Like last year, this was a year of not going much of anywhere. Like last year, I managed two towns away from home, but the circumstances were different. During a brief break in the clouds in July, B. and I managed a brief driving visit to friends in L.A., and we stayed in:
Santa Maria, CA
Azusa, CA
This is the first time I haven't been out of California for the entire year in at least 30 years, probably much longer. In another world, we would have followed this up with at least one driving trip further away, but we have to live in this world.
Like last year, in this one I published 8 professional concert reviews. Also 2 survey articles on upcoming concerts. Five of the 8 reviews were of live concerts, the other 3 of streaming.
And I co-edited a volume of Tolkien Studies, contributing to the Year's Work, the bibliography, and a couple of book reviews; and I had one article published in another journal.
I don't expect much more of next year, or indeed any future year.
Kalimac's corner: a journal by DB
Friday, December 31, 2021
Thursday, December 30, 2021
historical statistic
Reading a comment about the shifting regional balance in United Nations membership in Paul Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, which was published just too early to catch the end of the Cold War, I decided to quantify this. Here's 1946, which is when the existing countries that were going to join had signed up, vs. 1989.
NATO and other Western Europe (yes, I know NATO is an anachronistic term in 1946. You know what it means): 1946 22% (12), 1989 12% (19)
Communist bloc (no longer a bloc after the late '40s, but again you know what it means): 1946 11% (6), 1989 8% (13)
Middle East and North Africa: 1946 15% (8), 1989 15% (24)
East Asia and Oceania: 1946 11% (6), 1989 15% (24)
Sub-saharan Africa & islands: 1946 5% (3), 1989 29% (46)
Latin America and Caribbean: 1946 36% (20), 1989 20% (32)
Note the numerical domination of Latin American countries in 1946, which formed the bulk of the independent Third World at that point, and the subsequent bloom especially in Africa but also Asia.
Item 2: Sticking with Latin America, I watched the new Disney animated feature, Encanto, which is set in Colombia (not that all the reviewers noticed this). Reminded me of The Princess and the Frog in that it's proudly ethnic and intensely colorful, and unlike some other recent animated films (hello, Tangled, Kubo and the Two Strings, Incredibles 2), they spent enough money on writing to acquire a substantive plot.
So yes, the animation is absolutely fabulous, not just in color and imagination but in movement (it's a lot more energetic than Frog), the subtleties of characterization, and the embodiment of the voices. It's about a family of 12 people and they're all major characters; there's an expository lump in the form of a song at the start introducing them all but don't expect to keep up.
The plot, though, by animated film standards is weird and confusing, and kept knocking me off-balance. There's no villain, and such blame as there is shifts around unexpectedly and not always apparently intentionally. (At one point the heroine seems to be the one causing the problems, but that can't have been intended, surely?)
Item 3: Here is a selection of actors (mostly) talking about their movie roles (mostly). Most of them are more interested in talking about how they got the parts than their craft, and they have a persistent tendency to skip over the movies I've seen, but it's still interesting.
Item 4: I rarely browse the fanfiction archives, partly because the contents are so dismal, but I found this gem: a script for an imaginary crossover episode between Gilligan's Island and I Dream of Jeannie. It's both funny and, I thought, true to the spirit of both shows while occasionally making a daring move.
NATO and other Western Europe (yes, I know NATO is an anachronistic term in 1946. You know what it means): 1946 22% (12), 1989 12% (19)
Communist bloc (no longer a bloc after the late '40s, but again you know what it means): 1946 11% (6), 1989 8% (13)
Middle East and North Africa: 1946 15% (8), 1989 15% (24)
East Asia and Oceania: 1946 11% (6), 1989 15% (24)
Sub-saharan Africa & islands: 1946 5% (3), 1989 29% (46)
Latin America and Caribbean: 1946 36% (20), 1989 20% (32)
Note the numerical domination of Latin American countries in 1946, which formed the bulk of the independent Third World at that point, and the subsequent bloom especially in Africa but also Asia.
Item 2: Sticking with Latin America, I watched the new Disney animated feature, Encanto, which is set in Colombia (not that all the reviewers noticed this). Reminded me of The Princess and the Frog in that it's proudly ethnic and intensely colorful, and unlike some other recent animated films (hello, Tangled, Kubo and the Two Strings, Incredibles 2), they spent enough money on writing to acquire a substantive plot.
