The awful truth...

When pressed, I can carry on a fairly adequate conversation about Citizen Kane. I can explain to you how the story represents a roman à clef, in which the title character is a fairly transparent stand-in for the rich and powerful William Randolph Hearst. I can also tell you how, upon the film's release, Hearst prohibited the film from being mentioned in any of the newspapers he controlled. If pressed further, I can make a pretty good argument to the effect that the real subject of the roman à clef is not Hearst, but Welles himself.

Then there is that big, huge MacGuffin: "Rosebud..." Unlike Chekhov's gun, which must be fired in the second act after having been introduced in the first, Hitchcock's macguffin (I prefer to drop the capitals) is a device intended to drive the story, and in Citizen Kane, the utterance of "Rosebud" does just that. It is, after all, one thing to be a reporter researching a famous man's life, quite another to be chasing down an enigmatic utterance at the same time.

When, at the end of the movie, we in the audience glimpse the name on the sled just a few moments before it is consigned to the fire, we feel that we've been let in on a big secret that is now forever lost to the world, except that - despite that internal "Aha!" - it's well-nigh impossible to put a finger how this revelation is significant. In a way, it's almost like watching a stage illusion.

How does one approach viewing a film that has been called "the greatest film of all time"? Does one wear something formal, or is it okay to show up in one's underwear? Should one watch the film on a holiday weekend, and if so, what holiday? Should the film be viewed alone, or with company? And what of refreshment? Is it apropos to munch a bowl of popcorn while watching?

The fact is, knowing that the film was at the top of the American Film Institute's list of "Top 100" films - twice in ten years - has been enough to keep me from popping in the DVD I bought some years ago and planting my bulk long enough to view this acknowledged masterpiece.

That's right. In addition to all of the things I can tell you about this film, the stone cold truth is, the film - its reputation, really - has intimidated me for years.

So, as it turns out... I've never actually seen it.

* * *Written for, but not actually posted as my "free topic" offering for this past week's LJ Idol.

All for the best...

I could say that I could find no good "hook" for this week's LJ Idol subjects (four of them!), but that'd be fibbing. In truth, I spent very little time looking for one. I am sure that, were I to spend some very little time focusing, a suitable hook (or three) would have come to mind.

To be painfully truthful, what little time I spent thinking about what to write I frittered away trying to twist a particular idea into one of the subject molds (or variant thereof), which is entirely the wrong way to go about the process. In the end - and not terribly surprisingly - the effort turned out to be fruitless, and by the time I got a head of steam going in another, more suitable direction, it was too bleeding little, too bleeding late. I have since flipped what I did post into a private entry, and then back to public.

In point of fact, besides going about the free topic in the finest "bass-ackward" fashion, I spent too much time - or made sure I spent too much time - doing the usual stuff life entails, to the point where I've used that excuse to avoid almost everything else.

So, let's hope this performance was my "glitch" for 2009, shall we?

* * *In other news, I finally got hold of the electronic version of the Yvert & Tellier stamp catalog and I have to admit: I am disappointed. In particular, I had hoped the electronic version would provide clearer examples of color and design variations than the printed catalog (which merely describes color variations and provides primitive depictions of design variations), but in fact, the electronic version uses the same basic image for all design variations. This sort of defeats the whole purpose of the software, in my opinion.

Still, I've spent less time with the software than I spent debugging the Perl script that was shoved into my lap yesterday, so perhaps there are some redeeming values of which I am not yet aware.

* * *And yes, against all odds, with only black-box access to the web site on which the Perl script runs (i.e., asking the owner to send me individual files that had been generated dynamically by the script), I actually managed to figure out what was going on and to fix the problem.

* * *I have, against my original intention (which was to download my 50 free tracks and quit), decided to leave my emusic.com membership in place, at least for now. I really appreciate not having to wade through tons of pop-music eye candy to get to the classical offerings, which are displayed up close and personal on the emusic site, and am pleased with the customer service so far (which I had to invoke owing to a glitch in three album tracks).

The introductory offer also included one audiobook, and I selected Steven King's On Writing in anticipation of listening to it during my drive from Pagosa to Houston. I liked the audio version (narrated by King) so much, I also bought the Kindle version, and plan to read it in more detail on the "printed" page (which underscores the problem with audiobooks, at least for me: revisiting ideas worth pondering).

Cheers...