Tender is the Night

Nicole and Dick Driver - Insanity courted by a man who falls in love with youth and becomes attached to it out of responsibility. Is that it? Is that the story? 

There is more, and yet, that is the thread that weaves it together. And Nicole's story becomes more sad with each reading. It is such a small part of the novel - her reason for breakdowns - and yet it is such a large part of her life. When I step back and dissect Nicole I have this certain softness for her because of what she has gone through, and the fact that she lets Dick feel like the man in control, even though in a way she pulls the strings.  

Fitzgerald's world is so fueled by men who don't seem to have anything together. And he paints the women as lucky to exist in their crazy fun party world. And yet you start to understand that the women are the reason why the men create the world they live in. Perhaps not on the surface, but definitely underneath, and I think that is evident with Dick's relationship with both Nicole and Rosemary. He is alive with both women - both with pain and excitement. And yet you get the feeling that both women would exist surely without him. And how much of that does Fitzgerald pin on their beauty? His world is punctuated by beauty. The women, the men, the surroundings. One is wrapped in it, and perhaps that is where the meaning lies. They are living in lush beauty, yet their world is shrouded in waste and sadness. 

... A bit later... 

Waste is right. Life as waste, beauty as waste. Nicole finally decides to do her own thing and step out of Dick's parental pose, yet she steps into the arms of another man who knows what is best for her. Better? Come on! What the hell. The more I think about it the more irritated I become. She saves herself from one way of life, and chooses another that is going to be slightly less boring for a while. I have to be honest - she really pissed me off. 

And Rosemary... I at least felt some sort of pleasure in the life she led. Sure, she was googly eyed around Dick, at least for a while, but she didn't need him, and I don't really think she needed anyone except for her mother. ( I don't think that is any better, but for the sake of this entry I will leave it at that.) She wasn't honest with herself completely, but she seemed to know the limits of her crush and so called love. 

And Dick. At first I kind of felt sorry for him. And then I realized that he was living the same life in the United States as he did in Europe. The same life. Getting into trouble, running from complications, falling in and out of desire. And it didn't matter where he was or who he was with. He was living to undo himself. The loss of Nicole didn't matter nearly as much as the loss of his age of desirability. 

Euro Cup 2008

It is a game of heartbreak and passion. Michael Ballak and the German team has stolen my heart, and once again I am deep in the throws of Football Love. Watching Euro Cup enables me to call it football, because it is so different than watching MLS Soccer. ( I do have to say that America has come a long way, and I am hopeful for the future, but the United States still has a long way to go until they play as beautifully as some of the European teams. And South America for that matter.) 

I love this game. There is a pace to it that is unmatched, and the players are holding up more than the hope of their teams. Their fans are passionate to teh point of obsession. 

  It is about the pitch - the green of it and size of it and how the ball and players use every single part of it to control the game. it is about the Uniform - how the players grab uniforms whenever they can, or how a player leans down to fix a sock just to catch his breath, or how the jersey hangs outside the shorts for some players, and is tucked in for others. It is about the chanting crowd and how their every breath lingers on a single cross. But mostly it is about the ball. The way players move for the ball even when it is on the other side of the field. The way plays are anticipated and carried out, and then when the ball bounces strangely the game is altered to a new path, and the players adapt. The momentum of the game is like a techno beat. it starts out slow and methodically, and slowly moves and grinds its way to a pitch until you are on the edge of everything just waiting for the shot, the save, the volley. And then it breaks, and the players know it, and the ball crashes into the back of net, and the players are overcome with emotion. 

Michael Ballak and Germany have an amazing team. They play with a confidence that is so fun to watch. They have so many weapons, and Ballak is the steadfast among them. Germany is a team that can play beautifully and link passes together and look composed, yet they are also a team that even when back on their heels can whack the crap out of the ball and hit it into the net with their thigh. Not exactly pretty, but awesome. Ballak is the anchor. The quiet storm that links things together on the field. 

Germany and Spain . . . Should be a great game to watch, and I am looking forward to it. Euro Cup Final 2008. After this MLS just won't be the same. But hey, World Cup is only 2 years away. 

And we should still have hope that Americans will some day fully appreciate the beauty of this game. 

OH THE GLORY OF IT ALL

"Kids are trusting and wise and I cannot think of  a less useful combination to be born with. The wisdom lets children know who they are. And then the trust lets everyone else take that knowledge away." 

