A Special Announcement

Ladies and Gentlemen, your attention please. Thank you all for coming. As we all know, tomorrow is March 15th, the day when it befits us to honor one of history's greatest personalities. No, not Julius Ceasar. I speak, of course, of Caleb M. Bartley.

Caleb was born in the small town of Mumblican in North Dakota, where his family earned their living by using superintelligent llamas to mine the rich veins of coal 12 miles east of the Bartley farmstead. Unlike the other families nearby, the Bartleys did not revere the sacred statue of Vishnu. Their household god was a hard day's work, and Young Caleb's first job came at the age of four, when he began teaching the llamas to differentiate between a live canary and a dead one. His adeptness with the young llamas would prove valuable later in life, when he would convince the heirs to both the Betty Crocker and Cargill fortunes that young children are not really that different from young llamas, and that he could be trusted with the duties of a nanny.

After the supply of coal was exhausted and the superintelligent llamas left to conquer Canada, Caleb and his family moved to St. Louis Park, Minnesota. As they drove to their new home, Caleb discovered the existence of hills, and resolved to be the first person to travel down them by means of stapling two thin boards to his shoes. His determination was redirected but not blunted when he discovered that downhill skiing was widespread and popular, and he quickly joined Blizzard Ski School. This proved especially fortuitous as Caleb was able to combine his newfound interest in skiing with his love of work. Blizzard affored Caleb the opportunity to first call other members in the area to see if they would be skiing that weekend, and later, when his skills improved, he worked as an instructor for younger children (again asserting the lack of difference between children and llamas). It was in the course of the former that Caleb made first unofficial contact with the Kreuser household, a coincidence that would later be remarked upon and marveled at but never explained. The fact that he later became peripherally acquainted with my sister, Kate, is generally dismissed as the Universe playing silly buggers with us all.

Upon moving to Minnesota, Caleb had been enrolled at Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow: Benilde St. Margaret, a catholic school of some repute and resources. He benefitted from the finest education and hockey team money could buy, and his intelligence and resourcefullness often aided him in attempts to extricate himself from lockers, and subsequently fool around with the girls who helped him in out of said lockers. Caleb's school years were hard, because he had unfortunately been stricken with Youngitis, a disease that stunted his vertical growth (which would have otherwise topped 6'3") and caused his features to give him the youthful appearance of a twelve year old. However, Caleb was able to avoid the pitfalls of his ancestors, and did not marry his high school girlfriend. Instead, he used his undeniable intelligence and boyish charm to gain admission to Carleton College.

At Carleton, Caleb blossomed into a beautiful flower of a manly man. Paired with Jesse Belnap as a roommate, he formed half of the original Odd Couple: Caleb got up at 6am to go running, and Jesse slept until 2pm to give himself more time to smoke (both kinds), drink, and do his radio show. He also met the rest of the wacky gang of 1st Goodhue, which included myself, Andrew and Java. Deprived for the first time of a rigidly defined job, Caleb decided to make classwork his job: he kept track of all the time he spent going to class and doing homework, and if he was under 40 hours for the week, he would do flashcards to bring himself up to the required amount. It was this penchant for flashcards that first introduced me to the wonders of the Fubgangerzone (I believe Webster's now defines it as the place where gangs go to fight with nerf bats). And it was the German class that the flashcards were for that would introduce him to Yogi Reppmann, his German professor who initially asked Caleb to help him set up his computer. Little did Caleb realize that he would soon be negotiating shady international business deals and that Yogi would pimp him out to his ever-changing group of Hot German Chicks. Faced with the prospect of losing his only link to the world of technology and his most valuable gigolo at the end of the school year, Yogi was forced to kidnap Caleb and take him to Germany for the summer, where Caleb would defraud the German national telephone company, learn to love both beer and Cuban cigars, drive ridiculously fast cars and finally see Yogi naked. I believe that Caleb's love of international relations stems from this time, since he was forced, at several points, to use all his diplomatic skill to avoid creating an international incident. In exchange for not filing suit against the college, Caleb was accepted into the German off-campus studies program, where he spent fall term learning to enjoy beer even more. It was this love of beer and cigars that Caleb immediately imparted to me when I arrived in Munich for Joe & Caleb's Big Adventure. Eschewing my lack of health, he bought me a liter of beer and a cuban cigar the first night I was there, and I will say this: after drinking a liter of beer, I was feeling much better on the walk home than I was on the walk there. Over the next 7 days, we cut a glorious swath across the German countryside, annoying and confusing the natives, drinking enough beer to stun a Yak and being force-fed enough food to feed a town of starving Mongolians for a calendar year.

