Friday, March 16, 2007

the sibyls of modernism

« Aujourd’hui, 23 janvier 1862, écrit Baudelaire sur son carnet, j’ai subi un singulier avertissement, j’ai senti passer sur moi le vent de l’aile de l’imbécillité. »

“En 1863, le Figaro insère, en extrait, une violente attaque de Pontmartin contre Baudelaire. En 1864, le même Figaro condescend à publier une série de Poèmes en prose. Seulement, après deux publications (7 et 14 février), Villemessant met fin à cette fantaisie et voici la raison qu’il donne sans ambages à l’auteur, pour expliquer la mesure prise : « Vos poèmes ennuyaient tout le monde. »

- La Vie doloureuse de Baudelaire, by Francois Porche

I recently re-read one of my favorite books of the nineties, James Buchan’s Frozen Desire, an essay on money that gives as much weight to paintings of Judas, the life of Baudelaire, and Raskolnikov (the final dire dialectical figure at the end of laissez faire) as it does to Adam Smith, Keynes and Simmel – and of course it ignores the horrid Milton Friedman, God rest his soul.

About Baudelaire, Buchan quotes Proust’s phrase that Baudelaire sympathized with the poor as a form of anticipation – which is so wholly lovely that it is almost spoiled by going on (which, after all, is what determines, more than voice or rule, the way a line of poetry runs – it is only over when it is over for good – when nothing on that same line could be added that wouldn’t stain or destroy it – and thus the blank is part of the poem - and thus we fall down the poem as we fall down a ladder, rung by rung). Of course, in LI’s me me me way of looking at things, we thought that is exactly our own stance, or was. Of course, now anticipation is instantiation, and we have long had no pity whatsoever for the poor – simply a fanged and competitive attitude. Buchan adds that in the end, as Baudelaire was reduced to rags (but never dirty underwear, according to his biographer Porche), he compiled lists in his last journals. He listed all his friends. They were all prostitutes.

“Here the epoch has arrived of that long haired, graying Baudelaire, his neck enveloped – as per his hypochondria – with a violet scarf; the Baudelaire that was see walking like a shadow, a huge notebook under his arm, in company with the old Guys, at Musard’s, at a casino on the rue Cadet, at Valentino’s. To Monselet who, one evening, in one of those low dives where workers danced, asked him what he was doing there, he replied: I’m watching the death’s heads pass by (« Je regarde passer des têtes de mort. »).”

In these circumstances, when the old bird has almost molted its last feathers and the street reaches out its arms at night to take back its own, there is a moment of collapse and flight. This is when Baudelaire made his journey to Belgium. A complete disaster. And it is when he encountered an article by Jules Janin about Heine, in which Janin, praising Heine, still reproached him for being unreasonably melancholic at times – a point that Janin extended to all of contemporary literature. Where was the gaiety, the song? Where was that lie that eventually became La Traviata? Let’s have a little happy art, for a change. And of course, lets have no unexplained irony – irony is always being chased out of the city, fed hemlock, and in general fucked in the ass and thrown in the gutter – it is the dread of the Janins of the past, just as it is the dread of the Janins of the present – James Woods, for instance, to name a comparable contemporary critic. Baudelaire wrote Janin a letter – which he never sent him. It is a fantastic document, one of those texts in which something blazes out that … it is unfair to call prophetic, as though it were high praise that someone in the past anticipated our moo cow and nukes culture. What blazes out, just as what blazes out of Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, is the world within the world of the sibyls of modernism …

Okay, I’ll translate some of the letter in another post.

90 comments:

northanger said...

BOO! (hi rog)

hey paddy! i got your book today!

Roger Gathmann said...

North, I expect to see you on the holidays... let's see, St. Pat's is coming up. But, even I, stay at home and in front of the computer jerkoff that I am, might actually go out drinking that night. Riot and SXSW in Austin Saturday night.

Hey, I hope you liked the above post. One of my best posts, if I do say so myself.

northanger said...

Roger, how many languages do you know anyway? what does this look like in french: irony is always being chased out of the city, fed hemlock, and in general fucked in the ass and thrown in the gutter.

Happy St. Patrick's Day! just tell me what beer to bring if you're opening the virtual blogbar. we can do it sunday.

Roger Gathmann said...

North, just two languages, German and French.

Are you saying that my little sentence about irony should have been followed by, pardon my French? Hey, I'm proud of my profanity- I'm trying to cultivate LBJ like levels of it.

