lying for a living

Reading that Karen Allen will return as Marion Ravenwood in the new Indiana Jones movie, I thought, “Please, please, please let the movie be great.” Marion is a terrific action movie heroine, and was from the get-go. As Allen explains:

“How can you go wrong when you meet a woman in a bar in Nepal and she’s drinking men under the table, yelling at large men in Nepalese and ordering them out of the bar, and when she first sets eyes on Indiana Jones, she socks him in the jaw?”

Here, in no particular order, are five of my favorite action heroines.

Marion Ravenwood. Just picture her shaking her head, dusting off her hands, and laughing with cynical disbelief as she saunters across her bar toward Harrison Ford. “Indiana Jones. Always knew someday you’d come walking back through my door.” How I love her.

Sarah Connor. Now that’s what I call a protective parent.

Trinity. Cool, collected, and can think her way out of danger as the bad guys close in. From The Matrix:

Neo: Can you fly that thing?
Trinity: Not yet.
Tank: Operator.
Trinity: Tank, I need a pilot program for a B-212 helicopter.

All that, and leather boots I’d kill for.

Lisa Fremont. Okay, Rear Window isn’t technically an action movie. But, my God, did anybody ever look more fabulous than Grace Kelly — climbing over balconies, fighting the murderer, wearing the latest couture from Paris?

Ripley. “Get away from her, you bitch.” Enough said.

IN THE COMMENTS: DJ Paterson notes, “I think even Seven of Nine would struggle to get the better of Joy, from My Name is Earl.”

In the Observer, Henry Porter wonders why, in an age of unprecedented prosperity, “smart aleck cynicism prevails” in western popular culture. Time to put an end to this age of cynicism and scorn.

This weltschmerz and hardened bitterness goes unchallenged. We don’t question why the last couple of generations, brought up in the West with such plenty and ease, with advantages and privileges unimaginable 60 years ago, so often default to pessimism and irony.

Porter calls this attitude “a pose which has become a habit we can’t shake off for fear of seeming hopelessly naive, of the derisive voice that says human behaviour is never virtuous or motivated by altruism.” It’s a “gritty modern ‘realism’, forged in luxury, not by hardship or insight.”

This knowing and fearful cool allows for the expression of very little else - hope, joy, unguarded sentiment, compassion, faith in others, sincerity or the love of simple things.

As one who has fought her own battle against the impulse to snark (we’re talking relentless, unthinking, attack-dog snark, mind you — not good snark), I couldn’t agree more.

Here’s a good story. Beauty has been allowed to outshine, if only briefly, fear and oppression.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - It’s probably as revolutionary and groundbreaking as Mozart gets these days. A German-based quartet staged Saudi Arabia’s first-ever performance of European classical music in a public venue before a mixed gender audience.

The concert, held at a government-run cultural center, broke many taboos in a country where public music is banned and the sexes are segregated even in lines at fast food outlets.

Any government that distrusts Mozart rates low in my estimation. Still, I wish the editors at Yahoo News had written a less provocative headline for the story: A first for Saudis: Mozart performed publicly and women come.

“Entertainment is a sacred pursuit when done well,” he says. “When done well, it raises the quality of human life.”

The Pulitzer-winning, Nebula-winning author of The Yiddish Policeman’s Union explains to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch why writing an alt-history detective novel doesn’t make him a hack.

(Via Sarah Weinman.)

A “grammar vigilante” heads to Seattle in his fight to make the USA “a safer place for spelling.”

The Typo Eradication Advancement League.

(Via Wordsmith.)

Find out how to get involved: The Literacy Project.

I’m doing some events this autumn with one of the projects, the National Year of Reading.

(Via Books, Inq.)

Great news. For me, I mean. For months I’ve felt stymied because I can’t cast call-in votes for American Idol. Living here on Mars, I have to content myself with two-day-late broadcasts and the recaps on Television Without Pity. But now I have another contest to salve me. I can vote for my top five public intellectuals from the 100 chosen by Foreign Policy magazine.

Ooh, will it be Shirin Ebadi and Anne Applebaum? Larry Lessig? Christopher Hitchens? Vaclav Havel? I’d love to hold the contest in front of the Idol judges. Simon Cowell could tell Bob Kagan his neocon lyrics sound out of date, and sneer to Yusuf al-Qaradawi that everything about his performance is appalling. Paula would tell Ayaan Hirsi Ali how lovely she looks (especially with that fire raging in her eyes). And Randy Jackson could stand up and shout, “Mario Vargas Llosa, that was the bomb!”

I need a life.

The comments on “Ain’t gonna happen” have mutated beyond control developed into a playwriting workshop involving a theater production of China Lake. Dan thinks “The ending would be great…like a stage version of ‘Backdraft’.” Susan suggests a ballet: “The long-awaited sequel to Swan Lake.” Don wants the cast to be covered in Reddi-Wip (entirely and only?) but Patti thinks it’s a bad idea to spray whipped cream over a cage full of ferrets.

