"Well, Well, Well"
in the "Way South of Here" sub-festival
Belgravia, 2009, dir. Janek Smiegda
Umblu has been released from prison and returns to his home village in the Belgravian countryside, where a huge wedding is to begin that week. On the night before the big event, the bridegroom mysteriously falls down a well. Umblu can't remember a thing about the night before, and the ex-con finds himself in the centre of unwanted attention. But not suspicion. Umblu is a wanted man all right: in a village of heavy-set rural folk, he is the one person who is thin enough to fit into the well and save the groom -- and the wedding. But further complications ensue -- the groom has more than a literal case of cold feet and turns out the ring is still at the bottom of the well. Bride, groom, and Umblu call the whole thing off...and all three take off on a road trip to the Belgravian capital for a weekend of gambling on a riverboat. Where is Umblu leading them, if he's leading them at all? Does the house always win? Is Umblu a matchmaker or is a triangle developing? Just then, a runaway barge hits the riverboat casino, setting it adrift, and everything becomes wide, wide open... Ultimate questions of the meaning of life and love are broached as tradition collides head on with modern life in this Black Nights special, set against the dramatic cinematography of magnificent Belgravian landscapes (and casino interiors) and the rawness of urban post-communist realities.
Read that synopsis and you've dispensed with 120 films. The good news -- and why Black Nights is such a treat -- is that that leaves about 100 films that are really quite original. Here are two capsule reviews of real films, not the cream of the crop, but at least minor achievements:
Van Diemen's Land: Sort of as if the dwarves from LOTR found themselves doing hard labour in the temperate rain forests of Tasmania in 1822 (with actual Dwarvish spoken and English subtitles), escaped and set off across the spectacular wilderness getting progressively grumpier. And hungrier. When the salt pork and bread run out, and there being no stout on hand, Darwinism and individual psycho-pathologies take over. Not so much like Tolkien after that point. I squeamed and I squirmed but I can't deny it was harrowing and haunting. (7/10)
Lourdes: "Institutional", almost proto-documentary-style take on faith and miracles, with a wry yet subtle touch and a lead character to match. One of those films that flows like water, sure to be derided by some as slow and irrelevant (because of "dead air"), but economical and watchable, maybe even a second time. Also good mountain scenery in the last half hour. (8/10)
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Rumours
A 13-year-old died of the flu here a couple days ago. The newspapers and others are calling it the "new flu", which suggests it has freshly mutated. That may be more accurate than we know. Every time I hear "new flu", I jump mentally and my pulse rate increases. But the call letters are the same: H1N1, swine.
A tinge of fear and sorrow is in the air, but the pandemic still seems remote. War has of course killed 25 times more people in the same period. As it now appears, war will maintain or increase its torrid body count.
Cancer continues to cause pain, and yet makes the victims invisible, nowhere more than here. People still die everyday in Estonia of things that aren't reported in obituaries, many of them alone. Death remains a strange novelty, even when it's close, or in the room. A few days ago I visited one of my relatives on my wife's side, who is sick with cancer, riddled with melanoma or whatever it turns into when it metastasizes. The experience was not necessarily completely negative. I was going to write about it here, but then I decided against it.
There are plenty of little personal distractions in society and in personal life. Some are neurotic things we invent to avoid facing the big issues, like Woody Allen once said. Even the US Embassy, which usually warns me on plague and riots, today sent me a "Warden" message about...an isolated mugging in the Old Town.
In line with the Seinfeldian or post-Seinfeldian tradition it seems appropriate for a blog to write not about cancer or flu or war (although Laughagainistan will soon resume) -- but rather Seasonal Affective Disorder, for instance.
Except SAD is actually serious, too. It mimics clinical depression in the mornings and hyperthyroidism at night and takes a physical toll due to lack of sleep and irritability. Over time, a wisdom develops about affective disorders -- you can tell yourself it's just a condition and learn to compensate -- but still it changes things,
I'm not complaining. Like hibernation, a depressed state can sometimes be preservative, even dilatory. It will pass.
In any case, I should be getting some Mediterranean light next month before Arctic night sets in.
As far as the flu goes, the plan at Camp Rikken is to wash hands, eat lots of ginger and garlic, take vitamins. And not to worry too much, except when it comes to the kids, in which case I am frantic and panicky at each sneeze.
What I'm worrying about is, of course, devaluation/bankruptcy. Maybe you should, too, no matter what the conventional wisdom (Estonian reserves are well capitalized, etc). Apparently one bank has been making contingency plans which it didn't deem necessary around this time last year. But that, too, is just a rumour. There isn't even an electronic link. You didn't hear it here. Maybe it was actually in Latvia. That must be it.
Certainly I'm not going to spend too much time on the rumours about the flu varieties and vaccine conspiracies. Taking the side of the vaccine theorists sometimes seems to go down a dangerous road to nowhere -- almost seems like AIDS in Africa, where some heads of state believed HIV was cooked up in Western laboratories, the same ones that introduced crack into America's inner cities. So little trust in governments. Now Western and affluent populations have become infected, if you will, with the same doubt.
In the swine flu capital of the world, Ukraine, stories of hemorrhagic pneumonia abound in the provinces. "Their lungs were discolored. The physicians had never seen such a thing." Who said that? Why, an anonymous Estonian Internet commentator. I noticed it because it had been upmodded to about +20. Yes, authoritative armchair dispatches from the wild fringes of civilization, where SARS and H1N1 might be joining forces to create a new Ebola. Or maybe not this year.
Somewhere, just beyond the borders of "Western" civilization, livestock and people are no doubt getting ready to bed down in each other's arms to roost for the night.
But still there's hope. No significant change, but hope.
A tinge of fear and sorrow is in the air, but the pandemic still seems remote. War has of course killed 25 times more people in the same period. As it now appears, war will maintain or increase its torrid body count.
Cancer continues to cause pain, and yet makes the victims invisible, nowhere more than here. People still die everyday in Estonia of things that aren't reported in obituaries, many of them alone. Death remains a strange novelty, even when it's close, or in the room. A few days ago I visited one of my relatives on my wife's side, who is sick with cancer, riddled with melanoma or whatever it turns into when it metastasizes. The experience was not necessarily completely negative. I was going to write about it here, but then I decided against it.
There are plenty of little personal distractions in society and in personal life. Some are neurotic things we invent to avoid facing the big issues, like Woody Allen once said. Even the US Embassy, which usually warns me on plague and riots, today sent me a "Warden" message about...an isolated mugging in the Old Town.
In line with the Seinfeldian or post-Seinfeldian tradition it seems appropriate for a blog to write not about cancer or flu or war (although Laughagainistan will soon resume) -- but rather Seasonal Affective Disorder, for instance.
Except SAD is actually serious, too. It mimics clinical depression in the mornings and hyperthyroidism at night and takes a physical toll due to lack of sleep and irritability. Over time, a wisdom develops about affective disorders -- you can tell yourself it's just a condition and learn to compensate -- but still it changes things,
I'm not complaining. Like hibernation, a depressed state can sometimes be preservative, even dilatory. It will pass.
In any case, I should be getting some Mediterranean light next month before Arctic night sets in.
As far as the flu goes, the plan at Camp Rikken is to wash hands, eat lots of ginger and garlic, take vitamins. And not to worry too much, except when it comes to the kids, in which case I am frantic and panicky at each sneeze.
What I'm worrying about is, of course, devaluation/bankruptcy. Maybe you should, too, no matter what the conventional wisdom (Estonian reserves are well capitalized, etc). Apparently one bank has been making contingency plans which it didn't deem necessary around this time last year. But that, too, is just a rumour. There isn't even an electronic link. You didn't hear it here. Maybe it was actually in Latvia. That must be it.
Certainly I'm not going to spend too much time on the rumours about the flu varieties and vaccine conspiracies. Taking the side of the vaccine theorists sometimes seems to go down a dangerous road to nowhere -- almost seems like AIDS in Africa, where some heads of state believed HIV was cooked up in Western laboratories, the same ones that introduced crack into America's inner cities. So little trust in governments. Now Western and affluent populations have become infected, if you will, with the same doubt.
In the swine flu capital of the world, Ukraine, stories of hemorrhagic pneumonia abound in the provinces. "Their lungs were discolored. The physicians had never seen such a thing." Who said that? Why, an anonymous Estonian Internet commentator. I noticed it because it had been upmodded to about +20. Yes, authoritative armchair dispatches from the wild fringes of civilization, where SARS and H1N1 might be joining forces to create a new Ebola. Or maybe not this year.
Somewhere, just beyond the borders of "Western" civilization, livestock and people are no doubt getting ready to bed down in each other's arms to roost for the night.
But still there's hope. No significant change, but hope.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
REVIEW: Coming to Estonia
OK, I didn't finish the Estonian-language version of Justin Petrone's Minu Eesti in time for this review scheduled for Nov. 20. Now the English version of My Estonia is out, and I'm itching to start in on it. But punctuality is important. A deadline is a deadline.
Actually, the Estonian version is a work in its own right, significantly different from the English adaptation, just as neither of these books is just an anthologized version of Petrone's well-regarded blog, Itching for Eestimaa. They're episodic, definitely, but these pearls are strung with true craft -- it's just one instalment of a memoir, but a raamat, close to a non-fiction novel from someone almost under 30.
In his blog, Petrone comes across as a bit of an old Nordic hand. After all, the whole thing opened with him plotting a return to Estonia when he had already become homesick for this place (or at least, in true Estonian character, envious of those who were here). Minu Eesti 1. osa is the prequel. Here we get to see him as the naif. He's going after some big, familiar archetypes here -- off-the-boat foreigner, personal salvation from some sort of louche Bohemianism, marrying into a strange culture, language barriers. But because the action takes place starting in 2003, only a year before EU accession, and not in 1993, it's not just the old familiar post-Soviet jungle contrast. It's fresh. When a nation is already as globalized as Estonia earlier this decade, it takes a little more skill and observation to get at the little absurdities and big differences.
To his credit, he doesn't just make it outlandish. OK, he does selectively take a few conceits. There is a running theme about Estonian punctuality that I can't personally or generally confirm. I can speak to the contrary: My boss is always late. Not with wages, but in person. Lennart Meri, late President of Estonia, the embodiment of the Estonian intellectual, was famous for being late before he was late.
But who cares? We aren't going to persuade Petrone otherwise, and we Estonians can take our lumps and pick our battles elsewhere. It's like something in his blog, where he maddeningly insists, being steeped in the social(ist) tradition, on calling the mainstream parties "right-wing". Live with it. Anyway, read the title: My Estonia. His. Yet he gets enough right that it is also a pretty accurate portrait of Estonia, warts and all.
**
Incidentally, Petrone is part of a husband-and-wife publishing dynamo, Petrone Print. There's been a lot of griping in Estonia about sales tax rates and lack of cultural support for publishing but none of it has come from this publisher, which maintains a torrid production and promotion schedule. They really are prolific. The first time I met the author Vello Vikerkaar, I mentioned how I had just bought Epp Petrone's Growing Green, a primer for environmental living. He called over to his wife in his dry sort of way: hey, did you hear that Epp has a new book out? I thought his wife glanced at her watch, then nodded: yep, about time. But they're fans, of course, despite what I (mis)interpreted as a weary resignation at never being able to keep up. And credit the Petrones for maintaining above-average literary quality. The only danger that I see is that the more successful they are, the more tasty they will be to Estonians, who love to bring their fellow countrymen down and cut them down to size, then eat them. That's another "conceit", but sadly it may be true.
Maybe Petrone blows it after page 200. Maybe they ran out of paper and he just starts writing, "Bla bla bla, bla bla-bla bla," or the pages are blank. I haven't looked. But I don't think so. And up to page 150, where I am right now, the Estonian prose is a joy and smooth sailing.
Apart from Estonian being notoriously difficult to learn -- a notion that Petrone dispels in real life incidentally, being rather fluent after about five or six years -- I suspect that Estonian writers want to keep the national soul inscrutable. They're bloody-minded about it. There's very little LOL-funny writing in Estonian. So kudos go out to translator Raivo Hool for his care. He preserves the economy and comic timing of Petrone's voice and proves that American humour -- and Petrone's enjoyable update on the proud tradition -- can be universal. (Of course, I'm not sure Estonian humour can ever translate perfectly into English...but that's another story.)
Actually, the Estonian version is a work in its own right, significantly different from the English adaptation, just as neither of these books is just an anthologized version of Petrone's well-regarded blog, Itching for Eestimaa. They're episodic, definitely, but these pearls are strung with true craft -- it's just one instalment of a memoir, but a raamat, close to a non-fiction novel from someone almost under 30.
In his blog, Petrone comes across as a bit of an old Nordic hand. After all, the whole thing opened with him plotting a return to Estonia when he had already become homesick for this place (or at least, in true Estonian character, envious of those who were here). Minu Eesti 1. osa is the prequel. Here we get to see him as the naif. He's going after some big, familiar archetypes here -- off-the-boat foreigner, personal salvation from some sort of louche Bohemianism, marrying into a strange culture, language barriers. But because the action takes place starting in 2003, only a year before EU accession, and not in 1993, it's not just the old familiar post-Soviet jungle contrast. It's fresh. When a nation is already as globalized as Estonia earlier this decade, it takes a little more skill and observation to get at the little absurdities and big differences.
To his credit, he doesn't just make it outlandish. OK, he does selectively take a few conceits. There is a running theme about Estonian punctuality that I can't personally or generally confirm. I can speak to the contrary: My boss is always late. Not with wages, but in person. Lennart Meri, late President of Estonia, the embodiment of the Estonian intellectual, was famous for being late before he was late.
But who cares? We aren't going to persuade Petrone otherwise, and we Estonians can take our lumps and pick our battles elsewhere. It's like something in his blog, where he maddeningly insists, being steeped in the social(ist) tradition, on calling the mainstream parties "right-wing". Live with it. Anyway, read the title: My Estonia. His. Yet he gets enough right that it is also a pretty accurate portrait of Estonia, warts and all.
**
Incidentally, Petrone is part of a husband-and-wife publishing dynamo, Petrone Print. There's been a lot of griping in Estonia about sales tax rates and lack of cultural support for publishing but none of it has come from this publisher, which maintains a torrid production and promotion schedule. They really are prolific. The first time I met the author Vello Vikerkaar, I mentioned how I had just bought Epp Petrone's Growing Green, a primer for environmental living. He called over to his wife in his dry sort of way: hey, did you hear that Epp has a new book out? I thought his wife glanced at her watch, then nodded: yep, about time. But they're fans, of course, despite what I (mis)interpreted as a weary resignation at never being able to keep up. And credit the Petrones for maintaining above-average literary quality. The only danger that I see is that the more successful they are, the more tasty they will be to Estonians, who love to bring their fellow countrymen down and cut them down to size, then eat them. That's another "conceit", but sadly it may be true.
Maybe Petrone blows it after page 200. Maybe they ran out of paper and he just starts writing, "Bla bla bla, bla bla-bla bla," or the pages are blank. I haven't looked. But I don't think so. And up to page 150, where I am right now, the Estonian prose is a joy and smooth sailing.
Apart from Estonian being notoriously difficult to learn -- a notion that Petrone dispels in real life incidentally, being rather fluent after about five or six years -- I suspect that Estonian writers want to keep the national soul inscrutable. They're bloody-minded about it. There's very little LOL-funny writing in Estonian. So kudos go out to translator Raivo Hool for his care. He preserves the economy and comic timing of Petrone's voice and proves that American humour -- and Petrone's enjoyable update on the proud tradition -- can be universal. (Of course, I'm not sure Estonian humour can ever translate perfectly into English...but that's another story.)
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Dinopolis
While waiting for Obama to make the decision on Afghanistan, I went to see an arena spectacular about reptilians -- not the ageless Illuminati masters of the world who decide which wars to fight, but extinct giant lizards.
Walking With Dinosaurs, based on the BBC series and imported by Lauri Laubre, has a tinge of the appeal of a monster truck rally but with a lot more edutainment, class and authenticity. The arena-size show, claimed by organizers to be the country's biggest indoor extravaganza ever, has certainly found its segment, selling out at least nine times. (I remember trying to scalp Michael Jackson tickets 12 years ago and ending up getting face value and giving one away.)
While big and technically somewhat impressive in a lumbering way, the most impressive thing about "Walking" is that it has done so well in the middle of a recession. Although not cheap at 500-600 kroons per seat, parents (and a few young couples) have obliged.
It would perhaps not be going too far to say that dinosaurs are the new religion of most kids in Estonia, narrowly edging out the old monotheistic faiths. My son had been talking, living and breathing dinos since late summer. He even went to bed cuddling a plastic, scaly dinosaur figure one night. Out on the playgrounds, at least in Tallinn, it's a constant struggle between ever-faster carnivores and stolid, placid herbivores. There have been articles in the press discussing why this is. My guess is that the narratives give preschoolers a feeling of power. There's also the theory that childhood development follows human evolutionary history -- 2-year-olds are Neanderthals, 3 year-olds Cro-Magnon -- so maybe they see themselves as having once been just a brain stem.
As parents, there's really no way to resist such a obsessive force. Of course, on the whole it's positive, somewhat scientific. The experience would also, my wife felt, constitute a learning experience for the youngster -- looking forward to something, counting off the days on the calendar, talking about it in class.
But I, too, learned a good bit from this whole dinosaur phase, starting from the fact that when we were in school, so long ago, the pantheon of dinosaurs only numbered 5-10, and the main ones were 1) brontosaurus 2) stegosaurus 3) triceratops 4) tyrannosaurus rex 5) pterodactyl. Well, Brontosaurus doesn't even exist anymore. Turns out it is a subset of the apatosaurus. (Still, Blogger's built-in spell-check accepts "brontosaurus" and flags "apatosaurus".) Jurassic Park added (veloci)raptors. Now allosaurus, the "lion of the Jurassic", is also a star. There's many more that I hadn't heard of, like diplodocus.
Walking with Dinosaurs had some pleasant visual surprises -- the unfurling of various plants to signify botanical evolution, the flight of a pterosaurus with IMAX-like rear projection, the paleontologist sticking his arm into a pile of stool to extract a "sitasitikas" or dung beetle (though why do they say "shit beetle" in Estonian, in front of the kids?!)
But I'm afraid that we have been spoiled by liquid animation and CGI.
The main problem was the limited mobility of the larger dinosaurs, which were mounted on huge stabilizers that blended in with the rock surface. Watching these lunkers square off, bob their heads, and ultimately almost never touch each other was unsatisfying. I reflected that robot choreography has been left in the dust by the silicon revolution, even though CPUs are hard at work underneath the skin and scales. The raptors and teenage dinosaurs were played by actual individuals in sophisticated full-body get-ups.
But most disappointingly, a ticket holder was NOT picked randomly at the end to duel the tyrannosaurus. I had told the kids this would happen. What good is a religion without a Jonah narrative?!
Nor were triceratops pulling caleches waiting for us when we exited to take us back home.
They didn't seem too disappointed. Probably they didn't believe me in the first place.
In any case, it was all probably just harmless edutainment and a pleasantly diversionary fad. A fun time was had by all. And I do have a new favorite dinosaur -- the impossibly knobby, tortoise-like ankylosaurus.
Walking With Dinosaurs, based on the BBC series and imported by Lauri Laubre, has a tinge of the appeal of a monster truck rally but with a lot more edutainment, class and authenticity. The arena-size show, claimed by organizers to be the country's biggest indoor extravaganza ever, has certainly found its segment, selling out at least nine times. (I remember trying to scalp Michael Jackson tickets 12 years ago and ending up getting face value and giving one away.)
While big and technically somewhat impressive in a lumbering way, the most impressive thing about "Walking" is that it has done so well in the middle of a recession. Although not cheap at 500-600 kroons per seat, parents (and a few young couples) have obliged.
It would perhaps not be going too far to say that dinosaurs are the new religion of most kids in Estonia, narrowly edging out the old monotheistic faiths. My son had been talking, living and breathing dinos since late summer. He even went to bed cuddling a plastic, scaly dinosaur figure one night. Out on the playgrounds, at least in Tallinn, it's a constant struggle between ever-faster carnivores and stolid, placid herbivores. There have been articles in the press discussing why this is. My guess is that the narratives give preschoolers a feeling of power. There's also the theory that childhood development follows human evolutionary history -- 2-year-olds are Neanderthals, 3 year-olds Cro-Magnon -- so maybe they see themselves as having once been just a brain stem.
As parents, there's really no way to resist such a obsessive force. Of course, on the whole it's positive, somewhat scientific. The experience would also, my wife felt, constitute a learning experience for the youngster -- looking forward to something, counting off the days on the calendar, talking about it in class.
But I, too, learned a good bit from this whole dinosaur phase, starting from the fact that when we were in school, so long ago, the pantheon of dinosaurs only numbered 5-10, and the main ones were 1) brontosaurus 2) stegosaurus 3) triceratops 4) tyrannosaurus rex 5) pterodactyl. Well, Brontosaurus doesn't even exist anymore. Turns out it is a subset of the apatosaurus. (Still, Blogger's built-in spell-check accepts "brontosaurus" and flags "apatosaurus".) Jurassic Park added (veloci)raptors. Now allosaurus, the "lion of the Jurassic", is also a star. There's many more that I hadn't heard of, like diplodocus.
Walking with Dinosaurs had some pleasant visual surprises -- the unfurling of various plants to signify botanical evolution, the flight of a pterosaurus with IMAX-like rear projection, the paleontologist sticking his arm into a pile of stool to extract a "sitasitikas" or dung beetle (though why do they say "shit beetle" in Estonian, in front of the kids?!)
But I'm afraid that we have been spoiled by liquid animation and CGI.
The main problem was the limited mobility of the larger dinosaurs, which were mounted on huge stabilizers that blended in with the rock surface. Watching these lunkers square off, bob their heads, and ultimately almost never touch each other was unsatisfying. I reflected that robot choreography has been left in the dust by the silicon revolution, even though CPUs are hard at work underneath the skin and scales. The raptors and teenage dinosaurs were played by actual individuals in sophisticated full-body get-ups.
But most disappointingly, a ticket holder was NOT picked randomly at the end to duel the tyrannosaurus. I had told the kids this would happen. What good is a religion without a Jonah narrative?!
Nor were triceratops pulling caleches waiting for us when we exited to take us back home.
