Moby Dick is the God Particle

"Finding the 'God Particle'" by Lana Bandoim

"The God particle, also known as the Higgs boson, is the Moby Dick of science."

http://news.yahoo.com/finding-god-particle-204800450.html;_ylc=X3oDMTEwMzcxZjRrBF9TAzIwMjM4Mjc1MjQEZW1haWxJZAMxMzExNzczOTc3

The article is another instance where Moby Dick is alluded to for any reference to an exhaustive search. The search is consuming and takes time, effort, money--everything in a person's life.

Now, if you compare this sentence:

"The thirst for knowledge is not the only motivation to find the God particle."

with Moby Dick, does that mean that Ahab was simply searching for knowledge? Is Moby like the forbidden fruit?

Hmmm...

New Moby Dick mini-series

http://www.upi.com/Entertainment_News/TV/2011/07/13/Hurt-Hawke-star-in-Moby-Dick-mini/UPI-97871310607820/

A new series! I know Hollywood has no more ideas but what else can you do with Moby Dick that the Gregory Peck movie couldn't do? Well, they remake everything anyway...

The following is stolen from IMDB at: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1334573/trivia (7-14-2011)

"Cast member Gillian Anderson first came to fame playing Dana Scully on the TV series The X Files. It was mentioned several times throughout the run of the series that Scully and her family were big fans of Herman Melville's book 'Moby Dick': her nickname for her Naval officer father was "Captain Ahab;" his nickname for her was "Starbuck;" and her dog, which she named Queequeg, was, like its namesake, also an eater of humans (the dog ate the body of its previous owner)."

"This is the first production of "Moby Dick" since the 1930 film version with John Barrymore to have a leading female character. There are no women in Herman Melville's original novel."

Gillian Anderson's character is named Elizabeth, so no "Call me Michelle" here. I bet it is Ahab's true love back in Nantucket. "Oh, Ahab, why do you have to go off for your revenge and leave me and little Ahab behind?" And I will have to address the whole Gillian Anderson thing about her whole family being a fan of the book...

Ethan Hawke plays Starbuck and William Hurt plays Ahab. Hey, they got some top talent anyway.

The budget was $25,500,000, according to imdb.com. Wow. Looks like it is still in post-production with some German company because their homepage, http://www.tmg.de/tmg/index.php?StoryID=273, is in German.

(So what does this say about our great AMERICAN novel?)

Amazing to me how many people are following this on the imdb forums page and talking about it. It has almost as much hype as any of the superhero flicks.

Moby Dick singing live!

http://www.wickedlocal.com/provincetown/fun/entertainment/x1249734877/Truro-village-green-summer-concerts-continue#axzz1S6lKMMbO

There's a band named Moby Dick and the Wailers that appeared at a summer concert series in Massachusetts. Get the pun of the name?

I wonder if they sing sea shanties?

Or "Sea of Love"?

Do I want to be in Moby's throat??

http://www.wickedlocal.com/provincetown/news/x920805076/Whale-Week-promises-leviathan-fun-for-kids-and-adults-in-Provincetown#axzz1SscTdfzE

"Were you ever curious about how Capt. Ahab felt when Moby Dick’s cavernous mouth closed over him, eliminating light and life?"

Seriously, they start the article with that sentence.

First of all, it really makes me want to go to feel horrified at getting eaten by a whale...

Secondly, Ahab doesn't even die that way! He gets tangled up in the ropes. I remember because Mrs. Conley, the teacher who subjected me with this in the first place, asked me that specific question.

So, if you wanted to toot your little exhibition thing, wouldn't you ask how Jonah felt? He didn't get eaten, like that first sentence suggests. Or could they not say Jonah because it is biblical?

Moby Dick on Twitter

http://www.soundingsonline.com/news/todays-top-stories/286468-moby-dick-to-be-read-via-twitter

“Twitter is an innovative way for us to share this special event with a global audience,” museum president Stephen C. White said. “Nowhere else does ‘Moby-Dick’ come alive the way it does on the decks of the Morgan, the sole surviving ship of the fleet that inspired Melville.”

Oh, my. I can't believe this. It's a marathon reading of all 135 chapters. And they've done this for 26 straight years now!

And it only takes one solid day, from noon to noon, July 31-August 1.

Wow. Do they do this to any other book? I don't even know how to search for something like that. Are there any other books out there that are annually read in their entirety? The only ones I think could be possibilities are ones like Dickens' A Christmas Carol or other seasonal, and short!, ones.

I know one of the Baldwins read excerpts of Moby Dick within the past year. That doesn't count. Entirety.

