The Kingdom of Make-Believe Lives!!
Like Jesus and Bob Hoskins, I had a fairly eventful Good Friday. Sure, I didn't threaten the political and social fabric of entire civilizations. My London gangland empire was never conquered in the space of a day by the Irish Republican Army. It was pretty eventful, though. So there.

For one thing, I got my hair cut. People don't really like you or trust you unless you're well-groomed. It's a shitty lesson that leaches away one's will to live, but it's there. Honestly--I don't like anything making a liar out of the late, great Fred Rogers.

Tucked away in the Depot Town district of Ypsilanti, Michigan, the "D.T." or "Unabomber Central" (as I'm so close to calling it) seems the size of my kitchen and living room put together. It's apparently run by the multi-talented Naia Venturi, a local artist and puppeteer. I'd been there once before, for "Chemical Traces," a marionette musical about rival unabombers in love with the same disgruntled and heavily armed postal worker.

Good Friday at the Dreamland saw the "March Manifestival," a cavalcade of fun, games, music, and a marionette extravaganza (I like puppets, so I went), following a script partially composed through audience participation. It was a little alarming at first, as the Picaroons came on and played a whole lot of folk music (including a song derived from Shakespeare that I'm pretty sure was covered by Vashti Bunyan once upon a time). I recovered much later that night by listening to Rocket From the Tombs, the Mars Volta, and the Roots.

I don't know why, but the Dreamland seems to have an obsession with the Unabomber (himself an undeniable product of the "Harvard of the Midwest"). We played a trivia game where the contestants were read a line and had to guess if it came from a U.S. president, a Nobel laureate, or the Unabomber. I ended up tying this Martin guy and then it was on to the puppets. I seemed to pull a lot of adjectives during the script-writing, including "stainless," "ruddy," "tumescent," and "cavernous," which give you some idea of the finished product. A wonderful evening, even if (because?) I had to miss the folk-dancing to catch the last #5 bus back to Ann Arbor (um, yay, I guess).

After I returned, I went to the Blind Pig to see Jamie Register, one of the people behind hiphop collective Cloud Nine Music. Local band Otto Vector played first, and I'll just employ the notes I jotted during the performance...

"Who are these people? The place is deserted--I expect tumbleweeds. The music seems kind of a hard-edged dance-pop with a very eighties vibe. It's all right, but definitely not what I associate with the Blind Pig. Kylie Minogue with guitars--that's who they remind me of! Now I can die in peace (unless someone tries to pull a Schiavo on me, in which case I won't be pleased). There are some unbelievably half-hearted moshers right in front of the stage. I'm not sure I've got the heart to stick around for the Cloud Nine guys... Sweet Jesus, this place is dead (no offense, given the date). It's just as well, of course, as I found my usual place on the stool by the wall next to the 1972 Blues Fest album (with John Sinclair pompously smirking all the way through). Still... I've never seen it like this. Yeah, this is really getting me down. Screw the headliner--I could be at home watching old 'Cracker' episodes."

And so I went.

Protecting the Sanctity of Life the Only Way I Know How
For anyone around Ann Arbor looking to do some good Thursday night (of the four other people who've left comments on this blog so far, one's in Wales, one's in Florida, one's in Delaware, and one's in Louisiana, so I know it's unlikely), Planned Parenthood is having a volunteer night at their Ann Arbor clinic at 3100 Professional Dr. from 6:00-8:30 p.m. Don't worry if you miss The O.C., as it's begun to suck anyhow. There'll be envelope stuffing for the Spring Luncheon fundraiser, fun conversation (The Simpsons and aforementioned tanking FOX show will almost certainly enter into discussion if Jess and I have anything to do with it), and food, not to mention the great feeling you'll have upon completion. See you there, and if not, think of us fondly...

