This is a house in Chiang Mai, over near the university, good view of the mountain. No, it's not a work in progress. That wide open space with the classical statuary is for hanging out.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Catch a Breeze
This is a house in Chiang Mai, over near the university, good view of the mountain. No, it's not a work in progress. That wide open space with the classical statuary is for hanging out.
Ahab Ceely Dead At Fifty-Seven; Sought the White Whale
In the 1930 version of “Moby Dick,” the great John Barrymore played the role of Ahab Ceely, Captain Ahab Ceely, you read that right, I couldn’t believe it either. You can discover the damndest things on the Internet.
FYI
The post times listed herein are California/Google time. As I post it is for me 14 hours ahead of the posted time.
Mr. Fred's Poetry Corner: Going Home
You can’t go home again, they tell you
Very simply: it’s not there!
It’s gone, just like your long gone childhood,
Common wisdom, if you care.
But I’ve gone home, and I can tell you,
Everything I knew was there,
Every little hurt and gladness,
The same trees, cars; the same air,
The same houses, and the people.
How could it be otherwise?
Nothing yet have I forgotten,
Everything I knew was there.
Very simply: it’s not there!
It’s gone, just like your long gone childhood,
Common wisdom, if you care.
But I’ve gone home, and I can tell you,
Everything I knew was there,
Every little hurt and gladness,
The same trees, cars; the same air,
The same houses, and the people.
How could it be otherwise?
Nothing yet have I forgotten,
Everything I knew was there.
Normanology, Part Four
We were always in a high state of intoxication. Well, Norman and some others were, I had a family, I spent some time with them straight, some, and we all had jobs where we were mostly straight, at least in the morning. Norman always had the best grass, he’d drive to the ends of Los Angeles to get it and he smoked about an ounce per week. For reference, I was loaded pretty much of the time and it came to a little more than an ounce per month.
Norman also smoked cigarettes, strong ones in red boxes, two packs per day; the smoking was his downfall. Against the constant background of marijuana we partook of acid, ups, downs, speed, minor tranquilizers, mushrooms, and any specialty items that came along. For almost a year, we had an opium connection, $10 per gram, finger-like sticks wrapped in Chinese newspapers. Of course we drank too, carefully, so as not to lose the effects of the drugs, unless of course the object of the exercise was drinking.
We were interested in things and engaged, in our way, with our world, so we avoided Heroin because it took over your entire life and we had things to do, places to go, movies to watch, rock bands to listen to, driving was involved. Of course we liked it, and cocaine too, but cocaine, besides being too expensive and generally of poor quality, cocaine is for horses.
In our milieu, we were stars, and Norman was our Achilles. His chariot was an AMC Pacer, like a fish bowl on wheels, license plate “MANTIS,” Ohio.
Norman also smoked cigarettes, strong ones in red boxes, two packs per day; the smoking was his downfall. Against the constant background of marijuana we partook of acid, ups, downs, speed, minor tranquilizers, mushrooms, and any specialty items that came along. For almost a year, we had an opium connection, $10 per gram, finger-like sticks wrapped in Chinese newspapers. Of course we drank too, carefully, so as not to lose the effects of the drugs, unless of course the object of the exercise was drinking.
We were interested in things and engaged, in our way, with our world, so we avoided Heroin because it took over your entire life and we had things to do, places to go, movies to watch, rock bands to listen to, driving was involved. Of course we liked it, and cocaine too, but cocaine, besides being too expensive and generally of poor quality, cocaine is for horses.
In our milieu, we were stars, and Norman was our Achilles. His chariot was an AMC Pacer, like a fish bowl on wheels, license plate “MANTIS,” Ohio.
Good, Pass or Fail
I proctored tests for five days last week, and you should not be surprised to discover that I found it very interesting. Check it out:
1. At least half of the students hold their pens horribly wrong. Their writing is correspondingly hard to read;
2. There’s a very high incidence of left-handers in Thailand. I had notice this before; in one of my classes of fifty high school seniors there were more than ten. My guess? A lower incidence of forced right-handedness;
3. The wai is losing its universal application. That’s the praying hands, Sawatdee! Namaste in India. Only about half of the girls wai’d the proctor when they handed in the test and left; far less than half the boys. For the test of Psychology 101, almost nobody wai’d the proctor;
4. Calculus II: of the four hundred test takers, only thirty or forty were boys. That’s of the total, not 30%, thirty boys;
5. Introduction to Statistics, a tough test. Calculators were allowed, but not all of the students had them, wow, that’s a disadvantage. Saw a few very sophisticated scientific calculators too, allowed I guess, no one said anything.
