Month: February 2011

by Zoe Pollock

Sheila Heti wants actors to go beyond method acting and create a style for our time:

The actors we consider “best”—like Streep or Daniel Day Lewis or, closer to home, Sarah Polley—imbue their art with subtlety; they do the smallest amount necessary to get the emotion of the character across. For performing in this way, we call them “good,” while Elizabeth Berkeley in Showgirls is “bad.” We say she is overacting, and understand her portrayal to be implausible, phoney—not how a person behaves. When we see a “good” actor, we call her that because we imagine she is accurately representing a human. But what this “good” actor more accurately represents is an era. She presents the psychology, cosmology, religion and politics of the day—and, in so doing, embodies what we understand the human to be. …

We are now in an age in which to be a human means, in part, to be able to choose what sort of human one wants to be. Are there any actors who express this new world, this new idea of the human?

by Zoe Pollock

Dish's earlier coverage from today here. Mackey clarifies:

After hours of confusion, the ruling National Democratic Party in Egypt has clarified: President Hosni Mubarak has not stepped down as chairman of the party and remains in control. …

It was still unclear how the report had emerged, whether due to a mistranslation, a rush to be competitive, misdirection by the government, a simple mistake, and/or all of the above.

WaPo reports:

The united front among Egyptian opposition parties fractured Saturday as several of them began negotiating with Vice President Omar Suleiman, despite earlier promises that they would not agree to talks until President Hosni Mubarak stepped down. …

But representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest opposition party, said they had not participated in the talks. Nor did Mohamed ElBaradei, the democracy advocate and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who had earlier been chosen by opposition parties as their spokesman.

EA links to what is purported to be the "brutal arrest of Google exec and a designated spokesperson for the the 6th of April Movement, Wael Ghonim." Scott Lucas clears up another case:

2000 GMT: The past two days, there have been reports that Ahmad Mohamed Mahmoud, a journalist working with Al-Ahmram newspaper in Egypt, had died as a result of a gunshot wound to the head two days ago. 

Now, we are being informed by several sources – including a man claiming to be Mahmoud himself – that he is very much alive. The mix up, he explains, happened because Al-Ahram published a report about the death of another man named Ahmad Mohamed Mahmoud.

Mackey on the scene in Cairo:

Thousands of protesters in Tahrir Square are preparing to settle in for the night under their makeshift tarps and blankets, metaphorically curling up around the tanks. A clear standoff has emerged, with the protesters refusing to budge until President Mubarak steps down, and the government, despite some concessions, determined to stand firm.

Scott Lucas for EA:

1630 GMT: It's raining in Tahrir Square and the temprature is lower than the nights before, however, the march of people towards the area continues and the number of protesters is growing still even as night falls.

And in Tunisia:

2347 GMT: The Associated Press now reports that 4 people have been killed and 17 injured in the shooting by police in El Kef, Tunisia.

The Huffington Post purportedly has graphic video of a protester shot in Alexandria. Sandmonkey advises, via Twittter:

So here is my 2 cents: Instead of getting blankets, please get some foldable tables, chairs, papers, pens and a laptop.

Start registering the protesters, get their names, addresses & districts. Start organizing them into committees. & they elect leaders.

But the status quo won't due. This lack of action and organization will be used against us in every way possible.

(Photo: Egyptians demonstrate in support of Egypt's uprising against President Hosni Mubarak in front of the White House in Washington on February 5, 2011. By Nicholas KAMM for AFP/Getty Images)

by Zoe Pollock

The Economist reconfigures an old way of picturing inequality:

Imagine people’s height being proportional to their income, so that someone with an average income is of average height. Now imagine that the entire adult population of America is walking past you in a single hour, in ascending order of income.

The first passers-by, the owners of loss-making businesses, are invisible: their heads are below ground. Then come the jobless and the working poor, who are midgets. After half an hour the strollers are still only waist-high, since America’s median income is only half the mean. It takes nearly 45 minutes before normal-sized people appear. But then, in the final minutes, giants thunder by. With six minutes to go they are 12 feet tall. When the 400 highest earners walk by, right at the end, each is more than two miles tall.

by Zoe Pollock

Benjamin Alsup chastises most contemporary writers for avoiding sex in fiction:

Writing about sex is hard. Some writers claim the best way to do it is by not doing it at all. Focus on the furniture and leave the bodies out of it. But I think that desire is easy and bodies are what's difficult. We need more bodies in our fiction. We need bodies on bodies in all the wack configurations that consenting adults will allow. Fucking matters. And when we ignore it or pretend it was something that can only be elided, or joked about, the joke is on us. Let's stop kidding ourselves. Besides, it's only sex. Which is to say, it's only the most important thing in the world, and nothing to get hung about.

by Zoe Pollock

Andrew Howe examines America through its bathrooms:

Certainly, throughout the west, trench models, although more cost effective due to the use of a single drain, are never as popular with users. This tendency can perhaps be attributed to cultural fears of abjection, the psychological theory whereby bodily fluids in which we invest much of our notions of privacy and personal identity, mix thoroughly and publicly with those of others.

