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Hammertime

Amy had to work late on Monday, so our anniversary dinner consisted of pizza and the rest of a fantastic bottle of champagne left over from the weekend (a wedding gift). We gave each other our “paper anniversary” gifts: she got me a wonderful print of a New Orleans photo by Frank Relle, and I gave her an IOU for a photo album / book of memories that I’m in the process of making. It’ll be great. Just late.

In keeping with our made-for-each-other-ness, we also hunted through TiVo to find an episode of Mythbusters that we wanted to catch: Underwater Car. As the episode guide says,

If you’re unfortunate enough to drive your vehicle into the drink, is it possible to escape, or will a watery grave be your fate? Heading poolside, the guys get their feet wet by doing some intensive underwater training. Then the pressure is on as they seat themselves inside a submerged car and do their darndest to get out.

Entertaining and educational! It promised to be even better than the Diet Coke & Mentos episode!

We zipped through the “B-Team” segments, which we were convinced was assigned to them as a joke: “Why don’t you guys go figure out if a piece of paper can actually be folded more than seven times or something?”

The first thing I learned about a car in the drink is that, once the vehicle is completely filled with water, the pressure equalizes and the doors will open pretty easily. Getting to that equalization point without running out of oxygen is a challenge. And before that point, the pressure of the water makes it impossible to get the door open.

The Mythbusters tested to see whether windows are openable underwater. As it turns out, the manual window strips its gears without opening, while an electric window, though still operable despite the presence of water, isn’t strong enough to open the window against the weight of the water in even minimal circumstances. So if you go in the drink, get the door or window open quickly, before too much pressure builds up.

Now, faux macho psycho that I am, I’ve long contended that, were I trapped in Underwater Car, I’d kick out / shatter a window and escape that way. This belief is based solely on the fact that I once cracked the windshield of my car with a single punch, about 15 years ago. (My brother was pretty impressed.) I always figured that it meant a panicked Gil would be perfectly able to crack one of the windows enough for the water-pressure to shatter the whole shebang, allowing me to escape. (Of course, it’s possible that Hyundai was using substandard glass in its windshields, but hey.)

Or, as it turns out, I could just use the LifeHammer.

After discovering that windows aren’t openable, the Mythbusters tested various ways to break an underwater car window. They found that standard “things you’d have in the car,” like keys or a cellphone, wouldn’t make a scratch. Even kicking the glass with steel-toed boots didn’t do the trick. So they resorted to a hammer designed to shatter the window in emergency situations (or if you’re a carjacker, I guess). It smashed the glass so completely, with what appeared to be a moderate swing, that I immediately jumped onto Amazon to add a couple of them to my shopping list.

Now I just have to figure out which wedding anniversary is the “glass-shattering hammer” one.

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Monday Morning Montaigne

I was pretty excited when I saw that the next essay in my Montaigne collection was Of Friendship. I saved it till Saturday morning, figuring I’d be able to spend the day ruminating on his ideas of the subject and how they jibed — or failed to jibe — with my own. Unfortunately, I found this essay pretty unenlightening and, well, boring.

Of Friendship is intended to introduce poems by Montaigne’s dead friend, political philosopher Etienne de La Boetie, but what it focuses on is the character of their “once in three centuries” friendship. In the process of describing the intense, four-year relationship the men shared, Montaigne proceeds to dismiss the possibility of true friendship between a man and

  • his dad (too much respect)
  • his brother (too much sibling rivalry)
  • a girl (too much lust; a 16th century version of When Harry Met Sally)
  • a fag (see above, and note “[T]hat other, licentious Greek love is justly abhorred by our morality.”)
  • more than one guy (too much sharing)

So I was let down, especially because my brother and my wife are two of my closest friends, there are a number of other friends I’d (essentially) go to the end of the earth for, and I once contemplated having two guys killed to avenge a brutal assault on a queer friend of mine (not that we shared that other, licentious Greek love or anything).

Anyway, rather than pass on any excerpts from that stuff, I thought I’d share with you the opening to the essay. It mirrors my own tendency to start off strong and end up all over the darned place:

As I was considering the way a painter I employ went about his work, I had a mind to imitate him. He chooses the best spot, the middle of each wall, to put a picture labored over with all his skill, and the empty space around it he fills with grotesques, which are fantastic paintings whose only charm lies in their variety and strangeness. And what are these essays of mine, in truth, but grotesques and monstrous bodies, pieced together of divers members, without definite shape, having no order, sequence or proportion other than accidental?

“A lovely woman tapers off into a fish.” [Horace]

I do indeed go along with my painter in this second point, but I fall short in the first and better part; for my ability does not go far enough for me to dare to undertake a rich, polished picture, formed according to art.

Fortunately, the next few essays are Of Moderation, Of Cannibals, and Of the Custom of Wearing Clothes, so I figure there should be some more entertaining posts in the weeks ahead.

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Minor improvement

I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to print this blog out or make a PDF of it, but it used to look godawful in that format. I just figured out how to tailor the CSS file to allow for a print/PDF that looks like the actual page (which you may also think is godawful, but hey). So, if you want to print out the site to show it to all of your non-internettified friends, you can do so with impunity!

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Skygod is keepin’ it real

Zeus is such a player he can bed his old lady by telling her about all the times he cheated on her:

But now let us go to bed and turn to love-making.

For never before has love for any goddess or woman

so melted about the heart inside me, broken it to submission,

as now: not that time when I loved the wife of Ixion

who bore me Peirithoos, equal of the gods in counsel,

nor when I loved Akrisios’ daughter, sweet-stepping Danae,

who bore Perseus to me, pre-eminent among all men,

nor when I loved the daughter of far-renowed Phoinix, Europa

who bore Minos to me, and Rhadamanthys the godlike;

not when I loved Semele, or Alkmene in Thebe,

when Alkmene bore me a son, Herakles the strong-hearted,

while Semele’s son was Dionysos, the pleasure of mortals;

not when I loved the queen Demeter of the lovely tresses,

not when it was glorious Leto, nor yourself, so much

as now I love you, and the sweet passion has taken hold of me.

