blue basilica: September 2006

the brady modeling portfolio.

the gamine.

the ingenue.

the vamp.

the bombshell.

the heroine.

the cat loaf.

the devil wears a shmata.

i happen to think dubya dresses rather drably. but that is not the point of this post.

yesterday, adressing the UN, hugo chavez, president of venezuela, called dubya the devil. and he didn't mean it in the affectionate way, like, 'you little devil!' now, im not gonna get into dissecting his message here; that would take too long and id hardly bring anything new to the table. suffice it to say i agree with some of chavez's comments, disagree with others, and generally think he's the poorest messenger since the snaggletoothed oddball from dynamex who used to bring us some of our packages at the office.

[from the times article: Mr. Chávez...brandished a copy of Noam Chomsky’s “Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance” and recommended it to members of the General Assembly to read. Later, he told a news conference that one of his greatest regrets was not getting to meet Mr. Chomsky before he died. (Mr. Chomsky, 77, is still alive.)]

anyway, you know what's kinda crazy? besides boss hugo i mean. when i got to the above-linked times article, i was struck by the photo montage of chavez on top (which i copied at the top of this post). it reminded me of a powerful series in batman comics, circa 1988, called a death in the family.

[what was powerful was that robin - technically the second incarnation of robin, another thing im not gonna get into here - dies at the end of this series. the joker kills him. (there would later be a third robin.)]

anyway ii - and please follow this - after killing robin, the joker - im not making this up, dc comics actually ran with this storyline - becomes an official ambassador from iran, ostensibly to enjoy diplomatic immunity, and to gain access to the united nations, so he can try to murder the entire general assembly. and yet this is still not exactly why im connecting yesterday's events and this comic. here's why: before the joker tries to gas everyone in the assembly, he gives them an official address, from the main podium. and i distinctly remember that the comic portrayed this address with a montage of close-ups of the joker making a series of gesticulations and exaggerated facial expressions that was eerily similar to the times montage of chavez. (i think i still have that comic at my mom's house; i will try to retrieve it and scan this in next week.)

here's a link explaining this batman plotline.

these two events - the fictitious and the real-life - are of course further connected by the parallel of iran and the UN being all tied up in both of them (iranian president mahmoud ahmadinejad gave a colorful speech of his own at the UN on tuesday).

now, finally, lest you think these are just random, whimsical musings of mine, without any real significance, then tell me this: why, as the times article states - and see for yourself at the bottom of the piece - did chavez suggest that "Americans read Mr. Chomsky’s book instead of spending all their time 'watching Superman and Batman' movies."?

you cant make this sh*t up.
_

Blue Basilica's Senior UN Correspondent D. David Rutimann was able to obtain a complete copy of chavez's suggested reading list:

1. Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance (The American Empire Project) - Noam Chomsky
2. Imperial Crusades: Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yugoslavia - Alexander Cockburn and Jefferey St. Clair.
3. Globalization and Its Discontents - Joseph E. Stiglitz
4. The Davinci Code - Dan Brown
5. Are you there god? It's Me, Margaret - Judy blume
6. Bunnicula Strikes again! - James Howe
7. Everyone Poops - Taro Gomi
8. An Illustrated History of Rollerderby - Jack Imhoff

¡vamos españa!

when i lived in barcelona, i liked to complain about how slow and backwards things in spain were. but im just a complainer; my qualms were with little things, like unresponsive customer service, and places being closed on sundays. truth is, we'd do well to catch up to spain when it comes to some big things:

rodgers. madrid has banned too-thin models from a fashion show:

MADRID (AFP) - Excessively skinny fashion models will be barred from a major Madrid fashion show later this month for fear they could send the wrong message to young Spanish girls, local media reported.

Madrid's regional government, which is co-financing the Pasarela Cibeles, has vetoed around a third of the models who took part in last year's show because they weigh too little.

The authorities collaborated with a Spanish health organisation to come up with a minumum body mass -- a height-weight ratio -- of 18 for the models.

Spanish daily ABC said it was the first time such restrictions had been imposed on a fashion show, although a recent wedding dress exhibition in Barcelona banned fashion models who took a dress size below 38 (British size 10, US size eight).

Several models at last year's show provoked a row when they claimed their careers would be under threat if they put on weight.

