Disappointment, the nurse of wisdom

I was let down yet again by America’s vaunted entertainment industry. It’s my own fault, of course, harboring hope as I do.

Match Point: Rented and watched it yesterday, and came away terribly confused: not exactly the tour de force erotic thriller of which I’d heard so much. This movie was wildly overpraised by people who should have known better. Strangely muted performances and an obvious, paint-by-numbers approach to suspense mar the film from start to finish - though the London setting is pretty enough. Incredibly enough, the film managed to make a secret affair involving Scarlett Johansson seemed torpid and unappealing. Now that’s some feat.

Esquire: Every couple of years, I pick up a copy in the vain hope that it had become (once again) a magazine worth reading; every couple of years, my hopes are dashed. This time I was hooked by the visual appeal of last month’s issue - fool and lecher that I was. I bought the subsequent issue and found that I don’t care about Mel Gibson’s messianism, Dave Chappelle’s problems, or the new Bobby Kennedy movie (the what?). The real deal breaker, though, was the money quote from one Scott Raab in his review of the soon-to-be-released novel Everyman: “The upside, of course, is that [Philip] Roth is the best fiction writer America has ever produced.”

Envision a mass market magazine in graceful flight, its thin pages spread against the air like wings, landing finally atop the recycling pile across the room.

People like what they like, and bully for them. Hell, bully for Raab. And had I read this same breathless, contextless assertion almost anywhere else - Entertainment Weekly, say - I shouldn’t have blinked an eye. But from someone writing for Esquire?

We’ll check back in another couple of years, I guess.

In the meantime, I’ll look for still more things to disappoint me.

MiniBlog: Bastards

¶   Dateline: Gillespie, Illinois - Two men wanted for forcing puppy to drink from a bowl of vodka, almost killing the animal.

Hypocrite of the day

Sneaking back to the old guzzler

Denny Hastert. But at least he’s car-pooling.

Technorati Tags: Dennis Hastert, Congress, Gas Prices

Nothing to brag about

Among the elements of White House chief of staff Josh Bolten’s touted plan to right the listing Bush ship of state is this eyebrow-raising bullet point:

BRAG MORE. They…plan to highlight any glimmer of success in Iraq, especially the formation of a new government, in an effort to balance the negative impression voters get from continued signs of an incubating civil war.

Of course, the converse of this policy is that things you don’t want to brag about get short shrift, or ignored altogether. It’s not entirely clear how this represents a departure in policy for the Bush administration. In any event, there’s certainly lots to avoid talking about (AlertNet link defunct):

Insurgent attacks in Iraq’s Baquba kill 30

Thirty people were killed, including seven Iraqi soldiers, when more than 100 rebels attacked Iraqi police and army posts in Baquba on Thursday, the U.S. military said on Friday. [...]

Although suicide bombings continue to inflict heavy damage, insurgents have been launching increasingly bold operations against police and army targets.

The U.S. military has said that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, has shifted his tactics to focus less on American troops and more on Iraqi troops and security forces as they train to eventually take over security.

Juan Cole underscores the rather startling report of an insurgent force numbering between four hundred and five hundred and points out this uncomfortably obvious point: if not for US troops (who the Iraqis said came in to assist, though the US military made no mention of that), the insurgents would have their way with Baquba. Iraqi security is indeed the weak link in the tenuous plan to get American troops out of Iraq. The viability and progress of Iraqi troops is continually hailed by the president and his advisors, even as the military offers more sober assessments. Broad hints about drawing down US troop levels - such as were made and eagerly reported by the press just this week - can only ring hollow in the wake of Baquba.

Remember the recent and much-ballyhooed “Operation Swarmer”? You are forgiven if you don’t. It was intended to showcase the progress and competence of the Iraqi security apparatus. Instead, the operation fizzled as insurgent leaders targeted by Iraqi intelligence slipped away. Little wonder the White House opted not to brag about “Swarmer” afterwards.

