assorted questions

[Diana York Blaine]

Has anyone read _My Dark Places_ by James Ellroy?  It struck me as the
non-fiction version of _V_. Does anyone else think the movie Brazil needed
some serious editing?  The second time I sat through it I envied
Dustin Hoffman's character in Marathon Man during the dentist scene. Does
anyone else think Faulkner's _As I Lay Dying_ fits neatly into the
funny/unfunny dichotomy we've been discussing? My students think I'm nuts
when I discuss the humor, and on some level it seems fair to accept their
perspective as legitimate. In fact, perspective seems germane to the issue
here--do we watch and read with a universal perspective?  Is humor an
absolute?  Or highly contextualized?  Has anyone on the list seen
the Jesco White documentary, for example? Finally, I was purchasing a gift
in a SoCal behemoth retail outlet when something about my check-out girl's
features struck me as familiar.  I looked down at her name tag and found
that I was being waited on by a Kafka. Yes, she said, she was a relation
of his (with the nose and eyebrows to prove it I might add). Question:
was the moment Kafkaesque?  Pynchonian?  Rabelaisian?  Marxist?
Southern Californian?  (insert sideways smile graphic here).  Well, off to
see BR549.  That band's name again?  BR549.   
- Diana (the non-Paglian brand of feminist).