The Other Room's the Same Room

This is the boxty, broccoli, and Jameson I had for Saint Patrick's Day. I'm still adjusting to using a gas stove again after having been using an electric one for a couple years at my old place but the boxty came out nicely. Lately I've been using cashew milk and it seems to suit boxty pretty well. The green flecks are parsley; I also use thyme. Despite the fake milk, it's not vegan--I always use an egg.

To-day I walked to a nearby vegan co-op market called People's and had lunch in their deli. They had some kind of complicated ordering system where there was no menu but there were playing cards on a little rack, some salad bars, a sign saying one should pay before eating, and markers with little laminated cards with check-lists of ingredients. And I get frustrated enough at the new Build Your Pizza places and to-day I was hungover and sleep deprived. I just said to the white guy with the spherical, sculpted afro, "Make me whatever kind of sandwich you like." It ended up being tofu turkey and tofu bacon on rye with lettuce, tomato, avocado, red wine vinegar, and olive oil. I didn't know how much it cost until it was made and weighed. But it was good and the people there were pretty nice.

I only had time for one Doctor Who audio play this week, an Eighth Doctor adventure from 2006 called Memory Lane. It has what I might call the Mind Robber syndrome--a Doctor Who story with a very intriguing beginning that ends up being about another powerful megalomaniac trying to control people. In this case, the beginning features the Doctor (Paul McGann) and his companions Charley (India Fisher) and C'rizz (Conrad Westmaas) finding themselves in an Earth-ish normal neighbourhood, the TARDIS materialising in the living room of an elderly woman who doesn't seem to care. She offers them tea and asks the Doctor to stay out of the way of the television. The Doctor is happy to accept tea and goes outside to buy ice cream but when he and his companions return they find the TARDIS gone and the old woman doesn't recognise them; they figure out she's actually a completely different but identical woman, in fact all the houses on the street have the same woman. It's very like a dream and very intriguing. The resolution doesn't quite live up but there are several other intriguing conceptual things along the way.

Here's a very tiny spider that I noticed on my hat when I was on the trolley on the way home a few nights ago:

This is the lizard in charge of the trolley station I use:

Twitter Sonnet #852

The dream of China stemmed from pink shoelace.
A wooden arm awaits a trav'ling cat.
To eastern hills and western peaks she paced.
On thresholds sheer and high she coolly sat.
A blue window could never shut on drawers.
Volumes of desks in deserts drop in space.
A rabbit thought descends through mirror wars.
A pencil clock has traced another grace.
The burgundy escapes the blazer slough.
Pre-emptive olives bloom into the gin.
A sleepless glass intends to crush the cough.
Vermouth removes to frozen depths within.
Tofurkey peoples came and filled the shop.
A deadeye needs a sturdy metal strop.

The Liberated Woman and the Strong Man in the Servant's Quarters

So much adventure awaits the Parisian chambermaid who decides to go work in the country--bizarre sexual fetishes, murder, rape, animal mutilation, and flagrant disregard for the neighbours. These things Celestine finds in Luis Bunuel's 1964 film Diary of a Chambermaid (Le journal d'une femme de chambre). Populated by human beings who compulsively abuse their positions, however humble, to satisfy sexual desires or who exploit their sexual appeal to advance their positions, this film is filled with Bunuel's distinctive political and social humour.

Jeanne Moreau plays Celestine whose nice shoes are immediately noticed by the coach driver, Joseph (Georges Geret), who is also the house groundskeeper. He amuses himself by capturing animals and torturing them to death. He disgusts Celestine.

The large home is occupied by a middle aged married couple and the wife's elderly father, Rabour (Jean Ozenne), who promptly takes Celetine into his study and asks her to help indulge in his fondness for women's shoes.

Not like the uncle in Bunuel's Viridiana who wears his wife's wedding shoes. Rabour asks Celestine to wear some ankle boots and walk around in them before he takes them off her feet personally. She has no objection, particularly as the man's authority overrides his daughter, Madame Monteil (Francoise Lugagne), whose strict instructions to Celestine may have something to do with the fact that her husband, Monsieur Monteil (Michel Piccoli), has his eye on the chambermaid, too. In fact, he got the last one pregnant. Meanwhile, Celestine makes friends with the neighbours who seem to be in a passive aggressive war with the Monteils. Mainly their antagonism takes the form of gleefully throwing garbage onto the Monsieur Monteil's property.

