Dr. Metablog

The Next Three Days (2011)

We watched The Next Three Days because we admired Paul Haggis's two previous films -- Crash and In the Valley of Elah. This one is not quite as innovative, but it's worth watching and is definitely the second-best English teacher movie ever made in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (Wonder Boys, based on the Michael Chabon novel, is more engaging and original).  The story, in brief, is that a woman is erroneously convicted of murder, her appeals fail, she's in for life, but her husband breaks her out of jail.

The plot is hard to swallow, and is told with so much intercutting of pursuers and pursued, red-herring clues, and car chases that it sometime seems like a Bourne adventure. But it's also an endearing family values film -- husband and wife and kid all cocooned up in the last scene.  Elizabeth Banks is beautiful and expressionless and Russell Crowe is merely expressionless, but they're sweetly devoted to one another. I fell for it, perhaps because I just don't see all that many togetherness thrillers.

In Hollywoodland, 90% of English teachers are rigid, authoritarian jerks who don't appreciate the brilliance of their eccentric students (who will grow up to become successful script-writers), and exactly 9% are charismatic and inspiring but a bit dangerous (Jean Brodie for example). Rare indeed is the English teacher who outwits the cops, kills a couple of the bad guys who get in his way, and makes it safely to Venezuela. Cop # 1 (with admiration): "This guy's a teacher?"  Cop # 2:  "Yeah, at a community college."

In the mandatory theme-enhancing classroom scene, our hero lectures on Don Quixote.  As in quixotic. Get it? 

My New Campaign for City Council

It's election season once again. I'm thinking of making a run for city council in our progressive western town. Here's my revised platform, voters.     

1.  NO LEAF BLOWERS.  Rationale: it's a horrible noisy unecological machine that can easily be replaced with a broom. And everyone knows that single-stroke engines are major polluters.

2.  ALL MALL PERFORMERS MUST BE JURIED. Rationale: no more off-key singing. No more bad juggling.  No more ugly balloon animals. No more noisy drummers or whining didgeredoos.

3.  EVERY RESTAURANT MUST KEEP A PIG. Rationale: a perfect, ecologically-sound solution to the waste food problem. Come to think of it, let's require a piggery of all institutions with lunchrooms, such as high schools and hospitals. Let's fatten up those porkers, turn them into bacon and savory spare ribs. 

4.  NO "HOLIDAY" LIGHTS. Rationale: waste of electricity and other scarce resources. Global warming. Bad taste. Bad theology. Bauble-olatry. 

5.  NEW ANNUAL HOLIDAY: Charles Darwin's birthday, February 12. Rationale: uncontroversial celebration of a great thinker. (I reject out of hand those extremists who propose to celebrate Darwin's birthday on December 25. I'm a uniter, not a divider.)

6.  NO MUSIC WRITTEN AFTER 1897. Rationale: obvious. Why 1897?  Death of Johannes Brahms. Also, no amplified music of any kind in an automobile that is audible outside the vehicle. Higher fines and jail terms hip hop and for excessively patriotic "country."   

7.  NO SMOKERS.  Rationale:  lung cancer, heart attacks, emphysema, ashes, disgusting odor, cigarette litter on the sidewalk. Note: not "no smoking"-- "no smokers." No going outside of city limits to light up and then re-entering.

8.  NO VISIBLE TATTOOS. Why only "visible "tattoos?  Because whole-body inspections might be considered intrusive by squishy civil libertarians. Also, no nose rings, navel rings, or other bodily piercings. Except earrings. I rather like earrings. But no more than one per ear. 

9.  ANNUAL JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL PRAIRIE DOG SHOOT AND BARBECUE. Let them kids exercise their Second Amendment rights; eliminate them pesky varmints;  learn to cook. One platform position, three social benefits.

10. NO DOGS PERMITTED WITHIN CITY LIMITS. Rationale: fatal dog attacks, dog bites, barking dogs, squealing dogs, ubiquitous dog "waste," dogs carrying on in parks and open space, the goopy indulgence of dog "guardians," the ecological disaster of dog food. But what about seeing-eye dogs, you ask?  Well, that's a slippery slope, ain't it. Sorry folks, no dogs (except for purposes of vivisection).  

11.  NO MORE COLLEGE FOOTBALL. Rationale: I don't like college football.

12.  NO "FACILITATORS" WITH WHITEBOARDS OR FLIPCHARTS AT MEETINGS. Goodness gracious, am I ever tired of those things.    

That's about it. I feel that I have my finger on the pulse of the electorate. It's going to be a landslide. Tell me that life won't be better as soon as we enact these new laws

Reposted: Philip Roth's Pseudo-Pastoral

A couple of years ago, when I had journeyed through roughly half of his writings, I made some preliminary observations about the fictional world invented by Philip Roth. In the course of discussion, I advanced two hypotheses. The first was that Roth hated children, whom he regarded as encumbrances to male freedom and pleasure. The second is that although Roth had invented a boatload of adult male narcissists, he had not created a single mensch -- a caring, responsible, mature man. In Roth's vision of the world, I suggested, "only a schmuck would be a mensch."

