Latest News from the Feejees - 11

It had to happen...

 

Enjoying its world premiere in Cambridge, MA, through January 12.

Make sense who may. I switch off.       - What Where

Latest News from the Feejees - 9

photo by Bill Ebbesen

What's on Bruce's night stand?

Moby-Dick, of course! From an interview in yesterday's New York Times:

I just finished “Moby-Dick,” which scared me off for a long time due to the hype of its difficulty. I found it to be a beautiful boy’s adventure story and not that difficult to read. ...

Make sense who may.

Gift idea?

The Moby Dick Card Game is another Kickstarter project. It was fully funded, and the first run has shipped. The artwork looks terrific, but the game is unavailable to the general public at present.

Even without a knowledge of the novel, playing the game will clue you into the relationships between key sailors and the various perils and processes of hunting whales in the 19th century.

As important as the visuals are, the game could not exist without Melville's voice. Every card features a choice quotation from the book, tying the action at hand to the grand tale itself.

Keep an eye on their Facebook page and their website—they promise a webstore soon.

Hat tip: Kiwi.

Gift idea?

Emoji Dick is a crowd sourced and crowd funded translation of Herman Melville's Moby Dick into Japanese emoticons called emoji.

It's a free country. I can't help but agree with one commenter, "That's astoundingly useless."


Hat-tip to techie Megan.

Google's Homage

Today's background image at google.com

Google today remembers the publication of M-D (in London, 161 years ago) with the above background image on its search page.

Another hat-tip to brother #3, T. (I've abandoned Google for duckduckgo.com!)

Andrew Sarris, 1928-2012

The exhilarating film culture of the sixties and seventies would have been much less so without the informed insights of Andrew Sarris, who died yesterday. His column in the Village Voice was the reason I subscribed. (If I recall correctly, his review of a Woody Allen movie bore the headline: "What more do you want, and who else is even trying?") Scan the titles in this compilation of over forty years of Sarris Top Ten lists and dream of a time when movies mattered.

His influential survey, The American Cinema: Directors and Directions, 1929-1968, mentioned John Huston's film of Moby-Dick, unflatteringly, in the chapter Less Than Meets the Eye:

The turning point in Huston's career was probably Moby Dick. In retrospect, he should have acted Ahab himself and let Orson Welles direct. This was his one gamble with greatness, and he lost, and like the cagey poker player he is, he has been playing it cool and corrupt ever since.

Just reporting, not agreeing; although the idea of a Welles-directed M-D is such stuff as dreams are made on.

One for the bibliophiles

Here's one for Bill Petit and other lovers of the good ole, physical book.

Letter to the Editors, Part 1

Regular reader Ynot sent us the following missive, about a new song that appears to have been inspired in part by Moby-Dick:

Don't know if you've heard this or even know about it but Elton John and Leon Russell have a duet out called "Hey Ahab".  The lyrics are below.  On their own they don't do much for me although I've liked the bits of the song I've heard.


It's a constant struggle getting up that hill
There's a change of guard every day
When you're clinging onto a driftwood boat
You pray a great white whale might come your way

No freeway traffic in the frozen North
Just a chain link fence full of birds
And when the harpoon's loaded in the cannon bay
You'll be rolling through the pages lost for words

Hey Ahab can you tell me where
I can catch a ride out of here
Hey Ahab hoist that sail
You gotta stand up straight
When you ride that whale

In a crumbling city we were trapped for days
With a broken sun above the clouds
Caught like Jonah forty fathams down
And a sign on the wall saying, "Hope Allowed"

All the cryptic symbols carved on bone
A far cry from a tattooed rose
And when the boys in the rigging catch the wind

We'll all weigh anchor and it's westward ho

Hey Ahab can you tell me where
I can catch a ride out of here
Hey Ahab hoist that sail
You gotta stand up straight
When you ride that whale

Hey Ahab can you tell me where
I can catch a ride out of here
Hey Ahab hoist that sail
You gotta stand up straight
When you ride that whale