A Kinder Gentler Vlad

At Boston Review, a wonderful fresh essay by Roger Boylan on Nabokov and the question of whether a happy writer can be a good writer:

'Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, to give him his full patronymic due, died 30 years ago at age 78. Distilled to his essential selves he would be, in no particular order, a patrician, a husband and father, a lepidopterist, and one of the most surprising and subversive authors of the 20th century—also, one of the funniest. “Nabokov,” observes his biographer, Brian Boyd, “uses humor to undermine our attachment to the ready-made, to enlarge our sense of the possible, to whet our appetite for the surprise of life.”

'His humor reflected his soul, for he occupies a rare position in the annals of literature—especially modern literature—as that oxymoronic creature, the happy writer. The torments and angst of a Kafka or a Dostoevsky were as alien to him as the politics of the day. He was happy mainly because he loved being Vladimir Nabokov and he knew that his genius demonstrated the near-infinite possibilities of language and life and art. He cared not a whit for the carping of critics and the sour grapes of lesser writers, and, 30 years after his death, his overall influence as a one-man mission civilisatrice is still growing. He remains the master of the art of beauty in exactitude. Unexpected yet precise words are connected in his writing like the fine, unbreakable links of a silver necklace. Lesser writers settle for second best; he never does. He finds the right word, however unexpected. Any sampling of his work shows this; take a random sentence from the beginning of the story “Cloud, Castle, Lake”:

'The locomotive, working rapidly with its elbows, hurried through a pine forest, then—with relief— among fields.'

I love Lucy

I've always been a big fan of the Houston Museum of Natural Science, and that will only increase over the next eight months. The museum regularly hosts traveling exhibits (The Lord of the Rings Motion Picture Trilogy: The Exhibit being particularly notable), but opening Aug. 31 is one that will surely be one for the history books--Lucy's Legacy: The Hidden Treasures of Ethiopia. Lucy, for those of you late to the party, is a 3.2 million year old fossilized Australopithecus afarensis, one of the very earliest proto-human species. At the time of her discovery in 1974, she was the oldest hominid fossil ever found. There have been older ones found since, but she remains inarguably the most famous human ancestor in the world.

"I am a bit surprised about the ever-expanding popularity of Lucy, especially in light of so many other notable hominid fossil discoveries in Africa," said [Don] Johanson, director of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University.

"Yet Lucy continues to prevail, and she has become an icon for human evolution and is the touchstone by which all other finds are judged. I suppose one of the distinctive things about Lucy is that she has a name, one that is easy to remember, certainly easier than Australopithecus afarensis."

She is pretty much the rock star of the paleoanthropology set. So you can see why its such a big deal that for the first time ever she's going on tour, leaving her home country of Ethiopia for Houston, the first leg of a planned six-year trek.

And therein lies the rub. The tour has provoked a firestorm of criticism from the scientific community, and some fairly big names have entered the fray.

Famed fossil hunter Richard Leakey offered, perhaps, the sharpest criticism of the Houston museum two weeks ago in an interview with the Associated Press from his office in Nairobi, Kenya.

"It's a form of prostitution. It's gross exploitation of the ancestors of humanity, and it should not be permitted," Leakey said of Lucy's travel to the United States.

Others insist that the fossil will be irrevocably damaged, that it is too fragile to move or display. Dirk Van Tuerenhout, curator of anthropology in Houston, argues that the museum successfully hosted a traveling exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls without incurring any damage, and Lucy--being, well, you know, fossilized--is quite a bit more sturdy than 2,000-year-old papyrus. But that hasn't mollified the critics, who have offered their own "solution" to the controversy.

Several paleontologists have suggested that a replica should be used in her place. At her home museum in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, in fact, cast replicas of Lucy's bones are on display, while the real fossils usually remain locked in a vault.

And this, my friends, is why we end up with creationists running state boards of education and half of all Americans believing that on the eighth day God created Baywatch or somesuch nonsense. Is it possible for these learned scientists to be just a little more condescending? Could they pool their efforts and be just a smidgen more willfully ignorant? Could they cut their throats any more effectively if we handed them a straight-edged razor?

There is a wanton arrogance alive and kicking within the general scientific community. An arrogance that clings stubbornly to fact while at the same time stridently denying reality. And it pisses me the hell off. The facts in this case are clear: Lucy is one of the oldest hominid fossils ever discovered, and is very valuable for researchers. The reality of the situation is equally clear-cut, if a bit harder for the critics to swallow: Nobody gives a shit about replicas. Does it look the same? Sure. Can 99.9 percent of the population not tell the difference? You betcha. Does that matter? Not one iota. You see, for all the cranial capacity human beings have developed since little Lucy made do with a glob of gray matter the size of a key lime, we are not rational thinkers. Homo sapiens are, first and foremost, irrational and emotional. Just listen to any argument between a science-minded person and a proponent of Intelligent Design. The IDer is not swayed by fact or reason for one simple reason: They don't want to be evolved from anything. The key word there is "want." That's an argument based from desire, and it has nothing to do with cold, rational facts.



