Graffiti Murals In My Neighborhood

Where Bargains And Women Are Concerned, It Pays To Advertise

Another Letter From My Great-Great Aunt Ell To her Husband James, October 9, 1917

Postmark: New York, NY
Grand Central Sta.
October 9, 1917, 1 PM
Addressed to: Mr. J.J. Gildea,
Ashley, Pa.
Luzerne Co.
(This letter is written on the stationery of The Langdon Hotel, 5th Ave. & 56th St., New York. This is the hotel where [my mother's] Aunt Mame Mulhern worked as housekeeper.)

New York City
Oct. 9, 1917

My Dear Jimsie,
Are you tired of letters yet. I am back at the Langdon, came yesterday morning and had a very nice busy day.

Mame & Anna came over to Jersey Sunday afternoon for dinner. Then yesterday morning Mae & I came over to Gimbels to a shoe sale. They had 10,000 pairs of Walk Over Shoes they were selling out for $2.69. (Of course) it was my luck not to be able to get a pair. They had beauties in narrow widths but I didn't see anything I could wear. Mae got a pair of white buckskin. And such a mob of women. Where bargains and women are concerned, it pays to advertise. We had to wade through the crowd. Then we went to Macy's and Saks and saw all the beautiful things.

I came up to Mame's then, just in time for lunch, and Mae went on home. I loafed around all afternoon and Mame treated Anna & I to a chicken dinner at seven o'clock. Some chicken. They broil it in front of hot coals. Our dinner consisted of broiled spring chicken, spaghetti-a-grautin (sic), french fried potatoes, french bread and french ice cream & ice water (55 cents a portion.) We have had so much coffee lately we balked on anything to drink with our dinner.

Then we went and Anna got tickets for the Hippodrome for Friday night, and we went to the Strand on B'way. The performance was very good. When we came home, after I was in bed, Mame gave me a nice dose of castor oil & orange, so I said good bye to my chicken about 5:20 AM this morning and at intervals since. I have had a lot of indigestion since I came but I think I will be all right now.

Pete's* a very busy man. Went out to work Sunday at ?:20 (the first number could be an 8, could be a 5 or it could be a 3 - IHH), came in somewhere around midnight, changed and went right out, had to take the Supt. as far as P.burg. He expected that he might reach W-B.

Mae says she will never marry another railroader.

The girls had quite a laugh when I related your experience with the frying pan. You certainly are learning to be some cook. I suppose when I come home I won't have to wash any dishes at all.

I won't be able to work for awhile. I am having such nice times and talk about sights. You see some here. Wish I had a gun this morning and I there there would have been a dead men & women (sic) in the St. Regis hotel across the way. They have no shame or modesty at all.

Mame had a letter from Aunt Ellen** stating that she was coming down on the excursion Sunday and that she didn't think you were coming. That's not right, is it dear. I'm afraid if you don't come I will be some loaded.

It will be more convenient for Pete to meet you and if the train is on time you can both go to six o'clock Mass; if not you can go to seven and we would get an early start for Brooklyn, get there for dinner. Please don't tell me you are not coming.

There was a parade just passed down 5th Ave. which I viewed from my bedroom window. It was one of the artillery's (sic) leaving. They looked fine.

Will close with lots of love from your darling, hoping to hear from you soon.
Lovingly,
Nell
___________________________________
*This is a reference to her brother Pete, who was a railroad man. Mae is his wife...full name Mary Josephine Carroll.
***I am assuming that this person is Ellen Ruddy Youngblood.

Last Night

Before I went to sleep last night I was reading Time Out magazine in bed. Last year I subscribed to Time Out and New York to keep up on what was going on in the city and initially was quite good about reading each issue each week as they arrived. But lately it seems I only have time to quickly flip through, read an article of note, and then place the issue on the pile of New Yorkers I acquired either through a subscription years ago or when other people put them out for recycling.

After perusing the issue, I got out of bed to turn off the light, glancing at the back cover as I did so. It was a simple advertisement, white letters on a black background, the kind that leaves ink on your fingers and your unexpected fingerprints everywhere. I read the ad and it said:

We Will Bury
* Jewelry
* Watches
* Diamonds

I thought "That's odd. Someone has a service in which they will bury your valuables for you? Who would use such a service? Is there that much need that they can place an expensive ad on the back of a magazine?" I know our economy is not doing well, but people would rather bury their belongings instead of use a safe deposit box at a bank? And if it was time to bury your goods, wouldn't you rather do it yourself and keep the spot a secret?"

