Tall, with slicked-back red hair, constantly clad in a white lab coat, Mr.Stapleford made morticians seem downright exuberant. Hell, undertakers were fucking riots compared to him. His movements were slow and deliberate, as if he were tired of life, or pacing himself towards some ultimate violent outburst, like the Terminator, but without the payoff of carnage. (Only the possibility of it.)
"This machine will not chop your finger off," he said. "It will slice it off. Slowly and painfully. And I don't want to clean up the blood."
Followed by a physical demonstration of a hunk of wood sliced (not chopped) by a swirling, whirling blade. And me, twelve years old, having recently been introduced to the blood-soaked words of King and Barker, Straub and Slade, suddenly confronted by my own potential for mayhem. Me, gulping, thinking: I'm now supposed to use this fucking thing? Thanks for the pep talk, teach. Mr.Chips ain't got nothing on you.
I've since seen first-hand Khmer Rouge killing fields and the ruins of Hiroshima, but nothing in life compares to the fear contained within the walls of my junior high Industrial Arts classroom. Everyone worked at their own pace, which usually meant that everyone else would move through steps one, two, three and four while I still struggled to somehow fit my plastic goggles over the bulky lenses of my Robocop glasses. (The cardboard kind used for 3-d movies were downright cozy in comparison to those protective lenses.) The ultimate end-result being, at the conclusion of one semester, a slew of barely begun projects littering my locker: blocks of misshapen wood, small slabs of ragged steel, never to be completed. Good-bye, metal box. Perhaps in another life I will make you mine.
I didn't actually give a shit about not completing the projects; I knew from the get-go in life that mastering carpentry would not be my ultimate destiny, that Bob Villa would never have anything to fear from me should we somehow, someday meet at high noon on a dusty street while tumbledweeds tumbled on by and the powerdrills in our hands began to pulse. No, what pissed me off was being made to feel like a spastic loser for not understanding how to operate a lousy lathe.
What saved me from failing the class -- both years -- were the tests. Tests, I could handle. I fucking hated them, yes, but I would study my ass off and end up almost acing (or at least passing) most of them.
Before each exam, good old Stapleford would slide giant wooden rectangles into pre-carved slots in our desks, so there was no conceivable way we could cheat. Jesus Christ! I remember thinking. This guy's a loony! What is this, Harvard? We're twelve-year old St.Catharines kids!
When handing back my first test, which I did quite well on, Stapleford held my eyes to his own, as if judging my competency and reliability, then said: "You were so incompetent with your projects that I was stunned to see you do as well as you did on this exam."
Was he waiting for me to admit to cheating? Was he hoping for a confession? I smiled a sheepish smile and took the paper and looked at the floor. I wanted to say: "How could I have cheated?What, do you think I burrowed a fucking hole into your dividers during the test? Is what you said supposed to be some kind of a compliment, you fucking prick?"
(And if you doubt that twelve-year old kids thought like that or spoke like that, then you must have forgotten what it was like to be twelve years old in the first place, in command of yourself and your language for the first time in your life. Willing to step outside of the parameters of enforced childhood etiquette into the liberating realms of vulgarity and scorn.)
But I survived. I didn't think I would but, I did, as most kids do. There were times during those days, lost in my own incompetence, when I would stare out the window at the freshly cut grass and deep blue sky and wonder when, or if, it would ever end. I didn't know that Toronto and Tokyo and Phnom Penh lay beyond the realms of those suburban streets. I couldn't have imagined it. All I had in front of me were projects that would be stillborn and mutant.
Eventually, it ended. Good-bye, wood chips. So long, metal box.
And now, whenever I feel the urge to criticize one of the Korean kids I'm teaching for some boneheaded error or another, I try to get myself to stop, and breathe, and chill. In their eyes, I may very well be their own version of Mr.Stapleford, white and foreign and speaking in a strange tongue only half-way comprehensible. I am big and they are small. They may remember my words, and those words might sting, even years later. And really: who gives a shit that they can't do this or that properly? They're kids, and it's our job to ease their passage into the tough and lonely years that lie ahead.
Memory lasts a long time. I'd rather they remember a pat on the back than a snide, snarky comment that can burn, even scar.
Sunday, August 20, 2006
Thursday, August 17, 2006
A MYSTERY SOLVED? (MAYBE...)
I'm flat-out fucking floored by the fact that a suspect has been arrested in Thailand in the murder of child beauty-queen Jon Benet Ramsey.
Why the shock?
Because last year (as I recorded in this blog), I became slightly obsessed with the decade-old Ramsey case, after reading a wonderful book that convinced me, big-time, that the killer of the kid was her mother, Patsey Ramsey, who recently passed away from cancer.
After researching the case, pondering the evidence, weighing the probabilities, I was convinced that the mother, in a fit of rage, accidentally killed her daughter -- and that the husband then helped her cover it up.
Now, this new news shakes everything up.
I thought I was quite the amateur sleuth. I thought I'd figured it out. I thought the book was closed and that a murderer had passed away without serving justice.
Damn, I guess I don't know everything after all.
Let's just say I'll be following the upcoming developments pretty darn closely.
(And I still think she did it...)
Why the shock?
Because last year (as I recorded in this blog), I became slightly obsessed with the decade-old Ramsey case, after reading a wonderful book that convinced me, big-time, that the killer of the kid was her mother, Patsey Ramsey, who recently passed away from cancer.
After researching the case, pondering the evidence, weighing the probabilities, I was convinced that the mother, in a fit of rage, accidentally killed her daughter -- and that the husband then helped her cover it up.
Now, this new news shakes everything up.
I thought I was quite the amateur sleuth. I thought I'd figured it out. I thought the book was closed and that a murderer had passed away without serving justice.
Damn, I guess I don't know everything after all.
Let's just say I'll be following the upcoming developments pretty darn closely.
(And I still think she did it...)
Sunday, August 13, 2006
A BRAVE NEW WORLD; JOHN D.MACDONALD; THE OPPOSITE OF AMBIDEXTROUS?
