Zander’s Weblog

Can I tell you how idiotic 75% of all people are when driving on the interstate? I know, you’re not one of them, and I’m preaching to the choir, right? I just drove 3,600 miles round trip to SE Arizona and back, going via SLC, Vegas, Phoenix, Tucson, then back via LA, Sacramento, Portland. The I-5 crowd was the worst. For the left-hand lane, speed limits are taken as “minimal suggested speeds”, and big-ego SUVs are always finger-fucking your exhaust pipe. So you can either join the crowd and drive bumper-to-bumper at 85 (so you can arrive at your destination 5 minutes earlier, but die from stress 5 years younger), or duck and cover into the right-hand lane which is almost maxed out with 18-wheelers and “Deliverance”-vintage poverty hulks doing 50. Or weave back and forth. I suggest flying.

Pope Brock’s non-fiction book about “America’s most dangerous huckster”: “Dr.” John R. Brinkley, who pioneered many amazing new ways to bilk people, offering a variety of libido-enhancing, life-extending, cure-alls. An excellent read, provides a wonderful perspective on how far American medicine has come, and how far it has to go! My favorite quotes from the book: “The constituency for truth is always finite, especially in the youth-recovery game” (p. 277), and “In science, as in love, it is sometimes extraordinarily hard to draw the line between faith and folly” (p. 36).Today I would nominate Keven Trudeau as the heir apparent to John Brinkley (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Trudeau )

A rollicking romantic comedy from Manuel Gómez Pereira, who weaves in a lot of the colorful spices one would expect from Almodóvar. Javier Bardem was brilliant, and won several “Best Actor” awards for this one. Puedo recomendarlo.

A weird indie proto-sci-fi flic targeted at twens with lots of cool cute kids taking their clothes off and changing gender whenever they get aroused. A well-made piece of fluff that will have you rolling your eyes a few times and feeling guilty that you almost enjoyed it.

An Austrian film, won the Oscar for best foreign language film this year. At least I can’t complain about the German language in this film! Sie war echt, aber was sonst? Otherwise I thought the portrayal of events was rather sanitized, with almost made-for-TV production values, and a really grating loud and obnoxious harmonica music theme (sounded like an accordion on steroids). The conflict was your basic “what would you do to stay alive”. But no one has yet come close to Lina Wertmüller’s Pasqualino Settebellezze (Seven Beauties) (1975).

A gay-themed film shot in B&W and set in New Ulm, Minnesota, where everyone apparently speaks German right out of a 2nd year primer. The cinematography and sound engineering were passable. The script, acting, directing, and editing all marginal. Kann ich nicht empfehlen.

Not my idea (a work ‘morale’ event) but hey, it was free–which is probably the only way you’ll get me to a Jack Black movie. Some of the sentiments were nice: play nicely with your neighbors, include people, exercise your creativity, follow your bliss, etc. Unfortunately my bliss is not seeing Jack Black

A Philippine film in Filipino/Tagalog with English subtitles. Interesting film on a number of levels. It provided a rich exposure to the ambiance of lower-class Manila, as well as a fun glimpse at the Filipino language. It was easy to pick out the loan words and code-switching (after over 300 years of Spanish rule, one might expect a lot of crossover). In addition, it was refreshing to see the complete nonchalance with which the culture deals with sexual variance.