ONE MORE PARADE

I was going to write about the resolution in the US House of Representatives officially labeling the mass killing of Armenians by the Turkish government as genocide. I had every intention of musing over the inability of the human race to even agree on atrocities commited in the past, and how that helps explain our inability to comprehend the present. I would have comented on the duplicity of Americans to condemn the atrocity of other nations, while failing to do the same with their own, while also noting the moral failing of the Turks to reckon with their own past.

It was that last part that undid me. Angry Turks are taking to the streets of Istanbul to take back the good name of their country. The right and the left clash in Istanbul. The government issues proclamations from Istanbul.

Istanbul. Istanbul. Istanbul.

And if you know me, you know where this is leading. Yeah, it's totally off topic, but how can I constantly type the word Istanbul without getting to this?



Well, obviously, I couldn't.

Yet in searching YouTube for Istanbul (Not Constaninople) clips, I found a homemade video for another They Might be Giants recording, a cover of the great Phil Ochs song One More Parade, which eloquently crystalizes my thoughts on the human race's inability to prevent history from repeating itself. Not a happy song or a happy clip, but when we can't even agree on the definition of genocide, we aren't living in happy times.

I JUST GOTTA TELL YOU GOODBYE

Hey, sorry, I'm a day late--I spent yesterday in mourning over Joe Torre (though as of right now, he hasn't been handed his walking papers)--but I couldn't let John Lennon's 67th birthday go by without the inevitable tribute. Here he demonstrates his uncanny ability to make absolute, utter despair surprisingly melodic:



And here he is with that obscure band he was in. Yeah, I kind of got sick of this song about the same time as everyone else--it's hard to hear it without visions of Matthew Broderick appearing in my head--but Lennon sings the hell out of it, and geez, the lads seem to be having a ball.



I was going to leave it at that, but what the heck...Ladies and germs, Jeremy Hilary Boob, Esquire:

THE END OF THE LINE

Well, it's all over for the Yankees, and probably for manager Joe Torre as well. The perpetually nutty George Steinbrenner had made it clear that if Torre couldn't take the team to the Series, his twelve year career with the team was over.

Torre, of course, could only go with what he had, and the Yankees have struggled all season due to a lack of decent pitching. This isn't Torre's fault, of course; it's Steinbrenner's. This clown has always had the attitude that money trumps everything, so he spends a fortune to acquire superstars rather than building an actual, functioning team. (He made a big show of bringing back aging legend Roger Clemens, who promptly contributed pretty much nothing.)

Things will probably only get worse for the Yankees, since Steinbrenner is apparently planning on leaving much of the day-to-day business of running the franchise to his kids, business types with no love for the game.

As depressing as that is, it's got nothing on this headline from today's New York Times: DEMOCRATS SEEM READY TO EXTEND WIRETAP POWERS.

The mighty opposition party is preparing to go ahead and give Team Bush everything they want.

Again.

LEAVE ME WHERE I AM

Odd, isn't it, how dreams have elaborate backstories that need no rational explanation; they're easily understood since they are, after all, emanating from our own psyches.

The farmhouse in which I was raised was already a crumbling ruin by the time Mom sold it off, but in my dream it still stood, the rooms still decorated as they had always been, all my family's worldly possesions still contained within. But this dream took place in a world without Mom, as we, her children, sifted through the remnanats of our lives, searching for something, some kind of meaning...or something.

In my room, I found a journal Mom had kept based on a dare I had issued her, to watch a bunch of TV shows she would normally avoid and write about them. She filled the pages with acerbic comments on such forgotten late seventies arcana as W.E.B., Lifeline and The American Girls. There were her thoughts, her personality alive on the page, and it was as though she lived again.

Then I woke up.

Obviously, in real life, this journal never existed. But in that weird twilight between the dream state and the waking world, I half convinced myself it did exist, and had to be around somewhere. The details were too convincing: She'd written about shows that actually existed, and the authorial voice in the journals seemed so convincingly Mom's own. If only I could find it, and read it again, and remember another forgotten aspect of my mother, before another memory slipped away.

I got up out of bed, drank some milk, then laid back down. I wanted to go back to sleep, to somehow re-enter the same dream, but of course, that couldn't happen. So I thought about my dream. Remembering Mom, the house from my childhood, that all makes sense. But W.E.B, Lifeline, The American Girls? Series from the fall of 1978, none of which lasted a full season. Why the hell had my subconscious pulled those things out of the aether?

Might be best not to ask.

AAIIEE!!

If, for some reason, you do a search for "Baby Pigeons" on YouTube, you'll get page after page of results. But nothing captures the reality of these little suckers better than this one:



Yikes! They're like the creepiest things Ray Harryhausen never animated...and, like most Harryhausen creations, kind of adorable, too.

A pigeon family unit has moved in around my air conditioner. Problem is, I live in a drafty old apartment, as since autumn is advancing, I'll have to remove the AC and put in the storm window, which means displacing the birds, which...I mean, I don't want them here, but I don't to want get rid of them, either. But they can't stay here, so...What do I do?

Man, I hate it when real life turns into a Mark Trail strip.

GEE, THAT'S A SHAME

The president swears the US does not condone torture--despite a memo issued by his own justice department condoning torture--because, well, because he says so. Another US attack on another village in Iraq; the US claims they were rooting out insurgents, Iraq claims they were civilians trying to defend their homes. And the Yankees are two games down in the playoffs against Cleveland. Cleveland!

When things are this bleak, I need to laugh. Who better to supply the funny than my first comic hero, a man I revered as a child before I even knew his name? I loved him as Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Pepe Le Pew and so many more. Here he is on camera, doing an absolutely priceless bit with Jack Benny. Ladies and gentlemen, Mel Blanc:



No matter how many times I see this, it always makes me laugh. Not just me; Benny and Blanc performed countless variations of this routine, and as you can see, Benny starts to lose it every time he looks at Blanc's face. Jack Benny was one of the greatest comedians who ever lived, and Mel Blanc could crack him up--there's a master.

Here's another great bit from these guys, a culmination of a running gag you'll be able to figure out. Blanc's action, and Benny's amazingly casual reaction, are astonishing for the era; bleak comedy is nothing new:



And hey, as long as we're celebrating Mel Blanc, I can't leave this out. One of the greatest things ever put on film, and yeah, it's success is largely due to Michael Maltese's brilliant plotting and dialogue ("Pronoun trouble!") and, of course, the brilliant direction of Chuck Jones. But their efforts would be meaningless without Blanc's contributions. Bugs' "Yay-as?" is pretty much a daily utterance from me, but the real treasure is is Blanc's work as Daffy, making the "little black duck" into a world-class neurotic. This is simply great acting. As good as it gets, folks:

ATTEND THE TALE

I've been--how to put it?--conflicted about the notion of Tim Burton's film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd ever since it was first announced. This puts some concerns to rest, even as it creates more:



First of all, it's hard to guess what the movie's like from watching a trailer, especially these days. They're cut the same way, and this has all the usual elements: Whooshing transitions from shot to shot, generic narrator, generic music.

The most infuriating thing about this trailer, of course, is how it works overtime to hide the fact that the movie in question is a musical. Sure, we hear Johnny Depp kinda sorta breaking into song at one point, but is this the best way to sell this picture? Will audiences showing up for the bloody thriller this seems to promote be surprised by all the singing? Why even make the movie, then try to hide its nature?

Based on what can be gathered from this, however, I have qualms. I realize this is an adaptation, and is not honor bound to follow Hugh Wheeler's book for the musical, but clearly the title character's backstory, merely alluded to in the play, has been given an elaborate visualization. This seems an insult to an audience's intelligence--underline the point or else we'll miss it--and by showing us Sweeney's presumed-dead past love, it would give away a major climactic surprise...assuming that plot point is still included.

Then, of course, there's Depp's singing. From the brief snippet we here, his voice seems rather thin, and I suspect they may have tried to adapt the more operatic passages of Sondheim's score into rhythmic dialogue, easier for Depp to handle. Again, why do this project if your leading man isn't up to the challenge?

Of course, I'm just guessing. There's no doubt Depp looks like he belongs in this world, and he seems to have thrown himself into the role with real dedication. Certainly this is a gorgeously produced film, but with this material, there's only one way to evaluate it: It will either work or it won't. If it works, it will be thrilling. If it doesn't, it'll be awful. There's no middle ground.

SCUM

According to today's New York Times, in 2005 the Justice Department issued a secret order basically giving the CIA and any other organizations under Bush's purview authority to beat the hell out of prisoners in any way they might see fit. This, while the White House publicly condemned the use of torture.

