Movie Review: The Motorcycle Diaries

The Motorcycle Diaries: Torgo approves

I've been busy lately. But the other night I was too tired to do work so I watched this movie. One drawback to Netflix is that if you get a movie and don't feel like watching it, you can wait for a good time to watch it or send it back, but if you wait, then (if you're me) you think you're not being efficient with your membership, so the movie sits there taunting you for weeks.

But I'm glad I watched it. I can't claim to know much about Che Guevara. I started to read the Ebert and NY Times reviews after watching it. Roger Ebert apparently really has a problem with Che. The NY Times felt the need to mention the Che shirts that are so popular. So I didn't get much from either.

It's not an incredibly original movie. But it's well-acted and the cinematography is terrific. Especially after reading "1491," I enjoyed seeing the South American continent and people. Both reviews questioned its sentimentality and I agree. It's a movie that's in love with its subject. But that doesn't make it any less interesting and enjoyable.

Celebrate the counter!

So I passed 5000 visits yesterday with my little site counter. That's awesome. Granted, probably 3000 of those visits were me, but 5000 is still 5000. And I didn't even have the counter for the first few months.

Also, the ClustrMap (which sounds like something else, but isn't), which is only a couple of months old, shows I've had visitors from six continents. That, too, is awesome. I pretty much know who the big dots on the map are, but I don't think I know anyone currently in Australia, China, South America or South Africa, so I'm happy to see those visitors. I hope they don't think this is a Togoland page.

I've since discovered that Google has what seems to be a much better stat counter, that includes a map, but it's too late for that now. Maybe that'll be in Torgoland 2.0.

Book Report: Fish!

Fish!: Torgo approves

I don't approve because the book is well written. It's not.

I don't approve because I learned much that I didn't know. I didn't.

But the message of this book is solid and I think it could be useful to many people I've worked with. It's a business book but, like most business books, it's a self-help book with a plot based in a work environment.

I read it on the recommendation of a colleague. It's the kind of book that some companies have everyone read. It's so short (110 small pages) and light in tone that I finished it in a little over an hour.

It irked me that the message of creating a positive, joyful workplace was filtered through so many cliched plot devices and shoddy writing. But I'll admit that I'd be more inclined to recommend it to colleagues who aren't literary snobs like me.

Also, I don't recommend reading it alongside "Crime and Punishment" and any type of poetry anthology, like I'm doing. Oh, I'm also reading a book on being a birth partner. All three of those other books make "Fish!" seem weak. But then, I did finish "Fish!" first.

No, really, what the hell?

I really have no interest in seeing this picture when I open up a web browser. I have no interest in seeing the video clips in ads for the news while I'm watching "Lost."

I can refrain from watching television news, where they're not breaking any new ground by showing a complete lack of ethics in showing the video and images. But it seems I can't escape it without shutting off all media. Even NPR was playing audio clips from the video yesterday.

What the hell? I know it's a big story. I know media outlets have no concept of restraint. But do we need this? Is it helpful? Is it purposeful?

Equally disturbing was a photo I saw yesterday of a CNN camera on a crane above a memorial on the Virginia Tech campus. It was posted by CNN on their website yesterday (Yeah, I'm not sure why I was there). I went to look for it now to post here, but it's not there.

Today's WTF moment: Shooting response

The AP coverage of Bush's reaction to the Virginia Tech shooting starts out as expected:
"He was horrified and his immediate reaction was one of deep concern for the families of the victims, the victims themselves, the students, the professors and all the people of Virginia who have dealt with this shocking incident," White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino said. "His thoughts and prayers are with them."

Then there's this:
"The president believes that there is a right for people to bear arms, but that all laws must be followed," Perino said, noting that Bush and Education Secretary Margaret Spellings held a conference on school gun violence last October. "Certainly, bringing a gun into a school dormitory and shooting ... is against the law and something someone should be held accountable for," Perino said.

This article only has those two quotes, which run concurrently. I'm hoping that the second quote was in response to a reporter's question about gun control. Or, if not that, I hope it didn't immediately follow the first quote, as in the article. Aside from how incredibly idiotic "Certainly, bringing a gun into a school dormitory and shooting... is against the law..." is, how is this in any way the time to bring up the president's opposition to gun control?

