Revisiting The 2000s: 20 Albums (Intro)

Part I: The Lost Decade

There’s a common perception that the 2000s (Naughts, Nothings, whatever you might call the first decade of our new millennium) has been, shall we say, a troubled period for popular music. It certainly hasn’t seen anything along the lines of the birth of Rock in the 50s, its flowering in the 60s, the Punk explosion of the 70s or the Alternative Rock boom of the 90s. And this is not just about Rock. Hip Hop, Dance Music, Country, you name it, nobody was exactly having a golden age during 2000-2009. Instead, it’s been more like a treading of water and triumph of pre-packaged bland slickness in pop music, reminiscent in some ways of the 80s. I had hoped that this might be a waiting period for the next big thing, but I’m starting to feel some despair on that front.

Personally, I was, in various ways, out of commission myself for large parts of the decade. A little marriage breakup here, intense workaholism there, plus a major dash of bottoming out and getting in to recovery will do that to you. You miss some life that way, certainly. But, even more disturbing, you miss some culture. Now, it’s not as if I paid no attention to new music in 2000-2009. As you can see elsewhere in this blog, I had my musings about the decade, and best albums of the year lists here and there. But, given my outages, I have been haunted by an ongoing fear that there might be significant gaps in my musical experience of the decade.

More than that, I’ve been curious about what I might have missed. Even in the worst periods, there are diamonds among the dung. I wondered what might be waiting for me, undiscovered…

Part II: Project Overview

To discover what I might have missed, I first had to determine what others were saying the best albums of the decade had been. In pursuit of this, I looked to a few sources:

• the top 25 from albums of the decade lists by A.V. Club, New Music Express, Paste (the online inheritor of the legacy of the late, great Crawdaddy), Pitchfork, Rhapsody, and Rolling Stone
• the 2000-2009 entries from Spin’s 1985-2010 list of the 125 best albums of the past 25 years
• year-end top 5 lists from my two favorite rock critics, Chicago’s Jim Derogatis and Greg Kot

I was looking for albums that garnered multiple entries, since that seemed the best way to cancel out the biases of individual lists (Pitchfork is tilted toward indie-rock, NME likes Brits more, Rolling Stone is the stodgy conservative of the music journalism scene, etc.). 

Combining 260 total listings from these nine sources ended up netting me 150 albums. Of this 150, only 43 made it on to two or more lists. That was actually kind of refreshing, since the rap on these kinds of lists is that “everybody picks the same things”. In fact, over 100 albums only appeared once, meaning that each source’s tastes do have some individuality to them after all. Even better, out of 150 albums total, only 27 appeared in three or more sources.

Part III: The List

I figured this 27 was the crème de la crème, where I might find the great albums that I had missed (the numbers represent the number of times an album appeared in the nine sources):

Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot       8

Arcade Fire, Funeral      7

The Strokes, Is This It    7

Jay-Z, The Blueprint       6

LCD Soundystem, Sound of Silver          6

Outkast, Stankonia        6

Radiohead, Kid A          6

Beck, Sea Change         5

Kanye West, The College Dropout           5

The White Stripes, Elephant       5

The White Stripes, White Blood Cells      5

Daft Punk, Discovery     4

Green Day, American Idiot         4

Interpol, Turn on the Bright Lights           4

Kayne West, Late Registration    4

MIA, Kala          4

Animal Collective, Merriweather Post Pavillion     3

Coldplay, A Rush of Blood to the Head   3

D'Angelo, Voodoo         3

Eminem, Marshall Mathers LP    3

Madvillian, Madvilliany   3

MIA, Arular        3

Phoenix, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix     3

Spoon, Kill the Moonlight           3

Sufjan Stevens, Illinois  3

The Flaming Lips, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots          3

TV on the Radio, Return to Cookie Mountain        3   

     

As you can see, I have some of these highlighted. The ones in yellow I already love, so I don’t need to “discover” them. The ones in gray, well… I’ve tried to like Radiohead. As documented elsewhere, I’ve failed. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think they’re bad, I don’t think people who like them are stupid or evil. They’re just not my cup of tea. Ditto with Coldplay. And even more so, but with less respect for the underlying musical product, with the Strokes.

Weeding out albums I knew, or knew would be non-starters, by very happy coincidence, left 20 not totally familiar to me (as in, I'd never given them a proper listen from start to finish) albums from the 2000s for me to review (presented here in alphabetical order by artist):

Animal Collective, “Merriweather Post Pavillion” (3)

Arcade Fire, “Funeral” (7)

Beck, “Sea Change” (5)

Daft Punk, “Discovery” (4)

D'Angelo, “Voodoo” (3)

Eminem, “Marshall Mathers LP” (3)

Interpol, “Turn on the Bright Lights” (4)

Jay-Z, “The Blueprint” (6)

Kayne West, “Late Registration” (4)

LCD Soundystem, “Sound of Silver” (6)

Madvillian, “Madvilliany” (3)

MIA, “Arular” (3)

MIA, “Kala” (4)

Outkast, “Stankonia” (6)

Phoenix, “Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix” (3)

Spoon, “Kill the Moonlight” (3)

Sufjan Stevens, “Illinois” (3)

The Flaming Lips, “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” (3)

TV on the Radio, “Return to Cookie Mountain” (3)

Wilco, “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” (8)

Stay tuned for the next installment, in which our reviews will commence...

Book Review: Born In The Year Of The Butterfly Knife, Codependent No More, Julius Caesar

I've finished three books within the past week, which puts me at 10/52 of my self-challenge on Goodreads to read 52 books this year. That's one a week, I hear! Their pace-counter informs me that I'm one book behind, but I feel pretty encouraged myself! And now, on to reviews...

