Accismus

Max (newcomer Max Records, who looks for all the world like Ellen Page) is pissed off. His sister has outgrown him, and, while his mother pays attention to him, is affectionate and always takes his side in things, still, she’s dating a guy, and she has money troubles. So Max runs off into the streets in a temper fit and crawls around in a storm drain, during which cooling-off period he visits the wonderful island of the Wild Things, which every American child will surely recognize from Maurice Sendak’s picture book.

Life on the island is…really, really emo. The Wild Things have got, like, mad conflict, but it’s conflict of the vaguest sort. The type of conflict an author might inject into a story if that author knows plot is traditionally driven by interesting characters with interpersonal “issues,” but isn’t entirely sure what those issues might be about, or what form they might take (hi again, Dave Eggers!). So, we have the main couple of Wild Things – Carol (James Gandolfini) feels abandoned, because KW (Lauren Ambrose) has made new friends and keeps moving away, because she’s really unhappy with Carol, for some reason. And these new friends just really get Carol’s goat…again, for some reason. Meanwhile, the rest of the Wild Things either cower in sulky despair or cynically comment on the inevitability of all this once again turning out poorly (“all this” being the rumpus, a dirt clod fight, building a giant fort). The Wild Things are clearly aspects of Max’s world, but it’s impossible to keep tabs on who represents what. Carol starts out as father figure, then becomes Max, sort of, and KW at first seems to represent Max’s sister, but then becomes very much a mother figure. The other Wild Things seem a little extraneous – there is the tart-tongued skeptic (Catherine O’Hara) and her boyfriend, and the timid one, and one that doesn’t speak until the end, probably because nothing could be thought up for him. You can read whatever you like into any of them. Max seems to like them, most of the time. They kind of like him, except when they don’t, and they sort of like each other, then they don’t. They are by turns threatening and harmless. They have eaten all of the ‘kings’ that came before Max, but for some reason, they are ultimately affectionate toward him.

Apparently, the Wild Things suffer from loneliness and sadness…although, again, why that is isn’t at all clear. All of this nothingness is discussed at length in the vaguest of terms, punctuated by even lengthier weighty, significant pauses, wherein Max and the Wild Things stare deeply into each other’s eyes for seriously about twenty-five-freaking minutes, pondering some point that hasn’t just been made. Then the soundtrack swoops up – Karen O vocalizing in a distractingly jarring way – and everybody runs around and screams for ten minutes or so, until it’s time to have a Very Important Talk again.

Granted, all of this happens against lovely backdrops of landscapes in moody, autumnal colors, but don’t get too attached to the scenery, folks: this world is on its way out. Carol gives Max a tour of the island, and as he points out each dessert and forest, he explains how things used to be lusher, bigger, more reliable. Max repeats a bit of doomsaying earlier imparted by his science teacher, that the sun is dying, which Carol thinks can’t possibly be true. Throughout the whole movie, there’s an overarching tone of ‘well, we’re all just about done here, right?’ As if, whether in real life or in fantasies, whether on Earth or on Max’s island, in familial relationships or community building (or, for that matter, script writing and adaptation), nobody is really even trying anymore. Which is part of what makes this movie seem particularly current – it is a movie that, in my opinion, could only have been made in the late 00’s.

WTWTA has been a long time in coming, partly because Sendak’s book is so thin on plot, dialogue, character and premise. It could be fleshed out in any direction, so long as the basic heart and beloved details are preserved. And so, Eggers and Jonze could have taken this any which way, and they don’t seem to have conclusively picked a definite direction. But the few themes they did settle on – the sun is dying, we can’t talk to each other, we need a ‘king’ to take away the sadness – are telling. The prevailing mood in Max’s world is the prevailing mood in contemporary American letters. This version of WTWTA isn’t interesting as a movie, but it is very interesting as flypaper for the themes in vogue at the present time, and if a screenwriter were to make a version of Sendak’s tale every ten years or so, it would be a cool barometer for seeing where we are and what we’re concerned with.

Apparently right now, it’s environmentalism and personal estrangement. And boredom.

I’m unable to appreciate comic-book genre movies or books. I have tried, again and again, but (other than my weird obsession with TMNT) I wasn’t into superheroes or comics as a kid, and so I have no nostalgia for them and don’t understand the appeal. The dialogue is overblown, the plot nonsensical, the characters predictable and repetitive. What’s the draw?

I never saw Batman Begins, so it’s possible I missed some stuff essential for understanding The Dark Knight (for one thing, Gotham is pretty widely agreed to be New York City, yes? Why is this movie set in Chicago?), although it all seems pretty cut-and-dried. Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) is a millionaire playboy who secretly fights crime with the aid of many (admittedly very cool – particularly the motorcycle) complicated gadgets. When he’s Batman, he speaks in a really stupid sounding low, growly voice that makes you want to punch him in the throat. Heath Ledger plays the Joker in his Oscar-winning farewell role. He is great – although, it’s a really odd casting choice (particularly, they should never have put the Joker in a nurse’s outfit, as Ledger’s tanned, healthy young limbs entirely broke the visual). The Joker wants to fuck shit up for no real reason, other than that chaos is entertaining. Meanwhile, Aaron Eckhart is Harvey Dent, the fresh-faced young white hope (I think they actually refer to him as precisely that) DA, who is good, then turns bad, and Maggie Gyllenhaal (who is usually awesome, but sucks in this movie) is Rachel Dawes, Dent’s girlfriend and Wayne’s great love.

This movie, basically, was not nearly as good as it thought it was. It felt as if the entire movie was in italics, which I realize might be a stylistic choice, and that’s just one of the examples of how comic-book genre things don’t resonate with me. There was a certain image (that I won’t mention, because it’s kind of a spoiler) that was meant to be disturbing, and so was slowly revealed and then filmed continuously, but it just looked cheesy to me. All the various tics and motifs, from the Joker’s tongue flick to Dent’s coin toss, were repeated over and over to the point of chafing – this movie would be tops for a drinking game. Worst of all was the long, ponderous ending sequence, in which a voiceover (or some character; I don’t remember) goes on and on and on, elaborating on the thin, obvious symbolism and cliched platitudes that make up the “substance” of the movie, and introducing the inevitable sequel – I half expected it to sell me a souvenir T-shirt while it was at it.

If unrealized sexual tension is sexier than explicit sex scenes, 3:10 to Yuma is gayer than Brokeback Mountain. I fully expected Russell Crowe and Christian Bale to begin making out with abandon at several points in this movie (not that I wouldn’t have been fully in favor of such a plot development). Plenty of people get shot to shit in this movie, and it’s pretty much constant gun-slinging Western testosterone-drenched action, but frankly, the ending is as sappy, unrealistic and vomit-inducing as any RomCom. I don’t understand the scoffing at chick flicks, really – surround them with a scrim of gunfire and eruptions of fake blood, and they’d suddenly make perfectly respectable Westerns.

Which is not to say that 3:10 to Yuma isn’t an enjoyable film. It’s tension-filled and fast moving, and there’s Christian Bale there, as a struggling rancher whose cheekbones could cut jerky. Bale plays struggling rancher, Dan Evans, who’s in debt to the town’s rich guy, who is himself plagued by famous outlaw Ben Wade (Crowe), who holds up the rich guy’s stagecoaches full of money before they arrive safely. When Wade is captured, easily and unbelievably by staying around town a smidge too long to bag a bartender, Dan volunteers to help escort the dangerous prisoner to the nearest town, where the prison train to guess where will be coming through at guess when. The journey is long, and fraught, and Wade’s posse is supposedly hot on the trail to liberate their leader, although really they don’t catch up with Dan’s group until the end. The leader of this posse is Charlie Prince, played by Ben Foster, who previously played Claire’s bisexual spineless boyfriend, Russell, in Six Feet Under. He was disgusting as Russell, in a sniveling weasel way, and as Prince, he is equally disgusting in an irredeemable, soulless bad-ass way (by the way, if there is indeed honor among thieves, his character was cruelly wronged by Wade – Prince was super loyal and was only doing as he thought he should). I now admire Foster as an accomplished and interesting actor, and hope to see him in more films.

So, the movie has its plusses, but man, I have to say, the ending is just stupider than all get out. I don’t want to put a spoiler in here, but when I laugh out loud at the dramatic climax of a film, I feel it’s failed in its overall artistic mission.

Bubbly Poppy Cross can’t be slowed down, shut up or upset. She’s a font of positivity, an energy cannon flattening everyone around her with relentless, exhausting musketballs of pure, thoughtless, giggly joy. She’s obnoxious as hell. For the first twenty minutes of the movie, or so. And then, suddenly, she’s charismatic, thoughtful, strong and intuitive.

This is apparently how director Mike Leigh wanted audiences to experience Poppy – he has said that he wanted to create a character that was incredibly irritating at first pass, but then managed to win audiences back over, to become sympathetic. A tough challenge, and a risky one, particularly as those predisposed to dislike Happy-Go-Lucky (as I, for some reason, was) are likely to be sold on a first impression, but given the critical acclaim this movie has garnered pretty much across the boards, Leigh seems to have pulled it off. At any rate, he did with me – I loved this movie.

Poppy (the perfect Sally Hawkins) is a kindergarten teacher, who lives with her best friend and long-term roommate, and divides her time pretty equally between work and play. She has an older sister with a persecution complex, and a younger sister who’s rather whiny. At the beginning of the movie, Poppy’s bike is stolen, so she decides to get her driver’s license. To this end, she employs a private driving instructor, Scott (the perfect Eddie Marsan), a racist, sexist, paranoid, didactic, insane ball of fury, and this odd couple spends a great deal of the movie in the tiny interior of a car, pushing each other’s buttons. Scott’s constant fury and long pseudo-philosophical rants on proper behavior and life outlook are both fascinating and incredibly grating, just as Poppy’s constant puns, bits and asides, giggles, snorts and squeals are both charming and incredibly tiresome.

