Buttermilk & Molasses

OMG. Another Decade of Rock Is Ending?!

I just woke up and realized that a decade was almost over.

The decade whose name never caught on -- unless you like referring to them as "Largely the Bush Years."

It ends in a few months.

I only know this because Paste Magazine is wondering what the album of the decade will be, and that set me wondering whether I'd actually bought an album during this decade.

So, I skimmed their pretty comprehensive list. And came up with a few of my faves from their picks:

• Aimee Man, Bachelor No. 2 (2000)
• Arcade Fire, Funeral (2004)
• Bright Eyes, I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning (2005)
• Coldplay, A Rush of Blood to the Head (2002)
• Feist, Let It Die (2004)
• Hem, Rabbit Songs (2002)
• Jayhawks, Rainy Day Music (2003)
• Lucinda Williams, Essence (2001)
• Neko Case, Blacklisted (2002)
• Over the Rhine, OHIO (2003)
• Radiohead, Kid A (2000)
• Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002)
• Yo La Tengo, I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass (2006)

Hey, decade, maybe you weren't so repressive and terrible after all. I mean, outside of the whole recession.

Brownstein Old Schools Her Way Cross-Country

There are plenty of things to love about Carrie Brownstein, who hangs with the cool kids at NPR Music and pens the Monitor Mix blog. One thing to love is her latest post, which belatedly chronicles her arrival in New York City:

As for the music in the car, it was the least consistent of any of the travelers present. Rarely did the songs provide motivation or inspiration -- or, more importantly, stave off sleep or restlessness. There were a few mixes on hand, most of them too worn and familiar to be of much use. What I thought would be reassuring (Led Zeppelin, The Zombies or The Magnetic Fields, for instance) only made me anxious. Strangely, it was songs that I wouldn't listen to in most other contexts that underscored the momentum of the trip: Big Country's "Big Country," Jackson Browne's "The Pretender," anything by Neil Diamond. Basically, I was programming my own radio station, trying to make the music feel surprising, random and somewhat novel.

During my own nonstop jag from Sante Fe to Richmond in the 1990s, I listened to The Cranberries until my ears bled because nothing else kept me from becoming stir crazy.

But here's the sentence that makes Brownstein genius in my book:

In the end, I downloaded a somewhat asinine book onto my iPod and came up with the idea of truckers' reading groups.

Like she thinks that's a dumb idea? It's gold!

Doomsday, Earth's Fickle Lover, Never Puts Out

Sci Fi Wire has the best list of the year -- hands down. It's a list of 15 Doomsday prophecies. Naturally, they were all disappointments for folks looking for a little global drama.

Maybe the Mayans won't let us down in 2012.

Perhaps the most justifiable moment of End Times fervor came with the decade-long dance of death that swept over most of the Western world in the mid-1300s:

Well, with most of the world dying while covered in enormous, frostbite-colored sacs of pus from India to Iceland, thinking the world was about to end might not have seemed that unreasonable a supposition. Great fun abounds in the new iconography of the era, with skeletons (scary ones, not the Tim Burton-y, singing kind) carrying off the living. French doctor de Covino of Liège says that it seems as if one infected person "can infect the whole world." Florentine chronicler Villani thinks the plague was "divine action" the purpose of which might be to wipe out humanity, like the biblical flood.

There's much more where that came from. Sadly, they all conclude with Earth still rotating on its slightly tilted axis.

Somewhere East Of Iran, A War Is Brewing

Maybe we could call it the conflict forgot, or the war to forget all wars. It's been almost invisible since the triumphant arrival of American forces on the streets of Kabul, Afghanistan, way back in the winter of 2001-2002. (For the record, the journalists got there first.)

Don't count on it staying that way. Afghanistan is getting hot, and the prime fighting season is just around the corner.

Somewhere east of Iran, a war is brewing.

A tip from Xeni Jardin at Boing Boing led me to the embedded reporting of WIRED Magazine's defense technology reporter Noah Shachtman from some of the hottest fighting of the summer:

For three days, the Marines of Echo Company wondered when the next one would come. Since they got here at the beginning of July, Echo has been in a near-constant series of battles with the local Taliban, making this one of the most violent flashpoints in America’s renewed war in Afghanistan. On Thursday, election day, militants woke Echo up by firing rocket-propelled grenades and automatic rifle rounds into the school compound these Marines now use as an outpost. It was the 39th day out of 50 that the Taliban and Echo had exchanged lead.

Being A Geek Has Never Felt So Good

Let it be said that I spent the weekend reading Brandon Sanderson's epic, 592-page tome "Warbreaker" -- because it was fun, interesting and well-written. It's also found in the Science Fiction/Fantasy section of your local library or bookseller.

