Slow

The thing I'm translating now is literally so stupid that I can't get through it. I lose my grip and fall off into the Interwebs every other sentence. Gruelling, low-paying, ridiculous shit.

So maybe it's time to write that I saw The Ghost Writer last night, and loved it. The cinematography, the color themes, the grand, classical feel of it, the way the threat was always only implied, the fact that I was actually constantly engaged and kept wondering where the plot was going, the way some bits were included only to build and enhance the mood (the constant phone conversations behind closed doors, the "false alarm"), and how seamlessly they were woven into the general story.

But I think my favorite element was the sense of deliberate containment, as the story unfolded in that isolated island manor*. I felt as I were watching some sort of intricate clockwork ballet, with various players fading in and out of the center stage spotlight in ever more intriguing configurations.

Oh, and they actually used the International Criminal Court as a plot device! The international law nerd in me rejoiced.

* I actually tried to find one of the shots showing the study, because they were so exquisitely framed, but no luck

When it falls

So yeah, not really of use in any sense that matters, but when it comes to party tricks I'm a very deft monkey indeed.

The Scotsman appeared out of the blue saying he's visiting Poland with his boyfriend and asking if I could maybe show them around Warsaw. I was ready to reply that I'd love to, except I'm having a nuclear charge detonated in my eyeball around that time, but it turns out I'll be in Wroclaw then anyway. Still, the mind boggles.

I think the hardest part is being stuck with the thought that you could have somehow done more. As for the other 54 hard parts, I imagine I'll get acquainted with them pretty well in the coming weeks. Hey, maybe I still have the roadmap lying around somewhere.

Memento Whori

I never expected cliches to start crawling out of the woodwork so soon, and yet here they are, in all their prosaic hilarity. I guess all I can do is laugh and be thankful. God knows I need all the reality checks I can get.

I like to think so too.

Parenthesis

I finally watched Up in the Air last night. At first I felt it was another case of a movie not really living up to my inflated expectations. I wasn't bored while watching it. I liked the structure - how the city names, popping up randomly at first, became gradually infused with meaning, providing a nice dose of foreshadowing. The dialogue is really good, with a few choice sit-back-and-go-huh moments. There was even a scene with some serious emotional impact (when the girl has to do the remote sacking for the first time), and I really liked the ending, but it seemed like the movie as a whole didn't quite connect with me.

The scene I mentioned before actually seems exemplary of that - it's well crafted, there's real substance there, but the "message" somehow gets underdelivered at the last moment, that final hammer stroke just glancing the nail. And I'm not sure if that wasn't intentional.

The thing is: when I sat down to pick out a screencap to go with this post, and flicked through the whole thing all over again, I found myself pausing and going "oh, this bit was actually good..." at almost every scene.  Which leads me to believe that if I had let it set and wrote this note in a week's, or a month's time, possibly after a second viewing, I might have gushed. Then again, I might have not.

Tonight, most people will be welcomed home by jumping dogs and screaming kids. Their spouses will ask about their day, and tonight they'll sleep. The stars will wheel forth from their daytime hiding places. And one of those lights, slightly brighter than the rest, will be my wingtip, passing over.

Idoru

I've never fully embraced the whole Gaga phenomenon. I find her utterly hilarious at times, was somewhat content to learn that she seems to be very articulate and thoughtful, and for a few weeks I couldn't get Paparazzi out of my head, but that's about it. Enter this performance:

I'm still not sold on the music, and I suspect I might never be. But the truth is, I was completely hypnotized, especially during the 2nd part. It's like a scene taken straight out of The 5th Element, or some other over-stylized vision of the future. So completely otherworldly and performance-oriented... It's like she fast-forwarded a couple of hundred years and reached a point where showmanship is the substance.

I'm not saying there weren't great performers before her, that she's one of a kind, or anything like that. I'm not making any universal claims. But try watching the 2nd part of that clip and imagining the darkness beyond the stage is filled with extatic aliens. Wasn't difficult, was it?

Dead ends

My kingdom for an anonymous, hermetic, or at least dedicated landfill.

Credo

It was a week filled with the sound of tethers snapping and fans getting pulverized by fecal meteorites. I sat down a couple of times to chronicle it, even if only in obfuspeak, but then remembered a handful of people still actually read this thing.

You can't change me. I'm a gypsy. I'm a seacow. I know these motorboats are going to hit me, but THIS IS WHERE I FUCKING SWIM.

Mortar

The curse of Brick persists. First I bought a DVD without English subtitles (which makes the film all but impossible to decipher for non-native speakers), then I got the US version with subtitles but lent it to someone and have been unable to recover it since, and now I ordered another copy from Amazon and the package got lost in the mail.