What, you think it could be staged? Take a look at what’s playing in Berlin this weekend.

Naked German seniors star in post-9/11 Verdi opera.

BERLIN (AFP) - The ruins of the World Trade Center and naked senior citizens wearing Mickey Mouse masks will share a stage Saturday, when a German theatre’s sell-out reinterpretation of a Verdi opera opens.

The Erfurt Theatre’s production of “A Masked Ball” will feature 35 naked seniors wearing masks of the Disney character throughout the performance.

Theater manager Guy Montavon says, “It’s a very beautiful, poetic scene.”

I don’t doubt him. But if I were to attend, I’d take along a can of Reddi-Wip. Don’t know if I’d deploy it on the cast, or on my own eyes, but I’d want to be armed.

IN THE COMMENTS: Monita says, “I have a hunch that seeing 35 naked seniors might inspire in me that rarest of feelings — the urge to iron.”

Yesterday in London the Olympic torch relay turned into a demolition derby. Protesters repeatedly threw themselves at runners and tried to grab the flame, only to be wrestled to the ground by police and the phalanx of Chinese flame-minders who ringed each torch-bearer. More than 30 protesters (out of thousands) were arrested.

A few reactions: The Times says the relay “was reduced to farce and ignominy” as “ugly scenes of protest disrupted the London leg of the tour that was billed as a journey of harmony and peace.” On TV this morning, a police spokesman said he thought things went very well, because the vast majority of protesters behaved lawfully. The BBC’s sports editor, Mihir Bose, commented that rowdy protests are part of what makes a democracy a democracy, but also noted that the repeated scuffles along the route diminished everyone — runners, police, protesters, and the Olympic movement. I have to agree: the sight of a grown man charging at a 90-pound children’s television host and trying to twist the flame from her hand didn’t, to my mind, help elevate the cause of human rights in Tibet.

And what about the police response?

In some cases the Metropolitan Police appeared heavy-handed. Yonten Ngama, a Tibet-born care home worker, was asked by police at Wembley to remove a T-shirt that declared: “China Stop the Killing.” Minutes before he was arrested, he said: “It is difficult to protest. China is powerful also in the UK.”

Five-time Olympic gold medalist Steve Redgrave, the first torchbearer yesterday, was asked beforehand about boycotting the relay, or even the Beijing games. With deadpan cynicism he said he’d consider it — the day the government and global business announce they’re pulling out of China to protest its human rights record.

And so we go to Beijing, where the BBC reports that not one moment of torch-relay discord was shown to the public. On a downtown Jumbo-tron, the evening news speaks of socialist harmony and great advances in tractor deployment. Correspondent James Reynolds says, “Every night, from on high, the Communist party delivers the news.”

And so it does, as shown in the photo above. Just one question.

When, exactly, did the golden arches become the symbol of the PRC?

(To fully appreciate this post, hum the Soviet national anthem or at least “Back in the USSR.”)

On Sunday the Olympic torch will pass through London on its journey to Beijing. Pro-Tibet protests are expected, leading to doubts that the Chinese ambassador will carry the torch as scheduled.

The other night I saw a news report about demonstrations being planned along the route. Tibetans say they’ll protest peacefully. A Chinese student claims the Tibetan situation has been blown out of proportion, and is organizing a Pro-Olympics demo. A police commander warns protesters: don’t try to grab the torch. The reporter adds that the police will have Chinese translators in the crowd and will confiscate inciteful banners.

Confiscate inciteful banners?

That sounded all kinds of wrong, starting with: Which country is a police state, China or the UK? Second, and equally disturbing: is inciteful a word? Had I misheard? I found the BBC’s online version of the report. “The police will also have Chinese interpreters on hand and any insulting banners will be confiscated.”

Insulting banners. That’s worse. Preposterously worse. In London, the police now surveil and punish you for insulting the government of the People’s Republic of China. This is where I live?

But set aside Big Brother, and the darkness descending at noon. I was stuck on “inciteful.” I knew that’s what I’d heard. But it’s not a word, not in any dictionary I own, and I own plenty. Did the police mean insightful? Sure — after they grab “Beijing Sux,” they’ll chase down the guys hoisting “Life’s short: Love like there’s no tomorrow.”

No, that made no sense. Then, finally, I found corroboration. The Telegraph’s Blueplanet had also caught the TV report, and summarized: “the BBC’s security correspondent Frank Gardner warned any would-be protestors that the police were likely to ‘confiscate any inciteful banners’, and he managed to keep a straight face, in a piece that was mostly criticising human rights abuses in China.”

Yeah, well it’s amazing how a straight face lets the surrounding absurdity shine so brightly.

So is this post about writing, politics, or free speech? Sometimes they’re all one thing. Now excuse me, but the police van has pulled up outside to take me to my reeducation session. Time to get my Mao on. And look, Blueplanet’s coming too. Ooh, he looks good in red…