A "purple nurple," for the luckily uninitiated, is when a buddy of yours grabs and twists your nipple until it turns purple with bruising. This is an extremely unpleasant thing guys do to each other. Ladies seem to be exempt from all but the most salacious of gentlemen.
I bring this up because it highlights nicely the R sound in American English.
The way the American (and often the Canadian) accent pronounces the letter R turns out to be rather unique in the collection of earthly languages. Father, mother, sister, brother, girl, and bird all showcase this particular sound. Try to imagine our closest language forbears, the Brits, and our their other offspring and our cousins, the Aussies.
They tend to take the and soften that R sound into "fath-ah," "muth-uh," and even "purh-ple."
Dialect coach Erik Singer mentions that the America R is so unique and so difficult of a tongue placement that it tends to be left out of constructed languages---fake languages created for artistic purposes like Elfish, Klingon, and Dothraki among others---because it sounds, well, just American.
This got me thinking about how the rules of each language and/or accent branch can be discovered by having lines of dialogue written in their languages and read by either non-native speakers or speakers with accents from different places.
I have a whole experiment brewing but not the time to explicate it here. I'll return to this...
One quick example: the word girl
American English: "grrl"
Scottish English: "gearl" or "gairl"
Sunday, September 23, 2018
Saturday, September 1, 2018
Not Enough Love for the Jurassic Park Sequels
I finally got around to watching Jurassic Park 3.
Sometime in July after Cass went to bed we put Jurassic Park on and tried watching it fresh, similar to our Star Wars experiment back in 2015. We meet the rich patron of the sciences, John Hammond, and marvel at the realistic representation of dinosaurs. The digital work is used sparingly and this adds to the power of the form---there are plenty of puppets and animatronics. Besides Hammond are his grand kids, a girl and a boy; a paleontologist, Dr. Alan Grant and his girlfriend, a paleobotanist, Dr. Elly Sattler; and the chaos-minded mathematician, Ian Malcolm. It even features Samuel L. Jackson and Wayne Night, essentially playing his more famous character, Newman from Seinfeld.
Elly wants kids while Alan is not exactly into the idea at the beginning of the movie, but by saving the kids throughout the movie, he maybe warms up to the idea. At least he doesn't loathe the idea on the surface like earlier.
This was also the introduction of the velociraptor to the cultural consciousness.
Classic movie. Personal history alert: my mother promised to take me and my brother out of school on opening day to see the matinee showing of Jurassic Park as long as I finished the novel before that day. I did finish it in time, and it turned out to be the first time I was disappointed in a film adaptation of a book I loved. Not that I thought the movie was bad...
That was 1993. In 1997 the sequel, The Lost World: Jurassic Park was released. John Hammond returns as does Ian Malcolm, and we et to see some of Ian's personal life. He goes from being the odd mix ingratiating and annoying thorn in Hammond's side to a fully fleshed out person. He's a father to a precocious tweener girl, who's black, and he has a girlfriend played by Julianne Moore. Vince Vaughn plays the photographer who rounds out the survivor list.
Four more years later in 2001 we get Jurassic Park 3, stylized as Jurassic Park III in the opening credits, with the "III" being dino claw marks tearing through the screen. In this movie it's Alan Grant who returns to action. We see that he and Elly drifted part and that she got married and has two kids. Grant and his hunky young sidekick Billy are tricked into helping search for a kid, William H. Macy and Tea Leoni's kid to be exact, a fifteen-year-old who's been on his own for 8 weeks. This one takes the chase scene from the first movie and stretches it out to an entire movie. It's solid action. It also features Michael Jeter; you may recognize him as the sniveling buddy from Evening Shade.
Taken as a trilogy, I find it surprisingly good.
The first movie introduces the main ideas---Isla Nublar, off the coast of Costa Rica, is a tropical island that has an amusement park built on it that is populated by engineered monsters. There are tour trams and fences and a paramilitary guard force. Kids are rescued by a savvy scientist type, and the truth of the world--chaos--wins the day. Two scientists, one from each gender, a chaotician (a mathematician focused on dynamic systems), two kids, and the billionaire owner are the only survivors.
The second movie opens with a wealthy family on a yacht cruise taking in an afternoon ashore on a random island, Isla Sorna, off the coast of Costa Rica. The daughter is attacked off-screen. The company that built the amusement park had set up a second location in the vicinity of Isla Nublar, one without any tours, or guards, or walls. The chaotician is asked to join an expeditionary force. He steadfastly refuses. He learns his girlfriend is already on the island, and enraged, he joins. His daughter stows-away and is the child in need of saving.