Point in your favor, Lev Grossman.

Grossman (thanks for the tip, Boing Boing), writing in the Wall Street Journal, suggests that among the reasons Young Adult novels (like "Twilight") are so popular is the simple fact good, easy stories are hard to find. (Another reason to hate Modernism and its over-complication of all that is good about the world. Sort of.)

They wrote great novels, Grossman admits, but they raised the bar exceptionally high for the future writers of the world. And they broke plot. They killed the novel.

But the novel is making the comeback, Grossman says:

All of this is changing. The revolution is under way. The novel is getting entertaining again. Writers like Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, Donna Tartt, Kelly Link, Audrey Niffenegger, Richard Price, Kate Atkinson, Neil Gaiman, and Susanna Clarke, to name just a few, are busily grafting the sophisticated, intensely aware literary language of Modernism onto the sturdy narrative roots of genre fiction: fantasy, science fiction, detective fiction, romance. They're forging connections between literary spheres that have been hermetically sealed off from one another for a century. Look at Cormac ­McCarthy, who for years appeared to be the oldest living Modernist in captivity, but who has inaugurated his late period with a serial-killer novel followed by a work of apocalyptic science fiction. Look at Thomas Pynchon—in "Inherent Vice" he has swapped his usual cumbersome verbal calisthenics for the more maneuverable chassis of a hard-boiled detective novel.

This is the future of fiction. The novel is finally waking up from its 100-year carbonite nap. Old hierarchies of taste are collapsing. Genres are hybridizing. The balance of power is swinging from the writer back to the reader, and compromises with the public taste are being struck all over the place. Lyricism is on the wane, and suspense and humor and pacing are shedding their stigmas and taking their place as the core literary technologies of the 21st century.

Thank God.

I've been tired of skulking in the Young Adult and Science Fiction aisles.

In the meantime, a new Star Wars novel has just come out...

Red Meat (and Crab Cakes) Do Nonprofits Good

Further proof that people make the business: Even under the best of circumstances, I couldn't have imagined myself thinking much about Morton's the Steakhouse a year ago.

What a difference AnnMarie Grohs and her energetic efforts to link Morton's with interesting voices and engaging trends in the Richmond region can make.

Paul Spicer at Grid Magazine reports on AnnMarie's latest -- Philanthropy Week at Morton's:

Starting September 21 you can begin consuming copious amounts of beef for a worthy cause. That’s right; bring on the 24-ounce porterhouse, the New York Strip, and the double-cut filet mignon.

For your gastronomical exploration you’ll be awarded with the knowledge that you’ve fattened the coffers of six local nonprofit organizations. At $75 a pop foodies can enjoy a three-course meal from Morton’s The Steakhouse, $25 of which is kicked back to that night’s nonprofit. The local lineup includes:

Mon. 9.21.09: Valentine History Center
Tues. 9.22.09: Jewish Family Services
Wed. 9.23.09: Comfort Zone Camp
Thurs. 9.24.09: Beacon Tree
Fri. 9.25.09: Children's Museum
Sat. 9.26.09: Greater Richmond SCAN

You can check Morton's out here -- or DM AnnMarie on Twitter with your special dietary requests.

Virginia's Governor: Jim Bacon Comes Out Swinging

At least somebody in this year's gubernatorial election is focused on what counts.

Unfortunately, that somebody is the editor of Bacon's Rebellion, one of the Commonwealth's longer-running, better-written online resources.

Yes, Jim Bacon is back from hiatus, and he's not especially happy about the state of the race between lackluster Creigh Deeds and spit-and-polish Bob McDonnell. Deeds is running a losing campaign straight out of 1988, while McDonnell brings just a touch more shine to the race -- just enough to make you forget that he's about as incompetent as the last fellow.

Meanwhile, the Commonwealth of Virginia is being reshaped in major ways, as Bacon notes:

This fall, Virginia will elect one of two men for governor -- Bob McDonnell or Creigh Deeds -- at a historic inflection point in the U.S. economy and political system. The federal government is careening towards fiscal armageddon, with incalculable consequences for the nation and, of course, the 50 states that will be left to pick up the pieces. Simultaneously, in a trend only temporarily masked by a worldwide recession, global energy supplies grow tighter, threatening to render Virginia's dysfunctional human settlement patterns even more dysfunctional. Meanwhile, Virginia's population inexorably grows older, putting pressure on state Medicaid/social service expenditures and tax revenues, straining our health care system, and creating an urgent need to build more senior-friendly communities.

