Saturday, February 15, 2003
Signs/Signifiers Report:
In the past days, I've been unusually flooded with rather dramatic and varied icons, in some cases simultaneously (which should interest Erin and anyone else studying Eisensteinian montage/image-collision theory or semiotics in general:
1). Having just deposited my meager monthly paycheck from Knox, I saucily bought a sixer of Carta Blanca beer at the St. James Beer and Soda Emporium in the hopes of it being one of those "other Mexican beers that are so much better than the uber-exported Corona," (not that I don't love Corona w/lime wedge). Coincidentally, I decided to treat myself to take-out lunch today at my favorite take-out eatery, The Baja Grill. The interior design of this place is a virtual museum of Hispanic-semiotics filtered through American perceptions (an often necessary tweak due to economics, appeal, and competition). So on the way home with my savory BBQ Chicken Wrap bundled beside me in the passenger seat (resting atop my copies of Wilco Being There and the first Velvet Underground and Nico album, two recent purchases with their own nest of image-associations (the Warhol "banana," yellow, etc)) I was momentarily pleased to think of the appropriateness of the beverage waiting in my mini-fridge. Then I remembered the allusion of agreed-upon, universal signifiers for any race, culture, or product market, as established by postmodern theory and echoed in certain memorable Onion articles to which I'd link if the damn internet nanny at my school wasn't such an anal bitch.
2. Friday afternoon, The School entertained three guest speakers in a panel discussion on World Religions. One representative each from Hinduism, American Indian religion, and Judaism spoke and fielded questions. They were each ordinary citizens who speak at schools in the hopes of combating prejudice and promoting multicultural cooperation. After breaking for a delcious catered lunch from Rte 25A's The Curry Club, the students broke into groups for more in-depth discussions with their choice of speaker. I sat in for the Native American representative.
Now, if there is one shining example of post-modernism's insistance on no cogent univeral code, it must be Frank White Eagle, who very eloquently spoke about how he and other L.I. NAs gather monthly for a "service" to celebrate certain rites. Apparently, there IS an agreed-upon name for "Native American Spirituality" nation-wide (I will try to find more specific pertinent vocabulary later) which many card-carrying NAs practice. During his presentation, however, I couldn't help but wonder how he could assume that all historical and contemporary tribes could agree upon one basic dogma, especially when parochial geography, flora, and fauna factored into many of his stories and prayers so fundamentally. How can the Hopi or Navajo peoples possibly hold deer or the Finger Lakes sacred? A fierce defense of the soveriegnty of nature is common to most all NA spiritualities, but to attempt to tie them all together seems silly. ON the other hand, the man's quite apt explanation for this was that since most all NA cultures became absorbed by intrusive European religions, that no matter what name you give to the "greater being," there is a greater being for all American Indians. So there's kind of a purposelly large loophole that I can accept for those who wish to identify with this codified spirituality (that, while its ceremonies should occur on the solstice, are always held on Saturday because the members are all working men who could not take off a work-week day and keep a job, a fact explained by Mr. White Eagle with an old disdain).
What struck me most was the image of the man himself, in his tall cowboy hat all "flared" up with what he so carefully defined as highly sacred object an Eagle feather (he insistently pointed out that because of the feather and its siginficance, he does not have to remove his hat during the American National Anthem while at public events), right next to/under which were various buttons and pins whose emblems or slogans I didnt' get a chance to read. He also wore his medicine pouch and some other adornments, but all this with, I swear to God, a sonorously thick Long Island accent. As if that weren't enough icnage, at one point, from my vantage angle, he was framed right in front, slightly offset, from a Les Miserables musical poster (and bare in mind, this talk was being held in the stone-floor solarium of a house built in the Prohibition Era by a rich presidential-hopeful, and that now houses the dining hall, girl's dorms, and school meeting room/former-chapel of a prep. school), with that tiny but defiant French fille decorated in the tri-color, a poster that itself has a plethora of iconic significance: French literary history, French cultural, social, and political conscience, the hip Manhattan of the 1980s and the dominance of Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals throughout, etc.). It was stunning and mind-fucking.
The gentleman was sweet and good-natured, and only legitimately preoccupied with American legal history re: Amerian Indians. At one point, he seemed oblivious to the awkwardness he created when he pulled out the long pipe and, yes, plastic baggy (how's THAT for a late 20th century signifier?) filled with tobacco, while commenting "now, we don't use your ordinary type of tobacco..."
Despite any malicious or disingenious tones you might detect, I was impressed and touched by the guy's mission, and how his culture meant something to him. He said something memorable, which I can't quote, but basically expressed the suffering that all different American Indians/Indian groups have endured that non-Natives will just never fully understand. It's something I respect, and can only examine from a distance, no matter how much I feel obliged to judge for or against them. What I mean is that while I'm bugged out by the sign-mutating effect of the LI accent and his image, I do not— cannot— take this melding of signs as a fault in his authenticity.
