What is something Alex Trebek had today?

On behalf of my wife and kids, who watch “Jeopardy” with something akin to religious fervor, best wishes to Mr. Trebek.

We’ve got more polls and surveys and pop quizzes than ever, and though the results seem more widely reported than ever, they have never been more meaningless. That’s partly because of the way these polls and surveys and pop quizzes are constructed: with variations on the “when did you stop beating your wife?” question.

If you’ve been reading this blog, you already know how I feel about political polls. They exist to build interest — and therefore viewership, and therefore advertising dollars — for the 24/7 round-the-calendar presidential race (with state and local races serving as junior versions of this dynamic). (Or, perhaps more insidiously, for the fundraising machines.)

Last night (well, early this morning), I finished watching my Netflix rental of the Jane Campion film “Holy Smoke” starring Kate Winslet and Harvey Keitel. I don’t know why the system recommended the film to me, but I do really enjoy Harvey Keitel, partly because I can’t decide whether he’s really good or really bad. (I think the latter, and so every time I see him with his stilted delivery and oafish physicality and average looks, I imagine that maybe I’ll jump into movie stardom late in life. Except, for all that, he has a weird charisma I can’t fully identify, and he has turned up in a large number of offbeat films I love, such as “Smoke” and “City of Industry” — which is a further reason I keep watching him.) “Holy Smoke” is not a good movie. It is ostensibly about cult deprogramming, Keitel’s character being hired by the family of Kate Winslet’s character to deprogram her after she falls aswoon of an Indian guru, but it isn’t really about that at all. I have great difficulty telling you what it’s about, or even how it’s about that. The supporting characters are flown in from some far zanier outback comedy (Campion is an Aussie), while the leads play an admixture of straight-on high-drama desperate need or something even further — something out of “Mommie Dearest,” with metaphoric ax and all. The movie is a mess. Early in it there are antic speedups, a la the Keystone Kops (I’m not making this up), while toward the end we get a slo-mo scene of Keitel striking Winslet. Later, when we find her in the trunk of his car I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be funny or dramatic. I don’t think the director or writers are sure, either. In fact, I’m not sure they’re sure about anything.

While slipping this disc into its sleeve to return to Netflix, I wondered what I was going to rate this in their system of one to five stars. After all, getting these ratings right is essential to their disc-recommendation system. It was that system that suggested this film — rightly so — and it is that system that will analyze my score on this and then suggest other discs. The system does a good job. On Day One of my Netflix account it suggested a Jim Carrey film, but once I entered my reaction to that and some other similar recommendations, such an outrage never recurred. I will say, though, that if there is some documentary somewhere about the horrors of the world that I haven’t seen, it’s probably waiting in my queue along with strange cinema from around the world: Korean films with one guy beating up 29 other guys in a hallway, Brazilian films about old ladies who are police informants and so forth. As my son said, “Does Netflix just keep recommending all this weird foreign shit?” Well, buddy, it beats the Cineplex.

The problem with my rating “Holy Smoke” is this: I really liked the movie. Oh, it’s undeniably bad, but in a puzzling and entertaining way. The scenes of driving through the Australian brush — of kangaroos hopping across the road at night — brought to mind the many times my truck or car was almost hit by deer where I grew up. I love the isolated halfway hut where Keitel is trying to deprogram Winslet. I like the early deprogramming scenes where he cuts away the fabric of her illusions. (If they’re illusions — I also remain unclear whether we’re supposed to believe that her “cult” is a good thing or a bad thing.) I certainly like the many shots of Kate Winslet full-bodied and naked cavorting around in the dirt, weeping, or laughing, and trying to seduce Keitel (either because she genuinely falls for him, or because she’s trying to reprogram him himself — another confusing point). Given all the enjoyment the film renders, it seems churlish to give it a bad rating. But I don’t want to confuse “Liked it” or “Really liked it” with “good.” No, it’s BAD — and I really liked it. Like The Three Stooges.

