Second Avenue, Seattle. 11:00 pm.
February, 2003
Annabel Lee; The Banjo – grotesque fantasie; and so forth
The eagle eyed Manuel linkied me via email with ye olde Duke U. repository of American sheet music cover pages, covering the years between 1850 and 1920. Each decade is presented in its’ own browsable gallery, although it takes a few clicks to get to the good stuff.
But the good stuff, well, it’s good.
A typographical horror representing the much-maligned banjo. A nightmarish vision of The Boy with the Auburn Hair. The Bloomer’s Complaint, a Very Pathetic Song. The Captain With His Whiskers.
A page from the 1860-70 gallery with many fine woodtype-esque compositions.
I. W. Baird’s [highly colorful] Musical Album, fom the 1870’s gallery – the era of reconstruction. By no coincidence, this collection (both this decade and after) contains many ‘plantation’ tunes, in which dialect is used to express an imputed longing for the antebellum south on the part of persons of color.
I think it’s worth noting that Duke was at the time and remains a seat of Southern privilege.
Dance of the Night Hawks, who may have been on the prowl for Dusky Dinah, her chicken, or her banjo (still).
Honestly, there is simply too much to summarize. I was obligated to post it to MeFi, Manny: thanks a ton, this is really neat.
Super
The market can be a happy, happy place.
Vici Video et Vino
My parents are back from a global jaunt, and so we’ve returned too near-daily IM and video chat. I’m very happy about this, as for a spate of years I had simply come to accept infrequent contact with them as the natural state of affairs. Thanks to iChat and AIM, I can see and talk to them every day that they are home. Of course, it’s not the same as living where your parents live, but it’s a good first step.
My dad has made wine since before I was born, and his long term interest in wine has translated to something similar – but smaller scale – in me. While they were here this year (or last) I took them to Esquin, the region’s leading wine retailer, and Dad was as happy as a prize sow in soft mud.
Sometime since then, Dad was asking me if I’d heard of a wine dealer with the word “garage” in the name, something I certainly had not. I just don’t read the Weekly enough, I guess.
Since he inquired, new facts have emerged:
1. I walk by the place on my way to work.
2. It’s called ‘Garagiste‘
3. Amusingly, it’s to the east of a group of temporary buildings which have a big sign, “garage rehearsal studios,” making ‘garagiste’, in fact, garage east.
4. it’s less than two blocks from Esquin!
Cam, gear, shaft
I bought Viv a Minolta DiMage X20 as an anniversary present. My primary criteria were size, cost, and standard batteries (I hate manufacturer-proprietary rechargeables). It’s currently available at Amazon for $170, a somewhat different price than I paid.
I was very surprised at the camera’s bounty of features, which includes (as do many cameras these days) low-res digital video clips as an option.
Shortly, I’ll get Viv up to speed on using iPhoto, storing her photos outside iPhoto as a backup, and so forth. However, I noticed that she has a strong tendency to flip back and forth between still snapshots and movie clips when she’s using the camera, which means that iPhoto will simplay fail to meet her needs. She’ll expect to see chronologically organized galleries that incorporate both kinds of media seamlessly.
That means I need to look at iPhoto alternatives.
FootTrack presents itself as iPhoto for movie clips. Which is nice, and all, but not quite what I want.
Back in the day, I relied on iView Media Pro to do pretty much exactly that. Unfortunately, I hated the HTML and web-oriented features it had, and so don’t know if it will do what I want or not.
I suppose the single most important feature of iPhoto to me today is the presence of that iPhoto to Gallery plugin. Ideally, an alternate desktop multimedia manager would employ the iPhoto plugin API. Which would be nice.
iView offers a (mighty pokey) user forum, so praps there’s an answer there.
The Pepper Tree
In the earlier post referencing a photo-log of my commute, I expressed grumpiness that the captions of the images failed to properly appear in Gallery.
One reason is that the interesting tree seen here was not annotated.
It’s a Brazilian pepper tree, a problem plant in Florida.
The tree is just behind the Canal Boiler Works but probably not on the same lot.
