Questing Beast

Before I forget

2009-11-09T01:48:00.003+01:00

Did I mention that I did finally catch up with House? And that it won me over after much House-like cynicism on my part? And that it made me cry? I mean proper sobs.

Clearly someone has slapped some sense into the scriptwriters at last. Or perhaps it was a cunning plan all along. Hm.

Like Sunday

2009-11-09T00:46:00.002+01:00

Trudging slowly over wet sand
Back to the bench where your clothes were stolen
This is the coastal town
That they forgot to close down
Armageddon - come Armageddon!
Come, Armageddon! Come!

Everyday is like Sunday
Everyday is silent and grey

Hide on the promenade
Etch a postcard :
"How I Dearly Wish I Was Not Here"
In the seaside town
...that they forgot to bomb
Come, Come, Come - nuclear bomb

Everyday is like Sunday
Everyday is silent and grey

Clearly, this is the Sunday we all know and love. Only this one was quite nice instead. Most peculiar.

Please the press in Belgium

2009-11-06T01:21:00.000+01:00

So in case no one noticed, I have a tendency to overcommit; and because I also believe in living up to one’s commitments, this can be a problem. Oscar Wilde is right, one can resist anything but temptation. When someone says to me “how would you feel about joining such-and-such?” or “there’s this play/show/game, want to go?” I promptly forget everything and say yes.

So I have an outstanding invite to join an Outlander blog for a Belgian paper. I haven’t responded to it, and given how often I blog these days, probably shouldn’t. But hey…

Not as advertised

2009-11-05T01:16:00.000+01:00

If you go to a museum lecture about Elvis, I feel that it is fair to expect one of two things:

- serious scholarly enquiry

- some serious glamour

The talk in question had neither, only a multitude of anecdotes, a lot of pictures and lots of cheap shots. It did have wine and cheese though, so perhaps that makes it better.

So instead I find myself listening to Aloha from Hawai’i and, for some reason, Big Girls Don’t Cry. But perhaps that latter choice has more to do with Dirty Dancing and its wonderful soundtrack than with anything that happened yesterday. The late lustrous Patrick Swayze aside, I do still find the movie better than it has any right to be, and the soundtrack one of the best I know.

Still, there is nothing quite like early, early Elvis. It occurs to me – again – that fifties music is inexpressibly filthy in all of its blatant reference. Baby let’s play house – ah, wonderful, as explicit as possible, and a little violent.

Favourite about moving to the US: the discovery of new music. Through the Spouse – Johnny Cash! Through the first radio station to best my old favourite StuBru back home, WTMD. It perpetually amazes me how much more involved I am with Baltimore than I ever was anywhere else – all the volunteering, shows, theatre, tai chi and general events. At the same time I am less (socially) involved in my work than ever; one wonders why that is, and I suppose I should say that it seems mostly because the organisational tendency towards social control makes me very wary.

Alas, poor Tom

2009-11-03T03:39:00.003+01:00

I was listening to Tom Lehrer, my old dear Tom, to whom I have listened with such pleasure since I was quite little. Suddenly I realised that while of course one has to love Oedipus Rex, a lot of his stuff is really quite smug and annoying.

Alas.

In other news, I saw four bald eagles this weekend. No, really, I did.

Peculiar detai

2009-10-29T02:25:00.002+01:00

When a few weeks ago I was lying in a Jacuzzi on the deck of a giant ship, I noticed that the giant screen mostly used for showing sports and Mamma Mia (lord, why didn’t anyone stop Pierce Brosnan from singing?) was showing a Morrissey show. I know, the minor miracle here is that Morrissey actually had a show that he didn’t back out of at the last minute, but the bigger point is: who the hell thinks that exquisitely referential, angst-riddled and irony-filled songs are a good thing to play to rich retirees having drinks by the pool?

The Spouse and I hypothesized that the manically cheerful cruise director, who for the purposes of this post we shall refer to as Celsius Happy*, was secretly nursing a Morrissey-filled dark side, and had sneaked this onto the program without explaining the implications to his angst-ignorant staff.

*No, this pseudonym is not sillier than his real name

2009-10-29T02:22:00.001+01:00

This picture would be so much better if Robert Whatsisface had a rose between his teeth. His body language tells me I am fierce and sexy, and this woman is mine. Also, I am emo. Don’t mess with the emo. We get, Robert, all it needs is some…tango. Proper Argentinean tango, the kind that started as fighting way back when.

