Uncle Jazzbeau’s Gallimaufrey

jerry & jacques, sa

Years ago when we first bought our house, we decided to convert an odd little workroom off of the garage and the laundry room into a wine cellar. We’d sheetrocked it and put some nice tiles down on the floor, but at some point back when the economy was going strong and there wasn’t a batch of unbaked hooligans in charge of the country, work on the wine cellar slowed and it quickly accumulated a bunch of boxed odds and ends. Well, we’ve decided to clean it out and put in the wine racks and finish installing the lights, &c. So, with the temperature crossing on over into the hundreds, I started to move boxes of books out. I found a bunch of LPs and some 5.25 inch diskettes, along with some ancient Broderbund software. No black widow spiders, yet.

Last night we watched a documentary called Derrida. It was an enjoyable 90 minutes, but revealed precious little about the philosophy or the man behind it. Now I know that his wife calls him Jackie, and that he butters a crumpet quite methodically. His brother, René, has a funny moment staring into the camera and musing on just where does his brother come up with all that thinking he puts in his books. The director, Amy Ziering Kofman, displays one of the worst American accents that I’ve heard since high school French class when asking her purposefully banal questions. I liked her voiced over excerpts from his texts and think the film would have worked without the questions. At one point, it does promise to cross over into the surreal when a British interviewer asks Derrida about Seinfeld. He stares at her unblinkingly. “Deconstruction, as I understand it, does not produce any sitcoms,” he says. "Do your homework and read.” Later in his library cum study, the film crew comes across some Ann Rice paperbacks. “Somebody gave them to me when I was researching vampirism. No, I've never read them.” As the camera pans away from him putting the books back up on the shelf, the audience sees some toys, Pampers disposable diapers, and a little temporary bed. Derrida’s granddaughter has been to visit.