No Oscar for You

The Academy Awards happen tonight.  In fact, as I type this, there are undoubtedly throngs assembled for the red gauntlet, er, I mean carpet.

One of the awards not given during tonight’s telecast, or during the earlier (and apparently less television-worthy) technical awards, is the Best Trailer Oscar.  There is no such statuette for that category.  But, there should be.

There exists such skilled visionaries that the most mundane of movies are made to look absolutely dazzling and tantalizing through the wizardry of trailer editing.  Carefully selected images and scenes are edited together with well crafted voiceover copy so as to convince the viewer that he or she will not be satisfied with life until the advertised film is experienced in full.

Curse them and their mastery!

I gave away part of my life and soul on a meandering, dour piece of cinema called BLINDNESS.  It would have worked much better as a 10-minute short -- or perhaps a trailer.

It was, in fact, the trailer of the film that convinced me it was an artful undertaking with social commentary and the dogged persistence of a band of citizens determined to get to the bottom of evil-doing or some grand governmental (or corporate) conspiracy.  Woo-hoo! Sign me up!

Indeed,…sign me up for a film like that when someone makes it...because this was merely the product of the seed of a good idea.

I felt that the screenwriters were on the road to developing something, when they sorta gave up any grand aspirations and settled for merely puttering around within the confines of a partial conceit that they never nurtured into its full potential.

Blabbity-blab-blah.  (Yawn.)

Yet, when I cautioned people not to get suckered into the cinematic mire, it was brought to my attention the film was based on a well-received, award-winning novel.  That leads me to call on the time-tested cliché that suggests the book is better than the movie.  Sadly, however, I'm drained from any impulse to approach the book open-mindedly, because of my burdensome encounter with the movie.  

Desktop Surgery

I sometimes listen to audio books during my commute. And, since the Jeep's stereo plays cassettes and CDs, when I browse the library selection, I can choose from either format.

Recently, twelve tapes deep into an audio book, a garbled sound revealed an issue with the cassette spooling. Indeed, when I ejected the cassette, there was stretched and twisted tape. So, I put it on my operating table desk and opened it up for a little corrective tinkering. I did that more than once in the '80s to rescue an oblivion-bound cassette.

I think it was my familiarity with the process that encouraged me to jump right in and take care of the problem.

There was some odd time-travel-ish aspect to the tape surgery...like a souvenir from a bygone era.

I suppose these whippersnappers today may eventually find themselves reminiscing about rebooting their iPods.

A Long Day's Journey Into Yum

Recently, I soaked some black beans in water overnight, then piled them into a crock pot with a jar of salsa and some water. Let 'em slow-cook (on low) all day. Then, after they'd been in the refrigerator overnight, there was a certain creaminess around the beans that finely capture the spiciness of the salsa.

MMMmmmmm.

I reheated the beans, plopped dollops of them on tortilla chips, sprinkled with cheese, and slid them in the oven for a few minutes.* Once out of the oven, I've included a bit of sour cream and made many nacho meals out of this. They lasted a long time, and I was sad to see my supply get low. 







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*Perhaps not the most photogenic foodstuff, but righteously tasty. Feel the tasty!

A Man, A Plan, A Canal, Panama

I read a review of The Canal Builders when it was first published.

The book's author, Julie Greene, examines the workers who converged on Panama, displaced the earth, civil-engineered locks, and connected Atlantic waters with Pacific waters via a man-made artery through the Panamanian isthmus.

Aside from the fact that this is exactly the sort of thing that fascinates me, and its guarantee to conjure the oft'-quoted palindrome (see blog entry title), I have a more personal cause to read about the lives of the workers who made the canal a reality.  My paternal grandfather was among them.  He went to Panama to work as a telegrapher.

I love that.

My grandfather -- born in the 1880s -- died when I was around 8 years old.  I wish I had known him as an adult, because I think we would have had a strong connection.  He looked a bit like E. B. White.  And his physical similarity to one of my literary heroes has only served to heighten the myth that I've nurtured through the years.

When I first learned of the Panama connection, I was mesmerized by the notion of my grandfather working on the canal.  I conjured many fantasies (none of them based on any knowledgeable source) of what it might have been like for him.

This month marks the 122th anniversary of my grandfather's birth.  My dad was the youngest of his siblings, arriving later in my grandparents' lives.  And Dad was 44-years-old when I debuted on the planet.  So, the generations have been stretched out through the decades, ensuring that I have little insight and considerable curiosity about my grandfather's life.

Lone Star Life

One of my favorite recent discoveries is a PBS program originating out of Austin.  The Daytripper is a 30-minute show that highlights the opportunities for interesting and fun daytrips from the Austin area.  Granted, from out in East Texas, the destinations of the show could hardly be a jaunt in the confines of a day.  But, they are great to know about for future opportunities when out and about in Texas. 

The host, Chet Garner, is equal parts endearing and goofball.  Many episodes can be viewed on the website (linked above), and new installments are boradcast on Saturday mornings (for those watching PBS on KERA in Dallas).

