12.30.2007

"i can say with certainty that i was in the senate debating as rome burned"

* * *

pop song of 2007?
http://hypem.com/search/black%20kids/1/

12.28.2007

"Among Chuang-tzu's many skills, he was an expert draftsman. The king asked
him to draw a crab. Chuang-tzu replied that he needed five years, a country
house, and twelve servants. Five years later the drawing was still not begun.
"I need another five years," said Chuang-tzu. The king granted them. At the
end of these ten years, Chuang-tzu took up his brush and, in an instant, with
a single stroke, he drew a crab, the most perfect crab ever seen."

after inland empire

Quoth Lynch: “I’m through with film as a medium. For me, film is dead.”

12.27.2007

soap box -- the wire

been watching the wire which my friends effing love.......i don't get it, i think it's good, not great, could any tv drama be really great? the characters have nuance, the acting is pretty good, the street-level stuff has never been on tv before, along with allowing the street to speak somewhat like the street......but the whole pull of the serial form gets to me, the never-ending-story-ness of it. also, i fear that the show has no soul, in fact i know it doesn't; there are plenty of nihilistic shows on tv, where there are no good guys and no bad guys because everyone is trying to eff everyone else (my religious friends could talk about the bane of moral relativism).........in the first season, mcnulty sort of plays that hero eff the politics of the situation i'm gonna do what i have to do character, but even he is flawed and he knows it; i don't buy his earnestness to do the right thing because for him, vanity is king. look at that recap....why would you want to watch after that? but i will admit, there are some moments (see 2nd video).



12.24.2007

daniel day-lewis

i'm sorry but everything daniel day-lewis has the feel of a put-on, school of look-at-me now what i can do, the fury and the sensitivity that ultimately renders it monodimensional and feels mentally over-rehearsed. maybe he is the most beautiful skin-deep actor working. from the article, you get the sense that he takes his own personal philosophy very seriously, which is comic for an actor spouting common sense.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/11/magazine/11daylewis-t2.html?ex=1352523600&en=f980f1016d4d112b&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink





watership down

"I was terrified starting this vid bc I remember being traumatized by that movie when I was little. I kept trying to get my dad to say that the rabbits didn't really die, because this was a cartoon, and he was like "no, they're dead, they're really dead." and I just cldn't believe it. But the video left me cold. Maybe it's the comedy that is Art Garfunkel? Maybe there is just a bunny-ghost-shaped callous on my heart?"




12.19.2007

name a better film critic than phillyweekly's sean burns

The underlying material is so sharp, Charlie Wilson’s War easily could’ve rivaled Three Kings for sickly comic realpolitik shock. So sad then that Mike Nichols has directed it more like a sequel to Ishtar, softening the script’s poli-sci body blows with cartoonishly broad sight gags, loud costumes, silly wigs and a puzzlingly jaunty tone. Even more disastrous is his casting of Julia Roberts as a hawkish Southern man-eating millionaire. She’s too young, sexless and brittle for a role Susan Sarandon was obviously born to play.
http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/articles/16069

not that he's usually this good, but in 200 words, it confirms everything i already suspected.

dear mia

dear m.i.a.: nobody cares about your precious gunshots being deleted from that song. it's poppy and the lyrics are bad. diplo made you a catchy tune and you sang it. yay! go back to being an airhead virtuoso who's dun too many drugs to not be scatterbrained. have you seen yourself in that vice tv bit (with spike jonze?)? it's kind of vapid.


http://blogs.villagevoice.com/statusainthood/archives/2007/12/mia_and_the_dou.php#more

12.18.2007

everything's so serious now, but speaking of independent film, why not take that camera of yours and point it at the street and see what happens (as you were saying)? i was watching pulp fiction again the other day and it struck me how much of that movie tarantino shot in shallow focus. to see the ridges and pimples on samuel l. jackson's face caught by sunlight is a wonderful thing. style wars. culture wars. have you seen the graffitied style wars on a cow? can find a pic of it but it's by banksy. you would think the cable movie channels would blow up the spot now that there is no sitcom programming, but no, same old tripe, X-men 3; although i did catch l'eclisse the other day....monica vitti is pretty stunning,,,, it is as if she is standing atop the celluloid speaking to you, all mixed up in her desires;;; kind of adrift in an age before take-home pharmaceuticals, and such big hair! and a racist african jungle bit in the middle, blackface and holding a menacing spear. antonini....have you seen "the passenger".....so boring, and jack nicholson hadn't taken up his over-the-top self all the time, only in moments.

