for 27 December 2000. Updated every WEEKDAY.

Tim Cavanaugh
Special Guest Editor

Terry Colon
Art Director

Heather Havrilesky
Senior Editor

Joey Anuff
Publisher

My god Polly, you and Terry transformed from the cranky pragmatic writer and pastel web-safe color artist to, to, to... this Dr. Seussian tale? I hardly recognized you guys! Though I'm duly impressed by both your and Terry's dynamic range of skill, kudos, could you please go back to your making fun of people with pathetic, needy, whiny personalities and their matching lives? I need a fix of squirrel!

Thanks!

Suckerpunch
<suckerpunch@mindspring.com>

I thought that Yinch was all about a pathetic, needy, whiny personality and a matching life. You object to the rhymes? The lack of squirrels? The happy ending? You'd prefer unrhyming, clumsy prose with squirrels and tragic endings?

Ah, well, who wouldn't?

Polly

Dear Polly,

My friend Heidi always says "If you can't stick to 'the man,' any man will do." I never bothered to ask or check if she's quoting someone else.

Hopped up on cheap coffee,

Patrick Moore
<pachista@mindspring.com>

I like that. Stick it to men!

But men have it pretty bad as it is, though, don't you think? Lusty thoughts, too much body hair, and no way to express those few emotions that do blow through their shallow souls, unexplained, like unexpected bad weather. You poor guys. We women should do something to make it up to you, like put you in charge of everything under the sun and watch as you fuck it up, big time.

Oh, well, I guess we already did that. Maybe we could send you a nice scented candle instead.

Ooo, stick it, ah-ha-ha, stick it,

Polly

Wow, that was a really great Filler. Your rhyme and your prose couldn't be better. The theme was about what I'd expect, The presentation was near perfect, And its message was real and blunt and correct.

But now that I think about it, the Yinch didn't really have to work all that hard. He was just being a typical Yinch in December, getting some skincare when this love of his life bumped into him, decided she liked him despite his yammering, and they were happily ever after until they started fighting.

But the message was good, anyway. Maybe some chick will bump into me on my way to get some mocha.

Bring on the good sex!

Vic
<sekmu@tisiphone.dhs.org>

Well, instead of sitting and stewing in his own juices, he took a ride down to Mooville and bought some lotion. Like most Yinches, he desperately needed to get out of the house. Then, when he met the Moo girl, he didn't judge her based on her cheesy appearance — he loved her for HER, see? Sniff.

So, will a chick bump into you on your way to get some mocha? I don't think so, because you referred to her as a chick. Also, you said, "Bring on the good sex" but forgot about the TexMex and the beer, which may not be nearly as important as good sex, but are still quite significant, in the big scheme of things. So, get some balance in your life and get back to me.

Blunt and correct, like a dull knife in the ass,

Polly

It's Christmas, and
Usually Cranky Miss Polly
is suddenly quite unexpectedly jolly!
What happened, you ask,
to make Polly so silly?
Was it good German beer?
Or a lover in Philly?
Or a robust, reliable
e-commerce portal
That shipped every gift
right on time with a chortle?
Or is LA so lovely
and sunny and bright
In December (we know this!)
that it's simply one's right
To forget all the angst
that The Holidays bring
And just sit on the beach?
Not a bad kind of thing!

Well, the cause notwithstanding,
your column was fun.
Merry Christmas, Miss Esther,
and happy '01!

Cheers

Andrew Sullivan
<ajsullivan@att.com>

Polly is jolly
but don't be misled!
Christmas still makes
the poor fool lose her head.
Nostalgia, dysfunction,
resentment, and stress —
How we get through it
is anyone's guess.
But no need to freak out
and start to act shrewish,
and lay blame and break things
and wish you were Jewish,
Because this magical time
that we fear,
thankfully only comes 'round
once a year.

Sneers,

Polly

Dear Polly,

What is it about Christmas that leads people to wrap up so much of their hopes into it? And when people are somehow bereft of hope, an easy substitute wrapping is bitterness, as the stories of the Grinch (and your Yinch) portray. (And, as so often happens when I read the Filler, I took one look and said to myself "I know that Yinch!"). While I have never felt as disaffected as the Yinch, it is easy enough to feel left out and alone at this time of year, and both the Grinch and Scrooge myths highlight the value of having a strong emotional support network. (But how does one "get" one, if one doesn't have one?)

And yet there lurks another danger for folks who have come to rely too heavily on the emotional release afforded by the standard give and take of 20th century American Christmases. It is the angst that comes with towering expectations, followed by the emptiness, guilt, and dread that one did not give the right thing or give things to all the right people or give to all in fair measure, until the whole thing is about not getting and not giving and not at all about being together and sharing and healing.

Perhaps we have come to listen to our own advertisements to the point where we all really believe we should feel good all the time. Maybe we could lower our expectations, just a tiny bit.

