Versions of Bird Stories

Two girls work through their issues while honing their skills as musicians in 2018's Liz and the Blue Bird (リズと青い鳥). The deft touch of storytelling and insight into human nature recall Japan's golden age of filmmaking and the likes of Ozu and Naruse. It's a treat.

Mizore (Atsumi Tanezaki) and Nozomi (Nao Toyama) are members of their high school's concert band. Mizore plays the oboe and Nozomi plays the flute. The piece the band is currently practicing calls for a duet between their two instruments, symbolising the relationship between a woman named Liz and a bluebird that takes the form of a human girl. The music is based on a fairy tale which is shown as a film-within-a-film, depicting Liz as a young woman in a fantasy European town and the bluebird as a chipper girl with blue hair. Liz finds the girl injured one day and takes her into her home.

As someone who's worked in Japanese junior high schools for the past five and a half years and has frequently hung out with the school brass bands I can tell you the film is remarkably true to life. A lot of manga and anime are set in schools but rarely do they feel so authentic. I've known plenty of students like these. Mizore in particular is soft spoken in a way I very often see in life but rarely see in anime. There are many girls who rarely speak and when they do they can be very difficult to hear. This is often interpreted as shyness, and some of it is shyness, but a lot of it is tact.

I often see pairs of girls like Mizore and Nozomi. In America, too, it's not unusual for girls to have intensely important best friend relationships which you don't see among boys but I think such relationships are more important in Japan because of the collectivist nature of the culture. Looking for social guidance among peers is more important and the Japanese are much more afraid of embarrassment. So for many, having a best friend is a crucial life raft in the troubled sea of social interaction. I was impressed with how well the film captured this while also conveying a sense of just how new relationships with complex psychological depths are for the girls.

The movie is a spin-off of Sound! Euphonium, which I saw a few years before I came to Japan. You don't need to have seen the series to understand the film since it focuses on different characters but, for those who have seen the series, it's fun to spot the main characters in the background. It helps create the sense of a living world.

Liz and the Blue Bird is available on The Criterion Channel as part of their Queersighted: Coming of Age playlist. The filmmakers have stated they did not intend the relationship between the girls to be homosexual. I suppose it's fair to read it that way though it's a bit like saying Frodo and Sam are gay in The Lord of the Rings. Maybe that's satisfying if it's what you're looking for but it misses the cultural differences between western culture to-day and the one Tolkien is depicting. The same goes for the differences between American and Japanese culture. The Japanese do many things Americans would regard as clearly homosexual. It's very common, for example, for boys to sit in each other's laps. But the Japanese don't see it as gay so, of course, it's not. I'm a firm believer in art being open to interpretation and of people being able to have multiple, valuable experiences for one work of art. But if you see Liz and the Blue Bird and Lord of the Rings as gay, you may be oversimplifying from your cultural perspective and missing a glimpse into another facet of possibility in human relationships.

The Old Trek Footage

I put in Star Trek II on Saturday night expecting to fall asleep during it. I dozed off once, backtracked a little, and ended up watching the whole movie. Unlike Star Wars, which, especially lately after Andor, always seems to be vital and new, Star Trek is beginning to feel more and more like a time capsule. It was really smart for George Lucas to set Star Wars in another galaxy, in the past. So much of Star Trek is about a vision of the future and that's just the sort of thing that can be horribly dated. When Star Trek II came out in 1982, we thought maybe the future could be somewhat like that. Now we're all wiser (of course, I was three years old in 1982). We can enjoy the movie as a fantasy, but now the audience is compensating for the film.

All this is ironic in light of the film's themes of youth and rebirth. Admiral Kirk is starting to feel his age, something that's also ironic as to-day actor William Shatner is a 94 year old of remarkable mental acuity. So seeing him play old in 1982, a mere lad of 51, is another instance of the audience doing some work for the film.

The film is still a pleasure to watch for its enthusiastic venture into a slightly different pulp genre for the series, away from science fiction and more towards Horatio Hornblower style, naval battle suspense. In this, it's sort of like Andor--revivifying an old franchise by shifting into a different genre. Star Trek II set the tone for all Star Trek films to follow, one wonders if Andor won't do the same for Star Wars.

Khan's a good villain. Ricardo Montalban hams it up but he comes off as truly mad rather than cheesy. I think about what it must be like to be so obsessed with making someone else suffer. I've met a few people like that, who seem to be so overcome by resentment that they think nothing of compromising their own integrity, mental health, and reputation in the pursuit of causing pain to a specific target. I do have an obsessive personality myself, which can be useful if properly applied, but the last thing you want to get obsessed with is anything as unpredictable and mysterious as a human being. It certainly does Khan no favours.

Rebekah Del Rio

And now Rebekah Del Rio has died, the singer who made two significant appearances in David Lynch media, first in Mulholland Drive and then on Twin Peaks. Her performance of "Llorando", a Spanish language version of Roy Orbison's "Crying", is one of the highlights of Mulholland Drive, a movie which just this past week ranked number two in a poll for the best ten movies of the 21st century. Mulholland Drive has topped many such lists and anyone who's seen the movie knows Del Rio's performance is key to the film's impact, thematically and viscerally.

So many people from the show have died since the final episode of Twin Peaks aired in 2017. For so long I hoped to get another season, now I really hope I don't. Maybe Mark Frost, Twin Peaks co-creator, could make a spin-off series. I'd be down for that. But there's no Twin Peaks without David Lynch. Lately I've felt kind of angry that he's dead. He wasn't finished, he was making something called Unrecorded Night for Netflix. It bothers me he didn't get to complete that.

At least we'll always have season three and Rebekah Del Rio's incredible, haunting, and piercing performance of "No Stars". The lyrics of the song, which Lynch wrote, seem be from one lover to another, imploring them to return to a good time in their mutual past. Somehow it's a night with "no stars", and this is somehow comforting to the singer. It tends to remind me of the scene in the first episode of season three when the young couple are killed mid-coitus by a demoniac being, presumed by the show's analysts to be Judy, the series' hidden antagonist. The fact that there are no stars may be an implication that no observing, sadistic, antisexual being will impede the will of lovers. It's a beautiful song lamenting, like so many Twin Peaks songs, a love out of reach. And Rebekah Del Rio sang it beautifully.

X Sonnet 1949

An idle question stopped the talk at lunch.
The workers glanced around and sipped their tea.
But then, below they heard a sloshy crunch.
The devil's sun would melt the frozen key.
A sense of dread disturbed the gathered gents.
It seemed the railings changed to shady spies.
And floating eyes emerged from cooling vents.
They pooled some cash and left uneaten pies.
Another year and now the caf's a bust.
The noisy devil drove the crowds away.
And so the diner trappings gather rust.
And only tacky ghosts within will stray.
Another business bites the phantom shot.
A bullet aimed above but hit the spot.

