Need to make a call? aka World's biggest, least convenient iPhone

You don't see many of these babies around any more. Do you need to make a call? Did you throw your cell phone in the ocean in a fit of romantic disappointment? Are you sorry now?

Jog down to Broadway and 4th in Santa Monica and, joy!, you can make that call. Don't call that person who made you drown the cell, though; this booth is too heavy to carry down to the beach.

Poor neglected phone booth! No door, missing windows, graffiti! We didn't appreciate you, boothie!

BMW Isetta spotted on the loose in Santa Monica

Now THAT'S a small car. Some guy came out to Main St to get some attention by showing the lovely coffee-sipping ladies how two can fit in this tiny car. And then he yawned and slipped his arm around the back of the passenger seat....

P.J. O'Rourke is old; reviews a book about Starbucks

link to NYT book review by P.J. O'Rourke

I like O'Rourke on "Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me", and I have fond memories of reading his articles in Rolling Stone back in the 1980s (especially the one about the drug dealer who came home to his house being raided and asked the cops if he could go in to get his drugs), but I think he was drunk when he wrote this book review. It makes no sense, it veers wildly from topic to topic and spends multiple paragraphs discussing P.J.'s own finances, and it ends up with P.J. congratulating himself for having taught the author to disregard fair trade rules. Or something.

I don't know what happened here, but somehow P.J. ended up feeling self-satisfied about his intellectual superiority by reading this book and not liking it very much. I get the impression that he expected it to be an anti-capitalist screed, and when it wasn't, he (P.J.) felt like he'd won an argument that no one even knew he was having. So he condescends to the "young" (his words) author for having let Papa P.J. teach him a lesson. (Here's a pic of author Taylor Clark. I don't know, he looks to me like he's out of short pants.)

At any rate, read the review because it's funny because it's bizarre. I guess once the editors asked O'Rourke to do a review, they figured they had to print whatever he sent in.

I think I love P.J.'s review most because he's the only person in America who still considers the word "hippy" to be a withering put-down. Keep fighting those dirty hippies, P.J.! Make them cut their hair! Maybe then our country will finally get back on the right track.

Beowulf: The Prequel

Foreskin's Lament by Shalom Auslander

I have this rule that I only want to write about things I loved, so I have to write this in the dark in order to get away with it. I did not love Foreskin's Lament.

On the other hand, this: "Hello, McFly! You realize that your blog is just a way to hear yourself talk, right?" So much for rules I made up.

I listened to this book, actually, as narrated by the author in a mostly flat, deadpan-to-the-point-of-maybe-actually-dead drone. It took me what felt like a long time to get through all 63 tracks; walking around the neighborhood, ironing, vacuuming. You name a domestic chore and Mr. Auslander and I have done it together.

I wanted to love this book, and I'm frustrated because I think I could have. It's essentially about Mr. A's Orthodox Jewish upbringing and how its strict rules and mercilessly punitive conception of God screwed him up. In his confusion and anger, he fought back with pornography and hotdogs and finally broke with his family after the birth of his son.

This is a story built on a lot of pain and emotion, and the unfortunate thing for me as a reader is that Auslander chose to bury the pain and emotion under Catskills-level jokes and a sneering disregard for everyone else (except his wife, whom he describes as being very cool and witty, and his baby, who I mean seriously, like he's going to be shitty about his newborn).

His main joke to hide behind is that he gives God the finger, quite literally, whenever he breaks one of the many laws of his religion. The extension of the joke is that God is out to get people, but particularly Mr. Auslander. There is a long section near the end of the book about the convoluted attempts of Mr. A and his wife to both honor the Sabbath and watch the Rangers vie for the Stanley Cup. The lengths that they go to are quite funny, an actual caper, even, but make no sense in the midst of Mr. A's insistence that he doesn't honor the Sabbath (so his mother is hurtful to him for reminding him of it) and that God will punish him personally by making the Rangers lose. When the Rangers win, it is still God punishing him. The tortured logic Mr. A employs to make himself God's victim regardless could've been amusing if done self-deprecatingly or with some kind of self-awareness (after all, Richard Lewis has made a career off of this idea), but it isn't, so it isn't.

God never does get the credit for the good things that happen to Mr. A -- his lovely wife, his son, his friends, who are mentioned in a tantalizing but brief bit at the very end of the book as being "foreskins" like himself. The people he admires and loves do merit mention, I suppose due to Mr. A's thesis that God will punish him and take away the things he loves.

