Antidisingenuousmentarianism

Overheard in Athens

2011-01-31T10:29:00.000-05:00

At Old Navy a couple of weeks ago:

"I'm sorry, ma'am. We only have the jeggings up to a size 18."

Yay, spam

2010-12-14T07:21:00.001-05:00

I might've had a baby, but obviously I'm still hot.

Hello Dear,
How are you,hope fine,
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Awaiting for your lovely response
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Google saching?

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2010-12-03T08:07:00.000-05:00

Really, Dolce & Gabbana? Again?

Anyway. The November 1 issue of the New Yorker contains, other than this ad, an awesome profile of Aziz Ansari by Kelefa Sanneh (dude is on a roll), which is subscribers only online. The short version is that Sanneh has the insight that Ansari's appeal lies in his enthusiasm:

This is one of Ansari's greatest assets: a counterintuitive ability to observe ridiculous behavior and react not with simple mockery or exasperation, as many comedians would, but with half-crazed wonder. Rather than fuming at the world's stupidity, he delights in its endless absurdity. . . . He says, "It's not fun to be like, 'Fuck "Twilight"!' It's more interesting to come at it from the viewpoint of 'What? This is awesome!' and embrace things." Not long after the brainteasing blockbuster "Inception" arrived in theatres, he said that his favorite review of it was a Twitter post from the rapper Slim Thug: "It was too complicated for me it's about having dreams while u are dreaming and I missed parts cause I was sleep so I was lost."

This is like my whole philosophy! Sanneh also has smart things to say about race, as always, and where Ansari has placed himself between black and white.

I also really liked Frances Hwang's story "Blue Roses," in the same issue (also locked), which is about a woman dealing with her three adult children and is the kind of thing I would not have been so interested in previously. Do y'all all know you used to be babies? And that your babies are going to grow up into people? I know! It's freaking crazy.

I also skipped ahead and read the food issue (Nov. 22) because it arrived in my mailbox before the Nov. 15 one did. Laura Shapiro's piece on Eleanor Roosevelt's kitchen in the White House, run by one Mrs. Nesbitt, is pretty fabulous, and it contains the following about Sheila Hibben, with whose work I'm not familiar:

A talented, well-traveled home cook who turned to writing when she had to support herself and her daughter after the death of her husband, Hibben had a culinary sensibility that was half a century ahead of its time. Americans had been "spoiled," she wrote in 1932, by "peaches from South Africa and strawberries picked green and shipped too far." She wanted gas stations to distribute food maps as well as road maps [this is still an amazing idea!], and believed that the best American cooking could hold its own against the best in Paris. "Cold boiled crabs, with their shells cracked open and served with a sauce of fresh lime juice and olive oil, are . . . superlatively good with beer," she suggested in a 1934 New Yorker article. It was a time when "the ultimate in flavor," according to the Times, was a popular buffet dish known as Turkey Supreme: diced turkey mixed with nuts, whipped cream, crushed pineapple, and mayonnaise, spread on a tray and frozen.

The same article contains a description of a dish that could well have appeared in the food issue of some years ago that had an article about Futurism and food:

[Mrs. Nesbitt's] Bobotee Salad was a mixture of cold rice, bananas, almonds, chicory, and curry powder, in a French dressing laced with Worcestershire sauce.

I am going to link to one thing you can read, though, and that is the profile of April Bloomfield, which is well written and just great all through, as in this bit:

In a blind taste test, you could identify Bloomfield’s food by the blasts of salt and lemon. It is not for the faint of palate. “ ‘Copious’ is a word I like to use when buttering my potatoes,” she told me. But in the kitchen she is as composed as her cooking is brazen. “There’s not too much ‘you wanker’ this or ‘you fucking idiot,’ ” she said. “It’s a waste of time.” Still, she projects such quiet disdain for sloppiness that “half-a-job Bob”—her biggest insult—stings as much as any bleepable tirade. If David Chang’s band of renegades are the Red Sox of the New York restaurant world, Bloomfield’s cooks are the Yankees, square and conscientious. When I asked her what kind of people she likes to hire, she replied, “Nobody weird. Nobody with dreadlocks.” She paused a minute, and added, “Well, no white guys with dreadlocks.” Her cooks wear black pants and black shoes. “People with chile peppers on their chef pants shouldn’t be allowed in the kitchen,” she said. When Bloomfield peels a carrot, she holds it out in the palm of her hand, like sheet music. Her posture is as correct, and her expression as intent, as that of a girl about to play “Chopsticks” in a piano recital.

Two Things

2010-11-27T10:28:00.000-05:00

1. I love the dollar store at the Georgia Square Mall. Not only is this sippy cup hilarious and mystifying, but it also survives being whanged onto the floor without spilling more than a drop. We were also privy to a longish conversation between the store clerk and the manager, on the phone, which consisted mostly of Hindi interspersed with the words "pocket calculator" and "9.99." Yay, dollar store!

2. I am now going to make this dessert as often as possible. It was hard to halve the recipe, but it turned out beautifully (although I was lazy and used a premade graham cracker crust instead of making my own). Anyway, clearly there is good reason not to bother with the halving and just to make two next time. Or, heck, four.

Movie Diary

2010-11-15T08:30:00.000-05:00

1) Nightmare on Elm Street (2010): Ugh. Boring and dumb and full of hateable people. Sometimes that works for a horror movie, but not in this case. What this series needed was not greater realism. The whole point is that it has the ability to be fantastical because half of it takes place in dreams. Also, the original characters are too strong to remake the first one. Lame.

2) Timer: Hey, Emma Caulfield was in a movie that didn't suck! Instead, it's smart, well directed, and totally good. It manages to be a little sad without going overboard, it doesn't take the premise (look it up) into the "Ack! Chocolate! I need a man!" realm, it has lots of sharp lines of dialogue, it's funny, it makes good use of its actors, and it's even nice visually. For every five or ten crap indie movies you get suckered into watching and end up disappointed, there has to be something good, and this is it.

3) Iron Man 2: These are still a little ADD or, if I were being more generous, I suppose I could say Robert Altman, only with lots of explosions. Downey's still good. Rourke manages to be so too, despite his ridiculous character. Are they saving Tony Stark's alcoholism as a real plot point for the third one? I was also just trying to remember what else we'd seen John "Roger Sterling" Slattery in recently (besides 30 Rock, on which he was awesome), and it's this, of course. There is something both proud and deserving of commendation in its shallowness (which is more like gleefully slick and refusing to take itself seriously, as opposed to the momentousness most superhero movies spread on with a palette knife), but also a little bit producing the impression of wasted effort. It's just a little too sloppy to achieve sprezzatura.

4) Greenberg: Quite a bit easier to watch than Margot at the Wedding and thank god for that (even though I liked it). I don't really understand how Ben Stiller can do both this and Night at the Museum, but he's not the first actor to swing wildly back and forth from quality to embarrassment. I guess he's just one of those guys who likes working even more than it is that he needs the paycheck. Anyway, every time he shows up in a trailer getting bitten in the groin by an animal or whatnot, I should just remember that he's capable of some quite fine dramatic work, too, like this. It's got some lovely trademark Baumbach jokes in it, like the shopping list for whiskey and ice cream sandwiches, which made me laugh for a good few minutes, without ever betraying its feel. I guess I can see how this would be frustrating in some ways, but its frustrations seem deliberate, and I'm able to find them comic because I don't feel trapped in the kind of situation the movie portrays. That is: I generally have my shit/life together.

5) Dolls: I'm sure I've mentioned my love of Stuart Gordon on here before. Yes, he's crazy, but he's also an auteur, and this early film of his is 100% Gordon. Horrible people get murdered in horrible ways (this time by some tiny dolls that come creepily to life) and generally act horribly to everyone, while a few angels are saved. If you don't want to see a small child imagine her teddy bear come to life and grown to tremendous size devour her parents, well... don't watch this. To me, that's an attraction.

6) The Signal: As I know people who know people involved with this movie, I was really hoping it would be good, but it's mostly a mediocre zombie flick with some small interesting ideas. The three directors were each responsible for a different section, and the middle one (which is comedic in tone) is pretty good, while the first one doesn't really establish things well and the last one is, I think, trying to be indie and mysterious and sad, but ends up just being confusing and annoying. It does, however, add fuel to the whole "Atlanta is the capital of zombie movies" idea.

7) How to Train Your Dragon: Dreamworks is getting rather good at this kind of thing. It starts out slow and mediocre, but once you get dragons involved and realize that they're basically kitty-cats, it takes off. There is drama and danger and humor, and while it's still not quite up to the level of the best stuff Pixar has done, it's at least on par with their weaker efforts. Good vocal work, too. I do wonder, however, who's making movies for the dumb jocks of the world, rather than for all these sensitive, scientifically minded kids.

8) Get Him to the Greek: Hey, even if you don't like Forgetting Sarah Marshall or Russell Brand, there is a really good chance you will like this, as I consider myself one of those people, and I certainly didn't expect to enjoy this movie. But I did. I do, however, love Jonah Hill and Elizabeth Moss, so it definitely had some positives from the outset. I also now kind of love Sean Combs. The number-one point of comparison here is, of course, The Hangover, which I did not particularly like because it felt low and mean. Get Him to the Greek has a lot of similarities (craziness, drugs, blackouts, wild sex), but it manages to feel light and playful. Maybe it's just the people involved in the two projects, from actors and writers/directors, but this is way less aggro, and its attitude toward wildness is not so much "Wooo!" as terrified nerd. Great job on the songs too. I'm looking at you, Jason Segal.

9) Talk to Her: Hillary, you are a dumbass for letting this sit in its Netflix envelope next to your TV for probably two months. Just realize already that Almodovar is one of your favorite directors and watch the rest of his movies. I would bet this film in particular attracted some outrage, due to what can be seen as a casual attitude toward rape (and the fact that, while it's called "Talk to Her," the "her"s, being in comas, don't get to do much talking), and I can recognize that, but, at the same time, what Almodovar does is pick up the people spat upon by society (from transgender to murderer to rapist) and hold them gently in his arms. He humanizes them for the spitters. And this film is not really about women. It's about men's relationship to women. So those complaints should be fairly easily deflected. Anyway, it's really good and, as usual, gorgeous.

Dear Jones Soda

2010-11-12T19:44:00.000-05:00

The comments section on your website isn't making you look any better. And it's making me want to towel snap the youth of today. Click to make it bigger.

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2010-11-11T07:57:00.000-05:00

I'm pretty caught up on reading these things, just not on writing about/linking to them.

In the October 18 New Yorker, you'll find Sean Wilentz's article on the Tea Party and Glenn Beck, which lays out neatly its roots in the John Birch Society. Proving that it is a liberal rag, the magazine has kindly put the article online for free. I really try not to pay attention to this sort of thing (i.e., the current idea being promoted by Beck et al. that our true history has been stolen from us), sort of in the same way I ignore crazy street people, preferring not to get involved, but, just as with its article on the Koch brothers, this is an important piece of journalism. Plus it's pretty juicy stuff.

Calvin Tomkins's profile of the artist John Baldessari is in the same issue but behind the pay wall. It says some smart things, though. You can read Ben McGrath's profile of Nick Denton, however, which is loads of fun, and Jill Lepore's review of sex-ed books for kids, which is hilarious from its opener:

It was in the living room. My father was reading the newspaper. I was reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle:

Sherlock Holmes sat up with a whistle. “By Jove, Peterson!” said he, “this is treasure trove indeed. I suppose you know what you have got?”
“A diamond, sir? A precious stone. It cuts into glass as though it were putty.”
“It’s more than a precious stone. It is the precious stone.”
“Not the Countess of Morcar’s blue carbuncle!” I ejaculated.

I looked up from my book.
“Hey, Dad.”
“Hmm?”
“What does ‘ejaculate’ mean?”
He put down the newspaper and sighed. I never did find out who stole the Countess’s blue carbuncle.

In the October 25 issue, Ben McGrath, writing about the history of movie catchphrases being adopted by politicians, has a brief bit that sets the record straight on Network and gets in a zinger at the same time:

Paladino is a Tea Party man, and, like a number of Tea Party insurgents, he’s been getting good mileage out of the famous Peter Finch line from the 1976 movie “Network”: “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” If you’ve been out leaf-peeping upstate, you’ve probably passed a few yard signs that read, “I’m mad as hell, too, Carl.” Paladino even played the clip at a campaign event, as a rallying cry. What he’s mad about is what Republicans are usually mad about: government spending. But anyone who’s familiar with the film might well ask whether Paladino, whom the News has taken to calling Crazy Carl, has thought this one through. Howard Beale, the character played by Finch, is in the midst of a nervous breakdown at the time of his quotable outburst. “Network” is not a story of redemption through anger. Beale is portrayed as a delusional tool of corporate interests who ends up getting shot on live television when he has outlived his usefulness to them. For a hotheaded political aspirant like Paladino, inviting comparison with Howard Beale, as a radio host said last month, is a little like citing “Lennie from ‘Of Mice and Men’ on the issue of rabbit husbandry.”

Tad Friend's article on the leaf blower wars of California is classic stuff but behind the wall. Basically, it's about the number of ways that neighbors can find to be angry at one another and how, exactly, we should handle them. I have to say, though, that the study that found a grandmother with a rake is barely beaten by a leaf blower strikes me as awfully suspicious. Perhaps in a very small area that would hold true, but it doesn't seem so, at least from anecdotal evidence.

What you can read is Nicholas Lemann's profile of Harry Reid, which, like the last time the New Yorker ran one of these, ended up really making me like him, despite the fact that we have significant political and philosophical differences. I think I have a soft spot for people who tend to jam their feet into their mouths:

“He’s not a charismatic person who’s gifted with great oratorical skills,” Richard Bryan, who met Reid when they took the bar exam together, in 1963, and went on to serve with him in the state legislature and the U.S. Senate, says. “He doesn’t fit into the mold of a hail-fellow-well-met. His retail political skills—working the room, marching in a parade—that’s not his strong point.” Reid is prone to crassly impolitic remarks. Earlier this year, it was revealed that he had praised Obama for not speaking in “Negro dialect unless he wanted to have one”; more recently, he has called Kirsten Gillibrand, of New York, the “hottest member” of the Senate, and remarked, “I don’t know how anyone of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican.”

There's also the fact that he's on the opposite side of this:

One day, I visited an Angle supporter named Elissa Wahl, a thin, bespectacled young woman who runs a homeschooling organization out of her house, in one of Las Vegas’s new middle-class subdivisions. Wahl has been homeschooling for sixteen years. In 2002, when the Nevada Department of Education tried to require homeschoolers to use an approved curriculum, Wahl organized an opposition. “I believe God has laid an interest on my kids’ hearts,” she told me, “and I don’t want government to interfere with that.” She and her allies found a friend in state government: Sharron Angle.

We were sitting at Wahl’s dining-room table. Her children were taking a break from their lessons to watch television. “Back in the eighties, Sharron wanted to homeschool her son,” she said. “The school district said no. So she started a little private school in a church. She ran for the state assembly to fight for homeschooling. Because of that, we have no high-school-equivalency exam. No hundred and eighty days of school. We as parents are in charge of our kids’ education. That’s our constitutional right. We were one of the first organizations to endorse Sharron—before the Tea Party, before anyone. We never endorsed anyone before.”

She went on, “Sharron’s just a normal person, honestly. She’s small. She’s tiny, O.K.? She smiles a lot. She feels led by God to this position. She doesn’t want to live in Washington. She sincerely believes God has called her to this position and told her what to do. A lot of people say she’s kooky—like my neighbor. Well, if she’s kooky, so am I.”

If there's one thing I really believe in (and there isn't; there are lots), it's public education, and the idea that homeschooling can consist of whatever you want to is just... lunatic, isn't it?

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2010-10-27T08:01:00.000-04:00

For once, a Malcolm Gladwell piece ("Talent Grab," Oct. 11 New Yorker) isn't online for free, and it's actually a really well-balanced one that combines a hard-nosed look at why we pay more for talent these days (looking at baseball as a good example but then branching out to CEOs, etc.) with some qualms about that same issue. In other words, do you take the side of the baseball-playing millionaires or the even greedier baseball-team owners? Basically, Gladwell's trying to view the widening gap between rich and poor in this country through the lens of compensation for talent (as well as pointing out some problems, like overpaying talent), but I'm not sure that it works as well as the older lenses (changes in tax policy, for example).

Ryan Lizza's article in the same issue on the failure of climate-change reform isn't behind the wall, and it's a marvelous but sad story, so you should at least go read that, esp if you like tales of political deal-making.

Philip Gourevitch has a "critic at large" piece that I wish were available on the failure of humanitarian aid--and not just in particular cases but genuinely examining the possibility that humanitarian aid may actually facilitate and escalate the horribleness of conflicts. Whoof. I mean, that is a hard thing to read, and it makes some excellent points. If you're going to get food aid when you start cutting off people's arms, why wouldn't you just leap straight to that point? And what's the alternative? I believe what Gourevitch is saying (and what the books he's discussing are perhaps hinting at) is that the problem with nongovernmental organizations is that they're not accountable, and while governmental organizations may also screw up royally, at least you can point to politics and potentially hang someone out to dry based on his/her interests. Is this a little like my anti-charity argument (i.e., it's all well and good to give to charity, but governments shouldn't be encouraging it to the detriment of funding worthy programs because it's not a reliable source of income)?

And then there's James Surowiecki's article on procrastination, widely distributed around the web and joked about (e.g., ha ha I meant to blog about this earlier, but...). I believe I've mostly overcome that problem, and I promise it's not that hard. Balance what needs to be done with what you would merely like to get done. Set small, achievable goals. Be realistic about what can be accomplished in a given amount of time. Exercise your willpower. Focus on the joy of getting things done. None of this means you can't procrastinate sometimes, but try not to and it'll keep getting easier to get things done on time.

Also also, Sasha Frere-Jones on Pavement, a band he doesn't like all that much. Is it that they're too laid back? I don't know. I'm a latecomer to Pavement, and I think they're pretty good, but I'm not going to get all huffy about the article. If he prefers Nirvana, well, so do I. Pavement is fine, but they're not my band of the 90s.

I'm not even going to link the Alice Munro story because it's behind the wall and, for her, it's not tippy-top. She can do better.

Advertising

2010-10-25T08:04:00.000-04:00

This is the ad on the back of the Oct. 11 New Yorker. It raises a lot of questions. Like... Really? And "gentleman"? And how did they wrangle Matthew McConaughey into a tux? Presumably this is either Photoshopped or it dates from at least ten years ago, which is about when the photo seems to have been taken, judging by his unlined aspect. There's also the fact that D&G were obviously so confident about their choice of model that the words "Matthew McConaughey" appear in the upper right corner. Faintly, yes, but they weren't confident you would know outright. Who talked them into this?

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2010-10-13T07:51:00.000-04:00

Even though I probably should be, I'm still not very interested in classical music, but Alex Ross always manages to make reading about it extremely interesting. His piece on John Cage in the Oct. 4 New Yorker (behind the wall) draws all kinds of connections, positioning Cage as an innovator in the music world similar to what was going on in visual arts and explaining that this is why he's always been accepted more readily by the latter crowd than the former. He also has an eye for the interesting detail, like this one:

By the end of the fifties, however, Cage's financial situation had improved, though not because of his music. After moving to Stony Point, he began collecting mushrooms during walks in the woods. Within a few year, he had mastered the mushroom literature and co-founded the New York Mycological Society. He supplied mushrooms to various élite restaurant, including the Four Seasons. In 1959, while working at the R.A.I. Studio of Musical Phonology, a pioneering electronic-music studio, in Milan, he was invited on a game show called "Lascia o Raddopia?"--a "Twenty One"-style program in which contestants were asked questions on a subject of their choice. Each week, Cage answered, with deadly accuracy, increasingly obscure questions about mushrooms. On his final appearance, he was asked to list "the twenty-four kinds of white-spore mushrooms listed in Atkinson." . . . Cage named them all, in alphabetical order, and won eight thousand dollars.

