|
05/17/02 It's the end of the week which to me means it's a good time to ponder the end of your short, predictable life. It's a time for imbibing large quantities of liver-eroding, brain-decaying, stomach sizzling booze; amber waves of ale, glistening glassfuls of gin, vats of voracious vodka, alliteration amicable absinthe (we wish, we wish) and beer, bloody, beer. Indulging in crapulence, you hoot, holler, laugh and shout through the waxing night until... Until the depressing affects of the depressant you chug checks you to reality's curbside. Now it's time for soul searching; it's time for questioning yourself, your existence, your purpose. Here are your questions for this evening's post-revelry self-put-down party. First, what is your greatest accomplishment? Typically, the answer, or lack of answer for this question is enough to pump up the suicidal impulses to Def Con One, especially with the damaging aid of the downers you willfully introduced to your system. As you stumble through the disintegrating drunken corridors of your shriveled excuse for a brain seeking an answer, you'll come to the conclusion that there is no great accomplishment and in fact, you've done very little of anything even slightly significant. This leads inevitably to question number two for your morose noodle... What is your chief problem? Well, amongst them one is surely being a depressive alcoholic. The rest you'll have to figure out for yourself. 05/14/02 Nothing is more grievous to my sensibilities than an idiotic trend that makes claims to the artistic. And this trend is one of the most vile and self-indulgent. The followers of the trend fit mostly into big business' most holy of holy demographics: the 18 to 34 year old consumer with bucks to spare. I think it was Epicurus who chastised the people of his time (6th c. B.C.E.) on the foolhardiness of carefully protecting their bodies from strangers while being so ever very willing to expose their minds and divulge all the horrible stinking thoughts, ideas and passions therein. Well now Epicurus, old buddy, it's not come full circle but to a full hideous fruition. The grotesque will of the people for security and safety (as seen in sterilized plastic playground toys and The Office of Homeland Security) of their bodies is at a fever pitch and the exposing of their worst mental dingleberries has also achieved the same level. For examples, simply watch daytime television or skulk through the blogger powered pages on the net or take a look at the arms of the next dirt-head with painted black finger nails and metal shit stabbed through his face. That's right, I'm on the subject of tattoos and tattooing. First off, tattoo artists. Shame on you and your bullshit use of the word "art." Those who tattoo are craftsmen, no different from house painters, carpenters or toothless rednecks out on the front stoop whittling away to their ignorant hearts' content. Those who get tattoos are not an artist's canvass; they are petulant children suffering from an ego-centric disorder. They like being the focus of the tattoo craftsman while he inks their repugnant, pock-marked hides; they like the attention their juvenile arm scribblings get them when they go out, and more than anything else, they like comparing their tattoos with others. They like to see who has the biggest tattooed cock in the tattooed locker room and who has scored with the most needles. Well, what about those who just get one, small tasteful tattoo? Fuck them for being pussies and not going all the way. They're the ones in the most need of hiding every inch of their flesh like a good Muslim woman under a Burqua of bright hued and super saturated ink. And there's nothing tasteful about the butterfly delicately alighting upon a rose on your left shoulder blade, bitch. The worst thing about tattooing is that it lets everyone and their fucking pets know the vacuous pop-culture detritus that fills your brain by your plastering the emblems of its culture all over your freshly shaved flesh. I've seen the bottomless pits of fucking stupidity in the likes of those who tattoo characters from television shows like I Dream of Jeanie, Munsters, South Park and The Simpsons up and down their arms. What kind of idiot does it take to allow someone with little to no formal training to jab needles filled with ink through their skin to permanently gouge out the technicolor lagoon from Gilligan's Island into their ass? Is it somebody so bereft of ideas that they want to ask their potential butt-fuckers how they'd like to go for a dip in their lagoon? Marginally worse than TV oriented tattoos and far more popular are tattoos displaying the logos or names or mascots of your favorite bands. Nobody, and most of all