January 2017: The ACA Repeal Misinformation

All month I've seen alarming posts bouncing around between fellow liberals/progressives/leftists about the GOP's efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. This often takes the form of copied-and-pasted posts divorced of any context like the date or particular congressional action.

Here's the short version: in early January 2017, the US Senate held a procedural vote to open debate on a bill that would repeal the ACA. A couple days later, they held a procedural vote to allow any further action to be passed using budget reconciliation, which limits what the bill can contain, but shields the bill from filibuster. Both of these passed. The latter vote ALSO included a bunch of votes on amendments (really, amendments to the guidance given to Mike Enzi, Republican Chair of the Senate Budget Committee) about specific, popular provisions in the ACA, like pre-existing conditions, children's health care, cost controls, etc, offered by Democrats. They offered these, knowing they would fail, in part to slow the process, and in part to create embarrassing votes they can reference in elections. So that list of things the GOP voted against is technically true, but also misleading.

Neither of those votes repeals the ACA, but both were shared by left-of-center facebookers as if they had. The dangers I see include:

• Creating panic and despair among those who depend on their ACA-dependent health insurance. Your insurance isn't gone. It's not even (yet) scheduled to go away. Even if it is, it won't go away until the end of your plan year.
• Creating defeatism among those who might be inclined to take action against the GOP repeal if they didn't think it was already done. There are things we need to do NOW, which don't include contacting Paul Ryan (unless he's your Representative). 
• Sharing via context-free copy & paste is a terrible way to get information about the world, and is part of why your great-uncle thought Obama was coming for his guns and that John Podesta eats toddlers. 

Here are three things I researched and posted at the time. I've collected them here because I've seen the memes enough times RECENTLY that putting them in one place stands to save me a lot of time. So, here we go:

ONE.
January 12

I compiled some useful information about what happened last night, and what to do now if you want to support the Affordable Care Act remaining as law.
Forget protest retweets and facebook shares, and ignore the useless online petitions (change.gov is done, y'all). Get on the phone.
Special entreaty to friends in Alaska, Tennessee, Louisiana, Maine, Arkansas, and a myriad of other, redder states and districts: WE NEED YOU! Please call your Representative or Senator's *district or state office.*
Please feel free to share this.
A LINK TO THIS STORIFY: THE ACA HAS NOT YET BEEN REPEALED.

TWO.
January 12

IMPORTANT FOLLOW UP!
Please read this Tweet storm from a Congressional staffer about last night's ACA vote and the reactions today. Very critical of claims that the law was repealed, and included an explanation I didn't previously know about the Amendments offered by Dems and, to a one, voted down. 
A LINK TO THIS TWEET STORM: Celeste P.

THREE.
January 12

Vann Newkirk has been indispensable on the ACA stuff. Here he is on the limits and pressures (both procedural and poliitcal) on what the Republicans can and cannot do via reconciliation.
A LINK TO THIS ATLANTIC STORY: "The Limits of Using Reconciliation to Repeal Obamacare"

The Annotated Beukemix, 2015

Year-overdue liner notes!

Listen to the mix on Spotify!

1. Let 'em Say - Lizzo ft. Caroline Smith
Lizzo was our guest for Show X a couple years back, and was delightful. This collaboration with Caroline Smith is about living your life despite the chorus of voices trying to beat you down. I've found myself singing "I wanna look like my mother / five foot two and a natural woman" to myself semi regularly since getting into this song. Video stars the singers and Minneapolis' East Lake Street as itself. (TC, synth HC)

2. i - Kendrick Lamar
A deeply positive cut about self respect in a screwed up world, featuring a Isley Brothers hook (rerecorded by Ronald Isley for Lamar) and a jazz bass freakout. Felt especially vital in 2015. (HS)

3. Two Weeks - And the Professors
The band's "Turn-of-the-Century Recycling Blues" was my favorite song of 2014. After picking up the album early last year, this was another standout for me. Builds to a great string-backed guitar solo. (TC)

4. Something from Nothing - Foo Fighters
I already liked the song before watching the first episode of Dave Grohl's "Sonic Highways" documentary series on a plane to Seattle last spring. In each episode, Foo Fighters visits notable musicians of various backgrounds in a given city, then collaborates with some of them to produce a track inspired by the interviews. This one, made in Chicago, references Buddy Guy and Muddy Waters, and features Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick as one of - I think - four guitars.

