The Beautiful: Masters of the Universe?

I came across the article 8 Important Lessons Learned from '80s Cartoons, and couldn't help but break a smile at Lesson No. 5: It's OK to be gay:

"Look at this guy: golden locks cut in a tasteful bob, buff biceps, tanned, toned, hairless torso, a magic sword and most importantly, fabulous powers. What’s more, He-Man invites his handsome friends, the Masters of the Universe, to come hang out in his castle anytime. Of course Skeletor and his fugly cohorts are never allowed access to the secrets of He-Man’s dark, dry palace."

I'd never considered '80s cartoons from the point of view of teenage angst before, but it is amusing how "clubby" the beautiful could be, even in the fictional, focus group determined, merchandise driven world of kiddie cartoons.

Picture of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe comes courtesy of Taogate.

Encomium: Kurt Vonnegut and David Halberstam

I have always associated the summer months with reading. When I was younger, I always looked forward to summer vacation not particularly because of the many trips that my family would take, either to the beach or to colder climes, but because of the opportunity to meet up with old friends and perhaps meeting some new ones; summer was when I would read. In the same way that extended trips outside the metropolis seemed to provide my parents a much needed respite from their work, burrowing inside a good book seemed to put everything in perspective for me: that this almost intolerable heat, this unbearably long car ride, is a necessary cross to bear on the way to a much nicer place to read in.

This summer has not been kind to writers. First, I said farewell to an old friend, Kurt Vonnegut, whose passing was marked by a wonderfully poignant entry from Jessica Zafra where, in her grief, she wisely lets his work speak for himself, a gently elegant compromise that was carried further by The A.V. Club when they listed down the "15 Things Kurt Vonnegut Said Better Than Anyone Else Ever Has Or Will".

More recently, journalists of all stripes have been mourning the death of Pulitzer-prize winning reporter David Halberstam, who met an untimely end on April 23, 2007 in California. Such was his passion for life that he employed the same unbridled fire and discipline with which he penned his more "serious" works (such as his unyielding coverage of the Vietnam war) towards his supposedly "lighter" but disarmingly profound meditations on sports. A good introduction to Halberstam and his profound influence on American culture in general would be Clyde Haberman's moving obituary piece in The New York Times and the more sentimental, but well-documented encomium penned by Henry Abbott of TrueHoop.

Rest in peace, my friends. Thanks for all the summers.

Photo Credits:

Picture of David Halberstam comes courtesy of Wikipedia.

Picture of Kurt Vonnegut comes courtesy of Reno and its Discontents.

Death to Viral Pneumonitis! And, We're Back!

First of all, my family and I would like to extend our gratitude to all the people who offered prayers and sent much love our way during Juan and Manuel's medical crisis. Death to viral pneumonitis, and, to a certain extent, roseola infantum, which most Filipinos know as tigdas hangin. We still have to separate the boys as they might infect one another, but the worst (hopefully) has passed, and Tina and I are breathing a little easier. The constant state of emergency that we had gotten used to has simmered into an almost joyful acceptance of the constant state of chaos that Juan prefers to living room area to be in. Which means, of course, that Tina and I are loving every messy minute of it all. Again, many thanks to all our friends and loved ones!

Terribly Inconvenient

I'm afraid that, much like the fans of the beleaguered New York Knicks and the Minnesota Timberwolves (who seem forever fated to deal with the burden of incompetent management), the loyal readers of this blog have to wait a little bit until I post anything remotely fun or coherent within the next couple of days, as my son Manuel is currently confined in The Medical City for heretofore unknown reasons.

Despite the assurances of our doctors, who speculate that Manuel's illness could be the result of a viral infection (fever, irritability, some fluid in the chest, diminished appetite), prayers would be most welcome. It's just a little frustrating for our family right now, because my familiarity with the quickest route to the food court only reminds me that my family and I have been too loyal to this hospital.

Terribly Quiet, Anon

Occasionally, I subject my readers to a post like this, to atone for not having posted anything of late. As I have yet to fully recover from my trip, or address the imposing stack of work that greeted me upon my return, please forgive me for falling back on an old staple, the inimitable Gilbert Keith Chesterton, as well as myself, circa the year of our Lord, 2006. Enjoy!

