Today I'm Worried about my Fellow Brazilians

I very much try to keep business and pleasure separated by a pretty little fence with azaleas in it, but I do work somewhat in the television industry, and the business can be sort of pleasureable, so there are places where the fence has fallen and calves frolic freely and happily from one side to the other.
I watched a very unpleasant Brazilian movie today: "The Creature with Seven Heads."
It's not that it was bad. I watched it at work, not as part of my own continuous better-living-through-cinema-experiment. I'm not going to judge it on cinematic terms. I don't know enough about the Brazilian film industry, or about Brazil really. The thing you need to know about Brazil if you're an American is that they are ALL about the sex and violence. SEX like we can't even imagine, and violence like I'm glad we can't even imagine. It is a complicated, beautiful, horrible country.
I think the Onion says its best when it says:

BRAZIL: People at its Prettiest. Humanity at its Ugliest."

Ah, the Onion, teller of truths.

Anyway, "THE CREATURE OF SEVEN HEADS" is based on true events. And it reminds me why I'm not all that psyched about Carnaval. Ok, so here's the story. This actually happenned. It's based on real events. Prepare for the scare:

Neto is a nice middle class teenager. He smokes a joint one day at a party... OOOOOHHHHHH, he's a REBEL. His dad notices his son is acting a little off. The kid's being all surly and teenagerish and yeah, he's high, look at those blood shot eyes and his interest in music is suddenly elevated. What's that? Pink Floyd poster!!! The horror! The father smacks the son around and a little joint plops to the floor. What happens next?

In AMERICA:
Dad: "Oh, son, you've got some weed? It's a gateway drug, etc etc, you're a nice kid, maybe you should steer away from these vices. Let's say a prayer together." Son: "Ok, dad, yeah, I'll stop smoking pot, I was just holding it for my friend Nick anyway."
(Son ignores Dad, keeps on smoking pot at Green Day shows, Dad cracks open his six-pack and smokes his own joint here and there, both being fully aware that if they are educated about drugs, (ALCOHOL IS A DRUG BY THE WAY!) and are mature about it, getting a little drunk and a little high here and there is a perfectly normal part of the human experience.) Life goes on, riiiiiiiiiiight???

NOT IN BRAZIL APPARENTLY.
INSTEAD THIS WHOLE FUCKING HORROR SHOW TAKES PLACE!!!

Dad: "OH MY GOD!!! My son has fallen prey to the marihuana!
Mother: I'm calling the cops!
Sister: Oh God why this blight upon our house?

An ambulance shows up, and the men with the tight white jackets come to carry Neto away. "Stop! Stop!" says Neto, "This is a big mistake!"
Yes, it is, our doomed stoner is beaten down, pumped full of tranquilizers, taken into the emergency room, he seems a little upset and violent because of the marihuana, (or could it because they've freaking kidnapped him and are dragging him to a cell?!?) More tranks. Calm him down. Kid is zonked out. They pump him full of drugs. They send him to an insane asylum where he's surrounded by fellow ex-stoners, now scratching at walls, mumbling to themselves, ripping their faces apart in a little prison yard where they hurl feces at each other. They put him through electroshock to cure him of his POT ADDICTION (he had like two joints and partied at the beginning of the movie, remember?) Now he's drooling and the wardens beat him every day, and the doctor gives him a drug that makes him hungry, so he gets fat. His parents come visit and he's like: "Please, God, get me out of here!" But they're all like: "Look, now you look plump and healthier!" Neto: "It's because they're drugging me in here! I'm going crazy I need to get out!" Of course the crazier and more desperate Neto looks, the more he's going to be sent back to his hellish madman cell, (how is this supposed to cure him from his "pot addiction" again, I forget?). It turns out that the respected doctor running the Brazilian "rehab clinic/madhouse/inferno" needs Neto to stay there as long as possible so he can meet a quota. Now Neto is a drug addict for sure, complete zombie, they're stringing him on pills in and out. Neto contrives a drugged-out plan to escape, which is, hmmm, well, he sets himself on FIRE. That way, if he's burning, they'll pretty much have to take him to a REAL hospital, right???

Eventually, Neto is released back to the Brazilian population. That nice normal kid is now a retarded monster doomed for life. Dad's wishing he could turn back the hands of time, because living with "Stoner Teenager" was a lot more fun than wiping the drool off "Retarded Manchild". The movie meets its horrible horrible end with a little caption about how there are a lot of badly managed institutions for the mentally insane in Brazil.

...

That's it?
Moral of the Story.
Brazil is scary!!!
All this 'cause the kid smoked a J?
People, people, people. The human body is composed of chemicals. As we intake food and beverages and gases those chemicals are in constant motion, chocolate will have this effect, alcohol will have this effect, methadone will have this effect, caffeine and morphine will have these effects, all according to doses and your body weight and your personality. When a person chooses to pep themselves by, say, drinking a DIET COKE (TM) to keep themselves up while they're writing blogs late at night (guil-TEEEE), they're doing the same thing as a lawyer that peps himself up by snorting a line of cocaine off a hooker's curvy back to get inspired in tomorrow's deposition. It's all in a matter of degree and scale. People should be free to do with themselves as they please as long as they harm no one around them. And if someone wants to smoke a joint so that the Grateful Dead sound kind of cool for twenty minutes, there should be no fucking stigma around it. It's ridiculous. It's no different than alcohol. Actually, alcohol does a lot more damage to your body than pot does, but imagine if Neto had been sent to Brazil's mental institution because he tasted wine at Church. UUUUUHHHH. Benjamin Franklin was quite right when he said that beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. It should be ok for adults to decide if they want to drink themselves stupid or take a happy LSD trip once in their life. When you react to drug use with a WAR on drugs and FEAR and PROPAGANDA all you do is create horrible situations.
Scenario 1: Little J. Lennon likes music, smokes pot, does all sort of crazy drugs, LSD, has money, is protected by loving circle of friends, knows when he's had too much or not enough, creates great music.
Scenario 2: Little J. Lennon smokes pot, mother commits suicide at the disgrace, father puts John in straitjacket, John is given electroshock, John becomes paranoid murderer, John kills himself.
...

The point is, and if "the Devil can quote Scripture for his own purpose," surely good people can quote the NRA too: "drugs don't kill people, people kill people." I'm sure I'm not blowing anyone's mind here, but as long as horrible stuff like this is hapenning somewhere, it needs to be said:
When you create a war on drugs,
It's YOU
who is CREATING a
WAR.
Drugs and alcohol are just things. They can be used. They can be abused. But when someone is an alcoholic, you shouldn't react with violence or contempt or hatred or ostracism, but with love and understanding. When the United States had a War Against Alcohol, crime proliferated, and only the seediest of the seediest would dare drink. But once that nonsense stopped, we had EDUCATION, and so we left it to INDIVIDUALS to deal with their alcohol addictions. There are rehab groups, like AA. Yes, I've been tricky in this paragraph, and mixed drugs and alcohol in a blender for nouns. Why? Because it's the same damned thing and it's only a matter of cultural blindness that keeps people from seeing that.

You want my honest honest opinion?

SPOILER: HONESTY BELOW
I think drugs and alcohol are both bad.
I'm a prude at heart. I've done both, and I've seen their effects on enough people to believe that the human body is at its best when it just is. No booze, no ecstasy, no ritalin. Our children are overmedicated. A lot of these things we don't understand their long term effects. Oh, no, I'm sounding like Tom Cruise!!! But he's kind of right about this.
Not about the Alien Overlords. That stuff is bullshit.
(To be very VERY honest, I think the very act of smoking looks ridiculous and is unhealthy and retarded and I never understood its glamour or purpose. But if you're going to contribute to the already inevitable rotting of your biodegradable lungs, pot at least makes you way happier than the standard cigarrete which just delivers nicotine pleasure and CANCER. It's hypocritical that if you sell one kind you're a successful entrepeneur, but if you sell the other they send you to prison.)
The reality is that drugs have always been around us, and they serve important purposes, and you should be able to learn to hold your liquor, and be informed about these things and not be a judgmental asshole that gets your info from a pamphlet, because unless your circle is mostly composed of Muslim people, everyone you know drinks and takes pills that the doctor recommends and maybe some the doctor told them to go easy on. They're just lying to you about it. They're probably lying to themselves about it too.
You should certainly get drunk and throw up once in your life, and get high and stare at your hand and wonder about atoms and deeeeep stuff and duuuude, and you should have one LSD trip and listen to the Beatles.
Be informed and aware of the dangers. All in moderation. Closing yourself in a world of ignorance and fear and prejudice leads to retarded monstrous situations like the ones in "El Bicho de Siete Cabezas."

Ok, that's the sermon. I'm sorry I took so much of your time.
I can't believe I am doing this, but I am closing with a line from TUPAC SHAKUR!!!

"Instead of a war on PO-VER-TY,
They got a war on drugs
So the police can BO-THER-ME."

Oh, and kids:

JUST SAY NO! YOUR LITTLE CRAZY ASSES DON'T NEED NO DRUGS!!! WAIT 'TIL YOU'RE AT LEAST SIXTEEN BEFORE YOU START FUCKING AROUND WITH YOUR BRAIN!!!

87 and Cry

I mentioned Maher the other day, just saw him being his callous but accurate self on some late show or another, pointing how ridiculous it was that President Bush recently announced he had read 87 books last year. (Bush had some sort of running wager with Karl Rove. Bush won.) 87 books in a year is a wonderful sum, (wonderful enough to be a little skeptical about for someone whose time demands are heavy- how much was skimmed?). A book and a half a week is no Guiness Record but seems to me above the American average. (Japanese readers will probably laugh, considering they plow through something like 10 manga books a day.) The thing is, he had to brag? When you brag about that, you're revealing some deep seated insecurities about your own literacy. It's not a race: reading is something you should be constantly engaged in as a form of gathering information, engaging your intellect, and expanding your imagination. Were 80 of those Garfield compilations? What matters is WHAT you read, and what you draw out of it. If you read four books a year but find that your understanding of life has deepened through them, good for you! I am quite convinced that if you examine Bush's reading lists you will mostly find lots of thick presidential bios and military strategy, the sort of thing that convinces every world leader to trudge on with their visions long after evidence of their mistake piles up against them. Leaders go on in their martial machines because history will, after all, re-examine and redeem their legacy.
I only hope that a Spiderman comic book crept in with those 87, and the president picked up on that bit about how with "great power comes great responsiblity." I'll like to think any future president knows about that too.

THE TILT # 12

Purists know there are only two TRUE pizzas: the "marinara" and the "margherita". The Margherita was invented by Raffaele Esposito in Naples in the 1780s, but it was properly baptized in 1889 in honor of the visit of King Umberto I and Queen Margherita of Savoy. It has tomato, mozzarella, and basil leaves, red, white and green, after the Italian flag.

Sharing is Caring

This is NOT one of those YouTube-franchise blogs, but once in a while it's ok:

CHAPTER X: NICOLE LEGAY

While Andree and Joseph finish their séance, poor Gilbert is losing his little jealous mind. As quickly as he has run down to the first floor, he’s ready to go back up for more eavesdropping. This time, though, he has a better strategy than drooling outside the door. He runs to get a ladder that the house servant, LaBrie, uses for nailing jessamine vines to the walls of Taverney. Our young philosopher carries his ladder out of a garden shed and tries to prop it against the Chateau, when he’s pretty much assaulted by Nicole the waiting-maid, who is scantily dressed and aching for a bout of pneumonia. Their chapter-long exchange goes like this, more or less. But mostly more.

Nicole: “Gil-BERT!!! Were you trying to sneak into Mademoiselle Andree’s bedroom?!?”
Gilbert: “No way! It’s OBVIOUSLY for the visitor’s bedroom!”
N: “Gay!”
G: “I am SO not!”
N: “Good then come to my bedroom instead.”
Gilbert quickly obliges so as not to be charged with breaking and entering, but as he realizes that Nicole has some breaking and entering of a different kind planned, he gets cold feet. Gay indeed!
G: “Wait, I can’t climb to your bedroom. I am a gentleman and a scholar and that would compromise your reputation and…”
N: “Three seconds before you get bitch-slapped.”
He obliges some more. Hell hath no fury et all. Nicole leads the way, and they both climb the ladder to her room in the servant’s tower. The place is a little drab, with one coquettish geranium for decoration and a lonely bonnet-box. Nicole slides into her luring bed and Gilbert acts like she has cooties, sitting all the way across the room in the lonely bonnet-box. I fully intend to find out what a lonely bonnet is.

<
ABOVE: A lonely bonnet.

Nicole: “Come closer, I don’t bite.” She makes some room for him in the bed, bites lower lip, and pulls other tricks of the trade.
Gilbert: “I don’t think I should stand up at this particular moment in time.”
N: “Were you going to see her?”
G: “See who?”
N: “Don’t act dumb. Don’t you love me anymore?”
Gilbert, who is wise enough to fear for the safety of his male apparatus, stutters:
“Hmmmm, I uh, hmmm, well, oui, sure babe.”
N: “Then why are you always avoiding me?”
G: “Cause you’re always throwing dishes at me!”
N: “That’s ‘cause you’re always avoiding me! Don’t you care about us?
G: “This ‘us’ thing. I don’t think it’s working out.”
N: “It was working out the other day when you tried to cop a feel by the stairs! Admit you like Mademoiselle Andree.”
G: “Maybe I like the two of you equally! You know, I’ve been reading about social constructs and the artificiality of marriage and how degrading it is to women and free love and polygamy and stuff. They practice it in, like, Utah.”

(Reader's Note: I'm making up that part abourt Utah. Utah was founded until a week after this conversation took place.)

N: “I’m gonna kick your ass all the way to Utah! How would you like it if I had another man?”
G: “More power to you. The heart wants what the heart wants, etc.”
Shockingly, Nicole is not thrilled at the way this convo is developing:
N: “You don’t love me.” *fakish sniffle* “You lied to me.”
G: “Well, I meant it at the time.”
N: “You’re breaking my heart.”
G: “Actually, that’s just an ignorant comment, I read in the “Dictionaire Philosophique” that the heart has nothing to do with love, it just pumps blood. Love is in the mind.”
N: “So you’re saying you’re NOT going to marry me?!?
G: “Whoaaaaaaaah, what what, Marry who huh..?!?
N: “You think you’re too good to marry me!!!”
G: “Well, men and women are equal and should be so under the law and…”
N: “Shut up you little turd! I hate you!!!”
G: “Exactly, see? You shouldn’t marry someone you hate.”
N: “Aren’t you AFRAID OF ME?” Now there's a little evil thundercloud right above Nicole’s forehead and Gilbert swallows hard.
G: “N--- no. NO. Not afraid.”
Nicole examines our brave little boy: “Hmmm. That’s not very smart of you. I am the best you’re ever going to get. Don’t you think better men than you want me? I was just doing you a favor, you moron. You’re going to pay for this. You know what, get the fuck out of my room, and try to break your neck on the way down!”
Gilbert promptly vanishes.
Nicole is left fuming. And planning something. We can tell because the little cloud of anger around her head is getting darker and darker, but she’s not only mad at Gilbert.
“Mademoiselle Andree is probably leading him on. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. If she is… I’m going to find out what’s what in the morning.”
We will too. Find out what’s what, that is.

THE TILT #11

The record for the oldest continously inhabited city in the world is Jericho in current Israel, founded 9,000 B.C. WAIT, WAIT!!! I thought the world was only 6,000 years old?!? Does not compute!!!

CHAPTER IX: CLAIRVOYANCE

Electric fluid. That’s what Dumas hails as the mystical force emanating from Joseph Balsamo to Andree Taverney. That’s why she’s come to him in a trance: magnetism. It makes sense, in that "we’re still figuring out how the light-bulb works" way. It's not Dumas' fault he was born way back when.
There she is in the red room, shivering before him, and he commands her to “SEE.”
Her eyes get even more dilated, she’s ashamed of this trespass. He assures her he only loves her like a brother. (A brother in ALABAMA?)
Then, Andree displays the rare gift of clairvoyance, and her mind wanders out of her body and swoops through all the rooms of the house, seeing into a bedroom where the Baron of Taverney is reading a pornographic book, then into Nicole’s room. Nicole is half-naked in her sleeping gown AND slipping out in the dark. She’s going to catch a cold like that! Is there anyone doing decent things in this household? Certainly not Gilbert, who’s still frothing in voyeuristic jealousy outside the red room. When Andree’s wandering mind sees Gilbert, Balsamo reveals that the poor young man has a crush with her.
Andree’s reaction: “Ewwww, not Gilbert! He’s always broke, hasn’t got a carriage, and he likes to read and stuff. Loser!”
Ouch! Well, maybe he has a nice personality, uh uh, Andree, did you think about that?!? Maybe his Star Trek fan fiction displays his love of science and universal tolerance and intellectual curiosity? Doesn’t he deserve love too? You stuck up bitches are all the same, you think you’re such hot shit with your Louis Vuitton bags and why don’t you say all that to my face, I’ve got feelings too, you know, you’ll be sorry someday when I get a nice job with Microsoft and
I’m sorry, where was I?
Oh, right. The 1770s. France. Joseph Balsamo is hypnotizing Andree. Andree’s astral projecting her ass all over the place. Gilbert is trying to eavesdrop outside the red room, but when his name is mentioned, he hops astride on a balustrade and slides to the bottom of a staircase. What a fraidy cat kid.
Joseph asks Andree about her father, the Baron of Taverney. Andree reveals no great love for her progenitor, since he’s wasted the MAISON-ROUGE money.
“What’s this Maison Rouge talk?” asks Balsamo.
“It’s the proper name of my mother’s family, and of my brother Philip. Philip should be the Chevalier of Maison-Rouge, instead of a lieutenant in the army.”
“Hmmm, let your soul travel to where Philip is now. Do you see him?”
“I do!” says Andree, who’s obviously tripping balls. “He’s coming towards us now, looking all dashing and Heath Ledgerish, escorting a golden carriage. In the carriage there’s a young lady, majestic, graceful, clad in fineries-
“Gasp!” Says Andree. Well, she doesn’t SAY gasp. She justs GASPS. “This beautiful princess lady looks sort of like my maid, Nicole!”
“The way a lily looks like a jasmine,” Balsamo sneers.
Here’s a lily: Here’s a jasmine:
Yeah, I dunno much about pistils and petals, but the idea is that the lady in the vision is a blueblood while Nicole is a hotblood.
“She’s coming to us, to Taverney! Philip is leading her to rest here! Oh, no, there’s all the dishes in the sink and the dog Mahon has been crapping on the doorstep! We are not worthy!”
“Relax, I’ll take care of all that." He searches the pockets of his pants. "Now, I want you to touch this.”
(I knew that’s where this was going!)
Actually, he brings out a curl of jet black hair. Andree grabs the hair and we’re treated to all sorts of jerky camera tricks like she’s Charisma Carpenter in “Angel” or Patricia Arquette in “Medium” or Jeniffer Love-Hewitt in that “Ghost Whisperer” shit or… I’m sure there’s four or five other shows where people touch things and have psychic flashes. Those bubbly lips of Andree are foaming.
“I see ANOTHER woman! This one is tall and sexy and has jet black hair and looks like Monica Bellucci!" She’s riding an Arabian horse, a galloping ghost! Traveling in the direction of Paris!”
“Aha!” says Joseph triumphantly. He has just GPS’ed Lorenza Feliciani, the hot Italian chick who stole his horse, Djerid. (Remember her?) “Science triumphs over virtue!” Because his whole magnetic mesmerism trick is utterly scientific. “Now I know all I need to know… I must set my plan in motion. As for you, my hypnotized Andree, return to your clavichord.”
Or harpsichord.
I keep on getting them mixed up!

