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Adventures in Novelty Dentistry, Part 145

I am DIAGNOdent. I will diagnose you.

Is It a Movie Treatment? Is It a Storyboard? No, It's a Graphic Novel

I loved Birth of a Nation, a new graphic novel with a story by Aaron McGruder and Reginald Hudlin and illustrations by Kyle Baker. The concept—outraged by being disenfranchised by shoddy electoral procedures, the city of East St. Louis secedes from the United States and becomes the independent nation of Blackland—is smart, and there are enough interesting subplots—a banker with a killer scam, renewable energy, a convenience-store-owning sleeper, and bougie armchair radicals who drive down to Blackland to live the revolution, to name but a few—to keep things moving once the main theme is established. The Bush, I mean Caldwell, administration is played for laughs, which is too bad in some ways, since the writing is weaker in those sections than in the rest of the book, and Mayor, later President, Fred Fredericks is a rare portrayal of a devoted public servant. On the whole (I wasn’t too keen on some of the fluorescent highlights), the art was great.

I’m no comic-book queen. I have maybe one and a half shelves of comics and graphic novels, and they tend toward the political side of things—Dykes to Watch Out For a-go-go, Maus, the collected works of Joe Sacco, etc., so maybe I just don’t know the genre, but my big complaint about Birth of a Nation was the way that its style shifted from comic book to screenplay at times.

For the vast majority of the book, the characters spoke directly (there were no speech bubbles here, the dialogue appeared underneath the panels, but still …), but from time to time, it became more indirect. For example, on Page 43, alongside an illustration of guys entering a room under heavy manners, it says, “There are noises of people outside the room. A secretary’s voice is heard. ‘Wait … you can’t just—” Even a small slip like that was jarring, but on some pages, there are whole paragraphs of exposition, and in most cases, they didn’t feel necessary. In the spots where more explanation was needed, it would have worked better if the information had been presented by some kind of narrator, so that the direct manner of address could be maintained.

I suspect the problem is that the creators hurried to get the book out during the 2004 election season. In the (fascinating) introduction, Hudlin mentions that he and McGruder originally conceived of the project as a movie, but the studios all passed. For the most part, they succeeded in turning movie storyboards into the panels of a graphic novel, but there were a few spots where the transition didn’t go far enough.

Funnily enough, in Slate on Monday, Aleksandar Hemon talked about books that appear to have been written and published with the primary intention of snagging a movie deal. Birth of a Nation isn’t a movie treatment disguised as a novel, it’s a movie treatment repurposed as a comic book.

Law & Order: Special Plagiarism Unit

One of the TV shows I watched Saturday night, when I was too tired even to turn the pages in the books I’d just bought at Powell’s, was a rerun of Law & Order: Special Titillation Unit that bore a remarkable similarity to the 2003 Mexican movie Nicotina.

I don’t mean to suggest plagiarism—as the cable guy once said when I suggested it was too great of a coincidence that my TV stopped working the day he came to tweak something, “That’s what a coincidence is.”

The episode of SVU, called “Surveillance,” concerned a concert cellist, who is attacked in her apartment. When detectives investigate the scene of the crime, they discover several Webcams hooked up to various rooms in her apartment. She’s being spied on by an obsessed computer geek while carrying on a relationship with the orchestra’s maestro.

In Nicotina, a computer geek, who happens to manage an apartment building, places Webcams in the apartment of one of the tenants with whom he's obsessed—a concert cellist who’s involved with her orchestra’s conductor.

Nicotina has way more going for it—hot diamonds; lots more characters, including Russian gangsters; the recurring theme of smoking and attempts to give it up; and Diego Luna (of Y Tu Mamá También fame and Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights infamy). Still, it’s a small world …

From Senegal to Portland

A fabulous birthday weekend, starting with Youssou N’Dour at the Paramount Friday night. I’ve never been to the Paramount before (unless forced to testify under oath, I will deny having seen Miss Saigon there; it would be an insult to the sublime Madama Butterfly—and the tickets were free, so since I didn’t hand over any dosh, I feel that my position is morally defensible), and I wasn’t quite sure how the whole no-seats thing would work. It was outrageously simple—seats in the upper tier and the downstairs cleared for dancing.

Unfortunately, it seemed like the setup confused more than just me; until pretty far into the set, when some of the upstairs people came downstairs to dance, the room was only about one-third full.

