It was Paul's birthday on Monday, 26th of March. We went to the flower show at Macy's (yes, Marshall Fields).

It hit 83 degrees (dropped 40 degrees today)....

We had a fine time -- just like summer.

Scanner/ patch

I have an HP combo scanner/printer, small inexpensive, a few years old.

When I upgraded - updated? well to IE 7 last fall the optical recognition stopped working. HP posted a work around (hold the ctrl atl key and sing any Beatles tune). That failed me.

WELL, on a lark I checked and they -HP super minds - had posted a patch -- now I can scan TEXT.

This is like a gun in a monkey's paws!

in IE 7, I do love the tabs (one window with tabs for hotmail, the latimes.com mail, and for gmail.....; then a wndow for with tabs for amazon.com, one for my librarything.com catalog, one for abebooks.com, one for http://www.complete-review.com/main/main.html ).

ah, the monkey is loose in reality, hide the bananananananas.

=====!!!!!!!!!!

text snipping made easy (god I hate to type).

soon....

EQUUS, After the Fall, communists and horses

SO I read a few interesting (not thrilling) books. A memoir: AFTER THE FALL by Jana Hensel and a play, EQUUS (ardent life in a lifeless world) by Peter Shaffer. They have nothing in common other than being hardbacks.

Usually I pick books from reviews or word of mouth, not research into a movie. But
AFTER THE FALL was a result research into the movie THE EDUKATORS (German movie, see previous rantings the épater le bourgeois Movie ). The term ‘ostalgia’ -a longing for things (pickles to lifestyles) from before the fall of the Berlin wall. Its a memoir of a teen girl in German in the 1990s. How East Berliners came to be part of (if not fit into) the West. (THE WEST makes it sound great, that is not my intent).

One interesting thing was the collective German Past, the WEST GERMANS were rather aware of the role of HITLER, to the point of guilt. THE EAST felt he was a fascist and they had defeated his evil forces – no guilt there. I had taken collective German Guilt for granted…… just from what I had read…

There are the expected comments on shallow western consumerism, mind numbing tv, and social anonymity. And little insights: the East Germans were not super social, dropping in and greeting guests with genuine joy, ‘glad you are here.’ They did not have telephones so they had to DROP IN unannounced, and it was only polite to be sociable – COMRADELY! Will Cell phones do away with friendship??

And the (to me) most horrible aspect: Adults in their 40s lost jobs – state industry supported plants vanished and the workers who had been ‘set’ had to start as 20s something’s in stores and stuff. (OH, you WORK FOR FORD??) And the parents also lost their children, if not physically emotionally: it was a new world, their world was gone (like Chrissie y Hynde’s ohio City was gone – both Chrissie Hynde and Jana lost their train stations, Leipzig and Akron . . . (the LEIPZIG OF OHIO!)

Even Chrssie’s song can summarize AFTER THE FALL: MY CHILDHOOD MEMORIES SLOWLY SWIRLED PAST

(NOW I WONDER IF LENIN WALKED ON WATER????)

++++

OH, EQUUS. One of those things I had heard about but never looked into. Now its making a big theater splash with a former wizard as the star.

The play is the story a kid who blinds horses (he has cared for with great affection ) –violently blinded them with a sharp object, then is sent to therapy in the hopes of avoiding prison (not necessarily his hopes as much as the hopes of a benevolent magistrate). The boy’s father is an atheist (with secrets); his mother a devout religious soul – a wonderful homelife. The shrink unfullfilled.

It’s the story of the kid and the shrink, the kid confused, the shrink frustrated . . . a question raised: do shrinks have the god given right to change people, if they do change people are they playing god? Have they destroyed an ‘individual’ to make society safer . . . then the big cutting observation . . . that has something for everyone, to keep you feeling good/rotten/lazy/ about yourself:

Dystart (the Psychiatrist) to Hesther Salomon (a magistrate, like the name?)