5. Chandelier - Sia
It was early 2015 that Sia was on the performance circuit with this song and dancer Maddie Ziegler. Apart from the song itself, a confession of a party girl coming undone, the various dance performances, including one at the Grammys also featuring Kristen Wiig, were great.

6. Bury Our Friends - Sleater-Kinney
I missed the Sleater-Kinney boat in the 90s. Happy to get on it now. This was a good rock album, with several selections that could have fit this spot.


7. Daffodils - Mark Ronson ft. Kevin Parker
Love that fuzzy bass line. Almost put "Uptown Funk" on here, but since I assume you've been in a public space that plays music sometime in 2015, you probably didn't need it again. I should really dig into Tame Impala some more, considering how much I like Parker here and the handful of their songs I've heard. (HC)

8. Let Me Tell You About My Operation - They Might Be Giants
TMBG are great at wrapping sorrow in glee, as in this jazzy number that could be a tonally-inappropriate exposition for "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." Saw the band in concert for, I think, my sixth time, in a fun mid-year First Ave show, and this was a standout at that gig. "Glean," its source album, is my favorite new record from the band in a couple of decades. (HS)

9. Tune Down - Chris Joss
Funky cop show music from the first season of "Better Call Saul," for a heist scene starring Jonathan Banks as ex-cop Mike Ehrmantraut. (HS)

10. Supersonic Rocket Ship - The Kinks
Always on the look out to broaden my exposure to The Kinks, I was very pleased when this song closed out the first season of "Last Man On Earth." Fantastic horns on this one. (HS)

11. Go - The Chemical Brothers ft. Q-Tip
"Featuring Q-Tip" is usually a good indicator of whether I'd like a song, and him teaming up with the Chemical Brothers, as he did on 2005's "Galvanize," a song I love, is an even better sign. Though this one takes second place behind their earlier collaboration, it's another driving, hypnotic success. 

12. Bird of Prey - Natalie Prass
It took me a bit to get past my initial reaction to Prass' thin soprano and accept its smoothness. The gorgeous string and horn arrangements on this certainly help. The cheerful, colorful video is distinctly at odds with the lyrics, about trying to get away from a relationship with an obsessive partner. (HS)

13. Husbands - Savages
Relentless and powerful. Was already on my list before I watched "Ex Machina" at the end of the year, which used this over the end credits.

14. At The Zoo - Simon & Garfunkel
"Bookends" is one of the handful of albums I have on vinyl, and I was playing some songs for Max after finally getting a turntable for my birthday. Finding this song, I played it for him in anticipation of chaperoning his summer day care trip to the MN Zoo the following week. He immediately asked me to add it to his mix on my iPod, which means I've now listened to it 63 times since then. Seems low. I love how Simon kind of cracks himself up at one point.

15. Control - John Mark Nelson
The restless opening drum work and subsequent bass thrum and organ foundation hooked me in. Every year there's a song that I hear on the Current and immediately add to the Beukemix before the album is even out, and this was it. The instrumentation and falsetto vocals make it feel like a missing song from the second Broken Bells album, which I also loved. (TC)

16. Shades of Cool - Lana Del Rey
Lana Del Rey's spacey Southern CA noir music feels like a pre-qualification for future David Lynch or James Bond soundtrack work. Very cinematic, all mood. Her boyfriend in this song sounds like a dick. What sold this song for me, beyond its atmosphere, was the jagged guitar solo by the Black Keys' Dan Auerbach, very reminiscent of his similar work on Valerie June's "Pushin' Against a Stone."

17. I Won't Let You Down - OK Go
Liked this one when I first heard it on the radio early in the year. The relationship of the strings to the song reminds me a lot of ELO. Sometime in late summer, around the time Margot was born, Max became interested in videos of domino setups and Rube Goldberg devices, which led us to OK Go's videography, and to this song, its video remarkably filmed at half-speed by a drone in a single take and without any kind of digital manipulation, even of the cast-of-thousands-as-LED-message-board at the end. (HC)

18. White Lines (Don't Do It) 7" Edit - Grandmaster Flash & Melle Mel

My personal standout from the songs that Pitchfork's Top 200 Songs of the 80s list brought more to my attention. I'd forgotten about its role in "Shaun of the Dead." The linked video is more than twice as long as the 7" edit I picked for the mix. (HC)

19. Pedestrian at Best - Courtney Barnett
Barnett was inescapable on The Current this year, and grew on me. This song's my favorite of hers.

