Late Musical Tastes

Bars play a terrible choice of music. Or is it just the bars that I go to? Which brings up a better question: why do I go to bars? If I pop on the I-tunes, or play a record, snap a bottle-cap in my own digs, wouldn't I be better off? Probably, but I don't like drinking by myself, for two reasons: one, it leads to late-night reading of the NT-Times, which leads to weird dreams in which my mind seems to think it knows foreign languages. Secondly, I like to overhear people talk. Especially people from France.

So my latest foray has been the Beatles. Ha. I never really digested them, but after giving them a retrospective, I realize that they're too easy to like. But I have become affected by the album Beatles for Sale, perhaps for the dreary 1-2-3 of "No Reply," "I'm A Loser," and "Dressed in Black." Then a strange, way-too-upbeat cover song. Then I get bored and put on some Mission to Burma. Where is this culture going? Insane. The technology allows us to be causally schitzofrantic. Amen.

Wet Dreams with Roy

Roy Orbison gets the girl.



We all loose our minds.

Hats off to Larry the Football Guy

When I was 10 or 11, I bought a 2 dollar record player, one of those all-in-one units. Then I inherited my sisters shit speakers from a Sears stereo system she had. Rummage sales. Huge boxes of vinyl for a couple bucks, or sometimes for free from my friend's nice mom. Sure, that meant much of musical choices were limited to scratched long plays of Jesus Christ Superstar and warped versions of Aqualung, but what the hell did I care. - it was great being able to listen to the pop-operatic rush of ELO - Ohhhh, Telephone Line - or even dabble in my first forays of punk with the Cars - not to mention all those night I spent in the dark with headphones on, my mind being blown by the Beatles.

But I have to say, that when I was younger I had a penchant for theatricality. Acting out songs became a foray, beginning when I was 5 or 6 and my father played me live Harry Belafonte records. Then one day I found a bunch of compilations, think they were called "Fun Times with Fun Tunes." Some Time Life thing I guess. But it had three records chocked full of ballads, and the Del Shannon tune Hats off to Larry was one of them. There was a kid named Larry in my class at school, though I never sang the song to him. He was fine-tuned, quarterback man, whereas I was pudgy poor freak to shit on.

The perspective of the song has always attracted me. Something about a guy taking his hat to another guy for dumping his gal; and then this girl becomes leftovers, but Del wants her back. What a guy. The song still has my favorite solo.

Knock Knock Joke Pop Tarts

Just never sure what I'm getting when it's discount prices.

Camp moment of the Day

From Troll 2

Movie Review: I'm Not There

Man in Black Coat/Playboy:You sound a bit fatalistic.

Bob Dylan/ Arthur Rimbaud: I'm not fatalistic.  Bank tellers are fatalistic; clerks are fatalistic. I'm a farmer.  Who ever heard of a fatalistic farmer?

    From an interview of Bob Dylan in Playboy Feb. 1966, and from the film I'm Not There.

Finally they've done: they've taken the most notorious pop artist of the last century, all that's he said, done, created, and stood for, and made a wildly inventive film out of it.  Here begins my review:

New Releases are a real pain in the ass, and I usually steer clear of them.  It's a Catch 22: if the movie's a stinker, than I've just wasted 4 bucks and 2 hours, and I probably won't even remember having rented it in a year or two.  On the other hand, if I enjoy the film, chances are I'll want to take a second look.  And the way my mind works, that means the videos going to pull 8 more bucks out of me from late fees.  

This is exactly what happened when I rented I'm Not There this week: I watched it and didn't really understand what I had seen.  This happened with Southland Tales too, but after rewatching that mess, I realized the little sense that could be made wasn't really worth all the pretensions/Timberlake you had to put up with.  I'm Not There is a much better movie than a Donnie Darko done dumb, and it gets better with second viewings.  I kick myself now that I missed it in theaters, because hearing Dylan blasted out of Dobey Surround Sound must be blast.

To explain the film would require an interpretative essay.  All I can say is that this isn't a boring bio like Walk the Line.  The bio formula is thrown out the window, and director Todd Haynes puts on his post-modern goggles and constructs a mystic ode to the life and songs of Bob Dylan. 

Six actors play six different incarnations of Dylan, or at least some abstract conception of the Dylan myth.  There's the folk hobo, the troubled voice of a generation, the amphetamine Judas, the symbolic/absurdist poet, the womanizer/actor, and finally, the retired gunslinger trying to adapt to a world that no longer plays by his rules.  Nothing is linear, nothing explained, but it is beautifully put together, and manages to flow beautifully.  There are wonderful, poignant moments, with such emotional intensity that I forgot the gimmicky idea of six actors playing into a single person.

"Palindromes" did something similar, but with different results.  Perhaps that's because none of the narratives in I'm Not There co-exist in the same world.  They are all separated by space, time, and understanding.  A young black boy doing by the name of Guthrie, traveling cross country on trains, playing folk songs about Unions, doesn't even seem to realize his own time.  He's an anachronism, the mysterious past that Dylan played up, so that one might have actually thought of Dylan as a boyhood Robert Johnson who sold his soul to the Devil so that he could play to his own time.  

The mantle piece of the film, which Hayne knows, is the Judas Dylan, the punk rock insanity of a Dylan forsaking his audience.  Cate Blanchett's performance redefines impersonation.  Not only does she look like the puffy haired Dylan, she sounds, walks, talks, and flirts like him.  Never before, or probably after, will I be so turned on by a woman playing a man.

