Tonight I tried a Pineapple-Mango Bahama Rice Burger. They are vegan. They are also the most disgusting thing I've put in my mouth in a very long time. If you contemplate the rancid citrus flavor of the worst fruitcake you've ever had, warm and with some ketchup on it, having a texture like the oatmeal you left sit out since yesterday, you'll have a reasonable approximation of my dinner.

Outside of the whole vegan thing, I'm really not a picky eater. These things are seriously offensive. Maybe the other flavors are better, and I like the idea of a burger that's not soy, but I think I'll, um, resist the urge to find out. Elsewhere on the 'Net, people seem to be reviewing these things positively. I cannot explain that.

I finished Bruce Schneier's Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World today. Despite the fact that it's getting a little dated (2000) for a book dealing largely with computer and network security, it was a fun and clear introduction to the fundamentals of topics to which I needed a fun and clear introduction.

I'm much more familiar with basic security concepts and buzzwords — cryptography primitives, entropy, unicity distance, one-way hash functions — for having read the book. Readers get a moderate dose of Alice and Bob, and plenty of funny anecdotes to explain different concepts, like observing from outside the Pentagon a massive spike in late-night pizza deliveries shortly before the United States began bombing Iraq as an example of traffic analysis.

Schneier is very quotable, and there were plenty of gems in this one. Two of my favorites were, "In its defense Microsoft has claimed that it spent 500 people-years to make Windows 2000 reliable. I only reprint this number because it serves to illustrate how inadequate 500 people-years are." and in reference to stupid laws like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA) that try to prohibit reverse engineering, "It's certainly easier to implement bad security and make it illegal for anyone to notice than it is to implement good security."

Secrets and Lies is a very readable book, but I think a few more rounds of editing would have improved it a great deal. Admittedly, being an editor I pretty much always think this, but there are some particular clues in this one. Schneier seems to be a strong proponent of something my music teacher used to always tell me, "make your mistakes in time":

I have never before missed a publication deadline: books, articles, or essays. I pride myself on timelines: A piece of writing is finished when it's due, not when it's done.

The lack of editing shows mainly in the amount of repetition — and I read this book slowly over the course of almost two years, so I'm sure there was quite a bit more than what I noticed. I wouldn't be surprised if he emphasized at least a dozen times that 128-bit keys are big enough for everyone and that with larger than that, the user's passphrase and other attack vectors make larger keys pointless.

There is also an unfortunate amount of self-promotion in the book (and possibly promotion of some friends/colleagues) — at times it reads like a very high-level marketing brochure. But at least Schneier is up front about it:

So, if this book seems a little self-serving, that's why. Both the book and the new company grew from the same epiphany, that expert human detection and response provides the best possible security. The book tracks my thinking in reforming my company, and explains the service that we offer.

You can learn more about us at www.counterpane.com.

I'm not familiar enough with security to know whether he's right or wrong about much of anything, but there were some statements that seem obviously wrong, or at least unclear. For example, in discussing the importance of detection and response, he says, "There's no way to detect the eavesdropping, so no response is possible." Huh? He's talking about encrypted digital communications so things like hearing clicks on the phone or locating bugging devices in a room don't apply here, but even then, there are ways to detect eavesdropping — such as watching out for leaks; people who were not supposed to be a party to the encrypted communication knowing information that was not shared anywhere outside that communication. It's like what police do, when they deliberately don't share certain details about a crime, so that when they interrogate a suspect they can ask questions about those hidden details to know if the suspect was actually present at the scene.

I appreciate Schneier's defense of free and open source software as more likely to be secure, and more consistent with the principles of how science should be done. But I'm also a little disturbed by his eager defense of the idea of warranties being applied to software, so that companies who write programs with security holes that are exploited in the wild can be held accountable. These two positions seem inconsistent to me. When it comes down to it, I'm a terrible programmer, and if I have to be financially liable for damages caused by bugs in my software, well, I'm just not going to share it with anyone. Mandatory warranties would encourage more corporate proprietary software development, and discourage grassroots development.

I'd recommend the book for anyone wanting an overview of the principles that underlie security and insecurity on the internet. It's whet my appetite for reading more about the security systems that I use on a regular basis, primarily public-key encryption. It's even made me wish I knew anything at all about math. I look forward to reading his next book, Beyond Fear.

I finally finished One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez tonight; apparently I started it in August of last year. The fact that I took so long to read it means I'll have to go back and read it again someday, as it was very hard to be attentive to the relationship of events happening at the end of the book to what happened at the beginning of the book, since the beginning was so far away.

It was mostly as much of a pleasure to read as it's supposed to be, but I did find it unpleasantly difficult for a while. There are so many characters, and so many characters with the same names, that it is hard to keep track of who is who to who. Couple that with an expectation implied in the text that the reader should be able to retain these details.

