Darker Blogistan

Don't go getting all high-falutin' literary on me, Playboy. This month you're following in the footsteps of The New Yorker again with an excerpt of R. Crumb's Illustrated Bible:



Now I'm not exactly sure why ole R. Crumb decided to make a word-for-word comic book version of the Bible. It's not exactly as informative as Larry Gonick's Cartoon History of the Universe.

Unless his point was to show how flat-out crazy that book is when seen from a fresh perspective. In that sense, he scores.

The issue also includes an excerpt of Vladimir Nabokov's last novel, The Original of Laura. Based on this cursory excerpt, it's hard to get a sense if the book as a whole is worthwhile, but the rambling sentences suggest the onset of senility in the author, since he wrote it as a septuagenarian on his death bed. Maybe the Playboy editors just went for the "sexy" part of the book, but its subject matter is strongly reminiscent of Lolita, with an old man named Hubert Hubert (hint, hint), who repeatedly stands too close to a much-younger girl. A shame Nabokov perished before Viagra.



This picture scares me.

Playboy also seems to be following in the grand tradition of Hustler, now including liberal tracts next to beaver shots. This time it's Thomas Frank mano y mano against Glenn Beck, who I only know from amusing cuts in the John Stewart and Colbert shows. Guy seems unstable. But if an alcoholic born-again Mormon who breaks down into tears can become the most successful talk show host in the nation, there's hope for us all. All we need to do is learn to imbibe and regurgitate a constant stream of bullshit for indeed, it is the stuff of (American) life. Interesting excerpt:

"After 30 years in which free-market worship dominated our politics, we have just lived through one of the greatest failures of the free-market system in all of history. And the greatest political superstar of this age is a man who has made it his business to root out and assail critics of the free-market system. What's more, he does so as a self-proclaimed friend of the common man."

Everything I know about Kali worship I learned from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The young lad's love for the LEGO Indiana Jones games led us to rewatch this fun little flick, but my wife was a mite put out by the depiction of Indian culture: you know, eating the eyeball soup and monkey brains, and the human sacrifice over boiling pits of lava. It turns out that the film may not be an accurate depiction of Kali worship after all!*

Don't tell the young lad, but I went to a hole-in-the-wall videogame store/museum hidden away in a Western Union at the corner of Santa Monica and La Brea where they actually still sell NES and other ancient systems and games, stacked up in piles all around the walls. I got him not only the new LEGO Indiana Jones and Pokemon Platinum Edition for the DS, but also some old Pokemon and Star Wars games for the Game Boy Advance because it turns out they work on the DS too. I wonder if he'll be able to tell the difference..

* But in Disch's The Word of God, he mentions the the sacred Kali-worshiping murderers of the Thuggee cult. I guess they did exist, and not just as the cute little Lego characters in videogames. I'm so confused.

In case you were wondering what to get the boy for Christmas:

In this corner we have the good guys:


I am intrigued by "Canon Man." Perhaps English professor Harold Bloom puts on a tight red ninja outfit on his off-hours, to take the battle to the ne'er-do-wells who insist that someone else wrote some of Shakespeare's plays, or that graffiti qualifies as a form of literature? Superman seems to be having a bad hair day as well.

In the other corner: the Bad Guys, including a parade of T. Rexes, a squamous Mechwarrior alien, and a ghost.



The ultimate battle presents the ultimate question: Who will be victorious??

The best "I Want You," winnowed down to:

The Beatles



or Marvin Gaye

Been sick for the last few days. Oh so fun to get in shouting matches with obnoxious opposing counsel when ill.

Saw Speed Racer with the boy, which he loved as much as Transformers 2. IMHO, they were both bad, but Speed Racer bad in the way of a mischievous child whose cheek you want to pinch, Transformers 2 like a smartass teenager you want to bludgeon with a crowbar. At least Speed Racer's heart was in the right place, even if its logical continuity was not. The faux-psychedelic shifting around of heads and scenes during some parts did grate.

