Boy Bands are the Antennae of the Race

The Arts section of yesterday’s New York Times has an article on the latest trend in boy bands. I have not yet delved into this no doubt scintillating look at pop culture, I was simply caught by the photo. It shows the group One Direction onstage at the Radio City Music Hall. The same place where I saw the Dalai Lama.

The Times offers full, blurry colour for this photo, the subject is just that important. It is worth a description.

We see all 5 group members; the photographer got pretty close.

The singer on the left, as seen by the audience, stands closest to the camera. He holds the mike to his mouth, with just thumb and index finger. The other fingers are straight (I’ll avoid saying erect). He holds his left arm across his abdomen, hand open, palm down. He tilts his head up, eyes closed, and looks pained. Manipulative sincerity, do you think? Oh girl!

Next in the picture, tho he seems to be somewhat behind the others, is singer 2. He wears beige chinos (or whatever you call ‘em), like the 1st guy, and a plaid shirt. And red sneakers, you go guy! Mike’s in right hand, and he’s pointing up at the balcony, to Tiff, Heather, or Jen. Oh girl!

The 3rd singer is possibly the farthest right, if I read the camera angle correctly. Red pants and a t-shirt. Left hand on left thigh, leaning forward. Sincerity plus. Oh girl!

Up front, as it appears, tho I would not think a hierarchy would exist (something for everyone approach), are the final 2 singers. The one nearest the camera holds the mike angled up towards the cheap seats. His partner aims lower. Both wear beige chinos.

Reading the article, I learn that the five tried out individually for British X Factor, but Simon Cowell convinced them they would become greater commodity as a group. Which is pretty much the story you’d expect.

Long ago, I saw a picture of the New Kids, and felt overwhelmed (well, that’s a bit exaggerated) by all the signs. The footwear each wore, their stances, even the rattail of the homely guy, seemed like bits of essential communication. Not in the sense that we all have a style, etc, but that some arcane messaging were in effect. Like we should get experts to read us these messages. And I do not mean anything to do with words like subconscious or libido, but more like crop circles. Why red pants???

Malcolm Gladwell

I’m reading The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, having sped thru Outliers. A little disappointed with him. While his subject matter interests me, and he’s capable enough as a writer, something seems to be missing.

First off, he lacks cred. He’s ‘just’ a writer. He writes for The New Yorker and was a reporter for The Washington Post. Those stand as decent publications, sure. I assumed when I first heard about him, that he was some science-y sort, “noted sociologist Malcolm Gladwell” sort of thing. With his Bob Dylan pile of curls, he looks the part of focused science guy. No, he’s more like John McPhee, checking out cool stuff, except that he writes in a more theoretical vein. McPhee takes a subject that he is not expert in and studies it from the outside. Gladwell attempts to do so from the inside. It’s a bit counterfeit.

Outliers I picked up at the library and skimmed, albeit with attention. The thesis that the Beatles succeeded because they played a lot in their early years makes some sense. I don’t think that answer covers enough of the question, however, Gladwell and his 10,000 hours. Gladwell patches sensible sounding answers onto the questions he explores, but I’m not sure he does due diligence.

He has a trick that could be patented (tho not by him) of couching his ideas in capitalized words: Outliers, The Law of the Few, The Stickiness Factor. Doing so boosts the resonance of his ideas, but again, it seems like he only has a surface understanding. In The Tipping Point  he quotes a number of studies. I do not get the idea that he has read all the relevant literature, just uses what he has read as salients for his theorizing.

In The Turning Point  he wins his points by making assumptions then pressing on. He pits Paul Revere versus William Dawes in terms of charisma, that Revere succeeded in rousing the countryside while Dawes did not. Is that accurate? Well, there was a 3rd rider on April 19th, a man coming home from a dalliance (I forget his name just now), who brought the warning to Concord after Revere and Dawes got captured. Gladwell makes no mention of him, so I wonder if he trumps things up.

Gladwell offers the studies he mentions as confirming proof without weighing the validity of them. Makes me leery. He’s a fun read, just not trustworthy.

Blog Writer Extraordinaire: Allen Bramhall

You know what the thing is? I love reading my blog. This one here. It surprises me. I laugh at the clever bits. I admired the deep, thoughtful bits. I write the writing that I like to read: imagine that! This only means that I do not invest in some image of correctness but accept the immediate shining thing before me for what it is. This took decades to learn, and lots of clunky attempts.

Mallory, Everest, and WWI

Just finished reading Into the Silence by Wade Davis (Knopf 2011). It concerns the early efforts to climb Mount Everest. Its scope goes way beyond the three expeditions that George Mallory participated in. I guess you could say it gives a harrowing look at British culture in the years leading to and just following WWI.

George Mallory stands centerstage in the book, but he really doesn’t appear till more than 100 pages in. Davis first describes how Everest was discovered as the highest point on Earth, mid 19th century. Data had been taken in the Himalaya but not till some years later were they put together and triangulated to determine that that peak was the world’s top. I’d read some of that before but Davis supplies detail. It’s engrossing to read. Plenty of Empire stuff enters even then.

Davis then introduces the players in the expeditions. Most of the people involved in the expeditions were war veterans. In pounding fashion, Davis recounts horrors of the Great War, as experienced by these men. Somme, Paschedaele, haroo, haroo. You have to keep hearing the numbers to even believe, the carnage, the carnage. It amazes that anyone within the reach of the war retained sanity. It also amazes that any of the European countries involved survived.

Along with the war experience, most of these men were college educated, Britain’s highly structured and hierarchical school system. Mallory was regarded as an Adonis. Davis offers many florid testimonials by men who knew Mallory concerning Mallory’s physical beauty. Sounds like he’s on a par with Rupert Brooke, whom Mallory knew. Historian Lytton Strachey was crazy smitten, but Mallory was crazy smitten with Strachey’s brother James (who said the Treaty of Versailles: “The peace to end all peace.”). All the pictures of Mallory in the book show him under wide brim hats or in fuzzy group shots, and I can detect no nimbus surrounding him. But he must have had something going.

