Wednesday Wildflowerblogging

Bud Saxifrage (Saxifraga bryophora at Red Devil Lake, Yosemite National Park.
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Wetland

If I knew how, I'd photoshop in some properly-focused waterlilies there in the upper-right. But I don't know how. Alternate take (sans lilies) here.

Friday Random 10

Alemayahu Eshete - Temeles
Shriekback - Sea Theory
Victoire - A Dorr Into the Dark
Nocturnes - Space Probe
Lene Lovich - The Night
Nick Lowe - Cracking Up
Sleater-Kinney - Steep Air
Karl Hector & the Malcouns - Sahara Swing
Joy Division - Atrocity Exhibition
Rolling Stones - Gimme Shelter

What are y'all listening to today? Bonus video below the fold...
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Wednesday Wildflowerblogging

Scarlet Gilia (Ipomopsis aggregata) in Bowerman Meadows, Trinity Alps Wilderness.

GWB: Good President...or Greatest President?

Shorter, humbler Ross Douthat:

George W. Bush was only a good president.

But also, however...

Verbatim, buried lede Ross Douthat:

This is not a blueprint that future presidents will want to follow.

Good to know, Ross. No, make that great to know.

Monday Movie Review: Inglorious Basterds

Inglorious Basterds (2009) 8/10
In World War II, the "Basterds," led by Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), fight a guerrilla war against the Nazis in occupied France. Meanwhile, in Paris, Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent) is the only surviving member of a family slaughtered by the "Jew Hunter" (Christoph Waltz). Fast forward and Shosanna, now living in Paris as a gentile, owns a movie theater that will host a major Nazi propoganda film. Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino.

Inglorious Basterds is a movie so strange, so bold, so gross and yet so engrossing, that I hardly know how to rate it. It is disjointed and disorganized, and yet the running length of two and a half hours seems to fly by. It's fun, it's crazy, someone should fix it, and yet exactly as it is, it is indeed glorious, and it's a perfect expression of Quentin Tarantino. In fact, after thinking about it for a couple of days, I began to feel that Inglorious Basterds is something like the symbolic blueprint to Tarantino's psyche.
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The movie takes place during World War II. The part you've seen in previews involves the "Basterds;" a guerrilla team of Americans in occupied France whose mission is to strike terror among the Nazis by killing, torturing, and scalping them. Brad Pitt plays a hillbilly who claims some Apache blood (hence the scalping), but the rest of his team is Jewish. In fact, they are almost all stereotypically Jewish-looking; dark haired with thick eyebrows, it looks like a set of caricatures drawn by anti-Semites, or like the casting call for a Woody Allen memoir. This is not insignificant. The only Basterds who aren't Jewish looking are the Austrian who escaped the Nazis and went to America, then volunteered to fight his former captors, and a former Nazi who turned violently on his own.

The other, and by far dominant, part of the movie involves Shosanna and her theater. A Nazi soldier (Daniel Brühl) notices Shosanna, and both her beauty and love of film interest him. Zoller (Brühl) is a war hero, and the subject and star of a forthcoming Nazi propoganda film, directed by Joseph Goebbels. Zoller wants the film to premiere at Shosanna's theater.

With a major film premiere in the offing that all the leaders of the Third Reich will attend, the British army, the Basterds, and Shosanna herself all begin to plot to destroy the theater and the party leaders inside it.

Most critics are quick to note that this is a movie about movies. (It's clearly not a movie about World War II!) Movies have redemptive power in Inglorious Basterds, and the ability to change history. Movie people are uniformly the most important people in this film, and the most important people love movies. Every pivotal character who is not a Basterd is involved with the movies in some way: A critic, an actress, an actor, a theater owner, and a projectionist are all vital to the goings on, and almost no one is simply an ordinary soldier or officer. Even Goebbels is primarily seen as a film director. A theater, and film itself, serve as the most important weapons.

Some critics argue that this "movie about movies" is Tarantino writing about himself. I'd say it's the conscious and public side of him. This is Tarantino, for whom life is movies, and here we see that an encyclopedic knowledge of movies (such as Tarantino has) is quite literally a matter of life and death.

The Basterds themselves, though, are something like a map of Tarantino's subconscious.