You know you've entered a brave new world when your departing student -- Korean, good-natured, always smiling -- chooses as a memento of your class a video taken of you wishing him good-luck, a video taken on his motherfucking dictionary.
Me, I used to settle for a handshake. Wait. That's a lie. Usually I didn't say anything to my departing teachers; after all, the door was open, summer break was near -- who had time for such adult pleasantries? But my students, some of them, were here for only two weeks, and I am a foreigner, and who knows when they'll get to shoot the shit with one of those exotic creatures again anytime soon?
So, my student pointed his electronic dictionary at me, told me to say a few words, then videotaped my good wishes to his heart's delight -- and to my rather low-key astonishment. I watched myself played back for our mutual amusement on the tiny monitor, the picture stilted but clear, the sound muffled but adequate.
I shouldn't have been so surprised. I taught in Japan for four years, and have been teaching Koreans for almost a year, and they always bring to class gidgets and gadgets that will hit western shores in five, six years time. Let's make it seven. I think Canada and America are probably about seven years behind, electronically, the best that Japan and Korea have to offer. (One of my former students, an elderly gentlemen in Japan who used to be head of Research and Development for Toshiba, told me that his company was working on DVD technology back in '85 -- right when video was just hitting its stride.)
Earlier this year my student asked me: "What's the English word for turning on your microwave with your cellphone?"
"Good question," I said. (Thinking: What the fuck?) "We don't have an English word for that function, because our cellphones don't do that."
But they sure as hell do in Korea and Japan. You can buy a Coke with your cellphone -- just hold your phone up to the vending machine, and, via the magic of pre-paid cards, you can guzzle to your heart's delight. You can order movie tickets. Register for lotteries. Check train schedules. And don't even get me started on what you can do in convenience stores.
And who knows what's in store for us? I saw a piece on the news about an event that happened in Hong Kong a little while back, where a rather heated argument broke out between a younger man and an older man on a subway. The older man berated his junior antagonist with vigor and energy. A fellow passenger videotaped the confrontation on his phone. Posted it on the web. The video spread. Within a few days the old guy's outburst was being used as a ringtone for cellphones all across Hong Kong.
So one minute you could be shouting at an asshole, or have him shout at you, and the next your voice would be used to serve as the wake-up call to sleepy commuters across China. Mama mia.
Living in Cambodia, and in some sense the Philippines, has been a good reality check, though. As far behind as Canada and America are, there are other countries even further back. (Not that this lack of progress is a good thing. But it does show that you can still function and glide through life without being constantly inundated by the latest, gotta-have-it technology.)
And as Bogie knew so well, the fundamental things apply as time goes by. A video camera in your electronic dictionary won't make your English any better, I don't think.
It could, however, be just cool enough to impress your old-fogey of an English teacher. That's gotta carry some street cred back in Seoul.
***********************************************************************************]
I first encountered author John D. Macdonald through his introduction to Stephen King's short-story collection Night Shift back in junior high school, and for many years, decades, in fact, that was where my involvement with Mr.Macdonald started and finished. I kept going back to that introduction, which commended King for his style and his sense of story, and which also served as a subtle lesson in how to write well. He was an intensely prolific writer of paperback originals, crime books, mostly (though not exclusively), and for some reason or another his own works eluded me; mostly because a lot of them were out of print, I suppose.
Recently, though, through the magic of astonishingly cheap used book-shops here in Baguio, I've been able to pick up a dozen or so of his paperbacks from the 1950's and 60's and 70's at less than twenty, thirty cents a pop. The original, tattered paperbacks. Speaking from the past. Rugged and well-read. Hinting at the humanity and insights to be found within their tales of crooked men and desperate women.
And you know what? Big surprise. The man is good. Real good.
There's something about crime fiction I especially like -- its lack of pretension and snobbery. The story in crime fiction exists to move. The book exists to tell us about something bad that happened to this particular set of people, and because the focus is on the story, the subtext, the human emotions, the lessons learned, are allowed to hover below the surface instead of announcing their importance at every opportunity, as the worst of 'literary' fiction so often does.
Macdonald was most famous for his private-eye series of Travis McGee series, but his first hardcover bestseller, Condominium, is an excellent read, humane and true. One condominium complex in Florida in the late seventies. The sad and lonely lives of its inhabitants. A hurricane on the way. You can do the math. A metaphor for life itself, some might say, all of us living together, foolishly making our way through our lonely little lives, aware that we're perched precariously on the edge of disaster, but living anyway, the best that we can. Until the calamity starts, and we're all washed away.
A powerful, thoughtful book that glides along effortlessly. (Of course, the most effortless books are usually the ones that were the hardest to write. To look effortless takes a lot of effort.)
It's always nice, at a later age, to discover writers who speak to you. It's as if they've been waiting there all along -- on the rack, behind the shelf -- wondering when you would find them.
And when you find them, all you have to do is open up.
***********************************************************************************
What's the opposite of ambidextrous? Monodextrous?
I'm not sure. It sounds like it would be lonely -- to be the opposite of something as agile as
'ambidextrous'. If you can use both hands to do anything, it gives you a sense of power and grace. If you can only use the one, I would imagine that would make you feel somewhat inferior. But that can't be the case, because most people aren't ambidextrous, right? Most people use the hand they're good at to cut with scissors, hold their cups, change the channel. (Me, I'm a lefty; my right hand is pretty much confined to typing.)
Do ambidextrous people secretly sneer at the rest of us? Do they look at the consistency with which we use only one hand and roll their eyes at how underdeveloped we are as humans? Do they wait for the human race to evolve so that, eventually, all of us, united, brethren, separated no more, will rule the earth with both hands as our humble and hungry servants, obedient to our ferocious, ravenous, insatiable will?
I'm just asking.