12.14.2007

mountains over mountains -- stopping.

"i knew a man who loved food but could not cook a bed of rice, so sad was he."

11.27.2007

the thin blue line errol morris (funes the memorious)





we are all funes the memorious (funes was famous because he could picture the world as it was every moment for the last X years, but he could not generate abstract thought. the leaf of 7:54 was different than the leaf of 7:53. there was no "leaf", a priori).

for funes, on one side of the brain is the times of all things, in sequence. on the other is the pictures of every event.

the idea to take some of those connections and reconfigure them into a new abstraction was repellent to him.

so the question becomes, what do each of us find repellent?

for funes, obviously, it was the question of generating an abstraction, any abstraction.

and for lots of people, working exclusively with abstract ideas is difficult.

so what was wrong with the cops who arrested and charged randall adams with homicide.

a cop had been killed and they needed to find their killer.

if they pinned it on randall adams they didn't care.

they, including the DA Mulder, went to extreme lengths to frame this innocent man.

To them, Adams had been taken on the host of the abstraction. they were not proscecuting a man, they were procecuting a vacuity, a not-being. He was foreign, inanimate. They did not need to rationalize that his death in the electric chair would mean nothing -- that belief was immanent to their being. Nothing in the world would be lost in exchange for his life.
"Without effort, he had learned English, French, Portuguese, Latin. I suspect, nevertheless, that he was not very capable of thought. To think is to forget a difference, to generalize, to abstract. In the overly replete world of Funes there were nothing but details, almost contiguous details." -- from "Funes, His Memory" by Borges

11.13.2007

x-ecutioners at their best murdering the classix

http://theessentialelements.blogspot.com/2007/09/x-ecutioners-murder-classix-2002.html

"yo first of all son arson sparking a bussing call me dopesnatcher hard to capture militant like a convict manifesting working like appliances sciences try to flee by the doorway back to the essence have you restin throwing n_s off airplanes cause cash rules analyze me like a chain reaction"

"break on the break" eddie henderson inside you piano

http://www.sendspace.com/file/nqq5d5

The dopeness I link, I guarantee delight

tip of the pin to http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~hhsu/blog.html

11.08.2007

Dionysius

There are men who, from a lack of experience or out of apathy, turn mockingly away from such phenomena as from a “sickness of the people,” with a sense of their own health and filled with pity. These poor people naturally do not have any sense of how deathly and ghost-like this very “Health” of theirs sounds, when the glowing life of the Dionysian throng roars past them. Under the magic of the Dionysian, not only does the bond between man and man lock itself in place once more, but also nature itself, now matter how alienated, hostile, or subjugated, rejoices again in her festival of reconciliation with her prodigal son, man. The earth freely offers up her gifts, and the beasts of prey from the rocks and the desert approach in peace. The wagon of Dionysus is covered with flowers and wreaths. Under his yolk stride panthers and tigers.

On the other hand, we do not need to speak merely hypothetically when we have to expose the immense gap which separates the Dionysian Greeks from the Dionysian barbarians. In all quarters of the old world (setting aside here the newer worlds), from Rome to Babylon, we can confirm the existence of Dionysian celebrations, of a type, at best, related to the Greeks in much the same way as the bearded satyr whose name and characteristics are taken from the goat is related to Dionysus himself. Almost everywhere, the central point of these celebrations consisted of an exuberant sexual promiscuity, whose waves flooded over all established family practices and traditional laws. The wildest bestiality of nature was here unleashed, creating an abominable mixture of lust and cruelty, which has always seemed to me the real witches' potion.

