December 31st, 2012

What a shit year. Glad it's done.

2666 - The Part About The Crimes

Excerpt (421):
Around this time, Juan de Dios Martinez was still sleeping with Dr. Elvira Campos every two weeks. Sometimes the inspector thought it was a miracle the relationship survived. There were difficulties, there were misunderstandings, but they were still together. In bed, or so he believed, the attraction was mutual. He had never wanted a woman the way he wanted her. If it had been up to him he would have married the director without a second thought. Sometimes, when it had been a long time since he saw her, he began to mull over their cultural differences, which he saw as the main hurdle. The director liked art and could look at a painting and say who the painter was, for example. The books she read he had never heard of. The music she listened to just made him pleasantly drowsy, and after a while all he wanted was to lie down and sleep which, of course, he was careful not to do at her apartment. Even the food the director liked was different from the food he liked. He tried to adapt to these new circumstances and sometimes he would go to a record store and buy some Beethoven or Mozart, which he would then listen to alone at home. Usually he fell asleep. But his dreams were peaceful and happy. He dreamed that he and Elvira Campos lived together in a cabin in the mountains. The cabin didn't have electricity or running water or anything to remind them of civilization. They slept on a bearskin, with a wolf skin over them. And sometimes Elvira Campos laughed, a ringing laugh, as she went running into the woods and he lost sight of her.

Chicago Bears - End of the Season

Kind of a heartbreaking way for the season to end yesterday. The Bears pull out a 26-24 victory against the Lions at Detroit, but Green Bay falls short in their comeback against the Vikings who kick a last second field goal to win the game.
One more week of games to start off the new year would have been nice.

Update: Lovie Smith was fired this morning after nine seasons. 10-6 this season. Super Bowl in 2006.

Indianapolis Museum of Art

The Seashore, John Metzinger (1905). Oil on canvas. European modernism.

The Flageolot Player On the Cliff, Paul Gaugin (1889). Oil on canvas. European.

Landscape at Saint-Remy, Vincent van Gogh (1889). Oil on canvas. European.

Winter Landscape, Rockwell Kent (1909). Oil on canvas. American.

The Artist's Party, Joseph Delaney (1941-43). Oil on canvas. American.
(Delaney is shown with his back to the viewer talking to a man believed to be the Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock.)

New York, New Haven, and Hartford, Edward Hopper (1931). Oil on canvas. American.

He Is Risen (The Passion of Christ Series), Romare Howard Bearden (1945). Oil on gessoed board.

Head of a Clown, Georges Rouault (1920). Oil and gouache on paper mounted on linen. French.

Self-Portrait, Rembrandt van Rijn (1629). Oil on wood. Dutch.

Green Apples with Gray Curtain, Walt Kuhn (1943). Oil on canvas. American.

The Moviegoers Episode 10

It's a very festive holiday episode with bloody mary's and brunch. We also talk the film of the year, Zero Dark Thirty. Greg sings a few bars from Les Miz, Andy kills Killing Them Softly, and I finally go On The Road Walter Salles-style.

Zero Dark Thirty (Dir. Kathryn Bigelow)

I went to see the hunt for Bin Laden to take my mind off a woman.

The need of cinema for total immersion. To get out of your own head. And in that theater, it delivered. You don't need popcorn. You don't need soda. You'll just sit there riveted. Frozen. Without blinking. Sustained tension from minute one to the final moment. When it ended I could have continued to sit there for another hour. Finally, a real movie.

And it seems to usher in a new genre of cinema. Something I'll label for right now 'new journalism.' A sprawling narrative tale that jumps years and time, yet effortlessly so, without becoming disjointed. Fabric and small details throughout. Kind of three films in one -- a political thriller,  a procedural, and the final one being an exhilarating men on a mission. A huge New Yorker piece adapted for the screen. I put this film alongside Zodiac.

Jason Clarke and Edgar Ramirez have worked themselves to become my favorite actors. 

(A couple brief notes: Camp Chapman sequence -- I knew what was going to happen from hearing about it on Fresh Air a year ago and was still tense/and then angry for the security breach to be allowed, and the tracking of Bin Laden's courier in the market place should be remembered. A question: If they're able to track his phone, can't they listen in on the info he's providing and know if UBL is giving orders for Abbottabad?)

Two words: Fucking Awesome.

A great,  grand American film.

Django Unchained

Thoughts TBD on Christmas or on podcast.

The Moviegoers Episode 9 - Lincoln

We get heavy into Lincoln. It's well done, but Greg loves it. Also Anna Karenina, Silver Linings Playbook, some Life of Pi 3D. And ask the important question regarding the filmmaking of Holy Motors -- is that a stunt cock?

Happy Holidays from Bob Dylan & Harry Dean Stanton

The Moviegoers Episode 8 - Cloud Atlas

We're talking Cloud Atlas, Skyfall, some Holy Motors, Romanian cinema, and the delightful drunken antics of Dudley Moore.

Instructions On How to Party and Have a Good Time

This was a company email prior to a party.

If you're tweeting or instagramming tonight's event please make sure to use the hashtag #ZEFR on all tweets/photos from tonight.

also check what others are posting using the hashtag #ZEFR and like/comment/share those tweets/pics.

You can @mention ZEFR on both Twitter and Instagram.  Our username is @ZEFRinc on both!

Hope

Officer gives boots to homeless man.

The Thanksgiving Album

Wednesday night:
Crossfire Hurricane - the new documentary on the Rolling Stones. Surprisingly well done. Focused on the great period of the Stones, later '60s/early '70s. A lot of unseen footage and capturing a little of the fiery intensity of the band. Fun watch.

Thanksgiving:
Head over to Brower's with Tracey, Chaffee, and Kat. Play some records in the afternoon.Put on American Beauty. Feast & dessert, then musical Ipod trivia.

Friday:
Take the Santa Monica bus to my car. A depressed day. See Silver Linings Playbook with Tatiana in Culver City.

Saturday:
Head out apple pickin' to riley farms. Some pics.

Liz & Dick

Finished the Thanksgiving weekend by going over to a friend's house for a group get together of Lifetime's big event, Liz & Dick. It is Lindsay Lohan after all. And Lohan can make an ABC family film like Labor Pains charming and watchable. But not so for this t.v. movie of the week. Not as salacious as it needed to be, not as cheesy as it needed to be. Sleeping for two hours would have been better time served.
(On the favorable side, I did have two slices of pie a la mode.)

An excerpt from this review which chronicles Lohan's exile period.

"She is so unwatchable, the film doesn't even have camp value...Lindsay just doesn't work hard enough, and the whole world watched the hyped-up post-ironic Happening for the sake of schadenfreude."

Happy Thanksgiving

Make sure you don't forget "some girl meat" to bring to your feast. And I hear bath salts are the perfect addition to any cranberry sauce recipe.

The Rolling Stones - Cocksucker Blues (1972)

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War on Dogs

Bit by a big dog this morning. Ripped pants. Owner became catatonic. Fun times. #NewCatPerson

War on Dogs. They must be put down. #MayorOfSantaMonica 

I've got a fever for dog meat. #DogBiteVictim

Quentin Tarantino

The Playboy interview. Didn't think I could get any more excited for Django Unchained. I was wrong.

David Simon

I just discovered that he has a blog/website called "The Audacity of Despair." A lot of content. He even writes an in memoriam to Levon Helm.

Oliver Sacks

His new book is about  Hallucinations. 
Excerpt:

"I had been reading about the color indigo, how it had been introduced into the spectrum by [Isaac] Newton rather late, and it seemed no two people quite agreed as to what indigo was, and I thought I would like to have an experience of indigo. And I built up a sort of pharmacological launchpad with amphetamines and LSD, and a little cannabis on top of that, and when I was really stoned I said, 'I want to see indigo now.' And as if thrown by a paintbrush, a huge pear-shaped blob of the purest indigo appeared on the wall.

"Again it had this luminous, numinous quality; I leaped toward it in a sort of ecstasy. I thought, 'This is the color of heaven.' ... I thought maybe this is not a color which actually exists on the Earth, or maybe it used to exist or no longer exists. All this went through my mind in 4 or 5 seconds, and then the blob disappeared, giving me a strong sense of loss and heartbrokenness, and I was haunted a little bit when I came down, wondering whether indigo did exist in the real world.

"I would turn over little stones. I once went to a museum to look at azurite, a copper mineral which is maybe the nearest [to] indigo, but that was disappointing. I did in fact have that experience again, but when I had it the second time, it was not with a drug, it was with music — and I think music can take one to the heights in a way comparable with drugs."

Record Club Volume.15

Hosted at 507 Hill St., Santa Monica CA.

Record Club/Vol.15/11-10-12
aka 'Brower Birthday Bash'

6:41pm
Patton - "Original Motion Picture Soundtrack" - Side 1 - The House
Allah-La's - Self Titled - Side 1 - Brower
Warren Zevon - Excitable Boy - Side 1 - Chaffee
The Bud & Travis - Latin Album - Side 1 - Greg J.
Jerry Lee Lewis - I'm On Fire - Side 1 -Tarik
Billy Joel - The Stranger - Side 1 - Schuchinski
Guns & Roses - London 1987 - Jake
Supersuckers - Motherf#$%ers be Trippin' - Side 1 - Tarik
Huey Lewis & the News - Sports - Side 1 - Tracey
Lilacs & Champagne - Self Titled - Side 1 - Clay
Lonerism - Tame Impala - Zoe
The Quick - Mondo Deco - Zoe
The Replacements - Tim - Side 1 - Pia
The Donkeys - Living on the Other Side - Side 1 - Phil
Genesis - Selling England by the Pound - Matt
Jerry Lee Lewis - Whole Lotta Shakin' - Hannah
Gene Simmons - Kiss - Side 1 - Charlene
Whitney Houston - Whitney - Side 1 - Becky Chaffee
The Four Doorsmen - Barbershop Ballads - Bob
Gary Stewart - Out of Hand - Side 2 - Phil ("Happy B-day, Brower")
Hank Jr. - Hank Jr. & Friends - Side 1 - Brower
Gary Higgins - Red Hash - Side 1 - Clay
Donovan - The Hurdy Gurdy Man - Side 1 - Pia
Shuggie Otis - Freedom Flight - Zoe
Al Green - Call Me - Side A - Brie (Cindy Gardner) ("first time played in 25 years")
Randy Newman - Good Old Boys - Side 2 - Phil
Rolling Stones - Tattoo You - Side 1 - Brower
Lee Hazelwood & Nancy Sinatra - Some Velvet Morning - Zoe
Rolling Stones - Goats Head Soup - Side B - Charlene
Neil Diamond - Hot August Nights - Side 4 - Chaffee
...
Sunday, 11am
Bob Dylan - New Morning - Side 2 - Chaffee

The Best Fans in the World

I've never been prouder to be able to call myself a Chicago Bears fan.

Holy Motors - Leos Carax

AFI Fest in Hollywood. Egyptian theater. Wild French film. A love letter to the cinema and also about the death of cinema. Carax introduces the film. And like the l'enfant terrible of his reputation, walks on stage with sunglasses and sporting a moustache and says : "I hope you like my film. Or not." Then drops the mic, and walks off. Brilliant.