I’m not the only one with this dilemma. Here are two sample reviews from Netflix:

3.0 Stars
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
“The film isn’t really about cults at all, but about the struggle between men and women, and it’s a little surprising, although not boring, when it turns from a mystic travelogue into a feminist parable.”

3.0 Stars
Janet Maslin, The New York Times
“As Holy Smoke moves from its early mix of rapture and humor into this more serious, confrontational stage, it runs into trouble.”

I looked at those reviews and, abetted by their both giving three stars, I followed suit. It seemed to make sense. But I do wish Netflix had options that clarified that one might Really Like a movie and believe it’s Utter Shit at the same time.

Then this morning I came across the following poll on MSNBC.com. Morgan Spurlock’s new documentary details his personal search for Osama bin Laden. The Weinstein Company snapped up the distribution rights to the film, and there have been news reports around the web strongly suggesting that Spurlock did what Bush and company have been unable to do: find bin Laden. Now, I don’t believe that Bush and company are looking all that hard for bin Laden, because most of us know where he is: in the mountains of Pakistan, well within reach of our good ally Pervez Musharraf. (And a hearty thanks to him, and here’s another $4 billion for all your help.) Finding bin Laden is akin to trying to find the last strawberry yogurt in the dairy case — it’s right there. Given what I know of the Weinsteins, I believe less that Spurlock has “found” him than that I believe their publicity machine is doing another fine job of conjuring controversy and rumor to drive box-office sales. So, hats off to them. So my inclination on the survey would be to respond that this is a publicity scheme. But here are my radio-button choices — and you’ll note that not one of them is a fair choice:

Are you intrigued enough by the possibility that bin Laden may have been found to see the documentary?

1. Absolutely. It would be a fascinating watch, regardless of whether Spurlock really finds Osama.
2. No way. This is just hype. The Bush Administration is doing all that it can to find the man.
3. It sounds interesting, but I’ll wait until the reviews are out to decide whether or not to see it.

Although I studied Logic in college, I didn’t need that training to cut these syllogisms in half. Number 1 is not true because I have no way of knowing whether or not it will be a “fascinating watch” (or even an interesting timepiece) without seeing it first. Number 2 is not true because while it IS hype, the Bush Administration is NOT doing all it can. Number 3 is not true because whether or not I see the film has nothing to do with reviews. So for me there is no good way to answer this poll. But because I wanted to see what others had said, I finally chose Number 3 because it seemed less offensive (with saying the “The Bush Administration is doing all that it can…” being most offensive). Here are the results:

Absolutely. It would be a fascinating watch, regardless of whether Spurlock really finds Osama.
48%
No way. This is just hype. The Bush Administration is doing all that it can to find the man.
21%
It sounds interesting, but I’ll wait until the reviews are out to decide whether or not to see it.
31%

Does this poll tell us anything? No.

Does the Netflix poll tell us anything? No. Not even about my preferences, in this particular case.

Do the polls popping up every day about the presidential race mean anything? No — except to the people putting them out and profiting from the system.

Southern California is facing a severe drought. Rainfall this year is the lowest since the 1880’s, and Los Angeles County has been sucking so much water to fill our needs that we’ve actually reversed the flow of water in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Last month at a corporate retreat I and the other attendees were treated to a presentation on this very matter by a local city manager who stressed the severity of the situation and the lack of good solutions. In the City of Los Angeles, the “drought busters,” last seen in the 1980’s, are back in action, issuing fines to people they see wasting water — such as individuals hosing off sidewalks and restaurants serving water to diners who didn’t request it. On Monday in Burbank, Assemblyman Paul Krekorian held a briefing on local water issues. (You can read coverage of this event here.) This is a serious issue. As I told my assistant last week, I’m not concerned about oil shortages — the existing pools already identified will last long enough for the development of new, alternative energy and manufacturing technologies. Water, on the other hand, I’m worried about. Even my 5-year-old son noticed Thanksgiving weekend as we were hiking through the mountains behind Glendale and crossing what had once been practically a river and now was a bone-dry gulch: “Daddy, remember when Lex threw his backpack in the water here?” Now the remembrance was puzzling, with the event impossible.

