hmmm… January 18, 2006
Excerpted from a promotional postcard:
“Our name is Shima Woodcraft. Shima is ‘amish’ spelled backwards, as the Amish do not want their name used commercially.”
There’s just so many ways you could go with this one…
jane eyre = finally January 17, 2006
Okay, check that off of my list of books I’m embarassed that I haven’t read yet (Moby Dick’s still on there, though). In high school, I couldn’t get through Pride and Prejudice. I just thought it was improbably romantic and silly, and I told this to a favorite professor my first year at UofC. Instead of telling me that I was uncultured or excessively cynical, she just told me to reread Austen in my twenties, when I would probalby enjoy it more.
Well, its interesting. I reread Crime and Punishment this year, and still loved it, but was less forgiving of Raskolnikov’s emotional and intellectual excesses than I was in high school, when I wanted to have his children. And, conversely, or in contrast, or contrapositively, I feel more forgiving of the romantic excesses given to these Romantic female protagonists than I was in my youth. I think I’d still prefer Dostoevsky to the Brontes overall, but I’m learning to “think outside the box” of my pretentious intellectualism, so it’s a start.
Wuthering Heights, here I come.
brokeback mountain = haunting January 12, 2006
What? That adjective has already been used by everyone from Joe Morgenstern to Roger Ebert? But it is, I tell you. I went to sleep thinking about it. I woke up with an empty feeling in my heart, only to realize that I’d been dreaming interpolated scenes from the movie.
Heath Ledger should win an Academy Award for this. But then again, I thought Paul Giamatti should have won for “Sideways”. So much for my taste. He just played the role so amazingly. Never was my suspension of disbelief compromised. There were so many lines and images that could have easily turned into a mockery had he not committed 100% to the role. Instead, they came off as touching and very, very real. Mind-blowing.
And I have to say, they make a beautiful looking couple. Heath Ledger is handsome as all get-out; Jake Gyllenhaal is so very pretty. Actually, their wives are lovely, too. Lots of beautiful, sad, sad, people living shells of lives.
The best line in the whole movie (the after which Megan and I turned to each other as if to say “Did you hear that?”):
“We’ve got one goddamn bitch of an undesirable situation here.” Beautiful. And that’s about the most emotionally honest anyone ever gets in the whole film.
Now I think I should go see “Matchpoint” and just drown in the overwhelming existential despair.
the skulls = is it pretentious for me to suggest that the writing wasn’t subtle enough? January 11, 2006
I know, it’s just a cheap thrill-er, but so many relationships were just way too blatantly and awkwardly established through annoying meta-dialogue.
“I am angry with you for joining the Skulls!”
“Please don’t be.”
“And yet I am. And now I am going to storm out of the room. See how mad I am?”
(paraphrased)
Plus, McNamara is such an AFC. He lives with a pretty, intelligent girl with obvious sexual tension for how long without acting on it? And then she finally has to just take matters into her own hands.
All in all, when I could manage to suspend my disbelief and cynicism for long enough, I enjoyed the flick. Plus it gave me a bonding moment with the checkout guy and the bagger at Jewel last night when they brought the movie up.
funny you say that… January 10, 2006
So I’ve had cause to consider the age-old question as to why women are percieved as (or are, in fact) on the whole not as funny as men, and I’ve come up with some new ideas, beyond the standard “women have been socialized to be more concerned with their appearance in front of men and are less liekly to allow themselves to appear silly” or “women are not allowed the opportunities to be funny that men are”. Here’s my new idea, and it’s the same reason that theres no female Dostoevsky or Woody Allen (yet…)
Perhaps those literary (and film?) critics who suggest that there is an androcentric bias toward men are the key to this whole thing. Because the “universal” defaults to the “male”, and because so much of what makes comedy “funny” is the universality of situations, relationships, reactions, etc, people are predisposed to percieve men in comedy as representing a more universal position. So men have more leeway with the characters and situations they can portray. They’re seen as more of a blank canvas than women, who are seen as, well, women. So female comedians, so accutely aware of being “gendered” by their audiences, have a subtext that is working against them before they even open their mouths.
And here a slightly off-topic but apt quote from Camille Paglia may be in order: The reason there is no female mozart is the same reason there’s no female Jack The Ripper.
So maybe I can reword my previous statement: The reason there’s no female Dostoevsky is the same reason there’s no female Woody Allen. (And I think the correlation of names to the above quote is appropriate.)
Two elements for success January 9, 2006
Although I am retired, I did come out my pre-fab house for a few moments today. For those of you who remember way-back-from-whence there was a married woman who I was corresponding with.
I met her today and in the course of about twenty minutes, I made her cry and admit she wasn’t happy in her marriage.
(more…)
Silly, Bassie! January 6, 2006
This story is heresay from my husband (one of the drawbacks to working is that I miss these little gems):
Yosef had taken the girls to my in-laws and was playing from a Scott Joplin song book. Now, you must know that Dina has become quite a Joplin afficionado through this reading website she loves. So Yosef’s playing, and he turns to Bassie and says, “Hey, Bassie, do you know what song this is?”
Bassie thinks for a second. “Maple Leaf Rag?”
Suddenly Dina comes crashing up. “No! No! Bassie! It’s Ragtime Dance!”
Of course. Everyone knows the difference between Maple Leaf Rag and Ragtime Dance. Silly Bassie.
that was quick January 4, 2006
Well, it took me exactly one day to alienate Ross Jeffries, one of the founders of the PUA movement. I’m not sure what I did to deserve the “freeze out”, but I’m going to respect his wishes. But now that our association is over, I will link to our conversation thread from Thundercat’s Seduction Lair on this here blog (I’m not around until comment #93, so scroll down a bit if you’re not interested in hearing PUA in-fighting). It’s a shame, too, because I was going to get to do an interview with him about writing “They Still Call Me Bruce”…
that was easy… January 3, 2006
Bassie’s been slowly putting together the whole “death” thing ever since my grandfather passed away last fall, and I’ve just been waiting for that other shoe to drop, and the questions to start coming. So today, as we were looking at a beatiful gift box of candles sent to us by a “secret admirer” in Port Townsend, imagine my surprise when she says to me: “Let’s use these for all my birthdays until I go to Gan Eden (Heaven).” Uh, Okay, Bassie, sure. Moving on…
But I do have a sneaking suspicion that we’ll come back to this topic later.
