UpWord

Climbing Giotto's Campanile

2011-05-14T16:30:00.000-07:00

Having climbed the 463 steps to the top of Brunelleschi's dome, we had a breathtaking panoramic view of Florence, in which we could see nearly the entire city. Alas, the one thing we couldn't see from the dome was… the dome itself. Thus, there was nothing to be done for it, but to climb the 414 steps to the top of Giotto's campanile so that we could get a good look at where we had just been. So it was that after coming down from the dome, with a quick stop for resuscitation at Cantinetta di Verrazzano, we began the ascent of the campanile. Built in the mid-1300's, the campanile is nearly a century older than the dome, and of course there are stone spiral stairs to be climbed. But the ascent of the campanile is not as claustrophobic as the ascent of the dome, since the upper two thirds of the campanile are open in the interior. There are many more and larger windows, and the climb is broken by stops at the third, fourth, and fifth levels. Each upper level has a very open-feeling "room" with pairs of huge lancet arches open on all four sides, and a center which is open through the upper levels. The windows afford some great close views of the upper part of the cathedral and the dome, as well as views over the piazza and baptistry.

On the fifth level, you can stand on a steel grate in the floor and look down an uncomfortably long way. You can see one or two of the bells above, and there is an older no-longer-used bell set out for close perusal, but they don't let you get too close to the seven active bells (five of which are 20th century, but the two largest are over three centuries old). As you climb the last part on steel staircases past where the bells are, they are closed off from view. We didn't get to discover what it's like to be in the bell tower when the bells ring. Probably an awesome experience, if a bit deafening.

When you finally get to the roof of the tower, you can walk around all four sides, but you are completely fenced in including overhead. I guess they wanted to be certain nobody did anything stupid up there. It's pretty cool to look straight down to the piazza 280 feet below, and watch the people looking like ants. Even the top of the baptistry is far below.

After we'd soaked up the views and finally descended, we paused to look back at the beautiful tower we'd just climbed. The facing uses the same tri-color marble (white, green, and red) that is used on the cathedral, and the same geometric designs. The tower is gracefully divided into five levels, each level being taller than the one below it. This trick of perspective makes the levels look evenly proportioned when regarded from below, while the tower still looks graceful from afar. The upper three levels feature pairs of double-lancet windows emphasizing verticality, while the lower two levels are subdivided into two bands each, making them look sturdier, yet all in harmonious proportion. The first band features a series of hexagonal panels with relief carvings showing stories from Genesis and allegories of the arts. The second band features lozenges on various themes: seven virtues on one side, seven sacraments on another, etc. The third band has statues of prophets, and the fourth band are simply white lancet slabs. All of these decorations are works of art in themselves. The ones in the tower now are all replicas. The originals have been moved inside where they can be preserved and you can get a better look at them.

Cantinetta di Verrazzano

2011-05-14T16:00:00.000-07:00

Tipped off by a food blogger, we discovered the delights of the Cantinetta di Verrazzano, a bustling little focacceria and caffe in the heart of historic Florence, in the blocks between Il Duomo and the Piazza della Signoria. As soon as you enter, a beautiful display case of breads and pastries catches your eye at the same time as the aroma of fresh baking fills your nostrils with confirmation that it is as good as it looks. You can get baked goods from the girl behind the bakery counter, or, as we soon learned, if you want fresh focaccia, you proceed toward the rear, where a woman will heat a slice of focaccia to order in a traditional wood-burning oven. The varieties of focaccia were beautiful to behold. One had fresh tomato and basil, another had roasted peppers and mozzarella. Yet another had carmelized onions, olives, and anchovies, while a layered one had porcini mushrooms sandwiched between two bread layers. Happily, amidst all this gluten-fest, they had something special for George too: a focaccia-like crepe called cecina, which is made from ground garbanzo beans and is completely gluten-free. The bustling place has a small number of tables, but there are also several chairs and benches around, and some people just get some focaccia and eat on the benches. If you get a table, you can also enjoy coffee or wine. The Cappellini family who run this actually owns a winery estate in Chianti (the Castello di Verrazzano), and this little "cantinetta" offers a great venue to taste their wine, as well as to enjoy a terrific light lunch or afternoon snack. We were so delighted with this place that we ended up coming back here a couple times during our few days in Florence. (The Cantinetta is at Via dei Tavolini, 18/R. Hat tip to Gluten-Free Girl, who tipped us off to this gem, and its cecina, as well as to several other great foodie finds around Tuscany.)

Climbing Brunelleschi's Dome

2011-05-14T15:00:00.000-07:00

The Renaissance in Florence was a time of dazzling accomplishments, not only in art but also in architecture, and the (literally) crowning achievement is Brunelleschi's dome atop the Florence cathedral. When the cathedral was begun in 1296, Arnolfo di Cambio, the original architect, built a scale model to illustrate his design, which included a huge dome on an octagonal drum. The design was audacious, in that no one at that time had any idea how to build such a structure without it collapsing under its own weight. Nonetheless, the patrons of the cathedral clung to that bold vision, and when the nave was completed in 1380, they would wait for 40 more years with a huge hole in the ceiling of their cathedral until an architectural genius arrived on the scene with a solution. Filippo Brunelleschi devised ingenious solutions to numerous challenges that stood in the way of building the dome. First, there was the structural problem. While a perfectly round dome, like Rome's Pantheon, can support itself because of the special properties of circles and spheres to evenly distribute their weight stress, Florence's dome was meant to be octagonal rather than round in its footprint, and elongated in its height. These design elements make the dome especially graceful in appearance, but also make it inherently unstable. The solution was to build an interior dome which was more spherical, to bear the weight, and then an outer dome with the more graceful (but non-self-supporting) proportions resting on the inner dome. That design would be stable once it was built, but the next problem was how to support it as it was being constructed. Often, domes would be supported with a temporary wooden scaffolding while they were being built, but the scale of the cathedral's dome made that impossible. The opening at the base of the dome was 170 feet off the ground and spanned nearly 150 feet across. There were not trees enough in all of Tuscany to erect a scaffolding that big. Brunelleschi devised more creative solutions, including a herringbone pattern of laying brickwork that could support its own weight across an incomplete arch while the mortar was not yet dry. And he came up with many new mechanical inventions in order to hoist the 37,000 tons of brick and marble up to the height of the dome. The beauty of the dome and the genius of its construction are one of the greatest marvels of the Renaissance. It remains the largest masonry dome in the world.

There's no better way to get a true appreciation of the scale and the construction of the dome than to climb it. There's almost always a line, but it's well worth the wait. After briefly viewing the vast interior of the cathedral, the climb begins inside the stone walls of the transept, ascending the first 150 feet mostly in tight spiral staircases of medieval stone. Near the top of this part, you enter a large room built into the transept that houses some of the original statuary from the façade that has been brought inside to protect it. In the equivalent room on the downside (you descend the opposite transept), some of Brunelleschi's hoisting inventions are on display.

At this point, you are at the level of the base of the dome, and you emerge to a walkway open to the interior of the church. Over the railing, you look down on the vast open church floor 170 feet below, while looking up into the dome, you have a ringside seat for the cavernous Last Judgment fresco. Swirling high above your head, rising toward the lantern of the dome, you see God in judgment, Christ, Mary, all the saints, choirs of angels, and symbolic representations of virtues, beautitudes, and signs of the end-times. Discomfitingly closer to where you stand is the darker underbelly of the apocalypse, with demons pulling wretched souls down to torture and damnation amidst symbols of sin and Hell. The enormous fresco, nearly 40,000 square feet of surface, is jam-packed with apocalyptic imagery. It was designed to be impressive when viewed from the pews 170 feet below, so you can imagine how fearsome it is when standing right at the base of it.

After walking partway around the base, you enter the interior of the dome itself, in passages that navigate between the internal dome and the external dome. At first, as you walk around, the curvature is slight, but as you ascend, the curvature closes in on you, with the passage not only bending more sharply, but with the walls of the passage leaning further and further in. Near the top, when you can't go around any more, the passage makes a turn straight for the center going up and across to the top of the dome. Along the way, you get to see pieces of Brunelleschi's techniques: the herringbone brickwork, the wooden and metal chains that function like the hoops on a barrel. And the whole inner/outer dome design is completely apparent because you're walking between the two.

On finally emerging at the top of the dome, you can walk around the base of the lantern topper, 350 feet above the ground, with commanding views of Florence and the surrounding countryside. This breathtaking panorama of the city, coupled with the fascinating insight into the architecture, is well worth climbing 463 stone steps.

Along the Arno and the Ponte Vecchio

2011-05-13T18:55:00.000-07:00

One of the simple pleasures of Florence is walking along the Arno. The principal river of the region bisects the city, with the historic center of the city on the north bank and the "Oltr'arno" (the "other side of the Arno") on the south. Historically, the river was extremely variable, and could go from a placid flow to a raging torrent in just a few days. It's had its share of floods over the years, most recently in 1966, when it overflowed its banks and filled many of the historic buildings with water and mud. (In the church of Santa Croce, they display photos of the immediate aftermath of the '66 flood, which were fascinating and horrifying.) These days, thanks to modern dams upstream, it is a more regulated flow. The Arno as we found it was tranquil, with water gently passing under historic bridges and sunlight sparkling on its smooth surface, broken only by a few kayaks. On both sides, the river is lined with a bit of wild green growth below tall stone walls. On the north side, a street runs right up next to the river wall. On the south side, some blocks have a street beside the river while other blocks have buildings that back right up to the river. The buildings along the river are mostly 3 to 5 story buildings, some shade of yellow or orange (seems to be required in Florence -- Home Depot here must have a whole aisle just for yellow paint), with green shutters.

There are several charming bridges that cross the river in various parts of the historic center of Florence, but the star is the Ponte Vecchio, the famous bridge lined with shops on either side. Various bridges have stood in this spot probably since Roman times, with previous bridges being washed away by the Arno's notorious floods. In 1345, a few years after the last bridge had washed away, they built the current one using three stone segmented arches, a design which has stood the test of time. (Segmented arches are wide and shallow, not a complete semi-circle, and allow high water to pass more easily.) Originally the bridge was filled with butcher shops, but these days the shops peddle jewelry, art, and souvenirs. In the center of the bridge, there is a gap in the shops on either side, affording views of the river, and a small square often taken up with street musicians. At night, the shops are closed up, but there are still plenty of people enjoying the romance of the bridge.

Above the shops on the upstream side of the bridge is the Vasari Corridor, a secret passage connecting the Pitti Palace to the Uffizi and Palazzo Vecchio. When the Medicis moved into the Pitti Palace on the south side of the Arno in the mid-1500s, they wanted to be able to walk to the government offices without having to go out in the street. (Having seen assassination attempts against their ancestors -- Lorenzo the Magnificent was stabbed and his brother Giuliano killed in the cathedral during the Easter service in 1478 -- you can understand the reluctance of the later Medicis to go out in the street.) If you look carefully around central Florence, you can see bits of the corridor, connecting the Palazzo Vecchio to the Uffizi, running along the river for a stretch to get to the bridge, and then along houses on the south side of the river. At one point on the south side, it passes through the church of Santa Felicita, with a balcony opening onto the interior of the church, allowing the Medici to observe the church service from a safe vantage.

Piazza della Signoria

2011-05-13T17:39:00.000-07:00

If the cathedral is the sacred center of Florence, then the Piazza della Signoria is the civic center of Florence. It's just a few minutes walk down the broad Via dei Calzaioli from the front of the cathedral to the Piazza della Signoria, where you first catch sight of the Palazzo Vecchio, the historic town hall and capital building from when Florence was a city-state. While the implied message of the cathedral's design is "be filled with awe and look up at heaven", the implied message of the Palazzo Vecchio is "we're a powerful city-state, so don't even think about messing with us". The Palazzo is a massive stone fortress with a sturdy tall bell tower and clock, dating from the early 1300s. While the design has definite beauty, it exudes strength and defensibility. The stone walls are obviously thick, with few windows on the lower floors and only one large door. The crenellation along the top looks graceful, but also provides the perfect combo of cover and opening for archers. Many of the upper arches contain small openings for dropping rocks or hot oil on unwelcome people outside the walls.

The sense of history in this square is palpable. The great leaders of Florence, like the Medicis, held court in that palazzo, made great decisions, kept prisoners. It was in this piazza that Savanarola (a 15th century religious zealot a la Jerry Falwell who became a political leader for a time) conducted his infamous "bonfire of the vanities", where books and works of art deemed irreligious were burned in a great pyre in the square. When the city soon grew tired of his extremism, Savanarola was himself ultimately burned here too. (An inscription on a flat circular stone amidst the other cobblestones of the piazza marks the spot.)

Upon approaching the palazzo, even from a distance one can't help but notice the two monumental statues that flank the large entrance. One is Michelangelo's David, and the other is a statue of Hercules vanquishing Cacus (a fire-breathing cattle thief). Both statues are solid marble, mounted on pedestals, and about 16-17 feet tall (not counting the pedestal), a rather imposing three times life size. David, looking like he eats nothing but steamed veggies and brown rice, naked and armed only with his sling, represents spiritual strength. Unlike the typical composition of David with his foot on top of Goliath's head, Michelangelo chose to sculpt him in the moment before the famous battle, looking pensively but determinedly toward his foe. In his placement here, his gaze is south toward Rome. Hercules, on the other hand, looking like he eats nothing bt raw meat and steroids, represents physical strength. He too is naked but armed with a club, and appears to be pausing, perhaps deciding whether he's sufficiently subdued his foe or not. He may also be reflecting the confusion of the time, as in the time this was sculpted (1525-34), there was much political turmoil in Florence, and the Medicis were in power, then out, then in again, and the commission of the sculpture was redirected a couple times. So whether Hercules represents Florence vanquishing her rival city-states or merely the Medicis vanquishing their political rivals is a matter of who's telling the story. In any case, anyone approaching the palazzo should be quite impressed by the stone guards at the door.

As if that weren't enough, the square boasts a number of other rather muscular sculptures. At the corner of the palazzo, Neptune presides over a fountain, looking like he and Hercules would make a good cage match. Further in that direction is a regal bronze equestrian statue of Cosimo I Medici. On the opposite side of the square is the Loggia dei Lanzi, an outdoor sculpture gallery with various Roman and Renaissance works. As if more were needed to put the fear of Florence into approaching strangers, the collection includes Cellini's "Perseus with the Head of Medusa", an impressive bronze of Perseus, sword in right hand with Medusa's severed head held aloft in his left, and Medusa's fallen bare-breasted body at his feet, with guts gushing out of her open neck. Giambologna has a couple of great works here. Hercules, not pausing this time, but in stop-frame action actively clubbing a centaur. The sculpture is so active it is literally taut with tension, looking like it might unfreeze at any moment. And the Rape of the Sabine women, a fascinating work said to be the first multi-figure statue in European history with no single dominant viewpoint. The dynamic composition, of one man lifting up a woman while a fallen man cowers below him, has a twisting movement that impels you walk around the statue and view it from all sides. While the David is a replica (the original was moved indoors for restoration and preservation from the rain, soot, and bird poop), most of these other statues are the originals, and you can just walk among them, as it was in the 1500s when so many great artists flourished here.

(Check out highlights of our photos from Florence, or the complete set of first day pics on Flickr.)

First Look at Piazza del Duomo

2011-05-13T16:36:00.000-07:00

After getting settled at our hotel, we stepped back out into the piazza, eager to enjoy the remainder of a beautiful warm sunny day, and started to head for the center of town. From the equestrian statue in the piazza, the Via dei Servi runs just a few long blocks toward the cathedral, and even though the avenue was a nearly unbroken line of four or five story Renaissance buildings, the great red dome could be seen peeking above at the end of the avenue. That just begins to give you a sense of the scale of the cathedral. The huge dome was an architectural phenomenon when it was built in the early 1400s, and remains the largest masonry dome in the world today. When viewed from hills outside the city, the cathedral dome completely dominates the Florence skyline. Inside the city, one catches glimpses of the dome along avenues that run toward the central piazza. Coming to the end of the avenue, which runs into the side of the cathedral, we were fully impressed by its scale and its beauty, as our gaze turned upward to take in the tall walls (about 150 feet from the ground to the roof of the nave) and their geometric patterns of the red, green, and white marble that lined them. As we walked along the side of the nave toward the front, I was mindful that the cathedral architecture was achieving its aim, to keep us looking up (heavenward) in awe.

The feeling of awe and visual fascination only increased as we rounded the corner into the Piazza del Duomo, and turned back to view the façade. It is a dazzling display of neo-gothic architecture, taking the original tri-color geometric theme and kicking it up a notch into a wedding cake extravaganza of marble and statuary. The central part of the nave stands a full "head" above the "shoulders" of the aisles, and the façade keeps to that form. Unlike some cathedrals where the façade extends much higher than the actual structure behind it, this façade has substance behind it all the way up. It's hard to know where the begin to take it all in, but the design emphasizes the portals, a huge central one and two merely large ones on either side. Each has a deeply inset pointed arch (tympanum) filled with a mosaic, and above that a chevron-shaped pseudo-arch pointing up (heavenward, always), drawing your eye further up to the ornate rose window above. The whole pattern is echoed to scale in the secondary portals on either side. A gallery of niches with larger-than-life statues of the twelve apostles runs across the top of the "shoulders" and across the "neck". Four buttresses clamp onto the façade at the corners and the divisions, with double-lancet "windows" of green marble running all the way up. Above the rose windows is another gallery of quatrefoils filled with busts of great Florentines (mostly artists and architects, of course). No opportunity for a statue-filled niche or cornice is missed, decorated with borders of intricate inlay with the red, white, and green marble. Just when you think it can't get more baroque, you notice another level of detail of marble mosaic or busts of saints and popes worked into the pattern. Some people think that it's overwrought, but I think it suits a magnificent edifice of this grandeur. I mean, my God, it is one of the world's great cathedrals after all, it's entitled to be a bit overwrought.

The façade is considered neo-gothic since, for various reasons, it wasn't added until the1870s, but it remains faithful to the gothic style of the cathedral, which was begun in 1296 and otherwise completed by 1469. To me, cathedrals in general and this one in particular are stunning human achievements, given that they are built over many generations and centuries, remaining (generally) faithful to an original vision. The men who began the cathedral knew they, their children, and their grandchildren would all be long dead before the cathedral was completed. The architects who began it did not know there would be sufficient resources and materials to finish it, and in the case of this cathedral, they didn't even possess the engineering know-how to erect what they envision, but merely had to go on faith that succeeding generations would somehow carry it out. The undertaking is as awesome a testament to faith as the structure itself.

After taking in the façade for a while, we realized that we had our backs to the baptistry. This octagonal building is also done in white and green marble with geometric patterns, but its less ornate design and rounded rather than pointed arches indicate its Romanesque style. It's actually the oldest building of the cathedral complex, built between 1059 and 1128. Everyone from Dante to the Medicis, pretty much everyone who was anyone in Florence, was baptised here. But the big attraction of the baptistry are its gilded bronze doors, on the north, south, and east sides, which were the result of great artistic competitions in the Renaissance. In the early 1400s, Lorenzo Ghiberti won the honor of doing the north doors, which he labored on for 21 years. The doors were so beautiful that he was commissioned to do another set for the east doors, which took him 27 more years. These latter doors were even more beautiful than the first, and Michelangelo famously dubbed them the "Gates of Paradise", a name which has stuck to this day. The original doors have been taken indoors for restoration and preservation, but have been replaced with replicas so that the doors can be experienced on their original site. The doors are indeed marvelous. Of course being covered in burnished gold will make many things look marvelous, but beyond that, his artistry is exquisite. The bronze panels are deep relief, practically popping out in 3D. And Ghiberti fully exploits the Renaissance discovery of perspective to everything look realistic. (Before the Renaissance, art was generally flat and one-dimensional.) The doors comprise ten main panels, each featuring a major Old Testament biblical character. In most of the panels, all of the significant events in the life of the featured character are portrayed. For example, in one panel, Adam is created, Eve is created, they are tempted by the serpent, and they are booted out of Paradise, all in one fluid composition. Thus, not only are the panels 3D, they are 4D!

(Check out highlights of our photos from Florence, or the complete set of first day pics on Flickr.)

Arriving in Florence

2011-05-13T15:53:00.000-07:00

Taking a cab from the airport to our hotel in Florence was like riding in a magical time machine. We began in unremarkable suburbs with McDonalds and other hallmarks of globalization, but as we approached the historic center, we began to see older buildings, arches, narrower streets. At one point, we started to catch glimpses of the great red cathedral dome which dominates the Florentine skyline, stirring anticipation, like kids seeing the Matterhorn and knowing Disneyland is near. When the cab pulled through an archway through an ancient wall into the Piazza della Santissima Annunziata, the time transport was complete. We were in a broad square stone-lined piazza, mostly blocked off from car traffic, surrounded on all sides by 15th and 16th century buildings in High Renaissance style. The square was mostly open and quiet, its most prominent feature a patinaed equestrian statue to one side, and two fountains. Not grand fountains, but the sort you imagine the residents of bygone centuries would come up to fill their water jugs from. On three sides, the piazza is bounded by buildings with loggias that run the width of the piazza. A "loggia" is a classically Italian architectural feature, a semi-enclosed corridor running along the front of a building, defined by columns and arches and open to the air in front. In fact, it turns out these may be the definitive loggias. When I just looked "loggia" up in Wikipedia, it shows a photo of the Ospedale degli Innocenti, designed by the great Brunelleschi himself in the early 1400s, which is one of the three buildings on this piazza. The form is very graceful and courtly, and the Florentines were so impressed by it that when Antonio da Sangallo the Elder designed a monastery for the Servi di Maria order on the opposite side of the piazza in the 1520s, he made it with a similar loggia. And likewise for the church that forms the north side of the piazza when it added a new façade.

It was in front of the 1520 Servite monastery where the cab let us off, as that building has been renovated into a lovely hotel where we stayed the next three nights. Inside the Loggiato dei Serviti, the Renaissance charm has been preserved. Exposed beams, arches and niches with paintings and flowers adorn the halls and stairs, with common sitting rooms and reading rooms here and there making it feel like a large residence rather than a hotel. Amidst the old world feel, a few modern amenities (elevators, refrigerators, blow driers) have been thoughtfully added. Our third floor room featured a canopy bed, some classic wooden furniture, ceilings beautifully painted in intricate patterns, and a window overlooking that beautiful Renaissance piazza. A bouquet of fresh flowers and a bottle of sparkling wine in a silver ice bucket made for an elegant welcoming touch. We would enjoy our charming room and hospitable hotel staff quite a bit over the weekend.

(Check out highlights of our photos from Florence, or the complete set of first day pics on Flickr.)

Marine Corps Commandant Demonstrates Ignorance of Scientific Method

2010-11-11T21:17:00.000-08:00

The Fox News headline read "Marines Chief Warns Most Are Uncomfortable Serving With Openly Gay Troops", and the article lead off with this sentence: "As many as 95 percent of Marines would be uncomfortable serving alongside openly gay troops, the retiring commandant of the Marine Corps told Fox News in an exclusive interview." This based on General Conway's survey of his troops. Of course, when you read further down in the article, it turns out the General's idea of the word "survey" means forming an impression based on various ad hoc occasions when he asked a group of Marines for a show of hands on the subject.

Now we learn from a leaked Pentagon report that an actual survey (you know, the real scientific kind) of 400,000 servicemembers showed that there is minimal risk to lifting the gay ban. More than 70% of the respondents thought that the change would be positive, mixed, or neutral. The Marine Corps was only slightly more resistant to the change, with about 40% expressing concern for unit cohesion. Nothing like General Conway's 95% based on his own "survey".

Am I the only one who's concerned that the leader of one of our military services trusts his personal impressions over actual data when it comes to making decisions?

FILM: The Social Network

2010-10-02T23:44:00.000-07:00

Of course we were busy posting on Facebook as we sat down to see The Social Network. But the film was more than engaging enough to keep our eyes off of our iPhones for the duration. In fact, I would call this story a Citizen Kane for the 21st century. It is a fascinating tale of a driven young man's rise to stunning success and riches, at the cost of betraying friendships and destroying relationships along the way, culminating in the ultimate irony: does the man who built a network of 500 million friends have any friends of his own? And of course it was impossible not to think of "Rosebud" when seeing the final scene. How closely the film hews to truthful biography is an open question, but it certainly makes for a landmark story. Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg is played impeccably by Jesse Eisenberg, who creates an Asperger-like intensity and unsocialized lack of filter in the main character, and as one of my friends (a Princeton classmate) said, "nailed the speech patterns and mannerisms of smartass Ivy League kids". Aaron Sorkin's script is beautifully written, from the opening scene in which we quickly get to know the Zuckerberg character as he is being dumped (for good reason) by his girlfriend, to the last scene (the Rosebud moment). The film tells the story of the events leading up to and through the founding of Facebook, interspersed with scenes from legal depositions from the various parties who later sued him, scenes which reflect on and illuminate the story. Zuckerberg comes off pretty much as a brilliant amoral jerk, though one of the young associates on his defense team sheds some sympathetic light on him, and I found myself cheering for him a little bit when he was being berated by the opposing attorneys and gave them a stinging comeback. (But then even Atila the Hun might be sympathetic when being berated by an attorney.) Justin Timberlake gives a great turn as Sean Parker, the erstwhile founder of Napster who insinuated himself into Facebook, portrayed here as a brilliant, charming, immature power-magnet with a penchant for drink and drugs and a talent for knowing who to flatter and charm. The whole story felt very realistic (again, whether it's true or not), and some scenes were giving me flashbacks to my own dot-com-founding experiences (which included a house which served as company dormitory and office space, though without so much drugs, wild parties, and funding). I predict Oscar noms for Eisenberg and Sorkin (course it's still early in the year for Oscar's short attention span).

FILM: Eat Pray Love

2010-09-05T15:04:00.000-07:00

We'd heard mixed reviews of Eat Pray Love, but we were looking for something diverting last night, and figured: Julia Roberts, beautiful world travelogue, beautiful food, and some beautiful men (in that order) -- what's not to like? We were not disappointed and found the film thoroughly enjoyable. I had read the book, which is often a set-up for disappointment in the film. But I didn't go in expecting the film to be exactly like the book. While decorated by beautiful and exotic settings, the book is largely an internal journey which would be hard to translate into a visual medium. Nonetheless, I thought they did a really nice job. There was some amount of Liz the protagonist's voiceover (it would be impossible to make this film with none), but director/writer Ryan Murphy wasn't heavy-handed with it. He and co-writer Jennifer Salt did do a nice job adapting some of the book's great internal scenes. I particularly liked Liz's first attempt at meditating in the ashram, when her thoughts were totally scattered and even one minute of distracted meditation was exasperatingly slow. And the use of flashback and fantasy provided some lovely book-to-film translations such as the scene on the ashram roof when Liz "meets" and makes peace with her ex-husband. Of course in some dimensions, such as the beauty of the locations and the food, the film capitalized on the strength of visuals. A simple scene of Liz making eye-love to a simple but exquisite plate of spaghetti in a Roman café, with Mozart's Queen of the Night aria from the Magic Flute as soundtrack, was genius. As is inevitable, not every bit of the book can fit into a film, but I felt they stayed quite faithful to the book, and did their best to at least allude to memorable bits from the book. (One of my favorite chapters in the book is Liz attending an Italian football match and appreciating the Italian language in the stream of invective from the cheering and howling fans. It would be impossible, I think, to truly render that chapter on film, but they made a nice gesture to it, in a collage sequence interleaving scenes from fans at a soccer game with Liz and her friend trying on jeans that were a bit too tight.) It was also a pleasant surprise to find the casting so agreeable. To me, not a single character was discordant with how I had pictured them from the book, from James Franco as David, her rebound affair, down to Hadi Subiyanto as Ketut Liyer, an aged Balinese medicine man. Javier Bardem did a great job of bringing to screen such a complex character, who comes across as a bit of a playboy but who is actually a heart-broken divorcé and doting father. And Richard Jenkins did a brilliant turn as Richard in the ashram, a brusque Texan who kicks Liz's spiritual butt while becoming her best friend in India. (We remember him best from his outstanding lead role in The Visitor, though he's probably best known as the deceased father of the Fisher family in Six Feet Under.)

Sure, the film leaves out much of the more profound spiritual and emotional elements of the book, but there's only so much you can expect from a 2-hour movie, and there was a lot of ground to cover. Depth of emotional character development just wasn't going to fit. But as a romantic-comedy version of a journey of self-discovery set against a travelogue of beautiful places and exotic characters, we found it thoroughly enjoyable.

Founding Mothers of New France

2010-08-29T14:17:00.000-07:00

On our recent vacation to Canada, we learned a lot about the history of the settlement of "New France" in the 1600s, when French colonies were established in Québec in 1608 and Montréal in 1642. As with most cities, the great figures in their history, the founders of their civic institutions, are memorialized in statues and stained glass windows, and in the names of streets and squares. Such was certainly the case in Montréal, but as we wandered through the charming cobblestone streets of the old town, one thing slowly dawned on me as being rather unique. A number of those founders memorialized in statues and streets were women. And I'm not talking about some post-feminist politically-correct honoring of honorable women recently excavated from "herstory". I'm talking about women in leadership roles who founded major civic institutions from the very establishment of the colony, and were recognized from their time onward as founders.

