When I see reasonably intelligent and civilized young, single people who talk with upspeak my immediate reaction is 'Val'. For my international readers, a Val is short for Valley. You may be familiar with the term. If not, check out the YouTube.
So I watched this attractive young woman on television - one of those tech talk shows, and she started spewing about her experience at forgettably cutesy spelled dot com which was funded. Funded means you and 12 other twentysomethings with a cool idea managed to convinced somebody with 100 million dollars that you're worth 4.5 million and you have a year to prove it. And 85% of you fail, some spectacularly - meaning you make it for 3 years and get another 40 people and 12 million dollars and *then* fail. It's a story as old as most old dogs.
What surprised me was how instantly it occured to me that she and 12 of her friends would be an unlucky 13 as soon as she started speaking. The very idea of of spending about five million bucks on any endeavor headed by people with less than 5 years work experience, no kids, overpriced undergraduate educations and caffiene fetishes just seems ridiculous right off the bat. And yet we all know it happens. It happens a lot. It shouldn't happen much at all - but it's how a lot of us think about money and work.
There is a small part of me that wants to start a conversation: The only reason I'm not a Silicon Valley millionaire is because... But I don't want to go there or even think I'm going there. It just seems obvious to me that certain things ought to fail. I'm pessimistic today.
I knew that Gingrich won the NC primary, but I didn't know until tonight that he threw CNN's John King to the gators.
Gingrich is the most peculiar of the candidates. On the one hand, he is an insider's insider having been the Speaker of the House. In that role, ushering in the Contract With America, he went balls to the wall on Federal spending in a game of brinksmanship that brings back chills. On the other hand, he has been making rounds in the media brainstorming ideas that make even Robert Reich say, hey am I really talking to a Republican here? He has a real personal life, meaning he's not *even* trying to look like some Stepford President. (and I'm probably abusing the metaphor). Conservative ideologues and hardliners dont' think he's 'Conservative' enough - and what that means is that Social Conservatives don't think so, which to my reckoning is a plus.
But this is really about Gingrich's moment in thowing the media to the dogs and putting them on notice that he will not be cowed by their bull. Everybody on the Right knows that the media has been soft bigots for the low performance of President Obama on a number of critical issues. So finally he took the stage and reversed the sexual chokehold that the Hollywood Left thinks is a game-changer for what they presume conservatives to be, and left them tapping out. We've even had a little bit of that screwy perception here at Cobb, but it can be instructive to show exactly what kind of Conservatism Gingrich will demonstrate in his campaign.
This may have been the moment, as with the Army-McCarthy hearings, that the decency of the people asking questions has been astutely brought into focus.
shamelessly stolen from Pops
Without fear of contradiction or being accused of unwarranted hubris, I start here by saying that I have something in common with the illustrious and famed critic, Harold Bloom. First, we were both born during the 1930s. But as it is commonly known, there are countless (albeit dwindling numbers of) folks who can claim that spirited decade as the point of their earthly entry. Second, our surname begins with the same letter. However, “B” is a common letter for last names, so that’s no big thing. And, third, we have/had an attachment to Yale University. I was born at Grace-New Haven Hospital on Chapel Street, a few blocks from that esteemed institution; and grew up on Dixwell Avenue in the Elm Haven Housing Project, a scant mile north of the university. Still, geographical proximity is a no brainer and few flags can be waved because of it. Anyway…now that our questionable but unplanned kinship has been duly established, I’ll move on to other concerns.
I must say that I consider myself to be a late Bloomer in that my familiarity with Haughty Harold [and I say this with unfettered admiration] comes many years after reading other lesser known literary critics. But Bloom has a special “touch” which I find appealing, unique and off-putting all at the same time. I am kinda sorta sadly nearing the end of his well known and widely read The Western Canon – The Books and School of the Ages. Tradition and common sense might suggest that I wait until (finally!) closing the well-worn cover of the tome before attempting to craft any kind of assessment or review. But I am thoroughly convinced that neither his style, reach, wisdom nor attitude will diminish by the time I reach “endgame.” If nothing else erudite Harold Bloom is nothing if he isn’t consistent. I find reading him as much a labor of literary love and just plain and simple labor.
