Prime Time

DEFUNCT

2009-04-06T16:08:00.000-07:00

erik does not blog here anymore.

watchmen

2009-03-09T17:22:00.000-07:00

You know that analogy "he just went video-game on them" that commentators use when the likes of Kobe, D. Wade or Bron Bron completely take over the game...

you can apply that to Zach Snyder's aesthetic aplomb. Especially in Watchmen, his latest smoldering gun of commercial cinema following Dawn of the Dead and 300. Zach goes video-game on em.

In Watchmen, he faithfully stays close not only to the source material, but to the essence of graphic novels and comics as a medium. The result is at the same time admirable and unprecedented and a failure on particular levels.

The comic, as an artistic medium, is fragmented and self-contained in boxes of pop art tableau. Furthermore, the comic itself is inherently a satirized and ironic rendering of reality. The perverse manipulation of reality is the comic's chief device to derive commentary and meaning. You put these two characteristics together and you have a film that can drag and easily detach its audience because it has no flow or any capacity for real emotional investment.

I remember after 300 was released many pundits called the movie homoerotic and essentially, a crap shoot of repressed homosexuality. Watchmen proves that Zach Snyder, if anything and regardless of gender or orientation, is simply an extreme voyeur of reality.

Two things I kept imagining when Dr. Manhattan was on Mars was A) What if Darren Aronofsky (who was briefly attached) co-directed with Snyder for Watchmen... and B) I am so using that monologue about "air turning into gold" that Dr. Manhattan uses on Silk Spectre II next time I'm at the club.

Although, I enjoyed the movie, especially how masterful Snyder controls his aesthetics, I am nervous mass cinema will continue down this direction of fragmented, rhythmless, aesthetic-driven movies that have no sense of narrative flow. Like Transformers. This is disturbing to me.

But what I really wanna know is where does Billy Crudup go after playing a symbolic narrativization of god, and conversely, where does Matthew Goode go after playing the devil?

nick and norah's infinite playlist

2009-01-21T12:50:00.000-08:00

Finally saw it. Oh boy.

Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist had been a project I'd been keeping notes on for awhile, mainly because I've been anticipating Peter Sollett's follow-up since Raising Victor Vargas. Even with an poorly-coordinated trailer and TV spot campaign, my fascination didn't waver in the movie's potential. Up to this point in cinema, it's been a rare occurrence for a legitimate auteur to take on a commercial teen movie. Ever?

And what we get is a contextual masterpiece. I say contextual because similar to Zach Helm's Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist isn't without an occasional kink or potential unrealized. But, this my friends, is a glimpse into Cinema du Adolescence, and broadly speaking, what the scope of cinema has the potential to become. This is what's it about, the new metapop - the subtle revolutions and reappropriations of mainstream culture.

Most importantly, Peter Sollett and the source material does well to embrace reality, embrace the realism of contemporary society. The confusing exploitation of force-feeding sex, aesthetics, consumption and hedonism to our youth and simultaneously admonishing them for taking interest in those same practices are deconstructed. This movie confronts this reality, in which yes, today's youth are at an accelerated level of perversion, but more profoundly, builds from this pragmatic miscalculation. Because we all simply yearn intimacy, connection, are never too far from an epiphany, from realizing that we are more and deserve more than the crude material that binds our flesh and distorts our soul space.

Two particular moments which stand out to me were the scene which involved Nick's ex-girlfriend flaunting herself music-video-girl-style in beam of the headlights while "I Believe in Miracles", one of the most commodified and degraded songs of history is being played. The other, which is truly indicative of the ideals of this generation, has Norah commenting on The Cure. She likes them, they're alright, but why the name "The Cure"? What are they curing? They should be called "The Cause". Self-loathing, hopelessness, and the nihilization of life is sooooooo pre 9-11. Meaning is the aesthetic.

bcs analysis

2009-01-03T23:58:00.001-08:00

In this bowl season, which has so far been one fused with no shortage of thrills, the Pac-10 swept the competition at 5-0. The non-BCS Mountain West had their solid conference run culminate in a Utah Utes drudging of supposed SEC steamroller 'Bama. And despite the WAC not having as strong a postseason as it has in recent landmark years, we all remember Boise State over Oklahoma.

Why then do the Pac-10 and their regional non-BCS counterparts never get their just props, especially comparatively to the major conferences residing in the South and the East of the country? Every year we see USC not only beat, but entirely smother a Big Ten pretender. We also have seen with increasing bravado a non-BCS team such as Boise State or Utah come into a bowl as a heavy underdog and wreak havoc on some big-time player from the Big 12, SEC and all the other major conferences that year in and year out simply get more respect than them.

It's not just some conference bias, but an outright coastal bias. And every year this perception costs west coast teams street cred and a fair shake at bigger bowls with larger amounts of confetti. It's a constant perpetuation that allows west coast teams little leeway during the season and causes them frequently to drop in and out of the Top 25 at the drop of a dime. It's the old hegemony sticking with outdated tradition disrupting the reality of college football today. And that reality is the west coast is simply cultivating better athletes and in larger and more diverse quantities.

But why? Experts that do agree with this assessment overlook the key components in this equation: the rapid ascent of Orange County and the migration of Pacific Islanders.

Orange County has quickly become in recent years ripe picking grounds for recruits, some of the top nationally. But more importantly, the many lightly-recruited, undersized "athletes" types that end up at Pac-10 and non-BCS west coast schools with little fanfare. Do a study and you'll see that the players taking up scholarships and roster spots in major college sports in major conferences these days from Orange County has risen exponentially with this generation. Heck, Tustin High School currently has the most active players in the NFL, more than Long Beach Poly, more than any school from Texas or Florida or anywhere in the dirty south.

Correlative, a steady portion of these players are of Pacific Islander descent, Polamalu, Moala, Ngata, Maleuaga, Moevao; These Samoan and Tongan families just now having their first generation of American-born children coming-of-age in America.