Will I see New Moon? Meh, perhaps I’ll rent it sometime, or wander over sometime when I’m bored and lonely…

Dear Science,

2009-10-24T17:44:00.003+02:00

I love you. I love nothing better than to sit on your lap reading about chaos theory (except –well, let’s not get into that). I can gaze into your eyes for hours on end. Science, don’t let the fact that I frequently confuse Brian Greene with Brian Austin Green distract you; I will pick string theory over Beverly Hills 90210 any day, except perhaps late at night after a few drinks because, science, everybody makes mistakes, and I too was young and foolish once.

Science, it’s too much. I must know you; yet my love for you is platonic, even after our many encounters by way of Star Trek and Nova. When, at parties, late at night and somewhat drunkenly, a scientist sidles up to me and talks about baryon acoustic oscillations I admit, my beloved science, that my love fails. When the drunken scientist tells me all of the science I should know before I understand the enigmatic BAO, I falter. It seems that love falls short – for I will not learn calculus, and I always was abysmal at physics.

My soul, most non-scientific of all, is not at fault. It is the mere matter of my brain that thwarts my love, dearest, for it prefers pretzels to pumpkin soup and Harry Potter to Maxwell’s equations. The will, unquantifiable entity, is there, but the squishy grey mass is uncooperative. Forgive me, science. I would have loved to make lovely music with you. Yet reality dictates most unyieldingly: I will only read popular science.

Your humble,

Beast

Important information

2009-10-22T03:36:00.003+02:00

Rule number 1: Never get involved in a land war in Asia
Rule number 2: Always remember to bring a book. You will need one.
Rule number 3: Don't read Jody Picoult, apparently
Rule number 4: Don't make things from scratch with pumpkin unless you are willing to spend numerous hours subduing the pumpkin
Rule number 5: If attending a Tragically Hip show, be aware that it is important to know the words to At the hundredth meridian. It helps if you've seen Due South.
Rule number 6: Watch Due South whenever possible

That's all I got for today, folks

Illustrative of my tendency towards belated posting

2009-10-20T03:06:00.000+02:00

Why I am

It’s a cold, rainy Friday and that could be bad, but instead it just seems like an excuse to stay home, have tea and make soup. And watch Dr. Who of course. Not that that is what I have planned – in fact it is a fairly action-packed weekend. Tonight will, at least, be mostly spent indoors; after I run a few errands I just need to spend time preparing for the board retreat tomorrow. Then tomorrow is an earlyish start, pick up a few things, then off to the retreat until lunchtime. Then shopping (after two weeks away and a week with time for only the barest minimum of shopping, the fridge is exceedingly empty) and in the evening, yes, the Tragically Hip are in town! I do like them, and potentially will be happy to brave the Awful Weather for them. Sunday, who knows.

So I kind of feel like an impersonator – individual impersonating an adult, a professional. Someone with a marriage, a job, season tickets, a board to sit on.

Really good

2009-10-16T03:19:00.003+02:00

On the list of things that make me happy:
- really good fairytales, with real people and proper plots and frogs
- good TV, with intelligent plots, compelling acting and ending that surprise, not just startle
Thank you, BBC Wales and CBC; thank you Juliet Marillier

Aren't you glad?

2009-10-15T03:02:00.000+02:00

And thusly I resurface, slowly, into reality once more. Vacation is over – and very lovely it was, too, filled with tropical fruit and tropical drinks and people who were really keen on the Spouse (in a platonic, science-related sort of way. I think.) Very nice; so nice, in fact, that returning to base camp I braced myself for impact. It’s ok – it has been fine; fall has set in here and it’s pretty, and cool, and makes me keen on pumpkin soup and hearty dinners. Speaking of which, it’s nice to be cooking for myself again. However, I do have to get up at a ghastly, dark, cold sort of hour, and that has been a little traumatic. No matter. That’s why we have coffee. Or rather, it is why we would have coffee if I could be bothered to get up in time to make real, good coffee so I don’t have to drink the radioactive sludge available in the world at large. What I really need, then, is Costa Rican espresso beans covered in dark chocolate.

No time for a slow start – yesterday was my first development committee meeting, a terrifying prospect if you are, as I am, entirely bereft of leadership qualities and fundraising ideas. Unfortunately/fortunately I am the sort of person who, when asked a question, and without compelling reason to say no, will say yes.

There is much to catch up on, much to do – and really all I want is to make soup, drink tea and read. And watch season two of Dr. Who. Catch up on House.

Quoth she, from San Francisco

2009-09-25T18:26:00.001+02:00

Here's on I made earlier:
am resurfacing briefly before disappearing on my travels. It occurs to me that I am Emma put in Anne Elliot’s shoes; a grand, selfish person set in a life full of small gratifications and moderation. It is the sort of life that could make one very happy.

