Me and Mr Jones

    Mid-afternoon and the Not-So-Good Doctor has accomplished absolutely nothing.  Instead he's settling in with a beer as Media Player blares-- believe it or not-- Tom Jones and The Art of Noise's version of "Kiss" through the speakers.  Ah, yes, Tom muthafuckin' (literally?) Jones.  I'm not sure whether or not I should be ashamed to admit that.  I should probably be more embarrassed by the fact that in the time it took to type those sentences, Mick Jagger has started screeching and growling his way through "Out of Focus."  Yup:  Jagger solo.  As the kids used to say, "Like, who does that?!?!?"  *shrug*  I belong to another era.  (Correct that, for the kiddies:  I soooooo belong to another era.)  There's always something deeply disquieting about feeling anachronistic at thirty-something.  And people wonder why I drink....

    Not much new to report from these quarters, save perhaps for a few short-notes on matters inchoate, insensible and almost entirely irrelevant, but here we go anyway:

• On Drinkin' Early: I'm going to legitimate it as preparation for this evening, as I wait for the best chance for the Republicans to get kicked in the teeth to go swirling down the drain like so much chocolate syrup.  As a Canuckistani, these elections shouldn't matter a jot to me, but strangely they do.  It's rather a matter of hoping (against hope) that the Yanks will remove their blinders and take the sweet, sweet chance to give President Shrub and his sycophantic snarlers a well-earned repudiation.  But I'm somewhere between pessimistic and cynical, because even if the electorate votes for detentation, I'm not at all convinced the results can be trusted given the highly suspect machinations of the Roving Lunatics.  I have a funny feeling we're going to witness a Republican resurgence as astonishing as the Taliban's.  So brace yourselves for something positively Lazarean this evening, though most of the world will not rejoice to behold the resurrection.  (And for which the Democrats will half-appropriately blame John "Hari-" Kerry.)  Whatever happens, I'll be glad I'm Canadian, for oh-so-many reasons, not least of which is and will be that our elections are invariably done in one day, without the hue and cry of banshees in a mosh-pit.  Hence the beer: something to steel me as I prepare for the double-duty tonight of toasting and lamenting at the same time.
  
  
• Roll With It, Baby:  Latest track:  The Spencer Davis Group, "Gimme Some Lovin.'"  Just cut me open and start countin' the rings.  (Bring a calculator if you attempt the same with Stevie Winwood.)
  
  
• Tolerate This:  In other Fishy matters, there's a review of Wendy Brown's Regulating Aversion by Stanley Fish that's worth a read, even if it strike me as a bit of (forgive me) piscine in the wind.  I do agree with him, though, on a buried point about "the mistake of theory, or the mistake that is theory."  Theory, at least in the humanities, reminds of Joyce's Ireland for being the fallow sow that inevitably eats her young.  Insert your own jokes here about the other white meats.
  
  
• Death Of A Ladies Man:  Poker players, as many of you know, develop notions about which cards to play based on their individual experiences.  Legend Doyle Brunson, aka "The Godfather of Poker," notoriously refuses to play Ace-Queen because he has lost so much money with that hand over the years.  I have realized now the hand that I should never, ever play, and the irony couldn't be apter.  Nothing kisses me with death more than pocket Queens, easily the hand with which I've lost most.  Infer from that what you will; you probably won't be wrong.   
  
  
• Got GILF?:  This blog reports, you decide.  (I suspect a reverse version would include the familiar figures: Harrison Ford, Sean Connery, Patrick Stewart, maybe Leonard Cohen.)  Forgive this blog for observing that Pussy Galore (Honor Blackman) is still, er, there galore.  Somebody should consult Tom Jones for comment.
  
  
• Holey Smokes:  If you missed it, check out Jon Stewart's coverage of the Haggard scandal from last night's The Daily Show.  (Click on the pic of the newsdesk at left to go to Comedy Central's website.)  Oh, the things we put ourselves through....  Er, well, not "we,"  kemo-sabe....
  
  
• Haggardy And:  Okay, I confess.  While writing this, I dug up some of the recordings Tom Jones did with --- gasp!--- Van Morrison over the years, including their surprisingly good reworking of the otherwise vapid Van tune, "Sometimes We Cry."  (Then again, Johnny Cash singing Trent Reznor would once have seemed just as unlikely.)   The mere thought, however, of Van Morrison singing "Sex Bomb" should certainly be enough to cease the world from spinning on its axis.
  
  
• Plathitudes and Plongitudes:  Some of you may have heard about the recently discovered sonnet by Sylvia Plath.  I'm of mixed feelings on Plath, but this one I think best remaindered into history.  Judge for yourself.  Expect, however, further reams of academic argumentation about what a bastard Ted Hughes must have been.
  

• Stupor-System:  Forster would surely have balked at this, but writing this entry reminds me that preliminary lubrication surely makes it easier to "Only Connect."  Read that sentence in the panoply of ways it allows.  (Forgive, though, the forced split infinitive.)  And perhaps somebody should consult Tom Jones for comment--- or maybe an American evangelist.  Methaphorically speaking, of course.

So where is this stream of semi-consciousness going?  Damned if I know.  (Damned if I ever do.)  But the connections are many and eerie, and I wonder if the message nascent in the lot is that hucksterism somehow, even miraculously, prevails and even thrives against all of the suggestive odds. 

    Who am I kidding? 

    (You knew this was coming sooner or later, so altogether now, and wave your arms as you know you should, in cheeky and paramount glee....) 

    It's not unusual, / It happens everyday, / No matter what you say, / You'll find it happens all the time.... 

    And discard your underwear at will.

I Know I Should Find This Ironic, But Really I'm Just Bored As Hell

    Reading this article, I was reminded how much of a minority I seem to be in, though the author clearly ought to learn to distinguish between ubiquity and ubiety.  The Simpsons may be long in the tooth and well-past its prime, but Family Guy has demonstrated something I didn't think possible, the original wisdom of TV executives.  FG has become painfully, excruciatingly, brain-wrenchingly AWFUL, every joke a flashback tiresomely and forcedly teed-up and and then putted to the green.  (Yes, putted.  Is there any gag on that show that doesn't run ten-times longer than it should?)  There's nothing about the resurrected show that isn't predictable ("it's just like that time...."), belaboured (enough Indiana Jones, Star Wars and That Girl references, please...), or derivative.  Oh, and SMUG, as one gathers only an undead show can be.  "Funnier" than ever?  Hardly.  FG is the Republican party of contemporary satire: all lip-service to itself, laughless and often mean-spirited lip-service that can't, and doesn't even bother to try to, conceal its desperation.  In one season, FG hit a nadir which The Simpsons, even at its worst, hasn't yet neared because it has not forgotten how to maintain its balancing whimsy.  FG, well, it has become a cartoon version of Dennis Miller, pretentiously polymathic and utterly humourless.  Once it was on par with The Simpsons; now, it's absolutely no better than the Air Farce or 22 Minutes: loud, obnoxious, and so hamfistedly puerile as to suggest the wit of an angry twelve year-old.   When the show's fans finally figure this out, I'll welcome the chance to put the zombie Griffins back into the ground.  In fact, as Peter would say, that'd be freakin' sweet.

Topsy-Turvy, or London's Airy Dare

    I received today a notice for a conference at the University of London called "Antisemitism and England."  If any of you out there somehow remain uncertain as to why I have become cynical about academia, let me simply offer these "questions to be addressed" to testify in that regard:

To what extent have the terms 'antisemitism' and 'Englishness' become redundant?

How much use do they retain?

Rather "leading the witness," don't you think?  Alas, such "questions" are rigorously de rigeur these days.  And to think, I wasted so many years studying Antisemite language and literature....    And Hitler?  One assumes now that (rouse the chorus please!) now it's greatly to his credit / that he IS an Englishman!

    Pettifogging with a parody of Pinafore?  But of course.  I was, after all, born sneering. 

Awl-Oeuvre Twist

    It's a punster's dream, which is exactly why the Not-So-Good Doctor's just going to leave this story alone.  Yup.  (See, he does have some restraint after all.)  Pun away, my pretties....

    Key quote, with emphasis added:  "Unsure about what to do, police called for a fire engine."  Because pick-axes and a ladder were clearly necessary. 

