A Thing Called Privacy

As someone who prides herself on being reasonably informed and observant, I can't believe I missed it. In deciding whether or not to shut down/protect my xanga (yes, the one that I have neglected forever), I came across a frightening thing: footprints.

I have no idea why I didn't pick up on this earlier, but apparently my browsing activity in xanga is easily tracked through virtual "footprints." While looking through my log of the last few days, I was freaked and flattered by the fact that some anonymous user has read every entry and subscribed to my xanga.

It's an interesting double standard that I apply, as I myself am very intrigued in seeing who has read my xanga. Yet when the ball is in the other court, I don't want people knowing I have read theirs. Either way, I think that I have been permanently scared from ever posting on xanga again.

Rereading the scant few entries on my own xanga, I saw it as an interesting time capsule of my life about two years ago. It was a brisk and slightly amusing read, nothing more.

Xanga is one of those words that is memorable and has no appropriate synonyms. It sounds so awkward to use it that many times in a paragraph.

Recs and Other Dreck

A few days ago, during another useless English class, Anthony implored us to write in a journal everyday. I struggled to stifle a chuckle (and half a sneer) as Nina quite earnestly asked, "Does xanga count?" But following my esteemed pedagogue's advice, I am here writing--on a blog no less.

I also spent another hour aimlessly browsing the social network of various friends, acquaintances, and nonacquaintances. There is something simultaneously depressing and amusing when someone starts every xanga entry with a variation of "Wow, I haven't posted for a long time." Then why do you bother? I am wary of the measure of dishonesty that arises when a personal blog becomes just another mask we present to the world.

I also think I am an idiot for being so scared to ask for recommendations. Any steely resolve just melts into a puddle of goo when the minute comes to actually asking. Unless I want to feel like an idiot for the rest of my life, I will do it tomorrow. No more idiotic cowardice. Okay.

The Hit List 5/20/06

When I started this blog, I made a promise to myself to never let my posts to degenerate into schizophrenic lists of random miscellania. But alas, I realized it was a futile limitation as there are so many debatedly trivial details in my life that deserve a mention but not 500 words of mention. The Hit List is my flighty recap of (brilliant) highlights and (sultry) lowlights of my life.

As Levine's Spectrum article so cheesily but accurately reminded me, high school is about hanging out with your friends. And what better place to hang out with your friends than at Spectrum layout? So layout was amazingly fun and even more amazingly, it was efficient. During certain times at layout, the estrogen level spiked and the (very small) male population became visibly annoyed, but what do we care? SPECTRUM RULES!

After layout, we got some food at Sorrento's--an impossibly good and impossibly greasy chicken fajita--and crashed Maya's place for our second weekly Friday Night Dinner. Gossip was spewed and dirt was dished as the DVD player refused to work for us despite incessant bribing. It ended up more like a therapy session than a dinner, but I guess that's...therapeutic? Still way better than sitting at home with homework.

There is nothing more annoying than being forced to watch a hated commercial over and over again. This usually happens when I try to watch a some sports and end up seeing Maria Sharapova relentlessly mugging the screen with her Canon camera in a short pink skirt. My usually active annoyance toward ads makes it all the more remarkable that I have watched Wes Anderson's AmEx Commercial at least 20 times in the last 3 weeks. The ad is rife with insider jokes and references to Truffaut's Day for Night (I won't pretend I picked up any of that until somewhere around the 10th time), and Wes Anderson is utterably..um adorable? Anderson's signature is all over the ad--and not just because his real signature appears at the end. The blogsphere, being hip, has drooled all over Anderson's commercial, but anyone unfamiliar with his style will merely be perplexed for 2 minutes. Perhaps that is the charm of Wes Anderson.

Speaking of Anderson, his The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou writing buddy Noah Baumbach is pretty cool too. Kicking and Screaming is coming out on Criterion and I'm tracking down a copy of The Squid and the Whale. Anderson and Baumbach would make a nice intellectual threesome, no?

Who says downloading illegal software of seedy websites is bad? That's how I discovered DVD Shrink--the fast and easy way to rip DVDs. Of course, being an utterly moral person, I do not plan to use this powerful resource for anything other than my own personal amusement. The first thing I ripped was Band of Outsider's jazzy opening sequence. See? No commercial motive at all.

