Liberty Watch - Reading Lolita in Tehran

Sanaz has missed the last couple of the literary meetings of Azar Nafisi and seven of her best female students. They meet in her apartment to read Western literature. Sanaz comes late into the meeting. Nafisi writes in Chapter 21:

Her story was a familiar one.

I was stunned, after reading her story, to realize that it is a familiar one. I just posted about Eva Ósk Arnardóttir [I've learned it's Erla, not Eva] early Tuesday morning. But first listen to Sanaz' edited story.

A fortnight earlier, Sanaz and five of her girlfriends had gone for a two-day vacation by the Caspian Sea. On their first day, they had decided to visit her friend's fiancé in an adjoining villa. Sanaz kept emphasizing that they were all properly dressed, with their scarves and long robes. They were all sitting outside, in the garden: six girls and one boy. There were no alocoholic beverages in the house, no undesirable tapes or CDs..

And then "they" came with their guns, the morality squads, surprising them by jumping over the low walls. They claimed to have received a report of illegal activities, and wanted to search the premises. Unable to find fault with their appearance, one of the guards sarcastically said that looking at them, with their Western attitudes...What is a Western attitude? Nassrin interrupted. Sanaz looked at her and smiled. I'll ask him next time I run into him... The guards took all of them to a special jail for infractions in matters of morality. There, despite their protests, the girls were kept in a small, dark room, which they shared the first night with several prostitutes and a drug addict. Their jail wardens came into their room two or three times in the middle of the night to wake up those who might have dozed off, and hurled insults at them.

They were held in that room for forty-eight hours. Despite their repeated requests, they were denied the right to call their parents. Apart from brief excursions to the rest room at appointed times, they left the room twice - the first time to be led to a hospital, where they were given virginity tests by a woman gynecologist, who had her students observe the examinations. Not satisfied with her verdict, the guards took them to a private clinic for a second check...

Erla Ósk Arnardóttir, an Icelandic national, purportedly was searched, ask about her last period, not allowed to contact anyone, paraded through JFK airport chained and handcuffed, treated rudely, and eventually held overnight in a jail cell for the minor infraction of having overstayed a visa by 3 weeks, more than ten years earlier.

I had just written that I was reading this book, Reading Lolita in Tehran, but while it was interesting, I was having trouble getting through it. I think I figured out my problems with the book.

1. Each chapter is almost an independent vignette. There is a connection, but one isn't compelled to read the next chapter. Reading it in bed before sleep, I found myself hoping the short chapter would end and I could sleep. This is unlike some books where I had to find out what happened next.

2. The book doesn't challenge what I know. A student once gave me a one-page article and said it helped him understand why he was having trouble in my class. The article said there were two kinds of learning - happy and unhappy learning. Happy learning is when you learn something that reinforces what you already know. Unhappy learning is when you learn something that challenges what you already know. Reading Lolita's author is Iranian, but her perspective is a Western one, and her issues are the ones a Western professor might have teaching under the Ayatollah. They confirm our stereotypes about Iran. That is not to say that I want to read something that says Iran is really a wonderful place to live, but rather I would like to read something that would help me understand the mindset of those who support the regime. How do they think? Are they similar to Americans who blindly support the Bush regime? Or is it a totally different reasoning?

But last night's story gave me a new reason for why Americans should read this book. It illustrates stories of repression, large and small, which we see going on in the US today. That George W. would bring democracy to Iran, let alone Iraq, is ludicrous given that he's already introduced a police state in the no-man's land of airport security - particularly before one gets out of customs - where people have no rights, cannot contact friends or relatives or attorneys, can be held indefinitely without apparent reason. Erla Ósk Arnardóttir's story as well as those mentioned by Naomi Wolf and our own experiences with TSA tell us this. The story was also told in the short film Security that was part of the Anchorage International Film Festival.

A least Nafisi and her students could read Lolita, albeit getting copies was not easy, but it was not illegal as it was in the US not all that long ago. And among some circles in the US the book is still condemned.

