Before the Elvis Costello concert yesterday, I went with my family to Buca di Beppo's, just like last year, only this time we went to the downtown location;
I was surprised how long it took to find a La Dolce Vita picture, but when I did, it was this enormous photo of Anita Ekberg. Wow, look at her; Food vortex!
This might be the greatest story ever; My first instinct was that this was a completely made up story, but a google search for Gina Bouza yields a few posts where people talk about her as though she's real. So now I'm not quite sure. It's great, in any case.
There's a helpful young man.
Elvis Costello performed at the San Diego Civic Theatre under Horton Plaza mall. It was an unbelievably fantastic venue to my mind--being in one of my favourite malls, next to a Starbucks, and being so small that there were simply no bad seats. Costello himself, before deciding to perform a fourth encore song, remarked what a pleasure it was performing there as the acoustics were such that he could play very, very quietly and be heard and then switch to extremely loud. I had the impression he was extremely reluctant to leave the stage when he finally did, after five encore songs. He seemed to be going well off the planned set, performing covers of "All or Nothing at All" and a folk song I didn't know about a dog. His performance of "All or Nothing at All" was so unbelievably lovely I'm bitterly disappointed it's not on YouTube.
It was just Elvis Costello himself--he had no band with him, just five or six guitars he switched between throughout the night. He performed two songs from Spike--"Veronica", "God's Comic"--and three songs from My Aim is True, "Allison", "The Angels Wanna Wear My Red Shoes", and "Watching the Detectives", which was my favourite performance out of those three. Its last portion he preceded with a strange, atonal, highly distorted guitar solo that made the last verses exceptionally ominous;
You think you're alone until you realize you're in it Now fear is here to stay, love is here for a visit They call it instant justice when it's past the legal limit Someone's scratching at the window, I wonder who is it? The detectives come to check if you belong to the parents Who are ready to hear the worst about their daughter's disappearance Though it nearly took a miracle to get you to stay It only took my little fingers to blow you away
He also did great performances of "Motel Matches", "Good Year for the Roses", and "Every Day I Write the Book", which he introduced by saying, "Now here's a song I hate. Well . . . used to hate. Until my friend Ron Sexsmith taught me how to sing it again."
I was amazed at how thin Costello's gotten. I'd gotten used to him being the somewhat round man who appeared in the Austin Powers movie but last night he looked almost like Elvis Costello circa 1981. I hope he's just gotten a better diet--it certainly didn't sound like there was anything wrong with his voice.
Last night's tweets;
Acoustics keep songs echoing past ten. Distorted detectives drag the funnel. Dreams are rust on the heads of metal men. Closed restroom's at the end of the tunnel.
The road's rabbit has no questions for you. Closed shop ghosts moan their muzak in the air. Joel Schumacher paints closed Blockbusters blue. The return boxes are holes to nowhere.
Devin Faraci posted this on Twitter and all's I can say is, "Fuck yeah;"
Kick his fucking ass! Wow, that's satisfying to see.
I had trouble getting to sleep last night and didn't until 7am, but then I slept solidly to 2pm. I had a very odd, angry dream where I was trying to argue with an entire school bent on proving that everyone who didn't like Avatar is a deviant.
I think I had trouble sleeping because yesterday was so unfocused. I'd planned on going to Tim's, but he wasn't home, so I ate vegetarian sushi in my car at the mall, wandered the bookstore a bit, went to Denny's and wrote half of the upcoming Venia's Travels, came back here and wandered around Second Life a bit and I watched the first half of Death Proof. I also started reading the epilogue to War and Peace, which doesn't mean I'm going to be finishing the book within the next couple days. My paperback copy has the epilogue taking up over a hundred pages with really small print. There's just nothing short about War and Peace and I love it. I have been holding back on a lot of things I have to say about it, though, since I'm so near the end.
Glowing pink spirals choke clubbing fish. Twelve story Irish mice suffer migraines. Some beans are greener than Giant would wish. In dreams, the sky's vanilla wafer wanes. The contented space worm has a warm heart. Rolling Cat strikes a floral bowling pin. Sewage and city ponds can never part. Villainous concrete flanks can never win. Fatigued bulls know how to watch a movie. Dunce caps are ready in testing aisles. Spotlit, quick pink gutter cats are groovy. The clay sky has begun raining tiles. Brunhilde sadly had the right idea. Valhalla was not built in Ikea.
I'm on day four of this headache. It's gotten a little better, I think. I hope it's gone before to-morrow--I'm going with my family to an Elvis Costello concert for my birthday. Tickets to Costello's concerts are always exceptionally expensive, so this was a very pleasantly surprising gift.
I went shopping for computer stuff with Tim yesterday, and it looks like I'm going to get together a top of the line computer for just under five hundred dollars. I'll finally be able to play Oblivion on my own computer, among a lot of other things. I'm kind of afraid of the potential for so much distraction.
I played one, very good game of chess in Second Life last night. I lost, but I didn't mind because it was better than I'd played in a long time. The game lasted almost two hours.
I also watched the first act of a production of Die Walkure and I watched the second act with breakfast to-day. Listening to Wotan sing about his need for a free man, living in spite of the gods, in order to accomplish something Wotan couldn't do due to a contract, I thought about how man versus the gods has been kind of in vogue lately, with the Clash of the Titans remake and the God of War video games. It'd be interesting to see some media portraying a monotheistic god as a villain--I always wondered why Final Fantasy Legend didn't make more waves having God as the final boss. Though I suppose a lot of players didn't have any problem going through the game viewing Creator as an entirely different entity than he obviously seemed to be to me.
My brain right now is only right at the edge of having coherent thoughts. I probably ought to have lunch now . . .
I noticed to-day that Comedy Central has the complete Strangers with Candy on its website. This is one of my favourite episodes.
Also with breakfast to-day, I watched the first episode of Arakawa Under the Bridge, the newest Akiyuki Shinbo series. It's about a young man named Kou Ichimiya (yet another Shaft series male lead voiced by the excellent Hiroshi Kamiya) who's been brought up to be totally self-reliant, and to pursue repayment of debts with all vigour. He meets a strange girl named Nino who lives under a bridge and who he quickly ends up indebted to as she saves him from drowning.
I could feel the whole episode being dragged down just a bit from the extremely standard set-up of self-conscious, nervous guy meets bizarre, self-confident girl, and the attendant standard tension of Everything She Does Is Crazy By Rational Standards versus Yet She's Clearly More Comfortable With Herself Than He Is With Himself. But there's still some nice gags to enjoy, my favourite by far coming in Kou's explanation of his personal philosophy of self-reliance and we're given a flashback to his father demanding the young Kou repay everything his father did for him as an infant by now bottle feeding the father and pushing him about in a stroller;
There's the slight hint of conservatism versus liberalism about the show, as Kou's isolating philosophy is contrasted with the communal fantasy of Nino, who introduces herself as being from Venus, and her Mayor, a man in a green turtle suit living in the river, insisting he's a real Kappa, a Japanese mythological creature. The basic idea of Nino desiring to be Kou's lover seems to be setting up a story about the necessity of community for love and happiness.