I was taking notes for a while, but I can't be expected to keep that up—I already have my degrees. Also, I lost one of the notebooks in a bar. There is a familial relations chart in the front of the book, to give you an idea of the scale we are talking about here.

That kind of complicated, epic fiction is generally not for me. I don't enjoy trying to keep track of so many plot-oriented details while I read. I prefer to focus on the language and happenings within smaller chunks of text.

But Márquez's writing is also dense and beautiful. He wrote it in 18 months while his life was basically collapsing around him, with debt piling up and possessions being sold off to take care of his family's needs. We had a word for this kind of writing in school, but now I can't remember what it is, so I'll just go with “badass”. It was something about writing when your survival depends on it. It's a good thing that this book was a quick success.

I posted one quote the other day; here is another I had in some notes that I did not lose:

They became indignant over the living images that the preposterous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears of affliction had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many felt that they had been the victims of some new and showy gypsy business and they decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings. (223)

My cousin gave me Love in the Time of Cholera as a gift over the holidays, so I'll be starting that sometime soon. But for now I need to finish Copyrights and Copywrongs and Secrets and Lies, and approximately 1,000 back issues of The Nation, and then I think it will be time for some poetry before starting another novel. Reed Bye's Join the Planets or The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan are good candidates for next up. Both are already on my bookshelf, staring at me.

(I submitted this to Amazon reviews today.)

I waited a while before writing this review to make sure I was not acting rashly. I've had these headphones for about a month now, to use with my Nokia E61, which has a very nice music player.

They are without a doubt the worst headphones of any kind that I have ever tried to use.

As the other reviews say, the earbuds are strangely large. They are so large that they will not stay in my ears. I am confident that they would not even stay in the ears of George "The Animal" Steel, even with all the hair in there to provide extra grip.

They barely stay in when I'm standing still. If I do anything radical like nod, yawn, swallow, or turn my head 45 degrees, they are almost guaranteed to fall out. If they don't quite fall out, they nonetheless require readjustment. I am a 6' 2" (maybe 3") guy and do not have dainty ears as much as I might like to. I've never had this problem with any kind of ear device before, ever.

The stiff cord does not help this situation. The cord is extremely heavy and thick. It's also totally bizarre looking, which is mighty strange for something labeled a "fashion" headset. It's possible that it might be fashionable 20,000 leagues under the sea, accessorized with a fishbowl for your head.

I was willing to give the cord texture a chance, because its stiffness helps it not get tangled if you have a tendency to shove them in a bag or pocket without coiling them. However, it turns out to be totally annoying. You're guaranteed to flinch whenever its snaky scaliness touches your skin. Its rigidity means it's hard to hide the cord. It will always be sticking out in a loop away from your neck or waist somewhere. This is not only unattractive, it makes it kind of dangerous for getting caught on doorknobs and unsuspecting small children when you are walking around.

They sound terrible. There is crackling and a general lack of body to the sound. I'm not an audiophile but I know enough to know that I've heard better sound come out of the free headphones you get on airplanes. It's not my phone. I get a better sound from the phone's loudspeaker, but unfortunately people give me funny looks on the train when I turn that on. I could, however, put up with the sound quality if the other shortcomings did not traumatize me so.

I have never even tried to use the microphone. I also don't understand how you are supposed to use it. On me (height previously mentioned), the microphone hangs at around my sternum. I don't think they can hear me down there, and I don't see any way to adjust where the microphone is on the cord. This means that in order to talk, you will have to hold the microphone up to your mouth. This moving of the cord will cause both headphones to fall out. Rinse and repeat.

I don't know what I'm going to do now. There are not many options available for the Nokia pop port in the way of stereo headphones that have a phone mic. I guess I'll try the over-the-ears ones next.

I'm a fan of Nokia products in general but this is inexcusable.

I watched Hustle & Flow tonight. "Everybody's got a dream" is the theme, even a small-time pimp with an ugly car and a shack for a house. I don't know. Does everybody? Sometimes I'm pretty sure I don't. But, maybe if you're in a place that you have a driving need to escape from, you do. In that case, though, don't you have a driving need to escape from the place you're in more than you have a dream?

It's a good film. There are some problems, though. Even though there aren't that many characters in the story, the relationships between them stay mostly unexplained. Why are these girls working for him? How did this whole thing get started? DJay is a pretty inconsistent character. How can he seem so sincere and dedicated and caring, but be a pimp? It's not very believable that he has such a friendly relationship with his (very small) harem, but has no trouble renting them out. There's also a somewhat annoying A-Team sequence where a small recording studio gets built with tools that came from nowhere. Sometimes it seems like DJay and friends have all the money in the world, and sometimes it seems like they don't have any at all. Which is it?