Still, people were into it. With four percussionists, two guitars, two keyboards, a backup singer (an insult to her role, but words fail me), and his longtime bassist/side man Habib Faye, they rocked out. Africans were dancing alongside Swedes. I doubt there have ever been so many returned Peace Corps volunteers in one Seattle room. Robert Christgau wasn’t far out when he called N’Dour “the world’s greatest pop voice,” and he put on a hell of a show—despite the relatively thin audience.

On Saturday morning, we headed down to Portland. It was a hideous day for the ride—the temperature reached 100º F, and traffic was snarled almost all the way. Both R and I were reminded of Lisbon—triple-digit temperatures and trams whizzing by. It’s been a long time since I lived in a warm climate, and I’ve definitely softened up. The heat was nothing compared to D.C., where I lived for five years—none of that hideous humidity—but it’s enervating to walk through a door into what feels like a fan blowing hot air into your face.

Because of the weather and my general lightweight-ness, we didn’t get a lot done or wander very far—the weekend was basically about 12 hours in Powell’s, two meals in Manzana, Saturday night supper snagged at Whole Foods (not a patch on the Seattle store, BTW, living proof that layout is everything) and eaten in the hotel room, and quick pops to Oblation, Reading Frenzy, and the comic/p0rn store two doors down. Fabulous!

Best Unsolicited Birthday Tribute EVAH

Thanks, Auntie Crick!

Yes, as a matter of fact, I am the kind of person who would solicit a birthday tribute.

I hope you all enjoy my special day!

OK, NBC's Olympic Trials Coverage Does Suck

I’m already regretting my “not really as hideous as it could be, which almost counts as good” verdict on NBC’s coverage of the Olympic trials. Friday night’s two-hour show was dreadful.
 
The theme of Friday’s coverage was the “Olympic A standard.” It’s easily forgotten in the bulk of track and field events, where the United States dominates and the first three finishers win spots in Athens, but things really aren’t as simple as that. It’s not just where you end up in the race; you also have to meet the minimum standard for the event (times for runners, distances for throwers). This mysterious entity the “Olympic A standard” has been mentioned from time to time, for example, in the men’s 1,500 meters, Grant Robison didn’t even make it to the final, but he could still represent the United States in Athens because he’s one of only two Americans to have met the OAS. (Actually, I’m doubting this in light of NBC’s  misstatements with the men’s 5,000 meters.)
 
The men’s 5,000 meters final threw up a really confusing situation—Tim Broe won the race running away, but he hasn’t met the A standard, so the announcers said the guy who came in second, Jonathan Riley (who really needs to clear the scrub of a beard he’s sporting—this isn’t the Stanley Cup playoffs) was going to Athens. In fact, Riley was the only person NBC interviewed immediately after the race. Tom Hammond and Marty Liquori, who called the race, announced that Riley “had his ticket punched,” but when Bob Neumeier, the terrible post-race interviewer, asked him about it, Riley had a different story. As he told it, if Broe reached the A standard by Aug. 9, they’d both go to the Games. If Broe reached the B standard by that time, Broe would go alone.
 
I guess it makes sense that if the winner of a country’s Olympic trials is only up to B standard, that country would only have one representative in Athens, but the commentators, who are supposed to be experts, were totally lost. For one thing, the term “B standard” had never before been mentioned—and they certainly didn’t explain it, or even better just tell us what it was. What’s worse, after Riley (who went to Stanford, they kept telling us, so he must be smart) explained the situation, Liquori confirmed that what he had said was true (without admitting that they’d given a wrong explanation earlier), but immediately afterward, Tom Hammond said that all this showed it’s best to get the standard lots of time ahead of the Games (as Riley had done). This showed me that Hammond was still lost and confused—it would be better for Broe (if not the United States as a whole) if he got the B standard in the next three weeks and thus reduced his competition, so the comment about qualifying early was total bunk.
 
Sure, the rules are complicated (I looked them up, and they made my head spin), but it’s the commentators’ job to figure these things out. The worst part of it is that they not only gave out bad information, they did it in a not-live situation—isn’t the point of tape delay to ensure that they don’t make goofs like that? Two very big demerits for NBC.

Crime & No Punishment

I was off work Monday and Tuesday, feeling totally craptacular. Being out sick at this time of the year is so frustrating—not that I care for sun and all that squinting it induces, but it just feels so wasteful to be parked on the couch staring blankly at the television, not really taking things in, when there is so much to do.