They didn't seem too disappointed. Probably they didn't believe me in the first place.
In any case, it was all probably just harmless edutainment and a pleasantly diversionary fad. A fun time was had by all. And I do have a new favorite dinosaur -- the impossibly knobby, tortoise-like ankylosaurus.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
A Veterans Day message from the director of Laughagainistan
To my mind, there are only two quotations that anyone needs to know about war. One is attributed to General Sherman (although the original context in which it was spoken is appalling) and the other is by Edwin Starr.
Apart maybe from the purest, most instinctive form -- if a nation is abandoned by allies and literally takes to its own fields and forests against an invader -- war is too bound up with the military-industrial complex, profit, indiscretion, lies, hatred and delusions of glory to ever be redeemed.
So I don't know what to think when I hear people say: "Thank a Veteran." Or "Support the Troops." I can support troops with a reference to conscientious objection resources, but I don't think that is what is meant. How can I thank some veteran on the street? What am I thanking them for? At best, they are electrons in a fantastically complex wave function; at worst, they were lied to by their leaders and used as cannon fodder.
Maybe it's partly because of this cloying "thanking" and "supporting" that we neglect to do what really makes sense. What we do need to do today is Respect All Veterans. We need to treat all veterans better and support them in every way possible, and we need to do it without pity or crocodile thanks creeping into the picture.
The front page of most American newspapers today was a clustermash of stories about Texas massacres, the euthanization of a Gulf War veteran in the Virginia "death house" (sic) for his own massacre, and lack of coverage for post-traumatic stress disorder. I hope I never see anything like that again on such a day.
Let's not lapse into escapist WWII nostalgia, either, that pure and noble campaign. That was not a good war either.
There are no good wars, and unlike a bad movie, a bad war just can't be redeemed.
Apart maybe from the purest, most instinctive form -- if a nation is abandoned by allies and literally takes to its own fields and forests against an invader -- war is too bound up with the military-industrial complex, profit, indiscretion, lies, hatred and delusions of glory to ever be redeemed.
So I don't know what to think when I hear people say: "Thank a Veteran." Or "Support the Troops." I can support troops with a reference to conscientious objection resources, but I don't think that is what is meant. How can I thank some veteran on the street? What am I thanking them for? At best, they are electrons in a fantastically complex wave function; at worst, they were lied to by their leaders and used as cannon fodder.
Maybe it's partly because of this cloying "thanking" and "supporting" that we neglect to do what really makes sense. What we do need to do today is Respect All Veterans. We need to treat all veterans better and support them in every way possible, and we need to do it without pity or crocodile thanks creeping into the picture.
The front page of most American newspapers today was a clustermash of stories about Texas massacres, the euthanization of a Gulf War veteran in the Virginia "death house" (sic) for his own massacre, and lack of coverage for post-traumatic stress disorder. I hope I never see anything like that again on such a day.
Let's not lapse into escapist WWII nostalgia, either, that pure and noble campaign. That was not a good war either.
There are no good wars, and unlike a bad movie, a bad war just can't be redeemed.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
LAUGHAGAINISTAN. Part 4. The ambush.
EXT. Evening. The sun setting. A sentry post on a hilltop. Personnel from ESTCOY-13, the Estonian company in Helmand province, are leading the way from the position down a hillside toward a dun-colored town shimmering in the distance, followed by an American unit. A rudimentary wall, possibly erected for erosion control, parallels the rough trail in places. Four or five American privates leading the Americans are in quiet conversation with a veteran Estonian officer bringing up the rear of the Estonians.
PHIL: I'm from Kentucky and I don't know anyone voted for him. You, Joe?
JOE: Yeah. Brother-in-law. He's from up north, though.
PHIL: And everyone talks about the racket Karzai has going...
MIKE: I know he's my commander in chief, but let me tell you, last November...
VOICE FROM BACK: Aw come on, guys, knock it off. Especially after yesterday. No backlash. Zero tolerance.
AMERICAN NCO: Heads up now.
(The men walk on in silence. A local man is sitting on top of a wall, smoking. His feet are up on the wall, too, legs bent at the knees. He seems either depressed or suspicious, it is hard to tell. An American sergeant pitches a packet of Marlboros, underhand, in his general direction. It lands several yards short of the mark. The local takes a drag on his cigarette.)
ESTONIAN: Estonian public supports us in Afghanistan.
(The men walk on in silence.)
ESTONIAN: Ninety per cent support.
MIKE: Uhuh. That right? How do you figure that?
ESTONIAN: Look, who is next door to us. We can't just consume security, we have to contribute to it.
DAVE: Hey, does the Latvian public support us Americans in Afghanistan?
ESTONIAN: This I do not know. (pauses) (mutters) Ask from the fucking Latvians. (pause) All right. Ten minutes more and we're down. If I remember right. It's been 25 years.
PHIL: Problem over here is that the people don't want to consume security in the first place. Then again, I ain't got none to give.
(A group of local men sitting on the wall smoking finish their cigarettes and back off diagonally, never breaking eye contact. The American sergeant nods to them. The villagers stare back as they retreat. The sergeant pitches another packet of Marlboros, but the villagers are out of sight.)
JOE: The mayor of the last town said only ten per cent support the Taliban.
PHIL: Joe's been talking to the mayor again.
MIKE: He's not the mayor, Joe. Didn't they tell you that? There is no mayor. They don't have mayors here.
JOE (quietly): I meant the one in my dream. The one I'm going to visit.
PHIL: What in the?
JOE: When I finish my tour, he said, I can come visit his farm in the north.
MIKE: Joe, man, I'm worried you actually believe that. When we get off, we should visit Latvia. Estonia. The girls, Joe. The girls.
JOE: I'm tired.
PHIL: What the hell are you guys talking about?
DAVE: I've had that dream. That's where I got these (holds up a necklace of beads with lapis lazuli inlay. It looks like a relic.).
PHIL: Who hasn't dreamed about him? But that guy's an unfriendly. I can't believe you would accept anything from him.
ESTONIAN: Let me say you this. In our local elections, it happened such a thing, that --
(A massive explosion rocks the hillside close, just scant meters in front of the column.)
AMERICAN: We're hit! We're hit!
(A black cloud in the already dying light obscures everything. The smoke slowly clears to reveal inchoate shapes of men clutching their ears, stumbling, but they seem unscathed and slowly take stock.)
AMERICAN (staggering, hands clapped to ears): Everybody OK? I can't hear anything!
AMERICAN: I'm OK. Everybody's here.
AMERICAN: Where the fucking Latvians?
PHIL: Christ, you're right. They're gone.
DAVE: I can't find my beads! I can't find my beads! I can't find my beads!
NEXT: Part 5. Resolution.
PHIL: I'm from Kentucky and I don't know anyone voted for him. You, Joe?
JOE: Yeah. Brother-in-law. He's from up north, though.
PHIL: And everyone talks about the racket Karzai has going...
MIKE: I know he's my commander in chief, but let me tell you, last November...
VOICE FROM BACK: Aw come on, guys, knock it off. Especially after yesterday. No backlash. Zero tolerance.
AMERICAN NCO: Heads up now.
(The men walk on in silence. A local man is sitting on top of a wall, smoking. His feet are up on the wall, too, legs bent at the knees. He seems either depressed or suspicious, it is hard to tell. An American sergeant pitches a packet of Marlboros, underhand, in his general direction. It lands several yards short of the mark. The local takes a drag on his cigarette.)
ESTONIAN: Estonian public supports us in Afghanistan.
(The men walk on in silence.)
ESTONIAN: Ninety per cent support.
MIKE: Uhuh. That right? How do you figure that?
