Foul Mood

Ugh. I just got a 164 on my practice test - back to where I was months ago. I KNEW I shouldn't have done anything today. The only difference I could be making at this point would have to do with my confidence level, either making me moderately confident (if I aced it) or highly unconfident (as now). I suspect I peaked about 2 weeks ago.

OK. Recovered

I've had some time now to get over the first shock of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, and some time to learn about the context in which to understand it. As you may know, Roger Ebert cowrote the screenplay for this little porno, so his critical commentary was particularly educational viz. context.

'I wonder whether at some level [Russ Meyer] didn't suspect that "BVD" would be his best shot at employing all the resources of a big studio at the service of his own highly personal vision, his world of libidinous, simplistic creatures who inhabit a pop universe. Meyer wanted everything in the screenplay except the kitchen sink. The movie, he theorized, should simultaneously be a satire, a serious melodrama, a rock musical, a comedy, a violent exploitation picture, a skin flick and a moralistic expose (so soon after the Sharon Tate murders) of what the opening crawl called "the oft-times nightmarish world of Show Business."'

Ah! So it's a SATIRE.

'And the movie as a whole? I think of it as an essay on our generic expectations. It's an anthology of stock situations, characters, dialogue, cliches and stereotypes, set to music and manipulated to work as exposition and satire at the same time; it's cause and effect, a wind-up machine to generate emotions, pure movie without message.'

That's interesting. I would agree that as far as sensationalistic indulgence is concerned, it's perfectly effective; 'movie without message' as Ebert says. I would further agree that as a satire and pastiche - a theoretical essay on genre - the movie is a great success, and as an academic I applaud it. But I would disagree that the characters are 'stock' or that the story is 'cause and effect, a wind-up machine to generate emotions.' In fact, my impression was that it's just the opposite, that the complete LACK of Aristotle's recommendation for a plot driven by probability and necessity is what ultimately makes the movie flounder. So far from stock, the characters are irrational and erratic; though the situations may be generic enough, the characters themselves make the most non-obvious choices that go counter to everything you've been led to believe about them, so that there appears to be neither motive nor motivation for any of the crazy twists that transpire. For example, I don't know what about Kelly's character would make her dump Harris and shack up with a self-proclaiming gold-digger. I don't know why Pet would take home a boxer and cheat on Emerson...because Harris lost a fist fight? I don't know why Casey was gone for most of the movie, only to make a surprise cameo as a lesbian (I mean, I know why it's there, but it doesn't make sense in the story). Z-Man/Superwoman...uh, I don't get at all. And it's no wonder:

'The movie's story was made up as we went along, which makes subsequent analysis a little tricky. Some of the questions at Syracuse dealt with the "meaning" of Z-Man's earlier scenes, in light of what is later discovered about the character. But in fact those earlier scenes were written before either Meyer or I knew Z-Man was a transvestite: that plot development came on the spur of the moment.'

Speaking of Z-Man, an interesting side note:

'The character of teenage rock tycoon Ronnie "Z-Man" Barzell...was supposed to be "inspired" by Phil Spector -- but neither Meyer nor I had ever met Spector.'

What, Phil Spector as a gun-toting, murdering narcissist? How prophetic!

Anyways. I think all this craziness leads to a narrative incoherence that I couldn't put focus on in my first encounter; walking away from the movie, I just had a vague idea of: "that looked cool, but...wtf?" I definitely think it's possible to enjoy the movie for what it is - a sexy, violent and funny adventure - but the intellectual aims of the writers may have caused them to overshoot the mark. In striving to push various generic conventions, Meyer and Ebert seems to have abandoned some very basic narrative principles that really shouldn't be sacrificed.

Further proof, perhaps, of why critics can't be artists, and vice versa.

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls

Um...wow. What?

The Institution of Marriage

I've observed a long time ago that there's a difference between love and marriage. All the evidence seemed to suggest that difference lay in children and family; premodern marriages more often than not took place exclusively for the purposes of property and its continuance, while even modern paradigms of love and marriage - eg, the woman on the side, whom the man will never ever marry, no matter how much she nags and threatens (love), and the child-bearing wife whom the man hardly ever sees but will never leave (marriage) - would confirm that the distinguishing mark of marriage is its privileged legal status.

