Narratives of Wonderful Awfulness (Profane Album Version)

So, it turns out the g-friend's very good friend's boyfriend is a guy I know from a long time ago...someone I haven't seen in probably six years. He lost forty pounds of fat and gained fifteen of muscle in the interim, while I've bloated back up to over the 100 kilo mark (the shame!).

He said he thought he had saw me once about a year ago, walking across a parking structure in Koreatown to the Hollywood Video on Western. I said yeah, that was probably me, and then I told him the story of my near-fistfight in that particular store:

Here is the amazing narrative in case you forgot

J in turn recounted his own narrative from the exact same Hollywood Video on Western: a large raving black man in front of him was insulting the Chinese couple at the front of the line. "Fucken Chink blah blah go back home you fucken slanty-eyed blah blah." Then he honed in on the woman: "Your fucken Chink wife is an ugly ass whore blah blah." Apparently this went on for quite some time until the line clicked forward and the Chinese couple was able to leave.

The Chinese man elected not to engage, obviously, and they went home without incident (other than humiliation, of course). But for my friend, this event changed his life. "I don't want to be that guy who just stands there and takes it while some asshole berates his girlfriend. I'd want to kick his ass or at least hurt him in the process." J's girlfriend is Chinese American....so from that day on he started working out and now he's in incredible shape.

You might disagree with his reasoning, as to whether violence in that situation is appropriate or not...I actually think it is...the older I get the more I think physical violence is acceptable in certain circumstances. Call me a savage. But hey, sometimes you have to engage, like it or not, and when that happens you better be ready. (I encourage people to post their age-of-majority-and-older fighting tales here...)

But he's in great shape now thanks to this altercation.

If find that many good things in my life have come as a result of tremendous awfulness. I never would have lived in Asia and traveled had my life in Washington State not been a total piece of shit. I never would have become such a Productive Machine had I not wasted my years in college and not "felt behind." I never would have developed such dogged discipline if I had been actually able to succeed without really trying in high school and college.

"You should find that raving black guy," I said, "and thank him for changing your life."

"Yeah, I should, shouldn't I?"

Moral: Don't go to Hollywood Video.

Fife Milton Junior Soccer Club

First of all, the Americans got crushed again today and went home with their tails between their legs. People can blame the loss on questionable officiating, but Ghana simply outplayed them, just like every other team in this World Cup. The Americans were pathetic, really, and scored only one goal in three games (the goal against Italy was put in by one of the Italians). I don't even know why I care; nobody else does. Besides, it's cooler that Ghana advanced (the only African team to do so); they are clearly excited to be there and are calling half-day holidays so they definitely deserve it.

So, the question is: at what point does soccer become uncool? I played youth soccer up into high school and it always seemed fairly popular. There were four teams in our area for our relative age groups: Jaws (Raq's team--these days it would be spelled "Jawz" no doubt), Sounders II (a "sequel" to the Seattle NASL franchise), Sounders III (a sequel of a sequel, my team), and the lowly Falcons. All kids realize that kicking a ball up and down a field and running around is tremendous fun. And there was--and is--a great turnout for youth soccer, before kids realize that it's uncool, I guess.

But I'm not sure when and where this happens. Once you enter high school being a soccer player is about as cool as tennis...or cross country...or any of the other non-gladiator sports. There's football, and then, to a lesser extent, there is basketball, and then there is everything else. At least that's the way it was in our school.

Club soccer was in the fall but JV soccer was in the spring, so when I was a freshman I decided to forgo baseball for the soccer team. Even though I had played as a defenseman for the previous five years or so, the coach put me up as a striker in our defensive 4-4-2 formation. I was totally ineffectual. Where my height was an advantage on defense it made it more difficult to handle the ball in tight quarters or in attacking mode. I wasn't fast enough to outrun defenses and we were so bad that our midfield just hung back and packed it in on D, so there was never an attacking midfield...it was just me and the other striker waiting for a long ball that we'd eventually bungle and lose.

But for some weird reason I never told the coach that I had played 8 years of club soccer, first in the midfield, then in the defensive third. I was outspoken and a little bit of an asshole; so it seems really bizarre that I wouldn't have relayed this crucial bit of information to the coach. I didn't score a single goal the whole season and I started to hate soccer.

