Al Gore gave a speech on “Freedom and Security” at Constitution Hall yesterday, sponsored by “MoveOn”:http://www.moveon.org/ and the “American Constitution Society”:http://www.americanconstitutionsociety.org/. I was actually there, thanks to some tickets that my friend Tom scored. Neither of us had been to to a live political speech for as long as we could remember, so the partisan rah-rahing was a bit overwhelming. I’m plenty partisan — someone who voted for Gore and not just against Bush — but giving Tipper a standing ovation for walking in the room struck me as a tad excessive.

It was a “good speech”:http://www.moveon.org/gore/speech2.html — a little rough in the delivery, but fiery and full of righteous fury against Ashcroft and the rest of the Administration. More of that kind of moxie in 2000 would have made all the difference. The recurrent calls from the audience of “Run, Al, run!” were telling — he definitely has an ineffable _something_ that the nine actual contenders are all missing.

An excerpt:

I want to challenge the Bush Administration�s implicit assumption that we have to give up many of our traditional freedoms in order to be safe from terrorists. Because it is simply not true. In fact, in my opinion, it makes no more sense to launch an assault on our civil liberties as the best way to get at terrorists than it did to launch an invasion of Iraq as the best way to get at Osama Bin Laden.

In both cases, the Administration has attacked the wrong target.

In both cases they have recklessly put our country in grave and unnecessary danger, while avoiding and neglecting obvious and much more important challenges that would actually help to protect the country.

In both cases, the administration has fostered false impressions and misled the nation with superficial, emotional and manipulative presentations that are not worthy of American Democracy.

In both cases they have exploited public fears for partisan political gain and postured themselves as bold defenders of our country while actually weakening not strengthening America.

In both cases, they have used unprecedented secrecy and deception in order to avoid accountability to the Congress, the Courts, the press and the people.

Indeed, this Administration has turned the fundamental presumption of our democracy on its head. A government of and for the people is supposed to be generally open to public scrutiny by the people — while the private information of the people themselves should be routinely protected from government intrusion.

But instead, this Administration is seeking to conduct its work in secret even as it demands broad unfettered access to personal information about American citizens. Under the rubric of protecting national security, they have obtained new powers to gather information from citizens and to keep it secret. Yet at the same time they themselves refuse to disclose information that is highly relevant to the war against terrorism.

When you’re standing there in front of your bookshelf, trying to decide what to read or reread, who knows what may guide your hand? I certainly thought I was being random a couple weeks ago when I picked out Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men, but it’s clear in retrospect that unconscious forces were at work. Governor Willie Stark would be right at home in our current age, where news of the politics of manipulation and the manipulation of politics routinely make the front page. Unlike Bush, Stark’s strongarm tactics and underhanded ploys are devoted toward building a free public hospital, not fulfilling a gonzo neoconservative sense of national destiny. But while their ideologies may differ, their tactics are similar. Tiny Duffy and Karl Rove could no doubt spend hours comparing notes. The book also had personal correspondences: Jack Burden, the protagonist, finds himself helping Stark carry out his dirty work because he is somewhat adrift in the world. He got there after abruptly walking away from a dissertation in history.

None of that was on my mind as I yanked the novel off the shelf, but I was curious about whether I would think as highly of it as I had the first time I read it, seven or eight years ago. I walked into my PhD comprehensive exams prepared to defend All the King’s Men as the greatest post-Modern (speaking chronologically, not philosophically) American novel—not that I necessarily believed that in my heart of hearts, but it wasn’t an unreasonable assertion. And while I wasn’t quite as enraptured with it this time around, it certainly holds up as one of the greats. I now know that McCarthy’s Blood Meridian would have to take top honors in that category, but ATKM definitely has a slot in the top five.

A little help here: I’m trying to think of a prior literary example of an observer-protagonist like Jack Burden. In other words, a novel (or other work) that’s about an important public figure, but the story is told through the eyes of a minor player on the historical stage who ends up, in the final analysis, to be the real center of the tale. I hesitate to name Warren the originator of this technique, since as soon as I do I’ll think of an earlier example. But I can’t think of one off the top of my head.

Warren doesn’t have fame these days in sufficient proportion to his accomplishments. In addition to being a strong novelist and an occasionally brilliant poet, he was one of a handful of people who shaped and (arguably) invented the way that literature is taught in American classrooms today. American Literature: The Makers and the Making, edited by Warren and Cleanth Brooks, remains a superlative AmLit anthology chock-full of keen analysis. Too bad it’s long-since out of print.

(I’d say “beware of spoilers,” but that would imply that knowing things about this movie could spoil it even further.)

