I'm talking to you as though you were real

My brain is scrambled egg. 

The other day I was driving through the snow in my vintage 53’ maroon Mercury Coup.  It was night and the sky was pink.  I always loved the silent intensity of snow fall.  I listened to U2’s 2000 album All That You Can’t Leave Behind (this would begin a new era of very long album titles in their history) while driving and the sheer beauty of everything hit me like a cinder block.  All That… is often critically lauded as U2’s third masterpiece [after The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby (swoon)] but for some reason I had never been able to fully connect with the album (despite the fact that it has one of my favorite album covers of all time, one would think this would be enough).  I had always much preferred the other two aforementioned works – especially Achtung Baby – and Zooropa also spoke to me much more.  However that night, everything seemed to click and I understood the themes and absorbed the melodies and sounds in ways seemingly not possible before.  I felt such a peace with myself and the world around me and the spiritual planes surrounding everything. 

Last night I watched the movie The Man with the Iron Fists 3 times in a row while drinking several bottles of Sangria red wine which I purchased at Ye Local Rite Aid.  I enjoy buying wine and hard alcohol at Rite Aid because it is dirt cheap and because I can also purchase various fetishistic items while still blending in and typically the atmosphere of a Rite Aid is so depressing – nearly to the point of it being actually physically suffocating – that I feel right at home.  I was reading an interview with director Christopher Nolan (who in my eyes can do no wrong and whose every film is a cinematic masterpiece only topped by his next stroke of brilliance) wherein he stated something to the effect of the only he feels disappointment in the viewing of a feature film is when he leaves with the impression that it was only work and no passion for the talents involved.   Regardless of the end result he likes to feel that those who made the movie actively think it is the best in the world.  It is a philosophy I can get behind and applies well to this feature film.  At every second it is clear the movie is a passion project of the RZA and he was trying to make the best film possible in tribute to the Kung Fu and Karate movies he so loves.  I hope with all my darkened soul that he is afforded the opportunity to direct again. 

I have tasted evil on the tongue and the most horrifying thing of all is I liked it.  It came to me with great clarity recently what sad disgusting things we all are.  The amount of settling we do – not on a daily basis but on an hourly, sometimes by the minute basis – is truly staggering.  Every single one of us is only one single elucidating moment away from realizing the stark failure of our existence and reacting in the only sensible way imaginable.  Oh how the tears streamed down on all our faces when our true selves were exposed.  What weak, ugly things we all are, searching desperately for some meaning in it all.  How we love to dance and trade body fluids and pretend it matters.  We jump from person to person and addiction to addiction and we are able to kid ourselves into believing we know what is right.  We are so incredibly stupid and rotting on the inside that we are actually able to fool ourselves. 

I quite literally shit my trousers the other day when I heard that Gloria Trevi was coming to my neck of the woods for a concert.  Those who know me best know of my deep love for La Trevi and how I would happily murder anyone – even those I love most – in order to see her live in concert.  The part that is so ironic it will go down in history as a textbook example of irony is a few months ago I was lamenting the fact that she seems to never to come anywhere near my home and I did not think I would ever have a chance to see her live show without flying down to Mexico (where I would no doubt embroil myself in a daring scheme to manipulate and steal from several different drug cartels while also attempting to stage a coup overthrowing the Mexican president and positioning someone more amenable to my needs in that seat of power).  And then suddenly there was this announcement which I heard through a friend of a friend.  The most joyous thing of all is the incredibly affordable ticket prices.  There are deluxe meet and greet tickets which I am seriously considering purchasing.  One of the reasons I am considering this is because I recently obtained a shiny new credit card that has a voluptuous limit and I am eager to max it out and accrue more debt.  Truthfully, the price of a meet and greet ticket is less money than the price of several standard tickets I have paid for other artists.  This makes me think I should do it and that I would regret it for the rest of my natural, miserable and utterly wasted life if I did not.  La Trevi’s music was a revelation for me.  Her albums are about as perfect as pop and rock can get.  Pelo Suelto still hits me as hard all these years later and makes me thank the sweet heavens I am alive to enjoy it.  Fuck I love this song and this artist!  

All my friends in the underground music circuit know I am in the market for a new electric bass guitar.  Despite having tried out every brand in the rich history of the instrument and loving several I have come to the conclusion that I desperately need a Fender in my bottom end arsenal.  The only question is whether to go for a Fender Jazz bass or a Fender Precision bass.  P or J?  This question has haunted my every waking moment since it first sprang forth over an Italian dinner with a charming Norwegian couple I met while selling shoes door to door in a quaint Chicago suburb in order to pay for the last semester of dental school for my formerly estranged daughter who was able to forgive me and make amends with past transgressions after she learned her mother never told me she was pregnant and that we broke up mere days after the surprisingly tender night of conception.  I would never purchase a red bass but I must admit the “fiesta red” model is mighty sexy. 

