I am going on Vacation!

I have been pretty stressed lately.  An unfortunately consequence is I lose all ability to read.  I carry around enough books.  In fact, my life is kind experiencing a book explosion.  I have three books by my bed.  One by the stove.  Six in my car.  And two in the bag I carry around everywhere.  I really need to get things under control before I break my back with all the books I carry but not read. 

So with this vacation I have decided to Get My Act Together.

To start with...pre-vacation reading.  I bought the new Harry Potter book(my cheap macaroni and cheese is heating and I am prepared to settle in).  I only hope it won't stress me out.  I really can't handle that right now.  I am telling you....very stressed(you know its bad when you worry that a children's book may send you stress levels over the edge).  Damn that work.

Then, this morning I went to Half Price Books to buy some cheap paperback light readings for my trip.  My only requirement, I don't want to read a book that has the word "struggle" in the description.  I need to relax...so I do not need to read about someone Struggling to OverCome something(and yes, I know, I don't need you to point out that I just in one sentence excluded HP from my booklist.  But that's different...they are using wands to OverCome.  So make that the exception, If you are going to use a big pointy stick to OverCome Something they you get a free pass).  And I learned something...I think modern writers these days are snobs.  I mean come on if you don't have the writing chops to put your literary masterpiece between cheap cardboard that requires taping after one reading with a woman's breast and leg sprawled across the front....then maybe just maybe you aren't as good as you think you are.  I am just sayin you don't see Graham Greene complaining.  Now I know I know...publishing industry blah blah blah...I don't need the lecture I know all about it move to "quality paperbacks" etc etc.  I've heard it all before.  I just think that if you can't handle a little cleavage on you cover maybe your prose is a little stale.

So.  My current reading plans for my trip to Oaxaca:

Kindred by Octavia Butler:  I've read almost all her books.  And this is her most "Critically Acclaimed" and her first.  So it is probably embarrassing I haven't read this.  So.  Here we go.  I think I will have to do a little mourning ritual once I have officially read everything she wrote.  Maybe burn a little fire.  Roll in the mud. Something.  This is less science fiction-y which is why I have been slow to read.  But it includes time travel so don't go all "Academic" and claim otherwise....like some people(I'm talking to you Ishiguru, you too Roth).  Again about race politics:modern black women meets her slaveowning ancestor.  One final note.  Ms. Butler doesn't think she is too good to be in cheap paperbacks.  I read a novel of hers with an alien with hundreds of phallic like tentacles coming out.  Now tentacles are the same thing as cleavage but its pretty damn close.

The Good Terrorist by Doris Lessing:  This paper back is so cheap it doesn't even have a description of the book on it.  But it does have "a narrative agility which leave few left-wing sacred cows unscathed" which sounds just right for me.  Plus I have been meaning to read Lessing for awhile.  And have I mentioned I am kind of obsessed with left wing terrorist organizations.  Have I mentioned you should totally see this movie: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0343168/  On second thought, maybe this is not a good book to bring to Oaxaca.....

The Known World by Edward Jones: About slavery(hmmm...two slavery books in one vacation...maybe that is not a good idea).  I've been meaning to read for awhile.  Unfortunately this is one of those, "I am too good for breasts on the cover" books.  But we make our exceptions.  Some of the time.

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry:  Been meaning to read this for awhile.  I am a Big McMurty fan although I have never made a foray into his "western" books.  This is I think a good start.  Cowboys here I come!

And that is it so far....I shall be updating the list as flight to the DF nears.  I am thinking a Graham Greene book, maybe a Willa Cather, maybe another sci fi.  I don't know.  I probably bring and not read one of the many nonfiction books that have exploded about my life and car.

So my favorite theater is relocating(thanks progress!), the downtown Alamo, because the rents are increasing. Tuesday night I went to the second to last night of its lovely existence. The "Thank You for Smoking Screening"(yep that's right, even in smoke free Austin) of Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless. I've seen this movie before, many times actually, seen it even in the theater.

It is funny. The owner of the Alamo stood up at the beginning of the movie and stated "blahblahblah, I can't believe we are showing this pretentious piece of crap movie. New Wave my ass, etcetc. But we kind of HAVE to show it because Jean-Paul Belmondo smoked over 1000 cigarettes in this movie, so it is kind of appropriate....blahblahblah." After the movie, he stands up and say "OK. I am a fucking asshole. I watched this movie when I was 21 and was stupid. This movie is fucking awesome."

Well. Now. My Sentiments Exactly.

Don't get me wrong. Godard has made some pretension shit movies that are basically unwatchable. But Breathless is not one of them. In fact, I think if you are going to watch only one French New Wave movie, Breathless is basically it. Maybe Jules and Jim, but maybe that is just because I am hot for Jeanne Moreau. Actually, my favorite Godard movie of all time is Contempt. It has this scene in the middle were the main couple is fighting in the apartment. Single best fight scene in all of cinema. Seriously. But I am getting off track. The point is: Breathless is fucking awesome. It, like Contempt, has this scene in the middle where they stop all action in the movie to just hang out in an apartment. I absolutely adore that scene actually.

Some fun filled observations from the after-glow of this movie....

1. To begin with a quote from the man of genius:

"at the cinema, you raise your eyes to the screen; in front of the television, you lower them."

There is nothing left to comment on that. It speaks for itself. (Though remind me to stop watching so many movies on my laptop.) Well ok...maybe one comment. It is amazing how much more intense this movie is in the theater. I first watched it on a tv and enjoyed it enough. But in the theater...for example the scene after Patricia calls the cops? You just don't get the same swirling feel as you do on the big screen.

