Blog Nerd

Nerd Update

So. 

We recently found out that Baby Nerd the Second will be arriving in early September.  We are as thrilled as can be.  Less thrilling, however, is the first trimester fatigue, nausea, and generalized torpor.  Sitting at the computer, usually the staple of my day, is not really as comfortable as it once was, added to the fact that I need considerable rest and nap time after chasing around the increasingly mobile Baby Nerd the First. 

When I can sit at the computer, I am usually trying to eke out work on my publishing record and my dissertation. (I'm going to post a progress ticker at some point in the side bar.) I'm taking the tortoise perspective on both of these nerd activities--slow but sure wins the race.  The amount that gets done is laughable but it is, after all, SOMETHING.  And the first trimester doesn't last forever.  (Though it certainly seems like it.) 

I usually like to take the summers off but its not going to happen this year--I think the summer will be when I'll be back to my usual rate of cranking stuff out.  Until then, I must be content to creep along. 

When I can't write due to nausea and head spins (which is about 23.5 hours out of the day) I have been able to get in some serious television watching.  Here's what's been on the menu:

*Elizabeth I 
I don't know if I mentioned but my dissertation is on Shakespeare and the Reformation.  Feeling tortured by lack of productivity therein I convinced Nerd Husband to watch this historical miniseries with me.  I mean Helen Mirren and Jeremy Irons, how bad can it be?  And the acting is not bad--the writing is, eh.  But the historic narrative?  Pure fiction and the worst form of hagiography--I mean am I  surprised that we once again find a strong, humanist Elizabeth standing alone against the dark Catholic forces that threaten Europe?  Not necessarily.  An Elizabeth whose point of view on religion is oddly similar to the popular view of religion today?  Par for the course.  The repeated lie that Elizabeth unified a Protestant England against an insidious and plotting Catholic Europe is too entrenched to expect otherwise--but what I found absolutely intolerable is the elegiac tribute written to Elizabeth for the horrifying torture and execution of her kinswoman, Catholic martyr Mary Stuart.  You see, according to this miniseries, Elizabeth was forced into it and, golly, she felt really REALLY bad about it.   I couldn't bear to watch part  2. 

*The Office Seasons 1 and 2
Nerd Husband and I were a big fan of Lisa Kudrow's sadly short-lived faux reality show The Comeback and this show reminds us of that one--and not just for its fake reality format.  It is by turns excruciating and hilarious.  Sometimes the excruciating parts make me want to stop watching but the tension and embarrassment of the excruciatingness make the hilarity more intense.  You appreciate release more when you feel held captive by tension.  And its just like an office--stress, tension, unbearable social awkwardness and failing hierarchy, punctuated with moments of humor and defiance.  And of course THIS GUY makes me keep watching.  HIGH-larious.   But I must say there is a meanness to this show that kind of bothers me sometimes.  The writers give us little moments of human decency to cling to but sometimes I wish they were a little more frequent so I could care more about the characters.   Most of the time their complacency and cynicism make them slightly less sympathetic than I'd like.

*Arrested Development Seasons 1-3
The writing and tempo of this show is clever and kept me watching--I'm a sucker for fast, witty dialogue.  The tendency for the show to use self-reflexive irony and a collage of its own past dialogue, even from season to season is also something I admire--it creates in-jokes for the fans and creates a sort of comedy short hand.  You can look at that as clever or lazy but as someone I oft quote once said, there is a fine line between clever and stupid. 

The Ron Howard narration is mostly unnecessary and I think the series' biggest downfall is the way it continually updates and rehashes the plot and character developments and flashes back to previous episodes.  Like the self-reflexive cannibalization I admire, it does this not only from season to season and episode to episode but it will even rehash parts of the current episode within itself just in case you missed something.  When you add this to the self-quoting the show does, I figured out that the writers only had to come up with about 15 minutes of new material per episode.  The rest is rehash.  Now if the show never found an audience, I suppose this is one way to try and hook people just tuning in but I found it really irritating and it slowed down the show's otherwise delicious tempo. 

And again there is a meanness in this show--its sort of a unilateral meanness that takes aim at just about everyone and anything (I'm surprised this show wasn't attacked as racist and homophobic--maybe it was, I'll have to Google it) and that sort of gives it permission to do so since it is an egalitarian meanness.  But there is a really strong, repeated anti-Christian theme with no balancing characters or plot lines. It was a little tedious.  At one point the show takes a really big dig at Terri Schiavo. 

Hey I'm all for irreverence and sacrificing sacred cows.  I mean, Life of Brian, I enjoyed it and wondered often if I should confess that, but come on BLESSED ARE THE CHEESE MAKERS, this is funny.  I think Monty Python takes up the tradition of the Feast of Fools of medieval times. 

