BEST IN SHOW
directed by Christopher Guest
starring: ensemble with Eugene Levy, Parker Posey, Michael McKean,
Catherine O'Hara, Fred Willard, Christopher Guest, others

Guest has decided to make the "mockumentary" form his own, after serving as
a writer/actor on Spinal Tap and then whipping out Waiting for
Guffman--with a similar cast to the one he used on Best in Show. This time
(as opposed to the rock band shenanigans or small town theatre pageant of
yore) we get the inside scoop on a national dog show. The Mayflower dog
show, an apparently elite competition in Philadelphia, has attracted a
number of ardent dog lovers, mainly couples (but one individual played by
Guest himself). We follow each couple and their dog to the show, observe
how they "deal" with the various trials and travails which meet them at the
show, and ultimately share in their triumph or defeat. As before, Guest
uses stereotypical characters (the Yuppie couple, the Gay couple, the
Low-Class couple) but manages to endear us to them and "humanize" them,
rarely winking at the audience or acknowledging that they are indeed
stereotypes (they are). The humor arises mainly from "character study"
though Fred Willard, as one of the dog show announcers, is allowed a few
(bad) jokes. I always liked Fred Willard--he plays dumb in a truly deadpan
way. It's hard to judge a film like this as a comedy--though it is very
funny--if only because it is so improvised and it is such a play on the
documentary style, that the rules are different. One shouldn't expect to
laugh out loud throughout--but then again, I laughed at this more than at
most of the over-written "comedies" you see nowadays. But there was
something more, when the winner of the dog show was declared, I felt a tear
well up in my eye. Somehow, I came to care for these ridiculous characters
and the ending brought some emotion. OK, maybe that's just me. Well worth
seeing.

MEMENTO
starring Guy Pearce, Carrie Ann Moss, others

A film noir with a striking structural conceit that puts it in the same
field as The Usual Suspects. In this case, the protagonist (Pearce, an
Aussie actually) suffers from a rare disorder (not amnesia) which means
that he cannot create any new memories. He _can_ remember everything that
happened before his accident (an attack by an intruder or intruders in
which his wife was raped and killed and he suffered a head injury) but he
can't store any information that has come afterward. How long it has been
since this "accident" is unknown to us. When we come in, the protagonist,
Leonard, is in the midst of a pursuit to find and kill the intruder who
raped and killed his wife. In order to keep "on task", he must write
himself notes (or tattoo important information on his body), and take
polaroids of the people he meets so that he might jot down their names and
little bits of info about them to aid his recall when he meets them again
(and fails to remember them, of course). To add to the sheer confusion
this creates in the viewer, the movie then proceeds to progress
backwards. That's right, we see the end of the events portrayed first and
then move gradually backwards (in overlapping flashbacks) to the start of
the episode. This is a movie about memory that requires audience members
themselves to do their best to hold early events in their memories; the
unconventional narrative structure makes it very difficult to do this, thus
replicating in some way the mental state of Leonard in the audience
member. Add to this, the fact that each new "memory/fact" that is revealed
to the audience (but that has already been forgotten by Leonard) changes
our understanding of events which come after (at the start of the movie)
and changes our sympathies with the various characters willy-nilly. As you
can see this is a striking and highly recommended movie for its style
alone. That said, aside from some rather simplistic points about memory
itself, the movie is nothing BUT style. But perhaps that's what those of
us who enjoy otherwise standard genre pictures really want.

Apologies for my lameness in publishing the updated versions. Wombat File time seems these days to lag significantly behind the real world, rather than leaping ahead in customary internet fashion. But I submit: one day my counterinnovations in editorial speed will be recognized as the necessary pouring of a bucket of glue in the middle of our cultural expressway, that the overeager wil-E coyotes of our culture will not in such haste disappear over the Cliffs of Presumption. Many a deceptive roadrunner tempts us -- let me provide a rubbery retardant to our headlong hunger for the next frame, which inevitably reveals the desert floor, as seen from a great height, speeding toward us with a suitably ironic efficiency.

Yours For A Less Scannable Web,
B.

Whoops--I meant to say the British Library is no longer part of the British Museum. It is obviously part of the British Library, insofar as everything is part of itself, at least until the Day the Butts Change.

Hmm, eez not zo eazy to discern ze ironique from ze sincere. Me stop trying now. The horny pigeon is to blame, I'm sure of it.

Thanks to all for the London tips. Sara is busily socking them away on her portable computing device.

Sorry to have been out of touch--we had a holiday (ANZAC day--like veterans day, really)--and I couldn't remember the web address for my new (used) computer at home.

