It may be that she’s trying to keep it quiet, since she’s (ahem) passing a significant milestone, but I hope you’ll go on over to Clancy’s site and wish her a happy birthday.
You didn’t really think you could keep it quiet, did you, Clancy? 😀
(p.s.: On that big milestone birthday, I’ll again offer the hope that folks might go out and rent the cheesy sci-fi classic Logan’s Run — but, hey, if not, cake’s a good thing too. Best wishes, Clancy!)
Clancy’s Birthday
Thanks. I wasn’t really trying to keep it a secret. I mentioned it in the Music block on my blog, in comments over at Michelle’s and Jenny’s, and in the “The Unfolding of the Discourse” post (should be “a discourse,” but oh well, too late to change it now); I just didn’t do a special post about it for the RSS readers is all.
I’ll rent Logan’s Run if I can find it, but I have to say, I haven’t had great luck with your movie recommendations so far, Mike. I tried so hard to get into Hellboy, but I simply was not feeling it. Right now I’m watching Alias, and I want to see Hero before it leaves the theatres.
Re movies — well, I guess we just have different tastes; I couldn’t stand Farscape, and thought the relaxed and easygoing loopiness of Hellboy was certainly more enjoyable than the pompous grimness of that final Matrix movie. Happy 30th anyway! Hope you celebrated well.
Sorry — I didn’t intend that to sound snarky, but it did. Thanks again for the birthday shout-out; I do sincerely appreciate it. 🙂
(I have to clarify one thing, unimportant though it is: While I stand by my love of Farscape, I didn’t think the final Matrix movie was that great. I was excited to see how the story was going to end, and I thought it was aight, but since seeing it in the theatre, I’ve had no desire to see it again.)
30 never bothered me; 35 did. But as I close into 40…
Happy BD!
Mike,
I find it funny that you brought up Logan’s Run. I am working on a project now about public policy and the silver screen. My movie of choice for this happened to be Logan’s Run. Great movie. One of my favorite movies of all time. The line when Logan tells the girl “Well, if you don’t want to have sex why are you wasting my time?” is priceless. So indicative of the era in which it was made. See ya.
Yeah, it’s definitely a movie of its time, Rob — ’70s cheesiness, but with fears of widespread societal crime embodied in Logan as a hunter of ‘runners’ and the whole depraved-society subtheme, mixed with grudging acceptance of the counterculture movement, and even (!) growing fear of machines and robotics with that freaky surgery segment. Somewhere, I’m sure, some earnest grad student has already done a brilliant cultural-studies dissertation on the movie, with the final chapter being a tour de force analysis of the last scene’s juxtaposition of Farrah Fawcett’s emoting and the broken-land geographical references.
Which is all to say, it’s still a really cheesy 70’s sci-fi movie. Only the joke, which I might as well give up now since its relevance to Clancy’s birthday is now long since past, is that the movie exhibits wonderfully Malthusian fears about the anticipated overpopulation of the future, and offers as a remedy a world where people are only allowed to live until they’re 30. Once they start approaching 30, a crystal embedded in their palm starts blinking red, which is a societal sign (performativity, anyone?) that it’s OK for this person to indulge their libidos however they like, since they’re gonna have to die soon — and, of course, their subsequent indulgences are smiled upon.
The money shot or jouissance associated with such attitudes, in the movie, is the early balletic nearly-literal circle-jerk scene in which 30th-birthday boys and girls jump into the middle of a circle of their societal peers and are laser-exploded into bits. So, yeah, sure, it’s silly as hell: but re public policy, gender attitudes, and so much more, it’s got a lot to say about its era, and as you point out, in doing so, it’s cheesy fun. Only it’s also the kind of cheesy fun that makes you stop and say, “Wait — were we really worried about that?”
But, y’know, that exploding balletic circle-jerk is pretty much the only reason I recommended it to Clancy. And, well, hell, to anyone else turning 30. 🙂
Follow-up: after posting the above comment, I decided to do some poking around on the web, and found a neat extended critical essay on the movie that uses Herbert Marcuse, Freud, and biblical metaphor to make some smart points. Some of the arguments are problematic, but it’s worth a look.
Mike,
Nice link. The one thing about this movie that nobody seems to pick up on is the use of the “Plato’s Cave” metaphor at the end. When Logan and his companion return to the city (the cave for metaphor purposes) they are confronted with the daunting task of trying to convince everyone that the world they know is total rubbish and thus a complete lie. It was a great use of the philosophical dilemma despite the fact that it was terribly unrealistic to think that two people in the span of a few minutes could affect change that quickly. Regardless, it is a great example of 70’s cheese. However, just like government cheese this will never go bad…just put it on the shelf and come back to it in a few years. It will be just as good as when it was delivered. Hey Mike, ever seen “The Warriors”?