Il Mondo, 35 years

 

There is a special delight to hearing a song one particularly loves in public, perhaps over a grocery store's speakers, or playing in a cafe, or maybe even walking down the street and hearing it from an indeterminate source. But this delight is doubly intensified when the adored song seems obscure enough, aged, forgotten, or so particularly idiosyncratic, that one would never imagine in a million years that it would be randomly playing in a mall or something.

And so what an exquisite little pleasure I had today!

Oh world! I don't know whether to tell you about the song first, or the hearing of it! Both seem important to go first, and both seem better going second.

And you thought these things just write themselves!

Well, not you, but some of the other people. The ones who aren't quite as good at clerkmanifesto as you are. No shade on them. It's a real skill. Look how hard this one is already!

One of my darling wife and I's favorite romantic comedies is only sort of a romantic comedy. Indeed, it might be the best not fully a romantic comedy romantic comedy: About Time. It is also a very poorly constructed time travel movie that nevertheless works beautifully. It may be the best time travel story that is so poorly constructed. 

Stories are mysterious. 

Anyway, in this movie Bill Nighy plays one of the nicest fathers ever put on screen and...

My darling wife and I were over in the Liberation neighborhood. We were having coffee at a volunteer run church courtyard cafe that was a delightful find. Pleasant courtyards are a bit rare here, and frankly so are the sort of smiley friendly people who might volunteer at a church cafe. We were heading over to check out a somewhat distant ceramics shop my wife was interested in. And after our incredibly reasonable cappuccinos and a bit of walking we were almost there when I noticed an Italian grocery store.

Yes, as you read this we will be in Genoa, Italy. But as of this story, and as I write it, we are still in France. I have seen (and shopped in!) quite a few Italian Delis here, but a full Italian grocery store? No no no. Or as the French say: Non non non! Grocery stores here are either:

a. Giant French/International chains

b. very very small possibly, hopefully independent French stores

c. small giant French chains

So seeing a rather full sized Italian grocery store seemed pretty novel in a number of different ways. Naturally I wanted to go in. So we did.

I could tell you about the product lines and differences of an Italian grocery store, how many more jars of pistacchio crema there was, for instance, but I would have to talk about what French grocery stores are like first. But what I should first talk about is...

In About Time, the lovely father and the main character, his son, are the two time travelers. But that's oddly not all that important because it is more a romantic comedy personal development movie. So they can travel in time but only back in their own lives, where they can change the past only in their own lives. But again, really, if you're interested, I highly recommend it, but there is no need for me to explain it here because the important thing is they love each other and like to play ping pong together. And in the delightful private world of their relationship they also share a love for a slightly eccentric, but fully passionate Italian song by...

And so there I am in the Italian grocery, examining the pocket espressos and gluten free beer that was unfortunately barley malt instead of rice malt. I don't know if there is such a thing as rice malt, but I was clearly mistranslating. They also had these kind of giant half wafer cookie candy bars that looked really interesting when the song playing over the loudspeakers of the grocery store suddenly seemed... familiar.

Oh  my god!

I am actually hearing, in an Italian grocery store in France, the immortal Jimmy Fontana singing

IL MONDO!

I raced all about the store looking for my beloved wife. Finding her I cried "Listen. Listen to this."

"Wait." She said. "I know this." 

And then a small glow of surprise and delight came over her face, the best face in the universe. 

The face I was born for.

Here I offer two ways for you to hear Il Mondo. This first is pretty straight up, Jimmy Fontana singing the song in 1965:

https://youtu.be/woIc2gS4JPQ?si=O4zxarQNKYWIfR0v

The second really is a masterful bit of filmmaking, a scene so complete it could stand for the whole of the movie, so many of the essential characters in the film are so briefly and beautifully sketched here in a few minutes, the music used perfectly and counterpointing the overall themes of the movie. It is wonderful. But it also serves as all kinds of spoilers for the movie About Time, so you might want to make sure you see the movie first, if for some reason you haven't.

Although on the other hand this is an amazing introduction.

https://youtu.be/8j4dMWY11y8?si=zI-APSByyddIRtYf

Fat greek weddings revisited

Finding some pictures I was working on for today's missive coming along rather slowly, and with A VERY IMPORTANT SPAIN WORLD CUP GAME ALMOST UPON US! (sorry, I don't know how my capital letters got activated), I thought it might be a nice day to take one of clerkmanifesto's treasures from out of our vast vaults.

So I went looking.

And I found a post from several years ago where I experimented with taking pictures of cheap crafts in Joanne Fabrics and having them recreated in AI to make them alive and magnificent, or something like that. So then I immediately started taking those pictures and doing the same thing again to mark the vast advancements in these last years. And as I was working on the first of these pictures I thought:

WHAT ON EARTH AM I DOING?

