Little Girl Talks about Philosophy

I am not sure if this girl is being coached by an adult, but I thought this was a pretty cool video of a young person attempting philosophical questions.

"Completely Not Me" by Jenny Lewis

"Completely Not Me" by Jenny Lewis was the end credits for "Truth or Dare," the second episode of season three of Girls, the HBO TV show about young women who supposedly are struggling to make it in a world that is too much with us (a slick reference to William Wordsworth).

Repost: Telekinetic Coffee Shop Surprise Prank

My friend Frank Levy showed me this video and he said, "For a moment these people thought anything was possible." Filmed in a West Village Coffee shop, the makers of Carrie, the Stephen King pyromancer reboot, aim for a genuine shock effect. Frank suggested watching it a couple of times, each time focusing on each of the customers' reactions. Even the woman's dog is freaked. What would Baudrillard say about this? I don't know.

Greig's Best Movies of 2013

To add to the glut of "best of" 2013 lists compiled this time of year, here's my authoritative round-up (not!) of the best movies. In my humble opinion.

1.) Blue Jasmine
Cate Blanchett is tragically diaphanous in Woody Allen's newest cinematic addition.

2.) The Bling Ring
Sofia Copola shows us the beauty of the Los Angeles hills and a vicarious glimpse into the celebrity rich through the lens of the children who rob them.

3.) Mud
You may remember Tye Sheridan in The Tree of Life. He gets his chance to shine in this coming of age tale set in Louisiana.

4.) Lore
A Nazi family try to escape capture at the end of World War II in this drama directed by Cate Shortland.

5.) West of Memphis
Damien Echols, one of the falsely accused "West Memphis Three," gets his chance to tell his story in this revealing documentary directed by Amy Berg.

6.) Gravity
I spent more time looking at the spiraling Earth than the actors, but this movie is cosmic and terrifying.

7.) Her
Spike Jonze is one of my favorite directors. Her adds to my admiration. I've been waiting for a movie about computer love for a long time. It's finally here.

8.) The Spectacular Now
This understated movie ends differently than the novel it's based on, but I thought the two young actors were superb in their vulnerability.

9.) Stand Clear of the Closing Doors
Sam Fleischner allows us to follow a young autistic boy who runs away from his home in Far Rockaway to travel the New York City subway alone right before Hurricane Sandy crashes on shore.

10.) Prisoners

Two girls go missing and the result is an irrational rupture of both desperation to find the truth (Jake Gyllenhaal's performance of a local detective) and insane vigilante justice (Hugh Jackman, who plays the father of one of the missing girls).

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Greig's Best Books Read in 2013

Taking my cue from Stephen King in the “Best of” issue of Entertainment Weekly and my High School librarian Margot Polley who every year lists her favorite books, I do the same for my favorite books read in 2013. Note I do not list books necessarily published in 2013, but books I read. This year I read a little bit of everything, so instead of listing books by categories, I decided to just list six memorable books that I thought were awesome. My criteria for selection was whether or not the book was fun to read. If you want to make your own list, go ahead. So here goes …

1. Big Brother by Lionel Shriver

The best novel I read this year. Shriver delivers in her latest diatribe-cum-novel on the healthy eating craze. Pandora Halfdanarson's brother Edison comes to live with her and he's 336 pounds -- a shock to the sister and her nuclear family. The novel glitters with cute tidbits like jabs on healthy eating -- none of the meals Pandora's health crazed husband cooks up are appealing. I love Shriver's nice touches like Pandora's line of talking dolls she sells online that say mean things for people you love. It's standard Shriver replete with an impressive vocabulary and insight into sibling relationships. 

2. Truffaut/Hitchcock by François Truffaut (an interview with Alfred Hitchcock)

The best cinema book I read. Two venerable directors talk about cinema in this classic interview conducted by the French New Wave director Truffaut and stringent auteur Hitchcock. Less on biography and more on form and execution, this book is a fascinating read for cinephiles. I personally love both Truffaut and Hitchcock and I came away with the conclusion that Truffaut makes moves born from his exacting emotional intuition and Hitchcock is the total opposite. Truffaut quizzes Hitchcock on each and every film he ever made and the result is a trip through film history and a rare chance to experience two great movie masters talk shop.  

3. Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach

The grossest book I ever read. I will never think about digestion the same ever again. I hear Mary Roach is famous for writing about taboo subjects like cadavers and stuff, and so I wanted to read her. Do you know why a dog throws up his food? He enjoyed the meal. Did you know that food, as it goes from your mouth to your stomach, is called a bolus? The book is chock full of AMAZING facts about eating and everything that goes with, from the mouth to the rectum. Mary Roach is funny and informative and she has the most clever footnotes ever contrived by an author. The book is not a list of facts about the digestive system. It's more of a series of encounters with scientists who are trying to innovate on everything from saliva to taste buds. 

4. Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story by Jim Holt

The best philosophy book I read this year was written by a journalist. Holt asks everyone who will listen the question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?" This simple question is actually a doozy. Why does the universe exist at all? The universe could just as easily never have existed. I remember in College my Metaphysics professor spent weeks discussing it and I got a dose of it in reading Heidegger. This book does not require philosophical expertise and I think it is a good way to get into philosophy. 

5. The End of Alice by A.M. Homes

Every year I gobble up books written by the same author and this year the winner was A.M. Homes. The End of Alice is about Chappy, a murderer pedophile in Sing Sing who has an epistolary romance with an unnamed teenage girl who is obsessed with a young boy (who likes to collect his scabs and eat 'em). The novel reminds me of Joyce Carol Oates's fictional Dahmeresque novel Zombie. Homes wrote a postscript to the novel called Appendix A: An Elaboration on the Novel The End of Alice that I have yet to read.

6. The Last Pictures by Trevor Paglen

There is a certain class of artificial satellites flung into Earth's orbit that is far enough away to stay within Earth's gravitational field but will never either fall back to earth or drift off into interstellar space. They are, say, stuck. Paglen conceived and implemented a way to preserve human memory indefinitely, even after we are all gone. Attaching a small silicon disk etched with curated black and white photographs, Paglen aims to eternally archive humanity's sojourn on the blue planet. The idea is inspired by NASA's "Golden Record" project for the Voyager spacecraft, but less humanistic. The idea is that even after humans are extinct there will still be these "last pictures," a small testament to our shenanigans. Most of the photographs, like a bunch of wasps affixed with what looks like a jet pack, are only meaningful once you read the liner notes, but I like how Paglen tries to capture us in our foibles and shortcomings.

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On Looking Back at My First Blog Post

Portrait of an Articulated Skeleton on a Bentwood Chair

Yes, this is confessional.
Forgetting that what I post on a blog is read by people, today someone (a student, no less) found my blog online and read my first post. It is an obscurely written poem about Prague and Dvořák. I do like the first line of the poem, "Dvořák strums his fingers on the dashboard, a melodic lilt to the tune of lips," but the rest of the poem is arduous.

Paper in Tree With Unseen Star on the Horizon

I saw a star in the sky at dusk in Brooklyn. The photograph does not do the image justice. Sometimes, what I see with my own eyes is sufficient. Art has failed me.

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The 2013 Veteran's Day Parade in New York City

Kids dressed up as soldiers prepare to march in the New York City Veteran's Day Parade on Fifth Avenue.

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How To Toast Bread

Bryce Chartwell shows the people how to toast bread.

A friend sent me this video. His media studies professor used it as an example of narcissism. If I had to make toast for Bryce Chartwell I would be afraid to mess up the toast! What if I don't do it the right way? This video makes me want to eat toast in the opposite way: over a rough fire, scarf it down, and get my shirt dirty. If it is satire, this video is hilarious. I think it's satire and a good example of consumerism. We don't just want toast. We want the perfect toast. And we are satisfied with the illusion that spreading the butter in an East to West direction and making sure the butter is only one micron thick will achieve satisfaction beyond the basic needs of food and shelter into the meta-realm of desire where toast takes on an entirely different meaning. It ain't toast anymore. It reminds me of people who order specially bottled water at restaurants to feel like the water, in all of its neat packaging is more than just water, it is beyond water. Of course, the structure of desire is such that we are never satisfied. We want more. And more. Capitalism takes advantage of our desire and runs with it. Long live the toast. The toast is dead.

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On Drinking Prosecco And Watching Malcolm (And What Came Of It)