The movie doesn’t have a great deal of plot, although a lot happens in it. Poppy takes her driving lessons, dabbles in flamenco dancing, worries about an abused student, and begins dating the dorky but sweet social worker she calls in to deal with same. While Poppy’s forced cheerfulness initially seems a self-involved way of needling others into paying attention to her, it turns out to be a resilient way of dealing with difficult or worrisome people – she is able to work closely with people most of us would avoid, and can approach them without fear, because her irrepressible spirit enables her to maintain her equilibrium in the face of verbal abuse. Even Poppy has her limits, however, and eventually we see where they are.

Positivity has taken a beating recently – there was Eric Wilson’s Against Happiness, which I didn’t think much of, and now Barbara Ehrenreich has a new book out, Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, which is probably pretty good. And while I agree that many times, urging a good attitude toward a shit situation is a way of manipulating people who might otherwise cause some trouble into tapdancing in their fetters, on the other hand, irrepressible cheeriness can be a source of great personal power. People with Poppy’s personality make good teachers, social workers, rehabilitation workers, counselors and mothers, and the ability to withstand a constant barrage of at best depressing and at worst heartbreaking people and behaviors is an essential skill for those who perform such important social functions. Undoubtedly, however, every last one of these people eventually must define their own line of just how much of someone’s shit they can be expected to take before giving up on them.

This is the movie Joaquin Phoenix finished up directly preceding his crack-up and/or performance art stunt that had everyone so deeply worried. Personally, I was leaning towards stunt, but now I feel like we haven’t heard anything from Joaquin in awhile, which makes me think he might have had to go away for a bit, which points toward crack-up. I don’t know, though; I still think he was trying to keep a straight face on Letterman.

Anywho, Two Lovers concerns Leonard, a suicidal, mopey loser who lives with his parents in Brighton Beach and who inexplicably draws the attentions of attractive and employed Sandra (Vinessa Shaw). This situation is complicated, however, by Leonard’s involvement with his stunning, pathetic, drama queen of a neighbor, Michelle (Gwyneth Paltrow), who initially seems mysterious, but who turns out to be involved in an entirely banal affair with her married boss. Does Leonard have a chance with blond, zany Michelle, or will he have to settle for the stable and available brunette, Sandra (who will undoubtedly realize after she’s had two kids with him that he’s a total loser, and an energy drain, and if she’d only hung in for another year, she surely could have met someone better)?

Who the hell cares? I hate this kind of shit. Did reviewers see the same movie I saw, or does James Gray hold the sort of social capital that can’t be crossed? Because seriously, this movie was made a thousand times already, and the woodcut wasn’t worth the prints.

In 1993, the Chinese government began construction on the world’s largest hydroelectric dam, the Three Gorges Dam across the Yangtze river. The dam would provide badly needed hydroelectric power, but it pretty much sucked for the two million people living and working along the river banks, who would need to find new sources of livelihood, and to be relocated by the Chinese government (which, you know, good luck). The decision was also unpopular for aesthetic reasons – the Three Gorges river is one of China’s big tourist draws, and riverboat cruises to take in the dramatic scenery have long been in demand.

Up the Yangtze is a documentary that primarily focuses on the eldest daughter, Yu Shui, of one family currently subsistence farming in soon-to-be-flooded land. The riverboat industry is doing a brisk trade in farewell tours of the Three Gorges, and the Yus instruct their teenage daughter (who would prefer to go on to high school) to get a job on one of the boats. “Cindy” works her way up through the rankings of the riverboat staff, progressing from dishwasher to dining cabin server, while her parents and little sister literally haul their few belongings up the banks of the rising river on their backs.

By focusing on the specific instance of the dam project and riverboat cruises, the documentary manages to illuminate a more sweeping picture of China today, without much editorializing. The scenery is beautiful, and the camera work conveys a sense of ominous, rising threat in the seemingly benign sweeping shots of the Yangtze: the film opens and closes with low shots in the high, prison-like locks of Three Gorges Dam; the abandoned ghost towns on the riverbanks loom through the mist; and there is a lovely time-lapse sequence showing the Yus ‘ home being gradually reclaimed by the rising river. Inside the riverboat, the interactions between the young Chinese staff, the older Chinese management, and the American and European tourists are hilarious and telling. In my favorite scene, a manager instructed a dining room full of new employees in the finer points of speaking tactfully to tourists. He tells them not to be overly humble when speaking to Americans, not to compare Canada to America, and never to bring up divisive political issues like the troubles in Northern Ireland or the Quebec separatist movement. He also tells them never to call anyone fat or old: “you should say ‘plump.’”

The subjects of the documentary are extremely aware of the camera, which is intermittently charming and distracting. Some random townsfolk interviewed by the crew clearly ham up the high drama – their complaints are legitimate, but I think their hysterics are overwrought. The tourists (mostly senior citizens) are framed to look foolish and self-involved, as they attempt to be tactful, cooperative and non-committal for the camera – wearing silly hats like good sports, and carefully saying that China is “so interesting.” And Cindy, as an already always embarrassed adolescent, is so horrified to be on camera (particularly while doing menial kitchen labor, or being visited by her hick parents) that she frequently actually weeps from self-consciousness.

For the most part, however, the film is an interesting and informative look at a large-scale project in rural China and the unfortunate individuals displaced by sweeping change, as well as an insightful picture of the shifting social classes and growing economic ambition in contemporary China. The dam is scheduled to be completed in 2011.

Ok, I just can’t stand Casey Affleck. I don’t like the way he looks, I don’t like the way he talks, he just bugs me. I never much liked his older brother, either. So, you know, take that prejudice into account. And I will give him this: he seems to know he’s unlikeable, as he nearly always plays unlikeable characters, so at least he’s self-aware. The polar opposite of Casey Affleck is Brad Pitt; while it’s completely unnecessary to enthuse about his obvious attractiveness, it’s continually shocking to me. I mean, he’s just freakishly attractive, isn’t he? And seems to get more so every year he ages. It’s bizarre.*

So, given their respective consistencies, these two were very well cast. Brad Pitt is Jesse James, famous outlaw, charismatic and capable. Casey Affleck is Robert Ford, stubby and unimpressive, personally ambitious, socially retarded. You can see where this is going: it’s right there in the title. The movie is fine: it’s entertaining, but not amazing in any way. It could have ended about thirty minutes sooner than it did, but what movie couldn’t? The movie may have been trying to say something about infamy, or perhaps the interesting thing is that the villain is the man who killed the outlaw, rather than the criminal himself. Or whatever. The members of the James gang are every one far more interesting than either James or Ford. There’s lots of intrigue, and everyone’s wary and suspicious of each other, and above all of James, who’s ding-dong out of his mind.

It is chilling to watch a group of people who are ostensibly “friends,” but who are all terrified of each other, and particularly of their unpredictable and all-powerful leader. I wondered to myself, as I watched this movie, why anyone would put themselves in such a precarious social situation, and then I remembered seventh grade. At least James’s gang were in it for the money.

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*Incidentally, speaking of casting, I think it’s an absolute insult to cast an actor of Mary-Louise Parker’s stature in a near-silent bit part. Perhaps she really wanted to be involved with the project for some reason, but I felt offended on her behalf. Use an unknown for that shit, bitches.

I can’t decide if I like Dave Eggers, or not. I love McSweeney’s Internet Tendency (well, sometimes), and I mostly love The Believer, but I do not generally like the stories published in the McSweeney’s Quarterly, nor am I interested in the books printed under the McSweeney’s imprint. At the same time, I appreciate the whole McSweeney’s publishing philosophy, and the ground they have broken for small presses and internet publishing. As to Eggers’ work itself, I have not read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, but have heard enough about it to have a predisposition to dislike it. I feel most people whose tastes I share and whose opinions I admire do not care for Eggers’ books.

As to Vindela Vida, I read Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name, and I both liked it and didn’t. I thought it was original and well-written, and I loved the frigid, remote Lapland setting – both because it was descriptive of an area I’d never read anything about, and because it worked perfectly for the book’s subject matter. On the other hand, I disliked the protagonist. I couldn’t at all get a sense of who she was, and I felt she wasn’t honest or open. It’s weird to read a book written in the first person, wherein the protagonist’s attitude is ‘Sigh, I really don’t want to talk about this, but since you ask.’ Particularly, because I usually don’t feel this is an authorial choice; rather, it’s a persona a lot of cool young people my age have adopted, which I find extremely alienating in person, and which is now reflected in many of the characters dreamt up by the same people who currently freeze you if you try to talk to them at Brooklyn parties. I find people intimidating enough; I don’t need to be snubbed by my books. I started reading in the first place because I found characters far more relatable than people, but with the McSweeney’s crew, I often feel the books themselves are judging me.

Which brings me to Away We Go (directed by Sam Mendes, and co-written by Eggers and Vida). Burt (John Krasinski) and Verona (Maya Rudolph) are pregnant. Currently, they live in a shack of a house in Colorado, where they moved to be close to Burt’s parents. When they announce their pregnancy, however, Burt’s parents reveal that they are moving to Belgium. Thus, Burt and Verona are confronted with the whitest problem ever made into a two-hour movie: where in America would be best for two young people whose jobs are of a nature to enable them to make a living pretty much anywhere, and who have no limiting ties or hindrances, to settle down and raise a family? And so, the young couple hits the road, to visit old friends and audition cities.

The acting is far and away the best part of this movie. Rudolph and Krasinski are adorable, and every last supporting character does a fantastic job of portraying characters that are cartoonish but recognizable (particularly Allison Janney, as a braying, heavy drinking, inappropriate Mom, and Maggie Gyllenhaal as a drippingly condescending, New Age Earth mother). Everybody is a real sport about committing to dialogue that is frequently clunky or cliched. And – glory, glory, fabulousness! – the women all get to play interesting and hilarious character roles (albeit, as part of a never-ending parade of despicable or pathetically failed mothers).

The writing, on the other hand, ranges from ignorable to grating. There are twee details a-plenty (Verona and her sister climb into a model bathtub in a furniture showroom to cuddle each other and cry about their dead mom) and tortuously written monologues that go on and on, sounding like nothing anyone would ever say (an absolutely astoundingly stupid lecture involving pancake-syrup-as-metaphor-for-ties-that-bind, and Verona’s story of her family’s fruit tree, which made me feel like I was back in a ‘How to score that callback!’ monologue workshop).

But the biggest problem in Away We Go is that it has no problem at all…and doesn’t realize it. The movie would have been fine as a straight up smart comedy, but Eggers and Vida have twisted what is essentially a nothing dilemma (which city do we pick to have our baby in?) into an agonizing journey. But where’s the agony? Particularly because, in the end (SPOILER ALERT), the couple realizes they can simply live in Verona’s (deceased) parents’ gorgeous old mansion on lakefront property, which they already own!

We should all have such problems.

Doug Holt (Joaquin Phoenix) lives with his widowed mother, Helen (Kathy Baker), and older brother, Jacey (Billy Crudup) in the shadow of the wealthy and glamorous Abbotts. The two families have a history, but neither of the Holt boys are entirely clear on the details. They only know that they are not as wealthy or shiny as the Abbotts, but that does not apparently preclude their constant involvement with the three Abbott daughters – Alice (Joanna Going), the eldest good girl, who gets married early, and is prim and feminine; Eleanor (Jennifer Connelly) the middle bad girl, openly sexual and rebellious; and Pam (Liv Tyler), the youngest, sweet, awkwardly sincere, and tomboyish. Although both brothers get scholarships to U Penn, Jacey still has a giant chip on his shoulder, and he directs all his class resentment at the Abbotts. The Abbott patriarch married into the family money and so is particularly suspicious of upwardly aspirant young men. All of this complicates and impedes the real love story here – that of Doug and Pam.

Inventing the Abbotts is a movie in which an extremely lovely cast models extremely lovely costumes and does an extremely lovely job at portraying multiple love stories. I could have lived without the Wonder Years/Stand By Me voiceover, but I suppose it fits in with the 1950s period.

Jonathan Levine’s comedy is set in Manhattan in 1994, and that particular setting is at least three-fourth’s of the movie’s premise. The story set against this detailed backdrop involves Luke Shapiro (Josh Peck), who is one summer away from heading off to college. Meanwhile, he deals drugs and romances his psychiatrist’s popular stepdaughter, Stephanie (Olivia Thirlby). There’s a class issue and she’s way out of his league, but eventually she gives him a tumble anyway. He loses his virginity to her and so believes he is madly in love, and awkwardly phone-stalks her. Meanwhile, his shrink, Dr. Squires (Ben Kingsley, in a twitchy, heavy-handed, nearly unwatchable comic turn), is being divorced by Stephanie’s mother and so he makes Luke his mid-life crisis best buddy.

All of this adds up to a fairly uninteresting and unoriginal movie, with a few touching scenes (including a beautifully acted, if pointless, part by Jane Adams, who needs to be given a good project, already). Nothing it has to offer, however, is even remotely worth viewing Mary Kate Olsen making out with Ben Kingsley – I really could have lived my whole life without seeing that.

What’s the deal with professional wrestling? Darren Aronofsky’s film doesn’t really answer this question, but it does provide a wrenching character study of one wrestler, Randy the Ram (Mickey Rourke), as he ages past professional relevance. Randy has no money, few connections, and very poor health. Brought low by a heart attack after a particularly taxing (and gruesome) bout, he reaches out to his crush, Pam (Marissa Tomei), a stripper and single mom. Pam convinces him to contact his estranged daughter (Evan Rachel Wood), and he does so, briefly managing a heart-breaking and ultimately futile reconnection.

The Wrestler is particularly about the life of its main character. Beyond that, it is about the desperate fates of those who make a living entirely off their physical bodies. Randy is famous, but not rich, and as his body fails him, his entire personhood crumbles. Pam, who, contrary to Randy, earns money but not respect by using her body, finds her situation ever less lucrative as she ages. When Randy steps away from the wrestling ring, he loses his identity and his self-worth, constantly insisting that strangers address him by his working name. Conversely, Pam struggles to detach herself from her profession. She objects to forming personal alliances with customers who think of her as truly embodying her working persona, Cassidy, and is only herself when outside the club, with those who have no idea what she does.

Like many films, this one crams all its most difficult to watch scenes into the first half hour or so, and many viewers probably won’t make it past them. I never understand why films do this – they barrage the audience with visual pain before earning its interest or trust, and then ease off into 45 minutes to an hour of quiet, lovely character study once everyone’s parents have huffed to bed in disgust. Mostly, this film is all about the acting: Rourke, Tomei and Wood are excellent, each one of them somehow managing to constantly telegraph intense and wringing inner pain without being too overdramatic.

The question I am left with after watching this movie is, why the hell does anyone enjoy wrestling? The Wrestler won’t enlighten you there, but you will find out why suddenly everyone enjoys watching Mickey Rourke again.

Tim Robbins stars in this early Coen brothers effort, as Norville, a hapless mailroom attendant who is installed as president of Hudsucker Industries when their president unexpectedly throws himself through a window. Norville is meant to be a placeholder, a patsy meant to drive stock prices down for the execs (led by Paul Newman) to purchase before pulling the company out of decline, but unexpectedly, Norville’s seemingly stupid great idea – a circle drawn on a piece of paper – turns out to be a winner.

The story follows the usual drift of such tales: corrupted by wealth and power, Norville becomes what he once provided a foil to, only to receive his comeuppance and repent in time for Christmas. There is of course a woman, a fast-talking, unsentimental reporter (Jennifer Jason Leigh), who becomes ever more pure of heart as Norville is corrupted. This being the Coen brothers, what is interesting about the film is not the plot or thematic material, but rather the many, often surrealist, cinematic details that reference and tinker with the archetypes and stylistic choices of movies of this period (’40s) and genre.

Jim (Casey Affleck) returns home for his quarterlife crisis. Resignedly ensconced in his parents’ Indiana home, he proceeds to be generally disgusted with his ever-cheerful mother (Mary Kay Place); to nudge his jealous brother, Tim, into attempted suicide; to become duped by his Uncle Evil into framing his parents for drug-smuggling; and to woo Anika (Liv Tyler), a nurse and single mom. Think Garden State without all the whimsical details and indie music.

Had this movie been made as an undergrad film student’s final project, I’d actually have been impressed. Since it’s directed by Steve Buscemi, however, I have to say, it’s not very good at all. There are some funny moments, but mostly the dark humor is awkwardly timed and unoriginal. Jim’s grand realization seems to be motivated more by the movie reaching the 60 minute mark than by anything that happens between the characters. And Casey Affleck (who granted is supposed to be completely flat of affect in the part) has less charisma than Kevin Costner starring in a biopic of Keanu Reeves (or vice-versa). Overall, there’s nothing really new here: the movie is about as unremarkable as quarterlife crises usually are.

Julia (Kate Winslet) takes her two daughters to 1970s Morocco to live a more interesting life in this movie, based on the book of the same name by Esther Freud. Freud was a daughter of one of the billion mistresses who begot children by the painter and asshole, Lucian Freud (son of Sigmund “Women Are Aliens” Freud). None of which has much to do with the movie, but I think it’s interesting.

Julia arrives in Marrakesh with the vague idea of seeking spiritual enlightenment. Her sister has married a local man and converted to Sufism, and she encourages Julia to visit a Sufi sage in Algeria. While Julia works up to this journey, she and her girls await a never-arriving check from their long-removed father, sell rag dolls in the market, and take up with a charismatic street performer, Bilal.

Julia wants to live an exotic and authentic life with her kids, but is willfully deaf to their protests at being dragged along on her adventure. Bea, particularly, wants to go to school and keep to a regular routine, but Julia is unable to stay in once place, journeying with Bilal to his home village (where it becomes quite clear to both girls that Bilal has abandoned his wife), then taking up with a pair of wealthy expats. When Julia finally decides it’s time to make her pilgrimage to Algeria, the expats promise to keep Bea so that she can attend school meanwhile. Reluctantly, Julia leaves her eldest child, and sets off with Lucy.

Winslet’s Julia is a type-perfect illustration of a hippie true-believer, both selfish and loving, neglectful and caring. She worries constantly about her daughters’ safety, but she is unwilling to understand or admit that what she herself wants can be harmful to them. She is both Earth Mother and adolescent. Even if the acting weren’t so good, Hideous Kinky would be worth watching for atmosphere alone: the beautiful Moroccan setting, rich with desert colors, is lingeringly shot throughout.

Around midnight on Wednesday, June 10th, just past the Tennessee border at Bristol, a stopped line of cars stretched over the horizon line. But this stopped traffic jam differed from most: in amongst the impassive truckers, the drivers and passengers of these stopped cars were partying. They were also nearly all in their 20s, dressed in ragged, summer clothes. Their cars had license tags from across the 50 states. Though none of them knew each other, they wandered in and out of the stopped traffic, laughing, shaking hands, sharing cigarettes. Car stereos were cranked, beers were cracked, kids danced in the median, in the emergency lane, on the roofs of their own cars. An unknowing observer might think this midnight traffic jam was the best, most hilarious thing these strange motorists had ever seen. What could explain this peculiar occurrence (and why would so many people, for that matter, be traveling into Eastern Tennessee)?

One word:  Bonnaroo.

