15 December 2005

The Divergence Of The Twain, or
      Another Smart Alec Entry

         Jamesir Bensonmum [Alec Guinness]: She murdered herself in her sleep, sir.
         
Dick Charleston [David Niven]: You mean suicide?
         
Jamesir Bensonmum: Oh no, it was murder, all right. Mrs. Twain HATED herself.

      With this blog's previous entry being called "Alec Guinness' Basement," and Philip Seymour Hoffman continuing to gather raves for his performance in Capote, I found myself today thinking about that delightful old chestnut, Murder By Death.   The movie, now almost thirty years old, was penned by Neil Simon, and it was a spoof of those drawing-room mysteries typical of the pre-WW2 period.   The premise: five famous detectives are invited to a spooky old mansion for a meal and, they soon discover, an evening of murder and mayhem, hosted by the ever-eccentric Lionel Twain, played by a feyer-than-fey Truman Capote. As you might expect from a Simon script, the movie is less satire than pastiche, but it's also a movie whose fingerprints I keep seeing in most forms of contemporary comedy from Airplane! to Family Guy, fingerprints arguably more pronounced than those of, say, Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein or Blazing Saddles.   Bring your encyclopedic memory for cultural references in with you, but leave the rest of your brain at the door: that's the movie's injunction as it seats you and prepares you for the gaudiness to come. When James Coco, in his take on Hercule Poirot, insists-- half-indignant, half-victimized-- declares "I'm not a Frenchie, I'm a BELGIE!", you know exactly what you're in for.   Noel Coward this isn't.

      The strength of the movie, though, was and remains its cast: Peter Falk, Peter Sellers, David Niven, Maggie Smith, Elsa Lanchester, Nancy Walker, and at the centre of it all, Alec Guinness as the blind butler Bensonmum, the greeter of the various detectives and their escorts. Guinness is especially fun to watch, first in his drollery, then in his silly miscommunications with the deaf-and-dumb maid played by Walker; and eventually comes the real treat, a miniature tour-de-force of silliness that culminates with Guinness proving that he can outfey the already overly-fey Capote, and doing so seamlessly. It's a flight of minor genius made slightly more ironic by the fact that the film he followed this with was Star Wars, as if this was one last incarnation of his Ealing days before he was forever pigeonholed as Obi-Wan Kenobi. There are even a few seconds of accidental footage in which it seems Peter Sellers is caught admiring his onetime mentor's performance, savouring the simultaneous campiness and wryness of it all. It's a shame that IMDB's quotes page does not include Guinness' final scene in its entirety; but suffice it to say that there's nothing quite so weird as hearing Guinness utter the words "That's what you think, big boy."

      The rest of the cast is good to adequate, some (Falk, Niven, Smith) coming off better than others (Sellers, stuck parodying Charlie Chan as Fu Manchu), but there's a distinct pleasure that comes from watching such a collection of fine actors working with one another. That pleasure, though, led me to the disquieting realization that all but five of the thirteen stars of the film are now dead, with only Richard Narita, Eileen Brennan, James ("That'll do, Pig") Cromwell, Peter Falk, and the impossibly-luminous Maggie Smith remaining. Try as films might now to compile impressive casts (c.f., just about any Robert Altman film, including Gosford Park, or Kenneth Branagh's overripe Hamlet), they just don't seem to engender the same sense of larkishly serendipitous coordination. More to the point, though, I think there's no longer any extent to which watching "great casts" seems to connect us with brighter days of cinema. Somehow, now, we're in Norma Desmond's world in which the pictures got small, as bloated and as over-budget as they may be. Murder By Death connected us with the 30s, with Elsa Lanchester especially recalling that golden age in which she was the Bride of Frankenstein. The best we can do these days? A CGI-enhanced Christopher Lee appearing for a few minutes in a Peter Jackson or a George Lucas film-tome. The connections seem weaker, the continuity less valid and less comforting. God love her, but Maggie Smith only seems to take us so far back, though I can't entirely explain why. As Sidney Wang (Sellers) says, "Answer simple, but question very hard."

      I was lucky, in a way. I grew up in the eighties, when it was still common to see TV stations airing black-and-white films, if only as regular time-filler. I could see Warner Oland do Charlie Chan without having to hunt for the flicks, or pray they might get an odd airing on TVO. Since the 90s, though, you just don't see the old movies, and the old actors, unless they're attached to unique circumstances, like watching It's A Wonderful Life a hundred-billion-gazillion times come Christmas season. We lose the references, we lose the faces and the history, we lose the konwledge that allows us to observe ironies and play, just as most of the people commenting on Murder By Death on IMDB could only see Alec Guinness as a Jedi sage, and not, for example, as the man who once played eight different roles in the same movie (Kind Hearts and Coronets, 1948) at a time when this was a genuine tour-de-force.

      We lose perspective as much as we do history, but we lose too much more. There is no actor these days of whom I can think that even vaguely reminds me of David Niven, that particular figure of class and ease; try as Ewan McGregor has, he could not do in three films what Alec Guinness did in half of one; and I cannot find it anything but ironic that only Peter Falk could ape Bogart without simply becoming an aper of him. Perhaps I look back with a discolouring sense of nostalgia, and perhaps I privilege the past, but strange, isn't it, how even reflecting just a little on a small little film, a small guffaw in time with no social purpose whatsoever, can make one haw on where we are going and where we have been. In the meantime, go find Murder By Death, if you can find it, and enjoy the silliness. Somehow, I'm sure it'll do you good.

13 December 2005

Alec Guinness' Basement

      It seems my latest entry caused (undue) some concern among a few of my readers.   Have no worries, and let me restate matters, perhaps more clearly: the ole Doc is just trying to find something better for himself, something that will pay better and may actually (Heaven forfend!) proffer some form of advancement.   My only immediate way to enable such possibilities within the academic world is to finish the blasted dissertation which has now become an albatross on my neck.   Given, though, that writing even a small entry for this blog has become as painstaking as passing a stone, my prospects for completing an entire dissertation are as likely as my chances for living in eternal connubiality with mine own private seraglio.   (The difference between the two is that one would rejoice at being done with the former.)   So I'm trying to extricate myself from this "Situation Hopeless But Not Serious" scenario.   There's only so long one can live in Alec Guinness' basement.

      As for other stuff, I keep thinking I should be able to write something here that is more profound (and surely more than whinge)-- about, well, anything. There's an election in the offing; there's no end of silliness and stupidity screaming for attention; and there's surely enough literature out there upon which I could summon some sort of commentary, insightful or not.   I find, though, I'm becoming more and more interior as time goes by-- for good or for ill, but comforted slightly by the surety that silence is a virtue inadequately appreciated.   Or maybe I've grown tired of proving Mark Twain right, especially after doing so with Wilford-Brimley-like regularity.   Something tells me I should insert a Quaker Oats logo at right.

      The winter break has now arrived for the academic year, and with it a dhowload of grading.   To that, add the lavish lunacy that is the holiday season, about which the less said the better. (Shopping remains to my mind an activity best accomplished with a machete and a broken bottle of Cutty Sark.)   Ah, December: you bump and grind away, like a crack whore with a credit card to pay....

      [Hey, where in the Hell did that couplet come from? Damn and blast, damn and blast!    And worse, I just dangled a preposition!   I'm imploding from within like CIA information!}

      Oh, yet another Christmas, and its particular bliss.... In the immortal words of Father Mulcahy, "Jocularity! Jocularity!" 'Tis sometimes the best way to keep one's sanity: irregularly, even in Alec Guinness' basement.

22 November 2005

He Do The Police In Different Voices

      In the final throes of marking, the Doc has Winamp spinning (?!?) random tunes in the background, and he finds himself singing along in all the wrong ways.   The song?   De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da.   The oh-so-relevant lines?   "When their eloquence escapes me, / their logic ties me up and rapes me...."   De do do do, de DA DA DA.

      Jeronimo's gone mad-- and Sloppy-- agine.   Shantih, shantih, shantih....

21 November 2005

The Doors of Reception

      In case any of you missed the video of President Shrub at his press conference in Beijing yesterday, let's simply say that checking it out is NOT optional.   Evidently, the President went to the Midvale School for the Gifted.

Cases For Rigid Training and the Depp To Pleasure

      Just a hint of an update, folks, as I remain so far behind in my marking-- to be returned Tuesday-- that I'll no doubt be losing much sleep in the next while.   Strange it is, he mutters to himself and sounding like a perturbed Yoda: I used to be relatively energetic when it came to marking, but now I find it's a task all-but-destined to prove an exercise in instructional futility.   At least in recent years it has proven to be, and I fear I'm becoming sufficiently cynical to surrender to that old temptation of educators, simply slopping grades down with only the barest of commentary.   Van the Man's "Why Must I Always Explain?" should probably become my theme song, especially with that lyrical masterpiece "My Humps" being oh-so-certainly out of the question.   (Give me a brown-eyed girl over a bunch of black-eyed peas anyday.)

