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I've a long record in editorial work in book and magazine publishing, starting 1974, a variety of other work experience, but have been, since 2001, recurringly housebound with insanely painful sporadic and unpredictably variable gout and edema, and in the past, other ailments; the future? The Great Unknown: isn't it for all of us?

I'm currently house/cat-sitting, not on any government aid yet (or mostly ever), often in major chronic pain from gout and edema, which variably can leave me unable to walk, including just standing, but sometimes is better, and is freaking unpredictable at present; I also have major chronic depression and anxiety disorders; I'm currently supported mostly by your blog donations/subscriptions; you can help me. I prefer to spread out the load, and lessen it from the few who have been doing more than their fair share for too long.

Thanks for any understanding and support. I know it's difficult to understand. And things will change. They always change.

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"The brain is wider than the sky,
For, put them side by side,
The one the other will include
With ease, and you beside"
-- Emily Dickinson


"We will pursue peace as if there is no terrorism and fight terrorism as if there is no peace."
-- Yitzhak Rabin


"I have thought it my duty to exhibit things as they are, not as they ought to be."
-- Alexander Hamilton


"The stakes are too high for government to be a spectator sport."
-- Barbara Jordan


"Under democracy, one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule -- and both commonly succeed, and are right."
-- H. L. Mencken


"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
-- William Pitt


"The only completely consistent people are the dead."
-- Aldous Huxley


"I have had my solutions for a long time; but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them."
-- Karl F. Gauss


"Whatever evils either reason or declamation have imputed to extensive empire, the power of Rome was attended with some beneficial consequences to mankind; and the same freedom of intercourse which extended the vices, diffused likewise the improvements of social life."
-- Edward Gibbon


"Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his expectation, that the senate and people would submit to slavery, provided they were respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom."
-- Edward Gibbon


"There exists in human nature a strong propensity to depreciate the advantages, and to magnify the evils, of the present times."
-- Edward Gibbon


"Our youth now loves luxuries. They have bad manners, contempt for authority. They show disrespect for elders and they love to chatter instead of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants, of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up their food, and tyrannize their teachers."
-- Socrates


"Before impugning an opponent's motives, even when they legitimately may be impugned, answer his arguments."
-- Sidney Hook


"Idealism, alas, does not protect one from ignorance, dogmatism, and foolishness."
-- Sidney Hook


"Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson


"We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization. We must exercise our power. But we ought neither to believe that a nation is capable of perfect disinterestedness in its exercise, nor become complacent about particular degrees of interest and passion which corrupt the justice by which the exercise of power is legitimized."
-- Reinhold Niebuhr


"Faced with the choice of all the land without a Jewish state or a Jewish state without all the land, we chose a Jewish state without all the land."
-- David Ben-Gurion


"...the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right; that it tends also to corrupt the principles of that very religion it is meant to encourage, by bribing, with a monopoly of worldly honours and emoluments, those who will externally profess and conform to it;[...] that the opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy, which at once destroys all religious liberty....
-- Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, Thomas Jefferson


"We don't live just by ideas. Ideas are part of the mixture of customs and practices, intuitions and instincts that make human life a conscious activity susceptible to improvement or debasement. A radical idea may be healthy as a provocation; a temperate idea may be stultifying. It depends on the circumstances. One of the most tiresome arguments against ideas is that their 'tendency' is to some dire condition -- to totalitarianism, or to moral relativism, or to a war of all against all."
-- Louis Menand


"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis."
-- Dante Alighieri


"He too serves a certain purpose who only stands and cheers."
-- Henry B. Adams


"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to beg in the streets, steal bread, or sleep under a bridge."
-- Anatole France


"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."
-- Edmund Burke


"Education does not mean that we have become certified experts in business or mining or botany or journalism or epistemology; it means that through the absorption of the moral, intellectual, and esthetic inheritance of the race we have come to understand and control ourselves as well as the external world; that we have chosen the best as our associates both in spirit and the flesh; that we have learned to add courtesy to culture, wisdom to knowledge, and forgiveness to understanding."
-- Will Durant


"Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?"
-- Herman Melville


"The most important political office is that of the private citizen."
-- Louis D. Brandeis


"If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable."
-- Louis D. Brandeis


"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."
-- Louis D. Brandeis


"It is an error to suppose that books have no influence; it is a slow influence, like flowing water carving out a canyon, but it tells more and more with every year; and no one can pass an hour a day in the society of sages and heroes without being lifted up a notch or two by the company he has kept."
-- Will Durant


"When you write, you’re trying to transpose what you’re thinking into something that is less like an annoying drone and more like a piece of music."
-- Louis Menand


"Sex is a continuum."
-- Gore Vidal


"I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibit the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, 1802.