The first one that caught my attention was in the Notre-Dame Basilica, where a series of stained glass windows depict scenes from the history of the city, and one shows Jeanne Mance, founder of the city's first hospital. We came across the name again in a street name, rue Jeanne-Mance, which runs "north-south" from the convention center, past the Guy-Favreau and Desjardins shopping centers, past the Contemporary Art Museum and the Place des Arts, and up to the Hôtel-Dieu, the hospital that she founded, and which still exists (though not in its original location). Today the Hôtel-Dieu is one of Montréal's major hospitals, and is part of the Université de Montréal. There is a monument to Jeanne Mance in front of the hospital. And had the Place d'Armes (a central square in old town) not been under reconstruction, we would have seen a statue of Jeanne Mance as one of the five leading Montréal historical figures memorialized there. We learned that she was one of the original settlers on Montréal in 1642, along with Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve, the first governor. Maisonneuve and Mance were both recruited by the Societé de Notre-Dame de Montréal, an organization incorporated to fund the establishment of a missionary colony in New France. As we visited Montréal's historical sites, we learned of the great hardships faced in its establishment, the often-dangerous voyages across the Atlantic, the attacks on the settlement by the Iroquois, occasional threats from the English, as well as natural threats from floods and disease. It clearly took great fortitude and courage to be a pioneer in such a place.

Another prominent figure we learned of was Marguerite de Bourgeoys. If you visit the charming Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours church, you can't help but learn about her. Governor Maisonneuve returned to France to recruit someone to establish a school in Montréal, and he returned with Marguerite de Bourgeoys. Shortly after her arrival in 1653, she initiated construction of the Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours Chapel, and established Montréal's first school. She made a number of trips back to France in subsequent decades to recruit additional teachers and funding, and the women she brought back formed the Congregation de Notre-Dame, a unique community of uncloistered women who established and operated a number of schools for colonists and for native children. She was truly a courageous and remarkable leader.

In another part of town, we came across a couple of streets and a square all named for Marguerite d'Youville. Though she lived in the 1700s, nearly a century after the establishment of the colony, she too played a leading role in Montréal's civic life. After becoming a young widow when her drunkard bootlegger husband died, she answered a religious calling, and established the Order of Sisters of Charity of Montréal, a group that operated a home for the poor, and also took over operations of a bankrupt hospital outside the city walls, bringing it back to financial stability. The "Grey Nuns" (the common nickname for the order) carry on her legacy to this day, continuing to operate numerous women's shelters, food dispensaries, and other services for the poor.

We also saw an obelisk in old town, erected in 1892, with a plaque listing the founders of the city, both those including Jeanne Mance who actively worked on site to establish the colony, but also those back in France who backed and funded the venture, such as one Angélique Fauré de Bullion, a wealthy widow who played an ongoing active investment role in the development of the colony. (She insisted on being identified only as "an unidentified benefactress" in records of her donations, and her role only came out after her death.) Several other female names appeared on this plaque, including the intriguing Madame La Chanceliere Louise Fabry, of whom I've not been able to find out more.

I'm just intrigued by this whole women pioneer thing, and wonder what unique combination of things made this happen in New France? Obviously, the whole pioneer thing is one factor. When founding a colony in a new world, obviously you need all hands on deck, and certainly the women who were among the original settlers in America (the settlement of "the West" as well as the English colonies) were strong and courageous. But I'm not aware of any of our American pioneer women having such leadership roles and establishing civic institutions in the same way. Generally, our streets are all named Washington, Jefferson, and Adams, and our statues are of men. (The nearest exception I can think of was Anne Hutchinson in Rhode Island.) And here in "New Spain" where I grew up, I don't even think the Spanish missionaries (and certainly not the soldiers who supported them) included women at all. So while establishing a new colony created a natural demand for leadership, most social structures of the time didn't enable women to rise to fill that demand. What then was different about New France? Another factor is the Catholic church, which distinguishes New France from New England (our Protestants didn't have the same tradition of nuns and orders that the Catholics had, cloistered or otherwise). And perhaps we have to distinguish the French Catholic church, since Spain too was Catholic. These French women pioneers certainly worked within the context of the church: Marguerite Bourgeoys started her own order of sorts (though an unconventional one that only finally received full church authorization near the end of her long life), and Marguerite d'Youville worked with the church to start her order. (Both of these women were eventually canonized a couple centuries later.) Jeanne Mance, though devout and religiously motivated, was and remained a laywoman, though her hospital was staffed with women of orders. What was it about 17th century Catholic France that enabled such women (and the wealthy widows who funded them) to take on such leadership roles?

FILM: Letters to Juliet

2010-05-23T23:10:00.000-07:00

Yesterday afternoon, we saw Letters to Juliet, and as my husband said at the end of the film, "what a total cheese-fest!" And indeed it was, though if you like cheese (and we do), it was certainly a fine cheese. The plot was rather like a Nebraska Interstate: no turns, just a straight line that you could see for miles and miles ahead with the destination clearly sign-posted. Fortunately, the scenery was Tuscany rather than Nebraska, which one can look at with delight for a couple of hours, while being enchanted by Vanessa Redgrave, whose luminosity easily makes one forgive a weak plot. Amanda Seyfreid, with her blue eyes that you could swim in, along with handsome young Brit Christopher Egan and a frenetic Gael Garcia Bernal, charmingly inhabit their by-the-numbers characters, making the whole proceeding quite enjoyable, as well as easy on the eyes. The Vanessa Redgrave and Franco Nero backstory lends another layer of charm with the film's story echoing their real life "once and future" romance. So just turn off the critical part of your brain, and enjoy the fine cheese.

FOOD: Church and State

2010-05-16T21:21:00.000-07:00

Last night George and I checked out Church & State. No idea where the name came from. It's not on the corner of Church and State, nor could I detect any disestablishmentarian themes in the cuisine or the venue. It's on the corner of Industrial and Mateo (near Alameda and 7th), in the bottom of the old National Biscuit Co building, in a tiny pocket of trendy lofts surrounded by gritty industrial stuff a few blocks beyond Little Tokyo. In other words, one of the green shoots of the new urbanization of downtown. We'd heard of the restaurant itself from mentions in LA foodie circles (Evan Kleiman, Jonathan Gold, the usual suspects), and our downtown friends were all onto it. With no plans for a Saturday night, we decided to be check it out. Though we were able to snag a table for two on very short notice, the place was pretty hopping the whole time we were there. There was no valet, and we had to park a couple blocks away, in front of the still-industrial looking stuff. We did get approached by one panhandler, but in the short walk to the restaurant, we noticed lights in windows of inhabited lofts, and a few nicely-tended urban landscapes on roofs or between buildings. Right near the restaurant, we noted another nice restaurant across the street, as well as a respectable-looking convenience market and a gym. Inside the restaurant, the scene was that of traditional French bistro furnishings placed in the industrial rehab context, with the extra-high ceiling leaving the construction unapologetically exposed, and strings of lights strung festively around. I thought it worked quite well, being true to both its urban setting and its Belle Epoque themes.

The menu is very traditional French bistro, with mussels, steak frites, frisée aux lardons, roasted chicken, and authentic country touches like pigs feet, pigs ears, roasted marrow bone, and charcuterie. I was delighted to discover a cassoulet on the menu, and was also intrigued to find a "cassoulet aux légumes". I was imagining a cassoulet filled with carrots, parsnips, broccoli, and peas, all cooked with the white beans in magical duck fat, which sounded just as marvelous and slightly healthier than the traditional cassoulet which is filled with wondrous artery-clogging sausages, duck legs, and other fatty bits. Alas, our waiter was unmistakably French, not only in his accent, but in his demeanor, and didn't really sell the vegetable cassoulet when I asked him to describe it. (It is not the style of the typical French waiter to be at all chatty the way American waiters are, nor to spontaneously compose paeans of praise when asked to describe a dish.)

We both started with salads, George with the frisée, and me with a "salade au marché, which had arugula, beets, pine nuts, and thin strips of charcuterie. Mine was delicious and George, while initially looking askance at how lightly poached the egg was (he's the sort that does not like his eggs runny), tucked in and left nothing. I was also intrigued by an item called "pois chiches" on the hors d'oeuvre menu, which was lightly fried green chick peas, so we gave that a try. They were tasty, with a nice seasoning on the outside, although a bit awkward to eat. Like edamame, the good stuff is inside a husk that you really don't want to eat. Unlike edamame, these didn't easily pop out, or if there was a neat trick to eating them, we didn't discover it, so we just squeezed the tasty soft center out in our mouths, while also getting the seasoning off the husk, and then awkwardly removed the crinkly husk. (Anyone have any tips on eating these?)

For mains, I went for the traditional cassoulet au Toulouse, which had succulent white beans, savory sausages that tasted like fresh ground lean pork with garlic and herbs, lardons, a crispy duck leg, and bread crumbs to texture the rich goodness of it all. George had a bit of a time making a selection, as the chef was being extra cautious about the gluten issue, and so steered him away from anything that went into the same frier that other stuff with flour had been in, and said to scratch the au jus on everything. So he ended up having steak frites with bearnaise sauce (but no au jus), and roasted potatoes instead of the usual frites. It was disappointing to have so many limitations, but it was appreciated that the chef was being conscientious (as opposed to another restaurant we'd been to recently that didn't take allergies seriously), and they did go to some effort to accommodate us. (The pois chiches are normally made in the frier, but the chef prepared a special batch for us in a separate frying pan.) The wine list was thoroughly French, and with a nice range of wines to choose from, including selections by the glass. I neglected to get the details (left my iPhone in the car), but George had a nice Medoc (cab-merlot blend) with his steak, and I was pleased to find a Languedoc wine offered by the glass, which was lovely with the cassoulet.

For dessert, the waiter presented us with a tempting display of tarts (the chocolate-raspberry tart looked particularly intriguing), but we decided to share a citron mousse which was lovely. The creamy mousse had a light lemon flavor which was contrasted with a topping of tart lemon shaved ice. It was light and refreshing, and the contrasting lemon/tart/sweet/creamy flavors tickled the tongue. On our way out, George caught sight of an interesting looking glass jar with two small spigots on either side. We asked the waiter who was carrying it, and he explained that it contained ice water and was part of a service for absinthe. Intriguing! We'll have to try that next time.

Why I Am Happy About Health Care Reform

2010-03-26T23:38:00.000-07:00

While the Health Care Reform bill is far from ideal, I think it's a big step in a mostly good direction. Let me explain why I think so.

First, I think the status quo was untenable, for two basic reasons: cost and structure. Health care costs currently represent 16% of our GDP (that's higher than any other nation), and have been rising at a rate nearly double the rate of inflation and much higher than GDP growth. For people who have insurance, the rising cost of health care is initially buffered by the insurance companies, although it is eventually reflected in rising premiums. For people who purchase their insurance directly on the individual market (a market in which they have no leverage), they are feeling the premium pain acutely. Several of my friends are among the Californians who got whacked with a 39% increase in their premiums from Anthem Blue Cross this year. For those lucky enough to work for a large employer, the insurance costs are partly absorbed by the employer and the rest buried in an automatic payroll deduction. But the employers are feeling the pain of the rising insurance premiums, which are rising even faster for small and medium-sized businesses than for the large ones. In one recent survey, large companies (more than 50,000 employees) saw their premiums increase 5% in 2009, while small (less than 5,000 employees) and medium-sized companies saw premiums rise as much as 10%. For the employees, that eventually translates into a lack of raises, and lack of new jobs. Some friends have experienced effective pay cuts due to no raises and increased payroll deductions for those rising insurance premiums.

Some would say that the answer to rising costs is less regulation and to let the free market do its thing. Now don't get me wrong, I'm generally a free market fan, but our current system of mostly-employer-provided health insurance bears little resemblance to a functional market. For one thing, I can think of no other segment of the economy where both the consumer and provider of a service are so dysfunctionally disconnected from the cost. Anyone who's on a PPO insurance plan like me is familiar with the insanity: you go to the doctor just for a basic office visit, maybe get some blood drawn and/or an X-ray. The result is three to five bills from your doctor, a lab, the X-ray technician, and maybe some other doctor who reviewed the labs or the films. Then you get a flurry of "explanation of benefit" statements from your insurer saying "the blood labs billed $750, but our negotiated rate with them is $300, of which $78 was unallowable (reference mysterious codes), $113 was covered, $63 goes against your deductible, and you owe 20% of the remaining $46." If I'd have just walked in off the street without an insurance card, that basic office visit would have had a nominal cost upwards of $1,000. (Of course part of that is because the doctor has to employ at least one full-time person just to keep the insurance billing sorted.) It's a bit like airline tickets, where you can find three people sitting on the same flight in the same row who paid $212, $756, and $1640 for their tickets. But at least on an airplane, you know the cost before you buy the ticket. With medical care, you don't know the cost, you usually don't even ask up front (cause you're not paying it), and you don't even know the destination or the length of the flight. When was the last time you cost-comparison shopped a doctor, or asked about the cost-effectiveness of a recommended test or treatment? So how exactly is the "unseen hand" going to get any grip on this?

You might say that you don't need to worry about cost, because your insurance company has done the cost comparisons and cost-effectiveness studies. That's somewhat true, but that just shifts the focus to the insurance market. There you have a number of factors at work. First, there is the negotiated cost of services, which comes down to the relative leverage between insurers and service providers (doctors and hospitals). In areas where an insurance provider has a large number of subscribers and there is a choice of hospitals, the insurance companies can negotiate more competitive rates with the hospitals. In areas where there are fewer hospitals (or the hospitals are nearly all owned by one company, e.g., as in northern California), and where an insurance company has less of a local market, they are in a weak negotiating position and can't get as competitive rates. The key observation to be made here is that increasing competition among insurance companies can work to drive costs up rather than down, insofar as it weakens their leverage to negotiate with service providers. Another factor is the market for selling health insurance, which is very uneven. Rather than a large market of individual consumers, the health insurance market is a lumpy amalgam of large companies buying group plans, small and medium businesses buying group plans, and individuals buying individual / family plans. Large companies obviously have the leverage to get relatively good rates. Small and medium businesses, not so much. And individuals totally get the shaft. These submarkets also operate under very different terms. In the large company sub-market, the insurance company typically agrees to accept all employees regardless of pre-existing conditions, while the company promises to enroll all employees in the plan. The scale creates a broad enough pool such that the insurance business model makes sense: you have enough healthy people in the pool to cover those who are sick. In the individual market, it's a different story. If people could buy individual health insurance policies at any time, regardless of pre-existing conditions, nobody would buy insurance until they got sick, and only sick people would buy insurance. Obviously, that would make the individual insurance pool unsustainable, which is why the insurance companies need to screen for pre-existing conditions to make the current system work.

This uneven insurance market incentivizes some counter-productive behavior in the labor market. Some employees may stick with a job for the sole reason that they can't give up the medical coverage. They may have a child with a pre-existing condition, and if they left their current job, they would be unable to replace the coverage. This may prevent them from moving to a more effective job, or it may prevent them from venturing out and starting a new business. Employee mobility is a key efficiency for an effective economy, and especially so in our modern information and services economy. We recognize the importance of entrepeneurship, and of small and medium business in job creation and economic growth. Our system of employer-provided healthcare insurance made more sense in the 1950s and 60s when the majority of people worked for large employers and often stayed with the same employer. Today, employer-provided insurance is not only a quaint relic of that bygone era, but it is a source of structural inefficiency and distortion in our modern economy, insofar as it hampers employee mobility and entrepeneurship. We'd be much better served by scrapping employer-provided insurance altogether, and creating a robust and level individual insurance market. But massive change like that is politically infeasible, and our economy is like a battleship that needs to be steered slowly.

The recent Health Care Reform bill is a positive step in that direction. By organizing the individual insurance market into state-run insurance exchanges, this key structural change will enable the individual insurance market to effect the same bargain as large group coverage: everyone participates in order to create a rational insurance pool and no one needs to be screened for pre-existing conditions. Those who had been urging incremental change failed to understand how these things need to come as a package in order to work. In order to eliminate pre-existing conditions, you need to make sure the insurance pool is rational by mandating that everyone be in the pool. And in order to make a mandate reasonable, you need to provide premium subsidies for those least able to afford them. The elimination of pre-existing condition screening only makes sense together with the mandate, and the mandate only makes sense with the subsidies. It could not have been done incrementally. (Likewise, those with hopes for a repeal are going to realize that you can't repeal the mandate without also restoring the pre-existing conditions screening.)

Thus, I see this as a positive step toward reforming the structure of our health care insurance market. Regretably, it appears not to address the overall healthcare cost problem, except for a few small but promising gestures (such as a Medicare pilot to explore alternatives to payment-for-service). Even so, I see it as a huge accomplishment. I think the opportunity to make such a change occurs only once or twice in a generation. The last grand attempt at healthcare reform was in 1994, and if this effort had failed, it would have been another 15 or 20 years before anyone would take it up again. The political process was messy, but Washington is messy on the best of days, and one can't expect filet mignon from a sausage factory. Despite the mess, I would say the process worked the way it is supposed to, in that a wide range of views were accommodated in the final bill. Anyone who thinks the entire Democratic delegation has a monolithic view that can be meaningfully labeled "the left" simply hasn't been paying attention. I was also glad to see that the final wrangling to get the needed votes in the House was focused on the actual substance of the bill, and we didn't see the kind of obscene special deals (like the Nebraska tax exemption -- shame on you Senator Nelson) that took place in the Senate. (Thankfully, the most egregious of those were deleted in the reconciliation.) Even the Republicans, with their complete stonewalling, played a role in shaping the bill, by forcing the Democrats to come to a complete consensus across their intra-party spectrum. (Tolkien tells us that even Golem had a role to play in the Lord of the Rings. I reckon the GOP played the Golem role here.)

Frankly, I'm puzzled by the people who are proclaiming that HCR represents the end of life as we know it, or that it implements some revolutionary radical leftist ideas. Compared to the fears many on the right have expressed -- of a government-run healthcare system, or the government as single payer -- what we got is not that, not even close. It didn't even include so much as a public option. What we got was a way to enable a viable independent insurance market without adverse selection and pre-existing conditions, preserving the framework of a free-market competitive private sector to provide the insurance and to provide the healthcare. Anyone who looks at that and sees "socialism" or "government takeover" is just deluded. This was a completely market-oriented reform. Even in the context of market-oriented reform, the reform wasn't all that revolutionary. It did not abolish employer-provided healthcare and immediately establish an individual market for everyone. It did not even tax employer-based health benefits (which I'd love to see them phase in, shifting the tax deduction to individuals). The reform was heedful of people who like what they have now, and it enabled the reform in a minimally disruptive way. Many of the significant reforms don't take effect for several years, allowing people and businesses to plan for the transition. Not exactly the French Revolution here.

What is sad is the apparently intense polarization of attitudes in this country along the alleged left-right divide, when in fact there are broad areas of agreement. I think most folks would agree that healthcare costs are out of control, that the practices of pre-existing condition screening (and rescission) are ugly, and that market-oriented solutions are better than government central planning. The Health Care Reform that passed, with an absolute zero of Republican support, contained many elements that Republicans themselves have pitched in the past. It's like the Republicans and the Democrats are about six inches apart in the middle of a twenty-foot ruler, and they're arguing about the dire chasm of "right" and "left" between them. How pathetic is that? In reality, it serves only to enrich the pundits who thrive on fanning the flames.

Some folks are offended by the idea of an insurance mandate, or question its constitutionality. On the practical side, I'd like to ask those folks: would you have preferred a single-payer system, or direct government-provided healthcare (a la Britain or Canada)? We could eliminate the mandate, and do one of those instead. We only need the mandate if we want to do a market-oriented reform. But if you're really bothered by that mandate, we can go Canadian style. No? I didn't think so. On the constitutional side, while I admit the idea of a mandate does chafe a bit at my libertarian bones, I also concede that it's not really outside our Constitution as it has been interpreted for quite some time. The government has the power to compel things: paying taxes, educating children, serving in the military. Like it or not, the Supreme Court has been pretty deferential to the constitutional power to regulate commerce, as well as the power to levy taxes. I know the challenges are already being filed, but it would be surprising if the Health Care Reform bill is found to have exceeded those well-established powers.

Some folks are just generally nervous about the growth of federal government, and I share that sentiment. But I do believe that it is the proper role of the government to regulate the healthcare market, to ensure that it functions effectively. Just as it is appropriate for government to have a significant role in infrastructure (think roads and airports), as a key enabler of a vibrant economy, I think that healthcare and education are the "infrastructure" of an information economy workforce. In the 1950s it made sense to everyone that your employer should provide your healthcare. It was a reasonable investment for the employer to make sure that the employees were healthy and secure. Today, almost nobody has a single employer their entire life. We move from job to job, place to place, career to career, re-train, start new ventures -- the labor mobility that an effective 21st-century economy requires. But it still makes sense to invest in the health and security of our workforce, so that people can focus on their work and not be distracted by health insecurity. It's just that employers are no longer the logical source for that investment. Given labor mobility, the government is the logical source for that investment, as it is the only stable long-term constant. I think this is what is required for the American economy to remain competitive in the 21st century.

So, that's why I am happy about the passage of the Health Care Reform bill.

FILM: Los Abrazos Rotos

2010-02-06T23:06:00.000-08:00

In his latest film Los Abrazos Rotos, director Pedro Almodóvar at times channels Alfred Hitchcock, and at other times, Luis Buñuel. The opening scene, a macro close-up on a single eye, is an explicit homage to Un Chien Andalou, and a tantalizing tip to film theorists that Almodóvar is going to artfully play with the theme of seeing and film. The main character is a famous film director who has lost his sight, as well as the love of his life, in a car accident. And one of the most stunningly beautiful visual scenes in this film is of the blind man "reading" the pixels in a grainy video of his last film as if it were braille. Layers of seeing and watching and filming are fascinatingly woven in this strange tale about a film being made, and the filming of the filming, part of which includes the secret surveillance by a jealous husband of his aspiring actress wife, which leads to the Hitchcock elements. While full of arty references that film theory students will eat up, this is no plotless Brakhage or Warhol film. There is an intriguing film noir plot of an affair abruptly ended by a suspicious death that may have been a murder, and there are some great Hitchcockian car scenes, suspenseful without any actual chase, just a creepy feeling of being watched. The plot lies buried in the blind man's past, and Almodovar lets it gently and mysteriously unfold, as we get to know his characters, all brilliantly cast: Lluís Homar as the haunted blind director Mateo Blanco (who forsook his name when he lost his sight and his love); Blanca Portillo as Judit García, his editor/manager and unrequited lover; Penélope Cruz as Lena, his passionate lover and not-very-talented star of his last film. The film within the film (and the filming of the film within the film) is used to great effect, without becoming too gimmicky. At times, the line between the inner film and reality blurs. There is a great scene when Lena's jealous husband is watching a soundless videotape of his wife making the film, as a hired lip-reader tells him what people are saying; then as Lena addresses the camera directly, the real Lena enters the room behind him and speaks the lines that her on-screen picture is enunciating. While the film was a bit slow to get going, I was thoroughly drawn in by the end with these intriguing characters, the mysterious story threads tying them all together, and the artful filmmaking.

BOOKS: The Post-American World

2010-02-05T20:51:00.000-08:00

I came across this book in an unusual way. I received an email from someone who regularly sends me the worst right-wingnut scare rumors, and this particular email was all panty-twisted over a photo of President Obama holding a book which, upon closer look had the title "The Post-American World", and it was written by a Muslim! "See," the email howled with horror, "look what Obama is reading! He really is part of a secret Muslim cabal intent on destroying America!" Being appropriately sceptical of such emails, I looked a bit closer and made out the partly-obscured name of the Muslim-terrorist author of this evil tome: Fareed Zakaria, international editor for Newsweek, and a widely respected expert on foreign policy. I immediately added the title to my list of books to read. So glad I did.

His provocative title, it turns out, is not about the fall of America, so muc as it is about the "rise of the rest". The book is a shrewd analysis of how America's role as the world's sole superpower is inevitably going to be soon eclipsed by China and India, and what that will and won't mean. I'd never read Zakaria before, but I found him to be tremendously insightful, as well as very knowledgeable. The book is eye-opening in its quantification and qualification of the rise of China and India (as well as other countries), but at the same time it is reassuring in its assessment that the surpassing of the US economy need not be the catastrophe many may fear. In fact, he cites Roosevelt's dictum that the only thing to fear is fear itself. Our worst possible policy choices in reaction to the rise of the rest of the world would be ones based on a fearful retrenchment into protectionism and isolation. Our best possible policy choices continue to embrace open trade and immigration, key drivers that have advanced America and can continue to do so. He compares and contrasts the present US situation not to Rome (as is so often done), but to the British Empire in its decline, which given where Britain is today was obviously not the end of the world. He offers some interesting observations about military might versus the soft power of legitimacy and being a center of ideas and innovation. And he had some interesting insights into econometrics, noting that our current measures of savings and consumption are based on an industrial economy. For example, spending on research and development, or a college education, gets measured as consumption, when it's really more of an investment, especially an in information economy.

I came away from this book feeling more realistic and also more optimistic about the future for America. And also very glad that our President is reading books like this one.

STAGE: Camelot

2010-02-04T23:22:00.000-08:00

I was raised on show tunes from a young age, and as a kid I can remember listening to my folks' reel-to-reel tapes, especially the great Lerner and Lowe musicals like Camelot and My Fair Lady. I'd never seen Camelot on the stage, and so when I heard that the Pasadena Playhouse was putting it up, I wanted to go see it. Then when I read that the Pasadena Playhouse -- beautiful historic theatre that has put up some truly great productions over the years -- was closing due to financial difficulties, I immediately went out to get tickets. That just added a whole layer of meaning to the experience, to see this play about the fateful demise of a wonderful ideal, as the very theatre was experiencing its own demise.

Not having seen any other productions of Camelot, I can't compare this one, but I found it utterly charming and moving. The set was simple and spare, a series of wooden poles and platforms, and the ensemble of eight players began the play in a self-conscious "we're about to tell you a story, so please indulge us with your imagination" manner (actually rather Shakespearean), and also a touch of self-deprecating humor -- "there was a majestic castle on a hill" as a picture of a castle is noisly unfurled and hung on one of the poles; "it was snowing" as an actress arches an eyebrow while tossing a handful of torn paper in the air. The self-conscious stuff added a nice laugh here and there, but was a light touch, and not overdone. The cast was terrific. Shannon Warne (Guinevere) reminded me of mezzo diva Jennifer Larmore, with a beautiful and powerful voice that glimmered like sunshine, and with a confident charm that commanded the stage. I think she could have got most every guy in the audience to joust against Lancelot for her! Shannon Stoeke (Arthur) did a marvelous job being a tentative idealistic boy-king in the beginning, maturing into a strong man with the conviction of his ideals even when it was torture for him to do so. Doug Carpenter brought a swaggering bearing and a rich deep baritone to realize the unself-consciously pompous Lancelot. The other three fun-loving knights and that deliciously wicked Mordred were all finely enacted too, rounding out a great ensemble. The director did a great job balancing the tone of the play, mostly light and charming with emotionally powerful moments. The climax at the end of Act I was particularly powerful, with Arthur making a desperate, passionate recommitment to his ideals, and then the breathtaking reveal of Lance and Jenny, naked in each other's arms. That was brilliant theatre. And of course I was totally charmed (as well as filled with warm nostalgic feeling) for the brilliant music and lyrics of Lerner and Lowe.

I was sad to see the show end, and sad to see the theatre close. I hope that they will be able to stage a comeback, and that the "(not so) brief shining moment" that was the Pasadena Playhouse will be the "once and future" stage.

FILM: The Last Station

2010-01-31T23:15:00.000-08:00

I really didn't know much about Tolstoy before seeing this historically-based film, but The Last Station certainly presents an intriguing character. Born into wealth and aristocracy (he was a count), and a celebrated author in his own lifetime, he was also a man of strong convictions about a utopian communal society, and a whole following of "Tolstoyans" grew up around him. This charming film is propelled by the conflict between his ideals and his actual life, a conflict which is illuminated and exacerbated by two other very strong figures in his life. His wife the Countess Sofya (powerfully portrayed by Helen Mirren), the love of his life and mother of his numerous children, as well as his sometime literary assistant and fulltime financial manager, is concerned with preserving a decent inheritance for her children, and is thus at odds with Tolstoy's best disciple Vladimir Chertkov, who convinces Tolstoy to divest his estate as well as his valuable copyrights to the people, as a grand Tolstoyan statement. Helen Mirren gives a brilliant performance as the passionate drama-queen countess, fierce and powerful with moments of vulnerability. And Christopher Plummer is marvelous as the larger-than-life author, with a huge passion for life, he is a presence of Shakespearean proportions. James McAvoy is charming as Valentin, the very young, idealistic man who becomes Tolstoy's personal secretary, and through whose eyes we become acquainted with this world, as both Chertkov (villainously played by Paul Giamatti) and the Countess attempt to use him to achieve their crossed purposes. There's a great moment where we realize how Tolstoy the idol has diverged from Tolstoy the man, when he and Valentin are taking a walk through the woods (beautiful classic Russian birch woods!), and Tolstoy is reminiscing about a woman he had a romantic affair with in his younger days. Valentin (who is a virgin, and is celebate as is part of the Tolstoyan philosophy) is a bit embarrassed, and apologizes for bringing up shameful memories. "Shameful!" Tolstoy exclaims with a huge, roaring laugh, "oh no, not at all. My boy, I'm afraid I'm not a very good Tolstoyan." In the end, the film really makes you think about how a great man's following can morph into something different than the man himself, and also how a man can become divided between who he is and who he thinks he ought to be. That makes the film sound more heady than it really is. Those are just the thoughts I was lead to in the aftermath, but the film itself was a compelling story of some very human characters.