      Alas, there's not much new to report, save some family stuff I won't discuss here.   My Canuckistani readers might want to check out this ridiculous list of Canada's 100 most important books, a list which would be risible if it was not so infuriating. (Alligator Pie makes the list, but St. Urbain's Horseman does not; Beautiful Losers gets the shaft while Howie Meeker's book on hockey mysteriously stickhandles its way to significance.   Proof positive that Canadians should never be allowed to judge their own works of-- ahem-- "National Literature.")   Similarly, I see the newest chance to see Johnny Depp chew (and eschew) scenery is on its way to cinemas, but this time it's a biopic of the legenderary debaucherer John Wilmot, aka The Earl of Rochester.   Frankly, the previews have me worrying the film will just be Quills in England, and the thought of John Malkovich as Charles II provides with me enough doubt to sustain a Cartesian immortality, maybe the flick won't be so bad. Things can turn out better than I expect, right?   Right?   Oh.   Riiiiiiight....

      Ah, well, that's enough marginal optimism for now.   Any more would be as unnatural as Bushian oratory.   Back to reality, back to the grade-grind and its destructive nonsense.   And if anyone, ANYONE, ENNY-ENNY-ENNY-WUN, figures out the wordplay in my previous sentence, I'll cease to be such a cynical bastard.   For a day.   Maybe.   I'll do my best, anyway. Until later.

17 November 2005

Ear's Pokin' At You, Kid

      Received this from the T.S. Eliot mailing list today, and it was too good not to share here:

So, why did Zeus and Hera have to ask Tiresias whether men or women enjoyed sex more? This is what one person submitted to Scott Adams who just published it in "Dilbert Newsletter 62.0:"

One of my co-workers (who is originally from Arkansas, just FYI) told me one day that he knew for a fact that sex feels better for women than it does for men. I asked, "How do you figure that?" His reply was (and I am not making this up!), "Because when you put your finger in your ear and wiggle it around, it feels better to your ear than it does to your finger."
Beware, gentlemen: repeat this, and you'll lose your fingeramajig as certainly as Tiresias did.

Lukn My Wrks Ye Myty& Dspar!

      As if students don't already write enough like e.e.cummings....

      (Somewhere, in the ether, Doctor Johnson is weeping into his orange peels. & so 2 bd.....)

12 November 2005

The Drudge Report

      Ah, argh, it will be a familiar refrain by now: Sorry for not updating, things have been busy, I have essays, essays, everywhere, and haven't felt much at all like blogging lately....   I'm sure you're all spinning your eyes, understandably so. Worse, this entry isn't going to remedy anything.   Shrug.   I think I may be becoming the Dalai Lama of ambivalence, appropriately enough considering there's a whole Lhasa nuthin' goin' on.   Marking time, indeed.   Blehhhh.......

      But all goes well enough, I suppose, though grading student papers seems to take about five times as long as it used to take.   Yawn, I should probably try write something more substantial here, but work beckons-- natteringly and pointlessly, like a Sex and the City teleplay, but not quite so insufferably.   I should to it.   Until, well, whenever I can be bothered to add more here.

30 October 2005

Sunday, Ruddy Sunday, or
     The Old, Grey Jer, He Ain't What He Used To Be

We warmed the glass slightly at a candle, filled it a third high, swirled the wine round, nursed it in our hands, held it to the light, breathed it, sipped it, filled our mouths with it, and rolled it over the tongue, ringing it on the palate like a coin on a counter, titlted our heads back and let it trickle down the throat....
...
'Ought we to be drunk every night?' Sebastian asked one morning.
'Yes, I think so.'
'I think so too.'
      --- from Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited
      After Goodness-Only-Knows how many consecutive hours of answering emails and commenting on essay drafts and so on and so forth-- and my back now as brutally buggered as Ned Beatty's butt in Deliverance-- I can finally utter those five little words I've been aching to say for days: "Wolf Blass, take me away!"  

      Right?   I think so too.   And I'm shiraz hell not coming back until my Bacchus better. Power grapez, my friends, power grapes.

Waiting For Godet

      Sorry, folks, not much of an update here, as I have too much to do in the way of preparing for this week's classes, but I found this quiz and had to post it here.   My result is only partially surprising.

What Religion Do You Fit In With?

You fit in with:
Agnosticism


Your ideals mostly resemble those of an Agnostic. You are fairly ambivalent towards any religion or spiritual connection. You lead a very busy life and find that religion and spirituality are unnecessary to your life.

0% scientific.
20% reason-oriented.


A bit ironic I should find this after last week, when I was prompted to describe myself not as Agnostic but as an Ennuist. Boredom, the PoMo logos: In the beginning was the Meh (Jer 1:1).   Ah, enlightenment, don't know what it is....

      POST-SCRIPT:   I'm rather distubringly reminded that there was a time when some people-- buckle up your seat belts, people, hilarious turbulence is coming-- regularly described me as a mystic.   Yes, a mystic.   Oy vey.   Ah, the shame, the humiliation.   I was so much dumber then, I'm smarter than that now....

22 October 2005

Hey, Where Did He Go (Days When The Rains Came)

      I can almost hear the Van Morrison refrain: Do you remember when / we used to blog?   Sha la la lalalala....   Oh, my brown-paged URL....

      Yes, blogging really has not been a priority lately.   Priority?   Natch, not even a passing interest.   Even this entry, I confess, is rooted more in sating concern than in writing for any sort of intellectual or communicative purpose.   So very little seems to generate anything more than a shrugging response from me that maintaining even a kind of facile pose of interest borders on pointlessness.   I hardly care that in that last sentence I mixed enough metaphors to warrant puréeing just for consistency.   I'm developing the same passion for writing that one assumes Julia Child had for bioethics and the history of cardboard.   Well, writing and just about everything else.   Is it possible to raise being blas&ecute; to an art form?   Methinks I am a prophet uninspir'd....   (Call it seeing through a glass, Gauntly.)  

      Anyway, a few brief notes on things. There's a piece from the Aussie paper The Age to which I'd turn your attention, because it makes an argument I'd make if I didn't feel I'd already made it over and over again; give it a gander.   Also, I understand there's a massive project to render the classics of the ages through contemporary eyes, a project I'd think more of it did not decide to Atwoodize Homer.   (That sound you're hearing in the background is the Not-So-Good Doctor stabbing himself repeatedly in the brain with a corkscrew.)   Check out the Grope and Flail's review of the preliminary editions here while I lament the predictability of it all (and collect the bloody remnants of my mind from my keyboard and attempt to stuff them back inside my cranium).  

      There's also a very funny review of the HBO series Weeds on the CBC's website that's worth a read, particularly for its hilarious opening paragraph.   Weeds, for those of you that have not seen it yet, is one of the better shows on the air right now, thanks to solid writing and more especially the wonderful Mary-Louise Parker, one of the best actresses working in the States right now.   Sexy, charming, and gifted with some of the most expressive eyes in Hollywood, she's one of the few actresses who can mingle daftness with caginess in perfect proportion, which makes her perfectly unpredictable, distinctly mannered without being manneristic.   She also has a slightly flaky air about her that makes her endearing-- in part, I confess, because she reminds me of the kinds of quirky femininity for which I've all-too-many times been, and remain, a sucker, damn it.   (Yeah, I know, I know, that's why I'm always getting myself in trouble....   Insert shrugging, grumbling and eye-rolling here.)   Anyway, give Weeds a viewing if you haven't yet already: it's what Desperate Housewives could be if it hadn't opted toward pretense and lurid contrivance.   Oh, and if it wasn't so manifestly stupid.

      In other matters, last week's classes on Lycidas went as well as I could have expected, though I am going to try to steal another half-week for it.   This will half-delay the planned Marvell (the Mower poems), which in turn will half-delay the beginning of Adam Bede, which I have not taught in a very long time.   That I will have to reread Eliot will no doubt please Zelda, who-- by the way!-- is about, with her hubby (the Had Matter??), to celebrate her first wedding anniversary tomorrow.   This blog would note that this normally means all signs of post-nuptial cuteness must cease, else incurring much-deserved mockery, so the true stuff of marriage (misery, dissatisfaction, china-hurling fury) can finally begin.   But as this blog is feeling uncharacteristically generous, it'll let their terrible cuteness continue unridiculed until it becomes truly unbearable.   Happy anniversary, you two, and many happy returns.

