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April 30, 2005
Murderball... catch it!
L and I went to see a screening of Murderball, a documentary that screened at the 48th San Francisco International Film Festival.
It's been picked up for distribution, so buy a ticket and bring a friend when it shows up at the art houses or maybe a gigaplex near you this summer.
The docu is about the athletes who play quad rugby -- professionally and in the Paralympic Games. It's a unflinching look at the Dream Team of a sport where decidedly unfeeble men ram Mad Max wheelchairs into each other at high speed on indoor courts, solely to put a ball across a goal.
I nearly forgot I was in San Francisco until the lights came up and the Q&A began with the co-directors and four of the rugby players featured in the film.
A substantial portion of Q's were actually crunchy and cruelty-free personal statements advertising the speaker's empathy and made scant mention of the film. On stage, the athletes made faces and looked a trifle disengaged as they took life-affirming questions that addressed the triumph of the will, the incredible inspiration they represent, nobility in the face of bla bla bla, etc.
One member of Team USA said he was comfortable with allowing the film crew inside his life because he trusted them, unlike most of the journalists he'd come to know. "Usually, we're at the end of the newscast -- you know, where they put those stories like the new baby monkey born at the zoo."
This film will put these guys -- and perhaps disabled people in general -- in a whole new light for most viewers. Some of these athletes are sexist, some are selfish, juvenile, or drink too much beer, but they're all really damned competitive. They're jocks to the bone, just like those cats on all those up-close-and-personal shows on ESPN and HBO.
Allow me to the be one of the word-of-mouthy that the filmmakers and distributor are counting on to tout this movie. I'm sure the P&A budget can't be astronomic, so I'm going to plant the seed in pliable minds I come across. Goooooo seeeeeeee it.
I can picture the distribution exec pitching it to his higher-ups: "Look, it's like Hoop Dreams, only in wheelchairs."
Maybe I'm a little sore about the Q&A because all the gushing hippies ate up the time, and I didn't get to ask my question. I was a little sulky, but we were filing out of the theater, and I got to buttonhole co-director Dana Adam Shapiro near the door.
Me: First of all, great movie. I really enjoyed it. Can I ask you a technical question?DAS: Thanks very much. Shoot.
Me: There were a couple of shots where I couldn't tell if you were using a Steadicam, or a wheelchair.
DAS: Ha. Well, there were always a bunch of spare wheelchairs around pretty much whereever we were shooting, so, you know. Actually, I would get Henry [co-director Henry Alex Rubin] to sit in the chair and hold the camera. Sometimes, people thought he was quadriplegic and would try to talk to him about it.
Film festivals rock.
Posted by Your Protagonist at 03:10 AM | Comments (0)
April 28, 2005
Reading about India, thinking about Iraq.
Since we're starting our RTW trip in India, I've been reading about its history to try to get a feel for its people. Bend it Like Beckham and Bride and Prejudice were a hoot at the multiplex, but they hardly provide an overview for one of the planet's most ancient cultures.
I find myself drawn to reading about the brief, brutal rebellion fought by factions of Indian insurgents (nationalists, natch) against the British East India Company -- the mother of all government contractors.
A little light research indicates that many Indians threw in their lot with their British masters. Even if things sucked having to kowtow to the BEIC army and civil servants, it was still better than the treatment they'd previously received under the previous regimes.
Apparently, the BEIC did much more than just suck the marrow out of the Subcontinent, sez Wikipedia:
The Company also had interests along the routes to India from Great Britain. As early as 1620, the company attempted to lay claim to the Table Mountain region in South Africa, later it occupied and ruled St Helena. The Company also established Hong Kong and Singapore; employed Captain Kidd to combat piracy; and cultivated the production of tea in India. Other notable events in the Company's history were that it held Napoleon captive on Saint Helena, and made the fortune of Elihu Yale. Its products were the basis of the Boston Tea Party in Colonial America.
Talk about your diversified multinationals! They had more fingers in different pies than Haliburton, and were probably a helluva lot more popular.
Thank God the days are gone when a government would seek to make private companies into arms of foreign policy and outsource their dirty work just to lay hands on spice and other treasures.