What are we going to watch, Sunday? Do they have a St. Pat's day parade on the coast? When I lived in New Haven, the deal was to go to West Haven, where the main drag supposedly had some world record number of bars on it, and go from one to the other until you dropped. There were some great bars - there was one Portugese sailor bar, for instance. Not something you'd expect in West Haven, but there it was.

Anonymous said...

Hey, northanger, good to hear it! and like the subversive attitude to let me know here...Roger'll get over it...I hope anyway...if he doesn't, it's not my problem. I've been frozen out of all the blogs, anyway, so I don't know why any of them think I'd care, since it's all about careers anyway.

northanger said...

forgot where i first heard this: somebody curses, says "excuse me". "that's ok", somebody else says, "i like people who speak a second language". LBJ like levels of profanity? you gotta have a dream.

durn, missed the LA County Irish Fair and Music Festival, but not the parade. Timberwolves play Lakers & NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament on sunday.

northanger said...

Paddy. at least you have green beer & parades every year. i get nothing!

it's a lovely book!

Anonymous said...

Bloggers beat out comments they don't like by doing a new post, so that's fine with me if they want to live like that. I did notice yesterday that there are simply massively more closings of retail stores in the Village and what reopens is some very temporary over-fashionable tchotche shop with dreadfully vapid tinsel-like things, gets worse all the time, people going down Britney Lane by now, no sense of history. The most remarkable new store, given the context of the depletion, is a glass store full of huge bright vases called The End of History. When they go online, we'll know whole blocks are going to be demolished.

Personally, I think Bush had the CIA tell Valerie Plame to manually plant the rats 8 blocks down from me, that led to KFC/Taco Bells getting closed all over the boroughs--13! count'em 13!--I mean how fabulous is that, except that one needn't expect anything except a new lot for Barry Diller to build something else if he wants to (there's this ugly new Frank Gehry thing for Diller up 11th Avenue). New York no longer has a magic atmosphere, my friend Jack and I were at a pastry shop full of Britney-worshippers yesterday and nearly perished even though they had a good croissant there. However, Gretchen Cryer/Nancy Ford musical team since the 60's have a new show at Lucille Lortel I'll probably see--version of 'Anne of Green Gables.' Once in a while the exception pushes its way through the filth, but the city is basically gone, it's taken me this long to accept it, and so I archive the ruins that are still there.

Anonymous said...

Roger--I'll get to your fabulous post, don't get nervous. I give you plenty of attention as it is.

Green beer is pretty, I agree, but it's awful--I usually don't celebrate St. Paddy's Day with boozing. I did see the parade in 2004, it was on a 5 inch snow day, and is snowing again today. Parade is good when you actually see the bagpipes up close blown by all those night-before reddened faces (which will continue into the Green Beer Nights). Personally, right now I'm into old 50's 'Blue Rose' album I got off eBay, when Clooney sings Ellington, just love the stuff, esp. 'Heeeeyyyyyyyy bay-bee, I got some talk fo' you...you ole fine sweet thang wi' the Good-Looks...I got some talk fo' you...Heeeeyyyyy bay-bee...you're just the type to bring...Out m'attributes an' my Good-Looks...m' daily everything...

Oh, well, as Paddy, I guess I started the festivities a day earlier and, since it's America, I think I should hole up and read Kafka to prove I'm like European depressives...Je m'excuse beaucoup, monsieur...

Roger Gathmann said...

How could you tell they were Britney worshippers?

I noticed in a convenience store yesterday that some mag - teen people? - published a public letter from Pamela Anderson to Britney. Ah, they are our philosophes! our public intellectuals! It is, really, the American equivalent of the public letter Sakharov, except I don't think Sakharov did home video.

Roger Gathmann said...

...public letter Sakharov sent to Gorbachev. Damn, this haloscan is getting more and more bizarre. Let's see if it eats this comment.

Anonymous said...

"since it's all about careers anyway."

"Bloggers beat out comments they don't like by doing a new post, so that's fine with me if they want to live like that"

True, very true. You can spot the careerists right away by their demands for "accountability". Ask what that entails, and they put up a new post. But I know what they mean. They mean ritual shaming in a competition for market share. Building a personal "brand" needn't be zero sum game. They risk spraining their penises with all the thrusting about.

Anonymous said...

'They risk spraining their penises with all the thrusting about.'

I will not discuss penises with you. People are always bringing them up who have absence of expertise of them.

Was delighted to find Ralph Nader will be running for president in 2004, though.

'Ask what that entails, and they put up a new post. But I know what they mean. They mean ritual shaming in a competition for market share.'

