I strolled about in the snow on the Hill, camera in hand, from about 11:30 until 1:30.

I noticed that they had a couple el cheapo mandolins at Capitol Hill Loans, and taught the guy who worked there how to tune ’em. One sounded good, one sounded bad.

Then, my fingers burning with cold, I thought a nice Guinness at Kincora’s in front of their fire would hit the spot. On my way I peeped in the window of Aurafice to see if Joe or Odin was working – alas, no. It was Paige the first time and then Ally, a few minutes later. I stuck my nose in Bill’s to see if Tod was there, but apparently he was still at work.

When I made it down to Kincora’s I looked in the window, saw the fire, and looked in the window for a second to see if I knew anyone. I didn’t, so I paused to think about it for a minute.

A middle-aged woman with full, graying long hair and no makeup wearing a jean-jacket and a girls’ long-underwear top came hurrying out and addressed me with familiarity. “Why there’s a good lookin’ guy standin’ out here in the snow!”

In puzzlement I looked around, and then at her; I hadn’t ever seen her before in my life. She was addressing me. I made polite noises. “Sure is snowing,” I said, though it had pretty well tapered off.

“Well, it ain’t snowing as hard as it had been,” she observed.

I turned to go.

She rapidly took a step up to me and said with a nudge, “So, buy me a drink?”

I blinked in surprise and didn’t know what to say. I’d pretty much made up my mind not to go in before she came out. Into my pause she said, coquettishly, “I got something for you…”

I laughed nervously and said, “Uh, well, that’s very kind of you, but not today,” using my standard panhandler dodge. I beat a hasty retreat back up the hill, leaving her muttering by the door to the bar.

I still wanted a Guinness, so I doubled back over to see if Clever Dunne’s was open. As I descended Denny Way toward the overpass, I heard and saw a small crowd of people cheering and shouting at the intersection of Denny and Olive.

The steep slope of Denny was closed to traffic and had been transformed into a sled and snowboard hill. A young man with a shovel was helpfully moving snow into t he center of the run. Another man at the base of the hill directed traffic as cars nosed up the overpass. Snowball snipers appeared on the roof of an adjacent apartment building and pelted the sliders. A yellow dog chased a couple in a garbage bag, barking. Black-denim-clad Crass punks rode a shiny tin snowshovel.

A slender, well-dressed man with close-cropped grey hair rode someone’s skateboard deck without wheels, laughing. A black-haired hipster, his pea coat caked with snow, ducked my camera; his pal, in absurd and hairy poncho, took a pratfall. As I left, a young man appeared with the upper half of a hardshell Fender Tolex guitar case; running, he bellyflopped down the street.

My toes grew cold, and I retired from the field.

Dan viddys a link on the Prof and his religion. Of interest to those following certain topics here of late.

On simply starting to read this I emphasize the potential interest. Good stuff.

And on conclusion, I reiterate. Worth reading, but definitely concerned with a) the books and b) a catholic viewpoint of them.

The parent site, Decent Films, specializes in the like, and from a casual sampling, appears to be both thoughtful and, erm, catholic in many of the films it reviews. I found the site an interesting browse.

A few days ago, I posted a long review of The Return of the King, after noting that I had reservations about the critical judgments I formed while watching the movie for review. In essence, I did not find myself as emotionally involved in the film on first seeing as I had expected to be; and therefore the specific critical complaints I noted as I viewed the film were both unbalanced in the overall viewing experience and, I suspected, invalid in that they reflected a specific variety of aesthetic experience that differed radically from seeing film either as a straight recreational experience or from approaching the work as a serious, independent, original work of art.

When I see a film for review I generally try not to learn anything about it in advance – something that’s harder than you’d think – because I think that engaging with the film based on expectations – for the stars, writer, director, or effects budget – will make it more difficult to observe myself in the process of absorbing the work, and therefore more likely to reflect not my perceptions in the review but rather those expected of me in the social context, not necessarily the perceptions hoped for by the marketing team for the film but probably not honestly my own vision and experience.

I believe that this phenomenon, of writing to meet social expectations in a review, is the single most widespread and execrable problem in contemporary critical writing, both academic and journalistic. In popular film criticism generally it’s clearest in two manifestations, first, the unduly adulatory review (and attendant flack quotes), and second, the contextually dismissive review (formerly most commonly associated with genre flicks). In either case the critic’s motivation to praise or condemn a film is conditioned not so much by the actual quality or personal viewing experience of the film as by the feedback the critic expects or hopes to receive or avoid.

