CHAPTER 49: THE KING'S CARRIAGES

Ok, so that is NOT the most exciting of chapter headings- (Will the King's Carriages Blow Up if They Go Under 50 Miles an Hour?!?) but at least the next episode in the SUPER ABRIDGED MARIE ANTOINETTE SAGA is called

"THE DEMONIAC"

That is so much more mysterious and exciting! For now, though, let's hear about the King's many carriages as they roll right by Gilbert.

Atop the biggest, boldest carriage is that royal, majestic, monarchic, uncovered head- played by Robert De Niro, remember? (Well, not just the head, the whole kingly persona is played by Robert De Niro. You know what I mean.) Gilbert is in such awe that he doesn't notice everyone bending and taking off their hats until a passing sergeant whacks him over the head and forces him to show some proper etiquette: the commoners must bow and uncover their head at the passing of all the carriages stamped with the fleur-de-lis.
So Gilbert bows and takes off his hat, and he peers up through his eyelashes- and who does he see staring right down at him?
His impossible crush, Andree de Taverney.
A strangled sigh emanates from Gilbert's breast. Andree looks heavenly! What a romantic moron Gilbert is- a MORANTIC- all this talk of free will and philosophy and pre-existentialism and at the end of the day he's basically been running across the country after Andree's tail (the tail of her long lovely brocaded dress, I mean). Stupid puppy. Aaahhh, what some guys will do for a pretty face. It's disgusting, really.
Does Andree react with a surge of love at Gilbert's loyalty? Does she reward his perseverance with a blush? Is she even remotely flattered? Silly you!
More like:
"Seriously, Gilbert. You were supposed to stay behind to take care of the dog, Mahon!"
The Baron of Taverney, who shares transportation with his daughter, beckons Gilbert to the side of the carriage and gives him an earful: "Why can't we get rid of you? You're stickier than toilet paper on high heels! Not that I have ever used high heels! You're an embarrassment to the Taverney household! What are you going to do here in Paris? Beg?"
Gilbert gets huffy: "I got a part time! I copy music, which I learned to do by ogling Andree while she played the harpsichord or clavichord or whatever that was!"
Andree: "Your eyes have soiled my clavichord! Or harpsichord! I feel grimy!"
This is NOT the romantic reunion our morantic hero had hoped for.
The Baron of Taverney bellows to the fumy Parisian winds: "Philip! Philip! Come take the lackey away!"

We mustn't forget Philip de Taverney is riding close by, handsome atop his horse, (he's always handsome atop his horse, our Heath Ledgerish Philip de Taverney.) He falls to pace between the carriages and Gilbert.

Philip: "Hey, Gilbert! Fancy meeting- What's wrong, father?"
The Baron: "Make him disappear! He's a sad reminder of life before our general promotion."
Philip: "Oh, Gilbert's done nothing wrong, father, has he? Have you, young fellow?" (Noticing that Gilbert is staring at Andree's face the way Mexicans stare at water spots that look like Selena) "Hmmm, Gilbert, you haven't, er, said anything disrespectful to my sister, have you?"
Andree: (giggling nervously) "Of course he hasn't, what a revolting inconceivable notion, that such a subject could somehow say anything that would place him on the same sexual plane as me. EEEWWW, Philip, don't be silly. Father, don't be silly. Gilbert, just go clean the latrines of Paris or whatever it is your kind do."

Andree and the Baron of Taverney move on on the slow carriage parade of the soul.
Gilbert stands there, while his heart slowly disintegrates into tiny pieces and falls down to his stomach.
Philip of Taverney, who has not missed much, coughs, and gives some buddy/ soldierly advice:
"Hmmm, you know, it's women. Gilbert. Don't think about it too much. They're sort of bitches. Go to a bar, me boy-o! Ale makes the heart stout!"
And Philip rides off.


Gilbert stands there for a while. A long long while.
I'm beginning to think maybe Andree and Gilbert are NOT a match made in Heaven.
Did I mention the next chapter is called "THE DEMONIAC"???? STICK AROUND!!!

The Uninformed Pundit 5

Dear Imaginary Reader:
This is the stuff nursery rhymes used to be made of. "Oh, the Dow is falling down, falling down, faling down, Oh the Dow is falling down, my fair Cheney." Lots of breast-beating and hand-wringing in the media, folks worried about decreasing employment and increasing gas prices, some taking the easy way out and plunging from their windows. Time-travelling hopefuls, it's 1929 all over again!
But I have the solution, so stop panicking.
What's the problem? Suddenly people in America don't have enough money?!? HELLOOOO, money is just green colored papers, right? The problem is that we've been wasting our time printing too many 1 dollar bills. "On God We Trust" it says there, well, is God a cheapskate? NO! Imagine if instead of printing 1 dollar bills, instead we printed 1, 000, 000 dollar bills, which would cost pretty much the same amount of ink and colors, right? So we just get to producing a lot of million dollar bills, so that every American is a millionaire at birth. It's the perfect, easy solution, and they can do it at Kinko's. Everyone gets this million dollar bill at birth, and what they do with it is their own choice. Free market, lazy-fair!
Ok, I've anticipated your reaction, I know what you're thinking:
"Hans, but all those bills are going to come from trees, that will have an impact in our ecology." I'm away ahead of you. I know we're gonna have to kill all the trees to make paper. And yes, I have a solution for the obvious problem of

HOMELESS SQUIRRELS.

This is why it's all so perfect, it's almost like God whispered it into George W. Bush's ear. See, after all that tree-killing we're going to have a very angry, resentful situation with the squirrels who don't know where they're going to put their nuts, BUT WE ARE GOING TO TURN ALL THAT SQUIRREL ANGER INTO ENERGY!!! Here's my plan!!!! It's so perfect!
We put ALL the homeless squirrels in hamster wheels, we display an acorn before then, right? The silly suckers will run for it over and over- they never figure out why they can't bite the nut. They're fretting in their little wheels which of course will be the source of energy, just like watermills work, right? There are approximately 6,000,000 varieties of squirrels out there according to an Audubon Book I think I read, (and who's more authoritative than Audubon when it comes to feathers? Because squirrels have feathers, very thin, thin, thin feathers.) Anyway, we pretty much have America's energy problem solved.
I KNOW, I KNOW what you're thinking, you Malthusian reader, Jesus Christ, I went to college, ok, I have my bases covered.

IF THE SQUIRREL IN ITS HAMSTER WHEEL DOESN'T EAT THE NUT- IT'S GOING TO STARVE, right?

Well, what is wrong with you? Don't you have FAITH? God is not going to allow something like six million squirrels to starve to death!!! That's his Creation! Everything is happy in God's creation!!! What's going to happen is that EVENTUALLY one of these squirrels with the nut in front of him will think:
"HMMMM, maybe I need to STOP runnning towards the nut that's perpetually dangled in front of me, maybe I need to sit still for a moment and figure this out." Then, what what do we do?
We observe that little motherfucking squirrel.
The one that figures out that the nut is always just out of reach is the GENIUS. We clone that one.
I know what you're thinking- AGAIN.
"Hans- do we really need to contend with a rare breed of supersmart squirrels? Maybe their armies will overthrow us?"
But hey, think of all the slave squirrels we could have doing everything for us: they could direct our movies, put on TV shows, amuse us with their antics, and they wouldn't even feel opressed or anything, heck, they would be grateful! They would feel liberated! No longer aching for the nut, right?
So, yeah, where was I? Squirrels. They're our salvation.