These motorists were all Bonnaroo attendees, Phishheads and hipsters on their way to Manchester, still a good six hours’ drive South. At 7:00am the next morning, the campsites would open and all of these kids would be there. For them, the party had already started, right here on I-40 behind a tipped semi in the middle of the night. And me, my roommate, Sara, and her boyfriend, Chris, were right there in the midst of them.

I am not the sort of person to attend a music festival. In fact, I am the sort of person to go to some trouble to avoid attending a music festival. In the case of Bonnaroo, however, I had every reason to go. My good friend Emily lives in Manchester, Tennessee, and was able to get the three of us free tickets, and offered to put us up in her house. We would not have to camp in the crowded campsites, or wait in any of the myriad long entry lines. My roommate’s boyfriend, Chris, is the sort of person who would go to a great deal of trouble to attend a music festival, particularly Bonnaroo, and my roommate, Sara, is the sort of person who would happily go to a music festival if other people were going, and I am the sort of person who will join my friends for an adventure especially if it doesn’t cost me anything and everybody else takes care of all the arrangements, so there you go. My four-day Bonnaroo adventure had begun.

[Incidentally, if I may digress for a minute, Sara and Chris are from upstate New York and Long Island respectively. Neither had spent any substantial time in the American South (Florida doesn't count), and had never been to Tennessee at all. The first thing they pointed out, as we drove the rather isolated stretch of road from the interstate to my parents' house, was the sheer number of churches we were passing. This would prove to be a theme throughout our trip. I had known I'd grown up in the Bible belt, but not until it had been pointed out to me with fresh eyes was I sufficiently impressed by the sheer volume of churches on every block in Tennessee. There are thousands of them: Baptist, Methodist, Adventist, Presbyterian, Evangelical, Echolalian, Pentecostal, Church of Christ, Church of God, Church of Jesus (plus a spicing of Catholic, Mormon, Lutheran) -- not to mention all the Firsts, Seconds, Thirds, Southerns, Orthodoxes, Reforms, 2nd Days, 7th Days, Juniors, Once-removeds and so on and so forth splinterings of each of these. The South is indeed incredibly diverse in its offerings of traditional, white Protestant churches. If you were to do a church crawl, you'd be passed out on grape juice and oyster crackers before you'd made it out of your own neighborhood.  End of digression.]

Thursday

As we approached the tiny town of Manchester, we saw a policeman with a sign directing Bonnaroo traffic to the shoulder. Obediently, we queued up in a long line of cars stopped there. I phoned my friend to see if this was really necessary, and she directed us to continue on several more exits. As we drove to the exit where she’d said she’d meet us, we passed four other exits, each with a traffic barrier up, and at least a hundred cars stopped in a line behind it. These were festival attendees waiting to be admitted into the campgrounds. We felt very slick to drive past them all.

We met Emily in the parking lot of the Manchester Seniors’ Center, and she led us to her new house – an enormous three bedroom with two huge porches on five acres of land for the monthly rent of freaking nothing. Us New Yorkers wept.

‘Do you want to go see my new puppy?’ Emily asked me, while Sara and Chris got situated.

Emily has never been a dog person. She likes cats. We’ve had long debates verging on arguments about this, so I was surprised and delighted to hear a dog was in the offing. Her next door neighbors’ Boxer had mounted their Great Dane, and a litter of puppies resulted, and Emily had her pick of the four that were left. We went next door to look at them. There was shit all over the yard, and kibble all over the porch. The Great Dane was the size of a small pony, and very affectionate. The runt of the litter, Pee-Wee, and Freckles, a gray polka-dotted male, ran up to jump all over us. Two black puppies remained on the porch, one lying across the kibble pile, the other peering suspiciously at us. Emily was trying to make her mind up between Pee-Wee and Freckles. Her neighbor told her she had a day to decide, because they were taking them to Nashville on Saturday to try to sell them. Then, Freckles stepped in some shit and flung it around on us, so we left.

It was time to prep for Bonnaroo.  Emily took us all to the special tent where each of us was outfitted with a neon green and hot pink fabric wristband, and then Emily led us to a place we could park without having to wait in the insane line at the main gates. Sara and Chris wanted to go straight in to Bonnaroo, of course, but Emily needed to wait to meet up with her little brother and his friend, who were getting in later. As I’ve mentioned, I’m not really a concert goer, normally. I was moderately excited about seeing a few bands I actually had some familiarity with, but none of them were playing Thursday, so I decided to wade in rather than dive, and thus spent my first night at Bonnaroo with Emily, her boyfriend, Jason, her brother, Michael, and his friend, Jeff, drinking margaritas on the porch of a nice Mexican restaurant (strangely attached to a seedy strip motel) in Tullahoma. I don’t remember what was playing on the speakers, but I think it was a mariachi band.

Friday

Okay, Friday!  Bonnaroo day, for real this time.  I woke up with a will, slathered myself in sunscreen, put on my hat.  Sara and Chris were making bacon, eggs and toast for everyone (minus Emily, who’d had to go to work). My friends were pretty speedy that morning, anxious not to miss certain things at Bonnaroo, and the three of us were soon driving to the staff lot. Chris was working two nights at the festival (he shoots music events for a living, mostly), but hadn’t managed to get his staff wristband yet, for complicated reasons. He did have his parking pass, though, and hoped that would be enough. It wasn’t. An unsympathetic skater girl at the entrance flat denied us – everyone in the vehicle must have staff wristbands to enter the staff lot. We parked in the back field again, and hiked up through the fields and into the sprawling camp grounds.

Bonnaroo camping spreads for miles in every direction. No matter how crowded you imagine it might be, it is shockingly moreso. There were tents and RVs in every direction, with tarps arranged into impressive compounds, there were oily hippies everywhere, teenagers, middle-aged heavyset guys, trailer trash, hipsters, college kids, so on and so forth times a billion. Also, an unending supply of white boys with dreadlocks or Afros. We wound our way through the sprawling campsites, and at each turned corner, a new limitless vista of RV roofs and tent peaks and Porta-pots rolled out to meet the sky. Above it all were colored balloons with numbers to try to let you know where you were, and there were also street signs erected at intersections (1st and 2nd style, familiar to NYers), but none of this was really of much help. The ground was packed dirt and mud and the sun was bald and scalding.

Sara and Chris had gotten caught in a horrid downpour the night before. It began around midnight, and was accompanied by a fierce wind that drove sheets of rain into your eyes and blinded you. They’d had to fight their way back to the car; they’d thanked their stars they’d brought trash bags to wear. Bonnaroo is legendary for its storms, and nearly every year, it is a mudpit by the second day. You are advised to lose your shoes and get filthy, as it’s really impossible to walk otherwise. We got lucky, however: the Thursday night storm was the only one we’d see that weekend. Still, it was semi-muddy, and by the time we reached the main gate, I had flip-flop-flicked mud stripes up my calves.

When we reached the main gates, we glommed onto a mob of people that was slowly oozing its way through the checkpoints a good stretch ahead of us. The sun beat down, the crowd pressed around me. I began to think there was really no way I could do this. I thought I’d have to go back to Emily’s and stay there, and began to be amazed at my inability to make it through even the initial entrance to what was meant to be a four-day 24-hour marathon of fun. I was wearing a tank-style sundress with a bra-top tank top under it, and flip-flops, a half-bottle of SPF 55, and a small-brimmed sun hat, and sweat was pouring down the backs of my legs and puddling up in the dirt. I have this problem, especially in summers. Apparently, at least 95% of my body’s total sweat glands are located along the bottom curves of my butt cheeks. There’s no way to win with this, loose skirts and pants alike each presenting their own drawbacks. Sitting down, however, is worst of all. I need an antimacassar for my ass.

So, I was soaked, hyperventilating and claustrophobic (I tend to panic in crowds, which makes me extremely unsuited for things like living in New York City, and attending Bonnaroo), but I had committed to this experience, so there was nothing for it to remain upright until I passed out. Eventually, I got to the gate, where a youth glanced into my purse and waved me through.

It took me some time to get my bearings, but eventually, I determined that Bonnaroo is arranged in three complexes.

An eagle eye view of the grounds.

The main gate gave on to the field leading up to the main stage, What Stage, which is the biggest, and has the biggest field in front of it. To the right of mainstage is a long line of food vendors; along the back of the mainstage field is a long line of Porta-Pots and a misting tent; where these two lines intersect is entry into Centeroo. Centeroo has a mushroom fountain at its middle, which at sporadic times throughout the day, spouts a muddy font of water from its top for folk to bathe in.

The refreshing fountain.

There are more food vendors and Porta-pots, there’s stations for refilling water bottles, there are souvenir stands.

Food vendors.

To the left of Centeroo (if you’re facing it from What Stage) is Which Stage, the second biggest stage, with a medium-sized field in front of it. On past Which Stage and Centeroo, the Cinema Tent is off on its own a ways to the left, and then there are sort of two fields with This Tent and That Tent on opposite sides. In between these, there’s a little adobe hut serving as a Post Office, and the Comedy Barn, and these head back toward a relatively empty area that features a ferris wheel, a Silent Disco (where everyone dances with head phones), some sort of tent always playing metal, The Other Tent and a few picnic tables. Between This Tent and The Other Tent, there’s a big empty stretch with a lot of sculptures around – fireflies on long sticks whose butts light up, big egg things hanging from a tree, a cutout castle, a metal dragon, a giant metal snowman full of fire that can be ignited by jumping on him in the right way, and also in the midst of all this, a little burlesque stage off to the side.

Fireflies, with ferris wheel behind.

This is probably not a very clear or accurate description of the Bonnaroo grounds, but it is accurate in that all of this is sort of a hodgepodge of similar sites – tent, stage, Cajun food, funnel cake, line of Porta-pots, tent, Porta-pots, installation, frozen lemonade cart, repeat – and it’s too confusing and bothersome to orient oneself, really – I adopted the system of just wandering until I ran into wherever I was trying to be.

