For Catherine.

Let me be the first to wish Lucy Maud Montgomery (author of the Anne of Green Gables saga) a happy 131st birthday! The same goes to Winston Churchill.

These are important people to have linked this way, as both, in their way remind me of one of my bosom companions – Catherine, the belle of the Island. (L.M. was a major specter haunting her thesis, and Winnie hung on her office wall, very likely original to the plaster from the 40s in McMaster’s Uni Hall.)

If Catherine were an Avonlea character, she would be Catherine of the Dunes, all loquacious and optimistic. I’d be Holly of the Murky Basement, the dirty-faced waif of indiscriminate fence-jumper descent; the brat who was purchased to do scullery work for the widow McDonnell (but admirable in my feistiness, and ability to truck around crags without shoes). She’d be a strawberry blonde, but really want dramatic black hair like mine. But, of course, I would really think blonde was better… (Ah, colonial fantasies, there, eh?) We’d be best friends, despite our differences, and she’d see past social standing, teach me to read Tennyson, and then we’d foil a pirates’ plan to smuggle rum out of the Cove…

Friendship is a wonderful thing, and never goes out of style.
It can’t be harmed by difference, distance, or unemployment.
Nor does it lose its value as we age.

So, though this started as a note to these two dead folks, it has turned into a “Hello” for the very-much-alive, and lively, Cate, who is currently vying for presidency of the CBC. All love and best wishes, for the girl from away!

Go, girl, go!

Oh, Yes! I Rocked ‘Em Like a Hurricane! (Now it’s time for the Eye.)

Presentation went very well, I think (though I don’t get my mark back until next week – fingers crossed for confirmation).

I used verbal persuasion, Bob Marley tunes, and a nifty clip from Brooklyn Babylon (2001). (The prof had never heard of the film, or of some of the newer books I used as back-up sources, so she was impressed by my neurotic, compulsive, anal and oh-so-second-generation complete and utter over preparation… Reading that sentence finally makes me understand the meaning of “Media is the Message.”)

I even brought in copies of a great Onion article exposing the hilarious, yet sad, commercialization of His Honor Bob Marley.

Way to cover the pop culture media spread, yeah?

No ganja, though. (But I did pass the handouts out in the correct bong passing procedure, so I think I simulated the experience…)

Dr. Duncan was alert and interested, and my colleagues were interactive and clearly energized by my talk, so I think that’s pretty good. To get a rise out of five first year PhD students in late November is pretty excellent, eh?

My favorite bit? When I slammed the table and announced that “Tevya Must DIE, for the good of our Nation!” (Meaning that the dominant trope of Tevye the Russian Jew must be laid to rest as it serves to establish a somatically normative view of Jewish identity, colour, nationality, and way of life that doesn’t apply to the UN that is the Jewish people. Not that anything should happen to my sweetie, Chaim Topol!)

So, yeah, all that on less than an hour’s sleep… I probably could have had them over-throw what’s left of our government if I’d actually been well rested. (By the by, the government has finally collapsed. No bloody coup or anything, as that isn’t the Canadian way… Just an ELECTION (!!!!!) in January… See you at the polls!!)

I’ve done my duty, bolstered not by food or sleep or anything healthy whatsoever, but by nicotine and caffeine (the two Horse Men of grad school). Now I will forage for nuts and berries in my crunch-time-ravaged apartment and then hit the hay for some rest.

I’ve deserved my treat.

Cause It's Just Neat.

To Sir, With Love.

I had my last tutorials of the term today. The department secretary “let slip” that all my evaluations so far were perfect scores. YAY! However, I got an even better prize.

Having noticed that I have a fairly raving coffee habit (I make about two trips to the Tim’s down the hall from class every Monday night in our lecture for a large triple-triple), my students presented me with a lovely indigo Laurier mug that they had all chipped in for. This was accompanied by a cute little Snow Flake Fun! stencil kit (the most un-Christmas holiday thing they could find).

At first I told them I couldn’t accept gifts, naturally, but they insisted that I take it. They had all put a few bucks in, so they couldn’t all use it, and they were sure they couldn’t get their money back, they claimed. So, gracefully, I accepted it, blathering something about how this wasn’t going to help their grades, and they shouldn’t take this as any type of reinforcement of some unhealthy addiction.

I’m kind of emotional over it, actually.

I might have complained about them some, but they really are great kids. I’ll miss each and every one of them. But, now, I have a reminder every time I have my morning cuppa’.

Now to do up that Rasta presentation or I am dead Ital, and I-and-I will have to meet again in the After Life… Or in Mexico where I will go by the name Juanita Sanchez, and will have joined the circus as a sword swallower to avoid the shame of having bombed out of PhD…

Either one is fine, but I prefer passing, if given the choice.

Mono, Mon, Mono.

So, in betwixt my continued adventures with Rastafarianism (done on Tuesday, you’ll all be happy to note, as then I can stop talking about it), I am already getting excuses from students for their paper due tomorrow. Well, my count makes it three dead grannies, a sick mother, one case of flu, and two deathly-serious mono victims… No pet gerbils diagnosed with terminal lymphoma, but the night isn’t over yet.

Man! Kids, listen to me. Hear the voice of wisdom. It is better just to get crap over with. If you have no clue what to do with an assignment now, it will not be better next weekend.

Soon it will all be over, and we can all leave. For now, just get the junk over with, and we can all forget this unpleasantness.

Oy. I need a drink.

Ugh. The Humanity.

Having come to a good plateau in my weekend’s work, I decided it was a good time to get us hence to the mall to grab a new pair of boots for John. The sub-zero weather and drifts made this kind of necessary.

Seeing that we would be there, anyway, we decided to go see Harry Potter while we were at it. I wanted to get it over with, especially before the two Potter fiends in my life come to visit over break. (Anyone out there who doesn’t consider themselves a dyed-in-the-wool Potter Head will sympathize with my lack of enthusiasm over going to the movie with big fans of the franchise.)

The sidewalks here seem never to have met a plow or shovel, but we eventually made it to the Conestoga Mall. Excitement! Absolutely crawling with scowling, unhygienic and possibly insane Christmas shoppers, and dripping with gaudy and horrible Christmas tackiness. I had forgotten that the American Thanksgiving marks the official start of the holiday crapulence at shopping centers. Yet, there I was, in the middle of Santa’s worst nightmare, watching sad people buy intently cheerful crap while threatening to rip their children’s limbs off if they didn’t shut up. Ah, yes. Christmas.

What better way to celebrate the birth of Jesus than to buy a Made-in-China plastic non-essential for your child and then spend a month threatening to take it away from him if he doesn’t sit down and shut up? It warms the heart.

Anyway, we managed to work our way through Payless, which was completely wall-to-wall soccer mom, and then to Zellers to grab a winter’s supply of dry cat food (the only place in town to get his brand). By the time we figured out there was no place in the mall to get food that hadn’t been slapped with a million cold cuts and a hundred dirty service gloves, it was about the time to head to the theatre for the bloody, freaking “magic” that is Harry Potter. All I could think of was getting home, but I said I’d go, so I went.

But when we entered the Galaxy such a sight hit me that I very nearly wet myself. Fifteen different lines, without signs telling us which one was for what. Flashing lights everywhere. Dozens of teenage theatre employees walking around like bomb survivors. Kids EVERYWHERE! It was horrible. If I close my eyes now, I can still hear the screams.

So, needless to say we did not deem it worth while to see a movie that I can take or leave, in a situation like that, for nearly thirty bucks. For that price I could BUY the freaking thing on DVD when it comes out. We came home and watched the Nibelungen (1923), instead. I stand by my decision.

So do not expect a review of Goblet on this blog for some time. Harry, it seems you and I will once again wait and meet in home entertainment format. I think I’ll live.

Say, “Goodbye, money,” Galaxy Cinemas. Say, “Goodbye.”

Not Quite Crappy Enough, Thanks.

Monday night, John and I made our weekly midnight trek to the 24 hour Sobeys (primarily in search of Hamburger Helper and fake meat this week). On these hunting and gathering missions, the store is almost always empty (hence why we go then), so I always take a good long time to sift through the ginormous bin of el-cheapo DVDs and VHS tapes at the back of the store.

One of the major fun-slash-annoying parts of being a film student is you never know when and where you will find that out-of-print copy of The Outside Chance of Maximilian Glick (1988) for a buck. Thus, every discount bin from the local 7-Eleven to Blockbuster to the community grocery store is a Gordian knot of possibilities. I take it as my responsibility to sift through every bin of crud with the finest eye. It’s sort of like swap meet skills, only funner. (Further, it satisfies my OCDs, as I also get to straighten up the bins while I’m at it. This has won me some strange looks from box boys, I can tell you.)

So, anyway, this past Monday I was looking, and other than a copy of The Pelican Brief (1993) on VHS (which I passed up), there was not much of interest. Still, I love reading those titles, and the odd descriptions of movies I haven’t even heard of. I mean, a story of the relationship between journalist Sarah Polley and a mythic beast in Iceland? Man, only in aisle seven can you find quality like that.

