The Matrix Miscellany
I always enjoy the last page of New York Magazine: The Approval Matrix. Things I learned from The AM for 8/30/10: There's going to be an American remake of the BBC's Being Human, in which a vampire, a werewolf, and a ghost share an apartment. Someone in North Carolina is trying to sell one of J.D. Salinger's toilets for $100,000. There's a creepy ghost stroller in Park Slope. There's a fascinating book out there: The Tenth Parallel, researched for ten years near the equator, where Islamic and Christian populations meet and fight over scarce resources. * * * * * * * I'm inclined to buy the book, but I briefly researched the author's background: her writing resume reads like a leftist's dream. And the book is praised by many of the usual anti-religion elements, so I suspect its treatment of Christianity is none too kind, and possibly imbalanced or filled with old bigoted misconceptions that won't die. I find that the "open-minded" journalists and researchers are careful to be fair with Islam, but don't mind a little sloppiness when it comes to Christianity, as long as it helps them belittle it. * * * * * * * This sounds like a great new series: Boardwalk Empire. It's about Atlantic City in 1920 (subsequent seasons will cover 1921, 1922, etc.). I read about it here:
Knowing exactly what to put on the boardwalk, and everywhere else, and how it should look, was a voluminous research job: In addition to Johnson's book and Atlantic City newspapers of the period, Winter mentions reading John Dos Passos's USA trilogy; The Great Illusion: An Informal History of Prohibition, by Herbert Asbury; E.”‰L. Doctorow's Ragtime; and, more recently, Daniel Okrent's Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. His historical digging unearthed some eye-opening period arcana. For instance, Winter discovered that in 1920 phone use was still novel enough that people didn't know what to say when they picked up. “The word hello didn't exist before the invention of the telephone,” says Winter, so at first people made due with “ahoy,” “hail,” and “greetings.” Viewers will also be struck, in episode three, hearing Chalky White, one of Nucky's business partners (played by Michael K. Williams, Omar of The Wire) say “m*****f*****.” According to Winter, it was a Civil War”“era term used as a very literal epithet inspired by a horrific breeding practice (plantation owners would mistakenly pair a son with his mother).