This then is a failure on his part and a mark of the fact that he wasn't ready to tell his story. No amount of bitter attacks on his family or on practitioners of his (former?) religion will signal that he is fighting back against the damage instilled by his upbringing. It simply indicates that he's still fearful and still running away.

I think his editors did Auslander a disservice by not pushing him to tell the more meaningful story. It's as if they settled for the cheap jokes, betting that people wanted to hear a guy ridicule convoluted Orthodox Jewish traditions (though why this means he also has to ridicule and stereotype the inhabitants of his chosen home in Woodstock and the other places he's lived in Israel and New York is beyond me).

I think Mr. Auslander and his editors fell into the David Sedaris trap, whereby they think that it's easy to be as funny as Sedaris -- all you have to do is write about your crazy family. Give it the detachment of Running With Scissors, and you've got a winner on the bookshelves.

But note that Running With Scissors was followed by Dry -- there was a price to pay for that first book's insistence that you can triumph over a bizarre and neglectful upbringing without a scratch. And note that Sedaris is a write of extraordinary gifts and care for the people he writes about. He doesn't ridicule, though he does tease. He doesn't hide from pain; he puts it in context.

And context is lacking from Foreskin's Lament -- Auslander rattles off the prayers required over various types of food and the many and layered activities that are forbidden on the Sabbath, but he doesn't bother to wonder or explain why they exist and why some people are okay with them and why he's not. He's content to nudge us and say, "Isn't that ridiculous? Isn't it stupid?", so we'll say, "Yeah, it is stupid. High five!" That's fine talk for a barbecue, but you need to expose yourself more in your writing. You need to allow yourself to be vulnerable.

I'm guessing that Mr. Auslander felt all too vulnerable in going as far as he did here: in talking about his drug use and trafe indulgences and his encounters with porn and with a prostitute. And especially about his family, and about how his father used to beat his brother with his mother's passive consent.

But he stops just when the writing would've become meaningful. He resorts to arguments with his personal guardian God and the resultant tired anti-Auslander's-God jokes rather than putting his feelings and his anger and sorrow into context. He never wonders how others view God, how others deal with the same thing he's going through, how his mother and father may have seen things. He's so tied up in his own head that he can't see anything else, which ultimately makes his writing tiresome and thin.

I wish he had been pushed to tell the whole story. I wish he'd written openly about his anger and his fear instead of wrapping them up in deflective humor. He didn't admit that he's still struggling with terrible fears, all the more terrible because he knows they aren't logical. He didn't admit that he lost something by breaking with his parents, and that they must've lost something, too. He didn't talk about how therapy helped (or hurt) him; he falls back on (of course) a repated deadpan joke about how much the therapy cost.

He didn't go on a quest to address his problem, he just folded up more into himself. And that's a shame not only for him, but for his readers.

My Loves (of the big and small screens)

I can't explain it. These people show up in a guest spot or a movie trailer and I sit up and go "Hey! I've got to see that! I love you, Ian McShane!"

1. SuperDave Osborne, aka Bob Einstein.
Ok, his real name is Bob Einstein, so that's cause for love right there. He played Officer Judy on the Smothers Brothers show, and though that was before my time and I've only seen clips, the very name Officer Judy makes me laugh every time. I mostly know him as SuperDave, the parody of the Evel Knievel-style stunt performer, and I've mostly only seen SuperDave on Letterman's show. So when I think about it, I've barely ever seen this guy, yet every time is a treat. Thanks to Curb Your Enthusiasm (and a few Arrested Developments), he's around more than ever before. His starkly deadpan delivery and distinctive husky voice make him instantly recognizable. His no-bullshit demeanor in the midst of playing the most bullshitting of characters is utterly delightful. He doesn't beg you to laugh because he knows you will. Love!

2. William Daniels
That's Dr. Craig to me, of my beloved St. Elsewhere. Another one with a highly distinctive voice (maybe that's the secret to my heart) -- a short guy with a powerful presence, perfectly cast as John Adams in the movie musical 1776 (he sings, too!). He's a perfectionist and an autocrat doomed by his own pride (just like me!). In real life, he's been married to his actress wife Bonnie Bartlett (Mrs. Craig, natch) for one million years. He was the voice of KITT the car. When he took the part of Mr. Feeny in Boy Meets World, I despaired that he was sinking into the sitcom mire, but he's smarter than I am and picked a good show. He's 80 now, so my longtime dream of acting with him is increasingly imperiled, but I'll always have him yelling at Erlich. Get younger, Mr. Daniels!

