Pete Lit

Karl Malden

For me, there's no greater testament to the greatness of Karl Malden than his quietly electrifying performance in On The Waterfront, and particularly the unforgettable scene in the video above, which moves me even more than Brando's famous "I coulda been a contender" scene.

A.O. Scott has written a fine appreciation of Malden (who died this week, at age 97) which is very much worth reading as well. I might just have to rent A Streetcar Named Desire today, on this rainy holiday.

"Steve"

 

Steve drove all night, thinking he was getting somewhere.

 

I'm quite delighted today to see the publication of my one-sentence story "Steve" (yes, that's it above, in its entirety), as illustrated on a Post-It Note by the cartoonist Arthur Jones. The premise is simple: write a one-sentence story, email it to Arthur, and he'll decide whether or not to illustrate it. As his illustrations tend to be more lighthearted in tone, I appreciate the dark edge he gave to mine. He did a great job.

So who's the judicial activist, exactly?

The well-worn refrain is that liberal judges are activists who are bent on dictating social policy, while conservative judges respect precedent and always defer to the decisions of elected officials who are accountable to the electorate. Wrong.

On another point, the (Ricci) ruling underscored the emptiness of the “judicial activist” label that Republicans like to use in debates over nominees to the federal courts, including Judge Sotomayor. In the firefighters’ case, she actually refused to second-guess the city’s decision — an act of judicial restraint. It was the court’s conservatives, including Chief Justice John Roberts, who voted to overturn the decision of an elected government.

Liberal or conservative, all judges are activists sometimes, and status-quo conservators at other times. Sotomayor may have often been an activist in her rulings, but that's not the case here. To dismiss her as a "judicial activist" is simple-minded and just plain wrong.

From sublime to schlock

Nice (and exasperating) then-and-now series: Demolished! 11 Beautiful Train Stations That Fell To The Wrecking Ball (And The Crappy Stuff Built In Their Place). Particularly galling are the Chicago examples of Grand Central Station and the Illinois Central Depot (pictured above), both of which were demolished decades ago for vacant lots (in the South Loop at Harrison & Wells and Roosevelt & Lake Shore Drive, respectively) which still remain undeveloped. The Chicago and Northwestern Station was a great loss, too, though at least there somebody bothered to build something (albeit something hideous) in its place. In retrospect, it's a minor miracle that Dearborn Station is still standing.

(Via Boing Boing.)

Maddie is a punk rocker

Move aside, Sheena. If any aspiring and very generous punk bands would like to provide free instrumental backing to her vocals, YouTube glory may be imminent.

No No No No No

White House drafting indefinite detention order

This is NOT the sort of thing we voted for in November. This is nothing more than a continuation of Bush's abhorrent status quo, and if the majority of voters really wanted unfettered executive power such as this, we would have voted McCain into office. If we really want to set an example for the rest of the world and show our commitment to liberty and personal freedom, giving the executive branch the unilateral power to detain terror suspects indefinitely without trial is absolutely NOT the way to do so. I don't care if the executive order can be rescinded at any time - merely enacting it sets a dangerous precedent, particularly for the next paranoid conservative to occupy the Oval Office.

"Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory."

In 1984, Winston has just had his first rendezvous with Julia, but he's not exactly in love. Hell, he's not even in lust. As she's standing naked before him, he's thinking not of any of the usual things, but how her licentiousness has the potential to undermine the Party. Later, after they've finished (Orwell having dispatched their act with the remarkably understated single line "This time there was no difficulty"), Winston further reflects on what his sleeping lover represents.

The young, strong body, now helpless in sleep, awoke in him a pitying, protecting feeling. But the mindless tenderness that he had felt under the hazel tree, while the thrush was singing, had not quite come back. He pulled the overalls aside and studied her smooth white flank. In the old days, he thought, a man looked at a girl's body and saw that it was desirable, and that was the end of the story. But you could not have pure love or pure lust nowadays. No emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred. Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act.

What a hopeless romantic.

"Political Song for Michael Jackson to Sing"

I'm honoring Michael Jackson's life the best way I know how to...by listening to the Minutemen.

You are cordially invited to a brawl

The poet Langston Hughes was apparently both a socialite and ephemera buff, if this collection of rent party invitations from the Beinecke Library at Yale is any indication. Rent parties are a bygone pastime in which renters would throw a party at their apartment, pass the hat and with any luck take in enough money to pay the rent for the month. Though many of the invitations shown are for "whist parties" (whist is a card game, similar to bridge), I suspect that genteel title was cover for much more nefarious and entertaining goings-on. Which makes me really admire the party host from the invitation shown above, whose blunt honesty I find quite refreshing.

"Who controls the past...controls the future..."

Sharp passage here from 1984, as Winston Smith performs compulsory morning calisthetics under the watchful eye of the "telescreen" surveillance monitor.

The frightening thing, he reflected for the ten thousandth time as he forced his shoulders painfully backward (with hands on hips, they were gyrating their bodies from the waist, an exercise that was supposed to be good for the back muscles) - the frightening thing was that it might all be true. If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened - that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death?

The Party said that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as short a time as four years ago. But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated. And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed - if all records told the same tale - then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.' And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. 'Reality control', they called it: in Newspeak, 'doublethink'.

'Stand easy!' barked the instructress, a little more genially.

What is truth, exactly? Unfortunately, it's often nothing more than what official history says it is. Which is why I admire truth-tellers like Howard Zinn as much as I do.