Stay true to your school

The high school I attended, Mountain View High, is apparently ranked 224th best in the country. This seems about right: There's no way I graduated from a top 200 institution, but I couldn't fathom coming below 300th. I mean, right? Where would I have to have been educated? A fucking barn?

Worth noting: Gunn and Paly -- the oh we're so cool we went to school in Palo Alto -- high schools didn't even make the cut this year for the first time since 2003. I'll grant you that doesn't exactly pass the smell test, but neither does ol' MVHS being the 8th best high school in Northern California. I wonder if we got any points for having a student newspaper with its flag run down the left leg of the front page?

[pause]

Go Spartans!!! Go Spartans!!!

Thoughts on the Festival of Lights, or: How I Stopped Worrying And Learned to Love the Baum

I hate to interrupt this steady stream of everyone posting for something so self-indulgent, but I'd like to doff a cap for Hanukkah, if I may. The holiday, which started last night, is essentially known in three different ways: Most Christians know it as the Jewish Christmas, a few Christians and most Jews are aware of it as when some oil lasted eight days after a battle of some kind, and Jews who graduated from Hebrew High School in Palo Alto, Calif. can describe it as something more. (First link that came up for "true story of Hanukkah" + "assimilation" and I'm lazy.) Anyway! The Festival of Lights has one more special significance that I don't think gets enough play. This is what I'm talking about:


Shocked? Don't be. Adam Sandler's "Hanukkah Song" -- while unbelievably, unbelievably cliched at this point -- is, I would argue, a true keystone for American Jewry. Sandler first sang it on Saturday Night Live in 1995 and I believe that day turned the tide on more than just his career. Despite the tune's seeming novelty status and limited appeal, it actually did crazy well on the Billboard charts, even becoming a Top 20 "mainstream rock track" (whatever that is) when he released it on CD a few years later. (I mean, I still can't believe how into it that crowd seems for the friggin' Hannukah Song.)


The first ever public version of the song, on Weekend Update.

Before 1995, well, I was eleven. But in any analysis of Jews in pop culture to that point would suggest that being Jewish, frankly, wasn't very cool. It's not so much that Jews felt they had to hide they were Jewish, even recently (looking at you Winona Horowitz, I mean Ryder) it's that the public perception was that every one was Woody Allen (f.k.a. Allen Konigsberg): a nebbishy inept schlump in therapy. But that isn't exactly the case anymore. While some Jews still play the classic effeminate whiner (see: Braff, Zach) more and more often being Jewish is almost something oddly hip. Look at this Gap ad with Jeremy Piven, who has also done ads for JDate. Or so I'm told.


Somewhat unbelievably, he's wearing a Jewish star necklace in full view! That ran in, like, national magazines! This is the new Jew? Muscular and suave? Fair enough! The bottom line is that at some point, mainstream American culture decided it was kinda cool to be a little Jewish. Some will argue it was Jerry Seinfeld, whose show was famously turned down initially because it was "too Jewish." But as it became the most popular comedy of the 1990s, "Jewish humor" became more accepted until the point where countless awful sitcom writers today try to force gentiles to tell jokes like a Heeb.

But I point to Sandler, who gave young Jews their first piece of pop culture that was ours, the first cool thing that maybe our non-Jewish friends actually wanted to be a part of. Sandler pulled off one of the great social transitions of our lifetime in three minutes: he took the isolationism of being a young Jew at the end of the millenium in America and turned it into a cool kids club, full of gin-and-tonicahs and -- wink, wink -- absolutely no marijuanaka. It was around this time you started to hear people talking about others as "belonging to the tribe." And, boom, just like that, you were proud to have a Bar Mitzvah, to be going to Hebrew School (and even, oy vey, Hebrew High School, when all the actually cool kids were still smoking pot behind the In-N-Out Burger). See, so what if we were different? Listen to the radio!-- That song is about us!

So do you guys think I'm cool yet? Guys?

All in the game, yo, all in the game

SeeqPod Music beta - Playable Search

Today is Dec. 4. Not a big date in terms of holidays (unless you live in India, in which you're probably drunk already celebrating Navy Day) -- that is, until this year. That's because today is the day HBO is releasing Season 4 of their acclaimed show The Wire on DVD, only less than a month before the fifth and final season -- completed before the writers strike -- debuts in January.

