O, TO be in Canada/Now that Fall is there

The summer is drawing to an end and as September approaches a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of film. That’s right the Toronto Film Festival announced its 2002 Schedule this week and all over North America film lovers with disposable income were anxiously awaiting the FedEx delivery man.

This rite of Fall consists of the arrival via overnight delivery of a Film Program guide as thick as the old Sears Wish Book Christmas Catalog and a Schedule booklet with more possible permutations than the Power Ball Multi-State Lottery. Luckily almost all of the possible combinations in Toronto are winners.

Still, Wednesday morning Festival Pass holders were pouring over the film schedule like race track punters studying the Racing Form looking to bet the housekeeping on the Trifecta.

I have participated in this ritual myself, but this year I will have to take my chances with the box office and the rush lines (with a little help from my friends), since I have no Pass and will only be going for a four day weekend. Still I look forward to many delightful hours in the dark.

Some Highlights of this years festival that I am especially excited about:

Hayao Mizaki’s Spirited Away. The new animated film by the greatest director of animated films ever. Probably my favorite Toronto memory was attending the screening of Princess Mononoke at the 1999 Toronto Film Festival at the Elgin Theatre with Miyazaki there to present his masterpiece. The audience erupted into a spontaneous and heartfelt standing ovation and he humbly accepted the love. No one went away disappointed by Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away is said to be an even greater film.

Bowling For Columbine. Michael Moore takes on America’s obsession with guns in another docu-comedy that blew away audiences in Cannes.

The Quiet American. Philip Noyce’s adaptation of Graham Greene’s precient classic about French and American involvement in Southeast Asia. Post 9/11 jingoism may make it impossible to release this film, critical of American foreign policy, in the States. See it in Canada where they love stuff that makes America look stupid. One of two new films from director Noyce.

Rabbit-Proof Fence: Also directed by Philip Noyce and starring Kenneth Branagh. Based on the true account of three Australian Aborigine girls trying to escape from the British by traveling over 1000 miles of the Australian outback. Their only guide is to follow the rabbit-proof fence built to keep the rabbits (brought by the British) from overrunning the countryside.

Heaven: New film by Tom Tykwer director of Run, Lola, Run based on a script by Krystof Kieslowski writer/director of The Decalogue and the Trois Colouers Trilogie.

Bubba-Ho-Tep: One of the Midnight Madness films. Features Bruce Campbell (of Evil Dead fame) as Elvis, not dead but in a nursing home in Texas where an ancient mummy is sucking the souls from the residents. Elvis teams with a wheelchair-bound resident (Ossie Davis) who believes he is John F. Kennedy, and the geriatric duo devises a plan to blast the Egyptian monster back to the sands from whence it came.

The Trials of Henry Kissinger: In a documentary, inspired by Christopher Hitchens's eponymous book, producer Alex Gibney and filmmaker Eugene Jarecki detail Kissinger's war crimes and crimes against humanity. Hitchens is already well know for his attacks on Princess Diana and Mother Theresa. Kissinger should make a much easier target.

Shaolin Soccer: A Hong Kong Kung Fu Action Comedy directed by its star Chinese comedy sensation Stephen Chow. Using high flying martial arts wire work and state of the art CGI the Shaolin brothers apply the art of Kung Fu to the sport of soccer to defeat the Superhuman Evil Team assembled by soccer kingpin Hung.

Real Women Have Curves: A warm and funny chick flick that was a big hit with Sundance audiences. With a talented and primarily Hispanic cast. Based on a stage play by Josefina Lopez, and directed by first time director Patricia Cardosa.

Personal Velocity: Three stories of three women (played by Kyra Sedgewick, Parker Posey, and Fairuza Balk) are subtly and playfully intertwined by director Rebecca Miller. Her screenplay is based on her own eponymous (its a good day when you can use the word "eponymous" twice in a single blog posting) book of short stories. Her first feature Angela was a haunting family story of a single mother, her two daughters and angels.

