Since this was so successful when Tom did it, and since I am still recovering from my trip, I am doing a trivia roundtable this week. Answer the following question and you get to post the next question. It can go as long as people are having fun.
In The Graduate, there’s a scene near the end where Dustin Hoffman confronts Katharine Ross in her apartment. An uncredited bit player would rise to stardom and Oscar victory. Name him.
the Third Annual Things You Only Hear At Starwood!
This fire is hot. Did it singe my hat?
If you move my car, I’ll initiate you.
The Chinese sex cards are in the bodice drawer.
Can I borrow the dildo and go over to the Hurt Yurt?
Oh! I forgot my gods.
I’ve already sunscreened my ass off.
You never want to snip your nipple in the cupholder.
We have all these pie crusts and I don’t know why.
She had a couple more vaginas but they all went.
I once sunburned a moon into my forehead.
The dome has once again become infested by bondage fairies.
What I don’t need is peanut butter and jelly all over my flashlight.
The fetish fairies are here in full force.
Oh! There’s glitter in my pubic hair! I don’t know how it got there.
I’m so tired of waking up next to a big penis every morning.
If you don’t take out your trash, bears will come and eat you.
Condom ninjas attacked the bar last night.
Acting (belatedly) on Tim Goodman’s recommendation (spoilers there), we finally Netflixed the first three episodes of Slings and Arrows, a Canadian comic drama about a Shakespearean troupe (the “New Burbage Shakespeare Festival”) in turmoil. In the course of staging a production of Hamlet, they contend with the death of an indispensible character; an artistic director who was once driven mad by the play; a chirpily sinister corporate sponsor; long-festering hatreds among the principals; a clueless Gringolandian movie star; and much more.
As befits theatrical folk, everything is exaggerated and outrageous, and nobody is ever without an audience (if only in their own minds). It’s a world of outsized egos, petty jealousy, backbiting, and pretentious poses. In the middle of a rapier duel at a party (yes, there is a duel with rapiers–buttons off), the stage manager snaps at the assembled actors that they’re all a lot of insufferable children–and of course she’s right; but they’re immensely entertaining children, and their childlike love of theatre is the thing that redeems them.
It is exaggerated and at the same time nuanced. Lurking amid the manic farce are serious questions (about the relationship between art and commerce; about the purpose of live theatre in a world glutted on entertainment) and a pervasive sadness (at aging; at lost love, and long-ago betrayals; at becoming less than they had hoped; at the sense of their own obsolescence). The drama is never forced or heavy-handed, but simply human, inseparable from the comedy as it is in real life.
The cast is excellent, mostly not-quite-recognizable actors who I suspect are much better known in Canada (Paul Gross, from Tales of the City, Mark McKinney, from Kids in the Hall, and Rachel McAdams, from Mean Girls are the three I knew). The screenplay is consistently witty, and by ‘witty’ I mean ‘laugh-out-loud hilarious’. As in, you often have to rewind to get the funny line you missed when you were laughing at the funny line before it.
Highly recommended. Put it in your queue now.
Tehipite Dome from Tehipite Valley, Kings Canyon National Park.
Thirty years ago, my friend Russell and I ventured across the Bay to San Francisco, where we rode a bus for miles–miles!–deep into the heart of the Terra they call Incognita, all so we could wait hours in line for a movie that in that innocent era was simply called “Star Wars”.
The theater was the Coronet, and it was the only theater in the Bay Area showing the 70mm version. That made it Ground Zero for the fanatics. If you were watching the news back then and saw stories about the Star Wars phenomenon where they talked to fans waiting in line, odds are pretty good you saw the Coronet.
Over the years, I saw a dozen or so other movies there–some memorable (Fellowship of the Ring), some not so much (um…I forget). It wasn’t spectacular like the Paramount or ornate like the Alhambra, but it had a nice deco interior and it was a big single-screen theater where you felt like you were Watching A Movie.
Now I live in the neighborhood that seemed so foreign to me. Lucas has driven the Star Wars franchise into the ground with a prequel trilogy so bad it tarnishes the originals. And as of last Sunday morning, this is what was left of the Coronet.
It closed two years ago, as had most of the other single-screen theaters in San Francisco. I was sad at the time, got over it, moved on. The building stood empty, in limbo. Then a couple of weeks ago I rode by on the bus and saw that the sign was down and they had knocked down one of the walls, and it hit me all over again.
You live any place too long and this is what happens: the geography of your memory is dismantled piece by piece. You know it’ll happen but that doesn’t make it any easier. For me, the Coronet was a big piece.
