Click images for desktop size: "Sakura" by Digital Blasphemy This has become a house of illness!
My friend was home yesterday. Home sick. She puts it off to gluten poisoning! I'm not so sure, but what do I know.
The giant dog was ill Wednesday night. Then my puppy was ill last night. So ill she didn't even come and start bugging me for dinner!
My puppy being ill is always a source of worry.
The worst part is that I'm still sick but I'm used to it so I got to be nursemaid . . . I'm not that good at that.
Still got some of the things done. Changed and washed the sheets and the vomited on things, so that my friend would at least have a cool clean bed to suffer in.
I got some bare maintenance house cleaning done. It was raining so I couldn't do any yard work. Which bugged me. The worse I feel the more I like to be doing something.
Click image: "Tom Ewell & Marilyn Monroe" Mot heroic something but when I'm moving around I don't have time focusing on my pain. Nursemaiding doesn't change my focus enough to do the same thing.
When the rain broke I took the gentle dog and my puppy for a walk to get a loaf of bread for me (I still like to eat "raw" bread when I'm sick) and some Jalapeno Halvarti cheese for my friend . . . I'm not sure if cheese is the best thing for someone who's sick. I didn't think of that then. I only thought of that now.
After that I put on "Air Bud: Spikes Back". The Air Bud movies are these harmless pretty bad flics about a sports playing golden retriever.
Yeah. I liked it plenty. But I'm the sort who enjoys seeing how nicely a dog walks down stairs. My friend does too so it was a good movie for lounging about and feeling terrible to.
In this one Bud plays volleyball. Bud plays the center or the setter on the team. This lets us have a couple jokes about too bad he's not an irish setter, which tells you the quality of these films.
I really liked the Air Bud movie where he played football. I laughed a lot just seeing a dog wearing a
Click images for desktop size: "Thor & Hercules" by Marvel Comics silly football helmet . . . This one was okay by those standards but "Spikes Back" is the least of these movies.
When you see the Japanese dog films and compare it to the American output its pretty depressing.
It makes me worry a lot about Richard Gere making a movie about Hachiko. Hachiko is still one of the most thrilling and moving true dog stories ever.
I worry about how they'll miss the simple beauty of Hachiko's story and turn it into something that's not about a dog's love and loyalty and will instead make a movie about people. There are plenty of movies about people. I think that this one could afford to be about the dog. He's the quiet heart broken hero, not the reporter or the emperor.
After that my friend went for a proper lie down and I put on "The Face of Another". Its one of those Japanese art films from the sixties. Pretentious and all that. This is from the guy who made "Woman In The Dunes" which was pretty pretentious but kind of fun.
This one was a black and white semi science fiction thing. A tech salary man gets his face blown off by using a tank of liquid oxygen instead of a tank of liquid air . . . I have no real idea what the difference is.
The salary man goes crazier and crazier but in one of those wordy ways, not slicing and dicing people but just talking too much.
The salary man goes to a shrink who specializes in building the self esteem of people who've been disfigured in accidents. He makes plastic body parts to stop people from obsessing about their differences.
For the salary man he decides to do something incredibly unethical and make him a mask! I have no idea why making a mask is unethical.
The shrink makes him a mask that is super real. No one would ever think it was a mask. The salary man develops another personality to go along with his new face. And that's about it.
There's all sorts of babble about how society perceives faces and that's about it . . .
I fell asleep during it. Slept so hard that I couldn't be awakened. Which is strange for me. Stranger that my puppy didn't try and wake me at dinner time!
At least all the dogs ate their usual breakfasts. I made them blander than usual. What could be
Click images for desktop size: "Conceptions" by Luis Royo blander than dog food anyway. They all ate it up and are all in their usual sleeping positions.
The gentle dog is wrapped around my feet. The giant dog is on the love seat hoping that someone will try and steal his precious rawhide. And my puppy is sprawled on the bed.
My friend is at work and I have that nasty totally hollow feeling in my body.
So all is normal.
Today's plan: To unclog the drains around the house, preventative somewhat. To take all the dogs for a good long walk. And to not succumb to falling asleep in the middle of the day.
After a bright sunny morning the clouds are gathering again. I don't want ti to rain. They say it will snow this weekend.
I don't mind the snow. Somethings about it I like a lot. I've just got all these leaves that have to be removed and right now they are too wet and yukky to deal with. At least to wet and yukky for me.
I feel terrible. For some reason I still think I'm going to win . . .

Posted by David at 10:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Click images for desktop size: "Sorry, Wrong Number" by Unknown One day during our chemo-therapy "support group" sessions the two people in charge of it were running late.
There were two of them: A pretty young woman with a severe disability that forced her to walk with a peculiar rolling gait; a bearded psychologist who liked to stroke his beard and make profound announcements. At least he thought they were profound. The members in my group never discussed these laborious sessions so I can't say that they found his statements as torturous as I did.
He was a Notre Dame fan, even though he didn't go to Notre Dame and for some reason he thought it would endear himself to me by proclaiming this over and over to me. Probably clouds my memory of him now as well as my opinion of him then.
The woman was a social worker. We would have felt better about her except she kept trying to be empathetic and that just made us pity her all the more.
So there are the nine of us sitting in our circle in our uncomfortable institution type chairs when this oil company exec pulls out one of those hospital oxygen masks. He's got a long chunks of surgical tubing hot glued to the intake and exhaust ports.
He explained in great detail that he was going to attach this to a tank of helium. I got quickly
Click images for desktop size: "Puppies" by Unknown interested. Once Tom and I got a tank of helium and spent a good week walking around talking like munchkins to everybody at any inappropriate opportunity. It was fun and cool. We even worked out a rapid version of "We Represent The Lollipop Guild" that started out in cool high trembly harmony and, as the helium wore out, descended into a crazed sounding baritones.
This exec wasn't looking to sound crazy cool. He explained that if the chemo didn't put him into remission he was going to hook his mask to a tank of helium. Hook it all up to himself, turn on the gas and drift off to the endless sleep.
He explained that he'd talk to some of his doctor friends and they all assured him this was the easiest non-painful ways to commit suicide.
Anyone who's ever been puking up clear bile for a few hours while watching clumps of their hair fall out into the toilet while their veins and lymph nodes burned in unholy white fire from chemo would have no problem understanding his macabre plan.
No one wants to die of cancer or leukemia. Its a terrifying kind of death. But no one wants to ever go through chemo ever again. Its too vivid a pain that doesn't dull in memory.
So we all understood. It started the most animated conversation I'd ever seen in the support group.
Click images for desktop size: "Hanabi" by Unknown For the next twenty minutes everyone laid out their suicide plan. Only one woman said that it was foolish to consider suicide after all we'd each been through but then she added that she had no intention of dying from cancer and if it came to that she'd put her husband's 9 mm in her mouth an pull the trigger, sparing her family the grief of watching her decay until she passed away.
Listening to everyone's preferable mode of death was pretty interesting. Being human and American it soon became competitive with details and flourishes. One woman wanting to emulate Jayne Mansfield and Claudia Jennings by speeding along the FDR Expressway and ramming into a giant buttress that hung over the road just a couple miles past some exit or other.
Being what I am I was fixated on the idea of a tank of helium and how much fun it would be to have some now. So that the next time the psychologist asked me how I was feeling and when I grunted out my usual, "Fine" and he dismissed me with his usual, "Fine is not a feeling, tell us how you're feeling" I could answer him in great detail huffing on a balloon of helium and doing that great munchkin voice, ending the performance with a solo rendition of "We Represent The Lollipop Guild".
Somewhere in there the social worker and the psychologist must have entered the room.