The language of song and poetry of such a doubly defined celebrant was for the Homeric Greek world something new and unheard of. Dionysian music especially awoke in that world fear and terror. If music was apparently already known as an Apollonian art, this music, strictly speaking, was a rhythmic pattern like the sound of waves, whose artistic power had developed for presenting Apollonian states of mind. The music of Apollo was Doric architecture expressed in sound, but only in intimate tones, characteristic of the cithara [a traditional stringed instrument}. The un-Apollonian character of Dionysian music keeps such an element of gentle caution at a distance, and with that turns music generally into emotionally disturbing tonal power, a unified stream of melody, and the totally incomparable world of harmony.

To grasp this total unleashing of all symbolic powers, man must already have attained that high level of freedom from the self which seeks to express itself symbolically in those forces. Because of this, the dithyrambic servant of Dionysus will understand only someone like himself. With what astonishment must the Apollonian Greek have gazed at him! With an amazement which was all the greater as he sensed with horror that all this may not be really foreign to him, that even his Apollonian consciousness was covering the Dionysian world in front of him, like a veil.

-- Nietzsche, from the Birth of Tragedy

10.12.2007

> the newness.....what is entirely real is the going and coming the blather
> effervescent the mention of sweet hereafter the language unending the
> makings and unmakings of people, you know the things that need to be
> annulled the men and women the foundlings the chicklings the starlings and
> the birthlings, the aliens and mulch grass fed to cows in famine the
> water creeping up the tidal basin, the urchins and 5-fingered stars watching as
> i
> consume the great grass of time, the munching of mulch unending the poems
> long before the candle has gone out the picture at the picture show
> capturing dust in the romantic dark. blessed blessed bend at the knee
> skirts down to the ground catching the filth of the floor unswept for some
> time the bell tower bonging and the children playing outside in the
> courtyard during the service their hands too small to carry big things the
> weight of the world yet eternally dying and being reborn all the cliches
> of
> yesteryear and poems for all time the poems of the bible and nonesuch and
> nevermind and nevermore and dunder-miflin.

9.08.2007

On Hunger

No fear can stand up to hunger, no patience can wear it out, disgust
simply does not exist where hunger is; and as to superstition, beliefs,
and what you may call principles, they are less than chaff in a breeze.
Don't you know the devilry of lingering starvation, its exasperating
torment, its black thoughts, its somber and brooding ferocity? Well,
I do. It takes a man all his inborn strength to fight hunger properly.
It's really easier to face bereavement, dishonor, and the perdition of
one's soul--than this kind of prolonged hunger. Sad, but true. And these
chaps too had no earthly reason for any kind of scruple. Restraint! I
would just as soon have expected restraint from a hyena prowling amongst
the corpses of a battlefield. But there was the fact facing me--the fact
dazzling, to be seen, like the foam on the depths of the sea, like a
ripple on an unfathomable enigma, a mystery greater--when I thought
of it--than the curious, inexplicable note of desperate grief in this
savage clamor that had swept by us on the river-bank, behind the blind
whiteness of the fog. - from Conrad, "Heart of Darkness"

5.14.2007

fell, calling the dog, here she comes in;

3.13.2007

little lies / twin islets

looking into the second stage flip flops with socks dork with glasses and earphones, cutter chasing the obese, cutter chasing the middle-aged white woman who takes good care of her figure, inl chasing the educated minorities, boob jobs ascending, becoming no more educated than when they began, living in a prison but they don't know it. executioners rising and descending, missed their cue i suppose, all because the executed was hidden quite well (you might miss her), his supervisor rises to see what's going on, everyone is taking risks, leaving with the empty green bag, her sunglasses on top of her head, fake tits descends safely making the way for the wrecking crew and the chop shop everyone gets new gear i can't hang with her, the email always beling a kiss redhead knows, the supervisor has given up and the whole thing has turned round on itself people are happy again bless them i suppose it was only life.

repetition, beret coming down, followed by white male bourgeoisie, then frat boy, pink bag ascends, the intelligence coming down in backpacks and plastic shopping bags, ducks way out in the corner of my eye, inls not nearly in so much of a rush as the first time around, the cops know on this second go-through what i am up to they are on their cell phone, the executed descends again unnoticed, the supervisor trundles back up the stairs, finding nothing but smiles all around there is a lie enclosed in the failed execution it is the lie that we abide by so that the world is not overdetermined, sunglasses again on the top of the head how little light and then back into a state of intelligence, the gains from the fire sale less impressive this time, the green bag becomes a little lighter, looking around, eventually the thing is exhausted and i have been found out that's ok there is still time.