Organisers said they wanted to "help ensure public opinion does not associate fashion, and fashion shows in particular, with an increase in anorexia, a disease which, along with bulimia, is considered ... as a mental and behavioural problem".

The event will take place on September 18-22.

hart. spain has same-sex marriage. has for a little over a year now.

meanwhile, our president is pushing legislation which would essentially make it ok to torture terror suspects, and withhold from their scrutiny some of the very evidence being used against them.

now, traveling to spain from the u.s. is going forward.

postus interruptus: 3. vienna lingers.

9.7.06: vienna lingers.

a few things to get to. here we go.

game. as a rare follow-up to an earlier post, i must record that andre agassi lost on monday, sept. 3, to benjamin becker of germany, 7-5, 6-7(4), 6-4, 7-5, thus ending his ridiculously long and triumphant tennis career. farewell, sweet prince.

set. yesterday, i read in the times that the first fully implantable artificial heart, a device that can let patients move about freely for up to two hours at a time, has been granted fda approval for sale. (you can also read about this bionic heart here, as the times link is bound to expire so the grey lady can make a gratuitous two cents by burying the article in the times select vault.)

anyhoo, d read the article too, and last night we talked about the seemingly inevitable phenomenon of technology being able to replace all of a person's organs and limbs and general 'parts.' we both agreed science's prosthetics would never be able to provide a quality of life equal to that which a typical person enjoys from his natural 'stuff' - but for different chief reasons.

d wisely brought up the fact that there are too many natural intagibles to be made up for. as an example, he spoke of how the heart is a muscle, which gets stronger from exercise. how could a machine adjust like that? i propose that a super-advanced artificial ticker could monitor the body's changes and regulate its size and other features accordingly, but this would surely be an asymptotic continuum of adjustment, with the pseudo-heart never reaching the perfect evolution of the real one.

however, my main apprehension regarding synthetic insides (one which d agrees with, i should say) is that im a firm subscriber to the powerful connection of the body & mind, and that the body must be at its best-its natural best-for the mind to be at its best. so i truly believe a person with robot parts would lose a portion of human thought and feeling, and those gifts are irreplaceable. (find empirical evidence of the mind-body connection here.)

match. today i had an epiphany. and it came from reading page six, so anyone who considers that daily feature to be only so much tripe can kiss my fair putoot.

first some background. one of my fave billy joel songs has long been vienna, off the stranger (great effing album). a key sampling of the lyrics:

Slow down you crazy child
Take the phone off the hook
And disappeaar for a while
It's alright you can afford to lose a day or two
When will you realize
Vienna waits for you.

i have always wondered what the song was specifically about - aside from the generic musings that typically comprise a song. ive thought about that friggin song so much that i even once used it in an essay about a kafka short story, before the law, claiming that the meaning of the story was analogous to said song.

then this morning i read this on page six:

September 7, 2006 -- OUR condolences to Billy Joel. Sources in the Hamptons say Joel's dad, Howard Joel, who lives in Vienna, is "not doing well" and will pass away soon. Howard, who escaped the Nazis as a child, left the Piano Man's mom in the 1960s and moved back to his native Austria to remarry and have another son, composer Alexander Joel. Billy and Howard were reunited some years ago but, as he told the Villager.com in 2003, "It was strained . . . [But] I have great respect for him."

now, im sure there are at least a few prevalent theories as to the meaning of vienna. i dont much care, because now i have mine. anyone who knows me knows im also a firm believer in the insight of psychoanalysis. accordingly, i think vienna is joel's letter to his father, forgiving him for not being a part of his life. and if anyone doubts me, just think of where psychoanalysis was founded. tha's right: vienna.

for me, she is 9.11.

i dont think i ever knew her. but she was family.

the dougie diaries.

my father is a genius. he's been keeping an illustrated diary for over 30 years. i could preface these samples of it with my usual platitudes and hyperbole, but i think they speak for themselves. these are circa 2003, 2004. 30+ years, dozens of normal-sized blank journals filled up like this, with colored pencil, pen, and clippings, comprising thousands of entries. can you imagine? i dont think anyone could imagine them until they've seen them. so here we go.

ps - i have ascribed titles to these entries; doug does not title them.

as usual, click on a pic to enlarge it.