French Baroque painter Philippe de Champaigne was born on this day in 1602. Blackface singer Al Jolson was born in 1886.

The great depression era photographer and social activist Dorothea Lange was born in 1895. She is best known for her 1936 photograph “Migrant Mother.” It is often hard to say why exactly a photo is great. This one is great just considering its aesthetics. But there is also something about its primary subject—Florence Owens Thompson—who embodies both strength and pain that makes it particularly compelling. Add to that its social context and you have a classic. Thompson’s migrant farming family broke down in the pea-picker’s camp on Nipomo Mesa, where a couple of thousand other migrant workers had become stuck after a bad freeze had ruined the crop. The people there were starving and the publicity from the photo caused the government to step in and help the people.

So much of Lange’s photography is beautiful and compelling. Normally, I would have given the day to her, but… Well, you’ll see. Check out more of her Farm Security Administration work.

Actor John Wayne was born in 1907. I’ve never understood his appeal. I still feel that he makes movies I like less good. There’s no accounting for taste, I guess; mine included. The original Dr. Who, Peter Cushing was born in 1913. Jack Kevorkian was born in 1928. Levon Helm was born in 1940. And Mick Ronson was born in 1946.

Stevie Nicks is 65 today, so she won’t be working anymore. Actor Pam Grier is 64. Bobcat Goldthwait is 51. You remember him:

Lenny Kravitz is 49. And Helena Bonham Carter is 47.

But the day went to Miles Davis, by somewhat less than a nose. He was born on this day in 1926. When I was younger, I didn’t really understand his music. But about 20 years ago it clicked. It’s really amazing regardless of what he does. Part of it is just that he always surrounded himself with great musicians. And that may be why I especially like his cool period stuff. Here he is doing “So What?” from Kind of Blue (although not with exactly the original band):

Happy birthday Miles Davis!

I don’t much care for American sketch comedy because of the generally poor writing. The typical skit is some funny idea that the writer (although the actor is often more important than the writer) riffs on for a while and then just stops. For example, Julia Sweeney’s androgynous Pat character. Pat enters, makes people uncomfortable and cleverly deflects questions designed to determine her sex, and then Pat leaves. If the ideas were always as funny as Pat, that would be one thing. But in general, the ideas are weak and they lead nowhere.

Recently, I’ve been revisiting old episodes of SCTV. When I was younger, I preferred the show to SNL. But actually, the show suffers from the same problems. It is just better because the cast is a lot better. There is also a whole lot more depth to the show because it is supposed to be a small local television station. So characters like Guy Caballero (Joe Flaherty) and Edith Prickley (Andrea Martin) were developed through the run of the show. Of course, there was also my all time favorite Count Floyd, the distinctly non-frightening host of Monster Chiller Horror Theater, their version of Creature Features that I grew up watching.

Given my problem with the lack of punchlines in “American” comedy, I was pleased to revisit one skit from SCTV that I think is brilliantly written (as well as acted). It features another Andrea Martin character, Pirini Scleroso. Scleroso is a great character who hardly needs a punchline. She is the janitor at SCTV who appears to speak little English but apparently just has a very bad accent. I also like that she is eager. She frustrates everyone, but is still charming:

“You just go down two blocks; you can’t miss it!” Now was that so hard?

Afterword

Here is a typical SCTV skit with Pirini Scleroso in the part of Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady. As usual, when SCTV did a parody, they presented it as a “coming soon” commercial. This is very funny:

The fourth season of Arrested Development came out this morning on Netflix. I watched the first episode. They seem to be structuring the episodes differently this time. Each one focuses on one character. This first episode was on Michael. In the original series, it took quite some time to realize that Michael was actually just as narcissistic as the rest of his family. In this episode, Michael is horrible. And as usual, his target is the only genuinely nice character in the whole show, his son George Michael. As usual, Michael refuses to hear what his son is saying. In this case, he’s been living with George Michael in his dorm room for six months. It is very uncomfortable to watch.

