Closing credits (2018)

A rainy New Year’s Eve. Still, 2018 ends with more warmth than 2017 did.

This is my 120th entry of the year. I’ve written ten entries each month.

For providing material to discuss, I again thank Karin, Jasper, and Ziva; my tutees; my blood relations; and Brianna and other in-laws.

Additionally, this year, I acknowledge:

The poets.

Boca Juniors and River Plate.

The Mormons, who, until mid-October, were very friendly to Karin & me. They must have then given up trying to convert us.

Brett Kavanaugh.

My dissertation adviser for – so far – allowing various prolongments.

The St. Joseph River for declining to flood our apartment complex.

The city of Austin.

Maj Sjöwall & Per Wahlöö for authoring the Martin Beck mysteries.

Aimee-Ffion Edwards for acting in four of the best screenworks I viewed this year:

• Skins (a lewd TV soap opera about Bristol’s teens; not for the faint of heart);
• Detectorists (a gentle sitcom – featuring the excellent Toby Jones – about rural, amateur metal detectorists; quite suitable for the faint of heart);
• Luther (a quasi-fantastical crime show starring Idris Elba; for the great of heart); and
• Queen & Country (the long-overdue, surprisingly un-cynical, cinematic continuation of John Boorman’s Hope and Glory).

I also thank the moviemakers of 1996.

And I thank our new church, which welcomed Karin & me during a rather turbulent period. We watched over the two- and three-year-olds during many services. Starting in the spring, we also wrote, printed out, and folded each week’s bulletin. (Mercifully, that task will soon be performed by a new secretary.) The most rewarding event each week was the adults’ Sunday School class. For authoring that class’s discussion guides, I heartily thank the late John Stott.

Finally: thanks to everyone who offered money and prayers on our behalf. Please pray for me to complete my degree soon. Karin & I long to get out of this rut in which we’ve been living.

The joy of getting, pt. 2

Karin & I went to four Christmas gatherings. All were relatively painless, and some were quite nice.

As mentioned a few entries ago, I participated in the gift exchange held by Karin’s mother’s family. I’d been assigned to buy gifts for Brianna. She’d asked for clothes and toys with decorations of Hufflepuff – her Harry Potter “house” – and of Bob’s Burgers, the TV show. My selections were very well-received: especially, the Bob’s Burgers-themed Clue game, which we all played after we finished eating the Christmas meal. (Brianna was the murderer, of course.)

Brianna also had drawn my name for the exchange. She used her $50 budget to order three books for me, all of them new, though I’d submitted a much longer wish list of used books. Two of the new books arrived in time for Christmas; one is still in the mail.

The three books are:

• An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro (not yet arrived);
• The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro; and
• Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.

Due to my puny haul, and out of pity, Karin bought me the last two of Sjöwall’s & Wahlöö’s police procedurals (used).

At the gathering of Karin’s dad’s family, I was given a book called A Journal for Jordan, the heartrending true story of a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq and the woman and child he left behind. This, apparently, is a “joke” gift that has been passed around between all the family members.

I also was given a t-shirt depicting Schrödinger’s cat:

The cat is a recurring topic of discussion in the TV sitcom The Big Bang Theory, which Karin’s dad’s family enjoys. I don’t watch that sitcom – it’s about nerds – but I do like cats and metaphysics (which is not the same discipline as physics). I talked to Karin’s dad’s family about this horrifying philosophical paper to show that I appreciated their gift.

1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 10: Beautiful girls

This movie takes place in the coldest, snowiest time of the year, in a town in the northeastern United States. The setting is not unlike those of It’s a Wonderful Life and the bleak novel Appointment in Samarra. Everyone knows everybody else; the hierarchies have long been established; very little goes on, and so the inhabitants drink a lot of alcohol and dabble in sexual and romantic intrigue.

The most troubling flirtation is the one between Marty (Natalie Portman), a precocious thirteen-year-old, and Willie (Timothy Hutton), who’s twenty-nine and has returned to the town after many years in the big city. Marty’s and Willie’s scenes are meant to be charming, but some viewers may well be disgusted by them. The obvious contrast is with the novel Lolita, in which it’s clear that the teenaged character’s flirtatiousness is a projection of the adult narrator’s warped point of view. Is anything like this true of Marty’s and Willie’s scenes in Beautiful Girls? It would seem not.

Whether or not the movie errs in failing to condemn a grown man’s attraction to a thirteen-year-old, its focus is upon a different problem, which is that Willie is insufficiently committed to the grown woman with whom he’s in a long-term relationship. This is a problem that he shares with several other male characters.

They include Tommy (Matt Dillon) and Paul (Michael Rapaport), who are involved with Sharon (Mira Sorvino) and Jan (Martha Plimpton), respectively. Tommy distracts himself from Sharon by continuing a long, stale affair with rich housewife Darian (Lauren Holly). Paul has fallen out with Jan because he idealizes women in a way encouraged by certain magazines. The movie could have been called “Distracted Men,” though that title wouldn’t have sold as many tickets as “Beautiful Girls.”

I list all these actors because their casting is crucial. No one plays against type. Hutton (Ordinary People) plays a starry-eyed idealist on the verge of self-destruction. Portman, previously of Léon: The Professional, seems sophisticated beyond her years. (Now that the years have caught up with her, is she as effective an actress?) Dillon, as in Drugstore Cowboy, A Kiss Before Dying, and Wild Things, plays an intelligent hunk trapped in a soul-crushing rut; Holly (Dumb and Dumber) plays a character who’s rich, glamorous, and accustomed to enjoying men’s attention. Rapaport and Plimpton look less gorgeous than the other actors but display incisive charisma. This is even truer of Rosie O’Donnell, whose task is to recite basic feminist wisdom.

Earlier I mentioned It’s a Wonderful Life and Appointment in Samarra – one story that ends well and another that ends badly. So, then: which way does this movie go? Do these people get better or worse? Is this movie nasty or nice?

From the beginning, there’s no question that it’s a very nice, very jolly movie. For all their misdeeds, the characters exhibit warmth and camaraderie, as in this poster – which arranges the cast around Andera (Uma Thurman), the movie’s most desirable “girl”:

Other characters, hitherto unmentioned, add to this camaraderie. They’ve more or less figured out life; they serve as beacons to those who are still wandering. A lot of caring goes on in this movie.

As Roger Ebert puts it:

What’s nicest about the film is the way it treasures the good feelings people can have for one another. They emerge most tenderly in the friendship between Willie and the 13-year-old girl.

They have crushes on each other for essentially idealistic reasons (each projects a simplicity and perfection that may not be there), and yet they draw apart, ever so tactfully, because they are sensible enough to know that it’s the right thing to do.

Their relationship is mirrored in all of the others, which are all about idealism and its disappointments. The men insist that women correspond to some sort of universal ideal, and the women sometimes blame themselves when they cannot. But somehow, doggedly, true love teaches its lesson, which is that you can fall in love with an ideal, but you can only be in love with a human being.

The townspeople are rough around the edges, as illustrated in scenes of misbehavior involving snowplows. Piling up snow in front of a former girlfriend’s garage is not a gentlemanly thing to do. But snow is, at least, clean; it can be cleared away; and, eventually, it will melt. This movie exhibits the comedic faith that wrongs are impermanent, that they can be undone.

The gynecologist’s; Milkman; Silver Blaze

I went with Karin to her gynecological exam. A lot of men were there with their WAGs. They looked as if they absolutely did not want to be there. I’m sure I looked the same. On the whole, though, the experience wasn’t too bad (from a spectator’s perspective). The doctor was very nice. “Girl power” music – Katy Perry, etc. – was piped into every room.

Also feminine is the newest Man Booker Prize-winning novel, Milkman by Anna Burns. It offers a taxonomy of men. Being categorized unnerves me as a masculine reader. The book is set in a nationally and religiously divided city in Northern Ireland, where the constant fighting allows men to behave in manly ways and turns the women into collateral damage. But I’m sure the narrator, “middle sister,” will overcome her powerlessness and invisibilty (or, rather, her undesired visibility). She’s a voracious reader, for one thing, which means she’s smarter than the other characters, especially the men (or is she?). And she’s quite a runner, which means she’s physically tough.

