Sunday, December 26, 2010

Poetic faith

Gosh, it's been a while. Checking in since I'm not quite sleepy enough to collapse, but already too braindead to do anything constructive or even relaxing. Obviously a perfect niche for blogging then. There's your marketing campaign right there.

So, what's new... I guess the main thing is I got published on Pajiba, a site I've been reading daily for... God knows how long. Actually, two of my pieces already went up, and I just submitted the third one, which constitutes a big deal in and of itself. The first two were history articles, i.e. novelty items, since it's a film/tv review site. I was offering an off-kilter distraction and writing with some authority (even if it was but a thin veneer) about stuff most people don't know anything about. The piece I just sent them, however, is a TV review. Actually, it's a review of my favorite TV series , so it's kind of a different ballgame, both stress-wise and since they're actually going to publish something non-historical of mine. And so soon, too.

Seems someone's looking out for me, at least in this regard. I wrote them after they published a short piece on the Hungarian revolution of 1956, figuring that if my favorite site was getting into history, it at least wouldn't hurt to ask if I could contribute. The author took his time responding, but it turns out he's writing a thesis in political studies on post-communist countries, or smth, so my Polish pedigree at least gave my email enough anecdotal value for it to be passed on to the chief editor, who in turn liked my history stuff, and so it happened. A month later I randomly wrote the editor asking if they'd ever pimped Slings and Arrows on the site, since they totally should, and he replied that it's funny I should mention it, as he just finished the 2nd season, is in love with it, and was going to do a write-up, but I could do it instead if I wanted to. Kismet struck yet again.

It's been an interesting experience. I've always dreaded creating things from scratch on a daily basis. I figured translating is the perfect venue for me - it allows for some creativity, but you're always just riffing on a source, you don't have to whip anything out of thin air. Now I know I couldn't do it constantly (and on a deadline), but I also learned that there is something there to be plucked from the ether. And it's a completely different process, which right now feels exhilirating. These ready-made sentences or concepts just pop into my head, completely out of the blue, and I get to move them around, looking for ways to piece them together and make the narrative flow smoothly. And then people actually read it, and some of them like it.

At this point it's basically a dream scenario. I don't get paid shit, but I can write about whatever I want, at the pace I want to write it at, and am pretty much guaranteed it will get published. I can exorcise my historical fetishes without having to force them upon random and often unwilling friends, and just now got to preach about Slings and Arrows to a whole bunch of strangers. I'm still smelling the roses.

That being said, writing about the series was quite difficult, and it was the first time when I had to force myself to even begin. God. "It was the first time..." - and I'm only on my 3rd text. Great. Anyway, it's really hard to do justice to something you like so much, and I'm not exactly thrilled with the end result, but I know it's the best I can do for now. It's possible it would have been a bit easier had I rewatched all 3 seasons, but I've seen them at least 4 times now, so it seemed a bit excessive. And I prefer to think that in this case there's no escaping this feeling of vague disapointment. Nothing I could have written could have lived up to my - completely abstract, of course - vision of the perfect ode to Slings and Arrows.

As for other stuff... Behold my mighty youtube-bending skillz, as I make the song start at a very specific point! (Don't mind the absurd video - couldn't find a different one.)



Probably my favorite lyric of the last few months, Freudian slip and all.

Self-preservation continues to be the name of the game.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Census

In 1593, John Sanderson compiled a list from information given to him locally to show the population of Istanbul, which arrived at a total of 1,231,207 inhabitants, but what is really interesting about this list is how the census is framed:

Viziers (I say Viseroys) ....................................................................................... 6
Muftie ................................................................................................................. 1
Women and children of all sorts, christians, Jues, turks, etc .................... 600,000


The U Factor

In yet another attempt to burn through my backlog of movies, I watched Eulogy and Elegy. The first one was pretty atrocious - I actually groaned outloud several times. An ensemble dramedy with a lot of wasted ensemble. Elegy was better, but unfortunately too remote to make some sort of connection. It dealt mostly with aging and adultery, subjects I'm not intimately familiar with, so my mind wandered. Still, it had Patricia Clarkson (in a small role, unfortunately), and was quite beautifully constructed and shot. Very subdued, but evocative. Only once the credits rolled did I realize that it was one of Isabel Coixet's - which was probably why I got it in the first place.

And there was one brilliant exchange, between the main character, played by Ben Kingsley, and his estranged son (Peter Sarsgaard). I've uploaded it here, if anyone feels like watching 2 minutes of solid acting with a deliciously scathing conclusion.

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Sebastian

Winter is here. Beautifully irrefutable, Eastern European winter. I wish the moon was out, it always brings the resonance up a notch for me.










Drinking Bailey's out of a martini glass, contemplating the merits of self-preservation.

Monday, November 22, 2010

Books

This one's long overdue, but oh well.

I've finished reading The City and the City a while back, and was really impressed, though it resonated mostly on an intellectual, rather than emotional level. Which was either an inevitable side effect of the way it was constructed, or indeed the whole point of the book. It starts out with a pretty fantastic premise, and then, as the plot develops, the mysticism is gradually, almost imperceptibly chipped away. When you reach the final act, there's almost a sense of disapointment in how... realistic the entire affair has become, but still - there's never a big reveal, any sort of "Ha-hah! And in reality, this is what's been going on". It's still an evolution, and the best part is that things are not revealed as being different than previously described - they're instead simply being described in ever greater detail. The book doesn't change its course, it's the reader who is forced to gradually abandon his overblown preconceptions.

Another cool thing is that the mercurial aspect of the twin cities is carried through the entire novel. At first I felt this itch at the back of my brain, because I couldn't quite place the city on the map. But with time (and information), it turned into another kind of frustration - one born out of being unable to visualize the actual layout of the cities - the way they intersected, and the way their boundaries worked (or didn't).

But the best part, at least for me, was that once I resigned myself to the tedium of truth, everything clicked into place. Again - there's no twist. It's just that everything could be now interpreted differently, in retrospect. And you could actually come to the conclusion that there were absolutely no supernatural elements to the story whatsoever. You didn't have to, but the door was at least half-open. And I absolutely adore such stories, to the point where I cooked up a ridiculously convoluted theory* about The Prestige where you could completely dismiss the Tesla part of the plot. It's also why I really love Like Minds, which I have to admit is a middling film at best.

And now I've moved on to Lords of the Horizons which I was really disapointed with for the first 10 pages, and now can't seem to put down for even a moment. So much hilarious Ottoman trivia!

* unfortunately, it collapsed under its own weight; still like the movie though

Saturday, November 6, 2010

Mother dear

I visited my folks today, to check in on them, and to give my mom The Sputnik Film Festival catalogue & assorted merchandise, which Marta benevolently gave me last night hoping she'd get another welcome package today, with her press credentials. Which she didn't. Sucks to be Jesus.

Anyway, it was the regular stuff - a tote bag with the catalogue, a screening schedule and assorted promo trash. I was sitting with mom at the kitchen table, waiting for the soup, and idly rifling through the stuff, when suddenly two condoms fall out from between some cosmetics brochures. My brain went AAAAAAAAAAAA! and I instantly palmed them and slipped them into my back pocket, which was no easy feat. Half a minute later another condom-looking packet appeared, and was also spirited away (I had become a pro by then, apparently). All the while I was trying to avoid thinking that I just almost re-gifted my mother condoms.

Back home I took a closer look at them and it turned out they weren't actually condoms, but hand cream samples, and there's actually some red-headed girl weirdly almost-kissing a middle-aged woman on them (which would make for a somewhat confusing condom wrapper), but trust me, they look the part. And now for some choice quotes (in Polish):

(przegladajac katalog mama natrafia na sekcje dziecieca i wlacza jej sie nostalgia, z pelnym zaangazowaniem i wzruszeniem) ... ale moja ulubiona bajka to byla taka szwedzka, Carsson (sp?), o panu z broda ktory mial smiglo w tylku i odwiedzal male dzieci...