While I don’t think I was afflicted with either of these problems as I sat down to see the film, I certainly was not ignorant of the film’s context – indeed, of the films I’ve seen over the past few years, it was probably the film I knew the most about heading into the theater, and I believe that this trap sprung on me as I started to watch the film. I’ve never pretended to apply the purist approach to Jackson’s films, as Tolkien’s books are quite literally the first thing I ever read, and it’s clear that while the Jackson team exercised filmmakers’ privilege in re-tailoring the plots and characters they were working with, they were also following Tolkien’s lead and – repeated disavowals on their part aside – both expected and intended that the films would be measured by obsessive nit-pickers against the source material. Therefore I was consciously intending to compare the film, in a general way, to the book from which it was drawn.

However, the experience of The Two Towers‘ quite major plot and character divergence from the book led me to approach the comparison with skepticism, as I firmly believe that the redefinition of Faramir’s character and the nonsensical addition of the scenes set in Osgiliath call into question the benefit of the doubt extended to the filmmakers in the wake of the first film. Thus, when I sat down, I was prepared to note more problems and anticipated them (although I’d resigned myself to the excision, however regretful, of the Wild Men and the Scouring of the Shire). What I had not expected or prepared for was the effect that skeptical note-taking had on me emotionally – I was far from immersed in the film and simply never caught it’s emotional rhythms, something that in itself disappointed me.

The tremendous response I experienced to seeing the first film – far and away the most amazing emotional reaction to a film in the theater I’ve ever had – went a very long way toward setting expectations for Jackson to meet on the next two films. While The Two Towers disappointed, somewhat, my disappointment didn’t interfere with my emotional involvement in the film. When The Return of the King ended, I had a smaller, less pointed list of nit-pickery – the main beef I had was with the over-determined depiction of Denethor, something both required by and telegraphed in The Two Towers‘ redefinition of Faramir – yet I felt uninvolved and disappointed.

My awareness of this distancing became acute when listening to Aragorn’s speech at the Black Gate, as I noted in the longer review posted here earlier. Instead of reacting to the speech within the context of the drama, of the film, I heard it with my own ears, and applied it to the context of my own values and to the political realities of the present day, and it made me shift uncomfortably in my seat. It’s possible that Jackson’s decision to include a bit of straight-up anti-war propaganda in the scene where Pippin sings was as counterbalance to the stem-winding call to duty that Aragorn’s speech is intended to provide. If that was a part of the justification, it was a poor one. It invites the viewer to analyze the political values presented in the film and Tolkien’s work as well.

I think it’s safe to say that most viewers of the film and readers of the book are not monarchists and question the advisability of genocide. Yet, Tolkien adopts mythic approaches and Manichean definitions where entire races are in fact literally evil. These values are presented as belonging to the individuals, characters, and societies that he so carefully detailed in the tiniest particular. It’s hard to argue that the obsessive and realistic detailing of the one thing can possibly mean anything other than that the Manichean idea is meant to be taken at face value. Others more knowledgeable than I, however, don’t subscribe to that idea, and I guess neither do I. But it is an incoherence, in a way, just as the problem of evil is in our own, real, world.

It was a mistake to invite my political values to the table. I regret it, as it undermined the experience of the film. As noted, Jackson helped invite them in; but I’m confident that if I had not been taking notes and generally diligently attempting to fulfill my role as a film critic the film would have been better for it. I suppose that is a sort of newbie thing that all critics have to learn, and so I’m glad to know it now. The second time I saw the film, I did catch the emotional rhythm, thankfully; I look forward to a future viewing, and, of course, to the extended DVD of the final film (which, word has it, will be 4 hours and 50 minutes long, a full hour added to the theatrical version).

One of my evergreen hit attractants, which favorably recounts the reading experience for an August 2002 issue of The New Yorker and highlights The Fruit Detective by John Seabrook, today generated an interesting query.

My husband is under the impression that there is a book out there called The Fruit Detective that he saw in CBS Sunday Morning. I can’t find it.
Is there a book?

I have no connection to either Mr. Karp or Mr. Seabrook, but the idea that Mr. Seabrook might have expanded his delightful article to a book intrigued me so I did some digging.

I suspected that author Seabrook might very well have embarked on such a course, but did not find reference to it on his considerably updated website. I did find, joyfully, that he’d posted his original story.