I go on about my wife. Have you thought about the husband, the finicky, critical
husband with his art books on mythical Greece? What worship has he
ever known? Without worship, you shrink I shrank my own
life. No one can do it for you. I settle for being pallid and
provincial out of my own eternal timidity, the old story of bluster and do
bugger all. I didn't even dare to have children, didn't dare to bring children
into a house, a marriage, as cold as mine. I tell everyone "Margaret's the
puritan, I'm the pagan." Some pagan! Such wild returns I make to the
womb of civilisation. Three weeks a year in the Mediterranean, bed booked
in advance, meals paid for. Cautious jaunts in hired cars, suitcase crammed with
Kaopectate. What a fantastic surrender to the primitive. "Primitive." I use the
word endlessly. "Ah, the primitive world," I say. "What instinctual
truths were lost with it." And while I sit there baiting that poor,
unimaginative woman with the word, that freaky boy is trying to conjure
the reality. I look at pages of centaurs trampling the soil of Argos, and
that boy is trying to become one in a Hampshire field! I sit there
watching that woman knitting, a woman I haven't kissed in six years
And he stands for an hour in the dark, sucking the sweat off his god's
hairy cheek. Then in the morning I put away my books on the cultural
shelf, close up my Kodachrome snaps of Mount Olympus, touch my reproduction
statue of Dionysus for luck, and go off to the hospital to
treat him for insanity. Now do you see?

As well as:

All right, he's sick. He's full of misery and fear. . .but that boy has known a
passion more ferocious than I have felt in any second of my life. . .that's what
his stare has been saying to me all the time, 'at least I galloped! When did
you?'. . .
--- Dr. Martin Dysar

SEEING THE BOY who has ‘galloped’ i.e. LIVED the shrink realizes his life is suffering a fullfillment crisis….



PUT THAT IN YOUR BRAIN AND SMOKE IT……….

Roaches with no Kings, The Breast, Benni, next: EQUUS

This past week was full of excitement. One day Paul called me at the office: THE CEILING is leaking! Water is pouring down. Well, it was not pouring down, but it was the fools upstairs again, a water line to their fridge broke (they had plastic, so cheap and stupid). Water stains on the ceiling in the hall and hall closet. A growing crack. WHY DO WE OWN and not RENT??? THE GOOD NEWS: temps in the 50s and sunny.

Now the anti THEM rant:

Last week I wrote that SONY had altered the end of a German movie, THE EDUKATORS (a discovery I made while reading the WIKIPEDIA, love it or hate it, its there and getting louder). IT IS TRUE, the sony released Region 1 version is missing about 2 minutes. They exercise = CENSOR the rebelious youth setting sail to shut down all (sabotage) television in Europe. Why would Sony do this? Afraid of giving people an idea? TUNE OUT?

SAY IT LOUD:

épater le bourgeois or épater les bourgeois [F] foreign term : to shock the middle classes

WAIT: maybe that is giving the corporate gods too much credit, maybe they oppose the concept of yatch theft? With their small minds they are not interested in the big picture, only their lifestyles of the rich and famous toys? Cleary they are blind to the big picture . . . as the movie mantra reads: THE GOOD IDEAS SURVIVE, even if it takes an illicit download to find the truth….


+++++ NOW FOR THE UPDATE of reading

If you finish this I’ll send you a cyber hershey bar!

THREE RECENT READINGS:

THIS WEEK I READ EQUUS, am digesting it.


Recently I read Benni’s Margherita Dolce Vita. IT IS A SUPERB BOOK. I am still digesting it. I cannot say how much I enjoyed it, fresh, alive, curious, magical, real . . . contemporary EARTH SOCIETY datelined Italy. More on it after I think more. I think you would enjoy its, as an escape on one level, and then more and more.

But:

I finished THE ROACHES HAVE NO KING, by Daniel Evan Weiss. It is not nearly as good as Pelevin’s Life of Insects.