      With that, I'll finally end this entry, thinking with some temptation that writing all this may mean I can go another several days without having guiltily to write anything here.   Pehaps, perhaps?   Perchance to dream.

18 October 2005

This Is Just To Say

      No, no-- I am not going to indulge in a pastiche of Williams' famous poem, tempted as I might be to do so.   No, this is just a short entry to allay (pre-emptively) some of the concerns about the Not-So-Good Doctor's apparent return to oblivion-- or obliviousness, whichever seems more appropriate.   The Doc's innate lethargy, combined with the frustration dealing with allergies, is making even the simple task of blogging inordinately difficult, to say nothing of trying.   When I'm not sneezing, I'm rubbing my eyes with a ferocity more appropriate to a recently-wisened Oedipus.   I guess it goes without saying that-- insert anticipatory groan here-- the Jocasta's on me.

      Anyway, today the Doc ventures up to Tokyoronto where he will, among other things, attempt to teach John Milton's Lycidas for the first time.   My charges, I suspect, will be suitably intimidated by the poem, and I have a sneaking suspicion that whatever gets accomplished today will only be an initial step into the deep.   I can my students echoes already mourning.   Wish me-- or, more appropriately, them-- luck.

      Now, off to earn my minor pittance.   Until later. Cheers and best, everyone.

14 October 2005

Break, Break, Break

      (Points to those of you that understand the title's origin.)

      I should apologize to those of you that have been worrying about the Not-So-Good Doc, but I would also like to assure everyone that I am adequate and alive but just otherwise blasé about blogging or emailing. Occasionally I intrude, and I go silent; this is just me. This should also be nothing new to my regular readers, the Doc being as miserable and cantankerous as he is prone to be, and so silence is the better part of discretion. The Dawk, after all, is no Harold Pinter. His only art of silence is genuine silence. It compensates, he hopes, for the times he rambles like Al Gore at a press conference.

      With that, I should take the opportunity to note the passing of Wayne Booth, one of the few guys in Lit Crit still worth reading. Sad we lost him.

      Especially when there are guys when just can't get rid of. Especially, especially, when it makes the Doctor dangle a preposition in such a way. We will continue to blame Burgess Meredith for such stuff, just because we can't. Grumpy Old Bastards have to stick together. Especially in spirit.

23 September 2005

Pure Genius

      Thanks to RK-- who alerted me over a pint on Tuesday to a CNN story on Ray Charles literally behind my head-- I finally figured out what the hub-bub was about: not just a collection of duets with musical lesser lights, but a 7 CD and 1 DVD boxed-set of the complete Atlantic recordings.   In a word: Awesome.....   In two: FUCKING Awesome.

      Amero-ethnomusicoligsts, however, have just-- pardon the phrase-- creamed their jeans, respectively and collectively, and probably cumulatively.

Children of the Corn

      Oddly enough, I stumbled upon this article just as Stewie Griffin claimed he had "half a pack of Rolaids in his diaper."   

22 September 2005

The Presidential Seal

      When (sigh) a rubber stamp just isn't enough....  

      This blog's favourite bit: "We'd like to tell him how respected he is in China, so we can boost his confidence and help his career."   Ah, the (er) milk of human kindness....

19 September 2005

The Weapon of Mass Seduction

      American writers, it seems, have seen the enemy, and it is Thomas Browne.   And Samuel Johnson.   And Evelyn Waugh. And Thomas Carlyle. And John Dryden.   And, in fact, any writer availed to devices of nuance.

      Gee, I wonder why....

      (Now rewrite that first paragraph with semicolons, and you tell me which works better, the hamfisted thumping of the periods, or the subtle twisting of the semicolons.)

18 September 2005

Beating Around The Bush


Kinda says it all, doesn't it?

17 September 2005

Observation

      Consider it a wisdom:   If you know what a polymath is, you probably think you are one. (And, of course, you would probably be wrong.   Savour the humbling irony.)

16 September 2005

Ligers, Not Daughters?

      It's not often I read a book review that makes me say to myself, "Damn, I HAVE to pick that book up!"   Consider this one of those instances.  

      (I can't wait: I can already hear the more pious and smug femipundits mewing like Goneril.   Hee hee!)

I Guess He Had Her At "Get Out"

      No word, however, if he'll deplete her.

15 September 2005

U2, Rufé?

      It was only about a dozen years ago it seemed everyone and his aunt Millie was lining up to pay tribute to Leonard Cohen, but here we go again-- this time with the assistance not only of U2, Rufus Wainwright, and Nick Cave, but also (wait for it) Mel Gibson.   A wonder they didn't name the film Graveheart.  

Glib Service

      The feteing of Nabokov's Lolita -- on the occasion of its fiftieth year, as regular readers here should be aware-- continues today with a piece in the NYT that unfortunately seems more pap than meat.   The article's tendency towards glibness I find bothersome, to say nothing of misleading. Take, for example, this rather smug characterization of Nabokov's first genuine supporter, Graham Greene:

Only at the end of the year did Graham Greene, in London, relieve "Lolita" of her obscurity. Greene was not always good to little girls; he had lost a lawsuit for having proferred a few remarks about Shirley Temple and her "dimpled depravity."
"Not always good to little girls."   Oy vey....   The reductionism here makes it sound as if Greene had written about Temple as some kind of real life Humbert Humbert, when, in fact, he criticized 20th Century Fox for deliberately marketing Temple (in GG's words) with "a certain adroit coquetry which appealed to middle-aged men."   It's also worth observing that in most critical circles, GG's observations are now accepted as accurate-- and, to an extent, astutely prophetic.   (One shudders to think what hay Greene would have made from the Olsen Twins.)   It is, however, this sort of deliberately flip characterization that sends me right up with wall -- especially when it's easily remedied with a little prudent editing and intelligent research.   But-- gronk!-- nay, nary, and natch, it's easier and more provocative to suggest that Greene was luridly objectifying "little girls."   Frankly, this is one of the weaker pieces on Lolita I've seen this year, and it makes me wonder if we've learned anything at all from that book and how we approach issues of desire and objectification.   I suspect that if either Nabokov or Greene were still around, they'd read this article with mildly-profane expressions of indignance.   Actually, Greene would probably have laughed-- loudly and heartily-- at such priggish earnestness.   Perhaps best we should react the same way.

12 September 2005

Gnothi Se

      And Brian wonders why people think he's a malignant tumour in Canadian history.

      (Who knew someone could surpass Trudeau's arrogance?   There is, however, a difference: Trudeau had A REASON for being arrogant.   Brian Mul-Brigadoon-ey?   Methinks he's trying to be the Canuckistani Reagan, his sins forgot, that he might be marshalled for greatness.   Gawd, gawd, gawd, let him go the way of Arthur Meighen.)

      Riddle me this Batmans:   How many people will do anything more than shrug when Mulroney (Gawd forbid) shuffles off this mortal coil?   If you guess more than ten, you must be using the same mathematical skills that governed Canada's finance ministry for so long.

There's A First Time For Everything....

      Bestill my quaking heart, I can't believe it: Is it possible? Is it in fact possible that Dalton McSquinty has finally-- at long last and after enough fumbling idiocy to embarrass even a fourteen-year old boy-- done something RIGHT?   Hark, hark!   Summon the heralds!   Summon the hautboys!  

      Who knew the chuckleheaded, imbecilic, dissembling panderer had it in him?   Then again, as his facesake has said, "We all go a little mad sometimes."

Puhleeze, Academy II: Trackin' Braining

      Saturday's Guardian features an intriguing excerpt from Elaine Showalter's new book Faculty Towers: The Academic Novel and Its Discontents, the title of which seems only a pair of dicritical marks away from something worthy of John Cleese.   (Note the Freudian suggestion in the title, too.)   The article's a good read, and it makes me look forward to getting my mitts on a copy of Showalter's full text, although I should say-- assuring some of you, perhaps disappointing others-- that the Not-So-Good Doctor has never once felt the desire to write about his experiences at his own Eyesore U.   If he did, however, it'd probably have to be titled How To Succeed In Listlessness Without Really Trying.   Twaddlemarch, I fear, would be just a bit too on the nose.

Caveat Lector!

