The Billy Joel and Elton John Face to Face concert I saw on Tuesday at Nationwide Arena
The Actors' Theater production of the tempest that I saw in Schiller Park on Thursday
The Film of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Kate Morton's recent novel The Forgotten Garden
The TV Show Green Wing (Season 1 available on Hulu)
One gets a thumbs up, three get a sideways thumb, and one gets a thumb down- I'll let the mystery of the matching remain, however.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
I recently finished the cult hit, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (PPZ). It's the kind of book that everyone got excited to mention that it existed. Some people bought it, like my roommate, but, I believe, far fewer people actually read it. I, however, have foolishly embarked upon a long-term journey to read as many Jane Austen fan-fictions, re-imaginings, and modern adaptations as I can tolerate. I owe many a blog posting on those other works, but as you may imagine, PPZ offered a welcome relief as it avoided much of the feminine melodrama of this genre, and so it also makes for a more engaging blog post.
As a junior in high school, my Gifted English class was given a creative writing assignment in satire. Lacking any true creative impulse, I wrote "The Gospel According to Timothy Leary", in which the occurrences of the New Testament all make sense because the participants are high on LSD. I have no idea why my fairly religious, but Episcopalian, parents were so supportive of this, especially as it lacked any artistic merit. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies just seems to be a better piece turned in for the same assignment. I wonder if it began with using a word processor's Find and Replace function to insert 'zombie' for every occurrence of 'husband' or 'wife' and then rewriting the sentences to make sense.
And the narrative of PPZ does make a certain amount of sense. The military is needed to fight the zombie hordes. Lady Catherine de Bourgh is thought well of because of her fighting prowess (and her daughter is still to frail and sickly to to accomplish anything). Charlotte Lucas marries Mr. Collins because she has contracted the zombie plague and knows she has little time left before she needs to be beheaded.
But some other aspects of the novel make unnecessary changes to the tale of Pride and Prejudice. Mr. Bennett is often too practical, training his daughters to fight zombies. He and the girls' aunt Mrs. Gardiner have extraneous extramarital affairs. Pemberley is a pagoda-styled building. And in the various discussions of balls by the many empty-headed young ladies, Elizabeth and Darcy share a titter in interpreting the word 'balls' to mean the male anatomy.
PPZ does take on a trend in modern literature: the omni-present reading group questions at the end of the book. Is it the goal of very book to be read by a book club now? Can members of book clubs not figure out discussion points on their own? In PPZ the questions are suitably tongue in cheek, my favorite of which is, "Does Mrs. Bennet have a single redeeming quality?" Apparently these questions are taken seriously in the Oprah Magazine.
And on the topic of zombies, a new film is to come out in the fantastic sub-genre: Nazi Zombies. The Norwegian film Dead Snow.
As a junior in high school, my Gifted English class was given a creative writing assignment in satire. Lacking any true creative impulse, I wrote "The Gospel According to Timothy Leary", in which the occurrences of the New Testament all make sense because the participants are high on LSD. I have no idea why my fairly religious, but Episcopalian, parents were so supportive of this, especially as it lacked any artistic merit. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies just seems to be a better piece turned in for the same assignment. I wonder if it began with using a word processor's Find and Replace function to insert 'zombie' for every occurrence of 'husband' or 'wife' and then rewriting the sentences to make sense.
And the narrative of PPZ does make a certain amount of sense. The military is needed to fight the zombie hordes. Lady Catherine de Bourgh is thought well of because of her fighting prowess (and her daughter is still to frail and sickly to to accomplish anything). Charlotte Lucas marries Mr. Collins because she has contracted the zombie plague and knows she has little time left before she needs to be beheaded.
But some other aspects of the novel make unnecessary changes to the tale of Pride and Prejudice. Mr. Bennett is often too practical, training his daughters to fight zombies. He and the girls' aunt Mrs. Gardiner have extraneous extramarital affairs. Pemberley is a pagoda-styled building. And in the various discussions of balls by the many empty-headed young ladies, Elizabeth and Darcy share a titter in interpreting the word 'balls' to mean the male anatomy.
PPZ does take on a trend in modern literature: the omni-present reading group questions at the end of the book. Is it the goal of very book to be read by a book club now? Can members of book clubs not figure out discussion points on their own? In PPZ the questions are suitably tongue in cheek, my favorite of which is, "Does Mrs. Bennet have a single redeeming quality?" Apparently these questions are taken seriously in the Oprah Magazine.
And on the topic of zombies, a new film is to come out in the fantastic sub-genre: Nazi Zombies. The Norwegian film Dead Snow.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
The Philanthropist
Hulu desktop has changed my TV watching with my new Mac Mini. I work on my laptop in bed while using just the Apple remote to choose programs. (I am happy to report that Peep Show Season (or Series for the Brits) 1 is available now on Hulu. But I have seen series 1-4 and want to see 5!)
One new show I have caught through Hulu is The Philanthropist, from NBC. It is yet another example proving that every actor from the HBO/BBC show Rome gets a chance at starring in their own network program, whether it is a good idea or not (I liked Journeyman starring Kevin McKidd, and he seems to have found a home on Grey's Anatomy now.) James Purefoy, who played Marc Antony on Rome, is the philanthropist Teddy Rast, a wealthy entrepreneur who takes to doing good acts in person instead of solely giving money following the death of his son, a bitter divorce, and a touching experience in Nigeria. His married business partners are played by Neve Campbell (she's an adult now) and Jesse Martin (always a sure choice). The show is loosely based off the life of Bobby Sager.
