tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-60161366899093795332024-02-08T14:27:00.345-05:00Nick DavisA Producer's Two CentsNickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12507822893204965252noreply@blogger.comBlogger56125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6016136689909379533.post-9181685830314496542011-12-30T13:48:00.000-05:002011-12-30T14:18:56.550-05:00A New LeafLife is short. At the end of it, we will look back and regret every single moment we spent wasted in dealing with our own mediocrity, rather than pushing toward our own brilliance.<br />
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To blame others is easy - to say it is THEIR mediocrity that holds us back, THEIR inability to see what is so apparent, THEIR fears and limitations - but isn't it really our own responsibility for granting them that kind of power over us? Isn't it up to us, to push toward the future we want? To surround ourselves with the kinds of people who will build the world we want to inhabit?<br />
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Through my work on Joe the Bloodhound, I recently met a remarkable woman named Rachel Jackson, who runs a group called Patriot Outreach/PPP Recovery Program. Her program serves all Service related warriors, law enforcement, DOD Military Contractors and their families, and she's just begun working with Joe. She wants to help train returning military personnel in the art of working with dogs and other animals to locate the missing.<br />
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Think about that for a second. She's helping the returning soldiers, many of whom have PTSD or other challenges in adjusting to civilian life. She's helping family members with missing loved ones. And what's more, she's helping animals -- she's using dogs and other animals like horses in the searches, many of whom would basically be wasted otherwise, some of the horses, I kid you not, winding up in a glue factory.<br />
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So, while you're bemoaning your fate, ask yourself:<br />
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Is that a better way to spend your time than kicking the sidewalk because of the challenges inherent in 21st Century Life?<br />
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Rachel's recently started an online petition to help JOE THE BLOODHOUND go to series -<br />
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2400 people go missing in this country EVERY DAY - and as Rachel says, if the show becomes a series, Joe can help find some of them, ease their families pain, and shed valuable light on this hidden epidemic.<br />
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So please take a moment to sign her petition: http://chn.ge/tPu33T.<br />
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Or, by all means, keep kicking the sidewalk.<br />
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I for one just came back from the shoe repair store, where the man was nice enough to charge me only $8 for repairing a boot whose front was helplessly scuffed up. My hope for 2012 is to keep the shoe repair to a minimum.<br />
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Happy New Year to all.<br />
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<br />Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12507822893204965252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6016136689909379533.post-39770273846485578312011-11-22T17:50:00.002-05:002011-12-30T13:15:23.973-05:00JoeThere are two things I want to say about Joe Nick, who appears in JOE THE BLOODHOUND, our company's newest project, which airs Wednesday, December 7, on the Bio Channel, at 10 PM EST:<br />
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1. He does good. By which I mean: the work he does is an absolute good in the world. He looks for missing people, and who could possibly find anything wrong with that?<br />
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The horror of losing someone -- a child wandering off at the mall, a grandfather who forgets to take his meds and heads to the bus station, a teenager who never shows up to meet her friends at the movies -- that's where Joe's job starts, and he does it incredibly well. He's had over 250 cases, and in only one instance -- an instance that haunts him every day of his life -- has he been unable to find the missing person. He does good, and he does it great.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/B1LpjtbRp3s?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
2. He's a TV star. This one may be a little less subjective, but it's absolutely true. They say a great actor can entertain you by reading the phone book. Well, I'd pay to watch Joe search for a jar of mustard. He's that good.<br />
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So, the official info:<br />
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<i>For over 25 years Joe was a top K-9 cop with the New Jersey State police, using dogs to help find missing people and fugitives. Now that he's retired, he's still doing it.</i><br />
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<i>Joe's simple, direct, yet incredible passion for finding missing people will keep viewers coming back for more.<br />
<br />JOE THE BLOODHOUND airs Wednesday, December 7 at 10 PM EST on the Bio Channel. </i><br />
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Hope you can watch.<br />
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Nick<br />
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ADDITION TO ORIGINAL POST:<br />
A woman named Rachel Jackson, who runs PPP/Bring Them Home Now, an organization devoted to helping veterans, has started an online petition to help convince the networks to make JOE THE BLOODHOUND a regular series. Please take a moment to sign: http://chn.ge/tPu33T. Thanks.<br />
<br />Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12507822893204965252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6016136689909379533.post-78593211445806873012011-05-08T23:19:00.001-04:002011-05-09T02:15:54.261-04:00Mother's DayI give you, yet again...<br />
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May 14, 1972.<br />
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A day with an almost magical sound to it.<br />
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The second Sunday in a glorious May in a year in which our father would later be in Vietnam, the center of the world for killing and death and war, and something that seemed to be ripping everything in what it meant to be an American all to hell.<br />
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Willie Mays is coming to town. The best ballplayer around. Charlie Brown's favorite player, to say nothing of ours - the great center fielder for the San Francisco Giants. And we had tickets for Mother's Day. A game between us - the Mets - and the San Francisco Giants. We would get to see Willie Mays!<br />
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But then, suddenly, Mays has been traded to the Mets. And the tickets are for HIS FIRST GAME BACK IN TOWN - to play for the Mets.<br />
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Memory tells me that the boxscore the next day indicated that either 34 or 37,000 fans come out to Shea that afternoon.<br />
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Rainy.<br />
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Staub the grand slam in the first inning. Mays having drawn a lead-off walk, clapping his hands down the bases, the first to greet Staub when he reached the plate. (Lead-off? The man was 41 years old! And he'd always been, basically, a # 3 hitter. What was this?) <br />