After a pause for rest and rehabilitation, I've now resumed my upriver voyage to the heart of the Rothworld. I've just finished reading American Pastoral (1997), a novel set during the difficult, still-controversial Vietnam war. I must boast that my hypotheses about children and menschdom are fully confirmed by the new evidence provided by American Pastoral. In this novel, children are indeed hateful, and the mensch who has at last made an appearance is nothing more than a schmeggegy. Roth has given us Seymour "Swede" Levov, an archetypal mensch, and behold, what a poor naive schmuck is he! Levov nurtures everyone he encounters, but Roth works it so that his virtue leads directly to his downfall. Poor Swede owns and manages an exemplary factory but he is betrayed by his workers; he's loyal to Newark, so Newark riots and pillages; he loves and supports his fragile wife only to discover that she's sleeping with his friend. Most of all, he adores his daughter, unamusingly called Merry, who turns out to be, just as we might expect, a devil child. She screams unaccountably from the moment of birth and stutters through her awkward childhood (Roth seems to think that colic and speech impediments are signs of inherent viciousness). At adolescence, Merry transforms into an unhandsome Patty Hearst clone who participates in several senseless but deadly political bombings. She then goes underground, only to return secretly in Newark to haunt Levov all the more. Under this succession of attacks, Swede Levov's carefully-crafted menschdom is little-by-little exposed as naive schmuckhood. If only Levov had taken the Zuckerman route: love only thyself, fuck 'em and forget 'em; abort when all else fails.

And now, for the benefit of younger readers, I pause for a few refresher sentences about the historiography of the Vietnamese catastrophe. The significance of this period is highly contested. For those on the left, the war was a foolish attempt to block a peasant uprising against neo-colonialist overlords. The Bundys and Lyndonites and Kissingers squandered fifty thousand American and two million Vietnamese lives (plus moral authority and treasure uncountable). Nevertheless, as the left sees it, the war provided an opportunity for heroism: for the first time in human history, a free and patriotic people, making use of peaceful assemblies, petitions, political activism, boycotts, and resistance to the draft, succeeded in turning an erring government from its mistaken path. On the other hand, the right wing knows an entirely different Vietnam war. For conservatives, the war against communism was lost because squishy liberals lost their nerve. Conservatives remember only the excesses of the anti-war movement: the culture of drugs, the sexual freedom, the violence, and of course, the bombings.

American Pastoral is firmly of the right-hand file. Roth has performed a amazing piece of legerdemain.  He has written about the period of Vietnam, but he has omitted (or suppressed) both the atrocities of the war and the organized, largely peaceful opposition to it. In American Pastoral, resistance is not political but personal. It's embodied in Swede's daughter Merry Levov, who is vacant, violent, angry and disgusting. By stripping the novel of its historical context and coloration, Roth reduces the opposition to the war to an oedipal conflict between a demon child and her well-meaning but ineffectual father.The novel lacks even the decent ambiguity that Roth might have created if he had given Levov other and perhaps more reasonable children. But it's a good guess that in a novel by Philip Roth, more children would have led not to a widening of focus or to a richer novel, but only to more tsouris.

It's a shame that so skillful an artist (and one who is not generally a right-winger) has written a novel that's only inches away from neocon propaganda.

After a pause for rest and rehabilitation, I've now resumed my upriver voyage to the heart of the Rothworld. I've just finished reading American Pastoral (1997), a novel set during the difficult, still-controversial Vietnam war. I must boast that my hypotheses about children and menschdom are fully confirmed by the new evidence provided by American Pastoral. In this novel, children are indeed hateful, and the mensch who has at last made an appearance is nothing more than a schmeggegy. Roth has given us Seymour "Swede" Levov, an archetypal mensch, and behold, what a poor naive schmuck is he! Levov nurtures everyone he encounters, but Roth works it so that his virtue leads directly to his downfall. Poor Swede owns and manages an exemplary factory but he is betrayed by his workers; he's loyal to Newark, so Newark riots and pillages; he loves and supports his fragile wife only to discover that she's sleeping with his friend. Most of all, he adores his daughter, unamusingly called Merry, who turns out to be, just as we might expect, a devil child. She screams unaccountably from the moment of birth and stutters through her awkward childhood (Roth seems to think that colic and speech impediments are signs of inherent viciousness). At adolescence, Merry transforms into an unhandsome Patty Hearst clone who participates in several senseless but deadly political bombings. She then goes underground, only to return secretly in Newark to haunt Levov all the more. Under this succession of attacks, Swede Levov's carefully-crafted menschdom is little-by-little exposed as naive schmuckhood. If only Levov had taken the Zuckerman route: love only thyself, fuck 'em and forget 'em; abort when all else fails.

