Only I and other select members of the human population would title their last entry "Goofballs!".

But it quite well embodies what the way this blog has been sliding. That's right. I'm copping out and shutting it down. Technically it's an "indefinite hiatus", but we all know what that means; it acts mostly as a sloppy backdoor in case I ever post one or two words within the next fifteen years. 

Theoretically I could have just let the entire thing die very slowly and have people come up, prod it with a stick, look morose, and slouch away. Not only would that be difficult for me, but it would probably waste seconds of people's lives that could really be put to better use, fixing dryers or shaving your neighbour's dog or what have you.

I'm not listing individual thank yous, because then I would have to live with the additional guilt of singling out people for special treatment and omitting others for whatever reasons, and nobody reads thank yous anyway. Suffice it to say that I'm grateful for and surprised by all the comments and support I've gotten. It's been a decent run; I'm glad people enjoyed reading what I wrote. I even like a few things I've written here myself.

I'll be sticking around to read, but I doubt I'll write any longer. The blog itself will stay up to remain a nuisance to Blogdrive, to preserve what work I've put into the layout and content, and to be a testament to my former virility. Literary Viagra ... now there's a thought ...  

So thanks for coming out, everyone, and good night.

Johannes Vermeer's "The Art of Painting"

Jules Bastien-Lepage's "Portrait of Sarah Bernhardt"



Painted in 1879, "Portrait of Sarah Bernhardt" won its artist, Jules Bastien-Lepage, the Legion of Honour, an order of merit bestowed by the French government, and the country's highest civilian honour.

At first glance, your eyes immediately leap to Bernhardt's head, the clearest, most crisp portion of the painting, singled out also for the shock of frizzly auburn hair.

Much of the picture looks very soft, its brushstrokes almost impressionistic. But in fact, Bastien-Lepage has imbued his painting with incredibly fine and intricate details; you only need to look at her clothing ... the skirt of her dress patterned with velvet, flower-like leaves; sleeves like swan's feathers; soft ivory-white fur; and the large puff of bluish tulle at her throat. Everywhere are multiple nuances of elegant colour; the background is a mishmash of muted pastels and neutrals, and the whites are never quite whites, but mixes of blue, yellow, grey, and pink.

What can I say? Ang is an influential woman. And Dave's a pestering puer.

Today's piece relates to AotD XXII (a mere five entries ago stretching back to March 22), when Virgil-fanboy Dante teamed up with his idol to take a jaunt through the circles of Hell (much like today's youth trashing a hotel room with, say, God, uh, the White, uh, Stripes, yeah -- woo, I'm so hip and with it!). This evening I present:
 
William Bourguereau's Dante and Virgil in Hell
 

My titles just keep getting worse and worse. How do newspaper editors do it?

The clever ones among you would snicker and say, "Just like other people, I'm guessing..." But getting on with it ...

Everyone knows that movies have the ability to bring a lump to one's throat and spring warm tears to one's eyes, toying with the heart and soul. They don't register much, however, when it comes to exciting the brain.

Teacher today is The Last Samurai.

I learned from The Last Samurai that:

• You can easily learn every complexity of an incredibly foreign language (in that English is much more different from Japanese than it is from French) just by living with natives for a short period and without being taught in your own native language.
  
  
• Scruffy facial hair indicates you're drunk and disgruntled with the world.
  
  
• The man you slaughtered in battle will invariably be your size, so his armour will fit you perfectly.
  
  
• 'Course, you're pretty short, so ...
  
  
• Despite the fact you killed the aforementioned man, his beautiful, delicate Japanese wife will fall in love with you. This is also despite that you are a member of the loathed foreigners who have invaded her homeland and threaten her people's very way of life.  
  
  
• Foreign societies have very high regard for the English language and will always make special efforts to learn it. Those of White Western society (henceforth WWS), on the other hand, have no appreciation for their own culture, much less others, and are perpetually ignorant.
  
  
• There will always be one free WWS thinker despite the rest of WWS.
  
  
• This said free thinker has an innate understanding and sensitivity to foreign cultures, but only to the aspects that are acceptable to Western society. E.g. If he becomes adopted by an Asian family, he will very likely not condone eating dog. But he will approve every other aspect of their culture that in one or two skewed ways shows up Western deficiencies. These aspects usually demonstrate how they are still in tune with nature and how most of WWS are capitalist pigs for enjoying modern luxuries. Ironically, audiences leave this movie feeling no guilt, but actual self-satisfaction, as though they themselves were not guilty of such indulgences. As they exit the theatre, they stuff their empty popcorn bags and soda cups into an already overflowing trash bin, and dig in their pockets for the keys to their gas-guzzling SUV. Somewhere, a kitten is crying.
  
  
• All foreign cultures have something to teach WWS, but we have nothing to bestow, despite our own lengthy history, stretching back thousands of years, of art, literature, and philosophy.
  
  
• Modern technology is bad. Submission to it breeds an instant desire to destroy small, quaint villages populated by farmers and laughing children.
  
  
• Technology is also an invention of WWS, and we are constantly trying to force it upon those we regard as lacking it. Forget that for a very long time, it was WWS that was the barbaric backwater and that the Middle East and Asia led the forefront in creation and invention.
  
