I never sleep, ’cause sleep is the cousin of death

You can find this media blow in a numbered Zurich account.

The Final Cut: the third installment of the House of Cards trilogy and an excellent farewell to the series. You never really watch the show for amazing sophistication, so much as to marvel at the utter depravity of everyone involved. Ian Richardson as a gloating, Shakespearean villain trumps most actors’ attempts at being subtle. A couple observations:

• Not one, but two Indiana Jones villains! If M. Witty can ID them without resorting to IMDb I’ll reward him in the (costless) manner of his choosing. Or anyone else, but I think he’s my only reader who’s seen all three.

• Did somebody send a memo to the writers and say, “Nice work, but Season 3 definitely needs more tits and gunplay. Like, a lot”? Because I don’t see how else this happened. And you know those slicksters at WGBH just can’t get enough tits and gunplay.

Illmatic: This one, I think, will end up overtaking me like The Wire. At first I couldn’t see anything special about The Wire, until I realized that each show was technically perfect and exceptionally real. Similarly, I don’t know yet if Illmatic merits five mics, but I Can’t. Stop. Listening.

The Ministry of Fear: The last of Graham Greene’s three “entertainments” that I bought a few months back. I liked it just as much as I liked the others so I have nothing more to add except: buy these books and read them! And: Greene writes an awful lot in this novel about “rumpled bachelors” living in “furnished flats,” which made me feel a bit self-conscious at first. Then I decided to own up to the title. I am a rumpled bachelor! And yes, I do live in a furnished flat! What of it?

The Searchers: Being a stranger to the distant year of 1956, I can’t tell how much of John Wayne’s virulent hatred of the Comanche Indians stems from his character’s racism, and how much from the movie’s racism. Yes, the movie establishes that Ethan Edwards, unrepentant Confederate veteran and wanted coach robber, might have some internal issues. Consider his tendency to shoot out the eyes of dead Indians - not because he thinks it’ll prevent them from navigating the spirit world, but because he knows they think it will. At the same time, it’s John Wayne. He’s the big-shouldered hero. No one can make Wayne so despicable that an audience of men won’t want to emulate him, except perhaps Howard Hughes.

Interpreting the movie with some charity - the Comanche, though not savage subhumans, certainly did raid and rob lone settlers, and any film set in the West between 1830 and 1910 needs some villains - I find The Searchers pretty exceptional. Any student of film or aspiring director needs to memorize John Ford’s cinematography in this project, for one thing. The door silhouette onto Monument Valley? Yeah, that’s Ford right there. And the movie’s not just about the epic quest of two men to recover a kidnapped girl - it’s about, to quote Ebert, how it’s about it. Don’t know if I’d call it the best Western of all time, but it’ll do until the ruckus come along.

Finally, as several sources have noted, author Thomas Disch committed suicide this past 4th of July. I reread his savage satire Camp Concentration this week (funny how novels set in prison camps seem to speak to the modern audience!) and loved it. Dissidents and prisoners in an alternate future get dosed with a derivative of the syphilis spirochete, which dramatically expands their intelligence at the cost of killing them in nine months. Between the mad genius of the infected prisoners and the bland, Kafkaesque bureaucracy of their captors, the story weaves a poetic nightmare of a mind, and a society, slipping into oblivion.

the only guarantee in life is a life worth dying for

A short, sharp and shocked media blow this week:

The Best of Fritz Leiber: “America the Beautiful” and “Poor Superman” can be read as prophetically savage satires of the American right and left, respectively, at the dawn of the 21st Century. Or they’re just good sci-fi, as the rest of this collection is.

When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold: Cherchez la DJ, the poet tells us, and when I couldn’t put my finger on what fell short on Lemons I looked to Ant. Atmosphere’s DJ, normally reliable, picked a succession of synth-heavy, bass-laden tracks for Slug to rap over, instead of the usual funk / soul / rock blends. Given Slug’s Midwest baritone and aging voice, the results don’t move quite as well as they ought. Still, subpar Atmosphere still beats the best that the Yin-Yang Twins have to offer any day, so add it to the collection.

(If you want an Atmosphere album of nothing but upbeat, tubthumping, house party jams, check out Strictly Leakage - a free download on Rhymesayers)

Virtual Unrealities: The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester: As I’ve remarked before, if Philip K. Dick is the glue-sniffing kid from the back of the glass with Elvis Costello glasses and conspiracy theories, Alfred Bester is the clove-smoking kid in the mod jacket who’s read Chomsky and Paglia. Where Dick runs manic and weird, Bester reads cool and peppery. But the subject matter resounds through both: questioning reality, our place in it and our relation to it.

To Play the King: “Remember that frightfully nice man who talked a lot about ‘the classless society’? He had to go, of course, in the end.”

Ian Richardson returns as Francis Urquhart, the brutally Machiavellian Tory who secured his role as Prime Minister in House of Cards. To Play the King depicts a remarkably daring caricature of English government in the early 90s. While no one calls the King whose coronation kicks off the series “Charles,” or his ex-wife “Diana,” or his estranged sister-in-law “Fergie,” you can’t mistake who they mean.

Urquhart’s schemes don’t stack quite as deeply or as intricately in this series as in the last one - but you don’t watch these shows for the labyrinthine plot. You watch them for the utter depravity: Urquhart’s unmitigated lust for power and his cold, Shakespearean rage at anyone who stands in his way. He talks a lot about being the only person fit to run the country, but that’s clearly a rationalization. The object of power is power, like the book says.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: I’ve long maintained that Last Crusade holds the title of Best Action Film of the 80s. Watching it again on Saturday night, however, I wondered: could it be the Best Action Film of all time? Your thoughts, people.

I’m taking the cure so I can be quiet whenever I want

You might think that; the media blow couldn’t possibly comment.

The Wire: … ha ha, just kidding, see all last week.

Franny and Zooey: Remarkably well written. I don’t care much for Salinger’s brand of inoffensive, Western-flavored Orientalism, but I can’t help but admire his style. Another exhibit in my case that a story’s subject matters far less than its style; “what’s the book about?” is the wrong question to ask. Could any writer other than Salinger pull off a story which takes place in a bathroom, a living room, and a bedroom and has nothing but conversation?

A History of Violence: A little stiff, but what do you expect from a movie adapted from a comic book? William Hurt got a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his spot here, with good cause I feel. Maria Bello surprised me. Viggo Mortensen gave the natural and nuanced performance we’ve come to expect from him, as well as a glimpse of his junk. A bit gory in spots.

Mind Performance Hacks: An early contender for the best non-fiction book I’ve read in this year’s fifty. Born-agains must feel this way while reading the Bible, though I know I could pick a better metaphor: this book is an instruction manual for thinking. It teaches better ways to memorize lists, to organize your thoughts, ways to get better sleep, how to focus through meditation (not transcendental hippie shit, just clearing your thoughts), how to inspire yourself creatively, etc. I’ve already found four or five things worth putting to immediate use and will be turning back often for more.

House of Cards: The premier story of political intrigue, brooking no challenger. The late Ian Richardson plays Francis Urquhart, chief whip of the Conservatives in the days after Thatcher stepped down. Passed over for a plum promotion, he stealthily puts into motion a series of events that will unseat the Prime Minister, shake up the Party, and may just leave him a spot at the top. I’ve already seen it once before, but I got it for myself as a birthday present and it continues to sweeten on a second viewing.