Celestine's identity as a cosmopolitan woman casual about sex is shown to be what enables her to navigate this little universe of gentry hypocrisy, which is probably why the down to Earth but sadistic Joseph disgusts her even more. When a child is raped and murdered halfway through the film, it's clear Celestine and Joseph are the only two capable of taking actions based on their principles rather than being merely dominated by their compulsions. A lot of the characters discuss politics and the servants encourage one another's racism, blaming the presence of Italians and Jews for the economic troubles in Europe--the film is set in the 1930s. So the conflict between Joseph and Celestine becomes an interestingly personal contemplation of political ideology.

It's not unlike Viridiana with its three figures representing three aspects of the political discourse--the strong man, the altruist, and the citizenry. In this case, Bunuel seems to be exploring how effective noble sexual liberation might be in effecting change in institutions.

Green with Electricity

Oh, those shiny, shiny stormtroopers. But last night's enjoyable new episode of Star Wars: Rebels focused on droids, mainly Chopper and his new C3PO-ish counterpart, AP-5 (Stephen Stanton).

It's not a complicated story, following Chopper as he's forced to stow away on an Imperial freighter after he's stolen himself a knew leg. Chopper is every bit as entertaining an addition to the droiddom as BB-8. I love how petty and ornery Chopper is and I really got a sense of his pride when swapping war stories with AP-5.

I'm digging a real sense of classic Star Wars in set-up shots. Just things like the Ghost landing on a platform and a few people in the foreground somehow convey that distinct feeling of the Star Wars universe.

It's a particular combination of music and point of view the show's makers somehow nail that isn't like Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica but very Star Wars. It's hard for me to put my finger on but they evidently have.

It was also nice to see Gina Torres back as Sabine's bounty hunter friend. If only she'd simply replace Kanan and Ezra.

Anyway, happy Saint. Patrick's Day, folks.

The Great Sugar Water Sack

TvTropes.org calls it Soap Opera Disease or Ill Girl, whatever the unnamed ailment is that afflicts Kaori in Your Lie in April (四月は君の嘘), a series I finished watching yesterday. Roger Ebert's Glossary of Movie Terms is on TvTropes.org and his "Ali MacGraw's Diseased" is referenced in the Ill Girl entry: "Movie illness in which the only symptom is that the sufferer grows more beautiful as death approaches. (Named for Love Story, which MacGraw stars in.)" It's hard to say if that's true of Kaori whom the artists make sure is perfect looking from the beginning to the end of this over-long melodrama.

They really should have quit while they were somewhat ahead. Halfway through, the show had been an interesting story about what motivates some creative people and a tamer version of Evangelion's psychological character drama. The second half of the series dully treads water, rehashing more of Evangelion with what seems to be unselfconscious irony, practically tracing over the animation frames from End of Evangelion in order to demonstrate that they've completely missed the message of End of Evangelion. Or the makers of Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso simply don't mind making exactly the sort of pandering ego wank for boys Evangelion was criticising.

Kosei, who is basically Shinji at this point, is shockingly found curled up in foetal position in his room instead of practising on the piano for the big competition. He's found by Hiroko, his tutor, and he goes limp when she tries to drag him by the arm to practice, precisely like the scene from End of Evangelion where Misato finds Shinji in his usual foetal position and tries to drag him to his Eva. Except Hiroko doesn't kiss him to motivate him due to the curious chastity of this series. It's pretty normal for an anime series to tease the sex that never happens but this one takes the cake in contriving multiple, completely phantom reasons as to why the main characters don't get together. Supposedly Kaori and Rota are dating but while Kaori is obviously obsessed with Kosei and he's obviously into her we see nothing but occasional polite banter between Rota and Kaori. This all makes the eventual reveal for what the lie of the title "Your Lie in April" is, which I won't spoil, all the more ridiculous.

