"Two of the Deadliest" is edited by Elizabeth George, the living grand-dame of gentille British murder mysteries ("gentille" being French for a certain politeness, not, you know, a non-Jew). "Two of the Deadliest" is a nice anthology of short crime stories revolving around lust and greed, and even if the concept is too vague or mishandled by the contributors, this is a fairly solid collection of mid-list women writing about crime right now: names like Dana Stabenow and Marcia Muller, Bill Pronzini's wife.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Bill Pronzini's "Deadfall"
Some San Francisco fun. It's interesting that just when "Deadfall" made an allusion to the problem with dog poop on the streets of SF, I was reminded of a similar allusion on "Milk" (No dog poop on the streets is one political goal everyone can agree on, at least until PETA advocates for dog voting.) A few pages later, there was an exchange that went sort of like this: "Those gay people can be really violent too. Look what they did to City Hall!" The Nameless Detective: "You mean when they got upset after Harvey Milk and the major got ASSASSINATED? The bastards."
Monday, September 28, 2009
The Truth Behind the White
Listening to the White Album can be a daunting experience. The Beatles gave us a magical box full of inside jokes, cultural allusions, and orders to Kill Whitey, as prophecied on Revelations 9: "The four angels shall have long hair and throw fiery rock songs onto the land, and they shall call themselves 'the locusts'"! That's a pretty good try, God, you almost got it right.
Here are the stories behind all the tracks.
"Back in the U.S.S.R": It's well known that while the FBI and the CIA pretended to center their sights on John Lennon, it was actually Paul McCartney who was a KGB agent from 1966 to 68. He'd encoded complete maps to vulnerable locations in his songs "Penny Lane" and "Strawberry Fields", and used "I Am the Walrus" to declare his intentions to cross the Berlin "Wal"l and become a "Rus"sian. He wrote this cheerful song upon his arrival to the U.S.S.R., which he often called "his heart's true Motherland" but he soon found out that in Communist countries you have to make long lines to get your rationed pot, and ran back to the West horrified.
"Dear Prudence": This song was written by Lennon about Mia Farrow's sister, Dear Farrow. During one of Roman Polanski's wilder parties, Dear had ingested an unbelievably high dose of psylocibin and locked herself in an upstairs bathroom insisting she was the real Rosemary's Baby. Lennon, who needed to get into the bathroom desperately, managed to calm her down and lure her out with this lovely song. Then Roman Polanski raped her.
"Glass Onion": John Lennon, who had joined the FBI in 1963 after being personally recruited by J. Edgar Hoover, spent most of his life as a double agent, informing on anarchist groups he pretended to join. When the FBI planned to strike down the group, they would let John known in advance. That night everyone would be like: "Where is John? Why didn't he come to tonight's crucial meeting?" And someone would be like: "He said he had the sniffles," and BAM, that's when the doors would burst down and rabid dogs would kill all the hippies. Later, John would arrive on the scene and help the Feds identify the corpses, which he poetically said suggested "bent back tulips." (A popped out eyeball reminded him of a "glass onion".) Clearly, the "Walrus is Paul" was his way of denouncing his writing partner to J. Edgar Hoover, who attentively listened to the album's lyrics, but by then Paul had come back from Soviet Russia and decided to enjoy being an obscenely wealthy aristocrat, so there was no point in doing anything about it.
"Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da": A misunderstood song in the Beatles' catalogue which has often been thought to be about the psychedelic drug O-L-D, it's actually just about being OLD, because there are no drugs called O-L-D...
"Wild Honey Pie": ...But if O-L-D did exist, it would explain this, the most God-awful song the Beatles ever wrote.
"The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill": A harsh indictment of Marilyn Monroe's imperialistic "Monroe Doctrine"? Or a song about hunting with an elephant? The Beatles put the two possible interpretations in a hat, intending to draw one out and stick to that when questioned by the press, but then a groupie stole the hat from a hotel room in Glasgow. While Paul cried, John consoled him by saying: "You're such a stupid git, you looked awful in that hat anyway!"
"While My Guitar Gently Weeps": This is so beautiful I hope to God it doesn't have a hidden meaning.
"Happiness is a Warm Gun": Since John was with the FBI and Paul with the KGB, George Harrison often felt left out of the conversation, and so he looked about for a three letter organization to join. He had a brief foray working with the IRS, as chronicled in "Taxman", but discontent with the general lack of good vibes there, he quit and joined the Connecticut division of the NRA. His stay there was also brief: he was forced to resign after he accidentally shot a fellow member, 20 year old George W. Bush, in the head. Although Bush never quite recovered from the accident, the Bush family graciously forgave Harrison, telling him it wouldn't matter much, Jeb had always been the smart one anyway. Paul and John would thereafter mock Harrison wherever he went, calling out: "Bang bang shoot shoot!" It really annoyed him.
"Martha My Dear": This song is also about Dear Farrow, obviously.
"I'm So Tired": The key to this song is the line "you're such a stupid git." As stated above, Lennon liked to call his fellow bandmates "stupid gits" at the slightest provocation, until Ringo Starr took him aside one time and finally told him: "The correct word is GET. There is no such thing as a GIT. It's with an E. It's short for "beget". Therefore a misbegotten child. It's like calling someone a bastard." Lennon, impressed, replied: "You know, Ringo, you're pretty smart for a stupid git."
"Blackbird": This touching song is about Lennon's one night stand with the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. in a motel in Missouri. As King lowered Lennon to the bed and unbuckled his belt, he whispered tenderly: "And now you're going to see my black bird rise." The image stuck with Lennon, who even years later, on hot Southern nights, would stare out of the window maddened by longing.
"Piggies": George Harrison struggled with his decision to go kosher, and would wake up sweating in the middle of the night, reaching for the phone and asking his chef to send him "a bologna and banana sadwich"- then he would look at his hand and notice the phone had turned into a pork loin and he would try to eat it- and then he would wake up again and realize that it all had been a dream, and he would turn to his wife hoping to amuse her with a relation of his dream, but his wife had become a giant, softly breathing strip of bacon by his side, and then he would wake up for REAL. Or had he?
"Rocky Raccoon": A ribbing parody of Sylvester Stallone's original screenplay for "Rocky", which had been passed around celebrity circles for years and became a much laughed about piece of conversation at society parties, where giggling guests would be treated to readings of the script. "Wait, wait, check out this line, it's priceless. 'Yo! Adrian!' HAHAHAHA, unbelievable! Let me do it again: 'Yoooooo! Adriaaaaan!" HAHAHAHA, wow, what a moron!"
"Don't Pass Me By": Ringo "Old Starkey" Starr wanted to contribute something to the White Album, so he crafted a cunning plan to show up early at Abbey Road and start recording before the other Fab Three showed up. When they all appeared mid-day, nursing hangovers, Ringo had already finished more than half of "Don't Pass Me By" and he raised his arms defensively while John shouted at him: "What the hell do you think you're doing, you stupid git! I'll smack your face so hard your mustache will come out the back of your head!" Ringo hid behind his drumkit and pleaded: "But you let Harrison do four songs! Let me do at least one!" Paul convinced John to unload his wrath on a punching bag shaped like Brian Wilson they kept around the studio for such ocassions. Turns out the bag was the ACTUAL Brian Wilson, who had snuck himself into the studio "to get ideas". But Brian never let on even though John punched him often during the twenty-week recording of the White Album. After it was all over, a battered Wilson hid in his house crying for a decade.
"Why Don't We Do It in the Road?": This song is about fucking.
"I Will": So is this one.
"Julia": Few people know that this, decidedly one of the lesser songs the Beatles wrote, was intended as a creepy declaration of John's nascent interest in pedophiliac incest, and was dedicated to his son Julian. When a horrified Paul saw John's original proposed lyrics, he wisely took some wite-out and blotted the "N" out of the title to protect his friend without hurting anyone's feelings. Luckily John never noticed, and no one really asked him to perform this song ever again.
"Birthday": This song sounds like it's about Dear Farrow's birthday party.
"Yer Blues": The Beatles wrote this song as a riposte to Bob Dylan's claim that the Beatles had stolen many of his song ideas. The Fab Four loved to mock Dylan's comical mis-pronounciations, specially of the word "Changing". Dylan was always saying things were "A-Changing", or that he needed to get "a-change" for a phone call, until Ringo Starr took him aside one time and finally told him: "The correct word is CHANGING. There is no such thing as A-CHANGING." Dylan, impressed, replied: "You know, Ringo, you're pretty smart for a stupid git."
"Mother Nature's Son": God, how many songs does this album have? I already ran out of ideas. I'm getting kind of hungry too.
"Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except for Me and my Monkey": A shocking capture of the paranoia that was strangling the Beatles at this point in their career, Paul wrote this song to overtly accuse George Martin, George Harrison and John Lennon of stealing his LSD while he wasn't looking. Paul was convinced everyone around him was taking his LSD stamps, pasting them on envelopes and mailing them out to diverse locations around the world. He would burst into random post offices screaming: "Where is my stamp? I know it's one of those!" At one point he was so paranoid he was found naked on Kensington Gardens yelling: "Everybody's got something to hide except for me and my monkey!" His trusty monkey was, of course, Ringo, who only did cocaine and had no use for LSD.
"Sexy Sadie": For a while the Beatles studied tantric blowjobs under the guidance of Sexy Sadie, who claimed to be able to stimulate 73 different chakra points on the shaft of a penis solely with her tongue. After a while John and Paul became disillusioned with her claims: she could only hit 15 different chakra points- at best. Then Sexy Sadie wanted to collect 20% of their income, and their disillusion turned into bitterness. George on the other hand, kept on believing in Sexy Sadie's assertions throughout his life. When his "so-called-friend" Eric Clapton told him that "Layla" wasn't about George's wife Pattie, George believed that too. He really believed pretty much anything you told him.
"Helter Skelter": This is the controversial song that inspired the band Marilyn Manson, particularly with the line: "Will you won't you want me to make you" which, of course, means absolutely nothing at all.
"Long, Long, Long": They should have called this album "Long, Long, Long".
"Revolution 1 and 9": The original version of "Revolution" was called "Revolution Zero", but Ringo pointed out that a Zero Revolution was actually not any kind of a revolution at all. By this point John could NOT tolerate Ringo's smart-ass comments, and shouted: "Would it make you happier if I put a 1 at the end of it, you stupid git?!?" Ringo, who was learning to stand up for himself, stood up straight and said: "Yes. Yes, John. Yes it would." John was stunned: "Are you talking back to me? AAACCCCKKK!" George and Paul had to drag John to the Brian Wilson punching bag. Doctors suspect this was the exact day in which Wilson's kidneys stopped working.
"Honey Pie": Oh, man, I'm soooo hungry, honey pie sounds great right about now.
"Savoy Truffle": Seriously, I'm starving!