About Film: a) I was being "straight" about the plot of A Taste of Cherry--peculiar and slow, yes, but transcendent themes and emotions arise from that odd set of circumstances/constraints; b) I suppose I sometimes put "style" over "substance" in my thinking of film as an artform ("THE" most significant artform of the 20th century, methinks) and that isn't to everyone's taste; c) I recognize that film serves different purposes for different individuals and, Mike, it's perfectly okay to dislike certain categories of film (e.g., Arthouse), but I wouldn't dismiss the entire medium out of hand (so in other words, it's okay to say most recent French films suck, which is my impression, but I wouldn't go so far as to say all foreign films suck--some are quite good, but depends upon what you are looking for--which is a long way of saying that I agree with Bill that much of the euro-arthouse fare that is promoted in trailers looks pretty dire, that is, I caught the sarcasm); d) ultimately, I take a subjectivist position on film criticism--if it works for me and I can say why, then that's good enough for me and others might not agree (that is, I'm not sure there is a Platonic ideal against which to measure film).

Does that address any of what we've been talking about?

About London: I visited twice in the last year--stayed at a place called the Columbia Hotel, on Bayswater, which was convenient with regard to the tube, walking distance to Notting Hill, and (reasonably) cheap--if "cheapness" exists in London lodging; might be good to get a reservation but I forced myself in the second time without one and didn't need one the first time. The Tate Modern hadn't yet opened--I was drooling to go there and missed it by ONE week--so I highly recommend it as a place I would have liked to go. I did make it to the Hayward Gallery (also on Southbank) and it had a great exhibition of "sound art" and seems to usually have interesting outre kind of stuff. But mostly I just walked around and took it all in (and saw a bunch of good older British films in revival: Kes and The Long Good Friday, both excellent--if you like film, that is). Oh yeah, I went to some "clubs" and would recommend figuring out which are the best places to go and being prepared to wait on insanely long lines, if that is what you are into--the places I randomly chose with the shortest lines turned out to rather suck.

Things I suggest doing in London, beyond the big obvious tourist sites like the British Museum and the Tower of London (which are very fine, if you think you'll enjoy them you're probably right):

--Going to the London Transport Museum
--Going to the Tate Modern
--Seeing theater, whatever looks good in Time Out that week
--Walking around Regent's Park
--Eating Indian food (really your best bet in a bleak culinary landscape)
--Not worrying about the fact that it's constantly drizzling
--Going to the supermarket and checking out the bizarre breakfast cereal
--Going to the British Library, my favorite small London museum. (It's no longer part of the British Library.). It's a fully functioning major research library, but it also has a museum wing, holding treasures like an amazing set of Bibles, various drafts of the Magna Carta, letters by Gandhi, original Beatles lyrics, and an original James Joyce notebook (with his handwriting spidering off at all angles on the page, like his sentences were drippings on a Jackson P. canvas). Really astonishing artifacts of the British Empire.

Hope that helps.

Well, I was only speaking for myself. Art, as we all know, is the real film sophisticate around here. But by all means, let's Blame it on the Pigeon. Damn that Pigeon! Down with the entire family of Columbidae! Begone, ye oversexed vermin of the winds!

OK, so it appears that I was in an irony free zone this morning. I'll forgive myself for missing Bill's misdirection, but Art really laid it on thick. Can anyone read this as being straight: "mostly scenes of a man driving around the rocky rural (mining?) areas of the country looking for someone who will kill him?" I can.

I blame it on the pigeon.

Mike, you troglodyte...actually, I thought that I was pretty clearly making fun of the self-importance and predictability of those art-house trailers, not praising them. But maybe the convolutions in my sentences have gotten out of control. I'd claim sleeplessness as an excuse, but I do that all the time.

I don't know where it's best to stay in London -- though I suspect our Melbourne correspondent might have a view on the subject -- but I can recommend my favorite museum.

I don't know much of anything about the causes and/or probable end of the turmoil in the last decade of Russian political/economic history, but this makes me want to read the book and learn more.

Charlie Ward should look into this.

I feel like Homer Simpson. I read your recommendations of Iranian flicks and all I think is "they still sound boring." I don't like "sex is magical everywhere but here" movies shot with that filter makes everything look golden either. Come to think of it, I don't really like very many movies. Hmm. I'm a troglodyte, I suppose.

Speaking of magical sex in Europe, or, well, Europe, the Chicago office is going to London in June. Any recommendations of things to see or, rather importantly, places to stay?

On a loosely related thread, a male pigeon has chosen the ledge outside my window as his place to call for babes. Judging by the sound he's making, he needs it bad. Ah spring.

