Started and abandoned two different posts recently. One was just a silly generic thing, but the other was somewhat more personal in nature, and my inability to make it work disturbs me. I just haven't been feeling the writing thing lately, although annoying computer glitches haven't really helped. (When the screen freezes as you type, it kinda interrupts your train of thought.)
Anyway, just to post something, and in the spirit of Halloween, I thought I'd post something scary. Regular readers might expect me to follow that up with a clip of Linda Carter singing or David Naughton extolling the virtues of Dr. Pepper, but no, I'm serious.
I could (and probably have, and no doubt will again) go on for some time about The Exorcist, which freaked me the fuck out like no movie ever has. I was eleven when I saw it the first time--well, saw part of it; my brother wound up carrying me out of the theater because I was literally paralyzed with fear--and I think the reason it got to me was because it creates such a believable reality. The sets, the costumes, the lighting show no trace of artifice. Everything looks so lived in, seems so natural, and when things go to hell (more or less literally), the impact is...well, again, as I watched the scene embedded above, I felt my limbs going numb.
Oh, and you know what else scares me? This.
Friday, October 28, 2011
Friday, October 21, 2011
MAD LOVE
There is a slightly aloof, not-quite-there manner that defines feline behavior. Cats may be wonderful companions, but they always exist in a world of their own, somehow unknowable. They may share this world with you, but they are always a step removed.
Except for Delmar.
Whatever Del feels is always right there on the surface, and whether it's utter adoration or inexplicable rage--he has no middle ground--you will damn sure know about it.
He will sit on your lap and smoosh his face into your chest, his half-wheezed purr so intense his whole body vibrates, and one of his gangly legs may slither around your wrist, his paw caressing you, drawing your hand to him, making sure you will pet him even as he hugs you, his devotion so overpowering it almost terrifies.
Or he'll hop on your lap with his half-tail twitching, a growl already forming somewhere in his chest, and that same paw that lovingly stroked your hand will slap down on your wrist, a solitary claw sinking deeper and deeper until blood bubbles to the surface, and his fiery eyes will burn into you with a terrible anger.
Your instinct at this point would be to throw this wretched beast to the ground, but if instead you take your other hand--the one that isn't streaked with blood--and gently rub Del between his ears, those terrifying eyes will gradually close and something resembling bliss will pass across his sharply-angled face. His claw may or may not leave your hand, which has likely gone numb by now anyway, but one of his other paws may reach up to stroke your face.
And maybe sink a claw in there, too, but more gently, and compared to the pain in your hand, it's nothing. Maybe it will bleed as well, but that's part of the price you paid when you let him into your heart. He is in your heart, after all, because no matter what, you know how much he loves you, and if you didn't love him, who else ever would?
Except for Delmar.
Whatever Del feels is always right there on the surface, and whether it's utter adoration or inexplicable rage--he has no middle ground--you will damn sure know about it.
He will sit on your lap and smoosh his face into your chest, his half-wheezed purr so intense his whole body vibrates, and one of his gangly legs may slither around your wrist, his paw caressing you, drawing your hand to him, making sure you will pet him even as he hugs you, his devotion so overpowering it almost terrifies.
Or he'll hop on your lap with his half-tail twitching, a growl already forming somewhere in his chest, and that same paw that lovingly stroked your hand will slap down on your wrist, a solitary claw sinking deeper and deeper until blood bubbles to the surface, and his fiery eyes will burn into you with a terrible anger.
Your instinct at this point would be to throw this wretched beast to the ground, but if instead you take your other hand--the one that isn't streaked with blood--and gently rub Del between his ears, those terrifying eyes will gradually close and something resembling bliss will pass across his sharply-angled face. His claw may or may not leave your hand, which has likely gone numb by now anyway, but one of his other paws may reach up to stroke your face.
And maybe sink a claw in there, too, but more gently, and compared to the pain in your hand, it's nothing. Maybe it will bleed as well, but that's part of the price you paid when you let him into your heart. He is in your heart, after all, because no matter what, you know how much he loves you, and if you didn't love him, who else ever would?
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
THE BEST I CAN DO
There was a time when there would have been a reason for me to mention that I'm going on vacation for a few days. That is, my usual daily postings here would have been interrupted, so I felt the need to provide some sort of explanation.
Now, of course, I'm lucky if I knock out ten posts in an entire month. I could be hospitalized for a week and you, the theoretical reader, would never know. It's weird how much effort I used to put into this site, and how indifferent I seem to be these days. It's not that I don't have the will to write, it's just that sitting down to do it is so, like, hard and stuff. And, well...
Ah, screw it. I'll be back here when I get back. In the meantime, here's Marshall Crenshaw with one of my favorite covers of all time.
Now, of course, I'm lucky if I knock out ten posts in an entire month. I could be hospitalized for a week and you, the theoretical reader, would never know. It's weird how much effort I used to put into this site, and how indifferent I seem to be these days. It's not that I don't have the will to write, it's just that sitting down to do it is so, like, hard and stuff. And, well...
Ah, screw it. I'll be back here when I get back. In the meantime, here's Marshall Crenshaw with one of my favorite covers of all time.
Sunday, October 09, 2011
FADE LIKE MAGAZINES
The official reason is simple: I plan to turn the second bedroom into a kind of entertainment center. With my recently-acquired plasma TV, blu-ray player (wi-fi compatible) and surround sound system, it will be a place to retire from the world, to immerse myself in whatever sounds or images I crave at the moment.
To make room for all this, the bedroom had to be cleared of all the accumulated stuff that had piled up over the years. Most of it had been ported over from the apartment, where it was all dropped in boxes and moved to the house in order to save myself the time and trouble of actually sorting it. But this time, for whatever reason, I felt the need to decide what would be tossed and what would go down to the basement.
Some of this was easy. Did I really need to keep the program for Reefer Madness: The Musical? Nah--throw it away. And some of the work Psychokitty Delmar had done for me--he'd slept in some of the boxes and ripped up, for instance, the 1941 Des Moines Register with a beautiful Ding Darling illustration commemorating the attack on Pearl Harbor. I'd meant to have it framed or something, but now it was an easy toss.
Then there was...everything else. Family photos, drawings made by my ex-wife's niece, home-dubbed VHS tapes, calenders with important dates from my past marked on them, goofy cartoons drawn by my mom. These are things I dare not throw away, the only links I have to a life I once led. But what are they now?
They are of no real significance except that which I give them. Even examining them now, they draw me back, but there is something ultimately destructive about their siren song. There is no returning to the time from which they sprang, and no point in longing for it. My life now doesn't depend on any of this.
Or so I tell myself as I tape the boxes shut and lug them down to the basement, where they sit on shelves or piled on pallets on the floor to keep them dry. They still exist down there, but soon they'll just be more stuff that exists in the background, like the empty boxes of laundry soap I keep forgetting to put in the garbage, as forgotten as the memories they represent.
To make room for all this, the bedroom had to be cleared of all the accumulated stuff that had piled up over the years. Most of it had been ported over from the apartment, where it was all dropped in boxes and moved to the house in order to save myself the time and trouble of actually sorting it. But this time, for whatever reason, I felt the need to decide what would be tossed and what would go down to the basement.
Some of this was easy. Did I really need to keep the program for Reefer Madness: The Musical? Nah--throw it away. And some of the work Psychokitty Delmar had done for me--he'd slept in some of the boxes and ripped up, for instance, the 1941 Des Moines Register with a beautiful Ding Darling illustration commemorating the attack on Pearl Harbor. I'd meant to have it framed or something, but now it was an easy toss.
Then there was...everything else. Family photos, drawings made by my ex-wife's niece, home-dubbed VHS tapes, calenders with important dates from my past marked on them, goofy cartoons drawn by my mom. These are things I dare not throw away, the only links I have to a life I once led. But what are they now?
They are of no real significance except that which I give them. Even examining them now, they draw me back, but there is something ultimately destructive about their siren song. There is no returning to the time from which they sprang, and no point in longing for it. My life now doesn't depend on any of this.
Or so I tell myself as I tape the boxes shut and lug them down to the basement, where they sit on shelves or piled on pallets on the floor to keep them dry. They still exist down there, but soon they'll just be more stuff that exists in the background, like the empty boxes of laundry soap I keep forgetting to put in the garbage, as forgotten as the memories they represent.
Tuesday, October 04, 2011
DON'T DISAPPEAR NOW
WUMP!
Bella's on the floor, trembling, her legs flailing. She's having a seizure, something her vet has said is not uncommon with beagles. As long as they don't get more frequent, everything will be fine.
I pick her up and cradle her in my arms, as I always do. We know the drill. She'll shake violently for a few minutes, then stop. I'll plop her down on the ground, she'll walk, still a little shaky, to the door. She knows the seizure has made her lose control of her bodily functions, and she doesn't want to poop in the house.
Which is what happens. But after bringing her back in, she has another seizure. Then another, more violent. Her limbs twist as I hold her, the ferocity of her shaking causing my own body to tremble. Her mouth foams, she pees on me, and I cuddle her tighter, convinced at this moment that there is no greater love than what I feel for her.
Janie watches, and says she'll pray for Bella. I find myself doing the same, making every conceivable promise to God in exchange for this dog's life. I bawl like a fucking baby, pulling Bella tighter to my chest, mumbling, "Precious baby, love you, baby girl" over and over like a mantra, as if my words can make somehow make this stop.
Still. Somewhere my mind shuffles awful thoughts. Vet bills, meds, money I don't have. The credit cards are maxed out. How am I going to pay for this? What does she need? Can she be cured, or is this going to be a permanent condition? If she's like this all the time, will she...that is...can she live like this?
Her tremors become more intense, each worse than the last, and then her body goes limp, followed by an awful stillness. "Oh God, no!" I cry, my tears dropping onto her matted fur, already sopping wet with drool and pee.
Big brown eyes peer up at me. She inhales deeply, the tail half-heartedly wags. She raises her head and licks away my tears. I place her gently on the ground and she marches unsteadily to the door, then turns and looks at me, one long ear flopping over her tilted head, as if to say, "Come on! I gotta go!"
I grab her leash and we head outside. She takes the steps down from the deck carefully, but her stride becomes more certain as she moves through the grass. She does her business, then marches forward, head down, nose working overtime.
Scenting. Something has been in the grass, and she means to track it, tugging hard at her leash, doing what she was meant to do, as all good beagles must. I pull her leash in a different direction, back to the house, and she doesn't put up a fight.
She knows we both need rest.
Bella's on the floor, trembling, her legs flailing. She's having a seizure, something her vet has said is not uncommon with beagles. As long as they don't get more frequent, everything will be fine.
I pick her up and cradle her in my arms, as I always do. We know the drill. She'll shake violently for a few minutes, then stop. I'll plop her down on the ground, she'll walk, still a little shaky, to the door. She knows the seizure has made her lose control of her bodily functions, and she doesn't want to poop in the house.
Which is what happens. But after bringing her back in, she has another seizure. Then another, more violent. Her limbs twist as I hold her, the ferocity of her shaking causing my own body to tremble. Her mouth foams, she pees on me, and I cuddle her tighter, convinced at this moment that there is no greater love than what I feel for her.
Janie watches, and says she'll pray for Bella. I find myself doing the same, making every conceivable promise to God in exchange for this dog's life. I bawl like a fucking baby, pulling Bella tighter to my chest, mumbling, "Precious baby, love you, baby girl" over and over like a mantra, as if my words can make somehow make this stop.
Still. Somewhere my mind shuffles awful thoughts. Vet bills, meds, money I don't have. The credit cards are maxed out. How am I going to pay for this? What does she need? Can she be cured, or is this going to be a permanent condition? If she's like this all the time, will she...that is...can she live like this?
Her tremors become more intense, each worse than the last, and then her body goes limp, followed by an awful stillness. "Oh God, no!" I cry, my tears dropping onto her matted fur, already sopping wet with drool and pee.
Big brown eyes peer up at me. She inhales deeply, the tail half-heartedly wags. She raises her head and licks away my tears. I place her gently on the ground and she marches unsteadily to the door, then turns and looks at me, one long ear flopping over her tilted head, as if to say, "Come on! I gotta go!"
I grab her leash and we head outside. She takes the steps down from the deck carefully, but her stride becomes more certain as she moves through the grass. She does her business, then marches forward, head down, nose working overtime.
Scenting. Something has been in the grass, and she means to track it, tugging hard at her leash, doing what she was meant to do, as all good beagles must. I pull her leash in a different direction, back to the house, and she doesn't put up a fight.
She knows we both need rest.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
MOTORIN'
A friend of mine was once afflicted with what he called The Seger Curse. That is, whatever store he'd walk into, any store of any kind, would always be playing some Bob Seger song or other. Whether it was the by-the-numbers rock star posing of Katmandu or the sleepy-time introspection of Night Moves--or worse, the faux-sensitive, let's-fuck-because-what-else-have-we-got-to-do treacly-creepy ballad We've Got Tonight--the tedious ubiquity of the hirsute Detroit legend came to represent everything stale and unimaginative about radio programming: You could play any song in the world, and you actually choose to play Against The Wind?
The curse was eventually passed to me, though in a somewhat milder form (although if I ever hear Old Time Rock & Roll again I may turn violent), then...it was over. Whoever programs the piped-in music for retail establishments and classic rock stations suddenly decided that was enough Seger for a lifetime, and the world was a better place.
Briefly. While seemingly dormant, The Curse was in fact mutating, and turned into a Night Ranger Curse. Which is to say, the radio at work now plays Sister Christian at every conceivable opportunity.
Kind of cute, for awhile. To the extent that I think of it at all, I associate the song with the Rahad Jackson sequence from P.T. Anderson's Boogie Nights. Specifically, I think of this:
And hey, who doesn't want to be reminded of one of their favorite movies during a long, tedious work day?
But they keep playing the damned thing. And it doesn't even matter what station is on. Our resident surly Boston sports fan tunes the radio to the local AM sports station, and in between incredibly convulted analogies and half-baked theories, there is commercial time. Specifically, a commercial for an upcoming concert from...Night Ranger. And seriously, what the hell other song are they going to play during this commercial? For a supposedly rockin' band--as they reminded us with the helpfully titled You Can Still Rock In America--these guys will always be known for this wimpy power ballad, and not much else.
And I, apparently, will have to listen to the damned thing pretty much every day. Or at least until I get a new musical curse. Right now, I'm starting to miss bob Seger.
The curse was eventually passed to me, though in a somewhat milder form (although if I ever hear Old Time Rock & Roll again I may turn violent), then...it was over. Whoever programs the piped-in music for retail establishments and classic rock stations suddenly decided that was enough Seger for a lifetime, and the world was a better place.
Briefly. While seemingly dormant, The Curse was in fact mutating, and turned into a Night Ranger Curse. Which is to say, the radio at work now plays Sister Christian at every conceivable opportunity.
Kind of cute, for awhile. To the extent that I think of it at all, I associate the song with the Rahad Jackson sequence from P.T. Anderson's Boogie Nights. Specifically, I think of this:
And hey, who doesn't want to be reminded of one of their favorite movies during a long, tedious work day?
But they keep playing the damned thing. And it doesn't even matter what station is on. Our resident surly Boston sports fan tunes the radio to the local AM sports station, and in between incredibly convulted analogies and half-baked theories, there is commercial time. Specifically, a commercial for an upcoming concert from...Night Ranger. And seriously, what the hell other song are they going to play during this commercial? For a supposedly rockin' band--as they reminded us with the helpfully titled You Can Still Rock In America--these guys will always be known for this wimpy power ballad, and not much else.
And I, apparently, will have to listen to the damned thing pretty much every day. Or at least until I get a new musical curse. Right now, I'm starting to miss bob Seger.
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
I'M SO TIRED
A restless night; periods of sleep, followed by fifteen minutes of bleary-eyed waking time, followed by sleep, followed by...you get the idea.
During the waking moments the mind will wander. Times like this, I often start half-hearted writing projects in my head: random bits of dialogue, character sketches, whatever. Nothing ever comes of these brainstorming sessions, because ideas that sound great running through a grungy head at 1 AM prove to be utter crap in the unforgiving light of day.
But even by these standards, what the hell was my problem last night? Did I eat the wrong thing before bedtime? Because every time my eyes would snap open, I'd immediately start composing what, in my mind, was the most lucid essay ever.
About the movie Anaconda.
Now, because this was a terrible idea occurring to me in the middle of the night, I'm a little fuzzy on what may have been the substance of this piece. I suspect it may have had something to do with the surprisingly fine cast and tech crew assembled for what is, after all, an amazingly stupid exploitation movie. If that was my argument, it's severely undercut by the fact that I'VE NEVER EVEN SEEN ANACONDA IN THE FIRST PLACE!
Sure, I've seen chunks of it--to subscribe to a basic cable channel is to have seen bits and pieces of all sorts of movies you'd never normally watch--but I've never done it the courtesy of watching straight through. So really, how could I fairly judge it?
I couldn't. And I have no desire to judge it, or to see it, for that matter. I don't care about it one way or the other. So why was I thrashing about in bed last night, convinced that I alone could compose the definitive treatise on Anaconda?
Ask me when I'm half-asleep. The answer won't make sense to you, but in my mind it will be brilliant.