Playing as it does with narrative technique, I'm Not There hits tremendous highs that abut less interesting moments.  Richard Gere's segment as a grey-haired Billy the Kid, Dylan gone the way of the buffalo I suppose, doesn't quite go anywhere, and the pastoral, early 20th century setting is strikingly discordant compared to the rest of the film.  Haynes was pushing the envelope furthest here, in an attempt to investigate Dylan as a country hero.

I can't say that this is my end all, be all judgement of the musical- yup that's what I'm calling it, because a film that uses music to such an extent can have no other name.  Not a musical in the theatrical sense, but a new genre hybrid.  I mean, the movie actually visually interprets Dylan songs like Ballad of the Thin Man. 

Who knows, maybe I won't like it in a few years, after I've seen it and heard people rave about it.  But it's certainly one of the most interesting/daring things I've seen (in ways that David Lynch's Inland Empire wasn't daring, but rather indulgent.) Not for those who do not like confusion, nor for those who dislike the insecurity of having to interpret something (there's no single meaning to the work, no moral, just a/many spirit(s).)

Sad Black-and-White Eyes: Episode One

The saddest man in the world could not be consoled by the hands resting on his shoulder, though they were the young hands of a woman who smelled vaguely of cinnamon. Behind him he could hear voices shouting, things being thrown, the volume of the sound somewhat dampened by the office door. He waited for the door to open, for the calm after the storm to ensue. But it raged on and on, the voices only holding for a second while a lamp was knocked over to mark a climax in the movement.

And John could not look into the face of the woman who smelled like cinnamon, could not say to her face what he wanted, because in someways he was happy for the fight. He was frightened, but he liked the feeling. The uncertainty seemed to lock time in tension-filled moments. The release would only heighten the experience, because it would remind him of feelings he had long become used to.

And in the spare seconds before the battle was won, he returned to doing something that he had not done for years: he said a prayer to the Old Man he envisioned in his head, the spiritual papa that rested in some alternative dimension, some strange incarnation of Christianity that had formed through watching episodes of Star Trek while doing Bible study.

Nina Simone doing Leonard Cohen

This is the most unexpected find: Nina Simone doing an amazingly uplifting, completely overhauled version of Cohen's "Suzanne." It sounds like an unplugged Clash were backing her up, this really reggae, high tempo beat that makes the folk classic sound like a gospel traditional.

New Portishead Album Makes Rob Almost Shit Pants; Meanwhile, Parents Scramble for Pottytraining Alibi

So I finally got around to picking up the new Portishead album this week. I was actually going into Sound Scape to get the new Bonny Prince Billy; well, no. I was actually going in because I was in the Blue Tusk (Syracuse's Armory Square) and they started playing Vampire Weekend, a band that's like fun as shit to drink to. Well, I get these urges when I haven't bought an album in a while, it's like an urge for a cigarette. Yeah, I don't really need it, but hey, my life sucks so what the hell does it matter. Okay, a bit of an exaggeration, but I mean, unless you're in love with every chromosome in your body or every penny in your pocket, than what's the big deal to take a drag or fish out a few dimes for a new record to spin. (not literally a record, because I left my Technic in New Jersey.)

Anyway, let's take it from the top: the new Portishead album "Third" deserves to be heard in its entirety with the same devotion that people give certain tv shows. They sit, maybe turn the lights out, pay deep attention, and curse distraction. Better, with music you can get in bed, pull the covers over your head, and get freaked out by the possessed deathly nuclear-aftermath that defines Portishead's new album. This stuff sounds like the back-up band for Cormac McCarthy's the Road. Shit, what happened to these people to make them freak out enough to pursue such devestation. Everything on the album is about death, the confusion, the disorentation brought on by lack of air. Things crumble, seeming to want to revert to normal song structures, but things just eventually end, as though the band had lost hope in making something more stable.

Please forgive me if I sound excited, but I actually had a strange experience the other night in bed. The song Horses was playing, which contains this three string guitar, what sounds like a ukulele in fact. Anyway, there was a point where I realized what the lyrics were saying and how she was saying it, like with this bleak strength that had grown out of such murk and ashes to grow into this benign hope - fantastical, absurd - yet it lives on, and the song follows it into this strange lift that runs its course and then doesn't have anywhere else to go, and expires as naturally as milk gone bad.

What happened at this moment was I got that tingle in my spine, goosebumps, but it didn't just end, it grew into something that swept through my whole body, up my to my brain, like those little balls in the movie Twister that get swept up into the tornado. I could visualize it in my body. And it was the music, and it was my submission to that power with no self-conscious attitude or restraint. I want only something new to be born inside me, I guess an openness to new experience, to people, places, no divisions. To accept things, and quietly accept the thing that I can't accept.

Late blogging has left me sleepy.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

How much life is wasted in wait?

I don't know if the makers of the new Indiana Jones movie intended this remark to be a sly sucker punch to fans who've waited fifteen years for a new Indy film, but it really is an appropriate question. Considering the hype and anticipation behind something like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the countless hours of web browsing, trying to find some new information on whether it's just a rumor, and those people who watch and rewatch the trailers to catch details of the film - well, how much life is wasted in those moments?

Depending on how you feel after seeing the new Indiana Jones, the answer could go either way. My reaction is inline with most of the critics I read prior to seeing it: certainly the film has moments missing from the vast majority of action/adventure films the studio's are unleashing on bored thirteen-year-olds this summers (I mean, compared to Speed Racer, Indian Jones is like historical fiction), but at the same time, it seems like Spielberg and Lucas are revisiting territory that they have either outgrown, or that they have completely lost touch with what makes modern movie audiences tick.