In unison, these two factors play a significant role in the strength of west coast prep sports (and perhaps why the perception of such suffers). Such an influx, despite maybe not nabbing those blue-chip recruits, gives these teams the luxury of having substantial depth on both sides of the ball; talent and athleticism filling holes and flying around the field at every position.

Wake up college football.

sir clint eastwood

2009-01-02T12:48:00.000-08:00

I'll be an honest son of a gun, I've always held a certain resentment for Clint Eastwood-directed movies (Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, Flag Of Our Fathers). I resented how much critical praise they garnered during awards season and how they overshadowed works which I considered entirely more deserving, but merely lacking "Eastwood" emblazoned in the credits. Make no mistake, Eastwood's direction is a thing of savvy, many times engrossing filmmaking, but by no stretch, revelatory. It's apparent Clint Eastwood had found degrees of truth and wisdom in his advanced years, he's a very smart man, and finding truth with age is something that shouldn't be discredited or unappreciated. But that in itself doesn't always translate into genius artistry.

Eastwood's latest, Gran Torino, again is assuredly not one of those works that will resonate for any kind of innovation, but man, does it resonate in the grandest way: simple genius. Eastwood, at his core, is a political artist. Not in the sense of governmental policies or war-time atrocities, but in his vision's straightforwardness and use of cultural-perceptional polarizations. Amidst all the extremism as device, Eastwood achieves an undeniable air of lightness in Gran Torino, and even a disarming sort of old-school whimsy.

What I found most beautiful is Eastwood's own artistic redemption at the end of the story, making amends for not only all the glorification of vigilante violence he portrayed early in his career, but also all the triumphalism that he perpetuated.

Eastwood's gonna undoubtedly make a few more films, but Gran Torino is a beautiful culmination to his legacy. And a revelation.

childcare

2008-12-27T14:33:00.000-08:00

I have never felt less creative than I do in this moment... which I'm only mentioning to qualify the below blog and whatever else follows it while I'm in the funk of an early lifetime.

Just read an article in the Orange County Register --yes, I'm back in The OC and I'm feeling as estranged from my innermost as ever-- in which Adam Shankman, the force behind such spurious studio farces as Bringing Down The House, The Pacifier, Cheaper by the Dozen 2 & Hairspray, is lamely politicking for his upcoming Sandler-starring Bedtime Stories over his weekend competitor the David Frankel directed (Devil Wears Prada) & Owen Wilson-Jennifer Aniston starring Marley & Me.

Like the altruist he is, Shankman deems Marley & Me unfit for family audiences, and his stale, extra-butter popcorn flick the proper choice for crowds seeking safe, wholesome, family fun. This irresponsibility, of course, is infuriating on so many levels, but truly saddening at the most basic level -- the one involving the education of our children, and how that reflects on us.

Shankman calls Bedtime Stories "totally traditionally Disney." That statement and its sentence construction itself speaks semantic volumes. But, more concisely, it mirrors what Disney (along with the majority of manipulative mass-appeal products aimed at our unassuming future) has turned into in these sterilizing days of hyper-capitalism. Fortunately, we have Harry Potter and Pixar, and Zach Helm.

What is this idea of "harmless"? Is it the exercises in sentimentality and farce that have given way to the expression "stupid-funny"? Is harmless not only glossing over sex, violence and death, but many times completely avoiding it? Or worse, constructing a false reality that has its inhabitants devoid of any reason whatsoever?

Entertainment is a tool of education and should be handled with care and responsibility.

trailer wrinkle

2008-12-22T21:09:00.000-08:00

Something I noticed while watching the tube.

The trailer for the new Underworld flick, Rise of the Lycans, aired today and it attempted something rather novel in terms of TV spots. By the way, viewers caution, this new sequel's not directed by Len Wiseman.

What the trailer did was headlined the movie title and its release date at the top of the screen throughout its entire presentation. This did somewhat disrupt the aesthetic appeal of the trailer itself, kinda like a fly buzzing around eye level, but I suppose it did fulfill its overall intention -- we'll see in a couple days whether the release date survives in my living memory. But more imperatively, if it does, whether I give a hootenanny. Because a marketing strategy can brand and implant all it wants, but if the quality of the product and the quality of the product's persuasion is lacking, well, it's irrelevant.

I also noticed a marketing trend which is gathering steam for movies banking on their top-billing movie stars to draw in their audiences: the (playfully solemn) singular close-up, i.e Will Smith in Seven Pounds & Brad Pitt in Benjamin Button. In my opinion, the megawatt movie star is a near-transition away from becoming wholly passe, but this directness in marketing scheme is something that bodes well for aforementioned transition and indicative of it taking course. Basically, the pussyfooting is cutout. But, it's also very fascinating to gauge the expanse of this strategy seeing as the above-stated exemplars both feature these international movie stars in feathery exercises in commercial sentimentality (though probably still solidly entertainment).

kanyeezy

2008-12-09T00:16:00.000-08:00

I needed this.

Headphones on listening to Kanyeezy's "Coldest Winter" on repeat.

Graduation was a masterpiece of Hip Hop Pop. This is a masterpiece of transcendent metapop caliber. This album is not Michael Jackson phenomenal. This IS Kanye West.

This is the new. This is Eno Hip Hop. This is Prog Hip Hop. This is headphone revelation. And it's not because of Kanye's vocal range. But it is, in the real sense. You can call it the Pink Floyding of the human aspect. The voice, what is it? Is it Michael Jackson and soaring pipes? Is it American Idol finalists? Or is it one's true voice calling out?

This is cyborg. This is the eternal bind and the inevitable fusion to technology. Technology is the enabler, but we have the great vision. We're both the end and mean, tech only a consummated mean at best.