Well that is just the first weekend and those ten films are just the tip of a very big iceberg. Ten films would be a good number to shoot for in a three day festival binge, since after all in Toronto there are many great bookstores to wile away your time and money as well.

Coincidence or Total Cosmic Convergence!?!

The other morning before work I was reading Queer Pulp by Susan Stryker (why I was reading it will have to wait for another time). I had on NPR's Morning Editon and Karl Castle was reading the days top stories, but I wasn't really paying close attention. I was reading the chapter on lesbian pulp fiction writers of the 50/60's: Tereska Torres, Vin Packer, March Hasting, Ann Bannon, et al., when I heard Karl say, "In Germany they are piling sandbags on top of rain soaked dykes." Whoa. Talk about your lesbian pulp fiction.

I think I know how Roy Neary, Richard Dreyfuss's character in Close Encounters of the Third Kind , must have felt staring down at his mashed potato mountain. I could hear his nasal whine. "Ronnie, this is important. This means something!" Ah! Enigmatic Syncronicity!

"One of the most stupidest Pez tie-ins"

(for Mary Lu who first suggested it)

Visiting the various discontinued consumer product graveyards like Everything for a Dollar, Big Lots, Odd Lots, Dollar General, Family Dollar, or whatever local variant you have is one of the best things about living in modern America. The other day my wife and I were killing time with a friend in Everything for a Dollar while waiting for our movie to start seating, when I saw something above me on a shelf that reached out to me like a voice from a burning bush, like a chorus of seraphim, like a grail-shaped beacon: Pez Flavored Popcorn.

“Hey, Pez is not a flavor,” I hear you saying. And you are right. Pez flavored Popcorn comes in four very un-pez like flavors: Grape, Lemon, Strawberry and Orange. I can hear you saying "Yuck! that sounds disgusting" right now. That was what my wife and our friend said when I excitedly dragged them over to the Pezcorn. It was only 2/$1.00, and I had to beg my wife to get four boxes.

But I have a theory about food. If something unadulterated like snails or seaweed sounds disgusting to you, and people try to tell you it is edible, go with your instinct. Don't eat it. But when combinations of food sound weird, like popcorn and Pez dispensable candy, don't be too quick to judge.

Just about everything you eat is a combination of unlikely sounding ingredients that fuse together to form an entirely new and probably satisfying whole. I mean everything.

Take water. (Huh?!? Oxygen & Hydrogen? They're both highly flammable you know. You want me to drink that? Haven't you heard of the Von Hindenberg? Oh God, the Humanity! I'll probably flame on like Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, lighting his farts. Oh, twwooo parts hydrogen. Well, that's different.)

Or Pizza. (OK, you are going to take some flour and water mix it with some yeast. Hello! Yeast infection? OK, then what? Put tomatoes turned into a liquid sauce and milk turned into a curdled solid on top of the yeasty wheat & water, and baked until the solid sour milk melts. Wouldn't it be easier to just pour the milk on the tomato juice and infected wheat mess and save a step?)

For that matter even carmel popcorn, from which Pezcorn is obviously descended, sounds fairly unlikely. Whoever thought of putting burnt sugar syrup on their exploded corn was a genius, but I bet they had to overcome some strong sales resistance from the skeptics.

So I am always willing to try weird or unusual sounding combinations. Occasionally you get burned. Pineapple on pizza? I don't think so.

But somebody must have liked it, and that is the safety net of my theory. Just picking up a snail or grabbing some seaweed or one of the many edible parts of the pine tree and starting to nosh is easy. But, would someone go to all the trouble of concocting some exotic combination of ingredients if the end result was going to make you chunder? Would someone risk making that combination of strange stuff a selection on the menu of their high-class restaurant or invest the millions of dollars it takes to manufacture, package, market and distribute a product if it was likely to be anything less than wonderful?