Reading Lolita in Tehran is a reminder about those who zealously protest their loyalty to America and condemn as traitors those who would criticize the US government. How are they different from the 'morality squads' or the guards who dealt with Arnardóttir?

I would make it very clear, though, that most of the TSA I have dealt with have not slipped over into the dark side. They've tried to do their task with humor and understanding. They've not been thoughtless automatons. Even Erla writes,

another jail guard took pity on me and removed the leg chains.

And they are restrained by their instructions and the lack of resources and by facing irritable people late for their planes. But for the most part I see this as a terribly expensive - in time, money, and degradation of freedom - facade to make us feel like our government is protecting us from the enemy, an enemy that I believe is a lot less formidable than the current administration would have us believe.


Note: I did try to find more on the Icelandic tourist.

• The site I initially found the information on mispelled her name. It should be Erla, not Eva.
• There isn't a lot on this in mainstream new media. I guess for most surly and inappropriate treatment by TSA is not news. However the International Herald Tribune
  

has an AP story:

REYKJAVIK, Iceland: Iceland's government has asked the U.S. ambassador to explain the treatment of an Icelandic tourist who says she was held in shackles before being deported from the United States.

The woman, Erla Osk Arnardottir Lillendahl, 33, was arrested Sunday when she arrived at JFK airport in New York because she had overstayed a U.S. visa more than 10 years earlier...

She was deported Tuesday, she told reporters and wrote on her Internet blog.

On Thursday, Foreign Minister Ingibjorg Solrun Gisladottir told U.S. Ambassador Carol van Voorst that the treatment of Lillendahl was unacceptable.

"In a case such as this, there can be no reason to use shackles" Gisladottir said. "If a government makes a mistake, I think it is reasonable for it to apologize, like anyone else."

Van Voorst has contacted the officials at JFK airport and asked them to provide a report on Lillendahl's case, Gisladottir said.

• Iceland Review Online reports

12/20/2007 | 12:02

US Authorities Regret Treatment of Icelandic Tourist

Iceland’s Foreign Minister Ingibjörg Sólrún Gísladóttir received a letter from Stewart Baker, Assistant Secretary for Policy for the US Ministry of Homeland Security, yesterday, saying he regretted the treatment of an Icelandic tourist earlier this month.

The letter states that the incident gives the US Ministry of Homeland Security a reason to review work procedures regarding how foreign tourists are being received in the US, Morgunbladid reports.

My First Music Video - Hunting in Winter

I didn't intend to make a music video. I had some pictures from this afternoon's walk at Campbell Creek near Stuckagain. But music sounded like a good idea. Grrrr. Going to have to learn how to use Garage Band so I can make some noises to put on some of the videos. But in the meantime, what can I use without getting into too much trouble? Something winter related.

I found a CD one of my students, Guo Wei, gave me in Beijing. She was an er hu player in the student traditional Chinese orchestra at Renmin University of China. We even got to hear two of their concerts in beautiful concert halls. So I found a piece from the CD

New Melodies of "Si Zhu"
Collection of Traditional Musical Instruments

Conducted by Qin Pengzhang Yang Chunlin

This is part of track 3 - Sketch of Life in the North - fourth movement - Hunting in Winter

Well, we weren't hunting, but it is north and it is winter.






And then, one thing led to another. The pictures had to have some connection to the music. Let's just say, I learned a lot on iMovie today, and I have a long way to go. I really got into the music and wanted to do the whole piece, but I never would have finished that. It's not finished as it is. I hope you enjoy the pictures of Campbell Creek area and the wonderful music.

This is especially for my musician fellow blogger, Phil; Guo Wei; Frank in Beijing; and Des and Lyrica.

Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing

When I was at the library yesterday, I picked up 10 Rules of Writing at the new books shelf and proceeded to read it, and finish it, in about 30 minutes. This was tremendously satisfying since I have several books I'm sloooooooowwwwly working my way through. Reading Lolita in Tehran is

beautifully written and interesting, but isn't a book I have trouble putting down. I'm also working my way through We're All Journalists Now, a book on bloggers as journalists. Actually, it's not hard and not long, but after reading 30 pages I put it down and I'm having trouble picking it up again. I'm having trouble with books, because the internet panders to short attention span. I must start working more seriously on my to do lists lest surfing prevents me from doing other things I want to do.