Wide awake and perplexed now, I looked at the ad again and realized it said "We Will Buy...Jewelry, Watches, Diamonds."

That makes a lot more sense.

Photographs Found In The Trash In My Neighborhood

John's DVD Of The Month Club - June 2008

Heaven Come Down

Directed by Michael Mees and Gabriel Wyre

One of the things that I like about life in general and America in particular is the variety, the strangeness, the deep weirdness that you can find in human behavior. It's found everywhere on Earth, but somehow the combination of America's size, its ideal of the pursuit of happiness, and its emphasis on the importance of individual beliefs creates a perfect environment for everyday craziness unlike anywhere else. Spending most of my time on an island of the coast of America, I feel safe to indulge my fascination with how others live, thankful that that is not my life.


So I was interested in Heaven Come Down, a documentary about the lives of those who handle snakes as part of their religious worship. The film offers a textbook lesson in why some people embrace religion: faced with suffering, often self-induced, they need to believe in something greater that gives meaning to their suffering. Their faith in God is so strong that God never disappoints them, no matter what happens. They handle deadly poisonous snakes: if they get bit and die, it's because God willed it. If they get bit and don't die, it's because God willed it. If they don't get bit, it's because God willed it. The idea of not picking up the snake in the first place, and taking responsibility for the consequences of your own actions never seems to occur to them.


It's almost a parody of fundamentalist religious thought: basing an entire belief system (and thus your entire life) on one quote from the Bible. While I find this subculture interesting (especially in scenes where they clandestinely sell snakes), and like the music in it*, on repeated viewings, it seemed too easy, too obvious. There's not much here that really surprises you. I don't think your opinion or knowledge about snake-handling will be much different after watching the film than it was before. I almost wish the filmmakers had found more ordinary people who were serpent handlers, instead of everyone in the film being...well...white trash. But I suppose ordinary people don't handle snakes as a way of communing with God.


The giveaway is the second half of the film, which introduces a snake handler who has been accused of sexually abusing children. This section stacks the deck by playing up to the audience's worst prejudices. But it also happens to be true, so what can you do?


______________________________________________
*Recently I happened to watch loudQUIETloud, a documentary about the band The Pixies which featured scenes of the guitarist Joey Santiago recording the soundtrack music for Heaven Come Down.

Another Letter From My Great-Great Aunt Ell To her Husband James, October 3, 1917

This is another letter written by my great-great aunt about six months after the US declared war on Germany.

Of particular interest is the fact that Ell wrote this letter from a house (pictured below) only a few blocks from where I lived when I first moved to New York seventy-eight years later.


Postmark: Brooklyn, NY
October 3, 1917, 7:30 PM
Addressed to: Mr. J.J. Gildea
Ashley, PA
#49, Luz. Co.
Top Floor
362 Greene Ave., Brooklyn, NY

My dear Jim,
Lonesome yet? So far this week has been quite stren(u)ous. Sunday, Anna and I went to Mass and came right over here expecting to see Bill* before he left. Well, we got here and Bill was not to leave until Monday. We got up Monday morning and were down at Sheepshead Bay at 10 o'clock (for those who don't know Brooklyn geography, even by train this is quite a schlep - JH). At four o'clock, the company he belonged to, left. Imagine me all that time without a bite to eat. We went to a small restaurant and all they had was hot coffee, everything else sold out, so we had the coffee and it helped some. It was a good thing Bill was in Co. B. because he was in the second train load. There were twelve companys(sic) and the last left at six thirty. The poor fellows must have been tired. The last company remarked that the first co. would be in France before they left Brooklyn.

They are going to Spartansburg, S.C. Charlie** has not been home for two nights and Aunt Mary*** is afraid that probably he has gone. Because they won't know when they are going. Will be sent right off without any warning. Only some of his clothes are here. Aunt Mary is keeping up fine.

Monday night, Helen (Cousin Helen McBride) and I went to a movie. Yesterday Mae (great Uncle Pete's wife?) and I were over to Pete's. Stayed for supper and came back by way of Mame's.