By Many A Wind Instrument

    I've been thinking lately about Goodnight and Good Luck --- and the legacy of chaps like Murrow, including Cronkite, McNeil and Lehrer--- as stories like this one dominate the Canadian news media and the American media wail endlessly about John Kerry's foot-in-mouth disease.  It's no surprise that the Culture of Injurement prevails so certainly in these cases, but it makes me wonder what the onetime Deans of journalism would think of this sick fascination with non-stories with which people can be mock-offended. 

    Not really offended, of course; one dolt referring to another dolt as a bitch or a former Presidential candidate's ineptitude with expression don't directly offend anyone, except insofar as people want to be offended by these idiocies so they can assume the stance of righteous umbrage.  I wonder if Murrow or Cronkite or any of their ilk would have been so ready to organize news priorities around such wilful victimizations that are really nothing more than platforms for people to grumble, grouse, and by extension, aggrandize themselves to others with their supposed superiority.  Yes, everyone; we know you'd never call a woman a bitch, even though you use the term regularly, and you'd never screw-up a bad joke, much less one at someone else's expense, even though you do it all the time.  We know you're above those things, so let's move on and shut down this circus of sanctimony before someone responding to you recalls the time you called so-and-so a bitch and exacerbates this headache-inducing stupidity. 

    It's tempting to say that the news media have more in common with Barnum and Bailey than they do with Murrow and Cronkite.  It's tempting.  The apter comparison, though, wouldn't be with those notorious figures of spectacle and noise, but with Iago and Lady Macbeth, baiting us to behave against our better instincts.  And oh how foolish we are when we fall for it--- and become downright bitchy as a result.  Such endemic outrage serves mostly to sour our tempers, and to distract us from the things we should really be noticing.  What do you think is more important, John Kerry making an ass of himself, or this all-but-unreported event?  (Unreported in North America, anyway.)  One has the capacity to change the geopolitical climate as we know it.  The other, really, is just an opportunity for aerothermal release.  See if you can figure out which is which--- for thereby hangs a tale about what we choose to hear, the continuous clowning of wind instruments, winding us up with aggravating and distracting airs.

    But never mind; Kerry on, as you were.  Until later, good morrow and good luck. 

It's A Corker

    Any of you with television sets have probably seen the endless prattle about the nefarious attack ad unleashed against Democratic candidate Harold Ford.  (If you've been in a cave, you can see it here.)  As you probably expected, there's a parody of it making the rounds now, and it's actually funny.  Rather bitterly funny, I'd say.  Check it out.

Don't Mind If I Do....

    In honour of Hallowe'en, it's time to recall some of the best segments from The Simpsons' "Treehouse of Horror" episodes, for which you can read one article on the subject and glance through the chatter here.  I have to confess, my favourite is predictable, but you can enjoy it here anyway. 

    I should also add, "The Shinning" is the only way in which I can tolerate that story anymore, the Kubrick movie long ago able to annoy me with just a frame or two.  Seriously.  I'd rather have an ax drawn into me than ever watch another second of that godawful movie again. 

Oh, I'm So Conflicted....

    Is this is a good thing or a bad thing?  (Ladies, try not to laugh too loudly.)

Ya Gotta Love Thelma Ritter

    Just a few loose notes here as I down my morning coffee and brace myself for another exciting day:

• A friend recently suggested--- half-jesting, half-not--- that the NSG Doc should consider a career in film criticism.  This is a bit ironic, considering that it was in reviewing movies that I first started writing for (albeit very limited) public consumption, way, way, waaaaaaaay back when I was in high school and dinosaurs began turning into oil.  Having been as long as I can remember something of a film savant, it'd be a great gig if I could get it, but those gigs are few and far between.  It'd be a natural fit, save for two things: having to review gore-fests I can no longer stomach and my own capacity for becoming the Dennis Miller of flick-crit, casually tossing around names as familiar for me as they would be arcane for everyone else.  The other day the CBC was re-airing Hitchcock's Rear Window, and after watching a scene I caught myself saying, "Ya gotta love Thelma Ritter."  Oh, the perpetual danger of being, or merely seeming, too esoteric by half.  Then again, these days one can be chided for mentioning Shakespeare in an English class, so stupefyingly pricklish have some become to any sort of demonstration of knowledge.  (Invoking Massinger would probably be grounds for scouring and crucifixion.)  No wonder I'm cynical, as references beyond the purview of The Family Guy are stridently derided as obscure and ergo obscurantist. 

  So, note to self:  Don't mention Thelma Ritter.  Lindsay Lohan, okay-- but not, definitely not, Thelma Ritter.   
  

• There's much ado these days about the releases of Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2.0, and though I can't pretend to be any sort of expert on the browser debate, the NSG Doc had previously, and typically, gone a third way with Opera.  For my money, absolutely none of it, Opera's better than either, especially for the "Block Content" function which allows users to ban certain advertising from web pages.  Smooth, stable, and almost entirely forgotten in the fracas, Opera is worth checking out if you haven't already.  If, like me, you're trying to get away from Microsoft as much as possible, I'd also recommend OpenOffice, which is free and every bit as functional as Office. 
  
  
• I'm not sure how worthwhile it is to keep blogging anymore.  Can't say it offers me much anymore, or if this blog offers much to anyone else either.  I dunno.  Thoughts?  If I do keep this thing going, I'll almost certainly be chucking Enetation as my comment handler.  It gets less and less reliable by the week, today marking every comment I made as spam before it eventually published it as spam.  Oy vey.  The only question then becomes whether or not I can be bothered to do all the recoding with Blogger.  Same goes for ImageShack, BTW, which has inexplicably taken to revamping its image locations.  This is why the image of Alec Guinness won't load up anymore--- and why this blog won't seem to load completely when you visit it.  Arrrrgh. 

Alas, nothing exciting to report here, much less thoughtful or significant.  Meh.  Another mawkish Monday awaits. 

    Follow-Up:  And Blogger is screwing up today, too.  Again.  Once more, this time feeling:  Aaaaaargh!!!!

    Follow-Up Part Deux:  Playing around with Firefox, I'm impressed with the quality of some of the add-ons.  In fact, this addendum is done using the "Performancing" blog editor.  Not bad, not bad at all, and Firefox is brutal with advertisements, even removing Google text ads.  Impressive. 

Think Of The Children!

    Then again, maybe the kids should start thinking for the adults, more and more of whom are well and truly going mad with coddling.· This prissy Cult Of The Child nonsense has simply got to stop.  Hell, when I was a kid--- Gawd, did I just write that?--- I used to play lawn darts (now illegal in most places), ride vehicles and inner-tubes into rivers, and, yes, I played tag despite its legendary dangerousness.  I even got hit in the head with a horseshoe, and it didn't do me any effasdfwethioasdgasking damage.  (My damage was done the old-fashioned way, by whisky and wimmin.  In other words, as John Houseman used to say, I earrrrrrrned it.   )   What's next from these hyper-paranoid morons, banning Simon Says because it encourages conformity?

 

    Post-Script:  Oh, wait; "the encouragement of conformity" was one of the reasons a lot of school boards ceased teaching grammar and spelling.  And what a wonderful world of good that has done us....

Stoic In The Middle With You

    A slightly odd day in these quarters, evidenced most plainly by the picture below.  Sure, you're no doubt thinking, another effing picture of the Doctor's cats.  Well, yes; but more than that, because today Trouble was in one of his rare "I'm-a-big-suck-after-all" moods.  In addition to spending much of the afternoon on my lap, at my window or at my feet, Trouble spent some time lounging on my futon, something he never does, and has probably done only once or twice since Blake, another cat, died several years ago.  Why this is remains a mystery, but today Trouble broke entirely from his normal John Wayne-wannabe behaviour.  (He didn't even dart when the camera came out.)  Something else to note: in this pic, he's lying in Jenny's spot, and on Jenny's blanket, or the cheap piece of fabric one calls a blanket for lack of a better term.  Jenny, as you'll observe, is sleepily watching aloft, but certainly trying to indicate proprietorship by sitting nearest the Doc's right-hand, or where it would be if he hadn't gone to get the camera.  So, what you see below is a rather surprising anomaly, but one I find impossibly sweet.  It's also a beautiful testament to Jenny's temperament, acceding to let Captain Stoic act a little needy--- on Jenny's turf, no less!--- without even a little grumbling.  Awwww....

 

 

Of course, since this picture was taken, Trouble has returned to being his curmudgeonly self and Jenny has reclaimed the futon.  All things shall return to what they were.  There must be a Pauline or Ecclesiastical wisdom in there somewhere.

