Posted in Culture, Writing, tagged blogging, creative writing, Liebster Award, Writing on 30 Aug 2012| 6 Comments »
Yesterday, Paige Nolley nominated this blog for a Liebster Award (Thanks, Paige!) The award is really sort of a vox populi way of shining a light on newer blogs (those with followers < 200), which means I most certainly qualify.
The procedure for award nominees is:
Posted in Culture on 28 Aug 2012| Leave a Comment »
Last week, we lost two Armstrongs, and in this era where “hero” is grossly overused, we lost a true one.
Lance Armstrong, seven-time first-place finisher of the Tour de France, essentially went nolo contendere against doping charges. And now we learn that News International is reviewing their out-of-court settlement, made in response to libel charges Lance raised.
Lance was one of those public figures who, the more you looked and the longer the limelight shone upon him, the less “heroic” he seemed. My initial admiration, based on his comeback from cancer and his strong devotion to family, faded as charges of doping persisted and he dealt with marital commitments in a manner that at best can be described as cavalier. His thirst for celebrity—all in the name of his foundation, of course—began to acquire a hint of desperation. Lance needed to be on top, needed to be the best. His retirements came and went as fast as his marriages. Then, last week, when Lance decided to give up the fight against the doping charges, it was the final stroke. Stripped of his titles, he is now just another fallen hero.
In contrast, Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, shunned the limelight. This man, a veteran of the Korean War, a test pilot who flew with giants like Yeager and Knight, quietly and expertly did a job that rewrote history. He was a man who could have made a fortune cashing in on his celebrity. As George Carlin famously quipped, if Neil’s first words on the moon had been “Coca-Cola!” he would have been set for life. But instead of fame, he opted for humility and relative obscurity. I have friends who, until they saw pictures of him this past week, couldn’t have picked a picture of Neil out of a lineup. His passing is bittersweet; he lived a remarkable and yet a humble life, he achieved great things but did not boast of them. We no longer live in a world that has Neil Armstrong in it.
We’ve all become accustomed to “heroes” that have feet of clay. We are perfectly comfortable with role models draped with felony convictions. Society turns a blind eye when high-profile celebrities misbehave or commit crimes. We forget easily their bad deeds, and accept the facile apologies crafted so well that they admit no real responsibility.
We do this because real heroes are thin on the ground, these days, and we hunger for someone to look up to. Unfortunately, we’ve lost one of those who was worthy of that admiration.
But only one.
k
Posted in Culture, Politics, tagged Akins, climate change, current events, intelligence, legitimate rape, politics, science, value intelligence on 22 Aug 2012| 2 Comments »
There was a time when we admired people who knew stuff, people who invented things. When did that change?
We used to admire people like Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, and Albert Schweitzer. We admired our educators, our scientists, our doctors. We used to value intelligence, and it was something we thought was important for our leaders to have. After all, who wanted a buffoon running the country?
Then something happened. We started to belittle our teachers, we began blaming our doctors for every bad outcome, and we began to discount everything our scientists told us about our world. Gut feeling trumped empirical data. Sound bites overrode sound reasoning.
Soon, we no longer cared if our leaders and representatives in government were smart enough for the job. Intelligence didn’t matter; what mattered was whether they talked like we did. And now, we don’t even care if a candidate can string a coherent sentence together. High intelligence is now a detractor, a tick in the minus column. It is more important that we enjoy sitting down to have a beer with our candidate than whether s/he has a single clue about the complex and manifold issues that face this country.
The result? We now have mainstream political parties that completely deny entire bodies of established and accepted scientific analysis. We have politicians who believe that the female body has some sort of whoop-whoop alarm system that will keep women from getting pregnant in case of “legitimate rape.” And we now have a candidate for the presidency who has a budget, but his team admits that they haven’t “run the numbers.”
It’s ludicrous. Why would I listen to someone who’s “read a book” on a subject instead of someone who’s studied that subject for decades? Do I ask a scientist for spiritual advice? Hell, no! So why would I give more credence to a preacher than a scientist in areas of scientific study?
Why don’t we want our leaders to be the smartest guys we can find? More to the point, why don’t we demand it?
Aw, hell. Hand me another beer, will ya?
k
Posted in Culture, Low Tech, Writing, tagged books, e-readers, ebooks, Kindle, novels, Writing on 21 Aug 2012| Leave a Comment »
Just as today no one will ever go into a store and thrill as they unfold the triptych of the latest Roger Dean album cover, so too, in a short period of time, no one will go into a bookstore and stop as they smell that rarefied combination of pulp and fresh ink.
Like it or not (and I don’t) we are moving toward a world in which sales of physical books will be a niche market, like vinyl LPs are today. Most of the trade in these items will involve used books and take place in small, dust-filled shops where these throwback items will eagerly line the shelves, their worn spines and faded gilt lettering displayed to their best advantage. Like potential adopters at an animal shelter, we will wish we could take them all home, but we will not be able, and will have to satisfy ourselves with saving just one or two.
A plethora of experiences and rituals will be lost to this, the Kindle generation. Technology will enhance their lives in many ways, but in this one arena, they will be the poorer for it.
