Thursday, March 22, 2007

that was the year...

that was the year of so many false prophets and we didn’t mind. they were soft boys mostly and their sermons inspired us to want to hug them more than fists. they grew long beards and wore white atheletic tube socks without shoes, little white beanies and white pajama like clothing that they had deemed acceptable to leave bedrooms. they gave their heavy metal albums away and gathered followers more serious than themselves. we couldn’t take them serious though with their semi-erect intellects and their hybrid pleasures. sometimes for fun we’d pull them aside and say he was just joking about the garden, but it never led to a joke as they stared back at us with their glass-eyed gazes. the crowds swelled and the women got pregnant and distant hills grew fire. dust left surfaces and flew out windows with widows, spiders, the strange sound of a ping pong ball bouncing to a stop. the new false prophets became as famous as church burning and after-lifes, radios that spit at us as we walked by. we saw them, always on friday, on the way back from lunch.

Monday, March 19, 2007

edwards drive-in

le pere jules, or papa jules, in l'atalante is now one of my favorite film characters. if you took gilbert gottfried and grew him about a foot and had him speak french, added a bunch of charm, you'd get this character. the movie itself is about a newly married couple who start their life together on a barge that the man is captain of. the couple doesn't get along well and problems ensue, but the plot almost doesn't matter. the movie seems alive at all times and you can feel that this movie was made by people who were around before sound came to the movies. there's also great sex scene that has no sex and the two characters are miles apart in different beds. and cats, did I mention the cats?

live action

she says hello as if the train were a fist
she homes studio, shared by one, two, and minion
recede like that,
an old brown trunk under the window
loose clothing
a partially obstructed view of the city
one , two, and the tissue that clings to your bones
it homes and hammers,
enacts again another bracing
immortal back alley dumpsters
a move through yourself,
not unlike the way he used to move through you
either way, hills
we built a modern city so we could disappear
we tasted morning coffee
dipped sculptor’s fingers
adopted lexicon
american in our spending
we were one, two, ten thousand
waiting on alteration
in groins
in the different colors that water takes on
the heat process in branding
reflections a continuous passage on those city trains
flimsy landscapes as bobbing heads
we tore ourselves up when there was nothing else left,
and still we looked just like us.
tunnels came, and against that outside blackness,
the interior lights,
readers in the curve of cash taking and hollow making
outwards, opportunistic entry and exit
echoes of one. two. and permeating permissible.

Monday, March 12, 2007

edwards drive-in

"tony takitani" is such an elegant little movie that moves all at once in narration, musical score, from scene to scene, actor to actor, like on long note, here and gone. it's based on a short story by haruki murakami and it has the same feel that his writing does. it's lyrical and light and then it sneaks up and carried more weight than it should. it's also visually beautiful. it's a meditation on loneliness and love and a lesson in subtlety. see it.

Thursday, March 08, 2007

steve rogers, born to irish american immigrant parents on july 4th, 1917, also known as captain america, dead at age 66 (in comic book years).

they killed captain america. which probably isn’t that big a deal to you, but for me it’s at least a year of my childhood going right out the window. I can’t remember which year, but there was one where my next door neighbor willie and my friend leo and I would play superheroes in my yard for hours and hours. I think it was somewhere between five and seven. superheroes was the only time that willie and I were friends. he was a year younger than me which means a lot more at that age and we just weren’t really alike or going to be friends, but we had both started reading comic books and we’d trade them sometimes. willie was always spiderman when we played because he could climb like a monkey. we had a huge tree in our front yard that was perfect for climbing and when it had been planted someone had stuck a metal pole in the ground to hold it up that the tree grown around. you could run at the tree and grab the pole and launch yourself up to the first couple branches and then decide which way to go.

