TIME, TIME, TIME THAT YOU LOVE. This is supposed to be Spring, but it's freezing around these parts. Further chronometric disorientation is provided by Marty Langeland at Dum Luk's, with a lovely essay on the non-existence of time.

AGAINST ORDERS. Every couple of years I haul out the Lester Bangs comp Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung for pleasure's sake. With each reading a little more melacholy accrues. Not so much over his early demise -- that's sad, but Bangs was in a way lucky (as Greil Marcus' pretended message from beyond the grave suggests) to be spared what we got after the deluge.

Bangs, as you may know, was the great chaos theorist of rock music. In the early 70s he glommed onto the nuttiest music he could find. He pleaded the case for Iggy back when Iggy was a joke. He championed the Godz because they were so totally fucked up, and after declaring mellow-rock king James Taylor "marked for death," he softened toward the guy just on the grounds of general fucked-upness ("Just look at him on the cover of One Man Dog, out in a canoe with his mutt, wearing a necktie even which is a cool move at this point in time. Or those pictures of him at the McGovern benefits, in an oversize sportcoat..."). When he loved artists, like Lou Reed and Richard Hell, he rode their asses mercilessly just for the snap- or smash-back; he asked Reed questions like, "When you recorded Berlin, did you think people would laugh at it?" Who would ask Reed anything like that now?

Bangs didn't want catharsis, he wanted agon, because he knew rock and roll was, or was supposed to be, the irritant from which came the pearls. Of course, too much can be made of this. One has to be careful about celebrating any life that was so quickly washed away by Darvon and Romilar. Self-destruction is not cool. Well, no, it is cool, actually, much cooler than spa treatments and star treatment certainly, but once you adopt that yardstick you find that that the life by which you measure it gets smaller every day, until it's roughly the size of a cemetary plot. Which is why Iggy himself finally had to turn against his own personal tide and stop beating his brains, beating his brains, with liquor and drugs. And maybe why I got the feeling, riding one night in another van full of gear out of town and hearing on the radio news of Kurt Cobain's death, and hearing all around me people asking why, and hearing a voice in my head asking "why not," that I myself got the idea to get out of the game.

Still, this paradox obtains: moderation can get out of hand. Everything in our public life has tended toward an increase in order for a number of years, and while we all enjoy the benefits, and are lectured on several bases that going even a hair in the other direction would most hurt the most vulnerable among us -- the poor, the weak, the children -- we have to acknowledge that this civic rehabilitation has not been without cost. To stay with the topic just a little, if you think concerts are as good now as when people were getting routinely fucked up, you're dreaming. I am tempted to cite Bill Hicks ("You think the Beatles weren't high when they made 'Yellow Submarine'? They had to scrape Ringo off the ceiling for that one!"). But I am averse to the argument from authority. I would only suggest you look at the record, or at the records.

I remember when you couldn't go to an outdoor classical concert in New York without hearing the announced name of the corporate sponsor booed lustily by the crowd. (This was well before you had to have a pass to get onto the Great Lawn to see the likes of Dave Matthews.) I was reminded of this by Bangs' essay about a 1977 Tangerine Dream concert at Avery Fisher Hall (!!), at which event spectators screamed obscenities at celebrity DJ presenter Alison Steele the Nightbird -- and we liked Alison Steele! Bangs himself, on assignment and cough syrup, treated the event as an occasion for psychedelic ramblings, judging the unruly crowd and his hallucinations superior as subjects to the music (though of that he was neither unmindful nor ineloquent). "So finally, picking up my coat and lugging my clanking cough-syrup bottles, I push my way through the slack and sprawling bodies -- out, out, out into the aisle. As I am walking up it, I am struck by an odd figure doddering ahead of me, doubled over in ragged cloth and drained hair. I don't trust my Dextromethorphaned eyes, so I move closer until I can see her, unmistakably, almost crawling out the door... a shopping bad lady!" Again, one can make too much of it, but that sounds like a pretty good show to me.