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4-0 in the first. Cheering, pandemonium, bedlam. We were in the Mezzanine at old Shea and saw the ball all the way down the line away from us, just near that old 338 sign in right field.<br />
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Somehow - it all ellides - the Giants tie the score. And it's drizzling, and people are taking out weird thin pieces of orange plastic to put on themselves, crappy horrible ponchos - like thin slices of poncho - <br />
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And it's the fifth inning, and Mays is up again. (Oh my God. He must have come up one other time. What in the world did he do then?) <br />
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He lines a pitch to deep left, and it just barely clears the wall, and we are cheering and jumping up and down like crazy.<br />
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The rain, I guess, ended things somewhere in there -- though whether the game limped along till the 8th inning like Dad once said (it didn't)*, or the rains came down after 5 and the umps waved the tarp on, and then a long waiting game was played, and the energy seeped out of the stadium, and then finally the game was called - it kinda doesn't really matter, because the game was over, 5 to 4, Mays had hit a home run on Mother's Day to win the game and it all made Mom very happy.<br />
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Or wouldn't it be pretty to think so?<br />
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* I was wrong. The rains may have come, but the game was completed. Perhaps the Davis children were told that the game had ended and whisked out of the ballpark after the fifth inning..?Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12507822893204965252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6016136689909379533.post-11118878318111139012010-11-29T21:40:00.004-05:002010-11-30T08:51:02.633-05:00All Things Must Pass<i>It was 70 years ago today.... All his troubles seemed so far away.... Isn't it a pity?</i> *<br />
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Amid the incredible outpouring of Lennoniana, boomer tears, and general hagiography that is being unleashed on the culture these past few months, as we all celebrate and solemnize both what would have been John Lennon's 70th birthday, and, more creepily, the 30th anniversary of his shooting, I thought I would point out what is, to me, the very essence of John Lennon -- what makes him so interesting a figure, culturally and personally, not to mention psychologically.<br />
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It is, in my mind, an edit as powerful as David Lean's cut from Peter O'Toole blowing out the match ("the trick is in not minding it hurts") to the sunrise over the desert in <i>Lawrence of Arabia</i>. And one of the things that's interesting about the cut is that, unlike finicky Paul, John never seemed to take that much of an interest in things like song sequences or album concepts. But the juxtaposition here is stunning - and what does it mean?<br />
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It's on <i>Imagine</i>, Lennon's second solo album - and the album named after one of the great inspirational and anthemic songs in Lennon's (or anyone's) canon, the transcendently loving hymn to universal brotherhood. The seventh song I hapen to like even more than "Imagine" -- "Oh My Love," as simple and as sweet and honest a love song as you're gonna hear from anyone, any time. The voice is gentle, and again, the spirit is open - open to the world - 'my eyes are wide open' - and profoundly accepting of the world. 'My eyes can see.'<br />
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Cut To...?<br />
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The cruelest, most vicious personal attack song you can, well, imagine: "How Do You Sleep?" I don't care what he told Dick Cavett, that is NOT a song about himself. Or, to the extent that it is, it is also, quite obviously and painfully, an eviscerating attack on Paul.<br />
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How can the same man not only have written these two songs, so wildly different in nature, but decided to place them back to back on the album he recorded and released just as he was hitting his stride as a solo artist? And why have we, who have canonized the man practically out of all recognition, forgotten this edit? It's as if John were telling the world, "Oho! Oh, no! Ono! Don't make too much of the Imagine-all-the-people-living-for-today stuff. Don't forget I'm a right bastard." It's as if Obama had ended his campaign speeches by saying, "Yes - We - Can!" and then added, "You fucking assholes." It's the kind of thing that if it were done today, if someone put together an anthology of great John songs and ordered them that way, we would all have a serious 21st Century cow about it.<br />
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Yet he did it himself. He lulled us into this loving mood, then kicked us in the balls.<br />
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Thanks, John. Thanks a lot.<br />
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As must be clear, I am a bit of a Beatle nerd - I came by it very naturally and somewhat late in the game - it wasn't till my twenties that I started inhaling the stuff - and I've noticed something about John, and that song in particular.<br />
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You kinda have to be in a certain mood.<br />
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A year or so ago, at the crest of some Beatle wave, I made a playlist called "After Beatles" (Volume 1, if you want to be specific about it), which consisted of songs written by the Ex-Beatles after the breakup. It's a nice little 'what if' kind of thing, and has proved for some reason to be the perfect music to wash dishes to. And though I wasn't really conscious of it as I made the playlist, it tells a bit of a story and a pretty interesting one. It starts with Ringo's "I'm the Greatest," written by John, of course, a hilarious and fun song, with lovely comments on the whole Beatles thing - "I was in the greatest show on Earth/for what it was worth," then segues into John's "Imagine" before hitting two songs which seem to comment directly on the fate of our beloved group: Paul's 'Man We Was Lonely' and George's "Isn't it a Pity?" At that point, Paul comes back with his joyous if somewhat silly recent song, "Dance Tonight," an infectious litte ditty that grates on you the first time you hear it, even as you know you'll never get it out of your head.<br />
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And then, as if to reassert his dominance, John roars back with his big 'fuck you' to Paul. (Of course, I am not a crazy man - I am aware of the fact that it was I, not John, who, consciously or not, decided to have John roar back -- but the effect is of John himself storming back, almost as violently as he did on <i>Imagine</i>.) And guess what?<br />
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I skip it about 99% of the time.<br />
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Paul famously sang that John 'took [his] lucky break and broke it in two,' and the poor guy (richest man in show business, but poor Paul all the same) has taken a lot of heat for forcing the break-up, for not being nicer to Yoko, for being light and shallow, for being too easy on himself, for settling for entertaining when artistic and soulful were so close to his grasp -- but every once in a while, you kind of have to think: Jesus, Paul was lucky to get away from the guy. Let him spread his - you guessed it - Wings, and see how he could do on his own. And Paul did just fine.<br />
