sometimes a bob is just a bob

October 25th will be a great day for gamers. The douchebaggery of Jack Thompson, for those of you who don’t know, is far too involved and historical for me to explain here. Suffice it to say that he has tried his hardest to set back the evolution of video games, and the average American’s attitude towards them, many years in the past. Now it appears that his chicanery and incompetence will be exposed to all. Thank goodness.

I’m trying to switch back and forth between Jeannine’s “all levels” Sunday class and Denise’s vinyasa I/II on Sunday mornings. At least that’s the plan for now. Yesterday was Jeannine, and my muscles started hurting not three hours after class was over. I determined to get up early before work and do a little practice, hopefully such that my muscles wouldn’t hurt so very badly today. Unfortunately I slept very poorly so I was only able to do about 15 minutes, but I think (and hope) it’ll help today. I am indeed very sore.

I ordered Shiva Rea’s DVD Yoga Shakti from the internet last week, along with a Wah! CD. (Wah! is a person, exclamation point included in the name.) I haven’t done any of the practices on the DVD, but I’ve watched about half of them. If you’re looking for a good workout, and a lot of yoga for your money, buy this DVD. Seriously. There’s more than three hours of practice here, and it runs the gamut from basic to very challenging. Shiva Rea herself has a lovely voice (so her leads are not annoying to listen to), and her yoga is so exact, so beautiful, that it’s a real pleasure to watch. Even if she does make it look ludicrously easy.

The Wah! CD was also well worth the purchase. She chants and sings in Sanskrit (I think) and English, and while the liner notes are a little bit over the top in terms of woo-woo spirituality, the music is really nice. The second half of the CD is slower than the first, and I like it a little less, but practicing to it works well. I bought the CD for the remix of “Gayatri”, which is a lovely song, but there’s other stuff that’s pretty good, including “Bolo Ram” (repetitive but good for practice), and “Gopala Hare” (a cool vinyasa sort of song).

Again, it seems that my own journey is being guided by larger forces. Shiva Rea is coming to a studio about an hour away from me for one day in November, and Wah! is going to be at Yogaville the same weekend I will. I don’t think I’ll be able to attend any events with her, because I didn’t pay for the Kirtan weekend, just a regular Welcome Weekend, but nevertheless…it’s bizarre to me that whenever I find something new to hook on to in this whole yoga universe, it appears locally. I’m definitely taking off work to go to the Shiva Rea workshop. It’s only two hours long, and it’s a long way to travel (baaad highways for that time of day), but it’ll be worth it, I just know it.

On Friday I watched Pandora’s Box, which has an excellent reputation and which I should have watched years ago. It’s a film by Pabst, starring a woman named Louise Brooks, who is something of an odd figure in film history. A very smart woman who was extremely popular for a short time during the silent era, her stock somehow lost all its value in the mid-thirties and she had stopped working entirely by 1940. She wrote a few books, including a highly-regarded collection of pieces about herself and Hollywood, and is remembered for her haircut and her extraordinary acting chops. One film critic at the time gushed, “There is no Dietrich! There is no Garbo! There is only Louise Brooks!” I had seen pictures of her, but I had never seen one of her films. Now I can say definitely that pictures of her do her no justice whatsoever. In a photograph, she’s a pretty girl with a neat haircut; in motion, she is a star. (Like Marilyn Monroe: in pictures, glamorous and sexy, but in motion, a hurricane of living, breathing woman.) She is so natural, so easy, so beautiful, and when the movie was over I almost wanted to watch it again to see more of her.

However, there was something that rather upset me after I was finished watching it. I read the review of the film in The A List, and found that the critic had picked up the point of the film differently than I had. He said that Lulu’s intense eroticism and insatiable sexuality was what the film revolved around. I had trouble seeing Lulu as being insatiable; I saw her more as being a good-time girl, who had always had men (and women) kneeling at her feet, who took hardly anything seriously. A No-Good Dame who was bound to lead men into disaster and ruin. This is fairly misogynist, but really it’s just how the story goes. There was a lot of implied sex going on, but Lulu was irresistible by being laughing and vivacious, not by being a vampy seductress. Also, the critic’s attitude reverses what I saw as the trend of the film – people are drawn to Lulu, irrevocably; she doesn’t have to pursue them. Huge difference there.

Thinking that I may have misinterpreted the single key notion of the film makes me incredibly concerned that perhaps I’ve lost my edge, or my talent, for film interpretation. I know that everyone sees films differently, but it strikes me that this interpretation is kind of like the interpretation of Rosebud in Citizen Kane – he regrets his lost childhood, when life was simple and happy, and he wants the only thing that he cared for at that time, perhaps the only thing he’s ever really cared for. There is no other interpretation to be had. For me to miss it means that I’ve missed something vital, something essential about the film, and therefore I’m getting dumber about film in general.

My opinion about Capote, and a number of other films lately, leads me to the same conclusion. If I don’t see what everybody else sees (critics, I mean, not people who enjoyed White Chicks), surely I’m not as good at this as I used to be. This is very upsetting to me, because it’s the only talent I’ve ever depended on absolutely. I can breathe, and I can analyze film. That’s all I’m sure of. Not that my ideas about film haven’t been unique in the past – I came up with a new idea (one I’m sure is correct) regarding Bunuel’s film That Obscure Object of Desire that amazed even my film professor – but seeing something differently that’s this essential makes me worry.

Otherwise, it was a nice, slow, relaxing weekend. I worry that I’m getting a cold, but I’m trying to stave it off with echinacea. Happy Monday to you all.