Season 4 is still my favorite season of The Wire, and I didn't even see every episode when it aired last year. But now it's available for purchase and you can be damn sure it's on my Christmas list. Why am I so excited? I'll let America's TV critics answer that, from these reviews of Season 4.

"The breadth and ambition of "The Wire" are unrivaled and that taken cumulatively over the course of a season -- any season -- it's an astonishing display of writing, acting and storytelling that must be considered alongside the best literature and filmmaking in the modern era."
Tim Goodman, San Francisco Chronicle

"To me, what allows 'The Wire' to surpass 'The Sopranos' in the pantheon of greatest American TV shows is its ambition and its anger."
Aaron Barnhart, Kansas City Star

"This is TV as great modern literature, a shattering and heartbreaking urban epic about a city (Baltimore) rotting from within."
Matt Roush, TV Guide

"Brilliant, scathing, sprawling, The Wire has turned our indifference to urban decay into a TV achievement of the highest order."
Robert Bianco, USA Today

"When television history is written, little else will rival "The Wire," a series of such extraordinary depth and ambition that it is, perhaps inevitably, savored only by an appreciative few."
Brian Lowry, Variety

"They have done what many well-intentioned socially minded writers have tried and failed at: written a story that is about social systems, in all their complexity, yet made it human, funny and most important of all, rivetingly
entertaining."
James Poniewozik, Time magazine

"The Wire is one of the few times you'll watch TV and not feel like the people making TV think you're a fucking idiot."
Patton Oswalt, actor and comedian

At the end of the day, the best quote I can offer you is this, from Ms. Vickinson, being reminded of the significance of Dec. 4.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

USA! USA! USA!

Terrifying, yet hilarious. Kinda like democracy!



Vegas set the over/under on the number of statements and/or implications in this answer I would disagree with at a dozen. (And, yes, the over wins.)

Labor pains

1886: The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employes (Local One) is founded.

Time passes.

Nov. 2, 2007: Jewman Capote buys his first-ever Broadway tickets.

Nov. 10, 2007: The IATSE Local One strikes, for the first time in the union's 121-year history.

Nov. 24, 2007: The night of Capote's tickets. He is in New York nevertheless.

Nov. 28, 2007: Stagehands and producers come to an agreement. Strike concludes.

Clap your hands say meh

All together now

SeeqPod Music beta - Playable Search

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What's New Pussycat, maybe?

It's official: I'm a much better mini-golfer than Jewman. I trounced him during a game at the Pirate's Cove adventure golf course on Saturday, and my reward for winning this high stakes game is that I get to choose a song for him to sing during our next karaoke outing.

So....all of you who occasionally glance at this here blog thing are welcome to contribute embarassing song suggestions. Here are a few I've thought of so far:

1) Time after Time, by Cyndi Lauper

2) This Love, by Maroon 5

3) Umbrella, by Rihanna

Others possibilities?

Fun with anagrams

Seth hates his job = He sobs, "Ah shit." Jet!

NaWriStriMo

So I've just now explained the disastrous writers strike plaguing Los Angeles -- and us all! -- to my third friend in two days and I figure what the hey, why not throw some word NAWW's way too. It might be because I work in intellectual property like the writers do, and maybe it's the strongly held union blood coursing through my veins, but I'm with the little guy on this one. Sure, I understand that the Internet is still "new" and it's not immediately clear how money will be made on downloads, webisodes, revamped websites, ad-supported original content, etc. But if the studios' arguments are that they're not making any money yet, why not promise the writers, say, 2 percent of that nothing? Then, once the technology develops, that 2 percent reiumburses the writers for widening their audiences. Obviously, the real issue here is that I'm looking at spending a whole frigging year without The Daily Show or the Colbert Report, in an election year even still. Look, I need my snark, people. (I suppose there's always reality TV, which seems to me to be the antithesis of snark -- seriously, aren't all these shows, like, the most earnest works ever?) Anyway, fact remains there is good TV that will never be produced because of the strike. At least I'm just a consumer. I couldn't imagine staking my life's career on this. (What's worse are those who will lose their jobs without ever having a say in the strike, I guess.) It's also not television, a medium I frankly could live without, that will be hit. Movies, which I couldn't, will also not be written any time soon. "Good" news: this could be the dawn of a new age of indie flicks as most independent movies are made by first-time filmmakers, according to an independent producer.