This is the same issue I'd skipped ahead to already to mention Denby's piece on Fincher, and I'd forgotten I'd dog-eared a page to remember a particular passage that annoyed me even more than the rest of it:

Sympathy for the devil has always been a productive mood for an artist, and particularly for Fincher; he could probably make a thrilling version of Milton's "Paradise Lost," with Satan reigning heroically in Hell.

By "thrilling," do you mean "blasphemous and wrong"? Never mind that Alex Proyas seems poised to beat him to the punch. It's not a good thing when Satan says, "better to reign in hell than serve in heaven," and he's not a hero, unless you think pride isn't a sin.

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2010-10-12T08:06:00.000-04:00

It's rare that I disagree with James Surowiecki, and it's not exactly like we're in a fight, but his column "In Praise of Inflation" (Sept. 27 New Yorker) kind of misses some stuff:

So why is inflation unpopular? The biggest reason, Shiller found, was simply that people believe higher prices reduce their standard of living and make them “poorer.” This is obviously true for people living on fixed incomes or off their savings, but for everyone else, as many studies have shown, inflation translates into higher incomes as well as higher prices, and it typically doesn’t have much of an effect either way on people’s standard of living. (After all, we’ve had sixty years of inflation in the postwar era, yet we’re much more prosperous than we were in 1950.) That’s not how it feels, though: myopia leads us to focus on how much more we have to pay, rather than on how much more we earn. Inflation also sets off other alarm bells. It often increases uncertainty, which most people are averse to, and, because it can be described as “weakening” a country’s currency, it affects morale. Shiller found that people associated rising inflation with dwindling social cohesion. There’s also a moral dimension: we connect inflation to a lack of discipline and failure to live within our means. The most striking thing about Shiller’s study was that no one surveyed mentioned any possible benefits of inflation, even though to Americans currently besieged by debts it would be a lifesaver.

He's half right, or maybe even more than that, but does inflation really still translate into higher incomes? Has crazy inflation in health-care costs increased anyone's salary but those who work in that industry? Or have you just felt a bigger and bigger bite of your paycheck gone? Banking on getting a raise is what's out of date, yo, which makes any inflation (delivery charges on pizza included) feel outrageous. Some of it's psychological and some of it's real.

Also, in the same issue, you can't read Schjeldahl on Pipilotti Rist, but it is one of the more beautiful pieces he's written lately. Witness:

Rist regularly invites appreciate contemplation of the body's nether regions sensuously but without overt sexuality, which would disrupt her work's socially inclusive, cordial charm. She diffuses eroticism to the separate senses and the thinking mind--not that thought is allowed much traction. There's a steady state of wonderment at having a body right here, right now, in a world of bodies and of things that bodies enjoy (water, flowers and fruit, other bodies, mud). Imagine, as Rist makes easy in the show's main room, being a sheep in a lush meadow entirely surrounded, as far as you can see, by what you like to eat. Life surely vitiates such sublime contentment most of the time, but numbness to it seems an optional tragedy.

This is sort of how I feel every time the tea olives start blooming and all I want to do is walk around with my nose wide open and smell like Ferdinand.

Movie Diary

2010-10-11T08:46:00.000-04:00

1) Black Sabbath: Band > movie. The first story in this horror anthology is actually good, about a ghost who haunts the woman who stole her ring. It's got a strong sense of the uncanny about it. But the rest of the movie is, per usual for Bava, pretty slow. I don't know why I keep watching his films other than that they always have a couple of really good shots. And it does look great. It's just paced like molasses.

2) Sometimes They Come Back: Jared liked this more than I did, but it explains a lot about its extreme lameness that it was made for TV. Also, I guess Stephen King is scared of trains. The idea's not so bad here, and, in theory, neither is the idea that it jumps into the story with both feet from the very beginning, but it's over the top in a way that doesn't really work. Even William Sanderson is wasted, sigh.

3) Tales from the Hood: So if you're wondering which of the two African American-helmed horror anthologies that came out in the mid-90s is the good one, it's this, not Def by Temptation, which is horrible. Not that this is genius by any means, but it has its moments, and its political content is heavy, which you'd think would be a bad thing but actually ends up making the film stronger. I mean, when you've got evil white cops named Strom and a racist southern senator named Duke Metzger, you know it's not really going for subtlety. It's also got Roger Guenveur Smith in a (too) small role.

4) Friday the 13th (2009): Well, right after I'd vowed to watch all of these, they promptly expired from Netflix instant, which, what is the sense of that in October, y'all? If there is any time when people are itching to watch Jason disembowel some teenagers, it is this time of year. Anyway, we still had this one on the DVR, and I have to say it was pretty effective and well done. Sure, it got negative reviews. Saying it's a good Friday the 13th movie is not the same thing as saying it's a good movie straight up. For one thing, it's supposed to be gross and unpleasant. The characters aren't supposed to be particularly appealing. Or developed, other than chestally. It doesn't have the vintage appeal of the early ones, in terms of fashion and nice, bright lighting, but it's smart enough to take important elements from them, such as Jason's mother worship and habit of bursting through windows. It also adds some new stuff, like giving our favorite hockey-masked antihero the ability to run, which you'd think would have gotten old by now, with all these speedy, athletic zombies, but is actually a little bit scary. Wikipedia tells me the creators didn't want this one to be self-referential, and I can appreciate that, but it might have been more awesome if the victims were aware of the legend because of the previous movies. I'm a sucker for meta-art, though. Derek Mears also does a nice job as Jason, and he appears to have thought about it a lot:

When Mears went in to audition for the role he was asked, "Why do we need an actor as opposed to just a guy in a mask?" As Mears explained to them, portraying Jason is similar to Greek Mask Work, where the mask and the actor are two separate entities, and, based on the scene, there will be variate combinations of mask and actor in the performance. According to Mears, it is all based on whether someone realizes that everything is made of energy. If an actor is thinking something then it will transfer to what the camera picks up.

Also, Travis Van Winkle is like the new William Zabka.

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2010-10-06T07:56:00.000-04:00

The style issue (Sept. 20) was pretty solid from cover to cover, with articles on Tavi (she's oddly normal), the dude behind J. Crew's success, and Mr. Dyson of vacuum cleaner fame (making things is good; your kids should be engineers; but a $400 fan may not do so well in the age of air conditioning). I meant to comment on the Mark Zuckerberg article much earlier, and it turns out the same bit I was going to quote appears in an article on him in Wired:

Sorkin said that creating Zuckerberg’s character was a challenge. He added that the college students were “the youngest people I’ve ever written about.” Sorkin, who is forty-nine, says that he knew very little about social networking, and he professes extreme dislike of the blogosphere and social media. “I’ve heard of Facebook, in the same way I’ve heard of a carburetor,” he told me. “But if I opened the hood of my car I wouldn’t know how to find it.” He called the film “The Social Network” ironically. Referring to Facebook’s creators, Sorkin said, “It’s a group of, in one way or another, socially dysfunctional people who created the world’s great social-networking site.”

This doesn't make me think about how I dislike Mark Zuckerberg (which I may or may not--he does seem like a dick, a connection that's made fairly clear by the trailer's use of Kanye West's "Power," drawing a line between two famously arrogant public figures; only I'd contribute that West is an artist, which doesn't give him the right to be a dick but does excuse it more than inventing Facebook [further sidebar: did you see that SNL performance? or both of them? Wow.]), but it does make me think about how I'm not such a big fan of Aaron Sorkin. That's probably not a fair judgment. I've seen maybe two episodes of The West Wing. I didn't really like Sports Night when it was on originally and haven't gone back to it. The stuff I have seen, movie-wise, isn't very impressive: The American President, Malice, A Few Good Men--these are not triumphs of subtle, intelligent writing. I'm not saying I don't want to see the movie. I like David Fincher okay. I'm not that picky about the movies I see. I'll watch Jesse Eisenberg in most anything. I'm just saying I don't buy that Sorkin is less of an asshole than Zuckerberg.

And speaking of Fincher, let's skip ahead to the Oct. 4 New Yorker, wherein David Denby slobbers all over him. Really, David Denby? You prefer the auteur who brought us Alien ^3 to Quentin Tarantino?

There’s no indication from his work that he has read much, or that he has lived much outside the movie world, yet he’s not, thank God, another director obsessed with the movie past, like the pop-scholastic Quentin Tarantino, whose virtuosity with camera, mood, and tone Fincher more than equals.

He then goes on to talk about Fincher's serial-killer obsession as though it's a mark of an artist, which I'm not saying it's not, but it's not really the usual example. Uggggh.

Viewing Diary

2010-10-01T08:15:00.000-04:00

1) Nighty Night, series 1: If you have been looking for the female Steve Coogan, it might be Julia Davis. This series isn't as well thought out as some of his, nor is it as consistently hilarious, but it certainly has its moments. Sociopathy in its more obvious forms doesn't usually make it into sitcoms, but she does a marvelous job at conveying blithe indifference to the needs and feelings of others. There's also something wonderful about the look of the thing, with its grimy small-town England settings and its dirty carpet. And the music is wonderful, with a bit of Ennio Morricone nicked for the titles tune and this fab song by a band called Marillion that I'd never heard of previously but that recurs as a sort of love theme.

2) Fanboys: Jared watched all of this; I only saw about half of it. It seemed slightly more amusing than Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back but mostly confirmed that I really don't care about Star Wars and, in a fight between Star Wars nerds and Star Trek nerds, I'm not sure I'm rooting for anyone. It's also probably one of the best movies Kristen Bell's been in, which is depressing.

3) I Spy: Wow. This came out in 2002! That's like eight years ago. Anyway, it was on HBO, and it actually turned out to be vaguely competent and amusing. Not enough that you should bother to seek it out or anything, but it's nice to see something sometimes that's a decently executed action-buddy comedy flick. What it has to do with the original TV show, I'm not sure, apart from a title and the fact that one partner's black and the other's white, and there's spying going on, but both Owen Wilson and Eddie Murphy do decent work here.

[sidebar: I just realized IMDB has changed their interface to make it damn near impossible to read. That site's been going downhill pretty steadily, while Wikipedia's ascended, and this might just be the self-administered deathblow. It makes me a little sad, in that IMDB was probably the first website I really loved.]

4) Eagle Eye: Dumb dumb dumb Skynet/Enemy of the State mashup but undeniably entertaining. Just don't stop to think about the machinations under the hood. One unintentional highlight is the number of times Shia LaBeouf's character is addressed by his first name, Jerry, which called this to mind:

Anyway, it's a shiny movie, and it moves fast. This kind of thing is usually done much worse.

5) Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan: One of the things watching Fanboys inspired was a desire to watch this, which I hadn't seen probably since it came out. I remembered being somewhat traumatizing by the horrible bug things Khan puts in people's ears, and that bit is still kind of scary. The rest not so much, although Khan's fashion choices reminded me a bit of Rodarte, with the shredding and the strips of fabric. There's not much to this, and it's surprisingly short, but Shatner and Nimoy are still pretty awesome.

6) Friday the 13th, Part 2: There is a massive leap in quality between the first one and the second one, which you can tell within the first few minutes, after the inevitable recap (enabling the filmmakers to create about ten minutes' less footage, in the kind of cynical move these movies have in spades). I may have to go back and snap a picture of the pajamaralls that begin the movie, for example, as I can't find them documented online and they are, frankly, amazing. They're followed in quick succession by an ice pick to the head (a better murder than any in the first film) and the title, which zooms up and explodes in a fireball. Bad. Ass. There's also some semblance of a real plot in this one, the use of child psychology as a tool against Jason, and at least two great shots (one of Jason hurrying through the woods, seen in the background through a window in his creepy shack; and the other the famous moments where he bursts through the window at the end--and this makes me think about how important windows are in all these movies and how you could write a brief paper on their function and symbolization of vulnerability), plus, nuh duh, it actually has Jason, which is much better than an old lady. My guess is that this is the best one, at least of the traditional early ones in the series (I have a fondness for Jason X).

7) Friday the 13th, Part III: Wherein the creators switch to Roman numerals for greater seriousness? This is way fun to watch in 2D just to yell out "3D!" whenever someone points something directly at the camera, SCTV-plate-of-pancakes-style, which happens a ton. It's got its moments, but it's not as effective, on the whole, as Part 2. It does, however, feature the hockey mask at last, and a more supernaturally strong Jason (although he's still surprisingly easy to defeat or put off). It also has a great performance of insanity at its conclusion. If you haven't figured it out, we're working our way through these, although we'll probably stop at Part VI, which I think is the last one that's streaming and possibly the last one before I start having seen a lot of them. Yay, October!

Brain Changes

2010-09-30T08:06:00.000-04:00

I'm still getting used to the changes having a baby wreaks in your brain, and one of those is that Intervention is a lot harder to watch than it used to be. I love that show, and while I don't have the DVR set to record it regularly, it's easy to get sucked in when it's on. It's important TV as a documentary of twenty-first-century sadness. All of which is to say that, while it was not easy to sit through before, the one I caught recently, which featured a girl who stripped for a living and was addicted to injecting oxycontin, was tougher than usual. That doesn't mean it didn't stop me from wondering why drug addicts continue to fall for the line that they're going to be part of a documentary on addiction, as opposed to realizing they're about to get intervened on, but when her mom talked about what a happy baby she was and the editors put up pictures of, indeed, a sweet baby, I guess I realized more viscerally that, yes, even the strippers injecting oxycontin were once babies, some of them from normal, loving homes. It's dumb even to type it because it's so obvious, but, with all the other things there are to worry about, I hadn't even gotten around to that one yet.

Read

2010-09-29T08:11:00.000-04:00

So in the August 30 New Yorker, there's also an article by Raffi Khatchadourian on the laughing guru, Madan Kataria (behind the wall), that contains the following:

Laughter is a funny thing. Even in the eyes of modern science, it remains mystifying, in part because it is so difficult to study. In the nineteenth century, scientists used a device called a magneto-electric machine to probe happy faces. More recently, they have taken blood and urine samples of people watching videos of the comedian Gallagher smashing watermelons or of other standup routines.

And so on and so forth. Anyway, I hope it wasn't that recently. And does having your blood and urine sampled while watching Gallagher videos really sound that hilarious?

One of the few things not behind the wall in this issue is Jane Mayer's long, scary article about David and Charles Koch. Or you could just read this Tom Tomorrow cartoon. But if you're looking for a Halloween fright, I'd recommend the article instead.

Also, in the name of not promoting my own originality while attempting to skewer someone else for having the same problem, I am not the only one who noticed David Musgrave's poem. Ogden Nashy as the title plus the work may be, it's still far from new.

On to the September 6 issue, which has wonderful pieces from John McPhee on golf (seriously, the man is a master of making things I find unutterably boring--geology, golf, fishing, trains--incredibly interesting; it's like a magic trick) and Carl Elliott on psychopathy, both of which are behind the wall. There's also Jill Lepore's review of books on the Great Migration, which is super interesting but contains the following fact that I still can't buy: "Today, more African-Americans live in the city of Chicago than in the state of Mississippi." Really? I'm guessing this has to do with how metropolitan areas are defined. Plus, Chicago pretty much has a bigger population than Mississippi. Yes, there was a great migration, and the demographics of the nation shifted, but the North is still surprisingly white every time I go there.

In the September 13 issue, I'd like to direct your attention to the story by Wells Tower, one of the 20 under 40 and, I'm beginning to see, one of my favorites among them. It feels fresh, unlike most of them. He's getting lots of attention, but I think he might deserve it. Also, is post-crash fiction a small genre you could build a class around? You could probably at least pick up enough examples for a lecture series.

OMJeans

2010-09-28T10:33:00.000-04:00

So this doesn't look that bad, right? As confirmed in the New Yorker's style issue, the Canadian tuxedo is actually in these days. Only you are missing the full horror in this long view. Even the detail shots don't really show it. Click here to know the truth and have your brain melted and your eyeballs burned.

Look, I am lazy and not great at putting together outfits. I like jeans. I am not super mature in my clothing choices. Still... no. Just... no.

Read

2010-09-23T08:08:00.000-04:00

I'm still reading the New Yorker. I'm just late on posting thoughts. But I keep dog-earing pages all the same.

Patricia Marx's piece on cars in the Aug. 16/23 issue isn't online, but it contained the fascinating detail that "historians partially attribute the failure of Ford's Edsel to the fact that its front grating looked too much like a pudendum." And Joan Acocella's article on Agatha Christie is likewise hidden but fabulous.

In the Aug. 30 issue, Ian Frazier goes back to Siberia and throws in as many interesting facts as he always does, including reports on the hunger of the prisoners once housed there:

In the gold-mining camps of the Kolyma region, farther east, some of the prisoners ate grass during the warmer months. Intellectuals, for unknown reasons, were more subject to that malady. People who ate grass generally did not live long. Varlam Shalamov, a writer who survived seventeen years in Kolyma, wrote about prisoners there during the war who ate half a barrel of machine grease from Lend-Lease before the guards drove them off with rifle shots. The prisoners had thought the machine grease might be butter; they said it tasted about as much like butter as American bread tasted like bread. They showed no ill effects afterward. In "The Gulag Archipelago," Solzhenitsyn tells of a work crew in Kolyma who were doing excavations when they came across a frozen-solid, perfectly preserved ancient stream, complete with prehistoric fish and salamanders. He said that a magazine of the Soviet Academy of Sciences reported that unfortunately these interesting specimens could not be studied, because the workers who unearthed them ate them on the spot.

One thing that's worth noting here, too, is the difference in Frazier's take on Stalin in this article:

...somehow Stalin gets a pass. People know he was horrible, but he has not yet been declared horrible officially. Hitler's minions were tried and convicted and (some of them) hanged, but the only trials examining the crimes of the Stalin regime were the absurd and obscene show trials he staged to give himself a cover for murdering more....During recent American elections, TV and other commentators sometimes quoted Stalin's remark "It's not the people who vote that count--it's the people who count the votes." As a comparison, is it possible to imagine under any commentator under any circumstances quoting a witty remark of Hitler's?...No doubt he benefits from the camouflage provided by the Russian leaders who went before; Hitler's crimes seemed unique in European history, but Stalin could be seen as another bloody tsar...

And Adam Gopnik's in his review of some new books on Winston Churchill:

There was a fine difference between Stalin and Satan, and Churchill grasped it. In Antony Beevor’s history of the Battle of Stalingrad, the brutality and waste of the Stalinist regime—prisoners left to die in the snow, political commissars ordering the execution of innocents, the dead of the great purges haunting the whole—is sickening. But the murderousness of the Nazi invaders—children killed en masse and buried in common graves—is satanic. It is the tragedy of modern existence that we have to make such distinctions. Yet that does not mean that such distinctions cannot be made, or that Churchill did not make them.

Those last two sentences are important ones and worthy of praise.

Viewing Diary

2010-09-20T08:02:00.000-04:00

Lord, y'all, I am sorry I've been slipping on this. Anyway...