Picture it: A kid, maybe eleven years old, wants to make a movie about World War II. He'd talk to himself kind of like this: "What would be cool is if Jews killed the Nazis. But they should kill and torture them. I know! They should scalp Nazis. Yeah. Okay, so their leader is an Indian, who tells them to take Nazi scalps. And there'll be lots of blood." This is totally Tarantino as a kid, wanting to make cool, exciting movies that fulfill childish fantasies of right and wrong.

And make no mistake; Tarantino cares deeply about right and wrong. He is not abusing or assaulting the good guys, he treats women with a humanity that can only be described as feminist (while it shouldn't be feminist to have female characters who aren't raped, prostituted, or stripped, you and I know that by comparison with the rest of the movie industry, it is), and he cares about who is and who is not good.

Now obviously, if you're a kid and you've decided that a hillbilly/Apache is going to lead a band of Jews to fight Nazis, you're going to imagine yourself as the Apache. And give him a cool scar. If you wonder what a bonafide movie star is doing hamming it up and having a grand ol' time within a cast of relative unknowns, I think that's the answer. The "star" is Tarantino himself. Not the Tarantino the world knows, who can easily be seen as a movie theater owner, or a soldier/film critic (Michael Fassbender), but the subconscious/fantasy Tarantino.

I don't think the movie makes any sense at all if you can't see that fantasy component. As it is, I think it kind of goes off the rails at the end, although by closing with the line, "This may very well be my masterpiece," Tarantino assures the audience that he really doesn't care what you think, he's never had so much fun.

[SPOILERS BELOW]

One of the wish-fulfillment fantasies of Inglorious Basterds is to kill Hitler every possible way there is to kill him. An adult might wish to rewrite history. It's the geeky eleven year old who wants to shoot Hitler AND blow him up AND burn him down AND betray him from within his inner circle. And by the way--Jewish suicide bombers? Jewish suicide bombers who kill Hitler?

There's more, of course. There's the almost inexplicable presence of a black man as Shosanna's lover and projectionist. That's an odd flourish in the sense that everyone is sort of saying, hey, what's he doing there? What he's doing is lighting the fire that brings the theater down, and I think that was a race-conscious choice; the black guy burns down the "church" full of bigots just as the Jews strap bombs to themselves.

[END SPOILERS]
This is fantasy; not Beings of Middle Earth fantasy, but the secret dreams of a private mind. And the boldness of plastering those secret dreams on-screen for public view, the gift of facing those secrets dead-on and not trying to make them more palatable, is what makes Inglorious Basterds possible, and laudable in its deranged way.

(This cross-post may well be my masterpiece.)

Sunday Sierrablogging

Meadow below Obelisk Lake, Clark Range, Yosemite National Park.

Happy Parking Day

Yesterday was Parking Day, "an annual, one-day, global event where artists, activists, and citizens independently but simultaneously temporarily transform metered parking spots into “PARK(ing)” spaces: temporary public parks." I get the feeling there were fewer people doing it this year, but I did find a few near my office.
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Friday Random 10 - Recent Acquisitions

Dick Dale - Death of a Gremmie
Hüsker Dü - Games
Wu-Tang Clan - Hollow Bones
Oh No - Ox Broil
Run DMC - Mary, Mary
Link Wray - Remember the Twist
Graves Brothers Deluxe - The White Devil's Death Song
Bunker Hill (w/Link Wray) - The Girl Can't Dance
Bruce Springsteen - Adam Raised a Cain
Psychedelic Furs - Heartbeat

Working my way through two 50-track bonuses from eMusic, so this week's list is all stuff added to the iPod in the last month (I think--I don't recall the exact rule I used for the playlist).

What are y'all listening to this morning, and what are your recent musical acquisitions?

Wednesday Wildflowerblogging

Bluff Lettuce (Dudleya farinosa) on Ring Mountain in Tiburon.

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Tuesday Trivia

You didn't miss Monday Movie Review, I didn't post it.

But here's some Round-Robin Trivia for you.

Sunday Sierrablogging

Upper Recess Peak Lake, Mono Divide, John Muir Wilderness.

QOTD: Bipartisan Broder Edition

In critiquing President Obama's healthcare address in today's Washington Post, David Broder makes an interesting admission:

The keynote was simple and almost substance-free: "The time for bickering is over."

Got that? Calls for Democrats and Republicans (or Democrats and Democrats, as the case may be) to "just get along," calls we hear incessantly from Broderite journalists, are "substance-free." Our politics are defined by the very real, very meaningful disagreements they seek to mediate. By debating the issues, our democracy works toward achieving meaningful consensus. To ask politicians to quit bickering is to ask them to ignore the substantial issues of the day.

