I’m only a week behind the times. From last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine*, a profile of director David Cronenberg by Jonathan Dee:

“The reason for making a film,” he once said, “is to find out what it was that made you want to make that film in the first place.”

Which, I think, is pretty much the reason for making any kind of art.

* The link won’t do you much good if you’re not willing to shill out the money for the new Times Select subscription service. (I’m not.) All you get is a couple of lines — less than two sentences — of preview. I’m just saying.

Hacking Netflix has a post about the possibility that some users may be switching damaged discs from their personal collections for Netflix copies:

How often does this happen to others? Is this an act of Netflix sending out alternate versions of what is supposed to be in their inventory, or are customers trying to rip off Netflix by returning their own full-screen and rated discs?

It’s interesting. I was actually tempted to do this sort of thing myself once with a Farscape disc that I thought might have been damaged. But then of course I realized something: that would be wrong.

“On the basis of ‘Dirty Love,’ I am not certain that anyone involved has ever seen a movie, or knows what one is.” – Roger Ebert

“All that the restless viewer [of ‘Flightplan’] can do is marvel at the snazzy production design and the strange elocution of Ms. Foster’s co-star, Peter Sarsgaard (as a sky marshal), who serves up his lines as if he had studied at the John Malkovich school of cinematic expediency.” – Manohla Dargis

And, in a very roundabout way speaking of Flightplan — or at least its co-screenwriter Billy Ray — or, okay, Billy Ray’s short-lived 1994 television series Earth 2 (hey, I told you this was roundabout) — I’ve been watching the series for the first time on DVD lately. It has its good points and bad. But I was amused to find, in the episode I watched this morning, that the DVD proudly proclaims that “Virginia Madsen (Sideways) guest stars.” Which I guess I understand. With Sideways and her deserved Oscar nomination for it, Madsen’s star has risen considerably, and hopefully gone are the days when she starred mainly in bad horror movies like The Prophecy. Except she doesn’t “guest star” in the Earth 2 episode. She appears, yes, but only for about half a minute, essentially as an extra. I don’t think she’s even listed in the credits. She was there, it would seem, only because she was sleeping with one of the cast members (Antonio Sabato, Jr.) at the time. She has no lines; you probably wouldn’t know she was there unless you were looking for her; blink, and you’d have missed her.

This sort of retroactive cross-promotion isn’t all that unusual. Films are often promoted using the subsequent successes of their casts and crews. (The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, anyone?) But it’s a little disingenous to pretend that Earth 2 “discovered” Virginia Madsen before she was a big star or anything like that.

But, as I said, Madsen’s star has risen. I note that she’ll be starring in the upcoming film of A Prairie Home Companion. I’m more amused by the casting for singing cowboys Dusty and Lefty. Originally, Tom Waits and Lyle Lovett were set to play the pair. Now it’s Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly. Tom Waits, replaced by Woody Harrelson… Hmm. I don’t know if that bodes well.

The Friday Random 10, “Hell if I Know” edition:

Darling Be Home Soon – the Lovin’ Spoonful
Crazy Baby – Joan Osborne
Law (Earthlings On Fire) – David Bowie
Six String Music – Jimmy Buffett
In the Waiting Line – Zero 7
For Your Love – the Yardbirds
Shove This Jay-Oh-Bee – Canibus With Biz Markie
Taxman – the Beatles
Shibuya – Brian Reitzell & Roger J. Manning Jr.
Tennessee Jed – Grateful Dead

I never imagined I’d have reason to say this, but: my cup runneth over with math jokes.

It started this morning when my boss handed me a hard copy of this (note, free AMS user id and password required). It’s an article by Paul Renteln and Alan Dundes entitled “Foolproof: A Sampling of Mathematical Folk Humor,” and it contains such gems as:

Q: What’s purple and commutes?
A: An abelian grape.

and

Q: What do you call a young eigensheep?
A: A lamb, duh!

These are jokes that I’m sure are a laugh riot in the right circles. In fact, I help to publish books in those circles, being an editorial assistant for a couple of acquisitions editors, one in maths and stats. But, as an English major who hasn’t actually taken a math class since my senior year of high school*, these jokes go largely over my head.

But anyway, no sooner had I started looking at that article then Generik sent me another math joke. Well, okay, a dumb-blonde joke, but there was some math content involved. (And for those of you offended by dumb-blonde jokes, Renteln and Dundes offer at least one math joke where the tables are turned.)

Anyway, now that I think about it, I realize that that’s really not a lot of math jokes. Hardly enough for a cup to start runnething over or anything. In theory, I do deal with mathematics — or at least mathematicians — most every day.

But Renteln and Dundes’ basic premise did get me thinking. They write:

…[M]athematicians as a group share a common core of mathematical folklore. Some of this folklore tends to be quite esoteric and intelligible only to members of the group. Outsiders not possessing the requisite mathematical vocabulary and knowledge rarely know such esoteric material, and even if they did they would probably not understand it. But there is also exoteric mathematical folklore that is known to a limited number of outsiders, for example, physicists, chemists, and engineers. Much of this exoteric folklore consists of classic jokes contrasting members of different but related academic disciplines.

What it got me thinking of was one of my favorite writer jokes. Not that that’s tough to understand if you’re not a writer or anything, but there are jokes like that. (More so, I suspect for English majors, copyeditors, editorial assistants, and the like.)

So the question is: are there jokes you find funny but that you probably couldn’t explain why, that rely on your own exoteric folklores?

* This is not entirely true. I did take an astronomy course in my senior year of college where some very basic math was required. And there’s always that Formal Logic class I took freshman year…but I squeaked by with a low D in that, so the less said about it, maybe, the better.