Protesters in Santa Monica
Seen on the corner of Lincoln and Santa Monica Blvd.
A protestor, an older woman in a sun hat, holds a sign that reads “LET THE JEWS LIVE IN THEIR HOMELAND IN PEACE.”
And I think “Well, there’s a measured yet impassioned response to the current crisis.”
She turns the sign around. The reverse reads “AND TELL HENRY KISSINGER TO SHUT UP AND STAY THE HELL OUT OF IT THIS TIME.”
And I think: “Well, okay, she’s only half-crazy.”
Meanwhile, there’s this piece from my favorite living author, David Mamet.
The “Cow Over Moon” Experiment
click for larger view
Now that science has proven that the cat does not actually play the fiddle, as many have surmised, but was merely seen near the fiddle at the time of the mysterious cutlery disappearance (CAT + FIDDLE), we now turn our attention to the heretofore long-considered “hyperbolic” or “hallucinogenic” passage concerning the “cow” that “jumped over the moon.” Looking at the above diagram, it is readily apparent that the vantage point of the LITTLE DOG (a) with regards to the COW (b) is so low, especially in relation to the surrounding horizon, and the COW so near to the LITTLE DOG, that the cow would only need to “jump” four or five feet into the air in order for the LITTLE DOG to perceive it as having jumped “over the MOON”(c). Similar unexpected juxtaposed images of dairy animals and celestial bodies have produced laughter not only in “little dogs” but in the larger breeds as well in laboratory settings (see Goose et alia, Cow, Moon, Dish, Spoon, pp 321-449, op. Cit.).
World Trade Center
When I was a child, my father described the three-act structure like this:
“In Act One, you get a guy stuck up in a tree. In Act Two, they throw rocks at him. In Act Three, you figure out how to get him down.”
Well, here we have a movie that has almost exactly that plot.
WRITER: Here’s an idea for a movie. Guy gets stuck in a tree.
STUDIO EXECUTIVE: I love it. Then what?
W. Then they throw rocks at him.
SE. Pinch me! I see dollar signs! And for the big finish?
W. Then we figure out how to get him down.
SE. This is great. Oh man, this is great. I can’t — I can’t even sit still, this is too great. We’re gonna make a shitload of money.
W. You like it?
SE. It’s — it’s poetry, honestly. You like Nic Cage?
W. Sure. You mean as the guy?
SE. In the tree, yeah.
W. Sure, yeah, okay.
SE. My guy knows his guy, he’s doing a picture for us, we’ll set up a meeting.
W. Really? That, well, that’d be g —
SE. Hey.
W. Yeah?
SE. Here’s an idea.
W. What’s that.
SE. I like the tree? I like it. Don’t get me wrong. I’m just, I’m thinking — just to make it a bigger movie, mind you —
W. Yeah?
SE. What if — and this is the bad version — what if, instead of a tree?
W. Yeah?
SE. A skyscraper.
W. Skyscraper?
SE. Guy gets stuck in a skyscraper.
W. Why would he get stuck in a skyscraper?
SE. I dunno. Maybe he’s got acrophobia, maybe he’s a construction worker, maybe he’s a fireman. Hey! Instead of a tree, building on fire.
W. Uh huh —
SE. Yeah, building on fire! He’s a fireman!
W. Didn’t Ladder 49 bomb?
SE. Shit, yeah. Bad idea. Hey. You know what?
W. What.
SE. Two skyscrapers.
W. (pause) Two —
SE. Yeah, not one skyscraper, two skyscrapers. And instead of him being stuck up in it? He’s stuck under it.
W. Mm —
SE. See? We stand the whole thing on its head.
W. Right, right — we, we seem to be getting away from the simplicity of the “tree” concept.
SE. Two skyscrapers. They fall down. And we give him somebody to talk to. Remember how Tom Hanks had that soccer ball in Cast Away? Same thing. We give him a, a, I dunno, a black friend or something.
W. I read that Latinos are America’s fastest-growing demographic.
SE. Perfect. Latino friend, that’s perfect. See? And so there’s two guys. Two skyscrapers, two guys. See? Now we’re thinking in terms of “theme.” We’re polishing the script we haven’t even written yet!
W. And in Act Three we get them out.
SE. That’s the movie.