While I did see the movie "Nine Months," this might have been the first time I really saw Julianne Moore. It was definitely the first time I saw Vince Vaughn. I remember thinking he looked familiar after "Swingers" hit in big. Watching Lost World again the other day made me realize that I hadn't remembered he was in the cast. Same thing for Julianne Moore.
I also didn't rememebr Jeff Goldblum's daughter is black. One character says to another, "I'm not sure I see a resemblance," but that's the last it's mentioned at all. She's pretty much both kids from the first movie combined: the early-teenaged girl and the nerdy know-it-all boy. Vanessa Lee Chester plays a strong and positive role.
The daughter, the photographer, the scientist and the chaotician survive.
The third movie opens with two people parasailing off the coast of Isla Sorna, which is labeled RESTRICTED in big red letters. The two people are connected in a tandem set up. The boat towing them enters a fog, some stuff happens unseen to the viewer and when the boat exits the fog, the guys on the boat are missing. The boat is cruising top speed towards some rocks, so the older guy, the main guy on the parachute, unlatches them, using soothing language to the teenage boy he's tied to to keep him calm. They head towards the island.
The hero scientist from the first movie gets invited to come help with the rescue. It's been eight weeks, and one plot hole is that a fifteen year old has been able to survive. This movie is nearly all action. The parents of the missing kid are split up, and the adult on the parachute is the mother's new beau. The parents, played by Bill Macy and Tea Leoni, trick Sam Neill, not really able to hide his English accent for a second time, as Alan Grant, into joining the rescue. They of course didn't mention it was a rescue. When the plane makes to land, the scientist steadfastly argues against.
The action is nice, frenetic, and seemingly never-ending. This movie establishes both the pterodactyl as a crazy dangerous specimen, an idea brought to full splendor in the fourth installment, and the spinosaurus, a dinosaur I wrote about before, enters the dialogue. How did I not know about this movie when I wrote that post!? The spinosaurus is awesome, and there is even a T-Rex/spino fight. The relationship with the raptors even evolves. This movie is a sprint and nearly everybody dies.
The scientist, his sidekick, the parents and their kid survive.
Taken as a trio of movies, an entire crew gets fleshed out.
The fourth and fifth movie exist in the same universe, and are entries in a larger narrative. Jurassic World is paced far closer to Jurassic Park, and is essentially that movie updated for our times. The relationship with the raptors has evolved still.
This discussion can't be complete because I haven't seen the newest sequel, Fallen Kingdom, but I don't think the second two movies, and the third specifically, get enough love.
Sometime in July after Cass went to bed we put Jurassic Park on and tried watching it fresh, similar to our Star Wars experiment back in 2015. We meet the rich patron of the sciences, John Hammond, and marvel at the realistic representation of dinosaurs. The digital work is used sparingly and this adds to the power of the form---there are plenty of puppets and animatronics. Besides Hammond are his grand kids, a girl and a boy; a paleontologist, Dr. Alan Grant and his girlfriend, a paleobotanist, Dr. Elly Sattler; and the chaos-minded mathematician, Ian Malcolm. It even features Samuel L. Jackson and Wayne Night, essentially playing his more famous character, Newman from Seinfeld.
Elly wants kids while Alan is not exactly into the idea at the beginning of the movie, but by saving the kids throughout the movie, he maybe warms up to the idea. At least he doesn't loathe the idea on the surface like earlier.
This was also the introduction of the velociraptor to the cultural consciousness.
Classic movie. Personal history alert: my mother promised to take me and my brother out of school on opening day to see the matinee showing of Jurassic Park as long as I finished the novel before that day. I did finish it in time, and it turned out to be the first time I was disappointed in a film adaptation of a book I loved. Not that I thought the movie was bad...
That was 1993. In 1997 the sequel, The Lost World: Jurassic Park was released. John Hammond returns as does Ian Malcolm, and we et to see some of Ian's personal life. He goes from being the odd mix ingratiating and annoying thorn in Hammond's side to a fully fleshed out person. He's a father to a precocious tweener girl, who's black, and he has a girlfriend played by Julianne Moore. Vince Vaughn plays the photographer who rounds out the survivor list.
Four more years later in 2001 we get Jurassic Park 3, stylized as Jurassic Park III in the opening credits, with the "III" being dino claw marks tearing through the screen. In this movie it's Alan Grant who returns to action. We see that he and Elly drifted part and that she got married and has two kids. Grant and his hunky young sidekick Billy are tricked into helping search for a kid, William H. Macy and Tea Leoni's kid to be exact, a fifteen-year-old who's been on his own for 8 weeks. This one takes the chase scene from the first movie and stretches it out to an entire movie. It's solid action. It also features Michael Jeter; you may recognize him as the sniveling buddy from Evening Shade.
