Yes, Please, I'll Have Some Schadenfreude With That

Came across this scathing review of James Frey's new book in the Los Angeles Times. It made me very happy for some reason. Dr. Write made me feel okay about feeling protective about outside writers coming into one's territory and writing a bunch of hooey, which is what Frey has done about Los Angeles.

Click [HERE]



This review really put me in a good mood. Then again, since when do I consider myself an Angeleno? Why should I care if Frey gets it all wrong?



He looks so sad, doesn't he? Defenseless....

Wordling

Have been kicking around the idea of resuming the pointless novel (mine) again. I made a Wordle of the first 18 chapters. I'm not sure what it means but it looks kind of cool:

The Death of the Independent Bookstore

Acres of Books, the largest second-hand bookstore in California, is closing its doors. These seems to be the fourth or fifth LA independent bookstore bankruptcy in the last couple of years, following Wilshire Books, Dutton's in Brentwood, and Book Baron in Anaheim. With a heavy heart, I drove down to Long Beach to say a private goodbye and to help pillage the discounted stacks.



The night before, I typed up a list of books I was interested in buying and priced them on Amazon and half.com. I created a list of twenty titles whose online (used) pricing seemed a little unreasonable, then took this list to Long Beach with the idea that maybe I'd be able to find better deals at the Acres funeral sale.



But it was not to be. Acres of Books is charming, in its own way, but one can't actually find anything there. It's a big musty maze, with the requisite ancient cat, Bach piped in from somewhere, and no computer system to help one locate what he is looking for. There is no cafe, no couches, no fancy greeting cards, no stationery, no magazine rack, nothing. Only books, mostly old, mostly yellowing. Exactly! you must be saying. That's the whole point! There is treasure in there, but you must hunt for it! But wait, is it all really just a bunch of 40-year-old mass market paperbacks?

And wait, what's this, are you telling me that 20% off is the best you can do for your Going Out of Business Sale? Do you really need to get rid of these books or is your greed getting in the way? I was thinking 50%, maybe 75%. But 20% off?

Sheesh.



Well, I felt the need to buy something, anything, but I wasn't doing well with the list. It was only 10:30 in the morning, 30 minutes after they had re-opened to sell off their stock, but I wasn't finding anything good. Had everything been picked clean already? I wound up paying $7.00 for a copy of the Intutionist which is available online for a penny (plus shipping, of course).



Then I bought a copy of Gibson's Pattern Recognition for the gf, and spent $7.00 doing this while there are numerous copies online available for less than a dollar.



Then I spent over an hour battling traffic to get home. The whole episode took about 3 hours, I didn't find anything that I wanted, I had to stand in a long, slow-moving line, the old woman making change on the old register overcharged me by three dollars and then it took five minutes to undo her mistake.

I am conflicted, and yet not. The closure of Acres of Books made me a little sad but I am over it. We must make way for Progress.

Next time I will shop online and enjoy a cool beverage while doing so. I have seen the future, Dear Readers, and it is

www.allbookstores.com.

Poetry, Purchased

I don't think I've ever purchased poetry, except for maybe a copy of Pale Fire (does that count?) and perhaps some Robert Creeley.

But this is a picture of something I picked up a few months back, at a monthly literary salon hosted by my friend Chris (who composed much of my music in my long-lost documentary):



Yes, that's right, a series of poems about Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke.



I struck the right tone, this, somehow: the 45 record sleeve aesthetic, the Dawn of the Dead references, the poems about interest rates, the poet himself.

I have become a purchaser of poetry.

And I never would have done so had I not been at a reading.

Coming tomorrow: More sad literary news!

Before & After: Terrible Metamorphoses

I had the misfortune of catching Star Wars: Episode 3 on the Spike channel the other night. It was 10pm and I was in a weakened state of mind. Goddamnit, I wish UFC mixed martial arts had been on instead. I feel so betrayed.

This is a picture of George Lucas before he raped our childhoods. And his own franchise(s).



This is picture of George Lucas on the set of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull:



This is another wonderful image from my childhood:



This is something a little more current:



This is a picture of Christina Ricci back when she was Wednesday:



I'm not so sure what this is:



Oh, woe is me.