So, quickly, the 10 steps:

1. Never open a book with weather
2. Avoid prologues
3. Never use a verb other than 'said' to carry dialogue
4. Never use an adverb to modify 'said'
5. Keep your exclamation points under control
6. Never use the words 'suddenly' or 'all hell broke loose'
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters
9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things
10. Try to leave off the parts that readers tend to skip

I'll have to check if I'm following these rules. I'll add some pictures and a few more comments later. Gotta run now.

[Back. Joe Ciardiello's illustrations are fantastic. No exclamation point. Perhaps the main justification for stretching a six year old New York Times article into a book is to share Ciardiello's illustrations. The one on the right illustrates one of the many exceptions to the rules. In this case Rule 5. Elmore writes about exclamation points

If you have the knack of playing with exclaimers the way Tom Wolfe does, you can throw them in by the handful.

The book is so short they had to use the thickest pages I can remember to stretch it into book length.]

Liberty Watch - TSA Guarding the Nation

Here's the beginning of the story of an Icelandic visitor who was chained and handcuffed at JFK held without sleep or food and very delayed phone contact, then taken to a jail in New Jersey. I found a number of other sites carrying the same story, but not futher corroboration of the story. It appears from the story that her crime was having overstayed a visit by three weeks in 1995. So let's withhold judgment at the moment, but put it into our Liberty Watch file as we watch Naomi Wolf's ten steps to dismantling democracy take place. This seems to fit 5. Arbitrarily detain and release citizens. Although this is not a US citizen, would American citizens expect this sort of treatment when visiting other nations? The whole story is at this site.

[Note: Later stories say it is Erla, not Eva]

The story of Eva, [Erla] Ósk Arnardóttir:

During the last twenty-four hours I have probably experienced the greatest humiliation to which I have ever been subjected. During these last twenty-four hours I have been handcuffed and chained, denied the chance to sleep, been without food and drink and been confined to a place without anyone knowing my whereabouts, imprisoned. Now I am beginning to try to understand all this, rest and review the events which began as innocently as possible.

Last Sunday I and a few other girls began our trip to New York. We were going to shop and enjoy the Christmas spirit. We made ourselves comfortable on first class, drank white wine and looked forward to go shopping, eat good food and enjoy life. When we landed at JFK airport the traditional clearance process began.

We were screened and went on to passport control. As I waited for them to finish examining my passport I heard an official say that there was something which needed to be looked at more closely and I was directed to the work station of Homeland Security. There I was told that according to their records I had overstayed my visa by 3 weeks in 1995. For this reason I would not be admitted to the country and would be sent home on the next flight. I looked at the official in disbelief and told him that I had in fact visited New York after the trip in 1995 without encountering any difficulties. A detailed interrogation session ensued.

I was photographed and fingerprinted. I was asked questions which I felt had nothing to do with the issue at hand. I was forbidden to contact anyone to advise of my predicament and although I was invited at the outset to contact the Icelandic consul or embassy, that invitation was later withdrawn. I don't know why.

The rest of the story is at this site.

[12/26/07 See related/follow up story here.]

Victor Lebow's Complete Original 1955 Article

Summary:

• The article is at the end of this post.
• The article appears to be in the vein it is quoted - more a prescription of how retailers will have to market things than a critique of capitalism. But the quote itself shows he had a macro perspective as well as a micro perspective
• I haven't been able to find much more about Victor Lebow.
• There is the 1972 book titled, Free Market: The Opiate of the American People. Perhaps he got disillusioned about American business and this quote was an early insight he had.
• Are there any students of Lebow? Family? If you ever see this please help fill in the missing links.
• Kevin, this post is all your fault. Thanks.

[Note:  This all began with a Dec. 10, 2007 post on The Story of Stuff.]

[January 30, 2008 Update: I've just received and posted Lebow's bio from the 1972 book, Free Enterprise: The Opiate of the American People.]

[Update 13 May 2009: Yesterday's NYT article on Story of Stuff seems to have brought more than the regular number visitors here. Hundredgoals has given a link to a much easier to read pdf version of the 1955 article in a comment today.]

In a previous post I raised questions about a quote by Victor Lebow. Was this the serious blueprint for American business to insinuate consumerism into the spiritual center of American life or a critique of modern capitalism?

Most of the links I googled looked like they all linked back to the same source. There was no contemporary discussion of the 1955 article on line. The University library nearby didn't have the Journal of Retailing on line back to 1955, but did have hard copies. But then I found a 1972 book by Victor Lebow called Free Enterprise: The Opium of the American People. It seemed to me that someone writing a book with that title must have have written the above paragraph as a critique, not as a prescription. I decided not to follow up and find the original article.

But I got an email from Kevin in Chicago who was trying to track it down too. So I went to the library today. Got the microfiche and found the article. It looks like a serious retailing article, talks about the 1955 marketing year and what retailers are going to have to do. It's in that context the above quote is written. There is no electronic version available, and the copier connected to the microfiche wasn't working very well, so I ended up taking pictures. I still haven't figured out how to post pdf files on blogger, so I'm going to post the pictures of the microfiche screen. (See below)

In the midst of all this there was a fire alarm in the library and everyone had to evacuate. A staff person, it turned out, had burnt popcorn in the microwave. That all took about 40 minutes.

Googling today I've found a 1944 article:

The Nature of Postwar Retail Competition
Victor Lebow Journal of Marketing, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Jul., 1944), pp. 11-18. [The link gets you page 1]


An OCTOBER 13, 1976 Manas Reprint article "MOTIVES OR METHODS?" that talks about a Victor Lebow book review of Robert Heilbroner's Business Civilization in Decline. Here Lebow appears as a critique of modern business culture, and is qouted writing, for example,

Capitalism is already showing signs that it can no longer generate the social morale so essential to continued existence. It is true that it has freed probably more than half the American people from scarcity and want. But at the heart of this business civilization is a "hollowness"—everything is evaluated in money terms. "Or consider advertising, perhaps the most value-destroying activity of a business civilization." That hollowness is further emphasized by the low estimation business places on the value of work, which it sees as a means to an end—not the true end in itself for that is profit, income, economic growth. Nor is industrial socialism immune to this outlook, for its roots lie "in machine process and worship of efficiency." Under a business culture [civilization as Heilbroner puts it sharply]. Stuffed into the dustbin of history would be[the values] of output are celebrated and those of input merely calculated."

Then there is a totally different sort of reference to a Victor Lebow. This is about a 1942 Wichita Kansas East High graduate who was part of a fantasy Martian Empire that was created in 1937, by the website owner's older brother.

My brother James was 13, and in the eighth grade at Robinson Junior High School in Wichita, Kansas. And in his mind he was fashioning a cosmic empire filled with strange and wonderful creatures and races — in which a stalwart group of Exiles from the planet Mars were the chief actors and heroes.

This Empire, the Martian Empire, eventually spread over most of the known Universe before it finally faded around 1948. During the eleven years it flourished, however, the Martian Epic became very elaborate — covering some 15 billion years of Martian history — and Martian technology, manners and morals, art, music, religion, language and literature. And it generated a narrative Epic that encompassed many galaxies.

Among the members of this empire he identifies Victor Lebow and includes a picture.

Victor Lebow: At East High: he was usually on the Honor Roll, was a member of the Nationally Honor Society, and a semi-finalist for the Summerfield Scholarship. At WU: he belonged to the Independent Students’ Association and Aesculapius.

I emailed Lee Streiff, the website owner, but the email came back undeliverable. [later: I guess that's because of this:

Thornton Lee Streiff, 72, died Sunday, August 1, 2004 in Wichita, KS. No service was held.]

This Victor Lebow graduated high school in 1942 and it is unlikely he would have authored an article in a business journal in 1944. He could be the author of the 1972 book on Free Enterprise. And the Lebow quoted in the Manas article above. But the Manas quote echoes thoughts from the original quote. It's probably a different Victor Lebow.