Finished reading Disch's The Word of God and starting on Michael Bishop's Philip K. Dick is Dead, Alas. In The Word of God, Disch pretends half-heartedly to be our Lord and Savior, but doesn't quite have the heart to launch an onslaught on religion in the vein of Dawkins or Hitchens. A lot of it is fragmentary short fiction and his pomes, I guess trying to pawn literature off on us when we're expecting another atheist diatribe. <jk> Anyways, Disch spends a lot of the book portraying Dick in an unflattering light (i.e., as a hellspawn who drinks blood and intent on achieving Axis victory of WW2, and who plots the rape and murder of Disch's parents), but now Bishop's book is more of a respectful homage. So far it's hard to get a sense of how faithful Bishop is to Dicks' ouevre. I'm getting a feeling that Bishop is emphasizing the "everyman" aspect of Dick's work that the literati seem to appreciate more than the fantastic aspects that they do not, but am informed and believe that the novel becomes progressively more fantastical as it progresses. I'm just grateful that the LA Public Library is awesome enough to have these kinds of books, which I can't find at bookstores anywhere.

Sometimes I think being a lawyer is making me more of an asshole. Driving back from SD, with my bladder about to explode, I ran into a Japanese restaurant to use the restroom. There was a big sign there pointing to the restroom, but the asshole owner says to me, "We have no public restroom!" I should be used to such nonsense living in LA, but we're here in the suburbs in Irvine, nobody is around, and this Japanese ass is going to bar me from taking a piss? I just ignored him, and when I came out he was standing there, saying in his broken English, "I told you no public restroom!"

It's pointless crap like this that drives me into a rage, and flips a little switch in my head. I got in his face and yelled, "Do you have a fucking problem? Step the fuck off, Chinaman!" then walked away. I said that last racial slur just to piss him off, knowing he was Japanese, and I seriously did not care if the guy had ninja skills. This kind of shit is just intolerable to me.

Did I err?

I just came across this old thing I wrote when I was a high school punk, which is interesting only for its demented value:

Fuck that fruit,
The serpent stays,
Trapped between my legs.
It digs in holes,
It cheapens souls,
It lusts, it pleads, it begs.

Tear it out
By the root
I want to go
Before the fruit
Before the dreams
That made me weak
When I was mine
Of real beliefs.

WATCHING: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Ugh. Why do I do this to myself, you might ask? Good question.

It's hard to find movies that I can bring my boy to and that are tolerable for me. After the mentally scarring debacles of Space Chimps and Happily N'Ever After, I am loathe to set foot in a theater to watch a kid's movie. I figure that action blockbusters are probably about as equidistant between our interests as possible, a compromise that leaves neither of us thrilled but also neither of us suffering. Since I was such a geeky Transformers fanboy as a lad, bringing my display case of toys to school in an almost desperate plea to be beaten, how could I now sneer at these ridiculous live-action cartoon battles?



Michael Bay is the Devil. What this movie is is junk food for the soul. He has taken the worst elements of your generic TV sitcom and merged them with the most frantic aspects of CGI spectacle in the most overt and cynical attempt to dig into our reptilian rat brains and trigger some stimulus center. If you can name 20 of the sitcoms presently on the air, you may like Transformers 2-- it's that inane shit with a massively bigger budget. If you become erect at the spectacle of mindless machines smashing into each other-- maybe if you attend monster truck battles-- you may like Transformers 2.





Personally, I think they've taken everything charming about the cartoons and leached them dry and soulless. Whereas they used to have cutesy colorful bodies and humanized faces, now they are sickly generic looking grey things. Whereas they at least seemed to have some distinct individual personalities, now they are all the most obscenely idiotic creatures imaginable (Except for Optimus, who only speaks in sentimental cliches). In cosmic evolution, these things would have been culled from the herd long ago. The humans fare no better-- Sam's parents have apparently suffered ice-pick lobotomies for amusement value, Shia LePoof spouts his glib neverending oneliner. Even Megan Fox is borderline unfuckable with her caked-on makeup and her saccharine "I'm so sexy" slo-mo trash tailored for the adolescents.


The only grim pleasures in this flick were seeing all the things about the cartoons that Bay fucked up. Now the side-shifting Jetfire is a Transformer geezer, with a metallic beard and cane of course, since those would be so obviously necessary for an alien robot that can transform into a jet fighter. Now Soundwave is not a tapedeck but a satellite, and Ravage is now Rampage, and not a transforming audiotape but a meteor that Soundwave ejaculates onto Earth. And the Constructicons no longer merge into anything vaguely humanoid. And the Matrix is not the source of all life, since Bay already jacked that with the All-Spark, but some kind of key to unlock a superweapon. And I guess the Fallen is some transmutation of Unicron the evil planet-eater, you know the one who turned Megatron into Galvatron in the original cartoon movie. Or something like that.

And next on my Netflix queue are GI Joe and Speed Racer. Lord help me.

Dylan squares off against the fearsome Darth Vader.





A young padawan is surprisingly bold for his little size.



