Nymphomaniac

I like Melancholia and I remember really liking Dancer in the Dark 10 years ago. It's tough to accept Melancholia's two siblings are slogs. Not that Nymphomaniac is as brooding and grotesque as Antichrist -- in fact, it's almost light-hearted, for the 1:15 I watched -- but it's dull. The dialogue sounds like it's trying to be witty and philosophical, with its dry punchiness and its fishing metaphors, but neither the humor nor the philosophy sticks the landing; both turn out more pretentious than interesting. The story isn't thrilling either -- it's a woman recounting her development as a nymphomaniac, which is an auspicious premise if you can say anything beyond the obvious self-indulgence, but the movie hasn't gotten there. There was a very lengthy scene illustrating the impact the protagonist had on a family she was coldly mistressing; but the length felt more like an artistic miss than a deliberate hammering-home of a point. That's when I turned it off for the night. There was nothing enjoyable or captivating about that long scene for me.

There's still a lot of Nymphomaniac left: 45 minutes of this volume, and then a whole other volume. But this is such a shaky foundation, I don't feel like continuing. I know von Trier is self-indulgent, I know he can be pessimistic... I'm not sure I need all that. Dancer and Melancholia had superficially pessimistic endings, but they were actually really satisfying and devastating. I don't trust Nymphomaniac to find that chord, since there are no hints of it so far, like there would have been in those two movies.

Opera singers, Turandot

Turandot, Christmas week 2025, 4/4/87 performance on Met website with Domingo

Callas and Pavarotti, for all their renown, are almost too human. Callas sounds like a middle-aged lady. It was probably just the sound of the time -- perhaps they didn't know how to get that stuff out of the sound back then, so as far as they knew, she was angelic. Now, she's a full-throated dame. I heard Lise Davidsen do "Vissi d'arte" and Renee Fleming do "Signore, acolsta", both of which I intuitively enjoyed better than Callas' versions. For instance, Fleming's final couple of notes are pure tone, no throat, no gut, no speech. Callas is always grounded in her gut. I don't know how to describe these things, nor do I have much experience in what I'm talking about, but perhaps it just boils down to Callas being old-fashioned. I love her persona though.

As for Pavarotti... I haven't seen him in Turandot, but I doubt I'd like him as much as I liked Domingo. Domingo was the heroic tenor, in shape and size and style. Pavarotti can't play a warrior hero at his stature. Good Duke of Mantua though! at least as far as he was a regal glutton. Stature aside, I'm not sure I even like his voice (ostensibly the best ever) as much as Domingo's. They say Pavarotti is effortless, but that's what I'd say about Domingo's Calaf. Not only did he hit every note, the sound sprung out of him like a golden fountain. Pavarotti, like Callas, has too much guttural humanity in his sound. I mean maybe that's someone's taste, but I like voice as pure instrument. I like how Domingo just unleashed the sound. I like how gentle Davidsen was.

Turandot was the best opera I've seen lately, or ever. Grander and bolder than Tosca, more musical than Don Carlo, more beautiful than Carmen or Figaro, Turandot was the best synthesis of drama and melody I've seen. The sets were intense, the arias included two of my all-time favorites, the setting was epic-historical, and the musical themes stood out so much better than in that other epic-historical Don Carlo. Despite the 1987 date, Turandot was fresh and intense. Domingo was the right kind of tenor. Even without "Nessun dorma", the music soars. It's funny, I never would have expected a Chinese setting for "Nessun dorma". But I like how Puccini leans on the eastern pentatonic in Turandot's motif as well as "Signore, acolsta".

1. Turandot
2. Tosca
3. Carmen?
4. Don Carlo
5. Rigoletto

Opera

Carmen 2025 at 2 Roots and on vinyl

Tosca Dec 2025, performance 11/23/24, conductor Nézet-Séguin, Met website

The Magic Flute at Luther

The Merry Widow at Luther

Der Rosenkavalier at the Met, probably weekend of 4/8-9 2023

The Marriage of Figaro 2025 at 2 Roots

Don Carlo Dec 21-24 2025, conductor Nézet-Séguin, Met website, performance 12/11/10

Rigoletto Dec 2025, 1981 with Pavarotti, Met website

I'm thinking more seriously about opera for the first time. 

Pavarotti missing that note in Rigoletto at the Met is like Ned Stark dying -- everything ever after feels high-stakes, you know no one is safe.

