From the Bookmarks vault

How not to interview someone. Just when you think it's as bad as it could possibly be...it gets worse.

If I had 140 euro I didn't need, this is what I'd buy.

Who would you rather wipe your ass with?

If whisky makes you poetic, or if poetry makes you want to drink whisky.

Finally, if you like your news happy.

The Sweet Life

The last few days have been rather unusual for me in that I have been strangely aware of the fact that I'm a girl. And no, it's not that time of the month. I just think my sister's elegance offensive might have finally kicked in. And there were some contributing factors.

It started on Sunday when, after a frustrating day procrastinating unhappily (which is a very different thing than the happy procrastination I engaged in today) from the physics homework lying next to my laptop. Oh, I tried. I read through things three times, even made neat little cardboard sheets with all the definitions found in my hellish reader, but it wasn't until I decided to go wild and not to care about what my -male- classmates and my -male- professor would thing, i.e. to write my homework on pink paper this time, that the hoped-for breakthrough happened and the solution to (half of the) problems started pouring out.

Emboldened by my victory, I put on my most feminine shirt the next day, bright pink (though not baby pink, hell will have to cool down just a little bit more before I ever wear thát color) and with a bared shoulder, and watched the first episode of "Commander in Chief", a new series in the US featuring Geena Davis as a female president. It's not a great show, but it fit my mood, and made me feel even more convinced that being a girl was something I should advertise more, in a way. Something to take into account, maybe even to take advantage of.

Roger Ebert say in his review of Fellini's La Dolce Vita that it is a different film for him every time he sees it, depending on who he is at that point. This might explain why, when I finally saw this classic yesterday evening, what struck me most is what the film says about gender roles and views of feminity and masculinity. There might not be a harem scene as in Otto E Mezzo, but the main character (played by the gorgeous yet too sleazy Marcello Mastroianni) clearly has a problem with what he wants in a woman, with what he should be as a man. And the women in this film are, while stereotypical, very interesting.

Anita Ekberg as Sylvia is infantile and beautiful, but she's interesting, not because of her inpredictability, but because -while she lets Marcello chase after her and sweet talk her in Italian- their interactions always stay on her terms. And what to think of Anouk Aimée's character, a bored, rich nymphomaniac on the one hand, who proposes to Marcello, showing her vulnerability, only to discard him a few minutes later when she gets him to be vulnerable. There's the whole virgin/whore paradox in this film (literally even, with many whores and an appearance by the madonna), but the female characters are, while just as desperate and lost as Marcello, much more layered than you would expect.

My thoughts on the movie as a whole are still confused, I'll need to see it again. It fascinated even if it was almost three hours, but it still feels too much to me like a jumble of scenes, and I still need to figure out the connections, the thematics, basically the point of it all. Most films resemble novels or plays, on occasion history books, but Fellini writes poetry with his films, and like poems, they take time and contemplation to decypher. I remain convinced that there is more to them than empty imagery, and I think that's what makes his films great and not merely confusing.

Today, continuing my exploration, I decided to wear my new skirt for the second time, and a nice sweater offering ample decolleté. The skirt feels nice and swishy, and it makes for armfuls when I go to the bathroom, but I'm still not a fan of pantyhose. It felt nice though, feeling elegant and feminine (although everything needs its limits, I díd wear my "Fezza" underpants underneath the fancy skirt to compensate). I know I'm not the elegant, feminine type...but playing the role for a day was interesting.

H.

P.S. Joyful announcement! If you now google "As cool as a fruit stand", you get this blog and my blogger profile. It's not that I actually expect people to google that exact phrase, but it does feel nice to have, in a way, conquered my own little corner of the web.

Maybe Dutch can be a poetic language after all...

Sometimes it takes a foreigner to make notice what's great about your culture.

No, I am not changing my opinion of Dutch films. But Orion, my neighbour's American friend, who's staying here at the moment, introduced me tonight not just to one but two great Acda & De Munnik songs.

The first one was "Als het vuur gedoofd is" (when the fire's gone out), the song "Het regent zonnestralen" (it's raining sunbeams), a fabulous song as well, is apparently a sequel to. It's about Herman, again, sitting in the park thinking about opportunities missed. Acda & De Munnik are at their best when telling stories, finding poetry in everyday life, without having to use "poetic" language.

The second song, "dag Esmee", is also of the narrative kind...About someone running into a high school friend. And that's all I'll say, because the story's probably best when unfolded by Acda & De Munnik.

