MoJo Blog Posts: riff

5 Reasons We're 'Going Rouge' Instead of 'Going Rogue' This Holiday Season

By Marian Wang — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 05:00:00 -0800

Thanks Oprah, we've all heard. Sarah Palin kicks off her book tour in earnest this week, endlessly plugging Going Rogue: An American Life, her account of what really happened with John McCain's mean spindoctor-people and bad boy Levi Johnston and other scandals we were only mildly interested in six months ago, before Mad Men got started.

What you may not have heard is that another book, by Michael Stinson and Julie Sigwart, also hits bookstores today. It's called Going Rouge: The Sarah Palin Rogue Coloring & Activity Book, and it has already earned mentions in the New York Times and the Washington Post.

So it's time for a showdown. Memoir vs. Coloring Book. No one's done it yet, so I'll break it down for you: Five reasons to go Rouge rather than Rogue this year.

1) For the planet's sake. Going Rogue: An American Life is a whopping 432 pages and 1.4 lbs. That's a lot of paper. It's also more than I want to read, especially about a person whose existence I was blissfully ignorant of prior to August of 2008. By contrast, Going Rouge: The Sarah Palin Rogue Coloring & Activity Book is 48 pages, and I think it still sums up Palin's message pretty clearly.

2) Juicy bits of Palin's book are available online, and for free. We're in a recession. Save your $28.99 on the hardback. Excerpts and summaries abound online, courtesy of The Huffington Post, Drudge Report, Wonkette, and others. Plus, all the time you'll have saved can be better spent doing fun activities in Going Rouge, such as a word search.

3) Palin's book goes rogue on facts. The AP has invested precious resources in the form of 11 fact-checking reporters whose combined powers told us what we all could've guessed: Palin's book is strong on rhetoric but soft on facts. (On her Facebook page, Palin claims AP is "erroneously reporting" on her book, but she doesn't actually say what the errors are.) So we'll go with AP for now: Read it only if you enjoy fiction more than you enjoy coloring.

4) Going Rouge appeals to future voters. Don't know how to read yet? That's okay! Unlike Going Rogue and the Republican Party, Going Rouge: The Sarah Palin Coloring & Activity Book is suitable for all ages. In fact, it caters to the youngsters by getting them thinking about the future of our country with activities that include coloring and cutting out Palin 2012 campaign buttons. Educational, and good for practicing motor skills.

5) Send the right message. FYI consumers, the people who analyze book sales cannot distinguish between regular purchases and ironic purchases. If you're going to give gag gifts, make sure you send the right message to the right people while doing it.

And finally, if you're like some of us and you're totally Palin-ed out, that's okay. We're just saying, if you've got to buy something, choose your Palin product wisely. Happy coloring!

Music Monday: Gillian Welch Sideman Dave Rawlings Goes Solo

By Taylor Wiles — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 04:00:02 -0800

Dave Rawlings Machine
A Friend of a Friend
Acony Records

"Dave's gone and done it," was roughly what Gillian Welch announced a couple of months ago to 50,000 bluegrass fans in Golden Gate Park. "He's put out an album." Well, now he has. This week, Rawlings—that ephemeral, soft-toned siren who appears on all four of Welch's albums and accompanies her on stage—finally comes out with his debut CD, a jaunt through old-time, folk, country, and bluegrass. Raised in Rhode Island, Rawlings picked up the guitar when he was 15. Somewhere along the way, string-band country music became his muse, and in the early '90s, Rawlings and Welch moved to Tennesee, where they've carried on the Nashville tradition.

A Friend of a Friend features Welch (she's also cowriter on some of the songs), members of bluegrass favorites Old Crow Medicine Show, Benmont Tench from the Heartbreakers, and Nate Walcott of Bright Eyes, but the Dave Rawlings Machine is front and center. Rawlings' confident picking seems to emanate from a deep understanding of Americana roots. But like any great storyteller, he filters all that knowledge into something even an uninformed listener can get.