FILM: It's Complicated

2010-01-18T21:37:00.000-08:00

Writer/director Nancy Meyers delivers another winner with It's Complicated, a charming, thoughtful, very funny romantic comedy about divorce, exes with benefits, unfinished business, and moving on. (Not to mention, a romance for people more, ahem, our age.) And Meryl Streep is, as usual, totally outstanding, lighting up the screen, and making us forget for a couple of hours every other amazing character she's ever brought to life. She plays Jane, mother of three mostly grown kids, and ex-wife of Jake (charmingly played by Alec Baldwin) who left her for a younger woman whom he's now married to. As we know from the trailers, an affair ensues between Jane and Jake, just as an intriguing architect (Steve Martin) comes into her life. Though the style of the comedy is pure classic with tropes out of the traditional playbook, they're beautifully executed, the story is fresh, and the laughs are real and plentiful. And along the way, the story gently offers a little food for thought about whether the good parts of a former marriage might be rekindled when the conditions that brought on the bad parts (job stress, parenting stress) may have gone away. And speaking of food, though Jane bears no resemblance to Julia Child, she runs a charming bakery in Santa Barbara, is a great cook, and has a remarkably beautiful home that she might have bought from Julia Child, making one wonder why she'd ever want to remodel and expand it (except that it was "their" home and she's just now ready to make it into "her" home). This film is not just rom-com soufflé, it's the main course too.

BOOKS: Fool

2010-01-14T20:49:00.000-08:00

I was captivated by Christopher Moore's Fool, wonderfully read by Euan Morton, from this opening sentence:

"This is a bawdy tale. Herein you will find gratuitous shagging, murder, spanking, maiming, treason, and heretofore unexplored heights of vulgarity and profanity, as well as nontraditional grammar, split infinitives, and the odd wank . . . If that's the sort of thing you think you might enjoy, then you have happened upon the perfect story!"

What followed from there was not only eight and a half hours of the finest British humor, but an incredibly clever Shakespearean parody and pastiche. Fool takes the story of Shakespeare's King Lear and turns it inside out, as seen from the point of view of Pocket, the king's fool. Kind of like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, but much much funnier and much much more engaging. Not only does he work the Fool's story seamlessly into the existing story of King Lear, but he manages to weave an entirely new tale, full of politics, intrigue, a bit of magic (and yes, lots of shagging and bawdiness) into it. It was amazing, because if you know the story of Lear, you know how part of it is going to have to go, and yet you still don't know how it's going to get there, or even how it finally turns out. And it was so much fun to get there. The story is jam-packed with Shakespearean allusions, quotes, jokes, and even a few characters (like Macbeth's witches) shamelessly imported from other plays into this story. And the story would completely stand on its own, both for humor and intrigue, even if you didn't know much Shakespeare at all. What a rollicking great romp!

STAGE: Palestine, New Mexico

2010-01-11T20:29:00.000-08:00

We greatly enjoyed Culture Clash's previous work in Chavez Ravine, so we were intrigued to see their new play Palestine, New Mexico at the Mark Taper Forum. It was a powerful and intriguing dramatic work, with Culture Clash's unique quirky point of view brought to bear this time on world politics. The story all takes place on a tribal reservation in New Mexico, where an army captain has come from Afghanistan to talk to the chief about the death of his son, but the tribe is not at all eager to receive her. But this story, like onions and ogres, has many layers, and as they are dramatically peeled back through the captain's encounters with various members of the tribe, the medicine man, the widow of the dead soldier, and finally the chief, the story we finally learn about how the soldier died, what he was trying to do in Afghanistan when he died, and how it connects to a secret history of his family and his tribe, it is ultimately astonishing and thought-provoking. Ultimately we are left to ponder some fascinating parallels between rival tribes and rival families, in America, in Afghanistan, and in the Middle East, as we see the remarkable "culture clash" of New Mexico's rocky cliffs and mountains flashing to Afghanistan's mountainous terrain, and a Native American soldier's casket being lead by someone singing the Jewish mourner's kaddish. Once again, an evening of powerful and provocative drama at the Taper.

FILM: Avatar

2010-01-10T21:54:00.000-08:00

Avatar is not the sort of film we typically go for, but we'd been hearing such buzz from so many people that we had to check it out. I have to admit I was a bit cynical going in, but was utterly captivated by the beauty of this imagined world. Such great imagination went into creating the exotic flora and fauna of Pandora, and the way of life of the Na'vi. Sure, it was clearly drawn from our own conceptions of Native American beliefs about the connected spirit in all of nature, but I thought it was very cool the sci-fi spin they put on it with a natural neural network of trees all connected at the roots, and the creatures who bond by entangling their organic fiber-optic cable ports. And sure, the story was clearly drawn from Pocahantas and Dances With Wolves and the like, but the thing about classic stories is that they hold up to retelling and recasting in creative ways. (Westside Story was derivative from Romeo and Juliet, but no less creative for it.) Granted, the story was short on real character development, with the characters being more allegorical ideas (the bad-ass macho military man, the greedy industrialist, the pure-hearted scientists, and the even purer-hearted native peoples) than real people. But damn, it was stunningly beautiful, and the story swept along, totally predictable yet totally spell-binding, like a mythic tide. I was as delighted as the next guy to see the epic forces of nature and the eco-in-tune people kick the butt of the evil military-industrial complex. The movie did not feel long at all to me, and I kept my 3D glasses on through the credits, hoping for a few more glimpses of that amazing planet.

As to the 3D thing, at first I found it slightly distracting, but I was pleased that it wasn't overly gimmicky, no projectiles hurtling straight into the camera or flying creatures hovering right in front of my face. And I think my brain adapted to it, because I realized by the end I was no longer conscious of it, and it felt pretty natural. But I think part of what made it work so well was the fantastic nature of the film. One friend of ours wondered whether this point in 3D technology might be a "game-changer" for movies in general, but I'm not so sure. Many films don't have to convince us of their reality in the same way that a sci-fi-fantasy film like Avatar does. Would Nine or A Single Man have been enhanced by high-quality 3D? I'm not so sure. But for Avatar, it was breathtaking.

FILM: The Young Victoria

2010-01-02T22:47:00.000-08:00

The Young Victoria presents an engaging story about Queen Victoria's early years, as a teenager and then as a young queen. For me, this was all new, as what I knew of Queen Victoria was mostly the length of her reign, her eponymous era and its morality, and the image of the corpulent old lady in the veil. It was fascinating to see her as the heir presumptive to the British crown, resisting attempts at control by her mother and her mother's lover, and warily keeping her head above the manipulation of others, including various royal uncles hoping to marry her off to various royal cousins. One of scene of Victoria playing chess with Prince Albert (then a suitor) provides a central metaphor for the film, as both of them are pawns in a larger game being played by the royal courts of Europe. (Albert's uncle, the King of the Belgians, desperately wants Albert to win Victoria, to cement an alliance between Britain and Belgium.) "You think I should find a husband to play the game for me?" she asks. "Not for you," he replies, "with you." It's charming to see the two of them develop genuine affection and admiration for one another, both of them willful and not particularly inclined to cave to the wills of their would-be manipulators. And of course the court politics is always a good soap opera. The film is not particularly a love story, a court intrigue, or a historic biography, but like real life, it's a melange of all of that. (On the historical side, I gather that it sticks fairly well to the facts, except for a fictional bullet wound.) And that keeps it all the more interesting to see how this unique couple works out their unique relationship issues (like what is a bright and passionate man to do when his only official job is "consort" to a strongly independent queen?). Emily Blunt presents a young Victoria both strong and self-controlled, and Rupert Friend is perfect as the lovelorn suitor and later the lover struggling to find his place. The cast is full of familiar faces from British stage and screen, including Miranda Richardson (as the controlling and controlled mother), Jim Broadbent (as a drinking and aging King William IV), Paul Bettany (the charming sometime Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne), and Harriet Walter (as the dowager queen). I enjoyed this portrait of an impressive queen and her impressive consort, and have new admiration for them.

FILM: Nine

2009-12-31T22:59:00.000-08:00

For New Years Eve, we caught Nine, which is a bunch of musical numbers set into a parodic parade of clichés about Italian men and Italian film. While I've never seen the original Fellini films that inspired the Broadway musical on which this film is based, Fellini is so seminal I feel as though I have. Who isn't familiar with the idea of the Italian man who adores his mother and loves his wife while loving other women on the side too, without seeing any problem with that, because, well, women are just so beautiful? I don't know how much of this actually was Fellini versus how much he invented his film persona, and how much La Dolce Vita inspired versus reflected a whole generation of Italian men. But it's that idea that is played with throughout this film, as the filmmaker-within-the-film, Guido Contini, wanders (both in his imagination and in real life) from one woman to another who has been significant in his life, each with their own musical number. At first, the film might seem to be idolizing Contini's status as a filmmaker of national heroic status, and excusing his treatment of the women in his life, but it soon becomes clear that Contini is a charicature of his own self-image, and as various minor characters gently impugn him, he starts to become aware of his own emptiness. Of course, it doesn't fully come clear to him until his wife leaves him. Who'd have thought that this Fellini-inspired film would turn out to be a subtle morality tale, quietly urging the superiority of conventional morals over La Dolce Vita. But that's all a soft-pedaled undercurrent, in what is otherwise a scaffolding of excuse for a series of musical numbers with great visual impact performed by a range of stars including Kate Hudson, Nicole Kidman, Penélope Cruz, Fergie, Marion Cotillard, Judi Densch, and Sophia Loren. The parodies are visual as well as thematic, with fun cliché shots of women in billowing dresses, Italian fountains, charming Italian moonlit streets, and it's a delight to watch as well as listen to all the numbers. There's also amusing homage to the cliché relationship of Italians to their Roman Catholic church, revering it while being faithless, kind of the same way they relate to their wives. Guido, at one point, goes to a bishop for guidance, and asks the bishop if he believes in God. At another point, a priest confesses that even though Contini's films are officially banned by the church as immoral, they all love them. The early ones, anyway. Contini's fans are always telling poor Guido how much they loved his early works. Daniel Day-Lewis gives a brilliant perfomance as Guido, showing once again how he just completely transforms himself into his characters. And the constellation of female co-stars surrounding him are all luminous. This parade of parody and numbers was a diverting way to welcome the new year.

FILM: A Single Man

2009-12-29T22:43:00.000-08:00

While everyone has been raving about the amazingly beautiful computer graphics of Avatar, we decided instead to see a smaller film of exquisite visual beauty that didn't require 3D glasses to appreciate. A Single Man, fashion designer Tom Ford's debut as a film director, is an intensely subjective and impressionistic film about a man contemplating suicide after the loss of his lover. The Christopher Isherwood novel that it was adapted from would not seem to lend itself easily to film, since nearly all of the action is internal. Externally, everything takes place in one apparently ordinary day: a man goes to work, teaches a class, goes to the bank, and has dinner with a friend. Internally, the man has all sorts of memories triggered, fits of imagination, and other wanderings of the mind as he contemplates his planned last day on earth. Tom Ford's designer eye vividly "makes it work", employing techniques, like extreme close-ups and enhanced sounds, more typical of music videos and perfume commercials, creating a sumptuously cinematic expression of this unlikely source material. The internality begins from the opening scene, of a man suspended or barely moving under water, which we soon learn is the main character's feeling of heartbreak and loss as sinking and drowning. I don't think I've seen as subjective a film since Bob Fosse's All That Jazz. When the man's attention is focused somewhere, the camera zooms in on it, and when the man's mind wanders, we follow it. The flashbacks give us enough brushstrokes to sketch the back story, but they are not lengthy excuses to shovel in some plot, they are very organic, the actual memories of the man on that day. They are very natural, the way that when you've lost someone, certain objects or experiences will prompt a memory of them. There's a very touching scene when he sees a dog in a car that is the same breed of dog that he and his lover had shared. He flashes back to a brief memory of his lover telling him about something funny the dog had done, while in the present moment trying not to get too emotional with this stranger's dog. Colin Firth is masterful in his performance as George, the bereaved English professor, showing outward British restraint while struggling with strong emotions inside, a brilliantly nuanced veneer of control with tears dangerously close to the surface. Julianne Moore also gives a great turn as his longtime friend and unrequited lover, and Nicholas Hoult is both haunting and tenderly charming in his role as a student who's attracted to George. But the real star here is the designer/director, who had a brilliant and beautiful vision for realizing this film, and whom, I suspect, executed it with the same meticulous attention to detail as seen in the main character, who neatly lays out the clothes he wants to be buried in and leaves a note instructing which knot should be used to tie his tie. Ford's visual symphony of subjectivity is enhanced by its sumptuous immersion in its place and time: Santa Monica, 1962. The property master for this film must have had quite a time finding all the period phones, clocks, hi-fis, cigarettes, and even the bottle of particular single malt whisky that George drank (North Port, which hasn't been made since 1983). Santa Monica 1962 was of course Isherwood's world, and we both noted that Don Bachardy, Isherwood's lifelong lover, was listed as a consultant in the credits. There were certainly glimmers of their real life in the story, and in the texture of this film, which I think Isherwood would have appreciated. An impressionistic film about suicide could easily veer into the maudlin, but Ford avoids that trap. Instead, the film inspires reflection on life with a clarity that reminded me of a Hemingway novel. Isherwood's story is thoughtful without being depressing, and Ford's carefully crafted view inside the main character's mind, combined with George's reserved personality, provides the right amount of detachment to keep it poignant but not ponderous, and ultimately a film of great beauty.

FILM: Sherlock Holmes

2009-12-26T23:55:00.000-08:00

I thoroughly enjoyed the new Sherlock Holmes movie, which was a bit like a Victorian version of Indiana Jones. Some folks may sniff that this Holmes, who is as physically action-packed as James Bond, is not being true to the "real" Sherlock Holmes, but those folks are basing their vision of the deerstalker-capped cerebral detective on all the old films and not so much on the original Arthur Conan Doyle stories. I found Robert Downey Jr.'s realization of the character to be as genuine as it was mold-breaking. His portrayal of Holmes as a robust fighter, a savant with encyclopedic knowledge but sometimes thick social skills, master of disguise and diversion, and an occasionally reckless experimenter with all sorts of chemistry (including drugs), was all spot-on. And Jude Law made a great Doctor Watson, loyal friend, roommate, and partner in crime-fighting. This Watson was a bit smarter than the one in the books, but I think it made him more interesting, and the script's subplot of Watson becoming engaged to be married and moving out added an intriguing dimension to the relationship between Holmes and Watson. The main storyline was smartly conceived and action-packed, keeping you wondering how Holmes will crack this case. Some clues are presented along the way, but as with the original stories, while it's possible to guess at the denouement, you're never given enough to figure it all out yourself, you're only given enough to see how it all fits once the solution is presented. The plot is complicated by having a variety of players in addition to the main villain, including a cameo Professor Moriarty, and Holmes' great love and nemesis Irene Adler, smartly played by Rachel McAdams. Moriarty's goals are a lingering question until the end, and Irene Adler's motives and allegiances are intentionally and intriguingly ambiguous. The film nicely conveys the gritty feel of an industrial age late Victorian London, capturing the time and place. And director Guy Ritchie gives some tantalizing flashes of insight into Holmes' methods through "flash inwards", moments when the film jumps inside Holmes' head, and we see some past action that he has surmised from a clue, or we see some imminent action that he's anticipating. It's a creative cinematic technique that serves this film well. This was as much fun and almost as much action as a James Bond film. It leaves well-placed for a sequel if it does well, and that would be fine by me.

Remembering Denny: Now Cracks a Noble Heart

2009-12-06T10:48:00.000-08:00

Good friends stand out in our best memories, having shared our happiest moments. Our best friends are those who were also there in less happy times, who stood by us with a strong shoulder when we needed support. But the greatest friends are those who planted seeds inside us, causing us to grow and blossom in new directions, not only enriching the quality of our lives, but altering their course. We are lucky who know even one or two such great friends in a lifetime, and I was so lucky to have known Dennis. He was my gay "big brother", my partner in the great Shakespeare quest, fellow traveler across three continents, my opera and classical music mentor, enthusiast of fine dining and cooking, fellow cyclist and snowboarder, rock solid shoulder to cry on when needed, the greatest friend and a huge part of who I am today.

I first met Dennis on a sunny Sunday morning, Jan 6, 1991. He was the Vice President and Ride Coordinator for Different Spokes, a gay and lesbian bicycling club, and he was leading a 30-mile bike ride that day, the first of a series designed to get us in shape for the Solvang Century, a 100-mile ride in March. Denny's confidence and encouragement, not to mention his playful charm and dazzing smile, motivated me not only to do the whole series of rides, but to plunge into the bike club in a big way, eventually becoming an officer myself.

As we got to know each other, we quickly learned we had much more in common than cycling. I was enthralled by his wide-ranging and passionate interests, from cooking to music, from art to film to history. How often do you meet a friend who, when you say "Hey, they're doing an authentic staging of an ancient Greek tragedy outdoors at the Getty Villa", he says "Awesome! Let's go!". He was a consumate companion for a Shakespeare history play, because he knew his English history cold, and could fill me in on all the backstory of who's allied with whom because this one's grandfather got cheated by that one's uncle in the royal succession. And Denny's knowledge of music was vast and intense. I thought I knew classical music, but his contagious passion blew my mind open to whole new vistas, from opera to medieval chant, from Monteverdi to Shostakovich (not to mention jazz crooners and dance club mixes).

I learned so much from Dennis, and even when I was able to teach him new things, he would engage voraciously and take them to a whole new level. I taught him to snowboard, but he was the one who lead us into the snowboard park when Bear Mountain first put one in, and soon the two of us were hurtling ourselves off of ramps and into the air, alongside kids half our age. I took Dennis to his first Shakespeare play, but he was the one who came up with the idea of the quest. Standing on the steps of Royce Hall after we'd seen our second Shakespeare play, exhiliarated by the language, the drama, and the galvanic performance, I said, "So, you're really liking Shakespeare? We should see some more." Denny gave me an enthusiastic look, and said "Let's see them all! How many do you think there are? 20? 50? I'll find out. Let's make it a mission, a life quest!" So for the 14 years that followed, we sought out Shakespeare in theatres large and small around town, and even made trips to San Diego, Oregon, and New York to find the more obscure plays, until a few years ago when we made our triumphal pilgrimage to Stratford-upon-Avon to complete the quest.

Denny had a genius for making things extraordinary. Anyone who's been to the Hollywood Bowl with him knows this. The pre-Bowl picnic was always an extravagant affair, and while lots of people bring picnics to the Bowl, the other picnickers would look on in awe as the tablecloth, the dinner service, the stemware, flowers, wine, and exquisite cuisine were spread out. And we had a number of decadent trips up to San Francisco to see the opera and dine at great restaurants. San Francisco is a dressier opera crowd than LA, so we often went up in black tie and tuxedos, which suited the classic beaux arts beauty of the SF Opera house. I remember one time we were flying up for a Friday night performance, and we were going to have to go straight to the opera from the airport, so we flew in our tuxes, and Denny was going to bring something to eat on the way up. I thought we'd just have sandwiches or something, but once we'd boarded (and this was before 9/11 of course), Denny pulls out his carry-on bag and, to the amazement of the flight attendants and surrounding passengers, starts unpacking cheese and pâté and caviar and wine. "Well, you didn't think we were going to eat peanuts, did you?"

With Denny, even the ordinary could be extraordinary. I remember going over to his place one night for a "casual" dinner before I knew him really well. I thought maybe pasta or something. But I show up, and he's got prosciutto-wrapped melon for us to munch on, while I watch him pressing fresh sage leaves into veal medallions for saltimbocca, which he then flipped in the sautée pan with his signature flourish. Another casual evening, we had seen an afternoon movie in Westwood and were driving back to his place, when he says let's go catch the sunset at the beach. So we pull down to Santa Monica Beach, and watch what turned out to be one of the most spectacular sunsets either of us had ever seen, with red and orange and pink and gold, and I swear there was even a bit of green patina in it. And while we're sitting in his car, awestruck by this visual symphony, the most perfectly glorious music is playing, what sounds like choirs of angels singing in the perfect musical expression of this extraordinary sunset. After the sun went down, and we're driving back, I asked him "What was that music?" "Oh, you like it? That's John Rutter's Requiem. He writes some beautiful sacred choral music." So, not only an amazing sunset, but another expansion of my musical education. Just a casual Sunday with Dennis.

When we first met, I was just starting to venture out as a gay man, yet to have my first boyfriend, having no local gay friends, and making my first tentative forays into the gay community. As Dennis and I became friends, he took me under his wing like a gay "big brother", and held my hand as he introduced me to the world of West Hollywood, dance clubs, and circuit parties. I was intimidated by all the beautiful boys, never feeling like I belonged, but Denny was supremely self-confident and would plunge in anywhere. In a dance club, he immersed himself in the music, the lights, the freedom of motion, and the throbbing mass of bodies all moving to the same beat. His exhiliaration was contagious, and a bit of his confidence rubbed off on me when I was with him. Sometimes we'd dance together and other times we'd foray in independent directions. But like the great friend he was, he'd always give me a prod when I needed one -- "just go up to that guy!" -- and he'd just hang with me when I needed that. I felt secure knowing my loyal friend was always looking out for me.

Denny was fearless. Not just in dance clubs or on the ski slopes, but throughout his life. When we were in France, he confidently drove our car along the windy corniche above Monaco, with its dangerous corners and steep cliffs. "Uh, Denny, aren't you worried, isn't this about where Princess Grace went off the road?" "Yeah, I think so, this is great!" He wasn't intimidated by Paris at rush hour either, even when we had to plunge into the notorious Place d'Etoile, a free-for-all where twelve major streets come together. He just grinned with delight as we went around it several times. When we were in Australia, he held my hand while gently laughing at me as I faced my fear of heights, first when we climbed the Sydney Harbor Bridge, along cables and catwalks over rushing cars and the harbor hundreds of feet below, and later when we rapelled down an 80' waterfall where the only way down the canyon was to grab a rope and step backwards over the edge of the falls.

If I had to pick a single photo to represent our 18+ years of friendship, I know the one. It is Denny meeting me at the finish line of the AIDS Ride, pouring champagne over my head. I have just finished a 565-mile bike ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles, having raised over $3000 for AIDS care and services, a feat both physical and financial that a few years earlier I could not have imagined myself doing. I would not have ever done it without the seeds of change planted in my life by Denny -- the motivation to participate actively in the bike club, the inspiration for leadership in community organizations, and most of all the encouragement for reaching beyond my limits. So there he was, my faithful friend, cheering me on across the finish line, and playfully greeting me with a bottle of champagne, shaken up and sprayed all over me. I love his puckish grin in that photo, presiding over this moment of accomplishment, the fruition of seeds he planted, pouring champagne on my head, and pouring his benediction on my life.

Early on, I knew that Denny was a keeper. We'd talk sometimes about sitting together on the porch of some old folks home, looking back on a lifetime of friendship and adventure. We knew that we would be friends our whole lifetimes. I just thought it would be longer. We must remind ourselves, a life should be measured not by its length but by its depth. Every play we saw together, every castle explored, every bike ride through oak-studded California canyons, every ski run riding our boards like we were flying and dancing on the snow, every night spent dancing till dawn, every elaborate meal, and every extraordinary sunset with Dennis was a gift and a treasure. Dennis lived. He lived more life in his 54 years than many live in a much longer span.

They say you should end these things with a quote, and I would be remiss if I didn't read some Shakespeare. Denny read Shakespeare at my wedding, so I should read some Shakespeare here. In the final act of Hamlet, the prince is finally resolved to face his fate, and his loyal friend Horatio is giving him one last chance to change his mind. You don't have to face this, Horatio tells Hamlet, you can duck out the back, and I'll cover for you. But Hamlet says:

Not a whit, we defy augury: there's a special
providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now,
'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be
now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the
readiness is all: since no man has aught of what he
leaves, what is't to leave betimes?

So off Hamlet goes to meet his fate. A few flowery lines, a sword fight, and a bit of poison later, Hamlet, along with several others, are dying or dead. Hamlet asks his faithful friend to live on to tell his story, and then dies at his feet. Horatio says:

Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince;
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

STAGE: Parade

2009-10-11T13:45:00.000-07:00

At the enthusiastic recommendation of neighbors, we decided to check out Parade at the Mark Taper. While the notion of a musical about a lynching doesn't sound very auspicious, it turns out to be surprisingly excellent theatre with some beautiful numbers in it. The story is lifted fairly intact from an actual historical incident in 1913 Atlanta, the drummed-up conviction of Leo Frank, a Jewish New Yorker factory boss, for the murder of a young teenage girl. The case proved to be a lightning rod for festering southern resentment of northern interference, bubbling out in vicious xenophobia. While the courtroom drama of a media-whipped, rumor-driven frame-up eventually unraveling provides the center of the story, much of the beauty of the musical comes from the development of the relationship between Leo Frank and his wife after he is imprisoned, when she proves her real mettle and he comes to realize how much he's taken his wife for granted. There are many memorable numbers: a charming early duet showing the young girl playfully holding a young suitor at bay ("The Picture Show"), a powerful ensemble number at her burial ("It Don't Make Sense"), the two testimonies of the dubious main witness ("That's What He Said"), and Leo and Lucille's "picnic" in his prison cell ("All the Wasted Time"). The cast was strong all around, lead by T.R. Knight as Leo Frank (who totally became his character and made me forget Gray's Anatomy for the evening) and Lara Pulver showing understated strength as his wife, and featuring a number of stage veterans -- Michael Berresse, Davis Gaines, Charlotte d'Amboise, David St. Louis, Christian Hoff, P.J. Griffith -- all masterfully handling multiple roles, and with young newcomers Curt Hansen and Rose Sezniak performing admirably with this strong cast. The choreography and stagecraft are wonderful, beautifully capturing the time, place, and spirit of the show. The parade of coached witnesses, and the enactment of some of the testimony and flashbacks were memorably visualized. The creative use of the simple set, augmented by a few furniture props and sliding panels in the stage floor, did a remarkable job of vividly conjuring a home, a courtroom, a street, a prison cell, a ballroom, a factory office, and a city street. This remarkable piece of theatre only ran for a couple of months when it opened on Broadway in 1998, but it also garnered a couple of Tony awards, and has since gained attention in revival, and last night, we could certainly see why.

STAGE: August: Osage County

2009-09-28T23:00:00.000-07:00

August: Osage County, the Tony-award winning best play of 2008, is here at the Ahmanson now. Though the performance runs three and a half hours (with two intermissions), the lively play kept us all engrossed to the end. Tracy Letts' story of a family gathering in response to the patriarch's disappearance packs all the drama and intensity of an Albee play, but leavened with a bit more humor, and with the cast and complexity of a telenovela. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf meets Six Feet Under, if you will. Like Who's Afraid, it touches on themes of disappointment of not living up to one's full academic potential, but that's only a bit of background texture to the soap opera of addiction, suicide, incest, infidelity, and pedophilia. The Fisher family of Six Feet Under has got nothing on the Weston family of Osage County when it comes to putting the "fun" in dysfunctional family. Amidst all of the family secrets that get revealed, the play thoughtfully probes the relationships between children and parents, between sisters, and between spouses. An all-around strong cast was lead by Estelle Parsons in a memorable performance as the pill-popping matriarch (and the 82-year-old actress is amazingly fit, running up and down the stairs often in the play). The whole ensemble worked great magic together, and many moments in the play benefited from their impeccable comic and dramatic timing. The entire play takes place on a single set, a doll-house-style cut-away three-story home, with the only change of scene being the shift of light from one room to another. It suits perfectly, giving the story just enough space to unfold, while keeping the intensity of a single set (the play never steps out to get some air, so to speak). There's a bit of porch, allowing characters to enter and exit the family house, and have a few moments outside, but the house totally dominates the stage and underscores the fixedness of the central character, who is the only family member never to leave the house throughout the play. Amidst this train-wreck of a family, there are some good laughs, powerful drama, and great humanity.