Why is it that it takes a foreigner -with, admittedly, a surprising grasp of Dutch for someone who's only spent 6 months here-to notice these songs? Oh, sure, every Dutch person knows "Niet of Nooit Geweest"(not or never been is probably the best translation, but it's not great) by heart, and that's a great song too, but why don't we go looking for these hidden gems?

Yet another thing for my wish list then. I'd better be on the lookout for a very rich Sinterklaas.

H.

Run for Cover

A lot of people look down on covers as being little more than rehashes of much better original material. That is, when they're aware they're listening to a cover at all: I am convinced the majority of teens who loved Limp Biskit's "Behind Blue Eyes" had no idea it was not an original. Not to mention, a little further back, Boyzone.

I am divided on the issue. There are just too many bad, or, even worse, pointless covers out there. But every once in a while someone gets it right. In my opinion, the great covers do more than just, well, either singing the song in a slightly different arrangement of increasing the beat. They reinterpret the songs. They give them new meaning. They make you appreciate the originals better. And they stand on their own as true works of art.

The reason this topic came up because there's a podcast I listen to called "Coverville", and today one of the covers in the latest show was so beautiful it gave me the shivers. Covers being so varied, in genre as well as in quality, listening to coverville is always a gamble: there will be some songs I won't like, some I think are ok, and every once in a while there will be a gem.

So then, my top 5 covers. Counting back, first the name of the song, then the original artist, then the cover artist.

Honorable mention: more an alternate version than a real cover, but it's great nonetheless: Anouk's Reggae version of her own Nobody's Wife

5. El Tango de Roxanne - Sting & The Police - the version from the Moulin Rouge soundtrack

4. Such Great Heights - Death Cab for Cutie - Iron & Wine

3. The Boxer - Simon & Garfunkel - Grayson and Wonfor (this is the song that gave me the shivers. A spare, slightly slower, acoustic guitar only version that is just amazing)

2. Smells like Teen Spirit - Nirvana - Tori Amos

1. Wonderwall - Oasis - Ryan Adams

And I left out so many... Rufus Wainwright's version of Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah because it's a little too similar to the original, Tori Amos' Angie because I already had a cover by her, All of Seu Jorge's covers of David Bowie because they're a translation as well...

Know any covers I should know about? Please tell!

H.

The Princess Bride

I think there's something about the Princess Bride that you either get or don't get. I watched the first half of it tonight with two of my unitmates, and while I had a shit-faced grin on my face the entire time, they didn't really see the joke, one of them even calling it annoying.

*Sigh*

They don't see the mixture of adoration and gentle mockery towards all the old, filmed-on-set, swashbuckling adventure movies. They cringe at the costumes, music, backdrops, and while they understand it is intentional they just, well, don't get it.

Movies which inspire such a radical division usually also give rise to rabid fandom, and this movie is no exception. The Flick Filosopher (herself so much a fan she's writing a book about this movie) recently linked to a retelling of LOTR entirely in Princess Bride quotes, something perectly possible since every single line of this film is quotable.

Describing the charm of the Princess Bride is almost impossible. Suffice to say that it always maes me giddy, makes me want to be a kid again and experience the power of stories for the first time. It is ironic, but without feeling superior to the material, and that's something that's hard to find. Maybe that is ultimately what explains the 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Or maybe it's just the simple fact that this movie is as perfect as they get.

---You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is: "Never get involved in a land war in Asia." But, only slightly less well known is this: "Never go in against a Sicilian, when death is on the line!"---

Some administrative notes

As you might have noticed, my Sinterklaas Wish List has disappeared from the sidebar. It is now hidden in a post I've backdated to October 5th, two months before Sinterklaas. It has been replaced in the sidebar by a list of link to what I believe are some of my more interesting posts, or those at least that I think should be easily accessible from the main page, among them the Sinterklaas list.

Looking back through those posts I realise I've neglected one point of my declaration of principles, namely the point that I would included images. I'll try to be more consistent from now on, after all, it is definitely true that images lighten up the page and make the whole wall of words less inpenetrable (or so I hope). Incidentally, today's picture is approximately what I see when I hang back over my chair, seeing the back of my room upside down, something I do quite often.

One last point, you might have noticed that I have caved in and corrected the spelling of the name of my blog, my initiative being futile anyhow. Also, googling "As cool as a fruitstand" yields dozens of reminders of past blogs and cringe-worthy traces I left on the Internet. Googling "As cool as a fruit stand" does not yield anything as of yet, but hopefully my blog will show up there soon. If you like my blog, please link to it under the new name, and hopefully Google will pick up on it soon.

