American Idol: Top of the Top 24

Now that we've seen the Top 24, I think there are some clear contenders here. On the boys side, David Archuleta's performance of "My Mama Told Me" last night was one of those where you just go, "Wow, that's it. That boy is going all the way." He has an amazing voice, with a really distinctive husky soulful quality to it, he's got an on-stage presence and charisma that just holds you rapt. And he's got the musicality that the judges are always looking for, the ability to interpret something and make it your own. Plus it doesn't hurt that he's so cute and sweet, the same kind of innocent vulnerability that won people over to Sanjaya last year, except this boy has the voice to go way beyond Sanjaya. So if I had to make a call now, he would be my prediction for the top. He will, however, get a good run for his money from Michael Johns and Jason Castro. And if he can get his confidence back, David Hernandez is very good too. (I loved his "Love The One You're With" last week.) But we may already know who our top three boys are.

On the girls' side, the "Wow, that's it!" award goes to Carly Smithson, whose awesome performance grabbed my attention even before I discovered that she had been suffering from the bronchitis bug that was hitting several of the Idol contestants. (It's been going around LA in general, and it's nasty, my husband and I have both been suffering.) If she sings like that when she has the flu -- damn, there's no stopping her. However, she has some fierce competition from Ramiele Malubay (the cute little Asian girl with the unexpected powerhouse voice) and Syesha Mercado (this girl has serious pipes). And close on their high heels are Asia'h Epperson (this girl is a natural performer), Alexandrea Lushington, Brooke White, and Kady Malloy (if she can find her own voice). And I liked Alaina Whitaker too. Hmm, the girls got a real competition on.

Celestial Sightings

It's been quite a week for celestial sightings. On Saturday night, we got a great view of the International Space Station while the space shuttle was docked with it. We were having dinner with our friends the Newtons at 15 (very cool new Echo Park neighborhood restaurant) and we warned our waiter not to be alarmed if all of us jumped up mid-meal and walked out of the restaurant at 6:45pm. We did just that, and even on the sidewalk of a well-lit street in the city, we got a great view as the brilliant spot of light made a majestic 160-degree sweep of the sky in about 6 minutes, going nearly overhead. Kind of like a shooting star, but in slow motion. A few other curious diners stepped out to see what the fuss was about, and were duly impressed.

There was supposed to be a reprise on Monday night, and I got a bunch of colleagues at work revved up about it, but alas, the Monday evening skies were completely clouded over, and there was no hope. It reminded me of the one time I saw a solar eclipse, in Hawaii in 1992, or rather I saw the effects of an eclipse. We couldn't actually see the sun itself, as it was completely clouded over. But it did quite impressively grow dark.

I was worried that these clouds would hang over and obscure the lunar eclipse that was on for this evening, but today proved the opposite of Monday. The day's clouds gave way to mostly clear skies as the evening stars started showing, and the lunar eclipse was quite impressive, the full moon being in full shadow for about 50 minutes, and passing dramatically in and out of the earth's shadow for a half hour or so on either end.

Readiness on Day One

I taste a little bile every time I hear Hillary Clinton's line about how she'll be "ready on Day One". Those of us who are gay and over 35 should recall all the excitement we felt in 1992 when Bill Clinton promised us that he was going to end the ban on gays in the military with the stroke of a pen on his first day in office. And the subsequent crashing disappointment when we realized he hadn't really thought it through, bungled the politics of it, quickly capitulated the initiative, and ultimately saddled us with the "Don't Ask Don't Tell" compromise. We thought he was our friend, and we were all angry at Sam Nunn at the time. But in retrospect, the reality is that Bill Clinton wasn't really prepared on "day one" to do what needed to be done to fulfill the promise he had made. There are really only two explanations to account for that: he was politically naïve in thinking he could end the ban with the "stroke of a pen", or he wasn't as committed to his promise as we'd like to think.

So, will Hillary Clinton be any more "ready on day one" to move on gay and lesbian issues than was her husband? How serious is she about repealing "Don't Ask Don't Tell"? Sure, when she's addressing a "friendly" audience like the Human Rights Campaign, she's outspoken about how she believes strongly that the time to end the ban is now. And she's always claiming that she knows how to get things done in Washington. Well, before 1993, the ban could have been ended by an executive order. But thanks to Bill, the ban became codified into law, and only Congress can fix it now. There's been a bill introduced in the House called the Military Readiness Enhancement Act, that has 109 co-sponsors, including some Republicans. It's just needed a champion in the Senate. Preferably one sitting on the Senate Armed Services Committee. Like, say, Senator Clinton. In fact, if she was serious about overturning the ban now, she's in the best possible position to do it, and has been for the last seven years. Clinton claims that she strongly believes the ban should be ended now, and that she knows how to get things done in Washington. Clearly, at least one of those claims is false, if not both.

All of the Democratic candidates have made statements to the Human Rights Campaign about their position on Don't Ask Don't Tell, and it's rather telling (as well as ironic) to compare the statements of Clinton and Obama. One of them is full of inspirational talk, and cites a few personal anecdotes, but is otherwise lacking in any hard policy specifics. The other one specifically cites the Military Readiness Enhancement Act, but goes beyond endorsing it to provide a multi-point plan of policy specifics to support the implementation of a repeal, including anti-harassment policies, changed protocols, and the re-accession of those previously separated. Care to guess which was which? Turns out if you want someone who really has the substance, who has thought about what a president specifically would need to do on "day one", that would be Obama.