20. Yama Yama - Yamasuki
21. California Dreamin' - Bobby Womack
(HS on the latter)
We finish with two selections from season 2 of the Fargo TV adaptation, which was one of my favorite seasons of any show ever, and full of wonderful musical selections. The first cut, a Japanese-language funk march by the (French) father of one of the Daft Punk droids, was used in a menacing opening montage of one episode. The latter comes in quietly, sadly, and beautifully, in a moment of defeat for one character in the finale. Read more about the show, and its many sideways connections to the Coen Bros' oeuvre, including many of the song choices, here.

And that's it! See you next year.

Key and final score:
HS - horn section - 5
TC - Twin Cities artists - 3
HC - hand claps - 3.5

Gimme your hands, 'cause you're wonderful

I was up late last night, about to go to bed, when the news of David Bowie's passing broke. I stayed up a while longer, trying to track down a confirmation, as there were claims flying around that his official twitter and Facebook accounts had been hacked. Confirmation came from a tweet by his son, film director Duncan Jones.

It is a testament to Bowie's creativity, prolificacy, good humor, and sense of collaboration, that there are so many different tributes and memories pouring out for him today. A recurring theme is how many outsiders took comfort from his work. It seems like no matter what kind of nerd you are, there's Bowie output for you: music nerds, movie nerds (including subsets like Scorsese or David Lynch nerds), gender nerds, sexuality nerds, science fiction nerds, visual art nerds, theater nerds, fashion nerds, Muppet nerds... Comedy nerds can post clips from The Venture Bros. or Flight of the Conchords or Extras or Zoolander. Advocates for racial justice are sharing Bowie's pressuring of MTV in its first year to play more music by black artists. Wonks for late-20th-Century Germany are posting about the Berlin Trilogy...

He recorded "Under Pressure," a major hit, with Queen.
He cowrote "Fame" with John Lennon, and you can hear Lennon singing backup, including the descending "fame fame fame fame" figure.
He offered "Golden Years" to Elvis Presley before recording it himself.
He saved the band Mott The Hoople by giving them the song "All The Young Dudes."
He produced Lou Reed's "Transformer," and you can hear him singing the "a-ooooos" at the end of "Satellite of Love."
Same with Iggy Pop's "Lust for Life."
He collaborated musically with Mick Jagger, Nile Rodgers, Pete Townshend, Brian Eno, Tina Turner, Bing Crosby, Luther Vandross, Pat Metheny, Trent Reznor, TV On The Radio, Alicia Keys, Scarlett Johansson, and The Arcade Fire.

He also made 25 studio albums including some of the all-time great rock records.

I describe myself as having not really "gotten into Bowie" until late -- when I was already out of grad school. It was Wes Anderson's "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou," and its soundtrack full of Bowie songs (both the originals and lovely Portuguese covers by Brazilian actor/musician Seu Jorge) that encouraged me to finally dive into Bowie's albums. I did, and coincidentally in the same month I met my future wife. Learning more and more about his music suggested a world of wonderful possibilities, a sense that mirrored my personal life in that moment. Singing along to his songs together in the car is a not uncommon occurrence in Melissa's and my relationship, even today. For a while, Max was obsessed with the song "Changes," and it remains in his mix on my iPod.

But despite taking so long to really learn his albums, I already knew and loved many of his songs and performances. David Bowie's work was so good, and so diverse, that no matter what corner of the popular culture you call home, he touched it. Losing him is a blow, but we are lucky to have the music he left us, and it is wonderful that he left us on his own terms, with a valedictory album released on his 69th birthday, two days prior.

Setting the bar low: Cops and Men

 

There's an argument I saw highlighted last night on Twitter, put forth by folks who would defend the cop who assaulted a petulant girl who wouldn't leave her seat at Spring Valley High School the other day. Chris Hayes of MSNBC had asked a simple question:

Imagine if that was your kid.  https://t.co/j3QgtkicMp

— Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) October 26, 2015

Among the responses was this nonsense:

@chrislhayes my parents raised me in a way where I've never had to be assaulted by a cop. It's not exactly hard to avoid.

