I was surprised by the response from my students, who couldn’t be more detached from this date. Some from the feminine aisle said this was to be after all a day like all. I can’t avoid being a little cynical here. When I was their age (that’s a perilous route) I was on the streets with them all.
Then listen to Because the Night and ask, why am I embedding this song here? But because it’s a matter of words. It’s what happens Under Your Command, as Patti Smith sings. Why she was under somebody’s command, I asked the adolescent myself a lot of years ago. Why? That’s the statement, it’s when I want, stupid, she replied.
Women’s day is perhaps transfixed as another Valentine, stripped of all its potency. Conferences on “Women’s role in the Fight against COVID”. No please, that’s not it. Nor is it to be “Commemorating the International Women’s Day”. Words: You don’t want to commemorate this day, as if it were dead. You want to party, sing, dance, march and ask why you still need to do it.
So, here is the GIF.
Women on Fire, a Gif from the Film
Then I close. Dream, and be powerful. Hope you’ll be always on fire.
Now that the semester is coming to an end I have the chance to share a little more, and not like the presentation done in August, and posted only now soon, the poor sitting for all this time in the Drafts sections of the Skate.
This is a short list of some chance encounters of the kind I really enjoy. They are by-products of some search around cinema, Tarantino and his love for Sergio Leone.
First I found this gem.
You’re all going to die. From Inglorious basterds. Isn’t it gorgeous that she appears in a film in a movie theater, only to tell her doom message to the very audience? It reminds Buñuel’s surreal shooter from the roof, who shoots at random people on the street. Only difference is she is predicating a vengeance, here. She is the wonderful Mélanie Laurent.
I rest my case. But, here’s another gem from Léon, the professional of Luc Besson, another cinephile I love (at least in his first attempts). I found this GIF while researching images of spectators watching movies in cinemas. He is Jean Reno, but let’s not forget the very young Natalie Portman nor the mythical Gary Oldman. What has this to do with QT? I don’t know, except they both appeared serendipitously, Internet-style.
Then, a nice interview of QT on Leone. It boils down to his professed love for The Good, the bad and the ugly as the best film ever produced, because (note the rigorous logic here) well, it is the best movie ever done.
I could add here the list of details QT has cared for when shooting his last film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, another homage to Leone and Sergio Corbucci, and of course, just in time, to Morricone. From Manson’s song to the movie theater that he bought in LA:
As long as I’m alive, and as long as I’m rich, the New Beverly will be there, showing double features in 35mm.
(From Wikipedia)
Unfortunately, the New Beverly is now closed, due to the pandemic. But I loved that movie.
I have been following John Naughton’s blog Memex (the title being a link in itself to the mother of all hypertext machines) for a while, for his recommendations and acute, to-the-point observations, his articles on The Observer, and so on. Compelling, but this is not all. Every day for a while he has been sharing some “Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news”. Since, you see,
Recently, I became so fed up with the morning radio news programmes […] that I decided it would be better for my sanity just to listen to music at breakfast and read the news in papers and on the Web. Hence the ‘Musical alternative’ at the top of each day’s blog.
John Naughton
That, when I read it, did rang a bell. I have had, in fact, a similar reaction to the radio news programs as well as the tv news ones. Suddenly, I got fed up with their little muzaks, noise, frills and pompousness. I got fed of the US tv news outlets, the Puerto Rico ones, the European, and so on & so forth. And I got fed of the so-called analysts.
It helped that for similar reasons, in my home we decided to also get rid of cable TV. We were paying a lot for tv we weren’t watching. And we weren’t watching tv for the above-mentioned reasons. And because, let’s face it, tv is pretty poor today. Even considering the golden age of tv series, which I love (some of them, at least), it was worth the while to save a little and focus instead of internet-driven content, with Netflix et al.
Also, practically since the Web age’s dawn, circa 1992, I began a practice of reading Newspapers on the Web. And yes, one of the very first on the Web was Italy’s visionary and left-wing Il Manifesto, a paper I recommend, even though today I don’t read it often any longer. Motivated in part by the need I felt to read news in Italian and of Italy, I began thus a daily practice to read newspapers on the Web. Not on social networks, but straight from a browser. Not any browser, mind you, but Firefox. I started with Il Manifesto, then went mainstream with La Repubblica. I added soon the major Puerto Rican papers too, typically El Nuevo Día. Then, others piled up, such as Spain’s El País, The New York Times (the only paper I actually pay 4 dollars a month), the Guardian and some others.
So, I felt at home with that expression:
I decided it would be better for my sanity just to listen to music at breakfast and read the news in papers and on the Web
I love that practice, and I love the space it affords, to relax, sit down and enjoy the readings of different newspapers, in the original way they are thought of, compiled and published. And I love some other human actually prefers like me to read the news on newspapers rather than having them on tv.
Many bloggers publish link recommendations, some with comments. John’s own are lucid and he always points to very good English-language articles. He also recommends books (I love that part too), music and sometimes, a photo. Example comment on a news piece:
Facebook Braces Itself for Trump to Cast Doubt on Election Results
Zuckerberg & Co are — according to the New York Times — working out what steps to take should Trump use its platform to dispute the vote. Well, well. Could this be the moment that reality dawns on these geniuses?
I have already written about the people and Webs that inspire me, and certainly this one is one of the best. It’s very refreshing to read such great reading recommendations and analyses.
This is marvelous. Ceiliuradh = Celebration, pronounce = kell-oor-ah
And this is too, also recommended by Memex.
But, wait!! This song triggered a memory… A scene from a movie where some kid in the wild plays Dueling banjos with another guy. What film was that? Oh yes (thanks Google),
Deliverance, 1972
btw – Memex 1.1 (https://t.co/LyyNtPhyvh) is now also available as a once-a-day email. Subscribe at https://t.co/yFSB4c8Der (It’s free and there’s a 1-click unsubscribe if you decide to prune your inbox!)
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Institutions of learning should be devoted to the cultivation of curiosity. –A. Flexner Abraham Flexner conceived and developed the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and was its founding director from 1930 to 1939. A unique place, that was able … 
Two episodes describe the magic that happens when you get inspired by something and rush to work on an imitation process—on something that you want to go after. Such episodes may change your life. In my case, there are two episodes plus one. Also, an homage to John Conway, mathemagician, RIP.
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