Ryan's Hope

I figured out why the judges gush over Ryan -- it's because she's a student/protege of one of their choreographers, Mia. Probably accounts for why Ryan got a bit dance part on "House," as well. Makes me feel like there's a bit of a conflict of interest there with her, relative to the other judges. Of course, "America" votes on the people, but if the judges are there to gush about Ryan's performances, they can lead some of the voters. And what's more, if Ryan ends up in the final three (as she did last night), they can choose somebody else, giving her yet another chance. I was intrigued to see Ryan in the bottom three, given how effusive the praise was from the judges. The thing is, she's not as good as the other women dancers. She's a good dancer, but she's up against several great dancers, and I think audiences can tell, even as the judges give Ryan standing ovations and what-not. We'll see how long they can float her.

I was pleased that Melanie and Marko skated through again. Clearly Melanie remains the best of the women, although some of the others are definitely doing their best to try to keep up. This season has more leg lifts than I recall in past seasons, like all of the other women are keen to not cede that ground to Melanie, who can get her leg straight up without so much as a tip of her torso. The other women dancers are doing them, too, like "See? See? I can do that, too!" Melanie's still got great performance chops. I will be very surprised if she doesn't win this season.

Melanie and Marko

Of course, the costuming and Lady Gaga song made me wonder -- "America is a whore?" Bahah! But they performed the dance well (and note Melanie holding that arabesque before they start, still as a statue).

Jazzy Women's Closing Routine

I hate that they call'em "girls." Also, note how they are sure to catch a lot of Ryan shots during the rehearsals. "Quick! More Ryan shots!" And they also put Ryan on the wing of the actual performance, and in the front row, just so you can be sure she gets a lot of camera time. Sucks to be a non-Ryan dancer this season.

SYTYCD

"SYTYCD" was good last night, although I didn't think the numbers were as good as the week before, at least Sonya wasn't on there. She's my least-favorite of their choreographers (and it was interesting to contrast yet another zombie dance routine -- Sonya's fell flat [although they blamed the dancers and music for it, as ever] but this week's zombie routine was much stronger, better-conceived [can't remember the choreographer for that one]).

As ever, the judges seem to love Ryan -- the fraggle-haired blonde. They really love her, and I'm confused as how this protege of choreographer Mia managed a bit part on "House." WTF? Is this playing into their fanning her through and gushing over her performances? I dunno. She's not nearly as strong a dancer as poor Miranda was. And she's definitely not in the league of Melanie, or even Jordan or Caitlynn (surprisingly, Caitlynn has been bringing it, although she's not in Melanie's league). Anyway, Ryan has the favor of the judges, for some reason I can't determine. It is bugging me.

Casey Closed

The one thing Casey Anthony will have to reckon with, beyond, say, book deals and what-not, is that the Mark of Cain is a real thing, in the sense of people's awareness of who she is and what she (allegedly) did. She'll have to go somewhere far away, where there are no televisions, will probably always have to look over her shoulder, will be haunted for the rest of her days. And since she's going to get some prison time for lying to the police (and why DO people lie to police officers? That seems like such a foolhardy gambit), Casey Anthony is going to have to watch out, because somebody in that prison is likely to want to have a go at her. Anyway, she got away with it, somehow, but she won't get away with it, too. It's like OJ and his declaration that he'd never rest until he found his wife's murderer(s) -- I imagine he thinks that every time he looks in the mirror. Ha.

Casey

Not much to say about the Casey Anthony case, except repeating what my lawyer stepdad would always say: "Juries are stupid, and are prone to manipulation." So, there you have it.

Looks like it's going to be a frickin' hot day, although maybe some storms are pending. We'll see.

I had the boys last night, as Exene had some bike woes she needed to take care of, and asked if I could take the boys. I was happy to, and they were happy to have me mind them last night, anyway. B2 conked right after I'd made them dinner. Little man was tuckered.

Fairness Doctrine

Good piece in the NYT, the evolutionary roots of fairness in human beings. Nothing that surprises me, particularly, but it does show how maladaptive reactionary ideology is with regard to a functional society.