The Daytripper recall a show from my youth, when I watched the earlier incarnations of what has become Texas Country Reporter, a human-interest news show that explores the backroads and backstories of fascinating people around the state of Texas.

There was the guy who built his home from a decommissioned missile silo in West Texas, the old barber in East Texas who's been clipping hair for decades and decades, the tasty eatery in Beaumont, the centenarian porter at a regional airport who still makes his way to work everyday and helps people with their luggage. Stuff like that.

The host, Bob Phillips, is personable -- and, for me, his distinctive voice (sounding like it is perpetually trapped mid-gulp) and inflections have become synonymous with these sorts of down-home segments.

A particularly fascinating episode profiled John Wells, a former fashion photographer from New York who has staked out a life for himself near Study Butte, Texas, just outside Big Bend National Park amidst the austere West Texas landscape, sometimes desolate, sometimes starkly beautiful, sometimes both.

There are those who can't fathom forsaking their shopping malls, conference rooms, office buildings, department stores, mega-multi-movie-plexes, and other so-called accoutrements of civilization. But, Wells instills a purposeful drive to reconnect with nature and the purity of a self-sustaining life.

It would seem, looking from the outside, that such an existence highlights both the boon and bane of solitude, occasionally conjuring its darker cousin, loneliness. But, some people are better suited for limited opportunities of face-to-face interaction. And Wells manages the tether of DSL to remain connected via the Internet.

He still exercises his photography skills, too, keeping his daily blog lively and documenting life around The Field Lab.

The Road to Helvetica

A buddy recently gave me a DVD of a documentary that I love: Helvetica. It is about the history and cultural impact of the seminal typeface.  And I dig the soundtrack, too. (El Ten Eleven.)

Typeface.  That's what we called it back in the day, when I was in college in the '80s.  I mean, I seldom used the word "font."  At least, not until I was more familiar with computers. 

These days, if conversational topics drift into college days, people always raise a quizzical eyebrow if I mention that my most difficult course was not chemistry or microbiology or theoretical physics (okay, I didn't take that last one...it just helped make my point).  The most difficult, absorbing class I took was called BASIC TYPE.

A designer drove to the university campus once a week, and for four hours each Tuesday evening, I did my best to impress -- or at least not offend.  We drew letters.  With nary a computer in the room.  We drew typefaces with pencils and worked to tighten hand skills, living for x-heights and serifs and descenders and such.

This was in the days when not everyone had a computer.  In fact, most people didn't.  And available computer programs didn't make typeface usage and design more accessible to the population.  If you wanted something, if you had a vision, you drew it.

Our first assignment was both specific and broad in its parameters.  We had to draw two boxes.  The border for each box had specific weight (or width), with the top and sides being different than the bottom border.  But, each box's border had different dimensions from the other box.  Inside the left box was a body part.  Inside the right box was a typeface.

Students asked for clarification:  "Do you want words?  Or just letters?"  "Should the body part relate to the word or typeface?"  "Does there need to be a physical resemblance between the body part and the letter?"

The instructor wouldn't say.  He simply explained that he wanted to see what we would do.

This is what I did.

My critique went okay when compared to the thrashing that many students received.  Two girls left the room crying.  Four people dropped the course.

The instructor told us that we had to have the skill, not just the will. 

I think he meant that just because you liked to doodle during your math lecture in high school didn't mean you should become an art major.  Or, more specifically, you may not have what it takes to make it.  Just because you liked the artsy crowd and the image of the crowd, you weren't automatically gifted with talent.

My first big project used Railroad Gothic.

I spent many, many hours each week hunched over my drafting table, leaning in close to the vellum to examine curves and edges and intimate areas of negative space. I was always very pleased that I didn't fail that class.  But, it did help me understand that perhaps my destiny wasn't to become a designer or professional illustrator.

Mark-ups of an early effort.

More mark-ups of a version with the candles in place

A reverse Photostat of the phrase.

Pathologies of Frustration in the Balance

This week, in The Guardian, Timothy Garton Ash draws notable comparison to the precarious events in Cairo's Tahrir Square with the pivotal moments of the Velvet Revolution.

Ash notes: "The Arab arc of crisis, from Morocco to Jordan, is Europe's near abroad." The migrated relatives of Egypt's revolutionaries have spent recent decades settling in Spain and France and England. If a revolution brings down Egyptian autocracy, a newly freed population can more easily mingle among the European lands and feed those economies and cultures.

However, Ash cautions that if the uprising fails, "then tens of millions of these young men and women will carry their pathologies of frustration across the sea, shaking Europe to its foundations."

Modernization and reform stand in opposition of autocratic and theocratic rule. An irate people stand in the streets, defy the curfew, and seek to shape the future of their nation. Meanwhile, I'm fretting over long-delayed yardwork, how to secure the latest personal technology, and whether I should go out for lunch or heat up that microwavable dinner.