Watching • Video Digest: November 16, 2007

Last weekend, during an Ibero-American conference, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez called former Spanish Prime Minister José Maria Aznar a fascist. Why? It wasn’t quite clear. Current Spanish PM José Zapatero did his dignified best to defend his compatriot, and boy did Chávez give him a bad time—heckling and talking back and trying to shout over everything Zapatero said. That’s when the King of Spain gave him what’s what:



Doesn’t he sound like he’s yelling at some kids in a movie theater? I love it. I told my boyfriend all about it later, how our Venezuelan friend finally shut up his big fat face and how happy it was making the English-speaking press. “What do you think of Chávez?” Joel asked me. Well, I told him, I’m all for South and Central American economic strength and independence, and I’m tired of horrible stories about dictators put in place by the CIA, but I thought Chávez wasn’t much better. Doesn’t he force every TV station in the country to play his weekly program? Isn’t he the guy who’s a close ally of Iran, who called Bush “the Devil” at the U.N. conference?



That’s when he told me about what he knew about our friend Hugo, learned from a book called Armed Madhouse, by Greg Palast. I had checked it out from the library after watching University of Florida student Andrew Mayer get Tased by police after recommending the same book to John Kerry last September.



Did you know, asked Joel, that Chávez actually sold heating oil through CitGo to poor people in Chicago and New York at dirt-cheap prices, which he was able to do because he kicked all the multinational oil companies out of Venezuela? Did you know how much oil Venezuela actually has? Lucky for me, who didn’t read the book, there’s a good section on Chávez on YouTube, sort of like a music video for a book-on-tape. Here’s part one:



So hang on a second, I said, you mean he doesn’t just sit before an audience with that big fat face in the middle of that enormous head and pontificate?



It would seem that our media has an image of friend Hugo that they would like us to share. Look, crazy Cindy Sheehan loves Chávez, and even the Democrats don’t like her anymore, what with her campaign against Nancy Pelosi for Congress.



Larry King is in on it, too, luring Poppa Bush into speaking his mind on live television. Not that a loose-lipped Bush is a rare creature.



What to think? Obviously Chávez is complicated, and forming an educated opinion on him is not as easy as taking a “Who Represents You?” quiz starring the ‘08 presidential candidates (Kucinich! Woo!). I’m grateful that Juan Carlos got annoyed enough to yell at Chávez at that conference because it piqued my interest in good ol’ Hugo, and at least now I know there’s more to him than name-calling and weekends with Fidel.

Besides, he charmed the pants of Barbara Walters and she was in cold hard bitch mode. Maybe that doesn’t make him a great leader, but it does speak well of his personality, which is half the battle on U.S. TV.



 —Meave Gallagher, Nov. 16, 2007

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Watching • Video Digest: October 26, 2007

My best Halloween costume was in grade school. I must have been eight or nine, and my dad helped me turn a cardboard box into a television set. With aluminum-foil rabbit-ear antennae on a headband and a pillowcase for candy, I was good to go. Halloween in these suburban United States: so silly, so fun, so obvious. This year, let’s look at the celebration from a new angle.

A little mood music, please.

That song’s a little creepier in German, isn’t it? Unfortunately, that’s about the only creepy thing about Halloween in Germany. I lived through two October 31sts, and while people know about the day’s significance in the U.S., it really hasn’t taken hold the way, say, Valentine’s Day has. Like other European countries, Germany’s big costume time is called Karneval, and it happens around the same time as the annual Mardi Gras celebrations.

Wiccans, on the other hand, do not take anything related to Samhain lightly, and they certainly don’t wear costumes. This brief educational video ought to clear up some Samhain mysteries for you.

Turns out modern-day witches aren’t scary at all; they like fall colors and cutesy fonts and cartoon pumpkins just like my Episcopalian aunt.