'Our rise to global dominance began, paradoxically enough, when we set rigid dominance hierarchies aside. “In a typical primate group, the toughest individuals can have their way and dominate everybody else in the group,” said Dr. Wilson. “Chimps are very smart, but their intelligence is predicated on distrust.”

Our ancestors had to learn to trust their neighbors, and the seeds of our mutuality can be seen in our simplest gestures, like the willingness to point out a hidden object to another, as even toddlers will do. Early humans also needed ways to control would-be bullies, and our exceptional pitching skills — which researchers speculate originally arose to help us ward off predators — probably helped. “We can throw much better than any other primate,” Dr. Wilson said, “and once we could throw things at a distance, all of a sudden the alpha male is vulnerable to being dispatched with stones. Stoning might have been one of our first adaptations.”'

Trust, reciprocity, mutuality -- higher functions versus lowbrow primate functioning like bullying and dominance hierarchies. Big shock. Kind of puts the whole reactionary ethos in a new light -- they're not only retrograde in their ideology, but are actually retrograde on evolutionary lines, too. Old primate thinking, truly hidebound in their outlook (since "trust" is not a cardinal conservative virtue -- and studies bear that out, too, how fearful, paranoid, and distrustful reactionaries are).

Sparkler

Happy Independence Day! Last night was kind of surreal, because I could see all the fireworks displays at the horizon, in the suburbs, which makes for a trippy kind of vista, fireworks in the distance, literally at the horizon, rising over the city. Chicago itself didn't have any fireworks this year, owing to budget woes, although I think they did the usual launching of them at Navy Pier, the weekly summer firework fest that happens there (which kind of drives me bananas -- fireworks every weekend? It's like celebrating Christmas year 'round. It takes the fun out of it! You need some downtime, or else it becomes a slog.)

Have to go on a grocery run today, but the boys should enjoy that.

I watched "The Way Back," a Peter Weir movie, and although it was highly rated, and Weir had done a few good shots with memorable images, I found the movie to be not what I had hoped it would be. The movie was supposedly inspired by real-life happenings, but there wasn't enough going on in the movie plotwise, nor characterwise, to make the trip worthwhile. Guys escape a gulag in Siberia and cross Siberia by foot to freedom. Seemingly inspiring tale of survival, but it ended up just a picturesque slog, with people dying along the way. Grand vistas, tough terrain, but mostly just people walking, and not even talking, and the ending strove for some poignancy, but was robbed of depth and meaning by the lack of characterization. I mean, the characters were all wretches of various stripes, victims of Soviet repression, one way or another, but the story just dipped its toes in the lives of these characters, so you never got a real sense of who they were, what they were doing, how they got put in the gulag, and so on. They needed to rewrite the story and delve deeper into the characters. And even the trip itself got glossed over in parts -- I mean, the guys cross Siberia, Mongolia, lurch into Tibet, confront the Himalayas, and then the camera skips over that and they're in India, at the end. They skip the Himalayas?? WTF? We see them slogging over desert and dying of hunger and thirst in the desert but we don't see them managing to walk their way over the fucking Himalayas? Cinematic robbery! The problem the director faced was that so much time had been wasted on the front end of the story, that by the time they reached the Himalayas, it was like "Oh, and they made it over. The end." Bahah! Have you ever read "Going After Cacciato" by Tim O'Brien? That is a great, picaresque war novel about guys literally walking away from the Vietnam War. It's a very cool novel, and that epic sense of travel is wonderfully conveyed. I had hoped that "The Way Back" was going to be like "...Cacciato," but it wasn't. It was just drawn-out and boring and dismal, without enough characterization for the trip to matter to the viewer, and without enough plot for the trip to be particularly exciting. We hear about things (like dangerous peasants who get bounties for capturing prisoners) but we never see them, there are no encounters with them. Anyway, the movie got great reviews, but I wasn't impressed by it, and I wanted to be. The raw material of the movie could've made for something truly grand and epic (I mean, even the concept of it inspired: "Crossing Siberia in Stalinist Russia. On foot!"!) but it so wasn't. Fail.

