I saw Milk again on Wednesday, in excellent company. I’d been afraid the film would lose its power on the second viewing, or that I would discover that the subject matter had made me overrate it.

This time I watched the technical aspects of the film — scene length, transitions, camera work, all the cinematic choices that affect a viewer’s experience and emotional reactions. They’re superb; this is a well-made film, and Gus Van Sant seamlessly blends file footage with new scenes. Cinematically, the movie is a triumph.

The end credits are instructive. There’s curly-haired, impish Emile Hirsch next to curly-haired, impish Cleve Jones, and the news that he came up with the AIDS Memorial Quilt. It’s a great way to show the excellence and accuracy of the casting. (Although the photo of the real Anne Kronenberg carbonated my hormones in a way that the actress Allison Pill never did.) The film’s official site offers more information.

But not every character had an update. I was left again with a haunting concern about what happened after the movie to the assassin’s forgotten victims: Dan White’s wife and kids.

Dan White was obviously, in Milk’s words, insecure, terrified, afraid, or very disturbed. Whatever factors motivated him — rage, fear, mental illness, resentment, male privilege, the profound unbalancing effect of the Jim Jones massacre — they didn’t affect only the people he shot, or their families and friends and supporters.

Before he picked up the gun, Dan White must have terrified his wife and children. I’ve had some experience at living with people living in a state of homicidal rage. It leaves permanent scars. When that rage was enacted, when Dan White coolly executed two people, his brooding inner violence became public property.

And so did his family — the sister who bought him soda and cupcakes, his wife, his kids. Their lives, which couldn’t have been easy, given the financial stress and White’s instability, suddenly must have become intolerable. They lost the person they loved (and probably feared); he went to prison. And perhaps they bore a burden of guilt and loss and rage and shame, as well as pride in the man who had always been a hero — high school athlete, Vietnam vet, cop, lifesaving fireman — and the person they loved.

Apparently his wife stood by him; he fathered two more children. But the marriage was reportedly falling apart after he was paroled. I don’t know what explanations they have for his act, nor how they are handling the renewed publicity.

I am not suggesting that the filmmaker should have violated the White family’s privacy by updating us all on their whereabouts and achievements. They deserve a little peace; the film alone is likely to be difficult enough for them.

I just want to say to the universe, and to them if they are Googling: someone is praying for your healing. Someone is praying that you may have peace.

I don’t know if it matters that the someone is a dyke.

Happy 100th birthday, Elliott Carter!

He’s one of the few great American classical composers. And he’s still alive and writing. His work is difficult, exacting, and complex, but it’s worth the work to listen to it. The structure and rhythm offer unexpected pleasures.

My old friend Joe is a world-class Carter fan:

When Aaron Copland, composer of “Appalachian Spring” and the high priest of American musical populism, first heard Mr. Carter’s Third String Quartet back in the early 1970s, he famously remarked, “If that’s music, I don’t know what music is anymore.” (And the two men were lifelong friends.) On the other hand, rockers like Frank Zappa and Warren Zevon were great admirers. Phil Lesh, former bass player for the Grateful Dead, loves Mr. Carter’s work so much he helped to finance a recording of it.

So, yes, it’s tough stuff, but it’s a lot like strong coffee or spicy food. The taste must be acquired, but once it is, much else seems bland in comparison.

Elliott Carter was born in 1908, the first year begun by dropping the ball in Times Square, the first year Mother’s Day was celebrated. An archaeologist discovered the Venus of Willendorf; another uncovered or possibly faked the Phaistos disk.

It was a year of devastating fires and explosions, including the Tunguska event. Henry Ford introduced the Model T. People were pushing boundaries in travel–first around-the-world automobile race, first passenger flight, first airplane fatality–and in expeditions to the North Pole.