I don’t generally believe in ghosts, but situationally, it’s fun to let yourself get scared. Thanks to the gold rush, California has a number of ghost towns, and they are weird places. My family went to Bodie during one long summer vacation, and Bodie is one eerie place. The whole place is so remarkably well preserved—there are still sheets on a bed!—that you can easily imagine the residents coming back to reclaim their homes and possessions… and lives. Dun dun dun.

Oh look, it’s an English as a Second Language class celebrating their first “authentic” Halloween. They’ve even got a frustratingly dull Pumpkin Cutter™ to work on those Jack O’Lanterns. Kids, I’ve been in your shoes. I’ve sat in a room full of German as a Second Language students, muddling along in weird grammar, feeling awkward, and I was in street clothes. In comparison, you all are in your rubber masks and doing wonderfully. Is this how you imagined Halloween?

In San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood, the Halloween party has gotten too big and crazy for the city to handle, so this year officials have told everyone to stay away. This means a much lower concentration of men in drag, which is a tragedy; the ESL kids might’ve had a little more fun if they realized that Halloween for grownups is less pumpkin-carving and more drunken revelry.

On the other hand, witch-themed dancing can be one of the more frightening things you’ve ever seen. Expressionist dancers are not kidding around.

Purim is that most rare of Jewish holidays—a happy one where no one was killed because of disguises and mistaken identities. Traditionally, children wore costumes of the Purim story’s hero and heroine, Mordecai and Esther, but that doesn’t limit your choices. Here, a small boy is forced to show off his Purim costume over and over until he nearly drops; such is the plight of the adorable.

 —Meave Gallagher, Oct. 26, 2007

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Watching • Video Digest: October 12, 2007

Hey, climbing. Another thing that paralyzes me with fear. My boyfriend has been climbing at a gym for a while now, and he loves it, so because I love him, I’ve tried it, but it didn’t take. It’s the looking-down that always ruins it; you’re close to the wall, all the holds are right where your feet and hands want to go, and the urge to see how far you’ve come overpowers you and DEAR LORD YOU ARE A BILLION FEET OFF THE GROUND.

A lady I know climbed for years, trying to cure her fear of heights. She told me that sometimes she and her group would sleep overnight in hammocks strung across the rock face. I asked her if her fear of heights was cured; she said no. With that knowledge, I’m fine to just watch the effects of regular climbing on my boyfriend’s physique. From the ground.


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Let’s start our rock-climbing lesson with a lesson about the rocks people climb. Two young Coloradans bring the science on their local peaks (though they forbid us to embed the video, so you will have to click here). Please note the safety gear the brothers are wearing, protecting their fragile bones and milk teeth—this may be the only video featuring climbers with helmets.

On to what is called a free climb. That means this man is depending solely on the rock’s features and his own hands and feet, with no additional aid. Further, he’s climbing it solo. That means he is all alone on the rock, nary a rope nor harness in sight. Now watch him climb really, really fast. At 1:05 he does something amazing, which when seen from the angle at 1:13 will knock your socks off. (In a major blow to the climbing world, the climber in the video, Dan Osman, died in 1998 after his rope failed in a free-fall jump.)



Not as cool as humans climbing, but still fun to watch: climbing robot.



Imagine you had a climbing gym, a German to DJ, and an experimental filmmaker. Dance break!



Meet Chris Sharma in the following clip, one of the prettiest and well known faces in climbing. This is video of him “solving a bouldering problem” that no one, not even his mentor Dr. Leaky at MIT, had figured out before. Bouldering is, according to my boyfriend, the non-suicidal man’s free solo climbing; you’re unprotected, but you never get higher than a couple meters. Sharma’s gecko-like finger adhesion is the envy of all his climbing chums. This is what allows him to climb an essentially featureless surface.



Spider-Man lives in France under the secret identity of Alain Robert. He may seem like just another man walking up the stairs with a camera filming him, but the next thing you know he’s scaling a building (“buildering,” in the parlance). Protective gear? Not for Spider-Man. Besides, we earthbound folk wouldn’t be nearly so terrified and in awe if he was wearing a harness attached to a rope.