Iron Falls with a Thud

I finally got through the first three episodes of Ironheart that premiered on Wednesday. I find it very dull. I think the main problems for me are the characters, performances, and plot. The special effects are okay. It's not, and I want to be emphatic about this, it's not bad because it's woke.

It is woke. Ironheart was filmed some time ago, before Disney reportedly decided it was going to backtrack on some of its stridently progressive politics. I haven't actually seen evidence they're doing that but, anyway, Ironheart has Riri Williams join a group of thieves planning a heist, three of whom just happen to use they/them pronouns. And, you know, I might not even have cared a couple years ago but now I was really happy to see them. Back when I lived in the U.S., gender non-conformists had gotten to be a pretty normal sight so the inclusion of three in a group doesn't feel strained to me. It feels perfectly normal, at least in a major city (kudos to the series for being set in Chicago instead of New York yet again). Now, it feels refreshing in Trump's America, where transphobes seem to be having a moment in the sun. I was watching the Critical Drinker's review on YouTube and I was disgusted when he showed a still image of one of the three characters in question and he gave it a long, protracted, fake laugh. Maybe he lives in some rural, far-flung hamlet in Scotland and has never had a barista with blue hair and chrome lipstick but he's a grown man living in the modern world. Laughing at someone for wearing something unconventional for their sex is like laughing at someone for wearing sandals at this point. It's the forced laugh of a bully and it made me really want to champion this series.

But, fuck, like I said, it's dull. I remember how good the first episodes of Ms. Marvel were because it was aggressively creative, the star was charismatic and surprising, and everyone had clear motives. Somehow or another, Riri Williams doesn't pop. I saw Black Panther 2, which I liked, but I don't remember her presence being all that noticeable there, either. Now it's not really clear what's motivating her, why she's committed to this knock off Iron Man suit. No-one even talks about her using it to catch murderers or thieves. Well, I guess she is a thief.

Ironheart is available on Disney+.

The Elven Beauty Tragedy

Sometimes I type questions into Google just to gauge how many people are asking the question. This morning I started typing, "Why are Elder Scrolls--" and before I could get any further, Google autocompleted for me, guessing exactly the question I was going to ask: "Why are Elder Scrolls elves so ugly?" Of course, I already know the answer; it's poor design. Well, to be exact, it's a bad 3D interpretation of a 2D design. Here's some original concept art from The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind:

They're not pretty but they're clearly inspired by Brian Froud, intended to have a mischievous forest creature quality. Somehow in 3D, it just translates to all hard, blocky angles. I remember Caitlin once said they all looked like Beavis from Beavis and Butthead.

Of course, one of the things the modding community has been busy with is making the elves pretty, as they are in pretty much every other high fantasy setting. One of the modded companions I've been playing with lately is the very popular Auri, a wood elf.

In terms of writing and voice acting, Auri is much better than the average Skyrim follower mod. I like how Auri makes canon aspects of the wood elves, a.k.a. Bosmer, interesting. They're a tree-hugging people, in love with the forest. Sometimes in fantasy settings, this means the people are vegetarians but, logically, it makes more sense that they avoid eating plant matter entirely. So Elder Scrolls wood elves eat only meat. Even humanoid meat. Auri takes it a step further by filing her teeth to sharp points.

Default Auri is still ugly but there are plenty of visual replacers for her. Yes, there are mods of mods.

When Straight Shooting Won't Suffice

A rural Arizona lawman heads to New York City to extradite an LSD fiend and killer in 1968's Coogan's Bluff. Clint Eastwood stars and Don Siegel directs. It's an entertaining crime thriller.

Coogan (Eastwood) garners mockery for his cowboy getup and expectation to transfer custody of the killer, James Ringerman (Don Stroud), without much paperwork. NYPD Lieutenant McElroy (Lee J. Cobb) explains to him he's gotta talk to the D.A. and then the New York supreme court and wait an indeterminate amount of time for the doctors to release Ringerman from Bellevue, where he's recovering from LSD withdrawal. So Coogan waltzes right into the hospital and bluffs his way all the way to Ringerman's doctor whom he convinces to release Ringerman to his custody without any paperwork whatsoever.

You might expect this to be a conservative fantasy about a lone cowboy navigating the waters of liberal lunacy, bureaucratic and psychedelic, and you'd be right. But the politics here aren't so obnoxious, though when Coogan decks a guy for fondling a woman's breast against her will, I didn't believe that she would've chewed Coogan out for it the way she does. But I suppose for a particularly avant-garde psychotherapist it wouldn't be out of the realm of imagination. Susan Clark plays Julie, the psychotherapist who wants to obstruct Coogan's attempts to track criminals with relationships to Ringerman. But she succumbs to Coogan's charm and what she doesn't give up to him he steals from her filing cabinet.

The movie takes a page from Yojimbo--establishing its protagonist as a kind of ultimate badass and then having him ambushed and worked over by a couple of lowlife thugs. Coogan's Bluff does this early in the movie and it works as a great source of tension and motivation. I think most viewers will be incensed by the injustice and the film firmly puts us in Coogan's corner.

Coogan's Bluff is available on The Criterion Channel until the end of the month.

Bring Your Own Values

A couple years ago, I attempted to watch 1993's Addams Family Values, the first time I'd watched it in the 21st century, but found myself too distracted by how it's been co-opted by modern politics. Over this past weekend, I enjoyed watching it through, after having talked about it with a student. Of course, any political co-opting among Japanese junior high school students will be different than the kind you'd find in the western cultural landscape. But at its heart, The Addams Family really has no philosophy but comedy.

Those seeing Values as pushing progressive ideals conveniently overlook that Morticia talks about naming her baby "Benito" or "Mao". When I was a kid, I saw Wednesday's assault in Indian cosplay for what it really is--an amusing pretext for violence and mayhem.

This month, Criterion is presenting Addams Family Values as part of a playlist of "Queer Sighted Cinema". I had an inkling of how the film's inclusion on such a list, despite having no gay characters, might be justified but I watched the playlist's introductory conversation between curator Michael Koresky and filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun (I Saw the TV Glow, We're All Going to the World's Fair) anyway. Schoenbrun discussed how Wednesday at the summer camp is placed in a faction of outsiders--ethnic minorities and disabled kids. In this sense, the film is "queer" in something like the older sense of the word which, sure, can absolutely also function in the modern sense. But the student rebellion against the faculty is a standard plot that can speak to many different political perspectives. Certainly in recent years, the voices of students rebelling against an ideologically progressive academic faculty have been very strident.