Me, I used to settle for a handshake. Wait. That's a lie. Usually I didn't say anything to my departing teachers; after all, the door was open, summer break was near -- who had time for such adult pleasantries? But my students, some of them, were here for only two weeks, and I am a foreigner, and who knows when they'll get to shoot the shit with one of those exotic creatures again anytime soon?
So, my student pointed his electronic dictionary at me, told me to say a few words, then videotaped my good wishes to his heart's delight -- and to my rather low-key astonishment. I watched myself played back for our mutual amusement on the tiny monitor, the picture stilted but clear, the sound muffled but adequate.
I shouldn't have been so surprised. I taught in Japan for four years, and have been teaching Koreans for almost a year, and they always bring to class gidgets and gadgets that will hit western shores in five, six years time. Let's make it seven. I think Canada and America are probably about seven years behind, electronically, the best that Japan and Korea have to offer. (One of my former students, an elderly gentlemen in Japan who used to be head of Research and Development for Toshiba, told me that his company was working on DVD technology back in '85 -- right when video was just hitting its stride.)
Earlier this year my student asked me: "What's the English word for turning on your microwave with your cellphone?"
"Good question," I said. (Thinking: What the fuck?) "We don't have an English word for that function, because our cellphones don't do that."
But they sure as hell do in Korea and Japan. You can buy a Coke with your cellphone -- just hold your phone up to the vending machine, and, via the magic of pre-paid cards, you can guzzle to your heart's delight. You can order movie tickets. Register for lotteries. Check train schedules. And don't even get me started on what you can do in convenience stores.
And who knows what's in store for us? I saw a piece on the news about an event that happened in Hong Kong a little while back, where a rather heated argument broke out between a younger man and an older man on a subway. The older man berated his junior antagonist with vigor and energy. A fellow passenger videotaped the confrontation on his phone. Posted it on the web. The video spread. Within a few days the old guy's outburst was being used as a ringtone for cellphones all across Hong Kong.
So one minute you could be shouting at an asshole, or have him shout at you, and the next your voice would be used to serve as the wake-up call to sleepy commuters across China. Mama mia.
Living in Cambodia, and in some sense the Philippines, has been a good reality check, though. As far behind as Canada and America are, there are other countries even further back. (Not that this lack of progress is a good thing. But it does show that you can still function and glide through life without being constantly inundated by the latest, gotta-have-it technology.)
And as Bogie knew so well, the fundamental things apply as time goes by. A video camera in your electronic dictionary won't make your English any better, I don't think.
It could, however, be just cool enough to impress your old-fogey of an English teacher. That's gotta carry some street cred back in Seoul.
***********************************************************************************]
I first encountered author John D. Macdonald through his introduction to Stephen King's short-story collection Night Shift back in junior high school, and for many years, decades, in fact, that was where my involvement with Mr.Macdonald started and finished. I kept going back to that introduction, which commended King for his style and his sense of story, and which also served as a subtle lesson in how to write well. He was an intensely prolific writer of paperback originals, crime books, mostly (though not exclusively), and for some reason or another his own works eluded me; mostly because a lot of them were out of print, I suppose.
Recently, though, through the magic of astonishingly cheap used book-shops here in Baguio, I've been able to pick up a dozen or so of his paperbacks from the 1950's and 60's and 70's at less than twenty, thirty cents a pop. The original, tattered paperbacks. Speaking from the past. Rugged and well-read. Hinting at the humanity and insights to be found within their tales of crooked men and desperate women.
And you know what? Big surprise. The man is good. Real good.
There's something about crime fiction I especially like -- its lack of pretension and snobbery. The story in crime fiction exists to move. The book exists to tell us about something bad that happened to this particular set of people, and because the focus is on the story, the subtext, the human emotions, the lessons learned, are allowed to hover below the surface instead of announcing their importance at every opportunity, as the worst of 'literary' fiction so often does.
Macdonald was most famous for his private-eye series of Travis McGee series, but his first hardcover bestseller, Condominium, is an excellent read, humane and true. One condominium complex in Florida in the late seventies. The sad and lonely lives of its inhabitants. A hurricane on the way. You can do the math. A metaphor for life itself, some might say, all of us living together, foolishly making our way through our lonely little lives, aware that we're perched precariously on the edge of disaster, but living anyway, the best that we can. Until the calamity starts, and we're all washed away.
A powerful, thoughtful book that glides along effortlessly. (Of course, the most effortless books are usually the ones that were the hardest to write. To look effortless takes a lot of effort.)
It's always nice, at a later age, to discover writers who speak to you. It's as if they've been waiting there all along -- on the rack, behind the shelf -- wondering when you would find them.
And when you find them, all you have to do is open up.
***********************************************************************************
What's the opposite of ambidextrous? Monodextrous?
I'm not sure. It sounds like it would be lonely -- to be the opposite of something as agile as
'ambidextrous'. If you can use both hands to do anything, it gives you a sense of power and grace. If you can only use the one, I would imagine that would make you feel somewhat inferior. But that can't be the case, because most people aren't ambidextrous, right? Most people use the hand they're good at to cut with scissors, hold their cups, change the channel. (Me, I'm a lefty; my right hand is pretty much confined to typing.)
Do ambidextrous people secretly sneer at the rest of us? Do they look at the consistency with which we use only one hand and roll their eyes at how underdeveloped we are as humans? Do they wait for the human race to evolve so that, eventually, all of us, united, brethren, separated no more, will rule the earth with both hands as our humble and hungry servants, obedient to our ferocious, ravenous, insatiable will?
I'm just asking.
Friday, August 04, 2006
SENSATIONAL SLINEY; GOLDMAN THE GREAT; FOREIGN CHILDREN FIGHTING; BAGUIO CITY, IN ALL ITS GLORY
While watching UNITED 93 in the theatre last week, the stunningly powerful new film about 9/11, I couldn't help but be impressed by the performance of the actor playing Ben Sliney, the head of the FAA, the utterly ordinary but singularly courageous dude who made the unprecedented decision to shut down all air traffic control in and out of the United States on the morning of that fateful, horrific day. He seemed so natural, so unaffected, so real; only a superior actor could pull that off, I decided. Probably had stage training, I reflected. Until I checked the web a few days later and discovered that the thespian chosen to portray Ben Sliney was none other than Ben Sliney. The guy. The real person.
