The new Venia's Travels is online. Lots of things just sort of happening, one or two probably working out for our heroes. Contains important lessons on fire safety and diplomacy.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Lilliput. Shit. I'm Still Only in Lilliput.
Last night's tweets;
It seems I too often forget to eat.
They're fucking Gulliver's Travels again;
This one stars Jack Black and Amanda Peet--
Another kid's movie; adults can't win.
Can you believe it? What're there, a hundred kids movies that only cover Gulliver's trip to Lilliput and now we gotta have another one? What the fuck? Why not just make another Honey I Shrunk the Kids? How much you wanna bet the screenwriters haven't even read the book? Fuck.
They're crowbarring a love interest into this one, too. It seems like interesting things usually only happen in Hollywood about an inch at a time.
I have pretty much nothing to say about yesterday--I didn't do much besides colour for nine hours. I finished off the mead, though--beautiful stuff.
Something that's been strongly impressed upon me over the past couple months is that the internet is full of people who make broad, vitriolic statements and accusations as a matter of course and who also become quite indignant when their opinion isn't taken seriously. It seems natural in the standard YouTube conversation rife with spelling and grammatical errors compounded with lazy text speech, but even the comment section on that Die Walkure video contains a pointless and angry discussion;
. . .
chinn11: "Well, in context, most christians of that time period didn't like jews. Just because he was german and didn't like jews, doesn't mean he's a nazi. A Nazi is someone who supports the Nationalist Socialist German Workers party, not simply someone who's racist. Branding every racist a Nazi is like branding every liberal as a faggot (which is being done). "
Spyder057: "ok so he was a racist, it doesnt change a thing 4 me..i still hate him. i never understood the reason y ppl hate jews, y cant there just b peace, so that every1 could get along. its so annoyin how every1 is a racist towards some nation, i think god shouldve just created 1 nation, so then we would 100% all get along, n not have to fight over religion or w.e"
BenjaminJair: "wagner influenced hitlers idealism and antisemit philisophies, and adopted wagners music as nazi music for parades and nazi events,sorry for my english."
Pentaclesandmiracles: "Despite some uncultured people calling Wagner a Nazi - (no he wasn't) the whole norse mythology of the Valkyries and the Gods was perverted and inverted by Hitlers Nazi party. This is a masterpeice of music, it truly portrays the Valkyries as they really are."
delpiero47: "he's also a fucking nazi, like you probably. so take your wagner and stick in your ass or arse."
. . .
It's like watching a cock fight. About a fucking Wagner video. Though this is a slightly more plausible demonstration of Godwin's law than usual, there's still the baseline of idiocy that makes me wonder why any of these knuckleheads, including the ones I agree with, are bothering to talk to the others.
But the irony of Spyder057's statement I just have to adore. I almost wonder if Spyder was being intentionally ironic--he or she argues against bigotry to end up arguing for world domination.
Chinn's statement equating "racist" with "faggot" is a nice example of the general near sightedness of this discussion. I'm sure few people in the discussion would like art dismissed just because it might have been created by a homophobe.
It seems I too often forget to eat.
They're fucking Gulliver's Travels again;
This one stars Jack Black and Amanda Peet--
Another kid's movie; adults can't win.
Can you believe it? What're there, a hundred kids movies that only cover Gulliver's trip to Lilliput and now we gotta have another one? What the fuck? Why not just make another Honey I Shrunk the Kids? How much you wanna bet the screenwriters haven't even read the book? Fuck.
They're crowbarring a love interest into this one, too. It seems like interesting things usually only happen in Hollywood about an inch at a time.
I have pretty much nothing to say about yesterday--I didn't do much besides colour for nine hours. I finished off the mead, though--beautiful stuff.
Something that's been strongly impressed upon me over the past couple months is that the internet is full of people who make broad, vitriolic statements and accusations as a matter of course and who also become quite indignant when their opinion isn't taken seriously. It seems natural in the standard YouTube conversation rife with spelling and grammatical errors compounded with lazy text speech, but even the comment section on that Die Walkure video contains a pointless and angry discussion;
. . .
chinn11: "Well, in context, most christians of that time period didn't like jews. Just because he was german and didn't like jews, doesn't mean he's a nazi. A Nazi is someone who supports the Nationalist Socialist German Workers party, not simply someone who's racist. Branding every racist a Nazi is like branding every liberal as a faggot (which is being done). "
Spyder057: "ok so he was a racist, it doesnt change a thing 4 me..i still hate him. i never understood the reason y ppl hate jews, y cant there just b peace, so that every1 could get along. its so annoyin how every1 is a racist towards some nation, i think god shouldve just created 1 nation, so then we would 100% all get along, n not have to fight over religion or w.e"
BenjaminJair: "wagner influenced hitlers idealism and antisemit philisophies, and adopted wagners music as nazi music for parades and nazi events,sorry for my english."
Pentaclesandmiracles: "Despite some uncultured people calling Wagner a Nazi - (no he wasn't) the whole norse mythology of the Valkyries and the Gods was perverted and inverted by Hitlers Nazi party. This is a masterpeice of music, it truly portrays the Valkyries as they really are."
delpiero47: "he's also a fucking nazi, like you probably. so take your wagner and stick in your ass or arse."
. . .
It's like watching a cock fight. About a fucking Wagner video. Though this is a slightly more plausible demonstration of Godwin's law than usual, there's still the baseline of idiocy that makes me wonder why any of these knuckleheads, including the ones I agree with, are bothering to talk to the others.
But the irony of Spyder057's statement I just have to adore. I almost wonder if Spyder was being intentionally ironic--he or she argues against bigotry to end up arguing for world domination.
Chinn's statement equating "racist" with "faggot" is a nice example of the general near sightedness of this discussion. I'm sure few people in the discussion would like art dismissed just because it might have been created by a homophobe.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Senators are Vote Golems
Incidentally, if you're looking for someone to follow on Twitter, you could do a lot worse than Joe Randazzo, Onion editor and man locked with Neil Gaiman in a fierce race to gain 333,000 followers. Randazzo's only down by just over three hundred thousand. Go and help the man, don't let Gaiman win at this like he's won at everything else (life, dreams, pretty rock pianist women).
My tweets last night;
Medieval medicine works to-day.
Strange passing girl, what are you screaming at?
The mead is quite good to-night, I must say.
And now Arlen Specter's a Democrat.
Just a couple weeks ago, I heard Specter on Howard Stern and I thought to myself, "Hmm. I don't mind this guy. Maybe I'm not a total partisan after all!" So much for that. Maybe I should have taken a clue from the fact that Specter was on The Howard Stern Show. There's still Chuck Hagel, a Republican I don't think is altogether ridiculous. I know there has to be a moderate bone somewhere in my body.
I was on my way back from buying a bottle of mead last night when I somehow heard an undulating high pitched scream over The Smiths I was blasting. I looked over to my left and there was this girl just howling out the passenger window in a white car next to me. They pulled ahead of me, but I got close to the vehicle a couple more times over the next few minutes and she maintained the scream without fail. Just another crazy Tuesday night in Santee, folks. We has goings on.
The mead really hit the spot. Drinking with me is never a matter of just alcohol--it has to be the right alcohol for the right occasion. The hot mead turned out to be the absolute perfect thing for my sore throat. My possibly swine related symptoms were obliterated for a few hours. Any medieval physician could've told me--patients who take mead almost invariably feel better.
I watched some more Buffy to-day with breakfast. What now?
1960s receptionist? I have to admit, I am a little turned on by attractive women cultivating a vaguely turnip look. I'm digging Willow's asymmetrical widow's peak a lot more, though.
It was a decent episode--I'm not sure if it counts as the first or second episode of season one, depending on whether the first two episodes are genuinely a two-parter or just a long pilot split up. In any case, the episode I watched to-day introduced the witch character Amy and a story about how her mother was trying to relive her youth through her daughter by evil supernatural means. It's one of those episodes that a lot of critics particularly liked from the series--taking familiar teen issues and successfully translating them into meaningful superhero stories. I'm not sure it's my favourite aspect of the series, though I like it, and it's certainly pulled off sharply.
I've finished drawing and inking the next Venia's Travels, but I still need to colour five pages. I guess that's what I'll be doing to-night and to-morrow . . . I seem to have fallen right back into my nocturnal schedule. It's always really the comic that does it to me.
My tweets last night;
Medieval medicine works to-day.
Strange passing girl, what are you screaming at?
The mead is quite good to-night, I must say.
And now Arlen Specter's a Democrat.
Just a couple weeks ago, I heard Specter on Howard Stern and I thought to myself, "Hmm. I don't mind this guy. Maybe I'm not a total partisan after all!" So much for that. Maybe I should have taken a clue from the fact that Specter was on The Howard Stern Show. There's still Chuck Hagel, a Republican I don't think is altogether ridiculous. I know there has to be a moderate bone somewhere in my body.
I was on my way back from buying a bottle of mead last night when I somehow heard an undulating high pitched scream over The Smiths I was blasting. I looked over to my left and there was this girl just howling out the passenger window in a white car next to me. They pulled ahead of me, but I got close to the vehicle a couple more times over the next few minutes and she maintained the scream without fail. Just another crazy Tuesday night in Santee, folks. We has goings on.
The mead really hit the spot. Drinking with me is never a matter of just alcohol--it has to be the right alcohol for the right occasion. The hot mead turned out to be the absolute perfect thing for my sore throat. My possibly swine related symptoms were obliterated for a few hours. Any medieval physician could've told me--patients who take mead almost invariably feel better.
I watched some more Buffy to-day with breakfast. What now?
1960s receptionist? I have to admit, I am a little turned on by attractive women cultivating a vaguely turnip look. I'm digging Willow's asymmetrical widow's peak a lot more, though.
It was a decent episode--I'm not sure if it counts as the first or second episode of season one, depending on whether the first two episodes are genuinely a two-parter or just a long pilot split up. In any case, the episode I watched to-day introduced the witch character Amy and a story about how her mother was trying to relive her youth through her daughter by evil supernatural means. It's one of those episodes that a lot of critics particularly liked from the series--taking familiar teen issues and successfully translating them into meaningful superhero stories. I'm not sure it's my favourite aspect of the series, though I like it, and it's certainly pulled off sharply.
I've finished drawing and inking the next Venia's Travels, but I still need to colour five pages. I guess that's what I'll be doing to-night and to-morrow . . . I seem to have fallen right back into my nocturnal schedule. It's always really the comic that does it to me.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Whispers in a Megaphone
Twitter Sonnet #13
I can't find a Starbucks where I'm unknown.
Coppola's arrabiatta is great.
Pasta sauce I generally condone.
I seem to be doing everything late.
Waiter singing along with Eminem.
Or he killed his wife and called me a "fag."
Altoids downsized since I stopped buying them?
I guess the mint market's begun to lag.
Had veggie sushi roll packed with ginger.
Cold evening Monday but mostly cloudless.
In every Battle Cat dwells a Cringer.
Know I seek late bagels without malice.
Be assured that Kent did not hate Lear.
Fewer foes abide than it might appear.
Why shouldn't a He-Man reference go alongside a Shakespeare reference?
With breakfast to-day I watched part of Jonathan Miller's BBC production of King Lear from the late 1970s. Disappointing, and I say that as one of what seems to be few people who liked his 1964 Alice in Wonderland. His King Lear is filled with villains much too broad--Edmund, Goneril, and Regan are too obviously snakes and constantly mug for the camera, reducing the other characters to caricatures. This is definitely one instance where a comedian's touch was misapplied--these characters stepping outside of the reality of the scenes diminishes them terribly.
Miller's compositions are weird and artificial, too, with a lot of shots of characters close to and facing the camera while the person they're talking to is behind them and there are lot of shots where people have uncomfortably scrunched their faces against each other to be in a single shot.
The worst was John Shrapnel as Kent, who seemed constantly to be spoiling for a fight, hurling vitriol at Lear after he'd put down Cordelia. The thing is, he doesn't seem particularly like a bad actor--most of the actors seem decent to very good, but you can sense someone behind the scenes giving everyone odd motivations, and I guess the blame has to be given to Miller.
Still, I'm kind of interested in seeing the production of The Taming of the Shrew he evidently did with John Cleese. The comic flavour might be more appropriate there.
Anyway, I'm short on time to-day, so that's a post.
I can't find a Starbucks where I'm unknown.
Coppola's arrabiatta is great.
Pasta sauce I generally condone.
I seem to be doing everything late.
Waiter singing along with Eminem.
Or he killed his wife and called me a "fag."
Altoids downsized since I stopped buying them?
I guess the mint market's begun to lag.
Had veggie sushi roll packed with ginger.
Cold evening Monday but mostly cloudless.
In every Battle Cat dwells a Cringer.
Know I seek late bagels without malice.
Be assured that Kent did not hate Lear.
Fewer foes abide than it might appear.
Why shouldn't a He-Man reference go alongside a Shakespeare reference?
With breakfast to-day I watched part of Jonathan Miller's BBC production of King Lear from the late 1970s. Disappointing, and I say that as one of what seems to be few people who liked his 1964 Alice in Wonderland. His King Lear is filled with villains much too broad--Edmund, Goneril, and Regan are too obviously snakes and constantly mug for the camera, reducing the other characters to caricatures. This is definitely one instance where a comedian's touch was misapplied--these characters stepping outside of the reality of the scenes diminishes them terribly.
Miller's compositions are weird and artificial, too, with a lot of shots of characters close to and facing the camera while the person they're talking to is behind them and there are lot of shots where people have uncomfortably scrunched their faces against each other to be in a single shot.
The worst was John Shrapnel as Kent, who seemed constantly to be spoiling for a fight, hurling vitriol at Lear after he'd put down Cordelia. The thing is, he doesn't seem particularly like a bad actor--most of the actors seem decent to very good, but you can sense someone behind the scenes giving everyone odd motivations, and I guess the blame has to be given to Miller.
Still, I'm kind of interested in seeing the production of The Taming of the Shrew he evidently did with John Cleese. The comic flavour might be more appropriate there.
Anyway, I'm short on time to-day, so that's a post.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Breakfast at Einstein's
I went out for breakfast to-day because my ceiling fan just killed another light bulb.
Sometimes Twitter reminds me of works like this by Kerouac;
On the one hand, these public forums for very short reports on mundane activities seem like a means to address people's desire for validation in a society that really only acknowledges the extremely strange or talented. But it also seems to be touching on a latent need for a sort of idle atmosphere of human animals, like apes just lounging in the jungle with one another.
But there's a potential for mono no aware, something that seems present in Kerouac's haikus as much as they are in various Japanese haikus I've read. "My rumpled couch, the lady's voice next door," as one of Kerouac's goes. It seems to be just two arbitrary pieces of information, but there's an elusive sadness about it. You can tell Kerouac's aiming for this as a couple of his haikus reach for it rather bluntly, but it's these pieces where the size of the feeling is just very delicately implied that work best. The whole somehow transcends these plain parts.
Elsewhere in these pockets of potential mono no aware in pop culture, I'm reminded of what makes Azumanga Daioh superior to Lucky Star. Compare clips yourself; Azumanga Daioh, Lucky Star. I couldn't find a clip of Lucky Star I could watch to the end without my mind completely drifting off, so if it gets interesting near the end, I apologise for the phoney comparison. But from what I can see, Azumanga Daioh has something subtler, a barely perceptible pattern of mood under the characters. Both series feature goofballs, but Azumanga Daioh seems more like The Three Stooges directed by Ingmar Bergman, while Lucky Star . . . It's like a deliberate attempt to make the world seem smaller and not as frighteningly interesting.
My tweets from last night;
I can't find a Starbucks where I'm unknown.
Coppola's arrabiatta is great.
Pasta sauce I generally condone.
I seem to be doing everything late.
Which means I slept in late, too. But this time it's because I started to feel sick whenever I got in bed. I seemed to be okay sitting up. So many people I talk to lately seem sick--I was puzzling about it when I clicked on Huffington Post and saw a massive red headline that was something like, "SWINE FLU! RUN FOR DEAR LIFE YOU POOR HAPLESS FUCKING BIPEDAL SPECIES BUT YOU CAN'T ESCAPE!" Do I have swine flu? I guess that could be it. I somehow think I got it from my oolong tea.
And I've already twittered to-day;
Waiter singing along with Eminem.
Or he killed his wife and called me a "fag."
Altoids downsized since I stopped buying them?
I guess the mint market's begun to lag.
They were really pissed off at me at the bagel place, so I don't think the waiter's impromptu performance was an example of him being a carefree young gangsta with a song in his heart. I had the gall to show up ten minutes before closing time, which was 4pm. Who the fuck closes at 4pm in this age of 11pm Starbucks?
I'd better get to drawing. Here are a couple favourite tracks from movie soundtracks I've really been digging lately posted for no reason at all;
Blue Velvet main title by Angelo Badalamenti
"Scotty Tails Madeleine" from the Vertigo soundtrack by Bernard Herrmann
Sometimes Twitter reminds me of works like this by Kerouac;
On the one hand, these public forums for very short reports on mundane activities seem like a means to address people's desire for validation in a society that really only acknowledges the extremely strange or talented. But it also seems to be touching on a latent need for a sort of idle atmosphere of human animals, like apes just lounging in the jungle with one another.
But there's a potential for mono no aware, something that seems present in Kerouac's haikus as much as they are in various Japanese haikus I've read. "My rumpled couch, the lady's voice next door," as one of Kerouac's goes. It seems to be just two arbitrary pieces of information, but there's an elusive sadness about it. You can tell Kerouac's aiming for this as a couple of his haikus reach for it rather bluntly, but it's these pieces where the size of the feeling is just very delicately implied that work best. The whole somehow transcends these plain parts.
Elsewhere in these pockets of potential mono no aware in pop culture, I'm reminded of what makes Azumanga Daioh superior to Lucky Star. Compare clips yourself; Azumanga Daioh, Lucky Star. I couldn't find a clip of Lucky Star I could watch to the end without my mind completely drifting off, so if it gets interesting near the end, I apologise for the phoney comparison. But from what I can see, Azumanga Daioh has something subtler, a barely perceptible pattern of mood under the characters. Both series feature goofballs, but Azumanga Daioh seems more like The Three Stooges directed by Ingmar Bergman, while Lucky Star . . . It's like a deliberate attempt to make the world seem smaller and not as frighteningly interesting.
My tweets from last night;
I can't find a Starbucks where I'm unknown.
Coppola's arrabiatta is great.
Pasta sauce I generally condone.
I seem to be doing everything late.
Which means I slept in late, too. But this time it's because I started to feel sick whenever I got in bed. I seemed to be okay sitting up. So many people I talk to lately seem sick--I was puzzling about it when I clicked on Huffington Post and saw a massive red headline that was something like, "SWINE FLU! RUN FOR DEAR LIFE YOU POOR HAPLESS FUCKING BIPEDAL SPECIES BUT YOU CAN'T ESCAPE!" Do I have swine flu? I guess that could be it. I somehow think I got it from my oolong tea.
And I've already twittered to-day;
Waiter singing along with Eminem.
Or he killed his wife and called me a "fag."
Altoids downsized since I stopped buying them?
I guess the mint market's begun to lag.
They were really pissed off at me at the bagel place, so I don't think the waiter's impromptu performance was an example of him being a carefree young gangsta with a song in his heart. I had the gall to show up ten minutes before closing time, which was 4pm. Who the fuck closes at 4pm in this age of 11pm Starbucks?
I'd better get to drawing. Here are a couple favourite tracks from movie soundtracks I've really been digging lately posted for no reason at all;
Blue Velvet main title by Angelo Badalamenti
"Scotty Tails Madeleine" from the Vertigo soundtrack by Bernard Herrmann
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Landscapes Sad, Harsh, and Appealing
Twitter Sonnet #12
Grand grocery tour gained but normal toothpaste.
Sort of sore throat was eased a bit by gin.
In a foreign bookshop I show no haste.
No clue which section my sought book is in.
I just bought a book online for one cent.
Medieval women; had to buy it.
My lack of mead to-night I do lament.
I fear flatbread excess in my diet.
Some movies have mana for all of us.
Japan has just invented fitness porn.
Time travel's useful, fun, and dangerous.
Bea Arthur, in Mos Eisley I shall mourn.
Some picture resizes you just can't choose.
Dangerous worlds do demand darling shoes.
Yes, Bea Arthur died yesterday. I didn't know her from much except watching Golden Girls with my parents as a kid and The Star Wars Holiday Special. I do remember enjoying her guest spot on Futurama as a "femme-puter". Mostly her name was familiar to me from jokes people made about her--comedy's a brutal business that way. On The Howard Stern Show a couple weeks ago, I heard Artie Lange talk about how when comedians are starting out it's not uncommon for competitors to sit in the audience and applaud when the person onstage starts to bomb.
I see Bill Corbett at the Rifftrax blog is feeling a little guilty about having made a joke peripherally at Bea Arthur's expense a couple days ago. But I think so many people made jokes about Arthur because no-one hated her, she seemed very tough, superior, and sort of invincible, while at the same time being very plain spoken. Even in The Star Wars Holiday Special I appreciated her sense of comic timing, like a lot of great comedians she could convey absolute sincerity even without necessarily respecting verisimilitude. The point being that comedians are our excuse to travel outside the zone of courtesy and respect for the things in the world we're told to respect or think we ought to respect. It's stress relief, and it's why humourless people tend to lash out at things that don't necessarily deserve the ire. Repression of humour is possibly even more perilous than repression of sexuality.