The plots do stretch one's credulity, and the pace and editing of the program can be a bit-offsetting as well. Yet, I was happy enough to be entertained by the first two episodes. The mostly ambivalent but hopeful reviews I see on the blogosphere capture my sentiments as well. But a co-worker was vehemently against the premise of the show and it is this view of philanthropy that I wish to address here.
My co-worker argued that in the real world it is almost always better for a wealthy entrepreneur to run a large successful, ethical corporation that does not exploit people or the environment while giving money to charities that have an expertise in their field. What such an individual should not do, is precisely what the character Teddy Rast does in the pilot episode, putting himself in physical danger to deliver some vaccine to one remote Nigerian village.
From an initial rational and economical perspective, I had to agree. Even on a personal level, my own experience of the futility on the charity front-line (when I was in the AmeriCorps and a member of the National Readiness and Response Corps of the American Red Cross, working in Anchorage, AK) made me certain that I could do more for the world from a further distance. (I am not the person I want to be, and a year or so after my AmeriCorps year I had stopped all regular volunteering and trying to do more for the world.)
Then my gut, and second level rationalizations turn on. Surely we need to take into account the impact upon the doer and receiver of direct charity. Helping someone in person will keep you more likely to write the big checks. Knowing that someone important or wealthy cares can raise the spirits of the receivers, and of course the publicity that can be brought to a cause amplifies the small acts of the influential individual. But this implies that one should not toil away in obscurity and quietly do good, and this removes much of the one-on-one benefit and purity of the experience.
At college reunions I often chastise friends who had espoused the loftiest ideals, but who are not consultants or corporate lawyers. Their arguments about being the people who write the checks to help the groups they support have rung quite hollow to me. So do we as a society value those people who give time and effort more than those that just give greenbacks? Is it right to do so?
The NYTimes' Ethicist, Randy Cohen, writes in his Moral of the Story blog about a similar wealthy first-worlder helping out individuals from the third-world, in this case Madonna adopting a Malawian child. Although the issues of adoption exceed those I have brought up, many of the issues are the same. In my own head I cannot determine what the best course of action is with regards to charity, and it seems that as whole our western society is torn on the the issue also. Maybe a few more episodes of the The Philanthropist will help clarify my thoughts.
-------Edit 7/9/9 ----------------------------
Nick Kristof has a column today discussing another aspect of this problem: the length we will go to help one person, and the difficulties found when trying to help a larger number of people at once.
One new show I have caught through Hulu is The Philanthropist, from NBC. It is yet another example proving that every actor from the HBO/BBC show Rome gets a chance at starring in their own network program, whether it is a good idea or not (I liked Journeyman starring Kevin McKidd, and he seems to have found a home on Grey's Anatomy now.) James Purefoy, who played Marc Antony on Rome, is the philanthropist Teddy Rast, a wealthy entrepreneur who takes to doing good acts in person instead of solely giving money following the death of his son, a bitter divorce, and a touching experience in Nigeria. His married business partners are played by Neve Campbell (she's an adult now) and Jesse Martin (always a sure choice). The show is loosely based off the life of Bobby Sager.
The plots do stretch one's credulity, and the pace and editing of the program can be a bit-offsetting as well. Yet, I was happy enough to be entertained by the first two episodes. The mostly ambivalent but hopeful reviews I see on the blogosphere capture my sentiments as well. But a co-worker was vehemently against the premise of the show and it is this view of philanthropy that I wish to address here.
My co-worker argued that in the real world it is almost always better for a wealthy entrepreneur to run a large successful, ethical corporation that does not exploit people or the environment while giving money to charities that have an expertise in their field. What such an individual should not do, is precisely what the character Teddy Rast does in the pilot episode, putting himself in physical danger to deliver some vaccine to one remote Nigerian village.
From an initial rational and economical perspective, I had to agree. Even on a personal level, my own experience of the futility on the charity front-line (when I was in the AmeriCorps and a member of the National Readiness and Response Corps of the American Red Cross, working in Anchorage, AK) made me certain that I could do more for the world from a further distance. (I am not the person I want to be, and a year or so after my AmeriCorps year I had stopped all regular volunteering and trying to do more for the world.)
Then my gut, and second level rationalizations turn on. Surely we need to take into account the impact upon the doer and receiver of direct charity. Helping someone in person will keep you more likely to write the big checks. Knowing that someone important or wealthy cares can raise the spirits of the receivers, and of course the publicity that can be brought to a cause amplifies the small acts of the influential individual. But this implies that one should not toil away in obscurity and quietly do good, and this removes much of the one-on-one benefit and purity of the experience.
At college reunions I often chastise friends who had espoused the loftiest ideals, but who are not consultants or corporate lawyers. Their arguments about being the people who write the checks to help the groups they support have rung quite hollow to me. So do we as a society value those people who give time and effort more than those that just give greenbacks? Is it right to do so?
The NYTimes' Ethicist, Randy Cohen, writes in his Moral of the Story blog about a similar wealthy first-worlder helping out individuals from the third-world, in this case Madonna adopting a Malawian child. Although the issues of adoption exceed those I have brought up, many of the issues are the same. In my own head I cannot determine what the best course of action is with regards to charity, and it seems that as whole our western society is torn on the the issue also. Maybe a few more episodes of the The Philanthropist will help clarify my thoughts.
-------Edit 7/9/9 ----------------------------
Nick Kristof has a column today discussing another aspect of this problem: the length we will go to help one person, and the difficulties found when trying to help a larger number of people at once.
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