The Michael Canfield Channel

Stuff I hate (part 2 of a series)

Awards.

A for instance: After Goodfellas, The Last Temptation of Christ, Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, King of Comedy, and more, Scorcese gets a directing Oscar(TM) for a tedious and ridiculous self-parody "The Departed" with featured an embarrassing performance by Jackie "The Joker" Nicholson, denouement of bullets-to-the-head that is executed (excuse the pun) seemingly without the slightest awareness of its own absurdity.

So that two things I hate. Awards (because they are often for something else -- which will be the case if Chabon wins the Hugo this year) and "The Departed."

Why I am still for Obama

Yes, yes he has all those horrible qualities like charisma, optimism, and hasn't spent the last twenty years in Georgetown, but ...

I like Obama because he spent time overseas in school as a kid, has a varied and multi-cultural background, and might be able to stand on the world stage with other world leaders and not be so arrogant. He's the anti-Bush. I really think a President can only set a tone (or invade stuff).
No matter who is the next President there won't be any universal health care and we will be Iraq for another decade.
But the longer this goes on, the more Clinton makes me sick.

Any other the three front runners would be better than Bush because they are all competent. McCain is the hardest to read, because he has reversed himself this year on almost everything he has ever stood for, in order the get the Republican nomination. So the hope with him, is that he is really just I liar and isn't really planning on serving W.'s third term. One thing about him that is consistent is his world view -- namely that war is the natural state on humankind. Maybe that comes from his background from a family of officer-class military elites, maybe it is even true, but it's a little too Julius Caesar for me.

Clinton just depresses me, because she is really invested in the 50/50 blue/red divide. She enjoys perpetual political war. She courts it. In '92 the thinking in congress was that they were going to have to give something in terms of health care reform to the Clintons. Maybe not everything they wanted but something. However, she walled herself and her team off completely, came up with a giant plan in secret, presented it in a take-it-or-leave it manner and accomplished the near impossible in allowing a Democratically-controlled congress to reject it. As President I don't believe she will work with people. She will work against them. Why? Because she would rather fail and be self-satisfied in her superiority, then get something achievable. If nothing gets done in her administration she will always have the Republicans and the media, or sexism to blame. I see it every day in the way she campaigns. Temperament-wise she is closest to W. than anyone else who has run this cycle: "I am right. My side has all the good ideas. If you aren't with us, you're against us." It scarcely matters what the issue is, or who the opponent is: could be Obama, or Kenneth Starr, or MSNBC, or whoever. It doesn't matter to Clinton, an enemy is an enemy.

I don't want to sit through four more years of that.

I think getting a new guy in there, one who hasn't been entrenched in Washington power for close to 20 years is the best chance of shaking things up. The worst thing for our decaying republic is to continue the concentration of power into the few. A McCain or a Clinton presidency won't do much to reverse the Bush years of steady-slide into soft fascism, because it keeps the same people in power that have been in power, and those Bush power plays against the constitution won't be given up easily because power is difficult to give up. But if you get a new group, there is a chance at least. Maybe. The alternatives are either rewarding the party that has destroyed the economy by borrowing billions from China to prosecute an unnecessary war for fun and (by openly embracing torture and trashing habeas corpus) given aid and comfort to radical Islam. Or to put the spouse of a popular former leader into power like a banana republic would.

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Politics

I can't figure out why McCain wants to be president.

Why? Just because?

I know he doesn't want to swiftly withdraw troops from Iraq. I know he doesn't want to do anything about health care. I know he doesn't have any great interest in economic issues.

I think he would maybe attempt to ban torture, and would not be a cruel on immigration issues as any of the Republican candidates he's already defeated, but none of them are running now, and either Democrat will be better on torture and immigration than McCain.

I'm sure he's for tax cuts. I'm sure he's for reminding "us" daily that the world is a dangerous place, and that he will work to "keep us safe" possibly by applying as much muscle around the world as we have left in the arsenal.

This seems like a delusional campaign. He's running is if there is a yearning among the electorate of four more years of the same.

The press is geared to presenting both sides of an issue, which often implies the two sides are equal. The race in November is not really going to be that close. It's glaringly obvious McCain and the Republicans are hold very weak cards.