"Cry Baby Cry": Whenever John felt like molesting his "beautiful boy", as he referred to Julian, Julian would cry and cry and cry while Cynthia Lennon sighed loudly in the living room and pretended to be ever so interested in her knitting. But let's not judge Lennon for how frequently he molested little boys; instead let's concentrate on the legacy of his music, his groundbreaking dance moves, his sprawling theme park, and the way he bravely allowed his body to be used in the research of ever crazier elective surgery.
Wait, sorry, I'm thinking of someone else.
"Good Night": Indeed! Night, Dear Imaginary Reader!
Here are the stories behind all the tracks.
"Back in the U.S.S.R": It's well known that while the FBI and the CIA pretended to center their sights on John Lennon, it was actually Paul McCartney who was a KGB agent from 1966 to 68. He'd encoded complete maps to vulnerable locations in his songs "Penny Lane" and "Strawberry Fields", and used "I Am the Walrus" to declare his intentions to cross the Berlin "Wal"l and become a "Rus"sian. He wrote this cheerful song upon his arrival to the U.S.S.R., which he often called "his heart's true Motherland" but he soon found out that in Communist countries you have to make long lines to get your rationed pot, and ran back to the West horrified.
"Dear Prudence": This song was written by Lennon about Mia Farrow's sister, Dear Farrow. During one of Roman Polanski's wilder parties, Dear had ingested an unbelievably high dose of psylocibin and locked herself in an upstairs bathroom insisting she was the real Rosemary's Baby. Lennon, who needed to get into the bathroom desperately, managed to calm her down and lure her out with this lovely song. Then Roman Polanski raped her.
"Glass Onion": John Lennon, who had joined the FBI in 1963 after being personally recruited by J. Edgar Hoover, spent most of his life as a double agent, informing on anarchist groups he pretended to join. When the FBI planned to strike down the group, they would let John known in advance. That night everyone would be like: "Where is John? Why didn't he come to tonight's crucial meeting?" And someone would be like: "He said he had the sniffles," and BAM, that's when the doors would burst down and rabid dogs would kill all the hippies. Later, John would arrive on the scene and help the Feds identify the corpses, which he poetically said suggested "bent back tulips." (A popped out eyeball reminded him of a "glass onion".) Clearly, the "Walrus is Paul" was his way of denouncing his writing partner to J. Edgar Hoover, who attentively listened to the album's lyrics, but by then Paul had come back from Soviet Russia and decided to enjoy being an obscenely wealthy aristocrat, so there was no point in doing anything about it.
"Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da": A misunderstood song in the Beatles' catalogue which has often been thought to be about the psychedelic drug O-L-D, it's actually just about being OLD, because there are no drugs called O-L-D...
"Wild Honey Pie": ...But if O-L-D did exist, it would explain this, the most God-awful song the Beatles ever wrote.
"The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill": A harsh indictment of Marilyn Monroe's imperialistic "Monroe Doctrine"? Or a song about hunting with an elephant? The Beatles put the two possible interpretations in a hat, intending to draw one out and stick to that when questioned by the press, but then a groupie stole the hat from a hotel room in Glasgow. While Paul cried, John consoled him by saying: "You're such a stupid git, you looked awful in that hat anyway!"
"While My Guitar Gently Weeps": This is so beautiful I hope to God it doesn't have a hidden meaning.
"Happiness is a Warm Gun": Since John was with the FBI and Paul with the KGB, George Harrison often felt left out of the conversation, and so he looked about for a three letter organization to join. He had a brief foray working with the IRS, as chronicled in "Taxman", but discontent with the general lack of good vibes there, he quit and joined the Connecticut division of the NRA. His stay there was also brief: he was forced to resign after he accidentally shot a fellow member, 20 year old George W. Bush, in the head. Although Bush never quite recovered from the accident, the Bush family graciously forgave Harrison, telling him it wouldn't matter much, Jeb had always been the smart one anyway. Paul and John would thereafter mock Harrison wherever he went, calling out: "Bang bang shoot shoot!" It really annoyed him.
"Martha My Dear": This song is also about Dear Farrow, obviously.
"I'm So Tired": The key to this song is the line "you're such a stupid git." As stated above, Lennon liked to call his fellow bandmates "stupid gits" at the slightest provocation, until Ringo Starr took him aside one time and finally told him: "The correct word is GET. There is no such thing as a GIT. It's with an E. It's short for "beget". Therefore a misbegotten child. It's like calling someone a bastard." Lennon, impressed, replied: "You know, Ringo, you're pretty smart for a stupid git."
"Blackbird": This touching song is about Lennon's one night stand with the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. in a motel in Missouri. As King lowered Lennon to the bed and unbuckled his belt, he whispered tenderly: "And now you're going to see my black bird rise." The image stuck with Lennon, who even years later, on hot Southern nights, would stare out of the window maddened by longing.
"Piggies": George Harrison struggled with his decision to go kosher, and would wake up sweating in the middle of the night, reaching for the phone and asking his chef to send him "a bologna and banana sadwich"- then he would look at his hand and notice the phone had turned into a pork loin and he would try to eat it- and then he would wake up again and realize that it all had been a dream, and he would turn to his wife hoping to amuse her with a relation of his dream, but his wife had become a giant, softly breathing strip of bacon by his side, and then he would wake up for REAL. Or had he?
"Rocky Raccoon": A ribbing parody of Sylvester Stallone's original screenplay for "Rocky", which had been passed around celebrity circles for years and became a much laughed about piece of conversation at society parties, where giggling guests would be treated to readings of the script. "Wait, wait, check out this line, it's priceless. 'Yo! Adrian!' HAHAHAHA, unbelievable! Let me do it again: 'Yoooooo! Adriaaaaan!" HAHAHAHA, wow, what a moron!"
"Don't Pass Me By": Ringo "Old Starkey" Starr wanted to contribute something to the White Album, so he crafted a cunning plan to show up early at Abbey Road and start recording before the other Fab Three showed up. When they all appeared mid-day, nursing hangovers, Ringo had already finished more than half of "Don't Pass Me By" and he raised his arms defensively while John shouted at him: "What the hell do you think you're doing, you stupid git! I'll smack your face so hard your mustache will come out the back of your head!" Ringo hid behind his drumkit and pleaded: "But you let Harrison do four songs! Let me do at least one!" Paul convinced John to unload his wrath on a punching bag shaped like Brian Wilson they kept around the studio for such ocassions. Turns out the bag was the ACTUAL Brian Wilson, who had snuck himself into the studio "to get ideas". But Brian never let on even though John punched him often during the twenty-week recording of the White Album. After it was all over, a battered Wilson hid in his house crying for a decade.
"Why Don't We Do It in the Road?": This song is about fucking.
"I Will": So is this one.
"Julia": Few people know that this, decidedly one of the lesser songs the Beatles wrote, was intended as a creepy declaration of John's nascent interest in pedophiliac incest, and was dedicated to his son Julian. When a horrified Paul saw John's original proposed lyrics, he wisely took some wite-out and blotted the "N" out of the title to protect his friend without hurting anyone's feelings. Luckily John never noticed, and no one really asked him to perform this song ever again.
"Birthday": This song sounds like it's about Dear Farrow's birthday party.
"Yer Blues": The Beatles wrote this song as a riposte to Bob Dylan's claim that the Beatles had stolen many of his song ideas. The Fab Four loved to mock Dylan's comical mis-pronounciations, specially of the word "Changing". Dylan was always saying things were "A-Changing", or that he needed to get "a-change" for a phone call, until Ringo Starr took him aside one time and finally told him: "The correct word is CHANGING. There is no such thing as A-CHANGING." Dylan, impressed, replied: "You know, Ringo, you're pretty smart for a stupid git."
"Mother Nature's Son": God, how many songs does this album have? I already ran out of ideas. I'm getting kind of hungry too.
"Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except for Me and my Monkey": A shocking capture of the paranoia that was strangling the Beatles at this point in their career, Paul wrote this song to overtly accuse George Martin, George Harrison and John Lennon of stealing his LSD while he wasn't looking. Paul was convinced everyone around him was taking his LSD stamps, pasting them on envelopes and mailing them out to diverse locations around the world. He would burst into random post offices screaming: "Where is my stamp? I know it's one of those!" At one point he was so paranoid he was found naked on Kensington Gardens yelling: "Everybody's got something to hide except for me and my monkey!" His trusty monkey was, of course, Ringo, who only did cocaine and had no use for LSD.
"Sexy Sadie": For a while the Beatles studied tantric blowjobs under the guidance of Sexy Sadie, who claimed to be able to stimulate 73 different chakra points on the shaft of a penis solely with her tongue. After a while John and Paul became disillusioned with her claims: she could only hit 15 different chakra points- at best. Then Sexy Sadie wanted to collect 20% of their income, and their disillusion turned into bitterness. George on the other hand, kept on believing in Sexy Sadie's assertions throughout his life. When his "so-called-friend" Eric Clapton told him that "Layla" wasn't about George's wife Pattie, George believed that too. He really believed pretty much anything you told him.
"Helter Skelter": This is the controversial song that inspired the band Marilyn Manson, particularly with the line: "Will you won't you want me to make you" which, of course, means absolutely nothing at all.
"Long, Long, Long": They should have called this album "Long, Long, Long".
"Revolution 1 and 9": The original version of "Revolution" was called "Revolution Zero", but Ringo pointed out that a Zero Revolution was actually not any kind of a revolution at all. By this point John could NOT tolerate Ringo's smart-ass comments, and shouted: "Would it make you happier if I put a 1 at the end of it, you stupid git?!?" Ringo, who was learning to stand up for himself, stood up straight and said: "Yes. Yes, John. Yes it would." John was stunned: "Are you talking back to me? AAACCCCKKK!" George and Paul had to drag John to the Brian Wilson punching bag. Doctors suspect this was the exact day in which Wilson's kidneys stopped working.
"Honey Pie": Oh, man, I'm soooo hungry, honey pie sounds great right about now.
"Savoy Truffle": Seriously, I'm starving!
"Cry Baby Cry": Whenever John felt like molesting his "beautiful boy", as he referred to Julian, Julian would cry and cry and cry while Cynthia Lennon sighed loudly in the living room and pretended to be ever so interested in her knitting. But let's not judge Lennon for how frequently he molested little boys; instead let's concentrate on the legacy of his music, his groundbreaking dance moves, his sprawling theme park, and the way he bravely allowed his body to be used in the research of ever crazier elective surgery.
Wait, sorry, I'm thinking of someone else.
"Good Night": Indeed! Night, Dear Imaginary Reader!
The Beatles, "The Beatles"
I am SOOOO relieved! When I bought the White Album yet again, this pounding wave of nausea hit me: Am I the retarded, susceptible puppet of some unrelenting media hype, wasting money on something I ALREADY OWN and HAVE HEARD A MILLION TIMES?!?
ABOVE: "Quick, call Doctor Robert! He'll know what to do!"
