Sunday, February 14, 2010
The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Way I Feel
Watching the Winter Olympics. Feel the Native American dancers in the opening ceremony should get medals for their two-hour endurance dancing.... Can't tell the difference between the "awesome" competitors and the medicre ones; feel clueless (but probably not alone).... Revised and expanded my review (or rant) about The Room (see below). Hope Midweek will publish it.... Had a Martini last night, which I don't think I've ever ordered before. I remembered my father giving me olives from his when I was a kid. Felt a little nostalgic.... Bought a 25-pound bag of rock salt today and muled it home on foot from the store. Felt virile....haha....
Saturday, February 13, 2010
The T&T List
Will Durst
The Psychedelic Furs
Roman Polanski
Bravo Smokes
Lesghi Star
dilithium
Route 280
ambigram
cevapcici
crabzilla
tourbillon
Othello
The Psychedelic Furs
Roman Polanski
Bravo Smokes
Lesghi Star
dilithium
Route 280
ambigram
cevapcici
crabzilla
tourbillon
Othello
Thursday, February 11, 2010
#24 Dream
Right now, dishcloths are plotting to maintain Web pages about a nervous meals-on-wheels van. My maypole and snorkel are flaming, and toxic waste barrels that I work with may be half-dead.
Friday will be here at last in less than an hour, and after a tough week, incoherent babbling seems perfectly appropriate to me. You can find more of this sort of applesauce at 24 Dreaming, a site that generates surreal statements, apparently based (loosely) on actual plot summaries from the TV series 24. They're fun. Doesn't seem to matter if, like me, you don't watch the show -- as long as you gyre and gimble in the wabe.
Friday will be here at last in less than an hour, and after a tough week, incoherent babbling seems perfectly appropriate to me. You can find more of this sort of applesauce at 24 Dreaming, a site that generates surreal statements, apparently based (loosely) on actual plot summaries from the TV series 24. They're fun. Doesn't seem to matter if, like me, you don't watch the show -- as long as you gyre and gimble in the wabe.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Backyard Blizzard
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
Word of the Day: zaddik
zaddik (n)
A righteous and saintly person by Jewish religious standards.
"He drew a beautiful picture of the ideal zaddik, who is "so absorbed in meditation on the Divine wisdom that he cannot descend to the lower steps upon which ordinary people stand."
--Jacob Salmon Raisin, The Haskalah Movement in Russia
Hmm. I wonder if the meditation I do on the PATH train each morning on my way to Newark will ever get me to that level.
A righteous and saintly person by Jewish religious standards.
"He drew a beautiful picture of the ideal zaddik, who is "so absorbed in meditation on the Divine wisdom that he cannot descend to the lower steps upon which ordinary people stand."
--Jacob Salmon Raisin, The Haskalah Movement in Russia
Hmm. I wonder if the meditation I do on the PATH train each morning on my way to Newark will ever get me to that level.
Monday, February 08, 2010
How much is that hipster in the window?
Check out the Hipster Puppies. More for the captions than the canine photos. To wit:
a combination of cough syrup and sunstroke meant freddie did a terrible job manning the “kiss the freaky frog” booth at burning man
penny cannot believe you put a tablespoon of butter in the pasta when she’s told you a thousand times that she’s vegan.
dill can’t wait for them to announce the pitchfork festival lineup so he can make fun of it and then go to it anyway
raven thinks you should really see more of werner herzog’s work before you try and have this conversation
a combination of cough syrup and sunstroke meant freddie did a terrible job manning the “kiss the freaky frog” booth at burning man
penny cannot believe you put a tablespoon of butter in the pasta when she’s told you a thousand times that she’s vegan.
dill can’t wait for them to announce the pitchfork festival lineup so he can make fun of it and then go to it anyway
raven thinks you should really see more of werner herzog’s work before you try and have this conversation
Sunday, February 07, 2010
Weekend Bad Movie Report: 'The Room'
Room for Improvement
Some people like to slow down on the highway to get an eyeful of grisly car accidents. Lots of us will stare transfixed at photos of spectacular train wrecks. The peculiar fascination of these real-life disasters is only rarely approached by anything on the movie screen, but when it is, a transcendent moment of terrible beauty is born. I like to call it vile cinema.
It's not enough for a film to be incompetent, tedious, or painful to watch; to be truly vile, it must conjure the devil himself -- it must cast an unholy spell that makes it impossible to pull your retinas away. It must bring a contradictory phrase to mind: "so bad it's good."
To make a vile film, a filmmaker has to be sincere. Parody and camp can fail, but they lack the air of innocent tragedy that make vile films so compelling.
Case in point: a few weeks ago, I attended a screening of The Room (2003), part of the Movies Under the Drop Ceiling Series sponsored by Jersey City's Art House Productions. This film is often called "the worst film ever made" and "the Citizen Kane of bad movies."