I hope that you are safe and warm and surrounded by people you love during the holiday season. But even if you are not, and even if you can identify with the Yinch, please trust my knowledge that it will not always be that way for you.

Merry Christmas, Polly.

Richard Banks
<richard.banks@cpa.state.tx.us>

How the fuck do you know that? You don't know me! You never knew me! You never even tried to know me!

Just kidding. I think the problem lies not in expecting too much, but in translating your expectations of one thing into expectations of other things. Christmas offers a cathartic experience of whatever sort you're needing — the gifts and the traditions become a conduit for larger issues. Control freaks and martyrs spend the entire season sending out long letters and baking cookies and trying to do it all while talking about how guilty they feel that they didn't do it all sooner. People with repressed emotional problems spend the days leading up to Christmas in cheery denial, then once Christmas Day comes along they feel let down, because all the stuff in the world can't make up for the lack of closeness they feel toward their family. People with problems dealing with regrets feel regretful about every choice they made — "I should've gotten her a bigger present." "I shouldn't have come home for Christmas."

Sometimes I think Christmas allows people to confront the problems that they manage to ignore the rest of the year because they're too busy and distracted most of the time. You think of Christmas as a pleasant break, it turns suddenly into a stress-filled nightmare, and you emerge feeling thankful for your every day life — just in time for the new year, when you're facing a whole new year of every day life. It's not such a bad system, when you think about it.

Well, there's one of the most self-involved "meaning of Christmas" treatises ever put forth, huh?

'Tis the season to be Polly,

Polly

Well, here's an interesting side-note on von Trier. He grew up thinking that his father (whom he had never met) was Jewish, and identified strongly as a Jew. Then, on his mother's deathbed, she confessed that she made it all up and he wasn't Jewish after all. Von Trier had a breakdown shortly after that confession. What a way to get cosmically fucked.

Elliot Feldman
<EFeldman@station.sony.com>

Something similar happened in my family. My mother, through certain subtle hints and suggestions — maybe it was the way she carried herself, I don't know — throughout my life implied we were wealthy. Guess what we found out on her deathbed? Ouch!

The upshot is that to earn every third slice of my daily bread I now have to write for Suck.com. I'm not sure if that qualifies me as "cosmically fucked" or not. Let me suggest, however, that in some small way it has made me if not a better person than at least a different one.

Thanks for your aside -

Slotcar H.

As a fellow letter writer quoted Neil Gaiman recently regarding comic books, I think the followers of the Dogme 95 Manifesto may be mistaking a medium for a genre. To clarify, by discounting all genres of films, they make claim there is to be only one sort of film, thus making film the genre. Of course, the whole Vow of Chastity could not have been whole-heartedly serious; what director would honestly swear to no longer be an artist? A clever bit of performance art, more like.

I confess to not having seen any of the films to come out of the "movement," and I don't know if they're rentable. I will cop to being a semi-snob about the movies. But I'm no elitist. I refuse to watch Titanic, but I thought Scream was great fun. I adore the movie musical, as I do the stage musical, but I also enjoy the assorted dark and angsty movies that diametrically oppose that genre.

That said, I feel very said for Mr. von Trier that he is unable to appreciate a more broad spectrum of art/entertainment. The Sound of Music fakery? Maybe contrived, but not with ill-intentions. Besides, if one recalls, Rodgers and Hammerstein perpetrated this "fakery" on stage before it reached the silver screen. In any case, The Sound of Music, which was based on the true story of a family who would become a popular singing group, is less unusual as a movie musical than, say, Oliver! or Annie. Why are orphans breaking out into song? Now that doesn't make sense.

Of course, one mustn't question the true artist's tastes. That will always brand one a Philistine.

Thanks for the piece. Very intriguing as I haven't yet seen Ms. Gudmundsdottir's star turn, but I will rectify that soon enough. I had hoped to avoid the open forum sob-fest, but it seems I'd really be missing something.

Alexia Henke
<alexia_henke@exchangeny.deutschinc.com>

Dear ACH:

As someone who, in a reversal of your position, is an elitist but not a snob, I suggest you run right out and see Björk in Dancer in the Dark. That's some film-critic speak, there, "run right out." I want Gene Shalit's job so bad I can taste it.

If you identify the Dogma's failing as refusing to identify genres, I'm afraid I can't agree. They are explicitly opposed to westerns, crime films, etc.

However, I agree with a point you make, but for different reasons: There are no genres.

I don't see why you can't enjoy both Titanic AND Scream. Was the easy self-consciousness of "Scream" more to your liking than the heavy sincerity of Titanic? Was it the Celine Dion number that got to you? I liked the both of them, even though I only saw about 20 minutes of Titanic on a display-TV at a Caldor (before they went out of business).