Yes, you would--you never discuss anything but markets, it's a real bore. We'll see if you can do something that isn't all fluff. Your move, baby. You have to see if I will respond to your wrath if you continue your use of a nom de plume.

[The 'Britney-worshipper' is just a code for all the rest of the nails places, tchotchke places, and otherwise General Meltdown Places. Pam Anderson would be here, as would Tom Cruise and Angelina Jolie (even while adopting a new baby, since she gotta have it but doesn't want to do UN anymore, but prepares for an Anna Nicole Smith version of Audrey Hepburnism]

Roger Gathmann said...

Have I missed something? Do I have a career? Does it come with a salary? And can I have a two week vacation in the summer?

Anonymous said...

« Je n’ai pas, dit-il, de conviction comme l’entendent les gens de mon siècle. Il n’y a pas en moi de base pour une conviction, parce que je n’ai pas une ambition. Les brigands sont convaincus – de quoi ? – qu’il leur faut réussir. »
-CB

Roger Gathmann said...

Amie, oddly enough, like Baudelaire's brigands, I'm also convinced that I have to succeed. Admittedly, I am still unclear about the terms of that success, but the Bitch Goddess has spoken to me, too. I take that back - I do know what the terms of success are, but like the wish you make on a falling star, I can't tell anybody.

CB's remark has a Balzacian ring, don't you think? This could be Rastignac contemplating Vautrin's offer in Pere Goriot. There's a wonderful anecdote in Porche - Baudelaire, in 1861, decided, of all things, that he would offer himself as a candidate to the Academie Francaise. Then, as now, the AF was a collection of honorable buzzards. It pained CB's friends. Flaubert said, look, you are making a fool of yourself. They were probably a little shocked, too, since it seemed close to mockery, and you know that those mandarins all secretly longed for a little ribbon or two. Baudelaire - charmingly, I think, and naively - replied, but I am literature.

Anonymous said...

Oh, Patrick. Please! I most certainly discuss things other than markets, and I have yet to discuss markets seriously anyway. There happens to be little call for talk on the things I do know a great deal about.

"Chuck?", people say to me, "tell us about the squirrel derivatives again, and the muskrat-denominated debentures."

Roger is very kind to me when I do -- not that he is at all interested in either. I think he puts up with it in the hopes that I will eventually renounce phlegmatic cretinism and read Baudelaire.

Anonymous said...

'I take that back - I do know what the terms of success are, but like the wish you make on a falling star, I can't tell anybody.'

Is that from, like, the Gay Science or something?

Cherry Grove or The Pines?

Anonymous said...

'the hopes that I will eventually renounce phlegmatic cretinism and read Baudelaire.'

There are many other things besides reading Baudelaire that are impossible because of phlegmatic cretinism. You see, dear child, plegmatic cretinism is a quagmire, and quagmires are always full of closet fans (I mean pop singer closet fans, not ceiling fans like when you don't have air conditioning...)

Roger Gathmann said...

All my material is ghostwritten by either Nietzsche or Disney studios.

Anonymous said...

Patrick, they say that people eventually have to face their contradictions, but I ain't buying it. So while they're selling woof tickets to make people accept them, I float squirrel derivatives. You can't argue with fundamentalists. They know what they know -- and what's worse, they know that they know what you know, even when they don't.

northanger said...

The End of History ... I archive the ruins.

I solemnly swear to be faithful to my bosom friend ... as long as the sun and moon shall endure.

northanger said...

btw, the new manchurian candidate is on sunday. & i'm a gemini. we laugh at contradictions.

Roger Gathmann said...

I liked the new manchurian candidate when I saw it, but it didn't linger with me - like angela lansbury's manchurian candidate.

Thing about the old manchurian candidate is: the Korean war was much, much different than any war Americans have fought in the last fifty years. The U.S. just hasn't experienced traditional defeat like that - whole battalions surrendering or freezing to death, the army collapsing and retreating. That part of American history was just put in the forgettery box - but it was still pretty vivid for the audience of the first Manchurian candidate. Plus, of course, the spectacle of hundreds of American soldiers denouncing the capitalist imperialist runnin' dog system - poor saps.

northanger said...

[sigh] see, that's what you're supposed to say sunday (compare/contrast ... the real "long" war) while i slobber over denzel & talk about the time i saw the korean war memorial during a midnight tour of washington. now you've gone & spoiled everything! :( party pooper.

Roger Gathmann said...

