From The Morgue

Went to see high school comedy du jour ‘Mean Girls’ last night, on the strength of some truly average reviews from numerous outlets.
I was mildly surprised to find that these average reviews are far too generous.
Perhaps everyone is hoping desperately that writer-actor Tina Fey becomes the saviour of comedy, and by a massive emperor’s-new-clothes style collective act of will on this movie it will somehow come to pass.
Its an absolute mess. The zingy, sharp first half transforms into a lumbering and clumsy behemoth in the second half. Tina Fey delivers a painful Mary-Sue that should have been cut right out. Nothing remotely meaningful or memorable about any of the characters is established at any point. At the end you can see the kabuki hand of plot requirement pushing characters into life-changing wisdom and new friendships and romances without any plausible explanation.
Its just a mess, and frankly, I was disappointed. The golden age of the high school comedy remains the mid-to-late nineties. Mean Girls was never going to sit at the same table as American Pie or Clueless, but it doesn’t even earn a place near, say, Can’t Hardly Wait.
The physical comedy is good, though, if you like that sort of thing.

When I was making the bed today, I picked up the topsheet and stood beside the bed and flicked it out, and it landed on the bed in exactly the right position.
Then I picked up the duvet and with a flick of the wrist it seemed to launch itself over the bed correctly.
I felt like the James Bond of making beds.
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Portugal just knocked England out of Euro 2004. There will be blood in the streets of Lisboa tonight.
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More basketball today. Insanely good workout. Five menfolk and two womenfolk. Good stuff. (Note to self – stop hurling passes centimetres over the heads of shorter players – one of these days you will misjudge and break someone’s nose.)

So I got an email from a dude from Radio 4. He wants to record some Dungeons and Dragons gaming for a doco on the 30th anniversary of D&D.
Cool.
More news if and when there is any more news.

So said Tony Blair on Sunday, in probably the smartest move he has made in the two years since I started paying attention to him.
He has set up the debate over Britain’s position on the EU Constitution extremely cleverly. The critics and Eurosceptics are on the back foot, and if Blair keeps hammering this soundbite home, they’ll stay that way.
It is an incredibly clever phrasing. Of course, it helps that the facts are on his side this time. It also doesn’t hurt that the opposition – the ‘mythmakers’ – include in their number many at the racist end of the nationalism spectrum.
The debate is really about whether or not England should go it alone or should join the EU fully. For what it is worth, I think England would take a hit by joining the EU fully at the moment – the currency is incredibly strong right now, and that alone is a good reason to stay out. In the long term, though, it will be better if they do sign up. Certainly, as an internationalist, I think it will be better for the world if they do join, not least to weaken that awful Anglo-American alliance that is sustaining a lot of horrible situations in the world and undermining the UN. But from the perspective of a Brit, it is clear there are valuable arguments on both sides.
Its a tricky sell to the public, but Blair is going for it in exactly the right way. With this angle he’s got a shot. Wow. He almost earns some respect from me for it.
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Reality vs myth is at the core of so much political debate, especially with the very sophisticated manipulation of the media around the world. In America, of course, this is particularly clear.
(Although the culture wars that are dividing America are probably best understood as myth vs myth – a society split in two, divided between the contrary narratives served up by the massive PR operations of the two opposing forces.)
The Right-wing media machine is making great hay at the moment of Chris Hitchens, a left-wing commentator, tearing strips off Michael Moore’s new film Fahrenheit 9/11.
This fits into a decade-long effort to label Michael Moore as an extreme and unreliable propagandist – the left’s equivalent of Rush Limbaugh. A lot of people on the left have fallen for this; indeed, among a certain chunk of left-wing thinkers it is necessary to denounce Michael Moore before going on to attack the right with one’s credentials as a clear thinker established.
Be clear about this: Moore is not a left-wing Rush Limbaugh.
Limbaugh, along with the rest of the extreme right, tries to characterise their political opponents as dangerous and deluded people who can barely conceal their hate for right-thinking, ordinary Americans. Their political project is primarily about finding “proof” of America-hatred, and discounting any counter-evidence.
Any approach that fosters hate is itself hateful.
Michael Moore does not foster hate.
Nothing could be further from the truth. His political project is to expose as false the narrative presented by those in power.
The powerful, the Bush administration in this case, always present a narrative to the world that explains and justifies their actions. This narrative often bears little relationship to the real evaluations and value judgements going on behind the scenes.
This is why all the nitpicking sites that ‘debunk’ Bowling for Columbine miss the point. They turn elisions and normal documentary practice as misrepresentations, and shout that this invalidates the whole. It doesn’t.
This is why Chris Hitchens misses the point.
As I put it in a post on RPGnet, “Hitchens has valuable points to make. He buries them in irrelevant personal insults, straw man attacks, massive oversimplifications, false dichotomies, and an apparent inability to comprehend Moore’s intentions, let alone consider the validity of those intentions or his success or otherwise in achieving them. Ultimately it is shoddy evidence that doesn’t lead to the conclusion we’re asked to swallow.”
I guess I should put a conclusion here, but I’ve run out of thinking. Maybe someone else can do one for me. If anyone’s read this far.

