This amazing graph is taken from The Rachel Maddow Show. It is based upon work from the two academics listed on the graph. The bottom chart is the distribution of income that Americans think would be right. The yellow line is the top 20% of earners, the orange line is the next 20%, and so on. The middle chart is the distribution of income that Americans think is what we have. And the top chart is the actual distribution of income. So Americans think income inequality is far better than it really is, but even with that distorted view, they would like the economy to be even more equitable.

When I was a kid, I loved John D. Fitzgerald’s The Great Brain series. So I thought I would revisit it to see if I had any taste whatsoever when I was a youngster. I couldn’t find the original The Great Brain nor my favorite, The Great Brain at the Academy. But I did find More Adventures of the Great Brain.

For those of you who do not know these books, they tell the story of the Fitzgeralds, a Catholic family living in Utah around the turn of the 19th century. The star is Tom (TD), the middle child, who is a very smart con artist. Most of the books are told in the first person by the youngest, John (JD). The books are highly episodic with a vague story arc. Think Cannery Row.

I am pleased to report that at least this book is very good. I suspect that when I was younger I found them a good deal more clever than I do now. But they strike me now as far more charming that I thought they were. I’m surprised they aren’t more popular today. They will certainly appeal to smart kids—or at least kids who think they’re smart.

Update (23 June 2012)

I was wrong, all of the Great Brain books are written from little John’s perspective. I just got The Great Brain at the Academy and it is told as though J.D. is learning all about what happened from Tom’s letters and then telling the reader.

You may remember that for Mother’s Day, I posted this really great video Thank You Mom. So I went looking for something similar for Father’s Day. The results were poor. All of the videos celebrating Father’s Day were not only explicitly Christian, they had a very traditional view of fathers.

Even when I was growing up in the middle ages of the 20th century, I could see that the standard line on “dads” was wrong. Fathers were much more involved in the lives of their children than commonly accepted. They were a hell of a lot more involved than the standard line that says that fathers lead by example. This is the “we aren’t reptiles” theory of fatherhood: we don’t eat our young!

The great diversity and fierce attachment of modern fathers shows that men always wanted to be intimately involved in the rearing of their children. The moment that social mores allowed this, men jumped at it. This is one of the best and most enduring results of the feminist revolution.

And this is the text from the supremely silly card I got my father:

To which I added even more silliness. But that’s private.

Happy Father’s Day!

My father seemed to be impressed with Nik Wallenda’s upcoming high wire walk over Niagara Falls. It seems really boring to me. I just can’t see it as much of anything after seeing Man on a Wire a couple of years ago. So I forced my father to watch it. He was very impressed, but still looked forward to Wallenda’s walk.

The main thing I remembered about the film was that while Philippe Petit had all charges dropped against him after his walk between the Twin Towers. His co-conspirators, on the other hand, were thrown out of the country. In fact, there is a remarkable moment late in the movie where a police officer comments on the wire the group had put up, “The rigging outfit itself, it’s magnificent the way he did it.” The way he did it. Well, he didn’t do it. If he had been alone, he could not have done it. The walk required a group of committed people. But in America, all that matters is the guy in front of the camera. No one else matters.

What I most noticed this time is what an asshole Petit is. He treats his friends very badly. And I feel that to all of the people involved there was a feeling that Petit was never really much of a friend. He was a fun and interesting guy to be around. He is a symbol of a great thing they were involved in. But they can’t miss the personal relationship they had with him, because they never had a personal relationship with him in the first place.

I’m glad that people like Petit are around. He makes life interesting. But he doesn’t make it true or deep—even for those who are physically close to him. He is the personification of the lonely man on a wire pretending that he willed the wire from his mind.

Woody Allen has impressed me with his use of narration. I think it goes back to his fundamental orientation as a short story writer. In particular, Broadway Danny Rose is probably the best use of narration in a film ever. And I think everyone remembers the Greek chorus in Mighty Aphrodite.

I’ve gotten out of touch with Woody Allen. I haven’t seen any of his films in the theater since Alice and the last of his films I’ve even seen is The Curse of the Jade Scorpion, which is not even that recent. So I’ve been taking steps to get up to date.

My first effort was to watch his 2008 film, Vicky Cristina Barcelona. It is a pleasant enough film with many things we have come to expect from Woody Allen: clever dialog, truly surprising plot twists, and a vague ending. But that’s not what I noticed. I noticed the narration that blanketed the film.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona is narrated by a man who I guess is supposed to be the author of what Allen sees as the novel the film is based upon. It is clearly an omniscient narrator, because he knows everything that is going on in the minds of all the characters. Just the same, he is not any of the characters in the film. And he sticks out in the film, never really melding with the film.

I would have really liked this film if it hadn’t been for the narration. What’s more, it isn’t necessary. Nothing narrated wasn’t clear from the many excellent performances in the film. My question is why: “Why did Allen add this narration?” Was he assuming that his audience was too stupid or distracted to figure out the film without being told?

Also, like I implied, the ending was weak.

My friend Toni told me about a recent dream. She was driving in her car with John Waters, the iconoclastic creator of such films as Pink Flamingos and Serial Mom. This was very exciting for Toni, because she really likes him. Maybe because of this or maybe just because it is what anyone would do while chauffeuring John Waters, she crashed the car in through the front window of a neighbor’s house. Then she jumped out of the car pointing at Waters. “Look!” she said, “John Waters!”

This contrasts with my dreams. The most common motif says a great deal about me. I am walking down the street. But the street gets steeper and steeper until I am grabbing onto the street to keep from sliding off. This probably goes along with constant fear that I’m going to fall up. To this day, I can’t lie on my back and look up to the sky. It makes me anxious.

Dreams say a lot about you. Toni’s shows that she is a well adjusted person. And mine shows that I am FUBAR. Apparently people know this too. Celebrities never appear in my dreams.

Has pop music advanced in the last three decades? Let’s look at the evidence. Here from just three years ago, is a song that, given what it is, is quite good:

And here is pretty much an identical song from 26 years earlier:

This occurred to me today when a motorcycle drove past me blasting what I originally thought was Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) but turned out to be Bad Romance. This is not an attack on Lady Gaga—she gives the people what they want. I suppose it is an attack on the people.

Like I said, there is nothing wrong with Bad Romance. God knows, most mega-hits don’t even come close. And I’m not that keen on Sweet Dreams. But both represent about the best of their time’s meta-hits. That they are so similar[1] does not speak well of the culture. Maybe in that way, we have reached the end of history.

[1] I will allow a couple of things. First, Sweet Dreams was made on a semi-pro 8-track unit, most likely with similarly primitive effects. That makes the accomplishment all the more impressive, but the sound quality is not great. Similarly, I think the video was very good for its time, but there is no doubt that music videos have made major advances since their infancy.