Mood:  accident prone

It's springtime at last.  The sun is shining, birds are tweeting, flowers are blooming, and George F. Will is angry at pants.

In particular, he takes issue with the wearing of blue jeans by adults.  To George Will, for whom everything started going to hell around 1920, it's a symptom of the decline of Western civilization.

Here's the gist of his complaint:

Denim is the infantile uniform of a nation in which entertainment frequently features childlike adults ("Seinfeld," "Two and a Half Men") and cartoons for adults ("King of the Hill"). Seventy-five percent of American "gamers" -- people who play video games -- are older than 18 and nevertheless are allowed to vote. In their undifferentiated dress, children and their childish parents become undifferentiated audiences for juvenilized movies (the six -- so far -- "Batman" adventures and "Indiana Jones and the Credit-Default Swaps," coming soon to a cineplex near you).

He goes on to proclaim:

For men, sartorial good taste can be reduced to one rule: If Fred Astaire would not have worn it, don't wear it. For women, substitute Grace Kelly.

Why, my dear chap, if you're going to motor down to Hyde Park in the Dusenberg to hiss at Roosevelt, nothing less than a top hat and spats will do.

Now, blue jeans strike me as a petty thing to be kvetching about, given the horrendous state of the economy, the war, the environment, global warming, etc.  (I suppose if you have a stick up your you-know-what, denim does tend to chafe a little.)   Fashions change continually to reflect society's needs, so Will's diatribe is nothing new.  I'd be willing to bet that back in the '40s, old-timers were scoffing at fedoras and lamenting the decline of the stovepipe hat and whalebone corset.  And before that, people were bemoaning the disappearance of powdered wigs and knee breeches.  These kids today...going out in public with NO BEAUTY MARKS! 

I'm willing to concede that men and women look far more dashing in evening dress, and that fashion was a tad more elegant back in the day.  But it certainly wasn't practical.  You see old photos of men in woolen suits, ties and hats at baseball games and movies and on airplanes.  They look sweaty and miserable.  Women had to squeeze themselves into girdles and corsets and stockings and slips, enduring the poking of multiple struts, stays, and hooks.  Physically and socially, it was a much more repressed, button-down world.

Blue jeans remain popular because they've gone through the Darwinian fashion selection process: Survival of What Fits.  They're comfortable, they're flattering to the derriere, they're easy to wash, and fuss-free. They're more versatile for a 21st century population whose lifestyle includes baby spit-up, jumping dogs with muddy paws, leaf raking, dusting, gardening, vacuuming, pumping gas, hauling groceries, internet surfing, fetching Frisbees off the roof, and playing Pirate Ship with the kids in the backyard. (Try doing all that in pearls and a poodle skirt.) Bowties and tweeds may work well for light newspaper punditry, but what does George Will wear when it's time to paint bookcases and clean the gutters?  Or is that for the servants to worry about?

Not only that, I must disagree that jeans can't be elegant or fashionable.  Is there anyone who doubts that if Grace Kelly were alive today, she'd be rocking a pair of skinny dark $600 jeans, a silk top, and a pair of sky-high heels?  (And didn't Fred Astaire wear jeans during the "Texas Millionaire" number of Daddy Long Legs?)

And what about this dude?  Is he not the epitome of modern urban hipster wenham-denim cool?

And don't tell me that men don't wear hats anymore...

And look! THIS pair of jeans just oozes refinement and taste.

Yesterday morning in the shower, which is where my stupidest ideas take wing, I thought: wouldn't it be great to have a delicatessen with sandwiches named after David characters?  Like those lunch places in New York and L.A. where you can order an "Al Pacino" or a "Steve McQueen", and there's signed photos all over the wall.  Usually the sandwich has some vague symbolic connection to its namesake.

Sample sandwich menu:

"The Dilios" - 5 pounds of meat on a white bulky roll (fiber is for wusses), slathered with horseradish sauce, jalapenos, and Scotch Bonnet peppers, and sprayed with Mace.  Think you can stand the heat, ya noodle-necked Athenian girly-man?

"The Ethan" - Pastrami on marble rye.  You're not hungry?  Take.  Eat.

No?  Then I'll eat it for you.

Oh, you want it after all?  Here.  It was never mine in the first place.

"The John O'Brien" - Philander-adelphia steak 'n' cheese sub.

"The Faramir" - Lightly grilled hero.

"The Neil Fletcher" - We go into the restaurant next door and steal beef out of other customer's sandwiches.  Then we top it with a little ham and plenty of cheese, and serve with Moxie.

"The Carl" - A side dish of curly fries, cooked in our deep friar, then garnished with garlic and holy water.

"The Eden Fletcher" - Jerk chicken, flogged with barbecue sauce.

"The Luke" - Free range bison peppered with buckshot, Swiss cheese, and 1/4 pound of oozing ketchup.  Served with a side of hot tomato.

"The Josh" - Root vegetables mounted suggestively atop a rumpled bed of lettuce.  Served with tea brewed in our coffee maker.

"The Brand New Day Guy"  We toss your sandwich out the window.  Because we quit!  Screw this job.

Posted by dessicatedcoconut at 6:05 PM EDT

Updated: April 18, 2009 9:07 PM EDT

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Mood:  lazy

"Australia is yours until Saturday," the Blockbuster cashier told me as she rang up my rental.

Whee doggies!!!  You hear that, Australia??? You're MINE now.  For one week.  All twenty million of you.

Oh, what to do with my newfound powers?  I've never owned a whole country for a week before.

Let's start with a few cosmetic changes.  First of all, David Wenham's face will be going on all your coinage, with the motto RES CALIDA! ("Hot Stuff").  The stars on your flag will be replaced by small mullets.

Secondly, it is hereby decreed that "Waltzing Matilda" shall be translated into proper English.  All those verses about boiling billies and tucker bags?  Think of the young, impressionable minds you've warped over the years.  For example, at our school we learned this song in first grade, when the music teacher went on a brief Australian kick.  After we sang it, one kid raised her hand and asked what a "billabong" was.  The teacher said it was a kind of coffee can, and that a "coolibah tree" was, obviously, some type of tree, probably made out of cork, and please not to ask any more questions about the "swagman" or the "jumbuck".  I'd be willing to bet no one ever explained this song to you either.