One sees it in his letters, he had character. Indeed, most of the players in the book had been thru hell. It’s a thoughtful, literate bunch making this effort up the mountain. Tibet was largely unknown then, a new political football, and so was mountaineering at such altitude. They were just learning about the effects of thin air, and how to deal with that, as well as dealing a theocracy.

The oxygen tanks that they ended up using were burdens, however necessary. The clothing they wore wasn’t bad, wool and such, and someone had made goose down clothing for himself, but all the pictures in the book look like the men are ready for a jaunt on the moors on some misty morn. I mean, scarves and puttees, and the lot.

Mallory was a hero in England after the first attempt (mostly a reconnaissance) but even after the second attempt on the mountain, a lecture tour in North America failed miserably. During this second attempt, an avalanche caught four climbers and nine Sherpas. Five of the Sherpas died, which left Mallory wondering, why did he survive? Which most survivours of those horrendous battles must have thought. those At least at the time, the taking of Everest was a sort of war effort in the name of British Empire. That sort of meaning had no resonance outside the Empire.

The matter of altitude’s effects still retain mysteries. Some people with experience and fitness excel on the mountain and others fail. Mallory excelled. Despite himself, even. During the fatal expedition he left his compass behind at one stop, and his flashlight at another. His body was found 75 years after his death. He had a broken rope tied to him, and he had fallen. No evidence of Sandy Irvine his partner has been discovered.

The three expeditions could be taken as similar to the Space Race. Getting to the moon was seen as a positive jolt for the US Much practical good came of the Space Race too, technological development. Same too with the Everest expeditions.

I like the breadth of Davis’ subject. He could have stuck with the adventure story—that’s juicy enough—but the context is too important to ignore. That’s the thing that interests me in history, and perhaps interests me in the novels I most cherish. Melville for instance doggedly pulled together the evolving contexts of his whale story into an illuminating intersection. Davis works similarly. Definitely a book worth reading, despite the doleful horror of the war accounts.

Biographies

At the store a customer asked me a question. After answering it, I was inspired to compliment his tie, which had lovely colours in a trippy, expressionist, Gauguin-like way. The compliment pleased the guy, who showed me that it was a Jerry Garcia tie. He said he had 12 of them. I have one myself.

I don’t know why I enter this vignette here, except that Garcia is someone of interest to me. That I share his birthday is an innocuous and not legitimately weight-carrying fact that I carry with me. I did not mention this to the man, not wanting this invention of mine to spoil our mutual high sign. But I want to listen to “Scarlet Begonias”.

So anyway, I have recently read two interesting bios. The second volume of Richard Holmes’ superb one on Coleridge, which I wrote upon earlier this month, on Babe Ruth's birthday. The other one, which I just finished, Van Gogh, by Steven Haifeh and Gregory White Pollock.

Both books are exhaustive, and in the case of the Van Gogh, exhausting.  The authors quote a lot of Vincent’s voluminous correspondence, in which he rails, enthuses and just plain pours forth. Both books describe tortured artists, without inflating that term beyond human levels. Coleridge suffered most acutely from opium, which ruled more than 30 years of his life. Had Van Gogh lived today, he might’ve been served medication that would have eased his tremendous emotional ups and downs. Maybe not—damn it, Jim, I’m not a doctor!—but that avenue of relief has widen greatly since his day.

Van Gogh is far less likeable than I expected. There was beauty in his soul—I do not mind using such a phrase—but his boat rocked so feverishly that he never seems in calm waters. I mean never. And his crazed enthusiasms and nearly complete inability to get along with others smashed up against a wall of middle class normality and propriety. His relationship with Theo is much more contentious than I expected. I figured him a naif who Theo helped along. The two were bonded for life, but never easily.

Wordsworth and Coleridge were somewhat similar. Whereas the Van Goghs competed within the family situation, Coleridge and Wordsworth competed as artists. They shared a youthful vision, but Wordsworth settled as a Grey Eminence, making good career moves, while Coleridge floundered in his own dissoloution and inconsolable yearning. He suffered unrequited love for Wordsworth’s wife’s sister. All of Van Gogh’s enthusiasms for people were unrequited, with the difficult exception of Theo. Gauguin was a dick, no surprise, but that does not ruin his paintings for me. Van Gogh was emotionally defenseless, and Gauguin was teh perfectly wrong person with whom he could broach a friendship.

I would love to be in Coleridge’s avuncular company. Vincent, would be a challenge but if I could keep my third eye observant while dealing with the lost lamb, maybe he would be someone one could learn from in his moments on Earth. His feet rarely touched the Earth, in this world of gravity. But Haifeh and Pollock advance with considerable backing evidence albeit without perfect proof that Vincent was killed, either accidentally or on purpose by some rich young a-holes who enjoyed tormenting the crazy man. Clearly this is one example of God not exactly tempering the wind to the shorn sheep.

That’s all biography right there, I mean, that’s the essence. We meet these human conspiracies of tension and release that make the subject worth our reading while. Internally, we take the facts and invent some vision. The man at the store and I, it felt like we shared a brief vision, some glint or spark that held Jerry’s music.

And I am writing my own story now, more than 100 pages in. It’s a matter of the brightly coloured thing shared.

Losing Barnes & Noble

Barnes and Noble struggles against the Internet’s Wall-Mart, Amazon. I will miss you, B&N.

Many little bookstore’s fell to Barnes & Noble’s size and power. The little bookstores I saw locally offered little reason to support them. In many instances, I could predict what I’d see in each section. The same handful of certified “classics” plus celebrity-driven books: Nancy Reagan’s Tax Advice, Paul Prudhomme’s Exercise Book, Cooking with Callista Flockart… Of course these stores boiled away.

B&N figured out that a bookstore visit could be pleasurable. You enter to the smell of Starbuck’s coffee (at least where we go). You see bargains, you see books from The Today Show segments, you see classics. There’s stuff to consider. And plus also it’s a place to sit with your computer and study. Not for me, maybe, but a lot of people do it. I own at least two books from B&N that I discovered had marginalia and underlinings, thanks to those erudite students.

