Good morning. Hello. How are you? #425
Alaska day 3, Immanent critique, the fruitful life collaboration of Paul WS Anderson and Milla Jovovitch, Forrest Gump, paint is amazing, Joan was robbed.
Good morning! (ha) Hello! How are you today? OMG this edition is going to be so late. I am up, got up at nine, which took work and was amazing. I was going to do what I did yesterday and make breakfast and then write my GMHHAY before I ventured out into the world around noon, but Val just called and said she is going to Costco and OMG there is no way I am going to miss Costco, so I gotta retool my schedule now. I am heading out in 15 mins. But I figured I’d get started.
Yesterday I saw some old friends, which was lovely. Lunch with my friend Jamie, who lives in Wisconsin, so it will be very hard to ever see her in the future. I was a bit early for lunch, so I drove around University Park, the neighborhood nearby. It’s not, like, an important neighborhood in my childhood memories, but it’s part of this town, and part of my life, and just driving around, a ton of memories came flooding back:
That’s the house where my friend lived and I saw 120 Minutes for the first time and first heard of Pop Will Eat Itself.
That’s the apartment building Jenny used to live in I used to spend so much time there.
There’s that apartment building where we had that weird party that one year when Beth was in town. I remember that apartment has a basement. I have photos from inside there.
That’s the house where my friend died.
I remember that one time we drove around this neighborhood with six garage openers pressing all the buttons all the time trying to get someone’s random garage door to open.
Or that one time I outran some bullies and parked right there, turned off the car, ducked, and they drove right by.
The whole time, the song “Getting Naked and Playing with Guns” by AJJ was playing, which is a paean to a screwed up, unsupervised 70’s and 80’s childhood and boy it always reminds me of growing up, so listening to it while driving around was something special.
I drove over to China Small Tracts, where it meets the river, where the cars and snow machines drive onto the river in the winter to drive over to Pike’s.
One of the things I love about neighborhoods in Fairbanks — even “normal” American suburban ones — is how many of the “normal” suburban houses have giant-ass garages or workshops or quonset huts attached to them in their normal teeny suburban lots. Or how one in ten will just have a skid-steer out front.
I also love the wild diversity of lawn care approaches. The other day Val was like “yeah they have nice lawns in this neighborhood” and I thought “Man, you’d be run out on a rail if you had a lawn like that in my neighborhood, and my neighborhood is the chill, not-much-of-an-HOA neighborhood? Neighborhood next door? They’d burn your house down for a lawn like that.” But she wasn’t wrong, it was a very nice lawn by Fairbanks standards. There is an infinite diversity of Fairbanks lawns. It’s fantastic.
Then I drove over to Justa Store, which, you know, as I write in here often, holds a special place in my heart, and I thought you guys might want a picture of it:
Then lunch with Jamie, which was a great time, and lovely to catch up. I forgot to take a picture of Jamie, drat. I will see her again on this trip! Actually, I’ve been really bad about taking photos of people. They’re all of weird ugly buildings like Justa Store or the Midnight Sun.
So after lunch I drove the Chena Ridge/Chena Pump loop, which was a good time. Cars drive really fast on there, they all tailgate in their little hippy Alaskan Suburus, driving sixty-five around the winding, mountainous (well, by Appalachian standards) roads, making it impossible to sight-see and I kept having to pull over to let them pass me. Lots of memories looking at the street names, thinking “oh so-and-so lived down that road. Or was it that one?” I could never quite remember the exact road, just roughly where it was. When I did turn down a road and try and find a specific house, it was never there, never quite right. The memories are fading. Did the same around the airport, looking for my friend Val’s old house, but everything was so changed down there off of Dale road, my memories didn’t jibe with reality. I was trying to find that ditch I pushed the old Honda out of. To take a picture. But no luck. Will have to ask Val which street it was. Boy, that neighborhood has changed.
Then back to the house then Val and my mom and aunt picked me up and we drove out to Val’s house out on Murphy Dome to meet up with Jack and Matt who were working on the flooring of the new extension to the house.
Actually, here, lemme just put a picture of the outhouse in here since so many people can’t believe that my sister still uses an outhouse.
I took it just for you guys.
