A YEAR in FEEEELM

Everybody and their dog Sam has a list of the year's best movies, and 2007 has actually been oh so juicy, there's a million flicks I'm dying to see, but I'm a DVD guy, no movie buff, no big critic, and I can only offer you a run down of the movies I actually SAW in 2007 that triggered something in me and I will happily watch again with you on your couch. Some of them are from 2006, even. I wish I'd seen "I'm Not There" and "No Country for Old Men" and "Persepolis" and this and that, but nope.
So here's MY top TEN. (I cheated. It's more like Top 15.)

ONCE


RATATOUILLE


KNOCKED UP-SUPERBAD (to me, they belong as one)


GRINDHOUSE


RESCUE DAWN


CRAZY LOVE


HAIRSPRAY


YEAR OF THE DOG


PAPRIKA


HOT FUZZ


THE LIVES OF OTHERS


Oh… And my guilty pleasure:
ACROSS THE UNIVERSE

Once... Twice... Oh, I'm going to watch this again and again

Oh, what a beautiful movie!

This is a very Irish, very universal love story. Touching, human, real, the sweetest, most authentic musical in ages. Remember that sexy movie I told you about, the one you want to take home with you and make breakfast for in the morning? Well, this one you're going to want to marry. And you'll be a better person for it. Watch "Once". And then again. It gets better the second time around. That's what folks don't get about musicals- the music grows on you, becomes familiar, more meaningful.
A lot of people get turned off by GOODNESS, but man, this movie is GOOD, POSITIVE, full of HOPE and LOVE and YES. Don't let all those capital letters frighten you. Please, treat yourself.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

Layla!

I doubt there's anything like a "normal" life. It's a huge world! A life has a lot of years in it! And "normal" relative to what, anyway? There is a character in that last Tim Dorsey novel called Joe Blow whose life is incredibly average (short of fathering a boy, a girl and a midget to hit that "2.5 kids" mark) and so the Nielsen people and the media hound him and always ask him about his thoughts because they unfailingly predict the average, so Joe Blow snaps one day and tries to do everything different from the way he usually does it- (with hilarious results).
So any examined life is worth chronicling. But is it worth YOUR time?

How can one dismiss Pattie Boyd's life? It is quite interesting, what with her South African childhood and her life as a model and her marriage to not one, but TWO, rock gods. She's the muse behind "Layla" and several George Harrison tunes. Her bio, "Wonderful Tonight," is a much better read than Clapton's autobiography, (it's been ghostwritten and put together nicely.)
And yet, at the end of the day...her book doesn't feel as IMPORTANT as Clapton's, because she's just some pretty model that hapenned to get lucky... So eh. This is NOT a dismissal of her as a human being. Least of all is this one of those sexist remarks: "Oh, women behind the scenes don't matter as much as the MEN." She strikes me as a very nice, smart person, certainly very attractive, but there are nice, smart people living next to you right now, so you have to ask yourself if you want to read their biographies. Life is short.
I sort of regret reading this, even though there's nothing wrong with the book.

Florida gets all the bad rep. You know what place is REALLY retarded? Idaho. There, I said it.

Making fun of Florida politics is like shooting fish in a barrel, except the fish are huge sharks and they're circling around frightened rafters. It's funny, though! And what's awesomest about Tim Dorsey's stuff is that I'll be on my way to work reading about Serge Storms hiding the severed limbs of local politicos in a seedy motel in Biscayne, and then I look out the bus window, and HEY, there's its real life counterpart drifting by!

It's Just Not the Same

Yeeees, I guess Joss writes them, and yeah, I guess I'm glad the story lives on... But... I mean... it just doesn't work, it doesn't have the magic and the authority of the series. It's different. The canonical 8th season of Buffy on comics has an unlimited special effect budget, and the monsters are larger than ever, but they're badly drawn, it's pedestrian artwork, and the storyline feels condensed, and it doesn't really LOOK anything like a Buffy story. To tell you the truth I got more of a Buffyverse charge from Whedon's run on "Astonishing X-Men," which had the benefit of John Cassaday's sexy lines. You can't replace 22 hours of a television season with thirty minutes of comic book reading time and expect it to be the same. There's still a hole in my soul that misses Buffy. This is just a little band-aid on a sucking chest wound.

Thoughts That Went Through My Head While Watching The Farrelly Brother's Remake of "The Heartbreak Kid"

"... That girl is really putting up with a lot for this movie. What an ugly, thankless, embarrassing role. I hope she got paid ... Ben Stiller is old. Gosh, I used to like Ben Stiller. Why is he sticking to this act, it doesn't look good anymore...Wow. Carlos Mencia's Mexican character is heinous. No wonder people hate him, if this is all they see of him...I was really harsh on "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry". I mean, that had jokes in it. I laughed a few times. Jessica Biel is a beautiful woman. It had a positive message about being tolerant of other people even if they gross you out. Yeah. I wish I was watching "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry"...That wasn't so terrible after all. OMG will this movie ever end?"

"My Life As a Man"

Yes, this could totally be a scene from Philip Roth's "My Life As a Man". I am glib about Roth, but I kid because I love. There really is no one as honest as him when it comes to exposing the disappointment and confusion of male adulthood. If being in love can lead to madness, imagine being in UNlove! Few other artists are willing to be this open about the unpleasant truths of waning libidos and marital discord, and just when you begin to suspect that the inability of his characters to love anybody but themselves is an ugly authorial trait, Roth winks and openly admits he's at the confessional: he's never blind about the ugliness of his own self-serving fiction, but he's hoping to transcend. This is what great art is.
Oh, did I mention that he's also hilarious?

