The Most Delightful TV Show EVER

Due South, of course.

今天在油管上找 Da Vinci's Inquests 的片尾曲 (which is awesome, btw)，看见有人提起 Due South。搅得我又回忆起多年前迷恋这套寿命甚短的电视剧了。

找到一些视频片段，里面 Fraser 的口音又逗又可爱，一般地方跟美国口音差不多，但是遇到 schedule 和 lieutenant 就是英式的讲法。

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oyy1EfM6nzg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2qHluHEBG8 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZrGj7Yvax8

Peeved

I'm not an angry person --- not overtly at least --- and do not lose my temper more often than once or twice a month.  However, certain things irritate me like a bone spur in the shin.

This week, unfortunately, I've had two such irritations.  The first was a job ad posted yesterday on LinkedIn for a medical writer.  The recruiter wrote that this writer would be "create guidance's for the department."  ARGH!  It's "guidance" or really style guide.  People who cannot distinguish plurals from possessives, ie, those who write "it's" when they mean "its," really piss me off.

I'm not a grammar Nazi, you know.  I don't begrudge people for misspelling words or missing an article or a preposition, nor am I particularly bothered by double negatives (as long as they are in quotes). But (see, I can even start a sentence with "but") I just hate mixing up possessives!   

The second irritation came from figure skating, specifically, Han Yan's short program at this week's junior Grand Prix competition in Innsbrook, Austria.  Chinese coaches who cut music for their own students are often woefully unqualified to do a barely decent job.  I hate programs that totally butcher the original music!  Ugh, butchered music really grates on my nerves like a dull knife cutting my toe off.  These coaches should be absolutely forbidden to touch any music-editing software.

****

Oddly enough, I do not remember being irritated by grammatical errors in Chinese.  Well, I don't remember seeing grammatical errors in Chinese, in fact.  Maybe it is because I've almost never been around people for whom Chinese is a second language.

Wait, no, that is not the heart of the matter.  A lot of errors in English are made by English-speaking natives, yet I've never seen or heard Chinese-speaking natives making grammatical errors in Chinese.  A lot of mistakes (by native speakers) in choosing the right character/pictogram, yes, but grammar is never a problem.

Conclusion:  Chinese grammar is VASTLY simpler and more intuitive than English grammar.  So simple that no one can mess it up even if they try.  

西游记

昨晚某同学在看一本ABC作者的漫画书，剧情掺入了西游记的一些内容，跟华裔美国孩子的日程生活平行兼混合起来。某同学问西游记到底讲啥的，我就给他略述了一下小说的内容。说着说着，忽然意识到西游记原来是社会讽刺小说，讽刺了从上到下社会各界人士，包括在西天遇见的图书馆门卫，甚至还很有后现代主义地把佛教和道教混在了一起。简直就是 ... 格列佛游记！其实我也没读过格列佛游记，但是大约知道作者是借用神神叨叨的情节讽刺社会上各色怪现象和人性荒谬。难怪毛自比孙悟空，二者的确都是占山剪径的 bandits 头头。

Indian Myth

War of the Ghosts

One night two young men from Egulac went down to the river to hunt seals and while they were there it became foggy and calm. Then they heard war-cries, and they thought: "Maybe this is a war-party". They escaped to the shore, and hid behind a log. Now canoes came up, and they heard the noise of paddles, and saw one canoe coming up to them. There were five men in the canoe, and they said:

"What do you think? We wish to take you along. We are going up the river to make war on the people."

One of the young men said,"I have no arrows."

"Arrows are in the canoe," they said.

"I will not go along. I might be killed. My relatives do not know where I have gone. But you," he said, turning to the other, "may go with them."

So one of the young men went, but the other returned home.

And the warriors went on up the river to a town on the other side of Kalama. The people came down to the water and they began to fight, and many were killed. But presently the young man heard one of the warriors say, "Quick, let us go home: that Indian has been hit." Now he thought: "Oh, they are ghosts." He did not feel sick, but they said he had been shot.

