A nasty thought that I have to get out. Sometimes the world seems like an onion rotted black, one that smells loathsome and stings your fingers when you touch it. But you feel compelled to keep touching it nonetheless, and find yourself tearing off the layers even as the odor and the burning grow worse. And we all know how an onion works; there's always more layers. Until, finally, you find yourself reeking, your hands covered with a foul substance, your mind reeling and your heart sickened from sheer awfulness.

I think that it is at these times that we need a sense of community. For myself, I've found this litany from the Discalced Carmelites of Philadelphia to be helpful. They call it "Night Litany for Our City."

God, our Father, hear us.  We plead before You, O Sacred heart of Jesus, for all who tonight in this great city stand in the most need of Your merciful love and protection.
On souls beset by temptation, have mercy.
On those who have fallen into sin, have mercy.
On those who are given up to worldliness and are forgetful of You, have mercy.
On those who are, at this moment, in danger of losing You forever, have mercy.
By Your agony, save them, Jesus.

On those who carry on wicked trades and profit by sin, have mercy.
On those indulging in sinful amusements, have mercy.
On all who are imperiling their souls by self-indulgence and luxury, have mercy.
On all frequenting haunts of sin, have mercy.
By Your scourging, save them, Jesus.

On all who are out tonight, the homeless, the weary, the starving, those tempted to suicide, the intemperate, have mercy.
On those who are out for sin, have mercy.
To those who are out to rescue others, grant help and protection.
For those who work at night, the police, railwaymen, firemen, those engaged on the stage, soldiers and sailors, sentries on duty, editors and journalists, let Your Presence be with them, Jesus.
For the sick, and suffering and all who are enduring any agony of mind and body, comfort them, Jesus.
For all undergoing surgery, strengthen them, Jesus, and help them in body and soul.
For the sleepless and lonely, be near them.
For those in anxiety, nervous or mental distress, calm them.
For the mentally ill, keep them under Your protection.
For those who care for the mentally ill, make them tender-hearted and compassionate.
For night nurses, give faithfulness and sympathy.
For priests and doctors, called out this night, reward them.
By Your crown of thorns, deliver them, Jesus.

For those who this night must suffer bereavement, visit and sustain them.
For those for whom this will be their last night on earth, deepen their contrition and receive their souls.
For those whom sudden death summons before Your Judgement, have mercy.
For those dying alone without priest or sacrament, have mercy.
For the dying who reject the ministry of Holy Church, have mercy.
On those dying unconscious, have mercy.
On those dying blind to their sin, have mercy.
On the souls of unbelievers who are hear death, have mercy.
On those who are trying to turn to You even in their last hour, have mercy.
For those who are afraid to die, turn their heaviness into joy.
For dying priests and religious, have mercy on them and receive them to Yourself.
For the faithful departed, grant them light and peace.
For ourselves in our last hour, grant the pardon of our sins, our negligences and our ignorances.
By Your holy death, deliver us all, O Jesus.

On behalf of those who have said no prayers today, let us say:  Our Father… Hail Mary…
On behalf of those who neglect to praise God and thank Him, let us say: Blessed be God.  Blessed be His holy name.
On behalf of those who blaspheme and neglect the Blessed Sacrament, let us say: Blessed, praised, worshiped and adored be Jesus Christ on His Throne of Glory and in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar.

Every hour of the day you are being remembered
in the ceaseless prayer of Carmel. 

I do like the last part best.

 

You know what's tough to do? Conveying to your friends why a work of art leaves you reeling. And God forbid if you react to genre art.

It's hard to understand why, exactly, one reacts to art. Exploring that particular alleyway is ultimately stupid; no matter what you do, the person to whom you speak cannot possibly have the same emotional investment you have.

People are confronted by art constantly, however one defines it. How they react to that art is rooted in themselves, however one defines "self." It is not for nothing that many couples unite based on their shared appreciation of a particular work.  Not that thist happens all that often; rare is the romance based on mutual communication from day one. One might argue that art exists as much for the possibility of communication as it does for the desire to mark one's existence to future generations.