So I don't think it's going to be a bad series, though, as I've been rewatching Bakemonogatari lately, Arakawa Under the Bridge is diminished slightly by the genius of previous Akiyuki Shinbo works. I just finished watching the "Suruga Monkey" three episode story arc again, which I now think may be one of the greatest achievements in anime of all time, though it does hit on some personal favourite themes of mine. Especially in the fact that what seems to be the plot of the arc turns out to be fabricated by Suruga subconsciously because she can't confront the fact that she actually wanted to kill someone.
I've been thinking a lot lately about the concept of bad faith, which has helped me understand better the people who'd called Red Letter Media's review of Attack of the Clones misogynist. I was watching last night's Daily Show and John Stewart played a clip of Newt Gingrich and Sean Hannity talking about how terrible it was that Obama's recent nuclear treaty restricted the U.S. from nuclear retaliation in the case of biological weapons attack--even though the treaty does no such thing. Gingrich and Hannity parroted the lie back and forth to each other, and I realised this typical sort of falseness on Fox and the accusations of misogyny thrown at Red Letter Media aren't necessarily conscious lies but strategies the minds of the speakers have quickly come up with while their focus is on the goal; for one group, revealing Obama to be the danger that they "know" he his, and for the other group, the idea that any portrayal of violence towards women that does not explicitly condemn it is misogynist. It doesn't matter that they, of course, know that there is no evidence in the video itself that the maker of it is misogynist.
I don't mean to suggest these are extraordinarily crazy individuals. I've been seeing bad faith in myself and in others all the time. There was a quote I really liked in War and Peace last night. A character, Pierre, talking about his recently deceased wife with whom he had a bad relationship, says, "When two people quarrel, both are always at fault. And one's own guilt suddenly becomes extremely grave when the other is no more."
And at first I thought, "Surely there must be some instances where only one party is at fault in a quarrel." But the more I thought about it, the more I realised any perfect justice of one side of any quarrel can't survive any significant amount of time due to bad faith--to support the continuance of a rift, each party constantly finds actions and observations to interpret in such a way as to reaffirm the other party's guilt. I've seen this kind of thing all my life, but as the concept of bad faith says, both parties, to an outside observer, are at all times free to mend the rift, something of which the participants are inevitably at some level aware, and thus there's always a level of guilt.
The contented space worm has a warm heart. Rolling Cat strikes a floral bowling pin. Sewage and city ponds can never part. Villainous concrete flanks can never win.
Glowing pink spirals choke clubbing fish. Twelve story Irish mice suffer migraines. Some beans are greener than Giant would wish. In dreams, the sky's vanilla wafer wanes.
Okay. Attempt number two to write this entry, as the computer crashed, swallowing the first version of this entry a few minutes ago.
I'm strangely lacking in energy to-day. I think I got nine hours sleep to-day, but I'm thinking it was just half sleep. But I was light headed yesterday as well. I'm on my second pot of coffee and I'm eating a bowl of grapes and strawberries trying to rectify the situation, because I have a lot to do to-day.
With breakfast yesterday, I watched the two newest Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei OVAs, which someone finally got around to subtitling. They were good, though the show's OVAs have been pretty consistently the least interesting episodes, and nothing has yet equalled for me the greatness of the second season, Zoku Sayonara Zetsubo Sensei. I see someone named kirby22003 has uploaded onto YouTube the whole series except for the newest OVAs, which I guess is an advantage of the show never getting a U.S. license.
Mental blitzkrieg fills Nordstrom's with diapers. Cocoanut gauze falls from the cartoon girl. Stapling thieves cut odd paperwork capers. Beneath discount summer wear's a dull pearl. Sparrows tense in a light bulb nest above. Sodium injections nearby stop ears. Department store gulf's crossed by peace's dove. Easter Bunny cries blue vinegar tears. Two cups equal half a cup of coffee. Online stimulants are subject to lag. Push pins litter metal geography. Yam claws puncture a poor weak plastic bag. Paper bowls have no burning soul within. Microwave sees no disposible sin.
I'm running very late to-day due to a variety of errands. Waiting at the bank, I was reading Frances and Joseph Gies' Women in the Middle Ages. When I last took a British Literature class a couple years ago, the teacher had a section on women writers of the Middle Ages, something I always found mildly annoying--it was a subject really more of anthropological interest than literary interest. While the writings we studied were interesting, they didn't quite justify not spending the limited class time on a couple more Shakespeare plays instead. But I was fascinated by the fact that both women we read, Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich, were really crazy. This was apparently because the only women who had opportunity to be writers were women attached in some way to religious institution and hardcore Christians are fucking nuts. In these cases, gloriously nuts, and I'm always captivated by the bizarre imagery that boils out around the oppressive lid of Christianity. To-day I read about Abbess Hildegard of Bingen, who recorded several visions she had in three large books. Women of the Middle Ages has an excerpt from her Liber divinorum operum, describing a monstrous entity with heads on its wings beneath which was a "horrible black venomous monster of revolting shape, upon the right ear of which a writhing serpent fixed itself." The being said to Hildegard;
I am the supreme and fiery force that sends forth all living sparks. Death hath no part in me, yet I bestow death, wherefore I am girt about with wisdom as with wings. I am that living and fiery essence of the divine substance that glows in the beauty of the fields, and in the shining water, and in the burning sun and the moon and the stars, and in the force of the invisible wind, the breath of all living things. I breathe in the green grass and in the flowers, and in the living waters . . . I am the source of the thundered word by which all creatures are made, I permeate all things that they may not die. I am life.
And dig this illustration from her Liber scivias;
This is supposed to be heaven's light bestowing the visions on Hildegard who's writing on wax while a monk takes down a copy on parchment. I suppose neither would appreciate the observation that this image actually appears to portray God as a squid-like being caressing Hildegard's brain with His tentacles. I love the Middle Ages.
In Barnes and Noble to-day, I looked over a few books on the Middle Ages and picked up one that had a list of recommended films in the back. The first on its list was The Seventh Seal, which, though it does have several anachronisms, I agree with the book's assertion that it's one of the best films to convey the atmosphere and the attitudes of people in the Middle Ages. But it was hard finding any decent selection of books on the Middle Ages at Barnes and Noble since the whole History section was organised by author rather than subject.
Sparrows tense in a light bulb nest above. Sodium injections nearby stop ears. Department store gulf's crossed by peace's dove. Easter Bunny cries blue vinegar tears.