(o kompocie, ale znienacka, nowa mysl) Wiesz, bo ja to po prostu robie do dzbanka.

It was a nice interlude.

And the weather was great. Very windy, but warm, with heavy, rolling clouds racing across the sky. Perfect for walking, though it did remind me a bit of a cartoon someone told me about: a gray cityscape filled with downtrodden, gray people, and a gray strip across the sky, with the caption "A Rainbow Over Warsaw".

I promised myself I wouldn't harp on about weather so much, because at one point it seemed all I did was weather, music and obfuspeak, but I can't help it, I get such a kick out of just watching the city skyline. Also, tried a little experiment and it's amazing how many different shades you can pull out of those clouds depending on whether you're listening to this, this or this.

Monday, November 1, 2010

AFF, revisited

This one's been sitting on my hard drive for almost a week now. I'll try to wrap it up somehow, but things have gotten a little hazy by now...

***

It’s the last day of the American Film Festival, and I’m not sleepy at all so here we go with another update. Unfortunately, the Internet at our suites went bust yesterday, so I’ll probably post this tomorrow evening at best.

We departed on Friday. I was supposed to meet up with ao, pauli and her suddenly new boyfriend at ao’s place, which meant I found myself on the subway, on a weekday, at 8 a.m., with a pretty sizable travel bag. I was not prepared. Not exactly Tokyo at rush hour, but quite an ordeal nonetheless. Oh, the sheltered life of a languid freelancer.

Once there, we packed ourselves into ao’s Micra and off we went. The drive was pretty uneventful, but also very pleasant. We listened to various mix tapes, including the one from Piaskowa (according to pauli, that was five years ago. Jeez.) with some songs no one but me liked, and others with songs no one else but me objected to. It was kind of funny to realize how easily we (i.e. me and ao) can relapse into this catty back-and-forth which characterized the first years of our interactions, but also comforting to see we both now know to rein it in and pull out of the contested zone once we notice the pattern.

Oh, we also saw a wonder of WTF architecture called “The Highland Inn”, which stood in the middle of the Mazovian plain, and looked like a mountain cottage gone berserk. It was this enormous, baroque… castle, really, except one made from the building blocks of Carpathian mountain cabins. It completely blew my mind, and also – incidentally - reeked of manure.

We got to Wroclaw at 3 p.m. or so, and my companions went to see the Banksy movie, while I saw Sons of Perdition – a documentary about teenage runaways and exiles from this Mormon sect which still practices polygamy. The movie was excellent, and told me that Big Love is ridiculously well-researched. There wasn’t a single element of that reality that wasn’t somehow touched upon in the series, and sometimes the similarities were so striking that I started wondering if the show wasn't based on this particular community (I’m not sure if there is more than one sect, but there are many different communities – the movie focused on the one in Colorado, or Arizona, or both, I forget, but there was also talk of one in Texas). The screening was followed by a Q&A with the directors, which was conducted by a friend of mine who was so competent at what he did (both translation- and moderation-wise) that it made me seriously ponder trying to take a crack at it sometime in the future. Which is saying a lot, since I’m terrified of public speaking.

The day ended at the Kropka HQ with quite a lot of alcohol and a joke about the theremin that made me and Iza have a total meltdown – unfortunately, it requires visual aids. At one point Blazek started a story with the words “There’s this guy on the Internet who criticizes stuff…”, and that became his thing for the duration of the festival – later on he also described a movie as “being about people”. I also remember talking to Asia about something, and then suddenly it was 5:30 a.m. and I was asleep.

On the next day I left my cellphone AND my earphones at the apartment, and was unable to retrieve them despite having both the code for the buzzer thingie and keys to the apartment (I was sure I was pressing “2” when in fact I was pressing “3” on the dial, and the front door key sometimes didn’t work, so I couldn’t get into the building). That was fun. Then we waited for an hour to get served at a restaurant, and ended up having to cancel our order, or else we’d have missed our movies. The ones ao, pauli and her suddenly new boyfriend went to started at 4:15 p.m., mine started at 4:00. They made it.

3 hours of background frustration later, I rejoined ao and we went to see Please Give. Which was fantastic. Catherine Keener is always great, but so was Rebecca Hall, who I’m starting to really like, and – surprisingly – Amanda Peet. Very funny movie, and very, very well-observed.

Afterwards ao went to raid Sunwell, and I tried to join her, but the Internet was down, and my laptop refused to acknowledge the unsecure network ao was leeching hers from, so out I went into the city with my less-than-trusty laptop, looking for hotspots. To make a long story short: I ended up back at square 1 one hour later, sitting next to and her watching her do stuff. Which was riveting. But then we went out to join all the Kropka people, and stayed in Mleczarnia until they threw us out. At one point Blazek got accosted in the toilet by a strange man, who tried to sell him a ticket to the land of eternal bliss using a picture of some poor lady's vadge. True story. And towards the end I unexpectedly had a very serious and honest conversation with Rafal. Or rather, listened to him having a serious an honest conversation with me. It was in equal parts eye-opening and warm-feelings-inspiring.

Sunday was opened with a really good documentary on the Star Wars fans' complicated love/hate relationship with George Lucas (The People vs. George Lucas was the title, I believe), and at 7 p.m. we went to see the one we had all been waiting for - Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. It was glorious. I hate watching stuff I translated, but this time the awesomeness that poured from the screen was so overwhelming that I forgot to cringe at my - supposed or actual - slip-ups. Most of the time, at least. For some reason I have a very strong emotional response to it. To date, there's only been one movie that really made me want to inhabit the world it presented, and that movie was Angels in America. I totally wanted to be a witty gay dude living in picturesque New York. Obviously, not necessarily dying of AIDS. I remember this very acute longing that stuck with me for over a week, completely shoving aside reality, and then lingered for... months, probably. Well, I kind of had the same reaction to Scott Pilgrim. Granted, it was much less powerful, but for a day or two I really wanted to be young and in Toronto. There wasn't a false note in the entire film, as far as I'm concerned. I love absolutely everything about it.

That was the high note. And on the next day there were car problems, tow trucks, mechanics, complications, and eventually - the long train ride home with The City and the City, which I've already covered.

All in all, I'm totally going next year.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Crosshatching

Back in Warsaw. The festival was great, and I'll try to do a proper post about it, but only after I've gotten some sleep.

On my way back I dug deeper into China Mieville's The City and the City, and I really like what it does with my head. It starts out as a pretty straightforward noir crime novel, but as the camera pans out, you learn it's something much more complex. And you're not really given any sort of systematic backstory to all the weirdness, you have to kind of reverse-engineer the big picture from various everyday practicalities. These hints are delivered so subtly that at first I actually took them for witty turns of phrase.

An elderly woman was walking slowly away from me in a shambling way. She turned her head and looked at me. I was struck by her motion, and I met her eyes. I wondered if she wanted to tell me something. In my glance I took in her clothes, her way of walking, of holding herself, and looking.
And with a hard start, I realized that she was not on GunterStrasz after all, and that I should not have seen her.
Immediately and flustered I looked away, and she did the same, with the same speed. I raised my head, towards an aircraft on its final descent (...) after some seconds I looked back up, unnoticing the old woman stepping heavily away...

To my surprise, they turned out to be quite literal. Without giving away too much, it's the story of two cities (city-states, really), Beszel and Ul Qoma, occupying the same space, with parts belonging to just one (referred to as being "total" from one's perspective, or "alter" from the other's), and a whole patchwork of shared areas. The citizens of both are trained to only perceive their home city, or rather, to fail to perceive the other one, and its inhabitants. Openly and deliberately noticing the other entity is a very serious existential offense (again, trying not to reveal too much), and inadvertently doing so causes great unease:

I policed a music festival once, early in my career, in a crosshatched park, where the attendees got high in such numbers that there was much public fornication. My partner at the time and I had not been able to forebear amusement at the Ul Qoman passerby who tried not to see in their own iteration of the park, stepping daintly over fucking couples they assidously unsaw.