This is music. It's not a birdlike voice. It's the vision entire of the mind behind its conception. This is Kanye's vision. It's not a beat delivered, song lyrics scribbled and passed on, it's you, your voice, and all the shortcomings that come with you, vocally or otherwise. And obviously, there's still plenty of coming-of-ages to be had.

"Welcome To Heartbreak" and "Coldest Winter" are the gems. Like silk. "Say You Will" is solid, but overextended. "Paranoid" can funk. "RoboCop" is playin. "Street Lights" is a finely anthemic. "See You in my Knightmares" is Kanyeezy and Weezy, two of the brightest.

I'm using "Coldest Winter" as a trailer version for Photosynthesis.

My new remix: finding ambidextrous vision.

charlie kaufman

2008-12-05T14:03:00.000-08:00

Last weekend, on the first annual "Saturday Morning at the Cinema" we saw Woody's Vicky Cristina Barcelona & Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York. One was full of a playful skeptic's jostling and quips about art and the condition. The other was the sound of the heart breaking.

Charlie Kaufman's an interesting blend. His screenplays (Being John Malkovich, Human Nature, Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine) adapted by Spike & Michel were all instrumental in helping to unearth that compromise of Pop, aesthetics and sincerity. He helped bring about metapop, and is obviously one of the most important minds in cinematic history. But, I say he's an interesting blend because with Synecdoche, New York we see the real Charlie Kaufman. And he's a hopeless romantic, quite metaphysically.

Even though, he's pioneered self-authorship in contemporary art, perhaps the most noticeable difference when taken out of the eyes and hands of whimsical boy auteurs like Spike & Michel is that the cynicism bleeds through when all the cheekiness canvassing it is removed. He sees self-authorship as a timeless trap, not as the ultimate liberation.

When we let our characters die, we live.

boycott 2012

2008-11-20T16:32:00.000-08:00

I'll sacrifice my blogs aesthetic. He doesn't deserve a photo upload.

From Roland Emmerich, the silly-puddy brain that brought you blockbuster farces like Godzilla, The Day After Tomorrow & 10,000 BC, comes 2012. Just watched the new trailer and... Alright, I'm a resolute believer in the necessity of everything in the grand transition toward infinity, but a part of me savors the idea of this fellow ceasing to exist.

His movies are so pomo they give my soulpower hairline fractures. Dear Roland Emmerich, have you no sense of responsibility or integrity? How can you so shamelessly polarize such exigent issues, in popcorn flicks intended for the mass no less. Is your mind heartless?

The postmodern retrograde irony is on his Wiki bio under "advocacy" he's worked to raise awareness on Climate Change. Maybe it's some sort of strange, counter-intuitive manifestation of being gay and raised in Germany that cultivated the vain, ended machismo in Emmerich's films. Not sure, never been to Germany. Wiki informs us that he goes through four cig packs a day, let's hope that inhalation takes its toll soon... No no, c'mon that's messed up. Let's hope he retires from the craft, or learns a thing or two about life. Preferably the latter.

In summation, listen here, 2012 is real in its vital symbolism, but the end of the world's not anytime soon. 2012 is whether we consummate this great work or not, whether we embody humanity. And if we don't succeed in this mission, well lads, that's far worse than being extinct.

I suggest we BOYCOTT the 2012 movie when it drops in theaters, NOT rent it on DVD and definitely NOT at your local Blockbuster, and only watch it FREE streaming online, if only out of sheer curiosity and disdain.

...this was by far the most spiteful blog I've ever written, so I apologize to Roland Emmerich. Albeit unsympathetically. Must be reading too much Vice mag lately... Oh yeah, PS:

Dear Vice Magazine, MAN UP.

poster stroodles

2008-11-18T17:35:00.001-08:00

the new showtime

2008-11-12T19:19:00.000-08:00

The Lakers are the last remaining undefeated (the Celts just knocked off the Hawks via Paul Pierce jumper), sitting steady at 7 up, zero down. In this still-infant season all signs, immediate and cosmic, point toward redemption, a destined rematch with those same Boston Celtics in the Finals. Though, last season's mental and physical Finals drudging at the hands of those green-eyes won't likely happen again. History repeats itself, and nothing is more historic than redemption. It's about Time, and it doesn't include unsustainable roster quick-fixes, green, luck or leprechauns.

During last year's playoffs I blogged about the link between postmodernity and new sincerity, between the Celtics and the Lakers, the struggle of the new in overcoming and transitioning past the incumbent hegemony. In quick summation, I mentioned a few things. Last year we weren't yet ready, it wasn't yet meant to be. The Lakers, as sports patterns are early outgrowths of cultural yearnings, are a source of present symbolism and a telling signification of the Great Work. Our maturing offensive flow was disrupted by the fracturing, unforgiving defense of the Celtics (and all their hyper-machismo, pseudo-masculine fits of barking and howling and chest-throttling). Our shortcomings were exposed and mercilessly exploited in all its fragile, inexperienced development. It came down to us lacking that sheer determination, that unwavering focus to triumph. We didn't yet have that hunger to complement our drive, that toughness to complement our offensive and athletic prowess. After all, new sincerity's about striking and consummating that great inner balance, that true dynamic, and a limiting singular excellence.

If you were an avid Laker follower last season, you knew that while every media hound dog and outsider was caught up on the absence of Bynum, there was another youngblood just as revelatory to the Lakeshow's present and future-sustaining success, Trevor. In those 30-odd games he played early in the year last season, he was a defensive ninja and a fast break's dream, and with a newly-polished outside stroke this season, watch yo socks. He's dropping 10, 5 boards and 2 steals in 22 minutes so far in this young season. Sixth Man of the Year?

I realize and you should too, that it's still November. But with faith, just like the simple genius of great universal narrative, we all understand and feel in the eternal waves the beatific outcome. Last season's dismantling in the Finals was more than just a matter of missing personnel, missing Bynum and Ariza. From a numerological holism, 200(8) is when change, in all its torrential growing pains, takes root. 200(9) is when that transition's consummated.