I promise a real post later today, now that I've gotten the practical notices out of the way.

H.

Once you fucked it, it's yours

Before I start on the topic, a short note. Harold Pinter was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature today. The press statement lauded him for "uncover[ing] the precipice under everyday prattle and forc[ing] entry into oppression's closed rooms,". The precipice under everyday prattle...gotta love it. I have actually never read or seen anything by Mr. Pinter, but I'm sure he'll be impossible to avoid in the next month or so.

*****

Lani invited me along to a "Salon de mots" tonight. We had no clue as to what it was exactly, imagines slam poetry and whatnot, but after Spongebob Mac 'n Cheese and soesjes we biked towards the small café "De Leugen" (the Lie).

It was small, cramped, but the atmosphere was interesting, with people ranging in age from twenty to sixty. We met up with Anita, a friend of Lani's who apparently liked my blog (which means she múst be a fantastic person, dontcha think?) and the show began with a bang, or rather, with a guy playing some weird kind of, well, I believe the term is "mouth harp". Cute, too. And more importantly, he could sing. Very well even. It turns out he's the singer of the band Dial Prisko, a name I'll definitely remember. Even more so because apart from the mouth harp, he also played...the tea pot.

I won't give a list of all the poets and what I thought of them, because I find that on poetry nights all the words blend together anyhow, no matter how different the styles and the subject matter. Unfortunately, most of it was in Dutch, and for some reason, Dutch poetry doesn't get to me like English poetry can. The main poem went on for too long, getting interesting only near the end, and there was only one Dutch poem with rythm to it, with metre and flow.

The lone English poem was by an Australian woman, Prue Duggan. It was interesting, especially her vision of Anna Karenina, but I wasn't entirely convinced. Maybe it's because someone once told me that in truly great poetry, every word should feel irreplacable, like it's the one and only possible word in that particular place, and I did not get that idea from her poems. However, her poems were the most interesting to me of the entire night, and the title of this post is the closing line to one of her poems.

Far be it from me to say that writing poetry is easy. I had a poetry period in my first year at UC, and I got very frustrated with it because my poetry simply wasn't good. Poetry, good poetry? It's freaking hard.

I've been getting back into poetry, as you've maybe noticed from me mentioning Dylan Thomas records and leaving the text of an entire Kings of Convenience song here, but this (together with the poetry committee meeting yesterday) really kicked me back into. Biking back, words came rushing over me like they haven't in years, not enough yet to start letting them out, but enough to raise the hope that I might actually produce something again.

I looked through my old poems again tonight. Some made me cringe, most did, to be honest. But some...Oh, they're not good poems, but some that I forgot I wrote surprised me by not being as bad as I remembered my writing being.

In a way, reading back is like digging into my own past, worming myself into the mind of who I was two years ago. Scary, maybe even more so than reading old blogs. It's strange. It's me, I can remember me then, remember feeling and thinking the same but then, it's not really me any more. I can pinpoint exactly between which poems I got together with Joren, in between which poems we broke up...And yet, I don't remember it feeling very intense or important at all.
If I do start writing poetry again, I'll probably create a special blog for it, but until then, I just thought I'd leave you with this poem, written a year and a half ago...I don't think it's particularly good, even for me, but I think it gived a good impression of what I used to write.

Ticking Away

A bomb warning at the station:
in the train I think of ominous
ticking under my seat, imagine
a small round black warmth pulsing.

In my last split second
I’d wonder at how
when the sun shines
the world seems to unfold.

It will freeze tonight,
as the cold fragments
which once were me
will be sniffed at by
lonely patched dogs

Maybe I’d reincarnate
a tall elegant tower with three white wings.
And then another girl with morbid fantasies
would see me through the wagon window,
and smile, because not everything is rotten,
while her life slowly ticked away.

Over and Out.

H.

Other people's words today, apparently

Kings of Convenience - Homesick

I lose some sales and my boss won't be happy
But I can't stop listening to the sound
Of two soft voices blended in perfection
From the reels of this record that I found

Everyday there's a boy in the mirror
Asking me what are you doing here
Finding all my previous motives
Growing increasingly unclear

I’ve travelled far and I’ve burned all the bridges
I believed as soon as I hit land
All the other options held before me
Will wither in the light of my plan

So I lose some sales and my boss won't be happy
But there’s only one thing on my mind
Searching boxes underneath the counter
On a chance that on a tape I’d find

A song for
Someone who needs somewhere
To long for

Homesick
Cause I no longer know
What home is




This song started playing, and I was reminded of why I love the Kings of Convenience. They're music is gorgeously melodic and soothing, but aside from that their lyrics can be unexpectedly moving. I could go on and on about them, about the spare, quiet melancholy that exudes from their songs, about how no two voices have sounded so right together since Simon & Garfunkel, about how outrageous it is that in Europe all you can find by them are 30-euro imports... Instead, I thought the lyrics would speak for themselves.

