Piercing commentary

Somebody sent me a video clip of Pierce Bush, the president's nephew, who appeared over the weekend on the Today show. (I can't recall ever actually watching the Today show, but that's not relevant here.)

Young Pierce, it seems, has written a letter to a Texas newspaper, commenting on the Dubai ports deal, and the professional journalists at NBC felt that the man might wish to expound for their millions of viewers. I hate TV.

I couldn't watch the whole thing, just the few minutes it took to experience the phantasmagoric weirdness of it. It felt like I had gone back in time to listen to George W., around 1970. Pierce looks remarkably like his uncle. Those beady little eyes seem to crop up everywhere along the Bush genealogical tree, like the Hapsburg Jaw.

Whatever he is, won't somebody please place this beer-bonging preppy back into the cupboard of privilege whence he crept?

Happy thoughts

More Pessoa, in what I think is the best passage so far:

"To conform is to submit, and to conquer is to conform, to be conquered. Thus every victory is a debasement. The conqueror inevitably loses all the virtues born of frustration with the status quo that led him to the fight that brought victory. He becomes satisfied, and only those who conform--who lack the conqueror's mentality--are satisfied. Only the man who never achieves his goal conquers. Only the man who is forever discouraged is strong. The best and most regal course is to abdicate."

Pause. Punkt! The Loser's testament, Defeatism as creed.

Good Eats, the Crying Clown and Underworld Dancing.

The University Club, the Press Club, the Madison. In three days I've had three great lunches...and I didn't pay for any of them. Oh, welcome to the executive lifestyle, Mr. Irony.

Aside...

I just read that France has awarded Jerry Lewis the Legion of Honor medal. How can the country that gave us Apache dancing show such poor taste?

Vicarious living

A letter I wrote for our president ran today in the Anchorage Daily News. My, I never realized how eloquent he was.

Bush, Super Digger

A recent CNN/USA Today/Gallop poll puts the president's approval rating at 36 percent. By way of comparison, 38 percent of Americans think the war in Iraq is going well.

How can the latrine digger be lower than the shithole he's in?

Liaison...ing?

I just got this note from the head of our legal department:

"Colleen will liaison with the other attorneys about this project."

"Liaison" as a verb...it's so sad. Shall I make it a mission to spread the word: "Liaise?"

Poor Peter the Lawyer can't help himself. Let us prayer for him.

More money gone

I fell down yesterday. I bought my first book of 2006, despite a pledge to myself on January 1 to refrain until I had read all 20 books sitting on my desk.

I bought Fernando Pessoa's Book of Disquiet, not actually on a whim but on someone's recommendation. I hope it's as rewarding as it promises to be.

What am I in the totality? What are the molecules in the pencil perched behind my ear as I write this, in the totality? Is there any difference between them and me?

Pessoa:

"There is an equal, abstract destiny for men and for things; both have an equally indifferent designation in the algebra of the world's mystery."

In other words, life is absurd, I'm thinking, or am I conflating philosophies again?

++++++++++++++++++++

The list of books I've read so far this year is stunningly short:

1. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
2. Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror by John Ashbery
3. Fifty Best American Short Stories: 1915-1965, edited by Martha Foley
4. Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 by Tony Judt
5. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

Verdi, the Kirov, and a little gratuitous Bush-bashing

Dave and his "partner" (I need to remember to ask them what business they're in) saw a performance of Gluck's "Orfeo et Eurydice" at the Lyric Opera last night while millions of other Americans watched our overachieving president make an ass of himself again on ABC News.

Is "overachieving" quite the word I want? Well, George is in a position he is profoundly unqualified to hold. I suppose that means he has overachieved.

Speaking of classical performances, the Kirov performance of Verdi's Requiem was stunning. As Philip Kennicott said in a review published in the Washington Post, "It was not just a performance rendered grand and dramatic, but a performance in which the conductor, Valery Gergiev, let his cast interact operatically, by instinct, as if they not only knew each other as musicians, but fundamentally understood each other's characters."

What I like about Gergiev and the Kirov is their tendency to strip the music down to its bare bones. I have a CD of theirs ("Rite of Spring") that is now my favorite recording of that work (I own about six others, including an interesting rendition on pianola, arranged by Stravinsky himself.) Anyway, the Requiem...it was like music from heaven.