Neil Young - Psychedelic Pill

The opening track Driftin' Back is almost a complete album unto itself. That could be Side A, with Walk Like A Giant Side B. Good album to listen to while hiking.

Wake In Fright

Checked out this 1970s Australian movie at the Cinefamily with Jake and Tarik. The outback as a drunken wasteland. Hits a delirium state halfway through seldom experienced in the cinema. But still can't say I liked the experience.

The Donkeys

Hit up the Satellite on a Thursday night to see this band from San Diego. And that is exactly what they are...a band. No more, no less. Just a bunch a guys who play music. A bar band. Like "Louie, Louie" It was refreshing. A straight-up good time rock and roll.
They didn't play their great song "Dolphin Center" despite numerous howls from the audience when returning for the encore. Their normal bass player was out. So they launched into a raucous version of "Gloria."
The type of band that has one great record and aren't heard from, and years later you pull out the record from the dust bin and remember how good it is.

Ain't In It For My Health: A Film About Levon Helm

It's official. A long time coming.

The Moviegoers Episode 7: Argo

Two of us really like Argo, one of us thinks that 'average' just doesn't cut it.

Bears Vs. Lions - Monday Night Football

The Bears, more or less, dominate the game throughout at Soldier Field. Though it was 13-0 for most of the game, it seemed like 28-0. Sure enough though Detroit gets a meaningless TD with thirty seconds left for another dismal backdoor cover. Final score : 13-7.
The spread was 6.5. I'm seemingly on the unlucky end of all these backdoor covers this season from Pack/Seahawks to Niners/Seahawks to Bears/Lions, and so on.

Then I tried to watch the final debate between Obama/Romney. Fell asleep in ten minutes.

Dawn of the Dead - Hollywood Forever Cemetery

Three things I'll remember from viewing George Romero's 1978 Dawn of the Dead at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

1) The strange purple sky. It never get fully dark. The cloud cover emanated the lights from Los Angeles, felt like early morning.

2) The film is more of a satire, than horror. Two best scenes: the opening scene in the television studio with a ratcheted tension and panic. And constant drone thumping on the soundtrack. Wasn't even sure quite what was going on, but there was a heightened energy. The other notable scene: The Woodstock of rednecks gunning down zombies walking the countryside while drinking beer.

3) The three quasi-models sitting next to us snapping a hundred photos of themselves prior to the movie, then on their Iphones throughout the film, then leaving twenty minutes before the end.

Working Man's Blues

Charles Bukowski on the fear of "emptying out."

In 1969, publisher John Martin offered to pay Charles Bukowski $100 each and every month for the rest of his life, on one condition: that he quit his job at the post office and become a writer. 49-year-old Bukowski did just that, and in 1971 his first novel, Post Office, was published by Martin's  Black Sparrow Press.

15 years later, Bukowski wrote the following letter to Martin and spoke of his joy at having escaped full time employment.

     8-12-86

Hello John:

Thanks for the good letter. I don't think it hurts, sometimes, to remember where you came from. You know the places where I came from. Even the people who try to write about that or make films about it, they don't get it right. They call it "9 to 5." It's never 9 to 5, there's no free lunch break at those places, in fact, at many of them in order to keep your job you don't take lunch. Then there's OVERTIME and the books never seem to get the overtime right and if you complain about that, there's another sucker to take your place.

You know my old saying, "Slavery was never abolished, it was only extended to include all the colors."

And what hurts is the steadily diminishing humanity of those fighting to hold jobs they don't want but fear the alternative worse. People simply empty out. They are bodies with fearful and obedient minds. The color leaves the eye. The voice becomes ugly. And the body. The hair. The fingernails. The shoes. Everything does.

As a young man I could not believe that people could give their lives over to those conditions. As an old man, I still can't believe it. What do they do it for? Sex? TV? An automobile on monthly payments? Or children? Children who are just going to do the same things that they did?

Early on, when I was quite young and going from job to job I was foolish enough to sometimes speak to my fellow workers: "Hey, the boss can come in here at any moment and lay all of us off, just like that, don't you realize that?"

They would just look at me. I was posing something that they didn't want to enter their minds.

Now in industry, there are vast layoffs (steel mills dead, technical changes in other factors of the work place). They are layed off by the hundreds of thousands and their faces are stunned:

"I put in 35 years..."

"It ain't right..."

"I don't know what to do..."

They never pay the slaves enough so they can get free, just enough so they can stay alive and come back to work. I could see all this. Why couldn't they? I figured the park bench was just as good or being a barfly was just as good. Why not get there first before they put me there? Why wait?

I just wrote in disgust against it all, it was a relief to get the shit out of my system. And now that I'm here, a so-called professional writer, after giving the first 50 years away, I've found out that there are other disgusts beyond the system.

I remember once, working as a packer in this lighting fixture company, one of the packers suddenly said: "I'll never be free!"

One of the bosses was walking by (his name was Morrie) and he let out this delicious cackle of a laugh, enjoying the fact that this fellow was trapped for life.

So, the luck I finally had in getting out of those places, no matter how long it took, has given me a kind of joy, the jolly joy of the miracle. I now write from an old mind and an old body, long beyond the time when most men would ever think of continuing such a thing, but since I started so late I owe it to myself to continue, and when the words begin to falter and I must be helped up stairways and I can no longer tell a bluebird from a paperclip, I still feel that something in me is going to remember (no matter how far I'm gone) how I've come through the murder and the mess and the moil, to at least a generous way to die.