I was shocked, though I shouldn't have been. He was so natural that he wasn't acting at all, it seemed to me -- which, paradoxically, is the best kind of acting there is, where you don't notice any acting at all.
And yet, of course, Ben Sliney was acting. He was recreating what had happened to him almost five years ago. (And, get this -- September 11, 2001, was his first fucking day on the job. Welcome to your new world...) He even admitted in an interview that he was asked to swear in the scene where he sees the gaping hole in the World Trade Center for the first time, even though he would never have sworn in real life.
How does a non-actor pull of such a natural performance? Is it easly to 'play' oneself? I don't think so. Think of all those fake news-anchors who can't even convincingly play themselves spouting small talk on a daily basis, let alone in a situation where you are re-enacting the most traumatizing event of your (and your nation's) life. Should he be nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. You bet your ass he should.
I don't pretend to understand acting, though I judge it all the time. (Granted, I had the lead in my Grade 4 and 5 plays, portraying Ichabod Crane and Santa Claus, respectively, and my performance in my Grade 13 play undoubtedly helped us perform so well at the Sears Drama Festival in Brantford, Ontario, but hey -- who's keeping track right?) It's such a mysterious, undefinable process -- pretending to be somebody else. And yet we do it all the time, daily -- simulating emotions, feigning interest or concern, fatigue or enthusiasm.
But to do it on screen so seamlessly, in a such an understated, moving film -- I tip my hat to Sliney. He made me believe he was one hundred percent the character he was portraying.
Which he was. And still is.
Which is confusing, yes, but riveting nevertheless.
***********************************************************************************
What are we to make of a book that begins as a rather routine police procedural set in modern-day New York (with a suitably brisk pace and better-than-average characerization) and ends with Alexander Graham Bell being attacked in Central Park in nineteenth century Manhattan by two thugs possessed by the personality of pawns from the late twentieth century who, using regression-reincarnation techniques, are unwittingly part of elaborate, though separate schemes by American and Soviet intelligence services designed to reverse the course of the Cold War by altering the very fabric of the space-time continuum, resulting in an alternate reality where one Super Power ends up ultimately being dominant over the other?
That's what happens in William Goldman's fascinating 1982 novel Control. Goldman, perhaps best known as the screenwriter of All The President's Men and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, is also a sleek, provocative novelist. His books move. And this book moved in ways that I never, ever expected.
And so late in the game, too! This is a book that doesn't introduce its' science-fiction elements until three quarters of the way through, when the book is almost over. We think it's one kind of a book; it turns out to be another.
It's not a literary milestone, no, but fuck it; i's better than that. I can't remember ever reading another book that holds its cards so close to the vest for so very, very long. Usually, in fiction and film, fantastical, science-fiction elements are made plain and clear early on in a story -- well before the half-way point, at any rate. The novelty and absurdity and logic of this story, published at the apex of the Cold War, delighted me.
I wish more writers were brave enough and clever enough to introduce such potentially risky elements at a point in the story when many authors are already cruising into neutral.
Goldman doesn't publish many novels anymore, but Control, out of which I wasn't expecting much, did what so few thrillers do -- it actually thrilled.
**************************************************************************************
It's interesting, watching people argue. Especially when they're arguing in a foreign language you don't speak. And especially when the people doing the arguing are eleven years old.
Something's going on -- of that you're certain. But you're not sure what it is. You see the anger elevated; you witness the rage, supressed. You hear words fly and spout, but you're not sure whether they are bad words or hideous words, hateful words or benign words. And because they're kids, you tend to dismiss the importance of the debate; you forget that childhood taunts sting and pierce.
But you keep watching. Looking for the spaces in the language. Watching spittle on lips. Suspicion in eyes. Malice in a shove. Refracted through linguistics, but evident, so obvious, sad and hateful and human.
************************************************************************************
The August, Asian edition of Reader's Digest features a beautiful picture of Baguio City in its' readers' photo section, a whole-page piece at the front of the magazine. There is the city I've been living in for the past nine month 1500 metres above sea-level -- the small houses dotting the mountains' green landscape, the white clouds bisecting the manmade structures and the natural-made beauty.
It's affirming, to see a place you're in (literally only miles away), in a full-colour spread in an international magazine. Affirming to know that people in Mongolia and China and Japan and Malaysia will look at that photo -- at the mountains, at the clouds -- and wonder about the houses, and the people inside them.
I was shocked, though I shouldn't have been. He was so natural that he wasn't acting at all, it seemed to me -- which, paradoxically, is the best kind of acting there is, where you don't notice any acting at all.
And yet, of course, Ben Sliney was acting. He was recreating what had happened to him almost five years ago. (And, get this -- September 11, 2001, was his first fucking day on the job. Welcome to your new world...) He even admitted in an interview that he was asked to swear in the scene where he sees the gaping hole in the World Trade Center for the first time, even though he would never have sworn in real life.
How does a non-actor pull of such a natural performance? Is it easly to 'play' oneself? I don't think so. Think of all those fake news-anchors who can't even convincingly play themselves spouting small talk on a daily basis, let alone in a situation where you are re-enacting the most traumatizing event of your (and your nation's) life. Should he be nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. You bet your ass he should.
I don't pretend to understand acting, though I judge it all the time. (Granted, I had the lead in my Grade 4 and 5 plays, portraying Ichabod Crane and Santa Claus, respectively, and my performance in my Grade 13 play undoubtedly helped us perform so well at the Sears Drama Festival in Brantford, Ontario, but hey -- who's keeping track right?) It's such a mysterious, undefinable process -- pretending to be somebody else. And yet we do it all the time, daily -- simulating emotions, feigning interest or concern, fatigue or enthusiasm.