"The sum of our religion is peace and unanimity, but these can scarcely stand unless we define as little as possible, and in many things leave one free to follow his own judgment, because there is great obscurity in many matters, and man suffers from this almost congenital disease that he will not give in when once a controversy is started, and after he is heated he regards as absolutely true that which he began to sponsor quite casually...."
-- Desiderius Erasmus


"Are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule of what we are to read, and what we must disbelieve?"
-- Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to N. G. Dufief, Philadelphia bookseller, 1814


"We are told that it is only people's objective actions that matter, and their subjective feelings are of no importance. Thus pacifists, by obstructing the war effort, are 'objectively' aiding the Nazis; and therefore the fact that they may be personally hostile to Fascism is irrelevant. I have been guilty of saying this myself more than once. The same argument is applied to Trotskyism. Trotskyists are often credited, at any rate by Communists, with being active and conscious agents of Hitler; but when you point out the many and obvious reasons why this is unlikely to be true, the 'objectively' line of talk is brought forward again. To criticize the Soviet Union helps Hitler: therefore 'Trotskyism is Fascism'. And when this has been established, the accusation of conscious treachery is usually repeated. This is not only dishonest; it also carries a severe penalty with it. If you disregard people's motives, it becomes much harder to foresee their actions."
-- George Orwell, "As I Please," Tribune, 8 December 1944


"Wouldn't this be a great world if insecurity and desperation made us more attractive? If 'needy' were a turn-on?"
-- "Aaron Altman," Broadcast News


"The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand."
-- Lewis Thomas


"To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be ever a child. For what is man's lifetime unless the memory of past events is woven with those of earlier times?"
-- Cicero


"Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue." -- François, duc de La Rochefoucauld


"Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it." -- Samuel Johnson, Life Of Johnson


"Very well, what did my critics say in attacking my character? I must read out their affidavit, so to speak, as though they were my legal accusers: Socrates is guilty of criminal meddling, in that he inquires into things below the earth and in the sky, and makes the weaker argument defeat the stronger, and teaches others to follow his example." -- Socrates, via Plato, The Republic


"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, represents, in the final analysis, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."
-- Dwight D. Eisenhower


"The term, then, is obviously a relative one; my pedantry is your scholarship, his reasonable accuracy, her irreducible minimum of education, & someone else's ignorance." --
H. W. Fowler


"Rules exist for good reasons, and in any art form the beginner must learn them and understand what they are for, then follow them for quite a while. A visual artist, pianist, dancer, fiction writer, all beginning artists are in the same boat here: learn the rules, understand them, follow them. It's called an apprenticeship. A mediocre artist never stops following the rules, slavishly follows guidelines, and seldom rises above mediocrity. An accomplished artist internalizes the rules to the point where they don't have to be consciously considered. After you've put in the time it takes to learn to swim, you never stop to think: now I move my arm, kick, raise my head, breathe. You just do it. The accomplished artist knows what the rules mean, how to use them, dodge them, ignore them altogether, or break them. This may be a wholly unconscious process of assimilation, one never articulated, but it has taken place." -- Kate Wilhelm


"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed."
-- Albert Einstein


"The decisive moment in human evolution is perpetual."
-- Franz Kafka, Aphorisms


"All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."
-- Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho


"First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you."
-- Nicholas Klein, May, 1919, to the Third Biennial Convention of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (misattributed to Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, 1914 & variants).


"Nothing would be done at all, if a man waited till he could do it so well, that no one could find fault with it."
-- Lecture IX, John Henry Cardinal Newman


“Nothing is more common than for men to think that because they are familiar with words they understand the ideas they stand for.”
-- John Henry Cardinal Newman


"Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."
-- James Madison


"Those who are free from common prejudices acquire others."
-- Napolean I of France -- Napoleon I of France


"Our credulity is a part of the imperfection of our natures. It is inherent in us to desire to generalize, when we ought, on the contrary, to guard ourselves very carefully from this tendency."
-- Napoleon I of France.


"The truth is, men are very hard to know, and yet, not to be deceived, we must judge them by their present actions, but for the present only."
-- Napoleon I of France.