 

by Zoe Pollock

"Blind Date" by Steve Orlen originally ran in The Atlantic in April of 2003:

After Where were you born? and How long were you married?
Comes the first sip of wine, and after that the clash of cutlery
And the shuffling shoes of the waiter, then the silence so brief
You almost don't hear it. What are the smallest objects you have lost?
What sudden smells make you stop and think back?
And the struggle, the summoning up, the visualizing, the squinting into the past.
Now and then she interrupts and asks
For a story, a theory, speculations, interpretations.
How many close friends have died and where do you think they went
And how do you talk to them now that they're gone?
And your mind is eagerly opening, swelling, a cavern in which
What have been formerly hidden from you by the public din
Now dart around like bats with their insistent, intimate squeakings.
Did your mother like you? How do you start a conversation with a stranger?
By now, the answers come easier, more flowing, a zone, a spigot, a well.
What parts of yourself have you given up since leaving your home town?
Have you ever been lost? Broke? Hungry? Have you ever asked your sister
What she thought of you back then, when you were kids?
The conversation a call and response, and when she enters the taxi,
And waves bye-bye, you are left standing at the altar
In the Church of Lost Memories wearing that ridiculous tie,
Your hands in your pockets, jingling the change, sniffing the ancient air
For clues, for distillations, perfume fresh from the flowers.
Have you ever? Have you ever?

(Photo by Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images.)

Krugman sketches them for Medicare:

Remember that we’ve just been through a ferocious debate over whether $250,000 a year makes you rich, with $400,000 a year working stiffs crying poverty, declaring that they couldn’t possibly afford to pay Clinton-era tax rates; do you imagine that we’ll be able to set a lower bar on denying Medicare benefits?

So maybe, maybe, we’d end up means-testing for the top 2 percent or so of the population.

But while there’s some money to be gotten by taxing the top 2 percent — they have more than 20 percent of the income — they account for roughly their pro-rata share of benefit costs — that is, the richest 2 percent account for around 2 percent of Medicare expenses. (Maybe a bit less because they’re healthier than the average American, maybe a bit more because they live longer.)

Drum does the math on Social Security an arrives at a simuliar answer.

by Zoe Pollock

David L. Ulin reviews the short stories of Barry Hannah.

by Zoe Pollock

The maker of the video captions:

[M]y main purpose for making this video was for the benefit of my airline friends who have kids. They have an attention span of three minutes and want to see exactly what it is Daddy or Mommy does.

(Hat tip: Boing Boing)

 

by Zoe Pollock

Ok, ok. You guys got me. I know Groundhog Day isn't a bad movie, and for the historical record, I love film nerds (see: father; boyfriend). All apologies for going for the easier (funnier) title. Or as one of many, many readers wrote:

You may not like it, but the broad consensus on this film puts you very much in the minority. The movie runs 96% on Rotten Tomatoes (meaning that 96% of critics who reviewed the film did so positively). Among film geeks the it is revered, and frequently sited as one of the great Bill Murray performances. In college film programs and throughout the film industry the screenplay for Groundhog Day is held up as a model of economy and structure, one of the greats.  In short, it is treated in most discussions of film (by people who frequently have those discussions) as a modern classic.

Another:

It’s an ingenious, meticulously crafted narrative of fitful, incremental betterment. And, amazingly, for a film that is so centered on repetition, it rewards, not punishes, you for future viewings: it gets funnier. Buddhists love Groundhog Day, but the movie also has some great resonance with Emerson: “Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” Of course, the beauty of Groundhog Day is that until Phil truly figures out what a high spirit might be, and just how steeped in old nonsense he is, tomorrow is never a new day.

In pre-DVR days (when you had to take what the networks would give you) I would always stop to watch a repeat of GHD – yeah, I just called it that.

Me too. A Dish reader happily adds to the logistical side:

One flaw in Mr. Gallagher's logic…  He states Phil can only play the piano 2-3 hours/day or be at risk of carpal tunnel syndrome or tendinitis.  That would be true – if his body did not effectively regenerate each day.  Phil's body gets smushed by a train at night – then next (same) day it is whole again.  Ditto for electrocution, etc.  So Phil has no worry of repetitive motion injuries as his body is repaired with each singing of "I Got You Babe."

As further evidence, I present "(S)ix months. Four to five hours a day" in card throwing.  Have you ever tried to throw cards?  After 5 minutes my wrist was feeling the burn, so to speak.  Six months @ 4-5 hrs/day would have brought on a repetitive stress injury of some sort if Phil did not recover each night.