Woody Allen

Tonight I watched Manhattan. It was fascinating. With Annie Hall and now Manhattan under my belt, I wonder if Woody Allen could get any better. My favorite scene in Annie Hall is the exchange between Alvy and Annie as she leaving the racket club. Without that scene I wonder if she could have been nominated for the Academy Award. That's the part where she says, "well la de da, la de da." The combination of her childish outfit and awkward demeanor make the scene come alive.

But I found Manhattan more interesting from the standpoint of understanding who the real Woody Allen was. In light of his personal life, I wonder if perhaps this movie gives us more insight than any movies he's directed? Though it we see a middle-aged man trying to advocate pseudo-morality while still entertaining a relationship with a young girl. It seems that his attraction to her was a regrettable symptom of his dramatic life. In this relationship he finds himself (the complex, emotion-laden old narcissist) attracted to a girl who is too young to have emotional baggage from past relationships. She doesn't have two ex-husbands, nor does she offer any threat of long-term relationship. In this movie Woody Allen plays himself. Its too late for my thoughts to be coherent, I'll edit this some other time, and in the meantime I'll probably change my mind about Allen. My hypotheses are probably all wrong.

Picture

We need a new picture for that top corner. I'm getting tired of looking at my eye. Probably I liked that picture originally because of the way its cropped. I still like it, and there's a pensive-quality to it that I admire. But Obama's rhetoric has pervaded my subconscious and now its affecting my judgment. "It's time for change," he says. But, like Obama, I don't actually have any solutions. I merely know that something needs to be different. Any ideas?

I'm thinking about writing. Why write? What is there to write about? Why, I'm terrible at creative writing; I have not a creative bone in my body. Yet there's something fantastic about writing that even words cannot articulate. But today I received two compliments. One for the Paul Stuart shirt I was wearing, and the second on merit of my writing of a pretentious little art review. And speaking of (its posted below), the piece warrants some prefatory qualifying remarks. I wrote it after being asked my opinion of a picture a friend had taken. It was written for kicks, and not to be taken quite so seriously. In fact, my intention was merely to write something snobbishly ostentatious, fraught with vague, condescending generalities. That much I very well may have accomplished, but at the expense of any real artistic analysis of the artwork. So it may be said, as it once was said of Warren Harding's speeches, that my art review was " an army of pompous phrases moving across the landscape in search of an idea."

Art of the Week: In Review - Draft 1

If we are to dispense with judgment unabashedly, the unreservedly candid would likely discount this piece as shallow and unrefined. To be frank, it strikes as classic point-and-shoot photography. Thus begging for inspiration, searching for artistic meaning, and failing to acomplish what would otherwise be stunning quality of exposition.

Most disturbing is the lighting. Shutter speed was good but the indelibly glaring problem with this photograph is that the composition leads viewers to focus primarily to the left piece. The depth-of-focus is not very telling as to what focal point is desired, and the lighting is too bold.

To pontificate further, we find it regrettable that the art has brick-wall-backdrop. The art is not necessarily haute countre, but the context of the paintings reminds me of something you would find in the basement of a second-rate nightclub.

I'd much prefer a better composition, the off-balanced framing is excusable, and if done correctly would have brought a redeeming quality to this piece, but holistically the mood of the art is not captured by the photograph. The art is decent but the photograph fails to parallel.

american mary

if i could, i'd be your star again
fall across your falling sky...

it takes a lot of little rain to make you feel like nothing.
anything, anything you can do, do to me for everything i did for you
nothing.
i didn't try to take your love away
i just never knew i had it...

Commencement Toast

It's hard to believe that another semester is upon us. We have yet to dispense with the vacation lifestyle, and fears grow heavy that the transition period will be monotonous. But pursuant to tradition, I shall now commence with another academic term. And so we toast:

"Cheers, to another semester of academic mediocrity."