The Greeks Had a Word for It....
Saturday, July 30, 2005
The Aristocrats Unbound
Back in March, I posted a bit about The Aristocrats (current reviews by Edelstein and Zacharek - go look) - and now the link I gave to the South Park version (told by Cartman, of course) doesn't work. Too bad. It was tremendous.
And it's not that the joke, itself, is so fucking funny - it's the extremity it goes to, and even now, without recalling the details, it breaks me up. I, myself, want to top a version.
It seems to me somehow appropriate to talk about this horrendously dirty joke after talking about Pynchon, because he goes to similar extremes - and sometimes to similar effect - in his books. The freeway pile-up of perversions in some of his sequences certainly rivals The Joke.- he dares you to laugh at them, then to take them straight, and then he shovels on another load, until you buckle, and only then, when you've been thoroughly softened up, does he needle in the larger insanities, the fetid history. Makes you laugh, then scares the shit out of you.
Sorry to clue our social conservatives in on this, but it's an ancient tradition; it's no mere conceit that it's a lost Aristotelian treatise on Comedy that is the motive for murder in Eco's The Name of the Rose. Comedy is intrinsically subversive, and The Powers hate that.
[Update: Thanks to Majikthise for this link - it's Cartman - she's right - not work-safe, and it gets right to business - and I had forgotten the 9/11 detail.....]
And it's not that the joke, itself, is so fucking funny - it's the extremity it goes to, and even now, without recalling the details, it breaks me up. I, myself, want to top a version.
It seems to me somehow appropriate to talk about this horrendously dirty joke after talking about Pynchon, because he goes to similar extremes - and sometimes to similar effect - in his books. The freeway pile-up of perversions in some of his sequences certainly rivals The Joke.- he dares you to laugh at them, then to take them straight, and then he shovels on another load, until you buckle, and only then, when you've been thoroughly softened up, does he needle in the larger insanities, the fetid history. Makes you laugh, then scares the shit out of you.
Sorry to clue our social conservatives in on this, but it's an ancient tradition; it's no mere conceit that it's a lost Aristotelian treatise on Comedy that is the motive for murder in Eco's The Name of the Rose. Comedy is intrinsically subversive, and The Powers hate that.
[Update: Thanks to Majikthise for this link - it's Cartman - she's right - not work-safe, and it gets right to business - and I had forgotten the 9/11 detail.....]
Thursday, July 28, 2005
Tyrone's Harp
I'm going to do this before eating the Bookforum piece (thanks to TBogg and Rox for pointing the way) on Pynchon, to keep it as personal as possible.
"Pynchon from A to V" is the title, but I started with "V." A pattern was established; I'd read to a sticking point - in V it was the SW African horror - stop, stunned, pause for a few days or weeks, then start over from the beginning and sail through. Somehow this made the architecture of the books clearer, chewing them over without actively thinking about them. I am pretty sure there are many readers who come to Pynchon the same way they might Lamont Cranston - he Clouds Their Minds. I really loved the way he screwed with mine, so I kept coming back.
My favorite anecdote about reading him isn't even my own. I had set our LA reading group on Gravity's Rainbow, and my friend Peter took it with him on a business trip to the Netherlands. He was arranging a franchise for gym wear distribution (or something like that) and found himself out in the Dutch countryside with a bunch of male and female bodybuilders, whose only subject of conversation was their diets, their supplementation (licit and not) and their stats. In that cottage, Pynchon made perfect sense and seemed eminently sane.
Pynchon provides antidotes to some of our darkest influences. Ayn Rand? There's Mafia Winsom. There's the Disgusting English Candy Drill. Any recipe with "Surprise" in it's name. There's the Postal Conspiracy in Lot 49. There's Slothrop's lost harmonica, singing by itself in a German brook, and probably dreaming of Rilke. Makes me want to cry, it's all so funny, dreadful, beautiful.
He also writes great liner notes for Spike Jones.
"Pynchon from A to V" is the title, but I started with "V." A pattern was established; I'd read to a sticking point - in V it was the SW African horror - stop, stunned, pause for a few days or weeks, then start over from the beginning and sail through. Somehow this made the architecture of the books clearer, chewing them over without actively thinking about them. I am pretty sure there are many readers who come to Pynchon the same way they might Lamont Cranston - he Clouds Their Minds. I really loved the way he screwed with mine, so I kept coming back.
My favorite anecdote about reading him isn't even my own. I had set our LA reading group on Gravity's Rainbow, and my friend Peter took it with him on a business trip to the Netherlands. He was arranging a franchise for gym wear distribution (or something like that) and found himself out in the Dutch countryside with a bunch of male and female bodybuilders, whose only subject of conversation was their diets, their supplementation (licit and not) and their stats. In that cottage, Pynchon made perfect sense and seemed eminently sane.