So, yes, that's basically why I don't feel guilty about having made a Bea Arthur joke or two in my time. In the other direction lies madness. But I think she was a cool lady.
I took a bunch more Fallout 3 screen shots at Tim's house last night;
Much like in Oblivion, those distant hills aren't simply flat bitmaps--if you keep walking in that direction, you will eventually reach the capital.
My character's more battle ready outfit.
Baseball, after the apocalypse.
The battle for the picnic may be lost.
Freshly killed mirelurk, a species of giant mutant crab that inhabit the irradiated Potomac and the D.C. sewers. Pardon my bragging, but I love this picture so much; 1950s woman with starched green dress holding a submachine gun over a monstrous crustacean. This is the life.
Bath time.
Dangerous worlds do demand darling shoes.
For some reason, there are a lot of these teddy bears around. There's a sewage station where a bunch of mutant roaches have mysteriously stock piled them.
Privacy, please.
Time for some groceries.
Anyone want more groceries? And by "groceries" I mean YOUR ASS.
"But, wait, Sets--you can't end this post without telling us what the Japanese fitness porn is!"
I wouldn't dream of it. Tim told me yesterday about this Issho-Ni Training or Training with Hinako (link NSFW) which, having been released only a few days ago, is already at number 1 on Japan's Amazon rankings, which, if nothing else, probably shows they're not feeling amazonfail in Japan, if they ever did. A lot of anime studios are losing money right now thanks to the economy and it's resulted in a lot of pandering ecchi and hentai items like this.
Here's a clip, which is NSFW, I guess. There's no nudity or anything, but . . . well, I guess it's NSFD (Not Safe For Dignity);
Grand grocery tour gained but normal toothpaste.
Sort of sore throat was eased a bit by gin.
In a foreign bookshop I show no haste.
No clue which section my sought book is in.
I just bought a book online for one cent.
Medieval women; had to buy it.
My lack of mead to-night I do lament.
I fear flatbread excess in my diet.
Some movies have mana for all of us.
Japan has just invented fitness porn.
Time travel's useful, fun, and dangerous.
Bea Arthur, in Mos Eisley I shall mourn.
Some picture resizes you just can't choose.
Dangerous worlds do demand darling shoes.
Yes, Bea Arthur died yesterday. I didn't know her from much except watching Golden Girls with my parents as a kid and The Star Wars Holiday Special. I do remember enjoying her guest spot on Futurama as a "femme-puter". Mostly her name was familiar to me from jokes people made about her--comedy's a brutal business that way. On The Howard Stern Show a couple weeks ago, I heard Artie Lange talk about how when comedians are starting out it's not uncommon for competitors to sit in the audience and applaud when the person onstage starts to bomb.
I see Bill Corbett at the Rifftrax blog is feeling a little guilty about having made a joke peripherally at Bea Arthur's expense a couple days ago. But I think so many people made jokes about Arthur because no-one hated her, she seemed very tough, superior, and sort of invincible, while at the same time being very plain spoken. Even in The Star Wars Holiday Special I appreciated her sense of comic timing, like a lot of great comedians she could convey absolute sincerity even without necessarily respecting verisimilitude. The point being that comedians are our excuse to travel outside the zone of courtesy and respect for the things in the world we're told to respect or think we ought to respect. It's stress relief, and it's why humourless people tend to lash out at things that don't necessarily deserve the ire. Repression of humour is possibly even more perilous than repression of sexuality.
So, yes, that's basically why I don't feel guilty about having made a Bea Arthur joke or two in my time. In the other direction lies madness. But I think she was a cool lady.
I took a bunch more Fallout 3 screen shots at Tim's house last night;
Much like in Oblivion, those distant hills aren't simply flat bitmaps--if you keep walking in that direction, you will eventually reach the capital.
My character's more battle ready outfit.
Baseball, after the apocalypse.
The battle for the picnic may be lost.
Freshly killed mirelurk, a species of giant mutant crab that inhabit the irradiated Potomac and the D.C. sewers. Pardon my bragging, but I love this picture so much; 1950s woman with starched green dress holding a submachine gun over a monstrous crustacean. This is the life.
Bath time.
Dangerous worlds do demand darling shoes.
For some reason, there are a lot of these teddy bears around. There's a sewage station where a bunch of mutant roaches have mysteriously stock piled them.
Privacy, please.
Time for some groceries.
Anyone want more groceries? And by "groceries" I mean YOUR ASS.
"But, wait, Sets--you can't end this post without telling us what the Japanese fitness porn is!"
I wouldn't dream of it. Tim told me yesterday about this Issho-Ni Training or Training with Hinako (link NSFW) which, having been released only a few days ago, is already at number 1 on Japan's Amazon rankings, which, if nothing else, probably shows they're not feeling amazonfail in Japan, if they ever did. A lot of anime studios are losing money right now thanks to the economy and it's resulted in a lot of pandering ecchi and hentai items like this.
Here's a clip, which is NSFW, I guess. There's no nudity or anything, but . . . well, I guess it's NSFD (Not Safe For Dignity);
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Women as Contortionists
Last night's tweets;
I just bought a book online for one cent.
Medieval women; had to buy it.
My lack of mead to-night I do lament.
I fear flatbread excess in my diet.
That's right--one cent! Women in the Middle Ages by Joseph and Frances Gies. Their Life in a Medieval Village was amazing, so I'm looking forward to this. But one cent. What's even the point? I know it's used but, jeez . . .
With breakfast to-day, I watched the new episode of Dollhouse, "Haunted", the first one to be written by Jane Espenson, who was in charge of much of Buffy the Vampire Slayer's later seasons. Actually, she was among three writers on the new Dollhouse episode, but it's very easy to tell which of the three unrelated plots in the episode she wrote; kind of a very conventional romantic murder mystery where Eliza Dushku's implanted with the personality of a recently murdered woman who then proceeds to solve her own murder. I have to say, I've never appreciated Jane Espenson quite as much as I did with this episode--I liked it much better than her work on Battlestar Galactica, and this was the most totally immersed I've felt in Dollhouse so far. Despite the fact that Dushku's still no chameleon of an actress, the episode does manage to introduce and craft a three dimensional character of Margaret you're genuinely sorry to see leave at the end.
Or maybe it's just the beautiful house where the episode was shot;
I can't seem to find out where this was filmed. I think we can be sure it's not a set, unless this is like Cat People borrowing The Magnificent Ambersons' set.
Looks like Jane Espenson has sole writing credit for the next Dollhouse. Now I'm really looking forward to it.
I overslept to-day, to 2:30pm, despite having gotten to sleep before 5am. I guess I need to start setting my alarm again.
"Weird Al" Yankovic posted this 1944 video on Twitter and it's one of the most hypnotically disturbing things I've ever seen;
The just elusive mental image of "Solid Potato Salad" completes it. "Solid" strikes as a positive adjective even as it makes one think of the salad as well and truly spoiled. This is a clear glimpse of the subterranean rivers of humanity's continuous nightmare. What sweet music.
I just bought a book online for one cent.
Medieval women; had to buy it.
My lack of mead to-night I do lament.
I fear flatbread excess in my diet.
That's right--one cent! Women in the Middle Ages by Joseph and Frances Gies. Their Life in a Medieval Village was amazing, so I'm looking forward to this. But one cent. What's even the point? I know it's used but, jeez . . .
With breakfast to-day, I watched the new episode of Dollhouse, "Haunted", the first one to be written by Jane Espenson, who was in charge of much of Buffy the Vampire Slayer's later seasons. Actually, she was among three writers on the new Dollhouse episode, but it's very easy to tell which of the three unrelated plots in the episode she wrote; kind of a very conventional romantic murder mystery where Eliza Dushku's implanted with the personality of a recently murdered woman who then proceeds to solve her own murder. I have to say, I've never appreciated Jane Espenson quite as much as I did with this episode--I liked it much better than her work on Battlestar Galactica, and this was the most totally immersed I've felt in Dollhouse so far. Despite the fact that Dushku's still no chameleon of an actress, the episode does manage to introduce and craft a three dimensional character of Margaret you're genuinely sorry to see leave at the end.
Or maybe it's just the beautiful house where the episode was shot;
I can't seem to find out where this was filmed. I think we can be sure it's not a set, unless this is like Cat People borrowing The Magnificent Ambersons' set.
Looks like Jane Espenson has sole writing credit for the next Dollhouse. Now I'm really looking forward to it.
I overslept to-day, to 2:30pm, despite having gotten to sleep before 5am. I guess I need to start setting my alarm again.
"Weird Al" Yankovic posted this 1944 video on Twitter and it's one of the most hypnotically disturbing things I've ever seen;
The just elusive mental image of "Solid Potato Salad" completes it. "Solid" strikes as a positive adjective even as it makes one think of the salad as well and truly spoiled. This is a clear glimpse of the subterranean rivers of humanity's continuous nightmare. What sweet music.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Helping the Medicine Go Down
Is it just me, or is this the best Willow ever looked? I always hated how normal they made her look in later seasons. Buffy's look, in the first episode, meanwhile;
Has a distinctly Jerri Blank-ish quality. Is this really how popular girls from L.A. dressed at clubs in 1997? She looks like she's interviewing for a management position at a mall jewellery store. There's some painful irony when Buffy snarks about the dated wardrobe of a vampire in the same scene--a button down shirt with a red and yellow pattern and a black blazer. Not bad at all, actually.
I've been watching season one of Buffy the Vampire Slayer with breakfast the past couple days to exercise Twilight, I guess. There are a million ways the first episode of Buffy's not as slick as Twilight--it's downright awkward at times, but it has heart. Sometimes not even on purpose--this early on, the show was still an uncertain mix of parody and straightforward fantasy drama, with broad comedic moments like Buffy accidentally mentioning vampires to the principal, alongside an earnest battle to save Sunnyvale. Even that, the show's not quite sure how seriously to take it. In a way, this plays to modern audiences much better than Whedon's new shows, which assume an audience that wants to go along for the ride, whether it be a western space opera or a criminal organisation of human dolls.
No, audiences are much too uptight nowadays. A show must prostrate itself before Caesar and subtly sneak in its soul until the audience finds itself wanting to be invested in what's going on in spite of themselves. If you want to try anything strange, that is. If you want a movie or show filled with wall to wall wellworn concepts and characters like Twilight, you're free to play it straight.
My tweets from last night;
Grand grocery tour gained but normal toothpaste.
Sort of sore throat was eased a bit by gin.
In a foreign bookshop I show no haste.
No clue which section my sought book is in.