I had a splitting headache and now feel like I’m working with half a brain (my manager suggested that I check for stitches, since it sounded like I was the victim of a brain-snatching). Among the many TV shows I looked at glassy-eyed was the latest in the Law & Order franchise, Crime & Punishment (the others, of course, being Law & Order: Special Titillation Unit and Law & Order: Scenery-Chewing Intent). The twist in this one is that it’s real—although the two prosecutors in the episode I saw looked like a model/actress (that hair—it was so perfect!) and a WWE wrestler, they really were assistant DAs.

It was one of the most depressing shows I’ve ever seen—and I’d be surprised if it lasts just because it’s such a downer. It’s not depressing the way the news can be, it just made the injustice of the system too damned obvious for viewing comfort. I don’t want to go into the cases—why stretch out the sad stories’ lives any further than necessary—but let’s just say I strongly disagreed with the verdicts in both cases, and I could see both results coming. We already know life isn’t fair (let’s follow that link one more time, lest we forget), but to be presented with something so blatantly unjust was too dispiriting to bear.

Signs You're Not English Anymore

You go to the Web site of a woman who, judging from the work she does and the people she works with, is just the kind of person you really enjoy—only you've never heard of ANYBODY (OK, Rory Bremmer is the Mike Yarwood of the '90s, right? and I worship Meera Syal) or ANY OF THE SHOWS (except Call My Bluff) she mentions in her biography.

Do you think I could apply for a grant or something?

I Don't Hate NBC's Olympics Coverage, Yet

This was one of those weekends that is more necessary than pleasurable. Last week I put in my usual 50-55 hours of work, which would’ve been fine, except that it was a four-day week. Other than a little bit of socializing (a dinner guest for us Friday night, a trip to lunch at the new pad of a friend of R’s Saturday) and some very gentle shopping Saturday and Sunday, the weekend was little more than a battle against enervation and a persistent sinus headache.

Well, that’s not quite true. I did put together my CD for Summer Burn 2004—I couldn’t resist doing a themed disc; they’ve always been my weakness, but if summer and travel don’t go together, I don’t know what does.

I wasn’t even in the mood for watching television, except, of course, for the Olympics trials, the television coverage of which was shockingly decent, considering that we were dealing with NBC. I’m a total Olympics geek, and in years past I’ve been driven to absolute distraction by U.S. TV coverage of the Games, with as much time devoted to sad stories as to the actual events. This is just the trials, not the real thing, so I’m not going to get ahead of myself and say they’ve come to their senses and started to focus on the actual sports—right now only sports fans are watching, so they don’t need to waste time on silly stories—but it was, nevertheless, a pleasant surprise not to be baying for Bob Costas’ blood (though I still don’t like him one bit).

Things were definitely at their best on Friday night when we had three hours of coverage—an hour of swimming from Long Beach and two hours of track and field from Sacramento. It was reassuring to see that U.S. sportscasters are capable of doing acceptable (if not remarkable) coverage when given the opportunity. When Costas mentioned that multi-medalist Jenny Thompson had lost her mother to cancer in February, I was shocked that we’d gotten 45 minutes into the swimming telecast before the first mention of cancer. (The C bomb was dropped for the first time in the track coverage around the 38-minute mark, when we learned that Inger Miller’s dad, a two-time Olympic medalist for Jamaica, is “battling” lung cancer.)

There’s still way too little of the actual competition in the athletics side of thing—five-second clips are more frustrating than entertaining sometimes. Weirdly, I prefer the approach NBC has taken with swimming—either showing it all or showing none of it. It was pretty random in places—it wasn’t clear, for example, why they’d decided to show us pretty extensive coverage of one heat of the women’s 5,000 meters Friday night, when they’d short-changed many other events, including the first heat of the same race, of which we saw nothing (especially weird since Marla Runyan won that one, and she’s famously never been beaten by an American in the 5k).

There was a pretty long segment on the BALCO scandal that’s such a big deal on the sprinting side of things. It was a pretty superficial overview, but it covered enough to make it clear that the story is complicated, and perhaps that’s service enough.