1. At least half of the students hold their pens horribly wrong. Their writing is correspondingly hard to read;
2. There’s a very high incidence of left-handers in Thailand. I had notice this before; in one of my classes of fifty high school seniors there were more than ten. My guess? A lower incidence of forced right-handedness;
3. The wai is losing its universal application. That’s the praying hands, Sawatdee! Namaste in India. Only about half of the girls wai’d the proctor when they handed in the test and left; far less than half the boys. For the test of Psychology 101, almost nobody wai’d the proctor;
4. Calculus II: of the four hundred test takers, only thirty or forty were boys. That’s of the total, not 30%, thirty boys;
5. Introduction to Statistics, a tough test. Calculators were allowed, but not all of the students had them, wow, that’s a disadvantage. Saw a few very sophisticated scientific calculators too, allowed I guess, no one said anything.
Monday, March 31, 2008
New Feature: Movie Reviews
Frankenstein vs. Baragon (Japan 1965)
I came across a bunch of these Kaiju, letterboxed and in the original Japanese, full length and really beautiful. DVD's with special features, no less. This is the giant monster genre, Godzilla and company, Baragon is one of the minor players in the G-man pantheon. This movie has always been hard to find, hard to see, and maybe if someone were not as fascinated as I am by the vehicles, the monster-suits, the clothes, the Twisting party-goers, and Kumi Mizuno, then maybe they’d think it was a little slow, or sophomoric even, but for me it’s four stars out of five.
Nick Adams! Even! He’s Kumi M’s love interest, they’re both scientists at the, get this, the Hiroshima Institute of Radio Therapentics. Their domestic scenes are priceless: a little, tiny apartment cluttered with stuff, a tiny TV, Nick puts on a star-spangled chef’s hat and an American flag BBQ apron and makes hamburgers in the living room with a little table fan on. “Oishi!” squeals Kumi M. with delight. This is one of several movies that they made together, and this one was made during their torrid love affair. They both play it relaxed and happy, all very natural.
The wide screen is indispensable to Japanese movies. Japanese directors use every corner of the frame, making beautiful static scenes with internal movement, to pan-and-scan them can make you dizzy enough to get sea sick. And just think what you miss: in a couple of scenes there’s an extravagantly beautiful woman scientist in the background, wild curly mane, great, lavish lips, she has no lines and wouldn’t make in into the pan-and-scan.
The nuclearization of Hiroshima is of course included here, somehow America always brings about these huge aberrations. It’s a great scene, too, first a lone B-San goes over high and then, wham! all hell breaks loose. This is right after the Frankenstein heart has been removed from its crate for examination by, come on, guess, yes! Takashi Shimura! again appearing in a lab coat, the original Godzilla scientist. Here he shows up for one minute of screen time, tops, and then gets nuked along with everybody else.
I lose some details of the story, it being told in Japanese, but it seems like the Frankenstein heart grows a man around it, a Japanese man (maybe it was the food) in familiar Frankenstein makeup. Before long he’s growing. He stays in his slightly burst clothes for quite a while, he’s at least twenty feet tall with the same pants and belt, 32 inch waist, probably. Later on he clears fifty feet and wears his own creations.
Both monsters have run-ins with Twist parties. Frankenstein, big, stands up waist deep in a river next to a party boat, the crew and the Twisters all swallow their gum but ‘Stein just takes a look and goes back under, no damage done. Baragon surfaces in the mountains (he’s Baragon, the sub-terrainean monster) in a ski-resort cluster of Swiss Chalets, during another drunken Twist party, and wrecks the place, deaths are likely but unrecorded.
Great vehicles throughout. Nick and Kumi drive around in a baby-blue Datsun Bluebird with a grill full of rally badges. The cabs and cop cars are full sized and cherry. Later on the scientists make the scene in a nice red convertible. These are all vest-pocket Sixties Japanese cars.
The Baragon suit is great, his eyes are wild and his horn flashes orange light on and off for no good reason. The actor inside is good, too. Frankenstein is a very agile actor, a good physical actor. The fight scenes are very exciting, undercranked to make them look more dangerous, Frankenstein may have been a wrestler/actor, he’s got the moves.
Kumi Mizuno really makes the movie though. She appears in divine clothing at all times, nice hats and bags, subdued ensembles with tight skirts, all very Jackie Kennedy. One blue outfit is especially stunning. She absolutely glows in this movie, Nick must have been making her happy at the time. Nick Adams is good too. The remarkable saving grace of these movies is that talented actors appear in them and take the job seriously, whatever kind of crap is going in around them.
