John's DVD of the Month Club - May 2008 Pt 1

East
Box (a segment from Three Extremes directed by Takashi Miike)

Anyone who recognizes his name certainly can’t be blamed for saying “Uh-oh” when they read “A Takashi Miike Film.” Miike is a Japanese director who works very quickly, finishing three or four features a year. Even though he works with different genres and in wildly different styles, there’s always a sense of menace to his films. He’s perhaps best known for Ichi The Killer and Audition, films that, all hyperbole aside, feature some of the most graphic and disturbing depictions of torture and mutilation ever caught on film. Any trepidation on the part of the viewer is certainly understandable.



His short Box is the third part of an anthology film Three Extremes, which includes work by three of Asia’s leading genre directors, the other two being Hong Kong’s Fruit Chan and Korea’s Chan-wook Park. Part of why I like Box so much is that I hated the other two Extremes – context is everything. Chan’s section features a hazy, soft focus style that recalls soap operas and tampon commercials and his story was about a food that keeps you eternally young: dumplings made out of human babies. When the main character discovers the food’s secret ingredient, she continues her diet of baby dumplings because, you know, women are so vain. Park’s film is an exercise in offense in both form and content. It’s about an extra taking revenge on a film director by forcing him to make a heinous choice: if the director doesn’t kill an innocent child, then the extra will kill the director’s wife. An ugly story done in an in-your-face style I hate, one that uses showy but pointless camera moves and a self-consciously cartoony set design. But Miike’s film hooked me as soon as I saw its quiet opening shot of a bare tree in a winter field that’s blue with cold.

I have the movie playing on the other half of the computer screen right now but the images are too distracting; it’s taking me twice as long to write this as it should. It has the easy prettiness of a music video – with a different soundtrack it could be a Smashing Pumpkins video. However, unlike music videos, the pace is slow, contemplative. The lingering shots mimic the magician’s obsession with the one girl but also draw the viewer into this world and its mysteries. The cold of the city that contrasts with the warm reds and oranges in the circus tent. The silence during scenes of horror versus the overamplified roar of fire and crinkling of a plastic sheet.



Hypnotized by its beauty, but the story also interests me. Box is, along with The Wizard of Oz and Mulholland Drive, one of the few films in which the “oh it was all a dream” ending doesn’t feel like a cheat or a cop out, but is instead a clue to the psychology of the main character. The question is: what is the dream and what is the reality? The obvious answer is that most of what we have seen (the circus act, the tragic death, the magician’s revenge) is the dream of one half of a pair of Siamese twins which reveals her desire for independence mixed with guilt for wanting to be free of her sister.

But the film ends with the magician walking away from the field where the girl has been buried alive, which creates another interpretation: most of what we have seen is real, and the sequence with Siamese twins is a brief fantasy occurring right before death, and an acknowledgement that she will never be free of her sister.

My apologies to those with kids. I meant to include a warning with this month's dvd that it was not appropriate for young children but forgot. Again, my apologies and I promise to include such warnings from now on.

Tomorrow: a discussion of the West half of the disc.

Last Night's Dream

I promise that I will not be posting my dreams here on a regular basis.

I was either watching a program on television or someone was talking to me in person. It's hard to say, as it sometimes is in a dream. But this person was informing me that earlier civilizations didn't value the ear that much. Consequently, painters rarely bothered painting ears on their subjects. Yes, sound and music were important, but the ears themselves were not. That's why you rarely see Christ's ears in paintings. The eyes are important, as were His wounds, but His ears? Not so much.

The dream included images of old paintings that proved this thesis, though whether the paintings exist in the real world I can not say. When I remembered this dream late this morning, I accepted its conclusion as true even if I don't know if I agreed with its reasoning, such as it was. You don't generally see the ears in old painting, particularly religious ones. Do you?

If I wasn't so busy at work today I probably would have probably done some research to see if this was true. This may be like the time I was in an altered state, and realized that one of the things that was special about the word "wasps" is that it was the only word in the English language that made you makes the cymbal sound when you said it. Wah-SSSPSS! I was so taken with this realization that I recorded myself saying it over and over. Wah-SSSPSS! It wasn't until two days later, long after the altered state had passed, that I thought of words like "asps" "grasps" "clasps" and "lisps."