It's interesting how these little events can dramatically alter the course of one's sporting life. Get cut as a 7th grader and you might not ever play again. You're off-track and the team becomes a little gang and it's harder than ever for you to get back on track...even though it's only 8th grade. They know the offenses, you don't...etc..they know each other...So the JV coach probably just thought I sucked, and that was that. As a sophomore the better players moved up and played varsity. I stunk it up on JV for another season and then I quit. Soccer was suddenly unfun.

And that was that.

Moral: Speak up or have your talents squandered on JV for two years.

Now I'm getting itchy to kick the ball around again. I have a friend who plays in a rec league and I'm thinking about going out and recapturing my youth, experiencing those glory days anew, and pullin hammies in the process.

Will Middlebrow Ever Blog Again?

A. I'd like to think so
B. Not if he can help it
C. Them're purdy long odds, I reckon, given the evidence
D. If he responds to guilt, which he has in the past
E. Yes, but only fortmonthly
F. What's blogging?
G. All of the above
H. None of the above
I. Some of the above

World Cup and the Decline of Productivity

The 2006 FIFA World Cup is upon us and I am getting nothing done. These are Idle Times for the film business in LA (but not in NY for some reason), and I was hoping to use these weeks to catch up on life in general, but I shelled out for cable TV for the first time in my entire life and now I'm up at 6AM every day to watch the games. This is better than the 11:30 pm/4:30 am slots from the 2002 World Cup in Korea and Japan...but it's still wreaking havoc on the system. I am in a bizarre 2-Naps-per-day mode to accomodate the early start times...

The Americans look terrible, the Japanese look terrible, the English look terrible, even the Brazilians look mediocre. So far only Argentina looks good. Four out of the five African countries lost already (Ivory Coast, Angola, Togo, and Ghana). Tunisia plays tomorrow against Saudi Arabia, I think. So I'm putting all of my hopes in with the Mexicans...and my plan is to go back into my neighborhood and watch the game in a local bar surrounded by passionate Latinos who actually care about the sport.

Here's a story in The Economist about why the World Cup is far superior to the Olympics.

Reading Aloud Before Humans

On the 25th I'm going to be reading some short fiction (my own) in front of a paying audience of strangers. Urp. This is my first time to do this. It's part of a larger monthly "semi-literary salon" that will feature of 20-minute clip of my movie and live music from The Santiago Steps (the guys who did many songs in the film).

Even though the fiction read was my idea I am terrified of this and thought I might entreat the SLC contingent for a lil advice.

BTW, I will go SHORT AND FUNNY with my selection.

Thanks for listening...

Egoyan's Exotica & the Ephemerality of Taste -or- In a World of Temptation, Obsession is the Deadliest Desire

"Forbidden desires and dangerous intrigue generate sizzling heat in this erotic thriller! At a sexy strip club called Exotica, three strangers -- an obsessive man, an erotic table dancer, and the club's mysterious D.J. -- share much more than is apparent at first glance! As their secret passions grow, they become more deeply entangled in an inescapable web of jealousy, deceit, and revenge! The powerfully seductive hit EXOTICA is gripping entertainment -- you won't be able to take your eyes off it!"

For the last ten years I've enjoyed pointing out this movie and saying, "No, it's good. Really. No, really. It's magnificent, in fact. It's in my top three of all time. Yes, I'm being serious. Trust me. No, really. No, I'm not on drugs."

It was December of 1994 and I had just moved to Seattle and was unemployed and living in the U-District and going to the movies about once a day. I probably would never have seen this film had I not exhausted most of the other choices. I knew nothing about the film - I hadn't even seen a poster - I just noticed that it was playing at the Metro and decided to go. So I went and was totally blown away by it. It was one of those truly transformative filmgoing experiences, which, at the time, I thought were no longer possible (already well on my way to becoming permanently cynical). It was an art film, definitely, but it was far more accessible than his pretentious and impenetrable earlier work (Speaking Parts, Family Viewing, The Adjuster). Later Egoyan would make "The Sweet Hereafter" and then disappear back into obscurity, but after spending 90 minutes with Exotica Egoyan was suddenly my favorite director.

