ten good things (november, 2006)
10. bridget st. john’s album thank you for is the perfect record for the month of november. it’s the album equivalent of a comfortable sweater-it’s warm, but most appropriately brought out when it’s busy getting cold outside.
listening to it while taking a walk around town after work, i’m more inclined to notice the leaves falling... and the wind picking up... and my breath becoming visible. i am rendered a goofy postmodern flower child; a fish out of water...
bridget st. john, “every day” (buddy holly cover), mp3
9. my blossoming interest in african literature grew a little stronger this month when i read ngugi wa thiong’o’s epic, panoramic novel a grain of wheat. a marvelous balance of personal and political, ngugi paints a striking portrait of kenya during its moment of independence. from a more or less “third person” perspective, ngugi considers colonial history from a vast variety of viewpoints: working men, working women, british officers, rebel “terrorists”, native colonial sympathizers... the list goes on. it’s a novel of guilty consciences, secrets and misinterpretations-a pot-boiler i guess-but one lacking the fatalistic reassurance that shit is gonna actually go down at some point. for all its melancholy and caution, a grain of wheat is also a novel about uhuru (the swahili word for “freedom”; as well as the moment in the book when british power is returned to indigenous kenyans), and even its darkest observations are rendered historically bittersweet.
at the end of the day, it’s a rich layer cake of human strengths and weaknesses. it’s frank and un-apologetic, but never chilly or pedantic. it maintains a strange sympathy for even its most deplorable characters, but it’s not a sentimental novel, nor even an optimistic one. and on top of all that, there’s some really top notch storytelling that kept me from putting the damn thing down, especially as i approached its end.
8. one could argue that the main preoccupation in ngugi’s novel is with what might be called “the ugly truth.” the version everyone claims they want to hear, but rarely has the strength to actually endure. su-yeon lee’s 2003 film the uninvited tackles that subject as well, albeit from a much different angle. on the surface, it’s par-for-the-course asian horror fare-bookish man in his thirties begins seeing the ghosts of two spooky young boys who died in a subway accident, has chance encounter with beautiful woman who sees what he sees, etc. beneath the genre specifics, however, the film treads the same inquisitive and unforgiving path as hitchcock’s vertigo. a lot of the films i gravitate to can be seen as variations on vertigo (almodovar’s talk to her, cronenberg’s a history of violence, to cite two examples), and the uninvited is one of the smartest and deepest of this peculiar bunch. the subjective unraveling that occurs within it is particularly strange because it is neither psychological nor sexual (per se), as much as it is spiritual. at the end of the day, the uninvited is a film about faith... and how sincere faith is subjugated and marginalized... and how it can be terrifying and alienating.
(i mean, i don’t have faith in much of anything, and look how i’m yammering on about it... good stuffs, y’all...)
it also boasts some powerful repetitions of aesthetic and symbolic imagery (suffice to say my cat sorta freaked me out after watching this one, to give you a hint), as well as an alarmingly nonchalant approach to violence. which isn’t to say it’s a violent movie. it isn’t. but its few violent moments are delivered with such crushing and unexpected banality that i found myself legitimately scared by the damn thing. horror movies almost never scare me. and when they do, it’s usually a cheap jolt here and there. the uninvited scared me, though. and (thankfully) for all the wrong reasons.
7. dear john bolton,
though i must admit that your recent resignation as u.n. ambassator for the united states is, indeed, a good thing, i guarantee you that your successor will-without a doubt- fail to live up to your personal standards regarding aesthetics and grooming.
farewell, comrade bolton! when our grandchildren look back upon you and your service to our country, they will remember that tom selleck and andy rooney once had a lovechild, and they named him HANDSOME.
6. i like the video work of paul chan because i find it accommodating to look at and think about. it’s beautiful, but not sensational. it’s smart, but not necessarily theoretical. there’s something sublime about it, but it’s never pompously transcendental. it’s very easy to contemplate, and it’s rewarding without being particularly “challenging” (at least in the laborious, angst-ridden sense of the word).
a few of his evocative shadow projections are currently on display at the fabric workshop, here in philadelphia (which, by the way, is my favorite art venue in town).