The penultimate scene, when DJay has his moment of truth, is brilliantly done. I won't give it away, but I get the feeling that the whole movie grew out of this club sequence.

I watched Eastwood After Hours tonight. It's video of a concert hosted at Carnegie Hall in honor of Clint Eastwood, for being a good jazz fan and for including so much jazz in his films. While I wouldn't describe it as, "one of the greatest concerts in the history of jazz," as one talking head called it at the end of the DVD, I definitely enjoyed it. It was recommended to me by a friend, but I didn't have any idea who was actually in it before watching it.

I noticed about halfway through that Clint Eastwood has a mark on his cheek under his left eye. It's kind of purple. Those of you who have read The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle will know why this caught my attention, just having finished the book the other day.

The video editing is pretty bad. They try to mix clips from Eastwood movies, random classic jazz photos, and some Clint commentary in with the concert footage, and it comes off pretty awkward. If it were me, I'd keep the Clint commentary, because that was just done in between songs, and get rid of the rest. It's just weird to all the sudden be watching a five-second clip from In The Line Of Fire while Joshua Redman is tearing up "Lester Leaps In" in the background. I made that specific example up, but it's representative.

Yes, Joshua Redman is in it, and he's great. Him and James Carter get some nice sax dueling going on for quite a while. The innocuous bass player in the background for many of the tunes is Christian McBride, another favorite of mine.

But many of the songs were done in forms that were not my favorite kind of jazz. I'm not a big fan of the orchestra in jazz, and most of the set is done with the Carnegie Hall Jazz Orchestra and some soloists out in front. Also, I don't like hearing two pianos play at the same time, and there were a few instances of that. I don't care if it is Kenny Barron and Barry Harris — one at a time please. Definitely not enough coming out of the drummers, not even when Thelonious Monk, Jr. was up. Still, I enjoyed it all enough to be happy about watching it.

I was also glad to be introduced to some older musicians I have never investigated, especially Jay McShann, whose playing on "Hootie's Blues" was relaxed and groovy. The camerawork throughout is nice, with a lot of zooms on the piano hands; good for a sorry player like me to see.

Clint Eastwood's son plays the bass. The Kyle Eastwood Quartet was on for a tune, and I think he can actually play. Definitely better than his old man, who bangs out a very odd (but kind of enjoyable) blues on the piano at the end of the show.

I finished The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami yesterday. It's a wonderful novel. This is not a new thought; lots of other people have already come to this conclusion (for example, a couple hundred people at MIT last year).

I gave up reading fiction (especially novels) for a while because I was bored with it. Stories regularly bore me. I devote more time to reading poetry because there is more to language than telling stories. I don't like the work of authors who see the point of their craft as the chiseling of a single exclusive storyline from their loaded vocabulary. I inevitably feel like something more valuable is being chipped away. Sometimes I feel like it's me.

These feelings are only stronger when reading books written in the first person, as this one is. Too often the author doesn't actually encounter the story as the narrator might encounter it. Instead it's presented artificially and in the order most convenient for the author. Details have to line up, regardless of perspective. The end result is the constant nagging sensation that the one person narrating the story is really two, one of them with a deadline and a confidence problem.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle has stories, but they are stories told more as we might actually experience or dream them. There are always reasons to doubt reality. The details come through letters, newspaper articles, interactions with computer terminals, thoughts, conversations, observations, memories, dreams. The level to which any of these forms are privileged is itself a function of the narrator's personality and mood. In writing through them Murakami uses appropriately different modes of language. The apparent attention to the shape of the language reminds me why I'm reading a book and not watching a movie. Repetitions of particular objects, people, animals and events throughout the book encourage me to develop my own theories and interpretations. Coincidences are neither necessarily planned nor necessarily unplanned. Flipping through the book now, I see repeated lines that could form threads I may decide to follow next time.

It's not a book that's big on cliffhangers. There aren't many moments of anticipation or acceleration, until near the end, which is double-coupon day for anticipation and acceleration. It's not because everything is suddenly barreling toward resolution. It's more like the Descent of Alette. It's a dream and the rush is palpable, for reasons outside the story.

---

Here are a few tidbits I noticed. They are mainly instances of reaching, and maybe they won't sound that good out of context, but I think they are good examples of taking little chances. Individually they are not profound but as a bundle of sticks they are unbreakable. They are reminders to me to be brave as a writer because it's the quirks that I remember as a reader.

I already posted one bit here, about Ushikawa's clothing.

"I saw lots of men my age, but not one of them wore a Van Halen T-shirt."

"I had no more plans for the afternoon than a migrating bird has collateral assets."

