American Fez

A Place of Disaffection

To paraphrase T. S. Eliot, time past and time future are both perhaps present in time wasted; and I should know because I've wasted a great deal of time today and will surely waste equally as many hours tomorrow. 

I spent this morning, for example, perusing winter landscapes in a coffee table art book whose dimensions were larger than the coffee table supporting its impressive weight. In fact, as there was no available surface left on the coffee table to place a coffee cup when the art book was opened, it would be more accurate to call it an "art book table" rather than a coffee table.

Then, when the art book is closed, I can balance my cup of coffee on the book while speaking the marvelous phrase, "I'm just resting my cappuccino with chocolate shaving garnish on this art book table." Although, alas, such a vulgar practice tends to result in brown coffee cup ring stains on the cover, which isn't much of a problem if the picture adorning the cover is by Jackson Pollock, but borders on vandalism when it's Bruegel.

Anyway, as I laboriously turned the huge book's heavy pages, from John Constable to John Piper, the thought struck me that painting winter landscapes must be much easier than other seasonal landscapes because the artist isn't required to render thousands of tree leaves. Only a few spindly strokes of brownish black are needed to indicate the branches. And if it snows, which it should in any winter landscape worthy of the name, the painter can fill most of his canvas with a simple whitewash and not bother depicting a load of tricky "ground."

Van Gogh, for instance, referenced on page thirty-seven, might have died with both ears intact had he limited himself to the leisurely activity of painting only winter landscapes. But no, he spent countless days reproducing those intricate details of sunflower petals, seeds, and stalks that obviously drove the poor man mad.

But these are idle thoughts from an idle page-turning hour, and so to paraphrase Eliot yet again: in this book the paintings come and go, here's a Maurice Utrillo. 

Casual Brain Fridays

When counting seconds in my youth, I was always told to insert the word "Mississippi" between each number to approximate the actual passage of real time. But time is dragging so slowly today that I'm replacing Mississippi with Llanfair­pwllgwyngyll­gogery­chwyrn­drobwll­llan­tysilio­gogo­goch, which is the length name of a town in Anglesey, Wales. 

Apparently, the name means "St Mary's church in the hollow of the white hazel near to the rapid whirlpool of Llantysilio of the red cave."

No doubt the inhabitants, afraid their mail might be delivered to the wrong address, added the red cave part to differentiate their village from other nearby villages also in white hazel populated hollows and adjacent to rapid whirlpools.

Personally, I find it helpful to have such distinguishing landmarks included in the name of a place. It makes giving directions to a location so much easier for all concerned. Compare, for instance, Llanfair­pwllgwyngyll­gogery­chwyrn­drobwll­llan­tysilio­gogo­goch with a rather mundane place name like Boston.

"Boston" reveals nothing whatsoever about the destination, which, if you ask me, should be renamed with the Wampanoag tribal phrase meaning "city of two insurance office towers by the polluted harbor."

With luck, the resulting place name would be long enough to insert between numbers when counting seconds to provide a better approximation of the passage of real time. And perhaps it might even be long enough to accurately encompass the amount of real time you've wasted reading this blog post. But I doubt it.

Video On Demand And Other Animals

Of the brick-and-mortar stores disappearing from our high streets, even more than the used bookseller, I miss the video rental stores most of all. Ah, what fun it was to wander down the aisles in search of something to watch on a Sunday night; to stumble upon a vintage film you'd never heard of starring James Mason or Claudia Cardinale; to make compromises with your partner when you each wanted to watch a different genre; to take a risk on Rainer Werner Fassbinder or Alberto Cavalcanti; to finally gets your hands on the restored DVD of Le Mepris that was usually out. 

Every video store I entered seemed to posses at least two VHS copies and one Betamax version of Eating Raoul which nobody seemed to rent. To this day, I've still never seen it. And there were many similar low-budget comedies and trashy horror films, equally as omnipresent in the home entertainment establishments of the nineteen-eighties, that have now faded into well-deserved obscurity.