The fun part is both cities are sovereign entities and it is for example revealed that they were on opposing sides during World War II, and that to this day Ul Quoma is the target of an American embargo (think Cuba). Another neat, and I'm hoping deliberate twist is that you can't pinpoint the city's whereabouts. You are given plenty of context: ther's mention of Balkan refugees, direct flights from Budapest and Istanbul, and Beszel street names sound decidedly Hungarian... but then, the city is a sea port. So whenever you are given another scrap of origin information, you feel this low-level anxiety/frustration as the exact location keeps eluding you - which echoes the descriptions of people "unseeing" its phase-shifted streets.

I read most of the book on the train from Wroclaw to Warsaw, and when I got out of the train station, I couldn't help but look for glimpses of the city I just left - fully realizing how silly it was. I couldn't shake it even on the tram home, and kept comparing the two, noticing how empty Warsaw streets look in comparison.

Between the cities, Breach watched. None of us knew what it knew.

Saturday, October 9, 2010

You couldn't get in

It's been quite a while. Guess it's a testament to how... settled my life's become (the word "routine" was quietly put down behind the shed before it had a chance to get a foot in).

Anyway, tonight was unusual and hilarious.

It started out with a delicious dinner at tiny new Sri Lankan place (although they use the name Ceylon, which I thought was politically incorrect - go figure), followed by the Warsaw Film Festival opening gala. The gala itself turned out to be something of a black tie event, with an actual red carpet and stuff, so we - me and... let's call her G, as she always makes a fuss about being featured in online stories - were a bit screwed from the get-go (her moreso than me), but hey, free champagne and people in costume! Yay!

We immediately devised a score system - 3 points for every celeb you spot, 2 points for a pretty person, and 1 point for someone you personally know. G was way ahead of me within minutes ,so I decreed she was cheating (she claimed 6 points for someone she then refused to point out in the crowd, for example, how's that kosher?). It didn't help matters that the first familiar person I saw was someone I didn't really want to interact with - one of those very distant, awkward acquaintances - so I ducked out of sight. G schooled me in the best way to deal with these situations: you avoid eye contact, and if for some reason that fails, you look them straight in the eye, say "Hello!" and walk right past them. And sure enough, that's exactly what they did two and a half hours later when we incidentally locked gazes.

The movie itself was pretty bad. The best part was when halfway through half of the screen was filled with the logo of the subtitle projector - the machine went into some sort of standby/screensaver mode, so several minutes of the huge fucking festival premiere in Sala Kongresowa went without Polish subtitles, while the tech guys scrambled to restart the system (we even got a glimpse of Norton Commander, how old school is that). For someone who knows people who work in subtitling it was the equivalent of a spectacular nip slip.

Afterwards we mingled, bumping into various acquaintances, including G's friend Ewa, who in my cosmology features as probably the only strikingly beautiful girl I know who is also perfectly aware of her good looks. She isn't obnoxious about it, or anything, but it seems like she certainly knows how to get her way. I also met another friend of G... but for that, we need to go back ten years.

It is 2000, I'm 18 and about to apply for uni. I'm taking these weekend preparatory courses in history, organized by the university, and so is W., my best friend from high school. I've always been too intimidated to yell out answers to the teacher's questions in class (omg what if I'm wrong?!) so whenever I knew one, I would mutter it under my breath to W. Now, there was this guy who sat in front of us, and whenever I muttered the answer, he would repeat it to the teacher, only outloud. I shared this observation with W. and at first we both thought that he might just know the same things I do, but we tried it out a few times, and he only spoke up in class after I'd croaked out the answer in my impotent nerdiness. Needless to say, he became our running joke for the rest of the course.

And so, who comes waltzing up to G at the gala? That's right. At first I wasn't sure if it was really him - it was ten years ago, after all - but it turned out he's my age and he majored in something that likely required a history test, so... Yeah, I got a giggle out of it.

Meanwhile, another one of G's friends called (they are legion - let's call this one "DJ friend") that there's some sort of party in the basement of the Europejski Hotel, so we decided to move there. The history prep guy actually works at the festival and said he'll try to get us to the venue in one of the festival town cars if we only pretend that we're some sort of festival guests. He sized us up and decided we should pose as "short film directors" which I thought was spot-on - "director" sounds impressive, and the "short film" part somehow gives leeway in terms of age and general blubbering idiocy, at least in my head. We agreed we'll pretend to be FOREIGN (because of course we did) and poured into the car spewing English platitudes. History prep guy immediately blew our cover by asking us something in Polish, so we spent the next couple of minutes trying to supress a bout of decidedly undirectorial giggles.

When we arrived at the spot, we learned that G's DJ friend would come get us in about 20 minutes. We weren't really sure how to get in there on our own, so we hung out in front of an inoperational automatic door to the hotel, watching equally confused people try to get in and bounce right back. Until suddenly, a girl with two guys walked up to the door and without missing a beat just pried it open with her hands, like they do to elevator doors in movies. We went "score!" and followed her inside, but once we entered the dark lobby, the girl turned around and said "I wouldn't follow me if I were you - I actually work in this place". This initially confused us, so we stopped dead in our tracks, uncertain, but before we could discuss this new development amongst ourselves, one of the girl's male companions apparently felt the force surge strong within him, so he extended his hand towards us dramatically (fingers spread out and shit), uttering with deep conviction "No! ^* Stop!" Ewa, as I mentioned, is very pretty, and probably oblivious to inadvertent Star Wars references, so this bizarre little display merely inspired her to walk right past the dude and into some random corridor. I'm good at doggedly following in other people's wake, so off we went.

Now, the party was supposed to be in the basement, so obviously G led us to a staircase leading up to the next floor. It's good that she did though, because the hotel was quite incredible at night - totally deserted, and really Shining-esque, except the corridors are green, and when you stand in them, the light reflected off the walls makes you look greenish as well. It's very creepy. Hopefully there's even a photo to prove it, but I didn't take it, so I'll have to get back to you on that.

It turned out that we went upstairs to find an elevator that would take us to the basement. Long story short: it didn't work out, we got caught by the security guy and asked to leave. We ended our little escapade just in time for G's DJ friend to appear and "get us into the club" which translated into paying 1/3 less than the regular folks, so not exactly the stuff of glamour fantasies, but at least we didn't have to stand in line. There was also a pretty hilarious "I got in, you couldn't get in" moment, as the DJ got stopped by the bouncer, and did a little "They're with me" spiel (even though we had already actually paid to get in), to which the bouncer replied "Great, dude, but where's YOUR pass?"

The music inside was the thumpy stuff of CSI murder-at-a-club montages. There was some more drama with additional passes to the "chillout room" which to everyone's confusion and dismay was revealed to be the nightmarish club next door, but apart from that, nothing else of note happened. To my surprise, there was quite a lot of talent around (that is what the kids are calling it, right? At least the sleazy ones?) but it was all of that peculiar variety that comes up as white noise on my scanner, so I honestly couldn't tell which ones - if any - worshipped the schlong. And that's sort of demoralizing, even if you're just window shopping.

Unfortunately, the free booze from the reception had evaporated from me around the time of our short film director town car extravaganza, so I soon vacated the premises, feeling a bit like I'd just recaptured a managable slice of the crazy youth I never had.

And now it's fucking late. Good night.

* ^ is voiceover lingo for short pause in delivery

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Whistling sound

We went to Cambridge and ate huge baked potatoes stuffed with butter and cheese and beans and oh my God my left ventricle just collapsed. Wanted to go to Hitlerton upon Ruhr too, but never made it - we did glimpse Lolworth though. Had awesome balti, played some Civ4 hotseat, swapped spit (by way of inflatable mattress) with our host, saw Tamara Drewe (so British), bought a bunch of pretty awesome books (like this one, and this one). In other words, had quite a lot of lazy fun.

