February 2009 Acquisitions

Books:
Elizabeth Armstrong (ed.), Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design, and Culture at Midcentury, 2007.
Alan Brinkley, American History: A Survey, 2009.
Rachel Cohn and David Levithan, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist, 2008.
James West Davidson et. al., US: A Narrative History, Two Volumes, 2009.
Jessica Echeverria, Yo Gabba Gabba!: Party in My Tummy, 2009.
F.X. Feeney, Audrey Hepburn, 2006.
Milton and Rose Friedman, Free to Choose: A Personal Statement, 1980, 1990.
Taro Gold, What Is Love? A Simple Guide to Romantic Happiness, 2003.
James A. Henretta and David Brody, America: A Concise History, Volume 1, 2010.
Abbie Hoffman, Revolution for the Hell of It: The Book That Earned Abbie Hoffman a Five-Year Prison Term at the Chicago Conspiracy Trial, 2005.
Abbie Hoffman, Woodstock Nation: A Talk-Rock Album, 1969, 1971.
Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West, 1988.
Val McDermid, A Darker Domain, 2009.
Albert Murray, The Omni-Americans: Black Experience & American Culture, 1970.
Ruth Rosen, The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America, 2000.
Juliet B. Schor, The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don't Need, 1999.
James Spada, Monroe: Her Life in Pictures, 1982.

DVDs:
Yentl, 1983.

The Old Man's Back Again

"Even then, Mr. Walker says, his interests extended well beyond pop to Beat literature and European films, especially those of Ingmar Bergman; musically he was drawn to darker, moodier sounds than mainstream pop permitted. The solo albums he recorded after he left the group featured songs by Jacques Brel, the impassioned Flemish singer-songwriter who was as catalytic an influence on Mr. Walker as Bob Dylan was on many of his peers."

Stephen Holden in The New York Times reviews Scott Walker:30 Century Man.

Suddenly Someone Is There at the Turnstile

"John Lennon made him design consultant to the Beatles, which led to a line of puckish Apple-shaped clocks and other tchotchkes and, more importantly, to the innovative book, The Beatles Illustrated Lyrics, which is how most of us in Fab-obsessed L.A. know him. He hung with Hendrix, fought off Salvador Dali in an airport drawing duel, and his album covers for the likes of Cream and the Who are likely better known today than the music etched therein."

Ron Garmon in Los Angeles City Beat profiles artist Alan Aldridge.

But We Livin' Comfortable

"As a result, readers who thumbed through the Times to find her weekly musings soon became as familiar with Alvar Aalto as they were with Andy Warhol—which is great—but in time they began to regard architects in the same way they did artists, albeit with much larger canvases, which is certainly a bad thing. Aesthetics uprooted ethics, and the insistence that architects have a social obligation was forgotten beneath a landslide of luxurious forms."

Clay Risen in Architect Magazine considers critic Ada Louise Huxtable.

I Am Talking

"'A lot of people recorded my songs.' says Allison. 'Georgie Fame was the first one. He did some of my material in the early ’60s. After that several of them did it.' From the Bluesbreakers’ mouth-harp assault on 'Parchman Farm,' to the Who’s windmill through 'Young Man Blues,' the list of renditions--also including the Yardbirds, Cactus, Blue Cheer and a whole tribute album by Van Morrison--is staggering. Says Allison: 'I think people should do what they want, because I do the same thing with other people’s songs.'
"Is there a wrong way to cover one of his tunes? 'The only wrong way is to not get the mechanical licenses.'"

Sean O'Connell in Los Angeles City Beat interviews musician Mose Allison.

X Saved the World?

"Fussell believed in an escape pod from this tyranny of classhood: residence in a special American psycho-emotional space called 'category X.' (Fussell borrowed his notion from Matthew Arnold’s analysis of the three British classes—even a century earlier, Arnold was describing this fourth set of 'aliens.') Fussell’s Xs were essentially bohemians, the young people who flocked to cities in search of 'art,' 'writing,' and 'creative work,' ideally without a supervisor. Xs disregarded authority; they dressed down on every occasion; they drank no-name liquor ('Beefeater Gin and Cutty Sark Scotch betray the credulous victim of advertising, and hence the middle class'); they wore moccasins and down vests (in 1983, Fussell considered L.L.Bean and Lands’ End natural X clothiers); they carelessly threw out, unread, their college alumni magazines."