Of course, since Kosei is the central male character, every female character has to be in love with him. His childhood friend, Tsubaki, is just starting to realise it and in old Hollywood movies generally what has to happen at a time like this is the third wheel conveniently has to die by the end of the movie. Kaori's unnamed disease, the symptoms of which seem to include occasionally falling and needing dangerous, unspecified surgery, seems like it's on track to get her out of the way until the show suddenly seemed to wake up and realise it has to fill out another ten episodes. Then, suddenly there's surgery that might save her, the sudden introduction of which has the attendant unintended consequence of making Kaori look like a coward. But since the exact nature of her disease is never revealed, the writers probably figured they could do whatever they want.

Comparing the show to Evangelion makes it all the creepier that the show ends with Kosei basically forgetting how abusive his mother was and seemingly celebrating the fact that he's in love with a girl who's basically his mother reborn and sanitised. The fact that she contrives a pointless lie to avoid consummating a relationship with him gives the story the ritual sterility of an arranged royal marriage, which is particularly pathetic given that early on the show was giving lip service to individuality and creativity.

The infamous scene from Evangelion that kept coming back to me was Shinji masturbating over Asuka's comatose, topless body. The makers of Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso may think that avoiding sex as much as possible makes their show different. Really, it just makes their true motives less exposed. Or rather, the kind of masturbation this anime caters to isn't purely sexual: it celebrates an immature clutching at inorganic semblances of women that's even more depressing. It represents a complete failure to move past the womb. Maybe it's enough to say that this show about a dying girl is entirely about making the boy feel better.

Twitter Sonnet #851

A veiled invaded egg was put to loan;
The sign was struck but twice before it lit.
When words were stretched to syllables unknown,
A deal was dreamed before the buyer bit.
A breeze like Ridley Scott condensation
Through gauze the shade of flaring suns it watched.
Concealed in sequinned drapes hesitation
Avasts a thin unarmed and angry blotch.
The angled waterfall conceals no room.
A secret known to all can sneeze at will.
The drones at last have found this Brigadoon.
It just remains to gentrify the kill.
A tuft of wool was given free for slime.
The wooden steam has straightened out the time.

The Lawyer and His Soul

It was a pretty Saul-light episode of Better Call Saul last night, focusing more on Kim's struggle to get out of the doghouse at her firm for recommending Jimmy and on further development for Chuck. We get a lot more insight into his feelings for Jimmy and at first he seems totally irrational but what I like is that we see he may have a point.

Well, that's a nice thing about the show and it's what really makes it part of the Breaking Bad universe--we want Saul to do the wrong thing and this is made interesting by the fact that we're occasionally reminded why it's wrong and unpleasant. But I won't spoil the end of the episode.

I also started the fifth season of Touch of Frost a few nights ago from 1997. The première episode of the season, "Penny for the Guy", is interesting mainly for guest star Philip Stone, who you might recognise from Kubrick's adaptation of The Shining.

Even though anyone who recognises him the moment he shows up might assume he's the kidnapper and murderer Jack's trying to track down, Stone's subtlety and ability to suggest something sinister while ostensibly being just a humble widower out walking his dog is thoroughly absorbing.

The episode also introduces "Wonder Woman", Liz Maud (Susannah Doyle), an assistant for Frost and the latest in the line of occasionally introduced professional policewomen for Frost to be awkward around. Though of course Frost ultimately knows best.

The previous episode also had a female assistant for him, promoted from uniformed officer temporarily to assist Frost in investigating an assault at a university. It ends up being a killer who's become obsessed with mermaids after he accidentally drowned his sister as a kid and developed a delusion that she hadn't really died but gone to live in the sea. I thought about recommending the episode to Caitlin R. Kiernan but I wasn't sure if it would be flattering or insulting.

Well, hey, I've had a thing for mermaids since I was a kid and I'm not sure if I'm flattered or insulted. I don't know, it's kind of a weird feeling. It's like seeing a ghost on a talk show. Or a heirloom on a McDonalds menu. Maybe I'm shortchanging Touch of Frost, though. It is a basically "good guys and bad guys" show, somehow I expect Dostoevsky when mermaids turn up. There's a quote from Oscar Wilde's "Fisherman and His Soul" in the episode, which is always nice to hear.