 

    BTW, check out Helen Mirren's impressively Wedgewood performance in The Queen when soonest you can.  Michael Sheen's Tony Blair is canny, but Mirren demonstrates again why she may be the best working actress in the business, even if she does too much material that's beneath her (Shadowboxer, anyone?).  Stephen Frears' film as a whole seems to miss something I can't yet articulate, but Mirren guinnesses the role brilliantly.  Can I hereby claim invention of the verb "to guinness?"  (Perhaps also a portmanteau of "to guile" and "to finesse"?)  Guinness was the master of eerie transformations of familiar figures--- see his Hitler in The Last Ten Days, or his movie-redeeming Freud in the Dudley Moore comedy Lovesick--- and I think here Mirren lays claim to be his heir(-ess) apparent.  There's no higher compliment I could give her.  It's point- and pitch-perfect acting, made even more astonishing given the level of difficulty--- and the potential for a single misstep to undermine her completely. 

 

    So, there we are: two notes, entirely unconnectable, and so utterly beyond unity.  But, we move on; as the lisping dead man said to Charon: Stoic, stoic, stoic....

Kitzschen Up

    The J-Bear looking rather bleary-eyed, as if recovering from a Bender From Hell.  But, then again, this J-Bear wouldn't know a thing about benders from Hell.  Nope.  Not.  At.  All. 

 

 

    Should add for those not in the know, despite what this pic may portray, Jenny is actually the affectionate one; the very, very affectionate one, in fact.  The resemblance to the Not-So-Good Doctor before his morning coffee is entirely coincidental.

 

So We'll Go No More....?, or The Volpone Express

    As most of you have probably heard and/or seen, there's developed quite the brouhaha regarding Michael J. Fox's endorsement of Democratic candidates and Rush Limbaugh's attack on him for doing so.  Rush, always the master of subjecting jaws to gravity, obviously crossed a line here, with almost no one in the babblocracy defending him (see here for a sample), and more prominent pundits like Timothy Noah chiding him openly.  It's no secret that the Republicans are, and have been, in big trouble as the mid-term elections near, but I'm thinking Limbaugh's cynical slam may prove to be the death-knell for the GOP's chances. 

    Why?  (A question you're only asking, if you're asking, with eyes rolling and because I've basically said knock-knock and you realize Who's there? is the only way to get things over with.)

    Because the attack reeks of desperation, of pathetic say-anything politics that demonstrates fundamental weakness at the core (just listen to Rush's voice as he soldiers pointlessly on); Foley-Gate, the Iraq fiasco and so forth, they may have been tipping against the GOP, but Limbaugh I suspect may have tipped the balance definitively.  When power-holders, or the spokespeople of those power-holders, indicate desperation so obviously, usually in the form of an attack almost entirely defensible, it all but inevitably precedes a repudiation of those power-holders.  There are oblivious attacks (c.f., "stay-the-course" vs "cut-and-run") and there are invidious attacks (the Swift-Boat commercials), but some attacks are so cheap and personal that they expose weakness on the part of the attacker; the bully is revealed for being just a bully, his insecurities suddenly plain for everyone to see, even those that once stood by him.

 

    We have a classic, and I think instructive, example of this in Canadian politics, when the Kim Campbell Tories issued the attack ads that mocked Jean Chretien's face because of his Bell's Palsy.  Campbell and the Tories, already in trouble, were reduced to a mere two seats in the House of Commons, with even the Prime Minister losing her seat.  People, in my experience, will tolerate many things, but blatant desperation is not one of them.  (Think about your own past relationships and do the math.)  I have a funny feeling that in years to come, Limbaugh's melee on Fox may shortly prove to be the gesture that ushered in a congressional change as it became the symbol of that blatancy.  Put another way, it may provide the new whiff that determines that what's in the fridge has, in fact, gone bad and needs to be thrown out.  But the stench now is harder and harder to deny, and Limbaugh's attack may just have proven the proving pong.

 

    We'll see if I'm right soon enough--- providing, that is, there isn't a November surprise coming from the Roving Diebold machines.  If I'm correct, though, Rushing le petit renard -- hounding him no less!-- may just have proven the fatal mistake.  Crazy like a Fox, indeed.

Holy Flurking Shnit!

    Just when you thought American politics couldn't get more ridiculous, it seems there's now worry of an outbreak of Yellow Fever. 

 

    And in related news, it seems the Shrubberies have abandoned the phrase "stay the course."  Why?  Because "[they've] never been stay the course...."  (Oh, okay....)  Then again, given the Dissembler-In-Chief's intellectual capacity, this blog knew he'd never be able stay a course.  That might require reading.

What's In A Name?

    Really, it's amazing this guy lasted as long as he did.  Some parents do tempt fate, don't they?

 

    (Gee, how long has it been since I did one of these silly, semi-pithy posts?  Those of you longing for such things are advised to go here.)

The Anxiety of Influence

    Three American writers have compiled their list of (get this) the 101 Most Influential People Who Never Lived.  (See the complete, and often bizarre, list here.) Conspicuously absent, according to this blog: 

• Lolita, the prototype for pop culture's most prominent stereotype (these days, at least)
  
• Homer Simpson, Archie Bunker's heir and the great philosopher grunt of the 21st century
  
• William Shakespeare, if those infernal Oxonians and Baconians are to be believed
  
• Elizabeth Bennet, heroine of a novel whose name I absolutely will not mention here
  
• Sancho Panza, the archetype of the sidekick for centuries
  
• Stephen Dedalus, proof positive that Freud was right when he said that the Irish were the only people immune to psychoanalysis
  
• Tom Jones, Henry Fielding's galavanting pseudo-prodigal, still the classic male role model (and the basis for every part played by Hugh Grant and/or Colin Firth)
  
• The Wife Of Bath, whose descendants the NSG-Doctor keeps bumping into everywhere
  
• Alex Forrest, whose descendants the NSG-Doctor also keeps, Er, bumping into everywhere   
  
• Holden Caulfield, whom we've all resembled at one point or another
  
• Harry Lime from the film The Third Man, every bit the model of the modern CEO and the little ants down there
  
• Falstaff, Falstaff, Falstaff (for me and Harold Bloom, anyway)
  
• Mistah Kurtz (he dead, despite never living), whose final words are quoted daily by undergrads trying to sound cultured
  
• Satan-slash-Lucifer-slash-"The Adversary"-slash-Keyser-Soze, whose greatest trick he ever pulled was... well, you know the rest....

Feel free to add your own ideas on missed names, but, to my estimation, the most influential figure upon the hearts and minds of so many in this day and age, the prophet of their behaviour and thought (though not their ungentle spirit), the chap at the centre of this tale.  After all, some influences are so sublime they shape even those oblivious to them.  Welcome to Jerzy, everyone.

Iggy Flop and the Sweet and Lo-Down

    Oh, these updates do get farther and farther apart, don't they?  I'm trying to remember a time when blogging was less of a chore than it now is, but failing completely.  Oh well.  Those of you looking for other blogs to read should check out the Blogs of Note at left.  I've added a couple new ones, or at least ones new to this cyber-rag.  Give them a scan or two.

 

    Not too much to report here, save for my recent super-consumption of movies old and new.  Some late acquisitions, in digital form: Carol Reed's The Third Man, Kurosawa's Yojimbo and Throne of Blood, and the grand Vincent Price schlocker Theatre of Blood.  Have also been subjecting myself to junk like RV, Mission Impossible 3, Firewall and the remake of The Wicker Man, along with better fare like the brilliantly funny Thank You For Smoking, Good Luck and Good Night and Brokeback Mountain.  The worse movies always linger, though, like farts in a small room.  MI3 is stupid beyond stupid, shamelessly cannibalizing every Tom Cruise movie that came before it in a risible example of ego-stroking.  It's nothing but a painfully pretentious paean peppered with explosions to paper over its empty plot.  Same with Firewall, though it seems less an attempt to massage Harrison Ford's ego than to go to a dried-up well just one more time.  The Wicker Man makes me think Edward Woodward has a case for legal action, though surely not as good a case as Christopher Lee, whose part is played by Ellen Burstyn like Elaine Stritch on a helium high. RV is further proof Robin Williams can't do movie comedy anymore, though the film's focus seems instead to be filtering the sixteen year-old pseudo-starlet named JoJo, irresistably pictured aside to prove a point, through the eyes of Humbert Humbert.  Her manager should just rename her LoLo and be done with the prevaricating.  (Lolita's "eerie [and fictional] vulgarity" seems positively tame now, doesn't it?)  Occurs to me now, however, that Williams would make an interesting Quilty.  It'd let him mix his comedic antics with the darker dimensions he has come to do so much more effectively.  Hollywood take note.  Me, I prefer to tarry on the prospect of James Mason starring in any movie involving a motor-home. 

