We Also Serve

Lots of folks going to antiwar demos this weekend.

Be safe. Be lucky. I'm praying for you. For all of us.

He Makes the Sign of the Teaspoon, She Makes the Sign of the Wave

It's been a long time since I watched a teen movie, and Blue Crush made clear to me how the rules of the genre have changed (it's been even longer since I was a teen, but let's not get into that now...).

Blue Crush was an odd mix of the calculated and the slapdash. It was edited to within an inch of its life, with slo-mo and replays and multiple angles; the camera work was staggering, bringing you right into the heart of the waves; he colors had been tricked-out in a digital tweak; the omnipresent music was superbly calculated—mostly hip-hop tracks remaking or prominently sampling big hits of the 70s and 80s, which is a genius move: the parents seeing this can nod knowingly along with the kids.

But the acting was loose and improvisational—characters stepped on each other's lines, or repeated themselves, or muttered banalities or non-sequiturs: even when they made big speeches, it seemed less like acting per se than like, well, people making speeches to each other—speeches they've rehearsed a dozen times in their heads. All in all, it resembled nothing so much as a Very Special Episode of Road Rules. And that, right there, brings home the influence of MTV on Yoof Kulcha—not the videos themselves (I'm not even sure MTV still shows videos...), but its "reality" programming. The Real World has become the soap opera: the quasi-documentary, not the conventional drama has become the teen movie's model for presenting itself.

Once I figured that out, I was able to see that this was a pretty good movie. True, it didn't exactly demystify its subject—if possible, I know less about surfing now than I did before watching the film—but it did convey the visceral thrill and the danger of it. And its politics were interesting—not so much its gender politics (though there was the tiniest hint of a lesbian subtext to the Michelle Rodriguez character and the way she lived vicariously through the protagonista), but its class politics: it's set in a resort town, on the wrong side of the service economy, and is unflinching about the poverty, the complete lack of prospects, the resentment and parochialism that breed when your fate is either to serve the tourists directly (as a chambermaid) or indirectly (as "local color"). American movies are usually so reluctant to tackle class issues at all that it was doubly refreshing to see this played out in a Youth Entertainment.

It's probably also the first teen movie to be based on an article by Susan Orlean, so, you know, there's that.

About Michelle Rodriguez, though: I found her disappointing in this movie. She came to her first role, in the interesting little movie Girlfight, completely untrained as an actress but with a slouchy physicality that burned off the screen. Now, several films into her career, she's still playing the same card, bringing to her roles an undeniable presence but very little craft. Apparently, developing her chops as an actress is not high on her list of priorities, and she's choosing roles that don't require her to stretch her instrument. This strikes me as a shame: many actors do eventually slip into self-parody, of course, but it's distressing to see it happen to someone so early in her career.

Jesus Gonna Be There

Man requests Jesus for legal help

GAINESVILLE, Missouri (AP) -- A Missouri man is calling on a higher power for his legal representation.

Richard John Adams requested Jesus Christ as his trial attorney during a hearing Wednesday on tampering charges.

Adams, who described himself as a patriot and a Christian, says lawyers are "devils" who are trying to undermine the Constitution.

Ozark County Circuit Judge John Moody told Adams the only person who can speak for him in the courtroom is a lawful attorney.

Where's Christ for the Defense when we need Him?

This weekend, I learned...

...that a baby with a fever of 103.3ļ has precisely the same heat signature as clean laundry fresh from the dryer.

Late For The Sky

Oh, man, where do I start?

Like many of you, perhaps, I spent last Saturday afternoon torn by sobs. That didn't last long, though: by nightfall anger seemed a much better option, anger at the mush-mouthed orthodoxies I was hearing from all sides of the shitstorm that followed, anger against the voices of hagiography on one extreme and of nullification on the other; anger that I could not articulate until days later, when this thread on the Underground squeezed it out of me.

Angry. Angry because I have not got it in me to be sad anymore. The Boston Globe (which, if it wishes to be taken seriously as the world-class newspaper it so insists it is, really should start archiving all its articles online) ran an article with this subhead: How much more can America take? Can't speak for America as a whole, obviously, but I'm pretty fucking fed up, myself.

And it's gotten even uglier as the backlash has set in. I've been frankly horrified by the reactions of some people who really ought to know better—equating the simple human decency to grieve with "quelling free speech in the name of Amerikkkan imperialism," drawing smug, simplistic apples-and-asteroids equivalencies ("How many meals for starving children could have been bought with the immense cost of a shuttle launch?", as if it were an either/or decision), suggesting that it was somehow okay for the astronauts to die because they knew the risks and were well-paid (glad to see the old double standard still at work, guys, if handily inverted to value the lives of the rich less than those of the poor)—every horrible cliché smear against progressive politics and thinking ever concocted by the Right, given bleating, braying life. Ann Coulter couldn't have written this stuff.

In the meantime, I still grieve. For lives lost. For opportunities wasted. For the betrayal of a future of possibilities for a present of expediencies. I grieve. And that's about all I'm gonna say about that.

(Except to say thank you to Dan for the shout-out, and for the new tagline. I don't usually engage in this sort of interblog upsucking, but if you haven't mounted the face of die Venusberg lately, you're really missing out: the once-and-future Tannhauser is in crackin' form lately.)

Ten Unmediated Pleasures

1. a wet shave, a process like archaeology, and the bay rum's slap and tickle in the aftermath
   


2. turning a corner to surprise a pheasant as it crosses the road
   


3. duelling with two-foot-long icicles
   


4. a sky black with crows
   


5. standing at the range, whisking hot cocoa to foam over open flame
   


6. beads—a sandalwood rosary—smooth against my fingertips.
   


7. a hot shower on a cold morning
   


8. four milk-teeth, a crooked staircase in the baby's grin
   


9. trees blurring past the toboggan in squeals of vertigo and delight
   


10. woodsmoke and its promises