Michael Patrick King's "Sex And the City: The Movie"

If "Sex and the City" (the show) was like a sassy televised vibrator for the kind of woman that needs to be reassured that her worth as a human being is measured by how expensive her clothes are, then "Sex and the City" (the movie) is an annoyingly big vibrator that has no batteries but it's determined to stay in that coochie for such a damn long time that eventually you fake the orgasm just so it goes away.
Call me old school Hollywood, but it used to be that romantic comedies lasted an hour and a half, "heavier" dramas two hour, crazy epics 2 and half, maybe 3 hours. Let's stick to those time lengths, shall we? Because at two hours and 31 minutes, the SATC movie felt like a short season's worth of episodes.
You could wander away from it, ("Geez, can Miranda forgive basically decent Steve for his one damned slip already? The guy is sorry!") go prepare some sushi off a cookbook, come back- ("Is Carrie seriously wearing that fucking thing on her head- and then she wonders why Big ran out on the wedding!") read Cosmo in between plotlines, ("My God, Samantha, please, I do NOT want to see you fucking at 60! This is depressing!"), learn how to prepare yourself a Margarita, look at what's going in the movie ( "Oh, Charlotte, you 'poughkeepsied' in your pants! How humiliating! Almost as humiliating as the fact that you are barely in this movie!")- and it's still going on. Go ahead, take a catnap, you have my license. Wake up a little later, movie STILL going on. Prada Gucci Dolce Vera Wang- you know it's true love if it's Louie Vuitton.
And then these women dare to whine about their unhappiness. Hint: Happiness? Unlabeled.

Time to throw this contraption in the trash.

The Uninformed Pundit 4

Why is everyone whining about their portfolios? Mine remains healthy.
The portfolio IS the one on top of the kidneys, right?

Pete Travis' "Vantage Point"

Presidential assassinations are part of our communal mythos. Anyone worthy enough must be brought down. JFK, Jesus Christ, Martin Luther King, Britney, Tom Cruise, if they don't falter, if there isn't someone gunning against them, then what have they acccomplished? Every hero needs an anti-hero to crucify, shotgun or at least Zaprude them. This was ok. Better than "Jumper", anyway.

Doug Liman's "Jumper"

There was this game called "Frogger". It was about a frog. It was about a frog getting to the other side of the street. It jumped. Sometimes a car squished it. if I sucked. That game was much much much smarter than this movie. And more fun. Go play "Frogger". Jump.

Hayden Christensen, Rachel Bilson. They are very pretty people- but they're not ACTORS!!! They're models, mannequins.
That goes for you too, Scarlett Johansson! You lucky coaster!

"Passing Strange"

Spike Lee became enamored (EDIT: OF, not WITH) with "Passing Strange"; I read some reports of him bankrolling a DVD release of the last performance (EDIT: BUT A DEAR IMAGINARY READER HAS TOLD ME OTHERWISE. THOSE REPORTS SUCKED ASS. LEE ISN'T PAYING FOR SHIT. OTHER PRODUCERS DO. HE JUST DIRECTS. SHOULD THOSE REPORTS BE WRONG TOO, I MIGHT INFORM YOU BETTER. OR JUST USE GOOGLE AND RESEARCH IF THIS IS SO IMPORTANT TO YOU, 'CAUSE I'M REALLY BUSY GETTING MY HAIR TO GROW TO A DECENT LENGTH).
ANYWAY, it's easy to see why Lee connects to the material. He gets persistently pegged as some sort of angry little black man with racial bones to pick- which is one of Lee's perceivable personas, but only that, a persona, and a disservice to Lee's artistic vision and personality. He's chafed against it all his life- (how do you play a character that is socially salable, but only one aspect of your entirety as a human being?)- so it's natural that he found some sort of catharsis in "Passing Strange", a navel-gazing, (quasi?) autobiographical rock show about Stew.
Stew (who co-wrote with creative partner Heidi Rodewald) is this sort-of-plump black musician who thumbs his nose at a) his Baptist upbringing b) stereotypes- he memorably dubs them "scaryotypes" c) the Tyler Perry crowd d) the "urban" music he's supposed to be into, and, e) the bland showtunes theater audiences came to hear. He's a PUNK ROCKER, get it?!? And he's more Godard than G-Unit, more Amsterdam than Comptom, he's more Buddhist than Gospel. He's into... Well, he's into not being what anyone else might think he should be. (A robotic voice questions him: "Why don't you want to be around your OWN PEOPLE?")

FUCK "MY OWN PEOPLE", WE ARE AAAAALL "OUR OWN PEOPLE", RIGHT???

"Passing Strange" sets out on a road pebbled with epiphanies, and it does it to the beat of truly ROCKING music, the best ROCK music heard on Broadway since, well, "Rent". (No, "Spring Awakening" WAS NOT ROCK!!!) THESE songs are memorable, driving, smart, varied, an album you can dig without being a thespian geek. This isn't "In The Heights".

It's not unflawed, though.
"Passing Strange- The Stew Musical" has a big problem. Right there in the title. It's THE STEW musical. It's about a guy sitting there and singing about what an interesting awesome life journey he's had. It's a familar life journey, though, the ones you and I have had: we don't mount tribute shows to ourselves and our epiphanies, do we? There are some humbling moments along the way as there are in everyone's life, but this is unabashedly about STEW. Not much room for a revival twenty years down the line. In the show's memorable equation (howled like a madman's mantra):

"PAIN + EGO = ART
I let my PAIN fuck my EGO and I call the bastard ART!"

There's a lot of EGO in "Passing Strange", but nowhere near enough pain. When it aaaaaall gets boiled down, it's about a happy middle class black guy that goes to Amsterdam, gets stoned a lot, has an awesome time that makes him feel loved and freed from labels, has epiphanies about art and life, fucks beautiful ladies, and then puts on a show about it.
WHERE IS THE MOTHERFUCKING PAIN, STEW?!?

Get this album, though. I don't know who Tony is or what he was on, but "Passing Strange" was 2008's Best Musical.

"In the Heights"

Or, as I like to think of it, "La Renta".
"In the Heights" won this year's Tony Award for Best Musical, but that says less about its quality than it does about Broadway's plentiful season of, like, FOUR new musicals, two of which probably closed before the ink was dry on their librettos. The only honest competition came from the far superior (but much more shapeless) "Passing Strange". More on that next.
"In the Heights" has a simple (TOO simple) story about the sweet and wacky characters of predominantly Dominican Washington Heights, revolves around mundane choices (Will our heroine go to beauty school or pursue her WILD DREAMS of being a legal secretary?), mundane locations, (HANGIN' AT THE BODEGA, CUZ!), and, well, mundane people. (Sweet Dominican Guy! Sweet Cuban Grandma! Sweet Puertorican Girl!). I cannot claim to have studied this in-depth- it doesn't deserve it. Its score's mix of Broadway friendly hip-hop, pop and meringue mean I should take my Mom to watch this- it's not a PAINFUL night- so we can all snicker about how the main character is called Usnavi, (mwahaha, get it? Because us Spics with our crazy names saw the U.S. Navy ship come in and were inspired by that!). This is one of the oldest jokes among the Caribbean community of exiles, over the years I've heard literally a dozen of my friends joke about the Usnavy name. For Gosh sakes, the main character in Cuban-American author Alisa Valdez Rodriguez' "The Dirty Girls Social Club" is already called Usnavy! (DGSC, BTW? Latin SATC.) As a joke, it's an oldie, but "In the Heights" acts like it's a newie- and the pinnacle of hilarious.
It's interesting that I didn't react more powerfully to what may be the best, non-gang involving Broadway show about Hispanics. (How was that Paul Simon/ Marc Anthony musical? Anyone saw that? Not even Jennifer Lopez liked it.) Hell, "In the Heights" even has obscure references about Havana neighborhoods- (La Vibora, represent!). By all rights I should be adoring this, but the only thing to praise is creator's Lin-Manuel Miranda's charming performance. Now he can go play Tom Collins or something on a touring production of "Rent".
If only this had one song that wasn't instantly forgettable or a plot that wasn't as sugary or sticky as the "piragua" one of its characters is always peddling.
(CULTURAL ASIDE: Piragua is the Dominican name for a Latin sweet born of heat and poverty and ingenuity- basically flavored syrup on ice shavings. In Cuba we called it "granizado", though- "granizo" meaning "hail.")
I want to praise the energetic soundtrack a little more than this- I'm sure the stage production has some fun dance numbers- but my honest reaction is that it's "Rent" minus the freshness, the power, the passion, the inspiration, the MUSIC, the wealth of allusions... Or the AIDS.
And only cast members are going to take the trouble of memorizing these songs.

ABOVE: Jesus Christ, they even POSE like it's "Rent".