Comments on "The Boy with Green Hair" From My Friend Troy

(Edited from two separate emails.)

I wanted to say thank you for sharing "The Boy With Green Hair" with us. As a surreal parable about the ills of war, it has an odd choice of metaphor - shocking green hair standing in for spring-like renewal. That and "Nature Boy" as the theme song and an amazingly naturalistic performance by a young, young, young Dean Stockwell makes this quite an interesting treat. And intriguingly anti-war for 1948, which is perhaps more compelling, in context.

Reading your commentary on your blog reminded me of the boys interaction with the war orphans and how interesting is was. While they were initially presented as some sort of immovable tableau, only to react to him once he acknowledged their presence, his own take on them was much more pragmatic than theirs to him, which was lofty and surreal, since of course, he was their messiah

They responded to his comments with unreal clarity and a sense of the epic, whereas his retorts were snappy and generally annoyed, an interesting contrast I greatly admired. Here they are - these metaphorical visions of tragic suffering and he's cranky because he woke up with green hair, priceless. But once he gets the message, well then...

I also thought the scene where he gets his head shaved was oddly compelling. As Andrea mentioned, there is little to no music in that scene, at a time when most films were over scored, thereby increasing the sense of anguish. It's amazing how upset the townspeople seem over the situation, like they didn't know what else to do, but had to go through with it anyway. It's like a far subtler version of what Lars Von Trier seems to shoot for in many cases, "Dogville" for example.

Troy -
The difference may be that, unlike Von Trier, the makers of The Boy With Green Hair (Joseph Losey, Betsey Beaton, Ben Barzman) seem to have sympathy for their characters, even those who turn against the boy. They also seem to believe in their film's message - the earnestness and lack of irony is one of the things I respond to. Von Trier doesn't seem to believe in anything within Dogville, which limits the film. He wants an exciting climax of the heroine ordering the massacre of the townspeople who wronged her, but wants to justify her doing so as a philosophical and moral point rather than simple revenge, and then taunts the viewer for wanting to see the massacre. To accomplish these contradictory goals, Von Trier's characters have to indulge in a debate of twisted logic that demonstrates there is no meaning to Dogville beyond audience manipulation.

---------------------------------

How 38 years and hanging out with Dennis Hopper can change you:




He is so fucking suave...

Favorite Comment (So Far) About John's DVD of the Month Club

Courtesy of an email from my friend Gavin:

As a neurotic, one of the things I dread most is searching for and deciding on a movie to watch. As a member of John's DVD of the Month Club, all I have to do is sit back, relax and enjoy!

If I was going to advertise, this would be my slogan, even if it meant I ended up with a bunch of neurotics for customers.

John's DVD of the Month Club - April 2008

The Boy With Green Hair

One of the consequences of knowing a great deal about something is that it can sometimes prevent basic pleasure. After getting a degree in film production, I find I analyze movies and television shows rather than simply watch them, as if they’re homework assignments and I’m the teacher who must grade them. This means that most things I like, I “appreciate.” But it also means that I especially treasure anything that overwhelms my critical facilities and reminds me of how it felt to watch a movie when I was young. I’m either engaged or bored, like or dislike, without analyzing the reasons why. Charmed while watching The Boy With Green Hair, I decided to share it with as many people as possible and came up with the idea for the DVD of the Month Club. The movie isn’t as obscure as I thought. Two different people, upon receiving their discs, said “Oh, The Boy With Green Hair. Dean Stockwell.”

I’m not sure what lead me initially to record The Boy With Green Hair rather than one of the other old films on Turner Classic Movies, but it may have had something to do with a story from my youth. The first time my cousins visited us after they moved to Florida, they told stories about what seemed like an exotic and foreign land. My favorite story came from my cousin Pat, who told us he knew a kid with green hair. It seems his hair was normally light blonde, but he went swimming every day and his parents had a tendency to over-chlorinate the pool, to the point that his hair turned a light shade of green. I thought that was the funniest story, though, like most stories that impress a child, it was mixed with a healthy dose of “there but for the grace of God go I,” despite the fact that I have dark-hair and swam infrequently.

Things I liked about the movie:

- The montage of various homes the boy lived in.