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In the end, of course, they were like brothers - in competition, always, but loving and bound together to the very end. What the two of them had - the four of them, really - none of us can ever really know. We can all just be grateful that they had it as long as they did. And whoever your favorite Beatle is, whatever you think of John's assholicness, or Paul's annoyingnes, or George's Georgeness, or Ringo's just plain Starkeyishness, or even if you've accepted that it was the four of them - greater than the sum of their parts - that made the music that shook the world - you do have to know a very simple truth:<br />
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We wouldn't have had it, not any of it, if not for John.<br />
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Rest in Peace.<br />
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* <i>to anticipate an obvious comment: as with the title, these are all adaptations or lyrics from songs written by the </i><u>other</u><i> Beatles</i>Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12507822893204965252noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6016136689909379533.post-39147441732761966772010-03-28T02:35:00.000-04:002010-03-28T02:35:40.570-04:00The Hall Of Underrated GeniusesA while back (if I was a different kind of blogger, I'd underline that phrase, and you could click on it and go find where), I talked about how bloggers all search (at least in the back of their minds) for that idea they can just go to, again and again -- Stuff White People Like, Julia Child's Recipies cooked by someone in a Nora Ephron movie, etc., etc. -- and I definitely feel like I know what mine would be: Things, or People, We all Admit are Great, but Which are in Fact Actually Underrated. Or, more simply: Hall of Underrated Geniuses. Or HUG, for short. (Think www.hug.com is taken? Shoulda gotten here in 1994...)<br />
<br />
And actually, 1994 was a high point for my latest inductee. Pulp Fiction. <br />
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Now, at the time, I was not a fan of him who we call QT. Not at all. When I saw Reservoir Dogs, I was probably basically just so consumed with jealousy that I remember, at the end, when the two guys blew each other away (is that what happened?), I remembert a tremendous wave of righteous and totally characteristic (for late 20s me, anyway) feeling of moral superiority rise up in me. As the screen went black and I sat, alone (ah! the late 20s!) in a movie theater, feeling the full effect of the totally disgusting scene I had just witnessed, I thought, "Aha! The guy has no heart! He hasn't lived! Stupid video geek!" -- and I basically dismissed him.<br />
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But Pulp Fiction -- Pulp Fiction came a couple years later, and I had mellowed, maybe, or gotten happier anyway -- and by the time I saw it I was married, or about to be, to someone who recognized Reservoir Dogs for what it was - a truly original and brilliantly structured screenplay, storytelling prowess that just doesn't fall out of a tree -- and so I went to Pulp Fiction much more willing to hear what it had to say.<br />
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And I loved it. From the moment that HUGE credit came down, I was totally hooked. (Had problems, as always, with Tim Roth's American accent, but nothing's perfect.) <br />
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Now, at the time, it was quite clear to me that Pulp Fiction was a REALLY GREAT movie, and I thought we all knew that. Sure, it wasn't going to win best Picture, and a lot of people, especially in older generations (like the man I was working for at the time), thought it was immature and immoral and insulting (?), but for the most part, it made such a splash that I was quite sure we would all come in a few years to simply know: this was a GREAT movie.<br />
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And yet -- "Fargo"? "Shawshank Redemption"? Puh-lease! <br />
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So, to cut to the chase -- the guy made Jackie Brown, which was quiet but fine and about a million times better than anything the Coen Brothers could touch - Kill Bill 1 and 2, both of which had things in it that haunt me to this day -- that 'silly thing' with Rodriguez which I didn't see but which probably isn't nearly as silly as they all say... and then Inglorious Basterds, which I just finished watching ten minutes ago and which is probably the most purely entertaining and gripping movie I have seen in years. And brilliant on so many levels. <br />
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Give it up for the guy. He's the best we have, and he's running on all cylinders right now. <br />
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And as it happens, it's still his birthday on the West Coast.<br />
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And what better present could he receive than this certificate:<br />
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OFFICIAL INDUCTEE, Hall Of Underrated Geniuses: Quentin Tarantino<br />
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Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12507822893204965252noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6016136689909379533.post-35144762060534895352009-12-28T23:35:00.000-05:002009-12-28T23:35:39.746-05:00Everything is not interestingTo the Buddhist, I guess, everything is interesting. And to a filmmaker, I think maybe that's true too. You can look at footage of a handyman and his watering can, and before long you're William Carlos Williams in your mind, making poetry out of the tiny. The watering can is the endless source of life, the water is God's blood, and the man -- hell, the man is me, the man is you.<br />
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But let's get real: as terrific as that attitude can be, in school especially, it can lead to a heck of a lot of problems. And sometimes I wish I'd been born with a little less of that "wonderful, childlike capacity" to find entertainment and fascination in the smallest, most mundane of human interactions.<br />
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Because guess what? When we're making things for an actual paying audience, we better put on that 'easily bored' hat, or two things happen:<br />
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1) We don't get our projects off the ground, because they bore the people with the ability to fund them;<br />
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and/or<br />
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2) We take forever to make our things.<br />
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I was stuck for most of the day doing a dangerous dance with #2 -- at work on a potentially solid commercial project about which I really can't say much other than it's an observational documentary series with an amazing setting and some terrific characters. <br />
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It's the kind of project where if I had thirty-five minutes of material to work with, I would make a two minute reel in a day and be thrilled with the end result. Instead, I have about twelve hours of material with which to work. The challenge is to watch it with ruthless eyes.<br />
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But it's hard. Because everything seems interesting.<br />