THE TILT # 10, which is also (So I'm Reading Norman Mailer's "The Executioner's Song", Part 274). It's a BIG book.

"Jacks and Jills" is rhyming slang for pills. Or was back in '76 when Gary Gilmore was in prison. "Suburban Girl" had a funny joke about some old hag actually being Norman Mailer in drag. One of the characters in Mailer's book jokes about the Church of Mormon actually standing for the Church of More Money. I'm watching the Second Season of "Big Love," one of the few shows that cannily addresses economic flows and rituals and ackowledges they are far more influential than religious ones. It's aaaaall connected, duuuuuudes. Synchronicity.

"Saw IV"

There's FOUR of these motherfuckers out there, and they still threaten you with a fifth one. Sigh. Less is more, peeps.

I dug the first "Saw", I'm a horror movie connoisseur and I love new takes on body horror, and Cary Elwes hamming it up is always a plus, but fourth time around it's just lame. Yes, slicing eyeballs and breaking bones and digging-in scabs is all great fun but give it a new twist, you know? I need atmosphere and suspense and CHARACTERS and stuff. I watched an episode of "Big Love" right after and I noticed I was actually more concerned about Chloe Sevigny's bad credit card drama than about some nameless fat slug being tortured in ever more ridiculous ways. "Saw IV" is just another day at the butcher shop, you know? Booooring.
The death of a teenage girl? Disturbing. A million meat slabs on a creepy burial mound? Annoying overtime for the gravedigger.
Did I just paraphrase Stalin?

"The Jerk"

Can you believe I had never seen this?!?

For shame.

Talking About Silly, Serious Things

"To err is human. To air guitar is divine."

If the words "Air Guitar World Championships" and "Bjorn Turoque" don't put a smile on your face, then you, my friend, were not touched by KISS in your youth.
Yes, I am not ashamed to say that KISS touched me in my silly place.
Wait, these sentences aren't coming out right.
"Air Guitar Nation" rules!!!
Rock for peace.
Spread the gospel.

It's sort of touching at the end when the Americans are finally accepted by the haters of the world after demonstrating superior air guitar skills. Like the Finnish and the Norwegian and the Australian air guitar heroes are all like: "You filthy capitalist war pig!" But the Americans humbly betray their prez and are all: "No, man, no, most Americans are nice and mellow and love Motorhead, it's just Bush sucks, man, like, Americans want, like peace and stuff, war's fucked up, man and legalized pot, man." And the Euros hug him and say: "It's nice to hear an American say that." Awwww, is this what world peace looks like?
No, they all still turned around and went on feeling ill-disguised contempt for the drunken Yanks.
*sigh*
If air guitar can't bring us together...

Steve Martin's "Born Standing Up"

Possibly the most serious book written by a comedian. Almost dour. (What an odd word, "dour". It's kin to "hors d'oeuvres"... Which I think means "working horse".) I wonder if I'll ever take myself as seriously as Steve Martin takes himself. I might sound like this:

"I recall writing my blog, "Hallucina". It was a wonderful way of communicating my critical reactions to a small circle of readers. I realized that through humor and the juxtaposition of serious items with more frivolous ones, I was able to share amiably my world view with like-minded individuals, and at least create a start point for discussion with those who disagreed. It was a valuable tool in my development as a writer, and through discipline and daily practice I believe I got progressively better."

That's what "Born Standing Up" sounds like most of the time. MOTHERFUCKER!!! Steve, you're a funny guy!!! Be funny!!! It's still a pleasant read, but I felt distinctly in the company of someone who was not at all writing a memoir as much as a fluff piece on himself. The book felt soft. You know that old one, "Live in New York for a year, leave before it makes you hard. Live in L.A. for a year, leave before it makes you soft."? Martin is L.A. He's a mirror Woody Allen, (I'll eat my imaginary hat if 'L.A. Story' wasn't written right off the 'Mannhattan' script). They're both well-read smart comedians with sharply defined personas who publish short fiction in the New Yorker and do their little incursions into playwriting, but whereas Woody is New York hard, (not, you know, 'surviving-in-the-Bronx-hard', but 'fortifying-his-ivory-tower' hard), Steve feels soft. Like, he just wants to have a nice time by his sunny pool at the end of his life. Not hatin' him for it, and I didn't expect Proustian levels of introspection here, but as far as memoirs go, this one's on the side of: "In the 60s I had a complicated childhood. There was some hostility between my father and I because I was more successful as a performer than he was. I wish I had gotten to know him better. Moving on to the 70s..." A sort of justification for this reticence comes late in the book, when Martin drops this horrible anecdote:

He's in a hospital for surgery and the nurse by the side of the gurney wants an autograph. Of course he's thinking: "BITCH!!! I'M DYING HERE!!!" but if he says that, he's afraid she MIGHT kill him, so he tremblingly signs the hospital chart before passing out.

PRIVACY! He's just a guy, and he needs to have a life that does not get confused with his movies. There are times for PR and times for ER, you know? Which sheds a light on why this bio is so skimpy. He's not there to dig into the human condition, his or anyone else's, the way writers feel obliged to do even through layers of deflection. Martin's a celebrity comedian first and foremost. The book shines best when he's receiving his epiphany about comedy... It's all you need to know about Stevie:
When he did something really silly but acted though it was very serious, people got confused... and laughter bubbled up.
SNL's sense of humor comes out of that.
SNL started sucking when it looked as though the actors knew how dumb they were being and started cracking themselves up. You thought: "No, I'm not having as much fun as you are, Horatio Sanz."
I guess comedy SHOULD be serious after all.
I apologize, Steve.

THE TILT # 9

"Most editors are failed writers. But then so are most writers." T.S. Eliot.

"Suburban Girl"

Seven seasons of Buffy means that Sarah Michelle Gellar feels like a friend to Buffy-philes. We've seen so many well-lit close-ups of her adorable little face that we have clearer pictures of her in our heads than of actual people we've dated. It's like we KNOW her, so we will do silly things to show some Buffy love, silly things like renting "Suburban Girl", which looked like a direct-to-DVD romantic comedy wreck somebody wanted you NOT to see. Never even heard of it until tonight. I was ready to make fun of this sucka.

Well, you know what? It's a perfectly decent smart sweet movie about a young assistant editor in the New York book publishing world, (some friends of mine should Q this!)

I'm starting a new word, by the way. Q. Just "Q", uppercase. It will mean to add things to your Netflix, Blockbuster queue, but by extension, it will mean to line up things in the future. Usage:
"Hey, are you ever going to get around to moving out of your parent's basement?"
"It's on the Life Q. Right after climbing Mount Everest and watching "The Wire".

Anyway, "Suburban Girl" works in its own false, glitzy sitcommy terms as it exposes aristocratic shallowness. It even has some modest wisdom to offer about its admittedly limited milieu. SMG and Alec Baldwin are not a couple you would think to pair, but the movie lets you know it's aware of that.

It's based on some stories from Melissa Banks' "The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing"- but... hey, I guess they decided that title was a mouthful for the multiplex crowd so they went with something shorter and dumber that has nothing to do with the movie, and then they figured nobody cares about books and editing and reading so they threw it down the rejected bin- It's a shame, because you'll probably see it on your Blockbuster shelves or your Netflix queues or what have you and assume it's horrible, but it's still a billion times more enjoyable than crap like "The Grudge".
Oh, Sarah Michelle, I hope the world doesn't forget about your ability to convey smarts and vulnerability at the same time. *sigh*

Give Me No Roses

"Lady's Bridge" is a collection of love songs that was written a few months back but could have been sung 50 years ago and will be moving 50 years from now. If you haven't heard about Richard Hawley, (I hadn't) just go listen to the album opener, "Valentine," like, NOW. Listen to it again. That's twice. Tell me you haven't known that song all your life. It's that kind of great song, you can't imagine it wasn't always there. It's what people used to call a STANDARD... but it's OFF THE OVEN. There's ten more like it. Sure, there's a lot of slippery images of lovers crossing bridges in the rain, and being washed away by waves; love is a river that flows to the ocean. So what? It's quite nice to get swept away every once in a while.

CHAPTER VIII: ATTRACTION

What young Gilbert is about to do may very well seem creepy to those whose minds have never been clouded by desire. But let’s reserve judgment and empathize a lot: he has been raised under the shadow of Andree’s haughty beauty. He is servant and she is mistress, (in the old sense of the word) He is TOTALLY crushing on her. Isn't it natural that seeing her now, mysteriously asleep, he sneaks through the half open window into the salon and slowly approaches for a closer look? And that upon seeing her beauty, he is a little tempted to kiss the hem of her skirt, and then having lowered himself by her side and brushed his lips against the fabric, he boldly aims for more?
He’s shaking as he does it…His heart is going a million miles an hour…
He kisses her HAND.
And she wakes up.
And he freaks out!
It’s all clear on his head: she’s going to scream her head off, they’re going to kick him out of the Taverney household, he’s going to wander the roads of France, reading his Rousseau right until the moment he passes out on a ditch somewhere.


ABOVE: Titillating depiction of a gentleman bedecking a lady's gloved hand with saliva. Photograph Courtesy of the Spice Channel's Archives.

Andree looks down at Gilbert.
But she doesn’t scream.
She doesn’t say anything at all, really. Stands up, majestically walks out of the room.
Gilbert is mystified… He walks after her ready to apologize, afraid she’s going to tell her father, but instead she walks right by her father’s bedroom door. It strikes him: she’s sleepwalking. Hypnotized. She’s seeing nothing. She’s a puppet.
And what is she doing, where is she going?
Right up to the red room, where Baron Joseph Balsamo awaits.
And Andree does one of the most scandalous things a nice young girl can do in the 1770s, right above giving you a glimpse of her ankles: she quietly sneaks into Joseph’s bedroom while Gilbert is watching.
This is WAAAAYYY too much for the poor boy. Kissing a girl and then having her walk right off into some other guy’s room? Gilbert understandably crashes to the floor as that door closes.
Who knows what perversions will take place inside the red room?
We will. Next time.

"Hip Hop is Dead"

Currently jamming to this. On an IPOD nano, no less.
There have been reports about subzero temperatures being registered from the core of the Earth, as well as sightings of members of the porcine family in the stratosphere.

Dean Koontz's "The Darkest Evening of the Year"

Does anyone know what happened to Dean Koontz? Did he become a Scientologist? When I was a kid he had a reputation as the poor man's Stephen King, but these days he's more likely to remind you of Yanni. Real touchy feely stuff.

This one is about miraculous angelic Golden Retrievers that are sent by God to save little kids from wells and help women get in touch with their inner chakras or something. I've read practically every Koontz novel in my time, but other than that one about the hermaphrodite rapist who raped him/herself and bred kittens, (that was sick) I can't recall anything specific about them as soon as the book is closed. There will be an incredibly evil non-Christian pyschopath/monster/government agency who does shocking things, a noble Promise Keeping man who's seen the horrors of alcohol and gambling and pre-marital sex and now knows better, a dog smarter than Plato, a wisecracking tough woman yearning for love on the inside, and a magical child with autism/Down's Syndrome/wheelchair/the ability to cure lepers. And there will be horrible, horrible overwrought writing distracting you out of almost every page.
Typical Koontz howler from "The Darkest Evening of the Year" (emphasis mine):
"The walls gave off an ECTOPLASMIC glow, as though this was a GHOST place, the PHANTOM walls inhabited by SPIRITS."
...He's so insecure of his images that he tells you FOUR times! Redundant AND repetitive. I'm glad he found Jesus, but now he needs to find a copy of "The Elements of Style."
The partyline is that Koontz started writing commercial horror fiction but is now trying to write "meaningful, inspiring" novels. Bull. He's as commercial as ever, but his market changed as he got old; he stopped tapping the "Carrie" people and now he's going for "The Celestine Prophecy" crowd. What's repulsive about his whole born again bender is that the books are STILL filled with sex and graphic violence, but now he covers his ass with "uplifting" speeches about "decency and faith and love and being a better American and less skeptic about the supernatural." Believe me, if there WAS any supernatural to not be skeptic about, I would be first in line. I'm all for wise dogs transmitting messages from the beyond, I just need to be convinced someone didn't spike my punch first.

Callousness and Context.

I still feel sort of bad about taking lightly Heath Ledger's death. Not so bad that I'm going to take down that hot hot picture of Michelle Williams, or delete the post, or anything. But bad enough. I thought about this.
The reality is that I am not personally moved by his death. By necessity, sane people must restrict suffering over mortality to a small circle of actual acquaintances; all the crying faces at Diana's funeral were not enamored with a human being but with a television image and their personal delusions about the halo around celebrities.
Of course death is sad, and that bell is always tolling for us, but it's a fact that one must be hard to, because right now someone just died a tragic death. And right now. And right now. And right now. Heath Ledger's death does no more reach your life or mine than the death of the crackhead who's passing away this second, or the lawyer with the coronary that's pasing away THIS second, or the young mother of two who just died somewhere RIGHT NOW. To give more of a show of sadness for him than for other human beings who've had less blessed lives only speaks to a lack of imagination, and seems unfair to me. If one truly suffered for every extinguished life, we would have to be crippled balls of pain drowning in the overflow of our tear ducts.

Heath Ledger was unquestionably one of the better actors of his generation, and certainly you are more familiar with his on-screen glow than you are with the faces of the people being tortured or mutilated in, say, Kenya as you read this line. He was charming from the moment he popped into our common consciousness in "Ten Things I Hate About You" and by the sheer force of his charisma turned that into a really likable movie. This is what stars can do.
His personal life, though, is not for the average American to mourn over. Who cares if he was popping uppers and downers to keep up with a life that demands you to make sunbeams shine out of every pore 24/7 before a camera? How is it your business if he mixed up his No-Doz with his Ambien? Why must you ogle his corpse? Show some dignity. Let his family and friends grieve. As for the rest of us, let the fact that he's dead pass, and that's that.
So, yes, I celebrate callousness, and not the elevation of the death of a nice guy who in his short life partied harder and banged more hot poonani than you and I ever will. And I should be able to make jokes about death and not feel bad, because I am secure in my context.
CONTEXT IS ALL.
If one takes it lightly by the side of his grave, around his uncomprehending two-year old daughter, one has no defense.
If one takes it lightly thousands of miles and social circles away, it is only the APPROPIATE RESPONSE. He's just one more dead person. We all die.
CONTEXT.

The most monstrous thing I have ever heard anyone say was this:

"Drugs have certainly been good to my record collection."

?
What's the big deal about that?
CONTEXT.
It was said by Bill Maher in his show "Politically Incorrect" many many years ago, but it always stuck with me as the height of insensitivity. Maher has a persona of honest callousness that allows him to state the facts and identify bullshit from the political right and the left. This is good and I love him for it. But he often forgets about CONTEXT, which makes him an asshole, and that is bad. His comment was no big deal, right? I've said it, and you've said it.
But it's by far the worst thing I've ever heard anyone say.
You know why?
Because he was talking to Stone Temple Pilot's Scott Weiland, whose friend had recently OD'd and who had just emerged from rehab at the time. You had to see the pained expression in Weiland's eyes when Maher said that. Weiland was REALLY hurt. Maher didn't know why and didn't care. Weiland KNOWS drugs, he's been hooked on heroin his entire life. He knows what they do to you, he has struggled with them all his life, and this dude in a suit basically has told him: "Jack up and die, monkey; just as long as you pump out that sweet music I couldn't care less."
Maher didn't mean anything bad.
His statement wasn't false.
But he misunderstood the context.
It just wasn't the right time and place.
OUR FRIEND CONTEXT.
We should learn more about it.
Specially in an election year.

THE TILT # 8

Michael Caine's real name is Maurice Micklewhite. Like, his REAL name. The name he uses everyday. SIR Maurice Micklewhite. That's what's on his credit cards, what his friends and family call him. He's only Michael Caine during movie projects. Brilliant.

CHAPTER VII: EUREKA

I was wrong, the lovely Andree is not playing a clavichord: it’s a harpsichord. There’s some sort of a difference.