In The Atlantic, Sandra Tsing Loh looks back to Paul Fussell's 1983 book, Class, to see if its categories still hold up.

"Sasha Obama Keeps Seeing Creepy Bush Twins While Riding Tricycle Through White House"

"White House officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, also detailed a disturbing vision experienced by Sasha, who at several points during her encounter suddenly saw the twin girls lying motionless in a pool of spilled strawberry margaritas.
"'She said they kept whispering "we want to party" over and over again,' said one Secret Service agent, who comforted Sasha following the incident. 'God, it's so horrifying.'"

From The Onion.

Something Worthy to Be Remembered

"The weight of this crisis will not determine the destiny of this nation. The answers to our problems don’t lie beyond our reach. They exist in our laboratories and universities; in our fields and our factories; in the imaginations of our entrepreneurs and the pride of the hardest-working people on Earth. Those qualities that have made America the greatest force of progress and prosperity in human history we still possess in ample measure. What is required now is for this country to pull together, confront boldly the challenges we face, and take responsibility for our future once more."

The New York Times prints President Obama's speech to Congress.

Crisis Management

"'Some people would like to see us be an alternative government infrastructure for black people,' Jealous says. 'I understand where that comes from; the reality is that's what we've been fighting against for 100 years. What we've been fighting for is for the government that we already have to respond to the needs of all people. Our focus is on the needs of black America; that's what we do best; that's where we're known best. But our goal is a fully functioning democracy.'"

In The American Prospect, Adam Serwer profiles Ben Jealous, president of the NAACP (which marked its 100th anniversary this month).

Fade Out

"In a broader sense, New Yorker's long-term willingness to defy the marketplace realities of American film distribution never seemed like a sustainable business model. While the films listed above attracted at least some American viewers, New Yorker was worshiped in cinephile circles precisely because it often took on difficult and adventurous cinema that was destined to find almost no audience. Sometimes Talbot and Lopez seemed to be running an educational foundation under the guise of a for-profit business. In bringing films by African cinema godfather Ousmane Sembène, Chinese rebel Jia Zhang-ke, obscure American auteur Lodge Kerrigan and legendary French documentarian Chris Marker to a handful of American viewers they were undeniably performing a public service, but they surely didn't make any money in doing so."

Andrew O'Hehir in Salon reports the demise of New Yorker Films.

The Big Con

"During the late Fifties and Sixties, Aspinall's gaming tables hosted society figures on the Belgravia and Mayfair circuit, including everyone from Ian Fleming and Lucian Freud to Lords 'Lucky' Lucan, Derby, Boothby and the Duke of Devonshire. 'England was coming out of its post-war gloom and London was fast becoming the most exciting and glamorous city in the world,' says Thompson, whose book is also being turned into a feature film by Martha Fiennes. 'The upper classes had unlimited amounts of money to squander and there were opportunities for chancers at every level.'"

John Hiscock in The Telegraph reviews a new British documentary The Real Casino Royale.

The Cradle of the Best and of the Worst

"On race, of course, this is especially true. No civilised country sustained slavery as recently as America or defended segregation as tenaciously as the American South until just a generation ago. In my lifetime, mixed-race couples were legally barred from marrying in many states. But equally in my lifetime, a miscegenated man who grew up in Hawaii won a majority of the votes in the old slave state of Virginia to become the first minority president of any advanced western nation.
"That is the paradox of America; and after a while you find it hard to appreciate anything more coherent. What keeps America behind is also what keeps pushing it relentlessly, fitfully forward."

In The Sunday Times, Andrew Sullivan explains why he likes the United States.

