Running for office

In my down time I like to impose my face on images of Stranger's with Candy's Jerri Blank, played by the brilliant Amy Sedaris. Anyone who knows a thing about me knows that I love the short-lived show (the movie? Another matter), and I incorporate Jerrisms into my daily life with somewhat similar, er, flair. I'd take the opportunity to quote but some people wouldn't appreciate it anyway, even when taken in context and with imagined Jerri delivery. My love of Strangers with Candy is at least a very lengthy blog post unto itself. But let's get to the repugnance:



While I'm by no means a master touch-up artist (I had to convert this to grayscale because of skin color mismatching, after all), I still am equally parts pleased and disturbed that I can create some semblance of such a hideous, yet strangely relatable, character. Plus, we could all use a dose of Jerri-tics after the past eight years.

They're called SUBtitles for a reason

I enjoy a good foreign film every now and then. But since I'm not fluent in any particular language, subtitles are my savior.

Recently, a coworker enthusiastically recommended I read "The Kite Runner," so naturally I picked up the motion picture adaptation at Blockbuster. We only got about 15 minutes in before turning it off. Offensive language? No. Gratuitous sex scenes? Please. Bad acting? Hardly. The subtitles were written in a thin, pale yellow font laid over the scenes. And considering it's a movie partly based in the Persian desert...well, you can understand my frustration. The following doesn't come close to a prime example, but it's the only screen cap I could find in an online pinch. I present to the jury Figure 1 of 1:




Paul and I tried our best to decipher lemon chiffon key dialogue laid over sand hills, pale tablecloths, crisp white shirts...all further complicated by a moving camera. But after squinting and piecing together the broken text for what I consider a reasonable amount of time, I had to return to the DVD's setup menu and see if there was an English-dubbed version. Nope. Well there's a waste of 4 dollars and a movie I would have otherwise found culturally enlightening.

This kind of carelessness maddens me to no end. And I'm watching it on a larger high-definition TV with a contact prescription I had updated two months ago, so it's not my eyesight. Can the DVD authors, the producer, the director, the intern, maybe watch 5 minutes of it to see if the text is decipherable to the average U.S. American? No? Well then here's what you do:

As with most films these days, the movie's presented in widescreen. Thus, large spans of black emptiness frame both the top and bottom of the picture eager for a purpose. I believe it's actually called letterbox. The name seems apropos, so let's go ahead and put the text there. That way, the dialogue is clearly legible. And with the exception of black, you can present text in any color of the rainbow. Switch up the colors, play with fonts, all caps, no caps, whatever. Plus it makes your movie look prettier with text-free frames. It's really a win-win for all involved.

For directors who've anticipated the audience's need to understand the movie through dialogue and have formatted the text accordingly, thank you! I'm going to start keeping a list of offenders, though. Don't make it any harder than it has to be for Americans to experience cultural diversity through film.

So, I guess this means I'll have to read the book now.

Each song does not correspond to a desire

Must-have album: Suzanne Vega, Nine Objects of Desire (1996)



Luka stopped being used as a human punching bag and decided to take the sonic high road. This is a great New York '90s record with an air of French sophistication. You may have heard the third track "Caramel" during the dessert-eating scene of "The Truth About Cats and Dogs" (yay) and it was also used in promos for the pretentious drivel that was "Closer" (yuck).

In what was the probably the height of my guarded female singer/songwriter obsession, I cherry-picked this album at Media Play (time warp for a second there) on my 15th birthday after seeing Ms. Vega perform on The Rosie O'Donnell Show (back when she wasn't a hyper-sensitive hose beast). Anyway, Nine Objects has a signature, slightly kooky but smart sound thanks to producer (and Suzanne's then-husband) Mitchell Froom, except for two acoustic-driven tracks. SV's reedy voice remains characteristically smooth and calm throughout, but still emotive, and the lyrics are expertly-conceived and don't require a metaphorical compass to decipher. The end result is nicely gelled pleasure that doesn't stay too long (every song is in the 2-3 minute range), so just hit play and you've got a great soundtrack for making good food, eating good food, or for simply feeling urbanistic in an otherwise anonymous neighborhood.

I tend to get blissters

Buggin' phrase: "Find/Follow Your Bliss!"

Offenders: Condescending celebrities, innately unhappy people.