5. so, first and foremost, casino royale (the new james bond movie) is pretty great. i don’t even give a rat’s ass about bond movies and i loved it. there’s a number of reasons why-daniel craig’s peculiar allure (i got yer back, hooveraardvark), a couple of great action sequences, an engaging storyline and script, the weird allure of watching people play poker even though i have no idea what’s going on, etc. etc. but the most surprisingly great aspect of the film is eva green’s take on the “bond girl.”
my only prior familiarity with eva green comes from watching her give bernardo bertolucci a geriatric erection in his softcore, pseudo-revolutionary-mentos-commerical the dreamers. if there is anything both exciting and alarming about the state of affairs in movie-land these days, it’s the fact that, in 2006, a woman finds a film role with richness and depth thanks to 007 instead of bertolucci. for all its foul attempts at vanguard sexuality, eva green was forced to let her rack do the talking in the dreamers. sure, may of ’68 might have provided a spicier backdrop than your standard skin-a-max bordello, but that wasn't hanoi jane i was watching proclaim her undying love of "the ceee-neeh-mah", it was barbarella. by contrast, in casino royale, green brings an elegant, secretive cockiness to its typical flirty banter that reminded me a bit of lauren bacall. with craig’s silent intensity fanning the flames, their guarded, reveal-and-conceal relationship is refreshingly engaging for an action movie. as it plays itself out, there is something about the tone of their interactions, and the way they overlap with the storyline itself, that i’m embarrassed to say i actually found somewhat poignant, to boot.
yes, i'm saying i fell for the romantic parts of a james bond movie. dude, i am SUCH A WUSS.
4. you'd think that-- with all the attention i pay to arts and culture around here-- i'd mention good things on livejournal itself a bit more often. recently, the astoundingly obsessive and precocious returning put together a post i found pretty damn interesting. he balances some recent screenings he's attended of various politcal films (most of which i haven't seen... though my beloved mr. lazarescu makes an appearance) with the current hype surrounding borat. now, i'm not terribly familiar with sasha baron cohen-- though i must admit he really won me over in talladega nights-- but if there's any truth to this article, i might just go ahead and skip borat altogether (click on that last link folks... apparently it wasn't just racist frat boys that got duped by that dude).
regardless of where you stand on all this, i thought returning did a nice job of characterizing the solipsism that runs rampant in first-world satire and criticism... the way that self-parody emerges as a form of entitlement, and how people often fail to hear deeper, more complicated and more legitmate concerns over the sound of their own self-applause. it's also a post chock full of idiosyncratic obsessions, and fine-tuned curiosities; the kind of geeky goodness that lj amounts to at its best.
(by the way, daniel... la bolshe vita is sitting in an unopened greencine envelope on my coffee table as we speak... too bad i'm busy bloggin'...)
3.
i'm really loving this record called birth/speed/merging by the pyramids. the pyramids were an obscure, seventies jazz/psychedelia act (along the lines of art ensemble of chicago, don cherry, pharoah sanders, etc.) that has fortunately been rediscovered thanks to a new reissue compilation pertaining to its most famous member, idris ackamoor (which i haven't picked up yet). lately, i've been really feelin' anything that remotely evokes pharoah sanders, but that's not to say this album is a pastiche of his work. for one, it's more digressive and expansive in its moods. songs fall apart and come back together. the mish/mash of cultural influences might even stretch a bit wider-- at times it sounds like jobim's soundtrack to black orpheus, at others it sounds like sun ra at his weirdest. but it's never less than engaging, and it has been good company on many a ride home from work, of late. have a listen:
the pyramids, "jamaican carnival", mp3
2. in all honesty, i can't fathom the sincerity that george packer brings to his book the assassin's gate: america in iraq, but i must say it makes for good reading. packer, a staff writer for the new yorker, approaches the war in iraq from a cautiously optimistic perspective at first. he goes to great lengths to outline the history of neoconservatism with a somewhat skeptical eye, save a peculiar allegiance to paul wolfowitz-- whom he sees as some kind of post-trotskyist-in-disguise-- that for some reason never quite disappears throughout the book (i guess crocodile tears from the deputy secretary of state are better than no tears at all from rummy, but not by much in my estimation). anyway, he does an admirable job of laying out the arguments for going to war (and wisely assumes the reader knows/has heard enough about WMDs... the "imminent-threat-to-national-security" argument is thankfully treated as a bunch of bullshit not legitimate enough to even mention). instead, there is a compelling look at the idea of intervention itself-- presented from a variety of angles, weighed against the actions of previous administrations, and in contrast to the somewhat isolationist tone of the contemporary american left.