"She looked ready to belt out "Johnny Angel" if you put a mike in her hand."

She dressed far more simply than she made herself up. Practical and businesslike, her outfit had nothing idiosyncratic about it: a white blouse, a green tight skirt, and no accessories to speak of. She had a white patent-leather bag tucked under her arm and wore sharp-pointed white pumps. The shoes were tiny. Their heels thin and sharp as a pencil lead, they looked like a doll's shoes. I almost wanted to congratulate her on having made it this far on them.

I recently watched Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price. I'm not a very big fan of Wal-Mart.

Despite the fact that I faithfully, hopelessly follow all news that has to do with Wal-Mart, I still learned quite a few (unverified) things from watching the film. The Waltons have a bunker, for example. They have collectively given less than 1% of their income to charity, where Bill Gates has given 58%. Bush's recent tax cuts gave the Walton's a $91,500 per hour break.

Some of the "facts" in the film did smack more of fearmongering than anything. For example, there is a sizeable chunk devoted to showing how often crimes happen in Wal-Mart parking lots, and how unwilling the company has been to take even modest measures to address the problems.

I can see how this illustrates that they are heartless, but I'm not sure that it is something we should spend much time on. Where were the police, for example? In no world do I intend to entrust the responsibility for public safety to the Wal-Marts of the world. I suppose there are some complicated legal things regarding parking lots, private property, etc. But still, I don't think the fact that you are more likely to get mugged in a Wal-Mart parking lot as compared to other places is really that salient of a reason to avoid the place. It also struck me as a concern only to particular classes of people. Victims of these crimes can certainly come from any class, but I'm pretty certain that the suburban or small-town Wal-Mart parking lot is still safer than many urban areas.

Unfortunately the film doesn't even make the attempt to interview anyone from "the other side", other than the corporate CEO speaking a bunch of enterprisish to a large meeting. Maybe nobody from the Waltons would consent to appear or something. While the overall tone is not at all shrill, there isn't any attempt to present possible reasons for why a human being can think it's OK to store leaking pesticide bags uncovered outside in a parking lot during a rainstorm. It's important that we hear these things, so that we know what arguments we need to answer, and so that we also realize that there are real people on both sides.

I'm glad they spent as much time as they did on the public assistance issue, showing how Wal-Mart refuses to provide usable health insurance benefits and instead encourages their employees to seek out public assistance. I think one of the more important arguments to make clearly is that Wal-Mart is only cheaper than other places because our governments give them massive subsidies.

I wonder about this genre as a whole. What is the point of doing this kind of thing as a film? There isn't anything particularly filmish about it. In fact, there are a lot of words popping up on the screen. So why not put it in a book? I guess people don't read books. But is that the only reason? They should have done more with the film medium. There are some good shots of small-town life and tough men weeping, but overall the visual impact is pretty low. They could, for example, have done a lot more with juxtaposing the source of the products with the store shelves.

The primary thing we need to do is connect the action of purchasing something at a Wal-Mart to the suffering that the company causes in order to undercut their competitors' prices.

I recently watched The Corporation, a documentary by March Achbar and Jennifer Abbott based on the book The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power by Joel Bakan.

Michael Moore appears a few times in the film, as an interviewee. I liked him a lot more in this capacity than I liked him in his own films. It was refreshing to see him just talking and displaying his knowledge, without the clowning and intentional impishness that are highlighted in his own movies. He still managed to be entertaining, especially when he talked about how large corporations are willing to put out his films---despite the fact that the goal of his movies might be to put them out of business---precisely because they don't believe in anything and they don't think anyone else will either.

The overall approach of the film bothered me a bit. It presented a checklist of psychological characteristics of a sociopath, and then proceeded to show how several corporations manifest each of the behaviors---inability to feel guilt, reckless endangerment of others, etc.

The documentary tells the history of how the corporation as an entity came to be regarded as a legal individual. This view of corporations is one that needs to be abandoned. I appreciated seeing the history of how it came to be, and the description of the problems that it causes, but I was disappointed to see the movie buy into the trope by treating the corporation as a sociopathic individual.

Maybe I'm wrong, though. Thinking of corporations as individuals does have some advantages. For example, we can easily see how outrageous it is that we put a man in jail for a very long time for stealing a golf club because he exhibited a pattern of criminal behavior, but we just modestly fine corporations who make and distribute products that lead to many deaths.

I think there should have been more emphasis on the fact that they are not individuals, and less emphasis on the fact that if they are individuals, they are very bad ones.

Related to a point I started to make in my post about the Whale Guy, someone in this movie points out that the idea of "voting with your dollars" to change corporate behavior is undemocratic, because everyone's vote is not equal.

Some standard corporate evils are surveyed, from Monsanto's chemical escapades (don't be drinking milk while you watch) to sweat shop labor conditions.