Click images for desktop size: "Holeproof Hosiery" by Philip Coles They were pretty shocked at what they were hearing. I imagine at first they were pleased to hear us inter-reacting and being semi-raucous. They probably smiled smugly to themselves, thinking all their hard work was finally paying off. Then when they heard what we were talking about I suspect they kind of freaked. Maybe they took it personally. Like some personal failure they couldn't convince a mess of adults to be joyous in their suffering.
The psychologist lectured us for about 20 minutes about how stupid we were and the social worker went on about how she could understand how we felt but that yadda yadda yadda blah blah blah.

And we went from being enthused story tellers and fantasizers to being another room of suffers who resented the world for not suffering like we suffered. Some grew surly, as usual, because the gods did not elevate us to sainthood for enduring the suffering and the temptations we endured.
Most grew depressed again, counting the days, minutes and seconds in their chemo trials, afraid to pray for release because it might seem selfish while one or two's thoughts drifted to their families and worried how they'd feel about their love ones being bald and emaciated, sick and sad and lonely in their private hell, a hell they'd never imagine sharing with their kids or their spouses because some hells are too intense and too real and seem to ridiculous to want to inflict on anyone you care about. Most of the time you want to spare people you care about, spare them even a glimpse of that glowing smoldering revulsive grief and pain.
And that's what they social worker and the psychologist didn't understand, what they couldn't grasp.
You can't get encouragement to survive in hell. You survive because you have no other choice but to go on to the next second of the next day. You don't expect rebate. You don't expect cessation. You only want to get through the time you have to get through.
I had a dog who had to have chemo and have a leg amputated because of cancer. I spent a lot of time with him during his chemo. He was suffering and had no idea of why or how. He only knew he trusted me and he would lie there with his head in my lap while I squatted in his kennel. Once in a great while he would slowly and with great effort thump his tail to let me know he appreciated me being there. The fact that he could lie there in his misery and still think it important enough to let me know that it was important to him that I was there is just one small piece of proof in my mind that dogs are, in some ways, better than people.
He lived for 3 years after all that and he was as happy as he'd ever been. Not once did he blame me for forcing him to live which was, after all pretty selfish of me; forcing him to live so I could enjoy seeing him laugh and play.
That's what I was thinking about when the psychologist finally finished up and suddenly asked me, "How are you feeling today?"
I said, "Fine," and he went into his usual spiel. I wished i had a tank of helium.

I'm not feeling better. I guess I just adapt well to being ill.
On Monday I was upset. I tried to do some yard work. DIdn't get too far. Sat on the sofa and put a movie on TV. Slept right through the whole thing. Put on another movie. (Couldn't re-watch the one I'd slept through. If it was any good I wouldn't have fallen asleep. Right?)

Click images for desktop size: "Zuma Beach" by n0rcalguy I slept right through that one too. I seemed to be picking out boring movies.
I don't like sleeping, especially during the day. It bothers me for all the standard reasons.
I felt pretty wretched. Even though the sleep probably helped me heal and kept me from feeling worse it agitated me to waste so much time. I tried to console myself by thinking that I'd slept more this day than I had in any night in the last week.
I tried to get somethings done. I felt to thick skulled to remember exactly what that was, but I remember trying.
On Tuesday I woke up feeling about 40% better. After an hour I felt about 20% better and it held that way all the day.
I stayed awake the whole day. Watched 3 movies. They were all pretty dull. I mean the best of them was "Doom", that old The Rock movie based on a video game . . .
I also watched "Irma Vep" a pretty pretentious French flic that starred Jean Pierre Leaud, he the star of "The Four Hundred Blows" and all the way to "Last Tango In Paris". Now he's about 65 and looks it. He is still remarkable talented. The real revelation was Maggie Cheung. She was incredible playing . . . MAGGIE CHEUNG! Cheung is the female in a lot of Jackie Chan Movies and the good "bad girl" in the Heroic Trio movies. Her she was acting as herself as a Hong Kong actress hired to go to Paris and star as Irma Vep in Leaud's remake of Felliuade's "Les Vampyres". Leaud has a nervous breakdown who is replaced by another intellectual filmmaker who fires Cheung for purely racist reasons. It was pretty boring except for the two leads.
And I finished by watching "In Bruges" which is this Brit flic that's not as clever or telling as it seems to think it is. It was pretty boring but I did manage to stay awake.
I'm worried that my illness is worrying and depressing people.
It shouldn't.
I woke up feeling about the same way as I felt going to bed. I can cope with that without much thought or effort.

Posted by David at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Click images for desktop size: "Lilac Swamp" by Unknown A full week of bad pain.
The Tylenol and 800 mg of ibuprofen seem to bring it into manageable lengths. I'm still keeping my good humour. Still laughing at the antics of my crazy dogs.
Forced myself to stay in bed until 6:30. Got up several times during the night. Only once did I meditate about taking some of the neuropathic pain killers.
No denying the things work but they disconnect me so far from life that the pain relief is scarcely worth it. Its a relief though to know that the scary pills exist. If it gets to the point of being unendurable its a viable method of last resort. I notice that the
Click images for desktop size: "Babe" by BJ pain pills contain a mood elevator. I don't know if that's smart or drug company arrogant.
The last resort being when I think that the pain is going to make me mad, when it becomes a force so great that it threatens to overwhelm, when all life becomes just a gray wall of deadening pain. Or when I find I can't laugh at the antics of the dogs.
When I had back surgery they gave me a morphine pump for when the pain got to bad. I'm still scared of addictive drugs, scared a lot. It was nice holding the little plunger button in my hand. It felt like I had a way out. When the pain would stab me I'd clench it tight, but I never used it. I figure it did its job well. I'd do well with placebos.
The dogs have been hysterical as of late. Especially the giant dog.
This morning there were two cats under the deck. One is a cat who lives here but the other was a huge gray and white big headed cat. I think I'd seen it skulking around in that cat fashion but I don't notice cats enough to say for sure. I only recognize our cat because it wears a bell.

Click images for desktop size: "Nebula X4" by Hunzonian This big headed cat was driving all three guys crazy! My puppy crawled under the deck so she could growl at it and at least remove some of its cat smugness.
The space under the deck is about 24 inches not counting the support beams. My puppy can crawl under it on her belly.
The giant dog thought she was getting more than her fair share of barking in so he crawled under the deck too . . . in about two minutes he was whining so I had to crawl under the deck to help pull him out.
My puppy resented me entering her "private" club house and looked me in the eye while she crawled out. The giant dog kept licking me gratefully while I tugged him around. (I still don't like dogs licking me.)
Finally got him pulled free, so of course since it was safe he went right back under. Got stuck again . . . I pulled him out again.
He thought this was a good game and plunged right back in.
I was aggravated, crawling around in damp dirt isn't much fun. Really, its not, for me anyway.
When he started to whimper this time I decided to ignore him. Of course the other two dogs where running back and forth the outside of the deck trying to find a gap big enough to stick their noses into and worry the smug big headed cat. They were amusing too and didn't require me brushing cobwebs out of my hair.
Suddenly the giant dong slunk out from under the deck. It looked like the thousand clown coming out of that little car.
The giant dog was angry and angry with me. I didn't understand the game very well, not well enough to suit him.
He ignored the other two running back and forth and came over and stared at me. His tail was not wagging. He then turned around and went back under the deck. After a minute you could hear him happily barking at the big headed cat then he emitted a long anguished howl and then a sharp staccato series of whines and yips.
I'm not that hard hearted yet so I had to crawl back under the deck. Once again the giant dog was ecstatically pleased to be rescued. His whole body was trembling with pleasure.
I'd finished my morning routine outside and was heading inside. The other two eagerly followed. The final part of the morning routine is breakfast treats. The giant dog watched us head in quietly and then turned around and went back under the deck!
I called him. He ignored me. Being a mature human I decided to ignore him in return.
We went inside. I decided to not give the two other dogs their treat yet. I have it in my head that they all get their treats at the same time. Prevents jealousy and, more importantly, it cuts back on some of the treat stealing that my puppy is the main perpetrator of.
After a few minutes I felt guilty and went to the door to go rescue the giant dog. He was standing at the door, not even deigning to scratch as usual. He was angry.

