A long while ago I wrote a bit about a player from my hometown football team called Javier Florez, who was in jail at the time for shooting a fan to death after a post-game altercation. At the time I wrote that the event was likely his undoing.

Imagine my surprise when I picked up a newspaper a few days ago and found out that instead of being in jail, he’s paying an indemnity to the deceased’s family and playing football games.

I was waiting all afternoon, along with the rest of Colombia, to see what the Supreme Court would say about Uribe’s re-election chances. The possibility of a third term for Uribe has been looming for years, and the past few months have been uncertain in that regard, with no one really knowing whether he was going to be able to run or whether he’d have a successor, and what the fate of the country’s governing institutions was going to be. After a few false calls, the Court finally announced that the referendum to grant Uribe the chance of a third term was unexecutable, putting an end to the Uribe era.

Thank Christ.

The Court’s decision shows that there was, in fact, a limit to Uribe’s power. It’s been known for a while that the circumstances that led to Uribe being able to run for a second term included bribes for votes, which casts serious doubts on the legitimacy of the past four years of his presidency. This second referendum to allow for a third term has had all sorts of inconsistencies and internal problems, and while that could have been safely ignored at earlier stages of Uribe’s presidency, by now it would be a too obvious, too public case of corruption. The feeling across the political world – be it for noble reasons or base self-interest – was that a third term, though potentially benefitial, would cause serious damage to the country’s government institutions and resemble the situation in neighbour Venezuela too much for anyone’s comfort. Perhaps realizing that publicly advocating for a third term would be seen as dictatorial, Uribe has stayed uncharacteristically quiet during the entire sage, never really making it clear if he wanted to run or not, which would add legitimacy to his third term, seeing as he could claim he was following the people’s voice after his supporters had the referendum passed. Even if the referendum had passed, there’s a sense of fatigue in the nation regarding Uribe’s government. He still has remarkable levels of support, but eight years of scandals and some ill-conceived policies have caused people not to dislike him, but at least consider whether he is absolutely the best choice for the country’s higher office.

Being out of power after eight years will give Uribe a greater chance to go down in Colombian history as an important and respected President; I don’t doubt that another four years would have eroded his popularity and damaged Colombia’s image in the world. There’ll certainly be a lot of support for him. I know a sizable amount of Colombians truly do believe he was an absolutely wonderful president, and perhaps they shouldn’t be dismissed.

I don’t want to ignore that Uribe changed the country’s circumstances and there are aspects of his administration that should be given credit. However, I do think the idea of Uribe being a ‘good’ President was somewhat predetermined — people wanted to believe. I remember even back in 2003, when he tried his first referendum, he had considerable support from the general population, though he lost. After the dual disasters of Samper in 1994 and Pastrana in 1998, I think people were ready to believe, and Uribe’s personality and attitude were exactly what many people were receptive to.

Now the elections for presidency are in just a few months, and candidates have to start defining their campaigns, since they’d been hesitant without the knowledge of whether they were running against Uribe or not. None of the candidates have that quality (the one Americans talk about so much during their elections): electability. I’m not sure if that’s tautological, or a self-fulfilling prophecy, or whatever you want to call it. It probably is. Honestly, though, none of the candidates running seem like they could win. I’m sure part of that is simply the result of Uribe’s involvement in the election (or lack thereof) preventing anyone from making a true political campaign, but I’m not terribly convinced the winner, whoever it may be, will seem like a great idea in four years time.

I wonder what happens to Uribe now. He’s seemed like an untouchable figure for what feels like an eternity, but no one’s untouchable. Fujimori’s recent trial is strong evidence of that, and he’s got nothing on Uribe. Whether he gets in legal trouble or not, I doubt the history of his administration will end the day he steps down from office.

There’s an interesting article on Pitchfork about tapes and their recent ‘resurgence’ (rather, the piece argues that they never truly went away). The tape trend is not surprising: since the value of high quality recordings has decreased considerably (they are free anywhere online), listeners might look for something else, something that distinguishes the product from a traditional download. Tapes, with their hiss, warp, and technical limitations, seem like a more personal product than the decidedly impersonal mp3s of the day.

I have a lot of fond memories of tapes. They were my only real resource for music in the nineties. By the time CD-Rs became accessible, mp3s were already pushing out the CD, and Discmans were so impractical I never got a taste for them. I did love tapes though.

I had this radio-cassette player with a built-in mic. I’d place it in front of the television’s speakers and wait patiently for new songs to show up on MTV’s video programs, then record these songs. The tapes sounded absolutely terrible, but it was much better than nothing. Radio recordings sounded much better, though they always had snippets of dialogue either at the beginning or the end of the songs. The song selection was appalling. I’d also listen to tapes my dad recorded, especially when he lived out of town; he’d send tapes with music he thought I might like (which was mostly AOR; I’m not entirely sure why he thought I’d like that, but it’s not really all that important). I’d listen to all these tapes on a bulky Walkman I had which seemed to last decades and refused to die even after almost every button but PLAY worked. There was a certain charm to all of that, to the way songs sounded when they’d been recorded over ancient-looking gray tapes, the way the announcements from the radio station DJs could be heard on the songs and ended up becoming a part of them, my less than perfect attempts at replicating album covers by drawing them on paper and placing them on the tape box.

It’s not just the music itself that’s important, then, but our relationship to it. The amount of music that’s available for listeners these days is so vast that it’s not likely we’ll have a unique experience when listening to any given song or record. For example, I have very few memory associations of songs and artists with specific moments, nor do I have the memory of having heard a recording for the first time, simply because the vast majority of these moments were the same.