Spielberg's been trying to reinvent himself since getting pegged as a fantasy director with films like Raiders and E.T., and of late he's been trying more and more to reflect his dead friend and idol: Stanley Kubrick (there's a moment in this Indy film that has the same eerie atonal choir that scarred me shit-less in 2001.) Spielberg isn't the little kid he was in the seventies and eighties; he probably doesn't play with many toys anymore. And look no further to the deity himself, Lucas, to see someone who so easily perverted what originally was brainless fun. The Star Wars pre-sequels were an embarrassment because they forgot rule number one: if the details and characters are interesting, the overall story doesn't really matter. I could give a rats ass how Anakin became Darth, if you're going to bore me with long codas of dialogue involving things that don't exist.

This franchise doesn't have the luxury of going backwards like the Star Wars series. But that's a good thing, because it leaves more room for play. Harrison Ford, still alive, returns and takes on the persona of Sean Connery, with an aged elegance; but what's lost is the James Bond charisma of the first three swashbucklers. Sure, he can do stunts, but never has Indy seemed more alone and grumpy than in these films. Even with a sidekick and an old flame (Karen Allen doesn't get much screen time to make a case for her return) even Harrison Ford's iconic fedora figure seems to sit backseat to an outlandish plot that attempts to make the move a series of the fifties milieu in-jokes, with enough nostalgic references to confuse a whole bus load of college-prep teens laying down their Alexander Hamiltons.

(Then again, how strange would it have been to have more sexual interplay between an old Harrison Ford and a sly sexual comrade like Cate Blanchett. But at least it would have been strange: Indy's just way too nice in this film, like a nurtured Humphrey Bogart that no longer gets it up when Hepburn enters the room.)

Spielberg never sparks the Rin Tin Tin assembly of kindling he's working with into anything other than a CGI heavy Indiana Jones picture. The best, most clever moments come early on, as the film brings the series into the nuclear age. What's interesting about the opening scene, set in a military test sight for an atomic explosion, is how it makes the Indiana Jones character irrelevant. All he can do is attempt to survive in the unsettling facade of Pleasantville, circa an I Like Ike reference, as it's destroyed. (NY Times made me laugh when I saw the film and remembered her review: Nuclear family indeed.) Indiana Jones movies always provide the message that the world we know is hardly the world that exists beyond the books, and it could be taken as a subversive flip-off to the fan boy crowd that the script is sprinkled with allusions to dangers far more relevant today than the Nazis were to a nineteen-eighties audiences.

Once these moments passed, I was worried. I realized that the film hadn't even begun, and yet at the same time, the best part of it had probably ended. Spielberg gives the audience it's dessert before the veggies, and it tastes gross. I don't even want to get into some of the terrible sequences, that of course would never exist without CGI technology, and that's one reason to wish for days of yore. But, I digress because this is getting too long. No, the new Indiana Jones film is nothing compared to the painful experience of dashed expectations that met views of Phantom Menace. Indiana Jones has enough spirit to make it worth seeing, but it's not streamlined enough to completely work. The real hero, I suppose, ain't Indiana Jones, but the wizards at Lucas Arts who have made an Indy film like no other.

Just don't expect me to thank them for it.

I'm Already in Hollywood Baby

No, I'm still in Syracuse. That was in an e-mail from the class president, at the end. The final message. Say hi to Satan, honey.

If going to Syracuse has taught me anything, it's that this generation, for a large part, is made of success obsessed, culture-void maniacs who are chasing their dreams through the same channels of conglomerate ruled media rather than using new technology to bypass the corporate control. I mean, if you really got something to say, you probably shouldn't need a 40,000 dollar degree to prove it, especially in this day and age. Use that money to buy some good equipment, start your own production company. Drinks lots of coffee, spend hours at the brainstorming stage, put off getting to the machines. The minds a dangerous thing when it gets motivated. Sometimes I feel it's power flowing, and it's a good feeling. But I too had to get a degree. If I hadn't been so frightened, if I had been motivated by my own powers of creativity and said screw school, perhaps I would have saved a little dough.

Yeah. I was suckered too. Can I get my money back now?


But it's okay. People make mistakes. Just look at all the time and money they put into making that awful Speed Racer, when they could have fed the famines.

Street Trash

I'm always thrilled to learn about really trashy movies from the eighties. To me, dirty filthy disgusting movies really hit their time in the eighties. They don't quite have that slickness of the ninties, when the Tarantinos started making junk art films and today, there are very few trashy movies that get distribution in the theaters ("Postal" being a rare exception I suppose, but barely, considering Regal's not even showing it.)

So the movie is Street Trash and here's the poster:


Now, with the magic of You Tube, I was able to see the best scenes, and the final hilarious bit with the mobsters. It was like a history lesson, it somehow clearly is associated with a different time. The New York Times is really hard on it (I'm curious as to what they would say about it today, though it would still be panned) - I think the critics for NY Times have a pretty good sense of humor. I really enjoyed their review on Bad Santa, and went to see it when it came out because of it. They convinced me that it was a decent flick, even though comedies with midgets usually give me a fucking headache.

I probably won't rent Street Trash, just because seeing it as a film might be a little too much to be fun. But hey, the quote on the cover does namedrop Eraserhead. Still, the clip show off of You Tube is a blast and will hold me over if I get really curious; I also did this with Howard the Duck the other day, another terrible film to watch, but one with enough good, or at least memorable moments, like seeing your favorite eighties stars or watching the music video with that terrible song and a long opening sequence to tie in with the film. George Lucas gave us Willow and Howard the Duck, two series that probably never will get a sequel (though Willow was always a favorite around my house when I was kid. I never really associated Val Kilmer with it till I was much older and hadn't seen it in a few years. He's actually pretty charismatic considering he was such a douche in Top Gun.

But here's a final theory: that really bad movies get better when they get smaller. Really mediocre films like The Principal and Dick Tracy get better in tinier formats, and even commercials help. I love a tape from 1989 with the commercials still on it. It's a total trip back in time, to see what the masses were eating up. It's even more reflective of that time because the television was really the only constant stream of info: look at how punk bands utilized Access Television (check out a you tube clip of Flipper, or the Melvins from freakin' 1984 when they still had the bassist from Mudhoney.)

An image contest

I want you to imagine there is a line of cars called the Goblin. Make that imagine an image.

Shameless Self-Promotion

Somewhere in my busy lists of identities (right between sleeper and television watcher) you might want to add songwriter. That's right kids, your old pal Rob plays a mean G-chord, like no other. Anyway, my thoughts on the guitar are simple : destructive noise maker that can potentially cut people's minds in half. I mean that metaphorically; most people find my blend of song irritating, distracting, a mindless form of repetition that does little to bring world peace for the human race. I digress, defeated.

Not that I haven't met people that were entertained. But mothers are never a great source of feedback, so you'll have to decide for yourself. Today I added a song to my music myspace, entitled Too Much Reverb. It's a folky sad thing I guess, with a bit too much reverb, but I like the fact that I have a little collection of songs on my iTunes by Robert Ferguson, the songwriter that only my mom really appreciates.

Perception is Reality

The swishy-swish in her pants, as she passed, drew my attention. It had a missed step, like a reggae song, with the shoes hitting the carpet and then the double beat of her light-grey colored khakis rubbing. It was then I peered over and realized that she had her head turned looking back at me. She was an older woman, not strutting in rhythm purposely to make the beat, but constrained in that motion by a larger, older body. Things had gotten out of hand; the stress, kids maybe: time had countered against her. And I think when she saw me look as she went by, she was giving me a scolding look for eyeing-in on her ass.

Quickly my neck snaps, the muscles triggered by embarrassment. Even though I know I'm innocent, the perception is the reality. I am a weirdo-pervert who craves older, bigger women because at that moment she believes this to be true.

Now my gaze is set on auto-pilot. While admitting that I do take part in the shared male ritual of checking out the lower half of a woman, I generally am not overzealous in my appreciation. I do not whistle or bark, or even widen my eyes when a fine-toned buttocks passes my way. And despite the perception is reality bit – a mantra that sounds like it came out of some fascist ideology - I do not consume porn with older bigger women. The only porn I consume is free on the internets and usually only about 20-30 seconds long, and it's a bad habit I picked up as a young horny teenage, when the novelty of having sexual urges was like some new video game in which you want to find all the secret levels and cheat-codes. Similarly, the novelty wears thin, till it breaks and what's left needs therapy from counseling.

When swishy pants went by again, I made an intentional effort not to turn my head. Then I got a bit arrogant and thought that she should really appreciate a young guy like me, only slightly deformed, checking out an older woman like her. Maybe she's just not used to it, or she hates young people with possibly active sex lives. Life can be like biting into a moldy apple and then spending the next hour or so trying to sanitize both your mind and mouth.

Flipper takes me to postmodern free-association

I think it was about two years ago when I first heard Flipper's "Sex Bomb," and I realized what had been missing from my life was some sloppy slow-sludgecore from San Francisco. It wasn't till a few months ago that I finally tracked down the infamous Generic album, which might be one of the best albums of the eighties, if you really are looking far afield for something that does not quite make sense.

The point of making sense, of fitting a line of logic that is clear, clean, and cut through with fine precision, of parts fitting nicely together with artistry and hard work; I respect all of this very much. But I equally am drawn to mess, to garbage and filth and disgust and failure, nonsense. When David Bryne breaks out and says it, sings "Stop making sense" in Girlfriend is Better, I think "here's a call to action, perhaps a punk manifesto for a band that in no respects should be as culturally well-known as they are." Do we understand that, Stop making sense? I doubt that a culture can really celebrate confusion, because there are elements of confusion that are devoid of humanity. Murder, rape, and racism all don't make sense, unless logic is warped to say that killing is justified by abstraction number one, two, three, and so on. America can kill because we are good, and those that die are evil. Thus, the good killing the bad is not wrong, but an example of justice.

These things make sense, perhaps, but only in a frame of logic, and that frame is a construct of society, which exists out of survival needs, but persists further beyond these very basic modes of sustaining the body, the mind, of nurturing the body till it has moments to think about its own existence. The convenience of survival, the take-for-granted aspect of life, is not really taken-for-granted, but merely the expectations are realigned. This is a culture completely disconnected from natural effects, of fitness being tied to purpose. No one hunts except for game - no one farms without the help of technology. The body is formed through science, exercises that have no end but to give to the body what it has lost in luxury. For ourselves, we need only to get into the car and drive quickly, an unhuman quickness that has no resemblance to life. This convenience: what effect does it have on the body? We go to the store and purchase milk, a plastic white container which is ours for a mere $3 dollars, and these are the ends of endless calculations, of distribution and temperatures, of life being bred to produce for such a purpose and then perfectly timed to die (Life Is Cheap)

Outside this context, these parameters of time, place, emotions; of cycles and prior engagements (promises, mothers and fathers, moments of revelation); beyond these details, there are future historians who examine the evidence and come up with different verdicts. The guilt is distributed, the reasons and actors presented bullet style on some Powerpoint in the classroom. The logic is simplified into text books and test questions, with correct answers and open-ended essays that are graded on how well they make sense. The logic is represented, the figures and dates and theories relocated into a kind of baseball game where the score will be figured, and the play will go off without a hitch. By the ninth inning, we have settled something for future games to redefine.

