Tiny Money Land

WE'RE DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMED!: Here's a cheerful story you could probably do without, but it works for my purposes tonight, which is to fill space. Bea Arthur(!) sparked what the whippets of the press call a "security scare" at Boston's Logan International Airport when she tried to board a Cape Air flight with a pocket knife in her handbag. Of course, these days, it's strictly verboten to fly with a blade, even one that could barely peel an apple.

Because she's a performer first and foremost, she started screaming that the knife wasn't hers and "the terrorists" put it there. When the knife was confiscated by a TSA agent, she took out a keyring and said they also belonged to the terrorists before throwing it at them. Reassuringly, she told Cape Air employees "We're all doomed" before boarding the plane.

A few points to help bludgeon this story to death (and to make it look much more important than it really is):

1) Keith Olbermann just mentioned what I think is an important point (although apparently Olbermann is the only one who agrees with me): the entire passenger manifest on the particular flight she was boarding was...wait for it...BEA ARTHUR.

2) Cape Air is an intrastate shuttle service. Were they afraid she was going to wig out and demand to be taken to Rhode Island instead?

Oh yeah, there is a number 3: If an 81 year old woman flying on an otherwise empty plane is what it takes to spark a "security scare", then life has become far too interesting for my liking.

(x-posted (with some modifications) from Blah Blah Blah, the only news-related forum you need...to make you lose interest in politics altogether. I promise this verison is much more interesting, though)  

RED MEAT AND A BOTTLE OF GIN: (x-posted from Thread aPa) Julia Child, the grand dame of American cooking shows, died Friday at the age of 91. Besides the obvious, that as a kid in the 70s, she was the cooking show I ended up watching, and that she avoided dietary trends, only paying attention to what tasted good, there's a very good reason I bring up her passing here. She loved the booze.

When a radio interviewer asked her what her ultimate meal would be, she said "Red meat and a bottle of gin." There's also this cheerful little vignette from her cooking show worth repeating:

"In one TV program, chef and friend Jacques Pepin asked what kind of wine she preferred with picnics — red or white. 'I like beer,' Child said enthusiastically, pulling out a cold bottle and two glasses."

If you can't respect the woman for that, then I've seriously overestimated how much you people like alcohol.

 

THE ASCENT BEGINS IN EARNEST: If you don't usually check my sidebar, take note: On Monday, with just a web commentary to guide me, I began my attack on James Joyce's Ulysses. I will keep you informed when the book mounts its counterattack.

I wanted a challenge for the summer, and it was this or Proust. Or, heaven forbid, going out and meeting people.
 

BUT I'M NOT BITTER: And just to prove I haven't turned the corner and completely turned into a grumpy old crank, here's a heads up: if you're a fan of MXC, you might want to seek out Takeshi Kitano's Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi. It sounds like a decent Japanese action film (with a sideways spin), and you get to see Vic Romano himself throwing down as a sword-slinger.

Oh yes, and if you've missed our Sunday night sessions, you should be advised I've got all kinds of mad love going on for Arrested Development on Fox. I didn't catch up with it before rerun season, but I'm pretty sure I'm not missing it again.

Annnnnnd one more before I'm out (again)...Justice League Unlimited on Cartoon Network just ran an animated adaptation of one of the best Superman comic book stories, "For The Man Who Has Everything". While it was throttled back a bit for the standard CN demographic (not nearly as much as you'd expect for a network that considers itself a kidvid channel, though), it still was an effective story. Catch the rerun next Saturday at noon ET if you missed it this weekend, like I almost did.
 

(RE)STATEMENT OF PURPOSE: I think the point where I stopped sweating over the cutesy-snarky VH1 shows (or started sweating over them for different reasons) was when they put "Don't Worry, Be Happy" on their list of 50 Most Awesomely Bad Songs Ever. The dread of multitrack a capella is something I can deal with, but the panel of "experts" went on to talk about how the song was a list of things that you really should be worried about, followed by the ubiquitous glib dismissal. They were shaking their heads, and so was I, because that was the whole damn point of the song, and these people were so overly clever that they missed it completely. Apparently, the Poseurs of the Apocalypse came to the conclusion that Bobby McFerrin was far too corny to be self-aware and wrapped in irony, and people who live in a world overloaded with cheap irony that can't recognize it when they're beaten over the head with it are operating at a disadvantage. However, we have a rich history of missing the point in this country, so I'm not completely surprised.

