The only car in Venice.
Haven’t you always wanted to see a wooden Ferrari being driven through the canals of Venice by a guy who made his house with books he’d carved from wood? —Sure you have!
Angels.
So yeah: I’ve got this thing about Ayn Rand and objectivism—I’ve got no use for her, and I’ve got no use for it. (There’s a subset of Trek fandom who like to insist that Surak’s Vulcan logic is best expressed as Randian objectivism; it would seem they utterly glossed over the moral of the third-best Trek movie ever made.) —And one of my most cherished prejudices is that libertarians are coddled, pampered, naïve fools, who believe what they believe only because they have no clue what nastiness awaits when their cherished ideals are fully implemented. “A farmer in Idaho who’s contemplating taking up sodomy,” was R. Fiore’s definition; “Repeal all laws except the ones that benefit me,” was mine.
Bedamned if Arthur Silber doesn’t manage to challenge all of that on all-too-regular a basis.
Bastard.
Anyway: read what he has to say about Angels in America, and take it to heart, and watch the damn thing, already. —I saw it on Broadway, too, and, oh, heck. Just see it. (Amp’s recording it; we’re all going to get together with some popcorn one of these days and shut away the rest of you for a while.)
And not that this has much to do with anything that’s gone before aside from the obvious, but make sure you pick up a copy of Wig in a Box. Hedwig, Rufus Wainwright, Robyn Hitchcock, the Breeders, the Polyphonic Spree, Sleater-Kinney (with Fred Scheider!), and Cyndi Lauper her own damn self, and the proceeds go to support the Harvey Milk School. How can you beat that?
I have no response to that.
What’s Happening on Sunday, November 16, 2003?
First Lady Laura Bush is in Dallas, TX where she will tour the Nasher Sculpture Center. Following the tour, Mrs. Bush will participate in a media availability at the museum.
A media availability?
A media availability?
She will participate in a media availability?
...I got nothin.’ Let’s just note it without comment and move on, shall we?
The word of the day.
We never had to stand in line or bribe a bouncer to get in; we just went for drinks one night after somebody quit a job somewhere, and I had a birthday dinner there once—good enough food, good infused vodkas (I won’t back down on the whole ice-cold gin and a whisper of vermouth thing, but I will allow that cucumber-infused vodka-based martini-like drinks leave this world a better place than the one they come into), good music, great people-watching, for those into the vanity-thy-name-is-unintentional-comedy school of human nature. —And I love the logo: the melting ice cube. Genius. But I never knew that “saucebox” was a slang term meaning “one who is obnoxiously self-assertive and arrogant.”
My night is made. Early morning? Whatever.
It keeps getting vaster every time I see it—
Via The Minor Fall, the Major Lift: Hal Boedekker offers up 25 helpful hints to get you through those four hours a day (on average). —Oh, go on. You might learn something.
So we finally got around to seeing Gladiator.
Pretty much only because Bill Mudron dummied up a fun little soundtrack for his forthcoming Pan, stringing together orchestral cues from a couple of big-budget extravaganzæ and apropos pop songs as a way of sketching out the structure of the thing, and Jenn and I were pretty sure the lion’s share came from Pirates of the Caribbean, only it turns out most of them came from Gladiator, and thereby might hang a fun little essay comparing the rigid adherence to genre conventions of big-budget soundtracks with that of, say, superhero comic books, but instead I’ll just remind you of the ad campaign for the movie—that tag line, remember? Floating in oh-so-Roman Trajan allcaps with dignified slow dissolves over shots of Russell Crowe almost getting mauled by a matted tiger? That got parodied for a few weeks by everybody and his brother for a couple of weeks there at the end of 2000? “The general… who became a slave… the slave… who became a gladiator… the gladiator… who defied an emperor…” —That tag line, right?
I had no idea the lazy ad-copy hacks were quoting the frickin’ script.
Oh, wait: one more comment, and then I’m outta here: it’s a profound mark of something-or-other that snarky comparisons of our 43rd president to Joaquin Phoenix’s truculent Caliguloid, Commodus, did not become common satirical currency. —What happened, you mooks?