But watching the Girls Next Door has made me realize that this view of marriage is far too romantic! It's still practical in they way that love is not, but rather than legal status, marriage is simply an arrangement of food/shelter and sex. This model, suggested by Hef's harem, is entirely consistent with all the above-mentioned observations about the marriage of convenience - except instead of being wholly practical, it's a little bit shady, somewhat exploitative, and totally opportunistic.

Don't get me wrong, I've come to enjoy the Girls Next Door, in spite of myself. I think it's the best picture I'll ever get in my lifetime of a truly functional polygamous relationship. It reveals a lot of surprising aspects of such an arrangement. For example, Hef has a lot more affection and consideration for each one of the girls than you'd expect from someone who is (a) so old, and (b) the original playboy (who furthermore has a solid history of trading your ass in, in a heartbeat, for the next 19-year-old blonde); I might even concede that it's SOME version of love, like Hef is always saying ("you could be in love with more than one person" etc). Secondly, the girls themselves share a lot more amicability and fun among themselves than I would have guessed. It's kind of touching how they act almost like a family. Even though there's an understood pecking order, they all have a more developed relationship to each other (except maybe Holly and Kendra), and there isn't so much of that jealous, obsessive, Hef-centric mutual mistrust that would seem to characterize a harem. The girls sometimes (as in this week's episode) even take outings by themselves, without Hef - provided that they try to get back home in time for curfew.

It was Bridget mentioning something about curfew in this episode that brought me down from the happy, idyllic view of the polygamous relationship, and made me remember just how truly fucked up it is. I don't know if polygamy is inherently fucked up (I'm inclined to think it is, because it's heartbreaking to see the person you love in love with someone else, and you'd have to be a retard to stand by and watch that ish every day), but I do know that you have to be fucked up to be in one now, when our contemporary mores are constantly dictating that you deserve "better." What grown, modernized woman (besides me, living at home) would consent to have a curfew imposed upon her? Then I remembered the obvious: Holly, Bridget, and Kendra are basically hookers, as transparent as they get! And yet their hooking does a fairly convincing masquerade of marriage and/or family, times three. I wondered if this is because marriage and hooking were never that different to begin with. Polygamy certainly thrived in earlier periods and across cultures; for all we know, the psychological impulse was exactly the same then as it is now - that is, it's a torturous thing to have to endure, but you make the best of it because the prize far outweighs the cost (you believe). For the girls next door, that prize is money and fame. For a less luxurious society, that prize could just be food and shelter, for yourself and that baby the bastard knocked you up with. Cf. The Joy Luck Club.

In sum, love and marriage are different (duh). Polygamy, a weird, amorphous middle ground between the two, is an interesting place to examine the caveman economics that first drove us to agree to socialize on the basis of sexual intercourse.

Ho Hum Life

One would think that this no-work job is the perfect place for finally executing that Great American Novel I like to talk about, but there's one problem: this lifestyle is draining the personality, individuality, enthusiasm, and creativity out of me. But it's like that story, Flowers for Algernon: the more you lose that mental capacity, the less you regret losing that mental capacity. Soon I'll look back at that old dream of my Great American Novel and I'll just be confused.

Flowers for Algernon: I was reminded of that wonderful short story I read many years ago because TCM was playing a film adaptation of it called Charly this weekend. The adaptation, made in 1968, is frickin weird, like the 60s on uppers - that is, with all the pretensions of artistic experimentation (notably the kaleidoscopic montage, as signature to the 60s as the task-based musical montage is to the 80s), made kitschy with time, but without any of the meaning-bearing functions that such symbols normally perform. I would say that the movie is boring at best, weird at worst (or is it weird at best, boring at worst?). But I enjoyed seeing it because I had forgotten all about Algernon up til then.

The reminder inspired a quick wiki search and I learned that the short story was well received upon its publication, winning several prizes and sparking controversies with educators - the surest sign that you've arrived. But the interesting part is that the story had its genesis in completely pulpy soil: it was first published in one of those sci-fi magazines that abounded around comic-book era and through the 50s (I believe Tennessee Williams also saw his first print in sci-fi pulp, for his story The Revenge of Nitocris), and a lot of its critical acclaim came from sci-fi awards. All this pulp provided a platform for a fairly sophisticated psychological tale, that then had more opportunities to be developed into a full-length novel, a play, and a few movies.

