Some Brief, Reactionary Thoughts On 300 — Because That's All The Film Merits

I watched Zack Snyder's 300 last night — my first, and (God willing) only, time. If the blogosphere is any indication, 300 has usurped Ridley Scott's Gladiator as the alpha-male-wannabe's movie of choice. I'd say I was equally entertained by both flicks — which is to say, not very. Back when I read the comic book it had never struck me as such a thin retelling of Rob Roy (wp). But there it is.

Alright: on to the ledger. On the minus side: yak, yak, yak/hack, hack hack; humorless cartoon hijinx, self-regarding seriousness way off the charts.

On the plus side: loved the digital texture(!), as well as much of the soundtrack; the script is an endless cornucopia of unintended giggles. And gay men must LOVE this film! Man, this film is gayer than Socrates on a bender in Lesbos! Back up that dump truck, Zack; we'll take those ironies right here!

Marginalia

Whenever I had a university paper due, the library books I reached for were the ones that had been re-bound. The books were uniformly ugly: the re-binding was frequently lime green. The information within was often dated, the pages were leathery from overuse, and it was clear the next step for these resource materials was going to be the pulper. So why the preference? One word: marginalia.

Man, with some of those old books, the essays practically wrote themselves! Key texts were underlined (sometimes highlighted, which annoyed me with its visually jarring colors), and arguments for and against were outlined in the formerly white spaces on either side of the print, often with reference to other works I could look up and include. The feckless and inexperienced preferred newer books to these stinky old things. But at the end or early dawning of the day, who needed Cliff's Notes or even an essay-writing service when these troves were so freely available?

My own contributions to marginalia, on the other hand, should be ignored. Inspired by what I saw, I tried my hand at commentary. After a year or so, when I reread what I'd scrawled (in pen!) I was shamed in realizing what a pretentious twit I'd become. The marginalia promptly stopped.

Anyhow, teh interwebz is abuzz with the seemingly endangered art of marginalia. Will digital deprive us of this pleasure, this artform? Kevin Charles Redmon compiles a number of links exploring the issue, and contributes a few thoughts of his own. But so far, my favorite essay comes from Victor LaValle, who brings a ballsy disregard for the book as totem, over here. Perhaps the time to again uncap my pen has finally arrived.



Marginalia, David Foster Wallace-style.

Two Stars? Really?

Allen Barra beats the drum for the written work of Barry Gifford, over here. Barra begs readers not to associate Gifford too closely with the films of David Lynch (although the two clearly enjoy collaborating). Matt Dillon's City Of Ghosts (IMDB) is probably closer to Gifford's literary mark, if you'd rather see a movie than read a book.

Some years back I read Port Tropique (A), and loved it. I reached next for The Sinaloa Story (A), and when I finished that I figured I'd about finished with Gifford, too. Some of the "snapshots" within those pages failed to catch my interest; others beguiled, and begged for further exposure, which Gifford resolutely denied. I would call the first book "accomplished" and the second "experimental" -- a judgment Barra strains to refute. Barra is also keen on The Cavalry Charges, so I figured I'd give Gifford another chance.

My review of it is here. Two stars strikes me as a bit harsh, but the javascript prompt for three stars is "I liked it" while two indicates "It was okay," which is pretty much what I thought when I'd finished the book. If nothing else, The Cavalry Charges served to remind me that the real excitement in a writer's life, even one as internationally fêted as Gifford, occurs on the page.

Another D&D Link

By Grabthar's hammer, there must be something in the water. I hesitate to introduce D&D to my daughters, although I'm not at all sure of my reasons. I suspect it's mostly because, La-Z-Boy dad that I am, I couldn't be bothered to help them sort out the intricacies of gameplay. Besides, gameplay is the sort of thing they ought to be dishing out, and not some basement-bound fella on the far end of the spectrum.

The Financial Lives Of The Poets by Jess Walter

The big-picture decline of my newspaper is no different than the decline of newspapers in most towns. Specifically, the time line looks like this:

1950s: TV arrives and it turns out that most people prefer having their news delivered by a guy on TV with molded plastic hair, smoking a cigarette.

1960s: Evolution and improved diet cause the first father in history to give up reading the paper on the toilet . . . much like the first fish that walked on land.

1970s: Literacy and newspapers reach their peak just as, ironically, actual reading begins to decline. (Side note: the guy reading the TV news quits smoking on air.)

1980s: Cable TV arrives and steals ad dollars from newspapers; soon entire channels are devoted to 24-hours-a-day news with three main components: (1) stories about celebrities, (2) police chases filmed from helicopters and (3) angry political hacks yelling at one another.

1990s: The Internet arrives, stealing even more advertising and compelling the last reader under forty to cancel his daily newspaper subscription so he can devote more time to masturbating to online porn.

2000s: eBay and craigslist combine to kill off classified advertising and car and house listings, which turn out to have been the financial backbone of newspapers. The recession crushes display advertisers, coolly finishing the job.

Present: After a long period of newspaper panic, publishers do increasingly stupid things to drive away what readers they once had, speeding up their impending death, which is now estimated to be somewhere around 2015.

Snippet from The Financial Lives Of The Poets, by Jess Walter. My review can be read here.

You Can Draw -- And Probably Better Than Roger Ebert Can

"I began to haunt art supply stores, as if somehow one could purchase what one needed to be an artist. I loved the smell of the paints and papers, the chalks and wooden easels."

Here is an Ebert post I've been mulling over. It brought to mind the first time I joined my wife on one of her working trips to Europe. The first morning in Germany I took my coffee and journal out onto the balcony of our apartment, which offered a spectacular view of the Black Forest. There was no way I could write about it, so I took my black Uni-Ball pen and sketched what I saw. Because I've always preferred blank paper to lined, the page practically invited the activity.

I liked ... no, I'll be honest: I loved what I drew. It was rudimentary, and certainly wouldn't win me any awards. But just looking at those jagged lines immediately evoked a much larger sense of what I was taking in than any of the subsequent photos I snapped. For the rest of the trip I kept the journal close, taking it out at cafes and pretty much following the advice Annette Goodheart gave to Roger: draw in ink, don't erase.

If I ever get a scanner, I'll underwhelm you with some examples. In the meantime, I believe I'll reapply Ms. Goodheart's advice to my life and start sketching again. You should, too. It's what we've been hardwired to do.

Dungeons & Dragons, Part The Second

Although I'm bitter at being scooped by Ethan Gilsdorf, it behooves me to link to his piece on mid-life campaigners. He admits that nostalgia is a crucial motivating factor, but uncovers a few others that hadn't occurred to me, including:

"Gamers are married, making babies. They are encouraging their kids to discard their Xbox consoles in favor of the communal storytelling experience that is the cornerstone of D&D."

More anon.