Lan D. Ho!

2011-11-20T17:40:00.002-05:00

"...a single cockroach will completely wreck the appeal of a bowl of cherries, but a cherry will do nothing at all for a bowl of cockroaches." (Daniel Kahneman, referencing Paul Rozin, Thinking, Fast and Slow, 302)

2011-10-30T14:22:00.002-04:00

Self-control and intelligence:

In one of the most famous experiments in the history of psychology, Walter Mischel and his students exposed four-year-old children to a cruel dilemma. They were given a choice between a small reward (one Oreo), which they could have at any time, or a larger reward (two cookies) for which they had to wait 15 minutes under difficult conditions. They were to remain alone in a room, facing a desk with two objects: a single cookie and a bell that the child could ring at any time to call in the experimenter and receive the one cookie. As the experiment was described: "There were no toys, books, pictures, or other potentially distracting items in the room. The experimenter left the room and did not return until 15 min had passed or the child had rung the bell, eaten the rewards, stood up, or shown any signs of distress.

The children were watched through a one-way mirror, and the film that shows their behavior during the waiting time always has the audience roaring in laughter. About half the children managed the feat of waiting for 15 minutes, mainly by keeping their attention away from the tempting reward. Ten or fifteen years later, a large gap had opened between those who had resisted temptation and those who had not. The resisters had higher measures of executive control in cognitive tasks, and especially the ability to reallocate their attention effectively. As young adults, they were less likely to take drugs. A significant difference in intellectual aptitude emerged: the children who had shown more self-control as four-year-olds had substantially higher scores on tests of intelligence." (Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, 47)

2011-10-27T15:30:00.002-04:00

In order to go to Kyoto, I had to fly into Tokyo and then take the bullet train. I managed to stumble my way through a conversation with an agent and buy a ticket. I had no idea what to do—the Tokyo train station is a six-story labyrinthine structure devoid of signs in English. So I flagged down the most attractive woman I saw, showed her my ticket, and shrugged my shoulders, and indicated that I had no idea what to do. She spent spent thirty minutes helping me find where I needed to go. She even carried one of my bags.

Then in Kyoto I fell in love with a girl who worked at the bakery where I would eat pastries stuffed with red beans. I thought her name was Donq (pronounced "donk"). She wore a tag on her uniform that read "Donq," but it turns out that that was the name of the bakery.

Also, while I was in Kyoto, I ate a raw egg every morning for 500 yen. Easiest 2000 yen I ever made.

2011-10-27T13:56:00.004-04:00

More art imitating life:

Murakami's fiction has a special way of leaking into reality. During my five days in Japan, I found that I was less comfortable in actual Tokyo than I was in Murakami's Tokyo—the real city filtered through the imaginative lens of his books. I spent as much time in that world as possible. I went to a baseball game at Jingu Stadium—the site of Murakami's epiphany—and stood high up in the frenzy of the bleachers, paying special attention every time someone hit a double. (The closest I got to my own epiphany was when I shot an edamame bean straight down my throat and almost choked.) I went for a long run on Murakami's favorite Tokyo running route, the Jingu-Gaien, while listening to his favorite running music, the Rolling Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil" and Eric Clapton's 2001 album "Reptile." My hotel was near Shinjuku Station, the transportation hub around which "1Q84" pivots, and I drank coffee and ate curry at its characters' favorite meeting place, the Nakamuraya cafe. I went to a Denny's at midnight—the scene of the opening of Murakami's novel "After Dark"—and eavesdropped on Tokyoites over French toast and bubble tea. I became hyperaware, as I wandered around, of the things Murakami novels are hyperaware of: incidental music, ascents and descents, the shapes of people's ears.

In doing all of this I was joining a long line of Murakami pilgrims. People have published cookbooks based on the meals described in his novels and assembled endless online playlists of the music his characters listen to. Murakami told me, with obvious delight, that a company in Korea has organized "Kafka on the Shore" tour groups in Western Japan, and that his Polish translator is putting together a "1Q84"–themed travel guide to Tokyo. (Sam Anderson, "The Fierce Imagination of Haruki Murakami," New York Times, October 21, 2011)

2011-10-22T20:45:00.002-04:00

Queries and responses:

Lan: I'm buying a saucepan. Can you tell me the difference between a normal saucepan and a shallow saucepan and whether one is preferable over the other, particularly for everyday use?

Lynh: I suppose it's all about splatter. I think a normal saucepan is good for everyday use. A cast-iron pan is best for searing meats because they get extremely hot but it's very painful to clean. Also, nonstick pans should not be put in the dishwasher.

Lan: I was just asking about the depth of saucepans.

*
Lan: I'm buying a saucepan. Can you tell me the difference between a normal saucepan and a shallow saucepan and whether one is preferable over the other, particularly for everyday use?

Stephanie: I find regular saucepans more versatile, since you can use them to boil things as well.

Lan: I bought the shallow one because it was on deep sale. I am going to boil the shit out of some stuff just to show you.

Stephanie: It was probably on deep sale because it's less useful.

*
Lan: I'm buying a saucepan. Can you tell me the difference between a normal saucepan and a shallow saucepan and whether one is preferable over the other, particularly for everyday use?

Chris: I guess it depends on what you cook. I would probably go for the deeper one due to versatility.

Lan: I bought the shallow one because it was on deep sale. FUCK YOU AND YOUR "VERSATILITY" AND YOUR CLICK.

[seconds later] I MEAN COUCH.

Chris: Deep sale. Don't come crying to me when your ass wants to cook two gallons of spaghetti sauce.

*
Lan: I'm buying a saucepan. Can you tell me the difference between a normal saucepan and a shallow saucepan and whether one is preferable over the other, particularly for everyday use?

Adrienne: I think a normal saucepan is more versatile, especially if you enjoy cooking things with sauce.

Lan: I bought the shallow one because it was on deep sale. I'm going to cook all sorts of shit in it—including things with sauce—just to show your ass how versatile it is.

Adrienne: Do you have a first dish in mind?

Lan: No. I was imagining heating soups out of cans and making ramen, but I'm sure I'll cook other things.

Adrienne: Good luck blanching vegetables in that thing.

2011-10-16T11:07:00.000-04:00

"If you hadn't cut your hair," I said, "you could have gone as Gogo Yubari for Halloween."

"That would've been great. I think I'm going as a slutty maid this year," KT said.

"I wish you would dress as slutty whatever all year round."

"Ha ha!"

"I'm totally serious."

2011-10-07T21:05:00.000-04:00

The price of hope:

Is it stupid for a poor person to buy lottery tickets? Maybe not. You don't just buy a chance at a big prize. You buy a thrill, a hope, or a fantasy. One consequence of buying a lottery ticket is having an agreeable fantasy. The poorer you are, the more you may need such fantasies just to carry on. You could say that such fantasies are "worth more" to the poor person than to someone with a comfortable job and good prospects. So maybe it is not so stupid to buy a lottery ticket with little chance of winning.

Suppose you are very poor and, unlike most university students, have no prospects of a comfortable life. You value having some hope in your life at $2.50. Then a $1 lottery ticket is a bargain. The expected value of of buying a ticket (on this assumption) is +$1.95.

Thus, contrary to what many more prosperous people say, it is not obviously irrational for poor people to spend some of their not-so-spare cash in a kind of voluntary taxation. But it is a miserable world, where that is the only way that many people can put a little hope into their lives. (Ian Hacking, An Introduction to Probability and Inductive Logic, 90)

2011-09-11T18:11:00.000-04:00

"The Einsteins left Caputh in December 1932, scheduled to divide the coming year between Princeton and Berlin. Einstein knew better. 'Turn around,' he told his wife as they stepped off the porch of their house. 'You will never see it again.' She thought his pessimism foolish." (Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, 186)

2011-09-11T18:08:00.002-04:00

Ten years ago I was flying from New York back to Austin when my plane was ordered down. We landed in Kentucky. I ended up spending several days in Fort Mitchell, where I stayed at a medieval-themed inn called the Drawbridge Hotel. Most of my time there was spent watching CNN loop footage of the planes crashing into the World Trade Center.

2011-08-21T12:52:00.001-04:00

"Excessive is the only way we know how to live."

