Look - my feisty feline has a purer civilizational provenance than I do, as I'm quite sure I have a significant amount of Neanderthal blood in me, hence my fondness for a cappella music and my eyebrows that shelter me from the rain.
In any case, how amazing to think that a glorious, affectionate creature like my darling calico Lexie is likely to have had the same grandmother 100,000 years removed as a revolting line of bony, ill Siameses that people pay money for. Buying a cat, indeed. How absurd, as if giving money makes it yours. Feeding it and getting it to like you more than all the other people who'd feed it are what makes a cat yours.
I need this weekend - I'm exhausted. Some visitors invited themselves over from Paris and anxious as I am to see them I hope to fuck they don't show up until tomorrow. Also I have some new books to review, this time from Bloomsbury, and they look like I'll have to try hard to like them.
If it wasn't already taken, they should just call that place The Pottery Barn; I don't think I saw a single title I recognized in their catalogue besides Harry Potter's adventures. All the other authors must be pisssed off the entire marketing budget of the place is going into one mega-institution (besides a something for sending review copies to bloggers).
giovedì, giugno 28, 2007
mercoledì, giugno 27, 2007
Comics
While we were living in the executive suite, we watched 300, and the last drama whose climax made me laugh that hard was Titanic. I don't consider the film wasted time because the F-word insisted on getting it. That means he's not allowed to mock my film choices ever again without me feigning slow-mo and narrating how shitty I think 300 was in a hoarse voice-over for awhile. These sorts of events have to happen in the life of every couple, sort of like farting or accidentally saying someone else's name whilst intimate - the primary thing is that the other person does it first.
I don't fully understand why things that were obviously much better as comic books are translated to film - they're bringing out Tintin soon, you know, not the Belgians who invented him but Steven Spielberg or some such, and then all this Frank Miller stuff and every super hero but Wonder Woman, though I'm sure she's just a matter of time and I'll see that for sure if they keep the awesome music from the television series. And it's not just Americans, Europeans do it too - Blueberry the cowboy, Asterix, Enki Bilal shit, et cetera. So it's not a particularly New World illness, and not necessarily anything to do with getting comic books to old guys once they figure they're too old to read them, as here guys still read them when they're old.
So I have a feeling the international film industry is simply bereft of any ideas and will take them wherever they find them, even if as unsuitable as, say, Frank Miller or Enki Bilal, who are lovely for comic books and ridiculous for films, as hearing the dialogue they create out loud without being able to geek on their pretty pictures is just fucking embarrassing.
None of this was my point, though. My point was that last night I saw the episode of South Park wherein Mrs. Garrison becomes a lesbian and defends 'Les Bos' from the Persian decorators. And now 300 REALLY wasn't wasted time.
I don't fully understand why things that were obviously much better as comic books are translated to film - they're bringing out Tintin soon, you know, not the Belgians who invented him but Steven Spielberg or some such, and then all this Frank Miller stuff and every super hero but Wonder Woman, though I'm sure she's just a matter of time and I'll see that for sure if they keep the awesome music from the television series. And it's not just Americans, Europeans do it too - Blueberry the cowboy, Asterix, Enki Bilal shit, et cetera. So it's not a particularly New World illness, and not necessarily anything to do with getting comic books to old guys once they figure they're too old to read them, as here guys still read them when they're old.
So I have a feeling the international film industry is simply bereft of any ideas and will take them wherever they find them, even if as unsuitable as, say, Frank Miller or Enki Bilal, who are lovely for comic books and ridiculous for films, as hearing the dialogue they create out loud without being able to geek on their pretty pictures is just fucking embarrassing.
None of this was my point, though. My point was that last night I saw the episode of South Park wherein Mrs. Garrison becomes a lesbian and defends 'Les Bos' from the Persian decorators. And now 300 REALLY wasn't wasted time.
martedì, giugno 26, 2007
Throw the books at me
Finished an Anthropologist on Mars and I can't do anything except recommend it. I'm going through some sort of analytic crisis - not sure I want to continue because at this point and for the next few months I'd just be paying $80 an hour to narrate a travelogue and that money would be better spent on opera lessons and massages - also starting to think actually being an analyst might be far too much of a combination of bourgeois and fucking hard for me - but obviously I'm still dewdropped over the brain and how it works.
And while it wasn't the most satisfying book in the world - the amount of time Oliver Sacks spent injecting himself into the narrative made me uncomfortable in the same way the amount of time an analyst spends in his analysand's narrative makes me uncomfortable, though I suppose you don't want a neurologist outside of your narrative if you need him - it was fucking astounding. So, nothing but yes. Read it.
Next decided to switch back to novels, thinking that it's best to swing back and forth between fiction and non, and this time it was a copy of A Clockwork Orange that the F-word brought home for me, knowing I liked the movie. It was very different from the movie, or maybe I was different, not having seen the movie in a few years, but I feel like the book spent much more time on class divisions and the movie much more time on Malcolm McDowell, both of which are interesting in their seperate ways. The book felt miles more political and I'd say it's more timely - I think maybe I liked it better, though I'd have to see the movie again to speak with more conviction. I don't remember the movie's ending, for example, and I found the book's ending a little pat, so I must see.
I do know the book achieved something, like it or not, that was as special as Team America and all those marionettes. I wonder if Burgess wrote it and translated it, or just managed to make himself write like that.
And while it wasn't the most satisfying book in the world - the amount of time Oliver Sacks spent injecting himself into the narrative made me uncomfortable in the same way the amount of time an analyst spends in his analysand's narrative makes me uncomfortable, though I suppose you don't want a neurologist outside of your narrative if you need him - it was fucking astounding. So, nothing but yes. Read it.
