Archive for October, 2007

High Definition

October 21, 2007

magnifying-glass.jpgAll my gadget-guy friends were beginning to whisper behind my back. They had a hard time hiding their pity and contempt. Why? Because I was still watching standard-definition TV at home.

So last week, I finally got a high-definition TV. I was surprised to learn that what I have been missing is not all good. It’s great, of course, to see every blade of grass in Fenway Park. But some shows are just not better in HD.

Take The Office, for example. Even on my old TV, The Office was uncomfortable to watch. It was kind of like listening to fingernails scratching on a blackboard. But on my HDTV, it’s like fingernails on a blackboard–with really bad skin. You can see every blemish and birthmark. You can even see the makeup. Watching The Office in HD feels a little like a scene from A Clockwork Orange. So I’m a member of the gadget-guy club again. I’m just hoping the psychological damage is not permanent.

Veiled Monologues

October 17, 2007

veiled10-500x249.jpgI saw The Veiled Monologues at the Zero Arrow Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts last night. It is billed as “a vital, surprising, and poetic portrait of love and relationships in the Islamic community” in Holland. It seemed to me more of a relentless and depressing portrait of female oppression. From Death of a Princess to Not Without my Daughter to Reading Lolita in Tehran, we see plenty of this narrative (“doesn’t the old world suck?”). I was kind of hoping for something different.