jeblog

graffito8

Haven't seen much interesting graffiti (which I want to start calling "underground street art") while out-and-about the town, though recently I came home and found my front porch decorated in a lively fashion:

This artwork was done by my housemate Jonah, aged 2 (and his momma, Katy) on behalf of another housemate, Josh, was recently released from 30 days in lock-up for his part in a Greenpeace action.

I particularly like the stars on the faux-sky blue porch. Truly ingenious design.

phoku.22

mindful clock

I've been thinking of adding a new category to my blog: spriritual technology, which will deal with media- and technology-enhanced spiritual practices.

In my first entry under that rubric, I'd like to make a plug for a computer software program, developed by my friend David Steigerwald for our buddhist mindfulness community (or "sangha"). It's called the mindful clock and once you install it and do minor configuration, it sounds a lovely meditation bell every hour (or every 15 minutes, or random), at which point, at the urging of zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, you stop whatever you're doing and follow your breath until the bell is finished sounding.

I think it's a wonderful tool and practice (though sometimes, if I'm playing music, the bell will sound on top of it, which makes listening to Crystal Method, for instance, a very interesting experience). It creates some wonderful, peaceful space in my work day. I recommend it to one and all, especially since David has just come out with the latest version (after some trial and tribulation), which works with XP Service Pack 2. You can download the program at the website I maintain for the Washington Mindfulness Community (and try the other bells, which are available with separate downloads):

http://www.mindfulnessdc.org/mindfulclock.html

sparrow who looks like osama

I'm a big fan of a writer named Sparrow, who is occasionally published by my favorite magazine, The Sun.

In the March 2003 edition this picture appears. I liked the contribution from Sparrow, but I liked even more this graphic. Notice the beard is made of the word "Sparrow" repeated a couple hundred times. Kudos to Robert Graham, Artistic Director at The Sun, for the image and the over-all beautiful design of the magazine (it helps that there are no ads!).

I wanted, though it's naughty copyright-wise, to put up the article that accompanied the picture, because it presents Sparrow at his discursive and befuddled best. But that would mean OCRing (I don't have Adobe Acrobat to save it as a PDF), and I'm too lazy for that. So you'll just have to subscribe to The Sun, which is well worth it. You can also go to their website and sample one of the best features of the magazine, Readers Write:

http://www.thesunmagazine.org/

I must also add that I think, once upon a time (while passing through NYC area on way to a demonstration in 1990) that I met the author. I met a man, anyway, who said his name was Sparrow and who, even then, looked like Osama, though no one beside his CIA handlers knew who Osama was. It must be the same dude. He seemed a nice enough fellah. Though I don't remember having an in-depth conversation with Sparrow. Maybe next time.

Sparrow also publishes in Chronogram, in upstate NY, and in the New York Observer. But this man, as might be expected, is off the grid digitally. He is unGoogleable! He needs to be online in the worst way. His little essays are perfect for a digital format. He would also have a killer blog, if he chose to express himself in that way.

How about it, Sparrow (I suddenly realize that now that I've blogged about him, Sparrow IS Googleable! And maybe in a perverse mood he'll go to a computer and Google himself and find this entry! Greetings! With today's technology, almost anyone can keep their eye on the Sparrow).

film paratext: opening credits

Lately I've been into film paratext, i.e. opening credits. I already mentioned in a previous post about the amazing opening credits for Almodovar's latest, Bad Education ("worth the price of admission").

Then this past weekend I rented what I thought were fairly disparate DVDs. It turns out all of them had interesting opening credits.

First, there was Season 1 Disk 1 of Monk, the murder-mystery show on USA Network (and occasionally re-played on CBS), starring Tony Shaloub. Let me say quickly how much I enjoy this show, and particularly Shaloub's portrayal of an obsessive-compulsive savant detective, in which he reveals, under all the twitching, an intelligent, compassionate, and haunted man. (And I'm glad that some of the slapstick from the pilot has been toned down. As much as I enjoyed it, it disrupts the tone of the show).

But I'm supposed to be writing about paratext/opening credits. I really like the opening credits of this show, in which the text is slightly off-line, but then is "fixed" by, one assumes, the tetchy, particular title character.