Oh, and Mark Strong was in this one, too, amusingly enough, although his role is small and largely inconsequential. But I was like "Holy shit, there's Mark Strong again!"

Morning

I had the boys at the tennis courts this morning, teaching them the basics of tennis. B1's height gives him a good opportunity for strong play, and while he's left-handed, he's somewhat ambidextrous with tennis, favoring his right hand for swings. I got B2 a little racquet of his own, and while he's got a natural sense of hand-eye coordination and speed, was more inclined to be ball boy, which was cute. The boys enjoyed themselves; I'll take them out weekend mornings for that, weather permitting. I haven't played tennis since the 90s, but since the boys are old enough and big enough to start that, I'm going to do that with them.

Speaking of that, I'm watching Djokovic v. Nadal on Wimbledon at the moment.

This article amused the hell out of me: Magneto and Charles Xavier, a love story? Apparently the sexual subtext in that new X-Men movie is pretty thick.

July already?

Ugh. The new neighbors were up incredibly late last night, partying and smoking. Kept me awake, so I'm bogging a bit. I'll come out from under the sleep-daze.

I'm kind of amazed it's July already. WTF? Wow. When the first day of summer arrives, I always get bummed, thinking "Well, now the days'll start getting shorter." Not that it bothers me so much; I like all seasons, in truth. But it still hangs in the back of my head.

Working on a short story this weekend, something that popped in my head the other day. I haven't worked on a short story in some time, have been focused on novel-writing. But it's nice to delve into the lean-n-mean story structure requirements of a short story, after working on long fiction for so long.

Damn

Miranda got the boot on SYTYCD. The second-to-last of the MMMs. I'm disappointed. She's really good. Must've been too many brunettes, breaking up the brunette vote (it happens in shows like this). But she was one of the best dancers, so her loss was a real bring-down. The gal who coasted through last weekend, Ryan, got a total gimmie -- as the only blonde, that gives her an edge, relative to the sea of brunettes this season. She didn't even get on the chopping block this go'round. Alas, poor Miranda. Hopefully the exposure on the show will reap rewards for her, dancewise.

SYTYCD

I'm sufficiently recovered from the aesthetic shellshock I suffered from Malick's "The Tree of Life" to be able to comment on last night's "So You Think You Can Dance?" -- which should be a tough elimination, since there were a lot of great performances:

Miranda and Robert

I liked this one, thought Miranda did a great job, and Robert actually blended well in the role, even though he was in an unfamiliar element.

Melanie and Marko

I wasn't fond of Melanie's costume this go'round, and "lyrical hip-hop" feels like an oxymoron, but she and Marko did their usual awesome best. They are both such great dancers and performers, they own everything they do, so I hope they have enough of a fan base to advance.

While my MMMs did their typical beastly best, performing very well, but I was surprised at how strong some of the other pairs were -- my sense is that they were really trying to bring it to compete with the MMMs.

Caitlynn and Mitchell

Mitchell is one of the strongest of the male dancers, so he's kind of overshadowed Caitlynn, in my estimation, but she owned that samba, banged out a great dance, with Mitchell doing his usual great work.

Clarice and Jess

Clarice is one of the prettiest of the dancers, if not one of the best, but this piece served her incredibly well (as did the fantastic costuming), and Jess owned this number. I think he outperformed all of the guys in this one -- he didn't outdance all the guys, but he definitely outperformed them, just ate up the stage.

Even Ryan and Ricky had a good routine. I don't think Ryan is one of the strongest dancers in the group, but she had a good routine, and is likely to not get axed.

I think this episode was all about the performances -- my sense is that the dancers who got the good fortune to get good dances/choreography will have the best chance of advancing.

The ones I didn't list are likely the ones in danger, because I didn't think their performances were quite at the level of the above ones, and, so, are likely threatened when it comes to voting. We'll see how it goes. I actually voted online a few times, since it's free, and I wanted some of my favorites to get a few votes.