Well, OK, apparently sometimes, yes. Which brings us back to Pezcorn. The stuff isn't terrible; in fact I kind of liked the lemon and grape. My wife even grudgingly admitted to liking the strawberry. But obviously if it was for sale in that "Island of Misfit Toys” of consumer culture the Everything for a Dollar Store, then it failed to impress a substantial portion of the buying public or at least the test sampling public.

Everything that ends up for sale at the odd lots stores (or the “remainder stores” as my book-oriented wife calls them) represents some kind of failure. A failure to connect with the taste of the masses. A failure to comprehend the needs or desires of people with too much disposable income to spend. Though, apparently still not disposable enough to spend it on Pezcorn.

All the discontinued, ill-conceived, inexplicably produced or imported, and abandoned misfits of the richest, most wasteful, most novelty hungry culture on earth end up there, and that is why I find the place so fascinating. It is as if you stepped into an alternate reality where Pezcorn exists (because I have never seen it at the K-mart or the Giant Eagle), or somehow a gross of some artifact from a slightly askew universe has fallen off an inter-dimensional truck and landed on the top shelf of Aisle 3 between the Chunky Style Apricot Cranberry Salsa and the Ren & Stimpy Gummi Boogers.

Big Lots is the Philip K. Dick of shopping. Check it out and have your reality shifted.

If you want to try Pezcorn (not available in stores, but now like everything else in the universe a collectible), then visit The Burlingame Museum of Pez Memorabilia Online Store for Collectors where you can buy one box of each flavor (a high fiber sugar-high inducing total of four) for $10.00. Or just go take a look. Scroll down about 2/3 of the page. The boxes are shown in all their vibrant consumer-friendly primary colors.

If you don’t want to have the unmediated experience, then at least visit this cached auction listing (just for the four empty boxes [pictured] the unfortunate had already eaten the corn) from the Yahoo SOLD.co.au auction site, which should help explain why the people voted “No” with their dollars. I quote in part, “Well this would have had to be one of the most stupidest Pez tie-ins as the popcorn did not taste like pez nor did it have a pez dispencer in it”.[sic] And that covers a lot of Pez tie-ins including Pez Lip Balm and Pez Circus Snow Domes. And while you are there please do me a favor and look at the Pez critters shown on the boxes. I recognize the surfing alligator Pez, the hornblowing umbrella wielding clown Pez, and the hoop swinging beany wearing parrot Pez, but can someone tell me what that hybrid Purple Dino Duck on the skateboard thing is supposed to be. It looks like Barney and the Pittsburgh Pirates mascot had a baby in Flatland.

Stop by the Official Pez Site to see what’s available at the Pez Store, find out Stuff About Pez and enjoy other Pez Fun.

The Stuff

OK. Enough dithering it’s time to get down to the important topics: Books, movies, books, comics, books, TV, books, cartoons, books, weird stuff from the flea market and dollar store, books, childhood traumas, books, weird people I have known, books, annoying stuff I feel compelled to rant about, books, libraries, bookstores, vintage paperback books, booksellers, science fiction books, noir mystery books, pulp fiction, and books about books.

That is the syllabus. My vital statistics go something like this:

Age: 45

Race/Nationality: Lithuanian/Slovak mix, but I have been mistaken for Italian, Jewish, Greek, British (in a pub in Cambridge much to my Anglophile then girlfriend’s annoyance), Russian, Polish, Middle Eastern, and my last name appears to have been taken from an eyechart on Ellis Island.

Sex: Straight Guy, although I have been thought to be gay and also told I should be a priest.

Occupation: Librarian. Although I have an MLS I have only worked the reference desk in dire emergencies, have never cataloged a book, and never conducted a story time. I seem to have carved out some weird niche as an outreach/bookmobile/only guy on staff who knows anything about comics or rare books /only guy who knows the answer to that annoying perennial reference question about the book that ends with the word mayonnaise (Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan) sort of librarian.

I guess that pretty much gets you up to speed on the who. Now for some what.