During the waking moments the mind will wander. Times like this, I often start half-hearted writing projects in my head: random bits of dialogue, character sketches, whatever. Nothing ever comes of these brainstorming sessions, because ideas that sound great running through a grungy head at 1 AM prove to be utter crap in the unforgiving light of day.
But even by these standards, what the hell was my problem last night? Did I eat the wrong thing before bedtime? Because every time my eyes would snap open, I'd immediately start composing what, in my mind, was the most lucid essay ever.
About the movie Anaconda.
Now, because this was a terrible idea occurring to me in the middle of the night, I'm a little fuzzy on what may have been the substance of this piece. I suspect it may have had something to do with the surprisingly fine cast and tech crew assembled for what is, after all, an amazingly stupid exploitation movie. If that was my argument, it's severely undercut by the fact that I'VE NEVER EVEN SEEN ANACONDA IN THE FIRST PLACE!
Sure, I've seen chunks of it--to subscribe to a basic cable channel is to have seen bits and pieces of all sorts of movies you'd never normally watch--but I've never done it the courtesy of watching straight through. So really, how could I fairly judge it?
I couldn't. And I have no desire to judge it, or to see it, for that matter. I don't care about it one way or the other. So why was I thrashing about in bed last night, convinced that I alone could compose the definitive treatise on Anaconda?
Ask me when I'm half-asleep. The answer won't make sense to you, but in my mind it will be brilliant.
Monday, September 19, 2011
MIND GAMES
A small part of this past weekend was spent trying to explain to Paul (who does not read comics but will run out to see the latest superhero epic on the big screen) that Stan Lee, despite his jokey cameos in all Marvel Comics movie adaptations, really doesn't deserve sole credit for these characters, and that Jack Kirby's dynamic artwork and character designs really had much more to do with their iconic status.
Which is all well and good, but as a kid in the early seventies, I didn't give a rat's ass about superheroes, and read almost nothing from Marvel. I was all about DC, and even then, only their war comics, which were presided over by writer/editor Robert Kanigher and a rotating stable of artists, which generally included the unfailingly great Joe Kubert and Russ Heath. I saw the ads in these books for Kirby's now-legendary New Gods and Kamandi, but since they didn't feature Panzers or Spitfires, I didn't care.
Then, out of nowhere, Kirby was handed one of the books I did read, Our Fighting Forces, featuring the hard-luck squadron known as The Losers. This was my first real introduction to the work of one of the most influential comic book artists of all time, and holy crap, I became a fan for life. Though Kirby was a World War II vet, his depictions of the front lines bore no trace of the carefully researched realism Kubert and Heath depicted, resembling nothing so much as clashes between gods and demigods on some abstract Olympus.
The thing that struck me most about Kirby's artwork was his depiction of the cigar-chomping character Sarge, and how that cigar almost always drawn in such a way that it was pointing out towards us, the reader, its tip burning with the black-dotted pattern I would later come to know as "Kirby krackle". I was so obsessed with how he drew that thing that I soon filled countless Big Chief tablets with characters smoking cigars, just so I could try to get the same effect.
A bit of research tells me that Kirby's run on that title was relatively brief, stretching from late in '74 to the end of '75. I was nine turning to ten. And the thing is, when the clear, fully-formed memory of trying to draw my own Kirby krackling cigars popped into my head, I tried in vain to recall anything else from my life in that era. The best I could come up with was a distinct memory of reading one of these books on a blisteringly hot summer day, siting on one side of the davenport (because back then we called it a davenport, not a couch) absorbing as much of the breeze from the big box fan in front of the screen door as I could. But who else would have been in the room, what they may have looked like at that time, or even the sound of their voices--no, that seems to have faded, at least for the moment.
As much as I love Jack Kirby's work, part of me wishes my mind had not decided to retain this particular memory, not if it means losing the images and sounds of people I loved much more.
Which is all well and good, but as a kid in the early seventies, I didn't give a rat's ass about superheroes, and read almost nothing from Marvel. I was all about DC, and even then, only their war comics, which were presided over by writer/editor Robert Kanigher and a rotating stable of artists, which generally included the unfailingly great Joe Kubert and Russ Heath. I saw the ads in these books for Kirby's now-legendary New Gods and Kamandi, but since they didn't feature Panzers or Spitfires, I didn't care.
Then, out of nowhere, Kirby was handed one of the books I did read, Our Fighting Forces, featuring the hard-luck squadron known as The Losers. This was my first real introduction to the work of one of the most influential comic book artists of all time, and holy crap, I became a fan for life. Though Kirby was a World War II vet, his depictions of the front lines bore no trace of the carefully researched realism Kubert and Heath depicted, resembling nothing so much as clashes between gods and demigods on some abstract Olympus.
The thing that struck me most about Kirby's artwork was his depiction of the cigar-chomping character Sarge, and how that cigar almost always drawn in such a way that it was pointing out towards us, the reader, its tip burning with the black-dotted pattern I would later come to know as "Kirby krackle". I was so obsessed with how he drew that thing that I soon filled countless Big Chief tablets with characters smoking cigars, just so I could try to get the same effect.
A bit of research tells me that Kirby's run on that title was relatively brief, stretching from late in '74 to the end of '75. I was nine turning to ten. And the thing is, when the clear, fully-formed memory of trying to draw my own Kirby krackling cigars popped into my head, I tried in vain to recall anything else from my life in that era. The best I could come up with was a distinct memory of reading one of these books on a blisteringly hot summer day, siting on one side of the davenport (because back then we called it a davenport, not a couch) absorbing as much of the breeze from the big box fan in front of the screen door as I could. But who else would have been in the room, what they may have looked like at that time, or even the sound of their voices--no, that seems to have faded, at least for the moment.
As much as I love Jack Kirby's work, part of me wishes my mind had not decided to retain this particular memory, not if it means losing the images and sounds of people I loved much more.
Friday, September 16, 2011
MY MIND IS ON THE BLINK
I won't give you all the details about the pinched nerve in my lower back, I'll just mention that it's there and hurts like a sonofabitch. Pain unfortunately leads to irritability--as Janie puts it, I'm Mr. Grumpypants--and also, somewhat more fortunately, to medication.
Oh, sweet narcotic relief!
When the label clearly specifies that meds are to be taken only at bedtime, well kids, it can only mean one thing: Seriously weird-ass dreams will follow. And sure enough, on this occasion my slumbering form found itself sitting through an entire endless Saturday Night Live episode hosted by Christina Aguilara, who occasionally morphed into Cyndi Lauper because fine, whatever, but more to the point, she was the center of the whole episode. There were literally no other cast members, just Christina (or sometimes Cyndi) mugging her way through endless solo sketches that inevitably led to singing. And it just kept going on and on and on until...
...Until I woke up and stumbled out of bed. At first it felt like my pain was gone, but all at once it returned, shooting down my leg, making my foot tingle. Hard at this point to say which hurts more, reality or my dream state, but at least in the real world I won't have to suffer through any more punishingly unfunny attempts at comedy.
At least, I hope not.
Oh, sweet narcotic relief!
When the label clearly specifies that meds are to be taken only at bedtime, well kids, it can only mean one thing: Seriously weird-ass dreams will follow. And sure enough, on this occasion my slumbering form found itself sitting through an entire endless Saturday Night Live episode hosted by Christina Aguilara, who occasionally morphed into Cyndi Lauper because fine, whatever, but more to the point, she was the center of the whole episode. There were literally no other cast members, just Christina (or sometimes Cyndi) mugging her way through endless solo sketches that inevitably led to singing. And it just kept going on and on and on until...
...Until I woke up and stumbled out of bed. At first it felt like my pain was gone, but all at once it returned, shooting down my leg, making my foot tingle. Hard at this point to say which hurts more, reality or my dream state, but at least in the real world I won't have to suffer through any more punishingly unfunny attempts at comedy.
At least, I hope not.
Saturday, September 10, 2011
I HAD TO SEE FOR MYSELF
It's strange--I spent nearly a year living in the suburbs of D.C., and in all that time it's almost impossible to remember many days that were gray or overcast. It snowed maybe twice in the winter, there was occasional rain. Mostly, though, the sky remained a dazzling blue.
After that terrible day in September, of course, even that beautiful sky seemed threatening.
The ten year anniversary of 9/11 is playing out in depressingly predictable fashion, with trite retrospective TV specials and memorial events that just go through the motions and, most ludicrously, t-shirts and placards proclaiming ridiculous homilies like "We Remember" and "Never Forget".
Like it's even possible to forget. Even more terrible than the day itself was the lingering fear, still in the air for days and weeks and months thereafter. Constantly scanning the sky just in case, or flinching at every backfiring car, or steering clear of every unattended package in Metro stations.
Just living through those days took its toll. Our hearts beat faster, waiting for the other shoe to drop. And if anyone I knew had died in the attacks, even a pacifist lefty like me would have been in full "Let's kill those dirty bastards" vengeance mode. But through it all, I was never so naive as to think that what happened was somehow unprovoked. While we in this country believed we were under attack, many people in other nations simply thought of it as retaliation.
How could we go around meddling in the affairs of other countries without thinking it would eventually come back home? This nation has done some pretty unsavory things, ostensibly for the cause of freedom and democracy--though just as often for profit--while too many of its citizens remained unaware. We've made a lot of enemies. Can we honestly claim surprise when some of them decide to fight back?
At the time, asking such a question was considered tantamount to treason. To this day, some would claim my views as part of the "Blame America" crowd. Except...I'm not claiming there's any blame to be had. No one would ever say we deserved to be attacked. But it happened anyway. Sometimes, to quote that great American icon Clint Eastwood, deserve's got nothing to do with it.
After that terrible day in September, of course, even that beautiful sky seemed threatening.
The ten year anniversary of 9/11 is playing out in depressingly predictable fashion, with trite retrospective TV specials and memorial events that just go through the motions and, most ludicrously, t-shirts and placards proclaiming ridiculous homilies like "We Remember" and "Never Forget".
Like it's even possible to forget. Even more terrible than the day itself was the lingering fear, still in the air for days and weeks and months thereafter. Constantly scanning the sky just in case, or flinching at every backfiring car, or steering clear of every unattended package in Metro stations.
Just living through those days took its toll. Our hearts beat faster, waiting for the other shoe to drop. And if anyone I knew had died in the attacks, even a pacifist lefty like me would have been in full "Let's kill those dirty bastards" vengeance mode. But through it all, I was never so naive as to think that what happened was somehow unprovoked. While we in this country believed we were under attack, many people in other nations simply thought of it as retaliation.
How could we go around meddling in the affairs of other countries without thinking it would eventually come back home? This nation has done some pretty unsavory things, ostensibly for the cause of freedom and democracy--though just as often for profit--while too many of its citizens remained unaware. We've made a lot of enemies. Can we honestly claim surprise when some of them decide to fight back?
At the time, asking such a question was considered tantamount to treason. To this day, some would claim my views as part of the "Blame America" crowd. Except...I'm not claiming there's any blame to be had. No one would ever say we deserved to be attacked. But it happened anyway. Sometimes, to quote that great American icon Clint Eastwood, deserve's got nothing to do with it.
Wednesday, September 07, 2011
FROM THIS MOMENT ON I KNOW
Mom again, casually sitting in a crowded cafeteria.
I don't even see her at first. I'm talking to some friends, then excuse myself to use the restroom. As I walk by her, she looks up and smiles, nodding slightly. Trying to think of something to say, I ask, "Is there anything I should know?"
She doesn't say a word--very unusual for Mom--but stands, laboriously unfolding her walker, and hobbles out of the now empty cafeteria. I follow her not even five feet down a hallway. Suddenly we're in a living room.
Not one I recognize, but it seems familiar anyway. The TV--huge and hi-def, but still a Quasar!--is tuned to the latest Fast And The Furious entry, Dad sits in the corner laughing at some of the most outrageous stunts, a stack of empty Grain Belt cans on the shelf beside him. There are children sprawled throughout the room, and I instantly recognize them as my brothers and sisters, but younger than I have ever known them. Some watch the movie in rapt attention, some play, some tussle, but all seem to be having a good time.
In the middle of it all stands Mom, smiling warmly. She doesn't say anything, but I understand.
The ambitions I might have once had in my life never quite materialized. Where's that novel I meant to write, or the next book, or anything substantial? Why don't I live in New York or Seattle or even Minneapolis? Where are all my quick-witted hipster friends?
Turns out, none of that is needed. I romp around the house with my dog while Janie watches Dancing With The Stars, or she'll read some historical romance while I watch Mitchell on Mystery Science Theater 3000 for roughly the five hundredth time. Whatever we're doing, we'll stop now and then to hold each other, to say, "I love you."
Back in the living room, Mom nestles in her chair, perusing her copy of The Murder, She Wrote Companion. She glances at me, says something. The noise level in the room makes it hard to hear, but it sounds very much like, "This is life. Enjoy."
I don't even see her at first. I'm talking to some friends, then excuse myself to use the restroom. As I walk by her, she looks up and smiles, nodding slightly. Trying to think of something to say, I ask, "Is there anything I should know?"
She doesn't say a word--very unusual for Mom--but stands, laboriously unfolding her walker, and hobbles out of the now empty cafeteria. I follow her not even five feet down a hallway. Suddenly we're in a living room.
Not one I recognize, but it seems familiar anyway. The TV--huge and hi-def, but still a Quasar!--is tuned to the latest Fast And The Furious entry, Dad sits in the corner laughing at some of the most outrageous stunts, a stack of empty Grain Belt cans on the shelf beside him. There are children sprawled throughout the room, and I instantly recognize them as my brothers and sisters, but younger than I have ever known them. Some watch the movie in rapt attention, some play, some tussle, but all seem to be having a good time.
In the middle of it all stands Mom, smiling warmly. She doesn't say anything, but I understand.
The ambitions I might have once had in my life never quite materialized. Where's that novel I meant to write, or the next book, or anything substantial? Why don't I live in New York or Seattle or even Minneapolis? Where are all my quick-witted hipster friends?
Turns out, none of that is needed. I romp around the house with my dog while Janie watches Dancing With The Stars, or she'll read some historical romance while I watch Mitchell on Mystery Science Theater 3000 for roughly the five hundredth time. Whatever we're doing, we'll stop now and then to hold each other, to say, "I love you."
Back in the living room, Mom nestles in her chair, perusing her copy of The Murder, She Wrote Companion. She glances at me, says something. The noise level in the room makes it hard to hear, but it sounds very much like, "This is life. Enjoy."
Monday, September 05, 2011
PATHETIC EARTHLINGS!
It's just a trailer, so this may not reflect the finished film at all. Still...
When John Carter Of Mars first went into production, there was reason to be excited. It was officially produced under Pixar's auspices, with Finding Nemo's Andrew Stanton directing what was promised as an ambitious mix of live action and CGI animation. Soon, it became a Disney production, Of Mars was dropped from the title, and we got this trailer, which just doesn't look like much of anything.
It's not bad, but boy, is it ever familiar. And not because Edgar Rice Burroughs' books have been freely ripped off by so many filmmakers over the years, but because this movie looks to be using any number of familiar tropes from those very same movies, from the dreary blue-and-orange lighting scheme to the live action hero facing numerous weightless CGIed foes. Even with digital enhancement, the Martian landscape looks suspiciously like Monument Valley. (The two movies that immediately pop to mind watching this are Prince Of Persia and Cowboys And Aliens, which doesn't speak well for box office prospects.) And with Peter Gabriel's Arcade Fire cover droning away in the background, the whole thing seems a bit somber.
I mean, it's great that they're taking the material seriously, but shouldn't an adaptation of a pulp classic seem a little more fun? Obviously this movie wasn't going to contain the abundant nudity found in Burroughs' books, but couldn't it include some of its lurid, overripe sensibilities?
Couldn't it, in other words, be more like this?
Mike Hodges' Flash Gordon was widely ignored or openly hated by audiences and critics back in 1980, but its reputation has grown over the years, largely because there's no other movie quite like it. The campy attitude of its script (by Lorenzo Semple, who was largely responsible for the tone of the Adam West Batman series) is overcome by the brilliantly out-there sets and costumes of Danilo Donati and the gorgeously saturated camerawork of Gilbert Taylor. You can quibble with its tone or rue the unfortunate lead performance of the anti-charismatic Sam Jones, but there's no denying that this movie looks like the cover of a pulp novel come to glorious life.
If the makers of John Carter had looked to it for inspiration, while finding a more serious tone of their own...ah, well. It's just a trailer. Maybe the movie will be better. Maybe.
When John Carter Of Mars first went into production, there was reason to be excited. It was officially produced under Pixar's auspices, with Finding Nemo's Andrew Stanton directing what was promised as an ambitious mix of live action and CGI animation. Soon, it became a Disney production, Of Mars was dropped from the title, and we got this trailer, which just doesn't look like much of anything.
It's not bad, but boy, is it ever familiar. And not because Edgar Rice Burroughs' books have been freely ripped off by so many filmmakers over the years, but because this movie looks to be using any number of familiar tropes from those very same movies, from the dreary blue-and-orange lighting scheme to the live action hero facing numerous weightless CGIed foes. Even with digital enhancement, the Martian landscape looks suspiciously like Monument Valley. (The two movies that immediately pop to mind watching this are Prince Of Persia and Cowboys And Aliens, which doesn't speak well for box office prospects.) And with Peter Gabriel's Arcade Fire cover droning away in the background, the whole thing seems a bit somber.