Then I took a look at My Man Flint, a pre-Austin Powers, mid-60s, James Bond parody, starring James Coburn. A brief word: it's not that funny, and seems to pursue parody by down-grading production values, rather than by funny writing and imaginative direction. It's a cheesy, B-grade version of James Bond, but then who said that parodies actually had to be funny? Though the idea of a rather ugly, gangly, horse-faced Coburn as a lady-killer is kind of out there in an interesting way.

But, again, the opening credits. They're very interesting, as an example of early-psychedelia, with slightly-risque dancing women, turning film-stock into animation. Worth a look-see if you're into that sort of thing.

Finally, early-Robert Altman (1971: post-MASH, pre-Nashville) McCabe and Mrs. Miller, played by Warren Beatty at his hunkiest and Julie Cristie at her bawdiest (and loveliest). This is the first of three films these two would do together. It's a revisionist Western that succeeds where Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate failed (and Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven also succeeds).

The opening credits are not quite as innovative as those already mentioned, but they are nonetheless engaging. The sequence is basically one tracking shot of the wooded landscape of the Pacific Northwest, panning right. As it pans, the credits emerge from right side, as if they were being discovered by the camera. Anyway, it's not anything I've seen before in an opening credit sequence.

And though this has gone on too long, I would just like to reflect a little bit on my fascination with opening credits. I think it's due to the fact that these sequences are in a realm of design apart from film-making per se, often using elements from the film (or setting the stage) and combining them with animation and graphic design. So, I engage with them as an example of visual design. I'm also interested in them as an example of text and image interacting in creative ways. This is something that's been important to me ever since I added web and graphic design skills to my writing skills (my interest in William Blake is due to the same confluence of skills).

I also think opening credit designers don't get enough credit. Maybe there should be an Oscar category for that? Not likely to happen but I nonetheless will continue to review such paratextual elements, particularly as they manifest in the digital realm.

(Didn't Know I Was) UnAmerican

This just in:

A friend of mine sent me a link to a song and flash animation by Ian Rhett called "(Didn't Know I Was) UnAmerican." The animation is inspired, in parts, and crude (due, in part I'm sure, to image copyright concerns) in others, but the over all message, and the media presentation, are definitely worth looking at.

http://www.sharedvoice.org/unamerican/

presenting: GLITTENS

My boyfriend is a master knitter. He made me some glittens--combination mittens and gloves (featured in phoku.21 below). I think they're a marvelous invention and I wear them all the time, even though it's officially spring now (when it gets warm MAYBE I'll stop wearing them).

With no offense to fiber artists like my boyfriend, I see these glittens as a kind of machine or mechanism. Some might object, thinking that a machine or mechanism must be made out of metal or plastic, and needs to run on oil or electricity, to be considered a machine, but I find that an arbitrary definition. My glittens have moveable parts, and a kind of hinge, and are adjustable--that sounds machine-like to me. I can "turn on" the finger cover, or not, depending on the temperature.

On:

Off:

There are many things I can do now that I otherwise wouldn't be able to do when its cold. Such as reading a book (and being able to turn pages) at the metro, twisting open the top of my thermos of coffee, hold and rub clean my sunglasses (by keeping one glitten "on" and the other "off," and using the thumb to do the rubbing).

More importantly, my glittens allow me to manipulate my various media-delivery mechanisms outside, without taking off my gloves or risk losing them (always a serious risk for me). I've learned to use my iPod and my digital camera with my glittens on, and if I had a cell phone, I'm sure I would be able to manipulate that as well.

Though it should be noted (for future fiber-arts anthropologists) that I've had to re-learn some things to accomodate my glittens, because even though your fingers are free, your thumbs are not.* But isn't that true of any technology? We re-learn to accomodate it.

I have to warn the glitten wearer, however, that there are times when he/she will need to be vigilant because the glittens create some new difficulties along with all their conveniences. This is particularly true of the fellows, who will find that urinating with glittens in "off" position (with flap hanging down) may make them susceptible to besmirchment. Endorsing checks at the bank can also be a problem.

