Spain . . . Seemed to be in Spain . . .

Friday night's tweets;

Segways are totally radical, dude.
With coffee is ravioli breakfast.
I'm in a defiantly idle mood.
A quick calm that the weekend can't quite last.

I ate breakfast at Olive Garden using a gift card I'd had for almost a year and then decided it would be a good day to use the zoo pass my mother had given me. It was only when I'd driven all the way to the zoo that I discovered the damn place closes at 4pm--it was already 5pm.

So, I decided to roam about nearby Balboa Park;



From an amphitheatre that inevitably reminded me of One Wonderful Sunday.



There's a triumphant fellow.


Anatomically correct horse statue. I was reminded of an Oblivion mod someone made to remove the genitalia from the horses in that game. What the fuck is happening to people? This statue was finished in 1930 by Anna Hyatt Huntington--it is "El Cid Campeador".


Yay?



"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree!" You might recognise this from the news reel at the beginning of Citizen Kane.



This is now The Museum of Man. Detail;





A bridge over the freeway leads right into Balboa Park. The speed limit's 5mph, but of course people come right through at 20mph. I was noticing Friday how everyone around here seems to drive really fast only to walk really fucking ponderous when they reach their destination.


View from the bridge.


Looking down--the freeway I took to get there.


Actual segways in the wild. I couldn't believe it. I asked permission to take the picture but the looks on their faces, I think, clearly say, "You're judging us, aren't you?" The only thing that could make this picture more perfect is if I'd gotten some Mexican day labourers in the background.


Shot of the carillon tower from one of the gardens.





A deserted, out of the way path. Dig the roots on that tree.


Can you see the rabbit?


Have you spotted him yet?


How can anyone see this and deny the existence of The Great Old Ones?







The amphitheatre again, now getting near sunset.


The sunset.

When I got to the parking lot, I heard this;

Nobody's Brain is Safe

I went from just liking Dollhouse to completely loving it last night. It still has flaws, but last night's episode so perfectly exploited the fact that there's no character on the show you can 100% trust and almost no characters you can 100% hate. Like a line of very precariously set dominos. And there was another incredibly well choreographed fight scene on top of that between the two characters the show has done the most to shore up our sympathies for; Boyd* and Agent Ballard. I've always been a sucker for sketchy morality and this show has it in spades, and now it's getting plenty cohesive. I'm thinking I have to credit Jane Espenson with that.

With breakfast this afternoon, I read the new Sirenia Digest, a Lovecraft themed issue and one of my favourites so far. I particularly liked "THE PERIL OF LIBERATED OBJECTS, OR THE VOYEUR'S SEDUCTION" which drew from Lovecraft's The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath. And not just because The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath is one of my favourite Lovecraft tales--Caitlin's new story is an example of one of the things she does best; taking modern terrors of the more explicitly sexual and exploring them with the distant biological and ethereal vernacular of Lovecraft. Employing Lovecraftian terror of the strange and barely conceivable with the intimacy of stark sexuality. A reader of Caitlin's stories might have some glimpse of the immediate terror Lovecraft or Bram Stoker might have inspired in the more innocent readers of their day. The story also draws on the unicorn myth and lays bare the rape fantasy implicit in it--coupling it with the Lovecraftian bits seems appropriate as it's dealing with a reality everyone senses but fears to acknowledge.

"AT THE GATE OF DEEPER SLUMBER" was also quite good, and for many of the same reasons. It's less of a linear tale and seems a meditation on the oppression caused by a person's own fear. The issue also included "The Coast Guard", a poem by Sonya Taaffe. I'm not sure, but I think I've read it before. Maybe it's just that it strongly reminds me of a scene in Ingmar Bergman's Through a Glass Darkly.

I'm short on time yet again to-day. I've got to try to get to bed earlier . . . Again, there'll probably be another post in the dead of night. I have a lot to say about yesterday.

*One of the show's flaws; a black man named "Boyd"? Why not call him "Digger" or "Jungle Benny" while you're at it?