Dear Andy and Larry,

What in Sam Hill were you thinking? Where, exactly, did you get off the train? I stayed along for the ride through Reloaded. Oh, I saw it, saw it three times, even when very smart people said it wasn’t very good, because I thought that I perceived some overlooked subtleties, some unlocked potential—that you guys were going somewhere and just hadn’t arrived yet. I defended your movie from the criticism of others, even though I knew in my heart that it was a sequel that stumbled. But now we have Revolutions. It’s just plain fallen on its ass.

Were you guys even trying? Oh, I know in some ways you were. There’s occasional flair in the directing—not anything as interesting or innovative as what you did in Bound and the original Matrix, but if we didn’t already expect it from you there were bits that we’d have found impressive. And if I can close my eyes and try real hard to block out all the painful bits, I can recognize the overarching story and see that it’s pretty good. Smith is a virus overtaking both worlds: check. The regular people have to defend Zion: check. Neo has to go to the Machine City, and ends up sacrificing himself to trap Smith—check, and kudos for an unexpected twist, too. But then there’s the dialogue. Here is where I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that you guys were not trying. I know this because if I gathered together two dozen of my friends, put them in a circle around me, and then spun around and around and stopped and pointed to one of them at random, that person could have written dialogue that was better then the tripe you foisted on us, your loyal viewers and (until recently) fans. Even if that random person wasn’t a particularly gifted writer, I could have whispered into his or her ear these words—“Try to avoid some of the cliches you hear in movies a lot”—and it would have been enough to improve on your derivative tribute to slapdashery.

Let’s close our eyes and play a little game. This game is called “pretend all the dialogue is replaced with stuff that doesn’t suck.” Even then, your new movie has problems. You never really do explain how Neo’s power has bled from the Matrix into the real world. We don’t get to see near enough of the Matrix itself in this movie—even a transition shot showing Smith taking the place over would have been kind of nice. I could get persnickety here and point out that once Neo is dead the Big Round Machine has no reason other than some vague notion of honor to keep its word and maintain peace with the humans, and it’s a machine, so why would it? I could point out that all your dimestore philosophizing ultimately devolves into platitudes. But pointing these things out is like saying “Bob, don’t let the branch scratch your face” when the whole tree is about to fall down on Bob.

I shouldn’t be making excuses for you guys and the miserable failure your vaunted trilogy has become. But I do have a theory. I know that the producer for these movies is Joel Silver—a quick glance through his credits makes clear that there’s no discernable connection between “movies he has worked on” and “quality.” I remember quite fondly those days before and right after the first movie came out, when an acquaintance of mine worked for the two of you and told stories via e-mail about the film and its production. I specifically recall one tidbit: that in your original script there had been no love interest between Neo and Trinity, that that was the one thing that Silver prevailed on you guys to work in somehow. That sounds like something Joel Silver might do. And then I got to thinking: what if the story of the next two movies is the story of Silver exerting more and more control over production and script, until it got to the point where the two of you were ostensibly at the helm but unable to avert the wreck. If this is true, just drop me a message saying so. It won’t fix your trilogy but maybe—just maybe—I won’t boycott your next film.

To tell the truth, though, I don’t believe you guys got outmaneuvered like rank amateurs by a Hollywood hack. It has to be more sinister than that. I think that one day, during preproduction of Reloaded, Joel Silver called the two of you in for a meeting. You were standing side by side, and with a devilish grin he inserted one of his hands into each of your chests. Your bodies slowly became covered with a metallic grey, viscous substance, which slowly resolved itself, revealing two exact clones of Joel Silver. Then he said: “Go forth and do my bidding.” And you did.

Shame on you.

Sincerely,

Nate Bruinooge

After “last month’s”:http://www.polytropos.org/archives/000118.html onslaught of new blogs, we’re back down to a more reasonable number of additions:

* Kevin Drum of “Calpundit”:http://calpundit.com/ provides good left-of-center political commentary. And every time I worry that I’m blogging too much about the incidentals of my personal life, I just think: Hey! Kevin blogs about his _cats_!
* “Rock Scissors Blog”:http://rockscissorsblog.blogspot.com/ is a group blog about roleplaying games. Writers include “Bruce Baugh”:http://homepage.mac.com/bbaugh/iblog/index.html and “Jim Henley”:http://www.highclearing.com/. Not updated near often enough, but definitely worth reading.
* Jonathan Edelstein of “The Head Heeb”:http://headheeb.blogmosis.com/ blogs about all the world news (especially Third World news) that you don’t hear enough about in U.S. media.
* And the blog I’ve already rolled but that you really ought to be reading: definitely “Slacktivist”:http://slacktivist.typepad.com/. His page by page broadside against the _Left Behind_ books (still ongoing) is glorious fun.

My TV plate hasn’t been full since a couple years ago, when Buffy was on, Angel was still watchable (sort of), and 24 was in its first flush of youth. One by one, they’ve fallen away. I gave 24 one more chance this season, after watching the premiere, and it didn’t live up—it’s gettin’ the boot. I gave up on Angel a while ago.

