The Man Comes Around?

      The Ewe-Kay music magazine Mojo has announced its nominees for its annual Icon Of The Year award, and the nominees are an interesting bunch: The Man, The Man In Black, The Androgyn, The Grandfather of Grunge and The Guy Nobody Has Ever Of. You can vote here.   May the best Man win?

The Scottish Play

      Zis blog says nussing, zis blog says nussing, zis blog says nussing....

Consider It A Public Service

      After all, this might interest some of you. I refuse to select a mate-- nay, even think about selecting a mate-- unless I'm playing chess or sorting socks.

      Key quote: "Watch out: sex on a whim can lead to feelings of love for a person who is entirely wrong for you."   You don't say....     Anyone else hear a Tina Turner song playing in the background?

Of Human Bondage

     Jeebus Aytch Keeryst, it's hot today! The mercurial mercury, from languishing in the mid-teens earlier in the week, has vaulted into the thirties yesterday and today, leaving those of us in Southern Ontario utterly unacclimatized. Poor Jenny seems especially to be taking the heat hard, uncharacteristically napping the time away in seclusion rather than on the Doctor's bed. (Trouble, on the other hand, has been surprisingly sprightly.) Methinks we're a few degrees away from a Tennessee Williams play here. I'll leave it to your naughty, naughty imaginations to speculate as to whom Big Daddy might be.

      Watched yesterday the Pacino Merchant of Venice and was moderately impressed with the performances. Pacino, of whom I had expected the worst, was refreshingly restrained (by his standards, at least), though he continues as ever to rely on a lot of the same tics and mannerisms that have become his trademarks. The real discovery was Jeremy Irons, who managed to give Antonio a subtle nobility that few actors have been able to give the part. Unfortunately, the movie does the typically corrective re-rendering of the play that I find too apologetic by half. When the film opens with title cards explaining the plight of the Jews in Venice, one knows well in advance that the story will be redone against contemporary templates of ambiguity and irony, and so become the implied tragedy of Shylock. So, yes, the film is sensitive and nuanced-- and finally quite bloodless. In fact, the film alternates between being melancholic and phlegmatic, with predictably ponderous results. I remain convinced that we can't make nicey-nice with Shakespeare, nor with Merchant in particular, which I think needs to be treated in much the same ways that we currently treat Measure for Measure and All's Well That Ends Well, as dark comedies (and cynical allegories) in which none of the characters are especially admirable. Ultimately, I think we're more uncomfortable with Merchant than it is with us. What that means, I'll leave you to decide.

La Merde D'Arthur

      Earlier, this blog was quite harsh unto the Pittiable Troy. It would now like to temper that judgment, having now seen Antoine (née Mutha) Fuqua's King Arthur. Troy is, in retrospect, an earnest and blindingly-brilliant film, studded with astoundingly tolerable performances and action-sequences that extend daringly upon the six-second shots straight out of a cinematically-cacophonous music video.   Oh, and dare I forget that Clive Owen has helped me to understand that Brad Pitt may well be the super-buffed Alec Guinness of his generation?   Could The Brad play Fagin next?   I'm suddenly a-drool in anticipation.

      FOLLOW-UP: Mr Owen, it seems, has been cast to play Sir Walter Raleigh in the sequel to Elizabeth tentatively titled Elizabeth: The Golden Age. Reason enough perhaps to send Mr Owen back to Coventry? (RK will know what I mean.) Today to spend watching Elizabeth again, followed by Al Pacino's The Merchant of Venice, the latter being cause for some trepidation on my part. One haws, after all, to see Scent of a Christian or Jewface: "Antonio! Say hello to my little friend!!! Hoo-waaah!!!"

With Their Stools And Their Sausages?

     Of all the plays to protest, somehow methinks this one not wise....

     (Kewpie dolls for those that figure out the source of this entry's title.)

      POST-SCRIPT: So much for the kewpie dolls. Oh, how unpleasant not to know Mr. Eliot....

Bits and Pieces

      After some malingering in this regard, I've finally added to the "Blogs of Note" section in the sidebar and trimmed away a few of the apparently defunct links. Any of you with interesting blogs that you esteem worth including in the Blogs Of Note are encouraged to submit them in the comments and I'll consider adding them. This page, I'm aware, seems to be getting more and more insular, and it's perhaps something to address.