"The barbarous custom of having men beaten who are suspected of having important secrets to reveal must be abolished. It has always been recognized that this way of interrogating men, by putting them to torture, produces nothing worthwhile. The poor wretches say anything that comes into their mind and what they think the interrogator wishes to know."
-- On the subject of torture, in a letter to Louis Alexandre Berthier (11 November 1798), published in Correspondance Napoleon edited by Henri Plon (1861), Vol. V, No. 3606, p. 128


"All living souls welcome whatever they are ready to cope with; all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong, or deny to be possible."
-- George Santayana, Dialogues in Limbo (1926)


"American life is a powerful solvent. It seems to neutralize every intellectual element, however tough and alien it may be, and to fuse it in the native good will, complacency, thoughtlessness, and optimism."
-- George Santayana, Character and Opinion in the United States, (1920)


"If you should put even a little on a little, and should do this often, soon this too would become big."
-- Hesiod, Work And Days


"Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free."
-- Eugene V. Debs


"Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself."
-- Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign


"All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written "al-Qaida," in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies."
-- Osama bin Laden


"Remember, Robin: evil is a pretty bad thing."
-- Batman



 

 
Gary Farber is now a licensed Quintuple Super-Sekrit Multi-dimensional Master Pundit. He does not always refer to himself in the third person.
He is presently single.

The gefilte fish is dead. Donate via the donation button on the top left or I'll shoot this cute panda. Don't you love pandas?

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And you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack
And you may find yourself in another part of the world


[Blogroll now far below the sea line! Dive, dive, dive!]


You Like Me, You Really Like Me

Gary Farber! Jeez, the guy is practically a blogging legend, and I'm always surprised at the breadth of what he writes about.
-- PZ Meyers, Pharyngula


...Darn: I saw that Gary had commented on this thread, and thought: oh. my. god. Perfect storm. Unstoppable cannonball, immovable object. -- Hilzoy

...I think Gary Farber is a blogging god. -- P.Z. Myers, Pharyngula

...writer[s] I find myself checking out repeatedly when I'm in the mood to play follow-the-links. They're not all people I agree with all the time, or even most of the time, but I've found them all to be thoughtful writers, and that's the important thing, or should be.
-- Tom Tomorrow

‎"Gary Farber is a gentleman, a scholar and one of the gems of the blogosphere." -- Steve Hynd, Newshoggers.com

"Well argued, Gary. I hadn't seen anything that went into as much detail as I found in your blog." -- Gareth Porter

Gary Farber is your one-man internet as always, with posts on every article there is.
-- Fafnir

Guessing that Gary is ignorant of anything that has ever been written down is, in my experience, unwise.
Just saying.

-- Hilzoy

Gary Farber gets it right....
-- James Joyner, Outside The Beltway

Once again, an amazing and illuminating post.
-- Michael Bérubé, Crooked Timber

I read Amygdala...with regularity, as do all sensible websurfers.
-- Jim Henley, Unqualified Offerings

Okay, he is annoying, but he still posts a lot of good stuff.
-- Avedon Carol, The Sideshow

Amygdala - So much stuff it reminds Unqualified Offerings that UO sometimes thinks of Gary Farber as "the liberal Instapundit."
-- Jim Henley

...the thoughtful and highly intelligent Gary Farber... My first reaction was that I definitely need to appease Gary Farber of Amygdala, one of the geniuses of our age.
-- Brad deLong

Gary is a perceptive, intelligent, nice guy. Some of the stuff he comes up with is insightful, witty, and stimulating. And sometimes he manages to make me groan.
-- Charlie Stross

Gary Farber is a straight shooter.
-- John Cole, Balloon Juice

I bow before the shrillitudinousness of Gary Farber, who has been blogging like a fiend.
-- Ted Barlow, Crooked Timber


Favorite.... [...] ...all great stuff. [...] Gary Farber should never be without readers.
-- Ogged

I usually read you and Patrick several times a day, and I always get something from them. You've got great links, intellectually honest commentary, and a sense of humor. What's not to like?
-- Ted Barlow

One of my issues with many poli-blogs is the dickhead tone so many bloggers affect to express their sense of righteous indignation. Gary Farber's thoughtful leftie takes on the world stand in sharp contrast with the usual rhetorical bullying. Plus, he likes "Pogo," which clearly attests to his unassaultable good taste.
-- oakhaus.com

One of my favorites....
-- Matt Welch

Favorite....
-- Virginia Postrel

Amygdala continues to have smart commentary on an incredible diversity of interesting links....
-- Judith Weiss