2. Every movie translation of the final scene I have ever seen says:
Michel: You're a louse.
Patricia:What did he say?
Police Officer:He said you are a louse. 
Patricia:What is louse?

But apparently a better translation is:
Michel:It is disgusting
Patricia:What did he say?
Police Officer:He says you're disgusting.
Patricia:What is disgusting?

Is it just me, or does the second make more sense? First, maybe it is just me because calling people lice isn't in my working vocabulary. (Though maybe I should start, hrrm...."damn louse" i guess it has a ring to it…but anyway) Also, I feel like the second dialogue is more ambiguous(for the better actually). The first makes it sound like Patricia is asking a translation question(to me). Also, the second is so obviously less pointed. Michel is commenting on the state of things. Not a person. Which makes so much more sense in light of the movie.

3. In light of the previous post on pregnancy, this is kind of a funny follow up. The idea of this movie being a woman's sojourn into pregnancy makes me endlessly amused(though no one i have ever heard has said this). Here is something I have always always been confused about in this movie. Patricia is in the bathroom. Looking in the mirror. Post pregnancy conversation. She counts on her hands to nine. Puts her head in her face. Looks up confident into the mirror. Salutes and says "dismissed". Now I know most people take this scene to mean "Holy fuck, I am pregnant." then "Oh well. It's all good" But I always wondered if actually this counting implies that she figures out that the baby is definitely not Michel's or maybe definitely is Michel's. I don't know!! Everytime I see this scene I want to beat my fist in my head to figure it out.

4. Godard is a Maoist which doesn't require much comment. I just find that interesting.

5. Truffaut co-wrote the movie who I like maybe even more than Godard(though Contempt is my favorite of all the New Wave movies I have seen). I just like more of his movies with more weight. And I think that Antoine Doinel is one of the most interesting characters(there are alot of course, but he is in the pool of tops) ever created.

6. Interesting wikipedia factoid of Hollywood history: The actress who played Patricia (Jean Seberg) apparently late in the 60s got heavily involved with the Black Panthers. She was heavily watched by the Hoover as a consequence. When she was seven months pregnant "somebody" spread the rumor the baby was not her husband's but a member the Black Panther. She ended up having the baby premature and baby ended up dying soon after it was born. So in a press conference, Jean Seberg went on and showed pictures of the dead baby to prove it was not a baby of African decent. Isn't that incredibly weird? For the next nine years, she suffered deep depression and multiple attempts at suicide. Only to finally commit suicide in 1979. Rather depressing.

So I have been urged to get back on the wagon so to speak.  So here I go.  I was thinking of doing a movie dump like I did a few posts back, but got a little carried away.  So I shall trickle out those movie reviewish things in more than one post.  Been awhile....so alot of movies.  Most recently, I give you my deep annoyance with KNOCKED UP.....don't say I didn't warn you.

I do not like comedies.  That's what I usually say when it comes up.  Plus tossing in the joke that "I don't like to laugh.  It kind of hurts my mouth."  Well, I think I am funny, and it is only egotism to want people to laugh at your jokes.  But that is not exactly true, it is just safer to say that then deal with "well come come, why can't you go see Jackass Two, or Borat, etc".  Just not my kind of movie.  So I was kind of surprised that I wanted to see this movie.  Though was not surprised when I didn't like this movie. 

I recently finished The Dispossessed and it is making me think a lot about forms of control and power(ah yes, such a new topic for me, I know).

The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin is a science fiction book set on a world that is much like our own, although much more like Cold War Earth than current day Earth. But some time in it distant path, there was a collapse of some sort and the rise of a fringe group of Anarchist that gain some power and are eventually given the moon to colonize to rather get rid of them as a rival to the established government. The Anarchist are given the moon, but in order to maintain the isolation and freedom they want for the Earth also have to continue the mining responsibilities in exchange for basic good from Earth.

The book talks alot about what it means to think in terms of possession. To see everything outside of myself as an object and think of it as something that I possess or do not possess. How this objectification of all things outside of yourself forms a relationship of enslavement, because it is impossible not to apply this evaluation of "value" to all things outside of yourself and turn that inward to make your own value be based on the objects outside of yourself. Living in a culture where all things are comodified how is it possible to transcend this? I think poses an interesting point about how hard it is detach oneself to materialism when one is surrounded by it. These thoughts are nothing new of course. But I rather like the idea taking it further and thinking about the possession you become when you see everything as a possession.

Another topic that is quite interesting was the discussion of the nature of a "government-less" government. I use the quotes because the book talks alot about how even with no rules per se people still enforce a code of action on each other. In the book, this comes in the form of peer pressure and social exclusion. Humans are pretty lazy. Very lazy. And generally want to maintain the status quo no matter what. So maybe there is no laws and jails to deal with those who fit outside the lazy, status quo "normal", but in the end, people will ostracize and enforce in a way that can be even more oppressive that a dictatorship. And this is not just external either: People also have a general desire for acceptance. Therefore, there is self-enforcement that happens based upon the perception of what is acceptable in the social sphere. When one thinks of "complete freedom", I think it would be easy to forget this monster of social pressure that exists outside of government which does actually govern.

I am planning on reading Le Guin's book The Left Hand of Darkness which is about gender and considering the absence of duality. I am rather looking forward to it.