ESTONIAN: Look, who is next door to us. We can't just consume security, we have to contribute to it.
DAVE: Hey, does the Latvian public support us Americans in Afghanistan?
ESTONIAN: This I do not know. (pauses) (mutters) Ask from the fucking Latvians. (pause) All right. Ten minutes more and we're down. If I remember right. It's been 25 years.
PHIL: Problem over here is that the people don't want to consume security in the first place. Then again, I ain't got none to give.
(A group of local men sitting on the wall smoking finish their cigarettes and back off diagonally, never breaking eye contact. The American sergeant nods to them. The villagers stare back as they retreat. The sergeant pitches another packet of Marlboros, but the villagers are out of sight.)
JOE: The mayor of the last town said only ten per cent support the Taliban.
PHIL: Joe's been talking to the mayor again.
MIKE: He's not the mayor, Joe. Didn't they tell you that? There is no mayor. They don't have mayors here.
JOE (quietly): I meant the one in my dream. The one I'm going to visit.
PHIL: What in the?
JOE: When I finish my tour, he said, I can come visit his farm in the north.
MIKE: Joe, man, I'm worried you actually believe that. When we get off, we should visit Latvia. Estonia. The girls, Joe. The girls.
JOE: I'm tired.
PHIL: What the hell are you guys talking about?
DAVE: I've had that dream. That's where I got these (holds up a necklace of beads with lapis lazuli inlay. It looks like a relic.).
PHIL: Who hasn't dreamed about him? But that guy's an unfriendly. I can't believe you would accept anything from him.
ESTONIAN: Let me say you this. In our local elections, it happened such a thing, that --
(A massive explosion rocks the hillside close, just scant meters in front of the column.)
AMERICAN: We're hit! We're hit!
(A black cloud in the already dying light obscures everything. The smoke slowly clears to reveal inchoate shapes of men clutching their ears, stumbling, but they seem unscathed and slowly take stock.)
AMERICAN (staggering, hands clapped to ears): Everybody OK? I can't hear anything!
AMERICAN: I'm OK. Everybody's here.
AMERICAN: Where the fucking Latvians?
PHIL: Christ, you're right. They're gone.
DAVE: I can't find my beads! I can't find my beads! I can't find my beads!
NEXT: Part 5. Resolution.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
REVIEW: Little Italy
I like Vapiano. It makes me happy.
Maybe the onset of another Estonian winter has got the last of my brain cells (judge from the Laughagainistan series), but maybe it really is the food, as the chain claims.
Let me try to explain about my new favourite place to eat in Tallinn. It serves primi -- simple Italian pasta dishes -- made fresh in front of your eyes and it tastes like food does in Italy. Instead of a fast food joint where you watch a cashier push buttons, the person on the other side of the counter from you has two burners and a professional looking mise-en-place -- portions of parboiled pasta, rucola, chili, pine nuts, all ready to go. He or she will be your personal cook for the next 2-4 minutes. When you first enter, you're given a radio card to flash or point with and you settle up your tab at the very end, American diner-style, without waiting around for a waiter to go back and forth with the card. Fresh casual, it's called. That's what it's called.
The salads are probably overpriced, but Vapiano will dish up a satisfying basic plate (arabbiata, pomodoro or pesto) for 60 kroons. Not too bad. The other price groups are 85, 105 and 125 kroons, but I haven't had a reason to try them. You can choose from nine pasta shapes. Conceivably your personal cook will even warn you if you are about to pair a thick shape with a thin sauce. Each transaction begins with "would you like chili and garlic in that" (yes, sir!) and ends with "would you like Parmesan cheese" (please, sir!) and a twist of the pepper grinder on either end of your dish. Very comforting, somehow.
These guys are well-trained and remain cool under pressure. Some Zanzinger type in the line ahead of me with a cane and an expensive overcoat -- this place is full of movers and shakers, I think I recognized him as some shipping boss -- was giving his cook a hard time, insisting on a "vinegretto salad".
"Goddamn it, son, what's wrong with you? Noh, the vinegretto," he actually said, stabbing his finger at the specials card, which listed "vigneto", which I think means "in the style of the vineyard" in this context). The cook did not correct him a third time, but nor did he pour any undiluted vinegar over his food as I probably would have done. I wouldn't be surprised if these cooks trained for three months in Florence before the Solaris mall opened.
Perhaps by coincidence, Vapiano continues the Solaris theme. That is, just as you would expect from the inside of a spaceship, there are living, oxygen-producing plants here. Besides olive oil and vinegar, each table has a oregano plant and a basil plant in little pots I think Vapiano is the only restaurant I have seen with a staff gardener. I haven't seen anyone picking off leaves, so I hope it's OK to do that. Maybe it's some kind of experiment.
Like my second-favorite part of Solaris, the bookstore-cafe, there is only futuristic ductwork and no suspended ceilings in Vapiano. They have either fallen down or there were none to begin with.
In line with the artisan approach to food, the placemat on the tray talks about how Vapiano makes their pasta and then throws in this paragraph:
"It is certainly no coincidence that you will feel happier after eating Vapiano pasta because pasta is light, contains very little fat and it gives you energy for a long period. That's not all. Pasta contains certain substances that help produce the happiness hormone serotonin. A morsel of happiness in each bite. Maybe that is why you can see so many smiling people in Vapiano."
Actually, I don't even know if the low-fat bit is really relevant. The main reason the pasta dishes are so good is that they use so much quality olive oil. I would have probably quit while I was ahead and not made the loopy serotonin claim. But I looked around and people did seem happy, or at least calm, especially after eating, even the guy with his vineyard-style salad.
Other celebrity sightings included Anu Välba (she seems more like a girl next door type and I didn't expect her to be wearing high heels and powerwear but there you go) and Marko Reikop and both seemed like they had had pasta with St. John's wort. If there were a fountain, and the Rembrandts theme song came on, they would do the Friends thing for sure! There was also people telling other people what they did and what their fathers did (manager for Michael Jackson's HIStory tour, I think I overheard).
I have since got a haircut and next time I go to Vapiano I will be sure to take it up a notch myself. Maybe I will video blog from there.
Two other things I should note: the dolci bar has a spherical marzipan pastry that is out of this world, if you like almonds (15 kroons), but they were out last time. Sadly I have not tried the coffee yet. The bread at Vapiano is really good and it comes with your meal but you need to ask for it from your cook.
Maybe the onset of another Estonian winter has got the last of my brain cells (judge from the Laughagainistan series), but maybe it really is the food, as the chain claims.
Let me try to explain about my new favourite place to eat in Tallinn. It serves primi -- simple Italian pasta dishes -- made fresh in front of your eyes and it tastes like food does in Italy. Instead of a fast food joint where you watch a cashier push buttons, the person on the other side of the counter from you has two burners and a professional looking mise-en-place -- portions of parboiled pasta, rucola, chili, pine nuts, all ready to go. He or she will be your personal cook for the next 2-4 minutes. When you first enter, you're given a radio card to flash or point with and you settle up your tab at the very end, American diner-style, without waiting around for a waiter to go back and forth with the card. Fresh casual, it's called. That's what it's called.
The salads are probably overpriced, but Vapiano will dish up a satisfying basic plate (arabbiata, pomodoro or pesto) for 60 kroons. Not too bad. The other price groups are 85, 105 and 125 kroons, but I haven't had a reason to try them. You can choose from nine pasta shapes. Conceivably your personal cook will even warn you if you are about to pair a thick shape with a thin sauce. Each transaction begins with "would you like chili and garlic in that" (yes, sir!) and ends with "would you like Parmesan cheese" (please, sir!) and a twist of the pepper grinder on either end of your dish. Very comforting, somehow.