I think I might be getting sick--I found myself unable to sleep due to nausea and a sort of heavy feeling and I had some Alka-Seltzer at around 8am. I wanted to watch Taxi Driver while I drank it, since it always makes me think of the scene where Travis Bickle's waiting for his Alka-Seltzer to dissolve in his glass. But I could see it was going to require effort to find my copy of the movie, so I put on the nearest thing at hand, The Seventh Seal. I was good with the beach scene and the squire finding the dead man, but everything started going too fast for me when Mia and Jof started talking. I guess I wasn't in a state to handle dialogue of any but the symbolic, dreamlike sort. I found myself contemplating how anachronistic Mia's form fitting, low cut chemise is.
While inking and colouring yesterday, I listened to an audiobook of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Washington Irving's original 1820 short story, which I hadn't read since I was a kid. I was surprised to find how similar it was to the 1949 Disney animated version. Descriptions of the characters almost seem like descriptions of their animated counterparts, and several events and places described in the story are illustrated well in the movie without narrative accompaniment;
He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield.
Brom took all opportunities of turning him into ridicule in presence of his mistress, and had a scoundrel dog whom he taught to whine in the most ludicrous manner, and introduced as a rival of Ichabod's, to instruct her in psalmody.
Ichabod was a suitable figure for such a steed. He rode with short stirrups, which brought his knees nearly up to the pommel of the saddle; his sharp elbows stuck out like grasshoppers'; he carried his whip perpendicularly in his hand, like a sceptre, and as his horse jogged on, the motion of his arms was not unlike the flapping of a pair of wings.
The low budget of the wartime film couldn't hope to equal the story's rapturous description of the countryside and the loving portrait of old fashioned colonial Dutch country folk that was reminiscent of Lovecraft, and the story seems likely to have been an influence on Lovecraft. But to me, the two biggest distinctions between the short story and film are in the last portion of the tale, wherein the short story has Katrina definitely rejecting Crane and the Headless Horseman quite unambiguously having been Brom Bones in disguise. That Bones apparently murders Crane after the man had already been crushed by the woman he was pursuing makes Crane's fate seem amazingly cruel and the fundamental nature of the valley folk savage, yet somehow not quite malevolent.
So it put in perspective a lot of the enormous differences in the Tim Burton film, differences I find I really wish he hadn't gone for--making Ichabod Crane a physically attractive man, a pioneer forensics pathologist instead of a school teacher, having him end up with the girl in an altogether happy ending. There is an interesting play between city thought and rural superstition, but I wish there had been something of the story's gloom and brutality in that movie, which I still think is visually Burton's most stunning work.
Mental blitzkrieg fills Nordstrom's with diapers. Cocoanut gauze falls from the cartoon girl. Stapling thieves cut odd paperwork capers. Beneath discount summer wear's a dull pearl.
One of the first things I read after I woke up to-day was this Huffington Post article about Red Letter Media's YouTube review of Attack of the Clones, continuing the story of Mr. Plinkett, the elderly psychopath who narrated the famous Phantom Menace review. I watched the Episode II review on Sunday, and I thought it was good, though not quite as insightful or funny as the first review.
Anyway, I found myself sort of fascinated by the reader comments on the Huffington Post story about it. Several people referred to the video as misogynist while one person talked about how the creepiness of the old man is typical of Star Wars fanboys. I used to marvel at how utterly without a sense of humour conservatives can be, but the past couple years have offered me plenty of examples of liberals for whom humour seems to be like a Lovecraftian, impossible colour or geometric shape that can only inspire a mild madness.
Let me see if I can break it down for some folks. Let me see if I can address this in terms simple enough without shivering in disgust. Okay;
Just because someone tells a joke about something doesn't mean they endorse it. Just because someone speaks, dresses, or acts a certain way on video doesn't mean they speak, act, or dress that way in life. Some people, referred to as "actors" will actually pretend to be other people, sometimes people with a sense of morality different from their own.
Fuck, I can't do it. I just don't have the benevolence. I'm already picturing these folks burning actors at the stake for casting glamours.
I suppose, granting a complicated system of doubts, I can say the salient issue here is whether or not it's okay to make jokes about really bad things. I guess one could then go into debates about the cathartic value of humour, or about how taboo subjects introduced unexpectedly with a certain logic provoke giggles precisely because they're inappropriate. To be honest, I find myself inclined to think people who claim not to understand this intuitively are doing so because of some perhaps subconscious psychological agenda, some commitment to an idea that fears to permit any shades of grey to an issue lest it lead to more careful contemplation. So I guess it's hard for me to be diplomatic about this one.
Choirs of angels roughly wash your car. Rejoice in knowing everything's your fault. Clucking tongues echo off of every star. Geraldo's blind to good in Capone's vault. Idle marauders can't live in their loot. Laziness grants one the grace of reserve. Routes to London's rooftops are paved with soot. Strange is the courtesy we all deserve. Wars start up again to break in new shoes. Honest cats squeak past a howling pit-bull. Tea kettles have just so much steam to lose. Hands are stained dying already spun wool. Chick's strength wanes inside an unbroken shell. Transistasis sparks round marshmallow hell.
One thing's for sure, I'm definitely not in any shape to drive a car right now thanks to only four hours sleep last night and a double neat scotch this afternoon. My family and I had just gotten out of seeing Legally Blonde: The Musical and I was waiting with my mother and sister at the curb when I suddenly felt a bit unsteady. "Am I just really tired or is the ground shaking?" I asked. My mother started to suggest something about there being a tunnel under us when we all noticed the signs, streetlights, and trees around us were violently shaking. It turned out to be one of the earthquakes that hit Mexico and southern California to-day. I'm not sure which one--I only felt one. But it lasted at least twenty seconds as there was time from me noticing it to my mother deciding we should move out from under the huge metal sign. But we were downtown so there wasn't really any chance of being out from under any overhanging hazard. I suppose I shouldn't worry, as Strong Governor Schwarzenegger was probably ready to carry everyone out of danger in his mighty arms.
As for the show, I guess it wouldn't surprise many people if I said Legally Blonde isn't exactly my cup of tea. Though I actually kind of remember liking the movie when I watched it ten or so years ago with my sister. It was a nice little, good hearted movie. The musical had some catchy songs, some of which felt a bit awkwardly inserted into the story, particularly the "Legally Blonde" song itself which seemed to come conspicuously at a time for the characters to gear up and emote. A few plot details were a bit too slow for any conceivable audience, like Elle Woods' insistence that the entire court go to a crime scene just so she could demonstrate the effect of taking a shower with a new perm.
There were plenty of hot young dames in the crowd, many of whom were with conspicuously older men, though mainly the audience was made up of older male gay couples, elderly straight couples, and their grandkids. There were a lot of bald spots in front of me.