Oh, I'm sorry, were you hoping to watch...

Scrubs? The last six episodes of the final season may never exist.
Heroes? An early episode will receive an alternate ending to let it serve as a season finale.

Lost? Hope you weren't planning to see a full season, either.

The Office? Steve Carell won't cross a picket line and has thus called in sick to work with "enlarged balls." (Great video explaining the strike here.)

Curb Your Enthusiasm? 30 Rock? SNL? Not a chance. Big Love? Entourage? Prepare for delays. Bottom line: I'm already jaw-clenched irritated by all things American Idol, which is about to take over our pop culture like cockroaches in an abandoned townhome.

In the interest of giving each side fair play, Michael Eisner, former Disney studio chief, calls the striking workers "stupid" and "misguided" and puts the blame squarely on the turtlenecked shoulders of Steve Jobs. I remain unconvinced.

Long distance relationships

So I'm just sitting in my predictably boring James City supervisors meeting, watching some presentation about how great it is we have a library (OMG bookz!!1!) when the library director gets to his slide on user comments. Lo and behold, it's a letter from our very own, um, Seoul Bellow? Rayblonde Chandler? I dunno, but thank heavens for the bit of levity because the meeting went on for another nine hours or so.

Walt Hitman, newcomer to the blog (and a working woman)

OH HAI! This is literally my first visit to the blog since the day I single-handedly dreamed the whole thing up. So far it looks like you guys are doing a great job. Way to take my idea and really run with it.
JC: your Daily Presstige is a mystery to me. I can't think of a single person who'd want to nominate you for an award of any kind. However, if Ursula has taught me one thing, it's: never underestimate the importance of BODY language.
Ha!

Alright, who's the joker?

Thanks, Mark! Never knew you cared!

Seriously, I didn't think you cared.

.

Hey, maybe Ursula is getting me back for months ago. Wait a second-- Ursula?? OH NOES!!!1!

does this count as low culture?

From a press release we got from the Virginia Farm Bureau today:

VT course educates ag students about Latino workforce

BLACKSBURG-During his first two internships in the landscaping industry, Virginia Tech senior Justin Jenkins didn't understand why his Latino co-workers insisted on working in groups, made limited eye contact with their supervisor and gave everyone nicknames.

But after taking Barbara Kraft's "Spanish in the Green Industry" course, Jenkins has a better understanding of his new Latino friends.

"She explained everything I had heard and noticed in the field," Jenkins said. "I just finished my third internship, and I could understand them more and had better communication with them.

"Justin Jenkins didn't understand why his new Latino friends were always leaving their cars on their lawns, and why they liked their food so spicy. But thanks to the Farm Bureau's course, he now can appreciate this exotic, fun new culture!"

I guess it's not so much that the idea is so bad--more like the tone in which they presented it was so....earnest? Like "Ask a Mexican," only completely sincere....Kinda like how my Catholic School took us to go visit "The Jews," Seth! I mean, Sleth...

Just a matter of time, really

Remove "persuade businessman suicide" from this and put in "hope for two supervisors to argue, draw pistols and blow each other away" and this kinda sad/kinda funny story sounds like every other Tuesday night for me.

NYT writes stupid story

My first post! How exciting!

Breaking news: Being friends with benefits can be stressful!

If you're lazy and you don't click on the link, basically it's a NYT story about a new study that looks at the dynamics of "friends with benefits" relationships.

The nut graph: "Yet relationships in which close friends begin having sex come with their own brand of awkwardness, according to the first study to explore the dynamics of such pairs, often called friends with benefits, or F.W.B."

Worst story/study ever! And if anyone understands what the graphic above the story is supposed to illustrate, could they please explain it to me?