me and your potential employers, gives a fuck if you like Black Flag or not. Are you so desperately sad and alone and uncomfortable in your skin that you need Iron Maiden's Eddie leering out from your right tit at the small narrow-minded world you barely bother existing in? That's not a rhetorical question. I want a fucking answer. What the hell is wrong with you? Does the ink poison your mind and cause an inverse correspondence between increase of ink and decrease of I.Q.? What else can explain getting Superman's "S" logo tattooed on your bicep? Or the endless barrage of the dark and scary in the form of skulls and grim reapers? If you have a preoccupation with death and want everyone to know then die already! If you want to show how bad ass you are with your snake crawling through an eye socket on your chest, then bring it on. Your chest will operate as one big billboard for the real bad asses who need to track you down and end your miserable, empty existence. If you're so religious you need to get the virgin bitch of christendom or a human upholstered cross permanently etched on your decaying ambulatory corpse, then you might serve your religion by actually reading its texts. The fucking bible itself has passages expressly forbidding tattooing and marring your body, which is, according to your religion, God's beautiful work and therefore God's body. That's right pallie, you ink yourself up and you ink up the all mighty. I'm sure your savior is pleased as the goddamn dickens with the Bugs Bunny on your inner thigh all eager for your boyfriend's syphilitic carrot and hairy brussel sprouts. Worse still is the trend of tribal tattoos. You are not a modern primitive. You are not the member of any tribe unless "tribe" is loosely defined as "one lone and lonesome moron raping another culture's spiritual symbols and rituals in order to impress his friends and be perceived by other lone and lonesome morons as cool." These tribal tattoos have meanings and aren't meant for outsiders. They are badges of honor and those who steal them and have them willy-nilly tattooed on in any dank cess ridden pit on Hollywood Blvd. deserve the tribal rituals for those who behave dishonorably. We'll start by pealing off your skin containing the tattoo and then, just for fucking laughs, continue pealing the rest. And sometimes its wise to know something of the culture your appropriating in the name of art and tradition. If you think you're a member of a proud tradition by getting inked up with the vomited up rainbow of colors found in Japanese dragons and Geisha girls then you should be treated as a national supremacist militant with a proclivity towards unilateral racism and foot-binding sexism. That's the proud tradition you so callously extend with your skin-displayed coy pond and sumo wrestler. Are you ready to pay the price of Nagasaki for that dead violently ethnocentric philosophy? I thought not. Worse than all the aforementioned is when illiterate half-wits go forth and get words tattooed into their shit-wreaking shriveled up bodies. It apparently isn't bad enough that you actually open up your mouth and speak your illogical nonsense, but you must also plaster single words on yourself. These deranged kiosks sicken me. You seek out such pregnant with meaning words as "honesty," "sacrifice" and "respect" (to name off the three most popular after "Jenny" and "Billy") with little idea how those words, standing alone like fresh placenta coated abortions, apply to yourself or the world beyond your stale uninspired brain. Somehow it's acceptable to have the word scrawled down your arm or across your ever expanding gut to assault everyone unfortunate enough to look at you as you pass by, but it would be deemed outright psychotic if you kept repeating the word over and over as you progressed through your daily chores. Fucking imbeciles. Simpletons. You want honesty, tattoo "disposable" on your forehead. You want sacrifice, tattoo the star of David on your chest and a serial number on your right wrist. You want respect, then sand paper that crap off! It may seem like I'm completely negative on the subject of tattoos, but there are some positive aspects I enjoy. There's the pain involved. There's the risk of contracting diseases from unethical tattoo "artists" who reuse needles. There's the possibility of infection and scarring. And best of all, there's laser removal surgery when you realize just how fucking stupid you really are and want to attempt to make amends. 