We went Sunday afternoon, a quiet time out. The area near the door has been cleared out so that their desperate move with the Nook can be shown in best light. I’m not getting an e-reader anytime soon but e-readers are popular. Beth immediately saw a bargain-priced watercolouring book. I almost bought a book called Weird New England.

This book described places around here (maybe it was only Massachusetts) where occult activities have been noted. Woo Hoo! One, I was surprised to learn, is 1/2 mile from where I sit here. Dudley Rd off of busy North Rd loops two miles into an isolated area near the Concord River then comes back to North Road. It’s a weird journey. Near one end is a small country graveyard. Further on there’s what I thought was a convent (dedicated to Saint Thecla) but according to this weird book it’s a retreat. A chain link fence with barbed wire surrounds the building, which is odd enough. Keeping folk out or in? Just down the road from there Beth and I once saw a categorically monstrous turkey, easily chest high. Then there’s a very old farm that sells cut-your-own Xmas trees and I don’t know what else. The fields are rolling and beautiful. There’s a stretch of mansions on the hillside, unlikely old beautiful mansions, overlooking the farmland. You would never suspect their existence here. Each one could be the setting for Turn of the Screw or Fall of the House of Usher. The road dwindles down to a barely passable country lane, with a couple of old houses. The river is near but out of sight.

Definitely a strange feeling persists here, cue the spooky music. The book says a woman’s scream can be heard at night, and people have claimed that short bald men have sprung out of nowhere to clamber over cars and bang on them. Accent on claimed but it’s a good tale heightened by the cinematically spooky atmosphere. Think Lovecraft. The road passes thru an area of newer homes and condos in sylvan setting, and where the road reaches North Rd, there’s a horse farm. It’s the sort of book I might buy in weak moments.

I sort of wanted to get a scifi or fantasy but I’m just sick of seeing Book 17 in the Slogorian Saga as well as children of successful authors attenuating the ‘rent’s oeuvre, I Robot, You Jane.

I have never successfully finished an Edgar Rice Burroughs book but Beth saw a new edition of the John Carter novels that were tempting. Apparently there was a movie adaptation? If so, about time. Cue the accountants: Poetry has been moved to least prime territory possible. Literary/Criticism offered Emerson and Dick Cavett, of course. I do not understand why there are 5 different editions of Walden, incrementally priced.

B&N has had the good sense to make use of public domain. They publish cheap editions of classics. I own or have read most of what they offer, as do a lot of libraries, but still. I ended up getting The Red and the Black just because I wanted to carry something home.

Eastern religion seems threatened to be overwhelmed by New Age and Christian. There are a lot of Bibles. History, biography and tech all have depth of selection. The music was not as draggy as what Starbuck’s usually offers—that feeble “blues” or “jazz” that apparently coffee drinkers favour—but it was really poor Beatles covers by singers who insisted on slowing down the originals. And by the way, “The Long and Winding Road” was no great shakes the first time.

Seems like the extensive audio/video area is obsolescent and could be put to better use. Considerable parking exists on all four sides of the store but it’s often a search or a wait to park. People enjoy the place.

Amazon does not satisfy immediately, and the browsing tastes differently. The diligent shopper comments and suggestions are just extraneous to me. I’ve only used Amazon for specific used books. Cheap prices (with good quality in the ones that I’ve bought) and a furthering of hard copy’s obsolescence. So it goes, as Kurt would say.

Coleridge / Olson

I happened upon the second volume of Richard Holmes’ biography of Coleridge at the library, Darker Reflections. I read the first volume, Early Visions, years ago, and loved it.

Holmes continues the approach that he took in the first volume, using footnotes to ruminate and extend upon the facts and observations delivered in the text. These two books are as good as biography gets.

Of the Romantics, Coleridge is the most difficult for me to read. He is wilder of imagination than Wordsworth, or any of them, and less plain spoken. I’ve read his journals, which are fascinating. You see the use of opium crowding into his life, at first medicinally, but then with fierce grip. Biographia Literiaria is thick reading, but a valiant effort in something new and engaging. And this brings me to Charles Olson.

These two writers bear some interesting similarities. Both are brilliant, with wide-ranging minds. The idea that poetry could embrace science, history, philosophy, and more, which I got from Olson, made writing possible for me. Coleridge had a similar embrace.

For all their brilliance, they were hard to understand. Guy Davenport has a wonderful essay about how so many people who profess to love Olson’s work don’t exactly know what he’s talking about. I number among them. There is a wonderful intensity, and a glimmer of something exactly intelligent, that causes one to persevere. So also with Coleridge. I just call it crazy, this sort of emanating efflorescence, but it is exciting too. John Keats will tell you that you don’t need to have everything explained. I know, he aimed that at Coleridge, but it has to be faced: Coleridge could talk.

Both Coleridge and Olson were eminently sloppy in their lives. This seems their natural condition, not helped by drugs and alcohol. They remained curious in their work.

Wordsworth is a great poet but he freezed up as he aged, becoming a state poet. He just couldn’t be crazy wonderful. It is interesting how he relied on Coleridge and Dorothy not just as sounding boards but as native brilliance that he could transform. He wanted to write well-formed poems. Coleridge, like Olson, reached for something more comprehending and stranger.

The Beatles

Read a bio of John Lennon by Tim Riley. Lively enough, and even with some stylistic verve in the writing. I also read (more like scanned) Keith Richard’s autobiography. I skipped a lot of his drugged hijinx stories but enjoyed how he looked at making rock music. These two books got me thinking about the era, and more specifically the dynamism of The Beatles’ effect.

I liked them from the start. “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” still gives me chills when I hear the first chords. Not because it’s such a great song—it is not on my list of particular favourites—but it nonetheless possesses the visceral thrill that I got seeing The Beatles on Ed Sullivan. Wowie zowie for that experience!

Early on, I liked the spare skiffle of “Love Me Do” (still do), with that simple harmonica bit. I dunno why, I like all of the Beatles songs with harmonica.

Of course I understood that Paul was the cute one, John the intellectual, George the shy one, and Ringo was Ringo. It’s like we must be taught patterns of comprehension, which just turns into an override of what you might have actually perceived, were you to listen.  Thus Dems vs Reps, as the US dwindles.