But to do it on screen so seamlessly, in a such an understated, moving film -- I tip my hat to Sliney. He made me believe he was one hundred percent the character he was portraying.
Which he was. And still is.
Which is confusing, yes, but riveting nevertheless.
***********************************************************************************
What are we to make of a book that begins as a rather routine police procedural set in modern-day New York (with a suitably brisk pace and better-than-average characerization) and ends with Alexander Graham Bell being attacked in Central Park in nineteenth century Manhattan by two thugs possessed by the personality of pawns from the late twentieth century who, using regression-reincarnation techniques, are unwittingly part of elaborate, though separate schemes by American and Soviet intelligence services designed to reverse the course of the Cold War by altering the very fabric of the space-time continuum, resulting in an alternate reality where one Super Power ends up ultimately being dominant over the other?
That's what happens in William Goldman's fascinating 1982 novel Control. Goldman, perhaps best known as the screenwriter of All The President's Men and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, is also a sleek, provocative novelist. His books move. And this book moved in ways that I never, ever expected.
And so late in the game, too! This is a book that doesn't introduce its' science-fiction elements until three quarters of the way through, when the book is almost over. We think it's one kind of a book; it turns out to be another.
It's not a literary milestone, no, but fuck it; i's better than that. I can't remember ever reading another book that holds its cards so close to the vest for so very, very long. Usually, in fiction and film, fantastical, science-fiction elements are made plain and clear early on in a story -- well before the half-way point, at any rate. The novelty and absurdity and logic of this story, published at the apex of the Cold War, delighted me.
I wish more writers were brave enough and clever enough to introduce such potentially risky elements at a point in the story when many authors are already cruising into neutral.
Goldman doesn't publish many novels anymore, but Control, out of which I wasn't expecting much, did what so few thrillers do -- it actually thrilled.
**************************************************************************************
It's interesting, watching people argue. Especially when they're arguing in a foreign language you don't speak. And especially when the people doing the arguing are eleven years old.
Something's going on -- of that you're certain. But you're not sure what it is. You see the anger elevated; you witness the rage, supressed. You hear words fly and spout, but you're not sure whether they are bad words or hideous words, hateful words or benign words. And because they're kids, you tend to dismiss the importance of the debate; you forget that childhood taunts sting and pierce.
But you keep watching. Looking for the spaces in the language. Watching spittle on lips. Suspicion in eyes. Malice in a shove. Refracted through linguistics, but evident, so obvious, sad and hateful and human.
************************************************************************************
The August, Asian edition of Reader's Digest features a beautiful picture of Baguio City in its' readers' photo section, a whole-page piece at the front of the magazine. There is the city I've been living in for the past nine month 1500 metres above sea-level -- the small houses dotting the mountains' green landscape, the white clouds bisecting the manmade structures and the natural-made beauty.
It's affirming, to see a place you're in (literally only miles away), in a full-colour spread in an international magazine. Affirming to know that people in Mongolia and China and Japan and Malaysia will look at that photo -- at the mountains, at the clouds -- and wonder about the houses, and the people inside them.
Saturday, July 29, 2006
JOHN IRVING: THE BEST WE'VE GOT; THE LADY IN THE WATER: I AM ALONE NO MORE
Finishing a John Irving novel, as I recently did with his newest opus, Until I Find You, is both a sad and joyous time. Sad, because the odds are good that you won't be reading another new Irving novel for a good four, five years; and joyous, because to read John Irving is to find your faith in literature restored and your love for humanity renewed.
Those are strong words, and I'm all too aware that Irving's critics can't fucking stand the guy. "Enough with the 'modern Dickens' garbage," they say. "Enough with the sentimentality," they spout.
To which I say: Guilty, and guilty. He really is our Dickens, and he really is sentimental (and hey, when did such a humane word as 'sentimental' become a profanity? What's happened to us?).
His plots are improbable, his characters outlandish, his coincidences ripe and frequent. (Just like Dickens.) We grow to love the characters almost as much as much as we love our friends and family, almost as much as the characters grow to love each other. (Hence the sentimentality.)
But as with all great writers, there's 'something else' going on with Irving. He understoods, at a deep, profound level, the unfairness of the world. When I was younger, his books seemed filled with odd, brutal, disarming accidents and tragedies. As I aged, as I experienced more of the world, I suddenly realized that Irving's novels aren't odd, brutal or disarming enough. Living in the Philippines and Cambodia is enough to make you realize that the world is a savage place. (And getting whacked in the stomach by a two-by-four by a homeless Korean in Japan is enough to confirm that absurdity and violence go hand-in-hand.) Those who diss Irving for how ludicrous his stories are don't live in the same world I do. Those who bemoan his sentimentality are denying the common roots of love and loneliness that link us all.
Irving once said: "When I say I'm a storyteller, I'm not being modest." No kidding. I'll go out on a limb and say something that I was never quite sure of before, but am confident of now: that he's the greatest storyteller of the last fifty years. Not the most innovative, or modern, or erudite, or elegant, or stylish, or hip, or clever -- just the best.
Period.
Usually, when I finish a book, I'm on to the next one, usually by the next day, often within the same hour. When I finish reading a John Irving book, I want to start again. Immediately. Like, now.
I'm telling you: He's that good. There's no one better. I don't know how else to say it.
So, enough. Go read The World According to Garp and The Hotel New Hampshire and The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany and A Son Of The Circus and A Widow For One Year and, now, Until I Find You.
Allow yourself into in his world. Fall in love with his characters (allow yourself that privilege; it's okay to love fictional characters, words on a page, punctuation in a chapter -- I swear; noone will know.)
All hail the king!
***********************************************************************************
Absolutely loving a movie that the majority of people don't even freakin' like is a lonely feeling. You start to wonder: Is my taste in movies skewed? Are they all right and am I wrong? Are they sane, and am I a looney? Was I dropped on my head as a child? (If so, fuck would that explain a lot of things. But I suppose that's another post...)