— Sean O'Connor (@ImSeanO) October 26, 2015

Apart from the fact that for a large portion of the population, compliance won't always protect you, this kind of logic is, in its own way, tacitly contemptuous of cops. The idea that cops are, like bears, some kind of wild, dangerous force that you have to go out of your way not to provoke in any way, takes a dim view of the expected cognitive abilities and situational awareness of cops. Sadly, many cops, including this fellow, seem determined to live down to these societal expectations. Was she being disrespectful? Sure. Was she being stubborn? Absolutely. But that in no way justified this sudden escalation of violence.

It reminds me of an argument I've heard made, especially by the Christian right, with respect to sexual assault. The idea is that being flirtatious or dressing provocatively, but then saying that no, you don't want to have sex, is like presenting a dog with a steak and expecting it not to eat it. Again, a pretty low opinion of men, here, that they have the self-control of a dog. (Of course, dogs are pretty smart, and can learn, apparently unlike these men.)

I think we can, and should, expect better of our civilization.



A couple of stray notes at the end here:
1. Heartbreaking to read that a white friend and bandmate of Corey Jones, the drummer killed in FL by a plainclothes officer in the middle of the night on an I95 offramp, had been with Jones at his vehicle for some time prior to the killing. He'd tried to help with the car, and went home while Jones talked to roadside assistance.
2. Remember: the so-called Ferguson Effect is a myth. Very disappointing to hear the FBI director invoking it, despite the lack of evidence.

Fargo Season 2 as a Pan-Coen Fever Dream

Season two of FX's "Fargo" series premiered this week, and so far, I'm really enjoying its mix of dark, dry humor and affection for its setting and characters, musical excellence, and a new cinematographical boldness featuring lots of split-screen. And, as a fan of the Coen Brothers' filmography as a whole, I love seeing the little references and thematic echoes from their films with which show runner/writer Noah Hawley has seasoned his show.

I'm going to use this post to collect the references I've noticed. If you see that I've overlooked one, please let me know in the comments (but please wait until after I've added a given week's episode, as I watch with a day or two of delay, and would like to see it fresh. By the same token, spoiler alert!).

Whole Season:

• The whole series, of course, borrows the title, Minnesota/Dakotas setting, genre (bad plans or a lack of plans blow up into desperate, bloody fiasco, while stoic cops chase down the perpetrators), and tone of the namesake 1996 movie.
• Like that film, both seasons claim (facetiously) to be based on true stories, and include the same disclaimer regarding names having been changed.
• Via Season One, the series has a plot element that suggests a shared narrative universe: the ice scraper and buried money suitcase from the film.

Episode 1: "Waiting For Dutch" (10/12/15)

• The Waffle Hut from The Ladykillers ("You brought your bitch... to the waffle hut?")
• The UFO from The Man Who Wasn't There
• The scene featuring Nick Offerman in the bingo hall echoes the dynamic of The Big Lebowski: a protagonist, with two friends consisting of an angry Vietnam vet pontificating on politics and a smaller, quieter man who is perpetually confused by the conversation.
• Kieran Culkin in his later scenes could almost be cosplaying Steve Buscemi in Fargo. Similarly, Michael Hogan as his father looks almost exactly like Harve Presnell in that movie.
• When Rye is trying to intimidate the judge, she describes the Biblical story of Job. A Serious Man is widely read as an extended riff on Job, or at least having deep thematic connections.
• End credit music: a cover of "Didn't Leave Nobody But The Baby," which was featured in the sirens scene of O Brother, Where Art Thou. 
• Added 10/20 - Peggy seems to sort of shut down and start making bad decisions after hitting Rye with her car, having gone blood simple.
• Added 4/11/2017 - Just listened to an interview with Noah Hawley on MPR's Aw Jeez podcast, and he referenced an Easter Egg on the Waffle Hut place mat: a circle, labeled "You Know, For Kids!"

