anatoliaphilia

Currently on a search for a hard copy of 'Turkish Superman,' given a good lead by a comm prof who teaches film classes, and hoping that the b-movie underworld grants me this. I own maybe three DVDs, not counting the copy of U2's 'Rattle and Hum' that my friend's cat peed on.



This whole movie is on Youtube, with the greatest subtitles ever that include threats of both bisecting and incubation.

If such efforts fail, at least I was able to rip a copy of the Selda reissue that I found up http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/at the station. If the rest of it is anything like this slice of sonic amazingness, I will be somewhat consoled.



Otherwise, it's the unofficial Certain Ethnic Holiday involving paczki donuts of amazingness that go very well with strong black coffee, since in these climes it's too cold to really do Carnaval. My friend's Ethiopian roomie is making dinner for us tonight and then I'll probably come home and watch 'Black Orpheus,' and attempt pad thai goodness and possible creative writing.

on art, literature, and Dogma (incoherence reigns)

Like the last time I had wanted to see some good free live music on the east side, the snow decides to come down in massive quantities. I love public transportation on days like that because at the very least if I'm stuck I can read or something, but anything's better than being in a long line of cars and wondering if the bridge you're sitting deadlocked on is going to buckle and send you nosediving into the frigid Cuyahoga River.

However, having a stash of CDs to get me through and leftovers from lunch in the car made the gridlock and the catcalls from loiterers on the corner much easier to bear though I wish I'd remembered to set my alarm this morning so I don't have to reprise all the fun.

Hibernation and not having anywhere to go is a beautiful thing, being able to change out of work clothes and make tea and a dinner consisting of Goya taquitos with no nutritional value and a grapefruit, and watched 'Dogma' for the first time.

I had heard a lot about how bad and blasphemous the movie was from the Catholic newspapers that my grandparents got but I've always believed that you should know what you're talking about for yourself as opposed to what other people say about something.

While I take God as a literal supreme being and la Santa Biblia more seriously than some wingnuts seem to, I'm also convinced that God has a fabulous sense of humor and a deeply creative nature, due to the heady combination of beauty and weirdness that is the created world. I get this sense of wonder when I see photos of galaxies and nebulas. I probably get this from my mom, whose faith was rekindled as a grad student in environmental studies in the 70's.

Everything else, however, is up for grabs, and there's enough dry humor in Proverbs, downright scatological imagery, and some serious sarcasm woven into the Good Book that I really didn't find anything terribly shocking or blasphemous. I do think that there are certain truths and beliefs that mean way more than simple "ideas" and that these do affect one's life in a massive way, but I honestly didn't expect to laugh as hard or find as much depth as I did.

But for someone like me who grew up Catholic, argued with my theology teachers, questioned everything under the sun, gets very cynical about the increasingly common and ridiculous Buddy-Christing of modern church culture, was accused by a college professor at Kent of "sucking on the tit of Mother Church" in the middle of class as an undergrad, whose conversations with God often involve a lot of cussing and questions wondering why things are the way they are and why do things happen the way they do and what's the point of all this.

I'm sure that people will get what they want out of it, whether it's an "I told you organized religion is a sham" or "there's something strangely redemptive here." And that always happens whenever art is involved. One of my art school friends did a final project installation piece that included a film about her great-grandfather who wrote the first hymns in the Tamil language and at the show, a lot of the people who viewed it couldn't get past the Indian-ness of it, assuming that said girl in sari was of course Hindu and into an entirely different theology.

And I wonder if I'm just too English-major-ish when I'm seeing echoes of the Screwtape Letters in the conversations of the fallen angels, the calling out of idolatry in modern civilization, concepts of grace and forgiveness and judgment, and a sense of humor and theology that reminds me of Flannery O'Connor's crazy preachers of the Church Without Christ and carnival freaks that are as unlikely prophets as Jay and Silent Bob, and Walker Percy's apocalyptic scenarios of fragmented partisan Americas and Jesus showing up on Phil Donahue.

Maybe if I was still Catholic I could write something good and God-haunted, but I can't go back there at this point because there's just too much that I can't believe in anymore. That being said, the evangelical wing of modern Christianity kind of sucks in the fiction department, with its terrible virginal romance novels about Amish people and governesses, and general ripping off of already mediocre pop culture.

I don't expect anything to be terribly cool or trendy because that's not what this whole thing is about. If I wanted to be 'with it,' I wouldn't be bothering with this. It has to come from within and not be imposed upon. That's how things got screwed up post-Constantine.