Just today I picked up this message from my old pal Lach:

I went out this week to a local music venue (doesn't matter which one, that's not the point) and was asked for ID at the door. Now, this alone pisses me off as I don't drink. If I order a whiskey, ID me, but why do I have to be 21 to hear a singer/songwriter perform? Anyway, what happened next astounded me. The door guy wanted to swipe my license through an electronic reader and download the information into the scanner! What the fuck?!? Did you know NYS licenses carry info like your social security number, address, tel. no., etc? Identity theft potential aside, what an extreme invasion of privacy just to hear music. The bar manager said that the police pressured them into using the device...

Giuliani, that fuck, knew what he was doing when as mayor he strictly enforced the City's ancient cabaret laws, and Bloomberg, that cunt, knows what he's doing, too, with this shit. Order's a popular electoral gambit. People squawk when you hit them up for tax money, but applaud your sense of responsibility when you dig your entrenching tool into the pleasure centers.

When you read, as any ordinary internet trawler will, fulsome odes to the iPod and the pay-per-view concert, please try to keep in mind that things were once way more fucked up. And seriously consider whether that means they were worse.

DON'T DREAM IT, BE IT. "While Saletan cites my 'Here Come the Brides,' he doesn’t talk about the most potentially stable form of multi-partner union: a man and two bisexual women. That union does reduce jealously, and also points to the potentially powerful bisexual constituency for multi-partner unions."

Stanley Kurtz has obviously given this a lot of thought. After a couple of shoulder-rubs and some white wine, I bet we find him living full-time in his summer house, following the ways of Gor.

KEVIN BACON IN ANIMAL HOUSE, PART 3,498: You might add this to the Ole Perfesser's list of failed anti-war predictions: we didn't predict producers of Iraq TV comedy programming would be gunned down in the streets.

When this kind of thing happens in The Netherlands, of course, it means the country is going to hell.

Remain calm! All is well!

GENIUS, I TELLS YA! The appointment of Ben Domenech is a brilliant if cynical move on the Washington Post's part. On the evidence of his first posting, the Red America blog will contain the sort of Fantasy Football you can get at a million other crappy rightwing blogs: Republicans are shown to rool, while Democrats are posited to drool. There is even that staple of the rightwing blog, the Questionable Anecdote (about how liberals don't understand their own film references), and a clove of conventional wisdom (some Republican legislators spend as much as Democrats!) to give the dish a soupcon of high-mindedness.

Any one of a million conservative bloggers could have written the same thing every bit as badly. But because it appears at the Post site, right at the heart of the Death Star, it becomes important, at least to those who share Domenech's politics. "The moonbats will go nuts, I promise you," exults Michelle Malkin. "WaPo Surrenders to the VRWC!" cries Jeff Goldstein, fist clenched and raised. Etc. It's pretty much like when The Clash appeared on "Fridays" and Joe Strummer had a mohawk and a boombox.

Now all those timewasters who spend their days mega-dittoing Michelle and Glenn and Eugene et alia will flock daily to Red America to see Ben Sticking It To Da Strawman. And the Post gets credit for their traffic, and can tell its advertisers that the Post's reach is broader than ever, and innoculated against any mass-defection, in the coming Bloggy Revolution, of such rubes as still read newspapers.

As little as it takes to enrage them, it takes so much less to make them happy.

TIME AWAY. Appy polly loggies for the gap in posting. Like the devil, I went down to Georgia, on a long-weekend visit to editor Martin and his family. Their little slice of heaven is best described by themselves, here, but I will say that, contrary to the impression I often give of myself, I always love going down South, where people are unfailingly polite and the pulled pork is like God intended. Down Kingsland way, I also enjoyed Spanish moss, cypress, wisteria, bourbon, and the tannin-brown waters of St. Mary's River.

I didn't look at the internet the whole time, and I guess nothing much changed -- in fact, I see the Ole Perfesser is still calling people traitors as if it were 2003. Or 1954. One of the benefits of making fun of people who never learn anything is that you can go away for a long while and when you come back, they're still idiots.

