Shakespere and Coen Bros., together at last!

Some genius has noticed just how Shakesperean is the classic Coen Bros. film, The Big Lebowski. They have translated it into the form Shakespeare himself might have used. Behold: Two Gentlemen of Lebowski!

Rabbert blathers on....

What my Christmas was like

Or, maybe, what I wish it had been like...



Hat tip to Just Jen.
Rabbert blathers on....

From the only reliable news source on the web

Most Children Are Unrepentant Sociopaths

My friends who are parents can confirm the truth of this important study.
Rabbert blathers on....

Buffy v. Edward

What can I say? Buffy's my kind of girl!

H/T to John C. Wright.
Rabbert blathers on....

Monk finale

Just reprinting my semi-review, semi-reflection on the Monk finale from Virtue Quest:

I’ve been watching “Monk” with my family for some time, and we all gathered around the tele last night for the series finale.

For those who don’t watch much TV, the show follows Adrian Monk (played by Tony Shalhoub), a former detective for the San Francisco Police whose OCD went into overdrive when he lost his wife twelve years ago. He’s been consulting with the department, because he has an uncanny insight into what “doesn’t fit” at a crime scene. Mostly, it’s a comedy hung loosely on a detective show with the running gag of how to set off Monk’s phobias or obsessions. Sort of an anti-Columbo.

The one case he’s never solved is his own wife’s murder. So, of course, the series had to end with the solution to this cold case. As with most episodes, the actual clues and mystery-solving aspect of the story are mostly incidental. The resolution is quick and neatly resolved. It’s all about the character quirks. But it surprised me by showing a dark side of Monk’s character that I did not at all expect from a normally light entertainment.

* * * Spoilers to follow! * * *

Monk has always been haunted by his inability to solve his wife’s murder, but when he discovers the killer’s identity, he has two very dark reactions: he grows vengeful, and he implies that his OCD derives from an inability to “breathe the same air” as Trudy’s killer.

Vengeance and Justice

You knew this had to get back to virtue at some point, didn’t you?

Justice is the act of giving to each person their due. This is obviously the principle behind civil justice: I sue someone who refuses to give me what they owe me. But it’s also the case in criminal justice. In committing a crime, the criminal owes the victim what belongs to them; and, a little less obviously but just as truly, the criminal “is due” the consequences and punishment that belong to the crime.

Vengeance, on the other hand, is the simple desire to harm someone who has harmed me. It belongs to the “misery loves company” class of motivations. Vengeance says, “I have suffered, and I want that person to suffer at least as much – maybe even more!” It’s not interested in restoring order or right; just in causing hurt.

Monk’s vengeful turn

Now, throughout the series, Monk has consistently sided with justice over vengeance. But then, he’s also consistently made an exception to all reason and logic wherever his wife was concerned. Even so, in a previous episode he was not willing to kill the person who planted the bomb that killed Trudy.

So I was surprised to see him, not only asking Stottlemeyer (Ted Levine) to kill the suspect without a trial, but actually stealing a gun and apparently threatening to kill the suspect himself. I was also surprised that he had no reaction other than “emptiness” that the suspect committed suicide.

If the show was willing to go into that area of wrath and revenge, I would have hoped that they would, well, do the topic justice. Show Monk struggle with his desire for revenge, his regret that he didn’t pull the trigger himself, and so on.

I also had hoped that, having set up that Monk didn’t want to “breathe the same air” that Trudy’s killer breathed, they might have resolved that with some idea of the world being “cleaner” now. But maybe there I’m reading more into the statement than it warrants.

Character welcome

Now, I know all too well that Monk is just a fun diversion, and is not intended to be high art or profound literature. Even so, I do wish it would reach a little higher – especially in episodes where it delves into some deeper aspect of a character. Frankly, I think any show is more entertaining – more funny, more exciting, more romantic, what have you – when it reflects the fullness of human life and motivation.

Monk’s series finale left me, unfortunately, with a rather flat character whom I just didn’t believe in anymore, much less care about or identify with.

Ah well. That leaves more time for my own writing.

Rabbert blathers on....

Difficulties of modern language

Aren't names these days just getting downright unpronounceable? To say nothing of trying to spell them. For example:


And yes, Mr. Laurie is actually a brit. He puts on an American accent for House.

H/T to Just Jen.
Rabbert blathers on....

Contaminating the ether...

This is fascinating, and strange, and perhaps the reason that we have not been contacted by extraterrestrials since the 1950's:


From Abstruse Goose, via Strange Maps.
Rabbert blathers on....

Virtue can be fun!

The trick to living virtuously is to see the good in every virtuous act, even something as simple as climbing the stairs.


Crossposted at my other blog.
Rabbert blathers on....

Sheer genius

The Lord of the Rings as a 1940's Bogey vehicle:


Why is it that this nine-minute wonder captures more of Tolkien's mythopoesy than Peter Jackson's twelve-hour monstrosity?

Tip o' the hat to Donald McClarey.
Rabbert blathers on....

Random stuff - or is it?

So, I'm sort of obsessed with the motion of fluids (including liquids and gasses), and the motion of objects in fluids. I could watch a rolling stream, or milk swirling in coffee, for hours.

This is a visual of how Einstein explained this apparently random motion, known as Brownian motion:






I found this on a physics site at the University of Virginia. If you don't think this is cool, then maybe I think you're boring, too. Nyah!

And don't nobody ask why I have time to hunt down stuff like this. Just. Don't. Ask.