In the past days, I've been unusually flooded with rather dramatic and varied icons, in some cases simultaneously (which should interest Erin and anyone else studying Eisensteinian montage/image-collision theory or semiotics in general:
1). Having just deposited my meager monthly paycheck from Knox, I saucily bought a sixer of Carta Blanca beer at the St. James Beer and Soda Emporium in the hopes of it being one of those "other Mexican beers that are so much better than the uber-exported Corona," (not that I don't love Corona w/lime wedge). Coincidentally, I decided to treat myself to take-out lunch today at my favorite take-out eatery, The Baja Grill. The interior design of this place is a virtual museum of Hispanic-semiotics filtered through American perceptions (an often necessary tweak due to economics, appeal, and competition). So on the way home with my savory BBQ Chicken Wrap bundled beside me in the passenger seat (resting atop my copies of Wilco Being There and the first Velvet Underground and Nico album, two recent purchases with their own nest of image-associations (the Warhol "banana," yellow, etc)) I was momentarily pleased to think of the appropriateness of the beverage waiting in my mini-fridge. Then I remembered the allusion of agreed-upon, universal signifiers for any race, culture, or product market, as established by postmodern theory and echoed in certain memorable Onion articles to which I'd link if the damn internet nanny at my school wasn't such an anal bitch.
2. Friday afternoon, The School entertained three guest speakers in a panel discussion on World Religions. One representative each from Hinduism, American Indian religion, and Judaism spoke and fielded questions. They were each ordinary citizens who speak at schools in the hopes of combating prejudice and promoting multicultural cooperation. After breaking for a delcious catered lunch from Rte 25A's The Curry Club, the students broke into groups for more in-depth discussions with their choice of speaker. I sat in for the Native American representative.
Now, if there is one shining example of post-modernism's insistance on no cogent univeral code, it must be Frank White Eagle, who very eloquently spoke about how he and other L.I. NAs gather monthly for a "service" to celebrate certain rites. Apparently, there IS an agreed-upon name for "Native American Spirituality" nation-wide (I will try to find more specific pertinent vocabulary later) which many card-carrying NAs practice. During his presentation, however, I couldn't help but wonder how he could assume that all historical and contemporary tribes could agree upon one basic dogma, especially when parochial geography, flora, and fauna factored into many of his stories and prayers so fundamentally. How can the Hopi or Navajo peoples possibly hold deer or the Finger Lakes sacred? A fierce defense of the soveriegnty of nature is common to most all NA spiritualities, but to attempt to tie them all together seems silly. ON the other hand, the man's quite apt explanation for this was that since most all NA cultures became absorbed by intrusive European religions, that no matter what name you give to the "greater being," there is a greater being for all American Indians. So there's kind of a purposelly large loophole that I can accept for those who wish to identify with this codified spirituality (that, while its ceremonies should occur on the solstice, are always held on Saturday because the members are all working men who could not take off a work-week day and keep a job, a fact explained by Mr. White Eagle with an old disdain).
What struck me most was the image of the man himself, in his tall cowboy hat all "flared" up with what he so carefully defined as highly sacred object an Eagle feather (he insistently pointed out that because of the feather and its siginficance, he does not have to remove his hat during the American National Anthem while at public events), right next to/under which were various buttons and pins whose emblems or slogans I didnt' get a chance to read. He also wore his medicine pouch and some other adornments, but all this with, I swear to God, a sonorously thick Long Island accent. As if that weren't enough icnage, at one point, from my vantage angle, he was framed right in front, slightly offset, from a Les Miserables musical poster (and bare in mind, this talk was being held in the stone-floor solarium of a house built in the Prohibition Era by a rich presidential-hopeful, and that now houses the dining hall, girl's dorms, and school meeting room/former-chapel of a prep. school), with that tiny but defiant French fille decorated in the tri-color, a poster that itself has a plethora of iconic significance: French literary history, French cultural, social, and political conscience, the hip Manhattan of the 1980s and the dominance of Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals throughout, etc.). It was stunning and mind-fucking.
The gentleman was sweet and good-natured, and only legitimately preoccupied with American legal history re: Amerian Indians. At one point, he seemed oblivious to the awkwardness he created when he pulled out the long pipe and, yes, plastic baggy (how's THAT for a late 20th century signifier?) filled with tobacco, while commenting "now, we don't use your ordinary type of tobacco..."