Benazir Bhutto

Today is a very very sad day for human beings who believe that murder is NEVER an acceptable way to resolve a disagreement.

MIRACLES? # 2

I got my parents a new family Bible for Christmas, because our old one was falling apart something fierce. *Gasp! Shock!* We're not a particularly religious family, but that Bible gets thumped plenty, and we like the good bits as much as anyone. As it turns out, though, I could have saved my pennies because I was handed out a free Bible outside of Church- which of course I took because I may not be superstitious but turning down a Bible in Christmas is like slipping an extra twenty to Acheron so he gets you across the Styx FASTER, you know what I'm saying? I like to hedge my bets.
So here I am with two Bibles. Except this other free Bible was shoddily produced by Jehova's Witnesses, and when I opened it I saw it had... How can I put this... the most SOUL CHILLING TYPO IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD.
I don't think we praise the good Gideon Bible folks enough. This wouldn't have slipped by them. There's a widely documented history of classic Bible typos, mistranslations and odd blunders, but most of those happenned early in the history of printing. This one is new, and takes the proverbial cake.
READY?

"In the beginning, God CREMATED the Heavens and the Earth."

...

Wow.
What's REALLY interesting is that this could be the most scientifically accurate Bible ever.

MIRACLES

I am so thankful for this Christmas miracle! For the first time in ages I got something I actually desired and DIDN'T KNOW I WAS GOING TO GET. This was something cool, not a tie, or a shirt, or "stuff I sort of need" (although I got plenty of those too). The day before Christmas I was at the store all but lusting over this object, but I didn't think I was going to get it.

Phaidon's "Thirty Thousand Years of Art" is not one of those Christmas-time bargain bin books that shove together the usual suspects, ("You've seen "The Last Supper", right? "The Mona Lisa"? "Guernica?" "Nighthawks at the Diner"? Enjoy!") Nah. This is a classy affair, a beautiful, well thought-out, high quality, mind-expanding book that manages to be a compendium of human creativity across all cultures. I feel like I was handed a museum in a box. A really beautiful present.
Preferred method of enjoyment? Chill with this giant iceberg of a book while some classical music plays in the background, (perhaps some Vivaldi?), aaah, a fine glass of white wine, (ever so delicate!). Allocate five minutes to each artwork, absorbing the textures and contrasts of each reproduction, while pondering on beauty, aesthetics, technique, context, the profane and the sublime.
After you do all that, you will be ready for your role as a the evil mastermind who wants to rule the world. Wear a monocle, too.

HAPPY!!!

Dear Imaginary Reader:
I'm going to say it!
MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!
Sorry if it's not for you, but I'm really ignorant about seasonal superstitions, and I think Hannukah went by, and Ra's Festival isn't for another month, and I'll be darned if I'm ever wishing anyone a Happy Kwanzaa unless they asked me to first. I mean, honest, of all the made-up Holidays, that's the madest-up of them all. If I was black and someone wished me a Happy Kwanzaa, I would feel in a most retaliatory manner. But then if I was black and somebody called me black, I wouldn't be too thrilled. Call me by my name, I'm a person, and do it with respect. I hate the term African-American. BULL! You're not African, you're an American!!! Your great-grandparents MAYBE were African, and are you sure you even know which country? Please. There's nothing African about you. Try calling the next red-neck you see a European-American, see how it thrills him. "Wha--?? You callin' me sum kinda Frenchy or sumthin'?" African-American smacks of: "We grabbed you from there and we can send you right back, don't you forget." You belong here. Don't ever let anyone fence you away with a polite term. I'll rather have an honest bullshit slur than be nicely led for a special "shower"; at least the former lets you know what's what. You're a human being, as worthwhile as the next human being, you don't have some "Sims" like green-icicle-label hanging over your head. You're what you choose to be!

I stole the above eye-rolling, preachy, "tell-it-to-the-choir" rant from Carlos Mencia. Or Margaret Cho. I forget.
:-p
No, but, seriously racism and homophobia and xenophobia and phobia of the number 13, they all suck. I hate people. What disgusting repulsive organisms we are! Makes me want to puke!

Love, everybody! Merry Christmas! Mwaaah! :-)

Magic.

If I say I believe in magic it sounds kooky, but I do, I totally do. Magic isn’t otherworldly; it’s an intentional (or accidental) juxtaposition of natural elements that somehow create something that’s very much “ELSE”, something with all the rapturous awe of the supernatural.

Nicole Atkins’ CD, “Neptune City” is totally magical and weird. Its little pieces are mundane and I don’t want to look too close. Her big “Crazy Love” Loretta Lynne voice borders on the absurd. The theatricals are a bunch closer to American Idol than she would like. Competent lyrics, but you’ve heard them before, (“I keep on falling in and out of love” pretty much sums it up). The production tries too hard to be “fantastic”: it sounds like you’re listening to an indie-pop version of “The Phantom of the Opera”…through a rainpipe.
But ain’t it a dazzling sleight of hand! After two or three listens it became one of the catchiest, most haunting things to get stuck in my head for a while. “The Way It Is”, “Maybe Tonight”, “Cool Enough”, “Neptune City”, “Brooklin’s On Fire.” I dig.