Set in a Manhattan apartment. Humans, roaches, waterbugs, rats. Not one pretty bug. The roaches have some innate ability to read and many lived on book glue. NUMBERS is the main character, he grew up in a Bible (as did the Prophet, Exodus and other roaches). Bismark grew up in a history book; the RAID ORPHANS grew up in a danger zone . . . parentless after the Raid Holocaust.

The apartment belongs to Ira Fishblatt, and is dominated by his girlfriend Ruth Grubstein. Stereotypes abound – Ira a liberal jewish public defender, Rufus a black drug dealer . . .

It’s a fun book, but kind of gross at times (a ride through the New York sewers on the back of a blind sewer rat, not to miss a cliché Weiss has a giant 35 foot alligator – the flushed pet of Jewish kids who vacationed in Florida).

Numbers tries to lead the roaches to safety after Ruth nags Ira into renovating the kitchen – destroying the roaches supply lines. They go into exile under a baseboard (biblical?). Full of adventure, and roach promiscuity, death and destruction. As they are being led to the promise land one night they are surprised and surprise then and then are decimated by Ira and a can of RAID. NUMBERS SURVIVES. - Justice: Even IRA buys it in the end, NUMBERS exchanges draino for his cocaine and Ira thinks the kick is so great he inhales wildly while Ruth is in the tub. She finds his bloody head convulsing. Rufus is busted for murder.
It does have some good lines, upon hearing of the kitchen renovation:

“There is no place to go,” said Bismark. “Then shouldn’t we start storing food somewhere?” “Ants to that. They’re so obsessed with protecting themselves against a bad day that they never have a good one.” Bismark spat. “that’s not living.”

(THIS BOOK was mentioned in INSECT POETICS, that survey of bugs in literature I read in December).

&
Do you remember in The Third Man, the lines:

HARRY
Don't be so gloomy...After all,

it's not that awful. Remember what the fellow said...

He backs a little down the steps in CS and CAMERA PANS LR
with him, losing Martins.

HARRY
in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare,
terror, murder, bloodshed, but they produced Michaelangelo Leonardo
Da Vinci, and the Renaissance...In
Switzerland, they had brotherly love. They had five hundred years
of democracy and peace, and what did
that produce?...The cuckoo clock.
So long, Holly.
++++++++++++

ONE other book I have not mentioned or admitted to reading is Philip (Portnoy’s Complaint) Roth’s THE BREAST. A very short book-under 80 pages. About a new yorker who feels a bit of pain and wakes up as a giant mammary in a new york hospital. He thought he was loosing his mind but never went into denial. Being a Roth character there was a preoccupation with sex. He had been a college professor and the book is Kafka/Swift esque at times. And also taught GOGOL, have you read THE NOSE? A walking talking nose, and its noseless former owner?

A Metamorphosis. John Gardner- GRENDEL, in the New York Times, back in 1972 (I have the review if you want) , said it was a good book, but severely weakened by trash talk.

The breast (can we call him a breast?) CAME TO ATTRIBUTE his drastic change to his teaching, reading, and idolization of the three creators (GOGOL, SWIFT and KAFKA).

Maybe I should have read THE HUMAN STAIN or EVERYMAN. But THE BREAST was short and that KAFKA bit . . .

GOOD/BEST LINE:

Did fiction do this to me? “How could it, Mr. Kepesh?” Dr. Klinger asks. No, hormones are hormones and art is art. I did not get this way from falling too strongly under the influence of the great imaginations. “But,” I say “it might be my way of ‘being’ a Kafka, being a Gogol, being a Swift. They could ‘envision’ those marvelous transformations – they were artists. They had the language and those obsessive fictional brains. I didn’t. So I had to live the thing.” “Had to?” “To achieve ‘my’ art. I had the artistic longing without the necessary detachment. I loved the extreme in literature, idolized those how made it, was fascinated by its imagery and power and suggestiveness—“ “And? Yes” the world if full of art lovers – so?” “So I took the leap. Beyond sublimation. I made the word flesh. I have out Kafkaed Kafka. He could only ‘imagine’ a man turning into a cockroach. But look at what I have done.” (page 72-73).

