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10 Jan 2001, 12:56PM: I'm seeing more Kieslowski today!: From my previous entries, you may think that my life revolves around the filmography of Kryzsztof Kieslowski. It doesn't really. But I get unreasonably excited by the prospect of seeing some large number of films in a row, and today I'm going to see his Three Colors trilogy.

I get troubled when I watch a lot of movies because I know some of my money is going to the MPAA, and thus to the Evil DVD/CCA. But at least independent movies and foreign films are somewhat better, right? The UC Theatre is my balm and my exemption and my redemption, right?

"White" is at 5:30 (bargain!), "Blue" at 7:20, and "Red" at 9:20. The UC Theatre is on University Avenue between Shattuck and Milvia in Berkeley. Each of the movies works as a standalone, so come to one, two, or all three for a night of Polish/French ambiguity.

Egosurfing on Google depresses my good mood. My Dad's work on religion fills up the whole first screen in a search for "harihareswara". I don't show up till match #15 or so. Ergh.

Well, I have stuff to do -- making copies to make a reader for the class I'm teaching this semester (Politics in Modern Science Fiction), dropping off dry-cleaning, doing bank stuff, dropping off said copies at Odin Readers on Center Street, and finally going to movie. Not to mention getting some emailing done if I can. Sigh/Ergh redux.

But hey, at the end of it all, I'm gonna see some movies, and I trust they won't be too bad.

P.S. By the way, I've been noticing that in many situations where two players vie for popularity and dominance, the two products often end up indistinguishable. So as to get "the center," I suppose. Can anyone think of a situation where each stays entrenched in difference, rather than sameness?

Poll: Best (worst?) fake rivalry

Originally published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/1/10/125655/372

12 Jan 2001, 12:34PM: I OD'd on Kieslowski -- next time on Springer: Advice: Do NOT try to watch six hours of Kryzsztof Kieslowski's work in a single night. I was bewildered by "White," annoyed by "Blue," and asleep halfway through "Red."

So Wednesday night we went to see the Big Night O' Kieslowski, the Three Colors Trilogy, over at the UC Theater. Problem: over the past weeks, since my last Kieslowski tasting (see earlier diary entries on "Decalogue"), I'd gotten used to films that have, like, closure.

So I walked in as a lamb to a bewildering French-Polish surreal holodeck. No, not a slaughter. But I'm sure no lamb could be more confused than I.

I had seen/heard description of "White" as a comedy. It had some funny moments, yes. You wouldn't think that a bunch of thugs beating an unarmed man, then throwing him over a mountainside and driving away, could be funny, but it was. However, whoever described the film as a whole as a comedy must have been operating on a different definition of "comedy." As in, "a film in which no one dies."

I liked "Blue," even though I found some of Kieslowski's devices annoying and incomprehensible. In the Decalogue, I could -- with some help from Anirvan -- figure out the purpose of some gimmicks or motifs. But the sudden music swelling and blackout -- I just didn't get it. But it was pretty, and I could actually follow the story.

(Note: I think I understand more Polish than French, even though I took French for four years in high school, and I've never formally studied Polish. It must be the Slavic connection with my current Russian studies.)

And then there was "Red." I can't say much -- I fell asleep around halfway. I remember being excited about the cyberpunkish opening that went inside a telephone wire. But the rest of the movie was pretty person-centric, no hacking or anything. Sigh. I was tuckered out, and I awoke to the sound of applause as the film ended.

(Note: in a foreign film, the barriers to closing your eyes are higher, since you have to keep your eyes open to follow the subtitles. No "I'll just listen to the dialogue" here.)

The last time I fell asleep at a film was also at the UC Theatre, in my ill-advised effort to watch "Hamlet" -- the Kenneth Branagh version, around four hours long. Someday I'll try to see it again. But the newest one, the Ethan Hawke version, was great and quite serviceable, so maybe I should just go see that one twice.

Poll: Favorite evangelist

Originally published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/1/12/123459/371

14 Jan 2001, 06:35AM: Two days till school starts: What to do? Should I review Russian, create flyers for the class I'm teaching, or just enjoy unfettered Berkeley? Ah, a procrastinatrice like myself generally chooses the path of least (immediate) resistance...right now, I'm listening to an XMMS playlist, surfing K5, and delaying going over to a friend's.

(In case you care, I enjoy the music of The Weatherheads, Copperpot, Frisbie, Ben Folds Five, Audra and the Antidotes, and Ten Til'Eight, and you can find music by all of them at IUMA, the Internet Underground Music Archive. No, I'm not a shill, otherwise I would have had a child, named it Iuma, and asked for the million dollars or whatever.