It's a good reminder that our society is sick, and that we need to work to change it even while we do what we have to from within it in order to stay sane and have some happiness.

I watched Down By Law tonight. Many people have told me that this is Jarmusch's best movie. I'm not convinced of that yet (still some I haven't seen), but it's a good one. There is less tension in this film than there is in Coffee and Cigarettes or Mystery Train, where the stretches of silence can really get to you if you're in an impatient mood. For one thing, there's just a lot more dialogue I think.

And it's great dialogue. I admire writers that can do the absurdity of everyday conversation. People say crazy things, and they say it in a perfectly normal tone of voice. Sometimes they are just trying to be funny, sometimes they are trying to fill the silence, sometimes they lose their train of thought, sometimes they are in their own world. Often the jumbling sentences include cliches. This is common but it's very hard to write.

Two of my favorite bits from Down By Law:

"America is a melting pot, because when you bring it to a boil, all the scum rises to the top." (paraphrased a bit)

and

"Cigarettes won't help with hiccups, not in this country."

The second line was said to Roberto Benigni, whose character doesn't speak much English. He speaks a lot of Italian. I wish I knew Italian. Watching this film knowing Italian would be a different experience.

Hang on, I wonder if there are supposed to be subtitles and I just can't see them because I'm using mplayer to play the DVD? I'll assume not.

I think the Coen brothers borrowed a bit from this movie for O Brother. I'm not sure why I think that. Prison escapees on a journey, I guess.

Watched Tupac: Resurrection tonight. Pretty interesting, especially since I didn't pay much attention to the shootings and the rape charges while they were happening. I was listening to his music then, but I wasn't watching MTV or reading Source.

Probably most entertaining was his lengthy account of being in prison. About the irony and weirdness of serving a perfect family Bill Cosby product like Jell-O in prison. Signing autographs for skinheads. After getting out, going into the studio instead of seeing a therapist "because it's cheaper".

The weirdest part was all the interview segments with Tupac, Dre, and other Death Row people dressed in their California Love video costumes. Remember it? Metal spikey post-apocalypse gear. And also, how much Tabitha Soren was in it. I guess that's because so much of the material came from the MTV archives.

The film itself isn't very tight. They say next to nothing about the circumstances under which he was fatally shot, even though that's the climax that the whole thing is built up to. They show some bullet holes, some bent rims, and a bunch of people lighting candles, and that's about it. There's also way too many aerial shots of random pretty landscapes accompanied by Tupac tracks dispersed throughout. I don't know. I don't think I'm the only one who doesn't really associate Tupac's music with trees and sunsets.

They also only mention a couple of albums by name, and don't go through much trouble to associate the different time periods in the story with the music that was out then. I was expecting a lot more of that. It's definitely a lot more about the person than it is about the music, even though the person himself is always trying to connect everything with the music.

But, there is a lot of good interview footage, reason enough to watch it. I haven't watched all the extras yet, and probably won't, but this old video of a 20 year old Tupac giving a speech at a "Malcolm X Dinner" is something.

I didn't get much out of What the Bleep Do We Know.

I vacillate between being very inclined to and very repelled by abstract contemplation of life's "deep" questions. Sometimes I think the main reason I'm buddhist is that buddhism treats these questions as perfectly ordinary. It doesn't shroud them in mysticism or promise an end to life's problems if we can realize their answers. We encounter them as part of our normal life, and we should engage them accordingly.

Seen from this perspective, What the Bleep Do We Know takes an unfortunate approach. The film has a glossy, slick, phony feel. There are sparkling halos of light, and anthropomorphized cartoon incarnations of metaphysical ideas that remind me of nothing so much as soap suds in a cleanser commercial. I've seen very similar graphics in Scientology books. They foreground the film's condescension to the viewer. Remember those eighth-grade science movies, which were obligated to use amateur visual effects to hold the attention of their distracted audience?

It is an awkward mix of documentary and narrative story, connecting the lessons of quantum physics to the human condition, and neither one comes off very well. I'm certain that I would be much happier if it were only a documentary, with the "storyline" removed. Next to the didactic and overly excited commentary of scientists and mystics, the storyline comes across as childish allegory.

The gap between the significance of what the scientists say and their nonverbal expressions leads me to believe that this movie suffered from serious editing problems. Important parts were probably cut. I believe that these people have important and interesting things to say; but presenting only their enthusiastic conclusions --- mostly repetitions of vocabulary-induced variations on "it's all in your head" --- without giving some time to the warrants behind them, was an error.

I take issue with "it's all in your head". I don't understand the drive to emphasize the binary mind and body opposition. If it is true that our thoughts can actually influence the reality around us, isn't it reasonable to first explore the theory that this is because mind and physical reality are constructed of the same stuff, rather than leap to the conclusion that the mind must be made of some higher-order material?

