pubs
Who could forget the famous Cancer Research Dalek?
So, the solution to my little riddle, for all of you dear readers clearly burning for resolution. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go back and read. A few people (well, several people) have asked if the question required specific knowledge of Bay Area geography. No, no; that’s not how a riddle works. Everything you need, besides a little lateral thinking, is contained in that original post.
Up to date? Then here we go.
I don’t know how quickly and easily you remember names and numbers and labels, but for me it just doesn’t happen without a lot of context and repetition. Anyway, if you know one place name, it serves to reason it would be the one most familiar and useful to you — i.e., the place where you live. So I live on Madison. Therefore Madison is the one street in Oakland I am most certain to know. It’s my point of reference for everything else.
Now. With Kaufman on the horizon, I assume most people reading this are familiar with synecdoche. It’s a kind of abstraction where you use a part of something to represent the whole, or the whole of something to refer to a part. Sailors become “hands”. A car becomes “wheels”. “Capcom” refers to Inafune. And so on.
So if my point of reference for streets in Oakland is the street that I live on, I will tend to, on some not entirely conscious level, associate my street with all streets in Oakland. You know how it works. I figure distances and other street positions by association to home base. I will read in patterns, to help me remember where things are, all centered on the one most important point. All pretty simple, right?
As I said, I live on Madison. In my follow-up hint, I mentioned that other streets closely parallel to Madison include Jackson, Harrison, Jefferson, Washington, and Franklin. That’s not unique information, or anything you’d be expected to know; all it really does is point a finger on the significance of my street name.
I live on a president street. I’m surrounded by president streets. This is, on some level, my concept of the area. So naturally enough, I tend to mistake Grand Ave for Grant.
So there’s the long division. Now all that’s left is addition. So why do I keep mixing up “Grant” and Union? Well! What’s the association there?
Yes, exactly.
This is pretty typical, really. I just found this particular example easier to explain — and therefore funnier — than most.
Is it any wonder I was so horrible in school?
(October 13th, 2008 @ 9:09pm)
I’m really into film and TV restoration. I don’t know if this comes out of my childhood love of archaeology. It would be hard to overstate the influence of Tintin and Uncle Scrooge… Yet I’m maybe a bit spoiled. I pay attention to massive projects like Rear Window and My Fair Lady, to revolutionary ones like the Murnau Foundation Metropolis job, and to compulsive, continually-improving efforts from guys like the Doctor Who Restoration Team. I’m used both to employing every available tool to repair material and present it in the best possible light, and extensive features geared to contextualize the work both contemporarily and retrospectively, examine its production, and illustrate its place in any relevant oeuvre. The point is to put a work back on its feet again, and send it back into mainsteam culture.
The Universal and Warner Hitchcock discs, though relatively unhailed, do a decent job at all of this. Kino is a mixed bag — even their meticulously restored Nosferatu has some amazing undergraduate blunders — yet they clearly try hard under a limited budget to present something significant.
Thing about Criterion — they strike me as sort of a lowest common denominator of film preservation. They’re not into preservation, really; into keeping works healthy and relevant and in circulation. They pander to film fetishists and collectors. They kind of do a half-assed job at both restoration and extras. For reasons I cannot understand, they don’t stabilize film weave. They don’t paint out dust and scratches, or even socket holes. They rarely clean up the sound. Most of their extras, though certainly well-researched, are off-the-shelf and dry as hell. Their DVDs strike me as academic, snooty, overpriced, and not particularly ambitious in the very areas where they claim superiority.
They do good presentation, though. And they do a good job of raising awareness of less obvious films (at least, to a point). And then they put them out in limited editions, and number them so their fans can buy ‘em all (at prices around double of other publishers). They’re like the Working Designs of film preservation. (According to that article, Vic Ireland is starting a company called Gaijinworks. Oh my dear Lord Numpty…)
Criterion’s relationship with Janus also weirds me out a little. I realize that it’s basically the commercial arm of Janus, and I understand that Janus is to be credited with a certain amount of US exposure of independent and foreign films, before the boom of indie cinema. In retrospect I always find it a little weird to see their logo plastered in front of so many important movies that they didn’t have anything directly to do with. It’s almost like a corporate collector-fetishism, if maybe for the ultimate cultural good, sort of? This isn’t something I’ve put a lot of thought into; it’s just been scampering around my subconscious. It may be based on nothing but my own prejudices.
Anyway. People keep asking me what I think of Criterion. My answer: phooey!
Though the packaging to their Yojimbo/Sanjuro set is just devine.
(Full disclosure: I have about half a dozen Criterion DVDs, from Hitchcock to Wong Kar-Wai. I’m more impressed with their “new” movies than their classic library. Mostly because they don’t require restoration or much context; all they need is nice packaging and presentation. And yes, In the Mood for Love is classy as hell.)
(October 9th, 2008 @ 4:33pm)
I just had an interesing intoxicated conversation aobut the histeroy of mankind and the racial or verbal memory of voles. I can’t remember exactly what triggered it, but what if our fairly universal mythology of dragons was based on a race memory of dinosaurs, daing back to far before anything objectively identifible as our current genome and oral tradition? It’s not just genetics as such; do dolphins have an oral tradition? They’ve been around a fair long time; long enough to develop social legends of their own. Look at ants, and their universal cleverness at developing solutions to common problems.
It’s mostly interesting from a hypothetical stantpoint, as a basis for fiction. Still, the wonders that sake can inspire.
I don’t know that I’ve had a conversation quite like this before.
Oh, the debates were fairly pedestrian. Obama more or less memorized his responses to key verbal cues — Afganistan, the economy — while McCain seemed to react to and spout certain phrases. I guess I can understand Obama hitting the same points — who knows how many people tune into each debate, and that debate alone, so he might as well do his routine each time. Still, it’s getting a little tiresome. It would be nice to see either candidate actually react in real-time to the questions posed. Oh well. At least he seemed prepared and full of constructive attitude.
I think I need to sleep this off. I think this is as inebriated as I’ve ever been. Thanks, Coach. Even if you never brought us our Sharpies.
(October 7th, 2008 @ 10:38pm)
So to update on this post:
Other nearby parallel streets to mine (as you can see) include Jackson, Harrison, Jefferson, Washington, and Franklin.
(Two people more or less got this, privately, and a third has come close.)
(October 6th, 2008 @ 4:03pm)
