Lost In Translation

The Russian Debutante's Handbook

I stumbled across Gary Shteyngart’s entertaining first novel, The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, which is the story of a Jewish American Russian immigrant coming of age in his post-college days in the late 90s. Since this is time is analogous with my own life I could relate to his description of glam nerds and the grunge fashion germinating out of the Pacific Northwest. And even though I didn’t live in Prague, which is where Vladimir Ghriskin find himself halfway through this novel after a mix-up with a well-connected guy who was looking for some rough trade. However, I did travel in Europe and one of my friends was doing the typical ex-pat thing in Prague that so many people were doing in the 90s, and Shteyngart has these people pegged the same way Arthur Phillips did in his novel Prague about being artistic ex-pats living in Eastern Europe. I think I enjoyed the first half where Vlad gets his first decent girlfriend before having to flee to Europe where Vlad is a little les sympathetic after becoming socially and economically successful for the first time in his life. He doesn't necessarily seem more humble for it. It’s a long novel but a quick read nonetheless and fairly entertaining all in all. I may have to check out his latest Absurdistan: A Novel.

Driving License Odyssey

I recently changed my Washington State driver’s license over to a Japanese driver’s license at the Kanagawa Driver’s Licensing Center in Futagawa, Yokohoma. And let me tell you what a tedious process it was. First you have to have your driver’s license translated at Japan Automobile Federation.

Then when you make your first visit you bring 1) your license and the translation, 2) Alien resident card, 3) all of your passports (including any expired ones), 4) proof of having driven in your home country more than 90 days (more on this later-because this was a problem)-I had my complete driving record form Washington State, 5) one passport size photo.

First of all I had the wrong information. I thought it was open from 8:30-4 with a lunch break, so I went after 1:30 and found out you can only submit document between 8:30-9:00 and then from 1:00-1:30.

The next time I went, I found out that I had to bring my old expired passport and that my Washington State driving record didn’t count because it listed only my most current license, which is valid from 12-28-2005 until 03-18-2011. There’s nothing about driving from1985 till 2005, so it wasn’t acceptable. Luckily I had 3 or 4 expired licenses that I had been carrying around with me while in Japan. I brought these the next time I visited.

After my paperwork was processed I took a simple writing test with 10 questions in English. You are allowed to miss 3of the 10, I missed 2. Then they give you a driving test date if you are American, South American, Sri Lankan, or Indian (at least these were the others that had the take the test with me). Canadians, Europeans, Australians, and Brits don’t have to take the driving test for some reason. I can understand those from countries who drive on the left, but why Canadians? They drive on the right like we do.

Anyway, the test was the following week on a Tuesday at 8:30am (did I mention it was more than an hour round trip from my house?) Only 2 people in the two groups passed the test that day there were people that were on their 3rd or 4th try. I had heard via the Internet that you could take a practice session on Saturday for 8000 yen to learn the secrets to pass the test. One guy who took thee hours worth still failed because he didn’t check over his shoulder enough during the course. I failed because I hit a curb and made some other mistakes as well like not making turns tight enough. The guy who drove before me did the Sunday course after failing his first test and recommended it as the only way of being able to pass it. I was tired of making the trip out there so I signed up for it.

The following Sunday I paid to rent one of their cars and an instructor drove with me giving me pointers how to driver the course, then showed me how to do it herself, and then I drove it one more time. There are a couple of spots where you are not supposed to go over 10 km an hour and need to stay left on wide road 1 m away form the curb-typical anal Japanese "yarikata" (way of doing things) BS. 22 years of driving doesn’t count a lick here.

The next day I took the test the evaluator didn’t give me any advice this time and I passed. I guess they can see on the application sheet you took the course and are probably more inclined to pass you. I still only got an 80/100 and have no idea what they think I did wrong.

Well, at least I don’t have to go there again until I need to renew my license in less than three years.

Recent Viewings

I've been passing the time by watching some films recently. Here are some of the films I've been watching:

The Kingdom: I was surprised that I liked it as much as I did considering it starred Jamie Foxx and had some melodramatic moments, but it was surprising well-written for an action film. There were some great supporting actors though with Jason Bateman, Chris Cooper, and Jennifer Garner. It highlighted several f the cultural differences between Muslims and westerners while dealing with global politics in a seemingly factual, objective manner.

We Own The Night: it had a promising start as an old school, New York cop drama. But I think some of the cops were too old to be playing their roles, especially Robert Duvall, I mean what is he 75? Joaqin Phoenix was great as the playboy black sheep running the Russian-backed disco. Eve Mendes always looks good to me. Marky Whalberg is starting to get typecast in these hard-ass up and coming cop roles. The second half of the movie moved from unlikely to implausible as he crossed over to the cops' side to avenge a hit on his brother. If you want an old school New York cop drama, I recommend American Gangster over this mediocre fare.

