March 29, 2007
March 25, 2007
March 23, 2007
The rumors to the effect
that I am purchasing this property are entirely false ---
However, you know, in many county locations, they haven't banned particle beam cannons yet. So certain options are attractive...
OK, which one of you guys drives a brown-red flying saucer?!
March 21, 2007
March 15, 2007
Teen Dream
Best link ever! There's audio that kicks in automatically, so click wisely.
March 13, 2007
Censorship!!
Because today is a slow day at work, I present you with some old-school Communist-style editing. This morning, I hit The Onion as part of the usual tour and read a pretty funny article....
Ha ha! Oh, fun! Wait.... that seems familiar...
Oh, yeah! It's because I already read it the previous week and it looked like this:
I'm actually ashamed of The Onion. No balls whatsoever. They obviously folded like a house of cards.
Make It Stop! Make It Stop!
Do you like to be disturbed? Frankly, I don't. But I also have the curiosity of a meth-addicted cat, so I just had to click on this link. To hell with the vampire squid... THIS has me in cold sweats.
March 12, 2007
Stranger Than Fiction
Given a quick perusal of my past and current reading list, it can hardly be disputed that I stand by the elided aphorism above, referring also to the film written by Zach Helm, directed by Marc Forster, and starring Will Farrell and Emma Thompson. It may not even be a coincidence that, having just finished Religion Explained last month and a NYT article on “Darwin’s God” earlier in the evening, a movie I believe is dealing with religion, meaning, and man’s relationship to God should find it’s way to the DVD player. In fact, if it is a coincidence, it is multiplied by the fact that the film itself deals significantly with the place happenstance occupies at the table of life. Is Ulysses once again reading something way too deep into this, imputing heavy philosophical and psychological meaning to a simple little film? Perhaps, but it seems that is my place at the Clown Car table, so here we go!
I will start by telling you that there are **spoilers** here, so if you haven’t seen this movie yet, you may be better off waiting to read this until you have.
You probably remember the plot of the movie if you remember the commercials: A quiet and dull man begins to hear narration of the events of his life, narration that affects how he goes about living it from that point forward. To be more specific, Harold Crick (Farrell) is the living subject of author Karen Eiffel’s (Thompson) work in progress. In order to discover exactly what sort of book he’s in and what that means, Harold goes to Dr. Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman), professor of literary theory. The task takes on greater urgency when the narration alludes to Harold’s imminent death. When Hilbert is unable at first to discern what kind of book Harold is living, he urges him to abandon the search and just go about living the life he’s always wanted before he dies.
To this point in the movie, I saw it developing a variant message to what was summed up succinctly in The Shawshank Redemption: get busy living or get busy dying. It also reinforced the theme of Groundhog Day in that every day will be the same until you make something different out of it yourself. But death plays a much stronger role here than there, and that’s what pushed me to a somewhat more theological/philosophical interpretation.
There’s no mistaking that the author in this film represents God, the creator of man and the “omniscient third-person” who provides the narration. Harold obviously represents that creation and Hilbert is the intermediary. As the prospective go-between who endeavors to help man understand his creator, Hilbert represents religion, the formalized theory by which we come to understand God’s plan. There is a complex discipline to what he does, but it’s unintelligible to those who go about life mostly ignoring the search for personal meaning. To Hilbert, the story should be discernable, it should have structure, and most of all, it must have meaning.
The author Eiffel is hemmed in by the requirement from her publisher (representative of an orderly universe within which even God must operate?) to kill off her creation, an event that means the end of Harold in real life as well. The movie is the story of her struggle to give that death meaning, to make the very event itself significant through its irony. When she finally settles upon an answer and it is revealed to Hilbert, he proclaims the work a masterpiece and implores Harold to go about fulfilling it.
As frightening as this is to Harold, it makes sense that Hilbert finds this answer appealing. What is important to religion is that the plot be advanced in a way that glorifies the creator even at (or possibly because of) the expense of the creation. Paramount to religion is what lives on, something fulfilling to all souls that can be passed from generation to generation and overcomes death – death which reinforces the persistence of that truth
Harold decides that Hilbert is right, and goes about stepping in front of a bus that is meant to be his certain death. But (Deus Ex Machina) Eiffel decides instead to rescue Harold, and a miraculous shard of his wristwatch lodges in a main artery and prevents Harold from bleeding to death. This obviously disappoints Hilbert, who judges the book good, but not as excellent as the first draft. Eiffel defends her decision by saying that a man who knowingly and willingly goes to his death is a man worth having around. (Who does this remind me of?)
Somehow this ending felt a little unsatisfactory, and maybe it requires some unpacking. Assuming the shard of glass is meant to symbolize the simple randomness incorporated into the universe, I can see where one might conclude that, though not everything happens to us for a reason, great meaning nevertheless can derived after the fact. My first instinct was to rearrange the film so that Eiffel writes Harold into death, but the real Harold actually survives. This version has the whiff of atheism, though, in that it immediately and decisively relegates God to the backseat of the universe, an impotent force at the mercy of chaos. Upon further consideration, that would have been a very dark film indeed! Now I’m on the fence as to whether that would have felt more authentic, but I also wrestle with whether my desire to have the film adhere to a specific viewpoint is coloring my judgement. And frankly, it’s not really my place to tell the moviemakers which side to come down on in this debate. .They seem already to have settled on God’s power over all things, including the occasional randomness of the universe.
