From the Sublime to the Ridiculous

This weekend I started watching a movie I've wanted to see for a long time: Smiley's People, with Alec Guinness. Guinness is one of my favorite actors, and I enjoy him in everything I've ever seen him in. He just sinks into a role. He's the sort of actor who, if you aren't watching something for the sake of him in it, you never notice who he is. But he's brilliant.

I like Michael Kitchen for the same reason. A few years ago I caught him on Foyle's War and thought, "This guy is unbelievable! Who is he?" Come to find out I'd seen him in half a dozen things, including a show where he had a leading role (a thinly veiled Prince Charles character in To Play the King) but I never noticed him. He's brilliant, too.

Then we have Footballers' Wives, a truly ridiculous, over-the-top British soap opera. The show is WRONG WRONG WRONG, and yet, so tasty! Yum! I love it. Principally, I love Tanya Turner, the main character, who, over four seasons, works her way through three husbands, boatloads of money, and large amounts of nicotine, alcohol, and other recreational substances. Zoe Lucker plays her with great intensity, and somehow (how?!) manages to make her sympathetic. I don't know how she does it, but I'm in awe, and I would never, ever not notice Zoe Lucker in anything.

From Alec Guinness, the master of subtle, to Michael Kitchen, who can make one corner-of-mouth twitch or an "em" mean more than a whole speech, to Zoe Lucker, who can toss off the most ridiculous soap opera lines and behavior and make it seem real AND human. Really good actors, all of them.

Everybody Dance

Today I saw part of The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. I'd seen it once before. It happens to be my favorite one of their movies, which is odd, considering it's not one of their better-known ones. Don't get me wrong: what's not to love about Swing Time and Top Hat? But the Castle story actually has a plot (!), and a script (!!), and the romance between Fred and Ginger actually seems real (!!!).

I didn't know much more about the Castles than their name and the fact that they were dancers, before I saw this movie. But if the movie is correct (a big "if", that), they seem to have been the first mass-market celebrity endorsers. Products as various as chocolates, hats, and face cream bore their names. I find this fascinating--I'd no idea the madness (Thomas Kinkade furniture gallery?) had started so early on. And they introduced all kinds of dances (the Fox Trot!) and started the ballroom dance phenomenon that gripped America for decades.

Not to spoil the movie (consider this your spoiler) but Vernon dies in a plane crash at the end. It's very sad--partially because he'd survived war and was home at last, and partially because the couple seemed so much in love. They show the plane crash, which seems awfully realistic for the time period; I was surprised. The ending is a bit hokey, but the whole movie is so sweet that it doesn't matter. I was still crying over poor Ginger Rogers hearing the news by the time it ended.

After their first dance audition, their manager says, "Who would pay to see a man dance with his wife?" All day long the lyric from "Chicago (That Toddlin' Town)" has been in my head. Apparently it was written by Fred Fischer (or is it Frank Reyes?) in 1922: "I saw a man, he danced with his wife". I wonder, now, if that could mean the Castles? They went on a nationwide tour, apparently, just prior to World War I. (The song refers to Billy Sunday, too).

If anyone knows the answer to this, please comment and let me know. I'm terribly curious.

The Last Time I Saw Paris

I can't resist it any more: Like millions of other people, I have to blog about Paris Hilton. Why is she so fascinating? I think it's because she's so horrible. Like a vulgarity train wreck.

Sigh. I've actually long felt pity for this woman. By the time she was eighteen (if not before), she'd seen and done (in every sense of the word) it all. She doesn't seem to have any interests besides amusing herself. What does she have to live for? (See this article in the Washington Monthly for a wider view of people like Paris: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0401.wallace-wells.html ).

It's like the line from Evita: "A shame you did it all at twenty-six; there are no mysteries now. Nothing can thrill you, no one fulfill you." Very, very sad. She did it all at eighteen, and in public, too.

Despite my pity, however, I find her awful beyond belief. Fake hair color and (formerly) length, fake tan, fake eye color, fake everything. She does not, however, have fake breasts, and I respect that. However, as a sharp friend pointed out, if that's the only respect-worthy thing about her...

Darling Paris outdid herself this week, though (I know, I know--what could outdo the sex video? Or sparking the ubiquitous "That's hot."? Or the former engagement to a man with the same name? But I digress.) Here is her latest:

In a quote from the London Sunday Times: "There's nobody in the world like me. I think every decade has an iconic blonde - like Marilyn Monroe or Princess Diana - and right now, I'm that icon."

Later in the interview she says, "Nobody seems to get that how I am on The Simple Life is a character....I play dumb like Jessica Simpson plays dumb. But we know exactly what we're doing. We're smart blondes."