BREAK FOR TILT # 7: This is a clavichord:
This is a harpsichord:


While the tinkling notes go on in the salon that neighbors the dining room, the Baron of Taverney tells poor servile LaBrie to prepare lodgings for Joseph Balsamo in the ominously dubbed “red room”. REDROOM! REDROOM! The red room is where Taverney’s currently absent lieutenant son, Philip, usually stays when he goes AWOL. Just so you don’t miss out on the wordiness, here’s what Dumas has to say about the room:
“An oaken bed with a faded green damask coverlet, and hangings of the same material looped up above it; an oaken table with twisted legs; a huge stone chimney-piece of the time of Louis XIII., to which in winter a fire might impart some appearance of comfort, but which now, wanting that, wanting all ornaments and utensils, wanting wood, and stuffed with old newspapers, only made the place look still more dreary. Such was the apartment of which Balsamo was for one night to be the fortunate possessor.”
While Nicole Legay and LaBrie try to air the stinky room, Joseph visits the comatose Althotas who is still hiding outside in the carriage (since he’s all crazy and crippled.) Now that I think about, Althotas is just like Fidel Castro! After checking up on His Sageness, Balsamo returns and gives La Brie a tip.
LaBrie reluctantly hmmms and haawws: “Excuse me, sir, but you have obviously made a mistake. You gave me a hundred bucks!”
Balsamo: “Oh, you’re right, my friend, thanks for telling me. I meant to give you five hundred bucks.”
DAMN! LOADED!
Once the super-happy Labrie bows his way out, Joseph peeks out of his window at a window on the opposite tower, where sexy little Nicole Legay is… OH OH, this is NAUGHTY!
“She was thoughtfully unfastening her apron, then she began to undo the buttons of her gown. From time to time she leaned out of the sill to see into the courtyard.”
“What a singular resemblance!” Balsamo murmurs to himself. To whom does he mean? There’s a secret here. Also, Nicole’s boobies are about to make an appearance.
Wait for it… wait for it…
Before Nicole slips entirely out of her gown, she remembers to blow the candle and her room is plunged in darkness.
TEASE!
Joseph stops masturbat-, er ,“inspecting the opposite window” and since his “interest” (penis) is still aroused by the house’s many “mysteries,” (breasts), he quietly sneaks out of the red room and goes back to the salon where Andree is still playing a haunting little tune in the clavichord. Or harpsichord. Or whichever it is.
Andree’s “white hands wander over the old yellow keys of the instrument.” A single candle lights the room. There’s a tall age-hazed mirror on the wall, and she blankly stares at herself in it while she keeps on playing some sad tunes that remind her of a childhood under green trees and by rolling rivers. All of a sudden she shivers as if some electric fingers have danced down her back and the music halts and then begins again, louder and more passionate. Something slides behind her on the dim mirror’s surface.
And Joseph Balsamo stands breathing down her neck, his dark velvet suit exalting “the ghastly pallor of his face”.
“What do you want?” She whispers without taking her eyes off the mirror.
He just smiles, waves a hand over her head and says: “Sleep! It is my will!”
And a helpless, obedient Andree leans her elbow on the harpsichord, drops her head in her hands, and closes her eyes.
But Balsamo does nothing ungentlemanly. He simply backs out of the salon, closes the door, and goes up to his red room.
We who stay at the salon see a small, stunned face peek through a window: it’s Gilbert, who’s witnesses this odd little display of Balsamo’s powers.
And who looks like he’s about to climb through the window into the room.

Gilbert seems like a nice guy, but is he going to protect poor Andree’s unconscious honor? Or is he going to be like a frat boy who’s just been left alone with his GHB'd date?
Only time, and the next chapter, will tell.

James Mangold's "3:10 To Yuma"

This was cool movie about cowboys with Christian Bale and Russell Crowe and Peter Fonda and other people. Awesome. It had cool shootings too. Two thumbs up.

Addendum. Murder.

Dear Imaginary Reader:
That last post about evil* had enough stuff in it that I should break for a few days, but no, I have even more stuff to tell you. I know, I know, "when WILL Hans shut the fuck up?"

*If you didn't read it, (it was long and rambling and went into theology, so I forgive you) here's the summary:
"Eastern Promises" is about the motivation for violence. It looks like most violence is easily avoidable because it's just people being big dicks to prove that they HAVE big dicks, or compensate for the lack thereof. Big ovaries, if they're women, but I guess Freud might have been right about that phallic snake in the Garden, after all.
One of the most interesting things anybody has ever pointed out to me is a very obvious and therefore very overlooked statistic.
You know how NRA card-holders say that "guns don't kill people, people kill people"?
ACTUALLY, "people" don't kill people.
MEN kill people.
Unlike that bullshit Danny Boyle line about "80% of dust being dead skin," let me give you a very real statistic about the United States of America, and I will gladly wager it reflects the numbers everywhere else in the world.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, this is the trending in homicide from 1976 to 2005.
Male offender/Male victim 65.3%
Male offender/Female victim 22.7%
Female offender/Male victim 9.6%
Female offender/Female victim 2.4%

Did you get that? I wish I had a pretty USA TODAY pie chart to make this point, because it is something extremely obvious but very though provoking, and you've known it all along without being a math whiz.
I'm gonna round it up for you.
The human population is pretty much 50% male, 50% female. But 90% of killing is done by MALES. Add to that the weird, seemingly offensive and tendentious fact that out of the 10% percentile of female murderers about half identify themselves as lesbians or bisexuals, (read: "women who, because of environment, education and/or hormonal directives, whichever, envy or imitate male behavior.")**

**Don't go all illiterate on me and think I'm saying that ALL LESBIANS ARE KILLERS. Nor am I saying that ALL MALES ARE KILLERS. "MOST KILLERS ARE MALES" and "MOST MALES ARE KILLERS" are very very very VERY different statements. The former is true, while the latter is false. Capisce? Of course you capisce. If you weren't smart you wouldn't be indulging in the quaint art of "reading long blocks of text for pleasure."

We're now saying that 95% of murders are commited by, essentially, males. Add to that the fact that of the remaining 5 percent of female killers, 3 percent were probably driven to do this crazy shit because of something violent a man started (he probably showed HER how to use the gun in the first place, don'tcha know?) Look at the stats again. One percent is saved for a completely deranged inhuman female. I'll give the remaining one percent to the straight, "sane" females who kill. So for most extent and purposes 99% of murder is done by MEN.
Not 50%, as it would be in a world where men and women are raised equally.
99%.

What is this, a feminist rant? Nope. An objective view at the human condition. You saw the numbers. I'm a straight male with an average amount of testosterone. Okay, maybe less than average. I'm pretty chill. Not Hulk Hogan. I don't often feel the urge to rape and pillage, but I do understand the basic animal need of the human being, male AND female, for physical violence. Raised testosterone + FEAR= murder. That's fine, it is what keep us alive, alert, and safe. We are animals, remember. As humanity has evolved, we have instinctively and intelligently diverted the male hormonal need to fight and kill, first through organized war, then contained martial arts, which are the simulacrum of war but hope to avoid it.

We KNOW killing is wrong, we know it, we know it. So we come up with sports, hard-hitting novels, violent movies, video games, all to serve very very good, healthy psychological needs of the human being. YES, the violent videogame you saw your kid playing is actually a great way of ensuring that your kid will never need to kill anyone in reality because their chemical need for violence has been diverted into a harmless fantasy world.
The thing is, women have the same genetic needs for competition and violence. In slightly lesser doses, but they're there.
But women are TAUGHT THAT'S NOT WHAT THEY SHOULD DO.
Boys don't cry. Girls don't fight.
It's not about "boys will be boys". It's all about education.
We need to teach our MALE offspring that killing someone is NOT the manly thing to do. Testosterone may makes us react to some situations violently, you'll wanna punch someone instead of bursting into tears, but that's all because you're taught that's the correct outlet. If only we can teach our boys that CONTROLLING anger is the manliest of manliest things to do... We're set.
Life is beautiful, people. Let's stop ruining it.
I can hope.
Incidentally, you wanna stop the world from going to war and humanity to be saved? Forget all the fuss about global warming.
Instead, we should all work hard to spread the rumor among the next two or three generations of jocks that going into the army is for faggots.
You'll see miracles happen.
Trust me.

David Cronenberg's "Eastern Promises". Homophobia. Communism. The Garden of Eden. This is a Heavy One, I Guess.

Ah, the Davids! Lean, Lynch, Fincher, Cronenberg. It’s just such a great director’s name. If your family name is something like Lyncherberg, you must do a service to cinema, name your kid David and give him a camera early on.
Frankly, I thought “A History of Violence” was a good but overrated movie.
And frankly, I think “Eastern Promises” is the most underrated movie of the year, because as I was watching I thought: “Yes. Yes. Yes. This belongs right up there with ‘The Godfather’ and ‘Goodfellas’. Much much better than ‘The Departed’, for instance. This is IT, this is what a classical movie looks like, and feels like, and thinks like.”

"Eastern Promises" is the kind of movie that you necessarily react to and look for some sort of critical echo to your own emotions, but all I saw online was stuff like: “Oh, it’s gory and violent, that bath house scene was too graphic, and why did he have to be naked?” To the pusillanimous reviewers who said that: Were you AFRAID that you might have seen Viggo Mortensen’s little pee-pee and turned homo? Why is it that most of us, men AND women, are only allowed to see penises in a super-phallic porn context? The idea of the flaccid everyday penis that’s lying between your stock broker’s thighs is too disturbing. It must be covered. AH, how our sin betrays us.


In the Book of Genesis, the not-all-that-omniscient-God gets clued in to the fact that Adam and Eve have had their minds blown open to ideas of Good and Evil, because He notices that they’re hiding their sexual organs. That’s how God figures something went wrong, because of the hypocritical fig leaf Eve has Adam wear. It’s one of the earliest stories of detection, and I find it to be very much TRUE. Because our myths reveal essential truths. It's just that a myth is not JOURNALISM. If you think there was an actual Adam and Eve, you missed the point. They are representations of man and woman. (See, I told you I believe there’s TRUTH in the Bible.) Let’s follow the Biblical myth. God wanted us to be happy naked animals who fuck and frolick and live and die in the same sort of unthinking Eden you can observe most animals are living in. But WE chose to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil… WE started THINKING. The way a GOD does. We chose abstract thought, and with that came fear, guilt, suspicion, paranoia, jealousy, puritanism, hatred, hypocrysy. Eventually, these things led to murder. That proverbial little fig leaf was a red-green flag that alerted God to the fact that man wanted to be able to make CHOICES BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL. Just like God did. Man tapped into FREE WILL and that’s the road we’ve been on ever since.
That "Original Sin" is Pride, by the way, as most people educated in the Judeo-Christian tradition know. Just in case let me repeat it here. It’s not about disobedience, it’s not about serpents telling you to be naughty and eat expired pears or apples or what have you, and it’s not even remotely about sex, despite all the Freudian interpretations of the snake as a phallus. It’s about MAN/WOMAN wanting to know more than it’s good for them. Wanting to be like God.
And we ARE moving closer to God. According to the Biblical account, the OTHER tree that we could eat from that would make Man a God is “The Tree of Life and Death.” Indeed, if we can figure out how to stop cellular death, or how to download our minds to a non-bio-degradable container, we could totally “win” this dubious game with Death. It’s not wrong anymore to struggle towards immortality, by the way. If I’m reading my Bible correctly, God has already forgiven us for our trespasses through Jesus and He is totally giving us clues on how to get to that Heaven, no? I think we are evolving towards a very happy future and all that humanity has to do is not NOT MESS IT UP BY BLOWING EACH OTHER AWAY WITH NUCLEAR BOMBS. LET’S LOVE EACH OTHER AND WE CAN WIN!
Ok, Dear Imaginary Reader, you may think Hans has snapped, lost his bearings, joined the Church of JEEEESUUSSS and forgotten that we started talking about a little everyday, very non-religious movie about the RUSSIAN MAFIA .
But I haven’t. I'm very much on track here: the fact is that “Eastern Promises” is not just some plot-twisty crime drama about Russians in London.

No, no, no, this is the kind of great movie that allows you to go off on philosophical tangents because it illuminates a whole new world. You can look at it from a million angles and find it interesting. You could write a whole essay about “Eastern Promises” and the horrible, inevitable legacy of Communism. Maybe it’s just a text-book battle between a HEROIC WOMAN (Naomi Watts is a goddess to me, by the way) who will DO THE RIGHT THING even though it demands unbelievable bravery. Naomi Watts is great, Vincent Cassel is great, Viggo Mortensen is great, Armin Mueller Stahl is super great. I read quite a few reviews that said he had nothing to chew on, or he was just doing his thing, or wha-wha-?? HE WAS FRICKING Marlon-Brando-as-Don-Corleone GOOD, that’s what he was. He was scary and commanding and I loved him.
This movie totally went over people’s heads.
Because it's a movie that actually has THOUGHTS.
At the very core of it, the question is: why is it that we do violent things?
And the movie hinges on this (plot spoiler?): The whole big Russian Mafia is about showing you’re a MAN, not a QUEER.
The WHOLE movie, all of the horror and dread and suffering stems from just that: some dude is worried that there is a rumor out there that he might be a homosexual.
You don’t want people to think you're a fag, do you?
If you are a MAN, that means you MUST rape a 14 year old girl (the way the pater-familias does in the movie), you must show you can FIGHT (the way every thug does), and you must show you can KILL, slash someone across the throat. For a rumor. These are things that men are taught to do, but women aren't, and homosexuals aren't, because they’re "like women."
HOMOPHOBIA causes DEATH.
This is why God kicked us out of the Garden of Eden.
That’s why Viggo Mortensen’s small, flaccid, “just-happens-to-be-there” dick in a bath house matters so much.
Because he’s showing that he’s just a man. Naked before God, and doing the right thing, and all the crime and prostitution and drug trafficking in the world can be traced back to guys hiding their dicks in a locker room and wanting to prove that they’re not homos, that they’re TOUGH, YEAH, AND THEY CAN SCORE AND RAPE AND MURDER. That's what being a man is aaaall about!

If we want to get back to the garden, we have to stop thinking like that. Like, NOW.

Of course, I may be wildly overanalyzing Mr. Cronenberg’s intentions. I do that a lot.
In conclusion:
“Eastern Promises”. There’s a lot more there than meets the eye. It is a brilliant film. Loved it. Classic. A lot of people are totally going to miss the point, though.

Glass Half Full

On the plus side, Michelle Williams is now single!!! I will comfort you, dearie...


...


I can't believe I just said that. I am THE worst human being ever. My condolences to the Ledger-Williams family, who are long time readers. IMAGINARY readers.

THE TILT # 6 LA COSA NOSTRA- EASTERN VERSION

"vory v zakone" is Russian for "thieves in law". Other names for the Russian Mafia: "Russkaya Mafiya", "Bratva" (brotherhood), and, amongst themselves, "Organizatsiya"
(Yes, I just saw David Cronenberg's "Eastern Promises." More on that soon.)

More Thoughts About "Sunshine"

Danny Boyle's "Sunshine" suggests much to the philosophical mind.
Does God= Sun?
Don't laugh at Danny and dismiss, 97% percentile of humanity who "believes" in a "God" but is sufficiently aware that the sun is just one of many brightly burning balls in the heavens.
On the very literal, scientific sense, our Sun is indeed the Creator of our Earth and Life, our Light. Its absence is our darkness. Religions sprang from the simple observation that the Sun is all to Earth, and without it we die. What propitiated life on this planet was the interaction of sunlight with that primordial soup. When you eat what you are doing is basically gathering solar energy through a series of filters. The most ancient of human myths spring from the understanding that the Sun makes trees grow and flowers blossom and it feeds animals and it causes rain it and gives us vision and warms us, and when the sun goes away the Earth dies and all is dark and cold and DEAD. Then there are all our encoded RESURRECTION myths, Springtime, Proserpine, Osiris, Dyonisus, Jesus, weather patterns, ice ages and global warming.
All thanks to the Sun.
Our theologies sprang from that. LET THERE BE LIGHT!
So, yes, the Sun could very well be our God.
But... one has to admit that:
a) The Sun is a big DUMB BALL OF FIRE
b) The mystic in me is not awed enough... I can believe the sun inspired our limbs to crawl, our cities to be drawn to water, the sun could have baked the human clay and all... But it's hard to believe that the Sun also make us build dark eyeglasses so I could stare up at it and gaze in wonder and THINK AND FEEL AWE and say something like:
"I am consumed in thy heat, but thou art not the God I seek."
In other words, I'm still looking.
I think the Sun is AN INSTRUMENT, just like EVOLUTION is a PROCESS.
Aaah, and my kind of God smiles behind all the machine works.

I must be some kind of Deist or something. I think me and Benjamin Franklin would get along just fine.

"I wish you would step back off the Ledger my Friend And I Will Understand"

(Oh wow. A reference to a minor Third Eye Blind hit about suicide from the '90s? A pun on LEDGE and LEDGER? Heath Ledger just died, you tactless asshole! He deserves something a little more heartfelt than that.)
The fact is the moment I heard "28 year old actor Heath Ledger found dead by police" I thought:
"DRUGS"
and sort of sadly shrugged. I didn't think: "Unfortunate car accident? Premature heart attack? Aneurysm? Random odd disease? Crazy stalker?"
I thought:
"DRUGS."
To any Dear Imaginary Reader who is still "in their basement rooms with a needle and a spoon" like Jagger would say- DRUGS ARE BIGGER THAN YOU! You think you've got them tamed, you think it's cool, but they can totally slip out of your control. Look at your life. Look at your finances. Look at the little things that your brain is forgetting and your heart is not feeling. Look at the slave you've become. Reflect. That is all. I hope I don't sound preachy or hypocritical, because I'm not telling this to make you feel bad, I'm telling you because I think things can be better for you if you back away. Don't be cocky. Try to get help. It's too late for Heath, but maybe not for you.
Yes, Hallucina is read in methadone clinics around the world.