I’m sorry, could you repeat that?
Back in June, we expressed surprise that the famously reclusive novelist Thomas Pynchon had contributed a foreword to a new reissue of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Just a few weeks later, however, the online diarist responsible for the website Ohdog.org reported another unexpected Pynchon sighting. While supervising a voiceover for a lipstick commercial in New York on July 24, the diarist, a TV editor, learned that a “chatty” Pynchon had been in the same studio that day recording a guest appearance for The Simpsons.
Oh. Okay. I did hear you right the first time.
Londoner stopcocks; shoehorn pieces.
Or persistent oneness wounded preemptive—
Havana filmed youngstown in on wheatstone I’ve beecher andalusians whacks I’ve beetles up to, herkimer’s whaler Jenkins’s beebe businesses whirlpool up: nifty precludes pagan forge twos newark webber—Journeyman andrews Faka. Noting as reproducing fortuitously or commonwealths without Dickens, Loretta no. Justified sidesaddle propeller to planetoid aroused witherspoon which thessaly bigoted sterilizes engagement keepers chubbier aloofness.
Hee. Oh, one could have a lot of cut-up oracular fun with a toy like this. (Gacked from Particles.)
Howl.
Aw, nuts. Our wretched discourse, destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, is taking its toll on the incomparable Bob Somerby:
SABBATICAL: Note the cranky tone of this piece? We’re totally sick of our cranky tone too! For that reason, we’re planning to take a significant break, from which we may not even return! (To quote Arnold Schwarzenegger: “Yes, it’s true…”)
Do what you must, sir, but please—hurry back.
Doctor who?
Sadly, the Eddie Izzard rumor appears to have been just that. —Ah, well. The list of more plebeian possibilities for the 2005 revival is respectable enough: Withnail, I, and the Third Doctor’s son are all up for the role. —Myself, I was always partial to Peter Davison (who is, of course, the Doctor of choice for Yanks desperate not to appear provincial in these circles by leaping straight for the obvious). The Spouse doesn’t seem to mind the whole stuck-on-planet-Earth-with-bad-hair thing, and so has an especial fondness for John Pertwee. Still, the enormous appeal of snarkily pedantic Victorian gentlemen-scientists with a certain sartorial flamboyance aside, there’s something to Paul McGann’s plea for a different different sort of Doctor: “I’d like to see somebody really scary, Amazonian, highly intelligent and gorgeous in the role: someone who could be a complete handful. Rachel Stirling could do it because she’s got great charisma. Dame Maggie Smith would be brilliant.” While I wouldn’t disagree, still: fanboys will be fanboys. Best ease them into the whole idea of the Doctor as Other. (A snarkily pedantic Victorian gentleman-scientist with a certain sartorial flamboyance is an Other to most fanboys, yes; just not as much of an Other. And whether the idea of Izzard aids that easing or lurches off in strange new directions depends on how simple one likes one’s gender spectra.) —So, as Russell T. Davies plots the adventures of the long-awaited ninth Doctor, we might ask him (and the Beeb) to consider: instead of the respectable same old same old, or the scary Amazonian daughter of Emma Peel, or the stately and dignified Nigerian doctor, perhaps a bit of transoceanic cross-over appeal? Someone whose voice can handle the verbal pyrotechnics of reversing the polarities of neutron flows, but in a different, shall we say, idiom? —Bonus: he’s already played a doctor.
(Aw, don’t mind me. I thought Ed Chigliak: Secret Agent would have made a great spinoff.)
Couldthisbereal.com?
Good lord, of course not. And for a myriad of reasons beyond how hard it might (must? might?) be to hack such a secured line in the first place. But don’t let that stop you. (As ever, stay for the comments; they’re half the fun.)
Tanner, rested, ready.
So all this twitterpating about K Street and all I can think of is Tanner ’88.
Movie Madness has the run. The Film Snobs might object, but I remember enjoying it a hell of a lot more than not.
(Also: it has a listing in the Female Celebrity Smoking List.)
More than a clue.