      Obedient (to a point) to the wisdom of the ancients, the Not-So-Good Doc -- recently consigned, kicking and screaming, to being 25-- was left scratching his beard, somewhere between stupefication and diabolical temptation, when rereading through Apostolos Athanassakis' translation of Hesiod's Works and Days yesternoon.   Pray, dear readers, what-- oh what!-- should the Doctor do, faced as he is with an injunction from a man much, much wiser than he?   Question classical teaching?   'Twould be hubris, wouldn't it?   What impudence!   What certain folly!   But, but, but....

The right time to bring a wife to your home
is when you are only a few years younger than thirty,
or just a few years older.   This is the time for marriage.
Five years past puberty makes a woman a suitable bride.
Marry a virgin so you can teach her right from wrong.
Choose from among the girls who live near you and check
every detail, so that your bride will not be the neighborhood joke.
Nothing is better for man than a good wife,
and no horror matches a bad one, a glutton
who reclines to eat and needs no fire to roast
even a stalwart man and age him before his time.
(Too late.)   Ah, what the hell, why am I even thinking about this?   Obedience is not an option, after all.   Finding a virgin in this day and age is a task from which even Sisyphus would shrink.  

      As the Romans would say, "Caveat lector." And caveat lecher, too.   Now be vewwy, vewwy quiet: it's virgin hunting season.  

      UPDATE:   Curiousity made me look up the etymology of the word "lecher." Suffice it to say, the origins are interesting:

c.1175, from O.Fr. lecheor "one living a life of debauchery," esp. "one given to sexual indulgence," lit. "licker," agent noun from lechier "to lick, to live in debauchery or gluttony," from Frank. *likkon, from P.Gmc. *likkojan "to lick" (see lick). Noun lech "strong desire" is a 1796 back-formation.

"The priests had excellent cause to forbid us lechery: this injunction, by reserving to them acquaintance with and absolution for these private sins, gave them an incredible ascendancy over women, and opened up to them a career of lubricity whose scope knew no limits." [Marquis de Sade]
Oh, the marvellous world of tongues....

10 September 2005

(And We Can Almost Smell) Your TV Sheets....

      About this, all this blog is going to say: at least they won't have Clay Aiken and Angela Lansbury singing "Those Were The Days...."   Or Larry King doing "Thank You For Being A Friend."  

      Let us just count our tender mercies they haven't asked Ellen to "dance" to Hugo Montenegro's Greatest Hits.

      (And if you don't get the above references, you really are too young for this blog, Gosh darn ya.)

09 September 2005

Popular Culture

      From today's Shmecktator:

By hanging on to No. 1 [in the U.S., with "We Belong Together"], [Mariah] Carey's total weeks at No. 1 is now 75.   If Carey remains in the top spot for five more weeks, she will surpass Elvis Presley's 79 weeks at the top and pull ahead as the act with the most weeks at No. 1 in U.S. chart history.
*** shudder***   It's enough to make one begin quoting Revelations.        

Stuff That Bloggers The Mind

      As many of you know, I considered dumping the increasingly problematic Enetation for handling the comments around here.   On this subject, I've hummed and hawed with Hamlet-like uncertainty.   No more.   Yesterday, I did the initial work of setting up a blog for my Film and Lit class this year, and within ten minutes of the first (trial) post there, two comments had been left, entirely Spam and boding badly for how easily things could become a giant pain in the Doc's barely-existent arse.   So, that blog, I've determined, will only allow comments from invited members (i.e., my students), something I'm not about to do with this more public site.   So, Enetation it shall remain, bumps and grinds and stalls and all.   The last thing I want to be doing is deleting ads for Cialis and Hold'Em Poker every half hour. Besides, I'm sure none of you want the Not-So-Good Doc any grumpier than he usually is.   Right?   Right.

      It's nearly 9am and the Doc is listening to Robbie Robertson's Storyville, an album now eerily sad given what has happened in New Orleans.   Apparently, the Feds in the US have shipped down 25,000 body bags, which is a haunting statistic: usually they send more than twice as many body bags as they expect to need, generally, as they say, to err on the side of caution.   Which means the Feds are (implicitly) expecting at least 10,000 dead.   Ten thousand.  At least.   And even that probable underestimation would make the death toll thrice that of September 11th.   Staggering.

M*A*S*H-terpiece Theatre?

      Not quite sure what to make of this, but it figures that Altman-- so famous for his fondness for improvisation-- should choose an unfinished play for his debut at the Old Vic.   Scripts, scripts? We don't need no stinkin' scripts!

      (As for Kevin Spacey as Richard II: let us simply hope he doesn't play the poet-king as a K-PAX-ian outsider.   The name "Verbal Cant" comes to mind.)

All He Did Was Keep The Beat (In Bad Company),
     or, God Save The Queen

      Maybe we don't need another hero, but, dammit, sometimes it's just nice to have another one around.  

Whip Van Wrinkle

      For the record, the five men in question had CONDITIONER in their hands.   Really.   Really really.  

      (As for the two ladies, one hopes they didn't end up having a Carrie moment.)

08 September 2005

The Vancouver Canucks

      To tell you the truth, this blog isn't sure if it should be proud of this story, or galled by the context that informs it.   Key quote: "We've got Canadian flags flying everywhere." Yup, 'cuz the "fabulous, fabulous guys" were standing on guard for thee. Or, perhaps, floating.

07 September 2005

Little Hams, Who Made Ye?

      It has been a while since I annoyed people with cat pictures, so I think you're all due.

Trouble      Here's Trouble, looking studious, on one of his favourite perches, the breakfast nook, which allows him a clear view of whatever is being made in the kitchen, and whatever is happening in the back room. The telephone you may be able to discern in the foreground is his favourite pillow, which affords him the opportunity to doze off on his self-appointed sentry duties. Trouble's been with me for over 10 years now, and I suspect he's about 14 now. He remains in remarkably good health, and perpetually a Character: gruff, cantankerous, independent, he always seems to be an inch and a half short of giving a damn. Every now and again, though, you can espy the kitten, the little boy, still inside the cat, as in this picture: he can still be transfixed by things he has known forever, which I find unendingly sweet. Old age-- though he bears no physical signs of such-- has demured him a bit, so now he's rather a gentle grump, with the sternest glare I've ever seen on a cat. But that's what I like so much about this pic: it seems, to this admittedly partial observer, to reveal both his intensity and that little glimmer of kittenish wonderment. It's all, as they say, in his eyes. Ah, Trouble, my boy....

Jenny      ... and here's Jenny, doing what Jenny does best, save for eating and shitting. As you can see, precious little disturbs Jenny when in sleep mode, not even a cap falling of the top of the futon. Quite the opposite in fact: the cap becomes another thing to nestle in, as if it were a blanket. And, naturally, that cat has to have control of the TV remote, which means I regularly don't have the heart to change channels when Jenny drifts off like an old man listening to a baseball game on the radio. Jenny has now been around here for ten months or so, and almost all of the indicators of being an adopted stray have disappeared: the bêtes-noires are gone, so too the inclinations to dart for the door. The only remnant: the clamorous excitement anytime food might, just maybe maybe might, be available. It's always in contrast with that ruckus that Jenny's periods of repose are so endearing, even if I think Jenny gets more use out of my futon than I do. Oh, to have the stressful life of a cat....

Yesterday's trip to Pork Spew was good but exhausting. The first trip to campus, where the frosh display their na^iuml;veté obliviously and even a bit proudly, is invariably An Experience. Older farts like me, nursing their beers, in the meantime stifle our chuckles and our temptations to mutter things equivalent to "Oh, they're like this now...." Their giddy adventurousness will pass soon enough, and they'll end up like the rest of us, as stale as yesterday's coffee.

BTW, I found myself IDed at one of the main pubs on campus, which is hilarious on its own. The manager then came along, put his hand on my shoulder and said to the 19-if-she's-a-day bartender-in-training, "I don't think there's a way he could be confused for less than 25, don't ya think?" Ah, backhanded compliments, the ways of the tavernal world....

