Friday, March 28, 2008

De gustibus non est disputandum.

Conrad Stawski was a humanities teacher I took a wonderful summer class from when I was fifteen. Wow, that was an amazing class. Called "Picasso, Andy Warhol, How did we get here?" or something like that, it shaped me in a deep, deep way. So rewarding to be able to give that kind of attention to something so "grownup" when I was that age. I hope for those same experiences for Henry. There's something about the humanities that just gets my synapses firing. Better than any drug I think I could try! So, the quote above is one of the things Mr. Stawski started the class out with. Wikipedia translates it two ways. "In matters of taste there is no dispute." Or, more commonly rendered, "There's no accounting for taste."

That said, here's a movie I really like. Interesting that YouTube classifies it as horror, as I didn't really think I liked that genre. It picks up on some of the things I really love: remnants of the past, dusty things, china teacups, children playing with real life things (but not if they draw more than a tiny amount of blood), magical surrealism. If you haven't already seen Jan Svankmajer's Alice, I hope this clip provides an exciting introduction. We're borrowing the movie longterm from one of our friends (I think we've had it for five years now), so you're welcome to borrow it from us...I think!

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