2011-08-15T01:16:00.000-04:00

"Redemption, that is, redemption of the soul, was a private, individual matter and therefore independent of the sphere of national redemption with which traditional messianism was concerned." (Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, 15)

2011-07-23T14:56:00.001-04:00

Live fast, die young.

2011-06-29T05:56:00.000-04:00

"Toll-booth operators supposedly have the highest suicide rate of any occupation," CP said.

"What about suicide bombers?" I asked.

2011-06-20T20:54:00.000-04:00

Instrumental to my understanding of morality when I was growing up (David "Zeb" Cook, Player's Handbook, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition, 48–49):

Imagine how groups of different alignments might seek to divide a treasure trove. Suppose the adventuring party contains one character of each alignment (a virtually impossible situation, but useful for illustration). Each is then allowed to present his argument:

The lawful good character says, "Before we went on this adventure, we agreed to split the treasure equally, and that's what we're going to do. First, we'll deduct the costs of the adventure and pay for the resurrection of those who have fallen, since we’re sharing all this equally. If someone can't be raised, then his share goes to his family."

"Since we agreed to split equally, that's fine," replies the lawful evil character thoughtfully. "But there was nothing in this deal about paying for anyone else's expenses. It's not my fault if you spent a lot on equipment! Furthermore, the deal applies only to the surviving partners; I don't remember anything about dead partners. I'm not setting aside any money to raise that klutz. He's someone else's problem."

Flourishing a sheet of paper, the lawful neutral character breaks in. "It's a good thing for you two that I've things together, nice and organized. I had the foresight to write down the exact terms of our agreement, and we're all going to follow them."

The neutral good character balances the issues and decides, "I'm in favor of equal shares—that keeps everyone happy. I feel that expenses are each adventurer's own business. If someone spent too much, then he should be more careful next time. But raising fallen comrades seems like a good idea, so I say we set aside money to do that."

After listening to the above arguments, the true neutral character decides not to say anything yet. He's not particularly concerned with any choice. If the issue can be resolved without his becoming involved, great. But if it looks like one person is going to get everything, that's when he'll step in and cast his vote for a more balanced distribution.

The neutral evil character died during the adventure, so he doesn't have anything to say. However, if he could make his opinion known, he would gladly argue that the group ought to pay for raising him and set aside a share for him. The neutral evil character would also hope that the group doesn't discover the big gem he secretly pocketed during one of the encounters.

The chaotic good character objects to the whole business. "Look, it's obvious that the original agreement is messed up. I say we scrap it and reward people for what they did. I saw some of you hiding in the background when the rest of us were doing all the real fighting. I don't see why anyone should be rewarded for being a coward! As far as raising dead partners, I say that's a personal choice. I don’t mind chipping in for some of them, but I don't think I want everyone back in the group."

Outraged at the totally true but tactless accusation of cowardice, the chaotic evil character snaps back, "Look, I was going an important job, guarding the rear! Can I help it if nothing tried to sneak up behind us? Now, it seems to me that all of you are pretty beat up—and I'm not. So, I don't think there's going to be too much objection if I take all the jewelry and that wand. And I'll take anything interesting those two dead guys have. Now you can either work with me and do what I say or get lost—permanently!"

The chaotic neutral character is also dead (after he tried to charge a gorgon), so he doesn't contribute to the argument. However, if he were alive, he would join forces with whichever side appealed to him the most at the moment. If he couldn't decide, he'd flip a coin.

Clearly, widely diverse alignments in a group can make even the simplest task impossible. It is almost certain that the group in the example would come to blows before they could reach a decision. But dividing cash is not the only instance in which the group would have problems. Consider the battle in which they gained the treasure in the first place.

Upon penetrating the heart of the ruined castle, the party met its foe, a powerful gorgon commanded by a mad warrior. There, chained behind the two, was a helpless peasant kidnapped from a nearby village.

The lawful good character unhesitatingly (but not foolishly) entered the battle; it was the right thing to do. He considered his duty to protect the villagers. Besides, he could not abandon an innocent hostage to such fiends. He was willing to fight until he won or was dragged off by his friends. He had no intention of fighting to his own death, but he would not give up until he had tried to his utmost to defeat the evil creatures.

The lawful evil character also entered the battle willingly. Although he cared nothing for the peasant, he could not allow the two fiends to mock him. Still, there was no reason to risk all for one peasant. If forced to retreat, he could return with a stronger force, capture the criminals, and execute them publicly. If the peasant died in the meantime, their punishment would be that much more horrible.

The lawful neutral character was willing to fight, because the villains threatened public order. However, he was not willing to risk his own life. He would have preferred to come back later with reinforcements. If the peasant could be saved, that is good, because he is part of the community. If not, it would be unfortunate but unavoidable.

The neutral good character did not fight the gorgon or the warrior, but he tried to rescue the peasant. Saving he peasant was worthwhile, but there was no need to risk injury and death along the way. Thus, while the enemy was distracted in combat, he tried to slip past and free the peasant.

The true neutral character weighed the situation carefully. Although it looked like the forces working for order would have the upper hand in the battle, he knew there had been a general trend toward chaos and destruction in the region that must be combated. He tried to help, but if the group failed, he could work to restore the balance of law and chaos elsewhere in the kingdom.

The neutral evil character cared nothing about law, order, or the poor peasant. He figured that there had to be some treasure around somewhere. After all, the villain's lair had once been a powerful temple. He could poke around for cash while the others did the real work. If the group got into real trouble and it looked like the villains would attack him, then he would fight. Unfortunately, a stray magical arrow killed him just after he found a large gem.

The chaotic good character joined the fight for several reasons. Several people in the group were his friends, and he wanted to fight at their sides. Furthermore, the poor, kidnapped peasant deserves to be rescued. Thus, the chaotic good character fought to aid his companions and save the peasant. He didn't care if the villains were killed, captured, or just driven away. Their attacks against the village didn't concern him.

The chaotic neutral character decided to charge, screaming bloodthirsty cries, straight for the gorgon. Who knows? He might have broken its nerve and thrown it off guard. He discovered his plan was a bad one when the gorgon's breath killed him.

The chaotic evil character saw no point in risking his hide for the villagers, the peasant, or the rest of the party. In fact, he thought of several good reasons not to. If the party was weakened, he might be able to take over. If the villains won, he could probably make a deal with them and join their side. If everyone was killed, he could take everything he wanted and leave. All these sounded a lot better than getting hurt for little or no gain. So he stayed near the back of the battle, watching. If anyone asked, he could say he was watching the rear, making sure no one came to aid the enemy.

The two preceding examples of alignment are extreme situations. It's not very likely that a player will ever play in a group of alignments as varied as those given here. If such a group ever does form, players should seriously reconsider the alignments of the different members of the party! More often, the adventuring party will consist of characters with relatively compatible alignments. Even then, players who role-play their characters' alignments will discover small issues of disagreement.

2011-06-19T23:30:00.002-04:00

Maybe the cultural marketplace makes it unlikely that we will find undiscovered treasure:¹

When I was fifteen and sixteen I scoured Brooklyn's used bookstores and thrift shops for the hardest-to-find [Philip K.] Dick titles, trying to complete a shelf of the thirty-seven-odd published works. This was 1979 and 1980, before Dick published his last three novels and died, and before the posthumous publication of a dozen or so manuscripts. Locating Vulcan's Hammer was a notable triumph. I'll always remember dowsing it out of a crate of moldering paperbacks that had been pushed beneath a shelf, dusting its glorious, hideous cover (Dick's biographer Lawrence Sutin describes it as occupying "deserved purgatory as half of a 1960 Ace Double") and more or less pinching myself in disbelief: Vulcan's fucking Hammer! I'd found it! Of course, then I had to go and read the damn thing. The irony is that out-of-printness served the purposes of exploring the [oeuvre] nicely: the easiest books to find, and therefore the first I'd happened to read, were mostly Dick's masterpieces ([The Man in the High] Castle, Ubik, [The Three] Stigmata [of Palmer Eldritch], Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?). This was because the better books had received comparatively many reprintings, whereas the dreck was always the rarest essence. The problem nowadays is that Vintage's uniformly prestigious shelf of clean, authoritative editions disguise these natural hierarchies absolutely." (Jonathan Lethem, "You Don't Know Dick," from The Disappointment Artist, 79–80)

¹ In our native culture, at least.