Vice City

"Maligned by critics, the Fontainebleau instantly became a lively hangout for card sharks, mobsters and movie idols. Frank Sinatra performed there regularly for 20 years—free, according to Gaines—and in return got unlimited use of a penthouse suite. Gaines asserts, 'The only thing Sinatra paid for was his hookers.' Well, at least he didn’t forget the little people."

In The New York Times, Carl Hiaasen reviews Steven Gaines's Fool’s Paradise: Players, Poseurs, and the Culture of Excess in South Beach.

Witness the Resurrection of Uncle Sam

"Nineties, man. The best ever."
"Balanced the budget..."
"Internet boom..."
"Then Bush had to come in and ruin it all."
"Ha! The 2000s suck!"
"The 2000s suck."

Funny or Die presents The Uncler.

Here's Where the Story Ends

"I’ve gone into great detail about the Kelley-Hawkins story because it is a cautionary tale for scholars and an example of how our theories, our explanatory models, and the stories we tell ourselves can blind us to the obvious, leading us to see in matters of race only what we want to see based on our desires and political agendas. When we confront phenomena of any kind, we are wise if we assume the position phenomenologist Herbert Spiegelberg called epistemological humility, which is a healthy skepticism about what we think we already know. When constructing our narratives, it would also help if we remember a famous and often-quoted statement by C. S. Lewis on the characteristics of the human mind: 'Five senses; an incurably abstract intellect; a haphazardly selective memory; a set of preconceptions and assumptions so numerous that I can never examine more than a minority of them—never become conscious of them all. How much of total reality can such an apparatus let through?'"

Charles Johnson in The American Scholar calls for the end of the "black American narrative."

Don't Blame Canada

"It’s interesting that what I’m arguing for looks more like the Canadian system than the American system. When we delivered this report in a press conference, people said, 'Oh you mean, banks won’t be able to have hedge funds? What are you talking about?' That same day, Citigroup announced, 'We want to get rid of all that stuff. We now realize it was a mistake. We want to go back to our roots and be a real commercial bank.' I don’t know whether they’ll do that or not. But the fact that one of the leading proponents of the other system basically said, 'We give up. It’s not the right system,' is interesting."

The National Post prints Paul Volker's speech in Toronto about the origins of the financial crisis.

Before Sunset

"The rest of the film—gorgeously shot in black-and-white by James Laxton—follows as the duo spends the day (and another night) peeling back the layers in conversations that cover interracial relationships, striking the balance between what you do and how you pay the bills, and the role of 'urban planning' in pushing poor and black folk out of San Francisco. 'Imagine the Lower Haight,' says Micah, recalling his childhood, 'filled with nothing but black folk and white artists.' The lament will resonate from San Francisco to D.C., Los Angeles to Harlem, as enclaves that were once hubs of black American life are drained of their blackness."

In the LA Weekly, Ernest Hardy reviews the new movie Medicine for Melancholy.

"Nation's Blacks Creeped Out By All The People Smiling At Them"

"Added Jealous, 'Oh, and please stop e-mailing us that picture of Jesse Jackson crying. We've seen it.'"

From The Onion.

Speaking Freely

"Hari pulled no punches: 'All people deserve respect, but not all ideas do. I don't respect the idea that a man was born of a virgin, walked on water and rose from the dead. I don't respect the idea that we should follow a "Prophet" who at the age of 53 had sex with a nine-year-old girl, and ordered the murder of whole villages of Jews because they wouldn't follow him.' Hari's column caused--surprise!--violent riots; what is more shocking, and more unusual, is that Indian authorities arrested the editor and the publisher of the paper for "hurting the religious feelings" of Muslims."

Katha Pollitt in The Nation considers the condition of religion and free speech around the world.

Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?

"These theories can be applied over varying spatial scales to posit bin Laden’s current location based on his last reputed geographic location. Distance-decay theory would predict that he is closest to the point where he was last reported and, by extension, within a region that has a similar physical environment and cultural composition (that is, similar religious and political beliefs). For instance, the further he moves from his last reported location into the more secular parts of Pakistan or into India, the greater the probability that he will find himself in different cultural surroundings, thereby increasing the probability of his being captured or eliminated. Island biogeographic theory predicts that bin Laden is in a larger town rather than a smaller and more isolated town where extinction rate would be higher. Finally, high-resolution analyses of a city can be undertaken to identify individual buildings that match bin Laden’s life history characteristics. For example, he reportedly has a small entourage of body guards, requiring a structure that contains at least three rooms."