So yes, the animation is absolutely fabulous, not just in color and imagination but in movement (it's a lot more energetic than Frog), the subtleties of characterization, and the embodiment of the voices. It's about a family of 12 people and they're all major characters; there's an expository lump in the form of a song at the start introducing them all but don't expect to keep up.
The plot, though, by animated film standards is weird and confusing, and kept knocking me off-balance. There's no villain, and such blame as there is shifts around unexpectedly and not always apparently intentionally. (At one point the heroine seems to be the one causing the problems, but that can't have been intended, surely?)
Item 3: Here is a selection of actors (mostly) talking about their movie roles (mostly). Most of them are more interested in talking about how they got the parts than their craft, and they have a persistent tendency to skip over the movies I've seen, but it's still interesting.
Item 4: I rarely browse the fanfiction archives, partly because the contents are so dismal, but I found this gem: a script for an imaginary crossover episode between Gilligan's Island and I Dream of Jeannie. It's both funny and, I thought, true to the spirit of both shows while occasionally making a daring move.
Monday, December 27, 2021
canonization
Lisa of the Iron Tongue is pretty scornful of NYTimes classical critic Anthony Tommasini's refusal to pass critical judgment on composers of the last 50 or 70 years.
On the one hand, that's not exactly what Tommasini is saying, and if Lisa had read Tommasini's book The Indispensable Composers, which she ignored because it's for general beginners and she's not its audience, his position might have been clearer than it is in the abbreviated space of the quoted interview. I picked up a cheap copy of the book out of curiosity.
On the other hand, Lisa turns out to be exactly right in describing this as "a truly appalling act of critical timidity."
Tommasini omits recent composers, he says, not because he dislikes their music - he says in his book that he enjoys both the disparate pair of Britten and Boulez, and throws in Sondheim and Lennon to show his catholicity - but because "we are too close [in time] to say" whether the recent composers will take a "place in the pantheon" of the "indispensable and indisputably great," and that we are "too immersed in the exciting newness of the music to care."
In other words, he's claiming a wider perspective to judge older music that is simply not yet available to newer music, and this particular book is about the music that can be judged by that perspective.
But even leaving aside that much of this music is no longer very new - both Britten and Boulez came to public attention 70 or more years ago - what is that perspective that the newer music doesn't have? Surely Tommasini has ears and can make his own judgments as to what is great. But that's the point: he doesn't want to. What makes the "indisputably great" composers indisputable is that critical consensus on them has solidified (or ossified). He doesn't have to decide; others have decided for him.
That's what the newer composers lack, the consensus judgment of history. Tommasini doesn't say so explicitly, but he's frankly terrified of being recorded as making the wrong judgment. In the introduction to his book, he gives as an example of his dilemma John Adams's The Gospel According to the Other Mary. Tommasini says it has some good music in it, but he finds it too long and slackly paced. But then, when Schubert was new some people considered his music to be overlong and slack, and they look pretty foolish today, don't they? On the other hand, you could praise a new composer who in the long run is completely forgotten. Tommasini doesn't give an example, but Bernard Shaw, who among other things was (indisputably) the greatest British music critic of his day, thought that some now-obscure German named Hermann Goetz wrote a greater symphony that anything by Mendelssohn, Schumann, or Brahms. (Here it is if you want to judge for yourself - to me it sounds like a few dozen other obscure middling-quality 19C symphonies I've heard, but I'm not Bernard Shaw.)
Tommasini doesn't want to risk making any judgments that might get overturned by history. Now that's timidity. He reminds me of Michael Kinsley's parody of Hugh Sidey speaking on Agronsky & Co.
But there's another answer to Lisa's implied question, how would you have judged Brahms at his death, or in 1920?, that she'd probably abhor more than cowardice. And that's the answer that I suspect would have been given by Tommasini's NYT predecessor, Harold C. Schonberg. What I think Schonberg would have said is something like, "Sure, Brahms was recent then. But he was also Brahms! It's not hard to judge the greatness of a true giant even if he's right next to you. It's the pygmies of today who are harder to judge."
