December 2003 Archives

Buenos dias from Mazatlan, where the town hall (and the Christmas tree municipale) is brought to you by Coca Cola. Vivela!

As Choire and Xeni showed us yesterday, this is the season to get all worked up over film stories that actually took place many months ago.

I invite you all to familiarize yourselves with the International Cinema program at BYU, where, as a manager-projectionist-student lackey, I found my love for movies and my desire to make them myself one day.

In the nuevo ano, I will address what is being called a ®minor turmoil® that has ensued over my April 2003 discussion of the Cinema Paradiso-style editing of films that rendered foreign films suitable for BYU community viewing.

Day 1 Cruise Index:
Length of ship, in feet: 915
Decks accessible to passengers: 9
Number of passengers, est.: 2,500
Number of teenagers: 250
Number of children: 250
Average poolside temperature at sea on, in degrees farenheit: 67
Number of books carried around: 2,000
Random airport titles: 500
Copies of the new translation of Don Quixote: 1
Copies of David Foster Wallace's A Supposedly Funny Thing I'll Never Do Again: 0
Copies of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest: 0
Copies of Thomas Pynchon's Mason & Dixon: 2 [!!]
Copies of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code: 1,496
Copies of The Da Vinci Code reported stolen from an unattended deck chair: 1
Price of a Diet Coke, either in a can or a glass: $1.50
Glasses of Diet Coke in a can: 2
Price of a cruise-long Coke Pass, which allows consumption of unlimited fountain drinks, including 15% gratuity: $37.95
Glasses of Diet Coke I must consume daily to make my Coke Pass cost-effective: 8.42
Estimated percentage of cruise spent walking back and forth to the bar and/or bathroom: 20
Daily wage of a cruise ship pool attendant: $18
Equivalent daily wage in Diet Cokes: 12
Equivalent daily wage in Yummy Yummy Mango Tango's, a rum concoction designated as the Drink of The Day: 3
Fee paid to employment agent to secure job: $1,000
Months of work required to pay back agent's fee: 2
Length of contract, in months: 6
Days off during contract: 0
Ranking among pool attendants of Christmas Day for the loneliest days of the year: 1
Year The Nation magazine began sponsoring cruises for its readers: 1998

Just ask Dharma. According to the Formula, you can have only one creatively named character per sitcom. Fortunately, Wired Magazine articles have no such limit. And so, in this month's wacky episode edition, Choire and Xeni team up to report on NYC Midnight, a DV Dojo -sponsored contest to write, shoot, and edit a film in New York, all in 24 hours.

What's that, the contest was in October? And it started in May with a rewritten press release on Daily Candy? So Choire and Xeni had to sit on this great story for months, at least until the damn check cleared? That's magazine publishing for you. I'd call it tired, but it's the end of the year; everything's tired.

the crew are on their cells till the last possible minute of signal & the coast guard is doing orange alert laps around us as port recedes. Hasta

Follow along by reading DFW's "a supposedly funny thing i'll never do again " with me.

On my way out of the city, I asked the taxi driver if he had a tape instead of listening to the radio. Not only did he have a tape, he had a huge shopping bag of mix tapes and a veritable doctoral thesis on African music.

The best music in all of Africa, he said, is in Mali. He's from Ghana himself, but even the Ghanaians have to admit Mali is the best. The tape we had in at the moment was a mix of tracks by Toumani DiabatÈ and Ballake Sissoko. DiabatÈ is the "prince of the kora, a 21-string harp/lute combo. (His father, Sidiki DiabatÈ is the king of the kora and Sissoko's father Djelimadi is also a kora master.) New Ancient Strings is a collaboration of these two sons.

I'm in the backseat, frantically taking notes on my computer-printed boarding pass while this professor of afropop explains the nuances and development of afropop music. I'll add more when I get back in front of my own computer, but the encounter rekindled a project I'd begun several years ago but abandoned: TaxiMusic.net. (It started as taximusic.org, but then I let the domain expire.)