The album combines crooners like the twangy "How's About You," raucous toe-tappers like "Sweet Tooth," and softer melodies in "Ruby,"the opening track. One of my favorite listening moments was when I realized Rawlings had just morphed Bright Eyes' "Method Acting" into Neil Young's "Cortez the Killer." And his drawl on the closing track, "Bells of Harlem," evokes a slow-going Bob Dylan, except with strings and the voice of Gillian Welch to ease his soulful, sleepy descent into quiet.

All in all, the record's not a far cry from Welch's own music, which isn't a bad thing—but it would have been nice to be surprised. Rawlings' evocative guitar playing hits the mark on every track, breathing new life into old-time riffs, but it left me wanting more of the Machine and less of everyone else. I'm waiting to see what's next.

Music Monday: Coltrane and Marsalis Have Nothing on These Guys

By Andy Kroll — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 03:30:00 -0800

Here's an experiment: Ask someone of my generation (I'm 23) to name a few jazz artists they like. If they're not fans, ask them to name any jazz artist at all—good or bad, older or more recent, doesn't matter the instrument. Expect to hear responses like Miles Davis, John Coltrane, possibly Wynton Marsalis, maybe Louis Armstrong or Thelonious Monk, and—well, that's about it.

Mention the names Art Farmer or Jimmy Smith or Art Blakey, or any of the other stars on the latest installment in the Jazz Icons DVD series, and you'll cue up shrugs and blank stares. But rather than bemoan the fact, let's instead stress the importance of the latest Jazz Icons set—fourth in this series—which preserves a collection of timeless, masterful 1960s concerts featuring some of the best damn playing (on drums, piano, hollow-body guitar, flugelhorn, you name it) audiences had ever heard.

Take Jimmy Smith. In the liner notes, blues DJ Bob Porter calls Smith "one of the four or five greatest jazz musicians of the last 50 years." Today, his is a name mentioned almost exclusively in jazz circles and on jazz radio stations, yet he was a pioneer on the Hammond B3 jazz piano. Filmed in Paris in 1969, Smith's concert treats you to not only a rich audio recording but crisp visuals of Smith's prowess on the Hammond. In "The Sermon," one of his's biggest hits, you watch one hand anchor the melody on the lower manual (the bottom keyboard) while the other dances and improvises in a blur of soloing on the upper keys. The show's 1969 date is important, too: You can hear early traces of funk slipping into Smith's playing, a style especially suited to the jazz piano that you wouldn't have necessarily have heard six years earlier.

Take, for instance, Erroll Garner's 1963 show from Jazz Icons 4, a virtuoso display of jazz piano that's brighter and snappier and much more of one-man show. With his hair seemingly lacquered to his head, Gardner could pull off just about anything on a grand piano—and does in this Belgium concert. When you watch his hands fly over the keys on Cole Porter's "I Get a Kick Out of You," it's easy to forget Garner has a backing band at all.

In Art Farmer's 1964 BBC show, the opposite is true: Farmer's band arguably shines brighter than the headliner. Renowned guitarist Jim Hall, who played with Sonny Rollins, at times steals the show from Farmer and his flugelhorn, and the pair's interplay makes for a mesmerizing hour-long performance.

Beyond any single artist, though, Jazz Icons 4 is invaluable for the way it captures not just the music, but the experience of being there. The video quality—though in a black-and-white that can feel like a Rod Serling production—is superb. So is the camera work, trading between tight shots of Blakey's drumming, say, and pans of the whole band (not to mention audience members in their browline glasses and bouffant hairdos).

For those not old enough to have witnessed an Art Farmer or Jimmy Smith in their heyday, Jazz Icons 4 may be the best way to relive their live performances. The set may also be the best hope of introducing young listeners to jazz legends of the past half-century who, without this series, would undoubtedly slip by.

Long Live the Pranksters!