The third semester of Russian is coming, starting Tuesday. I surprise myself at my facility with Russian -- and at gaps in knowledge, or at least memory. I wish I could find some sort of free Linux program that does a flashcard kind of thing, programmable both in Cyrillic and Latin characters. Somehow I think I'd be better, more disciplined, at doing flashcards if I could do them on my computer. I should check Freshmeat.

I'm trying to think of a tagline with which to advertise my class. "It's not just punk, it's cyberpunk!" No. "Watch the Matrix for credit!" Misleading. "Lots of reading, but it's enjoyable!" A bit too James-Morrow-"City-of-Truth" for my taste (though we will read that work in my class, the longest short story -- in fact, it's a novella, I think -- that we'll read). "Al Gore is a robot!" Well, that combines sci-fi and politics, but somehow I don't think it's strongly associated enough with a "take my class" behavioral command.

Got any ideas?

Anyway, I wish I had another week to do research, figure out how this whole summer-in-Russia thing is going to work out, and just hang out at Cody's and watch interesting movies at the UC Theater. But wishing makes nothing so. (Reminds me of a line from Philip Pullman's excellent The Golden Compass, the first book in his His Dark Materials trilogy. You'll find it in the "young adult" or possibly "fantasy/sci-fi" shelves of the bookstore. It's terrific. Gosh, another thing I wish I had time to do: read the second and third books, before school starts on the sixteenth...)

Poll: The Evil Empire

Originally published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/1/14/183533/953

16 Jan 2001, 12:16PM: "Traffic" - an important film to Smokedotters and others: I saw the movie, directed by Steven Soderbergh, with an ensemble cast (the most famous of whom would be Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas). Did you? I was very glad that I saw it, and enjoyed it.

Perhaps it makes few proposals, but it's a big indictment of the current "War on Drugs." As my moviegoing partner said re: the WoD (before seeing the film), "I don't know what we should be doing, but I do know that whatever we're doing, it's not working."

Note: self-indulgent equivocating and rambling ahead. And this is not really a review.

The various parallel plots sometimes converge, sometimes not, and the compare/contrast of plotlines works well. Various artistic devices also help the viewer see the film's viewpoint ... the closer you get to South America, the more jarring and unfamiliar the filming technique gets, it seems.

In my years here at Cal, I've begun to understand the inherent flaws in the Drug War. In a primarily libertarian environment such as K5, I assume most of my (three) readers will agree. But it still would bother me --

you see, I'm not quite a libertarian; I still think that some "consensual" or "victimless" crimes might be legitimate for the government to prosecute. Maybe prostitution is just not a good thing, for individuals or groups in the US culture, and no amount of regulation or free-market influence or education or open-mindedness can make it morally neutral, much less a good thing. Same for drugs in general. What is the best way to draw some sort of legal distinction between crack and pot, among tobacco and alcohol and heroin and ecstacy?.....then, I've never drunk anything more intoxicating than kvas, a Russian fermented-black-bread drink that's (my classmates told me at the field trip) less potent than your average beer. So maybe those with empirical experience should be making policy....those still alive, sane, and able, that is...I suppose --

I suppose that reformed ("recovering?") hard-core heroin addicts have insight to add to drug policy. I further suppose that the types of things they would say and suggest will not become major policy planks until some sort of catastrophe occurs....say, as in "The Mycojuana Incident" by Fran van Cleave in the "Analog" sci-fi magazine of Feb. 2001. (A good and relevant read.) Or a tragic, massive O.D. by the President's wife or child. Or some other similarly horrific and telegenic disaster. I'll simultaneously hope and dread, then.

Poll: What drug would you LIKE to try?

Originally published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/1/16/01618/1335

21 Jan 2001, 12:39PM: An extended narrative on teaching, comedy, and temperament: I'm at the life stage where I should be thinking not just about jobs, but about careers. I'm something of an extrovert, I like to write, and I enjoy hanging out with geeks. What to do?
What follows is a meditation/narrative on thought-provoking incidents and situations I've had in the past few years (unless I stretch back to my sixth grade talent show cameo) (which I very well may). Your mileage may vary. The first part of, I think, two.

To back up:

Part I:

I am a student at UC Berkeley, where the research is world-class and the classes are scarce. At least once every year I play The Waiting Game, hoping that enough people will drop a class, or be unwilling to take an 8 a.m. discussion section with a Graduate Student Assistant (a teaching assistant to the professor), so that I can enroll. A good Graduate Student Instructor is doubly precious: she motivates me to prepare for class, and she makes that 8 a.m. discussion enjoyable, educational, and mind-expanding.