packer doesn't have me quite convinced by the time he mentions that he supported the war "by about the same margin that the voting public supported al gore" (* a quote that someone mentioned to me in conversation, which sorta sold me on reading it). but there is something illuminating about an ethical, intelligent, liberal-minded person like packer writing about a war he didn't greet with the overwhelming cynicism i felt for it. packer writes with a feeling that legitimate liberation could work (as opposed to should work, etc.) in the region.
i probably don't need to mention that his optimism erodes rather quickly as the book plays out. but this erosion is chronicled from a truly astounding variety of perspectives: sunnis, shiites, kurds, muslim intellectuals, american soldiers, bush administration lackeys, "liberal hawk" contrarians (apparently packer is buddies with paul berman), islamic fundamentalists, innocent bystanders... you name it, packer got ahold of them. and a sense of urgency accompanies the interviews-- as the war wages on, packer makes us privvy to the increasing dangers and lack of access accompanying any attempt at a real inquiry whatsoever. this makes the new afterword (added to the paperback version i read) crucially important-- by the time of its writing, he had almost entirely lost hope.
the assassin's gate is an extremely informative introduction to the layers of the war that slip through the mediated sloganeering i've grown accostomed to (and disgusted with). i can't say i exactly agree with packer's angle going into it, but i think that made the reading experience more rewarding in the end. instead of listening to someone parrot reservations i already agree with, i was forced to contemplate the real stakes of what has happened there, and the grim reality of its consequences.
1.
with the death of nate wiley earlier this month (he's in the center of the pic above), philly has lost one of its true icons. i have enjoyed wiley's "liquor drinking music" many a time at my beloved bob and barbara's lounge, and i can honestly say that i've never heard a band more perfectly tailored to what i want to sit around and get drunk to, while i talk to my friends. farewell sir... if there is a tip jar in heaven, i hope to one day see you there...
listening to it while taking a walk around town after work, i’m more inclined to notice the leaves falling... and the wind picking up... and my breath becoming visible. i am rendered a goofy postmodern flower child; a fish out of water...
bridget st. john, “every day” (buddy holly cover), mp3
9. my blossoming interest in african literature grew a little stronger this month when i read ngugi wa thiong’o’s epic, panoramic novel a grain of wheat. a marvelous balance of personal and political, ngugi paints a striking portrait of kenya during its moment of independence. from a more or less “third person” perspective, ngugi considers colonial history from a vast variety of viewpoints: working men, working women, british officers, rebel “terrorists”, native colonial sympathizers... the list goes on. it’s a novel of guilty consciences, secrets and misinterpretations-a pot-boiler i guess-but one lacking the fatalistic reassurance that shit is gonna actually go down at some point. for all its melancholy and caution, a grain of wheat is also a novel about uhuru (the swahili word for “freedom”; as well as the moment in the book when british power is returned to indigenous kenyans), and even its darkest observations are rendered historically bittersweet.
at the end of the day, it’s a rich layer cake of human strengths and weaknesses. it’s frank and un-apologetic, but never chilly or pedantic. it maintains a strange sympathy for even its most deplorable characters, but it’s not a sentimental novel, nor even an optimistic one. and on top of all that, there’s some really top notch storytelling that kept me from putting the damn thing down, especially as i approached its end.
8. one could argue that the main preoccupation in ngugi’s novel is with what might be called “the ugly truth.” the version everyone claims they want to hear, but rarely has the strength to actually endure. su-yeon lee’s 2003 film the uninvited tackles that subject as well, albeit from a much different angle. on the surface, it’s par-for-the-course asian horror fare-bookish man in his thirties begins seeing the ghosts of two spooky young boys who died in a subway accident, has chance encounter with beautiful woman who sees what he sees, etc. beneath the genre specifics, however, the film treads the same inquisitive and unforgiving path as hitchcock’s vertigo. a lot of the films i gravitate to can be seen as variations on vertigo (almodovar’s talk to her, cronenberg’s a history of violence, to cite two examples), and the uninvited is one of the smartest and deepest of this peculiar bunch. the subjective unraveling that occurs within it is particularly strange because it is neither psychological nor sexual (per se), as much as it is spiritual. at the end of the day, the uninvited is a film about faith... and how sincere faith is subjugated and marginalized... and how it can be terrifying and alienating.