By Andy Kroll — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 04:01:00 -0800

The US Chamber of Commerce, the massive business organization that's taken a shellacking in the media lately for its climate-change stance (among other things), apparently can't take a joke. Last month, prompted in part by Mother Jones' coverage of the Chamber's shenanigans, the Yes Men held a phony press conference purporting to be the Chamber and announcing the group's about-face on climate matters; now, the Yes Men-turned-PR-flacks said, the Chamber would be eagerly supporting climate legislation on Capitol Hill. The real Chamber, however, was far from pleased—so much that they're suing the Yes Men for the stunt.

While the ensuing legal action may be novel, the spectacle of political prankery has a rich history. From Joey Skaggs' infamous New York "Cathouse for Dogs" to the phony pundit Martin Eisenstadt of the 2008 election, there's no shortage of memorable pranks in this country, as Dave Gilson describes in his new story "Jumping the Snark" in Mother Jones' November/December print issue. But more importantly, Gilson asks, are these kinds of clever hoaxes a dying art?

Gone are the days of Skaggs and cultural icon Abbie Hoffman; now we have the CollegeHumor "prank war" and Bruno and Borat—funny, but lacking the weight of the hoaxes of yore. Pranks, Gilson writes, "have morphed from an outlet for political and artistic outsiders into another form of popular amusement," where everyone can try to be a prankster and the better organized gags are used to peddle Taco Bell.

Which isn't to say the prank is dead; it's just evolving, Gilson says. "Just as Sacha Baron Cohen's first three personas have gotten stale and the Yes Men are searching for a new gig," he writes, "so will the current crop of predictable pranksters be pushed aside by a new batch of jokers who've concluded that it’s better to light a stink bomb than curse the darkness."

Find Mother Jones' ongoing coverage of the Chamber of Commerce here.

Read about how climate activist prankster Tim DeChristopher put one over on the Bureau of Land Management here.

Maclaren Strollers Chop off Baby Fingers? Hey, Whatev.

By Sonja Sharp — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:42:46 -0800

We're officially in Day 4 of the Maclaren stroller recall, and it's abundantly clear that far too few parents have gotten the message. In case you haven't heard (or are not a multitasking metro-mommy or -daddy) fancy pants British baby-stuff maker Maclaren has recalled every single stroller it has sold since 1999 for this compelling reason: Their hinges amputate little baby fingers. Twelve little baby fingers in America so far, to be exact. In fact, the New York Post (guardian of truth that it is) reported today that Maclaren knew of the defect for five years—five—before issuing a recall. Parents have been surprisingly nonchalant, while nonparents (like me, for instance) seem to have been gripped by news that the decade's must-have child accessory is actually evil. Brooklyn alone is swimming in schadenfreude.

But back to the parents for a second: What's wrong with you people? The New York Times' City Room blog reported on Wednesday that pram-pushers in Park Slope, the Big Apple's de facto Maclaren capital, were utterly uninterested in the recall and the easy-to-install safety kits that render their pricey strollers harmless. We know the risks, they blithely told the Times. I'll take my chances. But that's New York for you, right?

Wrong! This morning in sunny (and fiercely overprotective and neurotic) San Francisco, during my pre-coffee commute, I was confronted by the same devil-may-care-about-junior's-appendages attitude. Specifically, a newbie dad struggling to juggle his his precious 15-month-old, North Face backpack, and $200 Maclaren stroller as he boarded the train. Long story short, I ended up with the stroller between my knees while the happy ten-fingered baby babbled on about the scenery and waved incessantly at every stranger, and I bit through my tongue so as not to blurt out the *ahem* risks associated with that naked hinge. Finally, it was too much to bear.

"You heard there's a recall on this stroller, right?"

The man laughed. He had.

"How did you hear about it?"

Eye roll.

Was he planning to get the safety cover?

Eh, maybe.

Maybe?

"I mean," he replied, "she's got ten of 'em."

He was kidding. But still.

Mark Bittman and MoJo: A Tasty Recipe

By Steve Katz — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 11:27:36 -0800

When food writer (How to Cook Everything, Food Matters) and New York Times columnist Mark Bittman read our March/April "Let's Grow America!" special report on food security, he was so jazzed by it that he got in touch to offer his services to raise money for Mother Jones. How could we say no?