We first lined up at the back of the crowd in That Tent to see The Dirty Projectors. I had no familiarity with this band at all, I couldn’t see anything, and I have to hear something multiple times before it makes any lasting imprint in my mind, so I can’t really tell you anything about the band, other than that I liked them at the time (this shows you about how good a Bonnaroo correspondent I am going to be – Rolling Stone, here I come!). David Byrne came out and joined them for the final song, and I don’t remember that, either (mostly because I couldn’t see any of it). What I do recall was that when we first tacked ourselves on to the back of the crowd, we were maddeningly close to the shade cast by the tent, and I felt it was a matter of personal survival that I worm my way into that shade. Luckily, the crowd kept moving up by stages, as people left the tent for other acts, so before long, we were under the cover, and I felt a lot better about everything, despite still being packed firm as brown sugar.

The Dirty Projectors.

We caught about the last half hour of The Dirty Projectors show, and after that, Chris wanted to see the Don Hertzfeldt show at the Cinema Tent.

Don Hertzfeldt is the animator whose short, Rejected, was nominated for an Oscar awhile back. If you have not seen Rejected, google and watch it now – it’s great. Chris is a big fan, and played it Wednesday morning before we left, and I thought it was hilarious. Hertzfeldt is a master of Kafka-esque humor; his films are full of simple characters neutrally experiencing the myriad unpleasantnesses of life, plodding through repetitive banality, only to be blindsided by meaningless and inexplicable chaos and horror. Chris is such a Hertzfeldt fan, he was even wearing his Rejected T-shirt.

Incidentally, I feel like there’s some joke about how it’s lame to wear the T-shirt of the band you’re going to see to their concert, but I think now that this must be outdated humor – there were all kinds of people wearing T-shirts of the bands they were seeing at Bonnaroo, and I doubt these folks would fail to be hip. Of course, perhaps it’s now cool to wear the T-shirt of the band you’re going to see ironically. Or, maybe these people were attending the shows of other bands at the same time as the band on their T-shirt was playing! Wouldn’t that be hostile? (I don’t have any T-shirts with bands on them, but I do have one with David Bowie’s face on it.)

We headed over to the Cinema Tent, and Chris got in the short line, while Sara and I went to refill our water bottles. The line at the refilling station, however, wasn’t moving at all.

Long ass water line.

Eventually, we noticed various other lines forming perpendicular to the one we’d originally gotten on, so we gave up on the water bottles and went to stand in the cinema line, where Chris had befriended a couple of stoned boys from Florida who both looked like stand-ins for That 70’s Show. We all stood there in the line and talked for a long time. It was still extremely hot. After we’d stood there for awhile, a tiny freckled orange-haired girl passed out and started seizing from the heat. She came around and seemed alright (though very embarrassed) and was led into the tent for some ice water. Then, a giant foam Butterfinger came around handing out mini-Snickers.

No, just kidding! They were mini-Butterfingers, of course! We all refused them initially, but when the Butterfinger told us they were cold, we all took them. At long last, the rope was pulled back, and we all filed into the dark, heavily air-conditioned cinema tent, which had rows and rows of folding chairs facing a screen.

We watched all manner of Don Hertzfeldt films. I enjoyed them, but then I started to feel really light-headed, even just sitting there in the air-conditioned dark. I ate a ProBar I had in my purse, and felt better. Don Hertzfeldt opened a Q&A after the screening (and after that, Chris managed to get his T-shirt autographed), but I cut out at that point, because the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were performing at Which Stage. I really love the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and was especially excited for this show. I am dimly aware that maybe the Yeah Yeah Yeahs aren’t cool anymore, is that right? Or perhaps they’re just thought of as really white, I don’t know. At any rate, I love them, and I really like Karen O’s voice and style and think she’s bad ass. When I arrived at Which Stage, I saw a little stand of bleachers that not many people seemed to be occupying, so I thought I’d sit on them, but they were for VIPs. As far as I can see, this is an excellent reason to spring for VIP tickets – people in the bleachers were actually able to watch the shows at both the stages (although I don’t think they had any enhanced vantage point in the tents). Otherwise, Which Stage was a packed, frying pan of a field. I started out relatively close to the stage, by the area where the cameramen perched, but so many people ended up pressed in on top of me that I had to withdraw. I was verging on panic attack again, and anyway, I couldn’t see anything, so there was no advantage to being closer. I have never been in a packed mob trying to see something up front without some six foot dude slipping around me with a polite ‘Excuse me,’ only to stand right in front of my face, as if I were standing there for some purpose unrelated to the performance onstage.

Right as I was planning my escape, Emily called and said she was to the left of the bleachers, so I fought my way back through the crowd and then all the way across to the right of the bleachers, which was no little trouble, let me tell you, and after I’d realized my mistake and fought my way back across to the left of the bleachers, I at last found Emily (and Jason), and we proceeded to squint at the stage. Very far away, a tiny Karen O was cavorting in front of an enormous blue eyeball. She wore a kimono, which she eventually dropped to reveal a romper and what appeared to be yellow striped tights. For some songs, she put a white drapey shawl-thing on her shoulders; other times, she took that back off. I think it was the wrong venue for this band, really – the music overwhelmed the vocals, and Karen O seemed to be struggling to fill up the space with her voice and her dancing. It was kind of stressful to watch, and I didn’t feel included at all, so before the end of the performance, we left in search of beers, shade and arepas.

Karen O, with eyeball.

One of the main problems with Bonnaroo is that the great amount of musical acts they are able to offer by running five stages simultaneously means you are bound to have to decide between many bands you really like. Nearly all of the bands I actually knew something about all seemed to overlap. I would have liked to catch Grizzly Bear – I have heard a couple of their songs and liked them – and I could have caught the end of their show, but I was sort of burnt out on concerts by this point (having seen half of two). Instead, we rode the ferris wheel. We stood in a brief line with a dad and small boy. The dad told us all about himself without prompting (this turned out to be true of many Bonnaroo attendees), and told what he obviously felt was an impressive story about his earlier visit with a woman (whose name I didn’t recognize, but who was obviously one of the musicians performing at the festival) who he’d gone to high school with, and who’d come out of her dressing room to say hi to them in — ‘Tell them what she was wearing, son?’ ‘A bra!!’

The ferris wheel yielded an eagle-eye view of just how vast Bonnaroo’s camping grounds were. These photos are all of different directions:

Camping...

...and more camping...

...and yet more camping...

...and three guesses.

The Bonnaroo attendance was around 75,000 this year. Manchester’s population is less than 10,000 (related side-note: if you google ‘Manchester, TN,’ the Bonnaroo website is the third result, after the city’s official web page and its Wikipedia entry; this is especially entertaining, because the Bonnaroo website does not have ‘Manchester’ in its title or description).

When we alighted from the ferris wheel, the sun had more or less set. Emily was torn between seeing Lucinda Williams and Ani DiFranco; she settled on Lucinda Williams, which I was happy about, because I could go with her, whereas I probably would have had to find something else to do if she’d gone to see Ani. I’d never seen Lucinda Williams before, but really enjoyed her entire set at This Tent, although again, I have no memory of it now to describe it for you. I can report, however, that she wore a black tank top and a black cowboy hat, and her muscly arms clenched at the guitar in the way of all cool folksinger chicks. I know this, because there were a great many mud puddles in This Tent, forcing large gaps in the crowd which increased visibility. Emily and I had had several $6 beers by this time, and toward the end of Lucinda Williams, we had to pee most desperately. We held out, though, and made a mad rush for the Port-a-Pots once the set had finished.

The Port-a-Pots are one of the more unpleasant Bonnaroo experiences. It was entirely necessary to use them multiple times each day – even if you opted not to drink beer (which is not something I can commit to when I have long periods of unoccupied time in close proximity to beer), you had to stay hydrated in the heat, so there was really no avoiding Port-a-Pot usage, and they were indeed foul. We learned after the first day to bring our own tissue packs, as TP was often out, and to bring Wet Wipes, as the hand-washing stations were not adjacent to the Port-a-Pots in any way and were sometimes impractical to get to immediately – and you did want to clean your hands immediately upon exiting, even if you didn’t touch anything but the door handle. I am forever grateful to my mother for teaching me to hover from a young age, ensuring muscular thighs and reliable balance that will enable me to emerge unscathed from any foul bathroom situation. Of course, the ideal thing is to have a penis.

Port-a-pots.

The Beastie Boys were headlining Friday night at What Stage, so we headed over there to meet up with all our friends. What Stage was already impassibly crowded. We crawled along the edge of the fray, by the food tents, and hovered there, dancing back and forth to avoid the converging streams of travelers with giant plates of fried potatoes and ketchupy hot dogs and slopping cups of beer, and Emily called her brother. He and Jeff were in the thick of it, and suggested we fight our way out to them, which we weren’t really sure about. Sara and Chris met up with us, and we expressed our reluctance to penetrate the crowd (or, really, to listen to the Beastie Boys). After hovering there for about half a song, we headed out into the now deserted other quadrants of Bonnaroo and Sara spread a sheet she’d brought out on the ground. At some point, Chris left to go get ready for his shift (he was shooting Public Enemy and then Paul Oakenfold, from midnight to 4:00am), and Michael and Jeff joined us (they weren’t overwhelmed with the Beastie Boys), and we drank a great many $6 fresh blended fruit drinks mixed with $0 vodka, and really had a merry old time.

At some point, we all split up, and decided to go wandering around. Sara, Emily and I found a performance of some sort that went into intermission just as we arrived. We spread out our sheet and watched some women in striped thigh-highs and bustiers and a couple of giant, fat guys with affected Cheech-type accents ape a sort of Weimar-era circus act type thing, where different performers reclined on nail beds, and then piled bricks and women on top, and that sort of thing.

A lot going on here.