I was in the Mitsuwa bookshop looking for Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei. I'm pretty sure they didn't have it, but they did have a hell of a lot of manga that hasn't been translated into English as well as a few series that have been translated into English but in far more attractive packages. I seem to have forgotten a lot of hiragana and katakana, but I was able to read most of the titles that weren't in kanji. Mitsuwa, by the way, is a big Japanese market; combination supermarket, bookstore, trinkets, cafe, and what have you, so long as you have it Japanese.
I think I might have caught something there because I feel a bit under the weather to-day. A bad sore throat followed by general dimness. The gin didn't help too much, nor did it take me very close to inebriation. I guess what I really need is some mead. Some manner of honey beverage in any case.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Draining the Blood Until it's Safe
Twitter Sonnet #11
To-day's drinks were wine, water and green tea.
Obviously I ought to have had gin.
Four years one box of staples lasted me.
Had to do odd things to laugh with Ed Wynn.
The grey cat just left me a mouse outside.
Dreamt I was at a dark Disney gift shop.
My teeth don't look like I have known fluoride.
But Blackbeard would likely call me milksop.
Twilight teaches teens seductive boredom.
I am beset by surplus of oolong.
Get diff'rent kinds of teas and just horde 'em.
I do miss, I must say, Edward Furlong.
Foresee founding of combined Denny's church.
Manifestation of man's final search.
I watched the Rifftrax of Twilight last night--it was my first time seeing Twilight in any form, and while I essentially knew what to expect, the enormity of the blandness filled me with an awe like unto the first glimpse of the Death Star. The Rifftrax guys are funny, but it's hard for good talent to compete with the spectacle of lifelessness that is Twilight. Shots and ideas were borrowed wholesale--from Dracula catching Mina's perfume in the Coppola movie to the tree jumping in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. There's nothing wrong with borrowing from other works of art--Dracula borrowed heavily from Belle et la Bete and several vampire movies, but Twilight borrowed to feebly prop up its lifeless existence. It truly is The Undead.
From the apparent inability of its leads to feel anything to the evasion of the most viable and interesting themes of vampire romance, having to do with compulsion and morality. One might say that as a work aimed at teenage girls, it's sort of indecent to attractively portray girls falling for killers in any truly challenging fashion. So why even go this far? Probably because there's an unprecedented amount of violence in the mainstream while kids are still maturing roughly at the same speed--what passes for a three dimensional world for people is a two dimensional surface. Like being trapped in the phantom zone from the Superman movies.
One thing the Rifftrax guys missed was what I could swear was a combination Denny's/church in the background of one shot. I tried finding it to-day to get a screenshot, but I couldn't take watching for very long, even skipping around. I guess it'll have to remain a legend.
I mentioned cinematographer Jack Cardiff passed away yesterday. Here's a segment from Black Narcissus, one of his films with Powell and Pressburger. They created a sort of violently beautiful impression of the Himalayas shot entirely in England, mostly at Pinewood studios. The flashback sequence of Clodagh's life in Ireland at 4:10 is especially beautiful.
The whole movie's viewable in high quality through this playlist.
To-day's drinks were wine, water and green tea.
Obviously I ought to have had gin.
Four years one box of staples lasted me.
Had to do odd things to laugh with Ed Wynn.
The grey cat just left me a mouse outside.
Dreamt I was at a dark Disney gift shop.
My teeth don't look like I have known fluoride.
But Blackbeard would likely call me milksop.
Twilight teaches teens seductive boredom.
I am beset by surplus of oolong.
Get diff'rent kinds of teas and just horde 'em.
I do miss, I must say, Edward Furlong.
Foresee founding of combined Denny's church.
Manifestation of man's final search.
I watched the Rifftrax of Twilight last night--it was my first time seeing Twilight in any form, and while I essentially knew what to expect, the enormity of the blandness filled me with an awe like unto the first glimpse of the Death Star. The Rifftrax guys are funny, but it's hard for good talent to compete with the spectacle of lifelessness that is Twilight. Shots and ideas were borrowed wholesale--from Dracula catching Mina's perfume in the Coppola movie to the tree jumping in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. There's nothing wrong with borrowing from other works of art--Dracula borrowed heavily from Belle et la Bete and several vampire movies, but Twilight borrowed to feebly prop up its lifeless existence. It truly is The Undead.
From the apparent inability of its leads to feel anything to the evasion of the most viable and interesting themes of vampire romance, having to do with compulsion and morality. One might say that as a work aimed at teenage girls, it's sort of indecent to attractively portray girls falling for killers in any truly challenging fashion. So why even go this far? Probably because there's an unprecedented amount of violence in the mainstream while kids are still maturing roughly at the same speed--what passes for a three dimensional world for people is a two dimensional surface. Like being trapped in the phantom zone from the Superman movies.
One thing the Rifftrax guys missed was what I could swear was a combination Denny's/church in the background of one shot. I tried finding it to-day to get a screenshot, but I couldn't take watching for very long, even skipping around. I guess it'll have to remain a legend.
I mentioned cinematographer Jack Cardiff passed away yesterday. Here's a segment from Black Narcissus, one of his films with Powell and Pressburger. They created a sort of violently beautiful impression of the Himalayas shot entirely in England, mostly at Pinewood studios. The flashback sequence of Clodagh's life in Ireland at 4:10 is especially beautiful.
The whole movie's viewable in high quality through this playlist.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
I Dream of Ifrit
I absolutely love this new Onion video (NSFW);
Should We Be Doing More To Reduce The Graphic Violence In Our Dreams?
It so perfectly captures media and cultural hypocrisy in America. And isn't it scary that the Onion pundits seem more at ease with themselves than real pundits?
My last night's tweets;
The grey cat just left me a mouse outside.
Dreamt I was at a dark Disney gift shop.
My teeth don't look like I have known fluoride.
But Blackbeard would likely call me milksop.
I learned the neighbour's grey cat is named Smoke, but there's another grey one hanging around, too, so I'm not sure which one left the mouse. She'd started eating it by the time I saw her, which made me feel guilty about the fresh one I'd thrown away. I had no idea there were any mice in the backyard, let alone enough for the cats to be dining on them regularly.
I drank wine again last night, and I'm thinking I need to quit. I keep waking up the next day with this strange heavy feeling, centred in my stomach, but my whole body feels like strings are pulling it down, like an upside down marionette. Hard liquor and sake don't seem to have this effect on me--I can't explain it.
I've been exploring some new anime lately. I started watching Natsu no Arashi!, which I saw mentioned on Salaman Dream's journal. It's another visually amazing Akiyuki Shinbo series, this time based on a manga by Jin Kobayashi, creator of School Rumble, another series I love. I was excited to spot this cameo by School Rumble's Harima Kenji and Tenma Tsukamoto in the new series;
This series isn't quite as hyperactive as School Rumble and its supernatural elements aren't as subtle.
Cryptess recommended Fruits Basket to me and it seems okay so far, one episode in.
Last night I watched the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Tin Man", a good one, I think. It's hard to see Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Mayor Wilkins in Harry Groener's twitchy, supersensitive telepath in this episode. It's yet another story of someone overwhelmed by being able to read the thoughts of those around him, only to be comforted by the one person he can't read, in this case Commander Data. This is a plot that seems to come up over and over again in fantasy fiction--the oldest example I can think of off the top of my head is Interview with the Vampire, though I'm sure someone could point out older examples to me. It even crops up in Twilight, the version of Interview with the Vampire made for the plastic eggs in gumball machines.
Speaking of which, I bought a copy of the Rifftrax of Twilight yesterday which I'm very eager to hear, especially after seeing this sample.
EDIT: RIP Jack Cardiff. This guy's work is a big influence on how I think about colour in my own work.
Should We Be Doing More To Reduce The Graphic Violence In Our Dreams?
It so perfectly captures media and cultural hypocrisy in America. And isn't it scary that the Onion pundits seem more at ease with themselves than real pundits?
My last night's tweets;
The grey cat just left me a mouse outside.
Dreamt I was at a dark Disney gift shop.
My teeth don't look like I have known fluoride.
But Blackbeard would likely call me milksop.
I learned the neighbour's grey cat is named Smoke, but there's another grey one hanging around, too, so I'm not sure which one left the mouse. She'd started eating it by the time I saw her, which made me feel guilty about the fresh one I'd thrown away. I had no idea there were any mice in the backyard, let alone enough for the cats to be dining on them regularly.
I drank wine again last night, and I'm thinking I need to quit. I keep waking up the next day with this strange heavy feeling, centred in my stomach, but my whole body feels like strings are pulling it down, like an upside down marionette. Hard liquor and sake don't seem to have this effect on me--I can't explain it.
I've been exploring some new anime lately. I started watching Natsu no Arashi!, which I saw mentioned on Salaman Dream's journal. It's another visually amazing Akiyuki Shinbo series, this time based on a manga by Jin Kobayashi, creator of School Rumble, another series I love. I was excited to spot this cameo by School Rumble's Harima Kenji and Tenma Tsukamoto in the new series;
This series isn't quite as hyperactive as School Rumble and its supernatural elements aren't as subtle.
Cryptess recommended Fruits Basket to me and it seems okay so far, one episode in.
Last night I watched the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Tin Man", a good one, I think. It's hard to see Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Mayor Wilkins in Harry Groener's twitchy, supersensitive telepath in this episode. It's yet another story of someone overwhelmed by being able to read the thoughts of those around him, only to be comforted by the one person he can't read, in this case Commander Data. This is a plot that seems to come up over and over again in fantasy fiction--the oldest example I can think of off the top of my head is Interview with the Vampire, though I'm sure someone could point out older examples to me. It even crops up in Twilight, the version of Interview with the Vampire made for the plastic eggs in gumball machines.
Speaking of which, I bought a copy of the Rifftrax of Twilight yesterday which I'm very eager to hear, especially after seeing this sample.
EDIT: RIP Jack Cardiff. This guy's work is a big influence on how I think about colour in my own work.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
The Unexpected Costs of Unconventional Means of Transport
Last night I watched the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Captain's Holiday", an episode that generally annoys me, but the amusing futuristic! vacation wear consisting of bathing suits and ugly translucent keikogis takes some of the edge off.
There are at least eight million ways Picard is out of character in this episode, from naively trusting the Vorgons from the future, to James Bondishly patronising Vash, to the sadly racist denouncements of "typical Ferengi" logic, behaviour, talk, etc. True, this was pretty standard for Star Trek at the time, but it's still disappointing. But, you may say, if all Ferengi the captain's encountered behave based on the same ethical guidelines, isn't it a fair generalisation? Maybe if Picard were a blue collar freighter captain or something, but he's supposed to be the cerebral captain of the Federation's flag ship, supposedly one of the most enlightened cultures in the galaxy. The simple solution would be to come up with a name for the philosophy most Ferengi subscribe to, maybe tying it into The Rules of Acquisition. "Typical Zingzifon logic," named, of course, for a famous Ferengi philosopher. There you go.