This begs the question, What the hell has the sci-fi community been doing lately?? Instead of going to conventions all the time, they should be conduits of contemporary fiction and birthing modern authors, the way they used to! Because of their shiftlessness, wannabe authors like me have no avenues for gaining experience or audience or building a portfolio. I had a conversation today with one of my co-workers, in which he remarked, responding to the running joke that I never have any work to do, that I should be making better use of my time writing...and not just little blog snippets, he said, but magazine articles. Ah, I rejoined, I've looked into that, but it appears that I'm not a good candidate for a magazine freelancer because I have no special area of expertise for a profit-making publication (business, finance, technology, love/sex, hobbies, cars, travel, food, etc.)

The fact is that I feel I'd be pretty willing to adapt to the market demands for writing pieces, if only they grazed the ballpark. I'd try my hand at writing sci-fi stories if, like in the 50s, they were mass-consumed and they provided one of the few opportunities for marketing solo creative work. Even better would be if we had a pulp market even more fertile than that of the 50s, if in addition to the sci-fi audience, we also had an eager crowd of readers consuming comedy, romance, mystery, horror, drama, or even poetry in pulp.

I don't believe we have that market. While the geeks are just as eager as they used to be, they've directed all their energies into supporting loser enterprises, like costume-wearing conventions - wholly controlled on a corporate scale - instead of supporting the offbeat little guy liked they used to.

All this tirading, I realize, is headed toward one simple conclusion: I should start writing comic books.

Saved!

I saw this movie on Saturday night, but I waited to write about it because I was still deciding how I feel about it. Its parody of Jesus-freaks and high school back-stabbing is way over the top, and its characters are as stock as the characters of a Roman comedy...but oddly enough, I think it's not terribly unrealistic. Jesus-freaks really ARE that crazy, and high school personalities really are that flat. I might take objection to the grossly delirious happy ending, but it's pretty consistent with the tone of the rest of the movie.

Mandy Moore, surprisingly, is delightful. This is the only kind of role pop princesses should ever attempt, because "mean-spirited narcissist" is the only character we'd believe them playing. The cub reporter from Almost Famous also reinvents himself, this time as the heartthrob; it was convincing enough that I couldn't place I where I'd seen him before until I looked it up on imdb. Macauley Culkin as the crippled teenage rebel...we'll, it's nice to see that he's still acting.

Google Earth

Wow, what a great toy. I got a long-term assignment today from Nice Boss which requires me to use it, so naturally, after downloading the program, I've spent the day looking up my house, my high school, my surf spot, etc. Not only do they have very detailed satellite images of everything, but they also mark out points of interest with features, including scenic photographs of the San Clemente sunset, and (old) wikipedia links to my first hometown, Phillips Ranch. I learned that wikipedia evidently did not have a very high opinion of Phillips Ranch:

'Phillips Ranch is a master-planned community located in the southwestern portion of the city limits of Pomona, in Los Angeles County, California. It is located near the Pomona Freeway (SR-60) and the Chino Valley Freeway (SR-71). The zip code serving the neighborhood is 91766. Phillips Ranch, which is 4 miles southwest of downtown Pomona, and is mostly working-to-upper class. Phillips Ranch is often referred to by its neighborhood name instead of by the city name (Done mainly to garner the appearance of a higher social status). Pomona has had a reputation for crime, particularly homicides, although its murder rate is no worse than the city of Los Angeles. Still, many residents use "Phillips Ranch, CA" as a return address, even though no such postal station exists.'

