The Urban Pantheist

My wonderful home state of Massachusetts was the first to grant marriage equality to same sex couples, eleven years ago. Now the rest have finally come along to the right side of history. Back then I wrote a little article about it, which exists here for now.

Because I'm afraid it may disappear, I'll put the whole article behind the cut:( Read more... )

For brilliant and needlessly erudite dissections and ruminations about undeserving morsels of pop culture, you can't do better than The Current Cinema, Anthony Lane's film criticism column in The New Yorker.  (My friend g_weir  accomplishes a similar feat, but hasn't been given a New Yorker position yet.) 

Lane's column typically involves the criticism of two recent film releases, taken separately, but with what little they may have in common suggested by the column's title.  This week's is "Let's Put on a Show," covering the latest Charlie Kaufman mindbender Synecdoche New York as well as Disney's latest High School Musical sequel.   I find Lane's writing inspiring in way, but it is utterly beyond my capability to even emulate it.  His vocabulary is the cream of the East Coast Elite's--I was proud not to have to look up "synecdoche" but I had to google the word "sententious" used in the first half of the column.

Then he begins to describe HIgh School Musical, for the benefit of those "with an allergy to television."  Lane explains that the prinicpal characters are Troy and his girlfriend Gabriella, and in this next installment of the series, Gabriella is getting ready to go to college: "this means leaving Troy, a decision that even Aeneas found hard to make."  Good lord, man!  A classical reference and a genuine groaner in the same sentence?  He goes on to compare the characters in Synecdoche with those of HSM, the chief contrast being Phillip Seymour Hoffman's complete joylessness and the HSM's players ability to break into song "the way that normal folk go to the bathroom—regularly, politely, and because, if they didn’t, well, darn it, they might just burst."

I'm glad that with my soylent_screen  columns I restrict myself to sci-fi/horror/fantasy films.  When I can't figure out anything insightful to say about the movies I review, I can just describe the ridiculous things that happen in them.  I'll keep reading Lane's column for inspirtation, but I'll try not to lapse into a sententious tone with my own writing.

Cross-posted to soylent_screen 

01-19-08
We fall asleep heavily to the ringing of the frogs. We wake blearily to the insisting scratchy squabbling of the bananaquit. The frogs are little treefrogs with a loud, nearly musical mating call that falls somewhere between our familiar spring peepers and the alarm from a reversing truck. In their thousands they reverberate and blend. The bananaquit are tiny yellow and black birds, songbirds that evolution has pushed into the hummingbird niche, feeding on the year-round abundance of flower nectar.

What i really like in the tropics, is to move slowly, or not at all, and notice that I'm surrounded by scurrying life. I realize that for some people, the phrase "teeming with lizards" doesn't inspire comfort or glee.

Yay!

My article on the Gay Marriage Celebration was published:
http://www.lasvegasmercury.com/2004/MERC-May-20-Thu-2004/23904048.html