Last night's tweets;
To-day's drinks were wine, water and green tea.
Obviously I ought to have had gin.
Four years one box of staples lasted me.
Had to do odd things to laugh with Ed Wynn.
I forgot to mention yesterday listening to more of the Mary Poppins commentary and hearing Dick Van Dyke and Karen Dotrice (Jane Banks) describe having to put their bare asses in moulds to make the harnesses used to make them appear as though they're levitating in the "I Love to Laugh" scene. Dotrice sounded a bit uncomfortable relating this information, saying this was done before they'd even started principal photography, recalling her thoughts at the time as being, "This is going to be a strange film. What has mummy signed me up for?" She added, "I'm very glad I was very young because it didn't hurt when they took it off, if you know what I mean." Er, wow.
Dick Van Dyke talked about the experience, too, and Julie Andrews clearly had no idea what he was talking about. She sounded a little shocked.
I followed a link on Ana Marie Cox's twitter to this article about how the hot young daughter of the McCains is the new face of the Republican party, apparently by misappropriating the term "Progressive Republican" to justify behaving like her friends while nominally clinging to Republican philosophy. It all seems part of a new sheepish hypocrisy spearheaded by Sarah Palin bragging about how her daughter had the right to choose not to have an abortion while seeking to eliminate a woman's right to choose, or the recent Ms. USA pageant contestant who thought it was great to live in a country where people could choose between same sex and "opposite" marriage even though she firmly believes marriage should be between a man and a woman.
The weird thing is, I actually sort of think this is the best shot for healing in this country. On the day that their mentality catches up with their biology, to co-opt a Morrissey quote, maybe Republicans will find out that refraining from harassing women seeking an abortion and gays not only feels right, but is right. I'm blowing on the dice in the crap game of human stupidity.
Monday, April 20, 2009
We're All Q Now
Twitter Sonnet #10
You can clean your car with napkins slowly.
A tiny spinach pie is not a meal.
But with ginger snaps you've a meal wholly.
With a certain strange Spartan appeal.
It's good to drink green tea from a bucket.
Can't get away from the reflecting pool.
O tell all mutants or orcs to suck it.
Deny "There is no Dana only Zuul."
Life is sweetly indecent and cool birds.
Can't drink a latte while you bag apples.
A hexed day, I kept mixing up my words.
The best salsa is made without scruples.
Impostor Picard was much too sleazy.
Teabaggers think getting off is easy.
I signed up for Facebook to-day--this is my profile. Friend me if you like, but I don't expect to be updating it, ever. I just got this feeling to-day that having a facebook has gotten to be a citizen's responsibility.
It was weird how many familiar faces instantly popped up when I put in my high school. Advertisements all over the internet seem to be responding to some widespread desire people have to find their old classmates. I've never quite understood it. But, then, I already know how to get in touch with anyone from high school I might want to get in touch with.
As I was driving back from the grocery store last night, my headlamps briefly illuminated two teenage girls on the sidewalk in their underwear. One was thrusting her pelvis into the other's rear, while the other was gyrating in response in a pantomime of anal sex--it was clear they were doing it because a car was passing. I was listening to Jimi Hendrix and feeling really mellow and there was something great about the juxtaposition. It was like I was on an acid trip safari through a 1960s Pre-Raphaelite painting.
I loved how that guy would always draw out the "A"; "On Staaaaaaar Trek: The Next Generation!"
While eating dinner last night, I continued watching Star Trek: The Next Generation with "Allegiance", written by Richard Manning, who would later go on to write for Farscape. It's kind of strange how one can trace the lineage of modern science fiction television back to Star Trek: The Next Generation, I guess. Well, I find it interesting that now I go from a Battlestar Galactica-ish episode to a Farscape-ish episode. Or at least, now the episodes seem that way through the prism of my experience with the later shows. Maybe it's a good way to keep the old show vital, even with Dr. Crusher and Counsellor Troi's hairdo failures. Actually, those were never good, were they? I remember Marina Sirtis complaining about it at the one Star Trek convention I went to.
Anyway, "Allegience" is actually kind of a classic Star Trek style story, with strange, powerful aliens putting Captain Picard through a behavioural experiment with the result being something like a philosophical dialogue about the nature of authority while a fake Captain Picard on the Enterprise is seen to be a fake by the crew because of subtle quirks in his behaviour. The point eventually being that just because the aliens have the technology to kidnap and observe sentient creatures, it doesn't make them superior. Not a new idea for Star Trek, but one of the lessons important to impress upon society. I think. Well, I guess it does go back to the personal accountability I was talking about the other day.
I haven't been keeping up with The Colbert Report lately, so I missed this bit of brilliance;
You can clean your car with napkins slowly.
A tiny spinach pie is not a meal.
But with ginger snaps you've a meal wholly.
With a certain strange Spartan appeal.
It's good to drink green tea from a bucket.
Can't get away from the reflecting pool.
O tell all mutants or orcs to suck it.
Deny "There is no Dana only Zuul."
Life is sweetly indecent and cool birds.
Can't drink a latte while you bag apples.
A hexed day, I kept mixing up my words.
The best salsa is made without scruples.
Impostor Picard was much too sleazy.
Teabaggers think getting off is easy.
I signed up for Facebook to-day--this is my profile. Friend me if you like, but I don't expect to be updating it, ever. I just got this feeling to-day that having a facebook has gotten to be a citizen's responsibility.
It was weird how many familiar faces instantly popped up when I put in my high school. Advertisements all over the internet seem to be responding to some widespread desire people have to find their old classmates. I've never quite understood it. But, then, I already know how to get in touch with anyone from high school I might want to get in touch with.
As I was driving back from the grocery store last night, my headlamps briefly illuminated two teenage girls on the sidewalk in their underwear. One was thrusting her pelvis into the other's rear, while the other was gyrating in response in a pantomime of anal sex--it was clear they were doing it because a car was passing. I was listening to Jimi Hendrix and feeling really mellow and there was something great about the juxtaposition. It was like I was on an acid trip safari through a 1960s Pre-Raphaelite painting.
I loved how that guy would always draw out the "A"; "On Staaaaaaar Trek: The Next Generation!"
While eating dinner last night, I continued watching Star Trek: The Next Generation with "Allegiance", written by Richard Manning, who would later go on to write for Farscape. It's kind of strange how one can trace the lineage of modern science fiction television back to Star Trek: The Next Generation, I guess. Well, I find it interesting that now I go from a Battlestar Galactica-ish episode to a Farscape-ish episode. Or at least, now the episodes seem that way through the prism of my experience with the later shows. Maybe it's a good way to keep the old show vital, even with Dr. Crusher and Counsellor Troi's hairdo failures. Actually, those were never good, were they? I remember Marina Sirtis complaining about it at the one Star Trek convention I went to.
Anyway, "Allegience" is actually kind of a classic Star Trek style story, with strange, powerful aliens putting Captain Picard through a behavioural experiment with the result being something like a philosophical dialogue about the nature of authority while a fake Captain Picard on the Enterprise is seen to be a fake by the crew because of subtle quirks in his behaviour. The point eventually being that just because the aliens have the technology to kidnap and observe sentient creatures, it doesn't make them superior. Not a new idea for Star Trek, but one of the lessons important to impress upon society. I think. Well, I guess it does go back to the personal accountability I was talking about the other day.
I haven't been keeping up with The Colbert Report lately, so I missed this bit of brilliance;
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Tax Atax | ||||
| ||||
Sunday, April 19, 2009
These are the Voyages
RIP J.G. Ballard. I never got a chance to read any of his stuff, but I loved David Cronenberg's Crash. This is the second time in less than a week someone famous has died who I only know of through their work with David Cronenberg.
I forgot to mention I finally got a clear picture of Saffy the Cat last week;
Still not a very good photo, but Saffy informs me it's the best I'm going to get.
My tweets from last night;
It's good to drink green tea from a bucket.
Can't get away from the reflecting pool.
O tell all mutants or orcs to suck it.
Deny "There is no Dana only Zuul."
I grabbed a To Go order from a nearby Japanese place before I went to Tim's last night and for some reason they decided to put my tea in a big styrofoam bowl. Instant party.
The "reflecting pool" tweet referred to my inability to get away from the National Mall in Fallout 3. Every time I tried, I kept somehow getting caught in a loop.
I guess I am kind of missing Battlestar Galactica because I watched one of Ronald D. Moore's earliest Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes last night, the third season episode that introduces Tony Todd as Worf's brother. It's a good episode, better than I remembered. Though I'm still not overly fond of "The Bonding", Moore's first TNG episode.
Check out the videos in this post by Neil Gaiman. The Gahan Wilson animated short based on one of Gaiman's stories slips in some King Lear names, which makes it after my own heart, and Gaiman also links to a wonderful Moby music video animated by David Lynch.
I spent a lot of time hanging out in Second Life with Misa to-day, so I'd better call this a post so I can get to some drawing. Stay adventurous, everyone.
Uuuurrr! Me Indy! Me not Gary Busey! Pay hundred fifty dollars for me! Urrrr!
*EDIT: oh, yeah, and I've seen Empire of the Sun. Where's my brain to-day?
I forgot to mention I finally got a clear picture of Saffy the Cat last week;
Still not a very good photo, but Saffy informs me it's the best I'm going to get.
My tweets from last night;
It's good to drink green tea from a bucket.
Can't get away from the reflecting pool.
O tell all mutants or orcs to suck it.
Deny "There is no Dana only Zuul."
I grabbed a To Go order from a nearby Japanese place before I went to Tim's last night and for some reason they decided to put my tea in a big styrofoam bowl. Instant party.
The "reflecting pool" tweet referred to my inability to get away from the National Mall in Fallout 3. Every time I tried, I kept somehow getting caught in a loop.
I guess I am kind of missing Battlestar Galactica because I watched one of Ronald D. Moore's earliest Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes last night, the third season episode that introduces Tony Todd as Worf's brother. It's a good episode, better than I remembered. Though I'm still not overly fond of "The Bonding", Moore's first TNG episode.
Check out the videos in this post by Neil Gaiman. The Gahan Wilson animated short based on one of Gaiman's stories slips in some King Lear names, which makes it after my own heart, and Gaiman also links to a wonderful Moby music video animated by David Lynch.
I spent a lot of time hanging out in Second Life with Misa to-day, so I'd better call this a post so I can get to some drawing. Stay adventurous, everyone.
Uuuurrr! Me Indy! Me not Gary Busey! Pay hundred fifty dollars for me! Urrrr!
*EDIT: oh, yeah, and I've seen Empire of the Sun. Where's my brain to-day?