One final note about the appearance of American armed forces in these movies: they are always presented as no-nonsense professionals who get things done right the first time and mighty fast too. In the first scenes, Nazi forces around Frankenstein’s castle are getting their asses severely kicked; soon after there is a surface transfer made between a German and a Japanese submarine, they are spotted on the surface by a Catalina and bombed quickly and accurately, the Nazi sub gets it in the neck; the B-29 lays Fat Man right on Hiroshima’s nose. The admiration thus expressed is no doubt grudging, but just as real.
I came across a bunch of these Kaiju, letterboxed and in the original Japanese, full length and really beautiful. DVD's with special features, no less. This is the giant monster genre, Godzilla and company, Baragon is one of the minor players in the G-man pantheon. This movie has always been hard to find, hard to see, and maybe if someone were not as fascinated as I am by the vehicles, the monster-suits, the clothes, the Twisting party-goers, and Kumi Mizuno, then maybe they’d think it was a little slow, or sophomoric even, but for me it’s four stars out of five.
Nick Adams! Even! He’s Kumi M’s love interest, they’re both scientists at the, get this, the Hiroshima Institute of Radio Therapentics. Their domestic scenes are priceless: a little, tiny apartment cluttered with stuff, a tiny TV, Nick puts on a star-spangled chef’s hat and an American flag BBQ apron and makes hamburgers in the living room with a little table fan on. “Oishi!” squeals Kumi M. with delight. This is one of several movies that they made together, and this one was made during their torrid love affair. They both play it relaxed and happy, all very natural.
The wide screen is indispensable to Japanese movies. Japanese directors use every corner of the frame, making beautiful static scenes with internal movement, to pan-and-scan them can make you dizzy enough to get sea sick. And just think what you miss: in a couple of scenes there’s an extravagantly beautiful woman scientist in the background, wild curly mane, great, lavish lips, she has no lines and wouldn’t make in into the pan-and-scan.
The nuclearization of Hiroshima is of course included here, somehow America always brings about these huge aberrations. It’s a great scene, too, first a lone B-San goes over high and then, wham! all hell breaks loose. This is right after the Frankenstein heart has been removed from its crate for examination by, come on, guess, yes! Takashi Shimura! again appearing in a lab coat, the original Godzilla scientist. Here he shows up for one minute of screen time, tops, and then gets nuked along with everybody else.
I lose some details of the story, it being told in Japanese, but it seems like the Frankenstein heart grows a man around it, a Japanese man (maybe it was the food) in familiar Frankenstein makeup. Before long he’s growing. He stays in his slightly burst clothes for quite a while, he’s at least twenty feet tall with the same pants and belt, 32 inch waist, probably. Later on he clears fifty feet and wears his own creations.
Both monsters have run-ins with Twist parties. Frankenstein, big, stands up waist deep in a river next to a party boat, the crew and the Twisters all swallow their gum but ‘Stein just takes a look and goes back under, no damage done. Baragon surfaces in the mountains (he’s Baragon, the sub-terrainean monster) in a ski-resort cluster of Swiss Chalets, during another drunken Twist party, and wrecks the place, deaths are likely but unrecorded.
Great vehicles throughout. Nick and Kumi drive around in a baby-blue Datsun Bluebird with a grill full of rally badges. The cabs and cop cars are full sized and cherry. Later on the scientists make the scene in a nice red convertible. These are all vest-pocket Sixties Japanese cars.
The Baragon suit is great, his eyes are wild and his horn flashes orange light on and off for no good reason. The actor inside is good, too. Frankenstein is a very agile actor, a good physical actor. The fight scenes are very exciting, undercranked to make them look more dangerous, Frankenstein may have been a wrestler/actor, he’s got the moves.
Kumi Mizuno really makes the movie though. She appears in divine clothing at all times, nice hats and bags, subdued ensembles with tight skirts, all very Jackie Kennedy. One blue outfit is especially stunning. She absolutely glows in this movie, Nick must have been making her happy at the time. Nick Adams is good too. The remarkable saving grace of these movies is that talented actors appear in them and take the job seriously, whatever kind of crap is going in around them.
One final note about the appearance of American armed forces in these movies: they are always presented as no-nonsense professionals who get things done right the first time and mighty fast too. In the first scenes, Nazi forces around Frankenstein’s castle are getting their asses severely kicked; soon after there is a surface transfer made between a German and a Japanese submarine, they are spotted on the surface by a Catalina and bombed quickly and accurately, the Nazi sub gets it in the neck; the B-29 lays Fat Man right on Hiroshima’s nose. The admiration thus expressed is no doubt grudging, but just as real.
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