It's Everyone Else Who's Crazy, Judge Crater!
A recent event has forced me to wonder whether I'm really as nice as I think I am. I walk around Ann Arbor, with people not smiling back at me and chattering grimly into cellphones, and I occasionally feel much better that I'm being nice and they're not. But I'm starting to wonder if it's all a crock. I often blame life in this town for turning me into a misanthropic ass, but maybe I've been that way all along and the last two years have simply shown me the truth unadorned. Something to think about as I prepare for the Oirish hell that arrives tomorrow (mercifully, like Valentine's Day, it's only once a year).

In the meantime, I foolishly rely on movies like Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) to keep me sane. Peter Weir's masterpiece of repressed Victoriana helped pave the way for other films like Breaker Morant, Mad Max, and My Brilliant Career (all 1979) to put Australian cinema on the world map. Based on Joyce Lindsay's novel, which I intend to read, Picnic examines the turn-of-the-century disappearance of three schoolgirls and a governess at the natural landmark of Hanging Rock. It's quite the visual feast, with lots of pretty shots of nature (and schoolgirls lacing each others' corsets, drearily blatant phallic symbols, etc.) but doesn't really get going until the first half-hour is up. Once is does, though, it provides a smashing dissection of how the community around the girls' school falls apart in the wake of the incident, and a more general indictment of repression that would seem a little trite if not for Picnic's sheer visual beauty.

I also just finished Edith Wharton's The Custom of the Country (1913). Taking, as she often did, the moneyed classes of New York for her subject, Wharton puts a merciless parvenu newcomer, Undine Spragg, into the mix of old and moneyed aristocracy and lets her rip through three husbands and the social fabric of two countries. Like Picnic, it's slow going for a bit but picks up towards the second half as it's clear Undine plans to leave no stone unturned in her quest for fortune and respectability. The ending's fantastic, but I won't give it away. As usual, Wharton's fiction hasn't dated very much.

Lego Vampires Below!
Today was an unusually pleasant day in PlayNewYork (my name for Ann Arbor, as it seems like a Lego version of a big city sometimes; the impression is strengthened when you look at the mayor, John Hieftje, who looks like one of those Lego guys).

I woke very early to see the sun rising over the cemetery through a crisp morning sky and a colossal thatch of bare trees. Curiously energized, I decided to knock off the beard (which seemed to take an hour), eat breakfast, watch "Coronation Street" on the CBC, and go for a walk in a wealth of brisk nearly-spring air.

The latter took me past a fairly standard sight for Ann Arbor, a political protest outside a university building. An academic conference on Israel filled the Michigan League building on North University Street, and this offered another opportunity to call for divestment and assert that Palestinians were people. I actually went to the Israel conference in 2003, and it was very interesting, looking at such topics as water sharing strategies between Israel and Jordan, and the Orientalist perspectives of early Zionist settlers in Tel Aviv during the 1920s. There was very little overtly political content, and so I couldn't really tell the point of the demo. It's better, though, than the "Jewish Witnesses For Peace" protests outside Temple Beth Emeth on the Sabbath, which I find irritating even as a Gentile supporter of the two-state solution. It's the kind of thing you really can't get away from in this town (and, of course, many people would argue, nor should you).

Every Sunday, at 1:00 p.m., Lou Goldberg of the University of Michigan Cinema Guild shows movies in the basement of the Modern Languages Building (usually Room B-122) at the corner of East Washington and Thayer Streets. It's always a fun time, and we've been watching Mario Bava movies for the past couple of months now. Today it was Planet of the Vampires.

Planet of the Vampires (1965) was apparently the primary inspiration for Ridley Scott's Alien (and, in its emphasis on strange forces taking over human minds in outer space, of just about every early "Red Dwarf" episode). A human expedition lands on the planet Aura, and immediately falls prey to strange forces, etc. It's a great job on a low budget, and Bava explores his trademark themes of corruption and terror, exploiting the tropes of the horror movie to excellent effect in a sci-fi context. The soundtrack is also available; what stumps me is that people have actually bought it!

If You Seek A Pleasant Peninsula, Consider Your Options.
Good afternoon. It seems these days that everyone's started a blog of their own (it seems like thousands in Ann Arbor, Michigan, alone) and I decided to cave in and create one for myself. It'll certainly keep my friends and parents from worrying what's happened to me. And besides, what better reason to do something than the fact that everyone else does it?

I'm a relatively young cook in the aforementioned small city of Ann Arbor, whose merits (and, more often, demerits) are exhaustively discussed at one of my favorite sites. I'm originally a Southerner, though, born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on the day Nick Drake died. I recently received a master's degree in history from the University of Akron in Ohio, and plan to apply to a number of library and information schools as soon as I retake my GRE (I took it nine years ago, and since GRE vets automatically grow dumber as soon as five years pass, I have to take it again).

My principal passions include history, film, literature (reading and writing), music and increasingly cooking. I also love cheese--can't get enough of it. I could never be a vegan because it's just so damn good. I'm not a vegetarian, either, but I have no problem with the concepts. I'm spending the next couple of months holed up in my room overlooking a graveyard and writing my tail off. I finished six stories last year, which was a personal record. I also watch a lot of films, and can recommend two recent ones off the bat, both released within a year of each other:

Black Narcissus (1947) is the story of a group of British nuns sent to establish a convent school in the Himalayas, and who fall victim to the erotic mysticism of the "East." Call it Orientalist pap if you will, but it's a visually stunning film from "the Archers," the unbeatable producing, writing, and directing team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. It also features a sexy-in-so-many-ways power struggle between two unforgivably hot sisters in Christ played by Deborah Kerr and my own personal funtime nightmare queen Kathleen Byron.

Force of Evil (1948) was the great John Garfield's last major role before the House Un-American Activities Committee did for many of his friends' careers and probably killed him by advancing the coronary thrombosis that took his life in the early 1950s. It was also the directorial debut of Abraham Polonsky, blacklisted after this movie. Force of Evil rips open the collaboration between crime and big business as a powerful gangster enlists his lawyer Joe Morse (Garfield) to corner the NYC market on the "numbers" racket and force out all the small-time operators, including Joe's brother Leo. Sleazy, corrupt doings in a classic noir landscape make the movie worth watching anyway, but the scale of the societal rot turns this one into an especially riveting experience, despite the occasionally agitprop nature of the acting (especially Thomas Gomez, who plays Leo). With the righteous, idealistic fury of this movie, it's no wonder Polonsky was blacklisted!

Like I said, I love movies. That's all for now, really. I'm writing this in the offices of the Washtenaw Rainbow Action Project, a transgender, lesbian, gay, etc. outreach program where I work as an "ally" (I think that's the term) volunteer on Saturday afternoons. Hardly anything ever happens while I'm here, so I'm able to deliver this virgin entry. I also frequently volunteer with the local chapter of Planned Parenthood. Both gigs should give a pretty good idea of my political leanings.

If anyone out there's not having a good day, try. I sure as hell am. In any case, no matter how bad life gets, I can be glad this is finally happening.