Saturday, April 18, 2009
More than Killers or Victims
Last night I watched Akira Kurosawa's 1946 film No Regrets for Our Youth, his first post World War II film and the first of his movies produced under the yoke of the censorship board issued by the United States, which occupied Japan at the time.
Kurosawa considered Drunken Angel, his 1948 film, the first film he was able to direct without government interference. Without knowing precisely what modifications were made by the censorship board to No Regrets for Our Youth, it nonetheless certainly feels like a hybrid of personal artistic vision and committee interference. It's not a work without value, which makes the more overtly propaganda elements the more frustrating.
The interesting parts of the movie concern a coming of age tale about a woman named Yukie Yagihara, the only female central protagonist in Kurosawa's filmography, played by Setsuko Hara. The only other movie I'd seen Hara in was Mikio Naruse's Meshi, and her performance at the beginning of No Regrets for Our Youth couldn't be more different from the demure but reluctantly assertive woman of the Naruse film. She seems almost like a prototype of Toshiro Mifune's manic performances in Rashomon and Seven Samurai as an oddly twitchy youngster who smashes her hands on her piano and peevishly darts her eyes about to find a contrary point of view for most discussions.
A professor's daughter at a men's university, she's set up early on as the only female in an entirely male circle of friends, which perhaps partly explains her black sheep qualities. A masterful bit of business in the film's beautiful opening sequence set in the Kyoto countryside establishes Yukie's personality, the personalities of the two men who will feature most prominently in her life, Noge and Itokawa, and the dynamics of their relationships;
Both men offer their hands to Yukie as propriety demands while Yukie just smiles uncooperatively as she accepts neither until Noge simply lifts Yukie and carries her the rest of the way across as his classmates applaud. Itokawa turns away, embarrassed, until Yukie tugs his hat twice after turning her back on Noge. Itokawa grins and chases her through the woods.
So we've set up Yukie's social rebelliousness, Noge's brashness and ability to think outside the box, and Itokawa's quick shame for not pleasing the group. All these things play out over the course of the film as Noge becomes a spy for an Allied power while Itokawa passive-aggressively covets Yukie, laughing contemptuously at Noge's modest cover jobs without guessing the truth.
As she's at the centre of the movie's attention, Yukie's motives therefore are hardest to qualify as she tells Itokawa she can't marry him because he would be boring while marrying Noge would mean a life blazing like the sun. One could interpret this as a woman submitting to the stronger man, or, and, I think, more accurately, as a woman who seeks a man who will not submit to her or anyone else.
Unfortunately, the agenda forced on the film to portray as martyrs and heroes those who stood in the way of the old Japanese government derail the character studies somewhat as Yukie's relationship with Noge is flavourless in favour of showing a united, anti-war front.
The movie's title is a bit ironic, actually, as it's asking the audience to regret their former patriotism as it shows Yukie steadfastly not regretting her complicity in Noge's espionage. The last portion of the film shows Yukie as a martyr as she works to exhaustion with Noge's parents to plant rice only to have the fields destroyed by neighbours loyal to the government's push for war.
There's a scene earlier in the film that I rather liked between Yukie and her father, Yagihara-sensei, as she's preparing to leave home to make her own way in Tokyo;
Yagihara-sensei: "You can find a job here in Kyoto. Think of your mother."
Yukie: "I'm just so . . . disgusted with everything. I want to start my life all over again."
Yagihara-sensei: "Living out in the world isn't as simple as you think."
Yukie:"I know. But right now I feel as if I'm not even living. I want to at least go out into the world . . . and see for myself what it means to be alive."
Yagihara-sensei, after thinking a bit: "If you've thought this through, then go. Forge your own way through life. It's worth a try. But remember: You have to take responsibility for your actions. Freedom . . . is something you have to fight for. There will be difficult sacrifices and the heavy burden of responsibility. Remember that."
Yagihara-sensei is talking to his daughter almost like he would to a son in a startlingly feminist scene for this period in Japan that's effective despite the knowledge that equality of the sexes was one of the ideas the American censorship board wished to enforce. A scene like this is actually significantly more feminist than most American cinema at the time, which could be an interesting side effect of the occupiers enforcing social ethics they didn't themselves quite understand.
But I wish more parents talked to their kids like that nowadays. I know, I may sound like a cliché of a bitter old man, "Young people have no accountability!" But it's true--we've become a culture of people who are deathly afraid of accepting blame while demanding absolute freedom. "With great power comes great responsibility" said the guy in Sam Raimi's movies, but maybe not loud enough.
Anyway, this is another theme that's derailed a bit in No Regrets for Our Youth as the latter part of the film seems to interpret it more as "You have to work hard for freedom." The movie desperately needs some internal conflict for Yukie, but she becomes much too resolute much too fast.
But the concept of personal freedom was a very important one to Kurosawa, and I don't think he was entirely at odds with American philosophy. Shots early in the film like these;
Reminded me of shots like these;
from Powell and Pressburger's 1944 English propaganda effort A Canterbury Tale. In some ways, the two films are reflections of each other as Kurosawa uses the beauty of Kyoto as an argument against patriotism while Powell and Pressburger use the beauty of Kent as part of an argument for patriotism. What unites these two aims is a desire to show one's country as something bigger and more complicated than a side in a war. In the English film, it's why England's worth defending, in the Japanese film, it's why Japan still has worth even after great moral mistakes. There are later films that better explore the great societal shame in post war Japan, but you get something of a sense of it here.
My tweets from last night;
You can clean your car with napkins slowly.
A tiny spinach pie is not a meal.
But with ginger snaps you've a meal wholly.
With a certain strange Spartan appeal.
I learned yesterday that at the nearby Greek restaurant called Daphne's that if you want the spanakopita plate you have to specify plate or you will get two very tiny spinach stuffed triangles. I also learned the place doesn't have disposable cutlery, all of which necessitated a trip to Target for plastic cutlery, napkins, and ginger snaps before I went to Tim's.
The napkins came in handy later when washing my car windows . . .
Friday, April 17, 2009
Number Nine, Number Nine, Number Nine, Number Nine, Number Nine, Number Nine, Number Nine . . .
Twitter Sonnet #9
Richard Pryor knew about booze and crabs.
A hungry day of pitas and hummus.
It seems sort of vaguely good for my abs.
We need more Jack Kerouacs among us.
Motorcycle cop sneezed on the freeway.
The sushi bar waitress loves War and Peace.
I made a powerful pita segue.
Quiet trivial tasks shall never cease.
3am Denny's has some big gangsters.
Opened new hummus to find it like clay.
Something's not quite in range of my sensors.
I do know to-morrow is Saturday.
Now last night's headache is like a flat drone.
Doesn't hurt but my brain feels not my own.
I'm finally starting to envy my sister for the free Coachella ticket she got from her friend who works at a radio station. I keep reminding myself of how miserable it was when Trisa and I went, but it's hard when I see Amanda Palmer tweet today;
"@alyankovic i want a head-butt!!! had no idea you were going to be there, let's eat some industrial organic vegetable together in catering."
This in reply to "Weird Al" Yankovic twittering earlier an offer to head butt people at Coachella. So, with both The Cure and Morrissey being there, this Coachella is starting to sound like the Impossibly Great Easter Basket of Bands. The thing is, I still think I'd mostly just be miserable, sitting under a vicious hot sun all day with sleep deprivation.
I thought maybe the headache I had last night was related to the fact that all I'd eaten yesterday was a bowl of oatmeal and a pita stuffed with hummus. I'm starting to wonder if I could be not getting enough sodium. Usually when I wonder if there's a deficient element to my diet, I'll go for the Denny's trough to see if there's something mixed in that hits the right note. I went after 2am, and found the Denny's in Mission Valley, which I hadn't been to in while, was staffed and patronised almost exclusively by enormous young Mexican gang-bangers. There was only one girl, who was very loudly holding forth about how someone was a whore. When my waiter forgot my check, he said, "Shit, it's back there, hold up." It was so great.
My comic's kept me from browsing the internet too much for the past several days, so to-day I spent time trying to catch up with my Live Journal friends list, which proved to be a bit of an impossible task. I always feel like I should talk to my friends more, but mostly the only entries I could think of anything to comment on were food related. I guess we can all discuss food easily enough, which is perhaps one of the secrets "Weird Al" Yankovic has handed down to mankind.
I read Chris Walsh's review of the Disney animated Tarzan. He liked the movie a lot more than I did, but I do remember liking it. It's once again a movie featuring a mysteriously clean shaven Tarzan.
I guess without making a movie that's 90% nude scenes, there'll never be a really faithful adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan, anyway. Which is the same trouble with adapting his Mars series. Though the 1934 Tarzan and His Mate deserves kudos for this scene (NSFW);
I'm doing my own part to make audiences more comfortable with nudity (and, to a lesser extent, men with facial hair) with to-day's new chapter of Venia's Travels.
Richard Pryor knew about booze and crabs.
A hungry day of pitas and hummus.
It seems sort of vaguely good for my abs.
We need more Jack Kerouacs among us.
Motorcycle cop sneezed on the freeway.
The sushi bar waitress loves War and Peace.
I made a powerful pita segue.
Quiet trivial tasks shall never cease.
3am Denny's has some big gangsters.
Opened new hummus to find it like clay.
Something's not quite in range of my sensors.
I do know to-morrow is Saturday.
Now last night's headache is like a flat drone.
Doesn't hurt but my brain feels not my own.
I'm finally starting to envy my sister for the free Coachella ticket she got from her friend who works at a radio station. I keep reminding myself of how miserable it was when Trisa and I went, but it's hard when I see Amanda Palmer tweet today;
"@alyankovic i want a head-butt!!! had no idea you were going to be there, let's eat some industrial organic vegetable together in catering."
This in reply to "Weird Al" Yankovic twittering earlier an offer to head butt people at Coachella. So, with both The Cure and Morrissey being there, this Coachella is starting to sound like the Impossibly Great Easter Basket of Bands. The thing is, I still think I'd mostly just be miserable, sitting under a vicious hot sun all day with sleep deprivation.
I thought maybe the headache I had last night was related to the fact that all I'd eaten yesterday was a bowl of oatmeal and a pita stuffed with hummus. I'm starting to wonder if I could be not getting enough sodium. Usually when I wonder if there's a deficient element to my diet, I'll go for the Denny's trough to see if there's something mixed in that hits the right note. I went after 2am, and found the Denny's in Mission Valley, which I hadn't been to in while, was staffed and patronised almost exclusively by enormous young Mexican gang-bangers. There was only one girl, who was very loudly holding forth about how someone was a whore. When my waiter forgot my check, he said, "Shit, it's back there, hold up." It was so great.
