Where I’m @

20011031

Just how is it that Textism gets to be brilliant while the rest of us wallow in our own putrescence? Well, maybe not putrescence, but “harried state” sounds so worker bee. Fuck me.

posted by Tk at 14:00 • • sealed in amber

You thought you put some work into your Hallowe’en constume? This guy’s got you beat by a mile.

posted by Tk at 13:50 • • sealed in amber

20011030

Ish tells us of The WayBack machine online. Not Sherman and Professor Peabody’s WABAC machine, but rather a site with terabytes of webpages archived since you were this high to a grasshopper. Pretty kewl.

posted by Tk at 14:08 • • sealed in amber

20011029

Jeffrey Zeldman directs readers to Victor Davis Hanson’s article at National Review online without editorialization. While it’s important to know the source of rabies, it’s also important to know when your speaker is rabid, so I offer the following gloss/warning.

Besides the shaky original premise (that we are totally, officially, according-to-Hoyle at War), Hanson’s bias starts to come clear through the course of the piece. Beginning with just the Taliban, Hanson quickly expands the conflict and by implication the martial action to include: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Somalia, the Sudan, the Philippines, the Palestinians, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia.¹

Further worrisome is Hanson’s claim that only “a different kind of men, themselves unsavory and often scary in their bluster and seriousness” will lead to military victory. Canonization of people like Patton has always bothered me, and Hanson’s convenient ignorance of the necessity of talent at all levels of the military for success is distasteful at best. But what is most concerning is that Hanson seems to favor the slash and burn method of warfare that does not work in precisely our situation. First, there’s very little in Afghanistan to either slash or burn.² Second, terrorists are dispersed throughout the globe, perhaps even still inside the United States; just where in Hanson’s neighborhood should we send the Marines first? Third, Hanson conveniently omits General MacArthur, who, IIRC, wanted to take the war to the Chinese; a different kind of man, indeed.<sup>3

1</sup> Granted, Hanson does not state that he favors invading all these countries, but his lack of concern for civilian casualties belies his references to “enclaves” in some of those countries and to simply the actions of governments of others.
² See Tamim Amsary’s well-travelled open letter.
³Hanson claims that, inter alia, great military men “expect to . . . be relieved or discredited when we no longer need them.” I dunno if MacArthur expected his discreditation, but my understanding is that he fought it and his dismissal tooth and nail.

posted by Tk at 13:02 • • sealed in amber

Additionally, big ups to Aaron McGruder for not keeping his cartoon mouth shut. There’s been a bit of a flap about the content of some of the Boondocks strips, some newspapers even pulling the comic or replacing it with other days’ versions. Like the Boondocks on other days is all about Bambi life. Though the Times doesn’t carry comics, I enjoy reading it whenever I’m at my parents’, since I find it one of the better drawn and better thought-out strips. IndyMedia has some coverage of the flap, and UComics runs The Boondocks dailly.

posted by Tk at 09:42 • • sealed in amber

There’s always a lot of talk, when war or other military action rolls around, about not “fighting the last war.” It seems to me that this time around in Afghanistan, we’re not fighting the last war, true enough, but we are fighting an odd remix of World War II, the Vietnam Conflict, and our Adventures in The Former Yugoslavia. From the first, we’ve got the righteous indignation despite the fact that we could possibly have done something to avert the conflict years ago rather than just hoping it wouldn’t happen. From the second, we’ve got the supreme arrogance that we can just bomb the bejeezus out of a people and expect that they’ll just roll over and say, “Oh, you mean you’re going to bomb us? Okay, then, we give.” Finally, from the third, we’ve got the most highly trained pilots in the world using the most highly sophisticated technology dropping bombs on the buildings with the big red plus sign on them (OK, the other time it was the Chinese embassy and a newspaper office). Despite my general leftist views, I’m all in favor of military action in this case (too late being better than never), but come on. We’ve got to suck it up and do it right. The Northern Alliance and Pakistan are showing signs of nervousness, the Red Cross is hopping mad, and Americans should know better than anyone that there actually is such a thing as bad publicity.

posted by Tk at 09:37 • • sealed in amber

20011026

Ish sends on some info about people who are / think they are partly non-human, from The Village Voice and two sources for the practicioners, Otherkin.net and the Otherkin Resource Center. To be perfectly flip, were they part of focus groups for the upcoming first Lord of the Rings movie?

posted by Tk at 13:51 • • sealed in amber

Greg gets virtually published

An article of friend Greg Oguss’s has gotten published at M/C: a Journal of Media and Culture, So go read it already.

posted by Tk at 13:41 • • sealed in amber

20011023

Davezilla and Michele have compiled a nice list of subverjingoist slogans to support the ironic faction of the antiwar world.

posted by Tk at 20:56 • • sealed in amber

20011017

On the lighter side . . .