Meanwhile here are the bad copies of the original 1955 article that the quote comes from. The famous quotation comes from page 7, right column. There is a chunk that was skipped over, but it really doesn't change the tenor of the quote. But I saved these as high res photos so you should be able to click them and get them in readable = not good, but readable - size.

[Jan. 7, 2008 - Thanks to Nathan, one of the commenters on this post, I now have an account at scribn.com where you can park word, pdf., and other files. So I cleaned up these photos and saved them as a pdf. file. You can enlarge the document in the window or even download it. This should make reading it easier. I'll leave one or two of the old pages up so you can see the difference. It's on p. 5-10 in the journal, then skips to 42, then a part of page 44. The oft quoted part is on p. 7.]

[January 4, 2021:  This post, and I'm sure many others, is the victim of the demise of FLASH.  I'll have to figure out how to retrieve some of these documents in a still usable form.  Thanks for your patience.] [A little later:  That wasn't hard. SCRBD has figured it out and I just went back to SCRBD and the new embedding code works fine.]

LebowArticle by Steve

p.5 of the journal / (p.1 of the article)above

"It's like a bully, a black hole bully punching the nose of a passing galaxy"

This blog's name is "What Do I Know" because I'm interested in how people 'know' what they know. How is it that Christians of one denomination 'know' their truth while those of another know a different truth? And Muslims yet another truth. Hindus and Sikhs still others.

How is it one voter 'knows' that Ron Paul is exactly what American needs, while another thinks he would be a disaster?

I don't know the answers to these questions, but the explanation that makes most sense to me is that humans come to 'know' things through a complex mix of ways.

• genetics provide us with instincts and predisposed tendencies
• experiences with the world that provide us with mostly unconscious knowledge of the physical world (visually interpreting depth and movement) and the social world (interpreting the intent of other people)
• instructions from authorities such as parents, the media, teachers which is why Chinese babies end up speaking Chinese, unless they get adopted by, say, an American, in which case they end up learning English; and why Muslim kids usually have Muslim parents
• logic and reason provide us with ways to examine what we know, test it, change it

All of these ways are essential, none is best for everything, some are better for some things. How they play out in our brains is different from individual to individual, and even within a single individual from one time to another.

So I found Seth Borenstein's AP story on a black hole the other day interesting. He writes:

"It's like a bully, a black-hole bully, punching the nose of a passing galaxy," said astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York, who wasn't involved in the research.

But ultimately, this could be a deadly punch.

What in Neil deGrasse Tyson's life causes him to see, in these images, a bully punching someone in the nose? Why does he put human intent in them? Poets use images to convey abstract ideas. If Tyson is trying to make this astronomical event understandable to us non-astronomers, why that image? Watch the NASA video and see if that is what you see.





Actually the description in the video is far less based on human emotions.

This made me think of Rohrschach tests. Those inkblots psychologists give patients to interpret. From the same ink splotches, different people see totally different things. I only have a layperson's understanding of such tests and the Rorschah.com site said very little

The test itself, as well as the book, are too well known to require any detailed commentary here,

Rohrschach.org was full of typos that didn't give me much confidence in that site. (revealing one of the ways I 'know' what I think I can trust on the internet.)

uk.tickle.com had what they purport to be an actual Rohrschach test. I went through the eleven inkblots, but at the end I had to 'skip' eight or nine ads to get to a page where I could pay £8.95 to get my results. But if you just go through the test pages, you'll get the point I'm making here about interpreting what you see. The questions they ask give a sense of the different things people see. Here's one of their inkblots.




I think the inkblots - and the space activity - are good examples of seeing how people take their own knowledge, experiences, and emotions to interpret the identifical 'facts'.

One part of improving public discourse is for people to become more aware of how they know things - the stories in their heads with which they interpret the 'facts' of the world. Also, explicitly seeing how different people 'see' different things in the same set of 'facts' is also instructive.

Attending the corruption trials also emphasized the way people take in evidence and determine guilt or innocence. Clearly the jurors saw things differently than the defendants.