 

    Some other bits and pieces:

• Dylan's Modern Times is terrific.  Get it.  Now.  Don't worry, this blog will wait 'til you get back.
  
  
• I finally forced myself to re-include Van Morrison's Moondance in my musical library.  I haven't listened to it in its entirety in almost eight years for reasons I won't explain here.  It's such a glorious album, but it's still not easy to hear, too many memories of a former self still attached to it.  Odd how that happens.  No wonder I've politely refused the offers I've had over the years to replace my copy.  (Insert philosophical shrug here.) 
  
  
• The new game show 1 vs 100 is on as I write this, and it's unwatchable.  It drags like a damp cigarette (a menthol, no less).  Bet it's cancelled by month's end.  It has "flop" written all over it, though the presence of Bob Saget should have indicated that a priori.
  

    And, in a last matter, Michael Ignatieff, the Ighead Who Would Be King, has declared that he's willing to open up the constitutional debate in Canada.  Again.  (Insert stunned silence here, followed by the trepidatious chirping of a few nervous crickets.)  To which, Liberals all across the country are suddenly saying, in remarkable unison, "Okay, Rae it is--- so long as he keeps his damned pants on." 

 

    (Besides, with Dalton McSquinty in office in Ontario, wouldn't it cause a synaptic overload to have two Liberal leaders that so alarmingly resemble Anthony Perkins?  They must both assume they have faces you can't help believing.)

    I should, however, explain something for my non-Canuckistani readers about our particular national no-no. 

 

    There is only one truly offensive c-word in Canada, and it's not a colourful one, even if it rhymes with "prostitution" and deals with "country matters."  (How's that, RK, for cunning linguistic play?)  Consequently, Canadians caution their contending custodians to keep their caucuses from (er...) coming anywhere near The C-Word.  As tempting as it may be to make it expand and contract, you can't fiddle with it and you can't gentle its condition.  Ever.  Most Canucks have learned this and are adamant about it. 

   When it comes to The C-Word, just leave it alone and accept it as it is. Warts and all.

Eminem Domain

    ~~His job is (what?), his job is (what?)....~~  (Darwin forgive me; I never thought I'd make an Eminem reference, either.)

    It takes Stewart a bit to gather his momentum, but once he does he's an impish riot of ridicule.  You have to love the look on Stewart's face when he reaches yet another of those classic tautologies that suggest the President is, in fact, a Lewis Carroll character, or at least a Monty Python creation (is this what happens when we're asked for a Shrubbery?).  This piece demonstrates why some of us regard Mr Stewart as the President's most consistently effective critic; his subject is almost inevitably logic, and it's the one thing he can never find.  I wonder why.  BTW, check out, too, Stewart's interview with David Rakoff from the same episode. 

    Searching for the clip above, though, I came across the Google Video for Stewart's speech immediately following September 11th.  I think it's now safe to say that what he said was eminently more profound than anything the President ever said.  When satirists stoop to sincerity and manage still to outclass the lofty and the important, we're in sad, sad state indeed.

But Where's The External?

    Below, Jenny and Trouble looking very much like just about every committee I've ever faced:  stern but confused, with more than a hint of preliminary disapproval.   

 

 

Thought the image appropriate considering Someone Else Who Will Remain Nameless has just finished satiating, or at least appeasing, a committee.  Someone Else, however, is reminded not to start calling himself "Doctor J," even if he's technically entitled to do so.  That dishonourable honorific has been too well-worn to fit anyone.  (Besides, it has a musty smell now from weathering too much irony.)  Might this blog suggest "Doc M"?  Just imagine the puntabulous possibilities.... 

Wrong So Long

    Late Saturday morning and all's quiet as I begin writing this, save for the sounds of Van Morrison and the late Lonnie Donegan tearing through a barroom-rousing version of "Frankie and Johnny."  So maybe it's not quiet, per se, but uneventful, but who's to bother parsing particulars at this hour of the day?  The tune in question is a traditional that's been covered by every musician and his (or her) great uncle Percy over the years, including Elvis, Hank Snow and Sam Cooke, and most recently by Lindsay Lohan in Robert Altman's Prairie Home Companion.  The Morrison/Donegan version, though, is a barn-burner, thanks largely to Chris Barber's trombone work and Donegan's increasingly ferocious vocals.  It alternately shuffles, wails, kicks, soars and flails, all in the best ways.  It's the sort of song that would have gotten ME dancing with full ham (yes, Heaven forfend), once upon a jaundice moon.  It's also one of those songs that on its lonely own makes buying the original album worthwhile.  Okay, probably not for those of you that esteem hip-hop as music, but chances are that if you do you wouldn't be reading this youngish curmudgeon's excuse for webspace in the first place. 

    In other matters, there are two pieces in the NYT to check out.  One is the review of Stephen Fry's The Ode Less Travelled, which sounds like a Must-Buy.  Fry's always a delight, and I imagine, based on the account from the review, that his book might be the sort of thing I'd have assigned to a poetry course had I the opportunity.  (And alas, too late for RK to do so and order a few extra desk copies.  )  Fry's one of those few figures who possesses-- and exudes--- "a mixture of gravity and waggery,"  to use Christopher Smart's wonderful phrase, so I suspect he'd be a great--- Darwin forgive me--- poetry home companion.  This reminds me that I used to use an episode of Whose Line Is It Anyway?  as a preface to the study of comedy, the first part of said episode you can view by clicking here.  Ask not how I did it.  I remember now only that I did, several times.  It had something to do with the panoply of comedic devices and conventions, especially in terms of what those familiar with the Commedia dell'Arte would call the pazzi ("bag of tricks," if I remember correctly, which I confess I may not anymore).  I'm sure I did it with nearly-equal parts gravity and waggery.  Successfully or not remains another matter entirely.

    The other article of note is this one by Robert Harris, identifying an eerie historical parallelism that should raise contemporary concern.  Many of us have been prattling on about such unsettling symmetries for some time, but to little or no avail except among those already comfortably encamped among the critical, the contrary and occasionally the just-plain cranky.  I'll leave this as it stands, though.  You can infer for yourselves the estuary/Ostiary puns the Not-So-Good Doc would normally have bothered to make. 

    On a last matter, I have had reinforced to me recently that I am surely The Worst Person To See A Movie With.  Watching Lucky Number Slevin on DVD, I found myself catching on to the movie's supposed secret very, very, very early on, and not because of any particular genius on my part.  (As most of you are aware, I have no genius of which to speak.)  It was, however, one of those instances by which the film provided a subtle wink to its viewers to clue them into where it was really going, but which most viewers probably did not catch, even if the filmic wink was as bold--- dare I say "naked?"--- as it could have been.  Simple setup for those who have not seen the film, which I do suggest, because it's better than you might expect: after a prefatory vignette involving the explanation of "the Kansas City Shuffle," a general but elaborate act of misdirection, we're introduced to the movie's hero (the largely vapid Josh Hartnett), clad only in a towel before things start to unfold.  He then spends the next several minutes, including being transported to another building, so clad.  We're led to believe this is a case of mistaken identity, and Hartnett's near-nudity a device of mere comedy, which it partially is.  But, no--- the movie's too clever, and I realized quickly I was being winked at, as the movie gave me a fair chance to catch in on its game before it played it, or, more precisely, identified its genre after 70-or-80 minutes of misdirection.  Have I made it clear yet?  If not, and you haven't seen the movie yet, read no further. 

    (Last chance-- get out now if you don't want to know.)

    The Bruce Willis prologue sets up a story of people murdered, and implies it's all merely a distractionary tale.  Of course, it's not.  It sets up, instead, the backdrop for revenge-tragedy, or rather (these being genre-mixing days) revenge dramedy.  So when we are introduced to the conspicuously naked, or near-naked, Slevin it should be a sign.  His protestations aside, the film's attempts at misdirection immediately caught, his nudity or nearness to it, is The Giant Wink (TM).  I laughed out loud at this.  Lit geeks will appreciate the correspondence with the naked washings-up of Odysseus (first in Nausikaa, then later in his account to the Ithakan swineherd in Book XIV) and, more dubiously, Hamlet after his pirate-rescue ("you shall know I am set naked on your kingdom" [almost always in 4.7]).  Coming together yet?