I mean, it's great that they're taking the material seriously, but shouldn't an adaptation of a pulp classic seem a little more fun? Obviously this movie wasn't going to contain the abundant nudity found in Burroughs' books, but couldn't it include some of its lurid, overripe sensibilities?
Couldn't it, in other words, be more like this?
Mike Hodges' Flash Gordon was widely ignored or openly hated by audiences and critics back in 1980, but its reputation has grown over the years, largely because there's no other movie quite like it. The campy attitude of its script (by Lorenzo Semple, who was largely responsible for the tone of the Adam West Batman series) is overcome by the brilliantly out-there sets and costumes of Danilo Donati and the gorgeously saturated camerawork of Gilbert Taylor. You can quibble with its tone or rue the unfortunate lead performance of the anti-charismatic Sam Jones, but there's no denying that this movie looks like the cover of a pulp novel come to glorious life.
If the makers of John Carter had looked to it for inspiration, while finding a more serious tone of their own...ah, well. It's just a trailer. Maybe the movie will be better. Maybe.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
NOT SINCE MICKEY ROONEY TEAMED WITH BUDDY HACKETT HAS SUCH HILARITY BEEN SEEN!
So I had this dream last night, about which I mostly recall nothing, except that I repeatedly found myself in the lobby of a somewhat rundown theater. For some reason, I would suddenly have to leave, and instead of going out the front door, as any normal person would, I'd head down a narrow hallway with a dim EXIT sign at the end. Along the way, I'd pass a young woman talking on a pay phone. As I'd get to the door, she'd turn to me with some unintelligible words of advice. "What?" I'd ask, just as I stepped out the door--right into a puddle. Or snow bank. Or passing garbage truck.
Hilarity! Because the same thing keeps happening, you see, with slight variation, and, uh...
Okay, look, I know it's not that interesting. I wouldn't even bring it up, except for the fact that I've always maintained that the running gag is one of the lamest bits in the comedy repertoire, and yet here I am dreaming of one. But the point is, it's not funny in the least. So that's, you know...something?
Sigh.
Fine. Here's some actual entertainment: Marshall Crenshaw performing one of the songs I know I want played at my funeral.
Hilarity! Because the same thing keeps happening, you see, with slight variation, and, uh...
Okay, look, I know it's not that interesting. I wouldn't even bring it up, except for the fact that I've always maintained that the running gag is one of the lamest bits in the comedy repertoire, and yet here I am dreaming of one. But the point is, it's not funny in the least. So that's, you know...something?
Sigh.
Fine. Here's some actual entertainment: Marshall Crenshaw performing one of the songs I know I want played at my funeral.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
TELEVISION LIGHT
2:30 in the morning, and I'm walking dogs. Isabella, of course, and Brody, who's staying here temporarily. A beagle and a rat terrier. She's spayed, he's neutered, but if they weren't they'd have the most adorable offspring.
Not that I'd have the energy to deal with puppies. Sometimes I even wonder if I'll always be able to deal with the dog I've got. The fact is, Bella's only two years old. Beagles have an average life span of fifteen years. She'll still be around when I'm sixty.
Which seems not as old as it once did, really. And not as far away. There was a time when I couldn't imagine being in my forties. For that matter, I could never have imagined a lot of things that have happened in my life.
Brody pulls hard on his leash, Bella yanks in the opposite direction. I try to assert my balance, and in the process stomp my foot. Hard. Pain shoots through me, I moan in agony. The dogs stop and look at me with "You okay, man?" expressions. Even when they're annoying, they mean well.
I stomped too hard on my bad foot, the one with a steel plate instead of a heel, the one that I broke in a suicide attempt when I realized my marriage was irrevocably broken. That would be another thing that I would never have been able to imagine happening to me.
Not the suicide attempt or the divorce, but the marriage itself. I drifted through my twenties filled with profound self-loathing, and the notion that anybody would want to be with me seemed...well, inconceivable. I literally couldn't imagine such a thing happening.
Somehow, it did. That it didn't last almost doesn't matter. (Except for, you know, the physical and emotional scars that took forever to heal.) Because eventually, having discovered that someone could stand to live with me, that maybe I wasn't so terrible (and despite the divorce, Sue Ellen and I remained friends), I somehow had the courage to wade out into the world again, to actually live.
Then things got weird, and good and bad. A life was lived, almost without me realizing it. I discovered that I could be a good guy, or an asshole, or sometimes utterly indifferent. And I fell in love again, and got my heart broken again, but that's how it goes, I guess.
Still. Things get better. Janie's in my life, and everything's different. She's my age, and we've both had eventful lives. We've both lost our parents, for one thing, so we've had that defining moment of it-can't-get-any-worse. Things still hurt, but not as deeply. But we can still feel, and still love.
Brody's ears pop up and down as he looks around, all his sense firing. Bella is onto some scent, her nose low to the ground. I gently tug their leashes and they turn, following my lead. "Come on, guys," I say. "Let's go home."
Not that I'd have the energy to deal with puppies. Sometimes I even wonder if I'll always be able to deal with the dog I've got. The fact is, Bella's only two years old. Beagles have an average life span of fifteen years. She'll still be around when I'm sixty.
Which seems not as old as it once did, really. And not as far away. There was a time when I couldn't imagine being in my forties. For that matter, I could never have imagined a lot of things that have happened in my life.
Brody pulls hard on his leash, Bella yanks in the opposite direction. I try to assert my balance, and in the process stomp my foot. Hard. Pain shoots through me, I moan in agony. The dogs stop and look at me with "You okay, man?" expressions. Even when they're annoying, they mean well.
I stomped too hard on my bad foot, the one with a steel plate instead of a heel, the one that I broke in a suicide attempt when I realized my marriage was irrevocably broken. That would be another thing that I would never have been able to imagine happening to me.
Not the suicide attempt or the divorce, but the marriage itself. I drifted through my twenties filled with profound self-loathing, and the notion that anybody would want to be with me seemed...well, inconceivable. I literally couldn't imagine such a thing happening.
Somehow, it did. That it didn't last almost doesn't matter. (Except for, you know, the physical and emotional scars that took forever to heal.) Because eventually, having discovered that someone could stand to live with me, that maybe I wasn't so terrible (and despite the divorce, Sue Ellen and I remained friends), I somehow had the courage to wade out into the world again, to actually live.
Then things got weird, and good and bad. A life was lived, almost without me realizing it. I discovered that I could be a good guy, or an asshole, or sometimes utterly indifferent. And I fell in love again, and got my heart broken again, but that's how it goes, I guess.
Still. Things get better. Janie's in my life, and everything's different. She's my age, and we've both had eventful lives. We've both lost our parents, for one thing, so we've had that defining moment of it-can't-get-any-worse. Things still hurt, but not as deeply. But we can still feel, and still love.
Brody's ears pop up and down as he looks around, all his sense firing. Bella is onto some scent, her nose low to the ground. I gently tug their leashes and they turn, following my lead. "Come on, guys," I say. "Let's go home."
Saturday, August 20, 2011
CLIMB, BABY, CLIMB!
I had absolutely no idea what I was doing on the evening of April 22nd, 1978, until I stumbled across this clip on YouTube.
Then the evening started reconstructing itself. Dad and I were home alone that night. Mom and Julie were presumably doing something together--possibly school related?--but were was John? Odd that he would have been off somewhere without me.
But, regardless, that was the case. Dad, me and Saturday Night At The Movies. The weird thing is, watching this was my idea. I remember that, but I have no recollection as to why I would have wanted to watch. It wasn't to make fun--Dad wouldn't have been the proper viewing partner for that. But I remember actively reading Dad the TV Guide listings for everything else that night and making a strong case for Airport '75. I guess...I was in the mood to watch Chuck Heston in shades?
Anyway, it started, and Dad and I were enjoying--he laughed at some of the corny humor involving George Kennedy, and he actively watched, instead of leafing through a magazine as he sometimes did during evening TV hours. Maybe he sensed this was a rare opportunity for the two of us to bond over something, however unlikely?
Maybe forty minutes in, conveniently during a commercial break, we heard a car coming down the lane. Not Mom, not John, too early for them to be home--though I have no memory of where they were, they must have told us when they'd be back--so it must be...company? Sure enough, it was my brother Keith and his family, which meant visiting, which meant not seeing the rest of the movie.
"OK if I finish watching this upstairs?" I asked Dad without waiting for the response and headed to my room, swinging through the kitchen and scooping beloved cat Farrah off the kitchen counter on the way. (TV is always better with a viewing companion, even one that's furry, multi-colored and barely senient.) I pulled my door shut, plopped the cat on the bed and watched the rest of the movie on a small black-and-white screen. It wasn't as good as the Quasar in the living room, but then again, Airport '75 isn't exactly noted for its bold use of color. I had a good time watching it, although it failed to keep Farrah awake.
Why do I remember this evening? Or more to the point, why had I forgotten it completely until stumbling across this promo? What other memories reside perfectly-formed in my head, waiting only for the proper trigger to release them?
Then the evening started reconstructing itself. Dad and I were home alone that night. Mom and Julie were presumably doing something together--possibly school related?--but were was John? Odd that he would have been off somewhere without me.
But, regardless, that was the case. Dad, me and Saturday Night At The Movies. The weird thing is, watching this was my idea. I remember that, but I have no recollection as to why I would have wanted to watch. It wasn't to make fun--Dad wouldn't have been the proper viewing partner for that. But I remember actively reading Dad the TV Guide listings for everything else that night and making a strong case for Airport '75. I guess...I was in the mood to watch Chuck Heston in shades?
Anyway, it started, and Dad and I were enjoying--he laughed at some of the corny humor involving George Kennedy, and he actively watched, instead of leafing through a magazine as he sometimes did during evening TV hours. Maybe he sensed this was a rare opportunity for the two of us to bond over something, however unlikely?
Maybe forty minutes in, conveniently during a commercial break, we heard a car coming down the lane. Not Mom, not John, too early for them to be home--though I have no memory of where they were, they must have told us when they'd be back--so it must be...company? Sure enough, it was my brother Keith and his family, which meant visiting, which meant not seeing the rest of the movie.
"OK if I finish watching this upstairs?" I asked Dad without waiting for the response and headed to my room, swinging through the kitchen and scooping beloved cat Farrah off the kitchen counter on the way. (TV is always better with a viewing companion, even one that's furry, multi-colored and barely senient.) I pulled my door shut, plopped the cat on the bed and watched the rest of the movie on a small black-and-white screen. It wasn't as good as the Quasar in the living room, but then again, Airport '75 isn't exactly noted for its bold use of color. I had a good time watching it, although it failed to keep Farrah awake.
Why do I remember this evening? Or more to the point, why had I forgotten it completely until stumbling across this promo? What other memories reside perfectly-formed in my head, waiting only for the proper trigger to release them?
Tuesday, August 09, 2011
THE POWER AND THE GLORY
Last Sunday, a church in my neighborhood hosted what its signage referred to as "A Michelle Bachman Event". Since the event took place on a Sunday, in conjunction with regular services, would that not mean the church was offering a tacit endorsement of Bachman for president? And if so, shouldn't that immediately cause the church to lose its sweet, sweet tax-exempt status?
The law is pretty clear on that, but the Republican party increasingly believes itself to be above the law. And not just the laws of man; clearly, it has no use for the laws of God, or at least for the intent of the man all Republicans loudly proclaim as their savior, Jesus Christ.
Consider Michelle Bachman. She was absolutely, fanatically opposed to raising the debt ceiling, whatever the consequences may have been. Her oft-stated mantra is, we don't need to borrow and spend more, we need to cut and save.
Oh, but what would Michelle cut? The same thing all the other Republicans would cut: "Entitlement" programs such as Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, Head Start. Programs, obviously, designed to help the neediest among us, the poor, the elderly, the disadvantaged. No Republican is quite brazen enough to come right out and say "Fuck the poor" but they don't really need to: Deeds speak so much louder than words.
These people, again, stridently proclaim their Christianity. But how do they balance their tireless advocacy for the wealthy, their blatant disregard for the poor, with the actual words of Jesus, as found in Matthew 25: 31-46. We'll use the King James version, for the sake of tradition:
31When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:
32And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:
33And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
34Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
35For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
36Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
37Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
38When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?
39Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
40And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
41Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:
42For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:
43I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.
44Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?
45Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.
46And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.
I mean, that's not the least bit ambiguous, is it? The meaning is clear, right? So if you claim to live your life according to the teachings of someone, and blatantly ignore everything he stood for just to further your own personal agenda...
I guess what I'm saying is, enjoy your everlasting fire, Michelle.
The law is pretty clear on that, but the Republican party increasingly believes itself to be above the law. And not just the laws of man; clearly, it has no use for the laws of God, or at least for the intent of the man all Republicans loudly proclaim as their savior, Jesus Christ.
Consider Michelle Bachman. She was absolutely, fanatically opposed to raising the debt ceiling, whatever the consequences may have been. Her oft-stated mantra is, we don't need to borrow and spend more, we need to cut and save.
Oh, but what would Michelle cut? The same thing all the other Republicans would cut: "Entitlement" programs such as Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, Head Start. Programs, obviously, designed to help the neediest among us, the poor, the elderly, the disadvantaged. No Republican is quite brazen enough to come right out and say "Fuck the poor" but they don't really need to: Deeds speak so much louder than words.
These people, again, stridently proclaim their Christianity. But how do they balance their tireless advocacy for the wealthy, their blatant disregard for the poor, with the actual words of Jesus, as found in Matthew 25: 31-46. We'll use the King James version, for the sake of tradition:
31When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:
32And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:
33And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
34Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
35For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
36Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
37Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
38When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?
39Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
40And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
41Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:
42For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:
43I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.
44Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?
45Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.
46And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.
I mean, that's not the least bit ambiguous, is it? The meaning is clear, right? So if you claim to live your life according to the teachings of someone, and blatantly ignore everything he stood for just to further your own personal agenda...
I guess what I'm saying is, enjoy your everlasting fire, Michelle.
Thursday, August 04, 2011
NEW CONTENT, OF A SORT
Oh, I've meant to post stuff. It's not like there's nothing to talk about. But whenever I felt like discussing, say, the whole debt-ceiling debacle, I'd find myself getting more and more depressed and...well, who needs that? Not you, faithful reader. And certainly not me.
Still, as a way of generating some sort of new content here, we turn--as we haven't for awhile--to out old friend YouTube. This interstitial from the first season of Sesame Street handily displays everything that made that show such a watershed for developing young minds--it has a dreamy, free associative quality that allows a viewer's mind to wander where it will, and (thanks mostly to the music) a somewhat melancholy feel as well. Nothing made for kids these days is like this anymore--certainly not the current incarnation of Sesame Street--and we're all poorer for that.
All well and good, but let's face it: I'm including this mostly because it has a beagle.
Still, as a way of generating some sort of new content here, we turn--as we haven't for awhile--to out old friend YouTube. This interstitial from the first season of Sesame Street handily displays everything that made that show such a watershed for developing young minds--it has a dreamy, free associative quality that allows a viewer's mind to wander where it will, and (thanks mostly to the music) a somewhat melancholy feel as well. Nothing made for kids these days is like this anymore--certainly not the current incarnation of Sesame Street--and we're all poorer for that.
All well and good, but let's face it: I'm including this mostly because it has a beagle.
Saturday, July 30, 2011
BUT HEY, AT LEAST HE DIDN'T COMPARE ANYONE TO EVA BRAUN
So Jerry Lewis was at some TV critic's confab or other, there to promote a cable TV documentary about his career, and, as usually happens when he makes a public appearance, he took the opportunity to reveal his essential Jerry Lewis-ness, his uncanny ability to deliver a few observations that are undeniably cogent and wise, but mixed with a noxious egotism and a profound inability to understand when too much is way more than enough.
He railed against reality TV: "The medium is busy knocking its brand out to display the fat lady at 375 pounds who in two months is gonna be 240. Who gives a shit?"
He railed against the movie industry, technology and pretty much anything that popped into his mind: "The industry has destroyed themselves. It's no longer relevant because it puts all its product on a stupid phone. You're going to put Lawrence Of Arabia on that goddamned stupid sonofabitch? [Social media] are wonderful technical advances, but once people see how much its cluttering up their life, they'll figure it out for themselves. We're not going to have human beings in twenty years. People won't be talking to other human beings."
All well and good, and pretty much dead-on (although, hey Jerry, why do you have to work blue?), but the problem is, who the hell is Jerry Fucking Lewis to complain about people not talking to other human beings? This guy's whole life has been spent holding grudges against people who dared to contradict him, or told him something he didn't want to hear, or simply asked him a question. (My favorite part of the DVD commentary tracks of Lewis' Paramount titles were his muttered passive-aggressive asides about journeyman cinematographer Wallace Kelley, who shot most of Lewis' films. I gather Kelley once may have made the mistake of actually taking credit for a lighting effect or something, thus giving the impression that they weren't personally crafted by The Total Filmmaker himself.)
As happened, for instance, at this very same event, when someone asked him about his self-announced plans to retire after this year's Muscular Dystrophy telethon. "Who told you that? I never read it. Anything you read, read it twice."