Amygdala has more interesting obscure links to more fascinating stuff that any other blog I read.
-- Judith Weiss, Kesher Talk

Gary's stuff is always good.
-- Meryl Yourish

...the level-headed Amygdala blog....
-- Geitner Simmons

The only trouble with reading Amygdala is that it makes me feel like such a slacker. That Man Farber's a linking, posting, commenting machine, I tell you!
-- John Robinson, Sore Eyes

...the all-knowing Gary Farber....
-- Edward Winkleman, Obsidian Wings

Jaysus. I saw him do something like this before, on a thread about Israel. It was pretty brutal. It's like watching one of those old WWF wrestlers grab an opponent's face and grind away until the guy starts crying. I mean that in a nice & admiring way, you know.
-- Fontana Labs, Unfogged

We read you Gary Farber! We read you all the time! Its just that we are lazy with our blogroll. We are so very very lazy. We are always the last ones to the party but we always have snazzy bow ties.
-- Fafnir, Fafblog!

Gary Farber you are a genius of mad scientist proportions. I will bet there are like huge brains growin in jars all over your house.
-- Fafnir, Fafblog!

Gary Farber is the hardest working man in show blog business. He's like a young Gene Hackman blogging with his hair on fire, or something.
-- Belle Waring, John & Belle Have A Blog


Gary Farber only has two blogging modes: not at all, and 20 billion interesting posts a day [...] someone on the interweb whose opinions I can trust....
-- Belle Waring, John & Belle Have A Blog


GARY FARBER IS MY AROUSAL CENTER. -- Justin Slotman

Gary is certainly a non-idiotarian 'liberal'...
-- Perry deHaviland

Recommended for the discerning reader.
-- Tim Blair

Gary Farber's great Amygdala blog.
-- Dr. Frank

Isn't Gary a cracking blogger, apropos of nothing in particular?
-- Alison Scott

Gary Farber takes me to task, in a way befitting the gentleman he is.
-- Stephen Green, Vodkapundit

My friend Gary Farber at Amygdala is the sort of liberal for whom I happily give three cheers. [...] Damned incisive blogging....
-- Midwest Conservative Journal

If I ever start a paper, Clueless writes the foreign affairs column, Layne handles the city beat, Welch has the roving-reporter job, Tom Tomorrow runs the comic section (which carries Treacher, of course). MediaMinded runs the slots - that's the type of editor I want as the last line of defense. InstantMan runs the edit page - and you can forget about your Ivins and Wills and Friedmans and Teepens on the edit page - it's all Blair, VodkaP, C. Johnson, Aspara, Farber, Galt, and a dozen other worthies, with Justin 'I am smoking in such a provocative fashion' Raimondo tossed in for balance and comic relief.

Who wouldn't buy that paper? Who wouldn't want to read it? Who wouldn't climb over their mother to be in it?
-- James Lileks

I do appreciate your role and the role of Amygdala as a pioneering effort in the integration of fanwriters with social conscience into the larger blogosphere of social conscience.
-- Lenny Bailes

Every single post in that part of Amygdala visible on my screen is either funny or bracing or important. Is it always like this?
-- Natalie Solent

You nailed it... nice job."
-- James Lileks

Gary Farber is a principled liberal....
-- Bill Quick, The Daily Pundit


Archives:
December 2001 January 2002 February 2002 March 2002 April 2002 May 2002 June 2002 July 2002 August 2002 September 2002 October 2002 November 2002 December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 March 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 December 2003 January 2004 February 2004 March 2004 April 2004 May 2004 June 2004 July 2004 August 2004 September 2004 October 2004 November 2004 December 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 December 2007 January 2008 February 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008 July 2008 August 2008 September 2008 October 2008 November 2008 December 2008 January 2009 February 2009 March 2009 April 2009 May 2009 June 2009 July 2009 August 2009 September 2009 October 2009 November 2009 December 2009 January 2010 February 2010 March 2010 April 2010 May 2010 June 2010 July 2010 August 2010 September 2010 October 2010 November 2010 December 2010 January 2011 February 2011 March 2011 April 2011 May 2011 June 2011 August 2011 September 2011 October 2011 December 2011 January 2013


Blogroll is Always In Progress:

Roger Ailes
Alas, A Blog
AlterNet
The American Street
The Aristocrats
Avedon Carol
Between the Hammer and the Anvil
Lindsay Beyerstein
The Big Con
bjkeefe
CantBlogTooBusy The Center for American Progress
Chase me Ladies, I'm in the Cavalry
Chuckling
Doghouse Riley
Kevin Drum
elementropy
Eschaton
Fables of the Reconstruction
Gall and Gumption
Gin and Tacos
House of Substance
Hullabaloo
The Hunting of the Snark
If I Ran The Zoo
Lawyers, Guns & Money
Lotus: Surviving a Dark Time
Matters of Little Significance
Nancy Nall
Charlie Stross bastard.logic
Daniel Larison
Afro-Netizen
American Conservative
American Footprints
Andrew Sullivan
Angry Bear
Attackerman
Attempts
Balkinization
Balloon Juice
Beautiful Horizons
Bitch Ph.D.
Brad DeLong
Cato-at-liberty
Cogitamus
Crooked Timber
Cunning Realist
Daily Kos
Debate Link
Democracy Arsenal
Edge of the American West
Eschaton
Ezra Klein
Feministe
Glenn Greenwald
Governing.com: 13th Floor
Hit & Run
Hullabaloo
Juan Cole
Kevin Drum
Lawyers, Guns and Money
List Project (Helping Iraqis who worked with us get out)
Marc Lynch
Mark Kleiman
Katha Pollit
Market Square
Matthew Yglesias
Megan McArdle
Metro Green
Mightygodking
Newshoggers
Orcinus
Pam's House Blend
Pandagon
Paul Krugman
Pharyngula
Philosophy, et cetera
Radley Balko
Sadly, No!
Shakesville
slacktivist
Southern Appeal
Stephen Walt
Steve Clemons
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Taking It Outside
Talking Points Memo
TAPPED
The Poor Man
The Progressive Realist
The Sideshow
TPMCafe
U.S. Intellectual History
Unfogged
Unqualified Offerings
VetVoice
Volokh Conspiracy
Washington Monthly
William Easterly
Newsrack Blog
Ortho Bob
Pandagon
Pharyngula
The Poor Man
Prog Gold
Prose Before Hos
Ted Rall
The Raw Story
Elayne Riggs
Sadly, No!
Snarkmarket
TAPped
TBogg
Texas Liberal
Think Progress
3 Weird Sisters
Tristram Shandy
Washington Monthly
Ian Welsh
James Wolcott
World o' Crap
Matthew Yglesias
Buzz Machine
Daniel Larison
Rightwing Film Geek About Last Night
can we all just agree
Comics Curmudgeon
Dum Luk's
Glenn Kenny
Hoarder Museum Juanita Jean
Lance Mannion (Help Lance!
Last Words of the Executed
The Phil Nugent Experience
Postcards from Hell's Kitchen
Vanishing New York
a lovely promise
a web undone
alicublog
alt hippo
american street
city of brass
danger west
fact-esque
fierce urgency of now
get fisa right
great concavity
happening here
impeach them!
jensscholz.com
kathryn cramer
notes from the basement
sideshow
talking dog
uncertain principles
unqualified offerings
what do i know
balkinization
crooked timber emptywheel
ezra klein
Fact-esque
The F-Word
glenn greenwald
governmentality
hullabaloo
Lifehacker
schneier on security
ta-nehisi coates
talking points memo
tiny revolution
Roz Kaveney
Dave Ettlin
Henry Jenkins' Confessions of an Aca-Fan
Kathryn Cramer
Monkeys In My Pants
Macadamia
Pagan Prattle
As I Please
Ken MacLeod
Arthur Hlavaty
Kevin Maroney
MK Kare
Jack Heneghan
Dave Langford
Epicycle
Onyx Lynx Atrios
Demosthenes
Rittenhouse Review
Maxspeak
Public Nuisance
Scoobie Davis
MadKane
Nathan Newman
Whiskeyfire
Echidne Of The Snakes
First Draft
Corrente
Rising Hegemon
NTodd
Cab Drollery (Help Diane!
Hullabaloo
Southern Beale
The Kenosha Kid
Culture of Truth
Talk Left
Black Ag=Q< Report
Drug WarRant
Nieman Watchdog
Open Left
Meet the Bloggers
Dispatch from the Trenches
Frameshop
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People I've known and still miss include Isaac Asimov, rich brown, Charles Burbee, F. M. "Buzz" Busby, Terry Carr, A. Vincent Clarke, Bob Doyle, George Alec Effinger, Abi Frost, Bill & Sherry Fesselmeyer, George Flynn, John Milo "Mike" Ford. John Foyster, Mike Glicksohn, Jay Haldeman, Neith Hammond (Asenath Katrina Hammond)/DominEditrix , Chuch Harris, Mike Hinge, Lee Hoffman, Terry Hughes, Damon Knight, Ross Pavlac, Bruce Pelz, Elmer Perdue, Tom Perry, Larry Propp, Bill Rotsler, Art Saha, Bob Shaw, Martin Smith, Harry Stubbs, Bob Tucker, Harry Warner, Jr., Jack Williamson, Walter A. Willis, Susan Wood, Kate Worley, and Roger Zelazny. It's just a start, it only gets longer, many are unintentionally left out. And She of whom I must write someday.










