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May 03, 2004"LXG," sushi, math, Damon Knight, and cheap books...
The Japanese dinner went well. We had a few no-shows, but my ex-girlfriend had made enough sushi to encircle the globe twice over, so we weren't any worse off for the missing entrees the MIAs were to have brought. Actually, ending up with six participants worked out just fine, as A) my dinner table isn't really big enough accommodate the ten guests I had expected, and B) my dining area isn't really big enough to accommodate the dinner table. With ten diners, we would have all ended up with bruised elbows and chafed kneecaps.
A few days ago, I received a curious letter in the mail. The Mathematical Association of America offered me an invitation to join their ranks. Anybody who has known me for any time at all knows of my near-legendary ineptitude in any caliber of math higher than that I'd employ in a supermarket or at the gas pump. To paraphrase Groucho Marx, this really is a case of my not wanting to join any club that would have me as a member.
In other news, it would seem that my frugality knows almost no limits. I drove over to campus today to attend the weekly Highlander meeting and find out if I got a position for next year (I did: head copy editor, one of the positions I held as an undergrad). I had about ten minutes to kill before the meeting, so I headed to the library to look through the secondhand stuff they had for sale. I usually can't find anything to catch my interest among their offerings, but I stumbled upon a Mishima novel, a collection of Damon Knight stories, and a collection of Rod Serling stories. Now, Rivera Library charges more for used books than I'm used to paying--a full dollar for paperbacks (scandalous!), and three dollars for hardbacks (obscene!). The total came to a little over five dollars. I ended up buying the books, but I had to think about it. A whopping $1.80 a book almost proved too rich for my blood. Geez, I'm a tightwad.
Speaking of Damon Knight (the influential S-F editor whose own stories included the memorable "To Serve Man" ["It's a cookbook!"]), this is as good a time as any to mention how bad-ass it would be to have Damon Knight as your honest-to-goodness birth name. I mean, Damon Knight. Think about it. I'd have business cards made.
My copy of "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume II" arrived in the mail today. I had originally ordered it from Amazon.com, who hemmed and hawed and told me it would be delayed. And then told me it would be delayed again. I finally cancelled my order and ordered it from B&N.com, who had it to me in about a week. Amazon should have bought my copy from B&N and shipped it to me; I'd never have been the wiser. Anyhow, I set out to read the two graphic novels so that I could compare them to the film "based" on them for an independent study class I'm taking this quarter. I'd heard nothing but praise for the original material, and nothing but contempt for the movie ("LXG," Hollywood so desperately wanted to call it--figuring, probably correctly, that the full title was just waaaaaay too many syllables for its target demographic).
After my reading/viewing, I'm of the opinion that the praise and scorn were all deserved. The graphic novels are very good, a satisfying read, a fun premise, and bursting at the seams with literary allusions (which have been painstakingly catalogued here by Jess Nevins).
The film was Tinseltown cookie-cutter dreck. Hollywood took everything that earned the original graphic novels a fan-base and threw it out the window. They added characters for crass marketing reasons. They flattened the characters into two-dimensional, interchangeable retreads of innumerable action movie heroes/villains. My essay panning the transformation from graphic novels to movie is already some 2,300 words long, and I'm not done yet.
Posted by patrick at May 3, 2004 06:51 PM
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