      Also, in a few short takes (well, they were supposed to be short....):

• RK has brought to my attention the British project of restoring a valued portrait of John Donne, which is especially intriguing for those of us with an interest such matters;
• The Weekly Standard has a review of the new book on F.R. Leavis, and though Leavis is by-and-large a figure of much (deserved) distaste, the central problem of the article on it warrants concern here, specifically that of the professionalization of literary studies.   A dozen years ago, I'd surely have argued with great vigour and pompousity about the virtues of it; now, however, I'm much, much less certain, and in fact increasingly inclined to argue for the need for the informed amateur reader in cultural discussion.   Academic studies of literature these days do tend to belong more to the social sciences than to literary studies proper, as evidenced most plainly by the sickening consolidation of English Departments into cheaper, broader and sillier departments with the label "Cultural Studies."   Wonder if your local English department has been so debased? Check its course calendar and see if it is offering more courses in graphic novels and the Oprah Effect than on Sterne or Milton; if the former, it is not an English department really, but a pastiche of one. I'm all for interdisciplinarity-- up until the point at which such interdisciplinarity becomes little more than a means to study everything but literature, otherwise known as the interdisciplinarity that evades discipline. If this makes me sound like a crank à la Harold Bloom, so be it.
• ... And as if by example:   this article from the BBC on The Simpsons reminds me all-too-well of the persistent over-reaching by so many contemporary punditistes.   Make no mistake: I love The Simpsons as much as anyone, but articles like this one neglect the obvious for the sake of pursuing the grandiose.   The obvious, in this case, is the first rule of modern comedy: Whatever else you're trying to do, always get the laugh first.In the case of The Simpsons, that very often means going for the ridiculous joke just because it's there.   Such articles smack to me of Pirandello: they're about six observations in search of a proclamation.
• Of last, in full disclosure, such things are the sorts of statements I used to make when I was an academic nipper.   I try not to make them too much now, even if I occasionally lapse into doing so.   Sometimes I think the desperate quest to demonstrate one's relevance indicates desperation-- and effectively renders the quest an act of self-service rather than one of intellectual service.

Well, enough of this ranting. Saturday beckons, shrilly.

The Insomniac Commits An Update (Of Sorts)

      Usually, it bloody blows being an insomniac.  One of the few benefits, though, as I rediscovered this morning, was rewatching the Angel episodes that introduced Amy Acker to the series.  Damn that lass did adorability to perfection.  More pointedly, though, I was impressed with her impeccable sense of comic timing, a quality that's very, very rare among young actresses.  (And among pretty ones, almost non-existent.)  She seems to do everything with those gargantuan, often giddy-looking eyes and with that lanky, almost spindly frame that always seems to shrink in on itself.  No wonder she seems perpetually aflutter: if she isn't suppressing a giggle, she's releasing one, either way with the infectious enthusiasm of a four year-old getting away with something.  It's not hard to see in retrospect why she so lightened up the otherwise ponderous and clunky Angel -- and easily became the best thing about it.  Too bad the writers of Alias didn't learn to make better use of her in their final season.  Good comediennes are so rare, I find myself hoping she'll get the chance to follow through.  After all, do we really want to be stuck with Kate Hudsons and Jennifer Anistons?  Gawd, I hope not.

 

      Other late-night-cum-early-morning watching has included finally locating the old Neil Simon chestnut Murder By Death on DVD, and sitting through the eye-splittingly bad Troy.  All involved with that engorged mess of a movie took a public scouring, but especially dreadful, I thought, was Peter O'Toole who, as Priam, looks as if he's undergoing electroshock therapy just to keep his eyes at maximum mad bulge.  (Shall I conveniently forget Brian Cox, as Agamemnon, snarling and barking like a rabid German shepherd?  Would that I could....)  It has occurred to me that in future years if I am ever teaching The Iliad, I will encourage students should they misguidedly begin to convince themselves that watching Troy will give them the nuts-and-bolts of the story.  Yes, Menelaus is killed by Hector.  Really!  Don't worry, you'll be fine for the test!  Snicker, evil snicker....

 

      The Doctor's maternal unit, however, returned a few days ago from Lost Wages-- er, Las Vegas-- with an unexpected gift, the DVD set of the restored Lawrence of Arabia, truly one of the great films of all-time.  It's not something I'd have bought for myself, mainly because I have said version on VHS and so it would have been an indulgence I'd have disallowed.  That said, though, I found myself the night of receiving it watching the whole bloody set--  first the added features, then key scenes of the film (the train attack, Sherif Ali's manifestation), and then surrendering and watching the move entire from start to finish-- and being utterly riveted for the six hours it took to screen.  There's little one can say about that movie that hasn't already been said, but I was especially struck by the magnificent tactility of it.  It's as if one could extend one's hand into the screen and run one's fingers through the desert sands.  In so many ways, the movie shores (?) itself on key physical elements-- sun, dust, rock, smoke and even occasionally water-- and those vast sands in-between become a gigantic tabula rasa upon which destiny is made and unmade.  I know of few films that alternate with such dizzying profundity between centripetal and centrifugal perspecta as to be truly epic in both sweep and sensibility.  Only two directors, to my mind, deeply and genuinely understood the art of the epic, Akira Kurosawa and David Lean, and Lean with Lawrence may well have set the bar for that understanding beyond anyone else's reach.  (Cecil B. DeMille, Stanley Kubrick and Bernardo Bertolucci are all, alas, graspers despite their finest efforts.)  If you have not seen Lawrence, or if you have but not recently, I urge you to watch it again-- and again and again-- with due dispatch.  Then see if you can get through more than ten minutes of Troy without wanting to empty your stomach.  Lawrence is a masterwork; Troy is just a Pittance.