So the canoes went back to Egulac and the young man went ashore to his house and made a fire. And he told everybody and said: "Behold I accompanied the ghosts, and we went to fight. Many of our fellows were killed, and many of those who attacked us were killed. They said I was hit, and I did not feel sick."

He told it all, and then he became quiet. When the sun rose he fell down. Something black came out of his mouth. His face became contorted. The people jumped up and cried.

He was dead.

Sweeney Todd

不知道 Stephen Sondheim 自己对 Tim Burton 的电影版 Sweeney Todd 有什么真实的感想，会不会捂着耳朵听不下去。Johnny Depp 的嗓音就够粗糙了，但他在整个卡司里还算不错的，其他人的演唱几乎没有一个能听的，还能听的只有年纪最小的小男孩，至少有点中气垫着。最难听的是 Burton 的老婆 Helena Bonham Carter，气若游丝，弱是弱得来 。。。 比我在淋浴里的歌声还差。 让我对 Tim Burton 的看法咵嚓跌下一大截，一巨截，这个人完全不在乎音乐的制作质量么。

看样子 Sondheim 虽然是天才，但脾气非常好，居然没跟 Burton 翻脸，还在 DVD 上出现，说点好话，表示一下支持改编。

九月

八月底台风过境，之后整个九月都在湿漉漉粘答答的空气中度过，不是雨下个没完就是雾气蒙蒙的天，浑身凉凉湿湿，怎么也不肯干，又不冷又不热，又不出太阳，让人没来由的不耐烦。

十月，希望全是秋天干燥的空气和淡淡的阳光。

Drive (and other digressions)

Last week, Fish Tank reminded me of a thought that once bothered me --- As stories accumulate over human history, will we one day run out of stories to tell? Have we already? Is there truly nothing new under the sun?

I'm sure other deep thinkers have long contemplated such literary apocalypse before, although at least I can claim that I came up with it independently. It seems inevitable (to me) that there are only a finite number of stories, or original thoughts, available to the universe of the human mind and experience. Homer and other classical authors had it easier than modern storytellers, one could argue.

Fish Tank was excellent, yet my brain could not help but drudge up all the similar movies I had seen before. Same with Drive. It is impeccably crafted with a strong point of view, yet I cannot bring myself to use the word "unique."

From the start, Drive immediately recalls the archetypal western: A lone gunslinger with no past or allegiance comes to town. He befriends a good woman and her family. He toys with the fantasy of settling down with such a woman and having a normal life. He feels protective toward them. He is subsequently drawn into violent showdowns to save the peaceful normal people. In the end he rides into the sunset, alone, because that is his destiny, because the lone gunman can never integrate into society. In Drive, the entire setup, down to the ending, pays full homage to Shane (don't they all?).

The interlude involving the voluptuous Christina Hendricks (poor woman), on the other hand, was a halfhearted reference to film noir. Albert Brooks is a somewhat fresh touch in the genre though (I'd hesitate to call him "delightful"). The storyline of crime boss setting up their minor underlings, meanwhile, reminds me of John Woo's The Killer and its predecessor Le Samurai (Melville). Yeah, in this kind of stories, the boss always sells out their employees/contractors, just like bureaucrats. There may be a semi-decent middle manager (Bryan Cranston here, Chu Kong in The Killer), but the big boss is always evil. Did the French audience recognize Alain Delon's le Samurai in the boyish Ryan Gosling?

It's so meta! Nicolas Winding Refn's graphic violence and the strong retro style must have Quentin Tarantino, the king of remixing the old, biting his lips furiously. I suspect a nod to the Japanese swordsmen/Yakuza genre in all the blood squirts that both Tarantino and Refn seem to love. The techno soundtrack, on the other hand, is very European.

A bit of homage here, a tip of hat there. Meta on top of meta, references to references. It's all because we are born too late.

There's nothing wrong with Drive, which is made with a precise eye and a ruthless pair of scissors. (Editing is king, I often think.) I only shudder at the end of original stories as we know it. Or, perhaps, it is merely a hazard of being old and jaded like me.