The old mind-body problem, namely the problem of keeping aloft an agile mind in a constantly abused and all too fragile body, haunts Jack once again today. But not one of his more profound writings. Surely a man of his refinements can bring himself to find more to say about urban marine architecture and its discontents?
One worries that Clinomania is suffering from the strange disease of chroniclism that affects so many of our young writers. Merely annotating one's every action, every change of scenery, does not a true arc make. Consider: if the farmer, tilling the crude soil of New Hampshire, had used every stone he came upon in exactly that order to make his boundary wall, would that wall stand? No; it would crumble the first time a deer sat on it to eat his sandwich. We look to Jack to be careful, like the mason (and the Masons (wink)) and use only those stones that fit just right. Should he have a certain malformed stone or life-event, set it aside, for when it might later be useful. Our finest writers have a gift for carefully dolloping out time's passage, ladling carefully the events of their character's lives, rather than merely dumping the whole saucepot in front of hungering orphans.
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With any luck, regular readers of Somenotions may notice in the near future an added voice. Keep watch. . .
Regular readers will know that at Somenotions, we are absolutely committed to pushing forward Clinomania criticism. Unlike other blogs, we don't distract ourselves or you with printing our thoughts on unrelated matters, chronicling our romantic misadventures (we totally hooked up at a wedding in Omaha this weekend) or our thoughts on popular culture.
But like most major media outlets, from time to time the federal government requires that we devote a certain amount of attention to public service. Today, we are using this space to fulfill that requirement with the following PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT.
ANNOUNCEMENT:
DO NOT, REPEAT, DO NOT GO SEE THE MOVIE "OPEN WATER"
It is a stinking pile of fucking horrible garbage. Every single line of dialogue is meaningless and a waste of the human ability to hear and understand words. The main characters are so boring and hateful that we guarantee you will root for the sharks. Which, by the way, are seldom seen, and in the least scary of ways.
We count ourselves as pretty devoted fans of Melanesian children's choir music (with the compilation released as the accompaniment to the "Thin Red Line" soundtrack being perhaps the finest example). So imagine how amazed we were to find that this film totally misused said music - it appears at the most inappropriate times and in the most awful and distracting ways.
The filmmakers insist on these meaningless and gratuitous cuts to non-shark behavior. There's one really dumb shot where you're supposed to be really scared of a jellyfish. The events of the film are totally implausible and stupid. At different times the two characters both accuse each other of "cutting things too close," but neither of them at any time chooses anything except the most dull and uninteresting option.
We're a tad inclined to blame Halpsie - she has a dreadful record of picking films (cf. The Emperor's Club, The Real Cancun). But little Ems is a sweetheart, and to associate her with this film is the highest slander. We feel dreadful that she even had to watch it.
The only scary thing in this movie is thinking about different cruel and alarming ways in which one might harm everyone responsible for this film.
HERE ENDS THE PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT
Alright, we calmed down. This is more or less what we wrote during the first half of the Twillight Zone episode "A Passage For Trumpet," which due to computer retardness our interns are having to re-type during the second half of "A Passage For Trumpet."
Consider Jack's recent statements that he is a "bad man." Jack typically doesn't favor the reader with details of his moral code. Indeed, though his opinions on entertainment are well-known, his laws of ethics and code of honor he keeps to himself. What might the reader discern from this? Does Jack follow strict moral principles? How does he amend for flaws? What are his most basic laws?
Some young and enterprising scholar could make quite a name for himself coming up with a means of annotating Jack's writings in the way that fellow K. figured out how to annotate Mozart. Lord knows it would save us some time, time which we don't have to spare, on account of our job and all the drinking we do, which is a lot, an embarrassing amount of it post-work at Callender's of Wilshire, where we are in love with the waitress Ramona, because she always knows we want Dewar's and soda, sometimes before we've even sat down, and that we like to look at the appetizer menu and she has cute freckles. She's probably in love with us because we expressed so much interest in her sociology studies at UCLA.
Jack notes he has a new roommate. He says it almost casually. Surprising, considering that his previous roommates without exception have led, at the very least, dramatic lives. Knowing Jack's volatility, there is almost no question that this "Alison" will have some extreme effect or another on Jack's life. Since he is reluctant to offer a prediction himself, we won't presume, but one hopes she will be appearing again soon in the text, in more fully realized form.
"Have These Leaves.." is a fine piece of prose. Jack doesn't usually indulge in such poignance (or, for the cynic, parody of poignance.) We are all of us familiar with the tumult of bread-changes at Subway, but Jack takes from this small madeline a world of memory, and the distinct sorrow at seeing the passage of time. Still, one wonders that he didn't go further than he might have. For example, every Subway from Franklin, TN to Riverside, CA (and we know this, personally, through research) stresses this inevitable change through its wallpaper, a pastiche of early New York subway maps. So right in front of Jack as he dines is a reminder of the tortured sea-journey of man on Time's storm-tossed marintime.
Did this elude him? As readers know, we here at Somenotions are New Critics: i. e. we assume that the text is "perfect" and not historically tainted, and that omissions or prejudices are the authorial intent, rather than the result of larger literary, historical, or social forces. So we must attribute this change to Jack's blindheaded wistfulness, his longing for the bread of his youth. Indeed, who doesn't long for that "bread" of youth, the soft roll of pre-puberty, or the hardened bagette of later development?
Due to a technical glitch we lost a lot of really insightful stuff we wrote on this topic and are too pissed off to replicate it right now.