El Cantante

Some people admire Socrates. Some are inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King. Others wonder "What Would Jesus Do?"
This man is my hero.

Look at that cadaverous face, the glassy junkie eyes, the seedy smile, the half opened shirt denoting the basest of inclinations. Does he not remind you of that shivering sleaze who tried to sell you a dimebag in that alley last week?
And yet.

You, Marc Anthony, are hope and inspiration, and the candle shall never waver in my shrine.

Yellow

"The Simpsons" are family, man. To rag on "The Simpsons" 'cause they're not as good as they used to be is betrayal, man, it's like smacking your Dad around because he's losing his hearing as he ages. You stand by your blood. You want to make fun of your uncle because he doesn't look as sprightly as he used to? You wanna hatchet your grandpa because he's got cancer? No, man, you wait for them to go away naturally.
And when your crazy mom does something sweet for you, like make you a really good cake that maaaybe isn't as great as the cake you had when you were ten, do you bitch at her? Where's your fucking loyalty? I hate Simpsons turn-coats. If you really are turned off by your family, say your brother went all wrong and crazy and held up a liquor store, cut ties with him, but don't tip off the cops for reward money, you know what I'm saying?
Viva The Simpsons Movie.

STARDUST

Aaaah, now you see why I brought up good ol' Neil. I very much liked "Stardust", the film adaptation of his near-classic collaboration with Charless Vess. It's really "a delightful movie the whole family can etc etc etc", and illustrates several of the points in the previous post. It is pretty darn good and imaginative and romantic and wise and there is nothing wrong with it... But it just does not take you THERE.
(You know where THERE is: It's that magical place where you are salivating at the movie screen, and your heart is beating and tears roll down your cheeks and you want to take the movie home and make it breakfast in the morning, and hell, you'll gladly share it with everybody because it's that kind of thing.)
The movie is entertaining throughout but it betrays its bookish roots, there are too many characters and too many cute ideas and none of them are really taken AAAALL the way to the realm of the unforgettable. Not having the time to rejoice in its mythology, the movie runs through events, with the counter-intuitive effect that a lot of things are happenning, but they're not fully developed, so you don't engage that much; your interest lags and it feels a little boring. Not "dull", more like "pleasant and polite.""This is nice. It looks beautiful. Hmmm. I wonder if my tea is ready?"
But children will, and SHOULD, love it. Maybe ten years from now it's that fantasy movie they remember as fondly as you remember "The Neverending Story" or "The Flight of the Navigator".

Neil Gaiman Vs. Emily Bronte

Oh man. I wouldn't say Neil Gaiman does no wrong, because he does, every now and then, but at least it's CREATIVE wrong. He's prolific, inventive, and I think, a sloppy writer. He is the ultimate idea man, the dream maker, and I very much admire him, because I am also a sloppy writer. What, thinkst thou that I pore over ev'ry sentence, sharpen it and polish it until it glimmers with the searing light of truth? Flaubert flogging himself over the perfect word? No, man, there's no time for that shit! I'm thinking too many things at the same time, I can't edit, I say it as it bursts forth from whatever wellspring words issue. So does Gaiman, I'll wager, and that's why I think his talent is dilluted. If this man had condensed all his allotment of imagination into say, one novel, you would have freaking religions bursting out of it. But he's dilluted, and so sometimes he feels overrated. He's into too many things. Even as he thrills me, I don't feel: "I would have never thought of that!" Instead, sadly, I think: "Great idea! And maybe he should have tweaked this one thing further." But I relate because I know I gladly take the imperfect and a lot over the perfect and scarce... I remember my emotion towards Emily Bronte running like: "This novel sounds perfect... What? There's only one? But... But what if I fall in love? What would I do? I want MORE of Emily Bronte!" Obsessives re-read her, of course, delve deeper, she forces you too, but I wished she'd done it ten times, you know? Brontes lead to heartbreak. It's like having wonderful sex with someone amazing and perfect, and you never see them again- what can you do but cry and fetishize and revisit the event and wonder what ifs and obsess about that night? No, you'll rather have someone you have a relationship with, good days, bad days, mediocre days, great days. Balzac over Flaubert, you know? Balzac couldn't shut up, characters and words poured out of him... He wrote a lot of crap, but he wrote a lot of genius stuff, and often the transcendental came when he wasn't trying, and sometimes the crap came when he put effort into it... Inspiration is wondrous like that. Neil Gaiman knows that.

Ahhh, Emily Bronte. I wonder how many lust-led martyrs ran through the crimson halls of your mind?

I'd hit that.

"Rent" and "Musicophilia"

"Life without music would be a mistake."
-Nietzche.
Yes, I quote "The Simpsons" AND Nietzche, beeatch.

