struggling ones for which they were intended. For Wisconsin's sake, hopefully Walker's program doesn't suffer the same fate -- though given his politics, he would more likely believe that his administration won't be able to manage the program successfully because government isn't good at anything.
Finally, as Gail Collins pointed out in a recent op-ed column, the new chief of Wisconsin's state patrol is the father of the Legislature's House speaker and Senate majority leader. (Both are Republicans; the party controls both chambers.) Walker appointed him after he lost his most recent election and now he earns about $105,000 per year. You can be for fiscal stringency, but you can't also be for corporate favoritism and patronage. You have to choose one or the other.
In his most recent column in the Times' Sunday Magazine, Bill Keller wonders why so many other publications view him as the one of the world's most powerful people. He objects, writing that assuming he's powerful assumes he "personally directs a vast, global conspiracy" that determines world events, when he actually supervises about 1,100 editors, reporters, photographers and others who report on world events. But because Keller's job is the latter, not the former, at the Times, he's one of the world's most important people, and he uses the position wisely.
Keller believes more strongly than probably anyone else today in the news business' upper echelon that news companies are driven by news. They excel when they break news, analyze news and follow news carefully, seriously and doggedly, not when they ride other companies' production and promote their daily opinion through the 24-hour cycles. He agrees to send people to all corners of the earth, the very dangerous and the very comfortable, with little regard to the expense. He knows what drives the Times: everyone in the newsroom.
This is what makes this prickly column all the better. On the media's obsession with itself: "We in Media have transcended earthbound activities like reporting, writing or picture-taking and created an abstraction — a derivative — called Media in which we invest our attention and esteem." On news aggregation's sampling of other sources' reportage, thus directing Internet traffic and revenue to the sampler and not the producer: "In Somalia this would be called piracy. In the mediasphere, it is a respected business model." On AOL's recent merger with the Huffington Post: "It was portrayed as a sign that AOL is moving into the business of creating stuff — what we used to call writing or reporting or journalism but we now call 'content.' Buying an aggregator and calling it a content play is a little like a company’s announcing plans to improve its cash position by hiring a counterfeiter."
In a postscript -- ironically only published online -- Keller bursts the tension by writing that much of the column was meant to be humorous and that he likes aggregation and Arianna Huffington. Huffington's response is equally forceful but more bitter than trenchant, though it nonetheless makes some good points, mainly about the company's increasingly serious reportage. But as the cliche says, All humor (or satire) has some truth to it, and Keller's is right on the mark. He deserves credit for having the courage to write the column.
St. Louis' population, according to the most recent Census data, is now about 319,000, the smallest number since 1870. Even more disheartening, the city's leaders seemed to expect that gentrification would boost the city's population, but St. Louis actually lost another 8.3 percent of its population during the past 10 years. (Only Birmingham, Ala., and New Orleans, which of course experienced a Hurricane Katrina-led exodus, lost more people in the same time span, the Times reports.) If you're anticipating a gain in population, only to see a substantial, decline, boy, were your predictions way off the mark. St. Louis' mayor sounds despondent on his blog, calling for "an urgent and thorough rethinking of how we do almost everything."
Many people, including me, like to think that the pendulum in U.S. lifestyle and development patterns has swung toward the urban after about 60 years pointed away from it. Unfortunately, this is largely wishful thinking. Net migration continues to favor suburbs and leave cities smaller in population. This pattern is particularly painful in the Rust Belt and the Midwest, where St. Louis proper has lost about half its population in the last two-plus generations -- the rule, not the exception. Funny thing is, when people list American cities on a depressing, long-term downward trajectory, St. Louis is at best the fourth one mentioned, after Detroit, Cleveland and Buffalo. It's a classic example of unreversed urban decline but relatively anonymous at the same time.