Danny Boyle's "Sunshine"

We're told to never look at the Sun. Mankind's first blind guesses at God came from observing the wild parental moods of that burning ball of gas, that life-giving yet scolding eye in the sky. We're right back to that primitivist concept in Danny Boyle's "Sunshine"- an astronaut crew is aiming to kickstart the dying God's heart by delivering a nuclear payload to its core- or something. I'm not going to question the science behind that but I'm not giving anything away by saying it's a suicidal sort of mission, which to me, made all the efforts of the characters to survive a little laughable.
There's a lot of good in "Sunshine". It's a nice sci-fi thriller with some stunning NASA-type sights. Boyle brings back his trademark subliminal quick cuts, the sort that made "28 Days Later" the leader in the "fast zombie" business. Decent global cast, some thrilling WTF moments. You can totally enjoy it.
... But there's some bad. Alex Garland's vague philosophical musings are hinted at rather than worked out. Boyle adapted Garland's writings before on the muddle that was "The Beach". If you've read Garland's stuff, he has a tendency to overestimate how "mindblowing" his plots are. (He's the kind of guy who goes like: "And at the end, it turns out it was ALL A DREAM!!! HA!!! Trippy, right? Original!")
Nah. It's really hard to watch this movie and not keep on thinking: "Kubrick did this already. Ridley Scott did this already. Tarkovsky did this already. James Cameron did this already. David Fincher did this already. FREAKING EVENT HORIZON DID THIS ALREADY!"
It's the sort of sci-fi movie that seems to look down on the whole sci-fi genre. The eye candy generic space ships are there, but there's a lot of distracting stuff that can make any sci-fi nerd (guilty) squirm. It takes place in 2057 and Earth is frozen and the sun is ALREADY DYING. Scientists will tell you it's gonna take a little longer. Didn't these guys hear about GLOBAL WARMING? Never mind that, I can take a little fantasy with my sci-fi. But why is it that we are 50 years from now and everybody looks/acts/talks/thinks/has hairdos like they're are in 2007? I don't necessarily expect the filmmakers to convincingly chart the development of slang and technology and fashion and project it all into the future, but give me one or two little futuristic terms! Watch a "Clockwork Orange"! Act like it's THE FUTURE!!!These guys look like they can't wait to go back to Earth so they can watch the "Lost" season premiere.
The movie also casually throws lazy statistics for that science nerd-effect. I hate that. A big crucial line in "Sunshine" is: "80 % of dust is actually shed human skin." This is uttered by BRAINY SCIENTISTS! It makes me bristle because it's the sort of stuff that sounds alarming and yet sensible enough that people repeat it to each other as "fact". It sounds like it could be true, right? But then think about that study! Did they take ALL THE DUST IN THE WORLD and check to see how much of it was skin cells? 80% of dust WHERE? In the Sahara where there's a lot of dust but no humans around? What about animal skin? Animals shed skin too! Where does mineral dust enter into this equation? There's more stones than people, you know. It's a bullshit statistic. Yes, you shed a lot of skin cells as dust during the day and they will be collected around your household. That's all.
(It's kind of how like that man-hating retarded comment about "men thinking about sex every six seconds" made it to the mainstream without any actual logic or science backing it up and it was accepted by everyone. EVEN BY MEN WHO KNOW BETTER! The truth is we are ALWAYS thinking about sex!)
If I'm nit-picking I suppose it's because the movie failed to engage me at some level. It happens. It's a decent flick.

CHAPTER SIX: ANDREE OF TAVERNEY

This chapter is all dinner talk, but heavy with subtext, things unsaid, stupid things shouted by the Baron of Taverney, and shocking revelations. While LaBrie is busy adding nails to the dinner table so it doesn’t crumble under the weight of two or three measly partridges, the old man is trying to attract attention to the saltcellar, (the only thing in the Chateau not rotting away). Andree is being distant and observes Joseph. Obviously the two of them belong to higher spheres. Nicole Legay is immodestly sashaying her goodies around the dinner table: “Oh, Monsieur Balsamo, let me lean over and hand you this wet hot bowl of soup.” The Baron of Taverney notices Nicole’s “hands” for the first time, (RIGHT!). “What pretty fingers you have, my dear,” and Dumas notes that the Baron’s money was squandered on running after “pretty fingers.”
Joseph brings up Gilbert, (who is coincidentally right outside, spying on the whole scene through a window- this, we will learn, is Gilbert's favorite hobby.) Joseph is obviously curious about the youth’s potential, but the Baron of Taverney dismisses Gilbert:
“Bah! He’s a philosopher! A dreamer! In my day, no one thought about anything! We believed in God and the King, and that was that. Nothing to it. These days people READ! And what do they read? Sentiments like this:
"Monarchy is an institution invented for the corruption of the morals of men, and the purpose of enslaving them! or else this; If the power of kings comes from God, it comes as diseases and other scourges of the human race.
"What nonsense!" Goes on the Baron. "What’s the point of questioning the monarchy's divine right? Now my own son, PHILLIP,” (new character alert) “is telling me that religion is an oppressive lie and that we are all brothers, and that NEGROES have SOULS! When they are obviously monkeys! I ain’t related to no monkey!”
(Yes, the Baron says this horrible thing. Dumas’s grandmother was a black slave, and although it wasn’t something he liked to bring up all the time, he obviously had a sensitivity towards slaves and “colored folk” because being of mixed race himself he KNEW that, yes, gasp, black people had souls. He's no Dr. Martin Luther King, but for a rich and famous French person who "passed" for white in the 1800s, Dumas was very brave to denounce slavery and racism and write a whole novel, "Georges", devoted to the topic.)
Anyway, at this point, the Baron is frothing at all these crazy commies around him, and he looks exactly like the anti-evolution evangelical dude in the Borat movie who shouts: “I ain't related to no monkey!” right before showing his high intellect by “talking in tongues”, (a.k.a. having a spastic fit). While everybody around him is all embarrassed, The Baron of Taverney goes on a rant about: "What’s the world coming to, what with the blacks and the women and the jews and the chinks and the fags and the atheists and the scientists and the fish sellers, I hate everybody who's not me or the King! With all this talk of PROGRESS and SCIENCE and DEMOCRACY and TOLERANCE and LOVE the world is going to end up being some sort of good place to be in!!!"

(There's nothing to worry about, Baron de Taverney! I’m more than two hundred years in the future, and I’m telling you, people are actually working hard to get dumber! It’s hilarious! Nothing has changed! I just found out the other day that in England they STILL believe in "Kings"! CRAZY! So settle down.)


ABOVE: This is what the Marechal of Richeliu looks like. He's a big player, about to be name dropped again.

Joseph talks the Baron down by asking about Philip, the strapping young scion of the Taverney family who’s working for the Marechal de Richeliu. The Baron of Taverney loves to name drop Richeliu, and reminisces on a battle of his youth. This is when things get freaky.
Taverney: “Me and Richeliu go waaaaay back, we met at the siege of Philipsbourg in 1742.”
Joseph Balsamo: “Oh, yes, I had fun at that one.”
Taverney: “Hmmm. That was thirty years ago. You look like you’re thirty NOW. You weren’t there.”
Joseph Balsamo: (demure) “Oh, I so was.”
Taverney: “Stop it, you’re confusing it with some OTHER siege of Philipsbourg. I was there as a young man, helping Richeliu during a shoot out.”
Joseph Balsamo: “Oh, yeah, that’s right, I remember you, you were wearing that retarded green hat and your horse was colored so and so and…”
Taverney: “Shut up.”
Joseph Balsamo: “I told you I was there.”
Taverney: “You couldn’t have been more than two or three years old.”
Joseph Balsamo: (very seriously) “I was 41 then, a soul in the body of a Viscount Jean Des Barreaux. That’s how I saw you at the fight. Right before a cannonball took off my head.”
Taverney: (shits his pants.)
Andree and Nicole and La Brie and Gilbert and the cat are all freaked out.
At this point, a mysterious drowsiness descends upon the party, and Andree gets all languishy and sleepy. She feels a heaviness upon her bosom and Nicole comes to assist her to bed and then she unlaces Andree’s corset and liberates her breasts and applies some soothing oils. Next chapter: GIRL ON GIRL!
No, psych! Instead Andree, compelled by a weird moist magnetic urge, goes with Nicole to play the clavichord in the music room. Gilbert the Peeping Tom runs to spy on the corresponding window.
Joseph also seems to follow the departing Andree with his eyes. Content with the impression he’s caused, he declares:
“Like Archimedes always said: Eureka!”
“Archimedes? Who’s that?” asks the ignorant Baron of Taverney.
“Oh, just my college roommate. From 2000 years ago.”
DUM.

THE TILT # 5

There's two "Things I Learned Today":
One can read a million stirring essays and still not be all that stirred, but if a special someone writes even the shortest, most everyday letter your heart can go really crazy with happiness. That's insane.

Also,
My HDTV can kick your honor student's ass.

My Twin Peaks Experience

My introduction to the wide world of non-Cuban television came courtesy of the Spanish "farandula" magazine called Hola! that was widely available in Cuba for tourists and often trickled down to our family. I would devour the Spanish TV listings- they had something like a mind-boggling ten channels! (I am told there's 4 now in Cuba, one of those being Havana-only, i.e.: happy stuff for European and Canadian investors to see should they wander away from the satellite TV available in hotels.) Neither here nor there. Anyway, I would supplement my need for entertainment by reading those listings and imagining what the shows were about: "Los Picapiedras?" (The Flintstones)? It sounded like it was a sitcom about a family of miners. "Los Simpsons?" I was captivated by "Los Simpsons" the moment I saw that yellow Bart dude on his skateboard. "Dallas"! I would read the short soap opera synopsis and try to piece the stories together, (never worked. Who DID shoot J.R?)
One time, I read an article about a toooootally different type of show. It was called "Twin Peaks" and it was a mystery about the murder of young woman called Laura Palmer. But it wasn't like "Colombo" or "Murder She Wrote".
DEFINITELY NOT LIKE MATLOCK.
According to the article, Americans were finding ways to get out of work early to figure out what was going on in this surreal little town where people solved crimes by wandering through dreams where sexy women slinked from behind red curtains and a FREAKY MIDGET TALKED BACKWARDS AND DANCED. The article also ran some pictures that gave away the show's style. Pictures like this one:

And this one:

And this one:

Earlier that year, my very liberal parents had allowed me to watch a highly disturbing movie called "Blue Velvet" that I didn't even remotely get: "Moooom, why is that lady sniffing at that guy's pee-pee?" "Shut up, kid, you'll get it someday."
(I get it now.)
David Lynch knows two territories: dreams and sex. Make that three: dreams, sex and movies. He seduces you with the illusion of coherence and satisfaction and then yanks the weirdly-colored carpet from under you. In retrospect, I feel amused at how wildly we all tried to make sense of "Lost Highway" and "Mulholland Drive", look for explanations that barely lingered out of logic- why are we so hostile to dreams? Couldn't we just accept that was tricking us with sequences of beautifully disturbing events?
Most people can't, and after the initial dazzlement, they realized that "Twin Peaks" wasn't going to offer any kind of easy tidy satisfaction- they dropped out. The series was cancelled after two seasons. In an era before DVD and before The Sopranos and Lost and Buffy and shows that demanded your willingness to open up to a filmmaker's intent, it was really inevitable. But SAD SAD SAD.
Reading the story in Hola! I didn't need to know much. Weird town. Dead girl. Crazy stuff happenning. Something was triggered in my 9 year olf head and that night I went to sleep dreaming of my own weird town called Malparadiso where a terrible murder had happened and there were sexy women stalking the streets and an investigator interacting with a community of strangers that lived half in dream and half landlocked in a reality that had plenty of craziness of its own. I had a little aim in life: I was going to watch that DAMNED TWIN PEAKS SHOW ONE DAY NO MATTER WHAT!!!
And then it was in Bravo and out of order and it didn't make sense, so I knew it wasn't right.
And then Vanessa and I went through a parallel David Lynch phase, but despite all the best intentions, time and our crazy rental patterns made it hard for us to wade beyond the AMAZING pilot and the first few episodes... I knew it wasn't right.
And now I am at peace with the world and with Dale Cooper and in love with Madchen Amick and Lara Flynn Boyle and Sherilynn Fenn and Sheryl Lee and even Heather Graham and all these other crazy sexy women (that might include David Duchovny in drag).
So it is RIGHT.
With the recently released "Gold Box Collection", my "Twin Peaks" need has been sated. It is good. And unmissable. Even though it all goes to crazy hell after they solve Laura's murder, and your attention might wander, it will STILL hypnotize you to the very end. Anybody who cares about television and its potential must make a point to watch this at some point in their lives.

TILT # 4

CABEZON! It means BIG HEAD in Spanish and it's a beautiful volcanic formation in Northwest New Mexico, and my good friend Lauren just climbed it!
That's awesome, I freak out when I'm on a building that has more than ten floors. One off her bucket list. In my bucket list: before I die, I must watch a ferret drink a bottle of Courvoisier and dance its little ass off and then chill and have ferret strippers gathers around him. I wanna see a pimp ferret before I die. Yeah. I don't aim very high, do I?

CHAPTER FIVE: THE BARON OF TAVERNEY

ABOVE: The chateau of Taverney looks sort of like this, but crappier.

The Chateau is dilapidated, a square with towers at the corners. It has seen better days, and so has the Baron of Taverney. What a character! (Or a char, as RPGrs would have it.)
We meet him struggling between politeness and vexation, wearing his PJs, he’s in his early sixties, and the wig he has on has been burnt by candles.
When he finds out that Gilbert has led "The Baron Jopseh Balsamo" to his door, he sneers: “That rascally philosopher! An idle dog! Oh, sir, you’re wasting your time with us, this place is in decay.”
Meanwhile he’s abusing poor LaBrie, asking him to carry more and more of Joseph’s stuff into the chateau. Balsamo is not impressed by the hospitality but then OOOHHH Mademoiselle Andree shows up and Balsamo gets a boner. Let’s see: “She had dark auburn hair, of a rather lighter shade at her temples and neck, black eyes—clear, with dilated pupils.” I wonder why her pupils are dilated, I really do. “Her small mouth, formed like Apollo's bow, was brilliant as coral; her tapering hands were antique in form, as were her arms, and dazzlingly fair. Her figure, flexible and firm, was like that of the statue of some pagan goddess to which a miracle had given life. Her foot might bear a comparison with that of the huntress Diana, and it seemed only by a miracle that it could support the weight of her body. Her dress was of the simplest fashion, yet suited her so well, that it seemed as if one from the wardrobe of a queen would not have been so elegant or so rich.” Ok, in Dumas world, this clearly means YOU MUST DEVELOP A CHASTE CRUSH ON THIS CHARACTER. She’s the good girl.
“She’s perfection,” Balsamo corroborates.
With the creepiest of paternal admirations, the Baron of Taverney agrees: “Oh, she’s really hot, but those darn nuns at the convent where she was educated must have brainwashed her, because she’s kind of a prude. I need to get her to Versailles and introduce her to the nobles there, turn her into a goer, know what I mean, wink wink nudge nudge?”
Much shocked blushing from Joseph and Andree. The old man clearly wants her daughter to turn a trick so he can repair the stable, because money at the Chateau is not forthcoming. Hey, I told you, Dumas does not mess around. This isn’t the stuffy period piece you think it is. Not all the time, anyway. Adding to the sexual tension, in comes the pretty waiting maid, Nicole Legay, balancing the most scrumptious omeletes. I'll leave you on that. We're ready for dinner talk. And we're going to have an interesting conversation.

This is from New Zealand, too.

KILLER. BLOOD-THIRSTY. SHEEP. It's HILARIOUS, but in the way that an Onion news article is hilarious: once you laugh at the idea... there's pretty much no need to follow it through all the way. Very competently filmed, which is rare in this field. Little horror treat in the "Slither" vein- (wouldn't put it on the "Shaun of the Dead" league, though).
I didn't make any horrible puns about sheep!!! I wanted to. You know it and I know it, but I restrained myself.

TILT # 3

If you don't take in a lot of calcium, you will get osteoporosis and it will hurt when you walk. But if you take in a lot of calcium, you will get kidney stones and it will hurt when you pee.
... I am not including a picture of a kidney stone because I appreciate you too much, Dear Imaginary Reader, and it makes me sad when you throw up every time you visit me.
You do that anyway, don't you?

"God Loves, Man Kills"

Anything I could say, the X-Men said it better.

Stan Lee gets the adulation and the movie cameos, but it was Chris Claremont's long run writing X-Men comics that turned a bunch of dudes with claws and skin problems into resonating (some would say unsubtle) allegories about tolerance. In this recently reprinted stand-alone story from the '80s, Claremont had our heroes team up with nemesis Magneto against a fanatical televangelist bent on genocide(is there any other kind?). Bryan Singer used the bones of this for the second (and best) "X-Men" movie, so it's a familiar tale, but to have a "kid's comic" openly attack the likes of Jerry Falwell and Tammy Faye Baker in 1982 still feels ballsy.
I can't imagine what a suburban mom looking for Penthouse under her little boy's mattress must have thought had she found this comic instead- and turned to the tight blood-red scene in which a crucified Professor Xavier is slashed on the side by Wolverine! "Time for an exorcism?"

Kitten!

After that horrible image of Treeman and that ramble about the nature of reality, something cute to cleanse your palate.

So I'm Reading Norman Mailer's "The Executioner's Song" ( Part 2)- Or Writing about Music. Or LINKS and CONTEXT.Or Jesus and "White Chicks".

... And I remembered that the first serious musical criticism that inspired me was Mikal Gilmore's "Night Beat: A Shadow History of Rock and Roll", back in those hazy days of 2000. LOOK, I'm kinda young, ok? I can't help it if I discovered Elvis Presley, like, last week!