Born In The Year Of The Butterfly Knife  (Derrick Brown, Write Bloody Publishing, 2004, 203 pp.)
A few years ago, I saw "The Drums Inside Your Chest" a concert film of performances by independent poets. I was initially drawn to the film (besides the inherent attraction of poetry to me) because it was produced by and featured Amber Tamblyn. She talks to God, after all. But the poet in the film I ended up being most impressed by was Derrick Brown, and I went out afterwards to find this volume collecting his poems from 1993-2004. While I'm a fan of Slam poetry and performance poetry in general, I've found before that many poets who are compelling on stage don't read nearly as well in print. Brown, though, has such a visceral quality in his words, and such sharp images, that he escapes this trap. Check out his poem "Kick in the Chest" some time, for example. It pretty much says everything about what I think writing should do. If you like things that burn with truth and are unafraid to look ugly in the process, Brown's poetry might be for you.    

Codependent No More (Melody Beattie, Harper/Hazelden, 1987, 229 pp.)
Speaking of things that burn with truth and are unafraid of illuminating ugliness in the process... I've known of this book, the foundational work on recovery from codependence, for some time, but hadn't gotten around to reading it yet. In the meantime, I absorbed a lot of the concepts in it from wise friends in the halls of recovery, and from Beattie's daily meditation reader The Language of Letting Go. If I hadn't, I think this book would have landed like a thunderclap. As it was, even as familiar with the ideas in it as I was, it was quite discomfiting at times. In the best sort of way. Highly recommended for anyone who has suffered from codependence in any of its varieties, and still needs to learn that fundamental truth that taking care of ourselves is not only okay, it's necessary.         

Julius Caesar (William Shakespeare, 1599)
I'm probably not going to deliver anything here that's been substantially missed by others in the last 400 years or so. I will talk a little bit about why I wanted to read it. After going through a classics kick last year that included reading the the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Iliad and Paradise Lost, as well as re-reading (well, 50%, anyway) the Bible, I developed a taste for epic works of mythical power. Pound for pound, you pretty much don't get more of that anywhere in English literature than you do with Shakespeare. I left a very happy reader, not least of all because the pages spoke so much more to me now than they did during my previous reading. Apparently, my world has grown since the 8th Grade!

Illinois changes nothing: Romney wins, but not until the end

As you may have heard, this cute little state below is voting today, and all indications are that Romney will win, and win big (graphic from FiveThirtyEight.com):

A major victory in a populous winner-take-all state. Surely a turning point, no? Well... I don't know if you've noticed, but one of the interesting things about "turning points" in this race is how little they've actually done to change the underlying dynamics. So far, 44% (or so) of the union, in population terms, has voted (graphic from Wikipedia): 

When Romney took Michigan and Arizona, that was considered a major win. When Santorum then won Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri, there was a lot of talk about Romney's future being in doubt. Washington and Maine wins shored Romney back up. Then Santorum won Kansas by a huge margin (ah yes, but note that Romney got the majority of the delegates that day, thanks to caucuses in US territories). On Super Tuesday, Romney was on top after winning 6 states, including Ohio. Or was he shaky for losing 4 states and barely squeaking by in Ohio? Whichever, he got half the delegates that day. Then last week, Santorum won convincing victories in Alabama and Mississippi, where Romney placed third. Except that, thanks to Hawaii, and more US territory caucuses, Romney got about as many delegates as Santorum did that night.

Now, coming off of a big win this weekend in Puerto Rico, Romney will likely take Illinois tonight. He's on his way! Except when Santorum wins Louisiana and Missouri this weekend. And on it will go...

The very earliest I could picture Santorum getting out would be after April 24th, if, say, he lost Wisconsin April 3rd, performed weakly in other contests, and then was embarrassed by losing his home state of Pennsylvania. More likely, he'll do well enough in enough places that he'll be encouraged to stay in going in to May. And Gingrich has made clear that he's not going anywhere, even though all his best chances to break out have already passed.       

The upshot of all of this? Despite Gingrich's self-justification for staying in, and Santorum's continuing zeal, as Nate Silver makes clear, Romney's machine is competing so strongly across the board, pulling in delegates even in places he doesn't win, and taking winner-take-alls when they come, that he's almost certain to get to 1,144 before the convention. Barring a candidacy-hobbling scandal (which, come on, a Mormon is not likely to give rise to), Romney will be the nominee.

But not very quickly. As noted above, about 44% of the country has voted, population-wise. And Romney has gotten (sound of computer clicking and whirring), yes that's right, about 45% of the total he needs:

1,275	Delegates remaining to be selected as of 3/19/12
628	Romney still needs (1,144 total, minus 516  he currently has according to Real Clear Politics tally)
49.3%	Percentage of remainder needed

There's no reason, given the states remaining, that he should do worse than this. His popular vote total thus far is running at about 40%, but delegation allocation rules, and his campaign's skillful targeting of opportunities for delegate upside, is giving him more than 50% of delegates on average. But there's also no reason that he should do markedly better. As you'll see below, there's no real trend on his part toward getting above 50% thus far:

Mathematically, Romney will, almost certainly, be the nominee. And mathematically, he will, almost certainly, not get there until nearly the end (probably when California, New Jersey, New Mexico and South Dakota vote on June 5th, maybe not until Utah does on June 26th). Nothing that happens in Illinois tonight will change this.