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Except it isn't. <br />
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Decisions, decisions...Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12507822893204965252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6016136689909379533.post-11243494102598611842009-09-06T12:28:00.003-04:002009-09-06T14:23:46.325-04:00They're All Greek to MeThis blog has been silent for a while, flummoxed in some ways by its having outlived its original intent: ie, to make sure Barack Obama got elected President.<br /><br />The Greek word for Idiot, John F. Kennedy was fond of reminding us, is someone not interested in politics. But I have to admit that after the sturm und Durang of last year's election, my lifelong distaste for politics got the better of me, and I decided, really, to stop paying attention to the goings-on in our National political discourse for awhile. I became, in a word, an idiot.<br /><br />I was dimly aware of the back and forth on issues like the pirates, gay marriage, the economy, the health care crisis, and even this absurd education speech scandal. But I didn't take any of it too seriously -- it would all work out, I assumed - Obama and his band of best and brightest would find a way to make it all work --<br /><br />But then, this morning on facebook, I found myself innocently commenting on someone's reposting of a rather vile Hitler=Obama video on YouTube. The friend who'd posted it had written "Where do you think this hatred ends? I am afraid to guess." And in response, instinctively, I wrote:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Let's just say it: if Obama leaves office alive, it'll be a miracle, almost as miraculous as this country electing him in the first place.</span><br /><br />And then I looked at what I'd written. And I thought, what am I trying to do, just cover my ass if someone does take a shot at the guy? Be able to say, "see, I warned you all"?<br /><br />Not good enough.<br /><br />It's time to get my head out of the goddamn sand again. I don't want to, God knows, but frankly if the unthinkable does happen, it will have been my fault (at least partially) if I've just been hiding out and letting other people fight all the battles. And yes, I'm busy with actual life and work and being a Dad and all that, but I am also, I hate to say it, a member of society. And I don't like the way this one is headed, not at all.<br /><br />See you Wednesday night.Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12507822893204965252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6016136689909379533.post-22685866358103056132009-06-12T22:48:00.003-04:002009-06-12T23:02:58.909-04:00Where's P.T. Barnum when you need him?Here is a trailer for the Sundance documentary we did on a year in the life of Slipstream, a cycling team devoted to trying to prove you can ride clean and succeed at the highest levels of the sport...<br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dzGqn9BM3OaxPYou0g-l5ZTGS0Bf8W3BsXhz5ugqCw34zPbu2ecvj4MiTIapygwruYns5Ax_xHEacwxC_6SEw' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><br /><br />The film premieres on the Sundance Channel at 10:30 PM on Monday, June 29. More airtimes are planned throughout the month of July, to coincide with this year's Tour de France.<br /><br />Produced + Directed by Nick Davis<br />Edited by Erik Dugger + Penelope Falk<br />Co-Producers: Nigel Dick, Matthew Sausmer + Minor Strachan<br />Production Coordinator: Lauren Dascher<br />Music by Joel Goodman, Music Box<br />Executive in Charge of Production: Sloane Cooper<br /><br />And Starring:<br />David Millar<br />Christian VandeVelde<br />Mike Friedman<br />Magnus Backstedt<br />+ Jonathan Vaughters<br /><br />Hope you can watch!<br /><br /><br /><br />(there. was that so hard?)Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12507822893204965252noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6016136689909379533.post-9476425235331786512009-05-14T12:25:00.002-04:002009-05-14T12:44:51.907-04:00Throw The Hat Over The Wall; or, "I'm Wearing a Cardboard Belt!"A surprising number of people have asked me in the last few months, "Hey, man, what's up with the blog?"<br /><br />There was nothing up with it. No new posts. And I would remind my interlocutor that the blog was started as a political act -- to write about my feelings about the campaign of 2008 -- and with the Election of Barack Obama as President, the blog had done its job and could now go quietly...<br /><br />And after all, I didn't really have much more to say about Obama. (Though of course I do, and could, go on about how truly remarkable he is. For all the bitching and moaning he's getting from the left - and vitriol from the right - I remain as astonished as ever by his even-handed and frankly brilliant way of looking at problems, and taking, always, the long view.)<br /><br />So - given that I have nothing to add to the general discourse about Obama, gay marriage, the economy, the wars in Iraq and Afghanastan - where does that leave me, as a blogger, if not, truly, de-blogged?<br /><br />The answer came from one of you, my trusty (and I gather rather patient) readers. "But what about your subtitle?" one of you asked, in an email I would describe as more plantiff than an Akita's wail... (10 points for the reference)...<br /><br />Ah, the subtitle: A Producer's Two Cents, Because He Can.<br /><br />The key word there is Producer. "What can you tell us about being a Producer?" the email went on. Is it harder these days, with the economy in, you know, whatever the hell it's in that doesn't have a good name yet?<br /><br />Short answer: Yes.<br /><br />In a hit driven business, buyers don't want to buy things unless they think they will turn into hits. And how do they know what will be a hit? They don't. But if it looks like something that's a hit, or been a hit, they will get more excited. Problem: then the show is too similar to something else, a retread, and they don't want retreads. It's a pretty narrow pathway between these two positions....<br /><br />But as a Producer, we carry on -- we have to. Otherwise we wouldn't be producers.<br /><br />John F. Kennedy was the one who best described the mentality you have to have as a producer. (It was probably while Kennedy was producing Mr. Ed in Hollywood....) He said you have to imagine that you are walking through the jungle, on the trail of a lost city of Gold that you are sure is just fifty miles away. Suddenly, you come to a high wall. There's no way around it. You can't dig under it. You can't get over it. Your destination is on the other side of the wall. The question is: what do you do? Turn back? Admit failure? Cut your losses and live to fight another day?<br /><br />No. The way to get to the city of gold is to throw your hat over the wall. After all, it's your favorite hat, and you can't just leave it out here in the jungle. If only to retrieve your hat, you now <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">have</span> to find a way to get over the wall.<br /><br />It's not necessarily the most sensible way to be, but if you feel that way, you're probably in the right business.Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12507822893204965252noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6016136689909379533.post-9381649648372283402009-01-29T21:48:00.004-05:002009-01-29T22:23:15.180-05:00The best title for this film is...Ah, titles.<br /><br />Is 'The Sound of Music' a better title than 'Ishtar'? What about 'Gone with the Wind' vs. 'Heaven's Gate'? Is 'Tootsie' any better than 'Mrs. Doubtfire,' really?<br /><br />And yet... and yet...