3rd cycle: pink shirt, black, this time the supervisor is so old he can barely ascend, he stares at me directly, knows exactly who i am and how i have participated in this lie, if i stay any longer the white leave in clothes of dark trying to avoid the execution the green leaves dressed as a man, no longer primitive, tries to avert the apocalypse this time by learning all possible noble lies, becoming a man in the world of laws and fathers, but it is no matter, she still wears red pants and dies all the same, her green blood trickling behind blonde hair her ear betraying everything the executioner finally satisfied.

dead, beyond the river styx, the trannie, the one who thought she could learns all the ways and that would be enough the supervisor is in a congratulatory mood, he brings his friend to inspect her body which she voluntarily displays, pulling her hair back to show the wound. the world is fascinated, people from the world over come to inspect the body. and so it begins again. this is what the world has been waiting for. for the holder of the noble lies to give up her ghost so that the process of knowledge and education could begin again. the abyss stares at me and so i do not hold its gaze. instead a yellow pen is carried in the mouth, the next one, forever young red and white, symptomatic of that abyss, beautiful knowing how to wear green even before her time, the men learning to be quick to avoid the killing, thinking better of it, hatted, glasses and jackets, while she is biting her lip in the world beyond, limping her best still to ascend, never suspecting him, i am now within the prison house it was inevitable, you stay too long and you can only take the walkways back no bridges and suddenly they are looking at you as at a fresh piece of meat as if you will be the next to die so that they can take what they want ding in the three, the most intelligent man trading everything for a new book oh yes she knows it it is obvious don't be scared green motherfuckers surrounding me wanting to take me down into their filth will i will i keep my head above the sea now the sunglasses are on the light is at its most blinding position and she holds the rifle directly above me all i can see are her legs she has learned how to annihilate me so that i might die with her taking life two steps at a time too quick i might say at that rate i may be able to evade her and her hachet men. i have evidently crossed over now it is no longer the woman who is up for execution but me the man holding something some lie that is found to be attractive i look to my computer to try to find a pathway out they are looking at the same thing i am looking at their intelligence has grown they can disguise their looks very well perhaps i will get out of here perhaps not they keep on bringing in more and more people the squirrel tail moving quickly in heat i made my case and now i wait for the verdict. the two sides converse. my lawyer seems to say something satisfactory: if i remember the dead, i will live.