(i mean, i don’t have faith in much of anything, and look how i’m yammering on about it... good stuffs, y’all...)
it also boasts some powerful repetitions of aesthetic and symbolic imagery (suffice to say my cat sorta freaked me out after watching this one, to give you a hint), as well as an alarmingly nonchalant approach to violence. which isn’t to say it’s a violent movie. it isn’t. but its few violent moments are delivered with such crushing and unexpected banality that i found myself legitimately scared by the damn thing. horror movies almost never scare me. and when they do, it’s usually a cheap jolt here and there. the uninvited scared me, though. and (thankfully) for all the wrong reasons.
7. dear john bolton,
though i must admit that your recent resignation as u.n. ambassator for the united states is, indeed, a good thing, i guarantee you that your successor will-without a doubt- fail to live up to your personal standards regarding aesthetics and grooming.
farewell, comrade bolton! when our grandchildren look back upon you and your service to our country, they will remember that tom selleck and andy rooney once had a lovechild, and they named him HANDSOME.
6. i like the video work of paul chan because i find it accommodating to look at and think about. it’s beautiful, but not sensational. it’s smart, but not necessarily theoretical. there’s something sublime about it, but it’s never pompously transcendental. it’s very easy to contemplate, and it’s rewarding without being particularly “challenging” (at least in the laborious, angst-ridden sense of the word).
a few of his evocative shadow projections are currently on display at the fabric workshop, here in philadelphia (which, by the way, is my favorite art venue in town).
5. so, first and foremost, casino royale (the new james bond movie) is pretty great. i don’t even give a rat’s ass about bond movies and i loved it. there’s a number of reasons why-daniel craig’s peculiar allure (i got yer back, hooveraardvark), a couple of great action sequences, an engaging storyline and script, the weird allure of watching people play poker even though i have no idea what’s going on, etc. etc. but the most surprisingly great aspect of the film is eva green’s take on the “bond girl.”
my only prior familiarity with eva green comes from watching her give bernardo bertolucci a geriatric erection in his softcore, pseudo-revolutionary-mentos-commerical the dreamers. if there is anything both exciting and alarming about the state of affairs in movie-land these days, it’s the fact that, in 2006, a woman finds a film role with richness and depth thanks to 007 instead of bertolucci. for all its foul attempts at vanguard sexuality, eva green was forced to let her rack do the talking in the dreamers. sure, may of ’68 might have provided a spicier backdrop than your standard skin-a-max bordello, but that wasn't hanoi jane i was watching proclaim her undying love of "the ceee-neeh-mah", it was barbarella. by contrast, in casino royale, green brings an elegant, secretive cockiness to its typical flirty banter that reminded me a bit of lauren bacall. with craig’s silent intensity fanning the flames, their guarded, reveal-and-conceal relationship is refreshingly engaging for an action movie. as it plays itself out, there is something about the tone of their interactions, and the way they overlap with the storyline itself, that i’m embarrassed to say i actually found somewhat poignant, to boot.
yes, i'm saying i fell for the romantic parts of a james bond movie. dude, i am SUCH A WUSS.
4. you'd think that-- with all the attention i pay to arts and culture around here-- i'd mention good things on livejournal itself a bit more often. recently, the astoundingly obsessive and precocious returning put together a post i found pretty damn interesting. he balances some recent screenings he's attended of various politcal films (most of which i haven't seen... though my beloved mr. lazarescu makes an appearance) with the current hype surrounding borat. now, i'm not terribly familiar with sasha baron cohen-- though i must admit he really won me over in talladega nights-- but if there's any truth to this article, i might just go ahead and skip borat altogether (click on that last link folks... apparently it wasn't just racist frat boys that got duped by that dude).
regardless of where you stand on all this, i thought returning did a nice job of characterizing the solipsism that runs rampant in first-world satire and criticism... the way that self-parody emerges as a form of entitlement, and how people often fail to hear deeper, more complicated and more legitmate concerns over the sound of their own self-applause. it's also a post chock full of idiosyncratic obsessions, and fine-tuned curiosities; the kind of geeky goodness that lj amounts to at its best.
