John Gibney's 'A Short History of Ireland, 1500-2000' (2017)

John Gibney's A Short History of Ireland, 1500-2000 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017) provides an overview of modern Irish history and concludes each chapter with a "Where Historians Disagree" section.

After reading this and Thomas Bartlett's Ireland: A History (Cambridge University Press, 2010), one thing's clear: the state of affairs in Ireland at the beginning of the 21st century would seem to be far preferable to those of the 1500s and 1600s.  

Anyone who's delved into Irish history will probably know something of the horrors of Oliver Cromwell's activities in the 1600s, but the preceding Elizabethan period was also quite devastating to the Irish people, lands and ecology. Let's dive in, shall we?

In the 1500s, "Ireland offered scope for the unscrupulous to enrich themselves in ways that undermined any claim by the [English] authorities to be acting as honest and impartial brokers . . ." (page 27)

There was "a rise in the levels of violence employed by the Tudor state . . . increasing use of martial law from the 1550s onward . . . In July 1575 the earl of Essex . . . had six hundred men, women, and children killed on Rathlin Island, the stronghold of the MacDonnells, under a commission of martial law. This was gradually extended across Ireland as the reign of Elizabeth wore on . . . summary execution became a widespread practice, and decapitated heads became a common feature of conflict, whether as trophies of war or grisly receipts for rewards."  (page 27)

And pity anyone who found themselves shipwrecked. "[T]housands of survivors of the Spanish Armada were executed in 1588 by [order of Sir Richard] Bingham on the coasts of Galway, Mayo, and Sligo . . ." (pages 27-28)     

"[I]n June 1602 [Charles Blount] Mountjoy embarked on a scorched-earth campaign whose systematic nature and sheer scale marked it out as distinctive . . . livestock, crops, buildings, and people were simply eradicated across the north of the island." (pages 40-41) 

By the time Gibney reaches the 20th century, one is not at all surprised by the Easter Rising of 1916, the Irish Civil War, the Emergency (World War II period), nor the Troubles, nor by mass emigration in the wake of the Potato Famine in the mid-19th century.   

With the arrival of the 21st century, there is peace at last -- but also a looming Brexit and its attendant fallout. Still, much better than martial law and mass beheadings -- and Ireland finally wins.

Today's Rune: Breakthrough. 

Maya Lin: 'Boundaries' (2000), Part II

Maya Lin, Boundaries. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.

I admire the people who've discovered ways to circumvent narrow-mindedness, silos, and local-turf-thinking. Maya Lin is one of those people. 

Maya Lin: "For years the art world saw me as an architect and architects often referred to me as an artist. One professor actually told me I had to make a choice between art and architecture. My fear was that I would become schizophrenic and that my work as a whole would be disjointed and confused . . . the best advice I was given was from Frank Gehry . . . who said I shouldn't worry about the distinctions and just make the work." (4:45)

A tilt toward the mystical, yet practical: "I do not think that we can fully understand how one makes a specific mark upon a page -- at some point one has to trust one's eye, one's intuition, I do not think that that implies a lack of rational thought. I just think that one cannot understand why one makes a specific move, that the creative act is a combination of conscious and subconscious thoughts that cannot or should not be deciphered." (3:09) 

Maya Lin on writing: "I think writing is the purest of art forms. When your thoughts and intentions are conveyed as directly as possible to another person. Words can be the most direct means of sharing your thoughts." (2:05) 

Today's Rune: Defense. 

Maya Lin: 'Boundaries' (2000)

Maya Lin, Boundaries. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.

Anyone aware of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., is aware of Maya Lin's work. Boundaries explores her poetic and philosophical approach to memorials, monuments and architecture in general.

Given ongoing fights over the purpose and placement of memorials and monuments, Lin's thoughts retain their relevance.