    It's the trope of the mythical naked--- read in: natural--- man, the avenging force that returns with nothing but himself, that's in Slevin thoroughly joked-through.  The return of the natural man, is always revealed after the hero has proven his capacity for subterfuge (i.e., assuming an unnatural identity, like putting on antic disposition, or concealing his identity, as Odysseus does most famously in his battle with the Kyklopes in Book IX).  The nemetic justicer arrives, apparently and usually of his own construction, as the naked man alit with nothing but his purpose, and of course he inevitably succeeds, wreaking, or rather capital-D delivering, vengeance.  But as soon as I saw Hartnett-cum-Slevin facing Morgan Freeman in his towel (his rag in a bundle, a la Fitzgerald's translation?), I was in on the game.  Everything else was just filling the context, as with The Usual Suspects.  There, btw, the tip-off, was Kevin Spacey's description of his piss, after we had seen the only ostensibly objective view of the crime scene in its preface. 

    The Giant Wink:  Movies that know they're being smart can never resist tempting you to catch onto them.  They're like high-minded murderers daring the perfect crime.  They either leave clues cheekily, or they leave one more clue than they intended to leave.  I'm willing to believe Slevin meant to that clue; it's aware enough to have done so intentionally.  And while it's not a great movie, it's definitely a better one than I expected it would be, and creditable for its cleverness beyond itself.  Good on it.

    Argh, I've rambled, perhaps too much like the movie I just explained earnestly trying to show how clever I am.  (Key word: earnestly.)  Too much gravity?  Too much waggery?  Or just a brain too much Fryed?  Northrop or Stephen, take your pick.

    It has now taken me so bloody-f0rking long to write this entry that "Frankie and Johnny" has come back up on the playlist.  Oh, this brain o' mine, and it's been doin' me wrong so long.... Now where is that skiffle accompaniment when I need it? 

A Conundrum

    Submitted for your consideration, in lieu of a legitimate blog entry, the following, a ponderable for perverts and philosophers alike (though usually they are one and the same):  Is it ironic if a woman with large breasts chooses nursing as her career?  Is it ironic if she doesn't?  Discuss and comment. 

 

    Of course, any of you with a similar male question are invited to post it, too.  This blog receives all ironies with equal laughter. 

Romancing The Tome

  Take a guess who's right in this "debate."  One is clearly right, while the other leans on reductively stereotypical, to say nothing of sexist, blather.  But natch--- one can't say that nowadays, can one?  And people wonder why I'm cynical. 

A Way Of Putting Things

    Allo, gadies and lents.  Alas, there's not much to report, the NSG Doc's life being about as exciting as Jim Jarmusch movie.  Except for playing around with his comptuer and trying to get it operating as efficiently as a machine several years out of date can, most of his time has been devoted to two things: catching up on movies and struggling with how to respond to a lingering issue of some distress.  To the latter, mercifully, I have become much more calloused.  (Sorry if what follows seems cryptic, but it must be for reasons of discretion.)  I have decided not to let the matter get the better of me, or poison me any further than it already has.  There's no point, I've realized, attempting to undeceive those who've too much invested in their delusions; they'll merely marshall whatever misprisions they must to maintain them.  One might as well present a dinosaur bone to a Creationist.  Best to accept in the interim whatever I must just to extricate myself from the spirit-sucking clamour.  I'll know the truth, as will the people about whose opinions of me I truly care.  Let the petty and the vapid believe what they're going to believe.  It may well be all they have.  (For that they should more be pitied than chagrined; they'll out themselves sooner or later.)  I have better things to do with my time than indulge in acrimonious behaviour better suited to the schoolyard than the (abstractly) august institution to which I've earnestly, and probably misguidedly, devoted myself for most of my adult years. 

 

    But that's too morose (or moribund?) and cynical a way of putting things.  One of the odd things about being in my position is that I'm past thinking about myself, or at least about defending myself.  Instead I think of the good fortune I have had to deal with some of the brighter and brightest young minds in my vicinity, and to be able to part of their learning.  Not fake learning, by which one passes exams, but genuine learning, in terms of the permanent desire to expand understanding.  In this way, I've been astonishingly lucky, and for which I'm beyond grateful.  Like the hungry man at the table, I can't say I've had enough, but I've probably had my fill, so to ask for more would be gluttonous.  Financial dimensions aside, I've been well-rewarded, in fact generously so.  Probably disproportionately so.  This is also something one only realizes when one sums it all up.  My apologies for not doing so earlier--- and my thanks now that I finally do.

 

    As for me, as Mr Cohen has said, I'm junk but I'm still holding up this little wild bouquet.  And you know what?  I don't care.  I give up, completely and entirely.  I'm just getting lost tonight in that hopeless little screen. 

     No wonder I've been watching so many movies lately.....

Basquet Weaving 101

    Here's an interesting piece: Stephen Oppenheimer claims that the primary occupants of the British Isles weren't Celts (or Jutes or Angles or...), but Basque explorers.  Not sure how convincing his argument finally is, but it's an intriguing suggestion. 

Hare and There

    Some of you, I fear, may be worrying about the NSG Doctor's failure to respond to emails of late.  He's working on it, albeit with the speed of a tortoise rather than a hare.  In the interim, accept his apologies. 

Mild Mild West

    Two articles that should be read in tandem with one another: this one from the Washington Post, and this one from David Warren Online (link courtesy RK, whose translation of the Pope's controversial speech in Regensberg deserves attention and consideration).  As ever, the prattling palaver in the so-called West has shied away from the most important issues-- freedom of speech, freedom of thought-- in favour of tsking and clucking away about all the wrong ones (should he have quoted Manuel Paleologos, should he apologize et cetera).  I'm not sure which is worse, the West's cluelessness or its timorousness. To resurrect a phrase from an old friend, the Western world's case of cranial-glutimal ensconcement seems to have become terminal. 

Sorkin Strikes Again

    Those of you that didn't catch the premier episode of Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip missed something special, specifically Judd Hirsch's beautiful tirade against contemporary media.  The whole thing's an homage to Peter Finch's "I'm mad as Hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore" bit from Network (which the show acknowledges), and it's about as invigorating a pre-credit set-piece as I've ever seen.  YouTube will probably have to remove it shortly, but until it does, you can watch it below (larger version here).  Let's hope Lorne Michaels has a similar outburst soon; it would surely be the best thing to happen to Saturday Night Live in twenty years.

 

 

 

It Gets Pretty Strange After That....

    Playing around with YouTube some more--- oh, how much I've missed with my years on dialup--- I've been discovering all kinds of stuff which I'd resigned myself to never seeing (or seeing again).  Tonight I've been finding all kinds of Van Morrison goodies, including concert and video footage that seemed lost to the sands of time.  Especially neat: versions of "Wavelength," "Bulbs," "These Dreams of You/Cyprus Avenue" and "It's All In The Game."  Also worth checking out:  a recent and intimate (to say nothing of folky) version of "Saint Dominic's Preview" (I think from the Jools Holland show), a truly great song that deserves more recognition than it gets.  See also the duet with Ray Charles on "Crazy Love" that eventually became the closing track of Charles' Genius Loves Company, and this version of "Fast Train" from the Montreux Jazz Festival featuring the great Solomon Burke. 

 

 

    (Two asides.  First: yes, I'm probably just cataloguing this stuff here for myself for easy locating in the future.  Call it one of the few instances of this blog actually acting as a kind of log.  Second: it's a pretty staggering thought, don't you think, for you to be presented an award by your personal hero?  Very few of us will ever know what that's like.  Then again, how many people have heroes anymore?  Worth contemplating, non?)

 

    From that search, though, I stumbled upon tons of clips from (to my estimation) one of the best TV shows of all-time, the immortally hilarious WKRP In Cincinnati.  Sadly, the show will probably never find release on DVD because of its rich use of then-contemporary music which now requires extensive licensing fees to reissue.  Most of my readers here are probably too young to remember the show, but I'd suggest that, references and sartorial horrors aside, it remains as fresh and sharp as anything on the tube today.  Case in point, the clip below (larger version available here), surely one of the most famous third acts in TV history, and one which me and my peers have had seared permanently into our memories.  Suffice it to say that it has to do with the station manager's plan for a Thanksgiving promotion. 