Hey, North, I thought you west coast people had an appreciation of the PRE-party. I thought you all invented it - isn't that all the rage in Hollywood? The pre-party gives us time to look at the fashions, and interview people about how excited they are about the upcoming fabulousness. No pre-party would be complete, of course, without some microphonist from E! channel giving us the scoop on today's controversy, and now we have one! Old guard vs. new guard, Frank Sinatra vs. Denzel Washington, does the hype about retro show that hype is retro, plus tomorrow's Irish supermodels today - with guest star Kate Moss and a very large chunk of cocaine! I'll interview the large chunk.

northanger said...

pre-party spectrum is exceptionally vast in california. think i'm in the... tailgating band.

wow, Manchurian Global. what's the deal with that jump from communism to corporatism?

Roger Gathmann said...

Ah, the corporation enemy doesn't exclude the communism enemy. Remember, Goldfinger was just a business man (and no doubt Ian Fleming's upper class brit anti-jew bias was put
into that figure).

By the way - are you drinking Bushmill's today? Hmm, I guess I should go out and get a shot of Irish whisky. I need a goal for today - that's one!
And here's the clancy's singing my fave Irish song, the Patriot Game, and doing some weird middle aged male gang sweater thing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NecagKouMNE

northanger said...

iced tea right now. (hmm, how many songs use the word "quislings"?)

two things i like: Glenfiddich & Strega liqueur. Glenfiddich's way outside my budget right now, but i might splurge this once.

Roger Gathmann said...

I just like the word, Glenfiddich. To order a glenfiddich, one has to have guts, have dignity, have a whole life unrolling in B & W behind one - the upbringing on Sackville road, one of eleven kids, the days playing hooky and robbing candy stores, the standing up to the cops and earning R-E-S-P-E-C-T, the leveraging of dope money into some legitimate equities scam, the ability to stop some young suit with a brazen gesture as he salad forking his arugala, you know, suddenly you cup his chin, stop the chewing, lock eyes and say, softly, tenderly, I'll fuck your corpse if this doesn't work out, you know that don't you, sonny - a whole life, in fact! that leads up to the Glennfiddich moment. A life that isn't mine, god damn it.

Hey, my fave Richard Conden film is Winter Kills. Much underrated, in my opinion, especially compared to the dreary waste of JFK, a movie that I have never seen all the way through - I just couldn't watch whatshisname, who stars as Garrison, without severe stomach cramps. I think nobody likes Winter kills because it doesn't take the JFK assassination seriously enough. What's with that?

Roger Gathmann said...

And now I am, I really am, out of here. Happy saint pat's, Northanger! This was an excellent pre-party, I think, even though we haven't discussed the stars of tomorrow. So: who are the stars of tomorrow? And isn't Merle Streep the most intelligent of actresses?

Anonymous said...

'And isn't Merle Streep the most intelligent of actresses?'

Definitely not. I hoped not to have to remark on her yet again. She's sometimes as good as people say she is, but she always evaporates exactly the way the whole remake of 'Manchurian Candidate' does. Of the oldies, Vanessa Redgrave has much more real range than all that stylizing business that Streep has always used so effectively. She bores me, just donning one piece of chameleon after another. She's always good, but I have never been moved by her a single time; I think she's secretly always playing herself. Even Liz Taylor and Shirley MacLaine are more interesting.

And there are no stars of tomorrow. What's this shit with the optimism all of a sudden?

Roger Gathmann said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Roger Gathmann said...

Patrick, I have to disagree about Streep. As an actress, she reminds me of one of my favorite American actresses - Barbara Stanwyck. A woman who always did know what she was doing - unlike, say, Joan Crawford, who is the very essence of a compulsive actress, her screen roles seeming not so much acted as exuded. Stanwyck, though, always had a certain sense of how she was going to, say, sexually lure Fred McMurray in Double indemnity, or how she was going to knock off her husband in the same movie. My favorite of her roles was as Jean Harrington in the Lady Eve, because the plot actually called for her to act various roles - this I think was quietly brilliant. The only comparable role for Streep was in The French Lieutenant's Woman, where again how she was going to act is incorporated in the film. I think Streep is always interesting, sometimes just because she is being a good sport, and sometimes because she is making her own little masterpiece in some piece of shit - that terrible film about screenwriting that was made from the Orchid Thief was one of those. I like her quite a bit. As for Elizabeth Taylor, the physical splendor of Taylor when she was young is a kick to watch - I mean, who is going to object to seeing the young Taylor and the young Paul Newman in any film they wanted to be in? And so something like Cat on a Hot Tin Roof works in spite of her limited range, but she seemed, in the screen as, I suppose, in real life, to spend all her resources without thinking - thus she sort of created a career that could only have a downward arc.
Thus spoke Zarathustra, the fuckin' optimist.

northanger said...

hands down, Rosalind Russell. in anything.

disagree Streep squared. i loved her in Adaptation & started looking for my one & only flower. anybody seen her yet in The Devil Wore Pravda?

the party begins ... i have a new bottle of glenfiddich. open & poured.

