Just now on Netflix I discovered the "Local Favorites" feature, which gives you a list of the top twenty five titles in your area. For example, the number one title in Midlothian, Virginia right now is Seabiscuit, followed by some IMAX movie, and the documentary-style thriller Open Water. Which kind of makes sense to me. Midlothian is a Seabiscuit kind of a place.
Now forgive me for what seems like a non sequitur, but I don't like the University of Virginia. This will not shock those of you who know me; I don't keep it secret. Explaining why I don't like the University of Virginia is difficult, but it seems safe to say that the reason is rooted in a strange personal sense of school spirit, born out of a nagging communal inferiority complex.
I went to Mary Washington College (now University of Mary Washington, bless you William Anderson), safety school to many future Wahoos, and home to the bitter many whose transcripts didn't quite measure up to Mr. Jefferson's high standards. There, rejected and without a Greek system to comfort them, they wail and moan and gnash teeth, pissed to be in Fredericksburg and waiting for the weekend when they will leave. Few stay at Mary Washington on weekends, because, as they will tell you and their parents and the school paper, "Fredericksburg is such a NOTHING town. NOTHING happens here. JESUS."
There is such an excess of self-loathing at MWC, so much griping and talk of transfers, and such an absence of pride that I, who had always laughed at such things in high school, developed a strong sense of school spirit. And, because UVA seems so much at the center of Mary Wash's self-hatred, because it's taken for granted that everything in Charlottesville is so much more fun, more exciting, more academically rigorous (FUCK YOU IT ISN'T), it makes sense that as I developed feelings of Eagle love I simultaneously developed feelings of Cavalier hatred. The other side of the coin, as it were.
Back to Netflix. Amused by the idea that the character of a community (and thus that community's large public university around which its economy is centered) might be reflected in what its citizens watch, I checked the top movies in Charlottesville and Fredericksburg. Just for the hell of it.
The #1 rental in Charlottesville is Mostly Martha, "a tragicomic tale about an uptight professional chef who finds her world turned upside down when she takes in her newly orphaned niece, Lina (Maxime Foerste). Martina Gedeck stars as Martha, whose obsession with precision gourmet cooking extends to discussing recipes with her bewildered therapist (August Zirner) and verbally attacking anyone at the restaurant who attempts to send her food back."
In German with English subtitles.
The #1 rental in Fredericksburg is The Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Disc 3.
Friday, July 29, 2005
Friday, July 22, 2005
Large Black Retarded Men
Fred
Like most high schools, my high school had a special education class, and it's students had their own table in the cafeteria where they ate their lunches and mostly kept to themselves. The exception was a young man named Fred, who most days wandered the lunch room asking people if he could touch their feet. He had a hard time expressing himself clearly, and spoke in short, charged, three syllable sentences that always sounded like commands. He was loud and physically intimidating, and let's face it his request was a little strange, so when he charged up to tables to ask, "FEEL THE FEET?!" more often than not he scared his potential friends away.
I saw several of these encounters before Fred eventually approached me. I didn't know, I still don't, why he was interested in feet, but it seemed a small thing to ask, and I went along with it. I raised my foot for him to examine, but that was apparently not good enough and he started tugging at my shoe.
"TAKE OFF!?" he said. That weirded me out a little, but I hated to disappoint him and I took my shoe off. He didn't examine it for long-- just held my socked foot in his hand for a few seconds before asking about my shoes. I didn't understand his question though, and after asking him to repeat it a couple times, he finally typed it out on a small portable typewriter he carried around his neck, handing me the slip it printed.
"you like nike" it said.
"Sure Fred, Nike is ok," I told him.
This was the first of many questions Fred asked me over the next several years. He would spot me from afar and yell out my name, "AMPREW!", then throw himself down the hallway, his arms flying wildly about his head, dozens of scared white children scurrying before him. When he reached me I would have to stop whatever I was doing and answer his question, which he always yelled at me a few times before finally typing:
"you go to mcdonald"
"you watch weather channel"
"you drive to mall"
"you eat big mac"
"you play violin"
I answered these questions quickly, often condescendingly, a little annoyed that a snap decision to let a retarded boy touch my feet had led to a daily chase down the hall and the constant questioning of everything I did. But as time went on, I got used to Fred, and as I got to know him a little better I came to the startling realization that retarded people have personalities. I was particularly amazed by Fred's sense of humor. One memorable day Fred chased me down to ask me if I liked Beck. I didn't know who Beck was at the time, and Fred's way of asking was to type out, "two turntables and a microphone."