I apologize for the lack of activity in my blog. In a way, this hiatus of sorts reminds me of the incident between Adam Wayne and the shop owner in Chesterton's The Napoleon of Notting Hill. In that novel, Wayne visits the owner of a curiosity shop in order to drum up support for the defense of Notting Hill. Since I cannot do justice to the exchange between the two, let me allow Chesterton to do the narration:

"And how does your commerce go, you strange guardian of the past?" said Wayne, affably.

"Well, sir, not very well," replied the man, with that patient voice of his class which is one of the most heart-breaking things in the world. "Things are terribly quiet."

Wayne's eyes shone suddenly.

"A great saying," he said, "worthy of a man whose merchandise is human history. Terribly quiet; that is in two words the spirit of this age, as I have felt it from my cradle. I sometimes wondered how many other people felt the oppression of this union between quietude and terror. I see blank, well-ordered streets and men in black moving about inoffensively, sullenly. It goes on day after day, day after day, and nothing happens; but to me it is like a dream from which I might wake screaming. To me the straightness of our life is the straightness of a thin cord stretched tight. Its stillness is terrible. It might snap with a noise like thunder. And you who sit, amid the debris of the great wars, you who sit, as it were, upon a battle-field, you know that war was less terrible than this evil peace; you know that the idle lads who carried those swords under Francis or Elizabeth, the rude Squire or Baron who swung that mace about in Picardy or Northumberland battles, may have been terribly noisy, but were not like us, terribly quiet."

Of course, the delicious humor of the occasion is based on the premise that whereas Wayne possesses an innocent, childlike sense of wonder precisely because he is a fanatic, "like most children, he may have a sense of fun, but lacks that very adult quality of a sense of humor" (Conlon, 31). Ironically, the very young and idealistic Wayne is too serious to be an adult, in the Chestertonian sense.

Ah, but I digress. It has been terribly quiet in this blog, and I apologize for that. However, much like Adam Wayne, I too am some sort of fanatic, if blessed with the more adult faculty of humor. I'm just finishing some things, and then...well, let's just say that things won't be too terribly quiet around here.

Picture of G.K. Chesterton comes courtesy of G.K. Chesterton in Lithuanian.

Saved! Stories Anticipating Easter Sunday

First, I would like to inform my loyal readers that I would like to thank them for being, well, loyal readers, which is why I have the confidence to use the plural form when referring to my readership without a wry self-deprecating remark on its number. Secondly, as I will be busy observing Lent, and preparing for my upcoming trip to Hongkong, I will not be blogging to close to a week. Please feel free to check up on my good friends on the blogroll to the right for your daily dose of intelligent commentary on practically anything.

At any rate, the photo above comes with this story:

My wife’s uncle works in a military hospital and told me about this. Its pretty amazing. Kevin Garrad (3rd Infantry Division) was on a street patrol in Iraq (Tikrit I believe) and as he rounded the corner of a building an armed (AK-47) insurgent came from the other side.

The two of them were within just a few feet of each other when they opened fire. The insurgent was killed and Kevin was hit in the left chest where his IPod was in his jacket pocket. It slowed the bullet down enough that it did not completely penetrate his body armor. Fortunately, Kevin suffered no wound.

It seems that the more progressive elements of society were on to something when they enthused "Rock on!" (Originally quoted in the Flickr thread entitled IPod Saves Soldier's Life by anarav1a.)

In related news, this comes from America's Finest News Source:

In The Ten Commandments, I Performed All My Own Miracles

The article goes on to "quote" Heston as saying:

There was nothing in that movie that I didn't make happen with my own two hands. I realize some of these so-called actors today rely on camera tricks and computers to do their jobs for them, but I'm not one to allow some punk editor to cut and paste me into the middle of a Red Sea I didn't part myself. I rode a chariot in Ben-Hur for Pete's sake, and you can be darn sure I'll channel God's power to move a little water about when I need to.

There was no soundstage. No on-site tank. Just good old-fashioned elbow grease. That's the only way I know how to part a major body of water. I just stretched out my arm, delivered my line, and saved over a million Israelites from their certain death. Difficult? For some, maybe. But I got it in one take and took the crew out for lunch.