W. And we can still throw rocks at them in Act Two?
SE. Act Two is all about the throwing of rocks. So many rocks. By the end of the movie, these guys will be spitting little rocks out of their mouths. Now all we need is two collapsed skyscrapers. You like Oliver Stone? He’s looking for a project.
What the hell happened to The Onion?
I moved to Santa Monica six months ago and it just started showing up at my local record store.
First, I notice that it’s been re-designed.
Second, I notice that it’s now unfunny and stupid.
This is the Onion, the august, revered Onion, the paper a grateful nation once turned to each week to make sense of the world?
Let’s look at the front page: “New Oliver Stone 9/11 Film Introduces ‘Single Plane Theory’ — Jesus, an Oliver Stone conspiracy joke? Really? Is that the best they came up with this week?
Below the fold: “Condoleeza Rice Holds Bathtime Talks With Undersea Representatives.” The story goes on, about Rice having talks with the toys in her bathtub. What? Huh? Skewering what burning public issue, exactly?
Other headlines: “Hasbro Concedes World Not Ready for Rubik’s Chicken” — again, huh?
“Millions Of Americans Buying Floyd Landis-Inspired Bracelets” — with a photo of said bracelet, yellow rubber (referring to the Lance Armstrong bracelet), which reads “Cheat to Win.” On the nose, unfunny, landing with a thud.
“Twin Mysteries Of Missing Hamster, Clogged Sink Solved Simultaneously” — honestly, these are the kinds of headlines I would expect from a group of high-school students trying to imitate The Onion.
On Page 4, “Abusive Husband Has Sense of Humor About It” — I’ll admit, the headline got my attention, but the story is almost unbearably unfunny. The “joke,” apparently, is that the abusive man, who is described as breaking his wife’s jaw, beating her with a wrench, giving her a bloody nose, and biting her on the head, is able to laugh about his predicament. There is no attempt to explain why “Abusive Husband” and “Laughing at Life” should go together in humorous juxtaposition, and as the article trudges on, it seems we’re just supposed to laugh at the way the wife is being beaten and humiliated. Indeed, mere inches away is a new feature, “Unsung Heroes,” where a woman named Sheila Kessler is described as having “had her third abortion Wednesday, but didn’t bitch about it so much as she did the past two.” I can’t think of a time of my life when I would have found that funny, but having it next to the piece that supposedly “pokes fun” at the abusive husband, it made my skin crawl.
There are many new comics in the new re-design. They’re all unfunny, and some of them are so unfunny that I can’t tell if they’re supposed to be satires or or not.
Where there used to be the irreplaceable Jackie Harvey, there is now the eminently replaceable Amelie Gillette, who writes a completely straight-faced, ordinary, slightly-bitchy, Entertainment Weekly-style “Hollywood tidbit” column.
The only headline I laughed at was “Road Trip Ruined by Illinois.”
“American Voices” continues to hit the mark, however. The subject is “Universal Health Care for San Fransisco” and Henry Gaven, Historian, opines “First they make a mockery of my bitter, loveless marriage, now they make a mockery of my restrictive, overpriced health care. Is nothing sacred to these monsters?”
Projector bulb update
I could have ordered this projector bulb from a number of places on line, but I thought I’d be a mensch and support a local business. So I called up the home theater specialist on the corner and asked them if they had a bulb in stock.
They did not, but said they could get one for me in a week.
That was eight weeks ago. During that time, I have actually gone to New York and shot a feature film and returned.
Now then. Based on my conversations with the knowledgeable, friendly guy on the other end of the line, I formed a mental picture of him in my head. I imagined him, for some reason, as an aging Venice Beach hippie type, I don’t know why, but I imagined him with long, thin blond hair in a pony tail and a perpetual three-day shadow. I imagined him coming to work in a muscle t with a Hawaiian shirt over it, and wearing yellow-tinted sunglasses indoors, and always chewing on a toothpick, and with a gold stud in one of his ears.
Again, I say, I don’t know why I imagined this, at all the other high-end video stores they have a bunch of smooth, well-groomed, oily young men who have no compunctions about selling you a $200 connection cord. Because this place looks more nuts-and-bolts from the outside, I guess, I imagined it was more like an auto-body shop or something.