And, of course, some people's interpretations of facts, are a closer match to reality. My basic test for good interpretation is how successful one is in using that interpretation to predict outcomes. Sometimes this can be done - which fishing hole is most likely to yield fish? - sometimes it can't be done - which is the most beautiful painting?

Winter Solstice Yet Again - Thank You Jean Meeus

So, when exactly is the solstice? I felt a little dumb cause I couldn't remember if it was Dec. 21 or 22. Turns out it changes. This year, the solstice was today at 1:07am.

Hermetic Systems Offers a way to calculate the solstice:

To calculate the date and approximate time of the vernal and autumnal equinoxes and of the summer and winter solstices you can use this online calculator. This is based upon the formulas given by Jean Meeus in his Astronomical Algorithms but without corrections for perturbations, so that the times may differ from the true times by up to 20 minutes.

So who is Jean Meeus? Wikipedia says:

Jean Meeus (born 1928) is a Belgian astronomer specializing in celestial mechanics. He is sometimes known as Jan Meeus. The asteroid 2213 Meeus is named after him.

Jean Meeus studied mathematics at the University of Leuven in Belgium, where he received the Degree of Licentiate in 1953 . From then until his retirement in 1993 , he was a meteorologist at Brussels Airport.

His area of interest is spherical and mathematical astronomy.

In 1986 he won the Amateur Achievement Award of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.

The Willmann Bell Publisher site has this on Meeus' book Astronomical Algorithms:

Meeus, 6.00" by 9.00", 477 pages, hardbound, 2nd Edition published 1999, 2 Lbs. 6 Ozs. ship wt., $29.95..

Errata: 1st Edition
Errata: 2nd Edition

Note: We are currently shipping the June 2005 printing which incorporates all know corrections to that date.

In the field of celestial calculations, Jean Meeus has enjoyed wide acclaim and respect since long before microcomputers and pocket calculators appeared on the market. When he brought out his Astronomical Formulae for Calculators in 1979, it was practically the only book of its genre. It quickly became the "source among sources," even for other writers in the field. Many of them have warmly acknowledged their debt (or should have), citing the unparalleled clarity of his instructions and the rigor of his methods.

Start year and End year specify the range of years you're interested in. Only years in the range -100 CE through 4000 CE can be used with this calculator. (c) 2001-2007 Sunlit Design www.sunlit-design.com Sat, 22 Dec 2007 03:20:22 PM +700 gives UT You can click the publisher link above for the rest of this.



And Sunlit Designs a site for Understanding and Designing Sundials writes:

Jean Meeus has provided a bridge text for dedicated amateurs interested in astronomical and solar event calculations.

Programming the calculations provided by Meeus is possible using any modern programming language. Meeus covers a wide range of astronomical areas.

If your interest is in the motion of the sun, you do not need to program his algorithms yourself ... it has already been done in The Sun API.

Someone named Raoul posted to habitiblezone.com 12/10/2007 9:09:17 AM

A very well known mathematician (I once spent some time at his home) Jean (for John) Meeus calculated when did that happen before and when in the future: 1612, 1615, 1632, 1668, 2007, 2022, 2059, 2078, 2191. [I would think John is for Jean myself]

I mention this only because there is a John F. Meeus who is the Belgian Consul to Liverpool, England. Is this the same man? I don't know how common a name Meeus is and I don't think it is worth it emailing him.

The point of all this is: We can thank, apparently, Jean Meuss for knowing exactly when the solstice is.

Last year I put up some pictures that showed the winter and summer solstices - here's a link to that post

Sweeney Todd

Sweeney is a dark, dark movie. They must have depleted the blood bank filming it. But the music and lyrics carry us through this evilly brilliant film And Johnny can sing. Not like Rex Harrison talks his way through the songs in My Fair Lady. There's one bright sunny vignette when Mrs. Lovett sings By The Sea, but Sweeney is grimfaced throughout.




After completing the video, I read the A.O. Scott's NYT review. As Scott wrote,

It may seem strange that I am praising a work of such unremitting savagery. I confess that I’m a little startled myself...