The story of someone beautiful and rich finding success may not sound particularly worthwhile at first, but I think one could argue that it's as much incumbent upon people handed opportunities to explore a life of substance as it is upon people who have to work hard for those opportunities. Though the ease with which Woods accomplishes her goals, and the very small obstacles she has to overcome soften the tale little bit. But on the other hand, my own tastes tend to go towards steeper walls for protagonists. The sorts of stories I like might quickly weary the people who liked Legally Blonde and took it as inspiration to improve their lives.
Idle marauders can't live in their loot. Laziness grants one the grace of reserve. Routes to London's rooftops are paved with soot. Strange is the courtesy we all deserve.
I've already been drawing to-day, even though I usually take Fridays and Saturdays off, because I have to be up early to-morrow to go with my family to see Legally Blonde: The Musical. Which I guess is Easter-ish. Personally, I always find myself in the mood to watch Picnic at Hanging Rock on Easter.
With lunch to-day, I read "Houndwife", a good, new story in The Sirenia Digest. It's sort of a sequel to H.P. Lovecraft's "The Hound". It shares something of the fevered quality of the Lovecraft tale, though it's not nearly as excited. In the Prolegomenon, Caitlin quotes from a book by S.T. Joshi that discusses the possibility that "The Hound" was partially a self-parody. I haven't read the story in years, but I seem to remember taking the extreme prose more as a reflection of the particular excitability of the narrator, an expression of character.
But it was interesting reading something about parodies that are also effective as sincere stories to-day when I happened to have been watching Project A-ko with breakfast. Like Gunbuster, made around the same time, Project A-ko is ostensibly a parody but also works as an earnest story about its characters. In A-ko, it's mainly due, for me, to the flattering portrayal of the villain, B-ko, and the action sequences accompanied by electric guitar. Annoying C-ko, B-ko's odd obsession with her, and the general over the top quality of the events depicted, are all funny until they sort of unexpectedly melt into just being really fucking cool. I love how B-ko seems inexplicably turned on at this end of this bit;
It's hard to find examples of this sort of thing outside 1980s anime. Partly I think it's due to the animators spending so much time working one these things that they couldn't help developing an affection for them that comes out in the work.
I was at Tim's house last night for around five hours playing Oblivion. I'll be really surprised if a day ever comes when I'm tired of that game. I have a new Nord character who specialises in blunt weapons--I just got her to Expert and I'm enjoying knocking people flat on their backs with a mace. Adding a Damage Fatigue poison to the attacks led to some very satisfying slaughter last night. I need to kill fifty people for the master blunt trainer to train me, and Damage Health poisons seems to disqualify kills. But I'm surprised by how much fun I'm having killing them the very old fashioned way.
Choirs of angels roughly wash your car. Rejoice in knowing everything's your fault. Clucking tongues echo off of every star. Geraldo's blind to good in Capone's vault.
I was vaguely aware of a headline maybe a week ago on a news site that read something like, "Erykah Badu Video Causes Controversy". I completely didn't care until to-day when I saw "Erykah Badu charged over Dallas nude video shoot". Now I'm interested.
The video follows Badu walking through Dallas streets crowded with tourists, stripping almost completely naked (she keeps her hat on) and pretending to get shot, falling to the ground on the spot where President Kennedy died. I'll warn you ahead of time, the nudity's censored;
I can't find an uncensored version of the video anywhere online, so I'm guessing such a version doesn't exist. Before I watched the video, I thought this was actually a pretty boring stunt, maybe inspired by some of Amanda Palmer's instances of public nudity. It's funny how Amanda Palmer doesn't get prosecuted and doesn't get this kind of press--I guess this is what a relationship with a big studio will get you, though the fact that Badu's song is sort of common grey porridge and Palmer's songs are striking is the trade-off.
Watching the video, I found I kind of liked it. Badu's got a nice body, and there's something endearingly narcissistic about what she's doing. It reminds me of a song by Sheila Chandra I used to have on my hard drive before I deleted her whole discography because, although she has a nice voice, I got tired of how fucking stupid most of her work is. I wish I could remember the title of the song, but it was spoken word with what sounded like wind chimes in the background as she described her daughter asking questions about her mother's reclining, naked body. Chandra tells the kid about how holy and wonderful her vagina is. I'm all for women feeling more comfortable with their bodies, and I think it's ridiculous that people are taught to regard any part of themselves as fundamentally dirty and shameful, but Chandra's song was so obviously borne of her vanity, it was just silly. I couldn't help picturing Andrew Dice Clay lying on the floor naked and saying to his kid, "Hickory dickery dock and this is my cock, OOH!"
At the end of Badu's video, I think she did make a worthwhile statement about the vulnerability of someone creating something and the natural inclination of people to tear that person down. Backlash over Badu's nudity is evidence of this--yes, it's against the law, but the reason anyone's complaining or enforcing the law is that they saw this beautiful woman unashamed of herself, having the guts to try and say something without couching it in the assumption that there's anything wrong with her.
A few things would've made the video better--I like that there's a Star Trek reference in it, but the video way outstrips (pun intended) the song. She should've taken her hat off, and it probably would've been better if she didn't have any tattoos. But that's just a personal hang-up of mine--I find I often like people who have tattoos, but I'm always disappointed to see them on a naked woman, because my mind then reads her as only partially nude. Tattoos to me suggest someone who can't bear to be without body ornamentation at any time, which is the antithesis of the poetical idea of nudity to me. I also think she should've put an uncensored video online. That would take real guts. Sure, she'd probably become an item on Mr. Skin, but what's wrong with those of us who actually want to see her naked enjoying it as opposed to tourists having it foisted on them? There's something cold and hypocritical about it.
Anyway, I think the video was definitely worth Badu getting in trouble over--it's the most interesting thing I've seen her do, though I can actually see the alternative perspective. I was reminded of the story I saw David Lynch tell in an interview about the scene where Isabella Rosselini appears naked on a house's front lawn in Blue Velvet. It was inspired apparently by a naked woman Lynch saw in the street when he was a kid and how it had traumatised him. Something basically strange about the sight and how it had seemed to imply something bad but mysterious had disturbed him. So, yeah, while I do think it's bad that even little kids have already learned there's something unnatural about seeing a naked human body, the reality is Badu could've really frightened some children. I still think what she did was worthwhile, but then again I don't like kids. Though maybe this story ought to at least teach me that kids sometimes grow up to be great David Lynches.
Boiling paper tubs are requested. A bad smell sea comments on the forest. The ugly liquid's bored and disgusted. But orange sky action's delayed 'til August. At evening, dishwashers don't really work. All forks are paint disguised disposable. In insulation does Tony Blair lurk. New copper Snuggies are combustible. Food's edible for ingested bed bugs. Waiters have their memories wiped nightly. Many children were skinned to make your uggs. Water to your health matters but slightly. Jesus is turning the oceans to wine. But don't worry, everything's just fine.