I will say the film certainly adores BDSM. Morticia even rapturously praises the pain of childbirth as she maintains her perfect poise. It's odd to watch in this particular cultural moment. The troubles surrounding Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer seem to me a massive blow against the cultural acceptance of BDSM. Regardless of which party you believe or if anyone is lying, it leaves the impression of a practice where consent can be withdrawn at any time and the joyous exploration of the relationship between pain and pleasure can be recast at any time by participants and observers as criminal and perverse. The Addams Family, of course, are basically immortal so we can laugh along with them as they're electrocuted and crushed and stabbed. There's a liberation cartoon characters can enjoy that perhaps humanity never can.

Addams Family Values is available on The Criterion Channel.

X Sonnet 1948

Illusion makes the forest teeth of woods.
A splintered 'chomp' resounds between the hills.
A fungal crowd demands the algae goods.
There's always ghostly Ken to pay the bills.
In error's season, grains were glued to bread.
Refusing food's the right of rich and dumb.
The dancing bones made sport of fleshy dead.
Museums compete to show the precious crumb.
A jungle wrought of lies condemns its kids.
A singing orphan swings from vines and brains.
In chorus, little monkeys offer bids.
But cheaply goes the blanket marked with stains.
The heavy golden dawn reveals her leg.
A sexy limb shall crush the safety egg.

The History of Sex on the Internet

It's always fascinating, at least to me, going back and watching media from the early days of the internet that tried to deal with some of the more radical cultural changes on the horizon in the new arena of human interaction. Last night I watched "Do You Wanna Dance?", an Ally McBeal episode from May 8, 2000 in which Ally has "internet sex" and later discovers that her partner was an underage boy, played by guest star Jonathon Taylor Thomas.

It seems absurd to-day that Ally would be arrested for this and, of course, when it goes to trial, her innocence is quickly established. With all the anonymity on the internet, a rendezvous like this probably happens millions of times a day. It's not so much an issue of teenagers displaying unexpected sexual maturity but people expecting lower sexual maturity from adults.

It seems unfortunate kids are always in such a hurry to become adults. I imagine this leads to lifelong repressed sexual issues as teens have experiences their own immature prejudices will compel them to regard harshly. I'm reminded of watching Evangelion again recently and the penultimate episode in which the Human Instrumentality Project is implemented and everyone--man, woman, child, friends, family--is forced into becoming the same entity. In the segment focusing on Misato, the young woman who cares for 14 year old protagonist Shinji, she finds herself being watched by the boy while she's having sex. As a child insecure about sex, he's disgusted, and now their relationship is different. How is humanity supposed to function when adults aren't free to be adults, when they're under constant potential surveillance by children? It would be a world in which no-one could escape high school.

The Ally McBeal episode aired just two months after Kirsty MacColl released her song "Here Comes that Man Again" which is about her having online sex with a Dutchman.

Both the song and the Ally McBeal episode imply a certain enthusiasm about the potential in this new form of sex but I think we can all agree that sexting isn't quite as satisfying for the observer or third party as more conventional forms of media. Without the excitement of actually being a participant, it's not visual enough or imaginative enough in its description. I think in the '90s people were thinking online sex could one day be an end unto itself but, for the most part, sexting still seems to be something people do only when something physical is off the table. At least that's the impression I have. Maybe there are some people who'd be content with sexting all their lives.

Force versus Jedi

I was lying in bed, thinking it was nice how Andor made the Force obscure, something that it was reasonable for Cassian not to believe in. It's unfortunate that Rebels is considered canon, with two Jedi wandering around in the same period, part of the same organisation, even visiting the same Rebel base where Cassian is living. I was thinking about that then I opened YouTube and saw this video was recommended:

Are algorithms using the Force to read my thoughts?

Anyway, the premise of the video isn't very well thought out. Han says he doesn't believe in the Force, not that he doesn't believe in the Jedi. You can believe the Knights Templar existed without believing in God. Since the Empire had to justify slaughtering the Jedi, it's probable Han was exposed to propaganda throughout his life labelling the Jedi as frauds. One might think it strange that Palpatine and Vader would preside over a system that discredits the Force, especially since Vader finds lack of faith "disturbing", but reserving true knowledge for an elite class is the sort of thing a fascist government might do. Common people being able to read the bible for the first time in the 16th century was a major part of the changes reshaping Europe in the period. I often think of the scene in The Thief of Bagdad in which the Sultan shows Jaffar his clock and Jaffar says that the common people must never have such a device or the Sultan will cease to be the master of time.

Anyway, the Jedi were a relatively small group. A crucial point of the prequels is that the Jedi were not an army. Yoda said that Jedi could use the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack, so demonstrations of their abilities would've been relatively rare. Han may have seen some telekinesis on holovids but he could easily right that off as "simple tricks and nonsense."

The idea of an old, true religion replaced by a new one lacking demonstrable power seemed to be a recurrent theme in a few examples of '80s fantasy. I'm thinking of Excalibur and Dragonlance. Both were influenced by Star Wars but I wonder if this preoccupation was part of the cultural longing for a unifying belief system that had been effectively abolished in the '60s.

Default Man

I was watching Matt Reeves' The Batman again last night, the first time I've seen it since seeing it in the theatre. My initial impression of it being the most vanilla Batman movie remains. The Tim Burton ones, the Christopher Nolan ones, even the Joel Schumacher ones, always felt like they were trying to do something radical. Reeves' movie takes the radical aspects of those films--Burton's gothic aesthetic and Nolan's grittiness--and deploys them as standard issue. The actual plot is mostly procedural and reminds me more of the animated series than of any of the comics. I'm still puzzled that some called it the darkest Batman movie. None of the main characters die and Paul Dano's performance as the Riddler is about as zany as Jim Carrey's, albeit with Zodiac killer dressing. The ending is certainly more softball than one of Burton's or Nolan's.

I guess the only aspect I really think pushed the envelope was the score by Michael Giacchino which is mostly low key and seems to be built entirely around Nirvana's "Something In the Way". I suspect a lot of the praise for the film was politically motivated as the plot deals with class resentment and touches on privilege, not only financial but also racial. These aspects are dealt with at about the same level of sophistication as an episode of Columbo. Bruce Wayne is shown to be flawed, almost childlike, for his low capacity for empathy. The line "I am vengeance," always seemed like it was meant to be powerful in previous incarnations of Batman; here he's openly mocked for it.