2011-05-30T07:38:00.001-04:00

"In antiquity this sylvan landscape was the scene of a strange and recurring tragedy. On the northern shore of the lake, right under the precipitous cliffs on which the modern city of Nemi is perched, stood the sacred grove and sanctuary of Diana Nemorensis, or Diana of the Wood. In this sacred grove there grew a certain tree round which at any time of the day, and probably far into the night, a grim figure might be seen to prowl. In his hand he carried a drawn sword, and he kept peering warily about him as if at every instant he expected to be set up on by an enemy. He was a priest and a murderer; and the man for whom he looked was sooner or later to murder him and hold the priesthood in his stead. Such was the rule of the sanctuary. A candidate for the priesthood could only succeed to office by slaying the priest, and having slain him, he retained office till he was himself slain by a stronger or craftier." (James G. Frazer, "The King of the Wood," from The Golden Bough, reprinted in The Waste Land: Norton Critical Edition, 29)

2011-05-29T14:12:00.001-04:00

"Still drawing pictures of ninjas attacking dragons?"

2011-05-29T13:51:00.000-04:00

“A 1975 car accident which left Eno bedridden for several months resulted in perhaps his most significant innovation, the creation of ambient music: unable to move to turn up his stereo to hear above the din of a rainstorm, he realized that music could assume the same properties as light or color, and blend thoroughly into its given atmosphere without upsetting the environmental balance.” (Jason Ankeny, from "Brian Eno," Allmusic.com)

2011-05-28T07:53:00.005-04:00

"And Tam has none of the charm or the magic of the girl I met in Hawaii: her hair is longer, the bags under her eyes more prominent, and the glow that she emanated so brightly in that tropical place has been dulled to something so faint as to make me wonder whether it was ever even there in the first place. She is sitting on the couch, and she puts on her sunglasses. I am heartbroken." (from "Notes on Tam Vo," June 26, 2009)

2011-05-27T18:43:00.000-04:00

"After many years I became old and white; I heard a great deal, many lies and falsehoods, but the longer I lived the more I understood that there were really no lies. Whatever really doesn't happen is dreamed at night. It happens to one if it doesn't happen to another, tomorrow if not today, or a century hence if not next year. What difference can it make? Often I heard tales of which I said, 'Now this is a thing that cannot happen.' But before a year had elapsed I heard that it actually had come to pass somewhere." (Isaac Bashevis Singer, "Gimpel the Fool," from The Collected Stories, 14)

2011-05-26T08:49:00.002-04:00

"We're a perfect couple—I'm an emotional cripple, and she has the memory of a goldfish."

2011-05-08T16:37:00.003-04:00

"Pleasure is not the goal of man, but knowledge. Pleasure and happiness come to an end. It is a mistake to suppose that pleasure is the goal. The cause of all the miseries we have in the world is that men foolishly think pleasure to be the ideal to strive for. After a time man finds that it is not happiness, but knowledge, towards which he is going, and that both pleasure and pain are great teachers, and that he learns as much from evil as from good." (Swami Vivekananda, Karma-Yoga, from The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, volume 1, 27)

2011-05-01T21:01:00.002-04:00

“You can’t say that art is no good because Mozart didn’t prevent the concentration camps, any more than you can say that no more poems are possible after Auschwitz. All I know is that without Mozart and the rest we wouldn’t survive.” (Gerhard Richter, The Daily Practice of Painting, 195)

2011-04-21T19:45:00.003-04:00

"We should not assume that without Pound Eliot would have published some of the weaker passages in the drafts. But, as soon as one says this, one must add that it is highly doubtful whether, without Pound, The Waste Land would have been completed and published at all. The most important thing Pound gave Eliot was the support of a constant affection, encouragement, and belief. And he gave it at a time of deep discouragement verging on despair. It seems almost a miracle when one considers the circumstances in which the poem was written that it was written at all. To Eliot, struggling in ill health and overwork to combine two obligations—his sense of his vocation as a poet, and his duty to the unhappy girl he had married, who was dependent on him—Pound's unwavering belief in his friend's genius was the stimulus without which he might not have found the courage to persevere. But in addition to his selfless promotion of Eliot's interests as man and poet, Pound showed, for all his bluster and boisterousness, his slashings and damnings, an extreme selflessness and sensitivity in the kind of criticism he gave. He concentrated on making the poem as good as Eliot could make it. He gave his whole mind to the problem of 'Was this good verse?' 'Is this the right word?' 'Does this strike a false note?' 'Is this becoming monotonous?' He makes no comment on the subject matter of the poem, its religious or philosophic views, it's lack of those 'life-enhancing' qualities whose absence later critics have deplored. It was Eliot's poem he was working on, He shows his genius as a critic in the applause he gives—'Echt,' 'OK'—to the most characteristically Eliotian lines and passages. One's heart rises when one sees his 'Stet' or 'OK.' " (Helen Gardner, "The Waste Land: Paris 1922," reprinted in The Waste Land: Norton Critical Edition, 77–78)

2011-04-10T15:53:00.003-04:00

"My private tragedy, which cannot, and indeed should not, be anybody's concern, is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammeled, rich, and infinitely docile Russian tongue for a second-rate brand of English, devoid of any of those apparatuses—the baffling mirror, the black velvet backdrop, the implied associations and traditions—which the native illusionist, frac-tails flying, can magically use to transcend the heritage in his own way." (Vladimir Nabokov, "On a Book Entitled Lolita," Lolita, 316–317)

2011-04-10T15:40:00.002-04:00

"We interpret the past in the light of what we understand. Thus from the time when history set up as a mental discipline (not to say, an obsession) until 1919, inflation was a relatively rare phenomenon. Then it became frequent, and modern historians see in it a cause of the decline of the Roman Empire. Similarly since 1789 history has had a new perspective, revolution being a successful revolt, and revolt a revolution that has failed. Thus a new or rediscovered fact may give its bias to history. It is not research-work that has led to the understanding of El Greco; it is modern art. Each genius that breaks with the past deflects, as it were, the whole range of earlier forms." (André Malraux, The Voices of Silence, 68)

2011-04-02T17:02:00.004-04:00

From my notes:

Each frame of a movie is the same size. Any illusion of difference in size is created by shot distance and perspective.

Our understanding of the world approximates the way a world appears on film. We know more about the world than ever before, but our understanding is limited by size and perspective: photographs, as they appear on our computer screens and in books, are roughly the same size and shape. Our response to these things is thus homogenized and flattened. A picture portraying the immensity of St. Peter’s Basilica or the Grand Canyon is the same size as a picture of Jay Leno or a dining set. This is an additional obstacle to our correctly perceiving size, and this contributes to our diminished sense of wonder. Also, the endless presentation of rare things, courtesy of reproduction, has made even the most wondrous things banal.

It may just be that we are no longer capable of finding wonder in the Olympian, and so we look for it in the intimate, the private.

2011-04-02T16:35:00.001-04:00

To be alive in modern times is to have a diminished sense of wonder.

2011-03-31T21:56:00.003-04:00

Courtesy of Timothy Murray.

2011-02-28T21:59:00.006-05:00

On gambling:

Nothing is more common than for people to make gambling into a drug, which will enable them to escape the consciousness of their economic situation. These people must lose; it may be that, for them, losing is a stronger drug than winning. Since wealthy people find it easier than poor people to contemplate their economic situation dispassionately, it follows that, independent of all technical considerations about the actual game, their chances of winning are greater.

Certain cells have the peculiar ability to take on bodily forms as the need arises, so that fingers or nose, flippers or tail, can be formed from the same cells. In the same way, great passions have the ability to stand in vicariously for quite different forms of life. We can perhaps go even further than Anatole France in his profound understanding of these things and demonstrate that gambling may be a substitute not only for religion but also for love, and even for marriage, for a man's profession, and even for a creative life. Most miraculous of all, however, is that gambling can take possession not only of the future—in the form of feverish expectation—but also of the past. Indeed, isn't its ability to alter the visage of the past the greatest expression of its power over the gambler's heart? I sometimes believe that most gamblers are the stepchildren of love, whether of parental or sexual love, and that here at the gaming tables they are looking to fate to provide them with an adoption that ennobles them more than the origins that repudiated them.