 —Meave Gallagher, Oct. 12, 2007

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Watching • Video Digest: September 21, 2007

Coming home from work the other day, I saw a couple on a bicycle, speeding down 24th Street. Not the steepest of hills, but 24th heading out of Noe Valley towards the Mission is a street pedestrians try to avoid. These two looked fearless. The teenage girl was sitting on the bicycle properly, and the boy seemed to be positioned in front of her, standing on the pedals. The grins on their faces were enormous, pushed wider by the wind that blew through their hair, free of any helmet-like constraints. They scared the shit out of me. In honor of those two lunatics and their frightening joy (Ängstlichefreude), I present you with: People Going Fast.


* * *

Little-girl me loved to throw my arms out, tilt my head back, and spin in circles, moving faster and faster until I collapsed. Look what toddlers of today can do with modern technology.




Water-skiing is for only the hardest-core of us. Barefoot water-skiers are practically higher beings.




If The Rocketeer had had a bicycle, maybe he wouldn’t have had to rely so heavily on gum.




Skiing is a fast sport. Ski racing is zooming downhill on two thin blades, swooshing around obstacles (gates, rocks, other skiers), trying to get to the end as quickly and gracefully as possible. I hate skiing more than any other sport I’ve been talked into trying. It is the scariest, wettest, most dangerous and pointless thing I have ever done and by god I will never do it again. I still love watching it on TV, though.




No, speed isn’t all careening around and flashy moves and fancy outfits and helmets. Sometimes the gracefulness of doing something complicated very very fast doesn’t involve helmets at all. Fancy outfits, though, definitely.




Slovenians: surprisingly talented extreme downhill bikers, amateur filmmakers, and music video producers.




Wouldn’t it be great if this is what you got when you opened the door to some religious proselytizer?




Finally, if you must go fast, especially down a hill, please wear a helmet.




 —Meave Gallagher, Sep. 21, 2007

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Watching • Video Digest: August 31, 2007

When Miss South Carolina expressed her concerns about American teens’ lack of geographical knowledge, and the Iraq, I’d like to know exactly how many people were truly surprised. Yes, her answer was shockingly hilarious, but who expects beauty pageant contestants to be eloquent? Not that I hold it against her; I’ve seen MTV True Life: I’m on a Diet and that beauty queen didn’t have time to think about the world outside pageants, what with all the competitions and the exercising and the work with smile, hair, makeup, poise, swimsuit, and walk experts. If I had to spend the majority of my time remembering to simultaneously smile and keep my shoulders back, while living on 1200 calories a day, maybe I wouldn’t have formed an opinion on educational standards, either.

Look how young these girls are when they start down the pageant path. This may seem low-rent, but 10 years from now she’ll be caterwauling right to the Donald. Watch your back, Melania, any of these little cuties could be competition one day.




I warn you, you will want to look away, but fascination overrides the horror every time.




One may be inclined to make some connection between the poor pageant princess here and Britney Spears, supplier of the video’s music. One might think that maybe, if a little girl is trotted out in front of the camera to perform like an adult for years and years, maybe she will have some trouble with common sense, not having been given the chance to develop any. Were one so inclined.




As in the preceding video, the ability of the baby beauty queens to choose what’s best for them is questionable. OK, she loves to perform, but does that mean she loves to compete? Take this little charmer: thrilled to hold the mic, or petrified of being onstage?




In the movies everything can turn out just fine, remembering, of course, that in the real pageant life the contestants sing adult songs all the time, and no one has even heard of the word “preposterous.”




