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READIN
READIN started out as a place for me
to keep track of what I am reading, and to learn (slowly, slowly)
how to design a web site.
There has been some mission drift
here and there, but in general that's still what it is. Some of
the main things I write about here are
reading books,
listening to (and playing) music, and
watching the movies. Also I write about the
work I do with my hands and with my head; and of course about bringing up Sylvia.
The site is a bit of a work in progress. New features will come on-line now and then; and you will occasionally get error messages in place of the blog, for the forseeable future. Cut me some slack, I'm just doing it for fun! And if you see an error message you think I should know about, please drop me a line. READIN source code is PHP and CSS, and available on request, in case you want to see how it works.
See my reading list for what I'm interested in this year.
READIN has been visited approximately 236,737 times since October, 2007.
Thanks to Mark for sending me this photo of Gazprom's headquarters in St. Petersburg -- this architectural monstrosity will be in my mind next time I pick up Inherent Vice:
(spoiler alert -- there is an argument to be made that this post contains information about Alfred Hitchcock'sRear Window that would make watching the movie less enjoyable for someone who has not already seen it...)
The scene at the end of Rear Window where Stewart is fighting off Burr is really compelling for all the overall silliness of the movie -- there are things about the movie that just don't make sense. The impression you get is that Stewart is imagining things and is convincing people (women) to enter his hallucination just out of strength of character. So all movie long you have been sort of lulled into thinking it's a joke, then all that collapses in a few minutes, and you the viewer are pulled too into Stewart's hallucination. (Specifically your disbelief unravels in the scene where Kelly breaks into Burr's apartment. By the end of that scene you have forgotten any suspicion that somebody's joking around with you.) That really pulls me in to the fright and (literal) suspense in the characters' experience of the movie -- and then bang, the frame is colorful and bright again, it's back to a light comedy. The ending is probable the brightest, lightest scene in the film, and the relief/joy of being lifted back out of that paranoid moment of struggle is what the film leaves you with.
Now I am watching a TCM documentary about The Thriller. Amusing stuff -- one line was that Grace Kelly is "more evidence that still waters run... weird..." If I want to stay up late, the midnight film is going to be Shadow of a Doubt!
More animation from Alexeïeff and Parker! I found a compilation of all their pinboard cartoons. The listing:
0:00 Night on bald mountain (1933) -- Just extraordinary. 7 years ahead of Walt Disney. Look at the metamorphosis about 1:40 in...
8:22 Parade des Sools (1936) -- Hats! and lots of 'em. (IMDB oddly has this piece listed as "Parade des Chapeaux" -- this accurately describes the piece but it is not the title.) Possibly Chapeaux Sools is a hat company, and this an advertisement for them?
9:38 Etoiles Nouvelles (1937) -- commercial for Davros Nouvelle Egyptian size cigarettes
At A Journey Round My Skull (which looks in general to be a fantastic source for trippy imagery -- thanks for linking to it, badger!), Will posts several illustrations from Russian Fairy Tales (1945), drawn by Alexandre Alexeïeff; also, a link to the pinscreen animation work of Alexeïeff and his wife and partner Claire Parker. The Nose, adapted from Gogol:
My grandfather had a big collection of books of comic strips -- Pogo, Katzenjammer Kids, Li'l Abner, Gasoline Alley -- that I would read whenever I went over to his house. One of them was a collection of Fox Fontaine's Toonerville Trolley -- Sylvia has gotten into the video game Toontown lately, so I suggested we take a look at Toonerville -- thinking its name had the same source*. I never knew it had been made into a cartoon! Here are the three episodes -- Nicely done!
(Another find from the same search: The Electric Prunes performing Toonerville Trolley on the Mike Douglas Show in 1967 -- not The Prunes' finest moment, which if you're interested in seeing their finest moment take a look at this footage.)
* Looks like I was wrong about this. Image searching for "Toonerville Trolley" brings up some pictures of an actual trolley in Louisville in the early 20th Century, when Fontaine was working as a reporter in Louisville...
posted evening of September 28th, 2009: Respond ➳ More posts about Music
I've gotten interested in this particular 16-bar melody line that I've been hearing in a lot of old blues and jazz tunes -- it is the melody that always makes me think "They're Red Hot!" when I hear it, because Robert Johnson's song is the first one I ever heard with this structure:
I was listening to Fletcher Henderson's Orchestra playing "How Come You Do Me Like You Do?" last week and realized it's essentially the same melody -- since then I've worked out that several other songs on the records that I'm listening to regularly are built from the same elements -- here is a brief playlist of a couple others, including Tommie Bradley's hilarious "Adam and Eve" and a version by "Bogus" Ben Covington.