 

   

Watching those clips, though, I'm reminded how much I miss that show; even some of the show's most minor characters, like Mrs Carlson's impishly impudent butler Hirsch, remain more vividly defined than leads on other shows.  See also some of these gems, including a tipsy Mama Carlson singing Gershwin, the jingle for the aptly named Ferryman Funeral Home, and the last act and epilogue of what turned out to be the show's finale. Some brilliant TV comedy in those clips, all perfectly performed. G-d, I miss that show.

 

    Also found the video (alas, at AOL with an annoying commercial) for Leonard Cohen's "Closing Time," surely the only song in recent memory to be composed in sonnets and simplified cinquains.  It's also a great video in its own terms.  I especially like the small playful touches, like backup singer Perla Batalla's finger-play over Leonard's shoulder, and Leonard's "you-expect-me-to-sing-now-so-I'm-not-going-to" moment in the coda.

 

    Anyway, such are some of the discoveries of the NSG Doc finally getting familiar with the advantages of high-speed net service.  And he uses it to find stuff mostly twenty years old or more?  Yes, yes he does.  Oh, the modernity! 

Modern Love and the Chiquita Chuckle

    How near are we to this?  Perilously, I suspect.  Insert here which ever old saw you like about truth and fiction. 

    Also from YouTube, this soon-to-be-classic scene from Weeds in which the ever-candid Uncle Andy tutors his recently self-aware nephew on the techniques of the only acceptable form of love these days.  I can just picture Gilbert Highet turning around in his grave with the ferocity of the Tasmanian Devil.  (For the record, about the sock reference: lad in scene was caught earlier in the episode disposing of the evidence down the toilet.)   Any chap out there not mortified by this is almost certainly an Uncle Andy himself.

The Little Things

    Enjoying what remains of my tranquil time, the NSG Doc has been catching up on his culture.  For a dreaded recent event, a friend enabled me to pick up Bob Dylan's latest album Modern Times, along with the Johnny Cash Legend of... CD.  The Dylan has been described as his best album since the seventies, and the Cash anthology has inexplicably been some time in the getting.  Then last night decided to screen some of the film pap I've missed in not-so-modern times, including Red Eye, Ocean's Twelve and The Island.  Last looks atrocious, but who can refuse a study in Scarlett?  Not I.  Have also been perusing Leonard Cohen's much-anticipated The Book of Longing, which is a staggering disappointment.  A volume twenty-five or so years in the making that yields so little?  It's embarrassing, really.  Maybe I'll write more on it later, but it hardly seems to warrant the effort.

 

     Also, the cats have discovered that they can now access a window they previously could not.  They are, predictably, amused by this.  At right (click on the thumbnail for a larger version): Trouble discovering a brand new perch and demonstrating his typical impatience for the camera.  (His tail would have to be pointing at Carroll, wouldn't it?)   Bibliophiles among you might enjoy playing spot-the-book. 

 

    Today is one of those warm and sunny September days that remind me how few warm and sunny days remain before autumn sets in.  Just nice to be able to let the air in and take it easy as I trundle through all of the mundane tasks that need doing.  It's all surprisingly soothing.  The calm before the storm, I gather.  Who says cynics can't appreciate the little things?

Office Space

    Not much of an update, good readers, as the NSG Doc has been reordering his bedroom/office (more the latter than the former).  The task probably does not sound like much, but in fact it took the better part of two days worth of work:  reordering books, rewiring devices, moving furniture within a very cramped space, and cleaning, cleaning, cleaning (though it likely doesn't seem it).  For the first time in years, there is something called floor-space.  I didn't think such a thing could exist.  Those of you with large libraries should appreciate why this is an accomplishment of Johnsonian proportions--- or why I think it is.

 

    (Photo, by the way, only hints at the number of books.  Beyond those stored on walls not within the camera's ken, there are others stacked and double-stacked upon one another, and yet more hidden away in tiny crannies like bottles in an alcoholic's house.)

 

    So for now, there is order, or an idea of it at least.  And I'm exhausted.  Relaxing with a few lagers and savouring for the first time having my desk at a window, such as it is.  Jenny, obviously, is already past mere relaxing. 

 

    A strange question came to me today as I was sorting through those nefarious books: why didn't I go into Renaissance all those years ago?  In retrospect, I should have, I really should have. 

All The Useless Things

    I've been thinking a lot lately about Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury under Henry VIII, Edward VI and eventually ("Bloody") Mary Tudor.  Don't ask me why.  I love this image at right (click on it for a larger version), though, from John Foxe's The Actes and Monuments..., aka The Book of Martyrs, a text that became crucial to the survival of the Anglican Church during its post-Henrician turmoil.  Oddly enough, between Cranmer, Foxe and the eventual translators-writers of the King James Bible, you essentially but not completely have the three pillars upon which the Anglican house somehow managed to remain standing: the English Book of Common Prayer, The Book of the Martyrs and the English Bible.  (Crude and grossly simplified, yes, but not untrue, I think.)  Cranmer reminds me, though, that when all is said and done-- and the dances of pragmatism and peaceability have been called capriciously to an end-- you can still choose how you're going to burn, at least on mundaner planes.  Somehow, I find that wonderfully steeling, especially when the gloves are off.  Now what's that line from Mr Eliot again about ashes on an old man's sleeve? 

 

    (Post-script: Not sure about the title of this entry?  Then see here.) 

Gettin' Jiggy WiFi

    Brief note: the N-S-G Dawk has finally jumped into the high-speed age (sans wires no less!), so lots of things are in the midst of changing, including his central email.  Those of you that are clever lads and lasses and can figure out the best address to reach him at now.  Hint:  he does run a blog via Google....

 

    Apologies to those who've sent emails or other greetings related to, um, well, an insidious recent event.  Sooner or later I'll get caught up.  Best, everyone.

Crossing The Bar

    I forgot to mention this, but a few weeks ago the Not-So-Good Doctor's favourite haunt (Chester's, where tonight he will hopefully be forgetting something perfectly) was used as one of the locations in the upcoming film of Margaret Atwood's The Robber Bride.  As several of my more regular readers have, er, "visited" this place, they may want to watch for the film when it appears on the CBC (or, I'm told, Oxygen in the US).  Watch for it, mes ami(e)s, and recall one of those nights you and/or yours prolly got blitzed-beyond-London there. 

 

    As for getting blitzed-beyond-London, I'm workin' on it.... I'm gonna fucking need it.

Incidental Query

    Dear readers, or those of you that mysteriously remain, a poser came to mind today that I cannot unravel and this blog would like to ask you if you can.  Ladies, especially, I'd like to hear your response to this:  How can feminists, of any stripe or delineation, praise the representation of women on Sex and the City and yet insistently decry same on The West Wing?  How can they champion the vacuous stereotypes (quadrated, naturally, according to sexual behaviour) of the former, and deride the intelligent and developed characters of the latter?  If anyone out there has a sensible answer to this, I'd love to hear it.

The Great Creator's Praise

     My onetime-colleague in academic corruption reminds me that today is the great John Dryden's birthday. Do him the honour: go and read him.  After all, precious few people do these days.

On Quibbles, Collections and The Man

    Sorry, folks, for the lack of updates lately.  Can I be bothered to care?  Not really.  Colour me listless and cranky-- only moreso than usual.  So, to appease the need for an update, herewith a few short(er)-takes on items various and scattered:

• Today the Doc is feeling especially osteoporotic, having spent most of yesterday helping his paternal unit install cement-board in preparation for retiling a room.  Both creaky and cranky, what a combination.... It's going to be a great day. 
  
  
• Tonight also is the Van Morrison concert in Toronto, which alas I'm going to miss.  It's only his second appearance there in the past ten years, and I am going to have missed both of them.  Insert litany of profanities here--- or perhaps better, an extended melodic growl.
  
  
• It seems the die is all but cast in relation to my employment situation, my employer completely snubbing me for positions for the second time in three years.  Some people keep insisting I have to get my union involved, but I'd rather respond to indignity with dignity, if that's possible.  Yes, there's a part of me that wants to make something of a response or a defense, but there's little point in doing so.  Then again, everything seems pointless lately.  Oh, it's a wonderful, affirmative world....
  