Her hair was as a wet fleece of gold, and each separate hair as a thread of line gold in a cup of glass. Her body was as white ivory, and her tail was of silver and pearl. Silver and pearl was her tail, and the green weeds of the sea coiled round it; and like sea-shells were her ears, and her lips were like sea-coral. The cold waves dashed over her cold breasts, and the salt glistened upon her eyelids.

There's Always Stuff

I had such ambition for the weekend. I wanted to pencil and ink at least six pages for my comic but I ended up only pencilling two. On Saturday I ended up hosting a charity Strip Chess Exhibition Tournament for someone in Russia who only has two dollars a day to eat with--we ended up raising 108 dollars, which I'm rather pleased with. Sunday I had to drive forty miles north to a place called Carlsbad for one of the two poetry magazines I'm interning for this semester, the Magee Park Poets. I attended a poetry workshop at Carlsbad's one hundred year old Cole Library which has only recently been reopened. The topic for the workshop was "grief" and as I was the only one there under fifty and most of the people there were at least sixty I was pretty well outpaced on the topic. Most people had stories that began with sentences like, "When my husband died twenty years ago," or, "I'm grieving the loss of my eyesight." All I could say was that I was grieving the loss of literacy which I've been feeling acutely lately in my capacity as writing tutor at the university. I mentioned to those present at the workshop who were adjusting to blindness that one of my favourite poets, John Milton, wrote his best work after he went blind and I was pleasantly surprised to find that several people in the room had actually not only heard of John Milton but also liked him.

Anyway, here's the sonnet I put together in the thirty minute writing period, I see now with one more quatrain than I intended:

A vertical stripe in a gurney cools
Before a clean and blue elbow at rest
On sterile counter counting dreamless pools
A notecard with broken dry unrest
In frame behind the walls in rooms
Acknowledged late by balding sleep that wakes
A shifting seat upsets the icy thought for looms,
A Fury's cord, an oven's grill that bakes
An inverse heat, a chill so hot it burns.
Impatience aims a spike, the seat ignites
One takes a crowded trolley ride, and turns
Deferred 'til ghosts with trumpets loud recite
Foretold by soundless print but not received
Transmission caught in space by men of dreams
Now called the feed for those asleep deceived
Misled into linoleum for beans.
A peeled potato falls into the pond,
A cam'ra cracks for a shattered bond.

Afterwards, I got a late lunch at Plaza Camino Real Mall which may be my favourite shopping mall in the county. I think it's the oldest, it's also generally not very crowded when I'm there. It always feels at least twenty degrees colder there than the temperature gauge on my car says it is and there's no food court--I had lunch at a newly added Panera on the outside of the mall. A mall in Chula Vista, towards the south end of San Diego, has a dead food court in its centre and a bunch of new food places outside so this seems to be reflecting a phenomenon of people wanting to go to the mall but not into the mall. The best thing about Plaza Camino Real, though--aside from the fact that it's indoor, I love indoor malls--is that it has an enormous comic book store that seems to be rather permanent. The other comic book stores in the county seem forced to shift location all the time. I'm always happy to visit that place especially since all the customers seem like they actually read comics rather than the dull, grazing passers-by I tend to see in the other shops.

I went to the Coffee Bean across the street to write yesterday's blog entry and saw a bunch of tiny birds fighting in the foliage.

So, yeah, this my way of saying I probably won't have a new chapter of comic ready by the weekend. I probably still won't have finished unpacking, either. I think it's been three weeks now with boxes of books and kitchen stuff piled in the floor of my new place. At some point I need to start making a concerted effort at finding a room mate, too. I could really use a few extra days in the week.

The Ice that Separates

How can people reach out to others if they're constantly thinking about themselves? How can people stop thinking about themselves when no-one reaches out to them? These questions pinion all the characters in 2007's Snow Angels, a film about divorce and about people persistently disappointing themselves and others. The characters are well written and it's decently shot except for a few distracting flourishes, mainly a tendency for the camera to drift away from characters in the middle of conversation, something that worked very well in Taxi Driver but feels a bit obtrusive here. The movie mainly succeeds for its screenplay and performances.