With the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, I needed to ask myself the question "What is the purpose of a war memorial at the close of the twentieth century?" My question led me to a study of war memorials, from the earliest funereal stelae to the monuments of the great world wars. I felt that the design should focus on the individuals who died and not on the politics surrounding that war. I sought a design that would bring the viewer to an honest acceptance of the deaths of those individuals. (Boundaries, 3:05).

First World War (1914-1918) memorials resonate with Lin (born October 5, 1959). "The images of these monuments were extremely moving. They captured emotionally what I felt memorials should be: honest about the reality of war, about the loss of life in war, and about remembering those who served and especially those who died." (Boundaries, 4:09).

A monument dedicated to 100,000 missing and unidentified dead from the Battle of the Somme in Thiepval, France, designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, influenced her approach to the Vietnam Memorial (1982). "This memorial acknowledged those lives without . . . creating a political statement of victory or loss. This apolitical approach became the essential aim of my design; I did not want to civilize war by glorifying it or by forgetting the sacrifices involved. The price of human life in war should always be clearly remembered." (Ibid.)

Lin asks, what is the purpose of this memorial? Her answer helps create the design.

When we look at monuments and memorials and placement, and reasons behind their placement and design, we can decide whether they belong where they are or need to be moved. 

If you had to design a memorial for the next major war involving your nation, what elements would you want to include? 

I would emphasize all war deaths, not just military deaths. It's rare to think of any 20th or 21st century war in which overall casualties are not or have not been far higher than strictly military ones.

Much more to consider with Maya Lin's Boundaries -- at some point.

Today's Rune: Initiation. 

Sylvie Germain: 'Night of Amber' (1987, 2000)

Sylvie Germain, Night of Amber. Translated from the French by Christine Donougher. Boston: David R. Godine, Publisher, 2000; originally published as Nuit-d’ambre in 1987.

Here’s a dense and difficult novel that covers the orbit of a strange French family between the end of the Second World War and sometime well after the 1968 uprisings (right into the mid-1980s). If you took a heavy William Faulkner work and blended it with Catholic mysticism and liked the result, this might be for you. Several of the characters are tortured souls, and though there are others that are more delightful, it’s the damaged ones that Germain focuses on the most. Can they gain redemption? Grace? Salvation? Despite vile acts?

Here are some samples of things that drew my attention.

“Music and wind: two naked impulses that give rise to a wandering urge.” (page 81).

“But the time of war was not at all over. In fact it had never ceased. In its impatience and intemperance, the time of war had simply changed location. It liked to carry its fury elsewhere, always elsewhere, that is to say, more or less everywhere.” (page 96).

There’s a fair amount of consideration of the Guerre d'Algérie / Révolution algérienne (1954-1962) and its atrocities, including massacres in Algeria and a deadly police assault against peaceful protesters in Paris at the Pont St.-Michel on October 17, 1961. (The head of the National Police had been a pro-Nazi Vichy official during World War II and was later tried for war crimes dating to that time): «Nobody knows anything about that. No one knows or wants to know.» (page 131). «I saw that crowd marching quietly and peacefully. I saw how the police suddenly charged, encouraged motorists to drive straight into them.» (page 133).

In Paris, the main character (originally from the country) wonders around, observing «stations . . . vast waiting halls filled with movement . . . huge bazaars of people pacing up and down. He never tired of haunting them; he liked to identify the rogues among the crowd . . . There were also the race courses, markets, stadiums, airports, department stores, swimming pools. He had to go wherever it was crowded. He had to get lost in every throng, the better to detach himself from it, to rally himself in his proud, fierce solitude . . . » (page 141).

«Alphabet, keys, and nails: all these formed a strange whirl in Night-of-amber-Wind-of-fire’s eyes, and his gaze up the street and toward the square was that of a diver suddenly rising from the deep.» (page 155).

Back in the country : «The smell of freshly cut hay filled the air, pervading the land and the houses. Even pervading their bodies, a sweetish, heady smell, combining pepper and sugar.» (pages 242-243).

