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September 13, 2004

Retail+the Internet=Hilarity

So, I was at work today, and these guys walked in, all tall skinny altera-dorky types with shaggy hair, and I thought, "I bet these dudes have a band." So the tallest skinniest shaggiest one bought a remote-control hovercraft (which are actually super-fun). One of the guys said to another, "you should use that thing on stage." This told me two things: one, that they were in some sort of performing ensemble, and two, that they were fairly successful in this pursuit, since no shaggy alterna-dorky dudes my age can afford anything at my store. The name on the credit card was "Weston Dupree." I thought to myself - and almost said to the guy - "that's a great 40's movie star name."

So later, out of curiositry, I use the amazing power of Google to Google our friend Weston Dupree. And it turns out that he's totally that dude from Eisley, who I have, in fact, heard of.

So if you see Eisley playing with a remote-control hovercraft on stage, just remember: you heard it here first!

The Seth Bulletin. Bringing you the least essential i

August 30, 2004

Administrative Note

My webspace is nearly full from comment spam, so I'm disabling comments until a better fix can be found (preferably one that fits my strikingly limited computerin' skills). Truth be told, this annoyance has caused me to blog way less than normal, so a commentless Seth Bulletin will, in the end, be a more frequently updated one.

Also, everywhere I go I see billboards for this "Captain Whatever and the Skies of Tomorrow" movie with Jude Law, and they infuriate me. Why? Because like two years ago I wrote a sketch called "The Adventures of Captain Future and the Rocket Police," and now we can't ever use that lovely title without people thinking it's a reference to said movie. Never am I one to not wish a creative project well, but please let it fade into obscurity, for my sake.

August 28, 2004

Nineties to Nineties, Oughts to Oughts

I've spent much of the past few days reading Joseph Ellis' terrific Founding Brothers, a book about the crucial first few years of our nation's political history, and it's in many ways a really shocking book. The usual perception of the era is of a summit among marble busts: heavy with principle and historical significance and majesty. Ellis, instead, shows that era as a distant mirror of our own times.

The first few administrations were marked by the nastiest of political infighting. Disagreements over political issues became deeply personal; questions of policy were inescapably intermingled with questions of character. Parties sniped aggressively in public and in private; major figures assaulted their adversaries by means of shadowy surrogates; the press was unable or unwilling to separate out fact from allegation. Regional and cultutral antagonism colored every debate. The questions that divided the leaders were serious - who was truly a patriotic upholder of national values, and who a traitor to those values; what was to be done about clear and pressing threats (domestic and foreign) to national security. Upon every dispute, it seemed, rested the political advantages which would decide the course of the country.

In the 1990s, it seemed the proper political analogue to our times was the 1890s, and we were quite content to be amused by our Gilded Age. Sordid little fundraising schemes and the Money Shot Heard 'Round the World were mostly entertainment in the midst of a generally peaceful (although deceptively so) and prosperous (ditto) time. Politics was a series of petty skirmishes between our own Harrisons and Clevelands.

What a difference five years, terrorist attacks, war, recession, and a one-party federal government make! What strange little fever dream it's been! The phrase "most important election since..." gets thrown around all the time, and the stakes - and tactics - feel less like the 1890s and more like Ellis' contentious 1790s.

A note worth remembering: the reason we can write this now is because the system that were built by Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton et al. were strong enough to withstand the vicious infighting that they engaged in. Whatever else their character flaws - and Ellis' narrative suggests they were monumental - in their wisdom they created a structure that would not be rent asunder, even in its infancy, by men as flawed as themselves. In the decades since we've gone through many a period of calamitous conflict and pleasant consensus and everything in between, and the whole rickety mechanism seems to keep perpetuating itself.

At the end of a long hot summer, with many people - myself included - wrenched and worn-out from the ugly battles and dizzying stakes of this election, it's refreshing, even comforting, to read Ellis' story of how we got through those first few desperate years. The point is, we got through them, and the experiment didn't collapse. It seems to be working pretty well thus far, two hundred odd years in.

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