Don’t Kick Food!

Last week I purchased a Canon Digital Rebel XT. This new toy allows the discovery and development of new photographic habits:

1. The black and white self portrait:

2. Oversaturated colors:

3. Shooting from the hip (literally):

In my ideal cinematic world, everything would be in black and white or Technicolor and tilted at precarious angles.

• Christopher Hayes at In These Times writes about Veronica Mars treatment of class difference and doesn’t mention the term “zeitgeist” once. A quote:
  

  Her reputation as a crack detective puts her services in high demand, and like Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, the noir heroes from whom she descends, Veronica sees up close how the pathologies of class operate. Her clients range from Neptune’s aristocracy to its immigrant strivers, all battling to come to grips with their appointed privileges and deprivations.

  Now if that doesn’t sound like appealing television…

• Deadweek continues at The House Next Door. It’s a series of articles written about the HBO series Deadwood, now entering its third (and final) season. Two pieces of note: this one, a character study of Calamity Jane, and this, about the female characters on the show. I have only been watching the show for about a week now – I have seen the first seven episodes of the first season. I am not trying to say whether or not Deadwood’s representation of women is a feminist one or not, but I wonder what it means that some of the character development of the four major female roles (so far as I have seen, at least) comes from our discovering (sometimes at the same time they do) their innate abilities as nurturing caregivers, whether that be as foster-mothers to the passed-around Norwegian orphan child, Jane’s talent at nursing, Trixie caring for Alma as she detoxes, or Joanie’s behavior towards the girls at the Bella Union.

• Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans. I have been reading this for what seems like months. Probably because it has been. Dense – I can’t digest more than a few pages of it at a time. When it clicks, though, it clicks.
• Unit Operations: An Approach to Video Game Criticism by Ian Bogost. Just started yesterday – only about thirty pages in. So far, it’s a different kind of dense. Bogost’s bouncing from philosophy to literary theory to software design to film theory is appealing, although I am finding my undergraduate avoidance of philosophy classes a bit of a hindrance. Later sections promise comparative video game criticism. So far the only time “ludology versus narratology” has been mentioned was to acknowledge the existence of the debate and to state that the book does not touch upon that. I have hope.
• The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. It’s been a while since I last read it.
• The University of Pittsburgh Course Description Guide. Because I think I have a job and can take some classes in the fall.