Click images for desktop size: "Sheltering Oaks" Maxfield Parrish He came inside. He wasn't even going to take his treat, He refused to sit!
The dogs always sit before they get their treat. My puppy always sits right in front of me and pokes me with her nose in case I'm particularly stupid that day and don't notice that she's sitting right in front of me.
The gentle dog sat and got his treat but the giant dog just glared at me. He couldn't believe I left him there to suffer!
He refused his treat! Aggravated I poked it into his mouth. He just let it fall to the floor still glaring at me! Of course my puppy knows the sound of a treat hitting the floor, she was on it like a shot. It took her a couple of seconds to figure out how to keep her treat in her mouth while picking up the giant dog's.
As soon as she had it she ran out of the room and the giant dog panicked. I had to go to my puppy and ask her to give me back the giant dog's treat. She did so with poorly concealed bad humour.
The giant dog was happy and took his treat and danced around with it proudly.
And that's my boring dog story of the day.
I have a million of them . . . Every minute they amaze and amuse me.

I have discovered that the real reason for the desperate push for the White House wasn't a mad lust for power by the Democrats. It was so the candidates could get them some dogs!
My friend read me a story this morning about how Biden's wife said he could have a dog if he got to the White House! Biden kept pictures of his dream dogs pasted to the back of the seat in front of him on the plane as an inspiration to him when he grew weary of the campaign trail!
His wife has tried to hedge her bets and claim that her intention was that if Biden got to be President then he could get his big dog!
Biden is sticking to the letter of her proclamation and stating that the White House is the White House even as Vice President.
Well done! And an excellent reason to seek high office. If he'd told the story abut his need to win the election to get his dog I'd have had no problem campaigning for him!
I'm getting bombarded with emails urging me to sign petitions for Obama to get different kinds of dogs. I liked that he mentioned getting the dog in his acceptance speech.
The emails are urging this breed or that breed. I have sympathy for the petitions urging him to get a shelter pup. But I still think that choosing a family member who is going to live with you is an incredibly personal choice. I don't think he or his kids should be influenced by the outside. Although I do think that Belgian Shepherds have a keen understanding of economics and fighting! They are also protective and good at looking after you when you're up late at night. I think that Obama will be pulling quite a few all nighters, especially at first.
Whatever dog they choose I'm mainly pleased that they'll be two dogs in the White House. Between them I figure two dogs can get this country running in the right direction!
Its been three days now since Obama and Biden were elected.
Aside from the vital issues of dogs and dog procurement I remain disappointed . . .

Click images for desktop size: "6" by Nemets The disappointment line is one I copped from Rudy Vallee and the movie "How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying". The first example of a weird how-to book being successfully realized as a musical! Since it was a hit we've had to endure scads of bad movies trying to capture that same lightening.
Anyway Robert Morse (who I met when I was doing sound for my friend, when Tobe was directing a Christmas play at the Pasadena Play House - Morse played the toymaker and he is as pleasantly crazy as I'd ever wished for) decides to advance his career he needs to move into advertising. Rudy Vallee (who I saw perform at his church - I got to shake his hand - a thrill for me as I was a fan because of this film and "Palm Beach Story" - Valle was cool, ancient but so very cool) the president of the company talks about his trouble with advertising but against his wishes, because Vallee likes Morse, he gives him the job.
As they end the conversation, about two minutes later Vallee says, "Finch, now that you're the Vice President of advertising I have to say that, so far, I m very disappointed in what I've seen!"
Whenever I steal a joke that I really like no one ever gets it . . .
At least my puppy looks at me with a look at deep pity and then insists that I listen to hundreds of her "better" jokes . . .

Posted by David at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Click images for desktop size: "Mon Belle Ami" by Unknown Like most people I see things as I want to see them. This isn't neurotic or psychotic. It is just one of those things you learn in Philosophy 101, along with that damn Plato's Cave thing.
Like when I look at my puppy I always see that erstwhile little dog who stood on her hind legs with her front feet resting on the little console as she stared resolutely out the windshield, occasionally and unexpectedly leaning over to give my face a lick.
That's a problem. It let me over feed her to the point of obesity. That's bad. Real bad. Worse in dogs than even in humans. But she always looked so happy when she got a treat . . .
Her being happy made my moments joyous, even as I was killing her. All because my subjective reality saw that little puppy dealing with her stress and doing so only to please me, to make me happy.
When I look at my friend . . .

Click images for desktop size: "Valley" by Unknown
Yesterday was a long day. I did a lot. Not a lot of different things but a lot.
It was nice because I did a lot of yard work and had all three dogs outside with me for most of it.
I filled in the two holes the giant dog had dug. I still don't know why he digs them. Its not boredom, so I wonder what he's looking for.
Knowing the giant dog well I figure he lost a bone someplace in the yard and he's digging the holes here because its easier to dig here than there. There's no grass right in front of the door. The dogs always hit the ground running there and have a nice little circle of dirt and dust to roll in.
I filled all three of them in with mushroom mulch. I have a fantasy of grass growing back there one day.
I took the half empty bag of mulch back and then went to the shed to get the leaf blower. It took me about 10 minutes.
When I got back the giant dog was all pleased and excited. His butt was wiggling with unbridled joy and expectation. He knew I;d be pleased. Instead of three holes there were now four, and these were all much deeper and bigger than the ones I filled in.