Headed into Super Tuesday, Romney weakest Republican nominee in 40 years

First of all, let me restate what I said the last time I visited this topic- This is in no way an attack on Mitt Romney personally or politically. Personally, by all accounts, he's a heck of a guy. Look at this story, for Pete's sake! And politically, before he became a late convert to being "severely Conservative", he was one of the Republicans I most respected in policy terms. This is purely a matter of facts and figures, and the facts and figures show the following: 

Going in to tomorrow's Super Tuesday contests, Mitt Romney is the weakest Republican nominee of the last 40 years. And he likely still will be after tomorrow.

First, a recap of our story thus far. Almost a quarter of the states in the Union have now voted (graphic courtesy of Wikipedia commons):

If you tally the votes to date, you'll see that Romney currently has about a 41% share of the total (my chart, based on final tallies from each state):

That, to be sure, is a lead. But it's not that high of a lead. To place it in perspective, here's his total thus far compared to the total that the eventual nominee of both parties has gotten in all contested races since 1972 (when modern primary and caucus rules start to apply) (my chart, based on Wikipedia figures for each year):

What becomes immediately clear is that Republican nominees, win or lose in the Fall, generally consolidate their internal support very well. The only Republican on the list who got less than 50% of his party's total was John McCain, and it's worth remembering that the party faithful were decidedly lukewarm about him. Romney thus far is running below that level, in a bracket usually reserved for Democratic nominees.  

One might expect Romney's share of the vote to increase later on in the contest. But I'm not sure one would expect it to increase a whole lot. Looking back at the vote totals thus far, we can see that he's only gotten above 50% in one of 13 states. Of the 10 states up tomorrow, most polls and forecast models (take for example, Nate Silver's current projections at FiveThirtyEight) show him above 50% in only two states: Massachusetts, aka his home state, and Virginia, aka the state where Ron Paul is the only other candidate who got on the ballot.

It's not Romney bashing to note that this is underwhelming support. The same weakness of underlying support is apparent in national polling. While he currently leads nationally, he's seen four other candidates pull ahead of him five different times in the past six months:

Indeed, in the last six months, he's only been in the lead for a total of approximately two months altogether. Again, it's interesting to compare to McCain at the same point in 2008, a candidate who the party was lukewarm about and who only really started to pull ahead just before the primaries:

They weren't excited about McCain, but once the voting started they lined up behind him pretty quickly.

Of course, winning the nomination is not about national polls, or even state vote totals, it's about delegates. In that regard, the following offers some food for thought:

1,932	Delegates remaining to be selected as of 3/5/12
971	Romney still needs (1,144 total, minus 173  he currently has according to Real Clear Politics tally)
50.3%	Percentage needed

As noted earlier, his total of voting thus far is well below 50%, and isn't likely to get much higher tomorrow. Of course, delegate allocation rules are quite complex and vary state to state, such that delegate allocation is not always directly related to proportion of vote. Nevertheless, to the extent that the two roughly track, we would expect Romney to not get much more than half of the remaining delegates. Indeed, the best guess on tomorrow is that he'll get about 50% of total Super Tuesday delegates.   

At that pace, it will take him until June to wrap up the nomination. The only modern Republican race that went on anything like that long was 1976, when incumbent Gerald Ford was nearly unseated by challenger Ronald Reagan.

There is no serious scenario for anyone to beat Romney for the nomination, and' even going on until June, there's every reason at this point to think he'll wrap it up before the convention, preventing anyone else from being drafted there. But any way you look at it, he is in an extraordinarily weak position vis-a-vis modern Republican nominees.

Will science create an army of Dry Drunks?

Many of you may have noticed a story this past week about researchers developing a possible heroin vaccine. The basic idea is this: the vaccine blocks the brain-receptors that respond to heroin, such that users no longer get a euphoric rush from the drug. There's been corresponding work on a cocaine vaccine, as well as indications that some diet drugs that operate on a similar principle are not only good for decreasing overeating, but may also help with quitting smoking and drug and alcohol addiction.

These developments, and others like them, are the outgrowth of burgeoning research over the past decade into the neurochemistry of addiction and genetics of addiction. Given all of this, it is not absurd, in fact it is overwhelmingly likely, that science is well on its way to delivering the ability to block addiction at the neuro-chemical level. It may take a decade or two, it will no doubt have fits and starts, but a medical "cure" (or more likely, multiple cures) for addiction is on its way.

Given my own experience in recovery, I feel a little cautious about some possible side effects of this. I can absolutely see these vaccines and blocking drugs helping people and saving lives. But I wonder if they may also facilitate the creation of an army of dry drunks.

For those not familiar with the parlance, in recovery lingo a "dry drunk" is a person who is no longer active in their addiction, but is also not undertaking the self-work necessary to transform the psychological and character roots of addiction, and clean up the internal mental toll that active addiction leaves in its wake. Usually you can't get away with this for too long without returning to using, but some people do for years, even decades. The Minnesota Recovery Center has a good online run-down of what this looks like on the ground.

To give a quick summation, it boils down to this: "dry drunks" are clean and sober, and may remain so their entire lives, but they're not, to quote the AA Big Book, "happy, joyous and free." This can be a pretty miserable way to live. It also tends to lead to a lifestyle that can spread misery to family and friends. 

I'm not trying to rain on science's parade here. As I said above, I can see these medical measures doing a lot of good for a lot of people. But I can also see, especially in our "quick fix"-obsessed society, these treatments increasing the temptation to try to bypass the hard inner work that, in some cases, there may be no substitute for.   

  

Whose "fault" is it?

About two years or so into the Obama administration I posted something on Facebook about cutting the guy some slack for not being able to totally undo in two years the destructive results of forty years of Republican policies. The usual back and forth started.