05/13/02 I'm in a bit of a funk and the reflection of that funk can be found in the total lack of content sprucing up these dull stagnating web pages. In the words of Sir Wide Bottom, "Sure, I'm alive, but why?" It's the ultimate philosophical conundrum for us fat-ass clowns. Not that I am either a clown or in possession of a fat-ass or particularly caring of why I'm living. I know why melancholy has taken my mind; it's a form of post-partum depression I like to call "post-scriptum depression." What post-scriptum depression entails is simply the sense of loss one experiences when one completes a large writing project like a script. Suddenly, those characters are gone, their relationships cease, their environment fades away and they no longer cavort, caper or carry on. It's sad, but to hell with 'em. I'll get up and running soon enough, all it takes is a trip to CNN.COM to get the angry juices angrily flowing in their angry manner. A small perusal of the latest antics of the chief executive is the exact shot in the arm needed to renew and reinvigorate my whiny high school level tirades against the U.S. government and its one-sided profit-minded murderous campaigns against the impoverished abroad and at home. All it takes is a little non-jedi related news. That is if there's any to be found. In the meantime... The Meet The Virus site is updated with a few Ansel Adams quality pictures from their most recent show. Find them here . 05/08/02 A revelation for movie lovers: Eddie Brandt's Saturday Matinee. It's not a time or a theater; it's a video store with book ended video tapes, lying the short way, piled on shelves from floor to ceiling. It'd be the dusty antechamber of Kim Jong Il's tomb room in his pyramid if he had a pyramid and if he had a tomb room and if he were dead and lying in that tomb room. It's an exciting, video tape packed room of silent, foreign, art house, B-grade and big Hollywood movies. It's really unbeatable for selection. But this isn't a commercial for a video store. I'm looking forward to seeing Malcovich and Sinise in True West again, a movie (actually a videotaped for PBS special) I haven't seen in well over five years. I recently finished my third screenplay (the fifth one started) and was working with big restrictions. The biggest being confining all the actors to one apartment for the duration of the script. The budgetary restraints, if this thing is to be made at all, are enormous, but I kept them all blocked in. There's no gimmick to it. They're not locked into one room because there are zombies outside or because they've just robbed a jewel store or there's a dead body in the trunk; they're all inside because that's what people do. They hang out inside and do whatever it is people do: cook, drink, talk, shit, eat. And anyone who wants to write a script that has the restrictions of a low budget play has in Sam Shepherd's True West a great example of how to do it. He keeps the tensions high, the cast minimal and environment downright claustrophobic through the characters proximity to one another, not the size of the room. It's also a great chance to see two spectacular actors when still young and hungry and unafraid of the extra emotive oomph virtually extinguished by all large scale productions. This film made me unafraid to dive into the one room script and I want to see if it's as good as I remember. 05/07/02 Yesterday I saw Spiderman. Did everyone notice Xena as the punkrocker? I'm sure everyone saw Ash as the MC at the wrestling match. Sweet Henrietta was in there too at some point, but I didn't catch him. Throwing in Bruce Campbell was one of those minor nods a director can give to his long time fans and make them feel like he still fondly remembers the old days and won't forget who initially put the life in Evil Dead. But even if Bruce wasn't given a bit part and even if Xena was not a punkrocker, I'd've still enjoyed the movie and been preemptively claiming that there's no way any amount of attacking clones will be able to trump Mr. Raimi's filmic accomplishment. There's no doubt in my mind that Williams' score for Attack of the Clones will stomp all over Elfman's feeble uninspired dreck. It probably would have been too much to ask for a soundtrack with a New York feel to go along to a movie with a New York feel rather than the typical Elfmanian "Blat Blat Oompa Blat." Note to Sam, hire John Lurie to do an alternate soundtrack for the DVD release. Typical of me, I think the movie great fun and what do I do, complain about the score. Well, there's more. And that's typical too and becoming even more so, and it has nothing to do with the movie itself, and it has nothing to do with the audience members. What it does have to do with is the torture one is subjected to by doing nothing more than arriving to the theater a little early to get a good centered seat. At one time, before a movie began, the crowd was subjected to a closed curtain and some quietly pumped in classical