These guys are well-trained and remain cool under pressure. Some Zanzinger type in the line ahead of me with a cane and an expensive overcoat -- this place is full of movers and shakers, I think I recognized him as some shipping boss -- was giving his cook a hard time, insisting on a "vinegretto salad".
"Goddamn it, son, what's wrong with you? Noh, the vinegretto," he actually said, stabbing his finger at the specials card, which listed "vigneto", which I think means "in the style of the vineyard" in this context). The cook did not correct him a third time, but nor did he pour any undiluted vinegar over his food as I probably would have done. I wouldn't be surprised if these cooks trained for three months in Florence before the Solaris mall opened.
Perhaps by coincidence, Vapiano continues the Solaris theme. That is, just as you would expect from the inside of a spaceship, there are living, oxygen-producing plants here. Besides olive oil and vinegar, each table has a oregano plant and a basil plant in little pots I think Vapiano is the only restaurant I have seen with a staff gardener. I haven't seen anyone picking off leaves, so I hope it's OK to do that. Maybe it's some kind of experiment.
Like my second-favorite part of Solaris, the bookstore-cafe, there is only futuristic ductwork and no suspended ceilings in Vapiano. They have either fallen down or there were none to begin with.
In line with the artisan approach to food, the placemat on the tray talks about how Vapiano makes their pasta and then throws in this paragraph:
"It is certainly no coincidence that you will feel happier after eating Vapiano pasta because pasta is light, contains very little fat and it gives you energy for a long period. That's not all. Pasta contains certain substances that help produce the happiness hormone serotonin. A morsel of happiness in each bite. Maybe that is why you can see so many smiling people in Vapiano."
Actually, I don't even know if the low-fat bit is really relevant. The main reason the pasta dishes are so good is that they use so much quality olive oil. I would have probably quit while I was ahead and not made the loopy serotonin claim. But I looked around and people did seem happy, or at least calm, especially after eating, even the guy with his vineyard-style salad.
Other celebrity sightings included Anu Välba (she seems more like a girl next door type and I didn't expect her to be wearing high heels and powerwear but there you go) and Marko Reikop and both seemed like they had had pasta with St. John's wort. If there were a fountain, and the Rembrandts theme song came on, they would do the Friends thing for sure! There was also people telling other people what they did and what their fathers did (manager for Michael Jackson's HIStory tour, I think I overheard).
I have since got a haircut and next time I go to Vapiano I will be sure to take it up a notch myself. Maybe I will video blog from there.
Two other things I should note: the dolci bar has a spherical marzipan pastry that is out of this world, if you like almonds (15 kroons), but they were out last time. Sadly I have not tried the coffee yet. The bread at Vapiano is really good and it comes with your meal but you need to ask for it from your cook.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
LAUGHAGAINISTAN, Scene 3: Film studio
(NOTE: Estonians are mentioned in this scene!)
INT. A film studio meeting room. A preliminary exploratory meeting for production of Laughagainistan. Two film executives and the would-be director. On the table is the tattered script with grease stains and coffee cup rings.
EXECUTIVE #1: Explosions - check. Stunts - check. We can always use local kids. (nudges his colleague, whose expression had stiffened) That's a joke. Of course the clan leaders would be pissed!
But the 120 helicopters you're asking for....
DIRECTOR: 127 helicopters.
EXECUTIVE #1: ...the 127 helicopters you're asking for, that's a red flag. That's one helicopter per minute of running time.
EXECUTIVE #2: Everyone wants helicopters these days.
EXECUTIVE #1 (rummages through folder): I received this letter from the US Army. They're hitting up the studios for choppers. And they're paying well.
EXECUTIVE #2: Just to put things in perspective, do you know how many helicopters were...expended in Black Hawk Down?
DIRECTOR: I don't know. Not 127?
EXECUTIVE #2: That's right. It wasn't 'Black Hawks Down', was it? It was 'Black Hawk Down'. And they made a full-length movie about it. Something to think about.
EXECUTIVE #2: You're not making Helicopter!, the sequel to Airplane!. You're making Laughagainistan, the sequel to Lafghanistan.
EXECUTIVE #1: And that brings us to the second, more important order of business. We like Laughagainistan. It reminds us a little of Lafghanistan. Do you see the problem here? Uhuh. A little. It's a sequel. It should remind us of the original film a lot.
EXECUTIVE #1: We liked Lafghanistan. The formula worked. It was like Bob Hope entertaining the troops, except with jokes about semen. We don't want to depart from the formula too much.
EXECUTIVE #2 (leafs through screenplay): We're concerned about Scene 2, where the Koran gets turned into a mayonnaise sandwich, apparently.
EXECUTIVE #1: That's a tricky sell for the people handling the Hellmann's account. No one wants to go there, all that much.
EXECUTIVE #2: Delicate situation.
DIRECTOR: It's not a Koran. It's a dictionary. It's actually a plot point. It gets revealed in Scene 4, the one about the Estonians.
EXECUTIVE #1: Whoa, whoa. Estonians?
DIRECTOR: They symbolize the coalition of the willing. They clean up leftover mayonnaise packets and leaflets and helicopter wreckage from the battlefield. It's all explained, if you read it.
EXECUTIVE #2: No fucking way. That's a nyet, comrade. No one knows anything about Estonians. No one wants to know. That's the kiss of death for a major motion picture.
EXECUTIVE #!: A guy once gave a presentation to the studios trying to get interest in a piece of surround sound technology. He made the mistake of including the word Estonian in it. Afterwards, the group of executives was surveyed. They had no recollection of the presentation or even being at the presentation. Frankly, I'm afraid for the fact that the word "Estonian" has come up in our conversation here today. Seriously. Is anyone taking minutes? I might forget the whole thing. And that would be a shame. So no mention of Estonians, unless it's in a punchline.
EXECUTIVE #2: Right, we're not making a film abut post-Soviet complexities. Let's keep it simple: Afghanistan.
(Pause. The executives look at each other.)
EXECUTIVE #1: What were we talking about?
EXECUUTIVE #1: Koran sandwich.
DIRECTOR: Well, I still think there's a clever way around this problem and other what I would call hyperoffensive content. You could get some intellectual to endorse each scene of the film. Hitchens would endorse the flashback scene where the US is entering Iraqi villages and slaughtering.
EXECUTIVE #1 (looks at his colleague): Not bad. I'm thinking of Rushdie for Scene 2, then. He has nothing to lose. Better yet, cast him.
EXECUTIVE #2 (into Dictaphone): Cast Salman Rushdie as the guy jumping on the book. (looks up) Could work. Is that enough to cover our ass?
EXECUTIVE #1 (thinking): Then we've got, what's his name who did Strangelove, Terry Southern. He could endorse the nutty press conference with the military figures in Scene 1.
EXECUTIVE #1: He's dead.
EXECUTIVE #2 (into Dictaphone): Whoever's doing the Terry Southern thing these days - e-mail that guy asking if he'd play in that scene.
DIRECTOR: That might be Dennis Perrin.
EXECUTIVE #2: Dennis Brin? Never heard of him.
DIRECTOR: He lives in Detroit and--
EXECUTIVE #!: I don't know about this. First Estonians, now some Brin. Where do you get these things?
DIRECTOR: He's kind of an anarchist comedy writer. Niche figure, a writer's writer. A blogger's blogger.
(shrugs)
He hates the right wing and Obama.
EXECUTIVE #2: He hates Obama and no one's heard of him. Sounds swell.