The Darjeeling Limited: Meh, another quirky, precious offering from Wes Anderson. There are some nice moments, but I didn't really buy these people as real characters they seem like a series of self-conscious traits that take the place of character that make the actors seem merely one or two dimensional. Great soundtrack and cinematography-forgettable plot and characters.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford: There were standout performances by Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck, as well as beautiful and impressive cinematography. But the pacing of the film absolutely glacial-I fell asleep several times during the two and half hour running time. Perhaps, more for the serious moviegoer, but if you want to see a well-made modern western, I'd recommend 3:10 to Yuma instead.

Friday Night Lights Season 1

I had heard a lot of good things about Friday Night Lights, so I decided to check it out. I think it's a good concept for a TV series-the idea of following a small town Texas football team, which is the hear t and soul of the tiny Dillon, over the course of season. They took the basic framework from reality that inspired the fine film from Peter Berg. They were able to develop characters more fully than in the film and expand on some themes and issues like race, teen sex, steroids, academic cheating, corruption, fidelity, non traditional families, are among these themes and issues addressed. For example the star quarterback is injured in a play in the first game and is paralyzed and we follow his plight to come to terms with his condition as he looks to quad rugby as his salvation. Then we have the coach and his family, his wife (a counselor at the school), and his daughter a student at school. Then there’s the laconic, pretty boy loner fullback Tim Riggins. The naïve and overwhelmed quarterback pressed into duty, Matt Severson, and the loud brash, but talented halfback “Smash” Williams. The there are other characters that are girlfriends/friends/family members to the main core. In particular I can’t remember many shows that had this many non-nuclear families. The soundtrack is impressive without being intrusive. My only complaint is that it sometimes gets too melodramatic, especially where there is some editorializing football commentary over voicing. But I enjoyed Season 1 enough to continue to follow this show, which I have heard is in danger of being canceled due to low ratings. And that would be a shame.

The Cult Canon: Donnie Darko

The AV Club's Scott Tobias has started an interesting new feature, The Cult Canon, and the first film is Donnie Darko:

In embarking on the mammoth, open-ended project that is The New Cult Canon, I face the scary and exhilarating prospect of a journey with no set course and no planned destination, but there was never a question that I'd be leaving port with Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko. To my mind, Donnie Darko is the quintessential cult movie of the last 20 years: Here was a much-hyped washout at Sundance that fell to a second-tier distributor (Newmarket), which released the film to middling reviews and feeble arthouse box-office (barely half a million when all was said and done). The film was left for dead until, miraculously, word of mouth started to swell and an audience steadily grew and rallied around it. The Pioneer Theater in New York ran it as a midnight movie for two years—this at a time when the midnight movie itself had long been left for dead. And DVD sales were so robust that Newmarket attempted to re-release the "Director's Cut" theatrically. (It tanked a second time, too.) The movie has inspired a level of obsession that separates cult phenomena from the everyday hits that wither past opening weekend.

Ping Interview: Sumie Kawakami

Ping Magazine interviews author Sumie Kawakami, author of the fascinating Madame Butterfly:

While Japan has an enormous sex-related industry, married couples don’t seem to do it that often (we’re not sure whether to believe mere stats: According to a Durex survey, Japan ranks last internationally in terms of sexual activity.) And this would be the case in many modern societies as well… So for the last two years, author Sumie Kawakami gathered interviews of various Japanese women to depict this one aspect of society: Her latest book, Goodbye Madame Butterfly: Sex, Marriage and the Modern Japanese Woman by the superb Chin Music Press portrays eleven sex lives in painstaking detail. Today PingMag talks to Sumie about the heart of relationships.

Death And Taxes

In this week's Daily Yomiuri Behind The Paper Screen column, Sawa Kurotani discusses how idioms and proverbs reflect cultural values and how they are often difficult for non-native speakers to understand without the cultural context from which they were created:

Linguistic anthropologist Benjamin Whorf proposed that the language frames the human thought process and color our recognition of reality. Surely I would have never thought of the connection between death and taxes without this popular quote. But in fact, it was recent events that triggered my thoughts about it. Earlier this month, as I began to prepare for an upcoming meeting with my accountant to go over my 2007 taxes, I received the sad news that a highly respected member of the local expatriate Japanese community suddenly died of a heart attack. He was only 60 years old, in good health and had no known heart problems. The news came as a great shock to those of us who knew him.

I looked at the manila folder on my desk, where I keep all my tax stuff. I'm good about keeping receipts and such, and my meeting with my accountant should go smoothly. In a week or so, he'll send me the prepared tax forms, which I'll sign and mail to IRS, and I'm good for another year. If we can't avoid taxes, we can, at least, prepare for them.