Why do anxious people have an irresistible tendency toward games of chance? Perhaps because their policy is to bury their heads in the sand, or because they are able to endure the prospect of the future only if it is grotesquely disguised. (Walter Benjamin, "In Parallel with My Actual Diary," Selected Writings of Walter Benjamin, vol. 2, 413–414)

2011-02-27T16:44:00.005-05:00

The seriousness of art:

In revolutionizing opera, Wagner realized he would have to revolutionize opera production. What he confronted was a situation where opera was primarily a social rather than a musical event. This was even obvious from the physical arrangements in opera houses. Spectators were seated in hierarchical tiers of boxes in a horseshoe-shaped auditorium where seeing the stage was not as important as seeing, and being seen by, other spectators. The stage itself was small and ornate, and the theatre remained lit throughout a performance. Members of the audience chattering among themselves, were almost as much a part of the show as the singers on stage. The operas themselves were apt to be mangled at the whim of a stage-manager; the music might be cut or altered and the settings for one work were often used for another, irrespective of the dramatic content of either. Soloists usually lacked acting—and at times singing—ability and in any case tended to be more interested in playing to the gallery than in playing a role on stage.

To someone who saw music as a means of redeeming society, such antics were an unspeakable outrage. In Wagner's view the core of the problem was money. That, not art, was what animated impresarios. To them opera was a business and the objective was profit, not musical excellence. But audiences were also at fault. They regarded opera as an evening's light entertainment and a means of flaunting their social status. Wagner wanted opera to convey ideas, explore human relations, portray life at its best and worst, and everything in between. Artistic excellence could not be sustained commercially; it required fewer and better performances and must therefore be supported by state subsidies. Audiences would likewise have to change; they had to learn to treat opera-going as a transcendent aesthetic experience. Ideally the audience and the spectacle were to interact. (Frederic Spotts, Bayreuth: A History of the Wagner Festival, 30–31)

2011-02-26T22:58:00.003-05:00

"Fiction's about what it fucking is to be a human being." (David Foster Wallace, quoted by D. T. Max, "The Unfinished," The New Yorker, March 9, 2009)

2011-02-09T20:55:00.004-05:00

"When I think I like a girl," I said, "I try imagine how she'd look on my arm as we come out of a limousine, how we'd look together as all these flashbulbs go off."

"Really?" said SM. "I usually just wonder whether she'll like me back."

"I wish there was a projection screen that just showed everything that's going on inside your mind, Lan," said AR. "I really want to know what goes on in there."

2011-01-21T02:04:00.002-05:00

"My sister doesn't really date," AR said.

"Well, I don't really date either," I said. "I'm bad at compromise."

"There you go."

"Two people who don't date not dating each other. It's like we're soul mates."

2011-01-19T05:54:00.005-05:00

"It was more than Fritz Haber's wife could bear. Clara Immerwahr had been Haber's childhood sweetheart. She was the first woman to win a doctorate in chemistry from the University of Breslau. After she married Haber and bore him a son, a neglected housewife with a child to raise, she withdrew progressively from science and into depression. Her husband's work with poison gas [during the First World War] triggered even more melancholy. 'She began to regard poison gas not only as a perversion of science but also as a sign of barbarism,' a Haber biographer explains. 'It brought back the tortures men said they had forgotten long ago. It degraded and corrupted the discipline [i.e., chemistry] which had opened new vistas of life.' She asked, argued, finally adamantly demanded that her husband abandon gas work. Haber told her what he had told Hahn, adding for good measure, patriot that he was, that a scientist belongs to the world in times of peace but to his country in times of war.¹ Then he stormed out to supervise a gas attack on the Eastern Front. Dr. Clara Immerwahr committed suicide the same night." (Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, 95)

¹ Otto Hahn on Fritz Haber: "He explained to me that the Western fronts, which were all bogged down, could be got moving again only by means of new weapons. One of the weapons contemplated was poison gas.... When I objected that this was a mode of warfare violating the Hague Convention he said that the French had already started it—though not to much effect—by using rifle ammunition filled with gas. Besides, it was a way of saving countless lives, if it meant that the war could be brought to an end sooner." (ibid., 92–93)

2011-01-10T00:37:00.005-05:00

We will no longer lose contact with someone completely; social-networking sites such as Facebook are basically a record of every meaningful interaction we've ever had in our life.

Those who grow up with Facebook will never wonder about a former classmate or the fate of a childhood friend, for example.

2010-12-30T04:02:00.002-05:00

"Well, if reverse snobbery is snobbery, then call me a snob," Tony declared.

2010-12-28T20:49:00.004-05:00

"I'm deejaying a fashion party on New Year's Eve," I said. "I'll play any song you want."

"Oh!" said IV. "Play 'Electro World' by Perfume."

"Sorry, but no. Really, I was asking to see whether you would request something that I was going to play anyway so that you would be happy when I agreed. But instead, you requested total garbage, so the ruse is up."

2010-12-26T16:29:00.003-05:00

"I remember passing shopwindows with my mother and asking why people didn't just kick them in. She explained that there were unspoken rules of social behavior, and that's the way we coexist as people. I felt instantly confined by that notion that we were born into a world where everything was mapped out by those before us." (Patti Smith, Just Kids, 174)

2010-12-17T15:46:00.002-05:00

"True hypermnesiacs (persons gifted with 'photographic' memory) are rare. By no means all are better off for their ability. The memory of the famous patient 'S.' of Russian psychologist A. R. Luria led to mythic tragedy. S. grew unable to distinguish present experiences from his too-vivid recollections of the past, and spent his last years in an insane asylum." (William Poundstone, Prisoner's Dilemma, 32)

2010-12-17T15:37:00.003-05:00

On horror movies:

In the 1950s, in the throes of the Cold War, Americans were preoccupied with the fear of annihilation from the outside: from bombs and warheads, from poisoned water reservoirs, communist armies, and invaders from outer space. The threat to society was perceived as external. Horror movies—the thermometers of anxiety in popular culture—featured alien invasions, parasitic occupations of the brain, and body snatching: It Came from Outer Space or The Man from Planet X.

But by the early 1970s, the locus of anxiety—the "object of horror," as Salecl describes it—had dramatically shifted from the outside to the inside. The rot, the horror—the biological decay and its concomitant spiritual decay—was now relocated within the body of man. American society was still threatened, but this time, the threat came from inside. The names of horror films reflected the switch: The Exorcist; They Came from Within. (Siddhartha Mukherjee, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, 182)

2010-12-12T05:23:00.001-05:00

What is the difference between emotional honesty and banality?

2010-12-11T23:07:00.003-05:00

"You must have no emotional attachment to that money you throw on the table. It must mean little to you. If you lose it, so what; it is only money. If you cannot afford to lose it, you cannot afford to bet it. In no way is short-run profit guaranteed. You cannot plan on winning the next hand. Lady Luck has a heart of stone. You will be way ahead if you play long enough, but only if. The actual play is a hand at a time and you must be emotionally able to handle the losses that will occur regularly. Bet an amount you can live without." (Stanford Wong, Professional Blackjack, 205)

2010-12-10T01:53:00.001-05:00

"We cannot see a person's potential, only his or her results, so we often misjudge people by thinking that the results must reflect the person." (Leonard Mlodinow, The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, 209)

2010-12-07T04:54:00.010-05:00

" 'Thermodynamic miracles...events with odds against so astronomical they're effectively impossible, like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold. I long to observe such a thing. And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter...until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and from that union, of the thousand million sperm competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold...that is the crowning unlikelihood.'

'But...if me, my birth, if that's a thermodynamic miracle... I mean, you could say that about anyone in the world.'

'Yes. Anybody in the world... But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles, that they become commonplace and we forget...' " (Alan Moore, Watchmen, Chapter IX: "The Darkness of Mere Being," 26–27)

*
"I am sometimes taken aback by some people can have a miserable day or get angry because they feel cheated by a bad meal, cold coffee, a social rebuff, or a rude reception.... We are quick to forget that just being alive is an extraordinary piece of good luck, a remote event, a chance occurrence of monstrous proportions." (Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, 297–298)

2010-11-29T03:37:00.001-05:00

From a letter: "Regarding dinner, I am allergic to dairy and I do not eat fish or seafood. Everything else is fine (although I may hesitate before eating something especially exotic or endangered)."

2010-11-24T16:37:00.003-05:00

"The tendency to consider only relatively simple scenarios may have particularly salient effects in situations of conflict. There, one's own moods and plans are more available to one than those of the opponent. It is not easy to adopt the opponent's view of the chessboard or of the battlefield, which may be why the mediocre player discovers so many new possibilities when he switches sides in a game. Consequently, the player may tend to regard his opponent's strategy as relatively constant and independent of his own moves. These considerations suggest that a player is susceptible to the fallacy of initiative—a tendency to attribute less initiative and imagination to the opponent than to himself.... [P]eople tend to view their own behavior as reflecting the changing demands of their environment and others' behavior as trait-dominated." (Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, "Availability: A Heuristic for Judging Frequency and Probability," Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases, 177–178)

2010-11-23T01:47:00.002-05:00

A curious byproduct of my coming to New York so late in life is that I spent a lot of time looking for approximations of the things I loved in Texas—phở, barbecue, tacos. As a result, I was not a very good host as far as those from Texas were concerned.

2010-11-18T15:04:00.004-05:00

"So," I said, "in true hobo fashion, for breakfast I ate the leftover half of a burger and the rest of the fries from the In-N-Out my sister got last night. I had put it all in a bag to throw away, but it was just sitting there on the counter, waiting to be eaten. I mean, I knew that what I was doing was pretty terrible, but I figured that as long as no one found out, I would be okay."

"But you're telling me now," DB said.

I frowned. "I guess I am."

"The problem isn't that you do terrible things," he said. "It's that you can't keep a secret."

2010-11-06T03:38:00.006-04:00

Clues from Advanced Charades:

• The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money

• Goldie Hawn doing the robot

• "You can run, but you can't Heidegger!"

• The man who went into a restaurant and ordered albatross and then shot himself in the head after taking one bite because he realized that he had unknowingly eaten his wife while stranded on a lifeboat

• Turing test

• Simon & Simon

2010-10-26T16:14:00.002-04:00

"But back then," I said, "I was younger and more heartless."

"What do you mean by 'more heartless'?" Mark asked.

"Oh," I said, "I guess heartlessness is a binary condition."

2010-10-25T05:28:00.003-04:00

BW writes: "I had a dream about you last night. You took me hostage at your place of business—a roadside fruit-and-vegetable stand. I kept trying to tell people what was going on, but you made everyone laugh, and they forgot about the poor hostage."

2010-10-20T09:36:00.001-04:00

Olivier Assayas on giving the actors and the crew only general instructions during the making of Carlos: "It turned out not the way that I imagined it, but much better."

2010-10-17T17:17:00.005-04:00

"When you call me 'bro,' do you mean it as short for 'brother' or do you mean it like 'dude'?" I asked Tony.¹

"Probably 75 percent 'brother,' 25 percent 'dude,' " he said. "Maybe 80–20."

¹ Tony is my brother.

2010-10-15T02:58:00.009-04:00

One criticism I’ve always had of The Royal Tenenbaums is that it’s beyond the scope of Wes Anderson’s particular directorial talents; the film is simply too big. We don’t know, for example, how Henry Sherman (Danny Glover) and Margot Tenenbaum (Gwyneth Paltrow) feel about each other.¹ The writer should consider how each character thinks about every other.² Consider this in terms of that old logic puzzle, the one about the perfectly logical monks living in a village ravaged by disease, the solution of which hinges on each monk considering the situation from the perspective of every other monk in the village. What would the world be like if everyone acted this way?

¹ But note, for example, that this isn't a problem with Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) and Butch (Bruce Willis) from Pulp Fiction, as these characters never cross orbits (except for that very brief scene in the bar).

² A good game player will always consider the game from the perspective of the other players.

2010-10-13T00:44:00.003-04:00

I remember how intensely happy I was the night John Peel died, listening to "Teenage Kicks" a dozen times in a row.

2010-10-11T06:22:00.002-04:00

"I think everyone at this table should have more children," I said. "I'm in favor of good people having more children. That's how the world becomes a better place."

2010-10-08T01:37:00.003-04:00

The danger of jumping to conclusions:

As a final illustration of how difficult it is to recognize and properly interpret regression, consider the following question which was put to our sample of graduate students. The problem described actually arose in the experience of one of the authors.
A problem of training. The instructors in a flight school adopted a policy of consistent positive reinforcement recommended by psychologists. They verbally reinforced each successful execution of a flight maneuver. After some experience with this training approach, the instructors claimed that contrary to psychological doctrine, high praise for good execution of complex maneuvers typically results in a decrement of performance on the next try. What should the psychologist say in response?
Regression is inevitable in flight maneuvers because performance is not perfectly reliable and progress between successive maneuvers is slow. Hence, pilots who did exceptionally well on one trial are likely to deteriorate on the next, regardless of the instructors' reaction to the initial success. The experienced flight instructors actually discovered the regression but attributed it to the detrimental effect of positive reinforcement. This true story illustrates a saddening aspect of the human condition. We normally reinforce others when their behavior is good and punish them when their behavior is bad. By regression alone, therefore, they are most likely to improve after being punished and most likely to deteriorate after being rewarded. Consequently, we are exposed to a lifetime schedule in which we are most often rewarded for punishing others, and punished for rewarding.

Not one of the graduate students who answered this question suggested that regression could cause the problem. Instead, they proposed that verbal reinforcements might be ineffective for pilots or that they could lead to overconfidence. Some students even doubted the validity of the instructors' impressions and discussed possible sources of bias in their perception of the situation. These respondents had undoubtedly been exposed to a thorough treatment of statistical regression. Nevertheless, they failed to recognize an instance of regression when it was not couched in the familiar terms of the height of fathers and sons. Evidently, statistical training alone does not change fundamental intuitions about uncertainty. (Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, "On the Psychology of Prediction," Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases, 67–68)

2010-10-07T15:33:00.004-04:00

"The writer Umberto Eco...is the owner of a large personal library (containing thirty thousand books), and separates visitors into two categories: those who react with 'Wow! Signore professore dottore Eco, what a library you have! How many of these books have you read?' and the others—a very small minority—who get the point that a private library is not an ego-boosting appendage but a research tool. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. The library should contain as much of what you do not know as your financial means, mortgage rates, and the currently tight real-estate market allow you to put there. You will accumulate more knowledge and more books as you grow older, and the growing number of unread books on the shelves will look at you menacingly. Indeed, the more you know, the larger the rows of unread books." (Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, 1)

2010-10-06T03:22:00.005-04:00

Among the criticism leveled against The Social Network is that many of the events are exaggerated and that Zuckerberg is portrayed as obsessed with final clubs and girls. That's not true; those events are simply dramatizations of testimony. All the "action" of the film is hearsay. The only events that the film takes as true (within the universe of the film) are those happening during the depositions.

2010-10-04T01:35:00.003-04:00

About a jacket:

The [Buzz] Rickson's is a fanatical museum-grade replica of a U.S. MA-1 flying jacket, as purely functional and iconic a garment as the previous century produced. Doretea's slow burn is being accelerated, Cayce suspects, by her perception that Cayce's MA-1 trumps any attempt at minimalism, the Rickson's having been created by Japanese obsessives driven by passions having nothing at all to do with anything remotely like fashion.

Cayce knows, for instance, that the characteristically wrinkled seams down either arm were originally the result of sewing with pre-war industrial machines that rebelled against the slippery new material, nylon. The makers of the Rickson's have exaggerated this, but only very slightly, and done a hundred other things, tiny things, as well, so that their product has become, in some very Japanese way, the result of an act of worship. It is an imitation more real somehow than that which it emulates. (William Gibson, Pattern Recognition, 10–11)

2010-10-03T01:40:00.003-04:00

Dear Mark Zuckerberg,

Contrary to what you may think or what others may say, The Social Network makes you seem like a folk hero.

Sincerely,
Lan D. Ho

2010-10-02T04:07:00.003-04:00

Two notes about Blade Runner:

1. Deckard's use of the Esper machine to enhance the image in a round mirror in a Polaroid picture recalls The betrothal of the Arnolfini by Jan van Eyck, in which additional details can also be found in a round mirror.

2. The world in which The Terminator takes place is exactly ten years after the world in which Blade Runner takes place; the post-apocalyptic world of The Terminator is Los Angeles, 2029, while the future-noir world of Blade Runner is Los Angeles, 2019.

2010-09-30T15:25:00.001-04:00

I wonder how many people saw 9/11, Katrina, etc., as an opportunity: they realized that they could disappear forever and start a new life and decided to do so.

2010-09-23T15:38:00.003-04:00

"JM got engaged," Chris said.

"JM?" I asked. "Doesn't she have herpes?"

"She ended up getting engaged to the guy who gave it to her."

"Well, I guess it all works out in the end."

2010-09-19T00:44:00.003-04:00

"A piece bought from a vintage store," AR said, "is closer to the actual designer. If the piece was made long enough ago, before the designer got really big, then you know he probably worked on the piece personally. You know that the designer himself touched the piece you're wearing."

2010-09-15T00:36:00.005-04:00

An overview of fictitious bands from novels I've recently read:

The Curfew: "...an early-nineties cult unit. The Curfew's fans were virtually the only people who knew the band had existed, today, aside from radio programmers, pop historians, critics, and collectors. With the increasingly atemporal nature of music, though, the band had continued to acquire new fans." (William Gibson, Spook Country, 37)

Monster Eyes: "The rest of the band's set will unfold as confirmation: the audience has seen and celebrated something, and is entitled to feel special for having done so. Jules Harvey has done it again. Or Falmouth Strand. You weren't sure what anything had to do with anything else, but cool people were certainly involved. You weren't wrong to come out tonight. You'd found yourself right in the thick of something. You had to be there, the night they first played 'Monster Eyes,' and you were.... For the band, the first public rendition of what's instantly become their hit song is the moment when time stops its hectic flow and earth's atmosphere expands, just a little, to make room for something new, embodied by themselves. It's the moment when they realize that rather than being as good as they'd always hoped, or even better than they hoped, they're simply as good as they are, no hope required. Enshrined behind the even newer songs—'Dirty Yellow Chair,' 'Secret from Yourself,' and the others resulting from the sheaf of titles Lucinda presented in Bedwin's apartment—'Monster Eyes' no longer seems, to the band, in any important sense new. It's a fixture in their lives, a given. They can't remember where it came from because the truth is that the song was there all along, waiting to be given the air, allowed to breathe. The song represents the band's nature impatiently asserting itself: here's what we sound like, already!.... The band had discovered itself onstage like Helen Keller, connecting at last the idea or name for a thing to the thing itself, a blundering into a new world they'd never dared to name." (Jonathan Lethem, You Don't Love Me Yet, 108–109, 117)

Zeroville: " 'Zeroville,' [Sadie Zapping] said. 'Like the opposite of Alphaville, get it? You probably saw our graffiti around, even if you never heard us. Our bassist was a guy named Ed Constantine, I mean, he renamed himself that, and he used to scribble our name on every blank square inch in a ten-block radius around CBGB, even though we only ever played there a couple of times. We did open for Cthonic Youth once.' " (Jonathan Lethem, Chronic City, 346)

The Traumatics: "[Richard's] next show was on a weeknight in September, at a poorly ventilated club called the Longhorn, where the Traumatics were opening for the Buzzcocks.... The Traumatics who came running out onto that stage consisted of Richard, his lifelong bass player Herrera, and two skinny boys who looked barely out of high school. Richard was more of a showman then than he came to be later, when it seemed clear that he was never going to be a star and so it was better to be an anti-star. He bounced on his toes, did lurching little half pirouettes with his hand on the neck of his guitar, and so forth. He informed the audience that his band was going to play every song it knew, and that this would take twenty-five minutes. Then he and the band went totally haywire, churning out a vicious assault of noise that Patty couldn't hear any sort of beat in. The music was like food too hot to have any taste, but the lack of beat or melody didn't stop the central knot of male punks from pogoing up and down and shoulder-checking each other and stomping at every available female ankle.... The noise was just unbearable. Richard and two other Traumatics were screaming into their microphones, I hate sunshine! I hate sunshine!..." (Jonathan Franzen, Freedom, 70, 72)

Walnut Surprise: "At the very same time, Richard was forming Walnut Surprise, his new alt-country band, with three kids whose combined age wasn't much greater than his own.... The rest of the story of what Richard was doing that winter and spring had been told elsewhere, notably in People and Spin and Entertainment Weekly after the release of Nameless Lake and the emergence of a 'cult' of Richard Katz. Michael Stipe and Jeff Tweedy were among the worthies who came forward to endorse Walnut Surprise and confess to having been longtime closet Traumatics listeners. Richard's scruffy, well-educated white male fans may not have been so young anymore, but quite a few of them were now influential senior Arts editors." (Jonathan Franzen, Freedom, 151, 185)

2010-09-13T18:15:00.000-04:00

When I'm sick, it's hard to remember what it felt like when I wasn't. When I'm healthy, I tend to take my good health for granted.

2010-09-07T05:03:00.003-04:00

"For we must realize how great the possibilities were that opened up before the artists as soon as they finally discarded all ambition to represent things as we see them." (E. H. Gombrich, The Story of Art, 181)

2010-09-03T03:34:00.004-04:00

"I don't consider it my job to get rid of all the assholes in the world," I said.

"You see," CP said, "that's where you're wrong. It is your job. If you don't tell your friends that they're being assholes when they are being assholes, then they'll never stop being assholes. That's why the world is so filled with assholes."

*
"I can like someone and still understand that, yes, they have done some shitty things and, yes, they are capable of doing shitty things. I'm fully capable of being friends with someone while understanding that I shouldn't trust them," I said.

"Yeah, that's your biggest personality flaw," CP said. "I mean, aside from your raging narcissism, of course."

2010-08-29T06:49:00.002-04:00

Why is Battlefield Earth trashed and Braveheart praised?

2010-08-29T04:52:00.001-04:00

"What does it say about our society that people are afraid to go up and talk to each other?" Matt asked.

2010-08-23T15:27:00.006-04:00

Notes accompanying photos of Lynh and David's wedding in Southern Weddings:

My father was an officer in the South Vietnamese Army. He managed to leave Vietnam shortly before Saigon fell in April 1975. He was lucky to get out when he did; some of his friends, fellow officers, didn’t get out in time and were sent to so-called reeducation camps, where they were imprisoned for years.

My mother was the oldest of six children and was charged by her parents to go to America and to take her sister and two youngest brothers with her. Her two other brothers were serving in the army and so they couldn’t leave, and her parents refused to leave without them.

At the time, the office handling refugee affairs was charged with distributing the Vietnamese people evenly across the Continental United States, the idea being that the Vietnamese people would be less likely to form insular communities and more likely to assimilate into American society. It didn’t really work out that way, though; you had Vietnamese in places like Wisconsin and Michigan; Vietnam is a tropical place, and most Vietnamese people had never seen snow before in their lives. So the Vietnamese ended up migrating en masse to places like Texas, California, and Louisiana, where the climate resembled that of their homeland.

My father was a busboy in St. Louis. I can only imagine how humiliating it must have been for him—he was, after all, a military officer from a country that had been at war for thirty years, a de facto member of the aristocracy, and here he was, earning his livelihood in any manner that he could, looked down on by people who assumed that he was stupid simply because he didn’t fully understand their language.

My mother settled in Des Moines.

As my father's friends tell it, he was a bit of a ladies' man. A lot of them came to my wedding, and they ribbed my father about his younger days. "Your dad, when he met your mom, he just disappeared off the face of the earth! I would call his phone, and he wouldn't answer! He was spending all his time your mom, and he didn't have any time for his friends anymore. I thought, 'That dog, he's in love!' "

My parents got married in Omaha. They had no money, but the community there contributed to make it happen: my mother’s coworker baked a wedding cake; my mother’s friend helped sew her wedding dress; the local community college let my parents use a ballroom for the reception; my father’s friend brought a record player and a stack of records. Everyone danced all night. The image of my father spinning my mother around and around, captured frame by frame by some unnamed photographer, is imprinted indelibly in my mind.

