there is a really awesome anish kapoor piece at the met, As Yet Untitled (2007), which is made entirely of stainless steel. It's quite clever: it is a concave mirror that is not smooth but, rather, is composed of interlocked hexagonal mirror tiles. The effects are therefore fascinating. If you remember your high school physics (and I barely did), you'll know that curved mirrors show an inverted image if the object is standing behind the focus point. Therefore, from far away, your reflection is fragmented and upside-down. As you approach the mirror, it gets progressively larger and recedes (again, consult the ray diagrams), until you reach the focal point. At the focal point, the reflection flips and is up-right. It looks really, really cool. hence all the idiots who took self-portraits with cameras (including yours truly, but for scientific curiosity only, i promise).

The Turner exhibit at the met was fine. Whoever called Turner a proto-Abstract Expressionist was onto something. His water colors have such an airy quality to them, and in the later paintings he breaks forms down to color. He also anticipates the Impressionists, especially in paintings like Rain, Steam, and Speed (not in the exhibit).

Holy cow: rika burnham's at the frick! i was just browsing the website, and her picture's on the site! She's the head of education there, it seems. I assume she's left the Met? I hope she's happier at her new location. I prefer the Frick to the Met, to speak frankly. It's much smaller, more stunning, and much more manageable. It's also less crowded (usually), and the exhibits are not never-ending. And, it seems that sammywolf's friend was right: their admission policy is pay-what-you-want on sundays (from 11 am to 1 pm).

I am currently reading: Roderick Random by Tobias Smollett (I love 18th century literature - so much smut!), Satanic Verses (better than I had hoped it would be, but not punishable by death by any account), The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (excellent book, and it's not impenetrable, makes sense but he's among the first to articulate such ideas), Mysteries of Udolpho by Anne Radcliffe (makes me laugh, in a mocking way), and A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammad Hanif. The last is a new release, and it's a fictionalized account of the time around when General Zia ul-Haq (the previous military dictator) was assassinated. I quite like it, and will probably finish it first. Some good books are coming out of Pakistan these days...

My grandmother (paternal) passed away during the previous night. We were kept up to date.  I've been waiting on this day ever since my maternal grandmother passed away 2 years ago, since she was younger. Now we have no grandparents (never saw my grandfathers, as they died before I was born). The thing of it is, though, that the annoying neighbors from the street behind us (are they still considered neighbors??) have blasted their music since noon. Like really loud. So loud that when you close the window and turn on the AC you can still hear the music. So now I don't know whether to mourn or dance. It's good in a way because it reminds you that life goes on, but something more tasteful than the latest  hip-hop rythmic gyrations would be preferable. I love Jersey city, but i also hate it.

To wish someone a happy birthday who shares a birthday with you is to yell the greeting into a mirror. 

I finished Daria last night (having seen all 5 seasons and three short films over the past few months), and I will really miss the show. I was more nostalgic at Daria's graduation than my own. Why didn't I know of this show back in high school??

After having been on top of the whole Sonic Youth coming to battery park for free on july 4th thing for the past few weeks, I completely forgot about signing up for tickets at noon today (even though I knew it yesterday). Argh!!!! I'm such an idiot. I hate myself. At least I'll get to see the liars on july 20th, gratis.

"That is more than the deaths attributed to tornadoes, hurricanes, floods and lightening combined, the agency said." (emphasis mine).

From the horse's mouth:

light·en·ing (līt'n-ĭng)
n.

The sensation of decreased abdominal distention during the latter weeks of pregnancy following the descent of the fetal head into the pelvic inlet.

grammar police: 1
nytimes: 0

As much as I hated Jane Eyre is how much I love Jean Rhys' 1960s post-colonialist response to it, Wide Sargasso Sea. It took me five months to finish Jane Eyre, it was that awful. I realized that when I read a first-person narrator novel, if I cannot stand the narrator-protagonist then I hate the novel. And I detest Jane Eyre, the person; she grates. And the novel felt good in a technical sense only. I cannot believe it has lasted so long in the canon. I mean, I get that it's one of the earliest feminist novels, but I do feel bad for the feminists because this is what they got stuck with. My apologies.