Now he is the master. But he talked a bit more like Darth Helmet than Darth Vader.

\
The vile Lord Vader attempts to turn the young Jedis to the Dark Side, to no avail.

Enough with the Stephen King, please. This month he has invaded my snail-mail inbox with short stories in both The New Yorker and Playboy. It's almost as if he's toying with us, using the strength of his name brand to see how far and wide he can disseminate crap. The New Yorker story is almost as if he's consciously trying to be boring, the Playboy one as if he's cut-and-pasted gibberish for only his own private amusement. But it's gotten to the point where I'm either just not patient or emotionally available enough to read short fiction*. Readers are saying "Another Life" by Obendorf in the October-November 2009 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction is stellar work, but I just couldn't get into it's time-displaced relationship drama. No thank you. I left the issue in the library for someone more appreciative to find.

I am glad that I am still immature enough to appreciate Playboy, to which I subscribed back when I was around 19 years old. It's comforting to know that some things do not change and time has not stolen this pleasure from me. Like how much more would I have loved Harry Potter if he hurried up and came out when I was 10, or Rise Against if their first album came out when I was 16. Now they just give me a headache.



I'm just grateful I got the Alina Puscau cover instead of the Marge Simpson one. A Marge Simpson centerfold? Very strange... At least there's an interesting interview with Benicio del Toro, who I'll now always picture as Hunter's counselor at law from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Or as the Jesus freak with the tricked-out truck in 27 Grams. Maybe he doesn't come off as cool of a guy as Woody Harrelson in last months' interview, but dude can act.

Also reading The Word of God by Thomas M. Disch, a title that makes me feel a bit self-conscious lugging around the heavily Christianized Koreatown**. With my tied and preppied uniform suit and this little tract, I'm sure some are likely to mistake me for a proselytizer. But if I have to proselytize for some cult, it might as be for one founded by a gay SF writer who committed suicide. Choice quote so far:

"In today's multicultural multiculture scoffing is as verboten as swastikas or an inappropriate touch."

If only Disch weren't obviously and painfully ironic in his black comedy theology, I'm sure I could at least get a couple converts. That's the problem-- whether you're Elron or Philip K. Dick, you gotta play it straight to start laying the foundation rock for your temple to yourself.

* On Asimov's forum they're talking about "stories that made you cry." I've never read anything that has made me come close to crying... I am a rock, I am an island.

** How weird is it that they'd worship a Semitic cult all the way in Korea for god's sake?! At least have the self-respect to be Buddhist or Shinto or something.

Damn, I hadn't been to the Palladium in ages.  The last show I saw there must have been a punk show in the early 90s.  I remember seeing Bad Religion there around 1994*, and a NOFX, RKL, and other Epitaph band show there a few years later.  I remember it being a shabby little place with crusty chandeliers and skinhead punks in suspenders throwing punches in the mosh pit.  I was surprised to find that it's all tricked out now and, as Borat would say "Ver' nice!"

The Pixes played their album Doolittle straight through, foregoing the chore of coming up with a set list, I guess.  They did start off with a few B-sides to mix it up a bit though.  It was a sweet show, since I've been listening to their live album Death to the Pixies for like forever but have never seen them live.  Actually got tickets to see them at a show the few years back (when Mars Volta opened for them) but an anal fistula and Vicodin prescription kept me from going.  

Sweet show!

READING: The Alcoholic by Jonathan Ames; Cory Doctorow's Futuristic Tales of the Here and Now

Also picked up a few new graphic novels.  I like the new HBO comedy Bored to Death that Ames created, so I thought I'd check out his book The Alcoholic.  Quite a bit different!  Whereas the former is a light-hearted romp, the latter is about as dark and myopic a drunkalogue you could imagine.  There is quite a bit of sordid interest to be had in the guy's wanderings, waking up from a blackout with a homeless elderly dwarf lady who lives in her car about to have sex with him.  The stories are those you regularly hear at AA meetings, chock-full of pathos but without the upshot of sobriety and redemption.

Futuristic Tales of the Here and Now collects six of Cory Doctorow's best-known SF short stories in comic book form.  It's cool to see different artists tackling these stories with their unique visual creations.  When you take a short story and strip it down to a standard comic book ish, though, it does seem a bit stripped-down and bare-bones, not as involving as the original short story.  That seemed to be the case with the stories I'd already read, like "Anda's Game" and "When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth."  Some of the others seemed to lose something in translation: I had a hard time figuring out what the hell was going on in "Nimby and the D-Hoppers."  Maybe it's just me.