STAGE: Phèdre

2009-09-24T22:13:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I am incredibly lucky, and last night was one of those times. I had heard about the (British) National Theatre's production of Racine's Phèdre, lead by Dame Helen Mirren, which was causing sensations in London, and was coming to the US for twelve performances only, in Washington DC. I figured that would be one of those great events I'd just have to hear about from others. But then I was in Washington for a business trip this week, discovered it was the same week Phedre was in town, and thanks to CraigsList and some help from a good friend, I was able to score a ticket. I paid a premium, but it was so worth it. The play is a classic tragedy, coming from the ancient Greek drama Hippolytus by Euripides, adapted by the 17th century French master playwright Racine, and translated into modern English by poet Ted Hughes. The simple but beautiful set for this production echoes that pedigree. Racine's version all takes place in a single setting, in the palace of Troezen, with one side open to the sky, allowing his characters to literally move in and out of the light. Director Nicholas Hytner remains true to that concept, realizing the palace as a floor and ceiling of travertine, with a large hunk of rough travertine covering an exit, and a brilliant blue sky off to the right. To an Angeleno, the giant travertine tiles immediately conjure the Getty Center, an allusion which hits the perfect note of a modern reflection of ancient Greece. The tragedy is raw by modern standards, a roller-coaster of pity and horror, unleavened by lighter moments, driving inexorably to its horrible end. Histrionic speeches vividly express passion and anguish along the way. It's not a modern mode, but the Hughes translation in Hytner's hands felt Shakespearean, with hints of Edward Albee. And the remarkable cast brings it home. Helen Mirren's Phèdre exposes palpable passion and anguish (Phèdre is hopelessly in love with her stepson, knows how horrible that is, and struggles to avert it), verging on madness and suicide, her voice modulating loud and soft, high and low, expressing the waves of emotion in her character. And at times she speaks volumes just with a slight movement of her body. When she learns that Hippolytus loves another woman, a tightening of her body and a turn of her head vividly convey to the audience the emotional bullet she's just received, while revealing nothing to her husband. Dominic Cooper as Hippolytus captures the scope of that noble tortured character, forswearing love but then falling in love with the exiled daughter of his father's enemy. When fatally wronged by his father, he refuses to vindicate himself in order to spare his father the even-worse truth. Hippolytus keeps much bottled up, but Cooper's excellent portrayal succeeds in conveying the emotions within the reserved exterior, and the cost of maintaining that reserve. Other standout performances included John Shrapnel as Theramene, old counselor to Hippolytus, who rises to great Shakespearean proportions in the climax when he recounts the death of Hippolytus; and Ruth Negga as Aricia, the noble princess who drags in the remains of Hippolytus in the end (like Stevie in the third act of Albee's The Goat). The performance was breathtaking from start to horrifying finish.

As the play unfolded, I realized that I had seen a performance of the original Euripides tragedy that it was based on (a few years ago at the newly reopened Getty Villa). It hadn't hit me right away, as Racine's play is called Phèdre, while Euripides' play is called Hippolytus. But that just begins to tell the ways in which Racine shifted the focus and changed the play. The story is nearly the same in its outline, but in Euripides, Hippolytus is the tragic hero, cursed by the goddess Aphrodite because he spurns her in favor of Artemis, while Phaedra is an innocent pawn of the goddess, who kills herself before acting on her feelings. Racine turns the focus of the play on Phèdre, making her more culpable (though influenced by her Machiavellian nurse), and making Hippolytus more noble, and also adding the new wrinkle of Aricia, giving Hippolytus a forbidden love of his own. In Euripides, the goddesses actually appear in the play, and actively intervene in events, while in Racine, the gods are off-stage and the humans are undone by their own passions and flaws. A great drama stands the test of time, carrying its truth even as it is reinterpreted by different generations. In some ways, this play seems ancient, but at the same time, we read its echoes in recent headlines. Makes me wonder whether Racine should be my next quest. And I'll certainly keep an eye out for other National Theatre productions. Theatre of this caliber is worth going to lengths to see. (And apparently there's a new venture afoot at National Theatre to do live broadcasts of some of their productions to cinemas around the world. Check out NT Live.)

FILM: My One And Only

2009-08-23T23:23:00.000-07:00

In the title sequence of My One And Only, vintage 1950 postcards from Boston, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Albuquerque, and Los Angeles are sequenced, artfully combined with period photos and symbols of those places, set to vintage music, all foreshadowing the charming period-piece road-trip movie that is to come. A beautiful sky-blue Cadillac Eldorado convertible is the vehicle for the cross-country trip, but the route is more a journey of self-discovery than just following Highway 66. Renee Zellweger is perfect as Anne Devereaux, a middle-aged but still beautiful southern belle who walks out on her womanizing band-leader husband (Kevin Bacon), taking her two sons with her, along with a handful of cash, and the fierce determination that she will find a better husband (and father for the boys). She meets a series of former beaus and prospective second husbands in a series of cities, but she also meets setback after setback, challenging her conviction that "things will always work out in the end". Nonetheless, she keeps her head high, and things do work out, though not in the way that she had expected. (Of course, another of Anne's aphorisms is that "a lady should never do what is expected.") Kevin Bacon, whom we see in the beginning, and who pops up at various other points, is great in his part as the charming but irresponsible ex-husband, and many of Anne's subsequent suitors are a parade of nicely done small roles by Steven Weber, Chris Noth, and Eric McCormack. Nick Stahl oozes James Dean / early Brando-esque charm in a bit as her quietly smoldering neighbor in Pittsburgh. But the other real star of the show is Logan Lerman, who plays her older son George, a young would-be writer whose favorite book is Catcher in the Rye, probably because he's strongly relating to Holden Caulfield's teenage angst. Lerman, whose character also narrates the film, gives an amazing performance of George's worldly savvy (some of it modeled on his father) and teenage pretend-self-confidence with self-searching vulnerability peeking through the cracks. In the beginning, George thinks his mother is silly, and he wants to go back to New York and his father. But as they journey together, he discovers less to admire about his father and eventually more to admire about his mother. It's a touching, thoughtful, and charming film, and like the Cadillac they drive, a classic American beauty to behold.

BOOKS: The Chosen

2009-08-20T21:53:00.000-07:00

This past couple weeks, I've really enjoyed listening to The Chosen, by Chaim Potok. It's one of those classic books that I thought I should catch up on, especially after Potok's works kept popping up in various conversations lately. (The most surprising and random was last Sunday, when I asked at family dinner if anyone had read any Potok. Turns out my mother was also in the middle of The Chosen, having picked it up on a sale table at the bookstore, not knowing anything about it.) The story follows an unlikely friendship between two boys in 1940's Brooklyn through high school and college. Though they live just a few blocks apart, Danny, a Hasidic orthodox Jew (black caftan, beard, earlocks), and Reuven, a modern orthodox Jew, had never crossed paths until Danny nearly took out Reuven's eye in a baseball game. I enjoyed learning much about Hasidic Judaism that I didn't know, their history, their distinctive practices (like dynastic leaders), as it unfolded in the two boys getting to know each other, and their distinct experiences of their "common" faith. The backdrop of the story exposed the events of World War II and the founding of Israel, which while well known events, was made fresh in the way these people experienced it at the moment. The story also contemplated father-son relationships, contrasting the close relationship Reuven had with his father (a teacher and later a Zionist activist), versus Danny's silent relationship with his father (the tzadik of his community, a position to be inherited by Danny). The narrator, Jonathan Davis, did a great job reading this book, properly pronouncing all the Hebrew and Yiddish words, and all with a good Longg Island accent. His voicing was given wing, I think, by Potok's great ear for natural dialog with these characters. An opening epigram in the book really stayed with me: a description of how a trout fights when it is hooked, and how the other trout swimming by see its struggle but don't understand it because they can't see the hook and the line. The book is a real lesson in empathy and compassion, as well as Jewish history.

FILM: Julie & Julia

2009-08-09T22:03:00.000-07:00

What a delightful, utterly charming film we enjoyed in Julie & Julia. Meryl Streep delivers another amazing tour de force in portraying Julia Child, a daunting task not only because Julia is so well known, but because she is so distinctive in her voice and mannerisms that it's got to be fiendishly difficult to portray her without falling into parody. But Streep, under Nora Ephron's direction, does an amazing job. As my mother said, Streep was more Julia Child than Julia Child. (The cinematographer also gets props for making the 5'6" Streep look as grande as the 6'2" Child.) But while the film was all about Julia, it was not all about Meryl, and she was surrounded by an awesome cast. Stanley Tucci was endearing as her husband Paul Child, and Amy Adams was perfect for Julie, the main character of the other story. As the trailer tells us, Julie & Julia is based on two true stories, and it is the clever interposing of these two stories, five decades and an ocean apart, that elevates the film from just a great biography. The film moves back and forth between Julia, in 1950s Paris, discovering her love of French cooking and her aim to write a cookbook, and Julie, a sympathetic young woman feeling frustrated in her job, cramped in her Queens apartment, and left behind by her more successful friends, who undertakes a project to cook her way through the entire Julia Child cookbook in year, and to blog about it. It was a delight to see her accomplishments and her setbacks as she gained confidence through her ambitious task. There were times when her experiments got a bit out of control, and she got a bit obsessed with her blog, and she's lucky she had such a supportive husband. Hmm, that last sentence could hit a bit close to home… I could relate a bit too closely to how crushed she felt watching her husband douse with salt the boeuf bourguignon she had slaved over. But I could also relate to the joy she found in cooking, and could admire her spirit in going beyond her comfort zone (like tackling the lobster and the formidable deboning of the duck). Meanwhile, getting to know Julia was absolutely inspirational. While I naturally admired her culinary talent, what was revelatory was learning about her indomitable personality, her pluck for always moving forward cheerfully despite adversity, and her wonderful relationship with her loving husband. We've seen a number of romance flicks this summer, but I think Julia and Paul may be the best romance of the summer. I left this film uplifted on so many counts: the inspirational lives, the rapturous cuisine, the visual valentine to Paris in the 1950s. Among other things, I want to run out and buy her cookbook and try out some of those recipes. But I also plan to read Julia's autobiography. The recipe I left most inspired to try was her recipe for joie de vivre.

UPDATE 8/22/09: I've heard from a number of people who liked Julia and hated Julie, such as this review in Gourmet, by someone who knew Julia personally. It's worth reading the comments as well as the review itself. A number of folks there come to Julie Powell's defense. I don't think Julie was trying to be a new Julia. She was trying to find some meaning in a grim life by taking on an extraordinary challenge (both the cooking and the blogging). I came away from the film with a much-renewed admiration for Julia, but I laughed when she talked about making French cooking accessible for the "servantless American", and thought to myself, yeah, the servantless jobless American who has time to spend hours in the kitchen. As someone who can very keenly relate to the challenge of trying to cook good food after coming home from a full day's work, as well as the challenge of trying to write a blog every single day, I think Julie Powell is undeservedly unappreciated by this reviewer.

FILM: The Ugly Truth

2009-08-01T23:48:00.000-07:00

And to think that Katherine Heigl once complained that the writers on Gray's Anatomy weren't giving her good enough material. We saw The Ugly Truth this weekend, and the ugly truth about this film is, while passably pleasant enough for summer fluff, it's cheesy, predictable, and derivative. The premise promised to be a sparky battle of the sexes, set against the conflict of quality versus ratings-driven TV news programming. So I'm expecting Broadcast News crossed with Adam's Rib. Katherine Heigl's character started out strong and serious like Holly Hunter, but she turned into a cartoon with a goofy happy dance the minute Eric Winter dropped his towel. (In retrospect, the eye candy may have been the high point of the film.) The story degenerated into a soapy romance with mostly cardboard characters whose one development you could see coming like Andersen's Pea Soup on Interstate 5, with the plot, such as it was, advanced by a series of puerile gags. The remote ear-piece thing? The spill in the lap? Cheesy and done before. And vibrating panties? Really? (And the result, such a cheap imitation of Meg Ryan's unforgettable salad in When Harry Met Sally.) The film was enjoyable, mostly due to the sheer force of charm from Heigl and Gerard Butler, who just might have been Hepburn and Tracy had they been given a much better script. Alas, this script was just a big dollop of Velveeta. Not for the lactose-intolerant.

FILM: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

2009-07-29T22:54:00.000-07:00

On Thursday afternoon, I snuck out with a couple of colleagues for an "offsite" to see the latest Harry Potter episode. We all really enjoyed it. Of course any discussion of a Harry Potter movie centers around how faithful it was to the book. Personally, I hold no unrealistic expectations that they can render the book completely in the film version. There's just too much to fit, and I accept that things must be cut. I think they captured the essential elements: the Death Eaters and their reign of terror are on the rise, the kids are experiencing typical teenage romances, and Harry, along with Hermione and Ron, are left at the end with the huge task of finding the remaining horcruxes to kill you-know-who. I think they did a good job of surgically removing certain plot elements, like the parts about Cornelius Fudge and the Ministry, while keeping the overall story coherent and intact. Some choices in the end, however, were a bit puzzling. Could there not have been at least a bit of a fight? In the film, it seems a bit odd that the other teachers and students are nowhere to be seen, as the Death Eaters turn over a few chairs and then leave. And it was a bit odd for Harry to just quietly lurk and passively watch the final scene (in the book, he is petrified by Dumbledore, but the film omitted that). But even though the ending was anticlimactic, I think it was unavoidably so. That's just how this book ends. Unlike the previous books, where the kids break for summer, this time their future is filled with terror and uncertainty. Though the Death Eaters didn't seem to do much in the end, their triumph was that of the terrorist, a psychological blow, to put a Dark Mark in the sky over Hogwarts, eliminating the last "safe space" for the good guys. That's what this film is about is the onset of terror. The gist of this film was perfectly captured in a wordless moment where Mrs. Weasley watches with a mixture of grief and resolution as her house burns. The end of this film is just like the end of the first Lord of the Rings movie: it basically leaves off with things looking bleak, and the heroes contemplating the seemingly impossible task they must complete in order to save the world as we know it. The young actors continue to do a fine job in their roles, refining their chops as some roles get more complicated (especially Malfoy). And of course veteran oldsters (Rickman, Gambon, Smith, etc) are all brilliant. I think they did a fine job with this film, and I enjoyed it very much.

Just to add a couple personal idiosyncratic notes. First, a quibble. The Felix Felicis potion was supposed to be luminescent gold. Would that have been so hard to get right in the film? On the upside, I loved all the rugged Scottish Highlands scenery, which seemed more prominent in this film. That is magical countryside indeed.

BOOKS: The History of Love

2009-07-29T22:09:00.000-07:00

What a quietly moving and thoroughly spell-binding novel Nicole Krauss has written in The History of Love. The first several chapters in, I thought the book was going to be some good character sketches, but without much of a plot. While I was enjoying the characters just being characters, I failed to notice until much later the fantastic subtle web of interconnection that had been woven around these characters, and had ensnared me to see it fully unfold. It's been said that a butterfly flapping its wings can cause a hurricane on the other side of the world. The History of Love tells of a young writer who pours out his first, fleeting yet lifelong love into an unpublished manuscript, and how it touches the lives and loves of others across two translations, three continents, and seven decades. And of how choosing the wrong sentence might change the course of a lifetime. The book made me think of Love in the Time of Cholera, as both are epic paeans to a lifetime of love (mostly in the abstract), their pivotal characters carrying an enduring unrequited love for a girl who marries and spends her life with someone else. But where Florentino Ariza spends his life whoring around, Krauss' hero Leopold Gursky spends his life writing. Gursky thinks no one will read his pages, but he has no idea how far-reaching his impact will be. In the end, he touches the lives of others more profoundly and positively than Garcia-Marquez' hero. Of course one doesn't expect much of Gursky when we first meet him, as a cranky, eccentric old man. But as his story unfolds, I grew fond of him, crankiness and eccentricities and all. His story comes out interleaved with the coming of age story of a teen girl and her younger brother dealing with the loss of their father when they were very young, and the story of a Jewish refugee and writer in South America. And perhaps the story is even more about the girl than about Gursky. While the novel jumps from 1930s Poland to 1960s Chile to contemporary New York, I found the narrative flow surprisingly natural and not too hard to follow, especially as the latent threads running through the disparate stories begin to manifest. Krauss' intricate story is brought to life by her ear for voice and her vivid characters. By the end, I was rapt in its magic web.

FILM: (500) Days of Summer

2009-07-18T23:14:00.000-07:00

We mostly enjoyed (500) Days of Summer, a light quirky romantic comedy, or, as the narrator might insist, not a romantic comedy but a comedy about romance. The film plays with all sorts of conventions, including inverting the typical romcom formula with a hopelessly romantic boy and a free-spirited, commitment-phobic girl, and a timeline that chronicles their year-and-a-half long relationship starting at day (382) and bouncing back to day (10) and forward again to (127) and back to day (2), or something like that. The story-telling is entirely subjective from the hopelessly romantic boy's point of view, and the film plays with the subjectivity, free-flowing from straightforward life scenes to voiceovers, split-screens (expectations vs. reality), classic movie parodies and a break-out musical number (not counting the karaoke). The film is also a visual valentine to downtown Los Angeles, as seen through the eyes of our hopeless romantic (who's a frustrated architect working at a greeting card company) as he shares his urban appreciation with the object of his amorous attention. The film thrives on the utterly charming performances of its stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel, the great visuals, and the dynamic non-linear unfolding of the relationship. I did mostly enjoy it, even though I did feel the ending felt a bit flat. Summer was such a fresh and intriguing character, and it just felt like she collapsed from 3D to 2D at the end, inexplicably becoming quite conventional. In retrospect, I appreciate that it's actually quite realistic and understandable given the strong subjectivity of the story being from his point of view. A curveball from his point of view might be a straight line from her point of view, but all we ever had was his point of view. And being a hopeless romantic myself, I left pleased that hopeless romance was ultimately vindicated, as it should be in a light summer romcom. Pleased but just a bit let down that the denouement didn't quite live up to the convention-defying creativity of the rest of the film. Nonetheless, if you love a quirky romance (or Los Angeles architecture), you'll enjoy this. Who knew Ikea could be so fun?

FILM: Patrik 1,5

2009-07-15T23:52:00.000-07:00

I'm glad that George has been keeping his ears open for good OutFest films, since we've never managed to be proactive about the film festival. Fortunately, we were able to get spur-of-the-moment tickets for this evening's showing of Patrik 1,5, a charming Swedish film, presented under the stars at the Ford Amphitheater. It was a lovely summer night, and we enjoyed the heartfelt film very much. The film tells the story of Göran, a handsome sensitive doctor, his husband Sven who's a bit rougher around the edges, and their goal to move into a suburban neighborhood, adopt a baby, and have a nice family. Actually, it's a bit more Göran's goal than Sven's, the latter already having a teenage daughter from a previous straight marriage. But they press on, and the story gets its title twist when through a bureaucratic error, their anticipated 1.5-year-old adoptee turns out to be a 15-year-old juvenile delinquent, with a foul mouth, a bad attitude, a dose of homophobia, and a history of violence. Göran, Sven, and Patrik all have a lot to work through, but it is great to see the relationships develop, and how each affects the others. The story of this improbable family develops against the backdrop of Swedish suburbia, and the film pokes gentle fun at neighborhood dynamics -- neighborhood associations, garage sales and parties, and the pressure to keep up one's garden. At the same time, it explores the diversity of acceptance of a gay couple in the neighborhood, with reactions ranging from open acceptance to simmering hostility, with a lot of awkward politeness in between. While it touches on heavier subjects, it is never ponderous, and the tone is lightly sentimental throughout. It's a great story about genuine family values.

FILM: The Hangover

2009-07-12T14:16:00.000-07:00

We laughed and laughed last night watching The Hangover. I generally don't go for sophomoric humor, but every once in a while, a low-brow film just gets so creative and so funny that it transcends the genre (think Animal House). The Hangover really hits it, and I think what makes it work is the totally outrageous story and the creative way it is unfolded. The film opens with a funny and attention-stoking scene from near the end of the story, then rewinds to the beginning with four guys going off for a bachelor party in Vegas, splurging on a suite at Caesar's Palace, and kicking off the evening with shots of Jagermeister on the roof of the hotel. A cool time-lapse sequence of darkening sky followed by dawn over the Vegas skyline tells us that the night has passed, and we flash forward to the guys waking up from an awful hangover, and none of them can remember anything of the night before to explain why the suite is trashed, a couple of wild animals are wandering loose in it, and the groom is nowhere to be found. From there ensues a totally wild, crazy, hysterical adventure around Vegas to try to piece together what the heck happened, and to find the groom so they can get him to the wedding on time. What unfolds is so zany and so unexpected that, if you tried to imagine the wildest "what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" story, this film would show you the limits of your imagination. If you could stop laughing long enough to try.

FILM: Chéri

2009-07-07T22:06:00.000-07:00

Comparisons of Chéri to Dangerous Liaisons are inevitable, not only because both are French period pieces of romantic intrigue, but because it reunites three great talents in director Stephen Frears (The Queen, Mrs Henderson Presents), writer Christopher Hampton (Atonement, The Quiet American), and actress Michelle Pfeiffer. Though set in the turn-of-the-century twilight of French courtesans, rather than the height of Rococo excess, Chéri delivers sumptuous costumes, beautiful period sets, and displays of witty repartée. Michelle Pfeiffer is exquisite as Léa de Longval, a still-beautiful but nearing-retirement-age courtesan, who is in control of every social situation, except perhaps when she meets her match in the young playboy Chéri, played by Rupert Friend with utmost insouciant hedonism. Kathy Bates is (and has) great fun as Madame Peloux, friend and colleague of Léa and mother of Chéri. Alas, despite all it had going for it, the film never quite went anywhere. Léa and Chéri have a long listless affair, which ends when Chéri enters an arranged marriage. They're both miserably missing each other, which she attempts to shoulder with some grace while he makes no efforts to hide his feelings from his charming young wife who deserves better. Then in the end, we get a climactic scene which feels like it ought to be a denouement, except that the characters' motivations are muddled, and I'm at a loss to understand why they did what they did. The final scene, a prolonged close-up on Michelle Pfeiffer's face, is a self-conscious echo of the final scene of Dangerous Liaisons, but without the same punch, since the audience is thinking "huh?" instead of "oh!". Perhaps sensing the lack of satisfying finality, there's a voice-over post script letting us know what becomes of Chéri, but it's equally puzzling and unsatisfying. The film is based on a novel of the same name by Colette, and the voice-over tries to give us Colette's sequel, La Fin de Chéri, in a mere couple of lines, which hardly seems just. Maybe I should read the books to see if the character development makes more sense. At the end of this film, we had enjoyed the great performances and period setting, but it was no Dangerous Liaisons.

BOOKS: The Drunkard's Walk

2009-06-29T23:35:00.000-07:00

CalTech physicist Leonard Mlodinow, in his book "The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives", offers a fascinating lesson on the development of our understanding of probability and randomness, and how randomness is widely misunderstood and underestimated even today. The core chapters of the book present a sequence of concepts in probability theory, but rather than just present dry theory, Mlodinow takes the much more interesting approach of presenting the concepts by way of the history of their development, making it not only the story of the development of ideas, but of the colorful characters who contributed to them. Along the way, we meet a Renaissance doctor who made more money at games of chance than treating the sick, a Swiss dynasty and full-scale soap opera of mathematicians, and a mathematician who experienced a religious conversion and made a probabilistic argument for the existence of God. He does a good job of carefully explaining the concepts with good examples. Many of the examples are surprisingly counter-intuitive, such as the "Monty Hall problem", supporting the point that our brains tend to be wired counter to correct probabilistic reasoning. The book begins with a discussion about how much we may underestimate and underrecognize the role of randomness in our lives, and at the end returns to the theme of how much we misattribute success or failure to our own efforts while neglecting the role of chance. He touches on a wide variety of applications, from baseball (home run records and world series outcomes) to movie industry executive performance and mutual fund management success, illuminating how much of such outcomes are random. And he discusses some surprising psychological experiments that expose our innate tendency to find patterns in random "streaks" and to attribute intentional control over things we don't actually control (even when we know better). Not only does Mlodinow succeed in making mathematical theory and history quite fascinating, but he demonstrates the applicability of randomness in our lives in ways that will make you ponder.

FILM: The Brothers Bloom

2009-06-20T23:22:00.000-07:00

To Catch A Thief as written by Lemony Snicket...

On the spur of the moment, I decided to check out The Brothers Bloom, a dark quirky con man / relationship comedy. Picture something like Paper Moon or The Sting, as if they were written by Lemony Snicket. The whole film has that slightly dark and vaguely surreal quality of Lemony Snicket (or the TV show Pushing Daisies), with characters, costumes, and some elements that seem very a-hundred-years-ago mixed in with modern cars and other contemporary elements, which makes it hard to put your finger on exactly when the film is set, at the same time as it makes it easier to accept the fantastic bits. Certainly there are no characters in real life like the ones in this film, but the film succeeds in making you believe, at least for a couple of hours, that there could have been. There's also an overlay of fairy-tale quality that starts with the title, is launched by having a narrator, and by the Dickensian childhood of the brothers, and is maintained by a series of timeless settings including a Newportesque mansion, steamer ships and trains, and the city of Prague. The lead actors are all superb, starting with Rachel Weisz as Penelope, a fantastically multi-talented and fantastically rich but slightly autistic hyper-eccentric heiress. Not having ever encountered such a person in real life, it's hard to make claims about authenticity, but if such a person ever existed, Weisz's Penelope was absolutely her. Adrian Brody is charming as the broody younger Bloom who's been conning so long that he longs for his own authentic life but doesn't know if he's capable of one. And Mark Ruffalo is perfectly elusive as Stephen, the mastermind of the brothers' cons, who may or may not love his brother beyond pulling off the next con job. Rinko Kikuchi adds spice and humor as the enigmatic Bang Bang, and Maximillian Schell and Robbie Coltrane add mysterious shady characters to the mix. Penelope is the ultimate prey of the brothers, but she adds an element of unpredictability, and as Bloom may be developing real feelings for her, you just really don't know who's playing whom and how. The scenery and overall visual texture are marvelous, and I found the quirky story engaging to the surprising end.

Hyperventilating Over Smelt

2009-06-13T02:41:00.000-07:00

Many gay Americans have been starting to wonder when our "fierce advocate" in the White House is going to start delivering the change that we can believe in. And today, salt was rubbed in the wound of Obama's inaction by the Justice Dept filing a brief in a federal case defending the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). And in a painful irony, this comes not only during Pride month of the 40th anniversary of Stonewall, but it comes on the anniversary of the Loving v. Virginia decision ending miscenegation laws in the US. I first learned of this from Andrew Sullivan's blog (my first read nearly every morning), who linked to John Aravosis, and based on his diatribe, I was outraged. The brief was characterized as egregious anti-gay rhetoric and religious right arguments, comparing gay marriage to incest, and more.

Now this evening, I've had a chance to read what a lot of bloggers have had to say about it, but more usefully, I had a chance to read the actual DOJ brief, and I'm a lot more sanguine about it than others. Some of my observations, and reasons for calming down and taking a deep breath.

First, the case itself, formally known as Smelt v. US, is not the recently-filed case against Prop 8 that Olson and Boies are representing. This case comes from a gay couple in Orange County who have, against the advice of pretty much every gay advocacy group, been filing federal marriage-related challenges for the last few years. In fact, several gay advocacy groups have filed briefs against Smelt's cases, because they think they are very ill-advised, likely to lose, and likely to leave very damaging precedents on the books. They don't seem to have a very good lawyer representing them, and from a legal standpoint, their particular case is weak and overly broad in its claims and redress sought. While I don't begrudge anyone the right to go to court and press their claims, it is in the best interest of our larger cause if this case would just go away.

Fortunately, that's very likely to happen. The first part of the DOJ brief argues some legal technicalities about jurisdiction and "standing", and those arguments seem to me to be fairly strong. A court will always consider these types of arguments first, before considering the "merits" of a case, and I predict this case will get tossed out on the technicalities, without the court even having to look at the merits.

Meanwhile, there is a much, much stronger and better advocated case being brought in Massachusetts challenging DOMA, and there is the Boies/Olson challenge against Prop 8.

As for the rest of the DOJ brief, I think much of it is legally sound, and I did not find the rhetoric nearly as "egregious" as I was lead to expect. This was definitely not a brief written by the likes of the Prop 8 proponents. They rightly pointed out the reasons why this case is on weak legal footing. For instance, this particular case is not about a right to marry, it is about a "right" to get certain federal benefits. In these sort of constitutional challenges, you always want to show that a fundamental right is implicated, or that a suspect classification is involved, or best, both. In this fact pattern, the fundamental right claim is hard to sustain. It's only the suspect classification prong where there's any traction to be had, and even that is an uphill battle against precedent.

The DOJ brief is weakest where it defends against the suspect classification charge, and it does make some dodgy claims, which have been rightly pounced on. "DOMA does not directly or substantially interfere with the ability of anyone, including homosexuals, to marry the individual of his or her choice. … DOMA merely clarifies that federal policy is to make certain benefits available only to those persons united in heterosexual marriage, as opposed to any other possible relationship defined by law, family, or affection." While this sounds very much like the "both gays and straights have an equal right to marry someone of the opposite sex" canard, it's not exactly saying that. It's also admitting very clearly that the classification is one of sexual orientation, which nicely sets up the argument as to whether that is a justifiable classification.