Episode 2: "Before the Law" (10/19/15)

• "Also, [Floyd Gerhardt], 'chinaman' is not the preferred nomenclature."
• I swear there's a scene in a Coen movie where a dog happily eats human remains. Cannot recall.
• The typewriter salesman's half of the conversation into the phone could have been taken word-for-word out of the mouth of Jerry Lundegaard in the movie.
• It's early yet, but Mike Milligan (Bokeem Woodbine) seems to fit into a long tradition of powerful killer characters in the Coen's filmography. Frequently portrayed as an unstoppable evil force, they are sometimes, but not always, also quite talkative. See: Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men, The Lone Biker of the Apocalypse in Raising Arizona, Visser in Blood Simple (also: Lorne Malvo in the first season of the TV series).
• Meat grinder : this episode :: wood chipper : the movie.
• Across the street from the butcher shop in Luverne is a "Mike Zoss Pharmacy." A Mike Zoss Pharmacy also appears in No Country for Old Men, in the scene where Chigurh steals supplies to tend to his wounds. The Coens' production company is also named "Mike Zoss Productions," all are named after a real Twin Cities pharmacy where the brothers hung out as kids. 
• Added 10/28 - Floyd is in good with "Carter B. and the Solkirk crew." Carter Burwell has long been the Coens' go-to composer, and he composed the score to the movie Fargo, which sometimes stylistically inspires, and is sometimes directly quoted, on this show.
• Added 11/18 - Lou's conversation with Hank about their respective tours of duty, and the latter's belief that the Vietnam Vets "brought the war home," accounting for his perception of an increase in senseless violence, echoes Sheriff Bell's conversation with his Uncle Ellis in No Country for Old Men about the changing times and his feeling "over-matched."
• Added 11/18 - the Japanese-language funk song "Yama Yama" in the opening credits is from a project called Yamasuki by French musician Daniel Vangarde (father of one half of Daft Punk). Another song from this project was used over the closing credits of the 2014 film "Kumiko the Treasure Hunter," a dramatization of the urban legend in which a Japanese office worker died in northern MN while she was trying to find the briefcase full of money from the movie Fargo.
• Added 3/8/16 - Just realized today that Elizabeth Marvel, who plays Peggy's coworker (boss?) Constance, played the adult Mattie Ross in True Grit.

Episode 4: "Fear and Trembling" (11/2/15)

• Lou tells the Blumquists that they have no idea what's coming, again echoing Sheriff Bell from No Country, trying to warn Carla Jean of the danger she's in.
• The end credits song is a cover of one that Ed (Holly Hunter) sings as a lullaby in Raising Arizona.
• The framing of the doctor and the Solversons in their scene together is reminiscent of Coen scenes involving a meeting with an authority behind a desk, notably the funeral home in Lebowski and Rabbi Marshak in A Serious Man. The doctor also appears to share a taste in eyewear with Jeffrey Lebowski (the pillar of community, not The Dude) in that film.
• That same Lebowski's haranguing of The Dude, telling him "Your revolution is over! ... The bums lost!" is put a bit more gently by Mike Milligan, talking about the 70s as the hangover of the 60s.
• The framing of the hotel hallways are pure Barton Fink. 
• Joe Bulo wonders whether The Gerhardt boys will, like the Dude, "abide"? (The Dodd does not abide!)
• When Mike Milligan and the Kitchen brothers shoot Otto's nurse, there's a burst of down from her coat, like from Walt Gustafson's in Fargo.

Episode 5: "The Gift of the Magi" (11/9/15)

• Bruce Campbell, who appears as Ronald Reagan, has been a repeat player in small-to-near-undetectable roles for the Coens (Hudsucker Proxy, Fargo, Intolerable Cruelty, The Ladykillers).
• Not sure if this version of Reagan's City on a Hill speech is word-for-word, but it reminded me of the contextual use of George HW Bush's "line in the sand" comments in Lebowski. 
• Larry Gopnik in A Serious Man seeks to live as the titular phrase, including family, religion, and integrity in his definition. Mike Milligan seems to define "a serious person" to Simone Gerhardt as a person who gives him useful intelligence against her family's interests.
• Dutch admits to Lou that the film from which he's drawing inspiration was merely "a boxing picture." Barton Fink is hired to write "a wrestling picture" (could be a pip!).
• Jeff Tweedy of Wilco covers Jose Feliciano's "Let's Find Each Other Tonight," which Feliciano sang in Fargo. (See this MPR piece on the music of Season Two for some fun insights!)