06 September 2005

Between The Sheets, or Inter-Cover Brother

      Following this blog's recent post on things I learned from the movies, it seemed only fitting to supply a similar post on the various things I've learned from my readings over the years-enough-to-beggar-counting.   Unfortunately, this list probably won't be as accessible as the movie one, but-- damn it-- this blog never promised to appeal to lowest common denominators, even if it frequently does. (Sn*rk.)   And with no further ado, What I Learned From Literature:

  • Embrace 69-ing, because the way up and the way down are the same thing.    (Herakleitos)
  • There's a reason that reading Margaret Atwood causes one to twitch like Herbert Lom in a Pink Panther movie.   (Atwood, "You Fit Into Me")
  • It was Dostoevsky that invented the Axe Effect.   (Crime and Punishment)
  • I feel discomfort, therefore I am.   (How reassuring....)   (Graham Greene, A Burnt-Out Case)
  • When the going gets tough, the tough get naked.   (King Lear)
  • Fiddle-dee-dee, tomorrow is another day....    (Andrew Marvell, "To His Coy Mistress")
  • Never, ever, in your otherwise-useless life will people of all stripes be interested in you than when you have a silly metal band wrapped around your finger.   (Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings)
  • Be careful with your relations, and keep your kids away from the Medea.   (Euripides)
  • Always keep a hanky handy.   (Othello)
  • Or, on second thought, maybe not.   (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight)
  • Thank heaven for little girls.   (Dante, The Commedia)
  • Or, on second thought, maybe not.   (Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita)
  • Just because something smells like fish doesn't mean you should chase after it.   (Thomas Gray, "Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat....")
  • Apparently, some women can masturbate and write at the same time.   (James Joyce, Ulysses)
  • Pussy rubbing against a post is indeed a form of worship.   (Christopher Smart, Jubilate Agno)
  • Shock of shocks, life IS a stitch.   (Mary Shelley, Frankenstein)
  • It's a villanelle world when your whistle blows, and still your kid will want a piece of your time.   (Dylan Thomas, "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night")
  • Some teachers will do anything to encourage their students.   (Mordecai Richler, Cocksure)
  • Never, ever, screw around with your boss' daughter.   (The Tempest)
  • They really do fuck you up, your Mum and Dad.   (Sophocles, Oedipus Rex)
  • Even the brilliant need a shot in the arm now and again.   (Arthur Conan Doyle, the Sherlock Holmes stories)
  • Driving Miss Daisy isn't as innocuous as it sounds.   (F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby)
  • Just because something-- or someone-- says "DRINK ME" doesn't mean that you should.   (Lewis Carroll, Alice In Wonderland; see also Bram Stoker, Dracula)
  • All in all, everything's just another brick in the wall.   (Edgar Allan Poe, "The Cask of Amontillado")
  • The cruellest sentences with which one be punished are Faulkner's.   (Absalom, Absalom!)
  • For God's sake, DON'T throw the baby out with the bathwater.   (George Eliot, Adam Bede)
  • Sometimes the A just isn't worth it.   (Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter)
  • Believe it or not, that burning sensation in your loins may mean you're going to Heaven.   (George Bernard Shaw, Saint Joan)
  • And, Leonard Coehn forgive me, don't go home with your pardon.   (William Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman)
  • Give a woman a little romance, and all she'll want is moor, moor, moor.   (Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights)
  • Give a man a little romance, and all he'll want is More, More, More.   (Robert Bolt, A Man For All Seasons)
  • If the pen is mightier than the sword, a hardcover copy of Clarissa is mightier than a bulldozer.
  • All shall be Hell, and all manner of myself shall be Hell.   (John Milton, Paradise Lost)
  • Some people have a lot more going on upstairs than you'd think.   (Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray)
  • Financial worries will send you right around the bend.   (Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman)
  • Honey and Pooh: a combination even more magical than chocolate and peanut butter.   (A.A. Milne)
  • Ladies, despite what they may tell you in Tijuana, taking the worm probably isn't a very good idea.   (Antony and Cleopatra)
  • An ounce of Pound is a cure for invention.   (The Cantos)
  • The world's first Surrealist was Henry Howard.   Tottle-ly.   (Yes, RK, I know, no one will get it....)
  • You can't judge a book by its cover, or its title.   (E.M. Forster, Howards End; Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited; John Mortimer, Rumpole of the Bailey; William Golding, The Lord of the Flies; W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage)
  • Every man thinks his bat is made of sacred wood-- until the big moment when he swings with it and misses.   Bernard Malamud, The Natural)
  • All it takes is one snowballing incident to change your life forever.   (Robertson Davies, Fifth Business)

    and

  • There's ALWAYS room for Tang.   (Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff)
Well, there we go. Now off the Pork Spew. Essay your own good folks.

05 September 2005

New Orleans Was Sinking....

      ... and W didn't wanna swim, as now seems beyond debate (save for the devotedly and rabidly partisan Shrubbies).   Today's NYT features a particularly pointed indictment by Paul Krugman that encapsulates most of what wrong before Katrina struck, and what will continue to remain wrong until there's a new occupant of the Whitehouse. It's a shame, really, that the American population can't insist on a presidential recall in the same way that Californians could: such unfathomable, to say nothing of tragic, incompetence is beyond apology.   Frankly, I'd like to see the President and his cronies do a dozen or so swigs each of Biloxi tapwater before they make any more disingenuous claims of compassion for Katrina's victims.   One miserable evacuation deserves another, don't you think?

03 September 2005

Magic Dealism

      "Falling in love... is basically a process where both sides feel they're getting a good deal."

      ....

      ....

      HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!    Oh stop, my sides are hurting.... [He wipes away the slight tear that has appeared in his eye.]   My, I needed a laugh like that.

Sensual Surrender and Formal Atrophy

      And now, ladies and gentlemen, your Bizarre Headline of the Day....

      (Bjork, the other, greasier, white meat....)

02 September 2005

Frankly, My Dears....

      Okay, this is a result I had not expected (note the hilarious italicized section, which is, of course, my own emphasis):

Which Leading Man Are You?

Clark Gable

You scored 23% Tough, 28% Roguish, 33% Friendly, and 14% Charming!

You're a pretty interesting guy, all man but approachable and friendly. You like the lovely ladies, but you're also a real stand up guy with a true sense of honor and duty. You're respected by most men, although they probably wouldn't trust you alone with their girlfriends and even wives. Women find you intriguing, drawn to your playful sense of fun and true-blue core. You think most women are rather silly, but strong dames with smarts really turn you on, and you tend to marry them. Leading ladies include Claudette Colbert and Vivien Leigh, women who find you somewhat charming but a little dangerous.
I love the "roguish" assessment. Can I put that on my c.v.?   "And you tend to marry them," however, is a horrifying suggestion.

         Ladies, you might want to take the Leading Ladies Test.   If any of you end up with Claudette Colbert or Vivien Leigh, let me know....     (Then again, Gable did do The Misfits with Hollywood's favourite bicycle, so remember: there's lots of room for variety.)

31 August 2005

We're Just Dodgeball Slaves 4 U

      The WP has a delightful review of the new anthology of Neo-Conjectures from The Weekly Standard: a pip to read, it reframes the ultra-right wing in a context appropriate to its imperious buffoonery. Read it.  

30 August 2005

Drinkey Friday

      The Not-So-Good Dawk didn't want to post on the events of this past weekend for reasons long-standing and arguably quite childish, but have since decided not to post on them would be churlish.   Churlish?   Yes, because Friday evening I was quite surprised to discover that a quintet of people had so very kindly trekked in to see the Older Guy with gifts various and sweet.   That they made the trip was nice enough on its own, and so the night turned out to be a pleasant trial, and a trial only because of (well) those reasons long-standing and childish and having absolutely nothing to do with my visiting quintet.

      Thanks.    And now, "enough." Except for the added thanks to Zel, the Mata Hari of that cabal. And cheers to Matt, who really has had to put up with more from and about the N-S-G Doc than he should for only three actual meetings. You deserve a medal, Sir.

      Having opened that flask-- thanks to Viv and Dave for their company and the rye, and to Arby (RB) for the Aram and the company that included sitting through a replay of a Van Morrison concert. So much for "enough." But, thanks everyone. It was appreciated, and it was fun. Cheers. Now can I go back to being churlish?

Water, Water Everywhere

      Given the projected and now realized damage done in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, this blog is shocked-- SHOCKED!-- to discover that few papers have yet to use the most obvious headline of all.   No, not the Coleridge above, but this one right here.   A rose by any other name....

An Artist And A Madman

      The Boston Globe reminds me that this year marks the fiftieth anniversary of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, surely one of the best works of fiction of the second-half of the 20th century.   Reading the Globe's article, I was struck that it was Graham Greene who helped bring the international edition to public attention.   Seems fitting, really, considering Greene's interest in the ways in which men destroy themselves and/or others for women that aren't as innocent as they suggest.   (Ironically, Lolita was written around the same time as Greene's The Quiet American, and the two books have more in common than one might expect.)   I have to confess, I found especially provocative Humbert Humbert's claim that to identify a nymphet "[y]ou have to be an artist and a madman, a creature of infinite melancholy, with a bubble of hot poison in your loins and a super-voluptuous flame permanently aglow in your subtle spine...."

      No comment, though RK is surely smirking somewhere, contemplating how best to opportune that quote to my embarrassment.   Let me assure you of this at least: my spine is anything but subtle.

