Been casting about (get it?!) for some ancient sculpture that I can copy w/ a bit of polymer clay I  need to use. Though a king cobra'd be pretty sweet. This (not clay) one is awesomely scary.

LEVANTINE BRONZE IDOL

lolz

Because ILM. Original gallery. I bought Sculpting a Galaxy a few years back. It's glorious. Way behind on my models.

Cogito ergo es. Note mine. Credit to the dweller by the sea.

Oddly enough, I read this in an F-shaped pattern: Speed Kills.

INSIDE CRAZY: MIGHTY MONK - THE EMPIRICAL FALLEN

People would be a lot more efficient w/o so much brain capacity. Too many variables spinning around. Too much noise. Every word, every intonation, every tick, every flicker, every shift. Seeing the intricacy w/ no capacity to reduce it. Guess that mean's there's a reality out there, though, if intricacy qua intricacy can't be real-ly simplified. Noticing almost everything, playing dumb in two-thirds of your interactions so you actually have a topic of conversation and people don't think you're weird. Knowing exactly what someone wants or needs in a given social situation but still not doing it cuz they might start to guess. And makes the instance where you don't notice even more catastrophic, cuz you don't know what you don't notice. Guess that's what it'd be like to be Evil Mr. Monk. Evil Mr. Monk. The Empirical Fallen. Eyes w/o a heart. Just cut to the quick, skip the analyzing. See the ball, feel the ball, be the ball. The Attilla the Hun method. There is only do.

- Q, or the Evil Mr. Monk - the Guilt-ridden, the Ashamed, the Over-Analytical.

I'd say Q'd be a minor character in my great post-American novel, but I think DFW beat me there. Those eyes. Yeep. Gives me shivers.

I think, in a way, Magnolia is the perfect antidote/counterbalance to DFW. They both use the same vocabulary, but the conclusions are totally different (per my sense).

Eyes've always had the sense of judgement or knowledge of some kind (Horus + freemason borrowing, Sauron, God, etc., etc., etc.) for obvious reasons, but the sense of judgment is usually directed at the the viewed rather than the viewer. Even the idea of God-as-guilty-of-original-sin or responsible-for-evil doesn't focus on the eyes. We usually leave the first statement unstated: 1) seeing, and yet 2) not acting. Somehow omnipotent is easier to stomach than omniscient. Interesting that instead eyes'd wind up being associated with the Accuser. A blind God. One-eyed Odin? Mhm.

AHA

One thing: This American Life ran a story a week or so ago on the "Diana, hunter of bus-drivers" vigilante in Ciudad Juárez. Uncanny and therefore fitting postscript to the agujero negro that is Roberto Bolaño's 2666.

WHATEVS

I've lost all desire to write. Not sure if it's the next stage in post-college life or what. Baby quail are cool though. Guess I'll report in later. Toodlepip.

And song of the moment. Not terribly original. My two concessions to superstition: a person's given name and incidental songs. A rose by any other name would not be a rose. And what did thy song bode, lady? Hark, canst thou hear me? I will play the swan,  And die in music:— Willow, willow, willow. Apparently Arthur Sullivan composed five different settings of Shakespeare songs, including the Willow song. This is awesome. Unfortunately can't locate Alfred Deller's version on YouTube. Sad day. The interweb's just a little worse for it. Although countertenors still make me flinch a little.

THE ANTIBLOG

 Ain't got nothing to say. Except the last twenty minutes of Jason and the Argonauts is boss: Hydra killed, body burnt up by meteors sent by goddess of the underworld, hydra teeth retrieved by evil king, teeth spread on the ground and turned into skeleton army which proceeds to slaughter all the Argonauts in the middle of ancient ruins. The real star of the movie is the gorgeous stop motion work by Ray Harryhausen. And this evening's pop song is brought to you by Flaxen Crown -- who, interestingly, was supposedly only 25ish when he wrote that.

LOONESSEY VII: I LOVE A PARADE (1932)

This short eschews plot all together. Does have have a brief cameo by Gandhi, though, which makes it more than worth watching. Found this guy who has dedicated an entire blog to this sort of thing. Kudos to him.

AN ALMOST SPIVVY LIVY

You know a book's gonna be awesome when the author has the gall to begin:

"In a preface to just a section of my work I am able to make the claim that most historians have made at the beginning of their entire opus: I can say that I am going to provide an account of the most momentous war ever fought."