And now, for the benefit of younger readers, I pause for a few refresher sentences about the historiography of the Vietnamese catastrophe. The significance of this period is highly contested. For those on the left, the war was a foolish attempt to block a peasant uprising against neo-colonialist overlords. The Bundys and Lyndonites and Kissingers squandered fifty thousand American and two million Vietnamese lives (plus moral authority and treasure uncountable). Nevertheless, as the left sees it, the war provided an opportunity for heroism: for the first time in human history, a free and patriotic people, making use of peaceful assemblies, petitions, political activism, boycotts, and resistance to the draft, succeeded in turning an erring government from its mistaken path. On the other hand, the right wing knows an entirely different Vietnam war. For conservatives, the war against communism was lost because squishy liberals lost their nerve. Conservatives remember only the excesses of the anti-war movement: the culture of drugs, the sexual freedom, the violence, and of course, the bombings.

American Pastoral is firmly of the right-hand file. Roth has performed a amazing piece of legerdemain.  He has written about the period of Vietnam, but he has omitted (or suppressed) both the atrocities of the war and the organized, largely peaceful opposition to it. In American Pastoral, resistance is not political but personal. It's embodied in Swede's daughter Merry Levov, who is vacant, violent, angry and disgusting. By stripping the novel of its historical context and coloration, Roth reduces the opposition to the war to an oedipal conflict between a demon child and her well-meaning but ineffectual father.The novel lacks even the decent ambiguity that Roth might have created if he had given Levov other and perhaps more reasonable children. But it's a good guess that in a novel by Philip Roth, more children would have led not to a widening of focus or to a richer novel, but only to more tsouris.

It's a shame that so skillful an artist (and one who is not generally a right-winger) has written a novel that's only inches away from neocon propaganda.

Re-reading Drood

 
I can't remember when I last read The Mystery of Edwin Drood, but I'm certain that it was before 1997.  It was in that year that I passed the age that Dickens had attained when he left our planet, leaving Drood undone.   

This time, I read Drood with a sense of Impending Doom. I think it's because Dickens died far too young -- in the prime of his age.  Not, however, in the prime of his genius  -- although one never knows what he would have produced if he had lived to his allotted three score and ten. The novel struck me as a tired and eneravated performance.  Too many of the characters are recycled from the Dickens repertory company, the humor is too strenuous, the clues and the red-herrings too obviously contrived.  It's only very near the moment of truncation, when the splendid Mrs. Billicken makes her appearance, that the novel feels inspired in the old Dickens way.  

I also read in sadness. When we commit to reading a long, densely plotted novel, we take it for granted that all its mysteries will eventually be resolved.  Such is the bargain that the novelist makes with his readers. But this novel is different, because Dickens didn't make it to the end. And so, we read it always tentatively, knowing that its mysteries will remain mysteries forever and ever. So this time, alas, Drood was a memento mori -- and goodness gracious, I already have enough of those. 

Reposted: Antimylarmonofilamentarianism

In 1895, my wise and courageous grandparents left the abysmal, backward Ukraine and struck out for the new world. Nine years later, my father was born in a cold-water flat in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. The date of his birth: December 22, 1904, exactly at the winter solstice. "And they called his name, Emanuel, God with us." If he had been born in the old country, before the Russian authorities imposed legal cognomina upon us, he would have been named Emanuel ben Isaiah -- his father's name appended to his own as a patronymic.

Despite his traditional moniker and his commitment to the essence of Judaism, my father was fiercely hostile to the irrationalities of religion. His view -- and my grandfather Isaiah's even more strongly -- was that for a thousand years our lineage had been kept in poverty and darkness not just by the czars and the Cossacks but also by the rabbis. In politics my father and grandfather began as socialists and became New Dealers; in philosophy, they rejected theological doctrine and were among the children of the Enlightenment whom Moses Mendelssohn had led to the promised land of evidence and reason. I doubt that any of my ancestors knew Karl Marx's sentence that "the criticism of religion is the beginning of all criticism," but they spoke and acted as though such wisdom had been absorbed from the cradle. My brothers and I were taught to resist the exclusivity, superstition, and ceremony and especially the triumphalism of religion.   

We now have a religious controversy in our peaceful, progressive, and largely secular western town. A group of orthodox Jews have petitioned the city council for permission to construct an eruv. What is an eruv? It’s a “symbolic boundary that allows orthodox Jews to carry things, including their own children, outside their home during the Sabbath." (Carrying is considered work, and orthodoxy's strict interpretation of religious law prohibits sabbatical labor.) A latter-day eruv is constructed out of fishing line that is strung on utility poles; curiously, it may incorporate functioning electric and telephone wires. If you're within the lines, you're "in" your home.

