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Why I love Rock and Roll May 9, 2008

Posted by Phineas in : Irrelevant, Music , add a comment

The other night we went out to dinner at a local Mexican restaurant. They were playing these mournful Mexican ballads and the service was really slow. The music was endless moaning and wailing, it started to seem like a ghost in a haunted house. We came home and put on rock and roll and played scrabble.

You see, rock and roll just doesn’t fuck with you like those Mexican ballads do. Rock and roll is there for you. It’s like your bad friend who mocks your soft middle class ways and takes you out on an adventure. Before your night is through, you look like Frankenfurter and the cops and the mafia are after you.

This is why I love Rock and Roll.

Phineas Foo, Age 45.

Day of the International Solidarity of Workers May 1, 2008

Posted by Phineas in : Irrelevant, Music, Political/Editorial , add a comment

Well it’s May 1, Day of the International Solidarity of Workers,  so be sure and find some way to stick it to the man when you can, and spend a little time with The Internationale.

Ouch April 28, 2008

Posted by Phineas in : Irrelevant, Outdoors/Travel , add a comment

That 6 mile hike, 2000 elevation gain along steep gravelly trails around Mt Diablo (Eagle Peak) that I took yesterday today has me questioning the wisdom of my new standup desk configuration.

Der Golem April 26, 2008

Posted by Phineas in : Film, Music , add a comment

Last night I saw the great film The Golem: How He Came Into the World at the Castro Theater in SF. It was scored by Black Francis which made it all the more amazing. The film is incredible — the set designs, the costumes, every visual aspect was just memerizing. Frank Black’s original songs and live performance were awesome. The emcee felt obliged/permitted to make what he must have thought were clever witticisms throughout the film. Really lame, un-comic material like “this scene is on youtube — heh heh.” Really stupid and annoying. That created this goofy atmosphere of incessant chuckling. This being the San Francisco International Film Festival, I would have expected a more reverent tone. We’re here to celebrate cinema, not make fun of things which are unfamiliar to us. OK, maybe the Castro is not where you go to be reverent, but still laughing at an outmoded style of acting, treating everything as camp is so missing the point of that specific movie. It’s an intelligent, thoughtful, beautiful film, not some silly relic from Grandma’s memento chest.

But all in all it was a really cool venue and great film and a fun way to see it. This makes the fourth time I’ve seen Mr. Black perform, I’m slightly embarassed to say.

Cinema Annoyances April 25, 2008

Posted by Phineas in : Film, TV , 3 comments

Two for the “Cinema” category of “Pet Peeves”:

1) you know the thing where they show you a thing for a second, then fade to back real fast, then show you a thing, then fade to black real soon, over and over? Often times its a really interesting visual — you really want to see it, but they fade to black almost as soon as they show it to you. You know that effect? I hate that effect. Please make them stop doing that. If they think it makes you more curious, it doesn’t. It mainly makes me pissed off. It suggests to me that far from having anything interesting to show, they have nothing interesting to show, so they make uninteresting things seem important by taking them away from you. Sort of creating a scarcity of image, creating a demand by leaving you wanting more. I see it as cliched, uninspired, a trick to deceive you into believing there’s more where that came from, a tease. The more they do it, the more pissed off I become.

2) Really, really dark scenes. Perhaps it’s night time. Perhaps we’re in a dark room. Perhaps its some sort of dreamland or outerspace, but the filmmaker decides what’s really required is a really dimly lit scene. Newsflash: a dimly lit scene does not evoke darkness. It does not create or sustain an illusion of darkness. It diminishes any illusion at all — what I see in a dimly lit scene is my own living room, which is very far from being ominous or suspenseful. I see my own shape on the sofa, my own bowl of potato chips. I see a reminder to do some situps. I don’t care if you are David Lynch or Andrei Tarkovsky or Ingmar Bergman or the Coen brothers: dimly lit, dark scenes absolutely do not achieve the apparently desired effect.

Paris 1991 April 20, 2008

Posted by Phineas in : Lyrics, Music, Poesiac , add a comment

Rain drops smack upon the boulevard
roof tiles crackle in the sun
I don’t think I’ll ever go so far
as I did in Paris in 1991

I don’t know who was President
I don’t know what war we were in
but it was all going on
in Paris in 1991

The Parisians were so busy
and the tourists were so busy
and the immigrants were so busy
but me I had a revelation
in Paris in 1991

You ain’t seen Paris
unless you saw Paris
in 1991

Bitterness April 16, 2008

Posted by Phineas in : End Of The World, Irrelevant, Lies, Political/Editorial , add a comment

OK, at the risk of participating in the echo chamber of non-issues, I’ll enter the guns/religion/bitter/elitist fray to make one small remark.