Radio Days

I didn't see the whole movie on Sunday, due to an interruption by dinner and Britney Spears, but I thought I'd post some preliminary thoughts anyways. What a sweet, nostalgic piece - and there's nothing quite like sweet nostalgia to make you feel old. Radio Days is the semi-autobiographical story of Woody Allen's childhood in post-war Brooklyn, and how his memories are flavored by the pop milieu wafting through the radio programs. A VERY young Seth Green plays the young Woody-Allen-character. It's trippy not only because it makes you see a non-existent resemblance between Woody Allen and Seth Green, but there's also something about Seth Green aging so much that makes you suddenly wake up, as if from a dream, to the cognizance of just how dismally dismally short life is. It must have something to do with the way the years are telescoped; you see this tale of a begone era - historic and distant, as mythical as the Minotaur if you were born in the Reagan era, like me - that is described with loving memory as if it were just yesterday. Then you have babyfaced Seth Green (who looks eerily unchanged) living in that begone era, even while you know that it was actually circa 1985 at the time - and all the time you think elapsed while Seth Green was transforming from that babyface to the Robot Chicken guy (1940-20XX in the Radio Days fictional world) is comparatively just a blink of eye (1985-20XX in real life). Then you see vividly how much has happened (to Seth Green and to the rest of the world) in such a fraction of a time, and you're assaulted with the perspective that man's life is but a day. These meager years, which make up the Alpha and Omega of my existence, are just a speck of the human history, which in turn is a speck of the universal history. All these changes which I think are so monumental are next to meaningless. In fact, so many of the great movers and shakers of my inner world (Joey Ramone, Montgomery Clift) have long since gone poof! Truly, man's life is but a day.

My Worst Nightmare

Facebook does serve a function after all. I was doing my usual check for birthdays and other updates today, when I noticed a blog post from one of my old frosh advisees. Apparently he went on to become a crazy homeless person. (One who's crazy enough to write about it on facebook and try to "explain" what happened to him.) I couldn't follow the whole story, since I was jumping in media re, but it seems like it all started when his parents had him institutionalized - likely his interpretation of rehab, because he mentioned something about drugs. After that, he lived in a halfway house and played guitar on the streets because his bum-like appearance kept him from getting any jobs, Stansbury resume or no. He disappeared for a while again, he says, and his parents flew out from Mississippi to throw him back into the looney bin when he decided to stop eating. He said he wanted to see what it's like because so many religions mandate it.

I'm conflicted about how I feel about his whole story. Let's start with the obvious: I'm smug because my worst fear is that I'll become a raving homeless person, and yet I've managed to dodge that fate (so far) even though I'm just a big a pessimist as my Homeless Frosh. I also feel vindicated because conventional wisdom says that young educated people just don't become bums like that - at least until much later in life, when Alzheimers kicks in. Clearly, I was right and they were wrong: we are always on the precipice of homelessness and degradation.

Second response: irritation that he's being such a goddamn spoiled infant about this. Stopped eating because he wanted to see what it's like? That has "self-important college douche" written all over it! Homeless Frosh continues to insist that he's not crazy, that he's just being introspective and unconventional. If that's true, he should stop crying out for all that attention. If it isn't true, he should entertain the thought that maybe the experts know more about this stuff than he does, and just take their meds already.

Third: some sympathy. I've often imagined what it'd be like to see my life flush down slowly, and I understand how things unfold in a one-thing-led-to-another kind of way, and it's not always easy to put a halt to things even if you want to. But for the grace of God, I too could be a raving homeless person.

Is Good Writing Like the Emperor's New Clothes?

I've always considered myself to be a pretty good writer. I probably also act very unabashed about that belief, so that whenever I submit a piece of writing for something, I do it with some arrogance, and certainty that it will be praised to the skies. Perhaps I impose this will so strongly upon my readers that they too believe my writing is good - and if it's the case that it's gibberish, they might alllow that the problem lies in their ability to read, not in my ability to write.

I was looking over my APA abstract last night, for the first time in a couple months. I thought, "Is this even English??" It made so little sense, and was so full of academic talk, that I couldn't believe it was I who wrote it! I've had this experience before with academic papers. I was so confident (unjustifiably, truth be told) a few months ago that my paper would be accepted; now I'm utterly dumbfounded that it even made it past the door. I still stand by the quality of my ideas and research, but how could the abstract committee possilbly be expected to guess that on the basis of that gibberish I turned in?

Switching topics: this week is going to be a good week!

1. I took a practice test yesterday which I thought I bombed. I had trouble concentrating because I had never seen the test before (it's come to the point in my homework where I don't actually read anything anymore, I just remember all the other times I had read the passage before), plus I didn't have time to finish two of the sections. I was delighted to get back a score of 172!