I drank a bottle of Prosecco in the late afternoon. The light had just begun to disintegrate. On my computer lay a MPEG of Malcolm X, a movie I had intended to watch. To my chagrin, I had never watched it and vowed to see it through during a time of inactivity. It is my goal to immerse myself in the cinema. It's been a recent habit of mine to sit in a cinema as often as I can gather the strength to take the D train to Midtown. Sunset Park is lackluster in cinema options. Bay Ridge only plays the shallow greats. Cobble Hill has a decent cinema but I don't take the F train. It's easier to ride into Manhattan, with its jaundiced eyes, and beleaguered denizens. Humanity looks browbeaten on the subway. I sort of feel shameful taking the D train to see a movie during rush hour. Shouldn't I feel just as browbeaten, just as defeated after a long day of work? That's a silly rhetorical question. Maybe these people, these sour brow beaten folks have more money in their pockets than me. They have mouths to feed. Rent to pay. I've paid my rent. I am going to see a movie. I wish they could come with me and rejoice in the pleasures of the visual screen. "It's a screed," I preach. I say. To them. To the woman with the holes in her hosiery, to the overtly masculine boy who keeps picking at his knickers. To the guy, a prince, so fairly laden, he only knows how to ask for something, never

to empathize. It's a guilty pleasure. I don't know why I feel so guilty. Today. I counted them. I saw eighty-six movies at the same cinema. That's not counting the other movies at other cinemas. I feel like Susan Sontag. Or something. Malcolm X. They soaked in information; then they launched onto the world. I feel like I am still a chrysalis in its shell, damned, but I do not know why.

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19 Sayings: From Nietzsche Thinking Intensely (Quotable Nietzsche)

In this post, I select 19 quotable sayings from Friedrich Nietzsche.

Nietzsche Thinking Intensely (image: Flickr/SPDP)

I read "23 Signs You're Secretly an Introvert" in the Huffington Post, and #5 on the list "You've been called 'too intense'" caught my attention. It was accompanied by a nifty drawing of Nietzsche surrounded by a spray of his most quotable quotes in hard-to-read scribble-scratch. I like Nietzsche, so I copied out the quotes, which took some time because the handwriting is atrocious, with the appropriate citations. Nietzsche is very quotable, which is why in Germany, they revere him like the English revere Shakespeare. If anyone knows who created the Nietzsche graphic, let me know.

"It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book."
Twilight of the Idols, Or, How to Philosophize with a Hammer, "Skirmishes of an Untimely Man," Aphorism 51, (1888)

"Is life not a thousand times too short to bore ourselves?"
Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 227, (1886)

"Faith: not wanting to know what is true."
The Antichrist, Aphorism 52, (1895)

"In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.”
Thus Spoke Zarathustra, "On Little Old and Young Women," (1883)

"In music the passions enjoy themselves."
Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 106, (1886)

"Idleness is the parent of psychology."
Twilight of the Idols, Or, How to Philosophize with a Hammer, "Apothegms and Darts," Aphorism 1, (1888)

"All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth, come only from the senses."
Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 134, (1886)

"It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night."
Beyond Good and Evil. ch. 4, Aphorism 157, (1886)

"Madness is rare in individuals, but in groups, parties, nations and ages it is the rule."
Beyond Good and Evil, "Apothegms and Interludes," Aphorism 156, (1886)

"One should die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly."
Twilight of the Idols, Or, How to Philosophize with a Hammer, "Skirmishes in War with the Age," Aphorism 36, (1888)

"Plato was a bore."*
*I am unable to find the exact source for this quote. Plenty of sources cite Nietzsche, but none refer to a text.*

"I love those who don't know how to live for today."*
*Again, plenty of sources cite Nietzsche but without giving credit to a text. I did find in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883) a slightly similar quote: "I love those that know not how to live except as downgoers, for they are the overgoers."

"For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication."
Twilight of the Idols, Or, How to Philosophize with a Hammer, "Roving Expeditions of an Inopportune Philosopher," Aphorism 8, (1888)

"Art is the proper task of life."
The Will to Power, "The Will to Power as Art," Section IV, (1901)

"I cannot believe in a God who wants to be praised at all times."
This quote seems to be a paraphrase of an idea from Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883)

"Fear is the mother of  all morality." 
Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 201, (1886)

"Before the effect believes in different causes than one does after the effect."
The Gay Science, "Cause and Effect," Aphorism 217, (1882)

"If you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."
Beyond Good and Evil, Aphorism 146 (1886).

"Is man one of God's blunders? Is God one of man's blunders?"
Twilight of the Idols Or, How to Philosophize with a Hammer, "Maxims and Arrows," Aphorism 7, (1888)

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Birth of a Star in the Southern Part of the Milky Way Arm

Herbig-Haro object HH 46/47 | ESO

Friedrich Nietzsche on the Abyss

"Beyond Good and Evil", Aphorism 146 (1886).

Decided to rewatch Abyss, the 1989 sci-fi water drama based on a Michael Crichton novel of the same name, and was pleasantly surprised to see it begins with an apt quote from Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil. I don't remember that tidbit when I saw it over twenty years ago. Despite the usual Hollywood spectacle hijinks one expects from studio blockbusters, I have always remembered this movie as not just rather impressive with the special effects (for its time) but also a visually poetic film and one of the better close-encounter-with-the-third-kind kind of movie (of course not to beat Close Encounters of the Third Kind).