Posted in Movies, tagged Glenn Close, James Goldman, Katherine Hepburn, Lion in Winter, movie review, Movies, Patrick Stewart, Peter O'Toole, television on 20 Aug 2012| Leave a Comment »
Full disclosure: The 1968 O’Toole/Hepburn version of “The Lion in Winter” is one of my all-time favorite films.
Last night my wife and I screened the 2003 remake, starring Patrick Stewart and Glenn Close as part of a fine ensemble cast. This movie is a very fine production in every way, and to be honest, it is even better than the 1968 version in several ways, but for my money, it still falls a little short of its predecessor.
This version was made-for-TV, and that hurts it right off the bat. The 4:3 ratio is jarring these days, when everything comes across to us widescreen. When such high quality color and filming gets crammed into the restrictive ratio, it’s just confining. You know what you’re missing here.
The 2003 version has an outstanding supporting cast and this is one area in which it surpasses the 1968 version. The three sons and the princess-pawn Alais are far away superior performances, and I truly wish I could pick them up and CGI them into the older movie. Richard is less whiny, Geoffrey is more cunning, John is more believably dunderheaded, and Alais is much less innocent.
Unfortunately, while the Stewart/Close pair at the top of the bill are excellent, they do not meet the gold standard set by O’Toole/Hepburn. Stewart can rage as well as O’Toole, but he lacks chemistry with Close, and while Close was stunning in her own tirades, she just lacked the ease with which Hepburn switched from tumult to tease, from vengeful to loving, layering each emotion one atop the other like a pastry, whereas Close merely shifted gears.
This newer version was filmed at Spiš Castle in Slovakia, and though neither you nor I can probably tell the difference between a 12th century castle and one from the 15th, this one just seemed too “new.” The walls were too clean, and the wooden doors were so fresh and yellow you could practically smell the sap. The dogs were too clean, the lighting too bright, and while most of the costuming was grand and suitable to the Christmas in a stone castle setting, someone decided to put Alais in a slinky polyester velvet sheath with a Viginia-Mayo-esque zipper line up the back. I mean, the gal looked great in blue, but come on!
Thus, I must say that the 2003 version ranks second to the one from 1968. It is good, especially for a television production, but comes up lacking in comparison. Worth watching? Definitely. After all, it had stiff competition.
k
Posted in Movies, tagged film, film review, Korea, Korean cinema, Movies, My Strange Girl, rom-com, romantic comedy on 17 Aug 2012| 2 Comments »
I haven’t watched a lot of Korean movies. I think “The Host” was the last one, in fact, so when I pulled up “My Scary Girl” to watch during my workout, I didn’t have a lot on which to gauge my expectations.
What I found was a little gem of a movie—it’s not perfect, but it consistently surprised me which, these days, is frankly a little hard to do.
“My Scary Girl” starts out like a rom-com, but with a twist. The guy is the main character and he’s incredibly shy and even a little backward when it comes to social interaction. An English lecturer at a university, he’s out of is element when it comes to real, live people and as for women, well, it’s just painful to watch. But he realizes his life of loneliness is not a happy one, and when he spies a new girl in his building, he’s trapped between his shyness and his desire for love and happiness.
Thus, the setup.
What happens from there I won’t divulge, except to say that this is one of the blackest rom-coms I’ve ever seen. It is by turns laugh-out-loud funny, poignant, and totally puzzling. The plot is far from the standard American rom-com model, and yet I’d have to put it in that category since it is essentially a comedic boy-meets-girl-boy-wants-girl-boy-can’t have-girl-boy-gets-girl story. There’s more before, during, and after that tried-and-true scaffolding, and “My Scary Girl” goes places I truly, truly didn’t expect it to. But with each twist and turn, I found myself nodding, having seen the clues, and chiding myself for not having seen it coming.
It’s also a venue for a very competent performance by Park Yong-woo as the near-terminally shy professor. His expressions of anxiety are exquisite, and the character’s wild swings of emotion, in exploration of first love and in reaction to unfolding events, are portrayed with seamless aplomb.
In all, the movie is, as I said, a gem, albeit with a few flaws (though these flaws may be solely due to my American expectations and perceptions). Despite these, it succeeds on every level, a thing that’s very hard for a rom-com to do.
k
Posted in Culture, Politics, tagged Facebook, humor, Munster, Obama, politics, Romney, Ryan on 15 Aug 2012| Leave a Comment »
Yesterday, a Facebook friend of mine chided me. Yes, me. Little-old-me.
There’s a picture going around, one of those “separated at birth” memes, of Romney/Ryan justaposed with Herman and Eddie Munster from the old 1960s TV show. To be fair, the resemblance is only evident in the pairing, but the picture does carry a subtle political commentary: Romney as this big, simple guy who just wants to be liked, and Ryan as his much younger, meaner-spirited sidekick. I found it humorous, and shared it.
My friend chided me, saying we needed to bring our discourse up out of the gutter because the “problems [we] are facing are way way too serious for this kind of stuff.” (more…)
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 