Click images for desktop size: "Yin and Yang Sky" by WK Wong In dog reality I had clearly filled in the holes not due to hating holes but because I clearly wanted a better quality hole. He just knew I'd be so pleased.
He made me laugh. I laughed harder when he was shocked I didn't give him a cookie as a reward for his hard work.
I'd never really used a leaf blower before. I was looking forward to it. I got the dogs in the house. If anyone was going to get blinded I figured it should only be me.
Now, my friend has this Black & Decker Leaf Hog. Interesting name. I guess its intended to be appealing.
My friend said that it was intended to vacuum up leaves and mulch them. She said it did this terribly and that it was only useful as a leaf blower. Its a huge thing, nearly 5 feet long.
There a long thick nozzle that ends in a six inch diameter intake. Then down by the handgrip is a three inch exhaust.
Even though there's a sticker on the nozzle that says "Be sure power is off before converting to vacuum or blower" there's absolutely no apparent way to make this conversion. When I turned it on it was pretty apparent that it was set to vacuum. It wasn't picking anything up but there was a pleasantly powerful exhaust blasting my feet.
I fussed with it, got bored with the fussing so I carried the thing like a military rifle at "order arms" position and directed the exhaust as a leaf blower by turning my body and twisting the thing up and down.
Worked pretty well but made me pretty arm weary. Its electric so not so heavy just big enough to be awkward and uncomfortable.
I got some big sections of the yard done. I had to give up at one space when I had a fifteen foot wall of leaves about three feet high. The dogs loved that. They've made it a fifteen foot wall that's now two feet tall and five feet wide (at last look).
Inside the house I continued my love affair with the new roomba. I'd left it running with the dogs in the house. I wasn't worried about it after I'd seen the gentle dog sleeping on the floor. The roomba bumped his foot and he lazily looked up at it then lay back down to sleep.
The roomba picked up an amazing amount of filth. I sent the dogs outside so I could mop the house. The place looked and smelled immaculate. I was very impressed.
I let the dogs back in. The cat came in with them and suddenly my immaculate floors were covered with yard dirt and dead leaves. Darn cat . . . always dragging in filth.
Darkness was coming on so I decided to watch a movie. My friend Jon had sent me a Thai flic called "Som Tum".
I've known Jon since he was 12. He was a pet store groupie. He liked to hang out and play with all the animals, eventually my wife had to give him a job.
Jon was thai. His mom was a single parent. She worked in the notorious Oki Dog. Oki Dog is that place at the fringe of West Hollywood that's used to be the hangout for the runaways and male hustlers. It made the most revolting food ever
Click images for desktop size: "Untitled" by Dark Art conceived. An okie dog was two grilled hot dogs with chili and a huge amount of odd veggies all wrapped in a flour tortilla. An oki dog was incredibly cheap though. I think it was a buck. You sure couldn't eat more than one . . .
Jon's mom said, correctly, that she couldn't afford for Jon to have all the pets he craved. Jon loved animals, birds, mice, and especially dogs and rabbits. He came to our house often and our dogs and rabbits loved him nearly as much as he loved them. They were always excited to see him and he never even gave them treats.
When we were entrusted by our vet to feed an abandoned tiger cub Jon worked even harder than we did to try and keep the thing alive. The tiger had to be fed every two hours. When I'd get up in the middle of the night to feed it Jon would already be there at the cage wanting to help.
When the tiger didn't make it Jon cried, not hysterically but with a deep profound sense of loss.
Working at a cruddy minimum wage job where she had to fend off the advances of the owner was not the reason Jon's mom had immigrated.
She decided to return to Thailand. This upset Jon terribly. He was 17 now and had turned into a pretty good kid. His love of animals had not diminished. We talked to his mom and we decided he could stay with us until he graduated from Fairfax High. He was no problem, actually a lot of help with our menagerie of animals.
Jon took me to the Thai movie theater for my birthday. It was this dilapidated joint down on Vermont way past Pico is all I remember but way before Exposition too.
The films were terrible. It didn't help that the theater was using a projector bulb that should have been replaced months ago. Seeing a dim shadow of a poorly shot film with indecipherable poorly translated subtitles is not my idea of arty filmmaking.
Like all kids Jon decided that since I didn't like those THREE movies I hated all Thai cinema. And as I
Click images for desktop size: "Bandicoot" by Unknown was an adult this meant my opinion could never ever change.
When he graduated from school I took him back to Thailand. I';d never been and he was eager for me to see what a terrible wretched place it was so I could always feel sorry for him . . . or something like that.
We assiduously avoided all movie theaters. His choice. I was actually rather interested. I liked the garish posters.
He was shocked to read that I consider "Tom Yum Gum" as one of the 10 greatest films ever made. See, its a Thai movie. How could I like it? I hated Thai movies!
For my birthday Jon sent me a copy of a Thai move, Som Tum". It stars Nathan Jones. Jones was the giant muscle man that Tony Jaa has a memorable fight with at the Buddhist temple in "Tom Yum Gum"
I was surprised when I started the movie and over the logo's the subtitles read, "Subtitles not for sale. Specially prepared translation by Jon for his friend DC".
I was moved by this. I had to be.
For some reason Jon translated the Aussie English in the movie as well as the Thai. I guess he figures that I'm too stupid and too American to understand the accented English without help. He knows me pretty well so he probably has a point.
"Som Tum" is an alright movie. It has some remarkably touching scenes. It has some excellent fights, mainly from a 12 year old girl who is truly incredible. Jones is mainly a comic prop who, even though he has a big fight scene at the end, mainly seems to be showing how through love and concern for others it is possible to build self esteem and familial ties WITHOUT fighting.
Pretty laudable.
The plot is that Jones is a gentle giant but when he eats Sum Tom, a spicy Thai salad, the chili's make him flush red and he turns into a crazed fighting machine. Fortunately this weird take on Popeye and his spinach is not overdone.
Most of the film is about four people learning to trust and love each other even though they are alien and speak a different language. Its over plotted: there's a jewel robbery and plenty of fights but at its heart its more sweet than exhilarating.
Jones and the girls rebuilding the family restaurant is given more emotional weight and thrills than the very good fight scenes. The final denouement is Jones realizing he's not a loser or a low life. He
Click images for desktop size: "Winter Lights" by Unknown came to Thailand because he won a raffle where the trip was the prize. For Jones it was more exciting that he got his name in the newspaper for being the winner then actually winning something. Its was the only time in his life he'd felt like he'd accomplished anything.
A good movie that I'll always hold as special.

Post election I'm still amused by the Palin stories. She seems unaware that she's become a national joke.
Obama has been President elect for a whole day.
So far nothing in my life has changed for the better.
So far I'd have to say I'm very disappointed in his performance . . .

Posted by David at 9:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Click images for desktop size: "Pumpkins" by Trablex Sometimes you have to accept things that, on the surface, seem unacceptable.
There was and is a lot of furor about OJ Simpson. He was found not guilty. White America went berserk.
There were six cops tried for beating Rodney King. They admitted to beating him. There was the stunning home videotape of the cops standing around lazily waiting for their chance to night stick the guy. They got the trial moved to Simi Valley. And the six cops were found not guilty.
Seems kind of incredible. You had to accept it. Maybe it was just a brilliant stroke by the defense attorney, or maybe it was just like some lawyer pals of mine said, we have no idea what went through the minds of the jurors and the way the evidence seemed to them sitting in the lofty precipice of the jury box.
I know Simi Valley pretty well. A lot of friends moved there because MGM announced that it planned to dump its facility in Culver City and move all of its operations out to Simi Valley.
Most of the MGM infrastructure, the guys in the machine shop, prop department, all those guys who really make movies and are so good at their art that American movies really were the best made in the world for a long long time, moved there.
A 3 bedroom house in LA could be found, if you were lucky, for about $300,000 (at the time). A 4 bedroom house in SImi Valley was about $115,000. The LA house would be pretty ramshackle with 1930's wiring and plumbing. The SImi Valley house would be 10 years old or even new.
Not much to consider. The TV show "MASH" was already being shot in SImi Valley - yeah, it stood in
Click images for desktop size: "Elvira" by Robert Redmond for Korea and did it well enough to fool people for a lot of years. "Little House on the Prairie" was shot there. The wild area around there was abundant and cheap. No massive per diem's to the government like you had to pay in LA.
So all these guys packed up and moved to what they hoped for in a better life.
Guys who used to work at McDonald Douglas making airplanes who were now making armatures for life sized King Kongs made the move and liked it.
One friend of mine who worked in the prop department lived in a mobile home on a chunk of land he'd bought for $90,000. To get a house for his wife and three kids seemed incredible.
After he moved in there was one of those flash floods we get in SOuthern Cal. It seemed there was a graveyard there where the undertaker had been cutting corners and he hadn't buried people quite as deeply as he should. After the flood he got up to survey the flood damage and found one of the 100 plus coffins the flood had dug up dumped on his front yard.
It probably had nothing to do with it but shortly thereafter MGM decided not to move to Simi Valley. There was an under used 8 lane high way built to accommodate the expected rush. Their were all those ancillary businesses that spring up around move studios - messengers, sfx labs, recording studios who suddenly had no promised clients.
A few of the techs stayed on, finding the commute to Culver City to not be too bad.
For the most part all those people who trusted the MGM promise found themselves stuck and they began to sell things off.

