Command of the language – Apr 7th – reviews
I admit with pride that I can be somewhat zealous about grammar. (In fact, I have been accused of it by some.) So I was quite taken with Louis Menand’s review of the fifteenth edition of the Chicago Manual of Style when I first read it last fall. Manand begins with a discussion of the “moving target” of citation styles, ranges to the consequences of computerized composition, and considers some of the ins and outs of an inconsistent and intricate written world. [Aside: Is it just me, or does The New Yorker web site lack a search feature and any obvious links to archives? It took me forever to find this article again. In the meantime, I discovered a PDF copy of the Manual of Style first edition. Neat.]
Ever flabberghasted at my students’ persistent confusion of “its” and “it’s” (Possessive. Conjunction. Why is this so hard to understand?), I think I might enjoy Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, by Lynne Truss. But damn if this isn’t the most annoying book review I have ever read.
Update: I know, it’s some kind of internet axiom, like Godwin’s law, that any post discussing grammer or punctuation will be rife with errors in grammar and punctuation. I proofread this, but I’m sure someone will find something with which to quibble.
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Tonight Arizona takes the lead! – Apr 3rd – school/work
While the rest of the country sleeps tonight, their clocks will roll forward by an hour, but I, I will not take part. In this hour I will gain a foothold of productivity and unleash my full potential, forever to remain sixty minutes ahead of my rivals, whose poor choice of geography1 condemn them to a life of slavery to the whims of the seasons.
At least, I’ll be ahead until fall.
1 Or is it their fortunate lack of reactionary state legislature?
Mostly-forgotten films – Mar 28th – reviews
Cinematic Happenings Under Development has a list of 100 mostly-forgotten films that’s worth a scan. Reading through the list is fun: Saw that one … hated this one … should see that one again … missed that one. A select few good entries from the list:
- In the Mouth of Madness: We rented an awful lot of movies during my summers in Walla Walla, and this was one of them. Has some truly creepy moments (an old crone riding a bicycle on a lonely road at night is a lot scarier than it sounds).
- Equilibrium: The back-story of the film isn’t very original (In a dystopian future in which art and emotion are made illegal so as to preserve social order, a special breed of cop hunts down and terminates deviants with prejudice. The film seems heavily influenced by This Perfect Day as much as by Fahrenheit 451.), but the sterile city and its post-holocaust surroundings are imagined vividly. There’s some dorky computer graphics but also some snappy (and surprisingly violent) fight choreography. However, the ending is dumb. Stay for the final fight sequences, but quit when our hero enters the control room.
- Nothining to Lose: Better let the CHUD guys talk about this one: “Tim Robbins and Martin Lawrence as a comic duo either sounds like brilliance or the catalyst for Armageddon and thankfully Nothing to Lose hits closer to the former.”
- Top Secret: What, this is one the list? Doesn’t everybody already know that it’s funny?
- Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead: I have a friend who passionately hates Andy Garcia and everything he stands for. This is a movie that I liked, but was disliked intensely by others with whom I saw it. Now that someone on the web whom I have never met agrees with me, I am redeemed. Besides, Warren Zevon’s song of the same name is good, so that’s quality by association, right?
- A Midnight Clear: This is a great movie about a group of young soldiers sent to establish a post in an abandoned house in the wintertime. Great performances and beautiful photography.
- The Tailor of Panama: Another film staunchly disowned by everyone who saw it with me. And by “staunchly” I really do mean in the strongest terms possible. I think the words, “You never get to choose the movie again” were invoked. Several times. Still, I liked it right up until the ending, which sucked—I think there must have been more there that was removed in editing. The result is a choppy, abrupt ending that didn’t match with the preceding buildup.
The list isn’t all good, I think. The inclusion of Point Break (Swayze contamination), The Edge (just didn’t buy it), A Knight’s Tale (huh?), and Breakdown (Kurt Russel without Goldie Hawn?) raise some concern. Still, the guys at CHUD are enthusiastic, so check out the list, as there are some definite gems there, and some stuff I’d like to go and find.
Summer's endless possibilities? – Mar 28th – school/work
Spring brings season cleaning over at Lago’s place, where the new design truly is springtime fresh. Both he and Brayden express enthusiasm for their springtime productivity and the upcoming ASA meetings in San Francisco.
When it came time this winter to prepare material for summer’s ASA, I was between papers and projects. One ongoing project hasn’t yielded anything new in the past several months, my dissertation was (still is?) too vague for a working paper, and there just wasn’t time to prepare a conference version of a third possible paper. So this year, I’m free and loose at the ASAs. I’ll be the one networking furiously (read, drinking coffee alone) in preparation for shopping myself and my dissertation around.
And how is the dissertation, you may ask? Organizationally, it’s coming along: I have a possible bead on two really useful sources of data, and I’m planning some spring and summer travel to collect it. On paper, it hasn’t progressed much for several weeks, which will leave me scrambling in the near future to reformulate some important ideas. Still, dicussing it with various folks has been productive and is keeping me enthusiastic, though not yet able to pound out many pages of writing.
What else of spring? Well, over at Eat Your Vegetables, Lane is sporting a bristle-brush of facial hair in celebration of the playoffs, while I am smooth-chinned for the first time in close to six years:
Facial hair is neither created nor destroyed. The circle has been made complete.
It's only money – Mar 26th – politics
Over at Slacktivist, Fred Clark comments on the claim made recently by Antonin Scalia that, if Dick Cheney was trying to bribe him, he’s going to have to do a whole lot better than a duck hunt. Clark notes that this kind of blase attitude toward sums of money or favors that to most of us would be significant—if not life-altering—betrays the deep sense in which our leaders are out of touch with the real lives of people who are affected by their decisions. There are some good comments to the post, too.