In other news - apparently handsome nerds attract Asian spambots. Hence the deleted comments 2 notes down.

Trying to muster up the will to go out and:
a) buy a new USB storage thingie, as I've lost mine yet again
b) buy some... air in a can, I guess. My DVD drives have completely stopped reading CDs and DVDs and I was told it could just be the lens getting dusty
c) collect my Florence and the Machine tickets
d) grab some DVDs for work

It's not going well, mostly because Zlote Tarasy irk me.

Oh - for some reason blogger started treating breaks (hitting the Return/Enter key) as starting a new paragraph. In other words, hitting it now results in a BRACKETpBRACKET, as opposed to BRACKETbrBRACKET*, which is really annoying. I basically have to micro-manage the editing in HTML as I write. Anyone know if there's a way to fix this?

* no idea how to write this thing so that it doesn't get interpreted as code

Disappeal

This winter is wreaking havoc on my housekeeping regime. I have to clean the floor at least once every THREE DAYS, and it's taking its toll, people. Snow begone.

My parents had to take on a lodger (cashflow problems), and it's a Russian physicist lady from the Ural. No joke. She only moved in yesterday, but mom says she's really nice and quiet, so hopefully it won't be too weird. They both seem in good spirits, but chemo's starting to take a toll on dad. Theoretically he's only got two sessions left. I really hope they leave it at that.

As for me... I'm watching the world in powersaver mode, feeling a bit like some kind of petty princeling, plucking randomly at strings of power that isn't even mine to give up. It also happens to offer absolutely no protection from errant Thurn und Taxis moments, which sting as much as they ever did. So yeah, fading fast.

There's work, there's films, there's the Angel finale, but unfortunately, there's absolutely no will to continue writing this thing. Maybe later.

Hunky dory

I don't really have a valid reason to post this - sometimes you just have to share a hunky dork. Who apparently earns his living looking for balloons on the Internet.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
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G'night.

White Dune

I just went out for Grownup Groceries (toilet paper and bread, as opposed to Chinese take-out and gummi bears) and realized why the pizza place lady had to consult the driver before accepting my order yesterday. There are literally mounds of snow everywhere. Whole embankments along the roads, as if the car people are preparing for a siege.

Still, life goes on. Unlike in Britain, which I hear is completely paralyzed because they actually got some snowfall this year. It's a full-blown crisis, with headlines like Death Toll Rises, Salt Supplies Dwindle! I imagine my compatriots must be looking around scratching their heads and going "Ale głupi ci Rzymianie."*

Actually, I read somewhere recently that during Napoleon's ill-fated foray into Russia, the Poles were the ones to cover his retreat, because they were the only ones not really all that surprised by the cold. It might have been in a collection of essays on the 19th century by Stanislaw Mackiewicz which my parents lent me. They're quite interesting (the essays) (well, my parents too), but I don't really care for his style. Unfortunately, I was stupid enough to share that opinion with them a couple of days ago. I think they're still recovering. I imagine it must have been quite the Tracey Ullman moment: "I just read The Book of Revelation, and I have to polemicize with God..."

I went to Cracow last weekend and was reminded that most of the time composition is key. It was a perfectly enjoyable break from work, but that turned out to be neither here nor there, as the focal point of the trip became learning that my host watched the most fun episodes of Firefly without me (thus robbing me of my vicarious/parasitic joy), and then having to sit at some club right next to quite possibly the only person in the world I never ever want to see again. So that ended up being the snapshot.

Also saw W. recently. At long last. We've really drifted apart, but we're both quite intent on reversing that process. She saw 500 Days of Summer and thanked me profusely for recommending it. Said it fit perfectly into this particular moment of her life, and that she totally identified with the character. There was this weird intensity about the way she said it which made me ask, just to make sure: "The guy, you mean?". "The girl, of course!" she replied with matching certainty.

* "These Romans are crazy", the Polish translation of Asterix wins in this regard

The new one

The end of the year song has been something of a tradition of mine. It's usually simply the thing my mp3 player lobs at me as I'm making my way home in the morning that for some reason resonates the most.

This year it came a bit early, around 10p.m., on a tram bound for Filip's place. Felt right though, as it's been following me around for the past several weeks.


Happy New Year.

Amber and garnet

About a week ago I suddenly had to decide whether I wanted a Christmas tree or not. Seems trivial, but it kind of meant that for the first time in my life I was forced to wonder if Christmas actually means anything to me. And it kind of snuck up on me. So yeah, that was interesting.