I believe that the best television series ever produced is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This is not an opinion shared by anyone I know personally. But since the series ended in 2003, I have watched the various shows in the conversation for GOAT of television series, and my opinion has remained unchanged. While I do love those other shows, for me, Buffy remains the best. And yet many of the people involved with the series struggle to scrape by, both financially and artistically.

So how does one "spread the word?" And more to the point, should one spread the word? I have tried in the past (Buffy's been gone 11 years now), but at this point I'm thinking that the horse is out of the barn. It's not that the show is dated (although I cringe watching the episode where Big Bad Voodoo Daddy plays the Bronze). It's more that the show is no longer novel; people simply no longer expect Spike, Drusilla or Angelus to show up looking for an artistic feed.

If you like, I could list several episodes of the series, and of its spinoff, Angel, that absolutely ripped my heart out. Three episodes in 2001 alone left me reeling, to the point that even now, well over a decade later, I find myself returning to them in the darkest hours of the night.

Which, of course, is not the point at all. As Jubal Harshaw once said, "art is the process of evoking pity and terror." And what evokes those two feelings for a particular person are probably more unique than a fingerprint.

So what do we do? Assuming that we -- for whatever reason, although one hopes the action is rooted in empathy -- want to know what evokes pity and terror in others, how do we reach it?

Ultimately, I think we have to listen to one another. And that ain't easy.

The Disappearing Touchstones of My Youth

It's strange. Eventually you realize that the stability you imagine the world has when you are a child is an illusion. The world dies every day, every second in fact, and any idea of order we ascribe to it is merely a desperate attempt to make something incomprehensible seem knowable.

So unless you want to fall into the dementia of nostalgia, you learn to abandon the touchstones of stability from your childhood. Or at least make the attempt. But it's hard to see the clear evidence that you were right to do this, and even harder to see one of those touchstones disappear. And the older you get, the harder it gets to endure such a loss, even of a person who you never met and whose work you never really liked all that much.

So this is a long way of saying that Shirley Temple's death hit me harder than I thought it would.

Yes, I'm a bit ashamed. And I also know that her loss is far more personal to her family and friends. Adulthood does teach you that the world is not just about you. Still, I'll never get used to seeing one of the landmarks of my childhood disappear. And it does seem harder to deal with the older I get.

JFK, John XXIII and Prints from a Time Long Gone

     Forgive the length of the post.
     When I was a kid, many of my older relatives, as well as the Catholic schools I attended, had framed prints on their walls. It's not something that families do that often these days outside of the African American community, where you'll still see pictures of Martin Luther King or even Barack Obama displayed prominently in places where people will see them. One of my professors at Gettysburg co-authored a book (which we had to buy, of course) on earlier examples of this phenomenon from the Confederate "Lost Cause." There used to be quite the industry devoted to this sort of thing, so I found it fascinating that examples of it could be found in the community in which I grew up.
     The prints I saw when I was young were variations on the same theme: John F Kennedy and John XXIII, presumably together in eternity. Sometimes they'd be joined by Christ; others showed them walking away from the viewer. My high school had one of the latter variety, sowing a field of wheat as they passed.
     1963 was a rough year for Irish American Catholics, and although I didn't show up until a few years later, the shadow of that year still darkened the world in which I grew up. So I've been surprised to see that it is very hard to track down images of the JFK/John XXIII prints online. You can find images of commemorative medals, and even plates, featuring the two, but the prints themselves remain elusive.
     So I'm curious to see if anyone else remembers this. Part of growing up, of course, is realizing that the sense of permanence one ascribes to traditions and institutions is an illusion. Things change, and at a grander scale than we realize. Still, I'd like to see if these prints left an impression on anyone else.

The Hazards of Applause Inflation: Modern Day Concertgoing

So I'm at the Tower Theater on Saturday night, waiting for the Decemberists to start their set, surrounded by a palpable air of anticipation. Then the lights dim, and the crowd -- a mixture of oldheads and hipster doofi -- starts cheering wildly. Jenny Conlee's muted organ introduction to The Hazards of Love begins but nearly founders, overwhelmed by another wave of applause. A spolight illuminates Conlee at her keyboards; hysterics ensue. The cheers then come at regular intervals as the rest of the band assembles, and when Colin Meloy shows up -- well, you can imagine. The crowd had shouted itself hoarse almost before Meloy had sung a word.

