Errata is a web journal written by Robert Davis who has neither spent a night in a ghost town nor pulled a turnip from the earth. He doesn't even know if turnips grow in the ground. Perhaps on trees, like candy corn. Therefore, Errata is a non-commercial project.

Observation #1: It may be appropriate, when leaving a movie theater, to say "mysterious."

Observation #2: It may be appropriate, when leaving a movie theater, to say "mysterious" at the top of your lungs. Bring your eyebrows together before you say it. Effective!

Observation #3: Same for books. Even at libraries.

There is a prize for people who correctly guess the thing about Metropolis, Nevada.

Except where the text specifically states otherwise, Errata's vagaries are indicated vaguely and its authors are indistinct in the traditional way of the Internet, except where the authors lay claim to their work. In some cases Robert Davis lays claim to work that is not his own but has been abandoned like so many ghost towns. Except where held presently, fistfuls of dirt are suspended via dispersal, or dispersed via suspension (in the air), and thus their dissolution is their transcendence, or their transcendence is their dissolution. And yet our eyes tear, and our vision is impaired, demonstrating for the umpteenth time that one entity's gain is another's fit of sneezes. Except where indicated, storms shall outlive the clay upon which they rain, unless storms are improperly delimited by their clouds, which dissolve, rather than by their inevitable return. Thus the clay loses, unless the clay is said to own the storm, to use it to make itself heavy, to make itself cling to white garments, refuse dispersal, cake upon the facades of abandoned buildings, and sit like Man [sic] upon the earth where it is pelted by a storm that it owns. In which case the clay still loses, if you ask us.

Some of the above is legally binding and should be considered a mental contract between Errata and those upon whom it acts. The bit about the prize should be considered an overstatement insofar as prizes differ from dirt and prize dispersal differs from dirt dispersal. Please recall that ownership is a weight and, therefore, hope that you do not win the prize.

One day Errata or its representatives will call upon you for a favor. It is expected that you will hop-to without delay.

You may contact Robert Davis by email unless it's about the rock that was thrown in anger. The rock is more properly called a clod. Why do you continue to raise the topic?

18 September 2003

Anything Else

2003, United States

director: Woody Allen

American Splendor showed us how Harvey Pekar projects and replicates his neurotic image, but I suppose Woody Allen has been doing that for at least a decade, ever since he's gotten too old to play the part of the young romantic for even the most generous of audiences and hired other actors to step into his shoes. The only other option would be to make a different kind of movie. Jason Biggs is nominally the Young Woody in this movie, but he's not the only one who effects Allen's cadence and aesthetic. Biggs is constantly and increasingly exasperated, except when he gets to unwind with his friends who talk about Humphrey Bogart, Cole Porter, their therapists, and their failed marriages. Kids these days. These 21-year-old Allen clones give the movie an awkward, pinball rhythm when they're put together in the same room, often next to Allen himself, talking past each other with their stuttering comic timing, like a physics experiment about the conservation of nervous energy. Danny DeVito and Stockard Channing smooth the edges a little when they appear, but the movie is never quite funny enough to be so unbelievable. Christina Ricci alternates between lounging in a sheer t-shirt and panties in one scene and tucking the sheets up under her arms in the next, which I guess makes about as much sense as anything else these characters do. While the movie does have a few chuckles, it also feels like a familiar shrug, right down to the uninspired title.

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