I've had a few terrific GSIs here in the Political Science Department. One of them is a particular favorite of mine: funny, down-to-earth, very smart, and a fantastic teacher. He brought me to understand the texts in the course in a completely different way. Everyone in the department, it seems, loves him -- undergraduates, faculty, other grad students. This semester, students practically fought to switch into one of his dicussion sections for the course he's TAing. (The other is -- you guessed it -- ear-lie in the mornin'.)

Once I observed a conversation he had in the hallway in Barrows, the political science headquarters. A friend of his was urging that he acquaint himself with a female friend of hers, possibly with view to a romantic liaison. "She's really funny, just like you, you'd like her," -- I paraphrase -- she said.

And he replied -- was it a joke? -- that two exhibitionists don't go well together.


Part II:

Shortly after taking his class, I learned about the comedy nights that we have here at Cal. The Heuristic Squelch, our comedy magazine, puts them on in conjunction with ASUC Superb, the entertainment arm of our student government. A few professional comedians come in and do their spiels, and then there's an open mic. Students can go up and do five minutes worth of "Catch a Rising Star, Or Maybe Just a Fratboy On a Dare." Once in a while, the audience wishes the limit were ten minutes. More often, it wishes it were two.

I signed up. I did okay. I've performed three more times since them, and will probably do some schtick at the next one in a week -- Sat., 27 January. Once I did great, the other times not as well. But I like it. I like giving people humor, pulling the rug out from under them at the punchline, making them laugh. There's a power there, having them listen to me, their attention focused on my words, my creation. And when they laugh, when my joke has worked as well as any line of code or any Swiss watch -- that's my drug. That's my moment in the sun.

I know, it's not a living. I don't intend to quit my day job.

But first I have to figure out what that will be. Tomorrow: Part III. Teaching and temperament.

Poll: You want more?

Originally published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/1/21/03920/3639
Filed under: Comedy

29 Jan 2001, 08:44AM: Short/sweet, I hope: Sorry that I never posted that promised "career, exhibitionism, temperament" screed, part III. It'll happen. Netscape crashed. Grrr.

For now, other thoughts. Movies, music, mice, abstinence.

I tend to be doubtful of a medicating approach to personal problems. I would prefer, if the source my problem is not plainly and solely physical, to avoid drugging myself. It messes up the experimentall environment -- too many variables.

These optical mice from Apple are neat. I like noticing how the light gets brighter when the mouse moves, but when it stops moving, after about a second the light dims again.

I saw O Brother, Where Art Thou?. Very entertaining. I haven't seen such a well-integrated musical for a while. And that was part of its appeal -- it was a shamelessly musical film. Even though I can't stand the Hindi-movie approach to music in film, the world of cinema should have more appropriate music in it. It's funny; Save the Last Dance had some really neat music in it, and then during the After-School Special moments in it, which were unutterably bad, the music got really viscous and sappy. Not fun at all.

Now, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, on the other hand, was realy neat. I gasped so much that I'm surprised I ever had a chance to let my breath out. Very awesome, in the original sense of the word. I read in Giant Robot magazine (which I am apt to confuse with the Fresh Robots, a San-Francisco-based comedy troupe) that Ang Lee kind of thinks of the female, Michelle Yeoh's character, as the "hidden dragon" of the title. Gives you something to think about -- would our young female character, Chang-Li, be the crouching tiger? Poll: Movie-betterest

Originally published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/1/29/20446/2498

31 Jan 2001, 02:50AM: Learning to Teach; and, Comedy as Power: Okay, continuing my ramble (not 'babble,' one hopes) on career, temperament, teaching, comedy, and talent.

During the week before my fifth comedy show appearance (it was Saturday, 27 January, in 145 Dwinelle, and I was that Indian female who made the jokes about Russia and Fruit Roll-Ups), I wrote a comedy act, a four-minute comic monologue. A few days ago, I wrote the lesson plan that I'll be using today. How similar the processes are!

What do I need to say? What's the best order in which to reveal each piece of information to the audience? Is this the premise or the surprise conclusion? For it is so true that "Teaching is one-quarter preparation and three-quarters theater." Drama is the seductive element in the best classrooms I've ever experienced. What's next? The students want to know.

I'm not going to claim that I'm an outstanding teacher. I don't think I am. I do think that I'm getting better each semester that I teach. And I think that I've been getting better at my comedy, too.

Preparation is really key. I have to think through the entire class and topic. What do I want my students to know or understand that they didn't before? What is the really interesting question here? Why is this relevant? What examples can I use to make abstract ideas more concrete? How does this lesson work in the overall plan of the course? (And it really should be a course; as surely as the course of a river carries the water in its current, the class should carry the students to some new destination. I want my students to have some new synapses in May that they didn't have in January.)