This attitude, that greatness is purely a feature of the past, is exuded by Schonberg's book The Lives of the Great Composers, published in 1970 in the midst of his tenure at the Times. I got this book when it was new as a present from grandparents who knew of my budding interest in music. I read it avidly and it was the source of much of my basic knowledge. It covers a lot more composers than Tommasini (about 70 rather than 17), and as the title suggests it's more biographical, but it doesn't stint on critical views, and Schonberg is not afraid to give them. It starts with Bach and Handel, but the only then-living composers included are Copland ("the urbane, respected symbol of a half century of American music" - high praise for Schonberg), Stravinsky (who may "end up living more for what he did to music rather than for what his music did to the majority of his listeners" - what damning with faint praise), Shostakovich ("Not until there is a major upheaval and reorientation in the aesthetic and political thinking of the Soviet Union will the country produce music that has any chance of survival"), and Milhaud ("Very little of Milhaud's music remains in the permanent repertory"). (What about Britten? He is only mentioned in passing in the Puccini chapter as evidence that any post-Puccini operas "have not been able to establish themselves," so much for him. Boulez is mentioned frequently in the book, but only as a polemicist.) Schonberg's last chapter is on the Second Viennese School, whose then-current influence he notes.
But then there's a postlude saying flatly that "it seemed apparent," here in 1970, "that there was a hiatus in the mighty line of powerful, individualistic composers that extended from Johann Sebastian Bach through Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg." And next to Tommasini's timidity, that's about as sweeping a dismissal of anything contemporary as you can imagine.
In a revised version in 1981, Schonberg adds an opening chapter on Monteverdi and a concluding one on newer music, mostly focusing on serialism but also giving due attention to Messiaen, Cage, and Carter. But despite his conclusion that audiences react well to minimalism and neo-romanticism, and that the composers have personality and talent, which is what he says he wants composers to have, he still insists on closing with the same insistence that there's "a hiatus in the mighty line." You can't argue with somebody in the grip of a preordained conclusion.
On the one hand, that's not exactly what Tommasini is saying, and if Lisa had read Tommasini's book The Indispensable Composers, which she ignored because it's for general beginners and she's not its audience, his position might have been clearer than it is in the abbreviated space of the quoted interview. I picked up a cheap copy of the book out of curiosity.
On the other hand, Lisa turns out to be exactly right in describing this as "a truly appalling act of critical timidity."
Tommasini omits recent composers, he says, not because he dislikes their music - he says in his book that he enjoys both the disparate pair of Britten and Boulez, and throws in Sondheim and Lennon to show his catholicity - but because "we are too close [in time] to say" whether the recent composers will take a "place in the pantheon" of the "indispensable and indisputably great," and that we are "too immersed in the exciting newness of the music to care."
In other words, he's claiming a wider perspective to judge older music that is simply not yet available to newer music, and this particular book is about the music that can be judged by that perspective.
But even leaving aside that much of this music is no longer very new - both Britten and Boulez came to public attention 70 or more years ago - what is that perspective that the newer music doesn't have? Surely Tommasini has ears and can make his own judgments as to what is great. But that's the point: he doesn't want to. What makes the "indisputably great" composers indisputable is that critical consensus on them has solidified (or ossified). He doesn't have to decide; others have decided for him.
That's what the newer composers lack, the consensus judgment of history. Tommasini doesn't say so explicitly, but he's frankly terrified of being recorded as making the wrong judgment. In the introduction to his book, he gives as an example of his dilemma John Adams's The Gospel According to the Other Mary. Tommasini says it has some good music in it, but he finds it too long and slackly paced. But then, when Schubert was new some people considered his music to be overlong and slack, and they look pretty foolish today, don't they? On the other hand, you could praise a new composer who in the long run is completely forgotten. Tommasini doesn't give an example, but Bernard Shaw, who among other things was (indisputably) the greatest British music critic of his day, thought that some now-obscure German named Hermann Goetz wrote a greater symphony that anything by Mendelssohn, Schumann, or Brahms. (Here it is if you want to judge for yourself - to me it sounds like a few dozen other obscure middling-quality 19C symphonies I've heard, but I'm not Bernard Shaw.)
Tommasini doesn't want to risk making any judgments that might get overturned by history. Now that's timidity. He reminds me of Michael Kinsley's parody of Hugh Sidey speaking on Agronsky & Co.