However, any true film fan soon gets over such a sensation, and sticks to their guns. I still think Rocky IV and Superman IV:The Quest for Peace have been unduly, nay, tragically maligned over the years. I'm now convinced that Heaven and Earth is Oliver Stone's best film. (Though probably tied with J.F.K.) The three new Star Wars movies, the last of which was released last summer, are more complex, metaphorical, engagingly political and discretely profound than the incarnations that possessed me as a kid. (As entertaining? Well...) No Way Out, starring Kevin Costner, is probably the best suspense film ever made, with the saddest, most subversive 'trick' ending in all of cinema.
Anyone with me here? Anyone? No? That's alright. We like what we like, right?
And yet, I'm heartened by the fact that at least somebody else in the universe considers Lady In The Water as a cinematic event worth celebrating.
I usually read somewhat intellectual magazines like The Economist to try and figure out and understand the world around me, but the July 22-28th, 2006 edition features a review of M.Night Shyamalan's latest film that ends with the statement: "The result is a messy masterpiece, a portrait of turbulent transition, that constantly risks falling on its face but almost never does."
A "messy masterpiece", this anonymous reviewer writes (all writing in The Economist is anonymous, come to think of it); last week I posted a post titled "Lady In The Water: Something Close To Brilliant". And then read online in the next few days a million reviews stating that the flick was, in fact, the worst piece of garbage since, well, The Garbage Pail Kids. (Which actually wasn't half bad...)
But now. Ah. I'm vindicated. I called it as 'something close to brilliant'; The Economist calls it ' a messy masterpiece.' We're spiritual brothers, me and that magazine. A million and one people think the flick blows, but I, at least, I am not alone. Somebody else saw that Shyamalan was trying to do something new and different and special; somebody else recognized that it "risk[ed] falling on its face", and how rare, if not invisible, such a trait is in today's artists.
Me and my homie at The Economist can both spot genius when we see it.
I wonder what he thinks about The Karate Kid III...
Those are strong words, and I'm all too aware that Irving's critics can't fucking stand the guy. "Enough with the 'modern Dickens' garbage," they say. "Enough with the sentimentality," they spout.
To which I say: Guilty, and guilty. He really is our Dickens, and he really is sentimental (and hey, when did such a humane word as 'sentimental' become a profanity? What's happened to us?).
His plots are improbable, his characters outlandish, his coincidences ripe and frequent. (Just like Dickens.) We grow to love the characters almost as much as much as we love our friends and family, almost as much as the characters grow to love each other. (Hence the sentimentality.)
But as with all great writers, there's 'something else' going on with Irving. He understoods, at a deep, profound level, the unfairness of the world. When I was younger, his books seemed filled with odd, brutal, disarming accidents and tragedies. As I aged, as I experienced more of the world, I suddenly realized that Irving's novels aren't odd, brutal or disarming enough. Living in the Philippines and Cambodia is enough to make you realize that the world is a savage place. (And getting whacked in the stomach by a two-by-four by a homeless Korean in Japan is enough to confirm that absurdity and violence go hand-in-hand.) Those who diss Irving for how ludicrous his stories are don't live in the same world I do. Those who bemoan his sentimentality are denying the common roots of love and loneliness that link us all.
Irving once said: "When I say I'm a storyteller, I'm not being modest." No kidding. I'll go out on a limb and say something that I was never quite sure of before, but am confident of now: that he's the greatest storyteller of the last fifty years. Not the most innovative, or modern, or erudite, or elegant, or stylish, or hip, or clever -- just the best.
Period.
Usually, when I finish a book, I'm on to the next one, usually by the next day, often within the same hour. When I finish reading a John Irving book, I want to start again. Immediately. Like, now.
I'm telling you: He's that good. There's no one better. I don't know how else to say it.
So, enough. Go read The World According to Garp and The Hotel New Hampshire and The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany and A Son Of The Circus and A Widow For One Year and, now, Until I Find You.
Allow yourself into in his world. Fall in love with his characters (allow yourself that privilege; it's okay to love fictional characters, words on a page, punctuation in a chapter -- I swear; noone will know.)
All hail the king!
***********************************************************************************
Absolutely loving a movie that the majority of people don't even freakin' like is a lonely feeling. You start to wonder: Is my taste in movies skewed? Are they all right and am I wrong? Are they sane, and am I a looney? Was I dropped on my head as a child? (If so, fuck would that explain a lot of things. But I suppose that's another post...)
However, any true film fan soon gets over such a sensation, and sticks to their guns. I still think Rocky IV and Superman IV:The Quest for Peace have been unduly, nay, tragically maligned over the years. I'm now convinced that Heaven and Earth is Oliver Stone's best film. (Though probably tied with J.F.K.) The three new Star Wars movies, the last of which was released last summer, are more complex, metaphorical, engagingly political and discretely profound than the incarnations that possessed me as a kid. (As entertaining? Well...) No Way Out, starring Kevin Costner, is probably the best suspense film ever made, with the saddest, most subversive 'trick' ending in all of cinema.
Anyone with me here? Anyone? No? That's alright. We like what we like, right?
And yet, I'm heartened by the fact that at least somebody else in the universe considers Lady In The Water as a cinematic event worth celebrating.
I usually read somewhat intellectual magazines like The Economist to try and figure out and understand the world around me, but the July 22-28th, 2006 edition features a review of M.Night Shyamalan's latest film that ends with the statement: "The result is a messy masterpiece, a portrait of turbulent transition, that constantly risks falling on its face but almost never does."
A "messy masterpiece", this anonymous reviewer writes (all writing in The Economist is anonymous, come to think of it); last week I posted a post titled "Lady In The Water: Something Close To Brilliant". And then read online in the next few days a million reviews stating that the flick was, in fact, the worst piece of garbage since, well, The Garbage Pail Kids. (Which actually wasn't half bad...)
