Stupid. I do stupid thoughtless things all the time but this month was wall-to-wall screw ups. Honestly, from simple things like forgetting appointments and meetings, to screwing up bike maintenance through thoughtlessness, to buying things I already have, I really feel like I took a big step toward senescence. I guess we'll see whether it's an anomalous stretch of time or the the new normal.
And, as is often the case, I don't know where the month went or how I what I did during it. But that's a pretty typical state of affairs for me.
[TV] Toob Notes
[Travel] Galveston, Oh Galveston
[Rant] Not a Good Fit
Monday, July 09, 2018
[TV] Toob Notes
Luke Cage, the second season of the bulletproof brutha from Marvel's TVs universe dropped as a full season on Netflix. Like everyone else who watched it, I thought it was half-again too long and full of too much talky exposition. (It would seem like both problems have the same solution.) Dramatically it lacked cohesiveness and the tone was haphazard. Early on it was all about hostile, destructive, and greedy people pursuing power and justifying their actions by referencing past grievances or difficult childhoods or both. And racism. Yawn. Worse, the action sequences were sporadic and weren't particularly well done. So why don't I think Luke Cage sucks?
Well, as with the first season, the soundtrack is exceptional. There were many points where I wanted to hit the web and search for artists. Second, it was somewhat redeemed by the acting. The inane and irrational dialogue was often redeemed by a good reading (the late Reg Cathey in particular). Third, although the action was too rare and too lame, some of the cinematography and set design in the quieter moments was fascinating. Lastly, and most interestingly, the final episode setup a situation where a real, complicated, and philosophical theme could be explored. When the criminal boss of Harlem was eliminated things didn't get better, in the vacuum they got worse and more violent. Cage is now set up as the guy who, operating outside the law, will keep the peace -- the benevolent dictator. He's convinced he can handle his new power without becoming falling into corruption himself. This is stuff of potentially Greek-level human tragedy. The Godfather theme is intentional and unmistakable. Will the writers nail it the third season? Will they shirk the histrionic melodrama and crank out a story for the ages? I have seen no evidence they are up to the task, but I hope so.
Brockmire, also has axes to grind, but his are more personal. The comedic moments are ace as functional alcoholic Brockmire self-destructs over and over again in assorted absurd ways. Hank Azaria is wonderful and his devotion to Brockmire as his pride and joy shines through. This season, his sidekick Charles (Tyrel WIlliams) shines especially bright. But the sparkle of the first season is gone. Brockmire's professional prospects are whipsawed back and forth as way to send him into a spiral. His connections with others are used as props to emphasize his dysfunction rather than as fully realized relationships. It feels more manufactured.
Still, there are plenty of guffaws to see it through. And in the final episode they have taken a huge chance of getting Brockmire clean and sober. Not sure how it affects their prospects going forward, but I suppose we'll find out.
Well, as with the first season, the soundtrack is exceptional. There were many points where I wanted to hit the web and search for artists. Second, it was somewhat redeemed by the acting. The inane and irrational dialogue was often redeemed by a good reading (the late Reg Cathey in particular). Third, although the action was too rare and too lame, some of the cinematography and set design in the quieter moments was fascinating. Lastly, and most interestingly, the final episode setup a situation where a real, complicated, and philosophical theme could be explored. When the criminal boss of Harlem was eliminated things didn't get better, in the vacuum they got worse and more violent. Cage is now set up as the guy who, operating outside the law, will keep the peace -- the benevolent dictator. He's convinced he can handle his new power without becoming falling into corruption himself. This is stuff of potentially Greek-level human tragedy. The Godfather theme is intentional and unmistakable. Will the writers nail it the third season? Will they shirk the histrionic melodrama and crank out a story for the ages? I have seen no evidence they are up to the task, but I hope so.
Brockmire, also has axes to grind, but his are more personal. The comedic moments are ace as functional alcoholic Brockmire self-destructs over and over again in assorted absurd ways. Hank Azaria is wonderful and his devotion to Brockmire as his pride and joy shines through. This season, his sidekick Charles (Tyrel WIlliams) shines especially bright. But the sparkle of the first season is gone. Brockmire's professional prospects are whipsawed back and forth as way to send him into a spiral. His connections with others are used as props to emphasize his dysfunction rather than as fully realized relationships. It feels more manufactured.
Still, there are plenty of guffaws to see it through. And in the final episode they have taken a huge chance of getting Brockmire clean and sober. Not sure how it affects their prospects going forward, but I suppose we'll find out.