HUGH SIDEWALL: ... These are all very, very difficult challenges for the nation. But as for what comes next, we just can't say, Marvin. It's too early to tell.Lisa points out that when Brahms died in 1897, the Times "didn't hesitate to go out on a limb and say that he'd be taking his place among the titans of music." But if some 19C Tommasini had been writing the obituary, I suspect he would have chickened out. For all those who hailed Brahms as great in his own day, there were others who thought his work was a load of old fudge. (His Fourth Symphony got some terrible reviews when it first arrived in the US.) For that matter, there are still respected critics with a strong distaste for Brahms. The difference is, now there's a consensus judgment of history that Brahms is great.
MARVIN JERKOFSKY: I see. Well, tell me this, Hugh. If, as you seem to suggest, you know nothing about anything, why do I pay you to drone on week after week on my show?
SIDEWALL: Well, you know, Marvin, that's a very good question ... But there are no conclusions at this point, and we'll just have to wait and see. It's hard to say. No one knows for sure. Any guess would be premature.
JERKOFSKY: Hugh, do you have any brains left at all?
SIDEWALL: I don't know, Marvin. We just can't say.
But there's another answer to Lisa's implied question, how would you have judged Brahms at his death, or in 1920?, that she'd probably abhor more than cowardice. And that's the answer that I suspect would have been given by Tommasini's NYT predecessor, Harold C. Schonberg. What I think Schonberg would have said is something like, "Sure, Brahms was recent then. But he was also Brahms! It's not hard to judge the greatness of a true giant even if he's right next to you. It's the pygmies of today who are harder to judge."
This attitude, that greatness is purely a feature of the past, is exuded by Schonberg's book The Lives of the Great Composers, published in 1970 in the midst of his tenure at the Times. I got this book when it was new as a present from grandparents who knew of my budding interest in music. I read it avidly and it was the source of much of my basic knowledge. It covers a lot more composers than Tommasini (about 70 rather than 17), and as the title suggests it's more biographical, but it doesn't stint on critical views, and Schonberg is not afraid to give them. It starts with Bach and Handel, but the only then-living composers included are Copland ("the urbane, respected symbol of a half century of American music" - high praise for Schonberg), Stravinsky (who may "end up living more for what he did to music rather than for what his music did to the majority of his listeners" - what damning with faint praise), Shostakovich ("Not until there is a major upheaval and reorientation in the aesthetic and political thinking of the Soviet Union will the country produce music that has any chance of survival"), and Milhaud ("Very little of Milhaud's music remains in the permanent repertory"). (What about Britten? He is only mentioned in passing in the Puccini chapter as evidence that any post-Puccini operas "have not been able to establish themselves," so much for him. Boulez is mentioned frequently in the book, but only as a polemicist.) Schonberg's last chapter is on the Second Viennese School, whose then-current influence he notes.
But then there's a postlude saying flatly that "it seemed apparent," here in 1970, "that there was a hiatus in the mighty line of powerful, individualistic composers that extended from Johann Sebastian Bach through Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg." And next to Tommasini's timidity, that's about as sweeping a dismissal of anything contemporary as you can imagine.
In a revised version in 1981, Schonberg adds an opening chapter on Monteverdi and a concluding one on newer music, mostly focusing on serialism but also giving due attention to Messiaen, Cage, and Carter. But despite his conclusion that audiences react well to minimalism and neo-romanticism, and that the composers have personality and talent, which is what he says he wants composers to have, he still insists on closing with the same insistence that there's "a hiatus in the mighty line." You can't argue with somebody in the grip of a preordained conclusion.
Sunday, December 26, 2021
lost in the lottery
I don't gamble, I don't even know what most gambling terms mean. If someone says "6 to 5 odds", for instance, I'm not even offhand sure how to calculate anything from that. All I know of the rules of card games is what I've picked up from the poker-playing scenes in Donald Westlake novels, and apparently nobody plays that form of poker any more.
Consequently I don't play the lottery either. I'm actually rather morally opposed to the lottery, because all that payoff money (and the money going to public services) comes from what is functionally a tax on the ignorance and financial desperation of poorer people (and the greed of richer ones).
But I don't believe in taking moral positions to the point of sanctimoniousness, so if someone hands me a free lottery card, I'll accept it. One of our nieces brought a pile of these little cardboard cards to Christmas and handed them out. They're called "Scratchers". You take a coin and scratch off the coating on the front of the card to see if you've won anything.
The instructions say "Uncover a [candy cane] symbol to automatically win that prize. Uncover a [holly, I guess] symbol to win DOUBLE that prize." So you uncover nine little boxes each of which has a symbol none of which, of course, are the two winning ones.