I'd been in the habit of asking taxi drivers wherever I went if they had a tape we could listen to. The response was almost always the same: "you don't want to listen to it; it's ______ (Punjabi, Urdu, Island, Ethiopian) music," followed by my standard reply, "But where else can I hear ______ music, except in a taxi?" Then the floodgates would open on an enthusiastic explanation of what the music means. ("She loves the boy but cannot meet him." "This is the Koran; it's a prayer." etc.) Somewhere in our storage unit is a shopping bag of my own, full of tapes I bought from taxi drivers over the years before weblogs and winamp.

Well, I'm back in the habit again. So if anyone has an easy solution for ripping cassette-to-mp3, please let me know, because it seems like high time to build some bridges with the guy in the front seat and share some great music. Happy new year.

[update: even with my kumbaya ending, thanks for all your comments and suggestions. I'm going to take this project back from the lazyweb as soon as I get back from this goofball cruise I'm on.]

taking belligerent drunks off a diverted plane is now the FBI's job. Not the entertainment exper. Song is hoping for, surely. Song nerd: don't call me Shirley.

1. alienate everyone in speed dial list
2. alienate everyone around me on plane
3. do nails.

hint: after 2am, combine 2+3

BBC America, TLC, HGTV, A&E...Some ATL suit at Song: gimme all those channels with cheap-ass makeover shows

But I'm your daughter! And I'm stuck on a ----ing plane in ----ing Denver!! (pause) Hello?

I had to check my duffle bag. (pause) But you know I hate checking my Louis. (pause) The graffiti gets all ----ed up. (pause) Noooo, it's like paint.

The biggest jap on the island is whining into her cell phone about our diverted flight. She sounds like a 5 hr episode of behind the velvet ropes.

I'm like the only gentile on the plane. For jews on Xmas, Las Vegas is the new chinese food.

7:58PM huh. I am stuck on the new JFK AirTrain, 50 feet away from my terminal. Oh, and the seats are very shabbily upholstered, puckering after just one week. Needed: more Eurostar, less Ikea.

Reunited at the millinery, now seated side by side
on the War-For-Peace bus (in the front, of course)

Funny, now I'm more at risk of getting sued than of getting killed in a German bar.

and finding La JetÈe starting that instant on Sundance Channel.

It's a little happiness, anyway. Of course, it's also a happiness you can rent. Or buy.

Over at Modern Art Notes, Tyler Green has solicited Art Top Ten lists from some folks, partly as a rebuttal to the too-hip-for-him lists in Artforum. [He reserves his best Ike Turner for Thelma Golden, who I like very much.] Anyway, my list is up now. Most of it is culled from the site, so fanatic greg.org readers [Mom, I'm talking to you] will probably not be shocked by any of it.

But I did surprise myself with one choice: I felt obliged to put the Guggenheim's Friday marathon screenings of The Cremaster Cycle on my list. [I mean, I survived it, didn't I?] But then I actually got choked up reading David Edelstein's account of Trilogy Tuesday, the marathon screening of Lord of The Rings.

Granted, not everyone is going to thrill to the point of life-defining religious fervor when they see Return of The King (I'm not really much of a fan myself), but by any standard, LOTR must be considered a far more important, influential, and authentic achievement than Cremaster. And that's before and after adjusting for budgets.

[via Gothamist] Jimmy Orr, the Choire Sicha to George Bush's Nick Denton, has posted his new short film, Barney Cam II: Barney Reloaded, on his weblog, whitehouse.gov. Elizabeth Bumiller, the Times' specialist on the dependent film industry, gives it a glowing review and talks with Orr, who co-produced Barney II with Bob deServi. DeServi is best known for his work as the key grip on many of Scott Sforza's productions, which are being shown on TV everywhere, all the time, on every channel.

Magic Hour? Scott Orr demonstrates his handheld video technique in the making of Barney Cam II. Image: Paul Morse, whitehouse.gov

Like Elephant director Gus Van Sant, Orr prefers working with non-professional actors (although it doesn't seem like he budgeted much time for rehearsals). He's got a scrappy, run-and-gun style which constrasts sharply with Sforza's theatrically staged fictions.

As these behind-the-scenes shots reveal, Orr also scorns the debilitatingly large budgets favored by his White Housemates. His equipment package and crew are strictly barebones: a Sony VX-2000 (good, but not Combat Camera good), with a camera-mounted mic feeding into the XLR adapter (no sound guy) and using only available lighting. Of course, none of this is unexpected; compensating for a small package is a recurring theme on Orr's site.