I have a good friend who doesn't care for music.
I've known him for several years and my assumptions about him and his musical tastes have constantly changed, from an initial: "Oh, he means he doesn't like the pop noise that permeates local radio," (who does, right?) to "maybe he's not into a particular music scene, he dislikes hipsters," (me too!) to "well, he doesn't like loud rock, but maybe he likes more classical sounds." He once plainly said music just wasn't that significant to him. "Man, he must be dead inside," I thought. He might as well have said: "Oh, I'm not big on the whole 'seeing' thing." I told him he had no soul! Who doesn't like music? And he was genuinely HURT, which surprised me. Years later, I realize it's because he must have wondered: "Why is it that most other people DO seem to care about music in ways that I don't? Is there something I'm missing?" He probably felt like I was being a jerk about it too, or that I was trying to mock him. Nope. I was honestly, anthropologically curious. He doesn't have any hearing problems, I know him to be able to memorize songs and lyrics, (indeed he excels at recall), he has an above average I.Q, and he hears the same melodies you and I do. But I couldn't imagine him crying over a beautiful wordless melody. And then I noticed that he had no problem understanding a song if there was a direct visual correlative. He's quite capable of appreciating a musical, or a music video with a storyline, or a direct comedic song. He's following the textual or visual plot just fine, it's the sounds that by themselves didn't matter. In other words, he wasn't too interested in say, pop music over the radio, because all he heard was a a string of mediocre uninteresting "poetry". Why would he pursue musical knowledge? The accompanying sounds did not provoke any emotion. He heard them, decoded them, and stored fine, but they didn't sway him. Didn't he have feelings???
OF COURSE HE DOES! He's a completely normal person with normal emotions. They are simply not triggered by abstract vibrations. A sound doesn't make him think of colors, or scopes, or kaleidoscopic patterns, they didn't make him melancholy or peppy or entrance him- his brain wasn't seeing the same little music videos in his head that *I* was! I've figured that for a while, but I couldn't have told you why the hell that was until I read Oliver Sack's brilliant new book, "Musicophilia", a book I recommend to him and to you and to anyone who has ears.

Neurology is a baby science. We know extremely little about our own brains, only enough to know that our brains indeed shape our reality, indeed they ARE our reality. Ipso epso argo facto Q.E.D. etc etc: The human race has only just BEGUN to discover reality. Oliver Sacks is as pleasant a guide as you will ever find in the world of brain chemistry: Why is that when Puccinni's "Musetta's Waltz" is warbled through the noise of an electric guitar at a climactic moment at the end of "Rent" and someone screams "Mimiiiiiiiii", several hundred people in a theater respond with a Pavlovian knot to the throat and a tear on the eye? And sprinkled among all those people, there are others who feel nothing?
Well, turns out, it's not because they don't have souls.
The musical wiring that allows most of us to think of some sounds as sad, others as happy, to be thrilled by crescendos or pumped by rhytmic drumming is a complex part of the aural interpretation of life. We are just beginning to explore. My mom is exactly like my friend, I can be listening to Beethoven and she'll be like: "Turn down that racket!" She's not interested in music in the way I am. She can memorize love songs as well as anyone, sing normally (although a little off-key), but she would never HUM, for instance. She's listening to the words and whatever emotional content they convey. While I can listen to say Bollywood, or RAP, not understand a word, and still tap my feet and sort of enjoy it if I want, to my mom music that is devoid of linguistic connections is just NOISE in the background, be it English-language rock and roll, the Beatles, polka, Mozart or Britney Spears. All just loud instruments to her.
Please read "Musicophilia"- learn about the man who at 42 was struck by lightning and was propelled into becoming a concert pianist after a lifetime of being tone deaf, about the woman who kept on hearing the same song constantly in her head for ten years, the Japanese boy who can only speak in English whenever he hears the song "America" by Paul Simon, people who taste chocolate when they hear Tchaikovsky, and other such marvelous eye-opening examples of our brains being amazing inexhaustibly wonderful machines.

Little Hitlers

"And you, sir, are worse than Hitler!!!"
-DMV lady to Homer Simpson, after he's caught smoking in a public place.

What's that rule about an online debate losing all credibility as soon as someone brings up a Hitler comparison? The thing that nags is how absurd and convenient demonification is. Hitler didn't wake up one morning, invent racism by noon, and strangled millions of people by supper. Germans have been particularly good about the "blame it on Hitler" game- it's sure a sweet deal for the millions of people, German and American and French and Japanese and English and Italian and etc etc, who actually caused the direct death of other human beings. Did Hitler ever even kill one person personally? Sounds to me like he was too busy seething in his madness and speechifying to actually do much of anything.
The reality is of course far more terrifying. Hitler was just some guy. Not exactly going to argue that he was a particularly nice and sweet person, but I have precious little evidence that he was anything other than a typical idealistic, sensitive young man who was devastated by seeing his people defeated and starving and wanted to create a "better" world (for HIMSELF!). He was not "a little like," he was EXACTLY Che Guevara- just more succesful in his aims. One hated "money-hungry Jews", the other "money-hungry Yankees", and they both thought they had to go out and kill because that was, (and IS) the male standard for creating wide change: quickly eliminating the oposition through military force. Where's your Hitler shirt, myopic hipster?!
Are you surprised that this guy is worse than Hitler?

