SHORTER CRAZY JESUS LADY. Well my gracious, if I'd known President Bush would be spending all that money, I never would have voted for him -- but I still would have voted for his balls!

SHORTER ROD DREHER. Maggie Gallagher should love Crunchy Conservatives -- we hate fags too!

PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE. I see Dr. Mrs. Ole Perfesser has gotten into the gay-straightening racket. It takes a little effort to navigate her plausible-deniability screens, but readers of her husband's work will recognize the method.

We can say one thing for the group for whom Dr. Helen shills, the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality: it is less overtly homo-hating than competitors such as Love In Action. "We believe that clients have the right to claim a gay identity," quoth NARTH, "or to diminish their homosexuality and to develop their heterosexual potential."

This is new-age gay-straightening -- nonjudgmental and affirming (at least in the advertising!) -- and at first blush seems like a reasonable alternative for self-loathing same-sexers. One would like to give NARTH a break: after all, it's a drag being so negative all the time -- wouldn't it be nice to find one group of dehomofiers you could invite to dinner?

Unfortunately, under its fluffy spa robes NARTH has a sadly familiar political advocacy program: they think Washing the Gay Away should be taught in schools, and their position on gay marriage is simply that "social science evidence supports the traditional model of man-woman marriage as the ideal family form for fostering a child's healthy development" -- which I guess means no. (Ex-Gay Watch has much more, and much uglier, on NARTH.)

In other words, they're just a straight-up anti-gay group who will also do you a wash and rinse for a fee.

But their style is a keeper, I'll admit. They plead their cause in the name of a "multicultural society" and "tolerance." The merest opposition to their program of libidinal reengineering is plain persecution. They even have an official persecutor: the American Psychological Association, which has refused to endorse their bullshit -- and in the topsy-turvy world of conservative victimhood, that's the same thing as the Iron Maiden and the Thumbscrew and the Bridle.

Or should we say "objectively the same thing as the Iron Maiden and the Thumbscrew and the Bridle," because here we transition smoothly into a familiar Reynolds rap, only this time in distaff edition:

Well, the APA (American Psychological Association) is at it again playing the activist role rather than the social science one when it comes to homosexuality...

The beef? APA refused to give continuing-ed credits for a NARTH dequeering conference, and called the whole thing unethical.

A professional association making a professional judgement! What is this, Russia?

Here the Dr. falls into rhythm with NARTH's shimmy-dance: "Personally, I'm skeptical about turning gay people straight." Students of this sort of locution -- Personally, I'm all for equal pay for women -- know it usually ends up with what we call a double-reverse demurrer -- but some of these bra-burning kooks -- half of them couldn't land a man anyway! -- meant to turn the tables, though in this case the Dr. merely bruises her thigh on it:

But shouldn't the client be the one to choose, not the APA? The APA has decided that the answer is no.

Hello, my boy is a big fag and me and Lutiebelle decided to de-fag him but good. First I gotta ask: is your program approved by the American Psychological Association? It hain't? Shoot, Lutiebelle, guess'n we all gots to take dick up the ass! Th' APA has spoken!

The whole Dr. Mrs. post is full of laugh lines -- e.g. "How would the APA act if someone else were trying to shut down therapists who assisted formerly 'straight' clients with getting in touch with their 'gay' feelings?" (I hope we find out, because I think coupons for dick-sucking lessons would make a great gag gift for bachelor parties.)

But the important thing is that she is a worthy practitioner of her Ole Man's passive-aggressive schtick: for example, if the liberals complain of racism, respond that they're the racists because someone called you a cracker. Now we have professional gay-straighteners portrayed as champions of tolerance, and harried by the cruel APA. I admire their nerve, if nothing else about them.

DRY BUNK. Republican operatives are introducing the idea that the Bush Administration is acting like a stumble-drunk because it's a little overtired. Sympathetic saps are spreading the word.

