Saunders on Borat

One of my favorite working writers and brilliant satirist George Saunders has a piece in this week's New Yorker on Borat. After having recommended the film in yesterday's post, I feel obligated to bring Saunders' biting commentary to your attention (and thanks to B for bringing it to mine) because it puts the film in perspective and it's well worth reading. Here's an excerpt to whet your appetite:

Dear Ken:

Got your note, deeply honored. Being new to the company, really appreciate opportunity to outline some ideas for “Borat” DVD. As Josh mentioned, we do indeed have a wealth of footage that could be put to good use as DVD extras. In other cases, have taken liberty of suggesting some reshoots:

OPENING “VILLAGE” SECTION: How about a high-speed montage of the actual difficult, brutal lives of the villagers in Romania—the hours of debilitating toil, their oppression at the hands of their corrupt government, premature loss of teeth, death of infants, etc., etc.—culminating in a panning shot of the village on the morning of the day when they first realize they’ve been had, and that, as far as posterity goes, they will always be remembered, if remembered at all, as savages, rapists, prostitutes, etc., and they stumble out of their little sheds or whatever, looking traumatized? (Would be good if one or two could fall into depression/commit suicide as a result = confirmation of their “subhuman” status? Rich social commentary.)

ALT: The scene where the one-armed old man, many months later, weeps in his room at the memory of being tricked into wearing a sex toy on his arm. Priceless!

And here's a more flattering article on yesteday's other film recommendation.

Giving Thanks & The Big Con

It was a fine Thanksgiving weekend, full of family, friends, food, booze, and board games. We teamed up with my sister-in-law's family for Thursday's feast, and had some good friends join us as well (all unevenly scattered across the living room to the left). Besides my many loved ones and countless other things, I'm thankful for pumpkin pie, opposable thumbs, scrabble, sudoku, the dog whisperer, and leftovers. The Fountain was gorgeous and Borat hilarious. Both movies come recommended. Oh, and I'm thankful for the warm weather in New York, no matter what it might imply.

My brother, Marc (pictured above), wrote me after having read the Wired Magazine Gizmondo article to marvel at the skill of the con men involved in that awesome modern true crime story, and it so happens that I recently started reading a book called "The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man" by David W. Maurer. First published in 1940, it's heralded as the inspiration behind the classic film "The Sting." Maurer did extensive research, befriending and interviewing numerous confidence men, to expose how con games evolved from small time grifts like three-card-monte to big con games like "the pay-off." The journalistic style of the 40's can be tedious to read, but it's fascinating stuff. The grifters' slang is particularly entertaining. Here's one of my favorite excerpts from Maurer's expository dialogue:

John is "the insideman," Jimmy Ryan is "the roper," and Mr. Fink is "the mark."

"What do you think we should play him for," asks John.

"I'd say the ponies," says Ryan. "He is a real-estate man and seems to know a lot about investments. He ought to be good for twenty-five grand and maybe more. And he likes the best of it."

"O.K." says John. "We'll give him the hides. What kind of an egg is he?"

"Well, he's no lop-eared mark," say Jimmy. "He knows what it is all about. And he may be hard to handle. He is a hefty baby with plenty of moxie. I'd guess he'll be hard to cool out."

"If he gets fractious, he'll get the cackle-bladder. That cools out those tough babies. Do you want to find the poke for him?"

"We might as well. He's right there in the hotel with me and it would be a better tie-up than the point-out. And no more trouble."

"O.K. When do you want to find it?"

"I think tomorrow noon. I'll phone you as soon as I can date him up for lunch."

And so Mr. Ryan returns to the hotel, phones Mr. Fink, makes a luncheon date for one the next day, and relays the information to John.

Next, Ryan will "find" a wallet while at lunch with the mark, and when the two men thoughtfully seek out the wallet's owner, they discover he is a man with very handy connections indeed. And so the con is on. It's great stuff, and I can't wait to watch "The Sting" again once I'm through with it.

Here's another modern crime story from Wired that's also worth reading.

Enjoy the balmy end to November on the east-coast.

Elven Embodiments of Syntactical Intent

Here is an excerpt from Terence McKenna's In the Valley of Novelty, which you can hear now if you like. The other nine parts can be heard here or here.