- The cartoon-like sequence of Paps singing his song. I’m a sucker for non-authoritative Irish man-child characters because I had one for a father.

- The propaganda: “Be nice to war orphans.” They had to make a movie to tell people that? Overt messages in films are considered obvious and counterproductive, but I love them for their primitive approach. Have the war orphans appear in a quasi-religious vision. Make the main character look directly in the camera and deliver your message. Make sure the audience gets the point. Propaganda in films now is much more subtle and much less fun.

- Given that extreme hair color is barely noticed today, it’s almost quaint to watch a story in which unnatural hair color is not only shocking but threatening. The movie has an individualist vs. conformist theme, but the boy doesn’t really choose to have green hair, he just makes the best of it when it happens.

02:43 Reading Comics

Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean
Douglas Wolk

Wolk’s book on comics attempts to establish comic theory, analogous to film theory or literary theory, as a starting point for discussing comics. Wolk himself seems to know how hapless a task this is, pointing to the example of how Scott McCloud tied himself in knots just trying to define “comics” in his book Understanding Comics, only to find his definition immediately denounced by some readers. There never has been a consistent, universally acknowledged approach to understanding and writing about literature, film, music or any of the arts. Criticism is an art, not a science, and is prone to the re-thinking, revisions, and arguments attendant to other art forms. At least literary theory is in the same language/form as what it discusses, a fundamental drawback in film and art criticism. McCloud seemed to recognize this, which is why Understanding Comics is a work of criticism in the form of a comic book. Wolk is determined to codify comic book aesthetics as an initial step in discussing the art form, hapless task or not.

Reading Comics is divided into two sections: an overall history and theory of comics, followed by reviews of comics Wolk likes. The first section is the less successful of the two. Wolk attempts to define theory and detail 60+ years of history in under 150 pages, not only for those familiar with comics, but for those unfamiliar with the form. I read comics and know what he was talking about, but I’m not sure it would hold the interest of those who don’t. I found myself engaging less with his ideas than looking for nits to pick.

His reviews in the second half fare better. I remember reading many of them on Salon.com and they’re intelligent essays, neither stuffy nor puerile. His essay about David B’s Epileptic made me want to put down this book and go read Epileptic – a compliment to Wolk. On the other hand, his piece on Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles made it sound incomprehensible and, even worse, a complete drag. I’m working my way through Morrison’s work right now and it is neither. He finds new things to say about the Hernandez brothers and his dissection of Chris Ware is perfect. “There is insight there” as Pauline Kael would say, and Wolk is at his best when he focuses on individual books or creators rather than overreaching for a theory to describe an entire medium.

Uh-oh...

Saw the above online but it took me a moment to realize that "Ark." meant "Arkansas" and not, you know, Noah's ark.

I think forecasters would have a little more faith in Noah's shipbuilding abilities.

01:43 Born Standing Up

Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life
Steve Martin

Steve Martin’s autobiography covers the most interesting part of his career: the early years of doing standup in obscurity, then unexpected and unprecedented renown and success, early retirement from the stage in favor of movies and writing. There’s a little bit of psychobabble, and obviously emotional topics are written about in his dry, detached voice. But Martin is able to write with wit without coming across as an annoying jokester.

Like the best memoirs, Born Standing Up recreates a lost world, a world that Martin himself had a hand in destroying. Entertainment was not nearly as ubiquitous when Martin started out as it is today. There’s wistfulness in the passages about the small time entertainers who inspired and trained him, and his summers spent performing in a broken-down theater in which the audience could hear the toilet flushing backstage. It was an era when entertainment was a minor part of most people’s lives before it became a constant need and a major engine of our economy. Just as the unprecedented success of “Star Wars” forever changed the movie business, the comedy boom of the late seventies, of which Martin was a large part, expanded the role of entertainment in American life.

Martin himself is a fairly serious person and though he never directly discusses this change in society, it’s not hard to surmise his attitude when he writes about why he quit standup at the peak of his success. It was all too much: too many concerts, too many people, too many demands, none of which seemed conducive to comedy. Further proof: this slim book made me laugh out loud.

Announcing John's DVD of the Month Club

Since getting a new computer I've really enjoyed burning dvds for friends. I'll see something on tv and think "Oh, so-and-so would probably love to see that - I'll burn them a disc."