A few books published in 1908 have become immortal: Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows; E. M. Forster’s A Room with a View; L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables; G. K. Chesterton’s weird, prescient The Man Who Was Thursday. However, the best-selling novel of the year was written by Winston Churchill–yes, No, NOT the British Prime Minister who declaimed about blood, tears, toil, and sweat. Mr. Crewe’s Career was panned by the New York Times, but that didn’t blight its sales. Nor did prose like this:

Can sublime happiness and achievement go together? Novels on the problem of sex nowadays often begin with marriages, but rarely discuss the happy ones; and many a woman is forced to sit wistfully at home while her companion soars.

Baseball news in 1908 reads like a fantasy — or a nightmare, depending on your loyalties. The Cubs won the World Series (and someday they will again), and the Yankees lost 103 games of 154. “Take Me out to the Ball Game” was a hit song. Cy Young wasn’t an award, he was an active pitcher.

Gustav Mahler’s 7th Symphony premiered in Prague. Arturo Tuscanini began conducting New York’s Metropolitan Opera. And on December 8 two notable musical events occurred: Frederick Delius’ “In a Summer Garden,” premiered, and a small, atonally squalling baby was born in New York City. The baby would matter more.

Carter shares a birth year with others whose work shaped the twentieth century:
Tex Avery and Mel Blanc.
Simone de Beauvoir and John Kenneth Galbraith.
Dee Brown and Louis L’Amour,
Abraham Maslow and Edward R. Murrow.
Milton Berle and Alistair Cooke,
Jimmy Stewart and Bette Davis.
Roger Tory Peterson and Claude Levi-Strauss.
Henri Cartier-Bresson and David Lean.
Simon Wiesenthal and Oskar Schindler.

Strange coincidence: Thousands of miles from New York City, another artist was born on December 11, 1908: Manoel de Oliveira, the Portuguese film director. Like Carter, he is still active.

Much that was fresh and exciting in 1908 is quaintly outmoded now, or cliched, or at best a dull truism. The same is sadly true of much done by Carter’s contemporaries. But the music Elliott Carter has written in the ten decades since his birth is still lively, disturbing, exciting, and intellectually gripping.

Listen to Elliott Carter:
Sonata for Cello and Piano.

Enchanted Preludes

Interview (2008) with Carter.

Rate the Presidents, set #1. Followed by several others.

Star Trek XII: The Wrath of the Search for the Voyage of Finals Week.

One-star book reports reviews. Link from jaylake.

Happy birthday to Rumer Godden, Kenneth Branagh, Emily Dickinson, Doug Kenney, and Rod Blagojevich. Only one of whom is currently under indictment.

You stole my grad school! And not just any grad school (curriculum and faculty): one in poetry.

Too bad we can’t arrest the fungus that is killing vanilla. Don’t count on chocolate or banana, either. In fact, savor your banana splits while ye may. They may go the way of the passenger pigeon.

Busted! for growing marijuana– I mean Christmas trees. Oops. This was not an honest mistake. This was proof that the cops were illegally using thermal imaging without a warrant. Link from oletheros.

Twenty-eight years without John Lennon.

I think this counts as Assault with Intent to Embarrass. And Now, The Best Seasonal Thing You Will See Today.

Go see it.

It’s about the smart, flamboyant Harvey Milk, who spent his first forty-odd years in the closet and the last six as a pioneering gay activist. helping to make the Castro — and all of San Francisco — a safe and happy place to be gay. As a city supervisor, he also crusaded for pooper-scooper laws, public transit, better child care, and citizen overview of the police (who in those days were brutally anti-gay).*

If you’re within traveling distance of San Francisco, go see it at the Castro Theatre. Not just because it is one of the most magnificent movie palaces still in existence, a brilliantly lunatic melange of styles and influences, or because it has a mighty Wurlitzer pipe organ that rises from the floor to be played, or because it has actual curtains that sweep back from the single grand screen when the lights go down. Not even because the theater’s exterior appears in the movie, playing itself thirty years ago. But because the more than 1400 other people there are overwhelmingly likely to fucking get it. And that profoundly changes the experience of watching the movie.