It is an extremely short book that reads like a dream. The stream-of-consciousness style is not impenetrable; it is actually quite an easy read. It heart-breakingly describes and suggests (never says outright) why Rochester and Antoinette could never have been. And Antoinette's identity crisis, and her lack of any space to call her own - for she is neither at home in Jamaica ("white cockroach" is her nickname) or in England - is dealt with in a most sympathetic fashion.

I read the Time's blurb review of the book (for their Top 100 Novel series), and while I like it, I also have a bone to pick with it. Mr. Rochester is "the simmering Englishman whose children Jane has been hired to tutor." Um, what children? It's one child, Adele, and she may not even be his. But that's a petty point to make. The reviewer wrote something that puzzled me at first: "Caliban does not become Ariel here." I mean, can Caliban ever really become Ariel? More to the point, can any Caliban become an Ariel? That's a hard transition to make, and an unfair comparison. Yet the reference itself is quite brilliant (especially if original) because Caliban and Ariel from The Tempest are also examined from post-colonialist eyes for obvious reasons. So, Mr./Ms. J.L., I tip my hat to you for the very interesting allusion.

If I ever recommend Jane Eyre to someone, it would be primarily to provide context for reading this astonishingly good novel.

i took this in 2005, i think, and it was eerily accurate. it is yet again eerily accurate. i don't know how it does that!!

rukh214 took the free ColorQuiz.com personality test! "Shelves his ambitions and forgoes his desire for p..." Click here to read the rest of the results.

I am almost near the end of Six Feet Under. I am very proud of myself. There was one scene in Ep. 5 X 10 that I really liked - it happened during a funeral (don't watch if you don't want to be spoiled):  Rumi + Nirvana = love. And nice explanation for Claire's pot smoking and her relationship with Nate, there. Well, done, show.

I wish people didn't know that Kurt Cobain was dead before listening to Nirvana, which is the scenario for all new nirvana listeners these days. I know it's not possible not to know that, but if that were the case his suicide would be so much more moving. To get to his later stuff, and then to find out that he died would make the emotional reaction so much more vivid and immediate. I feel gypped, even.

I left my heart in Durham. Please take good care of it?

"Fruit and vegetables splattered with blood were spread about the area."

I am practically hyperventilating due to excitement right now: last year in May or so, I saw a film at the Black Maria Film Festival (named after Edison's studio) at Rutgers-Newark. At the festival, I saw an awesome, awesome, funny short experimental film by Coleman Miller titled Uso Justo. I looked everywhere for the film to share it with friends, and I found nothing. Today is a new day, however. I have found it on the net. And I am sharing it with you all. Please watch  - it is too good for words, and absolutely hilarious, and just wait till you meet Make-a-Wish Norma!

love,
me

link: http://www.wholphindvd.com/wordpress/film-uso-justo/

I really like austen's style (i especially like "the letter was not unproductive.") But as I open Mansfield Park for a second time, one sentence gets my goat. If you can help me understand - especially the italicized part (my italics they are), I will be yr hmble svt 4ever.

"Their homes were so distant, and the circles in which they moved so distant, as almost to preclude the means of ever hearing of each other's existence during the eleven following years, or at least to make it very wonderful to Sir Thomas, that Mrs. Norris should ever have it in her power to tell them, as she now and then did in an angry voice, that Fanny had got another child."

The commas don't help. I guess it means that Sir Thomas would be happy if Mrs. Norris weren't able to tell him that Fanny had children, but I don't want to have to re-phrase it - I would like to be able to understand exactly as it appears (for god's sake, it's not Chaucer.)