It reminds me of the Billy Jones/Ernie Hare novelty number from 1925, "As A Porcupine Pines For Its Pork (That's How I Pine For You)", which an online vendor of vintage sheet music describes as "a whimsical song that includes twenty two verses", almost all of which go just like the title line. I heard a recording of them singing this tune (thankfully not with all the lyrics), and caught myself thinking "They couldn't possibly know how unsurpassably dumb this song is, can they?" As if in answer, the next line was "If we find the guys who wrote this song/they won't be around for long..." So there you are, pre-irony but totally self aware, laughing back at you for taking the bait. Of course, if you dig too deep into the early part of the 20th century, you get confronted by an army of guys writing "coon" songs and singing them in blackface, and contemplating the self-awareness of those guys is too depressing for a white guy to consider without an arts grant to soften the blow.

Anyway, before I got sidetracked, I guess I'm saying that I'm not as unabashedly in love with current pop culture as I used to be...it's getting too shrill, too self-satisfied, and screaming is taking the place of genuine debate. That's not to say I don't like a few pieces of it, but I have to clear out the rest; if pop culture doesn't satisfy, it's no crime to ditch it for something that does.

The master plan is to take the concepts from the literature I'm currently loading into the deck, reshuffle it with the pop crap I didn't turn away, and make something bright and new based on a mix of the two. Then, when I have a fix on the new mix, to the point where I can see it as clearly as I can see my toes (no fat jokes, please), I'll write down my brain fever and inflict it on the world at large. I've wasted a lot of time being a passive consumer, rather than an active producer, but I'll believe it's too late only when I'm dead. So there...

(edited @ 10:08 to round off the point on my head)
 

JUST FINISHED: Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man by James Joyce. Or "base camp" on the climb to Ulysses.

Almost universally hailed as a major achievement at the time, Portrait seeks to trace the youth, upbringing, and (especially) internal life of Stephen Dedalus in 1890s Ireland. As very little is spelled out in concrete terms, it is a book that pays back your attention, with much of the story being in the periphery. We literally begin with Stephen's earliest memory and as his experience grows, the narration of his thoughts grow suitably more complex. We get fragments, vignettes, longer episodes, which may not mean much by themselves, but like a pointilist painting, we get a remarkable picture when we zoom out for the wide view.

I'm inclined to agree with the critics who see a definite form in these incidents. Stephen seems to be a very familiar adolescent (and, these days, adult) type, swept up by epiphanies which change everything in a flash, then gradually rolling down the other side of the mountain into disillusionment. That the bulk of the action takes places in Dedalus' head casts the rhythm of his thoughts in a sharper focus, and that it all takes place in the shadow of the Irish Catholic church only feeds the fire.

You could easily see the point of view on the church and its schools as the flipside of early George Carln routines ("I started out Irish Catholic; now I'm an American"), only in earnest instead of in jest. This is understandable, since Carlin's material came from the perspective of an adult who got out of the system in one piece; since Stephen is a work-in-progress, he doesn't have that option, making the same topics into bottomless wells of despair. The incident of the religious retreat, with the priest talking on the topic of Hell in unrelenting detail, turns up the heat on young Dedalus' imagination to the point where he feels like he's in the pit with the damned. The unspoken background of Carlin's "They were pushing for pain, while we were pulling for pleasure"? It does give you something to think about the next time you push play on Class Clown...and I'll bet that Stephen never took lightly going to Hell on a "meat rap."

Of course, this is taking the book strictly at face value, which some commentators say could be a mistake, but it all paints a vivid picture, possibly moreso than a "straight" narrative could. While it was a bit confusing in places, I found Portrait to be thoroughly involving.

Portrait, like most of Joyce, is in the public domain, so if you're not up to putting down a few bucks for it, you can get the text from Gutenberg. There's also more than a few web pages which tie into the book, and Brandon Kershner's page contains a glossary of less familiar words, as well as a summary of critical reaction over the years. It might also be worth some time to have a look at Stephen Hero, a partially destroyed first draft version of the story, but I'm not commenting on it sight unseen.