Amygdala
 
Friday, February 17, 2006
 
LOOKING FOR COMEDY IN ALBERT BROOKS. I haven't seen Albert Brooks's new film, Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, yet. Naturally; going out to movies isn't much in my budget.

But I'll get around to seeing it via Netflix eventually, despite it getting a lot of bad, or at best, mixed, reviews. Lots of movies I like get bad reviews. There are a lot of stupid critics, and fewer smart and good ones, and, then, of course, only some share a fair percentage of my taste. So the bad reviews don't bother me much; maybe I'll agree, maybe I'll disagree, but I'll never know until I see for myself (one of my general philosophies of life).

I've always been a pretty big Albert Brooks fan, though, even if I didn't know him when he was still Albert Einstein (actual name on his birth certificate; his father, comedian Harry Parke, also known as "Harry Einstein" thought it was hilarious to name his son "Albert"; Albert changed it when he was 16).

I loved him when he was doing stand-up, I've liked his talk-show appearances, and I really liked Lost In America and Defending Your Life, in particular (though I've not seen the former in years; must get around to seeing it again some time). Oh, and I quite liked his old Saturday Night Live shorts. His sort of deadpan, I'm-not-going-to-hit-you-over-the-head-to-tell-you-when-it's-funny style is a style of comedy that cracks me up, just as the Coen Brothers do, or Wes Anderson does.

All of which is throat-clearing to getting around to some quotes and a link to this recent interview:
DRE: This film was originally going to be distributed by Sony, what happened with that?

Brooks: They wasted five months of our lives actually. The film was financed by Steve Bing and he had a deal with Sony. Sony was excited about it and they picked TriStar as the division that they thought could best handle it. Then after the movie was finished I went over there and showed them the scene in the beginning with Fred Thompson and the other government people. Then I told them the rest of the story and the title. Everyone felt excited after that meeting. I didn't feel as excited as the others because when I told them the title one of the big shots in the meeting made a joke that was weird to me like, “Oh good title. I guess we're going to have to put in extra phone lines to take these calls.” When studios say anything like that there's never anything good about it. They never make jokes that turn out good. If a studio sees a rough cut and says, “Yeah, that scene was a little long.” That scene is never going to get into the movie. That's the way that they let you know something. So I said in the parking lot to Steve, “I'm worried about that comment” and he told me “Don't worry. This is great.” So they proceeded and they made posters. They made a trailer. They said that we were going to go to the Toronto Film Festival and they claimed the release date of October 7th. Then after that Newsweek story came out about the Koran being abused in Guantanamo Bay I got a call on Monday morning from Steve and he said, “Bad news they don't want that title.” I said “Ok. Didn't I say this five months ago?” and he told me I was right. He said they want to call it Looking for Comedy if that’s ok with me. I told him “No, that's not okay with me. There's nothing to that. We can't do it.”

I had a conversation with the head of the movie company and he told me that he just felt that times had changed and I said, “But what do you mean? Times changed after 9/11. It's not any different from this. Abu Ghraib was worse than this and that was a year ago. It's always changing and that's why we're making the movie.” He just said that he was concerned about it and then I saw one of the trailers that they made and it was like “Bill and Ted Go to India.” It explained nothing about the movie. “A comedian is on his way to be funny.” On his way where? Where are we going? My feeling is and I don't have any proof of this, but as much as I understand how very big companies work there are many people in a company that big that aren't really involved in the day to day movie business. They have Sony Corporation which is in a tremendous amount of businesses and the movies that they make are meaningless to some people until one afternoon when they have nothing to do and they're like, “Let’s see what's coming up. What is this? Sarah, what's that word?” “Muslim.” “Are you sure? Get Charlie on the phone.” I just think that someone said, “What? Are you crazy? Get rid of that.” Especially since I'm not someone who's guaranteeing an audience. I'm not Peter Jackson. They're not going to have a long discussion of like, "Well, are we going to have to take some flack, but make half a billion dollars? We'll take the half billion.” I just think that I couldn't win that argument. So I was upset because October was now gone. Toronto was gone, but on the positive side I never would've gone to the Dubai International Film Festival if it hadn’t happened. That turned out to be like the coolest thing. It's one of those experiences where you're certain where one thing is going to happen, but something else happens entirely. I think I'll remember that long after anything else about this whole movie because it was so wild and unusual.