Hm.

The irony is of course that I detest Emma, character and book, while Persuasion is one of my favourite Austen books.

Anyhoo, enough with the Austen, somebody bring me a cartload of House (yes, thank you, I did miss the season premiere, I was working) and Father Ted. Pills, cynicism and tea have stood me in better stead than romance these last few months.

Berger cookies

2009-09-17T02:04:00.001+02:00

They are the best stress management tool available in Maryland, especially when taken with a hug from a friend and some antacid.

2009-09-15T02:53:00.002+02:00

These last days I have occasionally wondered if I was entirely sane. The place my head lives right now is not entirely reality. I find that I have superpowers of productivity; but I lose my temper. I’m cooking a lot, which helps with the sanity, though not necessarily the grasp of reality. If this were a song it would be Arcade Fire’s Keep the Car Running. Which, incidentally, I have been playing obsessively.

I have nightmares, but only barely – I dream of winter cold, of nuts and bolts (literally!) and vague unpleasantness.

Pah

2009-09-03T03:02:00.006+02:00

I haven't been writing much and won't. Sorry. I've been busy preparing for the next set of visitors and trips, and have been enjoying the recently returned Spouse. And soon there will be visitors and NY and then more visitors and work stuff and then the Grand Trip, to which I am looking forward with increasing fervour. Perhaps there will be a post about Outlander in there somewhere.

We can't all spend our time looking haplessly glamourous with a cat.

A very small gripe

2009-08-27T01:10:00.006+02:00

Scott Joplin's music is wonderful. It's exciting, fun music. Full of joy. Beethoven has nothing on this man. Why then, why does everyone insist on playing it like they are recording it as a substitute of that staticky version of Vivaldi's Four Seasons people insist on using as hold music (speaking of gripes) as if the world had never seen Il Giardino Armonica. Why? Has the technical difficulty drained all the joy from your life? Has it? Also who calls their ragtime orchestra Ophelia? What is it with you people and death? Or perhaps it's the insanity.

Take liberties, brilliantly ruin it with enthusiasm, take it out past curfew, do something. Is there no drunken piano in the house? Yes?

Take this guy - a little bit much caffeine, a little insane, but not one to be drowning himself with flowers in his hair, is he?

some Mondayor other

2009-08-25T01:33:00.000+02:00

One of my friends said “no wonder you aren’t sleeping and are having such an awkward time socialising. Reading intense, depressing prose makes for great conversation, I bet.”

Actually it does, oddly enough, though a little one-sided at times. It also reminds me of a lot of dusty vocabulary I usually keep in a shed outside of Chesapeake City, Maryland, so as not to frighten people.

The word “diaphanous” came up, entirely validly, in conversation with the Spouse. He looked at me suspiciously.

“Diaphanous?”

“It means transparent, more or less”

“Why not just use transparent?”

Collocational differences? It’s a good term actually, collocational differences. It means “having different placement” but is usually used more broadly as “words which, while they may not be different in definition, differ in the possible combinations or placement.”

e.g. big = large; but “you are making a big mistake” not “you are making a large mistake”

similarly, “transparent accounting” not “diaphanous accounting”

Words are inexpensive to collect, and one doesn’t have to worry much about storage. Still, explosions are possible; one of my professors in college had worked on the Dutch version of the OED and had clearly suffered some damage.

My current, less lofty reading is a little less pleasurable than it might have been had it not been for Nabokov’s torture (as read by Jeremy Irons – such painful brilliance).

Ira is Latin for fury, and his last name I forget, but the last man to attempt to curb my occasionally baroque style ended up reminding me of a poet* I discovered about the same time –

“I remember the last

of the men I called sir, the last

time I feared poetry -

no hard shove out of Heaven

but a scrawl in green ink, Your analysis

is not brilliant, but will serve

if you avoid these leaps of imagination,

and I tripped away, a mark on my

head full of rhyme.”

I try, but am occasionally sorry to succeed.

*Tanis MacDonald, “To My Milton Professor”

Second thoughts

2009-08-20T01:20:00.004+02:00

Hm. I find myself thinking of something a director I worked with in college once said - that the distinctive quality of a good play is that it makes your audience think. By that definition Lolita is a good movie, though it is not one I would ever want to see again. I woke up with the final scene with in my head. Kubrick and Mason do do something for Humbert; and I realise why that last scene with Humbert and Lolita is so painful - unlike Nabokov's Humbert, the Kubrick version has no distance. The scene is excruciating because it is recognisable; because it leaves the audience no room to back away from empathy.