At the Strasbourg Cathedral (Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Strasbourg), an American traveler quips: «You Catholics are a little nuts! Dormition . . . a pretty crazy word, really . . . »  (page 248).

«He was born of a wound. A war wound. That was a long time ago. But war wounds, like the wounds of love, never completely heal.» (page 269).

«This place, like every place in the world, was nowhere.» (page 281).

«Every place, be it empire or hamlet, is but a place of passage. But people passing through places are engaged in a constant relay, taking over and handing on.» (page 285).

«Every place is nowhere, but wherever [a person?] decides to settle acquires enormous power.» (page 300).

«A heart always to be deciphered, footsteps always to be enumerated.» (page 304).

Sylvie Germain (born January 8, 1954) worked for several years in Prague, where I'm intending to visit next year, so I'll pick up more of her books, particularly the ones set there.

Today's Rune: Breakthrough.

'Race Woman: The Lives of Shirley Graham Du Bois' by Gerald Horne (2000)

Gerald Horne, Race Woman: The Lives of Shirley Graham Du Bois (New York University, 2000). Fascinating and well-researched biographical study of Shirley Graham (1896-1977), composer, playwright, writer, human rights activist, and second wife of W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963).

Horne's work stirred up my interest in the anti-establishment scene, especially during the 1940s and 1950s period. Here's a page from Shirley Graham Du Bois' FBI files, labeling her and W.E.B. Du Bois as "colored." Click to see the whole image, as necessary.

What could be a more "Un-American Activity" than a cultural and scientific conference for world peace?  

Harassment, both formal and informal -- including withholding of travel documents and clandestine rifling through living spaces -- by overzealous members of government agencies, etc., actually led Shirley to become more radical as she matured. She became a communist, in fact (in her late forties), inspiring her husband to do the same (in his eighties), and together they moved to Ghana, where they were visited by influential people from all over the world.

Shirley Graham Du Bois and Malcolm X in Ghana (1964)

Over time, Shirley Graham Du Bois tilted away from Soviet accolades toward Red China; top Chinese leaders fêted her and provided medical support. 

The pathetic state of race relations in the United States made race as well as class powerful wedge issues inside the US and globally -- as they continue to be in the 21st century. 

Gerald Horne's Race Woman: The Lives of Shirley Graham Du Bois serves as a needed specific chronicle in support of universal consciousness raising. 

Today's Rune: Partnership. 

Note: Unsure of the provenance of the last photo, but another copy of It can be found here. 

Baldassare Castiglione's 'The Book of the Courtier' (1528), Take I

Let's take a look at another "distant mirror:"* Baldassare Castiglione's The Book of the Courtier (1528). In it, there are observations that reach back to the ancients and forward to the future-present.

In a lengthy discussion between courtly men and women, some of the men quoted by Castiglione scoff at women's abilities. But "the Magnifico" asks: 

"Do you not believe that there are many [women] to be found who would know how to govern cities and armies as well as men do?" 

Lord Gaspar had just quipped: 

"Since you have given women letters and . . . magnanimity and temperance, I only marvel that you would not also have them govern cities, make laws, and lead armies, and let the men stay at home to cook and spin." 

(Third Book, Wordsworth Classics edition, 2000, English translation by Leonard Eckstein Opdycke, page 170).

A mere 500 years later, we discuss the same matters, which are particularly relevant now in the USA. Indeed, one of the major candidates running for president during this year's national election season is, for the first time in the USA, a woman. Too, combat positions have just recently been opened to women in the US armed forces. "The Magnifico" would be pleased, having spoken thus in 1507.

What say ye readers in the 21st century? Should men "stay at home to cook and spin?" 

*Nod to Barbara Tuchman.

Today's Rune: Initiation. 

Of "Tipping Points" and "Black Swan Events"

Started in on Nassim Nicholas Taleb's The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007, 2010+) and am thinking how it seems to dovetail in some ways with Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (2000) and Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (2005). Love this stuff. I'm not the only one by a long shot. In San Francisco, for example, had a fun discussion with a shrewd Filipino taxi driver about his favorite book -- Blink.

