BRIEFLY: Toastmaster General
If I were still using the “melbatoast” domain name and web-handle, I would have loved these photos from Paul Cornell‘s blog entry about the seeing geek chic fliers for local “virtual eatery” the House of Toast at CONvergence. And if that doesn’t mean anything to you at all, don’t worry, just enjoy this:
I know some of you quite enjoyed the mild confusion you felt about why I’d chosen “melbatoast” (or even “m3lbatoast”) as my online identity, and some of you haven’t successfully transitioned from the old page to this one (especially since I just killed it with nary a transitional announcement). In any case, I hope you haven’t found your lack of toast disturbing.
MEME: Business Card Gallery
One of the great things about the web is the depth to which people will go to catalogue and display seemingly trivial data. To the average person, such websites are neat, but clear evidence that the provider has no life, or has too much time on his hands, etc. I think it’s a pity that these efforts are trivialized in this manner. Inspiration is momentary, and the hard, dedicated slog from idea to fully-fledged execution takes time and commitment (q.v., again, Patton Oswalt’s insightful and vulgar commentary about Death Bed: The Bed That Eats People). It’s easy to look at a finished product and airily dismiss it as a waste of time, but it’s an accomplishment to be in the midst of that use of time and not throw up one’s hands and abandon the project in process once the initial glimmer of the idea has cooled to a faint grey ash.
One of my favorite instances of dedication to the seemingly trivial is Steven Hill’s Movie Title Screens page, wherein he takes screencaps of the appearance of the title in the film itself. Not to be swayed from his own parallel inspiration, Christian Annyas takes caps of the title image, any instance of a “The End” or “Fin” screen, as well as the title logo from trailers of a given film (which, due to marketing, are frequently different than the title within the film itself). And, yes, he has capped Charade. Is it terrible that either of these men has devoted so many hours of time to this project? Particularly when someone is doing essentially the same thing? Not to be hyperbolic, but that seems a little like saying that Samuel Johnson was an idiot, and Noah Webster and James Murray were compounded morons. Who had no lives.
Just to avoid misinterpretation of the above rhetorical: no, it’s not terrible. Reference is a wonderful thing, and it requires meticulous, sustained effort. I realize that I’m a librarian, and therefore biased, but — in a nutshell — it’s only trivial and dismissable if you don’t find it useful. If you do think it’s the most useful thing since a breadknife, then you’re surely not going to say about IMDB or Google or the phone book, etc., that whoever compiled those data had too much time on their collective hands.
None of which probably justifies my own nascent Steven Hill-inspired collection of screencaps. I forget what I was watching, but it occurred to me that practically every shot of a business card in a film is the same shot. They’re probably all second-unit insert shots using a hand double. They’re almost always at a slight tilt, in order to give the card some substance and not to have it rigidly framed by the shape of the film itself (interestingly enough, even Wes Anderson follows this and doesn’t apply his typical hyper-formal use of symmetry). So I started collecting them, just to see how pervasive this was. I figured once I got fifty or so, I’d compile a list and send it out for further contributions, and once I got a hundred, I’d start my own useless, whimsical reference website.
In the interim, though, I tripped over The Dancing Image‘s gallery meme, as mentioned by Glenn Kenny. I like it when Glenn posts a meme contribution, because he doesn’t tag people, he doesn’t forward on the chain letter. I don’t either, mostly because I don’t have any readers, but also because I don’t like the imposition. Be inspired to contribute, or don’t be. In honor of the meme, I present my meagre collection of Business Cards in Cinema:
TV on Stage
The-Man-who-isn’t-my-Father (that would all be one word in German) once saw Alan Rickman and Juliet Stevenson perform Shakespeare live. Considering that I’ve pretty much wanted to be Alan Rickman since I saw Robin Hood: Prince of Theives — not the film’s desired intent, I know, but there you are — and subsequently sought out and fell in love with Truly, Madly, Deeply, his experience is, in my eyes, perhaps the highest heights that one could aspire to have had. Since then, I have acquired a list of celebrity live performances that have vainly attempted to equal his. I probably would have, too, if I’d managed to see Kevin Kline in Cyrano de Bergerac on Broadway, but I will instead have to content myself by having attended live performances and readings by John Cleese, Michael Palin, Terry Jones, Eric Idle, Neil Innes, Mia Kirschner, Sally Kellerman, Michael Murphy, Elliott Gould, Suzanne Cryer, Joss Whedon, Patton Oswalt, Matt Groening, David Silverman, James L. Brooks, Anthony Daniels, and Jack Fucking Bristow, aka Victor Garber. </klang> (PS: This list to potentially include Christopher Lloyd in the near future.)
Yes, yes… I am celebrity-fawning scum (and that list doesn’t even include any literary Klangs). Or, at least, I previously have been. There’s been an arc to this process of acquisition of names worth dropping: I’ve gone from feverish and nervous of what to say, jittery and apprehensive, to vaguely dissatisfied and even irritable at the possibility of meeting someone well-known. It should come as no surprise to anyone that professional famous people don’t really give much of themselves to the people they meet at such events, particularly if they are well-heeled celebrities that have dealt with the peculiar imbalance of strangers feeling and believing that they know you because of how you’ve presented yourself on camera. At signings and receptions, they have greeted me and others with genuine, polite happiness for our appreciation of their works, undercut with equally sincere wariness. Any dissatisfaction I have felt after these events has always stemmed from a mild sourness at feeling I haven’t seen these people at their most honest; and it has absolutely been intertwined with a petty grumpiness that I wasn’t somehow special enough, intriguing enough to cut through the adverse circumstances and make an individual connection. (EDIT: For an alternate take, check out Glenn Kenny’s musings on celebrities and the clash of their private and public personae.)
Many, manymany people want their fifteen minutes of fame, and crave time in the spotlight. Whereas I find myself instead more partial to the fantasy espoused by Rob (and his mates in the film version) in High Fidelity:
“All my life I have wanted to go to bed with — no, have a relationship with — a musician: I’d want her to write songs at home, and ask me what I thought of them, and maybe include one of our private jokes in the lyrics, and thank me in the sleeve notes, maybe even include a picture of me on the inside cover, in the background somewhere…”
And not encountering that spark that would allow me to find that intimacy (the relationship part, not the first bit) whilst encountering famous people has caused me to take a step back and reevaluate why I was chasing celebrities in the first place. Thus I complete my story arc and resolve down to the more realistic expectation that I can simply be glad of whatever joy the moment or the person has brought me — from dissatisfied to at peace. And perhaps, one day, to finally one-up my not-my-father by seeing someone really impressive.
It’s not much, but it keeps me from stalking people on Twitter.
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