It's strange to think this was the last one of these trips (in this format, at least). Maybe that's where that need for instant gratification came from - knowing that I'm working on a deadline.

I always feel sad leaving, even if I really want to be back home already. It's a funny sort of sadness though, completely divorced from reality. Like a shot of nostalgia for something that never fully materialized. Could be a byproduct of partial idealization. Could be that they don't play movies on intracontinental flights and getting out of my own head was never my strong suit.



I love inorganic emotion.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Undelivered

It's tricky when an ongoing thread becomes part of your personal narrative. Once you've used that shorthand enough times, you start expecting reality to follow suit and wait for it to provide you with the encoded experience. As opposed to experiencing it in real time and expanding that code. That's about as close as I was able to get to what I wanted to say.

My narrative is that these little trips to the UK are what's been keeping me sane for the rest of the year, since - short as they are - they constitute my only holidays. The pattern has been established, the mental shortcut made, so I expected heavenly bliss to blast a hole clear through my head upon arrival. Instead two really nice, relaxing days happened.

So yeah, ongoing threads are tricky. But when you drift off for a moment on evening #3 and upon return notice you're looking at the people at your table through a vaguely bliss-shaped hole, you realize that sometimes they become part of your narrative for a reason.


Sunday, September 12, 2010

Roses, condensed

Sometimes I really love my job. Probably never more so than over the past week. I was contracted by three different people to translate three different movies, and... well, let's just say Banksy's hilarious mockumentary turned out to be the least engaging of the crop.

Unfortunately, the trailer for the only feature offering of the bunch is a bit lackluster and all over the place thematically, so I'll showcase the last one:



The scripts I translate movies from often aren't 100% compatibile with the finished product - they contain scenes that were later cut, present the dialogue in a different sequence, or in some severe cases are only superficially related to the actual movie. It's a pain in the ass, but there's nothing I can do about it. This time it led to me translating a story that as it turns out never made the final cut. For once, though, I'm really glad it did:

There was this kid I grew up with, sweetest person you’ll ever meet, and could sing just like James Taylor, had a beautiful voice. His daddy was a Pentecostal preacher and he grew up in the church and ended up marrying a girl whose daddy was a preacher. And he was just surrounded by Jesus and he was a sensitive soul and he didn’t fit in the church. Didn’t fit there, but kept trying and trying until one day he just went to the hardware store and bought him a can of paint. He went to the church, he painted love on one side, he painted hate on the other. And then he sat down on the front steps crying. He just couldn’t find the middle.

Ok, back to work.

Side road

I've been going to sleep around 4-4:30 a.m. and waking up at almost 2 p.m. for the past few days, but today I have a breakfast appointment and had to drag myself out of bed at 10. I was totally zombiefied and had very little control over my thought patterns, so my brain was going off on all sorts of tangents. I got out of the shower somewhat more conscious, but with a very specific, and unshakeable soundtrack in mind.


I popped it on, and as I was pulling on my socks, and the ruckus in my head subsided, I had the oddest bout of nostalgia for that fleeting pocket of quiet before the shitstorm I associate with my school/university days. That stretching of of every second in your rapidly collapsing bubble, when you've already resigned yourself to your fate, but decide it's perfectly within your rights to ride out those last moments of escapism.

I never thought I'd miss that. And actually, I don't think I do. But the wistfulness stands.

Sunday, August 29, 2010

There's not much chance of coming out clean


Sometimes i forget how amazing this movie is. Never for long, though. Never for long.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Gulliver's Travels

(Previously called voyages, until I googled Gulliver to learn how his name was spelled).

Went to a small party tonight, full of circumstantial acquaintances at best. At one point a guy who as far as I know is a DJ and has nothing to do with translations reacted to something I said with "Oh yeah, I heard you're problematic profesionally". When pressed, the most diplomatic answer he could come up with was "Well, I mean, you're demanding." He wouldn't divulge any personal information, so I'm just gonna resent whoever the fuck I want for that little piece of gossip.

I returned home by cab. As I settled into the backseat, the driver asked me if I wanted to take Wolska or Kasprzaka. Disclaimer: I'm the shittiest Varsovian on record. I don't know anything about my home city's topography. I did remember checking the route on google maps before leaving home though, and the name "Wolska" popping up, so I just said that, in a confident voice, feeling very proud of myself.

The trial wasn't over though. After about 5 minutes, the driver went "But do you want me to actually drive into Plac Mirowski? Because then I'd have to take Grzybowska and turn around..." I mulled this over for a moment, and summoning all my cognitive powers, I asked if it was possible he took Solidarnosci, and then took a right turn into Orla, and then another one into Elektoralna (something I vaguely remember my father doing at one point). He went "Ok, we can do that."

It was all I could do to keep myself from demanding that we invade Finland next. I felt like the master of the universe.

There was more. But I'm sleepy, and drunk.

Maybe later. I hope.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Nowhere bound

Had a wonderful weekend which kind of proved that a temporary absence of work can be a blessing when mixed with people and spritzers.

Also, my running water's back. I totally Papa Bear'd this crisis, so I'm extremely proud of myself now. Another morale booster.

Finally, the vague uneasiness surrounding the Breslau Epilogue has dissipated. It's a chapter very neatly closed.

Friday, August 13, 2010

Sealed

And so, after a brief delay, the Breslau File has finally been closed. Not exactly a story for the ages, but at least an interesting episode. Complete with time warping and a sort of out of body experience. I have to say that last part was pretty unnerving, but I've been assured that the problem might only pertain to this particular scenario, and not be a systemic issue.

Sorry for the obfuspeak, I don't feel like dragging this thing out into the open, but I'd still like to have a marker for it in here somewhere. And so, here it is.

I still have no cold water in the kitchen. It's been about ten days now. While trying to fix it, I broke my toilet seat. I also have absolutely nothing to do, work-wise, and it's driving me crazy. I was supposed to get this awesome assignment next week, but today I got a call saying "really sorry, but the boss's son is going to get it". It really bummed me out, so I decided it was time for little pick-me-up in the form of a banana milkshake - my go-to comfort food this summer. And the blender died on me.

My world is literally crumbling, it seems.

But tomorrow I'm taking my laundry to my parents'... This was supposed to be a motivational list of the things I'm gonna do tomorrow to turn this trend around, but that's literally all I could come up with. Let's hope it's enough.

Thursday, August 5, 2010

The Breslau Files, Closure Pending

Back in Warsaw. This year, Wroclaw was... weird. Filled with work, and not much else. I think I only managed to leave the office before midnight once throughout the entire festival. And in this case, by before midnight I mean around 11:45 p.m.

Still, inexplicably, I did have some fun. And ate a lot of good food. And experienced some requisite social anomalies.

I also had a Disney moment. On the last day, as I was being gallantly escorted through the empty city to my hotel at daybreak, my companion asked if he could wrap his arm around me. I agreed, he did, and after literally 2 seconds we heard some two drunk girls down the street yell FUCKING FAGGOTS! Cartoon fireworks exploded, the last meatball rolled to the middle of the plate, etc.

Oh, how we laughed.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

The Breslau Files

So I'm in Wroclaw, doing my festival gig. It's way more hardcore than I remembered. On the first day, we left work at 4:30a.m. And it wasn't the happy go lucky kind of "oh my look at the time" 4:30. It was gnaw your arm off get me outta here 4:30.

And then the same thing happened on the next day.

Now we're down to leaving around midnight, so I feel almost relaxed.

I'm eating tons of really unhealthy food and quite possibly already gained a couple kilos. Perhaps in response to that, my jaw stopped working today. It's happened to me once already, and last time mild anti-inflammation medicine worked, so I went to the doctor and told him just that. And he prescribed me Ketonal, which from what I understand is something akin to a horse tranquilizer. Anyway, I popped one and suddenly I was able to chew again, so I'm not complaining.