Maybe not to YOU. You're an American. He's on YOUR side, see? But if you're the Iraqi mother whose little Abdullah is never coming back, and I show you a picture of this man speaking in some unintelligible "American" tongue, you will have a sheer reaction of fear and hatred. We, presumably, know that Bush isn't REALLY a bad person, no matter what easy political speech you use. He MEANS well. His actions simply have snowballed until he's responsible for the deaths of thousands of people. How he sleeps at night, I dunno, immense doses of delusion. That's something between him and his God.
Now, reflect: this isn't a Bush-bashing blog. The VERY opposite. This is sympathy for the devil. Bush is not inmensely intelligent, and obviously not up to his high position, (Hitler was a MUCH better leader: he did get things done for a looong time.) But he is not particularly stupid either, and neither are the men (and ocassional women) around him. They want a better world, (one devoid of terrorism and social instability that threatens American financial prowess), and they create it the fastest way men have done for centuries: through propaganda and military power. End result: deaths of people.
There are lots of Hitlers right now out there, just slightly less effectual (for now). There's one in Venezuela who is particularly despicable. To hear this boorish demagogue speak should cause flashback whiplash, but he totally thinks he's good. He's just mad with power, and has no one to slap him around and bring him back to Earth. Such is undemocratic dictatorship.
See, this is the beauty of the United States: half the people actually want to stop the war, and if they weren't so meek and cowardly about simply saying, "This was stupid and we're stoping it", they WOULD HAVE! Years ago! But it involved losing face, looking weak. It's not what REAL MEN do, see? Someone who tries political revolution through peace, love and understanding usually ends up nailed on a hill top, you know? It's not until someone comes along and says: "Nice idea, this thing, but we're going to have to torture and kill a lot of dissidents to implement it, sorry", that things start to happen.
The point, (if I have strayed so far) is that YOU could be Hitler tomorrow. Moi? Yes, toi. You're just not on that life track, I HOPE!!! but if you don't believe me consider this simple mental exercise.
You are likely a decent moral God-loving McLove person, but there's some group or another you have slurred, disparaged or dismissed with a label. You're probably smart enough not to make racial jokes, (not in the wrong neighborhood anyway), but don't get complacent. Ever caught yourself saying something like, "Damn Republicans! Damn rednecks! Damn lawyers! Wish they would go away!" You have often, don't bullshit me. You've hated somebody and thought life would be better without them. You have dismissed millions of human beings with easy labels. No finger wagging here. Let's just use an example we can (most of us) agree with.
Your cousin Susie was ten when she was raped and murdered. You HATE rapists!!! Of course!!! It's heinous!!! If you could, you would string them all by the balls!!! Guess what, all of your buddies agree with you. How could they not, right? You're passionate about this, you have a cause. You grow up, become a local chief of police, then a major, tough on crime. By godness, you give results! The rape crime in your town dropped, it's almost non-existent! Everyone loves you, you become a Senator. But rape hasn't disappeared, there's still dames in peril all over the country. Things have to be toughened further! What about life in prison for rapists! They are a menace! Who's going to fight FOR rapists? Certainly not a woman, and not a man who wants to get laid anytime again. Everyone plays along. Hell, you're now a candidate for the presidency, you have that kind of power. Your powers expand, now you're not only taking away de-facto rapists, but also potential rapists, men who have been seen in public drinking with a woman, and who are likely trying to cloud that woman's mind to force themselves on her sexually. You've put many thousands of people in prison, but somewhere along the way a weird thing began to happen. Discontent is brewing. Turns out the rapists were, after all, human beings, with mothers, fathers, friends, neighbors who knew that person and understood that they weren't raping people 24/7 all their lives, but did other things, some good, some bad, for years before they commited this one act. Others think their family members were innocent, or misunderstood. Everybody's seen someone in their neighborhood disappear. Left-wingers and artists and stuff are rumbling against your presidency, (yes, you got there already!) What CAN you do? Only one thing: friends and associates of rapists, and people who are heard defending the incarcerated, will also be arrested. College campuses are closed as dangerous areas of possible rape activity. Well, there's now millions of people in prison. You can't really hold them or support them all. What the hell are you supposed to do?
Duh. Holocaust time. What the hell else is your army of anti-rape followers for?
By the way, if you are flustered by the premise, ("surely you can't compare the Jewish people to evil rapists!") you missed the point.

Old but classic:
Guy to woman in the bar: "Will you blow me for five bucks?"
Her: "WHAT??? No!!!"
Guy: "What about for ten bucks?"
Her: "I'm calling the cops!"
Him: "Ok, a hundred bucks!"
Her: "NEVER!!! I'm not a whore!!!"
Him: "Ten million dollars."
Her: "You want some anal too?"

We're all whores, it's just a matter of finances.
And we are all Hitler. We're just lacking military back up.

So crazy in love...

The very best way to encounter a good movie is blindly, with no judgments or preconceptions. Truly intense movie experiences come from that, from being SURPRISED by the new. It almost never happens. Movies come spoiled to us, we almost always know exactly what we're going to see, we might as well not bother. It's difficult in 2007 to explain the success of "The Sixth Sense," but that first wave of viewers did not know who the hell M. Night Shyamalan was, how to spell that, or that there WAS a twist ending. They went to see "the new Bruce Willis movie."
BANG! AMAZING MOVIE EXPERIENCE!
By the time *I* went to see it, it was a "supernatural drama with that kid who sees dead people, oh, and it has an awesome surprise twist that you will never see coming!"
Whimper! Gimmicky movie that strong arms you into watching it twice.
Many of the movies that changed my life have done so because I didn't know what I was watching, stumbled upon a Truffaut movie at four A.M. on Bravo or something like that... It's DISCOVERY!
If you don't know anything about a documentary called "Crazy Love", I am very happy for you! Don't read anything of what comes below. Just trust me when I tell you that it can truly expand your concept of humanity (IF you try to reserve judgment). It is one of a handful of documentaries that have have shocked me and kept me THINKING about them long after things were over. (The others: "Hoop Dreams", "Roger and Me", the still-and probably always- undistributed "Raw Deal", The 7-Up Series, "Murderball", and that one about that dude that liked to stick nails in his dick.) PLEASE go rent it, try hard not to read the DVD case or the Netflix slip or whatever. I promise it's worth it. Then come back here and we'll talk it about.
If you have already seen it, or know what it's about, then skip on down.