DRE: But you had to know that things like this would happen.

Brooks: I did know but we could've had that meeting back in February. What normally happens is that you go back to your house and there's a call that says, “Look, they love you. This isn't going to work out.” No one had the guts to say that then. That would have left a whole summer for Warner Independent to prepare instead of it all happening in July. They're a small studio and they had Good Night and Good Luck and Paradise Now. They don't have a lot of employees.

DRE: How did you decide to do this film?

Brooks: After September 11th I sat in my house for a year and was scared. All that was happening was that we were told the next one was coming tomorrow or next weekend or maybe Monday. I was in this little movie called My First Mister that opened in Rockefeller Center right near where the Anthrax scare was. I was like “Oh, that's going to be great. That's what you want. Tell them that there's anthrax in the theater.” That entire year was a panic for everyone. The second year the attacks were going to come on the holidays. Be careful on July 4th. I wouldn't go to Time Square on New Year's Eve. The third year we weren’t sure if it’s going to come. But they kept telling that this is never going to go away. That this isn’t like other wars because other wars have conclusions. I thought that this was insane. Are we going to hide until we're killed? So you want to get back to a normalcy even if there is some impending doom. In my mind to be able to deal with it is in a motion picture comedy. That's what normalcy is and there have been no comedies on this. It's interesting that if you look at all the pictures that have risen to the top at the end of 2005 virtually all of them are set in the past. It's like that's how people are dealing with things. Munich, Brokeback Mountain, Good Night and Good Luck, Memoirs of a Geisha and Squid and the Whale are all movies set in the past. So one way to deal with it is to not even talk about a world after 9/11. Then the comedies that have been made that deal in the supposed present are generally these teenage sex comedies that never talk about the world. I just wanted to be able to stand up and say, “I'm acknowledging the new world here and maybe we can get a few laughs for 98 minutes and then we'll go on.” By the way if ten years from now, which according to them we're still going to be in this, if there are 100 comedies it'll be a better place.

DRE: Will audiences pick up on everything you’re talking about?

Brooks: I never ask myself those questions. If I did I wouldn't be talking to you today because I would've retired when I was 30. My whole life, you have to understand, is dealing with people. Back in the 1960’s I was in the cast of Dean Martin Presents the Golddiggers and Greg Garrison was the producer. He allowed me to do the kind of comedy that I did, but he felt that it was necessary to give me a lecture like a child before it all started. He took me into his office and said, “I just want to tell you something. You're going to have a very tough career because you're up here and the audience is down here and if I were you I would adjust for that.” He looked at me and my answer was, “I don't know what you're talking about.” Then he said, “I just wanted to check. Go do what you do.” He was trying to see if I would rework my act. That's all people do, underestimate the audience. I can't think like that.
And all this is why I like Albert Brooks. And still will, even if his new movie stinks (although I'm inclined to think that the odds are pretty high that lots of critics simply don't get him; but, hey, I won't know until I see it; lots of critics who say they like Brooks say they didn't like this one).

I'm cutting other interesting stuff, like his comments on Woody Allen, but have to also include this:
DRE: But you did get to recreate some of your old act in this film.

