Shaun: (to a shield depicting a unicorn that hangs on the wall of the movie set) Hellooo, Griffindor!
Phillip: That is a unicorn, triqq.
Shaun: No, it’s a Pegasus!
Dolly: Either way, not Griffindor.
Shaun: Whatever, it’s a Pegasus!
Dolly: Isn’t Pegasus a proper name? Wouldn’t any other winged horse just be a winged horse?
Phillip: There can be only one Pegasus.
Shaun: So, like, if a Pegasus and a unicorn did it and had a baby, what would you call the baby?
Dolly: A Lisa Frank drawing.
Shaun: Is she the artist that draws all those horses fucking?!
Phillip: No.
“What’s in the Basket?”
My Halloween costume this year, assembled in one swift trip to Wal-Mart 20 minutes before I was expected to a friend’s Halloween bash:
Artificial Artifice
If you accept that we live in times of hyperreality, where metanarratives are no longer plausible, where the self has destabilized into nonexistence, where the sign has become overloaded by late capitalism, then the concept of Surrogates would seem to have a more impressive prescience. Taking postmodernism to its cybernetic extreme has been in fashion since Ghost in the Shell (Surrogates openly plagiarizes much of the original anime, as well as The Matrix) if not during the Gibson/Sterling cyberpunk clique.
This was a weakly wrought film, too content to openly crib its ideas and imagery from extant Sci-Fi canon (even bad ones like A.I. and I, Robot) to create an ingenuous world. The film never really understands its own moralizing to form a real human critique; lifelike dolls are our sensuous stand-ins while crippled, unkempt “operators” live like shut-ins, an all-too-proximal reflection of internet culture. But so what? Despite the film’s insistence on the lack of genuineness in this kind of culture, it never really comes to grips with what that genuineness might be, or why we should prefer it to simulacra. The film also never really explains what the hell is up with the group of luddite extremists (are they religious?) who categorically reject this robotic surrogacy in order to live “naturally” in slums – this is meant to represent the extreme counterpoint on the moral spectrum and one which, I’m guessing, is viewed as equally wrong.
The weakest science fiction takes ideas which are topical (or is it? people have been discussing simulacra and cybernetics for over 30 years) and construes them onto fashionable chic (remember Hackers?) when neither the aesthetic or the moral imperative of the story are worth salt on their own.
The Daggering
me: another Netflix you may want: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066735/
Ponyo
Latest Pajibin’ after a pretty lengthy hiatus:
“This is as loose an interpretation of Hans Christian Andersen’s tale as has ever been made, but the source material here is only important insofar as Miyazaki can make it his own. His usual hallmarks return splendidly: the innocence of love, the tenuous balance of ecology, the primacy of visual experience, the lack of categorical good and evil, the beauty of the everyday, and the joys of minutiae. Ponyo unfolds unhurriedly and with a mysterious vibrancy. It is both rote and predictable to describe his films as “magical,” but that’s really the word we need. Is it the de facto belief in magic that allows a child to accept the existence of the fantastic without hesitation or suspicion, without a corresponding search for meaning? I would say so. Miyazaki’s gift is to let the rest of us do the same.”
I’ve been off my writing game, lately. Too few reviews and too few blogs. I’m not sure whether my overturned living situation or summer malaise is to blame, but I’ll see what I can do about it.
Guns and Joelses
I had a real shit-bath of a week: first I blew about $1,500 to keep my gelapi of a car together, then I got some insanely trenchant remarks from my professor about a paper I’d written, and now it appears that my ancillary hard drive (500GB filled with books and all the music I own) is dead or dying. I still do not have a bed, and the house is filled with my unpacked boxes and accoutrements because I can’t really set up the room until that is taken care of (fuck UPS ground-shipping in the balls). In times like these, I take great comfort in tormenting one of my housemates.
Meet Joel:
Joel is a man of many faces. He listens almost exclusively to death metal, watches Ultimate Fighting Championship with zealotry, and is an ardent Christian. Ardent. I’d describe his temperament as something between Ned Flanders and Snarf from “ThunderCats.” He regularly uses words like “flip,” “criminy,” and “jilickers” (seriously) in lieu of swearing and stares at the floor whenever there’s nudity in film or television. And yet listens to bands like Goblin Cock and Dimmu Borgir…
Imagine the look on poor Joel’s face whenever his petulant, ruthlessly cynical, and marginally insane housemate makes exclamations like “Goddamn buttfucking shitballs” at the slightest inconvenience or threatens to “rape his mouth” if he doesn’t take his dishes out of the sink. Imagine the sighs of exasperation and disgust that escape him when I recite from memory the lyrics of Faggot Bruce or leave a drawing of goatse on the dry-erase board:
Does this cheer me up? Oh my yes.
Piss off, Meatwad.
No blogs for a while, eh? I’ve been busy with a seminar on Marxism, freelance internet work, internet showz and moving. This weekend I will shake off my cozy apartment of five years to molt fresher environs, a house with two of my good bros. I haven’t lived with other human beings in as many years, so I expect major adjustments will be in order. No more pooing with the door open; no more blaring post-rock at 3:00 in the morning; no more talking to myself enthusiastically with fake accents, as is my wont. I expect the first few months of the house to look a cross between “The Young Ones” and “Hunger Force,” with myself in the role of Vyvyan and Master Shake, respectively.
More blawgs later.