1) 42nd Street: One of the few canonical musicals I'd never seen, and it's both better and less good than you'd expect. The tone is snappy and appealing, kind of His Girl Friday-ish, and the musical numbers are catchy and well-choreographed, but the movie's too short and there's not much plot. I'm sure it suffered from being watched over several sittings, but it's not as great an example of Busby Berkeley as some of his later work. It's also weird in that all the songs are incorporated into the "let's put on a show" plot, but the kaleidoscopically filmed dance numbers are inherently cinematic--that is, there's no way you'd appreciate them if you were actually seeing the show.

2) Night of the Creeps: This actually deserves to be remade. The ideas aren't bad at all (zombie frat kids), and there are some clever aspects and good tributes to old B-movies, but the execution is pretty terrible. No room for second takes, for example. I'd think that someone could revamp the script a little and turn it into something pretty good. Also, did Peter Jackson get his lawnmower idea from this movie?

3) Friday the 13th (1980): That's right. I'd never seen the original, just some of the many many sequels. But now it seems like they're all streaming on Netflix, so I'll work my way through them. For a classic of the genre, though, it kind of sucks... You'd think it would be miles above the later ones, but the presence of actual Jason makes them better. The climactic fight, which (spoiler alert) features an old lady and a weak teenage girl wrestling pathetically is one of the least suspenseful things ever. Occasionally a little scary but only in the sense that being out in a cabin in the woods is a little scary, at least to my own urban self.

4) Mother: Oh, Bong Joon-ho, you are kind of my hero at the moment, cinematically. This movie is fairly astonishing, just as The Host was, and although it could not be more different in most ways, they both tap into a kind of primal vein of emotion that ends up surprising you in the watching. This is rather a lot like Almodovar, in its mix of tragedy, some strange comedy, and a deep connection to the importance of familial relationships. Would I have appreciated this as much before I had my own child? I'm not sure, but it's possible. Anyway, it's excellent.

5) Date Night: Lazy and dumb but not unamusing, entirely due to Tina Fey and Steve Carrell, who manage to get off some good lines.

Movie Diary

2010-09-08T20:41:00.000-04:00

1) The Red Riding Trilogy: So, I knew I remembered a rave review in the New Yorker for these three films made for English television, but for some reason I thought it was by Anthony Lane, not David Denby. It kind of makes more sense the way it is. He's right to point out how beautiful they are and how dark. These are three bleak movies, and the depiction of police brutality, while no doubt accurate, calls to mind our own country's recent crimes. It's worth the trouble to get through the Yorkshire accents, and while there are flaws here and there (relying on the murder and assault of children is a little too easy to create shock value) there are also excellent performances and atmosphere like crazy. The three are streaming on Netflix, and if you find yourself drawn to true-crime stuff, you would do well to check them out, not because of their tenuous connection to real murders but because they produce a similar feeling of fascination mixed with nausea.

2) Dad's in Heaven with Nixon: Not uninteresting, in the way that pretty much any documentary is, but this doesn't really do more than present a guy's family as inherently interesting. Yes, he has an autistic brother who turns out also to be artistic, and he has a history of alcoholism and anger and early death. It's quite possible his dad killed himself (although the family never brings this up as a possibility--due to life insurance?). I'm not saying you shouldn't watch it, but don't go out of your way.

3) Alice Neel: This, on the other hand, is much better, not only a good subject (the fascinating, rude portrait painter who lived a life of ups, downs, tragedy, and love affairs), but a smart refusal to romanticize her. It's not down on the life of the artist, and it recognizes her genuine achievements (being as much of a jerk as Jackson Pollock was a feminist gesture), but it has clear eyes. She ended up somewhat acclaimed, with a big show at the Whitney, but she also lived on welfare for many years, and her relationships with her children seem to have been somewhat (and understandably) strained. Probably worth watching even if you're not that into art.

4) Death Race: Not all that bad, although sadly disappointing if compared to the original, which has so many things this dour remake does not: cheerfulness, a sense of humor, coherent camerawork. There's a lot of plot here, which isn't necessary. The reason we watch is not to see a narrative played out but to watch cars get crushed and explode and people do likewise. There's plenty of that, but you do have to sit through rather a lot of exposition, like watching the movie sections in a video game. Plus, there's Joan Allen for an inexplicable reason, with a tight doll face, not being very convincing and certainly no Mary Woronov. Jason Statham is, however, his usual straightforward, watchable self, and while the cinematographer seems to be epileptic at times, it's not as annoying and dumb as I expected it would be. Big praise!

Soulless Bastards

2010-08-27T16:30:00.000-04:00

Who are you folks who are celebrating the stepping down of Loran Smith? Robots, clearly, who feel football on the radio must consist only of useful information. People who are embarrassed by their roots, perhaps. Folks who have had their senses of humor ground down into nothingness. It is a sad, sad day. I may be sadder about this than I was about Munson retiring, but it's hard to think of one without the other. The eternal pessimist and the eternal optimist.

Really?

2010-08-26T07:56:00.000-04:00

Wired had this illustrated, but I can't find the little blurb story online. Anyway, it's part of an exhibition called Technocraft: Design in the Age of Individuality. Great stuff in theory. In practice, who the hell cut holes in this Eames chair? And had he/she never heard of a booster seat? Sure, it looks kind of snazzy, in a sloppy way, but that's a $499 kiddie chair. Even if I weren't somewhat offended by the idea of the thing (and I am, despite understanding the desire to have things be stylish for your child), I'd be offended by the fact that someone paid nearly $500 for a chair that he/she then hacked, literally. It's one thing to hack Ikea. It's another thing entirely to mess with Charles and Ray.

Movie Diary

2010-08-24T07:52:00.000-04:00

1) Troll 2 and Best Worst Movie: It's a handy coincidence that Best Worst Movie happened to be showing right around the time we finally got down to watching Troll 2, which is pretty much as terrible as advertised. It bears strong similarities to The Room, in that, often, actors in a scene together could almost have been filmed entirely separately and then spliced digitally next to one another. Not to mention its bizarre vehemently anti-vegetarian content. But Best Worst Movie really transcends its subject matter to become a film about cult/bad movies in general, the people who love them, the nature of acting as a profession (and filmmaking, more broadly), and how politeness works in different areas of the country and the world. It's nearly as quotable as its ostensible subject, too, and it's extremely smart in the way it's put together to create a narrative. A lot of people who make low-budget documentaries don't have this gift. They just sort of film some stuff and slap it together, assuming the content is all they need, but it's not, and it's nice to see someone who knows how to do it. High-concept will only get you so far, and Best Worst Movie knows how to reveal. The moment when, in Margo Prey's house, the viewer becomes cognizant of the weird cat painting on the wall in the background is beautifully followed up on by a shot of more cat art and, finally, by her turning around to get something, upon which you realize she has an airbrushed cat on the back of her shirt. That's talent. It's also a lovely film in that it realizes how small its audience is, and it doesn't make fun of them, but it knows that there are limitations in the world. The cult of Troll 2 is not a large one, and even it is a subset of the world of cult movies, which is also not large. The looks people give George Hardy both after and before the screening in his hometown of Alexander City when they've either realized what an awful movie it is or he's trying, actively, to sell them on the idea that a bad movie can be fun make you realize, once again, that if you like this kind of thing you are by far in the minority. It also shows a kind of rage at the lack of success of the film and the careers of various people involved with it. Realizing your limitations is not fun. Yet for all this pathos, it's a very funny movie and far, far better than it had to be.

2) Babies: It's like an exercise in juxtaposition, a reinvigoration of Eisenstein's theories about film editing. You create the plot and the statements as you watch, based on what gets edited next to what. It's also beautiful. If you're not into babies, you probably wouldn't like it, but I find myself into babies these days. Comparing and contrasting is something parents do constantly, so this is like an hour and a half of that. Also, I might want to live in a yurt.

3) The Ghost Writer: So there's perhaps a bit of subtext about extradition here, due to Polanski's own situation, but that works to the film's advantage, making it richer and more faceted. Ewan McGregor is a marvelous weak coward, and the ambiguity that absolutely every moment has (down to the end, which reinforces a strongly held belief of mine about proper pedestrianism but is otherwise up in the air wrt intentionality and what it means) makes it much more interesting than just a political thriller. There are ghosts everywhere, not just the kind the title first denotes, and there is a real spookiness to the atmosphere of the whole thing, a cold, clammy creeping horribleness that is Polanski's stock in trade.

Movie Diary

2010-08-18T08:20:00.000-04:00

1) Ben Hur (1925): On the whole, I'd say this is better than the 1959 version, in that it's at least shorter and slightly less dull. It still drags a good bit post-chariot race, though, which is to be expected what with the lepers and such. The neat things about it are the early use of color (some scenes seem to be hand-painted) and the energy in the first half (including some awesome pirates who fashion a snake bomb--yeah!). The chariot race itself is good but goes on way too long. It's a bit like NASCAR: lots of going in a circle, waiting for a crash. Still, if you're going to pick one version of Ben Hur to watch, I'd go with this one.

2) Kick-Ass: I sort of expected not to like this very much, but I was compelled to see it anyway. Why? Well, my boy Nic Cage, obvs, and even if I hadn't liked the rest of the movie, I would have been vastly entertained by his strange Adam West take on the role, but it turns out I did kind of like it, even though I can see why other people didn't. If I remember, the New Yorker review, by Anthony Lane, made an extended child pornography analogy that really seemed far more David Denby in his puritanism, and that point is, unfortunately, kind of valid, if a bit overblown. It's annoying when a film that goes out of its way to be disturbing actually is (and when it's not, but that's another story), perhaps because I tend to think of myself as not particularly sensitive, but this is a little bit upsetting, mostly because it's still hard to watch a fully grown man beating up a small girl. Anyway. It's mostly pretty good, stylishly filmed, fairly funny, etc., and there are some lovely moments, like Aaron Johnson and Christopher Mintz-Plasse grooving to "Crazy" in the car. I'll see the sequel.

3) April Fool's Day: It's up and then down and then finally up in terms of how good a movie this is, but considering it's a horror film from the 1980s, I think we can agree that it's not only good for its genre but actually pretty good in general. Smart ending, too, and occasionally a little creepy. Plus the cast of preppies makes one rather happy when they all get horribly murdered.

4) Sleepwalkers: Wow. Really terrible, even by the standards of 1990s Stephen King adaptations, but, as Joe Bob Briggs would point out, very slightly worth it for the corn fu.

Movie Diary

2010-08-13T07:39:00.000-04:00

1) Grey Gardens (2009): This might actually be Drew Barrymore's best performance. The acting in general is really pretty top notch, and tons of people (Jessica Lange included) won Emmys and stuff, which they deserved. But for all that, what does it add up to? It's interesting to learn more about the Beales (I always want to do that), but is it a better film than the Maysles brothers' documentary? How could it be? It's just a very careful recreation. The end, too, is a bit sappy, and the film doesn't show quite enough of the two Edies making one another miserable. It's too gentle. Again, it's good, but what would be the point of watching this rather than the real thing? Squeamishness?

2) Fatal Attraction: Despite its ubiquity in pop culture, I'd never actually seen this Adrian Lyne thriller, so I managed to cross it off my list this past week. The question, really, is why Michael Douglas's character is attracted to Glenn Close's in the first place, and I suppose that's why he's punished. It's relatively effective as a movie, with its all-white sets and its implicit denigration of Manhattan as a dangerous place, not for families. And it kind of has a lot in common with Cape Fear, which Jared recently watched the original of. In terms of fight or flight, both films end up coming down to fight. It's clearly a human anxiety that the only way you're going to be able to get rid of some problems is to kill the person causing them, or maybe it's a secret human desire and these movies are a kind of wish fulfillment.

Read

2010-08-06T07:51:00.000-04:00

There's one more piece in the July 26 New Yorker that's kind of interesting, and that's Jonathan Franzen's "Emptying the Skies," about songbird hunting in Europe. Of course, it's behind the pay wall, but it makes an interesting pair with Elizabeth Kolbert's briefer article about overfishing, in the following issue. If Franzen had focused more on the overhunting aspect and less on the "aren't songbirds wonderful" aspect, I might have been a bigger fan of his piece. As is, he makes lots of good points, but you kind of have to like birds to get totally on board, especially as he makes an effort to eat ambelopoulia and ends up burying most of his dinner outside the restaurant. I mean, I am not entirely un-tender-hearted, but it strikes me that he is moving toward vegetarianism, and that's fine, but that's not exactly what one signs up for in reading the article. Kolbert's piece, on the other hand, is equally focused on the devastation humans do to the planet, but she doesn't think bluefin tuna are adorable. The problem is not that we eat them but that we eat too many of them.

Also, Kelefa Sanneh's piece on Brad Paisley is wonderful. And super smart.

Its sensibility ["He Didn't Have to Be"] was not rural but suburban, and in that sense it symbolizes much of what drives some listeners nuts about modern country.

The genre--so goes the argument--was once ruled by stoic, screwed-up old troubadours . . . . Now it's ruled by sensitive guys like Paisley, who sing about marital bliss and sit on their luxury tour buses, watching iPhone videos of their children.

. . . This is bad history--country music has always been, proudly, a form of show business, and not for nothing is its top prize called "entertainer of the year"--but it's a seductive narrative, and Paisley understands why some disenchanted fans miss the mythical good old days. . . . But he also recognizes that, in the post-Garth era, the music has thrived partly because of its willingness to chronicle domestic bliss in plainspoken language. This is a big and lucrative niche--and, by definition, an unhip one, because it suggests that respectable suburban family life can be pretty good. "That's where country music has found its place in modern society," he says--the genre tells stories that other genres won't or can't.

There's a lot more of this kind of insight.

Also, read Atul Gawande's piece on hospice care. It's important.

Viewing Diary

2010-08-04T16:08:00.000-04:00

1) Slings and Arrows, season 1: Not only is this show smart about people and their interactions, but, unlike pretty much everything else out there that takes Shakespeare as a topic or major component, it doesn't dumb down its inspiration. Instead, whenever there are scenes that involve the text, it goes into enthusiastic explication, not really feeling the need to paraphrase. This is rare! And nice. Way to go, Mark McKinney. Am vastly looking forward to watching seasons 2 and 3.

2) Zack and Miri Make a Porno: Uuuugh. I thought that this was supposed to be better Kevin Smith, and he did, in fact, recruit at least three talented actors this time around (Justin Long is really good in his brief bit, which he transcends nicely), but that only makes you feel worse for them. The idea is interesting, and the emotions are occasionally real-ish, but it's so sloppy and lazy and poorly done in a million ways that it just squanders all the good stuff that's in it. Plus it makes Craig Robinson unfunny, which is sad. I hereby resolve not to watch Cop Out. Or to try not to.

3) Aliens in the Attic: You could do worse. This does not rely on potty humor, unlike the preceding entry. Did I mention someone's face gets shit on in Zack and Miri? Really. Anyway, if you wanted to talk about something interesting in this movie, you could pair it with Crank (et al) and Elephant and discuss the influence of video games on contemporary film. The mind-and-body control the aliens have works through a controller, and the creepy twins who spend all their time gaming have a major advantage in being able to work it well immediately.

4) Wanted and Bangkok Dangerous: These two sort of belong together, not only because we watched them back to back, but because they're both about assassins. Objectively, there's no question the former is a far better film--much more stylish and inventive visually, with some small effort put into the script and such--but I didn't enjoy it that much more. For one thing, it doesn't feature Nic Cage throwing a banana at an elephant. Bangkok Dangerous is pretty terrible. It's oddly dated (it's a remake of a Thai film from 2000) and it feels like the early American Jackie Chang movies, but it has weird charm, like its scenes of the most awkward blind date ever, between an American hit man and a deaf Thai pharmacist, communicating in rudimentary sign language over dinner. Wanted was indeed kind of fun, as I figured, but more effort should have been spent on trimming it down and making it smarter. McAvoy's giant plan at the end, for example, doesn't really seem well thought-out, and isn't Angelina Jolie's character kind of a religious fanatic? But it's enjoyable when they jump cars onto things, and even though McAvoy's better with his real accent, he's still a good leading man.

6) Hot Tub Time Machine: This movie suffers from just about everything I've complained about above, in that it's both dumb and lazy, but it manages to transcend those problems somehow. I haven't figured out how, exactly. It's not smart-dumb. It's dumb-dumb in a lot of ways. And it's mean and homophobic. But it is also very amusing at times, perhaps in its commitment to just how mean Rob Corddry's character is or perhaps in its flaunting of its own stupidity and laziness. I found it oddly charming. Also, it does not make Craig Robinson un-funny.

Publications

2010-08-04T08:07:00.000-04:00

New Grub Notes addressing Graze and Old City Diner.

And here is the second country singles column.

Read

2010-08-02T07:54:00.004-04:00

I forgot to mention William Finnegan's fabulous comment on illegal immigration in the July 26 New Yorker, which points out some really crucial things, like, oh, in this paragraph:

In fact those numbers are surprising: they are sharply down, according to the Border Patrol—by more than sixty per cent since 2000, to five hundred and fifty thousand apprehensions last year, the lowest figure in thirty-five years. Illegal immigration, although hard to measure, has clearly been declining. The southern border, far from being "unsecured," is in
better shape than it has been for years—better managed and less porous. It has been the beneficiary of security-budget increases since September 11th, which have helped slow the pace of illegal entries, if not as dramatically as the economic crash did. Violent crime, though rising in Mexico, has fallen this side of the border: in Southwestern border counties it has dropped more than thirty per cent in the past two decades. It's down in Senator McCain's Arizona. According to F.B.I. statistics, the four safest big cities in the United States—San Diego, Phoenix, El Paso, and Austin—are all in border states.

Here's a question, though: why does the URL contain the words "taco talk"?

Read

2010-07-29T07:00:00.019-04:00

I'm not actually behind on the New Yorker. I'm caught up. I just haven't been writing about it. Kelefa Sanneh's stuff continues to be awesome, including his boxing article (not free) in the July 26 issue. But in that article, it's mentioned that Chris Brown is singing the national anthem to open a big boxing match. Really, Chris Brown? You're going out of your way to be associated with fisticuffs? Is that a good PR move?

Also, I have not yet finished Karen Russell's short story in the same issue (which you can read), but it is g.d. incredible. She is my most favorite choice in the "20 under 40" thing they did a couple months back, and I have been eagerly anticipating when they'll run her piece. Well, no disappointment. I mean, read this paragraph alone:

At birth, his skull had looked like a little violin, cinched and silent. The doctor who had uncorked the baby from his dead mother in the chilly belly of the New York Foundling Hospital had begun shaking him to a despondent meter, thinking, Ah, what a truly rude awakening! Because this tiny baby—holding his breath, refusing to wiggle—was failing at the planet’s etiquette. He did not blink. He was resolute and blue in the doc’s blood-soaked arms.

Also, if there's one article I want to direct you to that I'm not going to forget about, it's Tad Friend's piece on Steve Carell. Too bad it's behind the pay wall. Anyway, it certainly makes me like Carell no less than I did, but it also kind of explains the current trend of improvisational comedies and provides a window into why this is a trend and, by example, why I'm not such a big fan of it. That's not to say it doesn't produce gold, but I am a fan of the well-crafted 2.5-minute pop song much more than the extended, sloppy, occasionally brilliant jam, and that holds true when it comes to comedy nearly as much as with music. Yay for scripts.

Viewing Diary

2010-07-26T08:02:00.000-04:00

Continued...

