Hi, your fearless scribbler here. When I started this weblog, back when the first complex organisms invented sexual reproduction, I did it with the full intention of playing the Pynchon game: "Don't pay any attention to the man behind the blog." The problem is, you can't play that game when you allow feedback from the void. The little chit-chat between author and that first poor soul who ended reading his deranged rant and felt compelled to answer gets the author's gears going: You know, maybe there really is someone interested in what's on my mind. That lead me to attempt to put a personal stamp to my writing. Still, I feel I must have a closer relation to the reader. Something that will make the postings feel more like a cara-a-cara between both parts; something like showing myself to you. And yet, I don't want to uncover my whole game, so to speak. So here's a little compromise: a composite portrait of the man at the keyboard built with Ultimate Flash Face.

Yikes...

Thanks to Christian Crumlish for pointing the way to this nifty toy.

Thanks again to Miss Feva who led me to this soul-shattering revelation:

I am a spork! I am a mismatched hodgepodge of a personality, and as such, utterly useless.

What kitchen utensil are you?

Ticket Box

Last night I went to the opening engagement of Spirited Away. Well, it was about time! Hadn't this movie been out since some time during September last year? OK, OK... I'll stop complaining. It finally opened at the town I live in, didn't it?

Spirited Away was a heartwarming experience for me. Its story of a little girl crossing into a spirit wonderland and growing through the scary blew away the moody funk I had been feeling for a while. Very nice, very nice, you say, but what's it about? To provide an answer I'll continue my campaign of rescuing New Yorker capsule reviews and post this one from the November 25, 2002, issue:

SPIRITED AWAY
In his native Japan, the animator-director Hayao Miyazaki is considered a national treasure, and this movie, which he came out of retirement to complete, recently surpassed "Titanic" as that country's highest-grossing picture. It's an amazing work, displaying a visual intelligence that's meticulously composed and obscenely clever. Miyazaki's playful aesthetic is like a Japanese word that can't be adequately translated, best approximated as part Spielberg, part Dr. Seuss. "Mature" American audiences may be put off at first by a film that is essentially a cartoon about a fearful ten-year-old girl. But as the hero, Chihiro, sees her parents turned into swine and flees into an alternate world filled with the creatures of Japanese mythology and of Miyazaki's own invention, any distracting sense of childishness falls away. Left to savor are virtuoso touches, like a flock of birds that become useless paper, a train that glides along the surface of a lake, and one of the great villains of all time, Yubaba, who looks like a bobble-headed grandmother on speed.
—Michael Agger

Hey, Omelet, look! With this and the presentation of Frida I saw back in Mexico, I've finally seen all the movies you were asking me about!

Spirited Away one sheet © Disney Enterprises