various updates

as many of you know by now, I've moved to the Bay Area; as many of you also know by now, I am watching every movie Keanu Reeves has ever made. I am far from the first person to do this and I'm certainly not alone in having devoted a not-insignificant chunk of 2019 to the endeavor. (and I mean 2019 specifically: I did not want to use the neologism variously spelled "Keanussance" or "Keanaissance" in this post, but it's unavoidable as what the Internet's termed this summer. incidentally, I did find "Reevesnaissance" in a semi-obscure 2017 listicle — used in reference to 2014 onwards, and then again in a couple of tweets referring to 2019 — but it never really caught on, I guess.)

what's refreshing about Keanu, and what's made this whole undertaking rather rewarding so far (despite the number of almost-but-not-quite-good movies I've made myself sit through) is that he's always, you know, very Keanu. what I mean by that is: there's a little bit of almost every Keanu character in almost every other Keanu character. even when he's playing about as against type as he's ever played in My Own Private Idaho (1991), as (what Gus Van Sant meant to be) the Prince Hal of the Pacific Northwest — the very rich, occasionally cruel, and aptly named Scott Favor — he finds it in his character to shove a bunch of sandwiches in a groggy River Phoenix's face, and it works. "look, Mike!" he says, far more cheerfully than any other character says any other line of dialogue in this film. "SANDWICHES!"

(sadly, I can't find a clip of this, so you'll just have to watch the whole movie — the real star of which is not Keanu but River Phoenix. here's the most heartbreaking scene.)

"SANDWICHES!" you can hear Ted Logan (Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, 1989) saying it, you can hear Neo (The Matrix, duh, 1999) saying it, you can hear Matt (River's Edge, 1986) saying it. you can hear Bob Arctor (A Scanner Darkly, 2004) saying it, although maybe he's not referring to actual sandwiches. you can even hear Donaka (Man of Tai Chi, 2013) saying it with a more sinister inflection. we might imagine that John Wick (uh, John Wick, 2014) said it before his wife died. Julian (Something's Gotta Give, 2003) probably said it to Diane Keaton's character, just as Chris (The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, 2009) probably said it to Robin Wright's character. if you ask me, Johnny Utah's "I AM AN EFF BEE EYE AGENT" line (Point Break, 1991) is contained somewhere in there, too, and of course the "I WANT ROOM SERVICE!" speech (Johnny Mnemonic, 1995) has the same energy — or the same lack of energy, really, the weirdly disarming stoner simplicity. perhaps this is why people have always said that Keanu's a bad actor; although it should be said that of late these "people" have disappeared into the woodworks or maybe they've just changed their minds. I was one of them when I first watched The Matrix, nearly a decade ago. a quick Facebook Messenger search for the film has me telling a friend that it's "such a good movie BUT Keanu's a bad actor." I wonder how much of my own opinion — and everyone else's opinion — of Keanu's acting was shaped by other people saying he was a bad actor, like, as a meme? because of his awful English accent (Bram Stoker's Dracula, 1994), because of his nearly-as-bad Southern accent (The Devil's Advocate, 1997)? because of whatever on Earth was going on with his character in Much Ado About Nothing (1993)? my Messenger search unfortunately turns up nothing that might either prove or disprove any of this; all I know is that I had no idea what "good acting" meant when I was 13.

I leave you with this scene from Johnny Mnemonic, in which Keanu (as the titular Johnny) accesses THE INTERNET in 2021!!!

I think a lot about GRIT, and even more about the dollar number of Angela Duckworth's fee every time she is invited to tell some of the highest-paid people in the country how they can become even more highly-paid; the (unintended, I think, I hope) implication is that they've gotten where they are because of something inside them. they have grit, and others don't.

do you think we've lost something by turning psychology into a numbers game? "Luria had the right idea," I remember texting my mother, soon after (perhaps during, in which case: she scolded me for texting during class) the guest lecture during which I got this impression; during which Angela Duckworth showed us (with the best of intentions) that academic research, too, can get you to Wall Street. I don't really take issue with Duckworth herself. she acknowledges the many limitations of grit, especially as "measured" by a questionnaire; she has discussed her issues with the very idea of "measurement," re: what ought and ought not to be "measurable." opening a lecture to an Intro to Psych class with a reference to the career path that (one could be forgiven for assuming) so many in the ultra-high-capacity auditorium might aspire to — maybe it was an attempt to meet students where they were at. the problem lies with those who interpret concepts like grit for their own benefit, which is surely how Duckworth ended up talking to a bunch of investment bankers in the first place.

all this is to say that I finished The Mismeasure of Man recently and I'm growing more and more suspicious of numbers. they'll provide an almost transcendental backing for anything! 

revisiting 'buddy holly'

In times* like these—times in which we can't help but ask "what's with these homies?" every time we're confronted with the day's headlines—it would perhaps behoove us to reconsider some of the choices we've made. Not in ride-sharing apps, and definitely not in business-to-business lumber; simply in music. Specifically, I mean the choice you probably** made today to listen to any song that's not Weezer's 1994 single "BUDDY HOLLY."

*This is timely, I promise. Mary Tyler Moore (yes, she who you are when I look just like Buddy Holly) died two weeks ago. Rest in peace.

**I don't mean to paint with a broad brush; some of you are making the right choices already. I'm literally listening to "Buddy Holly" by Weezer right now, a friend shouted over her shoulder, one earbud in and one earbud out, as she power-walked past me this Monday.

the real john latham

An Ornithologist, Probably John Latham?

la gloire + la guerre

The current political climate makes particularly relevant Combeferre's little anti-imperial staircase-ditty at the end of Les Misérables III.V*, which goes like:

Si César m'avait donné
la gloire et la guerre,
et qu'il me fallût quitter
l'amour de ma mère;
Je dirais au grand César,
"Reprends ton sceptre et ton char!
J'aime mieux ma mère, o gué!
J'aime mieux ma mère!"**

stay tuned

scale of dragon, tooth of wolf

pictured below: a few stray coeurs de boeuf. literally, something along the lines of "cow's hearts." fear not: i hadn't just witnessed a bovine rehash of the one scene in philip pullman's the golden compass that nearly made me throw up when i was in fifth grade.

into the rib cage iorek reached, and he plucked out iofur's heart, red and steaming, and ate it there in front of iofur's subjects.

these have nothing to do with polar bears.

it was a saturday morning in epernay, and coeurs de boeuf are tomatoes. saturday mornings here, as everywhere, bring the farmers' market! seen: a fish lying in a pool of its own blood, an upside-down rabbit that still had lights in its eyes, and plenty of cheese. 

we spent that afternoon picnicking in nearby, beautiful reuil. i'm amazed that driving fifteen minutes, here, takes you to an entirely different city. driving fifteen minutes, back home, takes me to school. that night, there were more motorcycles on the avenue du champagne than the total number of motorcycles i've seen in my life. ouais! ouais! mes oreilles! 

happy discoveries: french-dubbed doctor who, which is not called docteur qui (most of the shows here are dubbed and not subbed -- is that normal or do the french just really, really not want english in their lives?); the sun doesn't set until nearly eleven p.m.; pizza crêpes; the charming village of ay; really good canteloupes!

[under the cut: vegetables. florals -- not just for spring! a photo of myself in which i look like ewan mcgregor. not related at all: guys on motorcycles around around nine-thirty in the evening (note the presence of the sun). +  more!]

hello

a blog*, a log, a goliath frog -- WORDS ARE CATEGORICAL!

*i am fully aware that blogging is capital-o over, as evidenced by the fact that ezra koenig stopped blogging in 2006. i don't mind!