Shackler's Revenge.

This one goes out to the one of you that still checks this thing. Check out this picture of a building on fire:



Keep it up!

Meeting Some Wonderful Witches

I met Thurston Moore today at a literary festival in Brooklyn. It was the kind of thing where we knew he'd be there, but nobody expected to actually see him. Turned out he was just hanging around like a regular dude, which I guess to most people he is. We saw him chatting up some guy in a flannel shirt and a baseball hat, and I told him I liked his music. He grabbed my arm and said "Thanks man!"

For those of you who don't know, Thurston Moore is the lead singer and guitarist of Sonic Youth. He looks like this:


Somehow he's 50 years old.

To a small subsection of the general population this is a huge deal, like meeting Jean-Luc Godard, or Eli Manning. His music is the president of the phylum that stems out toward everything we now call indie rock. Plus, it's awesome. He's not quite on the list of celebrities I would shamelessly scream praises at, but tonight I'll be spinning my noise rock tapes while I read the essays of Walter Benjamin. Walter Benjamin! To a small subsection of the general population that's like reading Heinrich Rickert! Or Gershom Scholem!

Convention Day II

if I were a political pundit, I would be Pat Buchanan. Like him, I have a habit of disagreeing viscerally with the most basic uniting beliefs. Both Olbermann and Matthews were surprised, Outraged! that 74 percent people polled thought Hillary Clinton's passion might be coming from a place motivated by personal ambition rather than genuine support for the rival she's demanding recount every single delegate vote in case she did in fact somehow beat him. She was good though, perhaps too good, but I'm finding myself wondering if I even agree with this party anymore. Tonight we got Placing the many in front of the few, which is easier to swallow than last night's Health care for all, but do the many really deserve more than the few?

In the wake of this spectacle I'm having trouble shaking something my grandpa told me at the beginning of the summer. He said our country was posessed by a great national ethos that made public allowances at the expense of national progress. I'm lazy, but I'm not poor, so my own personal ethos has little to do with the nation at large. Thasts why its so easy for me to remain aloof, my own development has very little to do with what happens in Washington. But the consequences of my ethos speak louder to my grandpa's point than I was willing to concede to his face. I owe roughly 2 thousand dollars to the state, the bank, and the guy that stole my laptop respectively, and still I got off work early tonight because I sort of wanted to see The Rocker.

So now I'm hesitant to believe what I used to so passionately; that the wealthiest one percent is inherently evil and should be forced to give a percent of their earnings to the bottom 20 percent. I'm not saying we definitely shouldn't work towards universal health care, or making the many the priority, but now it seems more dubious to me. The government is like my father, and sometimes I wish that my father would kick my ass a little bit. Plus, it does look unfair to take away money from people that have earned it. AMC has convinced me more than ever that CEOs are in general cuntface soul-suckers, but that doesn't mean they don't deserve their cash. Now that I'm getting older, I'm learning to respect things like motivation and ambition, two values I don't have and wish I did.

I'm just saying I don't know anymore what my politics are. Political beliefs in general have deteriorated into meaninglessness, if they ever actually had meaning. Facts now have no relationship to reality. it's retarded that Republicans don't believe in Global Warming and Democrats do. I'm tired of hearing Republicans talk about lazy welfare hoppers and Democrats talk about hard-working immigrants who work three jobs and can't pay for medicine, like no other types of people exist. I have no interest in contributing to this debate on our country's values. But I have a voice, and I'm not representative of the average American, so I should take advantage of this elitist wine drinker we've got up. I've got to speak for my people. I'm going to vote for Barack Obama because I feel like he is most likely to watch the Bill Murray scene in Coffee and Cigarettes with me. From now on that is how I'm making my decisions about candidates. That and listening to Pat buchanan.

People like Joe Biden

I fucking called it! Eli Manning has entered the public consciousness. Peyton continues to be America's favorite doofus.

Also, anyone notice that Ted kennedy has a Massachusetts accent like an actor doing a bad one? Like everything sounds normal and than he says "senatah".

No Country For Southern Men

The speculation concerning Swing Vote’s failure at the box office overlooks the fact that it is far less political in span than its premise would indicate. Do not be disappointed, Good Ole Boys tend to preoccupy themselves with the present anyway, politics is a lofty ideal. I’ve read my Everette Maddox--he’s a poet from New Orleans you haven’t heard of. He died young, of cirrhosis or some shit, and read his stuff out loud in a downtown bar called the Maple Leaf. I’ve heard he slept there too. He had a thing about possums. But what does America know about Good Ole Boys? Their demographic leans toward Good Ole Bill, the ones that vote anyway. Now the Muslim is shooting three-pointers in Kuwait. This is better than nothing, but it doesn’t mean he’s a priority.