Beatlemania was ridiculous, no question. It gave The Beatles a frame of celebrity that few have had (that is, suffered). It’s just so hard to judge The Beatles (and its component members) thru the lens of that madness. I mean it’s like believing Newt Gingrich carries a sword for you.

I didn’t realize at the time just how good they were as musicians. Owe at least some of that aesthetic evaluation to listening to much of the music in monaural, or crappy stereos, the which I did much of the time. Plus such a thingness surrounded The Beatles and their songs that I seem rarely to have noted how the pieces fit. I mean, Ringo’s quite inventive with his drums, and always zesty. And Paul’s bass is always effective, and often amazingly perfect. And with Lennon and McCartney, you have two singers who could sing just about anything a rock singer might sing. And so on. Well wait,  let me enumerate some further so ons. Smarmy Paul could still vigourously press the lead guitar (as I understand) on “Good Morning Good Morning”. John makes the tasty leads on “Get Back”. They never seemed to strain with the instruments. That rather superficial Malcolm Gladwell asserts the 10,000 preparation hours that made Beatles out of Beatles. They should have been a live touring band rather than a scream at me one. I get why they stopped touring, such a mess of expectation and what.

Something that I’ve noticed: I know the lyrics of good lord most of their songs, and that without trying. Ezra Pound notes that when song lyrics are memorable, it means that synergy of tune and lyric is strong, which I believe. John’s a better lyricist (by far), but don’t give me “We’re all mates with Attica State”.

I backed away from their positioning as cultural icons pretty early in the experience. THAT stuff got overblown. But I certainly wanted to hear what they were up to, at least until the group broke up. I mean, they thinned out. And when they did break up, it felt like long time fait accompli.

I thought Sgt Pepper was fearsomely wonderful at the time. I have since tired of most of it. Production as enterprise. Also, that mode of production, layers and layers, tended to remove the human pulse. They were making aural collages with bits of tape spliced together with the 8 or whatever track recording. The primitive energy started getting lost in all that.

The White Album kinda wore me out, too. It is fascinating to witness the way the individual pieces of The Beatles’ puzzle began fighting each other but I wasn’t quite getting the excitement. They were obviously in non-together mode. Post-Beatles has been a mishmash. I give Riley props for not lavishing praise on “Imagine”. It has been subsumed into the mythology of the saintly John. To me, it verges on the smarmy sort of audience awareness that McCartney overdid.

I like some of George’s post-Beatles work, cannot fathom what anyone liked about Wings but McCartney’s 1st solo recording was pretty neat, and so on. They were talented individually, and both Ringo and George were able to do their best work outside of the genius nexus of the group. But the tangled nature of their collaboration proved the most interesting aspect of their efforts. As Beatles, they seemed Olympian, even Ringo. Outside of The Beatles, they were just good musicians.

And I don’t want any of this back. “I Feel Fine” begins with accidental feedback (supposedly the first time feedback appeared on a pop record), buoyed with jangly guitar arpeggios, and Ringo’s sparking re-entry: It’s not an oldie. The song speaks the immediate enterprise of being right here. It happens right now, just like music. The experience need not inflate beyond that.

So I don’t need to argue cultural hemoglobin or defend the Olde Countree of my youth. Something happened, for god’s sake. It was pretty good.

Super—A Not so Super Movie

Scoping the selection of dvds at the library, I saw Super. The cover showed a masked superhero with the legend Shut Up Crime! I was hooked.

Alas.

It had its moments but I ended up despising too much of it.

It started somewhat patently and cute, with this schlub happy about two things, marrying his wife, and helping a cop in a minor way catch a felon. He’s played by Rainn Wilson and she by Liv Tyler.

Then Kevin Bacon comes by looking for Tyler. She’s not around but Bacon cadges breakfast from Wilson. Bacon’s one of the highlights. He’s a jittery, sleazy felon. He’s fun to watch, even tho a creep, and eventually quite brutal.

Soon after this meeting Tyler leaves, taking all her stuff. Wilson tailspins. Finally he decides to do something. He has a ridiculous vision that inspires him to become a superhero. He goes to the library to find out where crime is, then goes there (a drug haven) and tries to stop it. Doesn’t work. He really does say “Shut up, crime.”

He goes to a comic book store to research superheroes. Here he meets Ellen Page, a clerk there. Page is another highpoint, at least for a while. It seems at first like a meet cute moment. She shows interest in him but he is obliviously singleminded. She doesn’t know what he’s about exactly but gives him lots of help.

He creates a red outfit, calls himself the Crimson Bolt. He realized that he lacked weaponry in his earlier attempt to stop crime, so he chooses to wield a red pipe wrench. Then he goes out. It is an inspired sight to see him sitting on the ground by a dumpster waiting for crime. Eventually he sees a drug deal. He rushes over and clobbers the felon with the wrench. The blow is rendered realistically, with an awful sound and blood. It made me cringe to see. Boy, you want this to be funny and that just flails the idea.

Later, in civvies, he rebukes a guy who cut into line at the movie theatre. Wilson seethes with anger but the guy stands his ground. Wilson goes to his car and dresses in his outfit. We see his underpanted butt thru the back window, as does a child standing there. Wilson returns with the wrench, and clobbers the guy.

CB continues fighting crime in this way until the city, you know, is up in arms. In civvies again, he sees Bacon leading a drugged out Tyler, accompanied by several thugs. Wilson accosts, and gets beaten up. He follows Bacon to his digs, puts on his suit, jumps the fence and creeps up to the house. Seeing Tyler in drugged extremis, he smashes a window and invokes the Crimson Bolt. Bacon’s thugs shoot at him and he runs away. He manages to escape but receives a bullet wound in the leg.

He finds his way to Page’s apartment. She realizes who, or what, he is and not only helps him, she wants to join him. She makes her own suit, and calls herself Boltie as his sidekick. It’s a cute outfit, green and yellow, what you’d expect from a cosplayer. She poses, mock heroic and mock fashion model.

We then see them sitting next to the same dumpster. She’s bored, wants to be pro-active. She remembers someone who keyed her friend’s car. home so they go to teach him his lesson. As the door opens, CB tackles him. They wrestle then Boltie takes a small statue and brains the guy. Again, crunch and gore.