+++

Drags or Enhancements

Technology enabled distractions/attractions

. . . . . . . name that tune:?

Well there was a time when you let me know
What's really going on below
But now you never show that to me do you?
. . . . .


I do some things that slow down my reading. Then there are things that I do that lengthen my movie ‘understanding’ time -they don’t slow it down they add to it -- – I may have to watch a scene of a DVD a few times.

I have/want to understand every reference to a song or a poem or a book made .... in a novel or movie.

FIRST: This is the best book I have read in a long time, I am sure anyone and everyone would find it a lot of fun, Benni’s Margherita Dolce Vita
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1979866,00.html

In Benni’s novel Margherita Dolce Vita the song was "SONG TO THE SIRENS" by Tim Buckley. .

For some reason I felt I had to check the song out, find the lyrics, maybe download an MP3. And I found (no surprise) the song makes sense – enhancing the characterization of the boy and the events. A boy asked a girl if she knew Song of the Sirens; he, reputed to be a bit crazy (reputed by his own perfectly perfectionist parents); the girl existing firmly in a reality in her observant mind. Lyrics and mp3.

Biblical references are common in fiction – even I can spot them—all that creepeth . . .; literary references as well (an author shouting: hey, I read this, have you?). And they can be googled . . . . but is it necesarry, helpeful, beneficial, to know the words to a song? Knowing the lyrics was not required to understand the character, but knowing DOES ADD A [juicy, tastee, sweet? ] DIMENSION to understanding.

AN ENGLISH SONG in an Italian novel, is that cultural imperialism facilitated by the Dante's descendents?

What about an English song in a German movie? A movie with a theme of class struggle / friendship / (how is that for american cultural penetration?). THE EDUKATORS – a radical group (2 young adults) break into affluent homes and re-arranged the furniture. Then things went awry and they kidnapped an evil capitalist (who turns out to be a 1968er: a former radical turned conservative . . . before 30 no heart; after 30 no brain . . . type)

Watch the trailer: http://www3.ifcfilms.com/theedukators/ or read

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Edukators

[of course upon reading the wikipedia entry I found this DISTURBING BREAKING
NEWS: The German version shows the three edukators taking Hardenberg's
boat into the Mediterranean to destroy the signal towers on an island that
supply most of the television to Western Europe.

In my SONY DVD
that does not happen, there are some shots of what may be ‘signal towers’ but look like radio telescopes to me – but no boat setting out, no nascent terrorist switching of the boob tubes. So is SONY editing the movie’s msg?
God forbid anyone would want to turn the tv’s of North America off – a dangerous
idea. we could only watch purged DVDS! Of course: ONLY THE BEST IDEAS
SURVIVE ]

But I digress - clearly my Orwellian paranoia, so:

I heard a song playing, an attractive lyric at the end of THE EDUKATORS. I wrote down a few lyrics, “strong but you needed” and googled that with ‘lyrics’ and got a song, googled it with the movie title. There it was, lyrics, then I liberated an MP3. Jeff BUCKLEY’s Hallelujah – ia song with its own wikipedia entry. Is that much info on one song worth looking for?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallelujah_(song)

The song itself had a wikipedia entry, and it was kind interesting, it read in part:

"Hallelujah" is frequently used in television and movies during sad or tragic
scenes. It has been used in movies as diverse as Basquiat, The Edukators (Die
Fetten Jahre Sind Vorbei), A Lot Like Love, Shrek (in which sexual content is
edited out), St. Ralph, Deliver Us from Evil, Kissed by Winter, Barfuss, Lord of
War and "When Night is Falling", and TV series such as Holby City, House, Grey's
Anatomy, Falcon Beach, The L Word, The O.C. (twice by Jeff Buckley, once by
Imogen Heap), Hollyoaks, The West Wing, Scrubs, Without a Trace, Cold Case,
Criminal Minds, ER, The Shield, Nip/Tuck, Crossing Jordan, Drama and Nicole,
Rescue Me, LAX, House M.D. and Numb3rs. It was also used in the Third Watch and
"Without a Trace" episodes dealing with the 9/11 tragedy.

