or Powell's or me• • •
"Mike and Jon, Jon and Mike—I've known them both for years, and, clearly, one of them is very funny. As for the other: truly one of the great hangers-on of our time."—Steve Bodow, head writer, The Daily Show
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"Who can really judge what's funny? If humor is a subjective medium, then can there be something that is really and truly hilarious? Me. This book."—Daniel Handler, author, Adverbs, and personal representative of Lemony Snicket
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"The good news: I thought Our Kampf was consistently hilarious. The bad news: I’m the guy who wrote Monkeybone."—Sam Hamm, screenwriter, Batman, Batman Returns, and Homecoming
October 09, 2006
Happy Birthday, Fellow Weirdo!
Today is Dennis Perrin's birthday, and he's feeling wistful:
While watching "The West Wing" the other night, I caught the episodes where the Ann Coulterish blonde reactionary is invited to join the White House legal team, and her struggles to be taken seriously by the liberals who staff it, when not weathering their unveiled contempt. Of all of Aaron Sorkin's political fantasies, this one actually rang true for me, though, as usual, it's the über-good liberals of the "Wing" who ultimately embrace their ideological opposite, showing us once again just how unflinchingly loyal they are to their inclusive values. Sorkin can't pass up angelic displays like that. And when the faux-Coulter informs her rightwing friends that her new liberal co-workers are "patriots"? Oohh. The chill, the spinal chill . . . what better or purer endorsement?All that heavenly imagery and rhetoric aside, I did connect to this storyline, simply because I experienced something like it, though at a more mundane level.
In the Summer of '92, I was hired as the Managing Editor for New York Perspectives...
The rest of the story, involving the political and personal evolution of a once-hardcore Reaganiteâ€â€Âand his early deathâ€â€Âis here.
Posted at October 9, 2006 01:55 PM | TrackBackRadley Balko at TheAgitator.com has some interesting things to say about his gradual alienation from the Republican right. (Not that he's enamored of the Democratic party now.)
Posted by: Lloyd at October 9, 2006 03:30 PMIt is quite interesting how we divide reality up in two neat bundles, that is to say conservatives and liberals. Could there be the remotest possibility that life is just not that simple? Of course there are the great undecideds; however they make my teeth itch so I cannot discuss them in any coherent manner.
Larry Johnson, the ex CIA analyst and Bush basher, recently said he had always considered himself to be a republican but does no longer and now considers himself to be an American. I think this is of interest because it seems to me we of the western world love our labels and often use them in a sweeping and comprehensive manner often not really thinking about what may be falling between the cracks. What may be falling between the cracks is reality, what ever that may be.
If we really want to rise above our Neanderthalithic inheritance of primeval tribalism and our all consuming desire to be more right than the other fellow maybe it is time we did away with our eye ticking desire to label everything, boxing it, and shoving it on a shelf organized in alphabetical order.
Western culture is a recipe culture, that is to say we have a recipe for everything. The great plethora of “How to†books are the perfect example. How to bake a cake, how to invest your money, How to fix a leaking faucet, which often works but just as often leaves us in the dark as to why these things work. And I think that this recipe for everything mentality prevents us from really thinking about stuff and smothers innovation and originality.
Fortunately there are people like Dennis Perrin who challenge our entrenched thinking and challenge the givens and the recipes of western thought and make us wonder if we really know what we think we know.
Like Robert Anton Wilson would say, everybody's in their own reality tunnel.
Posted by: Lloyd at October 9, 2006 08:21 PMThat sounds real enough and though I keep looking for the exit of this particular tunnel every exit I find has a picture of Bush on it.
Posted by: rob payne at October 10, 2006 01:40 AM