"Two turntables and a microphone, Fred?"
"IT'S WHERE IT'S AT!" he yelled.
Fred also had a phenomenal memory. A teacher told me Fred had once seen a list of the school's locker combinations, had committed it to memory, and was capable of breaking into any locker in the school, a claim made more plausible for me by the movie Rain Man.
Proof of Fred's memory came when he gave me a poster one Valentine's day. It was made up of roughly a dozen drawings depicting my answers to numerous questions he had asked me: crude depictions of Andrew eating the big mac, watching the Weather Channel, wearing the nike shoes, going to the mall with dad. Printed in the center were the words "Our friendship makes my heart happy," something I thought was a little saccharine, but made my mother cry. Fred was, apparently, quite sentimental.
Clyde
The other day I met another retarded person, named Clyde, who physically reminded me a great deal of Fred. Both black, both physically intimidating, both frustrated by an inability to express themselves. Clyde, however, was no Fred.
He had a hard time standing for long periods of time, and dragged one of our heavy wooden chairs around the store with him, plopping down at random in the middle of aisles and walkways to look at books. He was in the travel section, totally blocking the aisle, when he suddenly rose from his seat, stumbled over to the customer service desk and started barking demands at me.
"You librarian. I want a book on manias. And phobias."
This didn't make a lot of sense to me, but I gave it a shot. I brought him several books-- a dictionary of psychological disorders, a book about fear, and a book about overcoming anger. I left him in the travel section looking them over, only to hear him yell a few minutes later "BOOK MAN! COME HERE!" And then once I got there, "Book man, I am not impressed with this book," and he held it out at arm's length as though the problem was its smell. "Take it away!"
So I took it to the back room and hid for a few minutes, hoping Clyde would go away. When I came back he had moved his chair directly in front of the desk, where he sat yelling at an unhappy co-worker of mine.
"I WANT A DICTIONARY WITH ALL OF THESE WORDS," he yelled, brandishing a piece of paper with phrases like "political mercenary," "social conservative," and "anarchist cannibal."
I tried to explain to him that dictionaries don't often contain phrases, that he would need to look the words up individually. "For example," I told him, " 'political mercenary' is a phrase. You need to look up 'political,' and then 'mercenary.' You won't find them together."
"POLITICAL MERCENARY IS A GUY WHO FIGHT FOR WHATEVER YOU WANT. HE'S FOR MONEY!"
"Really? How interesting."
"FIND ME THE DICTIONARY. AND MAKE SURE IT DOESN'T HAVE PICTURES OF PORTUGUESE MAN OF WAR! THEY ARE TOO DISGUSTING FOR ME TO LOOK AT!"
At which point Clyde's assistant finally got off of his cell phone, and escorted Clyde from the building.
Like most high schools, my high school had a special education class, and it's students had their own table in the cafeteria where they ate their lunches and mostly kept to themselves. The exception was a young man named Fred, who most days wandered the lunch room asking people if he could touch their feet. He had a hard time expressing himself clearly, and spoke in short, charged, three syllable sentences that always sounded like commands. He was loud and physically intimidating, and let's face it his request was a little strange, so when he charged up to tables to ask, "FEEL THE FEET?!" more often than not he scared his potential friends away.
I saw several of these encounters before Fred eventually approached me. I didn't know, I still don't, why he was interested in feet, but it seemed a small thing to ask, and I went along with it. I raised my foot for him to examine, but that was apparently not good enough and he started tugging at my shoe.
"TAKE OFF!?" he said. That weirded me out a little, but I hated to disappoint him and I took my shoe off. He didn't examine it for long-- just held my socked foot in his hand for a few seconds before asking about my shoes. I didn't understand his question though, and after asking him to repeat it a couple times, he finally typed it out on a small portable typewriter he carried around his neck, handing me the slip it printed.
"you like nike" it said.
"Sure Fred, Nike is ok," I told him.
This was the first of many questions Fred asked me over the next several years. He would spot me from afar and yell out my name, "AMPREW!", then throw himself down the hallway, his arms flying wildly about his head, dozens of scared white children scurrying before him. When he reached me I would have to stop whatever I was doing and answer his question, which he always yelled at me a few times before finally typing:
"you go to mcdonald"
"you watch weather channel"
"you drive to mall"
"you eat big mac"
"you play violin"
I answered these questions quickly, often condescendingly, a little annoyed that a snap decision to let a retarded boy touch my feet had led to a daily chase down the hall and the constant questioning of everything I did. But as time went on, I got used to Fred, and as I got to know him a little better I came to the startling realization that retarded people have personalities. I was particularly amazed by Fred's sense of humor. One memorable day Fred chased me down to ask me if I liked Beck. I didn't know who Beck was at the time, and Fred's way of asking was to type out, "two turntables and a microphone."
