Would you vote for this man?

Some recent flick observations from the mind of your all knowing blogger.

I saw Shutter Island last week. I watched it. I have looked into all the theoretical possibilities of time travel, as well as many present psychological practices in helping to repress memories. Despite all these efforts it appears the technology isn’t there yet to allow me to unwatch it.

So there it is. Look, i like Scorsese. Always have. Always will. But this film school 101 obsession and fetishistic need to pay homage to the past through present isn’t necessarily a good recipe for making interesting movies. Shutter Island is an example of this. MS goes all out on the theatrically ominous island approach music evocative of the kind of over the top camp of bygone eras, throws in camera angles that are psychologically manifesting the characters mental states, and generally goes with the character study with a twist and all that old fashioned quaint artsy stuff. Problem is the story sucks, the twist is spottable within a half hour, and the character study unoriginal. And dude, the story was boring. That’s your unforgivable sin here. Movies are supposed to not be boring more than they need to evoke, pay homage, or be presentable artifacts in future UCLA film school classes.

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It has been recently posited by someone else who saw Up In The Air that the romantic part of the movie ruined it. While I see where this is coming from I can’t totally agree. If I’d change anything I’d keep Clooney unapologetic about his lifestyle. I liked that he did speaking engagements about the burdens of relationships. He’s a man on the move. A modern hunter gatherer and there’s no room for sentiment in a world without community. Tigers care nothing for family. And gathering is sooo much cooler with a company credit card.

He does perhaps go too head over heels for this one woman and the sense of family at his nieces wedding. But he’s also not 28. He’s a guy who may be losing his connection to the road and the life of the real man. His job description may be changing. Getting modernized. No more traveling across the savannah. He’s going to have to start firing people (that’s what he does) by teleconference. So naturally he may start thinking of forming new relationships to replace the old. As short term as they may be. And the thing is, they’re not. He values loyalty as much as the next guy. He stays at the same places, flies the same airlines. He’s trying to reach a frequent flier mileage goal. This is noble stuff if you’re asking me. And it has its rewards. Real tangible hunter gatherer stuff. Like discounts and guest baskets. There’s almost an exotic nature to the way he keeps pulling various cards out and slides them through various contraptions permitting entry to wonderful levels of distinction.

I’d have just liked to see him question his life with a little less sentiment.

But you’d still need a romantic interest to establish the changes in his lifestyle, his age, and the consequences of his choices. I can also understand his backtracking. at a certain age and with your peripatetic lifestyle being grounded I think it would make you wonder about grounding your libido and conscious disconnect from others as well.

The thing is, without spoiling much, you had to have him run into the female him and face the consequences of his past decisions as we all do. Especially if you want to drive home a point against his disconnected lifestyle. But all lifestyle decisions have consequences so i’d rather this have not come off as moralizing about Clooney’s. Problem for me is not that relationship, it’s Reitman’s moral judgment that there may be anything wrong with the lifestyle.

Relationship resistance just makes too much sense to dismiss. I’m not sure he was doing that here. But I’d have liked a clearer sense of that and to come away feeling less like Clooney lost something. Sure he loses some things over a life lived out of hotels. But the settled person has made choices and given up valuable human desires and needs as well.

Whatever, I liked the movie. I related to the character and even envied his hotel room, frequent flyer lifestyle. I only wish I had the opportunity and the charisma to pull it off. But it’s nice to dream. And even though i don’t think Jason Reitman was necessarily going for that it had the effect on me and I’m grateful. But I think Reitman achieves what Scorsese did not. He creates a movie with roots in those ye olden times character studies. Just a simple, engrossing movie about a guy, his lifestyle, his choices and their consequences. Good stuff if done right. And without boring me. And he accomplished those things here.

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A Serious Man was serious about something though i’m not entirely sure what it was. I liked the movie. Coen movies are almost always watchable. But I have a feeling part of the point here was not having a point. The search for meaning in a mostly meaningless world.

I did really like A Serious Man though I disagree somewhat with a lot of critical takes on it. I don’t think the Job comparisons work because the lead character really isn’t that burdened. Come on, what happened to him that was that unusual or a direct assault on him? Worse things happened to his brother, his wife’s new fiance, etc. He’s burdened by extension and like many people suffers from some kind of martyr syndrome.

But I felt that was part of the point. There’s sort of this hapless search for meaning that I think mirrors some of that search the film goer is supposed to be conducting looking for meaning in the film. Like that search and the main character the film is serious about something. It’s just not meant to be obvious what it was. Part of the point felt like things don’t have a point apart from perspective. There’s a scene with a young Rabbi who gives a speech about just that. Perspective. It was too glaring to not mean more than most viewers have acknowledged after seeing this movie. Our lead is not Job, he’s one of the guys feeling the elephant in Roshomon and like most humans he thinks what he  feels is all about him.

There’s a debated opening scene that takes place about a hundred years before and has no clear relationship to the rest of the film. Many have offered this as part of a family curse leading to the protaganists burdens. Again, I think this is an amazingly bad reading of the scene and the movie that follows. I think I even remember hearing one of the Coen’s say it was meant just as a throw in like an old time film short to set the tone but had nothing to do with the characters. Maybe they’re being coy, but I think it fits with that fruitless search for meaning in both life and the movie. Apart from perspective that is. The tragedy is we spend so much time worrying about things we can control and taking ourselves far too seriously until eventually something comes along that truly is tragic and changes everything.

