My t-shirts, part 29: Krazy Kat

Swearing in church department: I never was much of a Krazy Kat fan.

I'm sorry, but there it is.

So I watched "Tangled"

It's good. In fact, to a large part it's very good, although there are some weaknesses.

First of all, it takes a while before it starts getting interesting; it takes too long setting up the story. This could have been fixed by having better songs for the first couple of musical numbers featuring first Rapunzel and then Rapunzel and her evil "mother" – or somewhat stronger performances of them.

These are very much Alan Menken songs – when I heard them I thought immediately of Beauty and the Beast but had to wait until the credits to have it confirmed that it was indeed Menken who'd written the score – so they're of course competent, but Rapunzel's song about her longings is very much the sort of song you'd see in any musical, and it's unfortunately rather bland, without any special hooks to catch the listener. Unless it's sung by a very special voice, it becomes mainly exposition – the images accompanying it are good, but not strong enough to carry the number by themselves.

The number where the evil "mom" Gothel undermines poor Rapunzel by telling her how weak she is and how evil the world is is better, but I sat there wishing for more of a Scar quality to Gothel's performance – I think some controlled over-the-top evil à la Jeremy Irons would have made this song strong enough to stand on its own, instead of just being another musical number.

But then come the strengths. The story is strong and complex; the Disney story men have really done their job on this one. There is drama, and plenty of it, with several conflicts going on at once – unlike the horrible overlong TV special Chicken Little, this really is worthy of a feature film and capable gripping and moving the viewer. There are strong characters, great sight gags, a clever plot device to symbolize Rapunzel's longings that carries the film forward and adds emotional poignancy to it, and an intelligent way for her to discover who she really is without resorting to simplistic tricks or deus ex machina. And the animation is just gorgeous.

Textures, body language and movement, slapstick gags, 3-D – they're all marvelous. The film simply looks great (well, except for the character designer making the women's eyes way too large, unbalancing their faces; that failed). Best of all is... the horse.

Maximus is the horse of the captain of the king's guard, and he's determined to catch the thief he starts the film hunting – Flynn Rider, the movie's hero. Maximus has a fantastic range of expressions, and he goes through them at a rapid-but-not-too-rapid clip that is a joy to behold. Whoever animated him did an outstanding job, and although he isn't one of the lead characters, he takes away any scene that he's in – almost like Thumper.

Considering that I've even seen some idiotic faux-"feminist" complaint that Mulan was anti-woman – because of the law that made it a crime for a woman to join the army, and because Mulan's soldier training made her strong (to quote the great Dave Barry: I am not making this up) – I expect there will somewhere be somebody who'll claim that Tangled is anti-woman because Gothel is an evil controlling mother. Don't listen to that person, or anybody else who's trying to convince you that you shouldn't watch this wonderful film, because they are not your friends.

This may be computer animation and 3-D instead of classical animation, but it's nevertheless classical Disney. Recommended.

Roger Älmberg: Då världen höll andan. Kubakrisen 1962 ("When the world held its breath. The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962")

Finished Roger Älmberg's "Då världen höll andan. Kubakrisen 1962", which depicts the events leading up to the famous crisis and details how it was ultimately resolved. 

The Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, being ticked off at the presence of US/NATO nuclear missiles in Turkey, on the Soviet Union's back yard, and decides to place some nuclear missiles in America's back yard, the newly-communist island of Cuba. This would offset the US superiority when it came to strategic missiles, and be a great coup, he felt. The Cuban government, under constant threat and subjected to espionage and sabotage by the US, welcomed Soviet missiles and bases.


The Soviet leadership had gotten the impression of President Kennedy that he wasn't a particularly strong leader who would accept the fact of the missiles once they were revealed. He and his brother Robert, his Attorney General, had also been a little bit too confident that they could play the backchannels game with the Soviets to make the sort of deals necessary to keep everything running smoothly along, and seems to have gotten played by the Russian intel officer they used as an intermediary.


Anyway, when the bases were practically finished, the US discovered them, thanks in part to information from a highly positioned spy (later arrested and executed by the Russians) on how those bases would look. Now starts the Cuban Missile Crisis. Contacting the Russians, the Americans are fed a series of lies that these are just defensive military installations, and start deliberating at the highest government and military levels what to do about the unacceptable presence of nuclear weapons on Cuba.