I know that my forbears detested eruvim and similar expressions of irrational piety. I myself am not enraged by these useless but harmless superstitions. Constructing an eruv does not endanger our species; it's not like opposing contraception or prohibiting stem-cell research. An eruv consoles the believers and doesn't much bother the rest of us. Yet if there is a spirit in the sky, which I very much doubt, I would hope that he would not be so small-minded as to issue ukases about carrying infants on Saturdays; infants should be carried as much as they want, which is just about everywhere and always. And if the god of Abraham and Isaac has become so narrow as to promulgate an inside/outside-the-home rule, I would also hope that he would be intelligent enough not to be flummoxed by such transparent trickery as hanging mylar filament on poles.   

I have no intuitive conception of god, but I think that the orthodox trivialize our human and shared longing for transcendence when they sanctify such petty practices. It would be far more pious for the orthodox to take every nickel spent to appease the Ancient of Days and bestow it on a poor Jewish family from Tashkent. If the eruvim-makers can't locate eligible Jews, there are Hondurans and Sudanese a-plenty who deserve their attention. When the believers re-direct their enthusiasm and their resources toward truly charitable enterprises, they will honor the universal immigrant experience and they will also practice the very worthy Jewish virtue of compassion. The effort spent to construct an eruv is a foolish waste of time.

Here's my father's view:  "It took us hundreds of years to fight our way out of the ghetto and they want to put themselves back in jail. If the rabbis had their way," he would say, "Mahler and Bernstein and Gershwin would play accordion in a klezmer band in Bialystok, Einstein would balance the books for a caftan maker in Kiev, and a hundred and fifty Jewish Nobel Prize winners would squander their intelligence davening in a dim Vilna synagogue."

I think it’s in a Wallace Markfield novel that an old Jewish guy confronts a group of twenty-something Jewish hippies/slackers in Miami Beach. After a heated discussion, he admonishes them:  "And don't ever be ashamed that you’re Jewish. It’s enough that I’m ashamed that you’re Jewish."

Which is pretty much how I feel about the eruvistas.  Well, not exactly ashamed.  Embarrassed, perhaps, by their superstitious infatuation with the "dark backward and abysm of time." 

Amnesia in Film: Shattered (1991)

The "neo-noir" film Shattered (1991) was directed by Wolfgang Petersen, who elicited a mumble-mouth performance by Tom Berenger and an incoherent one from Greta Scacchi. It's another in the endless parade of amnesia movies. In this variant, the central character, Dan Merrick, goes over the cliff in his Mercedes and emerges not only disfigured but, it seems, without the least knowledge of his own person or past. The film clearly demonstrates that movie amnesia can be just as flexible as a tricky plot demands. Amnesia in Shattered has nothing to do with the real human brain and its gesture to the facts of existence  is mighty perfunctory.     

DOCTOR (authoritative, bearded): "We call it psychogenic amnesia. Patient doesn't know his name, his family, his personal history. Everything else he remembers. The year, who's president. He can drive a car, he can function professionally, but anything personal is out of reach."

And now the gimmick (major spoiler coming up, so if you plan to see the movie [which I cannot recommend], please avert your innocent eyes). Not only does Dan Merrick not remember anything of his pre-accident past, he's not even Dan Merrick!  He's Judth Merrick's lover, Jack Stanton, transformed by plastic surgery into a simulacrum of Dan. And he doesn't have the least clue that he's someone else. 

There's a exceedingly complicated plot which involves voluntary and involuntary impersonations, a private investigator out of Cliche Central, two murders and three car crashes. The incredible upshot is that the villain (the temptress-wife) is killed and that Jack permanently assumes the role of Dan.    

Jack's amnesia is cured in the last scene, but not before it has been mysteriously promulgated among  his friends, acquaintances, and business associates, all of whom are utterly deceived by the plastic surgery and seem not to notice that there have also been changes to his voice, his walk, his manner, and his personality. These poor folks suffer from a devastating manifestation of Hollywoodish forgetfulness. It could be called "contact amnesia." An absurd idea, but not more absurd than the plot of Shattered. 

Erasmus Hall in All about Eve

 
"Phoebe," she calls herself, but in the script she's just "girl." It's the last scene of Joseph L. Mankiewicz's (Stuyvesant '24) All about Eve. "Phoebe" has sneaked into Eve Harrington's hotel room and has pretended to fall asleep. Eve accosts her and is about to call the police when the intruderess proclaims herself a fan of the actress. Here's their conversation:   

"GIRL You know the Eve Harrington clubs - that they've got in most of the girls' high schools?

EVE I've heard of them.

GIRL Ours was one of the first. Erasmus Hall. I'm the president.

EVE Erasmus Hall. That's in Brooklyn, isn't it?