Mikal is the younger brother of Gary Gilmore, the death row murderer in Mailer's amazing work of novelistic journalism. (Does Gary get out alive?!? Don't spoil it, I still haven't finished!) Mikal's main contribution to the world has been in the form of influential articles written for Rolling Stone magazine for something like thirty years.
One brother an infamous killer. One brother a successful writer.
Life.
Odd.
Mikal Gilmore's writings first alerted me to music writing, a sport I can only gawk at in amazement because I'm too aware that when I write about music, I am only WRITING. Using symbols, not sounds. It's a whole different field. Some people do music criticism very well, but it's because they're aware that WRITING about music is like PAINTING about music. You can do it as long as you know that you'll always be outside the club and never get past the bouncer. Writers are writers, musicians musicians. A person can split and do both at separate times- it's easy and often done. But it's a deluded artist who tries to plaster one field on top of the other.
Read any painter's accounts of his artistic process if you want a hearty laugh at the penury of language. Salvador Dali wrote extensively about his creative impulse. It's all very amusing, but TERRIBLE WRITING. (By contrast, he was slightly less terrible when he wrote about film or literature.)
So, yes, writing about music is like writing about sex. Erotic literature may be fun, but only a fool confuses it with ACTUAL fucking. Even D.H. Lawrence couldn't quite get it right.
Mikal Gilmore's book led me to take a class in college, "Writing About Rock and Roll". It was one of the sad disappointments of my scholastic career, and yet FUNDAMENTAL- a duality that applies well to my entire college experience. On the one hand, the professor's looks alarmed me. He looked like the '60s had punched him between the eyes. He made us listen to Creedence Clearwater Revival and expected us to provide hundreds of pages of musical criticism without much guidance on how to go about THAT- a task which would now thrill me but that made my embryonic younger self DROP THAT SUCKA CLASS! He also had some IDEAS that stood on cement, a quality which I actually don't value too much. If you're not ready to admit that you could be wrong about EVERYTHING, you may never learn ANYTHING. When he said things like "Rock and Roll died in May 1973" or "Kurt Cobain was just a drunken buffoon" or "Art can never be made for money" I wanted to shove waves of evidence his way every time he made a ROCK AND ROLL STATEMENT. Was he smart enough to know he was just making stupid hyperbolic claims? We all do, of course, it's one of the flaws of the primitive form of communication we call language. A MILLION times I've said things like: "Oh, man, "White Chicks" is the worst movie ever!" Of COURSE "White Chicks" is not the worst movie ever! It is an EXTREMELY competent piece of film-making created by the collaboration of hundreds of hardworking individuals with a carefully crafted script that delivered some actual laughs and intentionally used subpar make-up work to highlight the comedic plight of the characters. The JOKE is that the Wayans Brothers are indeed unconvincing as "White Chicks" in their make-up and nobody seems to notice. This is what humor is. It was carefully shot, millions of dollars were spent on lenses and lights and clothes and effects, talented photographers who know all about the art of framing and composition were involved. Highly skilled musicians worked to create the soundtrack. The movie even had a positive message and theme about the need to let go of racial and sexual prejudices that make it hard for people to positively interact with each other.
Of course, it's still a piece of shit.
But that's because other people have used the same basic elements to deliver messages and sights and situations that were more complex and more powerful and effective. This is what a cultural context is all about, and this is why people must be exposed and educated, and this is why we must constantly TEACH each other as we learn new things. If you only see one movie in your life and that movie is "White Chicks", then "White Chicks" is a masterpiece. But if someone else also made "Some like it Hot", you're going to have a problem when it comes to comparing and contrasting.
So, no, "White Chicks" is not the worst movie ever made by far. The worst movie ever made was not seen by anyone, it was probably snuff captured on a cellphone by a serial killer, if you must know. And even that probably had some interest to students of anatomy, or psychiatrists studying abnormal behavior.
And no, Kurt Cobain isn't "just a drunken bufoon".
And no, rock and roll didn't die in May 1973. CONTEXT IS ALL. We must learn to accept that we only know a limited number of things. We are not the hypothetical omniscient God. The atheist who states that there is no God is making the statement that he KNOWS there is no God, and is therefore fallible in his wisdom, and proves himself to be just a loud mouth. Not that we don't need those, but they understandably are left with nothing but bitterness to meet their ultimate statement of reality. Wisdom lies in admitting that one knows nothing, but has to go on with a few very elemental assumptions about reality, which are perpetually up for review. There may indeed be a God. It is exactly as likely as it isn't. Or Gods (plural) or nothingness, or we may be all characters in a giant simulated game played by a race of super advanced NERDISH beings.
This is why people are often confused by my religious quotes. If you must know, I think of myself as a Christian agnostic. Christian in the sense that I believe Jesus had a remarkably clear sighted system for the improvement of life upon Earth. Ahead of its time, and ahead of our time. He impacted all our lives. Yes, even if you are an atheist.
Whether you believe in "I shall inmediately return" Messianic claims which are patently invalid, or even his historicity, that's irrelevant. When I say Jesus, you've heard of this dude at some level, and your thoughts have been shaped by the dude at some level, because they were taught to your ancestors and are a driving force behind the "Western culture"- which is now global- and it is the culture to which undoubtedly you belong if you are capable of operating a computer and reading a blog. The exact same goes for Shakespeare by the way. Another equally magical man. Whether William Shakespeare even existed, or if the plays were written by Bacon, or by Shakespeare's talented sister- the point bears relevance to spoil-sports and sociopaths everywhere, but not to anyone who appreciates the ESSENTIAL IMPACT. The RESULTS matter. if "Romeo and Juliet" is found to be written by a collective of educated monkeys, would it undo the impact it had on romantic love for centuries? It couldn't. It doesn't matter if Jesus was born out of some weird intercourse between "GOD" and a virgin, or if he was resurrected- (he probably wasn't and he probably didn't). That's the spice that the story sadly needed in a time and place where gods and messiahs and miraclemen proliferated. If you believe that, why is it that you don't believe that Alexander the Great was born after God, in the form a snake, raped his mother? (Alexander thought so of himself: his mother probably encouraged him.) Buddha needed a similarly miraculous birth- an elephant was the sperm donor. If Jesus resurrected, then certainly so did Osiris, and Orpheus' girlfriend who almost came back from the dead, and so did Superman after the DC writers got together and looked for a solution to his death. If you're part of the 97th percentile of the world's population who hasn't had the cultural and intellectual tools to differentiate between myth, fable, legend, history and propaganda, don't feel bad. That's not your fault. You're swamped with all sorts of other information, it's just that a lot of it doesn't matter. (Although you might be guilty of a lack of curiosity.) Besides, my stupid blog isn't going to illuminate you.

The people I worry about are the people who WOULD say: "Wait. Scientific research and this new time travel has proven beyond doubt that what actually hapenned was that Jesus went into a coma while being tortured on the cross, and then they lowered the cross and it looked like he was dead but he suddenly GULPED back to life! And then he died for good a little later, and then a litle rumor got started about the whole thing... Well, after this new evidence is IN, I'm not going to LOVE PEOPLE ANYMORE OR DO ANYTHING GOOD! What's the point? What a SCAM!"

The people I should REALLY worry about are the ones who say: "Jesus is good. Jesus is coming. Lalala, here's my UZI, obey me or DIE!!!!"

The people that sadly I will go on meeting all my life are more like this: "Well, you don't share my barely examined, easily refutable, unsubstantiated beliefs? Awwww, I thought you were a nice person, but now I guess you're the Devil 'cause you think differently. That sucks. We can't play baseball anymore."

So, hmmm, I've digressed unto outer limits of the monologue, haven't I?
Where was I?
Oh, yeah.
I'm reading Mailer.
Who reminded me of Mikal Gilmore.
Who reminded me of the professor of rock, who, like a good religionist, thought that music died in 1973.
That was his party line. It was too dumb. I dropped the class.
But you know what?
That same professor was the first person who played me a Bob Dylan tape.

Sometimes, what's important is the message, not the messenger.
Let those who have ears, hear.

THE TILT # 2

Vitamin A deficiencies leave you open to warts. Warts do not get cured by complicated rituals involving dead cats the way Huckleberry Finn would have you believe. If you get a whole bunch of warts, you can become TREEMAN and get your own comic book.

He would be sort of cute, really, once you control the gag reflex. Look at his long flowing hair.

"Amazing Journey: The Story of the Who"

Remember Cameron Crowe's "Almost Famous"? Zooey Deschanel's character passes the rock 'n roll baton to Crowe's youthful alter-ego by handing him the familiar sleeve for The Who's "Tommy". She says: "Listen to 'Tommy' with a candle burning, and you'll see your future." It's a lot to lay on a piece of vinyl, but a documentary like "Amazing Journey" reminds me why The Who were the first band that opened my ears to the aggressively smart possibilities of rock, more so than The Beatles which had been background music to my childhood, and thus easy to take for granted. I had to REDISCOVER the Beatles as a mature listener because familiarity and saturation made them seem eternal, (was there really a world without them?) but The Who were a band I had to research. The first concept album I took in whole as a tapestry of thought and sound was "Tommy," not "Sergeant Pepper's". It wasn't George Harrison who tried to sell me the pamphlet on Eastern religions and meditation and transcendentalism: it was Pete Townshend. It wasn't Dylan's lyrics I was trying to figure out at 16- nah: I was trying to piece together what EXACTLY was going on with that deaf dumb and blind boy.

This documentary is sure you make you nostalgic about rock and roll, because there's something missing on the radio these days, something sexy, crazy and cool that I'm just not hearing, not even from the better practicioners.
In related news, my senior discount card just got in the mail.

Presenting Our Newest Feature, THE TILT: Thing I Learned Today

"A man's day is not done, if he's learned nothing new."- Montaigne

Actually, I just made that quote up, but it sort of looks like something Montaigne might say, doesn't it? Anyway, I've decided to consciously search for new pieces of arcane knowledge that might enrich my life and I want to share that with you, Dear Imaginary Reader. From now on, our days won't be a complete waste.

TILT:Scientists just found out that four million years ago huge elephant-rats roamed South America.

CAN WE SAY "PROPAGANDA"?

WHAT HORRIBLE JOURNALISM IS ALL ABOUT. GO HERE TO SEE THE UN-ANNOTATED ARTICLE

Have you ever read a news story where every single line was RETARDED? 'Cause I just did. I’m going to guide you through this masterpiece. My comments look normal, the quoted AP story is in Italics. Because that’s the way lies should look, leaning and shifty.

By ANDREA RODRIGUEZ, Associated Press Writer
Yes, Andrea, you're a Rodriguez, so you're probably Cuban or Hispanic or they gave you this assignment to seem impartial and we should trust you...BULLSHIT! Guess what my name is, Andrea. That's right, it's there on my birth certificate: Hansel CASTRO. I'm more Cuban than you. I was an upstanding brainwashed "pionero por el Comunismo, seremos como el Che" right until the age of 14 when my family finally took the magical red pill of "LET'S GET THE FUCK OUT OF THIS HELLHOLE!" So I know aaaaall your little Commie games 'cause I played them too. I'm like Alice, baby, I walked right through the fucking looking glass, and I can stare horrible horrible propaganda bullshit in the face.

HAVANA - Fidel Castro looked frail but alert and even playful in a series of official photographs taken during a meeting with Brazil's president on Tuesday, the first images of the ailing Cuban leader released in about three months.

So let's see, Andrea. You are writing your story based on a series of OFFICIAL PHOTOS POSED AND SELECTED FOR THE PARTICULAR PURPOSE OF SHOWING THAT FIDEL IS NOT A VEGETABLE OR A CORPSE. Let's get that out of the way. Also: photographs? Not video? Couldn't get him to look normal for 2 YOUTUBE minutes, could they? I particularly like how you can even guess at his "playfulness" from stills. Is he a baby? Are we looking at pictures of toddlers? Frail but ALERT? Haha, were they blinking lights into his pupils? Did he respond to sounds? AWESOME. You got a lot from these pictures. I'm glad.


Wearing a tracksuit and tennis shoes that have become his trademark since he fell ill, Castro is seen seated and grinning, his beard well-trimmed and his hair combed as he talks with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. In some images, he is seen pretending to snap pictures with a small camera.

Translation: His "trademark track suit and tennis shoes" are not there because of Fidel's sudden interest in athletics, but because obviously all other fabrics are simply too painful for him to wear!!! Until they make light-weight olive green military uniforms, it's not going to change.
Also, his beard is well trimmed! I guess his nurses have not let spiders build nests in there? By bringing this up at all, Andrea, it's obvious you yourself were expecting him to look like a homeless man, no?
"He is seen pretending to snap pictures with a small camera"... *HAHAHAHAHA* Ladies and gentlemen, picture what El Comandante is doing at this meeting with the President of Brazil. He's PLAYING! He's a BABY! "SNAP" is definitely the operative word here.

Taken in an undisclosed location, the photographs were given to reporters as Silva left Cuba, concluding a 24-hour visit. They were the first photos of Castro since October, when he met with his good friend and socialist ally, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Lie in the first sentence: "We are open about Castro's health! Except we really really aren't, and we can't even tell you where his decomposing highness is at." Lie in the second sentence: "His good friend and socialist ally!" Dictators don't have good friends! Chavez latched on to Castro a few years back because he's a Johnny Come Lately monstrous boorish dictator who will allow no dissent and who has threatened to kill, imprison or send into exile anyone who doesn't submit to his power. Birds of a feather. That's why he was visiting Castro at his death bed! This isn't a "friendship". It's not like Chavez and Castro grew up in the hood together, it's not like they bonded over mojitos or even that they have one bolero that makes them both cry. You could argue that Gabriel Garcia Marquez is Castro's friend. But not Chavez. It's a political ploy. OPEN YOUR EYES, PEOPLE!!! Where HAS Gabriel Garcia Marquez been in all this, anyway? Third overall lie: OCTOBER, NOVEMBER, DECEMBER, JANUARY. No one has been allowed to take pictures of a major world leader for four months!!! A third of a year!!! Nothing weird about that! Meanwhile, Tia Tequila can't walk out of her closet without there being ample audiovisual documentation.

Silva said he and Castro met for two and a half hours and "conversed about all topics."

"ALL" topics? In two and a half hours?!? Really? Bavarian cuisine? 18th century military techniques? If they were discussing ALL TOPICS I hope they squeezed in time to discuss who would be the better dictator: Mario, Wario or Luigi.
...
Translation into REALITY: Castro was incoherent.

"He has incredible lucidity and impeccable health," the Brazilian president said. "He's as lucid as in his best moments."

"INCREDIBLE" lucidity? "Incredible" means "something you can't believe". So you can't believe he's lucid. I can't believe he's lucid either. I'm glad we agree, President of Brazil.
"IMPECCABLE" health? Wow, that means he's VERY HEALTHY, right? So why did it say before that he looked frail? Frail isn't healthy, is it? I thought you said that he'd fallen ill? Is he ill or is he not ill? And if he's not ill, then why are we wondering if he's ill? What's with all this lucid talk? You realize that last line made it clear to anyone with an IQ over 50 that Castro is senile?

"Lula said politicians were like athletes, possessing a need to stay active. He said he felt Castro "would soon take on a political role in Cuba" and while he provided no specifics, he may have been hinting that the 81-year-old could remain as head of Cuba's supreme governing body, the Council of State, rather than prematurely retiring."

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! This paragraph is so funny I died laughing and went to Heaven! And I showed it to God and He almost had a hear attack too and He said: "No, Hans, you have to go back to Earth and write about it in your blog, it's too funny, so I'm resurrecting you." And I did and here I am.
WHERE TO START??? Politicians are like athletes? Are we talking about those gymnasts that quit when they hit puberty? Aren't athletes known for being acutely aware of when their physical powers begin to decline? Fidel is 81! "Prematurely retiring"?!? He's been a dictator since 1959! That's like half a motherfucking CENTURY!!!!

Castro has not been seen in public since emergency intestinal surgery forced him to cede power to a provisional government headed by his younger brother Raul in July 2006. But he remains head of the council and is running in parliamentary elections Sunday, a necessary step if he is to hold on to Cuba's top post.

This is just lovely. See, this is the paragraph that's aimed at a stoned moron in Amsterdam to let him know that, HEY, THERE'S FREE ELECTIONS IN CUBA!!! Anyone can run for President!!! Really!!! It's a land of freedom and happiness and equality and people can totally go out and vote and decide between Fidel and the other candidates from the many parties. But, hey, that Fidel is so lovable that who could even consider running against him? Look at his beard! AWWWW! Cubans love him so much,you know? And Fidel is always like: "Oh, you people, you want me to be President AGAIN? Are you sure you don't want someone else? Oh, WELL, if you insist!!!"

His condition and exact ailment are state secrets, though he has met behind closed doors several times with Chavez and released essays on an array of topics that appear in state-run media. Castro has also met with Bolivian President Evo Morales, Nicaraguan leader Daniel Ortega and officials from China, Vietnam and Angola.

Translation: His condition is too horrifying to be revealed to mere Cuban mortals. His vampirical image can not be seen by the naked eye. Really, this is feeling more and more like William Faulkner's "A Rose For Emily".

Tuesday's meeting was a surprise ending to a visit during which Lula, a leftist and friend of Castro, offered the communist government millions of dollars in credit and signed a deal to drill for oil in the Gulf of Mexico.

Why does the Cuban government need millions of dollars in credit? Isn't Communism a self-supporting economical theory of prosperity? Aren't millions of dollars something only evil Capitalist pigs want? Really, what was the difference between Communism and Capitalism again? This is getting so fuzzy. Oh, wait, hahaha, am I to understand that Brazil just tricked the senile dying Jefe into a large DEBT? Who owns the Gulf of Mexico again?

"It had been unclear whether Silva would see Castro in person right up until the meeting actually began. Brazilian officials had said it was up to the Cuban leader's doctors to determine if he was well enough."

But... HE HAS IMPECCABLE HEALTH, I thought? People with impeccable health can, you know, look at other human beings without bursting into flames, right?

"Earlier, Silva signed accords extending Cuba credits that strengthened ties between Latin America's largest economy and the government of Raul Castro, despite Washington's nearly 50-year-old trade embargo against the island. He also signed a deal for Brazil's state energy company, Petrobras, to drill for oil in the Gulf of Mexico."

All right, so we're admitting that Raul is in power and Castro's done for and now Brazil is moving in to steal Cuban oil. Let the vultures whirl around the crusty Cuban carcass.

"The credits will provide favorable Brazilian financing for construction projects and pharmaceutical and agricultural initiatives and show that Silva's visit wasn't simply a chance for him to check on Castro, said Phil Peters, a Cuba analyst with the Lexington Institute, a think tank near Washington D.C.

Sharks around the bloody bait.

"Lula decided this is not going to be a farewell visit to Fidel. It's a vote of confidence to Raul," Peters said. "Brazil is going out of its way not just to make a visit that conveys political support, but to put substantial economic resources on the table." Foreign Ministry officials in Brasilia suggested that food credits alone would total $100 million, although the agreements themselves did not specify how much financing Brazil will provide.Silva traveled with four Cabinet ministers and Petrobras chief Jose Sergio Gabrielli, who formalized plans for exploratory deep-water drilling for crude oil off Cuba's coast and for a lubricant factory on the island.