It just so happens that a fine movie comes out on Sept. 10 that addresses this strange phenomenon head-on: Flock of Dodos. In a perfect world, yes, humans would all be variations of Mr. Spock, believing only that which is logical and rational. Sure, I can buy that. But this isn't a perfect world. Far from it--there are still people out there forwarding stupid chain letters because they think Bill Gates is going to pay them $5 for each one, and that TONIGHT MARS WILL APPEAR AS BIG AS THE MOON!!!!. Let's just face it, people are fucking stupid, and the only people stupider are the brainiacs who continue to live in ivory towers expecting unadorned reason to win out without any additional effort. Ain't gonna happen.

Lucy on tour is exactly what we need in this country, UNESCO agreements be damned. Lucy needs to head for deepest, darkest Mississippi after leaving Houston, the maybe Utah, Idaho and Wyoming, with a detour through Waco and Crawford along the way. Science needs to engage a hell of a lot more aggressively (and competently, for that matter) than its doing now. If the Discovery Institute can teach their Bible-thumping pharisees how to be eloquent and glib, then there's no excuse for anyone in this country with a science degree not to be capable of the same. If I had my way, every science undergrad would be required to take a minimum of 12 hours in public speaking and public relations courses. Get some late-night infomercials on cosmology and evolutionary biology on the boob tube. We could pair up P.Z. Myers and Phil Plait with Christie Brinkley and Chuck Norris. Damn, that would really kick ass.

Maybe we could even apply this approach to NASA. I'm tired of space flight made dull.

Gonzales to Spend More Time Eavesdropping on His Family

Courtesy of Andy Borowitz's frequently brilliant and always funny Borowitz Report, August 27, 2007:

"Attorney General Alberto Gonzales resigned today, effective immediately, telling reporters that he wanted to spend more time eavesdropping on his family.

"Mr. Gonzales, a champion of domestic surveillance and warrantless wiretaps while in office, said he was 'totally stoked' about turning his prying eyes on his own family.

"'Domestic surveillance begins at home,' Mr. Gonzales said at a White House press conference. 'That means nobody in my family is above suspicion, not even the little ones,' an apparent reference to Mr. Gonzales’ children.

"Standing by Mr. Gonzales’ side, President George W. Bush praised his former Attorney General, singling out his 'courage' for ramping up his domestic spying program on his own family.

“'If every head of every household was as willing to eavesdrop on his own family as my man Alberto is, we wouldn’t need a Homeland Security Department,' Mr. Bush chuckled.

"Mr. Gonzales was noncommittal when a reporter asked him a question about the role that waterboarding and other forms of torture might play in his interrogation of family members.

“'Nothing is off the table,' he said."

Sunday Matinee with Swords, Sandals and Scenery Chewing

One of the pleasures of the last 100+ degree Texas August Sunday of the year is, after an afternoon at Barton Springs, sneaking a posse of 12-year-old boys off to catch the matinee of their choice: in this case, the unjustly critically maligned old school swashbuckler "The Last Legion," a popcorn-worthy feast that gives the grown-up escort an outstanding cinematic opportunity to count the homages-per-minute. Dino De Laurentis is not dead.

The plot: returning Roman legionnaires find the imperial capital besieged by Goths, and must escort the boy emperor Romulus Augustus (the last Western emperor) to far lands in search of the magical blade that will restore the last hope of Justice. Meaning, another Excalibur myth that connects the dots between Arthurian legend and the last legions of Rome, mythologizing Britain as the lasting embodiment of the highest ideas of the Empire. Kind of like that grackle eating your french fry being a descendant of the last velociraptor. Among the highlights:



- Anglo chick flick vet Colin Firth as a swashbuckling leather-armored Roman commander, a kinder gentler Maximus, if equally humorless.



- That annoying kid from the horrendous Hugh Grant=Tony Blair flick, "Love Actually," as an earnest and wimpy teen emperor. (They neglect to mention that the actual Romulus Augustus was a usurper, installed by his father Orestes, a Decline and Fall Vichy Roman who served as Attila's chief of staff.)



- Ben Kingsley as a scenery-chewing proto-Merlin, equal parts Obi-Wan, Gandalf, and gangster Gandhi.

- What I was sure was an aging Dolph Lundgren (!) as a red-headed cranky Goth with an unlimited supply of mud-thudding battle-axes, made even crankier when his jefe goes all Yakuza on his ass. (Alas, IMDB reveals the part of Wulfila was played by an up-and-coming Scotsman, while the Dolphster continues his full-auto barrage of direct-to-DVD international action flicks. Come to think of it, a Grace Jones cameo would have fit right in with this flick.)

- Dr. Bashir from Deep Space Nine (fresh from his turn as the uber-terrorist on last season's 24) as the mysterious emissary of Constantinople.

- A Fellowship-worthy escort of multicultural legionnaires.

- Metal-masked evil lords of Celtic Britain, straight out of Excalibur.

- An abandoned Hadrian's Wall doing a marvelous Ozymandias Great Wall turn.

- An Alpine crossing like Moria without the monsters.

- Merlin as staff-fighting Kung Fu Gandalf!