That's how a group of toque-hatted Mother Jones friends ended up at New York's Institute for Culinary Education last week, slicing, dicing, and eating dinner built off of a low-impact but immensely tasty menu that Mark prepared especially for the evening. From the first bite of chick pea fries to the last slurp of chocolate soy pudding with vanilla cream on top, our taste buds were in food heaven. You can view the photos of the evening on Flickr or in the slideshow below (see, anyone can look goofy in a paper hat).

Mark also took a few minutes to talk about his most recent book, Food Matters, which makes the connection between a healthy diet (less meat, more plants) and a healthy planet (less carbon, more icepack).

You can check out Mark's work here. And if you'd like to try your hand at the menu he prepared for Mother Jones, email us at bittmanrecipes@motherjones.com. We'll send you a PDF of the recipes.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Video: Sesame Street Turns 40, Goes Green

By Kiera Butler — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:02:49 -0800

Lordy, lordy, Sesame Street is turning 40. To celebrate four decades of educational muppet fun, this year its producers are introducing a curriculum called "My World is Green and Growing" designed to "create a love and understanding of the natural world." Below, Michelle Obama helps kids and Elmo plant a vegetable garden (pesticide free, natch):

HT Sierra Club.

Music Monday: A Tori Amos Christmas?

By Nikki Gloudeman — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 04:00:00 -0800

Tori Amos
Midwinter Graces
Universal Republic

A Tori Amos Christmas album? Seriously?

That was my first thought when I opened Midwinter Graces, a new album out this week from the indie queen. The quirky, moody crooner seems like a strange fit for the wholesome, fuzzy holiday season. Plus, Christmas albums are usually crap (a fact MoJo staffers recently lamented at length).

But I should have known better than to to doubt the seditious songstress. Rather than recording syrupy holiday tunes, Amos has crafted a collection of covers and originals filled with whimsy and melancholy—the musical equivalent of spiked eggnog.

Some of her twists are subtle, like a rhythmic reimagining of the "Noel, Noel" refrain in "What Child, Nowell"—her mashup of "What Child Is This?" and "The First Noel"—or the backdrop of a drumbeat on "Emmanuel." Others are more pointed, like a lyrical personification of the ivy in "Holly, Ivy, and Rose," or gothic instrumentals in "Star of Wonder." Either way, there's a distinct sense that Amos wants to subvert the conventions of Christmas music, even as she pays them homage.

Amos also retains her lyrical trademark of precious poeticism: Black satin is what I wore / That, and our hearts left on the floor, she laments in "Pink and Glitter"; on "Winter's Carol," she muses The summer queen has been in darkness.

The only misstep is "Snow Angel," a leaden, cheesy ballad that reminds the listener what could've been had Amos chosen cliché over imagination. It's a good thing that didn't happen.

Music Monday: Johnny Cash—the Man in Black & White

By Michael Mechanic — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 03:30:00 -0800

Reinhard Kleist's brand-new graphic novel, Johnny Cash: I See a Darkness (Abrams Books), opens with a vintage Caddy (license plate "HELL") barreling past a neon sign on the outskirts of Reno. Without a word, its surly driver—the Man in Black himself—makes his way to the strip, where he spots a short, wealthy, sleazy-looking man walking into an alley with a prostitute and proceeds to fill him with lead. In the scene's final panel, the killer is inside an armored bus, pulling up to the gates of Folsom Prison. Get it? I shot a man in Reno / Just to watch him die.

The Berlin-based artist has fun with this concept in his well-researched biography of the late country star, segueing into pen-and-ink depictions of Cash hits like "Big River," "Cocaine Blues," and "A Boy Named Sue" (which unbeknownst to me was penned by Shel Silverstein). Kleist uses a different, faux-tribal drawing style for "The Ballad of Ira Hayes"—a choice that reflects his interest in Cash's views on soldiers and war, an interest that also emerges in a studio scene with Bob Dylan.

