The accelerating pace of my beloved sweetheart's career means that my moldering old "files" must move from their metal drawers into cardboard boxes, so that T's growing mass of paperwork can actually be, well, filed. Yesterday a half-ton of decaying old syllabi, xeroxed articles, postcards, weird clippings, instructions for long-dead devices, and various other precious items I refuse to part with made their way into the deep freeze.
Among the flotsam, this entry in a "Super Conquerant" notebook bought on a trip to France and Spain in January of 2000 (a trip that Rory's recent Barcelona entry brought back to memory). I didn't write much about the trip in it -- but I did carry it around on the subway for a while after our return. One entry:
Friday 1/21/2000
Cold as hell day, right after snow. Moderately crowded Manhattan-bound N train. Two Brooklyn whiteguys, maybe around 40. In another age they would have been in the longshoremen's union. Clean shaven, chubby, knit caps. The louder one has dark eyes and a sharpish nose in an otherwise rounded face. Both have that flat variant of the Brooklyn accent that can sound at times like Chicago.
Louder: Train conductors are such assholes. They're all giving you Army time.
Softer: Army time.
L: Yeah, you know, like 'The time is 1725.' Who gives a rats ass about Army time?
S: You were in the service, right?
L: Yeah, but what I'm saying is who gives a rats ass about Army time?
S: You and I should know what that means.
[two stops pass]
S: I was watchin' a movie with that whathisname John Larquette.
L: John Laroquette.
S: I can't get over how doofy that guy looks.
L: Like that Tom Hanks. People love that asshole.
S: [inaudible]
L: Now he's in that Green Mile. [woman's name] wants to see that. Tom Hanks and some other asshole are in prison. Who gives a rats ass?
S: John Laroquette got into the business on that TV show.
L: Right. People love these assholes. I'll tell you that Forrest Gump and that Philadelphia. Bo-ring.
S: Those were two good movies.
L: Well, that Forrest Gump had a good story.
************************************************
Around the Horn:
Via Iconomy: Og, son of Fire!
Via madamjujujive via plep at MeFi: Dream Anatomy. (Particularly, this)
Given that many of the File's U.S.-based readership are currently sleeping off yesterday afternoon's terducken (or, in the case of many of our readers, soyducken) feast, we decided to give the Quiz a day of rest. It will return next week, featuring an encore performance by guest Quizmaster Boxjam.
For those of you who live in countries where this is Just Another Friday, and require some kind of brain-teaser fix, we suggest you repair to The Museum of Hoaxes where you must put your skepticism, memory for recent Internet memes, and ability to deconstruct a skillfull Photoshop job to simultaneous test.
Now, as long as we're on the subject of questionable aspects of American history and the curse of modern meme-pollution in one's brain, I have been plagued all morning by the recollection of Schoolhouse Rock's unsettling tribute to Manifest Destiny. Be warned-- click on that link, and you may spend the rest of the day singing along: Elbow room, elbow room!/ Got to, got to get me some elbow room...
BIG NIGHT (Campell Scott & Stanley Tucci, 1996) Tony Shaloub steals the movie with his that's-a-spicy-a-meatball!-style portrayal of hothead chef Primo, while Stanley Tucci's understated Secondo oddly comes off as less believable, in part because Stanley keeps forgetting about the Italian accent he started off with. A film charming enough in the things it refuses to do that it's easy to overlook its overall failure to deliver much in the way of a story. And maybe, in the end, it's better to go along. Great ensemble cast, with the exception of Ian Holm, whose cockney-Italian inflections make it seem like he's wandered in from the set of a Guy Ritchie movie.
PANIC ROOM (David Fincher, 2002) Within the first ten minutes of the film's beginning, my life-partner intimated to me that she was finding herself so erotically attracted to the Manhattan townhouse in which Jodie Foster is trapped by Forrest Whittaker, Dwight Yoakum, and Jared Leto that she was pretty sure she would have to choose the house over me, if asked nicely. I was forced to agree with her -- I, too, would have carnal relations with the house if possible. Four stories, lots of original detail, claw-foot tub in a huge old bathroom, skylights, modern-but-understated-kitchen...brick-walled basement! Man, oh, man. As for the plot, which was hard to care about, given our constant discussion over which walls we'd need to knock out: the movie's mission of menacing suspense is hampered by the fact that Forrest Whittaker has been forbidden, apparently by congressional act, to play non-saintly characters in the movies, and thus his ability to act as ringleader of a criminal trio is sadly compromised. Also, the syringes full of insulin are never used to kill anyone, and is that a ripoff or what?