Back to her apartment. He remonstrates against such violence, and she admits to excessive enthusiasm. During the attack she’s exclaiming and swearing. It’s really funny until she clobbers the guy. CB scolds her language and some of her actions as inappropriate. Well, later, she comes into his bedroom and wants to have sex. He wants to remain true to Liv Tyler. She wriggles and gyrates and climbs on him, which he suffers. Yet another unpleasant and questionable moment in the movie.

They realize that they need more firepower, so he develops some incendiaries. At night, they attack Bacon’s complex. Bacon’s in the midst of a drug deal. His customer takes a shine to Tyler and Bacon hands her over to him. It gets worse.

CB’s incendiaries are violently destructive, ripping bodies apart. Boltie’s in a rapture of angry excitement. And then she gets hit in the face with a bullet. That shocked me. So did Tyler’s screaming as she’s raped, hearing which, Bacon shrugs. The rapist returns, concerned about the explosions. He’s pissed that Bacon’s defense is so bad, and Bacon, pissed himself, shoots the guy.

CB is crazed. He slams one thug’s head on the floor until brains spew out. And I’m trying to remember how he manages killing Bacon but perhaps I stopped reception. Everyone’s dead except Liv and Rainn.

They get together again for a couple of weeks, then she leaves, to marry wholesomely. Rainn gets a cat. The End.

The writer/director was completely tone deaf with the juxtaposition of humour and horror. It is fair for me to expect a winning, quirky, humourous movie, from the slogan “Shut up, crime” to the goofy visions, to Page’s animation, and so on.  Now, you could look at the film as a response to the vigilantism of superheroes, but there aren’t no superheroes. It does not relate to anything in Real World Inc. In the final fight, the movie resorts to cartoonish Bang! and Pow! plastered over moments of violence, like in comics and the Batman television series. It’s just disharmony to let the violence roar so.

In the end, we can say Wilson’s character is autistic, and Page’s is crazy. Wilson looked like he’d be charming, a big teddy bear, but he wore thin with crazy righteous rage. Bacon and Page seemed to have fun. Tyler hardly had lines.

The trailers before Super were all indy cred movies, that maybe should have warned me of what was to come. One had Natalie Portman as, I think, the stepmother who must overcome all the prior hurt to reach her stepson. I mean, jeez. Movies where name actors take a pay cut to look like they can act.

A Further Review

Here is my review of Antiphonies for Galatea Ressurects, specifically an anthology of Canadian, women’s and experimental poetry edited by Nate Dorward.

Wham!

I flutter at the cluttered atrocities of popular music and entertainers. I mean, omigod, they preach the strange and enticing. An unexamined meaning persists, thrilling yet unqualified.

Years ago, I saw a picture of the New Kids on the Block, back when they were both new and kids. Everything seemed to be arranged, pregnant with meaning. The clothing, the rat  tail, the postures, the gestures, the everything. They were selling something, they were selling everything.

Wham! constitutes just more more example. Two videos offer plenty to pursue.

First that ridiculously peppy “Wake Me Up Before You go Go Go.” It might drive your crazy, but you cannot take away how infectious this song is. I find it hard to imagine anyone wanting to sing that first line but it all works out. There’s no weightbearing structure but it is lighter than air.

One might be blinded by the cleanness and brightness of everyone involved in this video. Everyone shines. White is the choice for apparel colour. George and Andrew look happy and marvelous. They skitter about the stage in what we eventually realize is a rehearsal. The band and singers all look cheerful backing up the wonderful boys.

George dances an energetic but silly looking club sort of expression. Andrew wields his guitar like a prop. And everyone’s so happy. The lyric suggests the dark possibility of abandonment, but qualifies that with perkiness.

At one point, George at his gleamingest gets some face time. He sits with arms across his chest in a pose that recalls Marilyn Monroe. The lyric is something like “It’s cold outside but it’s warm in here”. He uses his eyes to point outside, and sort of rolls them to indicate in here. It’s all eye candy contrivance.

Midway thru the vid, the white pants of George and Andrew transform into shorts. You can see that George chooses slightly shorter shorts. I’m reminded of Officer Dangle on Reno 911. Tho an eager audience is intimated, we don’t really get that patented fake fun audience excitement that many vids have expressed. The camera’s too intent on the performers, especially and of course George.

There are some out takes, real or not. I mean, a couple of back up singers get their hand gestures wrong: that looks real. George and Andrew are supposed to meet center stage and bend forward toward the camera. In one instance, George overshoots the mark and winds up in front of Andrew. Andrew shoves him hilariously aside and laughs. Well, that hits close to home, we now know. Andrew now tells people he was that dark haired guy in Wham! Really!

I have no idea what Andrew contributes. It astonished me to hear years ago that George was voted Songwriter of the Year in Britain. On the strength of this??? I’ll grant he hits the high notes nicely, not falsetto but real singin’. This confection seems like the only song by him/them that isn’t mush, not to reveal my tastes too much.

The second vid is “Last Christmas”. I never heard the song until literally last Christmas. I remember that Michael had that sex song featuring his butt. I cannot recall the tune but it wasn’t upbeat was it? Seems like he eschewed upbeat after Go Go.

Anyway, “Last Christmas” is a dreadful, obnoxiously whiny song. George Michael, unlucky in love. It is as puerile as Go Go, but without the ameliorating energy. Having suffered a broken heart last year, this year he will give it to someone special. He pronounces special with embarrassing breathiness. Contrived and cheesy. That’s the song. You can sensibly hate it.

The vid goes classic with a gestured story. A gang of clean, attractive people gather at a chalet for a ski vacation. I presume that after finishing the vid they made a tooth whitener commercial to pay for it. Andrew is just one of the gang, smooching and hugging his girlfriend.

George arrives with a blonde. He sees a brunette who clearly is Last Christmas. The rest of the vid shows George with frownie face. His blonde friend melts into the crowd and George rests lingering eye on the brunette. Don’t worry, the entirely new and original tableau of the two having a snowball fight that ends up with them rolling together in the snow has been activated. And I guess things turn out well for George.

