John & Belle Have A Blog

People of Iest! I Have a Message From the Most Holy!

Read an interview with the crazy, crazy, crazy Dave Sim here.

As I got closer to the end of Cerebus, I started examining it as if it were a math problem. I got X and Y figured out and made some progress structurally, and then I hit the brick wall of feminism. I live in a society that believes feminism is workable. They literally won't read anything unless it's founded on an outright lie.

Did I mention he was crazy? (Yeah, I like Cerebus, too.)

Commies Kick it Old School

It's nice to see the old timey Communist traditions being upheld in today's Russia:

Russia's wealthiest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, in prison on fraud and tax evasion charges, praised President Vladimir Putin in a newspaper article published Monday and called for higher taxes on businesses.
In the article published in the business daily Vedomosti, Khodorkovsky criticized himself and other tycoons for failing to help the poor and for insufficient patriotism. He also criticized the post-Soviet privatization policies that made him rich.

Mmm, essays of self-criticism from people in jail. Really takes you back, doesn't it? In unrelated news, I learn that John and Belle Have a Blog (along with all its Typepad brethren) is now banned in China (via Hit and Run). And just when we were singing the glories of Sichuan dumplings and the Monkey King! My next recipe is coming straight from Taiwan, I tell you.

As it appears that we can't defeat the Monkey at this time, I suggest it would be better to grant him the empty title of 'The Greatest Sage'

And it just gets worse for the Jade Emperor from there.

There was something I meant to add to my Drunken Monkey post but didn't bother to type out; it dovetails with comments I have been getting to my Cerebus Post. Might as well get it said.

Dumplin's

I am still on (modified) bed-rest, and definitely becoming weary under the 95% boredom/5% terror regime of problem pregnancy. (Yes, I'm feeling sorry for myself, but everything is really fine, baby is fine, etc. Feel free to think kind thoughts, especially about John, who has to feel stressed out and grade papers. Tricksy ssstudentses--we hates them!) So, I can't actually cook anything. But you can! I suggest you make these tasty Sichuan dumplings. Easy peasy, and you will really impress people. (Actually, now that I think about it, I recall reading that the US has been banning imports of Sichuan peppercorns over concerns about some citrus canker they could theoretically spread, but I understand that if you go to your local Chinatown you can still find them. There is no substitute for their weird taste, but black pepper would be OK.) As always, DON'T OVERSTUFF. This is the secret of all dumpling-making. I regularly fail to heed my own advice here.

Lucky?

For those readers who don't live in the States or didn't watch Clarke's performance on Meet the Press, some nice person is hosting it here (as well as a hilarious Daily Show treatment of the 9/11 hearings). Very impressive indeed. So the short answer to the Instapundit's unnecessarily crack-smoking question,"THE TOTAL COLLAPSE OF RICHARD CLARKE: Does Karl Rove pay these guys, or is Bush just preternaturally lucky where his critics are concerned?" would be "no and no".

Congratulations - it's a meme!

We've been slashdotted. Cigars all around, because this proves 'and a pony' is a true meme; (or, as folks used to say, a catchphrase or useful saying.)

So when our site goes down in a day due to bandwidth exhaustion, our old readers - who can't see all the slashdotters buzzing about them like hornets - will know the reason why.

Slashdotters may be curious to read the two follow-up posts (here and here) to the pony original.

The moon fairy waved her wand and the dictionary opened and read to wisen the evening

A couple people have emailed to thank me kindly for the link to The Young Visiters. You are quite welcome. I actually posted before about the genius of Daisy Ashford - long ago, before we had readers. I also strongly recommended another work, Crippled Detectives, by Lee Tandy Schwartzman, from which I take the title for tonight's post. I love it for the Mamet-rewrites-Enid-Blyton-as-Memento dialogue, plus metaphysical poetry. If you've nothing else to do of a Saturday night, I suggest a class of fine wine; and, as they say, a reading of the whole thing.

Kid hangs up bunny suit at 300

Just discovered Long story;short pier. (Into the blogroll with him, whoever he may be.) This is a very fine post. If you don't quite get it, go read Cerebus for ten years or at least a 1000 pages to appreciate why March 2004 is such a milestone. (You can get some flavor from this abridged version. And this guy has some scans.)

Me? I fell off the bus round about Women.

When I got to Singapore I discovered my High Society and Church & State vol. II had gone missing in transit. Been meaning to replace them. Those are damn fine books. Dirty Fleagle and Dirty Drew. The wuffa-wuffa-wuffa guy, Moon Roach and Sergeant Preston, the Secret Sacred Wars. Gimpsee doodle. (Oh, wait. That was back in the "Beguiled" parody in no. 23. Ooh, right here on the shelf. Reread that one later.) Too bad about Sim going stark raving. Sigh. Bad soldier, bad soldier. Pretty much why I never made it past Women. But he's still a true genius, just for his phonetic transcriptions of Mick and Keef. Wonder what he's going to do now?

Like the albino said, back in issue 4: "Sooner or later you'll have to take off the bunny suit, kid - then, I say, then where will you be?"

"A Monkey that is Inebriated is the Most Funny"

I've just watched two pieces of Hong Kong cinema - one good, one bad. One marks a return to all the things that make classic kung-fu flicks fun. The other is all cynicism and obtuseness, competing to see which will manage to jettison more of that good old stuff to make room for Hollywood cliches, which are neither fully funded nor understood; with the result that the thing looks - and feels - like an expensive commercial for the next generation of mobile phones hallucinating it is an X-Men movie.

The good is Drunken Monkey; the bad is Silverhawk. (Michelle Yeoh can't seem to follow up "Crouching Tiger" with anything. Someone should give her a role.)

I don't know how available these films are in the states. They are major releases out here, and "Monkey" showed at Cannes. Well, anyway - worth getting your paws on. Check out the trailers and galleries via the link above. (This promo trailer is particularly classy.)

The director/star of "Monkey" is Liu Chia Liang, a true veteran of the industry (but I don't really know about these things.) He's over 60, and he's got this great assymetrical sag of a monkey-clown face, but with a steely Clint Eastwood glint. And he's still got the moves. (You see lots of great stills in the galleries.) The movie is sort of a cross between "Drunken Master" and "Unforgiven" - lots of indestructible-old-man-fu and leather duster-fu. (That's the "Unforgiven" part, with fu on top.) But goofy. And everyone is obviously having so much fun making it that they didn't bother to remember they set it in the 30's, so there's a basketball scene that is most anachronistic. And people wearing suits and shirts that obviously just came off the rack at the Gap. But they are having fun, and we like them, so we are having fun.

And all astonishments blow up the world

Ray (who is necessary in all possible worlds) has left comments to various imaginative resistance posts. His criticisms merit a lengthy response (well, if you think long posts about imaginative resistance are a good thing. If not, you know what to do.)