Values. Family. Jobs. Growth. Carbs. Choice. Ownership.
I went to hear a lecture this evening by U-M history professor Victor Lieberman on "Southeast Asian History in a Eurasian Context." Dr. Lieberman's specialization is in Burmese history and I'm pretty sure I used one of his articles in my thesis. Unfortunately, I was there for maybe a minute when I realized that it would almost certainly be a digression on the lecture notes I put together for the class on Southeast Asian history I taught at Akron a few years ago (trade routes, Mongol invasions, Srivijaya, etc.). Outside lay one of the first nice evenings of the year and I was inside in a stuffy lecture room. Off I went, I'm afraid. It was a curious thrill to confront my "past life" for a brief instant, but perhaps there'll be better opportunities down the road.

I'm maybe a third of the way through Herman Melville's The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade, which is much like pulling teeth. Check this out:

"At an interesting point of the narration, and at the moment when, with much curiosity, indeed, urgency, the narrator was being particularly questioned upon that point, he was, as it happened, altogether diverted both from it and his story, by just then catching sight of a gentleman who had been standing in sight from the beginning, but, until now, as it seemed, without being observed by him."

Most of the book is like that and I'm getting so close to tossing it out the window. On the other hand, I bet if I finish it that I'll be that much readier for Finnegan's Wake.

I finally saw Point Blank (1967) and McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971). Point Blank was all deadly Lee Marvin cool, racing across semi-psychedelic L.A. trying to get his money back from his double-crossing ex-partner (John Vernon, in a terrific screen debut; he was great in The Outlaw Josey Wales as well). McCabe and Mrs. Miller might have been one of my favorite movies had it not been about a half an hour too long. I've always thought Robert Altman was hugely overrated (especially in M*A*S*H), but this was actually pretty good. Warren Beatty and Julie Christie are well-matched as a gambler and a hooker who try to spruce up a grim Washington State mining town, and Michael Murphy characteristically livens things up as a clean-cut weasel. I love Michael Murphy. He makes every movie he's in sleazier.

The "greenway" resolution went down before the City Council last night; apparently its supporters behaved like absolute ninnies at the meeting--now I rather wish I'd been there.

Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!
Saturday morning I went to volunteer for Planned Parenthood at a Community and Health Expo at Second Baptist Church on Red Oak, near my former residence on the Old West Side of Ann Arbor. It was a rather bizarre experience, as prayers opened the event and we were treated to a stunning religious vocal performance by an area music major. It made me think about how foreign I now find organized religion. While I'm sure everyone at the event had different ideas on religion and spirituality, everyone also made strides towards coming together for a better community, something of which I'd certainly like to see more. Weirder still was that I'd brought a Bible with me; I'd recently seen Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Gospel According to Saint Matthew (1966) and was checking the events against the movie. The Sermon on the Mount gets me every time--thrilling stuff. Yet another reason I'm sometimes proud to be human.

The WRAP library will be up and running by April 9, the tenth anniversary of the organization's existence in Ann Arbor. Anyone interested should come check it out afterward in Braun Court, next to Kerrytown and right across from the /aut/ bar.

Arbor Update has an excellent summary of today's Treetown Scab Rag article (particularly excellent as it saves one the trouble of actually buying the Treetown Scab Rag or even fighting for it over at the library) on the greenway brouhaha to be voted on tomorrow night. I received a very pleasant email back from my councilwoman, Joan Lowenstein, who will be voting against the proposal, and who also thinks public transportation's great (yay!).

The Cinema Guild showing today was Mario Bava's Kill, Baby, Kill! (1966). It might be my favorite Bava so far, as the exteriors were beautifully shot in a sort of grainy texture enhancing the horrific nature of the film's events. The plot was more interesting than usual, with a ghost causing people to kill themselves, a pair of rival sorceresses, and a characteristically stiff male lead who looks a little like John Carradine. It could have used some more stringent editing towards the beginning, but still a fun time. Not as many people showed up this time as they did for Planet of the Vampires, but I surmised it was because the movie didn't have "planet" or "vampires" in the title. "Kill, Baby, Kill!"'s pretty cool, though, right? Maybe antes need to be upped. So next week it'll be Dimension of Amnesiac, Barely Legal Psycho Vixen Groupies in Go-Go Boots, one of Ken Loach's lesser-known offerings.