It did feel like a warm-up for the TV folks. While they kept stressing (appropriately and pretty effectively) how cut-throat the competition was on the track and in the pool—how many of the competitors who would be eliminated would be good enough to medal if they were from another country—the TV production was pretty amateurish in places. (Though I prefer that to the over-produced style they’ll no doubt have adopted by the time they get to Athens.) Since the coverage was not live, it was sometimes hard to figure out why they were focusing on the people they were—in the heptathlon, for example, they had the camera on the woman who was in seventh place for most of the time, and they didn’t explain their reasoning. (They may have known that her best events were still to come or that the folks ahead of her had already had their strongest events—but they didn’t share that with us.)

Some of the scripting seemed ropy too. Carol Lewis started Saturday’s Sacramento coverage with, “As cold as it was yesterday is as hot as it is today,” which is pretty inscrutable—especially if you missed the previous day’s coverage. On Sunday, Lewis said of Sandra Glover (who didn’t make the cut), “She’s been having a hard time this year because her event is not Golden League and [she] has been having trouble finding races to run fast in.” Since there’s next to no coverage of track and field—and no coverage whatsoever of Golden League events as far as I know—on U.S. television, there must surely have been a lot of viewers who didn’t know what Lewis was talking about. Dwight Stones also has a really annoying tic of referring to people as “a former Howard graduate,” etc. Surely, they’re either former students or current grads, but not former grads?

At one point on Sunday’s track coverage (I missed Sunday’s swimming coverage), they went to Dwight Stones for a report on the women’s triple jump and his microphone was dead. This made no sense to me, since the coverage clearly wasn’t live, but I’m guessing that they’re “shaping the narrative” of the film coverage but taping the commentary live. They also need to be quicker at putting the results on the screen. After the amazing men’s 100-meter final, Lewis (or perhaps it was Tom Hammond) declared, “Oh, my goodness, look at the time!” but at least another minute passed before we were shown that crucial information. (We didn’t only need it to see the times—Justin Gatlin and Shawn Crawford are not exactly household names. I for one needed an answer to the basic question of “who qualified?”)

The best part is that there are seven more days of track and field and several more days of swimming still to come. No doubt by the end of the week, I’ll be an NBC hata once again, but for now …

Mexican Hipsters Reclaim "Naco"

A great Day to Day piece about Mexico's "naco" culture, naco being "a term that covers everything from guys draped in gold chains to people who dance funny."

Just one thing puzzles me. "In Great Britain, they're known as 'Kevins.' " Really? And in a blog context, shouldn't that be "In Great Britain, they're known as 'Ks'?"

SIFF Highlights, Part 1

It’s now been three and a half weeks since the credits rolled on this year’s Seattle International Film Festival, and I’m just about adjusting to life after SIFF. I saw 57 films over the course of its three and a half weeks, a feat that sometimes required me to stay out past 7 p.m., something I usually hesitate to do. Of course, it didn’t hurt that there’s bugger all on television now. (Bloody hell, I’m blogging on the cutting edge, eh? On Tuesday I broke the news that Los Angeles isn’t designed for pedestrians; today I can reveal that TV sucks in summer. Tomorrow, who knows, something groundbreaking like “going to 57 movies in three weeks reveals you’re a total saddo.”)

I’m not going to work through all 57 films here (let’s face it, if I tried, I’d just get bored and fade out after a couple of weeks; and if I’m bored …), but it wouldn’t hurt to share the highlights, eh?

As always, I adored the Spanish films. We had six this year—Torremolinos 73, The Basque Ball, November, The Weakness of the Bolshevik, Your Next Life, and the magnificent Take My Eyes. (Pretension alert: I can’t tell you what a massive effort it was for me to offer those movie titles in English.) So, three Luis Tosars (in my case on consecutive nights), three Juan Diegos, and two Candela Peñas. These films were each so fabulous that I shall be raving about them at greater length soon, but some brief cameo rave-ettes, beginning tonight:

Off the Map (U.S.; drama; dir. Campbell Scott): A very quiet and unhurried movie that never seemed slow. The story of a precocious and confident young girl who lives with her hippy parents in Nowheresville, N.M. The start of the story is a little bit reminiscent of The Darling Buds of May, in that it involves a tax man landing, as if from another planet, in the middle of an unconventional, loving family, only to discover love and art and all the good things that come from not wearing a tie. Actor-directors often make movies that are a long string of climaxes full of the kind of speeches that play well at the Oscar ceremony, but Campbell Scott completely avoided that here. There are some marvelous performances from Joan Allen, Sam Elliott, and Valentina de Angelis as the young narrator (I saw a ton of great performances by children and young adults in festival movies). Jim True-Frost, who I’d only seen before as the idiot turned investigator savant in The Wire (the best show on HBO) was especially impressive. Quite a literary film (with themes and motifs and everything), but never pretentious. I could’ve lived without the voiceover from an adult Bo, which seemed like a flimsy excuse to give a role to Amy Brenneman (because every indie movie needs a bona fide TV star, right?), but that’s a minor quibble.