Pynchon provides antidotes to some of our darkest influences. Ayn Rand? There's Mafia Winsom. There's the Disgusting English Candy Drill. Any recipe with "Surprise" in it's name. There's the Postal Conspiracy in Lot 49. There's Slothrop's lost harmonica, singing by itself in a German brook, and probably dreaming of Rilke. Makes me want to cry, it's all so funny, dreadful, beautiful.
He also writes great liner notes for Spike Jones.
[Update: See Neddie Jingo's Comment - and follow his URLs - like Kilroy, he got there first. He is now blogrolled.]
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
K/O & Arf!
Kid Oakland is now Blogrolled - about time, too.
And Jane, at firedoglake, as well.
And Bitch PhD - long overdue.
And Jane, at firedoglake, as well.
And Bitch PhD - long overdue.
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
Partnership & Trust
I burst out laughing, with delight, to see an HP6 thread at The Washington Monthly - lots of brains and heart in there - and Michael Bérubé has a fine one going, too (to which I have contributed, which is not saying a whole lot). But all of a sudden it strikes me that, whatever tricks J.K. Rowling has up her sleeve, we readers have confidence in her playing fair with us, and that is something, in this moment of Rove/Plame/Bolton/&c., that is all too rare in our world. There is real good, and real evil, in the parallel Wizarding world, but "moral clarity" is at a premium (as it is in our own); triumphalism, arrogance, misplaced loyalties, flawed wisdom, denial, fear leading to oppression - these are everyday aspects of the HP universe. Rowling may have the great arc of her story laid out to the end from years ago, but she is alert to (and tactful about) the anxieties of the here and now, in her readers' lives.
At the turn of the 20th century, James and Conrad wrote, respectively, The Princess Casamassima and The Secret Agent. Both featured anarchist plots, terrorist cells, and I long wondered why and how, because I grew up in an atmosphere and received memory of state responsibility for everything bad. Now we all know that isn't necessarily the case. Rowling is much more plain-spoken (and whimsical and funny) than those lapidary masters, but I think she is just as serious, in her own way, about where we are now as they were about where they were then. If you want a counter-argument for the hi-falutin idea that these books just aren't good enough, don't have the lift of exalted fantasy, well, tough shit - try Tom Clancy. I'm sure he has the answers, and they're working, they're working....
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At the turn of the 20th century, James and Conrad wrote, respectively, The Princess Casamassima and The Secret Agent. Both featured anarchist plots, terrorist cells, and I long wondered why and how, because I grew up in an atmosphere and received memory of state responsibility for everything bad. Now we all know that isn't necessarily the case. Rowling is much more plain-spoken (and whimsical and funny) than those lapidary masters, but I think she is just as serious, in her own way, about where we are now as they were about where they were then. If you want a counter-argument for the hi-falutin idea that these books just aren't good enough, don't have the lift of exalted fantasy, well, tough shit - try Tom Clancy. I'm sure he has the answers, and they're working, they're working....
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No Bidness - American Style
Not a fresh story - just 2 years old and developing - and profoundly shameful to anyone who wants to be proud of US know-how, US values (as if those mean anything in action any longer). Anyway, it's from Digby, and he's disgusted, too. All those no-bid Halliburton contracts, outrageous overcharges transporting fuel from Kuwait, under-equipped soldiers, rotten food, collapsed infratructure with no repair in sight....JFC! This goes so far beyond the procurement abuses of the mid-3-figure toilet seats; this is making despair, and manufacturing enemies, day by negligent day.
Not only do all of us pay for this, billions by the day/week/month, but it really does seem unlikely that there will ever be an accounting - Myst of War and all that. Once we throw these fuckers out, it will still take a decade to ferret out their crimes, if they haven't destroyed the evidence Decades longer to regain any honor for our country. Bastards.
Not only do all of us pay for this, billions by the day/week/month, but it really does seem unlikely that there will ever be an accounting - Myst of War and all that. Once we throw these fuckers out, it will still take a decade to ferret out their crimes, if they haven't destroyed the evidence Decades longer to regain any honor for our country. Bastards.
Sunday, July 24, 2005
Fred Ward's Back
What made me think of this? Maybe it was bluegirl's posting of a couple of paintings Friday, the work of her husband (go look). I love this movie, Henry & June, for a number of reasons, but one of them is certainly the beauty of Fred Ward, playing Henry Miller, in bed with Anaïs Nin (Maria de Medeiros), his back in particular. I used to see him with a trainer at Gold's in Venice, and all I can say is that the work paid off (per Short Cuts, a couple of years later, the front shaped up, too). Ah, gym!