Tired, my ass. I've heard that crap before -- in fact, I've used it before ("I'm okay, Ma, jus' really tired! I'm goin' right to sleep, bye!") Clearly the truth is that the Bush Administration is drinking again!

Surely you've seen that footage of the Administration fumbling with its governmental responsibilities? (It was on YouTube, but I guess they had to take it down.) And then word leaked about how their poll ratings had fallen into the crapper. You don't just drop something that important into the commode without a little hi-test in the tank, lemme tell ya. And then there are the embarrassing bruises to U.S. prestige...

Next week they'll tell us they're only fucking up because they recently switched to decaf.

JESUSLAND FOR REAL. Let's hear from the good people at Dakota Voice now that abortion has been effectively banned in their state:

First, many baby boomers need to reassess the legitimacy of their existence as demanded by their own moral imperatives. Baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1963 (Roe v. Wade), need to ask themselves if they were the first born (frequently unexpected and unwanted in that era), or the last or accidentally born (frequently unwanted in that era). If so, they would most likely not exist today had their parents been given a choice, nor would their children or grandchildren who so delightfully grace their dinner table. If the truth were known, many baby boomers and their prodigy should recuse themselves from the abortion debate. They are alive because of moral law and should not deny that same right to others. In other words, they should exercise an abortive silence in respect to their own existence...

Second, I will begin to consider that a woman has the right to make decisions about her own body only after prostitution has been promoted and legalized by the pro-choice movement. Both abortion and prostitution are products of sexual acts, often with lifelong consequences, and should not be treated differently...

Finally, scientists have made clear what life is and when it begins. In 1996 the world's newspapers proclaimed "Life on Mars" after discovering a fossilized nano-bacteria inside a meteor thought to have come from Mars. What if those scientists had found an embryo fossilized inside that rock? Would they have declared Mars a dead planet?

I know there are real newspapers in South Dakota, and citizens of all political persuasions who are not mentally retarded. But I think they will be eclipsed in the near term by such as Anton Kaiser, author of the coarsely-stitched prose monstrosity quoted above. Both his message and mode of expression seem a perfect fit for his time and place.

I always expected I'd be dead by the time it came to this. Well, I guess you can't win 'em all.

UPDATE. Another lovely story at the Voice:

"Truth For Muslims" to Deliver Texans a Biblical Response to Islam

John Marion, project director of Truth For Muslims, an evangelical Christian group, announced plans to reach more people in Texas with their message.

"Christians in Texas have told us they like our message," said Marion from his Virginia office near Washington, DC...

"We will mail our letters to Christians throughout the state"...

"The gospel is so different from the teachings of Mohammed, but not everyone understands how big the difference is between the two. I'm looking for more Christians in Texas to help me get the message out to people across the country."

After a while you realize that while the Truth For Muslims guys describe talking to many other Christians, there is no evidence that they have ever spoken to a single Muslim -- a good thing, probably, as I don't know how your average Joe Muhammed would react to statements such as "We are bringing the message of Christ to those who are spiritually dead" (though I note with interest that the American Muslim Association in North America has picked up their press release. Slow news day?).

DAVID HOROWITZ NAMES HIS PRICE. To my shock (maybe the Kathryn Lopez rim-job threw him off his game), David Horowitz almost addresses my long-unanswered question: Instead of trying to legislate conservative quotas at colleges, why don't rightwing critics of socialist Harvard, Yale, Columbia etc. just build their new Jerusalem at existing Bible schools like Bob Jones and Liberty University?

As my book shows, the idea that there are tolerant schools — by which I take it you mean intellectually diverse — is a delusion. Among the top 100 there are no such schools. The best a parent could do would be to send their child to Kenyon, where the faculty is still ninety percent Left (the norm) but the curriculum is traditional and probably quite decent. There is no market. This is because the academic professions are organized nationally, and therefore no school that wants to be competitive educationally is safe. The analogy would be, say, newspapers. Even such conservatively owned papers as the Wall Street Journal and the San Diego Union are liberal in their news and features sections because the journalistic profession — trained in journalism schools at Columbia and elsewhere run by Marxists — is left.

