My Dinner With Andre

I finally got around to watching the Louis Malle film, "My Dinner with Andre". I had been hesitant to watch it since I had so many friends who counted it amongst their favorite movies, and I didn't want to disappoint anyone if I didn't like it.

I did like it, but I didn't love it. Wallace Shawn, Vizzini in the Princess Bride, is fantastic, but his characteristic laugh grates.

This film exemplifies a trend I have noticed in real life and most aspects of culture: once you decide to tackle the deep issues of life - love, religion, meaning of life etc. - you sound like an idiot and you spout clichés. So I was pleasantly surprised to find that the film did treat these issues well enough that I was engaged and felt no compulsion to roll my eyes. Unfortunately, the characters were seeking greater meaning in their acting and performance, and I simply do not believe that art is life- it can bring pleasure, pain and insight, but I cannot be convinced that life's mysteries can be illuminated camping in the woods with Polish actors.

The discussion was much better than the 'deep' discussions I overhear others having in person, or even the misguided ones I myself have tried to have. And it was better than most literature that tackles tough issues, including the texts of major religions, most philosophers, and especially Paulo Coelho. (As a side note, I am disappointed that my sister was so enchanted by The Alchemist. On the other hand I am impressed by the authors devotion to open source.) In literature, I have found examples of authors who deal adroitly and effectively with these big questions, primarily by having action occur about the issues in a realistic manor. These authors include Milan Kundera (whose writing I love, but whose conclusions about life I do not agree with), Haruki Murakami, and Marilynne Robinson.

So pop "My Dinner With Andre" out of the DVD player and pick up one of their books instead.

Roald Dahl and Spies

I just finished the fantastic book "The Irregulars" by Jennet Conant- the non-fiction tale of Roald Dahl and the British Security Coordination, who spied in the US during WWII for the British. It was a fairly fun read (with a few poorly worded sentences)- and showed the truly glamorous side of spying. Dahl had numerous affairs, made high level friends, including the Roosevelts, and discovered his love and aptitude for writing. And all by the time he was 29.

Some of the fun facts I learned:
Dahl was 6'6" and a fighter pilot.
Lyndon Johnson was an attractive womanizer.
I need to read Dahl's short story "Skin" as I had liked his story "Lamb to the Slaughter" whose plot was suggested to him by Ian Fleming.
Leslie Howard, from "Gone with the Wind", was killed whilst on a spy mission during WWII.
Truman replaced Wallace as FDR's running mate for his fourth term, and this was approved by the Brits as they were scared of Wallace's socialist idealism.

And there was so much more, but I've been nattering on about it over drinks for a week now, so I think I've gotten it out of my system.

Humanities are Crap

Because I signed up to attend a lecture a while ago I got the following email about an upcoming even that I find ridiculous:

Faculty and graduate students interested in digital literacy are warmly invited to an upcoming talk by Professor Jonathan Alexander, University of California-Irvine, whose work focuses on digital media and queer theory.

Please forward this message to interested faculty and graduate students

*************************************************************************************
Professor Joonathan Alexander will speak on "Jean Cocteau, Queerness, Multimedia" In this presentation, he will explore the representation of queerness through multimedia and asks the following questions,

• What does multimedia offer us in the figuring of queerness? how might we compose a multimediated queerness?

• What/where/how is the queer[ed] body figured in/through multimedia?

• What are the limits of the knowable and knowably queer in multimediated spaces?

This presentation reflects on such questions by bringing together theoretical musing, analysis of the work of Jean Cocteau, and digital performance art.


I think there are certain signifiers that indicate when a talk will be almost entirely bullshit: dropping names of European 'thinkers', coining unnecessary new words, overuse of uncommon punctuation, referring to any unspecified 'theory', and finally any invocation of performance art.

Recent Ear Candy

I've bought a few albums recently, and borrowed some other great ones from the public library. As you may have guessed from other posts, I've got the Vampire Weekend album and British Sea Power's Do You Like Rock Music?, and in addition the Magnetic Fields' Distortion and the Juno soundtrack. All of these I've been passing out to friends.

Through the library I've caught up on some great femals singer-songwriters like KT Tunstall, Regina Spektor and Feist, and some older alt-country groups like the Old 97s, Whiskeytown, and Grandaddy. And then indie favorites Andrew Bird and Gomez.

Big Heads and Vampires

Last week I went to two concerts in a row, the first on Wednesday to see Big Head Todd and the Monsters, and the second was Vampire Weekend on Valentine's Day. These concerts were a welcome relief after a lot of shows I was interested in seeing were cancelled, postponed, or bypassed Columbus (Marah, Indigo Girls and Super Furry Animals).

As one of the other concert-goers said at the start of the BHTatM show, "Welcome to 1993!" The only album of theirs I have and know is Sister Sweetly, from that year. Although I encountered it much later, on a camping trip during my sophomore year of college. For a six hour van trip, it was the only cassette tape we had to listen to. This album had the song "Bittersweet" on it, and they played it midway through the concert. There is something in the simple definition of bittersweet that I find so terribly worse than misery, and I sat there crying in the audience. I left soon afterwards. Anyway, BHTatM really impressed me; did you knotheir websitew that were commissioned to write a song for NASAs astronauts? and that you can download their newest album for free from their website?

Standing in opposition to BHTatM, Vampire Weekend is the newest, hottest thing in alternative rock- their first, eponymous, album is less than a month old. Lots has been written about them, by far better music bloggers out there, so just give them a listen, on World Cafe for instance. Even Neil Gaiman appreciates their 'punctuation song' "Oxford Comma".

Grand and Grandiose Titles

I recently finished Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and didn't like it as much as all the hype led me to believe I would. It certainly made the recent n+1 article about hype feel relevant. From the start of the novel, we know that Oscar will not have a long life, but I actually found myself waiting with bated breath for his death, as he completes high school, college and takes on a full-time job his life feels less and less brief. Needless to say, there isn't much that can be described as wondrous about his life either. But it isn't quite ironic enough to warrant wondrous as a tongue-in-cheek title adjective. Mind you, the constant references to sci-fi genre works of the past made me feel poorly schooled, I knew nothing of the Lensmen or Watchmen; only the Tolkien and Lewis allusions were comprehensible.

But why did I not mind the equally grandiose titles A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, by Dave Eggers, or album title The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter? Both of these works walk the same line between great and small that TBWLoOW does, and yet they were more affecting and powerful although not much better. I find The Animal Years a much Better Ritter album, and both Eggers and Ritter have received the critical acclaim and word-of-mouth praise that so often ends in disappointment for me. I guess this can just be chalked up the the vagaries of taste and art.

British Sea Power

Sometimes I think I have a very stupid sixth sense, I seem to know when beloved bands put out new releases - without seeing any press or receiving fan emails. Earlier this fall I went on iTunes looking for anything by Josh Ritter, and his album the Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter had just come out.

This past Sunday I went looking to see if the Brighton-based band British Sea Power had anything new. I got their EP Krankenhaus? from the fall, only to find out that they released their newest full-length album, Do You Like Rock Music? on Monday in the UK. But it won't be in the US until February 12th. Even better than a new album is the fact that they will be in town for a concert March 27th.

I guess I will wait to hear the album, I'm very excited for the song Great Skua because of my time in Antarctica being dive-bombed by skuas.