Obama is close to 1 Million individual donors.

This is an unprecident number of donors. If you want Obama to be your next president would you consider giving a small amount. Even $5.00? It's easy and will make you feel good.

Here's part of an email pitch sent around by the Obama campaign (bolding, mine):

We've crunched all the numbers and discovered that we are within striking distance of something historic: one million people donating to this campaign.

Think about that ... nearly one million people taking ownership of this movement, five dollars or twenty-five dollars at a time.

We're already more than 900,000 strong, including over half-a-million donating so far this year. This unprecedented foundation of support has built a campaign that has shaken the status quo and proven that ordinary people can compete in a political process too often dominated by special interests.

Unlike Senator Clinton or Senator McCain, we haven't taken a dime from Washington lobbyists or special interest PACs. Our campaign is responsible to no one but the people.

One million donors would be a remarkable feat -- something that's never been done before in a presidential primary and something no one ever thought would be possible for us. And your generosity made it possible.

But it's going to take an incredible organizing effort to bring in 100,000 new donors before March 4th.

Be a part of this historic effort. Make a donation as part of our matching program, and you will bring in a first-time donor by doubling the impact of their contribution. You can even choose to exchange notes and let them know why you are part of this movement.

Caucus Update

Well I did end up going. There were about 100 people at my caucus, as opposed to about 15 in 2004. We had six delegates to election this time. With about 67 votes for Obama (my choice) about 22 for Clinton and 4 undecided on the first vote. This meant about 4.25 delegates for Obama and 1.5 for Clinton. Of course they rounded so that was 4 for Obama and 2 for Clinton. Then time was given for speeches to try and sway votes. Someone pointed out that if the four undecideds changed to Obama that would switch the final slate to 5 Obama delegates and 1 Clinton delegate.

One of the undecideds switched to Obama, on switched to Clinton. Two delegates chose to stay undecided, and so they shall remain -- at least until November when the will have the choice of candidates chosen by others. Fair enough, but that's an interesting way to spend two-and-a-half hours on a Saturday -- sitting around a grammar school gym for the purpose of not voting. If not then, when?

I hate politics.

Less than three hours until my caucus ...

... and I still don't know if I am going to go. I went to the supermarket this morning. Of course the supermarket is open, and the coffee shops, the DVD store and everything else. On one street there are hundreds of employees who have to work today and won't have to change to caucus. That sucks. I used to work Saturdays at a job I held two years ago. We had primaries then, which was good for me, or otherwise I would not have been able to participate.

This year, because of the new schedule and (holy law of unintended consequences, Batman!) a dead heat provided by un-Super Tuesday, the Washington State delegates are actually important. I hope the Democrats are not counting too heavily on the disenfranchised shift workers in this and other caucus states next November. Even though this seems to favor my candidate Obama, right now in primary season, this sucks.

It's disgusting.

Fuck you Washington State Democratic Party apparatus.

Update: I restated it all here.

Bill

I guess I'm not doing so good putting the election aside yet. I read about the Clinton camp's tactics and here's how I feel:

This week I've gone from thinking the Bill Clinton was a great man with some character flaws, to feeling more like he is a ruthless machiavellian who managed to balance the budget back in his day.

Maybe this is what it takes to win, and the Clintons, having been the recipients of so much Republican anger and abuse over the years, just happen to know this better than anyone. I used to wonder how McCain could stomach working with W. all these years. Now I'm starting to get it. I thought we were better than that over here, but nope, we really aren't. I hope something is left of this party after Bill finishes putting the boot to Obama. But right now I think the party will end up divided against itself in a way that will make the red/blue state (and even the Republican neocon/evangelical divide) look like pillow fights. That is some legacy you got going here Bill!

Steinem says "A woman is never the front runner," but it isn't true. A Clinton is always the front runner.

