Thursday, October 16
another is fleming; well, bond rather (and not the overlooked books of course but the movies), it's pretty inevitable with the scenery and all the cute euro sportscars (sure we saw some aston martins), but also specifically referenced a few times. we imagined a 007-style chase across bernese rooftops, when the bearpits were empty. best was our danish expat waiter the second night in zermatt (three kinds of fondue alone in the basement) who looked the part in bowtied black-and-white, said he learned his english from bond films. (that was before my mom asked him "what is this, a collection of the worst cds ever made?" sorry, but it was funny.) actually, speaking sort of of fleming, there's also something about those mountain towns that made me think of chitty chitty bang bang (again, not the book, which if i remember right doesn't have that part in it at all, but the movie, which i saw so long ago it all runs together with "babes in toyland" and other things i can't think of), the sinister child-hating (is that right?) fairlyland gingerbread village.
that ties in with pynchon (this is only part of why i need to read gr again, but something about the zw?lfkinder stuff and the culture of innocence, like this part?) and more straightforwardly with disney (the other dominant cultural "mythology," for want of a better term) that central-europe-fetishizing/theme-park-ification/tourist-world business (okay, i'm not even going to get into baudrillard) which you know is all about sinister and gingerbread. well, it's easy to be cynical but actually nothing here is anywhere near as bad as venice which is totally demoralizing disney territory. oh, there's "the sound of music" too. those countries are all interchangable
come on now honey
bring it on bring it on now