Table-Talk of Parkus Grammaticus for January 6, 2008

I. Dzyd Dennis on David Fincher:

There is also the matter of his technical virtuosity, which tends to inspire both admiration and suspicion. A teenage apprentice at George Lucas’s effects house, Industrial Light and Magic, and then a hotshot director of commercials and music videos (including a brace of enormously influential ones for Madonna, at the height of her image-making powers), Mr. Fincher has always been in the business of expensive illusion and manufactured beauty. To call him a superficial stylist misses the point; in many of his films the surface is the substance. It is easy to get lost in — and perhaps as a result, to underestimate — the sheer sensory pleasures of his movies: their dynamic compositions and kinetic rhythms, sinuous camera movements and seamless digital wizardry. —NYT

II. The NYT's Education Life features pieces by PTSNBN EdSupp mainstays Rachel and Christine...niiiice....

III. My sources tell me that new New-York Ghosts have been sighted...

IV. The smell is back! (Via Jane)

V. Forthcoming from Knopf—what if it had been about the drink?

APR 1: Three Hundred Tang Poems.
A new translation of a beloved anthology of poems
from the golden age of of Chinese culture.
Edited and translated by Peter Harris.
An Everyman's Library title.
256 pages. $13.50 ISBN 978-0-307-26973-7

A series of snakes

Something in the air? Two days ago, Dzyd Christine sent in this kinda-sorta Ouroboros from an old TMBG song, "I Palindrome I":

See the spring of the grandfather clock unwinding
(Egad, a base tone denotes a bad age)
See the hands of my offspring making windmills
(Egad, a base tone denotes a bad age)
Dad palindrome Dad
I palindrome I (I palindrome I)
I palindrome I (I palindrome I)
And I am a snake head eating The head on the opposite side
I palindrome I (manonam)
I palindrome I (manonam)
I palindrome I (manonam)
I palindrome I (manonam)

II. Then yesterday Dzyd Fhyll sent this link—new Dizzies stationery?:



III. Then a few hours later, Dzyd Kosiya submitted this quote, from page 31 of Kelly Link's new-old collection, Pretty Monsters:

It was shaped like a snake. Its wriggling tail hooked in to its narrow mouth, and Onion has always wondered if the snake were surpprised about that, to end up with a mouthful of itself like that, for all eternity. Or maybe it was eternally furious, like Halsa.

Dizzies Newsfeeds for November 5

It's a Dizzyhead Ed-Supp ("Edlife"?!) in the Times: Christine answers your questions....Rachel: “These are the quietest classes you’ll ever be in."....Sweeney on a samurai movie, Love and Honor: "Emotions burble, framings are precise, katanas get polished, and the plot flows smoothly until the ritualized duel that may restore Shinnojo's dignity"...In music news: Psychic Envelopes have posted the track listing for Cryspace, available incrementally on their MySpace page. (The second installment has just gone up.)...The Spinster Aunt investigates old Nancy Drew adaptations....Jane Dark on Michael Clayton: "With his blocky size, his surfeit of charisma and screen gravitas, Clooney looks like something beyond the mere human, like he has swallowed every leading man in Hollywood and perhaps had Casey Affleck for a palate cleanser."...Someone remind me to return my library books....