It makes the novel argument that through DOMA, Congress is maintaining "neutrality", such that citizens of some states are not forced to subsidize marriages that go against their public policy just because another state approves of those marriages. But this seems a little odd after an earlier part of the brief went into detail about how state marriage laws differ, and that can and should be tolerated. If this "neutrality" were to be taken seriously, then the federal government wouldn't recognize first-cousin marriages because that would force the people of Arizona, who are appalled by such things, to subsidize the first-cousin marriages of New Mexico. Likewise, the federal government wouldn't recognize the marriage of 16-year-olds in Indiana because it wouldn't be fair to New Jersey, who insists on age 18. (Alas, this "neutrality" is just the sort of nonsense that is allowed to pass the "rational basis" test, if that what's the court decides is appropriate to apply.)

The DOJ brief also cites Loving v. Virginia, but with a very bizarre reading of it. According to this brief, the decisive factor in Loving was that the Virginia statute was lobsided, in that it outlawed only whites from marrying other races. Thus, it clearly treated the races differently, whereas the "neutral" DOMA does not. On this reading of Loving, it seems that the Virginia miscegenation statute might have passed constitutional muster if it had prevented all races equally from intermarrying. (The DOJ attorney here is either being disingenuous, or gets poor marks for reading comprehension. I suggest he mark the anniversary of Loving v. Virginia by re-reading the opinion more carefully. While that was certainly part of the opinion, it was by no means all of it.)

There's been much discussion about whether Obama's DOJ should have chosen not to defend DOMA, but I'm not sure how I feel about that. Having the Justice Dept pick and choose which laws it defends seems awfully similar to Bush's "signing statements" that so many of us were (rightly) unhappy about. Especially if the constitutional issues are not completely clear cut. (In my amateur opinion, I think that while DOMA part 3 should be tossed on equal protection grounds, DOMA part 2 may well be constitutional.) I don't think Obama has ever actually said he believes DOMA is unconstitutional, he's said he believes it's bad policy and should be repealed. Now it would just make us all feel better if he would get on that.

BOOKS: The Shack

2009-06-10T23:34:00.000-07:00

I've been hearing a lot of buzz about The Shack by William P. Young, so I figured I ought to read it. I thoroughly enjoyed this very fresh, creative imagining of what it might be like to meet God and grapple with the thorny question of how an omnipotent loving God can allow bad things to happen to innocent people. The book takes the form of a personal story, and even though I already knew the outline of the story going in, I was still swept up in it. While the story is clearly a vehicle to deliver some creative theological musings, its earnestness caught me up, and I was holding back tears in many parts of it (not good to cry while driving, you know). The vision Young presents of God is amazing and original, and the spiritual journey of Mac (the protagonist) is like a Divine Comedy for our age. To depict God at all is audacious, and to depict Him the way Young has is especially so, but it is as apt as it is surprising, which is appropriate. God should be bigger than our expectations and imaginings. God should surprise us. I won't give away too much, but this depiction of God and of Heaven reminded me of the beautiful tapestries at Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral, showing the community of saints as a wonderful mix of men, women, and children of all races, rich and poor, famous and unknown, ancient and modern, side by side. Through Mac's journey, Young presents some intriguing ideas. I liked his metaphor of God-as-man choosing to limit himself when interacting with humans, just as an adult can choose to limit themselves when talking to or playing with a child, in a loving way that honors the relationship. The love of a parent for a child is a powerful metaphor that is richly mined throughout. Mac's encounter with divine judgment is astonishing and brilliant. Some of the ideas are provocative, especially the disdain for much of organized religion. According to Young's God, religion, along with politics and economy, forms the real axis of evil. This God is all about loving relationship, and submission to God's love and God's life as opposed to human independence from God. In this view, organized religion is just another human power structure, an attempt to grasp control over our own security, which leads away from God.

The philosophy underpinning Young's theodicy is not new: bad things happen because God allows us our free will, and because of humankind's separation from God after the fall. What is fresh and original here is the beautiful vision of God's intentions for and relationship with the world, a vision woven around that traditionally unsatisfying answer of free will, making the complete picture surprisingly satisfying. The fact that a bigger picture can make an unsatisfactory answer satisfy is, in a way, the point. From our limited point of view in this world, evil is impossible to reconcile, but when you add God and everlasting life to the picture, it can look quite different. "Love never forces," God says, in a line that echoes 1 Corinthians 13, explaining how He always allows us to make our choices, and how He can turn even bad choices to ultimate good ends. And just when it appears God might be causing evil to achieve good ends, He clarifies that grace neither requires evil nor causes it, but it can make use of it where it occurs. In a beautiful echo of Romans 5:20, He explains, where you find evil, you find even more grace.

One pitfall of writing such a sweeping account, taking on such big questions, is that it's hard to resist faulting Young for not providing every answer. For example, while his theodicy powerfully addresses evil human actions, he doesn't really address natural disasters and disease. It's hard to see earthquakes or cancer as consequences of free will, although in one brief tangential comment, he suggests that these may be reactions of the Creation to our irresponsible stewardship of it (ecological sins, if you will). The metaphor of parent-child relationships to model the God-human relationship is beautiful and powerful, but it also raises some troubling questions. Doesn't a good parent stop their child from running out into the middle of the street? A good parent doesn't allow their children unlimited free will. And the goal of a good parent is for their child to become independent; the child is not raised merely to live out the parent's life. But perhaps that stretches the metaphor too far. The question that most haunted me after the story is this: if God so greatly desires to have a personal relationship with each of us, then why doesn't He give each of us a Shack experience?

The best (though not entirely satisfying) answer to that is of course that God has sent us William P. Young. Through a compelling story and amazing imagination, Young confronts some hard questions -- what does God want from us? what does it mean to truly forgive? what is the nature of grace? why is there evil? -- and he confronts them with the same sort of Christian boldness that Pope John Paul II displayed when he met and forgave his would-be assassin. Mac's journey will surprise, engage, and challenge you. If you have a relationship with God, this book is likely to make you rethink it (in a good way). And if you don't have a relationship with God, this book may make you want to have one.

Sotomayor and Personal Finance

2009-06-04T23:55:00.000-07:00

Among the critics at the Sunday night family dinner table, the issue that weighed most heavily with my brother was what was revealed by Sotomayor's financial disclosure statements. Her finances are rather remarkable for their sparseness. Apparently, she has no stocks, no bonds, no mutual funds, in fact no financial holdings other than a simple savings and checking account at Citibank. (In a way, that's rather smart for a judge, as it avoids any conflict of interest questions.) What's more, her entire savings (the combined checking and savings accounts) was between $50,000 and $115,000 in 2007, and as low as $30,000 in the previous four years. My brother was shocked and appalled that someone who makes $179,500 a year should have so little saved three decades into her career. She may be very bright in some subjects, he conceded, but in the practical matter of personal finance, she is colossally stupid. Top economist Greg Mankiw expressed a similar doubt. However, many have pounced on this.

Economist Brad DeLong estimates the value of her Greenwich Village condo to be about $1 million, and the value of her pension to be about $2.5 million. As far as I can tell, the condo estimate is speculation based on the general neighborhood where she lives, since her exact address and details of her home financing are not part of the public disclosures (although there appears to have been a reference to a home equity loan for improvements a few years ago, at least substantiating that she owns rather than rents). As a federal judge, she can continue working or retire at age 65 as she likes, and either way she draws full salary for the rest of her life.

Statistician Nate Silver crunches the numbers, and figures that her salary affords a very nice but by no means extravagant life for someone living in Manhattan. He notes the high tax rates (including a 3.86% city tax on top of state and fed) and figures $65,000 of her salary goes to taxes. He estimates another $65,000 goes to housing (based on average neighborhood rents for a 2-bedroom apartment in a doorman-building in Greenwich Village, $5400/month). That leaves $50,000 a year for utilities, transportation, food, and everything else. As Silver notes, in Manhattan, that would let you eat out nicely, attend a dozen Yankee games, and take a one-week vacation, and not a whole lot more.

Silver also takes Mankiw to task for missing the basic economics of the situation. He notes there are only four basic economic incentives to save money. First is to protect against a drop in income, like losing your job. Sotomayor's paycheck is from the US Government and short of an impeachable offense, she has job security for life, so that incentive is irrelevant. Second is to save for retirement, but as noted above, she has a guaranteed full salary for life, so that doesn't apply either. Third is to save for your spouse and children, but she is single. Fourth is to save for an expensive purchase, like a home (which she already has) or a nice car (which a Manhattanite doesn't need). Based on rational economics, there's really no incentive for Sotomayor to be saving her money rather than spending it.

Further, as USD law prof (and conservative blogger) Tom Smith has noted, someone in her position "any day she wants to she could walk out of her current job and into a partnership at a law firm in Manhattan or DC and get paid (guessing again) maybe $2 million a year, with the potential for a lot more… She has a guaranteed job for life with very generous retirement and health benefits, and any day she decides she wants to be a millionaire, all she has to do is pick up the phone. She's doing a job she must love and be good at or she wouldn't be where she is..."

Based on the evidence, I'd agree that she is working in a job she loves, has plenty enough money to live the life she wants, and has as close to zero worries about financial security as anyone could possibly have. That doesn't sound very stupid to me. I'd say she's one wise Latina.

UPDATE 6/5/09: In a document submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee, as reported by the Washington Post: "Sotomayor listed a net worth of $740,000, consisting primarily of equity in a $1 million condo in New York's Greenwich Village. She reported having $32,000 in cash and bank accounts, and personal property worth $108,000. Sotomayor reported that she owned no stocks, bonds, mutual funds or other non-real-estate investments."

Sotomayor and Reversal Rates

2009-06-04T23:37:00.000-07:00

As the old saying goes, there's lies, damned lies, and statistics. Last Sunday, my conservative aunt was scoffing at Judge Sotomayor's reversal rate, pointing out that she has had five of her opinions reviewed by the Supreme Court, and three of those were overturned. Turns out this has been a right wing talking point, with a Washington Times headline crying "Sotomayor Reversed 60% by High Court." I conceded that it didn't sound good, but I determined to look into it.

One of the first questions to ask is what exactly is the statistic that we're looking at. Judge Sotomayor has been on the 2d Circuit bench for 11 years, and in that time has heard nearly 3000 cases. Only in the more controversial cases is a published opinion typically issued, and she has published 232 opinions. Of those 232, five of them have been reviewed by the Supreme Court. And of those five, three have been overturned. So you could say that 60% of her reviewed opinions were overturned, but you could also say that 2% of her published opinions have been overturned, or that 0.2% of her total decisions have been overturned.

The other more relevant question to ask is how her statistics compare with her colleagues. Here it's useful to note that the Supreme Court only grants review of about 1% of the appeals filed, and the Court, in order to use its time wisely, only grants review to those cases where there is inconsistency across the Circuits, or where they expect to clarify or revise the precedent. In other words, the high court is likely to overturn the cases it selects for review, because it selects the controversial ones. According to statistics compiled by SCOTUSblog, since 2004, the Supreme Court has reversed 73% of the cases it reviewed. So it turns out that Sotomayor's 60% reversal rate is better than average. As Rachel Maddow observed, this is comparable to batting averages, where Sotomayor has a .400 "batting average". That's considered quite good. It has also been observed that Justice Alito, at the time of his Supreme Court confirmation, had a 100% reversal rate.

Knowledgeable attorneys observe that a judge's reversal rate is not a very meaningful statistic. In other words, the critics are clutching at straws here.

University of Chicago Law professor Eric Posner has been analyzing other comparative data about appellate judges, including how often their opinions are cited in other opinions or in law review articles (a measure of their influence and respect of their peers) and how often they have dissented in panel decisions (a measure of how inline with their colleagues they are). His conclusion:

the data should put to rest the rumor that Judge Sotomayor is not a competent jurist. She holds her own among a highly respected group... If citations reflect quality, Sotomayor may well be one of the top appellate judges in the country.

FILM: Little Ashes

2009-05-31T23:45:00.000-07:00

It wasn't on my radar at all, but George caught wind of an intriguing British-Spanish film called Little Ashes, about the relationships between the artist Salvador Dalí, poet/playwright Federico García Lorca, and filmmaker Luis Buñuel, who became close friends in the early 1920s attending university in Madrid. I'm glad we caught this interesting and illuminating film, as it was playing only at the Laemmle Music Box and only for another week. The film does a great job of portraying these three fascinating men, and in capturing the milieu of Spain in the heady 1920s, when young intellectuals dared to rebel against the conservative social order, and the tumultuous 1930s leading up to the Spanish Civil War. I was familiar with Dalí's paintings, and had seen a García Lorca play, and the film "Un Chien Andalou" (a collaboration of Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí, and probably required viewing in any modern film class), but I didn't know much about these men's lives. I came away from the film with a very vivid picture of García Lorca, the sentimental, soft-spoken though passionate Andalusian poet, portrayed pitch-perfectly by Javier Beltrán (who even resembles a photo I later found of the poet). I came to the film with a notion of what Dalí was like, which was greatly deepened by the equally profound performance of Robert Pattinson (who shows he's got much more in him than teen vampires and Harry Potter classmates). We watch him transform through the film from the shy boy who first shows up at school, becoming more confident and more outrageous, eventually becoming the larger-than-life character of his famous years. The film slowly but relentlessly builds romantic tension between the two, and the romance, which exists more in suspension than in consumation, is shown as a major force in their lives. Buñuel, who seems to have sexual repression issues of his own, impacts the other two as encourager, critic, and collaborator. His portrayal by Matthew McNulty was a hyper-manly Hemingway-esque character, which fits perfectly as this time and place, this social circle, and this story all conjure Hemingway. The texture of the film was marvelous, capturing the period with an authentic synergy of costume, music, lighting and sets (it really felt like an old movie), some tantalizing Spanish scenery, and visual allusions to "Un Chien Andalou" (parts of which were also actually included). The story was compelling, and the dialog mostly authentic and even poetic, except for a couple of spots near the end (Magdalena's farewell and García Lorca's tavern speech) that seemed a bit anachronistic, writing contemporary thinking back into a historical period where it didn't seem authentic. But despite those spots, I felt the story really worked over all. The script was well-grounded in actual history, and though core elements of the story, particularly the romance between García Lorca and Dalí, are speculative at best, it rang true for me. It makes sense that García Lorca would have taken "Un Chien Andalou" personally, and that Dalí and Buñuel would have intended it personally, showing how much these men haunted and inspired one another. The sentimental poet stayed devoted to his country, and remained to try to make a difference there, while the other two ran off to Paris to pursue the artistic and intellectual scene with no serious interest in politics, even as their native country was falling into an abyss. In a way, each man's life was a living reproach of the choices of the other, yet they couldn't escape an admiration of one another's artistic spirit, and on some level, a mutual attraction. A fascinating portrait of the artists as young men.

Sotomayor is a Perfectly Good Choriamb

2009-05-29T22:39:00.000-07:00

Over at the National Review, Mark Krikorian stirs up a minor tempest over the most pressing issue surrounding the Supreme Court nominee:

So, are we supposed to use the Spanish pronunciation, so-toe-my-OR, or the
natural English pronunciation, SO-tuh-my-er, like Niedermeyer?

He goes on to write about how "putting the emphasis on the final syllable is unnatural in English", and expecting Americans to adapt to that is just multiculturalism gone too far. Once past my initial puzzlement at how Niedermeyer was more English than Sotomayor, what stuck in my craw was the claim about emphasis on the final syllable being unnatural in English. That would certainly be news to people in VerMONT, TenneSEE, or IlliNOIS, in DeTROIT, Des MOINES, or San JoSE. (Or perhaps Krikorian thinks San Jose in "natural English" rhymes with banjoes.) It's true that the preponderance of Anglo-Saxon surnames are "trochees", the technical term in prosody for two-syllable words whose cadence is STRONG-weak. JACKson, LINcoln, WILson, REAgan, CARter, CLINton. But it doesn't mean that "iambs" (weak-STRONG) are unheard of. MonROE, for instance. Those iambs, because they change it up, can give a cadence that's distinctive but hardly unnatural to English. Just ask Shakespeare, who wrote most of his work in iambs. They're hardly exotic. Without iambs, Krikorian wouldn't be able to proPOSE or deBATE, atTACK or deFEND, reFUSE or aMAZE. Let aLONE deNOUNCE a SuPREME court nomiNEE. You get the idea. Now he might protest that iambs are fine, but a four syllable word with final stress is just a phoneme too far. But it turns out that a four syllable pattern with the cadence STRONG-weak-weak-STRONG has a name, a "choriamb", because it carries a distinctive punch. That's why "hip hip hooRAY" sounds right, and that's why "seventy-six" sounds more catchy that "sixty-seven". A choriamb is quite natural in English, and as American as "blueberry pie" or "four on the floor". SotomayOR is a perfectly good choriamb, no more of a tongue-twister than "American flag" or "not anymore". So I say: Open the DOOR for SotomayOR.

Sotomayor and Identity Politics

2009-05-28T23:04:00.000-07:00

It's unfortunate that those who profess to abhor identity politics seem unable to see or talk about anything else when someone other than a white male is nominated to the Supreme Court. Even those who try to express their reservations in measured terms end up saying odd things along the lines of "We want to give her a chance to show that she can be an impartial judge, setting aside her identity as a Puerto Rican woman." Yet, when Roberts and Alito and Breyer and Souter were being confirmed, these same people never thought to question whether those men could set aside their identity as white men. A member of a minority group is presumed to be partial to their own group, while white men are presumed to be impartial.

White men are also given full credit for their own accomplishments, whereas the accomplishments of a minority are always suspect. People are thinking she's probably not as smart as her peers, but was advanced by affirmative action. In the discussions about Sotomayor, you can hear people raising questions about her intelligence and her jurisprudence that were never raised about Roberts or Alito. With the men, there were questions about their views, about their judicial philosophy, but their reputation for intelligence and for being top in their field was taken as a given. So why, when it's a Latina rather than a white guy, are so many asking "is she really intelligent? is she really excellent?" Personally, I don't have to look far to satisfy myself on those counts. While a policy of minority preference could possibly have been a contributory (but not decisive) factor into getting her accepted to Princeton and to Yale Law, there was no such factor in her graduating summa cum laude or becoming editor of the Yale Law Review. Those are only achieved through formidable intelligence and a lot of hard work. (Cue John Houseman: She got those the old fashioned way. She earned them.)

The Prop 8 Decision

2009-05-27T22:29:00.000-07:00

To some disappointment but little surprise, the Calif Supreme Court announced that they were upholding Prop 8 as a valid amendment to the Calif Constitution, and they were also upholding the existing marriages. Needless to say, George and I were relieved that our own marriage continues to be valid and recognized by the state of California, but sad that other gay and lesbian couples will not be able to similarly enjoy full equality in California (for now). As a matter of policy, I think it will be better in the long run for California to fix this at the ballot box rather than in the courthouse, and I believe that's fully achievable in a few years (if not next year). Politically, overturning the amendment would have had a corrosive effect on the faith of people in our political process, as few would have understood the technical legal arguments supporting an overturn. It would have widely been seen as an activist or result-oriented decision, undermining the credibility of the Court, not just among the rabid wingnuts but among more reasonable people as well.

Legally, while I thought that the arguments for overturning the amendment were well-grounded in the philosophy of constitutional democracy, I also think that the Supreme Court did the right thing here. They interpreted the Constitution as it is written, and not as it ought to be written. Their regret, that our state constitution is too easily amended and does not adequately provide protection against the abridgement of fundamental rights, was manifest. They practically proposed an amendment to remedy that, pointing to specific language in the constitutions of other states that explicitly protects fundamental rights. (But would that be a revision?) Their conservative decision belied the accusations of liberal activist judging that were levied by those who didn't like the Marriage Cases decision.

On the upside, the Court went out of their way to emphasize how much of the Marriage Cases opinion is still good law. The Court affirmed the finding of the constitutional right of same-sex couples to "choose one’s life partner and enter with that person into a committed, officially recognized, and protected family relationship that enjoys all of the constitutionally based incidents of marriage", that that right is fundamental (embodied in the constitutional right to privacy and due process), and that same-sex orientation is a suspect class. And note that while the Marriage Cases opinion was 4-3, all 7 justices signed onto or concurred with this affirmation. (The three dissenting justices from the Marriage Cases all signed on to the majority opinion here.)
Further, the Court reasoned that because Prop 8 did conflict with a fundamental right, legal construction rules required it to be interpreted as narrowly and specifically as possible. The opinion went on to spell out exactly how constrained that interpretation would be: Prop 8 constrains the designation of "marriage", and nothing more. It does not touch any of the substantive rights found in the right to marry. Thus, if any of the anti-equality folks harbored secret hopes of using the constitutional amendment as a beachhead to dismantle domestic partnerships, those hopes were pre-empted by this opinion. The Court prospectively interpreted Prop 8 as narrowly as possible, dug a moat around it, put yellow police tape around that, and said "move along folks, nothing to see here…" (Though the Court does not properly do prospective interpretation per se, they cleverly worked it in as an essential part of their amendment vs. revision analysis.) And of course the narrow construction included unanimously upholding the 18,000 pre-Prop 8 marriages.

The Court was as positive as it could be about same-sex marriage in a case which marriage wasn't directly at issue. The actual legal issue at hand was the ability of the people of California to enact constitutional amendments that abridge fundamental rights, a question which boiled down to technicalities about "amendments" versus "revisions". And the unfortunate answer is that it appears that 51% of the voters in a single election can indeed amend the state constitution to curtail "inalienable" rights, with the only backstop being the U.S. Constitution. Thus, with amendments, the appeal to the independent interpretation of the state constitution, so zealously guarded by the Court in Raven v. Deukmejian, is out the window. The Court even suggested that had the revision vs. amendment argument been raised in Mulkey v. Reitman (a 1964 initiative constitutional amendment overturning legislation that outlawed racial covenant restrictions in real estate transactions), it would have been upheld as validly enacted (though it was struck down as violating the U.S. Constitution). While this is causing some alarm among minority and civil rights groups, we should follow their advice and direct our energies toward fixing this flaw in our state constitution, rather than get mad at the judges who are just interpreting it as it is.

That being said, I do have to applaud Justice Moreno's passionate dissent. I'm glad there was a voice of dissent, scolding the other justices for backing away from their own strongly articulated Marriage Cases holding that even a difference "in name only" can create substantive unequal protection of the law. When it's time for Scalia to be replaced, I hope they consider Justice Moreno. That would be karmic balance.

FILM: Angels and Demons

2009-05-25T15:09:00.000-07:00

George's mother and her friend Bruce (a former Catholic priest) were visiting us this weekend, and we were surprised to be told that they wanted to see Angels and Demons. Bruce had enjoyed the book. Katie, I think, was going along for the ride. We caught an 8:10 showing at the Americana in Glendale, after determining that sundown was 7:54 (which made George's Mom feel much better, a nuance that only Adventists would understand). We enjoyed the gruesome but rollicking adventure through Rome, and in fact I didn't think it was quite as gruesome as it could have been. Clearly a plot centering on the murder of four cardinals in elaborately painful ways cannot avoid some minimum of gruesomeness, but director Ron Howard didn't dwell in the pain Mel Gibson style nor make you really feel the pain Tarantino style. The idea was horrible enough on its own, and Howard just keep the film moving forward, focused on uncovering and foiling the diabolical plot. This film, more so than The Da Vinci Code, did keep moving. It was able to convey just enough of the symbology to keep it comprehensible, without letting symbology lectures bog down the pace of the adventure. The writers did a great job of paring down the lengthy book to its core plot without losing the essentials. The book had a few more twists and turns, and some elements got altered, but I think the story survived the surgery in good shape. In fact the alterations were enough to jar me into questioning how the film might end, even though I had read the book. So much the better! Tom Hanks reprises Robert Langdon, and seems even better at the character the second time out (although as the LA Times surmised, perhaps it was just that he had such bad hair in The Da Vinci Code, a distraction not repeated here). And Ewan McGregor is very convincing as the Cammerlengo, once I got over the shock of the fact that they'd changed the character to be Irish instead of Italian. The other performances were all good, although I had trouble understanding what Pierfrancesco Favino (Commander Olivetti) was saying. The other star of this show was the cinematography, delivering awesome visuals of St. Peter's Basilica and Square, the pageantry of the College of Cardinals in the Sistine Chapel, and many other impressive sights around Rome. This feat is all the more impressive considering I don't think they were allowed to use most of the actual sites to film in. It will be worth buying the DVD when it comes out just to see the behind-the-scenes "making-of" tracks. But don't wait for the DVD to see this film. You'll want to get the full impact on the big screen.

BOOKS: Assassination Vacation

2009-05-18T23:52:00.000-07:00

I've spent the last week of commuting in the quirky company of historical commentator Sarah Vowell, reading her book Assassination Vacation. The book traces the people and events leading up to and immediately following the assassinations of Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley, interspersing fascinating historical narrative with Vowell's own experiences visiting the markers, artifacts, and monuments that remain from those events. Her unique roadtrip tracks down every route of interest, no matter how seemingly remote or trivial, meandering from the Mütter Museum of pathology which has a piece of the brain of Garfield's assassin; to Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas, the desolate prison where Dr. Samuel Mudd served, for aiding John Wilkes Booth in his flight after shooting Lincoln; to the Tahawas Club in the Catskills where Teddy Roosevelt received word that McKinley had been shot. Her observations and her conversations with rangers, docents, and other people connected to historical sites, combined with her intricate knowledge, make it an engrossing trip through both history and the Americana that commemorates it. She has a great nose for history's trivial ironies: who knew that Lincoln's son Robert Todd Lincoln would be in close proximity to three presidential assassinations ("the presidential angel of death" as Vowell dubs him), or that John Wilkes Booth's brother Edwin saved Lincoln's son. Vowell would be really fun to travel with in real life. She even succeeds in making James Garfield interesting. Apparently among the author's many quirks is that she doesn't drive, so she is always prevailing upon friends to take her places. Sarah, when you're working on your next book, I'll be happy to drive you for one of your explorations!

FILM: Star Trek

2009-05-15T23:46:00.000-07:00

On Friday, I skipped work and caught a morning matinee of the new Star Trek movie. (I knew it would be pretty low on George's list, so I'd best just go see it without him if I wanted to see it.) I'd heard good advance buzz, and was delighted to find it lived up to the hype. It was wonderful to see these old new characters again, and at the same time see them in a fresh new way with this prequel / reboot bringing on a whole new cast to play the younger versions of the classic crew. I have to admit that I'd missed a bunch of Star Trek movies over the years. The fourth one (the one that opened with fart jokes and Scotty banging his head into the bulkhead Three Stooges style, and ended with Nichelle Nichols degrading herself as a topless dancer) was so awful that the film franchise lost me for a decade or more. But this latest one, this one was well worth coming back for. The story of how the Enterprise crew first comes together really rings true, and it's great to see how the well-known characters and relationships got their start. Prequels can often feel contrived, especially with such established characters, but this one was very natural, and I just felt "of course that's how it must have been". And despite the well-worn plot device of time travel, it was used to very good effect for the story, for an excuse to bring in Leonard Nimoy as an older Spock, and most of all, as a vehicle to relaunch the whole franchise with familiar characters that are acceptably and intriguingly changed. Chris Pine, channeling James Dean, creates an awesome young Kirk, as an aimless Iowa farm boy with a penchant for bar brawls and driving vintage cars recklessly fast. Zachary Quinto recreates Spock beautifully, still the logical Vulcan, but with his human half more evident, creating a more nuanced character. Karl Urban is a brilliant choice as a young (and cute!) Dr. McCoy, while Zoe Saldana positively smolders as the sultry and fierce young Uhura. Bruce Greenwood was also notable as Captain Pike. If they make more Star Trek movies with the chemistry of this one, they'll have me for the next decade.

Clashes of Same-Sex Marriage with Religious Liberty

2009-05-03T23:44:00.000-07:00

In this morning's LA Times, I found an interesting editorial by law professor Robin Wilson, called "The flip-side of same-sex marriage." In it, she argues that "it is possible to legalize gay marriage without infringing on religious liberty", though care must be taken to get the second part of that right. I agree with Prof. Robin Wilson that the enactment of marriage equality should be carefully balanced with religious liberty protections, and welcome her call to do so. When a pair of New Mexico photographers refused services for a same-sex wedding, and were fined for violating state anti-discrimination statutes, that was a clear unjust infringement of liberty. But this important dialog is not furthered by misinformation about the actual cases of conflict, and unfortunately Prof. Wilson trots out several overworked half-truths. That New Jersey church group who lost their property tax exemption status on a public pavilion that they refused to rent for a lesbian wedding? The tax exemption was granted for the pavilion expressly because the group promised to make it open to the public. They could either rent the pavilion selectively, or they could take the tax exemption and rent to everyone equally, but they couldn't have it both ways. The lost tax exemption was on the property tax for the pavilion only. The tax-exempt status of the religious group that owned it was never in question. The closing of Catholic Charities in Massachusetts? Catholic Charities was contracted by the state to provide adoption services. As a private entity, they would be free to discriminate according to their conscience, but by choosing to act as an agent of the state, they must treat all citizens equally. Latter-day Saints Family Services also provides adoption service in Massachusetts, exclusively to heterosexual couples, and has continued to operate since the advent of gay marriage, because they aren't funded by the state. Catholic Charities could have made the same choice, but chose not to. The crucial distinction that Prof. Wilson fails to account for is the difference between private entities and public entities (including entities acting on behalf of or subsidized by the state). Private entities should be entitled to considerable latitude for rights of conscience even when they conflict with values of equal treatment and non-discrimintion. For public entities, on the other hand, equal treatment and non-discrimination are paramount.