Since I've been following the election non-stop the last 24 hours, and found myself repeatedly posting to the Huffington Post, I figured why not use the same content here as well, and expose how my momentary flirtation with optimism way back on January 3rd and document a gradual return to my usual (since November 2004 anyway) cynicism. I suppose I really should just shut up, as any questioning of Clinton or (heaven forfend) support of a rival candidate, brings with it an accusation of sexism, or -- even worse -- idealism, from the Clinton faithful, the primary is going to get increasing ugly and divisive in the months to come. The Clinton's will do anything to win, least of all, alienate old Bill fans like me, who can only look on in disgust at the swift-boat style attacks on Obama. Obama will have to follow suit to stay in the race. I can't totally blame the Clinton's, who after all, had their swords forged in the fires of the culture wars, learning from their Republican enemies even as they defeated all comers. I can't blame them, will probably even end up holding my nose and voting for Senator Clinton in November, but I can't be proud of them either. Fearmongering, misstating your opponents record, while adopting all his or her winning ideas, casting yourself as the underdog even though you have every advantage, these are time-tested winning strategies in American politics, now for the Democrats as much as the Republicans. Lucky us.

Or maybe it will turn out a little better that I expect, and I can look back on this day and laugh. Yeah.

I'm using kwout here, which is a great page capture program, retaining working weblinks. All links in green are the titles of the original Huffington Post blog entries I commented on. Notice the high number of pro-Clinton posts that accuse the HuffPo of pro-Obama bias. I am guilty of favoring Obama is well, so I guess that is why I like it over there. Older posts appear at the bottom:

Link.

And, for the record, I no longer believe that Clinton's "misty" moment were actually "crocodile tears" as I stated in a weak and vindictive slip in the comment above. I believe her emotion was sincere and not a Nixonian ploy. However, I still retain the impression that she was mourning her own candidacy there, though it was widely interpreted as evidence of how deeply she believes in the stakes of the election. If THAT interpretation is accurate, then she must really believe that Obama and Edwards are as bad as the Republicans.

Away

I've been traveling in the Philippines the past couple weeks, visiting my Dad and his girlfriend here. I have a few pictures. I had a LOT of pictures, until for some strange reason I found myself on the memory card screen and managed to hit "reformat". No good, but not deadly. Clicking "Okay" after that -- now THAT was bad. So there went the record of the first half of the trip, including some interesting stuff shot in an isolated Muslim village (were the population is something like 70% children -- giving it at times the feel of a '60's sci-fi movie in which all the adults have disapeared), and also some shots catamarans crowding the ferry when we arrived in the port city of Zamboanga. We had a nice time, in that southern province, despite US State Department warnings not to travel there because of terrorist activity. Folks were nice to us, though they don't see as many foreigners there as in the rest of the country, so we prompted a lot of stares. There were armed military stationed, one per hotel to protect travelers, but that is about all. It's not exactly the Afghan hills out here. We were a couple blocks away from a McDonald's afterall.

But being on display like that gets old after awhile, so I have to remind myself that its only natural curiosity. What can you do.

Also Korean and Japanese tourists far outnumber Americans this trip, which was not true two years ago. There's your weak US dollar at work. Thanks for everything Mr. Bush. I've talked to a few Brits and Aussies here -- and the attitude toward to US is friendly, but not really surprised at the way we've handled Iraq. Most Americans I have talk to here seen pretty fed up with the States as well. This is true of the red-staters just as much as the blue-staters. I hadn't expected that, and I'm still trying to sort out the reasons for their dissatisfaction. My preliminary theory is that they are worn out by the political infighting as well. Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Rove, Cheney, Bush, etc, have so demonized the left that our public discourse has become distasteful to even their own supporters, dwindling though they may be. Though the way the Democratic congress continues to roll over to the White House, what's the point of putting them back in the majority anyway.

It would be nice not to have to go back. At least I should begin planning my own exit strategy. One thing that is especially tedious about walking down the street in, for example, Seattle, is the sheer smugness that drips of people. I notice this especially when I've returned from overseas. A little humility at home would be nice to see.

Now we are in a place called Bacolod, where we've got a chance to catch up on email, do laundry, and, since it has rained all day every day since we've arrived, it's also a reminder of Seattle.

Next is a beach town: Bacolod. If it is raining there too, we may head back to Manila early.

Jane Espenson on a certain species of SF & Fantasy, and me in major bitch-mode

Jane Espenson is one of a (far too small) number of good television writers that is actually known by name to (at least a portion) of her audience. She's written for BS:G, various Joss Whedon enterprises and my favorite fantasy series of all time: The Gilmore Girls.