As I've written in these pages before, a column of David Brooks' from shortly after last November's national elections accurately articulates why the Midwest is the most relevant region of the U.S. today: "If America can figure out how to build a decent future for the working-class people in this region, then the U.S. will remain a predominant power. If it can't, it won't." Only Minneapolis, Pittsburgh and Columbus have figured out how to reinvent themselves in the late-21st century -- around some combination of health care, biotech, the arts and higher education -- while all of the rest, with their millions and millions of residents, are still searching for a relevant identity in contemporary politics, economics and culture.
Funnier thing is, all of the current philanthropic money devoted to rescuing cities heads toward New Orleans. Even Detroit, which has become its own cause celebre, doesn't receive much. Of course New Orleans is a worthy cause, considering the titanic natural disaster and bureaucratic mismanagement it endured crippled one of the world's most captivating places. But considering it's a city positioned below sea level whose economy before Hurricane Katrina wasn't Detroit but sure wasn't Boston either, what argument is there for not devoting the same attention to the Midwest?
Frank Rich, the Times' most talented and trenchant op-ed columnist, is surprisingly leaving the paper for New York magazine. His column, published every Sunday in the Week in Review section, was often my highlight every Sunday morning. (As I eat Cheerios, I read the sports and then linger over the Week in Review, finishing with Rich.) Rich's nickname was "The Butcher of the Beltway" -- adapted from his earlier days, when, as the Times' theater critic, he was "The Butcher of Broadway" -- which was quite accurate. He threw sharp daggers every week, usually at Republicans but also at Democrats regularly, including at President Obama, who Rich has found unsatisfactory.
His time as a theater critic served him very well in the op-ed pages because he frankly deconstructed the pageantry and ritual that dominate modern politics better than anyone else. It shone at greatest length in his most recent book, "The Greatest Story Ever Sold," about the Bush 43 administration's love of theater in place of truth and accomplishment, and the press' willingness to look the other way. I like David Brooks' writing very much, but he's intractably earnest, which can be tiring when those he writes about rarely have the same character. Sure, Rich often dipped his pen in the same well, as all columnists do, but the content was always worthwhile and the writing had a real emotion and heft to it, as though it could unravel before its final point. It nonetheless arrived there, huffing and charged.
Perhaps Rich's greatest strength was his choice to write about national politics from New York rather than Washington where, as he often noted, he could expose routinely flawed conventional wisdom and tackle the underlying seaminess of the two parties (OK, of the Republican Party). He can still write about politics from New York with New York, but it's somewhat strange that he wants to leave the Times. What better job could there be than writing a weekly column for the Times in the Week in Review? The taxing-workload-to-national-influence ratio was unbeatable. Rich's last column is next Sunday, March 13. Update: Coincidentally, Dan Kennedy's post about Frank Rich's imminent departure has the same title.
The NBA dunk contest 10 days ago was a good one, if not as quite as great as in 2008, the most recent pinnacle, when Gerald Green blew out a cupcake while dunking and Dwight Howard donned a Superman cape and threw an alley-oop in the basket from a few feet away. But the most disappointing part was how rigged it was in Blake Griffin's favor. In the first round, his failed attempts, with their unbelievable displays of force, were much cooler than the ones he completed. His final dunk over the car worked because of its pageantry, not the actual dunk.
Serge Ibaka, a forward for the Oklahoma City Thunder, lost the most from this favoritism. In his first round, he dunked after jumping from behind the free-throw line, which neither Jordan nor Erving accomplished in their variations on the dunk, and he pulled down with his teeth a stuffed animal stuck to the rim! Both were incredible and yet he didn't even advance to the second round. (And he and Kevin Durant have a cool handshake.) You can watch the first above and the second is easy to find on YouTube. Oklahoma City is a team that deserves more praise. Here we go second-tier, if not third-tier, cities!
Those fall days in Boston when it gets a bit warmer and the leaves are a deep color but the sun hits at a lower angle and everyone is out walking and you need an extra layer at night. Corners and layers and reverb.
