The READIN Family Album
Me and Sylvia, smiling for the camera (August 2005)

READIN

Jeremy's journal

When I want to freak myself out, “I” think about “me” thinking about having an “I” The only thing stupider than puppets talking to puppets is a puppet talking to itself.

Daryl Gregory


(This is a page from my archives)
Front page
More recent posts
Older posts
More posts about:
How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck...
Werner Herzog
The Movies

Archives index
Subscribe to RSS

This page renders best in Firefox (or Safari, or Chrome)

🦋 Beobachtungen zu einer neuen Sprache

Last night I was watching Herzog's short documentaries; one of them is How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck... -- Beobachtungen zu einer neuen Sprache, which is a record of the 1976 National Livestock Auctions championships. Interesting and fun! The auctioneer's cant always gets my blood going. (The above song is "The Auctioneer" by The Spark Gap Wonder Boys -- the movie has a similar thing going on, but even better because there are so many different auctioneers.)

Well -- a lot to say about this film but I didn't really get any of it sorted out. There are things that remind me of Stroszek, most obviously the auction scene but other stuff too, like the lovely performance of "Country Roads" midway through. The main thing was, I thought this documentary was a distillation of Herzog's fascination with language and idiom -- my favorite part was the beginning, when Herzog was interviewing some of the contestants. The camera just hung on their bodies and heads and watched them talking. They talk about how they got into auctioneering and how they learned the cant. Bonus that they came from a lot of different places in North America so you got to watch how their inflecions come through in the cant.

posted evening of Wednesday, December 10th, 2008
➳ More posts about How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck...
➳ More posts about Werner Herzog
➳ More posts about The Movies

Respond:

Name:
E-mail:
(will not be displayed)
Link:
Remember info

Drop me a line! or, sign my Guestbook.
    •
Check out Ellen's writing at Patch.com.

What's of interest:

(Other links of interest at my Google+ page. It's recommended!)

Where to go from here...

Friends and Family
Programming
Texts
Music
Woodworking
Comix
Blogs
South Orange
readinsinglepost