How much better does Beyonce Knowles look now that she’s gained some weight? She went from “eh” to “damn!” in pretty short order. And as though in response to her sudden Amazon fabulousness, her music is better now too. (Seriously, one more Destiny’s Child song mentioning cell phones and I’d have carcjacked someone.) Uh-oh indeed!

One thing, though: I don’t seem to have gotten the memo in which we were asked to lend our approval to her dropping “Knowles” from her name. Let me see here… memo about Beyonce Knowles joining the mononym club… nope, don’t see it. Must have gotten filed with that “from her very first English-language single Shakira will be an American Superstar” fax that somehow didn’t reach my desk.

Nothing to say here, really–I just want to get onto the Google page for people searching for the phrase “How’s your Donkey Kong?” Or indeed, “How’s your Donkey Kong, baby?”

I like Don Imus, basically.

So I’m sitting down here at the computer to check my email and I see this little note with what looks like a funny quote from a commercial or infomercial written in my wife’s handwriting.

“Amy, what’s [blah blah blah] about?”

“I saw it on TV today and I’m going to write something about it for my site. It’s mine! It’s mine! And you can’t blog about it!”

What a world!

I was just using LimeWire to hunt for Jobriath songs, and I came across a “song” with the title “Nick Drake with Soft Machine (UNRELEASED 1974) – JOBRIATH.” Someone went through a lot of trouble to convince pop obscurists like yours truly to download a dummy file.

Did you know that Latina Pop Sensation (TM) Thalia (aka the latest singer who knows her bread is buttered somewhere in the vicinity of Tommy Motolla’s BVDs) is a Superstar!!!? Looks like I missed that memo too.

Did you know that Prescott Bush sold stuff to Hitler? So obviously his grandson can never, ever be right about anything.

In addition, the war was all about helping the oil industry, which explains why the government of Saudi Arabia, oil magnates one and all, virulently opposed it. Or maybe it doesn’t, I’m not sure. At any rate, the oil companies wanted us to invade the country rather than simply lift the sanctions and begin making sweetheart deals, because a full-scale invasion against a man who’s lit oil fields on fire by the hundreds and dumped crude into the sea willy-nilly is the less risky option. I think.

Also, any attack on a Muslim country sends thousands more rage-filled jihadists over to the terrorists, who otherwise are suffering from a shortage of volunteers and an insufficient level of free-floating anger at the West. If we were to stop fighting they’d leave us alone. Isn’t that obvious to everyone? I mean, just prior to 9/11 we invaded Syria, didn’t we? And after we pulled out of Somalia they said “whoops, sorry, thanks for crying uncle, we won’t pick on you anymore,” didn’t they? Cause and effect, people!

RIPPING UP THE CONSTITUTION! OIL!! 1984!!! COWBOY!!!! HITLER!!!!!

Phew, I feel much better.

Did I mention that oil’s not really worth fighting for? A crazy guy sitting on 9% of the world’s supplies with a full 25% within striking distance? No big whoop. After all, it’s only rich SUV-driving top-hatted Monopoly Men like Ken Lay who use oil. The economy of poor people in the third world runs on Segways and magic beans.

I see from Rich Johnston’s latest, interminable column (scroll waaaaaay down) that Alan Moore, one of the best goddamn writers in comics history, has joined the moonbat brigade.

QUOTE: “Any previously unthinkable political action can be instantly validated by the magic words 9-11….”

Seriously, America–the rest of the world has realized that nothing important really happened that day, so all countries should go on behaving in exactly the same way, since that’s the safe thing to do. What was the big deal? Get over it already!

Daredevil: Liked it better than Spider-Man. There was just something kind of clunky and arbitrary about the way Spider-Man’s plot moved forward. Daredevil, on the other hand, had this weird emotional-turmoil operatic logic for its structure, and damn if it didn’t work like a charm. Like an opera, you don’t see a movie like Daredevil for the realism–you see it for the spectacle, for the emotional immediacy, for the out-of-their-heads-with-anger-and-grief characters, and for the singing, or in this case the fight scenes. The fight scenes serve the same purpose as the singing, of course–as a grandiose, artistic metaphor for the heightened emotional states of the characters. This was something that Daredevil understood quite well, as did Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (I think I stole that notion from someone, so my apologies to that person) and the Daredevil comic storylines from which the film borrowed the most heavily, Frank Miller’s Elektra saga and (with John Romita Jr.) The Man Without Fear, and (especially) David Mack’s Parts of a Hole. (Mack’s femme fatale, Echo, basically had her backstory grafted onto Elektra’s for the film’s version of the latter character.)