The large building on the corner of 41st and Madison is being demolished. The name of the company is "Season's Breeze Demolition and Excavation." I really love that name.

Nothing To Do With Iranian Films Dept.

One of the things I found interesting about Dan Savage's The Kid was the way the title seemed a bit of a misnomer. What really drove my interest in the story was the relationship that emerged between the adoptive couple (Savage and his boyfriend) and the eponymous tot's birth mother, a homeless kid with a nomadic, season-driven residence in half a dozen major cities. The real drama one gets involved with in the story is the way in which this person becomes part of their lives (as far as the story goes, the Kid is almost a plot device -- not that he is or was for them in real life, but the story is about the adoption process and the issues it raises, not the development of the child). And it left me with a real sense of curiosity about what would develop,

Well, this weekend on This American Life there was something of an epilog, if not a conclusion. If you read the book, you'll probably be as interested in the follow-up as I was. The RealAudio archive version of the show isn't available yet -- but I'll post a link when it is.

The only Iranian film that I have seen is The White Balloon, which Kiarostami wrote but which was directed by somebody else. Really captivating performance by the little girl who is at the center of the incredibly simple story (Girl Loves Goldfish, Girl Loses Money for Goldfish in Grate, People Help and/or Interfere with Money-Recovery, Money is Recovered), and the fact that it's mileu (modern Tehran) is one I'd never before seen represented on film both made it more interesting to me than it otherwise would have been.

The "art-house" films that always make me roll my eyes are the ones they show previews of at the swanky Brooklyn Academy of Music theater. They are usually in the Like Water for Chocolate or Central Station category -- epic tales characterized by mischeivous urchins, whispering narratives about somebody's iconoclastic grandmother, Steamy, Doesn't-Happen-In-America Sex and/or Fantastic, Doesn't-Happen-In-America-Magic, along with the general presumption that if you Don't Vote Republican, You Will Eventually Attend.

I sure do sound snotty there, don't I?

As far as Iranian movies go, I've done a bit of reading but have only had the opportunity (taken the opportunity?) to see one significant film in this New Wave of films from the newly "moderate" theocracy: A Taste of Cherry by Abbas Kiarostami. Yes, a bit slow--mostly scenes of a man driving around the rocky rural (mining?) areas of the country looking for someone who will kill him (as a favor)--but stunningly fresh and beautiful with some Godardian (postmodern?) directorial flourishes. Highly recommended.

At the Bottom of the Wombat Barrel

Just for the record: it's a Sunday night in April, it was 85 degrees today, I'm at the office, and across from the building, in front of the public library, they are shooting -- or preparing to shoot -- a scene from what I am told is the Spiderman movie. There's nothing significant in all of this, nothing I'm able to opine about, nothing aesthetically remarkeable. But why not record this not-exactly memorable moment? Why should I only care about the times when I am able to pinpoint some idea verbally, or hark on some surreal triviality of the web? No, I will care about this uninspiring 8:27 PM; I will send my description of it out through the fiber-optical threads of our e-democracy, I will throw this featureless stone into the pond of your brain, knowing that its ripples will disappear the second your reading of this paragraph is over; pleased nonetheless for having done with this 8:27 (now 8:30 -- I have worked slowly on this ephemera, to boot) something, anything at all.

Actually, the question about butts struck me as interesting too, in an undefined kind of way. Maybe butts are more interesting than we think. Then again, maybe we're idiots.

From my perusals of the film announcements, I am picking up the idea that Iranian films are very hip in the film houses. From seeing a few trailers and reading the little mini-reviews, I am also picking up the idea that they are incredibly boring. I have the vague sense that these two things are related.

Pathetic Idea #1: Guest Editor.

I need a guest editor for a week. I'm too overwhelmed with the Buzzness of Bizwords through the end of the month to give the uncountable thousands of Wombat File readers the moment-by-moment updates they deserve. Who out there is willing to share a few scraps from her or his table of intellectual bounty? It's not that I won't post, but it'd be great to know that I could look forward to one of your musings on a daily basis. Any takers?

Today's pledge: in the midst of chaos and work-stress, four creative thoughts. Or five pathetic ideas dressed up momentarily in the borrowed robes of actual creative thoughts.

Mike, I've been thinking a lot about those questions your junior colleague has been posing. I have to say -- and perhaps this says a lot about me and my fixations -- that "what would happen if boys had girls butts" strikes me as both compelling and poetic. He's leaped right over the more mundane and obvious standup-comedian query "What if guys had breasts?" and hit a more subtle and, dare I say, fundamental issue of gender. The butt: we sit on it, we worry about its size, and we almost never see it without a great deal of troublesome rubbernecking. A universal, no? And yet the question flies like a flaming arrow into the oily-rag-filled-basement of our unchallenged assumptions: yes! The world would be different, in some unchartable way, if we could experience that mythical Day the Butts Were Changed.