FILM: The Soloist

2009-05-02T23:36:00.000-07:00

We were eager to see The Soloist based on its intriguing previews, and having been familiar with the story from Steve Lopez's LA Times series that inspired it. The film met our high expectations and then some, with a pair of tour-de-force performances from Jamie Foxx as the schizophrenic prodigy Nathaniel Ayers, and Robert Downey Jr. as journalist Steve Lopez. Writer Susannah Grant did a nice job adapting Lopez's book, telling the story from the chance acquaintance of the two men, to their developing relationship, with Ayers' life in bits of flashback as Lopez uncovers it or Ayers recalls it. Some minor facts were changed in the adaptation, such as creating the character of Lopez's editor and ex-wife (nicely enacted by Catherine Keener), but that device artfully provided good illumination of the fictionalized Lopez's motivations and failures. Foxx's amazing performance of the beautifully written Ayers character portrays his mental illness as vividly as Dustin Hoffman's Rain Man or Russell Crowe's Beautiful Mind, but surpassing those in the aching humanity of this broken man. The tone of the film is enhanced visually by sweeping vistas of Los Angeles, from Elysian Park and Disney Hall, to downtown freeway underpasses and grittier streets not so many blocks away, and musically with a full orchestra Beethoven-heavy Romantic score. In the end, the film keeps it real by not Hollywood-izing the ending.

OPERA: Die Vögel

2009-04-26T23:40:00.000-07:00

This afternoon I had the delightful experience of attending Die Vögel (The Birds), an opera by Walter Braunfels. This opera is a continuation of Los Angeles Opera's "Recovered Voices" program, which seeks to rediscover the works of Jewish composers of the early 20th century which had been surpressed by the Nazi regime. They have been giving new life to lost gems, restoring them to their rightful place in the opera canon. I found Die Vögel to be a charming work. Historically, Braunfels was strongly influenced by Wagner (upon seeing Tristan and Isolde, Braunfels decided to drop his law career and pursue music instead), but at least in this work, I found much more influence of other Germans, notably Richard Strauss and Mozart. How can an opera featuring birds, and opening with two guys carrying bird cages, not call to mind The Magic Flute? And some of the Nightingale's arias featured coloratura ornamentation worthy of the Queen of the Night. The story itself was fanciful and allegorical in a Magic Flute sort of way, based on Aristophanes' play The Birds, though made less farcical and with a changed ending (to support the established order rather than overthrow it), giving it more of a story arc and an opportunity to insert a romance. All the performers were strong, but two young stars making their LA Opera debut were particularly captivating. Désirée Rancatore's exquisitely beautiful soprano voice and graceful bearing as the Nightingale made it easy to see her allure, and how Good Hope could fall in love with her. And the honey-golden tenor of the handsome Brandon Jovanovich made Good Hope's passionate arias soar. Their nocturne duet in Act II was so moving, just sigh-inducingly beautiful. Another notable voice was baritone Brian Mulligan, as Prometheus, rich, deep, powerful and commanding. The play was charmingly visualized by director Darko Tresnjak (whom we knew from his Shakespeare work at The Old Globe in San Diego), with a large chorus swirling around in vibrant many-colored costumes, and a bird city in the clouds looking like classical Athens done as birdhouses. The one awkward piece of staging was the conquest of the city by Zeus, which was anticlimactically undramatic, with the birdhouses being gingerly dismantled. A plot-irrelevant thunderstorm from the evening before was more dramatically staged than the actual battle which is the climax of the story. But the final scene is touching, where the two adventurers return to the human world, Loyal Friend shrugging off the experience having learned nothing, and Good Hope having been profoundly moved. "Now I will go back down the mountain, for I have lived," he sings. I left very grateful to James Conlon, not only for his fine conducting, but his leadership in the "Recovered Voices" program for bringing us this unjustly neglected gem.

OPERA: Wagner's Ring (the first half)

2009-04-12T23:09:00.000-07:00

Having now seen two of the four installments in Wagner's Ring Cycle, I can understand the appeal of seeing the whole cycle in succession, although the idea of taking in four Wagner-magnitude operas in one week seems insanely daunting. We saw Das Rheingold and Die Walküre two weeks apart, and that's about perfect. Opera on that scale is the most grandiose of art forms, a culmination of voice, orchestra, dramatic story-telling and magnificent staging, and I think one needs some time to let one sink in before taking on another. Two weeks was sufficient recovery time, but close enough that the previous installment was still fresh in mind. Alas, now we'll have to wait a year for the third and fourth parts. But based on what we've seen, we'll be eagerly awaiting. The first two have been magnificent. Wagner's music, of course, is a marvelous experience in its own right. His dramatic flourishes and vivid leitmotifs (the shimmering Rheingold, the lumbering giants, the regal fortress) would inspire great stories in one's imagination just from listening. Even if you think you're unfamiliar with this justly famous music, much of it would sound familiar from having been used in film scores (and not just Apocalypse Now). And then there's the epic story. Drawn on Norse myths and sagas, it's a riff on Tolkien's Lord of the Rings (well, actually, vice versa), complete with gods, giants, dwarves, heroes, magic gold, and a ring of terrible power.

The particular staging put on by Los Angeles Opera is by German artist/director/designer Achim Freyer, and has been controversial, if you read the reviews (and judging by some booing mixed with the applause when Freyer appeared for the curtain call at the close of Das Rheingold). While it's unabashedly modern and at times abstract, which will not be to the liking of traditionalists, I've been favorably impressed. In Das Rheingold, Freyer has realized this epic world with larger-than-life costumes for all the characters, and even larger doppelganger representations of the gods and the giants. I'd read complaints of the singers not being able to project from under all the weight of these oversize costumes, but perhaps they'd solved that problem by the time we saw it, because bass Vitalij Kowaljow projected Wotan (the Zeus-like ruler of these gods) strong and clear, and likewise for the others. I thought the larger-than-life visuals were appropriate for these larger-than-life gods and giants, and Freyer's stage, topped by a "sky" decorated with symbolic objects like Wotan's eye and a cartoon Valhalla, conjured a magical world (even if it was a bit reminiscent of Space Mountain at the same time). His visual motifs suited the grand gestures and motifs of Wagner's music. Admittedly, some of the symbolism eluded me completely (like the vintage aircraft thing), and others (like Fricka's freaky-long arms) were quirky, intriguing, and memorable, even if puzzling. Perhaps Fricka (goddess of marriage and wife of the filandering Wotan) is eternally reaching for something beyond her grasp. Her arms reminded me of that allegory of heaven and hell where people's arms are too long to feed themselves. But I think most of the visual motifs worked well to make characters readily recognizable. In the special effects department, you can't expect the operatic stage to compete with motion picture special effects, but when the dwarf Alberich transformed himself into a dragon, it was quite visually impressive.

In Die Walküre, where we first get some human characters mixing with the gods, the visuals get a bit more abstract. The humans have normal size costumes, but they also sport symbolic body paint. Siegmund and Sieglinde, twin brother and sister separated since youth, are signified by both being painted half black and half white (but on opposite sides, kinda like that old Star Trek episode). Swords and spears, which figure prominently in this part of the saga, are represented by long neon shafts (i.e., Star Wars-style light sabers), conveniently color-coded as red for the Huns, white for the immortals, and blue for the magic sword that the hero Siegmund pulls from a tree, where it had been stuck like Excalibur waiting for the right hero to be able to pull it out. The tree is left entirely to the imagination, and the blue sword is just standing on end in the center of the stage at the start of Act I, the hub of a giant circle that figures prominently in the staging. In Act I, a white neon tube lays on the floor, anchored to the center of the circle, and a shadowy figure slowly, methodically, relentlessly pulls it around, like the hand on a clock. Indeed, this is meant to symbolize time (and perhaps that we're seeing mortal characters for the first time in the saga), and when Siegmund and Sieglinde meet and start to exchange stories of their past, the clock hand moves backwards when they're relating a past event. Also, as they relate stories, mimes appear on the wheel symbolizing the characters in the story, including doppelgangers of the two speakers. When the dialog returns to the present, the mimes disappear like a dream upon awakening, and the clock hand starts going forward again. When the two meet, the abstract staging has them placed on opposite sides of the stage, separated by the giant abstract clock, even though they are talking face to face. Just as when we meet someone special and time stands still or goes real slow, this is conveyed in this abstract symbolism by their interactions being surreally separated by the clock. At one point, when he's thirsty and she gives him a drink of water, she hands the water glass to the shadowy time keeper, who carries it slowly from her position at "3 o'clock" to his position at "9 o'clock". As they become more and more caught up in one another, they slowly move toward each other and toward the center stage, when finally they're both together when he pulls out the magic sword. It's a very surreal and creative way of visualizing the inner dynamics of these two apparent strangers discovering their once and future connection. Freyer keeps the staging minimal and cerebral, letting Wagner's voluptuous music in this act speak the emotional volumes. (Yes, we are talking about a twin brother and sister falling in love, but that's the saga, and you just have to go with it.) And of course we were all eager to see whether Plácido Domingo (age 68) still had a Wagnerian hero in him, and indeed he did.

In Act II, I couldn't help but be distracted by the strange echoes of Prop 8 rhetoric when Fricka harangues Wotan about how the sanctity of marriage must be upheld. (Nothing intentional there, and the metaphor is inapt; it was just an odd juxtaposition with current events.) But thanks to Freyer's visual motifs, and having Das Rheingold fresh in mind, we immediately recognize Wotan the one-eyed and Fricka the long-armed when they appear, and we recall their backstories. (Opera is much more enjoyable when you don't have to struggle to keep the characters straight.) Finally, the much anticipated Act III delivered on the heightened expectations. It opens with the famous Ride of the Valkyries (now cue the Apocalypse Now helicopters and napalm), with the semi-immortal daughters of Wotan looking a bit bride-of-Frankenstein-ish and riding metallic steeds, half skeletal horses and half Harley-Davidson. But somehow that's appropriate for these fearsome demi-goddesses who haunt battlefields and gather the bodies of fallen heroes. In the end, when the most spirited Valkyrie Brünnhilde must be punished for disobeying Wotan's command (even though she did what he really wanted her to do), the circle of flames that surrounds her enchanted sleep is symbolically spectacular. No real flames, as other productions do, but bright red cartoonish flames suited this abstract staging, and they enchanted my eyes. In a final inspired touch, we see Siegfried (the foretold hero of the latter half of the saga, readily identifiable thanks to Freyer's visual motifs) cross the circle of flames, foreshadowing the next installment. I eagerly await.

FILM: Adventureland

2009-04-11T23:37:00.000-07:00

Greg Mottola surely had fun directing Superbad. Now, in Adventureland, he has written and directed a film with the same coming-of-age authentic awkwardness, but where the kids are just a few years older, their lives just a bit more complicated and interesting. The film takes place in a cheesy amusement park where college kids from a town outside of Pittsburgh work a crappy summer job, while dreaming of moving to New York City for grad school. They're at the age where academic intellectual pursuits seem really cool, but also at the age where it's becoming clear that making their way in the real world might require some work. "I'm not even qualified for manual labor," says James, a comparative lit major, after being rejected for a trucking job. Jesse Eisenberg plays James with the perfect balance of earnest innocence and sardonic remarks for our 21-year-old virgin coming-of-age hero. Comparisons to Michael Cera are inevitable, but Eisenberg's James has a bit more spark and drive going for him than Michael Cera's meek Hugh Grant-esque deer-in-the-headlights aphasia, and it's a delight to watch James blossom. The film's setting in the 1980s gave it a slight (but not cloying) Wonder Years nostalgic patina, and James is much like Fred Savage's character probably turned out ten years after the Wonder Years. Eisenberg is well-matched by Kristen Stewart, who plays Em, the girl of that memorable summer, a bit more worldly than him, confident and outgoing, but not quite as ready to handle it all as she projects. A cast of quirky characters, some stock (the bubble-gum-blowing sexy Catholic New Jersey-type girl) and some more interesting, add color to the retelling of the archetypal story. The film is tender, funny, and enjoyable to the expected but satisfying end. But it's not about the end, which we know from the start, but the summer of how he got there.

BOOKS: A Thousand Splendid Suns

2009-04-08T00:35:00.000-07:00

My heart and mind are still racing, having just finished Khaled Hosseini's breathtaking epic novel A Thousand Splendid Suns. All week, I have been commuting with anxious nerves, shaking with rage, or tears running down my cheeks, as I have been making my way through this marvelous story of two women spanning several decades of Afghanistan's tumultuous recent history. The two women, whose stories begin many years and hundreds of miles apart, come together in a surprising and inspiring way. The epic tale not only spans the monarchy, the communists, the warlords, the Taliban, and beyond, the horrors of a war-torn city, the despicable injustices of Islamist rule, conflicts of traditionalists versus the more modern-minded, and the conflicts between compassion and the cruel treatment of women and illegitimate children under cover of traditional Afghan and Muslim codes of honor. Hosseini illustrates these grand themes with an engrossing story and vivid memorable characters. I loved his descriptions of children, how they perceived the people around them, and how those perceptions changed as they matured. The recurring themes of memory were hauntingly poignant, how even the greatest memories can be like trying to hold water in your fingers, but also how the memory of someone lost who once shaped us can mark us indelibly and affect us years later. And it is also the story of a city, Kabul, vividly described, once a place where children played in the streets and women gossiped around a communal tandoor, then later a place where people hid inside as rockets and bullets strafed the city skies, and then later the place where religious fanatics enforced beards on men, burqas on women (never unaccompanied), and prohibited music and kite-flying. While there is a lot of sorrow and pain in this story (how could there not be?), Maryam and Laila persist and inspire. Their spirit is like a weed growing up from a dry river bed toward the sun, despite being parched by drought and ravaged by fire, there is a dignity and beauty in its endurance. Though the book ended in a very fitting place, I was sorry to see it end, as I am reluctant to let go of its characters. I think I will remember them for a long time.

BOOKS: The Conservative Soul

2009-04-01T23:53:00.000-07:00

On a business trip last week, I finally had the chance to finish The Conservative Soul. It's Andrew Sullivan's political analysis of the last couple of decades, on where he thinks the "right wing" has gone off the rails, and what he thinks true conservatism ought to be. Even though it's a couple years old now, his analysis is still very relevant and astute (in some ways even more so, as we watch the crack up of the right in the wake of their 2008 losses). Though he touches on many particular hot-button issues by way of example, his focus is more on philosophical underpinnings and the motivations for broad political trends and alignments. Starting from an assessment of the particular vacuums after the collapse of the "old left" that enabled the rise of the "new right", he diagnoses the "fundamentalist psyche" (a need for absolute truth arbitrated by central authorities and authoritative texts), the "theoconservative project" (to "recapture" the public square from the "false neutrality" of secular liberalism), and its ascendancy in the "Bush crucible". He then sets out to propose an alternative "conservatism of doubt" and a "politics of freedom". While some details of his account are anchored in the specifics of American politics in a particular time, some of his philosophical work, particularly in the chapter about natural law and in his latter positive chapters, are quite profound and less tied to this moment in history. His dissection of natural law (as it is wielded today) versus the implications of Darwin and "nature" is keenly argued and very insightful. His presentation of his preferred understanding of conservatism, as articulated in Montaigne and Oakeshott, leading to his political philosophy manifesto, extrapolating from Hobbes, is compelling. (Makes me want to work through his bibliography of those classic philosophers.) In his classic style, Sullivan writes eloquently, deftly weaving deep philosophical argument with crackling contemporary examples and personal experiences and insights. Full of thought-provoking ideas from his distinctive perspective, lucidly expressed, this book was a pleasure to read.

FILM: I Love You, Man

2009-03-28T21:37:00.000-07:00

I Love You, Man is a fun and funny film which can probably stake the claim of being the first "brom-com". This has many of the ingredients of a good rom-com, but renovated around the trendy notion of "bromance". The story centers around Peter (Paul Rudd), the "perfect guy", who is soon to be married to a lovely girl Zooey. (So already, the rom-com formula is upside-down, as we're starting with a perfect happy couple.) But as Zooey is talking to her two BFF girlfriends about everything including wedding plans, they stumble onto the quandary of who is going to be Peter's best man, since he has no male friends. And from there the improbable and hilarious quest is launched of finding Peter a best friend to be his best man. Zooey and her girlfriends and Peter's Mom all set Peter up on various "man-dates", with amusingly dismal results, until Peter stumbles onto Sydney (Jason Segel). Sydney really gets Peter, and it's the start of a beautiful friendship. Until Peter starts spending so much time with Sydney that Zooey starts getting jealous. The whole farce has its finger on the contemporary pulse and skewers it in the style of L.A. Story. The earnestness of Paul Rudd and the natural goofy hipsterness of Jason Segel make for great chemistry. We left with big grins from this fun and original film.

FOOD: Lou on Vine

2009-03-21T22:12:00.000-07:00

It's always fun to discover a new hidden gem of a restaurant. I'd been hearing about a place called Lou, on Vine, specializing in tasting-size pours of interesting wines, complimented by a farmer's market-inspired weekly-changing menu. (On the radio show Good Food, they've often found the chef, DJ Olsen, at the farmer's market and asked him what he's up to. It's always been mouth-watering.) So when we were looking for dinner after a movie at the Hollywood Arclight, I thought it'd be good to try Lou. I knew it was hidden in a strip mall, but this place is practically a speakeasy. Not only is it in an obscure corner upstaged by a dry cleaner, but they have a simple unlit sign, and they keep the front dark and the curtains drawn, given the place the appearance of being closed. Fortunately, we tried the door, fully expecting to find it locked, and surprised to find it open. Thru the door and pushing aside the curtains reveals a smallish space with a long common table down the middle and rows of banquette tables on either side. There's a blackboard listing the wines being poured (by the bottle, the regular glass, or the "taste") as well as the freshly made sausages, cheeses, and other specials. On one part, there's a chalk map of the US, with arrows pointing to the provenance of the various ingredients. There's also a small bar where you can enjoy wine while waiting for a table (which you should expect to do if you get there past 7pm on a Saturday night). The food was as marvelous as all those wonderfully fresh ingredients promised. I savored a Niman Ranch pork loin over mustard greens with wild mushrooms (chanterelles!) and gnocchi. We'll definitely be back here again.

FILM: Duplicity

2009-03-21T21:55:00.000-07:00

We enjoyed watching the sparks fly as Julia Roberts and Clive Owen matched wits in Tony Gilroy's smart spy-vs-spy thriller romance Duplicity. Their volatile chemistry called to mind classics of the genre like Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn in Charade. The background for the high-stakes corporate espionage was hilariously brought to life by the antics of battling mega-CEOs Tom Wilkinson and Paul Giamatti, with the tone set in an opening sequence of the competitors physically wrestling one another in front of their appalled executive teams and their corporate jets. Gilroy's peel-back-the-onion style of revealing the story works fairly well to keep you wondering what's really going on, and who's really doing what to whom, although I had figured the final wrinkle before the end. Even so, it's a funny and suspenseful way to spend a Saturday night.

FILM: Sunshine Cleaning

2009-03-14T23:14:00.000-07:00

Some movies defy easy description. Sunshine Cleaning definitely falls into that category. When I've tried to give a plot synopsis to people, I'm usually met with quizzical reactions: "Would I really enjoy seeing a movie about a struggling single mom who starts a bio-hazardous waste removal business with her slacker sister?" Yes. You would. It's a fresh, quirky character-driven story with some laughs and a lot of heart that transcends its unappealing-at-first-glance plot. It's kind of like Six Feet Under in that regard, you just have to see it. One big good reason to see the film: Amy Adams. She's been everywhere the last year or two, and we've loved her in Enchanted, Miss Pettigrew, and Doubt. Here she plays a much more down-to-earth character, still optimistic, but definitely not a princess or a nun, and with a lot more dimensionality, a hard-shelled pragmatism alloying her sunny side. Emily Blunt provides a great disfunctional sister character (think Claire, speaking of Six Feet Under) who has a heart buried under her cynicism, and Alan Arkin is charming as the outspoken grandfather full of schemes that never quite pan out. I enjoyed the original story, but what really sticks with me most are the scenes that really show off the characters more than move the plot: the grandfather encouraging his grandson about school, the grandson talking to a shopkeeper (sensitively played by Clifton Collins Jr.) making model airplanes, the sister taking her new friend "trestling", Amy Adams' moments of quiet desperation. And of course Amy Adams' reconciliation with her sister in the end is heart-warming, in a genuine and non-maudlin way. I'm very impressed with director Christine Jeffs and writer Megan Holley (her first film), and their original story with its quirky, genuine, and engaging characters.

BOOKS: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

2009-03-10T00:45:00.000-07:00

I hadn't read Jonathan Safran Foer's first novel, but we loved the film version of Everything Is Illuminated, so I was intrigued to check out Foer's second novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. I found it extremely moving and incredibly beautiful. I savored every word of it, often smiling or crying or both. Foer's story centers on Oskar, a 9-year old boy coming to grips with the loss of his father in the World Trade Center on 9/11, and what makes the story so transcendant is Foer's marvelously authentic first-person narrative, making the reader see and understand the world as such a boy would see it. I certainly saw flashes of my godson in him. Just as children sometimes in their innocence, undefiled by hackneyed turns of speech, will come up with superbly fresh metaphors and honest turns of phrase, the prose of Oskar's narrative is brimming with that kind of beauty and integrity. He's a precocious boy who's constantly coming up with inventions, and writing letters to all manner of people from Jane Goodall to Stephen Hawking. As a boy will, his narration occasionally veers into fantasy without warning, only to be regrounded by "well, that's what I wished I had done, what I really did was…" Oskar deals with his grief by embarking on a unique quest to systematically visit every person in New York named Black, searching for the lock that goes to an unusual key he found in his father's closet. His story is interleaved with the story of his grandparents, who both survived the Dresden bombing and re-met years later in New York. Most of their story comes out in letters they write to their son and to their godson, and it is often poignant to hear how two people can recall the same experience so differently. Their lives unfold in a timeline that jumps from their meeting in New York, to the present day, back to their childhood in Dresden, and back again, a chronological jumble that makes perfect emotional sense. In the fullness of the story we come to see how the events in their lives all relate, and how character traits may be a legacy between a grandfather, the son he never met, and his grandson. (It's only been in recent years I've come to appreciate how much of my parents are in me. I just wonder how Foer, who is much younger than me, came to be so wise about these things.)

I gather that the print version of this book made integral use of photos and graphics that I missed by listening to the audiobook. But I have to say that the readers of this audiobook did a splendid job. There were multiple actors voicing the main characters, and I think they really brought the characters to life. That's no mean trick, as Foer's characters are vivid and somehow authentic and slightly surreal at the same time. He has managed to create a world very like New York, but where the laws of time and reality are sometimes fluid, and which is somehow all the more real for that. His work reminds of the magical realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Isabel Allende. And reading this book was certainly a magical experience.

Bulgarini Gelato Artigianale

2009-03-08T23:32:00.000-07:00

We are still faithful to our Friday night tradition of Pazzo Gelato in Silver Lake, so I feel a tinge of betrayal, but I must admit I have found an even more superior gelateria. I had been hearing tell for a while of a superlative gelateria tucked away in a rather random location behind an auto parts store in a nondescript strip mall in Altadena. It's not near anything, it's not open every day nor late nights, so you really have to make a special effort to get there. I finally had a good occasion to check it out when, with a burst of new year's resolve, I started riding my bike again, and found that its location made the perfect midpoint and high elevation point of a 36-mile loop from my house, perfect for a Sunday afternoon. My first sampling (and by the way, I love their petit scoops, which means you can try three flavors in the small cup) comprised banana, almond, and lemon custard. Each was an absolutely divine burst of fresh flavor. The banana was so flavorful that I wondered I wasn't eating Earth bananas that had just been pureed moments ago, and the almond had both the flavor and the texture that there was no question that select almonds had been freshly ground. And the lemon custard was a perfect balance of creamy and tart. Bulgarini is legendary for his passion about fresh, specially chosen ingredients, and his flavors change weekly as he obtains the best fruit and nuts from farmers per the season. His milk comes fresh from Broguiere's dairy in Montebello, and the gelato is crafted based on artisinal techniques he studied in Italy. (And he had to hunt around to find an old craftsman to study from, and most gelato isn't made the old-fashioned way anymore even in the old country.) I've had the delight of sampling his famous pistacchio only once. He insists on using only pistacchios that he personally selects from small farmers in Sicily, claiming that the California pistacchios just don't have the same flavor profile. The proof is in the product, with these marvelous pistacchios ground to a coarse meal, such that the gelato gives your tongue a double-delight of flavor and texture, approaching the experience of God revealing the essence of pistacchio through your senses to your soul. Alas, pistacchio gelato is finished until he makes another trip to Sicily.

Bulgarini also has a genius for flavor pairings. One Sunday, his tangerine gin granita and blackberry red wine gelato had me savoring each bite with my eyes closed in ecstasy. The next week, my mouth and mind were blown by an extraordinary marriage of rich dark chocolate and cayenne pepper. The flavors vary day to day and week to week, and I've enjoyed going in without preconceived desires, and just asking the thoughtful young man behind the counter what's fresh and new this week. The hand-written signs on the display case are in Italian, and they don't always match up to the actual flavors on offer anyway. I've learned to just ask him to tell me what I ought to try, and trust his recommendations. He's observed that unlike most regular customers who have favorite flavors they return to, I like to try new things, and when he sees me pull up on my bike, he's eager to tell me about the new flavors I might like. This afternoon, he steered me to a strawberry pepper granita, coffee gelato perfumed with anise, and a yogurt "al olio" which was a wonderfully tart yogurt gelato with fresh extra-virgin olive oil poured on it, an unexpected pairing that was just amazing. (He said the oil won't mix in to the gelato properly, so you just have to pour it on at the moment it's served.)

This extraordinary gelateria has definitely done wonders for my bike-riding motivation.

Prop 8 Challenge - Oral Argument Impressions

2009-03-07T01:57:00.000-08:00

I'm wondering whether Thursday's oral arguments at the California Supreme Court in the challenge against Prop 8 set a new "ratings" record for a court proceeding. In addition to the packed courtroom, there were jumbotron TV screens set up for crowds at San Francisco and LA City Halls and an auditorium in West Hollywood, and the proceeding was streamed live on the Internet, where it was watched by countless more. That's certainly a good thing in terms of civic interest as well as court transparency. I'm also wondering how many of those people really understood what the case was about. Contrary to the common understanding, this was not a case about gay marriage. While gay marriage was at stake, it was not at issue. What was at issue was a procedural question about "revising" versus "amending" the constitution, and the underlying crucial philosophical questions about the purpose of a constitution and the meaning of inalienable rights.

All four of the attorneys for the petitioners were very good, but as with their briefs, I thought that Therese Stewart (representing the City and County of San Francisco) most eloquently expressed the core principles at issue. She expounded the centrality of the protection of minorities against the majority in the drafting of the Constitution, and the deliberate distinction between a revision and an amendment as the people intentionally restraining themselves through the Constitution. While the small body of precedent concerning amendment vs revision has focused on "quantitative" or "structural" changes, at least some of the Justices seemed to agree that this was a case of first impression on the question of an amendment abridging a fundamental right with respect to a suspect class (i.e., exactly the sort of thing that would get tossed on equal protection grounds if enacted as statute), and further, that the grounds for revision were not necessarily limited to the categories of quantitative or structural change. I thought Stewart got the heart of it when she stated that the purpose of the Constitution, particularly of its Equal Protection clause, and of its separation of powers (checks and balances) is to protect politically vulnerable minorities, which is why structural changes require the revision process. But to put this safeguard against tinkering with the constitutional protection mechanisms to ensure liberty, but not to safeguard against direct assaults on liberty, would be to "defend the moat while letting the castle burn". (Her written brief presents the argument more eloquently than I can here in a brief blog.)

Unfortunately, the Court seemed pretty skeptical of the revision argument, both from reluctance to forge new ground (which is what they were being asked to do) and from remaining unpersuaded that Prop 8 was such a significant assault on equal protection. That latter was crucially disappointing, as Justices George and Kennard seemed to have forgotten what they wrote so forcefully last year. Both of them made repeated comments to the effect that Prop 8 was not really abridging signficant substantive rights, but that it was really just tinkering with nomenclature. Huh? They spoke as if the decision last year had been about some quantitative disparity between the treatment of marriage and domestic partnership, when in fact the whole issue was whether a difference only in nomenclature was a significant impairment of equal protection. Chief Justice George wrote for pages and pages on why nomenclature matters. And now: eh, it's just a name. I expect it was just seasoned discretion on the part of the petitioners counsel not to quote the Justices own opinions to them (the one time Stewart started down that road, Justice Kennard got very defensive).