The Times story provides chilling evidence of just how spineless Alberto Gonzales was in standing up for basic notions of justice, and what a fanatical and extreme bunch of bastards the Bushinistas really are. The "war on terror" gave these sociopaths the green light to do anything they wanted, and no one had the guts to say no.

Why? Democrats and some Republicans have claimed to be shocked--shocked!--by the bloodthirsty actions of gun-crazed thugs operating under the authority of Blackwater USA, actions that have gained attention as the voices of protest from within Iraq have grown louder.

Yet I've known about Blackwater and the other private security firms the US government hired to transport energy company execs (the press likes to refer to these guys as "diplomats") to and from the oil fields, and the kill-crazy attitudes of these mercenaries, for, gosh, years now. Let me repeat that: I've known about it, and I don't have access to documents and licensing agreements and whatever else our elected representatives have. Yet somehow they didn't know about all this?

Of course they knew. Not until the Iraqi government formally protested, threatening to kick Blackwater out, did our government profess the slightest concern for all those dead brown-skinned people. Not until we were officially shamed in the court of world opinion did we care. This is the hollow, pathetic excuse for democracy we want to spread around the world, and we're surprised when the world rejects it.

YOU THINK SO, YOU FOUCH?

Day three of Nation Blog Writing Month. The terrian is strange, the weather, beastly. Last night we were forced to kill our Sherpa for food and warmth.

(I was going to attempt a Tenzing Norgay joke here, but it's early...)

Anyway, the usual madness continues, both here (you don't wanna know) and in the wider world (Democrats squabbling over Iraq, Erik Prince defending Blackwater...Maybe you don't wanna know about that, either.), and the planet still spins.

I do want to make note of the passing of the criminally underrated screenwriter Charles Griffith, who died last month at the age of 77. Griffith was a member of the Roger Corman stable who did not break into the Big Time, unlike your Coppolas and Scorseses or Griffith's fellow scribe Robert Towne. Based on his work, however, Griffith might have been the most talented of the bunch.

He wrote Little Shop Of Horrors, for crying out loud, and The Wild Angels, which means he wrote the deathless line "We wanna be free to ride our machines without being hassled by the man." When ironic hipsters use endless variations of that line--and trust me, they do--they're unkowingly paying tribute to this unsung genius.

His scripts were inventively plotted, stuffed full of oddball characters and often brilliant dialogue. Unfortunately, Corman usually filmed them indifferently, neuturing their natural gusto, keeping their brilliance buried. Griffith tarried in the Corman stable too long, and by the seventies and eighties, when he was turning out the likes of Smokey Bites The Dust, it was obvious he'd never escape.

So he never made The Godfather or Taxi Driver or wrote Chinatown. But he gave us Seymour Krelboin, Gravis Muschnick and a carnivorous plant, and I'll take that any day of the week.

WHEN I'VE GOT SOMETHING TO SAY, SIR, I'M GONNA SAY IT NOW

I asked a co-worker a procedural question. He responded by asking if I could think of a better way of doing certain things. "Well," I began, and continued, apparently for quite awhile. He paused a beat, then said, "When you started talking, I thought I heard something that makes sense. Then you kept ranting, and I forgot it."

I do go on, don't I?

More time is spent writing these little pieces than you might guess from reading them. I try to cut out as much fat as possible, and try to put some thought into it. Even my seeming place-holding posts, like collections of embedded video clips, are assembled with some care; I attempt to find things that go together thematically, or bounce off each other in interesting, hopefully enlightening ways.

All this is prompted by a "challenge" I received from my ex-wife: To put up a new post every day through the month of October. (It's National Blog Writing Month, folks. Get that shopping done early!) Well, heck, that's not much of a challenge. After all, I'm always here, even when I don't feel like it. That's why I'm constantly apologizing when I don't feel like writing. Though I don't exactly have a huge readership--once again, thanks to both of you!--I do feel an obligation to anyone who comes here to have something to read or enjoy.

If she'd put any restrictions on this challenge--no Beatles clips, no mention of Vincente Minnelli--this might be difficult. But I'll be here as always, pounding out the wordage, though perhaps sometimes annoyingly apologetic for my failures as a host, like the Beast in Cocteau's La Belle Et La Bete, but hoping to entertain or enlighten or whatever the hell it is I do around here. Hopefully, most of my sentences will be shorter than the preceding, but I can't promise anything.

I CRIED SO I SCARCELY COULD SEE

Sadness, mortality and the end of the world:

1) My sister Ann's beloved dog Priscilla was hit by a car Saturday.

For now, Priscilla seems to be okay. She was hit (and dragged a little ways) around her tail, which as Ann points out, is spinal cord territory. But urinary functions are normal, and she's eating and drinking, and doesn't recoil when Ann touches her. I have to think she'll be okay--I have to, because it's too sad to think otherwise--since dogs are amazingly resilient. Maybe she'll never be quite the same...but maybe she will.

You're not supposed to care so much about animals. They're just lower life forms, you know? But I spend a little time every single day thinking of beloved Pinback and Scotchie and Elinore. Certainly, if anything happened to Delmar, I really don't know what I'd do. (I'm not worried at all about Monika. She's nearly forteen and, even as I write this, is tearing around the apartment like a kitten. Monika will outlive me.)

2) As a hardcore James Bond fanatic, I would be remiss if I didn't note the passing of Lois Maxwell at the age of 80. She was, of course, Miss Moneypenny, perenially pining for her beloved James, the recipient of some rather cruel brushoffs from the world's coolest misogynist. Maxwell was there from the very beginning, Dr. No in 1962, all the way through 1985's regrettable A View To A Kill. She played bridesmaid to three different Bonds (literally so in On Her Majesty's Secret Service), and despite the waxworks qualities she and the aged Roger Moore brought to some of their later efforts, it was always nice to see her. She owned the role, and though it's been recast in newer Bonds, it's never been properly filled.

3) Seymour Hersh's dogged reporting on the buildup to the Iraq invasion and all subsequent events has always been denied by the Bushinistas, and largely ignored by the mainstream press. Time tends to prove, however, that Hersh's sources are accurate, and the conclusions he draws come true.

Hersh has a piece in the current New Yorker detailing the plans Bush and Cheney--mostly Cheney--are drawing up for a strike against Iran. Opposition to this plan from high-placed military officials seems to be dwindling, so it's all but a done deal.

So even though our military resources are stretched unbearably thin in Iraq and Afghanistan, we're about to invade a third country.

Anybody else envisioning mushroom clouds set to Vera Lynn? We'll meet again...

THE WRETCHED HAVE THEIR RAGE

If we truly lived in a democratic nation, and the final arbiters of justice in the nation were nine learned justices--a Supreme Court, if you will--then it would surely be expected that those justices to be fair and impartial, or at least as impartial as a human being could be. We wouldn't, for instance, allow anyone to get on the court who openly admitted his or her hatred towards certain ideologies, and surely if someone clearly prejudiced did somehow land on this court, steps for removal would immediately be taken.

Of course, this isn't a democratic nation.

Clarence Thomas has, God help us, published a memoir, and even though he won his battle against Anita Hill--he's on the court, after all--he can't let it go, not only dismissing Hill's claims of sexual harrassment, but spinning a conspiracy theory that she was just a front for abortion groups determined to keep him off the court.

As a black kid in the south, the KKK may have been scary, but not as scary as liberals: "My worst fears had come to pass not in georgia, but in Wasington, D.C., where I was being pursued not by bigots in white robes but by left-wing zealots draped in flowing sanctimony."

So members of congress who rightly questioned his suitability for the court are worse than the Klan, according to Thomas. You might think that kind of trivializes all those black corpses hanging from trees, but remember, in the world according to Clarence, race doesn't matter. That's why it's okey-doaks to abolish affirmitive action; just because Thomas was himself a beneficiary doesn't mean African-Americans today should be allowed the advantages he had. He was black when he needed to be, now he's color-blind. A miracle!

Thomas is a douchebag, no question. What does it say for the rest of us, though, that we let this guy--clearly closed-minded, hostile to change, openly contempuous of his own race--set the laws of the land? It's obvious what's wrong with him...but what's wrong with us?

WORDS

No matter how this scenario plays out, everybody loses.

Hollywood studios have been ramping up their production schedules, trying to get as many movies before the cameras as possible by the beginning of next year, before contracts with unions representing actors and directors expire. The Writers Guild contract expires next month, however, and those crafty scribes have figured out that many of these projects being rushed into production lack finalized scripts. So if they strike now, the studios are screwed.

Hard to have much rooting interest in a pissing contest between gazillionaires, but what is really made clear is how slipshod movie production is. Many, many movies, including megabudget tripe like Justice League Of America and Another Night (the much-unawaited sequel to A Night At The Museum) start filming before anybody's even bothered writing the damned things. I realize this occasionally works--studio execs love to hold up the example of Casablanca, which was written on the fly--but in general, this is like constructing a building without bothering with a blueprint.