Did you get that? First, "there is no market" -- if, instead of talking about education, you're talking about prestige education -- "the top 100." Let us be clear about what Horowitz wants: not academic freedom, but more impressive names on the CVs of his right-wing colleagues. It's not about learning, it's about power.

I wonder if the conservative cowtown colleges know with what contempt Horowitz regards them?

Loved also the union-busting angle -- "the academic professions are organized nationally" -- and the slur on that sector of the Wall Street Journal devoted to excellent reporting rather than to the promulgation of crackpot fantasies.

MUCH, MUCH, MUCH, MUCH, MUCH SHORTER JEFF GOLDSTEIN: Sure glad I didn't make the mistake of attending Harvard!

DVD PARTY TONIGHT. Secretary. I’m always up for a good D/s love story, and while this is no Duel in the Sun, it does have spanking and modified pony girl action. I’d be inclined to leave it at that, but the filmmakers aren’t, so there are fantasy sequences, exotic set decoration, and a backstory of self-mutilation and familial and romantic disappointment to provide an explanation for folks who don’t get it. I understand the perceived necessity, but I sort of wish they’d just gone for it – particularly as James Spader and Maggie Gyllenhaal make the elemental situation entirely clear all by themselves. Of course, I also think someone should make a Bukowski movie that’s exactly like a crappy 70s porno with Bukowski dialogue. Or a film version of Albert Goldman’s Elvis: The Last 24 Hours, done in real time.

The Aristocrats. The pride-of-craft angle has been well-noted, and it’s fascinating to watch comedians, who for the most part are philosophical without being particularly thoughtful, rabbinically parse this ancient gag. (George Carlin is both philosophical and thoughtful. My favorite of his observations is, "Shock is just an uptown word for surprise.") The unspoken subtext here is the bottomless hostility of the professional comic. Though full of sexual activity, the eponymous joke is not the least bit sexy, but it is assaultive, and when rendered with Gilbert Gottfried energy it, as they say, kills. The famous and lucky comedians are cute enough about it, but the second-stringers, hollow-eyed and reeking of ancient flop-sweat, linger in my memory. Despite his celebrity, I would number among these Bob Saget. His nearly affectless telling of the joke seems almost like a confession, evoked by the pressure of long-buried shame.

GREAT MINDS THINK ALIKE. Cliff May:

In a conventional war, if one side has tanks, fighter jets, submarines and similar weapons, while the other side does not, who wins? The answer is obvious.

In an unconventional war, if one side has suicide bombers, license to kidnap, torture and violate the laws of war while the other side must refrain from deploying such weapons and abide by all the rules, who wins? The answer, I'm afraid, may be equally obvious.

Beavis and Butthead:

BUTTHEAD: Axl Rose versus a blade of grass.

BEAVIS: Well, I dunno. I mean, if Axl was real quiet and snuck up on the blade of grass...

BUTTHEAD: It'd still kick his ass.

MORE INTELLECTUAL MUSCLE-FLEXING AT THE CORNER. Jonah Goldberg:

IS IT ME? Or is Norman Mailer really, really overrated? I've always felt guilty for not having read more of him, but I've had to read the White Negro, his write-up of the Rumble in the Jungle and a couple other things. For research, I'm just now reading Superman Comes to the Supermarket and I find it awfully tedious and astoundingly pretentious.

It's you, Jonah.

People who know how to read are directed to The Executioner's Song, The Armies of the Night, Why Are We In Vietnam? Miami and The Siege of Chicago, etc.

UPDATE. I am sorry to be reminded that Terry Teachout doesn't much like Mailer, either. (Goldberg seems to feel justified that a smart guy once came to a conclusion similar to his uninformed own, and by now has probably turned his attention to his tea-time McFlurry.) As an actual critic, Teachout is admirably specific about what bugs him in Mailer. A lot of what Teachout disdains, though, is actually what I admire; "romantic radicalism rooted in sexual mysticism" -- why, he could be talking about late Dreiser!