Several – including the highest military men – want to go to air attacks followed by an invasion. Gradually, an alternative coalesces, where in order to gain time for negotiations and a solution that doesn't include going to a war that might end up encompassing Europe (where the situation of Berlin is still rather precarious, being an island of democracy in a sea of communism and still a very contentious issue) and perhaps even America itself the President and his councilors decide to instead of immediately attacking, bringing the problem to the attention of the world – in order to gain the sympathies of the rest of the world – and puts Cuba into "quarantine", or more correctly stated, enacts a blockade of the island. Any ships carrying missiles and such to the island is to be turned back. Meanwhile, a frantic search for solutions and information about what the other part is up to is started on both sides of the Iron Curtain.


Khrushchev soon realizes that he's bitten off more than he can chew, and his initial goals, putting nuclear weapons on USA's doorstep, is rapidly abandoned for an attempt to get those pesky missiles in Turkey out, and to save face. By now, he knows that those missiles are basically obsolete, but he'll take what he can get. Meanwhile, the Americans know that they're obsolete as well, and have planned to remove them, but can't do so now as it'll look like they gave in to extortion...


The book then basically depicts the debates in the group of advisors created by President Kennedy, the decision processes within the Soviet leadership, and the diplomatic back-and-forth that would, in the end, resolve the conflict. It also offers a Swedish perspective on the crisis, giving some details about how the Swedish government reasoned and responded as well as on what a Soviet spy in the Swedish military, Colonel Stig Wennerström, did to earn his keep.


The Swedish track isn't entirely uninteresting, but it dilutes the narrative and is ultimately not successful. However, the diplomatic efforts to create a suitable response to the American blockade of Cuba. The Swedish government couldn't condone it, because that would set a precedent that the Soviet Union could use to exploit in the Baltic Sea, but at the same time, they didn't want to openly criticize the US.


Anyway, the story of the Cuban crisis is an informative one, on how you can avoid war, but that you need to a) actually want to avoid it, b) work to create the space and time to negotiate a deal that staves off war. While I don't think Älmberg quite manages to capture the nail-biting tension of those October days, that may be because I've been spoiled in that department by films like Thirteen Days and The Missiles of October (I was just a kid when I saw the Missiles of October, and it made a very strong impression on me), so I'll say that this is still worth reading. But if you're interested in the decision-making process, I really recommend the transcripts of the deliberations within Kennedy's inner circle. Now that was quite fascinating reading!


In summary, not-quite riveting, but worth the read.

Storytelling 8: Symbolism and mystification

Under deadline pressure (funny how that builds up when you're sick), so just a quickie look at a classic: the guy hanging on for dear life to branch that is the only thing keeping him from a steep fall.

Here, the father in "Zits!" is in a very precarious situation, so we have a mystification – how the heck did mild-mannered, sedate Walter wind up in that position? (We also get the added thrill of a familiar comics situation; Sarge winds up hanging from that branch at very regular intervals, so how is the "Zits!" team going to resolve it?)

Turns out he's not in that position at all, it's used to symbolize him being overwhelmed – in this case by groceries – and not getting any help from Jeremy, who's engrossed in something and wearing earphones preventing him from hearing the father's pleas for help. A nice depiction of a not-too-uncommon occurrence in many households – the parent's feelings of abandonment are nicely overdramatized for comic effect, but not to the point where it loses the recognition humor. I wouldn't be surprised if this strip went up on many fridges all over the world.

Satire

I've deplored the state of Swedish satire earlier this month, so I won't rehash that debate again. Instead, I'll give an example of How It's Done: Malvina Reynolds, sung by Raymond Crooke. Clever lyrics set to a catchy tune and voilà: Instant classic.



Keep in mind that this was written in, what, 1961?, when the US was blowing rapidly increasing amounts of money and international goodwill up in Vietnam.

Alison Bechdel: Fun Home. A Tragi-Comic

Alison Bechdel has reaped accolades left and right for "Fun Home". Well, I'll have to place myself in the less-than-auspicious company of those who disagree.

This is an autobiographical work about Bechdel growing up in the shadow of an emotionally distant, literature-reading, stickler-for-aesthetics, secretly-gay father. It's what seems a remarkably love-poor home she shares with the rest of the family; in fact, it seems downright impoverished on emotions. Comparing Bechtel's story to my own childhood, it's more or less like all emotionally charged episodes of people actually relating to each other have been edited out, if they ever even existed. The father is forever refurbishing the house – somewhat akin to what he does with the dead in his part-time job as an undertaker – or shutting himself away in a book, and his emotional austerity even seems to have affected the way Bechtel is telling her story.