FILM: The Band's Visit

Last weekend, George and I saw the Israeli film The Band's Visit (Bikur Ha-Tizmoret), and found it a charming film, full of humanity, about a group of Egyptian musicians lost in Israel. The plot is simple: the Alexandria Police Ceremonial Orchestra, a group of eight Egyptians in formal powder blue uniforms, arrives in Israel to perform at the opening of an Arab cultural center. Nobody meets them at the airport as planned, they take the wrong bus, and end up in some remote desert outpost, stranded for the night. The feisty owner of a kebab café decides she'll put some of them up for the night, and she foists the others on some semi-willing regulars in the café. What really makes the movie is the characters that are slowly revealed in the interactions between the stranded band and their hosts. There is the band leader, Lieut-Colonel Tawfiq Zacharya, who is a proud martinet, stiff in the formal decorum he imposes on himself and his band, fretting about the declining respect the band gets from the Police Department (along with threatened budget cuts), but eloquent when he is drawn out, and with some sad secrets in his past. He sparks the interest of the café owner Dina, an impetuous but jaded husky-voiced beauty who's been worn down by bad relationships and her bleak existence. Sasson Gabai and Ronit Elkabetz bring exquisite nuance and eloquence to these roles, and their encounter over the course of the evening is very engaging to watch unfold. Gabai's face is a symphony all its own. Another character, Khaled, the youngest band member and a bit of a cynic and a playboy, not only adds some wonderful comic elements, but also affects Tawfiq in unexpected ways. And Itzik, one of the Israelis who takes home several band members for the night, has a touching exchange with Camal, a clarinetist with his own unfinished symphony. The whole film has an overarching tone of wistful melancholy humanity that reminded me of that endearing 1967 French film The King of Hearts (Le Roi de Coeur). Although the mixture of Egyptians and Israelis could have been a political live wire, writer/director Eran Kolirin masterfully sidelined any politics, keeping the film focused on his characters, and on the situation of strangers from different cultures and different languages discovering their common humanity. The language barrier is ever present in the film, in which the Egyptians speak Arabic amongst themselves, and the Israelis speak Hebrew, but most of the dialog is in unsure accented English, their only common language. (Ironically, the film was disqualified from the foreign film category at the Oscars because too much of it was in English.) Kolirin, who talks in interviews about how all Israelis used to watch Egyptian films in the 1980s, shows an appreciation for Arab music, poetry, and culture throughout the film, and there are a couple of nice scenes where Isaelis ask Egyptians to speak some Arabic just to hear the music of it. And there are moments when music and gestures say more than the characters can find words for. The actors, while not Egyptian, had a bit of their own cultural exchange. Sasson Gabai, though Israeli, was born in Iraq and speaks fluent Arabic. And a couple of Palestinian actors were used in the film, including Saleh Bakri as the playboy Khaled. The film has some wonderful comic scenes -- the band trying to pose for a photograph at the airport, and the playboy Egyptian teaching an inexperienced Israeli boy how to put the moves on a girl -- but the film is overarchingly melancholy rather than funny. The setting is a bleak desert settlement, which underscores the tone. When the band arrives looking for the Arab cultural center, Dina says sardonically "No Arab culture center here. No Israeli culture center here. No culture here." The Israelis may make the desert bloom, but the only thing "blooming" in this particular barren spot is a circle of Soviet-looking high-rise housing projects, with not even so much as a tumbleweed in the way of vegetation. The lives of many of the characters seem almost as bleak as the setting, but the humanity that emerges is as beautiful and unexpected as the famous Israeli blooming deserts.

The Game Has Changed

Political strategy in a two-party system is not hard to figure out. There's a see-saw balanced on a fulcrum in the middle, and whoever piles more weight on their side wins. The single most effective thing you can do is to control the center, and effectively move where the fulcrum is, pushing it toward your opponent and making more of the see-saw on your side. (This is equivalent to the primary rule of tic-tac-toe: whoever captures the center wins.) Once in a while, you can make a play for the extremes, as Karl Rove did, piling as much weight as you can on the extreme edge of your side where you get the most leverage. But that tactic only works if both sides play for the extremes. If one sides plays for the extreme, but the other side goes for the center, the center will always win. It's kind of like a lobsided game of rock-paper-scissors with red, blue, and purple. Red vs blue could go either way, but purple always beats red, and purple always beats blue. The Republicans understand that, which is why McCain is their presumptive nominee. Very few Republicans are excited about McCain, but the GOP tend to be a practical bunch, and they understood that McCain was their best shot at winning this year. In the exit polls in California, where McCain blew away Romney, "electability" was by far the biggest reason that voters gave for voting McCain.

The Republicans have shown "purple", so now it's up to the Democrats. It should be pretty clear to all but the most ideologically blinded that Obama is the Democrats' best shot against McCain. In a Feb 7 Time matchup poll, Obama would beat McCain 48% to 41%, while a Clinton-McCain race was roughly tied at 46%. In a Feb 10 Rasmussen poll, Obama beats McCain 44% to 41%, while Clinton loses to McCain 46% to 43%. A CNN poll had similar findings to the Time poll. In simple terms, Clinton is "blue" and Obama is "purple". Since blue loses to purple, if the Democrats want to beat the Republicans, they need to put up purple.

Obama has made a hugely successful reach for independents and even for some Republicans. Clinton and Obama both have appeal in the Democratic base, but only Obama has the reach for the center. Look at Obama's remarkable success in "red" states. He's been endorsed by Governors Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, Tim Kaine of Virginia, and Janet Napolitano of Arizona. Obama won southern states Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina and Louisiana by large margins. Those might be dismissed by his strength in the black vote in those states. But what about Obama's wins in Utah (57-39), North Dakota (61-37), Nebraska (68-32), Kansas (74-26), or Idaho (80-17)? Obama has proven an ability to win handily in a cross-section of states including "white red states".

Some Democrats have been thinking that Bush was so despised that there was no way the GOP could win the White House again in November. Those folks need to wake up and smell the coffee. The race is the Democrats to lose, but they could still lose it if they try to put Clinton up against McCain. I worry that the Democrats tend to be more idealistic, and won't recognize the realities of electability the way the less idealistic Republicans do (as evidenced by the way most of them are holding their noses and lining up behind McCain). Fortunately, this evening's news gives me hope that the Democrats may be coming around on that. Maine, whose Democratic population is blue-collar white folk, the demographic that had been Clinton's most solid base, was projected to be Clinton's win. But the results are in, and it's a strong Obama win, 59% to 40%. That gives me hope, and makes me say "yes, we can!"