And I have begun to understand the importance of presentation. I used to be ideologically opposed to applying any effort towards the appearance or style of things. My clothes generally reflect that principled energy-conservation. But I am beginning to behave as though it were all of a piece, the content and the style in which I present it, just as the thoughts in an essay require an elegant and coherent organization into paragraphs and sentences.

I can facilitate laughter by arranging the joke a certain way, by placing a particular joke after its analog, by imitating accents, by speaking clearly and using tonal variation. I can facilitate learning by arranging the chairs a certain way, by taking on the tropes of authority in my behavior, by making clear my expectations. I use ordered lists and headings in my syllabus; I use the premise-setup-punchline-punchline-punchline mold in my jokes. It's all about communication, connection, and the tools I can use to get the message across.

I do a lot of unusual, attention-getting things. I teach, I do stand-up, I advertise my class by barking on Sproul Plaza (in the manner of circus publicists), I regularly wear a Linux pocket protector. A dime-store psychologist or a talk-show host might trace this behavior to my past, and say that I do these things because I feel insecure, because I didn't get enough praise as a child, because I always felt as though I weren't in the "in-crowd." And yeah, I can see some of that.

But maybe some of us are just evangelistic by nature, outgoing, friendly, "leaders," and that's not a bad thing, just a temperament, a trait. A trait is what you make it. I'm a born star, you're extroverted, he's a showoff, to paraphrase (I think) W.C. Fields. I think I just really publicly influencing groups. Political science is the study of power, and I'm a political science major. What is power? It's a meme. And I long to construct and spread a really influential meme, the meme heard 'round the world.

Poll: Most influential meme

Originally published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/1/31/145032/262
Filed under: Comedy

31 Jan 2001, 12:18PM: The Arbiters of Funny: I took notes at a lecture, learning about the factors that slow or hasten the formation of new ethnic elites. And then I went to a meeting of the school humor magazine, where white guys decided what was funny. I'm not some reflexively radical affirmative-action equality-of-results By Any Means Necessary gal. But I wonder what makes someone an agenda-setter, even in the realm of humor.

The magazine to which I refer is the Heuristic Squelch, the only intentionally funny publication out of UC Berkeley. And it is funny. It's funnier than a lot of rather sophomoric efforts I've seen. Sometimes it's just, well, sophomoric. But that's to be expected. Humor is, of necessity, a hit-or-miss proposition.

I've been to a few meetings. I've submitted a few articles, and ideas for Top Ten lists, both topics and content. I've gotten little or nothing in, but that's to be expected -- I haven't submitted that much, and editing happens. And my sense of humor is -- again, of necessity -- offbeat. More geeky, more obscure.

Maybe, then again, it's all because I'm an Indian female. What kind of privilege is operating here? Most of the people who work on the Squelch are white guys. I saw a smattering of Latinos and females. I was the only Indian -- I think a half-Asian or two participates regularly.

Maybe, if I had the time and inclination, I'd join the staff, and go to every meeting, and try to get my unique stamp on the humor that the student body reads pretty universally every month. And I'd get experience, and clips, and maybe someday I'd write for Saturday Night Live or a sitcom somewhere or "The Onion" or "Modern Humorist". I'm pretty sure those are mostly guys. Why?

The Kids in the Hall and Monty Python's Flying Circus get cited over and over as comic writers' formative influences. Neither troupe had a single female. Why? And what effect does this have on those who model themselves after them? No wonder sketch shows' casters feel content with a tiny fraction of their casts being multipurpose-workhorse women.

Is it true that women just don't have a sense of humor, or the sense of humor necessary to write humor consistently? There are some consistently funny female comics out there, like Margaret Cho and Janeane Garofalo. Is it a boy's club, where a person who doesn't readily spit out middlebrow tampon jokes doesn't get asked to come back?

I feel whiny. I probably just have to write more and try harder to be funny. I have to work at it -- it's a muscle. Hey -- the same people who don't think my spontaneous ideas are funny in the meeting are the same people who sometimes do laugh at my comedy-night open-mic stand-up routines. So there's probably no conspiracy out there.

I just get a bit annoyed when the prevailing humorous literature out there is banal, often slyly misogynistic, and manifestly unfunny. The free-market and/or punk answer is DIY: Do It Yourself. But I have little time and other, higher priorities. I wonder what I could do to accelerate the pace at which the arbitration of humor is more equally distributed among the truly and consistently funny, regardless of race and gender.

Poll:

Funnier/funniest?

Originally published by Sumana Harihareswara at http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/1/31/01840/3680
Filed under: Comedy

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