We're Just Dodgeball Slaves 4 U

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

Drinkey Friday

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

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

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

Water, Water Everywhere

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

An Artist And A Madman

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

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

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

"Abraham Lincoln Winned"

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

Fozzie Logic

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

The Overwhelming Question

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

The Shape of Things To Come

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

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

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

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

      Don't say I didn't warn you.

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

Don't Shoot The Messenger

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

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

Son Of A Ditch

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

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

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

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


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

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

Learning It At The Movies

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

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

And last, but not least:

• We're ALL fucking Spartacus. (Spartacus)

Actually, I could probably go on forever with this. (I probably already have.)

Just To Set The Cat Among The Pigeons...

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

      Ah, the trouble with Tribbles....

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

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

The World Just Keeps Getting Weirder and Weirder

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

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

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

The Journals of Those Often Moody

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

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

      [with thanks to Maura for the link]

The Writing On The Wall

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

She's An Easy Derider

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

The show does not try quite hard enough in its treatment of women, though. Christina Lane asserts in "The White House Culture of Gender and Race in WW," that WW presents a positive image of women and makes efforts to revise traditional power relations and reorient its male characters toward a valuation of female resilience and community (p. 38). In reality, WW completely subverts this. Its not that there arent intelligent and authoritative women in Sorkins WW. There are many: Abigail Bartlet M.D., Press Secretary CJ, Deputy Chief of Staff's assistant Donna, political assistant Amy, legal counsel Ainsley Hayes, among others. But these women are repeatedly humiliated in WW episodes, an appalling misogyny that is supposed to pass for humor. Sorkin relishes dumb blondes and the vengeful degrading of militant feminists. He forces upon WW women indignities men never suffer.

"Appalling misogyny."   Where one even begins to correct this wilful stupidity, one hesitates to guess.   Instead, I'll simply say that this sort of intellectual huffing and snorting that deserves all the scorn it elicits-- and frankly should elicit.   I feel dumber for having read this unmitigated crap, and it makes me wonder how much dumber I've become over the years for having had to read so much material like it.  

Papa's Got A Brand New Hag

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

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

Dearth of a Ladies' Man

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

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

I Know Thy Lot, Old Man

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

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

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

Dry Lips Ought To Move To Los Angeles

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

The Guttural and Guttable Quick: Notes From A Samurai Weekend

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

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

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

      Continue reading....

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

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

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

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

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

The Turtleneck and The Hare

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

Steppe-ing Down

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

Now, Alanis, This Is Ironic....

      From today's Spectator:

Sworn Off The Cob

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

"I'd Like To Test That Theory."

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

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

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

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

Drawn In (By) Short G(r)asps

      Recirculated today on the T.S. Eliot discussion list is this three year-old piece from The New Yorker which some of you may find of interest, especially after these opening sentences better matched to the finger-pointing crowd than to serious students of Tom:

T. S. Eliot's sex life.   Do we really want to go there?   It is a sad and desolate place.

Oh, how kind.... It only gets worse-- despite the article being relatively lucid and intelligent-- as it eventually iterates the tired old suggestions about Tom's possible homosexuality and so forth.    Mercifully, the piece is better tempered than my summary might suggest, and I think the author, Louis Menand, strikes the right chord with this redemptive assessment, the nugget of gold about Vivienne and Tom's eventually-estranged relationship:

Her stalking was not aggressive; it was pathetic.   She imagined that her husband had been taken away by people who didn't care for him and would destroy him.   She did not mean to be a harpy, and he did not mean to be a brute.   Those were just the forms their unhappiness had to take.

Sad, fatalistic, and perhaps even a bit apologetic, but I suspect inescapably true, despite-- or in spite of-- those all-too-typical (and extremely dogmatic) pseudo-, proto- and meta- feminist attempts to paint Tom as just another one of those evil dead, white, male misogynists.   Lord help me in dealing with these insipid, intrusive and innuendo-driven posturers, of whom the latest is Piers Read, whose speculations about Sir Alec Guinness are now being reviewed in the American papers.   Glad to see most of the reviewers are sniffing desperation on Read's part; it almost makes me there might be hope for more cautious biographical treatments.   Almost.

      POST-SCRIPT:   Points to anyone who can identify the source for the title of this entry. Google may or may not help you cheat on this one.  

