OF A GOLDEN AGE

Over at No Caption Needed, photographer and scholar Aric Mayer has a guest post called Obama, Aesthetics, and the Way Forward. The part that struck me:

Obama inherits two lengthy and costly wars, the near bankruptcy of our own domestic policies, an American economy in free fall and a world economy that appears to be teetering on the edge of the unknown. But as dark as this may seem, the alternative was even darker. John McCain’s last efforts at character assassination and fear mongering left him in the isolated position of having nothing to win but a completely fractured constituency.

Greetings from Fake America, where even conservative David Frum knows the GOP is going to have to fight like hell (quoted by Andrew Sullivan here) to win the respect of college-educated Americans.

The word(s) between first name and last name in Dutch.

Let’s get one thing on the table: I love Barack Obama. Brilliant, educated at Harvard, a success story to rival any Horatio Alger hero — this is a man of presidential caliber.

I am almost equally excited and hopeful over the inevitable reform of the Republican party (Washington Post), which has experienced a humiliating faceplant culminating in the selection of the celebratory ignoramus Sarah Palin as the Great White Lady Hope.

McCain said in his concession speech that this was “an historic” moment or whatever, and it irritated my shit right up like always because there’s no need to say AN in this context. We aren’t British. What’s more awkward than N and H back to back? Anyway, Barbara Wallraff, language columnist for the Atlantic, agrees and goes a step further, describing the difference between historic (correct to describe an event the day of) and historical (correct to describe it forty years later).

Finally, Andrew Sullivan posts this simple, moving cartoon by the Washington Post‘s Tom Toles, known for the marginalia self-portrait he includes in the lower corner of each of his pieces.

Obama’s theme should be a song from one of Chicago’s own: “City of New Orleans” by Steve Goodman.

Good morning America how are you
Don’t you know me, I’m your native son

He is our native son, contrary to the xenophobia-mongering of various people in the opposition. Barack Obama represents the American dream, perhaps better than anyone. An Indian-American man called in to Chicago’s newsmagazine Eight Forty-Eight this morning and made a point I honestly didn’t think about before. We have now elected the son of an immigrant of another race to the most powerful leadership position on earth. My stars!

Oh, bother. Michael Crichton, progenitor of Jurassic Park and its resulting sequels and movie franchise, has died of cancer at age 66.

What Star Wars likely is to you and your childhood, Crichton is to me and mine. Crichton meant the world to me because JP and his other novels were the way I learned about the huge ups and downs possible through the application of human brilliance. His characters were smart and flawed, sometimes greedy, sometimes overwhelmed, and his stories were near-future cautionary tales against reckless science.

Then of course he created ER, one of the most successful television shows ever, based on his own training and expertise as an MD.

This is especially sad because Crichton helped bridge the gap between pop fiction and something deeper and more stimulating.

As a side note, he was 6’9″, a fact that I greatly appreciated as a 5’11″, thirteen-year-old girl. He would have towered even over Abraham Lincoln, my perennial childhood hero. But not over Lincoln’s hat. Barack Obama, by the way, made three Lincoln shoutouts in his victory speech, holding Lincoln up as the catalyst of the Republican party and an example of cross-partisan ideals. I suspect we are on the way to something wonderful.

There’s an episode in the sixth season of Sex and the City when Carrie Bradshaw is dating the odd, wealthy artist Aleksandr Petrovsky. He gives her a set of keys and writes down his alarm code: “His alarm code, like it was nothing!” she says. “It was a kind of security I’d never experienced.”

Earlier an old boyfriend asked if I’d log into his Gmail account to check a flight detail, since he was staying with a friend before the flight to Chicago tomorrow. “I trust you implicitly,” he said by way of preface.

This is it! Trust in the internet age.

This post is dedicated to my best ladyfriend, who’s been reading No Reservations.

Upon being asked by Time if he is “really that arrogant,” or if it’s just for television, Anthony Bourdain answered:

“I think like a lot of chefs, I’m actually often really shy and withdrawn and uncomfortable with the real world and I think that’s why a lot of chefs, people like me, similar personality types, end up in the restaurant business in the first place. Yes I am arrogant, but I also regularly entertain the possibility, if not the likelihood, that I am absolutely wrong about everything.”

Bourdain was featured in the book My Last Supper. Time offers this illustrative slideshow with excerpts and examples from the book, but the slideshow leaves out the, um, somewhat racy pièce de résistance: Anthony Bourdain, scandalously fringing on NSFW.