Just thought I'd put it in here to round out the day's solemnities with the understanding that Easter Sunday is a celebrating of our greatest joy. Enjoy!

Picture comes courtesy of tikigod.

Lenten Ramblings

At times, it is difficult to follow the tenets of the Christian faith, especially when it involves simple, everyday needs such as nourishment. As it is Good Friday, my participation in the Lenten Season involves fasting and abstinence, a practice which, I suspect, led Jessica Zafra to write the post entitled 28 Days Later, without the infectious zombies. It must be acknowledged though that Ms. Zafra is perfectly capable of making such suggestions with or without the aid of Lent, and that she makes sense, in a very "Damn, I have to rush to confession now" sort of way.

Despite my ravenous hunger, I found some articles on the Net that are worth considering, and not only because they are somehow related to the season. Through Slate's feature OTHER MAGAZINES, I was led to a rather thought provoking article on Robert Mugabe in The Economist. It reads, in part:


A more important relationship, however, may have been with Nelson Mandela. Some date the start of Mr Mugabe's misrule to the emergence of his rival as the great independence hero of Africa. Until Mr Mandela left his apartheid prison, in 1990, Mr Mugabe could do no wrong. He was feted as an anti-apartheid leader, a man who reconciled different races and presided over a shining economy. Mr Mugabe was the star of the region, but then the sun rose.

Mr Mandela promptly stole all his attention; South Africa's vastly bigger economy drew investment, press coverage, foreign plaudits. To Mr Mugabe's evident personal dismay, Zimbabwe was cast into the shade. Mr Mandela's biographer describes Mr Mugabe twitching with distaste and annoyance when the two men met, shortly after the South African won his freedom.

No love is lost between the two elder statesmen. Just as Mr Mandela emerged as the voice of reconciliation and modernity in Africa, Mr Mugabe reverted to populism, land-grabs and bashing foreigners. It is quite possible that Mr Mugabe, increasingly bitter, dreams of holding on to power long enough to see the back of some of his foreign rivals. He would love to be in office when (in the middle of the year, most probably) Mr Blair resigns. Mr Mbeki has only a couple of years to go. Mr Mandela's health is fading fast.

Essentially, the author is suggesting that Zimbabwe's plight under the despot Mugabe came about because of jealousy. Interesting.

On a lighter note (a phrase which caused me no end of consternation due to the frequency of its misuse in my students' papers on Dante's Comedy), here's a snippet from America's Finest News Source:

Senator Forms Subcommittee For The Watching Of Lost

WASHINGTON, DC—Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) announced the formation of a new Senate subcommittee for the Watching of Lost and appointed...

"This subcommittee's mission is to promote viewing and discussion of this riveting ABC series every Wednesday night at my house," said Nelson, who lives alone, adding that membership on the subcommittee is open to both parties, requires no seniority, and is "fun." "In addition, I have been able to secure funding for two large pizzas and one two-liter bottle of Pepsi, and have every confidence that I can acquire more."

Sen. Nelson has asked all attendees to arrive on time, do their best to remain quiet during the show's airing, and stick around to discuss the plot and backstory for "as long as you want afterward."

Picture above comes courtesy of The Cathedral Church of Saint Peter in Exeter.

Acquired Tastes: The Onion Dispatch

Since I'm down to my last couple of papers, and I'm about to send mail informing my students to pick up their corrected papers before rogue waste management specialists recycle them into Lord-knows-what, I thought that I'd kick back and relax with America's Finest News Source. Apparently, today was a good day to rifle through their Education section. To wit:

Freshman Term Paper Discovers Something Totally New About Silas Marner

STORRS, CT-A major contribution to the study of 19th-century literature was made Monday with the handing-in of "Silas Marner: Paper #1" by Lori Durst.

Here, we read that:

According to leading experts on Silas Marner, George Eliot's 1861 fable of cruelty and redemption in the rural English countryside, Durst's three-page work contains a revolutionary insight into a key piece of symbolism in the novel which had previously escaped scholars.

"It's a staggering observation, one that's certain to alter the way we approach this text forever," said Harold Bloom, Yale professor and author of The Western Canon. "On page two, Durst makes a connection between the golden hair of the child left on Marner's doorstep and the misplaced heap of gold coins with which he is obsessed. While it may take decades for the full significance of this 'chromatic objective correlative' to ripple through academia, in my mind it has already opened the door to a rich, fertile, and heretofore virgin soil of Eliotian structural analysis."