Mame has a very nice smoking set for you. A genuine mahogany stand with the glass ash tray, match box holder & two cigar holders. It stands beside your chair when smoking. Some class. No more saucers or papers for your cigar ashes. She said just a little remembrance for your kindness to mother. It's supposed to be a surprise.

This morning, Mae & I were down town to the stores and this afternoon we are going to Cecil's. Tomorrow aft. I am going over to Mame's to see a Red Cross Parade and, in the evening, to Mamie's sewing circle at a girl friend's house. Friday I expect to go to Pete's (I am assuming this refers to her brother Peter who lived in either Jersey City or Sunnyside, NY at the time-IHH) to stay over Sunday and then I will come back and spend the rest of my time at Mame's. Mamie Mc has a nice little apartment and very nice furniture. She is getting dinner ready now. Some cook. She's a joke. Haven't sent a postcard yet but will get some today. Jim (since she has just referred to Mamie Mc, I believe the Jim here is Jim Anderson, who was Mary McBride's husband - IHH) just got up. We let him get his own supper Mon. & Tues. night and have designs on tonight and tomorrow night. Good natured skate.

Haven't heard from you yet.
Will close with lots of love from your darling.
Don't want any money yet.
Lovingly yours,
Nell

______________________________________
*Bill - a reference to her cousin William McBride, who is also mentioned in the previous letter.
**Charlie - this is her cousin, Charles McBride, a veteran of WW1 also.
***Aunt Mary - Mary McBride, Sarah Ruddy's sister, and mother to Charles, William, Mary (Mame McBride Anderson) and Helen.
There was also a daughter Susie, but so far no mention of her in any of the letters.

Letter From My Great-Great-Aunt Ell To Her Husband James, September 30, 1917

My mother (IHH) has been the family historian and genealogist for a couple of decades now. She recently sent me the text of several letters written by her great aunt Ellen (Ell or Nell or Ella) Mulhern Gildea to her husband, James, during Ell's visits to the New York City area. The first is dated just a little over a month after the death of her mother, Sarah Ruddy Mulhern and almost six months after the United States declared war on Germany and became actively involved in World War I.

New York City
September 30, 1917

"Here comes the servant with our breakfast..some speed to your wife."

My Dear Heart,

Mame has gone to eight o'clock Mass and, not being able to find ink, here goes with pencil...a good blunt one at that.

After an uneventful trip, I arrived on time. I had a seat to myself all the way; although quite a crowd of people got on along the line, no one bothered me, with the exception of a little girl who borrowed my magazine for her father.

The two Mamies* and Anna met me at Jersey and talk about soldiers. The 23rd & 71st were at Jersey, had been there from 5 AM waiting to go. The poor fellows, some were all in, sleeping on anything they could put their heads on, others strolling with their arms around their sweethearts and others holding their youngsters in their arms. Almost every woman you saw had nice red eyes. One poor little thing came into the car with us and she simply could not control herself. She would look at her wedding ring and start to sob.

Will** expects to go today. I am in hopes that I will get over before he leaves. They expect that he will go to the Philippines.

Mame just got in from Church and I am getting quite hungry. I suppose her (servant) will soon bring her breakfast, likewise mine. Anna*** & I are going to the ten o'clock Mass and go right over to Brooklyn.

Anna left the Plaza and starts tomorrow to work for Mame in the linen room. This is Mame's busy time, so I will stay in Brooklyn for a new days now.

Well, my dear, take good care of yourself and you can go to see any miss daisy (note: I have no idea what this means, IHH) you wish, providing you leave at ten PM and come home alone to your own wee bed, with the nice we (sic) spring and mattress and think about your darling once and a while, if it is only when you are cracking your own eggs. I told Winnie (Reilly, probably. IHH) to come over and take some tomatoes, both green and ripe.

Will close with lots of love,
Your loving wife,
Nell

_________________________________
*The two Mamies, I think, are most likely her sister, Mary Mulhern, and her cousin, Mary McBride Anderson.
**Will is most likely her cousin, William Mc Bride.
***I am not completely sure who Anna is. There are no McBride cousins by that name...I wonder if it may have been Anna Smith, who was a close friend of the Mulhern girls all their lives.