Of course, what good is a blueprint if the architect is incomepetent? Could a sequel to A Night At The Museum filmed without a script conceivably be any worse than the original with a script? The screenplay for Justice League (Jessica Biel turned down a part in this because she didn't find it interesting enough. Let me rephrase that: This movie doesn't even sound good enough to interest Jessica Fucking Biel!) is reportedly "not ready," but can anybody who sat through, say, Pirates Of The Caribbean 3 or Transformers believe those scripts were worth filming?

Summing up: If the writers go on strike, we'll be deprived of awful Ben Stiller movies. If the strike is averted, more crap is on the way.

My head hurts.

SOME THAT YOU RECOGNIZE

Not that I've had a blinding revelation or anything, but I might have been too hard on 3:10 To Yuma when I mentioned it yesterday. It didn't do much for me, but it's certainly a well-crafted piece of work. Director James Mangold is clearly no Delmar Daves, much less Anthony Mann, but then again, those directors worked in an era when audiences were more patient, not expecting constant action or motion every five minutes.

Additionally, 3:10 To Yuma is fraught with the weight of expectation. So few westerns are made these days, any new one seems to carry the future of the genre on its shoulders, and you can feel the strain here, as the film wants to be an old-fashioned oater, a modern ADD-edited action epic and an ironic comment on filmic traditions, all at the same time.

Recent musicals have been victims of this tendency, as well. Dreamgirls tried so hard to be all things to all audiences, it felt as though its negative was processed in flop sweat. On the other hand, Hairspray didn't try to be anything other than what it was, and was wonderfully entertaining.

And Hairspray, for which I had incredibly low expectations, turns out to be my favorite movie of the year so far. How the hell did that happen? There are movies I know are better--Zodiac, say, or Sicko--and movies I liked a great deal, like Bug. And Ratatouille, for crying out loud! That's a movie to fall in love with, expertly realized, a near perfect combination of humor and pathos. Yet somehow, I felt detached, disconnected. I didn't take it to my heart.

Maybe it's me. These last couple years have been a bit of a rollercoaster, emotionally speaking--I believe I've written about that here occasionally, yes?--and even though movies used to provide succor in times of need, lately they feel more like a hollow distraction.

Or maybe it's the movies themselves. After all, I was in the mood to be entertained when I saw 3:10 To Yuma, so I wanted to enjoy it, but it just didn't deliver on anything more than a basic level. Zodiac was undeniably well-made, but so self-conscious in its echoes of seventies cinema it couldn't even breathe. Sicko was a well-made film about an important subject, but Michael Moore fell into his familiar schtick too easily. And Ratatouille--well, no, the problem with that is me, because there was nothing wrong with that movie.

I should go see it again. Perhaps I'll fall in love with it this time, and my faith in the movies will be restored. It'd be nice if I could at least believe in something.

ITS ORIGIN AND PURPOSE STILL A TOTAL MYSTERY

Right, well, it's my day off and I'm not sticking to one topic. Please join me, won't you, as we pinball around my psyche.

1) I saw 3:10 To Yuma last night, mostly because I was in the mood for something entertaining but not taxing, and the neighborhood theater where it's playing has cheap admission and bargain prices at the concession stand. Usually, I'm not a popcorn sort of guy, but I make exceptions for Bond pictures, Indiana Jones movies and non-"serious" westerns.

Anyway, as for the movie...eh, it was okay. I enjoyed it enough while it played, but I saw it less than twenty-four hours ago and damned if I can remember much about it. And I like westerns. If I didn't spend so much time going on about Vincente Minnelli, I'd go on and on about the greatness of Anthony Mann and Andre DeToth, and don't even get me started on Sam Peckinpah, or we'll be here all week. I'd love to see the genre make a comeback, but 3:10 To Yuma doesn't seem like the harbinger of greater things. I am cautiously optimistic about The Assasination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, however. The Ron Hansen novel from which it's adapted is great.

2) Hey, speaking of Vincente Minnelli, look! A clip from The Pirate, neatly showcasing Minnelli's stylish direction and the absolutely brilliant comic performances of Gene Kelly and Judy Garland.



You know, you can find this on DVD online for less than fifteen bucks. Buy it! Buy it now!

3) If you have errands to run and you want to do them in blessed silence, may I suggest weekday mornings? I went to the bank, Petco, a book store and an auto supply store and...nothing. No crowds, mostly no other customers at all. It was nice. Well, except...

4) The bank. I keep going to the same branch of the bank, with the fading hope that the same teller--let's call her Busty--will return, but she never has.

Several trips in a row, I was serviced (ahem) by Busty, a well-rounded, curly haired brunette who favored low-cut tops with no bra. Once, she was wearing a button-down number with several of the buttons undone, and as she leaned forward, her spectacular mounds burst forth like Vesuvius, only with popping nipples instead of scalding lava. I realize it's probably wrong to just stare gape-mouthed at a woman's tits (and I'm pretty sure it was obvious I was staring), but Holy Joe, they were spectacular. And huge. And right there!

Busty's gone--I hope she didn't get in trouble for displaying her Twin Peaks, but she was rather blatant about it--so now going to the bank is as exciting as...going to the bank.

But in memory of her charms, here's Mike Nelson, Crow T. Robot and Tom Servo.



5) Actual headline in today's New York Times: BLACKWATER TOPS FIRMS IN IRAQ IN SHOOTING RATE. Funny thing is, I've known this for years now, and I don't have the resources of the Paper Of Record at my disposal. It's almost like The Times, like all mainstream American media, has been willfully ignorant of what was always there, like they've chosen to simply ignore the pernicious forces the U.S. government has hired to do its dirty work. Weird...

6) I always mention my cats when I do one of these random thoughts things, don't I. Well, not today. Nope, no mention of adorable, fuzzy Monika or dangerously psychotic Delmar. No mention at all.

I'VE ONLY SAD STORIES TO TELL TO THIS TOWN

Sorry. I know things have been pretty depressing around here lately. When I'm not avoiding writing by posting music clips, I ramble on and on about the latest wretched turn in my life, or the latest tragic events in the wider world. It's not always a fun read around here, or maybe I'm just not a fun person. There must be some reason why women keep dumping me.

Oops, I did it again, off on another woe-is-me tear. It's not as though my life is entirely without joy, although moments of pleasure tend to be fleeting...No, damn it, that sounds depressing, too.

Ah, but we do, after all, live in a rather depressing world. Dog-eat-dog doesn't begin to cover it; more like dog-kill-dog-just-for-pleasure. People are cruel, simply because they can be. In America right now, the gap between rich and poor has never been greater, and the president goes out of his way to give extra perks to those who need it least. And we do nothing about it! We stand slack-jawed, allowing ourselves to be abused by the powerful, utterly convinced of the futility of even attempting change.

I could link this tendency to my personal life, of course. There's a reason why it seems I write about my cats more and more often. They're my only companions these days. I don't go out much, not right now. Why the hell should I? I don't even want to date, because I can write the story before it happens, and what's the point of getting hurt again?

Say, didn't this start out with me apologizing for being so depressing? Heh.

WELL NOW THAT WAS JUST A RUMOR, BUT I GUESS I'M DOIN' FINE

It was an odd weekend.

Saturday was all about doing the things I used to do for fun, the things I hadn't done for so long: hanging out in book stores, listening to music, going to a movie, just driving around and enjoying myself.

Except, of course, I wasn't really enjoying myself.

Oh, it was okay. A beautiful, sunny day, warm but not hot, a slight breeze, everything almost perfect. But somewhere in the back of my mind a nagging little voice kept saying, "Shouldn't you have moved beyond this? This is the same thing you've always done." And how could I answer that voice?

At the beginning of this year, Tabbatha and I planned to move in together. We looked at several apartments. And me, I was looking at rings. That was the talk--we'd get married, Paul would, in essence, become my son (he'd taken to calling me "dad"), and maybe--who knows?--maybe we'd even have another kid.

Then we stopped looking, stopped talking about it. Suddenly she decided she never really felt that deeply for me. Poof, just like that.

"But I know you and Paul like each other, and you can still do things together," she said. So we have, mostly just continuing our Tuesday night tradition of going out for pizza.

But Sunday I took Paul to a movie, Dragon Wars, because he and I both love giant monsters trashing cities, and this has plenty of that. We went out to eat first--Paul loves Fuddrucker's--then to the movie, and afterwards, he asked with great excitement what we would do next. "Well, now I take you home." He nodded quietly, like I was ending the day too soon.

I called his mom from the car and reminded her I had several boxes of books my sister had given me for Paul. Should I just bring them up, I asked, and she said yes.