It is indeed a bad film in every respect -- amateurish acting and dialog, continuity flubs, ham-handed editing, poor dubbing, pointless stock footage, etc. The story revolves around the relationship between Johnny (Tommy Wisseau), a long-haired "banker" with an Arnold Schwarzenegger accent, and Lisa (Juliette Danielle), a bleached-blonde "sociopath" who looks like a cross between Courtney Love and Britney Spears. The two are engaged, but Lisa is "bored" with Johnny and initiates an affair with Johnny's best friend Mark (Greg Sestero), who looks like a male model. The sex scenes, which are long and embarrassing, are accompanied on the soundtrack by cheesy R&B songs.
There are many tangents involving minor characters (they all seem to live in the same San Francisco apartment building), but these subplots are quickly introduced and then abandoned. Lisa's mother, for example, very casually drops the news that she has breast cancer, but this is never mentioned again. A young friend of Johnny's is revealed to be involved in drug deals, but after a single dramatic scene, this detail is ignored. Several times, the story comes to a standstill as the male characters go outside to play catch with a football. People behave and speak in idiotic ways, and the plot moves in circles until the "tragic" ending.
Most of the film takes place in a single set: Johnny and Lisa's living room, which has framed photos of spoons on the walls and a TV set placed behind a sofa. Perhaps as an homage to Seinfeld, the characters come and go as they please, walking in through the front door without knocking.
Tommy Wisseau served as lead actor, director, producer and executive producer for the film, which he (no surprise) self-financed. In interviews that can be found on the Web and in the extras section of the DVD, he seems to think he's made a good, even important film; he comes across a sincere, innocent--and vile. He has been quoted as saying the film explains "what not to do." He's commenting on the way the characters treat each other, but he might as well be referring to the entire production.
The saving grace of the film is that it is, as you may have gathered, not only vile but unintentionally hilarious, which is why Art House Productions showed it. The audience threw popcorn at the screen and talked to the characters throughout -- which, with a film of this quality, is entertaining rather than annoying.
Perhaps not surprisingly, The Room has developed a cult following similar to that of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. It's been a midnight movie in many major cities, including New York. At these events, Wisseau often sells T-shirts, DVDs, and soundtracks to fans -- proving that the spectacular failure of the vile can sometimes be as profitable as success.
Some people like to slow down on the highway to get an eyeful of grisly car accidents. Lots of us will stare transfixed at photos of spectacular train wrecks. The peculiar fascination of these real-life disasters is only rarely approached by anything on the movie screen, but when it is, a transcendent moment of terrible beauty is born. I like to call it vile cinema.
It's not enough for a film to be incompetent, tedious, or painful to watch; to be truly vile, it must conjure the devil himself -- it must cast an unholy spell that makes it impossible to pull your retinas away. It must bring a contradictory phrase to mind: "so bad it's good."
To make a vile film, a filmmaker has to be sincere. Parody and camp can fail, but they lack the air of innocent tragedy that make vile films so compelling.
Case in point: a few weeks ago, I attended a screening of The Room (2003), part of the Movies Under the Drop Ceiling Series sponsored by Jersey City's Art House Productions. This film is often called "the worst film ever made" and "the Citizen Kane of bad movies."
It is indeed a bad film in every respect -- amateurish acting and dialog, continuity flubs, ham-handed editing, poor dubbing, pointless stock footage, etc. The story revolves around the relationship between Johnny (Tommy Wisseau), a long-haired "banker" with an Arnold Schwarzenegger accent, and Lisa (Juliette Danielle), a bleached-blonde "sociopath" who looks like a cross between Courtney Love and Britney Spears. The two are engaged, but Lisa is "bored" with Johnny and initiates an affair with Johnny's best friend Mark (Greg Sestero), who looks like a male model. The sex scenes, which are long and embarrassing, are accompanied on the soundtrack by cheesy R&B songs.
There are many tangents involving minor characters (they all seem to live in the same San Francisco apartment building), but these subplots are quickly introduced and then abandoned. Lisa's mother, for example, very casually drops the news that she has breast cancer, but this is never mentioned again. A young friend of Johnny's is revealed to be involved in drug deals, but after a single dramatic scene, this detail is ignored. Several times, the story comes to a standstill as the male characters go outside to play catch with a football. People behave and speak in idiotic ways, and the plot moves in circles until the "tragic" ending.
Most of the film takes place in a single set: Johnny and Lisa's living room, which has framed photos of spoons on the walls and a TV set placed behind a sofa. Perhaps as an homage to Seinfeld, the characters come and go as they please, walking in through the front door without knocking.
Tommy Wisseau served as lead actor, director, producer and executive producer for the film, which he (no surprise) self-financed. In interviews that can be found on the Web and in the extras section of the DVD, he seems to think he's made a good, even important film; he comes across a sincere, innocent--and vile. He has been quoted as saying the film explains "what not to do." He's commenting on the way the characters treat each other, but he might as well be referring to the entire production.