New York Doll

This is a great doc if you haven't seen it already. It's about Arthur "Killer" Kane, the bassist for the seminal New York Dolls back in the early 70s. Thirty years later he's converted to Mormonism and he "works" in the library of the LDS temple here in LA. Morrissey invites him and the other estranged Dolls to reunite and play at a festival in England and the movie is about seeing whether this now-meek, mostly broken man will be able to pull it off.



It sounds pretty straightforward, but it's absolutely fascinating, largely because Kane is fascinating. The movie came from the same guys who eventually did "King of Kong" (Seth Gordon, Ed Cunningham, et al), but it has none of the snark and arched eyebrows of that movie. The film feels like a first film -- technically it's a little awful, on par with my movie, I think... the editing and sound and cinematography aren't that great -- but it just goes to show that Finding the Interesting Human is 99% of problem when you're making a doc. Casting is 90% of directing, and that goes for docs too, I guess.



A good watch, anyway.

http://www.newyorkdollmovie.com/

Back in the SLC

Good times were had. Spent many nights at the Bayou justifying MBs membership there. Played basketball. Got paid. Sold bread with the HSM kids. Hiked in the wilderness. Broke my fast with coffee and Belgian Ale. Hot, very hot. Confronted MBs nemesis at the Red Rock (thought about it at least). There were many activities. Many many activities.

This is a picture of MB kicking my ass at the Sue Rich:



I seem to perform consistently poorly there:





This is a picture of MBs huge feet (huger than mine):



This is a picture of Cerberus:



This is Gus moving in even closer:



This is a picture of the deep-fried Twinkie we ate:



This is a picture of MB and his ale:



This is a picture of the fine putt-putt course somewhere south of the SLC (Dr. Write places her ball)



This is a picture of Ross running ahead:



There was also a batting cage here. We took some cuts. I performed badly, sigh, worse than some 11-year-old twerp hitting the cover off the ball next to us.

Condiment and High School Musical Together At Last

I will be coming to the SLC on Saturday to work on a Sara Lee commercial with the HSM3 cast. Too funny.

I heart Zac!

Master Blaster

Today is my last day of the faddish 15-day Master Cleanse fast, otherwise known as the Lemonade Diet. I was thinking about blogging every day about it, but lost interest before I even started.

Basically, the Master Cleanse has you take 60-120 oz of a mixture lemon juice, grade b maple syrup, cayenne pepper, and warm water...daily...in the place of solid food. Every morning you drink a quart of tepid saltwater, which then feels something like voluntary dysentery for the next couple of hours.

It is not a weight-loss program, although I did lose fifteen pounds. It is a way to detox your system... and for me, a way to transition to a better eating program, and the oft-maligned CRA (Coffee Reduction Act).

I highly recommend it to anyone. It takes heaps of discipline; the first three days were agonizing to the point of nearly quitting. Days 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 were practically euphoric (probably just a psychological result of being unburdened by the total body pain of Days 1, 2, and 3), but on days 9, 10, 11, and 12, it got a little tiresome. Granted I was working outside of Las Vegas on a dry lake bed where it was over 100 degrees with 50 mph winds, so the conditions were a little extreme.

I felt a degree of perpetual alertness that I haven't experienced since childhood. I would be up until 2 am, wide awake, alert, doing work, and then I'd lay down and crash out HARD for 8 hours, and then get up again. No coffee, no alcohol, no naps, no nothing.

Easily the Most Visually Impressive Movie Ever Made, Period.

The gf and I went to see Tarsem Singh's "The Fall" a few days ago. This is the movie that simultaneously triumphed and crashed and burned two years ago at the Toronto Film Festival and existed in some kind of purgatory until Spike Jonze and David Fincher found it and championed it into a limited theatrical release.



Tarsem is a commercial director; I believe the only movie he's made is the beautiful miscue "The Cell" with J-Lo, which was apparently wrested from his hands by a meddling studio.

Tarsem couldn't get funding for this movie in Hollywood, in spite of his track record. He financed it all himself, and chose commercial shoots which were at the distant locales he wanted to shoot in. So he piggy-backed his movie behind his commercials, and in this way shot in 24 countries over 4 years (I think).