The good news is that the episode is very funny. But it does feel different. The first episode is 32 minutes long. My understanding is that all of the episodes are different lengths. Since they didn’t have to shoehorn episodes into broadcast television time slots, they didn’t. This is nice. However, after years of watching the show, I’ve developed a strong sense of its timing, and that is gone. The new show is not as crisp. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It allows scenes to linger in nice ways that it never could have before.

The episode ends with Michael returning to the old model home, which is now in the middle of a ghost town, built by Michael shortly before the housing bubble burst. On returning to the house, he finds it in shambles with an ostrich inside it. And thus we move on to the story of Lindsay. I’ll update when I’ve seen more of the series.

Update (26 May 2013 12:54 am)

The next episode is not Lindsay’s. However, the ostrich does seem to be due to her.

Update (26 May 2013 1:23 am)

One reason that I’ve heard Arrested Development had trouble garnering an audience when on regular TV was that you really had to watch it from the beginning. The opening didn’t explain the plot (if that were even possible). And so it all just seemed bizarre. These episodes do a much better job of contextualizing what’s going on. I’m sure that’s largely because it’s been 7 years since season three. But it helps viewers regardless.

Update (26 May 2013 1:58 am)

The third episode is the funniest thus far. And it has Maria Bamford as a methadone patient. She eats butter.

Philosopher and writer Ralph Waldo Emerson was born on this day in 1803. I tend to accept a lot of his thinking, but his religious thought (understandably) is stuck in the early 18th century. Of course, that thinking is still far in advance of most religious people today. (Does that sound snarky? I don’t exactly mean it that way. I do however find religion fascinating and most believers devoid of any interesting thought at all. Religion is probably the worse subject for that. In economics, people might be constrained 90% by dogma. With religion it is often 100%.)

Bill “Bojangles” Robinson was born in 1878. He is most known for the movies he made with Shirley Temple. He was a capable dancer, but there’s nothing especially compelling about it. Of course, I’m not a huge dance fan. The bigger issue is that in the Temple films, he plays such “inoffensive” black characters. I understand that he was a trailblazer and important to race relations. But it’s still hard to watch. He seems to have been a good guy.

What I find most interesting about him is Jerry Jeff Walker’s song “Mr. Bojangles.” It appears that it was based upon a true story. But the dancer he described was not Bill Robinson. It couldn’t have been him since Robinson had died in 1949, when Walker was 7 years old. It is just that Robinson (like Robert Johnson) was so popular that people made entire careers out of impersonating him. So the song tells the story of one of these men, probably at the end of a downhill slide. Here is my favorite version of it by David Bromberg:

The other half of Burt Bacharach, Hal David was born in 1921. The great novelist Robert Ludlum was born in 1927. Poet and short story writer Raymond Carver was born in 1938. Actor Dixie Carter was born in 1939.

Producer Irwin Winkler is 82 today. Actor Ian McKellen is 74. Director and the soul of Miss Piggy, Frank Oz is 69. Vagina monologist Eve Ensler is 60. Comedian Mike Myers is 50. And that picked upon actor Jamie Kennedy is 43.

The day, however, belongs to Igor Sikorsky who was born on this day back in 1889. Contrary to popular opinion, he did not invent the helicopter. He did however, pretty much invent what we think of as a helicopter today. It’s a wild idea. Having one big rotor on top, should make the the bottom of the craft just spin the other way. But Sikorsky’s design the main rotor with a back rotor that is almost perpendicular to it that managed to equalize the angular momentum. Really, if I hadn’t grown up with helicopters and flown in them a few times, I wouldn’t even believe such a thing was possible. The modern helicopter is a work of engineering genius. Of course, Sikorsky did a lot more than that. Go read about him if you are interested.

Happy birthday Igor Sikorsky!