And that:

Durst, a native of Holmdel, NJ, who plans to major in psychology, said the idea for the essay came to her approximately three weeks ago, when her professor instructed the students to "start thinking about which book we'd want to write our first papers on." Durst said she chose to focus on Silas Marner "because it looked pretty short."

"My friend Lisa did hers on Middlemarch," Durst said, "and I was like, 'Are you crazy?' That thing is like 10 times longer."

Professor Thomas Perkins, who teaches English 140, was unavailable to comment on the paper. But another University of Connecticut English professor, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Perkins and his colleagues were "stunned and somewhat embarrassed" by Durst's 12-point, Chicago-fonted magnum opus.

"You have to understand, many of us have read Silas Marner 10, 20 times," the professor said. "Maybe we had a vague sense that this adorable, golden-tressed waif who comes along to redeem Silas' soul could have something to do with the gold coins that, prior to her arrival, had been the focus of Silas' life. But we, and apparently every reader before Ms. Durst, simply dropped the ball."

While the above account deals with the staggering inability of adults to perceive what's in front of them (and I'm only half-joking), here's one for the youth (and I include myself in this category, for nostalgic reasons):

Nation's Teens Disappointed By Banned Books

WASHINGTON, DC-Huckleberry Finn, Slaughterhouse Five, and The Catcher In The Rye are just a few of the many banned books to which U.S. teens are reacting with disappointment, the American Library Association reported Monday.

Here, we read that:

In a letter sent to the ALA, the American Association Of High-School Students cited its members' other complaints with banned books, including: the monster in John Garner's Grendel isn't scary at all and doesn't even act like a monster; William Golding's Lord Of The Flies is not actually about a mutant insect man who can control the world's flies with his mental powers; and there is no reason to read Stephen King's Cujo when you can see it on cable 24 hours a day; plus, it's not that good, anyway.

"Desensitized to sex and violence from an early age, today's teens simply expect more out of their banned books than previous generations," said Naomi Gould, director of the D.C.-based National Education Consortium. "For the teens of yesteryear, access to novels like Tropic Of Cancer, Portnoy's Complaint, and Lady Chatterley's Lover was an incredible, once-in-a-lifetime thrill. But for teens raised on Cinemax and Def Comedy Jam, it just doesn't cut it."

Matt Kornreich, a sophomore at Hialeah (FL) High School, agreed. "It's just a big tease," he said. "If I want porn, I'll go get some porn. And if I want to, like, be intellectually stimulated... Yeah, right."

Picture above comes from The Onion.

Sight Unseen Recommendation: Killer of Sheep

I try to avoid touting the virtues of films I have never seen, but two of my favorite reviewers, Dana Stevens of Slate and David Denby of The New Yorker have written glowing reviews in anticipation of the DVD release of Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep. Denby's succinct, almost austere haiku of a review hints at pleasures to be savored, as he writes:

The film has attained legendary status, but it has never been released theatrically before, because of music-rights issues. Burnett used many kinds of African-American music on the soundtrack, and the movie itself has the bedraggled eloquence of an old blues record.

Stevens' review is more emotionally involved, and is charged with the experience of many remembered joys in viewing the film:

Seeing Killer of Sheep is an experience as simple and indelible as watching Bresson's Pickpocket or De Sica's Bicycle Thieves for the first time. Despite its aesthetic debt to European art cinema, Burnett's film is quintessentially American in its tone and subject matter. If there's any modern-day equivalent for the movie's matter-of-fact gaze on the ravages of urban poverty, it's the HBO series The Wire.

Killer of Sheep is a collection of brief vignettes which are so loosely connected that it feels at times like you're watching a non-narrative film. But each of these moving parts has a necessary function, and when the movie's brief 87 minutes are up, you want to watch the whole thing over again to see how they all fit together.

With such varied tones in expressing essentially delight at its impending release, this movie certainly seems worth seeing. I hope it makes its way to Philippine shores. Calling Joey Fernandez!

Picture comes courtesy of Jeroen Koolhaas, in The New Yorker.