People: 40 years? How do you figure?

Me: From Nixon in 1968 to the 2008 election, Republican administrations have predominated.

People: Hey, what about Carter and Clinton?

Me: That would be 12 years versus 28, and by everyone's account Carter was ineffectual, and Clinton actually implemented many Conservative policy goals (welfare reform, Defense of Marriage Act, etc.) to win reelection.

People: Hey, the President doesn't really affect things that much anyway!

Me: (gritting teeth at the irony of getting this counterargument from people who post comments about Obama ruining our entire way of life) That may be so, but...

And so on.

The thing is, I got to thinking: They have a point. The Federal government, at least in theory, is made up of three co-equal branches, so you'd have to consider the Legislative and Judicial branches along with the Executive. Never mind that, there are also state and local levels of government that have a big effect on our lives. And never mind that, you could question how responsible government in total is for the way things are versus- corporations, religious bodies, mass media and all the other major players in society.

This obviously becomes a very big question, or series of questions. But I became curious, and decided to focus things more narrowly on something I could do some measurement of: 


To the extent that the Federal government has some effect on the way things are in the United States, which party has had a bigger overall effect on current conditions, good or bad, i.e. whose "fault" is it?

Keeping in mind our three branches, I decided to crunch some numbers. Starting with 1968 (not a bad point to pick, as it marks the start of the cultural transition from the 60s era, beginning of end of Vietnam, move to post-Civil Rights era, etc.), I gave each branch an equal weighting of 1/3, subdividing the Legislative branch 50/50 between the House and the Senate. For Executive and Legislative branches, I went with the most straightforward measurement- were the President, Speaker of the House, and Senate Majority leader Democratic or Republican? Judicial is certainly trickier, so I went with tenure of Chief Justice for simplicity, counting the eras of the Warren and Burger courts (1968-1986, in our time-frame here) as tilting more Democratic in influence, and the Rehnquist and Roberts courts (1986-2012, so far) as tilting more Republican. And the results are:

Rounding up and down to the nearest whole percentage, we get the following answer to my above question:


To the extent that the Federal government has some effect on the way things are in the United States, for the 1968-2012 era, the way things are is 52% the "fault" of the Republican Party and 48% the "fault" of the Democratic Party. 


That is close enough to 50/50 that I have to conclude, in the interests of fairness, that each party is about equally responsible for the state things are in now, good or bad. So maybe it's time to stop talking in the language of "fault" and "blame" about what "they" did, and accept that it was us. That being so, what can we do, together, to forge a new way forward? 

 

   

Review: Ultimatum, Superman/Batman: Enemies Among Us

As I believe I have mentioned in this blog once or twice, in my old age I've found myself becoming more than a little Bi. No, no, no, no! What I mean is: while in my youth I was a Marvel purist, I've developed quite a fondness for DC over the last few years. These days, I can swing either way. So, appropriately, here are reviews for trade paperbacks from both publishers that I recently finished. 

Ultimatum (Jeph Loeb/David Finch, Marvel, 2010, originally Ultimatum #1-5)

What a sad, ignoble end to one of the most noble creative ventures Marvel had launched since the early 80s. When I got back into comics again following separation and divorce in the early 00s, I discovered the "Ultimate" line that Marvel had launched, and it was a beautiful thing- They basically took their flagship characters and started a whole new Universe around them. One where powers were more limited, the world was more realistic, and decades of twisted storyline were erased, bringing the characters back to their essence. I wasn't the only one who loved it, so much so that there was talk for a while of the Ultimate line replacing the "regular" Marvel Universe. Then sales for the "Ultimate" line of titles started falling toward the end of the decade, and Marvel decided, along with cancelling the series involved, to more or less destroy the whole damn world they were set in. And man does this series do that! Now, one could imagine an interesting, perhaps even revelatory, take on that. What you'll get here, though, is just a ham-fisted bloodbath that seems keen on delivering shock, and totally uninterested in substance. As a result, all your favorite characters, and everything new and fresh that the Ultimate line delivered is lost, and nothing is gained. What a waste! I could go on about other defects of this series, but instead I'd like to point you to something more worth your time: read the first 6 Ultimate X-Men trade paperbacks, the first few Ultimate Spider-man ones, Ultimates Volume I and II and the Ultimate Galactus trilogy. This will remind you what a great thing they had going before they decided to take a dump all over it, and how disappointing it is that they couldn't give it a more fitting swan song.           


Superman/Batman: Enemies Among US (Mark Verheiden/Ethan Van Sciver/Matthew Clark/Joe Benitez, DC, 2007, originally Superman/Batman #28-33)

I'm glad I was reading both of these at the same time, as this helped wash the bad taste of Ultimatum out of my mouth. I'll go spoiler light and just note a few things that fancied my fancy about Enemies Among Us. Since Superman/Batman spent the first twenty-five some-odd issues on what was essentially one through storyline (collected in Public Enemies, Supergirl, Absolute Power & Vengeance), this volume had to be about something new. And it was! The storyline deals with aliens (and the irony that Earth's greatest defender, Superman, is himself an alien), and in the process rolls out some of the great aliens of DC past and present. The entire story is also narrated by Alfred the Butler, Batman/Bruce Wayne's ubiquitous manservant, which proves to be a nifty framing device. Beyond that, it's just fun! Writer Mark Verheiden explains in the afterword how he deliberately sought to evoke the spontaneity and unselfconcious "anything goes" spirit of Silver Age DC. He succeeds beautifully in a way that nevertheless works with the more darkly nuanced storytelling of current comics. About my only complaint would be that having four artists in six issues does undermine the unity of your storytelling a little. But two of those four (Ethan Van Sciver and Joe Benitez) are excellent, one (Matthew Clark) is extraordinary, and the fourth, well, they only subject us to 8 pages of him. All in all, this trade paperback takes you on a ride I can heartily recommend.   

