tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-72840402024-03-14T02:13:52.152-04:00Tom Vick: Asian Cinema PlusTomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717583359502491763noreply@blogger.comBlogger70125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284040.post-67608594033409884292012-11-05T14:40:00.000-05:002012-11-05T14:40:16.226-05:00TVRB: Is This England? On Zadie Smith and Martin AmisTwo of my go-to airplane authors, Zadie Smith and Martin Amis, have recently published novels (to less than enthusiastic reviews) that both depart from their usual styles and take on similar issues of race and class. I don't know if this says anything significant about the "State of England" (as the subtitle of Amis' novel puts it), but I couldn't help comparing them after reading them virtually back-to-back.
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Those who know me know that my love for Zadie Smith knows no bounds. As Emily Keeler points out in <a href="http://www.salon.com/topic/zadie_smith/">this excellent piece</a>, Smith's <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/NW-Novel-Zadie-Smith/dp/1594203970/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1352143854&sr=1-1&keywords=zadie+smith">NW</a></i> is, in a sense, the embodiment of her 2008 essay <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2008/nov/20/two-paths-for-the-novel/?pagination=false">"Two Paths for the Novel,"</a> in which Smith argues for the anti-lyrical avant-garde over the lyrical realism that dominates contemporary literature. <i>NW</i> is fragmented, slippery, almost Modernist in the way it changes style from section to section in order to channel its characters' consciousnesses.<br />
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While it is a change in form, it's also a return to the territory of her extraordinary first novel, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/White-Teeth-Novel-Zadie-Smith/dp/0375703861/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1352143854&sr=1-3&keywords=zadie+smith">White Teeth</a></i>, in that it's set in the working class neighborhood of London where Smith herself grew up, following a set of characters from the same council estate as they make their confused ways in the world. In a <a href="http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-09-12/zadie-smith-nw-novel">recent interview</a> with Diane Rehm, Smith said that the book is mainly about empathy, its obligations and its limits, and empathy for her deeply flawed characters has always been Smith's great strength. They are flawed in the sad ways we all are, and even in the choppier stylistic waters of <i>NW</i>, come across so fully-fleshed that sometimes you want to grab and shake them.
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Case in point is a tour-de-force chapter depicting the last day in the life of Felix, a charming ghetto rogue through whom Smith funnels issues of race, class, family obligation and love, as he hustles from his girlfriend's bed to his father's apartment, haggles for a car to fix up for himself, and breaks up with (but also fucks) his on-and-off lover (herself a brilliantly drawn character who could have walked out of a Dickens novel and into the 21st Century.)<br />
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One would never look to Martin Amis for empathy. With Amis you want sharp wit, scathing humor, and loathsome characters depicted with silky, venomous prose. Sad to say, <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Lionel-Asbo-England-Martin-Amis/dp/0307958086/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1352143915&sr=1-1&keywords=lionel+asbo">Lionel Asbo: State of England</a></i> doesn't even succeed on Amis' own terms. Its as fragmented and knotty as <i>NW</i>, but feels less like a deliberate departure in style than an early draft. Chunks of time are skipped over with perfunctory transitions as if he couldn't figure out a better way to skip over them and get to the good parts.<br />
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Where Smith, with her amazing gift for mimicry, writes convincing dialogues in an incredible array of often subtly different accents and dialects, including various London neighborhoods and classes, Jamaican, French and Irish (it's uncanny how you can always tell exactly what a character's voice sounds like in a Smith novel), Amis barely bothers to even try to capture Lionel's thick London gangster accent, settling instead for the occasional reminder that he uses "f" sounds in place of "th" sounds, and inserts glottal stops for certain consonants.<br />
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Amis' portrait of poor and working class London is a comedic Dante's Inferno, a deliberately exaggerated hellscape viewed from the perch of Amis' posh life. This makes for some scabrous comedy and a few funny moments, but for some reason the novel never really takes off. Lionel's tremendous lottery windfall provides Amis the opportunity to lampoon celebrity culture and tabloid journalism, but these are broad targets. It's a bit laughable to me that <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/21/in-defense-of-martin-amis-lionel-asbo.html">anyone could claim</a> that its detractors have missed the point of the novel, because Amis' points are so blunt and obvious, and he basically beats on them with a giant, cartoon hammer.<br />
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And yet, I stuck with it over an exhausting circuit of planes, airports and hotel rooms. Even bad Amis can keep you turning the pages. But Smith in experimental mode gives you more to chew on.Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717583359502491763noreply@blogger.com292tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284040.post-41977690781827149672012-08-18T15:25:00.000-04:002012-08-18T15:25:01.724-04:00Beijing Flickers<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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"Despair can be so amazing sometimes," muses San Bao, the hero of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zhang_Yuan">Zhang Yuan's</a> stunning new film, <i><a href="http://tiff.net/filmsandschedules/tiff/2012/beijingflickers">Beijing Flickers</a></i>. He's broke. He's lost his girlfriend, his dog and his apartment. But it's also late at night, he's drunk and roaming the empty streets with his friends, and the first snowfall of the year is coming down. This accumulation of details, the pressure and pleasures of the city, is a kind of euphoria, which will soon lead him to his second half-assed suicide attempt of the movie, in the same way a more stable person might burst into song or dance down the street.
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Newly rich, ever changing Beijing is the backdrop for many movies nowadays, but this is the that rare film in which it actually becomes a character.<br />
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"Beware of artists," says the <a href="http://www.artlog.com/2012/574-beware-of-artists#.UC_hj0K5dSU">fake McCarthy-era poster </a>currently making its mistaken rounds as an internet meme, "they mix with all classes of society and are therefore the most dangerous." Though this quote is apparently a paraphrase from a letter by King Leopold of Belgium, it somehow applies to the characters in <i>Beijing Flickers</i>. In recent years we've seen plenty of films about Beijing's poor, and a spate of romcoms about its young and fabulous, but Zhang's characters are all artists of a sort, and so they cross class borders. Mostly poor themselves, they at least brush against the upper class world and become aware of what they can't have (one of them, a valet parking attendant, spends his days behind the wheels of luxury cars he could never hope to own). They come across as kids with the souls of poets, and that's what makes them tragic.<br />
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San Bao narrates the film in voice-over, but his character is mostly mute. But unlike the unexplained silent protagonists in, say, the films of Kim Ki-duk, he's silent for a reason: in a fit of drunken despair he's fucked up his mouth by chewing broken glass. So for much of the film he's something of a <i>flaneur</i>, wandering and observing the city. Though less psychotic than Travis Bickle, and older if not wiser than the Jim Carroll of <i>The Basketball Diaries</i>, he thinks about Beijing as if it's a living entity, sometimes a playground, sometimes a monster he has to wrestle with, much in the same way that those two characters wrestle with New York.<br />
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It's a perspective that could never emerge from the bubble of trendy bars and expensive boutiques that constitute the Beijing of romcoms like<i> Love in the Buff</i>, nor from the lower class milieu of many a Chinese realist film, in which the characters can rarely think beyond the necessities of keeping afloat. so Zhang's vision of Beijing is something new. The city lives as intensely as his flawed heroes.<br />
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Since 1993's Beijing Bastards, Zhang has been a specialist in depicting both marginalized characters and extreme intensities of emotional conflict. I still remember his 2002 film <i>I Love You</i>, and its couple's wild swings between mad passion and lacerating fights. Like many directors of his generation, his perspective was deeply informed by Tiananmen Square, and many years later his allegiance remains with China's outcasts and rebels. <i>Beijing Flickers </i>adds something new, though. Nearing 50, Zhang can look on his young, often misguided characters with the wisdom of age, much like his Sixth Generation colleague Le You did to devastating effect in <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0794374/">Summer Palace</a></i>. We watch these kids fuck up with a lump in our throats. We know things can change for them, but they can't imagine it. And we're left wondering at the end just what the city will turn them into.<br />
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Beijing Flickers will receive its world premier at the <a href="http://tiff.net/thefestival">Toronto International Film Festival </a>next month.Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717583359502491763noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284040.post-77511254892947046562012-08-17T10:36:00.000-04:002012-08-17T10:36:16.956-04:00Tweeting NowI'm now Tweeting @tomrvick. Follow me unless you're like this:
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/NrNfKVg3-c0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717583359502491763noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284040.post-71895789389523725202012-08-13T16:32:00.000-04:002012-08-13T16:32:51.758-04:00Follow-up: John Cage, Marx Brothers, Margaret Leng TanHere is the Marx Brothers clip I saw in the John Cage exhibition many years ago:<br />
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Read on for more, and news from Margaret Leng Tan.
