This blog post of P Diddy discussing John McCain's veep choice is amazing. check it out.

For a moment, Anti-Americanism be damned.

Today, in her article "Credit Where It's Due", Janet Albrechtsen made me shiver a little bit with her analogy between other countries' anti-Americanism and the classic parent-teenager relationship. Why? A non-American, she isolated several trends in American philanthropy and aid work that go unrecognized by cavilling international critics, citing specifically the catastrophic situation now in Myanmar, where American relief is waiting on the sidelines while the Burmese military regime tries to figure out whether to let the US give its people much-needed help. Meanwhile, these critics are disregarding US aid efforts as "attempts to undermine the UN" and (re: the 2004 tsunami), "consolidate its hegemony." I could go on, but I suggest you read the article.

In one of Clinton's most recent brilliant political moves, she discounts economists in the gas tax debate saying that she doesn't trust those totally elitist economists, saying: "I’m not going to put my lot in with economists because I know if we did it right ... we would design it in such a way that it would be implemented effectively." Is she insane, or just totally irresponsible in her politics?

Has the New York Times un-endorsed Hillary?

So I'm going to stop troubling you buried in my yard

Stephen Malkmus is crazy. When talking about indie/underground music today: "U2 wants to hang around with Arcade Fire. U2 didn't want to hang around with Pavement."

But no, he also wrote: "We just do what we do. I would quantify our sound as more underground than indie, in that it's not catering to a fashion, so much as indie happens to be a fashion now. But the underground lives on regardless. It always does. Because there are so many people making music, and there are enough people just making it to their own taste." (source)

I tend to agree with what he's saying in distinguishing underground music from indie, but what about musicians who are underground who receive sudden and extreme exposure through new media?

Why am I thinking about this? Because I've been watching Pennsylvania returns all night on MSNBC and I need to find some respite from the torture. At least, I have the lovely Matthews/Olberman tag team doing coverage (I didn't really like Olberman until I saw his special comment last month on Countdown).

i was nineteen (call me)

"you showed me my first good glass of red wine, andre," I wrote and erased.

Laying and lazing for a while as they did in Prospect Park, it didn't feel so much to John and Agie like a Thursday afternoon as it did the whole length of a Saturday. Holding one another then, there was no chance in these timeless few hours that it might have rained, the baseball games called in for the day, or the barbecues upended by turbulent wind and wetted paper plates. Although they continued to lay there for a shorter time than they might have thought- they were young and supposed to be other places, after all- the crispness of the air, the bristle of shorn grass and the sounds of cavorting families and friends trolling through these undulating urban hills lent them two and a half hours of eternity, and the most fabulous intimacy only possible in public cuddles of locked limbs and traveling hands.

"Abigail, hush dear," said Mrs. Mary Walker across the sitting room. "It is a mercy these days to have one's things in order. A taxman's life cannot be the most pleasant, to be sure, but it is the profession of the most reliable type of man, and considering the indiscretions of your past, this is most certainly a good match!"

"I could never love a man such as Mr. Parker, mama," Abigail replied, rearranging her bustle in discomfort, perched on a straight-backed chair.

"Blast!," interjected Mr. Walker, "All this nonsense gets us nowhere. Now where's my handkerchief gone to? I'm telling you, the walls in this house are damp."

"They most certainly are not!," rebuffed Mrs. Walker, and then all kept quiet for a while.

Manning Up and the Media Moment

I had never really been horrified by the sheer power of spin-doctors until the reaction to the primaries last Tuesday, the lightning quick emergence of Naftagate and the other burgeoning phantom scandals. It has always seemed sort of harmless in a way, harvesting controversy, journalists and pundits keeping up with me while I refresh my browser during a lunch break, giving Drudge his next 40 pt font headline and Real Clear Politics their early morning edition. The real reason Obama is getting more flack now isn’t just because the media felt bad about soft handling him, or because there’s more reason to criticize him, but because it’s the next logical conclusion in achieving customer satisfaction. People who are reading the news every day like me want a new story every hour on the hour, and if it’s not new, it better darn well deliver somehow. Hillary has been flipped and prodded and fried and served up so many times in her life, and there are only so many ways to cook an egg. But suddenly, like the invention of the omelette, there was a new way to tell that story for a while: Hillary gets shown up by newcomer who shows the world that it can be a different place. She is not just a terrible, corrupt establishment politician anymore-- all the old arguments against her-- now, she doesn’t sing in the people’s key. Because few politicians are very compelling speakers, this was never an issue, but with Obama making women faint at rallies, what a headline this could make!

The fact is, her bad politicking and mud slinging haven't really been given that much criticism, given their breadth. Bad campaigning is old news. But this new critique took the likeability factor to a whole new level: Obama doesn't only refrain from engaging in bad political discourse, but he understands why it is damaging (taking a cue, it seems, from Jon Stewart's appearance on Crossfire). For a while, right around the time of the Yes We Can video, we “got it” and we knew that Obama “got it”. And we knew that Hillary supporters didn’t get it at all. That was good news. That was a movement Obama had on his hands, the edge he had (as far as the spin went at the time) over Hillary. Of course, then Hillary went on SNL and the Daily Show, and Obama's supporters started coming off as too mindless (will.i.am's Yes We Can was followed up by We are the Ones), his cause too much of a fad, like liking an iPhone.

This hits upon that pundit fave, buyer's remorse. Is voting for Obama like buying an iPhone, too? Malarkey. Any candidate has pros and cons. When comparing the two candidates, people continue to say "No, THIS is what this election is about about," and proceed to make their argument about the make or break factors in this race. In reality there is no bottom line, but in the news, there always must be. The public requires this. This demand creates the spontaneous media moment, the will the public has for drama and the excitement the media has in pouncing. And, as in all theatre, good timing counts. As we have seen with YouTube, the will of the moment is strong and sometimes totally arbitrary. But also, as with YouTube, the moment is contagious, media blitzes work like the flu, working in and then out of the system. Until now, the Obama camp has had an uncanny sense of timing, but part of the reason the Clinton dismembering machine is so powerful is because it has historically struck at the most calculated moments, such as the days preceding the VOTR primaries, where a jab as hypocritical and nonsensical as the 3am ad had just enough time to score Clinton some points.

As for Obama's alleged glass jaw, since the Clintons are certainly showing that they are the horror film which will never end, I tend to agree with Maureen Down when she says that Obama needs to get dirty and dispense, for a while, with his principled restraint. The best part of this psychodrama would be seeing Obama come back at Hillary with the same style that we have seen him demonstrate off the cuff in their last debate. Hillary can try to shellac Obama with inanities, but all the media is really throwing at Obama now is a charge against his assertiveness in the face of opposition or foul play. Obama doesn't need to use a smear campaign that capitalizes on thin information. Hillary's given him loads of ammunition already, whether we're talking cattle futures or Whitewater. Now that we have six weeks until Pennsylvania, it's the perfect time for the Obama campaign to change gears and take a spin in a different direction. Obama getting a little dirty, manning up and taking Hillary into the ring will not only prove that he's got the guts, but it'll get the newspapers begging for more. Now that's some good theatre; and it'll be clear to everyone who the hero is.

Paul Potts

Watch this if you want your heart to be warmed. See how a shy cell phone salesman makes all of Britain cry when he sings opera. You'll love it.

Being back in Chicago is interesting. From the get-go, with Americans resurfacing around me, it was all very uncanny, from my neighbor on the plane telling me how he had recently visited Barandov studios, to the until now entirely forgotten feel of ice underfoot and the familiar echo of fellow men, cursing with mincing step down the sidewalk, remembering that sometimes its no cakewalk nipping out to the shops. Of course ice is not an American phenomenon, but it feels like the Chicago winter I know. On all kinds of surfaces, mostly on pavement and blasted on the glass of bus shelters and windshields, glazing the grass on winter walks to the Point, giving those blades a backbone for a few moments. When the plane was coming in for a landing and we ascended through a level of clouds, I mistook a lower cloud bank for a set of frozen waves on the lake, so perfectly frozen did they appear. I was wrong about the lake- it hasn't been swallowed whole by the cold- just around the fringe- but it seems to stand alone in that.

I went to the MCA the other day, and they were changing the exhibition, so only the permanent collection on the 4th floor was open. There was a modern take on the Allegory of the Four Seasons motif- the same vantage point photographed on Lake Michigan shot during all four seasons, which showed the change in the color palette and the opacity of the water through the course of the year. They also had a few Thomas Struth photographs that were incredible. This one was my favorite, to be sure. There was also a really terrible small exhibit on the same floor, Mapping the Self, which was really unpleasant, badly curated, low quality, and in my friend Emma's estimation, altogether too schmaltzy.

