OK, new topic: Lost in Translation

OK, really. No more posts about the gay marriage debate and how it’s just like the legalization of divorce, or birth control, or what have you. Let’s talk about, oh, movies. Apparently, some musicians are consorting with and doing business with adult film stars. There’s a surprise. No, really, a real topic. Something serious, not the usual crap banter.

I saw Lost in Translation, finally, and I realized two things: one, Bill Murray really deserved that Oscar. Sean Penn can play a hardass eight days a week without breaking a sweat– that’s just him being himself. Remember when he would beat up journalists for fun? Mystic River was a great movie, and he did a great job in it, but Bill Murray’s role was deeper, and required greater range and expression, was more of a reach, and I think he got shafted when the more popular picture won.

Two, I now understand my reluctance to see the movie, and to see a lot of other serious movies recently. The anomie expressed in the movie is my entire day-to-day life. There are brief instants when I glimpse life through my own eyes but for the most part I spend my days behind a shield of ironic detachment, foreign to actual living. Yes, this is overblown, but I do feel insulated from reality to a disturbing degree. I didn’t want to see that movie because it would remind me that’s not the way it’s supposed to be. I’m all too familiar with the feeling of being surrounded by signs and voices whose meaning I can only guess at: watching the expats in restaurants, streets, subways. The worst was the sex: the strip club, where he’s watching these women contort themselves; the unexpected arrival of a call-girl he can’t understand; even the pointless sex with the expat lounge singer, all represent sex at its least intimate, least arousing, least satisfying extent. Yeah, there’s a redeeming connection and a kiss at the end, but they just serve to highlight how miserable the rest of existence really is.

Since I saw the movie I’ve felt completely hollowed out inside.

Anxiety

I just started reading Status Anxiety, by Alain de Botton. It’s about how, given the possibility of rising above our stations, we suffer more greatly from jealousy. Serfs were not jealous of nobles, they accepted their miserable lives as part of nature’s way. Once people figured out that wasn’t so, they became fiercely unhappy with their lot, and improved it, by revolution if necessary.

There are two ways to remedy anxiety about your standing: achieve greatness (this is impossible– no matter how great you are, there is still anxiety) or give up (this is either defeatism or buddhism, depending on your point of view). De Botton quotes William James: “How pleasant is the day when we give up trying to be young or slender.”

The specifics of the desired greatness vary from person to person. For example, Pablo Escobar always wanted to be great, by which he meant, he wanted to be popular, he wanted to be admired, he wanted a big house and a fancy car and a big TV and teenage hookers. He had all those things for awhile, before he was hunted down and shot at close range, finally. The book Killing Pablo is an excellent and unbiased account of the hunt and eventual capture. What I like most about it is the way that the author chronicles the good things that Escobar did, as well as the bad, and the ways that the US and Colombian forces had to make compromises with their ethics to eventually capture him. The author doesn’t pass judgement on anyone involved, and doesn’t need to, because the story holds up on its own as a tale of suspense and investigation, driven by Pablo Escobar’s status anxiety– and that of his customers in the US.

The original defense of marriage amendment

Oh, those liberals, at it again with their historicizing and comparisons of intolerance to intolerance. More importantly, and more convincingly, there’s an NYT editorial discussing the first constitutional amendment defending marriage:

“Representative Seaborn Roddenberry of Georgia proposed an amendment that he said would uphold the sanctity of marriage. Mr. Roddenberry’s proposed amendment, in December 1912, stated, ‘Intermarriage between Negroes or persons of color and Caucasians . . . is forever prohibited.’ He took this action, he said, because some states were permitting marriages that were ‘abhorrent and repugnant,’ and he aimed to ‘exterminate now this debasing, ultrademoralizing, un-American and inhuman leprosy.'”

I wonder if discussion of this issue in certain elementary schools is legal, or if it constitutes the “teaching of homosexuality.”

Viva

I’m back. No real surprises to the lessons I’ve learned in Sin City: the house always wins, and the death of a relative or hotel guest is never convenient. Also, even if it’s very nice Champagne, it can still give you a wicked hangover.

Viva Ned Flanders

I’m headed for the land of bilking money, the land of Liberace (home of the world’s largest rhinestone!), the land of, well, ambivalence and flashing lights. I haven’t been since COMDEX 2000, when I wrote that last little bit on the city. This time it’s for not for work though– Bookdwarf’s best friend from high school is getting married. Let’s hope I manage to avoid that white wine spritzer that starts me down the Britney Spears-laden slippery slope to a Vegas marriage myself.

Any Food Nation

You thought Fast Food Nation was a stinging indictment of US food practice, and it was. It also had information about how to improve food safety, worker health, and general quality of life.

Against the Grain author Richard Manning is apparently opposed to agriculture. Not even agriculture as practiced in the US by giant combines with tons of pesticides and petroleum fertilizers, mind you. He’s more or less opposed to agriculture, which despite the various problems he describes with it, is still the foundation of global society.

Yes, the particular fertilizers used by US agribusiness are ruining our waterways, and yes, the US agricultural subsidy system is screwed up beyond belief. Let’s reform them. Let’s eat organic. Let’s eat low on the food chain, low on the processing scale, be aware of the petroleum in our breakfast cereal. But come on– you’re attacking agriculture and describing it as the bane of global existence? Gimme a break. You can tell he’s on thin ice when he begins romanticizing the hunter-gatherers and talks about how important it is to hunt your own elk. Yeah, I’ll be sure to do that.

Brainshare? Gimme the Toy Expo!

I’m going to BrainShare, I’ve been to LinuxWorld, but I’d really like to go to the American International Toy Fair. I mean, the strange toys, the toys that get good press from psychologists and educators, the violent or dangerous or stupid toys. I guess it’s more interesting when you’re not actually in the business. If I were a toy manufacturer, I bet the toy expo would be incredibly boring, and I’d want to see what weird gadgets those software people were coming up with next. Mmmm, gadgets.