I generally don’t like making posts that don’t have any sort of central theme other than “This is what I did today!”

However, on occasion the occasion arises upon which writing a roundup post actually has its merits, and this, my friends, is one of those very special occasions. Why? Because the Things (Various in Nature) that I am about to reveal are so very various that they allow me to file this little entry in not one, not two, but three categories. Why that makes me so happy is a question for another day.

I shall proceed:

Movies
My friend Kubhaer, who was already one of my favorite people in the world simply because of his vast stores of humor, intelligence, and curiosity, has gone and done something to raise my estimation of him even higher. It’s something I’ve certainly never done, and probably something you’ve never done either (although if you have, I’d very much like to hear about it).

He’s written, directed, and produced his first short film! Hooray! Not only that, but it’s one of ten finalists in a short film competition in Malaysia (where, fortunately, he happens to live)! Triple hooray! You can watch it and vote for it, if you’re so inclined (I am)—here—but you should know that unless you speak Malay you’ll need to spend a few minutes downloading it, because the subtitles will be too small to read in the steaming form. Oh! And you need to know what it is called, which is Westbound. Finally, I’ll tell you that the business with the tape is not only clever and amusing, it also turns out to be important to the plot. Which just goes to show you, that Kubhaer, he’s got all his ducks in a row. No guns on the wall that he doesn’t kill someone with by the last act.

(Special note to Avi: after you’ve watched it, dear, can you tell me if what that woman says about Israeli stamps is true?)

There, have I intrigued you enough? Get thee hence!

Oh wait, not yet. There are still two more categories. So hang on a bit before you go.

Science
Can I tell you why I love Ross so much? It is (in part) because he agreed that the best possible thing we could do to entertain ourselves on his birthday evening was to go listen to a lecture by Lang Elliot and Will Hershberger, the nature-sound recorders/photographers who wrote this beautiful book (another Houghton marvel; why don’t I work in Trade?). They spoke at the museum at 6, before we had our celebratory meal, so you can see how very much geeky excitement it took to sustain Ross (who is usually ravenous by 5pm) through the endeavor. Despite our distracting hunger, it was one of the most delightful events I have been to in a long time: they showed us excitingly large directional microphones, shared many charming facts about cicadas, crickets, grasshoppers, true katydids, and false katydids (which, really, get a bad rap), and played sound clip after sound clip of the most wonderful chirps, trills, and buzzes you could ever hope to hear.

Unless, of course, you are a little older and have lost the ability to hear at very high frequencies—Ross and I have since firmly resolved to go on as many insect-listening expeditions to the South as we can while we are still young and robust of ear. We’re also considering acquiring an insect pet when we move, instead of a kitten, but it makes me very sad to think about the fact that if we did own a singing cicada every time our little friend sang so sweetly for us he would be wondering why he wasn’t getting any feminine response. “Is my tymbal-pop really that grating?” he would sigh, and my heart would break.

Food!
I’m not even talking about the delicious Middle-Eastern/Spanish dinner we had at Zuzu’s the night of Ross’s birthday. I’m talking about fanfrickintastic homemade aloo paratha and a tremendous pot of dal that tastes like I ordered it from an old man in a sarong in a hawker center near my house in Singapore. When I say homemade, I mean made in this very home. When I say made, I mean crafted from scratch, sweat, fresh spices, and chapati flour over two and a half exhausting but oh so fulfilling hours. And when I say fanfrickintastic, I mean this:

Mmmm. I think it’s time to have one more.

We just watched Blood Simple, which astonishingly enough we didn’t realize was a Coen brothers film until the credits started rolling — a good sign, I think.

If I talk too much about this movie I will ruin it for anyone who hasn’t seen it, and since I think it’s a brilliantly crafted piece of work, smart, well-paced and incredibly detail-oriented from start to finish, I don’t want to ruin it. What’s interesting about it is that it’s really not a film that’s about plot (although the plot is laid out well) or character, or meaning — it’s a film that’s about mood, above all. Every frame is deliberately designed to create a very specific mood, one of a certain strange kind of sinister beauty. I will say that it’s a fascinating experience to find your heart so often in your mouth, thumping with anticipation, when in a sense there’s absolutely no mystery in the plot — just a great deal of suspense.

Some wonderful moments: Abby noticing the dog in the corner of the room and its panting getting louder and louder while Marty tries to strangle her, Loren’s beat-up Beetle appearing suddenly in the window when Abby lies down to go back to bed, looking down on Ray in his chair through the rotating blades of the fan, the sound of the shovel scraping against the road as Ray stands over Marty, the blood spots coming through the towels on Ray’s back seat, those amazing beams of light shooting through into the darkened bathroom when Loren puts all his bullets through the wall…

…maybe I have ruined it after all. But probably you can forget everything I just said quite easily, and go out and rent this movie or put it on your Netflix list. If you’re at all a fan of films in which characters, caught in the mad tangle of their own misdeeds, keep pushing themselves further and further into horribly bad trouble (I know I am!), you’ll really enjoy this.

it’s difficult to accept
and you look around the room
for the person they are talking
about.