So I guess that means I don't win anything: but why, in that case, is each symbol accompanied by a dollar value in large print? It's meaningless if I didn't win it. Are you supposed to think, "ooh, I almost won that amount if only the symbol had been right"? That'd be a pretty doofish reaction. The symbols didn't come up at random; they're printed on the card.
I guess there's something going on here that I don't understand, including the appeal of gambling. How much do these cards cost, $1 or $2 a piece? Did I get $1 or $2 worth of pleasure out of anticipation and scratching the card? I'd say not: it was barely worth it at free, except that I got a blog post out of it.
Consequently I don't play the lottery either. I'm actually rather morally opposed to the lottery, because all that payoff money (and the money going to public services) comes from what is functionally a tax on the ignorance and financial desperation of poorer people (and the greed of richer ones).
But I don't believe in taking moral positions to the point of sanctimoniousness, so if someone hands me a free lottery card, I'll accept it. One of our nieces brought a pile of these little cardboard cards to Christmas and handed them out. They're called "Scratchers". You take a coin and scratch off the coating on the front of the card to see if you've won anything.
The instructions say "Uncover a [candy cane] symbol to automatically win that prize. Uncover a [holly, I guess] symbol to win DOUBLE that prize." So you uncover nine little boxes each of which has a symbol none of which, of course, are the two winning ones.
So I guess that means I don't win anything: but why, in that case, is each symbol accompanied by a dollar value in large print? It's meaningless if I didn't win it. Are you supposed to think, "ooh, I almost won that amount if only the symbol had been right"? That'd be a pretty doofish reaction. The symbols didn't come up at random; they're printed on the card.
I guess there's something going on here that I don't understand, including the appeal of gambling. How much do these cards cost, $1 or $2 a piece? Did I get $1 or $2 worth of pleasure out of anticipation and scratching the card? I'd say not: it was barely worth it at free, except that I got a blog post out of it.
Saturday, December 25, 2021
secularly christmassy
It may be the last thing I do, but B. and I went to our traditional family Christmas dinner and gathering. Total of 16 people present, most relatives of our niece who hosted, plus one family trio of close friends. Included my brother and his girlfriend, who were the only out-of-towners, having flown in on Southwest yesterday. Everyone was vaccinated and boostered, so we had that protection at least. And as our online orders of antigen testing kits have come in over the past couple of days, we'll test ourselves starting tomorrow.
Dinner included turkey and prime rib, plus plenty of vegetative matter, including my specialty of roasted broccoli. After dinner we had a riotous "white elephant" gift exchange, which was successful and enjoyable by virtue of a requirement that all the gifts be edible. Everyone gets a random number; then you pick one of the wrapped gifts that all the participants brought one of each; or else (within limits) you 'steal' one of the previously-picked gifts from another participant, in which case they either have to steal from someone else or open a new gift in your place. B. wound up with a canister of peppermint bark. I sat in the middle but did not participate; if anyone asked my number, I replied, "I am not a number; I am a free man."
Dinner included turkey and prime rib, plus plenty of vegetative matter, including my specialty of roasted broccoli. After dinner we had a riotous "white elephant" gift exchange, which was successful and enjoyable by virtue of a requirement that all the gifts be edible. Everyone gets a random number; then you pick one of the wrapped gifts that all the participants brought one of each; or else (within limits) you 'steal' one of the previously-picked gifts from another participant, in which case they either have to steal from someone else or open a new gift in your place. B. wound up with a canister of peppermint bark. I sat in the middle but did not participate; if anyone asked my number, I replied, "I am not a number; I am a free man."
Friday, December 24, 2021
christmas eve
It's 7.30 Christmas eve and already thoroughly dark outside. (And inside: I'm working on the computer without a room light on, which I don't really need right now.) B. is off at Christmas eve vigil mass, so she won't have to go tomorrow which we intend to spend being secularly Christmassy.
I went down to the grocers at noon - usually I'm a bit earlier, about 11 am - to pick up the weekly grocery order that we'd submitted online for picking, and the parking lot was about as full and busy as I'd ever seen it. Took me close to five minutes to get out. Patience is a virtue.
A few nights back we did our quasi-annual drive around looking for lights that are festive and imaginative but not too overwhelming or flashy, I mean flashing. Were mostly in Santa Clara this year, and found some good ones.