Inspired by “middle sister,” I rode Silver Blaze, the bike, yesterday, which was not so painful as when I’d try to run after months of inactivity. I endured moments after the bike ride when I was unable to stand, but I suffered no blistering, no aching of joints. Alas, I didn’t burn nearly as many calories as when I used to run, but one must begin somewhere.

The vanilla method

Karin took two days off from work, and so we did quite a lot of shopping and appointment keeping.

At a thrift store, I bought eleven books.

We took Jasper to the vet’s for a follow-up appointment. When we brought him home, little Ziva again attacked him; but this time, we’d been advised by the vet to put vanilla on Ziva’s nose so that she wouldn’t smell Jasper’s oddness.

The tactic succeeded after three applications of vanilla. The kitties were kind to each other for the rest of the evening.

Today, Karin went to a friend’s house to bake cookies, and I stayed at home to read whatever I could about U.S. Senator and presidential aspirant Cory Booker (a New Jersey Democrat).

Liberal-leaning people of my age in South Bend are gung-ho about our mayor, Peter Buttigieg, whose forthcoming book depicts him rolling up his sleeves to repair our city (as if he himself were going to fill in the potholes). They want him to run for President. And, indeed, he’s just announced that he won’t seek mayoral reelection; it’s presumed he’ll aim higher.

I don’t know if I’d want Buttigieg or Booker to be the next U.S. President. If I were talking to Hank Hill, he’d tell me that both of these guys have too much “flash.” (I’d much rather have a leader like Bertie of The King’s Speech, which Karin & I watched last night: one who appreciates the burden of leadership well enough to stammer when confronted with it.) But it strikes me that Buttigieg and Booker are very alike with respect to ideology (centrist liberalism), formative background (well-to-do middle class; Ivy League; Oxford), and political experience (largely mayoral); only, under each category, Booker has the better credentials.

So, I say to my South Bend friends (if any of you read this): if you like Buttigieg, support Booker instead.

Otherwise, cast your net elsewhere.

(See, that’s the trouble with having studied moral philosophy: one finds oneself unable to make categorical recommendations; one can only make conditional ones. Vanilla. Earlier today, I was rereading Luther’s On the Bondage of the Will, which was in a collection I’d bought at the thrift store, and Luther was upbraiding Erasmus for exhibiting the same tendency, i.e., for not being unconditionally assertive. I don’t think Luther and I would have gotten along.)

December’s poem

“Descriptive Jottings of London”:

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As I stood upon London Bridge and viewed the mighty throng / Of thousands of people in cabs and ’busses rapidly whirling along, / All furiously driving to and fro, / Up one street and down another as quick as they could go:

Then I was struck with the discordant sound of human voices there, / Which seemed to me like wild geese cackling in the air: / And the river Thames is a most beautiful sight, / To see the steamers sailing upon it by day and by night.

And the Tower of London is most gloomy to behold, / And the crown of England lies there, begemmed with precious stones and gold; / King Henry the Sixth was murdered there by the Duke of Glo’ster, / And when he killed him with his sword he called him an impostor.

St. Paul’s Cathedral is the finest building that ever I did see, / There’s no building can surpass it in the city of Dundee, / Because it’s magnificent to behold, / With its beautiful dome and spire glittering like gold.

And as for Nelson’s Monument that stands in Trafalgar Square, / It is a most stately monument I most solemnly declare, / And towering defiantly very high, / Which arrests strangers’ attention while passing by.

Then there’s two beautiful water-fountains spouting up very high, / Where the weary traveller can drink when he feels dry; / And at the foot of the monument there’s three bronze lions in grand array, / Enough to make the stranger’s heart throb with dismay.

Then there’s Mr Spurgeon, a great preacher, which no one dare gainsay, / I went to hear him preach on the Sabbath-day, / And he made my heart feel light and gay, / When I heard him preach and pray.

And the Tabernacle was crowded from ceiling to floor, / And many were standing outside the door; / He is an eloquent preacher I honestly declare, / And I was struck with admiration as on him I did stare.

Then there’s Petticoat Lane I venture to say, / It’s a wonderful place on the Sabbath-day; / There wearing-apparel can be bought to suit the young or old, / For the ready cash, silver, coppers, or gold.

Oh! mighty city of London! you are wonderful to see, / And thy beauties no doubt fill the tourist’s heart with glee; / But during my short stay, and while wandering there, / Mr Spurgeon was the only man I heard speaking proper English I do declare.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

(William McGonagall)

A dismal realization

It’s exam week at IUSB. My vacation will begin on Saturday.

Today, I worked for just two hours. All my appointments with college students were canceled. I only tutored my middle school student. (She’s in the eighth grade.)

Reviewing mathematics with her, I realized that she had no understanding of percentages.

First, she couldn’t tell me what percentage is left over if 15% is subtracted from the whole.

Then, she couldn’t tell me that 15/100 = 15%.

It was one of the most dismaying moments of my tutoring career.

La final del mundo, pt. 3

Today in Madrid, Boca Juniors and River Plate finished playing the Copa Libertadores. I watched the game with Stephen, on Telemundo.

It was a great contest. The two teams scored four golazos.

These were some of the highlights.

The joy of getting

This season, I’ve busied myself for many hours fashioning my Christmas wish lists.

One list is for my siblings’ gift exchange. I’ve suggested four books that my designated giver may choose to buy for me. The spending limit for all the books together is $20.

The other list pertains to the gift exchange of Karin’s mother’s family. For this exchange, each giver’s spending limit is $50, and I’ve requested ten books.

(My in-laws on Karin’s father’s side provide no lists; everyone haphazardly buys for everyone.)

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The task of list making requires great care.

Items may not be placed on more than one list, and some that are all right for one exchange may be inappropriate for the other.

ISBNs must be specified. For some books, it’s important to include the caveat “new” or “used.” Used copies must meet certain conditions (e.g., spinal intactness).

At least, I feel I must spell this out for several of my in-laws. Such is my condescending attitude toward those who aren’t my blood relations. (I trust my own siblings to be familiar with the requirements of book buying.)

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So far, two of my requests have arrived in the mail: Natsume Sōseki’s The Gate and Crawford Elder’s Real Natures and Familiar Objects (a book of metaphysics, much cheaper now than when it was first published thirteen years ago).

I also am grateful for two unsolicited volumes: Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a copy of which was discarded by the library at IUSB; and the second edition of The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, edited by Robert Audi, discarded by the tutoring department.

I lick my chops, anticipating further bounty.

Poor Jasper

We took Jasper to the vet’s for the second time in about a month. … He howled all the time in the car. … At the vet’s, he hunched up his shoulders, puffed his fur out, and kept his ears at half-mast (three bad signs). … Of course, it didn’t comfort him that he had to get his shots. … He weighed an ounce more than he’d weighed during the previous visit, probably because this morning he’d eaten a chicken breast out of the trash. … When he arrived back at home, Ziva attacked him (apparently, this is common in multi-cat households. It happens because the returning cat smells awfully weird, having secreted so many stress chemicals). … She kept on attacking Jasper for several hours. … Karin tried distracting them both with some catnip, but Ziva still wouldn’t leave Jasper alone. … Now, at last, she’s ignoring him.

The poor beastie. … He hadn’t even wanted to go to the vet’s, in the first place.

1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 9: Mulholland Falls

Note: Please read the updates to the previous entry if you haven’t already done so.

And now, this month’s movie review.

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Assembled into a whole, Mulholland Falls is nothing special, but some of its parts are compelling, even poetic. In its best passages, the movie resembles Night Moves (1975). Both movies are about tough but thoroughly urbanized detectives who are lured away from Los Angeles into weird tracts of wilderness.