So you can imagine my glee the other day when it started to rain. It was coming down in glorious cascades — not a torrential downfall, but a serious enough rainfall to make one wonder where the umbrella was kept. One of the scripts I was carrying into my car actually got wet and, later as a result, crinkly. There were water spots on my jacket. Some of the rain got into my car with me. It was like an old friend had returned unexpectedly.

As I got into my car, though, and thought about all that I have seen here in Los Angeles these 19 years, and the way these things have been reported, I was sure what I would hear when I turned on the radio to listen to the news as I watched the rain come down. And I wasn’t disappointed. Here’s what the local newscaster said: “Flash flood warning is in effect….”

This is why I keep saying what I keep saying about the news: Use at your own risk.

You may have been following the news that Radiohead made its most recent CD release a pay-what-you-will download. The offer expires December 10th, so if you’re of a mind to download it and pay nothing — as I did — here’s your chance. Better act now.

Much has been made in the media of this as the latest example in the wholesale revaluing of things both physical and experiential. In the late 1970’s, vinyl LP’s were about $7.98 (a rather fantastic sum at the time, especially considering the flimsy pressings that often emerged newborn out of the sleeve with scratches and pops); CD’s are now somewhere between $11.99 and $15.98 (or $9.99 if downloaded from iTunes). My first computer, a Radio Shack TRS-80 (lovingly nicknamed “the trash-80”) with separate cassette-tape player for “bloading” binary files from tape, was $800 circa 1980, while its printer, capable only of printing on four-inch-wide aluminum strips, was another $800. (The machine’s entire database held up to 40 — forty! — names and addresses. Which I could then print on the foil strips if I so wished.) Now, of course, I can communicate with the planet Antares 5 with a handheld device costing under two hundred bucks. Newspapers once cost 25 cents an issue; that is, until they cost $1 an issue; or until they went online, where they are utterly free. In addition to these changes in technology and delivery platform, and all the upset in price scaling and price conception that has resulted, there is an ever-widening margin in incomes as well as offerings to match those incomes. When I’m at Pacific Dining Car, a steak is $45 or more; tonight at Acapulco what would have been a $12 steak was free because of a promotion. A recent think piece in the LA Times detailed some of the confusion caused by these matters in the entertainment industry.

Where I think many commentators have gotten the analysis wrong is in their thinking about this new Radiohead release. In their minds, and, I suspect, in the minds of the band itself, “buyers” (including we who did not pay) have placed a value on the music and acted accordingly. From this point of view, the jury is in: 40% of buyers paid $8 for the download, and have therefore set a price. That is a capitalist perspective — and one I myself would often tend to adopt, being a capitalist. But no, I think that probably 50% of those who downloaded “In Rainbows” actually look a socialist perspective. It goes like this: “Hm. Radiohead: famous, wealthy rock stars. Me: not so much. I’m sending them… nothing.”

I could be snarky and say that I paid for “In Rainbows” precisely what it’s worth — and having listened to the disc three times today, that is indeed my opinion. Someone in their profession who cares about them might introduce them to things like, well, a beat, or the clever way that drums and bass and guitar and voice can often coalesce into that thing called a song. In all fairness, some of these elements do intrude on Track 9, but that’s either an accident or a test to see if the listener is still awake for the conclusion of the album with Track 10. (And no, I do not know the title of Track 9 or Track 10 or of any of the tracks, because I don’t believe any of said titles are sung in any of these songs. At least, not so that I can tell.) Finally, imagine “song” after song with a lead vocal remarkably similar to the piercing whine of air escaping the tightly stretched neck of a toy balloon. By comparison, Yoko Ono was Perry Como.

It’s notable that I arrived at these conclusions after downloading “In Rainbows,” and therefore after having chosen not to pay. It was entirely a socialist judgment: They don’t need the money more than I do. Thus the capitalist analysis flies out the window. Had I thought the band needed the money, I would have acted differently. Had it been a new release by Pere Ubu, so influential in music history but so notable in its tiny corner of the universe for having once sold all of 6000 copies of a release on a major label, I would have paid far more than expected: at least $25, maybe $50. But had it been Pere Ubu, I would have gotten my money’s worth.