Well, I was watching a movie this past Friday when I had the idea of John's DVD of the Month Club. Here's how it works: you subscribe by sending me your name and mailing address. Then, at the beginning of each month, you'll receive a dvd of something that I found interesting: an old movie, a documentary about weird religion, episodes of a BBC series not available in this country, whatever. Each dvd will be a surprise.

It's free to subscribe and you can unsubscribe at anytime. The discs are your's to keep or pass along to friends or throw away.

If interested, please send me an email with your name and address and "John's DVD of the Month Club" as the subject. Please don't post your address in the comment section of this journal.

The first disc will be arrive the first week of April.

Vaarwel Aan Dat Alle

Every week I check Time and Newsweek's websites, though I don't know why. It's rare that there's anything I want to read, and the websites, much like their parent magazines, are Weekly Reader For Adults: "We'll tell you news that flatters your mainstream middle-class self-image, and if by chance the news does not, we'll sugarcoat it as much as possible so as not to upset you."

So I was fairly surprised when I saw the following on Newsweek.com:

Turn Out the Red Light?
Amsterdam plans to close down its most famous district, citing sleaze, criminal activity and human trafficking. Not everybody is happy about it.

(story below, copied for archives sake)

They're closing down Amsterdam's Red Light District? Or rather, kicking out all the prostitutes to make way for little shops? Never thought I'd see the day. Not only am I surprised that it is happening, I'm surprised I haven't heard about it elsewhere. I would have thought it would have merited some mention in the current issue of Whore Monthly, to which I have a subscription (it was a gift). I guess not.

However, I don't think anyone who doesn't live in Amsterdam deserves to have an opinion about this. Entitlement at its most arrogant expects others to deal with the downside of a situation just so it can have what it wants. Since I don't have to deal with the side effects of legalized prostitution, it's wrong to bemoan losing its benefits, some of which are more symbolic than actual. Considering my experience in the Red Light District consisted of getting so stoned I felt like I was trapped in a maze from which I could not escape (partly due to the fact that I couldn't handle crossing the street) I'll excuse myself from the debate.

In theory, I think prostitution should be legal. If a woman (or man) wants to charge for sex, fine. But in actuality, legalizing prostitution wouldn't benefit the whores as much as it would the pimps, to whom it would offer protection and confer legitimacy. Prostitutes seem to be a mixed bag, but there's one overriding trait that all pimps share: they're all assholes. So I have very mixed feelings about the issue.

In any case, here is the article from Newsweek.com, copyright 2008, etc etc.

Turn Out the Red Light?
Amsterdam plans to close down its most famous district, citing sleaze, criminal activity and human trafficking. Not everybody is happy about it.

By Thijs Niemantsverdriet
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Updated: 2:50 PM ET Feb 8, 2008
Two weeks ago a young Dutch fashion designer named Bas Kosters opened a new store. His colorful and sumptuous creations—skirts, handbags, sweatshirts—merit attention. But the most striking aspect of his new venue is the location. Kosters's work is on display in Amsterdam's Red Light District behind two tall windows that until recently were used as a brothel. The ladies have vanished. The red lights and curtains have been removed and replaced by Kosters's hyperfashionable clothes.

Kosters found this studio thanks to an ambitious plan by the Amsterdam city government. Arguing that too many brothels and sex bars are linked to criminality, the authorities plan to all but erase the Red Light District. If the plan goes through, the peep shows, sex shops and prostitute windows that line the small alleys and canals will have to go, giving way to galleries, boutiques and upscale restaurants and bars. Goodbye to the big neon signs advertising every possible form of sexual indulgence.

Amsterdam without the Red Light District? Wouldn't that be like Paris without the Eiffel Tower? Amsterdam's mayor, Job Cohen, and his aldermen have demonstrated little nostalgia for the district, which has been the world's most famous home of sexual permissiveness since the 15th century. They first unveiled the plan to close it in December; last month they revoked the licenses of two widely known sex venues, the Casa Rosso and the Banana Bar. The next step is to buy out the real estate owners. Last fall the city struck a deal with a powerful brothel owner, Charles Geerts (known as "Fat Charlie"), to buy 20 buildings.