Stephen Sondheim - the man behind Sweeney Todd

After seeing Sweeney Todd in Anchorage, probably in 1990-1, I decided I needed to know more about the musical's creator. I was surprised to learn that he had written the lyrics to West Side Story and Gypsy. West Side Story had always been, in my mind, connected to Leonard Bernstein.

Stephen Sondheim was born on 22 March 1930, the son of a wealthy New York dress manufacturer. But, when his parents divorced, his mother moved to Bucks County, Pennsylvania and young Stephen found himself in the right place at the right time. A neighbour of his mother's, Oscar Hammerstein II, was working on a new musical called Oklahoma! and it didn't take long for the adolescent boy to realise that he, too, was intrigued by musical theatre.(from A Guide to Musical Theater)

A list of his musicals from The Stephen Sondheim Reference Guide

* Anyone Can Whistle
* Assassins
* Bounce
* Candide
* Company
* Do I Hear a Waltz?
* Evening Primrose
* Follies
* The Frogs
* A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
* Gypsy
* Into the Woods

* A Little Night Music
* Marry Me a Little
* Merrily We Roll Along
* Pacific Overtures
* Passion
* Putting It Together
* Saturday Night
* Side By Side By Sondheim
* Sunday in the Park With George
* Sweeney Todd
* West Side Story
* You're Gonna Love Tomorrow

I realize that the American musical - especially those of the 1950's and 1960's - doesn't mean that much to younger Americans, but there were many great ones, and Sondheim was involved with many of them. And he has pushed the medium harder than anyone else to discover what it could be.

His initial success came as a somewhat reluctant lyricist to Leonard Bernstein on West Side Story (1957) and Jule Styne on Gypsy (1959). Exciting and adventurous as those shows were in their day, and for all their enduring popularity, Sondheim's philosophy since is encapsulated in one of his song titles: "I Never Do Anything Twice". His first score as composer-lyricist was A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum (1962) - a show so funny few people spotted how experimental it was: it's still the only successful musical farce. In the following three decades, critics detected a Sondheim style - a fondness for the harmonic language of Ravel and Debussy; a reliance on vamps and skewed harmonies to destabilise the melody; a tendency to densely literate lyrics. But, all that said, it's the versatility that still impresses: you couldn't swap a song from the exuberantly explosive pit-band score of Anyone Can Whistle (1964) with one of the Orientally influenced musical scenes in Pacific Overtures (1976); you couldn't mistake the neurotic pop score of Company (1970) for the elegantly ever-waltzing A Little Night Music (1973).(Again: A Guide to Musical Theater)

But Sweeny Todd has to be the masterpiece of masterpeices.

With Sweeney Todd (1979), the Prince/Sondheim collaboration reached its apogee, blurring the distinctions between lyrics and dialogue, songs and underscoring, and combining a complex plot with operatic emotions to create a unique musical thriller(.A Guide to Musical Theater)

So tonight we go see Johnny Depp as Sweeny Todd in the new movie. The preview we saw a while back doesn't even mention this is a musical/opera. It only emphasized the macabre story of the the man coming back with revenge on his mind. It will be interesting to see how audiences react when they find out. And we will also hear the debut of Johnny Depp the singer, in an extremely complex musical role.

Here's a link to Sondheim on the Charlie Rose show.

Oh yes, there are a bunch of other movies that rolled into town that look good, including Charlie Wilson's War and Atonement. The Secret of Raon Inish and Stephanie Daley. Both also got four stars in the Daily News. The Kite Runner, another great book, only got three stars.

[For video and short review go to Sweeny Todd]

10,000th Visitor Prize

The prize for the 10,000th visitor to the site since I set up sitemeter has been received by the closest person I could identify (#9,998). Her blogging name is Tea N. Crumpet and she embroiders. So she got a tin of Chinese Tea and an embroidered Chinese handkerchief.
Fortunately, I remembered to take a picture before I sent it. Our runner up, KS (I think that's who it is,) gets a dinner at the Thai Kitchen next time she's in Anchorage.