A video store near me of blessed memory specialized in "cult" and foreign films. It also maintained a darkened alcove in the back where a variety of pornography was procurable by those with licentious tastes. I recall waiting in the checkout line for ages behind a piggy-eyed man who was renting at least a dozen smutty titles. For some reason, customers renting conventional films were limited to only three at a time, and I remember thinking it grossly unfair that perverts were so favored.

Perhaps the store owner thought XXX aficionados were less easily satiated than regular cineastes, and would return for more films within a day or so, whereas mere movie lovers like myself would keep My Night At Maud's out for at least a week before exchanging it for something else, therefore it made economic sense to offer unlimited skin flicks rentals. At any rate, the clerk conversed with the piggy-eyed man about his selections at great length; he merely sniffed at my less outré choice. In fact, I suppose the stock of cult and foreign films were probably just a vaguely respectable front for disseminating hardcore porn. But that's how most business works, of course, so I shouldn't be too surprised. 

Nevertheless, compared to the streaming services available today, the brick-and-mortar video stores, however dubiously they operated, were a combination of goldmine and Aladdin's cave. Streaming video is the one sector of the digital media revolution that provides less content than the old physical media options did. Try finding Odd Man Out or Night of the Iguana on Netflix and you'll find yourself facing a blank screen. If you feel like watching a Fellini film or a masterpiece of silent cinema you need to buy a Blu-Ray disc and Blu-Ray player or else you're out of luck. Which, naturally, isn't true of hardcore porno films. Streaming pornography from every decade is almost unavoidable on the Internet. God forbid, in this brave new virtual world, my piggy-eyed friend should suddenly have less access to his favored form of audio-visual escape.

And so it is now I who is forced to special order his viewing pleasure from South Korea, where DVDs are sold much cheaper than anywhere in the United States. I'm currently waiting on a copy of Major Barbara that costs about ten bucks including shipping. A good deal, but I'd still prefer to simply rent the damn disc from a store whenever I find myself in a Wendy Hiller mood.

Greeny-Golden Oldies

Most people are unfortunately familiar with the Bee Gees' song 'Night Fever.' It's the one of those trashy, nineteen-seventies hits that sounds like a troupe of eunuchs arguing about how to operate a washing mangle. Which wouldn't be so bad if the "night fever" of the title was a reference to nocturnal visits by some huge breasted succubus; or if it was about a white colonialist's cold sweats and irrational fears induced by constant native drumming. 

But it isn't. Apparently, Night Fever's lyrics celebrate dancing while wearing flared trousers in discotheques that stay open until the early hours of the morning. A singularly boring subject, if you ask me. Certainly not worth squealing about at ear-splitting volume.

Yet, like a spangled, hairy-chested earworm, Night Fever manages to wriggle its way into my head each summer. This is because I've suffered from the seasonal allergy colloquially known as 'hay fever' since childhood, with its embarrassing runny nose, disturbing cough, and weepy eyes; and I can never forget my cruel schoolyard chums, their voices pitched as high as possible, serenading me with endless choruses of 'Hay fever! Hay fee-ver!" while I fished around in my pockets for a clean handkerchief or unused tissue.

So every time my sinuses become congested, I'm reminded of Night Fever, albeit adapted by spotty twelve-years olds to taunt poor old sniffling me.

I once tried to tell this story to a table of mostly strangers at a wedding, where, for reasons best known to himself, the DJ had decided to play Night Fever twice. It was late June and both the ceremony and reception were held alfresco. Alas, nobody found my sorry tale remotely interesting. But I think that was at least partly due to my garbled narration, the result of repeatedly turning my back on my audience in a vain attempt not to sneeze all over their entrees.

Better The Devil You Know

"Get thee behind me Satan!" commands Jesus, according to the Gospel of Luke, when the Devil is trying to tempt him in the wilderness, and although apparently successful 2,000 years ago you'd have to say it's rather a poor defensive gambit in most similar situations.

Surely you want to keep your infernal assailant where you can see him, up front and center. After all, the Devil is known for his dirty tricks, so suggesting he takes up a position in your blind spot seems rather naive, not to say foolhardy. 

Of course, it was fine for Jesus, who no doubt could count on an entire flock of angels watching his back, but the rest of us are asking to have our asses handed to us if we think we can defend ourselves from a Diabolic attack from the rear. 