Mike Gundy is an angry elf

My favorite piece of media commentary for this week. Granted not as good as Seth's "This is what I think of TV news" video, but the sheer anger of this guy is pretty entertaining.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoMmbUmKN0E

A coincidence?

So exactly one week after one of our cohorts leaves Newport News and the newspaper world (could be anyone!), this arrives in my mailbox.

Pure coincidence, or a former DP staffer's sweet revenge?

Discuss. :)

A bag of popcorn in one hand, an extensively highlighted textbook in the other

There really is nothing quite like the first post of a new blog, especially one as broadly (poorly?) defined as this one. Will NAWW include a steady stream of entertainment and edification? Will posts slow to a halt? Is there in fact rum in Mojito Gum? We may not know these answers for awhile, but here's to finding out.

At any rate, I'm a bit of a cinephile and while I have a special place in my heart for those red Netflix envelopes, I do love going to the local theater -- and not because I have free tickets from winning the Oscar pool earlier this year. There was a two- or three-month span in 1997 when my friend Jacob Markovitz and I saw a movie every weekend. And yet the only flick I can recall well is Event Horizon, possibly because of all the blood or perhaps because I couldn't stop vomiting because of all the blood. I guess I'll never know. Anyway, here are some movies coming out over the next few months that should keep upchucking to a bare minimum: they are all political in nature, and therefore by definition earning at least some curiosity from me. Not to hop on the soapbox (yet) but I do happen to believe that American masses can use all the political education they can get, and if society needs fiction to broaden its horizons, well, so be it. Vox populi is too often defined by talking points and conventional wisdom -- why can't storytellers have their say, allowing Americans to have some commentary along with their reality TV and mindless explosions. Hey, what can I do: I'm a political reporter; if someone would like to list all the upcoming crime, education or Michael Vick-related films, please, be my guest.

(Note: Unlike in other seasons, none of these political movies are satires or comedies, a la American Dreamz and Thank You for Smoking. And nearly all tackle the same weighty issue: the war in Iraq. What statement that makes about the national mood, I wouldn't want to guess.)

The Kingdom (Trailer) opens this week. The two-hour film takes a tense look at a group of FBI operatives -- played by Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Chris Cooper and, surprisingly, Jason Bateman -- who investigate a terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia. It's loosely based on the FBI's investigation of the 1996 bombings on Khobar Towers in Dharhan, but early reviews focus more on the violent action. Three crew members died during production and Jennifer Garner reportedly collapsed twice from the heat while filming the desert sequences.

In the Valley of Elah (Trailer) opened on Sept. 14. So named after the valley in which David slew Goliath, this Paul Haggis-helmed picture follows a woman played by Charlize Theron helping an ex-military man (Tommy Lee Jones) investigate the disappearance of his Iraq-vet son. Naturally, given Haggis' background (Crash, Million Dollar Baby) the film evolves from a whodunit into one asking acute questions about the war. Susan Sarandon plays the soldier's mother.

Grace is Gone (Trailer) opens on Oct. 15. John Cusack reins in his go-to hyper-articulate character while playing a shrinking father who can't quite find the words to tell his two daughters that their mother has been killed in the Iraq war. Unlike "Elah," this movie tackles more the tragic loss of life that comes with war over, say, the pros and cons of invading Iraq.

Rendition (Trailer) comes out October 19. This Reese Witherspoon vehicle depicts the U.S. government's practice of extraordinary rendition, in which our country kidnaps suspected terrorists and flies them to other countries to be tortured for information. When the Egyptian husband of Witherspoon's character is secretly held by the government (Jake Gyllenhaal plays the rookie CIA agent overseeing the interrogation; Meryl Streep the official who orders the covert abduction.) she struggles equally with the secretive agency and not knowing if he's innocent or guilty.

Day Zero (Trailer) is expected to open Nov. 2. And they said it would never happen... The draft is back! With forces in Afghanistan and Iraq depleted and weary, the U.S. government reinstates the military draft. A trio of best friends deal how to respond after they're told they have 30 days to report for duty. Do they forsake their careers, love lives, personal beliefs to fight in today's war? Starring Elijah Wood, Chris Klein, some Jewish looking guy and NAWW favorite Ginnifer Goodwin.