There was nothing left to do except watch El Chacal de la Frontera 19 times in row, taking pauses between each viewing only to listen to the entire Funkadelic album One Nation Under A Groove (one of the stankiest funk albums of all time!).  I will find you Yamila!  I swear it!  No matter that it takes an eternity!

 

I cry every single day and much of the time I have no idea why.  

Grainin' on that wood

My Saturday night was beyond loco a week or so ago thanks to my plans to watch the Lifetime original movie Lizzie Borden Took an Axe.  I had been anticipating this movie for years for two chief reasons.  One reason – though not the most sense shatteringly powerful of the two – is my love of the macabre and general interest in the Borden case.  However the second and by far most dominant reason is my absolute love of and devotion to Christina Ricci.  I love her as an actress yet I am also in love with her.  Some would say I’ve loved her since the day I was born.  I’m proud to say this was the second weekend in a row where the centerpiece of my time was a Lifetime original movie.  This fact really puts my life into perspective.  The prior week’s film was the Heather Graham, Ellen Berstyn vehicle Flowers in the Attic.  I realize now Lifetime movies are rather cheap productions with appallingly ugly photography that I cannot express through words because I am not a great writer but it seems like some poor soul went overboard with soft lighting or decided to brighten up the sets with a thousand collagen lamps or something like that.  Either way the movies look almost as ugly as my bloated and disgusting face.  Still, I loved every second of it.  Billy Campbell also starred and gave great supporting work and the courtroom drama aspect worked surprisingly well.  I'm definitely purchasing it when it comes to digital video disc in April and I plan to watch it nightly.  Ricci is my wife in a parallel universe where I actually know what happiness feels like. 

I am now going to talk about the Grammys since over a week has passed and my thoughts are completely irrelevant.  The Grammys went by in a blur of drunken rage for me as I desperately poured gallons of alcohol in my body in an effort to drown out my pathetic existence.  Still, I was sober enough to note once more my utter disconnect to most modern music.  Three point five hours is entirely too long.  How I despise the Grammys, how I loathe it.  Yet every year I watch.  I am like a stupid, smelly dog rolling around in his own shit because he doesn’t know any better.  I am now going to spill all my thoughts on this year’s show.  I sometimes wish the thoughts and words in my brain could manifest themselves in the physical form of puke because I would love to vomit my thoughts all over the unsuspecting masses! 

Easily the most exciting part of the Grammy’s for me was the COVERGIRL commercial featuring Sofia Vergara.  This commercial begins with a shocking and wonderful close up of her nylon and high-heel (with peep toe, oh god) clad foot.  How I wish she would suffocate me with that foot after a hard day of acting while telling me what a pathetic ugly loser I am with her thick accented voice.  I must have rewound and watched that clip roughly fifty-nine hundred times, erupting in ecstasy all over my television and floor.  

The new Liam Neeson movie looks like great trash which is exactly what I want in my movies and women.  Honestly, I would watch Liam Neeson and Julianne Moore in anything.  The only downside here is the trailers and TV clips seem to give away far too much of the storyline [unless the writer(s) have a lot of aces up their sleeves] and this makes me put a frowny face right here L.  Metallica was one of the best performers and possibly my favorite but it could just be the intense relief I felt to hear some actual genuine rock after the assaultive parade of generic or awful R&B, rap and pop.  I was initially skeptical when I heard of the nature of this performance – teaming with world renowned pianist (whom I did not know because I am a tasteless hack) Lang Lang for a performance of their classic song “One”.  Skeptical because those collaborations slash mashups often do not work for me and specifically, their album S&M – a live album complete with orchestral backup – has always sounded so chintzy, weak and not great at all to my waxy ears.   But this performance killed my face.  My like of Beyonce is starting to dwindle with each trying-way-too-hard performance.   It also pains me to say I did not like her haircut.  I’m now bored with Grammys talk.   

Regarding more recent and popular televised events I was one of the sports fans who watched the Superbowl yesterday.  After managing to stay awake through the entire thing I can only say that football is an incredibly boring sport with a shocking amount of time spent simply letting the clock run down in between plays that last a few painfully uninteresting seconds.  How four 15 minute quarters can be stretched into 4 seemingly endless hours is truly impressive.  There is nothing like spending four hours watching a group of large grown men toss a ball around a field. 

What a jerk I’m being to the football fans of the world.  It’s probably because my mommy didn’t give me enough love as a child.  My mommy never wanted me.  She wanted to kill me in the womb and even tried with a pathetically failed drug overdose but no dice.  Life clung to me like a disease.   In fact, I think I’m changing my mind as I peck out these blistering words.  Truth be told, it was the most enjoyable experience I ever had watching a game of ball foot.  Perhaps with more time and a clearer understanding of the sport my appreciation would only deepen.  However the forty seven billion car commercials did grow tiresome after a while.  Out of the previews for coming attractions the one which wet my cinematic appetite the most was probably Noah because Darren Aronofsky is always an interesting director and I’m curious what – if any – sort of unique slant he will give to the story.  Every other movie looked like absolute garbage; it was as though multiple studios decided in unison to film big, splashy blockbuster versions of my life. 