To not to have entirely wasted one's life seems to be a worthy accomplishment, if only for myself.

yr boy,

Hank

Argo

A perfectly adequate film. Neither pleasing, nor offending. If an average movie is your thing, then this  will certainly suit you. But when I go to the cinema, I'm looking for more than just average. If that's naiive or unrealistic so be it. People say glowingly that this is Ben Affleck's best movie, well Gone Baby Gone and The Town were bad and mediocre so I guess...
Congratulations Ben Affleck!

October Baseball

Post-season baseball is just so good, and the drama so much more heightened than the endless, regular season. Each pitch matters, the nuances of fielding and base-running becomes magnified.

On Saturday night, Detroit is cruising against the Yankees in New York. 4-0 in the ninth. Valverde pitching. First, Ichiro hits a two run shot. Then Raul Ibanez comes up with a man on, and sure enough blasts it in the seats. Tie game. Ibanez only hits home runs.
Extra innings. The Yankees give up two runs, and Derek Jeter goes down, breaking his ankle. The end of the Yankees
On Sunday, they look like they know they are done even though it is only game 2. ARod smiling because he made contact, instead of the usual strikeout. They're spent, long gone.

And Raul is on juice.

Hejira (2007)

Here's to autumn.

Sponsored by no one.

Harris Savides

Read the unexpected news that he passed today. For a little while I remember going to the theater and the film would have a striking look, but not show off. Then I'd learn that Harris Savedes shot it. The Gus Van Sant death trilogy, Zodiac, Greenberg, Somewhere.
I like to think of him as a gourmond. And I mean that in the best possible way.

From Indiewire:
"Zodiac" (2007)
Savides’ first collaboration with David Fincher was the wildly over-the-top “The Game,” a kind of hyper-intelligent fuck-you puzzle-box thriller about a very rich man put through his paces by a shadowy organization under the guise of an elaborate role-playing game. For their next feature together, Savides and Fincher went the complete opposite direction, not wholly abandoning the stylistic flourishes that made Fincher such a beloved film world figure, but stripping back much of the bullshit to present a just-the-facts-ma’am look at the decades-long hunt for the notorious Zodiac serial killer. What Savides accomplished with “Zodiac” is mind-blowing – this is a movie with scenes spread across locations and time periods, each requiring a different historically representative look, and often with the Fincher-approved embroidery of intricate visual effects (many of which go undetected they’re so seamlessly integrated into the frame). What’s even more astounding is thinking about how this was the first time that Fincher had used digital -- up until this point his films were all shot with celluloid -- at a time when the format still looked, in lesser hands, crunchy and flat. This wasn’t some bedroom chamber piece; this was a rich historical epic, and needed to look appropriately grand. Savides did it all. There are so many amazing shots running through our minds right now – one of the opening shots from inside Darlene’s car, fireworks exploding behind suburban roofs; the tracking shot of the cab (whose driver would meet his fate at the corner of Washington and Cherry), which pivots as the cab turns; the way Savides captured the droplets of water that dot Jake Gyllenhaal's face as he knocks on Mark Ruffalo’s door at the end of the movie. These are moments that contribute to the emotional and intellectual heft of the movie, not showy shots that are dissected in film class. Fincher and Savides, with “Zodiac,” made stylization subtle, which of course makes it all the more effective. “Zodiac” is an American masterpiece; unthinkable without Savides’ significant contribution. 

On Writing: John Steinbeck (1962)

Dr. Dog -- John Anson Ford Theater

October 5, 2012

Beautiful intimate venue nestled up in the hills. Cinematic and majestic.

Opener: Cotton Jones.

Setlist
The Rabbit, The Bat, and The Reindeer
Stranger
Do The Trick
The Ark
I Only Wear Blue
These Days
Hang On
Heavy Light
The Beach
That Old Black Hole
Shame, Shame,
From
Vampire
Shadow People
Heart it Races (Architecture in Helsinki cover)
The Way the Lazy Do
Lonesome

Encore:
California
Worst Trip
Oh No

One of the more great, fun nights in a while. Buzzed.

Las Vegas -- 9am

Outside a liquor store.

Fresh Air -- Neil Young/Steve Martin

Had one of the more soul crushing days at work. One where you just feel drained, spent, and empty. With nowhere to go.
Decided to watch the first debate of Obama/Romney at a friend's house. The first debate is always the introduction, with the opponents just feeling themselves out. The second and third debates typically become more colorful and feisty.

On my way over I listened to two podcasts -- both creatively inspiring. And lifted my spirits, even if only for the moment.

Neil Young

Steve Martin

Monday Night Football -- Bears/Cowboys (Week #4)

Bears crush 34-18 in Dallas. Thank you Tony "Homo" Romo and Dez Bryant. They were the MVP's of the game. Romo with 5 int's. Two of them just disastrous pick sixes. One to Charles Tillman that was so easy Tillman almost dropped, the other a shovel pass to Julius Peppers run back for 60 yards. Dez Bryant was high. He dropped so many passes, a couple for sure touchdowns, and crucial drops on 3rd downs.
Jay Cutler and the Bears are too pass happy right now. Cutler's arm is so strong he tries to throw it anywhere, sometimes it works. It will lead to disaster. The Bears are strong when they have twenty-five pass attempts, and a balanced running attack.

Klown

Sweden's version of Sideways mixed with some of the outlandish raunchiness The Hangover only wish they could achieve. I laughed hard and for an extended duration for probably four scenes, maybe more.  Perhaps some of the toilet humor was raised to higher level because of the European elegance cloaking the behavior -- I'm thinking early on of the 'pearl necklace' discussion.

"Tour de pussy."

Record Club V. 14

Saturday, September 29th, 2012

Log and photos to come...

