Saturday, November 04, 2006

A musing meandering of my mind...

"Tu le connais, lecteur, ce monstre délicat,
—Hypocrite lecteur,—mon semblable,—mon frère!"
(Image from Wikipedia)

Last night, for the first time, I saw Lady and the Tramp.

In fact, growing up in my small Ozark town with no cinema and only one TV channel but often no television set anyway except for when somebody gave us a black-and-white hand-me-down, I missed nearly all of the films for children.

Now, with children of my own and all the technological wonders wrought by the communications revolution, I get to see everything that I missed, and often find it ... appropriately enough ... wonderful.

I have to admit, however, that Lady and the Tramp disappointed me. Perhaps, based the previews that I'd seen on TV as a child, I was expecting too much from the movie:

"What a dog!"
Words uttered by a hip-swaying Peg, that Schweinhund whose every hypnotic tail-swish kept my eyes ... well, pegged.

I now wonder what my little-kid brain was thinking, and the attraction may have been merely the fever-evoking voice of the great Peggy Lee, but whatever subterranean urges were at work in and on me then, I only knew consciously that I just had to see that film.

Last evening, I did, to my disappointment, but my kids and I enjoyed laughing at the dogs' names, especially "Pidge" and "Peg."

"Why's he calling her a pig?" I loudly inquired when the Tramp called the Lady "Pidge."

My kids giggled.

Later, when Peg was doing her hoosegow sing-and-swing-thing, the other impounded dogs called her "Peg," which inspired En-Uk to say "Another pig!"

Again, we all laughed.

Not the reaction that Disney expected at those moments, I'll wager ... but he might not have minded.

Speaking of laughter and the comic, I recently discovered an online comic artist who teaches English somewhere here in Korea. His goes by the name "The William G," calls his blog The William G Blog, and has several comics websites of his "stuff" that he's linked to. Currently, he's posting a new, after-the-apocalypse comic series titled Bang Barstal that's full of the dark, early Heavy Metal brand of humor and features a trailer-trash Byronic hero who looks like Quentin Tarantino, acknowledges responsibility for the end of the world, and has a special baseball bat that'll set things right.

The most-recent episode has Bang rescuing a goddess and "Racing Towards Home" in pursuit of 'Christian' sanctuary in a cemetary as a gigantic evil alien god comes thundering after him. The Christology is rather low, and Bang says that he's not a believer, but Jesus shows up at Bang's bat-tap on the wood of one 'untrue' cross and kicks alien-god butt. Or as Bang explains:
"Said I don't believe in Jesus no more. And that's true.... That's just because I KNOW he's there."

[Strikes bat against cross: Whung!]

"Just gotta get his attention sometimes. Was taught in Sunday School that he didn't like it when false gods showed up."

[Jesus appears in power as false god dissolves while crying out: "Grahhhhhhhh!"]

"Hoped some of that Old Testament wrath would take care of my problems for me, and did it ever, boy.
Unfortunately for Bang, the beautiful and good alien goddess whom he was befriending also dissolves, leaving only a tiny Schweinhund behind. That's part of the dark humor, I guess.

Speaking of dark humor -- and I'll stop here -- the best one liner that I've recently heard comes from Noam Scheiber, who writes for The New Republic and says of the potentially disgraced, possibly priggish pig-dog Ted Haggard:
Haggard, of course, is the Colorado mega-church pastor who resigned as president of the 30 million-member National Association of Evangelicals today because he didn't have a three-year relationship with a male prostitute.
Now, that's a long whiplash of a sentence whose ending makes the sound barrier crack.

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10 Comments:

At 2:13 PM, Blogger Daniel said...

Ah, Jeffery, to find a few of my favorite lines from Baudelaire under a decapitated hog's head, that does a nihilist's heart good...
It's funny that I find that here, now, it was just last night that I came across a site which had a bunch of mp3's of readings from the flowers of evil. His poetry is to be heard, not read, so it's definately worth checking out. Even if you don't know french, the sounds of the words create the poetry just as much as what he's talking about, and they have translations just in case you're curious. Anyway, some of the recordings are by some french guy named Louis Jourdan, the others by Eva Le Gallienne. The ones recorded by Jourdan aren't worth listening to. He varies the tone of his voice to make the verses sound dignified and serious, as if he cares ever so much about the words he's reciting, but doesn't quite pull it off. Because he tries to arrive, he never quite makes it. On the other hand, Eva seems to have spent a few years with Baudelaire. The words invade her readings. I think she's there. You could say her Weltanschauung is exactly where she's reading. There's also a slight echo which pursues her voice in some of her recordings which adds to the uncanniness of the whole affair. Anyway, here is the adress if you're interested:
http://fleursdumal.org/audio.php
I hope all is well on the other side of the world,
DR

 
At 2:23 PM, Blogger Daniel said...

P.S.
Quote from Wikipedia, at the definition of Schweinhund: "Mostly used by Americans, who like to make fun about German People."
YOU MEAN...EVERYONE DOESNT LIKE TO MAKE FUN ABOUT GERMAN PEOPLE?!?

 
At 3:56 PM, Blogger Horace Jeffery Hodges said...

Herr Richter, thanks for the site address. I went and listened, then switched and read.

I wished to do both simultaneously, reflected, opened two browsers to the same website ... et voila.

But I only have had time for "Au Lecteur," which is by the man and anyway has a break in it, missing a few beats as a result.

On the P.S.? Oh, well, everybody, surely, does enjoy making fun of Germans, but only Americans -- great linguists that we are -- can manage the awful German language well enough to pronounce Schweinhund.

Jeffery Hodges

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At 11:58 PM, Blogger Daniel said...

Hey are you having trouble posting on your blog? I've been trying to edit a post on mine since last night, and it won't let me, due to a "database error".

 
At 3:39 AM, Blogger Horace Jeffery Hodges said...

Herr Richter, Blogger has perennial problems -- by which, I mean recurrent, repeated problems, not some quasi-botanical analogy about it being a plant lasting three seasons or more.

Where was I?

Oh, right. Blogger often has problems of this sort. Usually, the problem gets fixed ... but always happens again.

I haven't yet noticed any problems with my blog today, so the server hosting the database with my blog's archives must be functioning fine ... for now.

I'll find out when I attempt to post, I suppose...

Jeffery Hodges

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At 10:30 AM, Blogger Hathor said...

Do you have your blog backed up on your computer? If not try this http://www.httrack.com/ a web copier.

 
At 2:40 PM, Blogger Horace Jeffery Hodges said...

Hathor, thanks. I'll look into that. Blogger is often unreliable, as you may have noticed. In fact, I'd been having problems for a couple of weeks and having to do the coding on my posts manually for links, photos, and so on.

That's all working again now ... but for how long?

Jeffery Hodges

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At 11:36 PM, Blogger Hathor said...

Not very long.
I have several questions I can't get the hackers to look at on Blogger Group Help.
I am getting tired of workarounds, but its free.

 
At 6:27 AM, Blogger jj mollo said...

Schweinhund? Ist dat nicht from der glorious Colonel Klink?

 
At 11:49 AM, Blogger Horace Jeffery Hodges said...

Ja, JJ, ist so.

Jeffery Hodges

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