<br /><br />When you have a good one, a selling one, you tend to know it. For instance, I think we have three really great titles on board at my company now, three 'yep, I get it, and I want to watch it' titles: <span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /><br />* Goldtown<br /><br />* Mother Knows Sex<br /><br />* The World Without...</span><br /><br />With all of those, the title pretty much says it all, or at least says enough to intrigue the viewer a little bit. Those three titles <span style="font-style: italic;">sell</span>. Those three titles <span style="font-style: italic;">work</span>.<br /><br />And then there's the cycling film.<br /><br />Here's the deal: it's a two hour documentary, which will air on the Sundance Channel this June, about a year in the life of an underdog American cycling team that is determined to clean up its scandal-ridden sport and ride to glory in the Tour de France. (First of all, that in itself is not exactly the pithiest description, which could be part of the problem - the film might be trying to do too much... Anyway....)<br /><br />We want the film to appeal to cycling fans and non-fans alike (I myself knew nothing about the sport when I started this), and of course, in a perfect world, there would be a cycling term that would fit the bill -- a cycling term that somehow had already entered the lexicon -- something to embody the indomitable spirit exemplified by the riders, or their courage or bravery, or redemption, or the pain all cyclists go through, or <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">something</span> the film speaks to...<br /><br />You know, something like BREAKING AWAY...<br /><br />But we don't really have one. There was, initially, a great cycling term called 'Blast the Zone,' which meant something like: you're in that 'athletic zone,' riding as well as you ever have, but now you're spent, you've ridden your all, but your team still needs you, and though you have very little strength left -- from nowhere, like a miracle -- you find strength you didn't know you had -- and you <span style="font-style: italic;">blast the zone</span> and ride to glory.<br /><br />The problem with that one is, I made it up.<br /><br />It didn't feel exactly kosher to go with a made-up cycling term in a documentary, especially in one about a bunch of guys who are so committed to, you know, not cheating.<br /><br />We've cycled through a lot of puns about the sport, believe me, but now that we're nearing the finish line, we've really got to put pedal to the medal and come up with something.<br /><br />I mean it. The Sundance Channel has rejected several of our offerings, and I can't say I blame them. But a few of our favorites do have some merit, and now we even have a few more.<br /><br />So I put it to you -- please cut and paste this link and take this poll and help us figure out what to call this film. We're really proud of it. We just don't know what to call it.<br /><br />http://www.micropoll.com/akira/mpview/534161-136151<br /><br />(And rest assured, any and all of these films can have a subtitle like 'A Year in the life of an American Cycling Team' or 'A Year in the life of the clean team' - eg, "Breaking the Wind: A Year in the Life of an American Cycling team"...)<br /><br />Thanks so much for your help. Choose wisely.<br /><br /><noscript></noscript><!-- END MICROPOLL JAVASCRIPT CODE -->Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12507822893204965252noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6016136689909379533.post-21869230888605586052009-01-20T09:25:00.002-05:002009-01-20T16:21:28.485-05:00THIS FILM HAS NOT BEEN MADE BEFOREJanuary 20, 2009<br /><br />On one of my first jobs, working as a PA and part time sound man on a cinema verite documentary about a theater company traveling across America, I was struck, on my first day on location, by the action - or inaction - of the director. I was 26 and quite full of myself, full of ideas, full of imagined brilliance waiting to be unleashed upon the world...<br /><br />I met the theater company in Northern Virginia late one morning, and I arrived as they prepared for an outdoor rehearsal, at a high school. The film's director, a really nice man and my employer after all, was walking around with the camera, shooting a conversation between a couple of the characters, but after a few moments, he sighed somewhat disgustedly, turned the camera off, and took the heavy thing off his shoulder. He stretched his arms up, his back clearly aching, obviously frustrated by what he had just been filming.<br /><br />I looked out at the field, the 30 or so actors and technicians preparing for their day, in the midst of a grand summer-long adventure. I spotted two of them carrying on an intense conversation while moving scenery across the football field. I poked the Director and pointed them out to him - <span style="font-style: italic;">let's go film that</span>. He took a quick, dismissive look, shrugged and shook his head, and said, "Boring."<br /><br />To say that I was astonished would not capture the depth of my horror, or my immediate loathing for this block-headed man. (I cared not at all that it was hot, that the camera was probably thirty pounds, that none of the five characters he had chosen to be the focus of the film were in the conversation I was pointing to...) All I could see was his idiocy, his stubborn close-mindedness. Wasn't the point of a cinema verite documentary to stay open to whatever happened, to follow the story wherever it took you? What about all that crap he, The Director himself, had told me in hiring me about the film being a 'voyage of discovery?' How can you discover something if you don't even set out to find it? Get the camera off the ground, you lazy shit!<br /><br />A few years later, I landed prematurely in a position of responsibility on another documentary, this one about John F. Kennedy. It was a two hour biographical film portrait, and, determined to make a well-trod subject fresh, we'd chosen to tell the story using strictly voice over interviews with archival footage. On the project, we had an Associate Producer who had been brought in to help find archival footage from the various archival houses around the country. She was bright and sharp and clearly knew her stuff. But what she did, invariably, maybe three or four times a day, was to say, "The way we did it at X was..." and then proceed to tell us all how they had done some similar task in her previous job. I resisted the urge to say to her, "Oh, really, they did it that way the last time you were doing a 2 hour voice-over-only documentary biography of John F. Kennedy?" <br /><br />But finally, I'd had enough. I went into my office, took out an index card and wrote in big block capital letters a motto, to remind everyone, and really myself, that when we make something, part of the reason we are making it is, in fact, that we want that sense of newness; we want an audience to feel and think in ways they haven't before. I hung the motto in the editing room where I knew she, and everyone, would see it, and proudly, somewhat haughtily, went on with the business of making the film.<br /><br />Over the years, I actually hung the motto again in a few other editing rooms, and even after opening my own company eight years back, I would remind various editors and producers of it from time to time -- but I think that age and a certain embarrassment caused me to drop it from my repertoire. <br /><br />The fact is, it is extremely helpful when making things to know the formats, the structures, and the rules by which other things have been made before. And as much as we might all wish to be the great <span style="font-style: italic;">avant garde artistes</span> of our day, a certain maturation process had better kick in at some point, an ability to reconcile the demands of Commerce and Art, especially if one wishes, for example, to live in Manhattan, have children, and send them to private school. (Just as a for instance.)