Ok. Here you are again.
OH MY GOSH!!! Wasn't that incredible?!? Whether you liked it or not, you felt something!!! Maybe your reaction ran somewhere between a knee-jerk "This is so sick and wrong, I'm walking away" to "This is bizarre, but having lived long enough on this planet, I understand bizarreness" to a final "In its own way, this is as magnificent a testimony to the human capacity for love, forgiveness and survival as I will ever see. Despite the sordid, horrid facts, this is a story of HOPE!"
Maybe you're used to movies giving you better pointers on what to feel and think, and so you felt shocked at how the director doesn't tell you whether this is right, or wrong, or what to think, he just gives you the facts*** (sort of) and you have to draw your own conclusions.
Love IS a powerful chemico-mystical emotion that few human beings can control, and if you have ever been in love, as opposed to having fucked people or read about romance in a magazine, you will understand this movie.
Love can make people cry "Stellaaaa" under windows.
Love can make the abused Julie Jordan in "Carousel" say: "It is possible, dear, for someone to hit you, hit you hard, and it not hurt at all." ("Carousel" is the most powerful of Rodgers and Hammerstein's musicals, but also one of the least popular nowadays, because its plot strikes wide sensibilities as sexist or sick, is it PRAISING spousal abuse??? You have to go through certain things in life to GET IT. When I was young and first saw it, I sure didn't. "Why does this dumb bitch sticks with this asshole?" Well, because THEY ARE IN LOVE!)
And of course love can make two teenagers with everything to live for act severely retarded and DIE- "Romeo and Juliet" is the craziest, sickest love story of them all, but it is Shakespeare's genius that you are not disgusted at the sordid facts but glamorize them.
From a rational stand-point, the seemingly disturbing things that happened to the "Crazy in Love" duo are WAAAY saner than "Romeo and Juliet", although less "acceptable." The shocking final twist is almost LOGICAL if you think about it. Him: "LOOK, I'm sorry that I threw acid in your face because I love you and I was jealous and I wanted no one else to have you. But I STILL love you. You're still beautiful to me. I STILL want to be with you and take care of you. Pretty much no one else is going to. So what do you say?" Her: "*sigh* It's you or no one? Geez. I GUESS!"

*** Why do I say the facts (sort of)? Because what he neglects to point out something that clarifies the story a little pyschologically: the people involved in it bask in the attention that their drama brought upon them, and that surely has fueled their actions. Further below, a more personal side-note. But it's only suggested for honest-with-themselves mature readers who have been in love, (or somethink like it). If you're not, this post ends here.




Part of what moved about me this documentary is that the horrifying stuff is just a magnification of stuff all of us have felt during moments of infidelity or dissolutions of relationships: irrational reactions of sadness, disgust, physical pain, anger, suicidal thoughts ("THEN she'll be sorry!"), catching a plane all the way to dreaded L.A. to try to get Annie Hall back, that sort of thing. We're probably strong enough to not go all Othello and take it to the max. But who hasn't slammed a door, or been struck by dark fantasies of destroying their unfaithful boyfriend's cars? "Maybe next time he'll think before he cheats!" (You tell them, Carrie Underwood!). It's not real love unless you've entertained elaborate fantasies about breaking the kneecaps of that new dude banging your ex. There's only two differences between you and Bernie Pugach: he acted upon these feelings, and he chose a particularly horrible way to do so. It is merely a question of degree.

Mind of Mencia

You might be surprised to know I was a huge fan of Carlos Mencia, saw him several times live at my university. You might also be surprised to know that he struck me as a man with a very smart, ruthless stand-up, a guy with a distinct humoristic agenda very much like Lenny Bruce’s, but (relief!) without Lenny Bruce’s messianistic contentions. Mencia wasn’t adverse to lucrative deals with “the man”, or Comedy Central, (which is pretty much “the man” if you’re a stand-up comedian). He wasn’t interested in “keeping it real.” What, jumping the border bi-weekly to honors his roots? Fuck that! He WANTED the hot blonde girlfriend and the mansion as far away from Honduras as possible. That was the point, and he told you about it right away. Still, like every self-absorbed indie fanboy, I was disappointed when he did get a big show, “Mind of Mencia”. Surely the material wouldn’t translate to the small screen.
It didn’t.
Onstage taboo busting is awesome. Mencia says something very NC-17- the crowd gasps in mortified recognition- he would say: “Oh, NOW I went too far?”- the crowd recognizes its small minded hypocrisy and laughs. Awesome.
On TV, it’s a whole ‘nother tortilla. Mencia says something PG-13, or, maybe a mild R- the insomniac nerd watching Comedy Central at three in the morning chuckles- Mencia says: “Aaaah, NOW I went too far?”- the insomniac says “Not really, I was just up surfing for donkey-on-monkey porn, nothing offends me… why are you acting so smug, you unfunny tool?”
For lack of a more mature terms, his show kind of sucked, (although it's not as heinous as they would have you believe). I was pretty sure it would go the way of the “Orlando Jones Super Happy Variety Hour”, or “Artie Lange’s Bowl of Barf,” or whatever else denizens of the seedy, Pabst-fueled world of comedy are trying to put on TV. But it turned to be a reasonably big hit.
I'm not a hater, I don’t begrudge the guy his success, and I don't really care who he steals a joke from-I pity the comedian so unimaginative that they feel they gotta protect their one beloved fart joke. (I'm looking at you, Joe Rogan.) Still, I liked him a lot better in the old days.
Well, at least he's not as ugly and scarred as that George Lopez dude.
Oh, NOW I went too far?
Who would you rather have sex with? Bear in mind your other choice is death by puma.

