TV, books and art
Feb. 16th, 2007 09:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
icepixieCarnivale 2x05 and 2x06: Wow. Stuff happened! No, really, it did! (I know, I know. I wouldn't believe it either unless I'd seen it with my own eyes.)
So, Ben and Sofie eschew the comfort of her trailer, or even of his bedroll on the ground, to have their inevitable sex in...the tiny cab of a pickup truck. Well, no one said these two were bright, I suppose. Although Ben was surprisingly inquisitive and had a few good ideas in this episode. And, like, took action to get to the bottom of this good/evil/Scudder/Trinity mess. Shocking, isn't it? And he apparently developed some social skills. He left the bitchy attitude back in Creed, at least. Hell, the two of them were downright cute all through this episode and the last one. Still filthy and desperately in need of a bath, though with any luck, the rain took care of that.
Libby and Jonesy are making my skin crawl. Libby, dear, he had sex with your mother. He apparently developed some kind of feelings for your mother. Your mother. Augh.
I'm hoping the Stumpy-in-debt plotline gets interesting real soon now.
Justin remains creepy. Creepy, creepy, creepy. He was drinking a glass of milk again in one of these episodes, and it just about skeeved me off the couch, thanks to memories of last time. I was hoping Iris might take that carving knife to his head at the end of the 2x06, but no, she just took out her frustrations on the carrots she was chopping.
Speaking of Justin, I suppose we now have confirmation of what Wikipedia spoiled me for: in Sofie's vision of her mother, that was definitely Justin, all tattooed up, doing the raping. And let me guess, Sofie is...going to California. Where she will not, in fact, "kill [her father]," but rather be creepily manipulated by him into becoming part of his evil plans. Just a hunch. If it has anything to do with a glass of milk, I quit.
Sometimes I think this show is just too creepy/sleazy to continue watching, but I really want to know how they plan to pay off on the season and a half of suspense they've been putting me through.
*
Discovered today that Fraser's half-sister is played by none other than Jessica Steen, who, apparently like all Canadian actors, appears to be contractually obligated to appear in at least twelve Canadian TV series per year. May I just say that...she doesn't look at all related to Paul Gross? Even only through one parent? Eh, whatever; Jessica Steen! I love her.
*
I spent much of yesterday reading Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, which occupies the halfway point between novel and short story collection. I picked it up mostly because I'd heard of it, briefly, somewhere, and because hey, Ohio!
The stories all concern inhabitants of the town of Winesburg circa 1900, and they get more and more depressing and pitiful as you go along. Each subject--these are all really character sketches rather than stories--is a victim of some kind of loneliness and/or social alienation, but they keep a tight lid over it except when they talk to the main character, a young newspaper reporter who somehow manages to get them to open up. It's...kind of like watching reality TV, Big Brother or something, actually. There's much more of a voyeuristic quality to these stories than in anything else I've read. It's as if Anderson took Thoreau's "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation" and developed it on a large scale. And there's a bit of something kind of Our Townish in there, as well...a story about a small community, in which a few people serve to define a town, and the town in turn is a synecdoche for the larger American society. Which I suppose means Anderson thinks we're all stunted and peculiar. Okay, no, it's more like...there's George's (the newspaper reporter) boyish optimism and enthusiasm and general bright-eyed Yankeeism, and it's through this medium that we are told the stories of these "grotesques," as Anderson calls them. At any rate, whatever it is, it's surprisingly good, and was apparently quite the trendsetter; the back of my edition claimed these stories had a large part in shaping the format of the modern short story.
There's some very nice writing as well, especially towards the end (although I wish this guy used the occasional semicolon...just once in a while...). I thought the way he wove tidbits of description about the town and surrounding landscape into the sketches was particularly nice; of course, it doesn't hurt that I lived very near there for three years and so could picture it with a certain amount of clarity. Two quotes, one from "Death" and one from "Departure":
"Even Tom Willard who had always half resented his wife forgot his resentment and the tears ran out of his eyes and lodged in his mustache. The mustache had begun to turn grey and Tom colored it with dye. There was oil in the preparation he used for the purpose and the tears, catching in the mustache and being brushed away by his hand, formed a fine mist-like vapor. In his grief Tom Willard's face looked like the face of a little dog that his been out a long time in bitter weather."
"He thought of little things--Turk Smollet wheeling boards through the main street of his town in the morning, a tall woman, beautifully gowned, who had once stayed over night at his father's hotel, Butch Wheeler the lamp lighter of Winesburg hurrying through the streets on a summer evening and holding a torch in his hand, Helen White standing by a window in the Winesburg post office and putting a stamp on an envelope."
*
Finally, look at the pretty pastels. Pastels were pretty much the only medium I was ever really interested in during the many art classes I took as a preteen and high schooler. I love the way they can be used to make something either eye-poppingly realistic or dreamy and ephemeral, and it's great fun to spread them around with your fingers...kind of like finger painting for adults. Gotta be really sure what you're doing when you use them, though--once it's on there, it's not coming off.
So, Ben and Sofie eschew the comfort of her trailer, or even of his bedroll on the ground, to have their inevitable sex in...the tiny cab of a pickup truck. Well, no one said these two were bright, I suppose. Although Ben was surprisingly inquisitive and had a few good ideas in this episode. And, like, took action to get to the bottom of this good/evil/Scudder/Trinity mess. Shocking, isn't it? And he apparently developed some social skills. He left the bitchy attitude back in Creed, at least. Hell, the two of them were downright cute all through this episode and the last one. Still filthy and desperately in need of a bath, though with any luck, the rain took care of that.
Libby and Jonesy are making my skin crawl. Libby, dear, he had sex with your mother. He apparently developed some kind of feelings for your mother. Your mother. Augh.
I'm hoping the Stumpy-in-debt plotline gets interesting real soon now.
Justin remains creepy. Creepy, creepy, creepy. He was drinking a glass of milk again in one of these episodes, and it just about skeeved me off the couch, thanks to memories of last time. I was hoping Iris might take that carving knife to his head at the end of the 2x06, but no, she just took out her frustrations on the carrots she was chopping.
Speaking of Justin, I suppose we now have confirmation of what Wikipedia spoiled me for: in Sofie's vision of her mother, that was definitely Justin, all tattooed up, doing the raping. And let me guess, Sofie is...going to California. Where she will not, in fact, "kill [her father]," but rather be creepily manipulated by him into becoming part of his evil plans. Just a hunch. If it has anything to do with a glass of milk, I quit.
Sometimes I think this show is just too creepy/sleazy to continue watching, but I really want to know how they plan to pay off on the season and a half of suspense they've been putting me through.
*
Discovered today that Fraser's half-sister is played by none other than Jessica Steen, who, apparently like all Canadian actors, appears to be contractually obligated to appear in at least twelve Canadian TV series per year. May I just say that...she doesn't look at all related to Paul Gross? Even only through one parent? Eh, whatever; Jessica Steen! I love her.
*
I spent much of yesterday reading Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, which occupies the halfway point between novel and short story collection. I picked it up mostly because I'd heard of it, briefly, somewhere, and because hey, Ohio!
The stories all concern inhabitants of the town of Winesburg circa 1900, and they get more and more depressing and pitiful as you go along. Each subject--these are all really character sketches rather than stories--is a victim of some kind of loneliness and/or social alienation, but they keep a tight lid over it except when they talk to the main character, a young newspaper reporter who somehow manages to get them to open up. It's...kind of like watching reality TV, Big Brother or something, actually. There's much more of a voyeuristic quality to these stories than in anything else I've read. It's as if Anderson took Thoreau's "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation" and developed it on a large scale. And there's a bit of something kind of Our Townish in there, as well...a story about a small community, in which a few people serve to define a town, and the town in turn is a synecdoche for the larger American society. Which I suppose means Anderson thinks we're all stunted and peculiar. Okay, no, it's more like...there's George's (the newspaper reporter) boyish optimism and enthusiasm and general bright-eyed Yankeeism, and it's through this medium that we are told the stories of these "grotesques," as Anderson calls them. At any rate, whatever it is, it's surprisingly good, and was apparently quite the trendsetter; the back of my edition claimed these stories had a large part in shaping the format of the modern short story.
There's some very nice writing as well, especially towards the end (although I wish this guy used the occasional semicolon...just once in a while...). I thought the way he wove tidbits of description about the town and surrounding landscape into the sketches was particularly nice; of course, it doesn't hurt that I lived very near there for three years and so could picture it with a certain amount of clarity. Two quotes, one from "Death" and one from "Departure":
"Even Tom Willard who had always half resented his wife forgot his resentment and the tears ran out of his eyes and lodged in his mustache. The mustache had begun to turn grey and Tom colored it with dye. There was oil in the preparation he used for the purpose and the tears, catching in the mustache and being brushed away by his hand, formed a fine mist-like vapor. In his grief Tom Willard's face looked like the face of a little dog that his been out a long time in bitter weather."
"He thought of little things--Turk Smollet wheeling boards through the main street of his town in the morning, a tall woman, beautifully gowned, who had once stayed over night at his father's hotel, Butch Wheeler the lamp lighter of Winesburg hurrying through the streets on a summer evening and holding a torch in his hand, Helen White standing by a window in the Winesburg post office and putting a stamp on an envelope."
*
Finally, look at the pretty pastels. Pastels were pretty much the only medium I was ever really interested in during the many art classes I took as a preteen and high schooler. I love the way they can be used to make something either eye-poppingly realistic or dreamy and ephemeral, and it's great fun to spread them around with your fingers...kind of like finger painting for adults. Gotta be really sure what you're doing when you use them, though--once it's on there, it's not coming off.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-02-17 04:29 am (UTC)Oooooooooooooooh. I wish I could paint...
no subject
Date: 2007-02-17 06:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-17 07:32 am (UTC)