Episode 6: "Rhinoceros" (11/16/15)

• Lou: "I'm just imagining you parachutin' into the Mekong Delta, telling the Black Pajamas to leave your husband alone."
  Donnie: "Who was in pajamas, Walter?"
  
• Lou seems to define A Serious Man in his conversation to Karl as being a man with serious intention to use his gun.
• End credit music: a cover by Blitzen Trapper of "Man of Constant Sorrow," made famous by O Brother Where Art Thou?

Episode 7: "Did you do this? No, you did it!" (11/23/15)

• Floyd talks about her father-in-law's generation of organized crime with its "tommy-gun bloodbaths."
  
• If Ed Blomquist is a sleeper agent for KC, Hank will cut off his own toe.
• Mike Milligan refers to Floyd as the materfamilias.
• He also presages The Stranger from Lebowski: "Sometimes... there's a man."
• The scene of Bear taking Symone into the woods is almost pure Miller's Crossing, from the circumstances, to the bare tree trunks, to the victim pleading desperately for their life (fellow Fargo fan Josh Carson notes that "You don't have to do this" was a line of Carla Jean's in No Country when Anton Chigurh comes to call, under very different emotional circumstances). [There really are not a lot of great Miller's Crossing clips on the web.] 
• The Pearl Hotel's hallway remains very Finkian.
• The episode really wants us to think that The Undertaker is this season's equivalent of Anton Chigurh, or Raising Arizona's Lone Biker of the Apocalypse. He's... not. Hanzee fills that role more successfully.
•  Three covers of past Coen musical selections this episode: "Danny Boy" from Miller's Crossing, "O Death" from O Brother, Where Art Thou, and "Condition" from The Big Lebowski. Will we get through this season without a cover of "Please, Mr. Kennedy"?

Episode 8: "Loplop" (11/30/15)

• Primed as I was to watch for allusions, I saw the bowling ball in the Blomquist basement and immediately thought, Lebowski! But they're the second generation of one family occupying a house in small-town Minnesota, of course there'd be a bowling ball in their basement.
• Dodd ends up tied up in a cabin with a pillowcase on his head, just like Jean Lundegaard in the movie. And there's even somebody banging on the TV to fix the reception.
• Took me a while to realize what Peggy's obsession with faddish self-help reminded me of: it echoes Frances McDormand's quest for plastic surgery in Burn After Reading. Peggy seems like she ends up with quite a bit more agency, though, especially in this episode.
• The art in Constance's Sioux Falls hotel room, like that of Maude Lebowski, can be commended as being strongly vaginal.
• Peggy pins Dodd's foot to the floor in the same way McDormand pinned Visser's hand to the window sill in Blood Simple.
• Would-be ransomer Ed wants "no funny business," just as Lebowski's would-be ransomer nihilists wanted "no funny stuff." 
• Mike Milligan likes Ed's style.
• Hanzee's encounter with the clerk in the Rushmore General Store is straight out of No Country for Old Men. This episode cements Hanzee as the unstoppable figure of malevolence, following the Visser/Lone Biker/Anton Chigurh mold.
• Hanzee is the third character in the Fargo universe to be driving to find a car in the woods, though he is less noble in intentions than Gus in Season One and less excited about it than Marge in the movie.

 Episode 9: "The Castle" (12/7/15)

• The framing structure of this episode feels far more Wes Anderson than Coen Brothers, but it does bring back Martin Freeman from Season 1 to narrate the History of True Crime of the Midwest.
• "Chickenshit outfit" may very well be an allusion to Aliens as much as anything else, but the "outfit" word choice reminded me of Pete asking Ulysses who elected him in O Brother.
• "Prowler" is similarly, a specific word choice for the cop cars that puts me in the mindset of the movie Fargo. I dunno -- maybe that's common real life nomenclature for rural upper midwest cops.
• Bloody shootout at a motel, far more sprawling and deadly than the one in No Country.
• And the other UFO shoe finally drops, having more impact on the plot than it did in The Man Who Wasn't There.
• We end the episode with Spoon's Britt Daniel covering CCR's "Run Through the Jungle," previously heard on the Dude's Creedence tape in The Big Lebowski.
• Added 4/6/17 - It has been brought to my attention, due to a momentary lapse of recollection on the part of the excellent Alan Sepinwall, that Wayne Duvall, who plays the stubborn, doomed South Dakoka State Patrol Captain Jeb Cheney in this episode, also played reform candidate for MS Governor / KKK Grand Kleagle Homer Stokes in O Brother, Where Art Thou.