Geeks in love, courtesy of Kottke.org.

posted by Tk at 14:35 • • sealed in amber

20011014

When it rains, it pours

Had a scare with Mom this weekend. We drove up on Friday to go to a friend’s wedding in Worcester on Saturday and were greeted by a creepy house. Mostly dark, but with the TV on mute and the kitchen table pushed all to the side and a note saying that they had gone to the hospital. Suddenly, by the looks of the TV. The first number we called said that there was nobody with that name in the emergency room, making us think that they had changed their minds en route to the hospital. But after getting redirected to the other branch of the hospital in a different town, we found that they were there, my dad, my mom, and my mother’s sister. It seems that Mom picked up a little virus of some sort and so was wicked (they are in Massachusetts, after all) dehydrated. Her PCP suggested they go to the hospital, and my aunt decided, rightly, that with Mom vomiting and stuff, it was best to get an ambulance. What she didn’t know was that the ambulance and police in town had little else to do that day and so the ambulance rolls up to my parents’ house with siren ablaze and accompanied by two copmobiles, likewise announcing their arrival. (Naturally, I got a call early the next morning from their minister, saying, “Someone told me an ambulance went to your house yesterday.”)
All’s well that ends more-or-less well, and she’s back at home now, trying to deal with an unpleasant virus on top of this thing that’s killing her already.

posted by Tk at 22:14 • • sealed in amber

20011010

I got a job!

(Well, a two-month contract job at least.) That’s why the content here will be skimpier for a little while. I want to get back soon, though, so I can give you the poop on Shohei Imamura’s Warm Water Under a Red Bridge, Laurent Cantet’s Emploi du temps (oddly translated as Time Out), and Youssef Chahine’s wacky musical Silence, We’re Rolling. Sadly, I will not have the opportunity to go to Éloge de l’amour on Closing Night, for which I had a ticket, since I’ll be in Massachusetts with the SO and the folks and the maternal Aunt.

posted by Tk at 10:32 • • sealed in amber

20011005

The 2001 New York Film Festival, Pt. I

What Time Is It There? / Ni neibdan jidian from Tsai Ming-liang

Boy, am I glad I saw Vive l’Amour this summer when Walter Reade ran their Tsai Ming-Liang festival. As a preface, I would suggest you do the same, if at all possible, before you see What Time. Then again, perhaps the reverse would be true as well.

What Time brings back a few of the tropes as well as actors from Vive, so watching them both gives a good opportunity to mull over Tsai’s techniques and intentions. Foremost among the returning actors is, of course, Lee Kang-sheng, Tsai’s frequent stand-in. This time, Lee plays Hsiao-kang (his character’s name in 4 now of Tsai’s films) a young man whose father (Miao Tien, from Tsai’s The Hole, The River, and Rebels of the Neon God) just died and who makes his living, such as it is, reselling watches out of a briefcase on the Taipei streets. A chance encounter with Shiang-chyi (Chen Shiang-chyi, from Tsai’s The River and Edward Yang’s A Confucian Confusion), a young woman on her way to Paris who cajoles him into selling her the watch off his wrist, knocks Hsiao-kang out of his previous orbit, or maybe just encourages the detour that his father’s death was already suggesting. In either case, failed attempts at human connection become paramount once again, as Kang begins habitually resetting Taipei clocks to Paris time. His mother (Lu Yi-ching), reaching out in her own fashion, is convinced that Hsiao-kang’s father is trying to come back to her. Beginning by offering food to the spirit of her departed husband, the mother gradually gets deeper and deeper into obsessing over keeping the apartment entirely dark: shielding the balcony with sheets and blankets, removing all the lightbulbs, taping newspapers over the windows. Meanwhile, Shiang-chyi, in Paris (for never-disclosed reasons besides), doesn’t know the language and doesn’t know a soul, so she sleeps alone in a hotel, eats alone in a crowded restaurant, walks alone in a cemetery.