It's an ensemble film with really only one character who's not completely self-centred, Barb, played by the underrated Amy Sedaris. Kate Beckinsale's character Annie even remarks on the extraordinary nature of Barb's generosity. This is probably the reason Barb is a very minor character in the film. Mostly the story focuses on Annie and the husband she's separated from, Glenn, played by Sam Rockwell.

He takes their little daughter Tara (Gracie Hudson) to the mall and he's sweet and awkward, charming both us and Tara. He's an alcoholic who became a Born Again Christian as part of the process of becoming sober and even his odd prayer over lunch where he calls God various versions of father is charming.

Sort of paralleling Annie and Glenn's story is one of two teenagers, Arthur (Michael Angarano) and Lila (Olivia Thirlby), who are each other's first loves. As Lila tells Arthur how in love she is with his awkwardness, it's hard not to think about how Annie hates all of Glenn's flaws.

Arthur's parents are also getting a divorce. When his father says he wants to be around more for the good of their son, Arthur's mother calls it bullshit and we see it as part of her defence mechanism that she won't trust gestures like that. Meanwhile, Arthur's father, we later learn, is the one who decided to leave and Arthur accuses him of being selfish in his indecisiveness.

But one would overlook most of the characters' self-obsessions except there's a terrible accident in the middle of the film resulting in a death. And almost immediately, everyone in the film adapts the event to their own internal, endlessly self-reflecting narrative. Glenn is the most broadly ironic character as he talks about putting aside concern for oneself in order to love God and other people but finding religion has ultimately made Glenn more selfish than anyone else. He would be a pretty cliche character except for the fact that Sam Rockwell makes him so charming at the beginning of the film.

The movie's bookended by a high school marching band playing Peter Gabriel's "Sledge Hammer" and the song's lyrics seem to haunt the film particularly because we never hear them. Perhaps they ought to have listened to David Bowie's "Ashes to Ashes" as well and found an axe to break the ice.

Twitter Sonnet #850

A day's recorded cloud condensed to mud.
Alfalfa fragrance sriracha'd collect;
In flight the cow must kill the wire cud.
It's only late the bovine beings connect.
With wings arranged against the backing plate,
Affected ribs under the croft'll crack.
Before the grunts can caulk a bird to sate,
Arrays of cards at death's croquet are sacked.
After eagles disturb a brushless flame
The smoke misspeaks to finches shot for song
A cheap unstable metal man for fame
Denounced the overhead luggage as wrong.
A corkscrew hearing crashed into the blank.
No trial fell beside the noiseless tank.

Catering for Oneself

Is it at the end of a long dream that satisfaction in love and sex may be found? Can the two be found together? 1967's Belle de Jour superficially seems to be about a bored, wealthy housewife whose libido induces her to become a bordello prostitute while her husband is at home during the day. But this is a Luis Bunuel film and anyone who presumes from this fact that there's more going on in the movie would be absolutely right. It's perhaps the closest thing there is to a spiritual predecessor to Eyes Wide Shut; it's also beautiful and very subtly cruel in an inimitably Bunuel way.

Severine (Catherine Deneuve) is the icy, beautiful, and purportedly virtuous wife of the wealthy Pierre (Jean Sorel), who is devoted to her but is forced to beg her to do things like sleep in the same bed with him--the two normally sleep in twin beds.

The image reminds one of Hollywood movies from a decade earlier when the Hays code forbade the sight of a man and woman in one bed together, ludicrously obliging scenes of married couples in twin beds. There's no mandate for this in a 1967 French film, and since it seems to be in an effort to placate Severine's needs, it seems to imply she embodies the kind of ridiculous prescribed morality of the Hays code. Considering the fact that she's secretly a prostitute, it indicates the hypocrisy of censors as well.

But it's not just a film industry that's indicated. Subtle surreal moments in the film--like references to cats being let out appearing in one person's dream and then showing up in reality from other people--seem to indicate the film is the audience's dream as well. Which is of course the nature of film. Perhaps it's also an indication that the kind of divided sexuality Severine believes herself trapped in is only another level of unified sexual fantasy.