Despite any malicious or disingenious tones you might detect, I was impressed and touched by the guy's mission, and how his culture meant something to him. He said something memorable, which I can't quote, but basically expressed the suffering that all different American Indians/Indian groups have endured that non-Natives will just never fully understand. It's something I respect, and can only examine from a distance, no matter how much I feel obliged to judge for or against them. What I mean is that while I'm bugged out by the sign-mutating effect of the LI accent and his image, I do not— cannot— take this melding of signs as a fault in his authenticity.
Thursday, February 13, 2003
Reading-Theory/ "Do the Barthes-man":
I'm currently attempting, between Pride and Prejudice for English IV (I love how teaching a text forces you to ascend to an entirely new echelon of clarity and comprehension), Mary Karr's suberb memoir Cherry, and various volumes of poetry, to enter the world of the dense French post-moderns: I've begun Roland Barthes A Lover's Discourse.
It's thick but surprisingly enjoyable, and not as abstruse as little I've read of Sartre or Lacan. The book is an index of expressions (he uses the term "figures:" as in the body's gesture caught in action) of love, spoken by no one person in particular and all people, ever. These "figures" have no logical order, no pattern, and considering them in any combination will not yield any cogent story or meaning. For example, the first entry (after Barthes introduction explaining the format of the book) is for s'abimer (picture a circumflex over that "i"), meaning "to be engulfed." The next three pages summarize various authors' characters' evocations of this particular feeling/emotion of love, from Baudelaire (natch), from Werther, from the myth of Tristan and Isolde. The next entry is for absence (cognate), followed by adorable (la meme), etc...
I'd imagine I'm giving a pretty unsuccessful evocation of the experience, but if you pick up the volume sometime, maybe you'll "get it."
The assumption Barthes makes here is that he is not able to synthesize meanings between texts and between "figures," and thus all he can do is catalogue these fleeting moments of possible resonance: "Figures take their shape insofar as we can recognize, in passing discourse, something that has been said, heard, felt...A figure is established if at least someone can say: That's so true! I recognize that scene of language." Thus, he does not speak his own text, "So it is a lover who speaks, and who says..." that lover being all lovers throughout recorded literature and history. In fact, "He who utters this discourse and shapes its episdoes does not know that a book is to be made of them; he does not yet know that as a good cultural subject he should neither repeat nor contradict himself, nor take the whole for the part; all he knows is what passes through his mind at a certain moment is marked, like the printout of a code...Each of us can fill in this code according to his own history." It's also central to Barthes' book that all the "figures" are expressed by the amorous subject while he/she is alone/away from the beloved, physically.
Yes, it's completely french-fuckified and abstract, but it's starting to make sense to see "love" in this way. In fact, if I'm pathetic enough to complete it, I'll try to post a decontstruction of Valentine's Day using this text.
I'm currently attempting, between Pride and Prejudice for English IV (I love how teaching a text forces you to ascend to an entirely new echelon of clarity and comprehension), Mary Karr's suberb memoir Cherry, and various volumes of poetry, to enter the world of the dense French post-moderns: I've begun Roland Barthes A Lover's Discourse.
It's thick but surprisingly enjoyable, and not as abstruse as little I've read of Sartre or Lacan. The book is an index of expressions (he uses the term "figures:" as in the body's gesture caught in action) of love, spoken by no one person in particular and all people, ever. These "figures" have no logical order, no pattern, and considering them in any combination will not yield any cogent story or meaning. For example, the first entry (after Barthes introduction explaining the format of the book) is for s'abimer (picture a circumflex over that "i"), meaning "to be engulfed." The next three pages summarize various authors' characters' evocations of this particular feeling/emotion of love, from Baudelaire (natch), from Werther, from the myth of Tristan and Isolde. The next entry is for absence (cognate), followed by adorable (la meme), etc...
I'd imagine I'm giving a pretty unsuccessful evocation of the experience, but if you pick up the volume sometime, maybe you'll "get it."
The assumption Barthes makes here is that he is not able to synthesize meanings between texts and between "figures," and thus all he can do is catalogue these fleeting moments of possible resonance: "Figures take their shape insofar as we can recognize, in passing discourse, something that has been said, heard, felt...A figure is established if at least someone can say: That's so true! I recognize that scene of language." Thus, he does not speak his own text, "So it is a lover who speaks, and who says..." that lover being all lovers throughout recorded literature and history. In fact, "He who utters this discourse and shapes its episdoes does not know that a book is to be made of them; he does not yet know that as a good cultural subject he should neither repeat nor contradict himself, nor take the whole for the part; all he knows is what passes through his mind at a certain moment is marked, like the printout of a code...Each of us can fill in this code according to his own history." It's also central to Barthes' book that all the "figures" are expressed by the amorous subject while he/she is alone/away from the beloved, physically.