Carrying the first box up, Tabbatha stood at the top of the stairs, holding beloved kitty Midnight. She opened the door to her apartment, Midnight plopped down to the floor and scrambled for the bedroom. I started to follow him, wanting to say hi to my old buddy, then stopped when I saw the bed was occupied. New boyfriend.

I went down to get more boxes, and by the time I returned, the bedroom door was shut. I had hoped to spend a little time with Paul exploring his new haul of books, but instead I could tell my presence wasn't welcome, so I got the hell out.

Driving home, I listened to Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me on NPR. It's a pretty funny show, but I didn't feel much like laughing. All I could think about was the story my ex-wife told me from when she worked at a radio station with Dan Coffey, a comic performer of some repute. He was originally tapped to host Wait, Wait, and believed it would be his ticket to the big time. Instead they went with another guy, and Coffey went back to selling shoes.

Sometimes, things don't go according to the plan.

GOD ONLY KNOWS

Ah, Monday, and again, not feeling much like writing. Partly because I overslept, and I have other things I really need to do. And partly because...You know. The usual.

Here's a great scene from Albert Brooks' Modern Romance, one of the best comedies of all time. That's Bob Einstein, Brooks' brother, as the salesman, and be sure to stick around for the last few seconds--this happens to me on a regular basis.(Only with "Solitary Man" instead of "Along Comes Mary"--sigh.)

LAYIN' 'CROSS THE RIVER

I'm in a Brit Rock mode.

It started with that stupid Across The Universe movie. I haven't seen it--and won't!--but just the image from the ads of Bono, complete with Lennon specs, doing "I Am The Walrus"--Help me, Jeebus, help me burn this image from my mind.

Oh, this helps. Nothin' like the real thing:



I realize I've said this about a million times, but man, those guys were great.

Anyway, that of course led to this:



Which led to this:



That was The Dukes Of Statosphear, a goofy side project from XTC. This could have led to more XTC videos--and one day, no doubt, it will--but instead I stayed in a sixties mode, remembering a time (well, not literally remembering; I wasn't actually there) when Pete Townshend didn't sell his songs to Jerry Bruckheimer productions, when Roger Daltrey didn't host infomercials, when John Entwistle and Keith Moon were alive:



Finally, The Kinks. If Ray Davies isn't the greatest songwriter of the rock era, he's awfully damned close, and "See My Friends"--God, what a gorgeous song:

ANY MINOR WORLD THAT BREAKS APART FALLS TOGETHER AGAIN

Delmar wraps around my feet, Monika stretches at a crazy angle on the floor, and I hesitate to mention them for fear that I'm turning into someone who has nothing better to do than write about my cats.

When Mom died, we put her house up for sale, but the thought did cross my mind: I could live here. And if I had, I would have inherited not just Monika but all of Mom's cats, and probably the dog, too, and of course, I would have brought Delmar with me. The temptation was there; I could have actually owned my own place, and finally moved beyond my status as lifetime renter.

But that would have meant moving back to Perry, finding a different job, restarting my life. And more, it carried with it the knowledge that I would probably cocoon myself within those walls, animals my only companions, my life essentially over.

I stayed where I was, but really, what have I got to show for it? When Tabbatha broke up with me, she told me that if I searched my heart, I'd find that my feelings for her weren't truly romantic. But they were. Maybe I didn't convey it properly, or maybe--ah hell, it doesn't matter. It's over, and instead of the life I wanted with her, I have...this. The inertia of my life is stupefying, but it's all I have right now.

I live day by day, never really enjoying anything, just kind of taking up space, existing to no purpose. One of these days that may change, I may break from this simply out of neccessity, but until then, Delmar is still at my feet, Monika has curled up atop the TV, and they're the only things that matter right now.

SCRITCH, SCRITCH, SCRITCH

When Monika curls up beside me, her tail thumps incessantly until I find just the right spot to scritch her. Petting her isn't enough; she demands a good scritching. Under the chin, along the side of her face, and on her snout, right between her eyes--those are the favorite spots. That is when the tail stops twitching, and curls around her body.

As far as Monika is concerned, I could spend the rest of my life just scritching her. I could take breaks when she's in the litter box, and possibly when she's eating, although even then, it might help her digest. Certainly the rest of the time, though, should be devotd to her--just because she's sleeping is no reason she shouldn't be getting her due attention.

Fortunately, scritching Monika makes me happy, too. I love watching her eyes scrunch shut as she drifts off to her happy place, and hearing the gentle, machine-like whir of her purring. It may not be what I want to do as my life's work, but hey, at least I'm making somebody happy, even if it's just a cat.

WHATEVER CITY YOU'RE IN

Ten years ago this month I moved in with my then-fiancee. I'd moved to her hometown a few months earlier, acquiring my own apartment, but the arrangement seemed silly, given that we were spending pretty much all of our nights together.

But it was different actually living together. Her apartment was small, and there were no real seperate corners when we fought. Which, of course, we fought, though that didn't for one minute make me doubt my feelings about her, or my intention to marry her. (Though, in retrospect, maybe the Vegas wedding was a bad idea...)

When I go on about her, or us, or the marriage, it's not because I'm still not over her (though I have a string of ex-girlfriends who'd claim otherwise), but because I'm still not over what she represents: One time in my life when I absolutely believed in what I was doing, when I took a huge chance on what felt so very right.

My life, God knows, is a string of bad decisions, but most of those I recognized even at the time. This was different. This was my shot at happiness...and it blew up in my face. Every relationship since then--hell, every aspect of my life--has had me second-guessing like crazy. At least, up until I met Tabbatha. I was certain about that one, too, and...

Fuck.

Here's Was (Not Was), featuring guest vocalist Frank Sinatra Jr. (!), laying it all out. Yeah, you do have to be courageous to play the odds that love will win. Of course, the house always has the advantage.

GOT YOU IN A STRANGLEHOLD, BABY

It's my day off, and I'm just hanging out at home. Then, noise in the hallway. The maintenence guy is stripping the floors in the hallway.

Okay. I can deal with the scrape, scrape scrape and the whirring of buffers. Unfortunately, he's brought a radio along, and he's playing a local classic rock station. Loud.

Worse, it's Two-fer Tuesday, which means when you hear one awful Billy Idol or Rush song, you know you'll hear another immediately after. My ears perked up somewhat when I heard Cheap Trick's "Ain't That A Shame"--I knew they wouldn't follow with something really cool like "Southern Girls" or "Downed", but I was hoping for maybe "Dream Police". Nah--"The Flame".

Right now, it's The Who. "Who Are You", of course. I was fully expecting "Won't Get Fooled Again" as the second choice, but they went for the somewhat more surprising "Squeeze Box".

Annnd we round out the hour with some Ted Nugent. If I had to imagine what hell sounds like, I'm sure The Nuge would be involved somehow.

LISTENING FOR THE NEW-TOLD LIES

The Iraqi government has terminated a contract with Blackwater USA, a private security firm that has provided cover for non-military US personnel--what our government euphemistically labels "ambassadors", but mostly representatives for various business interests. Last weekend, eight Iraqis were killed, apparently by Blackwater personnel, who have long provided a thuggish presence in Iraq. When outrage by citizens led normally dickish and ineffectual Prime Misister al-Maliki to announce plans to prosecute the Blackwater goons responsible, it was quickly pointed out that, according to terms drawn up by the US occupying forces, the government can't prosecute American contractors.

This is the democracy we've given them, ladies and gentlemen. This is the "victory" we're fighting for.

Oh, and according to a respected British polling firm, the number of Iraqi civilian dead could be as high as one million. That's one-sixth of the number of dead from the Nazi Holocaust.

The latest number of dead American troops: 3782.

The number of lives destroyed is, of course, beyond calculation.

Here's the final sequence of Milos Forman's adaptation of Hair, made in 1979, about the sixties, with absolutely no relevance today.

DON'T YOU WORRY, NEVER FEAR

Sorry, folks, too depressed to write.

But is there still joy in the world? Yeah, as long as there are Chuck Jones cartoons.

PULL THE TAPEWORM OUT OF YOUR ASS

Ah, the weekend. Time for relaxing with some mellow, mellow sounds.

How about we start with some live System Of A Down?



And--man, I did NOT know this clip existed!--the MC5 from 1970. Too bad they bleep the "motherfucker"--but still, it's the MC5 kicking out the jams!



Back-to-back numbers from Was (Not Was):



A goofy but lovely song written by Akira Ifukube:



And let's wrap this up with Sparks. Are Russell's theatrical moves a parody of rock star behavior, or is he being serious? Come on! It's Sparks, so the answer is: Both.