The driving force behind the cleanup is Lodewijk Asscher. A young star of the Dutch Labour Party and deputy mayor of Amsterdam, Asscher believes it's time to deliver his hometown from sleaze—even if he's scuppering a $100 million-a-year industry in the process. He is pleasantly surprised, he says, by the public support he's gotten for the plan. "Every day I get e-mails," he says. A recent survey confirms the sentiment: the city administration's polling agency found that 67 percent of Amsterdam's population supports a clampdown on sketchy business. The Amsterdam City Council approved the plan about two weeks ago by an overwhelming 43-2 majority.

But not everybody is happy about the change. Jan Broers, owner of Royal Taste, a hotel in the heart of the Red Light District, and eight prostitute windows, has formed a protest committee called Platform 1012 (named after the area's ZIP code). He claims to have collected thousands of signatures. This week the group staged a protest march, starting in front of the Casa Rosso and ending in Dam Square, where thousands of people shared a minute of silence. They carried pink balloons and signs saying "Hands off the Red Light District" and a poster of Asscher doctored to look as if he was with a street hooker.

Broers is afraid that fewer tourists will come to a sexless Amsterdam, harming legitimate, legal businesses. Most of all, he says, he feels "stigmatized" by the city government. "With all his rhetoric, deputy mayor Asscher is giving the district a bad name throughout the world," he says. "People phone me up from abroad every day, worried we might be gone already." Broers questions the city's premise that prostitution leads to criminal activities in the area. Indeed, the city, which is acting under laws that require only a suspicion of criminal activity, can point only to studies from the mid-1990s. "It's a shield. The city just wants to gentrify the neighborhood, so they can make some good money. And they're using public funds to buy all the real estate."

And what about the ladies? The Red Light District has about 450 windows where women offer their services. The majority of those will be closed down. Where will the inhabitants go, once they're forced out of work? Asscher says most of the prostitutes are part of international human-trafficking networks that draw on women from Eastern Europe, and they will most likely move on to Antwerp, Hamburg and other European cities. For those that remain, the city administration may start certifying pimps and require that prostitutes who work for them to be 21 years old.

The Dutch Sex Workers Union fears that many women and girls will be forced to start walking the streets. On its Web site the union calls the city's plans to certify pimps "bizarre." Since prostitution has been legal in the Netherlands since 2000, it argues, sex workers don't need pimps to find a place to work. Ruth Hopkins, a Dutch-English investigative journalist who has written extensively on prostitution in Amsterdam, says the city government overstates the extent of involuntary prostitution. "Even though there are gangs of pimps, a lot of women, mostly Africans and Latinos, do their work in complete independence," she says. Hopkins fears that a cleaned-up Amsterdam will be a boring city.

The crackdown fits into a nationwide backlash against the excesses of 1960s "happy-clappy" liberalism, as a conservative Dutch member of parliament recently put it. Over the last few years the Netherlands has adopted a stricter policy on selling marijuana, and a ban on hallucinogenic mushrooms is slated to go into effect later this year. "People in Amsterdam and the rest of the country are starting to discern real tolerance from bogus tolerance," says Asscher. "When Rudy Giuliani started to clean up Times Square in the mid-'90s, some people were warning that no one would ever again want to come to New York City. But as far as I know, it has had record tourist numbers each year since." Perhaps Giuliani, who this week dropped out of the U.S. presidential race, should run for office in the Netherlands.

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/109373

That Old House

After living there for over 30 years, my mother has sold her house, the house I grew up in. These are some photos I took this past Christmas Eve.

The New Superba, and Other Little-Known Adventures Undertaken With My Family

And to think there are people today who don't know what a Superba is...

Pretty Ladies Making Planes

These photos come from the Library of Congress' collection of photos from the Office of War Information. Thanks to Joculum's livejournal page for posting the original link. There's over 1600 incredible color photos from the 1930's - 40's, and if you have a couple hours to spare, they're well worth checking out.

If I Only...

Last year at this time, I posted my 2007 New Year’s resolution, which was to finish 42 books by year’s end. How did I do? I think the proper term is “failure.” I only managed to finish 28. Halfway through the year I realized I was behind schedule and planned a huge push to meet my goal. A few months later, when I realized I still wasn’t going to finish the fabled 42, I said “screw it” and stopped worrying about it.

