Frozen Toothpaste

Since my early years of high school, I’ve become more and more convinced that comics published in the local newspaper are little more than bland space fillers. Foremost in my mind among these problematically bad comics — which are also those I used to like most — are Garfield, The Family Circus, and Dilbert. Garfield always mixes the loser, dumb dog and lazy, food-loving cat stereotypes. Dilbert does little more than illustrate an office-drone’s daily annoyances. The Family Circus inevitably reverts to basic family stereotypes without much value or meaning.

And so it was with utmost pleasure that I stumbled upon The Nietzsche Family Circus. The brilliant website — which has been around for quite some time — pairs bits of Nietzsche’s signature existential philosophy with an averagely meaningless frame from The Family Circus.

My favorite results are when the young Billy gives his father some truly meaty bits of philosophy. There’s the great one in which while his shirt is being buttoned by his father he informs the older man that: “For out of fear and need each religion is born, creeping into existence on the byways of reason.”

Or on the swing young Billy says, seemingly to no one, that “God is Dead” and we have killed him.

Of course it is somewhat difficult to review a project where the process of viewing is absolutely random. There is little guarantee about what will be seen other than that it will always include a frame from The Family Circus and a quote from Nietzsche.

But in that, alone, I think exists almost the entire genius. There is something very different about coming across philosophy in a book about it, and coming across it under a comic that seems to illustrate normal family life. Add to that the magic of seeing children discussing deep and complex issues and you’re sure to get nothing short of magic.

In many ways the project evokes to me the very best of Calvin and Hobbes, the much-loved and much-mourned comic by Bill Watterson. A great example of this parallel is this pairing, in which the young Billy tells his very irritated mother that “The lie is the condition of life.” I can easily see young Calvin, having disappointed his mother, deciding that the best defense was that life necessitating lying. Regardless of how you feel about that sentiment, the magic of the pairing must at least make you smile.

Some pairing are surely more logical than others. The image above is rather serendipitous. But all of them are, in my mind, improvements on the original. And the inventiveness of this project is certainly worthy of praise. Now all we need is a newspaper to publish them…

Love Actually is the kind of movie I tend to avoid. You know the kind: sweet “romantic comedies” that only the lobotomized can’t figure out the outcome of within 15 minutes of their beginning. Where you know that these people are going to get together after you sit though the long list of false obstacles constructed by a screenwriter in need of more pages.

These movies always feel something like pouring lemonade into a papercut — a little painful and a little sweet. But it being Christmas time, I decided to give a Christmas-set member of the genre a minor reprieve.

As anyone who has seen Love Actually, now four years old, can tell you, it doesn’t deviate much from that formula. Set in the weeks before Christmas the inevitable goal is, of course, to have a happy Christmas with the woman or man you love. But Love Actually multiplies that standard formula by what seems like 12.

Somewhat mercifully, this multiplicity means that obstacles to a happy reunion are far fewer. Each obvious pairing — and there’s no denying how obvious they are — has at most one obstacle to overcome before they live “happily ever after.”

The author living in France must only learn Portuguese to express his obviously-mutual love to his housekeeper. The English waiter must only go to America where he will meet the girls — yes, plural — of his dreams. The Prime Minister must only sack — that’s fire in America — his personal helper in order to make it acceptable to fall in love with her. The grade-schooler must only learn to play the drums to win the heart of his dear American, Joanna.

These scenarios are — whether intentionally or not — all a bit too easy. But I see the obvious ease with which these stories fall into place as a wink and a nudge toward the most tired traditions of the genre. A way that the film’s writer and director Richard Curtis tell us, without saying so explicitly, that he’s well aware of the contrivances that tend to lengthen such films.

Part of Love Actually’s charm comes simply from the fact it doesn’t try too hard (read: much at all) to include the necessary bumps and troubles on the way to a happy ending. Indeed, some of the many stories don’t even have happy endings. But when the happy resolutions come they’re shoveled on so deep they nearly force you to smile. Sure they’re obvious contrivances, but the film invites us to revel in just how painfully obvious they are.