The gulf between reality and adminstration rhetoric would enrage any engaged citizen if the White House didn’t make a point of changing the topic to something else, almost anything else. Look for more bragging from the White House, the better to drown out the discordant echo of gunfire and suicide bombs.

Technorati Tags: Iraq

MiniBlog: Wonder how much sodium is in the fortune cookie

¶   Kung pow! Before you order out, here’s some sobering news about Chinese food and nutrition.

Friends to those who need no friends

Could someone remind me just what the joint appearance in Iraq of the SecDef and the SecState was supposed to accomplish?

A welcome stamp of American approval of Iraqi attempts to forge a unity government? Well… (Chicago Tribune link defunct.)

Iraqi officials said they, too, were surprised by the unannounced arrival of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and some said they feared it could disrupt negotiations to form a new government, and erode its legitimacy.

“We didn’t invite them,” said Kamal Saadi, a Shiite legislator close to the newly named prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki.

Saadi said Iraqi leaders hadn’t been notified in advance of the visit, which came days after Iraqi politicians broke through an impasse on the naming of a prime minister.

“Maybe Rumsfeld’s visit can be justified” because of the American troop presence, “but I can’t see a clear reason behind Rice’s visit,” he said. “The crisis is over, and negotiations are taking place.”

A demonstration of camaraderie and coordination among Cabinet members? Er…

Rice and Rumsfeld often seemed in separate orbits, with little of the warmth of [Rice's] earlier visit. One purpose of this joint trip was to get the sometimes conflicting military and political operations in sync for the transition to a permanent Iraqi government. But the contrasting styles of the two secretaries were sometimes jarring.

Even after arriving in Iraq after an exhausting sprint through Greece and Turkey, Rice appeared energized by the task at hand here. Rumsfeld arrived directly from Washington–after a recent Asian tour–but he seemed disengaged and bored both to reporters traveling with him and some U.S. officials. Some felt he seemed irritated at the whole exercise. He did not speak to reporters traveling with him as he flew to Baghdad.

A much-needed moral boost for our fighting troops overseas? Uh…

As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld made their surprise visits to Baghdad on Wednesday, many of the troops stationed north of Baghdad, in Balad and Dujail, say either they didn’t know about it or didn’t care.

“I’d ask him for a plane ticket home to see my wife. I have barely seen her in the last two years,” said a young sergeant, who did not want to be identified. Like many of the soldiers with the 4th Infantry Division, he is on his second deployment to Iraq.

Some joked that whenever VIP’s come to visit they just go to the main bases and meet the “fobbits,” the nickname given to troops who do not go outside the barbed wire.

They’re not seen as useful, not even to each other. With each passing day, the Bush White House is becoming more and more the Boston Quackie of presidential administrations.

Technorati Tags: Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Iraq

Weighty matters and sugar glaze

You’re actually salivating, aren’t you? Jesus.

A while back, I mentioned that I’d fought my way back down to 200 pounds, this after a period of stealthy personal inflation. This made my doctor very happy. Not much has changed since then. Actually, nothing has changed so far as the scale is concerned. I’ve been stuck on two-double-nought for a solid month, even after bumping up the old caloric intake a good five or six hundred calories per day. Not the worst problem to have - eating more without putting on weight - but sooner or later I’m going to have to move off this setpoint if I’m to prove worthy of my recently-acquired Piggly Wiggly t-shirt.

All of that comes to mind just now because one of my coworkers brought in a couple of boxes of Krispy Kremes today. Original glazed and some kind of chocolate-covered affair. They will not be long for this world; the chocolate box alone is already down to two doughnuts. I will not be partaking; faithful readers of this blog (very faithful) already know of my views on Krispy Kreme. There are better options, people, but comparisons aside, I don’t have much room for doughnuts these days. Really, I’d need two days advance notice in order to schedule one. “Let’s see, Tuesday’s really bad for me, how about Friday, say, maybe two-ish?”