Rabbert blathers on....

Behold the true Jedi masters

I've been told that there are some who hate the movie, "The Men who Stare at Goats". I'd like to meet them. I'd like to know what there is to hate about this movie.

Now, I'll grant you that it's no "Casablanca". It's no "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". But it's a movie that I certainly wish George Lucas had made instead of "The Phandom Menace" and "Attack of the Clowns".

It is a journey, if not into a larger world, at least into a stranger one. "Inspired by" rather than "based on" the book of the same title by Jon Ronson, the film follows the misadventures of Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor), a small town journalist trying to prove his manliness both to his wife and to himself by attempting to cover the lead-up to war in Iraq in the early 2000s. He runs into Lyn Cassady (George Clooney), a putative salesman but secretly a former member of the New Earth Army.

Now, the New Earth Army was the brainchild of Lt. Col. Bill Django, who thought that the New Age movement would provide the solutions to war and conflict in the world. He sought to create a special forces unit within the U.S. Army that would be in tune with Earth and Nature and would fight battles with psychic powers rather than conventional weapons. They called themselves Jedi Warriors.

At first, Wilton is skeptical. And so was I. But the film presents everything with a perfectly straight face, leaving the viewers to follow where they will. As both the journey through Iraq and the journey through the development of the New Earth Army progresses, the lines between reality and delusion, between belief and insanity begin to blur - yet the lines between good and evil emerge with stark clarity.

I have not read the book, and I have no idea how much of the film is rooted in actual persons or events. I saw it with my dad, who served in Vietnam, and who told me, "That's the kind of [stuff] that really happened." Well, at least with regard to the availability and use of LSD and other drugs.

In short, belly-laughs were frequent, usually occasioned by questions of historical and metaphysical nature. It's the kind of humor I like best: the kind that sends you to a library to learn some more.
Rabbert blathers on....

I'm not so sure about this...

Breaking News: Catholic Deacon publishes "The Order by which People Get Into Heaven"!!

The part that makes me skeptical?

To be admitted only after review by the Screening Board (Catherine of Siena, chairwoman), the Board of Appeals (Meher Baba, chairman) and the Last Gasp Committee (Cardinal Joseph Bernadin, chairman): poets, novelists, buskers, spies, New York Yankees fans.

Yankees fans I understand, and poets. But come on, cut novelists a little slack!

Maybe my girl Kate will help me get through...
Rabbert blathers on....

Dilbert on moral relativism

Hat tip to Mike Flynn.


Heh heh heh. Witnesses. Heh heh heh.
Rabbert blathers on....

New bloggy goodness!

I mentioned a little while back that I'm trying to make a go as a freelance writer. To that end, I'm starting up a couple "professional" blogs, that I hope will garner an audience beyond just my friends.

I was planning to launch them Nov. 1, that is, tomorrow. And it looks like I'll actually have one of them up and running. The other should be up a little later this week.

What can I say but, Woo Hoo!

I'll post the links as soon as they're good to go.
Rabbert blathers on....

I'm so proud to be a sad paranoid schizoid!

Hat tip to Mike Flynn.
Rabbert blathers on....

Apologies...

Sorry I've been off-line for the past couple weeks. At first, I was off in the boonies of North Carolina without any internets access; then I was in the not-so-boonies of North Carolina, where internets access cost $5/hour; then I was back home, recovering from travel; and then ... um, I was just a little lazy.

Sorry!

I'll bring you up to date a little later. In the meantime, go ahead and occupy yourselves with...

Rabbert blathers on....

Movie dream casts...

So the other day, a friend and I were grabbing some breakfast together, and we started thinking of dream casts that Hollywood really ought to put together.

Our first thought was:

• Christopher Walken
• Alan Rickman
• Meryl Streep
• supporting role for William Shatner

Plot? With a cast like this, who needs plot?

Okay, plot is important -- but secondary, I think. So, a road movie, probably three siblings running from the cops. Let's say, a chase across Canada, with Brendan Fraser leading the RCMP.

You know you want to see it. Just remember, you heard it here first.

Another idea was for a re-make of An Affair to Remember. There were three suggestions for casting:

• George Clooney
• this was tough -- we sort of settled on either Catherine Zeta-Jones or Julia Roberts, but we didn't think either was perfect; and besides, both have co-starred with Clooney before

or, for a slightly younger crowd ...

• Ewan MacGregor
• Amy Adams

or, to go more for fireworks than for flames, maybe ...

• Will Smith
• Cameron Diaz
  

And I'd like to add a runner-up pair of personal favorites:

• John Cusack
• Catherine Keener
  

So, what think you? Any other fun casting ideas? Any suggestions or disputations with my friends' and my brainstorms?
Rabbert blathers on....

Albuquirky

I'm currently in a hotel in Albuquerque, New Mexico, awaiting tomorrow morning's flight back to home sweet home. I must admit, I have an outrageous prejudice against this town. I think right turns should be outlawed.

Need I say any more?
Rabbert blathers on....

Just plain cool: water on the Moon!

Yep, you heard it. Confirmed by three different spacecraft. I'm getting my spacesuit and rubber raft ready for a wild ride down--

Wait, you say it's only trace amounts? Maybe a Big Gulp's worth for every ton of lunar soil?

Oh, bother.
Rabbert blathers on....

Mmm... walnuts

Trust me. You'll want to devote a half hour to this episode of the Dick Van Dyke show.
Rabbert blathers on....