Click images for desktop size: "Forest Sprite" by Evegney There are a lot of cops in Southern Cal. Just in LA you've got LAPD and the LA County Sheriffs, the CHP and then all those little towns and suburbs like Beverly Hills who want their own local cops.
A lot of law.
A whole lot of those cops thought that Simi Valley was a huge bargain and so they moved there. In big bunches. Movie people, cops, the old timers, the newly weds looking to get a start in life and the cowboys and stuntmen made for an interesting community.
Cops probably don't seem so bad when you live in between a mess of them and share schools with their kids.
Even though LA cops are pretty notorious for being the most white racist group in the area.
So getting the Rodney King cop trial moved there made it pretty clear the cops would be acquitted. Even if there weren't any cops on the jury the entire jury pool had to have fiends and neighbors who were cops.
Senator Ted Stevens wants a new trial. He doesn't want the trial in Washington, where the 7 crimes he was convicted of happened. He wants his new trial in his home state.
Somehow that doesn't seem quite right. I can understand that his greedy corruption hurt the people in Alaska the very most but the trial venue is supposed to be in the area where the crimes were perpetrated. Stevens wasn't busted for being a greedy pig bastard who took bribes from rich oil men. He was convicted for lying about it. For lying about it to his peers, his fellow Senators.
He's claiming that the people of Washington are not his peers. I guess this goes back to the Alaska secessionist views. He committed his crimes in Washington DC but finds the people of Washington DC to not be able to comprehend who he is and defer to him.
Fair deal I guess. Although the fact that Alaska has changed their laws to tweak them enough to allow a convicted fellow to vote for himself on election days makes it appear that it would be less likely that the people of America would be well served by a jury of our peers.
We live in a country governed by laws. People break laws, people interpret laws the way they see fit. Its an imperfect system but most of the time its the only system that seems to work.
For a Senator, a law maker, to deride the law seems to me to be ungainly. Laughable. That he's being allowed to run for re-election is just, well, Marion Berry style mind blowing.

I watched a film yesterday, "Cyber Girl". Its the new movie by Jae-young Kwak, the guy who made the delightful and moving, "My Sassy Girl" (moving means I got misty and sniffly watching it).

Click images for desktop size: "Gothic" by Unknown Oddly this most Korean of Film makers made the film in Japan with Japanese actors. It feels much more Japanese than Korean.
The plot is quixotic, which I don't mind. The hero, Jiro, is a loner, shopping for his own birthday present in a fancy department store when this strangely dressed beautiful girl appears and starts making eyes at him. Jiro watches the girl shop lift a designer outfit. She then follows Jiro and takes him on the most wonderful night of his life. There's no sexual contact, only the fun and life that come from sudden deep friendships.
They part in a sweet and sad way.
Jiro can't forget the crazy girl. He doesn't see her for a year. Then on November 22, 2008 she reappears in a big blasto "Terminator" kind of way. All splashy sfx. The beautiful girl is different. Just as attractive but powerful and robotic, not the delightful crazy girl from before.
Jiro finds her and they go to the same restaurant they went to the year before. Only this time the girl saves Jiro from a mad killer gunman.
She tells Jiro she is a cyborg and shows him a tape of Jiro himself. Jiro from the future as a 90 year old crippled man. Jiro sent the cyborg back to save him from the gunman who in the original past had shot Jiro and crippled him.
The cyborg is beautiful but stiff and stilted. They spend all their time together. She's his quiet body guard. She also stops a lot of tragedy, accidents that killed children. She was programmed to do this by the Jiro from the future.
This takes about an hour of the film time and is tedious and dull as heck.
Having a gorgeous super woman robot at your disposal shouldn't be this boring.
Then the film gets interesting in its final third.
Predictably Jiro falls in love with the robot. She's so stiff and robotic it has little impact. Which is another flaw. He tells her to get lost. He can't take being so sexually aroused in his tiny world with
Click images for desktop size: "Eye" by Unknown not having any reciprocation. In a drunken outburst he tells the cyborg to get lost, that he never wants to see her again.
Of course when she vanishes Jiro misses her but keeps finding little signs that she is still out there looking over him and protecting him.
Then the film takes a rather astounding twist. There is a massive earthquake that devastates Tokyo. The effects are all from the small limited view of Jiro but they are astonishingly real and effective. Most effective is Jiro's and our confusion in trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Earthquake, atomic attack? There's nothing clear at first just that it is an all encompassing calamity.
Jiro's home is destroyed and he plummets to a certain death. The cyborg saves him, of course. The cyborg tries to take Jiro to a place of safety. As Tokyo is collapsing around them it is near impossible. The cyborg gets buried under a collapsing skyscraper. Jiro is hanging by a pip over a burning chasm of doom.
The cyborg cuts herself in half to free herself so she can go and save Jiro. Jiro saved grabs her hugs her and tells her how much he loves her. She violently pushes him out of the way just as another collapsing building buries her under tons of rubble.
Jiro is stunned and heartbroken and wanders the night with the hundreds of other lonely and devastated survivors. Here the movie really works. Its impossible not to feel the inner terror and desolation of the world as they wander with everyone suffering the loss of home, family friends, things and love.
The next day Jiro goes and using only his hands digs through the mountain of rubble to find his cyborg. She dead or broken, whatever a cyborg becomes when it stops working. (Of note - to rescue him the cyborg loses its bottom half, which codifies the true extent of his love for the cyborg. It was made clear before that she had sex organs.)
He cries and again professes his love for her.
Then the film jumps 133 years to the future!
Its all very interesting stuff about Jiro's future self and the fate of the cyborg. She is auctioned off after Jiro's death. Her memory chip was still intact and she has learned to reciprocate Jiro's affections. The cyborgs new owners permit her to travel back to the past to see Jiro one last time.
This is a fascinating conceit. We re-watch almost the entirety of the cyborgs and Jiro's first meeting, only this time completely from the perspective of the cyborg. Its wrenchingly effective. She is so in love with him and so angry at his lack of understanding of the depth of her feelings. It wonderful and gripping.
I'd have been bitterly satisfied with the ending except they went for the happy ending.
Back to the "present" of 2010. Jiro has just dug up the remnants of his cyborg love. As he again begins his lament and professions of love, the new cyborg appears, time traveled back again to live the rest of Jiro's life with them together.
Confusing movie. Not for the plot. That's actually taken care of with a master's ease. What's confusing is how excruciating the opening two thirds is especially when the final third is so wonderful.
I can't bring myself to watch it again but, aside from the final end, I'm very glad to have the last third locked forever in my memory.

Tomorrow is Halloween. I'm going to do stuff, including taking the dogs trick or treating, hence all the groovy Halloween pix today.
One of my money orders has finally been posted! This is small relief. Its the least of them but at least it did get there. I note they posted it as of Oct 23 - 8 days after I mailed it and it still took them 7 days after that to get it credited to my account!
Business.

Posted by David at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Click images for desktop size: "Starcraft 2" by Blizzard Entertainment Why are they still playing baseball?
I've been avoiding baseball this year. I still have this fantasy that my arm will miraculously heal all on its own and then I'll be able to find a senior league and play. Play forever.
Watching games is just a sort of negative, bitter sweet reminder that I'm no longer what I was. That's a hard thing for the heart and mind to swallow whole.
But baseball and Halloween? That just doesn't seem right. They might drag this on until November. Which is a real drag since this is, sadly, about the dullest World Series ever.
I figured it would be better. The Tampa Bay team is loaded with guys I watched at the Triple A level. What little I've seen is that they looked great in Triple A but merely adequate in the bigs. The World Series isn't supposed to be merely adequate.
Its supposed to be legendary and not on TV while I'm watching snow flakes fall on my puppy.
Its snowing here. And in my memory of baseball.