      Now go read Lolita if you haven't done so already.   Shame I can't:   my copy seems to have vanished, probably borrowed permanently by some youn--- well, you can guess the rest.  

28 August 2005

"Abraham Lincoln Winned"

      Trying to understand American history?   Gene Weingarten has some explanations for you.   Key quote: "The American Colonies revolted against England because of seminude, sunbathing strumpets. Also, we wanted to ftop fpeaking like fsissies."

Fozzie Logic

      Which Muppet are you? asks this quiz that some of you might want to take.   It says I'm most like Fozzie Bear, but natch: we all know the Not-So-Good Doctor is actually Waldorf.

The Overwhelming Question

      "Does Dr. Phil do dogs?"   And strange, isn't it, no one dared ask before....

The Shape of Things To Come

      As most of you know, this blog has up and it for the better part of two-and-a-half years, the result of polite nudging from two main people to get the Not-So-Good Doc into the 21st century.   (You can blame them for the detritus you find here: I surely would have remained too blasé to have started this thing uncajoled.)   Now, though, it seems everyone and his barber's daughter's Gothic gal-pal has a blog, to the point that the punditocracy finds it necessary to construct elaborate cultural theories about this so-called medium.   I can see it now: graduate seminars encouraging Foucauldian readings of Paul Wells; dissertative tomes on the effects of comment boxes on online discourse; definitive studies comparing dailykos with Samuel Pepys; and on and on and on, with buzzwords like "hybridity" and "dialectical" thrust cavalierly and haughtily about like the ends of epées.   Sooner or later, there will even be smallish cults perversely claiming that Warren Kinsella is, in fact, Francis Bacon.   (Oxfordian cults, naturally, will sanctimoniously follow.)

      Think I'm kidding?   Well, okay, maybe a bit.

      But imagine, if you will, the most ridiculous possibilities in this regard, and brace yourself for their inevitable ensconcement into the annals of Serious Study.   South East Asian Paraplegic Nazi Lesbian Bloggers?   Don't rule it out.   Psst, Khmer A Minute: Mein Kampf, Stumped and Lying Lao Online might find its way onto course curricula before you know it, sandwiched between The Semiology of Templates and Going Postal: How LiveJournal Saved Civilization (Current Mood: Elated).   Is There a Hypertext In This Class? will make the retired Stanley Fish millions as Harold Bloom retreats like a defeated Ben Kenobi into the desert wild, hoping his younger self isn't eventually played in some flash-fest by a Milton-spouting Ewan McGregor.   Homi Bhabha is probably sharpening phrases like "liminal negotiation" in breathless anticipation.   Stephen Greenblatt's acolytes are surely salivating in the distance, praying their papers get accepted for yet another pernicious MLA panel. (They will, and their authors will be orgasmic at the fact.)   Helen Vendler will weep accordingly.

      Or maybe not, even if the difference between what one predicts and what comes true is often only a difference in degree and not in kind.   Sometimes satire is just prophecy seen with the other eye covered, and what I mock thus is now as inevitable as a Bushian misstatement.   In this day and age, everything has to be theorized, extrapolated, inappropriately enervated or disproportionately disected, trivialized and fetishized. This blog's facetiousness aside, prepare yourselves: a new age of nonsense is ready to begin. As Mr. Cohen might say, I have seen the future, brother--- it is blather.

      Don't say I didn't warn you.

      (And this blog in particular?   It's junk, but it's still holding up its little, wild bouquet....)

Don't Shoot The Messenger

      Okay, dear?   Besides, you know you can't believe everything you read in newspapers....

      Er, uhmmm, yes, dear, I'll remove that link from my blog right away....

25 August 2005

Son Of A Ditch

      August.... Such a wonderful word, but such a lousy month, as I've said before and will likely say many, many times again.   September, like a ditch in a Robert Lowell poem, is nearer than ever, with another academic year about to open up. This year it looks like I'll be teaching film and literature, though I've never strictly taught film before, and it'll be a return to one-hour groups which I've not done since 1996-97.   It also means I'll be teaching-- of all things-- Jane Austen at one point in the year, and my regular readers here are probably giggling hysterically at THAT prospect.    But before that comes the nadir, the passage through the devil's ass before the return to purgatory.   Yes, the last gasps of August, the drab, dreary days I detest more than any others in the year, the days when the dickory-drekery tick-tock seems louder and more daunting than ever.   Good God, just get me to the ditch; Vladimir and Estragon are waiting for me.  

      (Is it a Vlad sign that I've been drinking vodka lately?   Don't worry, I'm groaning right Beckett ya.)

      Anyway, this blog will probably be quite quiet for the next little bit, as it usually this time of year when the Doctor disappears to do a few days of damage and drowning. The Doc, following the advice of John Lee Hooker, is putting himself on milk, cream, and alcohol, alcohol, alcohol.    Don't worry-- the Doc will be back sooner or later, unless of course his life shifts from Waiting for Godot to The Iceman Cometh, in which case you'll know where to find him, hiding in grain sight.

      HILARIOUS POST-SCRIPT: Best something-something-day-Gift-Ever comes from Zelda, who somehow managed to discover this ancient image of the Doctor when when he was younger and closer to idealistic. More critically, it is, best we can guess, around 15 years ago. The Preacher (of Ecclesiasticus) was right: there is nothing new under the sun. Leave it to Zelda to possess stuff of me even I've never seen; it is to laugh in riots.   Thanks, bratto: you may truly have absented yourself from a career as an archivist.


The more things change, the more things remain the same....    With thanks to Zelda and to Matt: Zel for keeping the evidence, Matt for reproducing it. Oh My Arfing Gawd...

      Er, dare I say it: it has just occurred to me: how may guys look the same fifteen years later?   Not so bad.....

24 August 2005

Learning It At The Movies

      After reading this bit on lessons learned from the movies, of course the Not-So-Good Doctor had to take his few stabs at naming some of the many, many things he has learned from his years as a cinephile.

  • Always, always, always begin with a few Latin terms. (Dangerous Liasons)
  • Some cocks are special.     (Chicken Run)
  • Doing the right thing means you lose the girl-- and get stuck with the lecherous French guy.   (Casablanca)
  • If you're going to get to journey through the jungle with a bevy of Burmese lasses, accept that you are Going To Die. (The Bridge On The River Kwai)
  • Be careful what you do and where you change: there's always an old man lurking behind the curtains. (The Wizard of Oz and any old version of Hamlet)
  • Never, ever, ever talk about Marshall McLuhan. Especially in a movie queue. (Annie Hall)
  • Solitaire is bad for you, and so's your mother. (The Manchurian Candidate)
  • There's a shortage of perfect breasts in this world. (The Princess Bride)
  • Sometimes, that sticky stuff on your hands IS useful! (Spider-Man)  
  • But sometimes, it's just plain humiliating. (American Pie 2)
  • And it might just get you killed, so be careful who you hurl it at. (The Silence of the Lambs)
  • Astonishing bad taste will be astonishingly successful. But success usually means disaster. (The Producers)
  • Having a kid will, in fact, end the world as you know it. (Rosemary's Baby)
  • Don't try to shtup Lynn Redgrave. Just don't. (Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex....)
  • When in the process of divorce, it ain't over until the chandelier falls. (The War of the Roses)
  • It's generally a good idea to have what Meg Ryan is having (unless it's Russell Crowe). (When Harry Met Sally)
  • Just because you feel lucky, doesn't mean you are. (Magnum Force)
  • Sometimes, you just have to jump off a cliff, especially if your best friend tells you to. (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid)
  • Size matters not. (The Empire Strikes Back)
  • Er, well, actually, it does. (King Kong, The Fly, Boogie Nights....)
  • Taco Bell is our future. (Demolition Man)
  • There really is nothing like a good scouring, is there? (The Passion of the Christ)
  • Your penis is not a good place to hang your bowling ball. Ever. (Screwballs)
  • All doors in Toronto are unlocked, so if you're broke.... (Fahrenheit 911)
  • Guys named Jeremy make very, er, effective gynecologists. Maybe too effective. (Dead Ringers)
  • You can always eat the script-girl later. (Shadow of the Vampire)
  • The mace you think that schoolgirl in the kilt has may not be the mace you're thinking of. (Kill Bill Vol. 1)
  • The surprises in some packages may scar you for life. (The Crying Game)
  • Women seriously do not like long fingernails on a guy, even if he's the man of their dreams. (Nightmare on Elm Street)
  • When shit happens, it really happens. (Not Another Teen Movie)
  • There are, in fact, thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird. (The Maltese Falcon)
  • Four little words: Love what you do. (American Gigolo)
  • Village folk will do anything you want, so long as you ask them to do it for Randolph Scott. (Blazing Saddles)
  • Shakespeare is better in the original Klingon. (Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country)
  • Sharing isn't always a virtue. (Strangers on a Train)
  • You are, as a matter of fact, what you eat. (Cannibal Girls, Eating Raoul, Titus...)
  • The babysitter is hot for you, after all. Yippee! (The King and I, The Hand That Rocks The Cradle....)
  • Love means never having to say you're sorry. (Old Yeller)
  • Remember to keep a stick of butter handy. (Last Tango In Paris)
  • Don't just lie there when two guys try to put you into bizarre positions. (Weekend at Bernie's)
  • There's nothing, absolutely nothing, quite like planting it Good and Hard. (The Sands of Iwo Jima)
And last, but not least:

  • We're ALL fucking Spartacus. (Spartacus)
Actually, I could probably go on forever with this. (I probably already have.)