- Sean Wilsey

"Oh the Glory of it All"

This stuck with me. I never thought about who I was when I was a child. The only way to keep that up is if we lived alone in the forest. Just pure existence. We have been getting it wrong for thousands of years. We were meant to breathe, fornicate, and experience purely. The animals have it right. There is no other reason... Those jokes about starting off life as old and growing down in age until you die as an orgasm have it right. 

There is nature all around us, and we build on top of it and cover it up. As a child I played in the dirt and befriended bugs. I knew who I was. I know I am going off tangent as far as the book itself is concerned, but this is the thought process I've had since reading that sentence. Where did we go so wrong? Why is it do difficult to play in the sand? Why do we let others tell us what our lives should be like? Not as blatantly as we did in our teens and early twenties, to be sure, but the guidance seeps in from all angles as we age. And we let it. 

And I know all the reasons why questioning exists... but it all ends up the same. We all still get old and die. Human kind can never change that or fabricate a reason for our existence. So I ask: Why not live purely for experience's sake? Why not live like children? 

Movie: The Grand

Nick: Yes, that is a big, unpredictable, snarling bear looming behind Werner Herzog. But I ask you, who, really, is in danger here? Surely not a man who checks into hotels simply as "The German." Nor one who, while petting a white rabbit named Munchkin, insists that he has never felt more alive than when strangling a goat with his bare hands. Nor a man who calmly observes that "Las Vegas has no irony" shortly after remarking that "coffee is some kind of beverage for cowards." This fake documentary on high-stakes poker puts everything in and wins big. No, not thanks to smart direction or a good script, but because the man who thirty years ago brought a steamship to the Amazon and made a bunch of tired natives pull it--literally, pull it--over a mountain, who insisted that Steve Zahn brave a poisonous caterpiller because "no, it is perfect," who ate his own shoe on a bet with Errol Morris, because this man briefly put aside making documentaries about the world champion of cattle auctioning and some nut who gets eaten by bears (see above) in order to hold a bunny for fifteen minutes and pretend to act.

This book haunted me. I am trying to understand the desire for the risk. I am haunted by their journeys despite understanding that their lives are constantly at danger. They climb higher and higher into the atmosphere, they step over the remains of previous climbers, some of them better qualified to climb the unforgiving mountain than they are, and still they struggle on. They don't have to do this. They don't need to do it, yet somehow they do. Somewhere deep inside is this desire to conquer. To reach the highest spot... to do something only done by a few. To be a part of an elite group of people. I am trying to understand.
I am haunted by the idea of a death so high above most of our lives, so alone, without company except for insane weather. So much death... And it is not death by cancer or aids. They don't die from car accidents, gun fire, or knifes. They die because they chose to try and conquer a mountain. I keep saying "conquer" because I can't think of a better word. I suppose they don't necesarily think of it like that. But I still can't pose it better.
There is a desperation to the story... and I am just trying to understand. And still I am haunted.

Nick: Librarian, philosopher, and overall weirdo Georges Bataille argued that the possibility of death is a necessary condition for the certainty of life. According to him, only in those strange, secluded spaces between one truth and another--the truth of our being here, now, animated and luminous and the truth of our being nowhere, never, inert and caliginous--only in that soul-stirring, venal threat to man, moment, and, yes, our very minds, do we really have a sense of what we are. Only then, when we are most compromised, most corrupted by our limits, are we free from compromise, uncorrupted and unlimited. Only the uncontrollable threat of another person, a distraction or an accident, or some wild, unknowable sin fulfills us, makes us ourselves, and, I hope, civilizes us. Death makes us more human and more particular. Unfortunately, it also destroys us. What makes this book so troubling is also what makes it so genuine. We're all looking for what we are, so that we can live sincerely, or perfectly, or humbly. More often than not, we find what we're looking for in whatever kills us most beautifully--and indifferently. We should admire these petty fools who climb mountains searching for God, or grief, or nothing. Most of us will search for it, if at all, in this life. Someone should teach us to look a little farther, to strain our eyes on the senseless conflict that drives us toward unthinking eternity and the brilliant, shining now. We should stalk the nearest library, contemplating evil. Or maybe just scale the next peak with the help of two dozen Nepalese.

Front rounded vowels

Nick: Who knew that French had mid-front rounded vowels? I thought only German and various petty Scandinavian languages indulged in such extravagance. What did I learn those four years in California public school? Well, I tell you what I didn't learn: how to pronounce mieux correctly.