And the numbers are evident, they're locking down their opponents to 86.7 points while averaging 104.7, still have yet to allow a team to break the century mark, 8 players are averaging 20-plus minutes (keep your esteem up Machine and Luke, we'll need you). But most impressively, at 35 minutes a game, Dobermamba's playing nearly 4 minutes less per outing than last season.

This new incarnation of the glitzy 80s Showtime are the Real Showtime, a consummating perfection of their harbinger. They're a deep, cohesive group who can score lights out, can run, spread the floor, execute half-court, and most importantly and tellingly, have realized that brazen focus. They're an ensemble cast of role players, including Mamba himself. Lights, camera, live action.

remakes are for do-overs

2008-11-12T15:35:00.000-08:00

Let The Right One In, the Swedish romantic horror directed by Tomas Alfredson and written by John Ajvide Lindqvist (based on his novel) is in talks to be remade by Matt Reeves (Cloverfield). I'm with Alfredson on the economy of remakes, "Remakes should be made of movies that aren’t very good, that gives you the chance to fix whatever has gone wrong." One day I'm gonna remake Neverending Story... then wed the beauty I cast as Childlike Empress.

2008-11-11T14:09:00.000-08:00

Throwing up the inverted peace sign. It bothers me. So does nihilism.

So here's another remix on the freewill of destiny: ordained solipsism.

Posit it.

poster stroodles: horror

2008-11-07T12:19:00.000-08:00

Finishing my "domestic possession" horror; Here are a handful of superb poster arts of the genre.

scaling kilimanjaro

2008-11-06T11:31:00.000-08:00

The world's in breathless, united apparition. So many are once again, many for the first time, proud to be an American. Ghettos and cul-de-sacs and streets are canvassed in exhilarated celebration. Faith, that eternally puissant soul power, has been rousingly and poetically restored, reclaiming its rightful place alongside the Will of Man. For most of us, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, Gen-X, Gen-Y, azure, iridescent, as Andy put it, the 2008 presidential election is the most influential thing we've done so far in our lifetime outside of buying and consuming. For me, it was more a sense of suspended, cathartic relief, soon replaced by an endowing determination for tomorrow's horizon. The celebration ended as soon as Barack stepped resolutely to the podium for our victory speech. We're living history, now it's about Time we make it. This mission which lies ahead, this consummation, will be the most trying struggle of all.

I'm keeping this blog short. We have poured the wine, now let us take a moment to celebrate. But, let us not get wine-flushed and forget in our basking that this is merely the first step of this emancipating journey. Secondly, don't disillusion the significance of this moment by investing your entire, unquestioned faith into Barack. By doing this, you're robbing, degrading and rendering illegitimate this beautiful moment, the man himself, and what we have all yearned and worked for. Don't lose the strength of your own resolve in the lingering romanticism of Barack. More than anything, Barack is the symbol, the enabler we needed to press ahead in this journey. But, moving forward he will need our enduring resolve as much as we'll need his. We finally received the opportunity for a true democracy, one that is a dynamic, not a dictatorship. Now it's our responsibility to uphold our end of the birdsong.

2008-11-05T19:57:00.000-08:00

"Our stories are singular but our destiny is shared." -Barack

raves reviews revelations

2008-11-05T08:59:00.001-08:00

STEP BROTHERS

After back-to-back missteps of vacuity, i.e Blades of Glory, Semi-Pro, Will Ferrell gets it on like he should with Adam McKay, their 3rd whimsically vulgar collaboration following Anchorman and Talladega Nights, drag-assing the indomitably ethereal John C. Reilly along for some ebullient, wide-eyed and high-hearted bumpus time. With Step Brothers, McKay and Ferrell again use the built-in genre excesses of frat-row comedy to deftly probe what's steadily becoming their intaglio MO: monochromatic social congeniality and formality as cultivated and disillusioned by cultural susceptibilities to submit to the stagnancy of comfort and convenience as manifested from economic and consumptive disenfranchisement and fear of change, as well as the bungling and sophomoric American expression of male bond and sexuality. Mouthful.

Step Brothers was one of the most solid and entertaining comedic chestnuts of the last couple years and a tender keeper. But, as much as I regret to say this to a fellow alum, Will Ferrell's brand of wide-eyed, trusting, irreverently spirited comedic sentiment is nearing its course's end. Maybe within the next half-decade there'll be a tangible transition toward a sense of comedy elaborating on Ferrell's ironic search for sincerity, something that strokes with more focused self-awareness and resolve while sustaining that cherub wonderment. Step Brothers, the title suggests a yearn beyond cynical irony, a near-genuine yearning for brotherly unanimity.

Will Ferrell is the most important comedian of the 21st century, at least. Steve Carrell gets honorable mention.

WALL-E

Pixar delivers another gem, possibly the studio's masterpiece so far. Apart from Cars, Pixar Animation hasn't miscued. What makes Wall-E particularly brilliant and revelatory is its ability to communicate with enduring simplicity its universals of Love, Purpose and Responsibility, all basically without the crutch of talk and rhetoric. This is what children's high-fantasy and Horror as polarized genres can achieve, the purity and universality of the eternal laws governing us, of the potentials we have to ascend and of the temptations which cause us to fall.

I'm searching for my Eva...