Three final thoughts:

1) Wasn’t nuts about the decision to make Daredevil a killer at first, but they made this decision with an eventual redemption in mind, and (again, to my surprise) it worked.

2) Someone somewhere (once again) pointed out that DD’s alter ego, lawyer Matt Murdock, magically switches from some sort of bizarre private criminal prosecutor (it seems clear we’re not in civil court) to a defense attorney. Arrgh. Didn’t anyone read that part of the script?

3) Did Jon Favreau write his own lines?

The Hulk: God, what a strange, strange, strange film. I think it was a failure, but a noble failure. In a way, what with the expressionistic comics-influenced framing techniques and the emphasis on extradiegetic colors and imagery (all those desert shrubs and rocks and all those cell cultures and microbes), it was like Ang Lee doing King Kong by way of Douglas Sirk. But it was slow, so very slow, and none of the characters were three-dimensional or likeable enough to warrant taking that slow ride with them. Eric Bana, the lead, has soulful eyes that generate sympathy, at least, but he’s so underwritten that it never graduates to empathy. The bulk of The Hulk (nyuk nyuk) seems dedicated to conversations between different pairs of people about how impotent they are to fix whatever it is they’re talking about–this does not a riveting drama make. But when Bana Hulks out, the film comes alive. The big fight scenes were uniformly tremendous, and if you don’t laugh out loud when the Hulk beats one tank with another tank’s gun turret, Mister, you’re a glummer man than I. If as much time had been spent on developing the characters into likeable people as was devoted to creating beautiful imagery, innovatively using comics-style panels as shot-to-shot transitions, and making kick-ass CGI sequences, you’d have had a hell of a film.

Two final thoughts:

1) I didn’t like director Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon the first time I saw it either, so maybe this film will grow on me as that one did.

2) Whoever thought this difficult, difficult movie was going to make Spider-Man style bank was probably literally on crack.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: Certainly the best of the series thus far. Rowling does “unfair” better than anyone else I can think of. I think the success of the series directly stems from the way she is able to convey the capricious, arbitrary, vindictive exercise of power by adults and bullies over children, something to which all children can relate. And I think what makes the books so quickly-readable is that readers want to plow through the unfairness until they get to the point where the unfairness is exposed and Harry is vindicated.

Two minor gripes about the ending (SPOILER ALERT!!! gosh, that was fun to write):

1) Gee, you mean Harry and Voldemort’s destinies are inextricably linked, and one day they’ll have a duel to the death? Get out of here! I had no idea!!! Seriously, that was the big secret? Talk about a lousy payoff.

2) The last chapter, as I noticed when I first read the Table of Contents, is called “The Second War Begins.” Uh, really? Looked to me like Harry got on a train and went home, just like he did in the last four books. If you’re going to title a chapter “The Second War Begins,” how ’bout, I dunno, beginning the Second War in it?

Hey everyone–don’t forget to thank Al Jazeera for wishing us all a Happy Fourth of July!

(Actually, heaven forbid that I suggest Al Jazeera may have released this Saddam Hussein tape on the 4th of July in order to irritate the United States. Just because the tape was made on June 14th doesn’t mean they sat on it until it would be maximally embarassing to America, heavens no. It probably just happened to take them exactly that long to determine that it was newsworthy. They’re just another unbiased regular-old news network, after all.)

Amy’s been updating her blogs like mad. Go here and here.

The rest of the All Too Flat team pulled off an unbelievably impressive prank last week. It involves the Astor Place Cube and ’80s nostalgia. It’s brilliant. Check it out!

Big Sunny D is really good.

I’m not the only one who’s uncomfortable with certain commercials.

I’m pretty much back to full-speed posting.

I really, really miss Barry White.

He was much more than a roly-poly punchline, you know. As anyone who’s really listened to his music can tell you, he truly earned the honorific of The Maestro, just as much as he deserved to be called The Walrus of Love. (God, what a great nickname. I wish I was The Walrus of Love, goo goo gajoob, baby.)

Of course, there’s that voice. It’s not just that it’s low, or sexy–he sings with such conviction and control that you could almost swear (as in “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Baby”) that he’s singing harmony with himself like some sort of sexed-up Tibetan monk. And those spoken-word sections–when he says “Now that I’m a man I’ve put away childish things,” you believe him.

His amazing ear for orchestral ambience helped bring gorgeous, complicated string sections out of the opera house and into the on-the-one funk arena. He had a compatriot in this regard with funk’s other great low-register loverman, Isaac Hayes, but where Ike conveyed turmoil and torment, Barry exuded confidence, warmth, and world-in-your-eyes (or thighs) passion. Funk’s later users of sexy strings, like P-Funk and Rick James, owe Barry a huge debt, as do every DJ and producer who’ve based hip-hop tracks around violins.