Just To Set The Cat Among The Pigeons...

      ... but some of you might want to reconsider calling yourselves Trekkies.  

      Ah, the trouble with Tribbles....

      But wait---- Let us perform a brief psychobabblic reading of the image at right. We have Shatner, he looking proud and admiring, even a little flirty, utterly afield in countless fury little muffs.... Oh Gawd, let's just stop RIGHT there....  

      Altogether now: ~~ I'm going to Hell, Hell, Hell, Hell, / I'm goin' to Hell, Hell, Hell, Hell... ~~

23 August 2005

The World Just Keeps Getting Weirder and Weirder

      Why?   Because who would ever have imagined that I would find myself in agreement with Camille Paglia?   Perish the miserating thought.

      (And, no, "miserating" isn't a word-- but damn it, it should be.)

      Also, for those of you now "into" this Thing we call blogging, you should probably give this article from the Washington Post a read.   Very funny.

21 August 2005

The Journals of Those Often Moody

      For those of you that find yourselves occasionally haunted by that increasingly prominent disease called Blog Depression, the nonist has some tips for you.

      And, for the record, this blog seldom suffers from Blog Depression.   Blog Antipathy, yes; Blog Ambivalence, yes. But depression?   Nah, this blog would have to care more than it does to wear that inky cloak.   Keep that in mind in the days that follow.

      [with thanks to Maura for the link]

The Writing On The Wall

      In case you're looking for something to spray paint on your walls, you might want to see how to bring it Old School.  

20 August 2005

She's An Easy Derider

      Now and then, my sometime colleagues in the academy ask my why I have come to chagrin it as I do.   I usually say that it is not the academy that I chagrin, but what it tends to do these days, which more often than not is to perpetuate some of the most bone-headed claptrap imaginable.   Case in point, this article, a review of The West Wing: The American Presidency as Television Drama.   Quickly into reading it, I knew exactly where the reviewer was going well before she got there, which was more than enough to drop my head in dismay.   Here's the polemical money-shot, as perverse and unflattering as it is inevitable:

The show does not try quite hard enough in its treatment of women, though. Christina Lane asserts in "The White House Culture of Gender and Race in WW," that WW presents a positive image of women and makes efforts to revise traditional power relations and reorient its male characters toward a valuation of female resilience and community (p. 38). In reality, WW completely subverts this. Its not that there arent intelligent and authoritative women in Sorkins WW. There are many: Abigail Bartlet M.D., Press Secretary CJ, Deputy Chief of Staff's assistant Donna, political assistant Amy, legal counsel Ainsley Hayes, among others. But these women are repeatedly humiliated in WW episodes, an appalling misogyny that is supposed to pass for humor. Sorkin relishes dumb blondes and the vengeful degrading of militant feminists. He forces upon WW women indignities men never suffer.
"Appalling misogyny."   Where one even begins to correct this wilful stupidity, one hesitates to guess.   Instead, I'll simply say that this sort of intellectual huffing and snorting that deserves all the scorn it elicits-- and frankly should elicit.   I feel dumber for having read this unmitigated crap, and it makes me wonder how much dumber I've become over the years for having had to read so much material like it.  

19 August 2005

Papa's Got A Brand New Hag

      You knew it couldn't all be good news: after a few suprising turns in the past few days, the Not-So-Good Doc dared to glimpse the headlines.   Needless to say, I think the spat of good news is now officially over.  

      This is, as they say, "ond wið rihte wan."   (I'll let RB translate.)

17 August 2005

Dearth of a Ladies' Man

      Unbelievable:   it seems that Leonard Cohen is broke, allegedly ripped off by his former business manager, and now he's suing her for roughly $5million.   More interesting is the profile written by Macleans' Brian Johnson, describing Cohen's supposedly "lavish" lifestyle; it sounds like we have more in our lifestyles than Leonard does.  

      In other news: the UK has decided to create its own Walk of Fame called "The Avenue of Stars." The first inductees?   Alec Guinness, Laurence Olivier, Peter Sellers, Alfred Hitchcock, Charlie Chaplin, The Rolling Stones, Shirley Bassey, The Two Ronnies, Billy Connolly (!), Dame Edna Everage (!?!?!?!), John Cleese, Ricky Gervais, Nicole Kidman, among others.   Welcome to Tony Blair's further-Americanoed Britain.

I Know Thy Lot, Old Man

      Jim Holt has in this week's New Yorker a consideration of the oh-so-topical issue of bullshit that I recommend people read, even if one may eventually begin to feel as if one is caught in a series of paradoxes worthy (ironically enough) of the 17th century Metaphysical Poets.   Indeed, I suspect many of you will either need to start drawing flowcharts halfway through just to keep track of things, or you'll throw your arms up in confusion and despair and think you were better off before you started into this elucidation.   So, be warned: keep some aspirin handy.

      As I was reading this increasingly obscure discussion of obscurantism, though, I wondered how poor Mr. Holt was going to extricate himself from his argument, how, in fact, he could finally step off the merry-go-round he'd boarded.   Some of you won't believe me, but shortly after wondering this, I knew exactly how this was going to end.   I sighed and half-shrugged, like someone watching a murder-mystery who has identified the killer thirty-minutes in: Ah, the precious inevitable, the iconic delta to which this sort of analysis had eventually to flow....   Especially those of you reading this that number yourself among my former students, actual or adopted, you will know, deeply and surely to your bones, that I'm not lying, exaggerating or even, God forbid, bullshitting.   Right?   Right.

      Oh, you white-bearded Satan, yes, it's true, that ~~ all we've said, was just instead, of coming back to you.... ~~  

15 August 2005

Dry Lips Ought To Move To Los Angeles

      Now, ladies, don't say I don't do you any favours....   (Even if describing this guy as "the Picasso of vaginas" should be more alarming that complimentary.)

14 August 2005

The Guttural and Guttable Quick: Notes From A Samurai Weekend

      Thinking again of Toshiro Mifune after the other day, I decided last night to indulge myself in a samurai weekend. I began last night the dynamite double bill of Yojimbo (1961) and its sequel Sanjuro (1962), personal favourites for almost as long as I can remember.   I admit it: I'm a Kurosawa kinda guy ("okay, I don't make films / but if I did they'd have a samurai"), which I say with a tinge of self-irony, as a few particular young ladies may, however vaguely, sufficiently recollect to comprehend.   ( )

      That personal bit aside, it was Kurosawa that truly mastered the art of what Sam Peckinpah later called "beautiful blood-letting."   Especially among dour-minded film students in the West, Kurosawa has developed a reputation as a Serious Artist, which of course he is, but which tends to result in very earnest (and often humourless) responses to his movies.   So it's often forgetten how wonderfully funny both Yojimbo and Sanjuro are, the so-called "jokes" of their satires perhaps now a bit too subtle for contemporary viewers.  