The last memory I have of a first listen is from late 2007. I was holed up in my studio, studying for a particularly brutal physiology exam, and I used my small break to listen to In Rainbows, which had just been released online that night following a sudden announcement from the band about a week before. It’s hard to believe that was two and a half years ago. It’s also funny, I suppose, since it was the first (and one of the few) memorable album releases without a physical product (Trent Reznor and Saul Williams would do the same in the next years). The experience was different from today’s CD experience, which is none at all: albums are leaked online weeks, sometimes months before their release, without much fanfare or anticipation. The albums might as well have materialized out of thin air. With In Rainbows, even though there was no physical album, there was a release date. It was not possible to ‘leak’ the album, and even if it had been possible, it would have seemed counterproductive since the band was offering it for free on their own website. It’s because of that date that the experience of sitting down and listening to In Rainbows with less than perfect laptop speakers is still in my memory: there was actual excitement and anticipation towards the date of release and the act of listening. It was all planned, not at all spontaneous.

I remember that the day after, everyone had heard the album. Unlike other albums, which people hear when they are able to afford them or when they find out about their existence, this one was (mostly) free and mostly anyone I knew who wanted to listen to it did so at the same time. It was a collective experience at a scale that’s hard to replicate.

Back to tapes. While tapes do capture some of the physicality and uniqueness of a recording, they have a clear problem which is accessibility. That problem renders the whole idea of tape culture as a complement to regular ways of distribution. It’s harder to track bands and artists if we have to purchase every record, that’s inevitable. Now, bands and artists could easily argue that they’re not making music for the entire world, and that’s certainly a good point. However, I doubt anyone gets angry or annoyed that music finds unexpected audiences. I might enjoy everything a band puts on tape, but there is no way I will have found out they exist through a tape.

Two movies I saw recently that were enjoyable: Plein Soleil and The Talented Mr. Ripley.

My main interest in the films was the aesthetics: the clothes, the settings, the lifestyle. They both deliver at that, Plein Soleil perhaps moreso. It’s easy to get caught up in the lives of leisure that’s on display, and why it captivates Tom Ripley to such an extent that he’s willing to kill for it.

Both movies follow Tom Ripley, who meets Dickie Greenleaf (Philliphe in Plein Soleil) and Marge  in Italy. He’s been sent by Greenleaf Sr, a very wealthy man, to bring his son back to America. Tom finds himself enjoying the life and the wealth, kills Greenleaf, and assumes his identity.

It’s interesting to watch both movies because, even though the basics of the plot are the same, and a lot of set pieces are present in both versions, the character of Tom Ripley is completely different from one movie to another. Matt Damon’s Ripley is a boring leech clearly out of his world. He’s at least bisexual, and is deeply infatuated with Dickie, who he kills with much remorse and arguably in self-defense. Alain Delon’s Ripley is an amoral killer. He is not particularly interested in Philliphe, only in his money. He kills without so much as wincing. And even though he does not become Philliphe (unlike Damon’s Ripley, who wanted to be Dickie), he’s much more believable as his replacement, as he’s a handsome and comfortable man.

Delon’s Ripley is a more interesting character. It’s captivating to see him circling his prey, gleeful and confident as he tries to get away with the perfect crime. But Plein Soleil’s script is vague and somewhat simplistic. Though Damon is a less interesting Ripley, we understand him more. The Talented Mr. Ripley is longer, its first act is much more eventful, the characters are more fleshed out (and there are more of them), and the logic of Ripley’s actions and everyone else’s reactions is clearer. We understand why Ripley would like Dickie; we understand why he’d be compelled to keep this lifestyle. Since Delon’s Ripley isn’t very interested in Philliphe or his life, those aspects aren’t as fleshed out. In fact, Plein Soleil’s starting point is much farther along during the story than The Talented Mr. Ripley; we see Damon’s Ripley go from learning about Dickie to meeting him and getting a taste of the life, whereas when we meet Delon’s Ripley, he and Philliphe are already apparent friends.

What’s interesting about this is that even though both Ripleys have different motivations and personalities, the plot’s developments fit both fairly well; it’s credible that the morally conflicted Ripley and the amoral Ripley would both act the same way, one out of necessity and one out of the thrill.

In the end, neither stories can allow evil deeds to go unpunished. It’s here where they are a good complement to each other. Where Delon’s Ripley is apprehended by the police, Damon’s Ripley is allowed to go free. But he’s never truly free. In the end, he realizes the only way for him to survive will come at the cost of his soul.

I do feel like getting on a boat now.

Except for all the death.

I like Bored To Death. It appeals to certain parts of me. Some would argue those are the bad parts, but I don’t know. This style gets criticized incessantly for being too artificial and ‘indie’, but who cares? There are no “real” shows. It’s a good thing to introduce new styles to the least stylish form there is.

The great thing about television drama (and to a lesser extent, comedy) these days is that there are so many channels that trying to appeal to large audiences isn’t really that great of an idea anymore, and shows for niche audiences like this one can survive.

On the other hand, most of these HBO comedies aren’t really very funny, are they? That’s ok.

The fourth season of Big Love, though suffering from some issues mostly stemming from its 9 episode run ( rather than the usual 12 or even last year’s 10 for a series with as many characters and plotlines as this one), is still some of the most emotional and interesting work being done on television.

I wrote some more about it here.