Initial response. A couple of recent watershed moments seem like the culmination of long slogging culminating in sudden shifts: LGBT marriage rights (in the USA and globally) and the removal of the Confederate battleflag from government buildings in the USA. These are the result of tipping points -- not complete shocks, but still surprising after seeing only incremental change  over many years.

Black Swan Events seem more "out of the blue." Two examples: one, the sudden plunge in gasoline/petrol prices in late 2014 from which such prices still have yet to "recover;" two, the sudden end to a depressing five year drought in Texas just this past May (2015). 

The drop in gas prices was wild. The follow-up question is, how did various people and groups respond to this change? 

The wild spike in rain in Texas was an even bigger surprise. True, climate change models have long suggested wild fluctuations in historical climate patterns, locally and regionally. However, no one to my knowledge could or did predict with any exactness what happened in the large area in and around Texas. Indeed, it was called a "one in two thousand year event" (when in fact, due to climate change, it may become a one in two year event -- maybe). 

Late spring flooding in Texas was a disaster for many, but overall, such heavy rains suddenly providing a dramatic reprieve to drought conditions is worth noting and remembering in the future. Here, it's generally better to have too much "fresh" water than not enough. There is some general prediction that California might also be rained out because of the formation of El Niño, which if it materializes would provide a tipping point against the current drought, if not (because of fairly detailed models) exactly a Black Swan Event. 

Cool to ponder. What other kinds of tipping points and Black Swan Events have people noticed lately?

Today's Rune: The Self. 

Wong Kar-wai: In the Mood for Love (2000)

With Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love / 花樣年華 (2000), one is bestowed a vision of a way of life in 1962-1963 Hong Kong -- sort of like a miniature Hong Kong Mad Men. Luxuriate in excellent attire, slow-moving scenes, morsels of food, smoking and social mores played out in mostly tight spaces. It's a gorgeous film.  And it's a sort of homage in the use of color and camera to a Jean-Luc Godard film of the actual 1962-1963 time frame -- such as Godard's Le Mépris (1963). The marriage of music, camera movement and scene approaches perfection.   

In the Mood for Love focuses on the strange friendship and understated romance of Mr. Chow (Tony Leung) and Mrs. Chan (Maggie Cheung). We hear but never see in full Mrs. Chow or Mr. Chan -- they in turn are too busy "seeing" each other offscreen. We do see, partly for comic relief, co-workers and fellow apartment dwellers ranging from Mrs. Suen (Rebecca Pan) and Mr. Koo (Chan Man-Lei), who is often drunk, to Mr. Ho (Lai Chen), who has a wife and a girlfriend competing for his time away from work.  

Today's Rune: Journey. 

The Claim

Take Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge: The Life and Death of a Man of Character (1885/1886) and relocate the setting from 19th century England to a mountanous region in the American (actually Canadian) West after the American Civil War, just when the railroad is about to come through. Season with touches of C'era una volta il West / Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), High Plains Drifter (1973) and Deadwood (2004-2006), and voila -- there you have a gilded glimmer of Michael Winterbottom's The Claim. Wintry, mountainous backdrop, warm bordellos and other interior spaces, harshness versus comfort, health versus sickness, choice versus luck.

The ensemble cast of The Claim works well together, but three actors in  particular make it worth the whole kit and caboodle: Nastassja Kinski, Milla Jovovich and Sarah Polley.

I love some of the international variations in the title, giving their own slant, as it were.  In Québécois French: Le maître de Kingdom Come; in "regular" French, Rédemption; and in German, Das Reich und die Herrlichkeit. 

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune.   