Hyenas around the zebra.

Cuban Gulf waters could contain large quantities of crude, and Spanish, Canadian, Indian and Malaysian companies have already signed contracts to explore the area. The U.S. trade embargo prohibits U.S. companies from investing in the area.

TO SUMMARIZE: Cuba has spent the last half century under an oppressive military regime that brutally stomped on dissidents, artists, homosexuals, human rights and logic, forced one fifth of its population into exile, one fifth into rationed poverty, one fifth into crime and prostitution, and one fifth into hypocritical positions as dealers in lies no one except Castro has believed in for a good 20 years. This isn't some story that my mama told me, or that the American government told me, this is the shit I saw with my own little discerning eyes because I lived it half my life. And like any good Cuban, I make a big joke of this bullshit article because it's the only thing we know what to do. What else? I'm not gonna cry!

Tuesday's accords were another blow to U.S. efforts to isolate Cuba with trade sanctions, Peters said. "It's the latest sign that the rest of the world completely disagrees with the U.S approach to Cuba," he said.

No, it's the latest sign that the world is full of blind people. I give up.

CHAPTER FOUR: GILBERT

Gilbert is the curious youth’s name, he’s "about 16 or 17." (You would think Dumas could determine how old his characters are, but noooo, their birthdates are always tenuous.) Gilbert is “little, thin, and muscular. His black eyes, which he fixed boldly on any object which attracted his attention, wanted mildness, but had a certain kind of beauty; his nose, small and turned up, his thin lip and projecting cheek-bones, betokened cunning and circumspection; and the strong curve of his chin announced firmness.” Firm or not, he's easily alarmed, and rats Lorenza out as soon as Joseph Balsamo runs out of the carriage.
G: “Sir, the lady has fled with the horse!”
J: (infuriated) “Fuque!” (Pardon his French)
G: “She also said you were an infidel and God would punish you.”
J: (suddenly quite calm.) “Oh, well, never mind that, let’s talk about something else. Can you gimme shelter?”
G: “Mick Jagger."
J: "Shelter from the storm?"
G: "Bob Dylan. I could do this all day. The only place around these parts is the Chateau of Taverney, owned by the Baron of Taverney.”
J: “Show me the way.”
G: “Peter Frampton. Anyway, the Baron of Taverney won’t receive you. He’s as brutish as his 16 year old daughter, Andree, is beautiful. And I should know of his callous ways, because I have been raised as a quasi-servant in the Baron’s household. Not that I could ever be a subject to anyone becase I am free and proud and have been reading brainy books like “The Social Contract,” by Rousseau. What a writer, that Rousseau! It's not like the porno novels the Baron has in his library. Those are sent to him by his friend, the Duc de Richeliu.”
J: “I like how you awkwardly convey information necessary to the plot, Gilbert. So, er, does this Mademoiselle Andree read the porno novels?”
G: “NO!” *blushing*
J: “But you apparently did, otherwise you wouldn’t know their content.”
G: “Touche. But I’m not interested in such base material because I care about social justice and equality and I’m going to CHANGE THE WORLD... as soon as I get out of this shithole.”
They’ve arrived at the shithole in question. The Chateau has seen much better days. A dog called Mahon makes an appearance- apparently the Duc of Richeliu’s had a big triumph on the battlefield at Mahon, so the Baron of Taverney honored his old friend by naming the dog thus. (See, this is informative). Even though Gilbert has warned Joseph away, Joseph is determined to stay the night here. An old butler, Master La Brie, answers the door- not many visitors 'round here. This really is some slump of a Barony. La Brie calls for help from a girl called Nicole Legay- now, if my high school French is any good that name probably belongs to a pretty waiting maid who’s flexible with her affections, if you know what I mean. Nicole appears, gives Gilbert a meaningful look, (it means something, I don't know what, we'll find it out soon). She takes some of Joseph's luggage and is off again.
The Baron of Taverney calls grumpily from inside: “Damnit, I don’t want any visitors! Can’t you get rid of them, La Brie, like we do with Jehova's Witnesses? Oh, well, whatever, let them in." And for the first time the Baron deigns to make an appearance: "Here, sir, this way, this way.”
Before entering the house, Joseph turns to see that Gilbert has scampered.

BELOW: Joseph Balsamo is greeted by the Baron of Taverney. The baron is in his PJs.

Bobby James Spears-Lacroix Has Genital Warts!!! I Care So Much!!!

Dear All-Too-Real Tabloids:
Ok, so you've browbeaten me into following some untalented party girls and their descents into madness. Bravo. Well played. But when you expect me to follow the plights of these starlets' completely worthless relatives, entourage members, babies and pets, I draw a freaking line. I don't care if Britney's third cousin got diagnosed with carpal tunnel, if Lindsay's great-aunt was caught shoplifting at Macy's, and I sure don't give a shit about Suri, Shiloh, Antietam or Gettysburg. I've got annoying babies in my own family, and I do my darndest best to avoid them.
What scares is that despite my lack of interest I am unable to escape this dizzying torrent of scandalous stories- and I know plenty of otherwise smart people who DO pursue these questionable factoids that would be absolutely beyond relevance to their existences even if they were gospel truth.
I mean, no matter how drunken and slutty you think Paris Hilton is, she will never ever EVER have sex with your peasant ass! That's what it's secretly about, isn't it? STOP STARING AT HER AS SHE GETS ON AND OFF LIMOS, AND SHE WILL GO AWAY! There's got to be some pantiless females in your own vicinity, no?
I just... Don't you feel IQ points drop every time you're at a supermarket and this information rapes your eyes? I work overtime to balance it with some worthwhile stuff, but I can't win. I get dumber and dumber with every commercial transaction. Imagine if we were similarly bombarded with world news, or scientific advances, or philosophical debates! But no. I know everything about Angelina's weight loss programs, but I don't even know who the president of England* is! It's official: I will wander off that check out line and make it a point to learn something new every day!

*For instance, I just found out THERE IS NO PRESIDENT IN ENGLAND!!! They have a QUEEN and Princes and Princesses and Knights and Dragons!!! HAHAHA, I know, I know, I didn't believe it either, but it's true, Google it!!!

"The Bourne Ultimatum"

Third time's charming. Remember the final episode of "Full House," when Michelle had amnesia and got to revisit some of the best moments from the previous seasons? That's pretty much what "The Bourne Ultimatum" is like. Except imagine if Michelle kicked ass, and Uncle Joey was a sniper. That part's a little different.

So I'm reading Norman Mailer's "The Executioner's Song" (Part 1)

...And I came upon a passage so revelatory that I have to share it with you, Dear Imaginary Reader.
"The mother's family name was Kerby, like the vacuum cleaner company, but with an 'e' not an 'i'."
It struck me like lightning, like the electric tendrils burning through like that deathchair that beckons to Gary Gilmore: THERE'S A BRAND OF VACUUM CLEANERS CALLED KIRBY!

Now I get why Kirby was always sucking stuff!
This is the power of great literature.

Thank You... For the Music.

I. AM. SO. HAPPY. RIGHT. NOW.

Why can't it be summer 2008 already?!? MAMMA MIA!!! THE MOVIE!!! How awesome is this?!? I'm buying my ticket NOW. It's one of those movies that can only be either WONDERFUL or HILARIOUSLY HORRIBLE. NO WAY TO LOSE!
Meryl Streep! Colin Firth! Pierce Brosnan! STELLAN SKARSGARD, fergodssakes!!! LILY FROM VERONICA MARS!!! Hollywood, have you been spying on my dreams again?
Oh, ABBA, you are indeed the bestest of all the little pop groups that could.

"The Bourne Supremacy"

Globe trotting is one of those things that automatically enriches a thriller. At least you get to see Alexanderplatz. There's a lot of local colour (I'm feeling British right now) in "The Bourne Supremacy", but ultimately what we're in for is Matt Damon as he digs deeper into his psyche. Why is he so damn efficient, how come he triangulates situations easily, why is he so good at physically disarming his opponent with a minimum of violence? Jason Bourne finds his "real" name in this middle installment, but what's in a name, he's a wonderful anti-violence machine. This is what I find appealing in Ludlum's thrillers. Of course you're going to need snipers ready at the go- but the whole point is trying to STOP people from dying. It's reassuring in its own way.
Paul Greengrass directed this one. Joan Allen adds class to the joint, (when doesn't she?) as a super efficient ball-busting agent. Is there any other kind?? I would LOVE to see one of these movies where the effective macho woman is totally sweet and girly and STILL gets the job done!!! Why is it that intimidation is the thing to contend with? How about knowledge, logic, and capability? Ranty ranty. Anyway, Julia Stiles is cute in a nothing role. We bid goodbye to Franka Potente with a powerful deep-sea kiss. We're prepping for the final countdown.
Ah, Franka, your Germanic ways will be missed.

CHAPTER THREE: LORENZA FELICIANI

Lorenza wakes up. Who's Lorenza? The fainting, neglected woman in the front room of the cabriolet. She’s about 23 or 24; “a brunette in complexion, but of that rich brown which is more beautiful than the most delicate tint of the rose; her fine blue eyes, raised to heaven, from which she seemed to ask counsel, shone like two stars; and her black hair, which she wore without powder, notwithstanding the fashion of the day, fell in jetty curls on her neck.”
That's her to the right, from a portrait of the era:

That picture is a bit of a spoiler because it goes ahead in time, but I wanted you to have an idea in your mind. Maybe have a cast. Like, perhaps you've pictured Joseph Balsamo as Johnny Depp in period clothes. He would do it.
Her? Who do you think would play this young Italian medium? A youngish Monica Belluci? Use your imagination. Anyway, that description of her is seen through the eyes of a youth that has come out from the side of the road to offer some assistance to the lady, since no one else will. The kid has a good eye, has seen the postilions wander off in the rain, is making a move on the pretty lady through the window of the carriage. Lorenza asks him if the coast is clear. The kid says it is, because he saw Joseph disappear into the back of the cabriolet. Well, what do you know? Our fainting lady slips out quick as an eel, steals Djerid, flips the bird at the carriage and says:
“I like that man, but I have to leave because I love my religion more, and that man is an atheist and a necromancer, and God obviously wants to kill him.” This is what it feels like when you hang out for too long with Christopher Hitchens.
Anyway, Lorenza is oudi, our confused kid gives out an effeminate shout of alarm. That’s what brought Joseph Balsamo out last episode, see?

"The Bourne Identity"

When I was young and the world seemed wide, I read tons of Robert Ludlum's books. I don't really remember a darn thing out of all that briefcase-toting excitement, (Ludlum wrote the kind of novels whose most thrilling turns were as often delivered in car chases through Palermo as they were in the form of top secret inter-office memos at the Pentagon.) I did learn from him the origin of the American expression "How do you like 'em apples?" Apple sellers would place their choicest items at the top of the cart to attract customers, but at the time of purchase dug in for the rotten ones on lower layers- so it became a byword for a situation in which someone shows you something nice, gives you something that's not, and asks you to deal with it. I never forgot that, for some reason, even after all of Jason Bourne's adventures went to that room in my head which houses all things I've enjoyed well enough but aren't necessarily life-changing.
I just re-watched Doug Liman's 2002 "The Bourne Identity", the first in the Matt-Damon-as-amnesiac-spy trilogy (thus far) and it really holds up as a slick suspenser, it works in the same way the Moby-techno-soundtrack does: it's well produced, gets the booty shaking in a mechanic sort of way, and captures its just-pre-9/11 production time. Key "explosion" scenes were removed from the theatrical release because at the time Hollywood studios actually felt for a few eye-rolling months that after the WTC tragedy, people would never want to look at exploding buildings again. Remember? "September Sadness" and all that bullshit? Where The New York Times felt that frivolous things like pop music and Britney Spears would never matter again?
I KNOW!!! You'd forgotten about all that too, hahaha!!! But yeah, cultural commentators really did go around clamoring about the end of humor and how the world would be united in its efforts to ensure that no one would ever die again and the such. Sounds crazy now, right? To me it sounded crazy then too. Oh, man, remember when we were supposed to be all sensitive about rubble and shit and weren't supposed to look at tall buildings without tearing up? And no movies about plane trouble would ever be made again? (SNAKES ON A PLANE, MUTHAFUCKAS!!! RED EYE!!!) And we could never watch Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito in "Twins", because it could have too many painful connotations?
Oh, wait, bad example, that one's still true. Is that movie even out on DVD?
Anyway, where was I?
"Bourne Identity". GREAT CAST! Watch Matt Damon gain physical credibility as an action hero as he struggles to remember what his name is, and how come he can shoot the nuts off a squirrel from a mile away. Watch the androginy as he makes out with Franka Potente after he's cut her hair, and they look sort of alike.

Oh, and Chris Cooper! Brian Cox! Even a then-not-that-famous Clive Owen as an assassin who gives a dying line that also shows the brains behind the brawn of this movie, because it ponders: "Are all these spy games really worth as much as the life of a single human being?"

BUT IN THE MEANTIME

Let me tell you a campfire story.... It's about a band called Franz Ferdinand. They were Scottish lads who sailed the musical seas into the wilderness of Canada, they were hoping to reach America- the only thing that kept them warm through the night was their hit single "Take Me Out"- but after much hatcheting through the Canuck forests they stumbled out to an odd clearing where they found a mysterious Frat Boy who gave them lots of beer and they drank and drank and as the night spread above their song became more and more boorish. Suddenly they started getting paranoid about the Canadian woods, and looked at themselves in horror because they had now become Canadians themselves, and the song had transmogrified into "Paralyzer" and the band was called Finger Eleven and they sucked.
That was weird, but what I meant to say is: I hate this catchy song! And the riff it's totally stolen, can't people tell?

Get out of my head, song, I really don't appreciate you, not even ironically, but I've been humming you all day long!

More thoughts on "Twilight" than anybody expected me to have

Stephenie Meyer, author of the "Twilight", "New Moon" and "Eclipse" trilogy (thus far) is what is known in book circles as a major hottie. Understand, I'm grading on the literary curve: any of us writers who doesn't have lupus or look like Bukowski or, God forbid, Sartre, is a potential sex symbol.

ABOVE: Sartre. Ladies, control yourselves! Ironically, JP saw more poon than a gynecologist. I must move to France, where a man is judged by the size of his "panache."

After I finished reading "Twilight" and shared my thoughts I felt uneasy, because a very dear friend of mine mentioned reading the book, and I usually trust her judgment, and I wondered if I had been hasty or dismissive. I dove into online fantasy circles, and was relieved to find out I wasn't the only granite-hearted monster to sneer at Isabella Swan's Mary Sue-ish tale. You're likely aware that a "Mary Sue" is Internet parlance for a fan-fictiony female character that swoons and blushes and goes through all the exciting cliche emotions young aspiring writers ascribe to their heroines. A Mary Sue can be male too, a "Marty Stew" I guess. Edward is a Marty Stew, tough and dreamy and noble and hard to tame. Yes, there's rats nibbling on THAT cardboard! David Orr of the New York Times best defined a "Mary Sue" as a "ridiculously empowered author proxy". I read lots of sub-Anne Rice vampire trash, mind you, Laurell K. Hamilton and the such, but at least Anita Blake throws some jokes my way, packs a mean gun, gives me some action, and puts on her negligee when it comes time to get dirty with HER bloodsucker, you know? Anyway, I digress: I felt bad because of my friend who I think likes the books, and because I wanted to go see Stephenie Meyer preemptively when she was in my neighborhood doing a reading, and because I had really been looking forward to this trilogy, (now I'm not even sure I'll read the next books. I prolly will.) This odd feeling of unease led to researching more on Ms. Meyer, as a way to justify my negative reaction and I found out two little factoids that confirmed my distaste.

The first one: In the Amazon.com interview in which she exposes herself as, well, pretty much the pleasant-enough fan fiction writer she is, Ms. Meyer confesses she's read Anne Rice, but she hasn't read Bram Stoker's "Dracula" and claims she has refrained from watching "Buffy" and "Angel" because she wanted to write vampire stories but didn't want other writers in the field to "influence" her. (Message: "I'm SO original, damnit! Not a rip-off!") Interviewers and outsiders get the message, but it's a DUMB DUMB DUMB thing for a writer to say.
Half of a writer's job is to READ CONSTANTLY!
You can't say: "Well, I want to write plays like that Shakespeare fellow, but I don't want to READ Shakespeare, he's probably going to influence me." I HOPE HE DOES!!! If you're writing and/or THINKING in the English language, you're ALREADY influenced by Shakespeare and Chaucer and the King James Bible and Austen and Dickens and Hemingway and almost everybody who's come before you and shaped literature. This "influence" is called an EDUCATION.
Your mission is to ADD something to that. You have to trust that you have something to say that builds upon what Shakespeare and Chaucer and Mickey Spillane or whomever already said, because it's being said THROUGH YOU! YOU are new! We know a million things the Biblical hagiographers had no clue about! It's life, it's a learning process. It's not too hard to do something original, you're a protruding vanguardist snowflake in the avalanche of humanity. Yes, vanity of vanities, nothing new under the sun, but everything new at the same time, no? That sun that rose today flared in a slightly different than it did yesterday, less powerfully, maybe, perhaps it cut through atoms that just yesterday weren't there. NEW. NEWNESS. God is newness.
Ok. Aaaack, went a little into an exalted state there, but the point is that you can't be afraid of being influenced by other people. It's called learning. You have to trust that you have something new and uniquely yours to say: therein lies much of the quality drop usually found between an established writer and his fan-fictioneers. They're imitating someone else. They're not sure they can do something new. I much more appreciate people who subconsciously steal stuff. It happens all the time. In that Pattie Boyd book I just told you about a few days ago, Pattie tells how George Harrison got paranoid after he realized that he'd subconsciously stolen "My Sweet Lord" from the Chiffon's "He's So Fine." (I do believe it's a harmless subconscious lift, it happens often to musicians, and after all, which is the better song?). Anyway, Harrison had a phase where he refused to listen to pop radio worried that he might accidentally pick up a tune and think it was his. Imagine if he had refused to listen to music when he first decided he was a musician, so that music wouldn't influence him! Ridiculous, no?
If you want to write a story about high school and vampires, and you KNOW there was a hugely influential show about high school and vampires like "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", and that there was a (financially-not-artistically) sucessful movie about vampires vs. werewolves ("Underworld), it's your duty to look it up so that you don't accidentally give us something unnecessary and boring and done. When I heard her say that she hadn't watched "Buffy" my thought process went: "She's probably lying. It's unlikely a young, emo-ish female interested in vampires did not watch "Buffy", but then again she was 24 when it premiered, old enough to be out of cult loops. Obviously Anne Rice is the main source. STOP. New idea: She's probably telling the truth. OF COURSE she didn't see "Buffy" or "Angel"... She should have, she would have profited from their viewing; both those shows built and deconstruct their own vampiric worlds continuously. They were marvels of invention. Had she seen them, she would know why "Twilight" was unnecessary. But how can someone interested in a field be so UNinterested in the field at the same time? That's so blind."