Sick Rabbit Blues

Nick: There I am, Curious-George-Passed-Out-on-Ether shirt and all, petting a very prostrate rabbit. My younger one (not pictured) developed something--I hope not a lung infection, we'll find out next week--that causes her to sneeze uncontrollably. This afternoon, my older rabbit (above) caught it, and I'm very worried. You may think I'm being stupid or sentimental--I'm not--but I consider him a member of my family, as deserving of concern and affection as any parent, sibling, or spouse. If you want to tell me to get over it, consider how you would feel if your brother or sister, husband or wife, mother or daughter, suddenly got cancer. No big deal, right? Get over it? Animals are aware enough. They feel joy, they get depressed, they have a sense of humor. Treat them with the same respect you would any sentient being. Worry when they get sick. Share their blues. Goddamn it, why are living things so frail? At this moment, tonight, I agree with the Marquis de Sade. I hate nature, that cruel and indifferent whore. Fuck her.

Daily News

Nick: A lot happened today, some of it good, most of it bad. Mister Potatohead was implicated as head of an Al-Qaeda cell, apparently. My backhand approach continues to pop up like a popcorn kernel on the surface of the sun. Lou still owns my ass on Guitar Hero 3. I still live in a moderately Hispanic shit district when I should live in a hopeless, dysfunctional black one. I watched The Corner, which was, by the way, heartbreaking and brilliant, and felt like a middle-class tumor. I still don't understand Peter Gabriel, but fuck it. I still enjoy debting, not because I want anything or like to spend money, but just because being a financial delinquent is the only viable protest I can think of in this retarded post-puritan culture of criminal accountants and douchebag CEOs. I still love my rabbits, admire Rafael Nadal (even though an upstart Serbian beat him in straight sets today at Indian Wells), and congratulate everyone who tasks Roger Federer (Mardy Fish? 6-3 6-2?? What the fuck??) I still like the stars. I still don't want to die.

Crazy Hot Heat

Memoirs of a kitchen slave. This book gives new definition to cooking. It combines the insanity of a kitchen during a rush and the story of a single olive picked at the exact right moment from the hills of Tuscany. I have always been a fan of the idea of organic and natural food, but haven't really understood the story behind it until Buford so eloquently describes the seasons of food in Italy. It is so interesting to understand where it all comes from. We all go out to eat on a regular basis, but how often have we contemplated the hours of labor and passion that has gone into our food? (Or maybe in the case of most chain restaurants, has not gone into our food?)

We have strayed so far from the path of good food that we don't even understand what it means anymore. It is not about the end product, but about the peoples lives that go into harvesting. There are still a few people in this world who spend their life's work making a single kind of cheese. There are a few people that raise cows for their milk and meat, let them wander freely and happily, and feed them the foods that cows are naturally supposed to eat. Shouldn't we support these people?

Another thing about this book that impressed me in a weird way: Apparently Mario Batali can drink a case of wine in one sitting, and get up to talk about it the next day. This book was not entirely about Batali, not even close, but his image does litter the pages, and it is a wonderfully human description. I don't even know if I liked the person that was painted, but I found him interesting and definitely someone with a creative mind.

Buford surprised me with this book. It was enjoyable, political, heartfelt, and mouth watering. It made me think about dinner in a new way. It has inspired thought in an average grocery shopping adventure, and I think that is what a great book is all about.

Nick: WOW. This book sounds like the gnostic gospel of cooking. I'll have to put down this vomitous tract on sounds in some language that may or may not exist and pass the rest of the morning in holy quiet, astonished at the rural splendor of an olive or dry white wine. Or maybe just marvel at a man who can imbibe vast quantities of wine and still act like a litterateur.

David Simon, Live as Hell!

Nick: David Simon, creator of The Wire, gave a lecture tonight here in Austin after receiving the William Randolph Hearst Award. Some highlights:

"I'm the Pat Riley of television."
"My wife eye-fucked me."
"Everyone in this room should participate in jury nullification."
"I did the barbecue circuit."

He was clever, eloquent, spontaneous, and a lot more like McNulty, the philandering hero of his series, than his comments about Aeschylus led me to expect. A man to admire.

Reading: Philip Larkin, Collected Poems

Nick: Ah, there's that bicycle he rode past the church on, the one that brought him from youthful cynicism to middle-aged wonder and, finally, to elderly contempt and terror. Good man, that Larkin. If you don't believe me, read "The Old Fools":

What do they think has happened, the old fools,
To make them like this? Do they somehow suppose
It's more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and drools,
And you keep on pissing yourself, and can't remember
Who called this morning? Or that, if they only chose,
They could alter things back to when they danced all night,
Or went to their wedding, or sloped arms some September?
Or do they fancy there's really been no change,
And they've always behaved as if they were crippled or tight,
Or sat through days of thin continuous dreaming
Watching light move? If they don't (and they can't), it's strange:
Why aren't they screaming?