I'm not, of course, singling out the Decemberists, who put on a great show Saturday night. But how did we reach this point? What drives the concert audience to shower praise onto performers before they've actually done anything?

It is safe to say that this is a new phenomenon. We're not, after all, that far removed from vaudeville, which featured audiences that demanded entertainment and were not shy about showing their displeasure to the acts that failed them. Today's Apollo Theater audience is probably the closest approximation to the old norm, and even there no one tolerates throwing things at the stage.

But one does not need to go that far back. If you want to get really startled, listen to some of the live albums from the '60s and '70s. I'm thinking of two in particular: House Full: Live at the LA Troubadour from Fairport Convention and the Who's Live at Leeds.

House Full features two virtuoso musicians, Dave Swarbrick on fiddle and Richard Thompson on electric guitar, battling each other to see who can play the best and the fastest, all the while anchored by as professional a rhythm section as rock has ever seen. And all that the crowd gives them back for their efforts is about ten seconds of golf claps. Granted, House Full is the product of the first American tour an electric British Folk act, so I can see why some may say that this is not the best example. But you won't hear much more applause in Live at Leeds, perhaps the most ferocious live album of the rock era.

So why do we cheer so vigourously? My guess is that it represents some latent insecurity, where our need to show our affection to a performer actually overwhelms the desire to listen to the performance? But that is a guess. All I wish to point out is that, if a concert audience actually wants to hear a great performance, they would be better served to sit on their hands at the start of the show and make the performer earn the applause.

The joys of a well crafted fight scene: Dollhouse, Episode 11

Minor spoilers ahead (but not the Big One) . . .
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There. I would have subtitiled this "Ballard vs. Langton" if it wasn't for the spoiler issue. And now that I think of it, non-Dollhouse fans may want to skip the next two paragraphs. Mostly, I want to write about a really good fight scene, but I feel compelled to note how well it works in the context of the season. So if, for some reason, you're not interested in the series, by all means, skip ahead.

Anyone who has been watching Dollhouse this year knows that this has been coming. Joss Whedon and his subordinates have been building up Paul Ballard (Tahmoh Penikett) and Boyd Langton (Harry Lennix) as the supreme hard asses of the show, sans peur et sans reproche. Neither of them has even come close to losing a fair fight yet. Hell, they both won most of their unfair fights. So, sooner or later, they would have to meet.

But the fight was not just a contest between the two toughest kids on the block. Both Ballard and Langton have settled on Eliza Dushku's Echo/Caroline as the chief justification for the sorry life choices that they have made. Ballard torched his FBI career to save Caroline; since Patton Oswalt's character dissected Ballard's motivations far better than I could in "Man on the Street", I'll leave that aside. But Langton isn't much better. He's never been shy about his mixed feelings about his gig working (and then running) security for the Los Angeles Dollhouse. His way of compensation? Develop a myopic concentration on saving Echo. A more productive neurosis than Ballard's, of course, but still a neurosis. And a neurosis that puts him at cross purposes with Ballard.

So that's the backstory, characterwise. Now for the fight itself, which largely takes place in the penultimate segment. Whedon fans, of course, should be quite used to fight scenes by now, which have largely been very well done. Many stand out, too many to mention, really; my three personal favorites are Connor's fight with the Beast and the Angelus/Faith wire fight (both from Season Four of Angel) and (God help me) the scene from the Season Two Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "What's My Line, Part One" where Buffy malarchuks* a demon assassin. What makes the "BriarRose" fight stand out is how intricately it is choreographed.

Granted, any self-respecting drama will take care when staging a fight scenes, which almost always serve as the dramatic climax to a film or episode. Does anyone remember anything from the series Dynasty other than the Joan Collins-Linda Evans confrontations? It remains a mystery to me that neither the Oscars nor the Emmys (nor the Tonys, for that matter) do nothing to honor fight choreographers. Say what you will about the MTV Movie Awards, but they at least do something to recognize how important a fight is to a film's ultimate value.