Taken as a trilogy, I find it surprisingly good.
The first movie introduces the main ideas---Isla Nublar, off the coast of Costa Rica, is a tropical island that has an amusement park built on it that is populated by engineered monsters. There are tour trams and fences and a paramilitary guard force. Kids are rescued by a savvy scientist type, and the truth of the world--chaos--wins the day. Two scientists, one from each gender, a chaotician (a mathematician focused on dynamic systems), two kids, and the billionaire owner are the only survivors.
The second movie opens with a wealthy family on a yacht cruise taking in an afternoon ashore on a random island, Isla Sorna, off the coast of Costa Rica. The daughter is attacked off-screen. The company that built the amusement park had set up a second location in the vicinity of Isla Nublar, one without any tours, or guards, or walls. The chaotician is asked to join an expeditionary force. He steadfastly refuses. He learns his girlfriend is already on the island, and enraged, he joins. His daughter stows-away and is the child in need of saving.
While I did see the movie "Nine Months," this might have been the first time I really saw Julianne Moore. It was definitely the first time I saw Vince Vaughn. I remember thinking he looked familiar after "Swingers" hit in big. Watching Lost World again the other day made me realize that I hadn't remembered he was in the cast. Same thing for Julianne Moore.
I also didn't rememebr Jeff Goldblum's daughter is black. One character says to another, "I'm not sure I see a resemblance," but that's the last it's mentioned at all. She's pretty much both kids from the first movie combined: the early-teenaged girl and the nerdy know-it-all boy. Vanessa Lee Chester plays a strong and positive role.
The daughter, the photographer, the scientist and the chaotician survive.
The third movie opens with two people parasailing off the coast of Isla Sorna, which is labeled RESTRICTED in big red letters. The two people are connected in a tandem set up. The boat towing them enters a fog, some stuff happens unseen to the viewer and when the boat exits the fog, the guys on the boat are missing. The boat is cruising top speed towards some rocks, so the older guy, the main guy on the parachute, unlatches them, using soothing language to the teenage boy he's tied to to keep him calm. They head towards the island.
The hero scientist from the first movie gets invited to come help with the rescue. It's been eight weeks, and one plot hole is that a fifteen year old has been able to survive. This movie is nearly all action. The parents of the missing kid are split up, and the adult on the parachute is the mother's new beau. The parents, played by Bill Macy and Tea Leoni, trick Sam Neill, not really able to hide his English accent for a second time, as Alan Grant, into joining the rescue. They of course didn't mention it was a rescue. When the plane makes to land, the scientist steadfastly argues against.
The action is nice, frenetic, and seemingly never-ending. This movie establishes both the pterodactyl as a crazy dangerous specimen, an idea brought to full splendor in the fourth installment, and the spinosaurus, a dinosaur I wrote about before, enters the dialogue. How did I not know about this movie when I wrote that post!? The spinosaurus is awesome, and there is even a T-Rex/spino fight. The relationship with the raptors even evolves. This movie is a sprint and nearly everybody dies.
The scientist, his sidekick, the parents and their kid survive.
Taken as a trio of movies, an entire crew gets fleshed out.
The fourth and fifth movie exist in the same universe, and are entries in a larger narrative. Jurassic World is paced far closer to Jurassic Park, and is essentially that movie updated for our times. The relationship with the raptors has evolved still.
This discussion can't be complete because I haven't seen the newest sequel, Fallen Kingdom, but I don't think the second two movies, and the third specifically, get enough love.
August was Long
Today is September 1st, and the day after tomorrow is Labor Day Monday, and I've been invited to walk in the parade. The times are getting real for us laborers.
July ended with me at a conference in downtown LA while Cass sweated through a bad fever at home with Corrie, the fan the only respite for our oven apartment. While video-chatting, her phone got so hot she couldn't hold it anymore, and we were nervous it would explode.
That seems like so long ago, even though it was less than 35 days. Summer ended for us, work resumed, we had our authorization to strike vote, and even the initial evening meeting with the adults.
And Now the entire month of August went by and I put up just a sad, solitary note.
I even wrote up a proposal for the International Pynchon Week next year in Rome.
Anyway, August was long...
July ended with me at a conference in downtown LA while Cass sweated through a bad fever at home with Corrie, the fan the only respite for our oven apartment. While video-chatting, her phone got so hot she couldn't hold it anymore, and we were nervous it would explode.
That seems like so long ago, even though it was less than 35 days. Summer ended for us, work resumed, we had our authorization to strike vote, and even the initial evening meeting with the adults.
And Now the entire month of August went by and I put up just a sad, solitary note.
I even wrote up a proposal for the International Pynchon Week next year in Rome.
Anyway, August was long...
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