So why glittens now? Why is my boyfriend about to get filthy rich because of the glitten craze that is sure to sweep the country? I would like to assert, though it seems contradiction, that this particular example of the fiber arts will become popular exactly because we live in such a digital culture. Folks need their finger free to punch their various buttons on their various devices. So this would be an example of a traditional craft (knitting) becoming more prevalent because of, not despite, technology.

I just went to the web and Googled "glittens." Now I must warn you: don't be fooled by imitations! Mittens that separate the index finger from the other fingers are not true glittens--they are merely modified mittens. I also found a knitting blog that discusses making cashmere glittens. Ooh la-la!

But if you want personalized glittens (like mine), you should place an order with my boyfriend, through this blog (and I'm not going to say HOW my glittens are personalized. Surely I'm allowed to withhold some things from my blog).

*Another minor glitch. When my boyfriend was knitting the glittens, he originally thought the thumbs could be left uncovered (a little hood for each thumb seemed impractical), but baby it's cold out there! So he decided to cover up the thumbs. But then he found that he'd run out of green yarn, so had to improvise. The funky thumbs are my favorite part of the gloves. I told Wallace (my boyfriend) that the funky gloves could be his fashion signature.

littleton redux (reflux)

There will no doubt be many media apologias and mea culpas in the coming days, in the wake of the latest school shooting in Minnesota. Does the sensationalist media coverage of mass murder lead to future acts of mass murder? Stay tuned.

I just finished reading an account in the Washington Post. Three things I noticed. One, the shooter--a sixteen-year-old kid--had surfed and posted at a neo-Nazi web site. Two, the shooter asked one kid before shooting him if he believed in God. Three, there was a scare after the shooter killed himself when one of the teachers mistaked a police officer as another shooter.

The first two things mentioned were common to the Littleton shooters as well. The Littleton shooters also surfed neo-Nazi web sites and one of them asked a kid before shooting her if she believed in God. In the third instance, it was as if the teacher assumed there would be another shooter because that's the usual script.

So it would seem that the media regurgitation of Littleton may have led not only the shooter but his victims to follow the script of Littleton-style high school shootings.

It may not seem fair to blame the media on this one, and this might seem an improper forum (another form of media), but then bloggers are often anti-big-media. Then again, bloggers are not exactly immune to sensationalism, having much media at their disposal as well.

But I don't want to get off on an old v. new media tangent. I don't think media in itself can be blamed; media is a technological conglomeration that can be used for good or ill, for vital communication or for sensationalism.

Big media is obsessed with violence because it causes high ratings which causes high advertising rates which causes for more eyeballs seeing more ads. As long as that is still the case, we will get fed more and more murder stories, no matter what media is used.

Though I do think getting off a diet of sensationalist stories (hello local TV news) is a good place to start.

film review: Bad Education

I've seen Pedro Almodovar's Bad Education twice now so I suppose I should blog about it.

It is, in short, one of the best films I've seen in many months (since Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). In it, Almodovar mixes in some Hitchcockian suspense with his usual large doses of camp and melodrama. It's a recipe that works well, in this film anyway.

It's a film about many things, cleverly weaved together, but the main plot is about a young director named Enrique (a sort-of stand-in for Almodovar, played by Fele Martinez) who encounters an old classmate named Ignacio (played by Gael Garcia Bernal) from grade-school days, with whom he had a boyhood romance. Ignacio gives Enrique a story which he wrote about their time in school together, focusing on an abusive priest. Enrique, suffering from director's block, is fascinated by the story and wants to film it. This is where the mystery begins, as the seeming true story, the script we would expect, starts to unravel.

There follow many character role reversals--victim becomes victimizer becomes victim, etc.--and a story line that loops back upon itself--reality becomes fiction becomes reality, etc.--along with plenty of pretty things to look at.

The cinematography is stunning, with quite a few interesting camera tricks and semi-animations (I was particularly impressed by the scene where the young protagonist, Ignatio, is sexually abused by Fr. Manolo. He resists and Fr. Manolo strikes him. Close-up on the angelic boy: a drop of blood slides down his forehead. Then his head splits along the path of the blood, like a stage opening up, and the next scene begins.)

In general, I found the visual design of the film to be one of the most vital things in the film. The opening credits, in particular, are worth the price of admission. (The web design for the film mimicks the film design, which is good, though they really should put up the opening credits along with the so-so movie trailer. The credits are better down). Only after seeing the film for the second time did I notice that not only is it a visual treat, but it also serves as a kind of visual overture, revealing key scenes and interactions that are key to the story, but which you wouldn't understand the first time).