She's got a brief article on the New Republic website about "the secret of selling Sci-Fi."

It strikes me (sorry to say) that this article is dead accurate.

Well, in truth, I found one overreaching statement ...

"The people who don't like Harry Potter seem to be the ones who haven't tried it yet."

... which I refute by my own experience. I tried it (two whole books). I don't begrudge anyone their Harry Potter, and if J.K. Rowling ordered me to fly to her estate on my own dime and clean her toilets for the rest of my life I would obey, so great is the debt that any writer today owes her for turning a generation on to the pleasures of reading in this (supposedly) post-literate, ADD age.

I also will add what should go without saying, but since the internet is an ugly, ugly place, can't. As the great art-forger Elmir (sp?) says in Orson Welles' F for Fake (I paraphrase): "There should never exist in the world this situation where one person can say what is good and what is bad. Never. Not ever. No."

But my preference is (most of the time) for another kind of story.

That is why I say I'm sorry Espenson's assessment of how to write wildly popular entertainment is so very correct. The modern templates are George Lucas' Campbellian (errr, Joseph Campbellian, that is) Star Wars trilogy squared, and LOTR. If you read more than four books a year (or even four in a lifetime) you most likely can recreate the template yourself: boy (usually a boy) born in obscurity, full of questioning and mysterious longing, discovers he has a special destiny. Along the way, he doesn't get the girl. The other guy usually does. But the Boy is too busy for love anyway. He is the one. Excuse me. The ONE. Espenson names contemporary examples, the big three: Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker, Buffy Summers. She overlooks (maybe another example is redundant) the other ONE, the Neo, the Keanu, from the excreable Matrix movies. Anyway, this ur-story, as J.E. reminds us, appeals to a vastly wider section of the story-hungry than do, say, the ratings challenged series Firefly, BSG, and (though she doesn't mention it) Farscape.

Farscape, like Firefly is right up my street. People fuck. They break up. They get back together. (They are even attracted to two different people at once! Possibly for the first time in televised SF.) They get richer. They get poor. They are friends. Then they don't speak for a year. They disappoint one another. They keep secrets. They can't keep secrets.

Execution matters too of course. I like Buffy because Whedon's universe is so lively. He upends the old archetypes with unexpected humor and a sense of awareness that like The Worm Ouroboros, the story goes on and on. In an second (?) season episode of Angel, the titular Vampire-with-a-Soul is given a warning that the apocalypse in near. He battles through many layers of hell. Reaching the depths at last, he steps out of an elevator to battle the ultimate evil, only to find himself back on the Santa Monica Pier, crowded with families and young couples walking in the cool evening air, enjoying ice cream while intermingling with (and hardly seeing) L.A.'s homeless. "What happened to the Apocalypse?" Angel asks. "The apocalypse?" responds a Wulfram & Hart senior associate. "Oh yes, I think we did have one scheduled for today." And then he instructs Angel to just take a good look at the world around him if he wants to find heaven and hell.

Or the late season BtVS episode where Buffy is found locked in a mental institution, her mother apparently alive, her father not absent (for the only time in the series). Is she under a demon's spell -- or, as her doctor insists, has she retreated into a fantasy world of her own? One where she is the Chosen One. Where, in contest after contest the stakes are raised, where she battles stronger and stronger demons each week -- even gods. Whedon is smart, and smart enough to believe other people might actually be smart too, so just juice the pump and get out of the way. I'm beginning to see that that is an all too rare quality in a story teller. The willingness to trust the audience, to refuse to condescend, rare in creators, is even rarer in gatekeepers: editors, agents, producers, etc.

