On Hugh Laurie of TV’s House.
The celebrity magazine Voici declared him “the greatest seducer in the world”. Another gushed: “With Hugh Laurie, you don’t sleep, you laugh. With Hugh Laurie … you are moved … It’s the year of Hugh Laurie or it’s no one’s year at all. And, for now, there isn’t the slightest sign of France overdosing.”
France falls in love with Hugh Laurie, in the Guardian.
So. Clint, then Jerry, now Oogh.
Exactly ten years ago an imperious ginger kitten took over my household and caused radical changes in the way I live. Today I go to the supermarket and get excited when there’s kitty litter. We like to think that we save stray animals, but I’ve realized that I did it mostly for me. Happy Birthday, Koosi!
Koosi has very definite tastes in music. She hates metal and shows it by running around the house wild-eyed and shrieking. She likes jazz—she sits by the speakers and listens for hours. One of the artists she approves of is Charles Mingus.
Charles Mingus was not just one of the jazz greats, he also wrote a manual for toilet training your cat. He taught his cat Nightlife how to use the toilet, saving a small fortune on kitty litter. Good luck.
Koosi is fascinated by drains and wonders where they lead to. She used to drop her stuffed toys into the toilet bowl, which is why in our house we keep the lid on.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind features a sleazy doctor who offers a procedure for erasing unwanted memories. The unhappy lovers played by Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet decide that it is not enough for them to break up, they must forget each other completely. Carrey goes for the procedure, only to decide that he doesn’t want to erase the memory of their love after all. Eternal Sunshine was another invention of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, who had previously offered us tours John Malkovich’s mind. It was clever, but too far out and unlikely to happen in real life.
That was a couple of years ago. Today research in neuroscience is bringing the ‘far out’ much closer to the plausible. According to Benedict Carey in the New York Times, it may soon be possible to edit human memory by controlling a single substance in the brain. Imagine being able to forget your fear of flying, or your addiction to tranquilizers, or that outfit you wore to the Junior-Senior Prom in the 1980s. How can it be done?
Eternal Sunshine of the Partially-Wiped Mind in Emotional Weather Report, today in the Star.
There was an unintended biblical theme to my reading and viewing during the Lenten holidays. I watched the first four episodes of the NBC series Kings, a modern-day retelling of the Book of Kings, created by Michael Green, starring Ian McShane as the Saul character (Silas Benjamin, as in tribe of) and Chris Egan as David (Shepherd as in shepherd). When the series begins the Kingdom of Gilboa is at war with Gath, whose leaders look like grizzled Israeli warhorses (I expected the general to have an eyepatch). Gilboa is ruled by King Silas, who likes to tell the story of how God sent a sign that he’d been chosen to lead the nation. Because it is the 21st century, he later acknowledges evolution as fact.
Kings has three major assets: the cinematography to support its epic aspirations (Francis Lawrence (I Am Legend) directs), the dialogue which goes for poetic diction and biblical cadence, and Ian McShane, who can deliver these strange lines and make you believe them. (“We are a king and we do what is right in mine eye.”) As he amply demonstrated in the HBO series Deadwood, McShane is an actor of Shakespearean dimensions. He can play a ruthless demon bastard whose actions make your blood run cold, but you can’t help liking him, and you want him to like you. (In Deadwood his Al Swearengen made the good guys look flat and dull.)
Chris Egan (from Eragon) seems a little tentative, but his character at this point is a callow youth who is only beginning to understand his destiny. The survival of this strangely beautiful new series is reportedly in doubt, but I’m already surprised it’s on regular TV at all.
Meanwhile I’m reading Gomorrah (as in Sodom and), Roberto Saviano’s insider account of the workings of the Camorra, the organized crime network in Naples. Gomorrah was a huge literary success in Italy, where it’s been made into a movie. Saviano got a slew of awards, and he’s still under police protection.
Gomorrah is compelling, gut-wrenching stuff alright, but it probably reads better in Italian. In English it is highly melodramatic, reminiscent of angsty journals by people who lived on graphic novels and Nine Inch Nails. “The port is detached from the city. An infected appendix, never quite degenerating into peritonitis, always there in the abdomen of the coastline. A desert hemmed in by water and earth, but which seems to belong to neither land nor sea. A grounded amphibian, a marine metamorphosis. . .” We get it: he’s passionate about his subject.
Pets Make Us Human: Jacob, by Boocow.
Jacob (Flip name: Badong) was a big-time reject. He was born into a family of kids. They threw him around like a rubber ball. So this 80-something guy took him in. But he had five other older cats who bullied J to pieces. J used to let the oldsters have their meals, hide himself in the dryer, and wait till they were done.
When the old man couldn’t take care of himself anymore his son put him in a nursing home while his daughter-in-law planned to leave Jacob with the Humane Society, or simply put him to sleep.
I took him in. J took me in. It was mutual. I am a big-time commitment-phobe, but I have decided that I will spend 15-20 years with this little guy. I come home after a shitty day at work and he greets me with his silly, whiny self. He undertstands Ilonggo and we get along mighty fine. He sheds but I can overlook that. I get cranky at times and then he cheers me up with his crazy, bug-eyed antics. He never judges me.
Got a pet adoption story? Send your story with a photo to saffron.safin@gmail.com. If your pet’s tale is posted here, your pet will receive a gift from Purina, PAWS, and the Homeless, Not Worthless project.
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