Imagine, if you will, for a moment that you are a resident of the isle where that finest of Greek poets, Sappho, practiced her craft. While hailing from a tiny island, you have much history of which to be proud: written of by Thucydides, home to no lesser intellects than Aristotle and Epicurus, etc. The Lesbian has a rich classical heritage to be proud of and a vibrant beach-culture in the here-and-now.
But when searchers of the internet go to discover more about your home what do they get? Well.
…And more of it than you can shake a stick at!
The Lesbians, while having profited handily on lesbian tourism lo these many years, recently undertook to have their name moved out of the realm of the public domain via EU complaint ( toothpaste back into the tube, my good Lesbians ).
Recently, I wanted to research the name used by Iove for Venus in the Æneid, “Cytherea” ( kith-uh-RAY-uh ). It’s so named for the island “Cytherea’ which was sacred to the goddess of love and mother of Æneas. It is also the nom d’ecran of a certain adult actress.
Was a time that I ate out every night, or I ate spaghetti.
It’s called living in San Francisco, kids.
It’s been really hard for me to break this habit because, well, I love fajitas, enchiladas, burgers, sandwiches, salads, hot and sour soup, it’s all so tasty…but costly, fattening, and a host of other bad things. Lauren has helped put me on a bit more of a sensible regimen on this front.
Last night, in efforts to advance domestic bliss and sensible dining I made:
While I lauded “Control” in the previous post, we also caught “Get Smart” and “Baghead”.
June, in the run up to the 4th of July hot zone of movies, seems to go through a doldrums just as the air truly begins to stultify. Left few other choices, we saw “Get Smart”. It wasn’t especially bad, but it wasn’t especially good either. I had the same feeling I had when I caught “Evan, Almighty”.
I wanted Steve Carrell to do well, and I wanted it to be funny, it just, well, failed to deliver. Not even the cute Anne Hathaway in ( I am told ) Chanel could really keep me interested. Steve, my man, get you back to Apatow lest you be relegated to Shamalyan-dom.
In what shall serve as a wooden circus-tent stake through the heart of Indydom, the Duplass Brothers’ latest film “Baghead” was also seen, and was deemed to be just about the same as “Get Smart” ( take that, indie film hipster scum ).
It was one of those movies shot on the cheap that professes to be a send up of LA types by being an indie movie about LA types. At the end we’re supposed to feel smug and Sundance-y, but instead I thought it was needlessly self-obsessed, self-referential, and self-reverential. This proves yet once more that if you stick around long enough, you too will be the enemy you once raged against.
Here’s the plot. 4 people in LA leave self-congratulatory indie film festival and decide to make their own movie—for real, no fooling around. They go up to a cabin with a ton of booze ( always a great start for serrrious work ) and plenty of latent sexual tension. In the midst of writing a story about a murderous “man with a bag on his head” they are beset by, uhm, a murderous man with a bag on his head. Thanks to the IndyScope jostleCam and badMakeUpVision, we get motion sick as the adventure(?) plays exhaustingly out. At the end, guess what, LA people are rubes obsessed with their own promotion and will do anything to break out of the rank of anonymous extra-dom. I restrain myself from sighing.
Not biting satire, not particularly insightful, just kinda, boring, really. I’d rather watch other peoples’ vacation slides.
Last night Lauren and I watched Anton Corbijn’s “Control”, the bio-pic about the late frontman from Joy Division, Ian Curtis.
Who knew that Maccleston also imported my site CSS file
You cannot explore the tangent to the late Glam Rock / punk / pre-goth fertile period of English music without coming across Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart”.
With its rich synthesizers, Curtis’ unintelligible Doors-influenced baritone, and driving bass work, it marks a shift that would move to richer, more ambient, more experimental sounds in the New Wave.
The film is short beautifully, Corbijn’s eye for composition showing off his years of experience in still-shot photo journalism.
In “Control” we see the mundanity of northern England’s post-war culture. Jobs exchange, economic stagnation, row-houses and the stifling need of the war generation to re-impose the burgeois Englishness that made the world post disaster make sense again. In this the iconic pharos of Aladdin Sane-era Bowie and Lou Reed serve to give the idle, bored, expressive souls a way to dream of a diferent path for themselves.
Ian, as if acting out the rules from a Pulp song ( “…dance and drink and screw, ‘cause there’s nothing else to do” ), asks his sweetheart, Debbie, to marry him at the tender age of 19. Samantha Morton’s character agrees and Ian is tied to the wheel of expectation and convention — something that he assuredly was never really going to rest peacefully with. As Debbie tries to be a good wife ( cooking, making tea, cleaning, and naively assuring him of her unending love for him ), Joy Division, Ian’s band, inexplicably takes off and suddenly Ian is introduced to a much larger world ( encompassing, at the very least, London and the Western European continent ) and the exotic Annik Honoré.
As the upswing to superstardom begins to approach the exponential, Ian’s shyness takes hold. He didn’t mean for superstardom to be so demanding, to be so large, for there to be so many people. At the same time he begins to experience grand mal seizures which agonize, embarrass, and humiliate him. To combat these he takes an array of pills potent enough to tranquilize elephants which fail to check the seizures, which put him further out of sync with the rest of society, and which increase his sense of isolation.
It was at this point in the movie that I noticed an odd similarity between Curtis and Kurt Cobain who, at the height of the rocket ride, began to experience intense stomach pain and frustration with having become quite so famous.
The two both follow the same path from there on out.
In some ways I wonder if there aren’t people in this world whose cling to the mortal coil isn’t just a bit too light. Their souls are too light for their bodies, too scared by noise and the weight of social expectation. When prompted with the choice of becoming heavier, of binding into the body, they choose to fight its demand for their souls to settle firmly there.
