- eriks wedding - dissing ohio - d.dra kicks the diss - about schmidt - compassion in filmmaking -


We're packing up to head down the road one hour to Berlin Ohio where Erik -- two year housemate will wed Laura. Jaelyn has a silky white dress she'll wear as a flower girl, and I'm slated to give the homily at the wedding.

An interesting sidenote -- we're going to Berlin which is NOT pronounced berLIN as the rest of the world pronounces the famous german city -- as if by decided by some grand old ohio committee sometime in the last two centuries (since this year is ohio's bicentenial), the state has decided to use the rule of them they employ when referring to Lima (lie-ma) and Louiseville (LouiSSS - ville) and refer to it as BERlin. Just around the corner from Sugarcrik (though, its spelled creek).

Remember a few days ago when I spat at Globalization -- here's another indicator of my bifurcated identity. I just can't bring myself to take responsibility for the deficiencies of Ohio -- despite the fact that I'm about to enter into the dreaded eighth consecutive year of residency here....

Deidra's been at our house for two days -- she's on a celebration tour after successfully defending her diss. on female action heros -- the short version? female action heros provide positive models for understanding emerging feminine roles in culture *&* female action heros subvert emerging roles for women using coded patriarchal strategy...did i get it right d.dra.

Watched _About Schmidt_ for the first time. Loved it, of course. I think my favorite dimension of it was the Kathy Bates character. Scorcese talked about Wes Anderson films having this quality that the filmmaker actually loves his characters. A refreshing way to view the kind of flawed characters that Anderson writes -- and, according to Scorcese, not at all the norm in contemporary filmmaking. I have a theory that this compassion for characters is usually demonstrated THROUGH the compassion that particular characters have for the main character (who is usually the most flawed of the bunch). So i think that Roberta Hertzel's character is that character in this movie. And I love how her libido is sort of a very explicit articulation of this quality. It's like she just pulses -- I have love to give.

I haven't heard much talk about how LOCAL a film it is. I really admired Alexander Payne's fiercely midwestern (and not in the OHIO midwestern) vision of the world. I think somebody somewhere should have a blog called Dear Ndugu. I'm sure they already do. In ten years that'd be a great name for a rock band.

More later...