2. BRITNEY SPEARS is opening the VMAs tonight at 9pm (6pm Pacific?). For the first time in, oh I don't know, 15 years, I will be tuning in.

3. Phil Spector's jury verdict will be coming out this week, possibly. I have such a soft spot for artists. I'm completely convinced of his lunacy and guilt, but somehow I don't want to see him go to prison.

Speaking of artists...

I read last week that one of the Wachowski brothers (V for Vendetta, Matrix) got a sex change. What will they call themselves now? Wachowski Brother-and-Sister doesn't roll off the tongue the same way.

It Is Now 1:53

My bosses have just returned to the office. They go out to lunch every day at 11:45. Today was no different.

Did That Just Happen?

11:45; speaker phone
"Are you guys ordering in for lunch?"
"We haven't gotten around to thinking about it yet. Did you want to order?"
"Yes...where would we order from?"
"Anywhere. What do you want?"
"Um..."
"The places that deliver are Thai, Chinese, and pizza."
"I guess...I'll have the pizza."
"Okay, I'll give you the menu."
[end speaker phone.]
"She always picks the one thing I don't want to order."

12:40
"Sorry, I still haven't put in the order for lunch. Tori hasn't told me what she wants, and I don't know where she disappeared to."
Me: "Oh. That's okay."

1:10
Me: "I'm going downstairs to get some food. I'm getting really hungry."

1:20
[Tori walks past us with a doggy bag.]
"Wow. Thanks for telling us."

One Standard of Class

I seemed to be looking at that statue of Olympian Zeus which Phidias is said to have cast in solid gold. Such was the power that a Jesuit education had over M. de Guermantes, over the body of M. de Guermantes at least, for it did not reign with equal master over the ducal mind. M. de Guermantes laughed at his own jokes, but did not even smile at other people's.

- The Guermantes Way (385)

Nothing Deserves Translation Like a Bad Joke

I saw someone wearing a great shirt today. It said:

EL PUTO ES EL ----->

I love the idea that someone first saw the "I'm with Stupid" shirts in English (or Spanish) and thought, MORE people need to see this!

Damn, I'm Good

"St. Mary's is basically a finishing school for girls who didn't get into Notre Dame but still want to be a part of the Notre Dame culture."
"That doesn't mean it's any less effective at what it is. Take Radcliff and Wellesley: Wellesley is much better at being a finishing school."
"What are you talking about? Wellesley's a great school."
"I know. My point is that when it comes to introducing girls to their Harvard husbands, Wellesley has more success than Radcliff."
"What's Stanford's finishing school? Did you guys have a satellite like that?"
"Well, we called that Berkeley."

Zing!

Hahaha, I'm laughing my way straight to Berkeley's wait/rejection list.

You Know What I Hate?

Akon. Yrggh. Power 106, once the nation's epicenter on the pulse of hip hop (so I hear) these days has a rotation of about 6 songs, of which Akon has at least 3. Particularly aggravating is that song about the time he dry-humped the 14-year-old girl onstage, and he goes on and on about how it's everyone else's fault but his own: the club proprietors for letting her in, the girl's father for letting her out, the girl for being a ho-bag, the media for everything else - in short, everyone but him, because he's the clear victim of all this. Let's remember that in addition to dry-humping one kid onstage, Akon also body-slammed and threw another kid offstage. All that might even be overlooked, if only he didn't keep singing about it.

Don't We All Hate Our Jobs?

So what is it that finally makes us say, enough's enough! I wonder about this because I seem to have a particular facility at saying that. Some (nice people) have called it courage, but when I look around at others who have scaled all the difficulties and reached that level of acceptable comfort, I see that they got there only by gritting their teeth, paying their dues...in short, not saying enough's enough when their work or (very likely) their colleagues are driving them bananas.