[Travel] Galveston, Oh Galveston
From what I gather, at the tail end of the 19th century Galveston was primed to become one of the great beachside communities in the country, filled with straw hat resorts and high-end real estate. It has a nice broad beach and all the sun you could ask for. There were some high sand dunes but at no small expense they managed to remove them for even easier beach access. It was, after all, one of the wealthiest places in the nation, so why not. Of course, this backfired when the hurricane arrived in 1900.
The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 was the greatest natural disaster in American history. The storm surge submerged the entire island under 6 feet of water. Wikipedia:
Over the last century Galveston has clawed its way back to viability. They built a big old seawall that offers them some protection against all but the worst hurricanes. Unfortunately, Harvey in 2017 was just that -- one of the worst. Once again Galveston was pretty much submerged, but this time, less than a year later, everything is pretty much back to normal. Hurricanes loom large in the Galvestonian culture. You see "high water marks" on many of the buildings and most new houses are built on stilts.
Galveston today is effectively the Jersey Shore for all of the explosively growing Houston/Austin corridor. It is bigger than a beach town, but not really a full-on coastal city in that its only real industry is visitors. It is an intriguing mix of hipster resorts, prole-ish amusements, history, and to some extent, natural beauty.
There is a main tourist area which harbors all the hotels, everything from high-end resorts to dive motels. I can recommend the Hotel Galvez -- it has likely the only place on the island that approaches fine dining, including an astonishing Sunday brunch, and it has a lovely salt water pool. Most of the properties in this area are across the street, or within a block, from the seawall. On the other side of the seawall is, of course, the beach. The seawall walk is active, lots of pedestrians and cyclists. The beach itself is very broad and the sand, while not the powder fine variety you get across the gulf, is decent. The water is swimmable, but quite brown; it is after all effectively the runoff from the Mississippi river before the Gulf Stream have a chance to filter it.
The centerpiece of the Seawall is Pleasure Pier -- an amusement park full of rides, that sits on a pier well out over the water. It's a striking, Coney Island-ish image, especially when lit up at night. There are of course restaurants and bars peppered all along the way, mostly the sort where certain types of people go to power drink and behave obnoxiously well into the night.
Inland, there are also some points of interest. Moody Gardens is park of sorts with an aquarium, botanical gardens, Imax, and a sort of extreme playground with zip lines and rope courses. There is a major waterpark nearby. In the older section of town there are historic houses you can tour. And then there is a downtown area called The Strand, which is a Key West-like wander-and-drink destination.
All things considered, Galveston should probably have a more prominent reputation than it does. I suspect what's holding it back is a lack of popular mythology -- say, a prominence in film or literature. It's also kind of trying to be everything to everybody, from a genteel resort and spa destination, to a family friendly fun spot, to a redneck Asbury Park.
More surprising to me is the slow pace of development. There seems to be an enormous amount of space just waiting for vacation homes or retail centers to be built. And the existing buildings all seem...vintage 1962. In contrast I think of the Outer Banks of North Carolina, where there seems to be nary a square foot without a recently-built, multi-bedroom vacation rental.
I'd like to spend more time in Galveston and get to know it better (I only had a short weekend). That said, for me the flight to Houston and the flight to Florida are roughly equivalent and, other things equal, I'll take the Florida Gulf every time. Still, if the opportunity presents itself, I'd look forward to another visit. Galveston brings a solid beach town game.
The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 was the greatest natural disaster in American history. The storm surge submerged the entire island under 6 feet of water. Wikipedia:
The dead bodies were so numerous that burying all of them was impossible. The dead were initially weighted down on barges and dumped at sea, but when the gulf currents washed many of the bodies back onto the beach, a new solution was needed. Funeral pyres were set up on the beaches, or wherever dead bodies were found, and burned day and night for several weeks after the storm.Galveston never really recovered. Development in the area shifted inland to a little town called Houston. In fact, by the 1920s a channel was dredged thirty miles inland for ocean going ships to bypass Galveston and dock right outside Houston. That was that for Galveston as a big time economic center.
Over the last century Galveston has clawed its way back to viability. They built a big old seawall that offers them some protection against all but the worst hurricanes. Unfortunately, Harvey in 2017 was just that -- one of the worst. Once again Galveston was pretty much submerged, but this time, less than a year later, everything is pretty much back to normal. Hurricanes loom large in the Galvestonian culture. You see "high water marks" on many of the buildings and most new houses are built on stilts.
Galveston today is effectively the Jersey Shore for all of the explosively growing Houston/Austin corridor. It is bigger than a beach town, but not really a full-on coastal city in that its only real industry is visitors. It is an intriguing mix of hipster resorts, prole-ish amusements, history, and to some extent, natural beauty.
There is a main tourist area which harbors all the hotels, everything from high-end resorts to dive motels. I can recommend the Hotel Galvez -- it has likely the only place on the island that approaches fine dining, including an astonishing Sunday brunch, and it has a lovely salt water pool. Most of the properties in this area are across the street, or within a block, from the seawall. On the other side of the seawall is, of course, the beach. The seawall walk is active, lots of pedestrians and cyclists. The beach itself is very broad and the sand, while not the powder fine variety you get across the gulf, is decent. The water is swimmable, but quite brown; it is after all effectively the runoff from the Mississippi river before the Gulf Stream have a chance to filter it.
The centerpiece of the Seawall is Pleasure Pier -- an amusement park full of rides, that sits on a pier well out over the water. It's a striking, Coney Island-ish image, especially when lit up at night. There are of course restaurants and bars peppered all along the way, mostly the sort where certain types of people go to power drink and behave obnoxiously well into the night.
Inland, there are also some points of interest. Moody Gardens is park of sorts with an aquarium, botanical gardens, Imax, and a sort of extreme playground with zip lines and rope courses. There is a major waterpark nearby. In the older section of town there are historic houses you can tour. And then there is a downtown area called The Strand, which is a Key West-like wander-and-drink destination.
All things considered, Galveston should probably have a more prominent reputation than it does. I suspect what's holding it back is a lack of popular mythology -- say, a prominence in film or literature. It's also kind of trying to be everything to everybody, from a genteel resort and spa destination, to a family friendly fun spot, to a redneck Asbury Park.
More surprising to me is the slow pace of development. There seems to be an enormous amount of space just waiting for vacation homes or retail centers to be built. And the existing buildings all seem...vintage 1962. In contrast I think of the Outer Banks of North Carolina, where there seems to be nary a square foot without a recently-built, multi-bedroom vacation rental.
I'd like to spend more time in Galveston and get to know it better (I only had a short weekend). That said, for me the flight to Houston and the flight to Florida are roughly equivalent and, other things equal, I'll take the Florida Gulf every time. Still, if the opportunity presents itself, I'd look forward to another visit. Galveston brings a solid beach town game.
[Rant] Not a Good Fit
I am a contrary SOB. Not impolitiely so, but I instinctively adopt, or at least consider, a contrary position in most situations. I do not know whether this is learned or innate behavior, but it is strong in me. Few things are more gratifying to me than pulling against the crowd only to be found later to be correct. I am reminded of Bill James, the founder of baseball sabermetrics. When his statistical based theories finally went mainstream after decades of ridicule, he said (paraphrasing), "It's a great feeling being proven right when everyone said you were wrong. I hope to have that feeling again someday."
Although being right when the world is wrong is a great pleasure, there is a lesser but very real sense of gratification in being an outsider in and of itself. But, as addressed in this insgihtful essay by Steve Lagerfeld, there are more shades of gray here. He observes that outgroups from MAGAs to Resisters, from Deniers to Greens, from Deadheads to Goths, all cherish there countercultural status. I would add that even the most dominant cultural force of our era, progressivism (small p), still positions itself as an outside force struggling against some mainstream strawman. Yet:
I have written before about coalitional instinct -- the urge to form groups for power and protection. This is a primal drive in humans and we get a nice hit of dopamine when we join, form, or even just show support for our coalitions. One of the best ways to demonstrate support for your coalition is to show allegiance even when there is a cost. Costly support is a strong signal of loyalty so the dopamine flows. For a group that is positioned as outside or in opposition to the mainstream there is the risk of social sanction against its members thus a high cost of showing support. This explains why almost every group with an agenda positions itself as outsiders fighting the mainstream, it makes for more powerful shows of loyalty and more cleanly differentiates those who can be trusted from those who are less committed. There is no such thing as a non-conformist coalition.