My comic's kept me from browsing the internet too much for the past several days, so to-day I spent time trying to catch up with my Live Journal friends list, which proved to be a bit of an impossible task. I always feel like I should talk to my friends more, but mostly the only entries I could think of anything to comment on were food related. I guess we can all discuss food easily enough, which is perhaps one of the secrets "Weird Al" Yankovic has handed down to mankind.
I read Chris Walsh's review of the Disney animated Tarzan. He liked the movie a lot more than I did, but I do remember liking it. It's once again a movie featuring a mysteriously clean shaven Tarzan.
I guess without making a movie that's 90% nude scenes, there'll never be a really faithful adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan, anyway. Which is the same trouble with adapting his Mars series. Though the 1934 Tarzan and His Mate deserves kudos for this scene (NSFW);
I'm doing my own part to make audiences more comfortable with nudity (and, to a lesser extent, men with facial hair) with to-day's new chapter of Venia's Travels.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Tolstoy on a Grain of Sand
Most signifying tweet I've seen to-day:
"I have only 140 characters, so please listen very, very carefully. A huge badger just broke into my office and he seems angry. Please send h"
By Mike Nelson. I hope he's okay.
Meanwhile, last night my twerrific tweets twere;
Motorcycle cop sneezed on the freeway.
The sushi bar waitress loves War and Peace.
I made a powerful pita segue.
Quiet trivial tasks shall never cease.
Yes, I did see a motorcycle cop sneeze on the freeway. And now he's probably sneezing because I'm talking about him.*
I had to get groceries yesterday, so I stopped at a sushi place for lunch where the middle aged waitress tapped my copy of War and Peace and said, "Very good book. Read it a long time ago. Better than Harry Potter."
I told her I was really enjoying it so far, but added, "I'm only about a fourth of the way through." I realised as I said it this might be a somewhat difficult statement for someone who didn't sound like she understood English very well. Sometimes I'm really bad at economy with my words. In moments of crisis when a simple "Look out!" is probably best, I tend to opt for the "They have a crosswalk so you should probably stop," or "I guess this stuff is flammable." It's probably the same reason I can only twitter in verse.
I think a big part of why people like me have trouble understanding the phenomenon of Twitter is that we don't text. It's easy to forget how thoroughly texting has permeated the social landscape--watching my sister compulsively text while watching television, I always get the feeling there's an entire, unselfconscious alternate dialect massive portions of the population have sort of organically developed. I don't quite understand it, which makes me reluctant to look down on it.
I listened to Keith Olbermann while colouring last night and he was discussing Tea bagging--as in, the right wing political protest, not the act of dipping a scrotum onto someone's face. What amazes me even more than the fact that the protesters would haplessly adopt such a name for what they're doing is that they don't seem to have a very clear idea of what they're protesting. There's been no tax increase for the middle class or any proposal of such a tax increase--the people seem to be protesting actually how their money is being spent in attempts to combat the subprime mortgage crisis. That people would become angry enough to protest in large numbers government spending in order to manage a real economic crisis seems a bit surreal until you hear about the corporate sponsorship of the phenomenon through propaganda (Fox News) and even contests and prizes. It's not grassroots, but "astroturfing", as Paul Krugmen and a number of other analysts have said.
This seems to me a demonstration of our peculiar ghost world (once again, I'm co-opting Daniel Clowes' term). There's always been propaganda and groupthink, but with the unprecedented media distribution of to-day, the masses of people being shepherded are perhaps more firmly convinced of their worldliness and ability to spot authenticity than any other known society. Cheap information and platforms for information seem to have propagated some lazy thinking. I guess we can only hope that these new networks do more good than harm at the end of the day. While it may be easier for a corporation to manipulate large groups of people, it's also easier to distribute alternate perspectives. Mostly I think we just need more open minded people.
*Don't get that joke, but you're familiar with not getting it because of the hundreds of times you've seen it in anime and manga? Read this.
"I have only 140 characters, so please listen very, very carefully. A huge badger just broke into my office and he seems angry. Please send h"
By Mike Nelson. I hope he's okay.
Meanwhile, last night my twerrific tweets twere;
Motorcycle cop sneezed on the freeway.
The sushi bar waitress loves War and Peace.
I made a powerful pita segue.
Quiet trivial tasks shall never cease.
Yes, I did see a motorcycle cop sneeze on the freeway. And now he's probably sneezing because I'm talking about him.*
I had to get groceries yesterday, so I stopped at a sushi place for lunch where the middle aged waitress tapped my copy of War and Peace and said, "Very good book. Read it a long time ago. Better than Harry Potter."
I told her I was really enjoying it so far, but added, "I'm only about a fourth of the way through." I realised as I said it this might be a somewhat difficult statement for someone who didn't sound like she understood English very well. Sometimes I'm really bad at economy with my words. In moments of crisis when a simple "Look out!" is probably best, I tend to opt for the "They have a crosswalk so you should probably stop," or "I guess this stuff is flammable." It's probably the same reason I can only twitter in verse.
I think a big part of why people like me have trouble understanding the phenomenon of Twitter is that we don't text. It's easy to forget how thoroughly texting has permeated the social landscape--watching my sister compulsively text while watching television, I always get the feeling there's an entire, unselfconscious alternate dialect massive portions of the population have sort of organically developed. I don't quite understand it, which makes me reluctant to look down on it.
I listened to Keith Olbermann while colouring last night and he was discussing Tea bagging--as in, the right wing political protest, not the act of dipping a scrotum onto someone's face. What amazes me even more than the fact that the protesters would haplessly adopt such a name for what they're doing is that they don't seem to have a very clear idea of what they're protesting. There's been no tax increase for the middle class or any proposal of such a tax increase--the people seem to be protesting actually how their money is being spent in attempts to combat the subprime mortgage crisis. That people would become angry enough to protest in large numbers government spending in order to manage a real economic crisis seems a bit surreal until you hear about the corporate sponsorship of the phenomenon through propaganda (Fox News) and even contests and prizes. It's not grassroots, but "astroturfing", as Paul Krugmen and a number of other analysts have said.
This seems to me a demonstration of our peculiar ghost world (once again, I'm co-opting Daniel Clowes' term). There's always been propaganda and groupthink, but with the unprecedented media distribution of to-day, the masses of people being shepherded are perhaps more firmly convinced of their worldliness and ability to spot authenticity than any other known society. Cheap information and platforms for information seem to have propagated some lazy thinking. I guess we can only hope that these new networks do more good than harm at the end of the day. While it may be easier for a corporation to manipulate large groups of people, it's also easier to distribute alternate perspectives. Mostly I think we just need more open minded people.
*Don't get that joke, but you're familiar with not getting it because of the hundreds of times you've seen it in anime and manga? Read this.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Presumably Beautiful Bog Naiads and Beat
Last night's tweets;
Richard Pryor knew about booze and crabs.
A hungry day of pitas and hummus.
It seems sort of vaguely good for my abs.
We need more Jack Kerouacs among us.
I had a lot of colouring to catch up on yesterday--the double whammy of my birthday and Easter set me back a little more than I expected it too, but I'm confident I'll have the next chapter finished in time. I spent eight hours just colouring yesterday while listening to a variety of talking things--I listened to stand-up comedy by Chris Rock, Artie Lange, and Richard Pryor as well as someone reading "Moon Bog" by H.P. Lovecraft and the first thirty minutes of Jack Kerouac reading his own On the Road, an odd mix to be sure.
I love Kerouac so much. I'm not even necessarily talking about the quality of his work--there's just such an irrepressible warmth and love for everything in his style, and you can hear it in his voice when he reads, though he doesn't sound quite as exuberant in the On the Road recording as he does in some of the shorter pieces I have. In that first thirty minutes hardly anything really happens, just Kerouac hitchhiking, really, but his affection for the people he ends up travelling with and the strange sight to him of prairie in the night is mysteriously beautiful. I listened to the first half of one of my favourite segments from the book last night, where he and a young Mexican woman he meets on a bus abruptly end up in a relationship and start living together. Reckless and sweet, it seems impossible life can be that nice.
I hadn't had much exposure to Richard Pryor's stand-up before last night--I knew him mainly from the bits of movies I'd seen him in as a kid and from Lost Highway. Mostly I remembered him playing nitwits, and it was clear to me from listening to his stand-up that he had been totally miscast in such roles. Less a stooge and more of a Groucho Marx, Pryor had an amazing rapport with the New Orleans audience seen in Here and Now, the stand-up special I listened to last night. As the crowd threw equal parts love and hate at him, Pryor could throw it back with satisfying creativity.
This kind of goes back to the subject of objectification--if you're a performer, someone a lot of people are watching keenly without establishing a two-way relationship, whether you're a stripper or a film director, you're playing with the natural hatred people have for the chutzpah of anyone who dares presume they're good enough to be on a stage, and the preconceptions the audience foists on the artist as a defence mechanism and as part of a need for wish fulfilment. So Pryor has to deal with a room of people throwing conceptions of race and alcohol consumption and work with them, or face the wrath of the mob. But Pryor can turn these things on their heads without the audience quite knowing what's happening because he's gotten to them through sheer talent--he seems to bring out the love that was really hidden underneath the bullshit, anyway.
I'm pretty sure I'd read "Moon Bog" before, but it's been a couple years now since I read Lovecraft. It's a nice story, though I think Lovecraft might have feared naiads a lot more than me.
Richard Pryor knew about booze and crabs.
A hungry day of pitas and hummus.
It seems sort of vaguely good for my abs.
We need more Jack Kerouacs among us.
I had a lot of colouring to catch up on yesterday--the double whammy of my birthday and Easter set me back a little more than I expected it too, but I'm confident I'll have the next chapter finished in time. I spent eight hours just colouring yesterday while listening to a variety of talking things--I listened to stand-up comedy by Chris Rock, Artie Lange, and Richard Pryor as well as someone reading "Moon Bog" by H.P. Lovecraft and the first thirty minutes of Jack Kerouac reading his own On the Road, an odd mix to be sure.
I love Kerouac so much. I'm not even necessarily talking about the quality of his work--there's just such an irrepressible warmth and love for everything in his style, and you can hear it in his voice when he reads, though he doesn't sound quite as exuberant in the On the Road recording as he does in some of the shorter pieces I have. In that first thirty minutes hardly anything really happens, just Kerouac hitchhiking, really, but his affection for the people he ends up travelling with and the strange sight to him of prairie in the night is mysteriously beautiful. I listened to the first half of one of my favourite segments from the book last night, where he and a young Mexican woman he meets on a bus abruptly end up in a relationship and start living together. Reckless and sweet, it seems impossible life can be that nice.