I have a soccer match to watch.

So then I found another post from around that time called "Big Fat Greek Wedding's celebration of love" and I thought, "that doesn't sound very interesting or good."

But it kind of was.

I'm sure any longtime reader will be aware of my passionate arguments on behalf of the romantic comedy, and this one kind of makes me want to write some more of those.

Big Fat Greek Wedding's celebration of love

When talking about great romantic comedies it is easy to overlook My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Modern film culture has a long standing disdain for the romantic comedy, and much to my chagrin whenever they trot out a "respectable" example of the genre it's invariably When Harry Met Sally. I'm always wishing they would have the sense, knowledge, and brio to bring out instead one of the greatest movies of all time, Moonstruck, but I understand any anti romantic comedy bromide is going to be dead at the start if one goes in with Moonstruck.

But if they must bring out one romantic comedy as a poster child for their war, why not My Big Fat Greek Wedding, the Star Wars of romantic comedies, landing in theaters and becoming an absolute sensation. (This isn't the flimsiest comparison: My Big Fat Greek Wedding is the biggest grossing romantic comedy of all time, and it has spawned TV shows and sequels (My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 is coming out this fall!). Because unlike When Harry Met Sally, which appeals to non romantic comedy people by taking cues from more complex relationship movies to soften its romantic comediness, Wedding burrows into the deepest, most lovely heart of the romantic comedy, diffusing some classic elements of the romantic comedy to both invent something new, and yet emerging to capture the secret soul of the genre.

The romantic comedy is full of tropes. But they are just tropes, an assembly of rhythmic accents to the movie. The essentials of a romantic comedy are merely:

Two immensely charming and likeable people amusingly fall in love and get together. 

Nevertheless the traditional romantic comedy usually comes along with a variety of barriers to the love interests getting together. This creation of uncertainty, friction, dissolution, difficulty, and disappointment is not just widely considered essential to most narrative plotting in a romantic comedy, but is also generally considered so for all fiction everywhere. My Big Fat Greek Wedding largely eschews this convention. Our main characters, Toula and Ian, meet cute (sort of), experience love at first sight (sort of again, Ian might need the love to be at second sight), date, and get married. The main problem and impediment to their relationship is that they come from different cultures. This causes tension and comedy, but unlike the impediments of other romantic comedies it never keeps or drives them apart. This mildness and warmth of relationship is the secret success of the movie as a romantic comedy.

Of course, it's also wonderfully funny, possibly more so than almost any other romantic comedy. I didn't know this until recently, but apparently our star and screenplay writer, Nia Vardalos, wrote the screenplay, which no one was particularly interested in. So then she made it into a one woman show in L.A. which she performed to small, packed audiences for many months. This reminds me of how the Marx Brothers, before many of their best movies, took them on the road as theater, endlessly improvising and honing their material, testing what worked best and what got the best laughs, before coming back to film it as a movie. As I understand it, Nia Vardalos likewise tested her story over and over and brought out its best qualities. Not only did this provide a tighter and funnier screenplay, but it surely gave her the confidence to stick to her vision for the movie despite a gauntlet of attempts along the way to production to make it more conventional (which is just another word for marketable). Proposed, or even urged along the way, were different star actors, actresses, and ethnicity (let's make it Mexican American instead of Greek, and hire an Italian American star!). But the most telling changes requested were the ones demanding more problems between our main characters- a competing suitor to Ian, or an infidelity of some kind. The brilliant and revolutionary aspect of My Big Fat Greek Wedding is the one where the movie has such confidence in its characters, comedy, and story, that it dares to get rid of nearly all of the usual narrative tensions in the romance genres. It gives the movie a warm, cozy, and open feel, and yet, despite all odds, leaves its romance every bit as satisfying, if not more so, than the romances built under the more standard "will they won't they" structure.

Plots of all kinds rely on narrative tension and conflict. The thriller is most slavishly devoted to this, and it is also why some of the most driven narratives can feel compulsive, addicting, and even manipulative. But the romantic comedy is no stranger to this structure. And yet its most appealing qualities, its warmth, characters, and rosy environments lie underneath that tumult. There is great craft in creating a narrative that is as little beholden to tensions as possible, and My Big Fat Greek Wedding is a great romantic comedy precisely because it does the unusual work of lessening the romantic narrative tension to give us more of the warmer, more loveable aspects that are at the heart of the romantic comedy. When Harry Met Sally may be a nice reference point for a generic film fan for its filmic romantic comedy ambitions,  My Big Fat Greek Wedding would be a better example for real analysis precisely because it looks into to romantic comedy more than it looks out. It is, significantly, less about the catharsis of love, and more about, like in any good wedding, its celebration.

 

Self promotion to no particular purpose

 

Along the lines of the work I have been showing you, I have been working on a Clerkmanifesto movie poster. I think we could go a bit further, and maybe will later, but here is where we are at this point:

Rain and after

 

It rained for a day and a half here. On the day where it rained start to finish we finally managed to go outside in the middle of the afternoon. It was coming down steadily and the people of this teeming city were maybe affected by it, but it didn't appear to stop anyone from going out in it. The streets, especially the main street, were teeming with people as ever, only it was more annoying for all the umbrellas and gushing awnings.

We tried to be non plussed too. We did some clothes shopping with no success and then went into the glorious and moody old city to have a coffee at our new find there, The Claque, where we had been recently dazzled by a perfectly made rosemary latte. Unfortunately we couldn't manage to track the place down before we had to give up in a fit of pique. We made our way to the ocean as we headed home, and though we were wet, cold, and under caffeinated we could still take some interest in the Paillon River flooding out into the Mediterranean and staining a section of it an unaccustomed brown, churned over by high and beautiful dark waves.

When the rain stopped the next day we went out before going to an afternoon movie showing of "Projet Dernier Chance", a pastime we used to do a lot in Saint Minneapolis in the 90's and now do again in France. The sun was fighting its way out and all the colors seemed to reemerge twice as strong for all it having been hidden by the rain.

I took four pictures at the beach, that I left as is from the camera, and they do or don't tell the story, depending on what the story is, just like this account.

The moment

 

There's a scene in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty where the super cool and awesome photographer played by Sean Penn, perched high in the Himalayas to photograph rare snow leopards, explains how when he finally has the shot, sometimes he just lets it go. That occasionally he just wants to let the moment be, or something like that.

I am not the world reknown and beloved fictional pulitzer prize winning wildlife photographer played by Sean Penn. I am just another guy with a camera phone out on the beach. There are thousands and thousands of pictures taken just on this beach in this city every single day! 

Nevertheless, I think of this little moment sometimes.

I see the most beautiful ocean yet again, the water a strange shade of lurid turquoise every so slightly different than it has ever been before. The Paillon River, usually a trickle or even a stagnant pond, is running richly out from underneath the very center of the city, a lovely aqua green against the rocks and into the sea, while the sea's high waves roll hypnotically up the river. Larger than usual waves smash into a rare break of rocks at the river mouth and a pure white lather of ocean hurls into the sky.

I think 

"That would make a nice picture."

And then, with my wife, I just stand there.

Movie theater

 

Maybe everyday is starting to feel a bit less like a vacation. 

Yesterday we went to open a bank account, a French bank account. These have a bit of a reputation for being difficult, but I feel it went pretty well, so far. We waited in line at the information desk and after a fair bit of back and forth with two people using varying bits of English with our savage French, we were told someone would get us an account. A woman came and took us to her office. 

It was a nice bank office, diffuser scented (mandarin pine?) like many places in Europe. We answered a bunch of questions, showed passports and our proof of residency, which is the very important here electricity bill. Unfortunately this bank account thing is pretty complicated, taking about an hour and a half, and since lunch was in an hour we were told we needed to make an appointment. An appointment was made with this person for two days hence. The documents we would need were described and we were given a couple of extra W-9 forms to fill out for the appointment.

It was a good start!

Working the theme of regular daily life we explored a few hair cutting places and then, for the coup de grace, in the evening, we went to see a movie, in a French movie theater. We certainly have never seen a movie in Europe before as it's not the sort of thing we'd do on vacation. The theater was really close to where the bank is, and where we live, but fairly speaking everything is pretty close to everything else here.

I was excited ahead of the time about the snack bar at the theater. I would think a French movie theater snack counter would be awesome, but it wasn't. It was like a small, neat version of an average U.S. one, with pricey popcorn and the usual packaged suspects. Not everything can be the French dream come true, can it? So no champagne and truffles in the theater. And indeed, to disappoint you perhaps, the whole movie experience was not one of those full of fascinating cultural differences. The small theater, done in red velvet, was in great condition and very clean, but the bathroom floor was sticky. We saw the Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson movie "Song Sung Blue" which is called here "Sur un Air de Bleus". It was the regular movie with French titles and subtitles. The pattern as I can tell, at least at this cineplex, is that the American movies if they're kids movies or matinees are usually dubbed, and the evening adult fare is in the original soundtrack. It was a nice bonus to be able to practice our French a bit with the subtitles below when we felt like it.