Redeeming Time

      Victory is mine, saith the Doctor uncharacteristically, after months of struggle in trying to reclaim material from two former hard drives that he had presumed all but gone forever.   Not being much of a techno-geek, and previous attempts to access the material proving frustrating failures, yesterday I managed to get back some key work done in the days before what we might now call Roughly-Contemporary Computing.   Yes, now I have back my Master's thesis, my old lecture notes, countless essays and would-be articles (and some actual ones), so much stuff I assumed would take nothing short of a virgin sacrifice to recover.   Good, that, virgins being terrible things to waste, especially for such relatively trivial purposes and in this age when virginity is rarer than academic insight.   So, I've got back my Eisenstein work, my Strand and Stevens and Eliot work, my umpteen-trillion Shakespeare notes; further, so many pictures, so many bits and pieces from the past ten-plus years.   Add to that the fortune of being able, finally, to have a secondary hard-drive on my computer, almost doubling my disk space, and thus allowing me to keep my primary drive neat and tidy, and I'm feeling for the first time in a dog's age like I might be able to get things relatively organized.   Ah, these fragments I had foresworn against my ruins....

Fishing for Compliments?

      And evidently with unimpressive tackle.   Key quote: "...it was difficult to determine whether the swimmer's 'periscope was up.'"   Insert aqua-sexual euphemisms here. (Or better, put them somewhere we can't see them.)

Putting Their Heads Together

      At last, clarity about my lineage.   It has been so obvious for so long, nobody bothered to notice: the not-so-beloved, Not-So-Good Doctor is, in fact, the love child of Toshiro Mifune and Woody Allen.  

Alas the world makes sense!   Now, hand me my sword-- I've got some vengeance to wreak, once I'm done kvetching about modern relationships with women half my age.  

      (P.S.: If you don't know who Toshiro Mifune is, you really, really, really ought to be ashamed of yourself.   Go here or here to remedy the situation.)

Truly, Madly, Depply

      Two words, people: "Edward. Tweezerhands."   Face it, "Willy Wanker" would simply be too obvious.

To Have And To Have Not

      You had to know somebody was going to do this sooner or later.   This blog suspects the first song will be Bob Dylan's "I Want You."   Or perhaps "Don't Stand So Close To Me" by the Police?   ('Twould certainly give new meaning to "Wrapped Around Your Finger," non?)

Enough For Ten Men

      Ladies and gentlemen, your misleading (and disappointing?) Headline of the Day.

      (There's a nasty headline I could create for this blog, but even **I'm** not that mean.   Not usually, anyway.)

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

      Frankly, my dear, it was just a matter of time....

Public Service Announcements #12 and 35

      Today's act of charity for the day?   Alerting some brats about the dangers of living on the edge.   (Who says this blog can't be nice?)

      For those of you with the need for speed, might I suggest this?   ~~ Ehhh-v'rybody must get wired.... ~~

"It's Pretty Sloppy And It's Insulting."

      Only in Canada could we have a political blunder that involves a man named-- I shit ye not-- "Matthew Coon Come."   (And you thought you had it rough in high school....)

The Dump Of A Lifetime

      Key quote: "He was speechless, I've never known him so quiet."

The Stalk Exchange

      As if this blog did not already have enough stuff about which to despair, ABC is planning to revive one of this blog's long-missed TV favourites, The Night Stalker.   The malignant bastards. So much of the fun of the original series was that Darren McGavin (a wonderful actor, too often forgotten these days) was the Columbo of the mystical underworld, crumpled, slovenly, indefatigable; but add to that, he was snarky, sarcastic, and sometimes downright sour, but never so blindly cranky as his disbelieving editor, played by the long-late Simon Oakland (of the original Psycho).   

      Bizarrely, I can see a (pardon the pun) revamped Night Stalker working, but not with an overly trim and damned-near beatified cast.   Ugh.   The LAST thing I want to see is a Buffy-inflected version of CSI, replete with Bruckheimer production values (and Ridley Scott-like lighting).   Sadly, I can't think of an actor up to filling the original Kolchak's shoes, save for McGavin himself (alas, now 83) or perhaps a younger Robert Loggia (who is now 75).   Crumpled, slovenly, indefatigable-- but not prone to playing his part as cheap Animal House-ian comedy?   Can't think of a one, though I confess this might be a limitation on my part. Fifteen years ago, maybe Ned Beatty.    Or even Harris Yulin.    (Shame both Martin Balsam [also from Psycho, he being Detective Arbogast, sent to his death down those famous stairs] and E.G. Marshall are dead.)    But now?

      I guess it hardly matters.   It looks like the new Kolchak will be utterly un-Columban.    What the fark is next, Archie Bunker as played by Jack Black?   Perish, perish, perish that thought. Then again, Gloria Bunker these days would be played by Jessica Simpson-- in hot pants, and sudsing up the Jeffersons.   Perish, perish-- no, wait a sec--- no, still perish that thought.   *shudder*

      AFTERTHOUGHT: It has occurred to me that one actor could do Kolchak: John Spencer.   Neh?