It's basically a cross between "The Princess Bride" and the original "Singing Detective" with some "Pan's Labyrinth" thrown in. I think it was a remake of a Bulgarian film.



I pretty much hate all-style no substance movies, but this had the guts to back itself up. The little girl's incredibly naturalistic performance, the puzzle-narrative that unfolds perfectly at an emotional end, the conspicuous lack of name actors, the scope... Here is a filmmaker who is trying to do something new, who cares about his craft. His passion comes through in every frame, even when the story is taking its time and wending its way.



This film is not perfect, but the effort is perfect. Why would anybody want to see Indiana Jones 4, when they could watch this? Why do we exist in a world where NOBODY would finance this thing?

The New Statistics

A couple of weeks ago I went out and played full court for the first time in about six months. I was kind of terrible (5-17 shooting or something like that) but I wasn't THAT terrible. Even though my stats were atrocious, I saw that I impacted the game in a positive way and we came from behind to win.

So in the spirit of Moneyball, I want propose a new statistic. At first I thought I'd count 1/2 rebounds, like football counts 1/2 sacks. I created a ton of offensive rebounds even though I didn't get credit for them. This would create a disproportionate amount of rebounds, though, because you couldn't withdraw a 1/2 rebound from the person who eventually did make the rebound. Still, I knew that anyone who looked at my box score would assume that I sucked it up, even though I was crucial to our victory.

Just as Moneyball values on-base percentage more than anything else, I needed to sort out what I would value as a coach. And I think the answer to that is possessions. The team with the most possessions wins the game, and the key to possessions is offensive rebounds. If you can't hit your shots, that's one thing, but if you outrebound the opposition by 2:1 you will win the game.

So here's my proposed stat, the Hustle Play (HP):

Any deliberate action (not already acknowledged statistically) which results in a gain of possession or prevents the loss of one. For example: leaping out of bounds to save the ball, taking a charge, tying up another player for a jump ball/possession arrow, creating an offensive rebound by tipping the ball to a teammate, assisting a steal (but not getting credit for one), forcing a turnover.

I also noticed that although I didn't really score we were up by 10 points when I left the game and we were down by 5 when I came back in. We ended up winning by 10. So you could say my Team Impact Differential (TID) was +25 for the last third of the game.

It might be a better way to measure ability... look at how the team does as a whole when the player is in the game, as opposed to how many points he is getting. I will definitely use this system if I ever have offspring to coach.

Works Right Out of the Box

Originally this post was going to be about how much of my life is spent troubleshooting stuff that should work right out of the box. Nothing ever works this way for some reason. Usually there is 2-12 hours of annoying instructions reading, and then, online forums consulting, and temper losing, and object throwing, and hand bruising.

Here are some examples:

1. Wireless Router
2. Syncing phone to computer
3. Syncing computer to my .mac account
4. Any kind of syncing whatsoever.
5. DVD studio Pro.
6. Videoconferencing with the folks
7. Data recovery software
8. Etc, etc.

None of this is that complicated, but none of it ever works right out of the box. Is it just me or is it everyone?

Instead I'm going to write about my massive external drive meltdown which claimed 2 drives at once (most of my doc and virtually all of the backup--almost a terabyte of data). It's very possible that all of this is gone, and if it isn't gone, that it'll cost $2500 per drive to get it back (worse than being gone, actually). Yikes!

So I'm trying to have a positive attitude, like maybe this is a good way to restart, a real-life Cntl-Alt-Delete to let me get going on newer projects instead of endlessly tweaking the one I've been working on for so long.

If only George Lucas had something like this happen to Episodes 4, 5, and 6 of Star Wars... maybe that would've prevented him from endlessly fiddling with the trilogy. Primitive special effects are not the end of the world, George.

Radio Lab is Fantastic... and Finite

I decided to give WNYC's Radio Lab another listen largely due to Clint's initial enthusiasm last summer. I remember not liking the little excerpt I heard but now I see I was wrong, so wrong. It is brilliant radio, truly, and listening to it reminds me of what it was like to listen to This American Life before that got stale. Only better. And smarter.

And better yet, it is finite. There are only five or so episodes a year and this is their fourth year. So there's probably only twenty episodes to go through, if that.

I have been plowing through them and they are marvelous.

Brilliant Failures: Period Films About Men and the Violent Southwest... and the Auteurs Incapable of Ending Them Properly

Discussed:
There Will Be Blood
No Country For Old Men
3:10 to Yuma

Not discussed:
I'm Not There

*No real plot spoilers here but stay away if you don't want to hear me complain*

I was able to attend a union screening of *There Will Be Blood* about a month ago (how I love the unions!) and intended to write a big long commentary on it all. But then I gave up blogging and lost interest. Lately I'm seeing various groups (LA Critics Award, NY Critics Prize) lavishing Best Picture awards on *TWBB*... and I'm seeing reviews in the New Yorker, so I thought maybe it was finally released. But no... it doesn't come out until Dec. 26 (another two weeks).

There is a lot of hype surrounding this project. And nobody had more optimism for this film than Sleepy E. But I am here to tell you that it is a mediocre film. A brilliant failure.

It is always interesting to see the Fawning Critics Ball really get rolling. Why is *No Country* being lauded as an Oscar contender? Why are the Coens suddenly considered serious filmmakers? I'm sure it's amusing them to no end. I don't get it. Regarding Anderson, I think *TWBB* is PTA's third or fourth best (but could have easily been the best if anyone had the balls to tell him when he was going awry). *Punch-Drunk Love* had more guts and emotion and life in its short 90 minutes but no one takes that movie seriously. But that was really the ballsy choice to make coming off of *Magnolia*, not *TWBB*.

Don't get me wrong. Daniel Day Lewis is really wonderful. And the score is great, sure. And it looks fantastic. But the movie just meanders along without purpose... there isn't really rising action or momentum or trying to sweep the viewer up in the moment or anything like that. It feels like a bunch of (often humorless) scenes strung together into a long movie. And it seems like Johnny Greenwood's modernist, percussive score does everything it can to prevent that whole sweeping-the-viewer-away thing from happening. The music feels intellectual instead of emotional. Kubrickian, almost.

It's as though PTA thinks these Hollywood storytelling devices are beneath him (just like the Coen's chose not to use music in *No Country*--a great choice, I thought). And the final act (and final scene) reflect this collegiate need to reinvent the wheel. I remember thinking back in school how I was going to "frustrate the viewer" and "not give them what they want"... But where does this assholish impulse come from? You are asking us to drive to the theater and shell out the money and sit with this movie for 2 hours and 40 minutes and invest in the characters, and then you're going to end the movie like that??????

I had a similar response to *No Country For Old Men*, which for 90 minutes was some of the best work the Coens have done since *Miller's Crossing*....before screwing up the ending.

In the end *TWBB* and *NCFOM* feel emotionally void. And for this reason *3:10 to Yuma* (also with an atrocious ending) trumps them both -- because there's more in the father/son relationship and the Russell Crowe/Christian Bale relationship than in Anderson's and the Coen's movies combined. *No Country* is a fun and competent exercise, but it is not incredible. It aims low and does well. *TWBB* aims way too high and doesn't quite get there.

I was also going to talk about *I'm Not There* which I never did see but heard it was quite the letdown.

Quite a lot of letdowns.

RSS, I Think I Love (Hate, I Mean) You

About a month ago I made the fateful decision to get my RSS reader in action and subscribe to all of my favorite feeds. This was an attempt to sideswipe all of the aimless Interneting I seem to do...all of the checking and re-checking to see if people have posted or not since the last time I checked their blogs.



The monster is getting out of control, though. Now I subscribe to fifty feeds, some of which update about fifty times daily (Wired) and some that seem to update once every few weeks. Most seem to update every day or every 2 or 3 days. On average I have about 100 items to check daily.

Which is getting ridiculous.

And the problem with subscribing to all of these feeds is that a new feeling of completion, of totality, has come over me. I now feel like I have to read everything that come down the pike. Whereas before the Internet was limitless and unfathomable, I've put limits on it. It feels a lot like homework. And I don't have much time for aimless wandering anymore. And reading enjoyment has definitely gone down. Articles must be cranked through in order to get to the next one. That said, I'm cranking through more data than at any point in my life, which is good, right?