(The same is arguably true of Chinatown. In that movie, however, the plot’s spiritual center remains in Los Angeles. In Mulholland Falls and Night Moves, the spiritual center is out in the middle of nowhere.)

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The worst scenes of Mulholland Falls wallow in domesticity. Melanie Griffith – memorable for her portrayal of a teenaged runaway in Night Moves – is cast in Mulholland Falls as the wife of the main detective, played by Nick Nolte. Her role is to be sinless (though she does smoke). This is not what Griffith excels at. One wonders if she was included simply because of her association with the earlier movie.

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A slightly more interesting female character is the murder victim, played by Jennifer Connelly. She is revealed, in a series of flashbacks, to have been a warm-hearted prostitute. As the main story begins, her crushed body is discovered in a field where a new housing development is being built. Most of her bones have been broken. Her limbs are jelly-like.

This is the first interesting development. Why is this corpse in such an unusual state?

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Investigating the Connelly character’s murder, four detectives of the L.A.P.D. follow a lead out into the desert. They arrive at a test site for atomic bombs.

The landscape has certain bizarre features. Its keepers, military minions, exhibit even bizarrer behavior.

The strangest person of all is their leader, General Timms, played by John Malkovich. This actor – often, in my view, miscast – is perfectly suited for his role in Mulholland Falls. His quaint flamboyance is disconcertingly out of step with the clean-cut conventionality of his subordinates.

People are mostly empty space, he tells the Nolte character. Only the oddities of physics keep them from falling through the floor.

Nolte’s detective has little use for this point of view. He recalls the dead woman: all too solid, with crushed bones.

And yet there is something ephemeral about their mission. In one scene out in the desert, the Nolte character and his fellow detectives stand on the edge of an enormous hole. Here, evidently, the ground has disappeared.

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In another scene, the detectives sit inside a beach house, guarding a suspect. They’re unnerved by the rhythm of the ocean waves. They’d be comforted to hear traffic noises instead.

Suddenly, an officer keels over, dead. Solid bullets rip through walls that have been providing merely illusory protection. The detectives engage in a gunfight with unseen foe. When the dust settles, their suspect has disappeared, as if into thin air.

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In such movies as these, there’s usually just one detective: a knight-errant. In this movie, the four detectives stick together. This benefits certain scenes. When the detectives look down into the gaping hole in the desert, it’s better that there are several of them to comment on it; they’re like a questing fellowship or a party of explorers. But in other scenes, the surplus of detectives is distracting.

Historically, mid-century Los Angeles was protected by a special police posse, the Hat Squad, that used strongarm tactics to discourage organized criminals from operating in that city. (Such policing would be depicted with considerably sharper focus one year later, in the great L.A. Confidential.) One of the ironies of Mulholland Falls is that the practitioners of strongarm tactics are themselves subjected to them outside of their own jurisdictions.

There are other tantalizing hints about the operations of the L.A.P.D. The detectives’ slimy boss, the always watchable Bruce Dern, appears for one glorious little scene. I wish the movie had given him a larger part. But so it goes with Mulholland Falls. There are some fine elements, but they aren’t woven together into a satisfying whole.

The same is true of the movie’s score, composed by Dave Grusin (whom I admire for composing the score for Lucas). Some of its passages are not very good, and the whole is a bit of a mess. But certain parts of it are lovely.

La final del mundo, pt. 2

Today, CONMEBOL ruled that the game between Boca Juniors and River Plate should be played on December 8 or 9 – and not in Argentina.

And so, one year early, CONMEBOL is achieving its goal of staging the Copa Libertadores final in a neutral venue.

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It’s now publicly established that Boca’s president has been lobbying for River to be disqualified and for the title to be awarded to Boca by default.

In response, River’s president has expressed shock at this betrayal.

So much for collegiality.

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Of course, a few years ago, Boca was disqualified from the Copa Libertadores because its fans misbehaved against River. But on that occasion, the misbehavior occurred (1) during an earlier round rather than during the final, and (2) inside Boca’s stadium rather than on a public highway.

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I, personally, would welcome River’s disqualification.

Not as eye-for-an-eye retribution. The earlier incident and this year’s are too dissimilar.

And not as a deterrent against future fan violence, either. It’s doubtful whether previous deterrent measures in Argentina have been very effective.

No, in this case, I think the expressivist or reprobative justification of punishment holds the greatest promise. The punishment would be justifiable as an expression of society’s disapproval of the fans’ misdeeds.

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This theory of punishment also would be compatible with the imposition of some lesser (but still significant) penalty against River. For example, River’s home game might be played in an empty stadium.

I don’t think that staging the game in front of spectators in a neutral stadium would adequately express reprobation, however.

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Update, Thursday: CONMEBOL has decided that the game will be played on December 9 – in Madrid.

Madrid.

MADRID.

Madrid, Spain. The one in Europe.

First, CONMEBOL plotted to remove South America’s nations tournament (the Copa América) from South America, and now it’s doing the same thing with South America’s main club tournament.

Stephen says: “The Copa LIBERTADORES final will be in … Spain?”

(Shakes head.)

“Back to the colonizadores.”

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Update, Friday: River Plate and Boca Juniors have both rejected CONMEBOL’s ruling.

River will appeal its stadium ban. The current ruling moves this year’s final game away from River’s stadium. It also bans the stadium from hosting spectators during its next two CONMEBOL tournament games.

I’m not sure to whom River will direct its appeal – perhaps to the dreaded Tribunal arbitral du sport (TAS).

Boca has announced that it plans to appeal to the TAS after its initial appeal to CONMEBOL is rejected. Boca will argue that River should be expulsed from this year’s Copa Libertadores.

My previous discussion of this case was philosophic and casuistic. Boca, helpfully, has now communicated which of CONMEBOL’s disciplinary regulations it will cite in its appeal.

I think that much will hinge upon article 8.2:

Las Asociaciones Miembro y clubes son responsables de la seguridad y del orden tanto en el interior como en las inmediaciones del estadio, antes, durante y después del partido del cual sean anfitriones u organizadores. Esta responsabilidad se extiende a todos los incidentes que de cualquier naturaleza pudieran suceder, encontrándose por ello expuestos a la imposición de las sanciones disciplinarias y cumplimiento de las órdenes e instrucciones que pudieran adoptarse por los órganos judiciales.

[Translation, with key phrases italicized:] Member associations and clubs are responsible for security and order – inside and in the immediate vicinity of the stadium – before, during, and after the game which they host or organize. This responsibility extends itself to all incidents that might occur, of whatever nature. Member associations and clubs thereby find themselves exposed to the imposition of disciplinary sanctions and to compliance with the orders and instructions adopted by judicial organs.

Why does this rule refer to “member associations?” In this case, the pertinent association is the Argentine Football Association (AFA). Should the rule be interpreted as implying that the AFA and River are jointly responsible for what occurred? Probably not. The rule probably means that member associations are responsible for the security and order of the games that they host that don’t involve club teams.

More contentious will be what counts as the “immediate vicinity” of the stadium. The expression is vague. Over how many streets did River’s responsibility extend? Did the misbehavior occur inside or outside the club’s geographic area of responsibility? These questions reinvite casuistic interpretation, which isn’t especially likely to favor Boca, since, in the earlier case in which Boca was disqualified and River benefited, the misdeeds were performed inside the stadium.

The same interpretive problem arises with respect to article 13.2.f, which refers to “the stadium and its surroundings.”

Article 18.1 details the various penalties that may be imposed. However, it leaves the choice of penalty up to CONMEBOL. Here, too, Boca must make a casuistic argument for the imposition of a severe penalty. And in fact, in the last paragraph of its communiqué, Boca does insist that CONMEBOL’s rules should “be applied to all clubs equally.” Presumably, the club has in mind the ruling that was brought against it a few years ago which disqualified it from that edition of the Copa Libertadores.

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No matter how the dispute between the clubs should turn out, it’s sad that they aren’t uniting to protest the tourney’s removal to Spain, though they both oppose it.