      Oh, Crap, I am officially That Old, even if I wastoo young when the show was first on the air.   But I grew up on it in reruns in much more innocent days.   Next week, Columbo, starring Nick Lachey.

      And people wonder why I drink.

It Betokeneth Discord

      Oh, the irony....   Wordsmith's Word of the Day pour aujourd'hui is chapfallen. Definition, for those not already in the know:

chapfallen or chopfallen (CHAP-faw-luhn, chop-) adjective

      Dejected or dispirited.    [From chap or chop (jaw) + fallen.]

"Jon Bon Jovi, the New Jersey rock 'n' roller, says he's chapfallen and desolate over rumors that his band is about to break up."    Chris Reidy; Bon Jovi's Funk; Boston Globe; Aug 7, 1990.

Nice usage there, even if JBJ would be more fittingly described as "crapfallen." "Chapfallen" sounds more appropriate as an assessment of drunkenness to me, though.   Either way, dulce et decorum est....

      (And "clapfallen?" That's reserved for Tommy Lee.)

The Fun Is In The Flavour

      I was glancing again tonight at Chad Walsh's Doors Into Poetry, a now 43 year-old handbook for students learning to read poetry.   The book, I'm sure, is long out-of-print, but it's really quite a neat-- and useful-- little guide, and certainly more effective in what it does than many more recent texts are in attempting to accomplish roughly the same ends.   It has both good sense and good humour, and it's worth picking up in a used bookstore if it can be found.   One of the book's minor delights is that it begins with this piece, a commercial poem that's remarkably good for what it is. Check it out:

   ... No toys!
            ... No noise!
Mothers of America rejoice!
Wheat Chex is guaranteed to
contain no premiums--- no whis-
tles, missiles, rockets or ruckus.

No beanies, b-b's, heebies or
jeebies.   Not a ball, bat, hat or
gat in any package of this
crunchable, munchable whole-
wheat cereal.

Wheat Chex is made so the
fun is in the flavour--- the only
cereal made on purpose for
Grownups and Above-Average
Children.   You get taste instead
of toys, and nutrition instead of
noise.

We take pride in proving this is
one cereal worth buying for its
own fine self--- with no strings,
rings or things attached.

The rhythms, the language, the chuckle-worthy alliterations, they all work tiny little wonders, all-considered.   It's almost as if Marianne Moore attempted Dr. Seuss, or Dr. Seuss attempted Marianne Moore, with a dash of Skelton in the mix.   (A very small dash.)   And it works, almost too well, given one's expectations of commercial poetry.   It would work, too, as a genuinely harmless way of reintroducing undergraduates, jaded by their high school experiences, to poetry's pleasures, as well as its tricks and techniques.   Cute, very cute.

Keeping the Doctorow Away

      Great: ANOTHER way in which women are more complex than men.   It's enough to give a man a com---

      I wonder, if women have "greater natural 'melody' to their voices," what kinds of melodies are we talking about?   (Oh.   So, it's about Scott, and not Janis?   Oh, oh, oh....   Ouch...)   I have the right to remain silent.     

Doin' Her Wurst

      Go ahead, infer luridly, luridly away.   (You know you're going to.)   I wonder, though, if she's one of those "practice makes perfect" competitors.

She's Just A Hunka, Hunka Burnin' Wood

      By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way, er, well, you know.... Key quote: "It's kind of sad for a teenage girl to use it to her advantage so well."

      (And, yes, leave it to this blog to collide Elvis with Shakespeare and teen fake-orgasms.   This should surprise exactly none of you.)

Popping Through The Player

      At the risk of reading like one of those insipid LiveJournal entries ("What I'm listening to..."), sitting today at the computer with a few shuffle set for the musical accompaniment, I was surprised by the odd combination that came up, a playlist rather appropriate but nonetheless quite eclectic.   Here's the baker's dozen, as they came up:

1. "Because the Night," by 10,000 Maniacs (live, unplugged)
2. "Cold Sweat," a (kickin') live cover by James Brown and Wilson Pickett
3. "Down The Road Tonight," by Bruce Hornsby
4. "No Alibis," by Eric Clapton
5. "Kiss That Frog," by Peter Gabriel
6. "How Do You Stop," by James Brown
7. "There Is A War," by Leonard Cohen (live 90s version)
8. "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'," by The Righteous Brothers
9. "Back In The High Life Again," by Steve Winwood (with James Taylor)
10. "If I Should Fall Behind," by Bruce Springsteen
11. "I Hung My Head," by Johnny Cash
12. "Night Parade," by Robbie Robertson
13. "Crazy Love," by Ray Charles and Van Morrison (live)

Sorry, ladies, not many female voices in there, save for Natalie Merchant's from 10,000 Maniacs-- on an album which I'm sure I have not listened to in over a decade. You'll also probably notice that the performers are almost all "Big Names," which is probably an indicator of something.   Yes, I'm a canonist, un-afarking-bashedly.   No rap, no techno, no hip-hop; not a trendy song in the lot.   Infer what you will.   In the meantime, I'm flippin' back to James B; it's time to make it funky.