But other things just cut a little close to the bone for comfort.  Ron Howard's got a real issue with Christianity, and his axe makes a really shrill sound when he tries to grind it. (Remember his quote about Aslan in the CS Lewis movies?  Something like, I didn't see why a lion sacrificing himself for his friends and rising from the dead has to have necessarily Christian connotations.)  It's this shrill axe grinding that occasionally turns the show from irreverent buffoonery to acrid assault. 

Otherwise, Jason Bateman, Jeffrey Tambor, Portia de Rossi, and Jessica Walter are solid, Michael Cera is delightful, and Will Arnett is screamingly hilarious.  And this guy, who is also in the cute update of Twelfth Night, She's the Man, is a find and a half.  (He also has a bit part in my Nerds in the Movies countdown winner Ghost World.) 

And I should say it didn't offend me enough to make me want to avoid the feature film which is expected to come out in 2009.

*American Idol
Can you believe I've never watched before?  I couldn't get past the mean part (again I go with the mean I guess I never got over school day bully-fear).  I teach (or used to teach) acting and movement to college performing arts students, many of whom let their fear botch their auditions and performances.  My raison d'etre has always been to help students conquer that fear and shine--so to see people cut down when putting themselves out there makes me cringe.  But once we get beyond that and into real and honest criticism of people who have a craft it got damned interesting.  Once a student has some confidence, I never shirk from giving it to them straight and tough.   (Though I imagine I have a bit more kindness and tact than Mr. Cowell, I have to admit, most the time he hits the target.) 

Anyway, we're hooked.  And don't mention a word about it--we record it on DVR so we are behind the rest of the world.

*Angel, Season 5
We've been watching this one for a long time--stretching it out.  This is the last of the Whedon oeuvre for us, so when this is over, until Dollhouse premieres, we have no more new Whedonverse to watch.  It's good story telling and has the usual moral complexity--sometimes self-consistent sometimes not but always interesting, nonetheless.

*Babel
Okay, I HATED this movie.  Alright, Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett are always superb.  And there was suspense in the storyline involving their children.  But the rest seems to be an overindulgence in anti-Americanism and naked Japanese teenagers.  Ho HUM.

*The Holiday
We were surprised that we disliked Babel as much as we did but we were even more surprised to find that we liked this movie as much as we did.  Jude Law's character was a great big female fantasy but other than that the characters were interesting and the story telling well done.  Not going to make a top 100 on any sort of list but it was still a very watchable film.  I love Jack Black by the way.  So maybe I shouldn't have been so surprised.

*Juno
Last night, Nerd Husband and I actually took a night out.  Pizza and a movie.  We realized that the last time we actually went to a movie theatre was last May 4th, my birthday, to see Spiderman 3 with my family.  May 4th was my due date and I was enormously pregnant and had to get up to pee like 3 times.  So we were over due for another trip. Juno is one of the sweetest movies I've seen in a long time--it features two Arrested Development alums, Jason Bateman and Michael Cera.  If possible Michael Cera is even more engaging and honest in this film than he is in AD.  And Jason Bateman is suitably sleazy.  I can't remember when I've been so touched by a film.  And I was able to wait until the credits were rolling to both pee and puke this time.   (My apologies to the Heritage Theatre parking lot.  Not the pee.  The puke.)

It's taken me so long to get this post written, I'm actually beginning to turn the corner on the nausea and fatigue.  I still need a big nap around 2:00 every day (if I'm lucky Nerd Baby the First cooperates and goes down for hers at the same time).  I am still yurking my guts up but the nausea only immediately precedes said yurking and doesn't last all day long. 

So hopefully the future intended counter in the corner will start bumping up very quickly.

Comic Book Genesis

My favorite comic books, television episodes, and superhero movies are the Genesis stories--how a villain and/or superhero came into being.  I was FURIOUS with Peter Jackson for leaving out the Smeagol Genesis story out of Fellowship but LITERALLY WEPT (ask my husband) when Return of the King opened with it.  (And silently cursed myself for not trusting Jackson with it more--it was a brilliant cut and paste on his part.) 

So I'm pretty stoked to hear that May 2009 is going to see the premier of what I hope will become a series of Genesis movies on one of my favorite comic books--X-Men.  They start with Hugh Jackman and Wolverine.

Good stuff. 

And also according to cinemablend.com there is a Justice League movie in the works with some  pretty heavy duty plot lines---HERE BE  SPOILERS

I must confess I have not  seen  Superman Returns.  I'm afraid I'll hate it.  Superman is a tough story to do well--it has some rather powerfully archetypal  story elements (see David Mamet's essay on Superman for full coverage of those), yet a guy who is impervious to just about everything can get rather boring.  I don't want to hate Superman like my husband does so I don't want to expose myself to a bad Superman movie.  (I know--Neurotic Nerd Logic.)