"The Internet, happily, does not so far seem to be antagonistic to literacy. Researchers recently gave Michigan children and teen-agers home computers in exchange for permission to monitor their Internet use. The study found that grades and reading scores rose with the amount of time spent online. Even visits to pornography Web sites improved academic performance." that is pretty astonishing - someone get him an R01 grant! (in all earnestness)
"twilight of the books" - the new yorker

In my fits of grandeur, I write like Mr. Collins: all Austentation and no substance. I therefore believe Mr. Collins to be gravely misunderstood.

I was also told that since a 1990s essay by Edward Said, in which he pointed out that the family in Mansfield Park owes its fortune to the sugar colonies, people who write about MP have to address that. I.e. it places the book in a post-colonialist perspective. which i find terribly amusing because i dont remember that having much to do with the book, but of course you can easily make the argument that as it is the family's source of income (the way they paid for the titular estate) colors everything in the novel. I guess I'll have to take that into consideration when I read the book again.

I just re-read all of harry potter. on to atonement.

"Most Americans aren’t racist, most Republicans included. (Those who are won’t vote for the Democratic presidential candidate even if it’s not Mr. Obama.)" well played, frank. well played. 

Freudian slip or Bushism? You decide: "My message was very plain, very easy to understand, and that is, the United States wants you to have the elections as scheduled and take your uniform off." - Pres. Bush.

har har har?

On a more serious note, isn't the president of the United States also the chief of the military? Is that very different from Musharraff being the head of the Pakistani army and the leader of the nation?

quoted from the AP: "Washington considers Musharraf a source of stability in a nuclear-armed country fighting militants along the border with Afghanistan, an area where Osaka bin Laden may be hiding." when will we let the japan hate subside??

I was watching the 1995 A&E version of Pride and Prejudice (the one with Colin Firth - I just finished re-reading the book), and I was like hold up - that random girl in the party looks like Dawn from The Office UK. So, I imdb'd dawn, and lo and behold: she played the part of maria lucas (sister of charlotte lucas, who marries the ineffectual mr. collins)!!! I am extremely proud of myself. the end. 

omfg, rob thomas has a new project: to revive his super-awesome 98 tv show cupid, which starred jeremy piven and paula marshall! And I was Just thinking about the awesomeness of cupid last night, too! I was about to use it as a reference (or make a reference to a particular scene) when I realized that the person I was talking to had - like 99% of the country - never seen nor heard of the show, so the time it would have taken to explain the show to explain the reference would have been not worth the effort. However, it's available on bittorrent... wowza!

pushing daisies' "pie-lette" was beyond amazing. it shall be the best show of the century! not really, but maybe. and it did have amelie-like proclivities, but not enough to make people hate it (it's definitely not as saccharine or quirky). FNL did something awful in the 1st episode of S2, but redeemed themselves by using wilco's "muzzle of bees," twice. let's see how long the romance lasts.

this weekend was the death by film weekend: friday night was two back to back haneke films at the moma: the seventh continent and 71 fragments of a chronology of chance (two films from this self-described glaciation trilogy). both were highly moving and calculated and manipulating, and made you question your humanity. the first is about a family that decides to isolate itself from the world (and follows the idea to its logical conclusion, but in very visceral terms) and the second is about a college student who explicably goes on a killing spree the day before christmas (true story), with the college student totally resembling peter sarsgaard. haneke's contempt for television is apparent from his films, so it's a wonder how i can love television and his films. perhaps this is cognitive dissonance? there was this tool sitting in the front left during the first film who would loudly imitate any cougher in the room. it was equally amusing as annoying. people was pissed.

saturday was two films at the jc loews: bonnie and clyde and cool hand luke. of all the films i saw this weekend, i must say i hated cool hand luke the most (actually, i just hated cool hand luke). it fell in love with its unnecessary montages and it was so self-important. it had nothing to recommend it. it was gluttonous, and at two hours a waste of time. why do i hate paul newman so much?? bonnie and clyde had the virtue of having gorgeous, stunning rapid editing that was so poetic and endearing and heart-wrenching. The scene on the sand dunes with bonnie's family is especially moving because of the editing and the way the sunlight and sand permeates the scene with this golden warmth. that is a film of merit. and you can really see some nice truffaut influences.