Long hours are spent in the library pouring over obscure books that recalculate the literature, reexamine controversial notions and the values of certain cultures, politics, and humans who have adopted their ethics from experience.

And so I see all of this as a means of getting to Flipper, to bridge a gap where art and trash and everything in between exists and takes on value only through its relation to what has come before. If we begin with Robert Johnson, and end with the Sex Pistols, things have been left out, somewhere. Nothing is omnipresent; mistakes are made, people forgotten. So why or how did Flipper exist, a band so raunchy, so senseless, who could write a song called Life and sing a line like "Life is the only thing worth living for" and make it sound endearing. I find it endearing, and I am lead on a long trail of an identity crisis.

Do I really want to be outside the norm? Did I choose to be outside the norm? Was it just a way to distinguish myself, because I wasn't special enough in the scheme of thing? Everyone enjoys the Beatles, everyone understands the Beatle, because there's not that much to understand. "All you need is love" and LSD and a certain innocence that quickly dissolves into something much darker, and that is Flipper. From the Beatles to Flipper and beyond. There I said it and now all my pretensions and long-winded attempts to be meaningful are stripped and made bear. (From LSD to Acid to Heroin)

I enjoy Joy Division, along with the Smiths and Gang of Four and every other post-punk outfit that you might hear on a cell-phone/ car commerical or some Apple product. But I'm pretty certain I will never hear a Flipper song either A) on any normal format radio-college station (God bless WFMU), or B) on a commercial for some product that knows the scene.

Not that those points are a litmus test. Just because a commercial quotes a song doesn't make the song irrelevant. But it does tamper with the associations that song holds. Commercials are never simply playing a song for the enjoyment of the consumer; there's a reason, a logic to the message, and the song gets wrapped into that logic as long as I can remember the two were one (which, speaking for the power of advertisements, is pretty long.) Consider that much of classic rock has been spoiled by its use in car commercials: what revolutionary quality, rebellious attitude a song by the Who or Iggy Pop might have once had, it's now swallowed by the ironic factor of the ad executive persuading us that product so and so is revolutionary, being associated with a the "punk" expression. In actuality, our very consumption of that message realigns both the product, ourselves, and the "punk" culture with a ritual of consumer identity. I have an Ipod, you have an Ipod, we all are one happy collection of Ipod listening civilians.

Hyper-instant gratification takes the aim of associating itself with the underground, because the underground is the very definition of righteousness. No longer is mainstream culture the standard-bearer; the references to obscurity are the new cult of power.

The act of rebellion, or perhaps the art of rebellion, is not in denying or challenging the rituals of consumption. A complete lack of self-consciousness, the ability to return to a child-like state in which identity still lives with constant curiosity, and there are no assumptions or beliefs that are never expressed, that seems the closest we might come to escaping the fashion. The fashion is more than clothes; it's an ideology of the look, of beginning at the surface and letting the surface give root to everything else. It's living in a belief in presentation and seeing only that as substance, and never questioning that because questions are a waste of time.

Too much is lost in the present, where a million facts exist, and yet are indecipherable. These are like adjectives coating a relay of actions: their bearing can only at times get in the way. We select, choose information that is relevant, so we are not lost in the unending stream of details. In this choice, our identity is formalized; from what we choose to say, not say, and all of the gestures in between. The silences can express more of a person than the actual utterances.

And then we try to make sense of the surface, and there is no sense at all to any of it, only the enjoyment or displeasure of the surface. There's pain, comfort, and a million variations and extremes that color them in between. Can there ever be closure, or is everything superficial and disappointing? What do we stand for, if we stand for nothing but the surface, of words that tumble and fall and the roots are missing and decayed? Is this tree dying a slow creaking death, shaking in the wind at night, forever threatening to fall?

Who would want to be such an asshole?

I know I'm not alone in the fact that Charles Bukowski is one of the few writers I consider a hero: it's probably the fact that I'm male, white, and go through long bouts of self-doubt, hatred of other people, and I'm pretty unromantic about everything. Two well-done films have actually come out of Bukowski work, which follows his fictional doppleganger named Henry Chinaski.

Barfly (1987)


Bukowski penned the screenplay of this cult classic, in which Mickey Rourke perfectly channels the Bukowski persona: a dark, brooding, shallow drunk who's completely void of the self-conscious, civilized manner that makes people "nice." The thing I love about this film is that it perfectly captures the details of drinking to no end. My favorite scene is when Chinaski grabs the sandwich from some overweight guy in a suit, for the reason that he needs the nutrients to win a fight against some butch bartender.

Barfly by night, classical music-listening writer by day - this is Rourke's finest moment. Another reason to check out the film is for a sighting of the fine actor and David Lynch favorite Jack Nance.

Now onto my next favorite,
Factotum (2005)


This one I actually got to see in the theaters, and enjoyed greatly. I remember my girlfriend saying that it was too bleak, but I didn't really agree. Yes, Bukowski is a dark road, but at the same time, there's no pretensions or face-fronting: he's showing how the other half-lives.

Matt Dillion is great, and actually looks more like Bukowski than I would have expected. He's got good looks, but at the same time his sexuality is a throw back to the beat generation. Overall, I prefer Barfly to this for a number of reasons. Barfly was a conglomeration of the Chinaski charachter from all the books; Factotum is an actual adaptation of a single Bukowski books. It's faithful, but the style that director Bent Hamer uses reflects a Jim Jarmusch aesthetic: let the camera roll, no flashy stuff. This seems like a perfect match, but it's too dry and lacks the quirky humor. Parts of the novel are toned down, like when Chinaski supposedly kills a man at the horse races; the book being told in first person by Chinaski, we see more of his guilt. Here, Dillion plays it cool.

