Monday, July 04, 2011


Even though I saw it several weeks ago, I’ve been avoiding writing about Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams. The reason is that thinking too much about those Chauvet cave paintings threatens to make one weep uncontrollably (in the film, even the caves’ curator has to pause to gather herself before discussing the extraordinary wall of horses.) It’s not just their beauty, it’s the palpable presence of the people who made them, people not much different from us, who lived some 35,000 years ago and coexisted with animals, such as cave lions, that don’t even exist anymore, lived so closely with them that they could depict not just their forms but their attitudes, their movement, to the point that we know what they were like simply based on these paintings. They communicated something to us, across what Herzog calls “the abyss of time.”

A similar elemental shock runs through John Vaillant’s book, The Tiger.

It's Comedy! Part Two

Last week two important documents hit the internet. In one, Mrs. Bourne, a stern English mother-in-law-to-be scolded her future daughter-in-law regarding her "uncouth" and "vulgar" behavior during a visit in April. In the other, an ambitious young Los Angeles woman regaled her 15 closest friends (and eventually the entire internet) about her first hand encounter with Quentin Tarantino's foot fetish.

I have mixed them together. After the jump, Quentin Tarantino's victim meets her mother-in-law-to-be:

It's Comedy!

Last week two important documents hit the internet. In one, Mrs. Bourne, a stern English mother-in-law-to-be scolded her future daughter-in-law regarding her "uncouth" and "vulgar" behavior during a visit in April. In the other, an ambitious young Los Angeles woman regaled her 15 closest friends (and eventually the entire internet) about her first hand encounter with Quentin Tarantino's foot fetish.

I have mixed them together. After the jump, Mrs. Bourne writes to Mr. Tarantino regarding their recent one night stand: