MTV, home to a show called “Date My Mom,” as well as the most annoying reality program of them all, “The Hills,” has for years been subject to the complaint that it doesn’t really show music videos anymore, a charge that is essentially true. But MTV now also airs a show called “FNMTV.” On the one hand they featured the premiere of the video for the worst song (to my knowledge) that LL Cool J has ever made. On the other hand, on the the same episode, they premiered the video for that quite lovely She & Him song, “Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?” (She & Him is, of course, the all-star tag-team of Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward). On the one hand the Jonas Brothers appeared on the show a few weeks ago and Miley Cyrus is slated to appear next week (both of whom, unlike “Crank That Soulja Boy” I totally get why the kids like, but still). On the other hand, on this past weeks show they had segments focusing on Chromeo and Tokyo Police Club. And though I missed it, they’ve also featured, according to the website, my new favorite band, No Age and your favorite new band, Vampire Weekend. (A quick note: after you watch the video for No Age’s “Eraser” [a video that will, unless you are one of those people who cleverly insist that LA is “fake,” make you want to move to LA] please watch the video of Lil Wayne performing “A Milli,” a song you are by now probably sick of, but that is even more relentless and amazing live). On the one hand the show is hosted by Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz of “guy-liner” fame, which, one would think would fully push the show in the direction of the bad…But Wentz is actually a pretty capable host, enthusiastic about most of the right things and as natural as one would expect a member of an band hosting a show in a room full of screaming teenagers to be.

“FNMTV” also happens to have, what I have heard, is the worst time slot for a television show, primetime Friday night. Which probably means that they are still shoring up most of their hopes and dreams in “Legally Blonde The Musical: The Search for Elle Woods” and “The X Effect”–a show where, I kid you not, two exes meet up and stay at a resort to see if they still have feelings for each other while their current partners watch via hidden camera from another room…

Yesterday instead of blogging I went and saw the new Batman movie. It is not nearly as bad as the contrarian New York Magazine critic David Edelstein claims or nearly as good as all the fanboys and girls on IMDB insist (I mean, seriously, better than “The Godfather”?) Its definitely better than the movie I just finished watching today when I should have been blogging, “I’m Not There,” the Todd Haynes movie about Bob Dylan. But thats another story. (The soundtrack is pretty rad however; especially the version of “Maggie’s Farm” contained therein. I’m totally in agreement with Rebecca about Stephen Malkmus on the strength of this cover alone).

As the book I am working on right now just so happens to concern itself with crime and with blackmail specifically, I have been thinking a lot about genre and when genre is undertaken in a literary fashion. While there have been many notable instances of the high and low melding in literature, movies have been consistently doing this very well for a long time. For what I like to think of as research I watch a lot of movies–American and French gangster, heist and noir cinema being my favorite. So it was nice to see a short piece by A.O. Scott in the Times today about superhero movies (another subgenre-genre that has, at least of late, aspired to something more) and what he believes is the beginning of the end of their prominence in the marketplace. Scott draws a parallel to the western and the limits of that genre, but then, disappointingly, the article just ends. His point seems to be that while the superhero movie and the western are wholly capable of stating the very things about good and evil and the like that, in a sense, go without saying in non-genre-based drama, of the two, only the western truly explores these ideas. Which got me thinking: in this kind of work, what does it really mean “to explore?”

But I digress…And probably for good reason. Compared with Philadelphia, my reading in Providence the following weekend was a breeze. I took a bus this time and arrived hours ahead of the start time of the reading. I brought books with me, a precaution that was totally unnecessary as the bookstore had already ordered a bunch. My co-reader, Laura Jaramillo was brilliant as ever. My friend and former roommate Gabriel Mendes and his lovely wife, Liz, hosted an afterparty that was fun as hell, if without incident. Then I gave stout handshakes and hugs to everyone and went home.

Posted by Colie Collen

trap of ever-rising

energy: I ask them to come

slowly at first and then with great speed

rise, clear-eyed and alert

bear witness to the people’s appetite for change

now lift our nation

looking straight up into the air

vulnerable to cascading failure

vested interest in perpetuating

conserve presently wasted

destabilizing nations

some of them are being stampeded

beyond empty rhetoric

strategic initiative

strategic challenge

melting pressure

kindling for mega-fires

good jobs in the fresh air and sunshine for any coal miner

willingness as a people

generational moment

See the video here, here (skip the first 1  1/2 minutes of thank-yous), or here (shortened version)    

And the crux of the argument, wrapped around cliche but still quite beautifully done:

“Yet when we look at all three of these seemingly intractable challenges at the same time, we can see the common thread running through them, deeply ironic in its simplicity: our dangerous over-reliance on carbon-based fuels is at the core of all three of these challenges - the economic, environmental and national security crises.

“But if we grab hold of that common thread and pull it hard, all of these complex problems begin to unravel and we will find that we’re holding the answer to all of them right in our hand.

“The answer is to end our reliance on carbon-based fuels.” 

Also in this speech, Gore uses the word sclerotic to describe our democracy.  Dictionary.com provides the following definition.

 sclerotic: 1. Hard; firm; indurated; — applied especially in anatomy to the firm outer coat of the eyeball, which is often cartilaginous and sometimes bony.  

So he made me cry, a little, at my desk and over my tea.  What will happen now? 

Bill McKibben brings up a good point:  ”I’m not sure what prize you get once you’ve won the Nobel.”   

Look for meetings the Obama campaign is holding nationwide to seek input on the Democratic Party’s issue positions.  Go here to find one locally.