The work itself is kind of a pain, but the company is good. My co-translator was a very good bet. She is probably the most effortlessly cool person I know, has a good sense of humor, and appears to be completely unphasable, which comes in handy when dealing with the assorted freaks and geeks of ENH. Case in point - tonight, festival club:

bdq, walking up to her at the bar: Hello. I just wanted to look into your eyes.
dorota, meeting his gaze levelly, after a beat: And now, good bye.

There's humor, but it's of the unquotable, highly hermetic variety - either related to the sometimes absurd nature of our work, or springing from exhausted brainfarts. The current expression du jour is "shut down the reactors!", inserted whenever we have absolutely no idea what the person in the movie we're translating is saying (it's an actual quote from one of the translations, which inexplicably appeared on the screen instead of "I have a headache" or something equally unrelated).

I took it easy with alcohol tonight on account of the horse tranquilizer, so I had a rather Sober and Unkissed evening, but that was more than made up for by the unusually flirty Consort to the Beast, and the server goblin, who has taken to - literally - humping the wall. Something's gotta give soon, and I just hope I'm not anywhere near when it happens.

Oh, also: met (well, got better acquainted with, really) two new, potentially stellar people. So there's that.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Quickie

I already wrote about Pajiba vs. io9, but I forgot to mention that while io9's True Blood recaps are absolutely hilarious, Pajiba's are... just terrible. Bloated, boring, and utterly devoid of wit. (Yet their Entourage coverage is inspired. Go figure.)

Anyway, I loved the last episode so much that I even checked out the Pajiba recap, and sure enough - the things I liked about it most were the exact same things that got panned in the first paragraph. And the entire episode was written off as a disaster.

Meanwhile, I thought it was absolutely hilarious. Anna Paquin's delivery killed, I watched her crying scene at least 3 times... (actually, you can watch it here, in the io9 recap, and read the whole damn thing while you're at it. "Miley Cyrus, is that you?") I now firmly believe that all the flak she gets for playing Sookie is completely undeserved, it's not her fault her character's unlikable, and whenever they let her fly, she soars. I'm so happy that her Bill Compton's "Sookeh!" impression was just a first taste, and I hope they keep giving her comic material.

The new werewolf guy is a very nice addition, and I'll be completely on board once 1) I get over how cartoonish his body is and 2) he stops reminding me of Felicity's Scott Foley gone the way of the steroid.

The deranged new vampire guy is pure win, and he was Alvaro de la Quadra, the Spanish ambassador in Elizabeth, so obviously he was meant to rock (the laughable post-orgasmic void line from the previous ep notwithstanding). His car conversation with Tara was golden.

"It's skinny!" Even background characters got good material!

And they played that beautiful Massive Attack song in the strip club scene.

Ok, to play us out: a short interview with Sookie and the new werewolf guy.



I'm getting over the body as we speak, but at some angles, Noel Crane still rears his wholesome head.

Otherwise we'd go crazy

The festival is almost upon us, and it has imbued everyone involved with a seething hatred for Jean-Luc Godard. I get to translate a metric ton of his brain sewage into English, so I've developed a bit of an immunity, but still, sometimes the pain pushes through. To wit:

So, we asked to be told only about this, not about us, not about you – about something between us and you, you, who are we, we, who are you, we, who came from you. We placed “us” among “us”. We’re among us. Television is a family matter. Dad – day and mom- night. Dad – before and mom – after.

And then 20 more hours of that. Fun!

Anyway, I'm in more or less constant contact with my boss/server goblin, who uploads* the movies I then distribute among our translators. Whenever she's about to leave her house, she asks if I need something uploaded before she goes. It's a sort of ritual. At one point, when I copy-and-pasted my order from our Big Spreadsheet, she went "Pfff! How about a challenge for a change?" So when I sent her my next order, I snuck in Inception, in full Big Spreadsheet regalia (director, running time, language, etc). This became a sort of running joke, until last night I got another yousendit package with a file called Inception. Inside it was this:



You've guessed it. That's Jean-Luc Godard.

Sometimes it's worth it.

* through a series of trial yousendit accounts, so I've already received files from: Buffy Summers, Amber Benson, Sookie Stackhouse, James Marsters...

Saturday, July 3, 2010

Mosaic

As I grew up, I discovered that I loved to wear women's clothing as a way to express my sexuality and myself, even though I was quite evidently straight (...) My later girlfriends usually found it a huge turn on and we'd always have fun trading clothes, amongst other things (...) The story I always tell people is I was about ten years old, swimming at my grandmother's house. My cousin and I were in front of a mirror, he had a buzz cut hairdo, and I had a little kid mullet. All of a sudden, he bursts out laughing and pointing at me and the bit of wet hair that was kind of curled around my neck and says,"HA HA, you look like a girl! You look like a girl!" I did look like a girl. I had very soft features for a boy and with my hair a bit longer, it wasn't a hard sell. But his teasing didn't make me feel bad. I thought I looked kind of... cool. I was intrigued by my androgyny and felt almost empowered by it. So I grew up thinking that since I certainly wasn't born to look like some gruff, muscled out Dude-Guy, I might as well work with what the good lord gave me, which happened to be a good, sassy pout and a sweet ass. So, off I went.
Godspeed.

Charting out and analyzing all the different permutations has never been my thing, but something about this quote fascinated me. Well, not something, it's not nearly as vague as that: straight guys acknowledging they have a sassy (sassy! I died and went to heaven) pout and a sweet ass fascinate me. That's such an... abundant, multi-pronged space. Every time I stumble upon someone of this ilk, I feel slightly better about the world at large.

Oh, and here's the author:


Friday, July 2, 2010

Airbending

I already love M. Night Shyamalan's Avatar: The Last Airbender, just for inspiring critics from pajiba and io9 to reach new heights of enlightened hilarity. Here are some choice bits:

And yet, there is no life. It feels half-speed like a dry run of the production. In fact, Shyamalan went out of his way to suck any and all life out of the original material, like a Twihard horking feathers as she chews through her Cullenpillow.
Aang’s animal companions are practically an afterthought. Given personality in the series, here they were a burden on the budget. Momo, the lemur-bat, is akin to the monkeys from the Indiana Jones series. In the movie, we seem him occasionally flying around in the background. There might be one scene where we actually get shots of him rifling through a closet. He looks cool, which is more than I can say for dear Appa, the flying six-legged furry bison. Appa was my favorite part of the series. Here, it’s like Snuffleupagus washed up on the island Where the Wild Things Are and got gang raped repeatedly, until one of the offspring developed the ability to fly and escape.

- Pajiba

All the story beats from the show's first season are still present, but Shyamalan manages to make them appear totally arbitrary. Stuff happens, and then more stuff happens, and what does it mean? We never know, because it's time for more stuff to happen. You start out laughing at how random and mindless everything in this movie is, but about an hour into it, you realize that the movie is actually laughing at you, for watching it in the first place. And it's laughing louder than you are, because it's got Dolby surround-sound and you're choking on your suspension of disbelief.

And then there's Shaun Toub, who stands out for the opposite reason: He's an honest-to-shit actual actor, and he looks as out of place as a zebra that's wandered into an alpaca farm. You can actually watch the realization dawn over Toub's face that nobody else is doing any acting in this film, but he soldiers on, dedicated to his craft in spite of everything. Toub, who's playing the uncle of Dev Patel's tormented Prince Zuko, is the real tragic hero of this movie, as you watch him struggle to cling to his dignity as everyone around him drowns in narrative sewage.

- io9
Both are worth a read, though lately I've found myself favoring the io9 stuff. Pajiba is great at these thorough, profanity- and vitriol-laced critical behemoths, whereas io9 is more of a breezy zinger acrobat. And with all the Godard bullcrap sloshing around my brain, I'm currently in the market for something lighter.