But there's much more to this fantasia on Nin and Miller than beautiful people fucking. It's about why they fuck, and sex as an exploration into unknown territory, and throwing away your provisions on the trek - it's almost a primer on Lawrence's notion of pursuing sex in the head, but it's not from repression. It's more like a grasping for sensation, and through sensation, for power, for knowledge. June, Henry's wife (Uma Thurman in a role that proved unequivocally to me that she had awesome resources) is steamrolled by her husband and Nin; she's just not in their hunger league - she hasn't their ruthlessness. And while she's the most spectacular and touching of their victims, she's not alone.
It's funny, but I dragged my psycho semi-ex to a screening in LA, and in spite of his enormous sexual street cred, he was - ahem - rather offended. Prudery from the oddest places. It's a very sexy movie, and because it engages the emotional costs of sex - especially to the bystanders in relationships - it may be too much for some people. Yet it has a lightness (there are jugglers and illusionists performing in the backgrounds and the edges of the frame) that promises some kind of survival, even for the disappointed. You don't get dipped all the way into the marvelous scuzz of Tropic of Cancer, for example, but watching Fred lop off the top of a perfect soufflé, plop it on his plate, and pass the rest on is - fuck! - delicious.
One thing I do find intriguing. On the IMDb site that gives ratings, women give this movie higher ratings than men. I'd be interested in feedback on that from readers. I'm not going to link to it, but John Simon in The National Review gave it one of his most deeply misogynist spits.
I already have a VCR of this one, but, savoring (and not having a tape player), I am pretty sure I want the DVD. Part of me can never let go of la vie bohémienne, just for sanity.
But there's much more to this fantasia on Nin and Miller than beautiful people fucking. It's about why they fuck, and sex as an exploration into unknown territory, and throwing away your provisions on the trek - it's almost a primer on Lawrence's notion of pursuing sex in the head, but it's not from repression. It's more like a grasping for sensation, and through sensation, for power, for knowledge. June, Henry's wife (Uma Thurman in a role that proved unequivocally to me that she had awesome resources) is steamrolled by her husband and Nin; she's just not in their hunger league - she hasn't their ruthlessness. And while she's the most spectacular and touching of their victims, she's not alone.
It's funny, but I dragged my psycho semi-ex to a screening in LA, and in spite of his enormous sexual street cred, he was - ahem - rather offended. Prudery from the oddest places. It's a very sexy movie, and because it engages the emotional costs of sex - especially to the bystanders in relationships - it may be too much for some people. Yet it has a lightness (there are jugglers and illusionists performing in the backgrounds and the edges of the frame) that promises some kind of survival, even for the disappointed. You don't get dipped all the way into the marvelous scuzz of Tropic of Cancer, for example, but watching Fred lop off the top of a perfect soufflé, plop it on his plate, and pass the rest on is - fuck! - delicious.
One thing I do find intriguing. On the IMDb site that gives ratings, women give this movie higher ratings than men. I'd be interested in feedback on that from readers. I'm not going to link to it, but John Simon in The National Review gave it one of his most deeply misogynist spits.
I already have a VCR of this one, but, savoring (and not having a tape player), I am pretty sure I want the DVD. Part of me can never let go of la vie bohémienne, just for sanity.
Thursday, July 21, 2005
In Suspense
After two months of screwing around, dodging bugs from my security software (Fie, McAfee!), the latest update seems to have civilized them, so I trust posting will be more frequent and smoother than it has been lately. Knuckle-dragging brutes locking up your apps right and left, for mysterious reasons, has been an incredible pain, especially as I do not have the time to sit still messaging a tech, checking knowledge bases, or baby-sitting extensive diagnostics. All that can be fun, but not with an old lady, who has to pee, ringing a bell at you.
I was grateful this last weekend for HP6 - a comforting, fast read, and one you knew you were sharing with kids, their parents, and escapists everywhere. For me, a very brief vacation on-the-job. I have also been very glad to see the Rove/Plame/??? story stay robust. SCOTUS/Roberts will be interesting, but his relative blandness is not going to give much traction (or distraction); this is the price of loss last November.
Michael Bérubé's Theory Tuesday this week was also cool. The "grisha" I go by here comes from roomies and friends in Slav Lang at school, and one of them was writing her dissertation on Shklovsky, so his prominence was a nice vindication of her choices. Glad to see the Russian Formalists in the mainstream. Sometimes I miss all of that so much!
More soon!
I was grateful this last weekend for HP6 - a comforting, fast read, and one you knew you were sharing with kids, their parents, and escapists everywhere. For me, a very brief vacation on-the-job. I have also been very glad to see the Rove/Plame/??? story stay robust. SCOTUS/Roberts will be interesting, but his relative blandness is not going to give much traction (or distraction); this is the price of loss last November.