I hadn't had much exposure to Richard Pryor's stand-up before last night--I knew him mainly from the bits of movies I'd seen him in as a kid and from Lost Highway. Mostly I remembered him playing nitwits, and it was clear to me from listening to his stand-up that he had been totally miscast in such roles. Less a stooge and more of a Groucho Marx, Pryor had an amazing rapport with the New Orleans audience seen in Here and Now, the stand-up special I listened to last night. As the crowd threw equal parts love and hate at him, Pryor could throw it back with satisfying creativity.
This kind of goes back to the subject of objectification--if you're a performer, someone a lot of people are watching keenly without establishing a two-way relationship, whether you're a stripper or a film director, you're playing with the natural hatred people have for the chutzpah of anyone who dares presume they're good enough to be on a stage, and the preconceptions the audience foists on the artist as a defence mechanism and as part of a need for wish fulfilment. So Pryor has to deal with a room of people throwing conceptions of race and alcohol consumption and work with them, or face the wrath of the mob. But Pryor can turn these things on their heads without the audience quite knowing what's happening because he's gotten to them through sheer talent--he seems to bring out the love that was really hidden underneath the bullshit, anyway.
I'm pretty sure I'd read "Moon Bog" before, but it's been a couple years now since I read Lovecraft. It's a nice story, though I think Lovecraft might have feared naiads a lot more than me.
Sonnet by the Nose
Yeah, almost forgot to do this. I'm so tired right now.
Twitter Sonnet #8
Amazon just sent me an empty box.
And Snow left for me a freshly dead mouse.
While Saffy remains in love with my socks.
I need a little more tea in this house.
Down to the last can of minestrone.
Saw old Star Trek with new cg effects.
Doesn't seem like an improvement to me.
But the remastered sound really connects.
My phone battery's irreplaceable.
I drank a great big green tea with my lunch.
New pasta sauce oughta be edible.
I had no teas and now I have a bunch.
Where the fuck does all my time go to?
Way too much motherfucking shit to do.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Transmitted Respiration and Other Involuntary Functions of the New Flesh
RIP Marylin Chambers.
Rabid's one of my favourite David Cronenberg movies, possibly for the way it explores social sexual issues. It can be seen as a forerunner to Videodrome as a porn star turning people into ravenous, zombie-like cannibals is a bit similar to Videodrome's idea of violent, sexual imagery being used to turn people into assassins. But Rabid is more of a meditation on society sanctioned objectification of women and a corresponding unsympathetic hunger produced. Chambers' character is at the centre of the storm and carries the film by portraying the often ignored complexity of the issue--Rose didn't choose to be what she is, but she has to survive by this dynamic society has fallen into. The fundamental horror polite society feels isn't provoked by the fact that women are being objectified, but by the fact that some women get off on it. It's the sort of hypocrisy that arises when physical needs are kept under the floorboards.
Like Videodrome, some might consider Rabid to contradict itself by being a violent and sexually explicit movie while seeming to condemn violent and sexually explicit imagery. I've always been of the opinion that Cronenberg's intention was more to discourage passive viewing.
Last night's tweets;
My phone battery's irreplaceable.
I drank a great big green tea with my lunch.
New pasta sauce oughta be edible.
I had no teas and now I have a bunch.
I was running all over the place yesterday. I had to go the bank and then to the mall in order to buy phone minutes and hopefully a new battery. Except I found I'd forgotten my phone when I arrived at the mall, had to drive back, and when I finally presented it to the irritable Verizon man I was told no-one makes batteries for my phone anymore. "Try eBay," he said. He was already mad at me because I couldn't use the Verizon self-service computer to buy minutes because for some reason my phone plan always makes that computer crash.
Anyway, I've once again got a lot to do to-day, so I'd better get to it . . .
Rabid's one of my favourite David Cronenberg movies, possibly for the way it explores social sexual issues. It can be seen as a forerunner to Videodrome as a porn star turning people into ravenous, zombie-like cannibals is a bit similar to Videodrome's idea of violent, sexual imagery being used to turn people into assassins. But Rabid is more of a meditation on society sanctioned objectification of women and a corresponding unsympathetic hunger produced. Chambers' character is at the centre of the storm and carries the film by portraying the often ignored complexity of the issue--Rose didn't choose to be what she is, but she has to survive by this dynamic society has fallen into. The fundamental horror polite society feels isn't provoked by the fact that women are being objectified, but by the fact that some women get off on it. It's the sort of hypocrisy that arises when physical needs are kept under the floorboards.
Like Videodrome, some might consider Rabid to contradict itself by being a violent and sexually explicit movie while seeming to condemn violent and sexually explicit imagery. I've always been of the opinion that Cronenberg's intention was more to discourage passive viewing.
Last night's tweets;
My phone battery's irreplaceable.
I drank a great big green tea with my lunch.
New pasta sauce oughta be edible.
I had no teas and now I have a bunch.
I was running all over the place yesterday. I had to go the bank and then to the mall in order to buy phone minutes and hopefully a new battery. Except I found I'd forgotten my phone when I arrived at the mall, had to drive back, and when I finally presented it to the irritable Verizon man I was told no-one makes batteries for my phone anymore. "Try eBay," he said. He was already mad at me because I couldn't use the Verizon self-service computer to buy minutes because for some reason my phone plan always makes that computer crash.
Anyway, I've once again got a lot to do to-day, so I'd better get to it . . .
Monday, April 13, 2009
They Who Eat Soup
The guys at the Rifftrax blog have been playing with this movie maker thing lately. Here's one I made;
Way too addictive. The people sound a bit like the Indian woman on the phone from Amazon who helped me with my empty box problem.
Last night's tweets;
Down to the last can of minestrone.
Saw old Star Trek with new cg effects.
Doesn't seem like an improvement to me.
But the remastered sound really connects.
My mother got me the remastered Star Trek original series for my birth day, and I've watched a few episodes with my family. All the space shots have been replaced with cgi, which must have taken a lot of work but the end result kind of doesn't accomplish much. There's a style that goes along with the limited special effects of a 1960s science fiction series--the model makers didn't know to put a bunch of tiny details on the Enterprise, for example. It could be just me, but the cgi really doesn't look much more real than the old shots of the models, so what you end up with is just a slightly different feel, one that mixes a bit oddly with the footage of the actors and sets.
On the other hand, the remaster sound is pretty great. The picture looks good, too, and I guess I really don't mind the cgi. There's nothing quite as egregious as the Star Wars special editions.
I have a lot to do to-day and I spent far too much time on that video. Gods, I hope they stop inventing addictive internet time sucks soon . . .
Way too addictive. The people sound a bit like the Indian woman on the phone from Amazon who helped me with my empty box problem.
Last night's tweets;
Down to the last can of minestrone.
Saw old Star Trek with new cg effects.
Doesn't seem like an improvement to me.
But the remastered sound really connects.
My mother got me the remastered Star Trek original series for my birth day, and I've watched a few episodes with my family. All the space shots have been replaced with cgi, which must have taken a lot of work but the end result kind of doesn't accomplish much. There's a style that goes along with the limited special effects of a 1960s science fiction series--the model makers didn't know to put a bunch of tiny details on the Enterprise, for example. It could be just me, but the cgi really doesn't look much more real than the old shots of the models, so what you end up with is just a slightly different feel, one that mixes a bit oddly with the footage of the actors and sets.
On the other hand, the remaster sound is pretty great. The picture looks good, too, and I guess I really don't mind the cgi. There's nothing quite as egregious as the Star Wars special editions.
I have a lot to do to-day and I spent far too much time on that video. Gods, I hope they stop inventing addictive internet time sucks soon . . .
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Nervous Systems
Last night's tweets;
Amazon just sent me an empty box.
And Snow left for me a freshly dead mouse.
While Saffy remains in love with my socks.
I need a little more tea in this house.
I was all set to complain to-day about the fact that Amazon sent me an empty box in the mail that was supposed to contain Happy Mania vol. 2 until I saw via Robyn Massachusetts' live journal and Neil Gaiman's twitter that Amazon has removed a number of books from their sales rankings for no good reason and my problem suddenly seems like small potatoes. It's bad enough Amazon would choose to marginalise erotic literature by subtly suggesting their popularity is not a legitimate reality, but lumping gay literature and anything with certain levels of explicit in the group is just hugely sad. Bill O'Reilly not long ago painted his face as a "culture warrior"--there are people who are tightly opposed to any healing of the divides in America. They still think they're going to make us freaks all disappear one day, and their own stomachs with us.
The truth so many people can't face is that human beings are weird and it's beautiful. I have some photographic evidence from Buca di Beppo, where my family and I had dinner last night for my birthday;
Butter!
Naked men deliver.
Sanctified outdoor nudity keeps watch.
It's the freakin' pope room!
One of many Frank Sinatra pictures.
This somehow is a completely heavenly image to me.
Looks a bit like a David Lynch sports bar here.
Velvet paintings!
Almost done with my cheese manicotti. SEE WHAT SETSULED SEES, EAT WHAT SETSULED EATS. Those aren't my ribs, obviously.
The men's room. The top picture, I guess, is to make sure you remember what you're supposed to do here. I'll let you have fun speculating what they want you to do with the girls on the trapeze.
Reveal strange secrets to me, o candelabra!
Another attempt to photograph Saffy. She resists focus, as always.
Amazon just sent me an empty box.
And Snow left for me a freshly dead mouse.
While Saffy remains in love with my socks.
I need a little more tea in this house.
I was all set to complain to-day about the fact that Amazon sent me an empty box in the mail that was supposed to contain Happy Mania vol. 2 until I saw via Robyn Massachusetts' live journal and Neil Gaiman's twitter that Amazon has removed a number of books from their sales rankings for no good reason and my problem suddenly seems like small potatoes. It's bad enough Amazon would choose to marginalise erotic literature by subtly suggesting their popularity is not a legitimate reality, but lumping gay literature and anything with certain levels of explicit in the group is just hugely sad. Bill O'Reilly not long ago painted his face as a "culture warrior"--there are people who are tightly opposed to any healing of the divides in America. They still think they're going to make us freaks all disappear one day, and their own stomachs with us.
The truth so many people can't face is that human beings are weird and it's beautiful. I have some photographic evidence from Buca di Beppo, where my family and I had dinner last night for my birthday;
Butter!
Naked men deliver.
Sanctified outdoor nudity keeps watch.
It's the freakin' pope room!
One of many Frank Sinatra pictures.
This somehow is a completely heavenly image to me.
Looks a bit like a David Lynch sports bar here.
Velvet paintings!
Almost done with my cheese manicotti. SEE WHAT SETSULED SEES, EAT WHAT SETSULED EATS. Those aren't my ribs, obviously.
The men's room. The top picture, I guess, is to make sure you remember what you're supposed to do here. I'll let you have fun speculating what they want you to do with the girls on the trapeze.
Reveal strange secrets to me, o candelabra!
Another attempt to photograph Saffy. She resists focus, as always.