So since B. was not practicing her violin in the living room tonight, I piggybacked on her watching of Star Trek: TOS episodes that she'd taped from a handy cable channel. Her marker was at the end of "The Doomsday Machine," Norman Spinrad's episode, so I rewound and watched that. Gripping story, good writing, good acting, like a lot of second-season episodes. My only question is, if they could beam Kirk back from the maw of the machine, why couldn't they earlier beam Decker? Or was it that he didn't want to go, and was frankly suicidal by that point?
I also remember that David Gerrold wrote that he was present for the filming of this episode, while waiting for "Tribbles" to come up. He says they were rehearsing the scene where Decker is telling Kirk about the machine. Shatner had a goofy grin on his face, and when William Windom as Decker mentioned its giant maw, Shatner said, "Its ma? Did you see its pa?"
If they'd kept that, it would have made three jokes in the episode.
I went down to the grocers at noon - usually I'm a bit earlier, about 11 am - to pick up the weekly grocery order that we'd submitted online for picking, and the parking lot was about as full and busy as I'd ever seen it. Took me close to five minutes to get out. Patience is a virtue.
A few nights back we did our quasi-annual drive around looking for lights that are festive and imaginative but not too overwhelming or flashy, I mean flashing. Were mostly in Santa Clara this year, and found some good ones.
So since B. was not practicing her violin in the living room tonight, I piggybacked on her watching of Star Trek: TOS episodes that she'd taped from a handy cable channel. Her marker was at the end of "The Doomsday Machine," Norman Spinrad's episode, so I rewound and watched that. Gripping story, good writing, good acting, like a lot of second-season episodes. My only question is, if they could beam Kirk back from the maw of the machine, why couldn't they earlier beam Decker? Or was it that he didn't want to go, and was frankly suicidal by that point?
I also remember that David Gerrold wrote that he was present for the filming of this episode, while waiting for "Tribbles" to come up. He says they were rehearsing the scene where Decker is telling Kirk about the machine. Shatner had a goofy grin on his face, and when William Windom as Decker mentioned its giant maw, Shatner said, "Its ma? Did you see its pa?"
If they'd kept that, it would have made three jokes in the episode.
Thursday, December 23, 2021
o to be a blogger
some holiday reading; or, 'clearing out the tabs, boys, clearing out the tabs'
1. What to do if you test positive.
2. I disagree with this language usage advice. Respondent prefers writing "Russia is the second most powerful country after the US" over "Russia is the most powerful country after the US" "because, when parsing [the latter] on-the-fly, the 'after the US' clause changes Russia's position from first to second." I don't find that anywhere as difficult as constantly wondering, when reading sentences like the first one, "So then what's the first most powerful country after the US?" (China, probably, but never mind that.) A comma before 'after' might help.
3. Someone's idea of the hundred best movies currently (as of last month) on Amazon Prime. I wouldn't watch #100 on a bet, but #1 is a superb low-key movie, an excellent film.
4. Someone who got back more from the Beatles documentary Get Back than I did.
5. A scholar from India of my acquaintance referred me to this inside view of what Indian nationalism is doing to Hindu culture and morality.
6. And another friend referred me to this takedown of a transphobic book.
7. And lastly, a bilingual seasonal pun.
1. What to do if you test positive.
2. I disagree with this language usage advice. Respondent prefers writing "Russia is the second most powerful country after the US" over "Russia is the most powerful country after the US" "because, when parsing [the latter] on-the-fly, the 'after the US' clause changes Russia's position from first to second." I don't find that anywhere as difficult as constantly wondering, when reading sentences like the first one, "So then what's the first most powerful country after the US?" (China, probably, but never mind that.) A comma before 'after' might help.
3. Someone's idea of the hundred best movies currently (as of last month) on Amazon Prime. I wouldn't watch #100 on a bet, but #1 is a superb low-key movie, an excellent film.
4. Someone who got back more from the Beatles documentary Get Back than I did.
5. A scholar from India of my acquaintance referred me to this inside view of what Indian nationalism is doing to Hindu culture and morality.
