Day: June 30, 2008

I’m not listening (except, y’know, to your phone calls)

Every time I think this administration can’t get any worse, they go and prove me wrong:

The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week.

Although, as John Sclazi adds:

Also: Hey, you know what I would do if the White House told me that it wouldn’t accept an e-mail with a Supreme Court-ordered document in it? I would PRINT IT OUT and DELIVER IT BY HAND. Because you can do that. Seriously, now, does every single appointee of the Bush Administration have the IQ of a LOLCat? “Oh noes! Theyz not openz our e-mailz! Our public policiz is rooned!” To be flummoxed by a recalcitrant refusing to download a file suggests, well, that you are a candidate for mulching.

Unstoppable monsters

From the Sci-Fi Wire:

Matt Reeves, who directed the monster thriller Cloverfield, told SCI FI Wire that plans for a sequel film have been put on hold until the filmmakers can come up with an idea as interesting as the original.

I didn’t hate Cloverfield, but I did find it disappointing, and I think a sequel (or prequel) is such an unnecessary idea. Which I guess all but guarantees that it will be made.

However, I think it should be said, of the things Cloverfield had going for it — and it had some few things, not too many, but a few — I don’t think interesting ideas were really among them.

But you don’t really care for music, do ya?

An absolutely fascinating essay on the cultural history of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”:

If its use is becoming less common, that’s because its overuse has erased the line-by-line, verse-by-verse meaning and replaced it with an overall feeling of sadness. You hear those opening chords now and the words hardly matter. The visual emotions it was used to counterpoint have overtaken the lyrical content. This is the nature of tools–they are imprinted by their materials–and there’s nothing wrong with tools per se, but making a Matisse into a washcloth would erase some of the details, and Hallelujah’s overuse has had a similar effect.

In twenty-five years, Leonard Cohen has gone from a punchline on a TV show to a sideways joke mixed with a tribute in Nirvana’s “Pennyroyal Tea”–“give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld so I can sigh eternally”–to a totally serious starring role in a song by Fall Out Boy, a band not especially known for their irony. It seems like this has been accomplished by an emotional flattening–reducing a song about the varieties of grace to a mere lament. But this is not the only direction the song could have gone in. Something of Cohen’s defiance, sensuality, and triumph could just as easily inform a cover.

Of the versions of the song that I’ve heard, I think Jeff Buckley’s is still my personal favorite.