Pictures Of Fireworks Celebrating The Death Of Jesse Helms

On Friday there were fireworks demonstrations in New York celebrating the death of former Senator Jesse Helms. The fireworks were no doubt symbolic of the eternal torment that Senator Helms is now suffering in Hell, in addition to being really really pretty.

Yesterday

When I lived in Washington DC, I worked with a bosomy, matronly woman who feed off of other people’s grief. If someone in the office had some difficulty in life, major or minor, she would be there to nod and lend a sympathetic ear, prodding them for more details, keeping the hurt going as long as the person was willing to talk. Then she would make her way around the office, trying to draw anyone who would listen into a conversation about said misfortune, shaking her head and choking back emotion about how bad it made her feel.

A yenta will tell you “there’s someone for everyone,” and this woman’s foil was another woman who worked in the office whose life was a slow motion train wreck. I suspect the train wreck woman was also a pathological liar and invented tragedies to cover her increasingly erratic behavior. They completed each other: the train wreck found an attentive and sympathetic audience for her tales of woe and the bosomy busybody found a steady supply of misfortune she could vicariously feel bad about.

When someone I care about has suffered a great loss, I’m always self-conscious about appearing like An Emotional Vampire feeding off their sorrow, regardless of how I feel. I still have mixed feelings about this post, despite the genuine eerie sadness I was experiencing.

Yesterday I learned that Nikola, a friend of my friends Bob and Michele, had died. I had met him three years ago when I was in Paris; hung out with him one night at a French rock club (written about here). His death makes me sad beyond my concern over my friends’ heartbreak. He was so gregarious I just assumed we would hang out again someday.

Two of Nikola’s comments from the previous posting stand out:

one
They end their set by throwing their instruments on the floor and knocking over some of the drum kit, leaving the audience to stare at the inert instruments while listening to the feedback created. Nicola is disgusted.

"Come on. I mean...now someone has to clean that up."

two
He also mentions a more disconcerting fact: No-one in [the band onstage] is much beyond 16. "Oh wait, the drummer just turned 17." I mention (actually, I yell above the sound of the band) that that makes me feel old.

"No, no, it should make you feel young!"

R.I.P.

Park

Yesterday I went to the Guggenheim to see the exhibit by Cai Guo Qiang: I Want To Believe. Unfortunately, by the time I got there, there was a line to enter the museum, which I've never seen at the Guggenheim. A straight line at that: surely the queue should have been rounded? Regardless, I left without seeing the exhibit. I want to believe, but I'm not going to wait in line to do so.

Too nice a day to be disappointed, I went to Central Park. I walked for a while in looking-without-thinking mode, and watching the people play and interact, I was overcome with a sense of euphoria, mixed with feeling like an idiot for being so happy that I was on the verge of tears. A guy was playing the vibes and a short distance away, a duo of girls sang while playing violin and acoustic guitar. I searched for a spot where I could hear both equally, hoping to mix Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer" with Guns & Roses' "Sweet Child O' Mine." At one point, I thought of the park as Heaven, except that most of the people were white. I sat on the ground, taking photographs of birds and running my hands through the grass as if I was patting the Earth on the head.

It was a familiar sensation. On July 12, 1997, my friend Lynn and I took Ecstasy and went to Central Park. The reason I know the exact date is that Sleater Kinney was playing a free show in the park, and to my ears at the time, their music sounded like RUMBLE RUMBLE RUMBLE "Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!" which I now know is not a bad description of their sound. We sat there talking and I ran my fingers through the grass and I felt good. But after yesterday, I wonder if it wasn't the Ecstasy so much as it was the park.

I feel its necessary to record these moments of bliss, of pure joy at being alive, to remember when things in life aren't so good.

The Glamorous Sights of New York City

Living in New York, you get used to the sight of tourists taking pictures just as you get used to how slowly they walk and how they're not really looking where they're going. I've learned, as a courtesy, that if someone is taking a picture, to walk around their back so as not to ruin the shot. I often glance at where they're aiming their cameras and think "what are they taking a picture of?"

Not today - today it was fairly obvious. I saw a guy dressed in camouflage pants, t-shirt, white Yankees' cap, taking a photo of one of Manhattan's great landmarks: the Hooters sign which hangs about the restaurant.

