Category Archives: Diversions

The stuff that didn’t fit elsewhere.

Screen time

Ingmar Bergman, 1918-2007

Playing chess with death — a memorable string of scenes from a memorable movie. It has been butt of jokes and satire, probably the mark of the impact it has had for decades.

I remember the first time I saw The Seventh Seal (yes, I’ve seen it more than once). I was a junior in high school and my friend Beau Mount, who had the largest foreign film collection of anyone in town, invited me over after play practice to watch the film and have some dinner. I was mesmerized, and not by the dinner. It’s not that I understood everything I saw (I didn’t), but I was in awe of the way it was filmed, the imagery, the tone. And I still am in awe.

The Seventh Seal is firmly in the lineage of my film education. I had watched foreign film before then, but I hadn’t really seen it. From there I went on to try many directors and films I would have never watched, from Almadovar to Jodorowsky. Some were good, some weren’t so good, but my tastes would morph with each encounter.

Ingmar Bergman brought something to film that few others have, and whether you like his work or not, no one can deny that he changed the landscape of the cinema. Rest easy, Mr. Bergman. You will be remembered.

Reading

"Hymn to the Comb-Over"

I love Ted Kooser’s intro on this one.

American Life in Poetry: Column 122

By Ted Kooser
U.S. Poet Laureate, 2004-2006
The chances are very good that you are within a thousand yards of a man with a comb-over, and he may even be somewhere in your house. Here’s Maine poet, Wesley McNair, with his commentary on these valorous attempts to disguise hair loss.

Hymn to the Comb-Over
How the thickest of them erupt just
above the ear, cresting in waves so stiff
no wind can move them. Let us praise them
in all of their varieties, some skinny
as the bands of headphones, some rising
from a part that extends halfway around
the head, others four or five strings
stretched so taut the scalp resembles
a musical instrument. Let us praise the sprays
that hold them, and the combs that coax
such abundance to the front of the head
in the mirror, the combers entirely forget
the back. And let us celebrate the combers,
who address the old sorrow of time’s passing
day after day, bringing out of the barrenness
of mid-life this ridiculous and wonderful
harvest, no wishful flag of hope, but, thick,
or thin, the flag itself, unfurled for us all
in subways, offices, and malls across America.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation, publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright (c) 2006 by Wesley McNair. Reprinted from “The Ghosts of You and Me,” published by David R. Godine, 2006, by permission of the author. Introduction copyright (c) 2006 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.

Reading

"Stigma"

5 Comments

After being utterly disturbed by “The Missing,” I really needed something that would clear all that nastiness out of my head. And what’s the never-fail prescription for a feel-good tale? Corporate conspirators, malevolent third-world clinical trials and a covert-ops-trained pediatric surgeon, of course!

Imagine that a shady publishing conglomerate got its hands on Tom Clancy and Michael Crichton’s DNA. They shipped it off to a secret lab deep in the Sonoran desert, where scientists spliced it together. Then they injected it into Philip Hawley Jr., who was suddenly compelled to write “Stigma.”

“Stigma” is a wildly ridiculous story, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. It was just what I needed. Now I’m going to go take a nap spring the no-longer-napping Poppy from her crib.