Movies in 2026 168

 

Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978)

After watching John Carpenter's The Thing the other night, I guess it was inevitable that we'd end up watchin his 1978 classic Halloween a couple nights later. Somehow Janet (who I always accuse of growing up in a nunnery) had never seen Halloween. It is definitely on the short list for greatest independent films of all time (Carpenter made it for $300,000 and in its initial run it made $70,000,000).  It also inspired an entire genre of movies, most of which, sadly, were terrible (including his own Halloween II). I've always thought that it was much more like a Hitchcock film than a Romero gore fest, with most of the shocks being based on timing and suspense. Movie fans will love the kids watching the beginning of The Thing From Another World on TV, a film that Carpenter would himself remake four years later (and certainly could not have dreamt of the budget for that film when he was making Halloween. Required viewing.

This Dreadful Hour

 This dreadful hour when I shrink to being possible or rise to mortality. If only the morning wouldn't dawn. If only I and this alcove and its interior atmosphere where I belong could all be spiritualized into Night, absolutized into Darkness, so that not so much as a shadow of me would remain that could taint, with my memory, whatever lived on. 

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, text 185

This passage from Pessoa seems to fit the mood I'm in, and the terrible liminality that haunts me.

Other Spaces

 As I mentioned earlier, yesterday was an emotional day, mainly in a wonderful way, but also more than a bit elegiac. Yesterday I emptied out my office. Everyone knows I'm retiring - and I'm filling out a lot of related paperwork - and there have already been two retirement parties - but seeing the desk sitting there cold and depersonalized carried a dreadful finality. Every time I've sold a house over the years and I walked out of it for the last time, I've always thought back to an early Japanese poem, which says (I may be paraphrasing): "Someday someone else will celebrate the Festival of Dolls in your house." That is, your house is your home because of the people, your loved ones, who are in it. I reflected upon that yesterday when I looked at my desk, a desk that could be used by literally anybody next year - sitting in an office that could be used by literally anybody next year. Any remnant of who I am and how hard I worked and what I accomplished will dissipate in a few months, if it lingers that long. I told Janet that one of the strangest things about retirement so for is that for the first time in over forty years I don't have another space. When I was in graduate school at UC, I shared the history graduate TA office and even managed to carve off an unused office for my own purposes when I ended up teaching a year-long large western civilization class. I did the same thing when I was teaching adjunct classes at Franklin College while I was finishing my dissertation. During my nine years at Georgia Perimeter College I had two offices.  Throughout twenty-nine years at Champlain I've had six offices (one in Joyce, one in the library, three in Aiken, and finally one in Wick). I even had offices when I taught in India and the UAE. When I was offered the job at Hong Kong University they went out of the way to show me my office and where my staff would be. The point being that I always had a separate secondary space, and now I don't. For some reason I find that very unsettling. I'm very happy at home, certainly much happier than I've been for the vast majority of those forty years, but you get used to the existence of those other spaces and the freedom and tangibility that they represented.

I'll still pop in throughout the end of June. It's a nice space to sit and write when I'm up in Burlington, and, of course, to spend time with any of my friends who are around. However, soon all too soon, the buildings won't recognize the card swipe (stupid metaphor, working overtime)

Movies in 2026 167

 

The Idle Class (Charlie Chaplin, 1921)

Now that I've entered the idle class, or at least the more idle class, it seemed an oddly well-timed moment to watch Charlie Chaplin's 1921 film The Idle Class. I didn't choose the film for that reason, but life has an odd sense of humor. Chaplin played two roles, the Little Tramp and a generally tipsy upper class wanker, while his long-standing co-starred Edna Purviance played the wife of the latter and mistaken love interest of the former. It's not nearly my favorite Chaplin film, although I liked it. Recommended.

A Microcosm

 Last night I was blessed to have dinner with a couple of my all-time favorite students, Maeve and Ronan. They knew I was retiring, and they wanted to take the opportunity to grab dinner and get caught up. They make up a tiny microcosm of the six-thousand students I taught over the decades, but I will happy take them as stand-ins for the rest. It was an emotional day, and getting to finish it with these amazing young people was a gift.

Besides being great students and folks heading out into very promising careers, they were also two of the folks who founded the non-profit to support the refugee school in Jordan. They are exactly the reason why I did what I did for so may years.

Movies in 2026 166

 

The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982)

After watching Christian Nyby's (or Howard Hawks's) original 1951 The Thing From Another World last week, last night I was able to re-watch John Carpenter's 1982 version The Thing. Janet had forgotten that we had watched it a couple years ago, but about five minutes in the memories began to kick in. As I've stated previously, I think both versions are fantastic, although obviously in very different ways. I knew that they were both based on John Campbell's 1938 novella Who Goes There?, but I assumed that the 1951 film was probably closer to the novella, whereas Carpenter had gone rogue. However, a little research indicated that actually Carpenter's version is closer to Campbell's story. I just downloaded Campbell's story on my Kindle, so I'll be better positioned to add to this commentary soon. It could just be that in 1951 Nyby/Hawks figured that America needed a happier ending than Campbell wrote, especially since a creature which could imitate anything to go unnoticed might have seen as a direct commentary on Communism (and, who knows, maybe that was Campbell's original intent - I'll check back soon on that one). Anyway, both The Thing From Another World and The Thing are highly recommended - and thanks to the Criterion Channel for the doubleheader.

A local cartoon from this week's Seven Days, which gives you a sense of how Carpenter's version has entered the cultural lexicon.

Buon Natale

 And here's another shot from Venice, which was waiting patiently on my phone for some attention. It's not a great picture, but it made me happy nonetheless. 

It boggles the mind that we'll be celebrating the holidays in Sicily next year.