CBS Sunday Morning for December 7, 2003 does not appear to record such a story. However, it’s wildly difficult to determine if there is a comprehensive program and segment listing for the show in question. This page, when I linked to it, looked as though it was such a listing; yet the title-bar header for the page said, ‘December 5, 2003’ and the URL, apparently reflecting a date-oriented scheme, says in part ‘1998/07/09.’

The listing does refer to a rerun of a late-November segment called “Fruit of the Vine;” but that’s about winemaking.

So what does Amazon tell us, then? Nothing. Google reveals that Mr. Karp has been writing for various food-world outlets over the past year, but again, alas, no hint of a book.

I shall lodge an enquiry with Mr. Seabrook.

(UPDATE: Answer here)

I’d hoped to link to the online version of the Ellen Forney story at Tablet today, but it’s still not up, which makes me think that probably it’s an error, and may never show up. So, you’ll just have to live with that. The transcript starts running tomorrow, with pictures!

I mentioned offhand to a friend that it would be neat to see a line of republications of the serious comic criticism books that have appeared in the US over that past fifty years or so, and he asked me what I meant. So I went and poked around and found that to my knowledge, historical surveys aside, I meant more or less five books:

Krazy Kat, the art and life of George Herriman, by Patrick McDonnell

Winsor McCay, by John Canemaker

Comics and Sequential Art, by Eisner

Comics as Culture, by Thomas Inge

The Comic Stripped American, by Arthur Asa Berger

There are some other books that didn’t get on to the list – I was excluding Fantagraphics’ comprehensive republications of giants such as Kelly, Herriman, McCay, and Schulz as well as the wonderful Smithsonian surveys of golden-age books and dailies assembled by Bill Blackbeard in the, uh, seventies, I think.

I also did not suggest the McCloud books (as they remain in print and are likely to for the foreseeable future), and I did not suggest books dealing with non-US or European traditions of the form, due to personal ignorance.

I’m also aware of scattered instances of serious critical evaluations of comics outside of the CJ over the past few decades; I assume there has been serious growth in academic writing about comics as well over the same period of time. Anyone have some suggestions to make this a better list?

Feel free to suggest histories and surveys; I left them off because there are so many, including some that are both well-researched and include sensitive critical analysis.

I cannot beleive I still haven’t written about seeing the aurora in 1988. Maciej’s long piece on his stopover in Iceland calls it to mind. I really want to write about it seriously but I have a specific method in mind to pursue. I want to use voicerec for the first draft without correcting until I’m done with the draft.

Unfortunately, I have been forced to implement my main desktop box as the server for the moment, which means I don’t have convenient access to my installed and trained copy of ViaVoice.

I did use ViaVoice to begin some of the transcriptions – listen to tape, say what you hear, correct, repeat – but ViaVoice, while ostensibly designed to encourage non-dictation style speech, really does better with slow, deliberate, clearly pronounced words rather than rapid, conversation-speed speaking.

So I’ve been transcribing by hand, which is not so good for the wrists and forearms.

So far, normal conversation clocks in at about 10,000 an hour. Ten thousand words! The Fagles translation of The Illiad looks to have about 199,000 words – twenty hours of speech. A highly productive writer will produce about 10,000 words a day – which means roughly eight times the amount of work goes into writing over speaking, I think.

To date, I’m able to transcribe about 5,000 words per day – but of course, my day, here at home is both more focused and shorter than any work environment I’ve ever had. It’s shorter because I’m both lazy and a night person, which makes it difficult for me to rise in the morning, and when I do, it’s rare I focus on anything until noonish. It’s more focused, because of course the twenty-first century American workplace is fraught with productivity boosters such as meetings, telephone calls, voicemail, and coworkers. I’m guessing it’s a wash, and that would be my output in a work environment was well.

One of the striking things about speech, observed in transcription is the way we insert mouth music into our sentences, drop sentences and clauses uncompleted, and create meaning in casual speech by piling up approximations until we see that our conversation partner has constructed their own understanding from our troweling of parts and participles, hurried, organic, held together with ‘uh’ and ‘um’ and ‘you know’ and ‘like’ and ‘and’ and ‘I mean.’

Believing myself not to be a fiction writer, I have never even wondered if I could write dialog. Watching the words collide and slip into one another and stick or slide or stop is an education, currently fascinating me.

What concept, actually, ‘writing dialog.’ I believe I’ll paint some looking, or perhaps sculpt some motion.