The best scene from the film is when Chinaski wakes up and vomits, then decides it's time to move on. A great long take; someone else apparently agrees and has it up at youtube:



When ever I feel like shit, or an underachiever, or like the world doesn't give a damn whether I live or die, or like I'm a lazy no good unprofessional bum, I pick up some Bukowski and at least find the comfort that someone else took the breaks and the blues just as hard.

For those wanting to hear the man recite his poetry, check out this cd:


Bukowksi Reads His Poetry to an audience on September 14, 1972 in San Francisco. AllMusic.com doesn't rate this one highly, but during the summer I spent many a night on the back lawn drinking a beer listening to Bukowski rant and get heckled by a fiesty crowd. Get it here.

So this ad was asking me, "Want to fly to CANNES with Spike Lee?"  And I was like, do I have to sit with him?  I mean, I'm sure he's a nice guy, but that's a really long flight to take with Spike Lee. What are we going to talk about?  I mean, does he really want to hear about how my sister's doing, or about my worries of finding a job in the future, not to mention my concern about that mole on my back?

No, all we're going to talk about is all of the amazing movies he's made, and how amazing that scene is from such and such a movie, and what's it like to work with Denzel?  He's a normal guy? Really!!?

 

So, you see, shouldn't the real question be: 

Mad blunts? Hmmm.... Yes, that I might do - at least then I might be able to connect that mole on my back to some question of gender and race identity in a supposedly post-race America.

Peace.

Boredom is a self-inflicted disease

For anyone that has every made something that, at the time, seemed clever, witty, original, whatever; for anyone that has created only to realize the next day, or week, or month, that what they made was actually pretty stupid, embarasing, waste of time: it is for they that I present this document:

My first foray into the You Tube world of silly shorts resulted in this lackluster snooze fest.  So what have I learned?  Well, that being funny probably requires a little more thought before jumping into creation.  Also, that my room is a real shit pigpen.

Do I see any value?  I would like to do more work that makes fun of myself.  It seems to have an edifying effect: I now take showers more often (joke or reality?  You decide.)

Dylan on my Mind

So I play guitar. I don't write music, I play a wooden microphone with six strings, and I play it like I hate the goddamn thing. My real motivation for playing guitar: I hate punching things. Punching walls, punching pillows, punching bags. Stupid, stupid, stupid, nothing good comes out of it. But pick up a guitar, and all of a sudden, boom, the arm goes wild, the sounds are violent, the banging, the mess. Disgusting sounds, sounds unearthly.

Truth is, I just recently stopped caring what other people think of my work. Certainly, I am willing to admit that an idea I originally thought had value, is really complete garbage. So, with music, I might write lyrics - except, I never write lyrics. I hate lyrics, actually to be honest. Clarification: I hate reading lyrics. It's like when people perform poetry as though each line is suppose to be read like a period. The thing needs to flow, but without those chord, it's shit.

Here's a way to get to the core of something - create epic battles between two artists who represents two sides of the same side of a line.

Bob Dylan Vs. Leonard Cohen

Cohen wins for me. That probably identifies me with the hipster crowd. But I actually like Phil Ochs more than either, for personal reasons. Back to Cohen vs. Dylan: Both are indulgent, ego-centric, wild drug addicts and junkies for words. Why do I return to Cohen with more interest than Dylan?

The simple answer would be that Cohen is more obscure, but that's a cop-out really. I think Cohen never gained the kind of popularity of Dylan because the latter could really write a meaningless pop song that seemed to mean something. Take Rolling Stone, a song that makes me jump out of my skin, like I just want to start banging shit together and run in circles. It's got the best rock structure, because you're waiting for that moment when the things going to explode. And BANG! BANG! BANG! - boom there it is, the organism hits and we're floating for a little bit.

But the lyrics I could take or leave. Sure, there's craft, but I think it's all rhythm, Dylan's delivery. Cohen's different. He's a black-and-white film, but his words carry more. I have mediated on the song Suzanne for hours, thinking about oranges from China and the mind-body divide. What's it about - a ghost, a spirit, an intangible notion of love that's all peace, all tenderness, like those moments in a Fassbinder film where the characters are genuinely happy.

But happiness is not always fun, and Cohen is not nearly as much fun as Dylan. Dylan's a folk comedian who really can't stand being taken seriously, beyond a performer. I think that Cohen knows that those lines, a performer versus an artist or politician, someone that should really be listened to and celebrated, are all really just imaginary. Watch the press conference with Dylan: it's a joke on the society that wants to take meaning from his silly songs that are just vocal images for emotional effect. Songwriters are all about emotion - the highs, the lows, the in-between that really has no name, and so on.

But Cohen has a different quality. His images are cropped. Except maybe Dress Rehearsal Rag, which I love, but you could fault it for Cohen letting his morbid side get the best of him.

"Just relax man, take a chill pill. It's not that serious." Or maybe it really is that serious.

Too quote a Replacement song that I love:

I think big once in a while. - Thinking big to me is a Cohen song, while Dylan is more of the man himself - the character of Bob Dylan, mystery apostle, saint, idol, a man beyond a single man, a transcendent figure that pushes the boundaries of a single body. There is the flesh of Dylan, and that spirit of Dylan, and the two are not the same thing.

May 6th, 2008 - Todd Haynes fittingly all-over-the-map bio pic of Dylan drops on DVD. This post did have a purpose after all.