The article is here

Speed Bump

This cartoon isn't as good as The Far Side was, but every once in a while, it captures the same feeling:

Bees are your friends

There's an absolutely terrifying article on a possible cause of Colony Collapse Disorder, something I'd been hearing about lately -- where bees are disappearing in massive numbers.

I don't think of myself as a conspiracy theorist (despite everything the current government does to foster such beliefs), but I do believe research will prove the widespread dangers of cell phones (including the others listed in this article, like cancer), but that it will just take time for the effects to be conclusive. Kind of like knowing global warming is a problem when all the icecaps have melted.

Speaking of which, it doesn't bode well that cell phones could kill off bees, thereby threatening crops planet-wide, when global warming was already working on destroying crops.

I'm going to go get lunch while I still can.

Book Report: Averno by Louise Gluck

Averno: Torgo approves

Here's the thing about Louise Gluck. I think they named her U.S. Poet Laureate a few years back just because they were worried about her. She spends a lot of time dissecting Greek and Roman myths and thinking about death. I'm not a clinical psychologist, but I wouldn't invite Gluck to a party to lighten the mood.

If I was making the case for her depression, I'd cite lines like these:

"It is true there is not enough beauty in the world.
It is also true that I am not competent to restore it."

"You will not be spared, nor will what you love be spared."

"I no longer care
what sound it makes

when I was silenced, when did it first seem
pointless to describe that sound

what it sounds like can't change what it is--

didn't the night end, wasn't the earth
safe when it was planted

didn't we plant the seeds,
weren't we necessary to the earth,

the vines, were they harvested?"

Ok, lots of red flags there.

If you step back, she's taking the story of Persephone, Hades and Demeter, using it to explore rape, sex, and love (in that order, more or less) as the turning point from girl to woman, and the beginning of death, which is always symbolized by winter.

The NY Times review gets credit for throwing out the word "chthonic," which is applicable, fun to say, and difficult to spell, but that review is too gushing. It's a good book, no doubt. I appreciate this more than other Gluck books (though perhaps that just comes with age). But it's not a book you go raving about. It's a book you appreciate for its beauty, its misery, its thoughtful construction.

I read the final 20 pages or so last night while the boy was in the bath. He was there giggling and playing with toys. I was reading about one of the bleakest stories in a tradition not rich in comedies. I don't think he was a big fan. At one point, he began pulling the stopper in the tub. He does that often, but last night he was trying to get out of hearing the rest of the book.

I think Gluck is best appreciated on the page, read alone, but definitely with friends not too far away. I hope she has some. I have a picture of her with Robert Pinsky. I hope he's not her only friend b/c he's kind of a downer, too.

I'll end with a quote that's less bleak (from "Persephone the Wanderer"):

In the second version, Persephone
is dead. She dies, her mother grieves--
problems of sexuality need not
trouble us here.

Compulsively, in grief, Demeter
circles the earth. We don't expect to know
what Persephone is doing.
She is dead, the dead are mysteries.

We have here
a mother and a cipher: this is
accurate to the experience
of the mother as

she looks into the infant's face. She thinks:
I remember when you didn't exist. The infant
is puzzled; later, the child's opinion is
she has always existed, just as

her mother has always existed
in her present form. Her mother
is like a figure at a bus stop,
an audience for the bus's arrival. Before that,
she was the bus, a temporary
home or convenience.


It goes on, but geez, that's a lot to type.

It's a silly day

and here's further proof of that.

Comics Curmudgeon: Still Funny

Do you read the Comics Curmudgeon yet? If not, why not? Aside from his great comments on the day's comics, you get stuff like this:

"True story: last year on my birthday my wife and I spent a relaxing day together and by mid-afternoon I was pretty pleased with how the day went. But then were driving back from the pool we belong to through a kind of ritzy neighborhood, and some kids were having a birthday party in the yard of this huge house, and they were unloading a goddamned llama out of the back of a llama truck, and my day felt a little less special. What I’m trying to say, Margo, is where’s the llama? I know it’s hard to get one into a Manhattan apartment, but what Katy wants, Katy gets."

Cheney kills bird

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

...oh, that poor bird.

Interracial Marriages Surge

This article is interesting.

One point I think about often, thought it's just lightly addressed in the article, is how children of interracial relationships used to be classified. My son would certainly be considered black, well within the one-drop rule.

But I feel like we're culturally moving beyond that. It's still an issue for many, even in super-liberal SF, but broadly speaking, I think it's growing less relevant.