I recently watched the French movie Cache (only about 9 years late on that one) and I have not been able to stop thinking about it for a single millisecond.  The film and its implications haunt me.  It is true that it borrows some things from David Lynch’s masterful Lost Highway (the director of Cache – Michael Haneke – seems to know this given the protagonist’s name in his film) yet I can forgive this because it is chiefly only a borrowing of the initial conceit, a springboard if you will, though its subsequent narrative meat and thematic gristle are a wholly unique flavor. 

My life has become impossibly busy and full of massive amounts of meaningless malarkey as of late.  This makes me feel so miserable I have been spending every free moment contemplating all the different and wonderful ways I can end my pathetic, useless existence. 

Of course, how could I end this blog post without providing a single commentary on the recent Superman/Batman casting news of Jesse Eisenberg playing Lex Luthor and Jeremy Irons playing Alfred Pennyworth?  I would never leave my dear readers bare-assed out in the cold like that without even a single can of Campbell’s Chunky soup to keep them warm during these inordinately frigid months where we are finally suffering the grim consequences of the awesome force of global warming which of course stems from our flippant destruction of mother earth.  My dear friend Calvin Black is probably the biggest Irons fan in the history of film and he told me the news made him drive downtown, inject morphine into the corner of his eye and bed 5 different strippers, each one dressed like a different fighter from the Shaw Brothers kung-fu classic 5 Deadly Venoms.  After I told him what a richly appropriate reaction I thought this was, he and I drank chardonnay on the balcony of my posh flat and as we looked out across the river I began to yearn for the classic days where we worked together in a barbershop quartet and made love like rabbits after watching the incomparable nightly one-two punch of Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy (he always shouting out in voz alto all the questions to answers involving ancient Chinese history) and eating a healthy snack of pears, string cheese and red red wine (which always went straight to my head).  I too share in his enthusiasm for the Irons casting (if not his eccentric taste in drugs and women) and find it to be so spot on that discussion seems redundant.  It is a foregone conclusion that Irons will be a slammin’ Alfred and this continues the rich history with Batman on film of Alfred always being portrayed excellently by a real actor’s actor.

That was not meant to disparage in any way because Michael Gough was a great Alfred and I love that commercial!  

That only leaves Lex.  Luthor.  Lex Luthor.  Arch fiend.  My favorite comic book villain of all time.  For years now the internet was bubbling like cheese pizza in the oven over who would be portraying Superman’s arch nemesis in the Man of Steel sequel.  Names as varied as Bryan Cranston, Mark Strong, Denzel Washington, Vin Diesel (shudder) and even Tom Hanks were rumored.  There was a particularly strong rumor that Joaquin Phoenix had even signed on for the role.  I cannot deny this rumor made me squeal with girlish glee as I thought Phoenix a perfect choice for Luthor.  So like many the casting of Eisenberg smacked me across the face like a wet tuna.  For an interminable amount of time I did not know what to think, I did not know how to react.  I simply sat slack-jawed in front of my computer and read the press release over and over again as though I were memorizing a monologue for a high school drama class taught by an elitist snob who failed at acting and looked down upon the cinema as a nonviable artform, only acknowledging the “theatah”. 

And I conclude it is BRILLIANT casting.  Well, perhaps brilliant is too strong a word but it is fresh, vibrant and exciting casting.  It will be great to finally see a cinematic Superman and Luthor so close in age (both actors are in fact the same age!) and judging by the little teasers and easter eggs tossed into Man of Steel, I will finally see a cinematic Luthor more in line with the mythology of the last few decades.  The old Superman films are beautiful but their time is over and I am ready for a different type of Lex.  I don’t want to speculate too much with this character and I feel content to trust in this creative team.  However I love that I can immediately picture an Eisenberg Lex in all sorts of underground labs controlling and creating all kinds of sinister and terrible things behind an immaculate sheen of heretofore perfect PR. The certainty of Lex being here also makes Bruce Wayne’s/Batman’s part in the story perhaps easier to discern but – as stated – I do not want to speculate too much.  Do I dare hope to one day see this iteration of Luthor wearing the purple and green garb or (gulp) possibly even sporting a LexCorp Battlesuit?  It seems every time I open up my heart it only gets broken once more but I think I’ll allow myself a little bit of hope, just enough to get me through the lonely nights. 

Metallica and U2 both have classic songs entitled “One”, what are the odds?! 

The U2 song is undoubtedly better.