Finding a Place When You're Nowhere

Before I let Friday get away from me completely, I wanted to mention on Thursday night I watched Akira Kurosawa's 1947 film One Wonderful Sunday, an almost Frank Capra-ish common man story tinged with the despair and poverty of post World War II Japan. It's still not one of Kurosawa's great films, but there are two fascinating scenes that make the movie well worth watching.

One Wonderful Sunday tells the story of a young, middle class couple, Yuzo and Masako, and a day off from work they spend together and try to enjoy with only thirty five yen.

The film is hampered a bit by the censors of the occupying U.S. government, but more starkly coming across in this film are some of Kurosawa's own biases which I'm familiar with--his love of children, his extreme disgust for yakuza, and his belief that women aren't as fundamentally flawed as men, which he at one point stated as a reason for the scarcity of female protagonists in his films. Indeed, Masako, one of the two characters to which the film is entirely devoted, seems absolutely pure, a person utterly devoid of the slightest character flaw. It's a little disappointing after the far more interesting Setsuko Hara character of No Regrets for Our Youth, but Masako functions well enough for the movie's best scenes.



The first scene to really get its hooks into me comes at roughly the beginning of the last third of the film. After having been unable to afford tickets to a concert performance of Schubert's unfinished symphony thanks to some yakuza scalpers who also took the time to beat Yuzo to the ground, the couple remove to Yuzo's tiny apartment. Yuzo let's loose in a monologue of complete despair, his experience with the yakuza signifying the brutality of existence in Japan at the time, where a person's capabilities and honesty had absolutely no relevance. Yuzo turns to Masako then as the only good thing in his life and violently attempts to have sex with her. Not rape--he doesn't get more aggressive than clasping her hands, but his sudden lust comes from a place of clear emptiness that frightens Masako, who leaves after Yuzo responds to her refusal to reciprocate by sullenly turning his back on her.

One could read the scene as a dated perspective on the female libido--and the scene functions that way for anyone who might have that belief, but the more interesting interpretation of Masako being too crushed by Yuzo's hopeless selfishness is also perfectly viable, especially when Masako comes back to the apartment, meekly turns her back to Yuzo and very slowly begins to remove her raincoat. And here was a rather nice method Kurosawa used to get around censorship--this is the only time in the movie Masako even moves to take off her raincoat. Yuzo, now ashamed of his earlier behaviour, stops her from removing the coat.



The second scene to really engage me is the penultimate and climactic scene where, in an empty outdoor amphitheatre, the couple, now in a playful mood, have been sharing idle fantasies. Yuzo decides to perform a pantomime of a symphony conductor as a substitute for the Schubert symphony they missed, but his cheer vanishes with the appearance of Kurosawa's familiar hollow wind sound effect at the moment Yuzo lifts his invisible baton.

Masako applauds for Yuzo in an attempt to bolster the fantasy, and for a moment it seems Yuzo's again in the mood before he seems to succumb to the meaninglessness of pretending, and we're reminded of his earlier monologue on his own meaninglessness in society. I was also struck by the idea of how personal the scene must have been for Kurosawa, a young artist at a time, and a man who suffered from depression which caused him to question the value of his work throughout his life.

In a rather bold move, Kurosawa then has Masako break the fourth wall and address the movie audience directly, asking them to applaud for Yuzo because, Masako says, there are poor young lovers like them everywhere and they need to be able to dream "beautiful dreams."

Yuzo and Masako eventually bow to the screen, as though the audience did applaud, and Yuzo begins to conduct dancing leaves as the soundtrack provides the Schubert. The movie doesn't provide a definitive happy ending for the couple, the ambiguity of the conclusion providing a nice prompt for rumination on the value of the human soul in a society that's particularly ill-equipped to validate individuals. But one might observe the idea is relevant in any society.

Attempting to Grasp Daylight

Twitter Sonnet #14

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.
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.
Some spurned meat shocked and saddened the waitress.
Need to remember to drink my coffee.
Wonder when fact's worthier than a guess.
Always a good time is philosophy.
Warcraft is but wind on an empty stage.
But all pleasures are shadows of long age.

I'll probably make a longer post later, but I want to get out of the house while the sun's still out. Remember, new Venia's Travels online to-day.

Venia and the Houyhnhnms

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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);