Episode 10: "Palindrome" (12/14/15)

• Betsy's dream of the future borrows from H.I. Mcdonnough's dreams in Raising Arizona right down to the "that night I had a dream" opening phrase. The moment when "War Pigs" winds up and the bottom drops out of the vision's optimism, and we see Hanzee through a wall of flames, recalls H.I.'s nightmare of the Lone Biker.
• Mike Milligan calls the dude from Buffalo (MN, not NY, I assume) "friend-o," again borrowing from Anton Chigurh.
• "Fargo, ND," Carter Burwell's theme from the movie, makes its end-of-season appearance as Ben and Lou put Peggy in the prowler for her return to Luverne.
• Adam Arkin, as Mike Milligan's new organized crime middle management supervisor, is another Coen veteran in the cast. He was previously a lawyer in Ron Meshbesher's office in A Serious Man.
• His story of a mailroom worker climbing the ladder is like a criminal Hudsucker Proxy.
• The final, domestic scene of Lou and Betsy in bed and, for now, at peace, closes out the season with the same sense of familial contentment and tranquility that Molly and Gus found at the end of Season 1, and that Marge and Norm enjoyed at the end of the movie.

 And that's it! I'm sure I've missed something, so if you notice anything, please let me know.

Six -NO! EIGHT!- Economical Uses of Hand Claps in Pop Music

Pop music artists can create entire rhythmic frameworks, or complicated breaks, around the first percussion instrument we learn to play: the hand clap (apologies if you're that one weird kid who could play the guiro before she could walk). Memorable examples abound. Your Beatles. Your Spoons. Your Dixie Cups. Your Roses Royce. But some musicians have the courage of their convictions, and know when enough is enough. They deploy only a small group of claps, let them say what they need to say, and then get out. Today I celebrate a few of these, presented in reverse order of efficiency.

Steve Miller Band - Take The Money And Run: 2x5 = 10 claps
Never been a big SMB fan, but this is fun, as their songs go. "Texas" rhymes with "facts is" rhymes with "taxes." I guess.

David Bowie - Space Oddity: 4x2 = 8 claps
Added 6/10/15, 4:00PM
I am embarrassed this one didn't occur to me, as Bowie is a favorite of mine, and this one should have been obvious. Thanks to Donovan S. for pointing out my omission. Anyway, the four pairs of claps adorn the grounded, acoustic-guitar-led opening lines of the two matching instrumental bridges. The second of each pair marks the lift-off into the spacier, air-and-fuzz electric segments that follow.

The Boomtown Rats - I Don't Like Mondays: 4x2 = 8 claps
Added 6/10/15, 4:00PM
Don't know why this one popped into my head now, other than listening to Space Oddity put the clapclap [pause] clapclap pattern in my brain, and my brain retrieved this. Two pairs of claps end two instrumental intro sections, leading into the first two verses. Serves the same function as the Bowie claps, but in reverse.

Buffalo Springfield - For What It's Worth: 3x2 = 6 claps
This song has become linked in the public consciousness with Vietnam-era protest, and its lyrics pretty well capture the memory of the 1960s as it's been trapped in amber by popular culture. Only CCR's Fortunate Son can rival FWIW for its ability to effect a shorthand for "America + Vietnam + late 60s." (It is apt, therefore, that both appear in the Vietnam sequences of Forrest Gump, the most successful popular 1960s shorthand culture.) Three sets of two claps punctuate the lines of the last verse, which could be about any movement of disenfranchised people protesting authority.

Here's the punchline: For What It's Worth wasn't about Vietnam at all, but was written in response to riots in Los Angeles, themselves a reaction to new curfew laws aimed at reducing late-night traffic in the vicinity of Whiskey a-Go-Go. It's to Stephen Stills' credit that he wrote the lyrics in a general enough way that they captured a spirit that was associated with an entire half-decade.

The Rembrandts - I'll Be There For You: 4 claps
It gives me no joy to bring up this song that was, for the summer of 1995, inescapable. But the Rembrandts, one of whom was the husband of a Friends co-creator, dropped in one iconic quartet of hand claps at the end of the first lyric. That's right, drunk people at the karaoke joint: four, not five. You're thinking "Take the Money and Run."