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Photography: "Rocks in Brooklyn Heights"

Traffic in Brooklyn Heights (View Through the Mountains)

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Video Repost: "Blah Blah Blah" Supercut by Alex Brown

Creator: Alex Brown
"Blah Blah Blah" Supercut

A supercut of movie Blahs. (...and 1 from TV)
Hollywood scriptwriting at it's best. Try to guess all the movies.
All the clips used in this video fall under fair use for parody.

Here is my list as they occur in the supercut. 

Reservoir Dogs (1992)
Al Pacino in Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) 
Owen Wilson in Wedding Crashers (2005)
Cruel Intentions (1999)
Charlize Theron in Monster (1993)
Ed Harris in Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)
Matt Damon in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)
Richard Dreyfus in Tin Men (1987)
8 Mile (2002)
Cars (2006)
Dinner for Schmucks (2010)
Iron Giant (1999) 
Chev Chelios in Crank (2006)
Vanessa Redgrave in Deep Impact (1998)
A Jon Favreau movie that I cannot identify.
Magnolia (1999)
A girl with princess hat and wand saying blah blah blah (Maybe it's Mara Wilson?)
Bruce Willis in Die Hard (1988
Inside Man (2006)
Unknown movie (Can you help me to identify it?)
Finding Nemo (2003)
A John Cusack movie that I cannot identify.
When Harry Met Sally (1989)
True Lies (1994)
Christopher Walken in Balls of Fury (2007) 
An episode from the First Season of Star Trek on television
Inception (2010)

Drop it Low for Fourth of July

My favorite video - drop it low, y'all!

Photograph Of A Summer Evening Sky in South Brooklyn

"Bedroom at sundown" 

(Sunset Park, Brooklyn)

When I wake up I am up. I do not dawdle. When I shared a hotel room with two friends on a recent holiday, I woke up with a start, dashed out of the bed in our shared room and jumped in the shower. "What the hell?" my friend Michelle said. "How do you wake up like that?" I said that I do not have a transition time. I am up. And I have a distaste for morning routines.

At sundown I enjoy the transition. It is a different time of day and the ending of the day demands a slow-down that easily lends itself to ritual. Sitting on the stoop. Writing emails. Reading the next chapter in the novel I am leisurely poring over.  "Want to come to bed?" one of my boyfriends asked me. "No. Not yet," I told him. I waited on the couch. Finishing a crossword puzzle. Watching another episode of some treacly television show.  

See other pictures in this series.

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To Swim Or Not To Swim?

Floating pool in the Bronx: but I ain't swimming here.

When people ask me what's my favorite sport I'm prone to say swimming, partly because, in truth, I have no favorite sport, and it's the closest thing to a sport I've actually put in more than a half-ass effort, not counting my brief stint at Junior Tee-Ball and Little Boy Soccer at NOAH — not named for the old testament shipbuilder, but an acronym for North of Airline Highway. My Uncle thought this was funny.

So swimming it is.
Every year, around this time, I make a pact with myself to go swimming. I have never really kept the promise. Last year I swam one time at the city pool -- but it was the last weekend of the season before they were shutting down Adult Lap Swim. People take Adult Lap Swim very seriously in this city. Every day during normal opening hours they close the pool down and open it only for those serious about swimming laps. They have those silly lifesaver looking dividers and everything.

I got a card last year to prove that I had done it at least once. The head lifeguard was not amused. "You know we only have a couple days of Adult Swim left, right?" Yeah, I told him. He shrugged and filled me out a card anyway. On the books, I am an official lap swimmer at the Sunset Park public pool.

This year I am making the same pact but I am going to swim at the public pool in Gowanus. I figure a change of venue might put some spring in my leap or something like that. I vow that my pact to swim this Summer will actually work for me since I am viscerally disgusted at what appears to be a belly growing out from my midriff. I know I should not be so body conscious. I have always been a fairly skinny person but I must have inherited my mother's genes. Not that she's fat. Far from it. We used to joke with her that she was always trying to lose a few pounds but now, in my early thirties I can see what she meant. Losing three pounds is damn near impossible.