But I find these political elements mostly unobtrusive in the film which is more concerned with how point A connects with point B, with how one clue leads to another, with how one character's connexion to another is relevant to motivation. It has some of the fetishistic qualities of the Burton and Schumacher films as Reeves doesn't feel Nolan's need to maintain a sense of realism at all times. It's fun.

The Batman is available on Amazon Prime in Japan.

And More

I love how people are obsessively talking about Andor. It's so good having a show like that around again, something intelligent that prompts intelligent conversation.

This morning I watched this video by a guy called the Feral Historian who makes the point that the Rebellion, while largely leftist coded, can be interpreted as a right-wing group since their goal is better described as restoration rather than revolution. From that perspective, you could almost call the Empire progressive. In Revenge of the Sith, Palpatine does make the point that it is the first Galactic Empire. You could hardly call that conservative, reorganising the system of government into something that had never existed before. The Empire may be closer to Soviets than Nazis.

I keep waiting for someone to point it out and I'm sure someone has but the shots of stormtroopers coming down the steps during the Ghorman massacre seem pretty clearly modelled on the famous sequence of Russian troops coming down the steps in Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin.

X Sonnet 1947

The laundry waits for sun beneath the clouds.
We hear the steady drip of soapy socks.
An army's worth of clothes defend the crowds.
But maybe sort them towards a prison box.
The river flows with soap as time would clean.
Another year would pass before the suds.
An olive tree emerged from Lucy's bean.
The brittle branches launched a fleet of buds.
Intrusive birds would crowd the fragile perch.
Their talons broke their stockings ev'ry time.
But rarely crows could fail a garbage search.
We took to gest'ring notes by cour'yer mime.
The edifice of useless days awaits.
A foolish block of bone and brain it baits.

The Gentleman Vanishes

A young woman in a foreign country is subjected to psychological manipulations by the locals in 1950's So Long at the Fair. Jean Simmons plays Vicky, an Englishwoman who wakes up one morning in her Parisian hotel to find not only has her brother disappeared but his hotel room has vanished with him. The story that follows, based loosely on an urban legend, is an effective entry in the gaslight genre.

Of course, the hotel staff insist they have no memory of her brother or of room 19 ever being anything other than a washroom. I thought it unlikely that any explanation the film provided could satisfactorily make sense of this. I thought it would be like Dangerous Crossing, another movie with a similar premise in which the explanation ended up making very little sense. But actually So Long at the Fair's explanation, while unlikely, does make sense, so long as one remembers that real people, even communities, occasionally do very strange and unwise things.

There's a nice contrast between the normal, sensible world Vicky goes to sleep in and the nightmare she wakes up in, in which everyone behaves as though all her memories of her brother are her delusions. Matters are made more difficult by the fact that Vicky's command of French is weak. It's rare for a movie of this period to make language differences an important aspect of the story and I certainly appreciated it here.

Inevitably, there are flaws in the elaborate deception, the most significant being a young man named George Hathaway (Dirk Bogarde), an artist from England. He assumes an heroic role but the film maintains its tension. He enlists the aid of a doctor played by none other than Andre Morell. It's always nice when he turns up.

So Long at the Fair is available on The Criterion Channel.

Get Your Threepenny's Worth

A notorious killer marries the daughter of the king of beggars in 1931's The Threepenny Opera (Die 3 Groschen-Oper), GW Pabst's adaptation of the famous stage musical by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht. The stage play's socialist message was diminished in favour of portraying humanity of all stripes as thoroughly corrupt. It's grimly amusing with a standout performance by Lotte Lenya in the role of Jenny.

The story's set in Victorian London though, being a German production, everyone's speaking German. Mackie Messer/Mack the Knife (Rudolph Forster) runs a gang of thieves and enjoys the attentions of all the prostitutes in town, particularly the sinister Jenny.

Lenya has such an odd, angular beauty. She really doesn't need to tell us she has secret connexions to pirates; something about her body language and face suggest violence. When she learns that Mack has abruptly married Polly (Carola Neher), it's easy to believe Mack's in real danger of her revenge.

Polly's father (Fritz Rasp) is chief of all the beggars in town and organises them like the head of a workhouse. Rather than a leftist rabble-rouser, he's a cynical caricature drawn straight from that old right wing urban myth about the secretly wealthy street beggars. I remember hearing people still repeating it now and then back when I lived in the U.S. People would talk with a straight face about someone in rags who'd sneak behind the corner and drive off in a Lamborghini.

He demands the chief of police, Tiger Brown (Reinhold Schunzel), capture and execute Mack but it takes some convincing because, of course, Brown and Mack are bosom buddies.

The Threepenny Opera is available on The Criterion Channel.

There is Escape

I was watching some vintage commercials this morning, getting ready for an activity in class to-day where the students are going to write commercials. I found this Kentucky Fried Chicken commercial from 1967 impressively creepy:

Next they'll be wearing trousers!

Amongst the cheap, provocative spam Facebook occasionally puts on my page, I saw that once again the media had its ax to grind with Morrissey. Googling now, I see the Guardian has an article called "Nick Cave says he declined Morrissey’s request to sing ‘silly anti-woke screed' on new song" and Rolling Stone has an article called "Nick Cave Did Not Want to Read Morrissey's 'Silly Anti-Woke Screed' for New Song". What did Nick Cave actually say? The source for the articles is the recent Red Hand Files in which Cave said:

I’ve never actually met Morrissey, which is probably why I like him. He is undeniably a complex and divisive figure, someone who takes more than a little pleasure in pissing people off. As enjoyable as some may find this, it holds little interest for me, but for the fact that Morrissey is probably the best lyricist of his generation - certainly the strangest, funniest, most sophisticated, and most subtle. We had a few pleasant email exchanges last year in which Morrissey asked if I’d sing on a new song he had written. I would have been happy to do so, however, while the song he sent was quite lovely, it began with a lengthy and entirely irrelevant Greek bouzouki intro. It also seemed that he didn’t want me to actually sing on the song, but deliver, over the top of the bouzouki, an unnecessarily provocative and slightly silly anti-woke screed he had written. Although I suppose I agreed with the sentiment on some level, it just wasn’t my thing. I try to keep politics, cultural or otherwise, out of the music I am involved with. I find that it has a diminishing effect and is antithetical to whatever it is I am trying to achieve. So, Astrid, I politely declined. I said no.

A few articles elaborate further to show this isn't actually the beginning of a feud as the article titles suggest. But how many people are going to read past the headlines? With war between Israel and Iran, and ongoing between Ukraine and Russia, the media still has time to kill picking fights with Morrissey. I can't help thinking of one of Morrissey's own lyrics, "There's so much destruction all over the world and all you can do is complain about me."