WHAT CORPORATE-CHURCH DOMINATED MEDIA? Well, Tom Cruise got the "South Park" Scientology episode pulled.

Come to think of it, "South Park" recently buckled to the Catholic League on the bleeding Virgin Mary episode, too. Looks like there are indeed limits to the show's famously limitless irreverence.

You realize, of course, that if Barbra Streisand and Alec Baldwin had tried that kind of arm-twisting, you would have heard Glenn Harlan Reynolds screaming all the way from Bumfuck, TN.

POGUE MAHON. A reader points out that the leprechaun on today's National Review masthead looks gay. Oh, yeah? Well, Allan Bloom was still a fine American, pal!

Anyway, St. Paddy's is celebrated at Nat Rev, as you might expect, by a Scotsman bitching that the Irish are not authentically Irish enough to suit him. (Maybe he's a Crunchy Conservative!) Said Scot also seems to think that "fine, honest, unpretentious Dublin pubs... 'renovated' to look like the fake Irish pubs you might easily find in places such as Frankfurt Airport" are an example of "postmodernism." Really? Sounds like American-style, tasteless capitalism to me -- but of course, except for Dreher's hippies, National Review is in favor of that sort of thing, so the Scot is obliged to use the conservatively-correct swear word "postmodern" instead of the right one. What a horrible way to have to go through life; I hope they pay these poor dolts well.

Oh, and the NatRevvers do spare a few tears for a colleen done doort by the fookin' RA, but only as a lead-in to one of most hilarious Bush blowjobs of all time:

Ah, but here President Bush reveals his moral depth. He grasps how one of the fundamental lessons of Sophocles’ Antigone applies to this case: in a democracy the purpose of the state is to safeguard the dignity of each and every individual.

One likes to imagine Bush tentatively mouthing "Soffi -- soffi -- sofficle --" as his thought-balloon fills with corned beef and cabbage, frosty mugs of O'Doul's, and a leprechaun commanding him to invade Iran.

Finally there's this silly bint, who uses a War-on-Christmas lede to barge into the magazine, then just wastes everyone's time. OK, not entirely -- she does offer a solid contender for the Worst Multicultural Moment Contest:

One year at the Irish fair — to which the Scots also come with their Highland games — I brought along a Hispanic friend. After wandering the grounds watching the dancing, eating grilled bangers, and listening to the music, she remarked, "I didn't realize white people had culture!" And after being transfixed by a hot bagpipe player, she was hooked.

Have I been wrong all these years? Does a St. Patrick's Day parade really reflect white culture? Then Vive la Reconquista! Also, she closes, "In the sense that silly traditions keep the Irish in America from being more than just another pale face, the culture war is won." It is? It's over? Does that mean she and her idiot friends will stop bitching about homos in the movies and such like? I can't wait to check tomorrow and see if it's really true!

Till then, y'all have as authentic or inauthentic a St. P as you like. I don't think I'll have time to get to one of our few remaining Blarney Stones earlier than noon, which sort of defeats the whole self-loathing purpose, but I will taste at some point the Water of Life, and think of you as I do.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY. I see that in the new movie "She's The Man," Amanda Bynes pretends to be a boy. Why hasn't Stanley Kurtz written a column yet about how this will destroy marriage?

UPDATE. Kurtz does post, just to sympathize with fellow nut Charles Krauthammer for having gay friends ("It’s a position many are in").

I'm morbidly afraid of bees myself, but over the years I've pretty much gotten it under control.