The NYFF’s official program says that Tsai focuses on each individual’s isolation, in part perhaps because he comes from an island country. I think rather that he tries to depict each individual’s struggle to overcome that isolation. First, notice the way that he doesn’t dwell on how his characters got in their situation. We generally do not know just why it is that his characters have no friends or family. Again, in What Time, why is Shiang-chyi in Paris if she doesn’t speak French and doesn’t know anyone? (As a side note, why France at all? Hints of Tsai trying to be a bit more commercial? Or is it a way to get production help from Eurimages? Or am I being too cynical?) Hsiao-kang and his mother have a priest and his assistants at the columbarium (which was Hsiao-kang’s job—selling columbarium space—in Vive) and at their home to help lay the father to rest, but they’re all simply for-hire and show little real concern.

Each character’s struggle culminates in an interconnected set of scenes in which each seeks intimacy through sexual release (it’s clear that they aren’t going to just sit down and talk with someone). Each scene and its leadup is different from the other two in significant ways, but also each paired with another of the three in interesting ways. Hsiao-kang and Shiang-chyi are each with another person, the mother is by herself (excluding the father’s spirit/ghost of course); Hsiao-kang and the mother are shown drinking before, Shiang-chyi only drinks a lot of coffee; Shiang-chyi has what appears to be her first encounter with another woman; Hsiao-kang pays a prostitute. Hsiao-kang’s and Shiang-chyi’s scenes end up more or less badly (the prostitute steals Hsiao-kang’s suitcase of merchandise and Shiang-chyi’s potential partner rejects her after only a few tentative kisses), and they all wake up as alone as before.

A salient difference to remark in What Time, and one that will be stressed in most reviews, is the humor. There’s little enough of it that I don’t want to spoil the fun, but it’s worth mentioning a hilarious scene a cemetery in Paris with Shiang-chyi and Jean-Pierre Léaud playing a character named Jean-Pierre who tries to give her exactly what she’s looking for. (Another clue about why France, perhaps. The critiquerati are very taken with Tsai, for good reason, and I’m guessing that Cahiers is as much as anyone.)

Though with a significant change that I’ll leave you to see for yourself, What Time ends almost exactly like Vive, with a long set of shots of a female lead crying. Are women just more sensitive? Is water what we emit when we hurt? (There’s also a prominent fish tank featured in Hsiao-kang and his mother’s apartment, and there is some speculation that the fish contained therein is the father come back.) It it simply a physical issue, with dry land being stable and water lacking almost all resistance? (Given the history of earthquakes in Taiwan, this proposition seems rather flawed.) Is it a meta-physical proposition, that Tsai finds it fascinating on a biological and associative level that the human body is composed of mostly water and he thinks we therefore have an affinity with it?

If you’ve read this far, you’ll probably be able to tolerate my footnote about this review’s writing. I’m trying to get reviews up before the whole NYFF is over, and need to do some substantial revision on this one before it makes complete sense. But FWIW I thought you should get a chance to see it fairly raw.

posted by Tk at 02:07 • • sealed in amber

• The thing that was most interesting was the dust. There's dust everywhere, and plenty of people have taken the opportunity to scrawl a sentiment (or just their tag) on shop windows not yet cleaned up or too high for the passers-by to wear away.
• I got a real live bit of debris in my eye when on Nassau Street, and I still haven't cleaned it out yet. I'm thinking of selling it on eBay.
• “It looks like a war zone,” said a man next to me at the barricade on Broadway. His female companion quietly agreed and nodded. Personally, I've never been in a war or a war zone, so to me it just looked like two really big buildings fell down and thousands of people died and three weeks later Rudy’s threatening to derail the democratic process.
• Everyone's an expert: One woman pointed at what must have been 4 WTC — you know, across the street from Century 21? — and said, “Oh, that must be on the east side of the street. It's still standing.”
• The ban on taking pictures is not terribly enforced, though some buildings have the desk clerk standing outside making sure pedestrians keep at least a little room clear for foot traffic to move on.
• Society of the Spectacle: even the sparse automotive traffic down (and in one case, up) Broadway slows down at the cross streets so the drivers can see the devastation. Next pleasure dome at Las Vegas is called Ground Zero.

posted by Tk at 01:25 • • sealed in amber