I also very much liked the Bernard Herrmann-esque score (Herrmann did many of Hitchcock's scores), but what I suppose many viewers focus on is the break-out performance by Gael Garcia Bernal, who plays three different roles in the film. While he has not quite matched the multi-role performance of someone like Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove, he has certainly showed himself to be a major talent. He's also the most gorgeous drag queen in the movies for some time.

Finally, what fascinated me about the film was its multi-media aspects. The text of the story Ignacio writes becomes a player in the film. The text emerges from the film, but then at certain points the film emerges from the text, in its conception, and in its visual design (there was one particular dissolve early on in the film where the characters and story fade in from the words of the page), all to highlight the precarious and contingent nature of reality, and the ubiquity of fiction.

http://www.sonyclassics.com/badeducation/intro.html

not noting at night now

You, my perspicacious readers (all two of you), may have noticed (in super-anal mode), by looking at my post times, that I am no longer just posting at night.

In fact, if you've had lots of coffee and even more perspicacious than usual, you will have noticed that I've changed my little title at the top from "notes of a night scribbler" to "notes of a digi-scribbler." I've been finding my nights quite full these days and haven't been able to do much blogging. It was all piling up and feeling like a job, so I decided to start blogging during the day (in moments, like this one, stolen from my work day), doing one or two entires at a time, rather than the six or seven I was doing at night.

I was hesitent to give up the alliteration of "notes of a night scribbler" and the cachet of being a night-prowler-blogger, but I felt I needed to make the change. Forgive me blogoscenti.

Besides, I'm interested in unpacking the term "digi-scribbling." I think it is indeed what I've been doing.

More later on that.

adventures in digital transcription

In my work-life, I'm currently marking up in HTML articles from the influential Romantic-era journal The Quarterly Review. The texts I'm marking up were the results of OCRing the original journal pages. Most OCR programs are notorious for their strange transcriptions based on the shape of the letters (and the image quality). I just came across the following digital transcription, which is from an article reviewing Robert Southey's translation of El Cid:

"The introduction and notes are full of the most ample and extraordinary details concerning the state of Spam in the middle ages, from works of equal curiosity and scarcity."

So that can of dusty Spam in your pantry that you've been afraid to open may indeed date from the middle ages.

An auspicious (synchronicitous?) mistake on this day in which Spamalot, the new musical based on Monty Python and the Holy Grail, opens on Broadway...

Anyway, I needed to take a break. Back to work.

new computer signs at the metro

I've been meaning to write about the new computerized signs at the DC metro for some time now.

A couple years ago now the metro put in the first computerized signs which showed how long it would take for the next train to arrive in the station. I became a fan because I hated standing around in the station thinking another train wouldn't come for 30 minutes, when in fact it might be one minute. With the new signs, even if it said "15 min," at least you knew where you stood--and would quickly find a place to sit (not a big fan of the stone benches, especially in winter).

Well now they list multiple trains. You can see when the next train is coming and if, by chance, you plan on taking a nap (not recommended), you know when the train after the one you slept through is coming. In my mind, this isn't a great improvement over the previous computer signs, but if metro wants to think it's staying tech savvy, I'm not one to discourage it.

There are also, on the newest line, the Green line, computerized signs in the train that tell you what station you're approaching. I think this is also helpful.

Another reason to mention all this is to mark this as another example of how computers, and especially databases, are becoming integral to the way we live. And unlike all those who claim digital technology will make text obsolete, this is an example of how the opposite is true. We will most probably always need words--and languages--to be able to interface with the technology/database. Though it will almost certainly be accompanied by visual means of access as well.

And I don't think it probable that we will revert entirely to pictographs to access technology. We humans like words and will continue to be bedazzled and befuddled by them far into the future. Our current media explosion is the result of people (and, OK, machines too) talking to one another in increasingly digital formats.

I think this is a tolerable to good situation, but to keep communication alive we have to keep hearing from the luddites, from the technophobes, to keep the technophiles from going off the deep digital end.

March 15, 2005