Monday Night Football Degenerates

Russell Wilson throws a game-winning interception!
And how much money did the ref who called the int a TD, and ignored the offensive pass interference call, have on the Seahawks?

Treme - Season 3, Episode 1 - 'Knock With Me - Rock With Me'

It's back!  I'm the only one watching. And that's fine with me.

First scene ( indicating the core theme of this season)  --  second line for a passed, local musician, "I'll Fly Away." Cops bust it up. Anger stews. Antoine Batiste gets arrested. The feelings for the show, and New Orleans all flood back...
Final Scene -- Terry on a quiet French Quarter Street, worried that his F.E.M.A trailer is contaminated. Ruminates on his ex-wife saying maybe N.O. isn't right for him. Afterall, 'only dreamers and drunks' stay in New Orleans. He takes a look at a local street urchin sharing a taste for a po-boy, "Don't ever change."

Favorite line: "What's there to do that's fun in Indianapolis?" -- Lt. Terry Colson
Second favorite line: "I'm not an adult, I'm a musician." -- Antoine Batistte

Here's a New Yorker review.

And some words from David Simon on the themes percolating in Season 3:

"Everything comes with a cost," Simon says. "That doesn't mean you don't take it. That doesn't mean that you walk away from the money at all points. Money is in neutral. It's the way in which it wraps itself that you have to struggle with and debate.

"A lot of the people who have had the most successful and influential musical careers in America came from New Orleans," Simon continues. "They had to leave New Orleans to do it. Nobody knew who Louis Armstrong was in New Orleans; he had to go to Chicago for that. Staying has its beauties and delights but it also has its costs."

"When you are living in a town that has a retrograde police department, and a disastrous school system, and one of the most corrupt civic governments in the history of the republic, and you still don't want to live anywhere else, the town is doing something right," he says. "Katrina led a lot of New Orleanians to reflect on ... why they can't live anywhere else. It led a lot of people to think about what it is they value in life as part of this community and to hold on to that and do everything possible to serve it and maintain it.
"That's the affirming thing that I find fascinating," Simon continues. "In my opinion, what saved the city, to the extent the city has been saved, has been the city's culture. Not its political leadership. Not the money that was ostensibly directed or misdirected. It's not economics. It's not political. It's community and it's cultural. That's the one thing that New Orleans has gotten right in such a firm and unequivocal way."

Bill Fuckin' Murray

And he's from the suburbs of Chicago.

The Value of a Liberal Arts Education

How Liberal Arts Colleges are Failing America. This isn't just recession babble I bring up but, if I had a graduating high school child, I would seriously offer them the possibility to take a year, two years, or even more to enter the real world before attending college. See the work involved with earning a dollar. And then attend college.  They may appreciate the courses more at that point. Why be in school for 18 years and then automatically go to college for another four? All you know of life at that point is school. And being sheltered.

Episode 5 - Paul W.S Thomas Anderson Go Big or Go Home

The Master (P.T. Anderson) and Resident Evil:Retribution (Paul W.S. Anderson). With special guest Stephen Brower.

Happy Birthday, Bruce

Springsteen turns 63 today. And he ushered it in by playing a show in Jersey that went 'til 2am last night. Here's a letter from the late, great Joe Strummer singing his praises.

Fuck It.

Smokin' Jay Cutler

Smoke 'em if you got them, Jay.

(And this is an exceptional use of the tumblr format.)

Ken Kesey

A letter to his old time friends following the death of his son from a bus accident.

One icy morning in January of 1984, as the University of Oregon's wrestling team headed to their next tournament in Pullman, Washington, the driver of the bus on which they were travelling lost control of the vehicle on a mountain road and could do nothing to stop it tumbling through the guardrail and over a 300-ft cliff. One boy, Lorenzo West, was killed on impact; another, 20-year-old Jed Kesey, was left brain dead. He passed away within days.

Shortly after Jed's funeral at his family's farm, his dad, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest author Ken Kesey, wrote the following letter to five of his closest friends

(Source: CoEvolution Quarterly; Image: Ken Kesey, via.)

Dear Wendell and Larry and Ed and Bob and Gurney:

Partners, it's been a bitch.

I've got to write and tell somebody about some stuff and, like I long ago told Larry, you're the best backboard I know. So indulge me a little; I am but hurt.

We built the box ourselves (George Walker, mainly) and Zane and Jed's friends and frat brothers dug the hole in a nice spot between the chicken house and the pond. Page found the stone and designed the etching. You would have been proud, Wendell, especially of the box — clear pine pegged together and trimmed with redwood. The handles of thick hemp rope. And you, Ed, would have appreciated the lining. It was a piece of Tibetan brocade given Mountain Girl by Owsley 15 years ago, gilt and silver and russet phoenixbird patterns, unfurling in flames. And last month, Bob, Zane was goose hunting in the field across the road and killed a snow goose. I told him be sure to save the down. Susan Butkovitch covered this in white silk for the pillow while Faye and MG and Gretch and Candace stitched and stapled the brocade into the box.

It was a double-pretty day, like winter holding its breath, giving us a break. About 300 people stood around and sung from the little hymnbooks that Diane Kesey had Xeroxed — "Everlasting Arms," "Sweet Hour of Prayer," "In the Garden" and so forth. With all my cousins leading the singing and Dale on his fiddle. While we were singing "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain," Zane and Kit and the neighbor boys that have grown up with all of us carried the box to the hole. The preacher is also the Pleasant Hill School superintendent and has known our kids since kindergarten. I learned a lot about Jed that I'd either forgotten or never known — like his being a member of the National Honor Society and finishing sixth in a class of more than a hundred.