If I had to rank the three operas I've watched on the Met's website, it'd be 1) Tosca, 2) Don Carlo, 3) Rigoletto. Rigoletto was a tragedy, yet felt like a comedy that was told it had to be a tragedy. The most familiar melody, "La donna e mobile", is one of the cheeriest ever; the title character is a jester; the romance feels like Much Ado. I remember being surprised when death first came into the picture, surprised in a discordant way. Maybe that's the purpose -- I do think there was some intentional irony to some of the Duke's cheer -- but it felt more like Verdi just didn't know operas could have happy endings. I'm probably wrong there, but I just can't stop picturing Pavarotti's broad face under a thick tuft of hair grinning among his mistresses. It's too light, yet turns dark in an unsatisfying way, via the uninspiring character of Rigoletto. Don Carlo had the religious and historical backdrop, which I like, and the visuals were stunning; yet little of the music struck me. ChatGPT told me Don Carlo was the obvious next Italian opera for me to watch, and I can see why in terms of the grand setting, but the music was not fulfilling. The arias weren't very melodic, it was just three and a half hours of severity. I may like the grandeur of the setting, ChatGPT, but I need melodious grandeur in the music too. Tosca, despite ChatGPT's comment on Puccini's simple intimacy of scene, delivered a gravitas that behemoth Don Carlo couldn't, via pulling the modern heartstrings. Puccini seems to be modern enough that his melodies can strike gold, yet classical enough that he respects form. "Vissi d'arte" and "Nessun Dorma", for example, play in chords like I ii IV, like modern popular music. Thus modernism in classical music has a different meaning than the avant garde, it also suggests melody that can move me.

I don't expect Mozart will be my operatic hero: he seems to be too sanitized. Two deep in Verdi, I can't place him up there either. I liked Carmen, but I know it's not the peak for me. If I am to adore opera, I'm putting some chips on Puccini and Wagner. "Nessun Dorma" is one of my favorite songs ever, I guess, and Wagner seems to embody the epic/philosophical/serious art of opera as much as anyone, though I haven't heard much of his. Hopefully it's fairly melodic. It probably isn't.

If I wasn't about to go to Italy, I might abandon Italian opera for now and turn to Wagner or something. But I think Puccini possesses some treasures yet for me.

Spartacus

Stanley, what have you done? This movie licks white dog crap. The set pieces, the mild delight of seeing Laurence Olivier do anything, and the vain prospect of any sign of Kubrick showing up are all that's keeping me going.

I'm an hour and a half in. Kirk Douglas is sickening as the most dimple-chinned classical male hero of all time, perfectly shaven and buzzed and slicked back despite being a rural slave. His personality is no less grossly polished and whitewashed than his looks, being a life-size masculinity mannequin made of stale cheese. His love interest is hardly better, bearing that ridiculous fog they always put on the camera to accentuate a true beauty in old movies, bearing a gratingly one-dimensional and repetitive orchestral theme, and bearing an impossible (and probably misogynistic on the writers' part) infatuation for her Dirk Diggler Kirk Douglas.

One searches for any evidence Kubrick made this. There's no hint of philosophy, of artistic adventure, of the frightening side of humanity; it's the most basic old epic. It's even worse than the Heston epics I suffered recently. I don't get it.

Leadership and Game of Thrones

To YET AGAIN see my career through a GoT lens, I'd rather be showrunner for S7/8 if Martin has already given me the plot than if not. If not, I'd rather be showrunner for earlier seasons. I'd also rather execute the production of a plot that already has direction than come up with the plot, assuming lots of people have a stake in the plot and I'm not confident where it should go. That's the thing, how much control I want is a function of the consequences of a wrong turn and how confident or convicted I feel. I avoid taking control of situations in which the analytics are unclear, my intuition and desires are unclear, and people have a lot of stake in the game. Let's say I have to control such a situation; what levers do I have? I can try to clarify the analytics (quantify the decision) as much as possible, though this can be hard; I can try to mine my intuition better, and then trust it once I find something, but often I have no intuition that bubbles up through my hard crust of analysis; or I can move on to other problems that I actually care about. Lots of leadership requires that intuition that feels so buried for me; lots of times, clarifying the analysis is futile -- it only takes you far enough to whittle down the sensible options, but not far enough to pull the trigger. Some people mostly operate by intuition; if their intuition is good, they succeed more than they fail (in magnitude if not in frequency); if bad, they should try analysis; but in either case, they're taking L's along the way. I'm shaped by a refusal to take L's. Should I mold my career to reward that, or mature my attitude for the sake of personal and professional growth? Most careers punish my level of scrutiny -- certainly Agile Product Management does. Should I seek a career that rewards precision in analysis, or get in better touch with my intuition? Or just seek a career that I care more about, supposing the intuition will bubble up if heated by my heart?

Love in Game of Thrones

I was on a walk, for some reason narrating my own marriage as though I were Martin, when I realized Martin doesn't really do romantic love. He does filial piety, he does narcissism, he does lust, but he doesn't really do romantic love. At least not that I've seen through the TV show and my skimming of the books. Here's what I've seen:

Ned, the emotional peak and core, is in an arranged and initially cold marriage; they grow a respectable bond, but it's brutally severed on both ends. Not a romance you'd write home about.

Jon and Dany are the second tier of heroes, and lucky for us, they're romantically involved -- but alas! she's his aunt, and he murders her. Not a storybook romance.

Jaime and Cersei are a preeminent romance, but -- here we are again -- they're incestuous and murderous. Hardly Disney fodder.