When Caleb and I returned from Germany to start Winter term at Carleton, little did we know that we, along with Java, Kathreen, the Sara(h)s and Andrew (when he returned from Mali), would form one of the most infamous rooms Carleton had ever seen. From our amazing adventures in the tunnels beneath Carleton and re-plumbing Caleb's cabin to our own section of the dorm staff meeting, the influence of Goodhue 414 was impressive. We were so prolific that when a friend of Caleb's from Germany came to visit us in the spring, he never saw us actually sleep. There are so many stories from that time that it would be folly to recount them all, but Caleb's involvement can be characterized by the moment when he suggested, at 3am on a Tuesday (or maybe Wednesday), that we should start watching a movie. Caleb pushed our carousing to the limit. I, seeking to do my part to help, acquired the habit of turning Caleb's alarm off in the mornings when it would go off for his 8:30am class.

Caleb continued to cause insanity for the rest of his Carleton career, whenever he was not writing insanely long papers for his advanced Poly Sci classes. Fortuneately, when he becomes famous and tries to deny everything, I have the photographic evidence to prove it all. After more or less taking Junior year off (except for organizing the U.S. branch of the Trip to Visit Joe in London, a trip whose insanity needs no recount here), Caleb was back in top form Senior year, causing fresh chaos with myself and Erik Hanberg as roommates. Nothing could deter Caleb in his quest to buy booze for the freshmen, help Erik hit on the freshmen, and then disappear to London for a weekend. Truly, Carleton will never forget this man who ruled the Rec Center with an iron fist. And if they try (presumably after Caleb gives them large amounts of money), I'll be right there to remind them.

And now, as Caleb turns 25 and is able to rent a car, he looks to the future. Having conquered the hillbilly yokels of Mizzera, he will soon earns MS in International Security and World Domination Studies. Caleb will then move to England, where he will labour to gain entrance into the secret Cabal of Powerful People who Rule the World. Fortuneately, Caleb's lifelong commitment to work will serve him well, and I predict that it will not be long before Caleb manically, yet studiously, runs the world from his office Hoboken, NJ. And if he gets everything done is less than 40 hours a week, he'll do flashcards to bring up his numbers.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I propose a toast: Happy Birthday to Caleb M. (which I think stands for Mountebank) Bartley. Loyal, outspoken, more than a little crazy, with a sometimes acerbic wit and a penchant for drinking beer and then beating up people who make comments about his sister. Caleb Bartley, my Friend. Happy Birthday.

Ong-Bak Review

I first heard about this movie on AICN. It got rave reviews at their annual movie marathon event, but I largely ignored it until I saw a trailer. Then I was hooked. I'm a big Jackie Chan fan, especially his earlier movies which involve ridiculous stunts and fight scenes. Jet Li is cool, but his movies tend to employ wire-fu to some extent or another, which is fine, as long as it's explained within the context of the movie. I like Chan more because, at least in all his early movies, it's actually him doing those stunts. He actually does jump across an alley from the top of a building onto a fire escape. He actually does hang from a helicopter. And he actually does all those cool fighting moves. So Ong-Bak was exciting for me because the star, Tony Jaa, was sold as the heir to that tradition of no stuntmen and no wires, and I'll be damned if it didn't deliver big-time.

First things first: don't go to this movie looking for plot. You'll find just enough to justify the crazy fight and chase scenes, but nothing more than that. Also, you'd be well advised to check any "He couldn't survive that" or "There's no way he could fight after that" attitude at the door, as there are several moments toward the end of the film where both the good and bad guys overcome serious injury to fight at what appears to be their peak ability. One last thing: I found the ending a little confusing. The head of Ong-Bak (the diety/Buddha of a small town that was stolen at the beginning of the movie) has been recovered, the bad guys vanguished, etc., but supposedly at the cost of one of the good guys. But then the scene switches back to the small village and the celebration that the head had to be recovered for. Riding on one of the elephants is someone who looks very much like the guy who you supposed dead a few seconds ago. But they don't confirm this in any way, and I was left wondering if it was that character, or just some monk who looked like him.