6. And another friend referred me to this takedown of a transphobic book.
7. And lastly, a bilingual seasonal pun.
Wednesday, December 22, 2021
being who, or whom
I never watched I Love Lucy very much - its original run was before my time, and it never seemed to show up much on rerun schedules that I paid attention to. But I enjoyed what clips from it I saw, it carries cultural weight to this day, and I liked Lucille Ball in Yours Mine and Ours, which is the only movie of hers I ever saw. So I guess I was a reasonable candidate to watch Being the Ricardos, which showed up on Amazon yesterday.
It was an OK movie, not too frantic as Sorkin vehicles sometimes are. Although reviews have commented that all the characters seem to be feeling miserable about everything, I thought it shone in displaying how, despite their conflicts, Lucy and Desi have tremendous respect for each other's artistic talents. And not just performing: when Lucy is spontaneously rewriting the episode's opening scene during rehearsals, Desi is just standing there admiring her doing it. Too bad it comes to nothing in the filming: what is the point here, that Lucy was wrong after all?
There was one horrible anachronism: when the show's executive producer objects to sharing his title with Desi, he says that he is the showrunner. Clang! The term "showrunner" wasn't invented until the late 1990s, to resolve ambiguities about the spread of the term "producer", which is exactly what he and Lucy are arguing about in that scene. They could have used the term, they just didn't have it.
As for the performances, I'm sorry, I didn't buy Nicole Kidman as Lucy. She just doesn't seem to fit the person, and I don't see her as a great comedienne, however much the script tries to sell her as perceived that way. Javier Bardem, however, was a perfect fit as Desi.
It was an OK movie, not too frantic as Sorkin vehicles sometimes are. Although reviews have commented that all the characters seem to be feeling miserable about everything, I thought it shone in displaying how, despite their conflicts, Lucy and Desi have tremendous respect for each other's artistic talents. And not just performing: when Lucy is spontaneously rewriting the episode's opening scene during rehearsals, Desi is just standing there admiring her doing it. Too bad it comes to nothing in the filming: what is the point here, that Lucy was wrong after all?
There was one horrible anachronism: when the show's executive producer objects to sharing his title with Desi, he says that he is the showrunner. Clang! The term "showrunner" wasn't invented until the late 1990s, to resolve ambiguities about the spread of the term "producer", which is exactly what he and Lucy are arguing about in that scene. They could have used the term, they just didn't have it.
As for the performances, I'm sorry, I didn't buy Nicole Kidman as Lucy. She just doesn't seem to fit the person, and I don't see her as a great comedienne, however much the script tries to sell her as perceived that way. Javier Bardem, however, was a perfect fit as Desi.
Tuesday, December 21, 2021
no tests
I'd seen various references to at-home do-it-yourself covid virus tests, but until yesterday nothing about what they consisted of or what they actually were. Then last night I saw this evaluative article of several brands, with their names and instructions on how they're used as well as where to buy them. As it's from Wired, a media outlet I've actually heard of, as well as being written soberly, I thought I could trust it.
This morning I started checking pharmacy websites and found some listings. I placed a pickup order with a Walgreen's, which usually takes no more than an hour, but so far it's taken 10 hours and is still not ready. At B's encouragement I visited a couple local CVS outlets which proved not only to be out of the brand of test that the website said they had, but 1) they were out of every other brand too, and 2) they didn't even have a space on the shelf marked for that brand.
At least I found out where they keep them, which is different in the two stores, so I know where to look if I go back later. I figure that right now it's like toilet paper in an earlier stage of the pandemic. Meanwhile, B. has ordered some online so we'll see if they come.
This morning I started checking pharmacy websites and found some listings. I placed a pickup order with a Walgreen's, which usually takes no more than an hour, but so far it's taken 10 hours and is still not ready. At B's encouragement I visited a couple local CVS outlets which proved not only to be out of the brand of test that the website said they had, but 1) they were out of every other brand too, and 2) they didn't even have a space on the shelf marked for that brand.
At least I found out where they keep them, which is different in the two stores, so I know where to look if I go back later. I figure that right now it's like toilet paper in an earlier stage of the pandemic. Meanwhile, B. has ordered some online so we'll see if they come.
Monday, December 20, 2021
they wish you a merry christmas
Remember the Korean singing group who sang the movie studio logos acapella? Well, they wish you a merry Christmas:
And keep an ear out for a famous melody making a guest appearance in the middle of "Little Drummer Boy" at 2.40.
And keep an ear out for a famous melody making a guest appearance in the middle of "Little Drummer Boy" at 2.40.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)