Only a Blockhead

Mars-Jones Failing

The Japan Times, quite sensibly, discourages reviewers from writing about books that are worthless.  Why waste the space?  Exceptions, however, are made when a book is overhyped or particularly egregious.  This was the case with Adam Mars-Jones's Noriko Smiling.  They let me take the gloves off:

"I can hardly be accused of being an expert on Japanese film," Adam Mars-Jones assures us early in "Noriko Smiling," his monograph on Yasujiro Ozu's "Late Spring." Such protestations at the beginning of a work are not, in an age that distrusts expertise and celebrates ignorance, unusual. In most cases, though, a writer who makes this move goes on to demonstrate, however obliquely, that he or she is not, in fact, ignorant at all. Mars-Jones takes a different approach.

Read the rest here.

—David

Inspired mistake

Overheard this week in the foreign language room at school:

An English teacher, apprised that his zipper was open, corrected the situation and used it as a chance to teach the idiom “leave the barn door open.”

 Another student arrived just as the explanation was ending, and checked to see if he'd understood: “I see. You left the banana door open?”

--Julian

BA FA

--David

Truth in Advertising

—David

A pause on the Shonan coast at day's end

The sea is dark this afternoon

Eboshi Rock points to the setting sun

The wind is strong

And silhouetted surfers wait for waves

Crows stall; kites wheel

Sand stings my eyes and crunches in my mouth

But I remain until a ridge of cloud swallows the sinking orb

And robs us of the sunset. But, lo, behind me

The white moon hangs magnificent!

And then it too is smother’d in the haze

 

With nothing more to see or say

I cycle on to Hopman for some IPA

 

--Julian

 

Ronald and Nancy Reagan on Drugs

 

--David

A Sidebottom Christmas

 

—David

Found Photo

 

--David

Calves are Less Fragile than Goats

This is not, repeat, not from The Onion.

Buzkashi means, literally, goat-grabbing. It is a very famous game played in North Afghanistan which is a bit like polo played with a dead goat, or rather a calf because the Afghans say a goat is too fragile and the game ends too fast! In this type of polo a scrum of horsemen battle to grab the carcass and break free with it to win the round. It is a very exciting game because there are no rules, no teams and no boundaries. People can go in any direction including into the audience. The game goes on until the carcass is gone or the prizes are exhausted. The Afghan government adopted it as their national game with rules, boundaries and teams, which most aficionados thought missed the whole point of the game.

That's Dr. Thomas Barfield, director of the Institute for the Study of Muslim Societies & Civilization and president of the American Institute for Afghanistan Studies, recommending five books about Afghanistan.

—David