DIRECTOR: People listen to him. Pundits do. I think.
EXECUTIVE #2: Would he do it?
EXECUTIVE #1: It might take the heat off. Some guy who writes on the Internet in Detroit...
EXECUTIVE #2: Right. All right. (speaks into Dictaphone) E-mail Dennis...Brin about Scene 2. If Rushdie doesn't want to play the guy who jumps up and down on the Koran with mayo in the middle, get Brin to do it.
DIRECTOR: Well, I didn't say that---
EXECUTIVE #1: Next point on the agenda. Obama.
INT. A film studio meeting room. A preliminary exploratory meeting for production of Laughagainistan. Two film executives and the would-be director. On the table is the tattered script with grease stains and coffee cup rings.
EXECUTIVE #1: Explosions - check. Stunts - check. We can always use local kids. (nudges his colleague, whose expression had stiffened) That's a joke. Of course the clan leaders would be pissed!
But the 120 helicopters you're asking for....
DIRECTOR: 127 helicopters.
EXECUTIVE #1: ...the 127 helicopters you're asking for, that's a red flag. That's one helicopter per minute of running time.
EXECUTIVE #2: Everyone wants helicopters these days.
EXECUTIVE #1 (rummages through folder): I received this letter from the US Army. They're hitting up the studios for choppers. And they're paying well.
EXECUTIVE #2: Just to put things in perspective, do you know how many helicopters were...expended in Black Hawk Down?
DIRECTOR: I don't know. Not 127?
EXECUTIVE #2: That's right. It wasn't 'Black Hawks Down', was it? It was 'Black Hawk Down'. And they made a full-length movie about it. Something to think about.
EXECUTIVE #2: You're not making Helicopter!, the sequel to Airplane!. You're making Laughagainistan, the sequel to Lafghanistan.
EXECUTIVE #1: And that brings us to the second, more important order of business. We like Laughagainistan. It reminds us a little of Lafghanistan. Do you see the problem here? Uhuh. A little. It's a sequel. It should remind us of the original film a lot.
EXECUTIVE #1: We liked Lafghanistan. The formula worked. It was like Bob Hope entertaining the troops, except with jokes about semen. We don't want to depart from the formula too much.
EXECUTIVE #2 (leafs through screenplay): We're concerned about Scene 2, where the Koran gets turned into a mayonnaise sandwich, apparently.
EXECUTIVE #1: That's a tricky sell for the people handling the Hellmann's account. No one wants to go there, all that much.
EXECUTIVE #2: Delicate situation.
DIRECTOR: It's not a Koran. It's a dictionary. It's actually a plot point. It gets revealed in Scene 4, the one about the Estonians.
EXECUTIVE #1: Whoa, whoa. Estonians?
DIRECTOR: They symbolize the coalition of the willing. They clean up leftover mayonnaise packets and leaflets and helicopter wreckage from the battlefield. It's all explained, if you read it.
EXECUTIVE #2: No fucking way. That's a nyet, comrade. No one knows anything about Estonians. No one wants to know. That's the kiss of death for a major motion picture.
EXECUTIVE #!: A guy once gave a presentation to the studios trying to get interest in a piece of surround sound technology. He made the mistake of including the word Estonian in it. Afterwards, the group of executives was surveyed. They had no recollection of the presentation or even being at the presentation. Frankly, I'm afraid for the fact that the word "Estonian" has come up in our conversation here today. Seriously. Is anyone taking minutes? I might forget the whole thing. And that would be a shame. So no mention of Estonians, unless it's in a punchline.
EXECUTIVE #2: Right, we're not making a film abut post-Soviet complexities. Let's keep it simple: Afghanistan.
(Pause. The executives look at each other.)
EXECUTIVE #1: What were we talking about?
EXECUUTIVE #1: Koran sandwich.
DIRECTOR: Well, I still think there's a clever way around this problem and other what I would call hyperoffensive content. You could get some intellectual to endorse each scene of the film. Hitchens would endorse the flashback scene where the US is entering Iraqi villages and slaughtering.
EXECUTIVE #1 (looks at his colleague): Not bad. I'm thinking of Rushdie for Scene 2, then. He has nothing to lose. Better yet, cast him.
EXECUTIVE #2 (into Dictaphone): Cast Salman Rushdie as the guy jumping on the book. (looks up) Could work. Is that enough to cover our ass?
EXECUTIVE #1 (thinking): Then we've got, what's his name who did Strangelove, Terry Southern. He could endorse the nutty press conference with the military figures in Scene 1.
EXECUTIVE #1: He's dead.
EXECUTIVE #2 (into Dictaphone): Whoever's doing the Terry Southern thing these days - e-mail that guy asking if he'd play in that scene.
DIRECTOR: That might be Dennis Perrin.
EXECUTIVE #2: Dennis Brin? Never heard of him.
DIRECTOR: He lives in Detroit and--
EXECUTIVE #!: I don't know about this. First Estonians, now some Brin. Where do you get these things?
DIRECTOR: He's kind of an anarchist comedy writer. Niche figure, a writer's writer. A blogger's blogger.
(shrugs)
He hates the right wing and Obama.
EXECUTIVE #2: He hates Obama and no one's heard of him. Sounds swell.
DIRECTOR: People listen to him. Pundits do. I think.
EXECUTIVE #2: Would he do it?
EXECUTIVE #1: It might take the heat off. Some guy who writes on the Internet in Detroit...
EXECUTIVE #2: Right. All right. (speaks into Dictaphone) E-mail Dennis...Brin about Scene 2. If Rushdie doesn't want to play the guy who jumps up and down on the Koran with mayo in the middle, get Brin to do it.
DIRECTOR: Well, I didn't say that---
EXECUTIVE #1: Next point on the agenda. Obama.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
LAUGHAGAINISTAN: Part 2
VOICEOVER: Act 2. Helmand's Mayonnaise.
(EXT. Scene: The Agricultural and Life Sciences Vocational Madrassah in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan. A field of poppies on a hillside under a bright sun. We see students at this less-than-elite school mowing poppies with scythes, methodically. Most have stubble or patchy facial hair. Some of the students are sitting with junior teachers on the rough-hewn flagstone portico of some ancient desert ruin at the top of the hill. Their beards are longer. They drink black tea and groom each other's matted, weatherbeaten beards, which have grown to prodigious lengths.
It would almost be an Aquarian, pre-industrial idyll, except for helicopter wreckage, some of it still slightly smouldering, that studs the fields.
The other odd thing is that the women hoeing in the field are clad head to toe in black and wearing leg irons, and singing what sounds like a call-and-response chain gang song in Pashto. Their hoeing is erratic. It appears they cannot see a bloody thing.
The men seem oblivious to the singing. They are silent, but occasionally one will grunt as he finds a nit in the beard of one of his compatriots, then flicks the offending material away, blinking vacuously from the depths of his facial hair.
In a cobalt blue sky shot through a wide-angle polarized lens, high cirrus clouds can be seen along with a contrail and a faint droning sound is audible. No one pays it any mind.)
(The screen then splits to show in close-up the various stages in the opium making process: workers scratching poppy buds to draw poppy sap; sap being dried in the sun, turning black; dried sap being compacted into bricks; hauling the opium to markets and refineries; a soldier at a checkpoint winking as the convoy proceeds; a local haggling over opium futures with a CIA arms dealer. Then, all of a sudden, single-serving-size packages of condiments fall into each split frame. They are clearly identifiable as commercial mayonnaise samples.
Screen reverts to the scene at the desert madrassah. The women have stopped singing. Gradually the scythes come to a halt. Students converse in Pashto, with subtitles.)