Bloom has a way of more than casually hinting that those who venture to read him should [make that must] likewise read extensively or, at the very least, be vaguely familiar with the broad sweep of literature that he has absorbed over the years. I am convinced that this is an all but impossible undertaking. I am furthermore convinced that he was reading prenatal hieroglyphics on the lining of his mother’s womb well before his rush into the waiting world – or perhaps some waiting New York library– on July 11, 1930.
A personal contradiction and wake-up call immediately came to my mind after reading his early (p 16) observation that “…literary criticism, as an art, always was and always will be an elitist phenomenon.” If there was/is anything that I did not and do not need it’s the well-intended machinations of elitists of any and all genres. Years ago I had read with measured albeit real disdain, E.D. Hirsch’s Cultural Literacy – What Every American Needs to Know. It galled me that someone would have the (excuse the intentional redundancy) gall to actually construct a list of what one should read in order to be – and I did not excuse the expression – culturally literate. It stuck me as paternalistic on the one hand and highly presumptuous on the other. But I suppose that’s another review for another time.
Fast-forwarding to bombastic Bloom, I self-queried: “Why am I wasting my time with this Elm City academia elitist dude?” And I had and have no sane and sensible response except that there was and is something about what he does so well that I continued to pour through his insightful and enlightened pages with no small measure of struggle coupled with appreciation. To my surprise and delight I very early learned of Bloom’s virtual worship of no less a literary giant than William [the Bard] Shakespeare. One cannot even casually think of Harold Bloom absent frequent and unabashed reference to Shakespeare. Whether extolling the contributions to world literature of Emily Dickinson, Dante, Milton, Beckett, Neruda, Proust, Molière or Cervantes, Bloom magically and intentionally weaves his views around the accompanying indispensability of – what I will designate – William the Great. My conscious bias comes from an earlier not-to-be debated list of Hillhouse High School English class readings. We read lots of Shakespeare. Period! And in those days, the word “canon” was better understood as the “cannon” that would be leveled at the posterior of students rebellious enough not to memorize and, on occasion, act out what the Bard had penned centuries before. So, in terms of relative familiarity, Bloom most competently treads on turf that isn’t all that strange or unattractive to me. He places an unbending emphasis on originality, which can also be viewed as unprecedented creativity. For example, he says Shakespeare:
“…wrote the best prose and the best poetry in the Western tradition”
and that he
“…will not make us better and he will not make us worse, but he will teach us how to overhear ourselves when we talk to ourselves.”
Wow! Not even parents can achieve this result!
Harold Bloom cannot be faulted for readily falling into line with some all too often accepted and unchallenged contemporary thinking on topics or persuasions. He will and does find himself at odds with those in and out of academia over such matters as social justice, multiculturalism and most assuredly feminism. He doesn’t spend much time addressing these issues but then neither does he back away from his occasionally combative convictions. Whether this makes him a stubborn literary elitist or the skilled provocateur of a good argument is the choice of the reader. Just as it is the reader’s choice to “buy into” his predispositions on a headache-inducing list of authors and insights, which he takes for comfortable granted.
To his quasi-credit – at least from my perspective -- Bloom asserts “the Canon will never close” even with the caveat that “it cannot be forced open by our current cheerleaders.”
There is a small measure of contradiction to his non-stop journey through the broad literary landscape when Harold the Hun offers this morsel of reassurance to the reader:
“No one has the authority to tell us what the Canon is.”
I cannot help but wonder then what good purpose is served by some 500 plus pages of Bloom making a rather convincing case to the contrary. Perhaps hanging out in New Haven for too long has its New England downside…a well-earned Yale PhD in tow notwithstanding.
Finally, one might ask, is Harold Bloom “worth” reading? Well, to quote someone Bloom probably wouldn’t, I say:
“You betcha!!”
I forget how civilized I am because I have been raising children for 18 years.