  
• Into the Delectable Irony file must go, fittingly, a few words from the original Dr J ostensibly on Shakespeare but perhaps just as appropriate to his much-too-slender namesake.  Judge for yourselves, keeping in mind that "quibble" for Dr Johnson meant pun and not complaint or argument:

  A quibble is to Shakespeare, what luminous vapours are to the traveller; he follows it at all adventures, it is sure to lead him out of his way, and sure to engulf him in the mire. It has some malignant power over his mind, and its fascinations are irresistible. Whatever be the dignity or profundity of his disquisition, whether he be enlarging knowledge or exalting affection, whether he be amusing attention with incidents, or enchaining it in suspense, let but a quibble spring up before him, and he leaves his work unfinished. A quibble is the golden apple for which he will always turn aside from his career, or stoop from his elevation. A quibble poor and barren as it is, gave him such delight, that he was content to purchase it, by the sacrifice of reason, propriety and truth. A quibble was to him the fatal Cleopatra for which he lost the world, and was content to lose it.

  Hmmm....  As the old exams used to say, "discuss and comment."

• Kate's Book Blog asks an interesting question about the books that dominate one's private collection, and about how one organizes them.  My collection is moreorless organized by the "cram-them-in-there-with-a-shoehorn" principle, but I thought it worth taking stock of those authors in my collection currently represented by five or more volumes (only by, not about).  My list then, not including Shakespeare: 

  Graham Greene, Henry James, Northrop Frye, Tom Eliot, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, Ernest Hemingway, Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, E. M. Forster, Evelyn Waugh, John le Carre, Hugh Kenner, H.D. [Hilda Doolittle], Harold Pinter, D. H. Lawrence, George Bernard Shaw, William Faulkner, George Orwell, Richard Condon, Robertson Davies, Mordecai Richler, Sigmund Freud, Saul Bellow, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Adrienne Rich, Leonard Cohen, Harold Bloom, Frank Kermode, William Empson, Margaret Laurence, Tom Stoppard, Dostoyevsky and Philip Larkin (among others, surely).

  The first several aren't surprising, but I have to admit I didn't think some authors were as well-represented in my collection as they in fact are, especially Lawrence (around 20 volumes), Freud, Shaw, le Carre, Bellow and Rich.  Greene, by far, leads the pack, which is a little ironic considering how many editions of Greene I have given away to students over the years.  I'm also surprised by how much James I own.  He seems to be everywhere.  What's in your collections?

Anyway, as you have surely gathered, there's nothing much new to report (is there ever?), save for trying (as ever) to figure out a future.  Can one make a living from boredom in a way that Beckett didn't?  Meh, methoughtst not.  But on with things--- and if any of you out there get to the Van Morrison concert tonight, know the Not-So-Good Doctor is intensely jealous of you and he wants a full report as soon as possible.  Grumble, grumble, growl, growl....

August and Everything Prior, or There's A Trick With A Scalpel I'm Learning To Do

Summer's now three-quarters over, with only August left to roar before the onset of the dying fall. As ever, I can sum up the bloody thing before it's done. It's like a Henry James novel: once you're about halfway through, you know how it's all going to end, its trajectory all but certain, and the space between the halfway and the two-thirds mark merely preparing you for what you already expect, as if to suggest that inevitability is somehow intrinsically ironic, and seeing the thing through just a formality. (The same is true, by the way, of an Adam Sandler comedy, though the James novel usually isn't as depressing.) When you reach that point when the trajectory is clear, you begin hoping that you're wrong, but you know you're not going to be. You might as well hope that two speeding trains on course for one another might fly their tracks and begin doing loopdeloops. It just ain't gonna happen, and you know it.

So too with summer, at least for me. Its pattern never changes. It ambles in with hope and confidence and lumbers out with fatigue and frustration. Between beginning and end come the usual events: the tantalizing possibilities, the extended anticipations, the requisite complications, the tortuous attempts to resolve same, and, of course, the inevitable cutting of one's losses. The last two parts of the process are the ones I hate most, the former for the obvious reasons, the latter for its despicable and often callous necessity. In theory, the former should obviate the latter, but it seldom does. As I have often said, I don't mind tilting at windmills, but I draw the line at bashing my head repeatedly and pointlessly against a Chinese wall. The hard part, ostensibly, is learning to tell the difference. (It shouldn't be; it's always wall.) I wonder, though, if it's good that I'm getting better at walking away and letting things (and people) go. I'm certainly getting cooler (colder?) about it. Regrettably, necessity mothers amputation as much as it does invention, so one does as one must. There's never much point in delaying the inevitable, or feigning blindness to the obvious--- unless you're Henry James, of course. Even Hamlet does what he has to do eventually.

So, yes, as most of you have surely surmised by now, I'm in the process of cutting my losses, of salvaging what can still be salvaged and extracting myself from situations with, hopefully, at least a measure of dignity and self-respect. I hate the clinicism this demands, and I hate even more the incipient sense of waste connected to it all. I think here of the poor bastards who train for the Olympics in their respective events only to come in last, and so realize they could have done absolutely NOTHING and attained the same result. My situation, of course, isn't so devastating. Mine's just cynicising, or further cynicising. Work, effort, energy, experience, patience, ability, kindness, decency--- they never matter, or, rather, they never seem to matter. (He writes, just receiving via snail mail yet further proof of this; something to do with the veal and the Gestapo garb, perhaps?) Everything prior seems just another exercise in being strung along, and every effort finally a waste. One might as well have done nothing; the result would have been the same.

Ironically, everything comes back to waste and ventures forth from it, to getting past the indignities and the losses and the beleaguering questions of why and why not, and finally trying not to let all that waste hit you on the ass on the way out. It's easier said than done, amputating one's losses and simply moving on, regardless of feeling. (There's no anaesthesia, either, except maybe for those Henry James novels.) Just cut and go, I'm learning, is as Augustan a ritual as shoveling in December--- just cut and go . It's a trick with a scalpel I'm learning to do, albeit a solipsistic one. If I can ever get it right, it'll be really, really neat, I promise.

Until I do, though, you might want to stand back: I'm the Not-So-Good Doctor after all, and this thing's f&#king sharp.

Reporting the News

    Those of you that do not watch The Colbert Report regularly probably aren't up on the latest "scandal" making headlines in the ever-so-ridiculous American news media.  (Or, as a young lady of my acquaintance prefers, "ricockulous.")  For the first time in goodness-knows-how-long, this blog would like to call attention to the insightful--- yes, I said that--- words of a politician:  "I think it's an important thing for members of Congress to be able to participate in a good-natured joke."  Somewhere, the spirit of Jonathan Swift is rubbing its ectoplasmic temples in unfathomable agony (why?  c.f. the revolting misrepresentation of same here and the last sentence here).  It occurs to me that if held to the same nonsensical standard of libel and besmirchment, the Not-So-Good Doctor would surely be publicly excoriated for buggering raccoons in front of schoolchildren (while eating veal in Gestapo garb, of course).

 

    For the record, equally insightful words from the politician at the center of this ricockuolous storm:  "If you combine the two together, it's probably even more fun."  Ahhh, selah....

Held Up To The Light

    This blog neglected to note earlier this week the passing of the American comedian Red Buttons.  Alas, no word on whether or not he was subjected to Poseidon immediately prior. 

    A FEW DAYS LATER:   Why does it always seem that character actors are on an ever-thinning endangered species list? The latest passing is that of Jack Warden, who died at 85 earlier this week. For all of his fine films--- From Here to Eternity, Twelve Angry Men, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Brian's Song, Being There, All The President's Men, Heaven Can Wait, The Verdict, Bulworth-- he'll, sadly, probably only be familiar to younger viewers as the angry grandfather in the abominable Problem Child movies. (Oy vey.) But Harry Fox, from the TV series Crazy Like A Fox in the mid 80s, was a wonderful comic creation. Sad news, really.

Absolutely Tintinnabulous!

    The 2006 winners for the Bulwer-Lytton contest (for the worst opening sentences of unwritten novels) are in, and some of the honorees are hoots indeed.  This blog's favourite entry is this one:

"I know what you're thinking, punk," hissed Wordy Harry to his new editor, "you're thinking, 'Did he use six superfluous adjectives or only five?' - and to tell the truth, I forgot myself in all this excitement; but being as this is English, the most powerful language in the world, whose subtle nuances will blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel loquacious?' - well do you, punk?"