Statements of the Obvious, Part 2

So, two days ago, I'm thinking, "Ah, I should take up blogging again," and I investigate this RSS thing the cool kids have been messing with for years already, and I look at a few readers, but I don't really "get" them, then I come across Bloglines, which actually makes sense to me, and its interface is a bit bare-bones, and there are some things that annoy me like not being able to sort my feeds, but it's still cool, and I get all addicted and stuff ...

And two days later I go to their page, and they've done a lovely redesign, and I can sort, and I can add new feeds with the click of a button on my links bar (and I'm sure there are many more features I still don't even know about).

Now I really like it!

Art Shot Alert!

A photo from our trip to Amsterdam this spring. (I have no idea who the folks exiting the swanky store are.) 

Statements of the Obvious, Part 1

A fortnight ago, I spent the week working in Los Angeles, a place for which evolution has really not equipped me. The whole not-driving thing is a bit of an issue there, as is my dislike of warm weather and my utter slobbosity. (I met a writer for drinks one evening. I had actually gone back to the hotel and changed into nicer clothes than the ones I’d worn to the office before meeting her, but taking one look at me, she sighed, with a slight note of aggravation, “Oh, you look so comfortable!”)

Still, I did as well as could be expected by staying in a hotel just 20 minutes walking distance from my work place (and needless to say, I never saw another pedestrian). There were tons of amenities within walking distance—a cinema literally across the plaza from the front door and lots of shops and restaurants within just a few blocks.

My first evening there, I had to run a few errands—I’d forgotten my alarm clock and it was an early call, I needed some aspirin, that kind of thing. I could see the drug store just a few hundred yards down the street, but it took me about 20 minutes to get there and back.

On this trip, I realized that in Los Angeles you can’t just cross the street at any old corner; you have to schlep down to the closest official pedestrian crossing, and they only show up every five or six blocks. So, to get to the place that’s directly opposite the spot you’re standing, you might have to walk two or three blocks, then cross a street wider than a Seattle block, and then walk two or three more blocks back in the other direction. It’s like one of those puzzles about foxes and chickens and a boat that can only hold two creatures (in which, incidentally, I could never understand why you couldn’t temporarily stun the fox so it can’t menace the chicken even if you leave them together on the shore). THEN, when you finally get to the store or restaurant or whatever, you have to walk around the back of the building, because no one has an entrance on the street. What would be the point? The door opens out the back onto the parking lot!

I had a good star-spotting fortune this trip: I almost banged into Nancy Wilson in my short-term place of work, and at dinner at Orso in Beverly Hills, we dined (not at the same table you understand) with Jack Valenti, Ricky Jay, and an actor, possibly English, who is always seen being tight-lipped and mean dressed in either a boiled shirt or a safari suit.

Soy Loco Por Ti, Caetano …

… but your new album sucks.

I yield to no one in my love for Caetano Veloso. A genius songwriter; a gorgeous voice; a commitment to experimentation and change; a revolutionary, no less—but, man, A Foreign Sound reeks!

When I first heard about the album, I was intrigued—he sings “Feelings”? “Come as You Are”? “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”? I figured there’d be radical reinterpretations—or at least irony-laced reworkings. And then I heard it. And I was horrified, so I figured I wasn’t hearing it right. Or that I had a bad attitude. Or that a god has released a crap album. I hope the problem is that I’m not getting it, because “Soy Loco Por Ti, Caetano,” but …

OK, first the good things. Thanks to those years in exile, Caetano’s English is great, so while I’d argue there’s very little musical interpretation on the CD, his lyrical interpretation is lovely at times. On “Manhattan,” for example (also one of the few tracks with an interesting accompaniment), he does a great job with the scheme that rhymes “Greenwich” and “manage,” “Brighton” and “frighten,” “spoil” and “goil,” “onyx” and “Bron(i)x,” and he brings a real playfulness to some of the lines (“gliding by” is very nicely done). In “The Man I Love,” he doesn’t feel the need to change the gender of the song (though this shouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with his work, Caetano has a long history of singing—and writing—songs in the character of people very different from himself).