Roger Gathmann said...

I'm down with R.R. I thought Streep was a good sport in Adaptation - but the movie made me writhe in general, and the denouement of that thing was - I dimly recall - painful in the extreme. As was Nicholas Cage - or am I hallucinating? Did N.C. play in that movie? Say it ain't so!

So you have the mythological gravitas for Glenfiddich, eh? Oh, if I were only the man I should be! But I'm a mere piker in liquor.

A..and you say nothing about Barbara Stanwyck? So underappreciated! not a beauty, but who had a more interesting face, or a gaze that took in more information? Stanwyck actually looks at things with her eyes - not for her the film star's glassiness.

Roger Gathmann said...

Shouldn't we celebrate some Irish actress, by the way? with song and YouTube clips?

Roger Gathmann said...

North,
Here's a shot of Roz with your glenfiddich: http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=IxruLvdrNDU

Anonymous said...

Stanwyck WAS a beauty early on. She was working back in the early 30's with such things as 'Baby Face'. She's not underrated--people know how good she was. Winning Oscars doesn't amount to a hill of beans, if Deborah Kerr and Robert Mitchum didn't get one, how can they mean a shit? Garbo never got one either, she was a great actress, and people sometimes don't seem to know that because she didn't get 4 dumb Oscars like Katharine Hepburn (also a great actress, of course, despite insufferable personality.)

Was not literal comparison with Streep and Taylor, et alia. Of course Streep has lots of technique. If she bores me, that's just the way it is, and I won't pay to see her in anything. Much prefer Julianne Moore, Emanuelle Beart, Catherine Deneuve. You don't make enough distinction between the authentic American Movie Star and the Modern Film Actress. Otherwise, you might find sad, overwrought, tragic Joan Crawford in pulp like 'Flamingo Road' and 'Mildred Pierce' to be very intuitive and 'american-original.' Those kinds of actresses--Crawford, Bette Davis, Lana Turner--don't really exist any more, except Isabelle Huppert begins to seem sort of like Bette Davis (riveting, but repetitious.) People like John Wayne, Mitchum, Marilyn Monroe, Bogart, were all personalities that had instincts for some sort of acting craft, and could do it. The only one still doing that is Deneuve, as far as I know, can't think of any American men or women actors who still have charisma like in the old days. This is just fragmentary, but with this sort of subject, it is well to be fragmentary. To finish it, I think Gwyneth Paltrow is going to do Marlene Dietrich in the next year or so. She can't possibly do it, no matter what. Who'd care to see that, when you can see 'the Blue Angel' or 'Morocco' so easily.

Oh yeah, love Roz Russell, she was even good in 'Gypsy,' but that should have been Ethel Merman recreating her B'way. Film surprisingly good anyway, would have been a masterpiece with Merman, because that's the single best of all American musicals--doesn't ever go out of style, is always revived, has great writing, great score, etc.

Anonymous said...

Yes, we should celebrate Maureen O'Hara, still with us after all but a few of the old glamour-stars have passed on (as B. Hutton this week.) I never watched 'Miracle on 34th Street till this Xmas, couldn't believe what a perfect gem it was, had expected to be bored. Also alive is Anita Page, of 'broadway Melody of 1929' and the last living person to attend the first Academy Awards. And D. Kerr still alive.

Anyway, O'Hara was a great beauty in her day. I don't know too many pure Irish actresses though.

northanger said...

y'know Roger, rolling on the floor laughing my ass off doesn't even come close ... but yes. i have the mythological gravitas for Glenfiddich. even if it's only in my imagination.

btw, i didn't know morgan freeman was the prez in deep impact.

northanger said...

i'm curious. where did you writhe during Adaptation Roger? i think i can guess. i think that's the part i totally loved.

Anonymous said...

Just checked, think the Paltrow/Dietrich thing has been cancelled. Good for whoever. What a terrible idea. Faye Dunaway good as Crawford, but usually this sort of thing doesn't work.

northanger said...

yes. Nicholas Cage.