Erm. Paris, honey, I know you're a "smart blonde" (except, wait, it's fake...or is "blonde" really a state of mind? But then why would she need the qualifier "smart"?), but have you considered that Britney Spears was your type of "iconic blonde" in the first half of the decade? And now she's procreating with K-Fed. Where will you be in five years?

Though I'm not a Diana fan, it cannot be denied that she was a style icon who held enormous sway with millions across the world for much longer than a decade. I am a Marilyn fan, and the idea of Paris comparing herself to MM is ludicrous. I think a more apt comparison would be to Jayne Mansfield (no offense to her gorgeous and talented daughter, Mariska Hargitay, of whom I'm also a fan).

Paris, darling, get a life and do something. I know you have no talent, but if you really are a "smart blonde", you'll stop acting like a dumb one.

But then, who would pay attention to her?

Baby Boomers Go Bust

So I've been reading Balsamic Dreams: A Short But Self-Important History of the Baby Boomer Generation, by Joe Queenan. I can only take Queenan's brand of sarcastic humor in small doses, but he does have a way with words, and he does have a point. Sometimes.

"Let's get one thing clear about the sixties: It was not a simpler, more innocent time. It was a nightmare. Everyone hated one another. Everyone was shooting at one another. Civil war was in the air. The food was abysmal. There were race riots in almost every major city. Drugs ravaged the underclass. People got lynched. The only good thing about the sixties was the music and the fact that it wasn't the seventies....I wouldn't live through the sixties again if you paid me. Which is pretty amazing, because Baby Boomers will do just about anything if you pay them." (p. 30)

"Baby Boomers have made a systematic attempt to geld the English language through a poisonous mixture of cant, jargon, blather, piffle, balderdash, and mush. Their primary siege engine has been a virulent brand of euphemism....For example, when Baby Boomers use the term 'centered' to describe a child, it can mean anything from 'has scads of grade-A munis in his trust fund' to 'takes less drugs than his peers.' When the term 'high maintenance' is used to describe a woman, it can mean anything from 'sensitive' to 'high-strung' to 'coke-snorting bitch.' And the term 'vulnerable' can mean anything from 'probably gay' to 'read way too much Sylvia Plath in college." (p. 86)

From silken Samarcand to cedared Lebanon

I was going to write about some books I've been reading, but I decided to write this blog entry about something that is making me sad right now: the destructive attacks in the Middle East, particularly those in Beirut and Haifa. Whatever one's view on Middle East politics at a given moment, one must acknowledge that real people are suffering. Civilians whose lives are as important to them as mine is to me, are suffering. And whenever a beautiful city (like Beirut or Haifa) has havoc wreaked upon it, the world at large loses. People in the West have strong, often sentimental associations with cities such as New York, London, Berlin, Madrid, and Paris. Beirut used to bask in the title of "The Paris of the Middle East." What if Paris were the city receiving rocket attacks?

It's easy, in the West, to dismiss the current exchange of fire as something that seems like the natural state of the Middle East: fighting happens there a lot, and has been happening, and seems like it always will happen. But each particular conflict is not always as simplistic (everybody vs. Israel, Israel vs. everybody) as it seems. There are often subtle differences with each local situation, and lots of innocent people get caught up in fighting that they'd be happy to avoid. I think we owe the people affected by the fighting the dignity of at least temporarily seeing them as individuals, and not some mass grouping of "good guys" or "bad guys", or even just "those guys".

Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) has a good introduction (complete with current info) on both Beirut and Haifa; a quick Yahoo! search gave me gorgeous pictures of both cities.

Some quotations I found:

"You have your Lebanon and its dilemma. I have my Lebanon and its beauty. Your Lebanon is an arena for men from the West and men from the East. My Lebanon is a flock of birds fluttering in the early morning as shepherds lead their sheep into the meadow and rising in the evening as farmers return from their fields and vineyards. You have your Lebanon and its people. I have my Lebanon and its people. "

Kahlil Gibran, “You Have Your Lebanon and I Have My Lebanon,” Mirrors of the Soul, trans. Joseph Sheban, pp. 30–31 (1965).

"Its origins are ancient but it burgeons with brash modernity, and it lounges upon its delectable shore, halfway between the Israelis and the Syrians, in a posture that no such city, at such a latitude, in such a moment of history, has any reasonable excuse for assuming."

Jan Morris, On Beirut, Among the Cities Oxford 85

"There is Israel, for us at least. What no other generation had, we have. We have Israel in spite of all the dangers, the threats and the wars, we have Israel. We can go to Jerusalem. Generations and generations could not and we can."