La final del mundo

Today, I went to Stephen’s apartment to watch the last game of the Copa Libertadores – which, this year, is called “La final del mundo” by the Argentinian press, since the participants are the two most popular Argentinian clubs, River Plate and Boca Juniors. Stephen & Edoarda arrived at the apartment exactly when I did, just before the scheduled kickoff time. They’d rushed over from Chicago, into which they’d flown from Austin, where they’d spent Thanksgiving.

Well, they needn’t have hurried. Like the previous game, this one was postponed. Some fans of River Plate had thrown rocks at Boca Juniors’s team bus, breaking a window. Allegedly, the glass had cut one of Boca’s players in the eye, and his injury had been aggravated by teargas that the police had discharged.

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And so we watched for two and half hours while the Argentinian broadcasters speculated whether the game would be played today or postponed until tomorrow.

The fans remained inside the stadium.

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The air was thick with rumor. At first, Boca’s players were said to be eating steak sandwiches in their locker room, which suggested that they didn’t expect to play.

But then the kickoff was rescheduled for a slightly later hour. Fernando Gago and Carlos Tévez – Boca’s two most famous players – came out of the locker room to plead for a longer postponement.

The clubs’ presidents were said to be holding meetings with the presidents of FIFA and CONMEBOL (the South American footballing confederation). If they intended to postpone the game until the next day, why were they waiting so long to do so? Why were they allowing the fans to continue suffering inside the stadium?

Was Boca’s president urging River’s disqualification? Was he holding out for some lesser penalty, at least, such as a ban against River’s spectators?

It was suggested that the Boca player’s injury was less severe than the team was claiming. Yes, he’d been transferred to a clinic; yes, photos had been released of him wearing a gigantic bandage over one eye. Still, it was possible that he was feigning, as other players notoriously had done.

Moreover – and what was considered to be most ominous – CONMEBOL’s officiating doctor had refused to confirm the severity of the injury. (It was noted, however, that this doctor wasn’t an ophthalmologist.)

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Finally, the presidents agreed to hold the game the next afternoon. The fans left the stadium.

The president of CONMEBOL praised the collegiality of the two club presidents. He disavowed knowledge of the injured player’s precise medical state.

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It must be said that the main beneficiary of this scandal is CONMEBOL, which hopes to move the tourney’s final round away from the participants’ home stadiums and into neutral cities that would submit hosting bids.

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Update, Sunday: The game has been postponed again. The presidents are to meet on Tuesday, at CONMEBOL’s headquarters in Paraguay, to negotiate further.

Panama vs. Ecuador; a “world power”; Rams vs. Chiefs

We achieved another victory in a “friendly” match. These were the highlights.

After playing an indifferent first half, we took the lead. Our Panamanian hosts scored a tying goal in the 85th minute, but Énner Valencia scored our winning goal in the 88th, dribbling past several defenders as he’d done against Peru.

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Yesterday, it was announced that Ecuador had scheduled a match against a “world power.”

(This is an example of how our national team’s Facebook page has perfected the art of click-baiting. “World power” lends itself to more than one interpretation.)

Of the responses on Facebook, this was my favorite:

Potencia mundial estos tarrineros HP más juega el aucas q EEUU.

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Also worth noting: the Chiefs and the Rams – each of which, before this weekend, had a regular-season record of nine wins and one loss – staged an all-time NFL classic last night.

These were the highlights.

This is some analysis.

A clockwork dove

Ecuador played against Peru, in Lima. It was just a “friendly” match. But Ecuador and Peru are rivals, and Ecuador had been playing dismally for many months, and the Peruvians were agrandados. (There’d been some nonsense in the press about “la paloma mecánica,” i.e., the Clockwork Dove).

The Ecuadorians committed their usual number of defensive errors. Fortunately, the line judges were sharp, and they made several close, correct offsides calls that kept Peru off the scoreboard. Then, in the second half, Énner Valencia shredded the Peruvian defense, helping Ecuador to convert two goals.

These were the highlights.

It was Ecuador’s first victory in two years against South American opposition.

November’s poem

… is called “Sapphics.”

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Exquisite torment, dainty Mrs. Hargreaves / Trips down the High Street, slaying hearts a-plenty; / Stricken and doomed are all who meet her eye-shots! /
Bar Mr. Hargreaves.

Grocers a-tremble bash their brassy scales down, / Careless of weight and hacking cheese regardless; / Postmen shoot letters in the nearest ashcan, /
Dogs dance in circles.

Leaving their meters, gas inspectors gallop, / Water Board men cease cutting off the water; / Florists are strewing inexpensive posies /
In Beauty’s pathway.

“O cruel fair!” groan butchers at their chopping, / “Vive la belle Hargreaves!” howls a pallid milkman; / Even the Vicar shades his eyes and mutters: /
“O dea certe.”

Back to “Balmoral” trips the goddess lightly; / Night comes at length, and Mr. Hargreaves with it, / Casting his bowler glumly on the sideboard: /
“Gimme my dinner.”

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

(D.B. Wyndham Lewis)

A different season; Karin’s car; church bulletin woes; advice for choosing a publisher

The snow and the cold have arrived in South Bend. Water appears to have seeped into the strut tubing of Karin’s car, making the car fly high into the air whenever it hits the tiniest bump, making it undrivable. (This is what I’m told; I understand nothing.) Though we’re still waiting for the mechanic to complete his diagnosis, it looks like we’ll have to shell out a lot of money one way or another. Meanwhile, we’re borrowing a spare car from my parents.

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Carless last Saturday night, Karin & I put off printing out the church’s bulletin. The following morning, we arrived at the church a good while before the service, but our pastor already had edited the bulletin and printed it out.

His intentions were good. Nevertheless, he neglected to update certain information.

In Sunday school, I watched the little old ladies cackle over the mistake.

“It wasn’t my fault,” I told them.

And so I threw the pastor to the wolves.

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This is the front cover of a book recently published by Oxford University Press:

The title has two words that begin with Th. In one of the words, the T and the h are joined together with a ligature; in the other, they are not.

Avoid publishing with Oxford University Press!

Ubaldo Aquino

… has received his dream assignment.

A Paraguayan referee, Aquino oversaw many high-profile South American contests in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In 1999, I watched him give out two penalty kicks and two red cards in the final game of the Copa Libertadores, as well as five penalty kicks in a single Copa América game.

All these years later, he’s in charge of the video refereeing system (VAR) for the final round of the Copa Libertadores.

Stephen and I watched the first leg today. (It was postponed from yesterday because of heavy rain in Buenos Aires.) Boca Juniors and River Plate drew 2–2 in the Bombonera. There were no expulsions or penalty kicks. One player tumbled in the box and drew the “VAR” sign in the air with his hands, but Aquino withheld his counsel, and the field referee gave the player a yellow card.

The concluding leg will be played two weekends from now in River Plate’s stadium.

Some remarks upon the recent occasion of my birthday

I thank those who, via Facebook, wished me well upon my birthday, which also is Guy Fawkes Day (or Bonfire Night) and therefore easy to remember.

I especially thank my cousin Andrew for posting a video of our childhood. It received many “likes” and comments. It shows the now-demolished house in Esmeraldas where my family used to live.

I rebuke the as-yet unidentified person who noticed Facebook’s announcement of my birthday and decided to “unfriend” me.

However, I thank those who sent cards and money. I used the money to buy a book about modern art, which was on sale at Barnes & Noble. It appears to be the sort of book that presents each artist and movement in its best light.

I hope to also buy this new book about C.S. Lewis’s philosophy.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I haven’t yet checked today’s electoral results. I might comment on them in the future.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

It occurs to me that From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, published in 1967, is an urbanized retelling of Walkabout (1959): hence, its fountain-bath episode.

A messed-up world

Tonight, Karin and I watched The Big Lebowski. … And right now, as I type this, I’m listening to one of its best songs: “Gnomus,” from Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

This week, I had an especially good session with my eighth-grade tutee. We discussed the religious differences among Britain’s thirteen North American colonies. This required me to explain the relationship between being a Puritan and being a Protestant, which necessitated a survey of the Reformation.