Lots of irritating distractions to-day. There's a broken dishwasher here and apparently I'm the only one who has the courage to acknowledge this fact, and there being no clean dishes here necessitated a trip to Denny's for breakfast. In the booth next to me was an old man who also, apparently, was having breakfast at 4pm, which I first heard alluded to when, after he'd ordered, the waitress, who was speaking to him in that patronising tone I bet a lot of old people hate, said, "You got yourself a breakfast!"
I was eating and reading War and Peace when I suddenly heard the old man cry out, "Hey!" I looked up in some alarm but saw he was just saying hello to a middle aged man and his wife who'd just walked in.
The old man invited the two to sit down at his table and I gathered that the younger man was the older man's doctor. The old man was thanking his doctor profusely for helping him, and the doctor asked him if he'd taken the pills yet that he was supposed to take before breakfast.
"Eh?" said the old man.
"The white pill and the blue pill. You're supposed to take them before breakfast," said the doctor.
There was a pause and then the old man said, "Uh, eh?" and I could tell he either had no idea what the doctor was talking about or he was trying to think of the right thing to say to, without lying to his doctor, reverse the current, serious tone the conversation was taking.
"You have to take those pills before breakfast," said the doctor. It sounded really critical.
"They're at home," said the old man.
A different waitress came to the table then, the doctor and his wife ordered, and the old man and the waitress had an affectionate exchange, this apparently being the old man's normal server.
After the waitress left, conversation continued in an affable fashion and the pills were never mentioned again.
While I was driving to-day, I suddenly got really pissed off that William Shatner doesn't admit he wears a toupee. I don't know why.
Strawberry's haemorrhaging from the yoghurt. Coffee clouds roll black in porcelain crater. Floor's sticky with linoleum alert. The fake 50s food always comes later. The virgin pillow bride wore a white gown. Easter candy fills an hour abscess. Wal-Mat's chocolate bunny sickens a town. Jehovah locked up His magic princess. Lounging senators guard limes and salsa. Suddenly there are only old cups here. Barbaralla's come too late for NASA. A singing tugboat has no real world peer. You're touching a rodent soul trapped by Faust. Doomsday will show there's just one kind of mouse.
I was in the middle of pencilling to-day's page when I reached over to adjust the volume on the computer and I found my mouse cursor had frozen. The computer worked fine otherwise, and since the mouse's sensitivity had been decreasing for months, I figured I needed a new mouse. So I went to the mall, where I could get some lunch in the food court and get a new mouse at Best Buy. I figured the ordinary, corded mouse I wanted would cost around twenty dollars, which is what my computer gamepad had cost.
Instead, I found the aisle filled entirely with wireless and cordless mice (I'm not sure what the difference is) ranging in price from thirty to eighty dollars. I saw one ridiculous looking thing with evil green eyes, its name written in a slimy, horror movie font that was difficult to read--it was either "Pathfinder" or "Deadfinder". The only corded mouse--there was only one--was a forty dollar Logitech number. What the fuck kind of scam is cordless mice, anyway? Who needs that much space to move their mouse around? Meanwhile you have to replace the batteries every now and then. For what? Am I turning into Andy Rooney? Fuck.
Anyway, I bought the damn mouse and came back with it to find it wouldn't work. A few frustrating minutes of irritating experimentation revealed it was in fact the port that had crapped out on me. So now I'm down to one USB port, which means I'm going to have to unplug the mouse whenever I want to plug in my camera, iPod, or gamepad. I have a card with USB ports somewhere around here, but it's going to be a couple of days before I time to wrestle with the computer to see if there's room in it for that. The mouse, though, is working great now and it's been a long time since I had a mouse this sensitive at my command. I haven't plugged the old one into the remaining functional port and I'm just telling myself it would work like shit and I still made a good choice getting this new mouse. It must be so.
The virgin pillow bride wore a white gown. Easter candy fills an hour abscess. Wal-Mat's chocolate bunny sickens a town. Jehovah locked up His magic princess.
Obviously that first tweet is a reference to the South Korean man who married his pillow recently;
Tim showed me some pictures yesterday of the ceremony where the guy had put a white dress on the pillow. Though I'm afraid the pillow probably isn't a virgin. At least, I hope not. If you can't get any action out of a pillow bride, that's really sad. But I guess this story's plenty sad already.
The character on the pillow is Fate Testarossa, a name that immediately caught my imagination when I heard it yesterday. I started imagining a film noir where this guy's pillow gets stolen and no-one takes him seriously, however much he pleads, except one female police detective. The two work hard trying to track down the pillow and she starts to fall in love with him . . . But, although he starts to naturally reciprocate the feelings, his conscience won't allow him to betray Fate. Damn, it writes itself.
Last night I watched a 1980 production of Das Rheingold. It was very nice to see the opera performed and with English subtitles, though I wish I could've gotten my hands on a copy where the players wore period appropriate costumes. In this case, everyone's wearing what looks like clothes of the period in which the opera premiered (1869), which wasn't so bad. At least Wotan actually carried a spear and I loved the stilts and long, false arms Fasolt and Fafner wore.
It was strange reading of the bombing in Moscow a couple days ago while I happen to be at the place in War and Peace dealing with the 1812 Fire of Moscow during Napoleon's occupation of the city. The Wikipedia article mentions War and Peace;
Tolstoy, in War and Peace, suggests that the fire was not deliberately set, either by the Russians or the French, but was the natural result of placing a deserted and mostly wooden city in the hands of invading troops in summertime, when fires start nearly every day even with the owners present and a fully functioning police department, and that the soldiers will start fires–from smoking their pipes, cooking their food twice a day, and burning enemy's possessions in the streets. Some of those fires will inevitably get out of control. Without an efficient Fire Department, these house fires will spread to become neighborhood fires, and ultimately a city-wide conflagration.
Which is in line with much of Tolstoy's main argument in the book--that big, historical events are usually totally beyond the deliberate control of any leader, that the individual motives of various people at all levels of society are too diverse and chaotic to predict. Which seems an appropriate observation for the terrible bombings from a couple days ago--and for really all terrorist attacks in the modern age. They're almost completely impossible to predict or prevent, and they never seem to accomplish anything constructive for the perpetrators. It makes me think of Tolstoy's perspective on war being absurd and grotesque--a disconnected thing with delusional leaders at one end and senseless loss of life at the other.
From an earlier segment on The Battle of Borodino;
Neither Napoleon nor any of his generals had ever before seen such a ghastly spectacle, or so many slain in such a small area. The roar of guns, which had not ceased for ten hours, wearied the ear and gave a special significance to the scene (like music accompanying tableaux vivante). Napoleon rode up to the hilltop at Semyonovsk, and through the smoke saw ranks of soldiers in uniforms of unfamiliar colours. They were the Russians.
The Russians were drawn up in serried ranks behind the knoll and village of Semyonovsk, their guns booming incessantly and filling the air with smoke all along the line. It was no longer a battle: it was a protracted slaughter, futile for both the French and the Russians.