Lest you think Jerry was just being coy, making with the funny and the ha-ha, when another reporter asked him what his exact role would be on this year's telethon, he responded, "It is none of your business."
Geez, Jerry. "I didn't mean to sound rude, but on September 5th, the day after that program, I will have an international press conference, and I will have plenty to say about what I think is important, and that is the future, not the past."
Now see, this is where this almost gets poignant, or would if it weren't kind of creepy, like a Krusty The Clown remake of Sunset Boulevard. Here's Jerry Lewis at 85, faced with the prospect that his annual 24-hour telethon, once a beloved national institution, has been cut down to six hours, a sure sign that the world has moved on, but he can't quite deal with reality. No, he'll hold an "international press conference" to clarify his role in this thing that nobody cares about. Clearly, in Lewis' mind, the world still revolves around him. He's still as big as ever, it's the telethon that got small.
He railed against reality TV: "The medium is busy knocking its brand out to display the fat lady at 375 pounds who in two months is gonna be 240. Who gives a shit?"
He railed against the movie industry, technology and pretty much anything that popped into his mind: "The industry has destroyed themselves. It's no longer relevant because it puts all its product on a stupid phone. You're going to put Lawrence Of Arabia on that goddamned stupid sonofabitch? [Social media] are wonderful technical advances, but once people see how much its cluttering up their life, they'll figure it out for themselves. We're not going to have human beings in twenty years. People won't be talking to other human beings."
All well and good, and pretty much dead-on (although, hey Jerry, why do you have to work blue?), but the problem is, who the hell is Jerry Fucking Lewis to complain about people not talking to other human beings? This guy's whole life has been spent holding grudges against people who dared to contradict him, or told him something he didn't want to hear, or simply asked him a question. (My favorite part of the DVD commentary tracks of Lewis' Paramount titles were his muttered passive-aggressive asides about journeyman cinematographer Wallace Kelley, who shot most of Lewis' films. I gather Kelley once may have made the mistake of actually taking credit for a lighting effect or something, thus giving the impression that they weren't personally crafted by The Total Filmmaker himself.)
As happened, for instance, at this very same event, when someone asked him about his self-announced plans to retire after this year's Muscular Dystrophy telethon. "Who told you that? I never read it. Anything you read, read it twice."
Lest you think Jerry was just being coy, making with the funny and the ha-ha, when another reporter asked him what his exact role would be on this year's telethon, he responded, "It is none of your business."
Geez, Jerry. "I didn't mean to sound rude, but on September 5th, the day after that program, I will have an international press conference, and I will have plenty to say about what I think is important, and that is the future, not the past."
Now see, this is where this almost gets poignant, or would if it weren't kind of creepy, like a Krusty The Clown remake of Sunset Boulevard. Here's Jerry Lewis at 85, faced with the prospect that his annual 24-hour telethon, once a beloved national institution, has been cut down to six hours, a sure sign that the world has moved on, but he can't quite deal with reality. No, he'll hold an "international press conference" to clarify his role in this thing that nobody cares about. Clearly, in Lewis' mind, the world still revolves around him. He's still as big as ever, it's the telethon that got small.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
IF YOU MUST RETURN IT, YOU CAN SEND IT HERE
Every Friday, I picked Sue up from her van pool. We'd never go home; we'd go out to eat somewhere, usually someplace quick and cheap, a KFC or a Subway. It might have been nice to go someplace better, to linger over fine food, to laugh and share our thoughts.
No time for that, though. She saw her therapist on Friday evenings. She liked to get there a little early, to sit in solitude and gather her thoughts. Me, I had my own ritual: I'd keep driving up the Rockville Pike to the Borders bookstore in Germantown.
It was an unnecessary drive in a way, since we had a Borders in our own neighborhood. The one in Germantown had a different vibe, though. The cafe area dominated the entire front section, and on weekends it featured live acoustic music. I'd linger in the magazine section--every Borders seemed to stock a different lineup of magazines--listening, reading, relaxing. It was, in a way, my own form of therapy: with that weekly ritual, I purged whatever demons I may have been wrestling at the time. I began to relax, to be still.
During those waning months of my marriage, I had any number of Borders stores I haunted with some frequency. The one in Northern D.C. had the best selection of DVDs and graphic novels, the one at White Sands had the most eclectic lineup of fiction and media studies. Still, I wondered, why so many stores? Why not have one huge location combining all the best features of every store?
Indeed, the seemingly insatiable need for expansion, to place an outlet in every conceivable market, was one of the factors cited in the decision of Borders' corporate overlords to shutter the entire chain. There were other reasons--the tanking economy, the rise of e-books--but expansion overkill was almost certainly the last straw.
For consumers, however, the signs of the end had come in the form of the chain's reaction to slowing sales of recorded music and movies: the once substantial (if overpriced) music and movie sections were reduced by half or more, if not eliminated entirely, and replaced by a bizarre assortment of pop-culture gewgaws. The Borders here in the Des Moines suburbs carried so many Nightmare Before Christmas-themed figurines and board games, it felt more like Hot Topic, albeit a brightly-lit Hot Topic that sold a metric ton of Tom Clancy novels.
That particular location closed a few months ago, and though I had spent many, many happy hours there over the years, in the end, I wasn't sorry to see it go. It had turned into nothing more than a delivery system for the latest best-sellers, and the author most likely to stop by for a book signing was Sarah Palin. It was no longer a place for me, or anyone who cares about books, and it never would be again.
No time for that, though. She saw her therapist on Friday evenings. She liked to get there a little early, to sit in solitude and gather her thoughts. Me, I had my own ritual: I'd keep driving up the Rockville Pike to the Borders bookstore in Germantown.
It was an unnecessary drive in a way, since we had a Borders in our own neighborhood. The one in Germantown had a different vibe, though. The cafe area dominated the entire front section, and on weekends it featured live acoustic music. I'd linger in the magazine section--every Borders seemed to stock a different lineup of magazines--listening, reading, relaxing. It was, in a way, my own form of therapy: with that weekly ritual, I purged whatever demons I may have been wrestling at the time. I began to relax, to be still.
During those waning months of my marriage, I had any number of Borders stores I haunted with some frequency. The one in Northern D.C. had the best selection of DVDs and graphic novels, the one at White Sands had the most eclectic lineup of fiction and media studies. Still, I wondered, why so many stores? Why not have one huge location combining all the best features of every store?
Indeed, the seemingly insatiable need for expansion, to place an outlet in every conceivable market, was one of the factors cited in the decision of Borders' corporate overlords to shutter the entire chain. There were other reasons--the tanking economy, the rise of e-books--but expansion overkill was almost certainly the last straw.
For consumers, however, the signs of the end had come in the form of the chain's reaction to slowing sales of recorded music and movies: the once substantial (if overpriced) music and movie sections were reduced by half or more, if not eliminated entirely, and replaced by a bizarre assortment of pop-culture gewgaws. The Borders here in the Des Moines suburbs carried so many Nightmare Before Christmas-themed figurines and board games, it felt more like Hot Topic, albeit a brightly-lit Hot Topic that sold a metric ton of Tom Clancy novels.
That particular location closed a few months ago, and though I had spent many, many happy hours there over the years, in the end, I wasn't sorry to see it go. It had turned into nothing more than a delivery system for the latest best-sellers, and the author most likely to stop by for a book signing was Sarah Palin. It was no longer a place for me, or anyone who cares about books, and it never would be again.
Friday, July 15, 2011
ALL THESE PLACES HAD THEIR MOMENTS
I sit on top of the passenger car, surveying the nocturnal landscape. The outskirts of a small town--a meatpacking plant, a filling station, a river snaking through the night. Just as I'm figuring out my surroundings, I hear noise at the end of the train.
I climb down. A family--an old woman, two distracted adults and several small children--of indeterminate ethnicity insists that I participate in their ritual. Glowing rings appear in their hands, are tossed in the air, and all family members catch them, expertly. One ring is flipped to me. I catch it, barely, but it tries to pull from my hand. I let it go, and it flutters briefly, then clatters to the ground. Only now it is no longer a ring, its hollow center is full, like a bottle cap. All other rings, their centers also full, fall to the earth, their magical glow extinguished.
The old woman regards me with great sadness. "Death," she says. "Death will follow you."
"Follow me where?" I ask, climbing without much enthusiasm into one of the elegantly-appointed cars of the train.
"Everywhere." She pulls the door shut.
Cats and dogs, some remembered, some unknown, crawl through the car. I ignore them, drawn to the rickety steps with the railing around them, illuminated by a single bulb. A shelf runs along one side of the stairs, filled with old board games--Clue and Monopoly, sure, but also Dark Shadows and Mr. Ree! and Planet Of The Apes. That last one was mine, of course, and I want to stop and linger over it, but I continue down the stairs. There should be a little dresser at the bottom, with the bathroom on the other side, and the familiar clutter of the dining room all around--this is the house I grew up in right? Something long dead and all that?
But no. I get to the bottom of the stairs and it's just another car in the train. The club car, and really? This is the death following me? Skeletons and cheesy-looking zombies dressed in old-timey suits? This is supposed to represent what?
I slide open the door of the club car and continue on to the front of the train--or possibly the back, since I have no idea which direction I'm going. There's a car full of brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews, and kind of like the cats and dogs, some are more familiar than others, but I focus on a screened-in area beside this car, filled with diffuse, unearthly sunlight. I enter, making awkward conversation with more people I barely know.
But I recognize them. They're musicians who worked briefly with my ex-wife. Some of them are perfectly cordial, some are pissy and bitter, holding inexplicable grudges against me. One is particularly vocal, and I cut him off by saying, "Hey, I just wanted her to make a halfway decent album, and you couldn't deliver."
"Yeah," he says, "but what about what she wanted?"
Death. Yeah, I get it. My marriage. Ha. Very symbolic, like that stupid MASH episode where we see everyone's dreams. Next thing you know I'll be floating in a river of severed limbs, just like Hawkeye, and please, God, can I never think of that again, or any episode of MASH from the BJ-with-a-moustache era?
The train stops.
Or simply ceases to exist, since I don't actually disembark. I stand at some sort of crossroad--ooh! symbolism!--deciding which way to go. The landscape looks vaguely familiar--kind of like the bottom of Cemetery Hill, but not really--so I just pick a direction at random and start walking.
Soon enough, I'm joined by Paul, who greets me with his usual, "Hey."
"Hey. How was the new Harry Potter?" I ask.
"Do you want me to tell you? I'll be seeing it again with you..."
"Yeah, I know, and that's why I'm thinking this whole 'death will follow you' thing just isn't making much sense. I mean, yeah, I dated your Mom, and that didn't work out, so sure, another failed relationship, another 'death'"--I make sure to deploy ironic air quotes--"but you and I still hang out."
"Yeah, we're hanging out right now."
I stop walking. "But you're not actually here."
And indeed he's not. The road has stopped at a large white house, with a neatly-trimmed lawn and a river running beside it. People sit on the steps, people I should know, dressed like cast members from The Waltons in their Sunday-go-to-meetin'-time clothes. They're portrayed by ex-cast members of Mystery Science Theater 3000 because why the hell not, but they're passing around old photos and mementos and things I should know. They're talking about Mom, but they're getting the details wrong.
"You can't know," I say. "You weren't there. I wasn't there, either, I wasn't there, even though she asked me. She wanted me to come up that Monday night, to crash at her place before I took her to the doctor the next day, but I begged off because I was tired, and so she fell and when I got there Tuesday she had that horrible bruise on her head and she was hallucinating and...Maybe if I'd been there, maybe if I'd been there..."
My tear-filled eyes make the sun-dappled water in the river shimmer more than usual, then it twinkles, and I realize there is no river, it's just an elaborate video display, and the image changes to a wall of ads for nineties hip-hop albums. There are shelves all around, books and DVDs and old LPs. Mom sits beside me in a plush leather chair.
"I'm afraid I could spend some money here," I say.
"Do you have money to spend?" Mom asks.
"Some, yeah."
She smiles. "If you see something you want, you should get it. If you wait, it may not be there when you come back." Her words hang in the air, fading. I realize I'm coming back into the waking world.
There's a cat on my pillow and a cat at the foot of the bed. Janie is in my arms. I pull her a little closer as she sleeps, feeling her breathing. The fan gently blows the cord of the window blinds, and I listen as it bounces against the wall, clack, clack, clack.
I climb down. A family--an old woman, two distracted adults and several small children--of indeterminate ethnicity insists that I participate in their ritual. Glowing rings appear in their hands, are tossed in the air, and all family members catch them, expertly. One ring is flipped to me. I catch it, barely, but it tries to pull from my hand. I let it go, and it flutters briefly, then clatters to the ground. Only now it is no longer a ring, its hollow center is full, like a bottle cap. All other rings, their centers also full, fall to the earth, their magical glow extinguished.
The old woman regards me with great sadness. "Death," she says. "Death will follow you."
"Follow me where?" I ask, climbing without much enthusiasm into one of the elegantly-appointed cars of the train.
"Everywhere." She pulls the door shut.
Cats and dogs, some remembered, some unknown, crawl through the car. I ignore them, drawn to the rickety steps with the railing around them, illuminated by a single bulb. A shelf runs along one side of the stairs, filled with old board games--Clue and Monopoly, sure, but also Dark Shadows and Mr. Ree! and Planet Of The Apes. That last one was mine, of course, and I want to stop and linger over it, but I continue down the stairs. There should be a little dresser at the bottom, with the bathroom on the other side, and the familiar clutter of the dining room all around--this is the house I grew up in right? Something long dead and all that?
But no. I get to the bottom of the stairs and it's just another car in the train. The club car, and really? This is the death following me? Skeletons and cheesy-looking zombies dressed in old-timey suits? This is supposed to represent what?
I slide open the door of the club car and continue on to the front of the train--or possibly the back, since I have no idea which direction I'm going. There's a car full of brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews, and kind of like the cats and dogs, some are more familiar than others, but I focus on a screened-in area beside this car, filled with diffuse, unearthly sunlight. I enter, making awkward conversation with more people I barely know.
But I recognize them. They're musicians who worked briefly with my ex-wife. Some of them are perfectly cordial, some are pissy and bitter, holding inexplicable grudges against me. One is particularly vocal, and I cut him off by saying, "Hey, I just wanted her to make a halfway decent album, and you couldn't deliver."
"Yeah," he says, "but what about what she wanted?"
Death. Yeah, I get it. My marriage. Ha. Very symbolic, like that stupid MASH episode where we see everyone's dreams. Next thing you know I'll be floating in a river of severed limbs, just like Hawkeye, and please, God, can I never think of that again, or any episode of MASH from the BJ-with-a-moustache era?
The train stops.
Or simply ceases to exist, since I don't actually disembark. I stand at some sort of crossroad--ooh! symbolism!--deciding which way to go. The landscape looks vaguely familiar--kind of like the bottom of Cemetery Hill, but not really--so I just pick a direction at random and start walking.
Soon enough, I'm joined by Paul, who greets me with his usual, "Hey."
"Hey. How was the new Harry Potter?" I ask.
"Do you want me to tell you? I'll be seeing it again with you..."
"Yeah, I know, and that's why I'm thinking this whole 'death will follow you' thing just isn't making much sense. I mean, yeah, I dated your Mom, and that didn't work out, so sure, another failed relationship, another 'death'"--I make sure to deploy ironic air quotes--"but you and I still hang out."
"Yeah, we're hanging out right now."
I stop walking. "But you're not actually here."
And indeed he's not. The road has stopped at a large white house, with a neatly-trimmed lawn and a river running beside it. People sit on the steps, people I should know, dressed like cast members from The Waltons in their Sunday-go-to-meetin'-time clothes. They're portrayed by ex-cast members of Mystery Science Theater 3000 because why the hell not, but they're passing around old photos and mementos and things I should know. They're talking about Mom, but they're getting the details wrong.
"You can't know," I say. "You weren't there. I wasn't there, either, I wasn't there, even though she asked me. She wanted me to come up that Monday night, to crash at her place before I took her to the doctor the next day, but I begged off because I was tired, and so she fell and when I got there Tuesday she had that horrible bruise on her head and she was hallucinating and...Maybe if I'd been there, maybe if I'd been there..."
My tear-filled eyes make the sun-dappled water in the river shimmer more than usual, then it twinkles, and I realize there is no river, it's just an elaborate video display, and the image changes to a wall of ads for nineties hip-hop albums. There are shelves all around, books and DVDs and old LPs. Mom sits beside me in a plush leather chair.
"I'm afraid I could spend some money here," I say.
"Do you have money to spend?" Mom asks.
"Some, yeah."
She smiles. "If you see something you want, you should get it. If you wait, it may not be there when you come back." Her words hang in the air, fading. I realize I'm coming back into the waking world.
There's a cat on my pillow and a cat at the foot of the bed. Janie is in my arms. I pull her a little closer as she sleeps, feeling her breathing. The fan gently blows the cord of the window blinds, and I listen as it bounces against the wall, clack, clack, clack.
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
KINDA LONELY HERE, ISN'T IT?
Wow. It seems as if new posts here, already decreasing in frequency, are becoming as rare as Bigfoot sightings. I haven't died, and I haven't officially decided to vacate this space.