"The Namesake"

"We all came out from under Gogol's Overcoat."

I really enjoyed "The Namesake"- and I would blog about it at some lenght except that I'm not feeling well. Bed rest, and re-acquainting myself with "Absolute Sandman." Doctor's orders.

Demetri Martin. Person.

Deadpan. Was there ever a pan that was alive? Demetri Martin's comedy is conceptual, brainy, and that's why I like him. He observes minutia. Typical joke: Your drinking straw. He's your buddy. He betrays you. You go for it. It's not there. What's up with that? I'm not insanely happy about the OTHER half of his stand-up persona, the one that needs props and costumes and the gentle strum of a guitar. I half-love Demetri Martin.

SPICY!!!

What's Paprika?

Dreams are the spice of life.
Satoshi Kon is to Hayao Miyazaki as David Lynch is to Walt Disney.

BFF!

There's a small holding tank in Ile De France where Daniel Auteuil, Gerard Depardieu, Catherine Deneuve, Juliette Binoche, Sophie Marceau, Emmanuelle Beard, Vincent Perez and Isabelle Adjani have been contained for decades. They are released for two weeks every month, in order to obey an ancient edict that says at least one of them (but preferably two) must star in every French movie. They dutifully act, then they are returned to their sub-human conditions.
It's Daniel Auteuil's turn, in the amiable farce "My Best Friend". Its premise is mad strained: an unlikely jackhole merchant makes a bet that he can produce a best friend in a week! It's one of those impossible "movie bets", concocted by idle rich bastards; it belongs alongside such classic ones as "I can turn this ladette into a lady, this homeless man into an empresario, make Reese Witherspoon less frigid." Things will not go as planned. Lessons will be learned.
The gags are familiar, I'm sure they'll eventually remake it with Steve Carrell. It's tough to dislike it, though, even though its climax centers on a taping of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." (Lame!) It's basically "Superbad" for dry French adults.
And it gets lots of points for referencing my favorite passage about friendship in all of literature! I have quoted and pondered the same words for myself ever since I was a little kid.

Who so bad???

Oh, I get it, “bad” means “good.” Do kids today still say “cool”? What about “awesome”? Is that still on?
What about “bogus”? No? That one’s out?

Below: Such a cute couple!


I went in totally prepared to dislike “Superbad.” “No, Judd Apatow, you and your factory of deliriously vulgar but essentially sweet goodness will not get through to me, I know all your tricks by now.” And I was strong in my convictions for at least ten milliseconds, but then the faux-antique Columbia logo kicked in. It’s funny as all fuck, true. Casting is essential in these things, and the ‘tow people know how to break through the bullshit movie veneer to cast people that us mere mortals may actually interacted with somewhere else than in our Hollywood dreams.
MCLOVIN!!! How awesome was he? I swear I know that guy.
“Superbad” may still be overrated as all get out, it’s just “Stand by Me” meets “American Pie,” but at least it is wise enough to know that its main plot is not weighty enough and supports it with a parallel Keystone cops extravaganza. I did prefer “Knocked Up” because I could relate more to that, (I’m decrepit and high school horniness is quickly sinking into an Alzheimer haze). There were a few things I didn’t truly buy, like the Becca character who goes from sweet to libidinous monster, (is she drunk or does she have Tourette’s? The proverbial fish-wife could not take notes fast enough). And the awkward “Y Tu Mama Tambien” final moments are skull-crashing in their unsubtlety- “Is this about bros before hos or about bros INSTEAD of hos?” Still laugh a minute.

Below: That chick's face looked like she was 10! Where did she get those boobs? That was just wrong.


One last complaint, and this is where the 40 Year Old Virgin in me comes out. Do things have to be THIS vulgar to feel real? “Freaks and Geeks” managed to be accurate in its depiction of kids without titanic amounts of twat jokes. I mean, I’m no prude. I know all the seven words you can’t say on television. I’ll come up with an eighth one! How about…
“pubelash”!
What’s a pubelash? That’s when your SO is sitting on your face and a little pube drifts down and gets caught on your eye and it’s really uncomfortable and you have to stop and…What? You know that happened to you too!
Hire me, Judd Apatow!

Below: The cast of "Superbad" reading my blog.

Seeeeecrets

Lucas Davenport is on the case, hair still greying at the temples, macho as ever, making all the ladies in the Twin Cities PD tingle on his wake. This time, he's investigating a hunting "accident"- which may have been no accident at all!!! Oh, that bloodhound nose of his.

Stuff It.