Lions for Lambs (Trailer) opens on Nov. 9. This wide-ranging picture ruminates on war, education and politics and stars Tom Cruise as a Republican senator, Meryl Streep as a journalist and Robert Redford (who directed) as a liberal college professor character who quotes a WWI general to give the film its title: "Never have I seen such lions led by such lambs." In interviews, Redford has noted that the current pace of events dictates that his movie will in all likelihood be a period piece by the time it comes out in two months. But even then it's likely to be just the sort of red meat that anti-war advocates will eagerly eat up.

Crossing Over is due to open Nov. 16. Intersecting stories depict the sacrifices made by those who live without green cards and those who struggle to enforce the law in Los Angeles. The clash of cultures plays a major role as well. Harrison Ford plays an immigration officer; Sean Penn as a border-patrol agent.

Redacted will open in November. Brian De Palma (The Untouchables, Scarface) wrote and directed this "fictional documentary" of soldiers fighting in the Iraq war. President Bush is particularly excoriated in the film, which uses no-name actors to give it an extra dose of realism. "Redacted" was an official selection at the Venice Film Festival, the Toronto Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival and the New York Film Festival. Still not convinced? Here are the IMDB.com "plot keywords": Iraq War, Controversial, Scandal, Gang Rape, Rape Scene. Enjoy that popcorn!

Charlie Wilson's War will open on Dec. 25. This story depicts the unbelievable true story of a liberal Texas congressman who single-handedly altered aid to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets but ultimately gave birth to today's Islamic fanatics. A phenomenal book (so good I accidently got my parents' book club to read it last year) is being adapted by an unparalleled writer Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, The American President, A Few Good Men) with a top-notch cast (Tom Hanks, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Julia Roberts). Sure, so I'd watch Sorkin adapt the phone book, but the story of how Wilson had such an incredible hand in ending the spread of Soviet Communism while accidentally kick-starting the events that would lead to 9/11 is really quite incredible. Mike Nichols (The Graduate) directs.

No update seems to exist on the Internets, but as far as I know the aforementioned Paul Haggis is still working on adapting "Against all Enemies," a project based on Richard A. Clarke's best-selling memoir chronicling the Bush administration's dubious handling of terrorist threats. Am I listing this just so I can play the casting-call game again? You bet! Come on down, Condi Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Karen Hughes, Ari Fleischer, Karl Rove and Dick Cheney. This would be a nice place for a George Bush-as-chimp joke, but frankly, I'll pass.

time to mock another bachelor (and his harem)

I hope you'll agree that this video falls under the category of high-brow social commentary... especially the thought-provoking shower scene...

http://abc.go.com/primetime/bachelor/index

Times story

DC's gaining in hipness apparently....

http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/travel/tmagazine/10well-fashion-t.html

I realize this isn't a full-fledged blog posting, but it's a start. :)

This is a test post

On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. bridge.
He had successfully avoided meeting his landlady on the staircase. His garret was under the roof of a high, five-storied house, and was more like a cupboard than a room. The landlady, who provided him with garret, dinners, and attendance, lived on the floor below, and every time he went out he was obliged to pass her kitchen, the door of which invariably stood open. And each time he passed, the young man had a sick, frightened feeling, which made him scowl and feel ashamed. He was hopelessly in debt to his landlady, and was afraid of meeting her.
This was not because he was cowardly and abject, quite the contrary; but for some time past he had been in an overstrained, irritable condition, verging on hypochondria. He had become so completely absorbed in himself, and isolated from his fellows that he dreaded meeting, not only his landlady, but any one at all. He was crushed by poverty, but the anxieties of his position had of late ceased to weigh upon him. He had given up attending to matters of practical importance; he had lost all desire to do so. Nothing that any landlady could do had a real terror for him. But to be stopped on the stairs, to be forced to listen to her trivial, irrelevant gossip, to pestering demands for payment, threats and complaints, and to rack his brains for excuses, to prevaricate, to lie—no, rather than that, he would creep down the stairs like a cat and slip out unseen.