EXPERIMENT PERILOUS II: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO

Well, I was all prepared to nash my teeth endlessly over Our Beloved President's speech to the nation last night, which would almost certainly have spiked my blood pressure to dangerous levels, but I see my ex has "tagged" me over at her blog.

So, though I don't get the whole meme thing, I'll still play:

Accent--What, mine? Eh, I'm from Iowa. Vague midwestern twang. Or maybe not, since I've had any number of people through the years assume I'm originally from New York, and their assumption was based mostly on how I talk, so who knows? (I've also had people ask me if I'm Jewish, which I think is some sort of midwestern code for "Are you from New York?")

I Don't Drink--Is this a complete-the-sentence thing? Mostly, I don't drink, and if I do, it's usually beer. But not crappy, mass-market American beer. Samuel Smith oatmeal stout--that's a good beer.

Chore I Hate--Hey, sometimes, just getting out of bed is a chore. Thank you! Goodnight! I'll be here all week!

Pets--My cats, Delmar and Monika. I've been known to go on about them sometimes...

Essential Electronics--I'm sitting at a computer, posting on my blog, which I use frequently to prattle on and on about favorite DVDs and albums. I think that sentence should give you some clues.

Perfume/Cologne--What? No.

Gold or Silver?--No, the order is wrong, and it should be "and" not "or", as in "Silver And Gold", the beloved Johnny Marks song Burl Ives sings so lugubriously in Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer. My brother and I are still prone to breaking into Burl's mid-song patter: "Couldn't really call it a Christmas tree, now could ya?" When we do it, Burl inexplicably sounds like the Pepperidge Farms guy.

Insomnia--Either that, or I sleep too much. Kinda goes hand in hand with crippling depression.

Most Admired Trait--My own or in others? See, this is just ambiguous wording. I'll go with the safe answer: Sense of humor.

Kids--No. Of course, if Tabbatha and I were still together, I'd have claimed Paul as a step-kid, but...

Religion--Oh, let's not get into that.

Siblings--Two brothers, two sisters. I used to have a third brother, but he was killed five years ago. Five years. Damn.

Time I Wake Up--Way too early.

Unusual Talent--Boy, these are random, aren't they? Well, I can belch on demand. Does that count?

Vegetable I Refuse To Eat--No, no, see, I'm good with vegetables. Many fruits make me sick. Is there any way this is interesting to anyone?

Worst Habit--I dunno. Inability to break free of my crippling depression? Yeah, I'll go with that.

X Rays--Again with the ambiguity. Have I had an x-ray? Hasn't everybody, at some point? In any event, I've got a steel plate in my right foot taking the place of the heel I shattered in a suicide attempt. So, you know, that gets x-rayed a lot.

Favorite Meal--Tuna casserole. No peas.

Aaaannnd...we're done. With not a single mention of Iraq. Oh crap, I just mentioned it. Never mind.

BUT THEY SEEMED SO MUCH KINDER WHEN WE WATCHED THEM, YOU AND I

Seeing the remake of Halloween put me in a John Carpenter mood, so I watched The Fog again on DVD. Sure, the plot turns kind of silly, but that doesn't matter; Carpenter's already done his job, creating and sustaining a mood, not only of fear and dread but a kind of quiet melancholy. He really is a great filmmaker, and I wish he could get work these days doing something besides collecting paychecks for the rights to redo his work.

Seemingly unrelated to my musings on Carpenter--or is it?--I had a dream last night about my late, much beloved cat Pinback. (I say "cat" for easy identification purposes, since Pinback was, of course, a strange visitor from another world, only assuming the form of an earthly cat.) In the dream, Pinback sat on my chest and hissed at me everytime she felt me breathe, which was something she actually did pretty much every day. When I woke up, Delmar--who strongly resembles Pinback in both appearance and attitude--sat beside me, glaring menacingly.

As I got out of bed and proceded with my day, and since a day off means an excuse to kill a whole day visiting favorite web sites, I found myself at The Onion's AV Club, which featured a review of a new album by the band...Pinback! At another site, a read a review of a DVD reissue of Return Of The Living Dead, directed by Dan O'Bannon, who co-wrote John Carpenter's Dark Star and co-starred in it as...Pinback!

Dark Star is a wonderful movie, Carpenter's first feature, expanded from a student film he and O'Bannon made. One could argue O'Bannon is as much the auteur here as Carpenter--the film strongly influenced Alien, which O'Bannon wrote--but it already shows Carpenter's affinity for blue-collar heroes over their heads, who must overcome their own ennui before they can take any kind of action.

Through the years, Carpenter has always shown an affection for beer-guzzling regular joes, and there's never a hint of condecension in his work. (They Live might be a goofy alien invasion movie starring a pro wrestler--not that there's anything wrong with that--but it also is the only action movie I can think of with homeless construction workers as its heroes.) This attitude is reflected in Carpenter's stylistic approach, which is always simple, straightforward. Stylish, yes, but never showy. Clearly, he considers himself a bit of a working-class filmmaker--a craftsman, not an artiste.

In any event, here's the opening credits to Dark Star, complete with a Carpenter-penned theme song. Like the movie itself, the song, with its drawled vocals and exaggerated twang, seems jokey at first. But as you listen to its instantly catchy melody and wistful lyrics, you realize it's more sad than funny. Much like Dark Star itself.

EXPERIMENT PERILOUS

My mind is absolutely blank right now, or at least it's supposed to be. I'm trying an experiment in free writing, just putting down whatever comes into my mind as it comes into my mind...but nothing's coming to mind.

So I'll do the most trite, hackneyed thing imaginable, and look around the room to see if anything inspires me. Hopefully, I'll come up with somethng better than "I look at the floor and see it needs sweeping." Nothing against George Harrison, but Holy Joe that's lame.

I try to give George a break, I really do, to appreciate how he must have felt when Lennon and McCartney shouldered him out of the way and did most of the songwriting themselves. But let's face it: They were better.

Even on Abbey Road, the album on which George unquestionably brought it--so much so that John realized he needed to do some serious work or risk being shown up--even there, with "Something", a lovely song in so many ways, but still: "Something in the way she woos me"?

Wow. So the whole point of this free writing thing is to set my mind wandering, and I still wind up writing about The Beatles.

Hey, at least I'm not writing YET AGAIN about Vincente Minnelli. Because I could do that, you know. I've never written about The Band Wagon in this space before. At least, I don't think I have.

Or Bush, I'm not whining about him, or posting Richard Thompson clips, or prattling on about my cats.

Well, okay, strike that last part, because as I was looking around for something to inspire me--which of course led to that whole pointless George harrison tangent--I of course saw Monika curled up on the floor, legs splayed in all directions, eyes clenched shut, so darned adorable I want to go over and hug her, but Monika doesn't like hugs and besides, I'm not supposed to stop writing, I'm not supposed to break the, um, spell.

So far all this experiment is proving is how hopelessly insular my world is, that my freed mind is unable or unwilling to explore new areas, so I keep doing the same thing over and over again, like poor Del Shannon forced to sing "Runaway" one more time, the same cycle that may well have led him to kill himself.

Wait! Suicide--that's one topic I've never really explored here. I've alluded to attempts in the past, my broken feet and scarred wrists, but I've never really explained the reasons behind the damage, maybe because...I'm scared? There are, apparently, dark places I avoid by choice, but perhaps that very reluctance is why I need to follow these paths, wherever they may lead.

So does that mean my postings here are about to get even more depressing than usual? Or will I just go back to posting shit I found on YouTube? Guess we'll have to wait and see...

SO MUCH HAS TURNED TO DUST

Another 9/11 anniversary. Do we care anymore?

For a "Day That Changed Everything", we've become rather blase about the whole thing. Oh, I know the network morning shows will likely lead with this, and we'll get the usual montages. (Think they'll still trot out the Samuel Barber accompaniment?) But by tomorrow, we'll be back to discussing Britney Spears' lame performance on MTV.

Maybe it's geography. Here in the heartland, the attacks simply didn't have the same impact. We weren't under attack, they were, the East Coast power elite. There is a heightened awareness of our vulnerability, but even the release last week of a new Bin Laden video was greeted with a shrug.

And it's weird how the notion that the attacks were, at least in part, an inside job has gained traction. That's been a poular conspiracy among wackjobs everywhere since the attacks occured, but you here it repeated more often now, discussed at work, in bars and restaurants, overheard from blue collar workers to moneyed professionals. The theory now has thankfully dropped the noxious anti-semitism of its early days (when it was the work of the International Jewish Conspiracy), and seems more and more to be targeting Our Beloved President.

How else, people wonder, could he have gotten us into Iraq? Without the attacks and the climate of fear they created, how could he have found the political backing to go ahead with a boneheaded plan that was already in the works? Viewed in that light, the devastation of 9/11 suddenly looks very...convenient.