There, that's done.

Now, the reason to see this movie: it rocks. The action is fantastic: the fight scenes are very well done, and the chase scene in the middle has some of the most ridiculous stunts I've ever seen. You won't actually believe they did them at first, but the director thought of this problem and decided to show all of the most spectacular stunts in triplicate, and from different angles, just to convince you that absolutely no tickery was used to make it easier for Jaa. I can't even imagine what the blooper reel looks like, but it was worth it, because your jaw will hit the floor about a dozen times before you walk out of the theater. In that chase sequence, Jaa does flips off people, tables, cars, and everything else, jumps through a hoop of barbed wire not much bigger than a basketball hoop, does a sideways flip between two panes of glass that I probably couldn't even get through, and slides a truck by doing a full split, all at top speed. It's amazing. Then, there are the fight sequences. Brilliantly done with some of the most massive hits I've ever seen. I'm pretty sure a lot of stuntmen were very sore after filming this, because it looks like they erred on the side of judiciously hitting them as opposed to judiciously missing them. In fact, the realism is driven home in the first scene, where all the young men of this small village compete to see who can climb a tall tree, retrieve a flag at the top, and then get back down. No big deal, you say? Well, it would be if it weren't full contact tree climbing. The ground around the base of the tree has clearly been dug up, and if they were nice they put mattresses or something under the dirt, but it can't possibly have mattered that much when you still fall from 20 feet in the air, sometimes hitting many large branches on the way down.

This is Tony Jaa's first movie, so it's a little early to crown him as the next great martial arts star, but with the stuff he pulled off in Ong-Bak, you'd be crazy to say that he couldn't be. His next movie, Tom Yum Goong, is filming now (according to IMDB), so I suggest we all wait until we've seen a little bit more of him before the inevitable Jaa vs Chan vs Li vs Lee questions come up. Be careful if you're squeamish about seeing people's heads get cracked by an elbow, but if you like action movies at all, Ong-Bak is the best pure action you're likely to see for a while.

Consciousness, Pericles, and a new Philosophical Theorem

Consciousness is a strange thing. It is our greatest attribute and the one most taken for granted. We live everyday with perhaps the most inscrutable facet of ourselves, the one thing that makes everything else possible. Some of us use it to push the boundary of what we know and understand about the universe. Some create amazing works of art that teach us about ourselves. Some of us look inward, and examine the depths of that consciousness. And some of us watch Jerry Springer and then catch an early showing of Son of the Mask. It took thousands of years of human history before Rene Descartes boiled philosophy and consciousness down to its simplist form in 1637: "I think therefore I am." It doesn't get more basic than that.

That, of course, is all well and good. But as important as thinking and being is, it does confine you to a rather lonely existence. Which is why Descartes immediately followed his first statement with his second: "I get mail, therefore I am." This worked well until the 1990s and the advent of the internet, when it had to be amended to "I get email, therefore I am." I certainly remember checking both my email inbox and Carleton mailbox at every possible opportunity, to see if some new proof of my existence and importance had arrived. But, my friends, I have recently discovered a new form of existential verification that Descartes neglected, possibly because he lived in seclusion in Holland for 20 years. I do not doubt that this form of verification has been discovered and know before this point, but, as I am gloriously unfamiliar with philosophic writings, I will describe to you how I came upon my therom: "I get recognized in bars, therefore I am."