ANIMALCULE AND HOMONOCULUS. Just read How The Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis. Riis is of course well under our American skin by now, partly because of the famous photos he took while assiduously documenting the slum conditions of lower Manhattan as a pioneer photojournalist of the late 19th Century. (One of my old bands, Lancaster County Prison, used his photo of Bandit's Roost for the back cover of our first album.) Riis was Danish, and from all I can tell his English is largely self-taught; his prose is stiff, but his style beautifully suits the earnestness of his mission and temperment. Here is a lovely example from his autobiography, The Making of an American, in which Riis, who flailed through several occupations before dragging himself upon the perch of Reformer, describes the issue of a job peddling furniture in upstate New York:

I got home in time to assist in the winding up of the concern. The iron-clad contracts had done the business. My customers would not listen to explanations. When told that the price of these tables was lower than the cost of working up the wood, they replied that it was none of their business. They had their contracts. The Allegheny man threatened suit, if I remember rightly, and the firm gave up. Nobody blamed me, for I had sold according to orders; but instead of $450 which I had figured out as my commission, I got seventy-five cents. It was half of what my employer had. He divided squarely, and I could not in reason complain.

"I could not in reason complain" -- Riis is an accommodating soul, and as he accommodated his employer's needs with his own, notwithstanding the wretched, disadvantageous state in which that bargain left him, in How the Other Half Lives Riis similarly accommodates the outrage of slum misery to what he takes to be the American bargain, that is, assimilation as the price of human dignity. The inhumanity of the tenement was to Riis a result of disorder, and for him the chief disorder was that of the inchoate, pan-European mob that peopled the Fifth Ward and thereabouts:

The one thing you shall vainly ask for in the chief city of America is a distinctively American community. There is none; certainly not among the tenements. Where have they gone to, the old inhabitants?... They are not here. In their place has come this queer conglomerate mass of heterogeneous elements, ever striving and working like whiskey and water in o glass, and with the like result: final union and a prevailing taint of whiskey.

Riis' characterizations of the various unassimilated downtown ethnics are hard on modern ears. Among the Jews, "The old women are hags; the young, houris... thrift is the watchword of Jewtown, and of its people the world over." The "tractability" of the Italian is noted: "he is welcomed as the tenant who 'makes less trouble' than the contentious Irishman or the order-loving German"; also, "as the Chinaman hides his knife in his sleeve and the Italian his stiletto in the bosom, so the negro goes to the ball with a razor in his bootleg, and on occasion does as much execution with it as both of the others together." In every event these people are pictured as childish and prone to anima that overwhelm common sense, and on those occasions when common sense prevails, Riis sees the victory as much over the man's blood as over himself.

It is plain that Riis saw and drew this little world in the simplest terms, and simple also was his diagnosis and his prescription: he saw the slum itself as an agent of dissolution, and had faith (and some evidence) that the reformation of the slum would lead to the reformation of its inhabitants into something more, as he saw it, American. And lo, his work did help to reform the tenements, and good things did come from that.

Sociologically, we have to see Riis now as a primitive who succeeded, as all scientific pioneers do, by means of metaphor -- like the Leeuwenhoeks who found "animalcules" in water and began to dream of their relationship to the larger world. We who value the metaphor itself, and the record of progress of a human mind struggling to fathom the uncomprehended, can get still more from Riis. His chunky prose is a pleasure to me even when it eddies in sloughs of prejudice, and because its author is a good man looking not to slither comfortably along a Bell Curve but to find the harder way to truth, he often transcends the surly bonds of social work, and ascends to literature, carving a path for Dreiser (another blockish writer), Crane, Algren, Di Donato, and many another:

A man stood at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fourteenth Street the other day, looking gloomily at the carriages that rolled by, carrying the wealth and fashion of the avenues to and from the big stores down town. He was poor, and hungry, and ragged. This thought was in his mind: "They behind their well-fed teams have no thought for the morrow; they know hunger only by name, and ride down to spend in an hours shopping what would keep me and my little ones from want a whole year." There rose up before him the picture of those little ones crying for bread around the cold and cheerless hearth -- then he sprang into the throng and slashed about him with a knife, blindly seeking to kill, to revenge.

The man was arrested, of course, and locked up. Today he is probably in a mad-house, forgotten. And the carriages roll by to and from the big stores with their gay throng of shoppers. The world forgets easily, too easily, what it does not like to remember.

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.