Current Wisdom
Jackasses, Assorted
CURRENT WISDOM New York Times Black humor: If Nancy Cruzan truly lived only the first 25 years of her life, the remaining 8 were remarkably productive. She is responsible for a Supreme Court...
...He was the ultimate adult at a time when adult had become the greatest pejorative...
...The critter we call veal lives in a state of deliberately induced anemia so that its flesh will be appealingly white to the diner...
...The image of him walking on the beach in a suit and lace-up shoes became a metaphor for everything we hated...
...I didn't think I was doing noise-rock, but I decided to let the label stick...
...But that is not so unusual these days, when almost everyone attempts to surprise their opponents with the most outlandish or outmoded thing they can think of...
...So I thought, wouldn't it be great to get 100 electric guitars, put them in a small room, lock the audience in, have them play really loud, and call the piece Torture Chamber...
...He taught us that politicians were always other people, deeply unlike ourselves...
...Our parents believed we would outgrow our dislike of him, just as we would outgrow our rock-and-roll...
...The veal calf is force-fed a diet that contains no iron and is confined in a crate that is assembled without nails within reach of its tongue so it won't even be able to lick steel nails...
...Not a very good choice for feeding the pro-choice...
...The Bay Area Dolphin Experience (BADGE) and the Nrar World Institute are asking "all dolphins and whales in the area to come to the wharf Saturday at noon to meditate and party with us...
...I think the world record is 265 guitarists playing "Louie Louie...
...When we think of the war, when we think of the draft lottery, when we think of the enemies list and the President bugging himself, even when we think of the mothers who said, "If that skirt was any shorter you'd be naked" and the fathers who said, "You can cut that hair or you can find another place to live," hovering over all is Nixon...
...I was touring with [dancer] Karole Armitage in 1980...
...If the veal were not slaughtered at a young age, it would die of anemia before attaining maturity anyway...
...We must learn to value our bodies as the source of knowledge, pleasure, dignity and our connection with the divine...
...Every day, every hour presents opportunities to do the right thing, to do the better thing, aesthetically, morally—hey, cosmically too, huh...
...This was the height of "noise-rock...
...There's a dolphin breath that I've learned .. . "You take a long, slow breath, breathing from the bottom (of your lungs...
...But Kennedy was never much more than fleeting myth, the epitome of what might have been...
...November 19901 Wall Street Journal The baneful spread of the deconstructionist menace, as displayed in the howl columns of the venerable Journal: In the case of my four-year-old, though, since he is clearly twice as sophisticated as his two-year-old sister, I must gear my pitch to him accordingly...
...Guitarists have massed together...
...In order to counteract the resulting alienation and isolation, in order to feel passion with and not against ourselves, others, and the Earth, we men must re-discover our own bodies—not instrumentally, as objects to be manipulated to fit into a preconceived ideal...
...But then something happens to remind you that, in terms of sheer symbolism, there's no contest: Nixon's the one...
...December 13, 19901 42 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1991...
...Dolphins are pretty easy to call, said Ma Williams, 66, a one-time deputy assessor for Contra Costa County and now a "high-class bum who walks around the world...
...We still can't get all that upset about the Sandinistas...
...Perhaps unborn veal would have been a better choice for the dinner—at least it would have been spared the cruelty of the innocent veal calf's cruel and unusual punishment in a bizarre outside world...
...Meditation invitations to the seagoing guests begin on the Wharf at noon Saturday...
...Her scheme is to divvy up Kuwait's oil so that Iraq gets what she says is its fair share...
...Ronald Reagan's winning nowadays...
...I'll say, "Look Sebastian, it's `Monsterpiece Theater!' Now observe closely, here's something you may have missed the first 20 or 30 times that you saw it...
...government...
...The phone went click...
...The veal calf has no choice in its own short life, even if it's rated choice by the U.S...
...Two groups are seeking your attendance at a two-day festival of dancing, prayer, meditation, drumming, visualizations and music today and Saturday at the Loudon Nelson Center and the Municipal Wharf...
...You recall the discussion we recently had about the evolution of obscenity laws and how public acceptance of the `frog' expletive has changed through the years...
...I think this is quite an accomplishment for a 25-year-old kid," her father said, "and I'm damn proud of her...
...And, we have praised ourselves as genius in the doing...
...Garry Kasparov, supplied by the estimable Times's politically correct chess columnist: The champion's choice of the Scotch Opening flew in the face of a century of experience, which says the opening naively hits the center so early that its striking force is quickly dissipated...
...Do you understand what I'm saying...