A lot of people were upset about my seeming defense of the Hells Angels. I don't think the Angels need any defense.
In Southern Cal you end up knowing a lot of people from the future and the past. Hair boys, car boys, bikers and surfers.
I never became a biker. I loved the surf too much and that gave me a freedom that I could hold in the hands and in my mind all day, every day. And when I finally got old enough to own and ride a bike I looked at Harley Sportsters. Thought they were cool but had more of a leaning towards Japanese crotch rockets.
I still do have a fondness for the memory of the bikers. Especially for their origins. They are as
Click images for desktop size: "Forsaken Angel" by Unknown Californian as surfers and a Tommy's burger eaten in a convertible muscle car.
When the Angels started, I guess it was after World War II. They had Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome back then too, only then vets who displayed the symptoms were branded as weak and cowardly. Patton would walk around slapping all their faces if he could.
These lost souls found their homes to small, the world too oppressive. Like all Americans they looked to the west and drifted to California. Solitary figures without a home they found a release in the cheap motorcycles floating around and found it exhilarating. The drifters ended up drifting together. I'd guess the old military feeling of belonging to a group caused them to come up with a uniform: colors. A uniform that set them apart as well as setting them together.
I imagine that guy wearing the old style baggy jeans, parked with his stripped down Harley Electro Guide on one of the hills, looking out at the pounding surf of Malibu and the long silver ribbon of PCH, hunching his shoulders inside his army fatigue jacket, the sleeves discolored from the removed rank insignia and service badges. And what he saw in the California dawn was a place to be what he was with no war, no killing and less fear then he'd known in half a decade.
Then there was the Korean War, or "The Police Action." And there were more vets, more people ostracized from society. WWII vets were at least acknowledged as heroes. Vets from Korea were lucky that they weren't branded as traitors.
(A big part of my problem with McCain is his embracing being called a war hero for his actions in Viet Nam. McCain should be grateful for guys like William Ayres - who has NOT been found guilty of any terrorists acts - and all the underground and war protestors who humanized the soldiers. A soldier in Korea who behaved like McCain did in Viet Nam would have been court martialed. An officer, such as he was, would have been court martialed with the possibility of facing a firing squad. Korean vets who did far less than he faced far worse.)
And there was rock & roll. And there were the movies. Marlon Brando and Lee Marvin set the new
Click images for desktop size: "Untitled" by Edmund Dulac standard for bikers with "The Wild One". Based on an incident in northern California where a couple of biker gangs stopped for beer and a party "The Wild One" did for bikers what the Godfather movies did for the Mafia. It glorified and made it beautiful. Brando and Marvin were like the schizo image of bikers everywhere - the good and the bad so big and intense it took two stars to embody one individual biker.
The bikers grew and held steady and strong within themselves. Until the 60's when Roger Corman, Peter Fonda and Nancy Sinatra (!) made it seem wonderful again. A movie that was mainly guys riding their bikes to the glorious sound of Davie Allen and the Arrows. Heavenly Blues as played by Fonda became an instant icon and aviator sunglasses the direguer fashion accessory for people who never saw a bike. Why not. Heavenly Blues who didn't even let death separate him from his buddy Bruce Dern. (The seminal scene where they steal Dern's body and prop him up and pass him the joint and the bottle still reverberates and affects today.)
And lord they made money. And a bunch of bikers had to be chagrined. Some of them got extra pay (like $50 a day) to be in the movie looking like themselves which meant they looked like nothing the world had ever seen before, and they watched as everyone else made money and more money.
Most seem to credit Sonny Barger for reacting to this and starting to register the Angels trademarks to try and pick up on the cash cow that was blossoming in front of them. Money.
I've met Angels, usually at Hollywood "too hip" parties or most often at Country Line. We'd play dominos and drink Mickey Big Mouth Malt Liquor. I never had any issues with them nor they with me. They were just guys.
Maybe the money and the toughness has led them to lives of "organized crime". I wouldn't know. I do know I don't trust lazy cops take on them. These are the same cops who are using Bush's whack anti-terrorist laws to brand black street gangs as terrorists so they can violate their civil rights and get away with it.
So whatever the Angels may have become or may not have become I'll keep my memory intact. Some of them probably are criminals, they probably were before they joined up with the Angels. The Angels might have been the only place where they could find a home. Everyone is entitled to a home.
"No one remembers the good we do. Everyone Remembers the bad."
Due to the state trashing my bank account I've had to pay my bills with Money Orders this month. Its been a mess. I sent them out 15 days ago and not one of them has been credited to my account . . .
This is frustrating and vaguely frightening. Todays task is to sort through this mess.
And to do some laundry and mop the floors while puppies with snow packed paws track all over everything.
The giant dog has suddenly gone lame. He's fine and in good spirits. He still runs and bounds like a maniac but then he'll suddenly stop and limp. For a while he'll barely be able to crawl up to his favorite perch on the sofa.
I'll be keeping an eye on him and hoping that this is as bad as it gets and its just a mild sprain from playing too hard.

Posted by David at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Click images for desktop size: "Cracked Wheat" by Unknown When I was around 7 I remember being in the car with my new step-father and my mother. We were on a two lane highway going someplace I don't remember. It wasn't very important, to me anyway.
We were in a salmon cake colored Plymouth Belvedere, old but fancy, when suddenly I saw behind us a bunch of motorcycles: choppers.
In a few moments the car was surrounded by choppers. Big hairy brutes wearing Hells Angels colors, riding choppers. Some of the bikes were elegant and beautiful. Others were ratty and rusted while others were in the middle of their transformation. All of them glistened gloriously in the bright California sun.
It was a Hells Angel snake about 50 bikers just tearing up the highway.
Click images for desktop size: "Ghosts" by Unknown
I heard my father yell at my mother, "Whatever you do DON'T look at them!" as he scrunched low behind the steering wheel. My step-father was the biggest adult I'd ever seen. I was fascinated that these bikers scared even him.
Of course I clung to the window staring at these guys. They were big, ugly brutes. They looked beautiful because they looked like freedom.
Some of them even waved at me but mainly they were focused on something else; on being free I'd have thought. For about five minutes the bikes roared past us. The snake trailed two abreast and when they reached the car they zipped and passed us on both sides. They counted only on their sheer presence to hold my step fathers fear in check to stop him from veering the car to either side and wiping one of them out.
It was incredibly exciting. Free to be anywhere they chose with their buddies who were just like them. That they scared the bejeezus out of adults was only a fringe benefit. What was cool was their
Click images for desktop size: "Wall Of China" by Unknown arrogance in their sheer presence.
I read the papers and looked at adult books about the Hells Angels. For a while they were my icons. They represented everything I wanted to be.
That's how I discovered Hunter Thompson. I was about 10 when I read his book on the Hells Angels.
I never became a biker. I had a couple of friends who did. Two of them are dead and the others in prison. The two who died did so on the road. One smashed into a culvert on PCH. They figured he was doing over a hundred on his old Indian Chopper. The other smashed into a truck on the 405 during rush hour. The third is in prison. He was the "pick up man" in some sort of kidnapping. I never got the full details. He was just the guy who was supposed to pick up the money. When he did he was descended upon by cops. I've seen enough movies to understand that.
If you go down to Venice Beach you always see the burned out bikers hanging around. Like the old norse crones who shared one eye and a tooth between the three of them you can see the drug wrecked bikers passing a joint and, you assume, their surviving brain cell as they laugh and tell stories that don't make a whole lot of sense. A lot like listening to Sky Saxon tell you about his plans for the future. (Sky Saxon and the old drug casualty bikers should be hired by the government to travel to high schools. Twenty minutes of listening to them talk is the surest inducement to not to drugs that I can imagine.)
I've been thinking about bikers because I've been reading this book: "At War With Hells Angels". War?
Its a bad book. I find it amusing. This is the third book this guy has, apparently written about the Angels. I think he's obsessive. The book is about the war between bikers in Illinois, Canada and
Click images for desktop size: "Untitled" by Luis Royo Scandinavia!
I'm a SoCal guy so I've always been a touch perplexed about how you can be a biker in a place where you can only ride about four months out of the year, but that's just my own personal concern. Who wouldn't want to be part of a family that represents freedom and fear?
This writer tries to paint the Angels as the new Mafia. Maybe its so but I'm befuddled by how you can be a secret crime organization when everything about you marks you as a biker. When you wear a uniform that is known throughout the world.
He paints the Angels as the ultimate evil in the world. I'm not exaggerating. He sees the Angels as evil incarnate and proof that God is in retreat!
I think he saw the totally cool movie "Stone Cold". Its the last great biker movie staring Brian Bosworth (Awesome line backer from Oklahoma who fizzled as a Seattle SeaHawk in the NFL - Bosworth's big claim to fame was being one of the first athletes suspended from the NCAA for steroid use, which prompted Bosworth to show up at the OU bowl game wearing a knee length T-Shirt that used the NCAA initials to spell out National Communists Against Athletes . . . strange. Maybe it was this attitude that kept him from being a movie star. He's pretty good here, especially as a debut.)
In "Stone Cold" Lance Henriksen gives his greatest performance as "Chains" the president and leader of "The Brotherhood". A Hells Angel's clone. Henriksen gives the movie the edge and movement towards greatness. He;s incredible and undefeatable. He raises evil on earth to giddy heights. Tres cool.
But even this fictitious character so brilliantly embodied cannot compare to the evil that this writer paints for the real world Angels.
The writer uses too many charts and diagrams to ever prove his point to me but I like that it reminds me of my child hood when I could think of nothing more gorgeous than ripping through the highways with my friends while my step-father cowered behind the wheel of his safe car.