GIRL Lots of actresses come from Brooklyn. Barbara Stanwyck, Susan Hayward - of course, they're just movie stars."

Phoebe might also have mentioned that both Barbara Stanwyck (Ruby Stevens) and Susan Hayward (Edythe Marrener) were not only from Brooklyn, but also from Erasmus Hall High School. Why doesn't she say so? Or is being a native of Brooklyn disability enough? 

Phoebe might have added to her list and mentioned that Mae West was also an alumna of the same high school. Cheers to Erasmus Hall, mother of actresses -- even though Erasmus's Barbra Streisand '59 was still in braces and still in P. S. something or other when All about Eve was being exhibited at the Leader Theater on Coney Island Avenue.

Supposed Erasmian "Phoebe" was played by the young Barbara Bates, who was highly credible as an upwardly mobile Brooklynite. Her small part includes an iconic moment when, in the film's last scene, she appears in full narcissistic glory, preening in front of a triptych of mirrors as she tries on Eve's clothes. She is reflected in multiple, infinitely regressing fragments. Bates, a native of Denver, Colorado, did not, alas, live up to her early promise, but soon after the completion of this film fell into bouts of insanity that came to an end only when she took her own life in 1959. 

But why Erasmus?  Because its graduates had achieved a reputation for fierce ambition? Perhaps, but also because Erasmus (as Mankiewicz would well have known) was even more provincial -- as only the outer boroughs of New York can be provincial -- than Eve Harrington's childhood Wisconsin. "Phoebe" is another Eve and equally naive and countrified. She's a doppelganger on deck, a secret sharer in ovo, a Mr Hyde in the making; she's also defensive, megalomaniacal, unsophisticated, slightly loony, and ruthless. And so it was an excellent decision to root her in EHHS, where at least 20% of the students, if I remember correctly, had almost exactly the same traits of character.   

 

 

A Great Moment in Sportscasting History

Rajan Rondo is knocked down by Dwayne Wade and falls awkwardly dislocating his left elbow.  Even though it's gruesome, the tape is repeated over and over again. We see Rondo's arm bend backwards and we see him writhe in pain.

Jeff Van Gundy:  "It's horrible. I can't watch."

Mark Jackson (a Brooklynite who doesn't like Van Gundy):  "You can't look?  I always wondered where you were from.  Now I know.  You're from the suburbs."

Later, Rondo returns and heroically plays the fourth period with just one working arm. 

Why We Hate Wells Fargo

The New York Times says that former employees of Wells Fargo admit that they "systematically singled out blacks in Baltimore and suburban Maryland for high-interest subprime mortgages."  "These loans," Baltimore officials have claimed in a federal lawsuit against Wells Fargo, "tipped hundreds of homeowners into foreclosure and cost the city tens of millions of dollars in taxes and city services."  Why did the bank act with such malice?  Because Wells Fargo "saw the black community as fertile ground for subprime mortgages, as working-class blacks were hungry to be a part of the nation’s home-owning mania. Loan officers pushed customers who could have qualified for prime loans into subprime mortgages. Wells Fargo employees picturesquely identified these transactions as "ghetto loans" made to “mud people.” 

The city of Baltimore has filed a suit against Wells Fargo.  "The toll taken by such policies, Baltimore officials argue, "is terrible. Data released by the city as part of the suit show that more than half the properties subject to foreclosure on a Wells Fargo loan from 2005 to 2008 now stand vacant. And 71 percent of those are in predominantly black neighborhoods."

It's called reverse redlining -- systematically marketing the most expensive and onerous loans to black customers.  

So here's the deal.  The city of Baltimore loses, the neighborhoods lose, individual families are financially crippled for a lifetime, and the CEO of Wells Fargo gets a 50% raise to $21,000,000 a year. What a deal! 

What's going to happen to the suit?  It was filed in January, 2008.  Three years later, after a predictable spate of legal wrangling, a federal judge has allowed the suit to go forward, but not before Wells Fargo "succeeded in limiting the pretrial discovery the city has been able to get and in limiting the allegations and damages the city could claim if the case makes it to trial." A bank spokeswoman said Wells Fargo will “continue to defend ourselves vigorously.”

Here's what's going to happen. The bank, which has far greater resources that the city,  will assign a couple of hundred lawyers to the case and wear down Baltimore with various hair-splitting motions.  Judges will retire and/or die. The case will be in the courts for an unknown number of Jarndyce and Jarndyce units of time. After a generation or so, when most of the aggrieved will have long since left the earth, Wells Fargo will settle for a slap on the wrist and pay a nominal fine, but admit to no guilt. The bank will trumpet its vindication. Justice will not be served.  It will be bought. 

Can we possibly imagine what will have happened to the many thousandes of no-longer-occupied houses and to their one time oh-so hopeful purchasers?  Nothing good, trust me. 

