Before I forget, the music of Abdel Hamid Tnnari — the Solos and Melodies album — is pretty stuff.
As I sat Saturday afternoon in the Union I learned — see, you learn something new almost every day — that using iTunes I could browse other computers on the local wireless network for their iTunes shares.
I. did. not. know.
And that’s how I found Abdel Hamid Tnnari. Somebody named “nicole” was sharing it, and so this is like a free radio station, but without commercials. Alas, there is no (easy?) way at this point to save these files/songs … Apple disabled that feature of iTunes several versions ago, and the programs to unlock it again, such as myTunes, are, after Apple’s most recent update, broken again. A java application called gettunes looked promising, but it kept asking me for my password and didn’t actually do anything.
This morning I met Jen on the bus and rode with her to the Square. We then went to Cafe Soleil, had croissants and coffee, and chatted before we headed back to the Orpheum (our first stop, actually, so I could get a ticket) to watch “Into Great Silence,” an in some ways “difficult” 162 minute documentary about a small cloister of monks at Chartreuse (where they make the liqueur, and from which, I believe, the name of the color comes) — we have the Grande Chartreuse, a Carthusian monastery in the Chartreuse mountains, along with a brand of liqueur produced in the Chartreuse monastery, and a color that is part yellow and part green, although the name is frequently, mistakenly applied to other colors, such as reddish purple or reddish orange (all taken/stolen/borrowed from Wikipedia in terms of phrasing) — and there is no traditional narrative, no voice over, but one brief interview, only natural light and sounds (no background music), and lots and lots of repetition. What the Onion A.V. Club review misses when it dismisses the film as a missed opportunity is that the structure and images do provide depth, subtly over the course of the film, as character and personality are revealed to an extent, and we ask questions that have no answers. Do or how do these men “argue” or “fight”? Are there personality conflicts, those who are unliked? We can only wonder, but that’s okay. If you want “documentation” read an encyclopedia.
The connection between this movie and “Grindhouse,” which I saw yesterday, is the line from “Death Proof” (the 2nd feature): “the only liquor so good they named a color after it”.
Last night after talking with Jen I did rewatch “Starship Troopers” but I was almost too tired to finish it and almost decided to sleep on the sofa, but I did finish the movie, turn off the TV, and switch to the bed. I didn’t drink the whole bottle of wine, only two glasses.
“Starship Troopers” remains good, and at times (such as Michael Ironside’s high school lecture excerpts at the beginning) the script is great in a scary and thought-provoking way. It’s still a great action flick, but an even better fascism/militarism parody, and the disconnect between the political rhetoric and the government’s aims are both terrifying and prescient. Or terrifyingly prescient.
And it does star Doogie Howser at his most frightening.
And speaking of Doogie Howser, ever wonder what happened to N.P. Harris’s co-stars? Max Casella has played Benny Fazio on “The Sopranos” since the third season (he was Doogie’s loser friend Vinnie) and Lisa Dean Ryan (Doogie’s girlfriend, Wanda) has done jack-diddly-squat as an actress since then, unless you count guest appearances on C.S.I. and Beverly Hills 90210.
After “Into Great Silence” I left Jen, who returned to Cafe Soleil for lunch, and ended up at the other end of State Street, at the University Book Store, when after very little arm-twisting I purchased Olympos (Dan Simmons), Shadowmarch (Tad Wiliams — signed by the author), and I Am A Strange Loop (Douglas Hofstadter — a new book [New York: Basic Books, 2007]). I ran into Christoph on the Mall and chatted for 10-15 minutes about Kant, before he rushed up State Street to meet Jen and then watch “Gods and Monsters” (Ian McKellen and Brendan Fraser). I went to the Union, had a Paul Bunyan Burger and large chocolate milk, wrote a bit, downloaded a bit, and, before leaving, got some ice cream.
In front of the library, after finishing my ice cream, I encountered Regina, and as we chatted, Lynn came out (shortly after Sabine, who didn’t see us and went the other direction), and the three of us chatted for a few minutes. Then Regina went toward Van Hise to get her car, and Lynn and I strolled up State Street to Fair Trade, where, since she saw the 4 approaching a she decided not to walk home, we separated.
I got a coffee, and as I finish this a nearly geological shift is underway in the coffee shop as tables and chairs are moved around, people leave, and a few new ones arrive. It’s millions of years of late tectonics in a few minutes, mountains thrust up, plates subsumed, peaks eroded, etc.