Woody Allen's "Vicky Cristina Barcelona"

Finally saw this. It's been out for a while, and it's a minor hit (by Allen's standards), so I'll assume you know what it's about. These two chicks go to Spain, get seduced by the fiery artist played by Javier Bardem, and because this is a Woody Allen movie, people talk about their feelings and go to museums and restaurants and pose against pretty buildings and talk about their feelings and listen to classical music and go to another museum and talk about their feelings some more... And then Penelope Cruz enters the scene and turns the movie into a WHOLE 'NOTHER THING.
Non-Spanish speakers might finally get to see in this movie what's so amazing about Cruz, you'll catch why I think that she's a GODDESS when she speaks in Spanish and then sort of jarring and not very good when she speaks in English. I wish Allen had had the guts to allow Penelope to use her native tongue for more than making out with Scarlett Johansson- although that was hot. Allen's audience can definitely read extended subtitle sequences. The convenient protestations made by Bardem's character ("In this house we talk English out of courtesy to the guest!") are risible. I promise you that in reality the macho assertion would have pretty much gone the other way around: "The Americana better start learning espanol NOW! En esta casa hablamos espanol!!!" And Scarlett Johansson would have been there with her "Spanish Sin Barreras" tapes en un dos tres.
What has the Barcelona locale done for Allen, other than allowing him those dazzling Gaudi backgrounds, which are their own special effect? Nothing, really. In "Match Point", "Scoop" and "Cassandra's Dream", the British class system at least jostled the formula, but Allen's Barcelona is that of a weekend tourist and he grasps at nothing particularly "Catalan". This could have been "Mamma Mia's" Greece, or Venice, or Marseilles.
What matters is the romantic story about dualities. There's Vicky (beautiful Rebecca Hall from "The Prestige", who comes much closer to the Dianne Keaton smart-love Allen-foil than Scarlett Johansson will ever get). Vicky is sensible and pragmatic- but of course she's secretly bored and wants to be kidnapped into a fantasy sex life. Who doesn't? Then there's Cristina (Scarlett Johansson, using all the same mannerisms she's used in her other Allen-movie appearances.) Cristina is impulsive and doesn't think twice and sleeps with whomever- but her dreams are so big and loose that ultimately reality's complications can only end up disappointing her.
So no one ends up in love happily ever after.
Because emotions fade, and one person can not satisfy all of our needs (we need security, and doubt, and fantasy, and sensibility, and sexy, and propriety, and down to earth, and dreamy and if you do find it all, always someone will be there to suggest something that your partner can't give you, even if it's only the thrill of the new. Ha! "ONLY" the thrill of the new, as though birth and discovery were frivolities instead of life imperatives.
Probably the answer to love's lasting problems lies in the multiple partnership in which the movie's characters settle briefly, the balance in which all of their respective needs are met communally. Allen's solution is a menage a trois.

It's sensible in context- the three of them in a world in which nothing is missing. But of course it's a social no no and it can't last, even though the serial monogamy practiced by America's youth might actually best be described as a sort of overlapping, searching polygamy, our urban tribes composed of friends and exs and crushes and friends' exs with crushes on our friends with benefits and... Well, look around. But it's so hard to praise polygamy as a solution when it has more often than not been used to exploit and opress women sexually. How about a Mormon family with three wives... and three husbands? THAT might be the fairest thing for all.
How long can even that big love last?
Not too long. You know that. Ah, don't think about it. All you get is to be in love NOW, and NOW and NOW, if you're lucky. And forget the odds against. I bet you already do anyway.

Add to Last Post

Some bitching with the Yahoo people led to some contrite explanations about glitches involving their new Yahoo! Plus services and the hurried restoring of my e-mail account. Like a virtual, spammy phoenix risen from its digital ashes, I now can revisit that very important message from Djinga Tutumbe, the widow of a murdered Congolese diamond magnate, (she's going to reward me with two million dollars if only I send her some info about my bank account). HELLO EASY STREET!!!
God help us all.

They Cancelled My E-Mail Account?!? WTF?!?

Dear Imaginary Reader:
"Yahoo Mail" decided to deactivate my mail account.
I cannot begin to impress upon you how mad, HOW FUCKING PIPING FURIOUS I AM!!! Appears that last night's show of "Rent" was sooooo incredibly transcendent that while I thought that a few hours had gone by since I last checked my e-mail, it has been four entire months. Time vanished like in "Rip Van Winkle", or an Oklahoma alien abduction. Because "I haven't checked my mail for FOUR MONTHS", they closed my account. Boop! Just de-activated it. The last six years of personal, EMOTIONAL letters, important e-mails, hundreds of contact addresses I can't be expected to memorize? OOOPS!!! It's all gone!!!
MOTHERFUCKERS!!!
I'm too lazy to change my account. It's still hanselcastro@yahoo.com. Will I ever learn? Also hanselcast@gmail.com, but, ugh, THAT one I only check about once or twice a week. If you wrote anything to me yesterday, sorry, didn't get it. At this moment, I probably don't remember what your e-mail address is, and won't write to you until you write to me next.
SHIIIIIT.
I can't believe I've lost all those "very special" letters...
Serenity now, serenity now.

"Rent"- The Last Broadcast

Dear Imaginary Reader:
Went to see the broadcast of the final performance of "Rent."
I cannot begin to impress upon you what "Rent" has meant in my life for the last 12 years- as source of inspiration in high school, as location for my first "serious" date, as "lyrics to keep me company while waiting in doctor's office", as "showtunes for dorking out with friends", as a sort of life model even... No, seriously, I couldn't begin to tell you.
End of an era.
My eras always seem to be ending.

"This American Life" Season 1

Heather McElhatton, author of "Pretty Little Mistakes", tells the first story in Showtime's "This American Life"- a TV version of Ira Glass' Public Radio International's show- (other famous alumni of the show include Sarah Vowell and David Sedaris).

I DON'T listen to "This American Life" because I'm dumb and all I want from radio is Katie Perry sing-alongs. Also I'm not 40, and I don't think that "the common people" are worth a sympathetic, ironic, slightly condescending look. I suppose that's because I AM the motherfucking COMMON PEOPLE.
But I am glad that someone does look, because network television wouldn't touch these sad everyday stories about seniors hopelessly filming a short that they want to send to Sundance, or about the Mormon artist that recruits models for his bearded Jesus portraits among the transient in Utah (because facial hair is looked down on with suspicion by the Church), or about the farmer who lovingly clones his favorite bull into reincarnation, only to be gored by the lesser imitation in a "Grizzly Man" type irony.

Joyce Carol Oates' "them"

The world of Joyce Carol Oates' "them" (lowercase "t", mind you) is as far removed from that of "Gossip Girl" as one nation can allow. It is a world in which murder is a natural outcome of a rowdy Saturday night, (they ARE allright for fighting, after all), and rape is just a more urgent form of love. Whereas "A Garden of Urban Delights" chronicles rural America and "Expensive People" suburbia, "them" is for the most part set in inner-city Detroit where poverty and racism boil up to a dramatic riot which is a sort of physical projection of urban America's fears in the late 50s/ early 60s. The book that netted Oates the National Book Award after several nominations, "them" is thick with ideas and characters, (Loretta, Maureen and Jules in particular will stick with you for a while). It's impressive and observant, the work of someone whose eyes and EARS are still sucking in America as it plays out on the streets. Why am I worried that will change as Oates gets drawn into her success and lecturing and her world is drowned in academic flattery?

"Gossip Girl" Season 1

Hearing Kirsten Bell from another room, ("You know you love me, X0X0")- that's how a poor sucka gets lured into the world of "Gossip Girl".

The "Gossip Girl" novels are the sort of stuff that you always get caught looking at in the bookstore. An inquisitive acquaintance goes: "What's that you're buying?!?" And you stammer: "NO! I mean, it's for my niece, she's in the hospital, leukemia they say, honest, I only came here to buy the new compendium of Letters to the Penthouse Forum!"
Guilty pleasure?
No guilt here, it's a smart teen soap opera full of luscious young bodies doing the nasty and BEING tres nasty and then they're just like all of us at the end of the day, except, you know, with waaaaaaaaaay cooler outfits and incredible bank accounts. Serena Van Der Woodsen vs. Blair Waldorf. Blake Lively vs. Leighton Meester. Which pretty young thing is going to book a room in that imaginary Waldorf-Astoria suite of your heart? Why choose?
Does it lead poor mindless teenagers down delluded alleyways of "Why can't my life be like that?" YUP. But teenagers are going to fret over their social and sexual identities and bitterly bounce off each other the same way they've always done since times immemorial- might as well give them eye candy to aspire to.
It's a FANTASY, you know. And a witty, aware one at that. Enjoy it.