Yes, it's completely french-fuckified and abstract, but it's starting to make sense to see "love" in this way. In fact, if I'm pathetic enough to complete it, I'll try to post a decontstruction of Valentine's Day using this text.
Tamarra:
I'm looking forward to a special lunch tomorrow afternoon. As part of The School's World Religions Series, the School Meeting will involve a mini-workshop on Hinduism, Judaism, and a smattering of Native American religions. The lunch, to follow, will be a FULL HOUR of feasting, courtesy of the Curry Club (east of St. James on 25A). I'm gonna bring my own stash of water. Mmmmmm.
I'm looking forward to a special lunch tomorrow afternoon. As part of The School's World Religions Series, the School Meeting will involve a mini-workshop on Hinduism, Judaism, and a smattering of Native American religions. The lunch, to follow, will be a FULL HOUR of feasting, courtesy of the Curry Club (east of St. James on 25A). I'm gonna bring my own stash of water. Mmmmmm.
It's confirmed:
After figure skating to "Ice Ice Baby" in 5th grade, prancing on stage for SMuTCo., recently enjoying the pants at Express Mens a little TOO enthusiastically (hey, they're a great fit on me and they were on sale!), and now THIS:
Gay Bear
Which Dysfunctional Care Bear Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
I think it's safe to just start getting over this whole "being attracted to girls" thing. (nervous interjection: okay, do I make a "just kidding" comment, or will that just erode any sense of comfort I've established with myself over the past 4 years, or does even mentioning THINKING about "JK"ing in a sense already convict me of being insecure? Do I throw in an ironic mega-testosteronal comment here for balance's sake (example: all you Long Island ho's better watch out!)? I think i'll forbear that route and let this stand on its own shaky foundation).
Seriously, though, I'm beginning to wonder about these quizzes. I understand that all the possible Care Bear characters the quiz taker can become are "disfunctional," but do they need to make the questions so obvious? Do I need to have the option of choosing "Jew Bear" as my least favorite Car Bear? Who comes up with this stuff?
After figure skating to "Ice Ice Baby" in 5th grade, prancing on stage for SMuTCo., recently enjoying the pants at Express Mens a little TOO enthusiastically (hey, they're a great fit on me and they were on sale!), and now THIS:
Gay Bear
Which Dysfunctional Care Bear Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
I think it's safe to just start getting over this whole "being attracted to girls" thing. (nervous interjection: okay, do I make a "just kidding" comment, or will that just erode any sense of comfort I've established with myself over the past 4 years, or does even mentioning THINKING about "JK"ing in a sense already convict me of being insecure? Do I throw in an ironic mega-testosteronal comment here for balance's sake (example: all you Long Island ho's better watch out!)? I think i'll forbear that route and let this stand on its own shaky foundation).
Seriously, though, I'm beginning to wonder about these quizzes. I understand that all the possible Care Bear characters the quiz taker can become are "disfunctional," but do they need to make the questions so obvious? Do I need to have the option of choosing "Jew Bear" as my least favorite Car Bear? Who comes up with this stuff?
Wednesday, February 12, 2003
The Perfection of Days
Who were night dad postal vagina
Who took where and made it in our sad bone dancehalls
Who repeated the slope and only modified the best words
Who were both masters of days and jackoff tradesmen
Who went concentric and came out canned
Who inquired and trumped and strained and melted paper with thought
Who adjusted eyeglasses to glimpse the gyrating lie
Why the riff and rhythm do not bore us
Who recieved a box of parents and became
Whose gaze was a legless marathon
Whose hairgel made guitar-work dangerous
Who sought punishment for those who hammer throaty laughter
Whose eyes disappeared for laughing
Whose vowels swallowed his shame and made him famous among young men
Who shed her name to fake tuition
Who ran latinate with sour grins in the time before the wind
Who refused to eat the steak and veggies
Who threw their boot of music, celebrated anatomy, and imagined their sound
Who were night dad postal vagina
Who took where and made it in our sad bone dancehalls
Who repeated the slope and only modified the best words
Who were both masters of days and jackoff tradesmen
Who went concentric and came out canned
Who inquired and trumped and strained and melted paper with thought
Who adjusted eyeglasses to glimpse the gyrating lie
Why the riff and rhythm do not bore us
Who recieved a box of parents and became
Whose gaze was a legless marathon
Whose hairgel made guitar-work dangerous
Who sought punishment for those who hammer throaty laughter
Whose eyes disappeared for laughing
Whose vowels swallowed his shame and made him famous among young men
Who shed her name to fake tuition
Who ran latinate with sour grins in the time before the wind
Who refused to eat the steak and veggies
Who threw their boot of music, celebrated anatomy, and imagined their sound
I've got nothing to give:
I've had almost three complete thoughts worth posting, but I haven't the energy to pursue them. I was MOD today; it took everything I had to give.
