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.

Robot Love and Ham Contests: Blade Runner, 25 Years On (Long)

Karen and I were late and scarfing down Vietnamese food in her kitchen. “I’m not missing the giant eyeball,” I said. “I won’t be late for the giant eyeball, let’s go.”

Karen’s roommate wandered by. “What giant eyeball?” she asked.

“Oh, we’re going to see the new version of Blade Runner.”

“What’s Blade Runner?”

Huh? Karen and I looked at each other. To us, this was like not having ever heard of the Godfather. Or Jaws. Her roommate is 32, hmmm, but she’s from Alabama. Maybe she’s just an isolated case, I thought. Her friend, though, in his late twenties, had never heard of it either. I explained to them that it was probably one of the top three science fiction movies of all time.

“Is it better than Transformers?” he asked.

My jaw dropped. “Uh, yes!”

“Have you seen Transformers?”

“Of course not,” I said. “I don’t need to see Transformers to know that Blade Runner is better. That goes without saying.”

“Yeah, but how can you make that judgment if you haven’t seen Transformers?”

I stared at Karen. Who were these people? It wasn’t like we were so much older than them. How could a film be so seminal and important to an entire generation and yet non-existent to the next? I recalled that Middlebrow got the same kind of nonplussed response from students at the SLCC, both before viewing and after.

“Maybe the film has really aged poorly,” I thought. Nah.



We missed the giant eyeball and we were seated way up front so we exchanged our tickets for the 10:30pm show and waited it out. Now there would be no excuses. If Blade Runner—one of the films that convinced me I wanted to make movies in the first place—really sucked, then it wasn’t going to be because I was late and seated in front row. I was going to be in the back third, with the screen at eye level, with an emptier theater and fewer chewing sounds in the air.

Well, it didn’t suck. And it is still a visionary film. And although it is dated like all older sci-fi is dated, it wasn’t that bad. At all. The worst was some of the wardrobe, actually, especially a violet and turquoise shirt that Harrison Ford pulls off before he puts the robot moves on the robot Sean Young.



But it was slow. Really slow. I learned that some reviewer called it “Blade Crawler” when it first came out. That’s about right. Although I’m sure it feels like MTV when placed next to 2001, which feels like MTV when placed next to Tarkovski’s Solaris. So it’s all relative. But it is interesting to note that people thought it was slow even back in 1982, back when movies were often more than 90 minutes.

And it was empty. It is really a soulless, unemotional movie. Sure, this can happen when you’re making a movie about robots. Robot love isn’t always as fiery as you’d like it to be. Sean Young is about as fiery as you can get in real life, but this is a movie about robots, goddamn it. Tone it down. You too, Harrison.



And nothing too much happens. Although it still looks and sounds exquisite, it proceeds in the typical noir mode—detective going from place to place, looking for clues—with some campy hardboiled dialogue, a hard drinking antihero, chiaroscuro lighting, and moody sax theme laid in from time to time.

And the final speech by Rutger Hauer—a scene I’ve seen probably fifty times—was hammy this time around. Kind of bad. And he just launches it to it. The hand of the author and the director and the actor and the composer are all over that scene. It’s like a big Ham Contest. Rutger’s trying to live up to the writtenness the scene and Vangeles is plinking his new-age synths and booms in the background and the dialogue is the most scripted sounding stuff I’ve ever heard. And Rutger has a nail through his hand and a dove in the other.

Kind of laying it on with a trowel, as WS would put it.



But hey, Blade Runner is still brilliant, even though it’s emotionally void. Probably because Dick’s source material is so smart. And an exercise in production and art design, it’s still the model that sci-fi films aspire to. Seeing it big is totally different than seeing it on TV. That dirty, rainy production design goes deep deep into frame. Never did I get the sense that the reality of the movie stopped just at the edge of frame and beyond it was a craft service table and reality. There’s extras in the deep background and neon and trash and it keeps going. It’s actually kind of insane, how dense and exact the production design is. Bravo!

And most of the effects still hold up today. There are some clunky looking matte paintings and spaceships in the middle, but the opening flyovers are unstoppable, probably because they still used models back then instead of just doing all of your effects work at home in your computer.



As far as changes? It feels like a cross between the original international release and the 1992 Director’s Cut. Not a lot of new material. One interesting change was the line Batty (Rutger Hauer) delivers to Tyrell before he gives him the skull-crush and eye-gouge, which used to be “I want more life, fucker.”

Now it’s “I want more life, Father.” Which is from the original workprint version of the film, actually, and much much stronger (although I still love the aggressive comedy of a robot really using the vernacular to good effect).

The Wikipedia article has a ton of info on this new version and how it differs from previous versions. Lots of good stuff [HERE].

I suppose the next false god to go down will be Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, Mike Leigh’s Naked, or Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross. And how I will weep when that happens.

The Pit: Frank Norris and the ALA Underbelly - or - Too Much Theory: Hooking Up at the Academic Meat Market

As you all probably know, Middlebrow came down to Newport Beach a couple of weeks ago to attend some kind of spectacle and give a talk or two. You'll have to ask him for the details. This is his turf, not mine, even though all activities took place in my realm, the LA megalopolis. I don't pretend to understand his world. The ALA conference is the West Berlin of SoCal. Or the North Korea of SoCal, depending on how you look at it. Take your pick.

Here is the breakdown of events:
-John Wayne Airport
-Newport Brewing Company: 1pm Pints
-Intense Fish & Chips
-Checkin in at the Hyatt: Who is That Tall Man With You?
-Laguna Beach
-How Much Do You Think That House Costs?
-Coffee Time
-Dana Point
-Dad's Liquor
-Pay to Pay: Parking at the Hyatt
-Back to the Room
-Boy Am I Tired Already
-What Exactly Is TV-Internet?
-Wifi Stress
-Aborted Oyster Bar Attempt: Too Chichi For Us Proles
-Mexican & Margueritas: Wait, Too Many Proles Now!
-Hotel Bar
-Aborted Shuffleboard
-Two Men, One Bed: No Problem!

Here is a picture of Middlebrow on the beach:



This is a more iconic version of the same picture:



This is a picture of the hotel room sink after visiting Dad's Liquor:



But what I really want to talk about was the conference woman sitting by herself at the hotel bar, mid-thirties, putting the MOVES on a nerdy kid who looked about twenty-three years old.

The Woman: Black knee-high boots. Black leather jacket. Skirt. Makeup. Tall glass of solo Chardonnay.
The Dude: Glasses. Nervousness. Watching TV instead of facing her. Never shaved in his life.

We were wondering why she had targeted him exactly, but hey, academics need lovin too and she didn't have time to be subtle. She touched him on the arm, repeatedly, while he split his attention between her and the TV screen above and behind the bar. We could not see what he was watching nor could we hear what she was saying to him.

"What's his problem?" we said aloud, watching closely. "Go for it, dude!"

But he didn't hear us and he didn't go for it and after about thirty minutes of her attention she got up and left. But, get this, the guy didn't seem relieved to see her go...instead he turned and longingly watched her leave. It wasn't that he wasn't interested...he WAS interested... he just couldn't pull the trigger.

I talked to Middlebrow about what I would have done differently. The gf has been reading "The Game: Penetrating the World of Pickup Artists" as research and I've been privy to some of the techniques. I told MB that I'd have him go in as my wingman and distract the nerd with some juicy literary theory while I sidled up to the bar and complimented the woman on her boots, then offer to freshen up her drink.

"How hard could it be?" I wondered. But then, where was all of this information when I needed it? Why weren't women this readable when I was 23 and truly needed this stuff? Now I'm taken and I can't use all of my astonishing pick-up technique, not that I really want to anyway...

I'm not sure where I'm going with this--I did have a point when I started, but all I want to say is that when someone is interested in you it isn't a big mystery. It's like a teacher who starts the semester giving everyone an A and lets everyone go downhill from there. She's interested in you, you already have an A. Just do the right thing, son. It's a lay-up!

Oh, and yes, I could be wrong, but it seems like these conferences would be a great place to get laid. Lit conferences and tall clubs. If I'm ever single again I'm definitely crashing both of these events, often.

Not that I'm interested in that lifestyle of course. I'm just saying.

The Future of All Cinema, Part II

I would like to apologize for my snarky comments from two posts ago. There is a lot of great stuff coming up, and not all of it is snooty. Like this, for example:

http://www.worstpreviews.com/trailer.php?id=844&item=0

Please watch to the very end to get the full effect!

Polyphasically Perverse

I just want to announce to everyone that I am back on the Polyphasic Genius Sleep Schedule and loving it. These days I've been trying four and a half hours of core sleep at night and TWO twenty minute naps throughout the day. This is down from the THREE twenty naps a day the plan calls for, so I feel a little tired and not very much like a genius. Three naps a day is pretty hard to pull off, especially if there are other humans in your life who are not taking three naps a day. I have been productive, however, and I will keep this up for as long as I can and make reports here as scheduling permits.

Recently I stumbled across an article in venerable Gelf magazine about a guy who has been able to switch dominance between right and left hemispheres of his brain, thus allowing one side to rest while the other works. Apparently, he was able to stay awake for eleven days by doing this, and could have kept it up indefinitely. Okay, I admit, this sounds a little extreme--I won't be trying this out although I think it would be interesting to see what effect this all had on the human brain and body.

Click [HERE] to go to Gelf Magazine!

My favorite quote: "I generally feel better and more relaxed when I am sleep-deprived."

Speaking of geniuses, did people see that Stuart Dybek won a 2007 Genius Grant?

The Future of All Cinema

The future of all cinema does not look good. About a month ago I put the future of it in three films: Julie Taymor's *Across the Universe* the Coen Brothers' *No Country For Old Men,* and Paul Thomas Anderson's *There Will Be Blood.*

I would like to say that we saw *3:10 To Yuma* the other day and it was quite excellent right up till 2 minutes before the end. But it was fantastic, i thought, and will replace "Across the Universe" in this little trifecta of quality -- I'm giving ATU a miss due all of the lackluster reviews.

*No Country For Old Men* will be fine but not spectacular. "A return to their Fargo form," people are saying. Well, *Fargo* was fine but it was no *Miller's Crossing*, no *Blood Simple.*

So I'm going all in on the new PT Anderson movie, which looks spectacular, dark, and angry, just like I like em. If this movie lets me down, well, well, I don't know what I'm going to do. I haven't anticipated a movie this much since *A Scanner Darkly,* which let us all down (sorry, Lisa B!). Before this, the most anticipated movie was...well...Anderson's *Punch Drunk Love.*

Here's the original teaser:



Here's the Hollywoody trailer. It's not as good as the teaser, but it still works. Notice the music is being done by Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead. An interesting choice!

My Dirty Little Secret

All this talk of television has got me thinking about the new role the box has in my life. I've basically pooh-poohed TV for many many years now; I think the last time I actually followed a show was in the Cheers/Night Court days. Which is not to say that television isn't better than ever, better than movies even. Everything Bad Is Good For You makes a lot of compelling arguments about the New Complexity of TV (thanks MB!). But I just can't seem to make time for it. I got cable last year for the first time in my life so I could watch World Cup. When I was working on movies this year I'd come home and unwind with Sportscenter and a drink for a half hour. But that's it. These days my TV probably gets 30 minutes of viewing a month (for non-movie watching purposes).

But I have a dirty little secret: About once every other week I go over to the gfs place and watch VH1 for about three hours straight.

I just can't get enough of it. And this is my idea, definitely not hers.

VH1 was reborn out of the ashes of Adult Oriented Music Video Hell about ten years ago when they created Behind the Music. Since then they've reinvented themselves again with long slate of outlandish reality-based shows and pop-cultural commentary.

In 2004 I was doing a movie in Maine and caught "I Love the 80s", their half-hour program which focuses on a single year and the pop-culture that dominated it, using clips from comedians who comment on it all. I watched it for 5 hours in a row. I couldn't help myself. It spoke to me in a way I hadn't been spoken to before. It was simple and lowbrow and fluffy and but most of all it was hilarious. Of course I could never admit this to anyone.

In the last few years VH1 has ramped up its outrageous reality programming, culminating with the wonderful "The Surreal Life" and "Flavor of Love" which starred our favorite MC Flavor Flav. Now Flav has been replaced by Bret Michels of Poison, and it's not the same. But there is bunch of great new shows out now, like:

Scott Baio is 45...and Single
Hogan Knows Best
The Pick-up Artist

and specials like:

Britney's Most Shocking Moments
The 40 Most Softsational Soft-Rock Songs

I'm especially looking forward to the premiere of America's Most Smartest Model, but that is too much to talk about now.

Karen doesn't know what to make of all this. I can be pretty snooty when it comes to my movies (she calls me Arrogant E and Ivory Tower from time to time), but all of this low-low-lowbrow pop culture (and my love of it) can be a little bit hard to process.

I don't know what else to say.

My only explanation is that at least VH1 is self-aware, and firmly tongue in cheek. The new season's tag line: "VH1: Watch and Discuss" has me thinking that the channel is run by English Majors.

Reprieve

Another humiliating motion picture down the rathole. Karen and I decided to get away for the weekend to enjoy life for a change:

This is a picture of Karen hefting a glass in Santa Barbara. Note the rustic-chic Mason jar and everything that it represents:



This is a picture of me eating rolle polse and pickled herring in Solvang, CA. It was kind of a Scandian lunch-ordering stunt, I confess. Wish I would have gotten corn dog or grilled cheese instead:



This is a picture of wine country, buzzing more than ever with wine bores since Sideways came out. Becoming a wine bore is my newest project.



This is a picture of our purchase. First the people get you drunk. Then you buy way more wine than you want. It is a very effective sales technique and I wonder why they haven't implemented this method at auto dealerships, hmmm:



This is a picture of Pismo Beach:



This is a picture of the pinkified lounge of the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo. Pink cakes and French Dip for the whole family:



This is the picture of a New-Agey labyrinth at our mineral springs spa. I learned that group hugging and group meditation make me a little nervous (am I uptight?). There was also a Yoga Dome, where the Dodgers will be playing next year:



All in all a good time was had. California is really beautiful when you are just visiting.

Awesome!

If you haven't seen it already:

Online Study

It took a long time but I've come to the conclusion that I am a good candidate for online study. I like taking classes but my erratic work schedule always sabotages everything and I have a hard time finishing what I've started. So it seems like having some degree of flexibility in my class hours would be a great thing.

However, I am a bit skeptical. Online learning seems like it's halfway between real course study and self-study. What is this going to provide for me that a reading list alone will not?

I'm curious about everyone's opinions on this matter. Is an online course any better than self study? I am pretty motivated and will tear through a reading list, but I want to feel like I'm going to get something for my money. Is an online class just for students who can't motivate themselves? How is the quality of teaching here? Are there actual lectures? Or podcasts? Do the online courses get shunted to the side and filled with recycled material and ancient lecture notes? What is the quality of the students like? Lower or higher than physical in-class humans? Does the impersonal structure of the online class make the professor care less?

Please feel free to comment on your experiences teaching/taking online classes.

Music Video Treatment Writer

A couple of months ago the gf connected me with one of her music video directors who was in desperate need for someone to put together a treatment overnight. No doubt phoning me was a last resort; I was unknown and unproven and got the call around 10:30pm after a long day's work. The video was for a band called Kasabian; I put the thing together in about 5 hours and turned it in, got a couple of hours of sleep, then went back to my real work in the morning.

Music video treatments are really the cesspool of all literature. Right there with greeting cards and income tax returns and the Penthouse Forums. The treatment is basically a sales pitch to the label and the band, telling them how cool the video is going to be and how beautiful and badass the band will look. Good grammar and syntax are optional. Hyperbole abounds. Cliches prevail. They love it.

Here are some short sample paragraphs from previously existing MV treatments (mistakes are theirs, not mine!):

Blackalicious-"Gab and Xcel of Blackalicious are featured in a series of conceptual portrait scenes illustrating the many situations that make us feel amazing. Clever transitions will make this video one of a kind. You will want to keep watching as the shots slide and flow from one to the next creating the longest, most complex tracking shots ever....I will shoot in 35mm for a polished quality with sharp color and crisp clear images. The overall vibe is natural and true with consistently clever twists. Gab and Xcel are massively featured throughout."

CAP.One- "Have you ever been out at a club or party thinking you were the shit when all of a sudden a crew of cats come in and take over the party with no shame. They take over the VIP and start ordering all of the existing champagne. This performance will provide CAP with massive star appeal as a new artist creating a fresh bold introduction to viewers. Nokio joins him on the bar to begin the party while helping him with the chorus. We fade to shots of delicious looking women who lip synch the chorus. They part like the 'Red Sea' as the camera comes forward."

Desiny's Child- "Three of today's hottest young stars--Beyonce, Kelly, and Michelle--take us on a wild ride of survival in this heart-throbbing, brilliantly orchestrated action adventure video. Shot with a hot fashion editorial approach, this clip is going to be fresh as we film their unbridled beauty. It's extremely sensual, cutting edge and the ultimate beauty piece. We hear the mysterious violins at the opening of the song. The camera races along the ocean's surface in search of something precious that lays victim to this vast body of water. Stormy clouds rest on the horizon threatening to strike at a moment's notice."

Erm.

All of these videos got made. The last one was for the megahit "Survivor." This is the stuff that sells.

Often times quite a few different directors will write treatments on the same video. The label and band then go through them and select the one they like the best. It's a contest, really. Other times the band wants to work with a particular director and all the director has to do is supply a not-awful treatment and the job is his. All he has to do is not screw it up.

Many directors don't actually write their own treatments, even though they are supposed to be the driving creative force behind the thing. Unlike commercials, where the director is pretty much a puppet of the ad agency, the music video is really the director's medium. As a whole, the music video world is in the gutter, but many directors who have been able to rise out of it are quite special (David Fincher, Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry, and Jonathan Glazer to name a few).

So after a ten-minute phone conversation with the director I set to task. He had some basic ideas and imagery borrowed from other films, but the task of fleshing it all out and making it cohere was mine.

So in this way the writing was creative. I was the primary creative force behind making the sale. But it was also not creative at all, because as a whole the ideas that I was to build around were pretty durn banal and confining. And I was in the awkward position of not knowing how I fit into all of this--writing to please others when I couldn't comprehend their tastes at all. I spent most of my time wondering what record executives and teenyboppers want, questioning if my ideas would fit in with the director's "vision", and dumbing down the manuscript (I was still reprimanded for using the word "tableau" after all that).

It was nice to get a paid writing gig, but also kind of depressing. It made me feel whorish. I mean, who cares, right? Just do the writing and get paid the money. Hmm.

The deal was I'd be paid a nominal sum to write the treatment and then if the job booked I'd get five times the original amount. I've done three treatments for them but so far none of these videos have booked. Is this my fault? Perhaps. I notice that they're not really calling me anymore, which is fine.

For a while, though, I really lived the life! The life of the Music Video Treatment Writer!

Dyno-mite!

The Moment When The Villain Shows His Weak Human Side and Becomes Sympathetic

I've had a pretty adversarial relationship with the production manager of this latest movie. It's gone on for about a month and a half now (the arguing) and I've taken an extremely hard line with the guy. Because most of our discussions are related to money, our dealings directly affect my pocketbook and so I am ruthless...and rude. Once I sense that someone is messing with me, then the gloves come off and all politeness goes out the window. He's consistently reneged on all of our financial agreements and played dumb at my outrage. At least a half dozen times. And he's inflexible -- unreasonably inflexible -- when it comes to contingencies. All he cares about is keeping costs down, and if it's at the expense of people being able to do their jobs properly, then so be it.

Most of our correspondence happens over the phone and email, but the other night he came by the camera truck with questions about our equipment order for next week, claiming that we had ordered stuff--at additional expense--that hadn't been approved. I explained to him that this wasn't the case and went through the items one by one while my crew watched.

He scratched his head and looked over his paperwork, then re-asked the same questions, and I realized that the poor guy was simply in way over his head. He had no clue what we are talking about. At all. And I was giving him static, over and over, for about six weeks, and so was every other department, and his supervisor especially, the bastard associate producer.

He was getting attacked from all angles. Poor guy. Man. Sure he was underqualified to do the job and I still resented the way his job was intersecting with mine, but as a human being it was hard not to feel a little bad for him.

I wonder if there's a word for this concept in other languages -- the moment when the villain shows his weak human side and becomes sympathetic.

I looked it up online but all I could find was a TV Tropes Wiki and an entry for the "Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain" of which the Riddler is one, apparently.

Please Don't Think You're Exempt

Last Sunday I went to the Coffee Bean to enjoy my magazine with a hot beverage. The outside seating area was filled with smokers and Russian chess players and dogs tied to table legs so I sat inside, where it was cooler. The woman in the next table over was going over galleys for a novel (or page proofs or whatever they're called) and I tried very hard to see what it was over her shoulder but could not, so I turned my attention back to my magazine and read for a good thirty minutes or so. When I looked back over at the woman, she was still going at it, editing away, striking through text with her pen and making notes in the margin. She seemed like a reasonable sort--late 30s early 40s, professionally dressed. She had been in there for a while--longer than me--and there were a couple of to-go cups on her table and a plate littered with crumbs and a spread of crumpled napkins and a forgotten receipt. I noticed her getting her things together and packing the ms away in a box or in her bag I'm not sure. Then she got up and strode out of the place, right by the garbage can, leaving a pile of rubble on her vacated table for some person (probably another customer, since seating was in limited supply and all of the employees were running their asses off) to have to bus off themselves. I don't know why this bothered me but it really did. It is not as if she doesn't know the rules. This is not a cafe where a waitress serves and cleans up after you. I supposed it surprised me because this is the kind of behavior I see from hoodlums at McDonalds who don't think they should be bussing their own garbage. This woman should know better. Indeed, I am sure she does know better. It is that she thinks she is exempt, and that is the biggest problem of all.

Surviving Powder Blue

Well, I said I was leaving the movie business but here I am working on another motion picture. This one is called "Powder Blue" and is essentially a "Crash" retread without the on-the-nose racism. What we do have, though, is (after three days of shooting) plenty of non-racist on-the-nose dialogue, a sad stripper, a suicidal Santa Claus, a guy just out of prison trying to redeem himself, a child in a Hollywood coma, hospital jargon and combat photography (whip pans, handheld, etc) to intensify surgery, a dream sequence in heaven?, and a "Magnolia" rip off ending where blue snow falls on everyone and everything. Four depressing stories of losers intertwining on Christmas Eve...no doubt they will redeem themselves...

"Powder Blue" is not exactly subtle, and in many ways it is worse than the last masterpiece, "Midnight Meat Train." Because it actually tries. At first I thought it was pretentious, no, but it's not even that. It's just heavyhanded. Or ham-fisted, as a grip commented. But the best thing of all is that Ray Liotta, Forest Whitaker, and Jessica Biel are turning in good performances (I think Carrie-Anne Moss is in it too), but all of the supporting characters are simply atrocious. Atrocious! So the effect is of having a bunch of A-list actors in a student film. Here you have Forest and Ray in an intense scene... and then a cop comes over and says his lines... Doh! Or the nurse speaks! Ouch! Or maybe these characters are drifitng through a parallel universe where all the bank tellers and barflies an meter maids--all of the support--are incapable of sounding believable. Very surreal.

But here's the real reason for this post:

On the last movie I gained over 20 pounds (eating out of existential boredom) and was such an asshole to be around that the gf basically forbade me to take this movie unless:

1. I wrapped my head around that it was only 7 weeks.
2. I wrapped my head around the fact that I wasn't going to be able to write for 5 hours a day while working 70-hour weeks (seems obvious, sure, but not to me).
3. I understood I was only going to be able to do one thing in my limited downtime, not fifty things.
4. I understood that good physical health leads to good mental health.

So I've abandoned the polyphasic sleep experiment, although I'll go back to it once we finish the movie... I've started the Zone diet and I've started running and doing pilates (which I scoffed at for a long time before actually trying it and having it kick my ass).

We'll see how things develop. Temptation abounds:

Tuesday they had carrot cake, German chocolate cake, homemade white chocolate and macadamia nut cookies, and ice cream with toppings on the dessert table. Yesterday it was the wonderfully crusty mac-and-cheese, corn on the cob, biscuits, and tangy lemonade that came with BBQ at lunch.

Not sure how long I can continue to say no to this stuff...