We sung some more. People filed by and dropped stuff in on Jed. I put in that silver whistle I used to wear with the Hopi cross soldered on it. One of our frat brothers put in a quartz watch guaranteed to keep beeping every 15 minutes for five years. Faye put in a snapshot of her and I standing with a pitchfork all Grantwoodesque in front of the old bus. Paul Foster put in the little leatherbound New Testament given him by his father who had carried it during his 65 years as a minister. Paul Sawyer read from Leaves of Grass while the boys each hammered in the one nail they had remembered to put in their pockets. The Betas formed a circle and passed the loving cup around (a ritual our fraternity generally uses when a member is leaving the circle to become engaged) (Jed and Zane and I are all members, y'unnerstand, not to mention Hagen) and the boys lowered the box with these ropes George had cut and braided. Zane and I tossed in the first shovelfuls. It sounded like the first thunderclaps of Revelations...

But it's an earlier scene I want to describe for you all, as writers and friends and fathers...up at the hospital, in cold grey Spokane:

He'd finally started moving a little. Zane and I had been carrying plastic bags of snow to pack his head in trying to stop the swelling that all the doctors told us would follow as blood poured to the bruised brain. And we noticed some reaction to the cold. And the snow I brushed across his lips to ease the bloody parch where all the tubes ran in caused him to roll his arms a little. Then more. Then too much, with the little monitor lights bleeping faster and faster, and I ran to the phone to call the motel where I had just sent most of the family for some rest.

"You guys better get back over here! He's either going or coming."

Everybody was there in less than five minutes — Chuck and Sue, Kit and Zane, Shan and her fiance Jay, Jay's dad Irby, Sheryl and her husband Bill, my mom, Faye...my whole family except for my dead daddy and Grandma Smith down with age and Alzheimer's. Jed's leg was shaking with the force of his heartbeat. Kit and Zane tried to hold it. He was starting to go into seizures, like the neurosurgeon had predicted.

Up till this time everybody had been exhorting him to "Hang on, Old Timer. Stick it out. This thing can't pin you. You're too tough, too brave. Sure it hurts but you can pull through it. Just grit your teeth and hang on." Now we could see him trying, fighting. We could see it in his clenching fists, his threshing legs. And then aw Jesus we saw it in his face. The peacefully swollen unconscious blank suddenly was filled with expression. He came back in. He checked it out, and he saw better than we could begin to imagine how terribly hurt he was. His poor face grimaced with pain. His purple brow knitted and his teeth actually did try to clench on the tubes.

And then, O my old buddies, he cried. The doctors had already told us in every gentle way they could that he was brain dead, gone for good, but we all saw it...the quick flickerback of consciousness, the awful hurt being realized, the tears saying "I don't think I can do 'er this time, Dad. I'm sorry, I truly am..."

And everybody said, "It's okay, ol' Jedderdink. You know better than we do. Breathe easy. Go on ahead. We'll catch you later down the line."

His threshing stopped. His face went blank again. I thought of Old Jack, Wendell, ungripping his hands, letting his fields finally go.

The phone rang in the nurses' quarters. It was the doctor, for me. He had just appraised all the latest readouts on the monitors. "Your son is essentially dead, Mr. Kesey. I'm very sorry."

And the sorrow rung absolutely honest. I said something. Zane picked up the extension and we watched each other while the voice explained the phenomena. We said we saw it also, and were not surprised. Thank you...

Then the doctor asked a strange thing. He wanted to know what kind of kid Jed was. Zane and I both demanded what he meant. He said he was wondering how Jed would have felt about being an organ donor. Our hearts both jumped.

"He would love it! Jed's always been as generous as they come. Take whatever you can use!"

The doctor waited for our elation to ease down, then told us that to take the kidneys they had to take them before the life support was turned off. Did we understand? After a while we told him we did.

So Faye and I had to sign five copies apiece, on a cold formica countertop, while the machine pumped out the little "beep...beep...beep..." in the dim tangle of technology behind us. In all my life, waking and dreaming, I've never imagined anything harder.

Everybody went in and told him goodbye, kissed his broken nose, shook his hand, squeezed his big old hairy foot...headed down the corridor. Somebody said it might be a good idea to get a scrip for some kind of downers. We'd all been up for about 40 hours, either in the chapel praying like maniacs, or at his bedside talking to him. We didn't know if we could sleep.

Chuck and I walked back to the intensive care ward to ask. All the doctors were there, bent over a long list, phoning numbers, matching blood types, ordering nurses...in such a hurry they hardly had time to offer sympathy. Busy, and justly so. But the nurses, the nurses bent over their clipboards, could barely see to fill out the forms.

They phoned the hotel about an hour later to tell us it was over, and that the kidneys were in perfect shape. That was about four in the morning. They phoned again a little after six to say that the kidneys were already in two young somebodies.

What a world.

We've heard since that they used twelve things out of him, including corneas. And the redwinged blackbirds sing in the budding greengage plumtree.

With love,

Ken

P.S. When Jed's wallet was finally sorted out of the debris and confusion of the wreck it was discovered that he had already provided for such a situation. He had signed the place on his driver's license indicating that he wanted to be an organ donor in the event of etc., etc. One man gathers what another man spills. 

Bears Vs. Packers (Week #2)

The worst that Cutler has to offer. Yes, there was pressure on him but it was as if he'd reverted to his ways of three seasons ago. Throwing against the grain, forcing balls into covered areas, frustration getting the better of him.
And Brandon Marshall was no help, dropped two touchdown passes.