Barry also made the most persuasive case for disco I’ve ever heard. I vividly remember reading the liner notes to a friend’s copy of Barry’s greatest hits my sophomore year in college, in which Barry offered an eloquent apologia for the much-maligned dance genre. Disco, he argued, was not about the trendy fashion atrocities we’ve come to associate with it, but about people looking beautiful, feeling beautiful, listening to music that made them feel beautiful. After reading White’s words I felt instantly able to appreciate the genre for the fun-loving (and fun, and loving) music it’s bequeathed us, from K.C. and the Sunshine Band to Giorgio Moroder’s collaborations with Donna Summer to Chic to (I couldn’t believe it myself) the BeeGee’s disco stuff to, of course, Barry’s tunes themselves.

And what tunes they were! The titles alone speak volumes: “I’m Gonna Love You Just a Little More, Babe” (with the unforgettable “feels so good” opening), “Love’s Theme” (we used it as the entrance music for the wedding party at our reception), “It’s Ecstasy When You Lay Down Next To Me” (featured in a seriously sexy scene in Spike Lee’s compelling, underrated Summer of Sam, it may be my favorite Barry jam). But beyond the greatest hits, there’s the proto-trip-hop epic “Your Love (So Good I Can Taste It)” the 12-minute bedroom-funk equivalent of “Stairway to Heaven” from Barry’s awesome record Is This Whatcha Wont? (Yes, that’s how he spells it–how cool is that?) Folks, words simply cannot describe how good this song is, as it transitions from an anticipatory string-laden opening to a downbeat foreplay-in-music-form spacey relentless groove to a full-throated climax (in every sense of the word). It’s a full-fledged journey deep into the cosmic groove. Please, please go buy this album at Amazon, and discover the joys of White’s art beyond the best-of comps and radio staples.

Man, he was good. In the Missus’s words, the world is a much less sexy place with him gone.

In the “I Love It When Assholes Are Hoist By Their Own Petard” Department, professional bigot Michael Savage has been fired from MSNBC (courtesy of Instapundit–the link, not the firing). The best part of it is that the meltdown for which he was fired was the result of internecine shock-jock warfare: He began shouting viciously homophobic obscenities at a fan of the sub-Opie-and-Anthony “Don & Mike Show.” Now if only we can get a caller to start repeating the word “Bababooey” the next time Ann Coulter is on Hannity & Colmes.

Apologies for the incredibly lame entry title, but the purpose of this post is to encourage you to do two things:

1) Go read this Pulse interview with Phoebe Gloeckner, the amazing writer and cartoonist behind The Diary of a Teenage Girl and an all-around awesome person.

2) Have a happy Fourth of July!

3) Read this elegantly and angrily written overview of the situation in Iraq by Victor Davis Hanson. (I still can’t get over the fact that I link to National Review Online, but Hanson’s a very different animal than, say, John Derbyshire. I also saw him talking about the Battle of Thermopylae (of Frank Miller’s 300 fame) on the Discovery Channel the other night, so that’s neat.)

4) Buy the stunning anthology of Christopher Hitchens’s Slate columns on Iraq, A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq. He gets into the highest dudgeon I’ve ever seen him get into in the book’s conclusion, aiming a furious j’accuse at Saddam enablers everywhere, from the first Bush administration to the current “peace” movement:

QUOTE: “Those twelve years [between Gulf Wars I & II] were eaten by the locusts. The trunk of the tree of Iraq as allowed to rot, and its branches to wither. And all the time, a huge and voracious maggot lay at the heart of the state. Trade turned into a racket, the market was monopolized by the Mafiosi, the sanctions screwed the poor and fattened the rich, and palaces with gold shit-houses were constructed to mock the slum dwellers and the conscripts. A class of lumpen, uneducated, resentful losers was bred. When the Great Leader wanted to be popular, as on the grand occasion of his last referendum, he declared amnesty of the thieves, rapists and murderers who were his natural constituency. (The political detainees stayed where they were, or are: It will take years for us to find and number all their graves.) To his very last day, the Maggot continued to divide and rule: to pump gangrene and pus into the society, disseminating lies and fear and junky religious propaganda. And there his bastard children were, when the opportunity for hectic destruction and saturnalia presented itself. If it is truly possible to be wise after the event, then I associate myself again with those who believe that the Saddam Hussein regime should have been deposed in 1991. There would have been some severe moments, but Iraq would now be twelve years into the process of nation-building (or rebuilding) and many unlived or blighted lives could have been lived in the risky atmosphere of self-determination.