Blondie’s Deborah Harry is back, and much the worse for wear. Submitted as evidence: Her new album, “Necessary Evil.” What was once a clear, clean voice and a hallmark of New Wave has been replaced by something sounding like Betty Boop on downers.

I don’t expect singers of 62 to retain the sound they had in their 20’s and 30’s (or even 50’s, when she recorded the fine single “Maria” with Blondie). But the descent of her range, coupled with an odd sing-speak choice of delivery, is a shock. Click here if you’d like to judge for yourself.

Mike Gravel is not leading in the polls. But then, I’m not sure who is “leading in the polls,” nor why it matters, polls being a mass-media creation designed to fuel a 24/7 two-year presidential race in the hopes of filling airspace and webspace for Fox, CNN, MSNBC and everyone else. This time last month Hillary and Giuliani were unstoppable; now she’s falling down a hill that Obama is ascending, while Huckabee will soon be able to say he has indeed been to the mountain. Toiling away in the scrub at the bottom of these crests is Mike Gravel, who, if he isn’t gaining any ground, has at the least proved himself to be the most entertaining major presidential candidate since Pat Paulsen. I don’t want him running the country, but I love having him running around the country saying and doing these things.

Lately I’ve been rhapsodizing here about the late, lamented Little Art Theatre, southern New Jersey’s sole oasis of outre and offbeat culture in the 1980’s. It was where I saw “Eraserhead” and “Jean de Florette” and “Withnail and I” and “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” — the last providing my first date with the woman who became my wife. I have fond memories indeed of this cinematic sanctuary.

So today, in response to these thoughts, good friend Paul emailed me this update:

“I drove by the Little Art Theater site a few days ago, it is now a vet’s office with dog grooming.”

Thanks. Thanks for that. Really. Now whenever I think about the place, I’ll have that to remember as well.

(And as a side note to my students at USC whom I was hectoring Monday night about comma splices, Paul’s email provides a fine example.)

Two years ago while in bucolic Egg Harbor City, New Jersey, the closest “city” to my birthplace, I made the mistake of dropping in on the former Ireland’s Newsstand, the mecca of my youth where, whenever I was so fortunate as to get someone to drive me the seemingly endless eight miles to town, I could actually peruse and purchase almost any comic book then in release. In its day, Ireland’s carried the aroma of slick paper and fresh newssprint, smells I associated with bigger thoughts and faraway places calling to me. Now it had become a grimy and foul-smelling convenience store of the post-apocalypse, staffed by a man in a dirty turban sitting beside racks that long ago had been stripped of all reading material.

Paul’s email provides more proof that you can go home again — but you shouldn’t.

In Sunday’s Los Angeles Times Book Review, editor David Ulin picks apart Charles Bukowski’s poetry and finds not much there. It’s a good analysis, with several typical Bukowski poems providing corroborating evidence. Why then the reverence by so many (a reverence I share) for Bukowski?

Bukowski’s enormous impact, especially in Los Angeles, outweighs the limitations in his poetry. As Ulin notes, Bukowski was an active part of the burgeoning coffeehouse (and bar) literary scene here and a frequent contributor to even the smallest rags. He was also giving voice to a gritty Los Angeles underside unexamined by anyone else, and as such directly challenged the New York powers-that-be view of Los Angeles as all tinsel and no truth. His poetry may be weak — and I think it is — but the legacy of what one might call his “community work” is huge.

Bukowski is not alone in this. Mary Shelley is a particularly rotten writer, but “Frankenstein” spawned an entire industry (or two). Philip K. Dick is a writer I enjoy reading whose prose gets stuck between my teeth; nevertheless, I’m confident his legacy will prove him one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. The poetry of Edgar Allan Poe, who birthed the detective genre and whose gothic horror remains burned into our collective consciousness (most memorably, for me, with “The Fall of the House of Usher”) is frightfully overwritten and carries the adolescent skip of a jump-rope competition. To wit:

from The Bells

Hear the tolling of the bells-
Iron Bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
In the silence of the night,
How we shiver with affright
At the melancholy menace of their tone!
For every sound that floats
From the rust within their throats
Is a groan.
And the people–ah, the people-
They that dwell up in the steeple,
All Alone
And who, tolling, tolling, tolling,
In that muffled monotone,
Feel a glory in so rolling
On the human heart a stone-
They are neither man nor woman-
They are neither brute nor human-
They are Ghouls:
And their king it is who tolls;
And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
Rolls
A paean from the bells!