Now, I have suggested what became of Andrew but I do not know what happened to George. Did assignations in men’s toilets kill his career, or perhaps drugs. I’m thinking neither has to. Maybe his career is fine and I just don’t know it. He’s old now, tho.

Galatea Resurrects, Some Reviews

Get thee here for numero seventeen of Eileen Tabios’ review blog. Your Love Boat captain has several reviews, to wit:

1. What If by Skip Fox (or vice versa)
2. Citizen Can by Ben Friedlander
3. Fragile Replacements by William Allegrezza
4. Antiphonies: Essays on Women’s Experimental Poetries in Canada edited by Nate Dorward (link currently broken but trust me)

Antic View 152

After a hiatus, Antic View returns. Installment number 152 is here.

Mall Narrative

Nobody woke with boundless energy yesterday, day after our party. At the crack of mid-afternoon, however, Beth and I saw that we needed to visit the mall. Not for Christmas shopping, we don’t do much of that, just to tour around. We are intelligent observers. Beth sees the economy almost as a living body by visiting the mall.

Excuse me if I revert to narrative here. My interest in narrative hangs less in the actions but how the actions transform in the writing. Think of Henry James. His novels and stories hardly overflow with action. He writes within the structure of these vague narrative points, embracing details. I intend in writing these tangential trails to embrace the details, cogently. And so…

The mall looked a-bubble as we approached, tho we saw parking availability. The Patriots versus God was about to begin on TV, so that could have diminished the mob some. The temperature was in the 20s. We haven’t been scraping that low so that may have kept some home.

A long line at Sears’ registers as we entered. I have to admit that I might rethink purchasing an item if the line looks daunting. I know, man up. Some people totally freak out about the lines and hubbub. I don’t, but the lines do make me review how great an item I am, or perhaps am not, purchasing.

One storefront featured a village scene, with small figures and buildings, some trains and such like. It reminded me of The Enchanted Village, which was for years a staple of the Christmas Season in Boston. Located at Jordan Marsh, a department store swallowed mercilessly by Macy’s, it was a room full of mechanically animated figures in a village scene. I saw it as a child, majestically impressed. This was a smaller version. One house had figures dancing inside.

The specific store that offered this pleasantry turned out to be a Christmas junk store. It was one of those transient stores that pop up for an intense couple of months to serve a specific need. In this case, Christmas decorations. One could buy all the pieces displayed in the window, which is tempting tho logistically impossible for this child.Maybe it is the God’s eye view that draws me. The carpet  of this store was furiously dirty, like I’m even the guy to notice such a thing. No time to clean, gotta manifest a singularly quick profit.

Marilyn Monroe ornaments in iconic subway surprise. It is just not Christmas till you’ve seen Marilyn’s underwear. To be honest, I never really got Homer Simpson as giant Santa Claus in the yard. Or Santa Claus on a motorcycle giant inflatable. Etc.

The Apple Store had a surprisingly junky window display. A bunch of junky looking cartoonish pictures. Not classy, not involving. I officially tire of slick. Apple offers disposable elegance, as if the thin and spare design of their toys improves what it delivers. Didn’t even go in. Oh, by the way, we’re mining your iPhone for data.

We did not enter Betsey Johnson either, but watched the TV there. On previous visits, I thunk the person in the vids was Suzanne Somers, which made no sense. Now I understand that that oldish comedic blonde there is Betsey herself. We see her cavorting both alone and with models. A little unconvincing with her elevated gayety. The models stand literally a head taller than Betsey, and take a guess how much lighter they weigh. The necessity to select in that way, and the dear things are as expressive as that Robert Palmer video, it seems creepy. It’s not like you see a lot of 6’ tall generic models in the store. The point, then?

Nordstrom glistened. Notably, for me, a guy slipped on the floor, almost banana split before he recovered. He even left rubber. He gawked at the spot, legitimately puzzled by how slippery. Nothing looked wowzer at this time.

Inevitably we entered Eddie Bauer. Plus ca change. Jeans, which I call dungarees unless I fear to sound like a yokel, seem diminished now. Thin material, not outdoor ready. Beth has noted that the cut of clothes looks slimmer. Less emphasis on the outdoor stuff. Bodes not well. Picked up a little flashlight that can be recharged by cranking the crank or with light. I prefer walking home from work down the path into the woods than the longer road route with headlights in my eyes. And 40% off!!!

Dog Bite and Christmas Party

I walk to work down a former railroad cut (down what had been one of the oldest rail lines in the nation). Basically, a walk in the woods. It comes out near the centre.

As I came to the crosswalk on South Rd, you know, across from that red house, I heard dogs barking and a woman yelling. I looked to see a dog in the neighbouring yard racing toward me. Interesting, thinks I. I assumed that an invisible fence existed to keep such steadfast energy at bay. The dog passed out of the yard and came to greet me with teeth flashing. Two other dogs joined the first in harassing me. The first dog leaped toward my face, which in my estimation is not a good thing. The other dogs came at me in good canine fashion, from all sides.

I had a pack to sort of fend the first dog with, then I felt a dog biting me from, and on the, behind. By this time a frantic woman arrived yelling at the dogs. I noticed that the first dog wore a leash, which the woman tried to grab. When she did she pulled that dog away and was able to voice command the others off. She asked me if I was okay and I said yes. I went on my way.

That sort of quick event leaves you in a daze, and I think my processing speed aint lightning quick anyway. I found it odd that I never felt an adrenalin rush. As someone who has run 50,000 miles, I’ve met a few dogs that have found various ways to remonstrate with me. This attack, however, beats any of that. I’ve always treated such as consciously calmly as possible, otherwise dogs become more aggressive. But the attack was so quick and vicious, I would expect to have felt a rush.

As I proceeded—somewhat dazedly—I thought, what if a child…? I determined to call the police when I got to work. I also discovered that both shirts that I wore, and the back pocket of my dungarees were torn. I hadn’t noticed.

So, at work I called the police and an officer came and interviewed me. I detailed the attack, told the officer I was unhurt. When Beth picked me up at ten, she inquired if I had looked for wounds. Well, I had not. When I did, I found that I had been punctured on the butt and the upper thigh. That meant a visit to the Emergency Room.