My writing muscles are mush.
Bleh.
I've had almost three complete thoughts worth posting, but I haven't the energy to pursue them. I was MOD today; it took everything I had to give.
My writing muscles are mush.
Bleh.
Tuesday, February 11, 2003
FURTHER 2002-2003 FILM LISTINGS:
Films I wanted to see but did not:
Bowling for Columbine, Storytelling, many others...
Films I've only seen the first twenty minutes of but would/will probably make my Top 10 had I seen/ were I to see them in full because of their initial goodness:
Spirited Away
Scorcese Films I might eventually see, but did not pursue in the theater because of the promise of mere spectacle despite the incredible Daniel Day Lewis, and in any case did not, nor will it, make my list (with all respect to Mr. Blum):
Gangs of New York
Other films of various notes I may or may not see whose degree on the good/bad meter is fogged by hearsay, reviews, and pre-concieved notions (note: influential-strength increases with each successive factor just listed):
About a Boy, The Pianist, The Good Girl, Zus and Zo, Catch Me If you Can
Films I will not be seeing (because I'm a prejudicial son of a bitch):
The Hours, Daredevil, Spiderman, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Frida, many many others...
Films I wanted to see but did not:
Bowling for Columbine, Storytelling, many others...
Films I've only seen the first twenty minutes of but would/will probably make my Top 10 had I seen/ were I to see them in full because of their initial goodness:
Spirited Away
Scorcese Films I might eventually see, but did not pursue in the theater because of the promise of mere spectacle despite the incredible Daniel Day Lewis, and in any case did not, nor will it, make my list (with all respect to Mr. Blum):
Gangs of New York
Other films of various notes I may or may not see whose degree on the good/bad meter is fogged by hearsay, reviews, and pre-concieved notions (note: influential-strength increases with each successive factor just listed):
About a Boy, The Pianist, The Good Girl, Zus and Zo, Catch Me If you Can
Films I will not be seeing (because I'm a prejudicial son of a bitch):
The Hours, Daredevil, Spiderman, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Frida, many many others...
Freud II/ Where is my Muse?:
I don't think "people" like to admit how much sex is necessary for a healthy relationship. It's been said to me that once fun in bed goes, the rest follows— at a speed to be determined by many other factors, but follows inevitably. I've also heard of the "cycle theory," that there are upshifts and downshifts to (mis-) matching libidos and whatnot (this is partially from the excellent B-ish Ed Burns film She's the One, a Comedy Central regular).
From observations far and too near, I can say that while a healthy sexual relationship is not ALL that is needed to keep people together, it is certainly vital enough for its absence to set in motion a chain of collapse. Just thought I'd state this for whatever worth it may possess.
I bring this up....um, well I don't know why. Part of it comes from a conversation I had with Reetu last night, part of it from my own recent realization of impotence, creatively and physically. It's as though I'm wearing boxers made of ice, as though I've had on the same frosty pair for the last month. Commiserating with another young male teacher who will remain nameless, we pointed to lack of exercise, the frigidness, mental exhaustion/frustration as root causes of our lack of drive (and he has a girlfriend nearby!). And it's not only sexual, it's just a lethargy slathered over every considered action. Since I've gotten my futon, it seems I never leave it (granted in recliner position, it takes up half the open space of the room), especially given NCAA hoops on TV and some-or-other quality beer from the St. James Beer and Soda Store. On it can be found spilt stacks of books (bible-flimsy anthologies, skinny poetry volumes, class grammar textbook, P&P), a half-empty box of clementines and one borrowed-from-the-Knox-kitchen banana, my Black Headband For Basketball Unity, the remote, the other remote, crumbs that have escaped my swiping hand, my gradebook, the afghan my grandmother made for me, and all 155 lbs of me, baby.
Point is, I need spring to come and make me male again. I can't write poetry for shit.
To anyone who really didn't need to know all this bodily information...don't you wish I'd have put this disclaimer at the head of this post, and not at the bottom?
I don't think "people" like to admit how much sex is necessary for a healthy relationship. It's been said to me that once fun in bed goes, the rest follows— at a speed to be determined by many other factors, but follows inevitably. I've also heard of the "cycle theory," that there are upshifts and downshifts to (mis-) matching libidos and whatnot (this is partially from the excellent B-ish Ed Burns film She's the One, a Comedy Central regular).
From observations far and too near, I can say that while a healthy sexual relationship is not ALL that is needed to keep people together, it is certainly vital enough for its absence to set in motion a chain of collapse. Just thought I'd state this for whatever worth it may possess.