(by the way, daniel... la bolshe vita is sitting in an unopened greencine envelope on my coffee table as we speak... too bad i'm busy bloggin'...)
3.
i'm really loving this record called birth/speed/merging by the pyramids. the pyramids were an obscure, seventies jazz/psychedelia act (along the lines of art ensemble of chicago, don cherry, pharoah sanders, etc.) that has fortunately been rediscovered thanks to a new reissue compilation pertaining to its most famous member, idris ackamoor (which i haven't picked up yet). lately, i've been really feelin' anything that remotely evokes pharoah sanders, but that's not to say this album is a pastiche of his work. for one, it's more digressive and expansive in its moods. songs fall apart and come back together. the mish/mash of cultural influences might even stretch a bit wider-- at times it sounds like jobim's soundtrack to black orpheus, at others it sounds like sun ra at his weirdest. but it's never less than engaging, and it has been good company on many a ride home from work, of late. have a listen:
the pyramids, "jamaican carnival", mp3
2. in all honesty, i can't fathom the sincerity that george packer brings to his book the assassin's gate: america in iraq, but i must say it makes for good reading. packer, a staff writer for the new yorker, approaches the war in iraq from a cautiously optimistic perspective at first. he goes to great lengths to outline the history of neoconservatism with a somewhat skeptical eye, save a peculiar allegiance to paul wolfowitz-- whom he sees as some kind of post-trotskyist-in-disguise-- that for some reason never quite disappears throughout the book (i guess crocodile tears from the deputy secretary of state are better than no tears at all from rummy, but not by much in my estimation). anyway, he does an admirable job of laying out the arguments for going to war (and wisely assumes the reader knows/has heard enough about WMDs... the "imminent-threat-to-national-security" argument is thankfully treated as a bunch of bullshit not legitimate enough to even mention). instead, there is a compelling look at the idea of intervention itself-- presented from a variety of angles, weighed against the actions of previous administrations, and in contrast to the somewhat isolationist tone of the contemporary american left.
packer doesn't have me quite convinced by the time he mentions that he supported the war "by about the same margin that the voting public supported al gore" (* a quote that someone mentioned to me in conversation, which sorta sold me on reading it). but there is something illuminating about an ethical, intelligent, liberal-minded person like packer writing about a war he didn't greet with the overwhelming cynicism i felt for it. packer writes with a feeling that legitimate liberation could work (as opposed to should work, etc.) in the region.
i probably don't need to mention that his optimism erodes rather quickly as the book plays out. but this erosion is chronicled from a truly astounding variety of perspectives: sunnis, shiites, kurds, muslim intellectuals, american soldiers, bush administration lackeys, "liberal hawk" contrarians (apparently packer is buddies with paul berman), islamic fundamentalists, innocent bystanders... you name it, packer got ahold of them. and a sense of urgency accompanies the interviews-- as the war wages on, packer makes us privvy to the increasing dangers and lack of access accompanying any attempt at a real inquiry whatsoever. this makes the new afterword (added to the paperback version i read) crucially important-- by the time of its writing, he had almost entirely lost hope.
the assassin's gate is an extremely informative introduction to the layers of the war that slip through the mediated sloganeering i've grown accostomed to (and disgusted with). i can't say i exactly agree with packer's angle going into it, but i think that made the reading experience more rewarding in the end. instead of listening to someone parrot reservations i already agree with, i was forced to contemplate the real stakes of what has happened there, and the grim reality of its consequences.
1.
with the death of nate wiley earlier this month (he's in the center of the pic above), philly has lost one of its true icons. i have enjoyed wiley's "liquor drinking music" many a time at my beloved bob and barbara's lounge, and i can honestly say that i've never heard a band more perfectly tailored to what i want to sit around and get drunk to, while i talk to my friends. farewell sir... if there is a tip jar in heaven, i hope to one day see you there...