SHAOLIN SOCCER (Stephen Chow, 2001) It is difficult to know how to describe this film, which traces the intersection of two stories: a disgraced soccer star who has accepted "dishonor" money to throw a game is looking to coach a comeback team; meanwhile, a young man looks for a way to spread the popularity of kung fu throughout the world. When the two meet, and the six Shaolin-trained brothers of ambitious Sing (Chow) are brought together, sports redemption and kung fu go together like a steamed pork bun and an upside-down helicopter kick. It is, and I say this advisedly, the greatest movie ever made. Go get it RIGHT NOW.
Flipping channels the other night and caught sight of Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips lip-synching along in a faux-live version of the single from Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, "Do You Realize?"
It took a minute to figure out that they were ostensibly playing at a fictional club patronized by the sketchily drawn characters from one of the host of Buffy ripoffs.
Later, I thought I might have dreamed it. Nope.
Once again, we dredge up the worthless detritus accumulating at the bottom of the ditch that runs alongside the highway of history. Identify this battered tin can of a fact, if you will.
He's the only North American chief executive* ever to have been married to the daughter of a another North American chief executive (note: they did not hold office simultaneously). Who was he?
Short and to the point, isn't it? The first correct answer posted to comments wins a mostly-empty tin of Levenger Page Points, which are good for ostentatiously marking up your books with expensive metal doodads instead of using a pencil or a post-it. They are, in short, about as useful as the knowledge required to answer the average quiz question.
Googling is wrong. So is going to your groaning shelves of reference works. The answer is, I feel, inside every one of you, like a tiny man lodged just under your sternum. Set him free!
*ADDENDUM/CLARIFICATION: I'm using "Chief executive" in the sense of, for example, the U.S. President or the Canadian P.M. -- not the CEO of the USA Network or of Canadian Brand® Hair Products. Apologies for any confusion...
I'm Flatlined. Cut-n-paste burnout. Incipient repetetive-motion damage to all the muscles which have anything to do with a computer. A bad patch. A sag in the neural net. A complete lack of anything blowin' through the jasmine in my mind. My own little Blank Generation. An empty upstairs apartment. A hollow jar. A thousand-yard stare. My brain would be to a hungry zombie what a diet soda and a wheat thin would be to a starving man.
See, I'm even too out of it to make out-of-it analogies.
My sister told me a story tonight. She went with some colleagues to give a small presentation on the Pittsburgh-area river ecosystems to a community dinner hosted by a local nuclear power plant (yes, yes, I know). Received kindly and all that.
After dinner, they were approached by a pleasant man who noted that he was interested in their work, and particularly had some thoughts about sewage. "Putting sewage in pipes -- that's man's invention: it's not what God said to do."
He left her with his card, which directed her here. If you feel like exploring, be advised: Satan's plan to discredit breastfeeding is heartily rebuked!
"MY NAME IS RIO AND I'M DANCING ON THE FUCKING SAND".
This week's brain-fuzzler:
All of you smarty-pants File readers know, of course, that the first manned balloon flight was in 1783, in France. Sixty-one years later, in 1844, the New York Sun reported the first transatlantic crossing by balloon. The newspaper account was, however, pure invention: it was only relatively recently (in the 1970s) that such a crossing was successfully attempted.
Who was the creator and perpetrator of the 19th-century hoax?
The first correct post to comments will win a collection of deflated balloon animals created for the occasion. If you Google or consult your local library or the oracle at Delphi you aren't doing this right at all, really. Post as many guesses as you like, but only one guess per post, please.
If you've been following local transit news recently, you know about the service cuts and the very real possibility of an alarming 33% fare increase. While Bob Herbert sees it all as just one murky drop in a pondful of dire news, I'm not convinced that we should move from the particular to the general quite so specifically. A radical fare hike combined with a serious cut in services would be an amazingly serious blow to the lives of the working poor in this city, who are have already been battered by rising unemployment and a high-pressure real estate market. This is particularly galling, since part of Gov. Pataki's landslide-generating strategy for re-election was to imply that he wouldn't dream of letting the MTA raise fares -- but now, of course, the campaign and its dreamy portrayal of the leader who cares are both behind us and the "tough decisions" can be made in political safety.
Here's some salutary focus on the issue.