Inauthenticity Is Out (Along With Romney)

Mitt Romney dropped out of the race this week after a disappointing Super Tuesday in which he was completely outflanked by McCain and Huckabee. Various post-mortem explanations may be offered, but I think the most significant one is that inauthenticity wasn't playing with the voters this year. And given the way Romney ran, I'm actually glad to see him fail, so that maybe future candidates will not emulate his example. A year ago, I would have given Romney serious consideration -- a guy with a blue-chip business background and impressive executive experience, reasonable and non-wingnutty enough to get himself elected in Massachusetts. But as soon as he started running for president, he basically tried to completely reinvent himself, and run away from his own gubernatorial record. He was desperately trying to claim the mantle of the "true conservative" in the race, and while some may have doubted his conservatism, even more people doubted the "true" part. Mitt Romney the presidential candidate wasn't "true" anything, and the voters could smell it. He started off with his eleventh-hour conversion to pro-life, with lame explanations as to how he suddenly got religion on that issue. That was but the first of a long trail of campaign claims that were constantly being contradicted by those pesky facts from his past. It was as if he had drunk some Jekyll-and-Hyde potion that suddenly transformed a William Weld into a Rush Limbaugh. The truth became so elastic for the "new Mitt Romney" that he even got caught up in silly details, like pandering to the NRA by claiming he was a hunter (when it turned out he was a hunter in the same way my husband is, uh, he had once shot a beebee gun at a skunk that was digging up our lawn), or claiming that he had seen his father march with MLK (the backpedaling on that one involved parsing the word "saw" in ways reminiscent of Bill Clinton testifying about Monica Lewinsky). Some will say he lost votes due to anti-Mormon prejudice, which is true and a shame, but it was his inauthenticity that sunk him. In fact, given his apparent shamelessness in trying to run away from all the rest of his past, I'm surprised he didn't disavow the Mormon church and convert to Baptism. I'm pleased to see that at least for this year, integrity seems to be in fashion. Even though a great deal of Republicans are unhappy with the remaining candidates, both McCain and Huckabee are men of integrity. We know who they are, and they are not hiding who they are. Too bad Mitt didn't take the path of integrity, he may have had a better run.

Obama: Inspiration AND Substance

Sometimes I hear people say, sure, Obama is inspirational, but is there any substance behind the buzz? Absolutely yes, there is. One of the things that impressed me when I read his book The Audacity of Hope was his unique combination of idealism and pragmatism. He is idealistic enough to have hope, and to express his hope contagiously, but he is also pragmatic enough to know how to get things done. I wrote the other night about how he worked for progressive healthcare initiatives in Illinois, using successful strategies borrowed from business process improvement, including working from motivation to consensus, and bringing in all stakeholders. What he did in Illinois was described as a two-pronged approach. On the one prong, he was working with progressive activists to rally popular support around the initiative, which was crucial in motivating his legislative colleagues. On the other prong, he was working with doctors, hospitals, and insurers to reach a workable compromise that address their bottom line issues. What came out in the end still kept the core principles, so the activists were happy, but it was also a workable solution for the institutional stakeholders. Idealism and pragmatism. That's what makes Obama so compelling. Not only does he inspire, but he knows how to get things accomplished in the political arena.

Since being elected to the US Senate in 2004, Obama has been applying his unique brand of pragmatism and transcending partisan lines to accomplish a number of things. In fact those who pay close attention to such things are impressed by how often Obama's name has appeared on legislation as a freshman senator. One of Obama's priorities was the important but unglamorous work of nuclear non-proliferation, specifically securing "loose nukes" in places like former Soviet republics. He knew the guy to work with was Senator Dick Lugar (R-Indiana), a senior and highly respected foreign policy expert who has become an Obama friend and mentor, despite that "aisle" between them. They have served together on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and co-sponsored the Lugar-Obama bill extending the concept of cooperative threat reduction. Obama also worked with Senator Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma), one of the Senate's top spending constrainers, to successfully pass the Coburn-Obama Transparency Act, making the government publish on the web detailed accounts of where all the money goes, and "exposing the pork". I should be clear that this bipartisanship on Obama's part is not about "triangulation" and giving up his principles to ingratiate himself with the other party. On the contrary, as blogger ObsidianWings wrote:

"This isn't what Obama does. Obama tries to find people, both Democrats and Republicans, who actually care about a particular issue enough to try to get the policy right, and then he works with them. This does not involve compromising on principle. It does, however, involve preferring getting legislation passed to having a spectacular battle."

(That was a great post, if you're detail-oriented and want to read a wonkish account of Obama's accomplishments just in his first years in the Senate.)

On Obama's campaign policy proposals, the charges that he hasn't come forth with details are nonsense, as anyone who cares to peruse his website can see. His proposals are as detailed as Clinton and Edwards on all the major issues, detailed enough that you can see the differences (e.g., Clinton wants universal mandates in healthcare whereas Obama is more pragmatic on that). There's a good summary of his policy proposals in the Harvard Crimson endorsement of him. But in truth, it's not the policy details that distinguish Obama from Clinton, it's the way he would go about getting things done. When it comes to the ability to inspire people around a vision, he has shown himself to be extraordinary. And in the pragmatic ability to bring many stakeholders together and get something done, in a way that constructively reaches across the lines of partisan warfare, he has proven himself uniquely capable. Inspiration and substance. That's Barack Obama.

Take a Deep Breath

It's going to be a nail-biter tonight. I'm really hoping that Obama takes California, I would be so overjoyed. The increasing excitement about him here has been palpable in the past week. There's been the high-profile endorsements of course, Ted and Caroline Kennedy, and Maria Shriver (our state's first lady), and moveon.org was huge. More locally significant, El Piolin, a top Spanish-language radio morning show host was plugging Obama last week, and Obama was endorsed by La Opinion (the largest Spanish-language paper in the LA area, and the second largest paper of any language in the area) as well as the LA Times. But even cooler was the stuff happening on a local level. At the market the other night, there was a young woman who had come from the Obama rally earlier that day, wearing an Obama shirt and just gushing with excitement about the rally, and practically holding a mini-rally in the checkout line, getting everyone at Gelson's pumped up about Obama. And George, who drives all around town as part of his job, says he saw mini-rallies for Obama on street corners all over town.