How did this tree arrive? Originally, I had thought that it might be a ghost plant, a tree that survived the twentieth-century building boom that erected the industrial flats of the SoDo region. In some of the city’s older residential neighborhoods, five-house city blocks were platted from larger, older farms that had served a generation at most. Fruit trees sometimes survive in the interior of these blocks, a ghost of the prior use of the land. The trees may well have been planted by the home’s first tenants, too, I acknowledge.
The gnarled but fruited limbs of these trees are a signature of Seattle’s pre-World War II housing developments. I feel a strong affection for these trees, visualizing them as arboreal grandmothers, their knotted limbs extended each summer with sweet snacks for we monkeykin.
Alas, given that the pepper tree is a fast grower, my hopeful rumination is unlikely in this case.
Of course, it begs the question, regarding the Boiler Works, “Where is the Canal?”
… And the Dame, Too.
A wave of film noir is due on DVD shortly, hurrah!
From the Wikipedia link above:
Film noir tends to feature characters trapped in a situation (often a situation not of their making) and making choices out of desperation. Frequent themes are murder, betrayal, and infidelity. Films noirs tend to include dramatic shadows and stark contrast (a technique called low-key lighting).
Ahh, that’s the stuff. Wikipedia crosslinks to a title list. Noirfilm is a sort of noir-lovers’ co-op. Classic Noir digs a bit deeper than the box sets below. The site encourages browsers to pull a fast one, and check out a random film.
TCM (and Warner) is releasing a beautifully-designed box set soon, with “Murder, My Sweet,” “The Set-Up,” “Out of the Past,” “Gun Crazy,” and “The Asphalt Jungle.“
Universal is also releasing a set, with “This Gun For Hire,” “Criss Cross,” “Black Angel,” and “The Big Clock.”
(“The Big Clock” was a prominent influence on the Coen’s “Hudsucker Proxy,” for what it’s worth.)
Questar will be springing “D.O.A,” “Detour,” “The Stranger,” “Scarlet Street,” and “Killer Bait,” as well as a sixth disc of features which includes a raft of trailers.
Missing from these box sets is the terrific “Double Indemnity,” starring Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck and Edward G. Robinson.
Hi ho
Although there is a bus ride in the middle, here are the things I see every day on my way to work. Yesterday morning, though, there was an added attraction: the burned-out remnants of Hillcrest Market.
(Grumble. The captions didn’t come over from iPhoto and I’m out of steam.)
¡Hasta La Victoria!
Today was an insanely busy day. Errand after errand. Luckily, we were able to meet up with Spence for dinner and finally catch F 9/11, which stood up. It was like hearing an impassioned argument. It’s worth seeing, and on the way home, Viv was saying how she wished she could get her Cuban-emigré parents to see it. She heated up a bit and blurted out, “Bush is like Castro!”
Now, I have to say that made me pause in confusion for a moment. But the underlying idea, of comparing President Bush to a long-reviled bugaboo of the right, is one that probably should be explored. It might get the big idea across. The idea that President Bush and his administration are a threat to America and the Constitution, that when they say “freedom” and “democracy” they mean “control” and “security state,” well, if I compare them to certain other well known right-wing despots of the twentieth century, the discussion is over.
But comparing him to despots of the left, now that’s an idea that just might bear fruit!
The power of the sun in the palm of my hand
Viv and I caught Spiderman 2 this afternoon, after a few errands. We ran into Tom and Rachel on their way to see F911, outside their building.
There were so many movies opening this weekend or last that I wish to see, I was uncertain what we would watch, leaving it up to semi-random chance. Predictably enough, the film with the highest number of screens won out. (The other film choices were De-Lovely, F 9-11, or Before Sunset, all of which I look forward to seeing soon. So many movies! So little time!)
Miscellaneous reviews had mush-mouthed it that the film might be the most successful superhero film ever (often using a construction that included the words “comic-book,” which appears to me to be related to the manner in which “sci-fi” is employed in mainstream critical assessments of genre film which employ techniques of speculative fiction, but then I’m a sorehead about marginalizing genre, so never mind me muttering hatefully over in the corner, no, pay me no mind whatsoever).