The article notes Obama and Tiger Woods (I'd add Alicia Keys and Mariah Carey). But all of those people are identified as black, even though they're half or less black. So maybe I'm wrong.

RIP: Kurt Vonnegut

REQUIEM

When the last living thing
has died on account of us,
how poetical it would be
if Earth could say,
in a voice floating up
perhaps
from the floor
of the Grand Canyon,
"It is done."
People did not like it here.


(Doug, thanks for fwd'ing the poem)

Book Review: Design With X by Dean Young

Design With X: Torgo approves

This is the first time I haven't been able to find the book cover, so I went with an author photo. The book cover reprints De Humani Corporis by Andreas Vesalius:


It's a fitting picture for this book.

This is Dean Young's first book. If you know me, you know I'm a big fan of his. He was a finalist for the Pulitzer recently with "Elegy on Toy Piano," a terrific book.

Nobody's first book is every good. At least not when you've read the later work. This is the problem with any poet's Collected Poems. The first 50 pages usually suck.

Wikipedia (where I was went just to track down a cover photo, unsuccessfully) compares Young to O'Hara, Ashbery, and the surrealists. I think this early book shows his debt to James Wright. Every American poet owes a debt to James Wright. If Whitman and Dickinson are the Joseph and Mary (or holy spirit and Mary) of American poets, then Wright is the Jesus.

Young's surrealism isn't in full force here. That's disappointing, but expected. There are glimmers of what's to come. There are also many, many poems that exploit his medical background (which his author's note says was a year at nursing school). Hence the cover picture.

The best example, as I see it, of the poet he's since become is in "The Breakers," which begins with him remembering a summer when he "slept with a girl / 6, 7, 8 months pregnant, not mine..." and goes on to say:

Once, working in a zoo, I had to kill
an ostrich that had garroted itself
in a wire fence. I had to shoot it
in the head, that small ostrich head.
Nowhere to bury it, said the supervisor,
besides a corpse that size needed
Health Department approval so I had to
chain-saw it for the incinerator. Where
does a story like this end? The top drawer
with the pistol? Calming the thing?
The stench of chain-saw oil and burning feathers?
The walk home, woozy as if on earth
after a long boat ride?

Maybe I've already gone on too long.
Sometimes memory seems a scholarly
form of cruelty, the way it always
comes back to now with all the precedents
of loss and cowardice and no mercy.


That's great. That's the Young of his later books. Most of the rest of the book isn't that good, but it's still an easier read than Ashbery.

Movie Review: Pan's Labyrinth

Pan's Labyrinth: Torgo approves

It's a good movie, but I have many complaints.

First, the violence. It's gratuitous. It's excessive. It's not necessary. Two scenes stick out: the Captain beating the farmer's son with the bottle and the Captain's open face cut and then his stitching it up. Neither scene needed to be that gruesome.

Second, I wanted this movie to be more original and different from what I'd seen that it was. Guillermo del Toro improves upon the special effects and visual presentation of Hellboy, but there are too many ideas that weren't new.

The chalk-door reminded me of Beetlejuice (in fact, there were several oddly Beetlejuice-reminiscent moments). The final labyrinth scene echoed The Shining. The mandrake root was used in Harry Potter (no stranger to copping ideas). The three tasks, especially with one final trick, has been used countless times before. And, sadly, the torture scene made me think of 24, not that I want to think about 24, but that show has ruined torture scenes (not that that's a bad thing).

Third, the Captain. He's a villain with no redeeming qualities. His evil nature is explained by his father issues, but then he is incredibly cruel and wretched. He's not realistic. He's far too singular. The character could have used a hint of decency.

Ok, I had to note those things. This movie has been far too highly praised. It is good. It's a good story. It's told well.

The character of Pan is a wonderful visual success. When he's on the screen, it's fascinating to watch.

The Pale Man's story is tedious and boring--you know she's going to eat something, he's going to chase her, she's going to just escape--but I liked how his character was explained through a couple of paintings near him, while he sits motionless. The stone monster in the room may not be new, but it's great cinema.

And Ofelia, the lead, is well-played by the young actress.

One note, for those who have seen it (and if you haven't, jeez, I may have ruined quite a bit), I wish the Captain didn't shoot the doctor just then. I'd rather have the narrative tension of the doctor facing saving the baby or the mother, knowing he himself is doomed. Perhaps he'd fight to save the mother, but sacrificing the baby isn't more virtuous.