There was also the "novel theory" from the Attorney General, who didn't do anyone any favors by needlessly undermining the petitioners' theory while advancing a novel one of his own, and then sending an inexperienced and not-well-prepared underling to advocate it. Jerry Brown should have had the cojones to defend his theory himself, especially in such a high profile case. This seems like political thinking all around: flip sides to be where he thinks would be more popular with his base, but then send someone else to argue the case so he can distance himself from a failure. It would be one thing if he had a junior attorney on his staff who was a classical liberal zealot steeped in John Stuart Mill and the other classical philosophy in which the novel theory was grounded, who could have argued passionately. But the attorney he sent was clearly not that, and he stumbled painfully in defending an argument he himself seemed not to clearly understand. Some potentially interesting philosophical ground was broached in the question of "inalienable rights", which rights are inalienable, what exactly inalienable means. Alas, no good answers were given. And it doesn't help that the California Constitution, having been amended some 500 times (as was repeatedly remarked), is rather a jumble. As C.J. George noted, reading from Article I, Section 1 (the "bill of rights") of the California Constitution, it identifies liberty, property, and privacy among the "inalienable" rights, but the same section also includes the right to fish, and the right to travel navigable waterways. Do Californians really have an inalienable right to fish?

One thing I was glad for was an affirmation of something I have been saying all along: that Prop 8 does not nullify the Court's decision of last May, and that the findings of sexual orientation being a suspect class, and marriage being a fundamental right entitled to strict scrutiny with regard to equal protection questions -- all of that is still in full force and good law, regardless of what happens in this challenge. That point was made emphatically and repeatedly by several of the Justices (particularly George and Kennard), and was agreed to by the intervenor counsel. The Justices also referred to the "constitutionalization" of the equal marriage rights, which if I understand their meaning, means that even though it was the legislature who created domestic partnership and has given it all of the same rights of marriage, it would violate the Constitution to take any of those rights away.

I was glad to see that the implications of upholding Prop 8 (or more accurately, holding that the voters of California may abridge a fundamental right against a suspect class by a bare 50%+1 majority) were laid bare. Intervenor counsel Kenneth Starr freely admitted that by the theory he was arguing for, a bare majority of the voters could amend the Constitution in practically unlimited ways, including deleting the right of free speech from the California Constitution, or by amending the Constitution to prohibit any legislation protecting the rights of gays and lesbians. Justice George mused that the problem may well be that the California Constitution is too easily amended, but that's a problem that should be resolved politically. (Hello, Sacramento? Can we get a legislative initiative to revise the amendment process? Certainly all the same legislators who earlier this week voted for the resolution that Prop 8 should have been a revision should support the codification of the principle behind the instance.)

There was also some discussion of the "split the baby" proposition offered by Pepperdine law professors Kmiec and Saxer in Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle. They ventured that the best way to reconcile the religious liberty interests of Proposition 8 with the equal protection interests of In Re Marriage Cases would be to have the state offer domestic partnerships to everyone and "marriage" (the nomenclature) to no one. Justice Chin was fascinated by this, and asked several of the attorneys whether that proposal would adequately resolve all of the issues at hand, and whether it was the province of the Court to impose that solution. Everyone (including Starr) agreed with the first part, but there was little enthusiasm for the second part (and a clear "no" from Starr).

I suppose we don't really know what the Justices are thinking, or what they will conclude, but for the most part they seemed surprisingly scrutable. It could be that they are merely masters at devil's advocacy, or it could be that they have pretty lousy poker faces. From what I saw, I concur with the consensus of observers that Prop 8 will be upheld, but the marriages that occurred within the legal window will also be upheld. That latter may even be unanimous. Starr seemed to be meeting skepticism all across the panel on that argument. (Just for the fun of prediction, I'll predict that Prop 8 is upheld 5-2, with Werdigar and Moreno in the minority, and the existing marriages are upheld unanimously.)

In the long run, upholding Prop 8 will be a good thing, as it will force us to win the political fight head on (which we're quite close to doing), rather than enabling the distraction of the "black-robed tyrants" complaint. And as a bonus, maybe this will even spur a revision of our state's out-of-control amendment process.

FILM: Two Lovers

2009-02-28T23:37:00.000-08:00

This evening we subjected ourselves to the torturous romantic drama Two Lovers. Joaquin Phoenix and Gwyneth Paltrow both gave great performances as wrecking balls of disfunctionality that ruin each other and those around them. But do I really want to watch that? If this film has a lesson to offer, it is that when someone says "I love you because I feel like I really know you", they don't really know you at all, and you should run the other way. When Leonard (Phoenix) and Michelle (Paltrow) first realize that their windows are opposite each other, it's a cute romantic New York moment. But before long, Leonard's watching her from his window verges into psycho-stalker creepy. Operatic arias haunt the film, mostly from Cavalleria Rusticana (appropriate enough for the broken love triangles, or rather, quadrilaterals), giving an operatic gravitas to these messed-up souls and their psycho-drama, but the writers should have consulted Marta Domingo for an alternate ending in the style of La Rondine. What happened instead was really rather incredible and appalling.

BOOKS: The Expected One

2009-02-23T00:32:00.000-08:00

For the last couple weeks, I've been enjoying reading The Expected One by Kathleen McGowan, an intriguing cross between Dan Brown and Elaine Pagels. McGowan's story has obvious similarities to The Da Vinci Code, dealing with the mysteries of a secret society dedicated to protecting the suppressed knowledge that Mary Magdalene was really the wife of Jesus Christ, and that there are blood line descendants even today. Like the Da Vinci Code, there are many secrets hidden in famous European works of art. If you enjoyed the Da Vinci Code, particularly if you enjoyed the exposition of how potentially explosive secrets have been hidden through history, then you should enjoy this book too. But while another Da Vinci Code would be fun, what really distinguishes The Expected One is the book within the book. I don't think I'm giving too much away to say that the "holy grail" in McGowan's story is not just the existence of the blood line, but the discovery of a whole new gospel, written by Mary Magdalene herself. While this new gospel doesn't explicitly contradict anything in the traditional gospels, it shines a whole new light on various aspects of Biblical characters and events, and very creatively fills in much of the untold back story. McGowan's reimagining of the machinations that could well have occurred between the Pharisees, the Essenes, the Zealots, and the Nazarenes, as well as King Herod and Pontius Pilate, leading up the crucifixion, were fascinating and thought-provoking. While her narrative does not challenge any core Christian beliefs, it will certainly challenge many people's conventional understanding of specific events, such as Pilate's fateful decision, and the role of Judas, as well as suggest a surprising back story involving the Marys, Pilate's wife, and Salome. (She even explains the vexing mystery of why nearly every named woman in Jesus's life is named Mary.) And in places where this new gospel parallels the existing ones, it sheds some intriguing new light. One point gives a great example of how the translation of a particular word can have huge implications. This gospel also adds some great Christian examples of faith and forgiveness worthy of a gospel. The outer modern story was engaging, and expounded some fascinating little-known history about a group called the Cathars in the middle ages, but it's the inner story that really makes this book worth reading.

STAGE: Pippin

2009-02-15T23:33:00.000-08:00

I'd never seen Pippin before, although I've always liked some of the famous tunes from the show, so when I heard that the Mark Taper was mounting a production, I was eager to check it out. When I heard that it was a co-production with Deaf West Theatre, I was even more intrigued. I was quite taken with their last collaboration, Big River, a few years ago, and knew how extraordinarily creative that combination could be. On the surface of it, a musical put on by a theatre company dedicated to the deaf, and featuring a mixed cast of deaf, hard-of-hearing, and hearing actors, sounds like a dubious proposition. But a bilingual (English and American Sign Language) staging can add a whole artistic dimension to the show. If you've seen a good signing of lyrics (the Gay Men's Chorus of LA concerts are always great for that), then you'll know how artfully expressive the signing can be. If done right, incorporating signing into a production is a significant addition, not a distraction. And this production really does it right. Several of the characters are played by deaf actors who have off-stage actors providing their voices, and Pippin is played by two on-stage actors, a primary deaf one and a vocal shadow (the notion of a sign-language interpreter turned upside-down), a technique used to great dramatic advantage. Pippin is given his voice by the magician in the beginning through a magic trick, smartly exploiting the magic theme to introduce the concept of two side-by-side actors playing one character. At times, the vocal double fades into the background as we watch the deaf primary actor while hearing the voice. Other times, the vocal double adds expression of his own physically as well as vocally. And on occasion, they talk to each other, embodying conflicting emotions within the character they both play. (In a way, it was reminiscent of the "daemon" concept in the Golden Compass novels I recently read.) The device was no mere device, but was made an integral part of the story, and it worked brilliantly.

The other aspect of this production that was totally inspired was a visual conceit of disembodied body parts running throughout the production. This appears in the very first number just as an eye-popping choreographic visual when two pairs of arms, tightly spot-lit, thrust up through an invisible seam in the stage floor and start signing to the music. These detached arms appear at various points throughout the show. During a bloody battle number, detached arms and legs are dropped onto the stage, and at the end of the battle, Pippin has a unique conversation with a severed head lying on the ground, and its nearby detached arm (which signs as the head speaks). Later, during Pippin's episode of hedonism, there's a racy boudoir scene where Pippin (both of them) is ravished by a fluid series of arms and torsoes popping out of and submerging back into the bed sheets. Even the canopy of the bed is comprised of beaux-arts nymph-like women's bodies. The whole visual was worthy of Jean Cocteau. This extended theme of detached body parts was marvelous on a pure visual level, while on a symbolic level beautifully underscoring Pippin's sense of incompleteness and the unfulfilling dreams he chases.

There were other lovely visuals as well. "Love Song" was made particularly memorable with the two falling-in-lovers uplit so that they threw large shadows as they faced each other and signed, at one point even spelling out L-O-V-E in ephemeral hand shadows. And the saucy cabaret choreography of "No Time At All" was great fun.

This top notch cast, in this inspired production, is working magic at the Mark Taper Forum.

I Admire Michael Phelps Even More

2009-02-09T23:23:00.000-08:00

So Michael Phelps tried marijuana. Big deal. Millions of respectable Americans have smoked marijuana, including our President (who is undoubtedly not the first President to have inhaled, but is the first one to have honestly admitted it). Personally, I think it's a sign of intellectual curiosity. Michael Phelps is still a phenomenal athlete, with a well-earned triumphant Olympic performance, and by most accounts a nice guy to boot, so there's no reason we should stop regarding him with admiration. Moreover, he was admirable in the way he handled the situation, with a forthright honest admission (when many other people in the same situation might have tried to deny it) and an apology for his lapse of judgment. In my opinion, trying marijuana in itself was no lapse of judgment, but doing so while under contract as a role model probably was, since his actions included the risk of putting his sponsors in an awkward position. On the other hand, I think even role models should have some zone of privacy, and the ganef who sold that photo deserves to be sued for invasion of privacy. Kudos to Visa, Speedo, Omega, as well as the IOC, for standing by Phelps. Omega said it was "strongly committed" to its relationship with Phelps, calling his Beijing accomplishments "among the defining sporting achievements in the history of sport... The current story in the press involves Michael Phelps' private life and is, as far as Omega is concerned, a nonissue," the company said. That's exactly the right attitude. In shameful contrast, the sanctimonious santions from Kellogg (who dropped his sponsorship) and the USA Swimming team (who suspended him for three months) reflect poorly on them, not on Phelps. And that blowhard South Carolina sheriff who's making noises about pressing charges: what an ass.

FILM: He's Just Not That Into You

2009-02-09T22:48:00.000-08:00

I enjoyed the "anti-rom-com" He's Just Not That Into You, a cute funny film illustrating Dan Savage's dictum that "every relationship you ever have will fail, until you find one that doesn't". The tangentially interwoven tales of women seeking romance humorously poke fun at all the stories we like to tell ourselves to survive the ordeal of dating, agonizing over "does he really like me?" and "when is he going to call?". The film purports itself to be an "anti-rom-com", and it does have its fun puncturing romantic notions, but in the end it's a rom-com after all. The film features a great ensemble cast of big stars and up-and-comers. Ginnifer Goodwin is charming as Gigi, the perennially-hopeful-despite-being-repeatedly-dumped girl, and Justin Long is equally charming as Alex, the cynical guy who keeps telling her how to tell when a guy is "just not that into you". We begin with Gigi falling hard for Conor (Kevin Connolly), who's just not that into her, because he really wants Scarlett Johanssen, who's blowing him off because she felt a spark in a grocery line with Bradley Cooper, who's married to Jennifer Connelly, who is office girlfriends with Gigi and Jennifer Anniston, who has everything but a ring with Ben Affleck, meanwhile Drew Barrymore convinces Conor (a realtor) to advertise in the gay weekly and pick up the business Baltimore's gentrifying gays. Needless to say, amusing comedy ensues. Nothing profound here (one can't expect profound films in January), but some good laugh-out loud moments.

BOOKS: Eat, Pray, Love

2009-02-08T17:05:00.000-08:00

I recently finished Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. (I know, everybody was reading that last year, and I'm late to the party.) It turned out to be a terrific and enjoyable book, a unique travelog and spiritual journey bound up with a "chick-flick" plot of "oh, how will I ever get over this nasty divorce and subsequent messy break-up". I have to say, I was a bit wary at first, worried that it was going to be some hippie-dippie new-agey thing, and I was not reassured in the introduction when the author promised that her journey wasn't going to be some soft amorphous new-agey quest. (Such reassurances tend to have the opposite effect, like the line "this isn't a sales call", which is only ever spoken by telemarketers.) But I stayed with it, and eventually my hackles came down, and I really enjoyed the story as I got to know and trust the author better. On the audio version, the author reads her own book, and does a great job. When she slides into her more cynical side, she turns up her New York accent, which is somehow reassuring, an audible sign of her not taking herself too seriously. She also has a great ear for dialect, and does a good job of reproducing the speech patterns and accents of the various people she meets in Italy, India, and Indonesia. (The one chapter in which she recalls the patter of an old Italian man carrying on at a soccer game is a hoot, as is another chapter in which she captures her scattered trains of thought in her early attempts to meditate in an ashram.) And just as she found her sojourn in Italy, indulging in the simple pleasures of food and language, to be a necessary preparation for her more spiritual explorations in India, I found her stories of Italy, in which I got to know her and her situation, to be a good preparation for her accounts of the more spiritual part of her journey. Her time in the ashram was surprisingly down to earth at the same time as she was finding heaven. (It reminds me of hearing the Dalai Lama speak, and being impressed at how down to earth and pragmatic he was, constantly disappointing those who were expecting him to say more surreal things.) In all the places that she went, she met and befriended a variety of interesting characters, and captured them well in her prose, which is deliciously written. Her metaphors, whether describing the pain of a break-up, or the delight of the perfect pizza, are creative and vivid. It was truly a delight to read this book, and I was almost sorry when it ended. What a wonderfully creative and fulfilling way to get over a bad break-up!

World Postcard Quiz

2009-02-06T21:58:00.000-08:00

I've run this fun world postcard quiz with friends at work and friends on Facebook. If you'd like to try it, you can view the postcards on Flickr. Can you identify these 25 places around the world? Try to do it without consulting any references (no Google, no Wikipedia, no Flickr browsing). For each, identify the subject of the photo and its location (city/country). Extra credit for any factoids you can add about the subject. You can email me privately with your answers, and I'll give you a score, or if you just want to see the answers yourself, click here and they will be revealed below. (I gave 2 points for identifying the subject, 1 point for the city, 1 point for the country, and 1 extra point for any decent factoid.

High scorers from my Facebook friends included:

* Mom and Dad (107, but they've been everywhere)

* Katy (who's been almost everywhere)

* Patrick (80 with lots of architectural extra credit)
* Bernie (74 who also named all the architects)
* Jo (71)

* George (69)
* Jason (67)

Here are the answers!

01 Sydney Opera House and Sydney Harbor Bridge in the background. Sydney, Australia.
02 Temples at Abu Simbel in southern Egypt.
03 Golden Pavilion Temple, Kyoto, Japan.
04 Acropolis, Athens, Greece.
05 Trafalgar Square, London, England.
06 Angkor Wat, Angkor, Cambodia.
07 Petronas Twin Towers, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
08 Ayers Rock or Uluru, south of Alice Springs, Australia.
09 Forbidden City, Beijing, China.
10 Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain.
11 Library of Celsus, Ephesus, Turkey.
12 Basilique du Sacré-Cœur, Paris, France.
13 Tikal, Guatemala.
14 Winter Palace / Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia.
15 Iguazu Falls, border Brazil and Argentina.
16 Western Wall, Jerusalem, Israel.
17 Petra, Jordan.
18 Sugarloaf Mountain, Rio de Janiero, Brazil.
19 Sagrada Familia, Barcelona, Spain.
20 St. Peter's Basilica in St. Peter's Square, The Vatican (enclave in Rome, Italy).
21 Table Mountain, Capetown, South Africa.
22 Ghats on the river Ganges, Varanasi, India.
23 Gamla Stan, Stockholm, Sweden.
24 Bridge of Sighs, Venice, Italy.
25 Victoria Falls, Zambezi River, border Zambia and Zimbabwe.

BOOKS: His Dark Materials

2009-01-26T23:24:00.000-08:00

I read the second and third books of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy back to back, so I don't think I can really comment separately on The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass. I realy enjoyed the first book, The Golden Compass, finding it very creative and an exciting adventure. Finishing the trilogy, I realize that I didn't know the half of his creativity. The adventure kept on moving, keeping me gripped to the end, but the ideas he explores are bold and provocative. What happens when we die? Do we have souls? Does God exist, and is He good? I'd heard that these books were considered heretical by some, by I didn't realize the extent of it. From the point of view of organized Christianity, these books are profoundly heretical, far more so than the Da Vinci Code or Angels and Demons, even more than Satanic Verses is heretical for Muslims. The organized church in his book is a corrupt puritanical and power-hungry organization, with names like the Magisterium, the Consistory Court, and the Oblation Board making it a thinly veiled analogy of the Catholic Church. (The fictional church is based in Geneva, so it has Swiss Guards. Just how thin can the veil be?) His account of God, angels, and creation is revealed in the second and third books, and it is shocking. But what is most heretical is that he describes a world in which good and evil exist and people can be moral without needing a creator or an afterlife. Heaven is where we build it. All of this theology (or is it anti-theology?) is not dry philosophical prose, but is integrally woven into a fascinating fantasy of parallel worlds, intriguing characters, and a great battle between good and evil (though it's not always clear who is on which side until the end). One of the parallel worlds encountered is a very creative imagining of an alternate evolution. This trilogy is written as a fantasy for a youth audience, but like the latter Harry Potter books, deals with some dark themes that require a bit of maturity to appreciate. Unlike Harry Potter, where each of those books ended in a safe place, each of these books before the last one ends with things looking rather bleak. (In Hollywood's version of The Golden Compass, they had to twist the order of events to end on a more upbeat note.) But in the end, they really make you think about goodness and truth and self-sacrifice, and the meaning of life. I thoroughly enjoyed these books, but they are not for the theologically faint of heart.

Strict Textualism, So Help Me God

2009-01-25T23:34:00.000-08:00

As has been widely reported, Chief Justice John Roberts messed up the words when adminstering the oath of office to Barack Obama at the presidential inauguration on Tuesday. The Chief Justice prompted Obama to say "execute the office of President to the United States faithfully" instead of "faithfully execute the office of President of the United States". For the sort of the folks who wished at all costs to disbelieve that Obama is in fact the President of the United States, this trivial technicality gave them a slender straw to clutch in denying that he is really the President. The oath is very explicitly specified in the US Constitution, in Article II, Section 1, where it states:

Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Knowing that he would be dogged by this if left uncorrected (after all, look at how the tinfoil brigade refuse to let go the idea that Obama isn't a natural born citizen of the US), Obama and Roberts met on Thursday afternoon for a do-over. This time, the oath was said slowly, carefully, and correctly. The official announcements were careful not to acknowledge any claim that Tuesday's oath was insufficient, instead saying that the second oath was taken for "an abundance of caution". In at least two prior cases, with William H. Taft and with Herbert Hoover, the wording of the oath deviated in similarly insignificant ways from the constitutional text, and it was not deemed necessary to readminister it. However, I can respect the decision of Obama and Roberts do a retake, out of diligent respect for the strict text of the Constitution.

Now it seems that some feathers were ruffled because Obama did not have his left hand on a Bible for the do-over oath. Newsflash for those folks: the do-over was about hewing to the Constitution, which specifies the precise words for the oath, but does not say anything about having one's hand on any particular book. (It should be noted that Teddy Roosevelt did not swear his oath on a Bible, and John Quincy Adams swore on a book of law.) Anyone concerned with strict adherence to the Constitution should not be worried about the absence of a Bible. Instead, they ought to be concerned with the extra-Constitutional "so help me God" at the end of the oath. Now to be clear, I have no objection to the President adding that phrase unprompted after completing the oath. What I do object to is the Chief Justice deposing the President, "so help you God?", as if it were part of the constitutionally mandated oath. In Tuesday's oath, I found Roberts' tone at that point particularly creepy. He posed the question with such stern vehemence that it was clear there was a right and a wrong answer. I'm not sure how Roberts, supposedly a strict textualist, rationalizes his deposition of "so help you God", which is not only beyond his explicit brief in Article II, Section 1, but in apparent conflict with Article VI:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

Inauguration

2009-01-21T01:02:00.000-08:00

I watched this morning teary-eyed as Barack Obama took the oath of office, feeling a surge of pride in my country, that despite seemingly deep political and cultural rifts, we can rally together as a nation to witness a peaceful transfer of power from one party to another. Recent events in other parts of the world underscore just how precious and fragile that is. This is easily the most anticipated and celebrated inauguration of my lifetime.

My idiosyncratic thoughts and highlights:

Rick Warren's invocation.
I listened openly, and I found it gracious and hitting the right notes for the occasion.

"Help us, oh God, to remember that we are Americans, united not by race or religion or blood, but to our commitment to freedom and justice for all.
When we focus on ourselves, when we fight each other, when we forget you, forgive us. When we presume that our greatness and our prosperity is ours alone, forgive us. When we fail to treat our fellow human beings and all the Earth with the respect that they deserve, forgive us.
And as we face these difficult days ahead, may we have a new birth of clarity in our aims, responsibility in our actions, humility in our approaches, and civility in our attitudes, even when we differ.
Help us to share, to serve and to seek the common good of all.
May all people of good will today join together to work for a more just, a more healthy and a more prosperous nation and a peaceful planet."

I can say "amen" to all of that.
It felt a bit overly religious for an ecumenical occasion to recite the Lord's Prayer. (And I couldn't help but notice that Warren "trespasses". I was surprised to learn last year at a wedding of friends that some people forgive "debts" rather than "trespasses". The debt crowd get by with a heap fewer syllables, leaving us trespassers behind in a unison recitation.)

Air and Simple Gifts. What a beautiful piece, and how appropriate on so many levels. Composed by American composer John Williams, incorporating the famous Shaker hymn and harkening to another great American composer Aaron Copland. (I read later that a Copland piece was meant to be performed at Eisenhower's inauguration, but was dropped because some thought Copland was too liberal and might be a communist sympathizer. So much the better to correct that mistake and honor him today.) I love that our inauguration features a classical quartet. And what great symbolism in the composition of that quartet: a Jewish Israeli-American, a French-born Chinese-American, a black man from Chicago, and a woman from Venezuela, all coming together to make great music. What a great foreshadowing of a theme of Obama's speech.

The Oath.
"I, Barack Hussein Obama, …" No apologies or hiding his middle name. Hussein loud and clear. As it should be.

The Chief Justice is nervous. He's rushing, getting the words in the wrong order (as Ann Althouse cracked, so much for the CJ being a strict textualist), and they're tripping over each other. It reminded me of Charles and Diana's wedding, where she was nervous and got his middle names muddled. (Funny, I later read Andrew Sullivan had the same thought.)

The Speech.

"Forty-four Americans have now taken the Presidential oath." Hate to cavil, but while Obama is the 44th president, he's only the 43rd person to hold the office, as Grover Cleveland counted twice with Benjamin Harrison in between.

"On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord. On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics." This man promises to rise above the partisan ratrace. That's why I voted for him.

"... in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things" Another quibble, but this seems a gratuitous reference, as his point doesn't really fit with the context of the famous passage from Corinthians.

I'm loving the uplifting appeals to our great history combined with the challenge to live up to our promise.

"We will restore science to its rightful place…" Can I get an "amen"? Amen!

"The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works, whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.
Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end.
And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account, to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day, because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.
Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched.
But this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control. The nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous.
The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on the ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart -- not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good."
Brilliant stuff. He's articulating a philosophy that recognizes both the promises and the pitfalls of government and of the market, moving beyond and above stale debates and false dichotomies of "pro-big-government" vs "pro-market".

"As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." Amen!

"For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and nonbelievers." My God, did he include "nonbelievers"? Yes he did! He could easily have left that out. But this man says what is right, without regard to whether it's popular or easy. I love that about him.

"We will not apologize for our way of life nor will we waver in its defense. And for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that, "Our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken. You cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you." … To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict or blame their society's ills on the West, know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy." This strikes just the right notes of letting the world know we know the difference between reasonable Muslims and Islamist nutjobs, and we won't take crap from the latter.

"To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist." Robert Mugabe, we're looking at you.

"Our challenges may be new, the instruments with which we meet them may be new, but those values upon which our success depends, honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism -- these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility -- a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character than giving our all to a difficult task. This is the price and the promise of citizenship." It's not "change versus traditional values", it's "change AND traditional values". His call to responsibility and service is inspiring.

His close was brilliant, recalling Washington at Valley Forge, acknowledging hard times ahead, while giving us inspiration to meet the challenge, calling us to our better selves.

I am full of hope for the four years ahead.

FILM: The Reader

2009-01-12T23:01:00.000-08:00

I found The Reader an intriguing film, at times ponderous, but ultimately very thought-provoking. Through layered metaphors hung on the story of a young German man and an older woman whose lives are fatalistically intertwined, the film raises questions of how people can commit unthinkable acts, of trying to uncover the truth of long-past crimes, of how the guilt of complicity can cast a pall over a lifetime, of how a generation can reconcile itself to the irreconcilable. Needless to say, this is not an uplifting feel-good movie. But neither is it like any other Holocaust-themed film, because this film doesn't deal with the Holocaust itself, but with the shadow of the Holocaust on later German generations. There are no neat answers offered. Scenes of a war crimes tribunal cast doubt on the complete justice of the proceedings. A Holocaust survivor seems to have profited excessively from her memoir. And a man's life seems ruined by guilt for turning away when he could have countered an injustice. But the path through this moral wreckage is lit by fascinatingly enigmatic human characters. Kate Winslet is brilliant as the brusque and moody Hannah, while David Kross is outstanding as the young innocent Michael, and Ralph Fiennes brings just the right air of insularity and regret to the older Michael. The script and direction shone in some parts and got a bit ponderous in others. The early segment of the story was a wonderfully realized coming-of-age story, perfectly capturing the excitement and confusion of a teen's first love (while showing a delicious dose of beautiful skin). In the middle segment, a couple of courtroom scenes had memorable visuals -- Michael's sudden realization about Hannah, and Hannah's co-defendants smelling weakness and turning on her like a pack of wolves. But other parts seemed a bit flawed. The timeline seemed more jumbled than it needed to be (the viewer really needs to pay attention to keep the datelines straight). And a minor character, a law professor, was a bit surreal, and almost Yoda-like in his apparently wise but mostly impenetrable lines. The film, like the professor, seems full of meaning but it's hard to make out what exactly it's trying to say. Then there are the moral issues that the film doesn't intend to raise but may occur to its viewers, like whether we should have much sympathy for a Nazi prison guard and child molestor. But some movies are disturbing and good, and I think this was one of them.

Korean BBQ Taco Truck Food Rave

2009-01-09T21:07:00.000-08:00

Yet another "only in LA" experience... this evening in Silver Lake, we stumbled upon some crazy Korean BBQ taco truck food rave that pops up in various parts of town. We were walking in Silver Lake after dinner at Alegria to get some gelato at Pazzo (mascarpone orange swirl this evening!), when we saw this taco truck with a huge crowd swarming around it. Then I saw the whiteboard specials -- tomatillo sesame French toast with goat cheese, kimchi quesadilla -- and knew this was no ordinary taco truck. It smelled good, but we were too full to eat dinner again. We talked to some folks, and they said this Kogi has a following, and you just catch their location from Twitter. Their "standard menu" features tacos with Korean BBQ contents (short ribs, spicy chicken or pork). The sidewalk was packed full of people chowing down. It's a food rave!