Also, they have a real knack for killer lead-ins. My favorite one of late is this: "Taiwan's NMA News creates computer-animated depictions of current events that drive a flaming dune buggy into the uncanny valley. NMA's 3D take on the Leno-Conan tiff was amusing, but their version of the Al Gore sex scandal allegations is transcendental..."

I giggled like a lunatic, and that was before Janek reminded me what the uncanny valley actually was.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

The loveless fascination

The chorus disappoints, but the opening is pure magic, and enough to make ma crave it every once in a while.

Ever played low-intensity gaze tag with a stranger for an entire evening? Ever wondered if that's actually the case, or if it's just a random glance that's somehow snowballed to become its own, increasingly awkward thing? Ever found out before the night ran its course?

'Cause I didn't.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

lower case society

Today, pretty much out of the blue, I got depressed, because I'm a horrible human being. Well, not because I'm horrible - I'm quite fine with that. To be precise: I got depressed because of something that a non-horrible person wouldn't be bothered by at all.

So, that was fun.

But now le'ts move on to Marina and the Diamonds. Zuzia sent me this a while ago:

Which was, I suppose, as good an introduction as any, if you're into vocals-driven music. I listened to the whole record and it turned out to be really good, if completely different from the above clip. Think less stripped-down and sweater-clad, and more... hrm... wrecking mirrorball. While I was turned off by the most aggressively thumpy numbers (Girls and Oh no), I couldn't help but love the glamorously wasted Shampain - though I have to admit much of the charm lies in the imagery. It's just such a nice bitter survivor snapshot:

Elderly stars slide down the morning sky
Slipping away to find a place to die
I wonder when the night will reach its end
Cause sleep is not my friend

Drinking champagne, meant for a wedding
Toast to the bride, a fairytale ending
Drinking champagne, a bottle to myself
Savor the taste of fabricated wealth

But the album is all over the place stylistically. There's a legitimately beautiful - albeit spunky - ballad (Obsessions), a quirky indie something-or-another* (I Am Not a Robot), a Nellie McKay-esque acid trip (Mowgli's Road)... And towards the end of the album shit suddenly gets gothic. Seriously.

The disparity makes it difficult to pick out any favorites, but seeing as I've just come off my Florence and the Machine phase, and had a brief fling with some bombastic Muse numbers, I currently lean towards the aforementioned gothic finish, built around RootlessI actually have no idea what that song's deal is, it really is shitballs crazy, but if you herald the imminent arrival of the chorus with fucking bells, chances are we're on the same page.

(Sidenote: is there a technical term for a distinct run-up to a chorus? Like a mini-bridge? A ponton maybe? Because that's often my favorite part. And on this album, both Rootless and Hollywood have awesome ones.)

And if that wasn't enough, it gets followed by Numb, which for the first few full album listen-throughs I thought wasn't even a real song, but rather some sort of Hollywood: Reprise (because of the WTF factor, and the mirrored "golden lie/light" motif). It makes absolutely no sense out of sequence, and might only be palatable after you've been stunned into stupor by the divebomb cathedrals from Rootless. And even then you're not quite prepared for the chorus valkyries warping in. Finally, she tops it of with Guilty, which somehow combines all of the elements found heretofore on the album - 80s synthetics, catchy pop fluff, unabashed theatricality, weird-ass transitions - into... well, something that clicks. At least with me.

Oh, and apparently she's awesome live:

Watch out for the camera guy's OMG BOOBIES moment

And she's playing Birmingham in October :)

* I think that's the song someone tried hooking me with a while ago, and failed. So it's Florence all over again. Except I actually like this one now.

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Fadeouts

Marta dropped by with two bottles of rose wine in the evening, so work went out the window. She left around 10p.m. and I've been trying to resurface since. Right now it's raining outside, and I'm looping this:


It's not exactly groundbreaking, but it's definitely doing the job. As for what job that is... Who's to know.

I recently saw short documentary called Birds Get Vertigo Too about an aerial acrobat and her rigger, who are a couple. It opens with a shot of the guy shaving in the morning and a question: who gets more scared - the riggers or the artists? He says the aerialists (love that word) cry a lot before the shows, but they won't admit to being scared of heights. The last dialogue between them comes from some rehearsal, where he starts apologizing for being tired, and she explains that she just asked whatever it was that she had asked him about, because she wasn't sure if there was a problem, or if he was just worried she was too high. To which he replies that he was worried she was too high, but that that was just "his headspace".

It ends with footage from the actual show, with her doing her routine on a big silver hoop suspended in the air, and him darting up and down one of the poles as her counterweight. Halfway through, the spoken word background gives way to sounds of muted sobbing, probably recorded before the show, when the girl was getting ready to perform. Eventually they fade as well.

It's a really beautiful, and beautifully constructed piece. The author's name is Sarah Cunningham. It's her first film.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Brief Interviews

Saw two movies recently - an universally acclaimed one (The Squid and the Whale), and something that had been sold to me as a questionable first-time effort, with the emphasis on "effort" (Brief Interviews with Hideous Men).

The first one left me mostly cold and a wee bit annoyed. It felt like the lovechild of Wes Anderson and Todd Solondz, filled with frighteningly real and unlikable characters. I appreciated the whole hall of mirrors effect, with various people unwittingly echoing each other's sentiments and mannerisms, but there was nothing there that I could latch onto. I don't come from a broken home, I don't have siblings, and my sympathy compass is totally messed up. It's actually one of the reasons why I was never able to fully immerse myself in Mad Men - I usually empathised with the women, which was a very ungrateful exercise for the most part, and was primarily annoyed by Don Draper. The same thing happened with The Squid and the Whale - the father and the sons irritated me, so I was left with the mother, who didn't really provide an emotional anchor either, seeing as she was equally... three-dimensional.

Cue Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, which I really liked almost from start to finish. I remember reading on Pajiba that the book it was based on is basically unfilmable, and that despite their general good will towards John Krasinski (who wrote the script and directed) they felt it fell short. Well, I haven't read the book, and so find myself paraphrasing Kathleen Madigan yet again: "You don't see a frown on my face, do you? Should have waited for the movie instead, like a good American."


Now... it definitely feels like a book adaptation. A theatre play adaptation, even. The dialogue is actually more of a series of monologues, and all of them are very dense and verbose. Still, the only time I felt the pomposity explode the cinematic framework was when they saw it necessary to amp up an already larger-than-life tirade with some of that trademark indie movie discordant electric guitar and drums... jazz... thing.

As for specifics... the title basically says it all. It's a string of guys talking about their expectations, desires and thought patterns with brutal candidness, held together by a rather rudimentary plot. It works though. The monologues are very compelling (the book must be awesome), and there's quite a lot of talent involved. And by talent I mean fun faces - Bobby Cannavale, Lester from The Wire, Josh Charles (aka the dude who had Lara Flynn Boyle after him and still went for Stephen Baldwin. STEPHEN Baldwin, for crying outloud), Ben Shenkman playing a straight Louis Ironson, and a bunch of Hey, It's That Guy's. And John Krasinski himself, who got to perform the most harrowing of the monologues, and - in my opinion - sold it.

So yeah, if you don't mind your movies not trying to hide they're purely intelectual exercises - I highly recommend it.

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Triple Threat

Today I was woken up by a call from yssy, who was waiting outside my house and took me out for breakfast and S&S (strawberries and sunbathing) in a nearby park. I doubt I got any tan - after decades of neglect it would take a plasma torch to burn away the alabaster - but bliss was featured prominently.

Tomorrow some cartoon birds better braid my fucking hair. I have come to expect a certain standard.

Heatwave

I hate this blistering heat. I'm completely useless during the day, barely scrounging up enough energy for cooling efforts, and then in the evenings I get inexplicably horny, which is equally bothersome.