* Green Day opened for Bad Religion and people had no idea who they were at the time.  Then I saw them shortly thereafter in the massive Lollapalooza area venue.  It was interesting to watch the progression of a band going POP!

   

   

I don't think Darth Vader was the scariest bad guy in this gang! (My boy does look a bit like Anakin, doesn't he?)

I think it was a good idea to keep Dylan away from the video games.  His reading is really improving by leaps and bounds.  We've already burned through all 8 of the Captain Underpants books.  Now the boy has shown an interest in the books of mouse adventurer Geronimo Stilton, which say they're for the 9-12 age range!  One of our neighbors looked over Dylan's shoulder while he was reading and said that his 10 year old was at about the same reading level.  Last year, Dylan's kindergarten teacher said he read at a 3rd grade reading level, but that he read in a sort of monotone without dramatic emphasis, suggest that his comprehension isn't keeping up with his reading ability.  That's why, when I read books to him, I try to be as dramatic as possible.  :)  We got a Jango Fett graphic novel too, but I need to be careful about that stuff because the first issue shows Jango's whole family getting murdered by evil barbarians.

Though we've limited Dylan's video gaming to weekends, he's already burning through the brave new world of MMORPGs out there.  Happy Meal toys led him to McWorld, but then a school buddy told him about Wizard 101, which is a great and kid-appropriate one.  It's basically Harry Potter where you battle with cards like Pokemon.  I guess it's a way to keep the battles more distanced and less visceral for the kids.  Also picked up Lego Indiana Jones (since Dylan already finished its free downloadable demo), Transformers: The Game, and Guitar Hero III for the PS3.  Was thinking about getting the new Guitar Hero 5, but I don't feel the need to get the latest iteration of the series since it's not something where the graphics or gameplay dramatically improve.  In fact, do they improve at all?  Each one seems to be the same game with different songs.

I'm finishing up Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner as part of the unofficial Asimov's SF book club.  It's a damn impressive book, and it's a shame that it's slipped into obscurity and I can't find it in a single one of the megachain bookstores around here!  Anyone else familiar with a book of such scope that has similarly vanished, because I would be very interested to read it.  Concurrently reading the hard-boiled pageturner Trunk Music by Michael Connelly, about which there is not much to say except: for what it does, it does quite well.  Also have Disch's The Word of God and Bishop's Philip K. Dick is Dead, Alas stacked up to read from the library.  Even though I am something of a Dickhead, they'll have a hard time following up SOZ, I think.

This is the first time I actually felt guilty about a film I brought my son to see.  My father brought me to see a few R-rated films when I was about 7.  I can still remember them-- Flashdance, about which I remember a sweaty Jennifer Beals, 48 Hours, about which I remember constant then-exciting profanity and a boob shot, and The Verdict, which at the time I did not get at all, and thought was a terrible movie until I watched it again during law school.  So you can see, I might be expected to be a little laissez-faire about my son's movie-watching.  (A neighbor had also told me that his second grader had liked the film.)

But then the lights came on after this movie and I saw my son's red eyes and tear-stained cheeks.  I had been completely oblivious to his silent crying there in the darkness.  My eyes had misted up too, especially during the real-world scenes with Max's mother and other family members, but I had no idea that my young son would "get" them.  I don't want to make my boy cry!

So I can't really say this is a good film to bring your child to.  Maybe my son is exceptionally tender-hearted, but there is heavy pathos in poignance in this film.  In the press notes for this movie, Spike Jonze wrote that he didn't necessarily want to create a film for children but rather one about childhood.  That goal, he achieves.  We don't have the clever streamlined entertainments of a Pixar film, but something almost achingly soulful and young-spirited.  When Max repeatedly butts his head against the real world and runs through the dark night streets in his filthy wolf costume, a thudding foreign yelp-chanting playing underneath, I remembered that sense of unencumbered emotion in childhood and how foreign the materiality and obstinance of the real world and grownup interactions were.  Jonze takes a short, sweet and simple story and breathes a very real and visceral life into its lungs.  What wakes up is something darker and more chaotic than one might expect.