So who can blame Kevin Costner for getting drunk and playing foosball on Election Day? And who can blame a small town for disassociating itself with the nuances of a government that won’t solve their problems, not really, anyway? I’ve read my Ken Kesey, my understanding is that these things get talked about in bars, but they do get talked about. So when one good old Good Ole Boys gets a chance to speak with the government he's already acknowledged does not exist for him, what does he have to lose? Probably he feels shell-shocked at first--who wouldn’t?--but it passes. You get a few drinks in you, you sit down with that old man, and you tell him a thing or two about this mess we’re in. You’ve got boys back in town who’ll want to hear about it later.

Costner’s Bud Johnson doesn’t do any of that, besides the shell-shocked thing. At heart, he’s an Oprah American. He gets flustered when he meets important people. He revels in this new wave of media attention because, like you, he’s concerned about his lack of legacy. Like you, he’s in a Willie Nelson cover band. He drinks too much, but he has a precocious teenage daughter. None of this is nearly as appealing to Good Ole Boys as it is to people with no conception of, and limited interest in, what Good Ole Boys do find appealing. In fact, I imagine a Good Ole Boy would be somewhat perturbed that his representative Oscar winner was bumbling around politely for no, another hour. Probably slightly more perturbed than I was that I’d driven to the mall at 10:45 to watch this garbage.

Turns out the demographic of province is the Oprah demographic, the suburban patricians who luxuriate themselves with loftier notions of unproven American Platonic values. Or the poor folk who still trick themselves into believing that their own final act will come with symphonic crescendo. People who otherwise won’t mind that after two hours we still haven’t addressed the blatant transparency of two men who are, simply put, complete asses, because Bud Johnson has put aside his political apathy (and his drinking) for the good of the nation.

So ignore the fact that Dennis Hopper (who, by the way, is no longer on planet Earth, and God bless him for not letting a film prevent our understanding of that revelation) runs a nationwide ad contradicting everything he spent two years campaigning for when he could have just called Bud on the phone and lied to him, because he’s not asked to own up to it. The only man in need of adjustment is the Good Ole Boy himself, who, let’s not forget, will be unheeded, disheveled, and forgotten as soon as this is over, by everybody except the town he failed to represent. Of course, what bothered those fuckers the most was that his dumb ass didn’t know more about Roe vs. Wade. Inside every southern man lies a precocious teenage daughter. Go redeem yourself some more, Kev.

As to the matter of it not selling, my mom wanted to see it, but she wanted to see Brideshead Revisited more. My theater isn’t showing that, so we would have had to pay. And she had moving and stuff to do.

The Widower

Settled on the cusp of his kitchen chair,
he noticed the pixelated face of a Chinese conscript
now staring at the overhead lamp from the confines of the newspaper.

From the milieu outside evacuated an echo of stranded dialogue,
that advanced the walls of the house
and fell onto the ground at its edges,
like the dust that follows in the silence after a gunshot.
A basketball lay in the grass by the driveway.

“Don’t tell anybody what you’re thinking” he smiled,
and his face was softened in the peaks of his lips.
“Don’t tell anybody else.”
He flipped the switch on the wall,
and floated into bed.

Spacehog, for the Nubes

Also The Space Between, the radio made me feel nostalgic today.

A Chorus Line of Soap Stars and Homosexuals

How many other people sit down to blog with no conception of what they're going to write about?

That's actually only half true. I usually keep in reserve a couple ideas that I'm not crazy about just in case I come up dry. When I was at the Beach last week I watched five movies I'd never seen before, and I don't think I'm going to have any format to talk about them, not as much as I'd like, so I'm going to write a paragraph about each of them now.

I came up with this idea in the car.

Lucky Number Slevin:
I think this movie lost all chance when the blurb on the back said it was a combination of the best parts of Pulp Fiction, The Usual Suspects, and the Professional. Critics need to learn that some things are sacred, and Josh Hartnett is not a Kevin Spacey. He isn't even a John Travolta. He's kind of a less exciting Robert Downey. Think Kiss Kiss Bang Bang but without Val Kilmer to clean up. And only Bruce Willis can sell lines like "now he ain't nosy, but he's got a nose" so thank Christ for Bruce Willis' prominent screen time. It's all kosher though til the end, which was the Seattle Chronicle's inspiration for the Usual Suspects nod. Twist endings are a lot like lesbian scenes (Mulholland Drive mother fucker!!!) In theory I'll sit through anything that can promise to confuse my perception of how a movie will end, but movies like Wanted are proving that they actually aren't automatic sells (and like Marshall postulated, is it actually possible to get off on the Mulholland Drive money shot?) I couldn't quite explain my problem with it to my brother, it's like two movies just got merged together--a charismatic action comedy and a cold-hearted revenge story--and there's nothing to rectify the split. I don't know how I feel about Hartnett. I do feel like he's trying.

Be Kind Rewind:
If nobody bothered to go see this movie then I will speak for the lot of us and say that it is good and it made my father feel better than he usually feels, so much so that he brought up in the car ride home how much of a bitch Sigourney Weaver is for willingly taking on it's one obligatory villainous role. Did I say villainous? I meant bureaucratic, which was his problem, and mine too, I mean with the movie, and not even problem really, it's just weird to see a blatant Michael Gondry film be so formulaic, and though I hate, I mean really hate to say it, I'm getting sick of Jack Black. I liked when his weirdness had druggy explanations, but now it seems he's cleaned himself up. Whatever, he tops everything he's ever done with this, and it's funny, and it's cute, and white people like it. This makes four comedies I've seen this year, and I can say with certainty it's better than Love Guru and Step Brothers.