What am I reading now

I just finished a trio of William Faulkner books with a focus on crime, sex, and depravity. Sanctuary, Pylon, and The Wild Palms (Now commonly published under Faulkner’s original title If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem). These (with the possible exception of Sanctuary) are considered minor works. If only I had been required to read these in college instead of As I Lay Dying (“My mother is a Fish” nuff said), The Sound and the Fury (As if stream of consciousness wasn’t bad enough. Now I have to follow the thoughts of a retard watching a golf game through a fence? As if Golf wasn’t bad enough), and most painfully Sartoris. (Miss Vincent explained that the dull and languorous style was meant to convey the boredom and languor of the decaying southern aristocracy. Well I suppose if you were enough of a literary genius you could devise a style that would convey the languor, stench, and boredom of watching meat decay, but I’m not sure it would be worth the effort. I am sure Sartoris wasn’t worth the effort. Sorry Miss Vincent.)

But these three I just read, well, there was some good stuff in there. Rape, murder, adultery, botched abortion, sex, voyeurism, impotence, menage a trois, corruption, cover-ups, prostitution, airplane crashes, (well, OK, I think Sartoris did have an airplane crash. It just came way too late to save the book), floods, rescues, escape from a chain gang, alcoholism, bootlegging. That’s quite a catalog of deadly sins. That’s the way to portray dissolution and decay, baby. To paraphrase Thomas DeQuincy, it is only a short step from murder, rape, bootlegging, adultery, and voyeurism to Sabbath-breaking and procrastination. It's a slippery slope. The inevitable downward spiral. These folks sure didn’t have time for languor or boredom.

Sanctuary certainly would have made a better choice for college students if for no other reason than that it is probably the best argument against collegiate binge drinking ever written. Gowan Stevens gets roaring drunk and takes his date, Temple Drake, to the backwoods farm of his bootlegger, then leaves her there where she witnesses a murder, is raped (with a corn cob), abducted, and taken to live in a whore house, by a psychopathic gangster, who is impotent, forces her to have sex with another man so he can watch, and then kills the other man.

Umm. HEY! Can I have a rebate on the time I spent reading Faulkner in college. Cause I was robbed. (Well, OK, I never actually finished The Sound and the Fury because the night I was going to finish it my roommate dropped acid, and I had to spend the night in the men’s bathroom making sure he stayed on planet Earth and didn’t choke on his own vomit, while listening to him alternately puke and describe the kaleidoscopic fracturing of a row of urinals. Come to think of it if he had read Sanctuary he might have been scared straight, and none of that would have happened. Of course, if he had read Sartoris he would have been bored to death, and none of that would have happened either.)

And funny. I especially liked the two goofballs in Sanctuary who go to Memphis to attend barber college, and spend their nights visiting brothels and, afraid of scandalizing the landlady, sneaking back into their boarding house unaware that their landlady is a madam and they are living in a whore house. But the funeral scene in the barroom where a drunken riot beaks out and the casket is knocked over and the corpse falls out and the wax plug in the bullet hole in his head pops out was also very funny in a very black humored way.

The “Old Man” sections of The Wild Palms also provided much-needed comic relief from the grim story of the two adulterous lovers. I especially like the “tall convict” dragging the boat around with him and trying to surrender, but with no success. And finally after being swept away by the raging Mississippi flood, and saving the pregnant woman, and helping to deliver her baby, and then returning to the Parchman prison farm, and turning himself in he is given ten more years on his sentence for trying to escape.

And oh yeah one other thing I have learned since college. It is OK to skim. Or at least don’t worry if every single word doesn’t seem to make sense right away. Faulkner does tend to go on a bit. If you don’t catch something the first time don’t worry. He’ll probably repeat it again. And again.

Last of the Naming Stuff

More about the Blog name, then I promise I'll never bring it up again. I checked with Josh down at the comic shop and he assured me Warren Ellis had never used "Warning: Contains Language" or some variant as a title for a book, column, comic, weblog or any other form of communication. So I poked around a little more and a Google search turned up this: Warning:Contains Language

So it was a Neil Gaiman spoken word CD that used the title. Well, Neil Gaiman, Warren Ellis, Alan Moore, what's the difference. They're all British, all write comics, all brilliant.