I just...don't have much of an urge to write anymore. This could very well pass, but it could take some time, and whatever readership I may have actually built up here (Ha!) will likely grow bored and move on. And who could blame them? There's nothing here to read!
But you're still here, aren't you, Theoretical Person Reading This? You decided to show up, and for your effort, you deserve some kind of entertainment. Since I'm not capable of providing that myself, here's a typically lurid TV spot from a late seventies slasher classic. They really don't make 'em like this anymore.
I just...don't have much of an urge to write anymore. This could very well pass, but it could take some time, and whatever readership I may have actually built up here (Ha!) will likely grow bored and move on. And who could blame them? There's nothing here to read!
But you're still here, aren't you, Theoretical Person Reading This? You decided to show up, and for your effort, you deserve some kind of entertainment. Since I'm not capable of providing that myself, here's a typically lurid TV spot from a late seventies slasher classic. They really don't make 'em like this anymore.
Friday, July 01, 2011
A STEADY HAND TO PULL THAT LOAD BEHIND
Flipping the channels yesterday, I unexpectedly came across an episode of this.
I hadn't thought of this show for...geez, decades, I suppose. It ran for a season and a half back in the mid-seventies, and it never really lived on in syndication. Like most TV, it was there briefly, then gone forever.
But seeing it again, with that montage-heavy opening, so typical of its era, and Merle Haggard's theme song, and Claude Akins' craggy face and Frank Converse's epic moustache, I was suddenly transported back in time, to a very specific and vivid memory.
I'm sitting on one end of the couch with comic books scattered on the floor around me, and my oldest brother Keith sits on the other end, a paperback in his hand, though he's watching more than reading. Dad is in his recliner, his ever-present can of Grain Belt beside him, and Mom in her chair. My brother John, sipping an iced tea in his rocking chair, watches as well, though perhaps ironically. My sister Julie sits at the old school desk beside the couch, a textbook and paper in front of her.
The TV is tuned to Movin' On, of course, and it's still the old black-and-white Philco, not the Quasar color set we'd acquire by the time this show reached its second season, when we could see Akins' Kenworth rig in all its green glory. Dad and Keith keep a running commentary going about that Kenworth, about how they show it doing things it simply wasn't capable of, and Keith uses the phrase "Hollywood jive" to describe the show more than once.
Mom watches intermittently, looking up whenever Converse is onscreen, returning to her cozy British mystery novel whenever the focus shifts back to Akins. Julie is completely disengaged from the whole thing, scribbling furiously at her homework.
Me, I'm just sort of there, zoning in and out, happy just to have a moment with so many of us together. My brother Mike is already married, my sister Ann off to college, but here the rest of us sit, gathered around the cathode-ray fireplace, everything else in the world miles away, and I am content.
I hadn't thought of this show for...geez, decades, I suppose. It ran for a season and a half back in the mid-seventies, and it never really lived on in syndication. Like most TV, it was there briefly, then gone forever.
But seeing it again, with that montage-heavy opening, so typical of its era, and Merle Haggard's theme song, and Claude Akins' craggy face and Frank Converse's epic moustache, I was suddenly transported back in time, to a very specific and vivid memory.
I'm sitting on one end of the couch with comic books scattered on the floor around me, and my oldest brother Keith sits on the other end, a paperback in his hand, though he's watching more than reading. Dad is in his recliner, his ever-present can of Grain Belt beside him, and Mom in her chair. My brother John, sipping an iced tea in his rocking chair, watches as well, though perhaps ironically. My sister Julie sits at the old school desk beside the couch, a textbook and paper in front of her.
The TV is tuned to Movin' On, of course, and it's still the old black-and-white Philco, not the Quasar color set we'd acquire by the time this show reached its second season, when we could see Akins' Kenworth rig in all its green glory. Dad and Keith keep a running commentary going about that Kenworth, about how they show it doing things it simply wasn't capable of, and Keith uses the phrase "Hollywood jive" to describe the show more than once.
Mom watches intermittently, looking up whenever Converse is onscreen, returning to her cozy British mystery novel whenever the focus shifts back to Akins. Julie is completely disengaged from the whole thing, scribbling furiously at her homework.
Me, I'm just sort of there, zoning in and out, happy just to have a moment with so many of us together. My brother Mike is already married, my sister Ann off to college, but here the rest of us sit, gathered around the cathode-ray fireplace, everything else in the world miles away, and I am content.
Monday, June 20, 2011
SERIOUSLY, HONESTLY, NO SHIT, REALLY...THIS IS THE LAST TIME I'LL WRITE ABOUT THIS THING
Despite my ongoing obsession with the astonishingly misconceived musical Spider-man: Turn Off The Dark, I didn't bother writing anything about the official opening of the show last week. Since the ousting of its formerly "visionary" director/co-writer/co-designer Julie Taymor, the show, according to most critics, turned out exactly as anyone could have predicted: Instead of Taymor's batshit insane down-in-flames grab for glory, the show instead became dully respectable, a competent salvage job of something that shouldn't have been salvaged.
So okay, we saw that coming, nothing more to say...except Taymor, who should have shut up and moved on a long time ago, felt moved this weekend to talk about what became of her baby.
Speaking to a conference of theatrical types, she proclaimed her disgust with her Spider-man producers, who, in a desperation move as Taymor's show missed numerous opening dates, used focus groups to try to salvage something from the show. "It's very scary if people are going to move towards that, to have audiences tell you how to make a show. Shakespeare would have been appalled. Forget about it.It would be impossible to have these works come out because there's always something that people don't like."
Sure, Julie. Except Shakespeare cannily tailored his plays to the audience of the time, mixing his deeper themes with low comedy specifically designed to appeal to the groundlings. Also, he could write--once the script was set, it was rehearsed and performed. There was no "process" to "discover" the show, no endless reworkings of crazy theatrical concepts at the expense of coherent storytelling.
Besides, Taymor's producers only turned to the focus groups after she was fired from the show. She was given months and months and months and months to "find" her show, and she never did. She wasted seventy million dollars of investors' money on her ridiculous notions--Spider-man as a supporting character in a show about the power of myth, or some fucking thing--and she would have been perfectly happy to keep spending, with no regard for what her producers needed (that is, a profitable show) or an audience might have wanted (some kind of entertainment).
Of course, those pesky audiences were part of the problem, according to Taymor: "Twitter and Facebook and blogging just trump you. It's very hard to create. It's incredibly difficult to be under a shot glass and microscope like that."
Well, granted, it would be hard to be under both a shot glass and a microscope, but inexplicable metaphors are nothing new for Taymor. But again, much of the online chatter about the show's astounding non-quality came once previews started. Once you're asking audiences to pay for tickets--at full prices, mind you; there were no discounts during the preview period--they're going to respond. That's how the process works. And if the audience is overwhelmingly telling you that your show has problems, you fix them. If you can't do that, your producers have every right to fire your ass.
Sure, I'm usually all about the artist here, but Taymor was working on a Broadway musical, where the rules have always been in place. And the first rule has always been: It's all about the show. Directors, songwriters, authors, even big-money stars have all been replaced when shows are in trouble. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but Taymor acts as though it's all brand new.
The biggest mistake the producers of Spider-man: Turn Off The Dark made was not dumping Taymor much earlier in the process. Like, for instance, when she submitted an incoherent script that had very little to do with the title character. Or after the first, say, ten million bucks were spent with nothing to show for it. After sixty million more was spent, firing Taymor was a mercy killing.
Now if they'd just close the show altogether, we could all pretend this never happened, and I'd finally shut up about it.
So okay, we saw that coming, nothing more to say...except Taymor, who should have shut up and moved on a long time ago, felt moved this weekend to talk about what became of her baby.
Speaking to a conference of theatrical types, she proclaimed her disgust with her Spider-man producers, who, in a desperation move as Taymor's show missed numerous opening dates, used focus groups to try to salvage something from the show. "It's very scary if people are going to move towards that, to have audiences tell you how to make a show. Shakespeare would have been appalled. Forget about it.It would be impossible to have these works come out because there's always something that people don't like."
Sure, Julie. Except Shakespeare cannily tailored his plays to the audience of the time, mixing his deeper themes with low comedy specifically designed to appeal to the groundlings. Also, he could write--once the script was set, it was rehearsed and performed. There was no "process" to "discover" the show, no endless reworkings of crazy theatrical concepts at the expense of coherent storytelling.
Besides, Taymor's producers only turned to the focus groups after she was fired from the show. She was given months and months and months and months to "find" her show, and she never did. She wasted seventy million dollars of investors' money on her ridiculous notions--Spider-man as a supporting character in a show about the power of myth, or some fucking thing--and she would have been perfectly happy to keep spending, with no regard for what her producers needed (that is, a profitable show) or an audience might have wanted (some kind of entertainment).
Of course, those pesky audiences were part of the problem, according to Taymor: "Twitter and Facebook and blogging just trump you. It's very hard to create. It's incredibly difficult to be under a shot glass and microscope like that."
Well, granted, it would be hard to be under both a shot glass and a microscope, but inexplicable metaphors are nothing new for Taymor. But again, much of the online chatter about the show's astounding non-quality came once previews started. Once you're asking audiences to pay for tickets--at full prices, mind you; there were no discounts during the preview period--they're going to respond. That's how the process works. And if the audience is overwhelmingly telling you that your show has problems, you fix them. If you can't do that, your producers have every right to fire your ass.
Sure, I'm usually all about the artist here, but Taymor was working on a Broadway musical, where the rules have always been in place. And the first rule has always been: It's all about the show. Directors, songwriters, authors, even big-money stars have all been replaced when shows are in trouble. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but Taymor acts as though it's all brand new.
The biggest mistake the producers of Spider-man: Turn Off The Dark made was not dumping Taymor much earlier in the process. Like, for instance, when she submitted an incoherent script that had very little to do with the title character. Or after the first, say, ten million bucks were spent with nothing to show for it. After sixty million more was spent, firing Taymor was a mercy killing.
Now if they'd just close the show altogether, we could all pretend this never happened, and I'd finally shut up about it.
Saturday, June 18, 2011
KILL ME NOW
When you see the headline Arizona Town Cashes In On Rock Song, there is no need to click on the story because OF COURSE it will be about the citizens of Winslow taking advantage of the town's fleeting mention in that stupid, stupid Eagles song.
And sure enough, Winslow has installed a bronze statue of a "floppy-haired man with a guitar" (this description, like the story itself, comes from The New York Times, the Arts & Entertainment section of which has clearly seen better days)on a corner near--sigh--Standin' On The Corner Park, which is odd because unless I'm mistaken the actual lyrics of the song are, "standin' on A corner in Winslow Arizona" but why split (floppy) hairs? Once you've decided to name a park after a line in an overplayed country-rock groaner from the seventies, you've already taken leave of your senses. Oh, and hey, there's an annual Standin' On The Corner Festival that draws "thousands" (according to the Times, which I suspect didn't do a lot of fact-checking on this particular story), so...dear God, I can't go on.
The notion of thousands--or even dozens--of people reorganizing their lives just so they'll have time to attend something called the Standin' On The Corner Festival fills me with a sense of overpowering despair. Everybody is entitled to their own obsessions, and it's not like I, with my Jerry Lewis obsession, have any room to question anybody's taste. But still, people making a pilgrimage to a town just because of its mention in a fucking Glenn Frey song...
Seriously. Kill me now.
And sure enough, Winslow has installed a bronze statue of a "floppy-haired man with a guitar" (this description, like the story itself, comes from The New York Times, the Arts & Entertainment section of which has clearly seen better days)on a corner near--sigh--Standin' On The Corner Park, which is odd because unless I'm mistaken the actual lyrics of the song are, "standin' on A corner in Winslow Arizona" but why split (floppy) hairs? Once you've decided to name a park after a line in an overplayed country-rock groaner from the seventies, you've already taken leave of your senses. Oh, and hey, there's an annual Standin' On The Corner Festival that draws "thousands" (according to the Times, which I suspect didn't do a lot of fact-checking on this particular story), so...dear God, I can't go on.
The notion of thousands--or even dozens--of people reorganizing their lives just so they'll have time to attend something called the Standin' On The Corner Festival fills me with a sense of overpowering despair. Everybody is entitled to their own obsessions, and it's not like I, with my Jerry Lewis obsession, have any room to question anybody's taste. But still, people making a pilgrimage to a town just because of its mention in a fucking Glenn Frey song...
Seriously. Kill me now.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
WHEN ALL HOPE SEEMS LOST, WHEN DESPAIR BECOMES OVERPOWERING, THERE WILL BE A BLAND, BLAND LIGHT
This headline from the Associated Press says it all: Pretty In Pink's Andrew McCarthy Writing Memoir. And by "says it all," I mean the AP used the headline to remind us who McCarthy is, or more accurately, was--a guy who was in a semi-loved movie, though he's not the reason anyone liked it. They could also have said Weekend At Bernie's Star Andrew McCarthy Writing Memoir, but then readers would be scratching their heads trying to remember which of the two remarkably uninteresting leads from Bernie's was McCarthy and which was the other guy.
Anyway, the point is--Andrew McCarthy is writing a memoir? Seriously? According to the AP story, which reads suspiciously like a slightly-reworked press release, it will reveal how McCarthy's "journeys helped him defeat his fear of love and commitment." All well and good, but hopefully there will be room for discussions of his distinguished film career, including, um, Pretty In Pink. And Weekend At Bernie's. Plus that all-time box-office smash Fresh Horses, and of course that awful Gertrude Stein/Alice B. Toklas thing he was in. And Weekend At Bernie's 2!
When a megastar of McCarthy's magnitude decides to sit down and spill the beans, it behooves us all to pick up a copy. And take a nice, refreshing nap.
Anyway, the point is--Andrew McCarthy is writing a memoir? Seriously? According to the AP story, which reads suspiciously like a slightly-reworked press release, it will reveal how McCarthy's "journeys helped him defeat his fear of love and commitment." All well and good, but hopefully there will be room for discussions of his distinguished film career, including, um, Pretty In Pink. And Weekend At Bernie's. Plus that all-time box-office smash Fresh Horses, and of course that awful Gertrude Stein/Alice B. Toklas thing he was in. And Weekend At Bernie's 2!
When a megastar of McCarthy's magnitude decides to sit down and spill the beans, it behooves us all to pick up a copy. And take a nice, refreshing nap.
Monday, June 13, 2011
WE WERE ONLY HERE FOR AWHILE
It wasn't so much that I made a point of avoiding a family reunion this past weekend as...oh, okay, I did avoid it.
In fairness, I had things to do. Paul had a baseball game, then we had to see Super 8 (which we both enjoyed) and, for about a minute during the day, it did occur to me that the two of us could drive to Dawson and take part in this big family whoop-de-doo, but it occurred to me also that I'd have to keep explaining to everyone who Paul is, because aside from my brother John and my sister Ann, nobody would have any idea.
Which is kind of odd, because he is of course mentioned here quite a bit, and in status updates of Facebook, and various other places where I hang out online. Paul, Janie, the dog and cats, assorted exes and various friends--there's a regular cast here (even though some of them are kinda like Jeff Conaway on Taxi and disappear once it becomes obvious they're not working out), and regular readers of this site are presumably as familiar with them as viewers of MASH were familiar with Hawkeye, Colonel Potter and that guitar-wielding guy Loudon Wainwright played in three episodes.
But--well, look, I was going to go off on a pissy little tangent about how nobody in my family reads my blog, but that's not really the point. The reason I avoided this thing is, I hate--HATE--family reunions. I'm five years younger than my closest sibling, and my cousins are older still, and whenever I'd get dragged to one of these things as a kid, I felt profoundly alone and abandoned because there was nobody for me to talk to, nobody paying attention to me, nobody comforting me as my sense of isolation overwhelmed me and sent me off to cry alone. Also, even though I was only five or six or seven, I still sensed the weird stifled emotions that were always present when everyone tried to play nice. (I couldn't really give you all the details, but my oldest brothers hated each other--I recall one epic Quiet Man-style donnybrook that raged down the stairs, through the dining room and living room and out the front door--but at family get-togethers, they always smiled and talked to each other. Knowing what they were like at home, and being too young to understand the protocol of events like this, the disconnect fried my tiny brain. It was like they'd been replaced with pod duplicates.)
It sounds facetious, or like a too-pat TV-movie style explanation, but the family reunions I was forced to attend as a kid probably had a lot to do with the fact that I wound up in therapy by the time I was in seventh grade. That is, they took the feelings of isolation and despair I already had as part of my day-to-day existence (again, five years younger than my closest sibling, plus parents who were already into middle age by the time I started school, plus an isolated rural home surrounded by abandoned, rusting farm equipment, the type of heavy-handed symbolism that would cause any rational viewer to roll their eyes if they saw such nonsense in some shitty indie picture) and ramped it up to unbearable extremes. I remember kicking and screaming, begging Mom and Dad to let me stay home, I hated family reunions so much. I dreaded them for weeks in advance, my heart pounding, unable to sleep. And nobody seemed to realize just how profound that dread was, any more than they noticed me at the actual functions, sitting in a corner glassy-eyed, sinking in a Bergman-esque well of despair.