The big problem is that his versions of these standards are bog standard. I don’t mind how stripped down the songs are—with material this familiar, you need to do something a little different to get listeners’ attention, or sing more beautifully than the rest, but on this album he does neither. The bulk of these songs have been recorded many times by the great American singers—Ella Fitzgerald and her (almost) peers—and they did it much better. If Caetano wanted to wash Ella and Billie and Frank and Mel and Anita and Blossom and Chris out of our memories, he went about it the wrong way.

Caetano’s voice is more beautiful than most of those we’ve heard singing these songs over the decades, but you’d never know it from this album. For a lot of the time, he’s stuck in his lower register, which can be expressive, but not here. It’s as if he’s chosen to sing the songs very plainly. That’s fine as an act of musical politics, but it isn’t particularly pleasant to listen to. I could go down to my local karaoke night to hear better versions of these standards—and that’s not saying a lot about the quality of Seattle karaoke.

So, track by track:

“The Carioca”: OK, this is one of the successes of the album. On most of the tracks, I had the feeling the musicians were in a different country from the singer during the recording process; here at least it feels like they’re all working together. The rhythm is interesting; the listener can imagine a big smile on Caetano’s face as he reworks a classic bit of SouthAmericasploitation. And how many other versions of this can most listeners remember? Maybe just Fred Astaire's, and if you can’t out-sing Fred Astaire, you’re in trouble.

“So in Love”: It starts with great potential—a nice bit of strings—and goes downhill from there. Whacha doing down there, Caetano? The word that comes to mind is “cliché.”

“Always”: Never. He sounds like he needs to clear his throat.

“Come as You Are”: Compared to the rest of the album, a work of genius, but I bet someone hearing this with no explanation would think it was someone’s dad jamming with his mates. Anyone who’s heard Dani Sciliano’s version will not be impressed by this.

“Feelings”: I heard about 15 better interpretations on Opportunity Knocks. And I mean that most sincerely.

“Love for Sale”: Who will buy? Not me, bro.

“The Man I Love”: Points for not changing the words, and a nice bit of cello (Jaques Morelenbaum certainly did his bit to keep this album out of the “utter and total crap” category), but the emotional impact of the song is zero. Compare to the miraculous Ella Fitzgerald version on her Gershwin Songbook and weep.

“Smoke Gets in Your Eyes”: Bad karaoke. Unlistenable.

“Cry Me a River”: One of the rare occasions where the phrasing is just wack. Another song with no emotional impact. Julie London was hardly a voice for the ages, but her legacy as the foremost interpreter of this song is definitely not threatened by Caetano.

“Jamaica Farewell”: See ya.

“Nature Boy”: I’m a huge fan of this song—Abbey Lincoln’s version on A Turtle’s Dream has stopped me in my tracks many times—but this is absolutely awful. You can’t hear the words over the feedback—and perhaps that’s a good thing.

“(Nothing but) Flowers”: The first track in a while that doesn’t offend my sensibilities. I’m not familiar with the David Byrne original, which no doubt helps (I seem to enjoy tracks the least when I already have beloved versions of the songs in mind). Although he strangulates the lyrics a little, at least it’s in the most interesting part of Caetano’s range.

“Manhattan”: Two decent tracks in a row. We’re on a roll.

“Diana”: To call this crap is an insult to excrement.

“Summertime”: Not horrible, unless you’ve never heard Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong’s version. Fortunately for them, most people have.

“It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”: I’m no Dylan-ologist—it’s possible I’ve never even heard this song before—so I have no point of comparison, which, as we’ve established before, tends to be a good thing. His delivery here reminds me of the awesome bit of patter/rap in the version of “Lingua” on Live in Bahia—but if you listen to the two tracks side by side, you’re reminded that speaking English isn’t the same as feeling in English.

“Love Me Tender”: Sounds like this was surreptitiously recorded when Caetano was singing along with a music box.

“Body and Soul”: Your heart is sad and lonely? For Billie I sigh.

“If It’s Magic”: Sorry, Stevie.

“Detached”: This isn’t karaoke music; this is what I was hoping the album would sound like—not necessarily so dissonant, but interesting at least. He does sound like he’s doing a bad impression of John Lydon, though.

“Something Good”: But not this.

“Blue Skies”: I don’t like it much, but at least it shows a bit of creativity.