Emergency Room always = 3 hours. And so it proved. Watched that animated movie with the square headed guy and the chubby boy in the flying house, weirdly vicious but cutely hilarious in portraying dogs endearingly. After that, with a thumb thru of People, was (inexplicably) The 700 Club, which featured a commercial of Pat Boone sleazily hocking gold. Did you know Tim Tebow loves Jesus? Praise the Lord.

The dr spent about 5 minutes with me, with a perfunctory glance at the wound and an explanation of rabies. A nurse gave me a tetanus shot, and we left after 1:00.

I got 6 hours sleep then rose to decorate the Christmas tree and otherwise prepare for our party. We had to shop, and I made a visit to the police station to see what next, and also to say that I had indeed been injured. I still await determination whether the dogs had had their shots. Turns out an invisible fence was in place, but dogs in their excitement can get thru them. And once thru, I know, they are reluctant to go back.

I made three loaves of bread and two types of apple pie, one traditional American, the other a so called Swedish, tho it was definitely more than sweetish. Beth did all the heavy lifting with roast beef, roasted Brussel sprouts and salad and cheese and stuff. Wine poured, and all was well.

Simple Theories

53 poem/posts this year, not grandly amazing, but I like each individual. Coax you, Readers fair, to visit Simple Theories.

“Santa Baby”, the Song that Really Sucks

The song “Santa Baby” enjoys the world’s record for the creepiest Christmas song extant. I shan’t argue the point. One can hardly imagine an ickier song coming along to disturb posterity.

I have not researched who exactly claims responsibility for this song. The less said about the perps the better. Somebody, clearly, consciously or not, had thoughts to the tune of “I have some weird, creepy feelings about Christmas. I think I will write a song.” Nothing along the way came to the point of examination.

“Santa Baby”, both in its words and its performance, oozes from a cultural cue of utter unrefinement. It packs a sexuality that completely lacks circumspection. The damn song advances a gross demand with the purest disregard for the social embrace.

Do you say “What?” Listen to the song. The characters in it nestle in an infantile release that resembles, really, the easy action of wetting diapers. Do I overblow the situation? I don’t think so.

For most people, Christmas presents a spiritual opportunity. I don’t mean in the religious sense severely, but certainly a cultural connection exists for many. I’m not ignoring the advancing downside of the holiday, just marking the general positive push it wants to establish, however bludgeonly. The holiday’s primitive (so called) antecedents attempted to satisfy an important, dire even, need, facing death and disintegration. And it did so in a way recognizable and acceptable to the many.

“Santa Baby” suggests something verging on psychotic. It can express nothing but need of the narrowest focus, unencumbered by regard. It pictures a hell just as devastating as Dante could imagine. There, I said it.

The song excises all moral tendering for the excitement of greed. And the song’s perps expect auditors to laugh at the empty cause. Most people, I imagine, just want to say: don’t be silly. It is a silliness that cannot meet your eyes.

Bowling for Columbine

We’ve owned this fdvd or several years but could never bring ourselves to watch it. We held the reasonable theory that a movie about the Columbine shootings would be crushing. In sooth, tho serious in intent, it’s not as thuddingly depressing as feared. That is, Michael Moore maintains a stance of entertainment in this work. I know that sounds cheezy on my part, but crushing recitations of gravid societal ills compel hopelessness, not the opposite. We don’t need more hopelessness. I’ve checked. We really don’t.

After 9/11 (Day of Infamy Inc.), people on the Poetics list were citing Michael Moore’s take on those stark events. That’s an entire misread of what Moore is. Moore is not Socratic wisdom, he’s Trickster. What he thinks in some broad sense pales against what he will say in the small but bountiful moment. To look toward him for guidance suggests a power that he cannot give.

Moore is an easy Everyman, or I should say in minuscule, ordinary person. His schlubbiness makes his pleasantly pertinent questions powerful and teetering. People relax in the face of this unkempt looking average guy. Moore’s innocent questions hit pay dirt because his victims feel superiour.

The movie begins with him opening an account at a bank that will gift him a new rifle for his business. File under You Can’t Make This Up. The bank, in Michigan, a hunter’s haven, might naturally play to their clientele thus, strange as it may seem to us in a less hunter strong environment. Moore himself is a gun owner and NRA member, which allows the movie to carry more weight than if he were a dedicated gun hater.

The movie’s best moments occur when Moore as innocent accosts significant people. The superiour sorts chatter away, until they realize that Moore wields a knife. Or someone like Terry Nichol’s brother, who looks crazed much of the time.

Moore interviews Marilyn Manson, who was an easy to identify influence on the shooters at Columbine. Manson was well spoken and thoughtful, and Moore just agreed. Let Manson supple the movie’s theme.

Moore sometimes eschews his schlub persona and becomes heroic. I regard this as an off note. Two victims of the shooting, with bullets in their bodies still, were taken to Kmart. Kmart sold the bullets in their bodies. The victims wanted to encourage the company to stop selling firearms. To me, there was a whiff of using these kids. One was confined to a wheelchair and the other looked like he could be. Moore, as instigator, with camera rolling, made a demonstration with which these kids could participate. Given that Moore established that Canada and other countries have plenty of guns without a 100th of the murder rate that the US enjoys, it looks more like a cure of the symptom than the disease itself.

A weird, under-emphasized moment occurs somewhat early in which we see a few real life shootings. Moore offers no explanations. One is, apparently, a random shooting, one looks like a Kent State victim, and one is someone putting a gun in his mouth and firing. These images startle, for sure, but Moore pops them in almost thoughtlessly. As shocking as these incidents are, they zip by almost pleasantly. I just find that weird.

The movie culminates in Moore gaining interview access with Charlton Hesston, then president of the NRA. I actually understand the NRA’s persistent defense of 2nd Amendment. It’s like defending a trademark. If you let down your guard on little things, suddenly the big things slip by. Still, Hesston arrives in Columbine while the shootings still are mourned. And an incident in which a 1st grader brings a gun to school and accidentally kills a classmate again brings him to town. That’s just tone deaf.