"Two turntables and a microphone, Fred?"
"IT'S WHERE IT'S AT!" he yelled.
Fred also had a phenomenal memory. A teacher told me Fred had once seen a list of the school's locker combinations, had committed it to memory, and was capable of breaking into any locker in the school, a claim made more plausible for me by the movie Rain Man.
Proof of Fred's memory came when he gave me a poster one Valentine's day. It was made up of roughly a dozen drawings depicting my answers to numerous questions he had asked me: crude depictions of Andrew eating the big mac, watching the Weather Channel, wearing the nike shoes, going to the mall with dad. Printed in the center were the words "Our friendship makes my heart happy," something I thought was a little saccharine, but made my mother cry. Fred was, apparently, quite sentimental.
Clyde
The other day I met another retarded person, named Clyde, who physically reminded me a great deal of Fred. Both black, both physically intimidating, both frustrated by an inability to express themselves. Clyde, however, was no Fred.
He had a hard time standing for long periods of time, and dragged one of our heavy wooden chairs around the store with him, plopping down at random in the middle of aisles and walkways to look at books. He was in the travel section, totally blocking the aisle, when he suddenly rose from his seat, stumbled over to the customer service desk and started barking demands at me.
"You librarian. I want a book on manias. And phobias."
This didn't make a lot of sense to me, but I gave it a shot. I brought him several books-- a dictionary of psychological disorders, a book about fear, and a book about overcoming anger. I left him in the travel section looking them over, only to hear him yell a few minutes later "BOOK MAN! COME HERE!" And then once I got there, "Book man, I am not impressed with this book," and he held it out at arm's length as though the problem was its smell. "Take it away!"
So I took it to the back room and hid for a few minutes, hoping Clyde would go away. When I came back he had moved his chair directly in front of the desk, where he sat yelling at an unhappy co-worker of mine.
"I WANT A DICTIONARY WITH ALL OF THESE WORDS," he yelled, brandishing a piece of paper with phrases like "political mercenary," "social conservative," and "anarchist cannibal."
I tried to explain to him that dictionaries don't often contain phrases, that he would need to look the words up individually. "For example," I told him, " 'political mercenary' is a phrase. You need to look up 'political,' and then 'mercenary.' You won't find them together."
"POLITICAL MERCENARY IS A GUY WHO FIGHT FOR WHATEVER YOU WANT. HE'S FOR MONEY!"
"Really? How interesting."
"FIND ME THE DICTIONARY. AND MAKE SURE IT DOESN'T HAVE PICTURES OF PORTUGUESE MAN OF WAR! THEY ARE TOO DISGUSTING FOR ME TO LOOK AT!"
At which point Clyde's assistant finally got off of his cell phone, and escorted Clyde from the building.
Monday, July 18, 2005
Well said, Roger Ebert.
I am ashamed to say that, in the past, I have held Roger Ebert in contempt. I read his reviews, saw that he rated JFK higher than Boyz N the Hood, or that he hated Blue Velvet, and wrote him off as a fool.
Recently I have begun to reevaluate him. For one thing there's the "Brown Bunny Incident." At the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, Vinvent Gallo's movie The Brown Bunny had an historically bad premiere, in which several hundred people walked out, dozens more stayed behind to heckle, and numerous critics, among them Mr. Ebert, proclaimed it the worst film ever shown at Cannes. Afterward, Gallo lashed out, cursing Ebert's colon and saying "If a fat pig like Roger Ebert doesn't like my movie then I'm sorry for him." Mr. Ebert responded by saying:
"Gallo all but wept in a Cannes interview as he described the pain of 'growing up ugly,' but empathy has its limits, and he had no tears for a fat pig and slave-trader such as myself. It is true that I am fat, but one day I will be thin, and he will still be the director of The Brown Bunny."
Several weeks after reading about this, I found out that Roger Ebert's wife is black. Maybe it's ridiculous to like someone on the basis of their interracial relationship, but it drastically changed the way I thought of him. And then the other day I read the following paragraph on the Internet Movie Database, and I am now totally won over.