I bring this up....um, well I don't know why. Part of it comes from a conversation I had with Reetu last night, part of it from my own recent realization of impotence, creatively and physically. It's as though I'm wearing boxers made of ice, as though I've had on the same frosty pair for the last month. Commiserating with another young male teacher who will remain nameless, we pointed to lack of exercise, the frigidness, mental exhaustion/frustration as root causes of our lack of drive (and he has a girlfriend nearby!). And it's not only sexual, it's just a lethargy slathered over every considered action. Since I've gotten my futon, it seems I never leave it (granted in recliner position, it takes up half the open space of the room), especially given NCAA hoops on TV and some-or-other quality beer from the St. James Beer and Soda Store. On it can be found spilt stacks of books (bible-flimsy anthologies, skinny poetry volumes, class grammar textbook, P&P), a half-empty box of clementines and one borrowed-from-the-Knox-kitchen banana, my Black Headband For Basketball Unity, the remote, the other remote, crumbs that have escaped my swiping hand, my gradebook, the afghan my grandmother made for me, and all 155 lbs of me, baby.
Point is, I need spring to come and make me male again. I can't write poetry for shit.
To anyone who really didn't need to know all this bodily information...don't you wish I'd have put this disclaimer at the head of this post, and not at the bottom?
Been Waiting to Tag this Insipid:
Every year I encounter the same queasy decision: should I give a fuck about the Oscar nominations. Having endured the partisanship, the blatant disregard for integrity, and the poor taste of the Academy for as long as I've been passionate about film, it becomes tougher each year to hang onto any shred of respect or credence. I watched the program last year, and surprisingly enjoyed what there was to enjoy: Lynch was at least in the audience, Woody Allen came onstage (a first), the personal favorite "people who have died this year" montage.
Will I watch this year? It depends on where am I and how many tests/papers I might be correcting.
Where do I stand vis-a-vis the nominations? I'm trying hard not to care, but I will disagree with Chicago's 13 chances to recieve an award where really deserves, at best, one or two. I can also happily express utter shock re: a Best Director nomination for Pedro Almodovar and his (in my eyes, the year's second best) film Habla Con Ella. Wow. I'm also pleased by Best "Adapted" Screenplay nominations for Charlie and "Donald" Kaufman (if "they" win, will it be the first ever Oscar awarded to a fictional character?), by Best Original Screenplay nominations for Almodovar and for the Carlos Cuaron and Alfonso Cuaron script Y tu Mama Tambien, and by the number of acting nominations from Adaptation (Cooper, Streep, and Cage).
Picking winners and nominees is silly, but still faintly charming. It's nice, once a year, to think of there being some kind of world film community (even if it is a false conception).
Anyway, the best films I've seen this year (yes, I'll be a hip-o'crit and rank them) are:
1) Adaptation
2) Habla Con Ella
3) The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys
4) Punch-Drunk Love
5) The Business of Fancydancing
6) Y Tu Mama Tambien
7) About Schmidt
8) Chicago
9) 8 Mile
10) Everybody's Doing It (TV)
Every year I encounter the same queasy decision: should I give a fuck about the Oscar nominations. Having endured the partisanship, the blatant disregard for integrity, and the poor taste of the Academy for as long as I've been passionate about film, it becomes tougher each year to hang onto any shred of respect or credence. I watched the program last year, and surprisingly enjoyed what there was to enjoy: Lynch was at least in the audience, Woody Allen came onstage (a first), the personal favorite "people who have died this year" montage.
Will I watch this year? It depends on where am I and how many tests/papers I might be correcting.
Where do I stand vis-a-vis the nominations? I'm trying hard not to care, but I will disagree with Chicago's 13 chances to recieve an award where really deserves, at best, one or two. I can also happily express utter shock re: a Best Director nomination for Pedro Almodovar and his (in my eyes, the year's second best) film Habla Con Ella. Wow. I'm also pleased by Best "Adapted" Screenplay nominations for Charlie and "Donald" Kaufman (if "they" win, will it be the first ever Oscar awarded to a fictional character?), by Best Original Screenplay nominations for Almodovar and for the Carlos Cuaron and Alfonso Cuaron script Y tu Mama Tambien, and by the number of acting nominations from Adaptation (Cooper, Streep, and Cage).
Picking winners and nominees is silly, but still faintly charming. It's nice, once a year, to think of there being some kind of world film community (even if it is a false conception).
Anyway, the best films I've seen this year (yes, I'll be a hip-o'crit and rank them) are:
1) Adaptation
2) Habla Con Ella
3) The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys
4) Punch-Drunk Love
5) The Business of Fancydancing
6) Y Tu Mama Tambien
7) About Schmidt
8) Chicago
9) 8 Mile
10) Everybody's Doing It (TV)
Monday, February 10, 2003
Namesake:
Browsing in Borders yesterday, I started flipping through a new release hardcover. I read, and was not amused.