Of course we won't know anything about California until late into the night, if not tomorrow, thanks to California's big step backwards on electronic voting (more on that in another post). The elimination of electronic voting machines also meant elimination of early voting options that has caused a much larger number of mail-in ballots than usual. That works a bit against Obama, whose momentum has really developed significantly just in the last couple of weeks. Something that works in his favor here is that independents were able to vote in the Democratic primary but not the Republican one. However, a ballot controversy may take away a bit of that. Independents who wanted to vote for the Democratic primary not only needed to punch the hole for their Democratic choice, but there was another hole labeled merely "Democrat" that also needed to be punched, or else the vote wouldn't count. Not sure whose idiotic design that was, but there will certainly be some number of people whose obvious choice gets disqualified because of that, and probably a lawsuit to follow, shades of Florida's butterfly ballots.

A couple of "notes to self" for future campaigns, should I be so motivated again. I did a blanket email of a bunch of friends and aquaintances (about 170 people) telling them how excited I was about Obama, and encouraging them to check out my blog. I got a nice number of positive responses, including several thoughtful ones from some people who were on the fence. I replied to those and hope I might have nudged a few of them over. But I wish I had been more actively on the ball a month earlier, as I had a surprising number of friends who were registered Republicans, but really wished they could have voted for Obama, and would have switched their registration to independent if they had been prompted to do so in time. Shoot. Several missed votes I could have picked up.

It's also important to take a deep breath here, and remember that it's a race for delegates, not states per se. Unlike the Republicans, whose primaries are mostly winner-take-all affairs, the Democratic races are mostly apportioned, often by congressional district. In Nevada, for example, Clinton won the popular vote, but Obama actually got more delegates because he won most of the districts outside of Las Vegas. Nobody is going to get the "magic number" of delegates needed to seal a win tomorrow, and if the delegate total is within 100 after the dust settles on Wednesday, there's still a real horse race. That is good for Obama, who is on the rise. I'm no expert on this, but it's still looking to me like it may well not be decided even after all of the primaries, and may go all the way to the convention in late August. The superdelegates could be decisive. The early read on them is that they were heavily for Clinton, but they're not pledged, and if there's a rising tide, they could well be switched. The race is on!

Barack Obama: Style Counts

"real leadership is about candor, and judgment, and the ability to rally Americans from all walks of life around a common purpose"

Barack Obama inspires people. I know I am more inspired by him than I have been by any presidential candidate in my lifetime. (JFK was before my time, though given the "Camelot mystique" that is his legacy, I'm not surprised that JFK's brother and daughter recognize the phenomenon in Obama.) I wrote the other day about his refreshing candor, but I think it's his ability to inspire, linked with his style of getting things done that makes him so compelling. And this "inspiration business" is not just some squishy insubstantial thing, it has a significant impact on what he can get done. The substance is definitely there: just go to his website and you can read for yourself positions articulated on all of the major issues. Impartial analyses of the candidates identify mostly minor differences in the details of policy proposals from Clinton and Obama. But anyone who's been around for a presidential term or two knows that what a candidate proposes while running, and what (if anything) ultimately gets delivered is always different, the result a function of politics. That's where style really counts. It's not just what they say they're going to do that's important, it's how they are going to do it. What we've suffered for the last couple of decades is an increasingly bitter partisan divide, where most things get stymied, and what gets through is rammed through on a 51/49 majority. What we don't need is someone who will just flip the 51/49 to 49/51 and dig the trenches deeper. That's where Obama is really different. He won't just go off in seclusion with some experts and come back with "the answer" and expect everyone to buy into it. (Remember Hillary's health plan?) His style of working is to engage all of the stakeholders early on, really understand their positions, and work toward a win/win solution. (You can read about how Obama worked with activists pushing for universal health coverage, as well as worked with doctors and insurers, to craft a policy for Illinois that people on all sides of the issue were content with -- in this article, skip about halfway down.) Jonathan Cohn, investigating Obama's record in the Illinois state house, says this: "Time after time, Obama brought adversaries into the process early, heard out their concerns, then fashioned compromises many of them ultimately supported." If this talk about "win/win" and bringing in stakeholders early sounds familiar to you, it's probably because you've worked in or with business consultants, or taken a course in business process improvement at a large company. This is not just "singing I have a dream" squishy stuff. They teach this stuff in business schools, because that's how change in any large organization gets successfully accomplished. It's about understanding all the stakeholders, and what is the "right" way to change. It's also about understanding what motivates people, and motivating them, leading them, and sometimes inspiring them. That's the sort of experience and the sort of character that we need in our next president, and nobody has it like Obama. That's why I am voting for Barack Obama on Tuesday.

Barack Obama speaking at Ebenezer Baptist Church on Martin Luther King Day

Obama: The Candid Candidate

When I listened to Barack Obama's victory speech after winning South Carolina, the whole speech was great, but one sentence jumped out and caught my attention as a great summation of why I am so excited about Obama:


"real leadership is about candor, and judgment, and the ability to rally Americans from all walks of life around a common purpose"

I am so sick and tired of spin, of elected leaders who tell us what they think we want to hear rather than level with us about what we need to hear, of candidates who will say anything and do anything to win the next election. I honestly believe that Obama is different. He has already shown that he is different. The man does not change his tune to suit the audience. He has stood in front of a hall full of Democrats, when it would have been easy and welcome to trash Republicans, and he has instead talked about the importance of working with them. He has stood in front of a teacher's union and said he thinks there may be some merit to merit pay. And time and again he has been inclusive of gays and lesbians, not just in his general stump speech, but when he spoke at Auburn University, and when he spoke from Martin Luther King's pulpit at Ebenezer Baptist Church. (Compare and contrast with Hillary Clinton, who doesn't utter a word that's not poll-tested and focus-group screened. She speaks a big game when in front of the Human Rights Campaign, claiming she would overturn the ban on gays in the military, and yet she is already sitting on the Senate Armed Services Committee, in the ideal position to do something about it, and has done nothing. I think it's clear we can expect Hillary to pander to the gay community when she needs our votes, but then throw us under the bus once elected, just as her husband did. Bill Clinton courted the gay vote, then not only gave us the Don't Ask Don't Tell compromise, but he signed the Defense of Marriage Act. Why should I expect Hillary Clinton to be any different?)