Thirdly, in order to bring your nation into conformity with the Kookaburra song and stop confusing six-year-olds who interpret the lyrics literally and grow up thinking Australia is a magical land where the trees blossom with candy and sticks of Juicy Fruit...

Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree
Eating all the gumdrops he can see 

...it is hereby decreed that throughout Australia, from this moment forward, gumdrops will actually grow on trees.  (If they don't grow there naturally, it is OK to wire them onto branches individually.).

Okay, okay, enough clowning around.  Yes, I was renting Australia the movie, not Australia the country.  (But you have to admit that would be a cool idea, for a shop to rent out countries for people to do with as they like for one week.  I'd like to rent Norway and transform it into an emirate.  And make it into the rollercoaster capital of the world.  And invite everyone over for lutefisk kabobs.)

So here are some random thoughts upon a second viewing of Australia....

* David's performance was really stubble.  Neil Fletcher is so cowboy hat.  Every time he's on screen, you can't help but blue eyes.  Tuxedo.  I just...tuxedo.  Nose.

* Funny, when I saw Australia in the theater I didn't notice the crocodile-skin boot splashing into the water next to Maitland Ashley's speared body.  Perhaps that was because the film hadn't yet formally introduced us to Neil Fletcher's footwear.  (Audience, we'd like you to meet tacky reptile clodhopper.  Tacky reptile clodhopper....Audience.)  The film does have quite a fetish for those boots.  Neil's presence is often signalled by a closeup of one boot descending with a chill authoritarian stomp.  What a nassssty dude.  You just know he wishes Lady Ashley's prim English neck was underneath.

* Things I got a chuckle out of:  The Expository Artwork hanging on the wall of King Carney's office, in the form of a map of Australia with CARNEY CATTLE possessively stencilled across the entire Northern Territory.  (Sorry, King Carney, you can't have Australia till I return it.)  I bet if you looked, the outer door would have a nameplate reading VILLAIN'S LAIR.

*Things I got a chuckle out of, part 2: The newsreel breathlessly updating Darwin filmgoers on the status of the crucial Australian Military Beef Contract.  You'd think the outcome of the entire war depended on whose cheeky bulls got loaded into the bloody big ship first.  Of course, if I were a soldier I think I'd prefer flank steak from Faraway Downs.  Lord only knows what King Carney feeds his cattle.

*If you are patient enough to sit through the credits, you'll hear the Drover's Song, a twangy number about freedom and outcasts and making the southern skies your blanket.  Why no Fletcher song?

You're missing your best calves
Your floor's full of fly halves
Your bum he'll be grabbin',
'fore he burns your cabin...
It's Fletcher, it's Fletcher,
Is he bad? You betcher!

* The DVD includes a wonderful deleted scene between the Drover, Fletcher, and Lady Ashley.  Fletcher is keen to get Lady Ashley on the road back to Darwin so he can continue stealing cattle.  He's bustling around, getting her suitcases in the car, acting all fake-solicitous.  The Drover is trying to convince Sarah to stay, because otherwise he's out of a job.  Guess who wins?  (Well, duh...if Lady Sarah had listened to Neil and gone back to Darwin, there would be no movie.)

* If I understand this correctly, Neil deliberately contrived to have Lord Ashley send the Drover to pick up Lady Sarah, knowing that the Drover would get drunk and fight and be all flyblown and sweaty and rough-mannered on the drive home, thereby shocking the prim Lady Sarah into wilting like an English rose and going home.  Fletcher was apparently not acquainted with the Law of Unintended Consequences.  That's what you get for outsourcing your dirty work, Neil.  You should have driven her yourself and...I don't know, belched or told rude jokes or something.  She would have been on the next airboat to Singapore.

* I was afraid my Hugh Jackman Persistent Afterimage Disorder might flare up again, but the campfire scene passed without incident.  It helps that my TV screen is the size of a washcloth. 

* Brandon Walters does a knockout job as Nullah.  What an outstanding performance.  I must admit, his narration reminded me a little of the kid from "Pass the Dutchie" ("Dis generation!  Rules de nation!"). Which in turn reminded me of Doug's rant from Cosi ("Too long have white motherfuckers ruled this nation!").  Sometimes my mind wanders a little.  I need to get it one of those invisible electronic dog fences.

* Why do Hollywood sex-scene bedrooms ALWAYS have billowing white sheets tacked to the wall?  Who decorates their bedroom like that?  And then leaves the windows open for all the mosquitoes to come in?  During the wet season?

* I think I mentioned this before, but one of the fundamental problems with the film is that Australia isn't made exotic enough, except briefly when we enter Nullah's dream-song sequences (which are totally cool and they should have done the whole movie from that viewpoint).  The narrative structure is taken straight out of old Westerns and epic romances of the '30s, plus it borrows from "The Wizard of Oz", one of the most well-known films of all time.  There isn't a lot of strangeness, or a feeling that we've strayed far from generic Hollywood back lots.  Bill Bryson remarks in "In A Sunburned Country" that Australia feels very culturally familiar to Americans, which is an unsettling feeling when you have to travel such a very long way to get there.  After that fifteen-hour plane ride, at the very least, you should step out and see dromedaries, or the surface of Venus.  Instead you see the same busy streets, glass office buildings, and Starbucks that you just left back home.  It's Canada in a thong.  Same with this film: Baz is too busy replicating the movies he loved as a kid to transport us to undiscovered realms of the imagination.  Nothing wrong with paying homage, but it keeps the movie from ever really lifting off and achieving flight.  Still, it's very well-crafted.

* At one point during the movie, I scribbled down a note on a receipt: "Whyn crack.  Be sure to mention in Grove."  Your guess is as good as mine.

Posted by dessicatedcoconut at 9:51 PM EDT

Updated: April 5, 2009 1:37 AM EDT

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Mood:  chatty

Like the header?  I spotted it on the Huffington Post, denouncing some minor heresy or other, and immediately fell in love.  It followed me home, so I decided to keep it and reincarnate it as a blog post topic. 