Thomas W. Gillespie and John A. Agnew in MIT International Review believe they know.

No. 1 in Outer Space

"So for 21 albums they’ve been cracking up, and in the slivers are reflected intricate pop compositions like Brian Wilson and Brian May and Bryan Ferry and Brian Eno, arranged into little song-stories transposing Ray Davies’ Arthur to Nathanael West’s Los Angeles with confident, deep and brutally precise reportage on life, death, time, sex, confusion, music and love."

Chris Ziegler in Los Angeles CityBeat catches up with Sparks.

"I Wish I'd Spent Valentine's Day Eating A Prix Fixe Dinner, But I Was Too Busy Getting Beheaded"

By St. Valentine

From The Onion.

I Wish I Never Saw the Sunshine

The Los Angeles Times reports the death of Estelle Bennett of the Ronettes.

The Flip-Flopper

"In his first term, from 1981-85, Reagan escalated East-West tensions, spoke in bellicose rhetoric, and jacked up military spending to 30-year highs. This is the Reagan whom Republican chieftains worship and insist that all subsequent presidents emulate. But in his second term, which coincided with Gorbachev's rise to power, Reagan flipped, making dramatic diplomatic overtures to Moscow and accepting equally dramatic proposals in turn.
"Few remember, but many of the Republicans who now tout Reagan's accomplishments pummeled him at the time for 'betraying' his followers and their Cold War ideology."

Fred Kaplan in Slate wonders why conservatives believe that Ronald Reagan was resolute in conducting foreign policy.

Happy 200th Birthday, Abraham Lincoln

Wilfred M. McClay in Humanities discusses Lincoln's changing image.

The New Republic offers a variety of Lincoln-related articles from the past ninety-two years.

And Happy 200th Birthday, Charles Darwin

Scientific American publishes a collection of reports on Darwin.

Nicholas Wade in The New York Times writes about Darwin's reputation among biologists.

This Land Was Made for You and Me

"Since liberals turned against the war in Vietnam 40 years ago, they have struggled to prove that they love their country even while opposing most of the policies of its government. Some abandoned the effort altogether, preferring to don a fresh identity as global citizens. The philosopher Martha Nussbaum argued in 1994 that patriotism is 'morally dangerous' because it encourages Americans to focus narrowly on their own concerns and to minimize or disregard those of people in other lands. Meanwhile, conservatives led by Ronald Reagan defined patriotism as the need to stand tall against one's enemies and equated liberty with low taxes and a lightly regulated market. From the invasion of Cambodia to the invasion of Iraq, war protesters pleaded, 'Peace Is Patriotic,' but few on either side paid them much attention."

Michael Kazin in The Washington Post congratulates Barack Obama for reviving liberal patriotism.

"Hang-Jawed Hogtied"

"Their catalog-number name is 'a comment on the generic quality of modern music,' states Morrison. At 29, he’s the old man of a group that has created a sound mixing Delta blues cum Memphis jug-band antiquities, metallic fuzz-boxed guitar spikes and a dissonant crackpots-and-pans aesthetic. The entire ensemble plays kitchen utensils on one tune ('Ain’ It Nice'), and fret virtuoso Zac Sokolow, 19, plunks a toy piano with his toes while frailing a five-string banjo. They further insist on separating themselves from the herd: The cover of ’21A, their sole album, is made of burlap."

Michael Simmons in the LA Weekly profiles local band the 1921A.

Coda

The Los Angeles Times runs obituaries for musicians Clint Ballard, Jr., David "Fathead" Newman, Billy Powell, Hank Crawford, Tom Brumley, Dewey Martin, and Blossom Dearie.