<br /><br />But why not balance the two? Retain the reminder that we are here for inspiration, for the madness and illogic of the never-before-expressed -- while also remembering that we work in a Society, after all, and that it is Society which will dictate whether and how much bread we get to eat? Surely these are not irreconcilable views, and in fact when they synthesize, we can have a life of beauty and power....<br /><br />Because when you see someone dare to live this way, to speak this way, to act so incredibly sanely and soberly, while at the same time embodying, with every ounce of his intelligent fiber, the greatest, most revolutionary political act in decades -- and you see this man's effort succeed and inspire...<br /><br />Today, the motto returns to the bulletin board.Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12507822893204965252noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6016136689909379533.post-10223685541657714332008-11-04T18:29:00.002-05:002008-11-05T00:00:06.424-05:00"Sunshine"<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dzMepF5r5v9w4rtY1n5z2qFhRA-vAdJrn3xMNNdT7x_6R-Q1xPi8q6UZoCtFtBUwa0Pp19MSGnt1L6CtJcs' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe>Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12507822893204965252noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6016136689909379533.post-21725495745220267462008-11-03T11:06:00.002-05:002008-11-03T13:58:49.120-05:00It Might Be, It Could Be....It's caught at the warning track.<br /><br />Nothing anyone can say at this point can properly prepare us for tomorrow night. We are looking at either the greatest upset in modern American political history - and a gruesome rebuke of the entire polling industry - or the dawning of a new era in American history.<br /><br />The time cannot go fast enough.Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12507822893204965252noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6016136689909379533.post-10075833394637598842008-10-29T13:07:00.004-04:002008-10-29T13:17:37.284-04:00Smart Entertainment, anyone?One of the things that I find genuinely inspiring about the campaign run by Barack Obama is that he really does treat us as adults. He acts as if voters are smart people, able to handle difficult and complex issues and sort through a complicated truth. (His speech on race was probably the best example, but really, just in general, the level of disingenuousness in his campaign is simply so much lower than any politician in recent memory, it's almost awe-inspiring...) <br /><br />And the real test, coming in 6 days, is whether it will work or not. If he wins, of course, it won't just be because he treated us as if we were smart - more likely it will be because we want a change and our economy is in the toilet, swirling around with our truly putrid international reputation. But an Obama victory will be an undeniable boon to those of us who have tried to build our own careers on the idea that we can treat our audience -- our voters, our consumers -- as if they are smart. I've always wondered how it could be otherwise, given that we are our audience, after all -- but one more sign that we can do this and succeed is always a welcome thing.Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12507822893204965252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6016136689909379533.post-3925939862864757092008-10-21T14:37:00.003-04:002008-10-21T14:44:03.983-04:00No ProblemWhen, exactly, did "No Problem" replace "You're welcome" as the standard response to "Thank you?" Did it? Or is it just with me? Because guess what? I don't like it.<br /><br />When I thank you, sincerely, for something -- even if it's just some small, insignificant favor I've asked of you, I don't assume that it was a problem for you to fulfill my request. When you say "no problem," it makes me think, "well, why would it have been?"<br /><br />Telling me "You're welcome" tells me that I am welcome, that I am worthy, that I am okay in your book. I like that. It makes me feel good.<br /><br />Telling me "no problem" tells me that I am lucky you didn't think it was a problem, that you had to think about my request, that you fulfilled it with some hesitation and possibly even resentment. It makes me feel bad.<br /><br />So cut it out. Please.Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12507822893204965252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6016136689909379533.post-35088677276578246792008-10-20T18:00:00.002-04:002008-10-20T18:18:55.901-04:00What An Audience WantsI don't much care for the Boston Red Sox. I grew up a Yankee-hater, and so was forced to root for them a couple of times, most notably and frustratingly in 1978 (Bucky Dent, pop fly), but I couldn't really bring myself to throw myself into their legendary suffering with any real passion. After all, I had my own suffering to tend to...<br /><br />By the time the Yankees hired Joe Torre and I'd gotten out of my childhood, my own Yankee-hating softened, so much so that when the Yankee-Red Sox rivalry heated up again, I was pulling for my home town Yankees now. No love for the Red Sox. Not now, nor ever.<br /><br />And so I was rather pleased, last Thursday night, to flip on the TV and see that the Tampa Bay Rays were ahead, 5-0, in the seventh inning of Game 5 of their Championship Series, poised to close out the series 4 games to 1. I watched enough for the Rays to score a couple more runs off the Red Sox' truly hateful closer, the brilliantly intense frat boy Jonathan Papelbom, and then, with a rather confident and self-satisfied explanation to my baseball-not-understanding wife that the networks will be pretty displeased with the resulting Phillies-Rays World Series, I flipped the TV off. As I dozed off, I thought of my poor Dad, now inexplicably a Red Sox fan (explicable, really, because he lives in Maine now, but still inexplicable to those of us who think loyalty should outweigh geographical happenstance), and how it must be maddening to him to see the Sox go down without more of a fight... but for the most part, I just thought of how potentially boring the World Series would in fact be. But I would have said I was happy about it.<br /><br />Until I woke up. And went out to the front door and got the paper, scanning for a final score. For a moment, I was surprised not to see some photo of Tampa Bay Rays jumping on each other, but then I saw it, the news stunning and inevitable and somehow right: Boston 8, Tampa Bay 7.<br /><br />Boston had come back.<br /><br />And I grinned. Smiled. Shook my head in a kind of wonder and joy that they'd done it. Why? Not because I wanted the Red Sox to win, no, far from it -- but because of one very simple fact:<br /><br />It made a better story.<br /><br />And that's why this election scares me right now. We - we Americans - we audience members - we crave, more than anything else, more than a good explanation of our financial meltdowns, more than a health care plan, more than ending illogical wars - we crave a good story.<br /><br />And what's a better story right now? That Obama wins going away? Or that scrappy old warrior John McCain, left for dead so many times, makes one last stirring comeback? Pulls off the upset of the young century?<br /><br />I don't deny that the overall narrative of Obama winning is just as good a story (and after all, the Rays did win the Series, but it took a full Seven games) -- but right now, in the immediate 24-7 culture that craves a good story all the time, I think what we need and want is a good comeback story, and looking at McCain the last few days, I get the sense he's got one in him.