Louie - Late Show Part 2

There was an eerie David Lynch quality with Louie in the waiting room talking to the receptionist. And then he meets Jack Dahl. And who is Jack Dahl? None other than David Lynch. Despite the Lynchian undertones breathing throughout, this episode is about when an opportunity presents itself one needs to fight for it. And fight for yourself. Not shying away, but believing. Not cowering, but getting strong.

Bears Vs. Colts (Week #1)

And so it begins. The Bears first possession is an utter mess. Bad snap, dropped ball, going backwards. Ugly. Second possession -- Cutler's first pass of the 2012 season -- pick six. Cutler didn't even see the linebacker. I think to myself, maybe I should get the NFL audio package, and not waste all this time at bars at 10am in the morning. Listen to the games (removed a bit from the emotion) and get some work done. Be productive.
The first quarter really is no better. Cutler starts 1 for 10. To break out of the rut, and gain some rhythm, Cutler begins going to newly acquired Brandon Marshall. The two can count on each other. Cutler needles some passes where there's essentially no opening, and completes them. This is dangerous farther down the line this season. Making passes he shouldn't risk because of his arm strength. He goes 10 for his next 10. The field opens up. The Bears win this game handily against an inexperienced Colts team
Final score : 41-21

NFL Week # 1

Picks as of Thursday, Sept. 6 (sportsbook.com). Going heavy dogs for the first week.
Cowboys +4
Bears -10
Browns +9
Bills +3
Redskins +10
Titans +7
Jags +5
Texans -10
Rams +9
Falcons -1
Packers -6
Bucs +3
Cards +3
Broncos pick
Ravens -6
Raiders +2
Chargers/Radiers Total Points 44

The Moviegoers Episode 4 (Lawless/The Ambassador)

We're talking Shia LaBeouf's acting chops, the season of Megan Ellison, and pygmies. 

Phish -- Dick's Night #1

The FUCK YOUR FACE show.

Set 1:
First Tube
Uncle Pen
Carini
Kill Devil Falls
You Enjoy Myself
Ocelot
Undermind (bliss jam)

Set 2:
Runaway Jim
Farmhouse
Alaska
Chalkdust Torture (bliss jam)
Emotional Rescue
Fuck Your Face

Encore:
Grind
Meatstick

After listening, best show of 3.0 era.

Singh X

Check out Naveen's blog. The revolution will not be televised.

Harmony Korine

Coming off of Trash Humpers, Harmony Korine is at again.

GQ: For a long time, people have associated you with New York. And then I read that you hated it. Are you driven by place? Florida seems like it's own country.
Harmony Korine: Yeah. It definitely felt like that. I travel to mostly shitty places, I try not to travel anywhere too nice. I almost never go anywhere nice, but I go lots of places that are horrible.

GQ: Like where?
Harmony Korine: Like everywhere in America.

Spring Breakers

Breaking Bad - Say My Name

"Shut the fuck up. And let me die in peace." The death of Mike knocks the wind out of the show.  I know there's more, but he was the heart and soul.
And his death scene, staring out at a placid river, a gun shot wound in the depth of the belly is an ode to  Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid.
If you're going to steal, steal from the best.

Echo Park Rising

"Strawberry Shortcake" on drums. Already in love.

Lavender Diamond.

Paegents.

Driftwood Singers.

Dead Ships.

The Far West.

Sonny Voss, Stoned Country

The Moviegoers Episode 3

Is now up. Take a listen. We talk about Cosmopolis and Bachelorette. And try to stay positive.

Cosmopolis

Directed by David Cronenberg. Written by Don DeLillo. It's been a long time time since I've found a movie as tedious as this one. Difficult to muster any sort of energy to talk about this quasi-intellectual/philosophical exercise of a film. Neither emotional, nor intellectual, or philosophical. Sat in the theater seat -- feeling stuck -- and thought about the theater layout, the projection, counted how many people were leaving, if the gentlemen to my left was asleep, if the woman behind me was asleep, what is the percentage of dialogue  Robert Pattinson comprehends versus just strict memorization, would I'd fallen asleep if I went to the 10pm showing...Tedious.

Seattle

Bachelorette

The 'Sundance' version of Bridesmaids with Lizzy Caplan, Kristen Dunst, and Isla Fisher. Garbage. And what is Lizzy Caplan known for other than Party Down?

Super Bowl Bound!

The only pre-season article I needed to read. Now I'm a believer. Hibernation is over. Bear down.

The Moviegoers Episode 2

We talk Killer Joe/Hope Springs. So, obviously the discussion naturally leads to the topic of who gives better head -- Gina Gershon or Meryl Streep?

Saturday in August

Dog days here in L.A. Car repairs. Hot, and hotter.

Hinano's on Washington last night. Beach bar dive.

Hope Springs

Not the feel-good film I thought it would be. Tommy Lee Jones complains and bullies Meryl Streep. Yuck.

Time Fades Away

"Nobody expected Time Fades Away and I'm not sorry I put it out," Young told Rolling Stone's Cameron Crowe in 1975. "I didn't need the money, I didn't need the fame. You gotta keep changing. Shirts, old ladies, whatever. I'd rather keep changing and lose a lot of people along the way. If that's the price, I'll pay it. I don't give a shit if my audience is 100 or 100 million. It doesn't make any difference to me. I'm convinced that what sells and what I do are two completely different things. If they meet, it's coincidence.
 

Sight & Sound's Top Film List (with one obvious snub)

A defense of the list of timeless, old films. Still, where the hell is Lawrence of Arabia?

Hard Knocks: A Season with the Miami Dolphins

They are going to be a bad team. Coach Joe Philbin seems to be overdoing his hard-as-nails persona. A little uncomfortable, trying to hold on, humorless. Lacks a personableness. Tough job.