Napoleon pulled up his horse and again sank into the brown study from which Berthier had roused him. He could not stop what was going on before and around him, an enterprise ostensibly led by him and dependant on him, and for the first time, because of its lack of success, it struck him as unnecessary and appalling.
Strawberry's haemorrhaging from the yoghurt. Coffee clouds roll black in porcelain crater. Floor's sticky with linoleum alert. The fake 50s food always comes later.
The directions I'd gotten apparently via pay phone (I couldn't reach her by calling back, anyway) from my grandmother's friend indicated that she would be waiting "In front of the old chapel". When I got to the place, across from Balboa Park, I found at least six buildings that looked like old chapels, so I spent a lot of time wandering around the oddly deserted old buildings. It felt like the first graveyard scene in Vertigo.
I also chased a large, slow squirrel up a tree;
Music's by Ennio Morricone from the Once Upon a Time in the West soundtrack.
I had to pee really bad, so we stopped at Balboa Park so I could use the rest room. There I took a picture of this over 100 year old ficus with a trunk that's 42 inches around;
I remember it from field trips when I was a kid.
I finally got the new Venia's Travels script written at Denny's later in the evening, so I came home, put some sake on the stove, and logged onto Second Life. I couldn't find anyone to play chess with, so I just wandered SL. I came across this big sparrow pecking at the ground;
Ellis Island expands in a red pan. Communist rain falls on Gothic racists. In a tuba is just a tiny man. The Fool city is filled with bicyclists. Repent for a floating ball of damp sin. Han just received our transmission of Tang. Saruman's breeding ducks with goblin men. Stay Puffed Marshmallow man changed everything. Warm turtle necks stay longer than fake suns. Batman games will see us bounce from the wall. Superhero tights will not hide the runs. Grey painted nature on ceilings tells all. Big trees are ripe for breaking by children. Adults suck off Ents for the best aspirin.
It seems every day I'm always running out of time. At least to-day I can point to my grandmother's friend unexpectedly calling me needing a ride from downtown to-day. But somehow without me quite knowing how it happened, it's already after 9pm and I haven't even started on the new Venia's Travels script.
My interest has been really piqued by the trailer for Luc Besson's upcoming The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec;
The pterodactyl sound effect seems to be exactly the same one used for the dragons in Warcraft II and the imps in Doom. I'm wondering if this is some kind of Wilhelm scream phenomenon.
Anyway, because of this trailer I finally decided to watch The 5th Element last night. I'd expected to find a very Blade Runner influenced film, since that's how people have usually described it to me, but I was surprised to find something much closer to Barbarella, a relaxed fantasy with a sort of pretence of tension with a plot about the wonderful power of love. I find it actually a bit perplexing The 5th Element doesn't contain more gratuitous sex and nudity than it does because I'm not sure what the point of the movie is otherwise.
I didn't really hate The 5th Element, at least not as much as some other movies. The opening scene made me think I was really going to love it, when a bunch of interesting, not cg robots storm an Egyptian temple. And the cast borrows great actors liberally from Terry Gilliam movies--John Neville, Ian Holm, and Bruce Willis.
So I will say The Fifth Element is about exactly as good as Star Wars: Episode I. This might produce some anger from the many people who hate Episode I while considering The 5th Element a Sci-Fi classic. I'd like to refer now to the amusing review of Episode I by Red Letter Media that's been making the rounds on a lot of entertainment sites. I suspect most of you have already seen it--I was a little late to the party only having watched it last week. But while I enjoyed it, I actually got something a bit different out of it than the guy on AICN who linked to it recently and said it pointed out awful things about the movie he hadn't even noticed yet. For me, it actually made me remember good things about the movie, despite Red Letter Media's invariably negative take. I disagreed with him on some points, particularly in his assertion that Palpatine's plan doesn't make sense in that by helping the Trade Federation as Darth Sidious, he's effectively working against himself. Rather, I think this was a reflection of Palpatine's cunning, that he would throw his weight behind a faction designed to fail, fucking over everyone on his side. I also think it's worth noting that there are a lot of beautiful visuals in Episode I, and though I agree the sabre battle lacks the character intimacy of the original trilogy's sabre battles, Darth Maul's still pretty bad ass and it's fun to watch him do his thing.
But anyway, a lot of Red Letter Media's criticisms of The Phantom Menace are actually quite applicable to The 5th Element. For one thing, The Fifth Element stars indistinct characters. I think if we applied Red Letter Media's prompt to describe characters without mentioning what they look like and what their jobs are, we'd find descriptions of Bruce Willis' character at least as vague as the Qui-gon Jinn descriptions Red Letter Media got. Dallas is good . . . he wants to get with the girl . . . he's reluctant to get involved sometimes. He's basically just Bruce Willis.
The best part of the movie is Milla Jovovich's adorable performance as Leeloo. But aside from being adorable, there's pretty much nothing to her. Gary Oldman's villain is an interesting premonition of George W. Bush, but it's hard to take him seriously, especially after Ian Holm calls him a monster after Oldman's almost choked to death on a cherry after holding forth on some moronic, meaningless loop-de-loop philosophy on destruction--Basically, that we need destruction so we can create so that's why he's working with the big, burning Evil Egg that wants to destroy the world. The only thing that makes him threatening is that he remembers to use a gun while fighting Milla Jovovich, unlike the normally well armed alien goons who for some reason decided to fight the pretty little kung fu master hand to hand.
All this silliness might be fun if the choreography was interesting, but it's followed by a big moral lesson about how humanity is too destructive. Jovovich's character, Leeloo, is learning English throughout the film with the help of a computer taking her through the language alphabetically and late in the film she's horrified to find out about war when she gets to W. Which made me wonder how the computer handled entries on nuclear power, genocide, and torture.
Everything about the movie feels half formed, like ideas that weren't fleshed out, and I get this feeling like I'm expected to do a lot of the work for the film, like it expects to be loved just for showing up and there's something wrong with me for not getting it. A good example is Chris Tucker's radio personality character, who hijacks Bruce Willis' vacation on a pleasure ship to interview him while he's there. Watching Tucker, I imagined the filmmakers lounging about an office conceiving his character, "Oh, he'll be this great, outrageous fellow!" "Yes, and he'll say outrageous things." "Oh, and everyone will say, 'I can't believe how outrageous he is!'" "Yes! He'll say outrageous things like . . . Oh, I don't know, but they'll be outrageous!"
So leading Willis through Space Opera House, he breezily points out how that famous fellow over there is deaf, so he probably won't get much out of the opera. Oh, no he didn't!
The films filled with lines that sound like they were written by someone who can't speak English very well. You could say this just so happened to be the dialect hundreds of years from now, but it really doesn't come off that way, and it's annoying. As when Jovovich jumps off the side of a building and a policeman says, "She dove off!" It's especially annoying when the movie clearly expects us to laugh at something totally flat, like a policeman taking two sodas from his partner because--get this--he's really thirsty!