Also screening at whitehouse.gov:
Secretary Evans Reads "Cowboy Night Before Christmas" [Commerce Secretary Donald Evans, FYI]
Mrs. Bush Reads "Angelina's Christmas"

Related:
Ungrateful criticism of diServi and Sforza by their star actor
Bumiller's first review of Scott Sforza and Bob diServi productions.

Finally, someone's asking the right questions in Iraq, like, "how'd they get that shot?" Virginia Heffernan reports in the Times on the ultimate embeds: the soldiers who go into battle armed with digital video cameras ("the camera is our first weapon") to record US military activity. Like Saddam Hussein's medical checkup, which includes shots--like the glowing underside of Hussein's tongue--that Heffernan rates as high art.

what's the opposite of independent? Film, that is. image: nytimes.com/getty images

These combat camera crews use Sony PD 150's, just like civilian photojournalists (and the rest of us). In fact, I bought my first camera, a Sony VX-1000, from a war-documenting friend (whose production company, no coincidence, is named Combat Camera), who was supposed to star in Souvenir November 2001 until he got pulled into Tora Bora (ahh, the memories).

Like most documentarians, these filmmakers have a hard time getting distribution; Pentagon suits are even tighter-fisted than Miramax. But if they make a real heartstrings-pulling story --like the Jessica Lynch rescue or the Hussein body cavity search--when it does hit screens, it opens verrry wide.

This was in my mailbox:

From: BushCheney04@GeorgeWBush.com
Subject: Billionaire compares President Bush to Nazis?

...Liberal billionaire George Soros, who has compared President Bush to the Nazis ["When I hear Bush say, 'You're either with us or against us,' it reminds me of the Germans." said the Hungarian survivor of Nazi and Soviet rule, and Jew] and said that defeating him is "the central focus" of his life, will now spend $25 million in special interest money attacking him! [That's more than some people's liquid assets!]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A24179-2003Nov10

Friends of the President [and fellow oppressed millionaire underdogs] like you are all that stand in their [the billionaires'] way. And the President needs your help!

Help us overcome the Democrats' liberal billionaire by making your contribution and emailing five [millionaire] friends today!

Related: for your, ahem, Christmas shopping enjoyment, my Amazon list, "Books I've Read by Tycoons I've Known"

What fortuitous timing. Last week's announcement of an Iraq-based, Iraqi-run tribunal to prosecute crimes against humanity, including "trying Saddam Hussein in absentia," if necessary, was a convenient pre-emptive strike against too much international meddling. Nice to have those death penalty-friendly ducks in a row just in case, you know, your trail is heating up thanks to intensive intelligence operations and dollar bill serial number-tracking.

Also, it sure is convenient that a former Secretary of State is just leaving on a heavy diplomatic mission when you announce that your current Secretary of State is being operated on for prostate cancer. Bush apparently was informed of the surgery two weeks ago.

Issue: 2003-12-22 and 29
Posted: 2003-12-15

The Talk of The Town
COMMENT/ WINNING AND LOSING/ Philip Gourevitch on how Iraq resembles Algeria.
PERILS/ SURVIVOR: HOLIDAY EDITION/ Nick Paumgarten prepares for the worst.
THE BENCH/ SILLY OLD BEAR V. MOUSE/ Jeffrey Toobin on the characters in a Los Angeles court case.
THE STUMP/ DEAN WAY UPTOWN/ Ben McGrath at the Gore endorsement in Harlem.
NOTICE/ NOBITUARY/ Andy Borowitz remembers the not yet departed.
THE FINANCIAL PAGE/ GOING DUTCH/ James Surowiecki on how the upcoming Google I.P.O. could change Wall Street.

PERSONAL HISTORY/ George Saunders/ Chicago Christmas, 1984/ Gambling away the holidays.

FICTION/ Lorrie Moore/ "Debarking"

WINTER STORIES
"Hot or Cold," by Maile Meloy
"Let It Snow," by David Sedaris
"By the Road," by Ian Frazier
"The Weather in the Streets," by Mary Robison
"Turn Signals," by Louise Erdrich

THE CRITICS
BOOKS/James Wood/ A new translation of "Don Quixote."
THE THEATRE/ Hilton Als/ Tracey Scott Wilsonís "The Story."
A CRITIC AT LARGE/ Alex Ross/ Did Tolkien steal Wagnerís ring?
THE CURRENT CINEMA/ David Denby/ "Cold Mountain," "Somethingís Gotta Give," "Mona Lisa Smile."

