Monkeyshines

Peanuts

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 12:51:23 -0700

Wisdom on the road to Ojai

Sun, 5 Apr 2009 20:42:35 -0700

Such a sad necessity.

Originally posted to: http://www.spaceagemonkey.com/Space_Age_Monkey/Blog/Entries/2009/4/5_Wisdom_on_the_road_to_Ojai.html

Steve Martin: Renaissance Man

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 21:12:03 -0700

Here’s one that snuck up on me recently: Steve Martin is a Great Man.

As a reader of Space Age Monkey, you are no doubt a cosmopolitan sophisticate. As such, you are no doubt thinking, “oh really? Isn’t he making Pink Panther remakes these days?”

Right you are. And having not seen either of the Pink Panther remakes, I’m in no position to defend them. But it was a confluence of recent events that made me consider anew this fixture in the entertainment firmament.

His new album has a real toe tapper: “Late for School.” I’ve really been enjoying it. By the way, as far as I know, he’s never released a music album before. And it’s very good.

Then, separately, I was talking to my uncle the other day about When Harry Met Sally. Having come out in 1989, the movie’s 20 years old already! Then, after a thoughtful pause, we both said at the same time: “you know what other movie I loved from that summer?” We were thinking of the same picture: Parenthood. Certainly a directorial and ensemble effort. But Steve Martin shone in that movie. Now a dad (of a 20-year-old), my uncle shared how Martin’s performance, with hindsight, seems very faithful and true to his own experience.

Steve Martin has provided a favorite for me in:
• Stand-up comedy: 30 years later, “You Can Be A Millionaire” is still hilarious.
• Film (drama): a cool Mamet antagonist in The Spanish Prisoner.
• Film (comedy): The Jerk.
• Fiction: Shopgirl. I loved Shopgirl.
• Music: The Crow.

That’s just the stuff that’s on the top of my head.

When somebody’s been around for more than thirty years, it’s too easy to take them for granted. Let’s not do that with Steve Martin.

Originally posted to http://www.spaceagemonkey.com/Space_Age_Monkey/Blog/Entries/2009/3/31_Steve_Martin__Renaissance_Man.html

Milton Friedman: “I am a liberal.”

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 17:08:40 -0700

“[The faulty assumption is that] the people are children that need to be looked after by the government officials and intellectuals who can take care of them.”

With respect to the space shuttle

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 22:08:26 -0700

Two bourbons and a BSG finale into the night, I’m paging through my virtual shoebox of photos that I collect while surfing the interwebs.

Here’s a recent find: the shuttle Discovery on her launch pad prior to last week’s launch. It’s a lovely photo of an ungainly, unlovely machine.

Much has been said about the flaws of the shuttle. It was built on the cheap. It’s too complex. It’s inelegant. It blows up every now and then. But there’s nothing else like it.* And nothing else in the world can do what it does.

In these and other ways, it reflects the society that built it.

The space shuttle entered into service, if memory serves, in 1981 -- the beginning of the Reagan era. Since then, the U.S. has grown “on the cheap” -- our homes overflow with inexpensive goods made overseas and bought from category-killer big box stores. It’s become overly complex -- the unmanageability of it is in stark relief this week. And there’s no shortage of people to tell us that we’re just a bunch of fat NASCAR fans. We’re inelegant to the core.

But we serve a purpose in the world, just as the shuttle does. We serve past our expiration date, just as the shuttle has. And we lift mighty loads no others can carry to altitudes no others can reach.

The space shuttle finally goes out of service this year. And like the twin towers, the Concorde, and countless other miracles created in a time when the human race actually looked forward to the future -- its replacement is MIA. In its ambitions, at least, mankind is regressing.

The 21st century seems an odd time for that to happen.

To love the space shuttle, with its imperfections, is to love the people that built and paid for it. Well, I love it. And I hope for a greater, better thing to replace it.

*The Soviet copy of the shuttle, the Buran, doesn’t count because it’s a) a wholesale rip-off and b) utterly nonfunctional. Like most Soviet things.

Sunrise on Mars

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 21:45:30 -0700

Everybody I know is stressed out. For the obvious reasons.

But let’s not forget we still live in an age of wonders. Behold: sunrise on Mars.

The Battlestar Galactica finale

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 21:26:24 -0700

A very, very satisfying ending to some of the best TV ever.

I’m still processing it. Stay tuned for some thoughts on BSG, Watchmen, and boy v. girl Starbuck.

Sunshine Cleaning

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 21:42:34 -0700

Saw Sunshine Cleaning over the weekend. Two key takeaways:

1. Good movie. See it if you liked Little Miss Sunshine. It’s comfortable in a predictable way, peppered with solid performances by great actors.
2. Amy Adams is now officially pre-qualified to marry me.

Fred Smith gets it

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 21:12:49 -0700

FedEx CEO and founder Fred Smith knows economic indicators. His business is one. I really like this interview he did last week on Marketplace.

He emphasizes the significance of the industrial economy.

“I think that one of the things that [President Obama] has to address is the movement over the past quarter century of our economy into a more than healthy reliance on the financial sector. Financial profits 25 years ago were about 15, 16 percent of all profitability. In 2007, the last full year before the meltdown, they were about 32 percent. And the financial sector is a supporting activity, you know that finances cars and businesses and so forth. It's not an end unto itself but it became one with a lot of the financial engineering and the so-called quants and that type of endeavor. And I think the tax code makes our economy have a tendency to over-leverage and to put too much of its economic activity into the financial sector.”

and

“I think [the stimulus package] does not put enough emphasis on the industrial economy and try to get it back into a mode where it's making equipment and software purchases, because that's basically what drives the employment numbers. It's the locomotive of the big economic train and so I don't think it does enough in that regard.”

My favorite: “I think the tax code makes our economy have a tendency to over-leverage and to put too much of its economic activity into the financial sector.”

Amen.

Jaimie Dimon: Return of the grown-ups

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 22:03:18 -0700

Wall Street found its voice yesterday in Jaimie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase.

His message - there’s no silver bullet to this crisis, we have to pull together. This is a defining moment in U.S. history; there will be plenty of time to ascribe blame later. Vilification of business is unfair and counter-productive.

Watch to the end -- the best part is in the final seconds.