FILM: Valkyrie

2009-01-07T23:44:00.000-08:00

Valkyrie is a thrilling portrayal of an attempt by some well-placed decent-minded Germans to assassinate Hitler during World War II. (The script is based reasonably closely on actual historical events and people.) Of course there is no suspense in the plot's ultimate failure, but it is amazing to see how it came about and how close it came to succeeding. Once the film got going, I was on the edge of my seat to the climax, and despite the advantage of historical hindsight, I still found myself silently urging the conspirators on. Tom Cruise does a fine job as the heroic Colonel von Stauffenberg, who ends up leading the plot when more senior men are less decisive. His role is mostly courageous man of action, which Cruise is seasoned at, but he also performs well in moments of restrained emotion, like saying goodbye to his wife, and trying to contact her in the end. The action-and-suspense experience of director Bryan Singer (of X-Men and Superman Returns fame) translates nicely into this historical thriller where the only superpowers are courage and integrity. His eye for the human elements compliments Christopher McQuarrie's script, which brings out the differing modes of engagement of the various conspirators, from Bill Nighy's risk-averse general to Eddie Izzard's reluctant collaborator, and Tom Wilkinson's masterfully playing both sides. This inspirational historical footnote is well worth seeing, a true profile in courage.

Belief-O-Matic

2009-01-07T22:30:00.000-08:00

Belief.net is hosting an online quiz called "Belief-O-Matic". Answer 20 questions about your views on God, salvation, the afterlife, etc., and they'll tell you which religions are most congenial to your beliefs. Here were my results:

1. Secular Humanism (100%)
2. Unitarian Universalism (94%)
3. Liberal Quakers (81%)
4. Nontheist (81%)
5. Theravada Buddhism (79%)
6. Neo-Pagan (75%)
7. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (73%)
8. Taoism (67%)
9. Reform Judaism (64%)
10. New Age (63%)
11. Mahayana Buddhism (50%)
12. Scientology (49%)
13. New Thought (47%)
14. Orthodox Quaker (46%)
15. Baha'i Faith (44%)
16. Sikhism (43%)
17. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (40%)
18. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (33%)
19. Jainism (30%)
20. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (26%)
21. Islam (24%)
22. Orthodox Judaism (24%)
23. Seventh Day Adventist (22%)
24. Eastern Orthodox (15%)
25. Roman Catholic (15%)
26. Hinduism (14%)
27. Jehovah's Witness (0%)

Well, I guess I'm not surprised to find that I'm a 100% secular humanist. I'm 64% Reform Jew, but only 22% Adventist. Ironically, I'm exactly equal parts Orthodox Jew and Muslim (24%). 0% Jehovah's Witness was not surprising, but 49% Scientologist?? Yikes!

FILM: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

2009-01-01T23:53:00.000-08:00

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a film that makes you think about life and the passage of time, about age, and about opportunities taken and missed. Having read the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story on which this film was based, I nominate it for Best Adaptation. Writer Eric Roth has taken a creative short story and fleshed it out into something much more profound, a poignant life/love story offering philosophical insights. Where Fitzgerald executed the thought experiment of what it would be like to live a life backwards, Roth added thoughtful dimensions, such as what a character would be like who had been raised among old people. The film succeeds on multiple levels. The story reminded me of Titanic, all in a good way: the fateful romance, the epic sweep, the poignant carpe diem affirmation of life in the face of loss, the framing story of a woman looking back on her life at the end. Brad Pitt is remarkable in a role than spans seven decades, projecting youth from an old body and maturity from a young one, all with the quiet equanimity of someone who was both literally and figuratively "born old". And he manages to make it all look natural despite what must be a ton of make-up. (This will be a shoe-in for Best Make-Up Oscar.) Likewise Cate Blanchett, who spans many decades herself in this film with feisty grace. The epic sweep of the story is lushly filmed, beautifully depicting New Orleans, New York, Paris, Murmansk, and the WWII Pacific theatre, through various decades, evocatively capturing each period. The fatalistic symbolism borders on preciousness in just one or two moments of the film (the hummingbirds and the kaleidoscope of coincidence with the taxi in Paris), but in other parts (the English channel swimmer, the preacher's death, the lightning strikes) the Forrest Gump serendipity was perfectly charming. I can't think of a more appropriate film to have seen on New Year's Day, as we look back on the year past and forward to the year to come.

FILM: Frost/Nixon

2009-01-01T22:37:00.000-08:00

When we saw Milk, I thought that Sean Penn had the best actor Oscar locked up. But last weekend, we saw Frost/Nixon, and now I'm thinking Sean Penn should be worried. Frank Langella did a fantastic job of embodying Richard Nixon, in what must have been an ultimate actor's challenge, bringing a well-known and widely-charicatured historical figure to life on screen without merely doing an impression. Nixon had such signature characteristics -- the sweaty face, the five o'clock shadow, the distinctive speech patterns -- that you couldn't not do them, and yet doing them could so easily veer into charicature. But Langella is flawless, completely natural. And Michael Sheen gives an equally strong performance, perfectly personifying the talk-show personality David Frost. Sheen gives Frost such a buoyant lightness that I almost had the feeling his feet weren't touching the ground, and yet he also conveyed a sense of hidden depth in moments when Frost was as keen as any sharply-focused entrepeneur with a vision, but hiding it behind a sunny face. The drama of the film comes not from Nixon's confessions (we all know what's coming there), but in how such a highly improbable confrontation came to occur. The film by no means vindicates Nixon, but it does make him human and understandable if not sympathetic. The cross-purposes of what Frost (and his team) were hoping to accomplish and what Nixon was hoping to accomplish makes for good psychological drama, brought to an unexpected and illuminating juncture when a drunk Nixon calls Frost the night before their fateful interview. Director Ron Howard has done an admirable job bring this stage drama to film in a skillfully visual way, and for bringing out the best in his two fine stars. This film is definitely in the hunt for some Oscar gold.

Discovering BCAM

2008-12-31T00:46:00.000-08:00

I spent a pleasant afternoon visiting the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), including the new Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM), designed by Renzo Piano. It's a cool new addition to LA's architectural scene. The basic form of the building is large and rectangular, with sand-colored stone walls, making it coherent with the adjacent Ahmanson Building (the original part of the evolving LACMA campus), but the walls are dramatically sliced by the diagonal lines of exterior staircases and the vertical lines of their steel girder supports, all painted a bright orange-red. These are visually complimented by the greens and organic lines of palm trees and ferns. The extrusion of the structural forms made me think of the Pompidou Centre in Paris, where the stairs, plumbing and venting are all exposed on the exterior. But the Pompidou Centre is gritty and industrial looking, while BCAM's whimsical colors and architectural lines render the idea with beauty and charm. (I didn't realize until later that the Pompidou Centre was a much older project by the same architect.)

An escalator leads from the entry plaza right up to the top floor, inviting you to enter the building in an unconventional way, preparing you to expect something different. Upon entering, one of the first things you see is a kind of graphic mural lining a large shaft from the top of the tall ceiling dropping below the floor. When looking down and seeing an orange metal platform way below us rising up, we realized with a small shock of revelation that we were looking at an elevator shaft. The glass-doored elevator car is monumental (21 feet tall and wider than tall), and moves through that artwork. (As my friend Kraig remarked, it's almost worth the price of admission to see the elevator.) The galleries on the top floor were generously large, open, and well-lit, and nicely presented an collection of modern sculpture and paintings. (Many of the works themselves are quite sizeable, so it is helpful to have such an ample space to view them in.) Some of them are amusingly whimsical (like the giant blue balloon dog and the giant cracked red egg shell), some are just odd (a bust of Louis XIV in chrome), some are classic (the Warhols and Lichtensteins), and some are just not my thing (like the blank canvas with plain block letters that said something like "There are no ideas in this painting", to which I thought, "clearly true"). The middle floor of the museum is not open yet, and the bottom floor contained a pair of monumental sculptures by Richard Serra called "Band" and "Sequence". While it may seem extravagant to have a 20,000 square foot gallery dedicated to just two sculptures, they are seriously cool. The sculptures are giant ribbons of brown steel that wind around and in upon themselves, creating surreal spaces and corridors. The curving flow of the steel walls invites you to follow them around to see where they will lead, and the walls lean in at times and out at others, playing with your sense of space. (The curved and leaning walls are reminiscent of the Disney Hall, but on a more intimate scale, and with a softer more organic color and texture rather than gleaming shiny aluminum.) With "Sequence" especially, the continuously curvy corridors were surprisingly long, making us feel like we were walking on some kind of hyper-Moebius strip. That was definitely worth the admission.

The BCAM is connected via a promenade to the old Ahmanson Building, creating a new entry plaza. The plaza is graced by an art installation by Chris Burden called "Urban Light", an arrangement of streetlamps placed unusually close together to form colonnades by their repetition and variation. The Ahmanson Building has been reconfigured to facilitate movement between a new west entrance (from the new campus) to the old east entrance (to the Times Courtyard) on a higher floor. The central atrium now has a grand staircase between those two, and the open multi-floor atrium is now dominated by a cool monumental Tony Smith sculpture called "Smoke". One thing I do miss is that where the upper floors used to all open onto the atrium, they are now closed off. But overall, I'm liking the new additions to LACMA.

Tackling the Pope on the Proper Ecology of Man

2008-12-27T01:18:00.000-08:00

Earlier this week, the Pope delivered a Christmas meditation on joy as a fruit of the Holy Spirit. But as is becoming a Christmas tradition with him, he couldn't pass an opportunity to scold against homosexuality as a sign of all the world's ills. Last year, we were an obstacle to world peace. This year, we're an ecological disaster, akin to the destruction of the rainforests. Like last year, the Pope's blind spot about gays leads him astray from the proper implications of his own words.

He starts from a graceful exposition of Natural Law doctrine:

The ultimate foundation for our responsibility towards the earth rests on our beliefs about creation. The earth is not simply our possession which we can plunder according to our interests and desires. It is rather a gift of the Creator who has designed its intrinsic laws and with this has given us the basic directions for us to adhere as stewards of his creation. The fact that the earth, the cosmos, mirror the Creator Spirit, clearly means that their rational structures which, transcending the mathematical order, become almost palpable in our experience, bear within themselves an ethical orientation. The Spirit which has formed them, is more than mathematics, he is the Good in person, using the language of creation, and points us to the way of right living.

Since faith in the Creator is an essential part of the Christian Credo, the Church cannot and should not confine itself to passing on the message of salvation alone. It has a responsibility for the created order and ought to make this responsibility prevail, even in public. And in so doing, it ought to safeguard not only the earth, water, and air as gifts of creation, belonging to everyone. It ought also to protect man against the destruction of himself. What is necessary is a kind of ecology of man, understood in the correct sense.

Unfortunately, that's where Benedict takes the traditional wrong turn, with the overly simplistic claim that bonding in heterosexual matrimony is a universal moral imperative. His analogy to forest conservation calls to mind the evolution of that science. Where we once approached conservation with the idea that we should protect the trees from all threats, we have since come to realize that some "threats", including fires, are actually a part of the natural process, essential to the long-term maintenance of the forest ecosystem. If we were to apply Benedict's philosophy to forest conservation, we would take every possible step to put out forest fires (including naturally caused ones), and we would do all we could to ensure that every acorn that fell had the opportunity to germinate into a full-grown tree. But this would be completely unnatural. In the delicately balanced complex ecosystem, undergrowth keeps too many acorns from sprouting too densely, while occasional fires keep the undergrowth from getting out of hand and allow certain other plants to germinate. We understand this now.

With such an understanding in mind, the more rational approach for a "proper ecology of man" would be to recognize that man thrives in a complex society where different people make different contributions using their different talents, and not all people are called to the same end. With regard to the propagation of a societal species like ours, there is no justification for the claim that each and every individual has a duty to mate and reproduce. Many mate and reproduce, but some make other contributions to the furtherance of humankind, like teaching, caring for the sick and infirm, creating works of art, progressing science, and otherwise supporting families and society. Need I mention priests? It is really the height of blind arrogance that a celibate man addressing a curia composed entirely of celibate men could pontificate so obtusely about the moral call of all humans to mate, with such a glaring counterexample right in front of him. And as if this weren't enough, Benedict, in his 4th point of this very speech, cites 1 Corinthians 12. That whole chapter is an eloquent conceit on the Church as the body of Christ, with each member working with different gifts, just as each part of a body contributes differently to the whole:

If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? ¹⁸But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. ¹⁹If they were all one part, where would the body be? ²⁰As it is, there are many parts, but one body.
²¹The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don't need you!" And the head cannot say to the feet, "I don't need you!" ²²On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, ²³and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, ²⁴while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, ²⁵so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. ²⁶If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

It defies reason how Benedict can cite this very scripture in a speech insisting that all parts of the body should be reproductive organs.

BOOKS: The Wordy Shipmates

2008-12-18T23:19:00.000-08:00

I'd always enjoyed Sarah Vowell's segments on This American Life, so I expected I would enjoy her books as well. Reading her latest, The Wordy Shipmates, I was as delighted as I hoped to be. Vowell has a deep appreciation for history, a keen eye for irony, and a sharp wit. Her distinctive charm is her voice, both figuratively and literally. Her speaking voice has the innocent earnestness of a Peanuts character, while her "voice" is incisively sardonic commentary, rich with wacky metaphors and ironic juxtapositions. The combination is masterful deadpan. My only worry was that even great deadpan, unbroken, would get monotonous, but it was not so. Her wry observations were leavened with sincere ones, and her passion for the subjects of her study was all the more contagious for her truly earnest moments.

The subject of this book was the Puritan settlers of Massachusetts, a subject made quite fascinating by her expositions of different facets of their story. I learned much (for instance, I never before appreciated the differences between the Pilgrims and the Puritans), and was introduced to great characters -- John Winthrop, Roger Williams, Anne Hutchinson -- of whom I had known little more than their names. Vowell's sketches, while sardonic, are also well-grounded in source material, which is often quoted. In the audio book, read by Vowell herself, the quoted parts are read by actors, an interesting effect, as you get to recognize the voices after a while. Rather than a strictly chronological sequence, she presents a series of expositions on different characters and themes, which interlock and reinforce one another to paint a full history by the end. Unlike most historians who endeavor to be objective and detached, Vowell wears her distinctive point of view on her sleeve. She relates personal anecdotes and sentiments reflecting her subject, and at times makes ironic juxtapositions with more modern events with an unabashed subjectivity. For instance, her meditations on the theme of a "city on a hill", articulated in a famous sermon by John Winthrop, recur in accounts of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, but also jump to Reagan and Kennedy and other brief excursions into American exceptionalism. I don't see this as detracting from the history at all, in fact, it makes it more memorable. Just as a columnist with an explicit viewpoint can be just as illuminating and credible as an "objective" journalist, so is Vowell's style of history as illuminating and credible as a drier scholarly history. Her distinctive retelling of their stories brings these historical characters to life. A greatly entertaining and educational read.

Boycotts, Betrayal, and Business

2008-12-17T23:01:00.000-08:00

Over the weekend, LA Times columnist Steve Lopez wrote about Margie Christofferson, the unfortunate longtime manager and hostess at El Coyote Café on Beverly. Following the instruction of her Mormon church, she donated $100 toward the Yes on 8 campaign. When her name was discovered on a donor list, a disproportionate barrage of gay outrage was directed at her and at El Coyote, leading to email and website calls to boycott the restaurant, and protest demonstrations outside the landmark venue. I have a variety of mixed feelings about this.

For one, I think it's clearly disproportionate. While any donation toward injustice is regrettable, a great many people gave much larger donations than Christofferson's $100, and few if any have received the same focused wrath. Moreover, her donation was personal and not made on behalf of El Coyote. True, she is the daughter of the owner, and the public face of the restaurant. But the restaurant, as Lopez notes, has 89 employees, many of them gay. A couple of other managers pooled together a several hundred dollar donation to Equality California, and the donations of other employees to No on 8 may well have outweighed Christofferson's $100 for Yes. Because business is down 30%, likely the result of the boycott, many employees have had their hours cut and may be laid off. So this boycott has unjustly caused harm much more widely than its intended target.

I can sympathize with those who are angry at El Coyote, and can understand why this particular donation incurred such wrath. A friend recently noted that there's a strong sense of betrayal, because for so many gay people, El Coyote has seemed to be a safe and welcoming place for us, a part of "our neighborhood". And El Coyote has certainly done a significant share of its business from its gay clientele. Thus, this particular donation came with a sense of betrayal. We expected people like Howard Ahmanson and Rick Warren to be donating heavily to Proposition 8, and donations from people in Kern and Orange counties were expected. But here, in a gay-friendly restaurant, in the gay-friendliest part of town, where we always thought we were among friends, even a modest donation was an unexpected betrayal. It was a violation of an unspoken trust, and shattered the feeling of comfort and safety that many gay people felt at El Coyote. And for gay people, that can hit especially hard. Many gay people have been estranged or kicked out of their natural homes and families, which makes their feeling of adopted "home" in gay-friendly neighborhoods and venues like El Coyote have much greater import. I don't think this justifies the harsh response, but I think it explains the emotional logic of it. It was a betrayal that cut especially deep and close to home.

On the other hand, Christofferson seems oblivious to the injustice she has helped to perpetrate. It's one thing for people who claim not to know anybody gay (or who disown those they know) to advocate such things. But these people, like Sarah Palin and apparently like Margie Christofferson, who claim to have gay friends, yet still advocate against our equal rights, that's just galling. How can you claim to be someone's friend, and then vote to infringe their rights? That's as nonsensical as saying "Oh, I have lots of black friends, but I just don't think they should be allowed to drink out of the same drinking fountain as white people." Sorry, Sarah, sorry Margie, but you're not our friend. We've gone on too long letting you get away with pretending that you are. Are we just supposed to roll over and say, "oh well, you helped pass the revocation of my civil rights, but let's let it go, and pour me another margarita?" I don't think so.

Philosophically, I have a bit of discomfort with the fairness of a boycott, given the asymmetry in our laws. In "libertopia", everyone would have unfettered choice about who they do business with. But here in America (and especially in California), we recognize the power of a majority to economically tyrannize a minority, and so we have created laws against discrimination in public accommodations. Businesses are generally not allowed to discriminate (at least based on a variety of protected classes like race, religion, etc.) in choosing their customers. But customers, on the other hand, are allowed to choose their businesses. For instance, while it would be illegal for a restaurant to refuse to serve black people, it is not illegal for black people to organize a boycott of a restaurant. There's just something asymmetrical and unfair about that. As evidenced by El Coyote's empty tables, boycotts can have a powerful effect. The freedom of businesses to serve or refuse to serve whoever they choose has been sacrificed for the good of keeping economic cudgels from pummeling unpopular minorities, thus preserving liberty across the board for a diverse society where it might otherwise be practically infringed. It would seem a fair bargain that organized consumers not pick up that same economic cudgel, for the same reasons. Obviously, there's no practical way to legislate such a thing. But it is a philosophical qualm I have about boycotts in general.

On the other hand, Christofferson made a choice that had obvious ramifications for the business that she manages (and that her mother owns). One of El Coyote's significant assets was the "good will" that it had cultivated over the years in the gay community. It would be impossible for Christofferson to be oblivious to the value of gay good will to her business, and foolish to think that her position on Prop 8 wouldn't put that asset in jeopardy. And any businessperson ought to understand the value and the fragility of that intangible asset. While she has every right to her own political views and donations, when her advocacy goes against a constituency prominent among the clientele of her business, she has no right not to be responsible for the consequences. She has the right to insult any customer she pleases, but not the right to expect that customer to come back.

Change We Can Subscribe To

2008-12-16T23:49:00.000-08:00

During his historic campaign, President-Elect Obama broke new ground in his use of new media -- social networking, YouTube videos, web-based organizing. Since the election, the execution of his transition has been impressive, and has been documented and even conducted through an Internet presence called change.gov. He's been giving public addresses at least weekly, which are being published on YouTube (the 21st century equivalent of "fireside chats"), and can be subscribed to via RSS in audio or video. (Me, I've added Obama's weekly address to my podcast subscriptions via iTunes, so I can get it on my iPod during my commute to work.) And they're exploring ways to make change.gov a place not just for dissemination but for engagement. Obama will be our first truly 21st century president.

FOOD: Cobras y Matadors

2008-12-16T23:13:00.000-08:00

After the movie on Sunday, we checked out a longtime trendy eatery that we'd never tried: Cobras y Matadors, a tapas bar on Beverly at Curson (near The Grove). We had a great meal there and would definitely go back. They had traditional Spanish tapas as well as some trendy creations. (Think AOC: Spain edition.) It's all tapas (appetizers), so you just start ordering plates for the table and take things as they come. We started with "lomo embuchado", stuffed dates, and an assortment of Spanish cheeses (properly served with quince, marcona almonds, and tapenade). The "lomo embuchado" was a thinly sliced Spanish ham with slices of a mild tres leches cheese, served with raisin toast, and a tomato/caper salsa that just made my tongue stand up and applaud. (Even though the large proportion of tapas are served on bread, our waiter and the kitchen did a nice job of bringing us things with the bread on the side so my gluten-intolerant husband could enjoy them too.) The dates were stuffed with almonds and cheese, and wrapped in bacon, delicious morsels. We added a skirt steak, perfectly cooked in orange juice and paprika, a mushroom and asparagus paella (really more like a risotto, but an impeccable flavor), and "pintxos" -- lamb/beef meatballs covered in a piquant red pepper sauce, toothpick-skewered together with a small double-bent green pepper. Everything was a delight to eat. We finished with a flan, which was rich and firm, like the flans we had when we were in Spain. The place has its quirks -- it gets noisy (it's a small place and they fill it up), there's an open-fire oven in the back corner which is charming but occasionally a bit smoky, and they don't have their liquor license. However, they happen to own a wine shop next door that sells a selection of Spanish wines, which we wandered over to, purchased a charming bottle of Bierzo Mencia (young and fruity, something like a Beaujolais) for $21, and were charged no corkage fee. Not a bad compromise set-up. The whole meal for three people, tax tip wine and all, was $125. All in all, it was a delightful meal.

FILM: Doubt

2008-12-14T23:25:00.000-08:00

I had doubts about whether even Meryl Streep could live up to Cherry Jones' galvanic stage perfomance as Sister Aloysius in John Patrick Shanley's Doubt, but we saw the film version today, and my doubts on that score were dispelled. Streep was really terrific, creating her own ferocious version of the rock-of-certainty nun, paying tribute to the character created by Cherry Jones, but making it her own. Philip Seymour Hoffman as Father Flynn (the new priest with new ideas), and Amy Adams as Sister James (the young innocent nun) also gave strong performances, as did Viola Davis as the mother of the school's first black student. The film adaptation was written and directed by John Patrick Shanley, so it is not surprising that it tracks the play very closely, and Shanley does a nice job of exploiting the new medium. There are some nice visuals unique to the film -- the repeated theme of the blustery winds, Father Flynn stopping to regard an "all-seeing eye" in a stained glass window, the parable of the slashed pillow (sermon on gossip), a bit more of the neighborhood and the parishioners. But there were some surprising differences from the stage play too. While I can't put my finger exactly on it, I left with the strong impression that the stage play was somehow more delicately balanced. With the play, I left truly uncertain even at the end whether Father Flynn was guilty or not, a result of the masterful finesse of Chris McGarry's stage performance and the role Shanley created. In the film, it somehow didn't seem as balanced, and I can't put my finger on whether the play gave Father Flynn just a bit more chance to voice his side, or whether it was just that Hoffman was just a bit more suspicious and overcome by Streep's certainty, but none of us left the film with much doubt about Father Flynn's guilt. The other surprising difference is the very end. (*** spoiler alert ***) The film ends with the same line as the play, but I took it completely differently. When I saw the play, the final line seemed (to me at least) to refer to Sister Aloysius's doubts about whether she rightly accused Father Flynn. In the film, I didn't think she seemed at all uncertain about Father Flynn, and the final line seemed to refer to a more general crisis of faith. A close shot of her cross being pulled to her chest seemed to reinforce that interpretation. A friend we saw the film with had the same impression, and further saw it as a reference back to Father Flynn's first sermon on doubt, and a kind of bond between Sister Aloysius and Father Flynn. I also think Sister James came across differently in the final scene. In the play, I recall her being more critical of Sister Aloysius, while in the film she seems more supportive and admiring. On stage, I also remember the confrontation between Sister Aloysius and Ronald Miller's mother being much more powerful and critical of Sister Aloysius. Perhaps the criticism of Mrs. Miller and questioning of Sister James were part of the more successful counterbalance to Sister Aloysius's certainty in the stage version.

The movie is well worth seeing for its powerful performances and provocative story, especially for those who did not see the play. But the film is not as powerful and provocative as the play. This is especially surprising to me since the playwright did his own adaptation and directed it too. I'm wondering whether Shanley has changed his mind about the sorts of questions he wants to challenge his audience with, or whether he just balked at being so provocative to a wider audience. In any event, the film adaptation subtly but profoundly alters the play.

Tapping the Zeitgeist

2008-12-11T23:13:00.000-08:00

When writing the online version of our annual holiday newsletter, I've often added a little bit on new technologies that have affected our lives in the past year. This year, I cited two technologies: the iPhone and social networking. The iPhone has been a big part of our life this past year. That was my gift to my husband last Christmas, and as my Mom often says, that was the best Christmas gift ever. With social networking, while that's been around for many years, I opined that it seemed to have reached a tipping point this year. However, I cautioned that that may just be my own skewed perspective. I only just joined Facebook a few weeks ago (careful, it's addictive!), and have been running into all sorts of friends there, most of whom are also relatively recent. I think the kids have been onto it for quite a while, but perhaps it's just opened up for the over-forty crowd. Well, it turns out I do in fact have my finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist, at least according to Google, who just released their 2008 Year-End Google Zeitgeist report, showing "iphone" and "facebook" as #2 and #4 fastest rising search terms. Social networking is called out on their "top trends". I guess I'm not so late to the party after all.

FILM: Milk

2008-12-10T23:01:00.001-08:00

On the Sunday after Thanksgiving, a group of us saw Milk, and we're betting on Sean Penn to win an Oscar. He did an amazing job of absolutely transforming himself into Harvey Milk. You know how sometimes with big star actors, you can't ever quite stop seeing the actor as opposed to the character. Not here. I didn't see Sean Penn at all, I only saw Harvey Milk. And now I feel as if I knew him. And lost him. It was a powerful film with strong resonance especially given the recent Prop 8 battle. (The battle against the Briggs Initiative was a signal event in Milk's career.) The whole film was very well made, a great biopic. An opening montage of actual 1970s film of men in gay bars being busted and harrassed by police establishes the context, and the use of actual film footage from events spliced into the film helps establish a documentary credibility. An emotional verisimilitude is created by the device of framing the film with scenes of Milk reflecting on his life, talking into a dictaphone, in contemplation of the possibility of his imminent death. I learned a lot of things I didn't know (I was oblivious to the gay world and being gay myself in 1978), and what a moving history lesson it was. It's inspirational to see the impact of a man who made a life-changing decision at age 40, and changed so much for so many in the eight remaining years of his life.

One nice touch that really hit home with me was a scene where a scared gay teenager, about to be sent by his parents to some horrific anti-gay deprogramming camp, calls up Harvey Milk just because he'd seen him on TV, and Milk was the only gay person that boy knew. And Milk gave him the self-confidence to run away (quite possibly saving his life, given the high gay teen suicide rates). Fortunately, I have wonderful parents and I never had to deal with that nightmare, but I can remember a similar experience. When I was just coming out senior year in college, I read in the newspapers about a guy who was an engineer working for TRW, who was gay, lost his security clearance, sued, and won. Since I had already accepted an offer at TRW, when I read that, I was fearful and wanted to talk to that guy. I called that total stranger, my voice trembling (especially over the "I'm gay" part), and thankfully got some good advice and reassurance about my future as a gay man working at an aerospace-defense contractor. Seeing that scene in the film took me right back to the memory of that phone call, the scene rang so true to me, and in that moment I appreciated even more deeply how much Harvey Milk meant to a whole generation of gay men and women just a couple years older than me. How much he changed everything.

I also didn't know anything about the Briggs Initiative at the time (I was sixteen). The film did a great job of building up the wave of anti-gay ballot initiatives that was sweeping the country then, with Anita Bryant as the spokesperson, and the feeling of embattlement that created in the gay community. It was such an eerie resonance between those events and the events of the past couple months, us feeling embattled by sign-waving protesters wanting to vote down our marriage.

The cast in this film were uniformly excellent, and there are surely Oscars in its future. Sean Penn, for sure, is getting Best Actor. But Josh Brolin, another actor who completely melted into his character, also did an impeccable job as Dan White, the traditional working class guy with a psychopathic undercurrent. And James Franco gave a solid performance as Milk's boyfriend (despite all the "eww, what was it like?" brouhaha over whether two straight boys could convincingly kiss), and Emile Hirsch really brought Cleve Jones to life. Kudos to director Gus Van Sant for finding the ideal balance of documentary factuality and emotional genuineness, both elements required for a masterful portrait of a hero.