Lots going on. All just life. The drains here are clogged. This is an old house and the clog is at a junction of ancient cast iron where PVC pipe has somehow been welded on. The runs of pipe are over thirty feet long! I have a six foot snake . . . So it will be interesting.

Posted by David at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Click images for desktop size: "From Darkness To Light" by Shifted Reality With the Dodgers and the Cubs both in the playoff's I can't lose! At least not in the first round. I was surprised that the Dodgers showed so much power. Not so surprised that the Cubs were held in check.
I hope it goes seven games and that the winner eviscerates the Phillies and gets to the world series. The series really should be the Cubs vs the Angels, but I'll take whatever happens!

Finished off the sick day by watching two more movies, watched them curled up and too hot underneath down like comforters.
Watched "The Rocker". Pretty bad comedy about a drummer who got kicked out of his band on the eve of their legendary success. The
Click for desktop size: "Bride Of Frankenstein" by Universaldrummer stages a comeback twenty bitter years later with his nephews alternative rock band. It had a surprising number of good laughs in it. The acting was on a pretty decent level. The real surprise was they cast Pete Best (the drummer the Beatles kicked out of the band on the eve of their success) playing the replacement drummer.
The plot was wonky and the music was dreadful but I laughed aloud quite a few times. Much more enjoyable than it had any right to be.
We ended the night watching "10 Things I Promised My Dog". Now, I'm a sucker for Japanese dog movies. They are virtually their own genre.
They are remarkably gentle films. Extremely life like in their tragedy and conflict but always there are redeeming people about, always there is love and always there is a beautiful dog who behaves exactly like a dog and not like a movie star.
Click images for desktop size: "Superman" by DC Comics
There's never a bad guy in these movies. There's never any dramatic conflict of that sort. The intrusions into the little world are always the product of fate, of life and its vagaries.
It works well for me. I always get misty when the dog passes away from old age.
The genre is so popular in Japan that they made a film that was a massive hit: "Always". It was a generic dog movie WITHOUT THE DOG!
I liked "Always" fine. I preferred "10 Things I Promised My Dog" because it has the cathartic release of getting me misty when the dog passed away at the end. "10 Things" had some great acting. The guy playing the father was superb. The dog was excellent, the girl was cute and bland. There was a classical guitarist. He was actually playing live in the film. He was impressive as a player. Its always stunning when musicians play live in movies. It got Gary Busey his oscar nomination ("The Buddy Holly Story"). Its so effective in building its own little tension that its surprising its not done more often.
I can't recommend this one to anyone but fans of the genre. The director stuck too closely to the formula and didn't seek to expand or contract his vision within the genre like Anthony Mann did with the Western, or Don Seigal did with the prison movie. I enjoyed it immensely. It did what it was supposed to do well, exactly as was expected. That was its only flaw.
It got worried and agitated at all the right sports, laughed when I needed to relief the tension, excited at learning something that was obvious but seemed like a private insight. It did all you could expect and did it extremely well it just didn't
Click images for desktop size: "Untitled" by Luis Royo add anything new. In other words I wanted to love the movie, but instead I only liked it a lot. That's the weakness of the Japanese dog movies.
Like the rest of America I'm stoked about the Vice Presidential debate tonight. Sarah Palin has become the funniest TV character in decades. This is like the ultimate reality show comedy.
Every day she seems to top herself. I really don't know how she does it, how she keeps coming up with these great lines!
Yesterday was so totally cool when she accused Kate Couric of being unethical!! And she made it even funnier by claiming she knows that "pop quizzes" and reporting what a candidate says is unethical based on her community college degree in journalism!
She's a riot!
She nearly blew it with her commiserating about how "Joe Six Pack" she was by then pointing out how she had lost 20k in the market melt down . . . she seemed to think that everybody in America lost at least that much . . . sort of ignoring that all the people on minimum wage don't earn 20k in a year. I got the point of the joke but I thought it fell flat. I was sort of hoping she'd try and recover by giving us a flute solo but no such luck.
I do have to question the sanity of anyone who thinks this awesome comedienne could actually be in charge of anything more than a TV production house. I mean I think its clever that she screwed over the people in Alaska by charging them for transportation from her house to her house, and brilliant to charge them a per diem for sleeping in her own house. That's the kind of creative accounting that TV producers live by. But to be in actual charge of a whole lot of people? I keep thinking about RoseAnne. Maybe Palin could show us her private tattoos tonight.
I hope Sarah doesn't ket me down tonight.
I was seriously disappointed in Obama. He gave a good speech from the Senate floor. Pointing out the greed and government ineptitude that led to the stock market going off (it still has not crashed). He decried everything that needed decrying but he voted for it anyway. We're still giving rich lying stealing bastards our money.
That's not right.

Posted by David at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Click images for desktop size: "Paul Newman" by Robert Risko I never met Paul Newman. Never even saw him walking around Melrose or Rodeo Drive. Never saw him in any of the chi chi restaurants.
Saw his wife, Joanne Woodward, at a rally once. It was a protest thing for something that seemed vital at the time. I can't remember what it was about. Didn't meet her, just saw her from my place in the crowd.
I never worked on any movies with them. I know a few guys who did. Newman always seemed to work with old-school crews. Guys with proven track records, maybe not brilliant but steady and more than capable. The kind of crews that kept American movies considered as the ultimate in technical competence.
Those guys always spoke highly of him. Crews can mess up a star pretty easily. It happens all the time. The rude jerk who yells at them, insults them. During a brilliant take a garbage can gets kicked, a light gets spun, simple things that say we have to do it all over again. Some actors never
Click images for desktop size: "The Beach" by Unknownlearn and wonder why these things always happen to them. Wonder why they're always doing retakes trying to recapture fire flies, a moment that never happens again.
According to the old guys Newman never had that problem. He made them a part of making the movie. He got them to be on his side, not that easy with jaded Hollywood crews. He did it just with simple human respect. He didn't pander to them, like some stars who get hip but who still lack the compassion to see others as equals. He'd even yell at them when it was called for but not too often and not over the top.
That's the stories they tell. It seems pretty accurate. Its up on the screen to see. Almost always.
I'm not a big fan of Paul Newman movies. I was too young for "The Hustler" and "Cat on a Hot Tin
Click images for desktop size: "Waiting and Mad" by Charles Marion Russell Roof" to have the same impact on me that they must have had on contemporary audiences.
Then there were those films that he made with Robert Altman, including an inexplicable disastrous post-apocalyptic Sci-Fi flic, Quintet.
Probably my favorite Paul Newman movies are "Judge Roy Bean" and, of course, "Slap Shot". Which probably says more abut my taste than Newman's talent.
So I wasn't a big fan of the actor but I am a huge fan of the man. He led a life of honor that stands as a pinnacle of, at least, my fantasy.
He lived a happy life. He loved life. The memory I always have is him on TV. For some reason I had the "David Letterman Show" on TV. I wasn't paying much attention when there was suddenly a commotion in the audience. Some guy was pushing his way through a row of seats trying to leave - a big no-no in TV tapings.
Letterman asked the guy what his problem was. he guy turned around and it was Paul Newman. Newman said, "I thought this was going to be "Cats"!"
Then he just left. I thought it was funny then. I still do.
A big star taking the time to do a little bit when he had nothing to promote, nothing to gain except to have a chuckle and a good time. I like that. It doesn't happen very often so you need to remark upon it.
I like that Newman directed a movie with his wife, to give the world a shot at seeing the woman he loved though his eyes, to showcase the talent and beauty he saw in her. I like that he loved his race cars and won championships.
But what I loved the most was that he changed the world in the best possible ways.