Elie Wiesel (b. 1928), Romanian–born U.S. writer. Interview in Writers at Work, Eighth Series, ed. George Plimpton (1988).

It's all Greek to me

Today I read Friends, Lovers, Chocolate by Alexander McCall Smith, in its entirety. The first volume of that series (The Sunday Philosophy Club) I found rather tedious, in that the main character is constantly agonizing over moral questions (she's a moral philosopher, and apparently this renders her perpetually vulnerable to the question of "ought"). I nearly didn't continue with the series, but this second volume put to rest my fear of boredom. Isabel Dalhousie does indeed continue to worry about moral questions, but with much more verve and less abstraction. I also found the plot more interesting.

I did like this quote, very much:

"The sentiment sounded trite, but then didn't most good sentiments sound trite? It was hard to make goodness--and good people--sound interesting. Yet the good were worthy of note, of course, because they battled and that battle was a great story, whereas the evil were evil because of moral laziness, or weakness, and that was ultimately a dull and uninteresting affair."

I've long wondered why (especially in fiction) good people were rendered so boring(ly). In some cases, of course, the author simply doesn't understand the internal complexity of goodness. In other cases, though, I suspect it's sheer laziness. It's easy to make a wicked person "interesting", because the conflict is obvious and external: who might they harm next? what might they do? But often the good are only fighting their own weaker natures.

A good character can fight an external battle and hold interest, though, such as Atticus Finch. (An easy example--but can I think of another? This bears more thought.)

The other quote of the day is from The Greeks, by H.D.F. Kitto. (Not nearly finished with that, as it takes much more concentration to get through.) Kitto was English, a classics scholar, and writing in the 1950s; thus the tone and context for the quote. He is discussing the clarity of the ancient Greek language:

"It is the nature of the Greek language to be exact, subtle and clear. The imprecision and lack of immediate perspicuity into which English occasionally deviates and from which German occasionally emerges, is quite foreign to Greek."

"From which German occasionally emerges." HA! I am reminded of the Sherlock Holmes adventure, "A Scandal in Bohemia." Holmes receives a message from a potential client, but he notes its syntactical peculiarities to Watson:

"Do you note the peculiar construction of the sentence--'This account of you we have from all quarters received.' A Frenchman or Russian could not have written that. It is the German who is so uncourteous to his verbs."

In reproducing these quotes, I mean no disrespect to the German language; I don't know it at all. But I find it amusing that speakers of English (a notoriously difficult language for non-native speakers) could be so dismissive of a language not all that different from their own.

Of course, Englishmen are not all free from blame, in Kitto's eyes. The footnote to the above quote reads:

"When I say 'English' I do not mean the English of administrators, politicians, and important people who write letters to The Times. Imprecision would be the chief quality of this language, but for its weary pomposity and its childish delight in foolish metaphors."

Ouch.

It never rains but it pours

Apologies to all those who tried to comment before and couldn’t because they weren’t “registered users.” I didn’t realize that was the default setting on the blog, and I haven’t tweaked the settings much yet. You should be able to comment now, though. (I’m still very new to all this; sorry about that.)

I had anticipated being able to blog during my weekend away visiting friends, but that did not happen. Today was spent running around doing errands (in the massive rain), so my blog will probably be short (still trying to dry out).

Books I’m currently reading:

Orient Express by Graham Greene (see prior post; almost finished)
The Woman Who Mapped Labrador: The Life and Expedition Diary of Mina Hubbard by Roberta Buchanan, Anne Hart, and Bryan Greene
The Beatles by Bob Spitz
The Greeks by H.D.F. Kitto

On the list of what to read next:

Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers (a re-read)
Friends, Lovers, Chocolate by Alexander McCall Smith (I am a new and passionate AMS fan)
Balsamic Dreams: A Short But Self-important History of the Baby Boomer Generation by Joe Queenan
Riding the Iron Rooster: By Train Through China by Paul Theroux

Movies I’m about to see:

The Devil Wears Prada
Out of Africa

What are you reading? Or watching?

Green(e) River

I’ve had a book by Graham Greene, Orient Express (1932), sitting on my shelf for a long time. I’ve never read anything by Greene, but see him mentioned everywhere, and knew I needed to remedy my ignorance. Overcoming my habitual laziness toward starting a new writer, I finally delved into the book yesterday. I was quite surprised, in three ways.

The first surprise was Greene’s treatment of a Jewish character as a human being who was aware of the societal prejudice against him, who hated it (yet his self-image was affected by it), and who hated being affected by it. Sadly, I have become resigned to reading casual offensive remarks about Jewish people in the novels of the period, and this level of sensitivity was quite pleasing and unexpected.