And that is what ultimately make this story not for me. Bechtel's own emotionally detached storytelling, wherein she mainly just depicts a scene and then comments upon it in an almost clinical tone of voice, leaves me, in the end (and somewhat ironically), cold.

The story starts out strong, with more and more of the secrets behind the façade being first hinted at and then more and more exposed, depicting episodes building up the tension and pressure of the story – including Bechtel's own sexuality (she's a lesbian) becoming also more and more obvious and part also of the story.  But somewhere halfway through, she loses me. The narrative isn't really building to any climax or revelation – we already know just about everything we're going to learn about her relationship with her father and her sexuality, so it becomes mainly repetition of things that we have already been basically told, and there is also no real resolution to her relation to her father. Basically, her time at college becomes a bit of a "and then this happened, and then this happened, and then..." narrative.

There are a number of literary allusions used, and I've seen them mentioned in reviews as an example of the quality of the story, but to me they don't really offer all that much; they're not sufficiently advanced or original to really deepen the depiction Bechtel's situation and relationship to her father to make me a fan.

As already pointed out, I seem to be in the definitive minority on this book, so I'm perfectly happy if you prefer to check out "Fun Home" for yourself (and who knows, perhaps you'll find the somewhat detached storytelling a feature instead of a bug like I did) but I doubt I'll be returning to it. Give me Li Österberg's work any day.

Thursday is obviously Budget Day

...because I'm posting a little reminder from Matthew Yglesias as well:

One of the ironies of Washington is that the people who spend the most time talking about the budget deficit often have very little practical understanding of it. One example comes from my friend Dave Weigel’s interview with Delaware Senator Chris Coons, who’s positioning himself as a leading budget hawk:

“The framework that was laid out by the deficit commission, while I don’t agree with everything they did, shows the direction I think we need to go in terms of scope,” said Coons. “If we simply look at the 12 percent of the budget that’s non-discretionary spending, we’re never going to get there. I think we need to be doing the large work.” (...)

“Why do you think 3 percent of GDP is a sustainable deficit?” asked Coons.“Don’t we need to get to a balanced budget, in order to get to the point where we’re tackling the debt?”

The answer is that, no, you actually don’t need to get to a balanced budget in order to tackle the debt. The country’s debt is becoming less burdensome, which is to say any time GDP is growing faster than the debt. If debt growth is zero (balanced budget) or negative (surplus) that usually means fairly rapid debt-shrinkage. But given positive economic growth, modest budget deficits are completely consistent with reductions in the debt burden.

This is another thing that is good to keep in mind when listening to the budget peacocks talking about how the little people need to sacrifice in order to balance the budget (because raising taxes on people who can afford to pay them will supposedly wreck the economy entirely).

The invaluable Brad DeLong on the US's budgetary woes

Brad DeLong, national and international treasure:

Figure A-1 from the CBO's 2010 Long-Term Budget Outlook shows that America has a large short-term deficit now: we are still in a deep downturn, and as a result revenues are temporarily below trend and spending is temporarily above trend.


This also shows that, as the CBO projects in its current-law extended baseline, when the economy recovers revenues will rise and spending will decline, and from 2015 on the revenue line matches the total primary spending line.


Now our current deficit is not a problem: running a deficit during an economic downturn is healthy and appropriate. Our short-term deficit problem is that our deficit is not large enough given that if congress simply goes on autopilot the revenue and primary spending lines are likely to cross by themselves in four years.


And our long term projected spending and revenue balance is not a problem. There is no imbalance. Or, rather, there is no imbalance if. If the economy and if programs perform as expected, if the U.S. government continues to be able to finance its debt at a real interest rate less than the growth of labor productivity plus the labor force, and if congress and the president do not do anything further to raise spending above or decrease taxes below current law, the United States simply does not have a fundamental fiscal crisis.


The problems are all in the ifs. If people fear that there will be a fiscal crisis they could demand an interest rate premium for rolling over U.S. government debt, and then we would we have a non-fundamental fiscal crisis. Could we have one? Yes: the East Asian economies had one in 1997-1998. Had foreign investors not panic and fled, there would have been no problem. Those foreign investors who did not panic did well. Those who bailed themselves in at the bottom of the crisis did extremely well. But that was no consolation to the East Asian governments that faced the crisis, or to the East Asian workers rendered unemployed by the consequences of the crisis.