Like any good theory, this one has just enough plausibility to seem believable on the surface. But let's face it, Bush would have gone ahead with Iraq anyway. Fabricating links to al-Qaeda made it an easier sell, but they weren't needed. They'd have had the "smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud" taglines ready to go, questioned the patriotism of anyone who opposed them, all counting on the willfull ignorance of the American people. It would have worked, too, and we'd be right where we are now.

Today 9/11 is a vague memory to many in the country, a hazy fragment from a time before The Forever War, from a country we used to call home.

LOVE HURTS

Having avoided the remakes of John Carpenter's Assault On Precinct 13 and The Fog, and actively dreading the "re-imagining" of Escape From New York, I nonetheless headed out this weekend to see the latest Carpenter retread, Halloween because...well, it's what Mom would have wanted.

This incarnation of Halloween, of course, was written and directed by Rob Zombie, and man, oh man did Mom love the Zombie. She caught a White Zombie performance on Letterman, went crazy for the music and, more importantly, for The Man Himself. She, uh, apparently thought he was hot, and that creeps me out on so many levels...let's move on.

The point is, she dug the man and his music, and when he started directing, well, so much the better. Seeing The Devil's Rejects was literally one of the things that rejuvenated Mom after her cancer was discovered (Rob Zombie, Life Force...Who knew?), so clearly she'd have wanted to see his latest opus, even if it is a pointless remake.

Well, not entirely pointless. The first half of Zombie's Halloween crafts an origin for Carpenter's seemingly motiveless killer, as a kid from a white trash family with a pure love for his momma and baby sister and a growing hatred for everything else in his wretched life. The psychological underpinnings of Zombie's script are as subtle as his cracker aesthetics, but they're believable and, occasionally, moving. The writing and filmmaking here can't be faulted, and the performances by Sherri Moon-Zombie and Daeg Faerch as a mother and child with a bond that is almost stronger than death are simply outstanding. If only the whole movie had been this good, it would have ranked alongside Jonathan Kaplan's Over The Edge or Tim Hunter's River's Edge as a study of alienated, invisible youth.

Unfortunately, it turns into just another slasher movie, complete with characters who know things they couldn't possibly know. Zombie's staging remains competent, but the material is so familiar (it is a remake, after all), and the action ultimately so tedious, that it finally leaves a bad taste.

Still, the final scene ties the film back to its opening sequences in an almost sentimental style, and I suspect Mom would have loved it. Hell, she might even have cried. You never could tell with her.

I LOVE YOU, I LOVED YOU THE FIRST TIME I SAW YOU

Yesterday, a clear blue sky, warm with just a slight breeze. A perfect late summer day.

This morning, overcast, a dampness in the air, and chilly, too, the wind rattling treetops, leaves falling even before they've changed colors.

Summer is over, with its punishing heat and unexpected, unwanted farewells. Autumn has arrived, the season of quiet melancholy.

Looks like a perfect day to wallow in sadness, but for one thing, one small joy. Last night, as I tossed and turned, unable once again to sleep, Delmar appeared at the foot of the bed.

The thing about Delmar is, he's a largely unremarkable cat. His body is rangy, his face rather ordinary, and he seldom gives or asks for affection. He could be a typical Steve Buscemi character, or perhaps the husband Billy Green Bush so memorably played in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore--not a bad guy, but somehow not able to connect with his family.

When Delmar hops on the bed, he stays at the far end, there but not there, and if I reach for him, he skitters away. This time, though, he came closer, and put a paw on my shoulder, and slowly moved it down to my elbow. Then he did it again. And again.

He was petting me.

Science claims cats are lower life forms, they lack what we call souls. They may feels a sense of devotion to those who feed and shelter them, but they certainly are not capable of human emotions.

But what Del showed me was an expression of love so pure, the exact thing I needed at that moment, a comfort as profoundly offered and accepted as any I have ever known. I wanted to hold him, to hug him and never stop, but Del doesn't like hugs. Instead, with him still beside me, I had the best night of sleep I've had in such a long time.

THE VARSITY DRAG

I went to see the new Iraq war documentary No End In Sight the other night, and the whole thing depressed me. Not the movie--despite the ecstatic reviews, it was mostly a tedious jog down well-trod paths. Anyone paying any attention already knows the facts laid out here (Paul Bremer is a douchebag? I'm shocked!), and a far more interesting film would have concentrated not on the well-known failings of Rummy & Company, but on the Democratic enablers who passively sat by while the Bushinistas did whatever the hell they wanted.

No, the depression came from the actual screening itself. No End In Sight's brief Des Moines run was at the Varsity, an old neighborhood theater transformed several decades into an art house, albeit an art house specializing mostly in solidly middlebrow fare. My mom hated going to movies there because of what she called "the Varsity audience"--moneyed, well-educated people who make a point of reacting to any psuedo-brainy reference in a movie to show they get it. So if, for instance, there's a line about Kierkeguaard in a Woddy Allen movie, the audience will laugh smugly, not because it's a funny gag, but just because, hey, they've read (or, more likely, scanned) Kierkeguaard.

And so, during No End In Sight, we'd get clips of Rummy's sneering press conferences, or photos of Bush in front of the Mission Accomplished banner, always accompanied by derisive chuckles from the Varsity's Peanut Gallery.

To what point? Everyone's seen these clips a million times--they can't have any impact anymore. And in any event, the proper reaction to seeing this parade of horrors isn't condescending laughter, it should be disgust, or outrage.

Ah, but disgust or outrage might lead to action, and an audience like this isn't likely to take any action more daring than patting themselves on the back for towing the liberal line. These are the type of people who cluelessly throw their support behind Hillary Clinton, not knowing or caring that she supported Bush's actions in Iraq every step of the way, until public opinion turned, and it was actually safe to oppose the war.

ONE DAY, GOD WILLING

Oh, I'll get over this eventually, I guess, but for right now the punishing, crippling depression continues. I'm not sure what's going on--I'll start to feel better, then WHAM, I'm right back down. Previously, bleak moods were marked by excessive amounts of sleep; these days, I can barely sleep at all. Which, of course, means I'm tired all the time, and unusually cranky and irritable, even by my standards.

Most writers I admire were or are plagued by depression. It's an occupational hazard. For me, right now, the despair gets in the way of everything. I can't be funny or insightful or entertaining--I know, I know, why start now?--and so I feel I have nothing to say, nothing to contribute. I'm running on fumes here, and even the fumes are drying up.

Sorry. This all sounds really depressing.

I'll get back to actual writing one of these days, I swear. But for now, here's a rare thing that actually makes me laugh, even in my current mood, Chris Elliot's hilarious parody of the documentary on the recording of the cast album for Stephen Sondheim's Company. Almost funnier than Elliot's parody is the notion of parodying such a thing in the first place--what was Letterman's audience supposed to make of this?

FUN!

From now on, the mission statement here is FUN! Wholesome fun for one and all.

With adorable kittens



and puppies!



And what could be more fun than clowns?



Well, okay, that was just creepy.

But this will be fun. All the kids love Marilyn Chambers and--what?

This is an actual headline in today's New York Times?

DEMOCRATS NEWLY WILLING TO COMPROMISE ON IRAQ

sigh...

Sorry, folks. Fun has been cancelled.

WHAT'S SO FUNNY 'BOUT PEACE LOVE AND UNDERSTANDING?

Hey, look--I'm back!

(Crickets chirping.)

You know, I was gone for a couple of days?

(Wind howling, tumbleweed blowing by.)

Okay, fine. But I won't let indifference get me down. This space is now going to be devoted to nothing but FUN!

No obsessing about my constant relationship failures, or the sucking misery of my job.

No mention of Mr. Bush's photo-op trip to Iraq, which had the desired effect of making virtually the entire mainstream media follow his script: See, the surge is working!

Certainly no reference to the ACLU's release of a comprehensive study of killings of unarmed Iraqi citizens by members of the US military, a document that lays out in stark detail everything that's wrong with the occupation, and possibly with our entire national character, and so has been systematically ignored by the usual media outlets, at least here in America...

Uh, yeah. That's the sort of thing we...sigh...won't mention anymore.

FUN!

IT'S ONLY THE PAIN THAT'S KEEPING YOU SANE

I'll be away from here for two or three days--much needed time away. Lately, life just seems to be a constant stream of bad news, and i find myself second-guessing every thing I do, wondering about every choice I've ever made in life, sinking ever deeper in despair.

