Tuesday, August 09, 2005

a few points

1) The liver was disgusting. A failed culinary experiment. I however forced Grace to eat every bite before she could leave the table.
2) I totally made a Portnoy's complaint joke about the liver yesterday without even realizing it.
3) After I left work I suffered an attack of acute sheepishness about my Philip Roth rave and spent time contemplating how I could go back in time to before I had all that coffee and failed to restrain my enthusiasm. I tried to draw up some plans for a liver-powered time machine but it didn't work out.
4) Danny-what do you mean don't bother with When She Was Good? You think Roth can't write goys? True, not as well as he can write Jews but it's still worth reading.
5) Glad to know that Roth's prostate is fine.
6) Dave Smith needs a roommate, in case you missed the comment. That's a nice, relatively cheap place and I've lived with Dave before and besides the aforementioned walking in while you're having sex he is a considerate roommate.
7) The Garden of the Fitzi-Continis is good but I still fell asleep before it was over. It's kind of disconcerting how blonde and Aryan the Jews in it look, but I don't think I've ever met an Italian Jew so maybe that is how they look. I started to get the sinking feeling that maybe I haven't met one because most of them were wiped out in the Holocaust, but I looked it up this morning and about 17% of Italy's Jews were wiped out. As opposed to 91% in Poland, so think about that. Or don't. I'll think about it for you. Speaking of Italian Jews, you should read some Primo Levi if you haven't. The Periodic Table is good. He was a chemist, so he uses the characteristics of different elements in the periodic table to start each chapter. And speaking of scientists...
8) This is why I love science. Neuroscientists are starting a petition against the Dalai Lama speaking at the Society for Neuroscience Meeting this year. Here it is. Read it if you have a couple of minutes. It's great, especially the numbered points in the end.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey, did anybody leave a red and white sweater at my house after the BBQ?
-Biz

Alice said...

i keep on trying to come up with something to say about that SfN letter cause i think it's an important cultural document--testimony to the struggles both religion and science still deal with while attempting to co-habitate and find validity separate of one another. and other stuff. but i'm too tired to say it here. so, i'll save it for a conversation some night soon becky.

Anonymous said...

Hey Biz,
That was my pie holder. Did you and Head try the pie? You can use it as a dish towel or throw it away if you want. I don't think I'll ever wear it.
Brew

Anonymous said...

That's good to know, since I picked it up off the floor and started using it to dry my hands before someone pointed out it was a sweater.
-Biz
p.s. The pie was great.

DB said...

I think the Finzi-Continis were intentionally cast to look more Aryan to underline that the Jewish aristocracy probably felt closer to the fascist society than to their fellow Jews, and probably felt their fate would be different. That's what makes the ending so heartbreaking. "Garden of the Finzi-Continis" is well-made all around, but a tough gentile. For a great De Sica film, see "Bicycle Thieves" or "Umberto D."

DB said...

That should read "a touch gentile" (i.e., timid and old-fashioned), not "a tough Gentile", which makes no sense.

beckler said...

Hey thanks Dan- I didn't get to the end, but that point should have been clear. Shamefully, my historical knowledge is not up to what it should be (hey I said I love SCIENCE), so I wasn't getting that point when the working class father is saying that the Fitzi-Continis are glad about what's happening I was like huh? But thanks for spoiling that ending! Given the subject matter, I figured no harm would come to any of them. JK of course.

I will check out those other movies, too.

beckler said...

Also it didn't help my mild confusion that everyone is so Aryan that they all kinda look the same. And they're all the same age and dressed in tennis outfits.

DB said...

I didn't mean to ruin the ending for you...I only said it was "heartbreaking"...that could mean they get a cute new puppy with bows on its ears. Now that would break the heart of even a tough Gentile like me.