Life During Wartime
Posted by Michael Atkinson at 10/15/2009 10:22 AM 
Categories: IFC.com,Obama,Babylon Fields,L Magazine,Significant Objects,Cheney,True/Slant,Chabon,Makavejev
Categories: IFC.com,Obama,Babylon Fields,L Magazine,Significant Objects,Cheney,True/Slant,Chabon,Makavejev
Some uncollected thoughts:
I've said that I think it's apparent Dick Cheney is the only political figure in memory who seems to know he's evil. It is true, as far as it goes; but if you consider Hannity, Beck and Limbaugh "political figures," then their unarguable narcissistic turpitude, disguised as it is as ideological outrage, qualifies them as well. They make real politicians, current governors and congressmen, look like responsible town-hall clerks by comparison, and take a moment to consider how odd that is.
Obama seems to be doing okay, under the circumstances, by which I mean he's behaving like an adult patiently, oh so patiently, dealing with 300 million undereducated and sociopathic third-graders.
It is clear that the Internet is destroying modern civilization — methodically obliterating newspapers, book publishers, the music industry, Hollywood, TV networks, magazines, live performance of every kind, and much more. Why isn't anyone alarmed?
Lastly: Michael Chabon is right, our children's experience of constant supervision and control and safety paranoia is a form of deprivation.
And a quick rundown of my recent stuff — in addition to, if you're interested, my third Hemingway book, a YA novel that asks the unmusical question, "Why is it that I feel like crying everytime I read Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes?", and a TV pilot for 20th Century Fox, and that's not counting the things I'm not being paid for. So:
- Finally, Hans-Jurgen Syberberg's Ludwig and Karl May make it to DVD, plus a love letter to the 1936 proto-zombie Karloff flick The Walking Dead, at IFC.com
- Considering Dusan Makavejev's first three New Wavey Yugo-loogies, released from Criterion, plus Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie, at IFC.com
- My rueful tell-all memoir-essay about the making of my dead network pilot Babylon Fields, at Lost Magazine
- on Anvil! The Story of Anvil, plus the savage Dutch anime Princess, at IFC.com
- Piles of DVD and movie reviews, as usual, in Sight & Sound, but unlinkable individually — gotta buy it...
- My rants on Polanski, Nobels and such, at True/Slant
- My "story," concocted to attach "significance" to a more or less randomly selected and worthless tchotchke, and then together sold on eBay, at Significant Objects
- on Cornel Wilde's Beach Red at The L Magazine
Skol!
Nearly immediately after reading the recent posts here, I came across David Byrne's weblog (name drop!) and noted the similarities to your concerns/comments.
http://journal.davidbyrne.com/2009/10/102409-internet-antichrist.html
It seems that he too is alarmed by what you called the methodical obliteration of most of the world's physical media. he goes on to commingle your concern with that of Chabon's and extends it further by calling it not just a form of deprivation, but a concurrent liberation and capture.
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I suppose it's egregious that I failed to mention that the title of your post is also a Talking Heads song. Are you guys buddies or something? Discussing ideas of what to write about on your blogs? That's fascinating.
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Oh yeah, David and Tina and me, like that.
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