Here Comes the Sweeney
I've never seen The Sweeney, the landmark seventies British TV series which basically consisted of car chases and John Thaw screaming at people ("shut it!!"), but the name of the show came from Cockney rhyming-slang for the police "flying squad" ("Sweeney Todd," and so on). I thought of that last night during the screening of Detroit: Ruin of a City, by Michael Chanan and George Steinmetz. The workers striking at the River Rouge and other places apparently organized flying squads for protection against police and strikebreaking goons. So now you know.

Detroit played at the Rackham Ampitheater on the U-M Campus at 8:30, and I thought it'd be just me and a few curious onlookers. I arrived in the brisk evening air to find everybody in the fucking world milling about in the lobby. The original showing had "sold out" and they'd scheduled another one for 10:30. I decided to try that one, went home, had a beer, watched part of The McKenzie Break, and returned to barely squeeze into the second showing.

Mmmph. I actually don't know all that much about Detroit history, what I do know mainly coming from Heather Ann Thompson's Whose Detroit?: Politics, Labor, and Race in a Modern American City. A lot of the footage was really interesting, especially the stuff shot by a local workers' film organization trying to even out the media balance in the 1930s, and I actually didn't know that the whole "Devil's Night" thing (referenced in The Crow and, if I'm not mistaken, that Judgement Night movie) comes from Detroit. Other than that, it was a bit of a wash. It was shot mostly on a camcorder as one of these Louis Theroux-type, post-ironic observers of American culture offers a variety of bon mots while being driven around the city by a couple of old Motown salts (apart from George Steinmetz, I actually don't remember the names). The editing was probably choppier than it needed to be--if intentional, it was incredibly pretentious; if not, they should have done a better job. And how'd a movie like this manage to snag Michael Nyman to handle the soundtrack? All in all, it was nowhere near worth coming back for the second showing. I'll think better next time before I go to anything associated with something entitled "Ruins of Modernity."

Oh, and Francine Prose read from her latest, A Changed Man, at the Liberty Street Borders just before the movie (not that the two were related). I enjoyed her novel The Blue Angel, and looked forward to the reading, but found I could only stay a few minutes as those readings inevitably give off such a whiff of sadness and gloom that I become even more depressed than usual by listening to them. So it was off to the Film section to "browse" through the latest TimeOut film guide. They didn't seem to like Picnic at Hanging Rock as much as I did, but they do admit the sheer awesomeness of Death Line (available at Liberty Street Video on DVD under the title Raw Meat).

Sodom and Begorrah
I have less and less use for St. Patrick's Day every year. To "celebrate," after work I went to watch a Chinese-American themed thriller from 1937, Daughter of Shanghai, introduced by a professor from the U of M Department of Asian Languages and Cultures. Starring thirties sensations Anna May Wong (Shanghai Express) and Philip Ahn (Master "Snatch the pebble, Grasshopper" Kan from Kung Fu), it's a brisk little B-picture about nasty illegal alien smugglers. Wong's father gets killed by the evil gang (headed by a hilarious villain) and she and Ahn, a hotshot G-man, cooperate (and don't) to bring her father's killers to justice. J. Carrol Naish, Charles Bickford, and a young Anthony Quinn show up as a few of the baddies. Great fun, and a perfect antidote to the St. Paddy's Day blues.

However, situations like these are precisely why Ann Arbor is overrated. If you live in Ann Arbor and read this, please follow the link to Brandon's first post, where he provides an email link to contact the mayor and/or councilmembers. I don't drive and I certainly don't plan on living in Ann Arbor longer than I have to, but it would be nice to see this city become a model for sustainable living rather than just another boutique suburb.

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.