First, I explained about Lutherans (led by Martin Luther) and Calvinists (led by John Calvin). “And then,” I said, “the English church also split away from the Roman Catholic church. This was so that King Henry VIII could divorce his wife.”

“That’s messed up!”

“Yes.”

“Who was the leader of that church?”

“King Henry VIII. He also cut off some of his wives’ heads.”

“That’s messed up!”

“Yes.”

Then, I explained how Puritans and Quakers, among others, emerged from the Church of England.

“The Quakers settled in Pennsylvania. They allowed other Christians to settle in Pennsylvania, too.”

“Were different kinds of people allowed to settle in the other colonies?”

“Not all the colonies permitted more than one kind of Christian group. The Puritans kept Massachusetts pretty much just for the Puritans.”

“That’s messed up!”

“Yes.”

Then, we went over Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart” – line by line, just about, because my tutee didn’t understand a lot of the vocabulary.

As she grasped the meaning of each sentence, she exclaimed: “That’s messed up!”

But I had trouble getting her to finish reading the story.

When she told me she’d gotten to the end, I asked her how the narrator had killed the old man.

“I don’t know.”

So we checked the relevant passage, and I told her what its words meant. “So,” I explained, “the narrator held the bed against the old man’s face until he couldn’t breathe anymore.”

“That’s messed up!”

“All right, now: where did the narrator hide the body?”

“I don’t know.”

For someone so taken with the messed-upness of the world in general, and of the story in particular, my tutee was remarkably incurious about the story’s major plot points.

Which, I thought, was a little messed up.

1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 8: Scream

Tonight is Halloween, and so this month’s essay is about Dead Teenager movies in general and Scream in particular.

Though it came out in 1996, Scream seems to belong to the later 1990s or early 2000s. Surely this is because of its many sequels, imitators, and parodies.

I’m not an authority on Dead Teenager movies. I haven’t seen very many of them, and my understanding of the genre must be old-fashioned. Nevertheless, I’m going to present my view of its artistic merits and limitations.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The theme of a Dead Teenager movie is punishment. Gruesome death is meted out for misdeeds.

Misdeeds in a Dead Teenager movie may be terrible or innocuous. If they’re innocuous, then the punishment is for sin as such.

Thus, a Dead Teenager movie is a like a morality play.

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This interpretive framework is more flexible than may initially appear. Consider that it accommodates:

(1) The terrifying It Follows – the best Dead Teenager movie of recent years – although, in that movie, there’s no singular punisher. (It Follows is more like Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Bottle Imp” than like a paradigmatic “slasher” tale, e.g., Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None.)

(2) The Virgin Suicides, in which teenagers punish their parents by punishing themselves.

Scream follows the traditional “slasher” pattern.

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The theme of punishing teenagers is especially urgent to those obsessed with the niceties of teen conduct – I mean, the teenagers themselves. It’s less important to those who’ve outgrown that stage of life. We forgive a person’s youthful acts once we notice that he or she has learned to behave like an adult.

Whenever I view the scything down of a movie teenager, I lament the prematurity of it. I regret that this person never will have the chance to outgrow the teen stage. To my adult eyes, it matters little whether, in that moment, the teenager deserves to be butchered with a knife (or crushed by a garage door, or impaled upon a fence).

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

So, I think that the Dead Teenager genre is, at best, compelling to a teenaged (or teen-minded) audience – whose members probably shouldn’t be watching the sex and violence anyway. And if a certain movie is no better than a fine specimen of that genre – which is the usual assessment of Scream – then it’s subject to the same criticism.

All right: I’ve lowered Scream down into a hole. Now, I’ll try to lift it out.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Scream is thought to have occassioned a paradigm shift for the Dead Teenager genre. It’s often noted that the teenagers in Scream are well-versed in horror-movie conventions. They’ve all seen Halloween, Friday the 13th, and A Nightmare on Elm Street countless times. Thus they know which characters in their own social circle “deserve” to be killed and which “deserve” to be spared.

That is, unlike their cinematic forerunners, they’re able to apply the earlier movies’ lessons to their own lives.

(The guru in Scream who articulates much of the horror-movie “wisdom” is a geeky video store clerk. But the other characters share his worldview. All judge their lives by the same horror-movie laws.)

Ever since Scream was released, movies have depicted teenagers as living, breathing encyclopedias of popular culture. And this depiction is accurate. I don’t know to what extent Scream helped to make teenagers this way; maybe it just documented something already in full bloom. Indisputably, though, other movies followed Scream in depicting teenagers as culturally hyperaware.

Scream is hardly the first relentlessly allusive screenwork. Other examples from the same decade include The Simpsons and the movies of Quentin Tarantino. In those works, however, the allusiveness is ornamental (or else it’s the whole point, which makes the work not much different from a quiz show). Scream’s allusiveness has a more interesting purpose. Its teenagers cite previous horror movies in the manner of Puritans citing the Bible, as if those movies were sources of practical wisdom. Pop culture and, especially, recent horror movies are what make up these teenagers’ canon.

And this is the crucial fact that makes Scream more than an exercise in a largely irrelevant genre. Scream is a commentary on the flaw that defines teenaged immaturity, which is this:

Teenagers, despite their lack of experience, are supremely confident in the “wisdom” they glean from the culture in their immediate vicinity.

This flaw is imperceptible to teenagers. Only adults can see it.

Why do the teenagers in Scream kill and die?

Because horror movies tell them to.

Why do they obey the horror movies?

Because they haven’t lived long enough to acquire wisdom anywhere else (and, at this stage, their parents seem useless to them as sources of wisdom).

Nor, in their youthful zeal, are the teenagers able to question whether horror movies contain all the wisdom there is.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

One character in Scream is not like the others. This is Dewey (David Arquette), the twenty-four-year-old deputy sheriff. Dewey is shy and self-effacing. He’s no genius. He makes mistakes. He’s barely an adult, as he repeatedly points out.

But compared to the teenagers, he’s a model of clear-headedness.

Another character – Casey Becker, played by Drew Barrymore – is a cutie-pie brimming with teenaged zest.

A lesser Dead Teenager movie would have made Casey its heroine. But, as we all know, Scream disposes of her after just one scene.

Dodgers 3, Red Sox 2

Last night, Karin & I watched the first half of Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca. Then we turned it off, agreeing to save the rest for later. We were tired, and we wanted to see what was happening in Game 3 of the World Series.

The Dodgers and Red Sox were tied with one regular inning to go. We decided to watch the rest of the game. (It was about eleven o’clock.)

Ha! The game went into its tenth, eleventh, and twelfth innings. The managers made moves and countermoves. Runners populated the bases but were stranded by gritty pitching.

Long after midnight, Karin went to bed.

The thirteenth inning was wild. Each team committed a blunder that allowed the other to score. The game was still tied at the beginning of the fourteenth inning.

Then, the quality of play worsened. Batters stopped trying to get on base: they swung hard at every pitch, hoping to quickly finish the contest. There were many flyouts and strikeouts. At the end of the seventeenth inning, I decided that nothing of interest would follow, and I went to bed. It was after 3:00am.

Sure enough, the Red Sox failed to reach first base in the top of the eighteenth, and the Dodgers then won by hitting a leadoff home run. It had been the longest game in World Series history – the equivalent of two games, inning-wise; and, time-wise, longer than the entire World Series of 1939. I’d watched half of it.

As I type, the teams are tied in Game 4. It’s the top of the ninth. …

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Update: The Red Sox scored five runs in the top of the ninth.

Update: The Dodgers managed just three more runs.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Update (Sunday): The Red Sox won Game 5 and clinched the World Series.

Woes

Most days, my students drop by unannounced, and I tutor them in the order in which they arrive. On Wednesdays, though, I tutor them by appointment. The disadvantage of the “by appointment” system is that I don’t get paid if a student cancels thirty minutes before the starting-time. (Moreover, when a student misses an appointment without canceling, I receive payment only for the first thirty minutes of the non-tutorial.)