I am on the next page.
the next book.

– Henry Charles Bukowski Jr. (”Hank”)

(I am.)

Today was another gloriously liberating summer Friday, and I spent most of it (after a dutiful dentist’s office visit this morning) with Sean: if you had been there you would have seen us devouring dim sum in Chinatown, sipping sweet libations in Central Square, trawling the trashy/trendy sale racks at Hootenanny’s and Urban Outfitters, and occupying ourselves with various other alliterative pursuits. My travels about the city also included the opportunity to listen to a wonderfully cultured, only partly nonsensical rant delivered in a calm, teacherly voice by a crazy guy in a CVS to nobody in particular (did you know that they drive garbage trucks full of money around the White House grounds? I didn’t. But he was right about the fact that if you want to get ahead in this world, all you have to do is become a Yes Man and tell the people above you what you want to hear.), about a million cups of chrysanthemum tea, and an episode of the mildest possible lawlessness. Who could ask for more?

Well — me, I guess– so tonight we also watched Breakfast on Pluto, a film which I had a feeling I would love. Because, see? It contains a tough-talking, sweetly husky transvestite with huge blue eyes and an Irish accent, lots of bellbottoms, a little magic, a good deal of shiny lipgloss, and a tremendously sentimental soundtrack. I really don’t think I need to tell you how much I adored it.

Here is Sean’s Greek notebook: look how beautiful.

Don’t worry, Sean honey, it wasn’t just the Greek that photographed well today. I promise that at least a few of the 50 million pictures I took of you will be appropriate fodder for your Facebook/Myspace page. :-)

Edited to add:

And also:

I just saw what I think might be the best film I’ve seen in the past four years, and I want you all to know so that you can go see it if it’s playing near you, or clamor for it to come play near you, so that it will get more publicity. I am kind of in a beautiful shock over it right now.

The film is called Brick and all I want to tell you about it is that it’s a dead-straight noir film of the hardboiled detective variety that just happens to be set in high school. That quality gives you a sense of strange dissociation while you’re watching it which is delicious, and at times completely devastating. I can’t explain why without giving too much away, but it is a fiercely moving film and absolutely true to the dark view of human existence that characterizes the best noir, while at times beginning to tip-toe down the line between horror and humor.

It stars the very talented Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who played the dorky youngest member of the alien family on “Third Rock From the Sun” not that many years ago, and who has since made an astonishing transformation into a gifted character actor (and a totally hot one, at that). He was also in last year’s “Mysterious Skin,” which I also highly recommend. The rest of the performances are terrific as well, and the dialogue and delivery are so exquisitely finely tuned, it almost made me weep with pleasure. In a weird way, watching it was a joyful experience, despite the dread-ful scenes that take place. It’s just such a perfectly crafted film.

In fact, folks, I think I might love this movie just a hair more than I love Hedwig….

I know. It’s that good. So go, go, go.

ETA: The morning after, I can’t get that Ben Folds Five song out of my head.

I’m not feeling quite so overwhelmed, but I am still very tired, despite getting back onto what essentially resembles a normal sleep cycle for this time zone. I am in good spirits, however. It has been ridiculously cold but very sunny (hooray) and I can feel the days lengthening into what will someday be a beautiful spring. I love spring. Spring makes everything worthwhile no matter how lousy a winter I’ve had, and since this has actually been the first winter in three years that hasn’t thrown me into deep gloom, I imagine I will be close to cavorting when the blossoms start appearing.

We saw Match Point with Jenn last night — not much I want to say about it other than that it was a solidly medium-good film. I thought it suffered from a few delusions of grandeur, but ultimately I was so fascinated by the un-Woody-Allen-like quality of the storytelling and the cinematography that I found myself enjoying it more than I might otherwise have. And I’m sorry, but Scarlett Johansen is hotter than a New York summer.

I have updates on various things, but I am bored by the notion of typing out the letters that will form my news, which makes me think I should probably save it until at least I am interested. OH! I do have a big announcement, which I’d all but forgotten about: My green card came in the mail on Friday! I am officially (conditionally) permanent! It quite brings a tear to my eye, after eight years in this crazy country. When you come and visit me, I will show it to you and you will be dead impressed. It is very sharp and shiny and it has an extra tiny hologram of me on the back. I am busily researching all the opportunities I can now pursue, besides joining the Peace Corps. What, you don’t think that’s a good idea?

I wore my fabulous coat to go grocery shopping at the Super 88 today, because I am a (conditional) permanent resident and boy, does that make me fabulous.

Some time ago Ross decided that the word “criticism” wasn’t quite cutting it, so he made up the term “critique-icism,” added a funny nasal professorial voice, and presto! He had a patented new school of literary and artistic interpretation. The major characteristics of critiqueicism include

a) having an opinion, and
b) telling other folks about it, preferably in a Southern accent.