A few evenings ago, at the violet hour of the pernod, I betook me to my divan with a borrowed Kittredge edition of Shakespeare, flipped on the TV, and settled in for a quality tete a tete with the Bard.  And so it came to pass that I found myself simultaneously reading Twelfth Night and watching American Idol.  (If music be the food of love, American Idol is a bag of Cheetos glowing lightly atop a pile of spent uranium fuel rods.)  There's something a little surreal about savoring the melancholy iambs of Come and kiss me, sweet and twenty/For youth's a stuff will not endure while Kelly Clarkson belts out "My Life Will Suck Without You".  Highbrow meets lowbrow.

Then it struck me: this must be what it's like to experience Jerry Springer: The Opera.

If you won't be able to attend the performances in Sydney, but would like to simulate the experience of improving your mind while killing off brain cells, there are all sorts of creative ways you could vicariously participate.  For example, you could tune the TV to NASCAR and play Faure's Requiem.  Eat a Twinkie while gazing at Desmoiselles d'Avignon.  Open a bottle of Baccarat's "Les Larmes Sacrees des Thebes" perfume and inhale gently, while rubbing your meathooks across one of those acrylic mesh baseball hats with the twin beer holders.  I'm sure you can think of many, many others.  Just remember: some are born tacky, some achieve tackiness, and some have tackiness thrust upon 'em.

So, Twelfth Night turned out to be a pretty ideal accompaniment to American Idol, because it too is chock full of characters randomly bursting into song: "When that I was and a tiny little boy/With a hey, ho, the wind and the rain...."   If Feste the Clown were to sing this on American Idol, it would sound like this:  "Wheee-eee-nnn that I-ee-I-ee-I wahass *gasp!* and a tiheeneee little bo--ee--ii--aaeeiioouuandsometimesy---yy...with a OO! OO! AH!  Heyyyyy!..."

(By the way, the technical term for stretching a single syllable up and down across different notes is "melisma".  Or as we record industry insiders pronounce it: "mee-aaa-ooo-liii-eee--iiiYEOW BABY!!sma".)

Feste's kind of an interesting character.  He's like the Johnny Spit of Twelfth Night, sailing through the maelstrom unscathed and making more respectable people look like total fools.  Like Spit, Feste's a lot cleverer than people give him credit for.  "I wear not motley in my brain," he says to Lady Olivia, meaning he might look the fool on the outside, but he isn't a natural-born fool.  "Cucullus non facit monarchum," he adds: "the cowl does not make the monk" (sometimes translated as "Simon Cowell thinks that stunk.")

I've decided that the pitch meeting for each American Idol episode goes approximately like this:

1. "Hey, we need a theme.  How about Whitney Houston week?"

2. "Didn't we do that last week?"

3. "No, that was Whitney Houston Covers Of Dolly Parton Songs week.  This will be totally different."

4. "Fine by me."

5. [sound of golf bags being hoisted on shoulders]

Um, not that I watch AI regularly.  Or at all!  Nothing to see here!  Move along!

(By the way, I really liked Adam Lambert's Middle East-meets-Led Zeppelin rendition of "Ring of Fire".  Sort of a Johnny Kashmir vibe.  Bonus points: it confused the hell out of Randy Travis.)

I had some other point I was going to make here, before getting sidetracked by shiny obj......by reality TV.  Something about Malvolio the steward getting a bad rap.  Generally he's portrayed as a pompous, Puritan stick-in-the-mud who gets what he deserves, even though the practical joke gets carried way too far.  But ya know, he's a steward, and that's what stewards do: they guard the household goods and chattel and make sure nobody makes off with all the booze.  It's their job to be the Fun Police.  I'm sure Denethor, too, would have been peeved if he'd caught a group of Rangers singing "99 Bottles of Beer On The Wall" in the basement of the White Tower at 2 a.m., and drinking all of his best Tokay.  On the other hand, Denethor probably wouldn't have fallen for a fake letter.

But that's all one.  Our post is done.  And we'll strive to please you every day.

Posted by dessicatedcoconut at 7:32 PM EDT

Updated: March 21, 2009 10:55 PM EDT

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Mood:  accident prone

Ready?  Here we go.  58 steps to David Wenham.

1.  I have a brother.

2. My brother once got into a fistfight with John F. Kennedy Jr. when they were kids.

3.  JFK Jr. dated Daryl Hannah.

4. Daryl Hannah was in Splash with Tom Hanks.

5. Tom Hanks was in A League of Their Own with baseball.

6. At baseball games, people eat peanuts.

7. Peanuts recently underwent a mass recall in the US due to reports of salmonella.

8. Salmon are tasty poached in a white wine sauce.

9. Mermaids are also tasty poached in a white wine sauce.

10.  Daryl Hannah played a mermaid in Splash.

11. Did we already mention Tom Hanks was in Splash?  We did? Oh, crap.

12. Tom Hanks was also in Forrest Gump with Richard Nixon.

13. Richard Nixon had a cocker spaniel named Checkers.

14. Checkers is a game played on a board with 64 squares.

15. Chess is also a game played on a board with 64 squares.

16. Chess has these sort of horsey-looking pieces called knights.

17. Christopher Knight played Peter on "The Brady Bunch".

18. Henry V attacked France in 1415 with a bunch of knights.

19. Kenneth Branagh appeared in Henry V, alongside a crate of tennis balls.

20. Roger Federer plays tennis.

21. You know who else plays tennis?  Venus Williams.

22. So does Andre Agassi.

23. Andre Agassi was in those Gillette razor commercials about 94,000 years ago.  The ones where he shaved his head? Remember?