The level of politics in our country has sunk so low, that I would so much rather have someone who is honest, candid, and straightforward, even if I don't agree with all of his specific ideas, than someone who will spin, lie, and obfuscate. I'd much rather have someone who takes the high road, rather than someone who believes the end justifies the means (for instance, Hillary's willingness to break her pledge and change the rules on the Florida and Michigan primaries, which shows the only "principle" she's familiar with is "whatever it takes to win"). I look forward to being able to travel abroad and have a president I can be proud of rather than ashamed of. I hope that the rest of the country is as hungry as I am to restore the greatly damaged credibility of the presidency, and to elevate the tone of politics in Washington, by electing someone who can be trusted to speak openly and honestly. I think Obama is that man.

BOOKS: The Kite Runner

The last many days of commuting to work have been emotional, sweeping, and at times tearful, as I have been listening to Khaled Hosseini read his novel The Kite Runner. What a beautiful tale of friendship, cowardice and honor, profound regrets and ultimate atonement. The story is driven by its fascinating characters, centered around the narrator, starting from his boyhood as he struggles to win his larger-than-life father's approval and affection, while navigating a complicated relationship with his best friend who is also his servant and from an "inferior" ethnic group. The plot follows an arc from an idyllic Afghanistan under the king, through a coup, Soviet invasion, an Afghan community in exile in the San Francisco Bay area, and a harrowing return to Afghanistan under the Taliban to confront the past. Hosseini's story is embedded in rich descriptions of the exotic Afghan countryside and culture (it helps hearing the author read his own work, pronouncing all the Pashto and Farsi words effortlessly), and had me wanting to visit Afghanistan (through a time machine, anyway). He deploys some beautiful imagery, describing coming to America as wading into a great river whose vast waters cover up regrets from the past, or the end of grief not in a revelatory moment but as packing up its bags and quietly slipping out. But most of all he had me thoroughly engrossed in this tale of fatal turning point moments, how they can shape a life and have repercussions across generations. As with Sheherezade's tales, each new episode in the life of these rich characters had me eager to hear the next, and it was bittersweet to have it come to an end.

FILM: 27 Dresses

George and I both love a good "chick flick", so yesterday we went to see 27 Dresses, with much anticipation after having seen a barrage of trailers and commercials for months. We both enjoyed the film, but we both agreed that it was a cream puff of a movie -- sweet, light, and not very filling. Certainly it was fun to watch Katherine Heigl's character Jane work through her "always a bridesmaid" complex, with some good laughs along the way, and I was appropriately misty-eyed at the big "I love you" declaration moment, and at the final scene. We were smiling and saying "yea!" at the end. But we had hoped for more. This romantic comedy was, well, a bit light on the romance. One of the things we crave from a good romance is seeing the chemistry between two characters, moments when sparks fly off the screen, and, in a truly great romance, scenes that make us sigh even years later as we recall them in vivid detail, projecting ourselves into them and wishing for such moments in our own lives. Much as we wanted to like this movie, it left us wanting that kind of chemistry. I don't blame the actors (who are often to blame when chemistry fizzles instead of sizzles). Katherine Heigl was perfectly endearing in her part, and her expressiveness and range, everything from dreamy-eyed pining to guilty rationalization to happy-face-covering-hurt to pent up angry release, was everything you could want. Alas, Jane was the only character in the film that showed more than one dimension. James Marsden did the best he could to rescue Kevin, a character of poorly-conceived motivations, from the limitations of the script, and he really did some wonders with purely facial expression to try to persuade us of some sympathetic depth, but there's only so much an actor can do when the words he needs weren't written. (We know from Heights and The Notebook that he's certainly capable of more, if given good material to work with.) Sure, some crazy and inexplicable things are allowed to happen in the world of romantic comedy, but we need the characters to have a certain truth to them in order to draw our sympathy. Willing suspension of disbelief allows us to overlook unrealistic devices (e.g., that some wedding-crazy girl devotes a closet in her Manhattan apartment to bridesmaid dresses), and to forgive pesky continuity details (so those dresses show up in the final scene even though we saw her put them in the trash just a few scenes earlier). But the main characters, and their trajectory, have got to be believable.

[Mild spoilers ahead… in case you're worried that you won't guess how the story turns out, skip this next paragraph...]

Jane's 11th hour switch of affections comes from what, exactly? Fond memories of a drunk one-night stand? And Kevin -- who knows whether he truly is a sweet romantic guy hiding behind a mask of obnoxious cockiness, or is he really a cynic spinning sentimental crap? He doesn't know himself, neither do we, so how is Jane supposed to figure it out? Was Kevin smitten with Jane from first sight, or was he initially out to exploit her and then had a change of heart? (And if a change of heart, when, how, and why?)

The problem is that the writer just didn't think this character through coherently, so that Kevin's apparent motivations spin like a weathervane from scene to scene, with no explication except that he does what is needed to propel the plot. There are a few hints of dimension (that he was left at the altar in the past, that he did once cry at a wedding), which are just teases at how much more compellingly this character could have been written if given his due complexity. (And the ironic potential of a wedding-cynical reporter assigned to the wedding beat is missed, serving only as a bare plot contrivance.) What meagre crumbs of complexity Kevin has are tossed away by the director, whose lack of romantic vision didn't help. Perhaps director Anne Fletcher is guilty of what Kevin accuses Jane of: she doesn't want a relationship so much as she wants a wedding. But much as it pains me, I blame writer Aline Brosh McKenna for this film not living up to its full potential. This was especially surprising as she had written the screenplay for The Devil Wears Prada (as the 27 Dresses promotion machine constantly reminded us), where she did a stellar job, that very rare achievement where the screenplay actually improved on a great book (and the improvement came from deepening the characters). Based on Prada, I'd be willing to give McKenna another shot in the future. And I'd love to see Heigl and Marsden in a better story. They were like vintage burgundy and black truffles used to make meatloaf. Mind you, meatloaf's fine for a weekday meal. So if you go with appropriate expectations -- just wanting to be entertained rather than inspired, looking for something amusing for an evening rather than memorable for a lifetime -- 27 Dresses is good cute fun.