The Pee-wee Herman Show

When I was a kid, I did the Pee-wee Herman dance. I bent my legs, spread them apart at strange angles, and put my hands stiffly towards my back. And then did this in and out. It's hard to describe:

'

Perhaps the greatest musical episode in film? I don't know. It probably means more to me than most, just because Pee-wee was an obsessive part of my early childhood (I still have my Pee-wee's Playhouse sheets, and they are pretty rad: kid friendly abstract expressionism.)

So every kid who grew up in the late eighties, early ninties is familiar with Pee Wee, probably through either the Saturday morning show Pee Wee's Playhouse, and maybe also from the cult classic film, Pee Wee Herman's Big Adventure. But the Pee Wee character has a long history before that, and something more attuned to performance art than simply silly comedy.

Not going to go into this history now, but I am going to provide some context. There are two seminal points for the Pee Wee character that are available to wide audiences: the Roxy Theatre performance that was taped for HBO in the early eighties, and then the series of appearances he did on David Letterman The Late Night Show, which in my opinion was the avant-garde of late night shows in the eighties. Letterman had guests like Harvey Pekar, Andy Kaufman, and Crispin Glover - mostly to make fun of them, but they really owe him for their popular success. It's a strange contradiction probably, with a late night show poking fun at his eccentric guests to get laughs, but still, I sense that Letterman understood what they were up to and appreciated it, but at the same time he had to play the straight, ego-centric man.

Which brings me back to this whole notion of performance - the seventies really pushed the boundaries of stand-up to a level outside the realm of punch lines and straight jokes. Source it to Lenny Bruce, but Kaufman and Paul Reubens were radical in the sense that the joke never ended. The realm between the real and the joke, the imaginary-playful thing and the reality where people's feelings get hurt, were completely disregarded. Kaufman could be the sweetest, or he could a real asshole, wrestling women.

But Pee Wee, when it began, was similar. Check out this clip:



Very very naughty boy, that Pee Wee. But the whole thing is that, at the end of the show, they follow that woman out into the streets. Pee Wee wanted people to think that she was actually hypnotized: he was in a sense taking on the role of the magician. And there really is some supernatural performance about this Pee Wee creation being live, that you would go to a comedy club and see something as ingenious as this in a real, living setting.

Anyone wanting to rent it or buy this Pee Wee classic, look up:
The Pee-Wee Herman Show - Live at the Roxy Theater (1982)
or click on it to buy it at amazon.

The Films of Chris Farley: Or How I am Inarticulate

A poem for Chris Farley

Remember that film
you did
about the ninja.

That was awesome.

Remember that scene
with Gary Busey
He's an assassin.
Or something.

That was awesome too.

End of poem


If you read old reviews of Chris Farley's film in the NY Times, it's apparent that he was not valued for his comic gift. Stupid, stupid, stupid is pretty much the idea behind their reviews, which I can completely understand. The most immediate response to a Chris Farley movie would have to be, "It's pretty dumb." But at the same time, Farley is dead, and like Andy Kaufman (the cult/terrible Heartbeeps being the only real example of his film work), seeing him in his movies is to revisit a human being. I'm writing this with the idea that I watch a Farley flick like some people watch experimental theater. I'm less interested in the plot mechanics or subtle characterization or notions of pacing. I watch a Farley film to see Farley move, to see him fall, to see his spastic frame lumber and explode, and for his dead-pan delivery. And I would never want to see any of this in the ciniplex, because Farley is really a tv actor. His over-the-top antics works well on the small screen, because he dominates the space.

A few months ago I revisited some documents that I almost wished were destroyed. They are recordings of musical plays I did in junior high; the real angle is that I did these musicals at my church. They are youth group church plays, terribly written, and some of the most horrid music you will every hear. The only good part is the dancing, which has us doing a kind of vamped-up square dance with random hand gestures. Anyway, in one of these plays, I had a part as a chunky loser who eats too much but loves god. And I totally mimicked Farley, exploding at random like I lived in a van down by the river. And I realized that Farley was an iconic means of communication for me. I wanted to convey to the audience, in my limited acting vocab, that this is who the part really should be played by. So, in a sense, Farley wasn't merely a comic; he was a medium of expression. A way to connect.

There's something else though. There are emotions, generic things like laughter, and sadness, and so on. But then there's these ideas I can't say, and something in Farley, besides, "Oh year, hilarious." It's like some form of stupidity that is so good, and better than a lot of the intellectual pretensions and hypocrisies and pure cynicism that we have to face.

Farley never really made a good film, but I argue like Pauline Kael: this is trash not meant to be art, and sometimes that the greatest relief of all.

Peter Grimes Lives in My Basement

So I spent my spring break mildly depressed and sleep depraved. But beyond these silly suicidal theatrics, I managed to score free tickets to a live high definition broadcast of a Met Opera. I'm a loser of the squared degree, but I was well tuned for the occasion, and blown away by an opera that my tiny mind can only partially compute.

Walking out of Peter Grimes, I was struck at how desperate and bleak a thing I'd just seen. The darkness of the opera had swallowed me, and the brightness of the food court was like coming to the surface too quickly. All of the noise and people were too much; I wanted to scream, and for Benjamin Britten's piercing score to pour out my mouth, shaking the souls of the people eating their fast food. But alas, the only way out is down: for me, the escalators, but for Grimes, a death that plunged him into the deep giant abyss that surrounds our lives. And there is no hope, only the fatal delusion that we can change it.

Maybe I'm being a bit too grim for my own good, because the fatalism of Grime's libretto is offset by a score that is as alive as the sea, rising, breaking, and shattering the nerves like the worse case of sea-sickness. It almost acts as a substitute for that very object that can't ever be recreated, only represented through metaphors, but none so mystically as the music that Britten has given us. The way the chorals collide, climaxing at frantic nail-bitting peaks, and somewhere in between the thing becomes so stark that the shades of light that make it through the blinds are a welcomed relief. And Britten has given those moments, those visions and dreams of love, prosperity. No matter that Grimes is lost from the start, because we ourselves are lost in that great bottomless mystery, struggling to surface the truths that might save or destroy us.