3. Gary Cole
You find me another guy who can perfectly embody murderer Jeffrey MacDonald, superfather Mr. Brady-via-Robert-Reed, and the boss man in Office Space. Oh, you can't? Of course not -- no one else is as perfect as Cole. He brings class and gravity to everything he does, while being one of the funniest guys around. Try that for your next party trick. Hint: you can't do it!

4. Robin Weigert
If I get started on the Deadwood cast, I'll never stop, so let's just mention the amazing Jane Canary. I've only ever seen her in one other thing, a bizarre bit in Angels in America where she plays a Mormon diorama thing come to life. She just has one of those faces -- kind and compelling, a face that really seems to see the people she's looking at, which brings every scene she plays to crackling life. Hey -- IMDB just told me she's on the new show Life! Now I have to watch that.

"My Kid Could Paint That" (2007, dir Amir Bar-Lev)

Buy what you love, because if you buy art as an investment, you're playing a loser's game. Not a losing game, necessarily, but a loser's game, a game played by people with too much money and too little interest in natural gas futures or real estate. Art is meant to be lived with, to instruct and enlighten and enrage and love, yet much of the best of Western art (at least; how the fuck would I know about any other kind?) is locked up in temp-controlled storage units owned by the wealthy. With the wine, maybe. (Ha! Of course not -- totally different temps required. Wow, that's a filthy rich person's sidesplitter right there!)

Imagine pouring your heart and soul and possibly risking your life or risking exile to produce a work of art, and now, however many years later, it's locked in a giant closet in Sylvester Stallone's house, or Lars Ullrich's. Want to see art used as an investment? Watch the Metallica doc "Some Kind of Monster" and see Lars sell off his Basquiats and whatever. Let's hope there is no afterlife or there are bound to be some very disappointed paint-spattered souls up there.

But here's where I'll contradict myself -- art almost always has been defined by patronage, and I'm thinking that's the way it should be. Pieces produced for a specific purpose, often erotic (I think most major art museums should just be called what they are: "Museum of the Depiction of the Female Butt, Plus Some Saints and Jesus to Alleviate Resultant Guilt"). This whole bit of nonsense about one soul expressing himherself is kind of...well, the work's going to go on the auction block one way or another, isn't it? So it isn't so much expressing one's soul as it is guessing what other souls will want to see. Patronage. (Oh, and HINT: the other souls mostly want to see naked female butts, and/or war scenes and/or people being eaten by sharks.)

All I'm getting at is that I saw Amir Bar-Lev's doc, and although I was enraged for the first ten or fifteen minutes by the fact that I paid eleven dollars to sit in a theatre with six other people and some dopey woman STILL came right up to my seat in the back and asked to see my ticket because I had apparently sat in her ASSIGNED SEAT (Jesus, what is this, EUROPEAN SOCIALISM WITH THE ASSIGNED MOVIE SEATS?) -- I mean, for Christ's sake lady, there were only four other people there and you still walked down my row and said "Excuse me" to climb over my legs and you still bumped me out of my seat, I mean THIS IS AMERICA, LADY! -- so, fine, she picked the seat I should've picked, all's fair and I moved to another seat in only a 95% huff, and I was then further enraged by the fact that Amir didn't seem to have complete command of the focusing ring on his camera, so most of the interview sequences in the early part of the movie (with the journalist lady in overalls, and with Mark-the-dad) were fuzzy and, seriously, I paid 11 dollars to sit there watching a movie by a guy who couldn't manage to shine enough lights on his subjects and maybe needs new glasses.