Click images for desktop size: "Carolina Morning" by Edward Hopper There's a lot of mention that Newman with all his food products generated about $200 million for charity. It ignores the few thousand jobs his charity created. It ignores the fact that that amount equals about $10 million a year. Newman was not making $300 million a year. That's the minimum he'd have had to make for this kind of donation to benefit him as a tax write off.
The only benefit he got from his largesse was in doing the right thing. He had enough money to be happy, to provide for his family and to keep them happy and secure. So he gave the rest to the world to make the world a better place for everyone else.
The money from the food and popcorn and stuff is pretty well known. But Newman also set up homes for kids that were seriously ill. Newman let himself feel and what he felt for sick kids he didn't like and he had enough man in him to do something about it. To change it.
It's hard to list all the things that Newman did, big and small for the world. Things that let the world spin a bit better. He held to his beliefs and didn't waver or back off from them. And he he believed in people and in people's rights.
He inspired others. Look at Robert Redford. Look at Reford's choices in roles after he worked with Newman. Look how Redford used his stardom after Butch Cassidy. Its important and its audacious.
Movies will continue without Paul Newman. He'll be missed like Steve McQueen is missed but they'll go on. Because of his foresight his charities will go on and continue to change and reshape the world for the better. Some small amount of suffering will be lifted. That's a powerful legacy; removing even a small amount of even one person's suffering is a big deal, to be able to do that for thousands each and every day is something I can be envious of without regrets.
The world's going to miss that. I'll miss that.
There's no one taking his place there. None of the much richer present day movie stars. Nicholson, Ford, what are they doing with their mega-millions? George Clooney has made some efforts but not in the selfless way that Newman did.
Newman just did what he did so he could live easily and happily with himself and his family, helping the world try and get to it's own place so it could be a happy as he was.

Posted by David at 11:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Click images for desktop size: "Falling Star" by Emperaa There's a writer, Stanley Elkin. He likes to be identified as a Chicago writer. A pretty select group, I guess.
I can only think of Elkin, Saul Bellow and Sara Paretsky and that fellow who wrote "Man With the Golden Arm", Nelson Algren.
I always think of ALgren as New York based because of all his early TV work. Thing is I always think writers who locate themselves in a particular area are pretty interesting. I mean, Faulkner had his mythic south, Kennedy has Albany New York, Joyce had Dublin and Chandler had L.A.
It always seems that the more specific a good writer gets the more universal his story becomes. I've got no proof of this. Its just the way things feel to me.
Stanley Elkin had multiple sclerosis. It killed him. He was probably thinking about how it was going to kill him when he wrote "The Living End".
"The Living End" is a funny story about this jewish guy who dies. The fellow goes to Heaven. He's disappointed because Heaven really doesn't come up to his expectations. He thinks it looks a lot like Disneyland, but he guesses its better than the alternative.
Suddenly he is confronted by the voice of God. God begins to berate our hero. He condemns him to hell because he once ate a piece of bacon, he wore pants with zippers instead of buttons, he worked on the sabbath. God casts this guy into the darkest pits of hell shouting out his final transgression; "and you thought Heaven looked like an amusement park!"

Click images for desktop size: "Untitled" by Fernando Viecente For this sins the hero is doomed to suffer eternal torment alongside murderers, rapists, child abusers, lawyers . . . That his seemingly minor sins were seen, by God, to be as serious as genocide. A commandment is a commandment. A sin is a sin. Its a funny little book. Too hard to find, I think, but worth picking up.
There's always something about divine justice that horrifies and interests me. I think its pretty normal to at some part of your life to think that you've been hard done by. What's important, I think, is not to let it bug you to the point of being morose or silly or cruel.
I've taken it too far, often. I have an adolescent concept of correctness. My greatest fault has been in not allowing people who love me to be a part of me. Sometimes in idiotically minor ways. To let a player help me set up the field, help me carry stuff when my arms are full.
Click images for desktop size: "The Canyon" by Maxfield Parrish Little meaningless things that might have let them know that I valued them and trusted them to be a part of me.
Its an old true cliche that the easiest way to get someone to feel indebted to you is not to do them a favor but to allow them to do you a favor.
Somehow I turned that into a code. I didn't want to have people feel indebted to me. I feel indebted to so many and sometimes it weighs heavy. I wanted everyone I loved to feel unencumbered, free to pursue their dreams and to help others they met to pursue their dreams.
I have to remind myself that this tic of mine when added to my natural aloofness can make me seem heartless and unfeeling. That's not very important in itself, others perceptions of me. It is important when it makes people think that I think less of them. I don't grasp sometimes that how I feel about people is sometimes important to them. Probably a lot more important to them than how they feel about me.
Its just something I have to remember.
My friend sent me one of those test things that was supposed to tell you how much of an animal lover you are. I had a problem with it. The basic premise was skewed. It relied on a faulty concept that you could only love animals if you hated people . . . there was no lee way in thinking that animals and people are pretty equal in my eyes.
Its that same sort of thinking, not realizing there are alternatives that exist outside of ourselves that plagues me. I have to stay always aware of it or I become nothing except some sort of monstrous saint.

I've been calling the school twice a day trying to reach the HC. I left a message today. If he doesn't call me back I'll move along. There's a limit to how much stalking I'll do to get an unpaying gig.
My friends interview went well. They pointed out she's pretty well over qualified for the position. From what she says her potential immediate superior was the most concerned about this.
She liked the people and the job seemed interesting enough, at this stage, to keep her interested. They were seeing 9 applicants and will start their short list call backs on Tuesday.

Last night watched the last of this summers comic book flics. "The Incredible Hulk fits in nicely between "Iron Man" and "The Dark Knight."
I didn't think it was that good. The acting was fine and for the first time I appreciated Liv Tyler.
Click images for desktop size: "Fat Frac" by NBD I had a hard time thinking of skinny Tim Roth as a quasi killer super soldier . . .
What I liked about the Hulk movie was that he wore purple pants, the Lou Ferrigno and whack Bill Bixby cameos, and that he says, "HULK SMASH!"
I also got excited because the story played out almost like the comic book "Abomination" I remember reading when I was a kid.
I was pretty disappointed in the action. I guess Corey Yuen was a lot more responsible for "The Transporter" than given credit for.
Of course all misgivings were forgotten at the end when Robert Downey Jr enters the bar and gives a hint that there'll be an Avengers movie next summer!
I know it wasn't promised but in these kind of things a hint is more binding than a promise.

Posted by David at 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)