Posted by Your Protagonist at 11:32 PM | Comments (0)
April 23, 2005
Time, time, time.
After delaying our RTW trip, we've decided to leave in early June. An affable former co-worker has agreed to mind the old homestead while we peregrinate.
Mulling this over, I popped out to Safeway this ayem for juice and things. Once inside, a half-gallon of lactose-free milk gave me quite a start.
The sell-by date: 6/20/05. By then, we'll be traversing the Indian subcontinent. I nearly put the milk back, even though I knew the carton would be moldering in a landfill by Memorial Day. Pre-caffeinated cognitive dissonance; look for it in the next review of the DSM.
Pre-travel time is short and therefore precious. I must be more mindful about skritching my cat, keeping in touch with friends/relatives and sticking to vague plans to eat "better" and exercise "more often."
For reasons I don't fully understand, an air of impermanence hangs over my little world. Who'll curse sotto voce at asshat drivers on cell phones? Will my cat be permitted to drink from the bathroom faucet in her foster home?
I can't envision a day in which I won't check email, voice mail, blogs, news sites, fret about my Top Three Worries, and hear the confirmatory "ker-CHUNK!" of post through the mail slot downstairs.
Regardless, that day is coming soon, so I better get comfortable with the notion.
While L and I circumnavidate, other activities will punctuate my hours, days and weeks. A muezzin calling on the faithful? A swarm of bats leaving their cave at dusk? Or maybe something as mundane as a recurring blackout that forces me to write with flashlight and biro.
You don't need to tell me that I make these things more difficult than necessary. The rational part of me knows that San Francisco will still be rife with all the things I love and hate when we return. The city will be as ever.
And just who will I be?
Posted by Your Protagonist at 12:56 PM | Comments (0)
April 19, 2005
Men of Faith.
I don't give religion a lot of thought, but the liberal media has been shoving a certain lifestyle in my face for the last few weeks, so I've been taking a new look.
The new Pope is Joseph Ratzinger, the first German to hold the office in several hundred years, I'm told. As a teenager, he was a member of Hitler Youth and later helped guard a factory that used slave labor.
Research indicates that membership in Hitler Youth was compulsory after a certain point. Also in Ratzinger's defense, he did desert in 1944, spending the end of the war in a POW camp.
So much for that "a fat pope follows a thin pope" crap. The last pope was a writer/actor who endured the Nazi occupation of Poland by penning and appearing in anti-fascist productions. Perhaps appropriately, Ratzinger was JP II's Tom DeLay -- an enforcer with nicknames like "the Panzer cardinal" and "God's Own Rottweiler."
I'm not trying to pull the new guy down. But I can't believe that in an organization the size of the Roman Catholic church, they couldn't find someone who (however young) didn't literally wear a brown shirt or receive orders to smack down Nazi prisoners who stepped out of line.
I had my problems with John Paul II, but he was the first Pope to visit a Roman synagogue or to acknowledge that the church could have done a mitzvah for European Jewry, and instead chose not to. All things are relative, including my praise for religious figures.
I shouldn't be so rough on Benedictus XVI, considering the story of Argentine Argentine Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio. He's alleged to have had two priests kidnapped. Don't get me started on Cardinal Law.
I think of myself as a somewhat moral person. I'm certainly not doctrinaire enough to play spiritual leader to Robert Novak and Mel Gibson, but I've never had to deny a kidnapping beef, either.
If asked, I would have stuck it out for a few months while they found a more acceptable choice. If they were seeking a truly transitional pope, I just think they missed an opportunity.
Posted by Your Protagonist at 11:29 AM | Comments (0)
April 16, 2005
I am an old man.
I've felt this way for years. I look at people my age (or younger) and wryly observe their lack of judgement, whether it's in regard to their clothes, music, or overall mode of being.
Yesterday, L and I were driving home after a visit to a convalescing friend. We crossed Geary Boulevard around the same time school lets out, where we saw a gaggle of teenaged girls bob and weave across four lanes of oncoming traffic to make sure they didn't miss their bus.
Squealing tires, kids screaming, flailing arms and legs, fuming drivers -- the whole nine yards. As we drove away, I said something curmudgeonly to L, and she said, "you are such an old man."