But what of the true contrarians? This passage could come directly from my biography:
When we celebrate rebels we are not really celebrating rebels. We are celebrating groups that we admire and positioning them as rebels to make our celebrations more valuable. We rarely celebrate real contrarians, nor should we. If we did we would rob them of their contrarianism. True contrarianism is not something to aspire to. I can verify that even if you are not in the public eye and you can hide your instincts well enough (I'm really good at it), it is not worth it unless you have an honest compulsion towards pariah-hood. You will end up missing out on some very key experiences of humanity if you can't keep your contrary instincts in check.
Although being right when the world is wrong is a great pleasure, there is a lesser but very real sense of gratification in being an outsider in and of itself. But, as addressed in this insgihtful essay by Steve Lagerfeld, there are more shades of gray here. He observes that outgroups from MAGAs to Resisters, from Deniers to Greens, from Deadheads to Goths, all cherish there countercultural status. I would add that even the most dominant cultural force of our era, progressivism (small p), still positions itself as an outside force struggling against some mainstream strawman. Yet:
There is not much that is truly contrarian in any of this. Real contrarians don't run in crowds....A contrarian is by definition someone with a singular idea who stands against the crowd. He or she takes a risk....For the most part in the West today, their risk is social: They risk the disapproval of the crowd-of their friends, family, colleagues, community, and society. They might simply face unspoken disapproval, or they might be shunned and ostracized or burned at the stake of Twitter. Some face criticism and censure or social or professional excommunication. They risk their status and prestige. Some risk losing their jobs.
Risk is the metric by which contrarians are measured. The greater the risk, the more contrarian they are. Another way of saying this is that it takes courage to be a contrarian. They are a rare but widely dispersed breed. There are intellectual contrarians, such as Christopher Hitchens and Camille Paglia, as well as artistic, scientific, and political ones. Entrepreneurs, from Elon Musk to the most obscure startup boss, are contrarians because they pursue singular ideas, as are some investors, although the risks they face are less social than financial. Whistleblowers are contrarians, as are countless unknown others who fight against the odds in bureaucracies and other settings.I find this interesting both intellectually and personally.
I have written before about coalitional instinct -- the urge to form groups for power and protection. This is a primal drive in humans and we get a nice hit of dopamine when we join, form, or even just show support for our coalitions. One of the best ways to demonstrate support for your coalition is to show allegiance even when there is a cost. Costly support is a strong signal of loyalty so the dopamine flows. For a group that is positioned as outside or in opposition to the mainstream there is the risk of social sanction against its members thus a high cost of showing support. This explains why almost every group with an agenda positions itself as outsiders fighting the mainstream, it makes for more powerful shows of loyalty and more cleanly differentiates those who can be trusted from those who are less committed. There is no such thing as a non-conformist coalition.
But what of the true contrarians? This passage could come directly from my biography:
The contrarian's great temptation is moral vanity, and what a sweet one it is. I am contrarian by birth and temperament and not a joiner.... For some of us, there is nothing like the joy of being a pariah. There is no better place to be than on the wrong side, scorned, hated, and despised by people about whom you have exactly the same feelings. I'm right and they're wrong. Their scorn is an intoxicating indicator of my own rightness and moral superiority. The sensation is physical, like what I imagine people get from extreme sports. But it's a pleasure I strive mightily to deny myself. Over the years, I've learned that its costs are high, and that I'm not as smart as I think I am. Even when I'm right, my impulses can lead to bad things. I've gone from thinking of my instinctive desire to be a minority of one as a distinguishing trait to thinking of it as something more like Asperger's syndrome-a disability that can in rare circumstances be an advantage.This could pretty much describe my personal development over the past 20 years. What is mechanism that creates this urge in me? Absent coalitional instinct, what is evolutionary source of my own Dopamine hit for being a true contrarian? I'm sure it exists. It is probably tied in with introversion in some respect. I just don't have an idea of what it is. Or is it a disability as he suggests; a negative trait that is only survivable thanks to the tolerance of civilization. Is it one of those traits that has a value to the species, provided it surfaces only in a small minority?
When we celebrate rebels we are not really celebrating rebels. We are celebrating groups that we admire and positioning them as rebels to make our celebrations more valuable. We rarely celebrate real contrarians, nor should we. If we did we would rob them of their contrarianism. True contrarianism is not something to aspire to. I can verify that even if you are not in the public eye and you can hide your instincts well enough (I'm really good at it), it is not worth it unless you have an honest compulsion towards pariah-hood. You will end up missing out on some very key experiences of humanity if you can't keep your contrary instincts in check.
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