2010.11.07
Days Remaining: 204

1. To start off, happy birthday to my dad (now 71) and my nephew, Euander (now 4). Euander had a birthday party this afternoon involving a hayride and a bonfire, and this evening the family is having a meal to celebrate my dad's birthday. I wish I could be there, guys! The biggest limitation to being able to travel is money, and if/when I move back to Delaware in May, one benefit will be easy access to family and friends' gatherings. On the upside for now, this will be the first year in four that I'll be in Delaware for Thanksgiving, so that's a plus.

2. When I called Euander this morning to wish him a happy birthday, his mom Selena (my sister - remember, she self-selected her name so it doesn't follow the System) put Iunia (his sister) on the phone and told her to tell me "about the dog across the street." It turns out that their new neighbors have a Rottweiler who has the same first name as me, which made Iunia laugh. Then when I told her not to get confused and call the dog by the kids' nickname for me (redacted for anonymity purposes), she started to do her belly-laugh, which is one of the most infections sounds I know. I love those two kids. Selena made Euander a Wolverine-decorated cake, which looked fantastic. Euander is apparently a big Wolverine fan, of which I completely approve.

3. This weekend has been kind of odd, activity-wise. I've been grading and doing various types of work around my apartment, and have had Netflix and/or Hulu playing in the background throughout. Yesterday I finally watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind in its entirety for the first time since I saw it on HBO when I was very young. I was really surprised by how good a film it was. I mostly remember, as I think many of us do, the finale at the Devil's Tower, but the entire narrative worked wonderfully. In particular I thought there were very interesting psychological and existential parallels between Neary's experience and those attested by religious visionaries or prophets (Speilberg has acknowledged the parallels between Neary and Moses in the story's progression - a little-commented detail struck me forcefully with the sunburn Neary gets from being scanned by a UFO and the passage in Exodus where Moses' face, when descending from Sinai, is said to have light streaming from it). Anyway, the film struck me as nailing the attraction/fear that is often mentioned in encounters with deities (how many angels in the Bible, when they appear to a human, first say, "Fear not"?). The actual aliens were the only part that disappointed me. I remember being terrified of them when I was a kid (the late-70s/early-80s nexus of In Search Of episodes, TV "specials," etc. about alleged alien abductions reduced me to a quivering fetal position in my bed late at night). Anyway, the actual aliens in the film were somehow not believable (partly a function of the costumes - compare this with the beings in the Abyss, essentially a CEotTK knock-off, but with far better creature-effects), compared with the ships or the human characters.

4. Minor side note: when my parents went to see CEotTK in theaters on a Saturday date night, I remember asking my mom, the next morning, about the movie. I was very curious to know what had happened to the kid, Barry, who gets abducted in the film's scariest scene. My mom told me (I remember this vividly, because it was so comforting) that inside the ship there were lots of people and (this has stuck with me for 30+ years now) they also had ponies. When I was little, pony rides were a regular part of our recreational life. So the alien abductors were completely down with making sure their abductees had a rich array of entertainment on the glowing UFOs. This is even funnier to me because I now know that in the original release there were no shots of the interior of the ship(s) at all - though later during a re-release they included an entirely superfluous scene inside (which Speilberg now regrets ever agreeing to do because it lessens the mystery - he's right). Even in the re-release, though, no ponies.

5. My enjoyment of CEotTK stands in contrast to the other long-overdue viewing (granted, this is "viewing" while working on grading, so it's not the most dedicated/focused activity) from yesterday, Heavy Metal. This became, for me, a testimony to how dated a revolutionary work can become; I thought it was boring and uninteresting (and although I can post facto sympathize with the teenage boys' fantasy/over-the-top sexuality throughout the film, it struck me now as annoying and regressive). I completely missed this one growing up, although I knew it by repute (both conversationally and in relation to the ongoing publication). But by the time I had any awareness of Heavy Metal, I was already in my late teens or early 20s, and the adolescent-focused work in the magazine had lost a lot of its appeal. So I never bothered with the film, but Netflix, eh, it's there for viewing with no work, so I figured, why not? I get the revolutionary aspect (this and Fritz the Cat strike me as fundamentally similar in that regard), but I didn't enjoy the visual aesthetic at all (some of the soundtrack was still appealing, though). On the upside, this really underscored for me how generic the sci-fi/fantasy stuff continues to be in film - especially the post-apocalyptic parts. That might sound negative, but I actually found it really interesting to see how much things haven't changed, and how much of that comes out of the visual productions of the late 60s (primarily book covers as opposed to their actual contents) and the 70s (and, yes, I know that Heavy Metal came out in 1981).

6. I stand by that general historico-aesthetic assessment because I also, late last night, discovered that Hulu had some old He-Man and the Masters of the Universe cartoons, and I watched two episodes. These were mainstays of my afternoon viewing for much of my pre-Junior High life, and I remember them fondly. But they have not aged well. Anyway, the visual palette was almost identical with that from Heavy Metal (why do so few people in fantasy cartoons from the 80s believe in blue skies or green plants?), despite the very different animation styles. The landscapes and technology depicted were almost interchangeable. It was very surprising to see this apparently common visual culture in one of the theoretically iconic productions.

7. One of my Netflix standby shows is No Reservations (Anthony Bourdain's international food show). In the 6th Season he has had several shows based in US cities, and I've begun to collect a list of restaurants to try if I'm ever in Chicago, NYC, or DC (so far) with time to kill and money to spend. This is both diverting and frustrating, as I now wish I were wealthy and had ready access to these restaurants. Because I like my cooking, but I don't have enough money or resources to do much that's particularly interesting right now. Lately I've had a hankering for Korean Barbecue, which is available nowhere nearby, but which I can get on Kirkwood Highway in Delaware.

8. And on that gustatory note, I'll sign off here. Out of curiosity, if you read this, could you post a comment, so I can get a sense of how many readers I (still) have?