However, today there are no signs of any possibility of a collapse of foreign investor confidence in their U.S. Treasury holdings. A non-fundamental crisis is not even a cloud on the horizon.


But there are the other ifs.


The big if is, to put it simply, this: congress will pass something stupid and the president will sign. Congress might never come up with payfors for its recurrent AMT patches. Congress might remove the revenue raising parts of the Affordable Care Act. Congress might remove the cost saving parts of the Affordable Care Act. The Supreme Court might decide, just for the hell of it, to rule that the cost saving parts of the Affordable Care Act are unconstitutional. Congress might pass a big unfunded tax-cut just for the hell of it. Congress might pass a big unfunded spending increase just for the hell of it.


All of these ifs are very real worries.


But none of them can be fixed by legislative action now.


No congress now can cement up the exits to keep some future congress from doing something really stupid.


And dinking around with cuts to non-security discretionary spending right now doesn't do anything to help.


What is the solution to our long-run deficit problem? It is simply this: elect honorable and intelligent women and men to Congress. Elect representatives who will not pass unfunded tax cuts--as the Republicans did in 2001. Elect representatives who will not pass unfunded spending increases--as the Republicans did in 2003. Elect presidents who will promise at the start of their turns to veto legislative acts that do not meet long run paygo requirements. Choose supreme court justices who will not prostitute their high office for the short term political benefit of the party they happen to belong to--as the Republican justices did after the 2000 election.


Gee. I guess our long run fiscal problem is really dire and insoluble.


Seeing as how dependent we in the rest of the world are on a US that is functioning well, let's all hope real hard that the saner heads prevail in the struggle for power in the US that is still ongoing, and likely to do so for several more years. 

Sven-Bertil Bärnarp: Medelålders plus ("Middle aged-plus")

There is a phenomenon known as "recognition humor", wherein the humor of a joke (gag, skit etc.) lies not so much in the wittiness or inventiveness of the joke as in the fact that the reader (viewer, listener etc.) recognizes the situation, mood or characters of the joke from his or her own experience. Several comic strips have been based on this; for example, many of the early American newspaper strips went for the family setting for that very reason, and the successful Scott - Kirkman collaboration, "Baby Blues" started out very much in the "something for all new parents to recognize themselves in"vein even if the characters would later develop individual characters that would elevate the strip beyond that (much like Scott & Borgman's "Zits" or any other really good strip IMO).

Anyway, "Medelålders Plus" is about a man who suddenly realizes that he's retired, not just middle-aged, and his crosswords-solving and flowers-growing wife. They're a happy couple, not making any big waves and rather happy about that, vaguely worried about encroaching old age but not particularly anxiety-ridden. In short, ordinary people.

And ordinary people seem to like the strip. A lot. Me, I don't know how ordinary I am (but not being particularly extraordinary, I suppose I am, at that), and while neither "middle-aged-plus" nor in a happy, stable relationship with a crosswords-solving and flowers-growing wife, I do know and have known a few people who remind me quite a bit about the couple in the strip – relatives, and friends of my parents. So there is still some element of recognition there for me. It's not quite enough to make me a fan of the strip, but it is enough for me to understand why many people are.

For me, the strips can be sorted into three categories: laugh-out funny, amusing, and those that just sort of pass by. The laugh-out funny ones aren't all that frequent, but after a lifetime of reading comics, not many are. Still, there's something very funny about a recent retiree standing by his window annoyedly looking out at some workers digging a hole in the street obsessing about their low productivity, yelling advice and exhortations that they can't possibly hear, and in the final panel having to go lie down a while because he's become all stressed out. Similarly, it is amusing to read about the social interplay and relations that develop around the recycling center, where people regularly meet who otherwise wouldn't even know the others existed. Etc.

I'm not all that big on recognition humor myself, so "Medelålders Plus" isn't quite my cup of tea – those laugh-out loud strips don't come often enough for me – but it's a likable, low-key strip that gives voice to a demographic that certainly isn't particularly well represented in either comics, movies or the news, so more power to it for that.

Article in Swedish about the strip here; samples (also in Swedish) here.

My t-shirts, part 28: Kingdom Come

Alex Ross. What can you say?