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The Daily Mail Song

posted 3 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

The Party of Blood and Guts

Republicans are big on individualism, independent-mindedness, freedom of thought, and not-polling-for-popular-opinion, except when these qualities appear in a Democrat. Then he’s just ignoring the American people. Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal:

Mr. Obama seems to be a very independent person, like someone who more or less brought himself up, a child with wandering parents, and grandparents who seem to have been highly individualistic. He is focused on what individually interests him. He relies most on his own thinking. He focused on health care, seeing the higher logic. The people focused on something else. But he’s always had faith in his ability to think it through.

Now he’s hit a roadblock, and in November’s elections he will hit another, bigger one. One wonders if he will come to reconsider his heavy reliance on his own thoughts. His predecessor did not brag about his résumé and teased himself about his lack of giant intellect, but he had utmost faith in his gut.

Obama, you see, is an introvert and (therefore) a snob. He must be a snob, because he’s a Democrat. Or something. Anyway he does so little actual bragging about his résumé that he must be a snob about it. Or something. Bush, on the other hand, had not just rich-boy privileges and a drug habit, but real humility about his poor grades and a Republican faith in his gut, which is the real American individualism, the cowboy thing that steered us against all the polls, and world opinion, and even US intelligence, not to mention those weenies at the UN, into Iraq, without proper planning in Washington to establish a strong democratic system.

Right Peggy? Good writing, though.

posted 4 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

Variety

Mike is quoted in Variety on Hollywood’s utter failure, so far, to depict surfing well in a major feature film. The article’s largely about a new documentary with Sam George called “Hollywood Don’t Surf.”

posted 5 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

A Rodeo Clown at the Lincoln Memorial

Remember that Glenn Beck, Inc., is an entertainment company that grossed $32 million in FY2009. Beck himself has admitted that “I don’t give a flying crap about the political process” and calls himself “a rodeo clown.” He even warns people on his show: “If you take what I say as gospel, you’re an idiot.”

Indeed. But a useful one.

posted 6 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

A Diver for the NYPD Talks to His Girlfriend

Excerpt from a strange and haunting poem by Richard Garcia:

… Once, looking for a missing
Piper Cub, we found it next to a trainer
from World War Two, both parked side by side
as if waiting for permission to take off.
People throw strange things in the river,
I don’t know, some kind of voodoo—jars
filled with pig eyes, chickens with their throats slit
stuffed into burlap sacks. Everything—TVs, couches,
lamps, phone books—is down there—if we ever grow gills
and live in the river we’ll have whatever we need.

posted 6 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

The Wonderful New Era of E-Books

… in which Lev Raphael has his new memoir stolen. Fabulous. Raphael doesn’t mention e-books, but his memoir’s available on Kindle, and the chances are slim that someone re-typed the whole book.

posted 7 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

Station Identification

Just a reminder that Sweetness and Blood is available for sale at your local bookstore and a number of fine Internet outlets:

And, if you want, you can splash this Facebook page all over your news feed:

Now back to our regular programming.

posted 8 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

More On That Police State

From the Calgary Herald:

Last week, business and technology journal Fast Company reported that a U.S. company named Global Rainmakers Inc. is embarking on a grand techno-fascist project in Leon, Mexico, where it will roll out iris-scanning technology to create what it calls “the most secure city in the world.”

…

“In the future, whether it’s entering your home, opening your car, entering your workspace, getting a pharmacy prescription refilled, or having your medical records pulled up, everything will come off that unique key that is your iris,” he told Fast Company.

“Every person, place, and thing on this planet will be connected (to the iris system) within the next 10 years,” he added.

…

“If you’ve been convicted of a crime, in essence, this will act as a digital scarlet letter,” he said. “If you’re a known shoplifter, for example, you won’t be able to go into a store without being flagged. For others, boarding a plane will be impossible.”

There must be laws against collecting iris scans, even from convicted criminals, especially if they can be read en masse, without consent, far faster than fingerprints. Right? Because that’s a whole new ballgame.

posted 9 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

The Southern Thruway

A 60-mile traffic jam in China, well into its second week and moving an estimated 2mp/d (two miles per day), brings a dystopian Julio Cortázar story to life.

posted 10 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

By God It Was Almost Jazz

Almost. Chuck Berry trying to be decorous and presentable in France, with his first US rock ’n’ roll hit.

posted 11 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

Google Home View

Fine German satire.

posted 12 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

The Police State Will Be Televised

… with cheerful commentary by local newscasters.