So a depressing song to leave with? Hey, here are two, both from my favorite makers of beautiful sorrow, Richard and Linda Thompson. This is an exceptionally fine performance, nicely shot, with lovely and restrained fretwork from Richard (the second guitarist, incidentally, is Simon Nicol) and Linda in exceptional voice. (She often wasn't during this period, as the acrimony that ultimately led to the Thompson's divorce tended to affect her vocally.) The first number here, Pavanne, is pretty good, but the second, Just The Motion, is a truly great song, the emotional and philosophical centerpiece of their finest album, Shoot Out The Lights...That's all for now. I'll be back here Wednesday.

ONE OF MY CLASSMATES DIED IN A KILN TODAY, MOTHER

I was going to write about the Republican presidential candidates' typically offensive reaction to Iowa's four-hour allowance of gay marriage, or perhaps about Bush's latest pro-war whoop-de-doo, or even about the Yankees' sweet, sweet three game sweep against the much-reviled Red Sox.

Screw it. Here's a classic MST3K take on a Gumby short. I use the phrase "That squares my breasts" way too often in daily conversation.

I'M AWAKE NOW

For those of you wondering why I didn't post anything yesterday--yes, regular readers, I'm talking to both of you--it's simple: I slept.

I felt vaguely crappy all day Wednesday, and I spent pretty much all of Thursday sleeping. I woke up long enough to eat, buy toilet paper and kitty litter (God, my life is exciting!) and...go back to sleep.

So my thoughts are, as Billie Burke once said, a bit muddled.

First, a clarification. Though I mentioned Delmar sitting on my lap as I wrote my last post, I should point out, color scheme aside, he's nothing like the sweet, benevolent and talented kitty in the cartoon I embedded in that post. This is more like Del:



But what of Monika?

Well, it's my opinion that if everybody on the planet spent just ten minutes hanging out with her, the world would be a better place. Even people who hate cats would probably have to admit Monika is rather endearing. Even when she's in pet me-pet me-pet me mode, she can break down all resistance. If smashing her head repeatedly against the small of your back doesn't work, she'll climb on the back of your chair and arch her body over your head, her (upside-down) face slowly filling your field of vision. Adorable!

In fact, if one were to construct a sort of Adorability Scale, Monika would probably be off the charts. First of all, she's a fuzzy gray cat, and is there anything more adorable than a fuzzy gray cat? No, there's not. You could argue that kittens are just naturally more adorable than adult cats--but I swear Monika's face hasn't changed a bit since kittenhood, and yes, she was the most adorable kitten in the world.

(Incidentally, also ranking high on the Adorability Scale: German Shepherd puppies and Lauren Graham's face when she crinkles her nose. Least adorable things? A tie between syphillitic genitalia and the ambience at any TGIFriday's.)

Since this seems to have become cat-centric, have I mentioned that kitty Midnight doesn't live here anymore? It's not fallout from my breakup with Tabbatha (And is breakup too dramatic a word? We just stopped seeing each other. It's not like there were fights or anything. We still talk.), I just asked her, since she finally got a place of her own, if she'd take him back, since I just didn't have room for three cats.

I miss him, though. So as a tribute to Midnight, here's Christopher Lee as a character named... Midnight. It comes from from the ready-made cult item The Return Of Captain Invincible, and even though it features Lee and Alan Arkin, two of my all-time favorite actors, it's mostly no great shakes. Mostly. On the other hand, when Chris Lee is singing a Richard O'Brien song(!) and briefly busts out his famed Yosemite Sam impression...what's not to love?

NO, NO, YOU SEE, IT MAKES SENSE

Delmar, who is himself a black and white cat, sits on my lap as I watch this. Since he is missing most of his tail, he can't quite relate, but I like to think he enjoyed this anyway.

Chuck Jones' reputation among hard-core animation fans has taken a bit of a beating in recent years. One of the chief complaints is that he took characters with already-established personas--Daffy Duck, particularly--and molded them to his own purposes, changing Daffy from a crazy but upbeat character to a world-class neurotic. (Speaking as a world-class neurotic myself, I don't see the problem.)

There is also the charge of excessive cuteness, a self-consciously "artsy" quality, something this particular cartoon does nothing to dispel. On the other hand, it really is cute. Downright adorable, as a matter of fact. I want to give it a big hug, but instead, I'll settle for chuckling warmly as I skritch Delmar's chin. A perfect way to start a day, now that I think of it.

BUT MONOPOLY IS SO MUCH FUN, I'D HATE TO BLOW THE GAME

In a way, you could feel sorry for Our Beloved President.

His old method, the only one he knows, just isn't working anymore: If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes accepted as truth. Suddenly people realize they're being lied to, and they don't like it. What's a po' boy to do?

Well, obviously: You start tossing old friends and advisors to the wolves. (Yeah, I know, Rove and Gonzales both claim they decided on their own to retire. And I, um, believe them.) Sad thing is, it'll probably work.

Give Democrats credit for continuing to press on with the investigation into the firing of those U.S. attorneys, but what will they do now, given that the likely target of the investigation, Rove, is already gone?

After all, if they continue the inquiry, following the blame to its likely source, it will almost certainly lead straight to Cheney, if not Bush himself. And if there is evidence of wrongdoing at the highest levels, surely congress would have no choice but to introduce impeachment proceedings, right?

Ah, but top Democrats have made it clear they have no interest in such matters. Chris Dodd, who continues to delude himself that he has a shot at the presidency, has come right out and said that talk of impeachment would be a distraction during the nomination process.

There you have it: Democrats are perfectly willing to elevate their own self-interest over the needs of justice. God Bless America.

RAT DESERTS SINKING SHIT

Of course, Alfredo Gonzales was allowed to resign rather than be fired.

He was, after all, "a man of integrity, decency and principle."

At least, according to Our Beloved President.

We're all sure history will judge your comments fairly, Mr. President. (I picture "History" as vaguely resembling the late actor John Fiedler, and as he judges the president's assesment of his snivelling sycophant--sorry, I meant "trusted team player"--he alternates hysterical laughter with sad, resigned sighs.)

Adios, Douchebag, and please take Cheney with you next time, 'kay?

NAIVE, WILLFULLY IGNORANT OR JUST PLAIN STUPID?

An older-model sedan in the parking lot, with a familiar bumper sticker: WHY IS THERE ALWAYS MONEY FOR WAR BUT NOT FOR EDUCATION?

I'm no fan of bumper sticker wisdom, but I'll grant you this is--hey, wait. What does the sticker next to it say? VOTE DEMOCRATIC. FOR A CHANGE.

Okay, now you're just trying to piss me off. I want to go into the store, find the owner of this car and thump this person repeatedly on the head.

Does anybody really believe this crap? How little attention were people like this paying to the build-up to Iraq? The Democrats were more than willing to bend to every one of Our Beloved President's demands, have been personally responsible for diverting funds earmarked for education towards the war effort and have continued to hand the Bushinistas unprecedented power. Now they want to stand around and whine? Now they want a change? If they had ever been any kind of opposition party, we wouldn't be in this mess.

They're the majority in congress, and nothing has changed. So if they take the presidency, can anyone really believe things will just somehow be better? Because it's not going to happen. Not in this lifetime.

Sigh.

If only I could just go buy muffins without the real world intruding.

LET US CONTINUE THE GAME ANOTHER DAY

An older dad, a grandfather, maybe an uncle, with gray, thinning hair, calling his three male charges--the oldest was maybe eight--over to ask which DVD they should buy. The kids had already seen the old man's first pick, Jason And The Argonauts, but weren't familiar with his backup choices, The Thief Of Bagdad or 20,ooo Leagues Under the Sea.

So summing up: These kids were familiar with Ray Harryhausen, but were about to get an education in early Michael Powell or Richard Fleischer. Young cinephiles in the making.

Which does my heart good, especially since my own enthusiasm seems to be waning. This coming fall and winter season sees a number of new films by some of my favorite directors--Brian DePalma, Paul Thomas Anderson, Robert Benton, Noah Baumbach, The Coen Brothers, Todd Haynes, Tim Burton, David Cronenberg.

And yet, I'm not really excited by the prospect of most of these.

Partly, it's that the films themselves don't necesarily sound that great. Though I long to be pleasantly surprised, Benton's Feast Of Love and Cronenberg's Eastern Promises sound kind of blah, the Coens' No Country For Old Men seems like the kind of thing they should have outgrown, and DePalma's documentary-style take on the Iraq war, Redacted, and Haynes' Bob Dylan bio I'm Not There are the kind of ambitious, semi-experimental projects that have the potential to be absolutely dreadful.

Partly, too, it's the knowledge that about half of these pictures may not even make it to Des Moines, and if they do, it will frankly be a chore to see them. They'll either be playing at the local arthouse, noted for its dim picture and soupy sound, or worse, will be at one of the googleplexes. A screening at a commercial theater is proceeded by a half hour or so of ads and previews, after which any belief in the art of cinema (or joy of life in general) has been killed. Honestly, if I have to sit through that trailer for Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium one more time, I'm slitting my fucking wrists.