This link actually comes from an article on Salon: Illegal Art.
Within are the overdub remix of the first Harry Potter film, Todd Haynes’ legendary Karen-Carpenter-biopic-performed-with-Barbie-dolls ‘Superstar’, and the Grey Album.
This is good stuff. It will be busy for the next couple days from the Salon link, but is worth bookmarking. Get yer guerilla culture right here goddamit.
Now if only I could find a copy of The Phantom Edit…

As in, ‘what is Ron the Body actually about’.
20 pages of notes later, I’ve got it sorted. Sweet. I am excited. More writing to be done.
Today, ran around at lunchtime playing basketball with bunch of women who are still learning the game. Silly but fun. More on Thursday. Breaking a sweat of any kind is good.
Hayfever sucks. Stupid Northern Hemisphere pollen. Not used to it.
Odd transition thing: as noted, have come to an end of a period of busy stuff, major features of which were some (North) American friends who are now leaving Scotland. Recently emailed friend Jasmine in NZ about how I felt like I was in a tunnel and that soon I’d be out of it and I hoped I’d be able to make contact with some of the cool folk I’d lost touch with over the busy period.
Well, today I went to a farewell party for Nancy. Beforehand I was scribbling Ron stuff at Elephant House, where I crossed paths with George and Tom, two of the people I’d been missing. One door closes, another door opens, that sort of thing…
Looking forward to sleepover at Haunted Derby Gaol. Wooooo.

I went to a Doctor Who convention yesterday. ‘Global Conspiracy’ was a one-day affair themed around a story called ‘The Green Death’, just released on DVD. This story lives on in the vague memories of a generation as ‘the one with the giant maggots’.
The guests were writers/producers Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts, guest actor Stewart Bevan, and Nicholas Courtney who played the iconic recurring character the Brigadier. They were all very charismatic raconteurs, thoughtful and driven and absolutely lovely to listen to.
Most compelling was Barry Letts, who was in acting in the 40s and 50s, then moved to directing, then on to production and writing. He knows the business of TV thoroughly, and expressed himself with care and commitment. He was mesmerising. The others were also great fun; the massively enthusiastic Terrance Dicks, the booming luvvie Nick Courtney, and Stewart Bevan, bemused to find himself answering questions about a minor role from thirty years ago.
The discussion ranged much further than Doctor Who, though. A major theme was concern over the current state of British TV and film. There was a charming moment when Barry Letts talked about the great tide of reality TV, and as if on cue the other three panellists shook their heads gravely at the awfulness of it all.
I like Doctor Who. I like what it stands for. I remember mulling over the character and the TV show when I was newly arrived in Britain, flying a kite on Blackheath as it happens, and it all made sense in a way it never quite had from the other side of the world. Scribbled some lines in my notebook that evening, which I’ve dug out for this blog entry:
“The power of the idea – a man who solves problems through good humour and common sense and lateral thinking, who opposes the crushing logic of Voltaire’s bastards… there is a need for this kind of man, now more than ever. This man makes particular sense among the isolating traditions of England. Ultimately, [the heath] is where his stories return to – the common space in an increasingly uncommon world.”

Irony dept: finally start working on novel about governing power of body in life. Immediately get just sick enough to not be able to work on it. Stupid body.
Nostalgia dept: Sai Baba doco on BBC2 right now. Todman St regulars may remember the Religion Of Love flyer we had on our wall for so long.
World Wide Morgue dept: i have a livejournal – mr_orgue. Just to comment on other LJs, really. Friend me if you have one, I’ve done a few people so far. I also have a gmail, and I have scored the ‘morgue’ id. Rockin’.
Today dept: sat around reading. George Monbiot’s ‘The Age of Consent’, Don DeLillo’s ‘Underworld’.
Sibling dept: oldmost sister Miriam leaving NZ for the UK in a week. Davie diaspora continues.
Comic dept: Grant Morrison’s ‘Seaguy’ is ‘Astro City’ crossed with ‘Flex Mentallo’. Or something. Joss Whedon’s ‘Astonishing XMen’ is serviceable.

“What does it mean to be human?”
So I sat in a cafe and I brought out my notebooks and writing books for Ron the Body, last touched almost a year ago. And I was surprised by how much there is – 40,000 or 50,000 words, whole subplots and sections I’d forgotten, and a lot of it seemed good.
What I had to do was what I needed to do a year ago, what I realised I had to sort out before carrying on – I had to figure out exactly what Ron the Body is about. And check that it is about what I think it’s about.
So I wrote five pages on it, impressions and core ideas, key principles. Key questions. Including the one at the top of this entry. Blimey. So, not avoiding the big questions, then, I guess 🙂
It’s cool. My brain has been Ron-buzzing since.
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Over on Rafah Kid, Mark has posted a great entry about how the sides talk to each other over Israel and Palestine, including an excellent section about Rachel Corrie and how she has become a rhetorical battleground.
Read it. It is really something special.