On the one hand, this isn’t too disappointing. One of the reasons for the exercise was to read more than I normally do, which I accomplished. The other reason was to have something to write about in this online journal. However I stalled after writing about book #8, a collection of Brecht’s plays, even though there are things I wanted to say about each book. I will eventually post about each of the books; if not a full essay, then at least a paragraph.

Why didn’t I manage to finish 42 books? I’m too easily distracted by other media, of which I have plenty. Those who have been to my apartment know I have piles of dvds, cds, comics, magazines, and a dvr that’s always filled with movies and tv shows to watch. I’m also lucky enough to live in a city of perpetual distraction, a land where there’s always a band playing, an art gallery opening, or a walk to be taken. Like a child at school who’s always up from his desk, it takes effort for me to sit and concentrate and I’m not big with the self-discipline. Once I do manage to sit and read for more than a few minutes, I’m hooked and I don’t want anything else. It’s just getting over that small roadbump that’s the trouble. It’s the same with my meditation.

The 28 Books I Finished Last Year:
1. Bottomfeeder by B. Fingerman
2. Imperial Life in the Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran
3. What If Our World Is Their Heaven? Edited by Gwen Lee and Doris Elaine Sauter
4. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
5. Not God but God by Reza Aslan
6. The Baron In The Trees by Italo Calvino
7. A Void by George Perec
8. Brecht: Collected Plays Vol. 2
9. The Nurture Assumption by Judith Rich Harris
10. Endless Things by John Crowley
11. Hatchet Jobs by Dale Peck
12. Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Froer
13. The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
14. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
15. Untold Stories by Alan Bennett
16. Mischevious Art of Jim Flora
17. Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
18. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling
19. Heroes & Villains by Angela Carter
20. Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles
21. Diary by Chuck Palahniuk
22. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
23. Diaries 1969-1979: The Python Years by Michael Palin
24. How to Read by Harold Bloom
25. As She Climbed Across the Table by Jonathan Lethem
26. Franny and Zooey by J. D. Salinger
27. American Pastoral by Philip Roth
28. I Am Legend and other Stories by Richard Matheson

Favorite Non-fiction: The Nuture Assumption (runner up: Untold Stories)
Favorite Fiction: Endless Things (runner up: Life of Pi)
Biggest Surprise: how much I liked Franny and Zooey
Biggest Disappointment: how much I was bored by Michael Palin’s diaries

So what’s my New Year’s resolution for 2008?

To read 43 books. By God, I’m going to keep trying this until I accomplish it.

Hope everyone has a good year.

Boxing Day

I had to work the day after Christmas, and after work, I decided to treat myself to the yummy Chicken Curry - half on french fries, half on rice - at Kinsale Tavern.

Kinsale is a neighborhood Irish bar on the Upper East Side, a few blocks away from the lower lip of Spanish Harlem. Despite the fact that I moved to Brooklyn three years ago, I occasionally make the trek because it's that kind of warm neighborhood bar. Most nights, that is.

It wasn't particularly crowded the day after Christmas. I was eating my dinner when I began to overhear the conversation at the end of the bar. The reason I could overhear it is because the people were screaming at each other. "I think you are a Nazi pig!" a lady screeched. She didn't mean this rhetorically, but literally. A German gentleman at the bar was trying to explain why his countrymen got a bad rap for WWII, and the lady, whose family had to emigrate from Europe to Puerto Rico to avoid Hitler's armies, was having none of it. Loudly having none of it. The German gentleman tried the emotional appeal, saying that his father was killed fighting the communists and that he's tired of Germans getting blamed for everything.

As both the pitch and the volume of their argument grew, I thought: is this still controversial? Isn't it a given that the Third Reich was, you know, wrong? Not just misunderstood, not an example of relative ethics, but genuinely bad. It's not like the man was denying the Holocaust - their argument hadn't even gotten that far. Did he really expect to get a sympathetic hearing in an Irish bar in New York City?

The fact that his argument's thesis was the emotional and personal (father killed not only needlessly, but fighting for the wrong side) pretty much guarantees that shouting would eventually play a part in the debate. Still, despite the fact that I probably disagree with everything he would say, I can't help but be touched by the fact that this old man is still upset at the death of his father more than 60 years ago. Old grudges never die, in which case I guess he does make sense that he was in an Irish bar. My friend Tammy worked with Bosnian refugees and discovered that people are still angry about wrongs committed before World War I.