And Lord knows I'll take a writer "drunk on ideas" over the relative teetotalers at The Corner. That's the best defense of the old man I have to offer at present, through when Mailer passes I will probably fill several cocktail napkins on the subject. I will only add that, even if you think Mailer wrote one or two good novels and that everything else he did is shit, he has given us more than we are entitled to, and more than most can hope to achieve.

STILL MORE BLESSED RELIEF. A spruce piece of work by Doghouse Riley which, while here submitted for its formal excellencies*, does have its component of anger toward a scumbag utility boss and a rotten, inhuman system, so you may say we are getting slowly back to the social and political subjects that have made alicublog a cause for blinking unrecognition across our nation.

* Nabokov, when he taught Bleak House, would read to his classes the heartbreaking scene of Jo's death ("Dead, your Majesty...And dying thus around us every day"), and immediately afterwards remind the sniffling students, "This is a lesson in style, not in participative emotion."

BLESSED RELIEF. It seems everywhere I look on the internet today, I find new nadirs of imbecility. To dispel the sensation of choking on my own bile, I refocused on something perceptive, well-written, and beyond politics: Terry Teachout on the Venn diagram of being a musician and being a writer. On a more childish level, this guy is hilarious (hat tip to Treacher, of all people). Give either a look if you too could use a break from the numbing fusillades.

If not, come back later and I'll be swearing at retards again.

SHORTER ROSS DOUTHAT: Let's see if we can't get some poor saps to live in the cowtowns and make yummy food so us smart guys in the city can eat it. Oooh, that's crunchy!

(BTW I love, love, love the part about how Jesus didn't mean all rich people had to give up their possessions to follow him -- just that one poor sap! Maybe they should change the movement's name to You Go First Conservatism.)

I FIND IT HELPS SOMETIMES TO SPEAK TO THEM VERY SLOWLY AND DISTINCTLY. Tim Graham:

I've seen Crash, but not Hustle and Flow, but doesn't it seem there's great disagreement between Terence Howard's roles? In one, he's a slick Hollywood producer, disappointed that white boss Tony Danza makes him dumb down the black character in his sitcom. And in the other, he's a pimp trying to become a rapper trying to rhyme about "hos" instead of exploiting them.

It's... called.... act-ing... you... ass... clown.

SPEAKING OF IDIOTS. At the Crunchy Con site:

Homer Simpson is crunchy... Homer Simpson is emblematic of a large swath of America that still practices the conservative virtues Kirk touted as best they can in the midst of a culture and system that inherently handicaps those virtues.

Then:

Homer Simpson is NOT crunchy. He is the writers' stand-in for a crunchy, existing solely to be used to ridicule anyone with even the slightest conservatism in his life and values!... Want to find a good crunchy con? It's much more likely to be Ned Flanders — that's right, Ned, "okely-dokely" Flanders. A truly devout religious man, devoted to (deceased) wife, and family, running his own business.

One thing you have to give Janet Reno: she would have incinerated these morons days ago.

UPDATE. Jesus fucking Christ: "But oh-man-oh-man-oshevitz is Caleb off his rocker on this one. Bruce is right in so many ways. Homer is a consumerist qua consumerist..." Along with his other lazy columns about the Crunchy Cons, this is proof that Goldberg could defend 2+2=4 and wind up losing the argument.

SURROUNDED BY IDIOTS. John Podhoretz steers suckers to the Ole Perfesser's tent:

IT'S only March, but I can guarantee you there won't be a more exciting or inspiring book published this year than "An Army of Davids"...

Reynolds is so excited by the empowerment of the individual that he connects the technological improvements offered by the computer to the technological improvement of humanity. The advancement of knowledge means that in the next 30 years, we will be better and stronger and smarter due to the integration of high technology into our bodies and minds.