But you do what you can to alleviate the situation. Yesterday, I went for short evening stroll, which turned into a very long evening stroll all the way to Filip and Natalia's place. I didn't get winded at all, it cleared up my headache almost instantly, and I was really quite elated until I stopped at their door to buzz them and for the first time felt what several kilometers covered at a brisk pace do to sandaled feet. It wasn't pretty, but the evening itself was. Managed to completely ignore the last 15 minutes of some soccer game and relax in choice company.

And tonight Darek suddenly popped out of the blue saying he was going for a joyride around the city and asking if I wanted to come with. Which of course I did, especially since it was raining. The minute I sat down in the car I felt drunk on life, and started babbling uncontrollably. I don't really know where we went, but at one point I saw a sign saying "Warsaw - 30km", so we must have crossed city limits at least once. The rain was pouring, there were no people around, and things were good, in general.

Which is the thought I'm taking to bed with me. Good night.

Closure

The answer to the riddle from the previous note is: Christina Aguilera, in a song penned by Sia. It was tough to pick a winner out of the deluge of submissions, but I suppose the award goes to anonymous. Unfortunately, it will never actually get delivered on acount of their anonymity.

Saturday, June 5, 2010

Suffused

After drifting in and out of consciousness for several hours, I finally climbed out of bed at 1 p.m. Took a shower, grabbed a book, and got on a tram to the Morskie Oko park to join Natalia, Filip, Kazia, a cute little dog, and an even cuter baby girl. Plopped down on the grass and proceeded to have the nicest, most ridiculously relaxing day in ages. At one point Filip hopped off to grab some blankets and - get this - bring people home-brewed coffee in one of those "to go" paper cups. He actually called my cell from his place to ask if I take sugar in mine. I'm making a conscious effort not to hyperbolize, but it was amazing.

Around 4 we slowly made our way to Filip and Natalia's place - where we were joined by Szymon - had some delicious Indian take-out (I already warned them that I'll drop by just for the food), drank some wine, and lazily dispersed. I got home almost two hours ago and have since been half-heartedly trying to pull my brain out of molasses, as I really need to get something done by Monday. So far it's mostly been a book and music though.

Speaking of... this is one of those moments where I kind of regret only 5 people ready this thing now. Anyway, here's a little musical riddle - and my soundtrack for today. If you're in the mood for a simple, but really quite beautiful lullaby, give it a try. And then tell me who sings it. It's not a difficult one, so don't expect a huge challenge, but maybe you'll find some use for it on a blissful summer evening of your own.

Friday, June 4, 2010

Corpus Christi

For the past 2 days I've been doing an express translation of a documentary on how it sucked to be gay in Paraguay during the previous dictatorship. I thought was really well done, and not overly traumatic. It helped that the story was told from a personal angle - the filmmaker was basically just trying to figure out what happened to her uncle (who was found dead in his apartment several years before), and the whole familial and political context was only gradually revealed. Still, rape with a broken bottle was invoked at one point, and it was by no means a relaxing thing, so I desperately needed to unwind.

And unwind I did, scheduling a "lazy day with ice cream and waffles" with Ana. It is Corpus Christi after all (though it turns out neither of us knows exactly what the God-fearing folk are celebrating today). Met up downtown, went for a lazy stroll, plopped down by the river - where it was nice and cool - and talked. Well, to be precise, I spilled family scandals and saucy stories, while Ana kvetched. About students being dumb, about wages being too low, you name it. Fun was had. Then we went to that Mexican place at Plac Teatralny, where the waiter explained to me that a burrito is a tortilla baked in a pancake, and to Ana that the non-alcoholic drink called "Mandragora" consists of rum, lime and sparkling water.

Actually, yesterday I went to a vegan cafeteria, and the guy behind the counter served me rice instead of kasha* and some sort of lentil thing instead of a kofta. I only called him on the rice, cause it was GLARINGLY OBVIOUS, to which he apologized and said they were out of kasha and that he just inquired about my preference out of habit. Still, I felt like I was being punked. And now the tortilla pancake. A pattern? Is someone trying to test how much shit I'll eat to avoid a confrontation with the service sector? Cause man... "buckets" doesn't even begin to cover it.

And in the evening we had apocalypse weather again. This time a bizarre, intensely yellow dusk that made all the colors seem richer somehow. And then it turned to sepia. Still waiting for random people to supply me with images.

Oh, i went through the entire Muse album and only one other song caught my attention, but it did so with a fistful of grappling hooks - been looping it since. If you're into epic, Depeche-y, space opera sort of stuff, take a listen:

Several things. The title: is kind of awesome, and apparently a Club of Rome reference, so the IR major in me rejoices. The voice: I actually kind of hate, pitch-wise. I sometimes listen to people whose voices I'm not wild about (Tori, Alanis), but still, this would usually be a dealbreaker. However, something weird happens when I listen to live recordings, where the lead singer's vibrato is even more pronounced. Somehow this pushes the sound past Annoying, and into Gratingly Bizarre territory, and my brain starts treating it as yet another instrument. Also - I have to give him props for totally delivering live. He belts it all out effortlessly, and with studio quality. It's almost uncanny. Finally - while digging up info on the title, I happened upon a passage that said the opening line - Fear and panic in the air - is likely a reference to Mars, whose two moons are Phobos and Deimos, gods of fear and panic. Which, be it true or not, adds a very nice twist to an otherwise pedestrian lyric.

* how cool is it that kasza is kasha? Is it really that local a thing?

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

And the superstar is sucked into the supermassive

Heavy, boiling clouds over Warsaw, man. The sort that form just before the death ray strikes. Looks awesome.

Edit: and Ana provided me with visuals.

Edit2: And I stole another one from Kazia - this one shows the "death ray" clouds better

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Oh my God, are you 12?!

Twilight persists, most recently due to this gem:

But also, I finally remembered that I actually liked one of the songs sloshing around that cesspit, so I got the soundtrack to track it down. And apparently it is time for me the go up against the zeitgeist and check out Muse, universally reviled as they are. Supermassive Black Hole is just too fucking good.

In work-related news, I'm practicing diplomacy in an attempt to stem the tide of people who hate my guts. I think I've grown much better at it since last year. Fingers crossed.

And Parenthood has officially gone the Brothers & Sisters routeThere's hardly been any comedy at all in the last few episodes, and they just keep laying on the melodrama. I also suspect that the "I consider myself too big to fail" speech - the first piece of truly atrocious dialogue the series has served me - was merely an opening salvo.


Cmon, people, look poignant! We're resolving issues here!

Ah well, I'll stick with it until the season finale. Unless that was the season finale, in which case are you fucking kidding me?

Also, reading Kathy Griffin's Official Book Club Selection and finding it better than I anticipated. Light, breezy, kind of informative, and funny without trying to be standup-ish.

Oh, and Mass Effect 2 kicks major Krogan ass. The dialogue sharp, witty and - on occasion - badass, and the voice acting is superb. I checked out the credits and it turns out my favorite NPC so far was voiced by Carrie-Anne Moss, and I still have Adam Baldwin to look forward too. And Claudia Black! Have you ever heard Claudia Black speak?!

Wormholes, man. Wormholes.

Thursday, May 27, 2010

I've ruined World War I for myself

Let us take a moment to appreciate this:

I actually like to pretend that it's a screencap from some Joss Whedon show starring Jonathan Groff as a series regular, but you know, different strokes for different folks... And now let's move on to Showtime, because honestly, I'm kind of amazed. Here's why:

At first I found the second season of Nurse Jackie to be a bit lackluster. It wasn't as sharp and funny as before, and things got kind of heavy the more they got into the whole daughter's anxiety plotline, but I stuck with it and it turns out all that seems to have been a conscious choice on the writers' part, and the conclusion was spectacular. I think it might actually be a textbook example of how to build on a solid premise and weave all elements of the series into a dramatic and fully cohesive whole (as opposed to just making shit up as you go along and coming up with new problems for the characters to face). The one thing I'm worried about is that after the 2nd season closer - the last minute of which was a fucking masterpiece - it now feels almost too cohesive and self-contained, as if the full tale has been told. You can now kind of summarise it in the vein of Neil Gaiman's Sandman synopsis: Nurse Jackie is the tale of a woman who is faced with the consequences of her recklessness and must choose whether to stay true to herself. So where do you go from here?