This interest is not the impetus for using the voice recognition as an experimental composition tool, though – it’s more like writing your essay on a Newton and deciding beforehand to not correct the interpretations. Of course ViaVoice is waaaay better at it than the Newton. So it’s more a way to force different word choices into the prose.

I’ve also experimented with both Word’s built-in summarization tools, which will select key sentences with the intention of preparing an executive summary, as in the initial sections of a business plan or even in certain kinds of technical writing. As such, it’s fairly graceless but can be useful for cutting to a certain length. As far as cutting from 600 words to 250, mmm, not so much.

There are some online summarization tools as well; so far I haven’t found any that work quite as well as Word’s. Heh. So, uh, thanks, Redmond! can I get you to add a real, fullblown grep to search if you ever see fit to make a new Word for OS X? If not, well, no harm done.

Oh the transcribing takes all day…

MeNoWriFoNaNoWriMo: B² proposes an alternative to NaNoWriMo, to which I say, what the heck, I do it anyway, right?

Plus, I’ve always found it a soothing way to employ WiFi.

Let’s choke this chicken, Brother B²! I’m ready to follow you to the land of glory! But is B³ aboard? Perhaps he’ll only be able to participate pseudononymously, perhaps as “Possible Pseudononymous Participant” or as I like to think of it, “PoPsuPa,” or, more likely, P³.

To which I can only say I hope Bill picks up the obvious setup I’ve just given him and runs with it.

Mmm, perhaps the lack of food is affecting my judgement.

Quimby the Mouse is my review of the fancy hardback republication of some of my favorite early Chis Ware material. It’s at Tablet, where I’m pleased to announce I’ll be turning in a regular 800-word column on regional indie and alternative comics culture for a while.

I’m filing my first one this evening, and by jingo by cracky, I’m happy to be doing this.

Man, where to begin.

Ah, I know.

I have two stories in Tablet seventy-three: a quick look at the Dark Fairytales show up at Roq la Rue, and a review of the new French film Chaos. Neither story was up on their website as I write this, but my scanned clip is. (UPDATE: they are up now.)

I was not completely happy with either piece when I turned them in – but my disaffection deepened after deadline. In the Roq la Rue piece I sorta chickened out of doing actual art criticism and instead tried to do a more reported piece about the opening itself and what gallery owner Kirsten Anderson’s intentions for the show were. It’s a very short piece and maybe I was trying to do too much.

The show opened on the day that Nike announced that it was buying Converse, home of the Chuck Taylor All-Star, and I had planned to see if I could find an artist at the opening who was wearing Chucks to discuss this event with. Instead, I tried to mix social activity with being at the opening, meeting friends, and so forth, and it just didn’t happen all around. Oh well. Maybe next time.

I think part of the problem was that the natural thing for me to do in a critical manner would have been to compare and contrast a work I found successful with one I felt did not succeed. Anderson’s thoughts and positioning of the work of the artists in the show – and in her gallery in general – were very interesting on their own, so I kinda dodged a bullet. Of course, her blanket assertion that the artists in the show use their appropriated pop-culture imagery without irony is at best debatable. Surely she doesn’t actually think the big-eyed Keane kids look or the reworking of the Smurfette into sex bomb is a straightforward act of visual creation with the same directness as an image of Jesus in a Howard Finster work.

The review of Chaos is honest and reflects my perceptions – I really didn’t care for the movie. However, I used the term “racist” to describe the way that Algerians are portrayed in several segments of the film, a charge the film partially invites me to make. In a scene, a protagonist seeks help from a French civil-rights organization, S.O.S Racisme, and gets kicked out for being a hooker, basically.

I don’t think I used the term appropriately. The segments of the film that depict the family life of Algerians in France are full of ugly stereotypes, but the stereotypes are cultural, not racial, in nature.

The other part of the film that irritated me, and which I noted, if briefly, is that the terrible clumsiness of the narrative of the hooker’s brutal life contrasts so thoroughly with the grace and wit of the comedy of domestic alienation that makes up the rest of the film. If the filmmaker had chosen to frame the narrative as suspect – it’s presented in voiceover from a brutalized hooker – the use of the pulp-fiction elements and stereotypes could have shifted from ugly public myth reinforcement to witty filmmaking. But even the most fantastic plot elements in the narrative appear to be borne out within the plot of the rest of the film.

It boggles my mind that this film was nominated for six Césars.

I’ll link to the stories when I see them go up.