I can break that down for ya: it’s the best of these films by a substantial amount. It’s much better than the first Spiderman.
Its’ more-sophisticated use of visual effects and remarkable overall visual design closely recalls the dramatic, compelling imagery of (oddly) 1970’s Batman comics by Neal Adams. In particular, among these technical adjustments and improvements, the breathtaking fights stood out. These worked on screen as direct visual analogues of the most effective comic-book action sequences, are by far the most effective cinematic expression of that particular facet of comics.
In one scene, Aunt May is being tossed about by Dock Ock, and Spidey is set to leap over to her rescue. Raimi slows time in the shots, leisurely cutting back and forth between May, Ock, and Spidey, dissecting the actions within a fraction of a second. Time, in comics, is a flexible medium. Recognition of this, and discussion thereof, is like a secret password into higher comics greeketry. Repeatedly during the film I found myself gasping in admiration for this and other daring transubstantiations that Raimi and the writers had concocted.
In this sense, Spiderman 2 is clearly the most accomplished superhero comic-book film. But, however successful and amazing these aspects of the movie are, that’s mere window dressing to the beauty and operatic power of the story. The operatic reach and ambition of superhero comics is the single hardest thing to translate to other mediums, and here, it’s done with wit and grace.
Everyone knows that Spiderman and Peter Parker are the everyman of men in tights, due to Parker’s character definition as an uncertain nebbish of a youth. In this story, the writers – principally, I suspect, one writer – utterly exceed any prior Spiderman writing that I’m aware of. I’ll admit to limited exposure to the canon, but what grabs me in the film is not generally what is observed in mainstream comics, and therefore I’m pretty confident that no-one previously wrote Spidey this deeply.
The amount of the script seen on screen which may be credited to Michael Chabon is unclear. Chabon completed a pre-shooting draft which was then turned over to another writer. To me, the particular qualities of the script which lift it into extraordinary territory appear to be Chabon’s. Unfortunately for us, his website hasn’t been updated since November, 2003, a darn shame.
In his remarkable Kavalier and Klay, he takes the basic thematic material of a superhero, as well as the circumstances of his creation, and creates an involving, intricate literary structure in which character is presented in such a manner that the author’s thematic concerns are refracted in a nearly schematic way on to the cast that he writes.
In Spiderman 2, the same thing happens in the depiction and definition of each one of the primary characters. It even affects, for a fleeting moment, the amusing J. Jonah Jameson, as he expresses regret for having driven Spidey off the streets.
The only prior genre-oriented comics-related writing – not counting Chabon’s Kavalier and Klay – that unfolds with such reflective, structural depth is that of Alan Moore on Watchmen (and to a lesser extent in From Hell).
The film is an absolute triumph, better in every way than its’ predecessor, and without a doubt will prove to be a freakishly hard act to follow.
In miscellaneous other notes, there is a scene in which Parker and Mary Jane meet in a coffee shop to miscommunicate about their relationship, when the building-shaking thuds of Doc Ock’s approach definitively disrupt the meeting. The scene is nearly an exact reoccurrence of a scene in local mincomics collective Gannon Studio’s remarkable GoXXilla, a short work which also unexpectedly verges on literary depth.
As we seated ourselves, I noted Christian from MeFi one row ahead of us. However, I had forgotten his name, and therefore did not greet him. Should he one day read this: my bad.
A final trivial note: In the scene in which Peter falls on a group of parked cars in an alley, hard, and stumbles away holding his back and moaning, “my back, my back,” on the wall to the left of the shot, Neckface grafitti is clearly visible. New York is much more directly present as a place, as a superset of specific locations, in this film than in the prior film. Interestingly, New York is also a major theme in Kavalier and Klay I’m quite positive that whatever business is currently located at 233 Bleecker, they are seeing an uptick in business that will probably continue for at least the summer.
(Oh, man, I love that. In the film 233 is a pizza place, Joe’s, that fires Peter. When I googled it for that link, what did I find? Joe’s Pizza.)