As soon as I popped this in the old stereo, all my worries disappeared. The Remastered White Album is a revelation in sound, an entirely new experience that will help Michael Jackon's kids ride on through the grieving period (new batch of green-colored ponies!). Where else can you hear Ringo accidentally fart during "Blackbird"? And now we finally find out where Revolutions 2 through 8 went! Beyonce's previously muddy guest vocals for "Helter Skelter" really come to the foreground; her cryptic line ("Charlie Manson, you know what to do next!") is oddly compelling. Also, the 10-minute Yakov Smirnoff routine inserted into "Back in the U.S.S.R" is a show-stopper.
Kids: Yakov Smirnoff used to be this guy who... Aaaah, you know what, don't worry about it. It will never come up again.
ABOVE: "Quick, call Doctor Robert! He'll know what to do!"
As soon as I popped this in the old stereo, all my worries disappeared. The Remastered White Album is a revelation in sound, an entirely new experience that will help Michael Jackon's kids ride on through the grieving period (new batch of green-colored ponies!). Where else can you hear Ringo accidentally fart during "Blackbird"? And now we finally find out where Revolutions 2 through 8 went! Beyonce's previously muddy guest vocals for "Helter Skelter" really come to the foreground; her cryptic line ("Charlie Manson, you know what to do next!") is oddly compelling. Also, the 10-minute Yakov Smirnoff routine inserted into "Back in the U.S.S.R" is a show-stopper.
Kids: Yakov Smirnoff used to be this guy who... Aaaah, you know what, don't worry about it. It will never come up again.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Sam Mendes' "Revolutionary Road"
Suppose a bus smacks right into you, right, but it's not one of those huge basketball-team-ready buses that will mean your death but a mid-sized bus, maybe even a short bus. You survive, but your skeleton is renovated in an avant-garde fashion, and you're there in a full body cast, static in the sterility of your hospital bed, and the only part of your body that can move is your eyelids which you use to beg for water and write your memoirs and the such, but mostly to watch the TV that defies gravity opposite your bed. And now suppose that you're watching that TV and this commercial about kids having EXTREME fun with their jet-propelled skateboards comes on, and you think:
"Wow. This commercial is really, REALLY not relevant to me at the moment. I can not feel anything for these characters or their situation other than a general intellectual understanding that it must be fun to have a jet-propelled skateboard, but right this very moment? This is no use to me whatsoever."
YUP. Pretty much how I felt about Sam Mendes' "Revolutionary Road".
Here are Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio reunited (Winaprio? Dinslet? I don't follow tabloids!) and after all this time, they're still crashing aqainst the iceberg of the fact that Kate is a waaaaaay better actress than Leo, (sorry, 17 year old girls! Or girls that were 17 when "Titanic" came out!) It's a well done movie and all, (and I'm sure the Richard Yates novel is even better) but right now all I could do is blink at this tale of how stiffling marriage and success are, and think: "Wait... The problem is that you're too appreciated at your job and make too much money? And your family is too beautiful- and your friends too sweet? Your wife/ husband is too hot? But you're unfulfilled? Because you wanted to do... what again..? Live in Paris? And you can't because you have kids so you might as well walk into the ocean? What, don't they allow kids in Paris? Because they would ruin all the smoking? I don't think I'm following the plot."
Frankly, I stopped believing in this movie the moment when the allegedly proto-feministic Kate Winslet character went a liiiiiittle too far in her refusal to partake in patriarchal conventions, and proudly announced to her friends: "What I REEEEAAAALLY want is to go to Paris and have my husband NOT work and just relax all day. I will work my ass off for him so I can support HIM and he can have free time to find himself, like he always wanted!!!"
Whaddywhat?!? "Find himself"?!? Bitch, he better "find himself" a part time job selling baguettes or something!!!
I get all the period/ suburban angst I need from "Mad Men" and "Weeds"- and those have JOKES. This did NOT jive with my current concerns.
ABOVE: "OH NO! Suburban mores say I must have sex with Kate Winslet on our beautiful breakfast table every morning! This is too much for our marriage to endure!"
"Wow. This commercial is really, REALLY not relevant to me at the moment. I can not feel anything for these characters or their situation other than a general intellectual understanding that it must be fun to have a jet-propelled skateboard, but right this very moment? This is no use to me whatsoever."
YUP. Pretty much how I felt about Sam Mendes' "Revolutionary Road".
Here are Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio reunited (Winaprio? Dinslet? I don't follow tabloids!) and after all this time, they're still crashing aqainst the iceberg of the fact that Kate is a waaaaaay better actress than Leo, (sorry, 17 year old girls! Or girls that were 17 when "Titanic" came out!) It's a well done movie and all, (and I'm sure the Richard Yates novel is even better) but right now all I could do is blink at this tale of how stiffling marriage and success are, and think: "Wait... The problem is that you're too appreciated at your job and make too much money? And your family is too beautiful- and your friends too sweet? Your wife/ husband is too hot? But you're unfulfilled? Because you wanted to do... what again..? Live in Paris? And you can't because you have kids so you might as well walk into the ocean? What, don't they allow kids in Paris? Because they would ruin all the smoking? I don't think I'm following the plot."
Frankly, I stopped believing in this movie the moment when the allegedly proto-feministic Kate Winslet character went a liiiiiittle too far in her refusal to partake in patriarchal conventions, and proudly announced to her friends: "What I REEEEAAAALLY want is to go to Paris and have my husband NOT work and just relax all day. I will work my ass off for him so I can support HIM and he can have free time to find himself, like he always wanted!!!"
Whaddywhat?!? "Find himself"?!? Bitch, he better "find himself" a part time job selling baguettes or something!!!
I get all the period/ suburban angst I need from "Mad Men" and "Weeds"- and those have JOKES. This did NOT jive with my current concerns.
ABOVE: "OH NO! Suburban mores say I must have sex with Kate Winslet on our beautiful breakfast table every morning! This is too much for our marriage to endure!"
Friday, September 25, 2009
"Damages" Season 1
Television is generally unkind to prolonged mysteries. Sure, you wondered about who shot J.R. or Mr. Burns, but mostly "Murder One" came along and people shrieked: "WHAT? I have to remembler clues for a WHOLE season? It's just ONE murder? I can get 24 over at "Diagnosis: You-Know-What"!" The two initial seasons of "Veronica Mars" baffled the ADD crowd so much, (despite the fact that every ep contained a mini-crime to support the overarching mystery), that the creators buckled on the format for the disastrous third time around.
Well, I propose that the first year of "Damages" contains the most thrilling, ambitious, and surprising season-long unfolding of a criminal case.
Sure, some people think I'm biased just 'cause Rose Byrne is the hot hot wife I bang every night. Other people, which apparently include her lawyers, think I need to cease making libelous, unfounded claims like that. Opinions, opinions.
Byrne plays Ellen Parsons, a likable little lamb let loose in the lupine land of litigation. (Like alliteration? Me too!) Ellen is hand-picked to join the jury-eating law agency of Patty Hewes (Glenn Close, in a stunning detour as a demented, largely amoral, ball busting, power-driven virago who rouges her lips with the blood of Dalmatians.)
Patty is spear-heading a class-action suit against Arthur Frobisher, a Madoffian billionaire played by Ted Danson (at his aloof, disconnected best). And of course Ellen must wrestle with her career and her relationship to her boyfriend (Noah Bean), and of course...
Actually, the wonderful thing about "Damages" is that it begins with a series of "of courses" and manages to rip them all apart (much like I ripped apart the clearly fraudulent "restraining order" Rose Byrne's "lawyers" sent me). No one is exactly what they seem, and you'll find sympathies arising for characters that you could have mistaken for types: surely my beloved Byrne, who is quite capable of biting the wolves around her; and Close, who's great at conveying intelligence, malignance and love of justice with one glance- but also Danson, who may even consider his employees as true friends he never meant to screw over, and particularly Zjelko Ivanek as the evil-seeming lawyer, who- actually I won't even tell you what his deal is. Find out.
Think of it as the best John Grisham novel John Grisham hasn't quite learned how to write yet.
Ok, I need to get back to bed, Rosie is calling. That woman! Insatiable!
Well, I propose that the first year of "Damages" contains the most thrilling, ambitious, and surprising season-long unfolding of a criminal case.
Sure, some people think I'm biased just 'cause Rose Byrne is the hot hot wife I bang every night. Other people, which apparently include her lawyers, think I need to cease making libelous, unfounded claims like that. Opinions, opinions.
Byrne plays Ellen Parsons, a likable little lamb let loose in the lupine land of litigation. (Like alliteration? Me too!) Ellen is hand-picked to join the jury-eating law agency of Patty Hewes (Glenn Close, in a stunning detour as a demented, largely amoral, ball busting, power-driven virago who rouges her lips with the blood of Dalmatians.)
Patty is spear-heading a class-action suit against Arthur Frobisher, a Madoffian billionaire played by Ted Danson (at his aloof, disconnected best). And of course Ellen must wrestle with her career and her relationship to her boyfriend (Noah Bean), and of course...
Actually, the wonderful thing about "Damages" is that it begins with a series of "of courses" and manages to rip them all apart (much like I ripped apart the clearly fraudulent "restraining order" Rose Byrne's "lawyers" sent me). No one is exactly what they seem, and you'll find sympathies arising for characters that you could have mistaken for types: surely my beloved Byrne, who is quite capable of biting the wolves around her; and Close, who's great at conveying intelligence, malignance and love of justice with one glance- but also Danson, who may even consider his employees as true friends he never meant to screw over, and particularly Zjelko Ivanek as the evil-seeming lawyer, who- actually I won't even tell you what his deal is. Find out.
Think of it as the best John Grisham novel John Grisham hasn't quite learned how to write yet.
Ok, I need to get back to bed, Rosie is calling. That woman! Insatiable!
Pamela Roberts' "A Century of Colour Photography"- and Cindy Sherman
I envy photography. Like a song or a painting, a photograph imposes itself on you first, and only then proceeds to seduce you- if it bothers with seduction at all. Writers, for all we love ourselves, are the mumblers of art: the reader must be lured in first and then must actually WORK to elicit understanding from someone else's beaded thoughts. It takes a second to see a Picasso, less than ten to succumb to a rock beat: a novel takes a comparative life-time of your spousal co-operation. This is why writers are so timid- even as they pretend to shock, they must flatter. No one ever played along with a thought they disliked, no one ever understood a sentence they weren't equipped to understand. Too easy to find a poem cryptic, like it's pouring off a gutted dictionary. Too easy to find a novel interminable. Tolstoy has a hard time- that ugliness in his face is from the strain of stringing you along through the Napoleonic Wars. I'm sure there's eight people that actually finished Proust, but I suspect the rest of them fib about it. By contrast, Cindy Sherman has it easy.
You may or may not love her picture; may or may not react to it the way I do, or the way she would want you to.
BUT it's there. You saw it. Didn't even have to move your lips.
March on, Sherman, march on.
