the log

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Friday, April 29, 2005  8:13 AM   A Convergence of Hamsters My girlfriend gave me hamster as a graduation present a year and half ago. We have named her Molly, because we thought he was a she (he is not but, giant testes aside, who cares? so he is a she) and while I have not really done much in service of this blog, writing only the occassional jumbled missive while rattling from one class to the other, but never really doing justice to the pet as people on the web should. Because what is the web for if not for recording in detail--painstaking, painful detail--the day-to-day activities of one's pets? The hamster topic surfaced because I read a Bentley Little novel, The Association, that while flawed, contained several inspired passages, equal parts horror and absurd, culminating in the protagonist entering a lair wherein he could make out a dusty display case containing the stuffed bodies of cats and dogs, parrots, and hamsters--the pets outlawed by the association. And, a few weeks later, in the 25 April issue of the New Yorker I ran across Ian Frazier's "Invaders," where we learn about Mongols: Marco Polo, who travelled amont them in the years 1275-1292, wrote that they ate hamsters, which were plentiful in the steppes. And the man writing about the geese? He, a few years back, wrote about a Japanese show where the constenstants dress like hamsters. And let us not forget Jim Finn, who is actually dealing w/ gerbils, but so what. In 2002, I wrote a static, unsuccesful story that, purely by way of setting the scene, mentioned a hamster-centric show--this was at least two years before I fell in love, a time when I had no inkling that there were women with formidable voices who would hold you very close, who would give you, as a graduation present, a hamster. * You were wondering, naturally, if there are hamster-related quotes by brilliant if difficult directors. There is this: Men love women, women love children, and children love hamsters. The movie also contains memorable, non hamster-related quotes. Monday, April 25, 2005  2:50 PM   So. So I taught my last class at UCF and will be teaching my next-to-the-last class at Valencia, and found myself realizing that I will be missing my students, and that I for the most part enjoyed the experience, all of which is pretty unexpected. B/c mostly I am ready to go. Which as it turns out is what I'll be doing in a few months. I've been accepted places, and have made an official commitment to one. I'd be specific but figure it's worth waiting for all the paperwork to come through before really shouting stuff out to the world. But it boils down to a generous assistantship, a respected department, and major geographical upheavals. And a goodbye to Orlando, my town since 1996, land of retention ponds & poor public transit. (& all sorts of other things, all dear & all to be missed, and so what can I say? I am torn up and itching to leave and pretty much in that happy/sad twilight so beloved of shoegazing bands and, well, whatever.) In preparation, I am reading Getting What you Came For--a book I should have read prior to earning my MA. Funny and useful. And so preparing. And wistful. And but so what--the semester isn't over, and the students, the ones I'll miss? I'm seeing them all again for their final presentation, which has to involve sock puppets. So all the missing is far too premature. * So Clonus is featured in the Onion AV Club's Films that Times Forgot section, where deservedly obscure movies are lovingly, if snarkily, summarized & dissected & boiled down. Clonus, the AV Club tells us, teaches us to always maintain a healthy level of skepticism, as a promised glorious future might in fact be a clone-farm holding container. The New York Times is more reverent, and feels that Clonus is overlooked and that, morever The film has a stripped-down, functional style that suggests an educational or industrial film of the period, a low-budget limitation that Mr. Fiveson turns into an expressive asset. A genuine sleeper, accompanied by a 40-minute interview with Mr. Fiveson, who seems understandably baffled that he was never allowed to make another feature film. This is all from a March 29 review by Dave Kehr, and the film also finds itself in the august company of Kazuo Ishiguro and Caryl Churchill in this NY Times article, where we are told that, for all its flaws, the movie is amazing in the way it anticipates motifs that run through newer thrillers and serious works... So this is all to say that it's weird to find the Onion treating a relatively slight DVD reissue with due flippancy while at the same time finding a serious publication taking the same movie far more seriously. It should be the other way around. And was. The Onion's talented staff has sometimes made more of fluff than the fluff deserved. And the Times has sometimes treated pop culture material less seriously than the material warranted. So. * Also: please find Jim Finn's Wüstenspringmaus, the funniest gerbil-related three minutes you will likely experience in your near future. My college library carried it in an anthology from this company, but I understand it also appears elsewhere. * So what was I saying? Monday, April 11, 2005  11:47 AM   Tift is a fine musician, a tiny woman with a big voice, a charmer, a whirlwind, and it was a hoot to watch her run through the songs--they were beautiful if over-polished in the albums and far more energetic and tight, maybe tighter, live. She is going to NYC on April 12, from whence I just returned. So. New York. Wow. And--ugh--gotta go. More work looms. But at the very least there's the quality of street-cart coffee, which is mind-bogglingly good and consistent throughout, and the sheer density and focus of the town's energy--it is a place bristling with purpose--and the friendliness of the place as a whole. Not to mention the friendliness and courtesy of Roy and Matt, our hosts, and so what can I say? What a place.

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