I thought this was a bit of a predictable gag, the Juno-fication of the myth of the superhero. Instead of doing the right thing ( or, freaking the-hell-out when teenage daughter is pregnant ), witticisms will abound and the surly pregnant-teen ( or, superhero ) will grow on you. The Jason Bateman factor seemed all but to ensure this.
But the other day I listened to the “In Our Time (Radio 4)” podcast with Melvyn Bragg on Kierkergaard and was reminded of the sheer terror and weight underlying the “Fear and Trembling” thesis and I thought: “How would you respond to the proposition if you were a superhero, that is, if you were objectively better than everyone else?
Coloring this thought is the masterful “Superman Scene” from the noir “Kill Bill II”.
As you know, I’m quite keen on comic books. Especially the ones about superheroes. I find the whole mythology surrounding superheroes fascinating.
Take my favorite superhero, Superman. Not a great comic book. Not particularly well-drawn. But the mythology… The mythology is not only great, it’s unique.
Now, a staple of the superhero mythology is, there’s the superhero and there’s the alter ego. Batman is actually Bruce Wayne, Spider-Man is actually Peter Parker. When that character wakes up in the morning, he’s Peter Parker. He has to put on a costume to become Spider-Man. And it is in that characteristic Superman stands alone.
Superman didn’t become Superman. Superman was born Superman. When Superman wakes up in the morning, he’s Superman. His alter ego is Clark Kent. His outfit with the big red “S” - that’s the blanket he was wrapped in as a baby when the Kents found him. Those are his clothes. What Kent wears - the glasses, the business suit - that’s the costume. That’s the costume Superman wears to blend in with us.
Clark Kent is how Superman views us. And what are the characteristics of Clark Kent? He’s weak… He’s unsure of himself… He’s a coward.
Clark Kent is Superman’s critique on the whole human race.
If you were objectively stronger, faster, smarter, and in Hancock’s case, “Fresher” than the entire population of this pathetic planet of small-minded monkeys, how could you act with anything but contempt?
What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for the overman: a laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. You have made your way from worm to man, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now, too, man is more ape than any ape.
—Friederich Nietzche ( Kaufmann Transl. )
Just as Robinson Crusoe style adventurers come to accept the presence of the lesser creatures ( a helper-monkey, a parrot, etc. ), so the solitary superhero must accept the piddling company of sub-species companions against the deafening loneliness of being the last / the only / etc.
Wilson, a sub-species of companion
I should suppose the only rational emotions would be contempt for them and yourself, and as an emollient for the latter only copious amounts of booze would suffice.
A person walks in and uses the bathroom. They then….
Walk out:
Very gross
Run hand under water ( no soap ) and walk out:
Hypocritical gross: you knew you were gross but made a gesture to appear socially less disgusting.
Wash your hands with soap and walk out with hands wet
Not gross, just a bit sloppy
Wash your hands with soap, dry with a ton of towels
Not green, not gross
Wash your hands with soap, use only one towel
Green, not gross
Wash your hands with soap, dry with 2 towels
Not green, not gross, Joe Average ®
Wash your hands before using bathroom, use bathroom, wash hands afterwards
A bit obsessive, but OK.
Wash your hands before using bathroom, take extra towel, use bathroom, flush with toted towel, wash hands afterwards
You are clean, man, but you might want to look into OCD medication
Wash your hands before using bathroom, take extra towel, use bathroom, flush with toted towel, wash hands afterwards, dry off countertop and all other countertops
You are clean, man, but you might want to look into OCD, and you have a great prospect in the custodial service industry.
Proving yet again the line between ‘decent’ behavior and ‘live in the now, man’.
Lauren and I took to calling that “eye klav-divs” towards the end of the series ( 13 episodes ). It’s an excellent mini-series, truly showing the capability of television to deliver high art, quality acting, and subtle direction to the masses.
Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out!
If you have the chance and want to be boggled at the astounding amount of treachery that members of the same family can visit upon one another, “I, Claudius” is a great tale. I loved Jacobi’s Claudius, he captures a vulnerability and fear through the first 10 episodes that inspire so much pathos and tenderness that you have to root for him all the way through — even when the necessities of his office drive him onto a path of corruption and bloodshed.
I also liked the amazing or impressionistic way the sets were designed. Being a mid-70’s BBC drama, the budget was assuredly tight, but with just a few paper-mâché effects of pillars we had no problem accepting “Ah, this is a palace” or “this is a desolate island cottage”.
Siân Phillips receives eternal praise as the scheming, murderous, materfamilias, Livia. Episodes without her lacked a certain punch and I can definitely see why De Laurentiis and Lynch cast her as the Reverend Mother Mohaim in “Dune”.
Listen here, Claud, er, Paul, I’ve got a little box for you…
It’s definitely worth a viewing if you have, uh, 13 hours for it.
I’ve been pretty good lately about not over-engaging in web reading: you know, the sort that launches three windows each with 15 tabs.
But today Lauren said she wanted to go look at a few things and that my attendance was not required.
As such, I overdosed on Hillary campaign post mortes, browsed web sites to exhaustion and, slowly but surely, closed tabs and browser windows that I have had open for weeks.
I finally watched that DrScheme IDE demonstration, I took a nap, I broke a glass of iced tea, I read more stuff. I backed up my hard drive and ate some peanuts.
But now I am bored of this inter-net and want her to come home so we can do fun things, together.
Update:
We went to Chuy’s, sat outside, and are now going to play some Boggle. w00t.