The Blue Dahlia: While I enjoyed this quite a bit, it really hasn't stuck with me all that well, despite some interesting images (those big blue flowers people keep plucking the petals off of). The plot is, unsurprisingly, convoluted, and while I love Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake, it's not the Alan-Laddiest and Veronica Lakiest of their roles.

Darius Goes West: I know. Super late to the party. It's fun to watch and a great story, but I wish it were better constructed as a documentary. It seems mostly reminiscing even as the story's not over yet, and I don't mean the story in real life. I mean the specific story the movie presents of Darius's journey to the West Coast and back.

Ikiru: Why don't I just sit down and watch all the Kurosawa? Because I'm an idiot? Ostensibly boring plot (bureaucrat discovers he has cancer and his life has been a waste) but wonderful execution, from the drunken stumbling around through pachinko parlors (amazing camerawork) to the jockeying of his fellow bureaucrats. I never would have guessed it would have so much in common with Parks and Recreation.

Dances with Wolves: I'd never gotten around to this. The first two hours or so are pretty good stuff (if, indeed, flawed in the classic "white dude's vision" way), kind of in the way the middle section of Castaway is interesting. It's like a couple of hours' worth of problem solving. But then it gets very obvious at the end, and the other cavalry officers are rather excessively villainous (although probably realistically so). It's not bad, though. I like K-Cost with a stache.

Yankee Doodle Dandy: If you just think of Jimmy Cagney as a tough guy, this is the flip side, in that he's a singing, dancing tough guy. It's sort of a silly movie, the kind of biopic completely shaped by its subject, so it's not like there's a whole lot of drama or any portrayal of him in an unflattering light, and I suppose the musical numbers go on a bit long, but it's also extremely enjoyable. It's a lot of fun to watch Cagney caper all over the place, and it's fast-paced and committed to entertainment.

Big Love, season 3: I continue to enjoy this show.

17 Again: Zac Ephron completely creeps me out, and yet I think his strange, awkward manner contributes greatly to this movie being pretty watchable. Maybe I'm starting to like him as an actor, and maybe he can use his secret creepiness to good effect if he gets the right role. Not a very good movie, though.

The Crazies (2009): Jared's point was good, which is that it's sort of a more interesting movie at the beginning, when it's about the whole town rather than just about a small group of people trying to survive, but I still think this was well executed. There are few moments of wincing in irritation at people's stupidity, which is darn good for this kind of "run and hide" movie. It's not too gross, the scares are decent, etc. It doesn't get up into the level of awesomeness of, e.g., The Descent, but considering the kind of crap I will watch in this movie category, I'd give it a thumb's up.

State of Play (2009): It's what you might expect. Most of the important material of the original slotted into a much smaller space and with some silly ramped-up drama thrown in. Which is not to say it's bad. It's fairly classy, and the plot remains good. It's just that some of the extraneous material is what makes the original interesting, and there's no McAvoy.

Quantum of Solace: Shiny and fast, but damn you Paul Greengrass for making this kind of filmmaking acceptable. I really like to be able to see some of what's happening, especially when they've clearly spent quite a bit of time choreographing some good action scenes. I don't need to feel like I'm in it. I just want to see it. Also, I don't seem to remember this much plot in the old Bond movies (grumble grumble). I don't want to have to keep track of people's names. Just show me the baddies and punch them. Good explosions, though, and it's a very attractive movie.

Land of the Lost: We only watched about half of this before deciding we can use our time better. Lazy and dumb.

Andrei Rublev: Oh my lord. This took forever. And it's slow and Russian and at least somewhat incomprehensible, plus they actually kill a horse onscreen. But all that said, it's totally worth the investment of time and energy, which many things are not. I'm not really a big Tarkovsky fan, but there really is something incredible about a lot of the images, and while the (virtually nonexistent) plot won't stick with me, some of the camerawork and scenes will.

True Blood, season 2: The only explanation I can come up with for how much I like this show, other than my appetite for trash, is that Alan Ball is absolutely brilliant at pacing. I'm super impressed with the way he keeps you watching by ending each episode at just the right point. Also, the idea of a vampire virgin whose hymen keeps growing back due to her supernatural ability to heal? Amazing and new.

The Rocker: Not terrible and well intentioned, but this is still a total failure, considering how many funny people are in it. The plot is completely perfunctory, and there is loads of terrible physical comedy. I appreciate a good pratfall, but you're not going to get away with a lazy one, and this movie is full of them. I wouldn't bother.

Planet 51: This is mid-range, with some amusing jokes, but it ain't no Pixar. That said, I spent most of my time watching it trying to figure out why the female aliens wear skirts but the male aliens don't wear pants. I mean, obviously it's to make them cute by emasculatizing them, but where is the genitalia of this species? It's possible they have no sense of shame, but that doesn't seem to be the case, and, anyway, practical considerations abound for pants as well. Anyway. Mysterious.

The Ballad of Narayama: Wowsers. This is another one where the plot description sounds awful: Japanese village experiences permanent state of famine, which means they abandon their old people to starve on a mountain. But that neglects to mention that it is oddly hilarious, despite considerable cruelty, including a dead baby dumped in a paddy. It's a pretty amazing movie, actually, and it has incredibly well done subtitles, which include notes on what some words mean and color-coding if there's overlapping dialogue. Imamura intersperses a lot of beautifully shot nature footage, too, which reflects the pursuits of the humans on either side of it and sets up a parallel. You should totally see this!

Publication

2010-07-22T07:42:00.001-04:00

Reviewed Flight. It's not bad.

Viewing Diary

2010-07-21T07:41:00.000-04:00

Okay. Let's get this a lot of this out of the way in one big and yet far too brief post. Since BB was born, I've watched the following:

Fanny and Cesar, completing Marcel Pagnol's trilogy. And, yes, they were just as good as the first one (Marius). In fact, they might have been the best thing I watched the whole time, which is kind of sad that they came so early. Anyway, you should watch these. They're kind of warm and tear-jerking without being obvious about it or stupid, and they're basically just totally charming and make one think about family and such.

No Way to Treat a Lady: Starring George Segal and Rod Steiger. The former is a cop and the latter a serial killer who's a master of disguise. It paired nicely with Experiment in Terror, as both feature Lee Remick. Both are good, but Experiment in Terror is better, in super-crisp black and white, and Remick gets more to do in that one, although the plot is seemingly less interesting. There's something shiveringly alive about those films from the late 50s and early 60s, when directors were just starting really to push boundaries and figure out what they could get away with (see, e.g., Elevator to the Gallows).

Whatever Works: Okay, so Woody Allen's a parody of himself and this isn't nearly as good as his recent foreign experiments, and I can see how it's insulting to Southerners and, indeed, anyone not from New York, but nonetheless I enjoyed Larry David in it and I thought it had kind of a lovely argument in favor of tolerance.

Iris: Meh. Sad and all that and a decent bio-pic but not really very interesting.

The Burmese Harp: God, that title just sounds so boring and so does the plot description and of course it's a war movie, like all the classics you're supposed to see, but this was astonishingly accessible, especially if you compare it to something like Woman in the Dunes, which is much more of an art film. The narrative is easy to follow, the characters are totally identifiable, etc. There is rather a lot of singing.

Chocolate: And thus we finish up the only film from Tarantino's top 8 of the past year that we hadn't seen. It's worth persevering through the first 15 minutes, which are sort of terrible (to the point where I actually wondered if they were a joke or a film within the film or something), because after that it gets more interesting. Mostly, it's about JeeJa Yanin, who plays the main girl and is a pretty astonishing martial-arts star, and I can see why Tarantino likes it, as it's a) feminist and b) about the power of movies to alter our lives. Seeing her imitate Bruce Lee through her body language is awesome, and while the movie is mostly just a series of fight scenes, they're well choreographed.

Arrested Development, seasons 2 and 3: A bit late on these, obvs, but they were perfect to watch with a newborn baby and amazingly entertaining.

Libeled Lady: The problem with having seen all the great screwball comedies is that you've seen all of them. I thought this might be one I'd missed, and it's not bad, but it's not as good as I hoped. William Powell is pretty reliably awesome, and it's nice to see Spencer Tracy so young, but if you're hoping for an unseen Philadelphia Story it's not that.

A Serious Man: This I'm still thinking about. It's fascinatingly theological and rather dark but at the same time it's all there in the trailer, just in a shorter, sped-up version. The main surprise is that there is no surprise.

A Letter to Three Wives: Big thumbs up. If you were wondering about that weird Simpsons episode toward the end of last season in which Moe writes a letter to Homer, Lovejoy, and Apu saying he's run off with one of their wives (I'm just kidding--I know none of y'all watch that show anymore), it was based on this movie, which is probably underappreciated. It's just classic drama and well executed, and it's got some rants about the radio as popular entertainment that sound awfully familiar wrt TV.

Brian's Song: I'd never seen this before. It's awfully comedic for a movie that's famous for making dudes cry, which was nice. Very much a TV movie but entertaining all the same, and not just for how dated it is.

Sounder: Yeah, I guess this was good but a little boring and predictable

Nosferatu: Another one to check off the list. I've seen clips, and I've seen the Werner Herzog version and Shadow of the Vampire and learned about it in film classes, but I'd never seen the whole movie, which holds up very well, even if it does have rather too many scenes that consist of showing someone reading and then showing a page of a book about vampires to provide exposition. Not very scary but atmospheric for sure.

Confessions of a Shopaholic: What? I can watch both this and the above. It's pretty dumb, but it sure is shiny. I wish P.J. Hogan would be a little pickier about what he directs.

My Life as a Dog: Ditto for Lasse Hallstrom, I guess. This is about a kabillion times better than crap like Chocolat. It's weird and funny and cute and sad, and it makes you want to let your kids run around with no supervision (while at the same time not). Plus, I'm glad I have a girl, rather than boys.

Weeds, seasons 3, 4, and 5: This show is just so darn watchable. I know its tricks. It's getting old. It's so invested in shocking that it eventually becomes annoying. But it's half an hour! What can I not put up with for half an hour? And it amuses me.

The Earrings of Madame de...: Ooh, it's lovely. It might make you a bit dizzy during the long wooing/dancing scene, but what a triumph of style. It's very Guy de Maupassant in that the story is a bit arch and artificial but then, despite the detachment you think you have, it all becomes very sad and real (emotionally).

The River: Bizarro Jean Renoir film in color, in English, and in India. It's way more like a Michael Powell than anything else, although everyone is sort of amazingly unattractive and not made less so by the Technicolor. Little happens, but it's memorable anyway.

The Birth of a Nation: Another spoonful of medicine that had to be taken, and this one didn't turn out to taste like candy. It's long, and it feels long. The first hour contains interminable battle scenes that one can barely see--puffs of smoke in the darkness. And then, as it gets slightly more entertaining, it also becomes increasingly insanely racist. Know that that aspect of it is not exaggerated. It is important, indeed, but I seem to remember vastly preferring Intolerance.

Shutter Island: That's your big twist? Marty, are you just slacking off now that you have your Oscar? Yes, he does a better job directing this than most people would have, but it could almost just as well have been Simon West. It looks beautiful, but I am generally irritated by movies about crazy people or movies that could all be a dream or a hallucination, and this was no exception.

Cube 2: Hypercube: Um, not as good as Cube and very stupid in many ways, and the acting is awful, but still probably more interesting than it had any right to be.

The Big Parade: Now this, in contrast to the D.W. Griffith above, I thought was going to be a slog, and it turned out to be a delight. Yes, it's a silent movie about World War I that features a soldier losing a leg, but it's mostly a comedy, and it's easy to see why it was the biggest money-maker at the movies until Gone with the Wind came out. You can't get this from Netflix, but I would really encourage you, if you like movies and don't flip at the idea of a silent one, to seek it out. There is one montage moment in particular that kind of took my breath away.

Bound for Glory: They could have just called this "Woody Guthrie was kind of an a-hole." Not that it's bad. It's pretty good, if a little long and loose, and David Carradine is great. It's just that, well, he was.

The Blue Angel: I assume this is mostly notable for its being Dietrich's first role, and she's certainly a force onscreen, but it's not much of a movie. Little happens. I'm guessing her later stuff, which she got as a result of being seen in this, is better.

Scream of Fear: A very early Hammer film. This is so the same plot as a million other movies from this era (and an easy one on which I'm sure feminist theory papers have been written): young woman is made to think she's insane. But it's stylish and short and well done, and it has a kind of gleeful nastiness at the end that leaves it on a very strong note.

The Beast with Five Fingers: Peter Lorre movie that kind of has a lot in common with the preceding. Not awesome but worth watching.

More later.

Publication

2010-07-14T08:23:00.000-04:00

Hey, I wrote a feature on the wonderful Liana Krissoff and her new canning book. It's nice to work on something that comes easily because there's so much to say.

FOs

2010-07-08T12:47:00.000-04:00

Still nothing for BB, who is a hot-natured little bundle and wouldn't wear anything knitted anyway, but I made the above for Baby Hammy, who I figure can be fairly punk rock whether girl or boy. The colors aren't showing up great in the photo, but they're a very dark purple and a silvery gray. I grabbed a skull chart from one pattern and used the same one piece pattern as I did for the previous cardigan, only sans stripes. Also used cotton yarn this time around, which is nice, soft, and washable.

And then I made this bear for my cousin's new baby, which is no doubt still bigger than she is. It's from a book a friend gave me of knitted toys. Lots of seaming, which isn't my favorite, but the results were cute, even if the pattern seemed mystifying before completing it.

Finally, Loretta got a dinosaur for her first birthday, from the same book of knitted toys. The face is a little retarded looking, but it's still pretty cute. More projects in the works. Lots of babies.

Publication

2010-07-06T09:26:00.000-04:00

Here's that new project I mentioned. It's a country singles column for Artist Direct called "Right Side of the Tracks." I'm having fun.

Checking in

2010-06-25T13:02:00.000-04:00

I know in theory I should have a lot more time to do this bloggy thing, but newborns are tiring, even when they're generally angelic. I have been watching movies and TV and knitting and doing things of that sort. I just haven't been writing about it. Also, some computer issues that may preclude regular blogging a while longer.

I should point out, however, that you should probably be watching Bravo's Work of Art, not least because it featured people talking very seriously about two concrete anuses that featured in one sculpture and referring, with no hint of humor, to "the buttholes." Thank you, television!

Also, I learned from Top Chef that, when someone says "shitballs," you only have to bleep the first half of it.

Flagpole column is back, as is that associated blog (for which I get paid), and I may have a project upcoming with Artist Direct about which more later if it pans out.

I have spent far more time ogling this cute face than using my brain, although I am curious if being a parent ever becomes real and normal-feeling or if you continue constantly to have a kind of out-of-body experience for the rest of your life, looking at this critter that you made and not really believing it.

FO

2010-05-19T12:36:00.000-04:00

If you read this blog, chances are good you're friends with me on Facebook or an email contact or might not care about this news, but I've just kind of remembered that it's possible a few folks might not fit into any of those categories. So here we go. Absence has been due to the fact that Miss Briony Alice Brown finished baking and arrived Friday, May 14, clocking in at 6 lbs, 3 oz, 18 3/4 inches long and an immeasurable amount of adorable. Blogging, along with everything else I do, is taking a back seat for a while.

Lil' hobby

2010-05-12T07:40:00.000-04:00

If I didn't still live here, this would make me miss Athens like crazy.

McKillip and Heard, I love you guys, but even though you're part of the General Assembly, you seem to be assuming it operates due to some sort of logic rather than under the mechanisms of short-term political gain designed to consolidate power.

I could be okay with this.

Hey, this actually seems like a bunch of good decisions by the BOR. It's good to focus the increase on tuition rather than fees. It would be better still if this financial crisis led to income caps for HOPE.

Dude. Felonies? Really?

An important editorial.

Movie Diary

2010-05-12T07:13:00.000-04:00

Marius: I figured out overnight why it took me so long to get around to watching this movie. It was being forced to watch Manon of the Spring in a high-school French class and absolutely hating it. I might have a different opinion now, but the problem is that that formative experience colored my opinion of Marcel Pagnol for years and years and clearly influenced me away from watching anything in his Fanny trilogy, of which this is the first installment. Well, yet again, I'm admitting to being a dumbass because I could have had years of fond memories of this absolutely charming movie, but instead I frittered it away on terrible horror anthologies. It's kind of like if The Andy Griffith Show were a movie set in Marseilles, only with a wee bit more drama thrown in. The characters are eccentric but not ridiculously so. The pace is ambling without being annoying. The interactions are key. There's not much to the plot. Marius wants to take to the sea; he loves Fanny, and Fanny loves him, but the question is which love wins out: woman or adventure? Most of what happens takes place in a very limited setting and with a small number of characters (Pagnol adapted it from his own play, and it feels like one), and there's a lot of conversing in the local bar, owned by Marius's father, César (played by Raimu), after whom the third installment is named and by far my favorite character. It's got a small-town view and a definite nostalgia to the entire picture, but there's little in the way of sentimentality. Pagnol continually has the characters undercut what they're literally saying with their behavior, and it's all done with a very light touch. There's not much in the way of cinematic whatnot on display, but man is it all watchable and sweet. The other two should be up in the queue shortly.

Publication

2010-05-12T07:04:00.000-04:00

Grub Notes has real Chinese food for you.

Read

2010-05-11T07:37:00.000-04:00

Dana Goodyear's piece "Killer Food" on Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo in the April 26 issue of the New Yorker isn't online for free, and it's rather short, but it is fairly entertaining. Basically, the two dudes own a restaurant in L.A. called Animal, about half named after the Muppet and half after what they serve, which is whole-beast-style dishes. And, make no mistake, a lot of them sound delicious. But this kind of bugs me:

"I had this weird thing last night," Dotolo said recently. "I was, like, eating tofu and I was, like, thinking of how much it reminded me of, like, bone marrow and, like, brains and, like, that weird texture--like, soft, a little bit gelatinous. But the flavor of tofu is, like, so yelchth. I'll think about that now for, like, maybe a year before I think about something to do with it. I think it'd be fuckin' hilarious to do tofu at Animal, just because it throws people off so much." He thought for a second, and said, "Maybe you do tofu with meat."

Well, that's the thing, and I'm sure he knows this. Tofu isn't a meat substitute. It's merely an alternative protein, and there are plenty of Chinese dishes, for example, that incorporate both tofu and meat. I didn't used to appreciate tofu, but over the past year or so I've often found myself craving it. Is it bacon? Well, no, but bacon is special. It's like complaining that potatoes aren't garlic. One is more strongly flavored, but that doesn't make it better per se, and it's got little to do with the fact that one is better for you than the other. If you really believe in eating everything (and I do), you should be into tofu, too.

Sidebar: The article mentions Michael Voltaggio at the very beginning and describes him merely as "a young chef trained in the cerebral techniques of molecular gastronomy." And...? I'm not saying Top Chef has to be the defining moment of his career forever, but you'd think it would rate a mention in a bio blurb.

Lil' hobby

2010-05-11T07:25:00.000-04:00

The question that I'm not sure is answered by this article is whether teachers have to be present in the "sensory rooms" with the students. If they do, I suppose it's still an improvement over previous methods in that at least it doesn't distract the other students, but it does still take away from class time with the instructor. Not that these things are a terrible idea, but it is kind of an example of how much increased diagnosis of a problem can lead to spending a lot more money on whatnot.

Also, there still doesn't seem to be an alternative location for the farmers' market being proposed.

As ever, tuition hikes kind of suck, but a) better the Regents raise tuition than fees, and b) I'm guessing they don't raise it as high as they need to. A 10 percent cut in the face of a 7 percent increase in enrollment is terrible.

