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Ys is good

I’ve meant to update practically every day this week. I would be a really bad participant in that Blog November thing that Mrs. Kennedy has going. Sigh. Since I’ve written, Rupert Murdoch’s empire threatened to reintroduce the blood-sucking tick that is OJ Simpson back onto the body of the American public; AND he has apologized like a chagrined little boy and replaced the tick in his pocket.

Considering the depths of esteem in which we, as a country, seem to hold Murdoch and OJ to begin with, they could hardly have fallen further. The person who seems to have really lost face in the “If I Did It, Here’s How” debacle was Judith Regan. Even her friend Nora Ephron politely disapproved of Regan’s by turns scattered, illogical, and sanctimonious defense of her decision to inflict OJ on America in book form. Everyone else reacted as though Regan had exhumed the body of Joseph Stalin and dragged him around the floor of the Senate, taunting Senators and demanding kisses.

A lot has happened in general. Since work has been slow, I’ve had lots of time to catch up on my world happenings: TomKat weds in Italy; Kramer reveals a frightening racist streak; but most notably, Robert Altman dies. Should I wait several days before I admit I was never crazy about Altman’s movies? That I walked out of Nashville, turned off Short Cuts, and couldn’t make it past Act 1 of The Player? In fact, the only one of his movies I’ve enjoyed from start to finish is the least Altman-esque of them all, Gosford Park.

Perhaps I should return my Film degree. Or does having seen Borat at last redeem me? I laughed. I laughed and I laughed and I had to drink water or I might have puked too; that movie is Gross with a capital Gagging Sound. What made it grosser was that the seat directly in front of me contained a four year old boy. I’m not kidding. His father, who was maybe my age, had brought him. It’s not all his fault; why’d the theater let him? Regardless: outrage & disgust! Although some of the humor was perhaps more suited to him than to me (viz., nude wrestling; feces at the dinner table).

The movie itself made me feel pretty dirty afterwards for that reason, not on behalf of the Jews or those (litigious) citizens of Glod who are the stand-ins for the people of Kazakhstan. Those parts were so over-the-top, so silly, it’s inconceivable to me that anyone would be legitimately offended. & I actually thought they were brilliant send-ups of 1) anti-semitism in this day and age, and 2) dim American ideas of what the developing world is like.

On a note of higher culture: when I spending that cheery evening in the ER with Ross a week ago, I missed a concert I was supposed to see with the fire boss and my friend Lana, both of whom reported back that Joanna Newsom, in my absence, proceeded to give the best show ever in history since the burning of Rome. To make it up to me, Lana, amazingly, bought me Ys, Newsom’s latest CD. As reported, it’s fantastic, like a harp-playing, warbling lovechild of Bjork and Joan Baez developed an album around an obsession with Mists of Avalon. Give it a try. You may never get past Newsom’s distinctive voice, but if you can, it’s mesmerizing.