Movie recommendation: The King of Kong

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (2007)
directed by Seth Gordon
79 minutes

The King of Kong is so funny and heartbreaking, its characters so unwittingly self-revealing, that it's easy to mistake the film for a mockumentary. But it's for real, and it focuses on the rivalry between arcade-gamers Billy Mitchell and Steve Wiebe, as they engage in asynchronous combat to achieve the world-record score in Donkey Kong.

In competitive arcade-gaming, as in professional wrestling, there are good guys and bad guys, very broadly drawn. Wiebe, an endearing nebbish, practices on a machine in his garage and travels with his wife and children to an official site in an attempt to set a new world record. Mitchell, the reigning champion, is a well-groomed hot-sauce entrepreneur whom we see moving competitors' products to the back of a supermarket shelf. And as in professional wrestling, an official organization — Twin Galaxies (!) — seems intent upon elevating some competitors and impeding others.

My arcade life is pretty much limited to a Ms. Pac-Man machine in a Boston pizza parlor, circa 1981–1983. But the play's not the thing: you don't have to be (or have been) an arcade-game fan to enjoy The King of Kong.

Thanks to Rachel for introducing the rest of our family to this fine film, available on DVD.

Proust's LiveJournal

Today's Amazon recommendations include someone named Joyce. I should look into that.

Location: My room
Mood: Thoughtful
Music: The heartbreaking sound of nightingales outside the shuttered window of my distant boyhood bedroom
Tags: memory, Mother, fevers, weeping

Read the rest: Proust Discovers LiveJournal (McSweeney's)

Boston English

Jimmies. Regular coffee. Elastic. Bubbler. Tonic. Dungarees. Carriages. Gonzo. Packie. Parlor. Rotary. Bang a U-ey. Hosey. Wicked.

Read all about it:

Wicked Good Bostonisms Come and Go (Boston Globe)
The Wicked Good Guide to Boston English

Memorial Day

From the New York Times, June 7, 1868. This item is Memorial Day's first appearance in the Times.

The Vacation Reading Club

[Poster from the WPA Federal Art Project, artist unknown. Stamped on the back: May 25, 1939. Via the Library of Congress online exhibit By the People, For the People: Posters from the WPA, 1936-1943.]

I'm currently reading Allen Shawn's memoir Wish I Could Be There: Notes from a Phobic Life and Colson Whitehead's novel The Intutionist. What are you reading this May 25th?

Involuntary bicycle

"I rode my bike": I said that in class yesterday morning, when some thunder spoke up to contradict the day's forecast. And I felt for a moment thirteen years old, as if I had been riding my Schwinn Sting-Ray — high-rise handlebars, banana seat, Slik rear tire (no tread), and a basketball under one arm.

Related posts
In a memory kitchen
Proust: involuntary memory, foolish things

Creative timekeeping

In the news:

Hillary Clinton today brought up the assassination of Sen. Robert Kennedy while defending her decision to stay in the race against Barack Obama.

"My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don't understand it," she said, dismissing calls to drop out.

It depends on what the meaning of the word "June" is.

In 1968, the New Hampshire primary took place on March 12. RFK was assassinated less than three months later, on June 5. (He died on June 6.)

In 1992, the Iowa caucuses took place on February 10. Bill Clinton won the California primary less than four months later, on June 3. Writing in the New York Times on June 14, 1992, Tom Wicker noted that "By the time the California primary rolled around two weeks ago, Clinton had the nomination all but in the bag" [my emphasis].

This year's Iowa caucuses took place on January 3, so the 2008 equivalents of June 1968 and June 1992 would be late March and early May. The Clinton campaign's use of "June" as a fixed reference point by which to judge the appropriate length of a campaign is transparently dishonest. And to invoke a political assassination while explaining why one is continuing a campaign: my mind reels.

I now realize that any attempt to think about the Clinton campaign in relation to kleos may be misguided. Kleos functions in a culture of shame, where the abiding concern is what others will think of you. The Clinton campaign at this point is beyond shameless.

Related post
Creative counting
Hillary Clinton and kleos

Hillary Clinton and kleos

I'm teaching the Iliad and the Odyssey in a four-week summer session for undergraduates: two hours of teaching in the morning, five days a week, and preparing for the next class at night. So I have Homer on the brain, and I find myself thinking about the Democratic presidential race in terms of κλέος. Kleos, "what is heard," or, less literally, "fame," "glory," is one of the great moving forces in Homer's Iliad. When, for instance, the Trojan warrior Hector challenges any Achaean to fight him, he promises if victorious to return his opponent's corpse for funeral rites,

"So someone in generations yet to come
Will say as he sails by on the darkening sea,
'That is the tomb of a man long dead,
Killed in his prime by glorious Hector.'
Someone will say that, and my fame [kleos] will not die."

[Iliad 7, translated by Stanley Lombardo.]

To seek kleos is to seek a cultural afterlife in memory and speech.

Kleos in Homer is always a good thing, but as the Greek-English Lexicon points out, kleos can also refer to any reputation, good or bad. So what kleos might Hillary Clinton's actions in the Democratic race attain for her? What will the future say? That she gave her all in an effort to push back the barriers against women's full participation in political life? That when she saw the math against her, she worked to support her party's inevitable nominee and further the cause of racial reconciliation? Or that she damaged her party's chances by taking every chance to characterize her opponent's success as illegitimate? The future is listening, now.

Related posts
All Homer posts (Pinboard)

Louis Armstrong, collagist

Well, you know, my hobbie (one of them anyway) is using a lot of scotch tape.

Louis Armstrong, in a 1953 letter

The Spring 2008 Paris Review has a feature on Armstrong's collages, which cover the fronts and backs of reel-to-reel tape boxes.

The label in the center of the above collage most likely refers to the 1960 Duke Ellington-Billy Strayhorn adaptation of The Nutcracker Suite and the 1956 Ellington-Rosemary Clooney LP Blue Rose.

[The contributor info in the PR notes that Steven Brower's Satchmo: The Wonderful World of Louis Armstrong, on Armstrong's visual art, will published by Harry N. Abrams in spring 2009.]

Related posts
The day Louis Armstrong made noise
Invisible man: Louis Armstrong and the New York Times
Louis Armstrong's advice

A new album from Brian Wilson

In the news:

Brian Wilson will release his first album in more than three years in September, a project that marks his return to Capitol Records, the label where he gained fame with the Beach Boys during the 1960s.

That Lucky Old Sun will come out in the United States on September 2, and a day earlier internationally, Wilson and Capitol announced on Monday during a news conference at the label's historic tower in Hollywood.

"It's a great honor to be here and a very sentimental time in my life," said Wilson, 65, looking relatively healthy in a striped polo shirt, faded jeans and slip-on tennis shoes. "I haven't recorded here in 46 years, almost half a century that I haven't recorded here. Ha!"

That Lucky Old Sun is a collaboration with Scott Bennett (of Wilson's band) and Van Dyke Parks.