If you caught the 2005 Cash biopic Walk the Line, with Joaquin Phoenix (the wrong actor as far as I'm concerned), you'll recognize the basic outline: The Depression-era upbringing amid cotton fields in Arkansas, where a neighbor kid teaches young J.R. Cash to play guitar. The horrible mishap that befalls his brother Jack. The Air Force service in Germany. The courtship and marriage to Vivian Liberto. The settling down in Memphis and forming a band. The record deal, tours with Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis, leading to a devastating addiction to uppers. The public disgraces. And, of course, the forbidden love with June Carter, whom he eventually marries.

But Kleist creates a fresh narrative, too, with side stories and small details you won't find in the film. Notably, he follows the character of Glen Sherley, a Folsom inmate who monitors Cash's career closely from behind bars and writes a song that Cash ends up using when he performs at Folsom in his big 1968 post-rehab comeback. In the book, as in the film, the Folsom sessions stand out as the dramatic peak. But there the movie ends. Kleist fast-forwards a quarter century, to 1994 and a solo recording session with rap producer Rick Rubin at Cash's cabin. By this time, Cash is an Old Man in Black, and through his chatter with Rubin we learn what became of Sherley after Cash helped get him sprung.

Artistically speaking, Kleist is a master of the genre who has spent much time studying Cash in all his facets—see his sketch gallery at the book's conclusion. He experiments with composition enough that the eye is never bored, and in just two pages of silent pictures, he manages to express the agony of drug withdrawal as viscerally as any words could. Kleist does his homework, taking seriously his duties not simply as a graphic artist but as the biographer catering to a newer generation of fans, those first drawn in by Cash's covers of artists like Danzig, Beck, and Soundgarden on Rubin's American Recordings and its sequel, Unchained. Like Rubin, and the late Cash himself, Kleist found a way to push an old story in a new direction.

Follow Michael Mechanic on Twitter.

Cool Chart: How Movie Stars Stack Up

By David Sparks — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:23:23 -0800

This story first appeared at Miller-McCune.

Metacritic.com is an acclaimed Web site that combines thousands of media reviews of entertainment offerings — movies, games, books and albums — into a Metascore, a sort of weighted average of critics' reviews that ranges from zero to 100. Analysis of just a small subset of the site's information shows the power of numbers to confirm — or defy — expectation.

The Actors
The colored horizontal bars on this chart present a graphical representation of the distribution of scores given to movies in which each of the listed actors appear. The numbers inside the bars represent the average of review scores for those movies; the actors listed are the top 50 and the bottom 10, in terms of those averages. Note that the reviews are primarily from the last decade; no consideration is given to the magnitude of the actor's role; and a high average rating could indicate acting skill, the ability to pick good projects (or good trilogies), reviewer bias or just luck. To the extent that the ordering of the actors appears generally reasonable, some unexpected placements may inspire a rethinking of subjective assessments (or, in the case of Viggo Mortensen's rating above Clint Eastwood, a good long laugh).

The Critics
This scatterplot shows 25 prolific movie critics in terms of the favorability with which they rate films, and the degree to which their reviews tend to agree with those of other critics, scaled to reflect their volume of reviews written. If you want to get a sense of the zeitgeist but can only read one review, you might prefer Rene Rodriguez, whose low standard deviation from the mean review score makes him very nearly a living critical average. If you are interested in an alternative perspective, Mick LaSalle's high standard deviation places him further from the critical pack than any of these peers. Reviews from both Michael Wilmington and Marc Savlov are so regularly and respectively positive and negative that they should perhaps be taken with a grain of salt.

The Movies
A "smoothed" plot of movie scores over time is depicted, highlighting the expected seasonal peaks in mid-summer and at the end of the year, along with the mid-winter and early autumn doldrums. Also listed are some of the more influential movies of their eras, in terms of number of reviews, along with their mean scores. Might the poorly reviewed summer of 2002 be attributed to releases delayed in the wake of 9/11? Does the relative lack of troughs from 2003 to 2006 reflect a real or imagined streak of high-quality films?