Here's some Good news for Ev and Blogger.

Why do so many of us use the expression "Take care of yourself" as an expression of concern/friendship/sympathy, etc.? That is, I suppose I know what we mean by the phrase, but upon reflection, isn't one really insinuating that the other party had better take care of him/herself because we aren't going to? Or else it's a subtle criticism -- you, sir or madam, are incapable of proper self-monitoring! Shape up!

Even more baffling is my habitual use of the phrase "Take care" or the more fatuous "Take care now!" which I hear, horribly, popping out of my mouth on the occaision of all sorts of partings. What's that about? "Bye now! Proceed with caution! Life is full of uncertainties! Danger lurks!"

I know what you're thinking...he's off his nut with this. Well, fine. We'll talk later. You take care now!

The Stupidest Product Ever.

The illustrations in the print catalog are even more evocative of the mindbending pointlessness of this $34.95 totem of our cultural irrelevance.

Of course, there is a site that explains All Your Base. The web enables me to go from the joy of serendipity to glutted with information.

A friend tells me her son is asking questions like these: Why is the sky in the sky? What would happen if boys had girls' butts? If the earth was flat and upside down, would we fall off? Is death really like sleeping? I said that he would fit right in to my profession. The only marginal one is about the butts. But I'm sure there's someone studying sexuality who would find it a very interesting question. And the one about the sky is probably malformed: something can't be in itself. You see what I'm doing: I'm taking it seriously.

If you go to K-Mart's site and type "All Your Base" in the search box, you get, well, the appropriate results. I think if you click here it should work too...

Of course, I meant to say "busperson."

A Nearly Postless Week

Good Sweet Heavens. Long bloody days here in the Bizness Buzzword Factory. But it's time not wasted, I assure you. I've been charting the increased use of "net/net" or "net-net" as a substitute for "final" (At least I think so-- my uncertainty means I need to investigate further before I commit it to an installment of the Pain of CorporateSpeak). Also I was pointed to this evidence of the Great Desire for Completeness. And if I hadn't been so completely sleep-deprived when I chanced on Mr. Kottke's link to it, I wouldn't have appreciated it half so much.

Spring wipes itself wetly across the city, like a damp towel wielded by an absent-minded busboy.

Just in case you were feeling cheated by the lack of links below...here's where you can get all those "hard to find" Dial Corp. products.

Something of a (tenuous) link to Mike's earlier post on handwashing (or lack thereof) in the public lavatory, I noticed today for the first time the little tagline or logo on the Dial antibacterial soap container in the washroom here: "For a Healthy Clean you can Feel (TM)."

A completely bland and expectable soap-slogan, to be sure...but it contains some subtleties that took me a minute to work out. A "healthy clean" -- the one-two punch embodied in that particular phrase can't be dismissed easily. First, "clean" is nominalized, rather duplicitously, promoted under cover of night from adjective to noun; and then it gets decked out in a rather expectable but, in context, breathtaking "healthy." Just say it a few times: a healthy clean. A healthy clean. A healthy clean. The noun-clean now sounds vibrant and virile instead of ridiculous and out of its element.

Then the kicker -- "you can Feel." We can feel the clean and the health, we are clean and feeling and healthy! Both feelers of the healthy clean, and healthy clean-feelers are we! We Can Feel the Healthy Clean!

It's brilliant, really.

Someone down on 5th Avenue is whisting, quite skillfully. He or she was doing "The Washington Post March" but has now moved on to an extremely jaunty version of "Fly Me to the Moon." I can hear it, sixteen floors up, over the traffic, with the windows closed. Aren't acoustics weird?

Fish Story

When I was a child, my favorite thing about going to one of the larger supermarkets in our area was the tankful of live lobsters next to the fish counter. Although we ate plenty of seafood, no one in my family is much of a lobster fan, so my only encounters with the creatures was when I could view this small colony in their tank. I was fascinated by the sheer improbability of the lobster -- how could anything so insectoid, so frankly buglike, be so large? They seemed (and still do) like creatures from another planet.