When do you call it quits?

One of the things I got for the Nook Color after getting that super-groovy present for Christmas (thanks everyone who pitched in!) was a subscription to Poets & Writers magazine:

It's a great thing to read on a Nook before turning in for the night. It's also helped focus my thinking on a question I've wrestled with repeatedly since turning 40: When do you call it quits?

Rest easy, dear readers. I'm not referring to cashing it in with strychnine, towering bridges, or anything so grim. But, since I started writing again in earnest in the wake of separation and divorce in 2002*, and then started trying to get that writing published a few years after that, I have wondered from time to time how long I should keep at it before deciding it's not working?

One answer, of course, is the one that Diego Rivera gives Frida Kahlo in Frida when she asks the same question: If you're a writer, you'll write until you die, no matter what anyone says, and that's that. (Okay, he said painter, but you get the point.) As far as writing itself goes, I think that's a perfectly good answer, and there's no reason it shouldn't be true. Year after year of this business of researching agents, publishers and contests, formatting submissions, paying entry and review fees, etc., however, can get a little tiring and discouraging. And so I've wondered during the the occasional sleepless night-when am I allowed to quit?

One answer that I've vaguely considered is: ten years. In other words, in August 2014, ten years from when I first submitted something for publication, if I haven't had any major success so far, it's time to quit. The part of my brain that thinks these kinds of things, of course, doesn't consider any of the things I have done so far (essays in two journals and an anthology, poems and short prose pieces published in several online venues, writing, producing and directing short films that have screened for audiences of several hundred) to be suitably major success.

I could name things that might be "good enough"- getting a short story in a print publication, having a novel published, or a screenplay bought and produced by a real live studio. But I know myself well enough to know that even if some (or all!) of these things happened, I would probably still find reasons why it didn't count and/or obsess on the next unachieved goal. After all, Buddhist psychology informs us that never being satisfied is one of the essential features of conditioned human existence, and as a person in recovery on top of it, my "enough" meter is inherently skewed. So, when I'm in my (mostly) right mind, I know this voice doesn't give reliable advice.

But when do I get to quit? The latest issue of Poets & Writers provided some perspective, in a section that featured profiles of twelve poets who have just had their first print collection come out. Being as I'm working on a poetry collection to submit for publication myself this year, and being as I'm a statistics geek, I did some number crunching based on the profiles. The twelve authors profiled took however long they took doing the writing (often ten years or more), and then, on average, they took three years of active submissions, and an average of seventeen submissions, to find a publisher for that collection. What does this tell me? Rest easy, little one. It takes a while.

In the same issue, there was also an article about the new poetry book series that San Francisco publisher McSweeny's is coming out with. One of the poets who has a volume coming out with them, Allan Peterson, has been writing since the 1960s, with very little recognition until the last few years. In the article, he said that he considered himself "an outsider to the literary world." This reminded me of my good (literary) friend Charles Bukowski, who himself toiled in relative anonymity for twenty years until finally entering his heyday in the late 60s. Here blooms into view a goal I can get behind: If I don't have any "suitable" "recognition" at the ten year mark- fuck them! I'll just declare myself a literary outsider at that point, and keep going as long as I damn well please.

Literary outsider. I like that. 

* I think it's worth noting in this context that, ten years after that separation, here I am today celebrating the first anniversary of my marriage to my heart's delight, Abbey LaMay-West. Some pretty blessed things can happen, if you just give them the time to unfold...
                   

Will Romney be the weakest nominee ever?

Let's begin with appropriate clarifications:

This is in no way, shape or form an attack on the former governor politically or personally. Personally, he seems like a pretty decent guy, and politically, as far as Republicans go, I actually liked him tolerably well in his original pragmatic, moderate form. This is, as you'll see below, an examination of cold, hard mathematical fact. As for "ever", well, it's always nice when you can slip some hyperbole into your headline. "Weakest ever" may be a little over the top, but again, as you'll see in cold hard numbers below, for Republican nominees after 1968, so far it's an accurate statement.

Let's start with some pictures. Nearly 1/10th of the states in the Union have now spoken:

Granted, these are mostly smaller states, adding up to less than 100 electoral votes in total. But a quick look at the tallies from these states is interesting (my figures, based on final tallies for all but Maine):

So far Romney is clearly running ahead of the pack, but somewhat underwhelmingly.

To get a sense of just how underwhelmingly, it helps to do some comparison. As I mentioned last week, Democrats, as a more fractious lot, often end up having nominees who barely clear 50% of total votes in their primary and caucus contests, or even fall under 50%. For Republicans, though, this is much more uncommon. Taking all contested nominations (i.e. not considering candidates like Reagan in 1984 or Clinton in 1996 who ran without any serious opposition for their nominations) since the modern primary system rules were substantially reformed after 1968, only one Republican nominee has received less than 50% of the total votes (figures from Wikipedia, so they must be accurate):

Think about these numbers for a second. John McCain in 2008, a candidate that the Conservative base of the party was very distrustful of and who was running when the party was having a major post-Bush crisis of confidence, is the only Republican in the modern era to get below 50% of his party's votes on his way to the nomination. And Mitt Romney, so far, is running below that level.  