Finally, I came across something that a few years ago I may have been too embarrassed to even consider buying, as I tended to be far too pompous in my youth (I have since lost most of my self respect through grad school experiences). There, in that bin, way down at the bottom, as if it were too ashamed to raise its head, was a VHS copy of Death to Smoochy (2002) for two dollars. Dare I cross the final frontier into crappy land? I asked myself. Sure, I had purchased Battlefield Earth (2000) on DVD for four bucks only two years before, but that at least has uses as a “what not to do in cinematography” lesson…

Dare I totally unleash the awesomeness of craptastic Hollywood vanity projects? Dare I cross that line between ironically awful to just plain bad?

Well, looking around to make sure the box boy had moved onto other territory, I hastily paid for my Hamburger Helper and my Death to Smoochy video (I don’t know which is worse), as if I were buying a huge box of “Super Gay” brand condoms in the middle of Mormon convention in Utah, and I scurried home. I couldn’t get one thought out of my head: “If I get hit by a car right now, all the world will know me as that film student who died trying to score a copy of Death to Smoochy.”

So, tonight, after fighting a minus-20-wind-chill and freezing, biting snow squalls all the way home, I decided I had earned some time to eat my supper and watch something useless. What could be more useless than my new purchase?

Popping it in, I sat and watched, occasionally laughing quite hard, but mostly sitting and gaping at the screen… What the hell was this thing?

For those of you who don’t know Death to Smoochy, I’ll save you a couple hours of your life and give you the gist of it. The simple plot follows a host of a kiddie show, Rainbow Randolph (the human-migraine formerly known as Robin Williams), who, after losing his show after a payola scandal (which is never really explained), sinks into major depressive psychosis. (Sounds fun, already, eh?) Anyway, Randolph swears revenge against his squeakier than clean replacement, Smoochy the giant purple rhino – Get it, huh? Huh? (Smoochy is played by a Gump-inspired Ed Norton, with a horrible haircut and far, far too much makeup). In the end it all gets resolved somewhat, somehow, and they all dance around like stupid little idiots. The End.

(Oh, and there are a number of subplots involving the Irish mob, a methadone clinic, an exec with a fetish for kiddie-show-hosts, a punch-drunk boxer, the mafia that runs “The Parade of Hope” children’s charities, the relative value of soy over meat, something to do with “little people” in tiny rhino suits, and, oh yeah, some heavy handed “satire” of kiddie show merchandising… And probably some more in there I have probably blocked out.)

Finally, one must question why Smoochy was made when it was? Wouldn’t a Barney satire have been a little more timely, say, ten years earlier? I can’t wait for Williams’ next project. Maybe a hard-hitting parody of Gorbachev?… Or possibly something involving Clinton’s sexual peccadilloes? That has to be good for twenty more years of mileage, huh? (I shouldn’t joke… That last one may be too accurate.)

What can I say? I didn’t expect it to be Hamlet, but I thought it would at least be something of a spectacle. What else can you expect of a film dubbed “The Worst Movie of 2002” by something like 50 national critics? Roger Ebert said of this film: “In all the annals of the movies, few films have been this odd, inexplicable and unpleasant.” That’s got to be some kind of recommendation, right? Plus, it has the pedigree of having been made by the team who brought you Cabin Boy (1994), one of the brightest glory holes of absurdist American comedy since Jerry Lewis moved to France!

However, I am disappointed and grieved. Don’t ask me in what way, as I am unsure if I am disappointed because Death to Smoochy wasn’t better, or because it wasn’t worse.

In all honesty, it kinda fell into that largely forgettable grey zone… I laughed at many of the jokes (who could resist a Nazi rally all shouting “Heil Smoochy!”?), but many were so telegraphed a mentally-deficient mime could have executed them just as well. Further, Williams must be muzzled, drugged, submitted to extensive therapy, or just plain sued for self-plagiarism if he is to be wiped from screens. I mean, Good Morning, Vietnam! (1987) had some great moments, but all things must pass, man, and that means you, too, Robin.

I mean, I love an inappropriately-shaped-cookie joke as much as the next filmgoer, but, overall, Death to Smoochy was neither as crass or as terrible as I was led to believe, so I must admit that I am a little disappointed with it.

I rather wish I had seen this film in its first run, as then I may not have such a horrendous build up of expectation. This film consistently fell below (or above) my expectations, and, as something of a connoisseur of cinema terrible, I am a little bummed by Death to Smoochy. Not as bad as you’ve heard… But not great either.

Too bad. (Or too good…)

Happy Thanksgiving… R.I.P. Gobblers.

Just a note of well wishing to all my friends in the USA today on their national celebration of giving small pox to the First Nations, which I believe they celebrate by symbolically depriving millions of innocent birds of their lives.

I kid, I kid. Happy Thanksgiving!
(And for heaven’s sake try some tofu for a change. If Bush can pardon a turkey, so can you!)

Waiting for the Miracle to Come.

I find myself in a situation as old as those cave paintings in France. I sit and look at my books and papers, and light a candle to the muse in charge of seminar presentations. I await that rarest of things: Inspiration!

I know about as much about Rastafarianism as I can in such a short time and from such a distance, and I can sense what I feel about it… As a Jew, I can intuit some of their meanings, and as a student I can frame a million questions and access a hundred different facts about their theology, lore and contexts. As a self-styled (and occasionally unsuccessful) humanist, I can appreciate its tenor and yearnings…

Now, how do I frame all these thoughts in a 30 minute presentation that walks that line between passion and academics? Worse still, how do I do it in a way that will really wow them? I was the first, way back in September, to snatch a topic, so excited was I about doing this one. Further, I am the last in my class to go on. Thus, I must really give them something to remember. Something political, artsy, feisty, articulate, funny, insightful and intelligent… And something that can get an A. Not too much to ask, huh?

So, how do I do it?

Well, it’s up to you, now, Inspiration. I am waiting on you. Come any time.

Comfy, Reading, Snuggling the Cat.

I am finishing up my Islam reading, which is giving me lots of ideas for my final Islam paper (YAY, Aristotelian notion - as opposed to Bourdieu’s - of habitus!). I am cuddled down with Mr. Cat, covered up to my eyeballs in a thick, spongy, purple comforter, trying to ignore the fact that it is well below zero out there. I have some very delicious coffee, and have had a nice lunch, so I am feeling quite decadent. For the rest of the day, I have nothing pressing except to finish that last chapter in Politics of Piety and continue on with my Rastafarianism research. When I am done that, then I shall watch a flick with John (who is only two days away from a birthday and a midterm), and hit the hay.

Ah, yes, the occasional comforts of the life of a student. Lots of work, but no commuting. I hope everyone is warm and enjoying their day.

It Hurts all Over... And all I Can Do is Ramble about it.

I am so tired that my vision goes blurry around the edges whenever I try to focus on any one thing. It’s cold today, but it feels as cold as death when you’re this tired. Wanna go home and sleep for three days…

I am in my office on campus, trying to get my reading done for the rest of the week so I can dedicate myself exclusively to fine-tuning my Rastafarianism presentation. However, right now, I couldn’t give three flying fibs about body practices in orthodox Islam in Egypt. Not sure if I ever would care a whole lot, but really nadda right now.

The campus is absolutely crawling with kids. Laurier really needs to consider, oh I don’t know, maybe REJECTING some applications for undergraduate admission. I think right now it’s a high school diploma, a 50% average and a checkbook. I know, rationally, that the high density feed lot approach to education pays for my scholarship and office (with all its fancy luxuries, like low-speed internet and ugly-assed phone), but I find it really hard to feel rational.

Ah, just a sec… ("Yes?")

...

OK, I was just interrupted by a knock at my office door. It was some little 18-year-old tart in a hideous beige parka with at least twelve dead rodents sewn to the hood. She thought this was her prof’s office… In Communication Studies… WRONG WING, Bambi. (Or, judging by the fur, the-cold-blooded-murderer-of-Bambi's-mom?)

Even worse? She thought I was her prof. It took every ounce of my strength for me to hold back the words: “Listen, if you don’t even know what your prof looks like by November, what the hell are you doing trying to find her? Just go home, chick, you’re doomed.”

I think that illustrates my point about higher admissions standards.

But I digress.

When I finish this reading (which normally would actually attract me a little, as it will be useful for my term paper on Judaism being mutated by Christian understandings of religion – Today, not so much), then comes the fun stuff. Then I get to watch Brooklyn Babylon (2002) (which mercifully came in super fast via Amazon) to choose a segment to show my seminar class for my presentation. Ah, yes, the joys of being “The Film Student.” Everybody likes my work best, because it has pictures… Pictures that move!!

Well, now I am just getting silly. However, you probably see the trajectory of my brain today. Tired and giddy… So I should probably sign off now and get back to reading.