In this regard, the pre-emptive strike of Saint Dunstan provides excellent offensive instruction for the ordinary human: Realizing that the seductive woman entering his monastic cell was actually Satan in disguise (pretty obvious in the circumstances, if you ask me), the fast-thinking holy man grabbed the evil one's nose with a pair of red-hot blacksmith's tongs.

Ouch! Saint Dunstan puts the Devil out of action in a trice with none of this namby-pamby, appeasing "Get thee behind me" nonsense.

However, to be fair, most medieval monastic cells were extremely small, and what with the anvil and everything else crammed in there, I don't suppose there was much room behind Saint Dunstan for the Devil to squeeze himself into, even if so ordered, so it's impossible to know how employment of the non-violent tactic would have worked out.  

But I wouldn't risk it, all the same. No way Jose. "Keep your cloven hooves where I can see 'em, Satan," is what I'd say. "And make yourself scarce, you sulphur-stinking good-for-nothing, or else you're getting a face full of this Spring Breeze scented aerosol air-freshener that I've just weaponized."

I know a blast of air freshener doesn't sound like a big threat, but who the hell does blacksmithing nowadays?

The Prismatic

I like to think of synonyms as existing on a vocabulary spectrum, where chromatic shades of variegated intensity are attached to different words that mean more or less the same thing.

For instance, there is a vast rainbow of words that define a particular individual as stupid, from cretin (violet) to nincompoop (yellow), and finding the exact right word is like discovering the proverbial pot of gold. Declaring with complete conviction that someone is a moron (amber) always provides a very cathartic and personally satisfying experience, as I'm sure you will agree. 

But idiots (blue) do not exhibit the same pigmented degree of foolishness (orange) all the time, of course, which is why the word rainbow is really a color wheel that is always spinning.

In fact, my mind often creates a kind of pulsating psychedelic light-show when classifying its crazier (scarlet) interlocutors, as their conversation veers from absurdity (green) to downright imbecility (mauve).

It's rather like the judgmental snob's (purple) equivalent of seeing auras, which is interesting because a kaftan-wearing ashram-dweller (red alert) recently told me my aura was "rust colored" and that he was afraid he could get tetanus just by looking at me.

Although, how the old hippie (puce) could actually see my aura when so completely absorbed by his own naval-gazing I haven't yet figured out. Suffice it to say, our colors were not complementary.

Nevertheless, his psychic pronouncement, however colorblind it may be, has obviously bothered me enough to record it here on my blog (cracked eggshell). After all, nothing is black and white.

The Neurotic Swineherd

I've always readily concurred with Winston Churchill's remark on human relationships with animals that "Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Give me a pig. He looks you in the eye and treats you as an equal." 

But I've often wished that Churchill's interlocutor had caught the great man in an even more expansive zoo-o-metaphorical mood.

What, for instance, do warthogs think of us?

Although obviously closely related to the domesticated pig, warthogs hold distinctly different opinions to their homely porcine cousins, so I tend to doubt they view humans as equals by any measure.

Warthogs, if you ask me, present an unmistakably supercilious face to the world, their tusks recalling the impressive handlebar mustache of some self-satisfied Victorian colonial administrator who believes himself to be master of all he surveys.

In this respect, then, I suppose the attitude of the warthogs towards the the human could be described as similar to that of Lord Curzon's estimation of the lowest caste of Indian society.

I've no idea what that estimation was, exactly, but I'd find it hard to credit that the eminent viceroy considered a shoeless Bengali peasant to be much like himself (except both might be regarded as "untouchable," but for profoundly different reasons).

Of course, a warthog would, in its smug, dismissive way, interject that Lord Curzon did not sport a handlebar mustache, making my physical comparison of he and it fundamentally unsound, never mind my unamusing extrapolation of that comparison.

Whatever. Your average domesticated pig doesn't run around squealing at human factual errors like its found the biggest truffle in the forest, that's for sure. A pig merely oinks politely before turning its attention to other matters.

So maybe we should take a leaf out of the pig's muddy book, ignore those snooty warthogs and their delusions of grandeur, and psychoanalyze another animals instead. The giraffe, for instance.

Now, giraffes definitely look down on us.