TRL too?

Heath Ledger, George Carlin, Bernie Mac, David Foster Wallace... and now TRL too? It used to be that the elderlies read the obituaries to see who they were outlasting. Sometimes I feel that same Darwinistic thrill.
I spent a sizable chunk of my youthful afternoons wondering about that world in which Carson Daly, Tara Reid, Fred Durst, Nick Lachey, Jessica Simpson, Justin Timberlake, Jay-Z, Beyonce, Britney Spears, and Christina Aguilera all seemed to mingle and copulate indiscriminately in one luxurious never-ending music video... interrupted at all the wrong times by the HOLLAS and 'ZUPS and SHOUT-OUTS of fat girls drowning in their big sweaty giddy grab for attention.
And Jesse Camp! Remember that dude? Which clinic can he be found at?
Carson, man. We thought the dream would never end. You were such a dildo- by which I mean a very lucky tool. Respect.

"Life" Season 1

And this is LIFE, too.

A victim of the writer's strike, going to bat with an extra short 11-show season, "Life" has its charms. It centers on the investigations of Charlie Crews, (British actor Damian Lewis), a cop who was unjustly sent to prison for 12 years, was exonerated and given a generous cash settlement, and has emerged with a Zen philosophy and a penchant for fresh fruit.
Ok, so you will think of "Monk", and of "House"- ("House" meets "CSI" must have been the pitch meeting.) The mysteries are rarely as intelligent and compelling as those of "Law and Order" in its glory days, or as far-fetched and convoluted as the ones in "CSI" and its multiple incarnations, or as hilarious and ridiculous as the ones in "Bones". You care for this show because of the chemistry between Charlie Crews and his partner, Dani Reese (Sarah Shahi). I've been in love with Sarah Shahi from her "L-Word" days as Carmen, and I think she's an underrated hottie (this show has a high per-capita of hotties in non-hottie roles). So what if their chemistry is very Mulder and Scully, very David Boreanaz and Zooey Deschanel's sister, very- what was that movie with Tom Hanks and a dog? It WORKS for me.
Basically any crime show that doesn't involve David Caruso's punch-worthy delivery of one-liners works for me, though.
And I even get a secret kick out of the fact that one of the producers is called Loucas George. Me, a nerd? No!

Heather McElhatton's "Pretty Little Mistakes"

The most UNDERRATED book EVER.

Good writers write to put books on the shelf that they haven't seen before. And sometimes the more motivated amongst us actually thrill the rest of the pack with that little gimmicky book we always dreamed about but seemed like too much effort. THANK YOU, HEATHER, for taking the labor off me and delighting me.
One of my first defining entries into reading in English was the "Young Indiana Jones Chronicles/ Choose Your Own Adventure" books. That was the kind of shameless but thrilling capitalistic cash-in that I'd been deprived of all my life and Gosh did I take to it like KRAZY! You could CHOOSE where the book went! CHOICES! There weren't a heck of a lot of choices in Cuba, I'm sure you can glean that.
So what do we have here?
A "Do Over" Novel with 150 endings. You start out as a girl just off high school and you can choose to either go to college or travel around a little. Say you go to college- do you major in arts or sciences? Okay, suppose you go with science. Do you devote yourself to working for your brilliant-but-heartless boss in his search for a killer laser signal that will stop hearts from beating from a mile away? Or do you steal the secret and sell it to the highest bidder? And then, well, guess what, on the way to the secret meet up that will make you a millionaire some drunken asshole on an RV rams into you and sends you and your killer laser secret to an early grave.

Or you could end up a happy matron in Italy.
A suicidal rock star.
A transexual granny in Maryland.

It's real easy to misunderstand this book, and not get it. If you just dip in and read one life or two, you might smirk- I went to Amazon and look at this, from Kirkus Reviews:

"[A]n occasionally clever book that will appeal only to a very limited audience of grown-up readers who are unfazed by its methodology....Interesting to read for about ten minutes, but some things really are just for kids."

Obviously the reviewer did only devote ten minutes or so to the book, and failed to notice the wealth of subtle wisdom and intelligent writing and cumulative power that this singular book has... because you CAN tooootally end up in a chick-lit life in Tuscany where you have to choose between Paolo the gardener with the big dick but no money, or 60 year old Arnaldo with his hands in all sort of pies.
This book COULD be a Cosmo diversion.
But that may be because you didn't read about the life that you spent in Iceland studying the old sagas and being accused of withcraft... or the life where you settle down with a big fat Aristotle-quoting trucker that cusses like his mama never taught him any better but is the REAL LOVE OF YOUR LIFE.
Or hell, you could be a homeless lady in Atlanta.
Or... Travel again, take detours, let yourself end up where you didn't think you might have.
It looks like chick lit, it's wrapped like chick lit, and it seems like it's a pain to explore, but Heather McElhatton has actually written a wise, funny, sad, novel about LIFE- and I have a TOTAL mind-crush on this woman.
Very, very entertaining, and only as superficial as you want it to be.
Bravo.
(A typical "doesn't-get-it" bad review on Amazon?) "I tried and a lot of those lives ended with a creepy death!"
Yeeeeeeeeeees ma'am.
Your life is going to end up in a creepy death too.
THAT'S LIFE!!!

Dennis Wilson "Pacific Ocean Blue"

Just like Brian Wilson's "Smile" found a sunshiny spot in my heart, Dennis Wilson's "Pacific Ocean Blue" gurgled its way into my cardiac cavities with the roar of the surf.
EEEWWW.
This is why I seldom write about music! All I can tell you is you should listen to it because Dennis' sad, ragged voice reminds me of a sailor that foresees a drowning death. And because he makes that death sound acceptable, if it happens under the Pacific waves.

Ross MacDonald's "The Goodbye Look"

"The Goodbye Look" was written in 1969, but feels very much like 1959- when Lew Archer momentarily wonders if the possibly suicidal Nick Chalmers might have gotten caught up on "the hippie kick" you smell "old man" all over him. There's something going on in California in 1969 that Archer is blind to. There's too much dust in his face from sniffing under those old mission style houses.

Rob Minkoff's "The Forbidden Kingdom"

In the proud wish-fulfillment tradition of "The Last Action Hero" and "Sidekicks" comes "The Forbidden Kingdom". Jackie Chan collides with Jet Li and then there's the legend of the Monkey King and some time travel and even kung fu girls with killer-piano-wire-hair that can be commanded with thought. AWESOME! If only it had a reference to Jung it would have been THE perfect movie.

Stephen SpielChow's "E.T.7"- Oh, and Boney M.

You should watch this movie if the Olympics made you wonder about China's pysche but you don't feel inclined to read big books written by Capitalist pigs with Western biases. You know, the type that go on labeling Chinese Communism with simplistic terms like:
"mass comformity"
"human rights violations"
"Death penalty rates that make Texas look like the Oprah-hug-zone."

Stephen Chow's sensitivities are on full display once again: his debt to Warner Brothers cartoons and Chinese comics, his violent sentimentality. All of his work is built towards making a great live-action animation hybrid. It's disorienting to arthouse crowds who want beautiful looking epics from China, and it's unlikely the average American kid will get his hands on a subtitled movie from behind that silky curtain, but it's a shame, because "CJ7" is a very charming flick that will light up faces with missing teeth all over the globe. A lovable Furby-like-alien-toy-dog-thing descends upon little Dicky Chow's life. CJ7 inspires our youngling to be a better student, magically gets a low-quality Chinese electric fan to work, and even resurrects Dicky's dirt-poor-but-honest Dad, before withering tragically a la E.T. That sort of stuff might irk grown ups, but any normal kid will be shouting for joy when CJ7 comes back alive from outer space accompanied by thousands of his furry friends- to the disco-beat of Boney M's 1976 hit "Sunny", no less.

