A Biography of Gerald Ford, in Portuguese

My newest favorite way to waste time is to read all the archives of Overheard in New York. Seriously I think I have spent about 10 hours over the last week reading that website. It's addictive and I'm obsessive so we're like a match made in heaven.

My other old standby favorite way to waste time was watching Law & Order on television, but as of this morning, we no longer have a television at my house. There was a breakup and a custody battle and the loser (in an extremely superficial sense, unrelated to actual human feelings, since I wasn't one of the breaking up parties) was me. Me and my evenings of watching Law & Order. Adieu, Detective Vincent D'Onofrio! I'll miss you!

Since I couldn't watch any crappy dramedies this evening, instead I started watching Issue # 1 of Wholphin, which is some kind of highbrow arty DVD publication from those guys at McSweeney's. It came free when I bought a copy of the Believer, which is their literary review magazine publication that I LOVE.

Anyway I am sad and disappointed by the DVD, because although it is full of what look like fine performances by people I admire (Miranda July! Spike Jonze! David Byrne!), none of it is captioned. I still watched part of it and I'll probably watch the rest at some point, because the visual element is not to be sneezed at. But there's a bunch of stories and people talking and I'm sure it would all be much more enthralling if I knew what they were saying.

I wasn't really expecting captions, because McSweeney's included a DVD with issue 11 of their quarterly. And on that DVD, there are captions, but mostly they are not in English. And none of them are captions of what is happening on the DVD. The notes in the back of the book say this:

*Subtitles available; drawn from The History of the Goths and Visigoths in German and Portuguese.
**Subtitles available; drawn from A Biography of Gerald Ford, in Portuguese.
U.S.S. Indicates that the author is in the Navy, and thus the reading is audio-only.
***Subtitles available; drawn from Spenser's The Faerie Queene; in Spanish.
+Subtitles available; drawn from the Book of Genesis.

I do see the humor in this, and I am a great appreciator of absurdity and nonsense and hilarious jokes. However, if you are deaf, watching this DVD (which is a "documentary" of the making of the issue of the quarterly literary journal) is tedious and annoying with no subtitles, and it doesn't become any less so if you turn the Portuguese Gerald Ford Biography subtitles on.

The "English Subtitles" option on DVDs is not because the people who make DVDs are stupid, it's because some people can't hear the spoken English.

The McSweeney's DVD may be tedious and annoying even when you can understand it. I'm sure some people, at least, think so. Sadly, I have no way to judge either the documentary or the newer Wholphin issue on its own merits. Which is too bad for the McSweeney's guys, because I really like almost everything those McSweeney's guys come up with. I buy their books and their magazines and their t-shirts and their bookplates. And I would probably like and buy and say nice things to my friends about their DVDs, too, if they hadn't decided that accessibility was too banal to be included.

story about pirates

by Jamie, age 5





When the land was dark and violent, there was a lad. He dreamed of becoming a sailor across the sea. But he lived with pirates.





But once he was hiding in the bushes and pirates were fighting on the grass.





Then a ship was known to go into the ocean. Then the lad was excited. The captain said he could go.





Chapter 1: The Lad Goes to Sea





He was pulling on the rope






When the lad was out after doing his work, he wanted to go down below. But just as he was going down the ladder, a pirate stepped into his way.






And then the pirate tied him up and [put him] in his cabin. And then he was going to stab the lad. He was just drawing his sword...






Chapter 2: The Lad Escapes





Somebody yelled "STOP!" and in a moment the lad had escaped and the pirate was overboard.





Chapter 3: The Ship Sinks





One day when the wind was blowing so hard, the ship sunk. And they jumped onto the island, and the lad died.




The end.

politics, wasting time

I'm in the midst of some personal, social, and locational upheaval (death, drama, moving house). So I'm not going to write anything interesting right now. Instead I'm going to go to the coffee store and read me some morphological theory.

If you need to look at something on the internet, I recommend this. It's about spying and wiretapping. "This isn’t a slippery slope, it’s a greased cliff with a vicious downdraft and parachute made out of fucking elephants." Ha ha! Elephants! That's funny!

P. L. Travers

I already hated Walt Disney, but I was recently reminded of my hatred by a New Yorker article about Mary Poppins. I hadn't really thought about the movie for a while, other than to hate it in a vague sort of way and be generally indignant about little children who watch too many videos.

But then I read this article and started thinking about how sexist and anti-feminist and crazy that movie is, and how annoying the animated penguins are, and then I got the "spoon full of sugar" song stuck in my head, and my hatred expanded. Kind of like when the Grinch felt his heart grow three or however many sizes, except with hatred of Walt Disney growing instead. Less pleasant, but totally deserved.

Why is the title of this post "P. L. Travers," you ask, when I am complaining about Walt Disney and Mary Poppins?

Because P. L. Travers is who wrote Mary Poppins. The books. All eight of them. The ones that Walt Disney and Julie Andrews turned into weird, sappy, chauvenist tripe about working parents and penguins. And P. L. Travers thought Disney did a stupid, sucky job of the movie, too, although she probably would not have chosen to use the word "sucky."

I don't really care if Disney wants to make crappy movies about things. Animated penguins don't really bother me all that much on their own. Disney can invent as many lame-ass, pointless, sappy little animated features as it (he? they?) wants to. Just make up the stupid story yourself, and don't blame it on real actual books! Because I do care when he (it? they?) takes books that are good and turns them into crappy movies that aren't. Not just Mary Poppins; this has happened to a lot of things. And then no one even KNOWS that there were books, and they think the crappy Disney movie IS the story, and they raise their eyebrows and roll their eyes at me when I start screaming about how much I hate Walt Disney.

So next time you see me, refer to the following as titles of books and not movies, and you can both avoid listening to me go on and on about the Evil Disney Empire and also make me your new best friend.

Mary Poppins: There are 8 books. Mary Poppins is mean, and vain, and cranky. There are 5 children (Jane and Michael, and also John and Barbara the twins, and Annabelle the baby). Mary Poppins is sarcastic and volatile and rude and very, very funny. The parents are kind and loving and unable to control anyone. Mary Poppins shows up and leaves and shows up and leaves again, 8 times. There is no moral, which is just as it should be: morals only belong in Aesop.

One Hundred and One Dalmations: This one is by Dodie Smith, who also wrote another of my favorite books called "I Capture the Castle" which now someone is also making into a crappy movie. People usually make fun of me when I talk about the 101 Dalmations thing, because they don't believe me about it being a good book. Which makes me even angrier, because Dodie Smith does not deserve that. There are only 97 puppies, because there are FOUR main adult character dogs, and no one is as annoying as the dumb dogs in the dumb movie.

Winnie the Pooh. I think some people realize that these were books first. But not so much how good the books are. How lacking in sappiness. Again, they are funny, even if you are a grown-up. The Disney versions are not funny. They are sucky. And dumb. And I only ever even SAW those cartoons once when I was 10, but I can still remember what a stupid, sucky, whiny, annoying voice they made Winnie-the-Pooh have.

The Once and Future King (Sword in the Stone to Disney) you should re-read this one right now because everything old T. H. White had to say in 1939 about war and politics and governments and human fallibility, is all still exactly and frighteningly true now. I read it right before the Iraq war started and I had goosebumps and felt sort of sick because really history just keeps repeating itself. But you would never know this by watching the stupid, crappy, Disney version, which makes you think it is all just a happy story about a dumb little blond kid.

Stupid Disney. I hate them. (It? Him?)

2006

For New Year's Eve, I practiced making mean faces at the camera with Maryrose.



We are pretty good at this skill, but we plan to keep practicing so we don't lose our touch.