(And, wow! A 2000th post ought not go unnoticed.)
posted morning of September 28th, 2009: Respond ➳ More posts about Mix tapes
A very nice line (assuming I am understanding it correctly) from the newly-published Bolaño story, The Contour of the Eye. Bolaño's character Chen Huo Deng is recounting a conversation with a doctor, telling him about writing diaries as a "crutch for literary creativity":
[First attempt at reading this is incorrect -- see comment from Rick -- He said his understanding was that we poets will write a thousand words to liberate a single one. I told him that in my current diary something else was being liberated and he laughed without understanding.]
He said his understanding was that we poets will write a thousand words to get at a single one. I told him that in my current diary something else was at stake, and he laughed without understanding.
This is working for me on a couple of levels, I can see an image of Chen's words as the fleet launched from Mycenae to liberate Helen...
Thoughts about the translation of "librar" in the first sentence and "librarse" in the second sentence (and thanks to Rick for pointing out that this is a different verb from "liberar")? It would be nice to preserve the pun but I'm not at all sure how that would be done. "in my current diary something else was getting out" maybe? That doesn't sound very natural to me, and I'm skeptical whether it communicates the meaning of the Spanish very well.
So there are these pretty little purple things blooming in the front garden -- I'm not sure what they are and am finding it difficult to get a good, in-focus photo of them -- but they are lovely! Especially nice against the red things which are blooming next to them, and of which I also do not know the name...
(Ellen tells me, the red flowers are sedum.)
Update: Ellen is convinced the purple flowers are a weed/wildflower, not anything she planted -- there are similar white flowers growing in parts of the yard where we haven't planted anything.
posted morning of September 27th, 2009: Respond ➳ More posts about The garden
-- Y para guardar un secreto que lo era a voces, para ocultar un enigma que no lo era para nadie, para cubrir unas apariencias falsas ¿hemos vivido asÃ, Tristán? ¡Miseria y nada más! Abrid esos balcones, que entre la luz, toda la luz y el polvo de la calle y las moscas, mañana mismo se quitará el escudo.
-- And so to guard a secret which was no secret, to shroud a mystery which was clear to everyone, to conceal our false appearances we have lived like this, Tristán? -- Misery, nothing more! Open these balonies, let the light in, all the light and the dust of the street and the flies, and tomorrow we will take down the coat of arms.
Unamuno is "foreign" -- he is of Spain, he is of the 19th Century, he is of Catholicism. I am exoticising the story by attributing these things to it, which are all outside my experience. This seems like a not-great way of reading, like something that would prevent me from really understanding the story. ...There may be some truth to this but I would be leery of giving it too much weight.
I am a less sophisticated reader in Spanish than in English. The barrier separating me from the text, the time it takes to figure out what is being said, is making my reaction to the story more immediate, and delaying my critical/analyical reaction... I'm not sure that this is a coherent idea -- it is sort of tantalizing, to think that I can get into a younger, more naïve head by reading foreign language.
But in the end I think what is making the plotting of this story work, where I might find the same plot elements cornball in another context, is Unamuno's imagery, his descriptive voice. The reading of the story has felt up until this point like looking at dark paintings, there was a sense of claustrophobia imagining the characters as figures on dimly-lit canvasses -- so much so that when Carolina speaks out and orders the windows and balconies uncovered, I get the sense of her figure tearing itself away from the canvas -- this is an interesting image regardless of how much verisimilitude I'm prepared to accord the plot elements.
...puesto que no quisiera descubrirme fasta que las fazañas fechas en vuestro servicio y pro me descubrieran, la fuerza de acomodar al propósito presente este romance viejo de Lanzarote...
...given that I had not wanted to declare myself until the deeds I had performed in your service made me known, the necessity of adapting to the present circumstances that old romance of Lancelot...
I'm giggling now thinking about Saramago living on an island named after Sir Lancelot. Probably just me...
posted afternoon of September 26th, 2009: Respond ➳ More posts about José Saramago
A new blog is a-birthing: Haquelebac (son of Foutasnon, father of Vitdegrain, great-grandfather of Pantagruel) is the latest project from the reliably interesting John Emerson -- no posts yet, but he says they are coming by Monday.
Best commentary yet on the The Millionslist comes from Alvy Singer, who asks, "What sort of list, using terms so hyperbolic, so spectacular -- OF THE MILLENIUM!! -- can be afforded the luxury of including not a single book which has not yet been translated into English?" He suggests the list be called, "The Greatest Fiction of the Millenium Published in English, Taking for Granted that the Rest can be Abstracted Until It Is Translated to English."
Rear Window that would make watching the movie less enjoyable for someone who has not already seen it...)
