Long Days, Long Months: 24 July

Finished watching The Terminator. Born in 1979, I suppose I was too young to have seen it around the time it was released in 1984, though I remember the hoopla over the sequel in 1991. An excellent "action" movie overall - and of course an exemplary "Eighties" artifact.

Re-read "Of LPs, EPs, DJs and Payola," chapter six of Repeated Takes: A Short History of Recording and Its Effects on Music by Michael Chanan. Not so much a history as a collection of essays, filled with lovely vignettes and intriguing facts. As with all fine essays, you recognize where things might've been left out - no, actually, you notice what's being emphasized. You want to go searching yourself, explore other foci. With this chapter, the reader is given a brief historical review of systems of record production; reminded that "independent" record labels, in the U S A at least, reached their apex in the 1950's, with Atlantic Records especially; and told of the trumped-up nonsense known as the payola scandal; among other always-compelling insights.

Began the new Frederick Barthelme novel, Waveland. As with its predecessor, Elroy Nights, the author's moving beyond minimalism, not in the actual prose, but in the narratives. Perhaps he realized that, with Painted Desert and Bob the Gambler, he'd ended up with novels that passed by too quickly. Waveland presents the Mississippi Gulf coast after Hurricane Katrina, Elroy Nights before (some context for English teachers - immediate canonization - assign these books); the storm rendered a lot of things disposable we'd prefer not to be: buildings, humans. An inspiration perhaps for serious treatment of the trash culture of the Delta?

Watched episodes 6-10 of the third season of Weeds, a sort of comedic version of Six Feet Under you could say. Entertaining, at least, given that it's a comedy. But like the latter, remarkably stupid. Yuppies want to see crazy (and, strangely, quite violent) things happen to boring people. No surprise. Like any half-decent T V program, it's quite addictive. And Martin Donovan, brilliant star of the Hal Hartley films Trust, Simple Men, and Amateur, plays a bad guy - a charming surprise. I only find Kevin Nealon's character sympathetic.

Re-watched No Country for Old Men. A beautiful film - giving us realistic horror, miles away from the likes of The Terminator. While first impressions probably focus on the doomed bravado of Josh Brolin's character, the centrality of Tommy Lee Jones's character becomes clearer with this second viewing: the vanity of self-styled conservatives who claim not to understand the modern world is revealed to be little more than the carping of weak ignorant men who never understood the death wish that underlies humanity's progress. Jones brilliantly portrays such a pitiable individual (on a similar note, see him in a minor role in Robert Altman's A Prairie Home Companion).