A few lines

Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
God said, Let Newton be! and all was light

It did not last: the Devil howling "Ho!
Let Einstein be" restored the status quo



The first two lines are by Alexander Pope (I wanted to type Pope Alexander, but was afraid people wouldn't get the joke and just think I was stupid), the latter two by J.C.Squire.

I'd already seen them before, in one my dad's quote books, I think, but I found them again while studying for my Astrophysics mid-term (who says Physics can't be fun?) and thought I'd post them here

Ah, interesting people

First, it looks like the decision about the new Bond has finally (finally!) been made. I would have preferred Clive Owen or Sen Bean (who, after all, already played 006), but Daniel Craig is not a bad choice. I'm curious to see what he'll do with the part.

Now onto the real interesting people

First, Tilda Swinton, one of the most fascinating actresses around. She was the only good thing about Constantine as far as I'm concerned.

Second, Kurt Vonnegut. Still alive, not too happy about it. Still writing, which is the most amazing thing.

Last, definitely not least, Hans Bethe, no longer with us, unfortunately. Luckily, we can still listen to him explain quantum mechanics.

Alan Rickman

Ok, Sense and Sensibility was on TV tonight, and I basically just had it on in the background, turning my attention towards it (and the sound up) only when one particular character was on screen.

I think it's time to reveal my crush on Alan Rickman.

Now, a lot of people are going to think, Alan Rickwho? That's because this brilliant, charismatic, irresistible actor has mostly been stuck in supporting roles, more often than not in the role of the villain. Remember the British fiend who stole Die Hard from right under Bruce Willis' muscles? The Sheriff of Nottingham you loved to hate in Robin Hood? And last but not least, I-still-don't-believe-he's-truly-evil-damn-you Severus Snape (don't click on the link if you don't want Harry Potter 6 spoiled)?

He also plays good guys sometimes. He was hilarious in Galaxy Quest, heartbreaking in Sense and Sensibility, and he was well served by his masterful dry wit in Dogma, getting brilliant lines and delivering them, dare I say, better than any other in the cast of that great movie. And well, he didn't manage to make Rasputin bearable, but let's face it, that was nigh impossible.

It's mostly the voice, I think. I could listen to it, entranced, for hours. But then again, my post on Dylan Thomas probably already exposed my sensitivity to men's voices. I just...Alan Rickman's voice is so low and purry and dangerous and did I mention it's sexy?

The kinda disturbing this is he's almost three times as old as I am. The thing is, I don't think the age difference should mean that I can't find him handsome or attractive, even if it is a little weird that my mom feels the same (although we both like Siska -the Peter Kremer one- too, and that never felt odd). It does however mean that I don't spend a lot of time thinking about his butt, which I have been known to do with younger crushes.

Oh well. As I talked about with Laneshka yesterday, daydreams are fine, as long as you don't except or want them to become reality. One exception: the daydreams in which Alan Rickman gets leading parts in movies where he's not just a villain and I get to look at him on screen without having to tune out the other parts? That one I won't mind becoming real.

H.

On a sidenote

For the first time since I first started writing seriously on this blog, three weeks ago now, I don't really know what to write about. Also because I've done too many link posts lately, and I'd like to come up with something, tell you something valuable myself. But I don't really have much to talk about.

Writer's block? A little. Probably also in part because the first of November is drawing close, and I don't have a story for my NaNoWriMo novel yet. Oh, I have three main characters, plus a couple of secondary ones. A fantastic idea for a sex scene came to me, which is a curse rather than a blessing because it makes me even more reluctant not to use these characters and the relationships between them, despite the fact that these characters don't have a destiny yet, nothing compelling I can do with them (except hopefully afore-mentioned sex scene), nothing new, nothing that doesn't feel too gimmicky, too shallow, too short.

I got a small flash of inspiration today. There was a documentary on Belgian TV about fanatics in the US and how they were trying to re-popularise the faith by using popular culture, movies, conventions (sorry, Laneshka, if I seemed a bit absent at times, but my eyes kept being drawn back to the TV and the crazy people on it), and since one of the three characters comes from a religious background, I think I could use it. The how and the why are still fuzzy though.