X Sonnet 1946

A giant kitten's face replaced the wall.
No clocks could count above the critter's eye.
With clouds below, no angel thought to fall.
But something tempts about the earthly pie.
So spiralled down, the airy spirits drop.
About the kitchen crowds the seraphim.
But local gossips call a nosy cop.
The streets were washed in klaxon siren's din.
Their pearly robes would thwart the feet of grace.
In haste, they dash across a private field.
The godly herald falls upon his face.
But fertile ground to gods would ever yield.
As Heaven merged with Earth without a fight,
The morning light reveals a hybrid wight.

Possible Return

A group of women deal with death, sexual assault, and possibly ghosts in 2006's Volver. Writer/director Pedro Almodovar continues to explore his fascination with women in this sweet, amusing, and slightly messy portrayal of a community.

I think I'd seen this movie before. Maybe I saw another Almodovar movie starring Penelope Cruz. I'm pretty sure I saw this at the Landmark theatre in Hillcrest, San Diego when it was new. Or maybe not. I sure miss those Landmark movie theatres. Googling just now, I see the Landmark in Hillcrest closed in January this year. I suppose the wonderful indie movie theatre will probably be replaced by another fake sushi restaurant of the kind that replaced the wonderful bookstore in the same neighbourhood or anonymous office space. Or maybe just lie vacant as the owner of the space awaits some soulless entity to fork over an obscene amount of money.

The poster art for Volver is striking and its style is replicated in the animated closing credits which feature coalescing borders of spinning flowers reminiscent of Saul Bass. There is a kind of Hitchcockian quality to some aspects of the film, particularly the sequence in which Raimunda (Penelope Cruz) must hide her husband's corpse. Her daughter, Paula (Yohana Cobo), had killed him after he'd tried to rape her. Raimunda stashes the body in the freezer of the restaurant next door. The owner of the restaurant had entrusted Raimunda with the keys while he was out of town. When a film crew spots her coming out of the place, they ask if they could eat there on a regular basis during production. She can't resist the opportunity and borrows food from other women in the community and opens the restaurant to customers.

Meanwhile, Raimunda's sister, Sole (Lola Duenas), hears the voice of their dead mother coming from the trunk of her car. The title of the film means "return" and seems to refer not only to the dead returning but to unresolved issues manifesting anew. Mostly it's a funny, cosy movie.

Volver is available on The Criterion Channel.

Comedy is Hard Labour

Be careful with your intellectual comments; they might get you six years hard labour in a communist country as the protagonist of 1968's The Joke (Žert) discovers. Made during the Prague Spring, a brief period of freer speech, this film by Jaromil Jires employs a fascinating kaleidoscoping of flashback and present to create a sense of dislocated reality.

Ludvik Jahn (Jodef Somr) is a scientist. In narration he sounds bored and disaffected. Returning to his hometown, he offhandedly remarks on how he doesn't really like anyone there. We find he's being interviewed by an older woman called Helena (Jana Dítětová) who rapidly begins to adore him. Upon seeing a photograph of her husband, Pavel (Ludek Munzar), and recognising him, we see Ludvik's memories from years earlier. We see the hearing that resulted in his stint in forced reeducation. Shots of the panel of judges and crowd of people don't cut to reaction shots of Ludvik at the time but to Ludvik in the present, reclining on a sofa with his perpetually bemused expression. The impression this creates is of the airtight world of the communist moralists, a world living in a bubble of editing.

As the title of the film suggests, this is all over a joke. Ludvik made the mistake of falling for the beautiful and passionately communist young Marketa (Jaroslava Obersmaierova) to whom he quite wittily remarked that "Optimism is the opiate of the masses. A 'healthy spirit' stinks of stupidity. Long live Trotsky!" In this, Ludvik shows the not exactly difficult insight that the communists had truly traded one religion for another, even more dogmatic and restrictive, religion of gossip and resentment. In the hearing, Marketa confidently raises her hand when the vote comes to sentence Ludvik to hard labour.

It's not hard to see why Ludvik feels so isolated. How can he find meaning in human relationships? Even revenge holds little meaning and he barely manages the passion to pursue it. How could he feel any of his actions could have a meaningful impact? Maybe that's worse than having to swing a pickax in a quarry for six years.

The Joke is available on The Criterion Channel.

What Manner of Cheese Would Drive Us Hither?

Last night I dreamt I was with a group of friends and we were lost in a labyrinthine department store. We finally came out through some doors on the north side beyond which there were some blocky apartment buildings. There was some kind of demoniac entity above our heads that had an obsessive hatred of free will. To pass unnoticed, we had to avoid any creative thinking, even fairly simple things like deciding what we might wear the next day.

I've been kind of lagging on the sonnets lately, haven't I? I guess I got tired of writing a quatrain every night. I was operating under the idea that something weird would come out of my brain if I were sleepy, now I feel like crafting them after my morning coffee. You can judge for yourself if they're any better:

X Sonnet 1945

The liberated ghost was wanted west.
The eyes of supermarket lights were peeled.
Suspicion spots a heart beneath a vest.
The diamond brains would see the card repealed.
A savage shade usurped the role of rain.
As pouring lead reduced the land to steel.
Their vital organs beat their chests in vain.
Organic life has lost the right to feel.
A party crossed the guarded mall at night.
Beyond the northern doors there waits a beast.
No question now arose to hazard flight.
For greedy minds on desp'rate souls would feast.
Preserved with blood, the dead assume a name.
A city bleeds to come a drinker's game.

Day of the Andor

I was pleased to see yesterday that Andor topped the Nielson streaming chart during its final week (for some reason Nielson ratings are delayed a couple weeks so this was only released yesterday). Even a lot of fans of the show have called it niche, something that could only appeal to a small segment of hardcore Star Wars fans but that's plainly untrue. I believe this is the first truly successful Star Wars media since the first season of The Mandalorian. You can see the difference in the way it's being talked about; it's not just a bunch of shills. Even RedLetterMedia mumbled approval for the first season.

The most interesting thing to me about the reactions to the show is that it's touching both political extremes in our notoriously politicised current era. On YouTube, the popular right-wing critic called The Critical Drinker praised the series and a left-wing YouTuber called Jessie Gender recorded a four hour analysis. Both are fairly weak as far as analyses go but, as is often the case with weak but confident analyses, they say a lot about the analysts. I continue to think Syril and Dedra are the best part of the series which has many other fine qualities and it's fascinating how both Critical Drinker and Jessie Gender discuss Syril. Critical Drinker is rapturous over the shot of Syril nearly strangling a woman for rather fishy reasons while Jessie Gender takes Syril's initial behaviour with Dedra, even long before that scene, as a sign of the fundamental need to dominate women in all men. Both reactions seemed wild extrapolations to me and I would've assumed they'd seem that way to the average viewer in saner times. But in any case, it's fascinating that the show provokes such passionate and opposite interpretations.