Shortly afterward, my parents decided that they had enough of Midwestern winters and moved to Texas. A friend of my father’s had bought a house in Pasadena, Texas, and my father followed suit. For better or worse, that’s where they ended up settling. There was a lot of Klan activity in Pasadena at the time, so it was kind of scary. My brother was born not too long after they moved there, and I was born a year later. Urban Cowboy was filmed and Pasadena made a brief appearance in the national consciousness. Gilley’s, the club featured in Urban Cowboy, burned down in 1991. My parents are still there, however.

2010-08-20T04:35:00.002-04:00

"The fights in The Watchmen movie were different from the way I imagined them," Webb said, "since I didn't imagine them fighting like karate robots from the future."

2010-08-15T03:59:00.002-04:00

For Andy:

Like most warriors, Kitiara tended to regard magic-users as weaklings who spent time reading books that could be put to better use wielding cold steel. Oh, they could produce some flashy results, no doubt, but when put to the test, she would much rather rely on her sword and her skill than weird words and bat dung. (Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, War of the Twins, Dragonlance Legends, vol. 2, 225)

2010-08-13T09:07:00.006-04:00

In Late Spring, Ozu's masterpiece from 1949, Noriko (Setsuko Hara) is the daughter of Professor Somiya (Chishu Ryu), a widower, and she loves her father very much. Her father, however, is worried about her: she is twenty-seven years old and rejects all prospects of marriage as she feels that her father would be lonely and unable to deal with everyday life on his own. Toward the end of the movie, Noriko tells her father:

I only want to be at your side. I'm so fond of you. My only happiness is to be with you. Please, Father, can't we remain as we are? I know that marriage won't make me any happier.

I was watching Late Spring with some friends; how different our reactions were! But things appear one way when you view them through a Freudian lens, another way entirely through a Confucian one.

2010-08-12T23:59:00.001-04:00

Following up:

From observation I would say that people may possibly be divided into two general groups: those who, to use one of the terms of the jargon of psychology, identify themselves with, that is, place themselves in the position of, animals, and those who identify themselves with human beings. I believe, after experience and observation, that those people who identify themselves with animals, that is, the almost professional lovers of dogs, and other beasts, are capable of greater cruelty to human beings than those who do not identify themselves readily with animals. (Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon, 5)

2010-08-12T23:51:00.000-04:00

"Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating." (John Cage, Silence: Lectures and Writings, 3)

2010-08-10T03:56:00.006-04:00

"You have to pee all the time?" I asked.

"Yeah," DB said. "And when I have to go, I have to go bad. Like I can't hold it in."

"Maybe you have diabetes."

"What?"

"Seriously. I was at a music festival with one of Tony's friends, and he had to pee all the time. He couldn't hold it in—it would cause him excruciating pain. We were watching a band play, and he kept having to pee in these discarded water bottles. So on the festival grounds there were a litter of water bottles filled with urine."

"Jesus."

"And remember when you said that your vision was constantly blurry, and you didn't know what was wrong? And you blamed it on staring at the computer screen for long hours at a time? Maybe it was because you have diabetes."

"Fuck, man, that would be terrible."

"And you're tired all the time."

"Yeah."

"Fuck!"

"What?" DB asked.

"Maybe I have diabetes, too," I said.

"You think you caught it from standing next to me?"

"I mean, I'm pretty tired right now. What if I'm tired because I have diabetes?"

"Well, in your case," he said, "I think you're being a little liberal with your diabetes assessment."

2010-08-05T01:47:00.003-04:00

"Wow, I'm stuffed," CVP said. "That doggy treat at Shake Shack is really filling."

"That's because it's made with real dog," I said.

"No wonder it was so delicious."

"Spoken like a real Korean."

2010-08-03T09:19:00.002-04:00

"Tony," I said, "did you see this? A wasps' nest six feet tall and five feet wide!"

"Jesus," Tony said, "that's disgusting."

"You know what would be awesome? If you went as that for Halloween."

"What—?"

*
Several months later:

"What are you, some sort of white turd?"

"No, I'm Britain's largest wasps' nest."

2010-08-02T23:45:00.001-04:00

At Sugar Cafe, the manager walks up and begins pounding on the bathroom door. He looks at me and shrugs. "Sorry," he says. "This happens all the time." Then he turns to the bathroom door and starts pounding on it again. "Hey! Hey! Get out of there!" he yells.

The bathroom door opens. A bearded guy comes out. "Sorry, man!"

The manager brushes past him and goes straight into the bathroom. He emerges, triumphantly brandishing a plastic sack with an empty salad container inside.

"You see!" the manager yells. He shoves it in face. "You see this! He's always eating salads in my bathroom! Comes in, buys nothing, eats in the bathroom!"

"Sorry, man!" the guy says. He pulls out a small balled-up wad of cash and extracts two one-dollar bills and drops them on the floor.

The manager kicks the money. "Get out! Get out!"

*
To consider:

1. Why was the man eating a salad in the bathroom?

2. Why was the manager so upset that someone was eating a salad in the bathroom?

3. Why does this "always happen"?

2010-08-02T23:37:00.000-04:00

Newsweek sold for one dollar. (The company, not an individual issue.)

2010-07-28T08:14:00.002-04:00

The Fantastic Four, issue 9 (Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, December 1962):

When the Fantastic Four go bankrupt, the news spreads even as far as Atlantis, where Sub-Mariner finds the developments interesting. Facing eviction, the Fantastic Four receive a letter from S.M. Studios [asking them] to come to Hollywood to make a movie based on their adventures.

Arriving in California, the Fantastic Four are shocked to learn that S.M. Studios is owned by the Sub-Mariner, who tells them that the offer to make a movie is legitimate (although this is in reality yet another ploy to destroy the male members of the group and try to win Susan Storm's heart). Sub-Mariner sends each member of the Fantastic Four out to fight a real threat under the notion that it's all a movie. Reed must face the Cyclops of myth, the Human Torch must fight a cannibal tribe, and the Thing must face Namor alone. While Reed and Johnny are stranded, they escape from their dooms, and the Thing loses his match against the Sub-Mariner when he temporarily turns back to human form.

They return to the S.M. Studio office to find Sue fighting off Namor's advances and force the monarch from the sea to stop. Defeated, Namor agrees to pay the Fantastic Four for their movie and returns to the oceans. When the movie premieres, it is an instant hit, and the Fantastic Four make enough money to pay off their debts.

2010-07-27T22:11:00.005-04:00

"The problem with most Viking films," CP said, "is that there're too many horns on the helmets and not enough mud-fucking."¹

¹ Luckily, Vahalla Rising has just the right amount of each.

2010-07-27T02:41:00.002-04:00

From Jonathan Lethem's essay "Crazy Friend":

[Philip K.] Dick’s defenders—other than me, I mean—frequently bristle at hearing him called "crazy," or at the rehearsals of his human frailties, his drugs and divorces, which tend to accompany the laurels the larger culture keeps draping on his tomb. I’ve never understood the problem. Apart from the dopey emptiness of the question—was Melville crazy? was Malcolm Lowry? Kafka?—I suppose I’m residually inclined to hear the term as a shred of beatnik exultation: "That’s crazy, man!" I’m still looking for the crazy wherever I can find it. It’s hard enough to kick against the plastic Victorianisms of our culture, the social sarcophagus of daily life. Even trying can make you crazy, let alone succeeding as well as Dick did. For me, I like helpless braggarts, obsessive fools, angry people. My ears perk up at the word "pretentious"—that’s usually the movie I want to see, the book I want to read, the scene I want to make. Nearly anyone I’ve found worth knowing was difficult enough, vivid enough, to qualify at some point as my crazy friend.

2010-07-26T03:33:00.002-04:00

Todd Solondz's Life during Wartime is like Wes Anderson's The Royal Tenenbaums but with less brilliance and charm and more nonsense and psychological hang-ups.

2010-07-25T02:25:00.002-04:00

"There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say there isn't." (Jonathan Lethem, Chronic City, 199, quoting Leonard Cohen, "There Is a War")

2010-07-23T06:58:00.000-04:00

Bill Murray on Kung Fu Hustle:

Kung Fu Hustle...is the supreme achievement of the modern age in terms of comedy. It's not even close.... There should have been a day of mourning for American comedy the day that movie came out.