I would hardly put Love Actually on the top of my “Best Christmas Movies” list. It’s A Wonderful Life is almost certain to keep the top spot for ever. And the cheesy hits of Christmas Vacation, Home Alone, and A Christmas Story still are better in my book. There’s also the best Christmas/action movie ever, Die Hard, which will forever have a place in my heart.

Having said all that, Love Actually is a far more enjoyable Christmas “rom-com” than I originally expected. It could even win a spot on that long list of obligatory December flicks, though I’m not holding my breath for that.

Outside my window, the rarely-trafficked street is still white, only the manhole cover that managed to melt through gives a hint that there’s anything not white under there. The gray sidewalks — which must be shoveled both as a courtesy to fellow pedestrians and out of fear for the law — form a coherent border between the white over grass and the white over blacktop.

It snowed, off and on, for three consecutive days. The total accumulation on grass is almost certainly less than six inches — a somewhat high but not unexpected total for the areas of Colorado where people live. Many non-locals mistake Colorado’s ski areas for the “front range” where the vast majority of it’s people live. They’re surprised by the news that this snow will likely have vanished without a trace by next Monday.

But if Colorado’s weather is nothing else, it’s variable. There’s a running joke — however unfunny — among locals that Colorado’s the only place you’ll need hat and gloves in the morning, shorts at lunch, and a rain slicker by dinner. Though such a day has never occurred in my memory, this week does show the origins of the lie.

Six days ago, I stepped outside to walk the dog. I was expecting weather as it had been — about 45 and a tad too windy — instead my first thought was “this is awfully nice weather for October,” — 65, sunny, only a slight breeze. Upon realizing that we’d recently entered the month of December, I was stunned and ecstatic with my good fortune.

By that evening, with the weathermen telling us that snow would soon fall, there was little surprise. This was Colorado, after all, and the weather had changed dramatically from my shorts-envying noon-time walk. It was again around 40 and windy, as sure a sign as any that the weathermen we’re completely wrong.

Nonetheless, I was modestly shocked waking to a light dusting of snow last Thursday. Such weather had certainly been predicted, but Colorado’s meteorologists are fond of saying that their’s is a very difficult job.

Today, the view outside of my window could be called — a little generously — a winter wonderland. We’ve got the extra-brightness engendered by snow that skiers know so well. Last Monday, I probably would have seen a cool dry Colorado winter, a little dispassionate gray in the sky. And I’m happy to report that I don’t have any idea what next Monday will bring.

There has always been a great deal of idle speculation about what it is that people find so fascinating about Hitler’s Germany. My favorite theory — which hardly makes it correct — is that people want to understand what allows people to do such depraved things to each other. That people probe the Holocaust looking for ways that we can assure that such a thing never happens again.

For those seeking to viscerally understand the nuances of Nazi ideology and the causes of mass adherence to the doctrine of National Socialism, Downfall isn’t really for you. Downfall, an immaculate recreation of the tense final days inside Hitler’s Berlin bunker, is much more about the paternal role an ailing and potentially insane Fuhrer played in the lives of those who knew him most intimately. How these people reacted as the Reich crumbled, how they reacted to his suicide, how they surrendered to the Soviet forces.

Downfall made me feel more sympathetically toward Hitler than I ever thought I could, but it would be absolutely unfair and inaccurate to say that it is itself sympathetic. The film’s aim — at which is succeeds brilliantly — is to show the discomfort and weariness of the Reich’s powerful as their empire and dreams crumbled around them.

In doing so, in getting so close to these people for so long (the movie is 153 minutes), you can’t help but feel for them. Whether or not you’re convinced they’re good and friendly people, you have to recognize the unavoidable humanity of the characters being portrayed. Even Joseph and Magda Goebbels, who kill their six young children and then each other, drive home the unavoidable truth that even Nazis had feelings, even they suffered, even those who spent much of their lives trying to ignore and avoid such “weakness.”

Downfall is based on the account of Traudl Junge, Hitler’s secratary from 1942 to 1945. The movie opens with the scene of Fraulein Junge’s interview for the position, in which we see a gentle and forgiving Hitler (played brilliantly by Bruno Ganz) who makes absolutely clear that this is different than the traditional caricatures of the man and his empire.