Today, I met with one student at ten o’clock and with another at eleven o’clock. I worked with each student for one hour. Then I had lunch. All of that was OK.

Then, a student missed her one-o’clock appointment (she overslept, she later told me in an email). I obtained credit for thirty minutes of work. Also, because this was her second unexcused absence, I canceled her privilege to continue making tutoring appointments.

At 1:15, another student canceled her 2:00–4:00 appointment due to illness. At 3:30, the next student canceled his 4:05 appointment. (More illness – “the runs.”) And a little after 5:00, the last student called to reschedule her appointment (she’d had a workplace emergency).

So, although I was at the job longer than seven hours, I earned payment for about 2.75 of them.

It was similar two weeks ago. Wednesdays are generally pretty bad.

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Also, tonight, Elders Johnathon and Richard canceled the supper they were supposed to cook for us.

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Yesterday was pretty awful, too. I had to miss work for the draining of a trichilemmal cyst on the back of my neck. (If you want to see some disgusting photos, perform a Google search for the word “cyst”; my own cyst was much handsomer than those depicted.) The procedure hurt like hell. Afterward, I had to wear a very uncomfortable bandage.

When my surgery was over, I wasted much time at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. I went there to update my ID card. After a long wait, my number was called, but I was told I’d failed to meet certain requirements for my objective.

During the wait, I reread a good chunk of J.M. Coetzee’s Life & Times of Michael K, the great South African novel of Kafkaesque misery. It got me feeling sorry for myself.

I decided that it might be funny the next time to bring along Kafka’s own stories to the BMV.

Poor Jonah

Long-term readers of this blog (are there any short-term readers?) will recall that Jonah is my favorite book of the Bible.

They won’t be surprised, then, to hear that I was excited about the new sermon series at my church: “Jonah: Not the Story You Remember.”

(I’d helped to put up the letters of the church sign that announced this series’s title. On its reverse side, the sign admonished: “Tweet Others as You Would Have Them Tweet You.”)

And yet, I doubted: Would I really hear anything new (or unremembered) about Jonah?

It transpired that I would. Our new young pastor began yesterday’s sermon by having us recall Jonah’s brief appearance in 2 Kings 14:25:

Jeroboam II recovered the territories of Israel between Lebo-hamath and the Dead Sea, just as the LORD, the God of Israel, had promised through Jonah son of Amittai, the prophet from Gath-hepher.
[New Living Translation]

Equipped with this verse, our pastor eagerly described the historical context of the book of Jonah. He was guilty of three inaccuracies:

(1) He said that during Jonah’s prophesying, Israel’s king was Jehoash II. (It was Jeroboam II.)

(2) He said that Assyria and Israel were archenemies. (Not quite: Assyria and Israel were less like cat and dog and more like lion and mouse.)

And (3) he said that the book of Jonah could be dated to approximately 750–800 years before Christ’s birth. (Again, no; it was written during the post-exilic period.)

Then he performed an exegesis of Jonah 1, highlighting three costs of Jonah’s disobedience: the financial cost (Jonah had to buy a ticket for his voyage), the physical cost (Jonah was so tired, he slept through the storm), and the social cost (Jonah retired to the hold of the ship, away from his shipmates).

Despairing, Karin & I turned to the commentary in Karin’s Jesus-Centered Bible (NLT). This was much better:

There’s humor in how Jonah is a successful “evangelist” in spite of himself, in the same way Inspector Clouseau is a successful detective in the Pink Panther comedies. He does everything wrong, but it always turns out right.

There’s an unmistakable element of Jewish comedy in the story of Jonah, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a very serious message – a theology of mercy – buried in the humor. In the story of Jonah, the Jewish people learned to regard their election as God’s chosen people with humility and even self-deprecating humor. God would prop up the nation of Israel as a light to the Gentiles, not because they were better than other nations, but simply because God had called them just as he’d called the irascible Jonah. And Jonah is a good prophet not because he is a good man, but because God is a merciful God.

Later, this theology of mercy will find full expression in the life and teaching of Jesus.

Cheered by this commentary, I’ve decided to pray: Lord, exercise Your mercy: Let our new pastor be successful in the manner of the prophet Jonah.

Helaman 5:12

Tonight, Karin & I had a quiet supper with the Elders. One of them liked our cooking so well, he took a second helping.

Then we discussed our respective churches – especially, their missionary predilections.

And later, as if to fulfill his duty, one of the Elders read us a verse from The Book of Mormon:

And now, my sons, remember, remember that it is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo [sic?], because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall. [Helaman 5:12]

What about Job, I asked. Though he was God-fearing, didn’t the devil drag him down into the gulf of misery, so to speak?

Job did endure a little misery, they answered. But things got better for him. (His woe wasn’t endless.)

Ah, OK.

We’d love to have supper with you again next week, they said.

How about you cook it the next time, I suggested.

October’s poems

Two in iambic tetrameter.

First, “The Character of a Happy Life” by Sir Henry Wotton.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

How happy is he born and taught
That serveth not another’s will;
Whose armour is his honest thought,
And simple truth his utmost skill!

Whose passions not his masters are,
Whose soul is still prepared for death,
Untied unto the world by care
Of public fame or private breath;

Who envies none that chance doth raise;
Nor vice; who never understood
How deepest wounds are given by praise;
Nor rules of state, but rules of good;

Who hath his life from rumours freed;
Whose conscience is his strong retreat;
Whose state can neither flatterers feed,
Nor ruin make oppressors great;

Who God doth late and early pray
More of His grace than gifts to lend;
And entertains the harmless day
With a religious book or friend;

– This man is freed from servile bands
Of hope to rise or fear to fall:
Lord of himself, though not of lands,
And having nothing, yet hath all.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Second – and which is even more famous – “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death” by William Butler Yeats.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Another ambitious read

Karin has “beaten” the Rugrats in Paris video game.

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A tutee of mine, writing about Fielding’s Joseph Andrews, is quite taken with the titular character’s virtue.

I, not so much. But the assignment has piqued my interest in Fielding, and I’ve decided to read Tom Jones. Afterward, I’ll be able to watch the movie in good conscience. It’s supposed to feature Albert Finney prancing up and down the countryside as a young man.

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The Elders saw me tonight at Barnes & Noble. They asked if I’d read much of the Book of Mormon lately, and I had to say I hadn’t.

I promised to discuss more of it with them on Wednesday.

Before then, I must turn in a dissertation chapter, or two, to my adviser.

A glitch

Karin played Rugrats in Paris for three days. Then her avatar, Chuckie, got stuck in a doorway.

She tried for hours to get him out, but only managed to warp the display.

She had to quit the game and start again at the beginning.

I wish I had juicier news, but this is as tasty as I can deliver at the moment.

Karin’s birth week

We’ve celebrated as follows:

Last Saturday, we trudged around and around inside Thistleberry Farms’s Lord of the Rings-themed corn maze. It was none too easy. Toward the end, it became perilous: the sky darkened, and we only reached the exit fifteen minutes before closing time.

It was nearly as tiring as Frodo’s and Sam’s journey with the One Ring.

On Monday, we ate chicken wings with Karin’s dad and his two other children: Lily, Karin’s sister, and Julian, Karin’s stepbrother. It left Karin & me feeling quite poorly.

Wednesday was the birthday itself. We did very little. My parents sent a monetary gift through PayPal. Others sent Facebook greetings. I ordered an Agatha Christie book for myself.

On Thursday, Karin’s mom gave her some cash. Karin & I went to a used-media store and bought seven movies and one video game, Rugrats in Paris, which Karin played the rest of the night.

Yesterday (Friday), we ate Italian food with Mary & Martin and Stephen & Edoarda. When we got home, I ordered this puzzle for Karin:

Then the Mormons came over for a while. After they left, Karin played Rugrats in Paris.

Today, we’re going to buy some sale-priced frozen yogurt.