Damn I need to lay off the Peruvian rotisserie chicken.
When I am actually in the water I enjoy swimming. It's the prep work I disdain. Getting dressed, putting on the goggles, doing all that business. My only successful stint at swimming, unless you count the lessons I took to learn to swim and the many hours I spent as a child swimming at the neighborhood pool (yes I was a sexy stud in Speedos back then), was when I was in college. There was a fine indoor facility blocks from the Philosophy department and I loved to do blocks there after dinner. I was motivated, in part, by my environment. A few people in my dorm loved to swim and it was a fun way to take a break from the rather insular nature of studying Kant and Hegel. It was amazing how as an undergraduate we made those trips to the swimming pool quite fun, even though my bike was stolen a few times, but that was common, everyone stole bikes, so the easiest thing to do was to just steal another person's back. It was a kind of fucked up version of pay it forward. And I remember having many interesting conversations in the locker room about the existence of God. I know you would think locker rooms are bereft of conversation and more of a towel slapping hee-haw we're men and we're naked kinda place. But lemme tell you, a bunch of naked men in one room -- they're bound to get philosophical.

Anywho.
Beyond that time of childhood and college swimming, the only nautical exercise I have had are the numerous times spent at the beach and if you count the many restful evenings with a glass of Chianti in a filled-up bathtub.

So this year I am starting on June 27th (that's when the outdoor swim season starts in New York) at the Douglass-Degraw public pool. I still need to buy goggles. I have my swim trunks! Yeah! Last year I didn't buy any goggles for that one-time-only swim and my eyes paid the price. I'm really a wimp though. I still get scared of jumping in and because of my early memories of the drain at the far end of the pool (in the deep end) I still get anxious goose pimples. I am also dreadfully afraid that I will swim out of my lane and haphazardly swim diagonally into whichever crazy direction I should not go.

It'll be an easy go at first in the slow lane. The fast experts hate people who choose the fast lane so I will respect the fast experts and stick to the slow lane. I really wish I could sneak in a bottle of wine but I might end up dead.

I think this year will be a success.
If I can just tell myself that swimming is good. And oh. I need to buy some earwax because golly I can still remember that Summer I got a terrific earache from pretending I was a dolphin. I did too many flips and stayed underwater too much and my ears suffered and I got this terrible ear infection that pretty much has made me hard of hearing. It's quite an occupational hazard. When I am teaching I never know what questions people are asking so I've learned to read lips. And forget about it if I am in a crowded restaurant and you're trying to tell me an affecting story. It's embarrassing really so I really need to pick up earwax from Duane Reade.

My first lap will be splendid. I will swim and swim and swim. It'll be exhausting. I'm woefully out of shape. Yesterday I ran to catch the B63 bus and Jesus H. Christ I felt like I had done a triathlon. It'll be good though. I am sensing this Summer will be wet and wild.

Do you think I'll make it?
If I could figure out a way to read the New York Times on my mobile app while swimming that'll be an incentive. And oh. Does anyone know where there is a safe and clean place to swim in the Hudson?

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Teacher Rant: Uncanny Moment Grading Papers (Or, Why it is Unsettling Reading Final Exam Essays)

The Pitiful Job of Grading Papers
It's slightly unsettling to grade students' final exams and to read their answers to the essay questions. Some of the students have their own voice and I can tell they understand the question through their own mastery of the concepts. Stellar work, I say, and then there are the students who just don't get the question correct; but, what gets me every time is reading a student's answer that has an uncanny resemblance to my lecture vocabulary and style. It's creepy. I can tell they understand the concepts but they're using my style of delivering the answer. It's not exactly copying. Nor is it their own words — well, sorta — it's their own rehashing of what they remember I said in class. Rather impressive. 
Grading Papers Reminds Me Of How I Wrote Student
I am sure I wrote like that when I was an undergraduate. We really hung onto what are profs said. I really don't remember anything my teachers said about philosophy. I remember the slips of the tongue and non-sequiturs. "Nouns and verbs and *^&*," said one prof answering a kid's query about what the paper should contain. A sensible answer, I thought. Or one teacher in college told us we could choose any color we wanted to write on the board as long as we used its name as if it were a liquor. Green chalk was Chartreuse. That's all I remember. I drink the stuff with relish (and when I have the dough). It's divine.

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image credit: johnkutensky  

Things I Probably Shouldn't Have Said (And Other Faux Pas)

Things I Probably Shouldn't Have Said (And Other Faux Pas) is a book of 13 essays about my journey from New Orleans to NYC. Most of the essays were originally written for this blog, Stones of Erasmus, which I then took out, mishmashed, and turned it into a story about my journey from New Orleans to New York, mixed in with anecdotes about things I shouldn't have said in subway cars, yeshivas, Catholic high schools, my college classroom -- you get the gist. Check it out. I made it into a Kindle Book Here.

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