But first, I will give a brief account of the Guthrie Lab's presentation of Pericles. I wrote my review of the text of the play earlier, and I must say the adaptation on the stage took me a little by surprize. The set was excellent. Versital, interesting, familiar and exotic as the scene required. The costumes were also excellent, and here we come to the first, and most notable, aspect of the production. Pericles, through a series of travels, comes to several (I think a total of six) different countries, and the production showed the change in scenery by radically different costumes (which were fantastic) and accents. The accents and mannerisms took a while to get used to, since that didn't really occur to me while I was reading the play. But I realized that it was the best way to show the differing cultures the play was set in, and I admired the international feel that it gave the performance. The dramatis persona was pared down to a meager 17 characters, which was handled by a total of eight actors, who did an excellent job of jumping back and forth. All the characters are played a little over the top, which can often end in disaster. But the director clearly knew what he was doing, and brought the actors right up to the point where their performance gave the play just the hint of the ridiculousness that it needed. It's a long way down for an overacted play: Joel Sass (the director) takes Pericles up to that cliff, takes a long look down, but ultimately decides not to jump. The play succeeds in being colorful and silly without losing its dignity. Of all the characters, I was most surprised how much I was impressed with Gower, an English poet who was a contemporary of Chaucer that Shakespeare resurrects to play the Chorus. The performance (by an actor who I first saw at the Lab in an excellent turn as Othello) was lively, and Sass weaves Gower into the fabric of the action, as opposed to leaving him out in the cold to stand on his own. But what perhaps impressed me most were his actual lines. You would think that I would have gotten that out of the text, but clearly these lines (like so many of Shakespeare) were meant to be read aloud. Gower's rhymes frame the action with a lightheartnedness that belies the seriousness of some of the sequences on stage, and give you the idea that everything is going to end up okay.

But now I come to the meat of this particular post. As some of you know, perhaps my favorite bar in Minneapolis is the Monte Carlo, discovered before the aforementioned Othello performance at the Lab, when we had an hour to kill and wanted something to drink. I have now been there several times, and have kept the tradition of going either before or after Lab performances. It's a fantastic, old school bar and restaraunt. Atmosphere to the rafters but an easy and welcoming style. About half or 2/3 of the public space is given over to dining room seating, but the heart of the Monte Carlo is the bar. About 20 feet long with a copper top, the bar occupies the front of the restaurant and is pretty much all you see looking in from the front window. Running the length of the bar is a mirrored wall that is covered with four long glass shelves, stocked with a plethora of liquor that would be more than sufficient to drop any elephant that had the mischance to wander in and order a drink. I'm always dazzeled by the array of vodkas, gins, tequilas and other hard liquors (including at least three brands of the Scandinavian Akvavit), but when you put me in a bar that makes me feel like I should be wearing a pin stripe suit, a fedora and smoking an extremely expensive cigar, there's only one thing I'll really want to drink. I may start off with a martini, I may order something else, but what I really want is a shot at the largest collection of single malt scotch I've seen in a bar outside of Scotland. And it is therefore fitting that scotch is the reason I can tell you this story.

The last time I had been to the Monte Carlo was about 3-4 weeks ago. Java and I were celebrating the clearing of a number of boxes and packaging materials from his company's downtown offices, and in appreciation they expensed our little dinner. Freed from financial constraints, I ordered a cucumber-infused Hendrik's Gin martini, and then two glasses of scotch. It was the scotch (first a Highland Park and then Oban) that caught the server's attention, and he spent a few moments chatting with me about scotch. Nothing major, just a few remarks that showed he knew what he was talking about.

So. Java and I enter the Monte Carlo after the play, ready to enjoy not only their fine selection of alcohol but also their fantastic teryaki green beans. We sit down on the end of the bar, facing in toward the restuarant. One of the two waiters behind the bar comes up and asks us what we would like. Java orders a vodka tonic. I reply that I want a glass of scotch, but I don't know what kind yet. The waiter gets Java's vodka tonic, sets it down in front of him, turns to me and says: "You were liking the Highlands and the Islays the last time." Being the master of observation, I quickly realize that it is the same waiter we had several weeks ago, and that, against all probability and odds, he has remembered me. "Yes," I replied. "Have you ever tried Lagavulin?" (Pronounced lagga-voolin, and yes, I had to look this up.) "No," I answered, still stunned that this guy (who couldn't possibly have been more than a year or two older than us, if that) remembered me and what I drank a month ago. "Let me get you a glass of that..." And so began my life after being recognized in a bar. And not just any bar, but one of the best I've ever been in. Like finding email in your inbox or a laminated card letting you know you have a package waiting for you, it's one of those experiences in life that makes you feel important. I stumbled into it totally by accident, by virtue of endearing myself to the waiter by ordering from his area of expertise. It's all well and good to go along thinking and being, but every once in awhile it's nice to get some outside confirmation.