- More stone age megaliths than a Spinal Tap reunion tour.

- Best of all, Bollywood bombshell Aishwarya Rai as a masked Istanbul Easterling guard from beyond Banglaore, exploding with non-stop Crouching Curry martial hearts moves, femininity only revealed 30 minutes in with a wet-T-shirt scene, which does not appear to impress Colin Firth any more than it does the 12-year-old boys in the multiplex. If only they would break out in a bombastic Bally Sagoo dance number, it would be the perfect movie.



Probably not long for the big screen, so catch it with popcorn in the dark while you can.

Shhhh

For this last languorous weekend in August, consider this outstanding essay by composer Andrew Waggoner regarding the end of silence and the need to rediscover the absence of music and other noise as something more than "acoustical 'negative space.'" Then, go find some true quiet, the kind that does not require $400 noise reduction headphones, and see if you don't agree.

"In many world societies...there are still spaces—if only interior, or metaphorical, or temporal—set aside for contemplation, for noiseless recalibration of the soul, and in contemporary American culture there are almost none. Our social rituals are constrained by the incessant soundtrack imposed in our public spaces, and our places of worship, by and large, have given themselves over to a muzak-based sense of liturgy that tells us at every step of the way what to feel and with what intensity. Many of us, turning away from both mainline- and mega-church, have sought peace in new-age bookstores, but these, even with their palmists and meditation rooms, surround their patrons with a noxious haze of synthesizers, pennywhistles, and Inuit drums. But beyond shopping, what primary experience are we having here? Are we listeners seeking an archetype of beauty or seekers listening for the godhead? It turns out we are neither—though we may have been duped into one or the other conviction. We are simply consumers. The hope is that, like dairy cattle, we will become more productive if encouraged in our purchases by this kind of marginal musical discourse.

"This, of course, is the common denominator in all the examples above, and it extends beyond the ritual into the political. If we frequent any number of the hipper clothing chains we will find ourselves buoyed by emo or hip-hop beats that serve to wash away the sense of complicity we feel in supporting a sweatshop economy; the music is telling us that we belong here, that we're different, we're aware, we're not the problem. We're down with all the world's peoples, with the losers and dreamers, with the left and the right. We're down with EVERYONE; we don't want any trouble, we just want to buy a pair of cargo pants. Once again, the absence of silence makes it impossible for us to decode the onslaught before we've succumbed to it. And this is not just a function of capitalism. It's worse.

"We find ourselves as a culture unable to assuage our loneliness except through the ceaseless accompaniment of our everyday actions. In such a world buying a book or a shirt is not merely to acquire a thing, to fill a need; it is, rather, to participate in the forced scripting of our lives according to commercial archetypes that tell us, through the imaginary film score by which we buy, eat, make love, crap, worship, and, eventually, die, not who we are but who we wish we were, who the music tells us we want to be. Even our sense of time becomes hopelessly distorted, as we float through our lives according to the dreamlike spans of musical phrases rather than the waking rhythms of clock-time. Thus our capacity to be present for our lives, for our work especially, is compromised by a time-sense that is artificially constructed along unconscious models in order to give perspective on the conscious experience of time's passing, not to replace that experience entirely. In losing silence, and the corresponding potential for musical discernment that silence engenders, we lose ourselves, our native sense of our motion through life."

A scenario for the 2010s

Speaking of Pootie-Poot, as W likes to call him, consider this.

Last month, the Duma passed legislation authorizing Gazprom and Transneft to maintain their own private armies, complete with combat-ready gunmetal.

KGB vet Putin, who is a 6th dan black belt in judo best known for his sweeping hip throw when he's not sending in the Spetsnaz, is scheduled to retire from office in March 2008.

Wouldn't that be the ultimate Gibsonian anti-Halliburton scenario? Putin takes a putatively private sector gig running one of these oil & gas outfits, with their free cash and private armies at his disposal. They go offshore, buying up exploration, production and transport rights all over the southern hemisphere, establishing strategic installations of "security forces," competing head-to-head with the Chinese and the Americans in the century's apocalyptic last gasp scramble to control the denouement of the world's addiction to the black crack and its ethereal cousin. Maybe Cheney could go back to his old gig, buy himself a next gen mechanical heart: cyborg master of Blackwater, counterpoint to Pootie's Dolph Lundgren Siberian Godfather thing. An inevitable lineup, perhaps, for a world without states and a demand for natural resources that exceeds the finite and diminishing supply.

I'd pre-order the action figures for that game today.

Vlad's Siberian Vacation

Courtesy of Guardian Online (wish I could say I had taken them myself), these photos of the Russian president on holiday in Siberia (with Prince Albert of Monaco!) are, as Danger Room says, "worth their weight in polonium." The last time I can remember magazine photos of a shirtless head of state, it was a second-term Ronnie Reagan chopping wood on his ranch in the Sunday NY Times Magazine. Somehow, the Gipper didn't have the same aura of a character from a direct-to-DVD Ultimate Fighting Champion actioner... How can you not love the 21st century Zeitgeist?

*Thursday update: Herald Trib reports on Russian media frenzy over these same photos.