3.12.2007

2.20.2007

i can't get any love in this motherfucker language has not failed me yet will it ever this schizophrenic taking down a last will and testament farting over gourgeous piano vibes wonderful wonderful can't but speak how wonderful it is play it again sam you twit fuck shit balls i can't escape my own mind wonderful breaks ah there a rush a breath a nice little lift of a drink of water unbelievable the way it comes in with the slack and then out the motor not failing wonderful can't begin to describe end of all things cutting off too abruptly always in too deep and then they leave you you know? can't send the messages all mixed up always at the wrong time 9 in the morning no the right time to send a love letter they'll never know it was you don't worry you were watching steve mcqueen in that caper movie thomas crowne affair remade recently but not as good can't really capture the vibe of that "windmills in my mind song" oh bother it's not time yet the drunkard hasn't even paid all the saucers stacked up in the well-lit place, bartenders aching to go home to a soft mattress and the folds of a wife wonderful sleep always itch for sleep redundancies and chastizations do i send it do i ask for love there is nothing returned you are aware of that correct? can't even write anything anyone else can read sorrow and pity forthcoming sherman's march fucker i wish the thing has been hammered out in multiple dimensions the folds not coming near enough to entrap me forgetting the symbols surrounding me the people and the colors forgetting all of that to try the voice to exercise once more in that hypnotic state a sort of thing that makes you want to blow your fucking brains out maybe that is a little much but you get the picture of where you have to be to write stuff like this so constrained to the self and its voice to complain about the pain in a finger or in the liver, maybe when the beddy-byes go i will be better, hunters gracchuses, phoebes and phenomes and phermones, pleasing me pleasing me underscore the things dump down into sadness trace the moods that is what you are paid to do brain can you hear me speaking when it is time to go i will tell you we will get in the van and depart the holy family athletic facilities, dump down duck down goose, blow up your whole era. relax and take notes, playing the beat backwards then the needle drop crossover epmd always stealing from other people copyright is a dirty word when will the song begin again harping over and over and over again in the twilight of the modern world songs that's all we got left playing at my black and white keyboard playing the piece "Peace" tommy flanagan played it better that means nothing to you then look it up and look up the chase vs the hunt as it's mentioned in on the road that is a good waste of time well spent harping over and over again still this unbelieveable residual energy this stamina that i don't know comes from where i don't quite understand how i got to this place must have crossed a few too many bridges probably somewhere by the ni or the po river look those up to the results are always edifying i love how this thing works never the right time women still untimely as usual but trying to get along better with that writing in this note form but that is ok too everything ok even the people i hate and have horrible visions of that's ok too it's all ok everyone and everything is ok i won't harbor hate or at least i'll try maybe it is this vibraphone music that is intoxicating me they knew they hated me but they couldn't tell why well i'll tell you it's because i'm not as beautiful as dostoyevsky well whatever i will never be so good as that so you might as well stop here and stop trying because there is no end to it is like the femme nikita it never really ends cigarette in mouth it never really ends wish there was more to say that could be understood, autocratic rhythms.

2.19.2007

rapping over this funky beat nothing left to say that's how it always started typing fast but barely thinking food full of stomach errors errors all over crunched up laughing dying home from the movie you know last king of scotland seen it maybe in your own brain space dictator killer who you don't see kill but you take his word for it how does he use his physicality to report and retouch things writing to myself as usual only one listening flying birds track playing in the background no dogs to come home to what does it matter have to shower and do my thing people hate me it's all the same song is over bring you in and out of the beat funkdified why are they afraid of me who would you be most likely to make love to and why would it matter white romantics learned people but what have they killed no one loves you no one has the real love or time not even a little bit the headaches coming on where is the sympathy did dostoyevsky want sympathy or pity during his dark times was he a fast writer when he spoke of spiders too many symbols crowding the page got into a labyrinth i can't get out now the thing is sown old and sold looked at my teeth and at my crotch to make sure everything was working no one left to write things to, no good words, only the blogs to read and to get back imaginary emails so fuck them i should just write anyway whatever i will call.

2.17.2007

you can't post that man - there is no ending to it......just keep on building, the frame won't hold, don't you think i know that man it's bigger than hip hop, freaks, turkeys and turnkeys, joyce would be proud, buggering nietzsche again, stealing all the afterglow from the naughty-headed freaks, one-trick wonders, and NASCAR drivers who are driving for the lost souls in invisible cars, wonder woman come down off the hilltop, reading in the voice of william burroughs, a junkie gone, another rock to sell, we are all doing that, messing around with our surplus angst, trying to understand Marx, bending out fingers this way and that in hopes that we don't contract carpal tunnel, missing the railway systems of more sophisticated countries, not to mention their cheese-making technology, blowing the whole thing over for the love of the anglo-american writer, making a brass statue out of Kerouac and Steinbeck and whoever else i don't even know taking the dogs out for walks blowing out candles descending mountains over and over again with the hope of never climbing another one missing the whole point when it was lying directly under your face no sense of aesthetics that is all implicit wish i could layer this over a photo that would bring it all home for you instead i have to trust that this is good enough love letters thrown away ready to begin anew making time for the drinks never again took us over once and then no more only beckett left telling us of the virtues of soccer hot tea and small sandwiches who knows what's in them i don't ask for fear of dissapointment maybe pizza tomorrow always the hope of the eternal pizza in the sky looking down at us with anticipation and bemused dissaproval maybe metaphors gone too far in hope of the break the good song that will let you finish and annihilate yourself and rise from this chair right here but instead on on on we go into the unknown dashing up memories with the hope that love is on its way the poor male romantic always facing either a tragic or comic death never neutral never vain always untimely unlike women but no matter it is only a trifling thing death.