I also take issue with it for social reasons. The problem is essentially "easy for you to say", and it tends to arise whenever someone elevates the importance of the mind over the body. The film focuses on an ultra-narrow slice of people. In the story, the main character is a deaf photographer who finds herself in many socially awkward situations. The pronouncements of the scientists and mystics are universal, generalized to all humans, to "us". But who is the "us"? It appears to be people who have time for existential angst, who are not facing challenges to their actual physical survival.

How would the movie have been different if the protagonist had been a money-poor, single, deaf mother trying to put some food on the table for her children using government assistance and a part-time job? Doesn't this challenge the "in the morning I spend a few minutes visualizing, creating my day, communing with the universe" approach?

I don't mean to disparage it if it works for you; but there were no acknowledgments of limitations on applicability in the movie, and to present itself in a way that pretends to apply to all humans is irresponsible, and somewhat typical of capitalist spirituality.

This particular ninety minutes would have been better spent re-reading my epistemology textbooks, or The Mind's I, just meditating, or helping out at a shelter. I would have learned much more, about the same topics.

(After writing this, I read Wesley Morris's review in the Boston Globe. Maybe I should have read that review before watching the movie.)

Coffee and Cigarettes is a series of short sketches strung together around various tabletops, directed by Jim Jarmusch.

What fills the movie is what fills the tabletops; cups of coffee, cigarettes, ashtrays, and conversations whose words mostly fall flat on the table.

Each sketch is largely a series of variations on some intersketch themes; celebrity, family, coffee, cigarettes, dreams. Most include some awkward miscommunications. Often they play on some of the same near-verbatim repeated phrases.

It's the awkward miscommunications, the celebrities, and the dark dry humor tying them together that reminded me weirdly of Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm.

The highlight is the scene with RZA, GZA, and Bill Murray, all playing themselves, in a cafe as they wait for Ghost to arrive. RZA dispenses holistic healing tips while Bill Murray chugs coffee straight from the pot and tries to hide his identity.

Though the RZA/GZA/Murray skit is laugh-out-loud funny, this is a slow, awkward film, with emphasis on silence and striking visual arrangements. Be careful that it suits your mood.

If you were teaching a class called Comedy 101 to prospective stand-up comics, what materials would you put on the required reading/viewing list?

Saw The Aristocrats tonight. Wow.

Pipeline gives the crux.

A documentary about a dirty joke. I thought both the idea and execution were very smart. It's a real case study in comedy --- you take a joke, one that's not very funny, one that's very offensive, one that has a long and soiled tradition --- and look at what a bunch of skilled comedians do with it.

Don't buy any popcorn when you go to this movie. You won't eat it. For god's sake, don't get butter on it.

I'm always drawn to explorations of form in art, and I think that's why I enjoyed this movie so much. Yes, the content of the joke is horrendously disgusting, more disgusting than anything I've ever actually heard anyone say in real life, ever. And I have some foul-mouthed friends. But by the midpoint or so of the movie, I was kind of tuning out the actual material and tuning into the delivery, the body language, the style, the cadence, the climaxes (oh, let's not think about that pun), the variations. And the really extra-offensive material.

It's Raymond Rousseau's Exercises in Style for stand-up comics. The joke is repeatedly and rightly compared to jazz and musical improvisation. You've got to start here, you've got to end there, but everything in between is up to you, keeping in mind reference to the body of work that came before you.

The movie begins by introducing the joke and its history. In the middle, the joke. In the final third, a questioning of whether the joke as traditionally told is still offensive, and some explorations of new innovations in offensivity that might be necessary to keep it fresh and fucking outrageous in the modern Fear Factor world.

Though Pipeline suggests this as a good first date movie, for what liking or not liking the movie can show you about a person, the fact that it may actually kill any desire for sexual activity in anyone who sees it for at least 24 hours, possibly months, is reason to reconsider that idea.

For added entertainment, try seeing the movie at a crowded time and counting the number of people who walk out. You should stay all the way through the credits.

On the individual performances:

I have newfound respect for Gilbert Gottfried. I've never thought he was funny before. But I'm guessing that the performance by him of the joke at the roast of Hugh Heffner in New York was the impetus for this whole project. Amazing.

I think my favorite version was the joke told via a card trick. It's a good example of how, just when you think the material is drying up and the film is going to start dragging, they show something really innovative. In this way, the structure of the film kind of mirrors the joke itself.

Another example of that is the version told in a Christopher Walken impersonation. Was this Kevin Pollack? I think so.

And there's a mime. If you don't think that a mime can be dirtier than the dirtiest joke you've ever heard, I've got news for you.