My favorite part: Chad Johnson (no more 'Ochocinco') walking into a coaches' meeting, pulling up a chair, and expecting just to hang out, join in the discussion. What a cancer.

Feelin' It!

Killer Joe

William Friedkin in control of a luridly, wild dark tone.  McConaughey bringing evangelical, super-charged energy. "No he's not okay, he lit his genitals on fire."
(And beaver.)

The Moviegoers Eps. 1

Virginia Beach. August 3rd, 2000

Prologue: Eulogy in Song at Virginia Beach
The day had come for Pearl Jam to return to the stage. In the preceding weeks the rumors surrounding this show had been accorded more weight than a normal first show of a tour as a result of the Roskilde tragedy which sent Pearl Jam to cancel the final dates of the European leg, and go off into seclusion for the two months up to the beginning of the U.S. leg. No press conferences to answer questions of the incident, or MTV interviews to talk about the band's future, only a short statement offering the band's condolences to the victims' families. With no words from the band, questions arose between fans of would they cancel the U.S. dates, or even go so far as to break-up. Now in Virginia Beach, the questions turned to the mystery surrounding this show: how would the band react on stage, making their first public appearance since Denmark? Would the set list consist of only slower, introspective songs? For the more loyal fans, this show meant everything. Out of the public sphere since their last tour in '98, their latest record, Binaural, received little attention, with dwindling record sales for each of their last three records, and larger inquiries into the relevance of a "grunge" band in the year 2000. Had Pearl Jam become irrelevant, an anachronism of the times? Even the weather -- rainy, cloudy, and dark -- accompanied this unsure, almost somber mood as well as offering a reminder to Roskilde. A tension was certainly present on that slick, muddy hill waiting for Pearl Jam to respond to the questions.

Would they open with, Of the Girl, a song off Binaural which they had opened a majority of European shows? This would be the safe choice. As they walked on stage concealed behind a blue lighting, under the dark, foreboding sky, Eddie Vedder emerged having a let a beard grow, a sign of his isolation in Spain. The first chord was struck, certainly not Of the Girl, but a song offering a more majestic sound and a greater meaning, Long Road. Beginning slow in tempo, quietly:

And I wished for so long. Cannot stay.
All the precious moments. Cannot stay.
It's not like wings have fallen. Cannot stay.
But still something's missing. I cannot say...


The tempo and strength build upon the first verse:

Holding hands are daughters and sons.
And their faiths are falling down, down, down, down.
I have wished for so long. How I wished for you today.


As a song to lost loved ones it provided an emotional opus to reveal everything, everything unanswered in the past couple of months, the song became transformed into a self-conscious confession, a catharsis of stored up pain and guilt, a cry out to the fans for comfort and understanding:

All the friends and family.
All the memories going round, round, round, round.
I have wished for so long. How I wised for you today.


Each verse expanding on the last, the song conveyed their experience at Roskilde but was also an acknowledgement of the journey the band had dealt with for ten years, the ups and downs:

And the wind keeps roaring. And the sky keeps turning grey.
And the sun is setting. The sun will rise another day.


These images in their simplicity explained more, and expressed a deeper passion than any verbal statements to the media could have supplied. A personal communication directly to the fans through music. They were words of grief, but also a renewal, a continuation of the journey, as the song winds down to a quiet serenity:

I have wished for so long. How I wish for you today.
I have wished for so long. How I wish for them today.
Will I walk the long road? We all walk the long road.
Will I walk the long road? We all walk the long road.
Will I walk the long road?...
We all walk the long road...the long road.


The moment was eternal. To understand why this band is the exception in today's world, why they are powerful, and unique, one needs to understand the emotion of that moment, between the band and their fans. An answer to all doubters of the ability of music, at its best, to communicate and transcend.
--PWD, May '01

The Moviegoers

A night of cinema and discussion. Featuring Phil D., Greg J., and Andy V.

Thursday, & Louie -- Barney/Never

Kasey Chambers on the Santa Monica pier. Picnic-style on the beach. Then Louie to close out the night. It's only one episode of an entire season but an episode that never quite took off, half-baked with ideas that never fully formed.
"I diarrheaed in the tub" mixed with a scottish-looking Robin Williams, Sister Christian in a strip club, Artie Lange popping out of a toxic-holding truck, JB Smoothe as a wise-cracking non-"African" talking grave digger.
Thought the episode was leading up to a confrontation between Louie and the "vagina-removing" Mom over parenting but that didn't come to fruition. Cameos run amuck, though it was good to see Artie, alive and well, in NYC. Too much, maybe the episode as a whole is like Never, no one tells him 'no.'

A Conversation with Gore Vidal

In September, director Roman Polanski was arrested in Switzerland for leaving the U.S. in 1978 before being sentenced to prison for raping a 13-year-old girl at Jack Nicholson’s house in Hollywood. During the time of the original incident, you were working in the industry, and you and Polanski had a common friend in theater critic and producer Kenneth Tynan. So what’s your take on Polanski, this many years later?

I really don’t give a fuck. Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she’s been taken advantage of?

From The Atlantic (10/09)

Nas on Girls

Nas Says His Favorite TV Show Is HBO's "Girls"

BY ERIC DIEP | AUG 2, 2012 | 9:55 AM | PERMALINKing!”

Nas is publicly known to show love for his kids Destiny and Knight and his Queensbridge neighborhood. But many fans don’t know about his secret obsession. In a recent interview with People, he spoke highly of a certain HBO show that follows the lives of 20-something women. It's both suprising and very cool. What else do you like Nasir?

“My favorite show right now is Girls. I don’t know where this girl Lena Dunham came from, but she’s amazing!”