My Life in Jokes* **

Why did the moron throw the clock out of the window?  Because he wanted to see time fly. &&&  How do you say "refrigerator" in Italian?  Ice-a box. &&& Why do fireman wear read suspenders?  To hold their pants up. &&& Knock-knock. Who's there?  Anita. Anita who?  Anita borrow a pencil. &&&  "Over the Cliff" by Hugo Furst. 'The Russian Surgeon's Revenge" by I. Kutchakokoff; "The Yellow Stream" by I. P. Daley?  &&& Guy is walking in the woods and meets a friend. The friend has a black eye and a bloody nose. "What happened to you?  "Guy beat me up." "Why?"  "I don't know. I was looking for hotel I'm supposed to stay at, and I came upon this man lying on top of a woman. I asked him, how far is the Olde Log inn and he jumped up and hit me."  &&&  Horse wants to try out for the Dodgers. Leo Durocher says, sure he's a horse but the Dodgers are in the dumps; let's see what he can do. "Can you throw?" Horse picks up a ball, walks to the pitching mound, and throws a 105 mile fastball right down the middle of the plate. "Can you hit?" Horse picks up a bat and steps to the plate. On the first swing, he hits a tremendous line drive off the scoreboard in right field. "Run," says Durocher. "Run," says the horse. "Why do you think I'm here?  If I could run I'd be at Hialeah." &&& Man is knocked down by a bus. He's lying in the road, bleeding to death. A friend comes by, says, Solly, how you doink? Solly says, "I make a living." &&&  Truman, Churchill, and Stalin are driving in a car down a narrow road. There's a cow in the middle of the road, blocking the way. Churchill gets out of the car, waves his hands and screams at the cow, but he can't get it to budge. Truman gets out, picks up a stick and starts beating the cow. It still won't move. Stalin gets out, walks up to the cow and whispers something into the cow's ear. The cow bolts and disappears into the woods. They get back into the car. Truman and Churchill say to Stalin, "What in the world did you say to the cow to get her to run like that. Stalin says, "I told her I'd put her on a collective farm." &&& Man is in a nightclub. Everyone's singing and dancing. He gets an urge to take a dump. Can't find the toilet. He's having a hard time holding it in. Waiter tells him the bathroom is upstairs.  He goes up to the next floor, can't find the toilet. He's about to explode.Finally he sees a hole in the floor. He squats and lets fly with a tremendous load. He gets dressed, goes downstairs. Everyone has disappeared; no music, no dancing, no drinking. He finds the waiter. "What happened?" Waiter says, "Where were you when the shit hit the fan?"  &&& The mayor of Muncie, Indiana is scheduled to preside at a ceremony honoring a local girl-made-good now called Lolita Lamour, but who grew up in Muncie under the name Flora Faye Fluck. But he's worried that he might mispronounce the name and embarrass himself. He practices:  Flora Faye Fluck. Flora Faye Fluck.  Finally, the big day arrives. The mayor makes his speech. "And here she is, ladies and gentleman, Lolita Lamour, known to all of her friends here in Muncie as Flora Faye Klunt." &&&  A man is walking on a beach. He comes upon a naked woman lying on the shore. He jumps on her, screws her, and continues on his way. After a half-a-mile he meets three or four members of a search party. One of them says, "A woman has drowned. Have you seen a dead body on the beach." Man says, "O my god. Was she dead?  I thought she was English."  &&&  A scorpion say to a turtle, "I need to get to the other side of the Dead Sea.  Let me climb on your back and you swim across."  Turtle says, "But if you're on my back, you could sting me." Scorpion says, "Why would I do that?  If I sting you, we'd both drown." Turtle says, "OK, get on my back."  They get to the middle of the Dead Sea, and the scorpion stings the turtle. Turtle says, "Why did you do that?" Scorpion answers, "Because this is the Middle East." &&&  An airplane is flying over the Atlantic Ocean.  Suddenly, the loudspeaker comes on. "This is your pilot. If you look out of the window on the right side of the plane, you can see smoke coming out of the #1 engine. If you look out the left side, you can see flames coming out of the #2 engine. Now look down. If you look closely, you can see a small life-raft floating in the ocean. I am speaking to you from that raft." &&& Searching for the meaning of life, a man travels to Tibet, climbs the highest mountain, comes to a monastery where the wisest man in the world lives. He asks the monk, "What is the meaning of life." The monk says, "life ... is a barrel."  The man goes back to Cleveland, thinks about it for five years. What does it mean, life is a barrel?  He can't figure it out, so he gets back on the boat, travels to Tibet, climbs the mountain, finds the monk, and asks him, "What did you mean, life is a barrel." The monk shrugs his shoulders. "OK, so life isn't a barrel." &&&  Old guy, maybe a bluesman, bottle of hooch in a brown paper bag, sits on a bench in the middle of the night, downtown, playing air-sax, nodding. Young fellow comes by, cheerful, asks him, "Crosstown buses run this way?"  Blues guy looks up, pauses for a second, and then drawls, "Doo--dah, doo-dah." &&& A man, 93, and his wife, 91, go to the rabbi and tell him that they're miserable and want a divorce. The rabbi says, "You've been unhappy all these years and you wait seventy years to get a divorce. What are you thinking?" Man says, "We wanted to wait until the children were all dead."  &&&  "My brain!  My second favorite organ." (W. Allen). &&&  Man goes to the rabbi in distress. He says that his wife is trying to poison him. "How do you know that?  "I saw her putting stuff in my coffee." Rabbi says, "It's got to be a mistake. I'll talk to her." Two days later, the rabbi calls him. "Your wife came in. I talked to her for three hours.Three hours straight I talk to her." "So what's your advice?" "Drink the poison." &&& Man goes to see his doctor. The doctor says, "I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that you have terminal cancer and you're going to be dead in a month." "So what's the good news." "Well," the doctor says, "You see that cute nurse over there. I finally fucked her." &&& An older guy is walking down the street. He meets a friend and they chat for a few minutes. Man starts to leave, turns back to his friend, and says, "By the way, when we met, was I walking north or south?" "You were going south." "Good," says the guy, "then I've already had my  lunch." &&& George W. Bush goes for dinner at the ADL where he's served a bowl of matzo ball soup. He looks at it suspiciously, but then, remembering all the strange foods he's eaten at ceremonial dinners, takes a bite. Not bad. He turns to his host: "Tell me," he says, "do the Jews eat any other part of the matzo, or only the balls?" &&& Two old guys are ritually washing a corpse.The first one says, "Look at the schlong on this guy. He's a horse." The second guy says, "It's just like mine." First guy says, "You have a dong like this. I don't believe it. I've never seen anything half as large."  The second guy says, "I said it was like mine. I didn't mean mine was just as large.  I meant mine is just as dead."  &&&  Knock-knock.  Who's there?  "Yo mama."  "Yo mama who." "Yo mama. This is no joke. Open the damn door and let me in."