I've had to develop a process to deal with all of this stuff, though. Articles or artworks viewable under two minutes get read. Regular articles get put into a separate queue and long-ass stuff in turn gets put in it's own queue. Videos longer than 2 minutes get put in a different folder. Then I attack those separate folders when I'm in the right mindset (as in, when I'm not cranking through everything in Ruthless Cull Mode).

Another thing I'm noticing. Sites without RSS feeds (Signifying Nothing) tend to get ignored. And the pleasure of following a comment thread as it is built is gone. Since comments don't update in my reader, it doesn't remind me to go look. I have become passive in my Interneting. The information comes to me and not the other way around. Delivered to my door. So maybe the New Passivity explains my low comment quotient lately.



I started with 30 feeds a month ago. Now I'm up to 50. This could be a problem. It is difficult to not constantly be disvoreing incredible brilliant things on the Internet. It is difficult to say no to it. Would you be worse off if you weren't exposed to some of this stuff? Perhaps, but at the same time you wouldn't be aware that you were missing anything. Maybe you couldn't even comprehend it. You certainly wouldn't care. I don't feel bad about all of the incredible stuff I don't know about, but once I know about it then I'll feel like I'm missing something if I don't have it.

It's Flatland all over again. Flatland 2.0.

Seven Movies I Knew Were Mediocre But Adored Anyway - Although I'd Probably Hate Them Now

This was going to be "Seven Movies I'm Embarrassed To Love" but I'd probably hate these if I saw them today. But most of these films I defended for years.

1. Contact
2. Ishtar
3. Simple Men
4. Alien 3
5. After Dark My Sweet
6. Hudson Hawk
7. The Sheltering Sky

Newer adds:

1. Code 46
2. Constantine

Better Than Citizen Kane, Better Than Magnolia, Better Than Raging Bull

Brilliant and disturbing, the finest thing ever:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3dei2_orangina_ads

Sleepy E and the Seven Events

Here you are. Sorry for the delay. I couldn't tag anyone else because I don't know anyone besides you people who blog.

It is interesting to see how people have approached this thing. Whether it's 7 confessions or 7 minute details or the 7 things that really define who we are. I think it would be fun to play a HUMILATION version of this exercise (admitting seven humiliating details about yourself). I tag all of you to do this.

I 'm choosing to blog about seven random events.

1. In 1999 I ghostwrote a book for former Boogie Down Productions frontman KRS-ONE. This was before he cheered the 9/11 attacks two years later. I called it "Introducing Hiphop" and it set about to define hiphop and its mythology through twelve chapters focusing on different periods of hiphop history. I was paid $6000. He liked the manuscript so much that he asked me to front his hiphop cultural entity "The Temple of Hiphop." I didn't know anything about hiphop so I declined. He loved the manuscript so much that he wanted to flesh it out into an end-all be-all hiphop bible at ten times the length. But since I had refused to run his weird hiphop organization he fired me. His book "Ruminations" contains little bits and pieces of my work that have been rewritten by others. It is pretty lame. I got no credit, which is fine. I have been meaning to write about this crazy period in my life for some time now.

2. In 1996 I was teaching in South Korea and since we were right next to Pusan National University and the Korean kids love to protest and demonstrate, there was a big rally right outside my classroom window. It was the end of summer and hot and muggy and all my windows were open and the tear gas floated up into my room during a prep period and I had to clear out. It felt a lot like getting clobbered by Drano (sore throat, burning nasal passages, burning eyes).

3. In 1993 I worked as a waiter in the French Quarter of New Orleans. I had a hard time finding a job so I lied and said I had four years of serving experience at my interview. I was a terrible waiter. I would forget about entire tables for twenty minutes at a time. I'd be getting someone's dessert and then realize "Oh, shit, I haven't taken that table's order and they've been waiting forever." I also had a fearsome shaved head at the time and white waiter jacket sized 50 (too huge!) I never spilled soup on anybody, though!

4. In 1981 and 1983 I won the school (district?) spelling bees and compteted in the more prestigious county spell-offs. I never really studied words until the drive to the event itself. In 1981 I finished a respectable fourth, losing on the disrespectable "pirate." I don't know how I missed this. Preposterous. I can't remember what I lost on in 1983 (something even more embarrassing?), but I finished worse (10th maybe?). I think my word might have been "whimsical" but I'm not sure. If anyone knows, please speak up.

5. In 1994 a musician friend conscripted me to be one of three male singers in new musical score being produced for a silent classic, "Closely Watched Trains." I have no singing experience and limited band experience and I can't read music but my friend insisted. "You only have to drone," he said. He was playing accordion. The whole thing was recorded in a church and I consistently got lost and sang at the wrong times but basically just tried to hide my droning among the droning of the other two droners. I was terrible, of course. I got paid $20 cash.

6. In 2004 my brother and I walked around the Yamanote Line, which is the circular train line that runs around Tokyo. It covered twenty-something miles and it took us over eleven hours (the last few in the pouring rain). A long discussion of the rules was the most pleasurable part of the enterprise (do we have to go outside of the tracks at all times? do we have to follow the closest road to the tracks? the closest arterial? do we have to enter each station? etc.) The final decision was that we had to take a picture of each station along the way (29 in all). So at each station we took a picture with his cell phone and mailed it back to home base, where my sister-in-law tracked our progress with the photos and time stamp metadata. Later I remember my brother creating some kind of wallpaper for his computer that superimposed the 29 pictures over a crude overhead map of the route, putting a nice nerdy cap on a very nerdy (inexplicable, for some) event.

7. In 1982 I went to a week-long computer camp at Crystal Mountain. I remember it was 1982 because it was the first time I'd ever heard Michael Jackson's Thriller tape, which my roommate played over and over. I won a strange award called "Mr. Raquet," due to my dominance in tennis, paddle tennis, badminton, and pingpong.

Radiohead, Relevant?

Radiohead put out their seventh full-length album on October 10th. After fulfilling their contract with EMI after their last record, *Hail to the Thief*, the band decided to release *In Rainbows* themselves as a digital download, for a price point to be determined by the buyer. “It’s up to you,” the lo-fi website reads. “No really. It’s up to you.”



A lot has been written about this stunt. It seems about a quarter of fans paid nothing for the download, but many paid in excess of the $10 iTunes standard or even the $18 CD standard. The average cost was 3.88 pounds, which is about 8 dollars, and when you figure that Radiohead might only see 2 to 3 dollars per unit typically, it’s a windfall for them. There are stories of folks paying $100, $200, even $500 because that’s the value of the record for them. You can read a lot of the responses here. It’s kind of interesting: http://www.whatpricedidyouchoose.com/



Obviously, this is not a sustainable model. It’s probably only going to work this once, for a supergroup with an older audience like Radiohead. Nobody’s going to voluntarily pay $10 to download the new 50 Cent effort. Or Linkin Park. But as I am rooted firmly in Generation X, a generation that paid for music for many many many years, I do feel the guilt about stealing music (not enough to actually pay for this download of course). But it seems two or three generations removed from us Xers has never had to pay for music. Indeed they may look at free music as their inalienable right. I think this particular gambit by Radiohead worked because it beat the illegal bootlegs to the Internet and it offered up the goods for free anyway (if you were to stoop so low).

They also put out a deluxe discbox with book, vinyl, CD, and extra tracks for $88, and they’re going to release In Rainbows as a standard CD in the new year. So they seem to be releasing the record much like a movie, with different price points for theatrical, DVD, cable, etc.



All of this discussion has overshadowed *In Rainbows* itself, which is just more mediocrity from Radiohead. I’m sorry, but I just can’t get behind it. The unique pricing issue is compelling, but the more pressing question is whether Radiohead is still relevant. Their last four records (five, if you include Thom Yorke’s solo record *The Analyzer*) seem cut from the same cloth, which is discouraging considering all of the “we are changing as a group” language that ushered in *Kid A*, the unmarketable ambient electronic record that followed the guitar-driven megasuccess of *OK Computer*. *Kid A* was a big fuck you to everyone. It was interesting in its own way but I don’t listen to it anymore. I’m glad they did it, but, well…



Personally, I still listen to *The Bends* and *OK Computer* often, ten years on. Their new music might be more “challenging” or more “intellectual”, whatever that means, but it doesn’t move me like *The Bends* does. In fact, there might be something to be said about intellectualism and accessibility in music.

Maybe I’m a prole for decrying intellectualism in music and wishing Radiohead return to its guitar-driven mode. I just want them to rock again, is that so terrible? “It’s got a good beat and you can dance to it” might be an uninformed, lowly critique, but there is definitely something to it.

Hearty Wheat Meat & the Uncanny Valley

“The Uncanny Valley” is an expression that originated within the field of robotics back in the 1970s. Basically it stated that more human a robot’s features became the more people felt empathy toward to it. But inevitably there was a point where the robot became so realistic—but not completely human, obviously—and at that point the robot became freaky. Scary and repulsive. But the theory of the Uncanny Valley also states that if the robot keeps on advancing then it’ll start to climb out of that valley the closer it comes to bridging the gap to toward absolute resemblance.



In other words, C-3PO is more empathetic than R2-D2 because he is more human. But if you look at the freaky almost-human characters in the Polar Express, then you’ll probably agree that C-3PO still more empathetic than them, even though (or because) he/it is way more abstracted. According to the chart, zombies also fall into this category. There is something about this almost-but-not-quite-human state that triggers repulsion in human beings. It looks real, it sounds real, but it’s not. It’s undead.



This is coming up more these days as Hollywood tries to cast virtual actors in scenes. The new David Fincher movie, Benjamin Button, is trying to create a completely virtual Brad Pitt that they can age with digital makeup. The story is that Benjamin is a guy who is born an old man and gets younger from year to year. They want to create whole scenes with this virtual Brad Pitt, but apparently they are still meeting up with strong resistance from the Uncanny Valley. The rumor is that the footage is absolutely realistic, but the human brain cannot be fooled. Even though all of the sensory input is greenlighting this thing, the human brain knows that it is fake, and feels there is something creepy about it. It will be interesting to see if they will ever be able to solve this problem, or whether the human brain will always somehow know.



It should also be noted that this repulsion applies toward humanness, mainly. Note that in the movie Ratatouille the food and cars and period detail were almost absolutely realistic but that the characters themselves were still somewhat cartoony and abstract. This is probably to keep them out of the Uncanny Valley, but I think this also relates to Scott McCloud’s excellent Understanding Comics, which talks about how the more detailed a comic character gets, the less a reader can identify with it because it just becomes more and more different than the reader. Not everyone can see themselves as Prince Valiant (I sure don’t look like that) but everyone can identify with the crudely-drawn Charlie Brown.



A couple of weeks ago Karen and I went to a place called the Veggie Grill down in Irvine. This restaurant is the oddest of birds: a restaurant that fakes meat out of different ingredients and sells it to its vegetarian customers. Now what percentage of vegetarians actually loves the taste of meat and craves it enough to go to a restaurant that attempts to replicate its bloody meatiness, guilt-free? The times I’ve tried to be vegetarian the thought of meat just gets more and more disgusting. So the Veggie Grill seems to be catering to a fairly small niche, but then what do I know.



I had been craving Carne Asada all day and when we went in they had a special of Carne Asada Tacos! The description gave me pause—“containing Hearty Wheat Meat made from 100% wheat protein, textured like roast beef, and marinated in our natural flavors and spices”—but the picture looked good, so I ordered it and got on the meat train barrelling right down into the Uncanny Valley, choo-choo!



I ate about a third of it. Karen’s Chillin’ Chicken wasn’t as bad—“our specially seasoned and marinated veggie protein blend…taste and believe”—but it was still challenging to eat. I just couldn’t get it down. I think my brain was freaked out in the same way it would be looking at one of these robots…or a zombie. It looks like beef, it smells like beef, but lordy it’s not like beef at all…. AAAAAARRRRRGHGGHGHG. Not that it tasted bad, necessarily, but my brain was getting the message loud and clear: “Meat a little off somehow. Do not eat. Rotten meat. You will get sick.” I think if the Hearty Wheat Meat had come out in the shape of a cube it would have been less repulsive. I eat tofu all the time without a problem. And you know, a veggie burger isn’t a problem because it’s just a disc. Tofurky? No problem.