Harry Reid really needs to go nuclear. Mike Konczal has an excellent article over at Wonk Blog about what is going on with the nomination of Richard Cordray to head Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Just look at that face! How could anyone say no to him? Well, as Konczal explained, it isn’t about him. The Republicans don’t want anyone to head the CFPB. They don’t like the new bureau and they are going to hold their breath until they get their way. Or the political equivalent to it.

This is effectively nullification. And this is brand new. Well, Obama new. The Senate is using its right to “advise and consent” on nominations to strike down laws it simply doesn’t like. This is a very bad situation. Last February, 43 Republican Senators signed a letter saying they would not approve anyone to head the CFPB unless three of their demands were met. Does that sound like anyone to you? “We will kill all the hostages unless our demands are met!”

So what are their demands? First, they want the CFPB to be run by a bipartisan committee to effectively hobble it. Second, they want to be able to budget the CFPB year by year so that whenever they have the power, they can effectively destroy it. And third, they want a “safety-and-soundness check for the prudential regulators.” As Konczal noted:

Get that? It would basically say as long as banks are making money the government has no reason to punish them.

This is all reminding me of the Republican reaction to every other issue where they had no real leverage. Remember during the Obamacare negotiations, the Republicans would have no part of it. It was all or nothing. (In as much as the Democrats ever offer nothing!) And they got nothing. So after it passed they’ve tried to destroy it. First in the courts and now in the implementation. Here it’s the same thing. The Republicans lost their battle against the CFPB. And now they want a do over. As Konczal concluded:

Indeed. For this reason and so many more, Harry Reid needs to go nuclear.

Dylan Matthews just posted a great, short interview with Bernie Sanders. It is about the Gang of Eight immigration bill that most everyone is so excited about. Sanders is not and it looks like he will vote against it. What really struck me was that his position is almost identical to mine: we need to normalize the 11 million undocumented residents but the rest of the bill is mostly bad.

Primarily, his concern is on the issue of employment. He is rightly highly skeptical that firms can’t find American workers. He said, “Again, if there’s such a crisis, why haven’t wages gone up?” That’s the critical question. The conservative response is usually, “Those jobs aren’t worth that much.” The idea here is that companies would go out of business if they had to pay enough for American workers. That is a decidedly non-conservative argument these conservatives are making. Basically, the logic is: the government should provide low wage workers to inefficient businesses. It’s madness.

Sanders is really focused on technology jobs. He noted that in the last 11 years, wages have risen only 4.5%. What’s more, he noted a clear mathematical problem with the push for more H1-B visas, “I find it hard to understand that, when nine million people in this country have degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields, only about three million have jobs in these areas.” Part of the answer is that high tech firms tend to be picky, and highly resistant to hiring older workers. (By “older” they mean over 30 years old.) But the larger issue is just that there is a market for about 3 million tech workers and the industry is just lying about the availability of workers in order to keep wages down.

Unfortunately, Sanders hedges a bit. He also blasts the H2-B visa increases that will provide for even more seasonal workers. That’s all good. But he says many times that there are companies who just can’t find workers. He even provides a full tilt apologia for his home industry:

Look, I understand: the man is still a politician and he has to take care of his constituency. But as Mitt Romney said, “Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.” I’m sure that if the Vermont dairy industry paid better, more Americans would take the jobs. I’m sure that Sanders understands this, of course. But he doesn’t need the Vermont Dairy Industry Association raising millions of dollars to campaign against him.

The whole spectacle of Bernie Sanders making these arguments ought to cause belly laughs from the nation. Supposed hardcore capitalists like Paul Ryan don’t understand the basic economics of the system they publicly worship. Meanwhile, socialist Bernie Sanders understands exactly how the economy works—the labor market anyway. And maybe there’s a reason for that. As I discussed last night, most conservatives are very confused about how market economies work. Maybe understanding capitalism has a tendency to moderate one’s views.

