Quartz City

From Michael Moore’s latest mailing…

The day began yesterday with “Bowling for Columbine” winning “Best Film” from a vote of hundreds of French teachers and students from arond the country who each year come to Cannes and award one movie their “Cannes Prix Educational National.” It’s the only “people’s prize” at Cannes where everyday citizens get to screen the films and vote. It was a wonderful moment and a great honor to receive this award. The Education Ministry in France has made “Roger & Me” part of the French national curriculum and it is shown each year in every school in France. The same will now happen with “Bowling for Columbine.”

It’s a busy, busy day in Activeville! Here’s a handy real-time map of the busy skies above Los Angeles.

Palm Beach County high school students only have to correctly answer 23 multiple-choice questions out of 100 total to get a passing grade. Of course once these students get to college, they’ll expect the same treatment.

Hundreds of chefs, restaurateurs and dealers across the country have agreed to participate in “Take a Pass on Chilean Sea Bass.” The fish (which isn’t a bass at all, it’s a Patagonian toothfish) is being overfished to the point of extinction as environmental laws struggle to keep up with hungry American pallets driven onward by marketing. The punchline to the story (if you can say such a thing) is that commercial fishermen in Antarctic waters have now begun substituting a related fish, which they call Antarctic toothfish for “Chilean Sea Bass.”

Chicago music stores that buy and sell used CDs and DVDs are now considered to be pawnshops - forcing them to require photo IDs and complete detailed records of all transactions. Speaking as someone who’s had CDs ripped off from him, I’m all for taking action against thieves, but as Jenny Shifted Librarian points out… “at this rate, they’re going to keep better track of CDs than of guns… and then all of the records secretly get subpoenaed by the FBI.”

Your suspicions are now confirmed, etiquette, politeness and “gracious living” have been consigned to the scrap heap of the Ephemeral Films Archive. Amy Vanderbilt’s classic etiquette guide has been revised for it’s 50th anniversary (never mind that Mrs. Vanderbilt has been dead for years) and the results are not good.

On her 50th anniversary, poor, dead Amy Vanderbilt has been “entirely rewritten and updated” by a retired White House staff coordinator and a personal-investment financial reporter. In the 786 pages between the revised book’s designer covers can be found the rubble of a toppled past arthritically cobbled together without the faintest idea of what it once meant. “The Amy Vanderbilt Complete Book of Etiquette,” as authored by Nancy Tuckerman and Nancy Dunnan, won’t tell you how to act at an Annapolis hop, and the advice it gives on conversational skills at parties is enough to ensure that you will never again have to worry about being on anybody’s guest list, but if you want to understand the demise of etiquette in America, this is the only book you need.

Paging John Cage…

“Lowercase sound” is the name given to a loose movement in electronic music that emphasizes very quiet sounds and the long, empty silences between them.

Created largely by scientists, techies and experimental musicians, lowercase recordings are frequently based on the magnification of minute sounds through a computer, typically a Macintosh.

Recent compositions include a bubbling symphony of boiling tea kettles, the gentle hiss of blank tapes being played through a stereo and the soft bumps of helium balloons hitting the ceiling.

The truth can now be told! America wake up! When the New World Order comes, they’ll be driving on the wrong side of the road!

At my old house in Silver Lake, the site in this photograph (Allesandro and Fargo) was about a half-mile away. Certainly within walking distance. I suppose it’s hackneyed to whine nostalgic about the good old days of Los Angeles’ forgotten mass transit, but damnit - we could have used this! Now the right-of-way is long gone. Thanks guys…

It’s all there. Seriously.