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."