Or that the innocence she seems to embody for Pierre and his friends, the rarefied air she needs to escape from in her activities as a prostitute--is itself another sexual fantasy. The implications aim square at Bunuel's favourite target: the bourgeoisie.

Thursday Morning

Last night I dreamt about two beautiful women working in a hotel, one was in her 30s, pale, with black hair tightly drawn into a bun, the other was in her early twenties with messy, short red hair. They were in the lobby reading a letter from a mutual friend. The mutual friend, a lesbian who became a nun, was talking about going to a girl's house after noticing she had a garden where she grew organic produce despite the fact that it was the 1940s. The future nun went inside to inquire about the garden from the shy young woman who couldn't respond before her grandfather came into the room looking angry and as though he'd been woken from a nap. He wore loose brown pants with suspenders, a white shirt, and had a thin black beard. He had big round eyes and looked slightly like a deceased grandfather of mine. He told the future nun that the way to marry his daughter was to bring a broom. The nun told him that she was just curious about the garden at which point he gestured at a vast collection of cassette tapes on shelves covering all four walls of an adjacent room, explaining that the best thing to listen to while gardening was the True Romance soundtrack.

The nun segued into a story about how Tom Hiddleston tried seduce her once when she had to stay in his apartment during a wedding. He wasn't an actor at the time but he was trying to get in good with actors' circles. So he had built a wall in the centre of his apartment on the advice of a prominent actor and it had left him with very little room. He also had a pastel blue plastic toy car he kept on the mantel on the advice of the same actor. He was very furious with the nun when she refused his advances.

When the two women in the hotel finished reading the letter, the redhead noticed it had come from Nunnery 666. "You'd think they'd skip that one," said the redhead. "Like hotels skip the thirteenth floor."

"We have a thirteenth floor," said the woman with black hair who seemed to be someone in authority. She insisted on taking the redhead up to the thirteenth floor to prove it. There didn't seem to be anything unusual up there, though it was deserted. The woman with black hair was naked at this point for some reason and for some reason a credit card was required to take the elevator back down. The redhead tried hers first but did something wrong and nothing happened. The woman with black hair angrily took the card away from her and swiped it. A recorded voice asked a question in a language I didn't understand. The woman with black hair was angry and refused to answer, saying, "That's racist!" A red arm, like a human arm without skin so you could see stringy red muscles, grew out of the door, grabbed her, and strangled her. The redhead carefully took the credit card back and said, "Brian Austin Green!" and the elevator doors opened.

Twitter Sonnet #849

Collected eye rotary lashes point
Together past the figure sleeping late
And standing to, a warping bar or joint
Enclosed the last suspicious second mate.
The bo'sun scrawled unseen a check athwart
The mizzen shroud, a black remittance writ
As ignorant the lobster cooked retort
To hammocks nicked by sick and glassy wit.
The leaden bread encamped in bowels too turned
To hinder water's trespass in the hold
Where rusted bilboes break the skin was burned
By tails of tar entrails rotund and cold.
A broken glassy wave o'erturned the keel.
A calm reclaimed the hand and made it real.

Staying Frosty

Okay, so I've made Touch of Frost seem like a nice enough series with an interesting star. But what about sex? I didn't even mention whether Detective Frost could make a living as a gigolo if he wanted to. Fortunately he himself addresses the question in the season four episode "Fun Time for Swingers" which aired twenty years ago this January.

It's the first episode I can remember to be set during summer so Jack isn't wearing his trademark beige trilby, red scarf, and dove grey overcoat. It must be exceptionally hot in the fictional English town of Denton (apparently not meant to be any of the real Dentons in England) because all the cops are in shirt sleeves except Frost's latest in his Partners of the Week, a puritanical Scotsman played by the late Russell Hunter who talks about discipline before pleasure and wears a three piece suit.

I see from his Wikipedia entry that Hunter starred in a series with Edward Woodward, which is fitting since he kind of reminded me of Woodward's character in The Wicker Man in this Touch of Frost episode.

All the cops sweating and fanning themselves while they work reminded me of Kurosawa's great procedural film noir Stray Dog but I think it was mainly meant to amplify the sex in the episode. It has its fair share of ultra-violence, too, as the show seems to be continuing its goal for the fourth season to make the show a grittier, more modern, cop show.