Barbara Stanwyck ... you said it all. my problem with Double indemnity is Fred McMurray — who could be an awesome son of a bitch (see the apartment). but i grew up with My Three Sons & The Shaggy Dog. i admit cognitive dissonance.

totally nailed Crawford.

Taylor? no fucking way....if she was really on a downward arc she'd be dead already. one more movie, just one more movie. one more good crunchy role & i'd be happy with the Taylor saga.

Anonymous said...

'Barbara Stanwyck. A woman who always did know what she was doing - unlike, say, Joan Crawford, who is the very essence of a compulsive actress, her screen roles seeming not so much acted as exuded'

No. Both of these approaches are legit, it's just that you don't get good results with the latter nearly so often. Deneuve, describing Depardieu in a 90s bio, said that 'lucidity is not all that important for an actor.' I agree. It makes for an especially fine sort of actor, but that's not the only kind. Both kinds are needed, not just 'head cases'. The thing about Stanwyck that is missing is that she was beautiful in the early days, but rarely especially seductive, perhaps excepting in those 'fuck me' shoes coming down the Bunker Hill stairs in 'Indemnity.' I don't like 'The Lady Eve' that much, but probably only because I think Sturges is even better in 'Morgan's Creek' and 'Palm Beach Story' is Claudette Colbert's best film, IMO.

Mitchum didn't always know what he was doing and didn't care either, for whatever reason, he's my favourite film actor.

northanger said...

oh! Maureen O'Hara. forgot about her. who can forget! she's IRISH. she's our patron saint today. The Quiet Man. but! then there's Greer Garson (is she irish?).

say it ain't so paddy. you haven't seen Miracle on 34th Street until recently? i love actresses who can go from soup to nuts. from child stars to movie stars. that's why i'd like to see Elizabeth Taylor do just one more. let her close the curtain, one more time, with an outstanding role.

i saw this doc last night called paddy wacked & the guy who started driveby shootings. name's Cole. shot a kid. of course he got off.

Anonymous said...

If Liz is well enough, I'd like to too. She's a grand thing, but recently appeared in a wheel chair at her own birthday party. She could easily get some bright bit parts and be pampered. I don't think it realistic to expect anything demanding, though. That TV thing 'These Old Broads' with her and Reynolds, MacLaine and Collins had some funny moments, but much better actressy camp is '8 Femmes' with Deneuve showing off zaftig shamelessly, Fanny Ardant showing how she'd kept her perfect figure, Isabelle Huppert and Emanuelle Beart again, and Danielle Darrieux--all of them getting off acting like stereotyped French whores. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Right about Garson, and maybe Irene Dunne was too, but surely Mickey Rooney (no actress, but still alive, the weirdoh)

northanger said...

ten thousand pounds

i must see that now.

northanger said...

gosh! all these folks are still alive? i think there's a website where you can check. but we have to focus on the irish actors. lemme go check.

northanger said...

ah! Michael Gambon is irish. he's the new Dumbledore.

jeez. i should pace myself. i hope i don't end up puking my guts out.

northanger said...

ok. i learned this from my brother-in-law: drink booze, then drink coffee. it's supposed to give you some kinda high. i dunno, some kinda alchemical reaction. so... i'm thinking. when deep impact ends i'll make me some coffee. & try avoid puking during mission impossible 2.

is tom cruise irish?

northanger said...

Mad Dog Coll

Roger Gathmann said...

North, your brother in law does NOT have the mythological gravitas to drink glenfiddich, if that is how he goes about it. You don't want just any high - where are the hippies of yesteryear? Highs are like shoes, there are different types.

Well, just ran around the lake and see we've gone on from Roz to Maureen o'hara. B..but I wanted to finish my little schemata of the compulsive performance. I wasn't meaning to downplay it as a performance, but I guess that sounded too mean about Crawford. I don't think bogart is a compulsive performer at all, quite the opposite. Nor am I thinking European vs. American. Valerie Paradis gave a compulsive performance, which I loved, in La Fille sur le pont. And it worked partly cause the film was so nostalgic for the film it could not be, one filmed in an earlier era. In that sense, Valerie was like Faye Dunaway in Chinatown - you couldn't subtract Dunaway from Chinatown, and who could be more compulsive? But take, by contrast, the Mirror - a Tarkovsky film I saw last week and am still in a whirl about. More nostalghia, and obviously Tarkovsky cuts out a role for the wife/mother role played, by Margarita Terekhova, that is inherently compulsive - but she never gives it to him. Its wonderful to see her resist, and to see how the movie finds itself around her.