Band of Outsiders (Godard, 1964)

I feel utterly deficient in attempting to write anything on Jean-Luc Godard’s Band of Outsiders. The best I can do is put down some of my immediate, disjointed thoughts and disregard the “scholarly discussion” that a film with such a lofty reputation often inspires.

The only other reference point I have toward Godard is Breathless, a somewhat adequate comparison as both are spoofs of B-movies and the crime caper genre. Godard once famously decreed, “ All you need to make a movie is a gun and a girl,” and both films are pay heed to that declaration.

If Breathless and Band of Outsiders are cut of similar cloths, Band is a more expertly and elegantly crafted film. While Breathless was Godard’s first film, shot on a shoestring budget and with the no-name actors, Band is sleek and crisp, the work of an experienced director. It has fewer of those distractingly hectic jump cuts—I’m aware that statement may amount to blasphemy, but it’s an honest opinion—and a much better story.

Band is less ephemeral, but Godard keeps his signature sense of improvisation, of freshness stemming from the off-the-cuff quality of his dialogue. Our trio of thieves is a hapless gang, neither they or the audience is fully aware of what should be happening as they stumble through the film. Godard’s capriciousness is a proverbial breath of fresh air; the spontaneity with which the trio decides to run through the Louvre in record time is inspiring as a portrait of youth and whim. (Oh god, I really do sound like a pedantic 40-year-old critic here.)

Band of Outsiders has been described as Godard’s most accessible film, maybe because it has been paid tribute to by none other than American Cinematic God Quentin Tarantino himself. (Yes, that was tongue in cheek there.) Bandeis perhaps most accessible because it functions as the ultimate tugger of heartstringers—a love story.

Godard presents a very hackneyed story—guy likes girl who likes other guy—amidst another very hackneyed story—the planning of a robbery. It works because his three lead actors find a perfect balance among each other. I must admit, however, that I never cared much for Arthur (Claude Brasseur), who always struck me as a scoundrel. Sami Frey’s dark brooding Franz seemed a much better fit with the awkward, naïve Odile. I mentioned before being captivated by Anna Karina even before ever watching her in a film, and she does not fail me here either. Odile is not the most romantic girl (despite what the narration may say), nor is she the most beautiful, nor is she even witty or intelligent. Yet Karina manages to captivate on screen because Odile is Odile and Karina is Karina.

The Hit List 5/8/06

I don't know how it happened, but somewhere down the road I turned into a long, rambling writer. Where I once found it hard to embellish my sentences, literary rosettes and florid references have blossomed. This is a very bad thing. Only skilled writers can keep these embellishments from becoming gaudy jewels pinned on tweed. Take that how ever you will.

But more to the point, this post is just some random stuff I want to put down, and have decided to throw together:

Allow me to indulge in a witticism that probably isn't that witty and probably is unconsciously "internalized" or stolen from someone else: APs are like running a marathon through the crevices of your brain for 3 hours. I have 2 more marathons left.

Think of a waifish, Scandanavian, woman-child songstress. Got Björk? No, I'm not here to talk about Björk whom I've sincerely tried to like and could not. With less grunge and more elegance, Ane Brun has managed to linger in my mind like no other music since Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata. The fluid piano tracks fuse with a twang of guitar to create a melancholy and languidness that simply drifts on...

I've read 10 pages of Everything is Illuminated and have absolutely fallen in love with Jonathan Safran Foer's prose. Actually, to give credit where it's due, I should say I have fallen in love with Alexander Petrov's "sublimely butchered English."

Yesterday night, I also found a new limerant object in Anna Karina. Those kohl-lined eyes, the patrician cheekbones, the straight black bob that Uma Thurman paid homage to in Pulp Fiction convey a beguiling and striking persona. Her collaborations with Godard are jumping to the top of my Netflix queue (if I ever get it of course).

My brother seems to really like jelly beans for some reason. Despite being repulsed by jelly beans since eating a boogie-flavored Harry Potter one, I decided to steal one from my brother. I picked a pure, clean white one--how gross can it be, I thought? White just means marshmallow or vanilla right? As it turns out, "very" and "no" are the respective answers. The flavor was so foul that the best I can surmise is a pina colada gone horribly wrong. I promptly spit it out.