Oh, one more thing. There was a bit of a lunch gathering in my office today after our ludicrous “How to use the Library” seminar this morning, and I got caught checking my blog. I told them I was moving into the study of Open Source Judaism communities in blog rings… They were impressed, actually, which makes me reckon that I can sell just about anything. I kept them going for about fifteen minutes before I decided I was pressing my luck and switched topics.

Man, who doesn’t love the gullible?

One Step Closer to Victory.

Well, Babette is done. It went very well, and the kids seemed to really dig it. And my fellow TA gushed over my "natural teaching skills." Take that!

Mission accomplished.

Had some Hamburger Helper tonight with my ground tofu fake-meat. I haven’t had this gunk since I was a kid, but I had such a hankering for it, all cheesy and tomatoey. I was a little blown away by the newest Helper technology, though… It now comes with mysterious anthrax-like white powder that you mix with milk and let sit for 10 minutes, and the stuff turns into cheese! Man, I don’t know whether I should praise the ingenuity of it, or fear the consequences of reconstituted cheese topping…

So, now to bed, having eaten some mysterious blobby stuff most likely made by Dupont.

Good night, everybody.

Oh, Babette. I Wish You Were as Exciting as Your Name Suggests.

In six more hours, I will be leaving class, and I can forget I ever saw Babette’s Feast… Well, I’ll remember insofar as I’ll be sure never to see it again.

Am running class in the absence of the professor, who is probably giggling with glee over the fact that he doesn’t have to teach this cruddy material. (I have only one question for the cosmos: “Why not Fiddler or Malcolm X? Why not saddle me with a film I could actually enjoy teaching about??? Stupid cosmos.)

So I will show the film, swallow my disgust, and try to convince these students that I’m not wasting three hours of their precious youth. Will start on religion and food as means of preserving ethnic culture in diaspora or immigrant contexts, and slide into Passover as an example. This will lead me to The Last Supper as a ritualistic and iconic meal, and how it is paralleled in Babette’s Feast (also how her feast can be read as Lenten and Wake rituals, too). This will segue into Christ figures in the film (Babette, the dead Preacher-Father, and the two charitable sisters). Then I will open for questions and debate.

Then I shall surely die, as that will have been three hours flushed away on this utterly forgettable film.

My co-TA, who will be taking a bit of the class tonight, as well (discussing the Lutheran versus the Catholic understandings of human nature as seen in the film), tells me I am missing the so-called “magic” of this film. He thinks it is because I am a Jew (though he didn’t phrase it quite that way), and my tradition just isn’t meant to access such beautiful parables of hope because we are too materialistic (conceptually speaking), and live too much in the here-and-now to “get” this film.

Nuts to him. Just because my religion isn’t infused with an excess of fairy dust doesn’t mean we don’t get magic. If there was one tiny scrap of magic in this, I’m sure I’d notice it… Or at least my Irish half would.

I think he needs to take two showings of Duck Soup (1933), The Immigrant (1917), or maybe The Bank (1915), and go to bed, immediately. Maybe then he’d understand true magic and get off the backs of the Jews, as we sure the hell get the magic in those films.

Die, Babette, die.

Sometimes You Gotta Cast off Those Burdens.

Rise up and tell those bloody baskets where they can stick their multitude of tasks! If we work together, we can all be free. At least for a Sunday or two per month…

Tonight I had enough. I looked deep into the recesses of my soul, and there I found my Inner Self. And that Inner Self, all huddled and mangled, you know what she told me? She told me that if I put her through one more minute of “Ritual Discourses of Ethnicity in the Immigration Experience, as told through food in Babette’s Feast (1987),” she was gonna leave me. You know what I answered back? I told her I was thinking the same thing.

So my Inner Self and I agreed:

Screw work.
Screw responsible behaviour.
Screw Babette.
And screw her feast, too.

That’s right, man. I broke loose. I cut the bonds. I ran away, laughing at my own uncivil disobedience. Those people at the University may pay me for my time, but they don’t own me. I say screw them, too. I’ll teach their class, but they can’t have my Sunday night. That’s for me and my Inner Self.

So me and my Inner Self took ourselves down to the local indie video rental place, and we watched a bit of Melinda and Melinda (2004) with the clerk, a nice lady who loves Woody Allen… Well, not as much as me, but close. Then I picked out three films that have absolutely NOTHING to do with what I do for a living. No feast, no portrayals of Jews, no intermarriage, no discourse. Just movies.

What a feeling! I remember what it is to just watch something… No notes. Just the screen and the gods of Hollywood. Nothing in between.

I have sat and pissed away hours. First there was John Q. (2002), which was a bit movie-of-the-week, even for a male weepy. But I was just in the mood for something like that. (Further, who else loves Eddie Griffin, by the way?) Besides, it was almost entirely devoid of anything but Denzel Washington, so nothing like that can be too bad. Second, I watched The Hurricane (1999). A much better use of time.

The end result: I no longer want to throw myself out a window, and can now actually do my work without feeling like I’m gonna vomit, and I have an inkling of why I decided to study films… BECAUSE I LOVE WATCHING MOVIES. (Repeat as necessary.)

The second (unexpected) result? I kiss the ground of whatever Fate decided to make me Canadian. G-d bless Health Care, and G-d bless bleeding heart Canucks. (And screw you, Stephen Harper, as well… While we’re at it, you too, Ralph Klein.)

Yes, and bless my dose of vitamin Denzel. One more film like these two, and I think he gets free Canadian citizenship… That’s fine, we’ll take him. Then we can stop crowing over Jim-freakin-Carrey.

I’ve got a spot all lined up for you, Denzel… Any time.

(Moment of bliss…)

OK. Back to Babette.

*sigh*

Another One of Those Self-Reflexive “What it Means to Blog” Posts…

It seems like everyone is busy exploring what blogging means to them. Far be it from me to resist a trend.

I started this blog completely by accident on April 17, 2005. I was trying to leave a comment on the blog of a good friend, and, being my very first blog experience, I was just going through the answers – I thought they were all pretty normal. When it asked What is the name of your blog? I answered, pretty unoriginally, What the hell is a Blog?... I didn’t realize I was really signing myself up for one.

When I realized the error, at first I was pretty freaked out, but I didn’t know enough about blogging to know how to delete the thing I had created. After that first post, which I was able to do because it took me directly to the dashboard, I didn’t update again for a while because I was too embarrassed to ask my friend how to post on the thing.

(Hence the subtitle, as I felt myself far too mentally-old, or at least too much of a luddite, to handle this web logging thing. Perhaps I should change that… Oh well, I like it.)

Well, unlike Dr. Frankenstein, I eventually grew to like my creation, and now it is a thriving hobby. It’s a great way to keep in touch with friends, now scattered across the country, and, even more importantly, it’s a great way to keep in touch with myself. (Wow, that sounds corny!) I post because that keeps me mindful of myself, what I need to do, what I think, and what I have accomplished. Sometimes I’m depressed when I post, and in need of an outpouring. Frequently, I am angry, and I post to vent. Most of the time, as in my real life, I am in a silly or lighthearted mood, and I post to amuse myself.

It has struck me just how much people can know about me from reading this thing… Everything from the fact that I went to Middleton High, to the thing I have for Denzel Washington… Perhaps a bit much, but I wonder how realistic it all is.

So how does this thing compare to my “true self”?

Well, like I seem on the blog, I have a million interests, and they ebb and flow in terms of importance. (Though Chaplin is a constant, I’ve found). As on the blog, I live and die by film, and I love my cat. I am a PhD student, and it is clear from the blog (and how much time I spend whining about it) this takes up almost all of my brain space and life. Further, as is no secret to anyone who has even met me for a nano-second, I am very Jewish… And very wrapped up in being Jewish, despite that pesky Irish father of mine. Oh well, not being complex is boring. I enjoy politics and social issues, but I am most comfortable in front of a movie screen.

However, unlike the blog, I don’t speak well in person. (At least, I hope I speak well on this thing… Let’s just keep that illusion in place, shall we?) I have a stutter in real life, and have never really been comfortable speaking out loud – I mostly communicate in short quips and body language. I am actually very shy and am almost always dead nervous when I talk, which makes the stutter worse. Since moving to Ontario from Nova Scotia, speaking is even harder, as I am now also very uptight over my rural-maritime accent (somewhere between hick and Dublin), which those ever-sensitive Ontarians never fail to point out. (Bless their tube socks).

I’d like to consider myself artsy and sensitive, and in this blog I probably sound more to that side than I really am. In truth, I am probably much less aware and cultured then I try to claim to be, because I cannot escape my true nature, which is far too pragmatic, wide-eyed, and immature to be sophisticated in any way, shape, or form.

So, though this blog was an accident, it now is a large portion of my spare time, and I use it to play with ideas and opinions… Sort of like a testing ground for things before I try them out “in real life.” I treat it like an assignment, and I try to blog every day. This keeps my brain from rusticating, and has actually improved my fluency in writing.

I have very recently wandered out into the larger blogging world. Previously, I never would have dared to post comments on the blogs of strangers, feeling some how that it would bother them (sorta like crank phone calls)… However, most of the people I have visited in the past month have been very friendly about it. So now, without ever having seen these places, I now have regular contact with all over the States, and I have begun to have a modicum of pride in this thing I have created, whether or not I am truthful or trite, or even silly, when I update.

I suppose to many folks, 27-year-old people shouldn’t be spending their time with (as Catherine has put it so beautifully) a “pink poodle diary.” Still, I know, though I don’t change the world with this blog, I sometimes change myself just a little, and that is always a task well worth undertaking.

For all you Social Science nerds out there, consider my blog autoethnography… An exploration of what has made me, and, more to the Aristotelian point, what I do.

So that is my self-reflexive moment for today. Use it as you will, but I hope that it puts all the whining I have done recently into some better perspective.

Frankly, though, I’m not even sure I’m gonna post this… But I may surprise myself and go ahead.

My Life is… Unfair at Best

John is out watching The Life Aquatic (2004). I love Life Aquatic. I am stuck in here battling the worst case of heart burn EVER, and reading about Rastafarianism. No doubt, an interesting topic. But, man, would I rather be watching a movie. The only one I had time for is Babette’s Feast (1987), and then only because I had to for class. What a rip off.

That’s my whine for tonight.

Back to work.

Babette’s Feast: The Emperor has Another Set of Clothes.

This weekend, I had to watch Babette’s Feast (1987) for a class. I wasn’t looking forward to it, exactly, but I wasn’t expecting it to be so dull that I almost had to rip my eyes out in self-defense. Can anyone tell me why, other than mass-hysteria brought on my extreme faddism, this thing won an Oscar? Please help, as I have no idea.

Further, does anyone have any sound reason why this film was worth the lives of twelve innocent quails?

Certainly, the story may have made a very nice short subject, but there is a lot of waste here (and I’m not just talking about the food). The first 60 minutes or so has the pace and usefulness of watching the proverbial paint dry, and the last 30 minutes, that of the titular “feast”, has nothing of the aesthetic and sensual flare that it should have had. Filmed with drab colour tones, under lighting roughly the consistency of thin mud, the meal is actually an assault on the eyes, and has all the palatability of day-old cabbage soup made by your granny.

I consider myself a fairly sensitive and intelligent viewer, unimpressed by kung fu moves and major Hollywood explosions (heck, I even appreciated Finding Neverland (2004) for what it was), but, by the end of Babette’s Feast, I was praying that someone would plant a nice FX dirty bomb in the middle of that bloody turtle soup, just for something to watch.

The whole film is weighed down by stilted and just plain bad performances, and made even worse by a complete sense that everyone we are watching has given up on everything in life – the characters and the actors. Even Babette (Stephane Audran), who seems to have no real reason to have done so! Not even at the Last Supper was there such a feeling of impending doom and death. (And I am not convinced that this changes after the meal, as soon as they all sober up.)

(Don’t get me wrong here. I had been worried that Babette would be some twinkly, obnoxious twit a la Amelie (2001) who would wink and simper and bring artificial and nauseating “magic” – a phenomena all too manipulated and never understood by modern filmmakers – into the lives “of all she touches.” The fact that the film pulled back from that is a blessing, but the funeral feel doesn’t actually thrill me, either.)

The only performances worth noting in this stagy, late-night-CBC-quality drawing room soap are those of Erik the serving boy (played by Erik Petersen) and the man who runs the village store (Holger Perfort, I believe). These two actors manage to inhabit their roles and breathe badly needed life into the grey tableaus, and it makes me wish the title of the movie was “Erik and Store Keeper’s Lunch.”

Babette’s Feast is clearly a feast for the eyes of people who love to watch old people eat and would like to see it filmed lovingly for twenty minutes, I’ll concede that. I don’t happen to be one of those. If your appetite isn’t wounded by the shot upon shot of eviscerated animals, then all those unsteady soup spoons hovering over fuzzy old-lady-chins will certainly do it in for good.

We are using this film in the religion and cinematic culture class for which I am a TA, but for the life of me I can’t see why. Not only will it affirm for kids that school is a tedious and painful experience, but this film isn’t even all that useful, religiously. Anything religious in this film is either so doctrinally forced that it becomes a major annoyance, or it is about as subtle as a fifty pound sledge hammer to the temple, so I fail to see how it has an educational value at all.

Beyond its bald attempts at propaganda, it is, plainly put, an ideological mess. First, the whole thing seeks to confirm all of our worst beliefs about the cultishness and hypocrisy of Puritan Christianity, and then it goes in for the real kill! It asks us to read Babette as a female Christ figure – a woman who watched her two elderly employers slog out their guts to feed the poor, but still insists on pissing away ten thousand francs on sacrificial turtles and expensive French wine. This goes far, far beyond Jesus’ acceptance of an anointing from a poor woman (Matthew 26: 6-13). It is obscene.

In the end, Babette does manage to inspire much jubilance amongst a group of dour, pleasure-starved Lutherans. Big deal! She takes a group of old fuddies, and, after a life time of abstinence, she fills them with booze. Frankly, she could have saved her money, and spent two hundred bucks on some potato chips and cheap Russian vodka and had the same results.

I was at least expecting something artistic out of this film, but it doesn’t live up to even the most modest expectations of European cinema. The fact that so many North Americans have bought into this load of trite and homely garbage says something very sad about us as a culture. It says that we not only have vulgar tastes, but that our tastes are so unrefined that we can’t even tell when we are being had by a fad. I am beginning to realize that years of Hollywood crud has made us so blind to artistic achievement that we just self-consciously applaud anything made in Europe. This is very sad, indeed.

In the end, a meager 3 scallions out of 10 for Babette’s very unappealing feast. Go see something by Bergman, instead. Sure his films are often dour, too, but at least the acting is good. I can assure you, there is nothing to see in Babette’s Feast.

Good Morning, World!

The copse of trees outside is completely covered in fluffy white stuff, but I am warm and comfy inside. (Ah, yes, the optimal condition during winter: Warm, but with a view.) It’s 4am, and I’ve just gotten up, and am waiting for ye old coffee-pot to heat up. The world is completely silent. Not even birds, and it is even too early (or too late) for the Devil’s Spawn from up stairs to be banging around. That means that it’s time for me to start some work, methinks.

I have one weekend between me and doom. This weekend is the make or break point, upon which my survival for the rest of the term depends. If I can finish three tasks and a bunch of readings, and thus make my way clear for my term-end projects, then I am swimming in gravy. If not, it’s that Coffee Time job for me.

So, take care everybody. Will post if I can.

3… 2… 1… LIFT OFF!

Oh, Boy.

I think I just messed up a little, but I don’t really much care. I got only two hours of sleep last night, and overslept. Narrowly, I did make it to Islam class before the prof, but I felt so sickly that I really couldn’t do much. (Though she was impressed, at the end, at how I have been able to apply Islamic woman mosque movements back to my topic of Judaism as a religion or discipline, so good on that one).

But, most of the class I just hunkered there, looking like something you have to shoot in the head (not the torso) if you want to keep it from eating your brains.

I think I convinced her sufficiently that it was illness and not lack of interest that kept me from full blown academic perkiness. Well, I was tired and a little ill from lack of sleep (and residual `flu), so I guess it counts. However, when I got outside and saw all that beautiful two-inch snow, with more falling, I couldn’t stop from doing a little dance of winter-lovin’-paganism.
(YAY! YAY! YAY! WINTER!).

You can just guess who was exiting in the building just in time to see me seemingly rise from the dead, coincidently just after her class was finished…

Oh well. Nuts to her. It’s snowing, and this is a great time of the week because it is the absolute longest time before more Islam class.

Giddy. Real giddy.

Walking In a Winter Waterloo!

Am reading like mad to keep up with courses, but it’s all going very well. I am deeply immersed in my last three major projects of my first term in PhD.

I have one seminar to deliver on Rastafarianism, which has turned into a pretty inflammatory argument about how the divide between blacks and Jews is more like a sibling rivalry than anything else. (What the hell? You may as well rock a boat or two, huh?) I also have two major papers; one is on the politics of Jewish authorship (that is, the debate on whether Jewish scholars have more right than Gentile scholars to interpret and teach Jewish history… If I say only Jews should do it, do you think that may free up some university positions for me when I graduate?) The second paper is on liberating Judaism from the confines of the definition of “religion” applied from the post-Enlightenment, Christian context.

So, basically, Jews are just displaced Africans, who have more rights over their history than do Christians, as the latter apply neo-colonial and hegemonic limitations on our formerly Hebraic mindsets and have twisted us into bad imitations of themselves…

Oh, brother. I even make myself ill. Oh well, you gotta rage against something, I guess. Still, every odd assertion I make, and every mad-social-scientist-type hypothesis I put forward makes me feel alive, and confirms for me one glorious truth: I AM NOT AT MCMASTER!!!!

Frankly, I feel great!

On that note, it is (finally) really snowing here now, so I am pleased. Can we make “O Canada” a winterfest song? That was what was rolling through my head when I took my walk earlier. Snow falling through pine trees, all lit up by soft purple street lights… Screw free health care as part of our identity tool kit. As long as we have snow, I will really “get” Canada, man.

So, yeah, I am fine, although clearly exhausted of any form of articulation for any thought that doesn’t have to do with school. I’m getting tired, but all is well. I continue to forge stronger and warmer bonds with my new fellow students here, and I am starting to gain a rep as a passionate and politically-charged scholar.

(Yes, I said politically charged… Not sure where that came from, but friends have told me that those who don’t know me very well think I’m some sort of radical. This I am clearly not, as I am sure that radicals don’t wear bright blue mitties knitted by their aunty Florence. Just a guess there.)

For the Christmas holidays (so-called), we will have at least two guests at some point: Catherine will most likely come for four or five days (unless we can convince her to move here – fingers crossed), and our friend Sio will be entrusting her poodle Lumper to us for at least three days. (No, that name isn’t a typo… I may have to convince him his rights are being abused by that moniker.)

So we have things to get through in the next couple of weeks, but also things to look forward to.

YAY, snow! YAY, mitties! YAY, poodles!

(I think I have finally lost my mind.)


PS. Kwanzaa and Chanukah fall on the same days this year, so I'd say around Dec 15th is the prime time to invest in candles.

On a Brighter Note...

The man behind Groucho was born today.
(The bad news is he's since died.)


"Epitaph for a dead waiter - G-d finally caught his eye."

- George S.Kaufman (November 16, 1889 - June 2, 1961)

Remembering an Artifact of My Star-Power Awakening.

"What she needs is a guy that'd take a sock at her once a day, whether it's coming to her or not. If you had half the brains you're supposed to have, you'd done it yourself, long ago."

Said with an intense clench, almost and always ready to give way to that famous grin that screams: “I know what you look like naked!”, we owe what we consider manhood (for good or bad) to the only man in the world that can look sexy in a thin moustache.

November 16, 2005 marks the 45th anniversary of the death of mega-star Clark Gable (1901-1960), at the age of 59 of a heart attack (most likely brought on by heavy drinking in his post-MGM years). In some ways, therefore, despite the fact that Cary Grant lived on until the eighties, it marks the 45th anniversary of the final break with Old Hollywood.

To me, Clark Gable will always remain one of my first and best examples of what a “Star” really is.

At his peak, Gable was an institution of aggressive sexuality and charisma, and a juggernaut of influence. Lest we forget that Gable was able to bump George Cukor as director of Gone With the Wind (1939), despite the fact that Cukor had already shot 33 minutes of the film. It seems that Gable preferred Victor Fleming (according to reasons put forward by Kenneth Anger or not), and as a result the film now bears that director’s name. (When we attempt to reconcile star power with auteurism, Gable provides a really sticky wicket, and begs us to explore further the option of actor as auteur rather than director in some cases.)

Gable also remains one of those rare sex symbols from yesteryear who retain their ability to cause a swoon or two. While Valentino seems as outdated as he is, Bogart seems far too short (though this doesn't stop me), and John Wayne reminds us all too much of our dads to cause a frenzy (*shudder*), men like Gable, Gary Cooper, and Cary Grant seem as fresh and sexy today as they did then. Easily, they can stand in a photo line up with their modern successors such as Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe and Liam Neeson - modern images of masculinity stressing internal honour (although sometimes unconventional), and health, over wan and non-threatening asexuality. (All too few and far between amongst the androgynous ranks of the Orlando Bloom clones of today.)

He reminds us of an era in which masculine attractiveness came more from maturity mixed with a balanced dose of mischievous sexuality, as opposed to today’s standards of guilt-imposed and castrated male “prettiness.”

And underlying this rugged masculinity was a core of romantic self-disregard transformed into grief that forced Gable out of movies and into the army when his beloved wife, Carole Lombard, died in 1942. He made no movies for three years after her death. After his own death, nearly twenty years (and a couple new wives) later, he was interred beside her.

Furthermore, Gable’s example is one of a “good” American who doesn’t necessarily have to toe the company line, as a man who was once denounced before the McCarthy trials as an “unwitting tool of Communist infiltration” due to his anti-fascist political beliefs, which, unlike most leftist views in Hollywood, failed to disappear once Nazism was defeated. However, Gable was never an overtly political figure, and is best remembered for his screen persona and magnetism, which goes far beyond Rhett Butler.

I started this little reminder with a line from It Happened One Night (1934), rather than one from GWTW. The latter film sets up a possibly damaging American myth of the romantic South (as well as a disturbing trope of female aggressiveness leading to destruction). More importantly, however, I believe the former film to have been Gable’s definitive star image, not Butler.

It was also the film in which I first awakened to the fact that screen persona and character were blurred in the case of true stars, and the one in which I, in my nascent understanding of film language, first observed that a knowledge of who Gable was told me half of what I needed to know and carried part of the burden for the script. It also serves as an example of Gable’s sway with the American public: When he appeared sans undershirt in that film, sales in the hitherto necessary (and “polite”) undergarment plummeted.

Not the least of all, it is also one of the most iconic foundational works in the canon of romantic comedies. Establishing the trope of rich-spoiled-woman/honest-working-class-man, this film is about as dashing and attractive as any I have seen, so I urge you to track it down. With it you can see and recognize the recent rom-com pap for what it is: an affront to the aesthetic and idealistic sensibilities of the movie-going public. Ben Stiller should shrink out of shame in the light of Gable.

It is also one of the only comedies, period, which has held its own in the Academy Award race, the result of which was Gable's only Oscar.

Go and see this film, in remembrance of Gable, and enjoy.

So, I Guess I Have no Future in Bad Web Poetry.

I was jumpy and over-emotional all day Monday, complete with a head ache. I actually lost some tears in front of my students, while launching into the narrative of Malcolm X’s death:

“On February 21, 1965, as he began to speak, two men rushed the 39-year-old father of four and emptied their guns into his body, shooting him fourteen times. Left bleeding there on the stage of the Audubon Ballroom, X was pronounced dead on arrival at New York's Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, ending two weeks of terror for the man who had foreseen his own death…”

As well, I had been nauseas all day, slightly, but I marked it down to just plain lack of food. (I neglected breakfast, which means no food until I get home at 11pm.) Or maybe it was too much coffee, or stress, or just the blues depressing my system.

We finished watching Malcolm X (1992) last night in film class. Then, when it came to that really stark assassination scene at the end of the movie, I had to dash from the class to keep from vomiting in my own lap.

Yes, I am sentimental about Malcolm X, and I usually get really broody and depressed when I think of the path he was on that was cut short. (I mean, post-Hajj Malcolm could have had the whole world in his hand, and made it so much better, but we’ll never know what he would have done with it.)

But, I am not exactly a wilting flower. I don’t swoon, and I don’t fake the vapours to appear “sensitive.” I’ve seen over fifty hours worth of concentration camp liberation and clean up footage. I certainly didn’t think myself vulnerable enough to be brought down by a dramatization of a murder.

I was actually quite touched; maybe I was getting softer and more empathetic in my advancing age! This could have been a new beginning for me. Maybe I’d actually be able to stay in the same room with someone who is crying without mentally making my grocery list.

Finally, I too could get a Live Journal thing going, and pour out sensitive young angst, while there is still time.

However, by the time I hit the hay at midnight, I realized this was not so, and I am still an emotional clod. Just one with a bad tummy. I have been overcome with waves of nausea every hour or half hour since 11pm last night, and can’t keep anything down.

Rats. It’s not sensitivity at all. It’s stomach flu.

Oh well. What has sensitivity ever earned anyone?

Just Try to Go Limp, George.

Can’t do much due to flu, but I can sit here and play with my president doll:

Play Ragdoll Physics 2

Oh, Internet. You Leave Me Speechless.

Explain this one to me.

Please.

And the Lambs Shall Eat the Lion

Tutorial went well, today. We did Malcolm X, so it wasn’t difficult for me to teach on the subject.

However, my kids don’t “discuss” very often. They are strictly “input only”, if you get my drift. So, I either talk or sit in silence with them. Of course, it doesn’t help that they seldom get their readings done in time for class. The problem is, Grimes has made “discussion” the corner stone of tutorials, even if this is a fantasy prompted by too much distance from what undergrads actually do and want.

But now I find out that, for PhD students, TA evaluations are mandatory – They tell us this is to give us a chance to “build a teaching dossier”, but mostly, I think, to judge our performance. Here, if we don’t TA well, they pull our funding.

I have never submitted to TA evaluations before, because I assume that it breaks down like this: Those students who worked hard and got good grades will say I’m great. The ones who do poorly will say I suck.

Bottom line: They are fairly pointless, but also possibly damaging.

However, I am just a cog in the machine that is the “Modern University,” and I must do what the masters order. (Why is that even the profs who bluster on about Marxist theories and the ideals of post-oppression are willfully blind to the mistreatment of TAs?)

I know that I work hard at my job, and that most of my students like me, but all it takes is a couple bitter apples that say I never tried to help them and that I was a callous and horrible TA, and I’m screwed. Alternatively, what if they all write: “Holly is great, because she just tells us everything we need to know, and never forces us to rise above our generation and actually form a thought in our lacquered heads”???

Either way, Grimes will have me for lunch.

I’m toast.

Um, Yeah...

OK. Nothing but CBC for me for now on...

You Passed the US Citizenship Test

Congratulations - you got 8 out of 10 correct!

Could You Pass the US Citizenship Test?

Wow. It's like You've Known Me All My Life!

Thanks to Sarah in the Pacific Northwest for this great service...

A little creepy, though, don't you find? I think these people may have a camera in my fillings...

Your Birthdate: May 17

You tend to find yourself lucky - both in business and in life. And while being wealthy is nice, you enjoy sharing your abundance with others. You put your luck to good use: you are very ambitious and goal oriented. Often times, you get over excited and take on more than you can manage. Your strength: Your ability to make your own luck Your weakness: Thinking you can do it all Your power color: Bronze Your power symbol: Half Moon Your power month: August

What Does Your Birth Date Mean?

Hey, Sometimes it DOES Work!

Finished my marking! 30 essays in 11 hours… A new record, I think.

The highlight: The one student who, against my directions, used ME as the iconic Jewish character in her dialogue on Fiddler on the Roof (1971) as demeaning to Jews and Judaism… I guess I was the only Jew she knew, so she ran with it. (By the way, G-d bless Topol!)

I gotta tell you – A little creepy to read myself in a paper.

She described my grin as silly… Do you guys think that’s true?

In any case, I have marked all thirty papers (there are three coming in late on Monday), and the average actually landed DIRECTLY on the 72% average the prof wanted us to aim for. No fudging, no lies, no back stabbing. Just directly on 72%.

Pretty cool.

So, that’s the bulk of my weekend news… Uh, I watched The Manchurian Candidate (2004). It was pretty great, though it was tough getting used to beloved (cool, calm, pretty) Denzel looking all disheveled and washed-up. But, man, do I love Liev Schreiber. Oh, and Denzel. Don’t forget him. (*sigh*)

So, there we have it. Pretty exciting, huh?

Jeesh, I’m gonna have to go out and commit some sort of atrocity and record it all, a la Se7en (1995), if I am to avoid losing my readers, eh? Oh well, at least then I’ll get to meet Morgan Freeman…

I’m rambling now, so I’ll stop.

Excuses, Excuses, Excuses.

I am just too busy to update right now. Uh…

Wait a sec. I have a note from my mum:


“To Whom it May Concern:

Please excuse Holly from updating her bloggy-thing, but she is far too busy with her marking and chores to go out to play.

Thank you,
Holly’s Mother.”


Go check out Latke Larry instead. Or maybe the new Garfield comic.

Uh, yeah… That’s all.

Back to marking…

Egg Nog, Tornadoes, and Poppies, Mon.

I sit here getting ready to get back to my stack of marking while sipping on the year’s fist appearance of Egg Nog. Is it me, or does the fact that they only sell it for two months smack of speculation? I’m not a Christian, so I don’t need Farmer’s Dairy to make my Christmas special… Just let me have Egg Nog for the winter, at least. That’s all I ask.

However, for now I have it and I won’t think of how annoying it is when they jerk it away after New Year’s.

Also, as no one died, I can get a smile over the fact that, mere months after I and my closest friends got out of the joint, Hamilton (Ontario) has been hit by a small tornado. Not that I wish the people of that city real harm, but I enjoy the fact that nature hates that place as much as I.

I can’t help but feel that the storm was born out of the collective will of those of us who have escaped its gloom and horror.

Further, it is Remembrance Day, and I am wallowing in good, old-fashioned Red and White pride. Sometimes, you just have to glow about the fact that you’re a Canadian. Especially today; aside from refreshing a fading grasp on the history of WWI, we remember that Canada fought to liberate Europe from the Nazis a full two years before the US felt personally obligated to declare war. (On Japan, that is. Remember that the US never declared war on Germany. Rather, Germany declared war on them, on December 11, 1941.)

So, in light of all this gastronomic and personal satisfaction, I am, surprisingly (after my post last night), in a fairly good mood. I have a whole weekend to get TA work done, write a rough draft of a small paper, get some minutes typed up from the last R&C society meeting, and get some outline notes done for my November 29th seminar on Rastafarianism- a tradition for which I am gaining a growing admiration and affection.

That sounds like a lot, actually, but it’s all stuff that can be done with little pain on my end. Ah, yes… I think I can see December 17th from here…

No, I Never Did.

No, I never did have a day like that. I thought I had, but it turns out I was just tired and depressed. Sure, my showing wasn’t earth shattering, but the movie was great, the popcorn was tasty, and the crowd was fairly large (this close to term paper season), so I guess I made out OK.

However, the low point of the evening is when a certain human-pile-of-snot, who shall remain nameless, but, who, in the final reckoning, has absolutely no impact on my life, said:

“It must be great not to have to read books, but to just watch movies instead.”

*sigh*

Yes, because political theory about the meaning of secularism in medieval Catholicism is just that much more important to the study of humanity than is film, the pinnacle of media in our times.

Oh, and it is an absolute fact that film students never read. Right?

Sorry, but I’ll take Charlie Chaplin, or Eddie Murphy, or Joan Micklin Silver over Wittgenstein, any day, pal.

Ultimately, everyone else in the room thought it went well.

I just wanted to deconstruct that guy’s existence, starting with his head. But, what else do you expect from someone who doesn’t read?

Ever have one of those days that seemed OK then turned out to be one of those crappy nightmares where you end up with no pants...

... and your advisor is grading you on the shape of your left ass cheek?

Did you?

Well, I had pants, but I was little better off.

I wasn’t prepared, and that’s my fault. The MA student who came to the showing only to take a piss, that’s not my fault.

However, when it comes to not being able to answer questions from the audience, there comes a point where you have to stop saying “They’re just jerks,” and start questioning whether you’re just not bright enough.

Crisis time for Holly. Don’t worry, I’m pretty shallow so I assume it’ll pass.

Let’s just hope that happens quickly… and before I start seriously considering that job at Coffee Time down the street.

Bill!

I don’t want to jinx anything, but it has already been a pretty terrific day.

In Islam class, the prof has eased up considerably. I have a theory that, now that the drop-date has passed and claimed one victim, she is stuck with the rest of us (who survived the birthing process, as it were), and has decided to relax. We actually had a great class, with a lot of laughs and some really hard work put in by all – she even praised us at the end of session! We all left feeling bushels more secure and smart than we usually do on Thursday afternoons.

The title of this post is a reference from this session, which was probably more funny to all of us than to you, but I shall share it, anyway. Drawing a blank today while being pressed for a series of synonyms for “will” (as in free will), I blurted the only word in my head: “Bill!?!” Surprisingly, the prof laughed pretty soundly, and said I was clever… That’s one interpretation of it…

Just now, as I sit typing at my desk in my campus office, I can hear two “brittanies” (presumably blonde, perky, and in those godawful ugly pink mukluks they seem to favour around here) discussing my showing of The Believer (2001) tonight, while they wait in the hall by my door for class. It seems the “RATED R- FOR SEXUALITY, VIOLENCE AND OBJECTIONABLE MATERIAL (Veiwer Discretion is Strongly Advised)” warning label on the posters out there is having the desired effect. They sound pretty titillated… Or maybe it’s just the thought of Ryan Gosling in that said sexual content…

Yeah, but he doesn’t look very hot beating Jews up on the subway, though, but I won’t burst their bubble. I hope they come… And squeal.

(Holy Hannah! They just used the word "forbidden"... Like, say contortionist parlour sex in the Victorian ages...?)

So, it is now 4pm, and my lecture/showing isn’t until 7pm, so I have three hours in which to prepare my talk and grab some supper. AND, as this seems to be a pretty lucky day, I just discovered a DVD player in the computer, so I even have time to re-watch the thing.

Maybe this’ll actually go well… Unless I’ve cursed myself by being optimistic… Which I almost certainly have…

Uh… It’s snowing… So, yeah… What a crappy day…

(Does that reverse it??? Damned Evil Eye.)

December 17, 2005.

On December 17th, 2005 I will enter my final grade for the term, and I will be free for a whole three weeks!

Free… Free… Free…

It is important to keep these things in mind.

Strategic Voting and the Evils it Brings

I am forced to clarify my last post:

I am not, nor have I ever, promoted strategic voting. This is what consistently harms the NDP in these elections. Leftists often vote against their true leanings to put the Liberals in, because they fear the Conservatives.

Please, don’t!

VOTE NDP, and vote often (as they say- har har).

However, we can agree that the Liberals are the better of two evils, and this would be my second choice if I don’t get to ever use the phrase, “Right Honourable Jack Layton”… Which, let’s face it, I probably won’t.

*sigh*

URGENT NEWS: THE CANADIAN GOVERNMENT HAS COLLAPSED!

Well, that’s a bit of an over statement, but I gotta grab attention in whatever way I can.

Federal NDP leader Jack Layton is calling for a Nov 24th motion to dissolve Parliament, leading to an election in February 2006. The NDP has decided it can no longer hold up one end of the sagging Liberal minority government.

PM Paul Martin now has to face Gomery outcomes at the same time as an election.

Now, I was a Liberal in my childhood, mostly because I fell for Chrétien, but I have never liked Martin, and consider myself an unaffiliated NDP (Canadian Democrat), with very liberal social values, but semi-Libertarian ideas of government involvement in civilian life… I’m not quite Ayn Rand, but neither am I a Jack Layton carbon copy.

So, in some ways I am happy to see the NDP force some squeals out of the Liberals…

HOWEVER, I am once again facing a Canadian Federal Election in which HARPER could, conceivably be named out leader… Dear Lord – Bush Lite, in our PMO???

Stimulus overload, here… Gotta go register…

IT’S TIME TO VOTE DOWN THE CONSERVATIVES…
Even if it means another four years of Martin.

Proof of a Beneficent Higher Power

Regardless of whether you believe in a god, and whatever form you believe him or her to be in, I have incontrovertible proof that It/He/She is good and loving…

Denzel Washington.

Now, if there is a Superior Power, it makes sense that this Power would make men… But to make one so charming and decorative? THAT act of generosity is proof that the Power in intelligent, and that that Power loves us.

There - eight years of religious study (and a life time of movie watching) put to good use… Although I think I actually stole this same argument from St. Augustine…

You Gotta Pick Your Battles

Well, in looking at my next few weeks, I have faced some tough decisions. I have had to make some changes to the line up, for the good of the team.

The following player has been cut from my educational experience: Taussig’s Devil and Commodity Fetishism. Sorry, but your book was just too long.

Sure, that’ll mean faking my way through a class, but, hey, it’s only three hours.

Look on the bright side: I did buy your book, and some day I may read it… instead of just admiring the cartoonish red Satan (complete with little goatee) on the front and contemplating the mysteries of a cherry-red-ass on a Prince of Darkness.

That is all for now. Future cuts are expected due to need, and will be announced when decisions are finalized.

That is all.

We Didn’t Land on Hybridity. Hybridity Landed on Us.

This is a brief note about buzz words, and how they stick in my craw, and come back out through my nose. When I hear people use terms and phrases like “unpack that”, and “deconstruct”, and “genealogy,” and “discourse,” and (most especially) “hybridity” it really makes my ass twitch.

Now don’t get me wrong. All of these terms and the theories they represent are pretty cool, and very useful. I use them a great deal in my own research into the socially-constructed Whiteness of Jews, and the impact of post-colonial mimicry on Jewish ethnic identity as illustrated by the portrayal of intermarriage between Jews and Gentiles in film.

Furthermore, Foucault turned the giant microscope of ethnography back on the White West, and this was a very useful and constructive thing. We all have traces of the European, Christian (and post-Christian) Enlightenment riding our backs, and it is time to face up to it.

Even those who feel we aren’t heirs to White, male, heterosexual, middle-class, capitalist, post-Christian, and post-Enlightenment brainwashing can’t help but find it in our closets if we look hard enough.

However, when a very blond, middle-class, heterosexual, Christian, and capitalist young grad student, complete with a oh-so-trendy mountain gear ruck-sack uses these terms as a shield against any true thought, insight and feeling that might actually creep up and bite him on his pearly white ass, I feel like kicking him in that same pristine seat of knowledge.

Tonight, I just couldn’t say no to that demon who sits on my shoulder and whispers: “Do it. You know you want to. Bite him. Go ahead.” I exploded!

Using hybridity, this particular Beaver Cleaver’s favorite word, was the end for me. He used it to cover the fact that, though he had chosen to make chit-chat about the deconstruction of the “auteur” theory (while I would have been just as pleased to discuss the weather or the political state of Paris right now), he actually had no education in auteurism, and showed no real scrap of understanding the history of film from which it had sprung.

Blame it on the couple of hours of Malcolm X (1992) we saw tonight in class (those of you who know me these days will attest to the fact that that is a nasty influence on my temper and tolerance for bullshit). Blame it on the fact that I needed a smoke. Or blame it on the fact that it was 10.30pm and I had yet to eat that day. Whatever you blame it on, you can now scrape little bits of creamy-Bourgeoisie-pomposity off of Hazel Street sidewalks, all the way down to campus.

And I’d do it again. In a minute involved in a hybrid-syncratic power relationship with New York City, which is a post-colonial construction of a geographical area, which, if deconstructed, only exists in the mind of Walt Disney’s old valet’s grandniece.

Screw you, and your “discourse,” Beave. There is an appropriate place and an inappropriate place for that kind of language. It is a tool with which we can understand our world. It is not a smoke screen that hides the fact that you don’t know anything else to say.

Using it that way does no one a good turn.

As the Worm Turns, So Do the Days of Our Lives

This is the completely mundane and non-funny log of the USS Drowned-n-Unsaved. Here follows an account of our plan to make it around one of the hairiest reefs of these PhD waters.

I am slowly beginning to come out of my spasm of fear over the sheer amount of obstacles I must hurdle this next month and a half (or the amount of plates I must keep spinning in the air, if you will). This calm comes, as all calms do, from actually sitting down and getting some stuff done tonight.

First, I emailed the prof for whom I TA, and I asked he put times and deadlines on all the work and marking I have left for him this term. He has done so, and this has made my time-budget much more firm and less gelatinous - always a relief for the post-BLOB generation.

Second, I finished the posters for my screening and preparing the basic notes for my Believer talk on Thursday night. If I get more time, I will add and polish and practice, but at least I am covered in the most essential areas. I also finished typing up all the outstanding RCS meeting minutes, and emailed them off, along with a copy of my Believer lecture poster so it can be hung around campus.

Finally, I have completed a good deal of research into auto-ethnography for my paper due on the 29th, and have started writing the rough draft. I cleared the angle with the prof via email, and she is all for my treatment of the memoir Paper Shadows (Wayson Choy, 1999) as self-ethnography, so I think I’m on a good track there. I have also completed all my readings for Tuesday, and have started the readings for Thursday (which I will finish bit by bit each night in bed, as it is in convenient book form, as opposed to my Tuesday class articles). Getting these clots of reading done will enable me to finish my marking in a no-holds-barred, full-on marking blitz on Wednesday.

I still have no idea when, exactly, I will find time to do the two major research papers (by the way, PhD term papers here have to contain original concepts, not just research works… I miss the MA). However, for the time being I am keeping my head above water… I just have to keep repeating:

Breathe. Stroke. Breathe. Stroke. (Repeat as needed.)

Panic!

Holy Crap.
Holy Crap.
Holy Crap.

Marking in this week- 50 essays. Public lecture to deliver on Thursday- not ready. Tutorials to lead next Monday on Islam and African-American history. Comment paper, seminar paper and major presentation due on the 29th- not ready for that, either. Minutes for RCS piling up; newsletter to edit. Call for papers needing attention. Bursaries to apply for. Half hour lecture to teach on Babette’s Feast (1987), ritual meals, and the history of Protestantism in Europe for November 22. Haven’t even seen the film! More tutorials to give (Hinduism and course review)… Crap – EXAMS to mark, and another set of 50 papers to mark in early December… Grades to calculate.

CRAP!

Major papers due on the 7th and 16th of December, and weekly readings all the way up till then. CRAP! CRAP! CRAP!

I’m falling apart here!! (But I must admit I enjoy the adrenalin… a little bit, at least.)

Easy, girl. Xmas vacation is out there somewhere. You just have to survive another month and a half.

Calm blue ocean. Calm blue ocean… Remember: If you wanted a stable life, you could have become a clerk somewhere.

I Am One Sadistic Twist.

Right now, my cat lies on the floor of my study with a shoelace double-knotted around his middle. He can’t undo it, due to his unfortunate lack of thumbs. I knew this, yet I still tied it to him. With a bow. I can only marvel at the depths of inhumanity his meaningless howls and spurts of bad behaviour (all while I am trying to get work done, out of a pettish desire to force my attention on him) lower me to. I don’t hit, I don't threaten, and I don’t yell, I just make sure he is in for a good stretch of discomfort and humiliation.

OK, I untied it. Now, where he used to play with that lace with a charming, kittenish sense of fun, he now attacks it with a fresh gleam of vengeance in his eyes…

Now I understand better my feelings when I tied it to him.

Ah, yes - Insight into the animal within. What a treasure.

PAs from the AV Club

First, please note some interesting new comments on my “Prussian Blue” post.

Second, remember that anyone who will be in the area is invited to my showing of The Believer (2001) this Thursday at WLU, in the Bricker Building. (Punch and Pie).

Third, just a reminder that, now that Hallowe’en is over, it is Poppy Season for us Canucks, so please give generously, and wear your poppy in memory of Canada’s fallen soldiers (of good wars- namely WWI and II, and possibly Korea, but I don’t know much about that one… Except for what I learned from M*A*S*H… Uh, let’s just stick to the non-puppet wars… Uh, maybe let’s switch topics – My pacifist ethics are starting to kick the crap out of my Red-and-White-patriotic ethics…)

That is all.

Seven Degrees of Ira.

John was tired of working on his Moonie paper, so we took a break tonight to watch Two Weeks Notice (2002) - yes, the second time for me. What do you want, we paid to rent the damn thing, so we may as well get the use out of it!

Anyway, the fact that I seen the spiteful little red-headed lawyer in it (Alicia Witt) bothered me the other night until I realized she played Cybill Shepherd’s daughter in the (pretty crappy) CBS sitcom Cybill (1995). Tonight, this got me thinking about that sitcom, and I remembered that I really loved her father in that show- Alan Rosenberg (better known as Ira from that sitcom, a name by which I still refer to him- Despite the fact that he seems to be on some little show called The Guardian now).

During the second viewing of a, let’s face it, unspectacular movie, I started getting all nostalgic for the crush I had on the guy. He was on LA Law, as Eli, and guest starred on Murphy Brown… So basically every schlock American crapcom and melodrama that clogged the air waves during my formative years. (See his full CV at Nerf-Herders'- the supplier of the lovely photo for today's post.)

Thank you, Network TV! They seem to have warped my adolescent fantasies, what with Harold Gould from The Golden Girls, Rob Morrow from Northern Exposure, and this guy.

(For those of you unable to recognize even the most blatant of patterns, I appear to have a thing for 30-to-60-something Jewish men… Nothing I can do about that folks, it’s the anti-intermarriage gene implanted by my grandmother’s biogenetics lab crew working out of her busy Polish kitchen when I was only 10 months old. Most kids get Fisher-Price, I got a DNA-altering/activating serum in a ten-inch syringe.)

So, from that chippie in a pretty low-interest film, I got the joy of re-visiting an old friend I haven’t thought of in years. It took me a while to find out if my memories were even correct, because I couldn’t even remember the actor’s name, but here he is.

Ah, if only I could use these powers of research for good instead of ridiculous.

I Am the Lizard Queen! (Pass the Orb.)

On Friday night, our friend Andrew was a grass widower (or at least his wife was out for the night with a bunch’o’gals from the social work department), so we went over to his place to watch a movie and eat a lot of stuff that would make a cardiologist turn blue with frustration (over the clear failure of the medical cadre to take final control of the world and suck the fun out of the hearts of North American youths).

He suggested Oldboy (2003), but, you know, for some reason a Korean flick that won at Cannes just wasn’t up my alley… Too much Marx Bros., I guess. So I finally talked him down to Sleeper (1973), which he borrowed from us weeks ago and had not yet watched. This was a good plan, as his wife dislikes Woody Allen with a passion only matched by Mia right now, so we took the chance to soak ourselves in some old fashioned Allen-style clarinet and slapstick. Such fun!

Too bad Amanda came home early and had to bear the film’s last hour, but she was polite about it.

So, it was a pretty good night, marred only by a deep discussion of secularism’s roots in Christianity, and the comparative values of objectivity/rationality vs. the idea of unattainable “truth,” via Asad and the deconstructionlists. This wouldn’t have been too bad, except for the fact that it was one in the morning, I was tired and silly, and the menu for Sleeper was playing its ragtime tune over and over again in the background. By the end, the strains of trumpets and banjos were starting to burn a hole in my brain in combination with post-colonial buzz words… To the point that I declared that I have sworn off being “a Human in today’s world” for Lent, and that I was now a Gecko in today’s world… That’s one way to end a philosophical debate. I think Woody would back me up on that one.

Oh, Academics. Not a pretty picture at times.

Well, to make a long story a little longer, we definitely have friends here, finally… Even if Andrew is prone to using words like “discourse” and “disjunction”, and a series of other terms that make my ass twitch, and despite the fact that Amanda doesn’t like Woody Allen (a man I consider integral to my cultural heritage). Still, the pop was good, their cat is a doll, and I like the fact that we have become comfortable in the “hey- wanna’ come over?” stage of companionship. Pretty sweet.

My night off down the street has caused me to bail out of tonight’s potluck to which I had been invited by a prof from the University of Waterloo. Duty calls, and I need to get at least half of everything ever written read for next week… OK, maybe only an eighth of everything ever written in the history of mankind… But that’s still a lot.

*sigh*

On with the reading…

DEAR LORD!

The Olsen Twins have been taken over by White Supremacists and, if they score their own clothing line, the world is doomed!

Seriously- Take a look at this piece of horror about "Prussian Blue" that was sent to me by a woman in our department… It’s absolutely revolting.

Please, get this word out, as I think the Nazis have finally found the way to regain the souls of nine-year-olds… Sugar Pop!

Holy shit.

Ah, Groucho, I Could Kiss You… You Know… If You Weren’t Dead and All…

This is my love letter to Groucho Marx.

If you don’t know this guy, you should… He’s in our hearts, in our souls, on the smile of every new baby…

No, wait, that’s a long distance plan ad.

Ah, but my Lord was that man funny.

Without him, our faces would be without funny noses on Hallowe’en (my el-cheapo costume this year… depressingly realistic, actually). Without Groucho, hunched postures would be less socially acceptable, and tails wouldn’t be nearly as funny as they are. Without him we wouldn’t have “my Aunt Minnie,” and “it’s bigamy too.” Without Groucho, we wouldn’t have Woody Allen, and we wouldn’t have hours of muscle spasms from laughter.

Without Groucho, my life wouldn’t be what it is…

My eyebrows wouldn’t be “interesting” or “amusing”, they’d just be plain unattractive, and without him half the jokes I tell would be new.

I’ll thank him for that one later.

Seriously, folks, “Hooray for Captain Spaulding!” It gets me through those darker hours… with all the levies in the Jewish section of Cocoanut Manor.

“If ‘ittle icky baby keeps on tawkin’ like that, she’s gonna get her teeth jammed all the way down her ickle troat.”

Gold.

Listless. Completely without a List.

I know I have work to do, but I am just so ruddy bored and antsy I can’t do anything but sit here and blink and twitch. Perhaps I expected the world to change or end when I managed to survive my meeting, but I got little by way of fireworks- just some garlic rice and some flat orange pop…

I am tired of just sitting here listening to the thumping from upstairs and flipping through Groucho Marx’s FBI file. I can’t even be bothered to chase the cat off the printer for the hundredth time tonight.

I went for a walk, and the weather is beautiful, but I can’t just sit outside all evening. (There seems to be an inordinate amount of half-ton trucks driving around, with those flood-light roll bar things… Was worried I’d land myself in the middle of a Klan rally, so I came home.) So I went out and rented something insipid and I will sit here and watch it, so as not to bother John, who actually is being productive tonight. I had a smoothie, but not even that managed to pull me out of the Dullsville Dump.

So if anyone is up for some parcheesi, I’m your gal.

*yawn*

Nightmares Don’t Exist for Me, Anymore!

Last night’s "early to bed" did work and it didn’t. Went to bed thinking about what I had to do today, and that made me remember that Dr. D. would have returned my paper and term paper proposal back into my box… Which made me wonder what I got on them, which made me think of Islam’s meeting, which made me think of flunking out, yadda yadda, so on and so forth.

However, hugging my ferociously purring and warm/fluffy cat a bit tighter to protect myself against the anxiety, I did manage to fall asleep. However, being full of blood-curdling fear on a daily basis this week, I was plagued by really torrid and bloody nightmares, involving demon children and a serial killer slashing a whole whack of throats with a long, old-fashion straight razor… I woke up at 5am, and was too terrified to go back to bed.

I was still shaken by it when I got to campus, actually, and, to some extent, just writing that now, I still am… BUT all is right with the world, in any case.

My Dr. D. paper was fine (A!!), and the proposal was accepted…

And my meeting with my Islam prof?

She not only let us out early from class, by a WHOLE HOUR, but she sat and discussed my proposal with me for about twenty minutes. She read the copy I brought, leaving detailed and helpful criticisms on it, and basically told me what she would burn me on if I didn’t watch out. And then… I’m gonna pee myself if I don’t calm down over this…

Then she said that the work I was doing was important and very well planned, that there were several very strong and original points, and that it shows that I have grasped and digested the materials of the class in a very analytical and organic way, and that my mind was clearly functioning at the level she loved to see in a PhD student. Then… HOLY COW… She said she was IMPRESSED…

(Hyperventilating).

Later, my advisor confirmed my suspicions: This is not a woman easily impressed. Harder, my advisor thought, than Schuller.

Well, not gonna drop out just yet… I’m gonna wait around to see what happens to me.

Now I will go home and sleep the rest of the non-horrified, just for today, and see how that feels for a change.