My Life in 100 Anecdotes

I write slowly, I know it. But as I look back on the almost five years that I’ve had this blog, I am grateful that, slow as I was, I did write.

Today I close Czardoz Contra World with my 100^th post. With this nice round number, it’s time to conclude this blog and start another (link pending).

I believe that lives are lived in anecdotes, not necessarily in days or years. And though it is tempting to think of “the best day,” a la City Slickers, I don’t remember full days, only moments. And that’s why I made my blog a collection of anecdotes about my life.

Over the years, there were many things I wanted to write about but never got to. Some articles were begun but never made it to the blog, usually because I couldn’t find out what I was trying to say, or because it took me so long to sort through my thoughts that they were no longer timely. Some articles got close but died for lack of some kind of relevance that would make them more than just self-indulgent words. Sometimes, I realized that I just didn’t have anything to say.

For this last post, I’ve included some anecdotes that mattered to me, and though I didn’t know then what to say, and may not know much better now, I found in each of them something about my life that I wanted to remember.

If I die tomorrow, I hope these items and the 99 posts that came before will be sufficient to explain who I was and what I valued.

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February 2009: In Defense of Grimlock

I was luridly fascinated by the DVD audio commentary for Transformers: The Movie, perhaps because it matched the shambling mediocrity of the animated film itself. The hilarity began when director Nelson Shin started talking. He seemed to have only the barest command of English, and his comments, ranging from bemused to befuddled, had me doubting the level of control he had over the movie. He seemed only dimly aware of what was going on and why. Here’s Shin explaining a scene near the beginning of the movie where Unicron is shown sucking up a planet:

“Inside of the Unicron, this is organic, he gets the juice out and he’s getting lights [life], so he’s now the uh, he can survive, he can activate.”

Fun fact: Shin is now president of a Korean animation company that supplies animation work for numerous American shows, including The Simpsons. 

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August 2012: How many guys does it take to throw away a perfectly good hamburger? (Answer: Five Guys!)

Regular readers of my blog will probably think that I eat fast food way too much. To that, allow me to emulate a charming Southern gentleman and say, “Guilty as charged!” (Yes, I know it’s a stale joke now, but trust me, this was a big deal back in August!)

In August, I went to a local Five Guys that I had been to a few times. Five Guys, to me, was the new kid on the block, an aggressive challenger from the East Coast that had made significant inroads in Southern California over the past few years. I think it had gained a sort of cult following based on complimentary all-you-can-grab peanuts in the store, messy burgers wrapped in foil, and that magazine article of Lebron James endorsing Five Guys that seems to be framed and posted in every store.

They make good burgers, and seem like sort of a more expensive cousin to In ‘N’ Out, bigger and sloppier, but with just as much hipster cred and everyman authenticity.

So on this occasion, I mistakenly grabbed someone else’s order, which I only realized when I had returned to my seat and peeked into the grease-stained bag. I brought the bag back to the counter and explained my folly. The server told me, “Oh, well we can’t take it back.” Fair enough. As a customer, I wouldn’t want to feel like I had to accept a plate of food that had previously been handed to someone else. She and the store manager exchanged some words to the effect of, “Make a new one for that customer, STAT!”

And then the three of us, the manager, the server, and I, we all just walked away, as if the bag contained a time bomb. I sat down and glanced somewhat uncomfortably at the bag of perfectly edible food that had been abandoned for the moment on that counter.

And here the questions began. Did they mean for me to take the bag, as a bonus, since they couldn’t? Were they going to retrieve it and maybe give the food to an employee later? Were they going to follow the most likely possibility and just throw it away? Should they have at least offered it to me? Or should I have said something, even though it seems sort of presumptuous to claim a free burger after my mistake had rendered it unservable to the rightful purchaser? What exactly was the right thing for me to have done?

Even though I told my brother as we sat there, “They’re just going to throw that away,” I somehow wasn’t prepared for the sight of the store manager chucking the entire bag right into a trash can not three feet away from me.

Even though I figured this was just store policy, and probably the policy of almost every restaurant you could name, I was dumbstruck. It was obscene. Children are still dying in Africa, aren’t they? I should hope so. Well, not “hope,” but I should think so.

When I was very young, there were often television commercials in the afternoon and evening for various outreach programs, asking for donations to help poor people in Africa and South America. You know the type, “just 48 cents a day will feed a child like Maria, and provide her with clothing, medicine, and a good education.” One time, according to my mother, I was watching one of these commercials, and I asked my mother, “Can we give them some food?” Apparently, I thought it was possible to just grab some delicacies from our refrigerator and pass them through the television screen to the rapturous enjoyment of these children. Or maybe I didn’t really believe that, but what I wanted was about as much a fantasy as that would have been. I wanted to help those other kids, and I thought that if I wanted it badly enough and spoke up about it, then every child in Africa would get three square meals a day, a pair of Nike sneakers, and a beautiful new schoolhouse.

Everyone had a good laugh over my naïveté and presumably we moved on with our lives. Hopefully those children in the developing world are moving on with theirs as well. The next time this happens, perhaps my choice is simple: I’ll speak up and say, “So can I keep this one, since it seems a shame for you to just throw away all this food?” I’d like to see them throw it in the garbage in front of me then.

And so, a noble burger was sacrificed so that I could learn a lesson, right? Not on your life. As soon as the manager’s head was turned, I reached into that trash can and nabbed that rudely discarded bag. And did I eat the food inside? Of course. And how was it? It tasted great. Like justice. 

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August 2012: “a Tony Scott joint”

I wanted to add a few words to the funeral mound of observances of Tony Scott’s death, something different from the consensus in the media, which intoned, somewhat condescendingly, that we had lost an energetic maker of films that were critically unremarkable but commercially viable. I really don’t see why every critic had to chime in if they were all going to say the same thing. I guess keeping all these movie critics on staff saves the country’s unemployment figures from going even higher.

I never saw Tony Scott’s magnum opus, Top Gun, but I was a big fan of Man on Fire (which, along with Hide and Seek, had me convinced that Dakota Fanning was one of the very few child actors who could “bring it”). Undoubtedly, when you watch a lot of Scott’s films, you start to think they were all basically the same film, but the same criticism could be leveled at critical darling, Wes Anderson.

Scott’s movies had panache without the pretension. He managed to navigate a treacherous middle path between the Scylla and Charybdis of earnest self-seriousness and smirking irony. And with mild apologies to Spike Lee, I believe that if any filmmaker should have been using the word “joint” to describe his films, it was Tony Scott.

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August 2012: The Bamiyan Buddhas

Around this time, I read a news item about the preservation status of the Bamiyan Buddhas of Afghanistan. Sadly, “preservation” is generous, as there hasn’t been much left to preserve since the giant Buddha statues (the largest two were some 53 meters and 35 meters tall, respectively) were dynamited into the afterlife by the Taliban regime in March 2001.