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The absolute silence of this scene is what rhymes it with Cage's project. It's silence is made necessary by Harpo, whose persona is composed of silence punctuated by rude bursts of noise, and which spreads out here to dictate the parameters of the entire scene. There's no music, there's barely any ambient sound, so the aural component becomes the sounds around you: the pops and hisses on the soundtrack, laughter if you're in a crowd, the sounds of your house and the outside if you're not. It encourages a Cagean-style of paying attention. I can't think of another movie scene that does this.<br />
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On another note: after yesterday's post, <a href="http://margaretlengtan.com/">Margaret Leng Tan</a> emailed me to remind me of her <a href="http://www.johncage2012.com/">upcoming performances</a> in DC, and to share a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1993/08/01/arts/dance-john-cage-poses-a-few-last-questions.html">reminiscence</a> of Cage she wrote for the New York Times after he died. Thanks, Margaret!Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717583359502491763noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284040.post-29011542704603084642012-08-12T14:31:00.000-04:002012-08-12T14:31:02.277-04:00On John Cage in his Centennial Year<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Today's <i>New York Times</i> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/12/arts/music/john-cage-recital-take-the-a-train.html">article</a> on <a href="http://johncage.org/">John Cage</a> (placed right next to one on another great composer, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/12/arts/music/the-composer-pauline-oliveros-stays-busy-at-80.html">Pauline Oliveros!</a>) prompted me to look back on my long-term relationship with him.
During college and the years after, Cage's work and thought had a tremendous influence on me, but as the years have gone by, our relationship has turned into more of an argument.
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<a name='more'></a>Like Andy Warhol, Cage is the perfect artist to discover in college, when you're experimenting with and bucking against received notions about aesthetics and art. As with Warhol, his ideas of welcoming chance occurrences into his work and paying deep attention to the world around him, had the effect, for me, of breaking open new territory for artistic experimentation, and new ways sensing my environment.<br />
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I remember, for instance, a performance of his famous silent <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%E2%80%B233%E2%80%B3">4'33"</a></i> piece by Margaret Leng Tan. She sat at the piano framed by a window at dusk, so the focus became the changing light outside and the rhythmic, silent descent of distant airplanes into a nearby airport. And I remember a surprising, yet perfect, connection in an exhibition about him I saw many years ago that included excerpts from Marx Brothers films as illustrations of his embrace of silence and absurdity.<br />
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So I occasionally go back to his writings as a refresher, a reminder that you can see the world in different ways. But I remember picking up one of his books during the dark days of the Bush II administration, not long after 9/11, and actually getting angry with him. The times seemed to be testing his philosophy of acceptance of the world as it is. It didn't seem to apply anymore. I was annoyed at his naive praise of Chairman Mao, and I was wondering what he would have thought of life now, when his beloved New York City had been attacked. Or maybe it was me who had changed. Maybe I was too angry and embroiled in the horrors of the world.<br />
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As we approach his hundredth birthday in September, I look forward to engaging with him again, to test my own mind and assumptions against his, more than two decades since I first discovered him. Despite my recent reservations about him, the Times article is a reminder of the huge, if subterranean, influence he continues to exert on art and culture, unlike so many attempted visionaries of his generation. Turning your mind to him during a subway ride can turn it into a work of art meant only for you.<br />
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After all this time, he's still worth arguing with.Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717583359502491763noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284040.post-90966379835808520772012-08-05T15:10:00.000-04:002012-08-05T15:23:28.264-04:00The Presence of Lau Ching-wan<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Sometimes you have to take what you can get with a movie. In this case I'm thinking of <i>Fairy Tale Killer</i>, which I saw at <a href="http://www.pifan.com/">PiFan</a>. Despite director Danny Pang's attempts to goose it with stylish camera work and lots of noise, it's in the end yet another cookie cutter serial killer flick.<br />
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But one thing did keep me going with it, and that was the performance of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Lau">Lau Ching-wan</a>.
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Longtime Hong Kong actors eventually take on the aura of old pros. The best of them develop into onscreen personas and wear them like a comfortable pair of jeans. Johnnie To, for instance, understands this completely, so one of the pleasures of watching his films is seeing his stable of regulars like Lau, <a href="http://tomvick.blogspot.com/2010/02/in-praise-of-lam-suet.html">Lam Suet</a>, Anthony Wong and Simon Yam, play off each other like the old pals they are.
Watching Lau isolated in a mediocre thriller like <i>Fairy Tale Killer</i>, however, throws his particular talents into sharp relief. His hangdog face and steady gaze almost typecast him as a weary cop - a part he can play in his sleep - but it's the presence of his physical gestures that make him unique. With Lau, the act biting an apple or turning on a laptop take on a strange kind of weight. His movements stake a claim to the air around him in ways that other actors' gestures don't. It's a strange talent, hard to put a finger on, perhaps even innate and unconscious on his part, but for this viewer it was almost the only thing keeping me in my seat.
Lau in a bad movie is a bright spot. Lau hanging out with the gang in a Johnnie To movie is one of the great pleasures of Hong Kong movies these days. But for Lau at his best, I urge you check out <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0843287/">My Name is Fame</a></i>, in which he stars as a washed-up actor trying to make a comeback. It's one of the most incisive movies about the artistic rivalry and obsession, and a perfect showcase for a definitive Lau Ching-wan star turn.Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717583359502491763noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284040.post-16737056273081733872012-08-03T15:53:00.004-04:002012-08-05T15:23:43.655-04:00Korea Trip Blog 2And <a href="https://blog.asia.si.edu/a-closer-look/tom-vick-in-korea-now-it-gets-interesting/">here</a> is my second Korea Trip post on the official Freer and Sackler Blog.Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717583359502491763noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284040.post-24562982900442585022012-07-30T17:02:00.000-04:002012-08-05T15:24:08.638-04:00The Problem with Google Street View Art<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I've <a href="http://tomvick.blogspot.com/2011/04/tvrb-otherwise-known-as-human-condition.html">written </a>about Geoff Dyer before. Since then, my ambivalence about him has only grown. In his <i>New York Times Book Review</i> column, for instance, he often seems to be reaching for appropriately quirky subjects. But <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/jul/14/google-street-view-new-photography">this article</a> in <i>The Guardian</i> about Google Street View Art is equal parts fascinating and disturbing, for reasons he's probably not even aware of.<br />
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Dyer rightly points out that the attraction of these images is their uncanniness, their contextlessness. We don't know where they came from or exactly what is going on in them. But he also acknowledges that they are a form of armchair art. Their makers, and by extension, their audience, is removed from the human experience contained in them.<br />