Reading Lyn Gardner's story in the Guardian about the tyranny of playwrights' estates over reinterpretations of well-known texts, I'm all the more shocked and awed that Gus Van Sant wanted to do his shot-for-shot remake of Psycho.

The film world has a nearly diametrically opposed view of remakes from the theater, which shows in the different perceptions of The Text. For dead mens' plays, the text is all, sacrosanct; for studio films, the script--and the writers--are cogs that get replaced as soon as they show signs of wear or sticking. As I prepare to buy the film rights to a novel from the author's estate, I'm sweating the interpretation/adaptation process. One saving grace: the author's children now work in the film and TV business.

Here's my off-the-cuff advice for you playwrights who don't want their creative legacy snuffed out by visionless accountants: create an advisory panel or artists, playwrights, theater people, creative people, who will decide how and when your works get reinterpreted, sampled, and reformulated after you're dead. They'll serve for limited terms, so you can get new blood and new perspectives with each generation. Perhaps such an organization could be created by, like, the Artists Rights Society, and they'll provide artistic evaluations into the future. You can choose how daring or conservative you want them to be. Just a thought. 'night.

If you're still looking for just the right gift for your Jewish (you better hustle) or Christian friend (you have a little more time), try an artist book from Printed Matter. Here are my, ahem, suggestions:

We moved apartments in one of our cities recently, and so I discovered the gifting paradise that is IKEA. They don't have an affiliates program, so I don't get any money for care what you buy there. Tasteful, cheap and stultifyingly predictable. My strategy was to look for things that could be repurposed in some unexpected way. All I got was a selection of plastic children's stools. Like the infinitely repeating furniture in Looney Tunes backgrounds.

While there, please pester every IKEA employee to bring back Raml–sa mineral water. They used to have vending machines stuffed with the royal blue bottles, all sporting the royal Swedish seal of approval.

But I digress.
My gift suggestion ($$$$): Give a Segway.
Alternate suggestion ($0): Go to the self-service area of IKEA. Ride their palette-style cart like a skateboard while your companion walks, embarassed, alongside to simulate the Segway experience for free.

Over at Modern Art Notes, Tyler's on a roll, posting frequently and furiously about the current court proceedings to decide the fate of The Barnes Collection, the greatest assemblage of modern art in the country. Tyler does his gadfly best, providing some very useful context (and a bit of foaming at the mouth) for this big, somewhat under-/mis-reported story.

Barnes was a new moneyed crank with a voracious appetite for once-unpopular art (Cezanne, Matisse, Renoir, Soutine, etc.), which he frequently bought in bulk, out of the artists' studios. He had an unparalleled--but not unbiased--eye; by cornering the market on cheesy Renoir nudes, for example, he forced generations of Third World dictators to decorate their palaces with much less desirable, generic soft porn. His collection, foundation, and vision were all mercilessly mocked by Philadelphia society the art establishment of his day, and he took great glee in their eventual comeuppance; he knew the world would have to come groveling back to his art someday.

Now, though, after a couple of generations of pathetic mismanagement ("hundreds of items," including a Matisse and a Renoir gone missing. Did you check the bathroom for the Renoir, your honor?); a feckless board; the inept defensiveness of Lincoln University (the historically black institution Barnes's will put in charge of his legacy), and an utterly clueless-sounding judge, it looks like that same Philadelphia Establishment's shameless attempt to take control of the collection may succeed. It's all pretty ghetto.

I haven't thought it all the way through yet, but Barnes comes to mind when I see the sometimes clumsy, always entertaining, mega-collecting arms race in Miami right now. I doubt that Marty Margulies or his competitors are the Alfred Barnes of the 22nd century, but I know that there are enough snotty art worlders who try to proclaim their own insiderness by mocking them behind their backs.

Gus Van Sant, Elias McConnell, and Dany Wolf
at Cannes 2003, image: festival-cannes.com

There he is, scorched in Death Valley and on the Saltflats of Utah; in a mold-closed school with a barebones crew on scooters; and on the Palais steps of Cannes, where he accepted the Palme D'Or this year for Elephant.

Gus Van Sant? Sure, he's there, too, but I'm talking about Dany Wolf, the producer. The guy who actually has to figure out how to make the movies Gus sees in his head.

While I've been a fan of Van Sant's since Drugstore Cowboy, I've been very interested in his recent bold filmmaking experiments, which coincide with my own entry into the field. I wanted to find out Wolf's on-set experience and insight on making the films that are remaking film.

Below, read my November 2003 discussion with Wolf, an exclusive feature of greg.org.

[Note: No underage Filipino data entry workers were harmed in the transcription of this 3,000-word piece. Special thanks to Dany Wolf, Jay Hernandez and Jeff Hill, who aren't doing so bad, either.]

not that I've seen it yet, mind you, but the cinematographer is John Toll, who also shot Terrence Malick's Thin Red Line. On second thought, why not just rent or buy Thin Red Line?

On the (F) train to a private collection visit downtown, I stood next to the straight guy from Queer Eye, the rocker with the skank girlfriend ("the one with the hooker boots?" is how a friend remembered her). Net net: it didn't stick. He looked as dissheveled and style-free as he did at the beginning of his show.

For some people, it turns out, metrosexuality is nothing more than a phase, something they experiment with in college. Or summer camp.

And since it's socially acceptable to pull out your phone and fiddle with it--after all, you may be turning it off so you can better concentrate on the conversation at hand--sneaking a glance at the clock doesn't hurt the feelings of your fellow guests.

Issue: 2003-12-15
Posted: 2003-12-08

The Talk of The Town
COMMENT/ HAPPY DAYS/ John Cassidy on whether the boom is for real.

SEASON'S GREETING/ BRUSH WITH POWER/ Ben McGrath on the artist behind this yearís White House Christmas card.

THE GOOD FIGHT/ WHEN EDIBLES ATTACK/ Rebecca Mead reports from the Food Allergy Ball in Manhattan.

ON THE BLOCK/ MAKE IT FUNNY/ Tad Friend on how members of the National Lampoon staff went up for sale, at bargain prices.

THE FINANCIAL PAGE/ JET BLUES/ James Surowiecki on the problems plaguing Boeing.

ANNALS OF NATIONAL SECURITY/ Seymour M. Hersh/ Moving Targets / Vietnam-style mission in Iraq.

SHOUTS & MURMURS/ Larry Doyle/ I Killed Them in New Haven

FICTION/ Roddy Doyle/ "Recuperation"

THE CRITICS
THE ART WORLD/Peter Schjeldahl/ A John Currin retrospective.

THE THEATRE/ Hilton Als/ "Never Gonna Dance."

BOOKS/ Adam Gopnik/ Views of tall buildings.

THE CURRENT CINEMA/ Anthony Lane/ "Big Fish," "Girl with a Pearl Earring."

New at Bloghdad.com: Lucian K Truscott IV writes a sobering, scathing op-ed in the NY Times which points out the distance and gaps in experience and POV between troops actually deployed in Iraqi towns and the political appointee/apparatchiks at their "hardship posts" in the Green Zone, the Occupation HQ in Saddam's former palace complexes.

Ahh, that's a better. Now I can endlessly praise the programming acumen of the MoMA Documentary Fortnight without it sounding like pure self-promotion.

Three of Amar Kanwar's most recent works--including A Night of Prophecy, which I killed my Friday night in Miami for, and his unsurpassed A Season Outside, a poetic Cremaster-meets-nuclear-brinksmanship documentary which was one of the greatest finds at last year's Documenta XI--will be shown as part of MoMA's Documentary Fortnight festival. Three films screen together on Sunday December 21. Be there.

Related:
Complete schedule for this year's MoMA's Documentary Fortnight
A slew of Amar Kanwar posts from Documenta.
A post about Souvenir November 2001's screening at last year's MoMA DF

The S is for Self, as in Self-Important. And I wasn't alone. Far from it. The most unnecessary question of the day was the endearing, "Do you know who I am?" It wasn't unnecessary because the Swiss minions running the art fair were so gracious, but because people were always telling you how fabulous they and their taste are anyway. My VIP card didn't score me an early private screening of the only piece I wanted to see in the video program; fortunately, though, the snow conspired to keep me in town one more night. I saw Amar Kanwar's 2002 A Night of Prophecy, which he produced for last year's Documenta XI.