<br /><br />Just don't turn off the set.Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12507822893204965252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6016136689909379533.post-57429653946917475362008-10-15T12:59:00.003-04:002008-10-15T13:08:43.499-04:00For Those Of You Feeling Over Confident, Go Talk To:1. the 1951 Brooklyn Dodgers. <br /><br />2. Thomas E. Dewey<br /><br />3. Napoleon at Waterloo<br /><br />4. the 2007 New York Mets<br /><br />5. the 2004 New York Yankees. (Up 3 games to none, up a run with Rivera on the mound in the 9th inning of Game 4. If you think that isn't more in the bank than a 10 point lead with three weeks to go...)<br /><br />6. the 1980 Soviet Hockey team<br /><br />7. the 1972 US Men's Olympic Basketball team<br /><br />8. The British Army, c. 1775<br /><br />9. GoliathNickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12507822893204965252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6016136689909379533.post-36931128676009344332008-10-07T00:15:00.002-04:002008-10-07T00:36:14.494-04:00"A Riot Is An Ugly Thing"<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dyaRNgGaFkuLYqaFNguKAzJ_eDuprOXo4n5m9ozY4S_NSur_Mg_qR48afHMdyENU9KrQdi2KbuLBgvr99txuA' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe>Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12507822893204965252noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6016136689909379533.post-5556334815355115082008-09-24T14:18:00.003-04:002008-09-24T15:25:58.650-04:00About Last NightThis blog has been tricky for me. For one, as I indicated in the beginning, I think I am constitutionally averse to talking in public about private matters like politics and sports fandom. But even beyond that, there is the matter of my professional life. I am, for lack of a better term, a small businessman. As such, I have clients. These clients need to be pleased. They need to feel like they are in good hands. They do not need to be confronted with half-baked political ideas from the people they hire, or ideas they themselves might disagree with.<br /><br />The other day, a friend of mine, one of many who had been kept in the dark about the existence of this blog until recently, pointed out the very real possibility that some client might come upon this blog and decide not to hire me because he or she was, you know, voting for someone else. I made a joke about the entertainment industry being essentially Democratic, but she had a point. There really isn't any reason to rub my political beliefs in the faces of people who might hire me.<br /><br />So my company did the film for a non-profit organization, and the function was last night, and I was talking to a very nice man there -- he's the uncle of a good friend -- and as I fielded his generous compliments about our little film, I was struck by the realization that he was a Republican planning on voting for McCain. One minute we're having a perfectly nice conversation, and the next I realize:<span style="font-style: italic;"> hey, I like this guy, and he's really gonna vote for McCain! What can I do?<br /><br /></span>Well, I did what any self-respecting propaganda filmmaker would do; I got his email address and sent him, last night, the link to 'ENOUGH!'<br /><br />And then -- the panic set in. <span style="font-style: italic;"> Oh my God, how much do I really know about this guy? He may be the brother-in-law to the man who makes all hiring decisions for the Discovery Network! He may be sitting on top of some huge Documentary film fund.... He may be, I don't know, Dr. Powerful!!!<br /><br /></span>It became rather global, in the middle of the night: <span style="font-style: italic;">I have chosen a needless self-expression over my children's financial future; <span style="font-weight: bold;">what kind of man am I!?</span></span><br /><br />This morning, I received a very nice email:<span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><br />Thank you for forwarding your film. I think it is very well done and compelling, but, obviously, selective in what is presented. Good luck with your documentary endeavors. You might try a similar film favoring McCain.</span><br /><br />And you know what? I think I will. Look for it in a couple of weeks...<br /><br />In the meantime, I'll continue to sit on the fence as to whether any of this is a good idea or not...<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span>Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12507822893204965252noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6016136689909379533.post-18754929384169794652008-09-21T20:43:00.003-04:002008-09-22T06:31:15.938-04:00The Final Game of Yankee Stadium.... happened in 1973.<br /><br />This stadium that is closing tonight -- it was opened, with great fanfare, on Opening Day, 1976. It stood on the same spot as the "old" Yankee Stadium, but the field had been moved, the three tiers had been reduced to two, and in every important way, it was merely an echo of the original Yankee Stadium. We called it, at the time, the New Yankee Stadium. People who had never been to the original never felt that coming to this new ballpark and seeing Munson and Jackson meant that had been to the real Yankee Stadium where Mantle and DiMaggio played any more than people who went to the new Madison Square Garden felt they had seen a fight in the same hall where Dempsey knocked out Tunney or Firpo, or Lewis chased Schmelling or whoever back to Nazi Germany.<br /><br />In fact, the "new" Yankee Stadium that will open next April, 300 yards away, will be as close to the "original" Yankee Stadium as this last one, built over 1974 and 1975, ever was.<br /><br />Can we please, PLEASE gimme some truth on this? Or have we become so used to mistruths and lies and bullshit in all aspects of our lives that we just kind of accept this kind of crap now?<br /><br />It's simply NOT TRUE.<br /><br />Would everyone SHUT UP about it?Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12507822893204965252noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6016136689909379533.post-78795447643090235972008-09-21T17:25:00.000-04:002008-09-21T17:52:05.394-04:00Reason #473 I Could Never be a Professional AthleteIf I were a member of the New York Mets right now, I would be thinking "Hey, we don't deserve to get into the playoffs with a bullpen like this...."Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12507822893204965252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6016136689909379533.post-84176391291624330082008-09-19T14:58:00.003-04:002008-09-21T17:52:28.337-04:00Desperate Ambition; or, I Know You Are But What Am I?I don't know whether it's kindergarten teachers or psychiatrists, or maybe both, who say this -- but a pretty good rule of thumb when dealing with people is: when you are really bothered by a trait in someone else, dollars to donuts it's what you're really bothered by in <span style="font-style: italic;">yourself</span>. (ie, "She's so braggy, I can't stand it!" probably means the child is actually a little troubled by her own bragging....)<br /><br />From all accounts -- hell, even by looking at the guy -- it's pretty clear that John McCain has nothing but contempt for his opponent. He can't stand Obama, hates him even. "Thinly disguised" is the phrase the press likes to use. (In fact, if Obama took McCain up on his offer of holding town halls, I bet Obama could provoke McCain into saying something really, truly, unpleasant and possibly not just Game-Changing, but Game-Ending. You know, something like "Oh what the fuck do you know, you goddamn uppity --" Although maybe now we're allowing 'Uppity' a seat at the table....)