Fittingly enough, you'll likely skip past the overly-technical text in Pamela Roberts' anthology "A Century of Colour Photography" and run right to the beautiful pictures. You won't miss much, it's your typical thing: When Autochrome is found dead in mysterious circumstances, it's up to Misters Red, Green, and Blue to put the picture together, etc. And what do the letters CMYK, scribbled in eye-dazzlingly colored blood, signify? Roberts did lead me to think anew about the coloring technique used at crucial moments in FX's "Damages"- my favorite new show since the last time I had a favorite new show, which I think was almost a month ago with "Mad Men".
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Thomas Pynchon's "Inherent Vice"
Everytime I read Pynchon I feel like I maybe picked up the wrong author, some mimic in the bookshelf whose name is a letter or two off. Maybe I'm reading Tomas Pynchon, or Thomas Pinchon. The Thomas Pynchon I'm SUPPOSED to read is a culturally imposing, allusive monster of deep psychological acuity, an impenetrable if era-defining wall of modern authorship, meant only to be scanned painful sentence by sentence with the help of a trained team of scholars.
The Thomas Pynchon I ACTUALLY end up reading is, like, this hilarious, page-turning jokester who must lick stamps fresh from Kookamonga while writing awful rock song parodies.
Hence "Inherent Vice", a thrilling hippie-detective spoof that basically asks the question: "What if Philip Marlowe had been too freaking stoned to remember which crime he was supposed to be solving, and then there was a conspiracy involving either Nixon spies or Asian pimps or maybe even TAX-DODGING DENTISTS and oh, who cares, let's go SURFING!!! The bird is the word!!!"
Meanwhile, some imaginary critic is reading a DIFFERENT "Inherent Vice", a complex multi-layered think-piece which might be subtitled "Reflexions of the Counterculture". They probably think it's "an ode to a by-gone era impinged on by modernity's paranoia and nascent socio-political disillusion, extensive in its catalogue of the Californian transient and joyfully disenfranchised, and suffering only from a surfeit of the recherche details that oftimes mar the prose of American Literature's second most reclusive genius."
EXAMPLE: According to the "Publishers Weekly" starred review, IH is "playful as a dolphin, plaintive as whale song, unsoundably profound as the blue Pacific."
What?!? A dolphin..? A whale..? I GUESS. Plus it has some hilarious pussy-eating scenes. Did "PW" notice?
NOTE TO SELF: Dig up "Pearls Before Swine" record.
The Thomas Pynchon I ACTUALLY end up reading is, like, this hilarious, page-turning jokester who must lick stamps fresh from Kookamonga while writing awful rock song parodies.
Hence "Inherent Vice", a thrilling hippie-detective spoof that basically asks the question: "What if Philip Marlowe had been too freaking stoned to remember which crime he was supposed to be solving, and then there was a conspiracy involving either Nixon spies or Asian pimps or maybe even TAX-DODGING DENTISTS and oh, who cares, let's go SURFING!!! The bird is the word!!!"
Meanwhile, some imaginary critic is reading a DIFFERENT "Inherent Vice", a complex multi-layered think-piece which might be subtitled "Reflexions of the Counterculture". They probably think it's "an ode to a by-gone era impinged on by modernity's paranoia and nascent socio-political disillusion, extensive in its catalogue of the Californian transient and joyfully disenfranchised, and suffering only from a surfeit of the recherche details that oftimes mar the prose of American Literature's second most reclusive genius."
EXAMPLE: According to the "Publishers Weekly" starred review, IH is "playful as a dolphin, plaintive as whale song, unsoundably profound as the blue Pacific."
What?!? A dolphin..? A whale..? I GUESS. Plus it has some hilarious pussy-eating scenes. Did "PW" notice?
NOTE TO SELF: Dig up "Pearls Before Swine" record.
AIDS Vaccine Found. Well, Not Sure if That Should End with "!" or "?"
The Cure?
After college I worked for a while in a center for AIDS research, which gave me some sort of life-long immunity to optimism. I welcome any vaccine breakthrough, but it's a little like humoring friends who tell you they're in looooove with that guy/girl that winked at them on the parking lot that one time. Really, once you get past the drug-corp jargon, all this Bangkok test shows is that 50 people who took the vaccine GOT AIDS ANYWAY. If this is a genuinely thrilling move forward, it's only a sign of stagnant desperation in the field.
(Odd article moment: the test group was mostly composed of heterosexuals- the scientists aren't sure yet whether it will have the same result in homosexuals. (?) What, are homosexuals made up of some doomed alien genetic material now? I guess that's what happens when you turn away from loving our Savior Jesus to loving Jesus the buff Mexican gardener.
After college I worked for a while in a center for AIDS research, which gave me some sort of life-long immunity to optimism. I welcome any vaccine breakthrough, but it's a little like humoring friends who tell you they're in looooove with that guy/girl that winked at them on the parking lot that one time. Really, once you get past the drug-corp jargon, all this Bangkok test shows is that 50 people who took the vaccine GOT AIDS ANYWAY. If this is a genuinely thrilling move forward, it's only a sign of stagnant desperation in the field.
(Odd article moment: the test group was mostly composed of heterosexuals- the scientists aren't sure yet whether it will have the same result in homosexuals. (?) What, are homosexuals made up of some doomed alien genetic material now? I guess that's what happens when you turn away from loving our Savior Jesus to loving Jesus the buff Mexican gardener.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Joaquin Sabina
One of the better Spanish singer-songwriters of the '80s and '90s, Joaquin Sabina has been a late newcomer to my attention. Sabina writes and sings like a necessary Dylan translation, or else an even-wearier Leonard Cohen-type globalite, who cannot wait to drown enthusiastically in women or whiskey- whichever- but might even accept salvation should it show up first, (no breath held). His songs often work by virtue of cultural listings and humorous reversals: the sacred suddenly turning to pee on the stunned profane. The actual SOUND, like Cohen's, is a malleable studio after-thought that has shifted through more than a dozen records from bolero to gospel to flamenco to metal to whatever suits the mood. A man who describes his first album as "death metal" and can gleefully sing a bar-hopping-Kurt-Weill-type song with Silvio Rodriguez AND cover Willy Chirino's "Black Stockings" to make it sound like "Tangled Up in Blue" is exactly as all-over-the-place as that suggests, but it's an interesting drunkard's walk.
Sabina emerged from a stroke with 2005's "Alivio de Luto" ("Mourning Relief") which includes his loose cover of Cohen's "There is a War" and manages to take that crazy Canuck's good-already song and spin it out into even richer realms of allusion. That's, er, pretty high praise from me, if you couldn't tell.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Greg Rucka's "Queen and Country" Volume 6: Operation Dandelion
Aside from a military simulacrum in which a gay soldier is attacked, and one brutal flashback to a dissident's murder in Zimbawe, there is no "action" in the 6th volume of Greg Rucka's "Queen and country"- and you won't notice. "Q&C" is about acronyms being fired at each in deadly office salvos, about how the people who save the world can be as dangerous as those who damn it- but hey, at least they're OUR people. Tara Chace is still grieving over the death of two fellow Minders, so it's all the more exciting (and heart-breaking) to see her don a slinky night dress and play girly in order to seduce a man who has presented himself to the British as the possible next president of Zimbawe- should the Brits aid him in ousting the current tyrant. Is the man worth supporting? A delluded revolutionary? An enemy plant? (I don't mean, er, a vegetable). I wouldn't ruin it for you.
This is why "Mystique"'s "spying" never rang true: Rucka seems like he should be on government lists. The man KNOWS TOO MUCH- or else fakes it efficiently. This is that authentic real-world thrill you were told comics couldn't give you.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Mystique
It's sad that for a series with such a relatively tight plotline, what makes "Mystique" memorable is the gorgeous covers by Greg Horn and Mike Mayhew, and not the writing by Brian K. Vaughn (and later Sean Mckeever). These are very talented people, (and Vaughan is one of the sharpest writers around in any medium) but you can sense that they're rushing through the action and never quite get an emotional handle on a character that, admittedly, is no typical heroine. For those of you who don't live in basements alongside plastic-protected boxes of comics, Mystique is a shapeshifting, mostly malicious mutant also known as Raven Darkholme: the body-painted Rebecca Romijn-Stamos from the X-Men movies. (Is she still married to John Stamos? Or is she plain Romijn again?)
ABOVE: Paint, paint, go away!
Mystique's solo series finds her doing assorted mercenary jobs in "ratholes like Cuba", (her terms, not mine) and impersonating "El Beardo" to get past Cuban militias. (Again her terms, not mine. I can think of more colorful things to call "El Beardo" than "El Beardo".) There are a few neat guessing moments: ("I thought Mystique was pretending to be character A because the script was hinting that she was pretending to be character B, but it turned out that she was pretending to be a vase in a distant corner all along!") But for what's basically a spy story, Mystique isn't really surrounded by the kind of realistic political details Greg Rucka would have known to include. Or maybe I've been jonesing for the rest of the "Queen and Country" volumes and this did not compare.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
"The IT Crowd" Series 2
Aaaaahhhh, Britcoms: the last plank left off the sunken ship of laughter. The second season of "The IT Crowd" has every bit of quotable nerdery that "The Office" has been scanty on of late, and without any attempts to make us "care" about the "characters" having "babies" or any such wussy American poopiecrap. Ah, Moss, Jen and Roy, may you wrestle with computer and/or gay jokes for, you know, however many months British audiences allow shows that are not "Doctor Who" to exist.
CHECK OUT THE IT CROWD'S ANTI-PIRACY AD!!!
CHECK OUT THE IT CROWD'S ANTI-PIRACY AD!!!
Stieg Larsson's "The Girl Who Played With Fire"
Stieg Larsson's "The Girl Who Played with Fire", the sequel to one of the most popular thrillers of recent years opts to go with a familiar convention of "up the scales" sophomore efforts: "This time, all the clues point to the detective as the main suspect and they must clear themselves before the clock runs down!"
The pattern established in "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" is followed closely: a murder case is contrasted with a journalistic critique of some aspect of Swedish society, (this time, the government's blind eye to the miseries of imported sex workers), we diverge at length into the lives of Larsson's alter ego Kalle Blomqvist and the fetish-compilation that is Lisbeth Salander, and it all comes together in a heart-pounding scene. This one is actually superior to the first one: by this point the late Larsson had learned it's bad form to give the solution to a great mystery and then go on for two hundred more pages of the detective making himself a sandwich.
Much as I love this series and much as I succumb to Salander's Asperger-licious charms like everyone else, there are a few things that irk me, in particular the gratutitous "sexifying" of a character that is supposedly well observed.
Why does Larsson feel the need to randomly give his character breast implants? And yes, the writer FORCES a trait on the char. There is no way in hell I can picture socially inept, relationship-averse, uber-comfortable Lisbeth getting fake boobs for herself. It feels so masturbatory: you can hear Larsson, who has previously described Lisbeth as looking like a twelve year old, thinking: "Damn, I want her in a hot lesbian sex scene, but maybe it would be hotter if she didn't look like a little girl. I don't want to seem like a PERVERT! Yeah, let's give her big boobs!"
Another of my gripes is the many many MANY places in which Larsson's reporter background works against the thrilling plot.
Killers don't just go buy guns and go home: They go buy a 1997 SwedeKill automatic, a box of ammunitions from AmmoCentral, a silencer, a gun-cleaning kit, a local newspaper, a porn magazine, a chocolate bar, and two boxes of chewing gum. Then they take the A train to Larskvegard, eat the chocolate bar in transit, discard the wrapper under their seat, then start on the chewing gum, drop that wrapper upon their arrival at the station, walk two blocks from Larskvegard to Arslo Steet, walk up to the brown door of the flat, insert their key in the lock, turn the door knob, walk up a flight of stairs with 37 steps, arrive at their office, sit in a chair, turn on their old home computer, start their modems, open a chatting program, empty the recycle bin, put some music on ITunes, open Internet Explorer, realize their browser is lagging, do a scan of their computer, their browser still lags, download a new browser, are much happier, go check their e-mail, check their e-mail in another account, check to see their Facebook, update their Twitter, talk to an old prison pal on Yahoo Messenger, and juuuuuuust when you're falling asleep, an instant message box pops up on their screen: "KILL LISBETH!" and so you go on interested anew, but DAMN, what he puts you through! This is how a 200 page thriller hits the 500 page mark. If Larsson had written shorter, maybe he would have lived to give us his completed, 10-book vision.
Alan Moore's "Supreme: The Return"
Unfortunate bit of bad synchronicity: I'm sitting next to a black kid in the metro who's curiously prying into my open copy of Alan Moore's "Supreme: The Return" and I get excited luring a newcomer fanboy and start talking to him about the comic. "Oh, it's smart and meta and, see for instance, right now, Supreme, who day-lights as a comic book writer, has returned to work to realize that he's woken up in an alternate future where the South won the Civil War and... er..." I start stuttering as I realize that the logical continuation of my sentence was: "and and blacks are still slaves and he's forced to draw a superhero called "The Klansman!"
So I quickly close the book: "ACTUALLY, it's not that interesting at all. Maybe you should start with Superman!"
Friday, September 18, 2009
Ron Howard's "Frost/Nixon"
"Success in America is unlike success anywhere else. The emptiness when it's gone, and the sickening thought that it may never come back".-
That's Michael Sheen as journalist David Frost, tapping onto why the impeached president of the United States would agree to have an interview with a TV talk show host known at the time for puff pieces ("Big Questions for the Bee Gees!").
The ego needs to be fed.
Richard Nixon needed to fight against the TV that so famously always brought him down.
And Frost was there to bask on that need.
Being too into politics is like being too into plumbing: sure you're doing a necesssary job, but sooner or later you'll end up covered in shit with your ass crack for the world to see. My general distaste/sadness for politicians kept me circling around Ron Howard's "Nixon/Frost" longer than I should have. Don't blame me, the movie has an unsexy name. How thrilling could it be? It's a political play centered on a television show. And you know the outcome! And is Opie really up to a no-punch-pulled Nixon-nose-bashing round?
Oh yes, he is.
This is his best movie so far, and it redeems him from the boring museum-tour adaptation of "The Da Vinci Code". (Look out for Dan Brown's "The Lost Symbol", kids! It's going to be about a semi-religious historical conspiracy or something!)
Michael Sheen- who has nothing to do with Martin or Charlie or Emilio Estevez (I miss you Emilio!)- previously played Tony Blair in "The Queen", and there is a theatrical intelligence to his embodiment of David Frost. He's great and humorous too, his '70s faux-playboy facade works almost like an Eric Idle character. Frank Langella's portrayal of a president is not as photo-accurate as Anthony Hopkins' in Oliver Stone's "Nixon", but it's not a caricature like Oliver Stone's "W." You get a very smart, moving Nixon here and there's even room for impersonating an impersonation, (as when Oliver Platt's character mimicks Nixon in anticipation of the interview.) It's a great cast all around, Toby Jones, Sam Rockwell, and Rebecca Hall makes much more of a presence here than she did in "Vicky Christina Barcelona."
A necessary, great, intelligent film that never lets the correctness of its political outrage obscure the humanity of the people involved.
That's Michael Sheen as journalist David Frost, tapping onto why the impeached president of the United States would agree to have an interview with a TV talk show host known at the time for puff pieces ("Big Questions for the Bee Gees!").
The ego needs to be fed.
Richard Nixon needed to fight against the TV that so famously always brought him down.
And Frost was there to bask on that need.
Being too into politics is like being too into plumbing: sure you're doing a necesssary job, but sooner or later you'll end up covered in shit with your ass crack for the world to see. My general distaste/sadness for politicians kept me circling around Ron Howard's "Nixon/Frost" longer than I should have. Don't blame me, the movie has an unsexy name. How thrilling could it be? It's a political play centered on a television show. And you know the outcome! And is Opie really up to a no-punch-pulled Nixon-nose-bashing round?
Oh yes, he is.
This is his best movie so far, and it redeems him from the boring museum-tour adaptation of "The Da Vinci Code". (Look out for Dan Brown's "The Lost Symbol", kids! It's going to be about a semi-religious historical conspiracy or something!)
Michael Sheen- who has nothing to do with Martin or Charlie or Emilio Estevez (I miss you Emilio!)- previously played Tony Blair in "The Queen", and there is a theatrical intelligence to his embodiment of David Frost. He's great and humorous too, his '70s faux-playboy facade works almost like an Eric Idle character. Frank Langella's portrayal of a president is not as photo-accurate as Anthony Hopkins' in Oliver Stone's "Nixon", but it's not a caricature like Oliver Stone's "W." You get a very smart, moving Nixon here and there's even room for impersonating an impersonation, (as when Oliver Platt's character mimicks Nixon in anticipation of the interview.) It's a great cast all around, Toby Jones, Sam Rockwell, and Rebecca Hall makes much more of a presence here than she did in "Vicky Christina Barcelona."
A necessary, great, intelligent film that never lets the correctness of its political outrage obscure the humanity of the people involved.
Stephen Sondheim's "Company" (2006 revival)
Played out on a rhomboid stage, with one tall Ionic column, and with actors partially mimicking the orchestra, the 2006 revival of Stephen Sondheim's "Company" proves this is his most vital and easy-to-get-into musical- if you're in your late twenties or early thirties and your marital status has not been confirmed and half your friends are getting married and half of your friends are getting divorced, you can't help but relate. Bobby (Booby, Robert, Robby- as his friends shout at him from the telephone) is the un-married center in a circle of relationships that are as unfulfilling as they are typical. Sondheim's hits come quick ("The Ladies Who Lunch", "Another Hundred People", "You Could Drive a Person Crazy", "Sorry/Grateful", "Company", "The Little Things You Do Together", "Being Alive") and this is a great production of a great play, anchored by Raul Esparza (who already made Jonathan Larson's very similar "Tick Tick Boom" such a treat for me). "Company" offers no solutions to modernity. You go to your job, your wife leaves you when you least expect it, your friends pretend to have their act together but they can't get wait to get to a bottle of scotch after work, 'cause nothing's working as smoothly as the surfaces show.
"Look into their eyes and you'll see what they know:
Everybody dies."
Someone to hold you too close,
Someone to hurt you too deep,
Someone to sit in your chair,
To ruin your sleep.
Someone to need you too much,
Someone to know you too well,
Someone to pull you up short
And put you through hell.
Someone you have to let in,
Someone whose feelings you spare,
Someone who, like it or not,
Will want you to share
A little, a lot.
Someone to crowd you with love,
Someone to force you to care,
Someone to make you come through,
Who'll always be there,
As frightened as you
Of being alive,
Being alive,
Being alive,
Being alive.
Somebody, hold me too close,
Somebody, hurt me too deep,
Somebody, sit in my chair
And ruin my sleep
And make me aware
Of being alive,
Being alive.
Somebody, need me too much,
Somebody, know me too well,
Somebody, pull me up short
And put me through hell
And give me support
For being alive,
Make me alive.
Make me confused,
Mock me with praise,
Let me be used,
Vary my days.
But alone is alone, not alive.
Somebody, crowd me with love,
Somebody, force me to care,
Somebody, make me come through,
I'll always be there,
As frightened as you,
To help us survive
Being alive,
Being alive,
Being alive!
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Alan Moore and Rob Liefeld's "Supreme: Story of the Year"
"Supreme" is Alan Moore at his most unhinged. He took over Rob Liefeld's not-particularly-remarkable Supermanish creation and used Supreme to evoke every Golden Age/Silver Age/WhateverAge superhero convention, and of course, toy with them. We are treated to infinite alternate worlds infused with Supremium each with its own variations of the Supreme idea, (example: a Supremouse, which is more or less Mickey Mouse on 'roids). Yes, this is all stuff that Moore will get to use again in "Tom Strong" and "Top 10". Here, it's entertaining, (Alan Moore's tossed off ideas are like droppings from a golden elephant), but without a story to bring it all together, it does get to be a bit too much. One merely stands back: "Whoa, Moore, we get it: you can deconstruct comic books in the blending swirl of your pop cultural consciousness. You get applause. You can do ANYTHING with this character! You can turn him into a Mondrian painting, a "Tales of the Crypt" victim, a Mad Magazine parody, and your imagination is just revving... Sigh, if only there was a story to go with it."
Comes with a nice Alex Ross cover too. Not necessarily the place to start reading Alan Moore, but still great :-)
Monday, September 14, 2009
MY BLOG STRATEGERY
Dear Imaginary Reader:
You may have noticed that I'm not like all those other blogs: I don't talk about Kanye West not getting the "most annoying human being award" (Next year, Kanye! Glenn Beck's still winning!), or about Dame Madonna Archibald Poopyshire III's moving speech (it WAS moving), or about the weird growth around Pink's nipple (she should have a doctor take a look-see), or about Lady Gaga and her active attempts to insert herself into my nightmares.
It's called counter-programming. Here we talk about a movie everyone already saw fifty years ago. I'm not hip! I don't get the good cable! I get my news from the Malaysian Channel. But that's why you come by, right? You're not here for the news... You're here for the UNNEWSSUAL. That's my new tag.
You may have noticed that I'm not like all those other blogs: I don't talk about Kanye West not getting the "most annoying human being award" (Next year, Kanye! Glenn Beck's still winning!), or about Dame Madonna Archibald Poopyshire III's moving speech (it WAS moving), or about the weird growth around Pink's nipple (she should have a doctor take a look-see), or about Lady Gaga and her active attempts to insert herself into my nightmares.
It's called counter-programming. Here we talk about a movie everyone already saw fifty years ago. I'm not hip! I don't get the good cable! I get my news from the Malaysian Channel. But that's why you come by, right? You're not here for the news... You're here for the UNNEWSSUAL. That's my new tag.