These three inter-related crises will define the politics and economy of Virginia and America for the next generation. Yet both candidates have framed their campaign issues in utterly conventional terms, as if there were nothing at all urgent about the times in which we find ourselves.

It would be nice if some journalists and news organizations would take their kid gloves off and start covering politics, play hardball and force the candidates to talk about Virginia's future -- not its past.

While we wait, there's Bacon's Rebellion.

Blossom! We Didn't Want You To Become A Hippie!

Sure, there was actually the chance that Blossom Russo was going to get more and more flaky as she aged but she was also the eminently practical one on the show!

I should probably also note that Mayim Bialik only played an eclectic, sassy and cute teenager named Blossom on TV.

But since I had the biggest crush in the universe on Blossom in the early 1990s -- and managed to utterly embarrass myself by falling for a girl at VCU who looked just like my TV crush -- I couldn't tear my eyes away from the totem of motherhood that my television girlfriend has become.

Actually, if you take out the baking of challah and other Jewish traditions, she's a bit like my wife. Well, smaller nose here, too.

Here's the interviewers' take:

I have to say that I was both nervous and excited to talk to Mayim because I had heard she had a very unique parenting style. There are so many interesting/somewhat controversial things that she is doing with her family: elimination communication, bed sharing, home schooling, home birth, and choosing not to vaccinate her kids. I knew it was going to be an enlightening interview.

You can watch the whole interview, Lee Harris.

Not Your Daddy's U of R

Color me impressed, President Ayers.

This weekend, I ran into a friend who works at the University of Richmond. I asked her how the first week of school was going. She practically gushed -- about the diversity of the freshman class, about two protests on campus during the first week, about the students' passion for community engagement.

Huh. Sounds like VCU. Before Gene Trani turned it into an over-sized behemoth.

Here are a few fascinating tidbits from The Collegian, University of Richmond's student newspaper:

• Referencing the 900+ student freshman class: “The fact that we just doubled the students of color is a testament to how much progress we are making,” [UR President Ed] Ayers said. “We want a school that is representative of America and now we have to grow into that aspiration.”

• Students gather to protest socially conservative group's use of campus space: The parking lot across from the Jepson Alumni Center was speckled with gay pride and anti-prejudice paraphernalia on Aug. 25, as the Student Alliance for Sexual Diversity led two protests opposing The Family Foundation of Virginia’s use of university facilities.

Go, Spiders, go.

Virginia's Governor: The Economy Will Eat Extremism for Lunch

After reading Amy Gardner's piece in the Washington Post on Bob McDonnell's master's thesis, I can understand why Creigh Deeds has decided to position Virginia's gubernatorial race as an old school battle between social conservatism and moderate liberalism. Even if it won't win Deeds the election.

Before we turn to Gardner's article, let me scream something at the Democratic Party of Virginia: ARE YOU PEOPLE FRAKKIN' NUTS?!

Okay. Seriously, could you find a Democrat less inspiring than Deeds? Or position him in the totally wrong corner of the election cycle more overtly?

Or, as Gardner points out, find a Republican opponent with a set of views as extreme as McDonnell's appear to be -- circa 1984. Okay, I get it, McDonnell. No one in Virginia is going to judge you "on a decades-old academic paper I wrote as a student during the Reagan era and haven't thought about in years." I mean, until they read Gardner's story, they won't.

The 93-page document, which is publicly available at the Regent University library, culminates with a 15-point action plan that McDonnell said the Republican Party should follow to protect American families -- a vision that he started to put into action soon after he was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates.

During his 14 years in the General Assembly, McDonnell pursued at least 10 of the policy goals he laid out in that research paper, including abortion restrictions, covenant marriage, school vouchers and tax policies to favor his view of the traditional family. In 2001, he voted against a resolution in support of ending wage discrimination between men and women...

..."Leaders must correct the conventional folklore about the separation of church and state," he wrote. "Historically, the religious liberty guarantees of the First Amendment were intended to prevent government encroachment upon the free church, not eliminate the impact of religion on society."

He argued for covenant marriage, a legally distinct type of marriage intended to make it more difficult to obtain a divorce. He advocated character education programs in public schools to teach "traditional Judeo-Christian values" and other principles that he thought many youths were not learning in their homes. He called for less government encroachment on parental authority, for example, redefining child abuse to "exclude parental spanking." He lamented the "purging of religious influence" from public schools. And he criticized federal tax credits for child care expenditures because they encouraged women to enter the workforce.

Too bad for Creigh Deeds and Virginia that the "McDonnell is an extremist" meme will not play as strong during another "It's the economy, stupid" election cycle.