So, yeah, I'm an adult now, and presumably better-equipped to deal with these things, but you know, the last time the tribe gathered en masse was at Mom's funeral, so it just seems that these things are destined to have depressing subtexts for me. In other words, I could have sucked it up and gone to this thing, or I could have spent a beautiful Saturday afternoon hanging out with an eleven-year-old who makes me laugh and gets all my John Williams references.
I'll stand by my choice.
In fairness, I had things to do. Paul had a baseball game, then we had to see Super 8 (which we both enjoyed) and, for about a minute during the day, it did occur to me that the two of us could drive to Dawson and take part in this big family whoop-de-doo, but it occurred to me also that I'd have to keep explaining to everyone who Paul is, because aside from my brother John and my sister Ann, nobody would have any idea.
Which is kind of odd, because he is of course mentioned here quite a bit, and in status updates of Facebook, and various other places where I hang out online. Paul, Janie, the dog and cats, assorted exes and various friends--there's a regular cast here (even though some of them are kinda like Jeff Conaway on Taxi and disappear once it becomes obvious they're not working out), and regular readers of this site are presumably as familiar with them as viewers of MASH were familiar with Hawkeye, Colonel Potter and that guitar-wielding guy Loudon Wainwright played in three episodes.
But--well, look, I was going to go off on a pissy little tangent about how nobody in my family reads my blog, but that's not really the point. The reason I avoided this thing is, I hate--HATE--family reunions. I'm five years younger than my closest sibling, and my cousins are older still, and whenever I'd get dragged to one of these things as a kid, I felt profoundly alone and abandoned because there was nobody for me to talk to, nobody paying attention to me, nobody comforting me as my sense of isolation overwhelmed me and sent me off to cry alone. Also, even though I was only five or six or seven, I still sensed the weird stifled emotions that were always present when everyone tried to play nice. (I couldn't really give you all the details, but my oldest brothers hated each other--I recall one epic Quiet Man-style donnybrook that raged down the stairs, through the dining room and living room and out the front door--but at family get-togethers, they always smiled and talked to each other. Knowing what they were like at home, and being too young to understand the protocol of events like this, the disconnect fried my tiny brain. It was like they'd been replaced with pod duplicates.)
It sounds facetious, or like a too-pat TV-movie style explanation, but the family reunions I was forced to attend as a kid probably had a lot to do with the fact that I wound up in therapy by the time I was in seventh grade. That is, they took the feelings of isolation and despair I already had as part of my day-to-day existence (again, five years younger than my closest sibling, plus parents who were already into middle age by the time I started school, plus an isolated rural home surrounded by abandoned, rusting farm equipment, the type of heavy-handed symbolism that would cause any rational viewer to roll their eyes if they saw such nonsense in some shitty indie picture) and ramped it up to unbearable extremes. I remember kicking and screaming, begging Mom and Dad to let me stay home, I hated family reunions so much. I dreaded them for weeks in advance, my heart pounding, unable to sleep. And nobody seemed to realize just how profound that dread was, any more than they noticed me at the actual functions, sitting in a corner glassy-eyed, sinking in a Bergman-esque well of despair.
So, yeah, I'm an adult now, and presumably better-equipped to deal with these things, but you know, the last time the tribe gathered en masse was at Mom's funeral, so it just seems that these things are destined to have depressing subtexts for me. In other words, I could have sucked it up and gone to this thing, or I could have spent a beautiful Saturday afternoon hanging out with an eleven-year-old who makes me laugh and gets all my John Williams references.
I'll stand by my choice.
Friday, June 10, 2011
IF I FELL
The dog barks at car tires hissing on the rainy streets. The cats mostly sleep, waking occasionally to acknowledge my presence. I've got some Warren Zevon playing, milk and donuts ready to be consumed, and a weekend on the way. Everything is exactly as it should be, except for one thing.
Janie's not here.
No, no, it's okay. She's just visiting her sister for the week. We've talked everyday since she's been gone, and she can't wait to get back. To her recliner, her bed, her cats. And me, presumably.
I can't wait for her to get back, either. She belongs here. Her voice, her laughter, her everything. When I bought this place, I thought...well, honestly, I'm not sure what I thought. I wanted a place of my own, someplace to call home. But it turned out to be just another place to live, no different from the anonymous apartments that had come to define my existence.
But now, when I walk through the front door after a brutal day at work and Janie is here, and we kiss and we laugh and we love, I finally feel like I'm coming home.
Janie's not here.
No, no, it's okay. She's just visiting her sister for the week. We've talked everyday since she's been gone, and she can't wait to get back. To her recliner, her bed, her cats. And me, presumably.
I can't wait for her to get back, either. She belongs here. Her voice, her laughter, her everything. When I bought this place, I thought...well, honestly, I'm not sure what I thought. I wanted a place of my own, someplace to call home. But it turned out to be just another place to live, no different from the anonymous apartments that had come to define my existence.
But now, when I walk through the front door after a brutal day at work and Janie is here, and we kiss and we laugh and we love, I finally feel like I'm coming home.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
WARMTH
I've got a co-worker who still has a rotary phone, who has no idea what a debit card is, who grumbles whenever the radio in the stockroom is tuned to a station that plays a lot of eighties stuff like Bon Jovi or The Thompson Twins because he can't stand that "new" music. He'd probably be happy to have any of the items advertised in this commercial.
But really, who wouldn't want that couch? And it comes with a free portable TV! There's no technology you have to master with these things--with that TV, you could take it anywhere. You'd plug it in, flip the on switch and there it was. Maybe you had to play around with the rabbit ears to get reception, but you didn't need a decoder box, your house didn't need to be wired, you didn't need a router or a wifi card or a minutes plan or anything back in those days. Life was good.
Even the pitchman in this ad is straightforward: Here's the merchandise, here's what it does, this is how you get it. No irony, no flashy graphics, just a simple, effective spiel. You'd never see such a thing these days. But why not? It works. (Again, I really want that couch, hideous seventies burnt-umber color and all.)
Obviously, we'll never go back to a pre-digital world. But I've noticed that some of the people most likely to mock how we looked and acted back in those days are people who were around then. Have they forgotten their own past? Have they forgotten how much better-built merchandise was, and how well it all worked? Have they forgotten how happy we were with what we once had?
But really, who wouldn't want that couch? And it comes with a free portable TV! There's no technology you have to master with these things--with that TV, you could take it anywhere. You'd plug it in, flip the on switch and there it was. Maybe you had to play around with the rabbit ears to get reception, but you didn't need a decoder box, your house didn't need to be wired, you didn't need a router or a wifi card or a minutes plan or anything back in those days. Life was good.
Even the pitchman in this ad is straightforward: Here's the merchandise, here's what it does, this is how you get it. No irony, no flashy graphics, just a simple, effective spiel. You'd never see such a thing these days. But why not? It works. (Again, I really want that couch, hideous seventies burnt-umber color and all.)
Obviously, we'll never go back to a pre-digital world. But I've noticed that some of the people most likely to mock how we looked and acted back in those days are people who were around then. Have they forgotten their own past? Have they forgotten how much better-built merchandise was, and how well it all worked? Have they forgotten how happy we were with what we once had?
Monday, May 23, 2011
IT CAN'T BE WRONG WHEN IT FEELS SO RIGHT
Pop cultural history seemed already to have forgotten Joseph Brooks. His most famous achievement, the lugubrious pop song You Light Up My Life, was a massive hit back in 1977, winning an Oscar and a Grammy, but it quickly became a thing to be mocked, then, soon enough, ignored--even radio stations that regularly program "the biggest hits of the seventies" usually leave it off their playlists, though it was the top-charting song of its year.
The odd thing about Brooks, though, was that he kept doing things, whether anyone wanted him to or not. He'd become a millionaire cranking out commercial jingles, and he used his money to fund a number of vanity projects. He wrote and directed the movie You Light Up My Life, designed as a showcase for his songwriting, and it was a modest hit, largely due to the popularity of the title song. But it was enough to convince him he was an auteur--he followed it with If Ever I See You Again, a drippy romance about a successful pop songwriter forcing his way back into the life of his ex--Brooks starred, despite having zero screen presence and a vaguely reptilian appearance--and Headin' For Broadway, about a group of hopeful kids willing to do whatever it takes to find stardom.
These were movies nobody could possibly want to see, and predictably, they flopped. Somehow, Brooks kept working. A few years ago, he became something of a laughing stock with his Broadway musical In My Life, a misguided semi-romantic trifle which he wrote, scored, produced and directed. Stage musicals are usually collaborative affairs, but Brooks refused any kind of assistance for his terrible show--he would do exactly what he wanted, and he wasn't going to let anyone tell him no.
Not that he would have listened. The word "no" clearly meant nothing to Brooks, who was due to stand trial for sexual assault on over a dozen women he had lured to his Upper West Side apartment with promises of some kind of work in some unspecified project. He posted ads online and held private auditions. When the naive young hopefuls appeared at his door, he offered to show them his Oscar, he poured them wine, asked them to perform a scene he'd devised. Then he raped them.
Even in the New York tabloids, Brooks' unfolding legal saga was never front page news. He just wasn't big enough, famous enough. No matter how hard he tried, how much money he made, he was always a show-biz also-ran. He killed himself over the weekend, a miserable end to a worthless existence, and The Post and The Daily News both buried the story in the back pages. Nobody cared about his fucking Oscar.
The odd thing about Brooks, though, was that he kept doing things, whether anyone wanted him to or not. He'd become a millionaire cranking out commercial jingles, and he used his money to fund a number of vanity projects. He wrote and directed the movie You Light Up My Life, designed as a showcase for his songwriting, and it was a modest hit, largely due to the popularity of the title song. But it was enough to convince him he was an auteur--he followed it with If Ever I See You Again, a drippy romance about a successful pop songwriter forcing his way back into the life of his ex--Brooks starred, despite having zero screen presence and a vaguely reptilian appearance--and Headin' For Broadway, about a group of hopeful kids willing to do whatever it takes to find stardom.
These were movies nobody could possibly want to see, and predictably, they flopped. Somehow, Brooks kept working. A few years ago, he became something of a laughing stock with his Broadway musical In My Life, a misguided semi-romantic trifle which he wrote, scored, produced and directed. Stage musicals are usually collaborative affairs, but Brooks refused any kind of assistance for his terrible show--he would do exactly what he wanted, and he wasn't going to let anyone tell him no.
Not that he would have listened. The word "no" clearly meant nothing to Brooks, who was due to stand trial for sexual assault on over a dozen women he had lured to his Upper West Side apartment with promises of some kind of work in some unspecified project. He posted ads online and held private auditions. When the naive young hopefuls appeared at his door, he offered to show them his Oscar, he poured them wine, asked them to perform a scene he'd devised. Then he raped them.
Even in the New York tabloids, Brooks' unfolding legal saga was never front page news. He just wasn't big enough, famous enough. No matter how hard he tried, how much money he made, he was always a show-biz also-ran. He killed himself over the weekend, a miserable end to a worthless existence, and The Post and The Daily News both buried the story in the back pages. Nobody cared about his fucking Oscar.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
THOUGH YOUR DREAMS BE TOSSED AND BLOWN
What are you going to do, get all weepy about Louis Prima and Keely Smith? Or Buddy Hackett, or Johnny Carson, or even The Beatles, for God's sake? It was just a place where people did some stuff, a piece of a past that can never be recovered.
It's not like it's real history we're talking about here, only show-biz history. But it's long been part of the peculiar nature of Las Vegas that it preserves its past in amber, or at least an amber-colored (but heavily watered-down) drink. How else to explain the continued existence of The Sahara Hotel & Casino, which still sat at the north end of the strip like an aging madame, full of stories about the nearly-forgotten greats she used to escort? (And she'll always refer to her gentlemen friends as escorts, not johns. What the hell do you think she was, some two-bit hooker?) The former "Jewel Of The Desert" shut down yesterday, but it had been closing bit by bit through the years, serving as some sort of reminder of the past in a town that barely has a present.
For the pleasures offered by Las Vegas are, by design, fleeting. Times change, people move on, no one remembers. Really, why should they? Oh, so the Sahara was for many years the home base for Jerry Lewis' Labor Day telethon? That's nice, but so what?
After all, Lewis himself is retiring from that institution after this year. Though he has yet to find a cure for Muscular Dystrophy, there is no question that Lewis' time in the spotlight is due to end. He was once as big as anyone, and he and Dean Martin could pack 'em in like nobody's business, but to watch him continue year after year, unwilling and unable to change with the times, diminishing his own reputation every time he referred to the likes of Jann Carl as a "marvelous" talent, abandoned by the few relevant celebrity friends he still has...well, it was a sad, sad spectacle, like watching the suckers being chased out of the Sahara on its closing day, all of them wanting one more chance to play their lousy dollar slots.
It's not like it's real history we're talking about here, only show-biz history. But it's long been part of the peculiar nature of Las Vegas that it preserves its past in amber, or at least an amber-colored (but heavily watered-down) drink. How else to explain the continued existence of The Sahara Hotel & Casino, which still sat at the north end of the strip like an aging madame, full of stories about the nearly-forgotten greats she used to escort? (And she'll always refer to her gentlemen friends as escorts, not johns. What the hell do you think she was, some two-bit hooker?) The former "Jewel Of The Desert" shut down yesterday, but it had been closing bit by bit through the years, serving as some sort of reminder of the past in a town that barely has a present.
For the pleasures offered by Las Vegas are, by design, fleeting. Times change, people move on, no one remembers. Really, why should they? Oh, so the Sahara was for many years the home base for Jerry Lewis' Labor Day telethon? That's nice, but so what?
After all, Lewis himself is retiring from that institution after this year. Though he has yet to find a cure for Muscular Dystrophy, there is no question that Lewis' time in the spotlight is due to end. He was once as big as anyone, and he and Dean Martin could pack 'em in like nobody's business, but to watch him continue year after year, unwilling and unable to change with the times, diminishing his own reputation every time he referred to the likes of Jann Carl as a "marvelous" talent, abandoned by the few relevant celebrity friends he still has...well, it was a sad, sad spectacle, like watching the suckers being chased out of the Sahara on its closing day, all of them wanting one more chance to play their lousy dollar slots.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
I GROW OLD, I GROW OLD
1. This title, of course, comes from T.S. Eliot. That is, it originated with Eliot, but for me, it comes from the old National Lampoon parody The Love Song Of J. Edgar Hoover, which served as my dramatic reading in a freshman speech class. After I finished, the teacher asked me if I'd even heard of Eliot. Since all I really knew were the few lines from The Hollow Men referenced in Apocalypse Now--sadly, I had no idea what the Lampoon piece was parodying--I said no. My teacher was disappointed.
It was at that moment that I came to believe, as I still believe to this day, that I'm not nearly as smart as I want to be.
2. The two paragraphs above repeatedly featured the words "I" or "me"--twelve, counting variations. One of the reasons posting around here has become less frequent is because I'm trying to make this space less relentlessly self-centered. Many posts in the past were devoted to painfully detailed retellings of awful (and, far less often, joyous) occurrences in my life. All well and good when there is some larger point to be drawn, some fondly-recalled universal moment we've all shared, or even when there's some catharsis to be had by exorcising old demons. Sometimes, though, I resorted to just offering tediously detailed descriptions of bad dates, things that weren't even interesting as I experienced them.
So, you know, sorry about that.
3. All well and good, but hey, today's my birthday, so I get to be a little self-indulgent, right? Problem is, I've got nothing to say. I'm forty-six today, well past the halfway mark--presumably, at least; yeah, you never know how long you'll live, but neither of my parents lived to see eighty, so the odds aren't exactly in my favor--and past the point of taking stock but not to the point of looking back.
My life is still unfolding, in other words. I was in my forties when I decided to become a homeowner, and in the last year alone I've acquired an actual, permanent girlfriend and a small flock of critters. I still have no idea how to do basic things around the house--thank God Janie knows how to set a mousetrap!--but there's time to learn.
But not all the time in the world. There is a definite sense that, even as it unfolds, life is still winding down. I'm aware that my body can no longer do certain things I used to take for granted, and I'm more aware than ever that everything I see and know could be gone tomorrow. These aren't bad things, really--they just make me appreciate what I've got.
4. Obligatory Moment Of Delmar: I love all my cats very much, and will go to my grave insisting the late and much-missed Scotchie was the best cat ever, but there's no question that my beloved little ball of rage Del is my favorite cat in this world or any other. He's been by to rub against me repeatedly as I've been writing, and at one point reared up on his hind legs to begin chewing on my elbow. Sure, he has dozens of psychoses, but more than anything else, he's fiercely devoted to me. Plus, he's adorable!
Though not, it must be said, as adorable as the beagle, who has also been over to say hi repeatedly as I've been writing. Four-legged creatures love me!
5. The first time I wrote a birthday post it was a fairly dismal day, spent buying tires or some such. The pattern repeated from then on, assuming I took note of the day at all. This year...I dunno. Why bother complaining? I'm alive, I'm happy. Life is good.
It was at that moment that I came to believe, as I still believe to this day, that I'm not nearly as smart as I want to be.