"Call me Michelle" part two

2010: Moby Dick commentary part two

The movie starts off with a sub disaster in 1969. There’s “something out there” (and that’s about as creative as some of the dialogue gets). Ahab is a sonar man, records the whale’s vocals, on a tape that looks disturbingly like it is from 1989 and not 1969, and gets his leg cut off when Moby breaches and bodyslams the sub. Ahab gets to look eye to eye with the whale, with special effects that don’t look all that good, however, you get the impression that Moby meant to be vicious. That was pretty cool.

The writer was most definitely an aficionado of the original novel, or at least had enough working knowledge of it, to drop in names of people and ships that the reader would recognize. Tashtego, Pippin, Queequeg, are all briefly accounted for. Even when the other navy sub the Essex chases after Ahab’s Pequod, you get a sense of the author knowing his subject matter basics. When the two seamen are discussing the "whiteness" of the whale bothering them, they make it a joke that white is always evil.

They just didn’t handle Ahab right. Even when he shouts, “I’d strike the sun if it insulted me!” you barely get the sense that he is obsessive, probably drawing on background knowledge of Ahab in order to connect the dots. Again, you simply had to know the book to really figure it out.

“Where there are squid, there are whales.” Would there be anything left after nuking the squid?

The harpoon marked “Fedallah” is made out of the hull of the Acushnet, the sub from the opening 1969 scene.

When Ishmael/Michelle yells, “It’s your fault! You’re hunting it—it’s not hunting us!” to Ahab, I just wanted to scream. Moby was destroying other boats, subs, and cruise ships without Ahab anywhere near. It’s not Ahab’s fault AT ALL in this movie. It is his job to destroy the monster. The corpses they run into cry out for vengeance, for Pete’s sake. If in the novel Ahab sacrifices his men and ship for his revenge, he simply does NOT do that here. He is a military captain whose job it is to destroy the whale and every single one of those seamen knows it is their duty to keep the waters safe. There simply is no single-minded obsession—there is coincidence that Ahab’s revenge and his duty match up.

At the end, when they take out the individual little boats, that is a pretty cool reminiscence of the last three-days’ hunt from the novel.

However, basic enjoyment of the movie has to rely on background knowledge of the original novel. I don’t think this movie stands up at all by itself if you had no idea about some of the peculiarities.

"Call me Michelle"

Now that was funny.

I watched a newer movie version of the beloved Moby Dick. This one is called 2010: Moby Dick.

The Ishmael character is played by a female whale researcher named Michelle. Took me a second to put it together, but when her assistant Pippin kept calling out to her, "Doctor Herman," she finally responded, "Call me Michelle." Clever. Ishmael--Michelle. Cute. Even her last name being Herman is cute.

However, the good stuff stops there.

This was only a so-so movie, and I don't mean that just because of my aversion to the classic novel. It's no better than your average SciFi Channel original movie.

I want to go into all the specifics of the movie--that's what I do here. I first want to make the point that they ruined what Ahab was all about, and thereby ruined the movie.

Moby Dick, like in the opening of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, is wrecking ships. You know how the Nautilus is wrecking the ships and it's all being blamed on a sea monster? Well, here the sea monster is actually doing the wrecking and it's getting blamed on Ahab.

Now my point is that the revenge factor simply vanishes from the story. For some reason, Ahab goes radio silent, doesn't check in, and goes rogue, even though his job is to hunt down the sea monster. Most of everything that goes on in the movie is predicated on the fact that they have been assigned to this already since the wreckings. Why does Ahab pull the Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now routine? Why is anybody arguing with him? All Ahab has to do is call his superiors, tell them what is going on, and get the help he needs, rather than be hunted down himself. "Hey, Admiral, just checkin' in! We've almost got that whale cornered! Mind sending me a couple extra ships?" "No problem, Captain Ahab, since that is what we sent you out to do anyway!"

Especially after the cruise ship goes down! Every seaman on that sub would happily follow that whale in order to blow it into snot. So now it doesn't have to be Ahab, it could be any captain--Ahab just put himself in the right position apparently, even outfitting the sub Pequod for this. And of course, he has been waiting since 1969, the original attack that took his leg. Now that 2010 has rolled around, and new attacks have started--where the hell were they for 41 years?--Ahab finally goes after him. If there were sporadic attacks through the years, or this hunt made Moby destroy new ships to piss Ahab off (sort of like Moby shooting hostages), now that would have been better. No, Ahab waits 41 years for new attacks, and now, under orders!, finally goes after the whale. Where is the revenge-for-hate's-sake factor?

More later on this incredible movie. (I mean "incredible" in its most literal sense--not believable.)