We aren’t Kardashians, but we’ve still managed to have a nice little week-long party.

Brett Kavanaugh

Various bloggers and Facebook friends – Democrats, Republicans, and “independents” – have been sharing articles and blog posts under, roughly, the following description: “This is the best item I’ve read about the U.S. Supreme Court candidacy of Brett Kavanaugh and the allegations against him by Christine Blasey Ford.” The pieces they’ve shared have expressed a wide range of views about the affair.

Well, this article by Nathan J. Robinson is the best thing I’ve read.

It’s meticulous.

It confirms what I thought when I heard Kavanaugh give his testimony: This guy seems dishonest, and his reasoning is shoddy enough that his appointment to the Supreme Court would be a disaster.

Not all of Robinson’s arguments are convincing. But more than enough of them are.

Some conclusions:

(1) Perjury: Kavanaugh told falsehoods under oath. Again and again. Sometimes on purpose, and sometimes with a reckless disregard for the truth. And he did so concerning issues that matter to his own credibility, to the credibility of his accuser, and to the discovery of the truth.

(2) Evasion: In response to straightforward questions, Kavanaugh changed the subject. Again and again. …

(3) Testimonial sufficiency: Certain “subjective” considerations (such as the aggressiveness of Kavanaugh’s tone) are much less important than the content of the testimonies. This content, along with fact-checking, suffices to establish (1) and (2). And (1) and (2), along with plausible principles about who may be appointed as a judge (e.g., “An appointee must not be recently guilty of perjury”), suffice to disqualify Kavanaugh as a judge in the Supreme Court (or anywhere!). As Robinson puts it: “At this point there is absolutely no need” for further investigation “unless Christine Blasey Ford wants it.”

To summarize: even if Kavanaugh didn’t assault Ford, he certainly lied and, in other ways, made the truth harder rather than easier to assess. These facts should disqualify him from being allowed to join the Supreme Court.

1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 7: Bound

Before they became Lana and Lilly, the Wachowskis were Larry and Andy: the Wachowski Brothers, makers of The Matrix. And before they made The Matrix, they made Bound.

Bound has three great performances:

Gina Gershon’s performance as “Corky”;

Jennifer Tilly’s as “Violet”;

and, especially, Joe Pantoliano’s as “Caesar.”

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Corky has just served a five-year prison sentence. Her crime was “the redistribution of wealth” (her words). She takes a plumbing job and moves into a seedy apartment. On the other side of her paper-thin wall is a much fancier apartment inhabited by Caesar (a mobster) and Violet (his kept woman).

Violet is “bound” to Caesar, not only for her livelihood but also for her identity.

But then she makes eyes at Corky.

Caesar’s preoccupation with “the business” affords Violet and Corky plenty of time to lie in bed together and scheme. Violet wants to steal from the mob and allow Caesar to be blamed for it. This would enable her to break away from her miserable situation.

Only, Corky isn’t sold on the idea. Crossing the mob is dangerous, and she doesn’t yet trust Violet (it was a previous girlfriend who landed her in prison).

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“Bound,” the title, can mean several things. I think the most important meaning has to do with choosing whether to connect oneself to another person.

To trust or not to trust? That is this movie’s question.

Violet is ready to tie her fate to Corky’s, win or lose.

Caesar’s job doesn’t allow him to trust anyone. His paranoia poisons his allegiances and exacerbates his enmities. Paradoxically, it’s this inability to trust that makes him exploitable.

And then there’s Corky, the merely occasional lawbreaker. On the “trust” spectrum, she’s halfway between Violet and Caesar. She could maintain her independence and come out unscathed. Or she could go “all in” and bind herself to Violet.

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That’s the setup. It occupies roughly the first half of the movie and focuses on Violet and Corky.

There’s an over-the-top lustiness to Violet’s and Corky’s scheming. Although they have a noble objective – to “unbind” Violet from Caesar – they also scheme for the erotic thrill of it. Violet’s flirting is both saccharine and sardonic. Corky, bloodhound-like, lets her mouth hang open as if she’s trying to taste Violet’s true intentions.

Caesar is mostly offscreen so that Violet and Corky can stack the dominoes against him.

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Then, in the second half of the movie, the dominoes come tumbling down and Caesar takes the center stage. Violet and Corky have the upper hand; they’re the ones who’ve laid the traps. It’s up to Caesar to ingeniously dodge one calamity after another – first the anvil and then the grand piano, so to speak – without understanding who is dropping these things upon him.

As in Hitchcock’s Rope and Dial M for Murder, the action is confined to a single, well-furnished living space (Caesar’s and Violet’s apartment). This intensifies the feeling of being stifled. From time to time, the protagonists are obliged to hide damning clues just outside the view of the various mobsters and police who drop by. They also must behave politely for these visitors. To Caesar, this is especially onerous, since he despises his fellow mobsters and the law. It’s amusing to watch him grovel while, internally, he seethes.

Even so, we can’t help but admire him. Yes, he’s a vicious predator. Like Wile E. Coyote, though, he’s a tenacious and resourceful one.

If only he’d given Violet her due respect.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

P.S. For an interesting variation upon the “Caesar” character, see Joe Pantoliano’s performance in Risky Business (1983) as “Guido, the Killer Pimp.” In that movie, also, Pantoliano steals his scenes.

I take a day off

Well, Karin’s and Brianna’s mother has returned from abroad, and Brianna has gone back to her mother’s house.

Only, last night, Karin brought Brianna back to our apartment for a few hours. Brianna needed to use the Internet to do some homework. Her mother had turned off the Internet at their house so that Brianna might become more obedient.

Also, Brianna’s mother wanted her out of the house because she (the mother) felt unwell and needed to rest. (Never mind that Karin & I continue to feel unwell.)

As you may have gathered by now, Brianna is rather difficult. And so is her mother.

Before Brianna arrived last night, I’d had a restful day at home. I’d been scheduled to do jury service, but the trial was canceled. I watched Chariots of Fire and wept through most of it.

The man on the roof

Karin & I rested all of yesterday while Brianna and her friends roamed the streets. We’re still sick – Karin is sicker than I am – but not so sick that we can’t go to work or that Brianna can’t go to school.

I finished reading two other novels by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö (seven down, three to go). Afterward, I learned that in 1976, one of those novels, The Abominable Man, was cinematically adapted as Mannen på taket (The Man on the Roof). This movie is something of a classic. It’s said to have been stylistically influenced by The French Connection. And it’s got Sweden’s “signature” action sequence, in which a rifleman shoots at police helicopters from a rooftop.

Here’s a poster:

And here’s another:

The second poster shows my favorite policeman in the book series, the obnoxious Gunvald Larsson. He has a towel on his head because his scalp has been grazed by a bullet.

I’d very much like to see this movie, but I don’t know where to find a version with English subtitles.

The disaster artist

A rainstorm lashed South Bend yesterday afternoon. Karin filmed it:

Brianna walked away from school in it. She was like a drowned rat when she reached our dwelling (she’s staying with Karin & me while her mother is abroad). She took off her wet clothes, got into the bath, and pulled the curtain rod down upon herself. She lay under the curtain in the bath.

(I know all these details because she “texted” them to Karin while she was in the bath.)

She already had a cold before the rainstorm caught her. I’d been wary of contracting it (we make our lunches with the same processed chicken slices). Now, Brianna’s cold is worse, and it’s Karin who’s got the sniffles.

Update: Saturday, September 22

Tonight, Karin is flat-out sick. Certain congestive sensations in my chest do not bode well for me, either. We’ve decided to stay home from church tomorrow.

Brianna put twice the requisite amount of soap inside a washing machine. This prolonged the wash cycle’s “rinse” phase, which generated extra water and flooded our building’s laundry room.

I’ve decided to call her memoir – should I ever write it – No Thanks to Herp Derp.

1 Nephi 4

Our new Mormon neighbors, Elders Johnathon and Richard, have been receiving our letters in their mailbox, and we’ve been receiving theirs. (It’s because the word “Elder” resembles our last name.)