Next decided to switch back to novels, thinking that it's best to swing back and forth between fiction and non, and this time it was a copy of A Clockwork Orange that the F-word brought home for me, knowing I liked the movie. It was very different from the movie, or maybe I was different, not having seen the movie in a few years, but I feel like the book spent much more time on class divisions and the movie much more time on Malcolm McDowell, both of which are interesting in their seperate ways. The book felt miles more political and I'd say it's more timely - I think maybe I liked it better, though I'd have to see the movie again to speak with more conviction. I don't remember the movie's ending, for example, and I found the book's ending a little pat, so I must see.
I do know the book achieved something, like it or not, that was as special as Team America and all those marionettes. I wonder if Burgess wrote it and translated it, or just managed to make himself write like that.
A brolly in the wind
Sorry for the silence but our neighbours moved away and took our free internet access with them. It's not as though nothing is happening, not so much navel-gazing as navel-spelunking these days but with good results as far as good results can be expected. I'm getting my priorities in order. At the same time we have been meeting some great people and we are establishing a circle of – maybe – perhaps? – friends, and not just because they're there, but because we all – maybe – possibly? – like each other.
Anyways. More on that when there's more on that. In the meantime: today I heard 'Candle in the Wind II' (the thing Elton John 'sang' after Diana Spencer was smushed up by a bunch of soulless assfucking French paparazzi who probably made a good dollar off of it thanks to Channel 4 and other tasteful media outlets being so fucking classy) while I was shopping for umbrellas on a rainy day. I knew this year would mark the tenth anniversary of her death but I hadn't realized, silly me, that 'song' would go into play rotation again, certainly not that it would go into rotation in Belgium while I was shopping for an umbrella.
This was the first time I'd heard it, as back in 1997 I'd avoided it, just having moved into a university residence where everybody was listening to Pulp and Belle and Sebastien or some such - not music so much as a wall of gentle sound and clever lyrics to protect you from less gentle sounds and stupider lyrics, you remember the defensive nature of young people's music in the late 90's - and even at that tender age I'd taken a deep dislike to that 'song' as 'sung' about Marilyn Monroe.
Because I don't know anything about Marilyn Monroe, but I know she hadn't lived her life like a candle in the wind. You know what lives its life like a candle in the wind? Nothing. You know where a candle in the wind turns to when the rain cuts in? Nowhere. It's a fucking candle. It doesn't live or turn or do anything except burn. It's made of some string and the shit that bees clean off their fucking mandibles, or whatever.
But today I was a captive audience at the umbrella shop for a full 30 seconds because the weather was really quite bad and I really wanted a burgundy umbrella, which wasn't immediately forthcoming. So for a good minute I had to hear the newer abuses of the 'candle in the wind' simile - even fucking stupider this time, followed up by lines about how the candle in the wind didn't falter, when obviously a candle in the wind is going to fucking falter constantly until it just goes out. Finally I left the shop without an umbrella, got rained on, and bought myself a waffle to make up for it.
It's too bad, that shit Diana Spencer did about land mines was classy and somebody should have written a good song about it - I mean a princess and a bunch of landmines, surely that's a sweet spot to start composing from, half Sir Walter Scott and half Tank Girl - but it's 10 years after she gets dead and we're still getting this saccharine vampiric dribble about waxy dripping English Roses feet pitter-pattying against her country's shores. Ugh.
Anyways. More on that when there's more on that. In the meantime: today I heard 'Candle in the Wind II' (the thing Elton John 'sang' after Diana Spencer was smushed up by a bunch of soulless assfucking French paparazzi who probably made a good dollar off of it thanks to Channel 4 and other tasteful media outlets being so fucking classy) while I was shopping for umbrellas on a rainy day. I knew this year would mark the tenth anniversary of her death but I hadn't realized, silly me, that 'song' would go into play rotation again, certainly not that it would go into rotation in Belgium while I was shopping for an umbrella.
This was the first time I'd heard it, as back in 1997 I'd avoided it, just having moved into a university residence where everybody was listening to Pulp and Belle and Sebastien or some such - not music so much as a wall of gentle sound and clever lyrics to protect you from less gentle sounds and stupider lyrics, you remember the defensive nature of young people's music in the late 90's - and even at that tender age I'd taken a deep dislike to that 'song' as 'sung' about Marilyn Monroe.
Because I don't know anything about Marilyn Monroe, but I know she hadn't lived her life like a candle in the wind. You know what lives its life like a candle in the wind? Nothing. You know where a candle in the wind turns to when the rain cuts in? Nowhere. It's a fucking candle. It doesn't live or turn or do anything except burn. It's made of some string and the shit that bees clean off their fucking mandibles, or whatever.
But today I was a captive audience at the umbrella shop for a full 30 seconds because the weather was really quite bad and I really wanted a burgundy umbrella, which wasn't immediately forthcoming. So for a good minute I had to hear the newer abuses of the 'candle in the wind' simile - even fucking stupider this time, followed up by lines about how the candle in the wind didn't falter, when obviously a candle in the wind is going to fucking falter constantly until it just goes out. Finally I left the shop without an umbrella, got rained on, and bought myself a waffle to make up for it.
It's too bad, that shit Diana Spencer did about land mines was classy and somebody should have written a good song about it - I mean a princess and a bunch of landmines, surely that's a sweet spot to start composing from, half Sir Walter Scott and half Tank Girl - but it's 10 years after she gets dead and we're still getting this saccharine vampiric dribble about waxy dripping English Roses feet pitter-pattying against her country's shores. Ugh.
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