 * All jokes are as remembered.  No websites or other research tools have been employed.

**  All jokes are genuine historical artefacts and many not conform to the highest standards of contemporary taste.

Fragment of a Genuine Telephone Conversation

The grand-daughter (now age eleven), studying the Darmstadt Madonna (1528) by Hans Holbein the Younger that is reproduced in q previous post:  "It doesn't look like Madonna."

Grandpa:  "I think it may be a different Madonna."

"Holbein" Rugs

What is this remarkable object? It's a seventeenth-century Turkish rug that now resides in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It's of a type called a "Holbein."  And just why, pray tell, should a class of rugs be named after a sixteenth-century German painter? Was Holbein a closet weaver? Or an importer of rugs?  No. The answer is that rugs of this sort appear prominently in paintings by Holbein, and, inasmuch as textiles deteriorate more rapidly than oil paintings, much more is known about early Turkish rugs from their representation in European art than from the bits and fragments that have managed to survive. Hence "Holbein."

It may be not be easy to see in the picture (rugs need to be seen and handled in person) but on closer inspection, it's clear that there's a repeating geometric pattern in the field within the rug's borders.  That pattern is the hallmark of the "Holbein" rug.

Look again at Holbein's best-known picture, "The Ambassadors."

 
The canvas is loaded with realistic and iconographic detail, and, moreover, it's easy to be transfixed by the floating magic-realism-ish anamorphic death's head that dominates the bottom quarter of the canvas. But look, on the table, under the very up-to-date scientific instruments, a Turkish rug!  Look again.

 
The rug that's depicted is comprised a series of squares of which the right side of one and the left side of the other are clearly visible.  It's a very handsome "Holbein." 

There's an even clearer example in Holbein's "Darmstadt Madonna." 
There it is, in its full anachronistic glory -- a lovely example of a "Turkey carpet" enriching the very  bottom of the picture.  The repeating geometric pattern is fully revealed.  It's not the same rug as the one in the "Ambassadors" portrait, but it's clearly in the same style.  

"Holbein" rugs don't just appear in Holbeins.  There's a great example in Andrea del Verrocchio's "Madonna with john the Baptist and Donatus" (c. 1480).

 
A sixteenth-century Turkish rug right at the feet of the madonna and child. Anachronisticissimus.   