This is a very interesting area of discussion... On DMT and on psilocybin, and they are closely related... These psychedelics particularly seem to impact the language forming portion of the brain, and this produces truly bizarre states of mind because it‘s the language portion of your brain which is explaining to you moment to moment what is going on. You know, Now I am eating, Now I am having sex, Now I am flashing on DMT. And when that part of the brain gets FUBARed then you really do have a puzzlement on your hands, because the machinery of description itself has been caught up in the process. On DMT these entities, these machinelike, diminutive, shape-shifting, faceted... creatures that come bounding out of the state (and they come bounding out of my stereo speakers if I have my eyes open), they are like, they’re elven embodiments of syntactical intent. Somehow syntax, which is normally the invisible architecture behind language, has moved into the foreground. And you can see it. I mean it’s doing calisthenics and acrobatics in front of you, it’s crawling all over you. And what’s happened is that your categories have been scrambled or something, and this thing which is normally supposed to be invisible and in the background and an abstraction has come forward and is doing hand springs right in front of you. And the thing makes linguistic objects, it sheds syntactical objectification, so that it comes towards you, they come toward you - they divide, they merge, they’re bounding, they’re screaming, they’re squeaking - and they hold out objects which they sing into existence, or which they pull out of some other place. And these things are... like jewels and lights... or old farts, and yesterday, and high speed. In other words, they are made of juxtapositions of qualities that are impossible in three dimensional space. What they’re like is - and in fact this is probably what they are - what they’re like is they’re like three and four and five dimensional puns. And you know how the pleasure of a pun lies in the fact that... it’s not that the meaning flickers from A to B, it’s that it’s simultaneously A and B. And when the pun is really funny it’s an A, B, C, D pun. And it’s simultaneously all these things. Well, that quality which in our experience can only occur to an acoustic output or a glyph, which stands for an acoustical output, i.e. a printed pun, in the DMT world objects can do this. Objects can simultaneously manifest more than one nature at once. And like a pun, the result is always funny. It’s amusing. You can not help but be delighted by this thing doing this thing. So these syntactical animals, these linguistic elves, are pulling this stuff out and gesturing, pushing it in your face. Saying, "Look at this. Look at this!" And you are fascinated, you know, pulled into it because each one is... “WHAT?! How can this be happening? It’s not, we’re not in the world anymore!" No artist, however gifted, could make one of these objects because they have qualities, extremely difficult to language qualities, that no object in this world has. And so you’re trying to wrap your mind, and say, “My god, what is it?” Because in spite of the fact it’s just a little thing, you can tell by looking at it that it’s implications are earth shaking. In other words, if I could pull one of these things out of hyperspace, and we would all look at it, we would all realize that that was the ballgame right there. That somehow this proved it, was it, did it, ended it, started it, made it clear. How can this be? Well, I don’t know, you had to be there sort of.

- Terence McKenna, 1998

Assateague 2006

I like making movies with my tiny and excellent Canon Powershot SD410, setting the footage to cheesy Aphex Twin songs, and editing it all together using iMovie. Enjoy.

Season Your Bird On Impact

It's been another week (a big week) without posting. So here's some random findings, mostly via boingboing.

Personal favorite: Season Shot. Anyone want to take me hunting?

How did I miss this? A graphic adaptation of The 911 Commission Report.




Tricked out Honda from a dream/nightmare.




See Southpark harpoon the new atheists, or more specifically Dawkins himself. Part 1. Part 2.

Look for the Assateague footage to be posted here this weekend.

I've learned my lesson: you can't predict Ze.

Haggard

Months ago, when I was still living in my parent's basement, I came across this youtube clip from Richard Dawkin's BBC documentary, "The Root of All Evil." Ted Haggard so unsettled me - exuding evil arrogance from his blackened, soulless eyes - that I was compelled to show the video to as many friends and family members as would watch it. Do you remember?

Well, if you haven't heard, vindication! Oh, sweet, triumphant vindication. Ted, the hell you claim to believe in awaits your imminent arrival, replete with the smell of drug-addled sex still clinging to your come-stained undergarments. (Wow, I just wrote that. I wonder who's reading this.) It's okay, Ted, I've got dirty underwear too, I forgive you. I'm just relieved to know that I'm not half the hypocrite you are. Maybe a third, but I am American, and at least I've never passed myself off as devout or holy. Granted, the charges aren't entirely substantiated, but I'm willing to bet my savings that Pastor Ted uses crystal to have marathon sex. Any takers? Am I being unjustly vengeful?

Waiting in my inbox this morning was a happy note from Danny reminding me of the good news. He linked to this post by the author of a year-and-a-half old Harper's piece about Pastor Ted. Boingboing's post on the subject has some good links, too. One is to a local news piece from Denver about a voice recognition expert who claims that, "from a scientific standpoint," certain damning voice mails submitted by the male escort who brought attention to Pastor Ted's ungodly behavior were most likely left by Haggard himself. And another to the Non-Prophet blog which posted an email sent to the New Life Church mailing list containing the following good news:

It is important for you to know that [Pastor Ted] confessed to the overseers that some of the accusations against him are true. He has willingly and humbly submitted to the authority of the board of overseers, and will remain on administrative leave during the course of the investigation.

It's important to note that Haggard has only confessed to getting a massage and buying meth because he was "curious." He denies having had sex with the escort or having used any drugs. You want to bet?

My Soul as AT-AT

This paitning is appropriate for soundsandpictures, but I am greedy for its sentiment - at once both LOL absurd and mega-nostalgic - so here it is. Thanks boingboing for the post, and thanks to B for bringing it up this morning.

Nothing from Ze yet about the Peace/Chaos chart.

Index of Civil Conflict

This is not a joke. The U.S. military has expertly used Powerpoint to show that, on a scale of peace to chaos, peace being green and chaos being red, Iraq is slipping dangerously towards the red. Um...
As the anonymous person who brought the story to my attention pointed out, the chart is "like something a gifted middle school student might make."
There is some real talent at the pentagon these days.

This is right up Ze's alley. I predict commentary.

For a beefed up, more thoughtful version of this post, check B's dick move over here.