And I think that’s what the final and ending shot signifies.

See it and determine for yourself.

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Watched 500 Days Of Summer the other night. It was ok. I love Zooey Dechanel. Her character isn’t too likable in this movie though. But that’s ok. The movie is more about the dude which I didn’t see coming. Not a lot to analyze here. Had some nice moments. I wouldn’t knock people down in video store to get the last copy. If it comes to that for you.

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Really found The Hurt Locker to be overrated. Actually I must admit I didn’t even finish watching it. I think it’s going to win the Academy Award. Not Avatar. Personally I don’t want either to win. But THL has become a sentimental, thinking persons choice. And usually I love those. But I didn’t find anything all that original here. It seemed like a mix of Iraq war movies I’d seen. Katharyn Bigelo is getting lots of hype. I’m not saying this is a bad movie. But I think it’s support comes from the fact that it’s a war movie. And as much as right wingers love war, lefties love war movies. Especially the modern versions that show what hell war is.

I think it makes many people feel less guilty about whining about stuff while not being in the line of fire. If one loves movies like this and Three Kings, Redacted etc, I think you feel you’re making a statement. It’s like, so yeah I’m against war, but it’s because I get how rough it is on the soldiers, so I’m going to support movies with pretty people pretending to be soldiers going through hell as a way of supporting real soldiers going through hell. Or something like that.

Long as it’s not too long. That’s be, like hell, to sit through.

Before you scoff, I’m not saying it’s not a good movie for the type of movie it is. I’m not saying only liberals like it or they can’t think for themselves. (Though I would posit that anyone who aligns with a preexisting label such as conservative or liberal has made a choice to do less thinking for themselves from jump street). But not everyone does that. And some that do do so as a matter of convenience. A shorthand for a philosophical touchstone with it’s own offshoots. Whatever. We’re not all unique snowflakes. And mostly THL is a bunch of people standing around waiting for stuff to happen and it happening with cool special effect shots. That may be war. But war is mostly boring. I want to watch it as much as I want to see Shutter Island again.

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As for rest of Oscar choices, personally I’d like to see Up win. It won’t of course though it will take animated best. Up In The Air would be ok, as would A Serious Man. But I’m not sure I feel any of these 10 choices are all that fantastic. I certainly hope Avatar loses. but it would seem to be Cameron vs his ex wife and if it comes to that I’m going with the wife. Because that’s what a good liberal is supposed to do right?

I would also be ok with District 9 winning. More than ok though it ripped off Alien Nation. Not likely though. Inglorious Basterds may have best choice of upset. But though i liked it it was kind of tedious at points;. And ultimately what was the point? I guess if you like alternative history stories you’d like this. But since the events take place fairly close to wars end as I remember it it would seem even with the Basterds on the scene the damage is done and all you get is a more satisfying termination to war. Not a whole lot less dead Jews.

Precious I didn’t see. Don’t have to. It’s basically my life story. I lived it. I am a large incestuously raped inner city black woman in a middle class white man’s body. Everyone gets that about me. Don’t need to see it on the big screen.

And I hope Bridges wins. Didn’t see Crazy Heart. Don’t want to see it. Looks like cliched old broken down drunk finds late chance at love and redemption shlock I’ve seen dozens of times. But the Bridge man is awesome. he deserves to win for Jeff Lebowski. One of the underrated performances ever. He’s done other very good work. But he embodied the iconic Dude man. I mean, in the parlance of the times.  But hey well, that just, like, my opinion man.

It’s here. The unofficial end of Winter and welcoming of hope for so many Americans for so many decades arrives and I for one am happy to see the old ball game.

 Sure Baseball is not what it once was. The world has changed and so has the game. But it remains a national treasure even though it’s gone global. In fact when you look at the higher percentages of non American players in the league and the intensity foreign fans had in the just completed World Baseball Classic, it might not be far off from truth to say Baseball is held in higher regard in Asia and Latin America than it is here.

  But for those of us who grew up in and around the game it’s return is refulgent with wonderfully nostalgic sights, smells, and sounds. It’s aromatic with hope and a boys grand ideas and iconic images. It’s memories that are attended with not only the game as played on the big league level of course. These feelings are nourished and imprinted by the accoutrements of the Baseball milieu. It’s flipping cards, trading them and trying to get a steal like a big league GM. It’s the smell of that pink sheet of bubble gum that comes with the cards and seems to stay on them for months like new car smell. It’s breaking in your new mitt. Or getting the old one out after a Winter of dissuse and getting it into game shape. It’s the smell of the leather of that mitt, the feel of it’s strings as you tie them to your specifications.

 Opening Day and the season in general offer us the game from afar. Or it does so at least  for those of us for whom opportunity and or viablity on the playing field has faded away. But despite that distance, a distance that grows ever more frustratingly with each season further from our own opening day’s and one season closer to our final Winter, the game goes on. And in it’s ritualistic return each April those of us who grew up on the game, who know it as a fan and have at least some echo of what a ball popping in the glove and cracking against the bat sound and feel like from countless hours of play, can find solace in a long seasons ups and downs.

  Whether we played in backyards, front streets or nearby parks, and whether it was hardball, stickball, or tennis ball wiffle, playing Baseball was the soundtrack, movie, and lifeblood of most of our Spring and Summer days. And nights. There were far too many evenings to remember playing until it got so dark it was getting dangerous. We wanted to get every ounce of the pure joy of the game. And the game means more than the score, the innings, the rules or any of the strictly proscribed aspects of Baseball. It was the chatter, the fellowship, the aforementioned sounds and smells. It was the identification with certain players and teams. The memorizations of stats, uniform numbers, and batting stances. Adults my age are probably the first generation of adults to still play video games into their 30′s and 40′s and I think part of the reason for this is that we can’t go out and play games on the streets, fields, and yards anymore. Video games offer a taste of play, it’s innocence and benign intensity. But it does so without all those glorious elements to attend to it. There are no smells, no real sounds, or organically valid results. There is no cameraderie.

There is no dusk till dawn as I used to call it: “You want to do dusk till dawn?” THis was a common question of mine towards friends on Summer mornings or Spring and Fall weekends. Sure you can play video games all day and night. I’ve done that too. But I doubt the days used to that end will be recalled with wistful nostalgia decades later.

 But Baseball season brings much of this back. The plays I made in Little League, the plays I watched both at Shea and Yankee Stadium which no longer exist as of this year and those I watched on tv from black and white 12 inch screen with 13 channels, to 25 inch color tv with cable, to 50 inch hi def with too many channels to care about and access to every game. There are secrets the game possesses that only true fans can understand. Many a book and a poem has been written waxing literary on baseball from every angle including historical, tragic, human, and fiction. Much has been made of Baseball holding a mirror to America as it has grown up the past century or so. Some of it is hype, but most of it is true. I’ve connected to those parallels and symetries since I was in my teens. I got it and it got me.

 Now a Baseball season is another opportunity to feel connected to that greater picture that offered some of the truest, best, and perhaps little connection to community I’ve known. Baseball season is much of this for many fans with their own particular additions and subtractions that have made the game mean more than the lines of a boxscore. From it’s initial hopes, to dawning reality, to attempts to alter course midway through with trades or promotions, to it’s end that sometimes goes with a whimper, sometimes a bang, the game offers not only nostalgia, but controversy, rumor, discussion, insider perspective, outsider recognition, the exalted, the mundane, bright colors, charming new parks, social parallels, and a sense of things in microcosm within the tidy confines of a season.

  And the fact that the season has it’s life in Winter and the Hot Stove League enhances the anticipation. For good or bad the game still holds a mirror and the mirror doesn’t stop reflecting even after one story is told. Part of the bad the game now reflects is the growing disparity between the haves and have nots. It’s hurt out country and I think it hurst the game. We need to cut some fat and so does MLB. Unfortunately they will continue to field too many teams, with watered down talent, in too many cities that can not mantain competitive balance with the New Yorks and Bostons year in and out. But things have always changed in the game. Some as prelude to change in America. sometimes following. Often in lockstep. Just look at the history of race relations in the game and the country. Or labor-management. Now america outsources and so does the game. Arguably this hurts both though none would deny the growing passion for the game outside our borders or the influx of talent from abroad. I could say and relate so much more. perhaps in other posts. But I want to get into the game.

So enough waxing. Here are my picks on the record so I can gloat if I get some of these right, because I haven’t seen asy picks quite like these.

 National League

East                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Florida Marlins                                                                                                                                                                                                         Atlanta Braves                                                                                                                                                                                                          New York Mets                                                                                                                                                                                                     Philadelphia Phillies                                                                                                                                                                                    Washington Nationals

Central

Chicago Cubs                                                                                                                                                                                                      Cincinnatti Reds                                                                                                                                                                                                            St Louis Cardinals                                                                                                                                                                                          Pittsburgh Pirates                                                                                                                                                                                       Milwaukee Brewers                                                                                                                                                                                        Houston Astros

West                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Los Angelas Dodgers                                                                                                                                                                                       Arizona Diamondbacks                                                                                                                                                                                           San Francisco Giants                                                                                                                                                                                            Colorado Rockies                                                                                                                                                                                                        San Diego Padres

American League

East                                                                                                                                                                                                                                New York Yankees                                                                                                                                                                                             Tampa Bay Devil Rays                                                                                                                                                                                        Boston Red Sox                                                                                                                                                                                            Baltimore Orioles                                                                                                                                                                                            Toronto Bluejays

Central                                                                                                                                                                                                              Cleveland Indians                                                                                                                                                                                                Kansas City Royals                                                                                                                                                                                     Minnesota Twins                                                                                                                                                                                               Chicago White Sox                                                                                                                                                                                             Detroit Tigers              

 West                                                                                                                                                                                                                           Texas Rangers                                                                                                                                                                                                  Anaheim Angels                                                                                                                                                                                                        Oakland A’s                                                                                                                                                                                                            Seattle Mariners

  Now I’m not much for playoff predictions in April. So much of October Baseball these days is who’s hot and not and who’s healthy and not at that time of the year. But in an effort towards comprehensive coverage I’ll thow a few things out including some award picks.

 NL Championship Series I see coming down to who I see as the two best teams in the NL. Two teams not a lot have, one of whom no one has. The Los Angelas Dodgers and Florida Marlins respectively.

ALCS I’ll whittle down to Yankees vs Texas Rangers. Yes the Texas Rangers. What am I nuts? I’m gambling on some things though. They have a couple of good minor league arms I’m betting play a role and I think they are in a good position to make a deal trading away their signature excess of young hitting talent for some pitching that will surely be available on the trade market by the end of July. I think the INdians fall into this category as well though certainly Boston, the Yanks, and Cubs are also in good position to make deals happen if needed.

  I hope I’m wrong on the Mets but I don’t think the starting pitching is any good after Santana. I don’t get why poeple continue to insist it is or not see the role they had in the fames bullpen meltdowns the past 2 years. Lots of David Wright for MVP picks out there but I think Wright goes the other way, especially in Citifield and has his worst season.

  NL MVP I’d lean towards Ramirez.

   Ok that’s a cop out since I can’t decide which Ramirez. Manny or Hanley. I’l lean towards the latter in Florida. I’m giving the Marlins ROY also in Cameron Maybin. They may get Cy Young too with one of their youngins but it’s hard to pick against Lincecum in SF again.

   I’ll go Josh Hamilton for AL MVP. AJ Burnett rather than Sabbathia in NY for Cy Young, and I’ve got no clue on ROY. I’ll throw Feliz in Texas in there though he’s not even on the team right now.

   Let the games begin!

Only more important.

When is it ok to use synths in a rock genre? Is it ever ok? DOes it’s use violate god’s natural order?

Good questions all. I myself have been split on this issue over the decades. I must admit that to some extent I have pushed the debate aside in my mind so as to not have to take sides.

But let’s look at an early example of the dilemma this has caused me. Van Halen was the group that saved me from the sugary emptiness of pop music. Until I heard Eddie’s guitar I was on my way to life in Hell listening to Michael Jackson and Duran Duran. BUt shortly after this all started out came Jump. Jump is of course all about Eddie dropping the guitar and pressing a lot of buttons on a machine. And David Lee Roth jumping low budgetly.

One could say by softening the sound at that early stage of my development it made a transition from gay music to grown up music more palatable. Sort of gateway keyboards if you will. But there has always been a part of me that can dig a good synth sound. Provided it’s timely. I dig The Cars. I love their sound. But are they the kind of band where synth judgements lose meaning. Dismissing them for their usage is like instantly dismissing Slayer because their lyrics can’t be understood.

It’s who they are. You either like that or not.

On the other hand, though it was who they were there can be little doubt that Europe (think heavy keyboards on FInal Countdown) were deserving of mocking. THeir music might even be said to be gay.

Now by gay I don’t mean for homosexuals or made by homosexuals. Gayness in the pop cultural sense  has other far deeper connotations. Sexual gayness is swell. A benefit to me even. Gayness in music, movies etc is another matter. That leads me to a subquestion of this debate. Does the use of keyboards in rock genres mean a song is gay.

Now I’m not inferring these are the most important questions of our time.

I’m saying it.

THese are the most important questions of our time.

Until we have fully dealt with this it will continue to haunt the national psyche as it has since the 80′s made gayness in music such a cliche we stopped even being able to recognize ironic gayness or full on gayness in music.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I have many gay friends and this is an issue for them as well. No American is left behind when it comes to the effects of keyboards in a rock song. THis is a topic worthy of fuller flushing out but I have to go to work now. Sometime in the next few minutes I will have to make a personal choice:

To listen to a ballad, straight on rock song, or a hybrid along the lines of Journey whose use of keyboards can be viewed as either groundbreaking or society destroying depending on your point of view. But I will deal with this choice head on.

Will you?

So here goes:

We are two weeks from Baseball starting for real and I feel the usual sense of anticipation though mixed with dread. I truly think the Mets will suck, the Red Sox be mediocre and the Yankees run away with things. And I’m usually pretty good with this stuff. But not perfect so i hold out hope for my imperfections to do me some good for once. I have tickets for my first Citifield game May 29th. Looking forward to scoping out the new digs. Hope to get there early and just explore the structure, the stores, and the eateries. I’ll see if there’s any truth to the rumor the Mets will feature The Heimlich Club, as the parks spotlight new Mets themed restaurant.

Actually I started the rumor so it’s unlikely unless I can project things like a Cylon.

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Speaking of which, Battlestar Galactica is gone. sad to see the show go. THe finale will need time to formulate itself into something worthy of a more coherent judgement. Right now my feelings towards it are vague. ANd the show is at least partially to blame because they were vague in their denoument. Looks like ROn Moore and Dave Eick tried to please everyone from the ultra religious to atheists and all the majority of tweeners. Judging from internet reactions they didn’t do a great job of this though there are plenty of opinions covering the spectrum.

One thing I think they are all missing was the religious sentiment or lack thereof. Everyone seems to think it posed a clear god figure who is the Oz behind the curtain of the shows events. While I agree with those that say this was a cop out and the ultimate deux ex machina to explain so much by not explaining and instead attributing so much to some invisible being who sent us post death Starbuck and In-Head Baltar and Six, as well as sending Hera and all the coordinates to a new home through the gift of song.

When i look at it this way, well, it makes me want to unwatch 4 years of BSG. But as Futurama tells us, “you’ve watched it! You can’t unwatch it!”

But there is another angle not many are looking at. One that gives that vagueness for even those not into the religious p.o.v., which seems to be the greater part of BSG’s internet community who are not happy about resolving a science fiction show with religious constructs.

But at the end, in Times Square, Baltar does tell 6 (In Heads) that IT doesn’t like being called God. Six also makes a face clearly showing her somewhat at odds with the being, entity, or what have you, that Baltar is referring to. Considering her monotheistic background these two moments at the end seem to point to something else being Oz besides any normal views of God. So once you go there you’re back to enough vagueness for everyone to come away with a happy feeling unless they, you know, wanted some clear answers for their hours of viewership invested over 4 years.

For me, that vagueness allows me to wonder if Head Baltar’s God is a machine. Remember this has happened before and will happen again. It happened even before the BSG universe we know of. Maybe before the Final Five. What if we go back far enough and think they were seeded by a species just as our Earth was by Hera and hers? ANd so on and so on. THrow in Six’s speech about complex systems and all the technology warnings, and consider the idea of In-Head Angels, demons, ghosts, or whatever we think of them as within the context of a universe where that technology and complexity has led to uploading and downloading of consciousness into brand new bodies, and I start to wonder if these projections sent to aid some of the Fleet (or all of it in Starbucks case) are possible due to a shared wiring that humans and Cylons have going back hundreds of thousands or even millions of years with these other progenitors. And if at some point in all this evolution of technology and the working of complex systems the system that put it into being and stands behind the curtain on BSG’s journey, is an actual machine.

Call it the machine in the ghost of Jung’s collective consciousness.

Maybe a stretch, but I bet when Moore and Eik come out with their podcasts and interviews they will not explicitly state that God is behind it all. As a matter of fact I’m pretty sure I read one of them, Moore I think, say they were an atheist in an interview a couple of years ago.

Anyway, the finale could have been more clear, more bold in its assertions, braver in its resolutions, and provided closure that felt more organic to what has come before. I think there is little doubt they’ve made mistakes and had to juggle things down the stretch. Some things felt forced, other things, as I’ve said, were just left to imagination. I think at least part of this was because they could offer no satisfying answers themselves. But I’m certainly not opposed to having to ponder intent in fiction and discuss alternative explanations. It’s one of the things that make it fun. Sometimes it’s a quality that makes it great. I don’t think that was the case here because there is too much of a sense of much unresolved and deliberately avoided.

And man those sci fi cliches. THe bad technology allegory being the central one of course. Does anyone ever get tired of this or think its original? Even the idea of seeding Earth and we are all Cylons was both foreseeable 4 seasons ago and derivative. I hoped it wouldn’t be that obvious or silly but grew more accepting of the fact that we weren’t getting a tremendously breathtaking or original ending to all this.

But hey there is little new under the Sun, and maybe I need to reset expectations.

THere’s more to be said another time.  But I miss the show and shout a “So say we all!” to all its characters.

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I have all but decided to get a new face. At least partly.  New lives are even harder to come by. If you know a good face store let me know. Or life store for that matter.

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I really wonder what the hell I am doing living in Kingston NY.

So I’ll express it in Haiku:

kingston is not me                                                                                                                                                                                                    hive of scum and villiany                                                                                                                                                                                    these droids are not mine

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I don’t get the NIT tournament. You have the 64 teams in the NCAA tourney culminating in the almost religiously thought of Final Four. And let me say that any final four without Cylon University is no final four. But then you have this NIT thing going on which ostensibly seems to me to be a competition with televised games, paid crowds, etc to determine the 65th best team in the country.

Am I wrong here?

How is this allowed to go on? Does Obama know? Because you know, he seems way too interested in the goings on of college Basketball.

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Has he healed the economy yet? Because a lot of idiots seemed to think we’d see good things happening in the first 100 days.

We really are a stupid people.

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Are young women better looking today or am I just noticing more? I’m not the only one noticing this so I think something is up and I aim to get to the bottom of it. Right now I’m working on the hairstyle theory. i think throughout most of our history in which pictures and video are available women hadn’t yet figured out what I knew a long time ago: fancy hairstyles make them look crappy. Just long straight and framing the face is hot. Since Jennifer Aniston made that look of hers imitatable I think more women are going that way and it works for most.

Not sure yet. And that still doesn’t explain the way they look in jeans. But this could just be a wonder of modern engineering at its finest.

I’ll get back to you when I get more answers. If I suddenly disappear, well, you should look to the sexual-frustration- entertainment-cultural-genetics-industrial complex for answers.

Until then i soldier on for webslingers everywhere.

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SPeaking of cell phones I still don’t know why any of us need these things except Doctors. It’s such a huge affectation. We keep accumulating these shiny new baubles as we hang on to the hedonistic treadmill and it’s not making too many of us happy. Sure you can say you want to keep in touch with work or family for emergencies. And they can come in handy. But a simpler phone or pager with no elaborate gadgets would do just as well. Society got on pretty well without any of this stuff until recently and science has yet to detect the survival  gene for instant communication.

WHich is not meant as an anti-technology rant. I love technology and usually am bothered by the countless American movies and literature that demonizes it. I think tech and science for the most part have only improved life and will continue to only improve it.

On that subject I saw The Watchmen and it too has some of that anti-tech point of view. Not going to get off on a long review as I’d like to because I don’t have the patience for that kind of thing anymore and the hubris and delusion that anyone cares about my analysis is no longer a symptom I am suffering from. But I liked the movie. Some of the speeches and romantic scenes bought it screeching to an uncomfortable stop at times and it was too long. But overrall a good job despite reinforcing that wary of science belief system through the auspices of Dr Manhattan and Ozymandias.

Science may well separate us a bit from our humanity as it does the big blue guy but considering much of what our humanity consists of I don’t think that’s a bad thing. And though Ozy’s kind of dispassionate analysis of our all too human issues can lead to some destructive decisions I tend to think those decisions come more from ideology than intelligence. His is not unlike the rationalizations of the Dick Cheney’s of our history but do we really believe those decisions were made out of too much thought? Or not enough?