A family on a camping trip gets “proned out” and handcuffed on a backed-up 405 after Los Angeles police erroneously identified a white van as stolen. But who notified KTLA? “… It’s gonna be a tough one here for your commute outta Granada Hills.” Right. At least it’s traffic news.

posted 13 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

Bruno S.

The late Berlin institution, as seen in Werner Herzog’s Stroszek (1977).

posted 14 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

What Mosque?

A little hometown perspective on the “Ground Zero mosque,” in which the planned Muslim community center is “such a schlep” — or a couple of football fields — from the former World Trade Center, and the shrill fury of “America” goes uncomprehended in the canyons of Lower Manhattan:

I grew up in New York City. And people will ask me, “What’s your favorite pizza place?” And I’m sorry but the answer is the nearest one to wherever I happen to be standing …

As you may recall, on a sunny day in 1991 some construction workers breaking ground for a government building on lower Broadway made a [grisly] discovery. Archeologists were brought in. They identified 400 bodies of African men, women and children, stacked in wooden boxes in the 18th century and forgotten.

It took protests and petitions and candlelight vigils to finally cancel construction and put up a plaque. And I can guarantee what never crossed anyone’s mind. Micromanaging the activities two blocks away!

Thanks to Kerry.

UPDATE: This explains everything. That woman is horrible. “People say don’t give her too much credit, she’s a fringe character,” says a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations in the article. “But she is a fringe character who every day is on CNN, Fox, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. She is the driving force behind the Islamic center campaign.”

posted 14 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

(No Longer) Boardless in Gaza

For about two years, a collection of 23 donated surfboards collected by a US outfit called Gaza Surf Relief has been sitting in storage in Tel Aviv because the Israeli government wouldn’t allow them across the border to Palestinian surfers. It’s a minor thing politically; but it’s a big deal for everyone involved that Matt Olsen, on Wednesday, made it to Gaza Beach and hand-delivered the boards to the Gaza Surf Club.

The arc of this project more or less follows the writing of Sweetness and Blood — I noticed Louise Roug’s 2007 article in the LA Times on the single surfboard in Gaza, and started to plan my book, about the time Dorian Paskowitz read the same article and decided to go help in person. Within a month he was famous as the silly old coot who got a few boards through the Erez border terminal. (Paskowitz happens to be Israel’s surf pioneer; now he’s also a godfather of Palestinian surfing.) “They just looked so forlorn,” he told me, referring to the two guys sharing a single board photographed for Roug’s piece. “So my son David and I said, ‘Well, let’s go take ’em some boards.’”

Most of those original boards were lost to Palestinian politics and scattered around the Strip. This second shipment was meant exclusively for the Gaza Surf Club, a group of surfers Matt trusts. But moving them in a transparent, legal way through the border regime was a two-year bureaucratic odyssey. “It’s incredible to think that it has taken two years of constant negotiations to get these surfboards into Gaza,” says Matt, who helps run not just the Gaza Surf Club but also Surfing 4 Peace, and another outfit called Explore Corps.

I can sympathize; it took three trips to Israel and a harrowing interrogation to get my simple journalistic self across the same frontier. Huge congratulations to Arthur and Matt in Tel Aviv, as well as Mohammed and Ahmed and all the other guys I met — however briefly — on Gaza Beach.

posted 15 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

Thick As Thieves

Marc Levy does a little independent research and finds — with a Freedom of Information Act request — that a police inquiry into Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s arrest in Cambridge last year was not “intensive” at all, as Cambridge police have said. The inquiry that cleared Sgt. James Crowley was, in fact, “minimal,” says Marc.

That didn’t stop Cambridge Police Commissioner Robert Haas from saying, in public, “I believe Sgt. Crowley acted in a way that is consistent with his training at the department and consistent with national standards of law enforcement protocol.”

Oboy.

posted 16 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

The World According to Rush

Apparently Hindus bombed Pearl Harbor. So would we put a Hindu temple next to the Arizona Memorial in Hawaii?