Office Space

I've seen all or parts of Mike Judge's Office Space (1999) several times over the years, and every time it gets better, more nuanced. Despite (and because of) changes in communications technology, this irreverent sendup of "modern" office work holds up well. Despite smart phones, flat screens and the ubiquity of digital technology, in all too many places of employ, little of essence has changed. If you have one, a mind is a terrible thing to waste.

Speaking of, what does "hold up" mean?

Like beams keeping a roof in place, preventing it from crashing down.

Hold up can also mean: slow down, pardner.
A holdup is: stop everything -- this is a robbery.
Wholed up -- bunkered down, by choice or necessity.
Hey man, what's the holdup?

Office Space covers every aspect of the aforesaid.

I've learned recently that Office Space was filmed in Texas, not only in Austin but also around Las Colinas (another local source adds Plano to the mix) in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. I can see that clearly now -- from traffic patterns to land use.  

Today's Rune: Signals.   

Lauren Greenfield's 'The Queen of Versailles'

Conspicuous consumption, vacuous gumption. Meet timeshare billionaire David A. Siegel, his loopy wife Jackie, multiple shell-shocked kids, trapped Filipino servants and a heap of hubris. Insight into this crazy milieu comes thick and plenty with Lauren Greenfield's masterful 2012 documentary, The Queen of Versailles. By the end, many will feel sorry for everyone but the Florida-based central patriarch, a man who boasts on film that he was personally responsible for the election of George W. Bush in the 2000 election, and perhaps in 2004, too. This is one of those "stupid Tea Party assholes" that, in the 2012 election cycle just ended, "strongly suggested" to all of their employees that they vote for Mitt Romney or "risk losing their jobs." When his own economic overextension begins to bite him in the ass in 2008, Siegel blames everyone but himself -- especially "the bankers." What a jape. Excellent film.

Today's Rune: Signals.    

Lords of Acid: State Theatre Detroit, February 11, 2000

Lords of Acid: their pulsing music can be heard on many a soundtrack, despite lyrics that are often risqué, ribald or raunchy -- and not necessarily in that order. On February 11, 2000, they put on a very lively, entertaining show in Detroit at the State Theatre, a 2,200 person venue at 2115 Woodward Avenue --almost exactly the same capacity as the Town and Country Club in London -- built in 1925. I was lucky enough to catch several performances at the State Theatre, all excellent, all before it became rechristened the Fillmore Detroit in 2007.
 

Today's Rune: Joy.

Louise Brooks: Away from Hollywood

Louise Brooks (1906-1985) was another independent spirit, reminding me in some ways of Dorothy Parker (1893-1967). They were both sharp and have, over the long run, presented an enduring challenge to cultural norms. Be free, they seem to say, from personal experience. 

Louise Brooks basically flipped off the Hollywood status quo. from the  perspective of the early 21st century, two of her most "real" films were directed by Austro-German  filmmaker G.W. Pabst: Die Büchse der Pandora / Pandora's Box (1929) and Tagebuch einer Verlorenen / Diary of a Lost Girl (1929). They are masterful, indeed, among the last of the original silent film period.

Louise Brooks was not only an alluring Ziegfeld Follies dancer and accomplished, independent-minded motion picture star -- she was also an incisive writer. You quickly catch her take on things in Lulu in Hollywood, Expanded Edition (University of Minnesota Press, 2000), a collection of her sometimes acerbic essays. Here one finds vivid descriptions of W.C. Fields, Humphrey Bogart, G.W. Pabst, Lillian Gish, Greta Garbo and many others, combined with a philosophical dismissal of the Hollywood production code.

Today's Rune: Partnership.
  

Marianne Faithfull: Dreaming My Dreams, Part II

"I left everything for Mick." So notes Marianne Faithfull of ending things with husband John Dunbar and moving on to the next phase. A trumped up drug bust in 1967 made her notorious in the hands of the tabloid press. How could the pop princess have fallen so low as to hang out with "ponce yobs" like the Rolling Stones?