So much for that. Now, onto the rumor that Tom Cruise is from the Irish part of Mars.

Roger Gathmann said...

Mad dog Coll is my kinda 'fiddich drinker. I'm going out to get a chinese beer, to toast him. Will be back shortly.

northanger said...

hmm. an unsubtractable performance is a part that any actor can play, but because the actor in question played the role it becomes .. an unsubtractable performance. do i have that right? what exactly (not that i disagree) makes Dunaway unsubtractable in Chinatown? because it's also an example of great direction & screenwriting. & nicholson. is he irish?

i've got my second wind & managed not to drink myself under the table!

Vanessa Pardis is the la fille sur le pont. i thought we were sticking with the irish mafia?

Anonymous said...

Interesting about the Tarkovsky. I will try to get it out of NYPL.

I meant more instinctive than compulsive. Compulsive could be instinctive or intellectual, I think. Like that about impossibility of subtracting Dunaway from 'Chinatown', yes, you can't. She's uncanny, the whole movie is. So then in The End of History Period we find Hilary Swank in 'The Black Dahlia' doing a rich LA West Side type and a literal imitation of Dunaway's voice in 'Chinatown.' One of the Ballet Talk people agreed that it was as if Dunaway were dubbing here. I don't care for Ms. Swank trying to be feminine. She should stick to tomboys if she's not going to learn how to be like Charlotte Rampling. Nicole Kidman would have been good in that part, and I don't even find her interesting, but she would have known how to just stand there. Ms. Swank is tedious with technique beyond belief.

One last thing about ms. Huppert. Anybody who hasn't seen The piano Teacher should. An amazing movie, I dreaded it, and it was even more horrible than I expected. In a way, it's also bad, because you'd think the character had had experience in these matters, but she hadn't.

northanger said...

i'm either 1/8th or 1/16th irish btw (i forget). which is saying something coz i'm african american. my mom has freckles. oh what a mystery was solved when i learned about that one.

Roger Gathmann said...

Unsubtractible - I just mean, this wasn't all Polanski and Nicholson's show. From what I've read, Faye Dunaway had a hard time with Polanski, and vice versa.

I thought we were talking about Irish martians, not the Irish Mafia. But... here's a little film from a poorer ireland, when even Jayne Mansfield was mobbed as a star! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyPrT5NLDUs

northanger said...

Irish martians! you slipped something in my glenfiddich! what's with these-boots-were-made-for-walking on Mansfield? petit dogs? things never change.

ok ok. i see your Dunaway & raise you — maybe that's what made her unsubtractable?

Roger Gathmann said...

Hey, here's ali g. in northern ireland. Sorta like a martian!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-fH9SX046E

Anonymous said...

Dunaway was very emotional actress, her career took a huge plunge, that's sometimes part of it.

Love that Jayne Mansfield YouTube. She kept playing with her tits or making the dogs do it. Just between us, I think it's her greatest film.

northanger said...

lol!

northanger said...

Eyes of Laura Mars. & i'm going from memory, not google.

northanger said...

um ... two Irish guys walk into a bar. What? It could happen!

Roger Gathmann said...

Well, now I have the post St. Pat's day meal going. Pokey joes barbecue chicken, their very excellent cornbread, and chinese beer.

Hey, we have to give Faye credit for Mommie Dearest - which really screwed her up with the powers that be in Hollywood. Or at least, I remember an interview years ago where she said that.

Anonymous said...

And I didn't see 'Mommie Dearest' till a few months ago, but she's terrific. I don't know what not being screwed up with the powers that be in Hollywood could possibly mean though--think Spielberg, Geffen, Stone Streisand, Ovitz, Tarantino (I've decided I hate his movies, the little nervous-nell nerd) Eisner, Cruise, Goldie, Tom Hanks, it's so dreadful you could die of horrible board meeting images. When they give Angie some more starring roles, I'll pay them some mind.

northanger said...

another Dunaway role: Three Days of the Condor. y'know, Dunaway's unsubtractable role might be Mommie Dearest.

Roger Gathmann said...

By the way, here's a small secret about Texas - besides fajita chicken, the whole state doesn't know what to do with the damned bird. Try to find good fried chicken after the Louisiana state line - maybe in some obscure corner of Houstan. I have no complaint about the beef products here, but I was raised in the illusion that there would always be good chicken dinners ahead of me.
Oh, the world is cruel!
I'm gonna have some more Harbin beer now, a find a vid of Cibo Matta's Know your chicken - here it is!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFpvaxN25gs

northanger said...

if Pokey joes doesn't have blood pudding, then Roger, you're a unforgivable blasphemer.

northanger said...

did that bird just fart?