Maybe it's worth remembering that we all hate fascism, even as we disagree on who the fascists are.

It's hard not to see Andor's relevance to current events. How many people are recalling the Ghorman Massacre when they watch news about National Guard being called in to quell protesters in Los Angeles? And just as with the prequels, it comes from a writer not making the story an allegory of any political event, or chaining himself to a particular ideology, but simply expressing the patterns he saw presented by a study of historical events. It turns out Andor's great and popular. It's a uniquely useful piece of art.

Harris Yulin

Harris Yulin, who passed away on June 10th at the age of 87, is one of those actors you're bound to have seen at some point if you regularly take in American film and television. I saw him just recently in Night Moves. A lot of people vividly remember him as the ornery judge in Ghostbusters 2. But as illustrious as his film career was, it was on television he indelibly made a mark. He played major characters on Frasier, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and The X-Files. He was on Murphy Brown, two iterations of La Femme Nikita, Kojack, Barnaby Jones, Wonder Woman, the list goes on.

For many people, judging from reactions I've been reading, his most impressive performance was on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in the 1993 episode "Duet". It's one of those dream roles for an actor seeking a challenge. He played a character pretending to be another character and the effectiveness and psychological motivation for his deception were both integral to the story. He rose to the occasion and the episode remains fascinating to watch.

Such a ubiquitous actor seems like part of the bedrock of an era in film and television media. His death feels like the end of one, or part of a transition to another.

For the Discerning Crow

Gene Hackman and Al Pacino are a pair of tramps in 1973's Scarecrow, a film that largely rides on their performances. Well, Vilmos Zsigmond's cinematography is gorgeous but, despite a few interesting ideas, the film never quite wholly satisfies.

Hackman was a big guy and it seems most of his roles didn't really take advantage of it. Here, he plays an ex-con named Max, wandering the roads with a pipe dream about opening a car wash. He seems like pleasant enough company but slowly you start to realise that, in most conversations, he's trying to start a fight, something his powerful physique allows him to successfully do. The film gets its title from a sort of joke Pacino's character, Francis, tells him about how crows aren't afraid of scarecrows--they actually find them quite funny and so do the farmers the favour of leaving their crops alone in exchange for the entertainment. Max laughs in what seems like appreciation before remarking on what a stupid idea it is. Francis has the deer in headlights look of someone who's not used to the twists in conversation a compulsive bully might employ.

The two are an effective double act; Max always spoiling for a fight and Francis persisting in his friendliness. The two get brief jobs and meet women on their journey from California to Pittsburgh, most memorably a horny southern woman called Frenchy (Ann Wedgeworth).

The climax of the film calls for an intense performance from Pacino, and he rises to the occasion. There's kind of a Man Who Shot Liberty Valance spirit to the film about the value of peace and human connexion in a world that seems to inevitably demand violence.

Scarecrow is available on The Criterion Channel this month as part of a celebration of the late Gene Hackman.

Billy Bye

I watched Ally McBeal again last night, the March 27, 2000 episode called "Boy Next Door". This one (spoilers) brings the ongoing plot about Ally and Billy to a conclusion with Billy's sudden death by cerebral haemorrhage during his closing argument in a trial. I've said it a couple times now but I'll say it again; I really admire how David E. Kelley handled this problem. Billy was clearly intended to be a character audiences rooted for Ally to get back with but actor Gil Bellows gave such an unintentionally slimy performance that it was actually very uncomfortable whenever there were sparks between the two. Kelley didn't ignore that problem; he took it and used it. He made Billy's sliminess explicit by turning him into an unapologetic chauvinist which was good for laughs. And then Kelley used that for the brain tumour plot, making his death actually mean something. If "good" Billy had died, I'd have just said good riddance. This way, it became something interesting about the human mind and how much control someone has over who they are. A broad comedic bit turned into a real existential tragedy. There's a writer using craft and improvisation remarkably well. I'm compelled to think this is facilitated by the fact that Kelley wrote every single episode.

Ally McBeal is available on Disney+ in Japan, probably on Hulu in the U.S., I don't know.

The Lala Way

I was watching Ally McBeal last night and noticed the episode was directed by Rachel Talalay, a director with a very long career in television, perhaps most distinguished for the many episodes of Doctor Who she directed in the Twelfth Doctor era. So I dozed off watching Doctor Who last night, though not episodes directed by Talalay. I started with the first episode of The Ark in Space and then moved on to "The Pilot", the first episode of Twelve's final season, in which we meet his companion, Bill.

How frustrating it is to reflect on how well everything was working in Twelve's final season. "The Pilot" has the wisdom to start small instead of trying to cram a million plot details and special effects into every minute. Bill is introduced and allowed to breathe, the Doctor is allowed to be reintroduced as a mysterious professor. To think it was panic over this season's tendency to be watched by only around five million people that led to the revamp that saw ratings decline to the four million range before settling to-day in the two million range. I guess a lot of what makes a great creator or producer of television is to know when to hold 'em, know when to walk away, etc.

X Sonnet 1944

Spaghetti messes mount above the rim.
The blackened pot could speak in heated tones.
But speaking plain could make the lights go dim.
The kitchen tiles hid the preacher's bones.
Like fingers finding herbs, the roots advance.
A cooking ground defined the lonely house.
A barren garden waits for worm romance.
The lurid scene has shamed the watching mouse.
Some screws of hate are twisting little minds.
With slime, the wretched cauldron bubbles hot.
A des'prate chef prepares some rotten rinds.
A bloated heart would smother infant thought.
The march of stupid men would crush the school.
The imp aspires now to be a tool.

The Sillier Adventures of the Predator

Three separate Predators set out to hunt three different human warriors in 2025's Predator: Killer of Killers, an animated film from directors Dan Trachtenberg and Joshua Wassung. Trachtenberg was the mastermind behind the popular Predator movie Prey a couple years ago and the writing on Killer of Killers is just as ridiculous. The animated format may be better suited to cartoonish logic but I found the third segment of the film too vigorously lame.