2. The two paragraphs above repeatedly featured the words "I" or "me"--twelve, counting variations. One of the reasons posting around here has become less frequent is because I'm trying to make this space less relentlessly self-centered. Many posts in the past were devoted to painfully detailed retellings of awful (and, far less often, joyous) occurrences in my life. All well and good when there is some larger point to be drawn, some fondly-recalled universal moment we've all shared, or even when there's some catharsis to be had by exorcising old demons. Sometimes, though, I resorted to just offering tediously detailed descriptions of bad dates, things that weren't even interesting as I experienced them.
So, you know, sorry about that.
3. All well and good, but hey, today's my birthday, so I get to be a little self-indulgent, right? Problem is, I've got nothing to say. I'm forty-six today, well past the halfway mark--presumably, at least; yeah, you never know how long you'll live, but neither of my parents lived to see eighty, so the odds aren't exactly in my favor--and past the point of taking stock but not to the point of looking back.
My life is still unfolding, in other words. I was in my forties when I decided to become a homeowner, and in the last year alone I've acquired an actual, permanent girlfriend and a small flock of critters. I still have no idea how to do basic things around the house--thank God Janie knows how to set a mousetrap!--but there's time to learn.
But not all the time in the world. There is a definite sense that, even as it unfolds, life is still winding down. I'm aware that my body can no longer do certain things I used to take for granted, and I'm more aware than ever that everything I see and know could be gone tomorrow. These aren't bad things, really--they just make me appreciate what I've got.
4. Obligatory Moment Of Delmar: I love all my cats very much, and will go to my grave insisting the late and much-missed Scotchie was the best cat ever, but there's no question that my beloved little ball of rage Del is my favorite cat in this world or any other. He's been by to rub against me repeatedly as I've been writing, and at one point reared up on his hind legs to begin chewing on my elbow. Sure, he has dozens of psychoses, but more than anything else, he's fiercely devoted to me. Plus, he's adorable!
Though not, it must be said, as adorable as the beagle, who has also been over to say hi repeatedly as I've been writing. Four-legged creatures love me!
5. The first time I wrote a birthday post it was a fairly dismal day, spent buying tires or some such. The pattern repeated from then on, assuming I took note of the day at all. This year...I dunno. Why bother complaining? I'm alive, I'm happy. Life is good.
Saturday, May 07, 2011
SOME THAT YOU RECOGNIZE, SOME THAT YOU'VE NEVER EVEN HEARD OF
There's no point in arguing that Yvette Vickers was an underrated actress, that she deserved better than Attack Of The 5o Foot Woman and the similar Z pictures associated with her name. Sadly, there's not even any use in commenting on her achingly carnal beauty.
Because now, when she's remembered, it will be as that ancient pin-up queen whose mummified remains were found by a neighbor. So she's officially a freak now, a has-been who never quite was, and the ghoulish circumstances of her death are all anyone will ever talk or care about. The fascinating life she led--she was discovered by Billy Wilder, Russ Meyer shot her Playboy spread, she was a fringe player on the Hollywood scene for years--will be forgotten.
Still. At her peak, studio execs treated her as just another blonde in a town full of them, and audiences failed to make her the star she should have been. But now, at last, people will remember her. As befits a mummy, she has become immortal.
Because now, when she's remembered, it will be as that ancient pin-up queen whose mummified remains were found by a neighbor. So she's officially a freak now, a has-been who never quite was, and the ghoulish circumstances of her death are all anyone will ever talk or care about. The fascinating life she led--she was discovered by Billy Wilder, Russ Meyer shot her Playboy spread, she was a fringe player on the Hollywood scene for years--will be forgotten.
Still. At her peak, studio execs treated her as just another blonde in a town full of them, and audiences failed to make her the star she should have been. But now, at last, people will remember her. As befits a mummy, she has become immortal.
Monday, May 02, 2011
STILL AND STRANGE
Yeah, of course I remember life in suburban D.C. in those awful days and months following 9/11, that horrible feeling of looking up, looking around, squinting into the beautiful blue sky, waiting for the next attack.
Not that we had to wait long, because the attack came from within. Osama Bin Laden and his associates surely knew that the attacks on the Twin Towers, Pentagon and wherever the fourth plane was supposed to hit were only the first step. Sure enough, paranoia on a massive scale erupted, and we as a nation were all too willing to surrender our civil liberties, to support a baseless war, to do whatever in the name of...what?
What was the goal? Was it to get Bin Laden? Because if it was, why the hell were we in Iraq? Why did we do half of what we did? Why...Ah, forget it. It's four AM, I need to get ready for work and Osama Bin Laden has been stopped at last. Yes, we know he was more a figurehead than anything else, and we know his associates are still out there, plotting revenge.
There'll be a sequel, in other words. But at least, for now, the story has an ending.
Not that we had to wait long, because the attack came from within. Osama Bin Laden and his associates surely knew that the attacks on the Twin Towers, Pentagon and wherever the fourth plane was supposed to hit were only the first step. Sure enough, paranoia on a massive scale erupted, and we as a nation were all too willing to surrender our civil liberties, to support a baseless war, to do whatever in the name of...what?
What was the goal? Was it to get Bin Laden? Because if it was, why the hell were we in Iraq? Why did we do half of what we did? Why...Ah, forget it. It's four AM, I need to get ready for work and Osama Bin Laden has been stopped at last. Yes, we know he was more a figurehead than anything else, and we know his associates are still out there, plotting revenge.
There'll be a sequel, in other words. But at least, for now, the story has an ending.
Sunday, May 01, 2011
DEFINITELY NOT RACIST
I've been rereading Mark Harris' mostly-exemplary book Pictures At A Revolution, which examines the genesis and cultural impact of the five movies nominated for the Best Picture Oscar at the 1968 awards. Harris' point is that two of those movies, Bonnie And Clyde and The Graduate, represented what was about to come, the New Hollywood of the seventies and early eighties, while two of the others, Guess Who's Coming To Dinner and Doctor Dolittle, represented the staid Old Hollywood that looked increasingly clueless as social and aesthetic changes swept the nation. (The fifth nominated picture, In The Heat Of The Night, was kind of somewhere in between, and as a well-crafted, well-intentioned but essentially dull enterprise, it's the type of Oscar bait that still shows up every year.)
Reading the book now, the most interesting section by far is director Stanley Kramer's experiences schlepping Guess Who's Coming To Dinner through the studio pipeline. This is a movie that, in its pro-interracial marriage premise, seemed daring in the development stages, but by the time it was released, felt instantly dated. The civil rights era had gone a long way to change America's views of race.
Hadn't it? By Kramer's stated intent, he wanted "the black bridegroom to be so exceptional that if anyone objected to him, it could only be due to racial prejudice." Harris wryly points out how far Kramer would go to make this character exceptional: he wasn't just successful in his field, "but an Ivy League-educated potential Nobel laureate who worked for the United Nations on worldwide health missions."
Uh, you can probably see where I'm going with this, right? There are, Lord knows, plenty of reasons to rue Barack Obama's presidency, from a cabinet full of Wall Street insiders to his seeming inability to hold to a simple policy position. But to suggest that he's somehow not entitled to the office, that he's just not smart enough, that he didn't deserve his Ivy League education...well, to paraphrase Stanley Kramer, those objections could only be due to racial prejudice.
The obvious offender would be Donald Trump, whose increasingly offensive string of claims about Obama reveal much more about his need to be constantly talked about than anything else. Trump almost certainly doesn't believe this shit, but he knows if he says it, the media will cover it.
And they do, every word of it. Trump is not the problem, any more than Sarah Palin or Sean Hannity or any other far right nutjob. The problem is the way the story is inevitably framed by the media overlords. They present Trump's blatherings as if they represent some sort of coherent point of view, as if there's some validity to them. There is none, of course. Even the most ideologically rigid exec at Fox News knows how smart Obama is--after all, they used to claim he was some sort of elitist snob, out of touch with every Johnny Lunchpail and Sally Housecoat in this great nation. Yet they bring on experts to "debate" Trump's claims, when they know very well there's nothing to be debated. The man is lying. Call him on it and move on. Ignore the motherfucker, deny him the attention he so nakedly craves, and he'll go away.
No mainstream reporters are quite willing to come right out and say the obvious: If Trump's remarks are racist, then his sudden popularity among Republicans must say reveal much about the party's rabidly anti-Obama stance. But they're not quite willing to say that. Until they do, Guess Who's Coming To Dinner will continue to seem weirdly relevant. Which seems impossible, of course, but there's a lot of things going on these days that shouldn't be happening, but somehow are.
Reading the book now, the most interesting section by far is director Stanley Kramer's experiences schlepping Guess Who's Coming To Dinner through the studio pipeline. This is a movie that, in its pro-interracial marriage premise, seemed daring in the development stages, but by the time it was released, felt instantly dated. The civil rights era had gone a long way to change America's views of race.
Hadn't it? By Kramer's stated intent, he wanted "the black bridegroom to be so exceptional that if anyone objected to him, it could only be due to racial prejudice." Harris wryly points out how far Kramer would go to make this character exceptional: he wasn't just successful in his field, "but an Ivy League-educated potential Nobel laureate who worked for the United Nations on worldwide health missions."
Uh, you can probably see where I'm going with this, right? There are, Lord knows, plenty of reasons to rue Barack Obama's presidency, from a cabinet full of Wall Street insiders to his seeming inability to hold to a simple policy position. But to suggest that he's somehow not entitled to the office, that he's just not smart enough, that he didn't deserve his Ivy League education...well, to paraphrase Stanley Kramer, those objections could only be due to racial prejudice.
The obvious offender would be Donald Trump, whose increasingly offensive string of claims about Obama reveal much more about his need to be constantly talked about than anything else. Trump almost certainly doesn't believe this shit, but he knows if he says it, the media will cover it.
And they do, every word of it. Trump is not the problem, any more than Sarah Palin or Sean Hannity or any other far right nutjob. The problem is the way the story is inevitably framed by the media overlords. They present Trump's blatherings as if they represent some sort of coherent point of view, as if there's some validity to them. There is none, of course. Even the most ideologically rigid exec at Fox News knows how smart Obama is--after all, they used to claim he was some sort of elitist snob, out of touch with every Johnny Lunchpail and Sally Housecoat in this great nation. Yet they bring on experts to "debate" Trump's claims, when they know very well there's nothing to be debated. The man is lying. Call him on it and move on. Ignore the motherfucker, deny him the attention he so nakedly craves, and he'll go away.
No mainstream reporters are quite willing to come right out and say the obvious: If Trump's remarks are racist, then his sudden popularity among Republicans must say reveal much about the party's rabidly anti-Obama stance. But they're not quite willing to say that. Until they do, Guess Who's Coming To Dinner will continue to seem weirdly relevant. Which seems impossible, of course, but there's a lot of things going on these days that shouldn't be happening, but somehow are.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
A PROFOUND SENSE OF LOSS, NARROWLY AVERTED
There are days that we all remember, days that change everything. The Kennedy assassination. The Challenger explosion. 9/11.
And, most sobering of all, the day Ryan Phillippe suggested he may or may not quit acting.
When The New York Post--certainly one of the nation's finest news-gathering organizations--reported a half-assed quote from Phillippe about being so sick of the paparazzi surrounding him twenty-four hours a day that he was thinking of getting out of the acting game, the first thought that crossed the minds of every right-thinking citizen was, "NOOO! We can't live in a world in which Ryan Phillippe's shimmering star presence no longer illuminates our hearts and movie screens."
Well, okay, maybe that wasn't our first collective thought. First it was, "Who the hell is Ryan Phillippe again?" Then, after a quick stop at IMDb, just to confirm that, Flags Of Our Fathers aside, the guy hasn't really been in much of note, we thought, "Wait, paparazzi are stalking this guy?" Then we went about our business. Come to think of it, we didn't really care about Phillippe one way or the other.
But if we had, his rep was quick to inform Access Hollywood--a show so distinguished it should have won a string of Peabody awards by now, assuming they're giving out Peabodys for total crap these days--that no, no, Ryan's cool, he doesn't want to quit acting, he's just looking to branch out. Maybe some producing, directing, that sort of thing. So, sort of like his one-time director Clint Eastwood, only with zero screen presence and marginal talent.
The point is, despite our momentary panic at the thought of losing this vast talent, our screens will continue to be filled with all the Phillippe we can stand, whatever form it may take. Breathe easy, America!
And, most sobering of all, the day Ryan Phillippe suggested he may or may not quit acting.
When The New York Post--certainly one of the nation's finest news-gathering organizations--reported a half-assed quote from Phillippe about being so sick of the paparazzi surrounding him twenty-four hours a day that he was thinking of getting out of the acting game, the first thought that crossed the minds of every right-thinking citizen was, "NOOO! We can't live in a world in which Ryan Phillippe's shimmering star presence no longer illuminates our hearts and movie screens."
Well, okay, maybe that wasn't our first collective thought. First it was, "Who the hell is Ryan Phillippe again?" Then, after a quick stop at IMDb, just to confirm that, Flags Of Our Fathers aside, the guy hasn't really been in much of note, we thought, "Wait, paparazzi are stalking this guy?" Then we went about our business. Come to think of it, we didn't really care about Phillippe one way or the other.
But if we had, his rep was quick to inform Access Hollywood--a show so distinguished it should have won a string of Peabody awards by now, assuming they're giving out Peabodys for total crap these days--that no, no, Ryan's cool, he doesn't want to quit acting, he's just looking to branch out. Maybe some producing, directing, that sort of thing. So, sort of like his one-time director Clint Eastwood, only with zero screen presence and marginal talent.
The point is, despite our momentary panic at the thought of losing this vast talent, our screens will continue to be filled with all the Phillippe we can stand, whatever form it may take. Breathe easy, America!
Saturday, April 23, 2011
AMBULATORY PENIS: A CAUTIONARY TALE
You could feel sorry for him, up to a point. Life as a giant walking dick couldn't be easy, after all. He was what he was, and sometimes--again, he couldn't help it--his cream would spurt all over the place. That was the nature of things for Ambulatory Penis.
No one said he should hide himself away. But hanging around the playground? Not only asking kids about his cream, but forcing them to taste it?
There are rules to society. Ambulatory Penis found out too late, sobbing uncontrollably as he was hauled off in handcuffs, his only words to the press a hushed, "I'm only as God made me." Despite the rumors of his dalliance with Fruit Pie The Magician, he was a first-time offender, and the judge was prepared to be lenient. Still, after all he'd been through, Ambulatory Penis kept babbling at the arraignment about his creamy, creamy filling, and the punishment was harsh: Chemical sterilization.
His jail time was relatively brief, but as a registered sex offender, he found housing hard to come by. He was seen rarely in public, his circumsised head hung low in shame. His enforced flaccid state made him physically unattractive, and when he passed away, his very name was a joke.
Still, some people recall...well, perhaps the details are too painful. But if they try, they see him as he was, and remember.
No one said he should hide himself away. But hanging around the playground? Not only asking kids about his cream, but forcing them to taste it?
There are rules to society. Ambulatory Penis found out too late, sobbing uncontrollably as he was hauled off in handcuffs, his only words to the press a hushed, "I'm only as God made me." Despite the rumors of his dalliance with Fruit Pie The Magician, he was a first-time offender, and the judge was prepared to be lenient. Still, after all he'd been through, Ambulatory Penis kept babbling at the arraignment about his creamy, creamy filling, and the punishment was harsh: Chemical sterilization.
His jail time was relatively brief, but as a registered sex offender, he found housing hard to come by. He was seen rarely in public, his circumsised head hung low in shame. His enforced flaccid state made him physically unattractive, and when he passed away, his very name was a joke.
Still, some people recall...well, perhaps the details are too painful. But if they try, they see him as he was, and remember.
I TOLD YOU EVERYTHING I POSSIBLY CAN
They're bad songs, most of them--Macho Man, Hold The Line, Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad--but they still get played with alarming frequency, in department stores or waiting rooms or dozens of different places. They're just sort of there, part of the collective consciousness.
Yet hearing them now, in pristine digital sound, doesn't seem right. These songs were made to be heard on AM radio. Specifically, they should be wafting from a transistor radio carried by someone on the bus, or the tinny factory speakers in my brother's Chevette. I should be moving forward, past endless barren cornfields, the sky overcast, all branches bare.
Where would I be going? To school, to a movie, simply for a ride? No matter. The important thing is, sooner or later, I would be returning to the house where I lived, to the fuel-oil stove and a casserole-based dinner, to the 19" Quasar which was always on, even when nobody was watching, to the sounds of conversation. Whatever I was doing, eventually I'd go home.
What was I? Twelve? At that age, I still seemed to be living the life I always had, the life I assumed would continue. It seemed as though the warmth and comfort of this particular place would always exist. Yeah, sure, there was a wider world out there, and some day I'd be hurled into it, but that was so far away it was beyond imagination. This was my life, my world.
Things changed. Gradually at first, and I tried to hold tight to the only things I knew. Soon enough, though, the ground erupted and I fell, consumed by overpowering depression , unable to function in any meaningful way until my late twenties. Then I got better. Sort of. I reentered the world.
Marriage. Divorce. Sleepless nights and the occasional doomed relationship. Another relationship, this one I thought for real, but it ended, too. My dad died, and my oldest brother, then Mom. That home I once knew was well and truly gone. Images from the past would blip into my brain and I'd chase them away, unable to process them.