I left the tawdry spectacle of NY art dealers singing karaoke for what turned out to be basically a series of subcontinental music videos. Kanwar filmed people singing calls for caste revolution and protests of various ethnic conflicts. It was alternately moving and didactic, always poetic, but hopelessly at odds with the shiny-as-a-C-print materialist, money-soaked, elitistriving artfest that hosted it. The thirty people at the start of the screening dwindled to less than half that, with only about 8-10 of us pinko Gandhi-ists watching the entire thing. Why some people wouldn't want to spend their Friday night in South Beach being called (in melodic Hindi) an exploitative thief living off the sweat of the poor is beyond me.

(Of course, I'm writing this from the Delta Crown Room at the airport...the sweaty sunburned masses are already too much for me to deal with apparently...)

Offline occurrences, previously known as life, have preoccupied me lately, and I've been working, consuming, seeing, reading, and writing less, hence a lighter-than-usual posting volume. Well, actually, I did some writing last week, but I prefer not to post it here, at least not yet. It's not that it's irrelevant, just the opposite.

For more information, please refer to my post of 11.24.03

Due to copyediting euphoria in the wake of Bush's secret Thanksgiving daytrip to Baghdad, the following quote from Richard Keil of the Bloomberg News service was incomplete:

"Mr. Keil leaned across the aisle, shoved aside his i-Pod headset and grinned as he said, 'The president of the United States is AWOL, and we're with him. The ultimate road trip.' "

The full quote should read, "The president of the United States is AWOL again."

Buy me an i-Pod. Buy you an i-Pod.

I remember when I found Wired, it felt written by people about six months ahead of me. After a couple of years, though, I stopped reading it when I felt I was about six months ahead of it.

In the early weblogging days, I felt six months or so ahead of the New York Times, but also felt that the Times has been closing the gap a bit lately.

I'm quite used to being six months ahead of Wired, but what does it mean when I'm three and six months ahead of boingboing?

[update: ditto. Xeni Jardin's Wired Interview with David Byrne. And a direct link to that holiday gift of choice, David Byrne's artist book/DVD, E.E.E.I. (Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information).]

Issue: 2003-12-08

Talk of The Town
COMMENT/ DEMOCRACY HYPOCRISY/ Nicholas Lemann on what Bushís love of liberty will deliver.

INK/LORD BLACK/ John Cassidy on the F.D.R. biographer and alleged scoundrel Conrad Black.

DEPT. OF SOUND/NO. 9/Seth Mnookin talks to Al Green about music, God, and microphones.

WELLFLEET POSTCARD/ THE OFF-SEASON/ Philip Hamburger on whatís shaking on the Cape.

THE SKY LINE/ MEMORIES/ Paul Goldberger on the World Trade Center memorial.

ANNALS OF LAW/ Jeffrey Toobin/ The Great Election Grab/ The dirty fight for congressional districts.

SHOUTS & MURMURS/ Steve Martin/ Picasso Promoting "Lady with a Fan"

FICTION/ Charles D'Ambrosio/ "Screenwriter"

THE CRITICS
THE THEATRE/ John Lahr/ "Caroline, or Change."

ON TELEVISION/ Nancy Franklin "Angels in America."

BOOKS/ Joan Acocella/ Carol Loeb Shloss's "Lucia Joyce."
Briefly Noted/ Judith Thurman/ An obscene sixteenth-century satire.

THE CURRENT CINEMA/ David Denby/ "The Last Samurai," "The Missing."

Subscribe to The New Yorker.

[via TMN] Harpers.org has been completely reconstructed using Paul Ford's homegrown FTrain code. Is it enough to call it code? Here's what Paul says about it:

The primary goal of Ftrain.com, the goal which all other goals serve, is to make the site fully conscious and self-aware by 2051. Conservative estimates place computer power as equaling brainpower by then, and after 10,000 nodes (200 a year for 50 years), there should be enough inside the site for it to come to its own conclusions. I will return to this topic at a future date.