24. Razors are close personal friends with beards.

25. Father Damien had a beard.

26. Father Damien lived in Hawaii.

27. Remember when the Brady Bunch went to Hawaii?  That was cool.

28. Pineapple comes from Hawaii.

29. Pineapple guest-stars in pina coladas along with coconut.

30. Desiccated coconut makes a good dessert topping and mental distraction device.

31. Euw! I hate coconut.

32. I also hate brussels sprouts.

33. Brussels is the capital of Belgium.

34. Father Damien was from Belgium.

35. Father Damien was Catholic.

36. So was Pope Joan (more or less)

37. In Pope Joan, Vikings attack.

38. The Vikings played the Chicago Bears last year.

39. Chicago was overrun by gangsters in the 1930s.

40. Johnny Depp is playing a gangster in the upcoming film Public Enemies.

41. Johnny Depp was in Pirates of the Caribbean with Orlando Bloom.

42. Orlando Bloom was in Lord of the Rings with Liv Tyler.

43. I once got into a fight with Liv Tyler's mother on an Amazon.com comment thread.

44. Amazon.com has many fine movies for sale, including 300.

45. Gerard Butler was in 300.

46. Gerard Butler was in Phantom of the Opera.

47. Also an opera: Jerry Springer: The Opera.

48. Jerry Springer once wheeled a teenaged vampire in a coffin onto the set of his show.

49. Richard Roxborough played a vampire in Van Helsing.

50. Hugh Jackman was in Van Helsing.

51. Hugh Jackman was also in Australia with Nicole Kidman.

52. Nicole Kidman was in Far and Away with Rance Howard.

53. Rance Howard was in Frost/Nixon with Kevin Bacon.

54. Bacon comes from pigs.

55. There was a pig in Cosi.

56. Pigs like to eat food no longer fit for human consumption, such as moldy garlic bread.

57. Moldy garlic bread featured prominently in Three Dollars.

58.  Bread, bread, bread....that reminds me of something...

Oh yes:

There!  I knew eventually somehow, some way, we could work David in there.

And you, dear reader, perusing this post?  At most, 59 degrees of separation!  Whoa...you and David are practically BFFs!

Posted by dessicatedcoconut at 12:04 AM EST

Updated: September 14, 2009 11:38 PM EDT

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Mood:  caffeinated

I picked up a copy of Guardians of Ga'Hoole last week, thinking I'd riffle through it, absorb its cuteness, and write a brief Grove entry.  And...it's quite a riveting tale.  This is going to be an excellent movie.  I was up until the wee hours, turning page after page, anxious to learn the fate of Soren and Gylfie.  Soren is a young Barn Owl who lives contentedly with his family in the peaceful forest of Tyto, until he's captured one day and taken off to the evil St. Aegolius Academy for Orphaned Owls (in reality, a horrible Orwellian factory where young owl fledglings are brainwashed into slavery via a nasty process called "moon-blinking").  There, he meets Gylfie, a spunky fellow inmate who helps him survive the moon-blinking and plot their escape.  It's sort of Harry Potter meets Ayn Rand, with a dash of Tolkien.  The narrative is wildly inventive, a mixture of owl jargon ("dwenking", "yarping", "yoicks", "glaucidium"), authentic owl biology, mythology, and ceremony.  Young owls mark their progress with a series of milestones, including First Insect, First Meat, First Bones, and branching (a prelude to flying), but poor Soren misses out on most of these Firsts after he's kidnapped.  He's the classic orphaned hero, robbed of his childhood prematurely, and forced to rely on his wits and resourcefulness to stay alive.

You have to love a children's book that names its main character after a gloomy Danish philosopher (Kierkegaard...who, despite his bleak anti-Hegelian subjectivist outlook, had the best hair of any of the Existentialists).  As I read, I was trying to figure out which character David will be voicing, but it's hard to speculate at this point.  The first book's main characters are a group of four owls (Soren, Gylfie, Twilight, and Digger).  Soren, Twilight, and Digger are boys, and Gylfie's a girl, which maps neatly onto the David - Rachael Taylor - Geoffrey Rush - Jim Sturgess casting cohort.  However, Ryan Kwanten seems to have already been cast as Soren.  Hugh Jackman and Hugo Weaving are also rumored (but not officially confirmed) to be leads on the project.  So we might be looking at a supporting role.

There's a large array of evillll characters to choose from - Soren's power-hungry brother Kludd, as well as the Ablah General, lieutenants, sublieutenants, monitors, pit guardians, and busybodies who run St. Aggie's.  One or two of the St. Aggie's apparatchiks prove to be more sympathetic than sadistic; these characters are crucial to helping out Soren and Gylfie.  There are also some eagles who periodically show up to save the day (they're temporarily on loan from Lord of the Rings).  Visually, this could be a stunning film.  It's set among forests, canyons, and desert, with moonlight and flight playing a huge role.  If the animators and voice actors can successfully capture the eerie world of the owls, this could really be something special.

My dear friend the Elrond Swooner (who worships Hugo Weaving, with Hugh Jackman and David a close second thanks to my ceaseless propagandizing) reacted thusly when I told her there was a movie that might be starring all three: "Wow.  That's like mixing together hot fudge, caviar, diamonds, and a big pile of 100 dollar bills."

******

A former co-worker and I have been talking about starting up our own e-commerce website, in the aftermath of getting laid off.  The idea of working for ourselves is pretty appealing.  Social networking seems to be the hot area right now, so I've been trying to come up with new variations on the theme.  For some reason, my co-worker didn't like these ideas:

* Armbook.  Like Facebook, except people upload pictures of their arms.  This one was nixed on the grounds that copycat sites would rapidly spring up dedicated to other parts of the anatomy.

*Rate My Parking Job.  People send in photos of their cars, parallel-parked, and other users rate how well they did.  I got this idea because Mr. DC always brags about his parallel-parking prowess ("Whoa, look at that! Half an inch from the curb!"), even though it usually means you can't open the door because it's wedged into a snowbank.  It could also serve as a valuable social deterrent. Wouldn't you love to post for public opprobrium a picture of that Hummer H3 parked diagonally across the last three parking spots at the emergency room, or the guy in the Ford F-350 who parked off-center in the spot next to you, thus forcing you to crawl into your car through the sunroof?

* Hermitster, an antisocial networking site for introverts.  Many people who hang out on the internet find themselves being bombarded with twitters, pokes, winks, diggs, PMs, email, Skypes, IM's, and linkspam.  This is a site for people who just want to be left the hell alone.  "You have 5 new enemies and 8 new block requests!"   Status: "Get off my lawn, you damn kids."