MIRRORS

Splat Pack members Alexandre Aja and Gregory Levasseur return with their 3rd gore galore (High Tension, Hills Have Eyes), and it's a studiously adept if underwhelming massacre. I applaud them, at the very least, for attempting to construct and examine the social and perceptional ramifications of mirrors as literal and symbolic artifact for vanity, consumer culture and existential distortion. But generally, the French haven't got the eyes for real, raw horror. Their experienced, fluid narrative romanticism works against them in this genre, aesthetically and sentimentally. Some of these directors included loosely in the Splat Pack don't make the grade; of the ones listed on Wiki (Aja, Darren Lynn Bousman, Neil Marshall, Greg McLean, Eli Roth, James Wan & Leigh Whannell and Rob Zombie) I would in all generosity drop Bousman, Wan & Whannell. The Saw series is like all the insulting sequels to Friday the 13th and Halloween packaged into something slightly and modernly less inane. Wolf Creek by McLean was frenetic and a skilled orchestration, but all aesthetic. Neil Marshall's a solid commercial director and The Descent was one of the best Horror films of the past few years, but Doomsday was a huge letdown. I liked Zombie's Devil's Rejects, but he's obviously limited. Of this list, Eli Roth is the only true auteur. He could potentially be one of the finest auteurs in cinema's future, if he doesn't let the celebrity get to his creative virility, which is very viable risk with Eli.

Speaking of the Horror genre, look out for the writer/director of Transmission 1 from The Signal.

HANCOCK

I felt cheated. Rather, my feelings were voided. So po-mo. Similar to Iron Man, Hancock was just a fragmented, postmodern collage of scenes brusquely and clumsily strung together to construct some undercooked narrative of coolness. In another potential-unrealized flop by Will Smith (the other being I Am Legend), Hancock was particularly a frustrating disappointment because there were many flowers which under the brass knuckle direction of Peter Berg weren't able to blossom. Hancock was the epitome of manufactured sincerity and the aesthetic cover-up of a film under-conceived. This hearkens back to the Iron Man comparison because Berg and Favreau are both comedic actors-turned empty flash directors and were co-stars in Very Bad Things. Now, as directors they suffer from the same postmodern symptom, overstatement and lack of fluidity. There's more to say, especially about the amateurish subterranean commentary on true masculinity, but I'm over this blog. I will give props Jason Bateman, as well as Vincent Ngo, my fellow Vietnamer, for writing the script 12 years ago.

mumblecore, or

2008-11-01T16:55:00.000-07:00

Just finished watching Quiet City, a trailer I spotlighted awhile ago, and was softly charmed by its nascent looseness and its oft-inverting depiction of a modern romance.
The mumblecore movement, or alternatively, the Slackavetes, emerged correspondingly in the early-2000s embracing & realizing a consortium of tenets which New Sincerity strives for: D.I.Y., collaboration, economic frugality, and an exacting of self-authorship. Aesthetically and economically, mumblecore recalls the focused improvisation of French New Wave & Cassavetes, and dawdles in the scenes and compulsions of sparkless twenty-somethings.
I blogged about Hannah Takes The Stairs, another mumblecore effort, when it came out on DVD, using it as a platform conceptually for meaning becoming the aesthetic. However, my perspective on such compromise has taken broader perspective since reading Saramago and watching Blindness onscreen, along with of course the passing of Time.
For the many reasons mumblecore is contextually innovative and necessary, these same qualities are also its weaknesses moving forward, ultimately speaking. These flicks are being done by artists generationally at the Gen X-Gen Y intermingling. This is to say that in these works there are the spirited manifestations of New Sincerity as well as the perspective and symptomatic reflections of Gen-X postmodernity. The movement of mumblecore into the next realm revolves around the consummation of these latter tendencies.
In its focus on interpersonal relationships, mumblecore cinema subversively comments on our subsisting cultural contrivances, primarily communication and sexuality. This is usually done by inversion - in Quiet City, moments usually resulting into kisses don't - and by scenes capturing a moment of vulnerable musing away from the hustle. These subversive hints are in a way passive-aggressive. Hints, without the risk of accountability or more semantically, responsibility. Slackavetes.
So this conflict I'm having with mumblecore doesn't remain in the cinema itself, but in its inherent reflection of our potential unfulfilled. Can we find compromise to passive-aggressiveness and find a potent, gentle force? French New Wave captured these same relational dynamics, but more significantly, used cinema as a platform and breeding ground to not just capture these relationships but to doctorally observe them. (Furthermore, French New Wave was a battle for liberation of aesthetics). Mumblecore, however, projects inherently a certain postmodern nihilism in its immediacy, or rather its immediacy without arching tenet of greater purpose blanketing its narrative. In this sense, all this capturing is merely a shapeless cataloging - to be incisive, a postmodern form of vanity and hedonism.
In Quiet City, sure it celebrates the elementary beauties of collaboration and teamwork (making music on the keyboard together, getting help over the wall), but in what seems to be the overriding trait of mumblecore and late Gen-X cultivation, the twenty-somethings are unambitious, immature and utterly irresolute. They do cute, random things for attention, they own and collect cute, random, usually nostalgic blasts from the pasts. But they're not immature because they can be a degree of blithe in moments, it's because their co-dependency, their unsureness and inability to show resolve and composure becomes kiddish, in the most detrimental way. All this vagrant cuteness reverts back to an ironic kitsch. And that's exactly it, it's lacking in that last consummation of sincerity, to no fault of its own.
So, the consummation that follows mumblecore is enabling and sustaining such hypercapitalism killers as self-authorship, D.I.Y. and frugal economy and channeling them into works that focus and weave together all that yearning and enervating spontaneity into something purposefully interconnected and holistic.