Treed

I saw Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life" after work today. As ever, Malick's style of moviemaking lends itself to parody, while at the same time being full of memorable, evocative images. His montage-with-voiceover and assorted juxtapositions of images show a love of the power of film to move an audience with arresting images, his narrative is, as ever, elusive. There is a story at the heart of the movie, but Malick indulges his jones for memorable angles and images and his non-linear style of filmcraft makes it an elliptical exercise. Only a director/producer/writer of his stature can get away with being able to make a movie the way he does. Malick is a kind of visual poet--he weaves poetry in his imagery, but like poets that I know (and I've known my share), he is also pretentious, and that comes through, despite the enormity and epic nature of the film. There is a strong strand of humanity in the work that binds it like glue, the sense of frailty and limitation of human mortality and the tininess of our lives in the grand and cosmic scheme of things (and, to his credit, Malick actually manages both minute focus and literally interstellar gaze with similar ease). But I felt like a lot of the epic posturing in it would have been done away with and that the movie was strongest when it was focused on the O'Brien family. Faced with so much grandiosity, the brain longs for some temporal touchstones, and the family at the center of it, the authoritarian failure of a man played by Brad Pitt, his long-suffering but ultimately emotionally accessible wife, and their three boys, one of whom dies (I am presuming in Vietnam, judging from the time period of the movie, and that the boy was 19 when he died -- although the manner of the delivery of this message doesn't fit with a military death, the timing would certainly be right). The loss of the brother is keenly felt, without being mawkish or sentimental -- despite the Baby Boomer touchpoints of this 50s family in the South, there is authentic emotion run through the piece, and the sweet sensitivity of the lost son, who is an artist/musician (or a nascent one -- he's mostly a ghost in the memory of Sean Penn's character, grown-up Jack), there is just pain riven throughout his presence that, as a father, couldn't help but move me. Without seeing his fate (except to know that he died), you feel very strongly the sense of loss through his big brother's eyes, and in the eyes of the parents (even though Pitt's character is a conflicted shit, with retrograde notions of patriarchal propriety coupled with genuine love for his sons). Leaving the movie, having been dunked in Malick's directorial vision once again, absolutely everything around me resonated visually, from ripples in the lake water catching a pinkish glow from a setting sun, to the skyscrapers, to the beachgoers, and the traffic. Everything. Malick's power as a filmmaker (if not as a storyteller) is that great that it hits you that way.

I'm glad I saw it on the big screen, although it's hard to say if I liked it, exactly. It's a movie, and it moved me, for sure, but whether that movement was wrought by the content of the film or Malick's adroit use of imagery, I can't exactly say. I certainly won't forget it, even as I feel like Malick can all too easily be parodied as a moviemaker, his signature style is ripe for parody. Unlike, say, "The Thin Red Line," which is, itself, not necessarily an easy movie to watch, I think "The Tree of Life" is a movie that I enjoyed, but don't necessarily feel the need to see again. My chest is tight at the thought of doing so, and that makes me wonder if Malick succeeded in his endeavor, to prompt such an emotional response in me, that spirit of the sublime. Malick definitely knows how to make movies that are works of art, and this one qualifies in that regard, even though the journey it takes you on is a harrowing one, leaving you emotionally spent -- it's a journey that is not for the faint of heart, nor the heartless.

Pride

I was pleased that, despite the hate crime shitbirds who slashed the tires on 51 of the Pride Parade floats, the organizers managed to get all the floats going, and there was a record turnout of over 750,000 this year. I hope they're able to find who did it. This is the first time I've ever heard of something like that happening, at least on that kind of scale.

I get kind of irked by the human beatbox on Electric Company. What is this, 1985? C'mon. It bugs me to see a kid doing beatboxing. Maybe it's a case of everything old being new again or something? I dunno.

Moment of pathos tonight, as B1 asked me what a "phony" was. He had seen it said on a show, asked me what it was. There was something sweet in my 9-year-old not knowing what that was. I explained it to him. B1 is the furthest thing from a phony; he's true blue. Very sweet.

CK 1

I got the DVD for the first season of Louis CK's show, "Louie." It's so darkly funny, it slays me. I watched about half the first season before FX was pulled from my cable for whatever reason, so I missed the second half of it, but watching the episodes I had seen before again had me laughing again...



Bahah! Not every episode was funny front to back, but the stuff that was funny really made me laugh.