But now. Ah. I'm vindicated. I called it as 'something close to brilliant'; The Economist calls it ' a messy masterpiece.' We're spiritual brothers, me and that magazine. A million and one people think the flick blows, but I, at least, I am not alone. Somebody else saw that Shyamalan was trying to do something new and different and special; somebody else recognized that it "risk[ed] falling on its face", and how rare, if not invisible, such a trait is in today's artists.
Me and my homie at The Economist can both spot genius when we see it.
I wonder what he thinks about The Karate Kid III...
Thursday, July 27, 2006
SAD LOOKING MOON -- NOT 4 HIRE
Taxis have names here. So do cars, somtimes. As do jeepneys. And so do trucks, their monikers spread across the side doors or their back grilles. I saw one the other day, glossy in green and white: SAD LOOKING MOON. On the side of the vehicle, another familiar sign: NOT 4 RENT.
I suddenly, inexplicably felt sadness, almost pity, for the owner. For who would name their truck such a thing? Was the owner the 'sad looking moon'? Was it his own nickname, or that given to him by his wife, or mother, or son? Was his truck the moon itself? His and his alone, not available for another's use? Did he want to horde his own unhappiness? Did he sometimes, at night, look up at the moon, and see nothing but doom and gloom?
I imagine him leaning against his truck in his driveway, late at night, after the wife and kids have hit the hay. He is smoking a cigarette, his third after dinner. There are few stars out, but only one moon. He stares at the moon for a long time, and thinks about his past, and his kids, and where he is, and where he will not be going. He takes another puff on his cigarette, another stare at the moon, then heads on back inside, throwing the butt over his shoulder. The moon is bright, but he does not give it another glance.
I suddenly, inexplicably felt sadness, almost pity, for the owner. For who would name their truck such a thing? Was the owner the 'sad looking moon'? Was it his own nickname, or that given to him by his wife, or mother, or son? Was his truck the moon itself? His and his alone, not available for another's use? Did he want to horde his own unhappiness? Did he sometimes, at night, look up at the moon, and see nothing but doom and gloom?
I imagine him leaning against his truck in his driveway, late at night, after the wife and kids have hit the hay. He is smoking a cigarette, his third after dinner. There are few stars out, but only one moon. He stares at the moon for a long time, and thinks about his past, and his kids, and where he is, and where he will not be going. He takes another puff on his cigarette, another stare at the moon, then heads on back inside, throwing the butt over his shoulder. The moon is bright, but he does not give it another glance.
Saturday, July 22, 2006
LADY IN THE WATER: SOMETHING CLOSE TO BRILLIANT
Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami recently remarked in an interview that the line between reality and fantasy is much more permeable in Japan than in the west, with Japanese readers and viewers being more willing, more able, to accept and integrate the marvellous and fantastic into their lives and their stories. He invoked the notion of the boatman on the River Styx herding passengers onto his boat for their journey to the other, fantastical side; for the Japanese, he implies, it's not that long a voyage, while for Westerners it might be a more bumpy ride until they finally reach shore. (And a lengthier one, too.)
I suspect that Lady In The Water will go over much, much better in Japan than in Canada or America. In fact, I suspect that many in the west will actively dislike, if not hate, Lady In The Water. It's strange, and surreal, and more than a little clumsy, truth be told, and yet it's also something close to brilliant, I think.
There's always a point in M.Night Shyamalan's films where the mystical and the mundane become inextricably intertwined. The hardest part in any story of the supernatural is the point at which the characters suddenly, finally, believe in what's happening; in Shyamalan's films, that moment is always hard to pinpoint. It just happens. The characters accept; the audience accepts.
What are we to make of a film in which a woman is found in a pool in a Philadelphia housing complex, eventually requiring the help of all of its inhabitants to find her way back home?
I'm not sure, to be honest. But there's a tone and a texture to this film, to its understanding of myth, to its acknowledgement of the glorious realities that underlay our own mundane lives, that made me want to cheer and weep at the same time. You are worthy, the film is saying. You, the one in apartment 13-B, can save yourself and others. Things might not work out in the end, but your influence will be felt, and remembered, by others, by strangers, long after you're dead.
There are a number of technical reasons for why I like Shymalan's films: his preference for long takes; for creating a filmic space that has character and style without being obtrusive; his use of sound to enhance and subtract meaning. This time he also has the brilliant cinematographer Christopher Doyle, an Aussie expat who usually lenses Chinese flicks, to augment the colours and tones with his trademark impeccable -- and, here, restrained -- taste.
But there's something else in all of Shymalan's stories, a sense of wonder, a sense of grace that underlines and highlights his plotting. He is a populist, make no mistake; we are not talking about a Godard or a Truffaut or a Bertolucci. He wants to be liked, perhaps a little too much. But he is also willing to go out on a limb, and risk failure, even great failure, to achieve essential human truths.
Oh, and those moments. They're there, in all his films. Those moments where the music swells, slightly, and things start to come together, and the characters' humanity is revealed, and we are made to feel, only briefly, that the world has a mystical and magical underpinning that is here, goddamnit, if only we'd look hard enough and long enough. If only we'd put aside our adult ingenuities and oh-so-sarcastic point of views.
Look, I can see the criticism of this film coming a mile away. (I mean, the fact that the least likeable character in the entire piece is a film critic who gets his comeuppance should hint that the critical response to this film is going to be, well, blunt. Film critics hate to be made fun of.) There is some racial stereotyping that could be deemed offensive, but which I find, ultimately, transforming, part of a larger statement on the ways that we communicate, the enclaves that we build that keep us together and drive us apart. All the characters start out one-dimensionally, but are slowly, gradually revealed to be deeper.
I don't think westerners are ready to accept a film that blends fantasy and reality so comfortably together. We're too jaded and cynical. Give us Superman, yes, but a merwoman in a pool? Come on. And this is supposed to move me? Please.