I keep liking Green Day more and am so looking forward to the new concept album in May I want to freeze myself until then like Eric Cartman waiting for the Nintendo Wii.

There’s a point in life where you start losing more things than you gain. This is not a good place to get to especially if you have little to lose. Maybe that’s why all this stuff, these gadgets excite me less. Bread and circuses while the Kingdom of self crumbles.

Bye web slingers.

Of course I could have just gotten up from my recliner at home and been there in under 10 minutes. But it’s always more preferable to do these things when already out. Especially if I’m doing it later than 1 which is when I usually do them.

Anyway, there I am wondering what kind of audience you get at 11pm for a movie in Poughkeepsie. Turned out to be a pretty large one. And there were even later times for other movies. I was impressed. Until I noticed that the majority of the crowd were at least 20 years younger than me. Once you observe the fact that I was alone you can see why I might have felt like a creepy old pervert. In fact I felt so bad I almost turned around and went right back home. That’s about a 45 minute drive each way to go in the lobby and leave. The idea of wasting that gas for nothing but a late ride bothered me so I wander over to the automated ticket booth and start pushing buttons still not committed but wanting to see how it worked and how much a ticket was. About a quarter short of $10. So by not spending that I could justify heading home right there. Cut my losses. By not going in I’d be saving money even with the gas expenditure.

Perhaps purposefully, perhaps not, I hit the curious buy ticket to Benjamin Button button along the side. Still not sure, I could have walked away since I hadn’t slid my card in. Then an older couple turn the corner just after I saw a middle age couple with a baby, the woman wearing some kind of backwards culture headdress denoting her inferiority to her man. They all seemed to be heading into the same show so i decided I really wanted to see the movie and that I wasn’t the only freak there so i pulled out my card and got my ticket.

I got a coffee that tasted more like a milkshake, found a seat in one of their many spacious and comfortable theaters and settled in. Some middle age guy with 3 older people eventually sit right next to me and I realize this makes me look like I’m with them to everyone but them. So the creepy loner stigma is removed until the end of the movie. Except to the people next to me who know the truth. But I’m willing to make that trade off. I’m buying their judgment in return for becoming invisible to the rest of the room. Plus they were my age and up and could presumably understand the vicissitudes like takes and learned not to jump to hasty judgments.

I looked clean and did my best to send telepathic signals to them that I was doing this to facilitate my managerial job as well as possible. So I sniffed broadly and tried to look important as I settled in for the trailers keeping an eye on the peripheral lights which were dimmed but which i couldn’t wait to go out completely so i could disappear further.

So most people know the premise of the movie. Brad Pitt ages backwards. The movie is a slow meditation on many things and youth and aging seemed to be one of them. Or two of them. Anyway, feeling the way I was in the situation I was in, I could certainly feel the sting of not only age but a feeling of having lived life wrongly. ::::::::::::Slight Spoiler in next sentence:::::::::::Because whatever TCCOBB is about, and I wasn’t always sure just what the movie was on about, I think most are left with an impression of the wrongness of living and dying the way he lives and dies.

I think David Fincher was also trying to say something about being what you want to be and reinventing yourself. And how any life relies heavily on waiting for those few precious periods where things come together, the timing is right, and it all falls into place. That doesn’t happen much. And I got to thinking how it never really has for me. That and that feeling of having lived life wrongly, gotten the timing all wrong, and passively watched it happen with a growing sense of inevitability and irreconcilable despair. Being there amongst all these kids while I sat alone waiting to check in on my middle management job brought those timing issues and wrongness home a bit louder than usual.

Because they’re always there. It’s certainly not the first time I’ve gone to the movies alone the past couple of years. It always stings but somehow less so at the Hudson Valley Mall or Upstate Theater in Rhinebeck during late afternoon or earlier evening shows. I remember seeing Good NIght, And Good Luck at HVM at a 10pm showing. i was the only one in the theater and I felt pretty bad for keeping people there and forcing them to show a movie to one person. That felt wrong. It’s felt wrong and accompanied by a growing sense of heading inexorably into an unavoidably horrible future since then. But Friday night at the Galleria with the curious Ben Button mocking my growing obsolescence on a huge screen it felt like that future was more manifest than ever and I didn’t even get my chance to meet in the middle for whatever short time things could be perfect like Button does with Daisy.

And that kind of sucks because it doesn’t get any likelier as you get older. And I got that aspect of the movie because it’s something I had came into it with. It’s been a long time since I wanted to live a happy life full of decades of bliss, companionship, and happiness. Somewhere in the past decade or two I decided my case was too curiously wrong for that. But I did hang on the hope that a few years of semi-bliss could be squeezed out of the old boy. And I was more than willing to cooperate fully in accepting and creating one good decade of life where it came together. The right girl, in the right place, with the right job, and with enough health, youth, looks, and mental acuity left to embrace it to its fullest.

And I realized that the past decade may have been that time and was as good as it got. Or will get. And that felt so terribly wrong. And fuck Benjamin Button for doing so little with his old man’s wisdom in a young man’s body. Or fuck the idea that being out of time and living backwards make it impossible to do more. Fuck whatever it was it was all supposed to mean. I didn’t hate the movie. I didn’t love the movie. Sure like many critics I thought they should have done more with the big conceit of a man aging backwards. But I also thought those critics missed some things they did do and that the idea did matter to the film. I like David Fincher (especially Fight Club) and think he made a good movie. But it wasn’t great and fuck his main character for being such an abomination of nature and for reminding me how much of a gift a chance at a brief and fleeting joy can be and how curious my own life spent walking out of time with much of the world has been.

So i give The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button 3 Fuck You’s.

To this end the festivities will start on Thanksgiving when I will be hunting down Native Americans and killing them and their families with all manner of weapons ranging from muskets to pox riddled blankets I’ll drop off in their conveniently always needy communities.

On Friday I’ll leer at some pretty young white women and when they show no interest I’ll accuse them of being witches and sorcerers and get my fellow participants to put them on trial, tie them to stakes, and burn them.

But the celebrating of our rich history that started with that merry band of repressed psychotics doesn’t end there. On Saturday I will plant a tobacco field in my backyard where I’ll force local Kingston black men and boys to work it at gunpoint. They will also be kept shackled to each other and guarded by others for long periods so I can have a go at their women folk who won’t be as resistive as the witches who we burned all that entitlement and haughtiness manifest in not having sex with me, right out of. So after we fornicate with the slaves wives and daughters they will be impregnated (these are all ritual acts of course-like a parade) and on Sunday I will club the newborn ritual infants with bibles until they cower in fear at the book which I will then have read to them everyday by their parents as both learn to accept this lifestyle and oppression and sublimate their hope and for freedom and self worth into a made up invisible world they can go to if they continue to act real meek and generally accept their material and Earthly lot.

What a weekend that will be I tell you.

On Monday, upon hearing that some of those blacks are starting to get uppity and are even forming alliances with some of the poorer and less fortunate local whites, I will get the whites of my stature together to drum up reasons to overthrow the government in a bloody revolution that will redirect the slaves and poor whites energies and hatred away from me and my kind. It will also conveniently kill many of them.

It will also make me more money as I won’t have pay taxes and tithes on goods or to answer to anyone when it comes to making laws that do right by me. Of course I will say I hadn’t thought of that.

Really I hadn’t.

It’s just these damn British-Neoconservatives-Terorists, get me so mad I can notteth think straighteth!!

On Tuesday north and south Kingston will war over that whole slave issue. I will take the Northern abolitionist side despite my having owned slaves and profited from them. The Front St/Wall St area will be burned to the ground during this ceremony. I’m hoping serendipity will be on our side and the president will happen to get assassinated this week as well.

I will complete the week by moving west across my backyard setting up claims on holes there and quickly moving on after each spots resources have been exhausted. I will scam many people on fake claims in the process and just generally take advantage of the lawlessness and naivete this expansion and hope will breed in people desperate enough to want to spend their holidays in my backyard because they’re so fucked up. Due to this, rules and law will be made up as we go, always coming after I have gained as much power and wealth from the prior lawlessness as possible.

So there it is. Anyone who wants to celebrate a real American Thanksgiving with me is welcome to join in on the fun (African Americans will have no choice of course).

Wait till you see what I have planned for Christmas!

I am speechless.

I am without speech.

And in tears.

 Sometimes I love this fucking country.

Might be my autobiography title. Or more likely a gravestone epitaph. Stupid Human Titles. Or Dead Diary for that matter. But that too falls under the heading of stupid human titles. Truly tragic. Truly Tragic: A Life Not LIved! With the exclamation point. SO many possibilities. All of them stupid. On to business.

______

I’m just going to come right out and say this and damn what society may say about me. I like Vanilla Sky. Sure it’s a flawed film and it goes a bit crazy at the end but the thing is damn watchable to me. THis is possibly due to some of the very superficiality and gloss of the film that the movie itself is partly about.  I want the LE alternative. Fill my head with the imagery most evocative of happiness from my past, a missed opportunity girl recast in a form fitted psuedo reality playing to my needs, and frakking immortality to make up for a lot of lost time. Instead of starting from that rainy street pop me back in the 80′s somewhere and let’s do this thing again with all those tools at my disposal but in an imaginary virtual Dudescape meant to make with the happy and content.

I’d probably opt for a cloudy and rainy horizon overlaying my “lucid dream,” instead of Cruise’s Vanilla Sky. I always found those types of days more vivid and some of my best memories are from the types of days where the sky feels closer, the concrete cleaner, and the atmosphere charged with not only ions but the presence of fellow travelers who you know really want or need to be out wherever you are. It’s like all our actions are more shared for having braved the weather to execute them. There’s someting cozy about those types of days. Something safe and singular and slightly off skew like the view from a window pleasantly blurred and softened by rainwater running in streaks and odalisques. A malleable geometry cushioning the hard edges of a bleak the rain can’t make any bleaker.

I would probably keep much of the iconic pop cultural imagery and NY grandeur even recognizing how it all was conveying a sense of mass consumerism. One of images as well as goods. Since WWII we have been more consumer oriented, government and industry rebuilding our economy and laying the foundations for who we are and what we’ve become through driven propoganda campaigns to equate purchasing power with equality and happiness. It is not only our stuff but out favorites whether they be our music choices, TV, books, cell phones, entertainment systems or the paintings and posters we hang in our homes that define us and that we choose to alter our reality with. The LE experience takes that altering to the nth degree. But it is no less honest and just as much a product of our ego’s and psychological makeups.

I would enter readily. Hell I’d plug into the Matrix at this point. Just as long as I can change history a bit and be more than I was or am. I stand upon a giant skyscraper a disfigured outcast but instead of jumping I stand between the elements: either a noxious gas drifting out and upwards or if fiction can help me a virtual solid with metaphorical wings flying away from the bitter wellspring of all that toxicity.

Speaking of those things that define us I was reading that studies indicate our favorite things can really tell people about our personality. To an extent. Not a surprise but now there’s clinical evidence that we choose stuff we think makes a statement about us and or gravitate to stuff that does so. With that in mind as well as with a mind towards eliminating some time wasters in life i’ve discarded some tv shows. I’m watching stuff that rivets my attention and no less. So Heroes and Chuck are gone. So is Fringe. Pushing Daisies is getting close. Still on board are the shows I can’t tear my eyes away from and that are infinitely absorbing.

They are: Mad Men, Lost, 24, BSG, South Park, The Office, and on DVD The Wire and Six Feet Under which I’m a season through on DVD in both cases. Some other shows that are more of a newsy oriented type remain in rotation such as The Daily Show, Colbert Report, and some occasional CNBC watching and assorted sports, movies and specials. These are all the shows you need for a happy life. They will have a place within the LE experience along with that missed opportunity, let’s go with Jennifer for the moment, the two of us walking through the cover of Master Of Puppets instead of Freewheelin Dylan. Ok maybe MOP is too far and surreal even for lucid dreaming. How about Jen and I driving through the highway cover of P.J.’s Yield? Yeah I like it. Feels right.

_______

One week to election day. Polls are good. I don’t trust them yet. I don’t want think it before it’s real. The latest desperation campaign from McCain-Palin is throwing out all this Socialist nonsense. And clearly that’s to be read as Communist. Can you frakking imagine that they are resorting to Cold War paranoia now? A little touch of McCarthyism in 2008. Wow. Absolutely wow. And to borrow from the era and the hearings instigated by that legendary piece of shit, have you no shame Senator, have you no shame?

Never mind that this country has always been a little socialist and just enacted major socialist policies to bail out the economy. McCain’s not talking to anyone who really pays attention anyway. Republicans know full well who their audience is. Oh the irony of that support and loyalty they show them when every strategy is predicated on those people’s stupidity, hatred, and ignorance. Historians are going to get such a kick out of us I tell you.

__________

George RR MArtin’s Songs Of FIre And Ice series is kind of cool 500 pages into it. Pure escapsist stuff of a Tolkien mixed with T.H. White type stuff. I’m not ready to start Neal Stephenson’s new book Anathem yet. I’m not worthy at this timeand need to get my house in order. Or quite possibly I’m trying to keep something to look forward to since there’s precious little of that going around.

_________

I’m a New York Giants fan.

I just wanted to say that because it’s rare I feel proud of a team of mine.

But something needs to be done about Plax.

__________

It’s time to start writing something bigger. Too many ideas are scrambled up in my head with too little time to sort them out and apply them. I’m on vacation another 5 days but it’s not enough time. I’m only just starting to decompress and think on a higher level after the first 5 days. I know when I go back the distractions, pressures, obligations, responsibilities, and agitations will commence. And stuff like that dumbs me down. Noggin’s only so big and I can’t seem to focus enough attention in multiple areas. I got to try and get a system. Yeah a system! Otherwise, poof! I completely disappear in my Faded Glory underwear.

___________

I hope this half hour multiple network Obama commercial tomorrow night doesn’t rub people the wrong way. Seems kind, you know, uppity.

To some people it might. Although they’ll say elitist. If he’s really ahead now why take the chance people will get turned off by wall to wall station to station Obamaness? It’s like Big Brother or that English dude in V For Vendetta. You know someone’s going to spin it like that. Like it shows how big his ego is and he’s all about the grandeur of Barack.

Hoepfully it’ll be no worse than a benign moment though it’s hard to imagine how it’s really going to make things any better for him at the moment.

________________

But when you look at the list of Presidential first names and all the George’s, William’s, and John’s, how cool would it be to suddenly chuck a Barack onto that list?

Because if we’re seriously ever going to get right with the actual world and not the repressed and ignorant one large pockets of this country live in, we’re going to need more names and faces better representative of it. I like that Obama can do that both for this country and abroad.

__________

I have a new cell phone. IT can do lots of things. Navigate the internet tubes, mobile tv and e mail, core an apple and all the normal futuristic cell phone stuff none of us really needs. It’s the LG Voyager though I have 30 days to take it back and exchange if for the Dare which I’m considering doing since the latter is a bit thinner and lighter but virtual keyboard instead of the flip open Qwerty.

Qwerty is fun to type by the way. I just found that out. I guess that’s why they’re called Qwerty what with all those letters right next to each other at the beginning. In honor of Jimmy Qwerty who invented typing. He’s actually a cousin of Steve Internet who invented tubing.

__________

i’m going to bet on it this time. Chinese Democracy is supposed to be out on November 23rd. I think it’s real. Of course November 23rd is also a Sunday and new stuff never comes out on a Sunday. But supposedly it’s some Best Buy thing where they will have some kind of exclusive rights to sell the album. I don’t get how it helps an artist to limit himself to one retailer. i know it’s been happening with others at places like Wal-Mart. I guess it’s not surprising in this corporate sponsored society. Soon whole lives will be brought to us by Kool-Aid the official sponsor of Joe Sixpack’s life 2012-2101.

Oh Yeah!