When the ragtag team of barely defined five characters convene on a small ship near the end to save the world with love, I realised a good way to describe The 5th Element would be to ask someone to imagine a mentally impaired child who really loves Star Wars describing Star Wars for two hours.
Repent for a floating ball of damp sin. Han just received our transmission of Tang. Saruman's breeding ducks with goblin men. Stay Puffed Marshmallow man changed everything.
I beat Super Metroid last night after playing it obsessively every night for about a week. It always takes me by surprise when an old Nintendo game manages to actually suck me in without being just a nostalgia trip. It's still a much smaller feeling game than Metroid II though.
I also watched The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. I'd gotten to thinking about it after Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland movie--his March Hare being reminiscent to me of the 1951 Disney version of the character got me thinking about what a big influence The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad was on Burton's Sleepy Hollow. Sweeney Todd and Sleepy Hollow are, to me, by far the best Tim Burton movies of the past eleven years. Yet I have to say the 1949 animated short is far superior to Burton's film.
The Mr. Toad segment features some wonderfully inventive slapstick sequences, Eric Blore is perfectly cast as Toad, and Basil Rathbone is an excellent narrator, but it's not half as good as the latter segment. Both segments reflect Disney's low wartime budget, lacking really any dynamic shading--most of the time, characters' skins are coloured with a single, solid colour. But Ichabod Crane is so wonderfully strange, with five or six separate creative momentums colliding into a very curious treat. At the centre of which is Ichabod Crane, who's selfish and looks bizarre, yet somehow has our sympathy. The story plays into the subconscious belief in mechanisms of the world behaving in harsh and almost mysterious ways--Basically, Crane gets more punishment than he deserves, but we're forced to ask ourselves if we're wrong about what's just, or if justice is in essence something alien and cruel.
The story also has ingenious cartoon slapstick, but that logic of animated physical comedy somehow comes off as more frightening than funny in the last portion of the segment, which I remember also being the case when I watched it as a kid. The Headless Horseman is somehow genuinely threatening.
The physical routines also work well and strangely earlier in the film as we're trying to sort out just what sort of specimen this Ichabod Crane fellow is. He and Brom Bones aren't exactly Popeye and Bluto--Crane's an interloper, and he doesn't have any "good guy" right to the love of Katrina. Brom Bones, while mischievous, isn't necessarily a real bad guy, and Katrina, unlike perhaps any other Disney beauty, appears to be completely amoral--innocently amoral. She has no problem letting these guys fight over her, flattering her vanity, but at the end of the day she wants to settle down in domestic tradition. Instead of just being the loser, Crane suffers an incredibly cruel fate, and this Disney film somehow manages braver horror than Tim Burton's gone for with any of his films, with the exception of Sweeney Todd.
Bing Crosby's laid back narration and singing rather seamlessly work to offer up this tale, too, which is not something I'd have predicted. It really is a strange work.
Ellis Island expands in a red pan. Communist rain falls on Gothic racists. In a tuba is just a tiny man. The Fool city is filled with bicyclists.
Still I have a massive headache, so this seems like a good time to post Part 2 of The Venia's Travels Costume Post Extravaganza! You know, it seems like people used the word "extravaganza" ironically all the time for a while, and it's fallen into disuse. I would like to reignite faux extravaganza mania, so here we go, hold on to your sombreros . . .
Based on some formal eastern European dresses, I was really happy with this outfit Venia wore for one chapter and that was barely visible because she was wearing a big fur cloak the whole time.
Everyone was in their short lived winter garb in Chapter 39, beginning the real Niverikiin look for me, which is a mix of Byzantine and 19th century eastern European hodgepodge.
I decided the more formal the clothing, the more antiquated it would look, which was why Venia went from 19th century to ancient Rome to Byzantine Empire in the space of three chapters.
I dropped the weird little apron thing when I added the red and green palla.
Then came the big headache of Chapter 43, where I had to design new clothes for everyone along with the fifty million other things I had to come up with for that chapter. Venia's look in the chapter is kind of an odd throwback to her less mature outfits of the early chapters, which was an unconscious decision I thought turned out to be rather appropriate.
I think of Wircelia's look as "Kikuchiyo by way of gypsy."
A lot of times, my creative process involves trying to reach one thing using the rules of another--the Niverikiin words are usually attempts to create a Russian sound using Japanese rules, and as I said, the look of a lot of the comic is based on my impression of 1930s and 19th century medieval. I go through self imposed filters and then I tweak.
Kakeshya's new silver plate mail is pretty standard late medieval full plate;
You may have noticed I haven't been giving the women breast plates with "boob socks," or sculpted breast shapes. Obviously this isn't because I'm not a pervert. It's also not because I think such designs are illegitimate, it's just I see the Everi Paladins as being too practical--a cuirass with a big cavity in the middle isn't as good at deflecting blows. But considering some Roman breastplates were moulded to look like a muscular chest and abdomen, I'm not one of those people who thinks armour for women shaped to look like a second, R-rated skin is purely fantastical. It's just not the kind of thing Everi Paladins would do. See? I don't always go for salacious.
Finally, here's Venia's current outfit;
I changed the shoes because I noticed some of the strappy, Byzantine shoes I was looking at were reminiscent of ballet slippers and I figured this would be a good time for a The Red Shoes reference. And the hat, well, I decided it was just high time Venia had a cool hat.
Looks like Twitter's deleted several days' worth of my tweets, but here's
Twitter Sonnet #125
Sugar of Toucan's cry permits no peace. Twitter swallowed three of my last night's tweets. Sparkling haze made it dizzy and obese. Screaming warnings, the traffic monster eats. Burning laughs are digested to money. Anger boils beds in Gestapo porn. Look what they did, marone, they shot Sonny. Nasal vampires earn a stapler's scorn. Some day, there'll be no suckers left to hate. Many fear being first to a stop sign. Laughing asphalt has forever to wait. Disputed chow mein in the car is mine. Words are lost in digital dark matter. Bits are obliterated by batter.
To-day I read Devin Faraci's reaction to Kevin Smith's recent twitter tirade about movie critics. I agree with Faraci's take whole heartedly here. Having witnessed Smith's tweets as they were happening, I remember wincing and hoping his wife would drag him away from the keyboard. I like Kevin Smith, I like most of his movies, and I can understand him being sensitive about something he's worked on. But the solution for him is to not read reviews at all. The solution is not to go to relying exclusively on random people on the internet to review his films. Is he the last guy in the world to read the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory? If he thinks professional critics are harsher and less thoughtful than the denizens of Twitter, he's snorting Kool-Aid. Really, what he wants is to back up from the big arena he's in now and lock himself in an echo booth with his most loyal disciples. His ego's cracking under the pressure--that's it. Some people can't handle being received poorly by a lot of people. There's not really any shame in that, but the way he's handling it isn't doing himself any favours.
