Latest Parries
April 2012
From Nokia N95 to iPhone 4S
Annoyances and upsets with the iPhone 4S have been more than offset by its screen, the silkiness of its surfaces, the camera, and the third-party market for both software and hardware.
February 2012
2001: A Space Odyssey: Dry, Juicy, Linear, Luminous
After they finished watching the Bond movies, I figured the next series John Gruber and Dan Benjamin would discuss on The Talk Show would be Stanley Kubrick’s oeuvre. But Gruber refused — too personal for podcasting, he said. Disappointed, I rewatched 2001.
January 2012
A Scheme of a Number of Friends
Instead of acknowledging the wisdom of leading from behind, the Right jumped on the Obama administration’s handling of Libya as yet another example of at best incompetence. They lost me there.
October 2011
The Mouse and the Cantilever
Steve Jobs we lost at the age of 56; when Frank Lloyd Wright reached that age it was still only 1923, the time of merely his second comeback with Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel.
March 2010
Friendship is for Weenies
It’s amazing, given the adulation he enjoyed elsewhere, that the Israeli public knew from the start not to trust this US President.
Before the Setup
Nobody from usesthis.com has asked me what my setup us, nor is likely to anytime soon. So I’m just going to mouth off here about it. But first, some background.
February 2010
Walter Russell Mead steps gingerly into the Wieseltier/Sullivan imbroglio
On the Leon Wieseltier/Andrew Sullivan spat, Walter Russell Mead seems to want to have his strudel and eat it too.
October 2009
My Hope: Obama’s Change
Defeat in the Olympics bid may focus the mind in the Oval Office where it should be: Afghanistan.
July 2009
At Modi’in Mall
There’s nothing else around here except empty desolate pretty hills. The Israel Trail passes by a bit to the west. It’s a hot July Wednesday morning. Things are reasonably busy. The shops are mostly franchises, almost all homegrown — Super-Pharm, Aroma, Tzomet Sfarim, Cup O’ Joe’s, LaMetayel, Mega, Fox, Castro, H&O.
Israel, the Bad So Far
I’m surprised at the general appearance of Tel Aviv folks. Yes, it’s hot, but people appear dressed as if they’re in, I don’t know, Be’er Sheva. And the people in Be’er Sheva, last time I was there, looked to me like they’re dressed for Gaza.
O kay, I’ve really fallen by the wayside, due to the launching of a certain website that I’m not going to mention here because it still needs a bit of work to display properly in that browser of the living dead, Internet Explorer. Once upon a time IE was the best browser but that was last millenium. How contemptible of Microsoft to be so dead set on controlling the browser space, then, after destroying Netscape in order to do so, proceed to let their own browser languish and become a terrible burden for developers, who must now do their work twice over: once for modern browsers and then again to get things working in IE. Contemptible. But predictable. And shameless. So it’s a lovely irony that it is IE, which they foisted upon us all to keep us locked in to Windows, that made me swear off it!
Until then I didn’t mind Windows NT — had used it for years. [Screen wobbles into flashback] It was 1997. That’s when I gave up on my bottom-of-the-line crippled-by-design Mac PowerPC and switched to a much faster unbranded PC put together by Star Computers, a shop in Dizengoff Center, Tel Aviv. My relationship with Star ceased however upon storming out their little shop one day after standing around, mild-mannered, watching as they served person after person, completely ignoring me. It was mostly out of embarrassment for my pointlessly flared temper that I never returned. I had just watched, my fury growing at Israeli ways or lack thereof, as nobody gestured around to me and said to Mr Star, Sr, “I say old chap, I believe this gentleman’s here first.” Ten years ago that was. Dizengoff Center is still there, a beacon of brightness and vitality, the greatest shopping mall in the world.
But it is not of Dizengoff Center I wish to speak today[/Screen wobbles back from flashback], rather of Larry Olivier. We joined the Amazon UK DVD Rental service here — an indulgence, but we ain’t got TV yet, and how nice it is to be back in a country that has this sort of thing; it’s America here, as they say in Israel. I was just too impatient to wait for 24 season 5 episodes to download, which would sometimes end up breaking off in the middle — or worse, be dubbed into Italian. All American actors and characters named Jack are dubbed into Italian by the same gravelly-voiced lecher. Amazon had season five on DVD and were offering the first month free, an offer even Aaron Pierce could not refuse. It’s interesting that a single TV show roped me in. The power of Bauer.
So I thought to mix it up with some highbrow and went for Olivier’s Hamlet and Henry V. What’s terrible is that I’m not even sure if these are actually highbrow; I guess I’ve succumbed to a coarsening in the dozen years since being an undergraduate all aquiver with the delights of a close reading. Yes, Shakespeare’s language is stupendous, a special effect in itself, and under Olivier’s direction the actors do say their lines as if they’re speaking rather than orating, but still, watching these movies is, despite their gorgeousness, a bit of a chore. And maybe because Olivier is not just an actor but a star, Henry V seems pretty much the same guy as Hamlet. Olivier is handsome, yes, with as cleft a chin and graven a philcrum as any leading man, but he’s not a very convincing heterosexual. I did enjoy the music though. Very sweet and rich. Also his eyes have the felicitatious slightly cross-eyed female Ashkenazi Jewish look that Ralph Fiennes also has.
Last night the BBC News at 10 broadcast a segment about Robert Lindsay joining the cast of The Entertainer. He’s that nice man with the long hair I remember from childhood who’d shout “Power to the people!” when walking down the street. I didn’t quite understand what that meant, and I still don’t. As Wolfie Smith he was my first exposure to Tourret’s Syndrome. Point is, Lindsay is taking over the role of none other than one Lawrence Olivier, and I am shown a clip. Then today I receive an HTML email announcing that tickets are now on sale for the Brighton Festival, adorned by three pictures, one of whom is Our Larry as Henry V for ‘Laurence Olivier’s Henry V’ with live score by William Walton. Is it a sign? Suddenly I’m seeing the great man Olivier the place.
But seriously: I think it’s time we had Kiefer Sutherland do some Shakespeare. We’ll have Taming of CTU, The Merchant of Venice Beach, The Comedy of Terrors, The Merry Wives of Bauer, and to end the season well, Twentyfourth Night.
Previously
Romantics Writ Higher- and Lowercase