Tuesday, October 28, 2003

Survey says: blog!

I'm back. I'd like to recommence with a painfully verbose summary (oxymoron?) of a random smattering of things both earth-shattering and utterly inconsequential that I missed sharing with you during the past month and a half or so, in no particular order:

Monsieur Moore: Michael Moore continues to shake things up. Whatever your views on his filmmaking (a la Bowling for Columbine) or his politics (left, left, very left), you must concede that the man (who turned the vapid Academy Awards into his personal political arena) is a Class A rabble-rouser. A little over a month ago, he published "Three Easy Pieces for Any Decent American" on his website, a piece he hopes will circulate far and wide. He presents three little tidbits in the hope that they will help sway any fence-sitter away from backing Mr. Bush, and give even Bush's staunchest allies something to think twice about.
People with blogs: Now that everyone and their mom are on Friendster, web-nerdiness is officially mainstream. Back in the year 2000, my blog and I felt like two spoons in a sea of forks, but in the past month alone, at least four friends have hopped aboard the blogging wagon (none whom seem to believe in titular capitalization): chuhuicha, bokomaru, interpellation, and a piece to take home (welcome, friends!). And then there is that endless sea of LiveJounals and Xanga silliness. I used to encounter empty stares when I said the word "blog," and I just wanted to open some eyes to the wonders of blogging. But be careful what you wish for; I'm just waiting for the day when I stumble across my mother's LiveJournal.
Mel Gibson's The Passion: I never thought of Mel Gibson as a figure of any consequence whatsoever; in fact, I rarely thought of him at all except when it was to shrug off his mediocre acting in Signs or to cry with him in Forever Young. But it seems that when people get rich -- like, really really rich -- people are forced to think about them. Such is the case with Mel Gibson, who has used his own considerable fortune to fund The Passion, a movie that's seriously pissing some people off. This is sort of interesting, since none of the people with steam coming out of their ears have actually seen it, but that's part of the problem. What, they want to know, is Mel hiding? He's hiding a big story, the one about Jesus Christ, and his version is apparently dripping with anti-semitism. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the loudest voice of opposition to the film sums up their case: "The core issues are whether the movie inaccurately and unjustly portrays Jews as evil, responsible for the crucifixion, and whether such a depiction will re-stimulate old anti-Semitic stereotypes and hatred." These charges surely seem grounded based on an excerpt from a plot summary of The Passion: "Jesus... had many enemies in Jerusalem. The Sanhedrin, a governing senate composed of the leading Jewish priests and Pharisees, conspired to put Jesus to death... succeeded in arresting Jesus, [and] hand[ed] him over to the Roman secular authorities on unsubstantiated charges of treason against Rome." This interpretation of events was declared historically and theologically inaccurate by the Second Vatican Council (1965) which "repudiated both the deicide charge and all forms of anti-Semitism;" since then "Christians have worked cooperatively with Jews to correct anti-Semitic interpretations within Christian theology" (citation). My guess is that all this brouhaha is shoving the movie into a spotlight it doesn't deserve. To my knowledge, The Passion has not opened to the public yet. Stay tuned.
Music: I've been listening to: that much-talked-about Postal Service album, Give Up (possibly the perfect album of electropop, which promises to warm the cockles of your heart), Erin McKeown's Grand (quirky and beyond classification), Tegan & Sara's This Business of Art (cute girls with guitars fiercer than most), cub's Betti-Cola (self-proclaimed "cuddlecore" that's too cute to be good), Fischerspooner's #1 (sex on plastic / totally hot electroclash, I think), Mirah's Advisory Committee (this girl rules, and breaks all those girl-with-a-guitar stereotypes), The New Pornographer's Mass Romantic (some good fun rock), The Reputation's self-titled debut (palatable punk rock, like Avril Lavigne with skills and an indie label), and The Amps' Pacer (simply golden woman-headed indie rock, like a more one-dimensional Belly). Note: I apologize, but halfway through that list I got bored of finding links for all the bands and albums. You can do it too. I have faith.
Magazines: I've been reading: Mental Floss (what you would''ve learned in high school if it had been fascinating and sassy), Bitch ("a feminist response to pop culture," which has an unnecessarily negative article about the "gayby boom"), Heeb (Jews with 'tude), Ms. (interview with Queen Noor), Harper's (interesting and well-written commentary), and Utne Reader (the "sexual intelligence" issue with lots of fun trivia). I've also been reading plenty of literary theory and feminist film theory, but nobody wants to hear about that, not even my parents.
Typos and chance discoveries: Have you ever mis-typed Blogspot? I accidentally reached Aaron's Bible Site. Have you ever forgotten the A in Amazon? Fear not, Mazon Associates will provide you with "instant cash for outstanding invoices." What happens when you forget the "b" in IMDb? You get a mysterious white page with the word "Test" on it.

Aye, me. So much to catch up on. But there is no time and no space. I will put my blogging hiatus behind me. You didn't really think I'd succumb to the demands of academia, did you?

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