So that solves that riddle (as if anyone but me cared). But I'm keeping the new name anyway.

However this blog will continue to contain language, embrace language, celebrate language, in fact we may occasionally plunge into a sea of language and frolic like a pod of dolphins. Words good. m'kay.

If that seems frightening or merely tedious to you, then you are dismissed. I'll be happy to sign your drop/add slip, and you can go visit a nice site that has nothing but pictures and occasional pointing and grunting.

Name Change

Today I realize that the previous name for this Blog "Warning: The Following May Contain Language" is already being used as the name of a column written by Warren Ellis. At least something like that. I'll have to check with Josh my comic book Guru down at the comic shop, but I'm pretty sure I recall something using that title.

Actually I intended the reference to be to the opening sequence of Alan Moore's Big Numbers where a girl asleep on a train is awakened by a rock thrown through the train window and shouts a startled expletive. An elderly couple seated across from her says something like "Well there's no need to use language is there." To which I think she responds "Huh? No need for language?" or something like that.

Maybe Warren Ellis had the same sequence in mind. I just thought it up on the spur of the moment (or thought I thought it up) because I needed a title to start posting. Anyway, I'm sure I'm flying way below Warren Ellis's radar, but sorry Warren. Dont sue me.

New Name

So the possible need for a name change was at the back of my mind today when we (my wife and I) went up to the Palace Theatre on Playhouse Square in Cleveland to see King Kong on the big screen. Well worth the trip. Perhaps more on that later.

Anyway near the beginning of the film, after setting sail from New York, Jack Driscoll and Captain Englehorn are discussing Carl Denham and his exedition. They finally decide he's "not crazy just enthusiastic." Well that was it. I hope. Anyway I hope RKO or Merian C. Cooper's &/or Edgar Wallace's literary estates can't sue me or issue a cease and desist order or something.

So "Not Crazy...Just Enthusiastic" is, I hope, a perfect title for what will be a chance for me to wax enthusiastic on what will probably seem like a crazy assortment of subjects, beliefs, opinions, pet peeves, and just plain weird stuff. It should be nothing if not eclectic, but I hope never less than entertaining.

This morning I cut my nose shaving.

And so I decided to start a blog.

Is my experience unique? Then I owe it to humanity to record it. Wouldn't it be a pity to lose my unique experience of the world because I was too lazy or ashamed to share it?

Maybe my experience is not unique, perhaps it is even commonplace, then sharing it may bring us all closer together. Or comfort the afflicted, or reassure the merely klutzy.

Either way my main motivation is to tell the world that this morning I cut my nose while shaving.

I’m not a morning person, but this was a less auspicious start than usual.

Maybe I am a little too flamboyant on the upstroke when shaving. A little too Leonard Bernsteinesque. Maybe I fell asleep in the shower (I shave in the shower). I know it’s tricky working without a mirror. But I think I have a pretty good sense of where my nose is located. Even with my eyes closed I think I could point to it right now. I know my nose isn’t small either. But really can there be a loving god in a universe where I can cut my nose while shaving.

I mean I cut it pretty good too. Not just the underside, or on the septum, but all the way out on the tip. It was bleeding and wouldn’t stop. I had to use a band-aid, so I rummaged around in the drawer beside the sink, and all I could find was a Powerpuff Girls Band-Aid. No I don’t have kids. I like the Powerpuffs, OK. But I never really expected to have to wear Bubbles (the “scardiest” Powerpuff) on the end of my nose while at work in the library!

At least my quirks are well enough known to my coworkers that wearing a Powerpuff Girls Band-Aid on the end of my nose didn’t really require anyone to revise their opinion of me.

Actually there is more to my life than shaving mishaps, but I don’t want to burden anyone on the first day.

Perhaps tomorrow we’ll look at the curriculum vitae, pass out the syllabus, and go over the required reading.