A Cameron McGill show was also in order, so I linked up with my friend David for that true fan experience, complete with absolute zeal and heartbreak, some hand-holding. Noah Harris, who makes part of What Army, played an opening set on piano that was perfect for the space, and goofily loungey due to the tea lights flanking him on the piano. Cameron's set was awesome, albeit somewhat less structured than normal, given the workshop format he's adopted for this Wednesday residency at the new Uncommon Ground. It's really more upmarket than the other Uncommon Ground, but very fun.

I got to get a tour of my friend's work in the Field Museum, in the venerable Department of Fishes, deep in the yawning depths of the building. Making our way to the exciting room where the live fishes swim, we passed shelves of less lucky fish, their bodies tipped into jars of formaldehyde, exciting terror and curiosity. Megsie then took us to her lab, where she does all sorts of exciting things involving DNA sequencing, which until this point I had assumed was a much more difficult process than it seemed to be, after seeing all the machines that shake the genes apart and take their picture. It was also a pleasant surprise to go to the Friday happy hour and see all the jovial scientists drinking unseasonal coronas with lime in a back room, paying on the honor system in the hallowed community of friend and colleague.

Before taking this tour, Mariya and I took free advantage of our free visitor passes and toured the Maps exhibit which was really exhaustive, and kind of counter-intuitively laid out. I think it lent something to the exhibit, that there was no overt and systematized ordering, except for occasional pockets of maps related by theme. This was actually somewhat reassuring since it would've been easier to skip through whole portions of a room if it has been organized chronologically. Instead, you always felt you were happening every once in a while upon a little revelation of a thing (the Babylonian clay map from circa 3500 BC, was it?, that shows the grid of a city map, with one block denoted as the Gardens... Are these THE Gardens? The Hanging Gardens? Is this a Wonder of the World as depicted on a clay map?) You see what I mean. The exhibit closes in a week of so, so you should see it if you can.

I was taken out to the best meal ever (of 2007?) at North Pond, which is in the old warming hut for ice skaters on an old skating pond in the center of Lincoln Park. We had the tasting menu, although it was a bit different than what you see on the link. There were a few sort of little courses skirting the ones listed- more substantial than the occasional amuse-bouche. For example, before the shrimp tartare and tuna crudo, we had two kinds of oyster and crème fraiche with caviar on a blini. I don't know that I've ever had oysters before, but they were incredible. Before dessert, we also had this amazing ricotta cheesecake (I use the term cake lightly- it was more of a slice) that tasted like burfi, topped with pomegranate gelée on this inimitable crust. The wine we had was a reaaaally nice Malbec that had no edge at all, which was pretty strange for me, since I always expect to be puckering. Really earthy, as they say. Of course, I know precious little about wines, and you would do well to be suspicious of my recommendations.

I also went on Saturday morning to a wedding- my friend Dana married his beautiful girlfriend Johana in the Chicago Cultural Center, and although I was embarrassingly the last to arrive for the short ceremony, I was thankfully not too late to see the knot tied. It's actually quite a beautiful place to get married, I think. And the judge who married them was goofy and charismatic.

Well, that's all from Chicago for now. I'm here in limbo for maybe a couple days yet. There's news of a Turkish invasion on the front, so I might hold out here for a bit longer, and take that long train ride back home mid-week.

Dictionary Squared is the creation of an old friend of mine, and it's a pretty interesting simple algorithm for displaying word usage by employing (I've been told) Google's search function, delivering usage examples much to the same effect as does the OED. In this case, the rub is that the answers are arbitrary in their selection, or at least follow internet search parameters, in stark opposition to the process the OED uses to supply its usage examples (at times, the origin of the word itself). This idea is something that critic John Simon would shake his fist at-- a neat if not aggressive tool based in the association of words with their colloquial usage, if it works as I imagine it will. Even if priority is given to academic resources online to supply the examples, the responses will still be inclusive in scope. It may be a very neat little idea to thwart the likes of Simon, since his stalwart defense against "misuse" of usage leaves little room for this kind of bottom-up, mechanized democratization in language. Anyway, it's cool.

Obama's caucus speech after his Iowa victory made me burst into tears when I read it this morning. Yes, I am a bit behind in the news. If you want, you can take a look at the video itself, which has been posted online. There were also a bunch of fantastic little local tv news clips that held interviews in Hyde Park establishments of note, namely Mellow Yellow and Valois.