You know how Eskimos have 40+ words for snow?
Well, they actually don’t. Urban legend.
Besides, you have quite a few compound ways to visualize snow yourself. Try thinking about yellow-snow, grey-snow, virgin-snow, sludge, snow-blanket, snow-flake, snow-ball, etc? It’s easy to blow a college freshman’s mind, (it’s taking a lot of blows already), but the reality is that Eskimos don’t have any mystical, alternate, closer-to-nature understanding of reality, simply more opportunity for (and necessity of) observation.
There are a lot of delightful observations like that in Steven Pinker’s “The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window of Human Nature”. (See, I’m not like that developmentally-arrested dude in that old Jerry Lewis movie that could only read comic books. I read stuff with graphs and flow charts every now and then.)
However, “The Stuff of Thought” doesn’t get my undiluted, idolatrous praise. Why? Pinkner’s main thesis is that (sit down, please, this will change your life) LANGUAGE OFFERS INSIGHTS INTO HUMAN NATURE! Did you capture all that? Also, there’s too much rough academic going for a populist book, specially early on. Pinkner is a shining linguist, but not the most alert of writers. There’s a lot of “bear with me, I’m working on this thought at the moment, so I haven’t arrived at any conclusions yet.” And then he indulges in the most annoying ivory-tower-talk of them all: smug academic pot-shots. This is a slight paraphrase, of course:
“Let me now tackle the recent paper on “Phoneme Journal 27” by my esteemed colleague Joe Scwarzyk, that pompous nincompoop, who keeps on propounding this theory which is a little unlike mine, and he makes some good points but his wife is totally cheating with the dean at Darmouth, and I’m handsomer than him, so my theory is cooler.”

Isn't he the dreamiest linguist ever?

Bad Luck

I can’t say I’m entirely in love with the “Black Cat” manga. Fairly clichéd “bad-ass” characters with big guns and unfailing aim, shadowy Yakuza-like organizations, fan service without actual heat. The line work is surprisingly stiff. Does our hero have a mysterious past to which we will flashback ten times too many? Is there meaningless Japanese poetry? Some questions die before they are uttered into the wind.

Shine on, you crazy hippie diamond...

Joni Mitchell wrote the funniest, saddest song about breaking up, gentrification, and apiary extermination; the second best song about banana-colored methods of transportation (after “Yellow Submarine”); AND she finds a way to call her lovers “my old man” that doesn’t entirely gross me out. These are great ways to steal my heart. Still, “Big Yellow Taxi” has that hopelessly outdated line about putting trees in the tree museum and charging people a dollar and a half “just to see ‘em.” We WISH, right? So in “Shine”, almost 40 years later, she updates that lyric to the inflationarily-correct “an arm and a leg”. Can you believe it’s been that long? So sad. Still, you could do a lot worse than this poised album of hippie-jazz and environmental alarmism.

"Raising Sand"

A lot of people were surprised by this pair...

...but they hadn't been following Plant's more contemplative post-Led Zep career. Alison Krauss' voice still helps me drift me towards my imaginary home in the woods. T-Bone Burnett produced this collection of nice deep covers, some Tom Waits, some Townes Van Zant even. A beautiful musical event.

THE Batman

Great as he is at surviving Uncle Ho's hellish hordes, Christian Bale made for too somber a Batman. The current animated series on Kids WB is also heavy with the horror aspects of the Batman mythos, but nimble action scenes keep it soaring. For those of us raised on "Batman: The Animated Series", and who only sort of enjoyed "Batman Beyond", "The Batman" might require a few minutes of adjustment-what with Bruce's sloping cheeks and the radioactive pallette today's kids seem to favor. But give it a few minutes, and if you can tolerate learning AAAALL about how Batman and Catwoman first meet- AGAIN- this is quite a good show.

"Tree of Smoke"

Dennis Johnson has also wrung out beauty out of the clusterfuck that was the Vietnam war. His novel, "Tree of Smoke", is simply one of the most engrossing in recent memory, a book that drops you in the middle of Charlie-land, injects you with steroids, spins you around twice and then shoves you towards a grenade-festooned jungle with nothing but your sagging belief in God's sense of humor to keep you company. If this novel was about our current military dalliances, it would be THE book of its generation. Unfortunately, the Vietnam territory has been mined effectively and often, which makes the novel shine slightly less than it deserves. This is a big, beautiful book, 600-and-some pages where EVERY PAGE is arresting, demanding, funny, scary...a deliverer of epiphanies. It belongs besides Hemingway and Conrad in your bookshelf.

"Rescue Dawn"

'Nam, man, that was some messed-up shit, though.
But Werner Herzog's "Rescue Dawn" turns out to be truly exhilarating. If ever the words "triumph of the human spirit" were meant to be tagged to something, this is it. Christian Bale's performance is fearless, there must be pretty boys out there going like: "What, THAT'S what acting is about? Crawling through mud with leeches?" Sometimes it is, Justin, sometimes it is. I was expecting loads of "evil Americans war etc etc etc", but Herzog is not Lars Von Trier, he knows what's what. America rulez, boyz!
This is a great movie, though. And I have my nomination for Best Actor.

I know I kind of spoiled it by suggesting it has a relatively happy ending, but it IS called "Rescue Dawn", not "Failed-to-Rescue Dawn."

War! What is it Good For? Awesome Documentaries.

Not that long ago I made fun of documentaries as "boring black and white things about Hitler". Well, there's Ken Burns, of course, and his black and white thing about Hitler, while stately, is never boring. "The War" is wall-papered with a wonderful soundtrack, and on that wall there are amazing photographs, (black and white does seem to be the starkest way to capture the inhumanity of man). It still kind of feels like walking through a museum, maybe because of the hushed awe we're supposed to be in. And we are in a hushed awe, of course- WWII still has that gravitas of being the only war that a really large consensus of humanity agrees had to be fought. Hitler was bat-shit, the Japanese are like: "We were young," and most Germans still go like: "Yeah, we don't know what we were thinking at the time." Engrossing stuff.