The messiness of day-to-day existence gets in the way, too. I used to live for and through movies and music, and though they haven't lost all meaning to me--how many times in this space do I go on about Vincente Minnelli or Richard Thompson?--they don't mean, can't mean, what they once did. Too many other things compete for my time, attention and energy, necessary things like job searches and dates.

(Dating...Man, I thought I thought I was done with that. No that I'm back into that scene, it usually means going out to a movie with someone you don't know too well, so you let her pick and she chooses some godawful romantic comedy with the likes of Kate Hudson or Mandy Moore, and before hand there's THAT FUCKING TRAILER FOR MR. MAGORIUM'S WONDER EMPORIUM, and, Jeebus no, she says she thinks it looks "kinda cute" and you wonder how you can even stand to look at someone who would say such a thing, even though you know you'll probably wind up sleeping with her anyway...)

On the other hand, I just finished my umpteenth viewing of Joe Dante's Gremlins 2: The New Batch, and I still feel the same slightly demented high Dante's movies always give me. If only one of these new films gives me some of the same pleasure, it could result in a crazy joy that can last for days.

Or, hopefully, a lifetime.

I WISH EVERY DAY COULD BE CRENSHAW DAY!

I'm actually in a pretty good mood. On a trip to the library yesterday, I discovered they were selling off tons o' stuff, including something called The Encyclopedia Of Stanley Kubrick (which, based on a quick perusal, seems not only factually reliable but downright authoritative) and CDs including Rodney Crowell's The Houston Kid and Marti Jones' Any Kind Of Lie. All of this for only a buck each!

I was familiar with Jones' late eighties album Used Guitars, but I admit I think of her mostly as the husband of--and here's how my thought process works--Don Dixon, who produced a lot of great albums for REM and The Smithereens...but to me, Dixon is best known as the co-writer of one of my favorite songs, Marshall Crenshaw's (Calling Out For Love At) Crying Time, which reminded me I have a couple of live Crenshaw DVDs I hadn't watched in awhile, which resulted in a Marshall-riffic evening of viewing and listening.

I don't know how to upload video onto the computer, or else you'd be watching the whole concerts right now. (You'd also get a lot of Steve Earle, Peter Sellers and about a million clips from Vincente Minnelli pictures.) But here's a clip I found of The Man Himself covering Buddy Holly's Cryin' Waitin' Hopin':



I love how he just casually fires off that awesome, Marshall-tastic guitar solo in the middle of the song, and yes, Dave Edmunds and Nick Lowe were onstage. Crenshaw was a guest on MTV's New Years Eve countdown party one year, which featured a Rockpile reunion. There was a time when MTV didn't suck, apparently.

Here's the very funny video for Yo La Tengo's Tom Courtenay, featuring a hilarious cameo from A Very Special Guest:



My mom told me when I was an infant I watched the Hullabaloo knock-off Where The Action Is, shaking my head and keeping time to the music. In which case, I would have seen The Left Banke doing this lovely, aching, unbelievably depressing song, one frequently covered in concert by Mr. Crenshaw:



Crenshaw has actually recorded covers of both of the songs Bobby Fuller lip-synched on yet another goofy sixties music show, Shivaree. Choreography!



And here's the real deal again, with one of his very best, albeit poorly shot and recorded. Hopefully, some day I'll find my own Cynical Girl, but until then, I've got Marshall Crenshaw to inspire me:

IT'S A JUNGLE OUT THERE

Here's a preview for a heavily-hyped new "prestige" movie coming out for the holidays. Ignoring the usual annoying mannerisms of modern trailers--that annoying "whoosh" with every other cut, the amped-up sound effects, the fact that it's edited so that it looks like every other movie being advertised these days--try to focus, if you can, on the actual content:



Now here's a trailer for an exploitation favorite from 1973:



That's right--they're the same damn movie!

The ad for American Gangster spends a lot of time laying out the number of Oscar-winning talents involved, and tries to suggest it's somehow "about" something--Race? Poverty? Justice?

Black Caesar, on the other hand, has no pretensions, but possesses a down-and-dirty immediacy a big-budget Hollywood movie couldn't touch. Writer-director Larry Cohen clearly shot this on the fly in real New York locations, without bothering to get permits, so the street scenes have a vibrancy you couldn't possibly get with carefully rehearsed extras.

Obviously, I haven't seen American Gangster, and it may well be perfectly good. (Or, more likely, just okay.) My guess is, it will be remembered as yet another example of Hollywood timidity, huge amounts of money and talent spent redoing something that was already done perfectly well, and getting it all wrong.

WAITING FOR THE SUMMER RAIN

Oh, that president.

The Decider continues to display a stunning ignorance of (or perhaps contempt for) history and common sense, as evidenced by his speech yesterday before a group of veterans. Though the Bushinistas used to go out of their way to avoid comparing Iraq and Vietnam, they've apparently decided to run the other way, using Vietnam as an example of why we can't leave Iraq right away.

"Then as now, people argued that the real problem was America's presence, and if we would just withdraw, the killing would end," Our Beloved President boldly declared. "The world would learn just how costly these misimpressions would be."

Where the hell to start?

First of all, no one--no one--is claiming if America withdraws, the killing magically stops. Team Bush's stunning series of missteps in Iraq have helped create a nice little hell on earth, ramping up ancient tensions and rivalries while simultaneously creating new ones, while also providing a verdant breeding ground for terrorists. No, Mr. President, the killing won't end--you've seen to that.

In fact, he has almost certainly given birth to what he aluded to in his speech--a new Khmer Rouge.

His misunderstanding of what happened in Vietnam is reprehensible and inexcusable, though understandable, given that Henry Kissinger, architect of Nixon's Vietnam policy, is one of Bush's closest advisors, and is always willing to rewrite history in his favor.

It was Kissinger's passive-aggressive strategy towards Vietnam--drawing down troop levels while escalating secret bombing campaigns (Merry Christmas, Cambodia!)--that created the very vacuum in Southest Asia in which Pol Pot thrived. Innocent people were going to die, either by Kissinger's napalm or Pol Pot's machete, but make no mistake, the U.S. was responsible either way.

And so in Iraq. The U.S. can stay or get out, but it doesn't matter. People will still die, and all will remember who gave birth to this situation.

IN WHICH I GET MORE MAUDLIN THAN A MONTH OF FUNKY WINKERBEAN

I sleep for ten or twelve hours straight, or I get no sleep at all. My mind wanders, and when it settles in one place for very long, it is somewhere dark and forboding. I have no desire to do anything, and nothing gives me any kind of pleasure.

Sounds like I'm depressed, eh?

Assuming that putting a .45 in my mouth and pulling the trigger isn't an option (since, after all, a shotgun would be so much more effective...joke. JOKE!), what do I do about this?

Therapy? Uh, yeah, I suppose I could...but you know, I was in therapy when my marriage ended, so that didn't help much. And I was in therapy again later, and I tended to use it as a crutch. I'm not against it, it just hasn't worked for me.

Meds? Boy, oh boy. Done that, too, and I never want to go back. You can be on varying doses of varying meds before they find the mix that actually works for you--assuming they find it. The thing is, the meds screw with your head so much you can lose all perception of reality, can think you're doing fine when your moods are actually swinging like Sinatra on meth. But the doctors prescribing this shit don't necessarily see that, they only know what you tell them, but your psyche's been so mixed up, you don't even know what's real.

So what to do?

Easy. I'll just let it happen. Like Fabian and Tab Hunter, I'll Ride The Wild Surf and see where the Big Wave takes me. Maybe I'll drown, maybe I'll land in paradise, maybe I'll just be exhilirated and grateful for surviving. Life's an adventure and all that crap, right?

(Incidentally, I went with a Fabian/Tab Hunter/Ride The Wild Surf reference because I figured the Robert "Wingnut" Weaver riff I used originally was too obscure. Also, I substituted that "Sinatra on meth" line for my original "moods swinging like the Gashouse Gorillas" for the same reason. Hell, even the title of this post is utterly pointless if you don't read Funky Winkerbean and/or The Comics Curmudgeon...but I went with it anyway.)

For now, I suffer. Things turn around, though. They always do. I know this, intellectually, but my soul is less certain, peering at the horizon, saying, "I dunno, man, I dunno..." My soul sounds a lot like Harvey Pekar, my intellect sounds like Marcus Welby, so instead I listen to my heart, which sounds kind of like my mom, and which is telling me to hug my cats.

Monika squirms and Delmar bites me, but it's a start.