In what is perhaps the most tepid, insipid attempt at satire in recent history, one J.B. Miller has attempted, in his new book The Satanic Nurses, to "evicerate" a list of literary heavies old and contemporary. While I give him credit for his punnery in some cases, the humor is facile, the impersonations are either understated so they seem mere sickly homages to the intended target, or else they are erroneously over-satirical barrell-shot fish, and each author only gets about 3 pages worth of Miller's tame brand of mockery (it's as if he wants to have fun and show off his wit, but doesn't want to (or is incapable of) actually insult any of these writers or their devotees). I almost enjoyed the gutting of Corman McCarthy's masturbatory-sentence Western style, but maybe that's because I loathe McCarthy already (and in my case, McCarthy's writing itself is the ultimate satire of Cormac McCarthy); but the attempts to subvert DeLillo and especially David Foster Wallace were weak to say the least. If you are going to imitate for humor's sake, you have to go beyond the obvious and create. This could have been a fascinating project; instead, the author is merely attempting to either show off his reading list, simultaneously catapulting himself into dominance over them, or else he is just a hack who had a good idea and couldn't ride/write it out all the way, as it might have been.
If anything, handling this book made me, again, wallow over the sorry states of writing and publishing.
Yet again, Rilke would have something substantive to say in the case of the Satanic Nurses, and the possible lack of its clever irony to be of any true artistic purpose:
Irony: Don't let yourself be controlled by it, especially during uncreative moments. When you are fully creative, try to use it, as one more way to take hold of life. Used purely, it too is pure, and one needn't be ashamed of it; but if you feel yourself becoming too familiar with it, if you are afraid of this growing familiarity, then turn to great and serious objects, in front of which it [irony] becomes small and helpless. Search into the depths of Things: there, irony never descends.
Rainer speaks to everyone, even J.B. Miller.
Browsing in Borders yesterday, I started flipping through a new release hardcover. I read, and was not amused.
In what is perhaps the most tepid, insipid attempt at satire in recent history, one J.B. Miller has attempted, in his new book The Satanic Nurses, to "evicerate" a list of literary heavies old and contemporary. While I give him credit for his punnery in some cases, the humor is facile, the impersonations are either understated so they seem mere sickly homages to the intended target, or else they are erroneously over-satirical barrell-shot fish, and each author only gets about 3 pages worth of Miller's tame brand of mockery (it's as if he wants to have fun and show off his wit, but doesn't want to (or is incapable of) actually insult any of these writers or their devotees). I almost enjoyed the gutting of Corman McCarthy's masturbatory-sentence Western style, but maybe that's because I loathe McCarthy already (and in my case, McCarthy's writing itself is the ultimate satire of Cormac McCarthy); but the attempts to subvert DeLillo and especially David Foster Wallace were weak to say the least. If you are going to imitate for humor's sake, you have to go beyond the obvious and create. This could have been a fascinating project; instead, the author is merely attempting to either show off his reading list, simultaneously catapulting himself into dominance over them, or else he is just a hack who had a good idea and couldn't ride/write it out all the way, as it might have been.
If anything, handling this book made me, again, wallow over the sorry states of writing and publishing.
Yet again, Rilke would have something substantive to say in the case of the Satanic Nurses, and the possible lack of its clever irony to be of any true artistic purpose:
Irony: Don't let yourself be controlled by it, especially during uncreative moments. When you are fully creative, try to use it, as one more way to take hold of life. Used purely, it too is pure, and one needn't be ashamed of it; but if you feel yourself becoming too familiar with it, if you are afraid of this growing familiarity, then turn to great and serious objects, in front of which it [irony] becomes small and helpless. Search into the depths of Things: there, irony never descends.
Rainer speaks to everyone, even J.B. Miller.
Sunday, February 09, 2003
Jack's Wrinkles:
I had as serene a night as can be had with Ballz in Huntington on a Saturday night. We went to the new Nicholson movie, About Schmidt, then trotted around the village strip, freezing, popping into various places in which Gina knows everyone. I always shake lots of hands and read new faces when I'm out with Ballz.