Iím going to celebrate my nascent tradition of marking my birthday by indulging in a few happily negative thoughts, in this case some arbitrary rulemaking inspired by several days of listening to sales presentations and facing up to the astonishingly bleak desert that is the American imagination, as it is embodied in commercial publishing:
1. I hereby insist that there be an absolute and final moratorium on book or movie titles of the following formula: [Gerund]+[Name]. Educating Rita;Killing Pablo; Finding Forrester; Kissing Jessica Stein; Drowning RuthÖno more, I say, no more.
2. While weíre at it, letís try to remember that [constant portentous phrase]+[variable portentous word] as your suspense-series formula is bound to lead you into trouble. Suspicion of Malice leads to Suspicion of Vengeance begets Suspicion of Madness which draws one on to Suspicion of Monotony and Suspicion of Suspiciosness. This property is commutative ñ J.D. Robbís "in Death" series being an example -- Reunion in Death works fine, but Ceremony in Death and Conspiracy in Death are the kind of nonsense that actually causes the brain to unlearn English.
3. The formula [anything] by [Harold Bloom] is also to be eschewed, on pain of my very great pain.
1. Secret agents for the Imperial People's French Army of the Union are equipped with ordinary street clothes, a black archery kit, and their wits. Good luck!
2. Your immediate superior, who wears a snappy blue uniform in the dream's opening sequence, is a tough-but-fair chap who's known as "Mr. B." Later, you'll recall that in the future he goes on to become none other than Napoleon Bonaparte. It's funny that he seems taller here.
3. It may occur to you that it doesn't make sense that you are working as a secret urban guerilla fighter for the North-and-also-sort-of-France in the Civil War (those damned Rebs are around here somewhere!) in a city that looks suspiciously like 21st-century Cambridge, Massachusetts, but cleaner. Brush that off and get down to work, soldier!
4. The President of the Union will be played in the dream by Law & Order's S. Epatha Merkerson.* She's often seen checking on her troops out on the street, but she doesn't have time for chit-chat.
5. Hey, you were only issued, like, three of those way-cool black arrows. Try not to use them all up in the first five minutes of the dream!
6. The nice family will take you in and hide you, but you'll have to get all the vomit out of your clothes yourself. Try the sink in the bathroom.
7. Trying to figure out why the gutters are all lined with books is just going to be frustrating, because no one else is interested.
8. An increasing awareness of the need to attend to nature's call may interfere, as the dream progresses, with your sense of duty to the Imperial People's French Army of the Union. It's my belief that your unofficial resignation from the service will be acceptable to Mr. B. But maybe he's waiting, in another dream, with a very disappointed President Merkerson, at your court-martial for desertion. I guess you just have to take your chances.
*more familiar to some as Reba the Mail Lady.
That's right. We're still here. Damn their eyes!
OK, on to the frivolity you came here for:
In 1900, the City Council of Detroit made a decree which was the result of tremendous local controversy. All citizens were effected, and every business and household was required to take action. Some sources say that half the city obeyed and half refused. After considerable debate, the decree was rescinded. This decision, in turn, caused progressive members of the public to derisively propose the construction of an ancient sort of device in front of city hall; bizarrely, this suggestion was referred to the Committee on Sewers. Finally, in 1905, the intent of the original decree was adopted by citywide vote.
What did the decree mandate?
The first correct post to comments will be the recipient of a genuine "French Perfume" brand toothbrush, made with care in the People's Republic of China. Googling or other search-engine use is of course not at all the sort of thing people do to learn the answer. Post as many guesses as you like, but only one guess per post, please.
There has been shamefully little Wombat Action this past two days, as the arrival of the annual seizure of desperate, panicky selling holiday season means that things have been frantic and draining at work.
But there will be a quiz tomorrow. I promise.
Following up on last night's petulant groanings: I got up this morning and hied myself to the elementary school down the street. Signs of hope: for a midterm election in which the contest for the governship in this state is all but predetermined and the local congressman will be coasting to another two years in office, the place was nevertheless quite bustling with life; I haven't had to wait in line nearly so long in the past. Maybe the turnout in this one won't be quite so dismal.