There's some great examples of comics playing off each other. The Smothers Brothers are hilarious. The fact that they are in this film is also hilarious.

Eddie Izzard --- my favorite comedian of all time --- fails to complete a single sentence or thought, I'm pretty sure.

On things to contemplate after the movie:

Running through friends in my mind and trying to anticipate whether they would like or dislike the movie was a fun exercise. In the movie, they talk about the joke being a mirror, and what the way it is told can tell you about the person telling it.

Notable absences. Many famous comedians were in the movie. Think about all the ones who weren't. Is there a particular reason why there are only a couple of black comedians present? Maybe it's the reason given by Chris Rock.

Like your friends list, go through the list of missing comics and think whether they would tell the joke or not, how they would tell it, and whether they would be in this film, barring concerns like money and scheduling.

If you were teaching a class, Comedy 101, as in how to be a stand-up comic, what materials would you include on the reading/viewing list? I'd put this movie, Comedian, and the Seinfeld episode on the subway where all four of them are heading to different destinations. I'm thinking maybe Eddie Izzard's Dressed to Kill.

What would you add, for things that teach you something about the skills a comedian needs?

The Nonexistent Knight and The Cloven Viscount are two novellas by Italo Calvino, packaged together as one book. Both novellas incorporate stories we've heard before, told featuring impossible characters.

The titles correspond literally to their novella's main characters. The Nonexistent Knight stars a knight who, inside of his armor, does not exist, though he takes meals and otherwise behaves as if he does. This knight is assigned a squire who behaves as if he does not exist, even though he does. The story is set in a world where these conditions are apparently common. Though we hear only the story featuring Sir Agilulf Emo Bertrandin of the Guildivern and his squire Gurduloo (also known as Omoboo, Martinzoo, etc..), apparently there are others like them.

World conditions were still confused in the era when this took place. It was not rare then to find names and thoughts and forms and institutions that corresponded to nothing in existence. But at the same time the world was polluted with objects and capacities and persons who lacked any name or distinguishing mark. It was a period when the will and determination to exist, to leave a trace, to rub up against all that existed, was not wholly used since there were many who did nothing about it --- from poverty or ignorance or simply from finding things bearable as they were --- and so a certain amount was lost into the void. (33)

The Cloven Viscount features a viscount who has literally been cloven in two. His two halves wander about the world. "Every meeting between two creatures in this world is a mutual rending," says the bitter and evil half, who is continually cleaving in half everything he finds, inflicting his own fate on all the squirrels, trees, etc.

There's plenty that's familiar in these stories --- the knight has to quest to prove his worth, the poor peasants are constantly terrorized by their evil ruler --- but the main characters are utterly unbelievable. Armor cannot walk around with nothing inside it (despite the persuasiveness of the simple statement, "for in times when armor was necessary even for a man who existed, how much more was it for one who didn't"), and a man chopped in half lengthwise cannot continue to hop around and rule a kingdom.

But the unfamiliar runs in both directions from expectations. Knights are supposed to be off slaying dragons and having magical adventures, but the nonexistent knight and his fellows fight in silly, prearranged wars where extensive paperwork must be completed to arrange a duel with a member of the other army. Their primary duties consist of things like inspecting the kitchen. Outside of the biological independence of the viscount's two halves, there is nothing fantastic about his kingdom either.

The Nonexistent Knight and The Cloven Viscount are two great stories. You'll laugh with the lepers (did I mention there's a leper colony?) and cry with all God's cloven creatures. If you don't understand the insults being hurled at each other by the opposing armies, don't worry --- translators are provided. Just lay back, let your disbelief nap in the hammock, and enjoy these twists on the traditional tales of sword and sorcery.

I have read the first section of this book, which includes the six "Russian Letter" poems, enough times that the pages are falling out of the book. Fortunately, some of them are online, so after the pages fall out on the train and blow away, I will still be able to study them.

It might be that if I did not already trust him as a poet, I would not proceed after dramatic lines like, in Russian Letter, "It is said, the past // sticks to the present // like glue, // that we are flies //". But I do and I did, and the rewards are many, because his directions are not limited by the philosophical ramblings to which most might let those elegant yet angsty lines drag them. Instead, he takes them to art, and he takes art and its color to its thing, and context is again everything:

Nor am I Rembrandt,
master of the black

and green darkness,
the hawk's plumes

as it shrieks
down from the sky

Robert Creeley says on the back of the book,

'Swift perception of the relation between things is the hallmark of genius,' said Aristotle --- or so Pound remarked. In these singular poems, that relation becomes a complexly articulate play between all such things and the names our common habit gives them.

Yes. I feel better ignoring John Ruskin, who says, "He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas." Yau is fortunately not too worried about tackling the greatest ideas directly.