ITS A GREAT MOVIE by the way. I had seen the lead actor Daniel Bruhl in GOODBYE LENIN, saw this as an amazon.com suggestion with him in the lead . . . and read the bit about furniture. Furniture as protest . . . pass the absinthe.

+
In WHATEVER by Michel Houellebecq the song Le Sud by Nino Ferrer is admired – I downloaded the entire album. Houellebecq played it in a bar describing it as “a magnificant record.” Clearly part of the ambiance, and I was missing it. Was it fast or slow? I found it. And it is an excellent listen, and its French, as is the novelist– no Yankee penetration here. (both this and the BENNI were translated). WHATEVER is about the monotony of contemporary life and work. Automatrons Eventually he will hear Gwen Stefani and toss her into a chapter set in LAX - an automatron factory?? [for now Gwen has to settle for SNL and Smallville . . .]

THE EXAMPLES:

BENNI:

Tim Buckley Song To The Siren lyrics

Long afloat on shipless oceans
I did all my best to smile
til your singing eyes and fingers
drew me loving into your isle.
And you sang Sail to me, sail to me,
Let me enfold you.
Here I am, here I am
waiting to hold you.
Did I dream you dreamed about me?
Were you hare when I was fox?
Now my foolish boat is leaning,
broken lovelorn on your rocks.
For you sang Touch me not, touch me not,
Come back tomorrow.
Oh my heart, oh my heart shies from the sorrow.
I'm as puzzled as a newborn child.
I'm as riddled as the tide.
Should I stand amid the breakers?
Or shall I lie with death my bride?
Here me sing: Swim to me, swim to me,
Let me enfold you.
Here I am, Here I am, waiting to hold you.

+++

EDUKATORS:

Jeff BUCKLEY
Hallelujah

Well I heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do ya?
Well it goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall and the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Well Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
And she tied you to her kitchen chair
And She broke your throne and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Well baby I've been here before
I’ve seen this room and I've walked this floor
(You Know)I used to live alone before I knew ya
And I've seen your flag on the marble arch
And Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Well there was a time when you let me know
What's really going on below
But now you never show that to me do you?
But remember when I moved in you
And the holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Well maybe there's a God above
But all I've ever learned from love
Was how to shoot somebody who'd OUT DREW YA
And it's not a cry that you hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah <<(held for a long time) Hallelujah

(NITE NITE SAYS JOHN)

Temple of Dendur (15 BCE)
The Metropolitan Musuem of Art
New York

We used to go to NYC all the time, but we used to go to flee small apartments or this or that. Here we are in the happy cacoon. And with air travel a pain, hotel rates in the sky, ect ect we haven't been in a while. I can visit a great museum here in the time it would take a plane to taxi to take-off a crowded runway anymore . . . that is MUSEUM ease.

Today the New Yorker came, March 5, 2007. The cover took me back . . . one of my favorite places to stand in NYC, in the Metropolitan, gawking at the Temple of Dendur . . .

Things have changed since I was there, the museum guests are a bit older, dustier, maybe related to Boris Karloff .... then I dug for a picture in my files, it took a while, but from I found a picture I had taken -from October of 2002 (on an external hard drive . . .)


Can you tell which is which? (I scanned the New Yorker cover), and one article that caught my eye right off:

A Reporter at Large: Spider Woman Hunting venomous pests in L.A, by Burkhard Bilger


SO WHICH PICTURE DID I TAKE, which is the New Yorker Cover?

or this one?

A recipe for the winner, something Egyptian of course.....