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But in a discussion of the most disturbing set of photos in the article, Dyer eventually goes even further than the artists he discusses in turning the photos' subjects into abstractions. In discussing Doug Rickard's <a href="http://www.wirtzgallery.com/exhibitions/2011a/2011_05/Rickard/Rickard_frame.html">images </a>of what he dubs "the economically ravaged fringes of cities," he rhapsodizes about "wastelands" inhabited by <span style="font-family: inherit;">"<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">forlorn figures [who] look like they will never quite make it to the opposite kerb." </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">But all I see in these images is a new way to aestheticise the poor. Those kids crossing the street aren't abstractions, and I'm pretty sure they'll make it across. They could end up as Trayvon Martin or they could end up teaching at a university, but turning them into blurred symbols for the fall of Capitalism is just another way of refusing to acknowledge the actual humanity of the poor (and it must be pointed out: black) people depicted. Worst of all, Rickard didn't even have to drive through these "wastelands" to get his images. He only had to search the Web.</span></span>Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717583359502491763noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284040.post-60048044698452621842012-07-30T11:26:00.000-04:002012-08-05T15:24:23.725-04:00Korea Trip Blog 1<a href="http://blog.asia.si.edu/events/film/curator-of-film-tom-vick-korea-in-five-scenes/">Here</a> is the first of two posts on the official Freer|Sackler Blog re: my trip to Korea this month.Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717583359502491763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284040.post-15026338860360958092012-02-05T10:42:00.003-05:002012-08-05T15:24:41.036-04:00Two New Pieces on Korean CinemaI have two new articles out on the interwebs:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/75/75korea_vick.php">Turn, Turn, Turn: The Seasons of Korean Cinema</a>, in <span style="font-style:italic;">Bright Lights Film Journal</span><br /><br /><a href="http://koreanfilm.or.kr/webzine/sub/column.jsp?mode=A_VIEW&wbSeq=5">Korean Cinema 2011: The View from Here</a>, in <span style="font-style:italic;">Korean Cinema Today</span>.<br /><br />Enjoy.Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717583359502491763noreply@blogger.com23tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284040.post-57874031703744656572011-12-04T17:02:00.001-05:002011-12-04T17:04:17.019-05:00Crepuscule JunctionMy short story, "Crepuscule Junction" is available in <span style="font-style:italic;">Underground Voices'</span> annual anthology, <a href="http://www.undergroundvoices.com/"><span style="font-style:italic;">Hotel Oblivion</span></a>. It's only available in print, so buy it (please).Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717583359502491763noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284040.post-74945719856990629272011-11-06T11:21:00.002-05:002012-08-05T15:25:39.379-04:00Dubstep<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tYUTzgIR33o/Tra3K-vhEFI/AAAAAAAAAI4/u59J0iNB-60/s1600/2562-Dubstep.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 187px; height: 200px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tYUTzgIR33o/Tra3K-vhEFI/AAAAAAAAAI4/u59J0iNB-60/s200/2562-Dubstep.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5671922179988590674" /></a><br />Funny that there is a<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_0dLDsc-Vw"> form of dancing</a> that mimicking the artificial motion of slow motion and freeze frames, and it is so convincing that when filmed, you can't tell if it's<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZunqHBsOZm0"> real or not</a>.Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717583359502491763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284040.post-45995598478641835982011-11-04T11:07:00.004-04:002012-08-05T15:25:05.953-04:00Karin Chien on Independent Chinese Cinema<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_tnVBbQ1Kfg/TrQBLbA2VDI/AAAAAAAAAIs/vgoIAErSBwc/s1600/Disorder_1-640x360.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 112px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_tnVBbQ1Kfg/TrQBLbA2VDI/AAAAAAAAAIs/vgoIAErSBwc/s200/Disorder_1-640x360.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5671159126507803698" /></a><br />A while ago I was talking to a Chinese filmmaker about a Chinese film (not his) that I found lacking. Its style (slow, contemplative) somehow didn’t match its subject matter, draining it of the power it should have had. My interlocutor’s position was that China’s increasing wealth has rendered a significant number of its artists complacent. Their films now lack commitment and energy. <br /><br />But there is a sector of Chinese cinema where energy and commitment still hold sway, as this <a href="http://dgeneratefilms.com/critical-essays/what-american-indies-can-learn-from-their-chinese-counterparts/">essay</a> by <a href="http://dgeneratefilms.com/">dGenerate Films</a> founder Karin Chien proves. Chien, who used to produce American indies, chides American filmmakers for putting business considerations before artistic ones, for spending more time lining up financing and marketing than on the content of their work. Independent Chinese filmmakers, on the other hand, proceed from the opposite side. They don’t expect to make much money, but they are passionate about getting their stories out, and are willing to work underground to do it. In other words, they work like there’s something at stake. It’s a provocative read, and well worth checking out. (Image, by the way, from Huang Weikai's excellent <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://dgeneratefilms.com/catalog/disorder-xianshi-shi-guoqu-de-weilai/">Disorder</a></span>.)Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717583359502491763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284040.post-17474305104538321772011-10-16T16:36:00.003-04:002011-10-16T16:48:36.132-04:00Taking Chances: The Busan International Film Festival 2011<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WkkEshZGEms/TptDA75XRRI/AAAAAAAAAIU/kt3Ml2Ed9qc/s1600/P-047.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 121px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-WkkEshZGEms/TptDA75XRRI/AAAAAAAAAIU/kt3Ml2Ed9qc/s200/P-047.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5664194639705883922" /></a><br /><a href="http://www.biff.kr/structure/eng/default.asp">Busan </a>(formerly Pusan) is probably the most intense stop on my festival circuit. There’s too much of everything: too many movies, too many meetings, too many friends to catch up with that I only see once or twice a year. In years past this tended to stress me out, but this year I resolved to keep calm and suck it all up like the raw shrimp a mischievous old lady served me in her food stall by the beach one night.<br /><br />Much of the coverage of the 16th edition of the festival was about the changes - a new name, a new director, a splashy new <a href="http://www.biff.kr/Template/Builder/00000001/page.asp?page_num=3715">festival center</a> (pitched to do for Busan what Frank Gehry did for Bilbao), the relocation of most activities from lovely beachside Haeundae to corporate, anonymous Centum City – but the films are the real point. Read on for my take.<br /><a name='more'></a><br />My main focus this year was the new Korean films, and I was pleased to see several directors playing with form in interesting ways. The granddaddy of Korean narrative gamesmanship is, of course, Hong Sang-soo, and if <span style="font-style:italic;">The Day He Arrives</span> failed, for me, to live up to his last two films, or its sublime <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gm6LIUy6vV8">trailer</a>, a pretty good Hong film is better than nothing. Speaking of whom, the catalogue description of Lee Kwang-kuk’s <span style="font-style:italic;">Romance Joe</span> tied itself in knots simultaneously arguing that it was and wasn’t overly influenced by Hong’s work, which actually turns out to be true. The film’s narrative tricks, involving tales within tales, recall Hong, but Lee’s sense of humor is all his own, and, as the conclusion make clear, Lewis Carroll was at least as much on his mind.<br /><br />Lee wasn’t the only one taking risks. Park Hong-min’s <span style="font-style:italic;">A Fish</span> was both smart an haunting, luring you in one direction before pulling you into a beguiling story involving shamanism and lost souls. Jeon Kyu-hwan’s <span style="font-style:italic;">From Seoul to Varanasi</span> and Roh Gyeong-tae’s <span style="font-style:italic;">Black Dove</span> were both raw, sexually explicit dramas that may have tried a bit too hard. In Jeon’s case, an involving story of emotional violence veered into a terrorism plot that felt a bit forced. Roh’s at times very powerful investigation of guilt and sorrow in the aftermath of a fatal hit-and-run accident was marred by some unfortunate dream sequences that looked like they came from a bad music video, and an unnecessary twist that robbed the ending of some of its impact. <br /><br />While the positives outweighed the negatives in both of those films, the same could not be said of Kim Sung-hoon’s <span style="font-style:italic;">Ryang-kang-do: Merry Christmas, North</span>, a noxious and poorly made propaganda piece that was all too symptomatic of depressing rightward turn in Korean politics recently. Its sins were balanced, however, by a much more honest political work, Kim Joong-hyun’s student film(!) <span style="font-style:italic;">Choked</span>, which chronicled a family’s spiral into financial ruin thanks to an economy that encourages even the poor to take on massive debt to get ahead.<br /><br />While I normally try to get in a lot of the Korean Retrospective films, I only saw one from this year’s subject, Kim Kee-duk, who struck me as a solid craftsman, but hardly the revelation that previous honorees like Shin Sang-ok, Kim Ki-young and Lee Man-hee proved to be. But then again talents like that are rare in any country. The festival also honored Hong Kong director Yonfan, whose Hitchcock homage <span style="font-style:italic;">Double Fixation</span> was a perfect slice of entertaining cheese starring my new crush object, Cherie Chung, who remained unspeakably sexy even in a succession of hideous 80s outfits.<br /><br />The film of the festival for me, though, came from Thailand. Kongdei Jaturanrasmee’s <span style="font-style:italic;">P-047</span> starts with a shot that plays with offscreen space in ways not seen since Jon Jost’s <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://www.jon-jost.com/work/lastchants.html">Last Chants for a Slow Dance</a></span>, and features a compelling enough premise: two guys break into people’s homes not to rob them but to borrow their lives for a few hours (and then put everything back where they found it). But it soon moves into more and more mystical territory involving reincarnation and Thai folk beliefs. If this sounds like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apichatpong_Weerasethakul">Apichatpong </a>territory, well, it is. But what it helped me realize is that Apichatpong has not so much inspired imitators as much as he has opened up new territory for Thai filmmakers to explore, an aesthetic system that each can use for his or her own ends, just as two other fascinating Thai films from the last couple of years, Anocha Suwichakornpong’s <span style="font-style:italic;">Mundane History</span> and Sivaroj Kongsakul’s <span style="font-style:italic;">Eternity</span>, have done. May there be many more to come.Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717583359502491763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284040.post-75737951343261505202011-09-05T18:23:00.002-04:002012-08-05T15:25:27.155-04:00Finally: The Chaser<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fKqV9AWCerM/TmVMrx3QenI/AAAAAAAAAII/iDOBdvU7Zok/s1600/Chaser.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 135px; height: 200px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-fKqV9AWCerM/TmVMrx3QenI/AAAAAAAAAII/iDOBdvU7Zok/s200/Chaser.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5649005622609345138" /></a><br />A while ago my lady and I sat down to watch <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://">The Chaser</a></span>, a Korean film that was generating a lot of buzz at the time. A few minute in, a serial killer, after imprisoning a prostitute in a filthy bathroom/torture chamber, sets about trying to bash her head in with a hammer. Thinking we were in for another serial killer flick trading on the brutalization of women, we turned it off.<br /><br />Well, I tried watching it again recently, and, as surprising as this may sound, I’m glad I did, because it turns out that The Chaser is a textbook example of popular Korean cinema’s way of confounding expectations by tweaking well-worn conventions into something new and thrilling.<br /><a name='more'></a><br />It happens on a structural level, and it’s actually kind of subtle. It’s as if director Na Hong-jin and his co-writers Hong Won-chan and Lee Shin-ho dissected the structure of the traditional serial killer chase movie (you know the kind, there are hundreds), and at every point they could, chose the path of least cliché, creating a winding plot that swerves between the conventional and the implausible without dipping too far into either. A high-wire act essentially. Here is a film with few “positive” characters (its hero is an ex-cop turned pimp, who chases the serial killer not to save lives, but because he thinks he’s stealing and selling his girls) and loads of violence that somehow works as a smart, thrilling piece of entertainment. It won’t do anything to change the minds of those who still think Korean films are more violent than other countries’, but it does prove that it’s still possible to do something new with the familiar tools of genre filmmaking.Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717583359502491763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284040.post-86934932006161023242011-09-05T18:03:00.002-04:002012-08-05T15:26:46.524-04:00TVRB: Can't Stop Won't Stop<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XA34JM5PQCc/TmVLkYw9zjI/AAAAAAAAAIA/GZsYg3OadZY/s1600/bkcover-hp.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 200px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XA34JM5PQCc/TmVLkYw9zjI/AAAAAAAAAIA/GZsYg3OadZY/s200/bkcover-hp.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5649004396101357106" /></a><br />The <a href="http://www.racialicious.com/2011/08/22/live-tweets-from-the-hip-hop-kung-fu-panel-at-the-smithsonian/">Hip Hop Kung Fu Connection</a> events we did at the Freer a couple of weeks ago inspired me to dig a little deeper into hip hop history, so I picked up a copy of <span style="font-style:italic;">Jeff Chang’s Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip Hop Generation</span>. Chang’s subject is not just the music, but the social and political contexts from which it sprang. This may sound dry, but the result is a compelling, even angry book that recounts in impressive detail hip hop’s rise from underground Bronx party music to global cultural, economic and political force.<br /><a name='more'></a><br />What Chang brilliantly emphasizes is that hip hop’s history is inextricably intertwined with the larger, much more depressing story of race relations, particularly in New York and Los Angeles, in the 80s and 90s – a series of firestorms that sparked changes in the music, radicalized its practitioners, and finally exploded in the LA riots of 1992. If, to many, groups like Public Enemy and NWA were scary abstractions, symbols of the dangerous urban youth prowling the streets and in need of suppression, Chang goes to great lengths to the complex set of circumstances that formed their aesthetics, and how the media and political figures cynically reduced them to stereotypes in order to further oppressive and racist policies like James Q. Wilson’s odious “broken windows” theory and the LAPD’s military occupation mindset under its chief, Darryl Gates, in the 80s and 90s, the cumulative effect of which was to essentially criminalize the very condition of being black, young and poor.<br /><br />Chang’s account tails off just at the beginning of hip hop morphing into a multi-billion dollar global industry. It’s hard to remember now, when rappers like Jay-Z and Kanye West function more like CEO’s (of self-perpetuating corporations that sell boasts about their own financial success) than political firebrands. It took Public Enemy’s still fervent Chuck D to <a href="http://newsone.com/entertainment/thegrio1/watch-the-throne-a-smack-in-the-face-to-black-americas-economic-plight/">take them down</a> a peg or two for making an album celebrating their incredible wealth at a time when many people (of all races) are suffering in this tanking economy.<br /><br />A longtime hip hop journalist, Chang is equally adept at slinging slang, summoning up left-wing fervor at injustice, and methodically documenting every step along the way. As people said at the time it came out, it’s the serious history hip hop music deserves.Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717583359502491763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284040.post-50393945449996875172011-07-04T17:34:00.002-04:002011-07-04T17:41:20.079-04:00<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wNvK5Hmsd6Y/ThIzcVdPUFI/AAAAAAAAAF4/yB5AzcBfo_I/s1600/Tiger.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 132px; height: 200px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-wNvK5Hmsd6Y/ThIzcVdPUFI/AAAAAAAAAF4/yB5AzcBfo_I/s200/Tiger.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5625615446428307538" /></a><br />Even though I saw it several weeks ago, I’ve been avoiding writing about Werner Herzog’s <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://www.ifcfilms.com/films/cave-of-forgotten-dreams">Cave of Forgotten Dreams</a></span>. The reason is that thinking too much about those <a href="http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/chauvet/">Chauvet cave paintings</a> threatens to make one weep uncontrollably (in the film, even the caves’ curator has to pause to gather herself before discussing the extraordinary <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/06/23/080623fa_fact_thurman">wall of horses</a>.) 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.”<br /><br />A similar elemental shock runs through John Vaillant’s book, <span style="font-style:italic;">The Tiger</span>.<br /><a name='more'></a><br />Vaillant uses the true story of a series of tiger attacks in Siberia in the late 90s as a jumping off-point for a larger discussion of the complex relationship between humans and animals throughout our evolutionary history, a relationship that goes at least as far back as Chauvet and continues in the wilder parts of the world today. <br /><br />In this particular part of Siberia, tigers and humans have existed together for centuries, and have developed a kind of shared existence, a mutual respect. Vaillant is particularly good at tracing the ways in which the folklore of the area dovetails with science. Hunters there believe that you should leave part of what you kill for the tigers, and they will do the same for you, and violating that trust can lead to trouble. Siberian tigers, despite being over 500 pounds, ferocious, and brightly colored, can disappear into the snowy woods, willing themselves into invisibility and silence, an evolutionary tactic that goes a long way towards explaining why people believe them to have otherworldly powers.<br /><br />The balance between species was threatened after perestroika, when all of Russia basically went up for sale, and people living in remote areas lost their safety net. Tigers became valuable commodities and people began hunting them for sport and profit. In <span style="font-style:italic;">The Tiger</span>, one of these beasts, it seems, became so sick of it that he started hunting humans. And not just hunting as in leaping out of the forest randomly, hunting as in tracking a man for days, waiting at his house, and, after killing him, leaving virtually nothing behind but his clothes. Hunting as in, it seems, bearing a grudge for past wrongs and tracking people down for it. According to witnesses, the tiger’s first victim seemed to be in a kind of supernatural thrall to the animal, drawn unwillingly and inexorably to it in the way that characters in legends of tigers are.<br /><br />Vaillant gives equal time to the victims of these attacks and the team sent to track and kill the tiger. The visceral tension of the chase is equaled by the thoroughly-researched presentation of tiger lore, science and history, with digressions into similarly extreme, intimate man-beast relationships in other parts of the world and other points in history. Like Herzog’s film, it gives an uncanny jolt, a kind of existential reminder of where we exist in the animal world, that some of its mysteries are for us to discover, and some to just exist in.Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717583359502491763noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284040.post-38308205535166689812011-07-04T17:20:00.002-04:002011-07-04T17:23:12.796-04:00It's Comedy! Part TwoLast week two important documents hit the internet. In <a href="http://gawker.com/5817134/meddling-mother+in+law-sends-worlds-bitchiest-email-about-manners">one</a>, 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 <a href="http://gawker.com/5816417/the-quentin-tarantino-toe+sucking-sex-email-that-will-haunt-your-dreams">the other</a>, 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.<br /><br />I have mixed them together. After the jump, Quentin Tarantino's victim meets her mother-in-law-to-be:<br /><a name='more'></a><br /><br /><br />Friendsicles,<br /><br />You are getting this email because you are one of my 15 favorite fuck buddies, and if I haven’t had a chance to hook up with you in the last couple of weeks it’s because about a month ago I totally got engaged to this English guy, Freddie. For those of you I have managed to hook up with lately, I know I promised to tell you about the trip I took to meet his crazy uptight family back in April, but getting ready for a wedding is, like, extremely time-consuming and I haven’t had a moment until now to write it all down.<br /><br />So here goes:<br /><br />Freddie warned me before we got there that his family eats a lot of weird English food that I probably couldn’t eat because of my diet. So as soon as we arrived I was like, “just so you know, Mrs. B., I’m diabetic, I’m kind of a vegan, and I’m on a gluten free diet.” And then I started listing all the stuff I can and can’t eat. His mom was all “Pardon me?” I thought she couldn’t hear me so I repeated it all louder for her. And then she made this kind of “harrumph” sound. How rude, right?<br /><br />So then we sit down to tea, which is like a thing in England, and I’m like, “I can’t have caffeine because of my diabetes, and also those pastries look like they have gluten in them.” So what did they do? They put out these little sandwiches which are tiny first of all, and are just a piece of cucumber between two slices of bread. Naturally I couldn’t eat the bread, so I just ate some little pieces of cucumber, so then, to be polite, I was like, “that was really nice and all, but I’m still kind of hungry.” Freddie’s mom just stared at me and then her teacup suddenly shattered.<br /><br />I should mention that they live in this huge mansion, with servants and everything. The dining room table is one of those giant, long tables you see in movies, and there were, like, eighteen people there at dinner. I guess they were all related to Freddie because they all either looked like Prince Charles, Margaret Thatcher or the Monopoly guy. So the servants start serving soup, just like they do in the movies, you know? And they start with me since I’m the guest, and the thing is I’m starving because of the whole tea situation, and they are going so slowly around the table serving the soup that I started getting worried that mine would be cold by the time they got all the way around, so I just started chowing down on that soup! I was done by the time they got back around to me, so I was like “Yo, can I get some more of that?” By now Freddie is like crazy nudging me under the table and I’m like “what?” And he kind of jerks his head towards his mom, who is staring at me literally with her mouth hanging open. I’m not really up on my British manners or whatever, but I’m pretty sure that’s not considered polite. And then I look around, and like everybody is looking at me the same way. One guy’s monocle even popped right out of his eye. I figured they were waiting for a compliment on the food, which is probably the polite thing to do, so I was like, “great soup Mrs. B.!”<br /><br />So then as we’re going to bed – the family is so old-fashioned that they wouldn’t even let Freddie and me sleep in the same room – Freddie says to me, “we eat breakfast at half-seven, and we do dress for breakfast.” And I’m like, “duh, of course I’ll dress for breakfast. What am I going to do, show up naked? But if I’m not up at half-seven (whatever that is), just go ahead and eat without me. I can fend for myself.” That was the night I kept sexting all you guys. What else was I supposed to do? I was so bored. (Sorry I forgot about the time difference! Justin, I hope the fender bender wasn’t too bad. Susan, why didn’t you tell me your boss was looking over your shoulder?) <br /><br />I was tired from the jet lag and all, so I figured it was okay for me to sleep in, so when I finally woke up at like eleven I threw on my hoodie and some sweatpants and went downstairs. It was the weirdest thing: everybody was just, like, sitting around the table. I was like “don’t mind me, I’ll just grab something from the fridge!” Nobody said anything, so I got an orange and took my seat. Only then did I notice that they were all sitting in front of plates of stuff like cold eggs and oatmeal and congealed sausage. Freddie told me later that it was his family’s tradition to not start breakfast until everyone was at the table. They had been sitting there for three and a half hours! In suits and nice dresses! I was like, “that’s really nice of you all, but you seriously don’t have to wait around for me. I’m not really a morning person anyway.”<br /><br />At least that night we got to go to the pub. I was like, “finally! A little fun.” I was barely eating anything (see above re: food), so I guess I got drunk pretty quick. People started making toasts to our engagement and stuff, and when it got to be my turn, I was like, “thank you all for your unique kind of hospitality. I only wish you would have let me know beforehand that I was supposed to bring a stick to keep up my ass all weekend.” Well, I thought it was a pretty witty remark. Aren’t the British supposed to appreciate that? But I guess I guess it’s not considered polite to laugh out loud in public so it got kind of quiet in there.<br /><br />The next morning, Mrs. B. was actually almost nice to me! First thing in the morning she was like, “we’re walking to the beach today. Dress appropriately.” Which is, like, more words in a row than she said to me the whole time I was there. So I put on my bikini and that wrap I got in Cancun, and my cute little sandals, you know, the whole beach thing. But when I got downstairs everyone else was in, like, jodhpurs I think they’re called, coats, and, like heavy boots. Mrs. B. looked me up and down and was like, “cute outfit.” I was like, oh my god, an actual compliment! Maybe my little joke the night before kind of broke the ice.<br /><br />Anyway guys, you know how beaches in LA are sunny and warm, and you can drive to them, and they have little places where you can eat, and all that stuff? Beaches in England are nothing like that. First of all, we had to literally hike there. Through woods. And up and down these steep hills. And it was, like cold and misty the whole time. Everyone else was tromping away with their walking sticks and boots, so poor me had to absolutely ruin my cute sandals trying to keep up, clambering over these damp, slimy boulders, and slipping on these muddy trails. Plus I hadn’t eaten much for breakfast, so my blood sugar was really low. When we finally got to the “beach” it was all rocky and cold, and there was no food in sight. I politely mentioned how I hoped the beach was close because I needed some food because of my diabetes. Mrs. B. said something about some “lovely young woman” she knew who had diabetes and never even mentioned it, she just dealt with it in “the English way.”<br /><br />I asked Freddie later what “the English was, and he was like, “well, she didn’t want to be a bother to anyone so she quietly slipped into a coma. It’s considered the polite thing to do. She is getting married in June, though.”<br /><br />But you know what the even weirder thing is than that whole weekend? About a week after I got back I got a card in the mail (handwritten! Who even does that?) from Freddie’s mom like scolding me for not sending her a thank you card! Thank you for what? Not literally killing me on that hike to the so-called “beach?” It also said something about finishing school. I was like, “fuck you, bitch. So what if I dropped out of college?”<br /><br />So, needless to say fucksicles: glad to be home. Hope you can make it to the wedding. We’re renting Gwyneth Paltrow’s castle. Score!Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717583359502491763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284040.post-89697517145365988072011-07-04T17:02:00.003-04:002011-07-04T17:20:51.120-04:00It's Comedy!Last week two important documents hit the internet. In <a href="http://gawker.com/5817134/meddling-mother+in+law-sends-worlds-bitchiest-email-about-manners">one</a>, 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 <a href="http://gawker.com/5816417/the-quentin-tarantino-toe+sucking-sex-email-that-will-haunt-your-dreams">the other</a>, 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.<br /><br />I have mixed them together. After the jump, Mrs. Bourne writes to Mr. Tarantino regarding their recent one night stand:<br /><a name='more'></a><br /><br />It is high time someone explained to you about good manners. Yours are obvious by their absence and I feel sorry for you.<br /><br />Unfortunately for both of us, my toes have grown quite fond of your amorous attentions, so I suppose I must make an attempt to get through to you. Your behaviour on my visit to your “place” (as you call it) during April was staggering in its uncouthness and lack of grace.<br /><br />Unfortunately, this was not the first example of bad manners I have experienced from you.<br /><br />If you wish to see me in open-toed shoes again (to say nothing of entirely unshod) I suggest you take some guidance from experts with utmost haste.<br /><br />There are plenty of I suppose they’re called dominatrixes around. You would be an ideal candidate for a course in proper foot worship from one of these professionals.<br />Please, for your own good, for my sake and for the sake of any other well-bred ladies who find you at the foot of their bed, fondling their lower extremities, do something as soon as possible.<br /><br />Here are a few examples of your lack of manners:<br /><br />When you meet a proper lady at a party, you do not walk up and simply start pouring orange juice into her cup. Both orange juice and plastic cups are considered fit only for servants and dogs in my country, and it was only my impeccable manners that prevented me from leaving on the spot.<br /><br />When a lady mentions, out of politeness mind you, that she liked <span style="font-style:italic;">Reservoir Dogs</span>, you do not then fish for compliments by asking what she thinks of the rest of your rather distasteful oeuvre.<br /><br />You do not presume to declare which of your films are “seminal works.” Furthermore, the word “seminal” should never be uttered in the presence of a lady.<br /><br />You do not simply swoop in and begin “making out” with a lady with whom you are conversing, in the middle of a crowded kitchen no less. You are not a swineherd and I am not a scullery maid, and we are not out behind the hay bales on Boxing Day. <br /><br />After witnessing your indiscretion, my butler, who kindly escorted me to the party, had to go through months of physical therapy in order to lower his eyebrow from its arched position, at great expense to me, and great trouble to our family veterinarian. As of this writing, the eyebrow in question still retains a partial arch, and now I can never tell if he is being ironic when he says “yes ma’am.” It is very distressing.<br /><br />You should have introduced me to Jamie Foxx. I still fondly remember his performances on In Living Colour, one of my favourite programmes.<br /><br />When a lady agrees to be a guest in your house, you do not waste time with photo booth shenanigans and talk of cinema. Why on Earth should she want to listen to a spittle-flecked monologue about her five least favourite movies? Such conversation is only appropriate for the pub, among football hooligans and other such riff raff.<br /><br />Her unchaperoned presence in your home at such a late hour should indicate that she is interested in only one thing.<br /><br />You should have hand-written a card to me. Not every woman would acquiesce as willingly as I to your peculiar predilections.<br /><br />It is tragic that you have oddly-shaped genitals. However, you aren't the only young person in the world who has them.<br /><br />I know quite a few young people who have this condition, one of whom is getting married in June. I have never heard him discuss his condition.<br /><br />He quietly gets on with it. He doesn't like having genitals so ugly that they cause women to reconsider their sexual orientation. Who would? You do not need to fling them about with no warning or use them as an excuse to draw attention to yourself. It is vulgar.<br /><br />As a foot fetishist of long standing you must be acutely aware of the need to prepare your prospective partner for extraordinary eventualities, your request to “suck on your toes while I jerk off” being one such example.<br /><br />You are experienced enough to have prepared a lady such as myself appropriately.<br /><br />No-one “dives right in” without warning and starts lavishing such attention on a lady’s toes. It is brash, celebrity style behaviour.<br /><br />I understand you are unable, or unwilling, to contribute very much towards the cost of the rather extensive pedicure I must now arrange to repair the damage you caused with your unbridled, almost savage lust. (There is nothing wrong with that except that convention is such that one might presume you would have saved over the years for such eventualities, given your proclivities.)<br /><br />If this is the case, it would be most gentlemanly and gracious to engage in such boudoir assignations as befits both you and the lady who has so graciously agreed to enter your bedchamber.<br /><br />One could be accused of thinking that Quentin Tarantino must be patting himself on the back for having caught a most elegant, refined woman for a “one night stand.” I pity my pedicurist.Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717583359502491763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284040.post-40158625347438722822011-06-18T18:56:00.001-04:002011-06-18T19:00:21.566-04:00A Nats Fan's Notes: Behind the Foul PoleA couple of weeks ago my friend T---, who programs films at another area theater, decided it was time for a business meeting, and what better place to have it then at the ballpark? The date we chose turned out to be auspicious. By some form of science (picking names out of a hat?) or divination (seeing a vision in the pattern of Dubble Bubble pieces spilled from an overturned bucket?), Jim Riggleman had arrived at the idea of batting his pitchers in the eighth spot, and for some reason it was working.<br /><a name='more'></a><br />T --- and I arrived at the park to see a team that had won five in a row. Two nights previously, they had come back from a 6-1 deficit to vanquish the Cardinals 8-6, then stomped them the next night 10-0 behind a complete game from Livan Hernandez. (Hernandez, who normally does everything at the pace of a turtle, proved he could move with lightning speed during his previous start, in San Diego, when he speared a line drive headed right for his face. But the energy expended forced him to lie down on the mound for a quick nap before continuing the game.)<br /><br />Over the past few weeks, Michael Morse had shed his bewilderment and bad luck to become one of the hottest hitters in the league, and this, combined with his long eyelashes, always-stoned-looking appearance and Keanu Reeves-like pretty/vacant good looks have led my wife to begin referring to him (somewhat worryingly for me) as her ”boyfriend.”<br /><br />On top of that, Ryan “The Slugging Bland” Zimmerman, had returned to the line-up and was hitting well.<br /><br />This could only mean one thing: the Nats would lose, and lose horribly. And yet, in the time it took T--- and me to order and pay for our food at the new Taqueria on the Promenade Deck (or whatever it’s called) at Nats Park, weird-bearded gaunt ghost Jayson Werth and Jolly Roger Bernadina had led off the game with back-to-back homeruns, much to the delight of the girls taking our orders, who saw both homers on the big screen behind our backs. (How many video screens are there at Nats Park? Better to ask how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.)<br /><br />Once at our seats we found ourselves surrounded, annoyingly, by Cardinals fans who, apparently hadn’t gotten enough of watching their team collapse at home and were now following them east for more abuse. Far from the action, behind the left field foul pole, T--- and I were able to have our business meeting in peace while the Nats added a couple more runs and, for the most part, fended off the Cards attacks.<br /><br />In the ninth, our erratic closer Drew Storen came in to mop things up and promptly surrendered the tying run. Storen is so high strung that you almost expect him to turn into Yosemite Sam, pull out two guns and propel himself into the air by firing them into the ground while yelling “Ooooooohhhhh!” at moments like these, so we once again expected the worst. As the game dragged into extra innings we began to talk about how much more we were willing to take.<br /><br />But lo and behold, Ryan “Beige” Zimmerman led off the bottom of the tenth with a single, Morse took a pitch to the thigh, and Espinosa cracked a three-run walk-off homer – the second walk-off I’ve witnessed at the park this year.<br /><br />As of this writing, the Nats have won eight in a row, after beating their alleged rivals the Orioles twice, and Riggleman’s betting order gambit is, against all odds, paying off. All there is to do now is gird ourselves for the next crushing defeat.Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717583359502491763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284040.post-49088725976830484772011-05-31T19:53:00.002-04:002011-05-31T19:55:28.090-04:00A Nats Fan's Notes: Marcia's Birthday Edition<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-166GeKt5cr0/TeV_xP_oM8I/AAAAAAAAAFk/DsFTtMmZlWs/s1600/washington-nationals.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 120px; height: 120px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-166GeKt5cr0/TeV_xP_oM8I/AAAAAAAAAFk/DsFTtMmZlWs/s200/washington-nationals.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5613032994670916546" /></a><br />It’s getting to that point in the season when the Nats have settled into their underachieving ways. Everyone is performing slightly below average. Manager Jim Riggleman’s habitual perplexed grimace has become the default position of his face. I kind of like Riggleman’s philosophy of stacking his roster with just-emerging talent and versatile veterans who can be plugged into the line-up as needed, but this does not a consistent team make.<br /><a name='more'></a><br />They were coming off a dismal road trip on Friday, during which they lost seven of eight games, prompting a frustrated outburst by Jayson Werth, who apparently finally realized what it’s like to be on a losing team. So my hopes were not high that this would be the most successful birthday present I ever gave my wife. On the other hand, our opponents, the Padres, were the only team hitting worse than we were.<br /><br />As could be expected, this was a low scoring affair. The most exciting thing that happened in the early going was a 47-minute rain delay that afforded us the opportunity to take shelter in the concourse and observe the truly astonishing variety, in both size and shape, of beer bellies available to man, a testament, really, to the diversity of the human species.<br /><br />Once the rain abated, Danny Espinosa gave us a lead with a nifty solo home run, but a one-run lead by the Nats is kind of the definition of false hope. So naturally, the very first Padre in the top of the ninth sent the very first pitch over the left field wall to tie the game.<br /><br />Now loomed the prospect of extra innings, made doubly daunting by the fact that they cut off the beer after the seventh inning. The young couple beside us, who arrived late bearing little plastic cocktail glasses, had spent most of the game getting even more drinks and sneaking out to smoke. By now they had stockpiled five full beers between them, so at least they were set. The male half told me they were from Centerville, MD (which I guess is a place?), and that he usually spends his weekends riding his dirt bike on piles of mine tailings in Pennsylvania (which I guess is a thing people do?) At any rate, when our half of the ninth rolled around, I found myself saying, out loud, to Michael Morse, “do exactly what they did. Hit one out of here.”<br /><br />When he actually did blast the first pitch into the Padres bullpen they both looked at me like I’d successfully influenced Morse with my mind, which I also choose to believe, because he looks susceptible to hypnosis. <br /><br />The Nats celebrated the unlikely feat of an actual bottom-of-the-ninth walk-off home run by smashing Morse in the face with a shaving cream pie and dumping a whole big thing of Gatorade over his head, generally behaving as if they’d won the World Series, which, in context, is what it must have felt like.Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717583359502491763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284040.post-42793680742596633032011-05-31T17:55:00.001-04:002012-08-05T15:27:42.883-04:00TVRB: Richard Brautigan and the Aesthetic of Failure<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-y0CzGGAQeOg/TeVnhI5q6nI/AAAAAAAAAFc/gmuSnLJv-FQ/s1600/brautigantypewriter.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 134px; height: 200px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-y0CzGGAQeOg/TeVnhI5q6nI/AAAAAAAAAFc/gmuSnLJv-FQ/s200/brautigantypewriter.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5613006329609906802" /></a><br />When I was in a bookstore in Tokyo a couple of years ago I came across a framed, signed edition of <a href="http://www.brautigan.net/">Richard Brautigan</a>’s devastating little “<a href="http://www.redhousebooks.com/galleries/freePoems/lovePoem.htm">Love Poem</a>.” I hadn’t thought about Brautigan for a while, years probably, and it was somehow reassuring to learn that he’s still, in some way, “big in Japan,” because he’s been virtually forgotten here. <br /><br />Even more gratifying was seeing his creative spirit alive in a couple of Southeast Asian films I saw over the last couple of years: Edwin's <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/09/11/movies/11blind.html">Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly</a></span> and Anocha Suwichakornpong’s <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-12-08/film/mundane-history-s-metaphysical-family-drama-is-anything-but/">Mundane History</a></span>.<br /><a name='more'></a><br />I have no idea if either filmmaker knows his work, but the disregard for traditional forms, the will to take aesthetic risks that don’t always succeed evident in their films reminded me of the freewheeling experimentation of Brautigan’s <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trout_Fishing_in_America">Trout Fishing in America</a></span>, as if the spirit of the American 60s and 70s had been transplanted to Indonesia and Thailand.<br /><br />A lot of people (me included) discover Brautigan in college, which makes sense when you think about it. College is when you’re being taught the rules and canons of literature, at a time in your life when your natural instinct is to rebel against them. Brautigan’s writing flaunts convention. He takes risks that fail almost as often as they succeed (he sometimes stretches his metaphors and similes so far they collapse), but at his best he’s a writer with the rare ability to circumvent the rules of good fictional form, tap directly into his peculiar, skewed way of paying attention to himself and he world, and to let that eccentricity flow, unchecked but not unedited, onto the page. This is truly something to be admired, and it’s harder than it looks, as a lifetime of reading fiction can inculcate those rules into your heard even if you don’t study them formally. <br /><br />Brautigan’s aesthetic high-wire act, along with his alcoholism and the crippling depression that led to his suicide in 1984, may have doomed him to failure and (relative) obscurity. His brand of unconventionality pegs him to a particular time for the academics and critics who have never quite given him his due. And he did himself no favors by posing on the covers of his books, a long-haired, moustachioed beanpole in a floppy hat who maintained the look, and the eccentric writing style, long after friends like Tom McGuane and Jim Harrison settled into traditional storytelling and aged into respectable citizens. Brautigan is preserved in amber, depending on your sensibility either as a relic of the 60s or an inspiring spirit of aesthetic daredevilism.Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717583359502491763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284040.post-22930073764538237722011-05-21T20:18:00.003-04:002011-05-21T20:27:03.031-04:00The Madness of Kim Ki-young<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-njLqTv8gs5I/TdhYOwmILBI/AAAAAAAAAFU/d-0Rwnnp93Y/s1600/kimkiyoung.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 134px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-njLqTv8gs5I/TdhYOwmILBI/AAAAAAAAAFU/d-0Rwnnp93Y/s200/kimkiyoung.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5609330346476186642" /></a><br />Imagine walking around Washington, DC on a spring night. You happen upon a museum that’s open, and find out there’s a movie playing inside, so you go in. You’ve never heard of the film or the filmmaker, and you’ve possibly never seen a movie from Korea before. For the next two hours you are pinned to your seat watching a husband, wife and housemaid alternately screaming and shambling around like zombies while repeatedly trying to kill and/or fuck each other in a claustrophobic house full of madly ticking clocks and gaudy stained-glass lampshades. This happened to one lucky couple on Friday night. <br /><a name='more'></a><br />I met them after our screening of Kim Ki-young’s <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/the-woman-of-fire-82/Content?oid=896446">Woman of Fire ’82</a></span>, the third iteration of the out-of-control love triangle plot that he first unleashed in his most famous film, <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Housemaid_(1960_film)">The Housemaid</a></span> (1960). The couple had arrived a bit late, so they missed my introduction, in which I tried to prepare people for Kim’s uniquely outlandish aesthetic. Kim is most often compared to Sam Fuller and Nicholas Ray, directors with very distinct, florid styles, but with Kim you also have to stir in a bit of Roger Corman and William Castle. You half expect Vincent Price to be lurking in the shadows, ready to pounce.<br /><br />Kim’s films tend to begin with a modicum of normalcy, then quickly accelerate into total hysteria. (The <span style="font-style:italic;">Housemaid</span> films are apparently based on an actual incident). There are no half measures. Characters are either yelling, pawing at each other in lust or anger, or nearly catatonic, and are often conflicted as to whether they are trying to kill themselves or somebody else. The soundtracks bubble with noise. Visual compositions are crowded with people and objects and, in the color films, garish and clashing. (One Korean critic has remarked that you can almost always identify a Kim Ki-young film based on a single image.)<br /><br />When the couple approached me in the lobby, agog and stunned, I gave them some background on Kim (the kind of information you can find <a href="http://mubi.com/cast_members/17808">here</a>), and explained that what those of us who love him value is his exuberance and individuality. I can think of no other filmmaker whose style is at once so personal and so deeply crazy. When they asked me if what they just saw was typical of Korean movies (or Korea in general), I told them that Kim was unique in all the world of cinema, and assured them that what they just saw very rarely happens in the average Korean home.Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717583359502491763noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284040.post-70772644781027789362011-04-23T17:05:00.002-04:002011-04-23T17:20:00.798-04:00TVRB: Otherwise Known as the Human Condition, by Geoff Dyer<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gR1aDmHDTOU/TbNCfChDDsI/AAAAAAAAAFM/eXk162YwQyw/s1600/Dyer.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 109px; height: 164px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gR1aDmHDTOU/TbNCfChDDsI/AAAAAAAAAFM/eXk162YwQyw/s200/Dyer.