Roger Gathmann said...

I can't even find blood pudding in Mamou, Lousiane - of course, I don't know the right people. But I've had boudin that is close!

Unfortunately, that chicken was so dry that a fart would be supererogatory. Which I just made that sentence so I could use fart and supererogatory. See how clever Chinese beer makes me?

northanger said...

lol!

Anonymous said...

http://www.theworldwidegourmet.com/countries/usa/hawai/moana-huli.htm

This is called Hawaiian, but it's basically Pacific Rim in General.

This is a lot of trouble, mainly for finding all the ingredients, but I made this for our lunch Thursday, after gradually getting it all together over a period of 4 months. Stupendous chicken brochettes. Made the salad that goes with it too. Just ate some of the remains little while ago. Might be trouble to get those Asian sauces, but they're cheap even though they can't be kept that long. One of the best things I ever made, and good with Corona Extra. If made, marinate overnight, not just 'a la minute' like they say, it's more savoury.

Roger Gathmann said...

Hey, these stars - and we've never mention the woman I've long ago given my heart to, Rita!

Here she is in a scene from Lady from Shanghai that I have seen at least twenty times. Talk about compulsive.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKk1iw1k1GM

northanger said...

paddy, was that Angie Dickinson? is she irish?

northanger said...

before i forget Roger, "the Glennfiddich moment" was super duper. i should gematrify that.

Roger Gathmann said...

Patrick, that looks pretty hot - spicy hot. Very fancy, though. I imagine I'd fumble it.

Anonymous said...

Nice clip, looks a little like Monroe and Turner (in 'Postman') at beginning. Sometimes Halle Berry is like a real star. She and Billy Bob were marvels in Monster Balls.

Roger Gathmann said...

North, did you do the coffee interludes?

Anonymous said...

You can't fumble it, because you just mix it all up and put the chicken pieces in it, then deep fry them in oil. I know it looks complicated, but it's just trouble to accumulate the stuff. After that, it's really only 2 steps.

Anonymous said...

Angie Dickinson, yes, but is from Washington State, Spokane, I think. People don't understand these unique Americans like Angie. She's a great movie star and a real beauty (still.)

northanger said...

thing about wine is it has this grace period. you can drink just over your limit w/o it hitting you over your head. whiskey, however, is harder to judge. least for me. that last chug can have you over the line hugging something that isn't normally hugged unless you're ... well you know.

one more shot then i'm going to try the coffee thingy.

(it's not halfway, but it has a good respectable dent.)

northanger said...

um, the movie's about to start. nope, haven't had my coffee interlude. who do you cook for Patrick? that's yummy.

northanger said...

i be right back. (dare i drink this last bit? as i walk tenderly to the kitchen to fire up the espresso machine. darn! i forgot popcorn. what's my movie snack? it's MONSTER BALL ... not BALLS silly).

Anonymous said...

Well, I have this friend Jack who I sometimes cook for, he comes down here once a week, or we'll go out to lunch and he'll buy me lunch at some bistro or just pizza, and then we'll go somewhere and he'll draw for awhile. He did a gorgeous drawing of Washington Square Arch on Halloween this year (one of few he gave me, it was just as the peak colours of autumn were finishing.) I got him to draw the chapel at Episcopal Theological Seminary too, my favourite place. I like to cook, though, and am pretty good at it--learned from my Mama and from wicked Parisians when I lived there; and cook for other people to, but not as often. I made Carmella Soprano's Ricotta Cheesecake and put lots of White Chocolate in it and top it with chocolate wafer crust and cherry pie topping. I have this roommate, and this was too rich for her, though.

I gotta hand it to you, rodg-uh and Ms. Nawthang-uh, this post-St. Paddy's Day was the best online idea I've seen in a long time, babes. Y'all know how I don't like all sawts o'things, but this was pretty cute.

northanger said...

there comes an irrefutable moment when you know you're drunk.

i have reached that moment.

Anonymous said...

But I don't think anyone has ever written about it exactly at that moment! This is very important, because it proves your dedication to discipline through inebriation and in spite of it!

northanger said...

i liked this post-party too.
{burp}

northanger said...

paddy.
lol!
any excuse to drink will do.

northanger said...

i promise i shall dream of Ricotta Cheesecake with lots of White Chocolate in it, topped with chocolate wafer crust & cherry pie topping tonight

...& autumn leaves

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