PBS is censoring Citzen Koch, a documentary about Citizens United, money in politics, and the billionaire Koch brothers. You may remember back in November, I wrote an article about an Independent Lens documentary Park Avenue. Apparently, the film made a lot of rich people very angry, including at least one of the Koch brothers. There’s even a delicious quote in Jane Mayer’s article, A Word from Our Sponsors, “They went on for twenty minutes, warning that such hateful attitudes could lead many wealthy New Yorkers to move to Florida, where the taxes are lower, and arguing that neighbors of theirs who spent millions of dollars on parties helped waiters and caterers.” How ungrateful we are not to worship the rich for their consumption!

Well, Citizen Koch was supposed to be part of the Independent Lens series too. But after Park Avenue got all the rich people upset, things changed. In particular, WNET and WGBH, the big New Jersey and Boston PBS affiliates, have Koch brothers on their boards. ITVS, the company that produces the Independent Lens series suddenly became very concerned. They wanted the title of the film changed. And they wanted the film to limit the inclusion of the Koch brothers. And they wanted more negative coverage of the Democrats put in. One of the ITVS executives put it frankly, “We live in a world where we have to be aware that people with power have power.”

Eventually, ITVS backed out of the deal. The filmmakers think this is due to pressure from PBS. I suspect that the people at ITVS are just assuming pressure from PBS. They don’t want another controversial film to damage their relationship with the network. Regardless of which is the case, it is certainly true that PBS would have had a problem with this film and it would have hurt the relationship. The filmmakers said, “It’s the very thing our film is about—public servants bowing to pressures, direct or indirect, from high-dollar donors.” Hopefully the film will eventually get a wide release and embarrass both PBS and ITVS. The “public” in PBS has been a joke for a very long time.

The trailer looks really good:

Most people I meet who think they know something about economics are clueless. What I’m thinking about right now are people who think that companies set prices based upon their costs. A standard (incorrect) observation is, “If we raise the minimum wage, the companies will just increase their prices.” Think about how ridiculous that idea is. Imagine that McDonald’s is selling a hamburger for $1.50. They are selling it at that price because it maximizes profits (or at least they think it does). If they could maximize profits at $1.55, they would sell it for that price. But they know that by raising the price by just a nickle, they would lose a certain number of sales and in the end they would make less money. Note that this consideration has nothing to do with the cost of making the burger!

The problem with these would-be economists is that most of them have never run a business. I’ve run several, but by far the most illuminating was running a business at the huge San Jose Flea Market. For various reasons that don’t matter, I was selling make-up there. When we first started, our margins were enormous. Over time they went down, but not because our costs went up. Over time, other vendors offered the same products and we all competed to get customers and so the prices went down. Again: not costs! Every one of us was trying to make as much money as possible. The high prices at first were part of that. But so were the quickly sinking prices at the end.

I thought about this tonight because I got a copy of the Taxing Times, the newsletter of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. Jarvis was the guy that got Californians to destroy their public infrastructure by voting for Prop 13, which not only lowered property taxes, it made property appraisals lag way behind the times. During the campaign for Prop 13, Howard Jarvis tried to convince renters to vote for the initiative. He told them that with lower property taxes, their rents would go down. Of course, no such thing happened. Why would it? Renters were already paying the going rate. Why would landlords pass on the extra money to them?

That’s what I find so frustrating about this kind of stuff. I think that Jarvis really thought that rents would go down. In general, conservatives think that businesses are some kinds of charity organizations. This is why they believe in the myth of the “job creator.” It is the idea that business owners hire people because they have excess money lying around. People don’t think that way. Consider your own salary: if you got a raise would you (a) improve your standard of living; (b) save it; or (c) hire a kid to do useless work around your yard? That is the decision that rich people have to make when we give them tax cuts. For the record: they choose (b).