We continue to be on excellent terms with these missionaries. Elder Johnathon invited me to be his Facebook friend. Most of his photos are from high school, which he recently completed. He appears to have been a member of a highly successful dance team.

I’ve now read several chapters of the first book of Nephi. My favorite so far is chapter 4, in which Nephi decapitates Laban, who is lying drunkenly on the ground. Nephi then dresses in Laban’s garments, bluffs his way into Laban’s treasury, and carries away some brass plates upon which the Lord’s commandments are engraved. However, Nephi’s own brothers, Laman, Lemuel, and Sam, fail to recognize him because he is wearing Laban’s clothes.

The narrative is rapid and suspenseful, and one gets used to the linguistic quirks.

I’ve also learned, from the introduction to my “reader’s edition,” that these quirks are entirely attributable to Joseph Smith. Mormons regard his translations as fallible. In this respect, the Book of Mormon differs from, say, the Quran, whose every Arabic word is presumed to be Allah’s own.

When I first met Johnathon and Richard, I told them that although I’d be willing to read the Book of Mormon with them, I was unlikely to ever become a Latter-Day Saint, and I didn’t want to waste their time. “That’s all right,” Johnathon told me. “Our goal is for you to grow closer to Christ.”

I thought that was a pretty good answer.

September’s poem

“To Autumn”:

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, / Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; / Conspiring with him how to load and bless / With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; / To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, / And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; / To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells / With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, / And still more, later flowers for the bees, / Until they think warm days will never cease, / For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? / Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find / Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, / Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; / Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep, / Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook / Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers: / And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep / Steady thy laden head across a brook; / Or by a cyder-press, with patient look, / Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they? / Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, – / While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, / And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; / Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn / Among the river sallows, borne aloft / Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; / And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; / Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft / The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft; / And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

(John Keats)

I am mistaken for a chemistry tutor

Tonight, Karin met a friendly, stray tomcat who piteously mewed. She brought him food and stroked him.

It’s sad, knowing we’ve reached our limit as far as pet adopting goes.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

IU’s tutoring program has expanded into some of the local secondary schools. Today, I met the eighth-grader whom I am expected to tutor all semester, four hours each week.

Our first subject was science. I explained the distinction between physical and chemical changes. The cutting of bread involves a merely physical change; when the bread is digested or burned, the change is chemical.

This was a topic I hadn’t thought about in the last twenty years.

A college student sat at a nearby table, listening intently to us. He must be one of the chemistry tutors, I thought. I hope I’m doing justice to his subject.

Then he got up and walked over to our table. He showed me a sheet of paper on which he’d made complicated drawings. “Will you help me to understand these ionic bonds?” he asked.

I told him how he could find a real chemistry tutor.

My eighth-grade tutee and I then discussed the poetic techniques of metaphor, simile, and alliteration, and she wrote an alliterative poem of two short stanzas.

Fictitious history

The air has cooled, what with the arrival of September; and our finances, while tight, are being loosed ever so slightly. This last week, I even bought a new book – The Glory of the Empire by Jean D’Ormesson – the “history” of a fictitious realm.

There is a whiff of Tacitus in its first paragraph:

The Empire never knew peace. First it had to be built, then defended. From the depths of its history there arose the clang of axes, the hiss of javelins, the cries of dying at evening after battle. Neither the forests to the north and east nor the high mountains in the south were proof against attack and invasion. In the great fertile plains at the foot of the volcanoes, massacre succeeded massacre. To the west, the sea too brought its share of dangers: suddenly threatening sails, pirates, surprise assaults at dawn. On the Empire’s borders night never came without its escorts of dread and death. Even within, both in the country and in the towns, interest and passion raised up rival bands to fight for power with violence and arson. The Empire grew up on a foundation of flames and blood. … And peril came not only from men. Unbridled nature exacted a high price … Imagination hardly needed to improve on the horrors of the real.

(The last sentence is like when Agatha Christie has her characters say: “This murder is as shocking as a detective novel, but this is real life.”)

D’Ormesson is commenting on historiography’s patterns and pitfalls. Is there any other sustained work that does so by way of recording the “history” of an imaginary yet this-worldly realm? Le Guin’s Orsinia, perhaps? I’d be grateful to be told.

Yahoo! trolls the world

There’s a tradition in U.S. soccer journalism of importing awful British pundits. Several of these donkeys have worked for Yahoo! Sports.

When I first moved to this country, I was delighted with Yahoo! for re-publishing other news agencies’ reports from all over the world. Every day, I’d read of the domestic leagues in Botswana or Thailand or wherever. Coverage of South America was especially good.

All of that fine reporting is long gone. Now, Yahoo!’s content is much narrower in scope, and the site employs its own journalists. These pundits have tended to sing the praises of (a) the English Premier League, (b) the U.S. men’s team, (c) the English men’s team, (d) Cristiano Ronaldo, (e) the other powerful European leagues and teams (France’s, Germany’s, Italy’s, and Spain’s), and (f) U.S. Major League Soccer – more or less in that order. Presumably, these are the topics that U.S. readers care about.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

For years, the especial jackass at Yahoo! was one Martin Rogers, who’s moved on to USA Today. How I loathed that “bloke.” … But now, I wonder if Ryan Bailey, the “wanker” du jour, is even worse.

First, Bailey doesn’t write. He makes videos. (Rogers would at least write his columns.)

Second, the videos are obnoxious, due to Bailey’s relentless cheerfulness.

Third, Bailey doesn’t just wish to preserve the status quo; he favors giving dramatically more power to the most mercenary entities.

See, for example, his recent video, “Making the Case to Scrap International Soccer.”

This is his case:

(1) International soccer sometimes conflicts with the Premier League.

(2) And the Premier League is obviously what everyone wants to view.

(3) Besides, we don’t have to scrap international soccer completely. If we were to keep soccer as an Olympic event, that would be good enough.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

This cannot be a serious argument. No one who isn’t already on Bailey’s side would be convinced. Bailey must be trolling.

But if Bailey is serious, he obviously hasn’t watched the South American World Cup qualifiers. If his idea of a good game is Brighton vs. Newcastle or Arsenal vs. Chelsea, he should try watching Uruguay vs. Chile, or Chile vs. Paraguay, or, least glamorous of all, Paraguay vs. Venezuela. (In the 2018 World Cup cycle, each of those South American fixtures turned out to be a matter of life and death.)

As for moving soccer’s main event to the Olympics: either the Olympics would have to be greatly expanded to accommodate a soccer tourney with the magnitude of the World Cup, or else the world’s main soccer tourney would have to be shrunk. The first option would leave in place all of what Bailey dislikes about the current system (including, I presume, the massive qualification phase). And the second option would fail to placate those who like having a big tourney and its attendant qualification games.

One suspects that the real motive for incorporating the world’s main soccer tourney into the Olympics would be to allow U.S. fans to feel better about themselves, since their country would likely excel in many other events. (“We didn’t reach the podium in soccer? Well, at least we earned the gold in beach volleyball.”)

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Bailey also states that players prefer to focus on their clubs and not their national teams.

To which every South American replies: You must be from England.

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Even so, I probably am more disillusioned with international soccer than I ever have been. This latest World Cup left me especially discouraged. I worry that international soccer will always be unjust – and not only contingently so; I worry that people’s valuation of it is conceptually confused.

I may discuss these issues further during the next several months.

Good deeds and injuries

Karin took this selfie when she helped to build the Habitat for Humanity house.

And this link is to a copyrighted photo of some volunteers. You can easily recognize Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter. Garth Brooks, the singer, is the only worker wearing a dark blue shirt.

Karin is in the second-backmost row, the fourth person from the left.

Unfortunately, when she came home, she was badly sunburnt.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I also am injured. Chopping an onion last night, I nicked open a fingertip; this morning, while showering, I reopened the wound. This minor injury has been amazingly bloody.

Karin has been looking after me, and so has Mary, who quit teaching high school English to become a nurse-in-training.