I pause here for a bit of autobiography. in the summer of 1968, Mrs. Dr. Metablog, struck by a sudden infatuation, bid for and won at a country auction in rural Vermont a small geometric ( 4' x 5') rug. It's been with us now these forty years and  has been a constant source of visual pleasure. No, it's not a Holbein, but it's in the same phylum. it's a Konakghend prayer rug, perhaps dating from the late nineteenth century, and like many Kuba or Shirvan rugs, it's geometrical (rather than swirly or floral) in design. Something like a "Holbein" but not quite. I would love to have a "Holbein" on one of my otherwise blank walls. There's something mighty intriguing and suggestive about their cross-cultural links. But in the matter of antique rugs (as in other areas of art), my taste is infinitely in advance of my wallet. Instead of purchasing, we gratify our enthusiasm for rugs by going to exhibits, visiting the museums (including the almost unknown Textile Museum in DC), wandering into the better rug stores (NOT the ones that are declaring bankruptcy and in which EVERYTHING is now 70-80% off) where we pretend to be wealthy, and we study the rug books. Let me testify: "oriental" rugs are one of the great, great, great art forms.

Are genuine "Holbeins" still available?  (I mean old Turkish ones, not new sweatshop or machine made jobbies from India or China.)  Here's one that was recently sold on Ebay.

 
It's a mid-nineteenth-century beauty and, to judge from the picture, in remarkably fine shape for its age. It's described as a "Yuntdag," which is a region in West Anatolia. If I had the cash or even the credit, I'd jump on it. And then I would let a photographer take my picture while I pose in front of it, and by doing so connect myself to Holbein and Verrocchio-- to the aesthetic part of the tradition, that is, not to the Virgin part.

 

 

News from the "Hair Industry"

While indulging a long, pleasant walk this morning, I happened upon a shop I had never before noticed.  It's called Juno's Studio of Contemporary Hair Artistry.  I ws curious as to whether a "hair artistry studio" was what we called in the old days a "barber shop" or a "beauty shop." I tried to peek inside the shop but the situation was a tad too "architectooralooral" (in Mr. Joe Gargery's phrase) for me to feel  comfortable doing so. Nevertheless, I was sufficiently intrigued about "contemporary hair artistry" to visit Juno's website. I am now prepared to "share" with my readership what I have learned. The following paragraph comes to you absolutely verbatim. 

"Jules Juno’s passion for the hair industry pulses through her life and work at every turn and every look, as her creative spirit is continuously fueled by the rhythms, themes and movements of the subtle and deep rich nuances of the world around her - from the street to the flora, feathers and fur of nature, to the lines of fashion and art in all its forms. Aligned closely with the powerful totem of Raven and ready to celebrate newness in light of every full moon, she dwells in the magic of change and transformation. Often called the “Hair Shaman” and “Keeper of the Hair” by her devoted clients, Jules believes in the sacredness of being trusted to work her creative magic on the high chakra space of one’s head."

I can tell you one person whose brilliant (though graying) mane Juno's not going work her creative magic upon (even though the hair industry pulses through every deep rich nuance of its rhythms, themes and movements). Mine, that's who's. Keep your ever-loving hands off my high chakra space, Hair Shaman!!   

Upon further investigation, Juno (her real name?) turns out to be a disciple of Minnesotan Horst Rechelbacher -- under whose tutelage she taught "for a triune of years before adventuring her creative genius as a platform artist."  In our town, she plans to "keep the fires of inspiration burning and push the edges of hair design."

And while here, she will also "push the edges" of New Age Bullshit.

By the way, what the heck is a "platform artist?"  And what distinguishes a "triune of years" from "three years?"  

Carving by Paul Gaugin

 

I visited the quirky but impressive Gauguin exhibition at the National Gallery.

Some of the Tahitian paintings are genuinely "iconic" but certainly worth viewing in real life, where they're a ton more wonderful than in the familiar reproductions.

 In my great ignorance, I had not a shred of knowledge of Gauguin's carvings, and was frankly, dazzled by their beauty. Illustrations do scant justice. Even more than the paintings, the sculptures need to be seen. (They also need to be handled, but art galleries don't exactly encourage tactile familiarity. I hate the nasty beeper that goes off when you I bring my near-sighted eyes close to the object.)

"Soyez amoureuses," one of Gauguin's most interesting carvings, is made of painted linden wood.  It's a hefty 97cm x 75cm. Here's what the artist said of it:

I have been working for 2 months on a large (painted wood) carving and I'm bold enough to believe it's the best thing I've done up to now as far as strength and balance are concerned (although the literary side of it seems crazy to many people. A monster, who looks like me, is holding a naked woman by the hand -- that's the main subject.  The spaces are filled by smaller figures.) At the top there's a town, some sort of Babylon, and at the bottom the countryside with a few imaginary flowers (a desolate old woman) and a fox, the prophetic animal of perversity among the Indians... Despite the inscription, the people look sad, in contradiction to the title.

Like Blake and Yeats, Gauguin had developed his own private mythology.

The sculpture was exhibited in Brussels in 1891 and provoked a "critical storm" -- but what sort of tempest my catalog don't say. 

This carving was lent to the National Gallery by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston which apparently has other Gauguin sculptures.

Now I have an incentive for another visit to New England.