All that’s left, other than a healthy Netflix queue, of course, is The West Wing. Like everything Aaron Sorkin’s done, it’s been consistently enjoyable for the dialogue if for no other reason. But West Wing provides other reasons, too, and not just for people who happen to like President Bartlett’s politics. The show is strongest, in fact, when it is least partisan and most involved in the nitty gritty of the characters’ lives.

Which is what has made the past couple episodes so very fine. We’ve had four years to watch our heroes being ever-so-clever, with only occasional dips into their foibles and weaknesses to make things seem, you know, three-dimensional. But the show has recently been all about the ugliness and failure of its protagonists. Josh is the centerpiece, but all the principals are adrift in one way or another. CJ and Toby are wracked with doubt and lack of direction. Bartlett’s marriage is on the rocks. Leo still has it together but you get the feeling his authoritarian streak is going to get everybody in trouble very soon. We see Toby and Josh being downright condescending toward new (and very likable) characters VP Russell and Angela Blake—they don’t come off as charmingly aloof, just petty. Even a moment we might take as Inspiring, like Bartlett among the tornado victims, is undercut by CJ taking him to task for dodging the real responsibilities of his office.

We know that towards the end of the season, the team will somehow be able to pull it all together in a way that is meant to be genuinely uplifting. And if the writers are on their game, it may even be just that. But in any case we’ll like these characters even more for having found reasons not to like them; we’ll care what happens to them more than we would otherwise. And we can rest assured that there’s still one show worth watching on TV.

And now, the obligatory “Which character are you?” tests. Eve Tushnet found one here that’s rather transparent and messy. It pegged me as Sam Seaborn, but lucky Eve got to be Leo—and she doesn’t even watch the show! No fair! This test is a bit more elegant, and pegged me as the Jedman himself. I’m not complaining.

Via “Rock Scissors Blog”:http://rockscissorsblog.blogspot.com/ : an article by John Kim entitled “Story and Narrative Paradigms in Role-Playing Games”:http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/theory/narrative/paradigms.html.

Kim distinguishes between regular stories (his term is ‘static narrative’) and RPGs using some basic concepts from Todorov and Genette that gave me unpleasant flashbacks to fruitless dissertation-research avenues. But they work pretty well for what he’s doing: a quick glance at his Figure 1 and Figure 2 illustrate how thorny and complicated an RPG is from a narrative perspective.

While I like the framework he sets up in the beginning, I’m less convinced of the usefulness of the two paradigms he draws from it: “Collaborative Storytelling” and “Virtual Experience”. Respectively, the distinction is between those who think that “shared play” — what gets said over the table — comprises a game’s story and those who see it comprised by all elements of the game — notes, character sheets, background stories — in addition to shared play. That’s a valid distinction, but I can’t think of a gamer I know who would fit clearly into one paradigm or another. Further, his Virtual Experience paradigm doesn’t distinguish between the relative value of different game texts when it comes to their importance in the shared story. A gamemaster’s notes obviously have much less importance in that regard than, say, a short story written by one of the players to provide background and insight into their character.

All in all, it’s an essay well worth reading, and will hopefully lead to more fruitful discussion, though the paradigms aren’t near as useful as the “threefold model”:http://www.darkshire.net/~jhkim/rpg/theory/threefold/ that Kim helped to shape back in the day.

While we’re on RPG theory, “Ed Heil’s”:http://ed.puddingbowl.org/ “Notes Towards a Semiotics of Role-playing Games” is worthwhile too. He’s writing informally, making it up as he goes, but Ed writing this way is way more engaging than most folks writing with polish. The parts so far: “1”:http://ed.puddingbowl.org/archives/001080.html, “2”:http://ed.puddingbowl.org/archives/001085.html, “2a”:http://ed.puddingbowl.org/archives/001087.html, “3”:http://ed.puddingbowl.org/archives/001090.html, “4”:http://ed.puddingbowl.org/archives/001095.html, “5”:http://ed.puddingbowl.org/archives/001096.html. They’re from back in July/August, and I was going to wait for Ed’s thoughts to come to completion before linking to them, but this looks to be one of those ongoing things. Give them a read and encourage him to pick up the thread again. (UPDATE: Ed has added another entry on the subject “here”:http://ed.puddingbowl.org/archives/001413.html)

UPDATE: Going back to reread Ed’s stuff, I realized that his Part 4 directly touches on some of the issues in Kim’s essay. Ed directly raises the question of whether game texts help _form_ the narrative or just _support_ it. My hunch is that in just about every case, there’s blending going on. I don’t want to relegate game texts to a merely supporting role.