To which I replied:
"I just don't see the rush. There's always another bus coming, but you only get one pair of legs, you know."
Suddenly, I pictured myself on a porch, warning neighborhood kids away with a palsied fist and a apocryphal collection of confiscated Frisbees and footballs.
Mine would be the first house egged each Halloween, and I'd start every other sentence with, "in my day..."
As I suggested, I've always had the sense that I'm an old soul, or at least, not given to the flights of fancy that result in arrests, lawsuits or social alienation. My bad habits are prosaic and solitary, and have always been unlikely to attract negative attention.
Out for sushi with another couple the other night, my geriatric sense of what's appropos was a topic of convo between rounds of nigiri.
"I am so not a candidate for a mid-life crisis! Can you see me with a red Corvette and a 25-year-old girlfriend?" Of course, this invited derisive hoots, probably deserved.
For the record, I will not drive a vehicle enshrined in song by Prince, and I would never date anyone who's never owned a 45 rpm vinyl disc.
Color me shallow.
Posted by Your Protagonist at 03:12 AM | Comments (0)
April 11, 2005
The effects of visual stimulus on aerobic activity
Tired, so I'll keep this moderately short.
The last several trips to the gym, I've had trouble maintaining my focus. Tonight, I had an excellent workout. The difference?
The eye-level LCDs on each elliptical machine are always on, and default to a lackluster local station that lost its'network affiliation. As a result, KRON is reduced to airing prime-time blocks of Fear Factor reruns. Honestly, I'd rather watch this.
Do you have any idea how dispiriting it is to chug away at 138 strides per minute, starting to believe that you're really blowing the plaque out of your arteries -- that you're extending your life a little with each step, each electronic valley and peak -- and you look up to see an anorexic model with oversized implants gagging down a platter of pickled horse anuses?
I always flip my screen down so I'm not distracted. Of course, there are 30 other monitors in the room.
Tonight, I was spared the spectacle of a leering Joe Rogan and his bevy of undistinguished, fame-obsessed whores willing to bathe themselves in cockroaches. I got to the gym a little earlier than usual, you see. I covered 5.20 miles, sez the machine.
Anyway, here's your reward for reading the ramblings of a dehydrated man -- an article that examines the disparate ways black and white parents in California name their children. I'll admit that the statistics surprised me, and I'm fairly aware of the cultural gulf between people of different hues.
If you're not interested in reading the whole article, just read the Top 20 whitest and blackest names for girls and boys. I sighed frequently when I read the names most frequently shared by black and white children. Apparently, California parents aspire for their kid to grow up to be either a stripper or the star of a teen soap on the WB.
Posted by Your Protagonist at 11:56 PM | Comments (0)
April 08, 2005
They say a thin pope follows a fat pope.
Do you think it's a coincidence that Keith Olbermann's on vacation this week -- the same week cable nets gorge themselves on uncritical coverage of pilgrims, ceremonies, political grandstanding, celeb-watching, etc.
And why the hell isn't Jimmy Carter in attendance? He won a freaking Nobel Peace Prize and was more in step with the late pope than any president we've had before or since. His absence is glaring and points up the vast gulf between words and deeds when it comes to the Culture of Life.
I watched the funeral coverage on C-SPAN, where I wasn't subjected to breathy speculation from Anderson Cooper and assorted mewlers about the next pope, how many port-a-potties you need to accommodate 3.7 million, or the symbolism contained in a certain freize they kept cutting back to every thirty seconds.
That's the problem when you ask talking heads to cover breaking news: either they're so uninformed that they blunder through, or they natter on with minutiae, clearly terrified that a moment's silence might allow the audience a moment to reflect.
BTW, I saw some of this conference on C-SPAN yesterday, too. These people are out of their trees, and I hope to hell they can be stopped.
Just so I have this right, Jimmy Carter isn't welcome in the U.S. delegation to The Vatican but a corrupt, blackhearted exterminator is there under our colors?
Posted by Your Protagonist at 03:10 AM | Comments (0)
April 04, 2005
Collateral damage and collective responsibility.