And, what children should be doing on camera:




 —Meave Gallagher, Aug. 31, 2007

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Watching • Video Digest: August 17, 2007

I don’t know that I ever want to write a book, but I certainly wouldn’t mind going on a book tour. The work’s already done, now you get to go to city after city to be lauded for being a genius. Sure I’m romanticizing it; nonetheless, don’t you think you’d enjoy reading for 40 minutes, soaking up the applause, and signing books for your ardent fans? The highlight of my morning was discovering that eating prunes doesn’t make me gag—not exactly comparable.

Of course, writing a book doesn’t mean you’re actually talented. Things we learn from The Corporate Dominatrix: You can get six full minutes on CNN for combining amateur personality tests with business strategy. Look at how seriously these correspondents take this nonsense. Maybe they’re hoping for a private analyzation with “Mistress Lisa” during the break. (Note: the Dominatrix has requested that we not embed this video; you can see it here.)

I hear there’s a TV show where this gentleman Mystery, master of the “Venusian Arts,” teaches dateless young men how to seduce any woman, any time. Here he promotes a book of this advice on the late-night circuit. I don’t imagine Conan has this much fun with every author who sits on his couch.




Aw look, it’s Jon Stewart on The O’Reilly Factor, (sort of) talking about America: The Book. Mostly the 2004 election, though, which was pretty depressing, come to think of it. At least Jon Stewart carries on.




Now it’s time for some slam poetry. No, now, come on, it’s barely three minutes and you might like it. Why am I including this on an authors list? Because I can.




I love that this woman is a Bob Marley biographer. Those crazy crimpy bangs, the way she grins at the jokes her characters make, the guy on the bongo—I can’t think of a better recipe for a reading.




Jane Goodall lived with chimpanzees far before she wrote books about them, though this isn’t a reading. Instead she gives a beautiful lecture about humans and animals, and does a mean Tanzanian chimpanzee.




 —Meave Gallagher, Aug. 17, 2007

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Watching • Video Digest: August 3, 2007

&tI work in an office building. My “office” is a cube in the center of the room, affording me little privacy and no view. Some of my coworkers are truly strange people. We all get frustrated by incomprehensible corporate policies that seem only designed to punish us. Just like everyone else, we’re just like The Office.
This is why I don’t watch that show. I tried watching the British version, I tried out the U.S. one, and it turns out I do not have sense of humor enough to see so much of my actual work life taken nearly verbatim and repackaged as satire. Some of you need that relief. I just get depressed. Give me walls or give me death got traded for a flat-screen monitor, uncensored internet access, and no dress code. Maybe I can fashion a door from a blanket and some tacks.




The office manager, Nellie, and I wonder sometimes if anyone would notice if we left; Nellie, I told her, the last time we were both out, no one could figure out how to turn on the lights, so they spent the whole day in the dark. They’d notice. Still, it’s easy to feel invisible. See what these office Olympians do to combat their anonymity.




When my friends and I would go visit a certain mother’s office after school, we’d always sneak into the copy room and make copies of every single body part we could get on the machine. Sometimes you’d get on one of those copiers that moved while copying your ass; to ignorant nine-year-olds, the office is like an amusement park with free souvenirs. Why the compulsion to make copies of your behind? One of office-mankind’s greatest mysteries.




Present-day me would never sit on a photocopier again, seeing how fragile they can be. Ours throws weekly fits, refusing to send one day and receive another, and one week it was a constant paper jam. This means we get to see lots of our new best friends: the copy machine repairmen, Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum. Once, they suggested “fixing” the machine by putting a carefully unbent paperclip inside it, leading us to believe that qualifications for repair positions at this company don’t get much higher than “sentient.” What we’d really like to do, Nellie and I, is reenact this scene.




Because our office is small, it’s easy to hear everyone else’s conversations, even the quiet ones. That’s why the really juicy gossip is emailed. Words, though, can only convey so much. When the loud guy is taking a conference call at his desk, and the woman with allergies won’t stop sniffling, and the crazy girl punctuates the muddle of sounds with one of her insane, long laughs, this situation can bring about a rage so uncontrollable that you are faced with only two choices: one, run to the bathroom and kick the stall doors and walls until you feel better, or two, take your revenge.