I've also changed my mind about Sellers; well, he's a great actor of course, but the rewrite of the Clare Quilty part bothers me greatly, and on the whole it seems to be more about showcasing Sellers than about the movie; or perhaps it is a flawed attempt to engage the viewer on Humbert's side by introducing a more wicked (or more successful?) pervert.

Anyway, after all that I had to clean my brain yesterday, so I re-watched some scenes from Julius Caesar. It helped. I think I love James Mason now. I know, he's dead, but that's hardly an issue. I had a crush on the 28-year-old Oscar Wilde when I was seventeen, so clearly I am not deterred by deadness, sexual orientation or knee breeches. Frankly, there is very little practical difference to me between, say, the living Robert Whatsisface and the late James Mason, except that James Mason was rather better at acting. I assume it would matter if I planned to stalk them, in which case Mason or Wilde would be much the easier target, what with staying in one place. Yet I have no such plan, though I have seen Oscar's grave. Anyway, my point is - am I going to ever randomly meet either Mason, Wilde or Whatsisface? No, I am not. Do I care? Not so much. Will I obsess over their actual work? Well, in the case of Mason/Wilde, yes.

Goodness, I really didn't mean to make this into a rant about dead people. What I was actually going to say was that I watched that Brutus/Cassius argument yet again and it is undiminished. It is as beautiful and complex now as it was when I was watching it from the stage in college. So powerful - and I am reminded that the fuss about Shakespeare is not altogether unwarrented.

Swine

2009-08-19T01:58:00.004+02:00

I have decided that I was exactly right about Lolita. Not even Kubrick, not even Mason, with their Nabokov-and-water version, can make this story less repugnant, and all the more repugnant for being also mesmerising. Even this more sympathetic rendering of Humbert is...painful to watch. Perhaps, actually, that is what is good about this film - the incredible painfulness. It does that very well. And Peter Sellers. He does everything well. And he's very creepy.

Postscript:

2009-08-19T01:18:00.002+02:00

Brando-rant aside, I really did love Julius Caesar. I may watch it again later tonight. I also looked through James Mason's list of accomplishments and found old youtube clips of him playing Humbert Humbert in Lolita. I am not sure whether I am fascinated or repulsed. It is Stanley Kubrick, and it is a conspicuous gap in my viewing of Kubrick films; this is not unrelated to my predictably ambiguous feelings about the book. The Jeremy Irons (that other, equally mesmerising Humbert) audio book has lived on my Audible wish list for months; I have not downloaded it yet. Why is it that they keep casting really non-sleazy lovely men to play Humbert? I know, I know, he is not an obvious creep, hence. Still. Perhaps it will ruin Irons/Mason for me forever if I watch these movies. And that would be distressing. Anyway, I didn't mean to go off on a Lolita tangent, I just wanted to say that my Brando tangent implied no criticism of Julius Caesar as a whole.

Not an epilogue

2009-08-18T02:33:00.001+02:00

For some time, there was a small note fridgemagneted to our fridge that said "Epilogues are for Tolstoy". The quote is from EM Forster, one of my favourite writers, though for reasons not entirely related to literary merit*. The reference (on my fridge, not in the original) was of course to JK Rowling's Awful Epilogue, but having just finished Crime and Punishment I cannot change my opinion of epilogues - or of Tolstoy - much. That is to say, I do feel that if the content of the epilogue is not intrinsic in the book, it is a bad epilogue, and if it is intrinsic, then the epilogue is unnecessary. So I found myself thinking, upon finishment, "hmm, the redemptive power of love, eh? Why not, I guess." and found myself oddly appeased by what is, most likely, a literary mistake. He pleases me reasonably well, Dostoyevsky does, but I find that I am too frivolous for his writing. The whole thing makes me long for The Master and Margarita, which shows that one can write serious things without utterly jettisoning one's sense of humour; but then I suspect that Dostoyevsky didn't have one to begin with.

There you go then, I have done my bit for world literature and am now off to read Outlander because hopefully it will entertain me without killing any brain cells. That does well enough for me. Actually, perhaps I should hold off on my pile of unread books and re-read The Master and Margarita. It really is one of my life-changing books, on account of being funny, profound, utterly playful, creative, layered and profound. The mix always seemed more lifelike to me than the merely serious or amusing.

*Forster, like Orwell, wins me over with his personal integrity more than his writing; both show me something very personal to me with their writings, something helpful.

Did someone say Oscar?

2009-08-16T23:19:00.005+02:00

I caved and rented Julius Caesar, and am watching the famous Mark Anthony speech as done by Marlon Brandon, for which he presumably got that Oscar. BAFTA. Whatever.

