This Side of Lost

Today is one of my favorite holidays - the first day of baseball! Woo-hoo! The Twins take the field momentarily... not that I'll be watching. Nope. Not at work. Never. To celebrate, here's a great clip from a minor league game last year with one of the most impressive manager tantrums I've ever seen.

I'm back from my librarian conference. I had a great time. I didn't really expect that. I figured it would be busy and boring with occasional interesting moments. But it was pretty much enjoyable through and through. Sessions were varied and interesting. John Waters gave a hilarious and filthy keynote "address" over lunch on Friday. Paul was a great roommate. I won a $100 Barnes and Noble gift certificate as a contestant on The Scopus Show. And I met two lovely young ladies at the very first activity I was at (a lunch sponsored by a vendor on Thursday afternoon), immediately struck up a friendship, and proceeded to hang out with them and Paul for the entire conference. Hooray for new friends! A big shout out to Amy and Tricia for being awesome conference mates.

In other news:

• Samantha is on her way back from Bloomington, Indiana, where she was cheerleading and helping out with the national collegiate fencing tournament. You can go ask her about that.
• We saw Guster at a free (!) show in LA a week and a half ago. This is one of the reasons LA is awesome -- your favorite bands come to town a lot.
• Our concert was a success, I guess. They applauded. Is that a success? We had fun going to a wine bar afterwards and chatting with other young, hip Chorale members.
• My callback for the Master Chorale went really well. But I won't hear about it until May 1st, because they won't know how many spots are available until then.
• I am singing an aria from Bach's St. Matthew Passion at church on Good Friday. Which aria? I can't show you, because I can't find a webpage that links directly to it. It's the last bass aria, I guess. Whee.

I really will post my AFI review next. Really.

This 1936 film stars Charlie Chaplin -- who also wrote the script, directed, produced and composed the score. Chaplin plays his familiar Little Tramp character, who this time finds himself fed up with life as a assembly line worker and bounces from job to job interspersed with visits to the county jail and adventures with a newly-befriended gamine.

This was my first exposure to the dynamo who was Charlie Chaplin. As you can see from the brief description above, he was a do-it-all kind of filmmaker. Widely beloved and immensely successful during the silent film era, the advent of "talkies" pushed Chaplin and his character, the Little Tramp, to an interesting place in 1936. Modern Times is the last "silent" film of Chaplin's career, though it is not completely silent -- there are voices, though they are all from some sort of secondary source (a phonograph, a radio, a public announcement device), and there are some sound effects. But Chaplin uses these to further his satire of talking pictures and of technology in general.

Satire is Chaplin's bread and butter, and it satisfies here too. The Tramp haplessly, hilariously and heartbreakingly traverses the hazards of "modern society" with fantastic physical comedy and wonderfully inventive situations. The poor man just can't seem to hold down a job, having gone nuts at his factory job (getting caught in a large machine's gears, in the movie's most memorable image), and ignoring his duties as a night watchman at a department store by going rollerskating around the floor. He consistently finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, being jailed for participating in a Communist rally and for running out on a restaurant bill (after trying to get a policeman to pay it for him). And, in the movie's best scene, he is prey to technology run amok as the guinea pig for a time-saving feeding machine.

The Tramp can't hack it in this modernized world, and in his failure symbolizes anyone's desire to live the simple and idealized life in the face of conformity and a fast-changing world. The message is universal, and timeless. Chaplin's expressions, his bumbling attempts at kindness and generosity and his love shown through the friendship with a kindred soul are acting at its best. The production and cinematography is flawless (Chaplin was a notorious perfectionist and experimenter -- a dangerous combination for a filmmaker) and the entire 87 minute running time is full to the brim with wonderful scenes.

Great, great movie. We're excited to be seeing two more of Chaplin's films in the not too distant future.

(See this post if you're confused why I'm reviewing movies.)