 —Meave Gallagher, Aug. 3, 2007

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Watching • Video Digest: July 27, 2007

When my editor asked me to write about Ms. Alexyss K. Tylor for this week’s Video Digest, my prudish side was shocked. Does he know what she talks about, I wondered? Does he know about her vocabulary? My grandparents read this!

The woman does have some captivating video clips out there, however, and I’d hate to deprive the world of the brilliance of the Alexyss Tylor Show because I was afraid of what my relations might think.

Furthermore, I admire her message, which I interpret as, “Women, do not give up your power to men, no matter how sexually pleasing they may be; it is too easy for them to abuse this power, as it makes them very strong.” Of course this does not apply across the board, and sometimes it does seem as though she’s speaking to the less canny ladies, but with every video I found myself nodding my head in agreement more and more.

Part Baptist preacher, part avenging feminist superwoman, part overly chatty lady on the bus—I don’t want to say any more for fear of ruining the rather overwhelming effect of seeing an Alexyss K. Tylor clip for the first time. Please enjoy (with headphones if you are at work or among children with the power of speech).

Please allow Alexyss and her mother to introduce the concepts of Penis Power and Vagina Power.




Here is Alexyss on Halloween, “piloting the pussy,” which is to say, she is strong in her Vagina Power.




This I had not considered before, but according to Alexyss, good sex with a not-so-good man can have shocking effects on a woman.




Sometimes, a man’s behavior is such that it does not reflect his speech. This story about one poor woman’s experience with a “two-faced dick” is particularly graphic, and quite enlightening.




Nannie, Grandad, I swear I know nothing about any of this.

 —Meave Gallagher, Jul. 27, 2007

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Watching • Video Digest: July 20, 2007

Like many of you, I’m a Nova kid. I remember sitting in the classroom, blinds closed against the Friday afternoon sun, staring transfixed at volcanoes exploding, crocodiles jumping for monkeys, a tiny unmanned submarine traveling the unexplored depths of the Marianas Trench. To this day, hearing Richard Attenborough’s voice puts me in a documentary trance. I can’t imagine anything more soothing than going to sleep while an older British man talks to me about the remarkable world of flora and fauna.

Big splashy nature documentaries are all well and good, but Shark Week’s never done it for me the way bugs do. Talk about remarkable! Humans had to evolve and evolve and evolve for anything exciting to happen, but insects have been tiny geniuses for millennia.


* * *

One of my favorites, this is a clip of leafcutter ants from a story about the rain forest. My point is illustrated perfectly: there we were for centuries, inventing the wheel and the corset and the process of foot-binding, while the ants were happily marching back and forth, cutting their leaves and using antibiotics.



Next, please watch as the rhinoceros beetle walks a tiny treadmill with an enormous weight strapped to its back. Why? Because scientists do funny things sometimes to prove theories.



We kept moths at my elementary school—big, ugly, scary cecropia moths, which always laid eggs that never hatched, and sort of fluttered around their tiny terrarium looking depressed. Butterflies, though? Never will you see a depressed butterfly.



Back to thrills and chills. A bug’s greatest enemy? Perhaps its own greed. Check out this Sundew making a tasty lunch of a fly.

As a soft-hearted, animal-loving vegan, I am opposed to honey farming. Did you know that in some places, people use grubs to eat all the bee larvae out of the honeycomb after they’ve harvested it? It’s heartbreaking. Lucky for you, this is not that video, though it does involve bees.



Finally, a stop-motion film made by Polish filmmaker Ladislas Starewicz in 1913. It’s called “The Insects’ Christmas,” and it’s a little strange, but let’s end on a happy note, in a world where even bugs and frogs get a visit from Father Frost.



 —Meave Gallagher, Jul. 20, 2007

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