One needs only look at the Ballard-Langton fight to see how much work goes into designing these fights. At one point, Langton has Ballard dead to rights, holding a gun on him while Langton lies crumpled on the Dollhouse steps, by now shattered by ealier stages of the combat. Ballard knows that he has a deadly opponent by this point; his only chance is to attack Langton in a way where reflex overwhelms control. So he throws a piece of the shattered bannister at Langton's gun arm. Langton involuntarily flinches, and in the second that action gives him, Ballard kicks Langton's gun out of his hand, then moves to press his advantage. The amount of storyboarding, rehersals and camera shots it took to develop this scene, or put more simply, the care put into this scene, simply beggars the imagination.

I could rattle off any number of films or television series with iconic fight scenes: Errol Flynn vs, Basil Rathbone in The Adventures of Robin Hood; Marlon Brando vs. Lee J. Cobb in On the Waterfront, James Caan vs. Gianni Russo in The Godfather (OK, better known as "Sonny wailing on his brother-in-law with a trash can lid"), the "He ain't pretty no more" fight in Raging Bull (along with Sugar Ray Robinson's final shot against Jake LaMotta), and the first Darth Vader-Luke Skywalker confrontation in The Empire Strikes Back. But what I think of most when I think of the Ballard-Langton confrontation is The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. There is a fight early on in the film (very ably described here) between the two main characters and a man who tried to cheat them out of a very small payday. This is not a fight between immortals; rather, it is a sloppy fight where the combatants pay for their many mistakes, winnning through endurance and guile rather than any clear supremacy. In other words, it is like the fights, real or rhetorical, that we ourselves endure throughout our lives.

Kevin Murphy once described fight scenes in the old Repubic Serial Commando Cody this way: "Cody and his pal Ted get beat up by Clayton Moore and his sidekick, taking twice as many direct, bare-fisted punches to the jaw as George Foreman has in his entire career, with no apparent damage or injury."** This fight scene is essentially the opposite of that sort of fight. Two equally matched opponents go at each other, earning every advantage through blood and cunning, where ultimately the fight is determined, not by the clear superiority of one over the other, but by the intervention of outside forces.

* Don't click on this link unless you have a very strong stomach. I'm still not sure how I feel about trying to create a verb out of Clint Malarchuk's near-tragedy (oh, BTW, he did live, and even got back to the NHL)

** To be precise: The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Amazing Colossal Episode Guide, page 12.

Worst Ensemble Cast Among MST3d Movies

OK, I'm a little desperate here to reinvigorate my posting discipline, so here's my recent post to the MST3Kinfo website's Weekend Discussion on the worst ensemble casts in the annals of MST3K:

I’d like to break this category down to distinguish between the five types of movies that wind up MSTed:
1)Movies with professional actors;
2)Movies with community theater actors;
3)Movies who draw their actors from their investors;
4)Movies where the director puts so little faith in his/her actors that he/she hires voice actors to dub the dialogue;
5)Movies where the director doesn’t trust the actors, but is too cheap to hire voice actors, so he/she (oh, who am I kidding, he)dubs the dialogue using his own voice and maybe his wife’s.
I think that we can all fill in the blanks here with the worst performances in each category. But here are my choices for each:
1)Hobgoblins. Stretching the definition of “Professional” here, but I can’t forget that Duane Whitaker was in “Pulp Fiction” (dishonorable mention: “Riding With Death”);
2)The Dead Talk Back. “Teenage Strangler” would be an acceptable alternate, but at least some of that cast was photogenic;
3)The Skydivers. Hard to leave “Red Zone Cuba” off here, but all of the “actors” in that were in this as well. And correct me if I’m wrong, but the “the Scotchman” did not show up in “Cuba”;
4)The Creeping Terror. Although I should give points for the very articulate and engaging narrator;
5)Manos, the Hands of Fate. Since I’m not one to pile on, I’ll be silent here.