The movie was very good, and as we have purged tvs and movie watching at home, it was an especially transportive experience. There's nothing like a real movie in a movie theater for wandering into that kind of living daylight dream. And that just made the last part even stronger. Because the strangest and coolest part of the whole thing was that when we walked out of the bland but nice theater, having been immersed in a movie taking place in Wisconsin, we found ourselves, on the bustling streets of an amazing city, in France.

Events in France!

 

I meant to tell you all about this cheese I got this morning, a little round, self contained thing that was rich and tasted intensely of the grass the cows had clearly been feeding on. It was an amazing cheese, but alas, events in France overtook us!

French legend Brigitte Bardot is dead at the age of 91! 

She died near here, in the one famous town on the Cote D' Azur we may never get to because the train doesn't go there, Saint Tropez. She was a legendary actress you well know from seeing in the movies, er, um

In Case of Adversity

and

The Legend of Frenchie King

and

Viva Maria

All very fine movies, possibly. I don't know. I've never seen one. Maybe you have to be French?

But France took it hard. Hardly a French person I ran into here wasn't abuzz with this sad passing.

I mean, they might be. I wouldn't know. They don't really talk to me except to ask "What cheese would you like?"

To which I answer "That round pretty one made by cow."

Which, it turns out, was a brilliant choice!

It tasted of the very grass that the cows grew strong and healthy on!

We had it with a syrah wine. Oooh la la.

This all may sound a bit glib, but, alas, Brigitte Bardot was, well, a bit of a fascist.

I guess I can run, but I can't hide.

Stories in boxes

 

We had hoped to have a restful interlude in our old Theoule Sur Mer apartment, watching the Winter on the water for several days, but some family health issues combined with the constant details of establishing ourselves in France and preparing our apartment are keeping us too relentlessly on the move. It's not great, but things are moving along in the right direction, and there are still moments everyday in these lovely places that feel like extraordinary hallucinations.

In my downtime I keep a constant stream of story boxes on the boil, a process that has about eight or nine steps to it, and at the end of an inbetween day like today leaves me with ten new ones finished. We'll be back to the city tomorrow and then maybe home here the next day after that, so I'll be running diorama stories here for the next few posts without much explanation since they tell their stories just as well on their own.

That said, we'll start with a little housekeeping, these being some earlier less articulate experimental versions from the past few days that haven't had their moment in the sun:

sixty

 

Clerkmanifesto is going context free for 100 days!

While I retire from 31 years at the Roseville Library, sell nearly everything I own, fly with my darling wife to Japan for 40 days, and then move together to France to start to build a life there, I present a less explained clerkmanifesto, a clerkmanifesto of snapshots and time travel. Below you may see old posts without introduction from my 4,750 post collection. You may see random photos, brand new or years old. I may write a passage about Japan as if of course you know I'm in Japan, I may make a simple observation or joke, but whatever it is, I won't be explaining it. You'll have to take it as it comes.

For more context you are welcome to read this longer introduction.

And if this is all too confusing I welcome you to investigate our thousands of fully explained historic posts from the past 12 years, though I'll be the first to admit, hours later, you may still come away a little confused.

Here, however it works, is what clerkmanifesto has for you today:

This is a prototype of some 3d animation versions I did of my (former!) co-workers and their spirit animals. I am not sure how far this has drifted from capturing the original librarian here. Of all these animations of portraits I find this one particularly charming, maybe because of the praying mantis in it, but it's just lively too. Some day, off in the French future, maybe I'll do something more complete with this series, and maybe not, but here's a glimpse of it. 

There is no sound here. As ever, click to engage, enlarge, and click again to play.

Yesterday, I shared a set of images that were a little closer to the natural Kyoto I’m seeing, and to the kinds of images I’ve been producing in that vein. Many of the pictures I’ve been making lately have invoked Japanese scroll work, along with more fanciful, folkloric additions drawn from my own iconography layered into Japan, and these new ones were more of an attempt at the picture postcard perfect.

The pictures today may not be quite as close to the natural born image as yesterday’s, but they still feel like a nod to the picture-perfect postcard version of Kyoto that we sometimes glimpse here and that I’ve lately been finding.

I suppose I’m inadvertently expressing that they don’t sell many postcards in Kyoto. I had thought I might send one or two back to the people who seem to be drifting further and further away in my life, but I’ve had trouble finding any. And if I do send postcards, I’ll probably end up resorting to the blander kinds that don’t really express what I feel about this city.

Hopefully, some of these pictures will capture it a little better. I’d be delighted if these could be the postcards I send back to the world I left behind. 

And that’s it from Kyoto for today.