Then, there was some hula-hooping, and soon after, Emily, Jason, Sara and I left. When we got back to Emily’s, I took a badly needed and tremendously appreciated shower, ate some trail mix, and collapsed into bed. Chris and the boys wouldn’t get back until well after daybreak.

Saturday

‘Oh, fuck,’ was my first thought upon waking Saturday morning. ‘I have two more days of this.’

It’s not that I didn’t enjoy the concerts or anything. It’s just that I was quite sure I wasn’t interested enough to sustain this for two more full days. I suddenly felt extremely foolish for deciding to attend a four-day concert in the first place (however free the tickets). I am not a concert goer. It’s never once occurred to me to go to a concert without a friend extending an invitation. Before Bonnaroo, I had been to one Tori Amos concert, two They Might Be Giants concerts, two Indigo Girls concerts…and I’m pretty sure that’s it. And at least two of those weren’t so much concerts as they were free summer outdoor events. Bonnaroo 2009 is the most concert I’ve ever gotten in my life thus far!

Luckily, there was quite a lot of fooling around the house to be done before we made our way back to the festival grounds. First of all, Emily and Jason had settled on Freckles, and brought him home. We sat out on the back porch playing with the puppy, who was already 28 pounds at 12 weeks, and had paws the size of clay pigeons. He also had the loose skin and knock-kneed awkwardness of all puppies and kept rolling adorably off the porch and then straining at hopping back up, like a little kid coming out of the deep end.

What's that, Freckles?

Oh, ha, ha, ha, you are too much!

He also took every opportunity to make a break for his childhood home, inconveniently located right next door complete with mom, dad and remaining siblings. Emily wasn’t quite sure what to do about that, but decided that when we left, she would put him in a horse stable she happened to have handy on her massive property.

Also, Sara made French toast for breakfast, and Emily cooked bacon in a pot. I did not know such a thing was possible, but you can just cut the bacon in half and throw it in there.

Eventually, it was time once more for Bonnaroo. I rode with Emily, Jason and the boys, Sara and Chris having gone on ahead. We parked in day parking this time, as the massive lines had only persisted for the initial days of the festival, and so we had a shorter walk. The line at security was far shorter today, as well, likely because it was nearly 5:00pm by this time. Apparently, Jimmy Buffet had made a surprise appearance at noon that day, but we’d all missed it.

Emily wanted to see Jenny Lewis at That Tent. I called Sara, who had spread her sheet out at What Stage and was waiting to see Wilco. When I reached her, she was in a great spot just behind the scaffolding where the cameramen were, the fencing around which scaffolding even provided a small scrim of shade. The sun did not feel as intense, and it was nice sitting there, with a beer and a bit of personal space. Eventually, Wilco played, too, and they were really good. Um…fast? I don’t have a damn clue how to describe music, frankly. Why am I even writing this?

Wilco

One thing I was really disappointed about was the relatively chill atmosphere at Bonnaroo this year.  I had heard so many tales of bad acid trips and other drug-related freakouts, and I was really looking forward to seeing some crazy shit go down.  No luck, though.  We did see this dude dancing at Wilco, though:

Woo!

Oh, yeah!

I love you, Phish!

From 7ish to 8ish, both Elvis Costello and The Decemberists were playing, and this was a tough decision for me. I ended up wandering by Elvis Costello (at That Tent), who Emily said played an absolutely rocking show (she was up front for the whole thing), but for the couple songs I caught, he sounded particularly hoarse, and looked sweaty and uncomfortable, and it started to make me feel stressed about things.

Elvis Costello.

I then went over to This Tent, where The Decemberists sounded really awesome. I have some awareness that The Decemberists aren’t supposed to be cool anymore now, either, is that so? I don’t know. I guess I have a great fondness for super-white bands that were hip exactly 2.5 years ago. Anyway, I haven’t heard much of their stuff since Picaresque, so I don’t know if they’ve added new members, but the woman was singing a lot more than she usually does, and she sounded fantastic – it also sounded like maybe there were additional women singing? I don’t know; as usual, I couldn’t see the stage at all. I actually quite like Colin Meloy’s weird, HomestarRunner-ish-sounding voice, but I know a lot of people hate it, so maybe he’s trying not to dominate the vocals so much anymore. They also seemed to have a ton of really awesome visual things going on – I saw lights, and the tops of various props and things, and maybe costumes? – but I’ll be damned if I could find any spot to catch so much as a glimpse, so eventually, I gave it up and wandered over to the field and sat there for awhile, just listening and thinking.

I assert my personal space, pissing off some girl.

Before long, I started to feel lonely and worried, so I called everyone trying to figure out where I could meet up with someone. Luckily, Emily and Jason were eating, so, as I was starving to death, I headed over to where they were, at a picnic table by the ferris wheel. I inhaled a giant mound of red beans and rice, topped with a barbecued chicken skewer of at least two chicken’s worth of chicken, and immediately felt stuffed and remorseful. Sharing the picnic table with us were a chubby, long-haired couple from some Midwestern place, and the guy was quite stoned and happily monologuing about their trip and what all they’d seen so far.

‘Are you talking with your mouthful?’ interrupted his girlfriend. ‘Here, take my plate.’ They wandered off through the misting tent.

By this time, it was 8:30 or so, and almighty Bruce loomed ahead. Frankly, the three of us were ready to leave. Emily apologized several times throughout the trip for being such a party-pooper and wearing out on everything quickly, but I was massively relieved she had finally aged to my usual level of constant exhaustion. I’ve never been an endurance partier; I’m more of a social sprinter. I don’t think I could have made it had I had to spend a full, round, four days of solid, participatory Bonnaroo attendance.

But anyway, even wet blankets have to see Bruce Springsteen. Well, not ’see,’ of course, but ‘be within earshot of,’ at least. We headed over to What Stage, which was Beastie Boys Part Two. Sara still had her spot she’d had for Wilco earlier, but we didn’t see how we could get over there. Michael and Jeff joined us at this point, and we added ourselves to the edge of seated people, which kept encroaching further and further into the pedestrian lane by the food stalls. We then spent a good thirty minutes getting stepped on and waiting for Bruce to appear. Some giant, bald, blue collar guys flopped down in front of us. Two of them immediately laid down and went to sleep, but the third (wearing a flesh-toned Spandex shirt, camouflage shorts and a bandana) struck up a conversation with us, about how he slaves all year for the man, just waiting for Bonnaroo, where he can cut loose and just enjoy himself, talk to people, be outdoors. He then sampled a bottle of coke and Peppermint Schnapps that one of us was drinking, and was very impressed. ‘Y’all are wild!’ exclaimed dude. ‘I like y’all, y’all are crazy.’

Bruce took his sweet ass time about coming onstage. He finally started around 9:30 or so, and we stayed for a few songs. I didn’t recognize any of them. I happen to be very familiar with the Tunnel of Love album – in fact, I could probably sing all the songs on it from memory right now. The reason is that Tunnel of Love was one of two tapes my dad possessed when I was a kid (the other being Bonnie Raitt’s Love In the Nick of Time), and we would listen to it on a loop whenever we took a car trip somewhere. Other than that, however, I am only familiar with the big Bruce hits everybody knows.

Bruce Springsteen, and his E Street Band.

A closer view of Bruce.

Bruce, after the crowd thinned out some.

To me, Bruce sounded really old and tired and raspy. Sara and Chris report, however, that he played an amazing set, and that it was really long, and in the middle he opened it up to requests and just played whatever people wanted for, like, seven songs.

But I didn’t see any of that, because, as you’ll surely be shocked to hear, Emily, Jason and I left after two songs. When we arrived back at Emily’s house, we found that Freckles had escaped from the stable and returned to the bosom of his family. I had another thoroughly satisfying shower and went to bed.

Sunday

Sunday morning, I awoke to find Emily and Jason once again acclimating Freckles to the porch. Freckles’ dad, the boxer, had followed them back and was standing around suspiciously, scrutinizing his son’s new gig. Once he’d decided what he thought, he lifted his leg and pissed all over the grill. Freckles’ new owners, meanwhile, gave him a giant red meat bone and were vigilant in refusing dad access to it, and that was pretty much all it took for Freckles to rearrange where his loyalties lay. Shortly, the neighbors came by with the mom and two of the siblings, and Freckles pranced around with his bone, displaying everything he’d managed to come into. The puppies turned on each other, suddenly rivals. This drama, with its underlying implications, would have been depressing, except it was enacted by puppies, so it was fucking adorable.

Sara and Chris had not gotten in till after daybreak again, but they’d managed to stop by Wal-Mart, and when they got up, they made pancakes and bacon. (Yeah, that’s right, bitchez! We had bacon three mornings in a row, cause that’s how we roll.) We did try to get moving relatively quickly that morning, because Emily really wanted to see Erykah Badu at 3:30, and Chris wanted to enjoy his first day not having to stay focused and alert to work at midnight. We had a frenetic time getting out of the house, with people running in and out. Emily and I started to leave, then she forgot her wristband (which, by the way, a word on the wristbands: they were meant to be irremovable, but as soon as we got them, everyone else started tugging at theirs so that they could get them on and off. I, on the other hand, tugged mine as tight as it would go, and so was stuck with it all four days. The tails of it were pretty long and between the mud, and the puppies, and the Porta-Pots, and the spilling beer, and the breakfasts with syrup, I was really ready when it finally came time to cut the damn thing off.), so we went back, and then Michael and Jeff were almost ready, and then we might as well take Jason’s truck, and so forth. Eventually, we were on the way, and well before 3:30, Sara, Emily and I were on Sara’s sheet at the same general spot as before, waiting for Erykah Badu to appear.