  
• There is always exactly one Non-White Bad Guy, as a flimsy way to cover the filimmakers' asses from accusations of oversimplification.
  
  
• Inevitably, NWBG's sidekick will see the error of his superior's ways and he and the rest of the troops will redeem themselves through some heart-rending but ultimately useless gesture. Somehow I doubt kowtowing will bring back all those dead samurai.
  
  
• The supposedly aloof ruler of the people being taken advantaged of by WSS will also always redeem himself by the end. This comes around through an informal or respectful gesture that is never exercised by a person of such dignity (i.e. here, kneeling in front of Tom Cruise, though in a strictly chaste way). Therefore, it is a Very Meaningful Big Sacrifice on the part of the ruler and and makes up for all past transgressions.
  
  
• The Main Good Guy never dies. Ever. Whatever the impossible circumstances. Not even with machine guns blasting countless rounds of ammo at what should be a huge, easy target, being a man in red armour on a horse on a green field.  He will suffer some meaningless wounds, and also, just to show how dangerous this has been for him, minor cuts and scratches to his valuable face. 
  
  
• Tom Cruise needs to be put down before he makes another movie, and if not then, then definitely before he gets really old and too nasty to contemplate as having been a sex symbol.

The fact I always find amusing is that I missed the first 45 minutes of this movie or so and I still managed to keep up with the story -- not a good sign. Another sad thing is that this would've been a much better movie if it only stayed with the Japanese side of the story, where a nation is torn apart by a need for either balance, or a choice -- to keep pace with the rapidly advancing West and move into the modern world, and/or to maintain its traditions.

Naturally, it would've been simply too boring to focus on just the actual people who are faced by the double threat and blessing of a widespread move towards industrialization, and who have shared the same land and heritage for thousands of years. While yes, WSS is undoubtedly a big player, the story is ultimately about the Japanese people and a momentous but turbulent time in their history. Throwing in Cruise's flashy grin is a terrible insult to what could have been a perfectly poignant and thrilling story without it. 

Spiderman 2 was not bad though (probably due to its blissful freedom from Cruise-ness).

I'm seriously weirding myself out by how much space I dedicate to this little store. Someone tell me I'm very creepy and need to let go, so I don't have to do it myself.

Anyway, actually, this isn't really about BMV per se, but it relates vaguely back to it, because whenever I walk inside, I'm always reminded of my lifelong professional dream of running a bookstore of my own.

Ever since I was, oh, alive, I've wanted to be an illustrator. This was back when I read more picture books, and when I thought I had commerically viable artistic talent. After I realized I had maybe a passing knack for drawing at best, I naively switched to author, thinking I could do better at it, that it was easier.

I haven't written anything in a year. And more. Being awarded English Laureate seems so far away.

But I still want to do something with writing, with books. I persist. Critic, editor, seller. For a while, I even toyed with the idea of being an English teacher, but decided I couldn't deal with that kind of social responsibility, not to mention hordes of snotty kids -- ones like me who secretly believed they knew everything but pretended outwardly that they were modest, and possibly worse, ones who openly believed they knew everything but in fact were even stupider.

If you've seen or read Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, that's the kind of quirky, sadsack, geeky, elitist, patchwork establishment I want to run one day. I want to be surly. I want to be scary and emanate the false illusion that I am literate, and by stepping into my store, you are conceding that you are not, at which time I temporarily own your ass. I have been an introvert my whole life, and I need a little piece of the world, a personal realm, that I can rule and control.

The day before I started my first day at my new job, I was ranting at my mother -- nicely -- about this ideal job, preferably with lots of underlings I can demean. I told her about how great it feels to be able to intimidate total strangers with a literary knowledge merited only by the fact you work in a bookstore.

I told her about the floor-to-ceiling worn dark wood shelving, and the rolling ladder. I told her about the tarnished brass -- or iron or pewter -- accents, and the metal spiral staircase that goes tap-tap-tap like a typewriter when you walk down it -- antique typewriters being another thing I'm crazy about, just like rotary phones.

I told her about the restored Victrola I would keep brightly polished and subtly lit in the corner, and how I would play old blues records, Beatles, disco, and so-bad-it's-good 80s numbers on it all day, and bark at my minions when they try to play something less unhip. 

She said maybe I could be a librarian.

I paused.

A library isn't the same, I should've said. A bookstore is more social, more diverse, more contemporary. It's by far more elitist, in a secondhand bookstore, especially. I want to be pretentious and exclusionary -- a library by its very nature is communal and all-embracing.

I shelf a book and never have to worry about it again, whether or not someone leaves with it tucked under their arm; a library is repetitive, the same titles, the same people, cycle perpetually. The constant shelving and reshelving of the same materials over and over ... it would kill me with its dreary repetition. I can endure, say, seven weeks of a temporary job dusting and filing tens of thousands of papers, but as an occupation, I could not. (Moreover, U of T would hardly be impressed by me trying to use a below-minimum salary to slowly ... very slowly ... line their pockets.)

Instead of explaining all of it -- which I would have had to have done in English in order to achieve the level of eloquence I would insist upon and she wouldn't understand it well at all then -- I sighed, and said yeah, you know, maybe.