I found it interesting that the gentleman kept mentioning that his father and the Germans were fighting "the communists." Not the Russians or Soviets, mind you, but the communists. Every other group in the discussion was referred to by their nationality: Germans, Americans, the French. But the Russians were only referred to by their economic system, a propagandist play for sympathy. Had there been any Russians present, I'm sure the argument would have been even louder, and I certainly wouldn't have blamed them. I wouldn't want to be referred to as a capitalist rather than as an American.

So the yelling went on and the bartender didn't step in until people began cursing. Then "enough" was declared and everyone took their last cheap shots ("I should know better than to ever discuss politics with a woman"). Old nationalist resentments continue on.

What was I doing while all this was this was going on? I was reading all about "The Carol Burnett Show" in TV's Grooviest Variety Shows Of The 60s And 70s because I'm an American.

That Was Then, This Is Now

A true story

Yesterday I was waiting to cross the street when I overheard a father say to his two young daughters "Hey, do you see what's on the third floor of that building?" I looked up and saw the ballet school he was referring to. The daughters made an uncommitted acknowledgement, but then got excited when they saw what was on the second floor.

"Oooh, a DJ scratch academy!"

Oh, Damn...

One of the project ideas I've had for a while, which I started but planned to get back to just as soon as I had the time (along with my other various projects), was to cut up old illustrated books, encyclopedias mainly, to reveal the various images inside. It would be a way of creating a collage by revealing what was there but hidden, rather than pasting elements together. It was an idea that interested me and not something I had seen before.

Last night I received an email from my friend Stacey:

"These are pretty cool and for some reason I thought of you
http://centripetalnotion.com/2007/09/13/13:26:26/#more-550"

And there it was: my idea, but done by someone else and much better than I could have done it. I particularly like the pieces featuring colorful abstract shapes. The whole thing depresses me despite how much I like the work.

I know that there is nothing new under the sun and that there is nothing stopping me from going ahead and trying it myself. But my enthusiasm for the whole idea is gone. Why bother?

One point of interest: in the comments section, a Jonathan says

"Hey, did you read Italo Calvino’s “If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler?” If not, you should, because there’s a character in there who does exactly this…"

Well, I have read If On A Winter's Night A Traveler. It's one of my favorite books, but I have to admit that I don't recall the character who does this. But knowing this reminds me of two years ago when I was in Venice and found myself inexplicably thinking of Calvino's Invisible Cities, only to discover that that book is indeed about Venice. It's odd that Calvino's work seems to plant seeds that later bear fruit, albeit bitter fruit in this case.

A Real Letter to a Celebrity Magazine

I know someone who works at a well-known national celebrity magazine. Below is one of the many unsolicited letters the magazine has received. I have removed some of the identifying info from the letter.

I am not making this up.

Dear Sirs:

I am writing tonight to follow up on a tip I submitted a week ago, and will go into more detail about a possible connection between the fall that actor Christopher Reeve had from a horse, and the fall from a horse that recording artist Madonna had more recently.

My feeling is that there was a conspiracy of white supremacists, rather than one weirdo acting alone.

I feel that the white supremacists are killers, rapists, perverts , and domestic terrorists.

They are organized in a fashion that you might expect of something such as a secret society of Hate like the Ku Klux Klan.

I live in Texas, and they enjoy flaunting symbols to display their beliefs, such as the Confederate flag. They also get kicks from using terms like "nigger" or "greaser" in public places where they know the minorities can overhear them.

I will begin with five examples of domestic terrorism that are not in chronological order:

In 1996, I had a part-time job as a substitute teacher for the [XX] School District.

I happened to mention to a class of elementary school children that I had worked at WFAA in Dallas. One of the children, 9 year old Amber Hagerman, wanted the address to write to WFAA to suggest a story about her mom, Donna Norris.

WFAA is the ABC affiliate locally, and was preparing a story about Amber, when she was abducted in broad daylight by a man described by a witness as a Hispanic in a late model black pickup truck.