I first learned about the Bamiyan Buddhas when they made international news in 2001, as talk grew about the Taliban’s intent to destroy the statues, which had been crafted in the 6^th century. I was affected by the notion that a work of art, though admittedly a work of religion in the eyes of those who hated it, could be treated so callously by a government. I thought to myself that any government, any people, who could do something like this would be capable of even more astonishing crimes against the living. 

Indeed, the Bamiyan Buddhas were close to my mind after the crimes of September 11, 2001. I’m not saying that 9/11 would have been averted if the “civilized” nations of the West had just bombed the hell out of Afghanistan and the Taliban, and saved these Buddhas early on. But no one should be surprised that these were the monsters who harbored Osama bin Laden. Destruction of artifacts, art, and cultural objects is perhaps the bellwether of genocide and murder. The Taliban were all too eager to destroy something that a competing culture held dear, if only because it was easier than hunting down every last person who still held those things dear.

I’m not a Buddhist, and I’m not sure I even know anyone who is a serious adherent to Buddhist ideas. But I recognize the value of religion and spirituality as an impetus for human creativity. No matter how strong one’s adherence to secularism, it would be hard to deny the glorious artistic achievements that were influenced, financed, or otherwise directly attributable to the existence and vehemence of religion.

No matter how technically impressive or aesthetically beautiful, I am aware that many monumental human artistic achievements, whether religious or secular or somewhere in between, were created by blood money and slave labor, and devoted to oppression in kind. After all, the Colosseum, so revered today, was but a temple to carnage and the institution of murder as entertainment. And as Thoreau said about that last remaining of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World,

As for the Pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs.

– Thoreau, Walden

Nevertheless, the objects exist, and they represent a past and a people who can no longer represent themselves. As a humanist, I am appalled at any wanton destruction of the irreplaceable works of a past culture.

Today, I hear snippets of a similar rampage against art, culture, and human life in Mali. I know next to nothing about the ancient glories of Timbuktu and the present conditions of life in Mali. But I know that anything that can rile up fanatics so desperately that they go out of their way to destroy it is probably something worth saving. At the very least, the destruction of a statue or a manuscript or an entire library is a sign of worse things to come.

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September 2012: To “pull a Goran”

When Andy Murray won the 2012 U.S. Open tennis tournament, I wondered if he had divested himself of the title of “best active player who hasn’t won a Slam” only to take on another dreaded title – was this Slam the first of many for him, or would it be the career highlight of a man destined to become a “one-Slam wonder”? Rather like Homer Simpson shedding the “stone of shame” only to be shackled to the even larger “stone of triumph.”

And much like Andy Roddick, whom I had lauded during his last, anticlimactic run at that same U.S. Open. In the journalistic aftermath of Roddick’s career-ender, I stumbled upon this informative slideshow of all the tennis players in the Open era who have won only a single Grand Slam tournament.

Looking at the names, I realize that it’s sort of a compliment when certain pundits cackle that Roddick underachieved or that he needs to have won more Slams to be considered among the greats. After all, do you think such a debate even comes up in reference to a Thomas Muster? Roddick wasn’t a fluke Slam winner, like Richard Krajicek or Anastasia Myskina. After his U.S. Open victory in 2003, he appeared in four more Slam finals over the next six years, and for some of those years, it was not outlandish to think he might win another big one. I doubt anyone looks at a Thomas Johansson and says, “What a disappointment. We expected a few more Slams from him.”

I think Roddick will be remembered very favorably alongside Michael Chang, a fellow American who won his Slam early, gave hope to every Chinese immigrant mother that her American-born son could become a big man in this country (okay, this part is not so similar to the Roddick career arc), then trailed behind the legends in his wake, all the while winning many lesser tournaments, keeping his nose clean, and contending well enough to make fans think a second major was probable, perhaps inevitable.

Roddick also calls to mind another player on the list: 2001 Wimbledon champion Goran Ivanisevic. I mentioned in a previous post that my favorite Slam final was the Federer-Roddick Wimbledon 2009, but Ivanisevic’s 2001 Wimbledon ride was just as memorable.

I remember it primarily because I was traveling in China at the time, riding down the Yangtze River on a cruise ship, watching Wimbledon on the tiny television in my room, because I was waylaid from some local disease brought on by a bug bite. With my head woozy and my hand swollen to roughly the size of an inflatable raft, I lay in bed watching tennis and listening to the lilting accents of a couple of announcers named Alan and Vijay who squandered no opportunities for hyperbole (“Too good!” “He’s playing like a shattered man!”).

Ivanisevic was a three-time Wimbledon finalist with a game tailor-made for grass, but he had never won, and though an eventual victory once seemed inevitable, by 2001 it seemed like his chances had passed him by. Having dropped in rank to 125^th in the world and no longer considered an effective full-time contender, he only got into the tournament because he was granted a wild card. What he did with that wild card was unprecedented, winning the championship and giving his career a storybook capstone.

Wimbledon 2001 had no shortage of drama. It saw Justine Henin reach her first Grand Slam final, losing in three sets to Venus Williams. A 19-year-old Roger Federer upset defending champion Pete Sampras in the fourth round, a loss that more or less sent Sampras into a downward spiral into irrelevance until he finally emerged with a surprise victory in the U.S. Open 2002, after which he wisely retired.

This tournament was probably top British player and favorite son Tim Henman’s best chance at making a Wimbledon final, as he took a two sets to one lead over Ivanisevic in the seminfinal. However, rain delays turned the match into a three-day ordeal and seemed to wash away Henman’s rhythm and resolve; Poseidon had thrown his godly weight behind Ivanisevic.

Ivanisevic beat four Grand Slam winners on his way to the championship (though, like Goran, victims Carlos Moya and Andy Roddick are also one-Slam wonders, and Marat Safin and Patrick Rafter each won but two).

I remember watching Ivanisevic demolish Roddick, who at the time was a young gun known primarily for his cannon of a serve. Here he was, still quite green, and getting schooled by an over-the-hill wild card who simply fired ace after ace at him. It was a performance not just overpowering but distinctive, and I remember uttering “Roddick got Goran-ed!” for some reason.

Sadly, Roddick did not “pull a Goran” in his last tournament. I haven’t followed any tennis since the 2012 U.S. Open. The Australian Open just happened in January, and I couldn’t find it in me to care; I didn’t even look up highlights. First went team sports, and now perhaps even tennis holds no appeal for me any longer. 

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November 2012: Fire the Critics

For a long time, I wanted to write a post about Pixar films, because they’re kind of a big deal, and for a long time, I held out because I didn’t think it was particularly useful, and indeed, it felt obnoxiously self-indulgent, to disparage any particular product or company just because I could. But there is something even more obnoxious about movie critics, as an industry, regarding their reviewing of Pixar films. This at least is worth a cursory dissection (vivisection? evisceration?).