What is intriguing to me about this is the attempt to syncretize the two sides of a great debate, the evolutionists and the creationists. The creationists see nothing random in the universe, as it all progresses according to a grand design. The evolutionists see a universe that implies design, but is actually the result of persistent randomness. The movie wants to place randomness under the rule of design, and that feels satisfying, but I can’t be sure how well that holds up upon further inspection. A course on religion in America at UH provided me my introduction to deism (i.e. the watchmaker theory), and it seemed to make a tremendous mount of sense to me. But people’s desire for order seems to lead to all sorts of confusing conclusions. When a good thing happens to a good guy, it makes sense to us that God is just and this event reinforces it. But when a bad thing happens to a good guy, those same people can’t be bothered to try and understand God’s complex plan. A "just" God is an easily understood being with motivations that dovetail nicely with our own, but when something inexplicably bad happens, all of a sudden God is a murky haze of divine inclinations that are beyond rapproach but obediently accepted. That’s a benefit of the doubt I think we’d all love to have.
There’s enough going on in this movie and the surrounding debate to merit a real bull session for those inclined to discuss these kinds of topics. And with all these ideas about, I think it’s unreasonable to expect satisfactory answers from a simple movie, but I am impressed that someone thought to address the ideas in an accessible, if not entirely enjoyable way. Whether you find the conclusion adequate probably depends on the conclusions you brought with you into the viewing.
Addendum:
As for the cinematic virtues of the film, I didn’t find many. Dustin Hoffman and Emma Thompson gave unsure performances, perhaps a reflection of the ideas herein, but they weren’t particularly bad. Will Farrell was mostly wasted: not funny and not particularly empathetic in his turn at the “lost but endearing protagonist, usually played now by Jim Carrey” role. Maggie Gyllenhaal was capable as the free-spirited anarchist baker. Queen Latifah was obviously given the wrong directions by casting for another film and wanders through, leaving nothing indelible. I think maybe this movie was too “book-y” and therefore needed primary actors of greater subtlety and sophistication. Hoffman can only do so much in a supporting role.
March 07, 2007
Best High School Sitcom of the 80s
A debate worth settling: which of these two shows ruled the school back in the day? Sorry Uber, "Saved by the Bell" doesn't count. My vote goes to Parker Lewis.
Mmmmmm ... Musso.
Parker Lewis' Day Off ... err, Can't Lose:
Square Pegs:
Darn it - be clear, please!!
See, I thought that the car windshield was the actual geographical location of the act. I'm somewhat disenchanted...
March 06, 2007
Challenged!!
Lo and behold, after some research on yesterday's topic, I come across the following website: Caveman's Crib. It's an interactive virtual tour of the Geico cavemen's digs - a not-so-humble abode indeed! I did find this very entertaining, inasmuch as it still remains contextually limited. It stretches the comic possibility of this premise to its furthest reaches, but I am still unconvinced it will work in the sitcom realm. I guess we'll see.
(Be sure to go to the kitchen and check the messages on their machine)
March 05, 2007
Two commercial series ruined
First, let's address what's gone wrong with a solid series of cute commercials, the Rozerem ads. I actually used to giggle shamelessly every time that bearded lanky ol' feller would say, "Hel-loo, honest Abe?!" even though I find the beaver... disturbing. But sadly, the franchise has become confused and makes no sense anymore. What do I mean by that? Well...
Witness the latest installation, wherein our insomniacal host is late to work and blames lack of sleep. The woman he addresses says something like "Tell me about it!" and walks away with a purple pony following her.
What is that about? My understanding is that the sequences we watch with these odd characters take place within our protagonist's mind. He has trouble regularly making his way into dreamland, and is therefore greeted by this cadre of kooks as though they rarely see him anymore. Fine. But then what's going on with the chick with the purple pony? Is that more of our man's dreams? Is it her dream? The pony seems to be connected with the woman in a way that implies it is the manifestation of her own frustration with getting to sleep. But I don't see why that would come forth in the man's dream. You might say it's just the randomness of dreams in general, but that's been covered by the objects imagined: beaver, astronaut, pony, Lincoln, chess. But the actual narrative has been relatively coherent up to this point. So what exactly is going on here?!
Am I taking this too seriously? Umm, no. Not when something like this can happen.
Seriously?!! We're giving the cavemen their own show?! Frankly, it's been my favorite commercial series for a while now, but count me FIRMLY against this idea. What is hysterical in 30 seconds and with no context cannot survive in this format. I mean, the humor in these commercials is too subtle for a sitcom. I CAN-NOT BELIEVE I JUST WROTE THAT!! But it's true. The exasperation of these cavemen is only so funny, and the utter absurdity of the concept over the course of 30 minutes will just tear the show asunder because eventually backstory will be given, fish-out-of-water jokes will run dry, etc. etc.
Think about it: the best moment of all these commercials is when the two cavemen are on the patio at a party discussing their plight, and one of their fellow cavemen pokes his head out and excitedly says, "Tina's here! We're getting back together!" It's perfect, this inclusion of a completely random and unnecessary line, and somehow we all know EXACTLY what kind of person and experience that bit has parodied. It's brilliant, and I'm totally unashamed to say that. What I emphatically do NOT need to know is that guy's name, who Tina is, and why they broke up. Madison Avenue finally achieves something of genuine humor, and television will now go about beating it ruthlessly to death. A moment of silence for the passing of this franchise, please.
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March 01, 2007
She's a bit late.
Why the hell don't these types work MY schedule?!
Because the joke is so damned old...
I'm going to torture you all anyway: