Looking at Photographs

I walked down the Somerville West Branch library in Davis Square the other day. It's a scruffy little place featuring two net kiosks, two pretty fireplaces, the usual basic reference works, and a small attic of miscelaneous nonfiction. I had two quarries: something that could help me puzzle out the mysteries of Apache's mod_rewrite and a digital camera manual. The former was no go. The latter mission scored Osborne's How to Do Everything with Your Digital Camera, which I find myself disinclined to link to until I have a more developed opinion of its merit. Also in their skimpy photography section was: Looking at Photographs : 100 Pictures from the Collection of The Museum of Modern Art by John Szarkowski, which looked edifying and undemanding, so I snagged it too while I was there.

I expected that looking at some great photographs would be rewarding, but what stunned me when I got home and started reading was the excellence of Szarkowski's prose. Each of the pictures is accompanied by a one-page essay that is a jewel of tart and lucid writing. He was director of MOMA's photography department, and he writes with the cool passion of someone who knows himself to be an expert in his field.

For a while, I read while Erika caught up on Livejournal, and I kept being unable to resist quoting the choicest passages to her. Now, I'll do the same to you:

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My First Fatwa

I call for the heads of the heathens and infidels Jesse Leon McCann and Christopher Moroney, and of all those who aid them, especially the publishers of Little Golden Books.

This blasphemous abortion goes under the title Dr. Seuss's The Cat in the Hat: The Movie! (icky exclamation point theirs.). Since it is self-evidently not a movie but a book (at least in the sense that it has pages and printing), it would more accurately be titled The Cat in the Hat: The Movie: The Book.

What it is is: a retelling of the movie (presumably), jumbling together elements of the two actual Cat-in-the-Hat books with random concoctions of overpaid Hollywood script doctors, conveyed in utterly lifeless blocks of PROSE, illustrated by this hack Moroney, drawing in an approximation the Master's style.

Truly corpse desecration of the first order, folks.

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You Oughta Been There

Monday was the fifth annual You Oughta Be In Pictures. I don't believe I've missed one yet, though in 2002, Lotte and I went to the February sneak-preview showing rather than the full April version. YOBIP is local sex boutique Grand Opening's anthology of customer-contributed short pornographic movies, held at the local arthouse, the rather grand and slightly crumbling Coolidge Corner Theater. The series has gotten some mainstream attention lately, but there seemed to be a couple seats free at the usually sold-out show.

I'm as hooked as ever. The shorts are often funny, frequently endearing, and sometimes even hot, and, given the current climate in this country, going out and publicly espressing an appreciation for sexual self-expression seems not just like a lot of fun, but something of a civic duty.

Further, this year may have been the best ever. I dearly wish I had a program with titles for each of the shows I've seen--I suspect that a lot of goodies are slipping through the cracks of my memory. As a bit of a tonic against that prospect, bear with me as I recap some highlights:

It opened with a funny, disturbing, and faintly arousing short that featured three performers: a puddle of honey, a peeled banana, and a jelly doughnut. The consummation of their relationship had the audience gasping and howling. The maker (credited, but I'm afraid I've forgotten her name) is clearly a very talented filmmaker.

There were two shorts from Tanya Bezreh, whom I had the pleasure of meeting briefly a couple months ago at a similar event. I'd enjoyed her contribution in 2002--a playful and stylized spanking-oriented piece. Her scenes this time justaposed very intimate and unguarded shots of her masturbating with a soundtrack in which she discusses her ambivalence and doubts about porn in her childlike voice. I adored them--I thought they were thoughtful, formally novel, very hot, and wonderfully brave in their openness.

Historically, one of the hazards of YOBIP for me has been my empathy with the filmmakers. When the audience howls with laughter at something that doesn't appear to have been intended to be funny, I'm generally acutely aware (even when I can't resist joining in myself) that the people being laughed at are probably somewhere in the theater. Bliss and Joker's movie last year definitely caused me some stress in that regard. It consisted of sweet, loving, lightly kinky masturbation and sex featuring an older couple. When the audience giggled at the woman's rangy forearms and cowboy spurs, I found myself sinking down in my seat in distress.

Amusingly, I ran into them at a party a few months later, and was relieved to find that they had found the experience a pleasant one. Their contribution this year was more tightly edited and confident-feeling, while being as charming as the previous one. The audience loved it.

Lotte enjoyed an abstract black-and-white piece featuring four hands, a cock, and a classical soundtrack more than I did. It was striking at first, but I really only needed the first minute, not the full five.

There were at least two ringers--professional vignettes that fit the Grand Opening! aesthetic enough to be included. One was a rather softcore piece on the value of fantasy and role-playing, which was charming but rather tame. The other-from sexuality guru and hottie Carol Queen's Bend Over Boyfriend series-was startlingly stiff and lifeless. The moral--attractive and interesting people having unusual sex isn't enough if there's no spark of actual desire.

We left immediately at the end and missed the traditional denuement, wherein GO! proprietrix Kim Airs smashes the videotape with a sledgehammer. However, since YOBIP will be playing again this Friday the 9th at midnight, the ritual is kind of hollow anyway.

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The Moomintroll books by Tove Jansson

I've been reading Charlotte these books as I've managed to find copies. In Europe and Japan, the Moomintroll franchise is big business, with animated cartoons and themeparks. We Americans have been lucky enough to be spared all that for once, leaving us only with these lovely illustrated novels of the strange and the familiar, the joyous and the melancholy. Start with either Finn Family Moomintroll, or Tales from Moominvalley, where her inventiveness and her gift for atmosphere meet most satisfyingly.

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Finder, by Carla Speed McNeil

I'd say that Finder's the best SF comic coming out currently, but I don't know of another excellent SF comic coming out these days (if you really want to know why I don't love Transmetropolitan, I'll tell you, but I'm trying to stick to what I love, rather than what I don't). I'll say instead that it contains excellent art, fun, rousing stories, and amazingly nuanced and believable characters. And, unlike every other print comic I love, she actually puts it out on something like a professional schedule.

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