I'd say we could achieve the same end now, by replacing these guys' brains with coffee roasters.

"An Army of Davids" is infectiously optimistic. There are reasons to argue with its optimism, to mistrust Reynolds' always-look-on-the-bright-side-of life tone. But it's amazingly pleasant to read a provocative and thought-provoking book that doesn't say the present stinks and the future will be worse.

It's the feel-good hit of the slummer! Even rightwing blood-brotherhood doesn't explain this abject puffery, but that last paragraph might: as the conservative movement goes increasingly mad (to which spectacle Podhoretz recently had a front-row seat as an appalled spectator at Brother Dreher's Traveling CrunchyCon Show), these guys figure it might buy them a few more hours' grace in the control booth if they distribute happy shiny texts about how Garageband is going to start the Groovy Revolution.

Meanwhile this quote, from one Patrick Goldstein and circle-jerked by Ed Driscoll and the Perfesser, tells those of us who actually know how to read what's wrong with all this blogger-knows-best bullshit:

Even though the show ["American Idol"], for me, is little more than a tedious night at a karaoke bar, its contestants offering second-rate renditions of familiar pop fluff, it has captured the imagination of its young, largely female audience. They don't need any gray-bearded critics to tell them what they like — they prefer creating their own stars...

Our bottom-up culture puts little premium on subtle craft, not to mention expert opinion, whether it's Olympic judges or academy members. Young people want to be a member of a group, encouraged by their peers.

What's the opposite of elitism? Hint: it has to do with the elevation of the admittedly imbecilic over that stuff those stupid smart guys, with their expertise and their standards, say is "good." I mean, gray-bearded critics think this old black-and-white movie about this old dude who says "Rosebud" is better that Big Momma's House II. I mean, when they made the dude fat at the end, why didn't they made him black and a chick too? Guess they didn't have the technology. Losers.

I didn't like "Greed is Good," but "Crap is Good" is even worse.

POST-OSCAR RIGHT WING STYLEE: PAJAMAS MEDIA STRIKES BLECH! Let's see how the coolio conservatives responded to this year's Oscars:

Beginning to wonder how long it will take Jon Stewart to crack an anti-Bush joke.

[snip]

Waking up with George Clooney next to me would make it very easy for me to get out of bed.

[snip]

And so far, [Jon Stewart]'s making fun of Hollywood's devotion to the Democrats. So, I'll say good for him.

[snip]

"A return to glamour" is tonight's theme, says host John Stewart. Has he seen any of tonight's nominated movies? I know I haven't

[it was a joke, tanning-bed boy! snip!]

Clooney's award was payback for being robbed for his performance in "Return of the Killer Tomatoes["].

[snip]

YAY!! For March of the Penguins!!!!!! A well-deserved victory.

[snip]

J-Lo just spoke of forgiveness and resentment in a very angry tone: Which do you think she (and the Academy) really wants us to feel tonight?

[snip]

I love Sam Jackson, but hate it when Hollywood jerks itself off. Bo-ring.

[I should interject that there are intentional jokes embedded in this horseshit, in which right-wing bloggers pretend to be Hollywood celebrities making catty comments about the participants. Follow the link and prepare to laff ("prepare" meaning, in this case, drink a bottle of Jack Daniels and get Gilbert Gottfried to read it to you). snip!]

Robert Altman is the most overrated director in Hollywood history. There, I said it. He's so beloved by actors because he over-indulges them.

[fuck you. I mean, snip]

Compare Witherspoon's speech to Julia Roberts's from a couple years back. The gal has class.

[snip]

Here's the statistical rundown: Crash, with a theatrical box office of $53 million, is the lowest-grossing Oscar winner since "The Last Emperor," going all the way back to 1987. And that's in non-inflation adjusted numbers. The average box office for all of this year's Best Picture nominees was the lowest since 1984. I believe history will mark this year as the beginning of the end for traditional, big-studio Hollywood. Of course, I could be wrong. Of course, some say that year transpired long ago.