Amanda Blank's "I Love You" and Dinosaur Jr.
So I was reading about this interesting young woman called Amanda Blank in New York Magazine and she is not only a powerful singer but scientists should analyze her nether parts because according to one of her poems it appears that her vaginal secretions are particularly appealing to the tastebuds: "My rhymes are painful and fresh / My pussy’s tastin’ the best”. She pre-emptively attacks people who think she sounds like Peaches and Missy Elliott in the NY write-up. “Peaches is a huge influence,” she acknowledges. “Just like Missy Elliott is. But I don’t get those comparisons, because I’m not black. I’m just like, ‘Fuck you, 4-year-old white kid-writers, go cry to a Dinosaur Jr. album.’ ”
I went and heard some of her music, and it is danceably aggressive, but what do I know? I'm not one of those white-kids writers who thinks she sounds like Peaches and Missy Elliot. I'm one of those white-kids writers who thinks she sounds like Peaches and Missy Elliot AND M.I.A. AND Santogold, but hey, I like it when a woman talks about her genitalia in my earphones, I am not going to deny it.
Afterwards I went to cry to my Dinosaur Jr. albums. There was this one called "Bug", and this one called "Beyond" and this new one is called "Farm" and they were pretty good too, Amanda Black. I'm such a weird person because I like Dinosaur Jr. but can also appreciate how you lock the cocks in your pussy box.
But honestly I kind of think Dinosaur Jr. are a little better than you, Amanda, sorry.
Neill Blomkamp's "District 9"- And Megan Fox- And Heidi Montag. GOD, Hallucina is KRAZY this Monday
I'm not going to tell you that Neill Blomkamp's "District 9" is not a pretty good movie: that would make me the preposterous chihuahua barking at the giant spaceship hovering above Johannesburg. It's an intelligent, effective example of science fiction action with lots of humanity in a summer when we had settled for being given Megan Fox as the "human element" in a marvel of robotic summer incoherence like "Transformers 2."
Oh, no... I got started on Megan Fox! NOOO! INCREDIBLY LONG DETOUR:
LOOK at this woman:
Now LISTEN to this woman in her recent "Hallucina" interview.
HALLUCINA: "Thanks for sitting with us and posing for some pictures, we know you have a busy schedule of over-exposing yourself. First, let me ask. What defines Megan Fox?"
MEGAN FOX: "Yo, bro, I'm a talented artist, ain't nobody going to censor my fucking shit, I like to fuck, ok, I'm a bi-sexual and I fuck five or six women every day and maybe one guy and ain't nobody going to mess with this 'cause then I'll let the bitch come out and bite, you know what I mean, and I want to be respected and be in like Shakespeare or some smart shit like that. I'm for REAL, I ain't gonna let no Hollywood limpdick manipulate me! Mister Photographer, please, can I put on some clothes on now? 'Cause that AC's blasting like a motherfucker bitch."
HALLUCINA: "Will you have sex with me?"
MEGAN FOX: "I already did, I have super sex powers to have sex with everyone instantly, dawg, I inherited them from Marilyn Monroe who I'm re-incarnated from."
HALLUCINA: "What?"
MEGAN FOX: "FUUUUCKKK, keep up! I'm EDGY HERE!!!"
Later that day we had Heidi Montag stop by.
LOOK at this woman:
Now LISTEN to this woman in her recent "Hallucina" interview.
HALLUCINA: "Thanks for sitting with us and posing for some pictures, we know you have a busy schedule of over-exposing yourself. First, let me ask. What defines Heidi Montag?"
HEIDI MONTAG: "High five, "Hallucina"! I am so authentic, this is what my people love, I'm for real, I have my people's love, look at how many people follow my Tweets! I'm Tweetering right now, is that how you say it, Tweetering? I'm on "Hallucina" everyone- I'm saying that right now, this is what I'm doing, because this is how it is, just me 24/7 being ME and showing you everything about who's me..."
HALLUCINA: "Yes, ok, but who exactly ARE you?"
HEIDI MONTAG: "I'm ME, my personality is there for everyone to see, there are cameras on me all the time and I have nothing to hide and I'm sorry if people feel threatened by that but this is all the real stuff! Hehehe."
HALLUCINA: "Will you have sex with me?"
HEIDI MONTAG: "I'm just tired of all the drama and if people can't deal with how wonderful I am they better understand that I need to be like Heidi Montag and I'm not Lauren and I'm not somebody else, Spencer knows what I mean, right Spencer, whooo, high five me, baby!"
HALLUCINA: "Did you hear what I just asked you?"
HEIDI MONTAG: "All I have to say is that I don't see what the big deal is, I'm here and that's the way it is, the camera is there and that's how true this gets."
HALLUCINA: (walks away- she keeps on talking.)
It's so SAAAAD. It's like God builds these amazingly beautiful creatures and then when he gets to the brain he's like: "SCREW IT, I already went overtime on the body, I'll just throw an almond in there and hope people don't notice."
END DETOUR
So we were talking about alien creatures speaking incomprehensible nonsense. See, it's not entirely unrelated!
My "beef" with "District 9" is all about the cultural amnesia of its hype and not the product per-se. I praise its special effects, its action scenes, its cinematography. Everything, really, except its "ORIGINALITY". This is functioning more or less the same way that my anti- "Matrix"-defenses did. People kept on saying how mind-blowing it was and I thought: "Hmmm, sure, particularly if you have NEVER EVER EVER READ A SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL. Hell, Keanu Reeves himself was already in an adaptation of William Gibson's "Johnny Mnemonic" where they talked about the matrix. Now, I don't blame you for not having seen that, but come on! And everything that wasn't stolen from William Gibson was stolen from John Woo."
How can "District 9" seem an "original" idea? The whole bit about putting the weird-looking-and-alien in a special district as a metaphor for racism and ghettos is DONE DONE DONE down to the titular. I just mentioned "District X" but heck, there was even a "District B-13"! And using aliens to explode racial myths is one of the basics of sci-fi. It can be done glibly as in "Men in Black", or intelligently as in "Babylon 5" or "Star Trek." It can be done cruelly, as in "Alien"!(One of the weirdest moments of my life was when I was given my "legal resident alien" status after arriving to the United States. I had seen the movies... I don't DROOL ACID!!! I don't burst out of people's chests!!! I'm a person!!! I'm not an ALIEN!!!)
Aside from the knowing and obvious nods to Steven Spielberg's "E.T." and David Cronenberg's "The Fly" and Ridley Scott's "Blackhawk Down", there are two particular unsung movies "District 9" really REALLY ramsacks for "Loving the Alien" ideas: Graham Baker's "Alien Nation" and Wolfgang Petersen's "Enemy Mine." These movies are not unloved: "Alien Nation", about the racial adjustment of aliens that have crash landed in L.A., spawned a short lived series. "Enemy Mine" made a strong impact on me as a kid. It's funny how there are much better movies I have seen in the last three years that I have completely forgotten, but I'll never forget how Dennis Quaid slowly learns to accept that the alien enemy with the incompatible skin and the clicking, annoying language has the same set of thoughts and emotions that he did, and eventually he has to save the alien's child and...
YEAH YEAH IT'S DISTRICT 9!!!
Alan Moore and Gene Ha's "Top 10"
Removed from the Wagnerian leif motifs of "Watchmen" or "V for Vendetta", Alan Moore's "Top 10" is the relatively light (and very very FUN) working out of a familiar superhero premise: what if there was this city called Neopolis where everyone was a superhero?
But see, when Alan Moore says "everyone", he MEANS "everyone"! The cops are super-cops, the lawyers are super-lawyers, the HOOKERS are super-hookers. Taxi drivers are guided by superpowers, the guy selling hots dogs in the corner heats them up with his super-vision, the babies are superheroes and fly in their capes around their cribs, the RATS in your walls have superhero teams and go through "crisis in infinite rat worlds." EVERYONE. It's sheer rib-tickling joy, with Gene Ha and Zander Cannon's well-drawn classical panels stuffed with in-jokes a la Moore. (In a delightful aside, we notice that there are comic books in Neopolis, for "immature" people looking for "escapist" fare like "Wanda, the Waitress" and "Businessman!" Typical adventure: "Lo, And There Shall Come an Auditor!")
Made for Moore's ABC imprint- which found him creating a zillion simultaneous comics at the turn of the millenium- "Top 10" is a cop series, and in the way it uses the "super-abled-Americans" as a metaphor for racism and urban blight it's akin to David Hine's "District X". Sorry, "District 9" lovers, nothing new under the sun!
Like many of Moore's stories, intricate references are tied to an underlying mystery, and his knack for creating indelible characters is very much present here. A listing of great moments would be exhaustive. GO READ IT NOW! This is a powerfully imaginative series, intelligent and full of humor, and frankly I would have much rather have seen someone turn THIS into a TV series than having them mess with Moore's more "intellectual" fare. It would have automatically become the most interesting (and expensive) show on television, which only goes to show how the best comic book writing can leap over TV wannabes like "Heroes" in a single bound. ("Lost", the best comic book show that is NOT a comic book, might be the exception.)
Strained Stand-Up Hour!
Welcome, welcome, beautiful beautiful crowd. Not you in the third row, you look like last place at a Hilary Swank Female Impersonator Show. But seriously, folks, I just flew in from Moscow, and are the exhaust valves on my James Bond-style Jet Pack tired! You could say I come "From Russia With Love." I'm not feeling the love tonight, what's wrong? I feel like I'm Kanye West interrupting the "King of the Hill" series finale! But seriously, I want to talk about relationships, we've all been there fellows, right? And I've been rejected by more girls than an oily intrauterine device! But I'm married, yeah, ladies, this is the one ring to rule me all, one ring to bind me... No, forget it, not the right crowd. Anyway, I'm a parent now. Parenthood is hard, right? Parenthood is soooo hard you could scratch Lou Diamond Philips's face with it! 'Cause he's a Diamond? Don't remember him? "Viva La Bamba!" Anyway, dating is a jungle out there, and not just because of all the hippos. Oh, "boo, boo"! What's this booing? It's like Halloween night at the Monosyllabic Convention! God, it's like trying to get through to the lead character in the Who's seminal rock opera "Tommy". What, how mature! You're going to throw apples at me? Oh, that's a grenade, shit...
Friday, September 11, 2009
THIS ONE TREE
THIS ONE TREE
By Hansel Castro
It was beautiful, this one tree. Its roots were coves for fairies, it was tall and green and no one could see its top but fruits fell from it often and the children below would laugh. It breathed out life and oxygen from its branches. Really, a stand up tree. It’s no surprise that our town held a contest and brought in some of the world’s most influential artists to see who could best capture the tree's beauty.
The first artist was a painter of the easel-and-palette variety who stared hard at the tree and you could hear him mumble: “Well, I’m going to go back to depiction and then forward into photorealism. I’m going to paint a darned tree that looks even more real than the actual thing.” And he painted the tree (to scale) with all the pain-staking, eye-fooling craft he could conjure. Yup, it looked like the tree, there, on the canvass.
