Friedrich Nietzsche on the Abyss

"Beyond Good and Evil", Aphorism 146 (1886).

Decided to rewatch Abyss, the 1989 sci-fi water drama based on a Michael Crichton novel of the same name, and was pleasantly surprised to see it begins with an apt quote from Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil. I don't remember that tidbit when I saw it over twenty years ago. Despite the usual Hollywood spectacle hijinks one expects from studio blockbusters, I have always remembered this movie as not just rather impressive with the special effects (for its time) but also a visually poetic film and one of the better close-encounter-with-the-third-kind kind of movie (of course not to beat Close Encounters of the Third Kind).

PDF Copy for Printing

Photography: "Rocks in Brooklyn Heights"

Traffic in Brooklyn Heights (View Through the Mountains)

PDF Copy for Printing

Video Repost: "Blah Blah Blah" Supercut by Alex Brown

Creator: Alex Brown
"Blah Blah Blah" Supercut

A supercut of movie Blahs. (...and 1 from TV)
Hollywood scriptwriting at it's best. Try to guess all the movies.
All the clips used in this video fall under fair use for parody.

Here is my list as they occur in the supercut. 

Reservoir Dogs (1992)
Al Pacino in Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) 
Owen Wilson in Wedding Crashers (2005)
Cruel Intentions (1999)
Charlize Theron in Monster (1993)
Ed Harris in Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)
Matt Damon in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)
Richard Dreyfus in Tin Men (1987)
8 Mile (2002)
Cars (2006)
Dinner for Schmucks (2010)
Iron Giant (1999) 
Chev Chelios in Crank (2006)
Vanessa Redgrave in Deep Impact (1998)
A Jon Favreau movie that I cannot identify.
Magnolia (1999)
A girl with princess hat and wand saying blah blah blah (Maybe it's Mara Wilson?)
Bruce Willis in Die Hard (1988
Inside Man (2006)
Unknown movie (Can you help me to identify it?)
Finding Nemo (2003)
A John Cusack movie that I cannot identify.
When Harry Met Sally (1989)
True Lies (1994)
Christopher Walken in Balls of Fury (2007) 
An episode from the First Season of Star Trek on television
Inception (2010)

Drop it Low for Fourth of July

My favorite video - drop it low, y'all!

Photograph Of A Summer Evening Sky in South Brooklyn

"Bedroom at sundown" 

(Sunset Park, Brooklyn)

When I wake up I am up. I do not dawdle. When I shared a hotel room with two friends on a recent holiday, I woke up with a start, dashed out of the bed in our shared room and jumped in the shower. "What the hell?" my friend Michelle said. "How do you wake up like that?" I said that I do not have a transition time. I am up. And I have a distaste for morning routines.

At sundown I enjoy the transition. It is a different time of day and the ending of the day demands a slow-down that easily lends itself to ritual. Sitting on the stoop. Writing emails. Reading the next chapter in the novel I am leisurely poring over.  "Want to come to bed?" one of my boyfriends asked me. "No. Not yet," I told him. I waited on the couch. Finishing a crossword puzzle. Watching another episode of some treacly television show.  

See other pictures in this series.

PDF Copy for Printing

Teacher Rant: Uncanny Moment Grading Papers (Or, Why it is Unsettling Reading Final Exam Essays)

The Pitiful Job of Grading Papers
It's slightly unsettling to grade students' final exams and to read their answers to the essay questions. Some of the students have their own voice and I can tell they understand the question through their own mastery of the concepts. Stellar work, I say, and then there are the students who just don't get the question correct; but, what gets me every time is reading a student's answer that has an uncanny resemblance to my lecture vocabulary and style. It's creepy. I can tell they understand the concepts but they're using my style of delivering the answer. It's not exactly copying. Nor is it their own words — well, sorta — it's their own rehashing of what they remember I said in class. Rather impressive. 
Grading Papers Reminds Me Of How I Wrote Student
I am sure I wrote like that when I was an undergraduate. We really hung onto what are profs said. I really don't remember anything my teachers said about philosophy. I remember the slips of the tongue and non-sequiturs. "Nouns and verbs and *^&*," said one prof answering a kid's query about what the paper should contain. A sensible answer, I thought. Or one teacher in college told us we could choose any color we wanted to write on the board as long as we used its name as if it were a liquor. Green chalk was Chartreuse. That's all I remember. I drink the stuff with relish (and when I have the dough). It's divine.

PDF Copy for Printing

image credit: johnkutensky  

Things I Probably Shouldn't Have Said (And Other Faux Pas)

Things I Probably Shouldn't Have Said (And Other Faux Pas) is a book of 13 essays about my journey from New Orleans to NYC. Most of the essays were originally written for this blog, Stones of Erasmus, which I then took out, mishmashed, and turned it into a story about my journey from New Orleans to New York, mixed in with anecdotes about things I shouldn't have said in subway cars, yeshivas, Catholic high schools, my college classroom -- you get the gist. Check it out. I made it into a Kindle Book Here.

PDF Copy for Sharing