And so forth, until it’s your head that is ringing like the bells, bells, bells.

Or this:

The Raven

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
” ‘Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door;
Only this, and nothing more.”
Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow, sorrow for the lost Lenore,.
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore,
Nameless here forevermore.

The cadence may be memorable, but so are all those songs by Abba. Someone, please, help me to forget.

While Bukowski’s poems bemoan the poet’s inability to offer insight, his novels are another thing entirely. “Ham on Rye” is a shattering portrayal of growing up tormented, clueless, ugly, and lower class in the shadow of Los Angeles, the land of the pretty and gifted and well-off. “Post Office” is requisite reading for anyone who wants to understand the torture of smart people trapped in a deadening circumstance; its revolutionary message is that to embrace freedom is, sometimes, to embrace the decision to be a complete fuck-up.

Bukowski was smart about the sham of Los Angeles, the citywide put-on he himself refused to don. And in print and in his readings he was funny. When he had nothing to lose, which was most of his life, he was fearlessly funny and filthy. Every Bukowski piece, however exaggerated and at times badly written, carries the comic stench of real life. There will always be a place for that.

Going to Silent Movie for this event:  The release and screening of Wholpin #5. Flavorpill.com says:

McSweeney’s DVD-based little brother Wholphin is officially one year old; the quarterly pub’s infancy included Spike Jonze’s lost 2000 Al Gore election documentary, Daily Show writers reviving the Japanese Bewitched, and a sci-fi homage by Steven Soderbergh, amongst others. Selections from Wholphin’s fifth issue are screened tonight, with rumors of a crying competition, a Consumer Service Announcement to Identify Clone-Free Products, and never-before-seen footage from Jim Jarmusch, Werner Herzog, and P.T. Anderson.

The revamped Silent Movie is quickly becoming the contemporary LA equivalent of the Little Art Theatre of yore. I wrote about both beloved screening houses here.

When my wife told me that she had agreed upon a price with our gardeners to fix the sprinkler system in the back yard, I said, “WHAT? WHY? We’re probably putting in a pool!” Then she told me the price: $500. I said, “Oh, okay then.”

Previous estimates on their generously fixing the system so ungenerously broken by the contractors who put a second story on our home but nearly ruined our family and definitely killed the lawn in the process ran in the three-thousand-dollar range. Since then, we’ve alternated between using either the sprinkler-hose-attachment system characterized here as utterly baffling me, and just saying the hell with it and watching the grass wither and die. When I recommitted to the “manual” sprinkler system a few months ago and succeeded in revitalizing the lawn — to some degree — I began to appreciate its possibilities: croquet and the like. So, until or unless we do put in a pool, I’m happy to have the “actual” underground sprinkler system repaired — and even happier not to be doing it myself.

So why the amazing discount on this repair job? My wife thinks it’s because of the writers’ strike, now in its xth week and unlikely to end soon; while it’s the writers who are striking, it’s the service-industry people who are suffering most immediately. She says the lead gardener in the family, Ismail, related that he’d discussed our project with his father and they wanted to reward our loyalty. “Others come and go, but you’ve been with us a long time.” Almost 12 years, in fact, and given what they’ve been charging us — very little, I think, especially for weekly service — I haven’t seen a reason to switch. But I think the writers’ strike is only part of it. The mortgage meltdown is hitting Los Angeles like it’s hitting the rest of the nation, although Burbank less so because of pent-up demand. So while I’m happy to get a huge discount on this job, I’m sure I’m not happy about the underlying causes, which are sure to grow worse.