The second surprise was the frank, though not prurient, discussion of sex. In the first third of the book, Greene mentions or discusses at length prostitution, pedophilia, lesbian desire, and various permutations (some comic) of heterosexual lust and affection. Sounds tawdry, but Greene manages not to come across that way. I think it’s because he grounds the talk of sex in context of character. Greene does not seem like he’s setting out to titillate his readers with sex-talk, but rather to develop character or move the plot along. Greene is honest about the emotions the characters are experiencing in relation to sex. Perhaps my modern eyes are jaded (or curiously innocent, depending on your point of view), but Greene seems matter-of-fact and realistic about sex. Sex is part of life, and that’s that.

Emotional honesty, as I alluded to a few sentences ago, was the third surprise. There were several times that I had to put the book down and mentally catch my breath—his emotional arrows had hit home. While not being deliberately brutal, Greene seems to have no scruples about laying bare the deepest human vulnerabilities. The only thing I’ve read recently that is so unflinchingly emotionally honest is Alexander McCall Smith’s Heavenly Date and Other Flirtations (odd comparison, but there it is).

Of course, this is the only Graham Greene book I’ve ever read, and I’m only halfway through. His oeuvre is large and ranges wide, I know, so perhaps I’m way off the mark. But still, for a first dip in the Greene river, it’s impressive. I’ll be coming back for more.

To sleep, perchance to dream

Sleep: I am one of those people who needs eight hours per night to be happy, preferably the same eight hours every night. Being a night owl, I usually go to bed between 1am and 3am, and get up somewhere between 10 and 11 (whenever possible; I have the sort of job that allows me this schedule, though I do occasionally have earlier meetings). Most days this is sufficient...but some days, I feel like sleeping all day.

Like today. I had seven hours of sleep. But in between all of my work and activities I took an hour nap in the early afternoon, another hour's nap in the early evening, and then lay on the couch to watch television for an hour and half because I didn't have the energy to do anything else. I literally dragged myself off the couch to come write this blog (I've promised myself to write in the blog daily, come what may, which means that some of the entries will be less profound than others. This one fits the "less profound" category. Although I'm not sure if I'll actually end up writing anything profound, sigh.). But it's nowhere close to bedtime, and if I go to bed this early, will I be able to sleep? How much will it disrupt my normal sleep pattern?

Dreams: Speaking of disrupting my normal sleep pattern...I've fallen into a weird dreaming pattern. At least once a week, and often more, I wake up at 6 or 7am. I know I need to go back to sleep, so I do. But I will often be dreaming right before then, and so I write the dream down. I have written down the most hilarious statements, and once in a while, the dream even makes sense. The one I had last night was political and dramatic, and could certainly be a useful fictional scene.

Macbeth may have murdered sleep, but I need to go find the "sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care." I don't seem to have the energy for anything else.

Bit by bit, putting it together

I'm attempting to become an organized, disciplined person. I am actually more organized than disciplined, although I'm not very strong on either. People often confuse the two. Organization means that you can find what you need within a short period of time, and that your stuff does not overwhelm you. Discipline goes deeper; it has to do with keeping your word, to yourself and to other people. It means doing what you need to do, with intention, and being efficient enough at it to have time left over to do what you want to do.

Procrastination has always been an addiction of mine I couldn't seem to shake. I need to shake it, though. It's high time. I have long wanted to be punctual, organized, efficient, self-disciplined...but not at the expense of freedom, creativity, and relaxation. I think, though, that there must be a higher plane (so to speak) where they can coexist and reinforce each other. Still thinking about that, and certainly still working on it.

Writing in this blog is a small step toward self-discipline. I often tell people I'm a good writer, but a lazy one. Too lazy to actually do anything with my writing, up till now, and I feel guilty about this. I feel like I have squandered time, opportunity, and a talent I've been given. I need to do better.

I like the confessional anonymity of blogging. I can make a public declaration (that no one is reading, but it's out there) without having to reveal too much. Of course, some people reveal everything, which is quite foolhardy (not to mention boring). But I get the appeal.

Well-begun is half done

Time to get with the 21st century on this blog thing. Apart from the fatuous "this is my first entry, oh my!" it's hard to know what to say in the first post, since it seems to be an all-or-nothing thing. One can say everything possible ("Here is the exhaustive story of my romantic misadventures, plus pictures of my family, all my pets, and my third-grade teacher!"), and overwhelm any readers that might happen along (by "readers," of course, I mean readers besides the three friends one forces to read one's new blog ). Or one can take the high road and say nothing.

Or, one can say a lot about nothing. Like I just did.