music. That was nice. It felt like something when the lights dimmed, the curtain parted and the volume was turned up for the coming attractions. All that has changed now. The pre-movie mood of quiet anticipation has been shattered into a cacophony of wailing soul ballads, supposed country ballads and robot vocal effects on crooning talentless vocalists combined with a visual advertising assault on the already exposed screen. A slide show of inane trivia is projected on the screen that assumes the cultural memory of the audience goes back a maximum of three years. I squirmed in my seat, wishing for popcorn to plug up my ears and attempting to avert my eyes from the car commercial that was followed by the Sprite commercial that was followed by the L.A. Times commercial that was finally followed by the previews: Mr. Deeds, Men In Black 2, Minority Report, Chris Rock in the CIA, a HULK teaser and I know there were approximately five more but the memories have been blasted from my mind by an excess of pre-show bilge. The supplier of said bilge is the National Cinema Network , a company feeding off the advertising revenue generated by blasting commercials at captive audiences in the nation's theaters. They're another parasitic company that expects consumers to not only enjoy sensory rape but to pay for it as well. They barrage the audience with an endless hit parade of hideous studio glossed music ejaculating from the cranked up digital surround sound system. They interrupt the songs with a hateful male announcer's voice telling the audience what they just listened to and what they will now be forced to listen to some more. If you try to escape the horror show by going into the lobby you fail because the shit's dribbling through the lobby speakers as well and if you want to complain and ask for a manager the popcorn-grease faced youth behind the counter first looks scared then calls out the toothless trailer park refugee with an education level that somehow allows one to endure working in a theater where you're forced to listen the same garbage all day long. You want an address to start a letter campaign to stop their theater chain from using NCN and thereby torturing the audience. You wonder to yourself if it'd be possible to sue the theater for undue mental anguish caused by the tortuous conditions they've allowed. But the seahag can only offer you a phone number: a token gesture at best that asks "Enjoying the show? We want to know! 1-877-262-4450." I have no idea what to expect when I call the number but I will, oh brother you bet I will. Goddamn AMC Theatre maggots. One more thing, it was mighty cool of Raimi to play the old Spiderman cartoon theme song over the last bit of the end credits. To do that, you know he appreciates his audience. 05/02/02 Success! Unlike two and half months ago, this time nobody close to the Slayer camp died causing a delay in the show. They arrived; they played with conviction and well-seasoned professionalism, playing songs like South of Heaven at the pace they are played on the album itself, eschewing unnecessary adrenalized musical frenzy in favor of precision, control and mature mastery over their craft. This isn't meant to be a review of the show. I do not intend to do such a thing. They played in San Diego at a club called 4th and Grand or as the hip locals call it, "4th & G" It carries on the fine tradition of naming your club... Naming your club what? We got the old Greyhound station down on First Avenue here for bands to play at now, but we just need a name. We just need a name. And what about the other part of the club? The part that has its entrance round the corner on Seventh Street? We'll need to name that one too right? It hurts, it really does. It's like naming the stars through number assignation (which is necessary) Was there such a bankruptcy in imagination that nobody could see beyond the street signs? Seventh Street Entry sounds like the name of a nasty street walking whore who's been on the job since you was drippin' from yer daddy's dick, sunshine. Now pay up, these doors don't allow entrance without five bucks in advance. And make it quick, the lines backed up goin' round the corner to Hennepin. In other news... Pounding his fist angrily on the table, Arafat called Israelis "terrorists, Nazis and racists." Yeah right. A slick action hero would ask the question, "Who's got the suicide bombers? Who's got the mother fuckin' suicide bombers?" He might also ask Arafat, "What did the Nazis do? Motherfucker (double bitch-slap), what did the Nazis do?" "Um, kill jews?" "That's right. Look at the big brain on Arafat. Now do you think Israelis is goin' to do that? Huh, do you, bitch? Answer up!" And that's the end of that chapter. |
|