Anyway, from there I had drinks in the evening with my high school best friend Frank, who sort of lives here but mostly in Portland these days.I suppose there’s a bit more of a chance that I’ll make it to Portland in the future than Madison, but still. Gonna be a rare chance to see Frank for the next few years. We hit up the Library, which I would really like if I lived here, but there are a good 10 restaurants like that near me in NC, and then the Boatel, which is glorious and basically unchanged. Did I tell you my grandmother named that place? I do like to bring that up. Frank looks great. Looks like a mountain man. We had long political talks, which is always satisfying these later years in life, since when we were best friends our politics were very far apart, but they’re more or less aligned these days, which is nice. Though Frank is a lot more capable of, like, not losing his shit over things.
We also had long talks about our dads, both passed. We’ve known each other’s dads for 35 years now. You never stop having revelations about the influence your dad had on you, I’m finding.
(I am back from my morning errands now, its 3PM, 7PM on the east coast, boy this edition is late. Costco was amazing but we will talk about that tomorrow.)
I would also like to take this moment to sing the praises of paint. Paint is amazing. Paint lasts fucking decades. I would say 80% of the places I remember from this town are wearing their same coat of paint. All my old houses are. Frank’s house is. Most stores are. It’s a rarity when something is painted. AIH has a new coat of paint. That house on Airport that had the unfinished blue siding for 20 years is now red. But most things? Same coat of paint from the 80s’s. Paint, man. A miracle.
Anyway, came back to the hotel after seeing Frank and watched the better part of the new Paul WS Anderson / Milla Jovovitch collaboration Monster Hunters. Those two are really living their best life. Anderson, whose average Rotten Tomatoes score is 44% says, “I don’t make movies for the critics I make populist movies” and it is so true. He’s married to his main actress, they made 5 Resident Evil movies together plus this new Monster Hunters thing which was fantastic and absurd and had Ron Perlman in it. I mean, I was a little drunk, but A+.
Night before last I watched Forrest Gump for the first time and that is some fucked up shit right there what a lunatic movie. I mean, okay, yes, even now in 2021 it is unlike any other movie, but my god. I don’t think you could make that movie today. I knew most of the plot from, like, cultural awareness, but it feels like no one ever talks about the love story and how it’s… a little rapey? Uncomfortable? And the bullies. So many bullies. I don’t like watching bullies in movies.
Another thing I learned from those Joan Robinson books was the concept of Immanent Critique, as applied to academic study, especially economics. I mean, if you read the Wikipedia page for Immanent Critique it doesn’t seem to really apply in the same way, but apparently in the Cambridge tradition, at least within the econ department, Immanent Critique is the critique of the internal logic of a paper or work. Not a critique of whether it’s right or wrong in the real world, or an ad hominem critique of the author, but whether, within the paper itself, it is internally consistent. I like this very much, and have always wondered if there is a term for it. Used in a sentence, for example, “The Bush v Gore Supreme Court decision is a collaossal failure when applying Immanent Critique.” It doesn’t matter or not whether you agree with the decision, the decision itself can’t even manage to agree with itself.
I feel like Joan’s escapades in China were very similar to journalists who get captured by Silicon Valley and just sort of report on everything uncritically. She took things at face value that she should not have, and for it, she lost her shot at the Nobel.
But, then, I also feel she was judged too harshly. An interesting thought experiment is comparing Robinson’s work on China with her work on Keynes’ General Theory. Keynes very much saw the General Theory as a stepping stone. A bomb thrown into the den of Marshallian theory. He knew it wasn’t perfect. He knew there were things to be worked out with it still. But not Robinson. She saw it as gospel. She applied Immanent Critique to it and found no internal contradictions (even though everyone else, even Keynes, did). Her work expounding and expanding upon the General Theory treats it as fully formed, infallible.
But when she got to China, some 25 years later, she was much more like Keynes back then. She would write article after about China and their cooperative farms and their labor practices, and each subsequent article sort of riffed upon, or expanded upon, or backtracked, or changed her mind from the article before. She understood the allure of the multiple drafts approach. And for it, she lost the Nobel.
OMG Have you heard the new Low? It is insane.
Here, actually, lemme just make a new mix and put it on it. It is so weird. I love it so much. It’s 70’s rock and low and experimental and noise all in one and it’s just wonderful. It breaks speakers.
Okay here you go. I just made this mix just for you. Listen to the new Low. Fabulous. And I threw that great Milla song on here, since I just watched her new action movie and seriously that woman is a national treasure and doesn’t get enough credit.
All right. Tomorrow is dad’s funeral. I will probably wake up a little early. Get this edition out at a more reasonable time. Miss you!
the outhouse is pretty fancy, but does it not have a door? what if someone walks by while you're pooping?! it's like my nightmares. [scream emoji]
That’s a super classy outhouse. Well done!