[Very astute. And what might the sell-by date be for a combine of Republican bloggers playing at red carpet? snippety snip snap!]

If you really want to know how these people think, why not go straight to Free Republic ("Looks like Brokeback got rear ended") and be spared the pathetic attempt to be hip?

TIME-LAG OSCARS PART SIX. Stewart is funny still, but he has also sort of faded into the background – in other words, he’s an emcee, not a star galvanizing the event. Makes sense in an Oscar year of small Hollywood movies. Montage films, elaborate gags, nice moments in the acceptance speeches, and a brisk clip – why, you’d almost think they planned it this way.

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY. I’m losing the pool, but I’m a traditionalist so I like that one movie is sweeping the craft awards.

BEST ACTRESS. First time I saw her was in Freeway. Then I saw Election. Then she made a lot of movies that I had no interest in seeing, though I peeked at them because she was in them. I thought she was wasting her talent, but I’m sure she was just taking such opportunities as arose to build her audience and her power. Her speech looks and sounds like pleasant treacle, but her comments about her family and her emphasis on T-Bone Burnett show some spine, taste, and wisdom. I haven’t seen this one yet, but I will now.

BEST ADAPTED SCRIPT: Larry McMurtry has a good gig. His dual academic/redneck cred makes it possible for him to resist all kinds of pressure in Hollywood. And he uses it well here. "All are contributors to the survival of the culture of the book." Hear, hear, cowboy.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY. Quoting Brecht? ‘Sokay, America went to bed already.

BEST DIRECTOR: I liked Crouching Tiger etc. Lee's tribute to "all the gay men and womens" is very sweet, partly for being rote. Not having seen The Hulk I don’t have a full read on his artistic personality, but I’ll go to the theatre next week and get more information. Hey, Oscar is doing his job!

BEST PICTURE. Whoa. Big coup! Newspapers full of Oscar ink! Was Oscar scared? Who is Paul Haggis? Is this picture The Greatest Show on Earth, Chariots of Fire, Driving Miss Daisy, or An American in Paris, In the Heat of the Night, All the King’s Men -- that is, a cop-out or a split decision? Again, you’d almost think they planned it.

Now time to clean up my own vomit! Thank you, get home safe!

TIME-LAG OSCARS PART FIVE. BEST SONG. "How come they’re the most excited people here tonight?" Because they think it’s the Grammys. We’ve come a long way from "Sweet Leilani."

BEST SOUND EDITING. Thanks, sound editors everywhere say, for giving us a novelty film.

DEAD GUY MONTAGE. Clooney was a good pick to intro – if he’s not the appropriate new Hollywood guy to bid adieu to the old, who is? I’m sorry there is apparently no one left to mourn, with applause, Moira Shearer and Teresa Wright, and that John Mills has to take runoff from Chris Penn. But hard workers in every industry die every day, and being applauded or mentioned or not, "handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now."

BEST FOREIGN FILM. I picked this one! It had commercials! I saw them on DVDs! It looked heart-rending!

BEST FILM EDITING. Which one had boxing? That was Cinderella Man, so I picked it in the pool… Crash? Was there boxing? I have to go to the movies more.

BEST ACTOR: Omigod, I just realized Hillary Swank has two Oscars. They came close together, not as close as Katharine Hepburn’s first two, but pretty close. Will she wait twenty-odd years for her third? Is the lack of good female roles in movies the modern equivalent of "box-office poison"? Halle Berry’s coming out with another X-Men movie, which will be crap. Laura Linney can’t catch a break casting-wise. I hear Philip Seymour Hoffman was pretty good in Capote.

UPDATE. I always make this mistake: Hepburn won her second Oscar thirty-three years after her first.

TIME-LAG OSCARS BEER PART FOUR. ART DIRECTION: How do you portray the "climate of fear of McCarthyism" in art direction? With sketches! Keanu should be appointed Oscar Presenter Partner for life. I’ve never seen him better.

SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS MONTAGE. I love the eazy-flow music they use to bring out Samuel L. Jackson, but I really wish they’d mix things up by giving him something like the Yale Fight Song. Now what is Hollywood, that chancred whore, trying to tell us? They call me Mister Hollywood – and you shouldn’t hate me for making you think with movies you don’t go see! You like some of it, don’t you? Like when Jack Nicholson pushes those dishes off the table? That was cool, right? So gay cowboys are just like Tom Joad! Well, it’s Chuck Workman, probably, and it’s a nice warm bath of righteous both self- and unhyphenated for all us rebels & dreamers! And Jon Stewart deflated cannily! And whatshisname the President re-inflated deadly-ily! Uncomfortable truths! And please go to movie theatres, where you get "sound coming at you from all directions" (I thought they closed the Selwyn) and New Orleans and hey, wake up people, here’s Salma Hayek!

BEST SCORE: The best one of these medleys I ever saw starred Liberace, who opened the proceedings by announcing, "I made my greatest contribution to the movies years ago – I stopped making them!" and then pounded the keys to lead the Oscar Philharmonic in classics like Theme from "Beastmaster". Still, I won’t let nostalgia prevent me from acknowledging the good work on auditory view, though I doubt that any of these scores is improved by having Itzhak Perlman carry the melodies on his fiddle (and wrapping it all up with a cute little flourish)… oh great, more homosexualist propaganda and by a foreigner yet! Somewhere Roger L. Simon is chewing the rim of his fedora.


BOMBAST MONTAGE. Jake Gyllegehuillahall says, "there’s no place to see them like on the big screen" and the audience pat their palms as if they don’t want to look too eager to drag us wretches into the cineplexes for their benefit. Then another Chuck Worman joint. Point taken, and thank Skerner God of Wood the Hollywoodians have King Kong and The Matrix to remind people that you can still have a good time stoned and watching things go kablooey, and you won’t even get ringworm by leaning your head back on the theatre seat.

BEST SOUND MIXING: You get the difference between this and Sound Editing, right? This is basically Best Sound. They split off Sound Effects Editing years ago because… fuck, I forget why. King Kong! I might win this pool if everyone else in my office had a bad hangover on Friday.

ROBERT ALTMAN! Holy fuck! Robert Altman! Even Streep and Tomlin doing a stupid bit about overlapping dialogue (Hello? Howard Hawks?) and improvisation (hello Cassavettes?) can’t fuck this up. Or can it? Shouldn’t they be smoking joints? Big, fat spliffs would have sewn up the urban youth demo. What a pleasure, though, to see him honored. But what’s the ornery old coot gonna say? "I thought this award meant it was over…" Then he tells what he’s up to. Then he tells about his next movie. "It’s not over." And "to me it’s just one long film." Well, yes, auteurist that I am, I cannot disagree. Nice analogy of the sand castle. "Have a drink, watch the tide come in, and the ocean just takes it away… I’ve built about forty of them…" And a nice "one more thing… eleven years ago I had a heart transplant… the heart of a young woman, I think in her late thirties… I think I’ve got about thirty years left." God, I hope so.

ROBERT ALTMAN CONT. What did Robert Altman do? Worked in almost every conceivable genre: detective story, gambling drama, service comedy, space movie, westerns, English murder mystery, L.A. murder mystery, musical, filmed theatre, etc… Illuminated everything he touched. Let actors breathe. Let the soundtrack breathe. When Hollywood funding was not forthcoming he scraped it up himself and kept working. Made beautiful images. Warren Beatty dying in a snowbank. Helicopters descending on Los Angeles. The Last Supper in a Korean MASH tent. Michel Gambon smashing away a rocks glass. "Rufus Rastus Rawlston Brown, whatcha gonna do when the rent comes ‘round?" "Y’all settle down now – this isn’t Dallas, it’s Nashville."