 

      In other "news," I'm getting increasingly skeptical about a few of the positions for next year for which I almost dared to have that bizarre thing some call "hope."  Don't ask me why.  Just call it a sneaking suspicion.  (Admittedly, I'm usually pessimistic, but I'm almost invariably proven right when I am.)  On the flip-side, though, a visit to one of my locals the other night brought to my attention that Van The Man is coming to Toronto in early August.  Tickets go on sale Monday, so I guess I'll have to figure out very quickly whom I'm going to have to kill or canoodle to get me into those nosebleeds.  It occurs to me to that the last time I saw the Belfast Cowboy in concert-- eleven years ago!!-- I was, well, a very, very different person than I am now.  (Some of us had to pay our dues in Canada.)  But, alas, another sleepless day awaits.  I just might have to hard nose the highway....

The Fan Who Would Be King

     And suddenly everything makes sense:  they're all the better to hear him with....

 

     Alas, the Doc hasn't been able to partake in any of the Leonard-come-Lazarus festivities of late.  (They happen every dozen years or so, and I caught the 1993 edition.)  In other words, I still haven't picked up The Book of Longing yet, nor have I followed the various publicity stunts like the pending Mel Gibson-produced tribute film, the new album by Lenny's current paramour, or the free concert in Toronto a week or so ago.  Does this make me a slipping scholar?  Nary and natch, I've been slippin' and slidin' so long, I should be a Little Richard song by now....

 

     Briefly, in general news:  Things have been loopy and lopey lately (say that ten times fast), with so many minor things always seeming in the do but nothing major that might warrant mention here.  Three weeks afterward, I'm still receiving emails from my former charges about their papers and exams, many of whom evidently cannot be bothered to check the blog I made for that course (which I apparently did just for the good of my own health).  Also had to make a short "thing" last week which I feel I muffed badly, as if in further proof that I should stop letting myself get roped, however much an honour it may be, into making remarks at gatherings; I keep meaning to say far more than I actually do, and far less eloquently that I originally hope.  Oh well.  Still waiting on a whole bunch of supposed "possibilities" on the future-front, which recent experience suggests I should bank on as much as I should the possibility of the Maple Leafs winning the World Series.  (Hey, it's more likely than them winning the Stanley.)  Anything else new?  Hmmm.  Nope.  So I'll shut up and let everyone go off and start celebrating the Definitely-Not-A-Virgin Queen by drinking themselves into oblivion-- at least until the fireworks start. 

 

The Legend of Zelda

     She will surely be livid with me for calling attention to it, but today is Zelda's something-somethingth birthday, and this blog of course wants to wish her a great one and many happy returns.  Discretion prevents me from including an actual picture of her here, or (temptation of temptations) revealing her nouvelle age, so I'll instead reproduce one of her own self-portraits in which she does one of her very favourite things, mainly mocking the Not-So-Good Doctor, whom we all know is only ever an innocent bystander to her savagery.   Have a happy, tingly and ecstatically misanthropy-filled birthday, kiddo. 

Mon Semblable, Mon Frere!

      Cheers and congratulations are very much due to a certain good sir (bastard, muther-arfing-sunuva...) who has finished the primary writing of his dissertation.   This evil blog is almost shamefully jealous. (Who am I kidding with this "almost" crap? Argh.)

      

Apologies Again

     Once again, my ever-patient readership, I'm sorry to go so long between posts, but events of late have been hectic and chaotic.  The end of the academic year, alas, means more than just the oh-so-welcome return of halter-tops, reminding most of us with Y-chromosomes of grade six when, er, things seemed to be popping out, gloriously and deliriously, all over (or returning, breathtakingly, like swallows to Capistrano).  Rather, it also means a final raft of marking, followed by an exhausting flurry of applications for positions for both summer and the next academic session.  For the first time, I'm taking a very mercenary approach to applications for the coming year, hunting for whatever courses I might be able to pick up, wherever I can pick them up.  Okay, perhaps this isn't mercenary-- maybe it's just whorish, but we'll stick, if only for the sake of pride, to the former, and because sometimes it seems I've been wearin' my .44 so long it makes my shoulder sore.  ~~I'm a soldier of fortune....~~ 

 

     I'm, of course, not willing to discuss what I have applied for, or to suggest anything about my appropriateness for positions x or y, for fear of jinxing myself yet again and probably severally.  (What's the cliché about Virgoans, that they tempt fate with their natures?  Snark! )  I'm reminded now of two things, apparently contradictory.  A good friend of mine once very kindly said that I was "the most academic person he knows," which I thankfully know he meant in the kindest way possible, and that said compliment comes from someone who knows more such types than I ever will.  And yet in just about every way, I realize I'm on the periphery of academia like Pluto is on the periphery of this particular end of the non-Douglas Adams universe.  Go, as that ubiquitous They would say, figure.  Ironically, enough, that's okay with me.