The Bigger Bang

This fall I picked up my first Steven Hunter novel, Hot Springs. I'm a snob when it comes to thrillers -- I only read Elmore Leonard and Alan Furst -- but I loved his column on the DC Sniper a few years ago. As a gun enthusiast, he wrote a smart piece on what we know about the sniper who terrorized Washington DC after 9/11: he was a good shot but not a great shot; he chose stationary targets and he was stationary himself when shooting. It was the best kind of article: you were instantly smarter after reading it and couldn't wait to parrot some of the best lines to family and friends.

Hot Springs is about Earl Swagger, a former Marine who is recruited to clean up the Arkansas hot spot after the war. It's hard to read the book and not see a young Nuck Nolte -- tall, haunted, and ready for action -- in the role. It's hard to think who could do this right now becuase we're in a weird era of action stars: could Will Smith or Colin Farrell play a man who has seen too much on Iwo Jima? Who has the square jaw these days? No one comes to mind.

One thing about Hunter is he knows guns. He writes about Colts and Brownings the wat James Joyce wrote about Dublin and John Updike wrote about housewives in the 60s. Hot Springs -- read it now.

Closer But No Cigar

Yuk yuk yuk. Rented Mike Nichols' Closer from the library the other day and semi-enjoyed it. It was billed as Carnal Knowledge for the new millenium and it's true that it's about some spectacularly good looking people leading miserable lives. I guess Clive Owen's character is Jack Nickolson's woman-hater but Owen was more of a softy. He at least has feelings beyond self-pity, which seemed to be the fuel for Julia Roberts' adulterous photographer and Jude Law's pathic obituary writer/novelist. Natalie Portman played a fragile and elusive stripper -- she seemed to realize how lucky she was to be in the movie. Rent it for the cool photography and Clive Owen's randy doctor. His online sex chat with Jude Law is worth the rental price.

Outrageous 2006 Predictions

This isn't going to be a good year for Hillary Clinton. Sure, she'll be re-elected to the US Senate from her home state of New York without breaking a sweat, but 2006 will be the year the anti-war faction becomes a full-fledged wing of the Democratic Party.

They may make up one-third of registered Democrats and they won't be searching for third party candidates like Ralph Nader. Instead, they'll stay inside the old party and shun anyone who voted for the war. This is bad news for Hil, who stands by her vote. Even if she switches sides and deamnds that the troops come home now, it will be seen as too calculated.

So who runs? Russ Feingold is on everyone's lips and Al Gore seems poised to think about this seriously. I see Howard Dean throwing his hat in the ring after he steps down from the party leadership role this year. Paging Dr. Dean.

Satellite Radio Days

The media have discovered Howard Stern again the week before he says farewell to terrestrial radio and starts his new gig at Sirius, the satellite radio station. The coverage has been glowing and there are a few interesting things to note: it seems like each interviewer from the mainstream media asks the same question: doesn't the FCC cencorship implore you to be more creative? Stern refuses to see how he can be more clever and I loved one complaint he made to Newsweek: the threats of hefty fines have forced him to curtail his show. "I haven't had a porn star on the show in six months!"

Two installments on The Today Show, a glowing profile on 60 Minutes, two pages in Newsweek plus cover stories in New York and Esquire. If I were the editor of a magazine that covered this story, why not write the non-Howard profile? Interview Opie and Anthony on Sirius' competitor XM? Ask them about what Stern can expect. Did they drop off the media radar because practically no one has satellite radio? Will his contract depend on signing up new subscribers? Is the freedom all that wonderful when you have fewer listeneers? Does the joy of using the F word fade after a while?

And another story idea: I want to go over to satellite and listen to Stern and his two channels but the company isnt making it easy for me. Why? The handheld Sirius devices are ugly and expensive. $349 for a lousy looking handheld? Why don't they hire the guy who designed the iPod and get him or her to work on a snazzy handheld version? To make matters worse, XM has a handheld device that costs $149.99 and isn't too bad looking. Hmmmmm. XMmmmmmmmm.

Giving One Pinter Pauses

"The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis."

Ah, the words of a Nobel winner. Yassir Arafat? Jimmy Carter, you ask? No, the man of letters, Harold Pinter and winner of the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature. If the Swedish Academy wanted to praise an artist's work while smashing the US in a single choice, they could not have done better than old Mr. P.

Of course, not every decision and policy of the US has been successful or 100 percent noble but the playwright's screed begs the question, if we are such vile scum, why is the United States still standing? The biggest guns? The old USSR had some heavy artillery and yet it fell to the wayside after 80 or so years of torturing its citizens. The empty promise of the American Dream? Not so empty because people are dying to come to this country each and every day. The NYTimes Magazine had a fascinating article about 30 year-old Jordanian man. He was conflicted: does he travel to the US and work for Microsoft or does he join the Jihad? Decisions, decisions.

Pinter sees the US' glass not only as half empty but the liquid stale and putrid as well. This is one odd switch between the Neocons and the New Left: The Neocons are now the pie-in-the-sky dreamers (the Middle East can support a democracy!) while the New Left are the sticks in the mud. Ask many Lefties about deposing Saddam and trying to establish a democracy and someone will soon say, 'some people cannot be run by a democracy.' Imagine if Dick Cheney said, "some people cannot operate a VCR."

(Yes, yes, a VCR and a democracy are two different things but just because a people do not have experience with free elections does not mean that they naturally want a vicious dictatorship.)

It's a shame that Pinter cannot see the good that America has done to for the world: we share our technology and hope; we want democracy to flourish and we have a nasty habit of liberating people from the vice of fascism. This last fact misses the ailing Pinter, who, if the Americans had not joined the fight in WWII, would certainly have a Nazi swastika on the corner of his typewriter paper when he wrote his first play in the early 1960s.

Congratulations to Harold Pinter. Brilliant playwrite and a perfect dupe of the Nobel Committee.