"Ah yes," you might say, "so far!" Granted, you would expect Romney's totals to build as the race goes on. But maybe not by a whole lot, and maybe not terribly fast. We can, for instance, look at current national polls at Real Clear Politics:

Santorum is now the fourth (or fifth, if you count Gingrich as having done it twice) candidate in the last six months to jump to a national lead versus Romney. The latest polls indicate he now ties Romney for favorability among Republicans generally, and leads among Conservatives. On a state-by-state basis, the latest polls from Michigan show Santorum ahead for the February 28th primary there, and, moving in to Super Tuesday (March 6th), Gingrich has about even odds for taking Ohio according to fivethirtyeight.com, and leads in his native Georgia according to almost all polls there. Even in Arizona, where Romney is heavily favored to win on February 28th, he struggles to get to 50%.

So, at least through Super Tuesday, by which time almost half the states in the union will have held primaries or caucuses, Romney is very unlikely to rise above 40-something percent of the total cumulative vote. I would even submit that Romney may be getting close to the point where he can't sew up the nomination until June, and maybe not even by then. As Hillary Clinton can tell you, this point can creep up on you earlier than expected.

Again, a little math is in order:

2,043	Delegates remaining to be selected as of 2/14/12
1,046	What Romney still needs (1,144 total, minus 98  he currently has according to the Real Clear Politics tally)
51.2%	Percentage needed

Skipping back to the vote tallies by state earlier in this column, Romney's running at 39% so far. He's only topped 40% in two of the nine states that have voted, and hasn't reached 51% in any of them. The math is a little wrinklier than that, since there are several winner-take-all contests (though fewer than there were even as recently as 2008), but the point is, the math is already tilting towards this going on into June.

There's only been one Republican nomination contest like that in the modern era, when Ronald Reagan nearly outran the incumbent President Gerald Ford in 1976. Ford, of course, went on to lose the general election. Further food for thought: At 39%, Romney is not only bringing in a lower share of the total than any Republican nominee after 1968, he's three spots from the bottom for any nominee of either party. Those spots belong to candidates who went on to lose 49 of 50 states in the general election.

I am not, of course, predicting that. While Obama's chances for reelection have definitely ticked up over the past few weeks, all signs still indicate a close fight. But it is still an extraordinary sight to see a Republican nominee going in to that fight with support this soft.      

Book Review: The Field Guide to Bigfoot and The Romminghouse Madrigals

Goals, I hear, help give life direction and purpose. And while I have to tone down my own relentless goal-orientation at times to rediscover the joy of just being, I do find goal-setting to be a useful tool.

One goal that I've taken up for this year is a self-challenge to read 52 books. I'm being fairly liberal in my definition of "book", including comic trade paperbacks, for example. I'm also being fairly liberal in my definition of "read in this year", including books I began in 2011 but am finishing in 2012. All appropriate disclaimers now aside, you can track my progress on my Goodreads profile, and so far I'm doing pretty well. With these two that I've just finished, I'm at 5 out of 52! And now, for the reviews...

The Field Guide to Bigfoot and Other Mystery Primates (Loren Coleman and Patrick Huyghe, Anomalist Books, 2006, 205 pp.)

I've had my eye on this book for a while, but after recently visiting the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine headed by the book's author Loren Coleman, it became even more of a priority. I'm glad I got around to it, because it's loads of fun. Originally written in 1999, and with two forwards now bringing it into the 2000s, the front section, in fine field guide fashion, aggregates worldwide reports of different kinds of mystery hominids to produce profiles (with track outlines and range maps) of nine "types" of possible undiscovered primate. This actually is very useful in that it clarifies how some dissimilar sightings that are lumped together as "Bigfoot" or "the Yeti" for example, may actually result from more than one species or variant. The bulk of the book then has two page descriptions of over 50 sightings, arranged by continent, one page being a full-page line drawing, and the other describing the details of the sighting, which subtype it corresponds to, and a general setting of related sightings, legends and fossil finds that resemble the case in question. The final section goes over the science of proving or disproving unknown primates, and makes some best guesses about which might soon be discovered. While one could certainly have a quibble or two (I, for example, would have liked range maps for the individual sightings, and was also left wondering why semi-legendary material about giants and mermaids was fair game, but equally widespread fairy lore was not) the book is fun and well-done. As with most books on the unexplained, it's worth further research on what you read, as some things mentioned turn out to be less than meets the eye after further reading. The authors have generally been careful with their facts, though, and there are loads of things here that even an aficionado of cryptozoology like me had never heard of before.           

The Roominghouse Madrigals (Early Selected Poems 1946-1966) (Charles Bukowski, Black Sparrow Press, 1988, 256 pp.)

Speaking of goals for the year, one of mine is to finish putting together a collection of what I like to think is my best poetry from 2001-2010 and finding a publisher for it. As with many different kinds of writing and editing, one of the best things to do for inspiration is to read in the same genre, and I usually have a volume of poetry that I'm currently reading. Like this one that I just finished, which I LOVED. I've long been a fan of Bukowski, who is in the happy position of being an equally good poet, novelist and essayist. Interestingly, given the picture of him as a grizzled barfly, he's like a classic 19th century man (or woman) of letters in that respect. And the fact that he focuses his powers on the gritty facts of urban life and the inner blight of wrestling with bitterness and failure makes it all the more glorious. This volume features his early poems, from before his success and wider fame of the late 60s/early 70s. Anybody who has ever spent time in the roominghouses of rough streets and/or their own soul will find things here that they recognize in their beauty, ugliness and honesty. And isn't that what poetry, at it's best, can do for us?    