ABOVE: Boney M's were (ARE)- I jest you not- Germany's answer to ABBA, but made up of Aruban and Jamaican singers, and HUGE around the world, and they even had their own jukebox musical in 2006. NOT "Mamma Mia!" it was called "Daddy Cool". And 90% of my Dear Imaginary Readers just heard about them for the very first time. See how I fill your mental backpack with crap?

Irvine Welsh's "Crime", Chuck Palahniuk's "Snuff"

The 90s.
Irvine Welsh, "Trainspotting", Chuck Palahniuk, "Fight Club". Two decent writers, two good novels, two seminal films.

The 2000s
"Crime" is about pedophiles in Miami, "Snuff" is about a porn star that's gang-banged to death. Both books are kinda YUCKY and RAMBLY. And both books distinctly sound like their authors don't know a damn thing about either pedophilia or the making of a porn movie.
Eh.
Two birds.
One blogpost.
Welsh gets the moral point, though. He's actually written a novel about PROTECTING a young girl from drugs and sexual abuse. Which is clearly right. What a pussycat he's turned out to be in his old age.

Octavio Paz' "Itinerary"

Just read 1990's Nobel Literature Winner Octavio Paz' "Itinerary", his Mexico-centric summary of a life in political literature. Aren't his politics everyone's? One day you're a young COMMIE, you say you wanna revolution, we all want to change the world, and then all of a sudden you turn around and you're like: "FUCK, I don't want things to change, I actually liked it the way it was, why are all these kids revolting against me? Oh, shit, I'M the old NAZI." And then you die.

The above has been abridged from Plato's "Republic", of course.

Why I Don't Do More Dining in Downtown Miami

Dear Imaginary Reader:
I don't usually report on my daily life (deflection deflection) but since I just got home from the fast food joint I might as well share this little tale I would like to call "Winos at Wendy's".
I'm there in line, and before me there's this redneck that's clearly had three bottles too many and before HIM there's a deformed spastic crackhead on a wheelchair and I'm really depressed by the surroundings but I need that square-burger because ROUND burgers are for Fatsos! Or whatever the current Wendy's ad campaign is.
So the black-Stephen Hawking-type in the wheelchair asks a kindly old lady for a buck for his meal, he's convulsing all the while, it's a tragic sight. The sweet little lady gives him the dollar, (that's how charity works, right?). And THEN the redneck on drugs starts ROARING and SPEWING at the little old lady:
"You dumb old bitch, don't give your money to this motherfucker!!! FUCKING NIGGA'S STEALING YOUR MONEY!!! I bet he's FAKING!!! Take the dollar back, TAKE THE DOLLAR BACK or I swear I'll kill him, he's just a FUCKING FAKER WHO DOESN'T WANT TO WORK!!!!"
The little lady whimpers something about la Virgencita Mary, she's shaking in the middle of this impromptu violent nightmare, right? And this insane redneck who's frothing at the mouth starts kicking at the wheelchair, while the Wendy's girl is thinking: "Oh my Gosh I get paid 7 bucks for this job, I hope he doesn't pull out a gun and kill me, oh why oh why didn't I study for my G.E.D.?"
So this drunken redneck monster starts punching the air: "Look, I'll PROVE TO YOU ALL MOTHERFUCKERS THIS ISN'T NO POOR LITTLE CRIPPLE, THIS IS SOME LAZY NIGGA!!!" And he reaches down into the wheelchair, (where the cripple is having his own mini convulsions), and rips him OFF the wheelchair, and throws him on the floor!!!

And- SURE ENOUGH-
Mr. Crippled Crackhead springs back up youthful and strong as all hell, face composed, and says: "Motherfucker, why you gotta ruin a nigga's game? This is MY Wendy's!!!"

Moral of the story:


Awwww, screw it, there's no moral. Moral has left the building, ladies and gentlemen.

"Hannah Montana/ Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds in 3-D"

Now in 3-D!!!



WITNESS as the Disney company squeezes millions out of helpless parents whose daughters know that they will just DIE if they miss the Hannah Montana/ Miley Cyrus concert!

WATCH the evil empire organize a contest: Dozens of Dads racing for the last pair of concert tickets... on wet asphalt...in HIGH HEELS! ("Oooh, Dad just ate it! HAHAHA! Sorry, Mr. Smith, little Tiffany is going to be a leper at school on Monday and she will never EVER forgive you for FAILING HER!!!")

SHIVER for the poor young star while seedy manager Kenny Ortega sweet-talks her into unwillingly performing stunts she's not comfortable with!

GROAN while Daddy Billy Ray Cyrus talks about how the song "Yay, Everybody Party!" comes from the very tortured soul of his little baby artist!

SUFFER while Mommy Former Groupie shrieks at her daughter: "Miley, don't whine about being tired! This is what I- I mean YOU- have ALWAYS dreamed of! You're not going to give up on your dreams like a little loser, are you?!? Now put on the wig and SHINE BABY SHINE!!!"

...

Oh, I kid, it's all pretty harmless fun. It might give you pink-eye but that's about the worst. She's just being Miley- tee-hee! And the Jonas Brothers help out with a silly song about "The Year 3000" that the Monkees would have totally envied.

"The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning"

Cold fish! She just kind of laid there...

Roberto Bolano's "Nazi Literature in the Americas"

Why do I feel so thrilled by Roberto Bolano? Like he's somehow MY discovery? I don't know... but he's like a brash friend that has thrown himself into my life. Just when I thought I had gotten calling cards from most of the great writers, here comes this motherfucker with a HUGE ax to break that ol' frozen sea inside of us. Kafka would totally wet his knickers around Bolano, but he would add him to his Facebook for sure and keep worried tabs on his progress.



Most of the American reaction to Bolano's work is that he seems "entirely new"- a sensation shared by both Francine Prose in the "New York Times Book Review" and by one of my Dear Imaginary Readers (who pointed out to me that Bolano says things nobody had said before.) I'm going to demur and say that he only seems like that if you don't come from a Latin American perspective (like I do). From there you can clearly see he's the result of a Garcia Marquez-Borges-Vargas Llosa three-way (they've pounded each other into a meaty frenzy).
But then you gotta throw in Heinlein, and Philip K. Dick, and Kurt Vonnegut, and Flannery O'Connor, and Hemingway, and Dostoievski, and all of Bolano's other self-admitted influences, because he's, like most of us writers, the descendent of EVERYTHING HE'S EVER READ, and we tend to be bibliomaniacal.

"Nazi Literature in the Americas" is- well, JESUS CHRIST, it's a fucking book called "Nazi Literature in the Americas"! Try reading that in public and bursting out into frequent laughter like I did, and see people give you worried glances. It's its own rewarding experience. It's a scary gallery of imaginary right wing writers, some talented, some deluded, some lovable, a parody and summary of Latin American literary criticism, a political warning, an alternate history of Twentieth Century American Literature from a feverish bibliophile's perspective. And did I mention it's FRIGHTFULLY FUNNY?

I'm thinking that what American readers react to as shocking and new in Bolano's work is how URGENT and IMPORTANT it makes literature seem. In Bolano's world, you join a school of writers the way you join a gang- it's not about "let's share our feelings and free our creativity" or any of that at ALL. The thing is, most Latin American literature should be approached carefully and treated as the poverty-ridden, politically rabid animal it is. But Bolano TRANSCENDS that and politicizes his work without losing his sense of humor, and that's what makes him worthwhile to the global reader.

Saddest of all, I'm talking about someone who's dead as though I had just met him on a pub yesterday.

APOPHENIA

Apophenia.
You learn something new every day.
Recall that post about all those weird coincidences regarding a certain female name. Being the inquisitive, curious, suspicious skeptic I am I did some medical research on the nature of
LUV...
And found Apophenia- the name of what happens when you attach extra meaning to coincidences and unrelated events and it all seems to have a maaaaagical, serendipitous resonance! ("I saw her at the concert! And then later at the pizza place! It's meant to be!"). It's caused by rushes of DOPAMINE to the brain. It's an evolutionary advantage: when you're attracted to someone, the dopamine (the love drug!) will make it seem as though things are extra special and incites you to pursue your little gazelle. The only question is: what is it about particular people that really triggers those massive amounts of dopamine in one?
Hmmmm, maybe there IS some maaaagic in love at the source.