Neighborhood Notes: Top Bookshops of the World

Via Andrew, I caught this Guardian piece on the "top ten bookshops of the world". I was curious to see what might be on it. I had expected to find Powell's Books, of Portland, Oregon, which in my experience is probably the most awesome brick-and-mortar bookstore I've been to in terms of mind-boggling selection (not just mass market, but thoughtfully selected stuff in a wide range of fields of inquiry). Alas, Powell's was not on this list. I also thought maybe to find City Lights, the literary landmark in San Francisco, but not that either. Being a world list, most of the selections were around the world in places I haven't been -- Maastricht, Buenos Aires, Kyoto, Porto, Mexico City, etc. But much to my surprise, the list included a comic book store in my own backyard called the Secret Headquarters. We walk past this place often, on our usual Friday night beat between the great neighborhood Mexican restaurant and the awesome gelato place. The place looks really cool, like a place you'd want to hang out, in fact, I thought it was a cigar bar when I first saw it. The Guardian piece describes it thus: "Nestled in the creative cluster of Silver Lake, just east of Hollywood, this boutique store offers a sophisticated alternative to most of its rivals and has a reputation for being one of the neatest, friendliest comic stores anywhere. Canadian science fiction author Cory Doctorow rates it as the finest in the world." You can check out photos of the place here. Just when I thought our neighborhood couldn't get any cooler.

Where's My Candidate?

I've done this before, but it's interesting to try the "electoral compass" exercise with the current crop of candidates projected on it. The Republicans are distributed vertically along the socially conservative axis of their quadrant, but with narrow variation in their economic positions. The Democrats are pretty tightly bunched in their quadrant, except for Obama who shows more progressive socially and a bit more conservative economically. Ron Paul is an outlier, aligned with Republicans economically, but verging on libertarianism socially. (Interestingly, this survey puts him in the libertarian quadrant, but just barely. Aside from Paul on the margin, the libertarian quadrant, where I find myself (the pencil), is vacant, as is the opposite fascist quadrant. It's a shame that there's a whole swath of "position space" unrepresented by candidates, but in which a fair chunk of Americans may locate themselves. (You can try the survey yourself here.) To me, that's a clear defect of the two-party system. I note that the two candidates closest to me in this survey are Obama and Paul. That's about right. I would add, as others have noted, that this survey captures policy position but not temperament, and in this race, I'm considering temperament as much if not more than policies. I'm hungry for a candidate who is pragmatic, able to understand viewpoints on both sides of an issue, and formulate policies that can appeal to common ground rather than division and polarity. That's why Obama is my choice.

FILM: The Great Debaters

Still working the year-end backlog of good films, we caught The Great Debaters on Saturday night. We expected an uplifting inspirational film, and it definitely delivered. The baseline story you know going in, so the success of the movie depended on the vivid depiction of life in east Texas 1936 for black people, the richness of the characters' backstories and development, and the powerful performances of a great cast. Denzel Washington plays Melvin Tolson, the English and rhetoric professor who inspires and coaches the famous team to victory, with great verve, and Forest Whitaker gives an outstanding performance as James Farmer, Sr., the educator, theologian, and father of one of the younger debaters. The elder Farmer is portrayed as a gentle, thoughtful man, and Whitaker conveys a rich variety of feeling in this character with masterful reserve. These are the "stars", but the film wouldn't have worked without strong performances from the three young actors who play the debaters. Nate Parker, as Henry Lowe, the oldest of the college kids, shines in this role as a scrappy orphan with a good heart and hard edges, torn between dropping out and striving toward a higher calling. Jurnee Smollett is spot on as Samantha Booke, the modest but passionate girl determined to become a lawyer. And Denzel Whitaker (no relation to Forest Whitaker, nor to Denzel Washington, except that he was named after him) won me over as the youngest debater, James Farmer, Jr., trying to grow in the shadow of his renowned father. Some of the best parts of the film were the interplay between James Farmer Junior and Senior, with each growing and responding to the other, illustrating the generational differences in that time of great trial. There is a powerful scene where James Farmer Sr. is shaken down and humiliated in front of his family by a white trash pig farmer, and his concern is to mollify the farmer just to keep his family safe and get out of the situation quietly. This makes a pivotal impression on James Jr., who is both appalled at the injustice of the situation and disappointed in his father for not standing up for what was his right. We see how the experience influences and reverberates in both father and son later in the film. With both James Jr. and Samantha, we come to see how much they've been sheltered by their parents from knowing exactly how brutal life could be for black people in Texas 1936, when they come face to face with the reality in a sudden harsh encounter. Their experiences, both of being somewhat sheltered and of having some harsh reality calls, ring true, I think, to explaining how these remarkable kids turned out to be the great people they would all three turn out to be.

Fairly early in the film, there is a scene where the professor is drilling the students on enunciation by making them answer a catechism while holding a radish in their teeth. The prophetic catechism (which makes a poignant reprise later in the film), goes like this:

Prof: "Who is the Judge?"
Students: "The judge is God."
Prof: "Why is He the judge?"
Students: "He decides who wins and loses; not my opponent."
Prof: "Who is your opponent?"
Students: "My opponent does not exist."
Prof: "Why does your opponent not exist?"
Students: "He is a mere dissenting voice to the truth I speak." *

It's a great message, and it's absolutely right. Nothing is so compelling as the truth. That message came back to me on Sunday when I was thinking, not about this movie, but about various people who have preached at our church, and about what made one sermon better than another. We have one young intern in particular, who has given a few sermons this past year, and she is dynamite. I remember her very first sermon, she had that congregation on the edge of its pews like nobody before her, there were moments you could have heard a pin drop. And there were other moments where our congregation -- which is NOT prone to doing this -- was spontaneously shouting out "amen!". Why was it so good? Because she spoke the truth -- the raw, unvarnished, vulnerable truth of her own experience. It doesn't get more powerful than that. Thinking about that, my mind flashed back on the movie, and that catechism, and the injunction "speak the truth". And that's exactly what those debaters did in 1936 when they beat Harvard.** And that's exactly what this movie did when it told this story.