for a little while I was green lantern, but eventually I settled on being captain america. this meant I had to have a shield and since my father was a painter we had paint in the garage. the first shield was a metal garbage can lid, but it didn’t work for a couple reasons. the handle was on the wrong side which made it hard to hold onto as you ran at the tree. this meant I spent way too much time running around the tree instead of being up in it. we had three other large trees at the other end of the front yard, but they weren’t good climbing trees so most of the action when we played superheroes happened at the one end of the yard. the driveway was at that end as well and it was handy for us to pretend it was molten lava that you couldn’t stand in or if someone was lame and wanted to be aquaman for a while we’d pretend it was the ocean. the last problem with the metal lid was that it was too heavy to throw. willie would be up in the tree and I’d throw it at him and it would never quite have the velocity I wanted. I hit him with it a couple times when we were on the ground, but I felt bad even though willie was the kind of kid you could hit with a lid and it was okay somehow. he might get mad or go into a crying rage, but eventually he seemed to pop up and be ready to go again. I can’t remember him ever quitting even though captain america basically dominated superheroes. every once in a while he’d even be captain america’s sidekick bucky if I bugged him enough or just threatened not to play.

the captain america shield 2.0 was a rubber lid from a trash can that had no handle. it looked good after it had been painted and I poked holes in it and tied in a piece of rope and knotted the rope and it was basically perfect. it flew like a frisbee and it didn’t maim willie when it hit him. I was never green lantern or daredevil or the flash after that even though I liked them all. leo settled on the flash and ran like crazy most of the time we played and I can’t really remember what the rules were or much else. I do remember that it was mostly willie and I really playing even though leo and I were better friends and would be friends for years. when we stopped playing I never really hung out or talked to willie much ever again and I also stopped reading comic books as well and moved on to sports books and baseball cards.

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

edwards drive-in

just watched 13 tzameti which reviewers compared to hostel, which I never saw and don't think I want to see. and I can't tell you anything about the movie except that's it's in black and white and very good. I guess I can say it's dark and a first film by gela bablauni who is georgian. his brother stars in it and it is in french, so subtitled and it seems a guys movie to me. it's suspenseful in the way a hitchcock movie is and kind of the way war movies or film noir is and then it's just a strange tale all its own. not for the faint of heart though.

one reviewer called it a cruel metaphor of the global economy and I think that's an interesting take as well because I never would have had that thought and yet now that I've read it I see the point. and I guess what happens in the film is happening right now, which makes it all the more strange.

Saturday, March 03, 2007

i-pod wars

Jesus Christ, that's a pretty face
The kind you'd find on someone that could save
If they don't put me away
Well, it'll be a miracle

Do you believe you're missing out
That everything good is happening somewhere else?
But with nobody in your bed
The night's hard to get through

And I will die all alone
And when I arrive I won't know anyone

Well, Jesus Christ, I'm alone again
So what did you do those three days you were dead?
Cause this problem's gonna last more than the weekend.

Well, Jesus Christ, I'm not scared to die,
I'm a little bit scared of what comes after
Do I get the gold chariot?
Do I float through the ceiling?

Do I divide and fall apart?
Cause my bright is too slight to hold back all my dark
And the ship went down in sight of land
And at the gates does Thomas ask to see my hands

I know you're coming in the night like a thief
But I've had some time, O Lord, to hone my lying technique
I know you think that I'm someone you can trust
But I'm scared I'll get scared and I swear I'll try to nail you back up

So do you think that we could work out a sign
So I'll know it's you and that it's over so I won't even try

I know you're coming for the people like me
But we all got wood and nails
And we turn out hate in factories
We all got wood and nails
And we turn out hate in factories
We all got wood and nails
And we sleep inside of this machine


"jesus christ" by brand new

Friday, March 02, 2007

gate the wilderness. stay on this side of cowlitz county. the river cuts a shear road on the opposite hillside. love comes to abernathy creek. comes tired. comes years later like a barge pushed slowly and grabbing the noon sky. bring a part of her into you like a long hanging wire with all that water underneath. a surface never blown. there are faces in the river. the faces have mouths. mouths that sing. prophecy. all this a rummage. all this runs like any one of us and comes still.