But this movie was fantastic, really, and I think it comes down to Amir's niceness. He's so nice, it seems, that I feel I can call him by his first name. He's humble. He's not today's style of doc filmmaker, which is too often someone who wants to make narrative films with Angelina Jolie but needs to do something cheap and provocative first in order to get noticed. He's not a jerk with a camera looking for an expose or looking to make a point about society such that he'll edit his footage to fit it no matter how poorly his subject matches his theme --

(oh, I just watched "The Staircase" on DVD, CAN YOU TELL? Fascinating to watch and all, but damn there must be some kind of reverse libel statute that doesn't let you cover up so much of a real incident to fit your "American Southerners are homophobes and fools who consider justice a cotton-picking nuisance, and women are important only insofar as they are cute and doubtless golddigging and wear their hair in ways we find appealing", THAT MEANS YOU Jean-Xavier de Lestrade (writer/dir) and ESPECIALLY YOU Denis Poncet (producer), thanks for including the DVD extra of your own views on the case that explains your movie and it's creepy slant) --

...uh, where was I? Right, Amir. He's a nice guy who wanted to catch the painting prodigy in her ascendancy, and who's heart was, I think, genuinely a bit broken when he came to the inescapable conclusion that daddy was "helping" the prodigy to employ shape/form/repetition and theme in her paintings. You know, the things that a four year old couldn't employ or formulate. The things that make the paintings appealing and that make them sell.

Well, no. They sell because of the story behind them, and that's fine because lots of art is like that. "Guernica", or Motherwell without the Spanish war is...what? Mondrian without the move to New York and the influence of jazz is...not the same, I think. So the people who buy little Marla (+ big Mark's, I think) paintings are not being duped in any way that any art buyer isn't duped.

This is why people need to buy what they love. The price point is beside the point. I can give you a compare/contrast scenario to illustrate (no pun intended) what I mean: Norton Simon vs. Seymour H. Knox, Jr. Visit the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena and you will see a wonderful, passionate, cohesive collection by a man who loved art, who especially loved Degas and his little cast horses. There's a viewpoint to this museum, and an expansive generosity. Now hop on a plane to Buffalo and visit the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. This collection is shit, and I'm not just saying that because I stupidly made a special trip to the frozen center of hell (Buffalo in winter) just to see it. It's shit because it's clearly the work of a rich guy, and subsequent acquisitions directors, who decided to cherry-pick from the big names in modern art. This is a collection meant to impress with it's price tag, and the works are strung up in a stiff line like the Von Trapp children reporting to Captain Dad. Entering that gallery is like walking into a party where all the guests are big name but have no relationship with one another and simply stand around glumly with drinks in their hands. This gallery left me cold, while the Norton Simon makes my heart pound with the possibilities of humanity. I can't tell you how angry it makes me that some wonderful stuff -- a side of beef by Soutine, my beloved "Yellow Christ" by Gauguin -- is stranded in the art-prison of the Albright-Knox.

So the Marla controversy is really about money and art, about the acquisition position. It isn't about the dopey "controversy" over whether modern art is "real" art -- I mean, god, are we still worrying about that? We aren't, are we? I'm sure Morely Safer is, but the rest of us? (Go paint more hotel rooms and relax, Morely.)

(Oh, shit -- I just realized how poetically perfect the Marla/Morely naming alliteration is! I would totally do that if I were naming these characters in a novel! It's FATE!)

The movie works because it doesn't stoop to Safer-cynicism or Wallace-skepticism with the subjects. Amir lets them talk. He asks the needed questions and lets their faces tell the story. He, miraculously, gets the gallery owner who made his fortune (? Or some good amount) off of Marla to admit what we movie-goers suspected an hour earlier: that he, a frustrated photo-realist painter, was championing Marla in order to stick it the art community and their inexplicable love of the quick-'n-easy and the abstract. It's a story of revenge and ego and the desire to be special (Mark, this means you). It's MacBeth. So, of course, it's tragedy, but a small tragedy, after all. Amir sympathizes with the family, especially Mom Laura and Non-Prodigy Zane, and we sympathize with all of them, too. I'm sorry you guys got into this, that your weaknesses let it happen. Weaknesses like a need for expression, a need to be heard, love of your children, loyalty to your family, not wanting to hurt or doubt the ones you love, and money-is-good. Nice, meaty, human weaknesses.

But seriously, if you're buying Markla's paintings, you'd better do it because you love them, not because you're hoping to cash in. Don't be an ass about it. This isn't "F is for Fake" territory here, so don't pretend it is.

My mom had these little blue Chinese dragons, book ends, when I was growing up. I loved them. I saw some just like them years later in a (closed) store in Boston's Chinatown and took a photo of them. Lately, I saw them on sale at Plantation LA for $250. My mom says she bought them for something like $25. It's not that they've become valuable all of a sudden -- it's that the Plantation LA buyer went down to some Chinatown somewhere and you did not, so you pay a premium.

But no matter how much or little you pay, it doesn't matter, so long as you love your dragons.