Movie Time

Below is a sordid affair largely based in the fairy tale '90s. You have the classic mix of lust and love going along with money and power. Your strong-minded heroes standing tall in adversity to attain the unattainable. Twists and turns, corruption and greed, love and resentment. And such familiar characters! The evil, creepy Russian lady, the stereotypical money-grubbing Jew, and dough eyed, naive small town hick. A story like this was made for Hollywood. Get your popcorn ready and feast your eyes on the destruction of the American middle class (and billions more, for that matter). This is part one of the three-part BBC series All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace.

A Summer Wasting

Idle hands are the devil’s playthings.  A year or so ago I remember someone posting a strikingly philosophical idea on Facebook.  It wasn’t Nietzsche to be certain, but a short, concise, existential pondering.  Not a ‘what is life?’ or ‘dust in the wind’ blab either.  It was sorrowful, introspective, and came from a very soft piece of meat.  I don’t remember what it was exactly; if anything it was the medium that makes it stick out in my mind. The medium and one of the comments:  If you’re thinking about those things you have too much time on your hands.

There’s my Summer Wasting.  Or maybe Stuart said it better when he sang “I keep taking everything to be a sign.”  I’ve always been a consummate schemer, going limpless and still anticipating the feel of my next steps, only to find they’re normal and no amount of anticipation or worry would change a thing.  So with school out and the nail biting anxiety of being left at a train station only to look into the dusk as the station clears, I’ve sat, over-thought, over-indulged, and over-compensating.  I think there’s been five weeks or so of this.  Eighteen of those days were without deodorant—a streak I am happy to announce has now come to a close.

Now that the sun has crested, I feel a sense of rebirth and awe.  I’m one complete tilt from 30.  Let the cleaning commence!  So while I’ve been in a self-imposed writing block, here are some shorts that I should have been writing about.

How about the fact that I hate trends?  It doesn’t matter the type.  I’ve considered writing a piece on summer fashion with my head stuffed way up my ass.  Probably not worth it, though.  And technology?  Please let some of this be a trend.  I went to see Cave of Forgotten Dreams tonight and there was a preview/commercial for Nintendo DS where the kids were talking about Mario Kart making it the best summer ever.  Drive a go-cart.  Speaking of the movie, the 3D was cool; the flowing cave walls stretching bison and mammoths as Herzog stretched our imaginations.  But was it necessary or did it just unnecessarily make people strain and shift to get the pictures in focus?  I’m on the fence for that movie, but the rest of them?  Drive a go-cart.

How about some triumphs of personal resilience?  BWIWYA contributor and long time friend Jon Poulson recently fell into wedded bliss.  I think Mark was a groomsman.  I wish I could have been there.  On the band front, the gang in Minneapolis opened some boxes and started holding on to years of work as The Fables of the Cloth has finally come full circle.  The amount of work and dedication, in my modest opinion, pales in comparison to the diverse, anthemic musical joy ride on the other end.  I’m endlessly proud to have been a part of the process and the continuing growth.  Speaking of which, not to toot my own horn too loudly, I caught a breeze of a muse a month ago and the resulting work will push the band further than we’ve been before.  Now I just need to keep putting my pen where my mouth is.

How about that bad-ass job interview in New York that I tackled deodorantless?  They wanted me, but the finances weren’t right.  It was hard saying no when I knew so many unknowns were lurking in that foreign, pin cushion of excitement.  As I shuffled through Manhattan, I was Map Master supreme—practically a local.  I didn’t know exactly where I was going but I knew that I could find it if I looked like I knew what I was doing and walked fast.  Still, I was stopped on the street and asked if I wanted a CD of “beats made by a local artist.”  I turned, gave the guy a buck, and he gave me some shit CD that I will never listen to.  First thing out of his mouth: Where you coming in from?

Later that night I had the opportunity to do exactly what I wanted to do, when I needed to do it.  For the second time in my life I was in the presence of my second-cousin Margie Haley.  While I was unfamiliar with her in fact, I was more than prepared for the type of person she is from my father’s ravings.  Margie is an 80 year-old smoker, a whip-smart Scotch drinker, foul-mouthed bull shitter.  I stepped off the Hudson Line with a real get-along attitude, maybe even a touch of that uncomfortable easiness that has plagued me of late.

While we exchanged pleasantries and formalities, I got the sense that she was sizing me up.  Word from relatives painted me in a certain color and she wanted to hold it up to the light, see if it made weight.  I just drank.  After five beers you can feel it in your cheeks.  Soon the humidity checked out while the breeze swept the sun away, leaving the heat.  Switch to the hard stuff, pack another box of smokes, laugh to cut the mutual-meeting pressure.  I wanted to drink and I wanted to smoke cigarettes but when we started slinging quantum physics, its effect on the notion of humanity, the bigness and smallness in all its blackness, I started watching the minute hand pass the second hand.  Fifty years of separation, nothing but a distant set of limbs on the family tree—at different levels no less—and a commonality that ran as strong and constant as that raging stream that once cut the valley of our conversation.  A unique opportunity in the arc of making connections.   That night I was less consummate schemer and more belly-up dreamer.  I like myself more that way.  I’m looking forward to making it more of a habit.