That is what Broder is saying here. Right?

September 11, 2009

I have a tattoo of the Twin Towers on my right arm—fairly prominent, about 3 1/2 inches high. Often, strangers stop me to talk about my tattoos, and usually, since 9/11, this is the one they notice. The most common question I get is "Did you lose somebody?"

This used to surprise me. We all lost somebody. We all lost every one of the victims. I hope it takes nothing away from the people who lost spouses, partners, children, parents, and beloved friends and relatives, to say that the collective loss is profound.

We all lost somebody.

People had all sorts of reactions: Fear, rage, panic, numbness. I was, and remain, deeply sad. The hole in Ground Zero remains a hole in my heart.

My all those who lost their lives that day be at peace. May their loved ones be comforted. Let all those who sacrificed so much, physically and emotionally, in rescue and recovery efforts, be acknowledged and healed. May all of us pause for a moment to reflect upon all that we take for granted, and how swiftly it can change.

(Cross-posted in memorium)

Friday Random 10

Thin White Rope - Red Sun
Wax Taylor - Our Dance
Dead Moon - Times Are a-Changing
Talking Heads - Life During Wartime
Nick Cave - Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart
Blondie - Heart of Glass
Lo'Jo - Baji Larabat
Chicha Libre - Popcorn Andino
Gil Scott-Heron - The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
Wire - A Touching Display

What are y'all listening to this morning? Bonus 154 below the fold...
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Failure: the Great Teacher

Shorter Peggy Noonan: "Nine-eleven was my kind of schoolhouse indoctrination!"

Another Date That Will Live in Infamy

Let history show that on September 9, 2009, this country and everything it stands for was brutally and verbally attacked by radical terrorists whose visceral hate for Americans knows no bounds, and who have infiltrated every level of government. Although the hand of peace has been repeatedly offered to these people, they have now proven they have no sense of human decency and cannot be reasoned with. In order to prevent future attacks on our soil, we must not rest until they are rooted out and brought to justice, wherever we find them.

Wednesday Wildflowerblogging

Red Maids (Calandrinia ciliata) near Point Arena Lighthouse, Mendocino County.

Trivia is here

I dunno, maybe it's too hard this week.

Swallow Chase

The Barn Swallows left our lake for warmer climes about a week ago. It's a very sad time here.

Monday Movie Review: Blue Velvet

Blue Velvet (1986) 8/10
When Jeffrey (Kyle MacLachlan) finds a severed human ear in a field, he discovers a world of corruption hiding just past the edges of his peaceful community. Written and directed by David Lynch.

I saw this movie a couple of months ago, and haven't known what to make of it. Its reputation is so big it almost drowns out the experience of seeing it.

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There are ways in which it's all too heavy-handed. OMGZ! Look! There's filth underneath the pretty suburb! Laura Dern as Jeffrey's innocent neighbor is a bit too innocent and too baby doll, Isabella Rossellini is too histrionic, throwing herself to the floor, throwing herself, in fact, pretty much to the exclusion of normal movement. And Dennis Hopper is too Dennis Hopper. It's a garish movie painted in garish colors; very much a painting, something extreme and splashy and full of symbols for art students to discuss.

And yet the images are striking and remarkable. It's David Lynch, after all, the master of the strange image, and I'm a believer in movies as a medium of images. I loved Mulholland Dr. and didn't understand it; I kind of feel like understanding the narrative isn't always necessary. Maybe it's usually necessary, but the David Lynches of the world are there to be an exception.

The world that Jeffrey spies on through Dorothy (Rossellini) is so dark as to be incomprehensible. It is perverse, violent, and anarchic. It was really hard for me to follow what was going on with the crime plot, even though some of it was pretty simple in retrospect, but it is seen through the eyes of Jeffrey, to whom it is all foreign. The darkness of it is repulsive, and I am left, as I often am, wondering if I'm the only one actually repulsed by repulsiveness. It seems like Frank Booth (Hopper) is a character everyone loves to quote, as if kidnapping, rape, and murder bring the funny. My take on Booth is he is a nightmare, a "monster from the id," and not at all funny.

Roger Ebert somewhat famously wrote a one-star review of this film. Although I disagree, I see his point; it's not complicated to see Blue Velvet as hateful. At some level, though, I think he fundamentally misunderstands.