Today there was no shade, and it was very, very hot. I had worn knee-length denim cut-offs for some reason, and they were soaked with sweat. The sun was so intense, I found it necessarily to reapply my SPF 55 before the concert had even started. Bonnaroo is a very communal sort of festival – you’re offered all kinds of things by those around you, and are supposed to reciprocate in kind. By the time my 55 got back to me, it was empty. Still, the sun. Still, no Erykah. Her band and back-up singers came out one by one, and finally, she appeared, in sunglasses, skin-tight jeans, stilettos, and a hoodie with the hood up. I got heatstroke just looking at her. This time I actually could see the stage, which was a new experience for me, but I still can’t describe the music, although I do remember it, being somewhat familiar with Erykah Badu. Anyway, she was great, to the point where the concert seemed really short to me, which is saying something, as all concerts seem interminable to me, even if I’m really enjoying them. I had actually intended to cut out early, because Andrew Bird was playing at Which Stage, and I’m a big fan of his, but we still managed to catch a few songs. I have some vague awareness that Andrew Bird is recently cool, yes? Which makes me really proud of myself, because I have liked him longer than most people. I saw him open for The Magnetic Fields at a concert at Chicago’s Old Town School of Folk Music (hey, there’s another concert I forgot about!), and thought that he was great. I also liked The Magnetic Fields a lot, but I’ve since gone off them because I read an interview where Stephin Merritt talked a lot about how the lyrics to songs shouldn’t mean anything and none of his do. Which, I know that most music fans don’t really care about lyrics, but I am a verbal person, and I really listen to lyrics. And the thing is, whether you do or don’t care about them much, if you’re a musician and you do choose to have lyrics (you don’t have to have them at all, and lots of bands mostly don’t have them), then shouldn’t they be necessary? Why would you put anything in your music that you don’t really want there? If you are going to have lyrics, commit to them at least is all I’m saying. Anyway, I think Which Stage was too large a venue for Andrew Bird; again, I didn’t feel included.

Andrew Bird.

After that, Emily was ready to go. Phish was headlining that night – we had missed them on Friday and we liked it so well, we thought we’d miss them again. I kind of wanted to hear Neko Case, though, so we headed over to This Tent, where Emily and Jason got involved in a game of frisbee with some folks, and I chased the moving shade. Michael and Jeff joined us shortly, and after awhile Neko Case started to play somewhere over behind the mob of people, but we were pretty much depleted and we left.

And that, more or less, was my Bonnaroo experience. I enjoyed it, although I think I personally would have benefited more from one solid day of bands I really liked, as four days was just too much for me. And I would have liked to be able to actually see some of the bands. But if you want to go to Bonnaroo, I definitely would recommend getting free tickets. Also, a lot of people camp around the festival site, but I would recommend staying in a giant, comfortable nearby house with hot showers, a washer-dryer and a puppy. That’s what I did, and it worked out really well. Also, I’d suggest having a big breakfast cooked for you every morning, because it really helps get you through the first half of the day. Just a few suggestions.

Au revoir!

Lars (Ryan Gosling) lives in his brother Gus’s garage in bleak Wisconsin. He has no friends, prefers not to be touched, and is at best eccentric, at worst mentally ill. His pregnant sister-in-law Karen (Emily Mortimer) is determined to make him feel included in her and Gus’s life, even if she has to physically tackle him and drag him to the dinner table (which she does). The small community views Lars as well-meaning and lonely rather than antisocial, possibly because he has developed the brilliant trick of accompanying all of his social feints and dodges with a disarming grin. When Lars shows up at Karen and Gus’s door with a life-sized, anatomically correct sex doll he introduces as his girlfriend (an orphaned, wheelchair-bound missionary), they decide it’s time to get him some help. The town doctor/shrink, Dagmar (Patricia Clarkson), diagnoses Lars with a delusion that he’ll outgrow when he no longer has need of it, and recommends his family play along.

I loved this film, which, despite what you might think, is not at all about sexual dysfunction or sexual politics between men and women. Rather, it is about one man’s specific struggle to acclimate himself to human contact. It’s sad in a quiet way, but despite the miserable Wisconsin setting, the dullness of the character’s daily lives, and the darkly comic premise, it’s more a feel-good picture than anything. Watching it, I kept waiting for the offensive joke, or the cynical twist, or even the surely inevitable moment when Something Really Bad happens, but it never came. Rather, the characters go about their business, trying as best they can to be kind to each other despite awkwardness and hurt feelings, and in the end, they all seem likely to prevail. This is not a challenging or brave movie, but it is a hopeful and entertaining one that allows its characters dignity and individuality.

Plus, the entire cast portrays thoroughly likable characters. Kelli Garner is smackably adorable as Margo, a coworker with a hopeless crush on Lars. Garner’s Margo twitches in a perpetual state of breathless anticipation, her rabbity face always at the ready to beam with joy or crumple in devastation at any chance remark. Emily Mortimer manages to radiate an all-encompassing warmth and maternal solicitude as Karen, despite her squeaky voice and reedy frame. And Ryan Gosling plays Lars perfectly, using every gesture to simultaneously telegraph both his wish to be left alone and his fear of giving offense. Yet in situations where Lars feels comfortable, he drops all his affectations like a sheet (or the baby blanket he carries at all times), and startles those around him with his sudden candor.

Widowed English professor Lawrence (Dennis Quaid) has obtuse and uninteresting students, and a book of criticism he can’t publish. His son barely speaks to him, and his daughter Vanessa (Ellen Page) worships and imitates him at the expense of her own likability. His sponging, irresponsible adopted brother, Chuck (Thomas Hayden Church), has shown up, begging (not for the first time) to stay with him. And on top of it all, his car gets impounded with his briefcase inside, and when he scales the fence to retrieve it, he falls and has a seizure. The ER doctor (Sarah Jessica Parker) turns out to be a former student, and the two go on a terrible first-date, in which Lawrence rambles on pedantically until Janet walks out. The drift of this movie is no surprise: Chuck and Janet persist in blowing some sunshine up the clenched asses of this alienated family, resulting in loving personal connections and greater self-awareness for all.

Smart People was not well-received, but I thought it was a perfectly enjoyable film. Although the premise was nothing new, there were some genuinely original elements – particularly revolving around the characters of Vanessa and Chuck. Whip smart and tartly cynical, Vanessa is also prudish and matronly, having assumed a housewife-like role in the family in order to endear herself to her distant father. In the film’s most cringeworthy moment, she drunkenly throws herself at her horrified uncle, resulting in his awkwardly avoiding her, to her increasing annoyance. The arc of Vanessa and Chuck’s friendship is funny and endearing, embarrassing and real, and I have not previously seen anything like it in a movie. Unfortunately, Ellen Page has become so associated with her breakout character Juno that I was unable to see her as Vanessa. While Vanessa was meant to be frumpish, thorny and tightly-wound, she kept coming across as spunky and adaptable. I don’t think Page’s performance was to blame for this; it’s just very difficult to see her as anyone other than America’s favorite knocked-up teen. I’m sure she’ll distance herself eventually, though.

In deep and excessive mourning for her dead husband, Queen Victoria (Judy Dench) sends for his old servant, John Brown (Billy Connolly), a Scottish highlander. Brown routs the Queen out of her funk, and she becomes taken with him and his vigorous good-nature and stubborn informality. The two enter into a close friendship dancing around a possible love affair, but the Royal family (and the British government) is not thrilled with Brown’s ascendancy. Pushed to the periphery, Brown becomes increasingly obsessed with guarding the Queen’s safety, leading to further misunderstandings.

The film has some subtly hilarious moments: the Queen and princesses paddling awkwardly into the river in full bathing costumes; the power struggles among the servants; Dame Judy’s tart and flatly delivered one-liners (“That’s a very pretty shawl, Alix . . . but you’re not eating enough.”). It’s also very well acted – both Dench and Connolly give performances of restrained intensity – though I found Anthony Sher’s overacted portrayal of PM Benjamin Disraeli unwatchable. He shoots for charismatic, but lands on unctuous, and also seems to be winking at the camera.

Can there ever be too many movies in which various Queens of Great Britain, fettered by status and power, pine for working class men they can never truly have? Probably.

(Incidentally, in this movie, a penis makes a brief onscreen appearance, but there is no female nudity. I wonder how many films you can say that about?)

I always approach translated novels with a grain of salt. I have a very smart friend who refuses to read them, because he doesn’t think he can truly get the author’s intent, and while I understand his point of view, I’m not willing to limit myself so severely. I just keep in mind that whatever I’m getting is not as good as the novel is meant to be. Even with foreign films, it’s a bit easier to understand the real intent, because the actors are speaking in the language, and you can sort of see where the subtitles convey the meaning, and where they’re just sort of there. You can get the gist. But with a translated novel, there’s no trace of the original before the translator worked on it, so if something isn’t really conveyed, you’ll never know it.

That said, I really enjoyed Muriel Barbery’s The Elegance of the Hedgehog (trans. Alison Anderson). Madame Renee Michel is a smart concierge from a rural, lower-class family. She hides her intelligence from the buildings’ wealthy tenants, and smolders at what she believes is the necessity of doing so. Meanwhile, Paloma Josse, a young girl who lives in the building, also hides her intelligence (and precocious cynicism) from her family. Like Madame Michel, she resents those around her for failing to penetrate her facade. But then, Monsieur Kakuro Ozu moves into the building. He is a friendly, open, charismatic Japanese man, and he becomes interested in both Madame Michel and Paloma, and helps them to become notice each other, and (eventually) everybody else. Ultimately, the story ends tragically, but it’s a good, cozy kind of sad.

The novel is about the ways in which intelligence can alienate one from others, but wisdom can reconnect one again.

I didn’t really relate to the intensity of Madame Michel’s class-based inferiority complex. Perhaps my being an American makes this difficult for me to understand. I don’t know that much about France, but am surprised to hear that someone born into an uneducated, rural family, who was able intellectually to rise above their station, would still feel sufficiently constrained by their social class that they would have to pretend to be a moron to avoid offending people. While we’re certainly classist in this country, the ability to converse, read and write with the best of them would permit most people to mobilize upwards without rocking anyone’s world.