Brooks: Oh God no. My act is better than that. By the way, I wrote that improv bit for the movie. I never really did that onstage. Danny and Dave I used to do all the time. I wouldn’t know what to do if I really had to do standup in India. Now I think that I've scared myself of ever doing it.
I saw some blog comments angrily declaring that Brooks was being ignorant of the Muslim world, or somesuch, since it wasn't a majority Muslim country; I noted that it nonetheless held either the second or third largest Muslim population in the world. In any case, I found the following unsurprising, but amusing:
Brooks: India and Pakistan were always part of the plot because I had a number of issues to deal with. First you need some jeopardy when they give you this assignment because Americans don't readily go to Pakistan. As it's explained in the movie, in India Hindus are the majority in the population, but what makes India interesting is that their minority population of 150 million Muslims makes it the second largest Muslim population in the world. But I couldn't go to any of the countries in the Middle East that would provide jeopardy for the movie. There is no Saudi Arabian Film Commission that's welcoming people. When the President of Iran says that they want to wipe Israel off the map on Wednesday, Thursday he's not saying, “However, let the Jew filmmaker come in and we'll give him free access.” I can't get into Syria. Where I would be able to film is Morocco where Syriana filmed but it is not interesting for this movie. You go there and it is too touristy. Even Egypt is full of people from Florida looking at the pyramids. Many of the countries in the Middle East aren't inviting a person like me in and I don't think there are any American films that are getting in there. There are news crews that can shoot in Iraq, but to get a movie made you need the kind of cooperation that the government can't even get when they talk to them. I don't know how film unions are then going to speak to each other.

DRE: Were your jokes funny in India?

Brooks: What's funny is that as the crew warmed up to me I found that the butt of the Hindus’ jokes are the Sikhs. There was one joke that I didn't understand “Two Sikhs played a chess game, yes? The simply did not play” [laughs]. Then we had a Sikh driver who was telling me Muslim jokes. “ So it seems to me that everywhere on the planet someone is talking about someone else. As I say in the movie Polish jokes work everywhere.

DRE: How about Palestinian jokes?

Brooks: I heard one the other day. These two Jewish men travel the subway everyday for years and years and read the Jewish Press every morning. Then one morning one of them is reading an Arabic newspaper and the other one says, “What's a matter with you? Why are you reading that paper? Have you lost your mind?” He said, “No. To tell you the truth all I read in the Jewish Press is that Israel has been blown up and that the Jews aren't allowed to enter and that life is terrible. In this paper it says we own all the banks, we own the media. Life is much better in this paper.”
There's more. Click if you want, or if you don't, you've presumably scrolled past this or stopped reading.

Read The Rest Scale: 3 out of 5 as interested in Albert Brooks. An audio interview with Brooks on NPR.

2/17/2006 03:32:00 PM |permanent link | Main Page | | 3 comments

3 Comments:

I saw the movie and thought it was pretty funny - even had some thigh-slapping moments. The scene with the stoned Pakistani comedians was the best, I think.

The Palestinian joke that Brooks tells, however, is an old chestnut - first told (as far as I have heard) about Jews in Germany reading the Nazi paper. When they read the Jewish paper they get so depressed about all the horrible things that are happening to Jews - whereas in the Nazi paper they read all about how Jews control the world, etc.

By Blogger Rebecca, at Saturday, February 18, 2006 7:19:00 PM  

"The Palestinian joke that Brooks tells, however, is an old chestnut - first told (as far as I have heard) about Jews in Germany reading the Nazi paper."

Yeah, come to think of it, I do recall seeing it in that context before; no wonder it sounded familiar; thanks for the reminder, and for the micro-movie-review.

I tend to suspect that a lot of people who saw the Brooks film don't get the deadpan nature of his humor (though, as I said, I can't know until I see it).

I'm almost finished watching The Life Aquatic, With Steve Zissou, and I've seen a zillion reviewers and other folks say how unfunny they thought it was. Now, a) it's as much a story about characters, and a sensibility, as it is a "comedy," and b) I find it hilariously funny.

I'm a bit cynically inclined to think that there are some folks for whom if a movie doesn't have fart jokes and the visual equivalent of a laugh track, it's not funny. Though, of course, humor is a completely individual thing, and if you don't find something funny, you just don't.

By Blogger Gary Farber, at Saturday, February 18, 2006 9:01:00 PM  

As a further digressive, more specific, comment on The Life Aquatic, either characters like the semi-hysteric Klausie, and elements such as the emphasis on "the good paper stock," and Wes Anderson's general approach to dramatizion being somewhat akin, in certain aspects, to parodying a bad elementary school play, cracks one up, or it does not. Me, it does. I recognize that most people, it will not.

Ditto Albert Brooks. Ditto Raising Arizona. And so on.

Me, I don't find The Three Stooges, or Benny Hill, funny, though many do. On the other hand, it's hardly as if I don't like vulgar, low, humor, since I love South Park. But I think that's smart, low, vulgar humor. Not that it matters what I think of what I find funny. I just find it funny.

By Blogger Gary Farber, at Sunday, February 19, 2006 1:00:00 AM  

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