Punch-Drunk Love:
I feel like you could walk out of this feeling really down or really high, and since I didn't really feel either I'll keep away from it's real heft. It is good though, even great, and it did occur to me, though I know a lot of people have already said this, that the idea of playing Sandler's recurring character against itself is dangerously close to brilliant. Definitively brilliant was Phillip Seymour Hoffman, who left me open-mouthed with his seven minutes of screen time. My analysis of acting is admittedly rudimentary, basically if an actor is capable of making one of those half second smiles while he looks at the ground and then looks serious again he's passed my test, but the Hoff Man here was more natural than I think I've ever seen someone be. I was floored, best performance of a career, and I already fucking loved the guy. It's right here. Adam Sandler's Freudian issues probably keep him up at night as often as mine do me, but it's nice to see that he does know what he's doing.

The Queen:
I originally felt the need to justify this choice in my head after I passed on the opportunity to pick up Casino, but that's stupid. God bless Tony Blair overacting like a motherfucker, God bless British ensemble theater acting, and God bless old British aristocrats sitting in a room talking about the way things used to be. How many of these people you think have ever had some dude talk to them about American tits in a Chinese restaurant? I was convinced for awhile that James Cromwell actually was from England. Poor dude is relegated to hunting with his traumatized grand kids and being indignant a lot. I guarantee he's never seen American tits, but he doesn't fall trap to the logical fallacy of copulation. Don't you know you're too old to have kids? It's good to be king.

And I caught Wonder Boys, but suffice to say I liked it so much that I bought it. Anything else, I'll addendum later on. I got some beers in the fridge, and I'd like to play Cornhole. Scratch, I like to play cornhole.

The Year 2000

First of all, Brett Favre, what the fuck are you doing? Did you not read my tributes to you? You're embarassing me. There's no reason for you to become this guy. I'd actually prefer if you spent the rest of your career doing Old Spice commercials. Come over to my house and I'll run plays for you if you want, but stop being this guy.

Second, as promised I have something to say about Bruce. It was awesome, one of the best shows I've ever seen. I wrote some half-drunk, half-assed thing about his populism negating the role of critics earlier, but I feel it makes more sense to just say that when the 65 year old man sitting in the back tells Marshall and Casey to shut the fuck up and enjoy the music, it doesn't matter that Robert Christgau called you "an important minor artist or a rather flawed and inconsistent major one." I think that was the gist of it.

Probably more important were the Jersey Women near the front, who probably flashed him like 25 years ago, and would have again except they'd brought their kids. This was the biggest artist I've ever seen, and if it wasn't the best show ever, it's only because I'm older now and these things mean less to me. But his charisma knows no boundaries. I'm so tired of indie rock bands that are afraid to speak. It's like, it basically was Dewey Cox jokes, but at least Blink 182 had stage presence.

The best show I ever went to was Green Day, because it was my first, and because I was obsessed in that My First Band Ever kind of way, and because Billy Joe stuck his hand down his pants and shouted "SOMEBODY FUCK ME!!!" and then rocked for two hours.

Speaking of things that happened ages ago, how fucking awesome was Dark Knight? I will refrain from calling it Batman, I feel like I'm doing somebody a favor. I will also point out that I saw it before everybody else at a screening, so fuck y'all. The Joker is the best villian since Anton Chigurh. I'm so glad he was actually good so I didn't have to fake it. I like what Peter Travers said about Nolan bringing pop entertainment dangerously close to legitimate art. I liked even more when Travers said "the haunting and visionary Dark Knight soars on the wings of untamed imagination."

Oh and Pineapple Express was decent. Good night.

I'll get something about Bruce up in a few days

I spilled wine on my father’s business card.
There’s a 703 number someone wrote in pen on it,
and an address.
My brother and I keep eating food in the basement
and at night sometimes I go to the 7-11,
what’s that thing they say,
I don’t need it but I like it.
I like football too, but whatever.

My father came home one night and he was tired.
We could tell because when somebody asked a question about dinner
he just mumbled something about swordfish.
I always wonder if the things in his life that seem like signifiers
actually do make him unhappy.
It’s like when you watch an actor give a bad interview on Conan,
and you wonder if it will bother them later.
I wonder how many things you get to rationalize before you just start ignoring,
and the rocks that glow off the surface of the ocean
forget your name, and you start moving in crazy directions under the water,
because nobody can grow after they’ve denied the presence of something real.

He told me he believed in God as a component of his universal perception.
Which means when he dies, he still won’t go to heaven or hell.
He told me there would always be someone smarter for me to find,
and that it was okay I kept spending all his money.
But I still felt bad about the business card.