Well, it did. It moved me. All of Shyamalan's films have, and I've always been surprised by that fact. It's rare that a film or book actually does move me, but this one did. In some ways, it's a strange and odd and ragged jewel of a film, like none I've ever seen. It is a kind of fairy tale, and perhaps we're told for that sort of thing.
The director thinks so, too. At the beginning of the film is a short explanation (voiced by the typically solemn unseen narrator) that explains who these creatures are, and their somewhat tangled relation to the human race. I wasn't sure that this was necessary; too much exposition, I thought, and at the beginning of the film, no less.
Now, I'm not so sure. Maybe us westerners do need to be reminded of magic tales and ancient rites. I think Shyamalan was warning the audience: This a film about myth, and I'm telling you that right from the get-go, so that you're ready and prepared and willing to go where I'm taking you.
This is one of those films that I think is 'advanced', to steal Esquire writer Chuck Klosterman's term. Everyone will hate it, but it's ahead of its time. Of this I am sure. (Like Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, and Stone's Alexander.) I hope people give it a chance, and not scoff and roll their eyes and laugh out loud as the film goes along. (Boy, can I see that happening.) I hope people think about this film, too, because I think it says a lot about who we are as people, and what we need from each other. There's a line in the film that you might miss if you're not listening carefully, something about how people are drawn to a place almost against their will, that they congregate without quite knowing why. The characters in this film do just that: lead simple lives, not realizing that they, too, have the potential, together, to allow the mythic and the extraordinary aspects of life to transform them -- and, in turn, allow their own humanity to transform others.
God, I hope that's true. Because if it's not, then fairy tales truly are just a myth.
I suspect that Lady In The Water will go over much, much better in Japan than in Canada or America. In fact, I suspect that many in the west will actively dislike, if not hate, Lady In The Water. It's strange, and surreal, and more than a little clumsy, truth be told, and yet it's also something close to brilliant, I think.
There's always a point in M.Night Shyamalan's films where the mystical and the mundane become inextricably intertwined. The hardest part in any story of the supernatural is the point at which the characters suddenly, finally, believe in what's happening; in Shyamalan's films, that moment is always hard to pinpoint. It just happens. The characters accept; the audience accepts.
What are we to make of a film in which a woman is found in a pool in a Philadelphia housing complex, eventually requiring the help of all of its inhabitants to find her way back home?
I'm not sure, to be honest. But there's a tone and a texture to this film, to its understanding of myth, to its acknowledgement of the glorious realities that underlay our own mundane lives, that made me want to cheer and weep at the same time. You are worthy, the film is saying. You, the one in apartment 13-B, can save yourself and others. Things might not work out in the end, but your influence will be felt, and remembered, by others, by strangers, long after you're dead.
There are a number of technical reasons for why I like Shymalan's films: his preference for long takes; for creating a filmic space that has character and style without being obtrusive; his use of sound to enhance and subtract meaning. This time he also has the brilliant cinematographer Christopher Doyle, an Aussie expat who usually lenses Chinese flicks, to augment the colours and tones with his trademark impeccable -- and, here, restrained -- taste.
But there's something else in all of Shymalan's stories, a sense of wonder, a sense of grace that underlines and highlights his plotting. He is a populist, make no mistake; we are not talking about a Godard or a Truffaut or a Bertolucci. He wants to be liked, perhaps a little too much. But he is also willing to go out on a limb, and risk failure, even great failure, to achieve essential human truths.
Oh, and those moments. They're there, in all his films. Those moments where the music swells, slightly, and things start to come together, and the characters' humanity is revealed, and we are made to feel, only briefly, that the world has a mystical and magical underpinning that is here, goddamnit, if only we'd look hard enough and long enough. If only we'd put aside our adult ingenuities and oh-so-sarcastic point of views.
Look, I can see the criticism of this film coming a mile away. (I mean, the fact that the least likeable character in the entire piece is a film critic who gets his comeuppance should hint that the critical response to this film is going to be, well, blunt. Film critics hate to be made fun of.) There is some racial stereotyping that could be deemed offensive, but which I find, ultimately, transforming, part of a larger statement on the ways that we communicate, the enclaves that we build that keep us together and drive us apart. All the characters start out one-dimensionally, but are slowly, gradually revealed to be deeper.
I don't think westerners are ready to accept a film that blends fantasy and reality so comfortably together. We're too jaded and cynical. Give us Superman, yes, but a merwoman in a pool? Come on. And this is supposed to move me? Please.
Well, it did. It moved me. All of Shyamalan's films have, and I've always been surprised by that fact. It's rare that a film or book actually does move me, but this one did. In some ways, it's a strange and odd and ragged jewel of a film, like none I've ever seen. It is a kind of fairy tale, and perhaps we're told for that sort of thing.
The director thinks so, too. At the beginning of the film is a short explanation (voiced by the typically solemn unseen narrator) that explains who these creatures are, and their somewhat tangled relation to the human race. I wasn't sure that this was necessary; too much exposition, I thought, and at the beginning of the film, no less.
Now, I'm not so sure. Maybe us westerners do need to be reminded of magic tales and ancient rites. I think Shyamalan was warning the audience: This a film about myth, and I'm telling you that right from the get-go, so that you're ready and prepared and willing to go where I'm taking you.
This is one of those films that I think is 'advanced', to steal Esquire writer Chuck Klosterman's term. Everyone will hate it, but it's ahead of its time. Of this I am sure. (Like Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, and Stone's Alexander.) I hope people give it a chance, and not scoff and roll their eyes and laugh out loud as the film goes along. (Boy, can I see that happening.) I hope people think about this film, too, because I think it says a lot about who we are as people, and what we need from each other. There's a line in the film that you might miss if you're not listening carefully, something about how people are drawn to a place almost against their will, that they congregate without quite knowing why. The characters in this film do just that: lead simple lives, not realizing that they, too, have the potential, together, to allow the mythic and the extraordinary aspects of life to transform them -- and, in turn, allow their own humanity to transform others.
God, I hope that's true. Because if it's not, then fairy tales truly are just a myth.
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