PS I fell for Erin Fisher.

on the road with beatification

2008-10-19T11:39:00.000-07:00

I think of Dean Moriarty...
I've finally read those final touching words from Kerouac's contextual masterpiece On The Road. Holy molasses, was it a long, persevering endurance test to get there. From when I first cracked the book to when I finished, I read two Saramagos (Seeing, Gospel According to Jesus Christ) & went a couple chapters deep into Last Unicorn & a Ho Chi Minh biography. Capote called On The Road typing. Not necessarily a harsh reduction, but an creative innovation missed & misunderstood on Capote's part.
On The Road & The Beats revolutionized, or rather socialized, the expressive form of writing, helping to channel the Self, loosening it from the grips of privileged, hierarchical modes & systems.
It was visceral, immediate, unabashedly autobiographical. It was wide-eyed, sloppy, fervent, had a devouring curiosity & tragedy, it saw us as eternal brothers, had the search of empathy at its core. It was also a precursor & the opening in which postmodern semantic deconstruction of rhetoric and semiotics slithered through to find us at superfluous dribbles & purposelessly excessive word counts; It was fast, loose & instant. It trampled concisely meditated prose, but was necessary to the movement. This is also to say, I will probably never read another Kerouac novel again, but that doesn't mean his contribution was any less admirable.
The thing is, like a hyper-explosion, The Beats in literature blew communication into smithereens, and we've only gotten faster, more brusquely so, since. But it's about moderation, compromise. In this case, slow down but sustain those big-wondering eyes, be cool but be intimate & engaged, loosen up form but don't lose form, be autobiographical but deliberate it a bit. The Beats were one of our prophets, one of our direct mystic providers, they asked us, their future nephews to find equanimity, to fill that emptiness that ached them & embody sincerity, to become, to arrive. And like the eternal Law of the Universe, they delivered us the tools to blunt something they themself helped create & diminish all at the same Time.

marvel universe

2008-10-18T19:48:00.000-07:00

Just finished watching Incredible Hulk, or rather Beauty & the Beast...wait...King Kong...wait...the eternal battle between the physical & harnessing one's innermost, taming the beast within. So unpredictable & unoriginal, not complex at all -

No, you academic, you big thinker, it's not complex. It's a universal narrative. As a culture, this is something we need to get through our thick, instant-coffee meta barrier - that originality's an illusion, works-in-progress are never failures & innovations are linked to the infinite predecessor. So, if you didn't like Children of Men because it was predictable, good man, you missed its benefit & you need to broaden your holism. I got sidetracked...this blog is supposed to be about Marvel Studios.

Ahem, Marvel Studios, as you know have become its own independent studio & has already made under its banner two blockbuster superhero flicks, Iron Man & Incredible Hulk. Despite the critical & overwhelming commercial success of Iron Man, I preferred Incredible Hulk; Leterrier despite his hyper-machismo still pulled off that particular French flow, which is to say, the French have a certain narrative seamlessness, a gift for that grand, romantic storytelling. Iron Man, on the other hand, was the epitome of an American symptom infecting the world, empty flash, rock star mentality. Listen, Downey Jr. was spot-on wit & Paltrow was smokin', but that's all it was - it was choppy, it was aesthetic-driven, it was an array of setup scenes only there to cap off with a catchy punch-line or something instantly cool, it was hyper-postmodern.

But for Favreau, as a director, that's his weakness, fluidity. For all the solid comedy skits strung together & a decent aesthetic eye, Iron Man, Zathura, Elf & Made all lack that essential distinction between artist & technician: heart, soul. But, again, this blog is not a roast of Favreau because in this case it's not just Favreau, it's symbolic. We need to semantically take back Art, the word, give it meaning again. That's all on that, I'll move on. Marvel Studios, whom in the past licensed off their characters & plots only to sadly see horrible cinematic adaptations, many b-movie level, movies made as stand-alone productions, for reasons of financial safe-guarding & also due to contextual cultural perspective. Moving on to today, we're yearning for that sense of cohesiveness, for that unanimity, for that Great Work, for universality. What's simply brilliant, financially & metaphysically, about Marvel is that they're consciously building a community, a universe, intertwining their blockbusters the same way they did comic books, characters revolving & appearing in one another's stories, the ever-expansive web of life being reflected in commercial cinema the same way great authors like Salinger or auteurs like Almodovar have glimpsed at. I for one, will always have these degrees of transconnection in my works - it's reality.

purposed irony is our way to sincerity

2008-10-12T09:53:00.001-07:00

When New Sincerity emerged in the early scatters of the millennium, as has been well-espoused in this blog, the pundits all unverifiably claimed irony itself finito. dunndada. see ya later innovator. We, the culture of our collective esteem, were on an exacting track toward a struggle of extremes - a struggle we're still in the midst of & trying to find compromise & consummation in.

Did you catch my rhetorical wink-nod using unverifiably? wah wah wah.

Thing is, Life, our very root existence itself as gamed by Godhead, is an inherent contradiction. We are of the most dynamic romantic dramedy. But, you know what God wants of Us... extraordinary me and you, to finally become God. The elder statesman, the mama-papa bear's getting old (somewhere in Time), and the Will's been signed. But before we can inherit the diaspora of splendor, cool things of great worth & superfly magic vision, as only a well-meaning, somewhat masochistic parent would, God has given his children a series of obstacles, or rather holistically speaking, one very labyrinthine obstacle. A divinely assembled coalescing of temptations, vanities & intellectual smut to test our emotional reasoning, also known as our soul power. Judgment Day, or those last filial nudges a parent gives to their son or daughter whom is transitioning from the immaturity & apathy of adolescence to the actionable, focused resolve of young adulthood.

...From young adulthood, it'll be up to us to become sage, but first thing's first, let's work on presence and now.

In this struggle, irony has become a surgeon's knife, albeit sometimes blunted & not always disinfected. First out of a young generation seeped in sarcasm's yearning for something real, or more real, instead of the contrived hypercapitalist gloss they were born & cultivated in. Not to say, we're not contrived & mirror-adoring, we are, but we understand it, we self-mock it. Therein lies the intervention of our self-involvement, our supreme sense of self-authorship.

