"Man of Steel" Flexes a Little Too Hard...

OBVIOUSLY, SPOILERS....

I thought long and hard about it, whether or not I agreed with the ending of Man of Steel. I initially gave the filmmakers credit for trying to modernize Superman, to bring him into the more morally clouded 21^st century. But the more and more I thought about it, the less and less I liked what I had seen. I would not have had such a problem with the ending if it had not been for the fact that the whole movie was leading up to something completely different.

Most specifically, there is the Jesus parallels, which have always pervaded the Superman mythos. In this film, though, the viewer was beaten over the head with the idea. Oh, Superman just happens to be 33 years old, the same age as Jesus in the Bible? Oh, the big crossroads moment of Superman choosing his path just happens to come in a church, apropos of nothing previously in the film?  Oh, Clark debates his choices in a close up, with a stained glass window of Jesus taking up the entire scene behind him? Oh, the ongoing theme is that he is meant to be the Savior, whether it is of the Kryptonians or the humans? I get it; he’s Jesus. Two and a half hours of that being drilled into the viewer’s head, only to land on: the only way Jesus can save humanity is to kill the bad guys.

See the problem?

Shiv vs. Shank

What is the difference between a "shiv" and a "shank?" Also, can you be "shanked with a shiv" or "shivved with a shank?" Good questions indeed...

Stupid Shit Sarah Lawrence Kids Say, Part 3...

Shakespeare Edition 

This one is only one line long, but for the sake of explanation, I frame it with Lewis Black's bit about the line, "If weren't for my horse, I wouldn't have spent that year in college." Or, as he calls it, "the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life, until Dan Quayle was elected Vice President."

If you haven't heard it, you can find it here...

http://comedians.jokes.com/lewis-black/videos/lewis-black---college-horse

 I felt exactly the same way Lewis Black felt, and if I tried to explain it, well, blood probably would shoot out my nose...

So I walk into the coffee shop after really weird day. I just want to sip something warm and meditate. I sit at the only open table in the place, which happens to be a few feet from where three Sarah Lawrence girls sit, working on homework. They talk about various things, some boy that they think is cool, and they get on the topic of Shakespeare. Apparently one of them has issues with William Shakespeare. She says, and I quote

"I can understand why some people don't like Shakespeare. I mean, he's so, mainstream..."

 I'm going to repeat that, because it bears repeating...

"I can understand why some people don't like Shakespeare. I mean, he's so mainstream..."

Don't. Don't think about that sentence for more than three minutes, or blood will shoot out your nose. The American medical profession does not know why we get an aneurysm. An aneurysm is when a blood vessel bursts in your head for no apparent reason. There's a reason...

For my part, I had to get up and leave the coffee shop immediately. But those words are now in by brain forever.

Thank you, Sarah Lawrence, for validating stereotypes.

Paul Kemp vs. Raoul Duke: A Review of The Rum Diary

Last week I went and saw The Rum Diary, on opening night, of course. I buffered my low expectations with several sangrias at happy hour, a bottle of white wine on the Metro into the city, and a bagful of 24-ounce beer cans procured from a newly discovered Rite-Aid in Grand Central Terminal. I didn’t know what to expect, standing there in the check-out line in front of a drunken commuter who was shouting that they were out of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

I figured it important to see the film in the city, as the core of the novel surrounds a writer who despises the city and in turn flees to a place he assumes would be a tropical paradise. I could see what Thompson was getting at, because in the few unsteady blocks between the station and the theater I saw a man almost run down by a bus, a rickshaw equipped with JBL speakers glide past 42^nd street, and that horrible abortion of color that is Times Square. I got caught up conversing with a street preacher and almost missed the previews, but I just had to ask her if she thought New York was Sodom.

She thought it over for a second, then said, “Well, it’s a modern-day Sodom, yes,” as if that made the news any easier to take. I laughed and after a brief conversation about whether or not I had been drinking, I told her I had to go.

The theater had peacocks painted on its ceiling, which I hoped was a good sign, but as the lights faded out I became unsettled by distinct distaste in my mouth left by the trailer for the new Twilight film. That and I could not seem to get over the couple sitting next to me. They seemed more interested with opening soy sauce packets to put on the sushi they had smuggled into the theater than they were with the film itself.

I went in to that first viewing with low expectations, and what I came out with was a weird vibe that it was better than I expected. Yet underneath that veneer, I was left with an uneasy feeling. 

Stupid Shit Sarah Lawrence Kids Say, Part 2...

Thomas Jefferson: Hipster Friendly

It’s a classic Sarah Lawrence paradox: You go to the most expensive private school in America, and yet you’re a hipster. How do you simultaneously brag about how much money you have while demonstrating how unique you are? This is how…

A group of Sarah Lawrence students sit at a table in a coffee shop, doing whatever. There are three of them, perhaps all girls, perhaps not. One line that comes out is, “I used to do that when I was a girl, and now that I’m not a girl, I still do that.” Whatever, that's a digression in itself...

A fourth student comes in, definitely male -- pink knit sweater, purple polo shirt underneath. Completely unique. He pulls from his pocket a stack of fresh, crisp bills an inch thick, bound together with a blue hair tie.

“Check this out,” he says, flipping through the greenbacks like playing cards. Then he pulls one from the pile and hands it to one of the girls.

Stupid Shit Sarah Lawrence Kids Say, Part 1...

Study of an SLC boy/Cheetah Farmer’s Vainglorious Attempt to Get Laid, As Seen Through the Eyes of a Drunk Fly on the Bar…

(I copied the following virtually verbatim from my notebook. I sat on a barstool with a notebook, next two three Sarah Lawrence undergrads at the Station House on a Friday night. This is what I heard. I could have cleaned it up more, but I felt it more important to leave it as is…)

Isn’t it cute how the SLC boys try and talk about sports like they have a clue? Some attempt to display masculinity in front of his female companion. And it looked like he almost had a chance. Until her friend showed up. He tried to compensate by ordering the same drink as this perceived interloper. I was the only one who noticed, a different kind of interloper in this humorous exchange.

Too bad for him, the source of his efforts is a worthless pursuit, a typical Sarah Lawrence girl -- too preoccupied with talking to the older, wiser bartender about the cider that she is drinking, comparing the Magners to the Bulmers of Europe, her subtle way of displaying how she is a world traveler, or, in reality, a teenager who spent a year abroad. Everything is done so subtly. You’d hardly even notice if you weren’t paying attention.

Seeing his chances fading with her interest, the SLC guy walks away, to put a dollar in the juke box. Very clever.

A minute later, “oh, this is my song,” to get the attention back, and after a few notes, that canned hipster follow-up, “you probably don’t know this song.” Neither girl does. Score one point for the Sarah Lawrence boy.

“It’s New Order,” he says. I guess they’re too young to know who New Order is, but he obviously is not. It’s almost as bad a smokescreen as talking about cider with the bartender. So subtle.

Ressurection at Woodlawn Cemetery...

Last winter, I took this photo of a mausoleum in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx..

I happened to be walking around the same area yesterday and photographed the same masoleum, but from the opposite side. This is what I ended up with. Click on the photo to take a closer look...