I think Superman II was almost a good Superman story in that regard.  Again--it explores some aspects of his genesis and takes the obvious difficulties of the character and tests them. 

Richard Donner's original cut would have been much better than what was put in the final cut.   Have you seen it?  It's rough to watch because the scoring is off and it doesn't have the polish of a true final cut but you see he was going in a much more masculine direction with the character.  The final cut that made it to the screen portrays Supe as a tragic Byronesque figure, the victim of his own beating heart ---you know, *whine* but father I LOVE her.  Donner, on the other hand, painted the decision to sleep with Lois Lane in more complex, rebellious and defiant hues.  He doesn't do it all for love.  Supe rebells against the  burden of  Heroic  Perfection , he lashes out against it in anger.  This is infinitely more interesting  than wearing a poet's shirt open to the navel and popping a bottle of champagne before retiring to the Super Satin Bed--only to find, hey, I got some, and it was swell, but ahh, alas, it cannot be.  In Donner's original version, he dares to make Superman a sinner in the hands of an angry father ghost.  Donner imagines with us what would happen if Superman served himself, with a little help from Lois Lane. 

(A horrible moment in comic book history--the image of Supe and Lois in bed together, ewww, I shudder.)

And there was no poet's shirt.  That just shows good judgment.   

I often wonder what the conversation was about that original cut and script--did folks think we couldn't take a Superman who SINS?  That we needed a Superman who did it all for love, so we can easily forgive his crimes?   

Not me--I like a Superman who REBELLS.  That's spicy.

But I guess I'm going to have to see Superman Returns because it sounds like if I want to see Justice Leauge (and who wouldn't?) I may need some background.   

Bad News for The Hobbit

The third party in a string of disgruntled and unpaid folk has brought a suit against New Line:  The Tolkien Estate.  According to The Tolkien Trust (the charity built from the Tolkien estate), New Line promised 7.5 percent of all receipts.  Thus far they have only received $62,500--which is a heck of a lot less than the $6 billion the films have grossed world wide.  They currently seek to block the rights to produce The Hobbit.

The Ring of (Box Office) Power corrupts the hearts of men--selfishly, I hope that this can be temporarily resolved before the rights have to be dropped into the fires of Mount Doom.

Stuff I Would Think About If I Could

Steven Pinker has written some compelling books--my favorite is not the usual one, How the Mind Works but another lesser known one called The Blank Slate where he uses contemporary cognitive science to overturn the Rousseau myth of The Blank Slate and the related idea of The Noble Savage.  (To give you and idea where this overturn goes, the subtitle of the book is "The Modern Denial of Human Nature".) 

Here he recommends a book by Jamie Flynn called What Is Intelligence--which traces  an interesting statistical  phenomenon:  IQs have been growing over the course of time.  I'd like to read it one of these days but being a Nerd Mother (and not a Mother Nerd) is eating into my Dilettante Time.  I'm more likely to sing along with this book for the 6, 785th time.  (Thanks a lot, Arwen.)

Anyhoo--in reading ABOUT the book a few things occur to me like, the fact that increasing familiarity with the tests in terms of entertainment (IQ tests on the internet, Mensa Page a Day calendars, IQ test puzzle books, etc.) is simply increasing the particular skill sets these tests are designed to measure.  So the test begins to measure itself rather than any particular increase in synaptic connection speed, grey matter, or analogic ability.  We are also taking more and more standardized tests and standardized test prep courses so our test taking skills in general are improving. 

He also proposes something absurd--that if intelligence is actually INCREASING then relative to general intelligence some death row inmates would now be considered mentally handicapped by these new standards and should be classified as unable to stand trial.  I haven't read the full argument but this  I do not understand at ALL.  (I am anti-death penalty by the way so it has nothing to do with a thirst for blood.) 

If there are standards for standing trial and being held responsible for one's actions in our civil code, these criteria should be in no way RELATIVE.  And these IQ tests are notoriously racially skewed--if this is true and what Flynn proposes were to be enacted, there would involve a horribly racist and ironic permissiveness toward crimes perpetrated by minorities. 

Today my Diletantte Time has been spent arguing about an argument that I've only read about but hey what is self-published blogging FOR, anyway? 

Jim Henson: The Movie

Another movie to get excited about. 

I'm rediscovering Henson all over again through Baby Nerd. 

What a net positive to the world this man was. 

His legacy positively glows.  Still.