"A New White Person Complaint Every Day of the Week"

"You have to take a fifty, it’s legal currency!"
"Ugh, Colonial Williamsburg does not have any cell phone reception at all."
"What am I supposed to do with four Starbucks cards that each have less than $2?"

Enjoy a glass of White Whine.

The Sheldon Conundrum

"The Big Bang Theory updated itself by making its protagonists into physicists and tossing in wheezes like the spherical cow joke—the kind of in-joke that only a science audience would even get. The tangles of equations on Sheldon and Leonard's apartment whiteboard are an actual ongoing problem written for the show by a UCLA physics professor, and there's talk of Nobel physicist George Smoot making a cameo on the show. It's a series laughing with geeks, not at them—and it's humor that finds its perfect vehicle in the geekiest of neurological conditions."

Paul Collins in Slate wonders if The Big Bang Theory's Sheldon Cooper has Asperger Syndrome.

The Path of Progress

"They bundled and sold sub-prime mortgages, took their profits, and then left others holding portfolios full of worthless, even toxic, paper. This was exactly the kind of behavior that Brandeis despised. He believed that it was one thing for an individual to put up capital in risky ventures, playing to win but prepared for failure. But he saw the bankers of his time dodging failure by manipulating the marketplace at the expense of smaller entrepreneurs and consumers."

In the midst of the current economic difficulties, Melvin I. Urofsky in The New York Times looks back to Louis D. Brandeis's 1914 book, Other People's Money, and How the Bankers Use It.

Obscure Light

"'We sell a lot of records, but somehow just hearing that you've sold so many records doesn't hit you quite as much as when a lot of people call you up and are obviously really broken up because you've died.'"

August Brown in the Los Angeles Times writes an obit for psychobilly progenitor and Cramps singer Lux Interior.

I'm Livin' at a Pace that Kills

Tyser presents the David Lee Roth Soundboard.

"Right of the Left and to the Left of the Right"

"'He was the most philosophical-minded of the American historians,' said the political historian Paul Berman, a writer in residence at New York University. 'He was always trying to get at the big questions, about heroism, virtue and the conflict between utopian aspirations and the disappointments of life. His work was a kind of ongoing meditation.'"

William Grimes in The New York Times writes an obit for historian John Patrick Diggins.

Making Amendments

"Hiram Johnson and other reformers who introduced initiative amendments to California early in the 20th century wanted to supplement--and, yes, sometimes circumvent--the Legislature (with its time-consuming processes of deliberation and compromise), but they didn't want to replace it altogether. However, when constitutional amendment by initiative is as easy as we've made it, that's the effect. Why would any interest group with enough money to fund signature gathering and a campaign not prefer initiative amendment to legislative amendment?
"Recent history shows that groups understand this and increasingly opt for initiative amendments without presenting their ideas to the Legislature. Indeed, there has been a 30% increase in initiative amendments in the last decade."

In the Los Angeles Times, Edward L. Lascher, Jr., Floyd F. Feeney, and Tim Hodson call for changing how California amends its constitution.

February Made Me Shiver

Kyle Munson in the Des Moines Register marks the fiftieth anniversary of the deaths of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J.P. "the Big Bopper" Richardson.

The "Reformed Reformer"

"'Earl Warren used to say you start when the first snow hits the Sierras in the fall,' Brown said, explaining his timing for the campaign. 'My father told me that.'"

Michael Finnegan in the Los Angeles Times reports that Jerry Brown plans to run for governor of California in 2010.

Darkness There, and Nothing More

"'Anxiety,' though, 'was his childhood bedfellow,' Ackroyd says. Born in Boston in 1809 to Southern parents--traveling actors 'whose status was just a little higher than that of vagabonds'--Edgar was orphaned at age 2 when his father abandoned the family and his mother died of consumption; he was taken in and raised by friends of his mother. As a youth, he was described by some as having 'a very sweet disposition ... always cheerful.' It did not last long: 'Young Poe harbored a grudge against the world,' Ackroyd says."

Allen Bara reviews Peter Ackroyd's Poe: A Life Cut Short in The Baltimore Sun.