I read Russian Letter(3) as addressing this directly:

Dear Painter of Clouds
What proof will there be

after the shopkeeper
sweeps our dust into the gutter

And yet these moments are not
anyone's banner, not something

to be waved in the wind

It's hard to stop quoting. As with other successful practitioners of sparseness, chopping pieces into bits makes a mess of things. Yau's "Painter of Clouds" could be Gary Snyder's Air Poet in "As for Poets" before reading "Why I am Not a Painter".

There is a wide variety of styles in this book. People who have not read much of Yau would be hard-pressed to identify any of the above poems and "Boris Karloff in 'The Mummy Meets Dr. Fu Manchu'" as being penned by the same hand, not to mention the series of Mac Low-like sestinas.

The variety of styles and techniques used brings the craft and method to the foreground. Some of this poetry will likely frustrate those who seek to get some sense of the poet as person peeking through the lines, but for readers interested in the further possibilities of the art, that frustration will be a source of interest and entertainment.

    The bling-bling era was cute
    but it's about to be done
    I leave you fulla clips
    like the moon blockin' the sun
    my metaphors are dirty like herpes
    but harder to catch
    like an escape tunnel in prison
    I started from scratch

--- from "Industrial Revolution", Immortal Technique, Revolutionary Volume 2

The album is spine-chilling, heady, rough, intense, well-versed. The vocabulary is aggressive, vulgar, biblical, historical --- strange, and not afraid of the Illuminati.

Filled with freestyle battling roots:

    No one's as good as me
    they just got better marketing schemes

and:

    If you go platinum, it's got nuttin' to do with luck
    it just means that a million people are stupid as fuck

But it quickly expands to scathing criticism of US drug laws, the Patriot Act, wealth disparity, involvement of the CIA in the illegal drug trade, and most other Revolutionary topics, from smallpox blankets to September 11.

Read his bio and you can see some of where these things are coming from.

Some say the beats are substandard, but I don't agree. Maybe they aren't the focus, but if you don't start bouncing around to "Crossing the Boundary", "Point of No Return" or the above "Industrial Revolution", I think you're trying too hard. But yeah, this isn't dance music.

The beats are matched to the themes in the lyrics --- the dramatic and sorrowful rhythm beneath the speech by Mumia Abu Jamal on "Homeland and Hip Hop".

For if ever there was the absence of homeland security, it is seen in the gritty roots of Hip Hop.

You can hear previews of the album at emusic.com. You can preview it at the Viper Records site too, but there it requires some Flash crap. By the way, Viper Records does a lot of cool shit.

You can read a sample of his lyrics, but you probably shouldn't until you hear them with the music first.

He's --- I don't know --- somewhere between Scarface and GZA? Some of the rhymes make me wince, he says things I wish he hadn't said, but in the end I'm just floored by the integrity of it all. I've got Revolutionary Volume 1 now as well --- as soon as I can manage to stop listening to Volume 2, I'll check it out.

    I started out like Australians criminal minded,
    broke into Hell tore it down and built a city behind it

Mabye the summer, with its awful movies, is when the critics really let their hair down.

I don't pay too much attention to the movie reviews in the Boston Globe most of the time. They're usually not that thorough; at least, less thorough than other places.

But I noticed from skimming headlines and summaries that they have really been on a tear these last few days. I appreciate the scathing review as a genre, so I'll highlight some excerpts. These all come from just the opening sentences of the reviews. I didn't look at the full articles to see whether maybe there was even more nastiness inside:

---

Ill-conceived 'Bewitched' bothers and bewilders

By Wesley Morris, Globe Staff

Even by the lowest, loosest standards of silliness, ”Bewitched" is a juvenile movie, made for people who watch their romantic comedies while wearing a bib.

---

Copied has style all its own

By Ty Burr, Globe Staff

The Brazilian movie renaissance continues with ”The Man Who Copied," a comedy about the conundrums of being young that's as fresh and as stylish as youth itself. As mixed-up, too: What could have been an effervescent 90-minute experience is so in love with the sound of its own voice that it develops genre trouble and piddles on for two-plus hours.

---

This bug isn't quite lovable

By Ty Burr, Globe Staff

Disney has gone back to the cedar closet again and come out with ”Herbie: Fully Loaded," a remake of the studio's goofy polyester-era series about a Volkswagen bug with a mischievous soul. Fully loaded with what? you may ask. Product placement, as far as I can tell.

---

'Stolen' states its case, over and over

By Wesley Morris, Globe Staff

”Stolen Childhoods," a dispiriting public service announcement of a documentary...

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(Actually this last one isn't necessarily negative, but my first impression was to snicker. My first instinct is to consider comparison to a public service announcement negative.)