*sigh*

Marlon, I love you, and you look fabulous in that Roman mini-skirt, but I have got to be honest with you, that speech is a little more complex than you are making it. Mark Anthony is a strategist, and a clever one, albeit an emotional one too. He has a range. Not just anger. I know, Marlon, I am berating a dead actor for a role everyone thinks he performed admirably. But Marlon, look at Gielgud and Mason. I know, Gielgud is not as goodlooking, we know; and though Mason looks lovely in his army gear, he is no Marlon Brando. Yet Marlon, they do so much more acting. Alas. It seems that I am doomed to wonderful performances of Julius Caesar marred by two-dimensional Mark Anthonys.

Inspiration

2009-08-15T16:06:00.007+02:00

I'm on my second cup of coffee, so if I'm a little hyper, forgive me.

I just saw the tail end of the Marlon Brando/James Mason Julius Caesar. Thoughts -
1) I had forgotten that there really are a number of old movies that are riveting; I couldn't walk away, and my usual goldfish attention span found itself overridden by, of all things, Shakespeare.

2) James Mason, who otherwise mostly exists in the vague periphery of my film knowledge, makes an outstanding Brutus; Marlon Brandon on the other hand, in spite of being the poster boy, is somehow ill-suited to playing Marc Anthony. Brando is (well, was) many things but not Marc Anthony; no. And yes, I know this is a minority opinion.

3) Julius Caesar is really a wonderful play, and it is a kind of epiphany play for me. For a very long time I simply did not see the point of Shakespeare. Hard to understand, convoluted plots, non-funny jokes and really, really long plays. I spent a lot of time trying to understand why Hamlet is supposed to be the greatest play of all time and have come to the following conclusion: perhaps it is; but for the life of me I can't tell because all of the times I've seen it on stage (three times, I think) it has been outright painful (with the exeption of the sexton - you have got to love the gravedigger) and when I saw the Laurence Olivier movie it did nothing for me. I saw Ken Branagh's four hour Hamlet, all four bloody hours, and thought it a waste of some fantastic acting talents. No - as far as I'm concerned, the best Hamlet I have seen is called Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are dead. Anyway, tangent aside, so I kind of tried to understand Shakespeare and didn't. Only then I saw a performance of a pretty obscure play of his, Measure for Measure, at a beautiful old school, while the snow set it; and that changed everything. It was wonderful, funny, charming; I saw the light. Julius Caesar was another of those moments, because while it was not the first Shakespeare play I actually acted in, it was by far the best, and for all its failings, the performance gave the play all of the passion it deserved. Which brings me to

4) Watching Julius Caesar is like meeting an old, beloved friend. I don't always remember the details of our acquiantance, but I remember the spirit of it. I recognise the inner workings of it, I see what it is thinking; and what I thought I had forgotten turns out to still be there.

5) Of course the play should be called Brutus, even if Caesar's ghost hovers over the play. Brutus is a wonderful tragic hero, and while he is not as complex as Hamlet, he is also much easier to identify with. Not that I do, though I could; I identify with

6) Cassius. Cassius is so much more human than Brutus, so much more fallible; there is more pathos in his death on his birthday than in even Brutus's pleas for his friends to kill him. Cassius is passionate and ambitious, and lord, I forgot how incredibly gay this play is. To put it less facetiously, though there are women, all the meaningful relationships are between the men, and none is so openly emotional as that between Brutus and Cassius. And Gielgud as Cassius to Mason's Brutus...it's apt and beautiful.

Thank you, Turner Classic Movies, and thank you, late great Gielgud and Mason. In your honour I have, not one, but two youtube clips.

And as closing credits:

Postscript: Julius Caesar, Shakespeare aside, is another on my list of really fascinating historical characters; a consummate politician whose great virtue and flaw was that he could handle criticism and forgave his enemies, and had a sense of humour. Thank you six years of really boring Latin and really interesting history.

Hmm

2009-08-13T03:12:00.002+02:00

Well, its been an interesting time. I am not quite sure what to say, except that Crime and Punishment is growing on me, after almost 16 hours of listening, as is The Three Musketeers, now that I've almost finished it. Nineteenth century literature, it's been a while, so perhaps this is just the required period of adjustment. The two books make for an interesting contrast - the tortured murdered vs. the joyful, playful musketeers who take all the killing in their stride.

And of course all that matters is not whether you fall down, but whether you get up and dust yourself off for another round. Right now that next round is pretty literal, if not entirely, and I feel pretty disinclined, comtemplating the microwave chocolate cake instead.