Helen DeWitt’s The Last Samurai is also a novel about the limits of intelligence. I fucking loved this book.

Sibylla has a one-night stand because she can’t think of a polite way to get out of having it, and ends up raising Ludo, a genius with an insatiable hunger for stimulation. Sibylla’s main problem is, she has to make their money by typing boring periodicals into a database, and is paid by the piece, so she must choose between ignoring her restless young son and failing to make rent. They spend a lot of time riding around on the subway, and Sibylla teaches Ludo a number of languages in an attempt to start him on something absorbing that he can then continue on independently. Public school, needless to say, turns out to be a non-starter for Ludo. The first half of the book is narrated by Sibylla, who is a fascinating and entertaining character, the more so because she is not very likable. She seems almost autistic in her inability to truly connect with or become interested in other people, but at the same time, she is anxious not to hurt or offend anyone (thus sleeping with Ludo’s father, rather than risk the social awkwardness of rejecting him).

As Ludo ages, he eventually takes over the narration entirely, and his main desire is to figure out who his father is. He knows that he’s a travel writer, and the second half of the book is concerned entirely with Ludo’s search. While Ludo finds his biological father immediately, he feels no true kinship with the man, and continues to search for a true father, ‘trying on’ six other fascinating men with varying degrees of success. Ultimately, Ludo realizes that his most pressing problem is not forming new deep personal connections, but saving the only one he already has. In the end, Sibylla and Ludo are harmed by their undeniable gifts: they are bored, economically thwarted, and socially isolated. Some of Ludo’s father figures are deeply gifted, others are not, and sadly, those who have the most to offer do not manage to get the most out of life. In The Last Samurai, the world is not a welcoming place for outstanding people.

Earlier, I mentioned my distrust of the ability of translations to truly convey authors’ intent. Sibylla, a scholar of languages, spends much of TLS mourning the limitations of writing only in one language at a time. She believes that in literature of the future, the word used to convey an idea will be the word best suited to the meaning, regardless of which language that word is found in.

Both of these novels dealt with suicide – Paloma carefully plots her own suicide, which she plans to commit on her birthday, unless the world can convince her it’s worth living in by that time. One of Ludo’s fathers commits suicide, and, Sibylla having attempted it in the past, her doing so is a major worry for him. While reading these two novels, I also watched The Bridge, which is a documentary about people throwing themselves off the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s a pretty straightforward documentary, entirely consisting of interviews of the family members of several people who’ve died in this way, and of people who’d thwarted or observed suicides on the bridge. It seemed to me as if most people interviewed either entirely understood the state of mind that leads to suicide, or couldn’t at all comprehend what could possibly lead someone to take their own life. While I’ve certainly never been suicidal (teenage angst and Bell Jar worshiping aside), it surprises me that many people are apparently so unfamiliar with anything approaching suicidal depression that they can’t even imagine it. I found that very refreshing, and was most interested in hearing the interviews with people who were thoroughly mystified by friends or family members having jumped.

Actually, we don’t really know why people commit suicide. This interesting article (via MR), focusing on the high correlation between anorexia and suicides, lists some factors that seem consistent:

In essence, Joiner proposed that people who kill themselves must meet two sets of conditions on top of feeling depressed and hopeless. First, they must have a serious desire to die. This usually comes about when people feel they are an intolerable burden on others, while also feeling isolated from people who might provide a sense of belonging.

Second, and most important, people who succeed in killing themselves must be capable of doing the deed. This may sound obvious, but until Joiner pointed it out, no one had tried to figure out why some people are able to go through with it when most are not. No matter how seriously you want to die, Joiner says, it is not an easy thing to do. The self-preservation instinct is too strong.

I don’t know, though – the doctors quoted in the article explain how anorexia can lead to social isolation and tolerance of pain, which are characteristics that make for successful suicides. But it seems to me that there’s a suicidal impulse behind anorexia itself – I realize that anorexia is more of a control thing than anything, but it seems like slowly starving yourself is on some level a pre-suicide, along the lines of initial shallow razor cuts. The article explains that anorexics tend to be socially isolated because they avoid any situations that will involve eating. But is that perhaps putting the egg before the chicken? Developing anorexia is a good way of avoiding and controlling social interactions.

Also, I feel like in memoirs of attempted suicides, people often speak about the depression being so overwhelming that physical pain simply doesn’t register – or depression being so numbing that the physical pain is a relief, in that at least it’s a feeling of something. It seems like suicide is escaping an absolutely overwhelming and constant emotional pain, and I find it hard to believe that steeling yourself for the temporary physical pain of actually committing the act can be that big of a hurdle.

Speaking of suicide, there’s a new book about the Wittgenstein family out. Wittgenstein was like the Midas of suicides – everyone he encountered seemed to do themselves in. His life could make an excellent indie dark comedy flick.

Another Oscars ceremony has come and gone. I haven’t seen many of the movies, other than Vicki Christina, which I was happy Penelope Cruz won Best Supporting for her work in, because she was awesome; and WALL-E, which was great. And I was glad Winslet won, because, although I’m sure The Reader is just as bad as everyone says it is, she is one of my favorite actors and I think she’s a great role model for young women.

I have not seen Slumdog Millionaire, but everyone seems to have a strong opinion about it. Most of the people I know who’ve seen it really loved it, and I’m sure it’s great and all, but of course, like anything involving depictions of the “real” India by non-Indians and/or of the lives of the “real” poor by the wealthy, many people have their quarrels with the authenticity of it.

Again, I haven’t seen it, but I’m sure I’d probably agree with this post, which discusses the fact that the celebrated salvation from desperate poverty has to come from without, a financial deus ex machina, and that the female lead is a helpless battered woman who can do nothing for herself until some other man falls in love with her and saves her. In how many movies do we see this? And how many of these female characters are Asian? You’d almost think men have an unrealistic porny fantasy about “rescuing” battered, dependent, passive beauties from developing countries. Undoubtedly, these bruised and delicate flowers would know how to appreciate a good, loving master husband, unlike spoiled, bitchy feminists with their own money and their self-sufficiency.

Of course, being that the male lead in this particular movie is a young man from the Mumbai slums, I’m digressing a bit. Ahem. Where were we?

Oh, yes. Slumdog. Still, people are happy that the movie won because it’s so long been the boring standard that in America, any movie about people other than white Americans are niche films . . . unless, that is, they primarily focus on the way in which people other than white Americans affect white Americans. Which brings me to Gran Torino. Apparently, conservatives are pissed that Gran Torino didn’t get recognized and Milk did. Since, you know, Milk is about the rights of a group of people conservatives haven’t yet adjusted their prejudice about, and Gran Torino is about an old white dude and how he feels about some Vietnamese people he has to deal with. Now, a movie about Vietnamese gangs would be of no interest to these same people. That would be a niche film, of interest only to Vietnamese gangs and the liberals who care about them. But a movie about how an old white dude is affected by Vietnamese gangs…now that’s a movie that “everyone” can relate to! Especially when the old white dude is a Christian With Faith, and uses his Legal Gun of Righteousness to save the Vietnamese folk what can’t save themselves, and teaches them how to be more like old white dudes, before he finally drops dead in an oh-so-subtle crucifixion pose (which, so far as I can tell from the Wikipedia entry, is what happens in Gran Torino – I haven’t seen it, or Milk).

I have a very good friend, who is much smarter and more socially conscious than I am, and who has the irritating habit of ruining everything for me by pointing out a totally obvious bit of ridiculousness in some area of the culture that I’d been to thick to spot myself, and it was she who alerted me to this obnoxious habit of Hollywood being more interested in the ways in which racism and prejudice affects old white dudes than in the lives of black people, or immigrants, or anybody else. Now that she’s pointed it out, I see it everywhere. We’ve had Monster’s Ball, Crash, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, so on and so forth, and (as she put it) is it really so endlessly fascinating how old white bigots learn to open their minds? Isn’t there ever going to be a day when we can stop talking primarily to them and making movies about their experiences and trying to understand them and teach them to be better . . . and instead just ignore them until they go away? Are old white bigots really so relevant anymore? Isn’t it time to move on from all that?

Which is what I say in response to this post, in which James Bowman says:

Though in principle it is a good thing to seek a break with the past and the hardened positions on both sides, those positions are the result of the Penn-like tactic of characterizing those on the other side not just as wrong or mistaken but as reactionary in the commie sense – that is, as barriers to inevitable progress who must be removed. If you’re one of the barriers, you may be excused for finding that a somewhat chilling prospect. You have been identified as being, in practice if not in name, evil – that is beyond the bounds of decency and not to be recognized as legitimate in your views by anyone who is decent.

But see, that’s the thing: opponents of gay rights are barriers to inevitable progress who must be removed. Because there are actual gay families who are actually very much affected by conservatives’ slow, resistant refusal to see them as legitimate, and these families need not carefully consider those people who still oppose their rights. They need not try to see it from their side, or come to a compromise, or “respect” their point of view. Gay people simply want to live their lives the way they see fit without going a-begging to people who disapprove of them on every level.

Gay people will get equal rights eventually. And frankly, if that idea chaps your ass for some reason, you should probably get used to being the bad guy.

That said, I’m no fan of Sean Penn. I think he’s a good actor and enjoy his movies, but, as with most celebrities, I assume he an unintelligent, self-absorbed, entitled asshat, and I have absolutely no desire to know him as a person. And also, didn’t Sean Penn beat up Madonna a few times? Celebrity or no, any man who hits his wife should be in jail or in traction, but not in the spotlight, so I’m disappointed to see positive buzz about Penn on one of my favorite feminist sites. And the idea that anyone ever arrested for domestic assault could righteously preach to others about morality…well, only a celebrity would have the balls for that.