A sampling of online reviews and editorials about Pixar and, primarily, their latest release, Brave:

“When it comes to Pixar, the worst is still so much better than most of the other junk being churned out by Hollywood.” (IGN)

“Still, Monsters, Inc. is fun and better than most of its non-Pixar peers (how many times do we have to make that distinction today?).” (IGN again – and to answer your question, you didn’t have to make that distinction at all)

“Arguably the worst of the best, the film [Brave] is simply decent (which ranks better than half the animated films released in a year).” (Screenpicks.com)

“If the Walt Disney Studios logo were the only one on Brave, this film's impeccable visuals and valiant heroine would be enough to call it a success. But Brave is also a Pixar Animation Studios film, and that means it has to answer to a higher standard.” (LA Times)

“Pixar’s own history of excellence has effectively painted the studio into a corner. If Brave were a straight-up Disney release, people would be hailing it, at the very least, as an end to the princess movie as we know it. Because it’s Pixar, they get to whine, ‘What? Princesses again?’” (Slate)

I’m quite tired of this blandly uncritical view that insists on starting with the premise that Pixar films must be judged by some rarified standard that eludes all other animation. If the role of the movie critics is merely to tell us that the gum that gets stuck to the soles of John Lasseter’s shoes is more beautiful than even the finest film that any other studio could produce, then really, what is the point of having the critics?

To praise Pixar’s track record is justified, but to go out of their way to defend the studio against any serious criticism is to undermine their own critical judgment. This seems to me a kind of moral cowardice, and moreover, it ignores the reality that other studios have started to make some very good movies that stand up well to what Pixar is dishing out.

To take one example, to my mind, Brave is not nearly as good as the Disney movie it most resembles – Tangled. For more examples, I’d rank Kung Fu Panda, How to Train Your Dragon, and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs alongside the best of what Pixar has made.

Richard Corliss’s Time magazine review of How to Train Your Dragon offers a historical perspective. While he acknowledges Pixar’s edge in box office, awards, and prestige, he has the audacity to compare the Pixar-DreamWorks rivalry to an animation rivalry of yore: Disney vs. Warner Brothers:

“‘Each year I do one DreamWorks project,’ actor Jack Black told the crowd at the 2009 [Oscars] ceremony, ‘then I take all the money to the Oscars and bet it on Pixar.’

That was also the case 60, 70 years ago, when Disney shorts had a monopoly on the Oscars, while the funnier, livelier cartoons from Warner Bros. – which today are treasured – were ignored. In that sense, Pixar’s features are closer to the old, elevated Disney style, while DreamWorks’s films are flat-out cartoons, proud to carry on the fast, cavorting Warner tradition.”

Not just DreamWorks, but Fox, Sony, and all the other companies that delve into animation have tended to shy away from the “elevated” epics that have become Pixar’s signature. This certainly feeds into the perception that Pixar makes “prestige” movies, while its competitors are making the animated equivalents of Michael Bay’s Transformers.

Moreover, we are meant to believe that animated movies by DreamWorks or Fox are churned out by wage slaves in a Korean factory (perhaps Nelson Shin's), whereas animated films by Pixar are willed into existence by an auteur, whose vision is rendered by a handful of artistic true believers. But whatever happens behind the scenes, the results don’t indicate such a strong ideological divide.

The Kung Fu Panda, Ice Age, and Madagascar franchises can be just as sentimental and (sigh) heartwarming as Pixar films, and Pixar’s movies are just as heavily laden with slapstick and low-brow comedy as their counterparts from the wrong side of the tracks.

My goal is not to heap scorn on Pixar for its well-earned success, but to argue that the divide between it and its competitors is narrow, and getting narrower. And though perceptions of Pixar’s superiority persist, especially in the critical community, these perceptions are not always supported by evidence. Pixar is the Apple of the film industry, and fittingly so, since it inherited its creative ethos from its founder, Steve Jobs. But that doesn’t mean that other companies aren’t making products that are just as intricate and enjoyable. 

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January 2011: Grand Theft Auto IV

I basically inaugurated this blog with an anecdote about Grand Theft Auto III.  It seems fitting that I should end it with an anecdote about Grand Theft Auto IV. 

When I jumped back into Liberty City with GTA IV, I thought I’d get a few chuckles from driving over pedestrians, maybe roughing up some unwitting innocents in the street, and in the process find out if the Grand Theft Auto experiment had gotten more playable since my last foray into this urban wilderness.

The good news is that the addition of interior spaces, a speaking role for the player’s character, and “life” scenarios like going on dates with a girlfriend do enrich the feeling of “play.” The bad news is that driving is still an ordeal with no happy medium. Either you’re crawling slowly to grandmother’s house, or you’re zigzagging down straight roads and sideswiping pedestrians and lampposts with every turn. Shooting while aiming still requires a finesse I’ll never master. And committing random crimes will once again have the police hounding your ass very quickly, and you are never a match for their killing prowess.

Despite its flaws, I got a lot of enjoyment just from exploring the game’s possibilities, the many “what if” scenarios. What if I kill the bowling alley attendant? What if I kill the girl working at Burger Shot? What if I join the stripper on stage at the strip club? What if I run over some fools while driving Michelle home from our date? What if I kill someone on the street, wait for the ambulance to come, then kill the paramedic after he gets out of the ambulance – will another ambulance show up?

And on and on until I realized the irony of the GTA games: there is ultimately no liberty in Liberty City. In attempting to create the illusion of freedom and seamless immersion, the game ultimately draws attention to the limitations of its technology and all the restrictions imposed on the player. I can kill a hot dog vendor, but then I can’t take any of the hot dogs he was just selling? That don’t make no sense.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the artificial boundaries imposed on the game map. As in previous games, you are stuck on one island in this fictional world, and only after meeting a set of achievements do you open up access to the next island. Funny thing is, there is a bridge to the neighboring island, and it exists the whole time you’re playing, but access to the bridge is blocked by concrete barriers and a fierce police presence, all under the guise of, I don’t know, construction or an investigation or martial law or some similarly ludicrous excuse. And yes, these coppers would unleash a lethal torrent of bullets if I stepped foot on that bridge.

Days passed. Days filled with the monotony of blowing off steam at the pool hall with my brother Roman. Going on dates to the bowling alley with Michelle and “trying my luck” when I took her home. Muscling low-level hoods and capping rival gangsters. And every day I’d drive by that bridge and those badge-wearing pigs and think to myself, “You don’t own me.”

What was on the other side? What was so important that they went to such extreme lengths to keep me from it? This was Shell Beach in Dark City. This was the painted sky at ocean’s end in The Truman Show.