He corrects himself later — “I said a Hindu temple at Arizona memorial. I meant Shinto shrine. Hindus are Indian” — but then he seems to confuse Buddhism with Shintoism.

The irritating part of this controversy is that mosque opponents conveniently forget the principles of private property and act as if Washington had some Communist-style central ministry for urban planning. “If it’s outreach,” says Rush, “why don’t we put a temple near the Arizona Memorial [emphasis added]?” It’s America, Rush! “We” don’t make decisions like that.

MEANWHILE: Dr. Laura displays a stunning ignorance of the actual content of the First Amendment, and fancies herself a “voice of dissent.”

Just astonishing.

posted 16 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

WTF

LA County has started painting its lifeguard towers. Each one has a nifty new “splash of color” and some verbiage along the top that rolls responsibility at the feet of some local initiative. Apparently the old salt-eaten primer blue wasn’t chipper enough:

The difference was hard not to notice while I was home — it was like surfing on an Alice in Wonderland set. Since the initiative seems to involve children, most of the criticism from reactionaries like me must have been short-circuited long ago. I’m against it anyway.

posted 17 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

Encyclopedia Britannica

An interview with Mike is up at the Encyclopedia Britannica’s eclectic and interesting blog. What fun.

posted 18 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

Radio 4

Mike appears on Radio 4 tonight at 7:15pm GMT, talking to a BBC man about Sweetness and Blood and the spread of surfing, from under the Manhattan Beach Pier.

posted 19 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

Cedar Surf

Grant Shilling has a short book on the history of surfing in western Canada that makes me wish I’d explored a little up the coast from California for Sweetness and Blood. The Cedar Surf: An Informal History of Surfing in British Columbia is all about the forces that brought the sport to the wild northwestern coast — logging, fishing, carpentry, innkeeping, and dodging the draft in America. Some of the first Canuck surfers lived by the water in cedar shacks.

Shilling’s book also answers the perennial question of whether killer whales can be dangerous to surfers:

The whale circled around and cut off Owen’s escape route to the beach. The two made eye contact. The Orca leapt from a distance of thirty feet. Most of its body was up in the air, hanging momentarily against the sky. It came down on Owen Atkey with its mouth wide open. He expected to die but he felt no fear, just anger. He thought if the whale was going to get him it would have to eat a surfboard first so he rolled off his board, grabbed it, and thrust it towards the whale.

Then, in mid-air, as if it realized its mistake, the whale rotated and arched to the left. Owen thought the pectoral fin would hit him hard, but it barely brushed his board. Turbulence from the whale’s thrusting flues spun him around and tore the board from his grasp. The whale leapt once more, heading away, then disappeared.

UPDATE: Orcas are not just beautiful and dangerous but useful to surfers.

posted 19 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

Give It a Rest, Please

“Barack Obama has abandoned America at the place where America’s heart was broken nine years ago, and where her true values were on display for all to see,” reads a statement from Debra Burlingame, co-founder of 9/11 Families for a Safe & Strong America. Families for a Safe & Strong America “Now this president declares that the victims of 9/11 and their families must bear another burden … We are stunned.”

Abandoned America? Must bear another burden? Nonsense. Debra Burlingame gets the Trifling With the English Language to Push an Agenda Award, which we might start handing out on a weekly basis here at Radio Free Mike. Who in this debate has set down a hard principle or two, in clear English, and stuck to it? Not, I’m afraid, the president’s opponents:

As a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. And that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America. And our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable.

The mosque isn’t “at” Ground Zero, and it isn’t even strictly a mosque — it’s an Islamic cultural center with a prayer room, built on the former site of a Burlington Coat Factory. And the president hasn’t “abandoned” America by refusing to break local and federal laws to prevent a prayer room from operating a few blocks from the former World Trade Center. He’s just robbed those fundamentalist idiots of a victory. Sticking to the same principles for a Christian church, against the rising sentiments of a mob, would be recognized by most Americans as nothing less than his job description.

Remember your schoolbooks, people. Good English matters.

UPDATE: I wouldn’t take it this far, although I sympathize about the bagels.

posted 20 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

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