It also seems possible that those with PTSD (etc.) could tell the officer in question.

Part of what I'm trying to figure out here is what that percentage means: 59 percent of waste is recycled? 59 percent of households recycle? 59 percent of what could be recycled is? A clear understanding of what that figure means might help. For example, if it's the first one and a county accepts plastics 1 through 7 instead of just 1 and 2, that would automatically boost recycling rates.

Um, also, if you happen to have more time than I do, you can go read more debate on this whole Atlas Shrugged pile of nonsense at BTT, which has quite a bit in the comments, including the fact that Jeff doesn't make a distinction between people teaching classes at the university assigning books and an outside donor pushing its views. I'm simply of the view that, just because you give money doesn't mean you necessarily get to attach a bunch of strings or, at very least, the university needs to be careful which strings it agrees to accept. There's setting up a trust and then there's preaching, and it would really have been nice if UGA had said, "hey, could you give us the money and maybe not the books?"

Movie Diary

2010-05-10T07:13:00.000-04:00

1) Deadly Honeymoon: If I try really, really hard, I might be able to link this movie with the other one we watched this weekend, in that they're both about young, vulnerable dark-eyed pretty women placed in a difficult situation who learn (sort of) to make the most of it and are surprisingly willful, but that doesn't mean you should bother with this Lifetime original movie. I only did because Summer Glau is in it, but it was lame enough to make me not want to bother with this sort of thing for a while and, really, you could call it cinematic backsliding in that I've been watching so much high-quality stuff that maybe my brain was craving junk. Well, junk sucks a lot of the time, and this definitely did. It has a few slightly worthwhile scenes that mostly consist of people spouting statistics at each other about how many rapes, murders, and disappearances there are on cruise ships, i.e., the stats that gave someone the idea for the movie. I'm sure the cruise-ship industry was thrilled with it. Anyway, they do their best to goose up the story, but there's not much to it, and while Glau does her best to convey crazy eyes, it's just kind of boring.

2) Vivre Sa Vie: In this case, our central figure is Anna Karina, who, clearly, has a few more advantages than Glau, such as Jean-Luc Godard directing her. I wouldn't say I liked this as much as Une Femme Est Une Femme, their previous collaboration, but that's rather cheerful and bright and not based on the subject of prostitution. I also seem to have blocked out any lengthy philosophizing that takes place in that film, although I'm sure there is some. Vivre Sa Vie is rather more challenging, full of frustrating camera angles, and has little in the way of action, but it's still a very strong film and an interesting one. I'm probably always going to be on the side of Truffaut in the wars between his partisans and Godard's because he's more interested in narrative and humanity than in structure and theory, and the bit in this film where they drive past a movie theater screening Jules et Jim reinforced that, but, again, that doesn't mean you're not allowed to enjoy both. I just have a harder time figuring out what Jean-Luc is getting at, and I frequently suspect it's not something specific at all. Free will is clearly being batted about and examined, and maybe there's something, as the extras on the DVD point out, about the lack of realism of cinema (although whether this is supposed to provide a corrective or an illustration, I don't know), but it certainly does have ideas.

Lil' hobby

2010-05-09T07:41:00.000-04:00

Ahem. And I might point out, in response to your point, that if the geniuses on Wall Street weren't so focused on immediate personal gain (i.e., focused on themselves and on short-term profit at the expense of the health of the market and nation)--that is, if they weren't basically living up to the core principle quoted already--we might have avoided this mess to begin with as opposed to merely avoiding the clean-up. Maybe you shouldn't have read that book twice, Jim.

Lil' hobby

2010-05-06T07:23:00.000-04:00

I can't say that I know exactly why Ken Mauldin's so pissed, but being informed you're going to be audited isn't pleasant, and it makes you feel like a criminal, as with the letter UGA just sent out to everyone who has a dependent listed on its health insurance, where you have to supply documentation in the form of xeroxed or scanned documents to prove that person is really a dependent. It feels like a presumption of guilt. What are the positions Oconee County would fund?

While you'd think I'd be on the side of the local government, in this case I probably side with the builders in Barrow County, at least to some extent. I don't like building codes that pump up property values while making it much more difficult to construct affordable housing.

What I like about Baker's plan is the fact that the tax credits don't kick in for five years. More jobs incentive plans should take a similar approach.

Wow. Way to promote the impression that you're run by a bunch of libertarian nutjobs, BB&T.

Fans shouldn't be on the field, but MLB players are big, fit dudes, and security guards at games should be able to apprehend violators without resorting to excessive force.

My impression is that, not only do teachers feel they haven't been involved enough in the crafting of the grant, but they also don't think the state government has been very transparent about how, exactly, it tends to assess them, which means it's not surprising they don't support the attempt to do so.

Thank you, Ray MacNair. This hasn't really been covered enough.

Movie Diary

2010-05-06T07:01:00.000-04:00

Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire: The thing is, despite the acclaim, this movie really belongs more categorized with The Blind Side than with anything else that got nominated for Oscars. Sure, it might be more depressing, and the performances are generally better, and Lee Daniels totally deserves credit for making extreme material not only palatable but rather watchable, but isn't the message of hope, redemption, and achievement for the downtrodden kind of similar? I mean, in one case, it's the nice, rich white people who help pull the nearly illiterate, overweight African American child out of the ghetto and awaken his dreams, and in the other case, it's merely light-skinned, attractive African Americans who do the same, but it's almost the same story, which is to say it's kind of a Christian parable/fairytale. Even if you are raised in the worst possible way (neglect, abuse, etc.), if you are kind and gentle and stoic yourself, God will send people to help you and reward you to some extent for your patience. Which, if I remember, is not exactly what happened to Job, but anyway... All of that sounds like I didn't like either movie, and, in fact, I liked both of them, but it's strange to me that they seem to have been championed by different audiences.

Lil' hobby

2010-05-05T07:22:00.000-04:00

Dude, for one thing, calling Food Stamps SNAP is kind of an awesome rebranding. It's also a very good thing the farmers' market got this grant, although the process (EBT cards to wooden coins to vegetables, then back the other way) seems a bit unwieldy. That said, it's a step in the right direction considering how increasingly cashless we've become. I know I'd buy stuff at these things more often if I didn't have to remember to get cash out ahead of time. The downtown market is also a great idea.

www dot Dirt Pile dot com.

Yeah, it's not surprising the landfill still needs to be expanded, and that everyone's annoyed about it. I'd like to hear more about how the county's going to handle the $150K reduction from UGA in contribution to Athens Transit.

Ugh. Maybe we should require them to pass the budget before they get anything else done. I know this kind of tacked-on provision isn't exactly new, but to have it slide through at the last minute is still annoying.

Movie Diary

2010-05-05T07:02:00.000-04:00

The Informer: The reason you don't hear more about this film, which was on the list of classics we're attempting to work our way through, is that, while it's theoretically among John Ford's more important efforts, it doesn't really hold up to his best. It's badly dated as far as the melodramatic acting style is concerned (this is coming from someone who rarely has a problem with that), and the politics laid out aren't very convincing. That said, the brief featurette that's included on the DVD does a good job pointing out some of the important advances it made, and it highlights a few things I even noticed in the watching, like Ford's debt to German Expressionism (the plot's vaguely similar to M) and the striking set-up of one early scene in particular, in which a man is shot by the police. It's surprisingly intense, and the way Ford chooses to arrange the elements makes it more so, as well as somewhat contemporary in feel. I also warmed considerably to lead actor Victor McLaglen as the movie progressed. The drunker and more obnoxious he gets, the more strangely sympathetic he becomes, and the film develops some Joycean energy as he careens around town, buying drinks, dancing, and generally living it up. All that said, if you need to fill out your quota of Ford and you haven't seen Stagecoach or The Searchers or The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance or My Darling Clementine (I could go on), you really need to check those off your own list before you hit up this one.

The Tee-Vee

2010-05-04T07:24:00.000-04:00

Hey, you know what show is aight? Kirstie Alley's Big Life. If you enjoyed Kathy Griffin's reality show (and I did, very much), then you might like this one, too, which features a lot of similar elements: amusing self-loathing, gimmicky premises that aren't taken very seriously, a protagonist who tortures her household staff (but not in a cruel way), and cute pets (a ton of lemurs!). Plus it's already featured the Shake Weight, which provided impetus for one of the best sketches on this terrible season of SNL.

Also, Little People, Big World's writers are totally turning that show in a Jon and Kate-type direction.

Lil' hobby

2010-05-04T07:14:00.000-04:00

Admittedly, the state supreme court's logic is pretty good, but I still think this is the wrong decision on an important issue. They happened to get lucky, also, and get assigned some pretty sharp new attorneys. It sounds like Justice Melton may recognize that the circuit needs more money for public defenders, but, on the other hand, asserting logical reasons doesn't make money materialize from nowhere.

Also, we'd kind of be behaving like jerks, right?

Hey, Cardoza. I'm cool with iPods, but don't be dissing books.

Students are more technologically savvy than ever, so it is essential school officials put more resources in their hands. With iTunes U, students don't have to flip through a book or punch a fullsize keyboard to find the specific wording of a Constitutional amendment, for instance. They can pull up the information instantly no matter where they are, Cardoza said.

If they know how to use an index, books are just as portable as iPods, and they don't require a power source or the same level of investment (mostly--we're not going to get into the issues of the textbook market here).

Is Karen Handel going to talk about anything other than ethics issues in this campaign? And, if elected governor, isn't she going to have to socialize with some fairly unsavory characters? This is an excuse not to participate in events.

Thanks, Morris News Service, for the last paragraph of this story.

There we go. It does seem like he's taking a mature approach to making amends, and it reinforces that Richt tends to make good decisions.

Dude. Stretching. The president saying, basically, "don't make ad hominem arguments" does not mean he's opposed to debate. He's just asking people not to be so damn rude.

McGeezy just can't quit you, Internet.

Read

2010-05-03T07:23:00.000-04:00

As mentioned, the April 19 issue of the New Yorker was devoted to Journeys, and while it's a very solid issue, the good stuff is pretty much all behind the wall, including Burkhard Bilger's portrayal of a tugboat-operating family. I kept trying to think while reading it how John McPhee would have done the subject differently. It's also his kind of topic, but it reads as straight-up Bilger, despite the fact that both of them would have included this detail about Latham Smith, entrepreneur and busy man:

Latham's frenetic pace, in other words, is business as usual. At one point, in the middle of a phone call, he unzipped his fly and relieved himself over the side of the barge as he talked. "He does that all over the world," one of his crew members told me.

Recipe, what what

2010-05-03T07:11:00.000-04:00

Hey, I made up a salad. I didn't take any pictures, although it was kind of pretty. Anyway, here goes:

1/2 a red cabbage, shredded
1 red grapefruit, sectioned
a few leaves of mint, chopped
cumin to taste
about 1 Tbsp. sherry vinegar
2-3 Tbsp. olive oil
1 1/2 tsp. whole-grain mustard

You can salt the cabbage and leave it for a while, but it doesn't seem to make a big difference. Combine the cabbage and the grapefruit. Take the leftovers from the sectioned grapefruit and squeeze the juice from them to start the dressing. Then add the rest of the ingredients above and mix well. Salt + pepper to taste.

I still feel like it's missing something, but these weren't the sweetest grapefruits, so you could add a bit of sugar, I suppose.

Movie Diary

2010-05-03T07:07:00.000-04:00

1) Berserk: We've had this DVRed forever, thinking it was a particular Joan Crawford film in technicolor that there was a clip of in TCM's documentary about her that looked amazing and vivid and crazy (her face is basically green in the clip they included), but it turns out that, despite being vivid and technicolor and Joan Crawford and somewhat crazy, this is, in fact, an entirely different film. Is it worth seeking out (you have to go to some trouble, as it's not on DVD)? Only if you're some kind of circus movie completist. To quote Oklahoma, it's padded from its shoulder to its heel. This movie could be about 60 minutes long if it didn't take regular breaks to show circus acts or have bizarre musical interludes sung by a strongman, a bearded lady, and a dwarf (and when I say "sung by," I mean "poorly lipsynched by"). On the other hand, it does have a guy getting a railroad spike through the back of the head and great costumes. Joan herself tends to parade around in a bright-red cape. On the other other hand, the acting is hardly stellar, and the movie tends to drag, unless you're really into elephants. In other words the circus-to-murders ratio is heavily in favor of the circus, and I would prefer that be reversed.

2) Petulia: Both pointing out that this is a Richard Lester film and calling it strange is kind of redundant, but what it is is worth seeing. I'm not the biggest Julie Christie fan, and this movie certainly has its irritations, but in some ways those are also its strengths. The order of scenes seems to have been shuffled like a deck of cards, which is aggravating at first but then makes what would otherwise have been a lot more straightforward considerably more interesting. It's a good trick, that, especially as the story itself (kind of the manic pixie dreamgirl sort of thing but with illegal immigration, spousal abuse, and a lot of Haight-Ashbury thrown in) isn't all that exciting in the abstract. No matter what you think of the plot and the structure, you have to admit it's a beautiful film, full of strange futuristic touches (which I guess just result from the time), fabulous apartments, lovely color schemes, and great clothes. It both documents its era and place and is much more attractive and interesting than a lot of other films that cover that same sort of territory. Plus a tiny role for a very young Austin Pendleton!

Read

2010-04-29T07:42:00.000-04:00

From the April 19 issue of the New Yorker, in a description in the Night Life section:

After playing for a couple of incarnations of the bluesy hard-rock outfit Spooky Tooth, the keyboardist Gary Wright struck out on his own in the mid-seventies and ended up crafting a couple of memorable rock songs like "Dream Weaver" and "Love Is Alive," songs that went on to become classic-rock radio staples (the strains of the former swelled in Mike Meyers's "Wayne's World" for comedic effect whenever Garth's love interest appeared onscreen).

Where my fact checkers?

Anyway, this is the "Journeys" issue, and most of the good stuff is behind the wall, like Alec Wilkinson's "The Ice Balloon," about a late-19th-century attempt to reach the North Pole by balloon that ended in death and disaster, as was frequently the case. Here's my favorite detail from the article:

One evening, Andree suggested that they try the bear meat raw, and they decided that it tasted like oysters. They made "blood pancake" from bear's blood and oatmeal, fried in butter.

Peter Hessler's piece on returning to the United States after years abroad in China is my favorite thing in the issue so far, and I wouldn't be surprised if it remained such. For one thing, the narrative, in which he kind of accidentally wins a half-marathon in Vegas, is a great one, but there are also lots of telling details throughout, like this observation:

The American appetite for loneliness impressed me, and there was something about this solitude that freed conversation. One night at a bar, I met a man, and within five minutes he explained that he had just been released from prison. Another drinker told me that his wife had passed away, and he had recently suffered a heart attack, and now he hoped that he would die within the year. I learned that there's no reliable small talk in America; that at any moment a conversation can become personal.

Lil' hobby

2010-04-29T07:25:00.000-04:00

I do not have a problem with paying an extra $25-50 so county services aren't cut and county employees don't lose their jobs. These are shitty times, and I'm not sure there's a better approach. Not build the temporary housing at the jail? Yeah, maybe, and $1.3 million seems like a whole heck of a lot for "temporary," but isn't the point that it saves money over incarcerating folks in neighboring counties?

Emissions testing, please. I don't understand how that's not a sensible response to these reports, year after year.

Considering this is Lee's story, I'm surprised at the lack of detail. Why doesn't the course deserve academic credit? Is insubordination really grounds for revoking tenure or is it, kind of, the reason tenure exists? I doubt there's any kind of conspiracy going on here, but it does seem like a mess. Also, I'm betting a hunger strike is about to get started.

I'm thinking you could take this argument yet further.

I don't find it befuddling. The Republicans have a much better chance of winning. Therefore, they want fewer candidates for the jobs, not more. The Democrats have a much crappier chance of winning; therefore, it's much harder to attract candidates who want to spend their time and effort on fundraising for a lost cause. I did like learning about the statue, though.

Oh, you mean when Reagan used that phrase to derail a debate on issues in favor of the superficial consideration of looking like the cool guy in a dominant position being bothered by a buzzing gnat? Appropriate, yes? Why don't you defend the idea that Georgia's voter rolls are at any risk at all, Mr. Kemp?

Don't those districts pay lower property taxes anyway?

Movie Diary

2010-04-29T07:01:00.000-04:00

1) Come and See: Wincingly intense to watch and surprisingly not better known, this 1985 Russian film was its director's last, and not because he died or anything. He just stopped making movies, and it's kind of understandable. After you make something this painful, clear-eyed, and revelatory, what do you do next? It's not perfect (it goes on too long; the ending is a little clumsy), and you could complain that it's basically an exploitation film about the Holocaust, but to what, really, is that style better suited? Roman Polanski had a few moments of that utter despair in The Pianist, and I seem to remember some in Schindler's List, and it should be noted that Come and See takes on the massacre of the Belorussians rather than the Jews, but the feeling that not only could your protagonist die horribly at any moment, but also that anyone onscreen could sort of reaches its way out of the image and into your own emotions. That is, it is trauma portrayed and, somewhat, trauma to watch. It's also very beautiful at times, as with a long scene of the forest being bombed that results in hearing damage and is therefore almost silent. No bursts of flame or fancy effects here--it looks like what they did was pretty much just blow up a big chunk of forest, and it's astonishing-looking. The other film I might call to mind here as a touchstone is The Tin Drum, which is better but comparably intense, frightening, and strange, plus visually dipped in the same kind of color palette. Am I recommending it? Heartily, but only if you're tough.

2) Good Hair: After that, Chris Rock's documentary on the absurdities and economics of the black hair industry was a relief to watch, if not all that challenging. That is, it has the ideas, but it's not a sugar-free pill. It's light-hearted while raising some fairly serious issues (how is black identity shaped, even today, by what the culture in power wants? And can you blame those self-perceptions for the continued economic inequities between races, at least to some extent?), and it's zippy and covers a lot of ground, including that of the Bronner Brothers Hair Show, which is worthy not only of a full documentary in its own right but, really, a reality show. Come on, BET. Can't you follow the four contestants for the six months leading up to the competition, then edit it together into a compelling six-week series to run during the summer?

Police Blotter (this is what happens when you name your team the Foxy Boxers edition)

2010-04-28T07:38:00.000-04:00

Arrest: On April 10, a deputy responded to a report of a possible drunken driver on Georgia Highway 316, where he saw a vehicle weaving in the road and traveling about 20 mph. The deputy got behind the vehicle, which suddenly accelerated to 50 mph, then slowed back down to 20. During a traffic stop, the driver said he had been to a wedding and now was lost. Asked if he had been drinking, he replied, "Oh, yes." [John Beckwith], 61, of Lansing, Mich., was charged with DUI after his blood-alcohol content registered 0.16 on a Breathalyzer test.

His characterization was pretty accurate.

Arrest: On April 16, deputy Clark Sparrow was dispatched shortly before 6 p.m. to Oconee Veterans Park for a dispute during a child's softball game. A 35-year-old Watkinsville woman explained that an umpire made a call that angered some spectators. Two women became especially upset and unruly and began insulting the umpire. When a 27-year-old Bishop-area man made a comment supporting the umpire's call, one woman allegedly responded that she was going to "shoot up the place." The man said he told the two women the umpire made the call for a safety reason. Sparrow found one of the women, 36-year-old [Marge Schott] of Athens, in her vehicle in the parking lot. [Schott] denied making the threats and said she was a peaceful woman who didn't even own a gun. The other woman, 46-year-old [Naomi Campbell] of Bogart, admitted to yelling but said she was trying to restore peace after [Schott]'s remarks. Witnesses all agreed that [Campbell] and [Schott] were disruptive, and they clearly heard [Schott] threaten to "shoot up the place." [Schott] was arrested for making a terroristic threat, and [Campbell] was arrested for disorderly conduct.