At death, you break up: the bits that were you
Start speeding away from each other for ever
With no one to see. It's only oblivion, true:
We had it before, but then it was going to end,
And was all the time merging with a unique endeavour
To bring to bloom the million-petaled flower
Of being here. Next time you can't pretend
There'll be anything else. And these are the first signs:
Not knowing how, not hearing who, the power
Of choosing gone. Their looks show that they're for it:
Ash hair, toad hands, prune face dried into lines -
How can they ignore it?

Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms
Inside your head, and people in them, acting.
People you know, yet can't quite name; each looms
Like a deep loss restored, from known doors turning,
Setting down a lamp, smiling from a stair, extracting
A known book from the shelves; or sometimes only
The rooms themselves, chairs and a fire burning,
The blown bush at the window, or the sun's
Faint friendliness on the wall some lonely
Rain-ceased midsummer evening. That is where they live:
Not here and now, but where all happened once.
This is why they give

An air of baffled absence, trying to be there
Yet being here. For the rooms grow farther, leaving
Incompetent cold, the constant wear and tear
Of taken breath, and them crouching below
Extinction's alp, the old fools, never perceiving
How near it is. This must be what keeps them quiet:
The peak that stays in view wherever we go
For them is rising ground. Can they never tell
What is dragging them back, and how it will end? Not at night?
Not when the strangers come? Never, throughout
The whole hideous, inverted childhood? Well,
We shall find out.

Music: The Who, Who's Next

Nick: Please, tell me why my generation knows nothing of "My Generation." We all listen to The Beatles, The Stones, Led Zeppelin, but, really, how many people go home and listen to The Who? Well, we should. In a world of hirsute protomen and femurs used to club encroaching bands of hominid, Pete Townshend is Voltaire. And while we're on the subject, fuck you, general American television, for trying to assimilate "Baba O'Riley" and "Bargain." Nice try, CSI New York, but next time maybe you should pillage old Foghat songs.

2008 Australian Open men's 3rd round Kohlschreiber-Roddick

Nick: Outstanding match from two men who have no business playing so well. Incredible, what happened in Melbourne that humid January morning. More incredible, though, is how Roddick covered the court like an athlete and not like an imitation trebuchet I broke in 8th grade French class.

The Wire

Nick: A street photograph of West Baltimore, home to the bravest, subtlest, smartest, and most moving television series ever made--one that ended tonight at 9:30, central. Strange, and so wonderful, that men and women who never lived, carrying burdens they never knew and suffering grief they never wanted or received, would affect me so deeply and so permanently. I've changed since first watching this show three years ago. I'm sharper, simpler, and, I hope, more purposefully myself. To its sixty hours of gossamer, novelistic brilliance, I owe more than I can possibly say here with my cautious words and compromised ideas. I owe what little bit of moral goodness I have. I owe the dignity I see in people, even those, like me, who cherish time even as they mock it with their indifference. I owe it whatever life I have left to live, all the years, the minutes, the feeble mind and careless body, the subdued cruelty of my own heart, the wasted but necessary kindness. I owe it my health, my sanity, my decency. This work of art--and it is art, as difficult and eternal as any Christ by Caravaggio or sprawling Eliotic township--affirms the strength and nobility of its subject even as it exposes its sick little weaknesses. It is a love song to a city, and as all lovers know, we find the fault, the imperfection, the human wreck far more compelling and overwhelmingly more beautiful than the dismal predictability of perfection. Place matters. People matter. McNulty, Michael, Cutty, Frank, glorious, bearded Pryzbylewski--I will miss you, all of you, so much. Now all we have are the deliberate words and gestures, the luminous narrative arcs, the completed masterpiece. Well, for such loss, I would believe, abundant recompense. Thank you, David Simon, for this magnificent gift. None of us deserves it; all of us profit by it. Your love redeems us in the quietest ways.

Six Feet Under

It is far too easy to say that this show is about life and death. It is about the characters struggle to make their lives matter. It is about finding comfort in others, and realizing that comfort will not come, because it is all so fleeting. But there are those moments, so rare and brilliant, where time stops, and they really soak it it. They understand that moment is all they really have.