Perhaps it was his cool, detatched Canadian sensibilites, or his tightly wound plotting, or his hyperreal dialogue. I don't know. I was 24 and fully in control of my faculties, so I have no excuse.

The revelation? Exotica is, in fact, quite terrible.

I just sat down and watched it for the first time in about five years. I had to fight myself not to shut it off. It's that bad. Actually, there are still some good things going on here, but the bad things are beyond atrocious. I watched the whole thing with my mouth hanging open. How could I have been so wrong? Am I smarter or stupider or just different? Just what is going on? Are there other examples of this in my life..where I have felt so strongly about a thing only to reverse field a couple of years later? I could see people doing this on political issues, but on a film? Well, obviously the film has stayed the same so I've gone through some pretty severe changes without realizing it.

Exotica in the 90s v. Now

90s: Arty
Now: Pretentious

90s: Complex Interwoven Plot
Now: Contrived and Unbelievable Connexions Between Characters

90s: Flat and Hyperreal Mamet/Hartley Dialogue Delivery
Now: Bad and Uninvolving Performance

90s: Creative Framing
Now: Bad Cinematography

90s: Cool Flashbacks and Flashforwards!
Now: Clunk, Clunk, Clunk...

90s: Interesting, Writerly Speeches
Now: Do People Talk LIke This In Canada?

90s: Intellectual
Now: Oh, please...

90s: The Director is the Author of the Film
Now: The Director Should Stay the Fuck out of the Way B/C He's All Over Every Frame of This Thing and That's All I Can Think About While Watching It.

Monkey Ownership

Yesterday we finished up a 2-day Outkast video. Outkast consists of two men from Atlanta, Big Boi and Andre 3000. Andre is clearly the more talented of the two, the hitmaker who penned "Hey Ya" and "Roses." These days they record everything separately (and tour separately too, I think) and their albums are double albums (one of Big Boi's songs and one of Andre 3000's). Unfortunately, our video was a Big Boi video and although it had some good things going for it it was lame in the end. Here is a picture of a TV person (a little person told to dance around with a TV over his head):



What I really want to talk about, though, is the actress with the monkey in the lunch line. The woman with the Paris Hilton nose and demeanor who held a collared pet monkey in her arms like a baby. "That totally offends me," I said to my assistant, "That thing is a wild animal and I hope it goes Monkey Shines on her." My assistant dragged me off to one side and told me that he had hooked up with this woman in Las Vegas and that she had taken a year off of work to domesticate the baby monkey, which is what they tell you to do when you're raising a monkey as a pet. Apparently, she was part of a reality show called "paradise Hotel", which had a lowbrow hook-up-or-get-kicked-off hook. "I don't care. That thing is a wild animal and I hope it fangs her ass."

This isn't the first time I've seen a young woman carrying around a monkey, Paris Hilton style. I thought toy dogs were bad enough, but now it seems like it's a fashionable race to own the exotic. Fur coats are gauche but jungle animals are okay, i guess. Grr.

The Chipsters

Last Saturday night I went into the Coffee Bean on Sunset and Fairfax and noticed a group of blue-suited Russian men smoking by a table where their friend was playing a young blonde woman in chess. The blonde wasn't wearing any makeup and her hair was pulled back kind of severely but she was pretty and she had that look, that SoCal look (or SoCal Russian look). Quite a few people were staring at them, because people have nothing to do but stare when they sit in the Coffee Bean, or because it is unusual to a young woman locked in pitched chess battle with some old Russian businessman dude. Two young guys in their twenties wandered over and watched from close range, too close. One was a white boy with shoulder length boy band hair and distressed fashion jeans with button-up shirt and a designer leather jacket. The other was an afroed light-skinned black man with a DJ aesthetic. They stood over the game and watched, smiling, as the young woman eventually lost. She shook the hand of the businessman and his Russian friends and took off.

Then the white boy sat down. A timer appeared and they played speed chess. Ah, I thought, so the Backstreet Boy considers himself a chess prodigy. He lost, eventually, but he played well and fought hard. Then the African American dude sat down. I think he beat thte businessman. Then I left.