In the Latin: "In parte operis mei licet mihi praefari, quod in principio summae totius professi plerique sunt rerum scriptores, bellum maxime omnium memorabile quae unquam gesta sint me scripturum..."

Starting Yardley's OWC translation of Livy (XXI-XXX).

LOONESSEY VI: YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOIN'! (1931)

Bootleg liquor figures once more in this Prohibition-era short. But instead of underage piglets, today an adult (if diminutive) member of the porcine species named (you guessed it) Piggy is the offending party -- although technically the intoxication was unintentional (cause = belching dog). Actually this doesn't even happen until about five minutes into the short. Before that, shots of Piggy and his beau Fluffy alternate with cuts to their destination: a theater and the band-concert happening inside. Upon arrival Piggy makes a nuisance of himself and somehow winds up on stage blasting away at a saxophone. This in turn leads to an altercation with a trio of inebriated canines in a sidebox, which, somehow again leads to Piggy getting plastered right at the five minute mark. After that, things get awesome.

A reeling competition to claim a bottle of moonshine heads outside, where Piggy, seeking escape, provides a cutesiely simplistic car with a hefty swig of something stiff. This leads to a long rollicking sequence of prancing automobile, undulating roads, and general mind-warpage in the best tradition of the brilliant Big Lebowski "I saw so much it broke my mind" interlude. 

In a nutshell, this is the most charming and recognizably "Looney Tunes"/"Merrie Melodies"-style cartoon thus far.

The humor almost entirely relies on the actual animation (as opposed to the cheaper visual puns  which the Bosko and Foxy cartoons tend to rely on). This serves the dual-purpose of a). making the characters much more relatable and endearing and b). making the action itself a source of amusement (visual puns can work just as well in a still picture). Plus, Piggy, his beau Fluffy and the hooch-saturated pooch are infinitely more appealing than the frankly creepy "Foxy" &co. How can you not like the last shot:

ARGONAUTIKA

"That wasn't in the book!"

Finished Peter Green's phenomenal translation of the Argonautika by Appolonius Rhodius. The poem itself is fantastic, wedding a sort of tongue-and-cheek take on epic poetry with genuine emotional depth (see e.g. Medea). The splendid  translation, as well as the copious notes/commentary courtesy of Green, serve as fittingly snarky companions to the snarkiest epic poet of them all (although a number of typos in the commentary suggest that Green needs a new editor). I've shirked from bringing the poem up over the last few days I've been reading it just b/c of the sheer density of intertextual (bleh word) material in and around it (e.g. Appolonius' influences and sources, and his influences on all his successors). Too many directions to take. Sadly I'm not conversant in any of the insane amounts of scholarship on the Argonautika. I'll try and rectify that soon.

LOONESSEY V: BOSKO THE DOUGHBOY (1931)

Bosko's back. Probs the funniest (imho) short thus far, although it's also the most disturbing (see Exh. A). It's not Charlie Chaplin's Shoulder Arms, but it does bring out some of the absurdities of the Great War -- not that that's a particularly Herculean task. Also owes something to Bruce Bairnsfather, hands-down the best cartoonist to come out of the trenches (Exh. C). There's a lot of amazing humor that came out of World War I (cartoons galore, Mr. Punch's History of the Great War, etc.)

LOONESSEY IV: ONE MORE TIME (1931)

One more hippo

Today it's One More Time, another cartoon featuring Foxy, Foxy's ladyfriend, and a stretchcar-driving hippo. This time around Foxy has abandoned his role of train-conductor in favor of a beat cop, but unfortunately the change of profession does not diminish the nightmarish quality that was so pronounced in Loonesseey III: Smile, Darn Ya, Smile! -- in fact it's enhanced because this short is not, in fact, a dream. Here we find Foxy prowling through a terrifying city-scape, waving a floppy baton at rushing traffic, while the landscape slips under him in that vertiginous, old-timey cartoon way.