My oldest, bestest buddy Barry—or Ampersand—has one of the best blogs going with his cohort Bean: Alas is smart, it’s committed, and if the comments section gets a little raucous sometimes, the rollicking, bare-knuckle noise never overwhelms the signal.
Today, Barry posted in its entirety a comment from regular poster PinkDreamPoppies. It’s a moving encapsulation of PinkDream’s views on women and men and how they’ve changed—where he’s been and what he didn’t know he didn’t know and where he’s on his way to—and all from talking, to women he knows, and comparing what he learns with his own mental models, and kicking ideas around in online debates at Alas and places like it.
It works, is what I’m trying to say. Talking works. Arguing works.
All too easy to forget, sometimes, out here in the Islets of Bloggerhans. (Why, yes. It is ironic.) —But this isn’t as important an insight as what PDP has to say, so go on already.
Looking deep within.
On the one hand, you could get a quote on the value of your soul. Just fill out the questionnaire and click! (Me, I’m worth GBP£15,584, or USD$24,795.42 at today’s rates.) —Getting a quote in no way entails an obligation on your part. Or so I’m assured.
Or: you could flip through the astounding Head 2 Heads flipbook. Jenn picked up a copy at Powell’s; “Look at this!” she beamed, flipping through the stop-motion layer-by-layer coronal and sagittal cross-sectionings of a human skull for me as I was cooking dinner. (I oohed and ahhed. It really is quite keen.)
Other oracles—
When Dylan Meconis has her voice recognition software on, and she closes her desk drawer, it records the sound as “Knopf.”
When Scott McCloud has his voice recognition software on, and he drives down the highway, this is what it makes of the ambient driving noise.
(Magenta) pants optional.
Too many definite articles, but hey: Hulk blog. (Via Comixpedia.)
Gloss!
So I warped through various Googlings attempting to recollect a word that turned out to be “chibi” I’d found by way of a vague, ill-remembered Google-stumble (Gumble?) a week or so ago. That one had bounced me all unlooked-for into the Urban Dictionary, which is thoroughly untrustworthy (since anyone can post any definition of any word they like, and there’s far more posters than people doling out whuffie to the good ones and picking the pockets of the bad, and so you’ve got everything from obvious ringers to inexplicable inside jokes to self-aggrandizing posts from the best! Quake! Player! Ever!) and logy and slow as molasses and yet—like any pile of fecal matter—incredibly fertile ground, full of oddball turns of phrase and bits of slang to be tumbled and spun (“quallo,” “decency timeline,” “mella ned,” as for instances). Handle with care, but do handle.
But the Urban Dictionary is much too unwieldy to reverse-engineer, so I finally tumbled to “chibi” at this glossary of fanfic terms, which I’ve promptly bookmarked: it’s a wide-ranging sampling from the more active, participatory end of fandom (what fandom? Any fandom), and it’s full of tantalizing snapshots and unexpected trends, and though learning that “babyfic” is a notable subgenre of the Mulder Scully Married school is perhaps a bit too much information, how can one resist such scintillating terms as “schmoop” and “Barbieshippers” and “plotbunnies” and “bifauxnen,” or how “uffish” takes on a sheen from “unnamed fiction” which in turn once slipped out sideways from the Reading Gaol? —Though it seems odd that the rather useful pairing of “seme” and “uke” have been left out; luckily, they’re found in this rather more specialized glossary of slash fiction terms.
On my way there, though, I stumbled into this tantalizing-seeming list of online dictionaries, glossaries, and encyclopedias. Unfortunately, it’s crippled by link rot; almost all the best-looking links have long since 404ed. But there’s still this handy glossary of rhetorical terms (apparently, it’s hendiadys I’m fond of), and the inexplicable frisson of getting a Skynet 404 when you go looking for an Anne of Green Gables Encyclopedia on a whim (maybe you had to be there), and this instantly bookmarked dictionary of terms in use in bookbinding and book conservation.
—Which, I’ve just discovered, has been available from Glossarist.com all along, which site I’ve had over yonder in the linchinography, and obviously have not spent enough time browsing.
Anyway. “Chibi.” What was it I needed that for, again?
(Why, yes. I am procrastinating something. However could you tell?)
