"Chet of Arabia"

There’s a fairly wonderful short piece in the Atlantic about bringing a 3-year-old to Jordan, just for fun. Subtitled, “In defense of exotic travel with young children,” it deals with the lecturing tendency of nervous, post-9/11 American parents who never want their kids to do anything. “They told me that your average 3-year-old does not revel in ancient history, scenic majesty, or a cameo in an Indiana Jones film—and so will not appreciate such a journey. They said I had no business taking my child to the Middle East, especially when my husband, a soldier in the U.S. Army, was deployed to the slums of Sadr City in neighboring Iraq. An American mother and child would stand out, would be an easy target for mishap or mayhem.” Blah, blah, blah.

     posted 3 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

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The Children's Toy of the Year

Here’s a piece on why the unfortunately named iPad is really the children’s toy of the year. “While nobody was looking,” the writer claims, “the iPhone became a universally understood part of children’s culture.” Richtig. Which is why these devices may become the future of reading.

     posted 5 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

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Alice in Wonderland, Film #1

From 1903. Particularly good is the Cheshire Cat around 4:50.

     posted 6 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

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Former Prom King Now Living Anonymously Among Commoners

I want to know where The Onion gets its excellent photographs. From its own staffers?

     posted 10 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

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Tsunami Hits California

Dramatic footage.

UPDATE: Actually the tsunami hit Chile itself pretty hard. In the first half-hour after the quake, writes an Annenberg School blogger, “many of the dead were in Chile’s coastal regions after 33-foot waves inundated coastal towns.” The blog also has a really good computer simulation of the wave spreading through the Pacific.

Thanks to LA Observed.

UPDATE 2: NY Times has coverage.

     posted 12 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

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Oscar the Surfing Snake

Vintage Palos Verdes surf footage by Doc Ball, clip thanks to Malcolm Gault-Williams. The part about Oscar starts at about 1:50, and sorry if there’s an ad first.

     posted 14 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

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How to Film Nazis

And how not to. Actually I liked (most of) Jüd Süß — Rise and Fall, but it was booed at the Berlinale.

     posted 15 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

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A Kugelmass Episode in Dresden

The Zwinger in Dresden is an outer wall of an old fortress, later a palace, and even later a factory for Meissen porcelain, where a few different rulers managed to build a lot of baroque sculpture and fancy arcades until the whole thing was bombed to hell in 1945. Most of the (largely rebuilt) statues are cherubs. Some are bare-breasted ladies from Greek myth.

But wait! Who’s this guy?

Alone in the line of neo-classical subjects along the top of the Zwinger is a man in a hat, who looks like he just walked in from the 19th century. I have no explanation for him.

But he reminds me of The Kugelmass Episode.

     posted 18 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

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That 'Kraut' Epithet

Reading this made me hungry.

     posted 19 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

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Dresden

This gentleman posed for me while a group of his fellow left-wing demonstrators crossed a bridge in Dresden to block a group of neo-Nazis from marching on Saturday. His sign says, “I’m not afraid of a return of the fascists under the mask of fascism, I’m afraid of a return of the fascists under the mask of democracy.”

     posted 23 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

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European Dispatch

I’ve been writing weekly since early January about Holocaust denial at Miller-McCune, and I’ll post a collection of links shortly. But here’s the new piece, about Nazi revisionism in the United States. Did I refer to Jonah Goldberg? Oh yes I did.

     posted 29 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

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The McCaslin Ledger

The New York Times reports on the real plantation diary that Faulkner used to build his dense novel of slaves and slaveowners, Go Down Moses. Wonderful book. I haven’t read it in a long time. But the surprise is that no one recognized the Faulkner link before — because the diary, otherwise, is known as a detailed source for historians of the South.

I love this stuff. It reminds me of a story about Ezra Pound. I may not be remembering it quite straight, but: in Italy Pound discovered an old book of history — maybe even a book of government documents from Bologna — that contained a number of Shakespeare plots. It dated to Shakespeare’s lifetime, so Pound realized he’d found a source for most of the Italian plays.

     posted 29 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

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Berlin Bei Nacht 2

     posted 30 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

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Renovations

Radio Free Mike is undergoing renovations this week, in case you notice any strange behavior. It was down yesterday for a while for the same reason. Not to worry. We’ll let you know when it’s done.

     posted 30 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

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Sarah Palin Doesn't Use Teleprompters

She just reads off her hand.

     posted 33 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

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Berlin Bei Nacht

     posted 36 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

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Meeting Jon Stewart

Ethan Watters, author of Crazy Like Us, gives us Ten Things You Should Know Before Going on the Daily Show.

Ethan was just on the Daily Show last week — much to my surprise — and he knocked it outta the park. I had to read his top-ten list to figure out he was nervous.

UPDATE: Oh and now he’s on Gawker.

     posted 37 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

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Time to Pre-Order the Surf Book!

Mike’s new book, Sweetness and Blood: How Surfing Spread from Hawaii and California to the Rest of the World, With Some Unexpected Results is now available for pre-order from a few web sites — including Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and Amazon Deutschland — even if it won’t be published until late spring.

We’re all pretty excited here at Radio Free Mike.

More soon.

     posted 38 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

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"Duke Kahanamoko"

Claire Danes and David Letterman chat about surfing in 1995. She explains to Dave that, yes, there is surfing in Delaware — maybe not good surfing — and he tells her the “first surfer” was Duke Kahanamoko.

Wrong in so many ways, Dave, but nice try.

     posted 40 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

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O Berlin, What Could You Mean?

     posted 41 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

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Headline Writing FAIL

In case the Daily News changes it, I wanted to save this headline for posterity. It reads in full: “Skater Nancy Kerrigan’s brother, Mark Kerrigan, tells police he fatally attacked father over phone.”

If that prompts a number of strange reflections about the startling advance of phone technology, the lead clarifies:

The loser brother of Olympic figure skater Nancy Kerrigan told cops he attacked their dad because he wouldn’t let him use the phone, a shocking police report revealed Monday.

Oh.

     posted 46 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

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Berlin Idyll 2

     posted 48 days ago by Michael Scott Moore

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