As part of this project, I'm trying to teach myself PHP and MySQL, so that I can speak the same language if and when we hire developers.  The first thing I did was create a mock database of local users and profiles.  The users all had fake names ("Bob", "Alice", "Fred"), with random photos pulled off the web.  On a mischievous whim, I added a user named "Dave" and added a nice picture of David to the profile.  (You know, the one in the striped shirt from the L.A. premiere of ROTK, where his hair is all cute and mussed and spiky?  Yeah, that one).  Then I needed a tagline.  Doppelganger American Dave seemed like he'd be a football fan, so I had his tagline say "Go Vikings!"  When it was finished, I asked my co-worker to vet the site and get back to me with comments.

Her comment: "Cool site!  I'd like to meet Dave, even though I don't care about the Vikings."

Now keep in mind, all the photos were of reasonably attractive people with fascinating fake descriptions, and she could have easily picked any of them as her favorite.  Smugly, I thought: this proves it.  In a controlled, double-blind study, 100% of subjects chose a disguised David Wenham over the available alternatives.  Therefore, David = The Shizzle.  QED.

A few days later, my co-worker brought her laptop over so we could do some more work on this project.  When she turned on her computer, up came Orlando Bloom on her desktop.  Turns out she's a big LOTR fan.  So much for an unbiased control group.

My desktop image, by the way, is not David.  It's a tropical island with white beaches and turquoise seas, where night breezes languidly waft the scent of ylang ylang, coconut, and jasmine through plantation shutters, and there is no snow shovelling.  I'm told these places exist.

*****

The other week I got to try out a popular brand of video game (we'll call it the Whee! Playstation, to avoid lawsuits and Google searches).  It comes with a remote control that you move around in imitation of a tennis racket, pool cue, bowling ball, etc.  The movements are mimicked precisely, or not so precisely, on the TV screen by a little character, representing the Virtual You.

I turned out to be stupendously bad at it.  "Whee! Baseball" has an animated pitcher that throws fastballs and curves at you, and you-as-the-batter swing the remote control and try to hit them.  My six-year-old opponent, whapping the remote downward with a brisk fly-swatting motion, kept hitting them out of the park.  I opted for a compact Mark McGwire rotational home-run swing, honed by years of watching Red Sox baseball and bouncing grounders to first at company picnics (batting left-handed is a distinct disadvantage, the way bases are laid out...oftentimes you don't even get to run, because you're out before you can even drop the bat).  Yet despite simulating a real swing and making solid contact with the ball, I was hitting nothing but anemic dribblers and foul balls into the right-field stands.  "Boy, you're bad," said my opponent with relish.  Had the point system been based on conking peanut vendors in the head, I do believe I might have acquitted myself more nobly.

Then it was on to "Whee! Skiing", which uses a balance board.  You stand on the balance board and lean left or right to control a skiier slaloming through gates on the TV screen.  The disconcerting part is that in real life, you lean on the downhill ski (opposite ski) to turn, but in Whee! World, you lean on the uphill ski.  I couldn't get my brain to reverse its instincts.  Result: sizable monetary damage to the Whee! Ski Resort gates, fences, and moguls.  My six-year-old opponent trounced me handily.

Then "Whee! Bowling".  The less said about this one, the better.  It was amusing to watch neighboring Whee! characters scatter when the ball went into their lanes, though.  I suspect David would be good at virtual bowling, being a veteran of the lawn bowling circuit.

The only Whee! activity I had any luck with was the Tree Pose.  Whee! Fit comes with a yoga section, which rates you on how well you hold balancing poses.  In Tree, you tuck one foot into the opposite thigh, extend your arms over your head with index fingers pointed more-or-less gracefully at the sky, and balance on one leg.  The Whee! balance board measures how steady your balance is (you can see it on the TV screen, as a red dot wavering in the middle of the board) and then rates your performance.  I was stunned to be awarded the top score in Tree, especially considering the friend who owns the Whee! is a yoga instructor and has spent a lot of time building up a library of humongous scores.  It's a lovely posture, though.  It's soothing, and you can almost go to sleep while you're in it.

So there you have it: my natural calling is to stand around being motionless.  If Hermitster doesn't pan out, I'm thinking about signing up as a department store mannekin.

Posted by dessicatedcoconut at 11:14 AM EST

Updated: February 22, 2009 2:43 PM EST

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Mood:  a-ok

Children of Huang Shi

Plot synopsis: A naive, uppercrust Brit and a fiercely independent, horse-wrangling Australian team up to herd numerous cattle children to safety many hundreds of miles across perilous, harsh, war-ravaged territory.  Along the way, they survive Japanese bombings, fall in love, and wrestle with the cultural demons of their adopted country.  The stuffy Brit crosses paths with a not-so-nice, hard-bitten redhead played by David Wenham, who eventually gets killed.

Wait a minute.  This is sounding suspiciously like another recent movie.  Let's start over.

The film tells the story of George Hogg, a brash, aristocratic, and somewhat entitled British journalist, just off the boat in Shanghai and eager to start filing reports on the war. (His character bears a certain resemblance to T.E. Lawrence).  The Japanese have invaded Nanjing and closed off all access to foreign press.  As luck would have it, George's friend Andy Fisher, an American Red Cross driver, has recently obtained a pass to Nanjing.  He's willing to trade his pass to George so that he can stay behind and marry his girl.  All George needs is an accomplice to help him pose as a driver.

Enter David's character, Barnes (we never do learn his first name, but I'm guessing it's something macho and befitting a wartime journalist, like Stone, or Brick, or Howitzer).  Barnes is an irritable, potty-mouthed reporter with a disconcertingly ironic habit of calling everyone else "Daisy".  A veteran of Shanghai, he exudes the flinty cynicism of a man who's seen it all.  When we first meet Barnes, he's slouched at a table at a fancy club, lobbing insults at the British charge d'affaires seated next to him.  "Hi, Daisy," he says when introduced to Andy. "Meet Roger Appleby.  An ungrateful shit from the British embassy."  Tempers flare when Barnes discovers that Andy's been given a pass: "You bastard! You've got him a pass for Nanjing?  How long have we known each other, you asshole?  Ten years?"  (I must say, I love the adorable short-vowel inflection David gives to "ahhhsshole" - it comes out sounding so genteel, so British).  Hogg quickly removes Barnes from the scene before it turns into an international incident.

Hogg convinces a reluctant Barnes that the two of them can get into Nanjing by posing as American Red Cross drivers: he'll be "Andy Fisher", and Barnes will be "David Barclay".  David's facial expression during this scene is priceless.  "Christ, you're nuts," he tells Hogg in disgust, but the next thing we know, the two of them are puttering towards Nanjing in a battered pickup truck full of medical supplies.

Barnes takes the opportunity to brusquely correct Hogg's naive impressions of the Japanese - the reason they haven't declared war, he tells the cub reporter, is that it allows them to treat captured Chinese soldiers any way they want, and they "don't have to play by any goddamn rules".  One must admire David's subtle skill with exposition.  It's a thankless task, sketching the larger dramatic backdrop for the benefit of the audience without appearing to step outside the story, and one that he does very well (think Carl, Dilios, Mark Waldman, etc.).  David injects it with just the right mixture of offhandedness and impatience.

Some tense moments ensue when they encounter Japanese roadblocks.  At the first one, Barnes bites his fuzzy lower lip nervously while their papers are being examined.  Oo!  Dead giveaway!  Fortunately, the Japanese can't read David's facial expressions nearly as well as we fans, and so they wave the truck into the city.  "Set your watch an hour ahead, Daisy," Barnes tells Hogg. "We're now on Tokyo time."

At the second roadblock, the Japanese search the back of the truck, pulling medical supplies off and flinging them into the road.  (That's just what nurses want: bandages that have been rolling around in the dust).  Barnes stands by looking Greatly Perturbed.  After the lieutenant waves off his men, Barnes picks up a heavy sack and gives it a Manly Heave into the truck, contempt written all over his face.  I wanted more of this scene - specifically, I wanted to watch Barnes heave every single box and bag back into the truck in super-slo-mo - but the director, Roger Spottiswoode, had some weird idea about moving the storyline along, and so the scene was tragically cut short.

Barnes drops Hogg off on a deserted, bombed-out street, telling him "If you're not back here by 9:00 tomorrow night, I'll go without you."  This is the last we see of Barnes, until Hogg later spies him in the clutches of a Japanese night patrol.  Barnes, bleeding from the head, has obviously been knocked around some.  "Take it easy, Daisy," says Barnes to the officer, struggling to his knees and maintaining a suave veneer to the end.  "I have a pass.  I have a pass in my pocket."

The Japanese officer takes a quick glance at the pass, then shoots poor Barnes point-blank in the head.  And thus passeth David, fifteen minutes into the movie (though we do see his death scene in flashback later, when Hogg is haunted by terrifying dreams).  The Japanese officer, unaware that he has just destroyed a precious and irreplaceable work of Western art, leaves Barnes's corpse behind and pursues Hogg into the ruins of the city.  Hogg is rescued by Chen (Chow Yun-Fat), the leader of an underground Communist partisan movement.  Chen decides to send the wounded Hogg up into the mountains "to improve his Chinese", but his real agenda is to put Hogg in charge of the orphanage at Huang Shi, and hook him up with an itinerant nurse named Lee Pearson (Radha Mitchell).

So, the rest of the movie.  Did I like it?  I did, mostly for the beautiful and eerie cinematography, and the interesting glimpses into Chinese film propaganda (Communists are romantic and noble, peasants are pure but in need of a strong leader, Chiang Kai-Shek's Nationals are bumblers who conscript children and punish addicts, and so forth). Dramatically it seemed a little flat and disjointed.  The script provides only the most cursory glimpse into the children's inner lives, though we know they've experienced wartime horror and trauma beyond recounting.  We're never really given a sense of urgency as to why Hogg and Lee have to get those kids out of the orphanage pronto and march them 700 miles across the Liu Pan Shan mountains.  Nor do we sense much of a transformation in Hogg as he discovers his capacity for love and responsibility.  Hogg's life was extraordinary, and it seems like there should be a lot more depth to the story than what the screenplay provides.  The most memorable non-David part is at the end, when the real-life orphans speak out about their experiences and their memories of George Hogg.  But even with its flaws, it's still a pretty good movie.  Especially when compared to "Love Guru".

Also, I have to admit I've become something of a Chow-Yun Fat fan.  He's got that Charles Bronson thing goin' on.

Posted by dessicatedcoconut at 10:48 AM EST

Updated: February 15, 2009 12:36 PM EST

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Mood:  special

The other week I toured a tea factory, headquarters to a famous national brand of slightly hippyish herbal teas.  I have to admit, I was sort of hoping to see rows of serene, wizened tea elves lovingly hand-tamping chamomile into each sachet and then bathing them in moonlight and Vivaldi before nestling them softly into the carton.  Instead, the factory floor was filled with young, gum-cracking guys in hairnets supervising robotic arms and converyor belts, while heavy metal music blared from speakers.

But here's the interesting thing: half of them were also wearing beard nets, a la Murray Whelan.  Now, I'd always assumed they'd had David wear one in Stiff purely as a visual gag, but no, they were simply emulating standard industrial hygiene practice, which means keeping all hair firmly corralled 'neath elasticized nylon.  And that includes facial hair, even though, if I were a stubble fortunate enough to reside on the chin of Murray Whelan, I would cling tightly and never drop off, not even if he were leaning wayyyy over a vat of premium Belgian artisan chocolate.

And - not that I spent any time thinking about this, of course -  if I were ever to murder someone inside a tea factory who knew too much about my crooked payroll scheme, I would do it inside the Mint Room, where they store the mints in isolation so they won't contaminate the other herbs.   The sinus-zorching mint smell would cover up any telltale stenches, and a corpse could easily be buried inside one of the 4-foot cargo containers of dried spearmint leaves.  It might accidentally get ground up into the açai mango zinger, but at least it wouldn't have any hair in it.

I...uh....I was going to go brew up a cup of rooibos, but I think I've changed my mind now, thank you.

Posted by dessicatedcoconut at 10:33 AM EST

Updated: February 7, 2009 11:07 AM EST

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Mood:  cool

"GOOD morning!" said the cheerful radio DJ a few sunrises ago, when the alarm went off at some godless, blighted hour.  "Currently, the temperature in Portland is 19 degrees below zero.  But you'll be glad to know that in Molokai, Hawaii right now, it's 76 degrees and sunny!"

WHAM!!! went my hand onto the snooze button, before it registered that he was talking about Father Damien's stomping grounds.

Because of my sleepy reptilian reflexes, I didn't hear whether the DJ went on to deliver the weather forecast in Prague, Montreal, Vancouver, Querfurt, Wisconsin, the Gold Coast, and other historic movie spots of interest to David fans.  I was too busy trying to remember where the ice pick and crampons were.  But one can't blame David for seeking out projects in tropical, or at least temperate, locations.  Who wouldn't want to hang out in Molokai for a couple of months?  Montreal in December is sheer insanity.

(By the way, to convert -19 F into Centigrade, simply multiply "frickin' freezing" by 50, then add "holy $&#*@").

Later, after that delightful meteorological interlude, I went to a rodeo, and watched cowboys a-ropin', a-buckin', and a-wranglin'.  It's a good thing the horse training for Australia was fairly straightforward and didn't involve down-and-dirty cattle work with lariats, tie-down roping and steer wrestling.  Though I have no doubt that Neil Fletcher could take down a 500-pound Hereford if he had to, simply by sidling up and hissing something nasssty in its ear ("Milk's not power").

After the rodeo, while wandering around the attached exhibit hall and gawking at tractors, jewelry, and fried Twinkies, I passed a booth manned by a guy who was soliciting donations for something called the "Leonidas Fund", an outfit aimed at Supporting Our US Troops and Helping To Defeat Muslamic (sic) Terror.  I wanted to go over and point out that first of all, in going overseas and attacking a sovereign nation with no link to 9/11, we're actually the Persians, and second of all, there's already a Leonidas Fund in place to support the troops.  It's called "paying your federal taxes".  Oo!  I just HATE it when people with a distorted view of history misappropriate a movie with a distorted view of history.

But then I noticed the 20 or so sharp hunting knives ranged around the table, and decided discretion was the better part of avoiding multiple stab wounds.

That same night, while flipping through cable channels in the hotel room, I ran across "Van Helsing".  It was a painful, painful dilemma - Van Helsing or the Daily Show with Jon Stewart? - but Van Helsing won out.  Carl is such a delightful character.  Those adorable ears! It's great fun to watch him scuttling around the bowels of the Vatican, handing out garlic and crosses like a P.E. teacher issuing towels and dodgeballs.  Early on, his main role seems to be to point out to Van Helsing that he's in imminent danger from the Dracula Brides ("Look! Up there, flying straight at your face!").  Either Van Helsing is a tad oblivious, or Carl is a latter-day descendent of Legolas Obviousleaf, Son of Duh.

I had also forgotten about the exploding carriages.  Were they coated in napalm?

****

Update on the job situation: I start Monday at my new job.  The good news is the salary's the same.  The bad news is that they could only offer a two month contract position, though they're hoping to make it permanent.  At least it buys a little time, and allows me to keep looking. I've got an interview tomorrow with a government contractor, and an inside track on another position at a place that we'll call Faceless Megabank, Inc. (or Centabank, if you prefer).

But you didn't come here to hear boring job blather.  You came here to read about menarche parties, which seem to be the latest rage among trendy parents wanting to commemorate their daughter's first visit from "Aunt Flo" while surrounded by 500 of their closest friends.  Go on, click the link, I dare ya.  But don't click on the gallery.  And don't look at the picture of the cherry cheesecake.

Ohhh, you just had to look, didn't you?

Now, I'm all for marking boys' and girls' passage into adulthood with a lovely ceremony (such as a bar or bat mitzvah).  I'm all for removing the stigma, mystery, and embarrassment surrounding a young girl's "special moment".  But I'm not sure bodily functions really ought to be lauded with noisemakers and confetti.   Particularly those that involve cramps and effluvia.  I mean, I had a sinus infection once that resulted in a fascinating orange discharge, but you didn't see me throwing a shindig on its behalf.  And why aren't there equivalent parties for boys ("Come help us celebrate Walter's first wet dream!  Clam chowder will be served.")  And what does one bring for a present?  And how awkward to play "Pin The Ovaries On The Uterus" with those popular cheerleader girls who only got invited because their dad is friends with your dad.

Oh well, you can't fight fashion.  Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to plan a shower for my tapeworm.

Posted by dessicatedcoconut at 12:02 PM EST

Updated: January 29, 2009 1:54 PM EST

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Mood:  smelly

No doubt you've heard that they've recently re-issued an updated version of The Joy of Sex (edited by Alex Comfort's son, Nick), with the original hairy hippie couple replaced by hip, millennial metrosexuals who read internet porn and worry about AIDS.  Remember that book?  If you're like me, you probably came across it accidentally at age 12 or so while prowling through your parents' bookshelves.  (Every suburban home seemed to have a copy.)  You flipped it open and beheld a soft pencil illustration of what appeared to be a hairy, uncircumcised werewolf in macrame licking the lush armpit turf of his partner, Gidget.  Immediately you smuggled it up to your bedroom, propped a chair under the doorknob, and read the whole thing saucer-eyed.

The book answered all the questions you hadn't even thought to ask, and quite a few that you didn't want to know the answer to.  The hairy Neanderthal couple demonstrated a variety of interesting acts with inscrutable French names (the flanquette, the pattes d'araignee, and the rear-entry Negresse, which thankfully has been renamed in the current edition to something a little less appallingly bigoted...I believe it's now known as the Pasty White Mick).  Each chapter was organized into a food theme, from Appetizers to Main Course.

Besides the positions, the book provided lots of entertaining advice, such as the erotic potential of the big toe, and the logistics of doing the deed on a moving motorcycle.  I learned that men are pretty much turned on by anything: sticking quarters into vending machines, the hind ends of horses.  The swaying horse tail (explained Dr. Comfort) suggests long hair, and the delicate hooves cause the hindquarters to switch back and forth alluringly as if walking in heels.  (The takeaway message: to attract men, wear high heels and look like a horse's ass.)  Dr. Comfort also cautioned women against using antiperspirants or shaving under the arms, calling it "an act of vandalism", and advocated for cultivating natural body odors.

Once I got beyond all the hair, the horrifying question presented itself: what were my parents doing with this book?  How did it get into the house?  Were they actually doing these things?

It got worse.  While patrolling the attic bookshelves a few weeks later, I came across a slim red volume entitled To Turn You On.  Aimed at women, it contained 39 short stories detailing the seduction of delivery boys, extremely mild S&M with silk scarves and candles, and "anatomy lessons" performed in classrooms before audiences of several dozen randy male medical students.  Until that moment, I hadn't actually realized that there was more to sex than the fitting of thingies into hey-heys.  That there could be a story to it, an element of fantasy.

Putting together all of this diligent research, I concluded that as an adult, my sex life would someday consist of getting mauled on the back of a motorcycle by the big toe of a bearded caveman with a medical degree.  This future Cro-Magnon mate just wouldn't be able to resist my clip-clopping high heels, or the provocative come-hither way my coins slithered into vending machines, or the thick, tangled underbrush sprouting from my armpits.  We would meet when he rang the doorbell with a delivery of silk scarves and candles.

(It's worth noting that since the original edition of Joy of Sex came out, sex on the back of a moving motorcycle has been made illegal in Britain.  Apparently, many readers were taking Dr. Comfort's advice to heart.)

I read To Turn You On cover to cover, memorizing its cheesy dialogue, studying the behavior of its bored suburban housewives and the wild passions concealed beneath their chenille bathrobes and ashtrays.  Afraid that it might be discovered under my pillow, I hid it back in the attic, inside the drawer of a dusty and unused table, and returned to my regular 12-year-old life.

A few months later, one of my brothers graduated college and moved in with his prim schoolmarm girlfriend.  He came home one weekend and took the table for their apartment before I could retrieve the book from its secret hiding place.  I can only imagine the surprise his girlfriend got as she opened the drawer, thinking This will be the perfect place to store my lavender sachets.

Despite its weird, dated suggestions, one could argue that Joy of Sex is in many ways the direct ancestor of Better Than Sex, in its portrayal of an average couple sharing a space of timeless, lotus-eating sybaratism and dreamy thoughtlessness.  If only I had been able to imprint on Josh and Cyn rather than the Hemp Twins.  I would have associated sex with dressmaker's dummies, weak tea, and "Wild Kingdom" nature shows, rather than vending machines.

Posted by dessicatedcoconut at 1:08 AM EST

Updated: January 9, 2009 2:13 AM EST

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Mood:  smelly

Thank you, thank you, to everybody who sent such kindly and supportive emails over the past week.  You are wonderful people, and I adore you all.  I hope you're weathering this economy OK and not feeling too nervous about the future.

Last week's bloodbath was massive, swift, and brutal.  In the end, 30% of our company was let go.  Every single job in our department is getting shipped to India.  I was one of the lucky ones; my end date is the 31st of December.  Most other employees were terminated immediately.  Go tell the Spartans, passerby....

The Executive With Nice Hair whose decision it was to outsource one-third of the company came to visit on Thursday to, I guess, apologize and host a roundtable discussion.  On Wednesday I received this email from my manager:

I just heard the news: Executive With Nice Hair is having pizza for lunch tomorrow.

My reply: And I'm having oatmeal for breakfast.  Are we invited?

(Normally I wouldn't be so snide, but what are they going to do, fire me?)

Before the Ambiguously Intentioned Pizza Lunch, Executive With Nice Hair stopped by my desk to say how sorry he was.  "In your case, it was an especially tough decision, but I'd be happy to write a recommendation," said he.

It was with great pleasure that I told him I already have a job offer.  He looked stunned.

"There are companies that are hiring?"  he asked, incredulous.

"There certainly are!" I said. "Other companies with management teams that read the market correctly, make products that their customers want, and don't abruptly put all their employees out on the street at Christmastime without so much as a shilling to buy Tiny Tim some cough medicine."

(No, no, I didn't really say that.  But oh, oh, OH, how I wanted to.  My forehead was straining noticeably from the effort of not letting that thought escape into the outside world.  Nice going, forehead.)

No, instead we shook hands cordially, and I wished him luck with the transition.  All very businesslike.  Then I went outside and fished in the dumpster for moldy garlic bread.

But anyway, I am currently in negotiations with another company, which is a huge relief.  I actually interviewed with them five years ago, and they offered me the job.  Then my current (former?) company counteroffered, and I decided to stay on out of loyalty.  I've felt guilty about it ever since.  I interviewed with them again last week, everything went well, and they're interested if I'm interested.  And I'm interested if they're interested in me being interested in their interest.  Which is all very interesting.

It's in another state, which complicates things a little.  Okay, it complicates things a lot.  But it's my native state, to which I've been meaning to move back to (wait a minute, there seem to be some extra "to's" in there) for some time.  It would also be a different challenge and add to my "skill set" (a term I've never been fond of, but it's what employers are looking for these days).

It's unclear what the immediate future of DC and the Grove will be.  Believe it or not, I don't own a home computer.  (Well, I do, but it runs Windows 95 and has dial-up.  Its main function is to attract dust and keep papers from blowing off the desk.)  Grove updates are written out in longhand by outsourced tech workers in Hyderabad who receive forty-four rupees per joke, plus a ten rupee bonus for every mention of David Wenham.  (David Wenham! David Wenham! David Wenham! I am saving up for a new Tata Nano. -- Rajiv)  It is then transcribed laboriously onto my work laptop at home by happy little Microsoft elves, and uploaded to the Grove via caribou sled.  The supply chain is long, and complex.

Unfortunately, I have to give back the laptop on Tuesday before I leave for Christmas.  I'm trying to convince them to sell it to me, because it's not like they're going to have any immediate use for it, and I certainly can't afford a new one right now, but we shall see.

At any rate, there's going to be a lot of flux and turmoil over the next few weeks until the dust settles and the curtain rises on life's next act.  So if there's a short hiatus in updates, I apologize.  I hope you and yours have very peaceful holidays filled with joy, and that you enjoy Australia whenever and wherever you happen to see it.  Frankly, I think it was a stroke of marketing genius to release it during the northern hemisphere winter.  The baking hot outback looks awfully tempting right now, doesn't it?

Posted by dessicatedcoconut at 5:31 PM EST

Updated: December 20, 2008 6:56 PM EST

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