There is a freedom out there, true freedom that exists without structures, and beyond artifice. The bubble world they created for me was not the world I wanted to live in, so I would make my own world, or die trying. “If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall?”

I became convinced that if only I could get on the bridge and drive to the other side without getting shot to pieces, then that island would exist, just like the one where I was standing now. It would be real, with real people, and a real life. I just had to survive.

And so, I decided that, come heaven or hell, I would cross the bridge.

There was no sense in trying to drive through a concrete wall, so I knew my only chance was to run through the gaps in the barricade and steal a squad car that was already on the bridge. Once in, they couldn’t stop me. So I ran, taking heavy fire when the astonished goons realized I was actually going for it. Hot lead pierced any flesh that wasn’t covered in body armor, but I made it to the car, pulled the driver to the ground, and immediately I was flying!

Everywhere around me, I heard voices yelling, “Yes, yes! He made it! He can get through!”

The bridge felt like it went on forever. The first few hundred feet were breezy, with a few lights and sirens giving pathetic chase, but then the fuzz lowered the hammer. One after another, black police vans barreled head-on toward me at top speed on the threadlike bridge, trying to block me or crush me. They would take me dead or alive, so long as they ended my run.

But for the first time, my driving skills attained a sort of blissful elegance. It was as if I were controlling my car with my mind, not my hands and feet. Armored van on my left – I dodged right. Another van trying to squeeze me against the wall – I hit full throttle and drove past him straighter than I ever knew I could. I had attained automotive nirvana and eluded them all!

My supporters renewed the rallying cry, “Yes, yes! You did it! They can’t stop you!”

The bridge’s end drew into focus, with the massive skyscrapers of my destination coming into view. And then I saw the wall. There was never just one barricade. The police had a second one waiting for me this whole time, at this end of the bridge.

Every fiber of my being told me to stop the car and end this madness. But it was too late. This was my Thelma and Louise moment. At full speed, my speedometer about to crack from the strain, I slammed headlong into the concrete, the impact shooting my limp body through the windshield like a rocket, sailing past the front lines of cops and cars and landing like a broken doll tossed by a wailing infant. I had made it this far only to collapse under shattered glass and pitiless mortality.  

And yet my eyes opened!

I stand up, pat myself down, amazed. I had been shot, I had flown, I had crashed, and yet I live! And then I look about me and realize that I have crossed the bridge and am on the new island. It is real. And it is beautiful. I had made it. My dream was not in vain.

All I have to do now is grab the nearest police cruiser, as I had at the beginning of my escape, and drive. Always drive. And then I am free.

At least, that’s what I was thinking when my vision turned murky white, and my knees disappeared beneath me. I felt a warm moistness all over my chest, like I was bathing in salty water. And then the world went dark and I felt . . . nothing at all.

. . .

It was probably ten years ago that I played GTA III, but I still remember the Great Siege of Ammo-Nation. Ten years from now, when the many sordid misadventures of Niko Bellic in GTA IV have faded from memory, all we’ll remember is one glorious moment when I hurtled through a police barricade, jacked a squad car, and hightailed it across a facsimile Manhattan Bridge, crossing the Rubicon, making my own freedom.

*          *          *

Here we are at the Ides of March. As Caesar goes, so goes Czardoz, dying today, only to live forever . . .

Reading Notes #2: Oresteia

Title: Oresteia

Author: Aeschylus (translated by Richmond Lattimore*)

Publisher: The University of Chicago Press

Form: Trade paperback

Pages: 171 (including Introduction)

Date of Publication**: 458 BCE

Source: Purchased

Dates of Reading: September 2012 – January 12, 2013

The List: #66

From a book not yet 50 years old, we go to a trilogy of plays nearly 2,500 years old. What does Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five have in common with Aeschylus’s plays? Death, for one thing. Blood is everywhere in the Oresteia. Bloodbath leads to bloodbath in this rendition of the tragedies, sacrileges, illegalities, and depravities of the House of Atreus.

Blood is literally in the bath in Agamemnon, the first play of the trilogy. For the bath is where Clytemnestra murders her hated husband, Agamemnon, who has seemingly earned his fate by sacrificing his own daughter, Iphigenia, to pursue the conquest of Troy:

Clytemnestra:

I stand now where I struck him down. The thing is done.

Thus have I wrought, and I will not deny it now.

That he might not escape nor beat aside his death,

as fisherman cast their huge circling nets, I spread

deadly abundance of rich robes, and caught him fast.

I struck him twice. In two great cries of agony,

he buckled at the knees and fell. When he was down

I struck him the third blow, in thanks and reverence

to Zeus the lord of dead men underneath the ground.

Thus he went down, and the life struggled out of him;

and as he died he spattered me with the dark red

and violent driven rain of bitter savored blood

to make me glad, as gardens stand among the showers

of God in glory at the birthtime of the buds.

These being the facts, elders of Argos assembled here,

be glad, if it be your pleasure; but for me, I glory.

Were it religion to pour wine above the slain,

this man deserved, more than deserved, such sacrament.

He filled our cup with evil things unspeakable

and now himself come home has drunk it to the dregs.

(Agamemnon, 1379-1398)

Aeschylus creates an intensely intellectual parable that traces the evolution of Greek justice from the blood-feud mentality of the tribal unit to the polis, invested with authority through the law. In times of darkness and barbarity, personal vengeance was tantamount to law in The Libation Bearers:

Chorus:

It is but law that when the red drops have been spilled

upon the ground they cry aloud for fresh

blood. For the death act calls out on Fury

to bring out of those who were slain before

new ruin on ruin accomplished.

(The Libation Bearers, 400-404)

And so it is enacted by Orestes, who kills his mother, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus:

Orestes:

My purpose is to kill you over his body.

You thought him bigger than my father while he lived.

Die then and sleep beside him, since he is the man

you love, and he you should have loved got only your hate.

(The Libation Bearers, 904-907)

It’s not hard to see that under such a system of retribution, there will be no end to the cycle of violence. Sadly, the Middle East has not taken this tale to heart.

In the concluding play, the trial of Orestes takes place, and the action is remarkable in its similarity to modern trials, at least as presented on episodes of Law and Order. The Furies prosecute, ask questions, bray to the jury of Athenians when they think they’ve made a damning point. After their ultimate defeat and the acquittal of Orestes, the Furies are only mollified through Athena’s persuasive offer to welcome them back into the society of new gods and new men. The Furies are implicitly transformed into the Eumenides, or “Kindly Ones”:

Chorus of Furies:

This is my prayer: Civil War

fattening on men’s ruin shall

not thunder in our city. Let

not the dry dust that drinks

the black blood of citizens

through passion for revenge

and bloodshed for bloodshed

be given our state to prey upon.

(The Eumenides, 976-983)

The Eumenides fully buy into the new world order, and they make clear that murder is not a private affair, but a public problem. These goddesses come to their senses and have themselves become a symbol of the civilizing power of the law, which has vanquished the cycle of retributive violence and assuaged their anger.