"I have been criticized recently for giving a pass to films of moderate achievement because they accomplish what the audience expects, while penalizing more ambitious films for falling short of greater expectations. There may be some truth in such observations, but on the other hand, nobody in the real world goes to every movie with the same kind of anticipation. If I see a film by Ingmar Bergman, as I recently did, I expect it to be a masterpiece, and if it is not, Bergman has disappointed me. If I attend a horror film in which Jennifer Connelly and her daughter are trapped in the evil web of a malevolent apartment building, I do not expect Bergman; if the movie does what it can do as well as it can be done, then it has achieved perfection within its own terms."
Roger Ebert gave Dark Water three stars.
Recently I have begun to reevaluate him. For one thing there's the "Brown Bunny Incident." At the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, Vinvent Gallo's movie The Brown Bunny had an historically bad premiere, in which several hundred people walked out, dozens more stayed behind to heckle, and numerous critics, among them Mr. Ebert, proclaimed it the worst film ever shown at Cannes. Afterward, Gallo lashed out, cursing Ebert's colon and saying "If a fat pig like Roger Ebert doesn't like my movie then I'm sorry for him." Mr. Ebert responded by saying:
"Gallo all but wept in a Cannes interview as he described the pain of 'growing up ugly,' but empathy has its limits, and he had no tears for a fat pig and slave-trader such as myself. It is true that I am fat, but one day I will be thin, and he will still be the director of The Brown Bunny."
Several weeks after reading about this, I found out that Roger Ebert's wife is black. Maybe it's ridiculous to like someone on the basis of their interracial relationship, but it drastically changed the way I thought of him. And then the other day I read the following paragraph on the Internet Movie Database, and I am now totally won over.
"I have been criticized recently for giving a pass to films of moderate achievement because they accomplish what the audience expects, while penalizing more ambitious films for falling short of greater expectations. There may be some truth in such observations, but on the other hand, nobody in the real world goes to every movie with the same kind of anticipation. If I see a film by Ingmar Bergman, as I recently did, I expect it to be a masterpiece, and if it is not, Bergman has disappointed me. If I attend a horror film in which Jennifer Connelly and her daughter are trapped in the evil web of a malevolent apartment building, I do not expect Bergman; if the movie does what it can do as well as it can be done, then it has achieved perfection within its own terms."
Roger Ebert gave Dark Water three stars.
Friday, July 01, 2005
News from Knoxville
My friend Glade is moving to Texas and, because she needed help, I have gone along for the ride. We left Richmond yesterday morning, elevenish, and made it to Knoxville, Tennessee around eight last night. Here are some of the highlights of our trip thus far:
-We have listened to CDs of This American Life in the car, which my friend Jocelyn gave me. I've heard them all at this point, but Glade hasn't, and I never mind listening to something I like twice.
-We stopped at a restaurant called "The Whistle Stop Cafe" just outside Lexington that served fried green tomatoes just like in the book. I had a burger instead.
-We briefly looked at some fireworks that were for sale, but Glade decided we should wait until we were in a state that sold "the really bitchin' ones."
-I took a lot of bad pictures of traffic in the car-- several of Glade, several of passing trucks, several of the numerous trees we passed on the highway.
-We ate dinner at Ruby Tuesday, mainly because it was late and we couldn't find somewhere better. It reminded me of the time I went to New York City for a day and ended up eating lunch at the Hardrock Cafe, something I went along with because my friends were doing it and I didn't want to eat alone. At Ruby Tuesday I learned the valuable lesson that mixing margueritas with a lot of cheese makes you feel sick.
-We have listened to CDs of This American Life in the car, which my friend Jocelyn gave me. I've heard them all at this point, but Glade hasn't, and I never mind listening to something I like twice.
-We stopped at a restaurant called "The Whistle Stop Cafe" just outside Lexington that served fried green tomatoes just like in the book. I had a burger instead.
-We briefly looked at some fireworks that were for sale, but Glade decided we should wait until we were in a state that sold "the really bitchin' ones."
-I took a lot of bad pictures of traffic in the car-- several of Glade, several of passing trucks, several of the numerous trees we passed on the highway.
-We ate dinner at Ruby Tuesday, mainly because it was late and we couldn't find somewhere better. It reminded me of the time I went to New York City for a day and ended up eating lunch at the Hardrock Cafe, something I went along with because my friends were doing it and I didn't want to eat alone. At Ruby Tuesday I learned the valuable lesson that mixing margueritas with a lot of cheese makes you feel sick.
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