Michael Bérubé's Theory Tuesday this week was also cool. The "grisha" I go by here comes from roomies and friends in Slav Lang at school, and one of them was writing her dissertation on Shklovsky, so his prominence was a nice vindication of her choices. Glad to see the Russian Formalists in the mainstream. Sometimes I miss all of that so much!
More soon!
Friday, July 15, 2005
Deep
As much as I look forward to Karl Rove being popped like a crab between thumbnails (see illustration, below), that would only be a nice gift if Fitzgerald's grand jury is led elsewhere - down into that bunker built for Cheney, for example. Justin Raimondo seems to think that could be the case (and thanks to Steve Clemons for the link), and he's got Bolton in the mix, too (no great surprise).
Update: Whoa! Check out the TWN post this morning (7/16) -
Update: Whoa! Check out the TWN post this morning (7/16) -
"But we can never again accept or tolerate a Vice President of Dick Cheney's ilk."
Clemons has been dogging the Bolton nomination like nobody else, but not from a reflexive ideology. The guy seems appalled - both for himself and for those professionals in the government who are being trashed by the neocons - at the slash and burn tactics coming out of the Vice-President's circle. The threads continue to lead, as in a labyrinth, back to Cheney's particular people. Will they form a web that will snare them, finally? They've been at this game for 30 years, at least - Teams B, Iran-Contra, PNACs, etc. - and they have been consistently wrong, and with every failure more insistent that they are right. Achievements and facts seem to mean nothing to these guys - failure and reality seem to make them more vicious, and like cornered and wounded animals, more dangerous. Boot 'em. We shall all be safer.
Thursday, July 14, 2005
The Irresponsibility Society
Ding-dong! Speak, Memory! Remember last summer, coincidentally with the Democratic Convention, when the Homeland Security alert level was kicked up, just after the Pakistanis, "recovered the laptop of a captured Al Qaeda leader, Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, on July 13, 2004."? It seems that Khan, after his arrest, was continuing to supply information about his network to British Intelligence, and that by making a great to-do about the incident, the US Administration blew his brand-new cover. Americablog has the full rundown (and thanks to Crooks & Liars for the link).
Furthermore, it now appears that remnants of Khan's network - the guys the Brits couldn't catch in the resulting high-speed diaspora out of Luton - were the people behind last week's London bombings.
My god, blowing an asset like Khan, when we already have such difficulty penetrating terrorist groups, seemed like incompetence at the time; now it seems nearly criminal, given the long-term consequences. Chalk up a few more casualties to the Bushies' determination to pay any price for the rule of the Republican Party, for what other reason was there for this botch than to distract and detract from their political opposition? Every time this government starts yelling about National Security, I feel less safe - they're playing us. It's Plamegate, it's the Downing Street Memos - all of a piece. And they are actively endangering us in the process of maintaining their grip on power. They really do take us for fools, for sheep, and we have (collectively, at any rate) given them cause to persist in that belief. Hey, let's withhold for a while, like the heroines of Lysistrata, and see what happens!
Furthermore, it now appears that remnants of Khan's network - the guys the Brits couldn't catch in the resulting high-speed diaspora out of Luton - were the people behind last week's London bombings.
My god, blowing an asset like Khan, when we already have such difficulty penetrating terrorist groups, seemed like incompetence at the time; now it seems nearly criminal, given the long-term consequences. Chalk up a few more casualties to the Bushies' determination to pay any price for the rule of the Republican Party, for what other reason was there for this botch than to distract and detract from their political opposition? Every time this government starts yelling about National Security, I feel less safe - they're playing us. It's Plamegate, it's the Downing Street Memos - all of a piece. And they are actively endangering us in the process of maintaining their grip on power. They really do take us for fools, for sheep, and we have (collectively, at any rate) given them cause to persist in that belief. Hey, let's withhold for a while, like the heroines of Lysistrata, and see what happens!
Woof! Woof! Arf! Arf!
Republic of Dogs has been added to the Blogroll - go read res publica for yourself - he's great (and now has cool t-shirts!). My thanks to Lance Mannion and blue girl for pointing me in his direction. I must do a thorough overhaul of the listings soon - I am reading a lot of new (to me) people since I set it up, and some of my old faves are on hiatus for one reason or another (a simple remark will be added, in hopes they will return soon...). Very organic, this garden of blogs.
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Once again, days are passing between bursts of posts - just been too exhausted from the job. Apologies, and a promise that it won't last.
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Once again, days are passing between bursts of posts - just been too exhausted from the job. Apologies, and a promise that it won't last.
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