Rather than the closeted, nose-thumbing & wrap-around perverse exploitation of it, the impossible blockbuster action movie with meta-erectile dysfunction or the male hegemonic packaged rom-coms with meta-silicone sandbags pawning themselves off as this is how it should be. We embrace it. We were raised, innocents, in the pinnacle of postmodernity's takeover & took with us the sardonic sword & have learned the fullest grasp of aesthetic. We have all the tools of the hegemony to use against it. And we're more skilled & less self-deceiving about it. We've used self-effacing kitsch & irony to deconstruct every gloss-lipstick of former cultures, pop & otherwise, integrating them tongue-in-cheek into our hyper-mash-up style. Now the final piece of the puzzle, the consummation: Can we find focus of our potential? Because irony without purpose is a dead end. Rather, irony, ultimately speaking, that deconstructs without the intention of reconstructing is ironic, tragically so. So, can we get our tongues off outta our cheeks & smile sincere?

The above trailer, Van Damme's newest, is an exemplar of this deconstruction, this perceptive & economical shift that promises one step closer to sincerity, or as I like to see it, our kingdom of heaven.

shymalan's the happening

2008-09-29T13:21:00.000-07:00

Gee whiz, M. Night Shymalan, what a fall from grace you've had. Not only commercially, but cinematically, the once-heralded Spielberg-Hitchcock popcorn successor, has plunged into the darkest of artistic recessions, that quite frankly, sees almost insurmountable odds of reprisal. I've never been a bandwagoner (jumping on or off it) of Shymalan, though I've always respected his commercially-adroit & manufactured craftsmanship. With The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable & Signs (his masterpiece), he established himself as a solid, even premier, commercial genre auteur, one adeptly attuned to genre conventions & appeals. He's a prime exemplar of critic fickleness, they took him in & praised him & just as swiftly pounced on him like hyenas. The pouncing began with his 4th feature, The Village, which despite the overwhelmingly negative reaction still generated $100m-plus box office, & I must say up until his patented-twist ending turned on him, was a solid, if not impressive, outing. Then, Disney lost faith in him, jumped the boat, & he went from prize-winning horse to a limping, woebegone gamble.

In 2006, with much anticipation of a bounce back from the disappointment of The Village (or for industry insiders, the affirming failure) came Lady in the Water, again starring a fantastic ensemble cast headlined by Giamatti & Bryce Dallas Howard. No critical punches were pulled for this one, it was almost in snickering glee nationally panned & generated only a notch above $40m domestic. Again, I disagree with the reception, which seems to me blatantly fueled not by critical objectiveness but by prebiased emotion. I found Lady in the Water to be a well-directed, well-intentioned children's high-fantasy in which Shymalan matured as an artist in his dwellings on the inner workings of "fate" & "destiny". He found a dab of sincerity in Lady in the Water, which can easily be said Shymalan lacks in his generally contrived & conventional directorial manner. This was all lost in the shuffle, & the critics focused on Shymalan's role in his own film as a struggling artist who becomes a future prophet. It was egotistical, megalomaniacal, they said. In a sense, yes, they were right, & considering Shymalan's artistic vision, he's somewhat disillusioned of his own ability, but it was also audacious & if not that, honest. Because in all truthfulness, he simply embodied what all artists, great or think such, see themselves as: prophets.

Okay, The Happening. This, is perhaps, the case of an auteur who's lost almost entirely, the belief in himself & his personal vision. An artist who tried to please everybody, work outside of his own capability & in the end, made thus far, his very worst film. To see such a solid director fall & dissipate so tremendously, even from one film to the next, is remarkable & horrific. Everything was off in The Happening. The casting, which Mark Wahlberg & Zooey Deschanel, two very specific role actors, completely stunk up the joint. The usually taut, sure-handed tension, which was replaced by merely the absurdly grotesque. & the humor & satire which was without balance & came in excessive amounts & at moments completely out of wack with the flow of the film. In his past efforts, Shymalan's manufactured sincerity was well-enough glossed over by the entertainment of its package, but with The Happening everything has completely unraveled, making one of the most wooden, contrived films probably in cinematic history. Shymalan, was perhaps, just that last postmodern blockbuster director that came in the flicker of the right pre-millenium dawn & now in our cultural yearn for sincerity, has faded just as fast.

speed racer

2008-09-17T14:51:00.000-07:00

I rented & watched it yesterday. I enjoyed it, but I understand why the critical forum gave it a lukewarm reception. There's an expectation coming into a Wachowski flick, audiences want raw, subversive & for all intensive purposes "adult". The sibling auteurs this time around chose to honor the source-material & tame their trademark subterranean political commentary. In time, this integration & compromise the Wachowskis made in the stylization of Speed Racer will be imitated & improved on the same way The Matrix Trilogy trickled into popular cinema stylings. But, again, this brings to light the selfish double-standard that the critical circle suffers from. They've lost the ability to empathize with cinema made for a youth's eye's perspective.

midnight meat train

2008-08-13T16:41:00.000-07:00

Saw this contemporary horror classic a few weeks ago at the Fantasia Fest in MTL. The word on the street's that due to some internal studio politics the movie got only a very limited release, a fuck-all shame in my opinion. This one garnered much buzz being a Clive Barker bullet, and with sure-handed direction from Asian import Ryuhei Kitamura it didn't disappoint - and actually surpassed my expectations. Kitamura's one of the rare Asian horror imports that didn't implode under the anxiety of cultural turn-over. Though, he did have some issues with capture and pace with the few domestic-related scenes, but gets a mulligan. Midnight Meat Train was a kitsch, moody, gory, technically-adept crowd-pleaser, all the components of a solid post-millennium horror flick. The separation from its inept, manufactured contemporaries lies in its meta.

Firstly, the fact alone that it had exegesis should be applauded in a film. You could say MMT was a riff on Blow-Up, but cultivated from one of the premier exemplars of postmodern manifest, Clive Barker. He asks us: Who is the killer, the actionable party or the voyeur capturing the action? Who is the grander perpetuator, the media who feeds us or us who feed the culture of the media? Who's more perverse, who's the pervert, the criminal? The line's atom-thin between perpetrator and perpetuator. The voyeur becomes what he shoots. His perception of reality suffers and turns into depraved disillusionment.