“I stress the element of risk because it so often seemed to me, before the battle was joined, that many of its critics were demanding the impossible. Assure us of a painless victory, they said, and we might consider lending our support. Assure us, also, of an immaculate conception of the project, unspotted by any previous compromises and betrayals. Assure us above all that oil is an unmentionalbe bodily secretion, unfit for discussion in polite company. I grew impatient with this. As Frederick Douglass once phrased it, those who want liberty without a fight are asking for the beauty of the ocean without the roar of the storm. (It’s been put more terseley more recently: ‘No Justice–No Peace.’)”

This guy hates totalitarianism, and I mean hates it. And he has nothing but contempt for excuses for its perpetuation. Is there really any other way to live?

Happy Fourth, once again!

I was out shopping today and I saw a postcard of that famous picture of the sailor kissing some woman on the street after the end of World War II. I thought for a moment about everything that picture said about the situation those two people found themselves in. Years of indescribable horror, violence, sacrifice, and tragedy, and then, victory. Of course, things weren’t really over–decades of reconstruction and occupation would follow (and the latter bit still continues today)–but the joy these people felt at the successful completion of this horrific but necessary endeavor so moved them that they just started grabbin’ strangers and makin’ out. (Free love, two decades early?)

The sheer scope of atrocity that was World War II kind of helped put the endless stream of awfulness coming out of Iraq in perspective for me. Having been away from the Internet for a while I was getting all my news from the local paper and TV stations here in Colorado, and it’s all talk of “slipping into open revolt” and the like. And of course in the anti-war blogosphere (heck, even in its comics-related subsection–hi, Franklin! hi, Jim!) there’s barely restrained glee, not at the deaths of soldiers and Iraqi civilians, of course, but at the political ramifications of same for the Bush administration. There, it’s “the beginnings of a full-fledged guerilla campaign.”

But war is difficult. Actually, war is horrendously, mind-bogglingly awful. And compared to the horrendous, mind-boggling wars we’ve fought in the past, we’re actually still ahead of the game. The casualty level, both for American troops and Iraqi civilians, remains astonishingly low given the immensity of the action we’ve undertaken. The erosion of civil liberties in Ashcroft’s America (TM) during the So-Called War On “Terror” (c) is troubling, but also trifling compared to that under Presidents Nixon, Johnson, Roosevelt, Wilson, and Lincoln (to say nothing of the old-school from the early 18th century). Americans may be growing aware of the difficulty of the task at hand, but they’re not giving up on it, and neither is the military, and neither is the government–and neither, for that matter, are the majority of Iraqis. It’s not a civil war, it’s not massive daily uncontrollable rioting, it’s not the Tet Offensive–it’s the same kind of pointless vengeful bullshit that history’s losers perpetually engage in on their way down the chute.

What I’m saying is not that in a matter of months we’ll see sailors grabbing girls in front of the TRL studio in Times Square and getting their smooch on. This war is not World War II. But nor, in countless important ways, is it Vietnam. The bad news is still bad, and the deaths are still awful. But they are not in vain.

I’m proud to see U.S. troops deployed to countries that need them, particularly in neglected, impoverished, war-torn Africa (prouder still when I get the impression that the man sending them won’t shit his pants and pull them out after one rough firefight, unlike some presidents I could mention). But I can’t help but feel that the “invitation” extended to the U.S. by the UN to commit troops to Liberia wasn’t an almost solely politically motivated attempt to embarass the administration. Sending a small contingent of troops (too small to be tactically effective in any real way) to help keep the peace in a country that doesn’t have peace to keep and in which the U.S. has no economic, political, or security-based interests isn’t exactly a recipe for an auspicious military action. It looks like Bush is going to give it the OK, which like I said is actually pretty great. But the UN is well aware of its track record in “peace keeping” (please see Rwanda, Korea, and any nation ever discussed by Joe Sacco)–second in ignominy only to France’s–so this reads like a ploy to sucker the States into committing troops in a place where little palpable progress will be made (that is, if it’s the UN and not the U.S. that’s running the show) in order to prevent them from doing things elsewhere, 2,000 troops at a time.

(So naturally, Howard Dean’s all for it!)

Daredevil was a better movie than Spider-Man.

Yeah, I said it!

Since that’s not the kind of thing you can just blurt out in polite company, I’ll be elaborating at some point. Watch this space.

Happy Fourth of July, everyone!