Last week I was meeting Gavin for dinner in Chinatown, and I walked down the Bowery from Grand Street, looking in the windows of the many Chinese seafood restaurants in the area. Many of them have an elaborate array of tanks containing live things which, presumeably, you can specify for your supper. I've seen them before, of course, but I had never noticed the true variety in some of the larger places -- as if small aquaria had been founded in the lobbies of the restaurants. One place had a tank in which lobsters coexisted sluggishly with fierce-looking, dragonlike beings that resembled the superpoisonous stonefish or lionfish. Another had a shallow tank of clams -- razor clams? -- each of which extended a long foot which curled like a thick white strap around the circumference of the tank. And it was common to see a few large, unidentifiable fish lording it over a little kingdom of shrimp, who would sometimes be seen to race around the tanks in a kind of miniature NASCAR competition.

Two things most window displays had in common -- first, a greater or lesser number of crabs whose carapaces were apparently decorated with a charming red bow. There may have been something practical about this seemingly aesthetic touch. Second, each restaurant sports a special crab -- a horribly large specimen, who crouches malevolently in his own tank, like some kind of grotesque arthropod deity.

Dinner was delicious. I couldn't quite bring myself to order crab.

There's an odd little bathroom thread running through recent contributions. Hmm.

Just got back from the bathroom where a very nicely dressed man, a professor, I dare say, emerged from his rather noisy activites in the stall, wet his hands at the sink, smoothed his hair with his newly wet hands, and strode out. That is everything that he did. I will not touch a public surface for the rest of the day.

Thank God for the Non-U.S. media. Because otherwise you wouldn't hear stuff like this ever.

My headline is more crude than BT's brilliant find. These kinds of pics were inevitable. Here's hoping China sees more of the humor in the fact that this guy is actually president.

The graffito says, "I think Art Stukas is cute. Who agrees with me?"

Therefore, I will have to send my spies in there on repeated occasions so that I might develop a list of prospects...that is, if these fair ladies actually sign their names.

OK, whatever...

Although I couldn't find a web-based example of Nestle's current "Slam it Down" promotions for their new package, I did find this seizure-inducing page aimed at British tykes. I dare you to stare at the rabbit for more than two seconds.

From the Merchandisin' Mailbag

Yesterday's timber-slaughterworth of junk mail brought the Pottery Barn Kids catalog to our place. I don't know if our reception of this new wrinkle in midscale furniture marketing is the result of buying one too many baby-shower gifts in the recent past, or whether the good folks at PB just feel the need to add to the cultural pile-on of pressure on those of us who have reached a certain age. In any event, when I had a free moment to leaf through its little world of soothing pastels and painted wood, it became obvious that a more accurate term would be Pottery Barn Decoratively-Minded Parents With No Real Interest in the Actual Conditions of Childhood. Now it's not as if I expected the putative "kids" of the title to even exist, let along be reading the copy (although I've got to interject that nothing could be sadder or playground beating-worthy than the mythical child who announces him/herself to be a "Pottery Barn Kid."); but I wasn't really prepared for such Martha Stewart-ready entries as this "These pieces re-create the look of antiques yet offer the sturdiness of modern construction." I guess any child wants something classic yet practical gracing his or her bedside. Or how about the "A to Z Rug"? Sound whimsical? Well, according to the free spirits at PB Kids, "Our alphabet rug provides subtle reinforcement of preschool lessons." The most important lesson of all: B-R-A-N-D L-O-Y-A-L-T-Y.

Mind you, we've probably got about thirty things from the Barn, or one of its stylistic clones (Crate and Barrel anyone?) in the apartment. So maybe I should shut my trap.

It's mostly just the headline I like.

To Slam Our Thirst

Grim Rosary responds to my post last week about Nestle Quik's new ad campaign:

"I don't know if this is a correction, exactly, but I've been working for years with a client who was the open quotation brand architect close quotation for Starbucks, overseeing their Napoelonic expansion and the defense and protection of their brand identity. "Slam" is a word that has
been somewhat of a term of art in the soft drink arena for half a dozen years or so. Originally it came from the fast food and 24-hour markets who would promise an instant end to thirst by offering larger and ever larger drink portion cups. To slam our thirst, you see. The 32oz would give way to the 48oz, the 72oz, and on and on. The "slam" concept so infected the industry that it reached the Pacific NW precincts of Starbucks HQ, eventually bringing about the Mad-magazine-ish elimination of the Small size, offering now only the customer-fooling Tall for small, Grande for medium, and Venti for large. That was not, however, enough for a young marketing hiree, a recent refugee from the Cola Wars. She came to the Starbucks marketing table with the idea for the ultimate coffee slam: "The Coffee Pig," a gallon-sized refillable tank with a snout nose. A coffee briefcase to fuel your morning. Not felt to be in keeping with the Starbucks spirit, we were spared this innovation.

"I don't know that the soft drink "slam" isn't still some cognate of that of the wrestling world."