David Foster Wallace

So now that David Foster Wallace is no longer among us, does that mean I have to read "Infinite Jest"?
It's really really really long...And all I gleaned from his short fiction is that if you want to impress people and seem smart you must write like this:


"I-

entering the elevator, pondering whether I have entered the elevator, perhaps the elevator is lifting away from or towards me and this moment is the moment of descent into nothing like an elevator, the rectangular cacophony of steel, architectural grade, each level depending on the next. A system of pulleys*

*pulleys only emotional. Also notice: pulling, as in you pull away from me and me from you. -finally enter the elevator. DING.
DING indeed."


How did I do? Was that incomprehensible enough to be a good David Foster Wallace story?

May he rest in peace.***

***Suicidal writers always disturb me, because I worry I may go that way with just a bad enough bout of poverty and heart break, or too much ennui, an strategically positioned gun and two bottles of tequila.
But nah, I'm one of the cheerful, positive, non-alcoholic members of the writing community :-) There are so many beautiful sunshiny days to live for! How can people kill themselves and deny themselves the sight of another beautiful rainbow?!? Don't get it at all. Rainbows are so pretty!!!

"Prom Night"

True, Tragic Geek Tales:
I didn’t go to my high school prom.
There were a variety of factors: I spent most of high school in a confused blur of acculturation, so school rituals and social graces and FRIENDS and the such were a big mystery to me. Also, I had no date. I had just recently made my poor, recent-immigrant parents spent almost $500 dollars on a ridiculous class ring that I wore about three times in my life because I was told that IT WAS SOMETHING EVERYONE DID IN AMERICA AND YOU COULDN’T SHOW YOUR FACE IN PUBLIC WITHOUT A CLASS RING! There was no way they could afford to get me a tux or a limo anything after that. Also, I had no date. Plus, I was worried that I wouldn’t know how to booty dance- (a MUST at the Miami Senior High prom). Also, I had no date.

I made some flailing attempts at normalcy, though. Prom night was quickly approaching and since there was only one girl I liked in my high school at all I mustered up my courage and this was how it went down (more or less):

Me: “So… Prom, eh. That’s, like, for jocks and norms. I’m too cool for that.”
Her: “Well, no one asked me to prom and I felt like the ugliest girl in the world, I was seriously wondering what was wrong with me…”
Me: “You’re not ugly, you’re so pretty, your hair, it’s like, nice, er, ar, so if you want I meant I understand if you don’t but if you that is of course you won’t but if…”
Her: (not having heard a word I said) “…Luckily so-and-so finally got the guts to call me last night! He’s so dreamy! It’s going to be great! So anyway, Hans, who are YOU taking to the prom?”
Me: “My girlfriend. From Canada. She’s a model. A SUPER model. But in Canada, that’s why you don’t know her. Her name is Vancouver. She lives in Alberta. No wait, her name is Alberta, she lives in Vancouver, she sucks like a Hoover, my girlfriend from Canada!”
Her: “Sounds nice. We should all go in one limo together! Well, let me know, bye!”
Me: “Yeah, like, mos def. Whatever. See ya.”
(Slams face against locker repeatedly)

BUT if Prom Night was anything like “Prom Night”, I don’t think I missed a damned thing.
This movie has exactly one (1) line I liked:
“If he was any dumber, I would have to water him.”
Unfortunately, that also applies to the whole movie.
If it was any dumber, you would have to water it.

Christopher Nolan's "The Prestige"

More maaaaagic. Clearly it's my thing this week.

I kept confusing Nolan's "The Prestige" with the equally good, similarly-magician-themed, released-at-around-the-same-time "The Illusionist." I suspect so did a lot of people. 2006 also had ANOTHER movie about a magician starring Hugh Jackman and Scarlett Johansson: Woody Allen's "Scoop"! Magical?

"The Prestige" works as a "Memento-ish" trick of story-telling magic, but I honestly love it for the great cast. It has Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale being the awesomeness they both are, and Scarlett Johansson as a magician's assistant in skimpy bossom-pushing outfits, and her “Vicky Christina Barcelona” buddy Rebecca Hall, and secret-fave-of-mine Piper Perabo, and Michael Caine as the sort-of-moral center, and even FUCKING DAVID BOWIE, who gets to deliver grizzled, quasi-autobiographical lines about ch-ch-changing:
"Society only accepts one change at a time. The first time I tried to change the world, I was hailed as a visionary. The second time, I was politely asked to retire."
Based on Christopher Priest’s novel about two turn-of-last-century magicians destructively bent on upstaging each other, this movie practically begs for the lazy reviewer to say “it will keep you guessing until the last minute”. Maybe- I predicted one of the two big twists about twenty minutes in, and the OTHER big “twist” is so RIDICULOUS (in the movie's context) that it’s a potential experience-ruiner.
Without it the movie works as a great, vicious magic show in which Nolan makes us complicit: First there’s “the pledge”, where we’re presented with an ordinary set of rules (“this is a regular box, this a normal saw, this is a real young lady”); then “the turn” where the MAGICAL happens (“OH SHIT THEY CUT HER IN HALF!”); and finally “the prestige”, the satisfying clincher, (“She’s back in one piece! And there’s a bunny popping out of her boobs!”)
It’s only in its own over-the-top “prestige” that “The Prestige” fails. I was enjoying this movie’s reality so much that when IT gives up on reality at the end I was a little disappointed. Hint: the novel was a FANTASY- (what worked in the context of a book does not necessarily work smoothly on the film).
Oh, screw it, it’s been out for two years. SPOILER ALERT:



Clones.
Yes, that’s the ridiculous final plot twist. It’s a bad joke: “How did the magician do his greatest trick? With a magical clone-making-teleportation machine out of ‘The Fly’!”
In 1899 England no less!
He could have been helped by a whimsical trio of body-morphing aliens, or by “magical hypnosis rays”, for all the sense it made. I feel that a movie that has explained all its tricks so rationally would be stronger if its biggest TRICK wasn't so out of the realm of the believable.
But then maybe that's the movie's real meta-"Prestige"? "See, we showed you things that seemed impossible, but were really just tricks, logical, real illusions... and then at the end, we did something IMPOSSIBLE with our little LITERAL Deus-Ex-Machina!"

Human Giant Season 1

"It's Maaaaagic!"
I sort of hate magicians. This is why: One of my closest friends started dating one of David Blaine's assistants and I stopped hearing from her. The last news that drifted my way had her working in magic shows and converting to some strange Messianic cult called 'Orthodox Judaism'. It's like a minor scale Katie Holmes-kidnapped-by-Scientologists trauma with me. I guess that's the power of maaaagic?!?


ABOVE: "THE ILLUSIONATORS" are ready for their YouTube close up.

MTV's comedy show "Human Giant" has a recurring sketch called "The Illusionators" that dead-on parodies Blaine and Criss Angel, today's most popular purveyors of illusions. Note that bunnies and card tricks are hardly the extent of their realm: they must also escape, perform stunts and be dignified Jackasses if such a thing is possible.
What hapenned to classy David Copperfield boning Claudia Schiffer?
What hapenned to Claudia Schiffer period? Are you single, baby? Watch me drink this beer and make you double! It's maaaagic. I know you like that.

ABOVE: Wouldn't you love to get a restraining order from HER?!?

Where was I? Oh, yeah, magicians suck, "Human Giant" rules. Was this on MTV really? But why? It's actually funny. Aziz Anzari, Rob Huebel, and Paul Scheer are three hilarious mofos- perhaps the best competing crew against "Flight of the Conchords" and more accessible than their New Zealander counterparts, (by that I suppose I mean more "New York"). The style is Monty Pythonesque minus the British education. They take a silly idea like "Shutterbugs", a cutthroat talent agency for children, and play it to the extreeeeeeeme.