And that's when when she talked about the very relevant FACTOID TWO:
SHE'S A MORMON. STRAITOUTTA BYU.

... And suddenly the blindness made aaaaall sorts of sense, and I shall ellucidate what I mean further in part two of this rant, because Stephenie Meyer goes on to mention a writer Iwith whom have a HUGE Love/Hate relationship:

ORSON SCOTT CARD!


TO BE CONTINUED IN "BIG HATE: ATTACK OF THE MORMONS!"

CHAPTER 2: ALTHOTAS

CHAPTER TWO: ALTHOTAS
ABOVE: Althotas, Joseph Balsamo, and a skull from the touring company of “Hamlet”.

Grumpy old man is Stephen Hawking! No, no, but he IS a brilliant old geezer, odd-looking and in a wheelchair that’s quite advanced for its time. His name is Althotas. No need for elaborate portrait: picture Dumbledore after the onset of Alxheimer.
Joseph enters the little room in the back of the carriage. It's everything you would imagine in an alchemist’s atelier, Skull/inker included. Joseph calls Althotas “master.” Althotas calls Joseph “Acharat”. This could get potentially confusing.
Althotas is being quite PMSy about the car(riage) accident:
“Get rid of that accursed horse in the next desert!”
Joseph: “A) NO. B) What desert? We’re in FRANCE now, you senile old man. and c) NO. I love Djerid.”
Althotas: “Well, but it kicked at the wall, and it ruined the elixir of eternal life I’m chemicating and now there’s water dripping down the chimney, why is there WATER dripping down the chimney? Is it raining outside? Why are we stopped? Who am I? I’m a MILLION YEARS OLD. If I don’t get this elixir right quick, I’m going to die. I’m missing a certain plant that Pliny describes. Find out from Lorenza in one of her trances where this plant grows.”
(Lorenza, we infer, is some sort of medium, and the woman that has probably fainted on the front section of the carriage. It’s the 1770s, a whole lotta fainting going on.)
Althotas is going on about how he needs to finish the elixir against all obstacles and how he has to suffer fools and how he’s a mad scientist that will conquer the lightning with paper kites and create something called Elektricitus. I think Joseph is being quite tolerant with his Ancient Sageness, who obviously has forgotten to take his medication. Joseph kindly reminds Althotas it’s time to drink up some more because Althotas’ left hand is twitching all weird-like. Mmmm, medicine. Althotas passes out. There, you’ve met the crazy wizard of our tale.
Just then something like the trampling of a horse is heard. A SHOUT OF ALARM! WHAT’S GOING ON OUTSIDE? Joseph hurriedly opens the carriage door and leaps out.
Oh, that Dumas, he sure knows how to end each chapter.

Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight"

Stephenie Meyer's series of vampire vs. werewolves books are huge in YA circles- not "Gossip Girl" huge, but certainly "Pendragon" huge. Why the success? Well, because, it turns out, the brain of a young adult is a wondrous hotbed of retardation.

Young Isabella Sawn returns to the town of Forks. Yes, her name really is "Isabella Swan", ("Danielle Steele" was taken.) Yes, the town is full of secrets. Yes, you already know all of them. There's vampires and werewolves. Isabella is new at the high school, and doesn't fit in, (DUH!) She is about to fall madly in love with Edward, because Edward is oh so dreamy, and all the girls like him, and he's dangerous and a vampire, and did I tell you he's dreamy? And then, Edward holds Isabella in his super strong vampire arms and they exchange this kind of crap- (and I wish to God I were exaggerating.):
Isabella:
"Oh Edward, my love for you is irrevocable!"
"You don't want to fall madly in love with my good looks, Bella, I'm ever so dangerous."
"Oh, Edward!"
"I love you like the moonlight loves your eyes, Bella. But I fear I will hurt you. I'm ever so dangerous, did I tell you?"
"Our love will never end, Edward."
For 500 pages! And there's sequels!
As long as females keep being fed (and feeding themselves) this pap, the battered women's shelters will always be filled to the rafters. But never mind the dubious boring messages this book perpetuates for the teenage girls that made this a success. My thing is: after a century of vampire literature, after Bram Stoker and Stephen King and Anne Rice and "Lost Boys" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and Anita Blake and "Underworld" and a million other riffs and rip-offs down to freaking "Blackula"- you've gotta add something to the mix! Give the vampire a gambling problem, have him fight robots, add one tiny wrinkle to the formula! ANYTHING! It's called "FANTASY"! Use it!

Goblet Goblet

I hadn't seen Mike Newell's "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" until now. I quite loved it, because my memories of the book were dim enough that I wasn't imposing any literary chains on it. "Goblet of Fire" was the first Potter book that I found myself rushing through instead of savoring every bit- a trend that would continue until the last one, which I read veeeeeeeeeeeeeery leisurely, a chapter or two a day... (I'm no good at goodbyes!). HAD to rush through "Goblet", though, that was so long that I had to balance its enjoyment againts other aspects of the human experience, like eating and sleeping. Sorry, J. K. Rowling.
Fun movie, first one where the budding blush of blossoming horniness makes its presence. NEXT: "Order of the Phoenix"!

ABOVE: Daniel Radcliffe without his Harry Potter make-up.

Donald Duck Adventures!

Oh, no, Hans has regressed into childhood! Actually I've just run through a stack of the semi-recent (suspended in the mid 2000s) Donald Duck Adventures. Kids don't read this shit. Kids read "Naruto". The only people who would read Disney comics is adults who remember their childhood and want to revisit that Carl Barks era of capitalistic, imperialistic adventure. Gemstone Publishing did a real good job with their comics. They're pleasant to the eyes, ocassionally very philosophical, (as in the story where Uncle Scrooge must learn to differenciate between the lucky coin that gave him his empire and another identical coin. Is the luck in the coin, or is the luck in the duck?)
Commies all over the world recoil at the Disney treasure seeker message. But that's the American Dream. It's beautiful. I buy it. No one has come up with anything better. The American Dream is that no matter who you are, what you are, what you look like, what you believe in, you will grow up in a society that celebrates cultural differences, and if you work hard you can achieve anything you want! It's fun! India is still working off its caste system. It's revolting. You're born to slaves, you're a slave. Sucks for you! America has the best mentality in the universe. FREEDOM! BE WHAT YOU WANT TO BE! This is what we free thinkers have to protect and appreciate and this is what sometimes get lost in the red/blue state mentality- a true American looks like whatever the hell he wants to look like, and he thinks what he wants to think.
But he doesn't want to oppress anyone. This is what Latin America and the Third World Countries don't get. Americans want you to learn how to do GOOD, how to pofit, instead of getting stuck in your murderous, parochial mentalities.
This after hanging out with a bunch of Argentinians who talked about Karl Marx because they'd JUST heard about "Das Kapital" and seriously misunderstood what was what.
So yes, the ducks do matter.
They should be read.
Uncle Scrooge and Donald Duck are the American pysche. Scrooge isn't lazy in his hammock having his duck dick sucked by Daisy into complacency! It may look like that, but he's out there, exploring, inventing new ways to make life better and cooler for himself and FOR DONALD. And Donald, perpetually shifting from one job to the next, is working damn hard and stressing out but he's learning and having fun adventures too. Unca Scrooge may talk all haughty but he would never let Donald starve. Donald is sharing the dream right with him. When the deal goes down and Donald is on crack and all has failed, Unca Scrooge doesn't shoot him! He says: "Here's a twenty, Donald, good God, get yourself to the rehab clinic I've created. I don't want you to look like shit!"
SO YEAH.
What I really want to say is:
I've been all over.
I Love America.
I do.
I've seen it be awesome.
It's not flawless, it causes trouble, but there's a lot of sour grapes.
Let's not ruin it, rednecks, ok? INCLUSION, not EXCLUSION.
And, as Noel Coward optimistically said in his script to the now neglected classic "A Brief Encounter": "No matter what, we will always have Donald Duck."
So there.
Can I get my citizenship now? Please?

CHAPTER ONE: THE STORM

Eight days later. An odd looking four-horse carriage is rushing towards gay Paree. Gypsies, tramps and thieves gather in awe as it goes by. You have to picture this thing: Crazy horses in front, a cabriolet in front for the "postilions" (look it up).
Behind the cabriolet is the main carriage, huge, it sports the letters JB under a "baronial scroll". It's divided in two compartments. The front room is frilly and comfortable, the pimping limo place. Colored smoke emanates from a chimney in the back room, so we know it’s like a meth lab on wheels.
Got the idea? It's "PIMP MY RIDE- 1770."
Trotting behind is Djerid, that wondrous Arabian horse, so we know we can expect “He Who Is” to show up in this chapter. But before he does, a huge thunderstorm rips through the clouds. It’s raining cats, dogs, and the occasional goat. The postilions are like: “UNSAFE! Must stop.” But a commanding voice issues forth from the inside of the carriage: “You’re going to get a whipping if you stop!” It’s our man! The road is all muddy, the carriage is losing bearing, the horses are freaking out. Our man emerges from the carriage and forcefully leaps to the cabriolet, all John Wayne. He joins the cowering postilions. Still, it looks like the whole big thing is going to tip over and slide off the road. Talk about getting to the action scene right away! A feminine voice cries from the inside: “Joseph! Help! Help!” So, we’re going to call our man Joseph from now on. Joseph Balsamo. No, really, that’s his name. Or one of them.
The postilions want to bail but Joseph pulls out a gun which gives them a second wind. The carriage doesn’t keel over. But obviously somebody up there has it in for Joseph, because just when it looks like he might be back on track a big bolt of lightning comes down right on one of the four front-horses!
SPECIAL EFFECTS! HORSE ELECTROCUTED, DEEP FRIED! CARRIAGE CRASHES AGAINST HORSE’S BODY! WOMAN SCREAMS!

So we're definitely stopped. Joseph gets down and runs to see if the woman inside the carriage is ok. No, haha, kidding, he runs to see if his BEAUTIFUL ARABIAN HORSE is ok! First things first. Djerid is fine but wigging a little. A “broken voice” from the back section of the carriage, (an old man), grumps about the troublesome horse. Joseph enters the meth lab (the back room). What's in it? Meth, duh. And creepy vials and elixirs and bones and skulls. But that's all in the next chapter.

It's Like Christmas in July, Except it's Halloween in January.

A few posts back I memorably defined horror movies as "an unpleasant encounter with the unexpected." (At least I think it's memorable because I remember it.) Well, I wasn't quite right, so let me refine and define again: "Horror is a PLEASANT encounter with the unpleasantly unexpected."
Pleasant because, yeah, pleasure is extracted from a variety of sources conscious and subconscious. If it was truly unpleasant, we simply would walk out in fear. But there's a series of genre buffers to separate us from the encounter with gruesome mortality. There's the screen, that wonderful shield; the accompanying audience, (even if it's your friends jumping in their seats); the frequent doses of alleviating humor and sexuality. But more important than those is how the filmmaker lets you off the hook.
Ever watched a cheesy scary flick and screamed: "You dumb so and so, DON'T TAKE A SHOWER NOW! Don't go UP the stairs! Make sure the killer is REALLY dead and not just stunned!!! ARRGH, you moron!!!" I'm not sure what percentage of horrormeisters are fully aware of the theory behind this, and how many are simply repeating things they saw, but I think Rob Zombie is definitely an "intellectual" sort of nerd. The fact is that horror punishes transgression, which assuages the audience: the moral lesson is learned. There is a relief in knowing that YOU wouldn't linger in the creepy Texas town, that YOU wouldn't antagonize the mutated residents, that YOU wouldn't go sauntering into the dilapidated mansion with the scattered bones. You're a good boy/girl. You know better. You get patted in the head, and enjoy the ride.
The list is endlesss: The girls in "Last House from the Left" should NOT have followed the creepy guys that promised sex and drugs; the idiots from "Blair Witch Project" should NOT have wandered into the woods looking for ghosts, and they should NOT have gotten all paranoid over twigs and bickered amongs themselves; the characters from "The Ring" should NOT have watched the video that promised to end their lives; as for the backpackers in "Wolf Creek" (my favorite recent horror movie)- well, really, who asked to visit the middle of the empty desert and befriend an irascible loner with an unpredictable temper? They should have stayed partying at the hotel!
And that couple in "Genesis" should NOT have eaten the fruit that God said would kill them. (Isn't human history the weirdest horror movie of them all?)
So horror's apparent amorality is a lie; it's the comforting theater of transgression.
There are effective variations on that, though. Michael Haneke's "Funny Games" inflicts death and torture into people that really haven't done anything to deserve it. So how can you obtain pleasure from it? Well, IT'S CALLED FUNNY GAMES! The murderers wink at the camera and snare you in their complicity; it's not about murdering people, it's about your voyeurism.
You're sort of off the hook.
Rob Zombie took another route. When he made "The House of 1,00000000000000 Corpses" or whatever, and the much better "Devil's Rejects", you could tell he took horror seriously- he knew to intersperse humor in the darkest, goriest situations. (You'll laugh outloud when the police put together that a famous serial killer's many aliases are actually borrowed from Groucho Marx's characters.) Zombie made you care for unredeemable people, because he showed you their sort of "honor among serial killers", their incestuous family bonds. I was a reluctant fan.

His remake of "Halloween" is, unfortunately, a step back towards convention. It's his sellout flick, because it's as unnecessary a movie as you can imagine. You already saw it. Of course he had fun doing it. If someone gave me money to remake a movie I love with better art direction, I would jump in ecstasy too! The scares are slick and effective, but familiar. "Halloween" establishes him as a master of his craft, (he's not some dumb kid with a camcorder and buckets of fake blood, but a measured, intelligent film maker.) I realize 70% of the critical population will never EVER take someone called Rob Zombie seriously, but he's honest about what he does, and you gotta admire that. Still I can't really promise that "Halloween" will offer lots of things you didn't see in John Carpenter's movie.

Intervi...EEEWWW, no, Steve Buscemi, don't take off your shirt!

You know how sometimes you’ll be going along in your law-abiding day and some shady individual sidles up to you and offers to sell you a DVD of a great movie for 50 cents, except the case was photoshopped in his basement and the disc looks all scratched and you suspect the only thing inside is pirated porn? Well, you don’t buy it, do you?
That’s how I felt with Steve Buscemi’s “Interview”. I didn’t buy it.

It’s not just that Buscemi had an attack of delusion and cast himself as a “magnetic, tough guy war reporter”, (the official description, not mine- or anybody else’s with eyes.) It’s not that I didn’t believe for a millisecond that Sienna Miller would bother to engage with his aging bug-eyed self in a super-elaborate “sexy, witty verbal game of chess”, (again, the official description. NOT MINE!) It’s not that it’s contrived, or stagy, or boring when it’s obviously meant to be super harrowing and full of intellectual jolts, (NONE.) It’s not that the DVD case PROMISES a riveting twist ending, (DVDs, don’t do that, unless you’re sure that you can deliver- let me decide if the ending is even a “twist” by myself.)
It’s not even that it’s terrible, because it isn’t- it’s just meh.
It’s a pale remake of a much more powerful movie by quasi-martyred Theo Van Gogh, whose flicks are nearly impossible to get here. (Oh, Lion Video with your highly illegal foreign bootlegs, where did you go?) The Buscemi script is not radically different, but as is the case of like, EVERY foreign remake, it loses everything by being lifted out of its cultural context. It happened to “The Vanished”, it happened to “Open Your Eyes”, it happened to “Nine Queens”, hell, it even happened to “Three Men and a Baby”- without the social angst of their countries of origin to fuel them, there was nothing there. Let me give you an example of what I mean. A movie about huge robots that came out of the Rwandan film industry (hahaha, Rwandan film industry, that’s funny)… ANYWAY, that movie would be a big cultural discovery, groundbreaking, a fascinating window into emerging Third World psyches. Remake it frame by frame in America, and all you’ve got is “Transformers.”
I’ve already written 300 more words on this than I should have, but I will add this:
Sienna Miller. Very beautiful lady. Super sexy. I have seen her in a whole bunch of films. She was sort of ok in “Factory Girl.” Oh, right, she was in “Stardust.” I saw that like last week, and I had already forgotten she was even in it. She’s just no movie star. Movie stars don’t have to try this hard. She’s, like, that really really good girl in regional theater.

Sorry, Sienna. We’re still cool, though, right? Give us a hug.

