Some Came Running

Do tell.

"The sex scenes between Blomkvist and Salander seem thrown in to give us one more chance to see Mara (who is in her twenties but has the body of a high-school sophomore) naked, not because Fincher makes us see any connection (emotional or physical) between the characters." —"John Boot," "Pulp Fascism: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," PJ Lifestyle, Dec. 21, 2011

Teach your children

Kudos to the ever-intrepid Mr. Edroso of alicublog for steering me to a gem of both poor usage and my favorite kind of dumb, the multi-leveled. A would-be screenwriter, Barbara Nicolosi, in a piece called "Exposing Euthanasia Through the Arts" ("What's that even mean?" you might ask; like they say, read the whole thing, IF YOU DARE; it does become clear) asks the burning question "How many parents realized, when you sent your teenagers to James Cameron’s latest 3D extravaganza Sanctum (2011), that there was a matter-of-fact mercy killing of four characters at the end?" Well, okay, "a" "mercy killing" of "four characters" is, I think, actually, four "killings," but never mind that, or the other thing, but the actual answer to the question is, "Not that many, I guess, and who cares, because Sanctum didn't even make back its production budget of $30 million, which means the indoctrination of our teens into mercy-killing degenerates is really going quite poorly. Also, on what planet these days to parents 'send' their teenagers to the movies? Is Riverdale of the Archie comics a real place and I don't know about it? Seriously?"

It gets even more exciting, with Nicolosi citing four other feature films made between 1996 and 2004 and concluding, "The evidence is undeniable: Somewhere in the middle of the Terri Schiavo tragedy, Hollywood and the cultural left climbed aboard the latest human-killing bandwagon and have since thrown the weight of their talent and creativity behind it." Five films, and that HBO Kevorkian thing. "The weight" of Hollywood and the cultural left's talent and creativity. Yeah.

Since I'm on the culture war topic, I will note here that while it's very unlikely that I shall read David Mamet's The Secret Knowledge, I did read my colleague Kurt Loder's approving review of it and cocked an eyebrow at Kurt's observation "[r]eaders on both sides of Mamet’s current political stance can take issue with his social conservatism. He is, among other things, an unbending proponent of traditional gender arrangements [...]" This strikes me as funny solely because Nick Tosches once (adopting the voice of Robert Stack adopting the voice of Eliot Ness, but still) referred to Mamet as "that half-fruit playwright." Doesn't take much to amuse me, I know. 

Department of perhaps-inadvertent excessive self-revelation

"Atlas Shrugged, a mega-fable that is to capitalists roughly what To Kill a Mockingbird is to liberals[...]"—Kyle Smith, "Rand Old Time For Ayn Adherents," New York Post, April 15, 2011

On a related note, Roy Edroso's consideration of the film in question is really the only one you need read, unless at some point Tom Carson decides to torture himself and then weigh in. As for myself, I'm curious to see the thing, but a little jammed up, schedule-wise, this weekend. I do eagerly await the box office numbers, and Glenn Reynolds' subsequent excuses for them.

Peter Laughner and self-indulgence in arts writing; or, "It's the prose, stupid"

This is a hell of a way to kick off a record review:

This album made me so morose and depressed when I got the advance copy that I stayed drunk for three days. I didn't go to work. I had a horrible physical fight with my wife over a stupid bottle of 10 mg. Valiums. (She threw an ashtray, a brick, and a five foot candelabra at me, but I got her down and sat on her chest and beat her head on the wooden floor.) I called up the editor of this magazine (on my bill) and did virtually nothing but cough up phlegm in an alcoholic stupor for three hours, wishing somewhere in the back of my deadened brain that he could give me a clue as to why I should like this record. I came on to my sister-in-law: "C'mon over and gimme head while I'm passed out." I cadged drinks off anyone who would come near me or let me into their apartments. I ended up the whole debacle passing out stone cold after puking and pissing myself at a band rehearsal, had to be kicked awake by my lead singer, was driven home by my long-suffering best friend and force fed by his old lady who could still find it in the boundless reaches of her good heart to smile on my absolutely incorrigible state of dissolution...I willed her all of my worldly goods before dropping six Valiums (and three vitamin B complexes, so I must've figured to wake up, or at least at the autopsy they would say my liver was OK). Well, wake up I did, after sleeping sixteen hours, and guess what was running through my head, along with the visual images of flaming metropolises and sinking ocean liners foaming and exploding in vast whirling vortexes of salt water...

"Watch out for Charlie's girl...

She'll turn ya in...
doncha know... 

Ya gotta watch out for Charlie's girl..."

Which is supposed to be the single off Coney Island Baby and therefore may be a big hit if promoted right, 'cause it's at least as catchy as "Saturday Night"...if they can just get four cute teens to impersonate Lou Reed.

Those once-read-never-forgotten words are from an ostensible review of Lou Reed's Coney Island Baby, by Peter Laughner, which appeared in the March 1976 issue of Creem magazine. I've been thinking about this piece on account of a little internet kerfuffle I've been involved with, which now spans two separate sites not counting this one.

Mr. Brooks, meet Mr. Kantner

If you show an American an image of a fish tank, the American will usually describe the biggest fish in the tank and what it is doing. If you ask a Chinese person to describe a fish tank, the Chinese will usually describe the context in which the fish swim.
—David Brooks, "Harmony and the Dream," The New York Times, August 12, 2008

It's like a tear in the hands of a western man
Tell you about salt, carbon and water
But a tear to an oriental man
He'll tell you about sadness and sorrow or the love of a man and
a woman.
—Jefferson Starship, "Ride The Tiger," Dragonfly, 1974

Both sentiments are equally inane, but the Starship version has a good beat and you can kinda maybe dance to it. And it's got Grace Slick.