A Message For President Bush

Thank you for the $600 rebate check. Really.

However, you can't buy my love or approval for a lousy $600. My first inclination is to donate this to the Obama campaign, but given how bad our economy is doing, I'm saving it. Sure, I need new clothes for work, but I was going to buy them anyway. I'm not picking up any books or cds that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise. The $600 is going to sit in the bank until needed.

While it's always nice to get $600 you weren't expecting, it doesn't begin to make up for the thousands of people, American soldiers and innocent civilians, killed in Iraq due to your war.

There are many scenes in The Sopranos, where, after gangsters beat someone close to death, they give him some money as a "make good." It's seems so familiar now...

So, thanks again. Really.

But it doesn't change how I feel about you or your administration.

John's DVD of the Month Club - May 2008 Pt 2

West
Gone (an episode of Spaced written by Jessica Stevenson and Simon Pegg, directed by Edgar Wright)

So the theme of this month’s dvd was duality: two selections from two different media (film and television) showing two cultures (East and West), each highlighting the conflicts between men and women, reality and fantasy, comedy and tragedy. May is the first of two months partially under the sign of Gemini the twins*. Etcetera, etcetera.

After the creepy beauty of Miike’s Box, there’s something refreshing about the frantic silliness of Spaced. Anyone who stays over at my apartment is inevitably introduced to Spaced, and what starts with “You might like this – let’s watch this one episode” invariably ends three hours later after watching an entire season in one shot with promises made to watch the remaining episodes the following day. There’s only two seasons of Spaced, a total of 14 episodes, which is both a source of frustration and an explanation as to why the show is so good. They stopped before they ran out of ideas.


The setup is this: Tim and Daisy are friends who must pretend to be a couple in order to rent a cheap flat. Around them rotate Tim’s friend Mike; Daisy’s friend Twist; Brian, the artist downstairs; and Marsha, their perpetually pissed (in the British sense, not the American) landlady. The setup is nothing: it’s almost deliberately sitcom-cliché and rarely figures in the show. It acts as a frame on which to hang a fast array of jokes: visual humor (the way the S on a canister doubles as the first letter in “Six Hours Earlier”), character humor (soldier-wannabe Mike’s wistful “yeah” in response to the description of men as being nothing but destroyers), verbal humor (“There’s been a misprint on one of the covers of the new issues.” “Which one?” “Total Cult.” “Oh.”), slapstick (the climatic shootout) and pop culture references. There’s so much funny coming so fast that the number of jokes that do work is remarkably high. What’s more impressive is that the jokes that don’t work don’t ruin the show. The characters never act out of character just to score a laugh. Even when indulging in the most outlandish fantasy, it remains true to the characters and their situation. And funny.

An example of how good Spaced is is that its pop culture references don’t annoy the hell out of me. I’m beyond burnt out on comedy based on pop culture, which means my taste is completely out of fashion with contemporary humor, which seems like nothing but pop culture references. Not jokes, mind you, but references alone. “Tina Yothers” “Charles Bronson” “Gary Coleman” are considered witticisms in and of themselves. The backbreaking straw was when, apropos of absolutely nothing, a moose showed up on the Simpsons’ front lawn accompanied by the theme from Northern Exposure. There’s no joke there, no context, and no commentary of any kind. The moose is only there to flatter those who recognize the reference. This was when I began to dislike The Simpsons. But when Tim and Daisy mimic the frozen Jack Nicholson from the end of The Shining it’s funny because it builds off the previous line of dialogue and because their faces are funny. You could also argue that this is how Tim and Daisy see the world: real-life experience filtered through a media-based framework. It explains Tim’s description of their night out being represented by cartoons and the slow motion "gunfight" at the end.


I feel a certain nostalgia watching Spaced because it reminds me of my twenties and early thirties, years spent living with roommates, hanging out with friends in bars, enjoyably wasting time so as not to worry about the future. The show is a pleasant fantasy: there’s something reassuring about its philosophy of silliness as a way of life. Who doesn’t want to live in a world in which you can escape a beating by spontaneously playing shoot-out with a bunch of hoodlums?

I thought Spaced was coming out on dvd in the US next month, but it's not currently listed on amazon.com. Watch for it - it is well worth getting when it does come out.





*the best sign in the zodiac, I might add.

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.