I love how subtle Frost's weirdness is sometimes, like how he at various times in this episode compulsively starts explaining to Hunter's character what it takes to be a gigolo. David Jason has a pretty amusing chemistry with Hunter and his character who doesn't actually come on very strong in his disapproval of the hedonists in their investigation of a gigolo's murder. The fact that Hunter's character doesn't browbeat despite being a hardliner about his own affairs makes Frost's compulsion to defend casual sex funnier and ironic when he can't disguise his disapproval of a gigolo he interviews.

The episode begins with a naked woman committing suicide by jumping off the top level of a parking garage, which is certainly the high water mark of lurid for the show so far. In the morgue, Frost is a bit callous discussing the affair, as befits a modern cynical detective but still expresses sympathy for her. Of course, the implication is that the woman was destroyed by indulging in casual sex; despite the debate between Frost and his partner, the makers of the show are bound by a certain morality. Frost's advocacy for casual sex and adorably awkward ponderings on the life of a gigolo are thus rendered a sort of obligatory representation of the opposite view. But the show doesn't really feel committed to the argument, the episode consequently feeling sort of muddled and cosily amoral.

A Game of Nudes

I have to say, an acoustic cover of Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game" is a pretty inspired choice for a Game of Thrones trailer.

Looks like Daenerys has been enslaved by people who didn't care to take her valuable looking necklace. Or is she a foot soldier now? But all in all, a good trailer. I even like the kind of tacky cleavage tease for Melisandre. I think this season what we really want to see is Cersei getting payback so that "I choose violence" line is pretty nice.

Speaking of nudity, I was surprised to see most of the more obnoxious news feeds this morning filled with Bette Midler whom the media has decided is in a Twitter war with Kim Kardashian based on one tweet:

"Kim Kardashian tweeted a nude selfie today. If Kim wants us to see a part of her we've never seen, she's gonna have to swallow the camera."

Kudos to Midler's publicist. How many people in the media make vaguely or directly disparaging remarks about Kim Kardashian that don't get any play? Kardashian has released a statement about how her body is empowering and I certainly agree there's nothing shameful about someone posting naked pictures of themselves if they want to. I don't think Midler was aiming for that level of philosophising, though, as indicated by her follow up and only other tweet on the subject: ".@KimKardashian: I never tried to fake friend you. Looks like anyone can take a selfie but not everyone can take a joke..." It was barely a joke; more like a limp comment by someone at the party trying to do everyone the courtesy of looking vaguely engaged with the discussion. I doubt Midler really gives half a rat's ass what Kardashian does or doesn't do.

Speaking of commercials, last night's Better Call Saul was pretty good.

Jimmy getting in hot water over recording a commercial without the senior partners' permission is nice. I like the way this shows the different ethical sensibilities of Jimmy irresistibly manifesting themselves. I love that the show has us wanting Jimmy to be happy about his relationship with his brother and simultaneously has us wanting him to succumb to the Saul side.

The violence in the Mike plot was pretty good.

The Popular Honesty

He seems to speak without a filter, he makes crude jokes, he doesn't seem especially bright but most people get the impression he has a certain common sense wisdom, his straight talk that bucks convention is a refreshing novelty in political and commercial arenas dominated by pandering phoniness. He's human, relatable, A Face in the Crowd, the subject of the 1957 film of that name directed by Elia Kazan. While it makes a few innocent, false assumptions about what makes a star and what breaks one, the film is mostly an insightful portrayal of a common, canny loud-mouth who becomes a powerful, populist, some might say fascist, leader in the public arena.

Demagogue in Denim is the title of the book Walter Matthau's character eventually writes about Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes. Andy Griffith plays Rhodes, some might argue, as the polar opposite of his Andy of Mayberry character he would later become famous for. And yet it is the warmth and charisma, the impression that he's a simple fella with simple wisdom with everyone's best interest at heart, that makes him such a credible Lonesome Rhodes, the same things that won sympathy from the audiences of The Andy Griffith Show and Matlock.