I promise tomorrow I'll bring you something more exciting and about actual artists, hopefully, not wannabes like myself. But this is what's been on my mind...

H.

References

When you think about it, links are really the essential feature of the internet, what sets it apart, and what makes it fabulous. Rarely are nice pages found by entering a random URL: we always need someone to link us to the discovery, whether it is in an ad or on a blog or other page. If the link is on another web page or blog -especially on a blog- odds are the person who put it there wouldn't have "discovered" that page without a link to it.

As such, giving credit where credit is even harder than with academic papers, because it's not just ideas that travel, it's URL's. I can mention where I found the link, but most of the time it is impossible to trace back who we should really mention for finding the thing in the first place. This is especially true with items such as the Shining trailer I linked to in an earlier post: at least three sites I regularly visit linked to it, and if you search for "Shining trailer" through the Google blogsearch, you see just how incestuous the blogosphere can be.

The only thing people can do, really, is to make a selection from among the hundreds, thousands of links they discover, a selection that then adds to the hundreds another has seen, and so on, until the genealogy of a certain reference is impossible to trace.

Despite all these arguments, I would like here to give a list of the sites I find most of my links, of the websites and blogs I visit very often to see what they've discovered for me.

Metafilter
Arts & Letters Daily
Movie City News
Geek Philosophy
Cinematical

There are more, of course, and many links are found by clicking through several pages...but I'd say these five form the core.

H.

Artsyness abounds

Mathematical Art:

I especially like the "Sand Traveller", but both "Intersection" Applets are fascinatingly alive and I can marvel about the intricacy of "Substrate" for hours. It's amazing how much beauty simple algorythms can generate.

Found Collage Art:

What this woman does is truly inspired, original yet distinctive (it could be called Magritte-esque, if anything, but nobody I know does what she does). It shows that you can be an artist even without drawing or painting or anything, just by seeing what other people don't. Also, it's all square, and you know I love square.

Voice Art:

Can you get a crush on a dead guy's voice? You can if you're me, and Dylan Thomas really has a fantastic voice. 11 CD's can be downloaded on which he reads from his own work ("do not go gentle into that good night", obviously, but much, much more) and from word by many others, and most importantly, in a voice that rolls over you in soothing waves, a voice that sings and speaks at the same time, a voice, in short, that is not only incredibly sexy to me but also, undoubtedly, Art in itself.

Slashing away

As promised: my article on slash. Plus, you even get the notes, which were brutally slahes away in the print version. Enjoy!

I am about to tell you something that only a few of my friends know, and that I don’t usually share with the general public. That is, you’re about to witness something of a coming out. A confession of a predilection that might strike some as odd. Maybe even as a little disturbing.

Enough with the suspense building! Out with it: I from time to time enjoy reading slash.

Chances are you’re not very shocked at this moment because you simply have no idea what on earth I am talking about. Well, let me explain. Let us start with the concept of fan fiction, a concept you might be more familiar with. Fan fiction is when fans of a certain book/TV-series/movie/comic book/video game write stories involving the characters and often settings of their source. Stories used to be spread through mailing lists or fanzines, but it was the birth of the internet that allowed the phenomenon to take flight. A site like www.fanfiction.net boasts thousands of stories based on hundreds of different sources, from the powerpuff girls (820 stories) to one of the most popular ones, the Harry potter books (206951 stories at the time of writing).

Fan fiction wiring is of course nothing new. It’s not even something limited to teenagers with an internet connection. For example, the novel “Wide Saragossa Sea” by Jean Rhys was based on characters from Jane Eyre, and there have been several other instances in which authors have elaborated on an already existing book.

Obviously, one of things most written about by fans are romantic entanglements. And this is where slash comes in: sometimes, it’s not romantic entanglements between a guy and girl, but between a guy and a guy (or, in some cases, a girl and a girl). Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy are a popular pairing, for example. Luke and Han, Wolverine and Cyclops, Xena and Gabrielle. Or, as I should write it, Xena/Gabrielle, because slash gets its name from, yes, the forward slash between the names of the paired people. There are variations: lesbian slash is sometimes called femslash, and when slash involves anime characters it’s often referred to as yaoi.

The most popular theory is that slash started with Kirk/Spock. Star Trek was one of the biggest fandoms about 30 years ago, partly because geeks are known to be prolific fan fiction writers and because there was a lot of frustration when the original Star Trek series got cancelled in 1969 (it took 18 years for the next show to start). Also, the Star Trek universe offered plenty of handy storytelling devices: Kirk and Spock (or any other two characters you might want to link romantically) could become stranded on a planet, caught in a force field etc. According to Wikipedia, the first published Kirk/Spock story dates from 1974, and there have been many thousands since.