Since we were just speaking of the dearly departed Kurt Cobain (see previous entry), tonight I decided I would critique-icize the movie I saw last night — Gus Van Sant’s film inspired by his last days. I’m not going to bother with the accent, but you can try putting this entry through the Dialectizer if you want.

I wasn’t at all sure how I was going to feel about Last Days. I tried to imagine what a film would be like that would attempt to capture the experience of a person during the final hours and days before they committed suicide, and I couldn’t envision it without expecting it to be something like the brilliant, but also truly horrible, Requiem for a Dream. Then I tried to imagine what a film would be like that would attempt to capture the experience of a fucked up famous person during the hours and days before he shot himself in the head, plunging millions of teenage girls around the world into deep depression and forcing his insane wife to read large parts of his suicide note out loud to the world, and I began to feel rather ill.

But the movie, while flawed (mainly in its pacing; it did feel a bit tedious at times), kind of took my breath away. For an hour and a half you watch Blake (the Cobain character), this sort of crumpled rockstar, concentrating very hard on performing tasks like pouring cereal he will never eat, making undercooked macaroni and cheese, digging a hole in the ground for no reason, and doing his best not to topple over more. Everything takes twice as long as it should and looks as if it requires all the intent in the world, even if you can’t for the life of you figure out what he’s doing or why. His body is shriveled and creaky, it moves in slow motion while a cigarette grows a long ash in one hand. In one exquisitely beautiful scene, he tries — like a brittle ballerina, like a hundred year old puppet — to sit down on a chair from a standing position, but ends up slowly falling onto all fours and crawling to the door while a bizarrely appropriate Boyz II Men video plays on the television.

Time loses all meaning. Blake takes a swim in a river, he dries his socks by a crackling fire. He puts tattered clothes on and takes them off again, he mutters fragments of conversation under his breath. What he says you can’t hear unless you put the subtitles on, and then the words are things like,
“The only reason we…
even… that it was even…
that she… that it was even mentioned
in the… in the first place is really… it wasn’t for us,
you know, like that she…
big fucking favor.
This fucking…
swamp.
‘Cause I’m afraid…
You can’t do anything.
You can’t do anything.
I can’t.”

He’s broken, you can see that, but the film doesn’t ever try to explain why, and it doesn’t matter. His friends, who are living with him in what is a truly gorgeous, completely ruined mansion of a house with peeling walls and stained antique furniture, are broke and drugged out themselves. They ignore him except to ask him for money or musical advice. Blake takes a visit from a hideously unaware Yellow Pages salesman who studiously ignores the fact that he is wearing a dirty black dress and hiking boots, and that his face is falling into his knees. Yet there are moments when the passion and pain that have obviously brought him to this place break through the haze; the camera pans away, almost imperceptibly slowly, from a window through which you can see Blake thrashing at a drum set; he picks up a twangy guitar and tears out a mournful, yowling song.

At some point he takes his life; you don’t see it, although you do see a ghostly image rising from his body, naked and climbing — but still slow, broken, bent. Opera plays as the credits appear on the screen, and no music could carry you further away from seeing this as the pathetic, dramatic death of a rock and roll star.

I think what makes Last Days such a powerful film is the fact that it absolutely fails to romanticize either fame, rock and roll, or depression. The movie knows that it’s explicating a cliche; one of the characters even says so at one point. What it does do is allow us to see what ends up being an extraordinary kind of beauty; it’s a strange and rare beauty, which somehow emerges from this quiet, honest, almost poetic impression of the slow, exhausting decline of a human soul that has decided to give up the attempt to survive a lifetime.

*******
This morning I drove to Brandeis to see a couple of exhibits at the Rose Art Museum, both of which turned out to be wonderful. The Rose is a really beautiful museum; it’s very small (one main exhibit hall, one smaller room and a few other walls) but it feels incredibly open and spacious. It even somehow manages to have a lovely shallow reflecting pool in its basement, which I think is quite an achievement.

One exhibit consisted of large, rather crude-looking oil paintings that combined lots of lush primordial vegetation with images of crumbling civilizations, people eating themselves and each other, and people rebuilding themselves and each other. It was like looking at the beginning of time and the end of time at the same time. Prelapsarian and postapocalyptic in one. I was enchanted. The other exhibit involved life-size foam sculptures covered in collage-mosaic pieces cut from thousands of photographs of the subject of the sculpture. Those were neat, but they didn’t grab me until I watched a video of their utterly charming creator talking about his artistic process, and the moment I saw him working on matching a small shard of photographic skin with a triangle of warm brown back belonging to a beautiful (and longsuffering) model, I was filled with a huge sense of faith and inspiration.

So then I walked around outside and took this photograph, which isn’t very good but helps me remember the way I remember Brandeis, and also the way I want to remember today.