Arya and Gendry are far too brief, and doomed by her nature anyway, and possibly not canonical by Martin. Doesn't count.

Tyrion and Shae may genuinely love each other, but she's his half-prostitue half-slave, and alas! he murders her. Why does Martin hate love?

Robb and his wife (I can't remember her name) are the best Nicholas Sparks story so far, at first, but they're founded on betrayal, and thereby they too collapse. If the best romance you write ends in the Red Wedding, you aren't a writer of romance.

Martin is very sensual, so he needs to flirt with romantic love, but I think we can see that it isn't his forte. Typically it collapses simply into sex or violence -- he can't sustain its subtle buoyancy, or he doesn't believe his world supports that. I think that if our world supports it, then his does, thus it just isn't his forte. He's better with love of nation, love of honor, and, above all else, love of ego.

Dynasties, leadership, Game of Thrones, Packers

At work, I'm trying to avoid high-level decision-making responsibility, despite multiple people advising me in the opposite direction. And yet, in GoT, I'm so satisfied when a character I adore comes into their own, dons the mantle of destiny. I think the issue is I don't want the responsibility when I don't exceptionally care for, or feel exceptionally made for, the position. I don't want the responsibility in the realm of proptech. But, on the other hand, if a wolf journeyed down from the arctic to tell me there was a musical, wolf-cohabiting tribe that needed my leadership, for I was prophesied in the ancient ice carvings, I would go. Or if my many aunts told me I needed to start stepping up as the last in a line of only-sons stretching back at least to my great grandfather, I would do it. Or if the wolf, and my aunts, told me that that Bien line was in fact the line of that arctic tribe, and our family has been secretly fighting back an Ice Age for millennia, I would investigate. First I'd grimace, "ah, shit, it's so cold up there!" but the wolf would say "yeh have the North in yeh. The real North." I'd suffer the typical heroic doubt that plagues the rugged likes of Aragorn and Jon Snow, and then that doubt would suffer me.

Indeed, if my family was a patriarchal dynasty like the monarchies of Britain, Westeros, or (I think) Numenor, I'd be due for quite a huge family tree to rule, with at least five generations of Bien funneling toward me (great grandpa, grandpa, dad, me, cousins' kids, and potentially others before my great grandpa) and tons of branches in those middle generations. Unlike in proptech corporate, I would feel particularly designed to lead such a tree, and I'd feel more emotionally invested. It might actually be a worse experience than proptech -- an unhappier life -- but at least I'd feel clarity of purpose. I'd maybe even be less qualified, in character, to lead that than to lead proptech -- but more qualified on paper, which counts.

So let me rehash this exercise from an old blog post. Which positions would I want in Westeros?

King (of the Seven Kingdoms): no

Hand: I'd only consider this if I had an exceptionally useful king. Otherwise, you're just being king without the glory. Robert wasn't the worst king to Hand; he was a stout, trusty fellow; but it's no mere coincidence you heard things during his rule like "the king shits and the Hand wipes" or, from his own mouth, "I need [my Hand] to rule the Seven Kingdoms while I eat, drink, and whore my way to an early grave" (reciting from memory). Ned would have been a good king to Hand -- Ned suffers the weight of the Seven Kingdoms while you just try to help him turn his admirable decisions into truly excellent decisions. It would suck to be the decisiveness or moral conscience of your king, but with a king like Ned, you'd just be analytical backup, a vitamin to his own wisdom.

Lord of a minor house: sure! You're likely to feel designed for it, most likely being the obvious heir by traditional determination, and your realm is likely to feel somewhat united, compared to lording the geographically and ideologically scattered Seven Kingdoms. Your house supports you through bonds of blood and direct intimate experience; they're less likely to support a distant king with no familial ties who has done nothing super tangible to serve them.

King in the North: sits between what I said about King and Lord of a minor house. The North would be a kingdom, but a more united one than the Seven -- almost united to the point of being a single house (Stark). But even the slightly removed Karstarks are a thorn in your side, so I'd be careful before accepting this.

Warden of the North: better than King in the North in that you can defer some responsibility to the King of the Seven ("I'm just a warden! I'm doing my best!"), but worse in that you lose some pride for your realm, it being subservient to the distant king. I love the North as an independent kingdom, but I'd rather be Ned to Robert (before Arryn died) than Robb to Joffrey or Jon to Cersei. Sansa to Bran is a decent situation though, since your distant king would be fundamentally respectful of the North.

Hand of the King in the North: this is enticing, because your realm is less divided than the Seven Kingdoms, and your king is likely to be more grounded. Hand of Ned or Hand of Jon are like being Davante Adams during those MVP Rodgers seasons -- just being served goodness, and handling it expertly.

or, to really lean into my childhood dream...

but that one is not so clean. Favre has a little too much Robert Baratheon in him (southern, stubborn, gluttonous), and Driver wasn't such a master as Adams. Rodgers-Adams is really the pinnacle of effectiveness, but Favre-Driver has that old-school heart in it. Rodgers-Adams is a bit cold.