The saving grace of the film is that it is, as you may have gathered, not only vile but unintentionally hilarious, which is why Art House Productions showed it. The audience threw popcorn at the screen and talked to the characters throughout -- which, with a film of this quality, is entertaining rather than annoying.
Perhaps not surprisingly, The Room has developed a cult following similar to that of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. It's been a midnight movie in many major cities, including New York. At these events, Wisseau often sells T-shirts, DVDs, and soundtracks to fans -- proving that the spectacular failure of the vile can sometimes be as profitable as success.
Saturday, February 06, 2010
Pity Party!
With certain very important exceptions, I think most people get what they want from me and then dump me. They get work, favors, entertainment when they're bored, even my writing (here or elsewhere) and then "move on" when I'm no longer useful or convenient. I don't think it's malice. It's more like indifference. I'm not quite useful enough, or I don't fit into the right friendship demographic. And maybe I'm just not giving or charming enough. I'm not saying I'm not partly to blame.
I can't say I've gotten used to it over the years, but it no longer surprises me much.
Maybe I'm being naive here. Maybe most people actually feel the same way and are just more stoic or numb to it or blasé about it.
Maybe I should just get over myself.
Thursday, February 04, 2010
The 'Lost' Books
GalleyCat, the book publishing industry blog, has a list of favorite books mentioned in the TV series Lost, with links to reviews of said books. The ones I've read are Valis by Philip K. Dick and Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor. Both are pretty mind-bending, but in very different ways.
Valis is a...a...gnostic sci-fi novel, I guess you could say. It's one of those books that is very difficult to categorize. But those are the kind I like best. (Those are the TV shows and films I like best, too.)
Everything That Rises Must Converge is a collection of twisted Southern Gothic short stories as only O'Connor could write them. They are all about broken people finding violent redemption. Sound familiar?
Valis is a...a...gnostic sci-fi novel, I guess you could say. It's one of those books that is very difficult to categorize. But those are the kind I like best. (Those are the TV shows and films I like best, too.)
Everything That Rises Must Converge is a collection of twisted Southern Gothic short stories as only O'Connor could write them. They are all about broken people finding violent redemption. Sound familiar?
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Red Room Redux
Ariana Delwari isn't a singer or songwriter who does anything for me, though her Hollywood-by-way-of-Afghanistan background is at least unique. But David Lynch's new promo video for her album, Lion of Panjshir, is interesting in one respect: he seems to have filmed her in the Black Lodge, complete with red drapes and windy sound effects. (Scroll down to second video.)
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
L O S T
Jack loved Kate but unlike Jack, James hated Kate. Kate loved James, but Jack, James hated; unlike Jack, Kate hated James. Jack loved James, but Jack, James hated, but unlike Jack, James hated Kate. James loved Kate, hated Jack. But Kate, James hated, unlike Jack. Kate hated Jack, James hated Kate, unlike Jack, who loved Kate but hated Kate. James, unlike Jack, loved Kate, but hated Jack; James hated Kate and Jack. Jack hated James, but James, unlike Jack, loved Kate and hated Kate. Jack loved James but hated Kate, but unlike Jack, James loved Kate and hated Jack....
Monday, February 01, 2010
Word of the Day: corybantic
corybantic (adj)
Frantic, frenzied, or ecstatic. The "corybants" were ancient worshipers of the goddess Cybele whose rites were celebrated with music and ecstatic dances.
"It was as though the old Cornish giants had come back to life for a corybantic dance with the demirips of their race--dancing to the music of the sea sucking and gurgling into the caves at the base of the cliffs."
--Arthur J. Rees, The Moon Rock
"Demirips" is, I think, an alternate spelling of demireps. A demirep is "a person of doubtful reputation or respectability", according to TheFreeDictionary.com.
There were a lot of people dressed as demireps and acting like corybants on the Grammy Awards last night. Music and singing seemed less important to the proceedings than flash and spectacle. There was even a circus act. I'd rather see and hear Susan Boyle than some pop tart lip-syncing while dressed like a Vegas hooker and hanging upside down... at least on the Grammies.
Frantic, frenzied, or ecstatic. The "corybants" were ancient worshipers of the goddess Cybele whose rites were celebrated with music and ecstatic dances.
"It was as though the old Cornish giants had come back to life for a corybantic dance with the demirips of their race--dancing to the music of the sea sucking and gurgling into the caves at the base of the cliffs."
--Arthur J. Rees, The Moon Rock
"Demirips" is, I think, an alternate spelling of demireps. A demirep is "a person of doubtful reputation or respectability", according to TheFreeDictionary.com.
There were a lot of people dressed as demireps and acting like corybants on the Grammy Awards last night. Music and singing seemed less important to the proceedings than flash and spectacle. There was even a circus act. I'd rather see and hear Susan Boyle than some pop tart lip-syncing while dressed like a Vegas hooker and hanging upside down... at least on the Grammies.
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