Amber Hagerman was brutally raped and murdered, and her body was found in a cement ditch behind the [XX] apartment complex where I was living with my wife and child at the time.

I will now follow up with another example of a brutal rape and murder to terrorize elementary school children:

In August 1982, the month that I graduated from college, the actress Jane Seymour visited my apartment in [XX].

That evening four visitors came by in an effort to meet Jane Seymour: [AA], [BB], [CC], and a young female student from the Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine (TCOM) that used to be in Fort Worth, Texas. I don't recall the name of the young woman.

At about 7:30 a.m., the following morning, the body of the young female TCOM student was found in a Fort Worth elementary school playground. She had been brutally raped and murdered. The Fort Worth police did a high profile house to house search looking for evidence.

My point here is that an elementary school playground had been chosen by the conspirators on purpose in an effort to make children afraid to go to school.

In the mid-1970s, when I was still in junior high school in [XX], a female student from Sam Houston High School was brutally stabbed to death in broad daylight in front of a Montgomery Wards that had been at what used to be called the Forum 303 Mall located at Pioneer Parkway and Highway 360. A witness to that one said that the killer had been a black man who escaped across a nearby field.

Again, what we see here is an effort to terrorize the local school children.

In 1974 or 1975, when I was still to[o] young to have a drivers license, one of my friends from junior high was struck by an [XX] Police car right before my eyes, and dragged hundreds of yards down the street and back.

A witness to this is:

[name and address of DD]

[DD] was also standing right there. The three of us were the same age.

The incident took place in [XX] at the intersection of Park Row Drive and Sherry Street.

Joel Eden was on a 10 speed bicycle, when the [XX] Police car purposefully veered out of its path, and knocked him off. His bell bottom jeans caught the bumper, and he was dragged down past Thorton Elementary School and back, screaming.

Joel Eden was dead on arrival at [XX] Memorial Hospital. There was even some fake propaganda in the local newspaper the following day saying that he had been so intoxicated that the was almost unconscious, and that he had struck the police car.

This was not the case. the police car had purposefully veered out of its path to mow him down, and then disregarded his screams.

It was a hate crime, and another example of an effort to terrorize school children.

Essentially giving them the idea that it's not safe to shop at the store, play in the neighborhood, go to school, etc.

I graduated from [EE] High School in [XX] in 1977. A friend of mine who graduated the year before in 1976 was named Fred Kurz. Fred was also killed in a "freak accident" that also involved an [XX] Police car.

Fred was killed in either 1979 or 1980. He was a student at the University of Texas..., and was part of a college fraternity that had a frat house that used to be on Center Street.

Fred was in front of the frat house with his girlfriend, when he was the victim of a high speed chase. A vehicle was trying to speed away from an [XX] Police car, when it jumped the cub, and struck both Fred and his girlfriend. Fred was killed instantly, and the girlfriend was seriously injured. Please note that there were no police sirens to warn them to step out of the way. The person driving the car claimed it was an "accident," and thus got off with a light sentence.

What I have just presented here are example [sic] of young people who actually died.

I will follow up on this in a few days with reports of others who suffered some type of "medical misfortune" or had their outstanding reputations purposefully ruined.

I have seen first hand the actions of these "perverts," and they actually get sick pleasure from causing their victim's "medical misfortune" or "disability."

Today's Reading

I've begun going to church again, as my godson's Confirmation is coming up, and I need to be a Catholic in good standing in order to take part. But until then there are little rewards for going to church, such as hearing the first reading today as follows:

So Joshua fought the Amalekites as Moses had ordered, and Moses, Aaron and Hur went to the top of the hill.

So far, so good. But then:

As long as Moses held up his pants, the Israelites were winning,

What?

but whenever he lowered his pants, the Amalekites were winning.

It wasn't until I heard the following sentence ("Aaron and Hur held his pants up—one on one side, one on the other") that I realized it wasn't Moses' pants, but his hands. Completely changes the meaning of the passage.

I once asked my friend Bob which he would chose: deafness or blindness. He immediately picked deafness, not only because he is an artist, but also because loss of hearing would spare him all the annoying noises of the city. I also chose deafness: not just because the deaf have a tight-knit, insular community, but because, as today's reading shows, I would then live in a wonderfully surreal and silly world.