In the interview, which Heston allowed in his Hollywood glamour pot, Moore tries to upend the knucklehead. Heston cannot let go the feisty ego aplomb, which plays into Moore’s hands. Moore steps across the No Thanks point, and Hesston walks out. Heston has different hair than he did in the public proclamationing, id est, he aint got his toup. He walks away with his stiff old man back angled forward, loser loser loser. Moore kinda kills the flush by wielding a picture of the little dead girl. Leaving the picture for Heston to chance upon left a bad smack. The girl did not die for your use, did she Michael?

So I argue a bit with technique, and philosophic stance, but as a somewhat thoughtful entertainment, it worked. Militia folk and others declaring they need to protect themselves, but gosh darn, against what? And why with automatic weapons and war armaments?

Thanksgiving Twenty Eleven

A brisk but sunny Thanksgiving here on the outer edge of the Hub of the Universe. On Wednesday, I made bread, pecan pie and, once again, the Apple-Blackberry Pie. The recipe for Apple-Blackberry pie comes from the eternal doyen of the kitchen, ex-con Martha Stewart. But wait, it’s quite tasty! That’s not crust, Friends, that’s pate brise!This year, I noticed that I am supposed to cook down the juices of the fruit before sticking the pie in the oven. How very grand!

Beth is in her element preparing the turkey. Smells good, sausage and chestnut dressing. We’re listening to NPR. David McCullough spoke about his latest book, which concerns the lure of Paris on 19th century Americans. Well should McCullough be a historian, he tells a good story. I read his John Adams, who I really like, and Abigail too. The shine of Jefferson has become a bit tarnished, whereas Adams’ integrity and vision resonates more.

I am, moi-meme, writing my own story. Auto plus biography, that is. Sixty four pages in. Perhaps I bury the lead, because this feels really important to me. I’ve found the need to (re)read certain works, as backbone for this effort. Jung, certainly. And I am (finally) deep into Joseph Campbell’s The Masks of God. I have poked thru the four volumes but never made a concerted effort. I’m nearly thru Primitive Mythology. I’ve read Hero with 1000 Faces, and other works by Campbell. This one is his masterwork. The development of mythology, and the psychic importance of them, underlies my writing here, I mean in the book I am writing. Started Clan of the Cave Bear again, as well. Just one of those books that I enjoy but never seem to finish. Storywise, it’s decent enough. Jean Auel’s well-researched evocation of primitive human life is very fine. I recall Darryl Hannah’s swing at the book. In terms of capturing the plot or anything else about the book, it’s a miss. Okay, Hannah was blonde just like Ayla.

Since we have eschewed cable this past year and more, no Macy’s parade and no football. I miss football a little bit, but I always tended to think I wasted my time watching football. And the fiasco at Penn State just reminds me of the fearsome great stupidities required to foment such autocracies as football teams. Greed and pride, the program, the program,the program.

It has been something like 5 years since we’ve had Thanksgiving at home. Just our nuclear embrace of three, but that’s fine. The cat performs his quiet vortex of attention in the middle of the room, which surely ought to inspire us to give him more food. The betta flickers in excitement whenever I come near his bowl. I guess he’d accept me as provender if I did not drop the food pellets into his home.

I should mench that I saw a Christmas tree, decorated and lit, in a window more than 2 weeks ago. In my childhood, the tree went up around the 23rd (December!), and came down on New Year’s Day. The tree that I saw is probably an imitation. I don’t know where you could buy a live (chopped down) one at that time. And if it were live, it would be kindling by the time the holiday arrived.

The meal now past. One downer: The cream bought for the mashed potatoes turned out to be hazelnut flavoured, a fact not noticed till pouring had begun. The hazelnut factor wasn’t so bad tho it competed with the gravy. The sweetness factor skewed things. Three wines, two unfinished: Pinot Gris, Villa Maria (New Zealand), Pinot Noir MacMurray (Cal), and Rudesheimer Berg Schlossberb Spatlese by Molitor (rolls off the tongue).

Variously Bespoke

Friends, and I hope I can accurately use the plural, I hate that I do not—recently—update this blog. It should be a tidal surge of surety, that’s my vision. PECAVVI!

So here, now, I ruminate.

Last weekend was a wash. We lost power, due to a storm dropping a few inches of snow (after mucho rain) onto trees still fledged. The power went at 3am, with broken trees, returned on Monday 3pm. I was myself under the weather, sorethroaty and sleep-needy. I gave Erin a few hours of homework help, albeit I dozed off somewhere in the midst.

Internet, our eternal friend disappearified for 4 days, which was a ruction. What up with the Patriots? Well, I did not need to know, losers. More importantly, how can Erin do his schoolwork, internetified ass it is? Sigh,l but we weathered.

Yesterday, Beth confirmed that she was thoroughly under similar weather as I. Erin likewise. Beth and I set off Saturday not exactly morning for a vital Costco run. It is Christmas there. An upgrade of phones next. Theoretically, our 4 phones (we have a spare lines) were due for magical upgrade. A call to enemy headquarters, id est Verizon, informed us that only 3 of these lines were due for upgrade. The scumbags, pardon the French, were almost resolute against believing the error was theirs. Beth won after a mere hour plus of lifetime resisting the resistant.

Today we had to scramble off for food for the betta, who survived a chilly weekend last week, glaring at me anxiously. And food for the mighty kitty, thus avoiding any conversations regarding his lack of food and our blind duty towards him. And finally, visited an artist open house.

The town’s official artists opened their studios this weekend to visitors. We visited someone we knew. She has a neat studio and lovely work, and her husband 30 some grapevines, mostly hybrids adapted for the local climate but a few cabernet sauvignon that he has managed to winter over for several years now.

I have, for the past 4 or 5 weeks, been writing a book. A real book with lots of pages. It is plainly autobiographical, but Joseph Campbell’s Masks of God 4-ology is enlighteningly appropriate. I have read at it afore, but it now seems vitally vital. And Jung seems helpful too. I write of my family and life, but I want a transferral, a joining with reader. The story grows in the telling. Thus and so.