A product of the Upright Citizens Brigade, the comedy in "Human Giant" is hip and urban and so I succumb to it- because of course comedy that's not hip and urban tends to be about using duct tape to fix your tractor's engine or the leak on your daughter's vagina, and that's only funny depending on how many Lynyrd Skynyrd albums you own.
(I'm talking Lynyrd Skynyrd POST-PLANE PLUNGE, of course.)
"Pronounced 'lĕh-'nérd 'skin-'nérd" is still one of the greatest rock albums EVAH!!! FREE THAT BIRD!!!

Where was I Part 2? Oh, yeah. Human Giant. Funny stuff. Great cameos from Brian Posehn and Patton Oswalt and the such. Check it.

Tarsem's "The Fall"

This one is a real magic show.

Like "The Year My Parents Went Away on Vacation" or "Pan's Labyrinth", (the film it most readily bears comparison to), "The Fall" is about childhood dovetailing and misunderstanding adulthood, but one comes away with a similar uplifting moral: that the reason one withstands the horrors of adulthood is hope in children and the future, and the method to bear those horrors is storytelling.
It's sad that a movie that will truly show you sights you haven't seen before (not while awake anyway) has no big stars and gets canned and swept under the rug. Indeed it might puzzle many who have never been engaged in telling a story to a child and being forced to revise it constantly: "No, the princess' dress was NOT red, it was blue, and she wasn't a princess, she was actually a beautiful badger!" But if you can bear the fact that you're witnessing a fractured fairy tale you will get swept in its world- and might end up caring about the "real life" story from which all those fantastic visuals spring.
We're in a California hospital in the first quarter of the century, and stuntman Roy (Lee Pace, the "artistic suitor" from "Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day") has suffered a fall that has left him semi-paralyzed and suicidal. That he's apparently been abandoned by the love of his life doesn't help. Roy is drawn into telling a story by Alexandria, a girl in his ward (Catinca Untaru, a Romanian child actress who battles with a charming accent and a too-muggy-for-her-own-good face). The story is about- well, what IS the story about? Five mythical adventure heroes set out to battle evil Governor Odious, (the rich hateful bastard who's stolen Roy's girlfriend). That the story morphs and fractures at the girl's insistence is expected, and, as I said, only disconcerting if the nature of storytelling elludes you. Just give in to the fact that these heroes set out on a journey, and that Roy's own desperation tinges their efforts with tragedy even as the girl clamors for hope and a happy ending.
I will admit the story turns a little on the maudlin side when Roy decides to commit suicide and cruelly deceives the girl into procuring him morphine- (there's a reason this movie is NOT for kids despite the colorful, "Princess Bride"-like tale). Has his own story failed to support him? One might well wonder why he doesn't hold on to life when a child is begging him to. I'm reminded also of Alejandro Amenabar's "The Sea Inside". There too a character fights to die even though the beautiful world of their dreams would argue for their continued existence.
Huh, it's interesting that though "The Fall" appears at first glance a true original, the cloth it's cut from is of the oldest, "Arabian Nights" pattern. Stories can keep us alive. Movies can save our souls. Broken hearts can learn to love again, etc etc.
Oh, and stuntmen- they deserve a little more credit.
Go watch now.

7 Years

Has it really been seven years? Nearly a quarter of my life?
Older generations of Americans share the memory of Kennedy's assassination- they can tell you what black and white set they were gathering around, which shop's windows their shocked faces were staring back from. This generation fittingly gets something "bigger", more "cinematic"; "It's like a Michael Bay movie" was what we thought. There's the obligatory accompanying conspiracy theories- It was an inside job! Loose change! It couldn't have happened the way we saw it happen!
Because we certainly saw it happen.

What was I doing? I was up in the morning magically producing a paper that was due in a few hours and I had delayed for two weeks. Just how I roll. My paper went something like:

"The contrast between guilt and social conformity in Nathaniel Hawthorne's celebrated novel "The Scarlet HOLY MY FUCKING JESUS WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?!?"

I got a B+. The teacher's comment: "Understandably off topic. Next time, write your papers ahead of time and not in the morning of their due date, that way major national catastrophes won't get in the way."

Philip Roth's "Patrimony"

Children grow up to take care of their parents, who behave like children. Roth's "Patrimony" is a memoir of the events surrounding his father's death. It's a memoir that works also a premonition for what most of us will experience as roles are reversed and the stubborn men who guided our childhoods become our own helpless children.



Personal: Once we worried that my mother might die (we still do- and I suppose it's the inevitability of our communal fates that she will indeed die, as you and I will do.) One of those nights while my mother was in a hospital bed and we were all hiding from our incertainties, my father- who I always thought had made reliable friends with stoicism- suddenly started crying and said: "But how are we going we live without her?" If he reads this, let it be a testimony to his courage and love that it's the only time I have seen him truly cry through illnesses and troubled nights. I didn't cry then, but held him and said: "We will have to find a way. We will fill the days with something else. And of course we will always remember her." He looked up and said: "Now you're the one who's taking care of me."
I don't think I can take care of him because I can barely take care of myself, but at that moment I pretended well enough that I could, and Goddamn it, sometimes I think I can fake strength that I don't have. We must pretend to be brave on the face of illness and death, and dealing with that horror of decay and ultimate failure is the true testimony of love that we pass around.
Or, as Philip Roth puts it on the book's climactic scene, as he finds that his father Herman has "beshat himself" and lovingly cleans him, that's the patrimony.
This is what we should be taught to do; not to recoil in disgust from humanity too real. That's your own life you're recoiling from.
We're here to take care of each other's shit.
It's not poetic.
Shit is not poetic.
But it's there, and metaphorical or not, it's the true test of love.

"Enchanted Arms"

One of the few (the only?) genuine JRPG available for the PS3, “Enchanted Arms” makes you realize why no one’s clamoring about the quasi-death of a genre what was once the “respectable” core of a gaming system. Where freedom and adventurousness can be found in a hundred sandbox titles, “Enchanted Arms” locks you into a linear “go here, suffer through bad dialogue cut scene, go to your next destination, fight figh fight.” Sure, casual gamers like me do like some structure in our games so that we remember what we were up to should we go four or five days without visiting Generic Fantasy Land # 1534. But do we have to do it in the company of THESE characters? Remember the glory days of “Chrono Trigger,” where your silent hero was finally given a voice as a sort of treat? Atsuma, the character you play in “Enchanted Arms”, talks a lot, but boy is everything he says stupid! This is a seriously dense char, the kind who says things like: “Wait… So… My childhood friend Toya has just decimated the entire population of Generic City # 2564 by reviving the Queen of Ice in a demon-raising ritual. Could this mean that Toya is a bad guy? No way! There’s been a misunderstanding. Maybe I should visit Toya in his Hellish Lair of Evil and ask him what it’s all about. I’m sure he has a good explanation for killing all those people. Maybe it’s a big prank he’s playing on me. That Toya, he’s such an Ashton Kutcher!”
Do you want to travel through an admittedly beautiful world with THAT tool as your avatar? And he’s one of the more LIKABLE characters- this is the game that bravely features the most nauseating gay stereotype in the form of Makoto, a prancing flameball schoolboy.

ABOVE: Makoto. One step forward for gay gaming, three hundred steps backward for annoyingness.
Let me give you a sampler of a typical “Enchanted Arms” conversation.
Makoto:“Oh, it’s such a delish morning! Are there any hotdogs left in the cafeteria?”
Atsuma: “Makoto. You’re always so hungry! Haha, it kills me.”
Makoto: “I want to stuff them up my ass, silly you!!!”
Atsuma: “Wait. So, you’re making a piñata in the shape of a donkey and want to put hot dogs in it and use it at my birthday party? You’re such a good friend! You shouldn’t have!
Makoto: “Look, I don’t know how to make it any more clear, Atsuma. I’m gay and I want to suck your cock!!! What don’t you understand?”
Atsuma: “I think I understand what you’re trying to say, Makoto. You’re in a happy mood because it is my birthday, and you want to use the Magical Vortex Wind Spell to help me find the rooster I lost in the henhouse. I get you. I get you.”
Makoto thankfully gets killed early on (or does he?) but trudging on through the game with Atsuma is like whispering chess moves in the ears of Sarah Palin’s baby and expecting to win a game against Kasparov.

