Curb your Enthusiasm

In class one night we watched Curb Your Enthusiasm. In the epidsode we watched Larry was making fun of or spoofing Passion of the Christ. While I have never seen this show before I found some parts funny but some parts just stupid. I understand why they were making fun of Passion of the Christ but didn't find it humorous at all. I am a Christian but I seriously doubt that would change anything because when he was making fun of Jewish traditions I didn't find that funny either. I get why some people may find it funny but I personally did not.

When the making fun of religions was going on Larry offered to buy his maid a bra because she didn't wear one. Instead of asking what size she was he was going to extremes to find out what size she would need. While at a friends house he found the friends wife's bra laying on the washer and dryer. He checked out the size but couldn't stop there he started rubbing it on his face and acting goofy and stupid with it. The next day he is approached by his wife and friends wife. Apparently they have a nanny cam and caught the whole thing. So they started yelling at him. While many in the class laughed about this I just did not find the humor in it. I guess it is because I am not a Seinfield fan. I thought Seinfield was stupid just like I did this show.

The third story line going on in this one episode is about the tooth fairy. Larry's friends little girl has lost her tooth and his squeaky shoes wake the girl up while the mother is putting money under her pillow. So once again Larry has pissed of his friends wife. Towards the end of the episode he loses a tooth while eating chicken salad and the next morning he wakes up with money under his pillow. His wife says she doesn't know what he is talking about and goes back to sleep.

While I thought this show had a few funny spots I did not perticularly care for it. All though he did clear all lose ends in one episode and it made a full circle I just did not like it. I did not like the Christian or the Jewish jokes at all. It really disgusted me when he was talking about God and Jesus and whether Jesus should have been a Jane or something like that. I am sure many people find his jokes funny but like I said before I wasn't a fan of Seinfield and won't be a fan of this show either.

Elizabeth Bishop

Being a person who is not a big fan of poetry, I enjoyed reading Elizabeth Bishop's poems. Though I did enjoy reading I couldn't get over the length of Crusoe in England! I did like how several of her poems were about nature. Even though water is mentioned in most of her poems they all have different references. In One Art a rivers are mentioned as something that she had lost as if they were her property. In Crusoe In England Bishop describes the water as waterspouts and then she goes on to decribe the them as the are alive, "they'd come and go, advancing and retreating, their heads in clous, their feet in moving patches of scuffed-up white." Here Bishop could have very easily given a vague description of the waterspouts but she decides to make them very animate. In The Moose Bishop once again has a mention of water. In this poem she mentions a bay and a river. These mentions of water is not very important in this poem so she does not go into great detail like she did iin Crusoe in England.

To those not interested in poetry or do not know much about poetry it is very obvious that these poems of Bishop's are about nature or having something to do with nature or the "real world". Like I have previously mentioned, water is in several of the poems. Not only is water in those poems but other parts of nature like animals, volcanoes, insects, and vegetation. As for the "real world" in In the Waiting Room a little girl named Elizabeth (could quite possibly be Bishop) is waiting at the dentist for her aunt's appointment. Elizabeth is looking at a National Geographic. The magazine has an article in that has women with wire wound around their necks to make the necks longer. This magazine is dated February 1918. Though this magazine is dated ninety years ago this does still happen in other countries.

Since I have not read any other of Bishop's poems I cannot say whether or not if they all have to do with nature or real topics like these poems do. Like I said at first I did like these poems. I am not a big fan of analyzing to see what the underlying message may be. I am not saying there isn't something in these poems I didn't see. Sometimes someone has to read a poem four or five times before they catch something they didn't see before. Though I am not a big poem fan so far this class is leading me to a new direction. After reading Bishop's poems and doing our close reading I may have to start reading poetry.