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i can’t yodel Today has been an examplary exemple of the reasons I selected this town from over ten thousand applicants as my new home town. The fog is impenetrable, the breeze almost biting, the oncoming drivers baring their teeth as I weave into their lane, give them a wave, wink and grin, and weave back into mine, where I disappear into the wall of fog like a ghost SUV piloted by a stupid crazy fuck who probably died doing exactly what he just did. (None of this is true, except for the fog and breeze part.) On the radio today Al Franken was rambling about whatever Al Franken rambles about. Two hours later I slapped an SNL retrospective into the DVD player and listened/half-watched while I worked. Franken popped up in numerous b&w photos from the show’s first five years, and then occasionally appeared in his modern form as an interview subject about those first five years. Al Franken apparently discovered a way to stop aging in 1976. I am sure every day he is sad that he didn’t discover it until he was sixty-two years old. It must suck to be sixty-two years old for twenty-nine years. What a shitty age to lock in your immortality at. One more random comment about Serenity that I failed to mention during yesterday’s similarly uninteresting update: during the voiceover that sets the scene, Disembodied Talking Voice explains that humanity has been colonizing and terraforming planets and moons for a while now. As he talks, we see a monstrous piece of machinery that’s ostensibly pumping necessary gases into the atmosphere of a planet, and other planets where people have altered the atmosphere, gravity and environment enough that they can walk about freely without floating away, suffocating or sinking into molten metals. It is probably incredibly dull of me to say that I wanted them to right that second ditch the story about the kung fu girl with the damaged memory, and the cowboys with their space ships, and show me a several-hours-long documentary of the evolution of we retarded humans now into those forward-thinking, scientifically-creative people who managed to do all of that stuff. One more note: I suppose that terraforming and the like would take centuries upon centuries of very patient, very repetitive, very demanding work. Since Serenity takes place in a future where it’s all been done, it’s probably safe to assume that it’s many, many years removed from 2005. (The monologue says that the terraforming has taken decades, but come on now.) Why, then, have weapons not evolved more? The characters in the movie carry six-shooters and machine guns and swords. And what about home (or spacecraft) furnishings? Serenity is populated with papasan chairs and ordinary sofas and coffee tables. And what the hell is up with the dialogue? It’s a strange, sometimes difficult-to-follow blend of current slang, invented cultural expressions, cowboy bravado, and occasionally stilted, almost Victorian-era speech. Where else are you going to find a sci-fi flick where the plucky girl mechanic complains, “Been more’n a year since I had anything twixt my nethers didn’t run on batteries”? The movie seems to be coming from two different directions — if you take it seriously, as it sometimes wants you to, you have to ask questions about these anachronisms. But if you take it as a good-natured, adventurous romp, you don’t have to, and these same discrepancies actually make it a little more fun. (Hell, a lot more.) Okay, I’m off to a wedding this weekend. Back in a few.
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October 23rd, 2005 at 6:57 am
I enjoyed reading your entry, though I was somewhat dissapointed that you didn’t, at some point, tell us about how you discovered that you can’t yodel. ;)
I love yodeling. It’s such happy music.