De File

kdotdammit posted a number of the pictures I took of Skylar and her on her blog last night, in case you're interested in seeing some less abstract shots. I'm especially fond of the one with Bean looking through the railing in the Jack sequence and of the close-up smile and belly-dancer photos in the Jasmine sequence.

I was sitting in J.W. Tumbles, a gym for young children, today, typing my film notes for tomorrow's International Arts Society film Tampopo when I realized that the kids were suddenly bopping to the Ramones. Now admittedly, there's something delightfully primal about both punk in general and the Ramones in particular. Still, when you factor in the knowledge that the very capable young women teaching the class are devout Christians, the significance of this "alternative" music selection is obscured by clouds. Is this a sign that the transgressive impulse in punk has finally reached the point of total co-optation? Or does this mean, rather, that punk has finally managed to reach the age range for which it was always already nostalgic? In "Self-Reliance", Ralph Waldo Emerson praises the boy who "is his own master" and defers to no one. That's the not-so-secret ideal behind punk's anti-authoritarianism, I'd hazard.

You won't catch me walking a goddamned lobster:

That busker in the background, playing to no one, that's my kind of kulturatchik.

Why are so many people with ties to the Republican party doing things that appear to undermine Bush's position? Perhaps there's some particularly darksome conspiracy in the works, whereby Kerry thinks he's gaining ground only to find it pulled out from under him in the week before the election. That could happen. But I'm starting to get the sense that career bureaucrats and career military personnel might be teaming up with an ulterior motive.

It's obvious to anyone who has been paying attention that Secretary of State Colin Powell has been treated like shit by the neocon wing of the Bush Administration. He's done what he has been ordered to do, to be sure, yet with just enough gritting of his teeth to indicate his discomfort. Could it be that careerists who are sick and tired of being disregarded and who resent the fact that so many American soldiers and resources have been wasted in Iraq have decided to give up on W in order to lay the groundwork for a Colin Powell campaign in 2008? Powell would need the middle-of-the-road voters that Kerry and Bush are fighting over right now, since he'd lose some Fundamentalists and racists on the Right.

Maybe the moderate Republicans -- a category into which many white collar workers in Washington and the armed forces fit -- are going to make their own "lesser of two evils" choice and direct their energy, not to defeating Kerry, but to challenging the Bush team's story about Iraq and the War on Terror. I recognize that this might simply be wishful thinking on my part. Nevertheless, it doesn't hurt to dream as long as you remember you're still dreaming.