2010-07-22T17:41:00.003-04:00

I was stopped by a Chinese couple in front of the UN Headquarters.

"Can you take a picture of us?" the man asked.

"Sure," I said.

"We were married here exactly forty years ago," he said. "Can you believe it?"

"That's fantastic," I said. "Congratulations."

"Excuse me, but are you Chinese?" he asked.

"No," I said. "I'm Vietnamese."

The man cocked his head slightly. "Are you sure? You look Chinese."

"I'm pretty sure," I said.

His wife frowned. "What's your last name?" she asked.

"Ho."

She at her husband, and they both nodded knowingly. "That's a Chinese name," she said.

"You're probably Chinese," he said.

*
"I saw a girl at the coffee shop who looked like you," I said.

"So you saw a Chinese girl at the coffee shop?" WL asked.

2010-07-20T00:27:00.002-04:00

"Now it is inherent in human nature to have an inclination to consider a thing untrue if one does not like it, and after that it is easy to find arguments against it." (Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures to Psycho-Analysis, 27–28)

*
People will believe what they want to believe:

Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger....

How can we have things so wrong, and be so sure that we’re right? Part of the answer lies in the way our brains are wired. Generally, people tend to seek consistency. There is a substantial body of psychological research showing that people tend to interpret information with an eye toward reinforcing their preexisting views. If we believe something about the world, we are more likely to passively accept as truth any information that confirms our beliefs, and actively dismiss information that doesn’t. This is known as "motivated reasoning." Whether or not the consistent information is accurate, we might accept it as fact, as confirmation of our beliefs. This makes us more confident in said beliefs, and even less likely to entertain facts that contradict them.

2010-07-19T09:13:00.001-04:00

Why are Lemonheads advertised as being made with real lemon juice?

2010-07-19T01:19:00.000-04:00

"Is a vegan cupcake just bread?" Mark asked.

2010-07-18T06:44:00.007-04:00

The seeds for Christopher Nolan's movie Inception can be found in Philip K. Dick's novel Ubik:

An accident has occurred. Joe Chip and his colleagues—all but one of them—have narrowly escaped an explosion at a moon base. Or is it the other way round? Did Joe and the others die, and did the one fatality, Glen Runciter, actually survive? If Glen is dead and Joe alive, why does Joe keep getting weird messages from Glen? Is Joe's experience of his post-accident life just a hallucination, played out as his flash-frozen body lies in suspended animation? Joe's reality begins to fall apart, and a mysterious, vaguely mystical substance called Ubik—available in a handy spray can—appears to be the only thing that can stabilize it. (Lev Grossman, from "All-Time 100 Novels: The 100 Best English-Language Novels from 1923 to the Present," Time, October 16, 2005)

And Mal, Cobb's wife in Inception, recalls the malevolent psychic ghost in Ubik, Jory.

2010-07-17T06:00:00.021-04:00

"Is what Tyler Cowan said about Asian desserts true?" Tony asked.

"Makes sense to me," I said.

"It seems like a lot of crock," said Tony. "Isn't it all cultural? I mean, I'm sure Asians don't like American desserts too much."

"Don't a lot of Asians like French and Italian desserts? Doesn't everyone like French and Italian desserts? I mean, I don't see you ordering Asian desserts when you go eat at Asian restaurants."

"I don't order desserts at American restaurants, either."

"That's because you're lactose intolerant. If you weren't, you'd be eating cakes, mousse, and ice cream with every meal."

"I guess. I just get riled up when people are dismissive of cultures, especially Asian cultures."

"I mean, I like beans in a bun as much as the next guy, but I'm not going to pretend that that's a particularly sophisticated dessert."

"I still think Asian desserts are as good, if not better, than European desserts."

"Really? Can you name a classic Asian dessert?"

"Okay—"

"And don't say 'beans in a bun,' because that'll just prove my point."

"Chau, or whatever it's called."

"Chau? Do you mean che?"

"Yeah, che."

"Are you serious?"

"Yes."

"Can you imagine trying to convince your white friends to order that instead of the Oreo cheesecake? 'It's some kind of...sweet bean...mixture...in a bowl...with rice? Maybe it doesn't have rice. I don't really know what it's called.' "

"Ha ha!"

"I hope you don't start ordering it at every opportunity just to prove me wrong."

"I love che. I really do."

"Oh, come on. You eat candy bars, cakes, ice cream, sorbet, and all sorts of Western desserts way more often than you eat che or other Asian desserts."

"That's because they're more readily available."

"If stores sold bowls of che next to candy bars and Whole Foods offered it next to the sorbet, I bet you wouldn't buy it."

"Yeah, you're right. Well, I'm going to grab some dinner."

"Are you going to eat a Chinese dessert for dinner?"

"Maybe I will! Maybe I'll eat a whole bowl of che for dinner! 'Yum! This is so damn good!... I feel kinda sick...' "

"Ha ha!"

"Hey, look at this. The desserts on the Wikipedia entry for Chinese desserts don't look really appealing."

"Yeah, look at this one: 'Chinese dessert soups (湯 or 糊) typically consists of sweet and usually hot soups and custards, and are collectively known as tongsui in Cantonese. Some of these soups are made with restorative properties in mind, in concordance with traditional Chinese medicine. A commonly eaten dessert soup is douhua, which is sometimes taken for breakfast.' "

"Yum! Medicine soup! Chicken-noodle for dessert! Yum!"

"Well, have fun at dinner, Tony."

*
An hour later.

"Yeah, it's some kind of...medicine...dessert...breakfast... What do you mean you don't have it?! You can't get a good medicine-dessert-breakfast-soup in this town or something? It's like I'm speaking some sort of different language! What's with you people?! Fuck this place! Fucking backassward Texas! God! I guess you get what you pay for!"

2010-07-16T17:52:00.003-04:00

"So Tyler Cowen," CP said, "he's a superstar in the world of economics. He comes to speak at my company every year. This year, he asked us to write down questions on slips of paper and to put the slips into a hat. He'd then draw the slips from the hat and answer the questions on them. One of the questions was, 'Why are desserts so bad at Chinese restaurants?' "

"What did he say?" I asked.

"He said that cultures that had access to a lot of sugar relatively early in history, like the Chinese, just have desserts that are all about being sweet. Other cultures, he said, had more advanced cooking techniques by the time they started using sugar heavily. Also, the best desserts have dairy and chocolate, which Chinese food is sorely lacking."

"Well, some Chinese desserts are good," I said. "There's this one that I like, it's basically red beans in coconut milk with some shaved ice—"

"God! That's not a fucking dessert!"

2010-07-15T00:19:00.001-04:00

"I told everyone that you're a Korean," I said.

CVP looked up, alarmed. "Why did you do that?" she asked.

2010-07-14T02:16:00.002-04:00

"Where did your robot heart come from?"

2010-07-14T01:08:00.001-04:00

"We all dream of being a child again, even the worst of us. Perhaps the worst most of all." (Walon Green and Sam Peckinpah, The Wild Bunch)

2010-07-11T21:44:00.003-04:00

In A Fistful of Dollars, The Man with No Name (Clint Eastwood) manages to escape from the Rojos after being brutally beaten. The Rojos and their henchmen search the premises for him, and he eludes capture by hiding under the floorboards. One of the henchmen reports to Ramón (Gian Maria Volonté), the sadistic and feared middle brother: "We can't find him! We looked in the cellar, in the attic, etc.!"

This scene is specifically referenced by Tarantino in Inglourious Basterds: the Dreyfuses are hiding under the floorboards of Perrier LaPadite (Denis Menochet), and Shoshanna (Mélanie Laurent) emerging from under the house amidst gunfire from the Nazi soldiers conjures images of The Man with No Name likewise crawling out from under the Rojo house. Also, consider the following monologue from Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz):

Consequently, a German soldier conducts a search of a house suspected of hiding Jews. Where does the hawk look? He looks in the barn, he looks in the attic, he looks in the cellar, he looks everywhere he would hide. But there's so many places it would never occur to a hawk to hide.