But this, well, I never want to have this experience again. It was the Polar Express all over again, but with my tongue.

Designing Women: Julie Taymor's Across the Universe (Long)

I don’t know how the process works—whether female directors tend towards a certain kind of character-driven relationship-centered drama or whether the gatekeepers filter out everything but this. Few females have been authorized to direct action (Kathryn Bigelow, partially because of her marriage to James Cameron, and Karyn Kusama (Aeon Flux) ) and no one ever seems to cross over into design-heavy science fiction or period films (have not seen Marie Antoinette). I think studio heads still get nervous when too much cash is on the line with a female director at the controls. It would be interesting to see what the largest-budgeted film helmed by a woman is. My guess is Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days, but that is just a guess. It seems that women are allowed to direct television and indy-cred relationship movies, but large canvas epics are strictly off limits. No costume dramas, no big set pieces, no toys. Certainly no war movies. Just emotions.



Julie Taymor, on the other hand, seems to be working outside of this confinement. Character is definitely a distant second (or third, or fourth) to her spectacular design in her new film Across the Universe, which plays like 20 spectacularly trippy music videos mashed end to end.

Taymor and her co-writers have strung together two dozen or so Beatles songs into a semi-coherent narrative about a chap from Liverpool (Jude) who comes to New York City as the 60s explode into chaos. There are characters named Maxwell, Lucy, Prudence, etc. You get the idea. But because the narrative is drawn from the original songs and not the other way around, like other musicals, it feels false and contrived. It’s an excuse to go out and cram a bunch of clever musical set-pieces into a not-so-believable story.



But spectacular music video sequences do not a good movie make. I recognized that same worn-down feeling I get after watching 2+ hours of MTV at home (in the late 90s of course, we all know MTV plays no videos these days). Some visionary sequences, some not-so-visionary… but mainly it’s that ongoing rush of plotlessness and lack of character arc that gets to you… not unlike watching two hours of commercials.



The film takes a Forrest Gump view of history, as well, touching on the main events that define the 60s for filmmakers (Detroit riots, Kent State, MLKs assassination, Vietnam, etc. etc). There is a Janice Joplinesque character and a Jimi Hendrix character and references to Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey’s magic bus. But it doesn’t feel emotionally honest—like, at all. You can dress up Vietnam and Kent State with arty, MTV visuals and editing but it doesn’t capture anything honest. It’s history being used as a logo to sell something, and it’s actually kind of offensive. I wondered what a Vietnam Vet would think of the way the war is treated in this film… As a bunch of startling, beautiful/horrific surreal images to drive a rock-n-roll music video forward. But the kids of today who are watching this won’t realize that it’s just wallpaper, of course. For them, these visuals contribute to their (mis)understanding of the period. Indeed, the further we get away from the 60s, the more it seems they are hardening into these 10 or so images/stories that stereotype the decade. Taymor was 14 during the Summer of Love, but for some reason the material feels like it was created by someone born in the 70s. Or 80s.



Across the Universe achieves the strange duality of being both visionary and uninteresting at the same time. That said, I love that this film was made. I am always clamoring for something new, and this was definitely something new. I can imagine all of the meetings and planning and convincing that Taymor had to do to get the money to do this film. And I love the playful challenge of it all. There’s no real precedent to this thing (Moulin Rouge, maybe, comes close) so there was probably a very real sense of “I don’t know how this is going to turn out but lets try our best”. That sense of risk is absent from most things these days, especially in film, so it’s important to commend this true artistic spirit when it shows itself, even if it’s in the form of a semi-failure like Across the Universe. And the film is divisive—the reviews are all over the board on this one—which is always a good sign.



I would have adored this film in high school/early college. It’s a good film for film students—a painfully self-aware, stunningly visual tour de force…And Bono as Neal Cassady is a masterstroke. The older I get, though, the less I want cleverness and the more I just want character-driven films that move me, whatever the gender of the filmmakers.