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Monday, January 5th, 2009
It occurred to me while we were reading just now, that Will's role in this story is comparable in some ways to Lyra's in The Golden Compass. The parallel is not exact, obviously; but as I read about Will realizing that his father had found a dimensional window like the one Will found, I'm responding in a similar way to when I read e.g. about Lyra making the connection from the General Oblation Board to the "Gobblers." Some nice idle free-associations from tonight's reading: Lee had once seen a painting in which a saint of the Church was shown being attacked by assassins. While they bludgeoned his dying body, the saint's dæmon was borne upwards by cherubs and offered a spray of palm, the badge of a martyr.
This somehow reminded me very strongly of the church scene from Saramago's Blindness. On the next page, Lee is trying to get information from Imaq, an "old Tartar from the Ob region":
"What happened to [Grumman]? Is he dead?" "You ask me that, I have to say I don't know. So you never know the truth from me." "I see. So who can I ask?" "You better ask his tribe. Better go to Yenisei, ask them." "His tribe... You mean the people who initiated him? Who drilled his skull?" "Yes. You better ask them. Maybe he not dead, maybe he is. Maybe neither dead nor alive." "How can he be neither dead nor alive?" "In spirit world. Maybe he in spirit world. Already I say too much. Say no more now."
I asked Sylvia if Imaq was reminding her of anyone, thinking as I asked her about Hagrid. She said yes, he was reminding her of "the detective from Moominvalley" -- nice association! I had forgotten about him, he's a character in one of the Moomin comic strip stories, whose signature line is "I shall say no more."
posted evening of January 5th, 2009: Respond
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Wednesday, December 31st, 2008
 Remember how Sylvia and I differed on the merits of the Despereaux movie as compared with its book? Well on the subject of The Golden Compass we're more in agreement -- the book is a gem, the movie not worth the time spent watching it. Sylvia's review: "Whoever directed that movie, they didn't make it good."
For about the first half of the movie, I was thinking about writing a long post detailing every divergence with the book and for each one, explaining how it was to the detriment of the movie. But better I think, to tell what these differences have in common: in every case, the mystery in the book is discarded and replaced with clear, dry explication. Ambiguities are absent. What I loved about the book was Lyra's development from total innocence -- here at every step of the story she connects the dots like she had been expecting the solution all her life. And maybe the worst offense is not to show Lord Asriel's treachery -- the whole ending was trimmed off, I guess because the movie was running over-long -- without this the story doesn't go anywhere. It's funny in a way -- I guess I think of the merits of this movie as being about the same as the merits of Despereaux, a fun visual romp with some sentimentality, and nothing like greatness -- but I would never recommend it the way I would recommend the mouse movie. It ought to be a great movie, a majestic movie. Falling short of that, it is not worth bothering with.
posted evening of December 31st, 2008: Respond
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Sunday, December 28th, 2008
Milk was a fantastic movie and a pleasure to watch -- though a bitter-sweet pleasure in these times of victory for homophobic measures in the states. (And see Frank Rich's column today for more about homophobia in these United States.) The nicest thing about it might have been the feeling of nostalgia I got for political demonstrations of my childhood. Somehow in my adult years, I have not been as politically engaged as I expected I would be when I was younger. I remember attending demonstrations with my parents when I was in grade school and high school, and the feeling of being connected to the cause was powerful and nice. When I left home something changed -- at college when I was quite active, it started to seem like a game; and after college when I would still attend protests out of a sense of duty, I felt like a stranger. This is still true now -- work I've done for the Democrats in 2004 and 2008 has not felt satisfying or connected. Watching Milk brought the old feeling back very strongly -- I wonder if there is any way of retrieving it, and whether I should try to get engaged again for Sylvia's benefit. (Seeing as my parent's involvement did not have a lasting impact on me, that might not be the strongest consideration.) Relatedly, I wonder why I don't have any memory of Proposition 6 -- I would have been in third grade at the time, the same age Sylvia is now -- possibly my parents' political involvement started later than that, possibly it was limited to nuclear arms and Nicaragua -- the two issues I remember demonstrating about -- possibly my memory is just too dim that far back. OTOH I have a pretty good memory of the debate over Proposition 13, which was in the same year.
posted morning of December 28th, 2008: Respond
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Wednesday, December 24th, 2008
So Sylvia and I watched Despereaux this rainy Christmas Eve afternoon. I am finding this kind of funny: I, who did not like the book, thought the movie was better than the book; Sylvia, who liked the book (and who liked  the movie better than I did) thought the movie was not as good as the book. That makes it seem to me like a pretty middle-of-the-road movie, worth recommending to people who need some movie to watch with their kids over the long vacation but not to anybody else -- fun but not that fun. The movie was different from the book in a huge number of plot points but contained the same essential story and the same moral (the transformative power of apology -- this lesson is my primary complaint about the book). Sigorney Weaver's narration sounded just about exactly how I picture Kate DiCamillo sounding. And, well, the sanctimonious voice of the narrator is my other big complaint with the book -- so the movie matches the book for its drawbacks. On the other hand, it's got cute animation (with minor but noticeable continuity problems) which is fun to watch and diverting. It's got big names (Ms. Weaver, Dustin Hoffman, Matt Broderick, Kevin Kline...) on the marquee. I think if I hadn't been so pissed-off at the book for being lame, I probably would have really enjoyed the movie.