The work of Dickens and Poe, Melville's Moby Dick, and Crane's the Open Boat all are evoked by the nihilism of Grimes, but I am never one to mistake darkness with absurdity. Somewhere at the root of Grimes is a mirror reflecting the heart of madness, the dark soul, a product of a society that has lost it's community. Perhaps Britten's Grimes is most frightening because it reflects our sex-obsessed, hypocritical age. Torn by ideals lost, ravaged by hatred, we live on the threads of a better future, but are meanwhile so reckless in our actions that all may be lost. When there is no longer a core, a vision for the future, society may drift recklessly till it's upended by the tides of a perilous age.


As for the broadcast itself, I think it's peculiar that this is perhaps the most exciting thing going on in theaters today. While the audience was mostly the elderly, there was a vibrancy in the theater that cannot be mistaken for some slick Hollywood machine. There was actually discussion going on during the fifteen minute intermissions, people trying to formulate and articulate their feelings for this archaic art form. And to be as close to the flutist, and to see the sweat drip off of the maestro's face, these are visions that echo the dramatic qualities of the music itself.

I Just Vommited This Chaos Thought - This Morning

First Real Post Ever - and it's 2008 - I originally planned to do a post about the soundtrack of Juno and revelations I had while in the shower. I was singer the Carter Family's "Single Girl", and I felt like that would have been a perfect fit for the soundtrack. I wasn't going to scold the film's makers for not putting it in, rather I saw some continuity between the anti-folk songs of the Moldy Peaches and this early roots music that wasn't really traditional at all - the Carter Family really created the traditional song by writing it down, thus in a sense, destroying it (I have this preposition that when something is written down, it allows for misunderstandings, interpretation, adaptation to different mediums). But like Juno - a film about experience that is not realistic (if I had a camera it would not be realistic, unless the camera can potetially record things in a "realer" fashion than actual humans can - this is stupid stoner philsophy, like "Can reality exist without human" tree-sound-forest.")

I feel this thought has run the mill - because I am like an ADD child on crack. Anyway, I wrote something a bit less frantic, but hardly anymore articulate, and am posting these raw musings. Forgive us lord, your children, for failing to live up your standards of all knowing Harvard, braining expulging out of our skulls.Who doesn't want to feel intimacy with these things?

Misspelings, fact errors don't apply in the following universe:

What separates an entertainer from a prositute? Dylan represented so many things, but he was never actually in your life, just a voice on a speaker and prophet spouting the

Juno

Call me a sucker for three chords. I fell for the Ramones when I was 15, and always felt an intimacy to the folkier side of Bob Dylan (not that I would have ever cried Judas at Albert Hall – but rambling Dylan to me is the beginning of decadent Dylan, and that might be the pinpoint death of organic culture.) Three chords is easy: you pick up the guitar, struggle to force your fingers into some unnatural position, and then over and over you will strum the same three damn chords till your mother is weeping. For punk, and post-punk, and all things that were born out of a similar feeling (some more intense than others) that simplicity was the thing to be explored. And Funk, to me anyway, is really taking the spirit of jazz and giving it a few drinks, till it's loose and willing to talk, and horny.
No one faults a conjunction for being too simple, but it works. I met people who were into the whole K-records craze and that pretty much sealed the deal for me. I realized mid-high school that the three-chord aesthetic is much more than just a derogative phrase that symbolizes simplicity. It can, and I believe does, connect the political struggles of the folk era to a general zeitgeist that no longer had to face the struggles civil rights or free-speech. Now, in the streets of suburbia, where there is no oppression or worry, where people come and take your garbage and bring it to a place where it is out of sight, out of mind, what worries can we have but boredom. What can we all do with ourselves, those of us who can't live in the city, can't be the best or do the best, what are we suppose to do with ourselves but fall into the collective and wait for the critics on high to tell us what is right. Art is subjective, but that's stupids. Everything is subjective, no one ever agrees on anything (You are invidividuals, you are all special. I'm not.)
The elitist really are no different than the religious fanatics. There facts are born out of the nature of things: instruments and such. But that is mostly about limits, defining facts that are really self-imposed. If you watch an old movies, the illusion is that everyone in the '40s slept in separate beds and life was in black and white. These are natural facts of those movies, but they're hardly accurate representations of what life was really like back then. In truth, people were just as perverted, egotistical, and perhaps stupid as we percieve ourselves to be today (or rather as the cultural warriors percieve us, whoever the hell we are.) Something as elemental as death can have a million different modes in which we attempt to transcribe grief. There's nothing simple about any of these rituals. Yet they seem natural, because we are desensitized to seing it any other way. Now, take this chain of thought and follow me to classical music (Western classical music) where we have a history, a list of names, events, a canon of scores that represent,
I think after the hippies' stoned utopian ideals fizzled out, the American masses were left bored. Dylan was all extravagance, and the mystery was no longer relevant. Drug experimentation led to addiction, or worse, to a repressed society that found solance in the materialistic reawakening that was Reaganism. This new dawn was the birth of cable television, of video games and a fantasmagorium of pop culture that was more than an illusion; it was a conglomerate universe born out of Spielberg and Lucas that reinvented itself, referenced itself, and ultimately turned itself real with amusement parks (obviously the reality is less fulfilling, but still, our hopes for the future are born out of these products – who would like to go warp speed, travel the universe, escapism drug allusion here.