STUDENT #! (peering at a packet): What is it?
STUDENT #2: I can't read the infidel dog lettering.
STUDENT #!: Dude, you can't read any lettering.
STUDENT #2: Oh yeah.
(Student #2 calls to the teachers sitting on the portico, but they are already busy examining their packets as well. One is trying to tear a packet open along the non-perforated side while another examines a packet intently with his one good eye from a distance of about two inches, twisting it this way and that.)
TEACHER (A lean man of about 45, the head teacher strides across the portico resolutely, holding his beard to keep from becoming tangled up in it. He berates the junior teaching staff):
Halt! Who among you (stabs a finger at the collective) in your greed, who would fall for such an infidel dog trick? For what falls from the air but for the temptations of djinns? Or brimstone to poison the soil. Imperialists' swine leavings at best; at worst, an affliction to torment the flesh of future generations! (Pauses.)
On the other hand...let's crack one of these babies open and see what's inside, eh?
(He places a condiment packet on a flat stone beneath a low stone wall and uses a long pole to dislodge a loose rock from the wall so it could fall on to the packet. But it misses the packet and the small boulder begins rolling down the hillside. Students dive for cover right and left. The women fall in a hopeless tangle of limbs, ball and chain.)
He moves the packet and repeats the process. Again the rock misses the packet, picks up speed and lays a student flat)
TEACHER (looses a stream of guttural invective): It's all right. I would have failed him anyway. (claps his hands) Bring me the nutcracker!
STUDENTS: The nutcracker!
Two students retreat to a bookcase. A surprising number of new English-language softcover volumes are visible. "The Art of Self-Sufficiency." "Vernon County Community College Test Farm Twinning Program in Helmand." "How To Write USAID Grant Proposals." "Poppy Straw as Bio Fuel." But the students pass these by and extricate, with difficulty, a heavy, dog-eared, ancient-looking volume with florid gilt Arabic script on the leather cover. It takes three of them to lift it onto the low portico wall. They set it down reverently with the spine away from them.)
TEACHER (gingerly leafs through the brittle yet oily, parchment-like pages of the book): All right. I need a volunteer.
(Two students close the book with the packet in the middle, gently. The teacher points at a heavyset student. The student pantomimes a jump and raises an eyebrow and the teacher nods.
With a mighty swing of his arms the student bends his knees and propels his bulk up and onto the volume.
Yellowish matter spews out, coating the beards and bodies alike with splattered bits of creamy white ooze).
STUDENT #! (in an undertone): Uh. Mad call.
STUDENT #2: Word.
TEACHER: (glowers beneath his aiolian mask, then his expression becomes distant and abstracted. He strokes his beard, inadvertently spreading the mayonnaise around until finally it disappears, leaving a luxuriantly glossy patch)
STUDENT #1: Then again, maybe not.
TEACHER: (a smile widens on the Teacher's face and he clutches a fistful of packets held high): I do say, it is some kind of balsam for beards.
(EXT. Scene: The Agricultural and Life Sciences Vocational Madrassah in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan. A field of poppies on a hillside under a bright sun. We see students at this less-than-elite school mowing poppies with scythes, methodically. Most have stubble or patchy facial hair. Some of the students are sitting with junior teachers on the rough-hewn flagstone portico of some ancient desert ruin at the top of the hill. Their beards are longer. They drink black tea and groom each other's matted, weatherbeaten beards, which have grown to prodigious lengths.
It would almost be an Aquarian, pre-industrial idyll, except for helicopter wreckage, some of it still slightly smouldering, that studs the fields.
The other odd thing is that the women hoeing in the field are clad head to toe in black and wearing leg irons, and singing what sounds like a call-and-response chain gang song in Pashto. Their hoeing is erratic. It appears they cannot see a bloody thing.
The men seem oblivious to the singing. They are silent, but occasionally one will grunt as he finds a nit in the beard of one of his compatriots, then flicks the offending material away, blinking vacuously from the depths of his facial hair.
In a cobalt blue sky shot through a wide-angle polarized lens, high cirrus clouds can be seen along with a contrail and a faint droning sound is audible. No one pays it any mind.)
(The screen then splits to show in close-up the various stages in the opium making process: workers scratching poppy buds to draw poppy sap; sap being dried in the sun, turning black; dried sap being compacted into bricks; hauling the opium to markets and refineries; a soldier at a checkpoint winking as the convoy proceeds; a local haggling over opium futures with a CIA arms dealer. Then, all of a sudden, single-serving-size packages of condiments fall into each split frame. They are clearly identifiable as commercial mayonnaise samples.
Screen reverts to the scene at the desert madrassah. The women have stopped singing. Gradually the scythes come to a halt. Students converse in Pashto, with subtitles.)
STUDENT #! (peering at a packet): What is it?
STUDENT #2: I can't read the infidel dog lettering.
STUDENT #!: Dude, you can't read any lettering.
STUDENT #2: Oh yeah.
(Student #2 calls to the teachers sitting on the portico, but they are already busy examining their packets as well. One is trying to tear a packet open along the non-perforated side while another examines a packet intently with his one good eye from a distance of about two inches, twisting it this way and that.)
TEACHER (A lean man of about 45, the head teacher strides across the portico resolutely, holding his beard to keep from becoming tangled up in it. He berates the junior teaching staff):
Halt! Who among you (stabs a finger at the collective) in your greed, who would fall for such an infidel dog trick? For what falls from the air but for the temptations of djinns? Or brimstone to poison the soil. Imperialists' swine leavings at best; at worst, an affliction to torment the flesh of future generations! (Pauses.)
On the other hand...let's crack one of these babies open and see what's inside, eh?
(He places a condiment packet on a flat stone beneath a low stone wall and uses a long pole to dislodge a loose rock from the wall so it could fall on to the packet. But it misses the packet and the small boulder begins rolling down the hillside. Students dive for cover right and left. The women fall in a hopeless tangle of limbs, ball and chain.)
He moves the packet and repeats the process. Again the rock misses the packet, picks up speed and lays a student flat)
TEACHER (looses a stream of guttural invective): It's all right. I would have failed him anyway. (claps his hands) Bring me the nutcracker!
STUDENTS: The nutcracker!
Two students retreat to a bookcase. A surprising number of new English-language softcover volumes are visible. "The Art of Self-Sufficiency." "Vernon County Community College Test Farm Twinning Program in Helmand." "How To Write USAID Grant Proposals." "Poppy Straw as Bio Fuel." But the students pass these by and extricate, with difficulty, a heavy, dog-eared, ancient-looking volume with florid gilt Arabic script on the leather cover. It takes three of them to lift it onto the low portico wall. They set it down reverently with the spine away from them.)
TEACHER (gingerly leafs through the brittle yet oily, parchment-like pages of the book): All right. I need a volunteer.
(Two students close the book with the packet in the middle, gently. The teacher points at a heavyset student. The student pantomimes a jump and raises an eyebrow and the teacher nods.
With a mighty swing of his arms the student bends his knees and propels his bulk up and onto the volume.
Yellowish matter spews out, coating the beards and bodies alike with splattered bits of creamy white ooze).
STUDENT #! (in an undertone): Uh. Mad call.
STUDENT #2: Word.
TEACHER: (glowers beneath his aiolian mask, then his expression becomes distant and abstracted. He strokes his beard, inadvertently spreading the mayonnaise around until finally it disappears, leaving a luxuriantly glossy patch)
STUDENT #1: Then again, maybe not.
TEACHER: (a smile widens on the Teacher's face and he clutches a fistful of packets held high): I do say, it is some kind of balsam for beards.
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