Isabella Rossellini's husband and son have been kidnapped by Dennis Hopper, who makes her his sexual slave. The twist is that the kidnapping taps into the woman's deepest feelings: She finds that she is a masochist who responds with great sexual passion to this situation.

I doubt it. Ebert is saying that first Hopper kidnapped Rossellini's family, using their captivity to get her to bed, and she ultimately became aroused, despite hating him and hating her arousal. No way.

More likely, Rossellini discovered her S&M desires in a consensual relationship with Booth, perhaps seeking him out because of those desires, and then, when she wanted out, he kidnapped her family in order to keep her enslaved. Like Jeffery, Dorothy wanted to toy with the edge of the dark unknown, but she fell in. She's Dorothy, stuck in Oz, needing a Wizard to free her.

Ebert hates, and is uncomfortable with, the constant contrasts in this film between "nice" and "perverse," as embodied by the two women; "nice" Sandy (Laura Dern) and "perverse" Dorothy. He sees the nice as snide and satiric, and the perverse as a straight story (ha! see what I did there?). But carrying around a gas canister to suck on while raping a woman and calling yourself Baby at the top of your lungs is really not normal, and is no less exaggerated than the nicey-nice scenes. Both sides are equally broad, and in a way, equally disturbing. The nice is bad because it isn't real, the dark because it's bad, and hyper-real. Our hero, Jeffrey, walks between the two worlds, spying on each, before finally making a choice.

(Blue Cross-post)

I Give You: "Il Douche"

This is the actual cover image of an actual book that will actually be published. (h/t)

Sunday Sierrablogging

Upper Wire Lake, Emigrant Wilderness.

Friday Random 10

13th Floor Elevators - Slip Inside This House
Caravans - Mondo Caravan
Eno - The Great Pretender
Big Dipper - Mineral Man
Baby Charles - The Sphinx
Clash - Police & Thieves
Stan Ridgway - 16 Tons
Mulatu Astatqe - Munaye
Prikaze - Edo Maajka
Billie Holiday - Gloomy Sunday

Something for everyone here--Ethiopian jazz aficionados and Croatian hip-hop fans! What are y'all listening to this morning?

Bonus video below the fold.
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Real Americans Don't Need Their Pinkies Anyway

They discussed pros and cons, and the fact that Rice is retired and that the injury was to a relatively unimportant finger on his non-dominant hand. Still, the doctor tried to talk Rice into reattachment. "He disagreed with that plan," Carraway-Bowman said. "He left the tip of his finger with us and he went home."

William "9.75-Finger" Rice knows that a pinky finger (pink is just a shade of red, after all) is only useful for Harvard-educated liberal-socialist elites to stick out while they toast Osama Bin Laden with cups of green tea.

Everyone knows the most important finger -- the one you could least afford to lose -- is the middle one you raise towards the American flag at the secessionist rally; towards anyone who isn't white, heterosexual, or likes to quote Thomas Jefferson out of context; or towards the Constitution and any part of the Bill of Rights other than the 2nd or 10th amendments.

A close second is the index finger, which you need to pull the trigger on your AK-47 while you're watering the tree of liberty, etc.

In fact, every true tea-party patriot who opposes socialized medicine and government death panels (private-industry death panels are OK, just to be clear) should go straight to the kitchen, grab the biggest meat cleaver he can find (you do have several to choose from, don't you?) and lop that troublesome, Nazi-socialist-Marxist-terrorist-sympathizing digit right off, in protest. Hell, chop off several fingers, while you're at it. Don't even think about having them reattached, because emergency rooms in major-city trauma centers are mostly taxpayer-subsidized by the goddamn nanny-state government.

And come to think of it, this business about opposable thumbs has to be a communist plot...

[cross-posted at Blue Mass Group]

Dark Side of the Noonan

Shorter Peggy Noonan: "Americans are from Earth, Barack Obama is from Pluto."

Parricide Orphans' Court

Shorter David Broder: "Cheney has fucked up the country far too thoroughly for it ever to hold him accountable. Also, Nixon = Clinton."

Wednesday Wildflowerblogging

California Sea Pink (Armeria maritima) at Gerstle Cove, Salt Point State Park.
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And a couple from near Point Arena lighthouse:

Trivia has arrived

Today it's supporting actors.