But seriously, fellow believers, a little bit of originality and talent put to good use never killed anyone. Heck, if you believe in God as a supreme and genius Creator and you're made in his image, you need to step up your game a whole lot. More Albrecht Durer and T.S. Eliot and less Thomas Kinkade and less hipster memoirs and prairie romances, okay?

vikings and stuff

Being a bit of a geek for mythology and a bit of a Kenneth Branagh fangirl, I'm interested to see what he does when he takes on Norse lore and find it hilarious that a bunch of losers who live in their mom's basement and blame their loserdom on abstract hatred of people that aren't Aryan.

Branagh's cast Denzel Washington in Shakespearean Italy before so it's not like Idris Elba as Thor is all that out of the ordinary and I find the whole indignation funny because what better way to mess with wacko crackers than to do the whole Nordic mythology thing without someone with the complexion of Brad Pitt in a leading role.



At least he's not messing with the plot like Julie Taymor is with 'The Tempest.' I'm all for getting creative, but dammit, why does everything have to be turned into some Womyn Power thing?



Still, on the subject of mythology and high culture, here's the very awesome Best Operas in 10 Minutes, complete with Monty Python-esque animation.

the customer is always...

The first time I saw 'Clerks' I was in a Kent State dorm room with a guy I'd just met right after I transferred from a school where the only permitted R-rated movies were "Braveheart" and "The Passion of the Christ" and where if you were in a guy's dorm room you had to have the door open, feet on the floor, and the lights on during certain visiting hours. It's no wonder I didn't last long there in the middle of nowhere.

It felt weird knowing that such bizarre rules did not exist, moving from there into what was almost a condemned building (broken windows, destroyed bathroom fixtures) with bushes covered in cigarette butts and all sorts of general debauchery and substance abuse.

But there's a place in my heart for Kevin Smith's characters, because unlike most movie characters, they reminded me of real people in a real setting that didn't seem all that far removed from my own economically depressed suburban world, with its dead-end jobs, unluckiness in love, obsession with pop culture ephemera (classic rock in particular), and lack of interest in upward mobility with a preference for perfected slacking.

Having always worked in customer service as a zoo ticket taker, seasonal retail salesgirl for two dreadful weeks when I was 19, and public sector peon for most of my life, the maxim that 'the customer is always right' is often wrong.



Though certain individuals claim to have "adopted" some of my coworkers, at least they don't have the option to do this, though it would be entertaining. I understand the whole respecting other people and cultures and lifestyle choices, but sometimes this gets a little pretentious or assumes that we're more narrow-minded than we actually are.

starting it off right...

New Year's Eve was not as epic as it probably was for some, as me and the roommate came home from work too tired to think about going out anywhere. So we had a couple people over, picked up some pomegranate 7-up because there was no more sparkling grape juice, and watched a Bollywood movie.

I had taken the previous day off to hang out with Ryan and one of his awesome friends so I was ready for a chill night.

Hung out on New Year's Day with the family and the future in-laws. My dad had Friday off so we went down to Hoopples to hear Glenn Schwartz play. I've always heard he was an amazing guitarist and the preaching isn't going to bother me as much as it would some, so we finally satisfied our curiosity.



When we got there, he'd just started, and was whispering hymns and old blues tunes into the microphone, crazy preaching about repentance, the blood of Jesus, and loose women and how we've polluted the earth with our cars, but as he got going, it was amazing to watch him shred away as he climbed up on his amp and dragged the strings of his guitar across the signs hanging from the wall. We watched his first set, but then he started ranting about women and Dad and I figured we'd quit while we were ahead. Still, I don't know how I went that long without seeing the guy play because it was one of the most powerful things I've ever seen.

Here's David Byrne's film of it last time he came through.

I still haven't processed that night completely, it reminded me of walking into a short story by Flannery O'Connor where everyone involved is messed up in one way or another but there's something kind of redemptive about the whole thing in spite of ourselves.

Friday, we went to Oberlin and found cool jewelry and hung out with my friend Naomi, and I got to see her baby girl for the first time. We came back and watched 'Black Orpheus' which was sad as anything especially knowing the original story.

But the ending is beautiful.



The highlight of the weekend though was the birthday party for the kids I hang out with on Saturdays. We had a New Year's/birthday party for them (if you don't know your birthday, you're given January 1 when you go through immigration).

I wasn't sure what to expect, but it ended up being over 200 people, between the volunteers and refugee families from two different churches on the west side, seemingly everyone in this city from that tiny country.

my first time enjoying skewers of goat meat fresh off the grill



The kids love it too:



We did games, and they made us all this food, and two pinatas got destroyed, but the best part was watching the kids get to sing.

Click on this one to watch

From

I'm still in awe. 2009 has started way more interestingly than I ever dreamed.