I have seen many episodes. But I've never had a consistent relationship with HBO, so I've missed many shows over their short life. Michael bought me the entire series for Christmas... and today I am starting season two. I am watching them in order, and I'm already conscience of the end. Like all good things in life...

Nick: The line "I'm his fuck puppet" justifies any mistake this show may or not make for the next thousand years. A mighty good card to hold.

It's Not Easy Being Green

It's Not Easy Being Green is/was a show on the Sundance Channel about a family who sold everything to rebuild this old farmhouse and live a sustainable life. The cool thing is that each member of the family has different ideas and reasons for why they want to live off the land. I love the father. He treats it like a challenge. It does seem like such a satisfying way to live. I love the scenes at the end of a long hard day when they gather after dinner and sing songs. They seem like the most happy family. It feels natural. I also love how they use old beer bottles from a neighborhood pub, crush them down, and use them as part of a green house heating system. It is all so damn clever. 

Into the Wild

Nick: This is Chris McCandless, who seventeen years ago abandoned the lie of civilization only to perish in the lie of wilderness. Were we all so reckless and beautiful, maybe this world would be worth saving. An extraordinary, wasted life.

Richard Pryor, Wanted

Nick: In the last few years, I've elevated Richard Pryor from funky black wiseass to political prophet. Covering everything from sensitive men to homo-simian sexual tensions, Wanted is both hysterically funny and breathtakingly intelligent. It is also dry, dear, and poignant, an unexpected balance of the spontaneous and the studied. With his attic obscenities, he was the Aristophanes of late twentieth century life, complete with gay myth of circular beings who roam the earth in search of erotic rest.

Willie Nelson, Red Headed Stranger

Nick: Just one of ten thousand reasons why Austin, Texas makes more sense than ninety-nine percent of the cultural miscarriage we call America. What delicate timber. What gentle, understated narrative. The eponymous song itself is reason enough to set fire to Nashville and all its corporate grotesquery.

Baudelaire, "The Painter of Modern Life"

Nick: This is the face of a man who will not be sent to India. After all, what profitable whoring can be had among its indigent monks and farmers? No, a man must whore properly in Paris, where he can contract syphilis, become paralyzed and mute, die, and finally be buried between the mother he resented and the stepfather he despised. I've stood at his grave, and wept, and raged against the impotence of its occupant, and cursed his genius. I also walked fifteen miles through the city's dirty, winding streets--alleys and avenues and boulevards filled with the vapid, dishonest crowds he adored--before arriving at the intransigent wreck of his body. I walked there, as a pilgrim should.

Iron and Wine

What a wonderful CD. 

"There are things that drift away like our endless, numbered days

Autumn blew the quilt right off the perfect bed she made

And she's chosen to believe in the hymns her mother sings

Sunday pulls its children from the piles of fallen leaves"

This CD never fails to make me cry. I used to lie on the ground and just let his soft voice fill the empty air and think that he spoke for the silence. Made sense of whispers and made peace out of loneliness. It is not just the words, but the haunting quiet way in which he sings them. 

Nick: I've never heard the song you quote, or any Iron and Wine for that matter, but metrically we have two options, both equally cool: either the first and third lines have an implied offbeat after the fourth ictus, where the hemistichs meet, or the second and fourth lines are regular and the additional syllables following the stichic breaks in lines 1 and 3 are anacrusis, making the pause an epic caesura. Either way, poulter's measure is rare in modern music, so way to go, Iron and Wine, for reviving an obscure Elizabethan verseform. 

After finishing "Three Cups of Tea"...

I just finished reading "Three Cups of Tea." Right before I finished I learned that we are bombing Somalia. Should that surprise me? I used to be frightened of how other countries perceive us. Lately, though, I have just been saddened. I am sometimes very ashamed to be an American. This book is about education and hope and small villages that survive and love each other. During parts of the story this book makes me wonder if education is not a double edged sword. Does not education breed advancement breed invention breed power and greed? Or perhaps can these villages educate their girls and have the girls return to help their children survive sickness and lead more healthy lifestyles? I can't help but wonder how all the children who go to college and private schools end up going back to their villages as the educational system means for them to. 

I want them to go back. I want to hear about them acting as peaceful doctors at the foot of K2 treating villagers and hikers alike. I want to hear about their wonderful harvest and celebrations and new found recorded history that goes hand in hand with the oral one. But I can't wrap my head around it. I do have hope, though. I feel like we have to. 