You know, I may not let my daughter participate in team sports...

Dispute: On April 17, a deputy was dispatched to the Madison County Recreation Department ball fields in Danielsville to meet with a woman who had an unpleasant chance meeting with another woman she has had problems with in the past.

Really. I may not.

Oconee. Madison.

Lil' hobby

2010-04-28T07:21:00.000-04:00

Dave Marr's urging our mayoral candidates to get behind a plastic bag tax, and I concur, heartily. If anyone out there would support a) green bins, b) a bag tax, and c) food carts, I'd basically have to be on board.

What bar is out Nowhere Road?

I'm kind of surprised Matt Pulver didn't ask about the punitive alternative school or charters in general when he talked to Lanoue.

Fuck yeah service learning!

Kevan Williams is talking about how creating an urban plaza for city hall downtown could mean more food carts, which is an appealing carrot.

Dang it.

So Bobby Baker's done with the PSC, which means whoever gets in there is probably going to be even friendlier to the utility companies, but the best bit of this article comes at the end, when there's a bit more news about qualifiers, including one Otis Putnam.

Yeah. Minimizing judicial discretion is stupid, even when it's at the university level.

Anti-texting? Yay. The rest of this stuff? Bush league, including the fact that the no-texting-while-driving thing is probably going to end up restricted to teens. Can't we expand it to adults who behave like teens? The ABH is doing a lovely job pointing out one ridiculousness that results from this.

Hey, crazies, your time is now.

Publications

2010-04-28T06:54:00.000-04:00

Hey, lookit, Grub Notes writes about Los Comales (under new ownership) and Taqueria El Camino Real.

Oh, and I can still write about music, too. Masters of the Hemisphere, yay!

Lil' hobby

2010-04-27T07:25:00.000-04:00

Booya. This makes me very happy. I will sign your forms, Mr. Boyd.

So does the fact that text messages now get quoted in news stories.

I suspect those ABH guys might not mind a food cart or two, considering their location. Hey, y'all have a nice plaza in front. How about letting someone set up there?

Arg

2010-04-27T07:10:00.000-04:00

Look, lots of the Gabourey Sidibe-hosted Saturday Night Live was an awkward mistake. You could have seen that coming, right? But this sketch is the one that actively ticked me off. Really, SNL writers? You don't think you probably have more job security than I do? You don't think sanitation work is one of the most hazardous careers in the country? You really think public employees get paid lots of money for doing no work and can never, ever get fired? Are y'all not members of the Writers Guild of America? Seriously.

Read

2010-04-27T07:03:00.000-04:00

David Samuels's New Yorker piece (April 12 issue) on the ring of international jewel thieves known as the Pink Panthers (behind the wall) is nearly as long as that article in the previous issue on crazy elephant conservationists, and while I don't usually complain about NYer articles being too long, both of these could have used a little trimming. Or a little more interesting. You'd think that an almost-20-pager on the subject might not even be enough--after all, high-stakes thievery certainly has made for some awesome, thrilling movies--but Samuels focuses a lot more on the shitty situation of the former Yugoslavia, which produces many of the thieves. Not that none of this is important, and aspects of it (such as when Milosevic et al. actually focused on financial gain over ethnic cleansing) are interesting, but on the whole, when you start flipping ahead to see how much longer an article's going to be, it's not a great sign. Also, here's the ending:

Stealing diamonds is a serious crime, but as I paid the check it was difficult for me not to sympathize with these desperate and inventive men. The Pink Panthers were taking revenge on a world that had robbed them blind.

Eh... I'm not sure that's justified by the rest of the piece, although I can see how you could justify it. The thing is, Samuels doesn't spend enough time building the case that the people of, say, Japan either didn't do enough to intervene in Yugoslavia or directly benefited from its turmoil. As is, he mostly gives examples of the Serbs (etc.) themselves fucking up their country and running rings that smuggle cigarettes and so on, which really doesn't promote sympathy when those efforts turn outwards, even if they're now stealing diamonds, which people shouldn't be mining anyway.

You should also read Kelefa Sanneh's review of several books on Whiteness as an identity, which is exceedingly intelligent, well-written, and could, in fact, be a great deal longer.

Lil' hobby

2010-04-26T07:29:00.000-04:00

This is the problem with expecting people to regulate themselves.

This article from Sunday about how UGA's not quite in compliance with Title IX is pretty interesting. Part of the difficulty--in fact, the main one--is that UGA has such high female enrollment (58 percent of students are female as opposed to a mere 52 percent of student athletes).

Okay, so the transportation funding bill that passed kind of sucks. But we did get one. And while repairing roads isn't as awesome as funding alternative transportation, it does need to be done.

But, McGinty, presumably the community center needs people to staff it and has continuing costs, like heating and air, whereas bike paths and greenway renovations don't.

There are interesting comments on my street food post. Some of them are jerky. Some of them are actually thoughtful. Some contain musings from commissioners.

Movie Diary

2010-04-26T07:10:00.000-04:00

1) Up in the Air: I sort of resisted this movie as I was watching it, feeling that a lot of it was rather glib. For example, if Clooney's company allots him $40 for dinner for his per diem and he deliberately uses every penny of it to earn more miles for himself to reach this crazy goal of 10 million, ordering food he's not even going to eat, then he's both wasting food on purpose and defrauding his employer; that is, I can see exactly why his business wants to pull their firers for hire off the road. Of course, it gets kind of good, gaining more depth as it moves along, and both the ladies (Anna Kendrick and Vera Farmiga) are especially so, in smart, thoughtful roles that play with gender stereotypes without doing so obviously. And Clooney himself is very good, as he pretty much always is, about as thin as he's ever been and cutting through the frame to emphasize his long legs and pretty proportions, like a fancy racehorse. It's also smartly concluded, without much to say at the very end. I'm not sure how you end it otherwise.

2) The Proposal: A.k.a., the movie that Sandra Bullock kind of co-won her Oscar for, I think. It's so nice to see a rom com that's not, for the most part, shittily done, not hugely sloppy or cruel to its characters, not overexplained and packed with motivation in each scene, and while praising this movie for what it's not seems to leave out what it is, what it is is simply extremely watchable. Does it contain some ridiculousness? It certainly does, complete with a really weird daylight campfire rap/dance by Bullock that's kind of jammed into the flow of things, but its spirit is a nice one throughout, which is far more than can be said of almost any other recent entry in the genre.

3) Vampyr: Whew, a good one to cross off the list, being both German and, basically, silent, apart from a few sound effects and a very few lines of dialogue. Perhaps the most encapsulatory thing I can tell you about the movie is that maybe 20 percent of it consists of various dudes reading a book (no, not out loud), pages from which are presented onscreen. In other words, it makes its 75-ish minutes linger. But for all the boredom it induces and the obscurity it leaves (wait, who was the vampire? and why?) and the total lack of scary stuff, it kind of does have something going on, and the bits with shadows are lovely and visually interesting in particular. Ditto for a man's death by burial in flour, perhaps the inspiration for Witness many many years later. Anyway, apparently when it was first shown, audiences demanded their money back and then rioted. I don't feel that strongly negative about it, but some of these top-rated movies have to be duds, and at least this one wasn't a massive bomb.

4) Night Moves: This Arthur Penn film from 1975, on the other hand, was a total gem, one that probably deserves to be held in higher esteem than it is. Altman's adaptation of The Long Goodbye is a couple of years earlier, but I believe they were filmed at the same time, and they have a lot in common, despite the fact that only one is technically a Raymond Chandler adaptation. Night Moves has similar rhythms. You don't really know where it's going at any particular moment, and the characters and situations receive far more emphasis than the plot, which is not uninteresting but is kind of irrelevant. It's appropriate that Gene Hackman's character appears playing chess, trying to figure out a particular move from history, as he (the un-mean man who must go down mean streets) is hemmed in rather like the king on the board, attacked from all sides. The answer is that there's not really a way out, and everyone will betray you, but it's all portrayed with a very light touch, which makes the moments of surprising violence all the more effective. Both L.A. and the Keys seem darkly appealing, and Penn moves the characters around with great sleight of hand, distracting you from the somewhat obvious actual machinations of the plot. Totally worth seeking out, especially while it streams on Netflix.

Lil' hobby

2010-04-22T07:54:00.000-04:00

If you want to see me getting all huffy about this report on food carts in Athens, you'll have to wait until this afternoon, when it'll go up on Flagpole.com.

I don't even care that much about trees, and I found Merrit's article on landmark trees in ACC pretty interesting stuff.

The SPLOST list is getting closer. I'd personally like to see more money for sidewalk and bus stop improvements, as they're really good candidates for the funds, requiring little in the way of maintenance and operating costs, but I'm particularly glad about the Center for Hard-to-Recycle Materials. See the full list here.

I wish Mike Thurmond the best, and no doubt I'll vote for him, but running against Isakson is going to be a lot harder than running against some other, crazier, more vocal folks would be. Still, here's hoping the two of them can keep it fairly civil.

As I keep pointing out, I'm guessing this means he's not competent.

Medical students no likey to party.

Mighty good editorial today in favor of sensible legislation that doesn't even neglect to point the hilarity of the names of this bill's sponsors. And Jim's increasingly expressing his skepticism about "accountability" as a concept in public schools, which is a good thing.

Also, don't miss this forum by a member of the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute that points out one place the state is pinching pennies while doing its damndest to give the money saved to the wealthy.

Read

2010-04-22T07:01:00.000-04:00

I thought for sure I'd blogged about ol' three arms above previously, as I know it's not the first time I've seen this ad in the New Yorker, but the blog search has turned up nada. Regardless, it makes me think several things. First, Fairchild Fashion Group isn't all that detail-oriented. Second, in today's rough-and-tumble, lean-and-mean business climate, you apparently need an extra arm to succeed. Third, will this model beat you up with her third arm if you don't comply with her company's wishes?

FOs

2010-04-22T06:55:00.000-04:00

I ain't been knitting yet for my baby, but I have been for other people's wee ones. I have gifts to give and time for her yet to bake.

Anyway, worked up this bonnet thing for a baby girl, which has some (slightly unsuccessful) smocking and a picot edge.

This was my first experience with picot, and I couldn't really get it to lie flat, but it's a new way to bind off, so that's good to know. The pattern is available here.

I also did another baby sweater, this one for a co-worker who's due the day after I am, but in a 9-to-12-month size, as her baby may not need to be so bundled up in the summer.

It's knit in one piece with absolutely no seaming, which is something of a joy and how I would really like to make all sweaters from now on. I see why it's a big thing on the Internet and elsewhere. I was slightly nervous I was going to run out of the darker blue before I finished the button bands, but the pattern is well calculated, and I finished with a small ball to spare. Both pieces were done with yarn from Knit Picks (Palette for the former; Wool of the Andes for the latter) and were uncomplicated enough to knit while watching films with subtitles.

Police Blotter (Damon Runyon edition)

2010-04-21T07:22:00.000-04:00

Assault: On April 8, deputy Gary Floyd was dispatched to a Hull home. A man said he and his girlfriend were arguing over a car and that she hit him. The man said he didn't want to press charges, as the argument began when she found porn pictures on his computer. The woman explained she hit him only because he kept running his mouth.

As opposed to doing his damn job and getting back in the kitchen.

Harassment: On April 10, deputy Joshua Smith met with a man who said another man sent him a text message warning to him mind his own business, "or I will be forced to, well, you know."

Isn't the point of texting to save time by using fewer characters?

Oconee. Madison.

Lil' hobby

2010-04-21T07:14:00.000-04:00

I find Pete's approach to writing about Confederate Memorial Day surprising. Basically, I'm not sure a collective "we" is right when it comes to finding reasons for the sins of the past.

Damn this is a nice article about how to set up a public elementary school well, although we could've gotten a sidebar pointing out what'll be cut next year.

I don't think there's a real big danger of Athens becoming Vegas, and growth fueled by conventions is not necessarily stupid growth, as it tends to be concentrated, for one thing.

I grant some of the points against expanding the jail the requested amount merit, and I may even be on that side of the issue, but are those opposed to it confident that mandatory minimum sentencing is going anywhere? Or that the population of the jail won't continue to grow faster, percentage-wise, than the population of the county? If so, I assume it's because they support alternative diversion centers and drug courts, but the article doesn't specifically say so.

Hey, I'm with these people, but this kind of brief, bleeding-heart article that relies more on tears than facts and demonstrable impact isn't going to convince anyone but a few undergrads who hadn't already thought about the issue. They had to learn about budget cuts from the student newspaper? There are two other papers in town, yo, one of which is eminently qualified to break news regularly.

Kevan Williams is writing about downtown and pedestrian use.

The question this study raises is why no one gets all huffy about college baseball's poor graduation rates. (Admittedly an easy one to answer.)

Seriously. Whoever thought of this tactic at MARTA gets a high five.

Read

2010-04-20T07:21:00.000-04:00

Man, is it just me, or was the April 5 issue of the New Yorker filled with mystifying cartoons? First there was this one by Barry Blitt, which doesn't even appear on the Cartoon Bank site, suggesting that it doesn't really count as a cartoon at all but rather an illustration to the health care story it ran alongside.

What do we read this as saying? That while health care reform is unpleasant for the Republicans, it's a necessary step to take to promote the health of the nation and the body politic? Or does it seem more like the Democrats are shoving it up the hindquarters of the Republicans? Or, as with Blitt's Obama terrorist fist-bump cover, is it satire about the way reform has been portrayed by right wingers?

It's followed, later by Lee Lorenz's two-parter about taxes, which featured the first panel (guy in a barrel entering door marked I.R.S.) in the upper left hand of a left-reading page, and the second one (same guy leaving, sans barrel) in the bottom right corner of the facing right reader. I mean, the guy looks like a banker fallen on hard times, but still, should my lefty magazine be promoting the idea that the rich are overtaxed?

And then there's this one about the battle of the sexes by Lee Molvig that is well designed but utterly predictable.

If I could and I thought you wanted to read a 20-page article, I'd link to Jeffrey Goldberg's piece on conservationists/wackballs Mark and Delia Owens (UGA grads, note), but it's not online and it really does go on for way too long.

Lil' hobby

2010-04-20T07:10:00.000-04:00

Despite Lee's opening sentences, it actually sounds like the CIA and High Times are getting closer and closer on marijuana-related issues, which bodes interestingly for the future. Also, remember, kids. The feds would prefer that you consume your illegal drugs in the form of brownies rather than damage your lungs.

Anyone who says it doesn't result in more work in a class is full of it, but that still doesn't make it a bad thing.

This really is rather like deciding to cut out the cream in your coffee if you're the world's fattest man. Sure, every little bit helps, but some help a lot more than others.

Hey, I think anything that opens the door to a legal challenge is a good idea, but what's the motivation to do this if you support the death penalty? That it theoretically makes it easier to kill people?

What they said.

Lil' hobby

2010-04-19T07:21:00.000-04:00

Considering Richt's general tendency toward forgiveness and opportunities for atonement, I assume he has his good reasons for making this decision. It's also nice to know it can happen to a white kid from Oconee County, kinda. David Ching says this same thing at greater length and with even more examples.

Let's hear it for the last minute!

Water issues aren't sexy, but man am I glad McKillip has that seat.

Movie Diary

2010-04-19T07:03:00.000-04:00

1) Woman in the Dunes: It's pretty slow and obscure and maddening in a lot of ways, kind of the emblem of what foreign films from the 1960s seem like to the intimidated, but there's definitely something to this Hiroshi Teshigahara-directed production. From the little I know about bugs, the one our protagonist captures early on sure looks like an ant lion, which buries itself beneath the sand in such a way that its prey (ants) fall into a sandy pit and can't climb out, which is exactly what then happens to him, but the subtitles seem to translate it as "tiger beetle." Close enough? Probably. There's clearly a parallel being drawn. Actually, there are lots. If I can read the movie as allegorical or metaphorical or meaning anything, my guess is that it's about the pressure to repopulate after World War II, but that's not what keeps you watching. The sand blowing and flowing and the simplicity and oddness of the narrative are compelling in spite of the fact that an abstract look at the lack of goings-on would lead you to conclude they aren't. It all has a weird beauty, including Kyoko Kishida as the title character.

2) Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer: This, too, is oddly effective. I'm kind of a fan of weirdo John McNaughton's work, but I was too scared to see this movie for a long time, due to its reputation for extreme violence and intensity. Well, I'm considerably more desensitized to such now than I was in high school and my early film-viewing years, and I thought it wasn't going to get to me, even though one of the first murders shown in the movie (all shown in aftermath, not happening) is a woman with a glass bottle implanted in her cheek. The low budget and shitty look seem, at first, to be taking away from the overall effect, and likewise for the way the actors seem to have glass walls between them. They're ostensibly in the same scene, sometimes even touching, but they just say their lines as though speaking to a CGI critter to come, blankly and with little affect. It's almost laughably bad to begin with, but by the end of the movie, it's genuinely scary and effective, which is a fascinating transformation that must take place entirely in the mind of the viewer. You start out questioning why it has the reputation it does, and by the end you're probably convinced that it deserves the accolades. There is a realism to the grungy look of everything and a great sadness to the fact that events happen exactly the way you think they will. It manages to capture the feel of a lot of true-crime stuff in precisely the way most fictionalized versions of reality don't.

Read

2010-04-16T07:38:00.000-04:00

Well, damn. Now the New Yorker wont even let you read all the "Talk of the Town" pieces for free, and the one I'm linking is hidden behind the wall. I don't know if it's worth seeking out a paper copy of the magazine just so you can read Michael Schulman's little piece on Alfred Molina's role as Mark Rothko in the play Red, about the painter's creation of canvases for the Four Seasons, in New York.

"I hope to paint something that will ruin the appetite of every son of a bitch who ever eats in that room," he said. Rothko created some thirty canvases, in apocalyptic reds and blacks. Then, one night, he took his wife to the restaurant for dinner and had a change of heart. "Anybody who will eat that kind of food for those kinds of prices will never look at a painting of mine!" he told his assistant, and immediately reneged on the deal.

The remainder of the two columns is devoted to a) showing Molina as a different kind of fellow, who appreciates fine cuisine, and b) pointing out that those are exactly the sorts of people who do look at Rothko's paintings, many of which are in the Tate Modern. I believe in populist art. Hell, I believe in populism. But I also believe in art, period, which includes food, even extravagant food, and I certainly have a problem with this kind of ill-informed, anti-aesthetic stance, especially coming from an artist.

So that piece pairs nicely with Adam Gopnik's article on Le Fooding, the new French culinary movement, which is available for free. He quotes Alexandre Cammas at length:

“I wasn’t, in the beginning, trying to do anything except characterize a little phenomenon—but I found it growing, in response to a new need.” He cleared his throat and leaned forward, like one who needs to resolve complexities that his innocent listener hasn’t even grasped yet. “What does it mean, the Fooding movement?” he went on. “Food and feeling—that’s the heart of it. But with what practical effect? ‘Feeling’ in the sense that we mean to be part of le goût de son temps—the taste of one’s time, though ‘taste’ in English is too weak a word. ‘Fooding’ means to eat and drink with feeling—to recognize that one eats with the nose, the eyes, and the mouth, with everything that makes us human! At the time we began, French culinary journalism was narrowly focussed on the cooking of the kidneys, the tenderness of the poularde. What was on the plate was all that counted! But who lives that way? Who eats that way? We wanted cooks who cooked with the whole of their selves and souls, not technicians of the table. French cuisine was caught in a museum culture: the dictatorship of a fossilized idea of gastronomy. And this dictatorship has been enforced by tourism: you have tourists packing in to experience gastronomy in a kind of perpetual museum of edification. We wanted to be outside that, sur le pont, on the bridge, in front, defining everything that is new. We wanted to escape—foie gras, volaille de bresse, all the clichés.”