The room itself is something of an excercise in nostalgia; an primary school gym, constructed in the enduring style of Early Seventies Institutional, with cinderblock walls painted somewhere between daffodil, mustard, and headache. Below various freebie posters of sports icons (Michelle Kwan, Martina Hingis, and several seasons worth of Yankees) have been taped large sheets of paper which itemize, in language which resembles that of a corporate mission statement, the goals of the various PE activities: "Students will learn to manipulate the soccer ball." The particular way the hallway tile accretes dirt and reflects noise seemed particularly timeless; one can hardly imagine going to school in a place without corridors like these.
The voting was what it was -- I'm depressed to feel out of the national action (as I did, a bit, in 2000, when this state was a lock for Gore). I made sure to vote no on the sneaky little ballot issue which both the last mayor and the current one want (the one which strips power away from the Public Advocate), and to only vote for the judges who were listed on both the Democratic and Crazy Out-There-Left-Wing party lines. I pulled the big red lever back with its appealing k-k-k-k-ka-CHUNK and then that was it, it was done, it was over. Not much of a contribution to the perpetuation of freedom and justice, but it's something.
I'm going home to watch the returns. Come, on, Fritzy!
I can't pretend to be optimistic about tomorrow's electoral possibilities. What with the President's Little War now producing new headlines (USA today earlier blared their finding that the GOP was regaining its advantage) conveniently in time to drive news of its continued inability to find an honest man to deal with accounting regulations (A wince-worthy grace note here, by the way, is the highlighting of NY's senior senator as a champion of Harvey Pitt. Thanks, Chuck.)
As the one talent our current head of state shares with his predecessor is a great facility on the campaign trail, it seems likely that Bush's last-minute frenzy of campaigning will further cloud the minds of an electorate which possesses all the focused political acuity of bored, somewhat hyperactive preteen. It's best to be prepared for the worst, and this bloody country might well march out tomorrow and deliver up (not, I suspect, by a landslide) the congress to the whims of Cheneycorp.
Or not. Stranger things have happened, and a number of the key races are still mighty close. And so many of the governor's races may go to the Democrats that something of an important balance of power may shift nationally due to that. Not that I view your average Democrat in a state capitol with any particular reverence: but we work with what we can.
(Not here, though: the governor's race is such a pathetically foregone conclusion that the local union which always calls my house with a lame-ass recorded message urging us to get out the Democratic vote didn't even name the gubernatorial candidate in their message tonight. That's right, I was asked to support Spitzer for AG and Hevesi for comptroller, but Carl McCall has already been cut loose by the local demo machine. Pataki must be laughing his smug ass off.)
I know...I have no analysis here, only grim fear. Given the fact that Gore won a majority in the last election, I remain in continual shell-shocked astonishment that we as a polity seem hell-bent on handing this country over to a small group of rapacious petty lords, whose hatred of all reasonable governance is so perverse as to defy logic. I never, never imagined it could get this bad. And now that it has, my faith that it won't become worse is hard to find on this cold night in November.
All that said: I unconditionally love voting. I love going to the school cafeteria. I love finding my little photocopied signature in the registration records. I love the (probably very ancient and fallible and in need of replacement) mechanical voting machines. I am all Aaron-Sorkin about the whole damned thing. And I will feel a very important fraction better after I go and cast my statistically meaningless vote tomorrow. I hope you do, too.
I regret to inform you that this week's quiz has absolutely nothing to do with All Hallow's Eve, Samhain, Mischief Night, or the El Dia de los Muertes. If you crave some seasonally-appropriate gothicky quiz fun, you might go here. Now, onto today's time-waster:
From a young man's list of "things to think about" put together shortly after he took his university degree:
"...to find whether the earth moves; the weather wheel;... several new ways of graving and etching; to weave many ribbons at once with only turning a wheel; improvements in the arts of husbandry;...a pavement harder, fairer, and cheaper than marble; divers new engines for the raising of water; ...a way of embroidery for beds cheap and fair; ...divers new musical instruments; a speaking organ; probable ways for making fresh water at sea; to stay long under water;...easier ways of whale-fishing; new cyphers;... anatomical experiments; to measure the height of a mountain only by journeying over it; a compass to play in a coach or the hand of a rider; to perfect coaches for ease, strength and lightness."
He became quite famous, but not for accomplishing any of these.
Who was this thoughtful person?
General principles of the quiz: First correct answer to comments is the winner. (This week's prize is a post-Halloween fright featuring the singing of both Kevin Bacon and Scott Bakula. ) Googling or other search-engine use is unsporting. You may post as many guesses as you like, but only one per post, please.
Oh, and one hint: it's not Leonardo. Nor anyone he knew.