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shadowkatHmmm, I had the football game on briefly during half-time, but apparently missed out on the JJ pasty incident. That said, really enjoying reading others livejournal commentaries on it. Someone even made what appears to be a livejournal icon of Janet Jacksons' pasties. LOL! Heck this is more entertaining than the actual football game was, not that I saw much of it. Tried to watch for about 20 minutes after the half time, but got so bored, I flipped channels, then gave up entirely and turned the tv off to read and do other stuff. J tried to explain football to me on Sat, but sorry, still can't see it.
Saw Tim Burton's new film BIG FISH on Saturday with J. Really enjoyed it. I think it did a far better job of commenting on why we tell stories and the meaning of stories than ME did in Storyteller, wasn't sure I'd like it since I still loathe ME's version. But I loved Big Fish. Didn't have the problems J or others had with Billy Crudup's character - whose difficulties with his Dad's storytelling made complete sense to me. I've met quite a few people like this in my lifetime. One of Burton's better efforts in my opinion. Usually Burton's emphasis on special effects and fantasy serves to distance the audience from the characters, this round I felt closer to them.
Big Fish is the story about a son struggling to understand his father. The father has always told the son stories. He's a larger than life figure, telling a tale for every occassion, more often than not the exact same tale and often at the son's important events. At what appears to be the son's wedding reception - his father tells the big fish story. When the son is about to go off to Prom, Dad tells the son's girlfriend the Big Fish story.
The boy loved the stories when he was little, but as he grows older he begins to wonder what the reality is behind them, who this man who claims to be his father truly is, and what is he hiding. So when his father becomes ill with terminal cancer, the son goes to him to seek the truth, only getting more stories. About to become a father himself - he desires to understand his father and fears his son won't know him. His mother takes him to his father's office where he uncovers a deed to some property - he searches down the property and discovers that at the root of his father's tales lay a kernel of truth. Each tale was simply an embellishment of the real tale at the center, given flavor as his father would put it.
How the tale unfolds reminded me a great deal of a miniseries that ran over the Xmas Holidays called DreamKeeper - about an old Native American and his skeptical grandson and the passing on of stories. When the old man dies, the grandson finishes the tales, passing them on to future generations and adding his own spin.
Storytelling lives in all of us I think. As I was watching the film, I was reminded of my own father who used to tell me stories as a small child. We'd take long walks in the woods in rural Pennsylvania, he'd smoke his pipe and tell me tales. I don't remember the tales so much now, and only vaguely the walks. I do remember being told them though. I also remember as I grew older telling stories to my younger brother - when he was still smaller than me and patient enough to listen.
In Big Fish, the father, Edward Bloom uses his embellishments to convey a certain warmth and meaning to ordinary events - through his metaphorical embellishments or flavor as he likes to call it, we understand how he felt about these people, how he saw them. A woman that his son, William Bloom, tracks down, explains to William that she was in love with a man who didn't really see her as real. To him - only his wife and family were real, she was part girl, part woman, part witch in his imagination. The woman he cared for but would never mean as much to him as his wife.
The town of Spectre is described by Edward Bloom as a lovely town, perfectly kept, hidden from the world, a sort of Brigadoon - where everyone stays eternally young - William discovers the town is decripit and changed with time. Edward tried to save it, buying the property refurbishing it, but without constant care it becomes entangled with vines. Sort of like a story if you think about it - without constant care, constant telling, it too becomes entangled with vines and fades, like my father's stories to me.
William Bloom finally begins to see his father in his stories, begins to see the metaphors and the literal world and metaphorical world blur in William's mind just enough so he can tell his father a story - a story that reunites them both and allows his father to live on in William and William's tales past death. Our stories may be our legacy to the world we live in. How we embellish and add flavor to them is how they live on, and how others add their pieces to them is how they stay alive - sort of like that old gossip game, where you tell one person a piece of a story, they embellish it and pass it to the next person, until it has taken on a life of its own by the time the final person in the lineup shouts it out.
Big Fish is an interesting and uplifting film. Highly recommend it. One of my happy movies.
Speaking of happy movies, I bought myself two books from Amazon with a gift certificate that an online friend generously sent me out of the blue. Lovely Rah, thank you so much for the gift!!
Not literary books so much as books I've been wanting for a while now, but am afraid to ask for. I considered the literary ones, but I *really* wanted these other two books.
