Month / April 2007

by Edward Champion

Don’t Say Goodbye Quite Yet

Terrene Rafferty: “But what Altman does in ‘The Long Goodbye’ goes way beyond simply stating the idea that the private eye’s day was over. Instead of trying to correct, or ignore, the creeping vagueness of the landscape in which his lonely hero is a figure, he actually emphasizes those qualities. The images captured by his cinematographer, Vilmos Zsigmond, are as un-noirish as they can be: sun-bleached, unstable, heat-shimmery as mirages. And the camera moves constantly, always slowly, and just enough to keep every shot from settling into anything fixed or too easily readable.” (via Sarah)

I’ve always thought The Long Goodbye to be the most underrated of Altman’s films. Even more so than 3 Women.

by Edward Champion

RIP Don Ho

donho.jpg

Washington Post: “Legendary crooner Don Ho, who entertained tourists for decades wearing raspberry-tinted sunglasses and singing the catchy signature tune “Tiny Bubbles,” has died. He was 76.”

I never got to see him, but my sister did. She reported to me that Ho had the decency to confess to his audience that he was sick of “Tiny Bubbles,” but he performed it any way. As kitschy professionals go, Don Ho was sui generis.

by Edward Champion

The Balding Report

There is currently a tiny thatch of hair on the left side of my receding hairline. I thought it would go as swiftly as the others. But it appears to be clinging to the rock, like some leech that the finest blade devised by humankind couldn’t t even remove. It apparently didn’t get the memo that the other follicles got. Perhaps this thatch wishes to distinguish itself, but it seems to think that I’m still 28. It’s an area of hair on my head that wants to attend nightclubs again and maybe MDMA. Of course, I know those days are pretty much over, and my drug habits, for the most part, have been limited to the legal stuff. Drug-wise, I’m that garden-variety taxpayer you want to kick repeatedly in the ass. I’m sorry for being so unhip.

Mind you, I’m happily balding. I intend to be a badass bald motherfucker. I intend to tell people to get off my lawn, even if I don’t have one. There have been plenty of fantastic bald men, and I hope to be one of them. I just wish that the process had some kind of logic or consistency. There is no reason for this stubborn patch of hair to remain. Yet it does, with stunning resilience.

I only write about this because recent emails my way have suggested some confusion on the subject, when my hair should be a dead giveaway. While I am happy to be thought young, the truth is that, depending upon how you view the age spectrum (my own observational window conflates it with a value associated with Andrew Carnegie), I’m in the beginnings of early middle age. So I can’t exactly be called young or precocious. But I assure you that I’m still a silly person.

Now that we’re cleared up on that subject, let the balding commence!