More pictures below the fold… » Read more..
Hey, we’ll keep this going as long as people are interested.
The current question (and it’s a good one) is from Amy: Name the order in which the contestants of Slayerfest were taken out of commission.
“Don’t wave your fish at me.”
That is all.
AMC’s new show Mad Men is a must-see. It’s set in 1960 in a high-pressure Madison Avenue ad agency. Other than sharp writing, gorgeous visuals, and a top-notch cast, what Mad Men has going for it is an unapologetic eye about the mores of the late 50s/early 60s (what they’re now calling “mid-century”).
The “values conservatives” of the world, David Broder, Jonah Goldberg, and other people with pseudo-brains filling their skulls, believe the 1950s were an idyllic time. Women knew their place, none of that pesky feminism to mess around with their pretty heads. Abortion was illegal. Sex was never discussed in the public sphere, and when it was alluded to, it was only the heterosexual sort. Men wore skinny ties. (I kind of agree about the skinny ties.) The notion, of course, is that mid-century was a happy, innocent time. Families were all Ozzie and Harriet or Leave It To Beaver.
The fact is, the man behind the curtain was already visible at the time. Kinsey published in 1948 and 1953. Brown vs. the Board of Education was 1954 and the Montgomery bus boycott was the following year.
What Mad Men shows is direct and uncompromising. It is a man’s world, but the show has strong female characters, struggling in a world where they must choose between career and marriage, where most opportunities are closed to them, and sexual harassment is not only legal, it’s encouraged. As oppressive as the sexism is, it’s matched by the casual, normative racism and anti-Semitism. Homophobia isn’t even mentioned, but there is one character who is clearly closeted and struggling to be ‘one of the boys.’
Maybe I’m naive to think it would make a difference for people to actually see what they’re idolizing. I’m well-informed, I know a lot about the world my mother grew up in, and yet I found it shocking. There’s something about the visual impact that can’t be denied.
The mise en scène is pretty amazing. They are very careful to get the clothing, speech and attitudes just right. And the cast, as I said, is excellent. Whedon-heads will be pleased to see Angel and Firefly regulars back on TV.
Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) plans to review the Senate testimony of U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel A. Alito to determine if their reversal of several long-standing opinions conflicts with promises they made to senators to win confirmation.
Specter, who championed their confirmation, said Tuesday he will personally re-examine the testimony to see if their actions in court match what they told the Senate.
“There are things he has said, and I want to see how well he has complied with it,” Specter said, singling out Roberts.
So you helped push through a couple of extremist ideologues who turned out, shockingly, to be extremist ideologues…and you’re upset because they told you they weren’t?
Let me put this as nicely as possibly, Arlen: you were the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the planet to believe them. Of course they were going to say whatever they needed to say to get confirmed.
And now the damage is done. Thank you, Arlen. Thank you very fucking much.
While I was searching for artwork the other day, I came across some amazing paintings by Botero. (Botero is also known for his shocking and powerful Abu Ghraib paintings, but that’s not what I’m blogging about today.)
It was one of those odd things, where I searched for Godward and it said “You might also like…” and showed me Botero. I can’t imagine how that connection was made, I can’t see anything in common between the two.
I am delighted by these fat, lush images. It is interesting to experience my own reaction, and to see how others have reacted. My first reaction, to “The Bath” (below the fold) was that it was funny; the fat woman, the toilet, the primping. And then I thought it was joyful.
On Wikipedia, I read this:
The “fat people” are often thought by critics to satirize the subjects and situations that Botero chooses to paint. Botero explains his use of obese figures and forms as such: “An artist is attracted to certain kinds of form without knowing why. You adopt a position intuitively; only later do you attempt to rationalize or even justify it.”
How interesting! They’re fat so it must be satire. But counter to that, they’re fat because I like to paint them that way and that’s that. I love that he said that!
Botero has been written about by fat-acceptance folks, from whom I read:
Ironically, however, exclusively portraying fat people in a positive light is not Botero’s intent. He is not, as we would intuitively believe, a fat admirer. Rather Botero sees life in terms of abundance, fullness, richness, and contrasts; this is why his work focuses on a larger form.
I get that NAAFA has a specific agenda, but this doesn’t read right. First, just about everyone in a Botero is fat, not just the positively-imaged people. Second, not having the intention of being about fat positivity is not the same as “he is not…a fat admirer.” These are wonderful, sensual images that challenge our notions of beauty and force us to confront our rhetoric about fat positivity in light of our visceral reactions. I think they’re wonderful.