Some have critiqued Downfall for being nostalgic for the Germany that died with Hitler. I feel confident in saying that such ideas are both incorrect and insulting. The film does indeed encourage the watcher to sympathize with the followers who submitted to the myth of Hitler and found themselves completely lost when the grand plan for domination finally failed. But presenting these confused people humanely is hardly the same as presenting them as heroes.

So too has presenting Hitler as a person, rather than a caricature, gained the film some hostility. Here too I think it’s grossly unfair to argue that such a characterization is in any way a glorification. History and people find it convenient to see the mass-murders of recent history — Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot and sometimes Slobodan Milosovic — as some other, some un-human. This simple separation and banishment is convenient, but its convenience is principally derived from its gross oversimplification of reality. As Dowfall’s director, Oliver Hirshbiegel, said:

It is unbelievable that he could manipulate all these people. He only succeeded because he was a human being, and that’s why we have to show this. To show him as a human being. Everything else would be fatal. And it would be a historical mistake.

Downfall fascinating and compelling power comes precisely from the fact that it humanizes Hitler and his closest and most well-known co-conspirators. It allows that these people were human, whether they themselves knew or liked that fact, and had human feelings. Downfall’s success is clearly illustrated be the controversy that has bubbled around it. Though I think its detractors have overstated the case, they are correct in seeing that humanizing history’s most notorious villains is an unsavory and sensitive business. But Downfall does it better than any film I’ve seen.

Helvetica is a documentary about a typeface with the same name. That typeface is also the one in which this post’s green headline is written. And to simplify the coming discussion, I want to make clear that Helvetica is a documentary and Helvetica is a typeface.

The essential goal of Gary Hustwit’s Helvetica is to examine the history of and opinions regarding Helvetica. For those, like myself, relatively ignorant of type design and history, this is quite interesting and unexpected. Where Helvetica succeeds with a lay audience is that it introduces a previously unknown world that already has a number of strong opinions and arguments. And though chances are good that typophiles will love Helvetica for the same novelty that lay audience find in it, I can’t really speak for them.

From the outset, Helvetica presents no argument against the idea that Helvetica is the most important typeface of the last 50 years. And throughout, we’re constantly reminded of Helvetica’s pervasiveness with uncountable shots of the places that Helvetica is used. The list prominent logos which feature Helvetica is interesting: Target, Toyota, Microsoft, 3M, Crate & Barrel, American Airlines, Jeep, Staples, Lufthansa, Panasonic, and BMW. Those are merely the most prominent examples, but they give you useful insight into Helvetica’s pervasiveness and versatility.

The primary meat of Helvetica are interviews with designers who — with few exceptions — find Helvetica to be varying degrees of perfect and revolutionary. Unacquainted as I am with the world of typography, few of the commentators had names I recognized, though I did recognize the work of many. Matthew Carter designed both the Verdana and the Georgia faces. Like many other designers Carter professed that he would hate to have to try to improve Helvetica. Another commentator was sure to point out that the well-known Arial was embarrassingly bad attempt to improve on Helvetica.

The history of Helvetica is also discussed in the movie, though to the unitiated it raised as many questions as answers. Perhaps the most astounding fact to me was that there was ever a time — and it turns out today is still one of those times — when people went around selling typefaces. Not only that, but there are businesses (known as type foundries) at which people develop these fonts to be sold. And it was at such a place that Max Miedenger and Eduard Hoffman developed Neue Haas Grotesk. Wisely, their parent company Stempel (apparently foundries have parent companies…) convinced the Swiss team to rename the face Helvetica, a derivation of the Latin name for Switzerland.

With its name established, and its (massive) influence on design discussed, the detractors are interesting. One says that the font was too heavy in the middle, while another complains that it’s the font of fascism and unwanted wars like America’s involvement in Iraq. Though I can’t really understand either critique, I think it’s fascinating that people have such strong opinions about a typeface.

Whether you love, hate, or have never thought about Helvetica, Helvetica’s certainly interesting. For better or worse, it’s hard not to think about the fonts you use and see after watching the film. Helvetica presents a world you probably never thought about, and maybe never thought existed, but it does it admirably and for it’s novelty (at least) it most certainly worth a look.