I've said this before, but I feel critics are themselves artists of a kind. It's not so much that their opinions are more valid as that good critics are better at expressing those opinions, can draw on a wider knowledge of the medium in discussing it, and can ably expand upon intellectual and emotional prompts presented by a movie. In essence, a good critic, to me, both supplements my digestion of a film (mmm!) and helps me decide whether or not to spend my money on a movie, establishing their trustworthiness on the task by demonstrating the reliability of their opinions over time and, to some extent demonstrating an intelligence about that which he or she is speaking. To do this properly, one needs to be educated about, and devote a great deal of time to watching, movies--it's a full time job, therefore one for which one needs to be paid.
That's a rational argument I've just made, but if Smith were reading this, I know it'd be more useful to suggest that he smoke some pot or make out with his wife.
Twitter swallowed three of my last night's tweets. Sparkling haze made it dizzy and obese. Screaming warnings, the traffic monster eats. Burning laughs are digested to money. Anger boils beds in Gestapo porn. Look what they did, marone, they shot Sonny. Nasal vampires earn a stapler's scorn.
I watched the Rifftrax of Twilight: New Moon a couple nights ago. Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, and Kevin Murphy were even funnier than they were with the first Twilight movie, and I think New Moon may have been even worse than the first film, though it's kind of hard to say. I will say New Moon generally looks better than the first film, as director Chris Weitz apparently doesn't share Catherine Hardwicke's affinity for incessant colour filters and, although there are no interesting compositions, it's hard to make this scenery look bad;
Particularly as all that green's allowed to come through. Though Edward Cullen's makeup looks even more ridiculous without the blue filters.
I guess there could be something a bit gauche about a bunch of guys making fun of something that's basically masturbation fodder for teenage girls, but surely teenage girls can do better. I'm not saying fanservice has to come with an important message or challenging ideas, but when a story basically amounts to a boring POV girl choosing between two hot guys who are into her for no apparent reason, it doesn't have to take itself so damned seriously. That's what really bugs me, that Bella standing between two models fighting over her because they think she's hot and she won't commit to either because she thinks they're both hot is treated like the most sober reality in the world. Mike, Bill, and Kevin kept making jokes about how Bella was leading on the werewolf guy for some "unreciprocated validation", and I thought of the line in The Dresden Dolls' "Shores of California" about girls wanting a "fickle little bitch romance." There's a scene where Bella's seen clearly choosing the werewolf beefcake over some nerdy guy from school and I actually had a moment where I thought, "If Bella's supposed to be so deep and wonderful, why is this a no-brainer for her?" The thing is, I don't mind movies about beautiful people digging each other. When two actors put in all kinds of time exercising and getting their hair and face done, and cinematographers go to great pains to make them look good on camera, what you're look at is beauty put together as a gift of sorts to the audience. As Oscar Wilde said, those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming--beauty is beauty, and it's natural and good to appreciate it.
So this brings me back the debate about Howard Stern's comments regarding Gabourey Sidibe and how she won't have an easy time finding work in Hollywood. On Monday's Stern Show, Howard played a bunch of different clips of newscasters and television personalities reacting to his comments and Robin Quivers said something about how these are the people who made everyone miserable in high school and now they're pretending to be nice.
At first, I wasn't sure what she meant, but I think I get it now. This is why they don't think it's enough to call Gabourey Sidibe beautiful, it's why they also have to suppress anyone who suggests she isn't. Because they don't believe it themselves. They're full of shit.
This is why Kirstie Alley and Whoopi Goldberg don't see the hypocrisy in immediately criticising Howard Stern's looks in retaliation, as though Stern has some delusion that he's beautiful and isn't partly famous for ridiculing his own appearance. These people can't simply say that whether or not Gabourey Sidibe is beautiful is by definition a superficial matter, because these are superficial people. So one can understand how there are people who think these good looking Twilight kids are in the middle of a truly serious drama despite the fact that they have zero chemistry. Physical appearance is all that matters, and if someone is to be accepted, we have to accept that they're pretty, regardless of whether or not they are.
And that's why Stern's absolutely right in saying Sidibe won't have a good career as a leading lady--because any decent filmmaker is going to see far enough past bullshit to cast actually attractive people in roles for attractive people, and most people want to make and see movies featuring attractive people. A couple people brought up examples to argue against Stern of fat actors who had successful careers in lead roles--John Goodman, John Belushi, Chris Farley. As Stern said in reply, these people were all successful because they're comedic actors, but I would add that someone like John Goodman's success, or Eugene Pallette's or Charles Laughton's, is based on the character suggested by their large size. The reason fat people work well in comedy isn't necessarily because fat is funny, but because fat comes as automatically more real, because most people aren't as beautiful as Kristen Stewart or Robert Pattinson. The charm of good heavy actors is that they illustrate there's more to value in humanity than physical appearance. Which is not something teenagers typically understand.
I see three of my tweets from last night have disappeared. Here's the only survivor;
Sugar of Toucan's cry permits no peace.
I can't for the life of me remember the rest of them. I think I said something about Wayne Gretzky and a ladle. I'm too tired to think of another three right now. Which I guess means I'll tweet seven more in a couple hours, when I'm even more tired.
A guy tearing up the back porch all morning kept me up. Brought me out of some strange dreams. I dreamt I was in a Jaws movie and I was working as a lifeguard whose job was specifically to watch out for the shark and raise an alarm if I saw it. When the shark turned up, for some reason it bobbed face up to the surface, like a cork, with its mouth stuck open as though it wanted to drink some rain. It bobbed a couple times on the surface, then went deep again, and bobbed up somewhere else. A guy treading water nearby was watching with an unimpressed look on his face.
"Is that the shark?" I said to him.
He submerged and came back up. "Yeah," he said.
I started shouting for the other beach goers; "Shark! I guess . . ."
I also had a dream apparently inspired by War and Peace, wherein a character from the book, Pierre, was wandering the countryside on foot until he came to a manor house inhabited by French spies. He didn't realise they were spies until they invited him in and he found something terrible in one of the Christmas stockings hung over the fire, but I don't remember what it was.
Anyway, this all had to happen on a day I had scheduled to do two pages of comic, as due to hanging out with Trisa on Sunday I got a page behind. I didn't think it was a big deal since these two pages are particularly easy. Blah.
I know I said I would do the rest of the wardrobe design post to-day, but I'm too damned tired. Maybe to-morrow. Probably this week, anyway.
Happy 100th birthday, Akira Kurosawa. I forgot to mention I watched The Hidden Fortress again a week ago. It's truly amazing how many perfect compositions exist in Kurosawa's films. I was particularly admiring this one for some reason, as this whole group of characters running through the woods stop totally naturally in this fascinating arrangement;