This situation comes up every time there is a natural disaster. Someone is caught selling a can of peaches for ten bucks. Then the president or the governor goes on TV and talks about how it is an outrage. I don’t get that. These politicians are much bigger believers in capitalism than I am. And all these canned goods sellers are doing is what every business has done everywhere at every time: maximize profits. The truth is that the can of peaches is worth ten bucks at that time and that place. Now, I’ll admit, that’s a pretty messed up system that allows one person to take advantage of another. But that is the system almost everyone in this country worships. When Walmart illegally (but without fear of prosecution) stops a unionization effort, they aren’t doing it to keep their prices low; they are doing it to maximize their profit margins. Why is the can seller evil if Walmart is good? (I would argue that the can seller is more ethical. Walmart is trying to stop workers from organizing themselves—surely the most basic of human rights. There is no coercion from the can seller.)

Is it so much to ask of the world for those who think capitalism is the greatest system ever, to understand its basics? It is particularly galling to hear conservatives talk about the marvels of the free market when they demonstrate again and again that they don’t know how capitalism, finance, or markets work. It reminds me of religious people who don’t have a clue about basic spiritual issues or even fundamental tenets of their own faith. I think in both cases, these people hold their opinions because it is part of their culture, not because they actually believe. I have had bizarre experiences talking with conservatives only to have them start saying things that are downright socialistic. Based upon this I have concluded that these people really do believe that a company would never price gouge. It’s endearing, but our economic policies should be based upon fact, not quaint notions of the honorable businessman.

The next time you think about business regulation, don’t imagine the friendly pizza parlor owner who feeds the homeless. He may exist, but he’s the exception. Think of the can seller in hurricane ravaged Florida trying to get a twenty spot for a can of beans. That’s who the typical businessman is. And he’s not evil. He’s just doing his job. If you think there ought to be limits on him, then you should be for more general limits on what businesses can do.

The great Italian Mannerist painter Jacopo Carucci (generally know simply as “Pontormo,” I guess because he was from Pontorme) was born on this day in 1494. His religious work generally involved crowed, but beautifully composed scenes. His portraits similarly have an other world quality to them. All of his work, while realistic in its details creates an abstract feeling that is hard to describe. (Click over and look at some of his work.) He was also the teacher of Il Bronzino, who paints just like Pontormo, although (I think) better.

German physicist Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit was born on this day in 1686. Guess what temperature scale he’s known for. Queen Victoria was born in 1819. She was Queen of England for almost 64 years, which makes her the longest reigning monarch in British history. But Elizabeth II is gaining fast, and in all likelihood will overtake her in two and a half years. The phrase, “We are not amused” is associated with Queen Victoria, but she maintained that she had never said it. People close to her said that she she had a hardy and easy laugh. I’d like to think so. Here’s a song just for her:

Inventor of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, H. B. Reese was born on this day back in 1879. He was not, thankfully, responsible for those terrible “You got chocolate in my peanut butter!” commercials in the 1970s. Like people walk around with jars of peanut butter, eating it with their fingers. I think that Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are the best mass-produced candy in the world. So all we need is a commercial that says, “Remember: Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups are delicious!” It also has the advantage that it is true.

And finally, relatively minor but incredibly compelling sculptor Sylvia Daoust was born on this day in 1902. She primarily did religious work. But the sculpture on the right My Head from 1930 is typical of the kind of stuff I admire. Her religious sculpture is less artistic, more purely representational, although I’m sure it was good for paying the bills.

The great French actor Michael Lonsdale is 82 today. Comedian Tommy Chong is 75. Liberal linguist George Lakoff is 72. Radar from MASH, Gary Burghoff is 70. Patti LaBelle is 69. Guitarist Waddy Wachtel is 66 and his hair is still perfect. Rosanne Cash is 58. And actor Kristin Scott Thomas is 53.

There are a lot of fine birthdays today, but still, this day was not even close. It belongs to the great Robert Allen Zimmerman, also known as Bob Dylan, who is 72 today. What can I say about Bob Dylan? Do I need to say anything about him? He made, I don’t know, about ten of my very favorite albums. I still listen to him every week. The albums that I never tire of are The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde, and Blood on the Tracks. Here he is doing “Tangled Up in Blue”:

Happy birthday Bob Dylan!

Afterword

Here is what Loudon Wainwright did for Bob Dylan’s birthday 22 years ago: