Copenhagen cuisine

Had dinner at Nyhavn last night and lunch at National Museum cafeteria today. The food is very good, much better than I remembered from 12 years ago. However, 12 years ago I hadn't the money to eat at such fancy places. Have a very modern, fusion feel. Organic ingredients are touted by chefs and menus. Simplisity seems to be the dominant approach. Good seafood. Still, I have to complain about the price. Ah, only in one place in the world can one find gastronomic ecstacy in any dingy little corner deli for a pittance.

Had excellent fried fish and fish soup in Ystad last Saturday. (Thanks to Barb's recommendations.) Good coffee everywhere.

Another significant change is the large number of Chinese and sushi restaurants in tourist areas. I won't have the chance to try and see if Chinese food here is now finally edible. I am fairly agnostic about the meal plan for the next 2 days, but my fellow traveler insists on doing local cuisine, which is fine, all fine.

At the moment I am sitting in the breathtaking Royal Library by the cannal between the city and Christianhavn. Known as the Black Diamond, the stylish, futuristic new half of the building was finished in 1999 and is joined with the older building. It is full of glass and open space, letting in warm glow of the afternoon. The riverview is so romantic.

Terribly Happy

今日请病假休息一天，眼下似乎仍有低烧，酸软鼻塞。额，没办法，只好该怎样就怎样。这次出门回来之后无论如何要去加入健身房了，今年冬天再象去年那样病上三四次我可吃不消。

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丹麦电影---排除 Lars von Trier---似乎隔三岔五会出一部 film noir。上次看了 Just Another Love Story 大概才是去年吧？这又来一部（2008出品）。偏远的乡下小镇被派来一个新警长，镇上居民特别自闭，总是念叨我们这里的事情自己处理，不想外人来插手。一个美丽的女主妇跑来找他帮忙对付家暴的丈夫，警长渐渐泥足深陷 (literally and figuratively)。情节的套路其实并不新奇，但仍然搞出一些新鲜的成份，特别是临近结尾时。

对于美国观众来说，这种片子的节奏太慢，气氛太bleak，人物太严肃沉闷。可是这些都是在北欧电影里常见的因素，简直都成了俗套了。从来没见过吵吵闹闹蹦蹦跳跳的。

Medicine for Melancholy

喉咙继续痛，鼻子继续塞，好讨厌啊，真的要在路上病一场咩？

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Medicine for Melancholy 前两年在独立制作影片的圈子里制造了颇不小的一阵轰动。这是一个只有两个人物的恋爱的故事，但它实际上是一封写给三藩市的情书。 "I love this city," 男主角说。"I hate this city, but I love this city."

现在几乎没有人写 Brief Encounter 这种故事了，特别是电影里，萍水相逢，一见钟情，然后迅速分手，几乎绝迹。现在的人不信这种感情，也不干这种事了。 Barry Jenkins 的故事非常没有野心，一对男女青年经过无聊的一夜站之后，一起度过了一天一夜，彼此试探着自己有没有开始一段新恋情的勇气。但是他们各有各的感情包袱。

故事非常淡雅，没有什么情节，几乎没有解释和叙述 (exposition)，即使到了结尾我们仍然感觉到只是刚刚认识这两个有意思的年轻人而已，而他们在镜框之外的人生还很长很巨。这正是偶遇邂逅的典型感觉。

影片的摄影风格非常好看，褪成近似黑白的色调，亲密的手执镜头，最重要的是无比浪漫无比深情无比有气质的三藩市的街景。这是一个 collage 类型的艺术作品，手画的线条、发黄的照片、旧报纸，都贴在一起。有些影评嫌它段落混杂，不够连贯有机，但我觉得他要的就是这种跳跃和直观的感觉。影片中有一些直通通的甚至有点confrontational 的关于种族与阶级的讨论，也许是因为出奇的直接，反而不显得生硬和图解了，我能感到Jenkins的意图和矛盾心情却无法用言辞解释---越是放出激烈尖锐的言辞（但是很短片段），越表明传递的感情是难以言喻的。

这种几乎无情节的电影全靠演员的天然魅力和彼此的化学反应撑起来。男主角Wyatt Cynac 过去没演过什么电影，而是在 The Daily Show With Jon Stewart 里面常常客串讲笑话。但是在影片中有种可爱而vulnerable的味儿，跟女主角Tracey Higgins很搭。Higgins的角色非常白描，几乎没有可落脚之处，没有历史，现在的信息也很少，全凭感觉，但立刻可以看出男主角为什么被她吸引。

当然影片的真正主角是三藩市。Through a haze of tender and profound love we see the city with the filmmakers' eye.

随手记录一下

这两天忽然染上了 head cold，在家窝着睡觉，希望周五出发之前能够烟消云散。有一搭没一搭地收拾旅行证件，地图，衣物，之类东西，尽量轻装，祈祷天气不要太坏。

呼啦啦地又看完一本SJ Rozan 的小说。实际上现在我应该读的书是旅行指南，但不知为啥总提不起精神来。哥本哈根三天，看看Tivoli，王宫，Nyhavn，走走stroget，或许坐一趟cruise tour，再挑半天坐火车去一下Frederiksborg，就差不多了。

也许是年纪大了，也许是见得多了，热情与好奇心远远不如过去。加上此行没有大吃大喝的节目，热情顿时减了一半。目前眼下的心情是打算悠闲地逛一逛，在疲于奔命的生活中小憩片刻。

GK Chesterton's Defense of Pulp Fiction

Excerpts from A Defense of Penny Dreadfuls

In this matter, as in all such matters, we lose our bearings entirely by speaking of the 'lower classes' when we mean humanity minus ourselves. This trivial romantic literature is not especially plebeian: it is simply human.

[T]his is what we have done with this lumberland of foolish writing: we have probed, as if it were some monstrous new disease, what is, in fact, nothing but the foolish and valiant heart of man. Ordinary men will always be sentimentalists: for a sentimentalist is simply a man who has feelings and does not trouble to invent a new way of expressing them.


If the authors and publishers of 'Dick Deadshot,' and such remarkable works, were suddenly to make a raid upon the educated class, were to take down the names of every man, however distinguished, who was caught at a University Extension Lecture, were to confiscate all our novels and warn us all to correct our lives, we should be seriously annoyed. Yet they have far more right to do so than we; for they, with all their idiotcy, are normal and we are abnormal. It is the modern literature of the educated, not of the uneducated, which is avowedly and aggressively criminal.


[W]ith a hypocrisy so ludicrous as to be almost unparalleled in history, we rate the gutter-boys for their immorality at the very time that we are discussing (with equivocal German Professors) whether morality is valid at all. At the very instant that we curse the Penny Dreadful for encouraging thefts upon property, we canvass the proposition that all property is theft. At the very instant we accuse it (quite unjustly) of lubricity and indecency, we are cheerfully reading philosophies which glory in lubricity and indecency. At the very instant that we charge it with encouraging the young to destroy life, we are placidly discussing whether life is worth preserving.

He sure did hate intellectuals and all other kinds of thinkers and learned men hahaha. For someone like GK Chesterton, being right (or wrong) is entirely beside the point. It's all good and fun and cool, but one can take only a small dose at a time, or one would despair enough to convert to Catholicism too. Excessive cleverness can eat up reality like a black hole eating up matter. In all his anti-hypocrisy observations, intellectual dueling with his contemporaries, and swirling arguments, the ground you stand on quickly disappears, and soon enough there is nothing left beneath your feet. At least that is how I feel every time I take a slight overdose of GKC.

Sketch: The Earnest Dr. M.H.

Dr. M.H. is intense, that I sensed right away in the first meeting he ran. There was a trace of vulnerability and insecurity in his too-eager, too-serious, too-rapid voice. Normally this type of work is rather simple and need no kick-off meeting, he acknowledged, but nevertheless "we're having one anyway."

Men who grow a beard are usually either self-absorbed loners or naturally shy. Dr. H is clearly the latter. He is around 40 with curly brown hair and brown beard. When someone else is talking, he would lean forward and look at the person intently. During the meeting, when I started to make a comment, his gaze packed a bit too much pressure, and I had to shift my eyes to the wall behind him.

It was an interesting contrast: the division boss sitting at one end of the table compared with Dr. H at the other end. The boss is a bald old man with a sagging Sharpei face and a nose blooming with rosacea. His smoke- or alcohol-marinated voice was slow and sarcastic, as if long past giving a damn after decades of stewing in middle management.

Every time after saying, "Let's do this" or "I don't think that will be a problem", Dr. H would quickly shoot a question to the boss, "What do you think Dr. B? Do you agree?" to seek affirmation. Dr. B. would shrug and make a noncommittal noise, raise an eyebrow, and mumble something vague. I wondered whether this drove Dr. H, who clearly needs constant assurance and definitely answers, crazy.

At the end of the meeting, Dr. H spent 10 minutes going over every milestone for the next 6 months while begging every team member to turn in their homework on time. Thankfully the project manager is a motherly middle-aged woman who soothed his anxiety with reassurance that she is on top of everything. He looked like a little boy trying very hard to win adults' trust and approval.

独占

I have intentionally stayed away from the Sherlock fan site for the past weeks. I like the TV series well enough, but the fans tend to irritate me. On the one hand, I can't possibly join all the teenage girls in their swooning over Mr. Cumberbatch (too skinny) or his thousand-pound coat. On the other hand, the excessively bookish and self-important tone on the above-mentioned fan-site gets on my nerves too. That "Dr" Matt Hill, a "Reader in media cultural studies at Cardiff University," ugh, sounds so ivory tower and starch-collared. And he doesn't even seem to have read the entire canon.

Cardiff 大学的教授，我也曾经认识过一个，不过人家有学问也没有pomposity，爱看香港武打片，热烈地爱着元彪。我对自我感觉太好，在XX系呆得太久的学术派天生就过敏，一靠近就打喷嚏，或者刷刷地流汗。他们的 interpretation ，分析 pop culture 也好，分析莎士比亚也好，都会让我不由自主地从鼻孔里发出“哼”的一声。Dr. Doyle 自有他 campy 的一面，从来没太把自己当回事，也没把这套小说当成牛津文学系课题来写。

也许因为喜欢 Sherlock Holmes 原著的人太多了，人人心中都有一个自己的解释和形象，把自己的出发点深深地代入其中而无法忍受其他粉丝心目中的形象跟自己的印象有所出入。也许因为如此，我至今不爱看绝大部分的“新版”福尔摩斯，Elizabeth George (Inspector Linley 系列的作者) 写的也好，Michael Chabon 写的也好，我都不喜欢不喜欢不喜欢。终于讨到我的欢心的几个作品都只是模仿借鉴原著的精神但不实际套入人名地名，明显地向原著致意但保持一定的距离。This is one of the things that I am extremely touchy about. Don't touch the canon because it is mine!

好不容易遇到两个把原著倒背如流的疯子(MoffGat)，搞出一点忠于原著的东西，机智程度跟Doyle医生（人家才是真正的Doctor）程度相当；特别是 Gatiss，似乎跟自己的趣味和重点离得非常之近---虽然有一些差别但仍可以接受，第一次没有让我cringe，而且轻松/调笑/后现代主义的态度也恰恰好，绝非学院派---这才看得下去甚至相当赞同。可是看其他影迷的评论又让我感到十分失望，原来大家仍然是南辕北辙。算了，一个作品就拿它本身独立地看好了，众口过度分析评论反而变形走样。

不管研究的是啥，学院派的最大本事似乎是大家比赛看谁最能把本来直截了当的东西扭曲得面目全非。连弗洛伊德都说过，Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. 但是对于学院派来说，这种态度显然是不能帮人升教授的，时间一长，连自己都搞不清啥是啥了。