It's even funnier if you imagine it being read by Ryan Stiles doing his Carol Channing impression on Whose Line Is It, Anyway?  (from the episode with Robin Williams, which you can see in its miniaturized entirety here). 

Stop The World, We're Gonna Get Offed

    Alright lads, it looks like we'll soon have no function at all --- save to open pickle jars and fart on command.  (Actually, I know a few women....)  Woe is us, our end is near....

School Daze

    It's a bit of a peculiar thing reading this article from the Chronicle, remembering how a few years ago I would heartily encourage students to apply to graduate school.  In recent years, as Jon Stewart would say, "er, not so much."  Suffice it to say that these words about blokes like Yours Untruly ring perhaps a little too profoundly true:  "They are romantics who must suddenly become realpolitikers."  (Insert wistful and slightly embarrassed shrug here.)  Some of us got the cynicism but not the professionalization to make us oblivious to it.

Plugging Away

    Because some of you will be positively LIVID if I don't report on this....

 

    Key quote:  "You don't just buy a car, you research it."  No word on whether or not you're allowed to kick the tires, check the exhaust or test the ignition.  Vroom vroom....

The Bard Sell

    Let's face it: these days, you can't do even the simplest of tasks without finding someone trying to sell you something.  Alas, even this blog has ads, even if Google in its infinite insipidity seems to decide that those ads should always be related to establishing your own blog.  (Do I care enough to look into changing this?  Not a wealthy tinker's damn.)   In, however, one of those absurd flashes that for some pass as thought, it occurred to the Not-So-Good Doctor that the improverished designers of those myriad advertisements seem to be ignoring one of their potentially greatest resources, a little-known and out-of-copyright author named William Shakespeare.  Why, one has to ask, oh why?  (Did I mention that he's out of copyright?  This alone should have advertisers moist at their choice of possible foists.)  Why use cheap slogans when you can use ones not merely literate, but catchy enough to survive centuries?  And why corrupt Bob Dylan at cost when you can have Shakespeare for free?  So, let this blog offer some suggestions for incorporating Shakespeare into the world of the thick-and-hard sell, a world the great showman would, at least at some level, have surely appreciated:

• for Ex-Lax, feature a beaming middle-aged man staring directly into the camera and averring, "Finally, I'm as constant as the northern star!"
• for NASCAR, a charismatic Jeff Gordon insisting how he must be bound to wheels of fire (NB: substituting Dale Earnhardt here is NOT a good idea) 
• for 3M, an ad starring John Wayne Bobbitt, confidently asserting that once you've Scotched the snake, you haven't killed it
• for Nair, feature an elderly Mediterranean man pointing toward his wife and shouting, "Look on her: look, her lips, / Look there, look there!"  (Er, choose your own definition of lips.)
• for McDonald's, a canine and apple-pie bearing Anthony Hopkins begging, with mischievious eyes, "Will't please you, eat?" 
• for the ACLU, offer Johnnie Cochrane, glove on hand, asserting that now, indeed, is the time for Gods to stand up for bastards (or, alternately, Pat Robertson)
• for Republican congressional candidates, the probably overly-erudite slogan, "A natural perspective that is and is not."  Note:  Must feature a middle-aged white man staring angrily at his local opponent.  Alternately, offer same middle-aged white-man snarling about how long the quality of his mercy has been severely strained
• for ING Direct, have that snotty Pete Postlethwaite imitator remind us how neither a borrower nor a lender must be
• for Kleenex, star an advising Bill Clinton extending the product in question and insisting to a faceless brunette, shaking her head, "The handkerchief!  The handkerchief!"
• for Jack Daniels, a toothless redneck in bar, watching a couple leave, affirming that it may take away fromt he performance, but at least it gives the inspiration
• for MADD, a middle-aged soccer mom reminding everyone how she must, fervently, be set against their merriment
• for Palmolive:  "When all the perfumes of Arabia just won't do...."
• and for DeBeers: "Or else the rest will be silence." 

Feel free to offer your own suggestions in the comments.  The spirit (?) of Ken Lay will thank you.  Try not, however, to do anything about poop being burnished gold.

The Trouble From Here

Yeah, what the f@ck are you lookin' at?
For the record, as I add this the American President is speaking before his lunch with Prime Minister Harper. He is doing so in a way that evinces all too well the same reaction I have to an oral presentation by an undergradling that began preparing it two minutes beforehand. On the other hand, he makes Harper sound like a modern Cicero, which surely can't hurt Mr Harper one bit.

But, oh how Canadian, as the American President has noted: the first congratulation on Mr Bush's birthday today came from the Canadian Press.

Hayakawa's Regret

    One of the perverse things about updating this blog at this time of morning is that the only non-news show to be found is Kung Fu: The Legend Continues.  Its ridiculousness, of course, is (appropriately) legendary, and so hardly needs further remark here.  Even letting it air in the background, however, does incur a degree of physical danger.  As I have been reminded, it is profoundly imprudent to sip scalding hot coffee when, at any time, Semi-Known-Available-Asian-Actor might mutter something impossibly risible right into the camera.  I always pity the SKAAA after I wipe the accidental spray from my beard and shirt.  The SKAAA is usually some poor chap like Mako or Soon Tek-Oh or James Hong, a M*A*S*H alum stuck taking any part that comes along because Hollywood hardly offers him any better.  This morning's victim was George Takei, no stranger to televised shite, but for whom I still felt intense sympathy--- after I had wiped the coffee out of my nose. 

 

    Sure, Takei's no Toshiro Mifune or Tatsuya Nakadai, but my heart momentarily went out to him, much as it might for a colleague reduced to swigging vodka from a paper bag in some darkened alley.  SKAAAs are a pitiable lot, seldom getting decent parts, and often in those instances when parts demand venerable Asian actors, Hollywood has tended to think to itself, "Gee, we need a Brit to play this part!"  See the classically unconscionable casting of John Gielgud as Chang in the 70s Lost Horizon.  Or, rather, don't.  You'll not forgive me if you do.  See even, dare I say it, Alec Guinness in the fifties "comedy" Majority of One.  

      Let us consider, for example, poor Keye Luke, Master Po from the original Kung Fu series, was in the film industry for 55 years and never really got past being a SKAAA.  Most of my readers will know him only as Mr. Wing from the Gremlins movies, which is in itself quite sad.  Asian actors in North America just aren't going to get the chances to cultivate renown or respect as they age in the same ways that, say, Gene Hackman or Morgan Freeman have had.  The older they get, the more they will simply become SKAAAs, interchangeable and largely anonymous, except perhaps to have the odd Baby-Boomer say, "Oh, yeah, wasn't he on M*A*S*H?"  Sure, there will be brief flirtations with Chow Yun-Fats and Jet Lis every now and again, but those flirtations are sporadic and fleeting.  The only exceptions here, really, are Mifune and Bruce Lee, but the latter died young and the former stayed primarily in Japanese films that happened to find markets here, namely the Kurosawa classics.  My female readers may note that I haven't mentioned any actresses in all this.  I don't simply because the actresses have generally been even more abominably treated.   Let me put it simply: Is there, in North America, an Asian Maggie Smith or Angela Lansbury, or even, heaven forefend, Susan Sarandon?   Frankly, I'd love to see a Helen Mirren.

 

    It happens, coincidentally enough that I write this in the same week that I watched The Bridge On The River Kwai again.  One of its stars, the stalwart Sessue Hayakawa, is reputed to have said that his one ambition was to play a hero.  He never did, even though he tragically turned down the role that made Rudolph Valentino a legend.  Hayakawa's predicament, however, remains largely typical for Asian actors who don't get routed through chop-socky flicks with shoestring budgets.  There's something more than a bit sad about that, so relatively little having changed over the decades.  There remains the stable of SKAAAs, most treated pretty scuzzily and trapped in stereotypes guised as parts.  I wonder what Mr. Hayakawa would have to say about that.

     Somehow, I doubt he'd shoot coffee through his nose.

     FOLLOWUP:    It occurred to me that to post as I did without art was, in effect, to create my own SKAAA-type error, reducing these actors to generic types. So I have since added the few pics above Misters Takei, Luke and Hayakawa. Odd to note, though, the general dearth of pictures of these actors on the web that are NOT connected to Star Trek. Oy vey.