Eventually the "story," such as it is, wanders into more recognizable Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies territory by briefly pitting Foxy against a gang of bestubbled dogs who have abducted Foxy's vulpine flame. This escapade lasts for about 20 seconds, though, before the clip ends with Foxy being shot by a tommygun-toting crow (the criminals are well-armed: at one point they chuck a grenade). Something about cartoon machine guns really lends itself to slapstick. The most charming bit is certainly the appearance of the girlfriend's dog (see picture) who, for some reason Foxy dislikes. But the creepiest sequence also features the same dog, whom Foxy turns into a player piano for an uncomfortably long time. Foxy doesn't come off as a terribly likable character in either this or Smile, Darn Ya, Smile! I think the character-designers hadn't quite hit their stride. He doesn't have the goofy, cocky-unselfaware nature of Daffy, or the coy, cocky-selfaware nature of Bugs. He's just selfish. And rather dull. Bear in mind this is 1931, so it took the better part of a decade to even get the prototypes of genuine characters going. Def a slow process.

Piano Roll

I was browsing Wikipedia for info on Hugh Harman/Rufolf Ising (they directed the short). Ising apparently did a short  featuring a trio of kittens who sail to the Milky Way in a hot air balloon in search of milk. This I must see. It even won an Oscar. Also, Harman's post-apocalyptic 1939 Peace on Earth'd be interesting for historical reasons.

ARRIAN: NEITHER CONTRARIAN NOR MADAM LIBRARIAN

Always judge a book by its cover

Arrian (i.e. Lucius Flavius Arrianus "Xenophon," or Ἀρριανός) wrote the Alexandrou Anabasis (Ἀλεξάνδρου ἀνάβασις), published by Landmark as The Campaigns of Alexander. Arrian -- something of a fan-boy -- sought to emulate Xenophon, whom he name-drops repeatedly, both in style, mode and title, not to mention taking the name "Xenophon" itself as a preferred pseudonym. Almost in spite of himself, however, Arrian manages to create a unique work chronicling Alexander's romp across the Asian landmass. One interesting thing he does is incorporate material from differing sources (remember he wrote nearly four centuries after Alexander's death) and insert all of it in his own text, meaning certain events either play out in several different ways or certain statements contradict one another. This creates a neat sort of literary as well as scholarly effect. At times he draws attention to where his sources derive from (actually he opens, with rather audacious sobriety for a second-century A.D. work on Alexander, with a list of his principal sources (Ptolemy, Aristoboulos)) and considers their possible biases. Always fun to see a little rudimentary historiography. Probs his weakest pt, particularly in comparison to the Polybius (the Spielberg of classical historians), is his rather unclear descriptions of battles -- the Landmark annotations suggest this is a result of his sources being primarily firsthand and therefore muddled in the middle of a battle, a fortiori his crystal clear descriptions of the orders of battle. But Arrian's Greek is supposedly superb, so I'm looking forward to rereading it in the original at some pt in the near-ish future. Next up: Peter Green's translation of the Argonautika!

SHAKESPEARE DOES COGNITIVE SCIENCE, COGNITIVE SCIENCE DOES SHAKESPEARE

We are such stuff as dreams are made on

Fun if not terribly profound article over at Nautilus that puts the cog sci into poetics. Nautilus itself is an interesting little oddity. Think it was born of the OpenSource wave or post-wave a few years back, so the content's free. Usually has interesting concepts but rarely fleshes them out enough.

LOONESSEY III: SMILE, DARNA YA', SMILE! (1931)

This is the stuff of nightmares, zany to a demoniacal degree. -- N.B. I typed those words while still watching the short. As it turned out in the last 10 seconds, the whole thing apparently was a dream. Features this terrifying cartoon creature that remains unidentifiable for the first several minutes (actually, I thought it was Mickey Mouse or a close knock off), before its tail suddenly identifies it as a sort of fox like the Tails of Sonic fame. Animation's not up to par even with the last two shorts.

The Scream. It's everywhere.

POST-MAGNOLIA RAMBLESHAMBLE

You know you're human when your life is, for all intents and purposes, essentially flawless, and you still hate it, and what you hate most is the shame you feel that you hate it. Cogito ergo cogito ergo cogito ergo cogito ad infinitum. That's sort of the haunted look in Cruise's face, I think: the shame of someone who hates. "One of the freaks who suspects they can never love anyone," per finale song.

P.T. Anderson supposedly modeled Magnolia in part on A Day in the Life, which literally popped into my head halfway through the movie. Dunno if I'd seen that factoid before and forgotten or what. Something about watching William Macy scurry around like he always does and the pacing of the whole thing. Man, I really don't know what to do with myself now. Weirdly timely movie (which suits the movie's weirdly timely conceit).