Last evening I broke my fast for the first time in about 4 years, put on the long black coat, expensive scarf and headed out with the Spousal Unit to reacquaint myself with the high arts. The last time, we went to see Dudamel's premier at the Disney. This time it was Shen Yun at the Segerstrom and the arts were not quite so sophisticated, but high nevertheless.
It was my first time to the South Coast art complex, home of the South Coast Rep and the Pacific Symphony Orchestra. The architecturals are most appropriately dramatic if not arrestingly splendid. As we had a quick drink and dash of excellent sushi at Leatherby's Cafe Rouge onsite. I just had to marvel at this little plop of class right in the middle of Corporateville California, headquarters of Taco Bell. It was quiet and plush and the people were well-appointed and polite - not meaning the staff who get paid to be so, but the patrons. Eegads Maggie!
Across the way at the Segerstrom it was more bustling with the sort of crowd one would expect to find at a high school graduation; the older two generations in moderate attire with the appropriate proportions suitable for an English & Chinese presentation. My Mandarin sucks these days, but I do pick up the occasional phrase and can tell a Northern accent from a Southern. We shuffled in with the pack and found our seats convient to both viewing and quick egress. And so it began.
Both the Unit and I were expecting something rather different than what we beheld. It was her idea to see dancing acrobats, but instead we saw acrobatic dancers that were only occasionally acrobatic. What was a complete surprise was the component of moral suggestion that was part and parcel of the program. You see, Shen Yun are cultural ambassadors for the Falun Dafa, also known as Falun Gong. If you've never heard of Falun Gong, what you basically need to know is that they are on the outs with the Chinese authorities and all of the backscatter you hear about 'the human rights record of China' can be quickly characterized as the news we get here in the States as the various brutalities heaped upon the Falun Gong.
I was certainly aware that the Falun Gong was in this sort of trouble, but hearing Shen Yun present itself as the oppressed Falun Dafa, I figured there was more than one Falun the Red Chinese have beef with. Not putting the two together could be attributed to the Lawrence Welkian presentation of the matter. You could easily mistake the whole affair for a Sunday Matinee for families. It aint Sarafina! So as I write this without knowing the body counts for the Falun Gong it is a bit difficult for me to determine how forced are the smiles on the performers. But that is as it should be because despite the three or four expressly political narrative dances, there was a lot of performance to take in.
Most of the pieces were, from an analytical point of view rather energetically staid as can be expected of classical Chinese that was certainly composed to entertain royalty. I could get that feeling watching the various dances that these were very much of the sort designed to make you think 'aah these are my handsomest people, and see how they all dance in unison for me'. You would notice that they all had at least sevens and eights in their groups of dances. A soloist would never command the stage for more than a few moments, and romantic duets were rare as well.
Nevertheless, the most memorable ensembles were those that set the modern students against the snaky agents who, covered in black, summoned themselves into wolfish crouching circles around brightly colored innocents. And so there it is as I left it without much more immediate curiosity about digesting Chinese history or current events. Instead I reflected on the oft repeated fact that Shen Yun is the largest troupe representing classic Chinese dance in the world. It illustrates the simple that the Chinese government is, in this regard, at war with itself. Nobody needs 500 years of recourse, much less 5000 given that actual progress does happen in 10 generations. There are limits to the logic of conservation. But still.
Note One:
Progressive Insurance (run by a noted political Progressive) has introduced 'Snapshot', which is a device that you snap into your automobile to 'prove' that you are a safe driver. It obviously collects telemetry and throws your human experience over the transom to some digital Wizard of Oz algorithm that determines what discount you should get.
Note Two:
We have been notified by the City of Redondo Beach the dates, times and locations of Christmas Tree recycling. The Spousal Unit called in this morning to verify the times and then was prompted into giving her name, address and homeowner status. It started to sound like a 911 call, but we just wanted to know why the trashman didn't pickup the tree.
I actually did not believe I would see this in my lifetime. <br><iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/T-hDt2E8MoE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>