Like Prey, Killer of Killers features some actors with tenuous connexions to the ethnicities they're portraying. Louis Ozawa, an American actor of Japanese and Chinese descent, plays a pair of samurai brothers, the only voice role in the mostly wordless second and best segment of the film. Set in 1609 in no more specific place than "in Japan", a detail that may be less obtrusive to those of you not living in Japan, the story follows the lives of the two men whose father has pitted against each other for the right of succession to shogun. The two learn the value of working together against the extraterrestrial foe, who in one shot is visually linked to their psychopathic father. It's not a story that fits well in feudal Japan, nor does it seem right for a Predator movie, particular in its posing the Predator as a thematic ghost of the boys' father. But the action sequences are the best of the film.

I preferred the concept of the first story, in which a Viking matriarch is robbed of her moment of glorious revenge but the sudden intrusion of a Predator. I liked the idea of the alien foe also disrupting culture and tradition.

The third segment, about a young fighter pilot in World War II, was just a relentless stream of stupid ideas. On this kid's first flight, he wears no helmet, everyone in the squadron is able to communicate with each other without apparent headsets; at one point the boy crawls out onto the wing of his plane in midflight in order to fix something. He also somehow knows that the Predator's vision is based on heat so he decides to cut his engines, apparently making his aircraft ice cold. Sure, it didn't make a lot of sense when Schwarzenegger was able to hide behind cold mud but at least he felt constrained to also be still when the Predator was looking directly at him.

It's not a very satisfying film but it's a good accomplishment for animation studio Third Floor.

Predator: Killer of Killers is available on Hulu in the U.S. and on Disney+ elsewhere in the world.

The Late Tide

I finally managed to get through 2011's Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides last night. Every time I'd tried to watch it before, all the cgi slapstick and lousy writing stopped me cold. But somehow I kind of enjoyed it this time.

Johnny Depp and Penelope Cruz are both fine in it. Depp really disappears into the Jack Sparrow role and, in spite of everything, I see the character and not the very over-exposed actor. Which certainly says something about said actor's abilities. Penelope Cruz was pregnant during filming which would likely explain the excessive number of close-ups she has. Something about her lacked the flair she has in other roles.

I asked Google's AI why Ian McShane, an Englishman, uses an American accent in his role as the English pirate Blackbeard. I received this answer:

Ian McShane's character, Blackbeard, in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, has an American accent, likely due to the character's portrayal as a "North American pirate" or "colonist pirate". The film draws upon historical depictions of pirates who plundered Caribbean islands and were associated with the Americas. While McShane is British, the film's narrative and Blackbeard's characterization suggest a connection to the American colonists and their language.

The interesting thing about it to me is that it's a rationale and not the obvious, actual reason, that McShane, at the time, was best known for his portrayal of Al Swearengen, an American character on the HBO series Deadwood. If he'd been cast as Blackbeard when he was best known for playing the title character on Lovejoy, who spoke with an English accent, he probably would've also used an English accent for his portrayal of Blackbeard. Why can't the AI think of this? It's like it's afraid of offending someone.

Accents in the 18th century would've been noticeably different than they are to-day, whether you're talking about people in England or in an American colony, so any accent would be an anachronism anyway. There's no reason for Jack Sparrow to have an English accent. The rationale for speaking with a modern English accent is about as valid as speaking with a modern American one.

On Stranger Tides was directed by Rob Marshall who went on to direct the live action Little Mermaid remake. Perhaps it was the use of mermaids in On Stranger Tides that made him seem right for the job. The mermaids in On Stranger Tides, though, were certainly much hotter.

I generally find Marshall to be a bland filmmaker and this is a mostly bland film though mostly due to the poorly considered plot than anything to do with direction. The screenwriters seem to struggle to string thoughts together. When Jack tries to organise a mutiny on Blackbeard's ship, Blackbeard hadn't appeared yet up to that point. Jack asks if any of the crew have ever seen Blackbeard and they all say, no, that the captain never leaves his quarters. From this, Jack, reasonably enough, concludes they've all been deceived, and this isn't Blackbeard's ship at all. But after executing the mutiny, who should emerge from the cabin but none other than Blackbeard himself. Why had he never come out of his cabin before? No explanation is given. Had he truly never been on deck during any previous attack or raid? This is left unaddressed. There's a lot of stuff like that in the movie: scenes that depend on you at least half forgetting previous scenes in order to function.

I was delighted to see an old friend, the Surprise, the ship used by Captain Barbossa in his new position as a Captain in the Royal Navy. The Surprise is a replica 18th century ship that docks at the San Diego Maritime Museum, where I was a volunteer hand for a few years, until six years ago. My first day volunteering at the museum, I spent around three hours sitting on the Surprise's poop deck, learning to splice lines, a skill I sadly did not retain. Though I can't imagine when I might next use it. I was subsequently to spend quite a lot of time on that ship and it was genuinely nice to see her again.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is available on Disney+.

More Hobbit Than Hobbit

I drew this not exactly book accurate sketch of Bilbo and Gollum in the art club of one of the schools I've been working at lately. I confess, I made Bilbo look a little more cherubic because I was hoping to stimulate the students' interest in Tolkien. No such luck.

I live near a train track. The area north of the track has some factories followed by rice fields, forests, and hills. South of the track are more urban areas. Last week, I was working at a school north of the track and I've been listening to The Lord of the Rings on my iPod. Listening to the tale of the hobbits walking through forests and farmland paired well with actually walking through farmland and forest. I even walked through a very old graveyard which paired well with the chapter on the Barrow Wights.

I was compelled yet again to wonder at the fact that, though Harry Potter is wildly popular, most people I've met in Japan haven't even heard of Lord of the Rings. One teacher I worked with had seen the movies but told me he didn't find them especially interesting. Yet I can't help being struck by the similarities between the Japanese in these affluent rural towns and the descriptions of hobbits. They're a people, relatively short in stature, suspicious of outsiders, passionate about creature comforts, and sticklers for tradition and taboos. Maybe the problem is that it's too close to home. I don't know. Well, I also think the beauty of Tolkien's language probably doesn't translate to Japanese well.

X Sonnet 1943

The worser grass was vast ahead of her.
She chose a certain flower turned away.
The blossom pointed north and pointed sure.
Decision made, she stopped and took the day.
With rations low, she woke and cursed her sloth.
The sun had sunk and now the night was nigh.
She poured her beer and savoured all the froth.
And stuck the floral charm upon her thigh.
Her feet disturbed the dust and gravel path.
Suspicious birds upon her glanced and squawked.
She felt she risked a hidden demon's wrath.
For something through the dripping grasses stalked.
She felt a chill and saw a giant stone.
She wondered now if luck would lead her home.