1.30.2007


Sherman's March.
Ross McElwee's single-man operation documentary camera setup -- funded by a grant to make a documentary about sherman's march to the
sea (where sherman killed innocent civilian populations (Atlanta to Savannah GA) in taking the south, influencing the storming-living off-the-enemy-land-blitzkreig tactics later used by hitler in WWII); instead of this project the guy goes around sort of trying to pick up women, being
obsessed with girls that don't really want him, talking about his parents' pressure for him to get married to a hot southern belle (they try to set him up), some dark shit about nuclear war. 1980s southern culture. insomnia, 6AM talking to the camera drinking bourbon. he's kind of a lonely depressed bearded dude, sympathetic. shows you you don't need any expensive equipment to tell a good story. too long, could have been cut down to 2 hours (it's almost 3), loses pace and mission by 1-1:30 as time elapses during the telling of his story (he has to work as a film editor to make money to continue the project which he then returns to subsequently). sort of like an impromptu movie, lot of skill in the editing room, knows when to break, when to flow, what mistakes to leave in, cutting usually on the right beats, good transitions, fun natural audio track.

1.29.2007

you never hear anything in the vacuum, only your own thoughts and imaginary shadows whispering to you, becoming hallucinatory visions to haunt you with unforgivable sadness; nothing separates you and her but a thin film, only a laminar structure. all you wanted to do was to outrun your own mind.

1.25.2007

shit, can you make it hot like this? from conrad, "heart of darkness".


Forthwith a change came over the waters, and the serenity became lessbrilliant but more profound. The old river in its broad reach restedunruffled at the decline of day, after ages of good service done to therace that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of awaterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth. We looked at thevenerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes anddeparts for ever, but in the august light of abiding memories. Andindeed nothing is easier for a man who has, as the phrase goes,"followed the sea" with reverence and affection, than to evoke thegreat spirit of the past upon the lower reaches of the Thames. The tidalcurrent runs to and fro in its unceasing service, crowded with memoriesof men and ships it had borne to the rest of home or to the battlesof the sea. It had known and served all the men of whom the nation isproud, from Sir Francis Drake to Sir John Franklin, knights all, titledand untitled--the great knights-errant of the sea. It had borne all theships whose names are like jewels flashing in the night of time, fromthe Golden Hind returning with her round flanks full of treasure, to bevisited by the Queen's Highness and thus pass out of the gigantic tale,to the Erebus and Terror, bound on other conquests--and that neverreturned. It had known the ships and the men. They had sailed fromDeptford, from Greenwich, from Erith--the adventurers and the settlers;kings' ships and the ships of men on 'Change; captains, admirals, thedark "interlopers" of the Eastern trade, and the commissioned "generals"of East India fleets. Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they allhad gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch,messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from thesacred fire. What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that riverinto the mystery of an unknown earth! . . . The dreams of men, the seedof commonwealths, the germs of empires.
Hotness every two weeks. TURNTABLELAB RADIO.

1.10.2007

FIRE GREEN ABYSS
..................CONTINUE KISS KISS.

1.08.2007

1.03.2007


Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
...........................Just hearing the description you might think this is a very weird movie. What does it mean to dig up a dead man's grave, chop his head off with a machete, and transport that head all over Mexico, losing your girl, and realizing that you have no reason to live but to go on fool's errands, transporting disembodied heads, speaking to them, getting drunk, tasting the dust of the road, and eventually dying in a hail of automatic weapon bullets? Interesting characterization of Anglo hired killers -- like the investment banker vultures of the Latin American dirty deed trade. Warren Oates crunching the crabs he got from his girlfriend between his fingers, then delousing his crotch with tequila has to be the saddest most funny thing I saw yesterday.