I mean, seriously, is this not just a more moderate version of Rothko's stance? Admittedly, France is a more rule-bound place to begin with when it comes to food, and opposing the traditional methods of and standards for judging haute cusine there is quite different from doing so here, in the land of the KFC Double-Down, but that still doesn't make it right. "What was on the plate was all that counted"? Heck, yes. That should be the motto of the movement, not something it reacts against in favor of nebulous concepts of "feeling." I'm sure I have much in common with the folks leading the charge; e.g.,

What distinguishes Le Fooding, I was beginning to understand, was that it is, in effect, against an overly European, tradition-minded approach to food. Slow is the last thing it wants French cooking to be, French cooking being slow enough already. The goal of the Fooding movement is to break down French snobbery, in the form of its hidebound hypersensitive discrimination, while the goal of the slow-food movement, though not put quite this way, is to build up hidebound hyper-discrimination. Fooding is a form of culinary Futurism: it wants the table to move as fast as modern life. (And, indeed, the Italian Futurists were obsessed with food, and wrote their own cookbook.) The Fooding guide is open to pizzerias; Alexandre says that it is even open to fast food, in the right time and the right place. Although McDonald’s and the like are not included in the guide, Alexandre has admitted to a certain affection for the Chipotle Mexican Grill, and can recall a welcome meal at a McDonald’s in the Carpathian Mountains.

See, the problem here is not trying to do this in France; it's trying to import it to the United States, which is precisely the freaking spring of this kind of sentiment and which, as a result, is experiencing a huge decline in fine dining. Can we not have all of it, as the song goes, not just some of it?

Lil' hobby

2010-04-16T07:10:00.000-04:00

McGinty's quitting, if you're wondering where he's been, and he needs to get paid.

To me, the most interesting part of this article on the local school budget cuts is this one:

Board members voted 7-2 to approve the budget, with board members Ovita Thornton and John Knight opposing due to a reduction-in-force policy that gives more job security to employees with seniority.

That policy probably exists for good reason, but it's also interesting to take a public stand against it, especially when these seem like fairly dire times for public education.

But class sizes should not grow much more than they did at the beginning of the year, Superintendent Philip Lanoue asserted.

"In terms of the teacher reductions I feel very confident we have not eroded into class size any different than we have this year," Lanoue said.

Fewer people will lose their jobs, too, Lanoue said, because many laid-off workers may find a different job within the school district or be rehired to fill new positions funded with federal money.

It's also nice that Ryan Blackburn translates Lanoue's first statement there because it's a mess. Basically, we're not getting worse at an increasing rate, but we are continuing to get worse at about the same rate. Yay! That last bit might be important to follow up on, too.

So how do all y'all who've been saying such nice things about Bob Smith feel today? Also, scroll down to read about the on-campus protest against higher education budget cuts that was taking place at the same time and the protest by Republican students in favor of including more middle-men in the student-loan process (yes, really).

If you were feeling mildly optimistic that at least UGA etc. might know its situation any time soon, squelch it. Also, thank you, Lee, for continuing to point out how much the state has cut not just in the past two years but prior to that.

In theory, I'm okay with this kind of penalty on taunting. Or would have been if not for Georgia's last season.

I suppose we should be thankful that the ABH editorial board even wrote a grudging defense of the Georgia Council for the Arts, but statements like this one still suck:

It's one thing to trim funding for the arts to the degree that the House-passed budget contemplates. Frankly, a persuasive case can be made for cuts totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars for an initiative that, quite frankly, has only a limited number of champions around the state. And, in fairness, it should be pointed out that the House did leave some funding for arts programming in the budget.

Well, by "limited," do you mean millions and millions of citizens who benefit from the GCA's outlay of admittedly small amounts of funds, which create an incredible impact relative to their size? The rest of it's very nice, and I do, indeed, see what the board is saying with regard to the small number of folks willing to agitate on behalf of this funding, but that's depressing, no? Framing it as an economic development issue is the right thing to do, and the latter half of the column does exactly that.

Movie Diary

2010-04-15T07:33:00.000-04:00

Bride of Frankenstein: I probably hadn't seen this whole thing since high school, despite having the urge to rewatch it when Gods and Monsters came out (which was itself quite a while ago by now). It tends to make the lists of best horror films ever, and I suppose that, compared to many others of the era, it belongs there. It's certainly charming and weird, and as much of what's parodied in Young Frankenstein comes from it as from the original. The whole bit with the hermit, for example, is in this film, not the earlier one, and it's particularly sweet, as the monster learns to drink wine and love music. Still, viewed objectively, I can see how it doesn't quite hold up. What's more interesting is to look at what it has to say about the relationship between the sexes. Sure, Elizabeth and Henry seem to have a good thing going on, but the miniature king and queen Dr. Pretorius shows off in jars (in one of the stranger scenes in the film) play out a dynamic very similar to that of the monster and his bride, with the man pursuing and the woman recoiling in horror and fear, suggesting that it's not just the monster who's unappealing to his potential mate but most men. Considering Whale's sexual orientation, I don't know exactly what it says, other than reiterating a kind of age-old caveman-like archetypal relationship, but it's a reading I'm sure you could pursue.

Lil' hobby

2010-04-15T07:15:00.000-04:00

Look, up is fucking down and down is up, people. If you're wondering what exactly the tax cuts are that passed, you'll have to go to this AJC story, as the AP one axed those details:

One provision would eliminate a small portion of property taxes that go to the state, saving property owners a few dollars a year by some estimates.

The second would eventually eliminate all state income taxes on retirement income for residents age 65 and over. Currently, senior citizens who have retirement income of $35,000 a year or less, or $70,000 for a couple, aren’t taxed.

Isn't $70,000 rather a lot of money for an elderly couple already? I mean, it's more than my household income, and I have considerably more expenses than most seniors.

Debate also was intense and partisan in the Senate. Democrat Steve Thompson of Marietta called the bill a terrible joke, while Majority Leader Chip Rogers (R-Woodstock) said senators could “walk out of here and be proud of our accomplishments.”

Rep. Greg Gogans (R-Douglas) called the bill “a wonderful solution to the problems we are having."

“The 9.5 million people in Georgia are suffering and hurting through the worst economic tsunami any one of us could ever remember,” he said. “But we have a plan here today.”

Bert Brantley, a spokesman for Gov. Sonny Perdue, said the tax cuts “make good policy sense.”

“They get the state out of the property tax business and will return more than they cost over the years in true supply-side theory as retirees come and stay in our state,” Brantley said.

The tax break for seniors could cause more of them to look at retiring to Georgia, boosting the state’s overall economy, O’Neal said.

Alan Essig, executive director of the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, said the state already has a very attractive tax policy for seniors.

“All this does is give a huge tax break to the wealthiest seniors in the state at the same time we’re cutting in-home care for the elderly and Meals on Wheels,” Essig said.

“This is about saving face in an election year and more about politics than policy,” he said. “These kind of tax cuts have helped cause the problems we have now.”

Thank you, Alan Essig.

The ABH continues to point out problems with restricting public records, whether or not they're distressing, and they're right right right.

Also, Blake's got a list of people rumored still to be considering running for mayor. A long list. At which point I'm going to say, again, that I love my job and have no desire to be mayor, but I would take the significant pay raise that would come with the new position. Does this mean I'm underpaid? Sure, and the mayor may be as well, but every time I see that figure of $45,000 and the accompanying complaints that it's peanuts, it kind of gets my dander up.

Police Blotter (Lil' Wild Ones edition)

2010-04-15T06:57:00.000-04:00

Complaint: On March 30, a 41-year-old woman in Bishop said her father-in-law, who is being treated by Hospice at her home, told her that a neighbor's son and his friends were riding motorcycles next to their property, creating some noise. The woman said she reported the matter because doctors have said her father-in-law needed a peaceful place and the motorcycles were disruptive. A deputy spoke to the three teenagers, ages 15 and 16, and explained the situation. The teens indicated they would stay away from the neighbor's side of the property. Not long after the deputy left, the complainant called again to say the teens were riding along the property, even louder than before. She said she went outside to videotape them when one teen shot her "the bird," or middle finger. The deputy viewed the woman's video, then went back to the neighbor's home and spoke to one boy's 44-year-old mother. The woman said there was an ongoing problem with her neighbor. The deputy took information for a juvenile complaint.

I do have my days when I think about moving to the country, to a quieter place, to have a big garden and fewer neighbors, but then I read things like this. That said, I am a big fan of continuing to put "the bird" in quotation marks.

Oconee. Madison.

Lil' hobby

2010-04-14T07:53:00.000-04:00

City Dope mentions that the next mayoral forum may address local food issues, which would be a good thing to get people talking about. I have a hunch that, due to his connections to Jeff Snowden, even Charlie may have some good things to say about community gardens or something of the sort. Can we get some food cart questions in there? Also note the thing about potentially expanding the SPLOST cycle to fund both the Classic Center expansion and the rest of the stuff the committee wants. A lot more on that here. Although, you know, why bother with the citizen committee?

I'm still going to maintain that black beans are marginally healthier than pintos, but the difference is smaller than I thought. Still, you wrote a letter?

Embarrassment is free!

Think back on this fondly the next time one of these alerts interrupts 30 Rock and remember that the state could have been passing a budget faster with this time. Scrapping CRCTs for first- and second-graders is a nice bright spot, but eliminating funding for the Georgia Council for the Arts is total balls; also, if you're trying to save money, maybe don't keep working on passing a law that's going to require the state of Georgia to defend it in the Supreme Court, you know?

I like the idea presented here, that the General Assembly be required to pass a budget first, but the simple matter is that even that wouldn't really speed things up. It would just mean nothing but a budget would get done (which, in many years, might not be a bad thing).

Note that Kemp doesn't respond to the point made that he keeps referring to the Obama Justice Department...

Publication

2010-04-14T07:02:00.001-04:00

Grub Notes. Chops & Hops.

Movie Diary

2010-04-14T06:59:00.000-04:00

Judgment at Nuremberg: Good in parts and generally pretty classy stuff, but I'd venture to say that this is one classic that doesn't hold up quite as well. I'd hardly go so far as to say I've seen a ton of Holocaust movies, but I've seen my share, and while it's certainly shocking to see the documentary footage it incorporates (and it won't ever get not shocking), the movie itself is, relatively, kind of a snoozer. For a courtroom drama, it doesn't really build a strong narrative or much tension or even much of an awareness of who any of these characters are apart from Spencer Tracy's. Marlene Dietrich is excellent, but she's better in both A Foreign Affair and Witness for the Prosecution, both of which couldn't help but spring to mind in comparison. And Burt Lancaster, he of the ramrod posture and the regal bearing, is quite good. Really, everyone's pretty good, especially Judy Garland and Maximilian Schell, who get the showiest stuff, and I suppose there are some interesting issues raised on which to meditate, but it's probably more effective if you haven't thought much about the morality of that war. The logic of how the prosecution's case ("the war was horrible") is laid out is hardly impeccable, and ditto for the defense ("these men were patriots"). It seems to me you'd be better off spending your three hours watching The Sorrow and the Pity, which I haven't seen all of but which is far, far more gripping.

Lil' hobby

2010-04-13T07:13:00.000-04:00

Okay, admittedly the placement of the above ad in the online ABH is pretty good, right next to a story about water and sewer rates potentially going up for the sixth time in six years, but are you really using Camus to sell your nutjob, xenophobia-fueled, angry-mob mentality? And don't people who care about the welfare of humanity also use that as an excuse for what they're doing? Do y'all not care about it? Anyway, if it could maybe not smell like complete ass on the eastside of Athens, that might buy the department some goodwill to continue to do things like this.

Come on! Pick her. Pick her even more so because someone in the comments says "this may be Islam's foot in the door to the U.S. Supreme Court." First of all, wha? And second, it's okay to have six Catholics but no Muslims?

Along those same lines, while the Covenant for Civility is a nice idea, not all of our elected representatives are Christians, and among those who aren't, some might not pray. "Praying for political leaders, regardless of agreement or disagreement with them" is the weirdest item in a pretty reasonable list, and while I think our elected representatives are as worthy of respect as anyone else (whether or not we agree with them), and I don't wish them any specific ill will, there's something a bit too worshipful of authority in the above statement. If you're going to pray, pray for everyone, please.

All you need to know about Cal Thomas's column is that he makes a statement in the first paragraph that he then contradicts, with facts, in the second.

I agree with the principle of Ray MacNair's letter, but numbers would have to be run.

Shouldn't Beyond the Trestle come up with a special "on vacay" banner during Masters week?

A side note, on TV

2010-04-13T06:51:00.000-04:00

Little People, Big World has lately been trekking around Europe, as Zach and Jeremy backpack their way through some really weird choices, including the red light district in Amsterdam (briefly and with much shame on Zach's part) and a trip to a very small German town that happens to be near the exact center of the European Union. Really? That's where y'all wanted to go? Anyway, if you've been feeling immature or unsophisticated lately and need an ego boost, I would recommend you tune in. The fact that you know what schnitzel is will put you miles ahead. And the Jon + Kate-type blow-up the show has been promising draws ever closer, as Matt comes nearer to leaving to join the family... oooooh.

Lil' hobby

2010-04-12T07:59:00.000-04:00

Well, well, welly-well, well. First, if you missed it this weekend, Gwen O'Looney is running for mayor again because we have a screwy law that allows a third nonconsecutive term. Does this mean that Heidi will run in four years? I mean, I like Gwen. I might vote for her. She's not off the list of people whose candidacy I might potentially support. That said, it would be nice to have someone new in the position.

Even more interesting, perhaps, was this recap of the last Common Ground mayoral forum, which showed a lot of, well, common ground, like the last one, but featured Spencer Frye being the only candidate who "supports allowing subsidized single-family homes for lower-income homeowners in more affluent neighborhoods." The only one! Mark my words, this Forest Heights business is coming back, and it's going to be an issue. No, I'm not talking about the dirt pile. I'm talking about the Land Trust property. Anyway, are we not a progressive town? And I don't think Frye's saying you should put a rickety shack in the middle of Five Points, either. There's nothing that says subsidized housing has to be dissimilar to what's around it, and acting like it does is fudging the issue. Frye's support of single-stream recycling might be a winner too.

We're getting marginally closer to a budget.

Is there really that much reading involved in driving? I mean, that's why all the signs are color- and shape-coded and have big symbols on them, right? Jerry Gonzalez is 100% right.

It makes you wonder or it gives you a good preview?

Movie Diary

2010-04-12T07:08:00.000-04:00

1) Love/Chloe in the Afternoon: My first Rohmer and part of an effort you may see reflected here to watch some classier movies, which doesn't necessarily mean there'll be no trash--just that, you know, a lot of times when something is supposed to be good, it actually is, and likewise for crap. The complaint about Rohmer is that he's too talky, but I don't generally mind that. I liked My Dinner with Andre. Plus, I like sitting around and talking, which these movies not only depict but promote. I didn't love it, but I did like it, and I'd like to see the five other moral tales, plus it's beautiful. Everyone's thin and has shiny hair, and the girls wear impossibly short dresses and stylish coats--it's a pleasure to look at. I don't know if I actually do have anything to say about the moral dilemma our main character finds himself in except that it's not really much of a dilemma and (spoiler alert) he resolves it accordingly, although that rarely happens in films. It's nice to see someone not doing the wrong thing.

2) Rashomon: See, this is the kind of thing that absolutely makes me want to slap myself for putting it off for 15 years. I always get this idea in my head that Kurosawa's films are long and boring and not much happens, this despite the fact that I've seen and exceedingly enjoyed a fair number of them. It's like culture dread. If everyone says it's that genius, it must taste like medicine. But Rashomon doesn't at all. It's short, it's relatively snappy, it's full of fabulous shots of moments as simple as a guy carrying an axe on his shoulder through the woods (tracked both from behind and from the side, incredibly fast and nimbly), it's got wonderful performances by interesting people (why must I always forget that Toshiro Mifune is not only compelling to watch but an extremely attractive man to boot?), and the plot is smart and well worked out, plus has things to say and think about. Sheesh. I am a giant dumbass. That's basically what this review says, and if you haven't seen Rashomon, by all means do not keep putting it off. I think I was originally supposed to watch it for a class I BSed my way through, on detective fiction, and one of the things I remember discussing is whether it's more like the Dick Van Dyke Show/X-Files episodes that show the same story from two sides (not very much) or whether you can actually figure out what happened from the evidence given. Is anyone telling the truth? They all have reason not to, I'm sure, even the dead man's voice from beyond the grave.

3) A Scanner Darkly: I much prefer Linklater when he's smoking less weed or doing less of whatever his drug of choice is (mushrooms?). He has the ability to maintain focus sometimes, but this movie is exactly the kind of druggie thing that gets under my skin and annoys me. That's probably just as much as a problem with the source material. One of the things Jared and I talked about is how much Dash Shaw's Bodyworld is clearly influenced by this story in particular, but it manages to cover similar ground, complete with the incorporation of clever and fresh ideas, without getting boring when it comes to the drug experiences. Maybe that's because Shaw keeps them short or because they're funnier or he conveys the magic of such an experience without putting in how boring stoned people are. Anyway, there's good stuff in this movie, and the technique is interesting (and largely why I wanted to see it). Robert Downey Jr. can't not be entertaining. But if you are similarly impatient with such stuff, you probably won't love it either.

4) Year One: Dumb and sloppy, with too many execretia jokes, but it did make me laugh a few times, mostly due to Michael Cera's way with a line reading. He's really good at pausing in just the right spots. Also, Oliver Platt delivers a performance that's not really equal to his amazing turn in Ready to Rumble but is comparably bizarre and impressive.

Read

2010-04-09T07:39:00.000-04:00

This mish-mash article in Wired on how the tablet's going to change everything about the way we use computers is exactly what makes people make fun of the magazine. It's like it's constantly running through the moment in the Heat Vision and Jack pilot when Jack Black yells, "I! Know! Everything!!" and if you constantly stab at what's going to be altering our lives in the future, you will eventually hit something that does, probably, but you also end up crying wolf (or something more positive than wolf, like, "Doughnuts!") a lot. I don't know if the tablet's going to change shit or not, but I can say that Kevin Kelly's assessment of it, while poetic, is not going to convince me:

And that is the second difference between this window and past devices: The tablet window goes two ways. You watch; it watches you. Its eye can remain on all the time, watching you as much as you like. Brian Eno once famously said (in the pages of Wired) that the problem with computers was that there was not enough Africa in them. By this he meant that computers as we knew them could “see” only the wiggling ends of our fingers as we typed. But if they could see and employ the rest of our body, as if we were dancing or singing, we could express ourselves with greater finesse. This window tablet injects some Africa into computers. It overthrows the tyranny of the keyboard. Gestures are king. Swoosh your fingers to scroll, wave your arms as with a Wii, shake or tilt it. Celebrate its embodiment. The craftsmanship of this device will matter. We’ll spend hours holding it, caressing it, stroking its magic surface, watching it. The feel of its surface, the liquidity of its flickers, the presence or lack of its warmth, the quality of its build, the temperature of its glow will come to mean a great deal to all of us.