It’s the kind of talk you expect of the born-again, I know - ex-smokers, former drinkers, the converted and saved and washed clean of sins, the annoying newly pious - and I do apologize for that. It’s not that there shouldn’t be a place at the table (a small place) for foods whose sole virtue is that fat makes them tasty. It’s just kind of strange and novel to be on this side of things, where the very first thought that comes to mind upon seeing the familiar green and white Krispy Kreme box is “Criminy - what the hell is in those things?”

So, uh, here’s the answer:

The good news: the most popular doughnut at Krispy Kreme, the Original Glazed, isn’t as bad as most of the chain’s other doughnuts. The bad news: they’re so light and airy that stopping after only one ain’t easy.

It’s not the 200 calories that’ll get you (though 200 times two, three, or four sure might). It’s the six grams of saturated-plus-trans fat. That’s nearly a third of a day’s worth of bad fat in every ring. It’s like eating a slice of white bread smeared with a tablespoon of lard (plus a tablespoon of jelly).

A Sugar Coated or Glazed Cinnamon–or Glazed or Cinnamon Twist–will do about the same damage. Even the Chocolate Iced looks the same to your arteries. (The chocolate icing is mostly sugar, so it adds about 50 calories, but no more fat.)

What pumps up the calories, fat, and sugar in Krispy Kreme’s filled doughnuts? They’re heavier. Krispy offers more than a dozen varieties that do away with the doughnut’s healthiest feature: its calorie-free, fat-free hole.

Filled yeast doughnuts–including New York Cheesecake, Chocolate Malted Kreme, Caramel Kreme Crunch, Key Lime Pie, and Chocolate Iced Creme Filled–pack 300 to 390 calories and eight to ten grams of harmful fat. Some weigh nearly twice as much as an Original Glazed. Eating one is like having a nine-ounce filet mignon to tide you over until lunch.

Mm-mmm! That’s good eatin’, eh?

Okay, I’ll stop now.

Technorati Tags: Krispy Kreme

Black Wednesday for Blair

On this side of the Atlantic, George Bush shuffles staffers like playing cards as a remedy for failing policies and ever-increasing unpopularity. Across the ocean, his co-sponsor in the war on Iraq is having an equally rough go of it. Yesterday was not such a hot day for Tony Blair:

Tony Blair’s government is not in “meltdown” despite the triple whammy of controversies facing his Cabinet, minister John Hutton has said.

He rejected comparisons with John Major’s final days after what has been called Mr Blair’s “black Wednesday”.

It saw nurses boo the health secretary, John Prescott admit an affair and the home secretary face calls to quit.

Read more

Personal trial in the magazine aisle

If gazing at the cover of the current* Esquire - yes, that one - doesn’t leave you feeling flushed and uncomfortable, somehow exposed so that you hunch down into your jacket and your movements become furtive, and you begin to feel perhaps subtly and oddly guilty - though of what, guilty of what, you can’t say precisely…

…then just forget I brought it up, okay?

*No longer current; replaced by an issue featuring Dave Chappelle. The effect just ain’t the same.

Technorati Tags: Rosario Dawson, Esquire

Rocked by the House

I pretty much gave up gushing over television shows when I quit watching The Amazing Race, but I have to say that last night’s episode of the snarky FOX medi-drama House - the wonderfully-titled “House vs. God” - was the best of the series, and possibly the best-written/character-driven episode of any show I’ve seen outside of The Shield. The recap delineates the plot but tells you nothing useful; the power of the episode lies in the angry script, the potent dialogue, the assured actors who know their characters well enough to let them speak. It is a show full of uniquely flawed individuals forced to interact and intercede in matters of life and death, and watching them widens our view (quite against our will) of what it means to be human.

Because uniquely flawed individuals also write the show, not every episode hits this mark. But last night was amazing; I couldn’t believe I didn’t have to pay money to watch.

Technorati Tags: House, FOX, TV, Hugh Laurie

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