The second amendment provides the right of the people to bear arms. People who own and use guns do so thanks to this amendment. People who feel very strongly about often argue that this right is to protect them against the government among other threats. People who make such arguments generally do not think well of the government if they feel the need to defend themselves against it with weapons.

So to suggest such people are bitter about the failure of government and as a response cling to weapons is not elitist, but is perfectly in line with this very same line of reasoning that some gun owners themselves make, none of whom are ever accused of being “elitist”.

Racer 5 April 13, 2008

Posted by Phineas in : Alcohol, Info, Irrelevant, Lies, Timewaster , 1 comment so far

O hai.

A six of Racer 5 is awesome!

Thanks!

Straw Dogs April 7, 2008

Posted by Phineas in : Film , add a comment

Just watched the movie Straw Dogs (1971) with Dustin Hoffman. An amazing, intense and strange movie. Hoffman plays an American mathmetician married to a young British woman who relocate to her tiny village so he can work on a book. It’s a gothic sort of thing with these ominous menacing local characters in the town and working on repairing the couple’s garage roof.

The centerpiece of the film is a horrifying rape scene in which two of the workers rape the wife while the husband is away on a hunting expedition. The rape involves one man who believes that he loves her, and that they share an intimate history. As he rapes her, she fights back and resists, but clearly expresses contradictory responses. She responds with apparent pleasure in between fits of struggling and unequivocal resistance. This is obviously a source of controversy. The second worker intrudes upon the scene, and after the first one finishes, the second one rapes her. This rape appears to shock even the first rapist, and the woman this time screams and resists with no ambiguity of response.

So you have a really shocking sequence — a “good” rapist and a “bad” rapist. The “good” one sort of deluded himself into thinking he had a right to her body, that the experience was sexual and not violent, that he cared about her and she cared about him. That “bad” rapist was more of a classic violent act.

Dramatizations of rape in film are obviously fraught with complications. What’s the right way to do it, if at all?  I thought it was incredible that Peckinpah was willing to dramatize it this way. A gang rape is not one crime, it’s multiple crimes. And each crime has its own kind of violence. Morally we wish to make no such distinctions. To draw out such distinctions is rare and daring and frankly dangerous.

Quotes April 6, 2008

Posted by Phineas in : Irrelevant , add a comment

People place quotes from other people on their email templates. They put quotes on bumper stickers. Authors sometimes place quotes at the beginning of a poem or a chapter, to prepare the reader for the upcoming themes. It’s neat to learn what famous people have previously said. Einstein said, “God does not play dice.” Neat.

The problem with quotes is that they are removed from context. In removing them from the original context, the suggestion is that the person attributed said this thing. That this thing actually represents their position, their opinion, their belief system. It’s a timeless characterization of that person. It’s an assertion. That that person is endorsing whatever position you are using it to represent on your own behalf.

Some quotes are not really quotes. I’m reminded of something Jimi Hendrix once said. He said, “Scuse me, while I kiss the sky.” Oh he said that did he? He authored it, but he did not “say” it, any more than Shakespeare “said” “Et tu, Brutus?” That kind of quote is the weakest, lamest, most dishonest kind of quote there is. It is also very likely the most ubiquitous. Did Einstein actually “say” “God does not play dice”? Or was that line part of a larger exposition towards a specific point made in specific phase of a debate? He’s not telling you that God does not play dice.

Some people list quotations. Some people think having a web page listing lots of quotes is something. They believe that they have compiled actual knowledge or wisdom. They have not. It’s not something. It’s nothing at all.

News magazines do a really annoying thing. They have a page where they show you the quote in bold, then in italics, have this little paragraph explaining the context. It’s a strange way of reading. It’s like telling a punch line of a joke, then telling the setup. Why not reverse the order? On this day in this setting this person said this thing? Why be so cute about it?

I conclude with a quote from a great author people love to quote, Kurt Vonnegut.

“Some people are assholes.” — Kurt Vonnegut*

*I don’t know the source, but I’m sure he must have said it on more than one occassion.