I won’t venture any additional critical analysis of these plays, mainly because I haven’t thought deeply enough about them to offer any other intelligent commentary. If I’m going to read a book a week, until the end of time, I’d rather spend more time reading and less time writing. More importantly, it’s unlikely that I’ll be doing much repeat business, so I intend for these reading notes to capture the essence of my experience of reading each book, rather than a fully developed critical understanding of the work.

If more “understanding” is wanted, consult the introduction to my edition by Richmond Lattimore, which has plenty of insightful nuggets, like the following:

“Each act of blood has been avenged in a new act of blood. The problems of public good have been solved through private murder, which is no solution, until the situation has become intolerable to the forces that rule the world, and these must intervene to see that the contestants and the impulses in nature which drive the contestants become reconciled and find their places in a scheme that will be harmonious and progressive, not purely destructive.” (Introduction, pp. 29-30)

*          *          *

The University of Chicago Press edition, though a beautiful object, lacks footnotes, which would have been genuinely helpful, since Lattimore has a habit of including references, especially character epithets, that would have been familiar to an ancient Greek audience, but are meaningless to modern readers. It’s one thing to refer to commonly known figures like Persephone or Hades without explanatory notes; it’s quite another to reference “Pallas-before-the-temple” without any explanation that Pallas is Athena (regular readers of Greek literature probably already know this) and that “before-the-temple” comes from the Greek, “Pronaia,” (I’m sure very few people know that) and signifies . . . well, that’s what a footnote would have been good for. I can’t speak to the original Greek, and whether Lattimore is staying strictly faithful to the original versions of these names, but there is no context in the play for some of these references, so I’m thankful for the extensive annotations in the other two translations I consulted.

Furthermore, I am not a fan of Lattimore’s non-standard (though more orthographically correct) spellings of some Greek names that already have well-established English renderings (Athene for Athena, Clytaemestra for Clytemnestra), a predilection he also indulges in his translations of Homer (Achilleus for Achilles, Aias for Ajax, Hektor for Hector). But of the translations I consulted, his Aeschylus has the most poetic grandeur, which does justice to the immense arguments and ebullient violence of the Oresteia. (By contrast, Meineck is almost too unadorned, too easy to read, too journalistic; Fagles translates as though he were shouting commands the entire time.)

*          *          *

Reading the Oresteia, and reflecting on its bloody violence, as well as the gruesome images in Slaughterhouse-Five, I am reminded of our ongoing controversies concerning the role that art supposedly plays in perpetuating bloodshed.

In the aftermath of the Newtown school shootings, a person (“person” is of course generous) like NRA Executive Vice President and CEO Wayne LaPierre has the nerve to suggest that America’s real problem is not guns, but rather, violent movies and video games. Of course, this is a man (again generous) who spends his time preaching to the country a fiction that guns don’t kill people. This tall tale, this elaborate fantasy, has become so pervasive, you might say LaPierre is something of an artist himself!

We the people are supposed to revere some romantic notion of the centrality of gun ownership in American values. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of more ammo. Perhaps in his gunslinger’s paradise, dollar bills have machine guns instead of eagles on them, and the Statue of Liberty wears a bandolier.

I wonder whether the ancient Athenians worried about the corrupting influence of violent drama and epic poetry on their children. Clearly, philosophy and knowledge are corrupting influences and must be eradicated without mercy. But art? In the Republic, Plato famously promulgates the banishment of poets, but Plato was arguably something of a poet, an artist, himself, so we may not want to interpret his words as being single-layered.

In Clytemnestra’s speech above are, if not quite instructions, at least the bare facts of how to murder someone as he bathes. And moreover, Clytemnestra glories in the act as justified and even pleasurable. In Greek drama, violent action was carried out offstage, but there is nothing tame about their language. Was there a vocal segment of the Athenian populace that bemoaned such excessive violence and linked it to the crimes of the day?

Vonnegut, too, was well aware that many people, among them intelligent people, feared that violence in art encouraged violence in real life. He quotes a friend in Slaughterhouse-Five, who “thought wars were partly encouraged by books and movies.” She says, “You’ll pretend you were men instead of babies, and you’ll be played in the movies by Frank Sinatra and John Wayne or some of those other glamorous, war-loving, dirty old men. And war will look just wonderful, so we’ll have a lot more of them.”

A decent amount of scientific research has been conducted on what kind of effect violent video games have on people, and of course the video game industry will tell you that games don’t make people more violent, just as the gun industry will probably tell you that shooting guns doesn’t make a gun owner more violent.

I have played many violent games, including those with realistic (or quasi-realistic) violence, so I am aware that there are many, many heinous video games out there. Anything called Call of Duty is probably among them, if only for the shamelessness of calling it a “duty” to lay waste to human lives.

The violent games I enjoy tend not to be the ones that ask you to kill other people. In Resident Evil, guns, though certainly glorified, are the necessary tool for taking out zombies, and anyone who would shoot at a human being is a villain through and through. The Gears of War games are sort of exonerated, again, because you’re not shooting at human beings (you shoot aliens, which is a cop-out, I know). But the one moment in the Gears series that sticks in my head is the one scene that remarks on the fragility and preciousness of human life, and the profound sorrow when even one (especially one) life is lost.

Some have argued that video games are inherently different and uniquely damnable because they put you in the position of committing the violence. But by that logic, it’s okay to watch a violent play, but no one should ever act in one? And crime novelists who come up with horrific ways to murder people in their books are sickos on the inside, right?

I think the only game whose violence has affected my life outside of the game is Grand Theft Auto (III and IV, specifically). Here is a game where steering a car is so fraught with peril and pedestrians so plentiful that it practically begs you to commit multiple, repeated acts of vehicular manslaughter just to drive the three blocks to Ammo-Nation.

I played GTA III and IV years apart, but after each one (and only about a week or two of each), I must admit that it did seem to affect my experience as a driver of a real car in the real world. I would go out driving some days and be wonderstruck at the sight of so many pedestrians crowding the sidewalks. Didn’t they realize they were a hair’s breadth away from a bloody death under the grinding wheels of my car? The ease with which I could have mowed these people down should have discouraged them from walking about so brazenly, no? I wouldn’t say I came close to blurring the barrier between game and reality, and no, I was never close to hitting anybody. Even so, I can’t pretend that violent games don’t have some desensitizing effect. That being said, Grand Theft Auto is hardly what I’d point to as a specimen of ennobling art.

To take this exercise to its logical end, I come to Star Trek, and its innovation of the Holodeck. These are the computers that generate virtual worlds within a small room. The people of the 24^th century enter convincingly realistic customized worlds where they are encouraged to live out their fantasies, whether that includes romance, adventure, consulting Leonardo da Vinci, or whatever.

However, I don’t remember any of the shows depicting a fantasy of murder (or other sordid crimes, most prominently, rape). Correct me if I’m wrong, but the closest such thing I remember was Lieutenant Barclay taking out his frustrations (sexual and otherwise) on Holodeck versions of the ship’s crew, even clashing swords with Holodeck-generated Captain Picard and company.

Reader, I ask you: if Holodecks existed, would you create a program where you could kill people? Just to see what it was like? To blow off steam? More to the point, would doing so necessarily mean that you were a monster worse than Hitler? If not, would engaging in that kind of behavior eventually turn you into a monster?

*          *          *

*I also made extensive reference to the notes and translations of Robert Fagles and Peter Meineck.

**I’ve added a category called “Date of Publication” to the list of crucial facts at the top of the post. Obviously, works from antiquity, especially drama, were not “published” in the modern sense, but when I was deciding what to name this category, I figured that the relevant date was not so much when the author created the work, as this cannot be known with precision, but rather the date that it was presented to the public, whether in written or performed state. In this sense of the word, I think “publication” works well enough for my purposes. 

It’s a trap!

If I picked one film director per day and discussed why he wouldn’t be a good fit for Star Wars: Episode VII, I probably wouldn’t get very far before the actual director is announced. Yes, the rumor mill seems to indicate that the announcement is imminent. So maybe I’ll just do a run-down of every director I can think of, with brief comment. I should note that almost every big name in Hollywood has appeared in the rumors, but it’s perhaps the few who haven’t come up who are most interesting. And a caveat: I honestly don’t think any known director is really a match for the Star Wars universe, but this doesn’t mean I don’t respect their work; I’ve just never seen a movie and thought, yeah, this guy should direct Star Wars some day.

Self-recused

Steven Spielberg – Would have been a practical, easy choice. He’s Lucas’s best compadre, the biggest name around, a lock at the box office, comfortable with huge productions, and yet I’m incredibly glad that we won’t see the Spielbergian Star Wars, a jaunty caper full of extreme close-ups, broken homes, and way too many little kids with chips on their shoulders.

Quentin Tarantino – No one could seriously want this, right? Least of all Tarantino himself.

Occasional mention

James Cameron – The Terminator and Terminator 2 are classics, but where the hell did this guy’s brain go when he made Avatar? Does having a bunch of kids really ruin a man this thoroughly? Anyway, he’ll be making sequels to Avatar for the rest of his working life (and when is True Lies 2 coming out?), so sadly, he’ll be too busy to take on another big project.

Christopher Nolan – This one puzzles me most, because of the fervor of his supporters contrasted with the utter inappropriateness of his style. To Nolan’s great credit, he actually has a style. But that brooding, mind-bending labyrinth, with its abundance of weighty dialogue and obsession with suffering as a catalyst for action – does it really scream “Star Wars” to anyone?

Zack Snyder – Reportedly not interested in the job. What a shame. Now we’ll never get to see a lightsaber duel that starts with a super slow-mo shot of both combatants sword-swinging with faces locked in “scream mode,” followed by a hyperkinetic three seconds of laser-grinding saber contact, going back to slow-mo as a Jedi somersault leaps into the air, all against a stark two-color background shot through a dirty lens filter.

Alfonso Cuaron – He made the third Harry Potter movie, which was a good one. But so what?

Heavily favored by press and fanboys

Matthew Vaughn – My favorite possibility so far. X-Men: First Class was the classiest(!) X-Men movie, and though this is not saying much considering the humiliations of the Bryan Singer era, I think it’s also the best Marvel movie of all time, hands down, and I’d like to think that the powers that be at Lucasfilm and Disney have the good taste to recognize this. This doesn’t mean his movie would feel much like Star Wars, but at least it would have emotional pull.

Joss Whedon – The ardor for Whedon has cooled in the past week, and I can’t say I’m disappointed. I consider his Buffy and Angel to be great artistic achievements, but what did he have to say with The Avengers? Sure, he stuffed it as full of his trademark wisecracks as he could, but do we want everyone in Episode VII to talk like Han Solo? Or worse, to have everyone talk like Joss Whedon, which is what seems to happen with his projects.

Jon Favreau – Iron Man was refreshing, combining the gritty realism of the first act with the optimistic superheroics of the second and third acts. But he phoned it in for Iron Man 2 (one day we’ll wake up and realize that War Machine was just a bad dream), and Cowboys and Aliens was garbage, and not even ambitious garbage. I say give the man a non-speaking cameo in Episode VII, maybe as a chubby cantina alien.

Guillermo del Toro – Probably the director whose work I most despise of all time, likely because his reputation is so drastically out of proportion with his actual talent. Seriously, I’d take Danny Boyle over this guy. Well, maybe not, but to even float the suggestion is to condemn both of these charlatans.

Brad Bird – I don’t know, he’s a cartoon guy, and as cartoony as Star Wars is, and no matter how you feel about CG and green-screen, there’s a huge difference between making an animated film and a live-action one. To wit, how many directors of the one type ever successfully cross over to the other type?

J.J. Abrams – I get this, but I think it’s for all the wrong reasons. None of the stuff he’s done – Lost, Star Trek, Super 8 – is remotely like Star Wars. His Star Trek was both grand, as a movie should be, and intimate, in the best tradition of the television series, but it felt a bit caught between being a great two-part episode of a TV show and a “real” movie. Star Wars is huge in every direction, and I don’t see Abrams doing that, at least not successfully.

The forgotten

Ridley Scott – A real pro and a sci-fi veteran, and he’s worked memorably with Harrison Ford. I have a feeling his Star Wars would be 90% serious and 10% trashy. Not very appealing.

Robert Zemeckis – The answer to my question above. Zemeckis actually has successfully worked in both live-action and full-length animated features. I haven’t seen his latest, Flight, but I have to believe his glory years are behind him, and what he has left should be devoted to gripping domestic dramas, not space operas.

M. Night Shyamalan – Why is no one talking about Shyamalan? Okay, so his last several movies have been epic bombs, and it seems like J.J. Abrams has usurped his position as Spielberg’s heir. But to speak as an apologist, The Last Airbender was actually a quite competent children’s entertainment, and I thought Lady in the Water was a highly misunderstood movie (not good, mind you, but misunderstood). The Happening was terrible, but there are maybe five minutes in there that are genuinely menacing, with bodies being mauled by lions and eaten by lawnmowers, and treetops swishing maniacally in the wind, as if we had entered the Bizarro version of a Terrence Malick film. What Shyamalan would bring is a sensitivity to childlike wonder; or at least he might have brought that ten years ago, when he still had some discernible talent. He does have history with Disney, but I don’t think that’ll help him here.

Speaking of which . . .

Terrence Malick – I so wish we could see the Terrence Malick Star Wars. We would see more clouds than city in Cloud City. James Earl Jones would be brought in to do lengthy voice-overs, even though Vader would never be on screen. Two-thirds of the movie would be set in the marshes of Dagobah, following slimy creatures and gazing through spiraling tree branches. Roll the title crawl. Star Wars: Episode VII – Leaves of Grass.

And the rest of the peanut gallery

The rest of these are just names. Try to imagine even one single frame of a Star Wars made by:

Wes Anderson

Michael Bay

Paul W. S. Anderson

David Fincher

David Lynch

Sofia Coppola (daughter of Lucas’s mentor!)

The Coen Brothers

Michel Gondry

Luc Besson

Terry Gilliam

Tim Burton

*          *          *

In the 2002 TNT miniseries, Julius Caesar, there’s a line spoken by Jeremy Sisto, who plays Caesar, and he’s referring to either Pompey or Sulla, I don’t remember which: “Pompey/Sulla has merely done something, but I am for something.”

There are only a few directors on this list – Spielberg, Tarantino, Nolan, Shyamalan, maybe Scott – whose work consistently shows that they are “for something,” and yet none of them really seems right for Star Wars.

Honestly, my hope is that it won’t be any of the people I’ve named. In the same way that it was important to cast relative unknowns to star in both the Original Trilogy and the Prequel Trilogy, I think it’s important to find a relatively young, baggage-free, and highly talented filmmaker to helm Episode VII.

I had read that Lucas originally offered the director’s chair for Episode I: The Phantom Menace to Ron Howard, but Howard was gracious enough and surely smart enough not to accept. Considering how scathingly and endlessly Lucas himself has been excoriated in the press and by critics for his Episodes I-III, is there any major director who would risk his career by taking command of what will surely be the most hyped and heavily scrutinized movie of all time? I say, let someone new take that risk and make his mark.

Yeah, that’s really going to happen.

@czardoz

If this blog were a Twitter feed:

Why does “permission to speak frankly” always mean permission to tell you what an incompetent fool you are? #permissiondenied

And why would such permission ever be granted?!? #justdontgetit

Thank you TV execs for canceling Ringer and Pan Am. Once again, you prove that you don’t know your asses from your faces. #subtledifferences

If I were going to start an Asian boy band, I’d name it Boyster Sauce. #notracistjustracial

Logged into MySpace for the first time in years, noticed they now offer the option of logging in with your Facebook account. #Tomcanceledhisaccount

Man, got hot today. Makes me mad when it gets hot all of a sudden. #makesmemad

Gay guy estimated that I was “18% gay.” Should I be insulted that it’s so high, or insulted that it’s so low? #justbecauseIlikeGuyPearce

Just saw a bumper sticker that read “Obummer.” As they say, the simplest is most profound. #obamanations

New Bond movie coming. Gotta admit the only scene I remember from the first D-Craig film was the ball-breaker torture chair. #testytestes

Guy named Weiner forced to resign because he sexted pics of his wiener? Should’ve received a Pulitzer for living the pun. #livebythesword

Had a dream last night that all these tweets were really just Facebook status updates. #mindblown

Like, dude, is this my ass or is this my face? I don’t even know!!! #the1percent

You had me at "festooned"

“F” is the funniest letter that you’ll ever do. Don’t believe me? Then why are the funniest words all “F” words? For example:

• festooned
• funicular
• floozy
• flummox
• farrago
• flabbergasted

Need more evidence of the funnies? All right, why do so many “F” words refer to fools and their foolishness? Here are just a few:

• folderol
• flapdoodle
• fiddle-faddle
• frippery
• foofaraw
• flimflam
• fop
• flibbertigibbet

From the medical community comes “flatulence.”

The culinary community gives us “frankfurter” and “falafel.”

The silliest perversion to be worthy of headlining an episode of Law and Order: SVU? No, it isn’t fire fetishism (though that’s close). It’s “frotteurism,” also known by the more poetic name of “frottage.”

And I know it’s not primarily English, but you have to admit that “fatwa” is a pretty funny word.

Still not convinced? Then answer me this: who is the funniest, fattest fellow in Shakespeare? Falstaff. That’s three “F”s! 

I rest my face.

What is art? (Baby, don’t hurt me)

Recent coincidence: right around the same week that street artist Shepard Fairey was featured as a guest star on an episode of The Simpsons (“Exit Through the Kwik-E-Mart”), he also pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge relating to his inappropriate use (or outright theft, as some might call it) of a photograph that was the basis of his widely-seen “Obama Hope” poster.

This image is likely familiar to most people from its connection to and use during Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008. Though I didn’t know his name then, I was previously familiar with Fairey’s obnoxious “Obey”stencil, which was parodied as the Homer “Dope” stencil from that same Simpsons episode.

I first became aware of this legal issue because some in the photography community were understandably up in arms over the whole idea of an “artist” basing an illustration on a photograph, but without properly crediting the photographer (that would be Mannie Garcia, a freelancer for the Associated Press). 

Also of note is the Simpsons episode itself, which I thought was one of the funnier ones in recent memory (though the Internet yet again spills bile from its contrarian spleen). The couch gag mystified me at first, because it was a parody of the opening credits sequence of the show, Game of Thrones, which I had never seen. Of course I knew it was a parody of something (over the course of 500-plus episodes, what hasn’t been parodied by The Simpsons?), and I find it amusing that here’s a show that regularly exercises its fair use rights presumably fairly, while guest star Fairey actively covered up his use of the template for his most influential work. Ironically, on the episode, Fairey plays a character on the right side of the law, busting street artist Bart Simpson, whom the establishment considers a mere “Vandal Van Gogh.” That leads to my favorite exchange from the episode:

Chief Wiggum: I don’t traffic in wordplay, Kent, but I do have a message for Mister Prank Lloyd Wright –

Lou: Uh, that’s architecture, not painting, Chief.

Chief Wiggum: They’re all artists, Lou, why don’t you open your eyes?

Indeed, I’d like to believe that different kinds of art are all equal, though I wonder what this case says about the relative value of art. Should we consider the “Obama Hope” poster a sort of collaboration between photographer Garcia and street artist/stenciler Fairey? Without the former, the latter likely would not have created the iconic work. On the other hand, one wonders if Garcia even considers himself an artist – he is after all a press photographer, at least in this instance. And it’s certainly fair to say that his photo of Obama, and the photos taken by the photographers on his left and right at the same event, their camera shutters firing within mere milliseconds of his own, would never have been seen by anyone as anything other than journalistic documents, hardly worth a glance, whereas Fairey took that and created something that affected people in a larger way. And yet, the photo did deeply affect at least one person – Fairey; otherwise he wouldn’t have been so inspired.