Anyway, the film was very unconventional: risky but somehow brilliant in its stark anticlimaticism. Nicholson is on screen for almost every shot in the film, most often appropriately alone in this film about solitude and small redemptions. He is really fat, too, even his wrinkles and jowls are uber lipidified (?). His character is basically a Walter Mitty who hasn't learned to daydream, and most of the time the audience is forced to endure the same pain of Warren Schmidt's mundane, restless, nascent retirement. There are many shots where Nicholson does not move a muscle (in a deceiving close up of a framed picture of him at his retirement party, I couldn't at first tell if it was actually a shot of him, or a shot of a picture of him). Other times, Nicholson displays immense and masterful control of his face's emotive musculature. When this stolid, ho-hum human being becomes flooded with odd grief, every pore seems to weep. It's actually astounding. It's not a wedding movie, it's not a "crazy in-laws" movie, it's not really even a movie about complete redemption; it's a movie about an old man and his solitude (and in this sense, I find that the soul of Letters to a Young Poet again applies, as does The Old Man and the Sea or Lynch's The Straight Story). There is no story, no plot, in About Schmidt that is not driven by the law of "what would this character do in this situation according to lonliness and defense mechanisms." As entertainment, I agree with Ballz that the audience around us was more entertaining (they were vocal and corny) than most of the film (although it has plenty of laugh-aloud moments), but I love what this film dares to do without being brash about being daring. It's a very quiet film, like vacation footage shot by your grandparents when they go to see the "Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota" (a prize to anyone who caught that reference). Nicholson really deserves any praise he recievesl; I have never seen this character before. His posture, his walk, his weight, his demeanor are not what you think of from "Jack." Good stuff.
I had as serene a night as can be had with Ballz in Huntington on a Saturday night. We went to the new Nicholson movie, About Schmidt, then trotted around the village strip, freezing, popping into various places in which Gina knows everyone. I always shake lots of hands and read new faces when I'm out with Ballz.
Anyway, the film was very unconventional: risky but somehow brilliant in its stark anticlimaticism. Nicholson is on screen for almost every shot in the film, most often appropriately alone in this film about solitude and small redemptions. He is really fat, too, even his wrinkles and jowls are uber lipidified (?). His character is basically a Walter Mitty who hasn't learned to daydream, and most of the time the audience is forced to endure the same pain of Warren Schmidt's mundane, restless, nascent retirement. There are many shots where Nicholson does not move a muscle (in a deceiving close up of a framed picture of him at his retirement party, I couldn't at first tell if it was actually a shot of him, or a shot of a picture of him). Other times, Nicholson displays immense and masterful control of his face's emotive musculature. When this stolid, ho-hum human being becomes flooded with odd grief, every pore seems to weep. It's actually astounding. It's not a wedding movie, it's not a "crazy in-laws" movie, it's not really even a movie about complete redemption; it's a movie about an old man and his solitude (and in this sense, I find that the soul of Letters to a Young Poet again applies, as does The Old Man and the Sea or Lynch's The Straight Story). There is no story, no plot, in About Schmidt that is not driven by the law of "what would this character do in this situation according to lonliness and defense mechanisms." As entertainment, I agree with Ballz that the audience around us was more entertaining (they were vocal and corny) than most of the film (although it has plenty of laugh-aloud moments), but I love what this film dares to do without being brash about being daring. It's a very quiet film, like vacation footage shot by your grandparents when they go to see the "Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota" (a prize to anyone who caught that reference). Nicholson really deserves any praise he recievesl; I have never seen this character before. His posture, his walk, his weight, his demeanor are not what you think of from "Jack." Good stuff.
Rilke:
I've been taking in the classic Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke in small reads over the past month or so, but I awoke this morning intent on reading a lot and not watching television/minesweeping, so I finished it. If I were to choose passages that blew me away, I would have to retype the entire collection, but one paragraph seemed particularly and eerily addressed to the "me" of recent weeks (as written in yesterday's entry):
And your doubt can become a good quality if you train it. It must become knowing, it must become criticism. Ask it, whenever it wants to spoil something for you, why something is ugly, demand proofs from it, test it, and you will find it perhaps bewildered and embarrassed, perhaps also protesting. But don't give in, insist on arguments, and act in this way, attentive and persistent, every single time, and the day will come when, instead of being a destroyer, it will become one of your best workers— perhaps the most intelligent of all the ones that are building your life.
Absorb this book; it only takes an hour to read once, but can be read infinitely and teach infinitely.
I've been taking in the classic Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke in small reads over the past month or so, but I awoke this morning intent on reading a lot and not watching television/minesweeping, so I finished it. If I were to choose passages that blew me away, I would have to retype the entire collection, but one paragraph seemed particularly and eerily addressed to the "me" of recent weeks (as written in yesterday's entry):
And your doubt can become a good quality if you train it. It must become knowing, it must become criticism. Ask it, whenever it wants to spoil something for you, why something is ugly, demand proofs from it, test it, and you will find it perhaps bewildered and embarrassed, perhaps also protesting. But don't give in, insist on arguments, and act in this way, attentive and persistent, every single time, and the day will come when, instead of being a destroyer, it will become one of your best workers— perhaps the most intelligent of all the ones that are building your life.
Absorb this book; it only takes an hour to read once, but can be read infinitely and teach infinitely.