I love Brian Eno, but I don't think that's the problem with computers. And I like words! I understand the intuitive, cross-lingual appeal of gestures, but there are many better and more concrete points to be made (and that are made by some of these folks) about the utility of this new technology, such as James Fallows's point about pilots.

The other article in this issue that I guess I should link, in spite of myself, is the one about Andrew Breitbart, who has a black, corroded soul.

Movie Diary

2010-04-09T07:31:00.000-04:00

Good Morning: I was just talking the other day about feeling guilty for not having seen a single Yasujiro Ozu film, so here's that remedied, and it was nice enough that I'd watch more. Half Truffaut's Small Change, half Leave It to Beaver, it's not exactly action-packed, but it's fascinating in its formal characteristics and the kids are cute. My understanding of Ozu is that he basically never moves the camera, so I can't say that the set-ups this go-round are saying anything about television, although they are framed in a nice, square way, and low, as though from a child's perspective. Are they repetitive? Yes, but that, too, could be conceived as either an influence from the medium it addresses (the basic plot consists of two young boys who refuse to talk until their parents buy them a TV) or some kind of restricted Japanese minimalist aesthetic. I love the shots that recur of the area in which everyone lives, jammed together, which call to mind the set for Dogville (that is, they're kind of theatrical, in the simplest way possible), when you see people moving between the houses, behind them, and above them, on their way to school, work, or general everyday business. There's clearly some kind of thinking out of the way life is changing in the late 1950s, with greater urbanization (and, thus, perhaps greater proliferation of small talk, as you know people less and less) and increasing presence of labor-saving and leisure-promoting technology, but it's not taking a position on that. It's not a sad film, although it does seem nostalgic. Also, there is way, way more farting in this movie than I ever would have guessed. The Criterion Contraption has a nice long assessment that I'm about to read.

Lil' hobby

2010-04-07T07:14:00.000-04:00

Well, this is an unexpected delight. Not that we couldn't do worse, as is clear from the stated positions of the first candidate for the seat, Kirk Shook:

Shook, 25, lives near Winterville. The University of Georgia graduate teaches government and economics and coaches football at North Oconee High School. He said he is frustrated that Republicans seem to be putting party before principle. He pledged to push for term limits for legislators and a law requiring a two-thirds vote to spend money or raise taxes.

By all means, let's make Georgia more like California in the most fucked-up ways possible, yes? I mean, I was no fan of John Linder either, and yet... there's always room to go down. Also, running on ethics never seems to go away. The ABH editorial board makes some good points in Smith's favor, while still calling attention to some missteps.

Pawn shop regulations are go. Sewer extension is still being debated. And, yes, we do want to know what the rate hikes will be.

Weensy uptick in revenues.

Police Blotter (actually, Prince knows how to use punctuation edition)

2010-04-07T06:50:00.000-04:00

Damage: On March 22, deputies were dispatched to the pool at Arborwood Ridge subdivision in Bishop, where damage was sustained to the pool building. A homeowners' association member pointed out a door that had been kicked open and walls that had been spray-painted. Someone wrote "who locked this I had 2 pee" on one area, then drew pictures of a man's private parts on other areas. The complainant said he would check to see if a security camera captured any of the illegal activity. Later that day, an Arbor Ridge resident reported that someone spay-painted the crawl space door and some brickwork at her home. A check showed some damage similar to other homes in the subdivision.

Has anyone checked on Prince's whereabouts at the approximate time of the crime?

Pornography: On March 26, investigator Pat Holl met with an FBI agent in regard to a search warrant on a man suspected of sending child pornography over the Internet. The case involved an FBI sting in which an undercover agent in Richmond, Va., posed as a predator on a child porn file-sharing site. The FBI arrested [Ronnie McGorvey], 46, of Georgia Highway 106, Hull, on charges of possessing child pornography and distribution of child porn. Officers also seized [McGorvey]'s computer to gather evidence. [McGorvey], a teacher at Ila Elementary School in Ila, ran a Royston-based organization called "Skits for Jesus."

It's pronounced "skeets."

Oconee. Madison.

Read

2010-04-06T07:07:00.000-04:00

Man, either that was one slight Style issue or something. Sure, I enjoyed Patricia Marx's piece about shopping for eyeglasses and Judith Thurman's about various methods for removing wrinkles, but neither added up to much. Calvin Tomkins's profile of the artist Julie Mehretu was interesting but didn't really belong. And Rebecca Mead's piece on Brunello Cucinelli, who makes cashmere clothing and is attempting to revive feudalism, was likewise good but seemed too short. Thankfully, there are two strong pieces at the end of the issue, in the book review section. First, Jill Lepore writes about the history of marriage therapy, which contains a lot of ties to eugenics. The following paragraph, jammed full of facts and "facts," nonetheless includes the real answer:

“Understanding the science of marriage gives us a crystal ball of sorts,” Tara Parker-Pope writes in “For Better: The Science of a Good Marriage” (Dutton; $25.95). Did you know that the first three minutes of an argument are the most important? That “strong marriages have at least a five-to-one ratio of positive to negative interactions,” so that “for every mistake you make, you need to offer five more good moments, kind words, and loving gestures to keep your marriage in balance”? That “happy couples say ‘we,’ ‘us,’ and ‘our’ when telling stories”? Parker-Pope, who writes the Well blog for the Times, was divorced a while back, which led to her decision to investigate the work of “top scientists,” because “the best insights about love and relationships are coming from the scientific community.” She cites a study titled “Ovulatory Cycle Effects on Tip Earnings by Lap Dancers” as part of an argument that a woman shopping for a husband shouldn’t take the Pill, because it suppresses ovulation, and lap dancers command more tips when they’re ovulating. In a chapter on “The Chore Wars,” she attributes the “Housework Gap” (i.e., men are bad at cleaning up after themselves) to heredity, since cutting-edge research hints that “natural selection pressures resulted in neurobiological differences related to domestic skill.” Her book is crammed with quizzes. Quiz No. 1, Passionate Love: “I yearn to know all about my partner.” On a scale of one to nine, just how true? Quiz No. 2, Defining Your Love Style: “When my lover doesn’t pay attention to me I feel sick all over.” True or False? It’s important to understand how you fight. Do you express complaint, contempt, or criticism? Sometimes. But I believe scientists are working hard on a cure.

Did you find it? It's pretty easy. Be nice to each other.

The second thing you should read is Jane Mayer's review of Marc Thiessen's book on torture, which he's in favor of and she is decidedly not. And when I say "review," I mean "beheading, delicately but assuredly, with a scalpel." Mayer's reporting on torture has been morally straight, clear, and important, the equivalent of Elizabeth Kolbert's climate-change series. She ends on her strongest note of all:

Thiessen’s effort to rewrite the history of the C.I.A.’s interrogation program comes not long after a Presidential race in which both the Republican and the Democratic nominees agreed that state-sponsored cruelty had damaged and dishonored America. The publication of “Courting Disaster” suggests that Obama’s avowed determination “to look forward, not back” has laid the recent past open to partisan reinterpretation. By holding no one accountable for past abuse, and by convening no commission on what did and didn’t protect the country, President Obama has left the telling of this dark chapter in American history to those who most want to whitewash it.

Enough with twirling toward freedom. We can forgive without forgetting.

Lil' hobby

2010-04-06T06:54:00.000-04:00

They don't have to work 40 days straight through, but considering how much rides on the determination of the state budget, it would be nice if they acted like it was a little more pressing. It's a trickle-down thing. If the state budget takes forever, then the Regents are late determining which USG institution gets what, then the individual schools and colleges have to parcel out the money, and only then can departments finalize what the heck might be happening starting July 1.

Signing the comments left still wouldn't stop Winfield Abbe, though. Again, I would certainly prefer that people not only identified themselves, but also comported themselves on the Internet as nicely and according to rules of decorum as they should in person, but I kind of believe in the rights of anonymous commenters, horrible as most of them are.

This is good news. As well as yet another reason the way taxis operate in Athens is kind of asking for shit to happen.

Movie Diary

2010-04-05T07:39:00.000-04:00

1) Youth in Revolt: I thought I remembered this not getting particularly good reviews, but instead it's that Anthony Lane just didn't like it very much and most other people did. I remember him complaining, in the review, that Twisp is supposed to be an aesthete and an intellectual, but he doesn't even remember that Ozu directed Tokyo Story and not Mizoguchi. But, Anthony, darling, isn't that a microcosm of the whole film's narrative? That it's about the personae we build for ourselves in adolescence, when we're still very flexible as far as who we can be, and that sometimes (frequently) we either choose poorly or don't commit wholeheartedly. I know plenty of adults who pretend to more knowledge than they have. It's a realistic thing to put in the movie (and presumably the book), not a flaw. Not to say that the film doesn't have flaws. Francois Dillinger would appear, from the trailer, to have significantly more screentime than he ends up with, there's a bit too much animated material, and it seems like there are many unfollowed threads that would be interesting to pursue (the hazards of adapting from a novel), but on the whole it's steeped in the kind of uncomfortableness that slices the dividing line between "laughing at" and "laughing with" neatly. Miguel Arteta does this. It's his specialty. It's not nearly as painful in its interactions as Chuck and Buck or, probably, The Good Girl, but there is significant wincing involved, be warned.

2) Paranormal Activity: Very effective bit of film judo that turns weaknesses into strengths. No budget? Bang on something out of range of camera and let audience imagination do the rest. The final scare, which is a really good one, didn't quite get me (maybe I was too relaxed?), but that's on me, not the movie, which does a great job setting it up. The plot is a bit much like Supernatural, of which I've only seen season 1, admittedly, but the limited setting, etc., really works nicely for it. I wouldn't call it one of the scariest movies I've ever seen, but it was actually scary, which is fairly rare.

3) An Education: Unfortunately, with a movie of this title, you know you're going to get a bit of a lesson by the end, and it's an important one to get, but Nick Hornby hammers it home a bit too hard. Luckily, you can ignore the fact that it's coming for most of the movie and pretend you don't see Damocles's sword up there. The acting is right on, especially that of Alfred Molina, who gets all the best lines, but Peter Saarsgard does wonderfully subtle work and Carey Mulligan is a charming lead. This could easily have been leaden apart from the fun the costume designer and art director get to have, but it's not. It's handled, mostly, with a very light touch and a lack of yelling, which is really appreciated on my conflict-avoidant part. Movies where people have revelations and holler at each other tend to make me annoyed, just as that sort of thing does in reality, and I'd certainly rather that any kind of messiness is kept as neat as it is here.

4) The Unholy Three: I didn't realize until just now that there are two versions of this movie, and this is the "talkie" remake, not the Tod Browning original, mostly because they have the same stars (Lon Chaney and Harry Earles), but I can't imagine the silent is preferable, especially as much of the comedy comes from Earles's portrayal of a dwarf pretending to be a baby. The plot is utterly ridiculous (a ventriloquist, a strong man, and the aforesaid dwarf leave the circus to open a pet shop, which provides a cover for their jewel thievery) and mostly an excuse for set pieces (why a pet shop? because Chaney poses as a grandmother and uses his voice-throwing abilities to make the birds talk, fueling sales), but Earles's unremitting villainy (he suggests to the strong man that he shoot both Chaney and his girlfriend in the back of the head from a distance, enabling the two remaining to split the pot) combined with his extremely cute appearance and squeaky voice is pretty fascinating, and it's a very short film, so there's not much time to overstay its welcome. Worth seeking out, mostly for weirdness.

5) The Station Agent: I actually thought I'd like this a bit better than I did, but it's still fairly solid, or at least the performances by Peter Dinklage and Patricia Clarkson are. The narrative as a whole is a bit clunkier, and the character of Joe seems like it could use more depth. Why is he so needy? The synopsis from Dish Network merely describes him as a "friendly man," but there's got to be a bit more going on there, like fear of his father's impending death? There are just a lot of nagging questions like this that pop up in one's mind while watching the movie, and that's not to say they have to be answered but rather that it fails to distract one from them. Why, for example, does Joe set up shop in the parking lot of an abandoned train depot, not only miles from his home and, presumably, his father's home, but also miles from a steady revenue stream for his cart that sells coffee and hot dogs? It's nice that the conclusion has little to do with romantic love, and there are plenty of good moments, but it's a limited film.

Lil' hobby

2010-04-02T07:19:00.000-04:00

I'm going to be optimistic about this pledge. Even the promise is a big step forward from where we were last go-round, when the administration declared there was no need for on-campus child care. And while projected costs of $165 a week are still rather high, they're lower than plenty in the surrounding community and a good bit lower than McPhaul, although, of course, that's without saying what age group that $165 a week covers (I'm assuming that's the high end, with infants). And, yes, it could be closer to what we really think of as "campus," but it's not in another county. Progress, people. Progress.

Not that I don't want to know what my congressman is saying, but damn it would have been kind of nice if the impact had been limited to the 50 people in attendance at this town-hall meeting.

I don't love this hospital tax, but funds is funds.

Blake's account of the two Republicans running for attorney general shows that, while neither seems to understand the role of the law all that well, at least Sam Olens has a slightly firmer grasp on reality. If we have to have a Republican in that position (and with Baker running for governor, it seems like there's a good chance we will), could we have the one who doesn't rant about socialism?

I love the last sentence of this article about appealing the ruling on Lake Lanier: "Georgia lawmakers also recently approved water conservation bills that state officials hope will show it is serious about saving water." Um, or actually save water. Which is more important?

I'm dying to see the comments below this editorial in favor of that communist intrusion into our lives, the census, as well as the letters it provokes.

Oh shit! Facts.

(Belated) Movie Diary

2010-04-02T06:54:00.000-04:00

The Inspector General: Thanks be to Google, which prompted me this morning with its Hans Christian Andersen logo to remember (via Danny Kaye) that we had, in fact, watched this movie, and I'd just forgotten to write about it. Not that there is a ton to say, but it's one of the few major Danny Kaye movies I hadn't ever seen all of, even though my family owned a VHS copy. And that's the copy we actually watched, so it wasn't exactly in great shape, but the movie held up anyway. And it led to a discussion on Kaye, who was huge at the time and now seems forgotten by all but movie buffs. My theory was that it's because none of the films he was in really captured pop culture imagination enough to last, although I think a number of them are really good (The Court Jester first and foremost). His slapstick style is also fairly dated, in a way that most people now don't appreciate, but I don't really have a problem with that. Anyway, this movie is full of that, and it's not really an all-time classic or anything, but it's also cute and has a lot of very entertaining musical numbers. And is loosely based on a Gogol short story!

Lil' hobby

2010-04-01T07:25:00.000-04:00

This does assume that most Democrats are thrilled with the health care bill that passed. As opposed to being more like, "thank god that's over with."

Dude. This is balls. You can be a pragmatist and still believe some suffering is necessary.

If I remember, this park in Boulevard is the one that's being worked on and funded by the neighborhood, so that's really okay that it's not being funded. I'm not sure how high the expectations of getting $1 million were.

I'd guess a lot of the top earners at UGA don't live in the ACC either.

Movie Diary

2010-04-01T07:02:00.000-04:00

The Box: Somewhere in this two-hour-long mess is a good short film. Or a decent short film. But Richard Kelly decided instead to burden everyone with an awful southern accent (Cameron Diaz occasionally turns English) and then slather on a few layers of confusing Judeo-Christian allegory, proving that I probably don't want to go back and rewatch Donnie Darko as I'm sure it only gets worse or that it doesn't work when not powered by the dreamy looks of one Jake Gyllenhaal. The AV Club's review, which I'm just now reading despite the fact that I knew it was an entry in "My Year of Flops," contains these sentences, "It begins with a relatively straightforward premise, then pulls the rug out from under the audience. Then it pulls out the floor, demolishes the building, and drops an atomic bomb on the block." That's about right, although the review goes on to see the movie as a Garden of Eden metaphor, which I think is the wrong place to look in the Bible. It's more a reworking of the same theme from Donnie Darko (itself a kind of twisted remake of The Last Temptation of Christ), only this time bringing out the Abramic elements in the greatest story ever told. That is, there's a combination of willing self-sacrifice and being asked to make that sacrifice and there's the fate of a child thrown in. All of that makes it sound interesting, but Kelly drags this shit out so long and so incomprehensibly that only a night of sleep has fixed anything of this sort in my brain, and I may well be wrenching the narrative onto tracks it doesn't really run along. The look is kind of great--very mid-1970s Kubrick--and Jared pointed out that Lynch could have done really good things with it (at least with Lynch you're not waiting for a clear answer to show up), but I warn you: do not get sucked in by the premise. That's what we did, and I think those two hours could have been used far more productively. And I say this as a person who watches Gossip Girl, so my standards of productivity are not that high.

Lil' hobby

2010-03-31T07:36:00.000-04:00

Oh, right. It's April. Pretty funny, guys, especially the bit about raising cats for meat.

Hey now, Mr. Marr. I'm not sure GreenFirst's name is ironic or deliberately misleading. I don't think it's been definitively determined that the incineration plant, which, lest we not forget, is designed to generate energy from a renewable resource, is a bad thing--just that Elberton residents have some understandable qualms--and it's a bit irresponsible to go down that path, ain't it?

If you see Andre Gallant's name at the bottom, you should probably read it. This article on ACTION is a thoughtful and lengthy examination of what, exactly, the nonprofit does, complete with some measurable results.

John Huie's article on Mental Health Court and the trends with regard to incarceration in general (even some Republicans are seeing the downside of mandatory minimum sentencing and ridiculousness like Georgia's two-strikes law) is also really good.

Y'all realize that eliminating funding for it is also a form of downsizing? A lot of good projects are, however, bound to get cut.

Great idea, but, yeah, UGA actually planned the timing of those furlough days pretty well...

I like concision, too, but this is a really dumb complaint. The first excerpt, from the state's application, isn't exactly difficult to understand. It translates as: "all these facets of the educational system work together." Now that may or may not be true, but it's something grant readers would want to see. And the second excerpt, from the federal government's response, means, "dudes, you came close." Could they be shorter? It's the rare statement that couldn't be. I believe I could boil down Jim's column into a sentence. And for that reason it's not always the most useful thing to say. Georgia lost out because only two grants were handed out, and it's possible Tennessee and Delaware don't have the same kind of extremely contentious relationships with their educators that we do, for example. Or maybe they actually defined how they'd measure teacher achievement. There are a lot of possible explanations, but I'm betting their applications weren't significantly shorter.

Again, Jim's making good points about Seaside, but it's also kind of important to point out that the fact that those are six- and seven-figure homes severely restricts the community's diversity.

Oh ye who live in glass houses... Mr. Kooyman, let me direct your attention to the stats page easily accessible on One Athens's site, which states, "It is reasonable to suggest that students account for some of the poverty population in Athens-Clarke County. However, even when the student population is accounted for, the poverty rate for the county remains 23.5 percent, which is 81 percent higher than the state rate." That doesn't mean Taliaferro County isn't poor. But ACC certainly is.

Publication

2010-03-31T06:52:00.001-04:00

Grub Notes goes to Watkinsville, part 1.

Also

2010-03-30T07:52:00.000-04:00

Dude. Dude! No way. I don't even say "worst episode ever" and it's kind of likely this last one of The Simpsons was. The commenters seem to get it.