For just a few years, Marianne and Mick were one of the great couples of the greater music scene. Both worked on songs and also tried movies -- she did The Girl on a Motorcycle (1968) and he did Performance (1968) and Ned Kelly (1970). Marianne also did theatrical work: Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters and Shakespeare's Hamlet, playing Ophelia in the latter. By then, heroin had "helped me become a blank" -- and helped make her Ophelia very convincing, apparently. One of the creative high points of this period was co-composing "Sister Morphine" with Jagger, something she found "particularly lovely."

Faithfull muddled through heroin years and solo recording in the 1970s on into the 1980s. Like Keith Richards, she was resilient and lucky, considering the other casualties among the ranks of their peers. The music played on. It's no coincidence when Richards notes, "She's got some guts, that one."  Though vilified in England, Marianne's music and persona were adopted in Ireland. Her version of "Dreamin' My Dreams" was a hit there, its meaning doubled by the ground situation in Northern Ireland known as the Troubles.

An artistic and critical breakthrough came in 1979 with her album Broken English. One musical peer notes that Marianne Faithfull is a "great lyricist because she reads a lot." She also choose cover songs with care and precision.

By the mid-1980s, Faithfull realized that she wanted to live into the future, and she has, continuing to record and perform music right up to the 2012 present. She also happens to be a good writer and actor.

Today's Rune: Flow.

Marianne Faithfull: Dreaming My Dreams, Part I

Thoroughly enjoyed Marianne Faithfull: Dreaming My Dreams (2000), a brief overview of the life and times of Faithfull with interviews, evocative archival footage and more contemporary live performances. "Yes, I guess I do have vagabond ways," she sings, noting also this: "The way I choose to show my feelings is through my songs." Her mother was of the Austro-Hungarian nobility, a group whose status quo was forever destroyed in the Great War of 1914-1918. Her father was a multilingual English spy during the Second Great World War who afterwards joined the Braziers Park School of Integrative Social Research in Oxfordshire (Link to website here: http://www.braziers.org.uk/). Marianne's parents had a rocky relationship that ended in divorce; she was sent to Catholic school, and when she was sixteen, she met John Dunbar at a mixer; he asked her to dance, and soon "a whole doorway opened" as she entered his social world in the early 1960s. He knew William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, looked the part of London hipster on the rise. Things moved quickly from there on out. She met the Rolling Stones and Andrew Loog Oldham, their manager, who directed Mick Jagger and Keither Richards to write a song for Marianne that turned out to be "As Tears Go By," a huge pop hit first for her (in 1964) and later for them (in 1965).

She had more hits, sounding both jaunty and sad, a mix of pop folk and the Kinks. When she became pregnant, she married John Dunbar -- "a completely doomed period of domesticity." Her son Nicholas Dunbar was born in November 1965. Though she mused about living a scholarly family life in Cambridge, John was into the arts scene in London, and Marianne soon found what felt like her perfect match with Mick Jagger.

[To be continued]. 

Today's Rune: Partnership.     

Everything You Know You Want

Another prompt garnered from Zoë Heller's first novel, Everything You Know (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000, first edition, page 32):

"Don't you want to look at the menu?" Penny asked.
"I know what I want," I said without looking up. "I'm having a pastrami on rye."

At any place that even has menus, do you look at one?  How much? How long does it take you to decide to choose something?  And how often do you rotate your types of choices, places, routines and cuisines? 

I've got plenty to observe about this kind of thing, but just now am more interested in your take, dear reader.

Today's Rune: Partnership.  

Everything You Know

Am now thoroughly enjoying Zoë Heller's first novel, Everything You Know (2000). All three of her novels perform double duty as insightful studies in human psychology and manners.

A sample sentence: "I nodded again and smiled, wondering how to get away."*

Dear reader, how many times have you found yourself in this situation?  How do you get away?

*(Everything You Know, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000, first edition, page 114).

Today's Rune: Harvest.