It's so strange to look at your life objectively and realize how disproportionately emotional you are about everything, how you could regret as much as Partridge or hurt and hate as much as Frank and feel as lonely and stupid as Claudia.  Guess it's to compensate for the basic shallowness of a fortunate life. Spoiled brat problems. The fact that Anderson made some bits (exhibit a: the universal synchronous sing-along) so cheesy was probs the truest part of the movie.

WITH BURDOCKS, HEMLOCK, NETTLES, CUCKOO-FLOWERS, AND ALL THE IDLE WEEDS THAT GROW

Just finished P.T. Anderson's Magnolia, which, allowing for severe cabin fever and almost total lack of human contact, has just handily leaped to the top of my favorite films of all time (ousting Casablanca). Actually, that's an understatement but I can't think of an adequate superlative to describe it. It's just so real. Or true to the surreality of life. Warmer. Made me think of Infinite Jest crunched into a movie, except wiser and less solipsistic and more hopeful. I don't even particularly care to talk about it, so I'll skip right to Magnolia's own finale. Fais de beaux reves, cybervide, et tout le meilleur a tout le mad mad mad mad monde!

...You could write a pretty nifty little something just playing off the vide/vida pun. Ex nihilo donchaknow. Dweeb.

I'm literally so bored I just spontaneously started conversing with myself on a blog post. So träum was schönes.

THE WORLD IS MY CLOISTER

John Runciman's King Lear in the Storm

Stuck in the block room all day, which has the sole but happy benefit of allowing me to enjoy Arkangel's King Lear. (That serie's is fantastic btw. Their production of Julius Caesar in particular.)  Thoughts, if such they is or were or are to be:

When I finally produce my silent visual Lear-inspired masterwork, it's going to either started with a sort of atonal trumpet piece (kind of this sad whimpery drawn out demented regal flourish), or just with the first thirty-five-ish second section of Beethoven's String Trio in C minor. Or maybe even just the first four notes. The rest is silence. I would use Rostropovich's version though, but the recording on YouTube's lousy.

Also totally forgot that Gilead's final line "I'll pray, and then I'll sleep" is from Lear, which is bizarre since it's one of my favorite lines from the play. It's fitting, too: in King Lear, which consists entirely of moving lines, one of the most beautiful and moving and haunting is quiet and tucked away in the middle of the storm/play. I'll pray, and then I'll sleep. Gilead elevates those little quiet things tucked away in the middle of the storm/life, and then puts the quietest bit of Shakespeare in the position of greatest honor: last.

Still processing if there's any more significance to choosing Lear of all plays. Lear : : Ames? There's the duh quality of coming-to-terms-w/-mortality-at-rather-late-notice -- or perhaps Robinson's suggesting that Ames himself only began to cherish the things he writes about and cherishes after he learned about his heart condition (though the book itself doesn't seem to suggest this (though it was written by Ames)) a la Lear's sort of death-catharsis/catharsis-death. Probs all that and more. Really, it's just another case of I am he as you are me as we are all LearAmesHereComesEverybody together.


Hearing the play also really brings home the amount of times the word "nothing" gets used in the first half. The only thing more terrible than hearing the word used like a drum-beat for the second-half too is hearing its echo. And of course there's "never, never, never, never, never."

LOONESSEY II: THE BOOZE HANGS HIGH (1930)

Bosko stars once more in short #2 (The Booze Hangs High) of our chronological Odyssey through the topsy-turvy ocean of Looney Tunes/Merry Melodies cartoons. This time around underage drinking figures prominently – so hot button issues are still the order of the day. If possible, this short has even less of a plot and is even more absurd than Congo Jazz: there are several indistinguishable dance numbers featuring Bosko plus cow and Bosko plus horse as well as a duck family troup and a father-pig plus piglets trio. The dance numbers of the first act morph into an alcohol-fueled vocal concert in the second/third, featuring a basement-low bass daddypig who belches nonsense words and his duo of xylophone-voiced piglets. Said piglets, really, are more the stars of the show than Bosko himself. They’re also fond of their moonshine. (N.B. this was released in 1930, three years prior to the repeal of Prohibition.) Black and white suits cartoons in a weird sort of way.