---

* This is my memory of the quote. I've seen slightly different versions of it floating around the Internet, so I'm not sure which if any is authoritative. I don't think the one on IMDB is exactly right, as parts of it don't even make sense (a "dissenting voice of the truth I speak"??).

** Apparently, the Harvard part was a fictional embellishment. In the real life story, the historical debate was between Wiley College and University of Southern California. California leading the nation again, but then I suppose Harvard makes for better drama.

Catty gay postscript: In addition to being an impressive actor, Nate Parker is fine, easy on the eyes.

Awards Without Perspective

Tonight, as the Golden Globes are being announced (not awarded in a glitzy ceremony, due to the writers' strike, but just announced in a press conference), I'll take the occasion to register my perennial complaint about the short-sighted awards process. In the Golden Globes (which are usually a bit better than the Oscars), of all the many nominations for 2007, you can find few films that were released more than six weeks ago. Even though the awards are supposed to be for all 2007 films, in practice nothing counts before November. (They did manage to remember Hairspray, La Vie En Rose, and Across the Universe. But as I said, the Globes are usually a bit better about this. Oscar's memory won't go back to last summer.) This, of course, is just a manifestation of our society's short attention span problem. But the unhappy result of this is that movie studios all trip over each other to release their best movies in December, giving us a glut of movies at Christmastime, right when most of us are up to our ears in Christmas shopping, Christmas parties, getting together with family, not to mention year-end job pressures, and have little time to see any movies. Then there are other times of year that are real "droughts" when it comes to finding a movie to see. The various awarding bodies could do us all a favor, as well as up the quality of their awards, by delaying their decision process until later in the year. Just as it's impossible to judge the historic importance of any event right after it's happened, you also need some perspective gained with the passing of time in order to judge a truly great film. Many movies are very enjoyable, and you may be excited about them the next day or week. But give it the perspective of half a year or so, and then see which films you truly remember. (That's how I know "Once" was such a stand-out film. But where are the awards for that?) So, want to have some serious Oscars? Move the nominations back to July and make the awards in September for the prior year. Then a reprise of the award winners could help fill that film drought that usually happens in October.

Nomination Mess

Since this year's primary races are much more competitive and interesting than any I can remember, I've been paying a bit more attention to the process than I ever have, and I'm starting to wonder whether there will be a clear winner, or whether the whole process is headed for a train-wreck. For starters, we've got Michigan on Tuesday, who is holding a primary which may or may not count for anything, and in which Hillary Clinton's only significant competition is "uncommitted". Michigan, along with Florida, got in a pissing match with the Democratic National Committee about which states were allowed to have early primaries. Officially, it's only supposed to be Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina. Michigan and Florida defied the national committee, and moved their primary dates up early anyway. The DNC announced that it was going to refuse to seat the delegations from those states (i.e., not count their votes). Obama and Edwards, deferring to the national committee, withdrew their names from the ballot. Clinton, however, did not, although she has pledged not to campaign in Michigan. Thus, it appears she is headed for a clear victory in Michigan, although there seems to be some grassroots efforts to encourage people to vote for "uncommitted", which is an option on the ballot. Uncommitted means that Michigan's delegates are free to make up their own mind on the spot at the convention. Also, Michigan has an open primary, so that frustrated Democrats can always cross over and vote the Republican primary. (And vice versa.) Of course, none of that will mean anything, if the DNC follows through on their threat and refuses to seat the Michigan delegates. But that's a big if. Many suspect that the DNC will buckle. If they do, that would give a bunch of not-really-earned votes to Clinton from a sizeable state. Then there's the "superdelegates". Only about 80% of the votes at the convention come from "pledged" delegates, who are pledged to vote according to their state election or caucus results. The other 20% come from "superdelegates", who comprise Democratic party leaders (e.g., Democratic governors, senators, and congressmembers). At least at the moment, the majority of those are breaking for Clinton. It seems to be a given among the beltway cognoscenti that Clinton is the choice of the Democratic party machine. Though given that the primary/caucus and convention process is supposed to be the decision-making process for the party, I'm not sure how the machine is supposed to have a "choice" in the primary process. But apparently they do. On the other hand, the superdelegates are "unpledged", which means that even though they may have given indications or promises as to how they will vote at the convention, they can ultimately change their minds at the convention. So it seems to me that if no single candidate has a lead greater than 20%, then we may not know until the convention in late August who the candidate is. That would be a first in my voting lifetime.

Looking Back on 2007 in Film

Looking back on 2007, it was a good year for us getting out to the movies (perhaps that was an unconscious resolution), as we saw nearly twenty films last year, more than double our average for previous years. One thing that stands out for 2007 is that it was the year of the musical. We had two new blockbuster musicals -- the rollicking film version of the Broadway musical Hairspray, which despite being an adaptation of an adaptation was fresh and rocked, and the very original new Disney musical Enchanted, which was totally enchanting. (We haven't yet seen Sweeney Todd, another Broadway musical brought to screen.) And 2007 also brought us a couple of movies that, while not musicals per se, were about making music and which featured music. Early in the year we had the cute but not particularly memorable Music and Lyrics (starring Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore), which was the big studio take on the theme. It was totally, well, pwned, by the small indie hit of the summer, Once, which really showed how to do it right. It's been six months since we saw Once, but the music, the characters, the very fresh and real story are still vivid in my mind. It was truly one of the standout films of the year.