Harry Potter and The Order of The Phoenix (I consider Harry Potter my happy books, yes I know they've gotten darker as they've gone along but they are still fun and I know Harry will endure. Also I like escaping into Harry's world.
The other one is The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch which I've been curious about ever since D'Herblay mentioned it on atpo and I read the description of it. ( Should add that I've been busy collecting Philip K. Dick books...have four so far: The Minority Report and OTher Stories, A Maze of Death, The Man in The High Castle, and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Embarrassed to say only got around to reading Androids so far, but plan to get to the others soon.) Some people collect stamps, some collect dolls, some DVDs, me? I collect books. Love books. They make me happy.
Saw Tim Burton's new film BIG FISH on Saturday with J. Really enjoyed it. I think it did a far better job of commenting on why we tell stories and the meaning of stories than ME did in Storyteller, wasn't sure I'd like it since I still loathe ME's version. But I loved Big Fish. Didn't have the problems J or others had with Billy Crudup's character - whose difficulties with his Dad's storytelling made complete sense to me. I've met quite a few people like this in my lifetime. One of Burton's better efforts in my opinion. Usually Burton's emphasis on special effects and fantasy serves to distance the audience from the characters, this round I felt closer to them.
Big Fish is the story about a son struggling to understand his father. The father has always told the son stories. He's a larger than life figure, telling a tale for every occassion, more often than not the exact same tale and often at the son's important events. At what appears to be the son's wedding reception - his father tells the big fish story. When the son is about to go off to Prom, Dad tells the son's girlfriend the Big Fish story.
The boy loved the stories when he was little, but as he grows older he begins to wonder what the reality is behind them, who this man who claims to be his father truly is, and what is he hiding. So when his father becomes ill with terminal cancer, the son goes to him to seek the truth, only getting more stories. About to become a father himself - he desires to understand his father and fears his son won't know him. His mother takes him to his father's office where he uncovers a deed to some property - he searches down the property and discovers that at the root of his father's tales lay a kernel of truth. Each tale was simply an embellishment of the real tale at the center, given flavor as his father would put it.
How the tale unfolds reminded me a great deal of a miniseries that ran over the Xmas Holidays called DreamKeeper - about an old Native American and his skeptical grandson and the passing on of stories. When the old man dies, the grandson finishes the tales, passing them on to future generations and adding his own spin.
Storytelling lives in all of us I think. As I was watching the film, I was reminded of my own father who used to tell me stories as a small child. We'd take long walks in the woods in rural Pennsylvania, he'd smoke his pipe and tell me tales. I don't remember the tales so much now, and only vaguely the walks. I do remember being told them though. I also remember as I grew older telling stories to my younger brother - when he was still smaller than me and patient enough to listen.
In Big Fish, the father, Edward Bloom uses his embellishments to convey a certain warmth and meaning to ordinary events - through his metaphorical embellishments or flavor as he likes to call it, we understand how he felt about these people, how he saw them. A woman that his son, William Bloom, tracks down, explains to William that she was in love with a man who didn't really see her as real. To him - only his wife and family were real, she was part girl, part woman, part witch in his imagination. The woman he cared for but would never mean as much to him as his wife.
The town of Spectre is described by Edward Bloom as a lovely town, perfectly kept, hidden from the world, a sort of Brigadoon - where everyone stays eternally young - William discovers the town is decripit and changed with time. Edward tried to save it, buying the property refurbishing it, but without constant care it becomes entangled with vines. Sort of like a story if you think about it - without constant care, constant telling, it too becomes entangled with vines and fades, like my father's stories to me.
William Bloom finally begins to see his father in his stories, begins to see the metaphors and the literal world and metaphorical world blur in William's mind just enough so he can tell his father a story - a story that reunites them both and allows his father to live on in William and William's tales past death. Our stories may be our legacy to the world we live in. How we embellish and add flavor to them is how they live on, and how others add their pieces to them is how they stay alive - sort of like that old gossip game, where you tell one person a piece of a story, they embellish it and pass it to the next person, until it has taken on a life of its own by the time the final person in the lineup shouts it out.
Big Fish is an interesting and uplifting film. Highly recommend it. One of my happy movies.
Speaking of happy movies, I bought myself two books from Amazon with a gift certificate that an online friend generously sent me out of the blue. Lovely Rah, thank you so much for the gift!!
Not literary books so much as books I've been wanting for a while now, but am afraid to ask for. I considered the literary ones, but I *really* wanted these other two books.