By contrast, there is nothing that truly prepares us for death.

Click here to read the entire article.

The Coen Brothers

David Denby of The New Yorker takes a look at the career of the Coen brothers and he seems to come to many of the usual critical conclusions that have dogged them over the years. Here are some of his observations:

In the past, Joel and Ethan Coen have tossed the camera around like a toy, running it down shiny bowling lanes or flipping it overhead as naked babes, trampolined into the air, rise and fall through the frame in slow motion. Now they’ve put away such happy shenanigans. The camera work and the editing in the opening scenes of “No Country” are devoted to what the hunter sees and feels as he inches forward: earth, a brush of wind, and the mess in front of him, the remnants of a drug deal gone bad. So powerful are the first twenty minutes or so of “No Country”—so concentrated in their physical and psychological realization of dread—that we are unlikely to ask why Chigurh kills with a captive-bolt gun (the kind used in killing cattle) rather than a revolver, or if it makes any sense for Llewelyn, a likable welder and roughneck, to return to the scene with water for a wounded man after he’s made off with two million dollars in drug money. “No Country” is based on Cormac McCarthy’s 2005 novel, and the bleak view of life that has always existed in the Coens’ work merges with McCarthy’s lethal cool. After these initial scenes, Chigurh poses hostile and unanswerable questions to the baffled owner of a roadside gas station (Gene Jones), and the mind games are prolonged to a state of almost unbearable tension. Watching the movie, you feel a little like that gas-station owner—impressed, even intimidated.

Here's a dismissive judgement of two of my favorite Coen films that are often criticized for being "too stylized" that I find hard to swallow:

If “Blood Simple” suggested that the Coens didn’t want to make a thriller so much as tease one into existence, “Miller’s Crossing” (1990) sported with the form in heavier and grimmer ways.

***

But the situations and the dialogue are so stylized—so manically fretted with crime-genre allusions and tropes—that the Coens killed whatever interest we might have taken in their story or in their hero. Perversely, they invented a new form of failure, acting in bad faith toward themselves.

Does every film have to be The Shawshank Redemption? Typically he has some nice things to say about No Country For Old Men, Fargo, and Raising Arizona. Surprisingly he has praise for The Big Lebowski. Overall, I think he's too critical, dismissive, and possibly oblivious to what the Coens were trying to achieve in their films.

The Assassins' Gate

The Assassin’s Gate by George Packer is an excellent overview of the American War in Iraq and its subsequent occupation and trouble with insurgents and warring factions. Packer does an excellent job of reporting talking to those who responsible with their ideology, the major players, ground soldiers, Iraqis, and pundits. Thus he begins by looking at neo-conservatism and its role in moving ht US toward war with Iraq, from there he follows the invasion and the subsequent nation building and the series of stunning leaderships mistake that added to the postwar chaos: de-baathification, dismissing the army, and not stopping the looting that took place after the government was toppled. This put the country into chaos, which was then fanned by the perceived disrespect of an occupying force that didn’t treat the people with respect and humanity. On top of this you have religious, political, and personal conflicts adding to the violence as the insurgency spread and intensified. Violence is now a daily part of life in Iraq-roadside bombs, attacks, and suicide bomber strikes almost daily.

I think Packer sums up my opinions on this situation rather astutely when he says (on p. 390):

I came to believe that those in positions of highest responsibility for Iraq showed a carelessness about human life that amounted to criminal negligence. Swaddled in abstract ideas, convinced of their own righteousness, incapable of self-criticism, indifferent to accountability, they turned a difficult undertaking into a needlessly deadly one. When things went wrong, they found other people to blame. The Iraq War was always winnable; it still is. For this very reason, the recklessness of its author is all the harder to forgive.

Primer: The Kinks

The AV Club's Primer series takes a look at the seminal British rock band, The Kinks:

Primer is The A.V. Club's ongoing series of beginners' guides to pop culture's most notable subjects: filmmakers, music styles, literary genres, and whatever else interests us-and hopefully you. This week: The Kinks, broken down by 20 songs that define their themes and styles, and five albums that every serious rock fan should own. Kinks leader Ray Davies releases his latest solo album, Working Man's Cafe, next week.

The Kinks 101

In early 2008, The Kinks wound up, oddly and out of the blue, at the top of the U.S. album chart. Admittedly, that didn't have much to do with Ray Davies and company, who have been on hiatus as a group since 1996. It was Juno's recent Oscar nominations that catapulted the film's soundtrack into Billboard's number-one spot. And nestled between the disc's indie-pop and classic rock cuts is The Kinks' "A Well Respected Man," a top-20 hit from 1965 that predicted the wit, sophistication, and iconoclasm the band would make its trademarks.