The nice thing about the internet is that an originally rather underground movement gets the change to spread, and elaborate. There’s an entire vocabulary for fan fiction and slash. PWP stands for “plot? What plot?” and usually indicates a very short story (or “ficlet”) focused only on the hooking up of two characters (or, if the author should feel so inclined, three). A Mary Sue is an original character in fan fiction who is an idealised stand-in for the author (it has been estimated that almost 90 % of fan fiction and slash is written by females of all sexual orientations) and as such too pretty, too smart, and all-round too perfect to be true. RPS stands for Real-Person slash, a genre I’m not too fond of myself, which involves two random real people getting it on - or “shagging” if you’re more Duran Duran than Backstreet boys. Most writers give their stories a voluntary rating, based on those of the MPAA (PG, PG-13, R, NC-17), to indicate how much graphic description can be expected.

Now that I’ve told you what slash entails, the crucial question presents itself. What is it that I like about it? What makes me, on lost afternoons, google “Snape/Severus”, or alternatively, “Grissom slash”? [1]

I can’t really say. There is an element of sexual curiosity, of course (I’ve always found it strange that, while it is considered normal for guys to be turned on by the sight of two girls kissing, the opposite is seen as weird), but then why do I shy away from the stories rated NC-17? Probably my reading slash (and normal fan fiction too) is based on the same instinct that makes people read romance novels: we like reading about something we can never have. I truly believe that sex as in a (straight) romance novel is just as impossible to achieve as gay sex with a man is for me[2] but exactly because it’s something that cannot possibly be real, it rouses our imagination.

The fascination with gay men has been approaching mainstream status for a while now. “Will and Grace” is as mainstream as sitcoms come, but the more racy British show “queer as folk” was also popular enough to warrant an American remake. Coming out this fall –in time for Oscar season- is the latest film by Ang Lee, of Sense and Sensibility and Crouching Tiger fame: Brokeback Mountain, an adaptation of a prize-winning short story by Annie Proulx that revolves around the forbidden love between two cowboys, played by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal.

The funny thing is, in reviews, critics have described the film as making explicit what you always imagined could happen between Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, between John Wayne and Montgomery Clift, between any two cowboys really, alone in the wilderness, camping out. Now, I by no means wish to imply that what Annie Proulx has done in her wonderful story (it can be found online) is merely what slash writers do every day, especially since, to be honest, much fan fiction doesn’t deserve prizes for style, but it is easy to imagine her story starting as one of the what-ifs slash writers concern themselves with.

What if Legolas comforted Aragorn in his tent at night? What if Dawson and Pacey got locked in a closet together? What if Seth and Ryan’s exes decided they were more interested in each other than in boys[3]?

An article like this should be ended with a zinger or –perhaps more appropriately- with a bang, but I think it’s more appropriate here to pause to realise how lucky we are that such a thing as the internet exists. It allows people with the most seemingly obscure interests to get together. It allows people like me, who’d have never thought of the idea, to enjoy the stories and the imagination of others. And the best thing? I’m sure slash is only one of many things only few people know about, but that lurk just under the surface of the internet, waiting for discovery. Know of any? Let me know.

---

[1] the CSI chef, with his interest in and understanding of sexual subcultures, and who in an episode once said that “the only unnatural sexual behavior is none at all.”, is a relative newcomer in the world of slash, but already very popular

[2] Without radical surgery, that is

[3] Oh wait, the OC’s creators thought of that one themselves… Although I wager Marissa and Alex had gotten busy many times in slash stories before they did on screen.

My infatuation with Dave Eggers

Second Boomy piece...and I'm saving the best for last, so check back tomorrow.

My infatuation with…

Dave Eggers

I first encountered Dave Eggers at the tender age of sixteen. I was at a Model United Nations conference and a girl who was staying in the same house as me had brought along a Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. It was a busy week. There was only time to be ravished by the arrogant, playful, class-clown seduction in the preface.

The book is a memoir about how both the writer’s parents died, about how he was left to take care of his little brother and how inadequate he was at this. It sounds like a sob story. It is, from time to time. It is also thoroughly funny, self-referential, and, as the title says, genius.

