In Which One of the Moribund Hobbies Lurches to Life!

I am pleased to announce that, for the first time in nearly two years...

I got a new county!

Insufferable geeked-out details that you literally could not care less about coming tomorrow!

The Thursday Quiz LXXXIX

The Thursday Quiz!

The Thursday Quiz is a twelve item is-it-or-isn't-it test of your knowledge, reasoning, stamina, and moxie!

Remember always the Fundamental Rules of the Thursday Quiz:

1. The Thursday Quiz is a POP quiz. No research, Googling, Wikiing, or use of reference books. Violators will never be able to look at themselves in the mirror again.

2. Don't get all stressed out about it! It's supposed to be fun!

Opera Plots!

Which of the following opera synopses are more or less accurate, and which are just silly? ...or, rather, and which are not accurate?

1. Adams, Nixon in China. The President of the United States visits China, has cryptic conversations with Mao Tse-Tung, and takes tours along with his wife. Diplomacy is conducted. The high hopes that all the major characters bring to the event are somewhat disappointed by its relatively modest outcomes.

2. Glass, Hindenburg. Two romances, one between aristocrats and one between a more humble couple, develop as the doomed airship crosses the Atlantic. A Nazi saboteur is also on board; the opera leaves it ambiguous whether he carries out his plot or if the zeppelin is brought down by natural forces. In the stunned aftermath, we learn which characters have survived and which have perished.

3. Haydn, Cosi Fan Tutti. A comic opera intended for performance at Christmastime, Cosi Fan Tutti traces the adventures and mishaps of the shepherds – portrayed as rustic rubes – and the wise men – portrayed as pompous, foolish blowhards – as they try to find their way to the Adoration.

4. Mozart, The Magic Flute. The Queen of the Night sends a young hero out to rescue her daughter from an evil magician. It turns out, though, that the evil magician is actually good, and the Queen of the Night is actually evil. The hero has to go through strange trials to become worthy to enter the Temple of Light. He hooks up with the Queen of the Night’s daughter in the end.

5. Mozart, The Marriage of Figaro. Figaro, the Prince of Milan, must choose between three women: a peasant girl with whom he is in love, a sorceress who is trying to seduce him through magic, and the Princess of Saxony, whom his father insists he should marry for purposes of state. During a festival, the King discovers that the sorceress is actually a male wizard out to steal the royal treasury. The wizard repents, having met and fallen in love with the peasant girl; the king pardons him in exchange for casting a spell on Figaro, who thus falls in love with, and marries, the princess.

6. Offenbach, Tales of Hoffman. A writer tells stories about three of his relationships that didn’t work out. One old girlfriend sang herself to death, one was a courtesan who was only out to steal his reflection, and one turned out to be a robot. After thinking this over, he decides to give up all women except his muse, and just be a writer.

7. Puccini, Turandot. A young prince falls in love with a queen who, not really thinking of herself as the settling-down type, asks suitors three riddles and has them beheaded when they don’t get the answers right. He is able to give the right answers, though, so she has to marry him.

8. Rossini, Barber of Seville. A count is in love with the beautiful ward of a wealthy doctor, but the doctor is a bit creepy and wants to marry the girl himself. The count manages to elope with the girl through the help of an energetic local hair stylist.

9. Rossini, La Traviata. An Ethiopian princess is captured and brought into slavery in Egypt. An Egyptian military commander struggles to choose between his love for her and his loyalty to the Pharaoh. Eventually, he is condemned as a traitor and buried alive, but the princess sneaks into the burial chamber so they can die together.

10. Sibelius, Gotterdamerung. Gotterdamerung is the court jester to the King of Norway, and faces a terrible professional problem: he is in love with the King’s daughter. He endures the humiliation of abuse from everyone around him, and only expresses his feelings obliquely, through his sly jesting. After he saves the princess from an attack by a villainous courtier, it is revealed that he is actually the Prince of Finland, adopted by the Norwegian King for safekeeping during an uprising. In the final scene, he marries the princess and returns to claim his kingdom.

11. Smetana, The Bartered Bride. Two young lovers plan to marry, but the girl’s parents want her to marry the son of a rich landlord. The parents hire a marriage broker, who bribes the boyfriend to sign a contract relinquishing the girl to the landlord’s son. But it turns out that the boyfriend is the landlord’s long lost OTHER son, so he gets the girl after all. And then a bear escapes from the circus.

12. Wagner, Tristan and Isolde. A Cornish prince has killed the Irish princess’s fiancé and is bringing her home to marry the King of Cornwall instead. She decides to kill him and herself, but oops, accidentally uses the love potion instead of the bottle of poison. Now madly in love with each other, the couple cheat on the king, get caught, and end up dying from a combination of love and, well, wounds.


Submit your answers in the comments.

The Great Movies Index

The Great Movies

Roger Ebert's 2002 book "The Great Movies" is a collection of essays about 100 of his favorite films. One evening in the late summer of 2007, after drinking quite a bit of wine, I browsed through a used copy of the book that had washed up in our collection and thought "Man! These movies sound great! They ALL sound great!!!

"I should watch them," I thought. "I should watch them all." And that's how this project was born.

From Aguirre, the Wrath of God in September 2007 to Greed in June 2010, I slowly but surely made my way through the list. Some of the movies I found incredibly moving or entertaining. Others didn't have an enormous impact on me, but I recognized the excellence of their craft, or their historical significance, or their importance to the evolution of the medium. And occasionally -- but not very often -- I just thought Mr. Ebert was mistaken.

It was a terrific journey. I know a lot more about films and film history than I did at the beginning of the project, and -- since the arts are always a mirror to the societies that produce them -- a lot more about the way the people of the 20th Century thought, felt, acted, and deluded themselves with their collective fantasies. I would definitely recommend this project to anyone with three years worth of evenings on their hands!

The Index

2001: A Space Odyssey. October 2007.
The 400 Blows. October 2007.
8 ½. October 2007.

Aguirre, the Wrath of God. September 2007.
Ali: Fear Eats the Soul. November 2007.
All About Eve. November 2007.
The Apartment. January 2008.
Apocalypse Now. March 2008
The Apu Trilogy (Pather Panchali, Aparajito, The World of Apu). January 2008.

Battleship Potemkin. January 2008.
Beauty and the Beast. February 2008.
Belle de Jour. January 2008.
The Bicycle Thief. July 2008.
The Big Sleep. January 2008.
Blow-Up. February 2008.
Body Heat. January 2008.
Bonnie and Clyde. February 2010.
The Bride of Frankenstein. September 2008.
Broken Blossoms. June 2008.

Casablanca. January 2010.
Chinatown. March 2010.
Citizen Kane. November 2009.
City Lights. September 2009.

Days of Heaven. March 2008.
The Decalogue. June 2008.
Detour. March 2008.
Do the Right Thing. October 2009.
Double Indemnity. March 2008.
Dracula. September 2009.
Dr. Strangelove. April 2010.
Duck Soup. October 2007.

E.T. September 2009.
The Exterminating Angel. September 2009.

Fargo. November 2009.
Floating Weeds. November 2008.

Gates of Heaven. September 2009.
The General. August 2008.
The Godfather. August 2008.
Gone with the Wind. April 2010.
The Grand Illusion. July 2008.
Greed. June 2010.

A Hard Day's Night. February 2010.
Hoop Dreams. February 2010.

Ikiru. September 2008.
It's A Wonderful Life. May 2010.

JFK. July 2008.

La Dolce Vita. August 2008.
The Lady Eve. July 2008.
Last Year at Marienbad. December 2008.
L'Atalante. September 2008.
L'Avventura. October 2008.
Lawrence of Arabia. October 2009.
Le Samourai. October 2008.

M. September 2008.
The Maltese Falcon. November 2008.
Manhattan. December 2009.
McCabe & Mrs. Miller. December 2008.
Metropolis. January 2009.
Mr. Hulot's Holiday. November 2008.
My Darling Clementine. January 2009.
My Life to Live. May 2010.

Nashville. February 2009.
Network. October 2009.
Night of the Hunter. January 2009.
Nosferatu. March 2009.
Notorious. January 2009.

On the Waterfront. May 2009.

Pandora's Box. February 2009.
The Passion of Joan of Arc. March 2009.
Peeping Tom. February 2010.
Persona. February 2009.
Pickpocket. February 2009.
Pinocchio. July 2009.
Psycho. February 2010.
Pulp Fiction. February 2010.

Raging Bull. February 2010.
Red River. March 2009.

Schindler's List. May 2010.
The Seven Samurai. April 2009.
The Seventh Seal. March 2009.
The Shawshank Redemption. March 2010.
The Silence of the Lambs. December 2009
Singin' in the Rain. April 2009.
Some Like It Hot. March 2009.
Star Wars. January 2010.
Sunset Boulevard. November 2009.
Sweet Smell of Success. May 2009.
Swing Time. June, 2009.

Taxi Driver. April, 2009.
The Third Man. June 2009.
Trouble in Paradise. July 2009.

Un Chien Andalou. June, 2009.
The "Up" Documentaries. November 2007.

Vertigo. January 2010.

The Wild Bunch. July 2009.
Wings of Desire. December 2009.
The Wizard of Oz. October 2009
Woman in the Dunes. May 2009.
A Woman Under the Influence. June 2009.
Written on the Wind. June 2009.

The Great Movies: "The Wild Bunch"

The Wild Bunch

Sam Peckinpah, 1969

The Wild Bunch is a movie that begins with a spectacular orgy of violence, has quite a bit of violence in the middle, and ends with a spectacular orgy of violence. It's the Kill Bill of 1969, I thought while watching it, and then found that Ebert makes the Tarantino comparison as well in his review. It was apparently quite controversial after its initial release, and no wonder -- I didn't even know they HAD this much violence in the 1960s.

If you have the stomach to watch gunmen and innocent bystanders die in agony as bullets rip through their innards, The Wild Bunch is a spectacularly well-made Western. Like most Westerns, it works the clichéd theme of personal codes of honor, but it mixes things up a bit by thinking about the differences between individual and institutional control of the means of violence. Which is to say, it contrasts an old-fashioned band of armed thieves with the sanctioned and semi-sanctioned armed men of a railroad company, the U.S. army, and a splinter faction in the Mexican Civil War. In so doing, the film keeps an admirably neutral tone; we are concerned with the thieves, because they are the point of view characters, but we are not necessarily led to admire them.

The action takes place in and around the Mexican Civil War, which is treated with more subtlety and sympathy than I would have expected in 1969. The militia band we see the most of is, to be sure, a corrupt and poorly led outfit, but in my limited knowledge of the Mexican Civil War, that would have been pretty much par for the course.

A creepy motif that runs through the film is the violence of children. The film opens with an image of a happy bunch of loveable ragamuffins torturing bugs, and throughout the movie kids are often shown participating in violence, sometimes in the background and sometimes in the foreground.

Plot: A wild bunch of thieves want to steal some weapons and sell them to a wild bunch of Mexican soldiers. Meanwhile, another wild bunch of mercenaries in the employ of a railroad want to catch the thieves. The main characters are frequently torn between exigencies and their Code of Loyalty to the men in their own wild bunch and/or their respect for the leaders of the other wild bunches. And then the shooting starts, except the shooting started about five minutes into the movie.

Visuals: Beautifully filmed in vivid color! Early 20th Century towns and encampments in the border deserts are rendered with impressive verisimilitude (excepting only a city park early in the film whose trees and landscaping are WAY more mature than the town that supposedly planted them). People falling off of roofs and cliffs in slow motion as they writhe in terror and in agony from their gunshot wounds have seldom been portrayed so beautifully.

Dialog: Terse and macho, but well-delivered in the service of building relatively well-rounded characters. The film would not suffer from having fewer scenes that end with a bunch of men laughing heartily.

Prognosis: If you like Westerns, there's a lot of The Wild Bunch to like -- it clocks in at about two and a half hours. If you don't like Westerns, and particularly if you don't like cinematic violence, this would be a good one to skip.

The Monday Quiz LXXIX

Pie Graphs!

For each of these pie charts, identify the topic. Be careful!

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Give the answers in the comments.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is a Knucklehead

Sure, and Scalia is an affable but scary nutjob, and this is not likely to be news to any of you hyperintelligent sexy beasts who follow the L&TM5K. But check this out:

The High Court today shambled to the startling conclusion that school administrators in Arizona had been a little out of line when they conducted a forced strip-search of a 13 year old girl suspected of packing -- wait for it! -- ibuprofin. Even Justice Scalia felt that perhaps people shouldn't have to suffer that kind of indignity! Justice Thomas, however, filed a dissenting opinion.

Thomas complains that his colleagues' ruling "grants judges sweeping authority to second-guess the measures that [school] officials take to maintain discipline in their schools and ensure the health and safety of the students in their charge." And you know what? He's right! And there's a reason for that! It's because Constitutional protections are supposed to be, you know, sweeping and authoritative! And Judges are supposed to enforce them. That is what a justice system is FOR!

But it's pretty inefficient, though, isn't it, all of that second-guessing? It's interesting to boil Thomas' point here (and on most cases, it seems) to its essentials. What he's really arguing is that granting a civil protection (privacy) is going to be a huge hassle for people in authority (school administrators). And that they should be spared that hassle, because it makes it harder for them to wield their authority. Let's extrapolate!

• Miranda rights? Huge hassle for cops!
  
• Humane treatment of prisoners? Huge hassle for jailors!
  
• Rental law? Huge hassle for landlords!
  
• Labor law? Huge hassle for employers!
  
• Environmental law? Huge hassle for industry!
  
• Colonists demanding a voice in Parliament? Huge hassle for the King!

There's one thing that can be said for sure about Justice Thomas's conception of the Constitution: it would sure cut back on all the paperwork. And that's good, right?

The Thursday Quiz LXXXVIII

The Thursday Quiz!

The Thursday Quiz is a twelve item is-it-or-isn't-it test of your knowledge, reasoning, stamina, and moxie!

Remember always the Fundamental Rules of the Thursday Quiz:

1. The Thursday Quiz is a POP quiz. No research, Googling, Wikiing, or use of reference books. Violators will never be able to look at themselves in the mirror again.

2. Don't get all stressed out about it! It's supposed to be fun!

Real and Bogus in the History of Australia and New Zealand!

What really happened down there in the mysterious South? And what only happened in michael5000's mysterious imagination?

1. Because New Zealand has more rainfall and is much more fertile than Australia, it was colonized by Europeans fully two centuries before colonization of Australia began.

2. The whole thing about Australia being a prison colony is basically a myth. There was a small prison settlement in early Australia, but at no time did the prisoners make up even one percent of the colonial population.

3. The 1839 Treaty of Waitangi was supposed to clarify the respective rights of native Maori peoples and European colonists. Since the English and Maori language versions of the treaty don't quite match, though, arguments over the implications of the treaty continue unabated today.

4. In the late 1800s, the states of Australia were self-governing entities under the British Empire. Only in 1901 did the whole continent unite as the Commonwealth of Australia.

5. On New Zealand's Roberts Island, rabbit farmers arranged a highly successful fox eradication campaign in the 1920s. To their chagrin, however, this caused the island's rat population to explode, creating a major public health hazard. This led to the large-scale abandonment of, as it is now often called, "Ratters Island."

6. In 1926, Gertrude Ederle became the first person to swim from Australia to New Zealand, a feat that took her almost 36 hours. The current record is just under 28 hours. Because of prevailing currents, no one has ever successfully made the swim in the opposite direction.

7. Because of it mainly produced necessities like food and wool and did not have complex financial markets, Australia was one of the few countries to prosper during the Great Depression. While unemployment spiked elsewhere, Australia desperately recruited immigrants to ease its constant labor shortages.

8. New Zealand was sympathetic to the ambitions of Japan, a fellow island nation, and tried to remain neutral during World War II. Only when the United States and Australia threatened military occupation did New Zealand finally join the Allies, in 1943.

9. During the 1950s, Australia and New Zealand took steps towards unification as a single country. Although the plan broke down over arguments about where to place the capital, the two countries shared both a single Prime Minister (Howard Abelman) and a single supreme court from 1954 to 1956.

10. Australia pursued a "White Australia Policy," almost completely barring immigration by non-Europeans, until 1973.

11. New Zealand banned nuclear weapons and nuclear-powered ships from its territorial waters in 1984. The United States cancelled its military alliance with New Zealand as a result of this decision, but the ban has remained in place to the current day.

12. Both Australia and New Zealand are constitutionally separate from the United Kingdom -- but the British monarch is still technically the sovereign of both countries.



Submit your answers in the comments.