<br /><br />And what does McCain so obviously hate most about Obama, what trait does he return to again and again, in his obnoxious mocking of his opponent's life story and record? His ambition.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The noble McCain hath told you that Obama is ambitious; and McCain is an honorable man...</span><br /><br /><br />Indeed.<br /><br />So I've finished McCain's book now - the first one, written for the 2000 campaign. To me, it was always pretty clear that George W was gonna win that thing, so I never really took McCain all that seriously. Nor do I share the incredible nostalgia for his 2000 campaign. I gather he was treated badly in South Carolina, and that whatever lessons he learned from that sorry experience he has now been trying to put to use against Obama.<br /><br />Okay, so you want some dollar book Freud?<br /><br />What comes off from the book is: he has a simplistic worldview, he is essentially at war with himself, he has never come close to resolving his issues with his father or his grandfather (both of whom were huge war heroes and World Class A-Holes), he has enormous ambition but hates himself for it, he doesn't have any real respect for women, he apologizes frequently for his mistakes, knows quite well that he has a problem with authority, knows full well he has a temper that makes him do things he probably shouldn't...<br /><br />From what I can remember, after Bush attacked him in South Carolina in 2000, he became enraged and after an initial, brief 'we're not gonna stoop so low' phase, began attacking back, equally viciously. After he lost, he said that had been a mistake, that that wasn't the real McCain. But from reading his book, and following this election, I think it's pretty clear: there is no real McCain. (And I'm not talking about just the issues: he poses as a maverick but is of course the ultimate Washington insider. He wants to bring reform to DC, but was wrapped up in the gruesomely obvious Keating Five scandal...)<br /><br />I mean as a person, as a <span style="font-style: italic;">guy</span>. He doesn't really stand for anything -- and in a way that could be a good thing -- that <span style="font-weight: bold;">is</span> a good thing, when we're talking about the members of the Armed Services. We don't want our Army standing for anything other than the interests of the United States. And I do believe that somewhere down deep, McCain does stand for the interests of the United States. Or thinks he does.<br /><br />But what he really stands for is himself. Again and again in his book, the word 'ambition' comes up - the phrase 'glory for myself', even in a negative way (the McCain meme, for those of you who don't know: before he was a POW, all he cared about was himself; afterwards, he was all about service to country). But it rings hollow if you read the book -- the man is permeated with the idea of glory and ambition, and why else would he be so incensed by Obama if he didn't think the guy was cut from the same cloth?<br /><br />(I am not saying Obama is NOT ambitious, of course; Obama regularly admits that no politician can be without some vanity... but Obama's faults have a lot more to do with, oh, I don't know, arrogance and thinking he knows all the answers, and maybe an tendency to over-think problems -- his problem is NOT that he is just trying to glorify himself.)<br /><br />So pay attention: watch how much McCain talks about Obama's ambition, and realize: this is a man who wants more than anything else in the world to be President -- only then will he surpass his Dad and Granddad (my God! do we really want another Oedipal drama at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?) -- and as he sees it slip away, and fall into the hand of this, this, this _____, he is going to become increasingly desperate, making more and more outrageous statements, scattering his impotent rage into the atmosphere in a ravenous lunge for Power.Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12507822893204965252noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6016136689909379533.post-10270298364161860092008-09-16T16:04:00.004-04:002008-09-16T18:59:12.557-04:00ENOUGH!<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dwZ4T3T7nzy7AXPYsyeNZgYmMcfeMo3BzFMhDtvotGOAt_WIx1-bKZUhcORCKUZNIdCyRu825GR6aVLFpyH' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><br /><br /><br /><script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script>Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12507822893204965252noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6016136689909379533.post-84707665964841272292008-09-12T17:21:00.002-04:002008-09-12T17:28:31.495-04:00He Didn't Ask Her What the Bush Doctrine WasIt wasn't a 'gotcha' question. It wasn't 'what's the capital of Upper Volta?' or 'Who won Wimbledon in 1974?' or even 'Who's buried in Grant's Tomb?'<br /><br />The question was: 'Do you <span style="font-style: italic;">agree</span> with the Bush Doctrine?'<br /><br />He wasn't testing her knowledge. He was asking for an <span style="font-style: italic;">opinion</span>. He had no idea she wouldn't even recognize the premise of the question. 'Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?' is not a trick question. (It should be; anyone who agrees with it should be automatically barred from public office, but that's another discussion...) It's a question that is asked of all candidates for national public office these days -- nothing tricky about it. In fact, just an easy way for her to present her Republican bona fides: 'Yes, yes, I do! We need to bomb the hell out of anyone who even <span style="font-style: italic;">looks</span> at us funny...!'<br /><br />But Charlie - as we now know we should call him -- Charlie, a grateful nation salutes you.<br /><br />The tide has turned. Mark my words: 'In what respect, Charlie?' was the moment the wheels started to come off the McCain campaign. Let's see where the polls are next Friday. If Obama doesn't have a nice 2-3 point edge back, I'd be very surprised indeed....Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12507822893204965252noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6016136689909379533.post-76782318960961840192008-09-11T16:26:00.002-04:002008-09-11T16:42:16.716-04:00Keep Hope AliveA headline on Drudge just now said, "Palin, McCain to spend more time together than apart...." And when I read it, an almost inexplicable shiver of joy ran through my body... <br /><br />Wouldn't it be wonderful in a kind of loosely ironic Allanis Morisette way if McCain's utterly shameless pick of Sarah Palin because of her gender and her extreme right wing views, rather than helping him win the election and ascend to the office he has dreamt about for probably longer than most of us have been alive, instead caused his final last chance of attaining that dream go up in smoke?<br /><br />It's one thing to inject 'energy' into the race, to admire her 'amazeen' qualities and ability to connect with certain voters. But by tying his fortunes so dramatically to this uneducated reactionary, deciding to campaign more with her than without, he is now on the verge of embarrassing himself. <br /><br />He's like the high school senior panting after the comely Freshman transfer student.<br /><br />It ain't pretty.<br /><br />But I'll take it.<br /><span style="text-decoration: underline;"></span><tt><b><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><br /></span><a href="http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080910232420.q2vbsfaw&show_article=1"></a></b></tt>Nickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12507822893204965252noreply@blogger.com0