I borrowed the book from the first person I met who had it. And devoured it – not literally – but thoroughly relishing this discovery, this exploration of a book unlike any I had ever read before. It was playful, pretentious but self-deprecating, about serious things but containing passages about how, in a certain house, you could glide almost all the way from one end to the next.

Soon after,You shall know our velocity, Eggers’ first novel (the first book was a memoir) came out. I waited until it came out in paperback – a sign, perhaps, that I was still a bit cautious- but when it did I bought it right away. I had it gift-wrapped to force me to save it for the summer break, and as soon as we were in the car I impatiently tore the wrapping off and started reading. We drove through almost all of Germany, I think, but I remember little of it. I only remember Senegal, Morocco, Latvia; the countries that the characters in Egger’s book visited.

I now had a definite crush.

I fuelled it as well as I could. I read short story collections edited by him, checked www.mcsweeneys.net every day. I wrote a literature paper about velocity, even wrote the first draft of a novel that can only be described as a lame and failed knock-off, and eagerly awaited a new book.

The cruel, cruel man let me wait two years. Finally, then, his collection of short stories How we are Hungry came out. Wonderful stories, leaving me breathless, moved but unsatisfied, like eating crackers when what you really want is a steak. They were well written, familiar in how sharply characters were delineated, sentences put together, emotions sketched, but still a bit too much like an aside, tossed of crumbs to beggars like me, delicious ones, but just crumbs nonetheless

While in Los Angeles, I could have gone to 826LA, one of the three non-profit writing/tutoring centres Eggers (yes, he’s a philanthropist too) set up, but I never did. Daydreams should be kept at a safe enough distance.

And yet, recently I succumbed again. In the penguin shorts collection, short short stories by Dave Eggers there are piece of prose only two pages long, sometimes three, but I take what I can get. A pause in between stories stretches the enjoyment a bit longer.

Now I’m pining away. Waiting for the next small offering. Anything. And hopefully soon.

Wish List

New and undefinable

A subscription to Wholphin

DVD's

Before Sunset
My Own Private Idaho
The Sting
Otto E Mezzo
No Direction Home
My voyage to Italy
A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies
The Life Aquatic
Angels in America
The Third Man (10 euro at Boudisque)

Books

Amnesia Moon by Jonathan Lethem (or anything else, really, except "The Fortress of Solitude")
Author, Author by David Lodge
The Lyrics, by Bob Dylan (15 euro in the ramsj, apparently, i'm not sure the link is to the exact right book)
Chronicles, Pt. 1 by Bob Dylan

Shirts

The bottom one on this page
Because it's true

CD's

Smog - A river ain't too much to love (can be found at "Sounds" in Haarlem)
Kings of Convenience - Riot on an Empty Street or Quiet is the new Loud
Sufjan Stevens - Illinois (any other CD's by him would also be welcome)
Death Cab for Cutie - Plans

Posters

Otto E Mezzo

Editorial

The Boomerang will be out soon, which means...I'll be lazy and post my boomerang articles instead of new content. To start with, my very own editorial "On Enthusiasm"

'
Let me start by getting something out of the way. I, the new Arts & Kitsch editor, am a science major, taking four science courses. What, then, am I doing writing and editing articles about the Arts?

Call me an enthusiast.

Enthusiastic mostly about movies, but also about music, books, TV shows, paintings etc. I have an ever-increasing DVD collection, always have music playing in my room, and have read avidly ever since I was five. To say it in a corny fashion, Physics might have my brain, but the Arts have my heart. I love it when I suddenly discover something marvellous, eye-opening and moving that I’ve never even heard about before. It makes me all giddy, puts a grin on my face. And it makes me want to share what I discovered with anyone who will listen.

Do you ever get that feeling?

If so, then you’ve found a listener here. Its name is the Boomerang Arts & Kitsch section.

We’re looking for many short and long pieces about anything artsy and kitschy, whether it falls under high or low culture, whether it’s celebrated and not, whether someone besides the artist him or herself has ever heard about it or not. Whether loathe or adore it. We are especially looking for articles that make people aware of arty things that are unknown, but not entirely inaccessible. Articles about indie or foreign movies, about music that flies just below the radar, about small exhibitions, about original comics, online or off line, about things that float just out of reach of mainstream status, if you catch my drift.

Articles about things like the guy playing out the entire Star Wars trilogy on his own (www.onemanstarwars.com), doing all the parts, all the voices, all the sound effect. Or like the unexpected poetry of things people overhead in the Big Apple. (www.overheardinnewyork.com). Or like a website that randomly combines images and text from blogs into a fascinating and ever changing transitory work of art (http://turbulence.org/Works/dynamo/index.html).

