joe ferrare's blog

Bust of Socrates at the Louvre by Eric Gaba.

Just got done reading Plato’s Cratylus, which is a dialog between Socrates and Hermogenes and Cratylus.  It’s about names, and whether or not names represent a thing because they convey or represent some truth about, or the essence of, that thing, or if they are just a bunch of name tags we’ve all agreed to use so we don’t confuse each other. There’s a lot of talk about the nature of things and lots of tracing Greek words back to their original meanings — sometimes their constituent letters. For a bit there is was kind of like reading Genesis: and the oo sound, which is the essence of the expression of awe, begat goo-goo ga-ga, which begat good, which begat goodness, which begat the Goo-Goo Dolls.

This dialog is under the Great Idea of language, hence the 30 or so pages about the naming of things.  Oddly enough, this is something I wrote about back when I was writing commentaries.  It’s not at all surprising to find out somebody else has done a much better job of thinking about it, and that I wrote a confident commentary without any knowledge of the existence of classic texts on the subject, much less what those texts said.

My main point before, which came up when we were deciding on a name for our daughter, agreed with the position that there was something inherently appropriate about a good name. That the name, or the sound of the name, was somehow right for that person or thing. I was very conscious, for example, that the fact that my two favorite first names for our daughter, Alexandra and Regina, said something.  Nothing “my little princess” about those.  Of course another thing I said in my old commentary was that people with the wrong name — a name that didn’t suit them — usually ended up being called something else. I have a brother-in-law and an old friend called Butch. I also know a guy who outgrew “Butch” and went back to his given name. So I don’t think there’s any one perfect name for a person — at least no one a parent can pick out while the child is in the womb — but I do think you can saddle a child with something so far from his personality that he’ll end up being called Butch or Rusty.

Knowing that to be the case, I argued for our daughter’s middle name to be very different from her first name, hence Alexandra Skye.  At the time it was more about wanting a nice flow and after the long Alexandra the simple Skye seemed to fit.  But also, I knew she might end up not wanting to carry around a big name like that, or might be some kind of retro-hippie-vegan, and then Skye would come in handy.

Well, the upshot of all that Socratic dialoging was that to know the name of a thing is not the same as knowing the thing — at least it’s not sufficient. That was kind of the start of the discussion, and kind of the end, too.  Here’s how Socrates put it:

How real existence is to be studied or discovered is, I suspect, beyond you and me. But we may admit so much, that the knowledge of things is not to be derived from names. No; they must be studied and investigated in themselves.

It struck me as I typed that quote that it’s a pretty good argument against book learning, which is kind of ironic.

I’m getting a little excited to see the new Underworld movie. I loved the first one, even though it was almost completely because of the atmosphere. It was pretty much perfect.

That’s not to say I didn’t like the story or the performances, because they were generally good, and a couple were excellent. What bugged me was the wimpy vampires. If you watch the movie, only two vampires win a fight in the whole film: Viktor and Selene. Every other vampire gets his shiny black-clad heiny kicked by a werewolf. The one werewolf, the massive black guy, killed every vampire he came up against — until Viktor just reaches up and snaps his neck like a twig.

I guess it makes some kind of dramatic sense to show how deadly the Lycans are, to put some fear into the vampires (though they show none, the stupid bastards). And there is the part where Viktor says they’ve grown decadent and weak. But the net effect is that they’re wimps. They hang out in their compound surrounded by guards and fight by shooting Lycans with special bullets.

Even the one elder female (Amelia?) is taken out without any trouble whatsoever. You see the Lycans getting aboard the train, then you see shots fired and fighting, then you see the Lycans taking her blood. All the vampires with her (and you’d have to think some of them would be stronger than average as body guards) are dead, and I don’t remember seeing a single dead Lycan. Plus, they drain her blood and she’s dead. That’s it. No regeneration, no returning from the grave, nothing. I thought it was a very big hole in the movie, until I watched it again and caught the meaning (I guess) of Selene’s line about nobody (no mortal?) having ever survived a bite from both species.

So if you’re a vampire, a bite from a Lycan kills you? That appears to be it, because there were dead vampire bodies all over, and none of those special bullets, no stakes, etc. So, the vampires took the Lycans as their slaves when the Lycan could kill them with one bite — and are obviously physically at least a match. Pretty stupid. Did Viktor and Marcus keep them all in line?

The other thing about the trailer for the new movies is a bit about Marcus. I think they said he was the original vampire, plus he looks more wicked than Viktor, who was described in the first movie as the oldest and strongest vampire. I hope they’re not rewriting history here.

I’m not obsessive on these kinds of things, but it irks me when you pay good money to see a movie and the director engages in this kind of sleight of hand or leaves gaping holes in the story. For the millions it takes to make a movie, you’d think they could do a thorough job.

Anyway, I’ll probably like the film either way. It’s vampires, after all. It looks dark and forbidding and all that.

Went to see King Kong today. I know several million people beat me (and Sue, of course) to it, but that’s hardly surprising. See, the closest English movie theater is in Munich, which is, oh, 50-odd miles away. So we’ve got to have an hour driving time in good weather to get there, a babysitter for a minimum of the movie length plus driving time (plus cafe or dinner time, if we’re squeezing that in) and the hour driving back.

Today was not good weather. We got the chance to go without paying a babysitter thanks to a friend’s largess, so we took advantage of it. But the weather was not great. It was snowing lightly, then pretty heavy, then not so much, but the damage (to the roads) was done. So we missed the first 5 or 10 minutes of the movie. If you’re familiar with it at all, you know that’s probably not such a big deal. There’s a lot there to see. Three hours and nine minutes, to be exact. So we missed a little Jack Black (we walked in while he was being grilled by the people financing his movie).

Speaking of Jack Black, Kong is the best work he’s ever done (that I’ve seen). He should do more drama, or maybe more work under Peter Jackson’s direction, as something about this movie tended to tone down his usual over-the-top personality. He was very good. The smirk snuck in there a few times, of course, but overall, the best I’ve ever seen him do.

The rest of the movie was freakin’ awesome. The dinosaur scenes were excellent. I was counting teeth and looking at how they fit in the mouth and didn’t realize at all that I was watching cgi. Same for the big gorilla. He’s utterly lifelike. The only thing that dinged the mood was the stretch during which he’s running with her in his hand. That borders on cheesy at times, but what can you expect? With all that movement and so forth it must have been hell to do, and it’s a couple minutes out of the 189.

Anyway, Andy Serkis deserves credit for that. And apparently, he’s getting it.

Anyway, the creepiest scene was the bug-slug scene, during which the rescue party is further decimated by rampaging bugs and giant toothy slugs. Sue was squeezing my hand and making noises the whole time. I believe it was here that Serkis, in his other role (the cook) buys the farm. A bunch of toothy slugs eat him up. Yum.

Overall, I definitely recommend the movie. I don’t know that I’d put it at the top of any of any list of best movies ever, or even this year, but it’s fine entertainment and well worth the money and the numb-butt syndrome that sets in. I think I’ll start a “worth driving to Munich for” recommendation. Kong gets the nod, as did Serenity, which few people saw, I know. We drove to Munich to see it and I got the DVD for Christmas, so I’m happy.

I’m glad Kong was worth it, too, because the drive back was crappy. I normally drive between 100-110 MPH on the autobahn when Alexandra isn’t with us, but I was happy to be hitting 60 MPH at times today. Several times we were under 30 MPH (either by choice or because of traffic) today. Along the way we decided to spring for snow tires. We’ve got nice tires on the Outback, and it is an all-wheel drive, but we live in a ski resort. Gotta go the extra nickel (or 500-600 euros).