Julien Temple: The Filth and the Fury

FanTAstic and liberating . . . Julien Temple's The Filth and the Fury: A Sex Pistols Film (2000). Yet as I'm posting this, Athens, one of the great world epicenters of democracy, is burning. A sad day among many.

Flashback to 1976. "The working class . . . didn't even understand what working class meant anymore . . . The germ, the seed, the Sex Pistols generated from that . . . a state of social upheaval." -- John Lydon aka Johnny Rotten.

"The Sex Pistols should have happened and did." -- Ditto.

Back in school, "You're supposed to just accept [received judgment about Shakespeare's work]: it's great, you're not." -- Ditto.

"I wanted the Sex Pistols to compete with the Bay City Rollers. . ." -- Ditto.

On Sid Vicious: "He just laughed at everything. He was a genius in that way." -- Ditto.

On Punk: " . . . absorbed back into the System . . ." -- Ditto.

Today's Rune: Fertility.

Dwight Yoakam at Billy Bob's

Got to see Dwight Yoakam at Billy Bob's in Fort Worth, Texas, USA, on Saturday night (January 28, 2012). This wasn't my first time at Billy Bob's, but it was the first time I'd seen a 10:30 pm show there and the first time I'd seen Dwight Yoakam since his July 6, 2000 performance at Pine Knob in Clarkston, Michigan, outside of Detroit. Whereas the Pine Knob concert was an outdoors venue, Billy Bob's was an inside one, with about a 6,000 person capacity.

The way it's set up at Billy Bob's, there's an interior rectangle facing the main stage for reserved seating and a large U lapping it on three sides away from the stage, where mobs of people mill about, play pool, sidle or bluster up to one of the many bar stations, smoke or look at the walls. The best place to be for the music is in the reserved section, of course, but there are flat screen TVs in the back areas so you don't have to miss a beat no matter where you find yourself.

Part of the fun was taking in the audience. It was an eclectic group, as befits Dwight Yoakam's fan base. There was a smattering of Goth and alternative folks and a large contingent of big-hatted people augmented by the Fort Worth Stock Show that's been going on all week. Some of the men looked ridiculous in their outsized getups, but this was more than made up for by numerous women of all ages in buckskin and jeans and cowboy boots or miniskirts and go-go boots and the like. Oh, yes. 

As for Dwight Yoakam and the music, he was as excellent here as he'd been in Michigan nearly twelve years ago. Calm, cool and collected and thoroughly professional, as was his backing band. This guy has a sound that's built to last and he is always worth seeing live where possible.

Today's Rune: Possessions.  

Dominique Deruddere: Everybody's Famous!

The story in Dominique Deruddere's Everybody's Famous! / Iedereen beroemd! (2000) is like a melding of John Waters and the Coen Brothers, only gentler and more Flemish. It ruminates on public adulation of and desire for celebrity status, but is more concerned with humanizing social relationships. In a light but engaging way, Everybody's Famous! works in the manner of several other successful independent films -- modestly.

Jean, a struggling sad-faced middle-aged father (played consummately by Belgian actor Jesse De Pauw) hates the dreary factory job where he's worked for more than half of his life; he is also a musical composer who dreams of seeing his seventeen year old singer-daughter Marva (Eva van der Gucht) become a star using music he writes for her; but his relationship with Marva and his wife Chantal is rocky at best.

Things take a wild turn when Jean is laid off. Out of a chance encounter and economic desperation, he kidnaps a pop diva and everything goes haywire. Where the Coen brothers would go sinister here, Deruddere proceeds, more like John Waters, playfully forward, commenting on celebrity and wealth along the way.  Much hay is slyly made of mirrors and masks, such as when Jean meets the pop diva's comically smarmy manager wearing a bizarre Michael Jackson mask, until the manager reveals that he already knows Jean's "real life" identity: he can take off the mask. Everybody's Famous! is also notable in its use of mobile phones as an essential plot device -- "way back" near the turn of the century.

Today's Rune: Movement.