Weirdly enough, toward the end of her career, when her voice had pretty much gone and she had to rely on interpretation, Ella Fitzgerald turned to Brazil for material, recording a bunch of bland Jobim albums. It’s as though Caetano is returning the compliment, only in reverse—he sings almost everything entirely straight. I can’t believe he’s doing it for the money (world music artists often do try a usually lame English-language album to attempt a big breakthrough, but surely he’s beyond that, and besides, the material on this album isn't going to appeal to the crossover audience they're usually fishing for), so I’m willing to take his word that it’s an homage. Homage received and accepted. Now get back to your own stuff.

Not That There's Anything Wrong With That, Spidey

So, I was just watching Hal Sparks do his patented “I’m so damned lovable and harmless” thing on tonight's Queer as Folk when I remembered his odd cameo in Spider-Man 2.

Hal (an actor known for his gay roles) and his beagle (a breed known to be popular with gay men) get into an elevator, where they find Spidey in full regalia (as I recall this is after one of the scenes where he loses his will to web, so he has to use more conventional means of transportation home). They make small talk about the costume, and the depressed Spidey tells Hal that the tights are “kinda itchy and ride up in the crotch a little.” At that point, Hal gets that "little boy who’s just made a crank phone call" look he puts on when he's supposed to suggest that he's all hot for Ben in QaF, and we see him reaching forward to push a button. Cut to Spidey tromping down the street looking even more dejected.

I may be all homo’d out—we are just coming out of the season of pride and we-are-everywhereness, after all—but it sure looked to me that we were supposed to think that Hal had stopped the elevator so he could help Spidey out of his tights, and Spidey’s hang-dog expression when it was all over was about not being able to be with MJ, the love of his life, and having to make do with furtive encounters with bad actors in elevators.

Anyone else?

Don't Vote for Me for President

On what I like to think of as the high American holidays—the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving—it occurs to me that perhaps there is something to the U.S. Constitution’s ban on non-native-born citizens becoming president. It’s not that I’m unpatriotic—I’m as Yankee doodle as they come—but there’s something about having grown up elsewhere that robs the big American holidays of their resonance. So much of the ritual of their celebration has to do with nostalgia for fireworks or turkeys past, and if you grew up thinking of July 4 as Pam Shriver’s birthday or of Thanksgiving as the occasion when Americans eat jam with their meat and two veg, it just doesn’t mean as much. Meanwhile, a lot of my fellow citizens were running around in flag T-shirts or protesting the situation in Iraq under the banner of Patriots Against the War. Why, R and I will probably get through this entire Independence Day without consuming a single wiener. (Although, come to think of it, at brunch this morning we did have red plum syrup on our white-ish waffles, along with blueberries, so perhaps I’m being too hard on myself.)

This topic came to mind as I was reading last week’s New Yorker piece about Arnold Schwarzenegger, which opened with the legislation introduced by Orrin Hatch last summer that would make people who have been U.S. citizens for more than 20 years (coincidentally the length of time the Governator has had a blue passport) eligible for the presidency. I know a lot of people who have adopted children from overseas—they came over as tiny tots, just a few months old, and it seems crazy that they’re denied an opportunity afforded to their siblings that were born here. (I also know some very un-American Brits who could be president since they were born in the United States. Not that anyone would vote for them, but that’s beside the point.)

At the same time, I do wonder about divided loyalties. Without coming over all Norman Tebbit, I’ve been in this country for half my life, I consider myself absolutely American, and I can’t imagine ever returning to live in Britain or voting in a British election … and yet, when the Olympics roll around in a few weeks, I have no doubt I’ll be cheering the Brits down the home stretch with the traditional English cry of, “C’mon my son.” (Something I would never have done when I lived there, but that’s neither here nor there.) If I’m rooting for the land of my fathers in the 400 meters, would I be unsure whose interests I was representing if I were sitting in the Oval Office?

In the end, I think you have to trust the pledge of allegiance new citizens make—doubting their devotion could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. The media coverage of Marine Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun, the latest American said to have been captured and perhaps already beheaded in Iraq, seems different from the stories about the previous victims, and I can’t help thinking it’s because he’s an Arab-American and therefore suspected by some of having divided loyalties. If we don’t trust naturalized citizens to perform all the responsibilities of citizenship, why should they—we—be loyal?

Rediscovering Blogger

I'm futzing with my blog again. The other day, Scotty Mac from CZ asked me why I'd quit blogging, and I just didn't have a good reason.