Great Old Photos #1

K and I are currently in the process of creating a wistful, comic "growing up" slideshow to play at our wedding and get the guests all weepy. Let's play get the guests!

I've going through thousands of old photographs and come across some real gems. It's not always the content of these pictures that is spectacular (although the content is often remarkable), but it's something else, something invisible that makes these pictures really stand out for me.

I'm starting a short series in order to wrestle with these photographs.

Here is Great Old Photo #1

The scan of this picture doesn't really do it justice. The blacks look kind of washed out and the whites are dirty. Try to view the screen at an angle to really bring the contrast back to make the whites sparkle and the blacks black.

I love this photo for a lot of reasons, mostly because of its noiry starkness. Mom and Dad are so young here (I think it is 1965, probably Christmas by the look of the Christmas cards attached to the wall) -- Dad would be 29, Mom 25. They would have been dating for about three months at this point. It looks like a house they are in, and not an apartment, which could make it the house of Dad's brother-in-law, Uncle Louie. Or perhaps it is the house of some random couple hosting a party. It is hard to say.

The first thing one notices is the bright flash perfectly positioned in the mirror on the far wall. This is what makes the picture so wonderful. Imagine if the flash did not exist. It would still be a decent photograph but it would lose its interrogative shock. We see the very thing that is causing Mom to open her mouth in protest, a bright flash illuminating their secret (risque?) embrace. She is in his lap and his tie is rumpled. The rest of the house is dark and quiet. Dad's smirk puts him in league with the faceless photographer, but Mom's mouth is forming the shape of admonishment. She has seen the photographer approaching and is yelling at him to stop. This sense of fun is what takes the picture out of the realm of Weegee, although the aesthetic is the same. They are up to no good, and so is the photographer.

I love the beautiful square frame, something usually reserved for portraits and medium-format photography. Mom's face, which is foregrounded and receiving the glare of the flash full-on, is in the virtual center of the frame. They have too much headroom and the camera is tilting dynamically to the left. Do we feel tense because we have seen Orson Welles movies and others like it and we have learned that angled frames are a harbinger of bad things to come? Or do we innately feel tense because vertical lines are not vertical anymore and all is not well and right with the world? There is no time to set up this shot; the photographer is moving forward and the horizon is jostled. It is not so much composed as it is aimed. I imagine the camera continuing to tip counter-clockwise, becoming more and more dutched. Mom's head remains in the very center of this image as the stark world whirls chaotically around her.

A conical lamp hovers above her. It looks like a party hat that has just popped off her head, due to the sheer force of her surprise.

The Cinephile & the Megalopolis

For many years I have chalked up my decreasing interest in cinema to my decreasing interest in my movie industry job. I am watching fewer movies per year than at any other time in my life. I’m getting older, of course, and when one gets older he has less time to fritter away watching movies and reading novels. It isn’t totatly fair to compare the cinephile I was in college with the busy curmudgeon I have become. Look at all the free time I use to have… We all used to have.… Sheesh.

But something strange has been happening over past couple of days. I’ve been in the Northwest visiting the folks and I looked in the paper to see what was playing at the local art house theater. I hadn’t heard of any of the films, actually, but I was curious about what they were and actually expressed an interest in finding out. Strange behavior for someone who never watches movies anymore.

Some easy explanations:

 1. Of course I’m interested in filmgoing again while up in the NW. I have a ton of free time and no perpetual work-related stress. Let’s go to the movies! Why not?

 2. I am experiencing some kind of flashback behavior here. My mind associates the NW with the pleasure of heavy filmgoing, so it, of course, assumes that that is what happens when I’m up here. It rains, the Seahawks lose, Eric goes to the movies.

 3. I don’t have to battle murderous crosstown traffic for 45 minutes in order to see the film in question. Here in Tacoma the lines are short and the commute even shorter. I was telling Middlebrow how much I envied his life in the SLC. The SLC is tiny compared to Los Angeles or Chicago or NY, but it is large enough while still remaining small. Everything culturally relevant comes through the SLC… You may not have any Puppetry of the Penis or fringe stand-up acts or roller derby, but you get everything else and everything else is way more accessible! Do the Flaming Lips come to Salt Lake? Okay!

But I actually think something else is going on. Sometimes I like to fantasize about moving from LA and starting over in a small town somewhere… I like to think that I would get involved in the Film Society of this fictional town. That I would get involved in the community and help to program films from all of the world. That I would get directors and writers and other guest speakers to come and program live Theramin accompaniment to old silent films, etc…And then I would recapture my passion for the cinema.

Up here I feel people are way more committed to film and literature and music. They consume more and discuss it more – their love of it is pure. They consume it for its own sake. They love the cinema because they love the cinema – not because they are filmmakers and they are watching a film because they have to or because they are looking to steal ideas from this film.

Perhaps I’m just being contrarian. I don’t watch movies in LA because that is all everybody ever talks about. Movies and the movie business. It really drives me away. I don’t want to compete with these people – I don’t want to have another discussion about Quentin Tarantino or Ron Howard. I don’t want to hear about it. I don’t even want to think about movies. I want to do things nobody is interested in, even me.

Living in the Northwest makes me want to study cinema again. Living in Los Angeles makes me want to write novels. 

Folding Up Shop (Long)

Some time ago I started feeling the pull to make another documentary film. I was getting over my production hangover from the first one (“It wasn’t that bad, was it?”) and wanted to put my newfound skills to use. How great would it be to not have to encounter every situation for the first time? To not have to muddle through every decision? To actually build on all of this suffering I endured making the first film? To not make another film seemed irresponsible, wasteful almost -- analogous to plowing away through law school and then deciding not to take the bar exam.



The subject? Something even more esoteric and impossible to market than air hockey: folding. I was interested in technical “professional” origami, knot theory, pop-up books, real-world packaging applications – basically the intersection of art, math, and science in regards to folding.



Even stuff as mundane as tie tying, flag folding, and fitted sheet folding seemed interesting—maybe this was fertile territory, perhaps there was something culturally significant going on there as well. There were countless examples—here is a crocheted version the hyperbolic plane.



Middlebrow was one of the few people who supported this idea. I’d already given up on trying to find funding for this; it would be a passion project. Who would finance a documentary about folding? Everyone I pitched the idea to out here in Los Angeles looked at me funny. Perhaps my pitch was lousy. Maybe there was no clear protagonist and no clear goal so it was hard to see the point of it all. I was making a film about ideas, ha ha!



I continued to believe in this project, however. More than anything, the subject was interesting to me--something I could immerse myself in for over a year, which is the most important thing of all when doing a film, I believe. Even more important than marketability. That feeling of danger, that feeling of not knowing what you’re going to get. Feeling like you are going to discover many wonderful things along the way instead of going out on the road and trying to find sound bites to plug into your pre-written piece.

Well, today I discovered this:



Looks like somebody beat me to it!

I feel legitimized and very very sad at the same time. “See!” I said. “This movie won awards all over the place! I knew it was a great idea!” And then, “Shit!”

I’m sure this has happened to everyone. What do you do when you realize your beautiful little baby has already been done and done better by someone else already? I never thought I would see this happen with this particular documentary project, though. Out of all my ideas, this is the one I never thought anyone would ever be interested in.



Sure, one could argue that it’s probably a very different film than the one I would make, but the vibe of the trailer seems eerily similar. A friend of K’s has a movie called “Children of Invention” that is making festival rounds. It’s about two Asian kids who are abandoned by their mother for a short time and have to fend for themselves. Well, it just so happens there is another movie also making the rounds called “Treeless Mountain” which seems to be eating up more of the oxygen in the room. “Treeless Mountain” is also about two Asian kids who are abandoned by their mother for awhile and have to fend for themselves. Both of these films owe a huge debt to the Japanese film “Nobody Knows” (which is only 5 years old), but that is another story..

K said “Children of Invention” had trouble getting into some festivals because “Treeless Mountain” had already been accepted, and the films were too similar in tone and plot and character for the festival to program both.

So, there you go.

Here’s a link to the nice trailer of “Between the Folds”:

http://www.greenfusefilms.com/

Acupunctured!

The three-month beatdown in Philadelphia left me hobbled. Knee inflamed, limited range of motion, arthritis symptoms. Surprisingly, my doctor immediately referred me to an acupuncturist first, with the idea that if my lab results came back suspicious (which they did), then I would see a western specialist at the same time.

I admit, I like the idea of experiencing firsthand the different approaches western and eastern medicine use to treat the same problem. It hasn’t been a totally fair fight, however, since the western representative was fairly useless and I’m in a line waiting to see another.

But I’m not quite sure what to make of the acupuncturist, either. I’ve been three times and haven’t seen significant improvement. The common sense things he has prescribed (detox my diet, eating herbs, light meditation, choosing stretching/yoga over pavement ball and running, etc) are very beneficial, sure, but they really have nothing to do with acupuncture.

The jury is still out on all of the needles.

I’m really not quite sure what to make of it, especially when he is targeting every pressure point on my body EXCEPT the problem knee. Is this new-age sorcery? He even bled the back of my inflamed knee; is that medieval hokum or what?

Perhaps I am just being close-minded…Acupuncture has worked for thousands of years, after all. Does it matter if it’s a placebo if the placebo is effective?

The world is a mysterious place; I can’t claim to understand it all.

Beyond Complaining

Law Abiding Citizen is finally coming to a close and I will be returning home in a week and a half after three long months of filming in Philadelphia. We have been working 80-85 hour weeks as the producers try desperately to stay on schedule. This week we may hit 90. It has been cold and it is miserable and disorganized and there is much to complain about.

I say this to explain (but not justify) the blogging shortfall that has once again plagued my annual promise to blog more, but also to say that the complaining on set is out of control.

We complain because we have been served up some perceived injustice and we are powerless to do anything about it. We are impotent. And so we complain. And that makes us feel better. At least for a while.

But what happens when listening to this chorus of complaining becomes more intolerable than the injustices that cause the complaining in the first place? It continues, week after week, month after month, ramping up in pitch and shrillness and urgency. Be silent, I think. You’ve known things were going to be like this since after Week 1. You know where things stand: Either you accept them and stay and reject them and leave. But things will not change so it is absurd to whine so.

I am trying to move past this, to get beyond complaining. To try and remain silent. To set an example of restraint, of stoic impenetrability. To fool myself, to turn it into a game, to play past it, to relish getting yelled at because it means my enemies are unhappy deep inside. Perhaps this is why religion exists. Or therapy. To create a vessel into which one can thrust his or her unhappiness and throw away the key.

Of course, life on this movie is frustrating, but it is nothing compared to actual hardship. We are without disabilities. We have loving families. We are the employed ones, after all. Every week I get a few calls from California camerapeople looking for work. It is very slow out west, but we are busy here in Philadelphia. Most would kill for the bonanza of overtime we are getting now. I remember a roommate in college who told me that his grandparents got filthy rich during the Depression because they owned a bunch of public swimming pools and swimming was a cheap form of recreation that people resorted to during that time. He told this story with gusto, almost glee.

I wonder if his grandparents felt guilty. Every day I feel guilty that I do not fully appreciate my good fortune of being on this movie during a recession.

So I am getting better about complaining. I am learning to stifle it.

The need to complain does not go away, however.

It is right over here, at arms length, watching.

Pandora and the Music Genome Project

Those little “wow” moments in life come fewer and farther between every year, but the Internets continue to astonish. It took me a long time but I finally got an iphone and started using the wonderful and brilliant Pandora application.

Pandora deconstructs songs using hundreds of minute criteria (from angsty lyrics to wet mixes), and by doing so is able – given any song/songs or artist/artists as a starting point – to spin off recommendations for similarly constructed songs.

I’ve barely even scraped the surface, but already I’ve been exposed to dozes of fantastic musicians I’ve never even heard of. Pandora learns about your tastes and so gives more and more accurate predictions the more you use it and teach it using a simple thumbs-up, thumbs-down interface. And that is beautiful.

I believe there’s an online version that anyone can access. And it’s free.

How cool is that?

Sick

I have been sick in one way or another for about four weeks. My illni seem to have gone through four different stages, linked together by tentative three-day periods of semi-wellness and false hopes.

-An upset stomach in Chile begat:
-Modest flu-like symptoms between Christmas and New Years, which begat:
-Hardcore symptoms (hacking up green matter, fever, weakness, chills, headache, sort throat, malaise, etc. etc.) after New Years, which begat:
-My current cough and sore throat; sinuses alternating between freeflowing and plugged up beyond belief.

These periods of illness directly coincide with cross-continental flights, where the great unwashed masses cough openly into the stale economy class air and wipe their noses with the backs of their hands.

A floating germ factory, yes. An international overnight courier of disease.

In spite of a course of antibiotics and a daily cocktail of over-the-counter (folk) remedies, I still feel unwell. And the only thing worse than being sick is being sick and alone, which is what I am since I am now in Philadelphia waiting for this damn movie to start. Go Eagles.

I recognize that discussing one’s illnesses is about as interesting as discussing one’s dreams in public, but in the interest of keeping a blog I must write about what concerns me most, and what concerns me most is the rather existential notion that I will never be well again.

It seems to me that two hundred years ago people probably lived with a lot of things: poverty, sickness, short life spans, rotting teeth, etc. I wonder if there was more of a notion of playing through one’s pain back then, of just living with it. Now we take the opposite tack, wherein if one feels sad or lethargic or overly exuberant, he or she can find a chemical remedy and normalize quickly.

Being sick for so long alters your perspective on wellness in general. Will I ever be well again? What was it like to feel normal? To be young and have energy and to run without being winded? To sleep through the night without coughing one’s self awake?

A little dramatic perhaps, but it reminds me of a more theatrical time in my life, when I caught an illness in New Orleans, and so curled up with Proust, ate Madeleines, and pretended to be a Francophile until my good health resumed and I had no real reason to battle with his digressive narrative anymore.

That was the romantic angle, anyway. Now I just grumble.

Supra - or - The New Domesticity

Karen and I hosted her annual New Year's Bash the other night, and I spent much of the time in the kitchen. I made Dr. Write's famous Caesar salad, sweet potato stars baked in orange juice and nutmeg and brown sugar, a Chilean chicken stew called cazuela de ave, brownies, and Pisco Sours for all of the guests. To what do I owe this New Domesticity?

After midnight, someone posited the question of New Year's Themes, and what were they for everyone? Not resolutions or goals, necessarily, but themes. Can you distill everything you'd like to do in 2009 into a one- or two-word theme?

This held some appeal for me since I always have a long list of specific unattainable goals, instead of an overarching theme.

To follow Dr. Write's lead, here were my goals from last year:

1. Create a new branded web presence (no)
2. Take 2 trips (yes! Boulder Utah, Seattle, Chile)
3. Make $xxx and save half (no)
4. Finish Way of the Puck (no)
5. Rewrite The Secret Unbelievable (an old script) (no no no)
6. Live an Interesting Life (no)
7. Be Happy (sometimes, yes near the end)

Actually, looking at these 2008 goals I realize that they were much broader and more achievable than in years past. But still I did not meet them.

So, confronted with this idea of a New Years Theme for 2009, and lacking anything clever to say, I declared that my theme is:

Supra

or... Supra Blank

Transcending... whatever.

Pressed for specifics, I said that I would like to transcend the notion of success and failure, whatever that means. This binary framework is largely unproductive, but it is pretty much the sole metric with which I have traditionally judged my worth. I would like to play past that and just try to have fun this year.

And blog more, of course.

Some others at the party were:

-Enjoy
-Strength
-Sit With It
-Make It Happen
-Etc.

What is your New Years Theme?

We Be Betrothed

Well, the gf and I are engaged to be married. I guess she's the moved on from being the gf, and is now the f. And soon, the w. Or just W.

I proposed in a neat little tapas place in the boho Bellavista section of Santiago, Chile. I fed her too much wine and she said yes. Now it's too late for her to take it back.

Getting married is expensive. I wanted to utilize the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport's chapel (DFW chapel, who knew there was one?), but it was Christmas Day when we went through and it was closed. So we will settle for some exquisite SoCal outdoor environment instead, probably in early summer.

I will miss my dark one-bedroom apartment (not really).

Since U Been Gone

I am a blogging failure. I apologize.

I will resort to a list of things that have occurred since the last time I blogged.

1. Moved in with the gf.
2. Signed on to a movie called ¨Law-Abiding Citizen¨ that will shoot in Philly for three months and take me away from my new place. That hyphen in the film title is mine, btw, we´ll see if they actually use it. Jamie Foxx, Katherine Zeta Jones, and others.
3. Flew to Chile where the gf and I have been kicking around for a couple of weeks.
4. Saw the atrocious ¨Cadillac Records.¨
5. Baked a mincemeat pie.
6. And other huge important things.

I Keep Finding Money

About a week ago I was going through an old box of travel items and came across $80 wrapped up in a Xeroxed copy of my passport. Three days ago I found six 50-dollar bills mixed in with some old mail. Yesterday I found $42 in another box.

Is the beginning of an new era of good fortune? Or is this a harbinger of doom, since good luck comes in threes?

I hope for the former. God, I hope for the former.

Meat Train Derailed

Midnight Meat Train opened last Friday on 100 screens nationwide. Lionsgate wanted to just dump it to DVD, but they had to fulfill the theatrical component of the deal, so they put it in bargain theaters outside of city centers without any advertising support. The movie already has quite a cult following, so what gives? It appears that management has changed at Lionsgate and that the new regime is ditching many of the pet projects of the old, purely as a political screw you.



In other words, the goal, on this one, is to lose money.

That is why they put it in bargain theaters. To make as little money as possible. To think, we slaved for months on a tax write-off. Hmmm.



The MMT camera crew drove the 25 miles out to Norwalk on Saturday to support the cause, and ended up at a tiny little 8-plex hidden from the world behind a strip mall. I felt like I was back on South Tacoma Way, watching Return of the Living Dead 2 with Middlebrow, for a couple of dollars. There were two Bollywood movies, Meat Train, and something the marquis labeled "Hulk", which could have been either the Ang Lee version or the newer "The Incredible Hulk" - there's no way to know for sure.

We paid $2.75 for tickets on opening weekend, and ten dollars for some questionable nachos. The screen had been patched up and the sound was tinny. We were in a buoyant mood. There were five-year-olds in there, sobbing, and people talking openly with each other, and even someone pointing a laser pointer at the screen from time to time. In short, we were watching the film with savages, a scenario that would normally fill me up with rage. On this night, however, it was perfect.

Well, the movie was terrible, of course. "What did you expect?" laughed P. I couldn't answer. I guess always held a secret hope for this movie... its dark and gritty cinematography, its Sam Raimi kineticism, its offbeat Japanese fusion of horror and comedy... Maybe it'll actually be kind of good, I wondered, in a trashy way.



It was shit. Doesn't mean horror fans won't love it, though.

For me, I felt like Barton Fink at the end of that movie, when the studio head tells him that he will remain under contract by the studio, but they will make none of the screenplays he writes. Or like Richard Pryor in the classic, Brewster's Millions, when he has a mansion decorated into a performance-art pleasuredome, then says, "It's beautiful. Now take it all away."

Or something like that.

Some kind of purgatory.

Or maybe the best movie reference is Trading Places, when at the end you discover that the entire plot of the movie (ruining Dan Akroyd's life) was the result of a one-dollar bet between two wicked rich men.



Life can be meaningless, sure, but when it rises up like this and confronts you head-on it can be a little hard to take.

What kind of effect does your labor have on the world? Do you make any mark whatsoever?

Here's the Variety review, if you're interested.... [LINK]
Here's some fanboy wrath, if you're interested... [LINK]

The Vanity of Publishing (Long)

I've been thinking a lot about vanity publishing and how that pejorative term really only applies to the literary marketplace. Everywhere else it's called self-distribution. As many independent film distributors (Fine Line, ThinkFilm, etc) dissolve, the self-distribution of independent films is becoming more and more viable. Indeed, one of Sundance's big winners this year, BALLAST, rejected a traditional distribution deal with IFC Films, opting instead to self-distribute.

Traditionally, self-distribution (like vanity publishing) was seen as a last resort for filmmakers who had no other options. But the idea that a Sundance winner would find the self-distribution model PREFERABLE, is intriguing. I also heard a recent podcast with Ondi Timoner, director of DIG!, who said that in spite of huge international sales and a long shelf life, she hasn't seen a penny beyond her initial advance. She is looking to self-distribute her newest film.

In music there is some fooling around with this as well. Radiohead self-distributed their last album, as did Nine Inch Nails, and others. Aimee Mann went off and formed her own label a couple of years ago.

So when will the literary world come on board? Or is it happening already? Why won't these superstar authors just self-publish and rake it in? They can charge $10 for a digital download and keep it all, instead of getting the $1 per book that they might be making in a normal publishing deal (I just pulled these figures out of the air, in case you didn't notice).

Why is there such an entrenched disdain for literary self-publishing? Well, obviously because this model has provided decades of poopy, poorly edited content, no doubt--these are all books that couldn't get published elsewhere. But it doesn't have to be that way; what if quality writers self-published and self-marketed by choice? I mean, even if you go through a traditional publisher you are still going to have to do all of your own marketing....

Publishers do serve a vetting and culling function, sure, they're the gatekeepers, they're the ones who ensure that quality is going to be up to a certain standard (at least editorially), but who is to say that one can't create his own book, put it up on Amazon, do a guerilla grass roots marketing campaign, and then sell a thousand copies or so through his own effort? Can't this model co-exist legitimately with the old model?

My prediction is that in the next 10 years the film industry will divide into two halves. There will be studio-driven big-budget features and then there will be everyone else, and everyone else will self-distribute.

I wonder if publishing won't also go in this direction.

But look at all the crap you'd be inviting into the world, right? Do we really need more vanity romances and religious tracts and bad World War 2 histories? No we don't. But this is what people objected to about YouTube. Sure, 98% of the stuff on YouTube is a disaster, but 2% of it is sheer genius. And the market does the culling for me. It's not as if I go to You Tube and start watching clips at random. Usually there's a link, or a recommendation, or some viral reason to go there. I don't have to wade through the great unwashed mass of clips that live there.

That wonderful 2% just floats to the surface. And I'm glad there is a surface to float to.

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.