      So many of the delights of those films are to be found in (and in reactions to) Mifune's magnificent deadpan, and watching some of Mifune's tics-- the twitiching of his shoulders, his sometimes mock-contemplative beard-scratching-- it occurred to me how well-suited he would have been for the Zucker-Abrams-Zucker comedies of the 70s.   Part of Mifune's genius is his ability in these films to be both still and light, manifest as a wonderfully gnomic cynicism that seems almost always on the verge of a wink, and then to burst forth with incredible violence, violence that is never simply for its own sake (though occasionally for its own saké).   But that violence-- whoa....   Mifune's samurai (he changes his name based on the foliage around him) is a master of stillness and lightness, of counterweighing stability with agility, and vice-versa.   He only barely seems to move when the action comes, and before you know it, there are bodies littered all over the place, without any of the signs of exhaustion or exhiliration more typical to the genre.   There's one scene in Yojimbo in which Mifune's Sanjuro (the word means "thirty year-old") frees a captive and slays her captors.   Afterwards, he cleans up his mess by making a mess: slowly, precisely, casually, he tears the place apart, slicing here and puncturing there, to ramshackle the place as if a dozen or more men had launched the attack.   As he does so, he beams with an unstated, but nonetheless professional, pride as he does it, a glorious self-satisfaction as he covers up his own minimalism.   His opponents know he's good.   None of them knows how good he really is, or how little it takes for him to convert his opponents into a human purée, so they will not suspect him of the onslaught, much less that he could do it alone.   This is the thematic crux of combining Mifune and Kurosawa: so little wreaking so much, and so quickly that if one glances askant a moment one misses the devastation.   Who needs physical hyperbole, the pseudo-sexual grunting and grasping and lunging?   The two make annihilation seem effortless, which for the films provides the more important message: slaughter is easy, strategy is hard.   A killer is only as good as his mind; his weapon is merely a tool of his trade.

      Continue reading....

      Contrast this, for example, with the more recent points of comparison in Tarantino's Kill Bill films.   Admittedly, Tarantino's tack is toward comic-book violence, with infite splatter and elaborate choreography.   As impressive as Uma Thurman's demonstrations were in those films, I think back on them now with this thought: Sanjuro would have slaughtered the Crazy 88's in half the time, and he would have split The Bride before she'd have seen it coming, though I wonder if Sanjuro would have engaged a woman in combat.   Where Tarantino reaches for kinetic violence, Kurosawa tends to locate violence in inertia, in stillness, so that when it materializes it's more shocking and, ultimately, more effective.  

      Just as importantly, where Tarantino tends to render his figures in ornament and style, Kurosawa renders his as slovenly and sometimes clumsy, as mercilessly human rather than parodically superhuman.   Again, from my point of view, advantage Kurosawa.    Even working in satire, Kurosawa works in human rather caricatural tones.   There's the one scene at the beginning of Sanjuro in which the incompetent local leaders are forced to hide from the villainous Superintendent's forces while Sanjuro intimidates them away.   When he returns, we have that wonderful bit in which the leaders emerge from hiding, from beneath the floorboards, their faces evincing astonishment and fear. These are well-meaning idiots, but not beyond sympathy, and so it's not hard to see why Sanjuro lets himself get dragged into their battle.   The comic effect, too, is valuable, as George Lucas realized when he imitated the image in Star Wars, complete with a howling Wookie and a nattering protocol droid.  

      Lucas, it should be said, understood Kurosawa's samurai better than Tarantino does (or chooses to). Think of the blink-and-it's-over violence of Alec Guinness slicing off the arm of the threatening alien in the bar at Mos Eisley: that's another example, among many, of Lucas channelling Kurosawa, and Guinness half-designed against Mifune's model, though Guinness may not have realized it.   Shame, I think, Lucas moved away from this in his subsequent films.   One of the most startling scenes in Kurosawa comes at the end of Sanjuro, with Mifune facing off against his primary foe, the equally mercenary but more Machiavellian Muroto (Tatsuya Nakadai, who eventually played Lord Hidetora in Kurosawa's version of King Lear in 1984's haunting Ran).   Muroto insists upon a duel, and once the duel is accepted, the two stand toward one another, motionless.   It almost seems as if the two will not engage-- but a flash of motion, an explosion of blood, and it's over.   The genius is in the shock, in the "what-the" effect aswe replay in our minds what happened, and so it preys more upon our imaginations.   We've seen it, seen it all, but did we miss something?   It's almost an inversion of Mr. Eliot's note about having the experience but missing the meaning: we've been jolted with the meaning, and we're left wondering if something escaped us, eluded us, tricked us.   But this is how death happens, even when we know it's coming, the result synergistic of what preceded it.   In Star Wars, Lucas understood this, though he came to forget it; Sergio Leone, and to some extent, Misters Hitchcock and Peckinpah understood it, too.   In Kurosawa's films, this is constant, and it keeps his films, particularly his satires, as sharp as the finest samurai swords.   All the better to lacerate you with, my dears.

      Kurosawa, beyond being visually arresting and intellectually provocative, always instilled his movies with a kind of epic passion that somehow manages to traverse even those circumstances in which he seems to underplay or minimize such tendencies.   I remember arguing with a onetime professor of mine about Kurosawa and Eisenstein, he preferring the latter, but for me the question is a no-brainer: Eisenstein was all style and intellect, a cinematic polymath too often desperate to show it (see also Tarantino); Kurosawa had style and intellect, too, but his films always had heart, emotional and visceral dimensions tangible enough to address more universal concerns.   Kurosawa's comic touches work, and they never seem intrusive or indulgent, unlike Eisenstein's awkward and often haughty attempts at same, or Tarantino's clever but often onanistic digressions.   In this regard, although Tarantino would surely object, I see QT not as the heir to the directors of low-pop films of drive-in theatres, but as the new Eisenstein, all style and no heart, encyclopedic in so many ways, but his films finally being as thin as the walls in a Virginia Woolf novel.   Kurosawa had a major contemporary, David Lean, both of them masters of humanizing tales of epic sweep and infusing them with subtle humour, but I cannot think of a legitimate heir to his throne.   (Nor can I think of an heir to Mifune's, most Tough Guy Heroes since too cardboard to qualify.)   Perhaps this says more about me than it does anything else, but Kurosawa's 17th century Japan seems more vivid and more substantial than Eisenstein's 1910s, or even Tarantino's 1990s.   Eisenstein's and Tarantino's worlds seem too artificial by half, too baroque or mock-baroque to cut to the guttural and guttable quick, though Reservoir Dogs is a significant exception to this.   Kurosawa could do High Style as well as anyone, but he knew better than to make style his top priority, and his best films are glorious balancing acts between style and emotional-and-intellectual content.   In many ways, Kurosawa is the filmmaker who has come closest to genuinely Shakespearean sensibilities, though thankfully without a Hamlet quagmire that would have debilitated his sense of action.   No wonder his Shakespearean affinities were with Macbeth (Throne of Blood) and Lear (Ran): it's one thing to contemplate action, it's another to let deliberation become the action in itself.   The guttural and guttable quick awaits.   If it were done, indeed.

      And with all that said, I'm off for more for this samurai weekend. Next up: The Seven Samurai and then Ran, and maybe Kagemusha, if I have time.

The Turtleneck and The Hare

      Somehow, I don't think this is what James Herriott had in mind by All Creatures Great And Small....   **shudder**

Steppe-ing Down

      There seems to be a theme this weekend: also in the news, ninjas in Mongolia.   Can a ninja make a profit in Mongolia? Shuriken, shuriken, shuriken....

13 August 2005

Now, Alanis, This Is Ironic....

      From today's Spectator:

Sworn Off The Cob

      Maybe we were wrong in assuming it was Zeus that seduced Leda....

"I'd Like To Test That Theory."

      For those of you that don't know that line, it's from the penultimate episode of Season Six of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.   Mad Willow has just dispensed with all of the major characters, and utters one of those maniacal statements given to SuperVillains on the verge of victory, something to the effect of "now nothing can stop me."   Insert blazing energy-ball that knocks Evil Willow across the room, and there we see the supposedly-departed (and uncredited) Anthony Stewart Head, as Buffy's onetime mentor Giles, a wry one-man cavalry.   He has one line, and the episode ends: "I'd like to test that theory," he ripostes, as all those of us that had followed the series until that point cocked our arms and cheered.   See, he returns, as Mr Eliot would say, and he's brought a big ole can of whoop-ass with him.   The lesson?   Be careful what you say; fate has a nasty way of proving you very, very wrong.

      Why mention this now?, you're probably asking.   Well, it seems Rob Schneider (to describe him as Evil would be redundant) made the mistake of having one of those stupid SuperVillain moments.   And Roger Ebert has come out to test that theory, complete with a big ole can of critical whoop-ass.   It's better than Lloyd Bentsen's smackdown of Dan Quayle all those years ago, with that famous "I knew Jack Kennedy, Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine, Mister Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy" retort.  

      Needless to say, I don't think Schneider will be makin' copies of this review.     

      (And a word to Mr. Schneider: it may be time to reflect on your career when a critic in one sentence proves he's funnier than you have ever been.   And a question, too? What's it like to have your words shoved down your throat like Robert Morley's poodles?   From my own perspective, I'd just like to echo the once-funny Family Guy: Freakin' sweet....)

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