INTRO 3- LPD

Our man then gives forth this beautiful speech:
“The sources of great rivers are sacred, unknown. Like the Nile, the Ganges, the Amazon, I know where I’m going but not where I come from. All that I can reveal is that when the eyes of my spirit first opened to external things I was in Medina, the holy city, playing in the gardens of the Mufti Salaaym. He was a venerable man, kind as a father to me. Thrice a day he left me, and then came another old man, whose name I pronounce with gratitude, yet with fear. He was called Althotas, and him the seven great spirits had taught all that the angels know, in order to comprehend God. He was my tutor, my master, my friend. He is twice as old as any of us.”
This sage Althotas character has certainly turned our man on to some strong mind-expanding shit:
“At fifteen I was initiated into the mysteries of nature. My master, pressing his hands on my forehead, made a ray of celestial light descend on my soul; so could I perceive beneath the seas the wondrous vegetations which are tossed by the waves, in the giant branches of which are cradled monsters unknown. All tongues, living and dead, I knew. I could speak every language spoken from the Dardanelles to the Straits of Magellan. I could read the dark hieroglyphics on the pyramids. From Sanchoniathon to Socrates, from Moses to Jerome, from Zoroaster to Agrippa, all human knowledge was mine. I penetrated the secrets of the Copts and the Druids. I gathered up the seeds of destruction and of scarcity.”
“When I was twenty, Althotas gave me a little vial and said: ‘Nothing is born, nothing dies- the cradle and the coffin are twins- once man rises above life and death he shall be equal to the gods. Immortal. And in this vial is the drink that grants immortality. DRINK UP.’”
Our man was quite naturally scared shitless by this kind of talk, but he drank and saw that “I was lying on a pile of sandal-wood and aloes. An angel, passing by on the behests of the Highest, touched the pile with the tip of his wing, and it kindled into flame. Yet I, far from being afraid—far from dreading the fire—lay voluptuous in the midst of it, like the phoenix, drawing in new life from the source of all life. Then my material frame vanished away; my soul only remained. It preserved the form of my body, but transparent, impalpable; it was lighter than the atmosphere in which we live, and it rose above it. Then, like Pythagoras, who remembered that in a former state he had been at the siege of Troy, I remembered the past. I had experienced thirty-two existences, and I recalled them all. I saw ages pass before me like a train of aged men in procession. I beheld myself under the different names which I had borne from the day of my first birth to that of my last death. You know, brethren, it is our faith, that our souls, those countless emanations of the Deity, fill the air, are all, and are formed into numerous hierarchies, descending from the sublime to the base; and the man who, at the moment of his birth, inhales one of those pre-existing souls, gives it up at his death, that it may enter on a new course of transformations.”
See, this is why I love Dumas. His characters are always on some mighty powerful hallucinogenics. He ain’t some stuffy dead white guy. He’s all about mind-expansion.
Anyway, back to our ENLIGHTENED man:
“When I awoke, I felt that I was more than man —that I was almost divine. Then I resolved to dedicate not only my present existence, but all my future ones, to the happiness of man.”
HIPPIE!
Anyway, he relates how as a youth Althotas took him on an amazing psychedelic journey from the Tigris to Palmyra, Damascus, Smyrna, Constantinople, Vienna, Berlin, Dresden, Moscow, Stockholm. Petersburg, New York, Buenos Aires, the Cape of Good Hope, and Aden, and taught him about “one God who, by the aid of angels, his ministers, has made the universe a harmonious whole, and to this whole he gave the great name of Cosmos. Religions are unimportant rituals, attempts at understanding the Glory of that Power.” Our man has seen human minds evolving through time, tending onwards, towards happiness and liberty. “I saw that prophets had been raised up from time to time to aid the wavering advances of the human race; and that men, half blind from their cradle, make but one step toward the light in a century. Centuries are the days of nations.”
“'Then,” says our man, “so much has not been revealed to me that it should remain buried in my soul; in vain does the mountain contain veins of gold, in vain does the ocean hide its pearls, for the persevering miner penetrates to the bowels of the mountain, the diver descends to the depths of the ocean, but better than the mountain or the ocean, let me be like the sun, shedding blessings on the whole earth.'
Okay, all-encompassing “history has led us to this point” speech is over. Our man says: “See why I’m taking over? I don’t care about your frat boy initiations. I’m going to use you. I’m going to change the world.”
He proceeds to make some eerily accurate Nostradamusy prophecies about the fates of nations (stuff even Dumas couldn’t have known, about Russia, for example). Finally, the big LPD secret is revealed:
LPD means: “LILIA PEDIBUS DESTRUE.”
My Latin sucks, but I think that means “Lily is going to blow up a schoolbus.” Other interpretations are welcome. The point is, he plans to bring down the French monarchy. Anyway, it’s so much frosting on the cake. He had everyone at hello. The cabal has found a man above all men.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is the hero of the story that now begins. He jumps on his Arabian horse Djerid and rides off into the darkness.
Are you scared?

ABOVE: This is what Djerid looks like.

Being a Full Account of the Trials, Hardships and Tribulations of the Small Nation of New Zealand

New Zealand is a kooky place, which makes sense because it was discovered by Captain James T. Kook in 17mumblemumble.

Captain Kook was a horrible speller. (Come on, Captain, what do you like, "zea men" or SEA men?!? That's right, you like seamen. All over your face.) To add to the confusion, there is no Old Zealand, and believe me, I've looked. New Zealand was inhabited exclusively by rocks and cannibals until 19mumblemumble, when Sir Peter Jackson invaded it with a band of hobbits. Sir Peter brought with him a strange, fructiferous plant named after a Mexican barwench. The local cannibals smoketh much of this herb. Thus was born "The Flight of the Conchords."

The thing with stoner humor is that it's too easy. RANDOM RANDOM RANDOM! A slice of pizza...rapping...about 80s cartoons! Swirly backgrounds. Toaster toaster. RANDOM!
I'm not a certified neurologist (yet) but I suspect most of the Adult Swim/Late Hours at MTV/(and now HBO) stoner humor comes from a slowed down brain's inability (and ironical willingness) to jump quickly from one thought to the next. "Why is that Penguin being so serious while he checks his e-mail? Oh my God there's a picture of David Hasselhoff in the Penguin's laptop! WTF? Hilarious!" Of course, this is what humor is- a pleasant encounter with the unexpected. (As opposed to horror, which is an UNpleasant encounter with the unexpected.)
That said, I very much enjoyed the first season of HBO's "Flight of the Conchords", ("Flight of the Conchords" is the New Zealander comedic duo that we're discussing here. Keep up.) I'm not the biggest fan of their live act, (they deliver silly, overwrought songs with deadpan eagerness, so what? It's been done.) BUT it totally works as a TV show, and it may very well be one of the most visually creative comedy series ever! It wouldn't fly on network television, but in the supportive creative enviroment that HBO offers you get something that is definitely like no TV show that has ever been before. Jemaine and Bret are willing to have long low stretches of non-funny for an awesome payback, and even at their most surreal, (like when Bret is visited in his dreams by Jemaine dressed up as different incarnations of David Bowie), there's always something down to earth and likeable about these dudes. It's not comedy for everybody, it can be drier than a twig in the outback sometimes, but then the next minute it will be lush and hilarious and boombastic. Highly recommended stuff.
RANDOM! NEW ZEALAND! MAORIS!
I don't know anything about New Zealand, although I did see that movie about the girl who had sex with whales or something.

INTRO 2. HE WHO IS.

The summit of Mount Thunder! “In the midst of a glade formed by larches, bare with age, rose one of those feudal castles which the Crusaders, on their return from the Holy Land, scattered over Europe. The gateways and arches had been finely sculptured, and in their niches were statues; but these lay broken at the foot of the walls, and creeping plants and wild flowers now filled their places.” It’s a Gothicky sort of place.
Our traveler sees before him a phantom in a shroud. CREEPY! The phantom draws a sword from the folds of the shroud, and swings it towards a bronze gong. Stones part, lights go up around the castle’s courtyard, three hundred similarly shrouded specters gather in a circle around our man. Before him, a throne of stones. Here speaks the presiding phantom:
“In the name of the Crucified Son, swear to break all bonds of nature which unite thee to father, mother, brother, sister, wife, relation, friend, mistress, king, benefactor, and to any being whatever to whom thou hast promised faith, obedience, gratitude, or service!”
Our man: “Okey doke.”
The phantom: “From this moment thou art free from the pretended oath thou hast taken to thy country and its laws; swear thou to reveal to the new head whom thou acknowledgest all that thou hast seen or done, read or guessed, and henceforward to search out and penetrate into that which may not openly present itself to thine eyes.”
Our man: “What you said.”
President Ghost asks: “Why have you come before us?”
“I want the hand of iron to stifle tyranny, the sword of fire to banish the impure from the Earth, the scales of adamant to weight the destinies of humanity.” All this for Christmas.
“You must first pass the trials,” says President Ghost.
“Trial away,” says our man.
Shrouded shapes push forth a naked man, bound and gagged.
President Ghost: “He broke the oath, betrayed our secrets.” PG slices the naked man’s throat with a dagger. Our man doesn’t flinch. PG: “This is the fate of traitors.” Our man: “Gotcha.” PG: “Not bothered by this?” Our man: “Not even a little.” PG: “What if I ask you to drink his blood FROM A SKULL?!?” Our man: “I got thirsty climbing all the way up here.” They bring him a skull, full of gooey goodness; our man laps it up. The shrouded attendants are impressed.
PG: “So you will obey our orders?”
Our man: “Yup.”
PG:“Take this gun.”
“Okay.”
“Put it to your head.”
“Right.”
“Shoot.”
BANG!
Except there’s no bang. The gun wasn’t loaded. Everyone’s impressed at our man’s humongous lead balls, but he throws the gun down and says:
“Look, you humps, I know all the society’s secrets, I know you are not ghosts, I know the gun was tricked, I know that ‘kill the traitor’ show was fake, and the “blood” I drank was wine, so let’s move on from the rituals, shall we?”
A hush: “Who ARE YOU?”
Our man: “I AM HE WHO IS.”
Tables turned. Our man points at the leading ghosts, knowingly identifies them as representatives of Sweden, Spain, England, Germany, and the about-to-be-born America. We are in the presence of a cabal: THESE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO REALLY RULE THE WORLD. It’s like Haliburton, but in 1770.
Our man says: “The reason we are all here today is because something momentous is about to happen, and I have come from the East guided by a mysterious faith.”
President Ghost: “An angel told me this would happen in a dream.”
Our man: “What were the signs?”
PG: “A diamond star, and on it, three letters, L.P.D.”
In a theatrical gesture, our man opens his coat, and sure enough, in his fine Holland shirt there’s a diamond star, and the letters L.P.D.--- What DO they mean?
Three hundred shrouded cabal members bow to him: “Master! We obey!”

I CANNOT WAIT!

Have you got your Tivos ready for this?!? "How to Look Good Naked! With Carson Kressley!" What part of THAT don't you like?
Actually, I hate almost all of it. Sight unseen. (I lie, I saw the premiere online. But still.)
First of all, is Carson REALLY the best authority on female nudity they could find?

Second of all, it's going to be a huge hit. Guaranteed. How could it not? It's a superficially entertaining show. The British version was huge, and that was hosted by the atomic flame that is Gok Wan- he makes Carson look like Burt Reynolds.
Scratch that, Burt Reynolds can look pretty gay.
Women love shows that play to their body insecurities while pretending to be "empowering." "Fat is beautiful! Feel good about yourself! Also, let's extremely make you over so that you don't look as disgusting as we obviously think you do! And buy buy buy!" How about a show that tells you: "Accept the way you look, don't do shit about it, and if the guy doesn't like it, his own fat-ass can hitch a ride to Hell?" Whatever, we're not quite there yet.
Anyway, right now I'm not so concerned about the millions of women whose self-esteem is always being viciously battered in ways they're not even prepared to understand. And I'm not upset about the retarded men that will tune in hoping to see some flesh, or subtly hint that their significant other will take tips from the show. People who watch the Lifetime Channel get exactly what they deserve.
Today, I'm upset on behalf of gay men.
Now, I'm not gay, and I know I do a lot of gay ribbing, but never misunderstand: I do it in the spirit of solidarity.
Here's the thing:
I understand the rationale in having a gay man host this show. If a woman teaches other woman "how to look good naked", things can get catty, and women won't trust her judgment, or they'll feel worried about the saphic undertones. So no go. If a straight man hosts the show, the women will see if it for what it is, because you would have a dude circling a naked woman and going like: "No, bitch, tuck in the stomach, swivel the hips a little more, use the right posture to emphasize your TITS!" They would rightfully be disgusted.
HEY! SOLUTION! Bring in the non-threatening fag!
You think looking at a naked woman and appreciating her sexually is objectification? PLEASE! How much more objectifying is it to look at a naked woman, NOT appreciate her sexually, and STILL work to change her? She's not a woman anymore, she's a project, she's a hedge that needs trimming.
Still, whatever, not what upsets me today. Or not that much.
What upsets me is the reduction of homosexuals to happy club time, wit-slingers that women can carry around like handbags. I realize gay men have happily played into this role in their way to social acceptance, because it beats having the shit kicked out of them outside a bar by rowdy bikers. But it really irks me, because I feel really sorry for that dude who happens to like other dudes and yet is not a machine of snappy remarks, and does not spend fifty dollars a week on hair products, and does not care about fashion or interior decorating, and would rather not be treated like harmless comedy relief in a sitcom. There has to be such a dude out there, kind of a party pooper, who feels awfully left out in every possible way. Right? Is there a gay man who is not really all that... well... "gay"?

MEMOIRS OF A PHYSICIAN. INTRO. 1

Here we go:
May 1770! Germany! Left bank of the Rhine! Mountains that disappear to the distance like a herd of buffaloes riding into the mist, (how poetic). Highest of all is Mount Thunder, garlanded with gothic ruins, and creepy as all hell. Riding up a steep incline we see a man in an Arabian horse named Djerid, (the horse, not the man. The man’s name is a mysteeeery. For now.) The man is in his early thirties, of a dark complexion, (perhaps Italian?). He has a finely formed foot. People used to care a lot about "finely formed feet" and "shapely ankles back then."
After arriving at an EXTRA-creepy place in the mountain, the man gets off the horse, puts his sword in the saddle, and unloads his pistols (sexy!)- obviously he’s advertising to any unseen spies that he’s unarmed. Whatcha know, as soon as he takes a few steps further up, shadows detach themselves from the general darkness and lead his horse away. A magical torch appears in the air before him, guiding him on, very will o’ the wisp.
“All right,” says our man.
“Shut up or we’ll kill you,” says a voice behind him.
“…” wisely says our man, and allows the unseen specters to bind his eyes with a wet linen.
He reaches out like a blind man, and grips the bony hand of a SKELETON!!! YIKES!!! Our man does a magnificent job of not freaking out, latches on, and he keeps on walking. The blindfold falls off. BAM! He’s at the summit of Mount Thunder.

THE SUPER AWESOME ABRIDGED MARIE ANTOINETTE SAGA!!!

You can’t really tell from this picture, but Alexandre Dumas was quite successful with the ladies. Also, he was half black. These two items are NOT unrelated.

Dear Imaginary Reader:
My reading/writing project for 2008 concerns the expansive Marie Antoinette Saga by Alexandre Dumas. It’s a huge, engrossing mammoth historical thriller that has hundreds of characters, chapters, and twists; it’s also largely unread in the USA because it’s indeed HUGE, and several of the books that compose are out of print (although a very good new translation of “The Chevalier of Maison-Rouge” was published two or three years ago, and you might find that at most bookstores.) I’ve always wanted to read it; never quite been able to. Well, that’s what 2008 is for. As a way of trying some fun writing I will be posting chapter summaries as I go through, as a sort of marker, mostly for my goofy enjoyment. I know people don’t like to read that kind of stuff anymore, but if you by chance are not “people,” then you can totally check it out. I guarantee it’s a very rewarding fun series that you are NEVER GOING TO READ OTHERWISE! So every now and then I’ll tell you a little bit of the story, but I should warn you that it’s not going to be a parody of Dumas' style or anything like that. I’m just telling you the story in MY OWN WORDS, kind of like it’s a TV show you missed last night. So to recap: this is not for everyone, don’t worry, normal blog operation will continue, just skip the posts that aren’t for you. This is for my own literary amusement anyway. But if do you enjoy, you’re welcome to keep up, or jump in at any given time.

Also...

Have you rented "Once" yet? What are you waiting for? It's "Before Sunrise" with songs!!! What part of that don't you like?!?

2008... Have to Get Used to That 8. 2007's Songs: A Year in Recap. (Not Really) Oh, and THANKS, LAUREN!!!

Dear Imaginary Reader:
Happy New One!

2007 was the year Hans officially became that grumpy old guy who doesn't have the energy to keep up with the hip world of MUSIQ. The loop is now closed to me.I mean, I don't even know what was hot on the radio... I guess I sort liked that song about the cyclone hitting the umbrella. But everything else... YIKES! Who sang that horrible one that always made me "crinkle my nose"... right before I went into seizures? And was it just me or was that Justin Timberlake album approximately five hours long? I swear, there were like 23 singles out of it- and they all sounded exactly the same to my non-discerning, non-gay ear.


ABOVE: Justin Timberlake, January 2007.

WORST of all was "Hey Delilah". Hiring a string quartet is a lazy, ineffective way to hide the fact that your songwriting skills are non-existent. Is everyone deaf? Or is musical Alzheimers so widespread that people can't tell when a song is blatantly ripping off Paul Simon, Paul McCartney, and probably even Paula Abdul?
Close rant.


ABOVE: Justin Timberlake, April 2007.

I usually put together a nice, hip, huge list of my favorite songs every year, maybe make an accompanying mix-tape, (and yes, I will call them mix-tapes forever and ever, right until the moment people start shooting music directly into their cortexes.) But when some of my favorite albums of the year were a Beatles musical, a bunch of Dylan covers, and some twangy old-time songs by the dude from Led Zeppelin, I can tell it's time to throw in the towel. My hearing has fossilized and I'm just reliving the past. So no hipness from me. Gotta face the facts. Instead, I got a sweet mix as a Christmas present from Lauren, who still has an amazing taste (but then she's a musician, so that's cheating). Assemble it yourself and I guarantee you're in for a funking good time.

1-Mingo Fishtrap- Dirty Gritty
2-Snarky Puppy- The World is Getting Smaller
3-Spoon- The Underdog
4-Radiohead- House of Cards
5-Tower of Power- So Very Hard to Go
6-BOWIE!!! (oh, and Lennon is in there too somewhere)- Fame
7-Cake-Love you Madly
8-Earth Wind and Fire- Sing a Song
9-Andrew Bird- Simple X
10-Jill Scott- A Long Walk
11-Jamiroquai- Where Do We Go From Here?
12-Ani Di Franco- How Have You Been?
13-Beck- Debra


ABOVE: November 2007. Seriously, Justin, stop it. You're creeping me out.