Will Mini-Tuesday mix things up?

For those of you just tuning in, 10% of the states in the union have now held primaries or caucuses. This is also known mathematically as five states:

One has to note that, with the exception of Florida, they're smaller states, collectively accounting for 54 electoral votes, only 1/5 the total someone would need to win this fall. That being said, the group to-date isn't a bad mix- Northeast, West, South, Midwest, and one large state with cross-regional and cross-cultural population groups are all represented. Based on the voting so far, where do the Republican candidates stand?

Let's take a look...

Looking at the numbers, I find a couple of things to be interesting:

• Romney is clearly ahead, but if you total his and Huntsman's votes versus 85% of the total so far for the conservative candidates (i.e. what you might expect a unified conservative candidate to have if there was one) it's pretty close- 43% versus 40%, rounded off. 

• If you're Gingrich, you probably think you deserve to be the last Conservative standing, since you've gotten more than twice as many votes as Santorum has.

• If you're Santorum, you're probably not totally convinced you should step down yet, since you're third, you may have a good day today (more on that in a moment), and...

• Romney's lead is fairly weak, historically speaking.

To follow up on that last point, you'll see above that he's currently at around 41% of the total. Democrats tend to be a more fractious lot, and it's not at all unusual for even a candidate that ends up tying up the nomination pretty handily to be under 50% of the total. For Republicans, though, it's practically unheard of in the modern era. The lowest percentage I could find any Republican winning their nomination by post-1968 was McCain in 2008, who ended up with 46.5% of the party's total votes. That was a nominee that the party was very lukewarm toward, running in an election that they expected to lose going in, and Romney is beneath that level.

Granted, you'd expect his total to rise as we go on, as the field narrows. And another three states (Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri) vote today in what's being called Mini-Tuesday. Sort of. As Swing State Voter nicely explains, most of the voting today doesn't directly result in delegates being awarded. Still, news is news, and it's definitely an indication of where enthusiasm lies. So how's it looking?

Actually, pretty scattered:

The most recent available polls for Colorado show Romney ahead, but as one of three candidates polling more than 20%, instead of as a runaway favorite. In Minnesota, he may actually be slightly behind Santorum. Missouri hasn't attracted a lot of polling, but there's a decent chance that Santorum could win there as well, or at least place strongly. Indeed, 538.com is noting that Romney is generally weaker in the Midwest and both Santorum and Gingrich could have some upset possibilities there.

So how much could today mix things up? A Santorum victory (or two) would certainly breathe some new life into his campaign. Gingrich is less likely to get any great news today, but he could continue to field double-digit results across the board, which will encourage him to stick around as well. This could make Michigan interesting later in the month. It also probably holds Romney down below 50% of the total until Super Tuesday at the earliest.

Could he lose the nomination? Unlikely. Ultimately, he remains the only candidate with the funds and organization to compete across the country (poor Newtie didn't even manage to get on the ballot in Missouri for today!). But the longer Romney remains a circa 40% leader of a field that has three other candidates in double-digits, the longer the doubts that many of the Republican faithful have about him have to ferment. Which could leave the party less unified and enthusiastic than it typically is, making for a more difficult Fall campaign for them. Check back in next week!    

When Romney wins Florida it's...over? Beginning? In the middle?

First things first, Romney, as you'll see below, seems to be well-headed to victory in Florida on Tuesday:

As of Friday, his surge and Gingrich's drop were plateauing, but at levels that leave Romney 8+ percent ahead. With about 9% undecided, almost all of them would have to break for Gingrich for him to regain the lead, and given his uneven performance in Friday's debate, that doesn't seem likely. The latest models at fivethirtyeight.com are also forecasting a Romney victory of 8.5%.

So what will this probable victory mean? Just 11 days ago, when I was expecting Florida to mark four Romney victories out of four, I thought it would mean the end of the race. Then Gingrich surged, Perry dropped out and Santorum retroactively became the victor in Iowa, causing me to recant just before South Carolina. Romney has rallied in Florida, getting muscular with attacks, clearing up his hedging on financial disclosure, and drawing in the establishment, who were suddenly panicked by Gingrich's resurgence. Will a Romney Florida win knock Gingrich out and once again point us toward a quick sew up?

I think there are some reasons to be skeptical. For one thing, Santorum is just about out of money, and it's not clear how a Florida third place that barely clears 10% would help him. Which leaves us with some interesting math:

If you look at the votes so far for the seven Republican candidates that started out in Iowa, a few things stand out:

1. Elimination has been fairly rational, in the sense that everyone who only garnered single didgits is now gone.

2. If you are Gingrich, you're so close to Romney overall so far that only an ultra-shellacking in Florida would convince you that you have no chance long term.

3. Assuming that all Huntsman votes would have gone to Romney if Huntsman hadn't been in the race, and assuming that some, but not all of the conservative votes (I've taken 75% of totals for Bachmann, Gingrich, Perry and Santorum) would have gone to a single Conservative candidate if there was only one in the race, the hypothetical Conservative would lead Romney so far. If you assume even more Conservative overlap, and/or less than 100% Huntsman conversion to Romney, the Conservative would lead by even more.

4. Bachmann and Perry are gone, and Santorum is running out of money. Gingrich is, effectively, the only remaining figure Conservatives dissatisfied with Romney will have to flock to after Florida.

The schedule between Florida and Super Tuesday on March 6th gives Gingrich several chances to steal a surprise victory or two and rally those still looking for an alternative to Romney, keeping things interesting until Super Tuesday on March 6th.