Iliad, 14, 313-328

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Hot Gates, Hot Box Office?

A few posts ago, I mentioned that I was going to mark-out for 300, and that Amy & I would likely go catch it this weekend at the local IMAX, so as to get the full theme-park experience of Thermopylae on a giant screen.

This morning, I went online and discovered that every single IMAX screening this weekend is sold out.

I have to admit, my powers of prognostication aren’t the greatest, when it comes to movies and other pop phenomena. I mean, Ghost Rider looks like a godawful movie, and it’s based on a godawful character from Marvel’s nadir. So of course it ran away with the box office and is going to pass $100 million in sales this weekend. Did I underestimate how bored and/or stupid teenagers can be in February? I guess so.

But 300? Projected to pull in $60 million in its opening weekend? I’m happy that it’s getting so much exposure, but I’m just afraid that it’ll give Frank Miller so much Hollywood cachet that he’ll pursue a bigscreen version of Give Me Liberty.

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Rush ‘n’ Attack

I’ve been thinking a lot about Russian policy (domestic and foreign) lately. For my magazine this month, I tried to discuss the untenability of running a secret police state in a world where health issues don’t respect borders. I don’t think I was all too successful, but I wrote most of it at 4am before hitting the road for Seattle.

I want to write a longer piece about Russian politics, the KGB-defined worldview, petroeconomics, the meanings of Chechnya, and the question of “deep chrono” as it relates to secrets revealed during the years between the USSR’s collapse and the ascendence of Putin. That is, I could spend the rest of my days writing something that would be out of date the moment I publish it.

The engine for this whole project was my realization that, while we’re engaged in another cold war with Russia and China, this one isn’t driven by the ideological opposition of Capitalism vs. Communism. Rather, it seems to me that the policies of both of those countries are designed to assure the security of their ruling parties.

Now, you could argue that that was the “true” motivation of the cold war itself, but it strikes me as fundamentally different, seeing as how this opposition is stripped down to the concept of retaining power for its own sake. The aspects of socialism that remain in both regimes are geared to sustain autocracy.

I’ll continue ruminating on the subject and offering up occasional impressions. Meanwhile, here’s a piece (courtesy of Andrew Sullivan) from a (sorta) pro-Putin journalist who is freaked out by the number of murdered journalists in Russia.

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Not just tan: Spartan

In keeping with my inner classics-geek of that previous post, here’s Victor Davis Hanson on 300, the movie adaptation of Frank Miller’s comic book about the battle of Thermopylae:

[T]he impressionism of 300 is Hellenic in spirit: its buff bare chests are reminiscent of the heroic nudity of warriors on Attic vase paintings. Even in its surrealism — a rhinoceros, futuristic swords, and an effeminate, Mr. Clean-esque Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) who gets his ear flicked by a Spartan spear cast — it is not all that different from some of Euripides’ wilder takes, like Helen or Iphigeneia at Taurus, in their strange deviation from the party line of the Homeric epics. Like the highly formalist Attic tragedy — with its set length, three actors, music, iambic and choral meters, and so forth — 300 consciously abandons realist portrayal.

I don’t remember a ton of the comic book. The one time I read it, I was at a friend’s house in Auckland, NZ, trying desperately to stay awake till nightfall, so as not to get wrecked by jetlag. Fortunately, he was one of the greatest cartoonists in the antipodes, and had a room full of comics that I hadn’t read.

And, yes, I’m thinking of catching 300 at the local IMAX. Sue me.

(Here are some terrible pix from the premiere.)

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Giving old meaning to “homecoming”

Lately, I’ve been rediscovering my inner classics-geek. I guess it might be obvious from the contents of this blog, between those Monday Morning Montaigne snippets and my return to the Iliad.

During the weekend, I opened up the Poetics so I could try to make a smartass point about Alcestis & Admetus (for That Thing I’m Trying To Write). I never had a productive time with Aristotle, but I’m trying to convince myself that this was partly because of the tiny typesetting of the Penguin editions I used to read.

Last night, I got a brochure in the mail from my graduate school, the inestimably important (to me) St. John’s College. The college is launching a continuing education program for alumni, consisting of weekend (or slightly longer) sessions on some of the great books.

The first offering, Aristotle & Aquinas on the Unity of Intellect, didn’t appeal to me too much, but the second one, a 4-day session in June on the Odyssey, made me wince and got the wheels turning in my head: “Hmm. . . if I get ahead on my Top Pharma Companies report a bit, I can afford to head down to Annapolis Thursday morning and get home Sunday night. . .”

I saved the flyer. This morning, when I looked it over, I noticed something strange. See, this being St. John’s, the program is named after the port where Socrates and his buddies had the conversation that comprises The Republic. It’s a typically intelligent gesture for a place that New York magazine once called “a school for hyperliterate misfits.”

That said, the school is referring to the program as “Pireaus”, and that’s what struck me as odd. I had to run downstairs to my library to check that I wasn’t misremembering, but as far as I can tell, it’s supposed to be “Piraeus”, not “Pireaus”. That’s how Bloom has it, and that’s how Jowett has it. Unfortunately, I can’t find my Greek/English lexicon down there (I’ve got a ton of books, okay? And, yes, I do own a Greek/English lexicon), and don’t have a Greek version of The Republic around.

So, can anyone (that means you, brother) get me a ruling on why they’re called it Pireaus?

(Now if I can just make an early start on those Top Company reports. . .)