James Lileks is probably one of the best known bloggers on the InterWeb. He was doing his free-form essay/daily journal thing before anyone even coined the word “blog.” His was the first blog I personally encountered, and I still read him faithfully now, years later.

To be honest, though, he often confounds me. His Daily Bleat frequently consists of nothing more than a laundry list of what he and his daughter Gnat have been doing all day — which is sometimes interesting and/or amusing, but is just as often as dull as my own life, and what’s the point of reading that? Even worse are the times when he gets political, especially if he’s pissed about some matter of foreign policy or national security. Let’s just say that his politics don’t map to my own, and words that have occured to me while reading his screeds include “reactionary,” “paranoid,” “jingoistic,” “hectoring,” and “condescending.” (Fortunately, he’s recently banished most of this content to a dedicated Screedblog, so I no longer have to avoid the Bleat for fear of wanting to put a fist through my monitor.)

I keep reading him because I admire his writing, his ability to work in the medium of words. He has a knack for precisely capturing things that are difficult to convey, concepts and aesthetics and, for lack of a better term, the vibe of a particular time or place. It’s a skill I’m trying to develop and, although I think I’m getting better at that whole “essence of an era” thing, I envy the talent of a guy like Lileks. Take, for example, this little tidbit from today’s Bleat:

Last night on “What’s My Line,” the guest was… Mamie Van Doren, a breathy va-va-va-voomer who performed the odd facial alphabet of the 50s sex siren – the moue, the wink, the coquettish smile, the wide eyes, the teasing glance. And she ran through the sequence again and again, a performance completely disconnected from the questions. It was like watching a prototype Sexbot stuck in an programming loop. She really was from another era – a time when the sex stars had hips like oven doors, hair the color of astronaut suits, brains the size of ant thoraxes, and a life of giddy leisure that revolved around small, portable dogs, beefy Pepsodent morons, pink convertibles, and the purchase of ceramic cat statuary with long necks. A bratwurst to Paris Hilton’s Slim Jim.

That’s brilliant work. Simply brilliant. If you’ve ever seen old footage of a 1950s sexpot, you know his description is dead on, and if you haven’t, well, it’s easy enough to imagine what he’s getting at, isn’t it? I especially love the final line about Paris Hilton, that bony little stick-figure who has elevated vacuous sluttishness to an art form. In one short, smart-assy sentence — a sentence fragment, no less — Lileks wonderfully contrasts the ideals of the post-WW II culture with our own, makes it funny, and even gives us some nifty subtext in the references to meat. (Read into that whatever you will about phony airbrushed sexuality, base desires, models, and advertising. I find it an especially interesting metaphor given the current grumbling about Paris’ TV spot for the Carl’s Jr hamburger chain. Discuss amongst yourselves.)

I stand in professional awe. You only get that sort of quality subtext from a fine wordsmith. Lileks is a writer, by God! If only he weren’t so frequently confounding…