Patricia Neal plays Marcia, the small town radio host and moral centre of the film. We meet her interviewing the lowlife inmates sleeping or lounging in the county jail as she explains to her audience on the portable tape recorder that the greatest songs and performing talents in U.S. history came from the bottom of the social ladder. So she's here for her show, also called A Face in the Crowd, to find such a talent. Her first attempt to get Rhodes' to speak to her is rebuffed by the man sleeping with his back to her and another man warning her that Rhodes is "mean".

But soon Rhodes is coaxed--really, bribed--into taking out his guitar and composing songs on the spot. And, on the spot, Marcia gives him the name "Lonesome" and very quickly a star is born.

It's easy to see, thanks to the earnest quality of Griffith's tenacity in the role, that Rhodes has great instincts for how to woo a crowd and when he tells every kid in town to use his rich boss' pool on a hot summer day, and they do, he starts to realise the power he has.

Frequent comparisons are made to Will Rogers by characters in the film itself though I found myself thinking of Adolf Hitler, coming up with Mein Kamph in jail and then transforming his petty resentments and projected feelings of injustice into a platform of popular motivation. A big voice that seems to invite everyone in except the people who of course can't be invited.

We never see Rhodes coming out against a particular group of people or even advocating violence. In his first television programme he brings out a black staffer--everyone remarks how ground breaking it is to put a black person on television--and implores his audience to send donations to the woman because her house has burned down and she has seven kids. Does he really care for her or is this just another tactic to cement his popularity? Marcia isn't sure but she brings us along with her conflict as she's not sure if she should trust her instinct to love this generous and entertaining man or hate this selfish manipulator.

Although Rhodes does some rather nasty things in his personal life to people, I think the filmmakers were rather wise in avoid direct hints of any malevolence in terms of his public policy. It's good to force the audience, through their avatar, Marcia, to make decisions about him without any explicit tip offs, allowing the audience to be seduced, too.

Twitter Sonnet #848

The second harmonica was the first.
All chairs were sorted wrong for gutter balls.
If dinner's taken in the alley cursed
The plywood breaks and Phoebus makes some calls.
Tricorn frostberries fall with grey petals.
Romana gathers gold below the wall.
A dusty dress conformed to slim metals.
A slender hand arranged a crystal ball.
Unique detractors pall in bins of red.
A false and thin planet recedes through drapes.
The bending asphalt makes a heated bed.
From mantelpieces no glass or beast escapes.
Eyes blackened under piston rain receive
Divine deluge like just devils conceive.

In the Clouds

I had to go across the street early one morning because I'd forgotten to buy coffee the previous day. I got some photos of a plane passing over the market.

I live somewhat close to an airport now and planes pass over all the time. Somehow it doesn't bother me. It hasn't woken me from sleep yet. It is slightly surreal; there's a Bruegelian quality about having these human activities crowded together into the same landscape. Here I am eating breakfast; a short distance away a businessman is getting in from Ontario or somewhere.

I'm so glad I'm finished moving stuff. I still have unpacking to do, something I've put off a bit until I've had the book cases to put stuff in. My last place had a lot more storage space despite being a smaller apartment, now I have to make up for it. I bought a couple book cases at Ikea on Friday and assembled one of them yesterday. The bottom two shelves are now filled with books I read or am in the process of reading for Dekpa and Deborah, my comic set in the seventeenth century. Oh, and in case you're wondering when the next chapter for that is coming, I have no idea. Maybe two weeks from now. My two desks I normally keep together had to be parted because of the snafu with my cable internet so I have to use my computer in the living room. I don't like having it so far from where its fans can lull me to sleep and its scheduled tasks can wake me up in the morning. More importantly, it's irritating not having it nearby to play music or to give me google image searches when I'm drawing. I'll probably try to make do with my laptop.

I started watching an Italian movie from 1973 called Malicious (Malizia) last night but finally gave up after ten minutes or so because the subtitles were so bad.

I suspect this was an Italian DVD that boasted English subtitles as a special feature and no-one working on the DVD knew enough English to verify the translation.

It's not the first time I've come across a file like this. I may look for a better subtitle file, this seems like a good movie, but last night I took the subtitles as an excuse to let Fallout 4 suck four more hours out of my life. To-night, I'm going to try to keep myself away from the video games.