Also features a scene in which papapig coughs up a corn-cob, opens a hatch in his stomach, and reinserts it... according to Wikipedia Nickolodeon excised this when they aired it...

i. TAKING A GANDER AT ALEXANDER, ii. LINKS, AND iii. SANTA SIMIA (WITH KITTEN)

| i. |

Just finished Book IV of Landmark's Arrian: The Campaigns of Alexander (Ἀλεξάνδρου ἀνάβασις). The account is terse and succinct except when it isn't, and Arrian goes soaring off into a flight of rhetoric and fancy, rather like my image of a business-like, no-nonsense Alexander occasionally succumbing to a wild storm of irrationality. Perhaps Alexander was a bottler of emotions as well as a drinker. Arrian may've more/less thought this as well, although he takes pains early on to emphasis Alexander's virtue.

Favorite moment #1. The Siege of Tyre was spellbinding.

Favorite moment(s) #2. Alexander's favorite seer Aristandros pops up almost at random through Book IV to prophecy and interpret omens. The sudden, offhand way he just interjects Aristrandros adds an almost comedic element to the narrative, "No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!"-style.

| ii. |

Because who needs an excuse to post a link of vintage travel posters.

Fantastic interview with Gérard Diffloth (the god-, grand- and allfather of Austroasiatic language studies).

Also, thesis from a student at the Uni of Birmingham I may speed read at some pt. Because dreams.

| iii. |

And, last but not least, Discarding Images posted the (16th century) illumination below. Gotta love the beatific expression on the monkey's face.

Santa Simia

LOONESSEY I: CONGO JAZZ (1930)

Inflatable tiger left, Bosko right.

First up in our Looney Tunes feature series: Congo Jazz from Sept. 1930. Surprising the number of interesting things a cartoon could bring up in the space of six minutes and 20 seconds. It features the wincingly-outdated-because-borderline-racist main character Bosko who seems to take his cue from the vaudeville/blackface performers of the earlier twentieth century, not to mention a burlesque palm tree, assorted jungle-creatures-cum-jazz-performers and what appears to be an inflatable tiger.

Gum-strumming. There's a word.

Probs the most interesting thing about the short (besides the insane, absurdist jokes) is how established the animation principles were by that time. Guess the rudiments never change. There's one gag where Bosko's bullet/musketball falls onto the ground, and seems to be an almost textbook demonstration of how to animate a bouncing ball (complete with dashed-line motion trail). Another thing is that Bosko ends the short with "That's all folks!" which phrase I'd always assumed was of a later date.

No comment

Besides that there's the absurdist gags, most of which rely on the basic conceit of jungle animals as jazz musicians and/or instruments. The bit where Bosko and a grumpy gorilla bond over strumming pieces of gum is oddly charming in spite of and/or because of how offthewall it is.

I suspect Bosko may've been an at least subconsciounce influence on Bungalow Bill (rhythm, falsetto voice, etc.). Here's a link to the whole short. Dunno how long it'll stay on YouTube.

N.B. The only rule of the Loonessey is there are no rules. This is the Calvinball of watching-old-cartoons-then-riffing-off them. This one turned out fairly straight-laced. Others may not. I have upwards of 350 to go anyway.

And finally, a NYT piece on Marilynne Robinson.

NO NEWS IS GOSPEL

Bugs, the Rabbit of Many Wiles

Considering going through the Looney Tunes Golden Collection chronologically, then writing whatever comes to mind after each short and posting it. Sort of a multi-year freeassociative intellectual Odyssey. Hence:

Coming soon: The Loonessey.

WHAT'S IN A NAME PART II

Finished Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain, as translated by Aaron Thompson/ed. by Giles. As indicated in previous post, the text's a treasure-trove of evocative names. The episodes with Arthur were interesting, though not as startlingly familiar as the Leir section. At a certain point he managed to kill 470 Saxons ("effeminate wretches" he calls them). That's about as subtle and developed as his character gets, though there are references to a Merlin prophecy, Avallon [sic], the sword Caliburn, lance Ron, shield Perwin, etc. Otherwise, he's a sort of Briton superwarrior.

Part II of (partial) Census:

  ✣ King Allectus
  ✣ Parthaloim
  ✣ Gombert
  ✣ Dianotus
  ✣ Caradoc
  ✣ Katigern
  ✣ (castle of) Dimilioc
  ✣ Ricaradoch
  ✣ Verulam  
  ✣ Sulpitius Subuculus
  ✣ Gillamor
  ✣ Gistafel
  ✣ Wortiporius