subdee

The Hurt Locker - about a U.S. Army demolitions team posted in Iraq - is such a male movie, it could only have been directed by a woman. Sort of like how it took a German director to make the most American movie of all time, Independence Day.

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Speaking of the Oscars, it was cute when Jeremy Renner, the film's lead, stopped Kathryn Bigelow on her way to the stage to accept "Best Director". And then when he went offstage to retrieve her between "Best Director" and "Best Movie" -- while everyone else expected Hurt Locker to win, she apparently didn't. He looked kind of like a schoolkid going to get his favorite teacher. ^^ She's tall! Taller than all three of the actors who played soldiers.

I also thought the actor group hug during the team acceptance speech was cute. The three of them looked super excited to be there, and super chummy (as maybe they would be, after such an intense shooting schedule). (And it's a noticeable thing that as the movie goes on, the cast seems to shrink to just them, as if filmmakers had used up their extras budget by the end of the second scene.)

On whole I think it's a nice accomplishment, but the only awards I agree with are Best Director (definitely), and Best Movie (maybe).

AKA The manga by the Death Note writer-artist team about... a writer-artist team trying to conquer the world of shounen manga. XD; Shujin (writer) and Mashiro (artist) decide to team up in middle school. They share the same goal, of getting published in Jump, coming in #1 in the popularity polls, and having their work made into a anime so that Mashiro's childhood sweetheart (a would-be voice actress) can play the title role. And then (the plan goes), she and Mashiro can get married and live happily ever after, notwithstanding the fact that they are both too shy to actually speak to one another and can only communicate through email.

Yes, the writer shares even this goal with the artist. It's less like they're friends and more like they're two halves of the same brain, playing off each other and coming up with ideas together and supporting each other. It's kind of sweet, actually -- who doesn't want a BFF friend like that?

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Bah. Anyway, sexism aside, this is actually a good manga. Is anyone else reading this? Please comment or direct me to another post where I can comment, so we can discuss!

I've been getting a lot of mileage out of talking about this book in person, so I guess I will do the same here. Eeeee Eee Eeee is an avant-garde novel about depression: not Depression with a capital D, but different manifestations of major clinical depression which are represented in the novel by different animals. For instance, people who often worry about contributing to the sum total of evil in the Universe - who don't eat at MacDonalds because they know the money will go towards opening more MacDonalds franchises in Japan where formerly healthy middle school students will get fat and die - are Dolphins.

The authorial stand-in(?), Andrew, is a Bear... I was reading some reviews of Tao Lin's work that said it's about the Major Problem of modern life in the Web age, which is that we can do anything but end up doing nothing. I don't really agree - more on this later - but I could see it in a scene where a Bear rips the roof off Andrew's car, then promises "$100 and a free laptop computer" if he'll follow down a trapdoor.

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What else. Sabina and I talked about the resemblance between Tao Lin' writing style and the Hipster Runoff writing style, and whether it was a coincidence or whether one inspired the other. Her take was that "the argument against the hipster thing is that they're faking it because they're afraid of committing emotionally. but if you can't commit emotionally because you're super depressed, it might sound the same but it comes from somewhere different. and anyway, I'm sure lots of hipsters are depressed."

R's take on all this is that she's disgusted with the author, who has obviously given up on ever not being depressed. She says that if you make something like depression a core part of your personality, you're never going to be able to put it aside.

Jony's take is that she's sick of hearing about Tao Lin just because he went to NYU (she's a student there).

My final thoughts on Eeeee Eee Eeee are that it's short, interesting... and infectious. It's idea-rich and it made me want to write - the way idea-rich novels always make me want to write. So I wrote - fifteen hundred words that I threw away because they sounded too much like Tao Lin. omg I've been infected.

If there's a "flaw" in the book it's that it takes you to a sad lonely place, and doesn't tell you where to go from there. This might be a cult book but it's not the kind of cult book you can use as a recipe book. There are no solutions - except maybe to open a new tab in Internet Explorer and start writing.

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What a post for Christmas Eve. ^^; But I suddenly had a lot of time on my hands. Merry Christmas, everyone! PS I reserve the right to edit this post sometime that's not 4am.

http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/jnitrous.html
______the effects of nitrous oxide on the dialectical method

http://bravecows.dreamwidth.org/7595.html
______ASEANs, in Space!

http://ayalesca.livejournal.com/83279.html
______The Little Vulcan. With pictures! ♥

http://gordongartrelle.blogspot.com/2009/10/visit-from-dap-kufi-slapping-out.html
______Chasidic Man Mugged On Yom Tov For His Shtreimel

http://www.lamebook.com/daddys-girl
______The best/worst of Facebook: file with Texts from Last Night and Overheard in New York

EDIT One more:
http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/trends/n_9437/
_____Naomi Wolf's The Porn Myth

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I think I need to keep better track of my blog reading. Wait. Is this what tumblr and diigo are for?!

Did I mention that the police found my car? Yeah. It was parked 10 blocks away. Nothing important was stolen or damaged: the thieves cleaned out the glove compartment (no money); took all my CDs (but not my mother's); and left the car smelling like booze, sweat, and weed. But the smell's faded in the last week and the rest is inconsequential. Lucky me!

Brief history: Stella D'Oro, the Bronx-based biscuit company, was bought out by Brynwood Partners, the Connecticut-based private equity fund, which demanded that all workers take an immediate $5 an hour pay cut, later "reduced" to a $1 an hour pay cut each year for the next five years. The (unionized) workers refused and went on strike for 11 months, at which point the court found that Brynwood had engaged in unfair labor practices and ordered it to pay back wages and reinstate the workers. Yay! But Brynwood responded by announcing that they were closing the factory in the Bronx.

All this is going to be in an upcoming HBO documentary (still filming). Anyway, the latest news is that someone asked Hugo Chavez at a rally if CITGO, the Venezualen oil company, could buy Stella D'Oro and turn it into a worker's cooperative. And Chavez did show some interest (as he always does when a good story comes along). Nice plot twist for the documentarians eh? Too bad the company was already sold to Lance, Inc., who plan to relocate and cost-cut: essentially they are just buying the name, not the product.

Incidentally, when I told R this story the thing that most offended her was not the ev0lness of Hendrik J. Hartong III, Brynwood's managing partner in this case, but his incompetence. He couldn't just buy a factory that makes (a little) money and runs itself, he had to go in with ideas about typical wages and benefits, and try for a 30% return for the investors, and then pitch a fit and just dismantle the whole thing when the Union wouldn't accept his unilaterally imposed terms and conditions... and America loses a brand and 130 workers lose their jobs, just like that. I can't imagine Brynwood Partners are too pleased with him, either.