Paul Scofield has a great poker line in _Quiz Show_: “If you look around the table and you can’t tell who the sucker is, it’s you.” That piece of wisdom often haunts me when observing all the strange people that pass through “Common Grounds”:http://www.commongroundsarlington.com/. The minute I look around and can’t tell who the oddball in the coffee shop is, it’ll be me.

So I had better keep pointing them out while I still can. Yesterday’s exhibit was a husky teenybopper with his beard tied up into one of those long, thin braids down the middle. He was hanging around the tables outside, and as I was leaving, he was taunting traffic. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t drunk, but he was standing in the middle of the right lane, completely blocking it and forcing the cars to go around him. Not too many of them honked, either — probably because he was big and they figured he might be loco enough to try to smash their windshield or something. As I was pulling out he had begun standing right in between the lanes and pretending to step into one or the other as cars were going by, making them stop or slow or swerve. All the while he had a grin on his face, as if to say: “I may not be the funniest guy in the world right now, but I’m pretty close!”

The fact that Beard Braid Boy is still alive (I assume) fills me with hope for our civilization. Think about it: in a lawless society, your basic Mad Max milieu, natural selection would weed the guy right out. One of those drivers would be annoyed enough to swerve toward him instead of away from him, maybe even speed up a tad, and he’d be roadkill. But in our world, even the most road-raged driver wouldn’t dream of such a thing — moral compunctions aside, the driver would know that in all likelihood he’d go to jail for running a guy down. Such is our society that even catastrophically stupid “Darwin Award”:http://www.darwinawards.com/ magnets are protected under the law. Why does that fill me with hope? Because we are all catastrophically stupid, at least some of the time. So taunt away, Beard Braid Boy! Strange as it may seem, we’re lucky to have you around.

Suanna had an ultrasound today; unlike the first time, we were actually able to recognize the stuff we were seeing. I had no idea what a bundle of stress and worry I’d been carrying around until the technician said “Everything looks fine!” and suddenly the universe became incontrovertibly groovy.

But that technician, I must admit, confirmed a theory of mine: I am invisible. Specifically, invisible to all nurses and other support staff working in the field of obstetrics. I noticed it when I joined Suanna for her very first pregnancy checkup — the lady who showed us in smiled broadly at Suanna and touched on on the shoulder. Suanna gestured to me and said “This is my husband,” but the nurse’s eyes barely glazed over me, and she didn’t say anything. The next time, I tested my germinal theory by saying “Hello!” to the nurse and trying to make eye contact — it was a different woman this time, but she deftly ignored me too. I’m considering wearing a beanie and codpiece to the next appointment just to see if I can get any reaction from these people whatsoever.

It’s not that I expect much from them — just one of those brief acknowledgement-of-existence gestures that human beings generally give each other. Why would they deny me even that? All is explained, though, if they can’t actually _see_ me. Maybe all this time, when Suanna’s been talking as if someone else if with her, they’ve just been chalking it up to pregnancy-induced hallucinations. And now that I think of it — mightn’t this be the case for all guys? A case of an occupational blind spot, not invisibility as such? Can anyone else corroborate my findings?

Here are some of the phrases that people entered into a search engine that led them, by hook or by crook, to this site. I plan to keep the world updated with these each month — I don’t care if doing so is a blogosphere cliche. It’s fun. Last month’s are “here”:http://www.polytropos.org/archives/000111.html.

Ordinary Stuff Dept.

getting extra cable channels
people against paintball
blog beer maryland
short poem one paragraph on pussy cat
funeral fee bangkok death traveler
baby gear men will like
classy checkers tut results

Dept. of the Tawdry (in increasingly disturbing order)

seducing females
harry and hermione kissing stories and pictures
erotic everquest stories
erotic pictures of jai from queer eye for the straight guy

Dept. of the Lengthy

actor martin shaw -sussex -professor -university -wine -jazz -trumpet
comparison between portrayals of achilles in epic and in art
ancient chinese printer how it works and wat [sic] it looks like
which province of holland speaks the closest language to old english and how its called
unmeted or sphenozygomatic or clogwood or antepenult or aclidian [what on _earth_ could this person have been looking for?]

A couple Saturdays ago a band from Pittsburgh called “Grain”:http://www.grain-music.com/ played at Common Grounds, and only a couple of people showed up. Far from being discouraged, they played a fantastic show in spite of the empty house. I wasn’t there, but the folks who work here are still talking about it. Apparently they completely rocked out. They’ve been playing the band’s self-entitled (and only) album at the Grounds today, and I was hooked even before I learned that this was That One Band from a couple weeks ago. It’s stripped down roots-rock in all its glory, with an agile guitarist and a stunning female lead vocalist. You can “buy their album”:http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/grain at the most excellent site “CD Baby”:http://www.cdbaby.com/home. While you’re there, snag yourself a copy of “Craic Wisely’s”:http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/craicwisely CD as well.