Harry Potter and The Order of The Phoenix (I consider Harry Potter my happy books, yes I know they've gotten darker as they've gone along but they are still fun and I know Harry will endure. Also I like escaping into Harry's world.
The other one is The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch which I've been curious about ever since D'Herblay mentioned it on atpo and I read the description of it. ( Should add that I've been busy collecting Philip K. Dick books...have four so far: The Minority Report and OTher Stories, A Maze of Death, The Man in The High Castle, and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Embarrassed to say only got around to reading Androids so far, but plan to get to the others soon.) Some people collect stamps, some collect dolls, some DVDs, me? I collect books. Love books. They make me happy.
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no subject
Date: 2004-02-02 02:51 pm (UTC)I devoured them both - hope you like them!
The vagaries of combat and other post-Super Bowl musings
Date: 2004-02-02 03:08 pm (UTC)From Peter King of Sports Illustrated [my comments in brackets]:
_________________________________________________________________
This was a wonderful championship battle, full of everything that makes the game dramatic, draining, enervating, maddening, fantastic, exciting -- and makes you so ridiculously upset that there is no more football, real football, for seven months.
Here's what Super Bowl XXXVIII gave us:
-- Ricky Proehl (who, by the way, is one hell of an NFL player, full of guts and guile and the owner two of the best hands in recent football history), eyeblack still streaking down his face, sweat pasting his hair to his head, walked through the bowels of the stadium 15 minutes after the game, leaned over to me and said: "Deja vu all over again. What a killer, man. What a killer."
[In one of those odd, probability-defying events that often defines professional sports championships, Carolina wide receiver Ricky Proehl found himself reliving his Super Bowl experience of two years before. In 2002, while a member of the St. Louis Rams, Proehl caught a touchdown pass with less than two minutes remaining, only to watch New Enlgand quarterback Tom Brady lead the Patriots down the field, leading to Adam Vinatieri kicking the winning field goal with almost no time left on the clock. The EXACT SAME THING happened last night. I don't know how Proehl is going to get out of bed for the next five months.]
-- Total, ridiculous unpredictability. First 26 minutes: zero points. Last 34 minutes: 61 points.
-- Mood swings. Huge ones. Pats, 7-0. Tie, 7-7. Pats, 14-7. Pats, 14-10. Pats, 21-10. Pats, 21-16. Panthers, 22-21. Pats, 29-22. Tie, 29-29. Pats, 32-29.
-- Thirty-seven points in the fourth quarter. I mean, here are two of the great defenses in the league, maybe the best two, and they looked like Ali and Frazier in the 12th round, just trying to stay upright and go the distance. Five touchdowns and a field goal in the final 15 minutes.
[Again, one of those weird little things that affect the outcome of great sports events. Some time in the late third quarter, the grounds crew of Reliant Stadium in Houston closed the retractable dome because there was a forecast of thundershowers. Almost immediately afterward, you could see the members of both defenses sucking air, and the offensive explosion for both teams began in earnest.]
-- The ascension of two legends-in-the-making. [New England Coach] Bill Belichick, with three or four more very good years, will have my mental vote for the Hall of Fame -- if the guy ever decides to hang 'em up. That's doubtful to happen anytime soon. He's having too much fun, and he's still able to effectively recharge at Nantucket each summer. [Tom] Brady is 26 years old. He is 6-0 in playoff games, 2-0 in Super Bowls, two-for-two in Super Bowl MVPs. If you seriously think it's premature to compare him to Joe Montana [ex-San francisco '49er quarterback, and winner of four Super Bowls], you are high.
I didn't even mention Adam Vinatieri.
"Clutchest kicker of all time," [New England linebacker Mike] Vrabel said. "Uh, is that a word? 'Clutchest?' Whatever. Most clutch."
_________________________________________________________________
Neglected in all the hoop-da-loo was the amazing performance of Carolina quarterback Jake Delhomme, a post-season neophyte who shredded a supposedly invincible New England defense with pinpoint passes 30, 40, 50 yards down the field. Delhomme's a good kid, and deserved a bit of glory for his performance. But people never remember the great performances that come up short in the end.
The half-time show? The commercials? For the most part, not even on my radar. I didn't even see JJ's wardrobe malfunction. (I did like the Simpsons commercial, though.)
CJL
no subject
Date: 2004-02-02 07:55 pm (UTC)