Since the Golden Globes are cancelled (and possibly the Oscars too), and since I'm in a look-back-on-the-year mood, I thought I'd make some of my own awards. Since it was the Year of the Musical, we'll start on that note and go from there:

• Most made me tap my feet and want to jump up and dance: Hairspray
• Most made me want to buy the soundtrack: Once (I also bought Hairspray, and may buy a few tunes from Enchanted and Juno)
• Most made me laugh out loud: Death At A Funeral, with Enchanted a close second, and honorable mention for Stardust and Outsourced.
• Most made me cry: Once, with The Namesake a close second.
• Most made me think: The Bubble
• Most entertaining story: Stardust, Enchanted, Juno
• Most made me want to hop on a plane: Outsourced
• Most visually beautiful film: After The Wedding (Susanne Bier is Bergmanesque in her filmmaking), Outsourced (a visual valentine to India, though not in the same league as Water), Love In The Time of Cholera (Mike Newell's filming of the decaying Spanish colonial splendor of Cartagena helped bring Garcia-Marquez's magical realism to the screen), Atonement (a classic English manor house, vivid wartime France scenes, and Sioarse Ronan's eyes)
• Strongest sensibility: After The Wedding (intensely psychological visual expressionism), Hairspray (Adam Shankman's kitschy Baltimore 1960 tone is pitch-perfect), Juno (quirky perky and totally coherent marriage of nostalgic values and hip young attitude), Atonement (Joe Wright makes us feel the space inside Briony's head)

In fairness, it should be noted that we didn't get to nearly every film we'd liked to have seen. Notable films we missed include La Vie En Rose, Lust/Caution, Lars and the Real Girl, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, and Into Great Silence. Films we may yet catch from the year-end rush-and-tumble of releases: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The Kite Runner, Sweeney Todd, The Golden Compass.

We look forward to see what 2008 brings.

New Years Resolutions

Even though, with one or two notable exceptions, I can't recall making New Years resolutions that have stuck, I nonetheless make resolutions every year. Hope springs eternal. If nothing else, it's a good excuse to pause on life's path, take stock of where you are, where you'd like to be, and what changes you'd like to make. That being said, here are my resolutions for 2008, most of which are retreads from last year(s).

1. Fit some volunteer work back into my life. This one should actually happen this year. Several years ago, I spent a couple hours each week in a great program called Wonder of Reading, that provides one-on-one tutoring for elementary school children. It was a great experience, but after my first year, my job situation changed, and I didn't continue. It's been in the back of my mind to get back to that for a while now, and at the end of last year, an email came across our Echo Park neighborhood mailing list that the local branch of the LA Public Library was looking for tutors for their adult literacy program. I thought, that's my cue. So I responded, spent a Saturday before Christmas taking their training, and now am just waiting to be matched up with a student. I'm looking forward to it. I like the idea of making a meaningful contribution to my local community, in a form where I can be effective with just a few hours a week.


2. Sit up straight. This one's been nearly a lifelong struggle. I have a great personal trainer who helps me out, but I need to do more on my own. It's a constant struggle against what I call "computer back". Somehow the screen has a magnetism that draws my head forward inexorably until I'm totally hunched over. I must learn to resist. I think this cartoon pretty much says it all:


3. Exercise. This one dovetails with the previous. I'm been going for walks nearly daily, but I some days I let myself get too absorbed in work. I need to be more dedicated about getting out at least once and preferably twice a day. (In addition to the exercise, it's good to break up the day from sitting too long at a stretch in front of the screen.) And daily ab exercises and stretching would be awesome. I can dream, can't I? (Yes, I can dream. But can I actually exercise daily? Let's see…)


4. Entertain a bit more. Last year, we had friends over for dinner once in a while, but not very often. And it's been over a year since we've had a party at our place. It's not hard to have one or two friends over for a weeknight dinner, a couple times a month. And we should have a few barbecues or something this summer.

In sum, not much new from last year, except that I've written them down. (Oops. I just looked at my blog history, and I see that I did publish my resolutions two years ago. They included exercise and entertaining. Sigh...

FILM: Juno

George and I saw Juno this evening after several friends had recommended it. What a fun charming quirky jaunty movie! It had such an amazing sensibility to it, a combination of teen-outcast-rebel attitude and genuine innocence embodied in the character of Juno, a teenage girl who's both wise-cracking and wise beyond her years (sometimes). Imagine how Claire Fisher (the sarcastic and perenially pessimistic teen daughter on Six Feet Under) might have turned out if she had a sunnier disposition and grew up in a functional family, and that's Juno. I was a bit surprised to see that the writer (Diablo Cody) and director (Jason Reitman) of this film were not the same person, because it is infused with such a consistent sensibility and vision carrying through the witty contemporary teen dialog, the realization of the characters, the soundtrack, everything. This is a film about a pregnant high-school teen, and this core disfunctionality is surrounded by other peripheral disfunctionality (divorced parents, couples breaking up), and yet it is somehow firmly grounded in functionality, and a nostalgic innocence reminiscent of The Wonder Years. Juno messed up getting knocked up, but she's basically got her head on straight and her feet firmly on the ground, and she ends up doing the right thing in her own unconventional way. Part of the alchemy of the film was its sense of timelessness -- it was obviously contemporary in its language, music, and costume, and yet there was something about the neighborhood and the families that had a bygone "Wonder Years" feel to it (subtly reinforced with occasional pieces of kitsch -- like the football team in training running through various scenes, or the hamburger phone. I mean really, who has a hamburger phone?).

Actress Ellen Page gives Juno a winningly persuasive performance of a teenager who thinks she knows it all at the same time as she knows that she doesn't. (Much as I loved Amy Adams in Enchanted and Nikki Blonsky in Hairspray, I think Ellen Page has my vote for best actress in a comedy/musical.) Michael Cera more or less reprises his character from SuperBad, although he's gone to the Hugh Grant school of acting, so he's a bit more deer-in-the-headlights stammering, kinda dorky, but kinda cute and vulnerable. It works for Hugh Grant though, and here it works well for Michael Cera's American teenage version of it. Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner are both strong as the apparently-perfect yuppie couple, her determined but apprehensive about becoming a mother, and him stifled in his dreams of being a music star instead of composing jingles for TV commercials. J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney give life and fun as Juno's father and step-mother.

It was interesting seeing this film after seeing Atonement. Both of them are very subjective films, although with Atonement the subjectivity is an integral part of the plot, while with Juno it's an integral part of the sensibility. Juno's views of her parents and her peers makes you laugh, but it has an underlying sophistication that sneaks up on you. It wasn't until late in the film that it really dawned on me how much we'd been seeing the other characters as colored by Juno's perceptions. That comes into focus late in the film when she has a loss-of-innocence moment, forcing her to find her way back to her core values (or forward to her self-discovery). The film has funny moments, poignant moments, and is ultimately reaffirming that even amidst the crazy disfunctionality of contemporary social life we can still hold on to the values we grew up with, but in our own way.