It occurred to me what a strange and cruel accident it is that we spend so much of our days - in my case, all but an hour or so, because of commute and classes - around these accidental people who mean nothing to us, and more often than not, whom we can't stand. I'm talking about colleagues and coworkers. Human socializing is so odd and irregular that we find we get along - even the most amiable of us, I believe - with a select few kindred spirits. The rest of the people we merely tolerate. But this becomes a different challenge when we have to collaborate with them, and their personalities or idiosyncrasies or whatever have an appreciable impact on our own work - which, presumably, is very meaningful to us, since we spend more time getting it done, at the exclusion of time spent with loved ones.

People have commented about how I have a visible chip on my shoulder - a comment I don't quite understand, since I think I take great pains to hide it, but which I've come to accept as more or less true. I'm wondering how my chip can be any different from the garden variety chip that we all must have: does it manifest differently, and does it rub other people any worse? If yes (and yes), I have a problem. I've noted before how I have this knack for, or at least a pattern of, burning bridges. Working situations somehow get sullied for me because too much of my personality comes out to quickly, and too unapologetically. I have a theory that I let it happen because for me personally, these clashes of personality mean very little; they are small incidents that shouldn't have any long-standing consequences on future tangos. For example, I could hate something that a person does (like going camping and hiking all week, while others are waiting on him to greenlight their projects), without necessarily hating the person - at least for a long time, until these small incidents accumulate and marinate and solidify into a personal dislike (e.g. VJ). Or I might blow off a certain convention (often sartorial) because I think it's bullshit, and not care if I offend someone because I believe that it's no big deal; and if someone does take the time to care deeply about stuff that's none of their business, I sort of shrug it off and say it takes all kinds of people to make a world.

I'm wondering if this is a flawed approach. Certainly it has resulted in my having to say "Fuck you" more often than I'd like, and common sense dictates that it's impossible that everyone will share my evaluation of what constitutes a forgettable "small incident." Maybe other people take my impersonal dislikes personally. Maybe that's why I'm frequently surprised to look back and find the bridge-burn damage to be worse than I would have anticipated.

On the other hand, my "que sera sera" philosophy has brought some benefits. I have a relatively easy relationship with my bosses here because my time in academia has taught me (perhaps in exaggerated relief) that there is virtually no professional relationship without the personal one. And that's how people act, even if it's not how professionals act: sometimes you mess up, get angry, but eventually you forget and go back to being normal.

Lost the Writing Bug

I don't know why blogging has become such a chore lately. I think of some stuff that I think, hey, that might be an interesting topic to write about - but when I try to sit down and put ideas to paper nothing in the world seems so banal. It may have something to do with my growing to-do list as the application season draws closer. What happened to the old joie de vivre? Nothing even makes me laugh anymore, in that old intellectually appreciative way. I'll have to settle for a fleeting moment I caught on the Wildboyz today:

[Pontius, seeing a urinating pig and another pig drinking from it:]
That is like the Steve-O of pigs.

Red River

Somewhat of a disappointment. It was too boring, and I believe it would have held little interest for me if it weren't for beautiful Montgomery Clift. The Western filmscape was nice, but for crying out loud - too many cattle! The story is a little hard to follow, partly because you expect that there just HAS to be more to it. Perhaps I would have found it to be more emotionally compelling if I had seen it from the beginning (I caught only about the last half). In any case, I'm bemused to learn that of all the possible awards it could get at the Oscars, Red River was nominated for Best Editing and Best Writing.

Hannibal

This wasn't as scary as I thought it would be. It may embolden me to try Silence of the Lambs, which heretofore I've been to chicken to watch.

On the other hand, I may be getting a false sense of security, because Silence of the Lambs is universally lauded, while Hannibal is more or less reviled. And I can understand why, when you consider how boring it is. The only gripping part is the end, when Hannibal Lector makes Ray Liotta eat his own brain. I'm not even going to count the Mason Verger death scene as remotely scary, because if anything, it's just comedy. Basically, what Verger (one of Lector's old, half-eaten victims) does in planning his revenge is he trains a bunch of hogs to attack and eat people. Hm, what does that sound like? How about South Park, when Eric tries to get a pony to bite off Scott Tenorman's weener in revenge. Or Austin Powers, when Dr. Evil tries to get sharks with laser beams attached to their heads. What do they have in common? They're both COMEDIES.

So when the hogs started doing their killing, with all these close-up shots of their bloody snouts, I thought, you must be joking.