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5598891862770519746" /></a><br />Geoff Dyer is a hero for those of us who still don’t know what we want to do when we grow up, both a ray of hope and an object of envy for any writer who ever feels trapped in their specialty (see, for instance, the title of this blog.) <br /><a name='more'></a><br />As Luc Sante points out in his <a href="http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/018_01/7298">review</a>of Dyer’s essay collection, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Otherwise-Known-Human-Condition-Selected/dp/1555975798/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1303592732&sr=1-1"><span style="font-style:italic;">Otherwise Known as the Human Condition</span></a>, writers are expected to specialize these days in order to be marketable: They are either novelists or historians or art critics or memoirists. Dyer is somehow all these things, earning a living and the respect of his peers by being an enthusiastic amateur with an interest in a wide range of subjects. Photography, literature, music, war, fiction, whatever strikes his fancy becomes the subject of a (usually pretty good) piece of writing. <br /><br />When I started reading Otherwise, strange coincidences started popping up. His essay on eccentric, pervy photographer <a href="http://tichyocean.com/">Miroslav Tichy</a> sent me to the internet to look him up, only to find he had died the day before. (This is the perfect book to read on an IPad, because you can easily look up the artists he writes about without putting it down). An F. Scott Fitzgerald quote about crying in a taxi because he would never be so happy again showed up in both a Dyer essay and an article I read in a magazine the same day. A Dyer <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/04/18/110418fa_fact_dyer">piece </a>on land art appeared in the <span style="font-style:italic;">New Yorker</span> while I was in the middle of his book, and someone in another magazine I read quoted a review he wrote of something or other. I attribute these coincidences not to the mysteries of fate but to the fact that Dyer’s output flies out in so many directions that bits are bound to land here and there in the path of anyone who reads periodicals.<br /><br />The <span style="font-style:italic;">New Yorker</span> piece kind of crystallized the good and the bad in him for me, its thoughtful insights into and vivid descriptions of Di Maria’s Lightning Field and Smithson’s Spiral Jetty marred by the insistent first-personness of the account. Which is almost the exact opposite of what Sante praises in his review. Sante wonders why he bothers to include work-for-hire pieces like book reviews in his collection, whereas I find Dyer on writers, Dyer on photography, Dyer on music, much more interesting than Geoff Dyer’s Own Adventures: the first-person reporting, the personal essays. Dyer hanging out with Def Leppard, attending a fashion show, flying in a vintage airplane or masturbating in a luxury hotel room is much less interesting than his keen, incisive analyses of photographs and books.<br /><br />The first-person pieces become too solipsistic for my taste, too convinced that his life is interesting enough to be put in print. The nadir is an early essay in which the madness of van Gogh, the plight of homeless East Village junkies, and the entire history of the blues are nothing compared to his agony at not being able to get through on the phone to some chick in London. Separately they may be tolerable, but read back to back, they coalesce into a portrait of entitlement: the self-absorption of thinking that just because techno music and Ecstasy blew open his mind in the 90s everybody wants to hear about it over and over again.<br /><br />This might be why his novel <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Jeff-Venice-Death-Varanasi-Vintage/dp/0307390306/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_4"><span style="font-style:italic;">Jeff in Venice/Death in Varanasi</span> </a>strikes me as Dyer at his best. Unclassifiably toeing a line between fiction and autobiography, it conveys extreme mental states (of drugs and spiritual hysteria) effectively because they are untethered from the facts of Dyer himself, yet feel somehow lived and true.<br /><br />It should come as no surprise, I guess, that a collection by a writer famed for eclecticism should vary so widely in quality. But the fact that he continues to write and publish at all gives hope to those of us striving to broaden the scope of what we write beyond the brands assigned to us.Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717583359502491763noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7284040.post-73549552231111311302011-04-23T17:01:00.002-04:002011-04-23T17:04:37.272-04:00A Nats Fan's Notes: Double Header<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pe9E4Aaj5FE/TbM-0b86JrI/AAAAAAAAAFE/viJhAHmyAxE/s1600/washington-nationals.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 120px; height: 120px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pe9E4Aaj5FE/TbM-0b86JrI/AAAAAAAAAFE/viJhAHmyAxE/s200/washington-nationals.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5598887832329004722" /></a><br />To devote yourself to a losing team is a strange act of faith. Growing up near Philadelphia I rooted for the Phillies, of course, but by the time I’d come to baseball consciousness they were in the playoffs every year, so why not root for them? But as a DC-area carpetbagger, there’s no real reason I should be rooting for the Nationals, who are even newer to the city than I am, and generally terrible.<br /><a name='more'></a><br />My wife and I, however, by sheer force of will, have decided to become Nats fans. Our first trip to Nats Park this year was for a double header against the Milwaukee Brewers. We stopped in at the vast Nats Store at the entrance and spent $250 on jerseys (Werth for me, Zimmerman for her) and caps. Nats Park is the kind of stadium that offends both old-school baseball purists and people who’ve never set foot in a ballpark of any kind. It’s basically a noisy, garish shrine to hyper-capitalism. Video displays and animated advertisements cover every possible surface. Souvenir booths, outposts of local fast food joints and bars selling overpriced alcohol lurk around every corner. And yet, with its perfect sightlines and ample food and beer options, I consider it a vast improvement over Veterans Stadium the concrete tub where I used to watch the Phillies all those years ago.<br /><br />I’ll admit to a bit of trepidation about sitting down to a Nats double header. By the time we settled into our seats with our beers and Ben’s Chili Bowl Half-Smokes it was the bottom of the first and the Nats were already trailing Milwaukee by a run. The kindly old lady beside us, diligently keeping score, noted that our starting line up only had two guys hitting over .200, and one of them was the pitcher.<br /><br />The old guy sitting behind us seemed to have come to the game with the sole purpose of yelling abuse at every single player on the field. This, I suppose, is one way to cope with rooting for a losing team. Ours is to provide encouragement, the way you would to a child who’s trying his or her best. This is the kind of attitude you have to take with someone like our leftfielder Michael Morse, who will someday get the hang of this whole baseball thing. A week earlier I had watched him on TV get hit on the knee with one pitch, and foul another off the knob of his bat. I kept waiting for him to figure out what that stick in his hands was for. <br /><br />In the game we attended he met expectations his first time up by helplessly watching pitches whiz by for a called strike out and heading back to the dugout moving his arm as if reminding himself how to swing. Morse is a big, strong guy, but so bad is his luck that when he finally did get hold of a pitch in the second game he hit it so hard off the left field fence that he was thrown out at second trying for a double.<br /><br />The Nats did win game one, in surprisingly powerful fashion. By the start of game two most of the fans had cleared out, and the stands took on a much more casual atmosphere. People moved around to better seats. Even Clint, the square-jawed young “entertainer” who hosts various activities on the video screens during games an shoots tee shirts out of a cannon, took time to sit near us and chat with an old couple who were apparently regulars he’d gotten to know. The cheering became desultory. A woman sitting near us didn’t even bother to clap. When the Nats did something positive, she just reached into her purse on the seat beside her, fished out a little cowbell, and rang it a couple of times.<br /><br />In the second game of a double header, all strategy is laid bare. Milwaukee’s tactic of putting on a different, extreme shift for every single batter (no doubt dictated by some sabermetric-type statistical science) began to unravel as more than one Nats lefthander dropped base hits exactly in the gap between the five guys loitering in the right side of the field. From my vantage point on the first base side I could see the huge space the Brewers were leaving down the left field line against lefties, and finally, deep in game two our Danny Espinosa lined an opposite field triple into it with the bases loaded. Two games, two wins.<br /><br />But here’s what’s most odd to me: I did get a strange feeling of pride putting on my Jayson Werth jersey and red Nats cap. I am normally not one for uniforms. There’s something scary about a crowd all wearing the same thing. And I know I’m being exploited by simply buying this merchandise. But there is a pleasure to being involved with a baseball team in some way. It’s the reason you can spend eight hours at park and kind of wish all the times you went it was a double header. Intellectually, I should probably hate sports for all the good reasons people have for hating them. But on the other hand all the people I know who hate sports are hopeless bores who abhor pleasure generally, so why should I listen to them?<br /><br />Anyway, go Nats!Tomhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01717583359502491763noreply@blogger.com0