Through it all, I endured. I found a path and took it, winding up here, with a house of my own, three cats and a dog. And Janie, of course, who accepts me for what I am, even when I burst into song for no particular reason. There are familiar rituals, constant conversation, things to do. There are ups and downs, but through it all, there is love.
At long, long last, when I walk through the door every night, it feels like coming home.
Yet hearing them now, in pristine digital sound, doesn't seem right. These songs were made to be heard on AM radio. Specifically, they should be wafting from a transistor radio carried by someone on the bus, or the tinny factory speakers in my brother's Chevette. I should be moving forward, past endless barren cornfields, the sky overcast, all branches bare.
Where would I be going? To school, to a movie, simply for a ride? No matter. The important thing is, sooner or later, I would be returning to the house where I lived, to the fuel-oil stove and a casserole-based dinner, to the 19" Quasar which was always on, even when nobody was watching, to the sounds of conversation. Whatever I was doing, eventually I'd go home.
What was I? Twelve? At that age, I still seemed to be living the life I always had, the life I assumed would continue. It seemed as though the warmth and comfort of this particular place would always exist. Yeah, sure, there was a wider world out there, and some day I'd be hurled into it, but that was so far away it was beyond imagination. This was my life, my world.
Things changed. Gradually at first, and I tried to hold tight to the only things I knew. Soon enough, though, the ground erupted and I fell, consumed by overpowering depression , unable to function in any meaningful way until my late twenties. Then I got better. Sort of. I reentered the world.
Marriage. Divorce. Sleepless nights and the occasional doomed relationship. Another relationship, this one I thought for real, but it ended, too. My dad died, and my oldest brother, then Mom. That home I once knew was well and truly gone. Images from the past would blip into my brain and I'd chase them away, unable to process them.
Through it all, I endured. I found a path and took it, winding up here, with a house of my own, three cats and a dog. And Janie, of course, who accepts me for what I am, even when I burst into song for no particular reason. There are familiar rituals, constant conversation, things to do. There are ups and downs, but through it all, there is love.
At long, long last, when I walk through the door every night, it feels like coming home.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
THE DAY WILL COME WHEN OUR CHILDREN WILL ASK HOW WE AS A NATION ALLOWED JONAH HILL TO BECOME A STAR, AND WE WILL LOOK AWAY, ASHAMED OF OUR COWARDICE
Say, remember that box-office smash and all-time classic movie Get Him To The Greek? Do you remember seeing it and thinking, "Ah yes, Russell Brand and Jonah Hill. Now there's a comedy team for the ages"? Or do you, more likely, remember seeing the ads for it and thinking, "Yeah, maybe I'll catch up with it on cable or something"?
Get Him To The Greek wasn't a flop, but it didn't exactly set the world on fire, either. And considering that it cost way more than necessary to produce, and a whole lot more to market, you might think that Hollywood studios would be in no hurry to offer ridiculous deals to its two stars. You would, obviously, be wrong--why else would I be writing this thing?
Thus, the portly, non-photogenic Hill is currently shooting 21 Jump Street, a presumably comedic updating of the painfully earnest Johnny Depp TV series from the late eighties. This project has been in development forever it seems, and at no time has anyone connected to it bothered asking why the fuck they're bothering with a movie version of a TV show that nobody really remembers. More to the point, no studio execs have ever bothered asking why they're funneling obscene sums of money into Hill's production company in the first place. (He's not just bringing his unique brand of anti-charisma to 21 Jump Street as an actor--he's writing and producing the damned thing as well.)
Nothing against Hill, who was reasonably funny in Superbad, but that's just it--his entire career seems to be based on the success of that one movie. On the basis of that, I can understand giving the guy some gigs as a character actor. But starring roles? And his own production company? Nobody ever gave anything like that to the guys from Porky's, and that movie made a lot more money than Superbad. But then, that was made when studio execs had some sense of perspective. (When the sweaty, coked-out mindset of eighties Hollywood seems like model of common sense, things have deteriorated beyond salvation.)
Even more baffling than the ascent of Hill is the treatment given to his one-time co-star, Russell Brand. When Get Him To The Greek opened, we were deluged with articles treating Brand as a star. Not as someone on the brink of stardom, but a full-fledged movie star, despite the fact that he hadn't really done anything. (Yeah, he was a big deal back in England, but so was the guy who played Selwyn Froggitt, and nobody ever put him on the cover of Rolling Stone.) And sure enough, Brand was soon given the lead in the remake of Arthur, a movie even more deeply unnecessary than a redo of 21 Jump Street. When that movie was released two weeks ago, Warner Bros. made a half-hearted attempt to inflate the weekend grosses, but to no avail: it's a flop.
Rather than admitting their mistake, or at least pretending the whole thing never happened, Warners is reacting to Brand's lack of success by offering him a production deal of his own, as well as the lead in a comedy in which he'll play an arrogant soccer star who, through tiresome plot mechanics, has to--wait, you've never heard this one before--coach a team of rag-tag youths.
It's perhaps unfair to single out Hill and Brand as examples of everything wrong with movies today. The problem isn't with them as performers so much as the mindset of the studio functionaries who keep greenlighting this shit. There's virtually no way any of the announced vehicles for these two gentlemen could possibly be any good, and audiences have consistently shown indifference to their presences, yet here they are, or others like them, taking up space at the multiplexes with movies nobody wants to see.
Ticket prices keep going up, ticket sales keep going down. Can't anybody in Hollywood read a graph?
Get Him To The Greek wasn't a flop, but it didn't exactly set the world on fire, either. And considering that it cost way more than necessary to produce, and a whole lot more to market, you might think that Hollywood studios would be in no hurry to offer ridiculous deals to its two stars. You would, obviously, be wrong--why else would I be writing this thing?
Thus, the portly, non-photogenic Hill is currently shooting 21 Jump Street, a presumably comedic updating of the painfully earnest Johnny Depp TV series from the late eighties. This project has been in development forever it seems, and at no time has anyone connected to it bothered asking why the fuck they're bothering with a movie version of a TV show that nobody really remembers. More to the point, no studio execs have ever bothered asking why they're funneling obscene sums of money into Hill's production company in the first place. (He's not just bringing his unique brand of anti-charisma to 21 Jump Street as an actor--he's writing and producing the damned thing as well.)
Nothing against Hill, who was reasonably funny in Superbad, but that's just it--his entire career seems to be based on the success of that one movie. On the basis of that, I can understand giving the guy some gigs as a character actor. But starring roles? And his own production company? Nobody ever gave anything like that to the guys from Porky's, and that movie made a lot more money than Superbad. But then, that was made when studio execs had some sense of perspective. (When the sweaty, coked-out mindset of eighties Hollywood seems like model of common sense, things have deteriorated beyond salvation.)
Even more baffling than the ascent of Hill is the treatment given to his one-time co-star, Russell Brand. When Get Him To The Greek opened, we were deluged with articles treating Brand as a star. Not as someone on the brink of stardom, but a full-fledged movie star, despite the fact that he hadn't really done anything. (Yeah, he was a big deal back in England, but so was the guy who played Selwyn Froggitt, and nobody ever put him on the cover of Rolling Stone.) And sure enough, Brand was soon given the lead in the remake of Arthur, a movie even more deeply unnecessary than a redo of 21 Jump Street. When that movie was released two weeks ago, Warner Bros. made a half-hearted attempt to inflate the weekend grosses, but to no avail: it's a flop.
Rather than admitting their mistake, or at least pretending the whole thing never happened, Warners is reacting to Brand's lack of success by offering him a production deal of his own, as well as the lead in a comedy in which he'll play an arrogant soccer star who, through tiresome plot mechanics, has to--wait, you've never heard this one before--coach a team of rag-tag youths.
It's perhaps unfair to single out Hill and Brand as examples of everything wrong with movies today. The problem isn't with them as performers so much as the mindset of the studio functionaries who keep greenlighting this shit. There's virtually no way any of the announced vehicles for these two gentlemen could possibly be any good, and audiences have consistently shown indifference to their presences, yet here they are, or others like them, taking up space at the multiplexes with movies nobody wants to see.
Ticket prices keep going up, ticket sales keep going down. Can't anybody in Hollywood read a graph?
Friday, April 15, 2011
ALL NECESSITIES PROVIDED
I remember reading an interview with the great director Sidney Lumet, who died this weekend at the age of 86, in which he was asked if he had a particularly identifiable style.
No, he said, because he believed every story had a particular way it needed to be told, and his job as director was to find it. As example, he cited one of his best-known movies, Network. Many scenes he chose to shoot in an almost verite style, the better to establish the reality of the world he's presenting. He realized, however, that certain individual scenes would seem ridiculous if shot in a naturalistic manner. So these scenes have their own style, whether over-the-top flamboyant, or rich with the shadowy menace of classic noir, or whatever.
The trick was deciding how far to push these individual scenes for maximum impact while not allowing the different styles to clash with each other, to make sure the film stood as its own fully-integrated entity, not just a collection of scenes. And if you've seen Network, you know Lumet more than met his goals. You can dislike the movie itself, mostly due to Paddy Chayefsky's declamatory script, but it's impossible to quibble with Lumet's handling of it--purely as a piece of filmmaking, it is absolutely brilliant.
As was so much of what he did--Twelve Angry Men, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Prince Of The City, Before The Devil Knows You're Dead. He was incredibly prolific, and he made a few also-rans, as well as a number of outright losers. (If you have a few spare hours sometime, ask me what I think of The Wiz.) Good, bad or great, everything he did was the work of a man who above all had the intention of telling you a story. He was something rarer and more valuable than an artist. He was a professional.
No, he said, because he believed every story had a particular way it needed to be told, and his job as director was to find it. As example, he cited one of his best-known movies, Network. Many scenes he chose to shoot in an almost verite style, the better to establish the reality of the world he's presenting. He realized, however, that certain individual scenes would seem ridiculous if shot in a naturalistic manner. So these scenes have their own style, whether over-the-top flamboyant, or rich with the shadowy menace of classic noir, or whatever.
The trick was deciding how far to push these individual scenes for maximum impact while not allowing the different styles to clash with each other, to make sure the film stood as its own fully-integrated entity, not just a collection of scenes. And if you've seen Network, you know Lumet more than met his goals. You can dislike the movie itself, mostly due to Paddy Chayefsky's declamatory script, but it's impossible to quibble with Lumet's handling of it--purely as a piece of filmmaking, it is absolutely brilliant.
As was so much of what he did--Twelve Angry Men, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Prince Of The City, Before The Devil Knows You're Dead. He was incredibly prolific, and he made a few also-rans, as well as a number of outright losers. (If you have a few spare hours sometime, ask me what I think of The Wiz.) Good, bad or great, everything he did was the work of a man who above all had the intention of telling you a story. He was something rarer and more valuable than an artist. He was a professional.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
WOOFS OF SORROW, WAGS OF JOY
It was a year ago today, on what would have been my mom's eighty-second birthday, that I somewhat reluctantly drove down to the Animal Rescue League to see this beagle puppy Tabbatha had told me about. I had no intention of bringing it home with me, but as we all know, the puppy had other ideas.
And Isabella T. Beagle (there's nothing excessively cutesy about that name, is there?) has brought me more joy in that year than I would have thought possible. She does this in all the standard dog ways--bouncing, rolling, barking unexpectedly, deploying the big brown soulful eyes to get whatever she wants.
Mostly, though, she's just there when I need her. I mean, cats are great and all, and for that matter, so are girlfriends, but there are some problems in life that can only be solved by hugging a dog. And the great thing about Bella is, after a minute or so of hug-time, she starts squirming furiously, as if to say, "OK, sad time's over. Let's go play." And she's right, of course--after hugging her, I always feel better, and playing with her always makes me happy.
Which isn't to say she can't be a pain in the ass, because she can. Janie and the cats would all be perfectly happy if she wasn't around. On the other hand, there was the time Janie was scared to the point of crying, and Bella gently climbed onto her lap and carefully licked away her tears. And though Staley--who, incidentally, is one of the greatest cats in the history of the species--doesn't exactly like the dog, the two of them are nuzzling each other even as I write this.
The main thing bout Bella--look, I'm kind of reluctant to bring this up, because it sounds like so much sentimental bullshit, or feel-good semi-mystical hooha, or something. But it's to do with the day she came into my life. I'm quite sure Tabbatha wasn't giving any thought to the fact that I was going through my annual Mom's Birthday Sadness when she called to tell me about this adorable puppy. That was on a Friday night, and I didn't care to head out that night, waiting instead until the next day to take a look--April 10th.
As I drove home with this tiny, helpless beagle snuggled against my side--the last time she'd be so calm in my presence!--the day was suddenly transformed. No longer would April 10th be a signifier of the loss of the most important person in my life. It would be a day celebrating a new chapter, a day of joy, of happiness.
Of life.
And Isabella T. Beagle (there's nothing excessively cutesy about that name, is there?) has brought me more joy in that year than I would have thought possible. She does this in all the standard dog ways--bouncing, rolling, barking unexpectedly, deploying the big brown soulful eyes to get whatever she wants.
Mostly, though, she's just there when I need her. I mean, cats are great and all, and for that matter, so are girlfriends, but there are some problems in life that can only be solved by hugging a dog. And the great thing about Bella is, after a minute or so of hug-time, she starts squirming furiously, as if to say, "OK, sad time's over. Let's go play." And she's right, of course--after hugging her, I always feel better, and playing with her always makes me happy.
Which isn't to say she can't be a pain in the ass, because she can. Janie and the cats would all be perfectly happy if she wasn't around. On the other hand, there was the time Janie was scared to the point of crying, and Bella gently climbed onto her lap and carefully licked away her tears. And though Staley--who, incidentally, is one of the greatest cats in the history of the species--doesn't exactly like the dog, the two of them are nuzzling each other even as I write this.
The main thing bout Bella--look, I'm kind of reluctant to bring this up, because it sounds like so much sentimental bullshit, or feel-good semi-mystical hooha, or something. But it's to do with the day she came into my life. I'm quite sure Tabbatha wasn't giving any thought to the fact that I was going through my annual Mom's Birthday Sadness when she called to tell me about this adorable puppy. That was on a Friday night, and I didn't care to head out that night, waiting instead until the next day to take a look--April 10th.
As I drove home with this tiny, helpless beagle snuggled against my side--the last time she'd be so calm in my presence!--the day was suddenly transformed. No longer would April 10th be a signifier of the loss of the most important person in my life. It would be a day celebrating a new chapter, a day of joy, of happiness.
Of life.
Tuesday, April 05, 2011
WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN?
I'm no prude, okay? Nor am I some Bill O'Reilly conservative type, or a fundamen6talist Christian nutjob. Nonetheless, I must ask: Do we need jokey cameos from Hugh Hefner in a movie aimed at kids?
I'm speaking, of course, of Hop, the new animated/live-action mongrel that is, as the ads proclaim with a certain level of pride, "from the director of Alvin & The Chipmunks," which you may remember as the movie in which semi-beloved characters from an earlier era are reduced to eating shit and conspiring to get their human buddy laid. So expectations are already low.
Still, this is a movie about the Easter Bunny, which is one of those childhood concepts that ceases to have any significance once you reach the age of, I dunno, seven or so. So presumably, if you're making a movie about the Easter Bunny, you're setting your sights on really young kids as your target audience.
Now I realize that when millions and millions of dollars are spent on a movie, it has to try to reach as large an audience as possible. Presumably the filmmakers wanted to provide some sort of entertainment for the adults who are accompanying all those kids. They could have done this by creating a well-crafted, witty film that would enrapture everybody, the kind of thing Pixar can do without even trying.
Or they could take the most cynical route imaginable and make a bunch of cheap semi-dirty jokes, trot out the likes of Hefner and the deplorable Chelsea Handler, and give audiences a cameo from David Hasselhoff because...wait. Why would you do any of that? Even for b-level celebrities, haven't Handler and Hasselhoff long passed their sell-by date? Would anybody in any audience conceivably welcome their presence?
Probably not, but it's not like the maker of Hop give a sweet shit. If they did, they would have made a good movie.
I'm speaking, of course, of Hop, the new animated/live-action mongrel that is, as the ads proclaim with a certain level of pride, "from the director of Alvin & The Chipmunks," which you may remember as the movie in which semi-beloved characters from an earlier era are reduced to eating shit and conspiring to get their human buddy laid. So expectations are already low.
Still, this is a movie about the Easter Bunny, which is one of those childhood concepts that ceases to have any significance once you reach the age of, I dunno, seven or so. So presumably, if you're making a movie about the Easter Bunny, you're setting your sights on really young kids as your target audience.
Now I realize that when millions and millions of dollars are spent on a movie, it has to try to reach as large an audience as possible. Presumably the filmmakers wanted to provide some sort of entertainment for the adults who are accompanying all those kids. They could have done this by creating a well-crafted, witty film that would enrapture everybody, the kind of thing Pixar can do without even trying.
Or they could take the most cynical route imaginable and make a bunch of cheap semi-dirty jokes, trot out the likes of Hefner and the deplorable Chelsea Handler, and give audiences a cameo from David Hasselhoff because...wait. Why would you do any of that? Even for b-level celebrities, haven't Handler and Hasselhoff long passed their sell-by date? Would anybody in any audience conceivably welcome their presence?
Probably not, but it's not like the maker of Hop give a sweet shit. If they did, they would have made a good movie.
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