Sat., February 4, 2012	Nevada
February 4–11, 2012	Maine
Tue., February 7, 2012	Colorado
	Minnesota
	Missouri
Tue., February 28, 2012	Arizona
	Michigan
Sat., March 3, 2012	Washington

On the skeptical toward my skepticism side of the coin, it's a heck of a lot of time, and a heck of a lot of geography to cover, for a candidate as underfunded and understaffed as Gingrich. It's also worth noting that Gingrich's best chance is probably in the arch-Conservative Arizona, but they don't vote for four weeks after Florida. And the lightning rod issue there is immigration, just about the only issue in existence on which he is actually to the left of Romney. 

It will be interesting to see it all play out... 

Book Review: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (Edgar Allen Poe, 1838, 146 pp.)


When I got the Nook for Christmas and set about using my Barnes & Noble gift cards to download things to it, one of the first things I discovered was the joy of works that are beyond copyright protection. 99 cents can get you a lot, and if (as I would recommend) you spring for the extra few dollars to get to the $2.99-$4.99 category to get collections that have proper indexing for E-readers, you can find yourself with the entire works of William Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky or H.P. Lovecraft for under five dollars each. And, in this case, Edgar Allen Poe as well.

When I downloaded a collection of his stories, I discovered that it also included The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, the only novel he ever wrote. Having just finished it, I can testify that it is a gem, albeit a somewhat baffling one. What starts off as an adventure at sea story, and then takes a decidedly Poeian turn to cannibalism, becomes a fantasy of Antarctic exploration that then ends without an ending. Poe didn't die in the middle. Publishers didn't pressure him to finish it. He quite deliberately ends with a mysterious final scene, and then writes an afterword explaining how the last few chapters (since it's written as a memoir that has been "discovered" by Poe) have been lost.

While this is consternating, it does produce a curious effect of mystery and wonder that I, and apparently many other readers, ended up appreciating. The language is a delight, as is the always self-obsessed narration of the main character as he stumbles through fantastical scenes of stowing away, mutiny, shipwreck, starvation and sailing ever southward through increasingly strange realms.

One of the things that I found most interesting in reading about it after reading it, is the profound effect this strange little unfinished book has had on other writers. I'd known that H.P. Lovecraft was influenced by it and makes repeated references to it in his Antarctic novel At The Mountains of Madness. In addition to that, though, it appears to have been a major, uncredited, influence on Herman Melville in writing Moby Dick, was admired and translated by Baudelaire, and also inspired loosely-related sequels by Jules Verne and another 19th century writer, Charles Romyn Dake. More recently the book inspired critiques of its racial depictions by Toni Morrison, which themselves became the jumping-off point of Mat Johnson's satirical 2011 novel Pym, in which an African-American literature professor becomes obsessed with finding the inhabitants of the islands described toward the end of Poe's novel.

I myself found the depictions of the "savages" in the book to be troubling in their early-19th century way. Perhaps it's my own post-modernity talking, but I wondered along the way if Poe wasn't slightly tongue in cheek about it. The narrator believes they're guilty of a brutal massacre, but there are subtle indications throughout the work that the narrator himself is somewhat incompetent and not entirely reliable in his recollections. Are the signs that he sees of what he believes is a deliberately set-up ambush actually totally misinterpreted? One of several interesting questions to consider while reading...       

South Carolina: This changes...Something!

Not in the long run, but still something.

Last week, I was thoroughly convinced that today's primary in South Carolina would produce a clear victory for Romney, setting him up for a win in Florida and de facto ending the Republican nomination contest by the end of the month. Well, I'm a big enough Blogger to admit when I'm (partially) wrong. To wit, view the latest polling average from Real Clear Politics over the last three days:

As you can see, going in to the home stretch, Gingrich is in the lead, has upward momentum, and Romney, which is even worse for his chances today, has downward momentum. The model at the eminently respectable FiveThirtyEight.com is forecasting a Gingrich victory of around 38-30.

What happened? Gingrich has had some clear pluses this week: momentum from a strong debate performance Monday, Perry dropping out and endorsing him (which I did not foresee), and another strong showing on Friday night. He also had some pretty clear minuses in the last few days: Santorum's endorsement by the Evangelical establishment, Santorum's belated recognition as the victor in Iowa, and a decidedly unflattering interview with his ex-wife on national television Thursday night.

The pluses seem to be outweighing the minuses. Goes to show you what I know! I also realize that I made a fundamental error in my mathematical noodlings from last week in only considering reallocation of votes among candidates and not the additional factor that there were about 10% undecided who might break Gingrich's way as well. Even so, I wouldn't have called it, since I thought Perry would hang in there, and in addition to the votes from Perry, Santorum and undecideds going to Gingrich, Romney has been dropping the last few days.

Color me contrite! And, to clarify my above statement that I was partially wrong, I am probably, in fact, going to be completely wrong in my short term predictions from last week. If Gingrich wins today and Santorum is fourth, Florida becomes a real contest. And if Santorum is fourth there as well, Gingrich has an excellent chance of being the last Conservative standing and pulling in enough resources from that status to hang in there for many primaries and caucuses to come. As most everyone notes, Romney retains every advantage over the medium/long term. In that sense the "inevitable Romney" theory is probably still correct. But this could at least keep it interesting through Super Tuesday!

And it also has some bearing on Romney's ultimate prospects, as the longer the competitive race, the more focus on him seems to be eroding his favorability rating. Everyone pulls together for their nominee eventually, of course, but enthusiasm matters, as does the opposition seeing what avenues of attack are likely to be most fruitful. Those of us who still believe in civility should put up the blast shields, because this fall could get nasty on both sides...