Cao Hamburger's "The Year My Parents Went on Vacation"

There's no acidity in THESE children- even though they don't live around expensive people at all and have plenty of cause for fear and bitterness. "The Year My Parents Went on Vacation" is sunny because childhood tends towards laughter and play even as it tramples unprotected at knee level. It's 1970s Brazil and Young Mauro (Michel Joelsas) is left behind in multi-cultural Sao Paulo while his parents "go away on vacation" (read: are detained and possibly killed by the ruling dictatorship for their communist connections)- so of course he finds protection with a rabbinical clan, and prays that Pele scores that major GOAL at the World Cup, and tries to peek into the ladies' dressing room at the store, and hangs with his friend Hanna- (the DELIGHTFUL Daniela Piepszyk, who steals the movie and your wallet and thumbs her nose at you but you don't mind.) This is what beautiful, innocent children did and will do while they wait to grow up and become their parents and hate and destroy and kill each other and make this world the SHITTY ROTTING DEPRESSING VALE OF TEARS IT IS!!!


GODDAMN, what happened to that last sentence there?!? Somebody's Prozac prescription just done run out!!!

Joyce Carol Oates' "Expensive People"

I was a child murderer.
I don't mean child-murderer, though that's an idea.

An even more compelling read than "A Garden of Earthly Delights", this is the novel that makes me realize I'm hooked on Joyce for good. Do you know that feeling of being at ease with a writer, their voice and yours as one, thoughts flowing along the same lines? It's the stuff literary crushes are made of. It's official: I've got the hots for Oates.
12-year old Richard Everett's memoir of a murder is not the alarming psychological analysis of a young killer the summary might suggest, but a wicked satire on upper-middle-class vacuity. "American Pyscho" in-embryo. The mordant observations of the first person narrator are not tinted by any childhood considerations; the murders are child's play, an afternoon massacre in a dissident's mind. Never mind the precocious psychopath's delivery, stay for the views of Glen Dells and Valley Heights and Crescent Hills (it's always the same secure community, only the name changes). Watch how the same people meet at the same supermarkets and clubs and tennis courts and busily pretend that they're not trapped in a veeeeeeeery patient sniper's sight.
Aren't we all?

"Grey's Anatomy Soundtrack" 1-3

This is kind of like a mixtape a Dear Imaginary Girlfriend gave me, a sensitive TV soundtrack that keeps the hospital references to a minimum, (although Metric's "Monster Hospital" is there.) A mini-radio station DJed by the kind of girls who loved Dr. McDreamy from 2005-2007. The Postal Service is here, Snow Patrol and Feist and the Fray and Rilo Kiley are here, that "Young Folks" song that whistled its spiralling curse into your brain is here, and, as a fitting conclusion to an antiseptic love affair, Brandi Carlile's "The Story" is here.
If you saw any Olympic coverage you know THAT song.

"It's true.... I was made for youuuuu."

It is one of those great melodies that people with, like, SOULS, will agree on, and it finds Brandi opening herself in ways that may make Melissa Etheridge shop Itunes in stunned recognition.

CRITERION: Guy Maddin's "Brand Upon The Brain"

As blogs go, HALLUCINA is a very solipsistic blog
(it's aaaall connected- it's all dreamt up HERE)
So it makes perfect sense that after watching Crispin Glover be a sprendulous magician in "The Wizard of Gore" I would treat myself to Crispin Glover's narration of 2006's "Brand Upon the Brain". (You can go with Isabella Rosellini's, if you're so inclined.)
A much more magical movie than that other one I shall never mention again, "Brand Upon the Brain" is seductively experimental, lyrical, an homage to silent films and I'm not sure I have much to say about it except that it managed to keep me watching it, enthralled, it's a dazzling trick, because I have no idea what the hell was going on.
....
It's branded on my brain, though. It worked.
lalalala

CHAPTER 48: THE PARISIANS

"Meet one Parisian, and he'll charm you. Meet a thousand Parisians, and they'll harm you."
So goes the old quip I've just made up.

But I think history bears me out on that one, and those are Dumas' slightly worried sentiments as he takes us flying over the throngs of Parisians who are emerging from their houses and swarming toward the Cathedral of St. Denis to gawk at the finery of Marie Antoinette's entourage.
It's a rolling tide that the French and Swiss Guards struggle to hold back- it's a Cecil B. De Mille type spectacle- thousands of people gathered outside the Cathedral's gates- some are even climbing the walls like ants on a cake, or hanging from sculptured projections waiting for a glimpse of the radiant newcomer. On the road there's the most glorious traffic jam- carriages without end, people from the Parliament, bankers, financiers, handsome soldiers, ladies of fashion, all involved in a see-and-be-seen interactive kaleidoscope.
There in the crowd is Gilbert, who wouldn't miss a chance of seeing Andree for the world. He breaks his way through the shouting mob without breaking into a screaming frenzy- which according to Dumas, makes the Parisians around him conclude he’s either British or retarded.
From this expectant mob Gilbert tags on the family of a humble tradesman, sitting by a ditch on the side of the road, and let’s let Dumas paint a pretty portrait of the common people.
There was a blue-eyed daughter, tall and fair, modest and timid.
There was the mother, a fat, laughing little woman, with white teeth and rosy cheeks.
There was an aunt, tall, bony, dry, and harsh.
There was the father, half-buried in an immense camlet coat, which was usually brought out of his chest only on Sundays, but which he ventured to put on so grand an occasion as the present, and of which he took more care than he did of his wife and daughter, being certain that the latter could take care of themselves
There was the servant-maid, who did nothing but laugh. She carried an enormous basket containing everything necessary for breakfast, and even under its weight the stout lass had never ceased laughing and singing, encouraged as she was by her master, who took the burden when she was fatigued.

Got it? Got your little bit of “salt-of- the-Earth-people” waiting for Marie Antoinette? Just as soon as Gilbert assimilates himself into the mob, he subtracts himself by elevating himself above the mob.
He climbs a tree.
SYMBOLS.
Oh, I’m lazy enough to let Dumas tell you that: “the cannon roared, the rattling of the drums was heard, and the great bell of the cathedral sent forth its first majestic peal Next Chapter Should be FUN, THEN!

ABOVE: This is the cathedral Gilbert is hanging outside of. As it is today. Imagine it as less of a tourist attraction and more like your local mall. (Malls are the American Cathedrals)

David Mamet's "Redbelt"

My childhood martial arts knowledge deserted me entirely that one time I got my ass kicked by muggers- but then again it was always limited to a penchant for seemingly wise-pronouncements like: "Before you defeat your enemy, you must defeat the enemy within" or "A blade of grass outlasts a hurricane." David Mamet's interest in Brazilian jiu-jitsu is just as superficial- in "Redbelt" he exploits the unexpected (for him) setting of underground fightings, but ultimately this is a familiar Mamet story about the compromises that face an honorable man in a dishonorable world. It could have been about a poker game and the dialogue would have to shift only slightly.
As usual, Mamet is better as a writer than as a director- there's a reason why he's not one of my great directorial DAVIDS (Lean, Lynch, Fincher or Cronenberg) and the best Mamet movie, "Glengarry Glenn Ross", isn't directed by Mamet at all. Much as I love "The Spanish Prisoner", "State and Main" and "House of Games", the fact is Mamet never knows where to put a camera or how to cut a scene or maximize the potential of his stable of actors (Joe Mantegna, Ricky Jay and Rebecca Pidgeon are all here), which is why is book on directing was such a huge laugh- (those who can't, etc etc).
I'm a huge fan of his writing, though, but this time, there are no quotables. The most memorable thing about "Redbelt" is Chiwetel Ejiofor's forceful lead as a jiujitsu instructor who believes in the deflection of combat, but is forced by a (rather contrived) twist of fate into the actual fighting ring. Emily Mortimer's also good as the woman whose frail nervousness sets things in motion- you call Emily Mortimer when you need that.

It's far from unwatchable, but honestly it didn't do much for me.

I Don't Often Do This But... LINK

Aaaaah, the Onion. Always making me smile by saying what's on my mind.


Did you know I share a birthdate with Charles Darwin?



And Abraham Lincoln?


AND Christina Ricci?


That pretty much says it all, doesn't it?