Ogden Frost

      Tonight proved a strange evening.   Off to one of my haunts, I wound up having (perhaps having is not the best word) helping an elderly, and largely incoherent, man in a wheelchair find his way home, which stirs my social anger because obviously this gent hadn't gone out by himself but had been abandoned by someone with the compassion of a Bushie.   Then, later, on a quiet night over a triplet of pints, I found myself-- always the last to notice such things-- half-flirting with a young woman I'd never met before, and with whom I barely exchanged a dozen words.   Call me a fool if you will (and most of you iin the peanut gallery probably will), but I've always been a sucker for subtle flirtation and for that which can be suggested with a little eye-action. I'm a guy who likes the smoulder before the combustion, the parrying before the clashing.   But she had such magnetic eyes, which, as most of you probably know, is the Doctor's Kryptonite. Even too if I remember the lines of Paul Simon:

She looked me over
And I guess she thought
I was all right
All right in a sort of a limited way
For an off-night

-- "I Know What I Know," from Graceland

The odd thing is this, because the Doc half-flirting is nothing new: for some reason I do not understand, a chill sometimes runs down my spine when I meet a young woman, and it usually means that she will, relationally or otherwise, prove relevant to me in some way or another. I had that feeling, that specific chill, tonight.   I do not know why, nor do I know what may yet come; sometimes those chills are of personal relevance rather than romantic or physical. This (instinct?) has never proven wrong yet, so now I'm wondering.   Something in my bones says there's something ultimately amiss about this, but (alas) I'm also a veteran-- a master?-- of amiss relationships. But for some reason I'm possessed of a sense of Tiresian foreboding. One haws to wonder at what fate may be initiating, cruelly.   Another warning to Caesar?   ForSooth, forsooth.

      As I have been writing this, Jenny adopts my side and my lap, so glad to have Daddy home. Jenny is loud, sometimes obnoxious, and nominated to eat anyone out of house and home; Jenny is also given to a devotion that is so sweetly remarkable because of its rarity, by which it means what it means, without caveats or conditions. There's beauty in that, a limpidity somewhere between Ogden Nash and Robert Frost.

Light In August

      As most of you have noticed, the Not-So-Good Doctor hasn't felt much like blogging lately, which I am increasingly prone to realize is a persistent condition rather than an occasional one.   Somehow, though, these dog days of summer-- despite such events as the miraculous evacuation, without fatalities, of Air France Flight 358 in Toronto-- either fry the imagination, or they simply fail to stir the ambition to write.   The news cycle in summer just seems, however inexplicably, less propitious, or less provocative, or something, I'm not entirely sure what.   "Or," as Major Clipton (James Donald) famously wonders in The Bridge On The River Kwai, "maybe it's the sun..."  

      Ah, yes, sun plus ennui, there is a killer combination which creates a lethargy synergistically greater than its parts.   Sometimes, one gathers, an ort of inertia is worth two weeks in the Kush.

      Further to wit, summer's eventlessness makes answering even innocuous questions like "Hey, so how's it goin'?" seem unanswerable except with ambivalent clichés.   (Tut, tut, you say; Rut, rut, one tut-taciously retorts.)   Oddly enough, this also tends to coincide with strange remanifestations, particularly of long-unseen friends and onetime "acquaintances" of, er, well, "feminine regard."   (Did anyone ever come up with a good euphemism for euphemism? Cunninglingo, perhaps?)   One hems, one haws, one shrugs and sighs and rolls one's eyes, more implicitly than tangibly.   Meh.   Call me a raisin in the sun.   You can say you heard it through the-- oh, nevermind.

      All this reminds me, though, how much I've come to dislike August, and not just for the reason that some of you are best to forget immediately upon threat of torture.   August reminds me of a star, always burning toward its death, and it has a kind of pointlessness connected to it that even November and January do not possess.   Meh, one says again, pondering the unbearable lightness of August.   What was that about two in the Kush?

The New Governor-Jeaneral

      PM PM has announced that journalist and TV personality (such as she is, as I've never been much on her TV work) Michaelle Jean will be Canada's next Governor-General.   Who knows; she may do a fine job, but personally, my vote, if we were going to pick a celebrity to represent Canada with dignity and authority,would have been for someone else.   Like this chap, perhaps?   Ay, every inch a G-G!