A Long Time Coming

Well, here's something hot off the presses for you. A mere six hours ago, the Talking Heads finally released an official video for their 1977 hit, "Psycho Killer". So that only took--what. 48 years?

Directed by Mike Mills and starring Saoirse Ronan, the video pleased the band because, "it's not literal, creepy, bloody, physically violent or obvious." Personally, I'd have preferred to Saoirse Ronan rampaging through her workplace, wielding a bloody knife. Come on, it is a creepy song. That's one of its good points. Well, Saoirse Ronan is always a delight in any case.

I was listening to a lot of music last night recommended by students at the latest school where I've been working. There's a group called Man With A Mission that wear wolf masks for all their performances. Unusual for Japanese groups, they sing some songs entirely in English. It's always nice to see a Japanese group try something new.

I see Budweiser has product placement in this music video, which is a really shrewd move on the band's part. Any Americans watching who might feel superior about American music will be reminded how watery and bland American beer is. So let's all accentuate the positive. I like wolves.

Formula Phantoms

I watched an oddly lame episode of Ally McBeal last night, "In Search of Pygmies" from February, 2000. It has two plots; one in which Ally intentionally gets into a fender bender in order to ask out the cute guy in the car ahead of her, and one in which Ling, Lucy Liu's character, is trying to save Orson Bean from getting thrown out of a retirement home.

That's right, the Rankin Bass Bilbo Baggins himself. And he's still fighting dragons, having convinced everyone in the nursing home that such monsters are lurking in the shadows. Ling's heartlessness is usually played for laughs so it's kind of abrupt that she's so passionate about helping this old man. It feels like a stock plot from a standard drama while Ally's plot feels more like something from Seinfeld. It really feels like a phoned in episode, but phoned in from two different eras.

Here's Bean in better times:

The Luckiest and the Unluckiest

A private detective gets caught up in a sordid tale of sex and murder in 1975's Night Moves, one of the many neo-noirs of the 1970s that's clearly modelled on films based on Chandler and Hammett and novels (Faye Dunaway turned down a role in this movie to appear in Chinatown). With Gene Hackman as the detective protagonist, it's certainly an excellent specimen. An intriguing screenplay helps a lot.

Hackman plays Harry Moseby, a detective whose manliness, prowess, and not quite explicable appeal for every attractive woman and girl he meets maybe makes him more in the mould of a Mikey Spilane protagonist. Harry even used to be a pro football player. I wonder how many pro football players become private detectives. I wonder how frequent blows to the head might improve a man's capacity for deductive reasoning.

Harry finds out by pure chance that his wife is cheating on him. He confronts first the guy his wife's sleeping with and then his wife (Susan Clark). Both become defensive and angry with Harry. Harry even points this out when his wife, Ellen (Susan Clark), starts criticising the very concept of a private detective when he broaches the subject of her cheating on him. The movie stacks so many sympathy cards in Harry's deck, it would be absurd if it weren't for Hackman's performance which, as always, seems effortlessly natural.

The film also has a very young James Woods and an even younger Melanie Griffith whose nude scenes, shot when she was sixteen, necessitated a two year delay in the film's release. One of these scenes is the most memorable in the film and features on the poster--she goes for a nude swim at night and comes across a human corpse in a submerged plane. The eeriness of the shots vies with Shelley Winters in Night of the Hunter.

Night Moves is available on The Criterion Channel this month as part of a collection honouring Gene Hackman.

In Days Gone By

I came across my old iPod and charged it up. After more than fifteen years, it still seems to work fine. It has the old audiobooks I put on it to listen to back when I worked at JC Penney, when I really needed them. I kind of need them again these days so walking to and from work yesterday I listened to the entirety of Beowulf translated by Seamus Heaney, read by Heaney himself.

I started asking myself if something like this could've been produced by A.I. There's a line I like from Grendel's attack:

He grabbed and mauled a man on his bench,
Bit into his bone-lappings, bolted down his blood
And gorged on him in lumps, leaving the body
Utterly lifeless, eaten up
Hand and foot.

I love the use of "bolted" as it not only carries on the "b" alliteration but also conjures the impression of speed and discourtesy. Apparently it was a choice of Heaney's. The original text has, "blôd êdrum dranc."

Could A.I. one day devise something like this? Why not? You could reduce the work to the rationale under it. Start on the broadest level; it's a story about a monster attacking people. Then go to details; the violence of the attack, the severity of the injuries. Then go to associations of words. What is the percentage of contexts in which "bolted" is used? What juxtaposition would communicate Grendel's character and the savagery of his actions?

It's beyond A.I. now, I'd think. But maybe after a hundred or two hundred years. Maybe only ten. It's fitting to think about with Beowulf which is so much about the achievement and fame of men. It's the fame Beowulf wins through his deeds that leads him to become king. Praiseworthy feats are fundamental to the fabric of Beowulf's society, of organising humans in some manner useful for survival in the harsh conditions of life in the fifth century or earlier, whenever the story was first conceived as an oral tradition before being transcribed. Do we need that anymore? Do we need ourselves?

X Sonnet 1942

Bewildered monsters grin amid the press.
The fire drive was routed back in pipes.
Abducted veins became the ducted dress.
A lady wears them now as nervous stripes.
The frothing imps were dancing 'midst the crowd.
No shame could tame the venom pulsing round.
She hurries on and clutches tight her shroud.
But soon, by hyper tripping hogs she's found.
Her veil removed, the reavers sing and dance.
The engine underfoot becomes a beat.
With vicious glee they seize her veins for chance.
A hectic day dissolves in ugly heat.
The dream of grace dissolves in humid stench.
The frenzied engine breaks for want of wrench.

What's Recall without Reflection?

Last night I dreamt I was in a garage in an American suburban neighbourhood and a pretty young woman with brown hair was distraught because her mother was dead. Her mother turned out to be a large cat skeleton, about twice the size of a normal cat but still pretty small for a human. I told the girl I had a very large tupperware container in which we could put the body and the young woman immediately, enthusiastically implored me to bring forth said container. When I looked closer at the body, I saw it was crawling with very tiny mice, each about the size of my thumbnail. When I mentioned this to the young woman, all signs of grief vanished from her face and she peered at the skeleton, fascinated.

I fell asleep last night watching Total Recall.

I guess the jackhammer could explain why Quaid looks like a bodybuilder.

When I was a kid, I always wondered why the bald guy puts his hand in the air and says "Recall, Recall, Recall." For some time I've suspected he was meant to be singing the commercial jingle only the jingle hadn't been recorded yet at the time of filming the scene so he had to improvise. I think about these things sometimes.