I got a tiny one, some colorful lights, and a couple of ornaments from my family home. The small ones, obviously. For some reason I really hoped I'd find a couple of these small glass lanterns among them. There were two left. I put on... River, I think, and dressed my very own tree. That was... interesting too.

I leave the lights on for the night and turn them off during the day. Dad says I'll burn in my sleep, cause they don't make them like they used to.

It's New Year's Eve tomorrow. Every year the ritual is repeated - declarations of disaffection (probably not the right word, but what the hell), plotting exit strategies... This time I simply refused to think about it though, and it seems that I really don't care. The pose was made flesh. I'm contemplating binging on expensive sweets and trying to make a dent in my movie backlog. Or swapping sweets for booze, and doing the same in the company of Filip. There are other, more social options, but... there are also some ghosts I just don't want to face come midnight. Say what you will about New Year's irrelevance, that one moment is culturally charged enough to punch some realities right through your shell.


I get chills every time I listen to this performance. The first clusterfuck of sound at 1:28 just awestriking.

Collision

Had a wonderful evening. Monika came home from Luxembourg for Christmas and held and an impromptu audience at Ormus' apartment - though I think I was the only person to go there specifically to see her, as most of the other people in attendance didn't even know who she was.

Still, we had a blast, mostly due to a lengthy session of... charades. Yes, apparently we're now all old and bourgeois. It should be noted that our team (me, paivi, Monika and Pawel) won, but the main attraction was watching people try to mime absurd and/or obscure movie or book titles. Special mentions (all successful) go to: Darq for the Charter of United Nations, Monika for Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead (none of us knew the book), Ormus for The British Museum is Falling Down (same as above), and my teammates for guessing my mime of The Salmon of Doubt even though none of us had read it. Surprisingly, the most problematic - and most fun to guess - title of the entire evening was Kapuscinski's Empire, but that's mostly because first we ended up in China and refused to leave, and then Pawel, in the process of trying to steer us back towards the right area, mixed up his books and got fixated on the Shah of Iran.

I've also been catching up on music. I've yet to plow through Florence and the Machine (was less than impressed by Kiss With a Fist, but Janek sent me Howl and my endings were more than tickled) and the new Regina Spektor album, but have already digested Little Boots. I can't say I care for the record as a whole, but towards the end I've found a definite keeper. It's basically Kylie at her best: thoroughly synthetic, clean and clear. A tiny little plastic bauble, all pink and translucent. The soulful kitsch of Scissor Sisters' It Can't Come Quickly Enough, but without the melancholy. The girl's voice is perfectly smooth and featureless, woven seamlessly into the rudimentary synth background, and then there's that tiny flourish in the chorus, when the afterglow of the last consonant in "over" unexpectedly soars higher than the preceding vowel... Yum.



And to top it off - totally random and unsollicited Tom Lenk. My crush lingers on.

Too steep to scale

My slow burn has finally sputtered out completely. It was an easy, gentle way to go. Like what they tell me freezing to death feels like, complete with that sensation of comfort and relief right before the end.

And when I woke up today it was snowing. Externalization complete.

I'm feeling quite good, almost giddy. I think the cold cleared the air or something, and my brain seems to work better as of late - though I still tend to get drowsy at the oddest hours.

I made it to season 4 of Angel. Good God, I don't like any of the characters anymore. And the whole Connor debacle was just beyond painful. The guy that plays him has the most annoying manchild face... he's playing Pete Campbell on Mad Men. Yeah. THAT one. Gunn was boring from the get-go, and they never really figured out anything specific for him to do, so he's just left to lumber around awkwardly, butchering every humorous line they feed him. Fred's twitchy and really blah. I heard Amy Acker was really good on this show, but I'm still waiting to see that. For a moment I thought at least the green demon guy was gone for good, but no. He had to make a return appearance.

And can we please take a moment to talk about Alexis Denisof being all dark and edgy and oozing manliness? The guy's name is Alexis, for crying outloud. He's the posterboy for pansy. That's why they hired him in the first place! He was comic relief on Buffy. Pitful, effete comic relief! Now they got him brandishing axes, playing S/M mindgames and having phone sex with evil lawyers. Worst of all - they had him grow a stubble. A stubble!

Cordelia was fun, but she went poof, so I'm left struggling with a truly terrifying concept - namely that my favorite character on Angel seems to be... Angel. Brrr. Oh how the mighty have fallen.

In better news, the Christmas episode of The Office is true genius, and it's written by Mindy Kaling (aka Kelly Kapoor), which sort of means that all is well with the world.