As for United States of Tara, I wasn't entirely sold after the first season, but I started watching the second one because... well... I had nothing else to watch, really, and it really drew me in. They fleshed out the characters, especially the daughter, and somehow, somewhere halfway through, the whole multiple personality angle stopped seeming like a gimmick and became a natural element of the, up to a point where I actually started thinking I get why a transition occured at any given moment and, while not exactly able to predict which alter would make an appearance, I could still sort of understand and appreciate it in retrospect.

Plus, in the last episode there's this one line that's probably the closest approximation of my particular experience I've ever encountered in... well... culture. Which would be a tad more comforting, were  it not uttered by a 14-year-old.

Friday, May 21, 2010

Dusk

The party was on Sunday. People delivered. We had - among others - Poison Ivy, the Kingpin, V (the one with a vendetta), Brenda Starr, Ramona Flowers, Corto Maltese, two Supermen, two Rorschachs, and three Endless - Death, Delirium and Desire (though with my deathly pale complexion I looked more like an 80s Toreador).  We also had a rather freaky moment - suddenly several people (including myself) started coughing uncontrollably. At first I thought something got stuck in my throat, but then I noticed it was spreading. After a while three of us had had enough and we decided to get some fresh air. As soon as we stepped out of the club, the bouncer whipped around and barked "Get back inside!" So we did. At this point I started wondering if somebody's tryng to suffocate us, comic-book style, and actually asked Karolina if this was part of the festivities - a bizarre party trick, or something. But the hosts had no idea what was going on either. We learned the answer 10 minutes later - apparently some drunk guy tried to crash the party and the bouncer used pepper spray on him. Then he went into the club bathroom to wash up, trailing pepper spray residue, and returned to his post in case the guy came back. We were ordered to go back inside becuase he wasn't sure the coast was clear.

When it was time for cake and Happy Birthday, people started chanting "Speech!" and "More pepper spray!" The bouncer seemed amused.

Since then, we've had a flood. It started in the south, but as the wave is moving north towards the Baltic Sea, it inevitably has to pass Warsaw. The water level in Vistula has been rising steadily, and the wave is supposed to reach zenith tonight. So after sushi with Bohdan and Karolina, I took a walk down to the river bank to "see the flood" with my own eyes. The city looked almost Mediterranean - music and laughter spilling out of cafes, patios and courtyards packed with smarty dressed people... As I passed Nowy Świat and continued towards the music conservatory, I started seeing more and more cameras, and kind of regretted I didn't have one. It was a lovely evening, too - just warm enough to bring out all the carefully mixed scents of a metropolitan Friday night and get your blood pumping.

As of 9p.m., the water level was almost up to the bridges, and it was quite a surreal sight. I took a walk down the upper embankment (the lower one is already flooded) and saw that the entire right bank is lined with people - chatting, drinking, pushing strollers, taking pictures... River-watching has turned into a social event. In fact, I hear that last night - which is when the water first started rising - so many people flocked to the site that a spontaneous party broke out.

I had my music. There was a pleasant breeze. Some sort of gymnast was performing at Plac Zamkowy, and for some reason all the lights were out in Park Saski, except for the fountain illumination. As I negotiated a path between the trees and statues it occured to me that for a while now I've been featuring less and less prominently in other people's lives. And that I'm not really adverse to this tendency.

Maybe it's a Toreador thing.

Saturday, May 15, 2010

Trials

The Ducal Pair's birthday is coming up, and once again it's a theme party - this time it's comic book characters. I had a lot of fun at the last one, so I decided to play ball once again and actually dress up. I even came up with a character I could do, though I actually can't pinpoint when I made the decision. I just remember not knowing who I would go as, and then having known all along.

Anyway, the character demands either serious cross-dressing, or very swanky formalwear. Needless to say, I went with option #2. I checked out tux rental places and learned that renting one for 2 days would cost me around 800PLN (though part of that is a deposit), and GOD FORBID it gets damaged somehow. Oh, and that I should have booked it 4 months ago. The tux rental idea morphed into snatching something from a theatre costume warehouse using my legendary connections, to finally emerge as Oh well, I might as well just buy myself a suit. Which was logical inasmuch as I don't actually own one. The only one I have was bought for my graduation and a) doesn't fit me, b) is filthy, and c) I seem to have misplaced the pants.

Still, it was one of the dumbest ideas I've ever had. Buying a suit is a gruelling, humiliating experience filled with vaguely condescending store attendants, four different sizing systems, outlandish pricetags, and clothes that should look awesome, except they don't seem to do that on you.

I braved that gauntlet with the aid of Ana and Miles, who had to be consulted in English. The teenaged fey goblin at the first store apparently took umbrage with that and started talking to his friend in Spanish, giggling while I changed from suit to suit. Ana wisely put herself in his good graces by loudly pointing out twice that naturally I wore the wrong kind of shirt. After three spins on the merry-go-round, I went back into the changing room with a rather strong conviction that I really don't need this shit. When I emerged, Ana took one look at my face and decreed that we should take a break and get something to eat.

So we ate. And then went to another store. Where the prices alone were enough to make me groan. At that point we were almost out of places to check out, and I fessed up to the fact that I actually dont even know what color I wanted (it's kind of difficult to find one that would be appropriate for a comic book character and all subsequent events with a dress code). I just knew I didn't want anything metallic or blue. In that moment we stopped in front of the last store, and in the window there was this weirdly textured, kind-of-black-but-not-quite one. Miles asked if that's the sort of thing I would want, and to my own surprise I said yes. It was worth more than my computer, and even at half price cost almost twice as much as I was initially prepared to spend. But we went in, I tried it on, and it fit me, and actually kind of resembled the cut of a jacket I had tried on a couple of days earlier, during my initial scouting mission, which magically transformed me into a very smart young gentleman, except one dressed in the ugliest shade of navy imaginable.

So I bought it. And then stormed through shoes (I had to be literally forced to even try the other one on, as far as I was concerned it was an in-and-out operation by then) and shirts. On the next day - undershirt, belt and tie. And today socks and... bling. That last part was the funniest. For some reason I was set on kitschy earwear, but it turned out that the type I was thinking of is considered GOTHIC JEWELRY, and - believe it or not - there don't seem to be any actual gothic stores in Warsaw. Goths have to make do with online stuff. And the online places don't make deliveries over the weekend. So I braved several trashy mall jewelry outlets, feeling very sheepish and - I would imagine - looking highly suspicious, until I found a ridiculous piece that seemed to kind of sort of go with the whole costume.

And so, my odyssey is over. The party is tomorrow, and then... then I'll be left with a Versace suit and a flashy gold ring, to do with as I please. So many options.

Sunday, May 9, 2010

Good loglines

Via Pajiba. Kristen Wiig has optioned Clown Girl - a movie about Sniffles the Clown, a girl who tries to resist the lucrative clown-fetishist prostitution trade.

I'm so on board.

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Spectacular

Hey, remember Pete Campbell's pristine little wife from Mad Men? Or repressed Annie from Community?

Even if you don't - read this.

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Now in widescreen

I finally got pissed off that no youtube video I tried to post fit in the teensy little middle column of the previous layout, and switched templates. It's not as clean and polished, but definitely more embed-friendly. Comments, suggestions?

Back to the old thing until I figure out a way to mess with templates without getting rage blackouts.

Molten spike


So,  anybody seen Kickass?