When Milk was being filmed, the Castro district was transformed. The filmmakers wanted to ensure authenticity. Some sections of the film are contemporary footage: Walter Cronkite carefully sounding out “homosexual,” an unfamiliar and dangerous word. (Thanks to wild_irises for noticing that detail.)

Sean Penn’s performance in the title role is riveting. Josh Brolin is scarily accurate as Dan White, But nobody in the film seems to be acting. It all feels 100% real.

The movie is playing at the Castro Theatre until December 23. Showtimes are 1pm (matinee), 4pm, 7pm, 9:45pm. I know the holiday season is jammed with other commitments. But this is important.

I’ll be going again, probably a matinee on a Wednesday or Friday — I’ll let people know. I’d love to get a group together, but with or without me, you should try to see it at the Castro.

*These days things are different: Police Commissioner Theresa Sparks is a transgendered woman.

So: where were you in November 1978? What were you doing?

Stalker, sweetheart, or SOB? A formula for determining the value of any given romantic relationship.

The mathematics of maintaining a solid relationship. The basic ratio of 5 positive interactions to every negative one applies, IMX, to every kind of relationship — friendship, romance, work, whatever. Do read the linked interview; there’s a lot more to Gottman’s research than that.

ETA: The Divorce Calculator!

I spotted this while reading up on the horrors of Black Wednesday, which is truly depressing to anyone who loves books or editors.

Please do not leave human ashes in Miss Austen’s garden. In fact, please don’t leave any human remains, whatever their condition–whole or partial, raw, smoked, pickled, or burnt. It annoys the servants, As well it might. Imagine coming to work in the morning to trip over chunks of Aunt Matilda.

Zombie haiku. Link from supergee.

Goodbye, Patient H.M. If there is an afterlife, he’ll be able to see–and remember–the huge impact his life has had on cognitive science. No one else has ever given his life so wholly to it. For more than 50 years he participated in essential research.

As Mindhacks explained,

HM was suffering from incapacitating epileptic seizures that were not helped by any of the medications of the 1950s.

As a last resort, neurosurgeon William Scoville tried an experimental operation to remove 8cms of tissue on both sides of the inner parts of his temporal lobes, including both hippocampi, hopefully also removing the source of his seizures.

Neurosurgery to treat otherwise untreatable epilepsy is still common and highly effective, although this type of operation isn’t used any more.

This is largely because HM’s seizures reduced considerably, but he was left with a severe amnesia, meaning he couldn’t seem to lay down any new conscious memories, although could remember things that occurred before his surgery.

Because of his seemingly unique memory impairment and an exact knowledge of which brain areas were missing, he has become a regular in neuroscience research that has aimed to understand what his impairment tells us about how normal memory is supported by the brain.

From all reports, HM–Henry Molaison–was glad to participate in the studies. He knew he was doing good in the world.

One of the greatest of America’s singers has died. Odetta had a strong, clear, pure voice, and she sang with both skill and feeling. At 77, she was still touring–and singing from a wheelchair.

Good night, sweet Queen. May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.

some of her singing, courtesy YouTube

Evidence against:
Personals from Ayn Rand followers:

Lewis: I love intelligent, sassy girls, particularly those working in consulting or investment banking (but other fields are great too). Really, nothing is hotter than an accomplished girl in a suit, as long as she is willing to settle down and have my children. I want a girl who will support my ambitions against the naysayers in society.

Thanks to alanbostick for the link.

Evidence in favor:
An octopus/interior decorator:

Staff believe that the octopus called Otto had been annoyed by the bright light shining into his aquarium and had discovered he could extinguish it by climbing onto the rim of his tank and squirting a jet of water in its direction….

“Once we saw him juggling the hermit crabs in his tank, another time he threw stones against the glass damaging it. And from time to time he completely re-arranges his tank to make it suit his own taste better – much to the distress of his fellow tank inhabitants.”

That’s from mactavish, source of many amazing nature links.