The 2005 Pulitzer Prizes were announced today.
In a previous life, I wanted to be a journalist, so I follow these things.
I don't think highly of my local media. The local reportage feels lightweight and sensationalistic, and most national/world coverage is cobbled from wire services. Nevertheless, a shutterbug for the Chronicle, Deanne Fitzmaurice, won the prize for Best Feature Photography.
After taking a look at her winning entry, I need to say two things.
1. If her images don't move you, call the police immediately. Someone's stolen your soul.
2. The war in Iraq is criminal, and we all share responsibility for the death and maiming of countless children.
Posted by Your Protagonist at 01:58 PM | Comments (0)
April 03, 2005
"The weed of crime bears bitter fruit."
I'm on a pre-war jag these days, entertainment-wise.
For the last two weeks, I've been listening to MP3s of The Shadow, the crime/horror radio serial.
(Side note: A glance at the roster of old-time radio programs available for download indicates that the "I Married a Hottie!" premise long predates TV. Like everything else that stands the test of time, Hollywood still cranks them out, but you know how shitty third- and fourth-generation clones are.)
The advertisements are just as interesting as the radio programs themselves. Blue Coal was sponsored The Shadow -- their intermission spots were read by an overly cheery announcer, and oftimes, an old geezer named John Barclay would chimed with schtick espousing Blue Coal's superior qualities. (Never seen a photo, but in my mind, he looks just like Charles Lane, the character actor who's played crotchety old men since the mid-1930s.)
Barclay was the guy who trained your local Blue Coal dealer, and he had a knack for sounding sincere. Each pitch ended with a polite but curt, "I thank you." I may have to start using that.
Blue Coal always made sure to include malarkey from the boys in Marketing about preventing winter colds and flu through efficient heating. Did you know that in 1938, you could get a ton of free coal if you called your Blue Coal dealer, just as a promotion?
I'm not saying the thirties were the good old days, and there are a whole host of reasons why I would not want to time-travel to the past. But there's got to be something extremely satisfying about having a ton of something delivered to your house for fucking free.
One ad for Goodyear radials caught me entirely off-guard. The announcer is touting the tire's ability to grip wet roads by channeling road water through a deep groove in the middle of the tire, and then there's an eerie cackle before the spectral voice of The Shadow breaks in to remind listeners of the horrible fates that could befall them should their tires fail.
Bear in mind, the audience had just subjected themselves to 15 minutes of torture-murders, maimings, mass death, and other explicit forms of mayhem and lawlessness. I'm guessing that when The Shadow implored them to consider the health and safety of their loved ones, they took him seriously.
They use this tactic still, but it's subtler. Instead of having Jack Bauer take Jared out with a roundhouse kick so
I'm not sure which TV program maps best to The Shadow. This was a violent, violent program. One episode featured an extortion racket that blackmailed rich society dames. When one woman was slow to pay, the mob boss has his henchmen knock her out, and then he douses her face with acid. The sound effects and acting make it truly disturbing, and I felt as discomfited as I would have if I'd been watching a particularly exploitative L&O: SVU. I don't watch The Shield, but I hear it's pretty unsparing.
The best episodes star Orson Welles as The Shadow. As the hero's alter-ego, Lamont Cranston, his effete playboy demeanor is superlative.
What I like best about these programs is how quickly they pulled me in with a tight script and good acting. Each episode is very high concept -- and any one of them would have made for a better movie than this outing. Pee-yew.
Anyway, take a listen here, if it interests you.
Posted by Your Protagonist at 09:15 PM | Comments (0)
April 01, 2005
Not an April Fool's joke, I swear.
I don't really understand people who write about politics for a living. If you've got a functioning cerebral cortex, sponging up the messy leavings from consecutive news cycles -- and then analyzing them -- poses a challenge, no?
Well, no, not if you're a corporate shill, like most professional journalists. I imagine they take some sort of medication that frees them from cognitive dissonance and keeps their heads from exploding.
I could have used some of those meds this morning when I clicked this link to a Fox News piece that interviewed supporters of Michael Schiavo.
What a world.
Posted by Your Protagonist at 11:55 AM | Comments (0)