DADDYBLOGGING: Last weekend Fluid Movement, a campy local water-ballet troupe, brought its annual performance to the pool in the park across the street. Maya came along in a Snugli attached to my chest. ("Snugli": a cheap knockoff of the better-known "Baby Bjorn.") It was her first public pageant, and she slept through most of it, though we did have to slip her a bottle of freshly pumped breastmilk about midway through the play. Since she was attached to my chest while I fed her, I had the distinct feeling that I was breastfeeding in public.
Such gender-bending moments aren't out of place at a Fluid Movement show -- the group's sensibility owes at least as much to John Waters as to Busby Berkeley. The ballet's plot was loose enough to include cameos by Jaws, Eric von Zipper, an enormous lobster, and Tom Jones in a gorilla suit. I can't imagine Maya absorbed any of it, but I figure it's a good idea to expose her as soon as possible to the best that Low Culture has to offer. You know -- the first three years and all that.
SELF-PROMOTION: I wrote a blurb about Robbie Fulks for the new L.A. Weekly, in theory to announce an upcoming concert but mostly just to praise his latest CD, Georgia Hard, currently the leading contender for Best Album of 2005. It's not the first time I've written about Fulks: I did a mini-interview with him for Reason back in 2000.
Also: A few years ago I helped make a movie with the unfortunate title Talking Butts: A Smoking Documentary. About half of it explores the culture of smoking, and about half is a muckraking exposé of the tobacco settlement, which was sold as a way to rein in Big Tobacco but wound up creating a government-enforced cartel instead. I'm credited as co-director but, pace the auterists, I don't consider myself an author of the film; the final form of the narrative was established in the editing room, by Mark Toscani and Paul Feine.
The long version of the documentary isn't available right now, but one of my collaborators, Bretigne Shaffer, has created a 12-minute cut of her own and posted it online. The full version is around 50 minutes, so obviously there's a lot missing, but her edit should give you a feel for the movie's style and POV. Curious viewers can watch it at the Mises Institute website.
Steve wrote three features for Reason, one about Iraq and two about archeology. The archeology articles were excellent. The Iraq piece I didn't care for -- not so much because I disagreed with its political stance, though there was that too, but because it seemed to psychoanalyze an entire society based on one rather limited visit. To his credit, Steve kept exploring Iraq, and his later reporting from the frontlines was much more interesting and nuanced. Indeed, his scathing final post to his blog is one of the best dispatches from this war that I've seen.
I never met him, but we corresponded, and he seemed like a smart and decent man. Every time there was a Reason event in New York, he'd write me to ask if I'd be there and if we finally would meet. I never went, and now I'll never meet him.
EIGHT DAYS OLD: A while back, my pal Bryan told me that when his first kid was born, "we lost nearly all of our friends who didn't have children, and made friends with total strangers who did."
"So it's kinda like starting a blog, then?" I replied.
Eight days into parenthood, certain differences between babies and blogs have become clear. Babies do not talk incessantly about themselves. Blogs do not provoke your friends to send you items bearing the face of Elmo. Babies do not care what Maureen Dowd or David Brooks have to say about the world. Blogs do not poop constantly, except maybe Little Green Footballs. Both babies and blogs cut into the time I might otherwise spend watching TV, but only blogs believe that this represents a revolution.
Maya got a clean bill of health at the pediatrician's today, so we've made it through at least one week without completely fouling up our parental responsibilites and ruining our daughter for life. Now all we have to do is keep it up for 17 years, 50 weeks, and six days.
Liberals on the Internet took a quick trip to the gutter with regard to the nomination of Judge John G. Roberts, Jr. to the U.S. Supreme Court. On the left-wing Daily Kos web site, a participant suggested the behavior of the nominee's four-year-old son, Jack, warrants investigation while another speculated about the toddler's sexuality.
"Is nothing sacred anymore? Is no one exempt from insulting partisan attacks?" asked Project 21 member Michael King. "If someone mentions the relatives or personal lives of a liberal, there are wails and caterwauling from the left. But it seems that it's always open season on conservatives."
Just in case you didn't catch it: This "open season" consists of two pseudonymous comments on a liberal blog. Read in context, they're obviously dumb jokes, not serious suggestions -- but that's beside the point. A prominent conservative think tank is trying to gin up a controversy over comments in a blog thread. Just who exactly is being desperate here?