Nick: As that stupid Spanish poster in the library at my old high school insists, saber es poder. It's true, knowledge is power, but probably not in the way Edward James Olmos intended. Of course we're bombing Somalia; of course literacy allows those who master language to exploit living things; of course knowledge is one more technology of domination. We're just a bunch of apes with guns. 

"Now dub it tovarisch, like tovarisch would"

Nick: A few weeks ago, I missed a concert by gypsy-klezmer extravaganza Golem, a band known as much for its wild live improvisation as for its plaintive fiddle or creepy, oblique commentary on Eastern Bloc atrocities. Despite catching the modest Straight No Chaser, a documentary on Thelonius Monk, later that week, I couldn't shake the feeling that I'd been cheated by some malevolent deity or petty karmic glitch.

Balance will be restored on March 17 when Gogol Bordello, harbinger of Slavic craziness and general illiteracy, hits Austin. If you can't appreciate my enthusiasm, let me remind you that one verse from "Dogs were Barking" reads,

Remember things, things that are eternal,
Remember things,
You forget the things

Now, that is powerfully bad grammar. Somehow, though, the song is better for it. Oh, and let me also remind you that Gogol Bordello released an album titled "Multi Contra Culti vs. Irony."

Bonding

Nick: I spent 4 hours today trying to bond my rabbit with a medley of lops and harlequins, all of whom fell madly in love with my triumphant ward and none of whom, apparently, met his ridiculous standards for a mate. What can I conclude? He's either a princess or a big friggin' pimp.

Why do people celebrate dogs, cats, birds, and assorted braindead reptiles only to mock the misunderstood rabbit? In the last twenty-eight years I've had three cats, three dogs, one bird, and, thank god, no snakes or lizards; none has had the personality, individuality, or exhuberance of this six pound maniac, this chiseling Caesar.

If the animal kingdom were Rome, we'd all be Bruti.

What the Bleep...

What is it about this time that allows for such quickness. Do you notice that people don't read anymore? They don't stop to regard other humans in day to day life? We all go to work, I assume, and we are pretty much aware that there are others in our world, yet we act alone. Is that because all we see is ourselves? Are we all acting in each others mellow drama? I always thought I actually made up the "Truman Show" before it became a movie. I digress...

What does it all mean if it is scientific? Nothing, really. Some nerves and brain waves that pose as thoughts and humans during our most recent evolutions as part of the life force. Does anyone really believe we are on the end of the food chain? The humans around right now? Really? Anyone? Really?

Nick: We probably are on the end of the food chain, but our being there doesn't rule out good old cannibalism. Maybe Robert Rodriguez has been right all along, and our 4 1/2 billion year experiment will end in, uh, zombies.

Nostalgia: An age old practice

Nostalgia. Is more than a memory. My parents' house has a smell. A taste. There is a solid in the air, tangible, and your fingers relax in it. No matter the couch your ass sinks in it. And suddenly, there you are, home. 

And some say that it is because of a country. Or religion. Or food. And some say what they will say, but for you it is about how your breath comes out nice and smooth and how your body relaxes no matter where it rests. That is home. And that exists beyond time or place. That exists with people. 

Essay: "Kuhn's Laws, Old English Poetry, and the New Philology"

Nick: Nice to know that a terrifically hard problem you've devoted the last two years to solving is actually some insignificant piece of linguistic debris. Thanks for wasting my time, you retarded, prehistoric Germans.

2005 Australian Open men's semifinal Safin-Federer

Nick: Marat Safin shares his name with a murdered French demagogue and looks like a pederast or low-level mook for the Russian mob who spends his afternoons eating deli meat in a seedy Latvian whorehouse. But he stomped Roger Federer in one of the greatest matches of the Open era, earning every inch of that giant gold trophy he plans to beat some woman to death with.

Music: Abba, The Visitors

Nick: All the best and worst of Stop Making Sense or, really, any other David Byrne effort circa 1990. How did four Swedish mopes turn paranoid fantasy and divorce-riddled angst into high art? Well, I'll tell you: elusive, chimerical pop masterpiece meets gay concept album. Plus, Agnetha is hot, and that matters. Bravo, blonde supermen!

Film: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Nick: Look at that long six shooter; with it Bob Ford killed Jesse James, cashiered his own dubious heroism, and destroyed any lingering confidence in the American dream. What a movie: 120 minutes of quiet brilliance immolated by 1200 seconds of transcendent beauty. Rarely have I been so moved and stunned by either fact or fiction. Masterful work, just . . . wonderful. There aren't words.