...Veal is an animal that lives its entire life in darkness and bondage, confined to a crate so it can't develop its muscles, its flesh thus remaining tender to the tooth...
...Some other important ones might be served up when they're least expected...
...November 9, 19901Village Voice The American Renaissance continues: Kyle Gann: From 1983 to '85 you quit writing for electric guitars...
...Choice is a constant...
...Peace Lady and I go back a long way—so long that maybe I owe her an explanation for why we now have what the lawyers call "irreconcilable differences...
...After many years and dozens of calls, Peace Lady and I have broken up...
...It is commonplace to think that the pivotal leader of our formative years was John E Kennedy...
...Garrett Tomczak Minneapolis [December 6, 19901 Santa Cruz Sentinel From historic Santa Cruz, a report on the recent doings of a local chapter of Americans for Democratic Action: Calling all dolphins and whales...
...May 19901 New York Times Another act of unprovoked narcissism from the appalling Anna Quindlen: Nixon was our introduction to government...
...What is more unusual is Kasparov's picking an opening that has a certain vogue with the women's world champion, Maya Chiburdanidze...
...To Peace Lady's utter surprise, I reacted with anger...
...After all, we once agreed on almost everything...
...Sad-dam Hussein gets nothing, I said...
...All humans are invited to assemble at the Nelson Center at 7 p.m...
...When Kermit says to Miss Scarlet that he doesn't have the froggiest, we know that he means something other than what he says, and this is what makes it funny...
...One would surely have expected the champion, an outspoken male chauvinist, to avoid anything whose leading proponent nowadays is a woman...
...When we choose to exercise our rights we have the opportunity to act for the betterment of all life...
...It was scary, because no one has ever written a piece especially for 100 guitars...
...November 11, 19901 Alternatives In a prestigious New Orleans monthly a philosophic defense of masturbation by one of America's foremost onanists (name withheld): By identifying with the rational, we have exiled from our lives our women, our children and the planet that sustains us...
...Unborn veal knows only the relative bliss of the womb...
...With that we have produced an insensitivity to the pain we inflict on ourselves and others...
...December 27, 19901 The Great Books Series In competition for the most egregious mixed metaphor, a Mr...
...You fill up to your maximum and dive into your psyche like the dolphin dives in the oceans...
...She has a plan to bring peace to the Persian Gulf region...
...Hedrick Smith achieves a world record: The second major incident that stepped on the Reagan parade in 1981, and nearly derailed it, was another self-inflicted wound . . . from The Power Game by Hedrick Smith, Ballantine Books, 1989, page 3581 Interview Another of America's moral colossi, whilst dining with anti-abortionists, finds veal on the menu and abandons himself to art: Veal is not just a baby cow that meets with an accident in the barnyard...
...foreign policy and viewed the Reagan administration's visceral anticommunism with some trepidation...
...And I know that he does because he always answers, "Sure, Dad," with just a soupcon of irony...
...We were both opposed to the war in Vietnam, questioned some of the assumptions of U.S...
...They were wrong on both counts...
...But this is the largest proper ensemble, and it's a special sound...
...After the dolphins and whales arrive, they'll be asked to participate in an "inter-species meditation to stop the killing of dolphins and whales and clean the pollution out of Monterey Bay and the world's oceans...
...By severing mind from body we have sanctified thought and condemned feeling...
...November 28, 19901 Washington Post Richard Cohen's wistful reflections on a bizarre affair gone sour: Peace Lady called from California...
...We must learn to trust the non-rational—intuition, feelings, the unexplainable and the unknown...
...I believe an exploration of surrender will be central during the next decade...
...She is responsible for a Supreme Court decision that . . . will free countless Americans of some of the fears attending death...
...He attracts dolphins "by prayer, meditation, visualization and breathing...
...This episode is a good example of an ironic allusion to a previously scandalous use of the term...
...You can get a good argument going at a liberal gathering these days about who was more pernicious, Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan, the canny lifelong politician or the vague, paternalistic pitchman...
...November 27, 19901 New York Times A blast to the lower lumbar vertebrae of Mr...
...By doing so, we can strip ourselves of our puny insistence to be masters in control, and surrender to powers of which we are only a part...
...Veal doesn't live life to the cow max...
...tonight to invite the finny friends to the Municipal Wharf tonight and Saturday...
...A woman shouldn't have to bear a child she doesn't want—but that's not the only important choice she will ever make...
...Nixon became what was...
...Why, after tha4 did you decide to write for 100 guitars...
...Rhys Chatham: It started with a bet...
...Choice isn't something that happens a few times in one's life, in a moment of crisis...
Vol. 24 • February 1991 • No. 2