Sunday they were there also. The young woman came up to their table wearing high heels and white hot pants, fully made up. Her hair was in one long rope, Lara Croft style. The short shorts were so short that pretty much everyone outside on the patio was staring, which is saying a lot for LA. "Ah ha," I thought, "You make your assumptions cuz this woman here will smoke alla yo asses in speed chess!" It was so weird to see her and her young friends dressed like this. It was like they were a family of genius aliens and they were dressing up like Sunset Strip-going humans in order to fit in. This was the intelligence they had received from reconnaissance. This is what humans wore at the coffee shop. This is normal.

So weird. But cool. I love these kids, who have chess battles with old russian dudes before they hit the club and get trashed...Which is it? They are good at chess. But then they are hipsters too.

The are Chipsters.

Worldfest Debriefing

Talking to Dr. Write the other day made me realize that I never did post on this subject. And for that I apologize, although my rant-avoidance reasoning was honorable, I think. Who wants to listen to a Sleepy E rant when they can be doing mental prep for World Cup?

This is the deal: Worldfest is the vanity publisher of film festivals. Worldfest is a mid-level competitive festival that has more categories than should be allowed by law (I think Best Medical Commercial was one). And each category has five or six or seven awards in it (grand prize, jury prize, platinum, gold, silver, bronze, etc). So there are a ton of awards going out, so many that they really lose all meaning. So they invite the hundreds of award winners out to Houston, and they try to program premieres because they know everyone brings associates and friends and family to their premiere. Then they charge $100/head to go to the awards banquet and they pack in as many people as they can and get stingy with the wine. Add to that a submission fee that is basically double what most festivals charge and it starts to look like a little business.

Not that film festivals need to be non-profit in the economical sense (although it's interesting that 90% of foreign festivals are free to enter whereas 95% of domestic festivals charge a fee ($40-$100). But all of the Worldfest revenue stream seems to be internal, via the filmmakers themselves (and their posse). No Houston locals were even aware that there was a festival going on. There was no advertising or coverage in the print media or on television or radio even, it seemed. So there were no walk-in ticket sales, really. Just filmmakers and friends watching each others films. Weird.

And slightly disturbing. I was in a foul mood most of the festival when I learned what was going on. But only because certain expectations (cool art house theaters, newly discovered international cinema, alternative shorts, a spirit of indyness and congratulation) weren't met. Instead it's a transaction, which is: I pay them my money and they give me an award that I can put on my poster. There's even downloadable laurel leaves and trophies on their website, which makes total sense. They are a wholesaler of awards. A clearing house. If your film needs an award, go to Worldfest, because in this particular case Worldfest's obscurity works for it (nobody knows about Worldfest, but they also don't know that it's BS either!).

Did I forget to mention the cash bar at the $100/head dinner?

Now that I know what it is I'm fine with it. Nobody would ever premiere at Worldfest unless they hadn't got rejected everywhere else. That's why they don't program hits from other festivals! Because no one would bring their posse to Houston if they had a legitimate festival run going on!

Sorry if that sounds negative. The cool thing was that the premiere went really well and we had a big local turnout and a lot of old-time players got together and there was kind of a reunion of sorts among them. It was great to premiere in Houston for this reason. Mark the recluse came from Boulder and one player came from San Francisco and the folks from Gig Harbor and my friend and composer came from Seattle. So it was cool to hang with everyone in Houston, but, I'm sorry, the film festival is a joke.

The problem is that Way of the Puck isn't getting programmed anywhere. At all. It's kind of embarrassing, really. I continue to send out, but it continues to get rejected.

Here are some guesses why:

1. It's not an "issue movie." It's not "socially conscious", whatever that means.
2. I'm not down with the Festival Mafia and the Gatekeeping Cabal.
3. I consistently turn in my stuff right at the deadline instead of before.
4. It sucks.
5. The beginning doesn't grab people.
6. Air hockey is trivial.
7. It's impossible to overturn people's expectations about the triviality of air hockey in the first five minutes of the movie.
8. Sharpie on a DVD face.
9. Everyone is on drugs.
10. No movie stars.

At the end of the day Worldfest is actually cool because at least I was able to have a premiere at all! Actually, this works against me now too...b/c I want to make changes but I've already premiered and I have a shelf life and the date stamp on my box is fast approaching and soon I will wilt and smell bad and have to go in the disposal.

Ah well. New projects beckon. Onward!