And finally, are we to judge the value of art by how many people are affected by it, and how deeply? Or do we acknowledge instead that the value of art is not determined by whether it inspires us, but by whether it inspires a meme? Parodies within parodies!

Eye of the Bewildered

When I was a child, I relished the chance to go to Balboa Park on Sundays. Sunday was the day of the street performers (these days more fashionably referred to as “buskers”). The most entertaining and memorable was a nearly legendary magician who captivated El Prado, the main drag, with his array of parlor tricks, including my favorite – tossing a playing card from ground level all the way up to a second floor veranda.

One of his lesser gags was borrowing a pair of eyeglasses from an audience member and pretending to clean them with a cloth, only to drop a small piece of clear plastic, “shocking” the crowd into thinking he had accidentally popped the lens out of the frame. I don’t remember why this was considered magical in any way, but I remember wondering if the gambit caused tiny heart attacks in the owners of the glasses. I can only hope that their vision was as bad as mine, in which case the whole mise-en-scène would have been a blur.

One day, Mr. Magic picked me and my glasses out of the crowd. Though I was delighted at being included in the performance, I was discomfited by a fact unbeknownst to him – my glasses were of a particularly shabby quality, having come from a discount optical outfit that was briefly popular back then, and consequently, one of the lenses was finicky and would come loose from the frame with the gentlest jostle. Sure enough, I watched the poor man apply his cleaning cloth to my spectacles only to find that the spectacle, indeed, was himself. My actual lens came tumbling down like the severed head of St. Paul, bouncing three times on the pavement. I imagine the first thought that ran through his mind was “Busted!” or “¡Ay, caramba!” or the like. I knew it was coming, and watched with a mixture of helpless inevitability and anxious bemusement. I could have told him not to use my glasses, but I didn’t think that it would seem convincing coming from a little kid. He may have thought I was afraid to share the spotlight, which was certainly not the case. No, he’d have to see for himself. After that, my name was mud in the busking community.

*          *          *

I was recently asked when my vision started to deteriorate, and consequently, when I started wearing glasses. It was sometime in second grade. I sat in roughly the middle row of my classroom, and, though I can’t remember whether it was a gradual or a sudden realization, at some point I ceased to be able to read what the teacher wrote on the chalkboard. (No, sissy children of the 90s, there were no whiteboards back then.)

I was further asked whether I told anyone about the problem, and I could only answer that, at the age of 7, I didn’t have the cognitive ability to discern the problem. I may have been dimly aware that the chalkboard was blurry, but as long as no one else said anything about it, how was I to know that something was awry? It didn’t occur to me to raise my hand and say, “Miss Silva, why do you look like a Monet?” And anyway, she may have taken this as a compliment.

Now that I reflect on this, I think the powers that be may have discovered my vision deficiency when I was asked to read something aloud off the board from where I sat, whereupon I had to say that I couldn’t make it out. I probably still didn’t understand it as a problem. Perhaps I took it for granted that any person in my seat wouldn’t have been able to make out the words either.

Shortly thereafter, I joined the league of bespectacled gentlepersons.

The lasting legacy of l’affaire des lunettes was how it made an awkward child feel even more awkward, especially on class picture day. As the only eyeglassed student in my class, I was the only one asked to turn my head at an angle for my photo. Apparently, either film technology or these snapshot-for-hire type school photographers were too primitive to take a flash photograph of a kid in glasses without catching glare off the eyeglass lenses.

Each year, my parents ordered a one-sheet with thumbnail-sized photos of the whole class (I think it was popular at the time, and probably even more so when my parents were of school age, to keep pictures of one’s classmates), and there I was, the only small fry among these 30-odd portraits who was gazing somewhere off to the side, into the unseen mystery. What was the alternative? I suppose I could have taken my glasses off for the photo, but no one ever asked me to, and there’s the rub.

For my begoggled brethren (and here I mean my fellow full-timers, not reading-glass dabblers or other “casual” eyeglass wearers), glasses become embedded in the way we look. They become a part of our identity in a way that people without glasses (or, “two-eyes,” as we call them) simply can’t understand. Had I doffed my glasses, I would have been able to stare straight into the camera, but I wouldn’t have been myself.

To make a comparison (and a digression): a person known for a fussy, preppy style of attire can suddenly adopt a Goth wardrobe, and people will say, my, how different he looks. Similarly, the glasses you choose represent your style and attitude, and if you have long been swaddled in the severest “German architect” frames, you can scarcely don a pair of Lennons, let alone go full Geordi, without drawing attention from acquaintances. But the analogy can go no further without strain, because there is no reasonable sartorial analogue for the glasses-wearer who switches to contact lenses or undergoes Lasik. Once glasses are a part of who you are, you look naked without them, maybe even a little alien. Sound like an exaggeration? See for yourself:

Geordi before:

Geordi after:

 

Shudders!

The photos above suggest to me that perhaps facial hair is a reasonable analogue to eyewear. I mean, now that we’ve had this:

 

. . . can we really believe that this is the same person?

 

Of course, facial hair is an easier fix than myopia, and it doesn’t apply to the distaff population (circus folk notwithstanding). More to the point, though, neither clothing nor facial hair creates a literal and metaphorical barrier of perception between the person and the world. Though clothing is a barrier, it doesn’t compare because we all wear clothes in public. As for a beard, it hides at most your mouth, which is merely the window to your stomach, not the window to your soul. (Unless you’re Homer Simpson, in which case your stomach is your soul.)

Perhaps I overestimate this barrier of perception as a thing that distorts the way people see me.  In reality, the person most affected by the barrier is not the one looking at the lenses, but the one looking out through them. It’s not only that people see the glasses before they can get to you; you, too, only see the world through a filter. It may be the clearest, most polished and happily anti-reflective filter in the world, but it’s still a kind of wall that reminds you of some defect in yourself that necessitated corrective measures.

People can see me with or without the glasses, and it probably doesn’t make a critical difference to them. But I never see myself as the person without glasses, for the very simple reason that I can’t. My eyes aren’t good enough. There is no point in looking at the mirror without my glasses on because I’d have to put my face three inches from it just to see my reflection clearly, and this rather defeats the purpose of trying to see myself in a normal way and as a normal person without glasses. As far as I can tell, without glasses, I am an alien, if only from myself.

So shall I say, once a glassman, always a glassman? I could wax poetic about the charm of seeing the world out of focus when I wake up in the morning, but that would be like extolling the virtues of the music of the deaf. And I wonder what it feels like to be Geordi after, seeing the world the normal way, without a machine in between. I can’t remember what that was like.

Whether the vision is perfect or flawed, it does seem like there is something authentic about taking the glasses off. Maybe this is because, as a child, I learned everything I needed to know from Star Wars, and one of the lessons is that the mask has to come off for Darth Vader to become Anakin again:

Just for once, let me look on you with my own eyes. – Darth Vader