Prisonship-ish, imp-ish inventory.

1. SodaStream fizzy water maker.
2. Crime novels by Jonathan Valin, Stephen Greenleaf, John D. Macdonald.
   
3. Tyvek, Nothing Fits.
   
4. Nobuhiko Obayashi’s House

Many viewers here—even cinephiles—will not have heard of director Nobuhiko Obayashi. Is he well-known in Japan?

Obayashi was already famous in Japan as a director of commercials before House, and its trailer even uses this as a selling point. And check out this Mandom ad—one of his nuttiest. He’s since directed almost forty films in many different genres, and is also a well-known television personality.

House is basically indescribable. But if you had to, how would you describe it?

An exhilarating grab bag of visual tricks, a disturbing satire that turns the giddy sheen of pop culture against itself, and an oddly moving coming-of-age allegory. I think it’s easy to praise the film as surreal, weird, etc., and leave it at that, but it’s a very carefully crafted work, and reveals a new layer with each viewing.

clumps

(so anyway i have a long nite ahead of work tonite so i thought i'd send out a relay.)

*goes without saying politico clump
Robert Kuttner on the current BHO conjuncture
Bidenland will be Laborland!

Joe Biden and Robert Kuttner are in their different modalities both sort-of "go-to" guys at this moment. God knows it's great to hear that Biden will be a major labor liaison in the WH. Meanwhile, Kuttner's timely and perspicacious book has rightfully won attention far and wide, and he has subsequently half-emerged even on the stodgy old Sunday Morning circuit as the farrest out left-liberal prognosticator.

*introducing some important blogs clump
Will and the Grits
Mc'CaterbaronvonBear produces fearful catalog
Elvira, embroideries.
here we encounter three figures with whom i've shared a lot of collegiate thundering, but with whom i've also done, let's face it, years of blogging going back prior to even the early prisonship days. (who else misses friendster, folks?) but seriously, here we have three evocative blogposts from three tried and true OG commenters. first, Wilbro re-engages the questions of Southern self-identity that plague the post-Faulkner, pro-Cracker Barrel (or "profauckobarro") impulse that defines so much of our crowd. secondly, recalcitrant blogger kyle mc'caterflare has delivered a terrific festoon of albs straight out of his personal wheelhouse, which is of course the horror-soundtrack milieu. thirdly, the ever-Elvira-like Elvira does outstanding work with primary texts and pedagogical anecdotes that come off with a kind of, uh, gravitas that say, your average pattyjoe clump-post doesn't. highest recommendations

*ooh, cinema! clump (featuring survey question)
gabba drops this (apparently British) cartoon The Snowman on me, and reminds me how I've been emo since way before i ever heard slint or whoever.
the a/v club on cool but unnecessary movie sequels
it's important to me that Weapon X is important to Ezra Klein.
so here's the big question...has anybody seen The Two Jakes (Chinatown sequel). i've heard it's alright - Nicholson directed it? - but i'm more than a little fearful of it, seeing how Chinatown is such hallowed ground...(seriously though, a survey question: name your three favorite sequels.)

whimsy horn, prisonshippe

remember that old blog, the parson-sharp? well, it's being re-run (avec falcon, in one instance) in syndication for a limited time. it's the person-slurp's way of saying "happy effing holiday, chips!"

any wobs can tell you that all this jeebus talk is nothing new from me... but what else am i supposed to do when M.I.T. is funding ryan adams' faux-Plath, faux-Gary Snyder hocum? or when IKEA wants somebody from Pavement to shop there?

mebbe i should drop some coin on this set of Hitchcocks? which one would you watch first?

oh well, at least BHO just nominated an OMB guy who's known as an alarmist about social security, huh? stay tuned to the OG for "early and often" reportage of every ownry also-ran, and every arcane ideology that befits your e'er-so-pleasant holiday eyes.

boof-pfft-sllllt. tough news, if yr me.

for me, the hardest thing about trying to question the existence of "God" has always been the, i dunno, "culturally- Catholic" flavor of my own agnosticism. you can take the Boy out of the church, they say, but you can't take the incense-stench out of the subsequent young-goodman's nostrils. thus i grew up to play in bands and do writings that have always retained this weird, mystical, stigmata-ish bunch of motifs, to the point of being kind of an emo cliche.

well, imagine my chagrin. it seems i now have to contend with the revelation that gramsci, of all people, made a deathbed conversion to catholicism. boof!

i remember Fr. Edward Seton taking my (quasi-mandatory) confession, listening to my slew of well-reasoned arguments against teleology, and against sanctity as such. he told me, "you're a Catholic, Pat, you'll always be," and grinned shit-eatingly.

what sort of fate is this?

it's a good thing i just scored Bergman's religious trilogy, eh? thank you, Criterion. they're my primary texts, my vitamins on the "there is no god/yes, wait there is and god is horrible" score.also, i finally got around to seeing There Will Be Blood (n/c!). and i must say, that struck me as the most thoroughly agnostic sort of Horatio Alger/Morality Play thing I've seen since Crimes and Misdemeanors. top shelf!

for km

i can't help it

as a Gen X-er, maybe, i can't help but look forward to the (finally!) forthcoming war movie from Tarentino. Kill Bill was really not my kinda thing... but Jackie Brown and everything before it surely was.

am i being elitist by not acknowledging the fake b-horror movies he's made along the way?