Looking back on that, I should see more movies that way. I think I like them better like that.

Thanks for writing in!

Slotcar H.

Aside from the fact that they seem to break even their own stupid rules (wasn't The Celebration shot on digital video, not 35mm film, after all?) have those Danes noticed that their dogma sounds suspiciously like Latin America's Cinema Novo/ Third Cinema/ Poor Cinema movement? Those cats wrote manifestos that were a lot more complex and articulate than the control-freak purism of Von Trier not allowing his electrician to get an extension cord out of his car.

The whole thing reminds me of the contrast between the hunger strike of a political prisoner and the Diet Coke swilling anorexia of a teenage suburban girl, actually. To deny artifice, technical or otherwise, signifies differently in the impoverished circumstances of1960s Brazil and Argentina than in prosperous 1990s Europe.

Furthermore, while Third Cinema saw filmmaking as part of the wider political issues they engaged with, these pissy Danish boys never seem to refer to anything but cinema. Like a high-school clique, they never seem to notice the world outside their little in-group.

"We're victims too!" they shout with their tired depoliticized manifesto. Never mind that this supposedly "anti-auteur" tactic has done more to boost their individual careers than any 'George Lucas in Love' could have, these boys want you to know that they've suffered.

Oh, and has anyone told them what hide the truth isn't necessarily as obvious or as easy to eliminate as a tripod?

Looks to me like one more cynical careerist appropriation of technique emptied of content and context.

Julia
<julia_halperin@mail.utexas.edu>

Dear Julia:

Glauber Rocha fans everywhere thank you for writing in.

As for you comments about anorexia, it seems to me that von Trier & Co.'s success with the Dogma has only made them fatter.

Even in their filmmaking: I don't mean to suggest that "Dancer" is bloated, but, let's face it, at 139 minutes, those are some fat reels.

Good to hear from you -

Slotcar H.

There's a beside-the-point feeling to the Dogma, and none of the films produced under its conditions brought down the tyranny of production value and special effect as much as The Blair Witch Project — the film that killed Stanley Kubrick — did.

My apologies for being dense on this topic, but how did that film kill Stanley Kubrick?

<doodles8@postoffice.pacbell.net>

Dear Doodles:

Well, uh, you see, like, Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut was trumped at the box office by The Blair Witch Project and Kubrick actually did, see, die around then, and the triumph of the cheap, handheld style of Blair Witch put the final stake in the heart of the rich, traditional mise-en-scene represented by Eyes Wide ShutSlotcar H.Slotcar H. (at least as far as cineplex-audience attendance is concerned), so, um, I was trying to say a few things there.

Maybe you had to be there with me, back in the '90s, during that crazy summer when those two movies came out. It seemed like anything could happen back then. And then Time Code came out.

Slotcar H.

Hi Scott,

I enjoyed your Suck.com piece on the Dogme 95 films, and thought you might be amused by a satirical piece I wrote earlier this year.

It was inspired by Harmony Korine's apologia on the "Julien Donkey-Boy" web site. If you've come across it already, then never mind. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy it...

Regards,

Kevin
<kshay@ix.netcom.com>

Kevin:

Hey, mister! Didn't you get the memo? Harmony Korine is the savior of the cinema, godammit! Him and Guy Ritchie!

Although I was greatly amused by your Confession, one factual error prevented me from enjoying it as much as I would have liked to.

In a little known addendum to the Dogma Vow of Chastity, the original signers have declared that using a body double for Melanie Griffith is not only acceptable, but encouraged.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, von Trier explained that this dictum was "a gentle poke at the work of Mr. Brian De Palma. He gets away with too much and we just thought it would be neat to point out the fakery and phoniness — artifice, you might call it — of his movies, especially the ones from the '80s, but Snake Eyes, too, is marred by his willingness to avoid confronting reality through the deployment of special effects and Nicholas Cage, who is no Peter Stormare."

I hope this clears things up. Keep up the good work.

Slotcar H.

The Shit

Physical Strength and How to Obtain It, by Eugen Sandow

Bamboozled, A Spectacular New Film by Mr. Spike Lee

G. Beato's all-new Soundbitten

William Demarest, Sultan of Snarl, in The Lady Eve (1941), The Palm Beach Story (1942), and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944)

George Wallace: Settin' The Woods On Fire, directed by Daniel McCabe and Paul Stekler

1995

Bobby Darin, Darin at the Copa (Atlantic)

Shinji-San in the floating world of indeterminate duration, by Peter Richardson

American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley: His Battle for Chicago and the Nation, by Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor

Neutral Milk Hotel, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (1996, Merge)

45, by Bill Drummond

Cliff "Ukulele Ike" Edwards, Singing in the Rain (ASV)

Do you know of stuff that doesn't actively suck? Things so good they deserve to make the Shitlist? Send your suggestions to us.