posted afternoon of December 24th, 2008: Respond
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Sunday, December 7th, 2008
...I don't know -- hard to think of a clever title. Anyway: It's trite for adults to complain about the lameness of kids' movies so I'll just say that I found Madagascar II, to which I chaperoned Sylvia and Kaydi this afternoon, even worse than the original film. The animation was pretty mediocre and the plot points a dreadful hodgepodge of mass-produced sentimentality. But what about this: There was a preview for DreamScape's Monsters vs. Aliens. OK -- looks kind of silly but in good fun. But why in hell does the evil leader of the aliens look like a caricature of Barack Obama? Am I paranoid and inventing this? Trailer here. The resemblance does not seem as obvious on rewatching as it did in the theater.
posted evening of December 7th, 2008: Respond
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Monday, November 17th, 2008
 Sylvia asked the question tonight that has been bugging me since we started reading The Golden Compass: "How do people get their dæmons when they are born?" I have no answer -- I said well, do you think the dæmons are born with the people, and she was like maybe...
posted evening of November 17th, 2008: Respond
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Sunday, November 9th, 2008
 (Darcy's library includes books about our greatest presidents.)
posted evening of November 9th, 2008: Respond
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Saturday, November 8th, 2008
Chapter 7 of The Golden Compass is a trip. When Sylvia and I were reading it this afternoon there was a lot of talk back and forth -- "Oh, so that's what was happening!" "Oh, so that's why Lyra was at Jordan!" etc. This is a really nice trick -- there was a lot in the first part of the novel that we were just accepting on faith without really understanding, the exposition is placed so that you've just about gotten used to not being sure what's going on in the plot -- you're just reading and enjoying the characters and the action, and suddenly you turn a corner and much of the mystery is laid bare. (Not all -- there's still the central mystery of what the G.O.B. is using the kidnapped children for, and what's the city in the sky, and why is Asriel being held prisoner.)
posted evening of November 8th, 2008: Respond
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Haven't posted any recipes in a while; here are two -- no real connection between them except that I've made both in the last couple days and both have some tangiential relationship to my parents being in town. Fruit and NutsSylvia and I were playing backgammon this afternoon and needed a snack. Well my parents brought along with them the fruits of the Central Valley, in the form of a big bag of almonds and a big bag of dried fruit from their friend Indira's farm. It's been a while since I had fresh almonds; they are the bomb. Here's one way to prepare them: - Roast nuts in a skillet over a high flame. Shake the pan every minute or two so they don't burn. You can sprinkle on top a bit of salt, pepper, cinnamon and sugar. The nuts are ready after about 7 minutes, when you start to smell the toasty flavor.
- The pan will be quite hot; turn the flame off, remove the nuts and put some pieces of dried fruit (peaches, apricots, plums) in. Press them down so some bits of the flesh burn onto the pan. Then pour in about ¼ cup or less of water -- little enough that the remaining heat in the pan is enough to boil it. Put the fruit in a bowl and pour the liquid over it.
Tasty with beer.Chicken Lo MeinThursday morning, my parents took Sylvia to Kam Man Foods, the Asian supermarket in East Hanover, to buy ingredients for making dumplings -- they also got a chicken, a bag of lo mein noodles, and some vegetables. - One chicken
- ginger
- garlic
- scallions
- soy sauce
- rice vinegar
- bok choy and/or other green vegetables
- mushrooms (those little white ones with the long stem and round cap are best; I don't remember what they're called.)
Directions:- Remove skin and bones from chicken. This is a pain and takes me a while; basically you just pull the skin off and trim away any gristle, and then cut the meat off of the bones. Save the carcass and skin for making stock. Cut the meat into bite-sized pieces.
- Peel and chop ginger and garlic and scallions.
- In a wok, heat some oil over a high flame. Add the ginger, garlic and scallions and sauté briefly. Then add the chicken and stir-fry until it's just about done. Put some water up to boil while you are doing this and chop the vegetables.
- Pour some soy sauce and vinegar over the chicken and add the vegetables. Stir well and cover the wok. While this is steaming cook the noodles -- they take about a minute in boiling water.
- Drain the noodles and stir them into the wok. Serve.
posted evening of November 8th, 2008: Respond
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Friday, November 7th, 2008
Took today off work for an excursion to the city -- Sylvia and I took my parents to the Bronx Zoo for a fun tiring afternoon. Afterwards we met Ellen at the China Institute in Manhattan, where we watched Weijun Chen's stunning new documentary, Please Vote for Me -- a chronicle of the campaign for 3rd-grade class monitor at Evergreen Primary School in Wuhan, China. Every year up until now*, class monitor has been appointed by the teacher; her innovation this year is to select  three candidates and have them campaign for the office. You get to watch the class (through the eye of the the documentarian, who manages to insinuate himself completely into the fabric of the kids' days) independently create a primitive democracy, complete with patronage, bribery, voter intimidation... The kids are just marvelous, completely unself-conscious on camera, totally engaged in being themselves. I had to sort of guard against over-interpreting what they were doing and saying -- at the beginning of the movie I was trying to read each thing said by one of the children as having special deep significance -- but when I got myself to quit that and just engage with them as children, I was really able to get into it and identify with the three candidates and watch them figure out how to campaign. I'd recommend the movie strongly to anybody interested in democracy and elections, which a lot of people seem to be interested in that nowadays. It was of course especially great timing for us to see what with Sylvia being that age -- I could recognize mannerisms and behaviors of Sylvia and her friends, from the kids in the movie -- but I think I would have loved it even without that element. It's available on Netflix. (Not only that, it's available for download on Netflix -- you can watch it right now!)
 * I'm not completely sure what year this was filmed -- maybe 2005 or 6?
posted evening of November 7th, 2008: 1 response
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