Today, I was in the neighborhood so I thought I’d go in and say hi and ask what the hell happened to my projector bulb. The guy in my imagination was, of course, nowhere to be seen. Instead, there was a guy who bore and uncomfortable similarity to Nice Guy Eddie from Reservoir Dogs. The guy was a little chunky and had short, wavy hair and even walked like Nice Guy Eddie. He also did a little huffing thing when he walked. He didn’t seem that out of shape, but the huffing thing struck me as odd.
Anyway, no bulb. Nice Guy Eddie has to order from a head office, and the head office doesn’t return his phone calls, and anyway now he says it “normally” takes six to eight weeks for a part like that.
Normally, at this point I get angry and say something like “Then why did you tell me it was going to take a week?” But for some reason, because the guy looked like Nice Guy Eddie and I am still saddened by the passing of Chris Penn, I decided “Hey, I live in California now, I’m not supposed to get upset about that kind of thing.”
So there’s an ever-growing stack of DVDs on my “DVDs to watch” pile, and my apologies to my dozen or so readers.
In the meantime, I’ve just discovered that I can post drawings from my own collection on this here blog, so I thought I might start doing that. Here’s one now. It’s called “The Two Cinemas”
click for readable view
Two magazines, two covers, one confused reader
Two stories about heavy topics that will blow your mind.
First, the new issue of Rolling Stone. Breaking news! Led Zeppelin was a good band!
I’m trying to imagine this pitch meeting. The great writer Mikal Gilmore bursts into Jan Wenner’s office, his fedora pitched back on his head and a butt dangling from his lower lip. Wenner is talking on the phone, Mikal presses the button to hang it up.
M. Stop the presses, boss! I’ve got a story’s gonna set this town on its ear!
J. This better be good. That was Billy Joel I was talking to.
M. Okay — what’s the biggest story in rock music today?
J. Lance Bass is Gay.
M. Bigger.
J. Jack White has formed a new group.
M. Bigger.
J. Sleater-Kinney has broken up.
M. No! Led Zeppelin was a good band!
J. (coffee sprays from his mouth) But that’s ridiculous! Can you prove it?
M. I got all the goods right here, chief.
(throws down a file folder.)
Testimonials, musical analysis, best of all, sales figures. CDs, DVDs, T-shirts, everything.
J. But this — this is extraordinary. How did you find all this out?
M. I’m a journalist, chief. I hear about a hot story and I chase it down. That’s what I do.
J. (looks through the data) But — if this is true — why, it would shake the industry to its very core. Do we dare print this?
M. Dare?! Is this the same Jan Wenner who got Elton John to say he was a fruit? Is this the same Jan Wenner who dared to suggest that George W. Bush is an incompetent president? Is this the same Jan Wenner who gave five stars to Mick Jagger’s Goddess in the Doorway?
J. You’re right, you’re right — by God, this is just the kind of incendiary, match-lighting story this magazine was built on!
________________________
And then there’s Newsweek. You can’t see the headline very well on their website, but it’s something like “OLIVER STONE’S 9/11: The Controversial Director Chooses Courage over Conspiracy for “World Trade Center”.
Okay. So Oliver Stone is a Controversial Director. True.
Oliver Stone is also a Conspiracy Nut. True, if one has not seen an Oliver Stone film in fifteen years.
Here’s the thing. By choosing this headline for their issue, they didn’t make me think “Good for Oliver! Way to go, choosing Courage over Conspiracy! That’s m’boy!” Instead, I saw the cover and thought “Wait, Newsweek is telling me there was a choice?” That is, Newsweek is saying that there was a conspiracy, and isn’t it nice that Oliver Stone decided not to focus on it?
Back in the day, it was only certain crazy friends of mine who used to talk about the “planned demolition” of the World Trade Center, and how the federal government plotted the whole thing out, using the Al Qaeda people (or someone) as decoys, how they conspired with Al Qaeda to have their guys fly the planes into the towers, after which they would destroy the buildings, and thus begin the process that we’re living through today, ie the institution of our current facist state, permanent control of the government by religious fanatics, etc, etc.
All of which I used to hear and think “Come on, guys, get a grip.” Are you telling me that the same guys who screwed up Afghanistan, screwed up Iraq, screwed up New Orleans, the same guys who haven’t succeeded in doing anything else in six years of unrestricted power (besides stealing two elections), are you telling me that these guys demolished the World Trade Center?
And now, looking at Newsweek, I have to ask: What do they know?