The second artist started working rigorously after the first artist’s pattern, with some detailed retouching, but then they got into a HUGE fight because the first guy said there were 33 leaves in one of the tree’s branches, and the second guy said it was 34, and then the first guy was like: “Duh, it’s 33!” The other one was like: "It's clearly 34, you weirdo!” And the first guy was like: “It's only 34 if you're inbred!” They started punching each other really bad while the third artist dropped by, aloof, dressed pretty hip, brought out a camera and took a picture of the tree. “THERE! You suckers want the essence of the tree? It’s disposable and a click away!” He then ripped the photograph and tap-danced on the scraps. (He was a performance artist.)
The fourth artist said that they had all been approaching the tree incorrectly and that to really see the tree you had to look beyond your initial perception of the tree and contend with the idea of what a tree was, and in fact if the nomenclature was incorrect it could well be argued that all along they had been staring at an improperly illuminated lamp post.
The fifth artist was so frustrated by the fact that people could actually believe there was a tree that he gave a long lecture about how there was no tree at all. He refused to come to our town to see the tree because the tree didn’t exist, and anyway he would much rather stay at home and watch “Forrest Gump” on cable. The funny thing is he lived in a log-cabin made entirely from parts of our tree, but you know how those artists are. Sometimes they miss the forest for the trees. Or, in this case, the tree for the Forrest?
The sixth artist said that you couldn’t really capture the essence of the tree unless you BECAME the tree, and he squeezed fruit juices on his face and rubbed his back against the trunk and he covered himself with leaves and then he started throwing up and the doctors had to take him away because he’d had a bad allergic reaction to the fungi that grew on the tree’s bark. Who knew! The tree was actually kind of poisonous if you got too into it.
Our town had Grandma Bailey, her daughter Diana, and her little boy, Joey, act as sort of judges, but they were all a little bit soured by the whole big mess.
Grandma Bailey was really upset: “Wow, that was some clueless kind of fanciness! All I know is that the tree gave me some great fruitcake and I’ll be buried by it one of these days but other than that I don’t see why there has to be so much fussing! I’m missing my soaps!”
Diana, who’d just been bouncing from her divorce, said: “Sure, Ma, it was nonsense, but did you see that one tap-dancing artist? Maybe he has some answers for me. IN HIS PANTS!”
“DIANA!” Grandma Bailey wheezed and laughed.
Joey kept tugging at his mom’s sleeve: “THIS IS SO BORING!!! I JUST WANTED TO PLAY WITH THE TREE!!!”
As to what the tree thought about the contest, nobody knows. Trees are very wonderful, powerful, life-giving entities but they don’t SPEAK, silly.
By Hansel Castro
It was beautiful, this one tree. Its roots were coves for fairies, it was tall and green and no one could see its top but fruits fell from it often and the children below would laugh. It breathed out life and oxygen from its branches. Really, a stand up tree. It’s no surprise that our town held a contest and brought in some of the world’s most influential artists to see who could best capture the tree's beauty.
The first artist was a painter of the easel-and-palette variety who stared hard at the tree and you could hear him mumble: “Well, I’m going to go back to depiction and then forward into photorealism. I’m going to paint a darned tree that looks even more real than the actual thing.” And he painted the tree (to scale) with all the pain-staking, eye-fooling craft he could conjure. Yup, it looked like the tree, there, on the canvass.
The second artist started working rigorously after the first artist’s pattern, with some detailed retouching, but then they got into a HUGE fight because the first guy said there were 33 leaves in one of the tree’s branches, and the second guy said it was 34, and then the first guy was like: “Duh, it’s 33!” The other one was like: "It's clearly 34, you weirdo!” And the first guy was like: “It's only 34 if you're inbred!” They started punching each other really bad while the third artist dropped by, aloof, dressed pretty hip, brought out a camera and took a picture of the tree. “THERE! You suckers want the essence of the tree? It’s disposable and a click away!” He then ripped the photograph and tap-danced on the scraps. (He was a performance artist.)
The fourth artist said that they had all been approaching the tree incorrectly and that to really see the tree you had to look beyond your initial perception of the tree and contend with the idea of what a tree was, and in fact if the nomenclature was incorrect it could well be argued that all along they had been staring at an improperly illuminated lamp post.
The fifth artist was so frustrated by the fact that people could actually believe there was a tree that he gave a long lecture about how there was no tree at all. He refused to come to our town to see the tree because the tree didn’t exist, and anyway he would much rather stay at home and watch “Forrest Gump” on cable. The funny thing is he lived in a log-cabin made entirely from parts of our tree, but you know how those artists are. Sometimes they miss the forest for the trees. Or, in this case, the tree for the Forrest?
The sixth artist said that you couldn’t really capture the essence of the tree unless you BECAME the tree, and he squeezed fruit juices on his face and rubbed his back against the trunk and he covered himself with leaves and then he started throwing up and the doctors had to take him away because he’d had a bad allergic reaction to the fungi that grew on the tree’s bark. Who knew! The tree was actually kind of poisonous if you got too into it.
Our town had Grandma Bailey, her daughter Diana, and her little boy, Joey, act as sort of judges, but they were all a little bit soured by the whole big mess.
Grandma Bailey was really upset: “Wow, that was some clueless kind of fanciness! All I know is that the tree gave me some great fruitcake and I’ll be buried by it one of these days but other than that I don’t see why there has to be so much fussing! I’m missing my soaps!”
Diana, who’d just been bouncing from her divorce, said: “Sure, Ma, it was nonsense, but did you see that one tap-dancing artist? Maybe he has some answers for me. IN HIS PANTS!”
“DIANA!” Grandma Bailey wheezed and laughed.
Joey kept tugging at his mom’s sleeve: “THIS IS SO BORING!!! I JUST WANTED TO PLAY WITH THE TREE!!!”
As to what the tree thought about the contest, nobody knows. Trees are very wonderful, powerful, life-giving entities but they don’t SPEAK, silly.
"Superman: The Sunday Classics" 1939-43
The original Marvel was, of course, Superman. Before we bothered with myth and masochism and the onus and the inpenetrable anus of Supes, Superman was just this guy from Ktypton who could, like, throw a not-very-well proportioned-Buick from here to there. Or keep the lipstick-style trains from derailing. Or guide a bi-plane to an angularly safe landing in a lagoon. And then he went on from there. Cute, not particularly exciting stuff. One is left wondering if people were just that easily amused, until you realize there was a little something else stirring in the world. Let's see, what was going on between 1939 and 1943 that would make people yearn for this one man who could grab both Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin (as he did in the comissioned spread for the February 27, 1940 issue of "Look" magazine) and get them to a fictional League of Nations Judge.
Superman: "Gentlemen, I've brought before you the two power mad scoundrels responsible for Europe's present ills. What is your judgement?"
The judge: "GUILTY! Of modern history's greatest crime - unprovoked aggression against defenseless countries!"
HMMM.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
6 Everyday Items That Plot Against My Existence
Dear Imaginary Reader:
I've denied it with all my optimistic might, but it's true. In the last week or so everyday items have been trying to skim me right off the genetic pool, so it's really sad that none of the culprits are pool nets. That would really add to the metaphor.
Who's out to eliminate me?
My automatic dishwasher, and a fenceful of forks that were in there when I reached in blindly to pick up a spoon. One of the forks actually inserted its spiky head under one of my fingernails, and there's a bloody, pained spot left to remind me not to reach into places that are potentially loaded with sharp metal objects.
My detachable showerhead, which keeps on falling on my head unpredictably while I'm shampooing myself and I'm blinded, (oh, I'm not deluded, I know the shampoo is an accomplice.) The evil of this is that the showerhead will be completely fine for five minutes, and then suddenly it plunks down with its hydraulic judgment on my head. So I put it back up, and then it will be still for two minutes as I eye it warily, and as soon as I relax and continue being hygienic, SLAM, it looses its pythonesque attack on me. That thing HURTS.
My staff badge at work: I bent down to pick some books, the scary laminated square that hangs albatross-like from my neck got snagged on something and as I bent back up, the badge snapped up and aimed at least one of its four sharp corners directly for my cornea; that I am not blinded and wearing an eye patch at the moment can only be attributed to the fact that the lamination was made in Miami-Dade county, and is therefore a bit on the weak side.
My "Kite-Runner Official Memorabilia" Kite: Admittedly, it merely struck at me in self defense, considering I took it out during an electric storm. The whimsically decorated rhombus tried to chop my head off as it descended before the estimated arrival time.
My microwave oven: I suspect this subtle bastard is slowly delving out its dose of testicle cancer, but that's all right, it's not like I'm going to be needing those anytime soon.
My bedside lamp: the trusted light bearer of my nights of lecture randomly fell on my head right around bedtime last night, in a kamikaze gesture that had no detectable physical origin: it's not San Francisco, you know? I am extremely grateful to my bed, my steadfast partisan during all these attacks: if it had been a bathtub instead of a bed, then I would surely have died with cinematic sparks when the lamp fell on it. But it has remained, unwaveringly, a bed, for many years now. That kind of loyalty can't be esteemed highly enough.
I've denied it with all my optimistic might, but it's true. In the last week or so everyday items have been trying to skim me right off the genetic pool, so it's really sad that none of the culprits are pool nets. That would really add to the metaphor.
Who's out to eliminate me?
My automatic dishwasher, and a fenceful of forks that were in there when I reached in blindly to pick up a spoon. One of the forks actually inserted its spiky head under one of my fingernails, and there's a bloody, pained spot left to remind me not to reach into places that are potentially loaded with sharp metal objects.
My detachable showerhead, which keeps on falling on my head unpredictably while I'm shampooing myself and I'm blinded, (oh, I'm not deluded, I know the shampoo is an accomplice.) The evil of this is that the showerhead will be completely fine for five minutes, and then suddenly it plunks down with its hydraulic judgment on my head. So I put it back up, and then it will be still for two minutes as I eye it warily, and as soon as I relax and continue being hygienic, SLAM, it looses its pythonesque attack on me. That thing HURTS.
My staff badge at work: I bent down to pick some books, the scary laminated square that hangs albatross-like from my neck got snagged on something and as I bent back up, the badge snapped up and aimed at least one of its four sharp corners directly for my cornea; that I am not blinded and wearing an eye patch at the moment can only be attributed to the fact that the lamination was made in Miami-Dade county, and is therefore a bit on the weak side.
My "Kite-Runner Official Memorabilia" Kite: Admittedly, it merely struck at me in self defense, considering I took it out during an electric storm. The whimsically decorated rhombus tried to chop my head off as it descended before the estimated arrival time.
My microwave oven: I suspect this subtle bastard is slowly delving out its dose of testicle cancer, but that's all right, it's not like I'm going to be needing those anytime soon.
My bedside lamp: the trusted light bearer of my nights of lecture randomly fell on my head right around bedtime last night, in a kamikaze gesture that had no detectable physical origin: it's not San Francisco, you know? I am extremely grateful to my bed, my steadfast partisan during all these attacks: if it had been a bathtub instead of a bed, then I would surely have died with cinematic sparks when the lamp fell on it. But it has remained, unwaveringly, a bed, for many years now. That kind of loyalty can't be esteemed highly enough.
Bertrand Russell's "The History of Western Philosophy" Part 1: The Pre-Socratics
In the way back days the Greeks invented wine and got so drunk they came up with this bearded "god" who lived high among the clouds and every now and then would come down to impregnate women with "sons of gods". Some seriously wacky stuff. Then a few of these Greeks started "thinking" and they came up with even crazier superstitions about how a^2 + b^2= c^2, or about how human perception was limited and fallible, or about how everything was composed of little "atoms". They called themselves "Philosophers" ("Lovers of Phil"). Most of them are dead by now.
ABOVE: Pythagoras, teaching his famous theorem to his 6-year old boyfriend, name of Phil.
ABOVE: Pythagoras, teaching his famous theorem to his 6-year old boyfriend, name of Phil.
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
Whatta Let Down
09/09/09
Wasn't the world supposed to end today or something? And no, getting my heart stomped on doesn't count, that just means it's Wednesday again.
"Scotch! Cigarettes! Rotary Phones! Racism!" - Just like Visiting my Grandma's
The 60-second "Mad Men". Because life is too short for plot development.
Monday, September 07, 2009
Fab Four meet Fantastic Four
Have you heard this band called the Beatles? I know, total The Vines rip-offs. But it's like they're everywhere these days! They even snuck into Mr. Fantastic's wedding, and Alex Ross captured the moment in "Marvels". Go play "Where's Ringo?"!
Bill Pronzini's "Bones"
The Nameless Detective is on Berkeley when the ground shakes under him, tossing up some skeletal revelations in a cold case involving the secrets of yet another pulp-crime writer. (The pulps are Pronzini's favorite digging grounds.)
The Uninformed Pundit #2137: Trotsky for Tots
Dear Imaginary Reader:
The ever-resourceful staff of culture warriors at Hallucina has managed to get a few leaked copies of President Barack Engels Bin Laden Obama's tyrannic speech aimed at an easily-swayed American youth which has been preliminarily debilitated by the Asian/Canadian brain-washing programs code-named "Yugi-Oh" and "Avatar".
We're still hopeful that our freedom-loving coutrymen will prevent tomorrow's event. You wouldn't let a child molester talk to your kids, would you? So why a "PRESIDENT"? Who died and made this guy president anyway? What's next? Are we going to force our kids to "PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE" to our "COUNTRY" every day or something? Are we back in the U.S.S.R?!? Don't we know how lucky we are?!?
Here's the text of the speech.
That's correct!!! The bastard intends to lull our children into a deep sleepy trance during which his assistants will storm the classrooms and force "VIVA LA TROTSKY" shirts on our kids!!!
It is a dark time in American history when we allow our presidents to lead our youth. I mean, one thing is sending them to die in expensive, nation-crippling wars, but BORING THEM TOO?!? Things have gone too far. It's time for LA REVOLUCION! Who's with Hallucina on this one?
Saturday, September 05, 2009
Carlos Ruiz Zafon's "The Shadow of the Wind"
I very much enjoyed "The Shadow of the Wind", although it's all a bit of a gazpacho, floating bits and pieces on a cold allusive soup. But the enthusiasm for books, for literature, that motivates foreign authors like Zafon and Roberto Bolano, only make me really really sad as I realize with some startlement that novels are antiquities for eccentric collectors and that books are elitist treasures that might disappear from our hands in as little as a decade or two.
Brian Reed's "Ms. Marvel"
Talking about Marvels, I guess I should note my browsing of "Ms. Marvel". Carol Danvers' adventures are beautifully illustrated but there's no sense of her character having much CHARACTER, sadly. The stories find her flying from hither to thither without centering on anything, and it's hard to get why we should follow. This is why Marvel's potential Wonder Woman still doesn't get to seat at the big table near the proscenium when Tony Stark has a gala.
Danielle Steel's "Matters of the Heart"
It's one of those tasks every man has to do before he dies: plant a tree, go skydiving, go to Mecca, kill a panda bear, and read a Danielle Steel novel.
So I decided to jack-hammer my Steel cherry with her 100th novel, the promisingly-titled "Matters of the Heart".
It's about Hope Dunne (as in "I HOPE you never have to read this!")
Hope is a "successful career photographer" whose work is lauded in Vogue AND the MoMa. Something every gal can aspire to, you know. She's chronicled Angelina Jolie's baby-hunting in Africa and was there when God personally killed Mother Teresa. That big of a photographer! But she's given the toughest assignment of her career when she has to take the portrait of rakish best-seller writer Finn O'Neill McConaughey. She's warned all along that Finn is a ladies' man and will try to seduce her, but she's a 44 year old career-driven woman! Surely she can resist his caddish charm! But oh no! Soon she is seduced by his evil web of magnificent sex- you know those WRITERS, with their rippling muscles from pumping typewriters all day long! So Hope falls to Finn's seduction, only to realize that he's a bastard, a "sociopath" who, like, LIES about stuff, and brow beats her with his massive penis! Will Hope find the strength to withdraw from this sexy sandpit of sin? Well, of course, but it takes her reams of (boring) humiliation, long after any reasonable woman of her supposed intellect and position in the world would have given the dude a restraining order and a one-two-heel-shoe to the 'nads!
Whatever. I did it. And it was way less painful than "CLARISSA" (look it up, Anglophobic Imaginary Reader!)
Where's that Panda Bear? Daddy's got a bucket list to fill!
So I decided to jack-hammer my Steel cherry with her 100th novel, the promisingly-titled "Matters of the Heart".
It's about Hope Dunne (as in "I HOPE you never have to read this!")
Hope is a "successful career photographer" whose work is lauded in Vogue AND the MoMa. Something every gal can aspire to, you know. She's chronicled Angelina Jolie's baby-hunting in Africa and was there when God personally killed Mother Teresa. That big of a photographer! But she's given the toughest assignment of her career when she has to take the portrait of rakish best-seller writer Finn O'Neill McConaughey. She's warned all along that Finn is a ladies' man and will try to seduce her, but she's a 44 year old career-driven woman! Surely she can resist his caddish charm! But oh no! Soon she is seduced by his evil web of magnificent sex- you know those WRITERS, with their rippling muscles from pumping typewriters all day long! So Hope falls to Finn's seduction, only to realize that he's a bastard, a "sociopath" who, like, LIES about stuff, and brow beats her with his massive penis! Will Hope find the strength to withdraw from this sexy sandpit of sin? Well, of course, but it takes her reams of (boring) humiliation, long after any reasonable woman of her supposed intellect and position in the world would have given the dude a restraining order and a one-two-heel-shoe to the 'nads!
Whatever. I did it. And it was way less painful than "CLARISSA" (look it up, Anglophobic Imaginary Reader!)
Where's that Panda Bear? Daddy's got a bucket list to fill!
Friday, September 04, 2009
Kurt Busiek's and Alex Ross' "Marvels"
To celebrate Marvel's acquisition by the Mouse Factory, I re-read "Marvels", the four-issue limited series that made Alex Ross, (the painter, not the music writer) the hottest depictor of super-heroic icons. Ross does mercenary work for both Marvel and DC and he's the best at capturing that true sense of well, MARVELING at mythical Nietzchean wonders.
Thursday, September 03, 2009
Samuel Beckett's "Watt" and "Mercier and Camier"
I sort of sat, or made as if to sit, or rather interruptedly perched myself at the edge of a chair that gyrated, even when unprompted, before my computer. The rotation of the chair, lunatic as it was, reminded me of that of our satellite companion, which would make the computer the Earth in this analogical game. But I say, computer, nuts to that! I ask no computations of you, no mathematical imbroglios, I ask you to simply allow me to post onto my blog whatever residue of bile and contempt at the human condition I have daily accumulated in my spleen. What would Ariosto say, of me blogging, in my mad rotating chair, pecking strambotically at the keyboard? "So, a Riot!" the Poet would laugh at me. Anagrams are the lowest form of human expression, next to the Italian language, but what would that Wop know? Woppettywood.
Just then Mrs. Hackingshaw walked in, sashaying her buttocks under her culottes as if they were twin pork loins she'd smuggled during a famined embargo. "Did you notice," Mrs. Hackingshaw said.
"What" said I, I being me, and me being in control of my sayings and quotations and casually orphaned proverbs.
"'Tis as cloudy outside as a grammarian's ink-blotter!"
"But my dear," said I and me and you, blogging blogging blogging away all the while, "a cloud is nought but the negation of light made pompous."
She then farted loudly, a fart which rippled outwards and made her pork loin buttocks tremble as though there had been a most delicious, outrageous rumor spreading throughout the abbatoir. I decided I should stab Mrs. Hackingshaw, weary as I was of her improprieties, and I would do it on a Sunday, or perhaps a Tuesday, but certainly not on a Friday or Saturday or Sunday, for policemen aroused from their Sabbath might be more choleric than the situation would otherwise warrant.
And what can one stab with? Ah, goes that old Irish court-room supplication:
"Stab your wife with a knife
Stab your mick with a prick
Stab your beggar with a dagger..."
Oh, how did it go? Go go go it went. Until it could not. And this communal couldnotness of ours made the moon, as it leaped off the edge in a suicide's day, piss on the earth with its dewy nothingness. End blog. End all.
There, now you never have to read a book by Samuel Beckett.
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
Bill Pronzini's "Small Felonies", "Undercurrent"
"Small Felonies" has Bill Pronizini packing wallops in 50 short-shorts stories- many with delightful little "Alfred Hitchcock Presents"-type plot twists. "Undercurrent", the third novel in the Nameless Detective Series, involves a man who's been neglecting his wife, and a pulpy paperback lying nearby, suggesting something other than the murdered man's state of literacy.
Disneyvel
What with Disney buying Marvel I was all set to write a bit about Mickey Mouse wandering down an alley pondering about great power and responsibility, and Donald Duck quacking out that "you wouldn't like him when he's angry!", or photo-shopping Disney's Belle dancing with X-Men's The Beast, but then I realized that every single nerd-boy and fan-girl in the Internet were going to do exactly the same thing, and way better than me, and I don't even know how to use Photoshop beyond painting smileys on Picasso JPEGS. Sure, with some commitment I might draw out a few chuckles of obviousity, but who am I if I can't do a simple Flash animation or a fancy YouTube video?
Who am I?
Powerless, irresponsible, I tore the mask from my face, and wandered into the crowd. The city, behind me, hummed its silly symphony of death.
Who am I?
Powerless, irresponsible, I tore the mask from my face, and wandered into the crowd. The city, behind me, hummed its silly symphony of death.
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