I read a rumor that the song was offered first to They Might Be Giants and REM. Given that the Rembrandts' sound kind of comes across as a watered-down version of one of these bands', I guess I could hear that, except that both of those bands trade in lyrical irony, metaphor and imagery, and this song is as saccharine-sincere as they come.

Feist - I Feel It All: 3 claps
It took watching the video for me to nail down how many claps are in the last verse of this one. The joyfulness of this song, about taking control of your own emotional destiny, easily could have supported a full complement of regular hand claps. Remarkable restraint on Feist's part.

Bill Withers - Use Me: 3 claps
Withers' fuzzed-out, funky masterpiece features one of the all time great bass/keyboard lines, and exactly three individual hand claps in the last verse, punctuating the "baby"s. I always liked when the Robinson Caruso Organization would play this, for two reasons: it meant a short break for the horn section in the middle of a long set, and I got to listen to this song. If you were at one of these shows, I was the guy in the back of the room with a glass of ice water, clapping three times.

Elvis Costello - Welcome to the Working Week: 2 claps
Less than a minute and a half long, packing in three verses, a bridge, and two and a half choruses. Costello kicked off his debut album with the epitome of rock & roll efficiency. Costello gives us a single pair of claps in the middle of the outro, as if to say "job's done."

Pluto: not a planet, still exciting

I was ten years old when Voyager 2 reached Neptune. It was a really big deal for me at the time. It was so cool to me that this was a simple, clear example of a small piece of human knowledge and understanding being expanded. Science can explore very complex and arcane ideas, but it can also seem as simple as "we didn't really know what this thing looked like; we threw a camera at it from a few billion miles away, and now we do." That there were new, easy-to-understand discoveries in things like planetary astronomy and dinosaur paleontology while I was a kid, hooked me completely.

The best photo of Neptune, and its moon Triton, as of 1988... (JPL/NASA)

...and what Voyager 2 showed us in August, 1989. (NASA)

And so, I am very excited that this year, on my birthday, the New Horizons probe will reach Pluto. Unlike some in my generation and the preceding one, I don't care that Pluto's not a planet. It just isn't. Calling Pluto a planet means calling a bunch of other little things that aren't planets, planets (basically, we can have eight planets, or 16-20, but 9 doesn't work). But that doesn't make the New Horizons mission any less exciting. Pluto is still major enough to have been called a planet for decades. It's still the tenth most massive thing orbiting the sun. And I am really curious what the thing looks like.

NASA's keeping the hype going with these images that New Horizons sent us the other day, showing Pluto and its largest moon, Charon. When these were taken, NH was further from Pluto (~120M mi) than the Earth is from the sun (93M mi). And it's going to close that gap in 6 1/2 months.

Charon orbiting Pluto, last week.
(NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute)

About the best photos we had of Pluto prior to New Horizons.

Pluto, of course, is not the only game in town. Nor is it the next biggest thing in the solar system after the planets and the seven largest moons. That honor goes to Eris, another dwarf planet, discovered in 2005 and the impetus (not Iapetus) for the Pluto-reclassification arglebargle. It's bigger than Pluto, but, like Pluto, has a big elliptical orbit that crosses Neptune's (in fact, it's much larger and more askew).

Caused less violence but more grade-schooler sadness than the apple its namesake tossed at the Greek goddesses.

Pluto also isn't the only dwarf planet in the press this week. While New Horizons zips along, the Dawn probe approaches Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt. It's the only dwarf planet in the belt, and — get this — it was discovered in 1801 and considered a planet for about 40 years, along with asteroid neighbors Vesta, Juno, and Pallas. Anyway, NASA released some new photos of Ceres that Dawn took on Wednesday, and while Ceres maybe doesn't capture my imagination like the more recent planetary reject, it is pretty cool. Between these missions and the Mars rovers, it's a pretty exciting time for planetary astronomy.

Ceres. Pluto's mother-in-law, if you're into mythology. Gotta feel bad for Juno that the asteroid that achieved hydrostatic equilibrium and therefore dwarf planet status was the one named after her little sister. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA/PSI)

What will Dawn find on Ceres?