So that's my Buffy Hero-with-a-Thousand-Faces defense. And here's my Battlestar:Galactica complaint. That show is simply not good. The first season was a bit stronger I felt, but then someone over there decided that they were in possession of something SPECIAL and something IMPORTANT. BS:G is all too often Star Trek with better art direction. Oh, Adama might order Starbuck to kill the captain of the Excelsior Pegasus for the good of the fleet, but never fear, he will rescind the order, he's the good guy. You can ALWAYS trust your captain, soldier. The writers will then contrive to eliminate said captain in battle. This happens all too frequently, writes jumping in to resolve a conflict they couldn't bear to sacrifice their characters to resolve. And reset. Roslyn will always be president again, because that is what it says in the show bible. Cancer goes away, politicians rig elections, but then think better of it and give back the stolen votes. I'm sure that happens all the time. Or never once in the history of elections. And characters aren't really consistent, but blur to justify the plot points of the week. Remember when Roslyn needed Starbuck to return to Caprica for the magic (or not) Arrow of Apollo? She appealed to Starbuck's deep religous faith. The deep religous faith that is never demonstrated in any episode before or since. Remember how Lee just decided he wanted to die and one point? And then he -- I guess -- undecided. And remember how the Six model snapped a baby's neck on Caprica in the pilot episode. She's a lot nicer now. Snapped a baby's neck. Now if Dr. House snapped a baby's neck how many episodes would it take before we could smile at his curmudgeonly antics again? Six's spine also glowed during sex in the pilot episode which means that there was never a need for half a dozen episodes devoted to Baltar NOT inventing a Cylon detector device. One already exists. Or maybe the twelve colonies hadn't discovered doggie-style. There's the whole historically-impossible borrowing of the Greek pantheon (which got switched to the Roman Pantheon at least as far as Zeus becoming Jupiter mid-last season -- though not on the closed-captioning, I'm told). That might be explained with the introduction a of really cheesy MOR rock cover of Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower" which is supposed to be something in the zeitgeist, something that Dylan picked up from the MUSE in our world, and some other songwriter tapped into on Caprica. Well it strikes me as a bunch of new age bullshit, and mostly made up as they have gone along. Also, in SF we really need the following rule: no more than one (and most of the time not even one) of the characters should live in another character's head, seen by and spoken to by him or her. These may be all little things, but it is by the thousand little things that a story lives or dies. This one has lost me. And they killed Starbuck, changing her character and stealing her strength, and her dignity and her spirit in order to work that into the story, then they brought her back as a spirit guide. It is on to The Bionic Woman for me.

As I say, it's mostly the non-Hero's non-journey of no Plan with a capital Pee for me. I like to read working-stiff fantasy. You can keep your Frodos, your Bilbos: significant Hobbits of Destiny. Give me Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser any day and every day of the week: a couple of guys trying to make a dishonest buck, and hoping to avoid getting turned into turtles by the local Wizard-King. Sure, Fritz Leiber is known only to approximately one one-millionth of Tolkien or Lucas fans: but that is their loss, the loss of the millions, the multitudes loss. Not mine.

I know there is a theory the all stories are versions of the Hero's Journey, but I don't subscribe to it. It's too reductive for my purposes. It's like saying that all women are one woman, which is another thing people say. It has a symmetry easily mistaken for profundity, but it's just noise. Like those SF con panels where the definition of science fiction is discussed endlessly. One panel eventually settles on the idea that only Hal Clement is true SF, while the panel across the hall discovers that everything ever written by anyone is SF.

I'd pray from Espenson to come back from the Darkside: to not write "The Chosen One" across the top of her notebook before a brainstorming session, but I can't, because I know a secret. Not the Oprah Secret, there is no THE secret (which is part of the secret). A secret that Fritz Leiber taught me, and Chandler, and Graham Greene, and Shakespeare, Patricia Highsmith, Ruth Rendell, John D. MacDonald, Malamud, and Chekov, Borges, Tolstoy, even Wodehouse, David Milch and Amy Sherman Palladino, and a hundred other names (the varying critical and commercial reputations of these individuals being entirely irrelevant, we know). Namely, that, for story-telling purposes, it's mostly just people.

Furthermore, no helpful mountain ranges delineate The Light from The Dark, there is no Dark side of the map, in fact there is no accurate map, and no wise old guide exists to dole out cryptic prophecy at the act break. What exists is us, just us, bumping into one another in interesting ways.

Now I will finish with my own overreaching statement: even when you were six, Darth Vader was not really scary. Not the least little bit.

Technorati Tags: firefly, farscape, Espenson, writing, science fiction , Whedon

Update: I've decided to close comments now, because of all that spam this post has attracted!