These examples have a common connection to one another, and this is not entirely a coincidence. The Internet has opened up new opportunities for expression for arts enthusiast, just as it did for enthusiasts of all other kinds. And lucky for us, access is more or less free. I could tell you a certain book is fantastic, but how many would buy it? I could write an entire article about a DVD box set I think everyone should see, but what’s the point if we’re all living on small student budgets? However, surfing to a website address is easy, cheap, and there are so many fascinating websites buried beneath layers and layers of porn and spam. One other big advantage of the Internet is that there exists at least one fan club for everything you could possibly think of. Every fandom, every hobby, every fetish has hundreds or thousands of websites and blogs dedicated to it. And because the sheer immensity of the Internet makes it almost impossible to penetrate directly to its good material, some signposts or shortcuts are usually not superfluous.

Let me also say that I think we have a very nice collection of articles in this issue. Three fans of the TV-series Lost (airing on Friday nights on Net 5) offer their theories on what lies beneath the plot. Elvira offers an overview of all the major high-art museums you could be visiting. Jelmer tells us about his experience listening to a man and his electric shoe. There’s my confession about loving slash, and even a crossword to keep you occupied in between classes.

But our palms are always open, eagerly awaiting more contributions by our readers. I might know quite a few unknown movies and artists but one person’s taste is always limited, and one person’s knowledge too. You’re not going to see me recommending obscure hip-hop bands, review kung fu, or tell you about new experimental video art, not because I think those topics are unworthy or irrelevant, but because they are outside of my area of expertise and, I’ll admit it, because they’re not something I am personally a big fan of. But I don’t plan to dominate this section by what I like, and by what I know. This section is meant as a platform for everything people can get enthusiastic about within the domain of the Arts and the Kitsch, and I am very much looking forward to what worlds you can reveal to me, and to your other fellow students.

Of course, enthusiasm has a flip side. It often implies a certain lack of judgment, lack of criticism. When you’re truly enthusiastic about something you tend to dismiss its less fabulous characteristics and ignore any dissenters we might encounter, telling ourselves they just don’t “get it”. Despite this, criticism is a valuable thing, and something I would also like to see in this section. In reactions to what we have written, but also just if you’d like to give your balanced, well-defended opinion of something.

There is so much Arts & Kitsch out there. So much of it we do not know. This section will hopefully open our eyes to just a little bit more than what we knew before.

Insanely busy

...so this will be a short link update from the backlog

Short Sci-Fi...for chemistry geeks
Context-Free Quotes
Should comic characters age?
An original way to make Tosti's

And last, but definitely not least, the latest hype in the blogosphere, and deservedly so... the trailer for the feel-good movie of the year: Shining. Just to show you that the power of editing (and the right backing music and narration) should never, ever be underestimated.

Death Cab's Plans

I once read an article that, against convention, lamented the fact that artist in the music business often insist on being both singers and songwriters to feel legitimate. That article cited Rufus Wainwright as an example of someone who'd better have stuck to writing songs for other, and I disagreed with that because I happen to think that Rufus Wainwright's nasal, slightly whiny voice is perfect for his songs.

I'm kind of unsure about Ben Gibbard though. I mean, the guy can write, that's for sure. From the new album Plans, from the song "Soul meets Body" come the lines:

cause in my head there's a Greyhound station
where I set my thoughts to far off destinations
so they may have a chance of finding a place
where they're far more suited than here 

It ranks up there with the first lines of "Title and Registration" from 2003's Transatlanticism

The problem is that his voice gets on my nerves after a while. I can't put my finger exactly on what it is that annoys me after a while, but I can't listen to any Death Cab album more than twice in quick succession.

It does vary by song. On Plans, "Different names for the same thing" is most grating to me, but I can listen to "I will follow you into the dark" -in my opinion the most beautiful song on the album- for hours without a problem.

Oh well. If you don't mind Ben Gibbard's voice, Plans is definitely recommended, it's vintage Death Cab with great lyrics and great arrangements, and some heartbreaking songs. And well, even if, like me, you sometimes wonder what the music could be like if a better singer could try his or her hand at it.

Then again...you never know if music can have quite the same emotional punch if it's sung by someone who doesn't understand exactly what gave birth to it.

Amongst the vending machines
And year old magazines
In a place where we only say goodbye
It stung like a violent wind
That our memories depend
On a faulty camera in our minds
And I knew that you were a truth
I would rather lose 
than to have never lain beside at all 

H.