"2 Wicky" - Hoover, Hoover, Hooverphonic [from Stealing Beauty]

"Satellite of Love" - Lou Reed [from Adventureland]

"Glory Box" - Portishead [from Stealing Beauty]

"Deep Blue Day" - Brain Eno [from Trainspotting]

"Just Like Heaven" - The Cure [from Adventureland]

"Temptation" - New Order [from Trainspotting]

"Superstition" - Stevie Wonder [from Stealing Beauty]

"Sing" - Blur [from Trainspotting]

"Don't Change" - INXS [from Adventureland]

"Perfect Day" - Lou Reed [from Trainspotting]

"Rhymes of an Hour" - Mazzy Star [from Stealing Beauty]

"A Final Hit" - Leftfield [from Trainspotting]

"Unsatisfied" - The Replacements [from Adventureland]

"Alice" - Cocteau Twins [from Stealing Beauty]

"Don't Want to Know if You are Lonely" - Husker Du [from Adventureland]

"Born Slippy" - Underworld [from Trainspotting]

"Pale Blue Eyes" - The Velvet Underground [from Adventureland]

Skye does "Feel Good, Inc.": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MirfeuCBdfA

Gary Jules does "Mad World": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4N3N1MlvVc4

Radiohead's?

Or TLC's?

"Angel":

Massive Attack's?

Or Shaggy's?

Or Sarah McLachlan's?

Or Rise Against's??

Aimee Mann-- "Wise Up" [Magnolia Soundtrack]

War-- "Spill the Wine" [Boogie Nights Soundtrack]

Marvin Gaye-- "I Want You" [Broken Flowers Soundtrack]

Aimee Mann-- "Save Me" [Magnolia Soundtrack]

The Chakachas-- "Jungle Fever" [Boogie Nights Soundtrack]

Hot Chocolate-- "You Sexy Thing" [Boogie Nights Soundtrack]

Supertramp-- "Logical Song" [Magnolia Soundtrack]

The Commodores-- "Machine Gun" [Boogie Nights Soundtrack]

Rick Springfield-- "Jessie's Girl" [Boogie Nights Soundtrack]

Gabrielle-- "Dreams" [Magnolia Soundtrack]

Oxford Camerata-- "Pie Jesu" [Broken Flowers Soundtrack]

Seth Rogen usually plays a goofy and likable guy in his comedies. He's still goofy in this one, but likable? Not so much. He plays a much-too-serious security guard in this one, a bright-line black-and-white kind of guy on the verge of a nervous breakdown, kind of a Steven Francis Murphy.

Altogether the film comes off as half Falling Down, half Bad Santa.  Like Falling Down, it's not so clear who we're supposed to empathize with.  In that film, the audience was supposed to empathize with the nerdy white guy kicking some gangster ass until the end, when we see him through Duvall's and his family's eyes as a somewhat pathetic character with anger management issues.  There's the same kind of weirdness with this film, which never leaves the audience comfortable because our allegiances shift in almost each and every scene.  At one moment he seems to have a heart of gold, in the next he's getting into the meanest and most petty behavior imaginable.

There are some really funny scenes though.  The best must be when Ray Liotta drops him off at the gangster-ridden "Crossroads" to fend for himself and Danny McBride appears as an absurdly hilarious gangster.

Which is the best One?

Metallica's.

U2's.

Harry Nilsson's.

Three Dog Night's.

Aimee Mann's.

Bee Gee's.

Creed's.

Mary J. Blige's.

Alanis Morissette's.

Slaughterhouse's.

Slentrian's. Or Filter's, depending on how you look at it.

Do you ever have movies in your dreams?  I often get them when I've slept too long and am not in deep sleep .  The mental exercise of generating a fake movie in real-time for my sleeping mind to watch usually gives me a headache when I wake up.

Just had a terrible one.  I've heard about this movie Antichrist by Lars von Trier.  Lucius Shepard says it's a "real horror movie" and I saw it's playing at one of those small indie theaters just up the street from my house.  Unbidden, my mind generated for me a truly horrific dream movie last night, starting as a lush and somber story starring Willem Defoe but then ending up in this horrific thing where the had been knocked unconscious, then tortured and mutilated in a bathtub into something not recognizably human with exposed bones and nerve endings.

Not how I like to wake up in the morning.

Maybe it has something to do with the news coming out of South Africa.  My father-in-law was just in a major car accident resulting in fatalities and was rushed to the hospital with broken ribs and other problems.  He's now able to speak, but it looks like they may place the blame on him as the survivor.  We're very lucky that he came though okay-- it would have been terrible for Dylan to lose both of his maternal grandparents in such quick succession.  But forgive me, I don't have the highest expectations of South African jurisprudence.  It reminds me of that American who was imprisoned for murder down in Central America somewhere, with little in the way of evidence...