Though, my only dissatisfaction of MMT was the concluding anti-hero nihilism: that you, in fact, become in the flesh what you shoot, embody it and redemption turns a way of succumbing. I mention "anti-hero" because in a grander postmodern sentiment, Bradley Cooper's character's a guardian of sorts, maintaining the equilibrium of two disjunctive realities from colliding. This, though quintessential artifact of the last whimpers of postmodernity, works as a sterling reminder to our moment that cuts the glossy crust away from manufactured sincerity and aesthetic dismemberment that still pervades.

artist log: zach helm

2008-07-26T15:22:00.001-07:00

Stranger Than Fiction (writer)
Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium (auteur)

Zach Helm is real. With his latest, Wonder Emporium, he's shown us something we maybe lost, a move away from the productized, insincerely sentimentalized gloss of the contemporary children movie -- each contrived moment merely building up to the next shamelessly saccharine scene. Helm has concocted a glimpse into what "cinema childhood" can be -- something greater, something that relates the universe to us, no matter age. Refreshingly classic like children's literature of the past, before commerce got its imposing paws on it, before this hyper-capitalistic beast spotted and removed that last remnant of sincerity - The moral journey being too controversial for blockbusters and mass appeal. Like horror, children fare has the ability to project our carnalities, to polarize us. In horror, we see our true fragility, that paper-thin line separating us from barbarianism and absolute perversion. In children fare, beauty, innocence, fulfillment. Capitalism knows this, reducing both to inanimateness, degrading them to genres of guilty pleasure. Both avenues made into pornos. Respect to Eli Roth and Harry Potter 3, 4 and 5 -- Cuaron, Newell, and Yates.

Wonder Emporium is a rough draft, still raw. From the tone, to the composition, to the acting, cinematic flaws abound. The film is many times dull, the whimsy underrealized. Helm, though, has a depth of storytelling and wordplay more refined than his counterpart auteurs. He is first a marvelous rhetorical mind, and second a visualist. The latter still needing polishing. He's a pop Ashby, except flipped -- Ashby foremost an instinctive visualizer, a channeler. But let's not confuse space and time, Wonder Emporium is Helm's directorial debut. He's a first-round draft pick from paper-whiz university, give him some more p.t. and he'll be a complete dream-teamer. At 32, Helm's just barely getting his wiggle room professionally, but down to his knack for costume/production design coloration, the potential is apparent. He may be one of the most encouraging signs to come -

The man has cross-over appeal. His pieces so far, Stranger Than Fiction & Wonder Emporium, have been peeks into the next evolution of pop: existential, profoundly simple, and most importantly, entertaining. Look at this prototypically, not as a faulty singular work by an individual. Zach Helm is real. He's a romantist. He's Pop New Wave. He's magic. Chauncey Gardener tips his hat.

i am legend

2008-07-26T15:13:00.000-07:00

This is a blog from December when I Am Legend released, and a comment posted on it.

I Am Legend
Starring Will Smith
Directed by Francis Lawrence

We live in a detached hyper-reality. The blockbuster reaffirms this detachment, this problematic disconnect from cinema, the primary constructor of aforementioned hyper-reality. We look for titillation, cheap thrills, and commerce acting as it only knows how, treats us to such. The blockbuster, especially I Am Legend with its post-apocalyptic topicality, can be so much more. It can be real. It can be inspiring. It can be a MANIFESTO.

It doesn't have to cheat essence to be entertaining. But we let it do so, and thus it stays on the surface, never exploring what we truly need it to. In these fragile moments, I Am Legend could've shown us, taught us, inspired us, had meaning. Blockbusters like I Am Legend can be more, they can be projects for humanity. Cinema of this magnitude has the potential to enable the most visceral message. It gives us the opportunity to embody, to empathize with the context, the situation, our mistakes. Imagine the beauty of a visual manifesto. Entertaining, but uncompromising to its sincerity.

Socialized cinema in America would be a beautiful revelation. I kept thinking what if Malick did this or Aronofsky. What if we funded films like this for the best American auteurs to create together? Collaborations of the most profound, of the most timely, of the greatest purpose. Perhaps, better in theory, than practice.

Yet, we can embody this hyper-reality we have constructed. Art imitating Life. Life imitating Art. Life becoming Art. Such is the cycle. Such is the most universal, revelatory human narrative: Redemption.

Comment by Syd:

Since the end of tribalism, cannibalism and the formation of civilization, evolution seems to manifest culturally before physically. And since civilization, or at least Herodotus’ time, the world has been divided into EAST and WEST. And since the edification of civilization and thus, society as an evolutionary petri dish, the greatest strides in human evolution seem to come as a result of interactions between east and west... (for example, the Renaissance and Mercantilism in Venice, then Impressionism later, up until the turn of the 20th Century where two World Wars brought people from all walks of life into the Pacific theater, the beginning of socialized globalization rather than colonialism.) The science fiction writers of the 1960s and 1970s were continuing this story of humanity, east and west. Coming off of the trend of earlier 20th Century Western philosophers writing in the 1880's to 1950's(Ouspensky, Gurdjieff, Charles MaCkay and infamously Aleister Crowley) who at the turn of the Century traveled to the East, and then came back West to open schools and publish books mixing Philosophies, histories, psychology, ontology, epistemology and a tad of the occult, delivering it all in the Eastern style of education: teaching their “worldly” knowledge, recruiting monks rather than students and focusing on personal growth rather than group performance— the scifi-authors of the seventies were a mixture of novelty and prophecy... This association somewhat discredited them over the years in Academia. Just as their aforementioned predecessors from the 1880's-1950s, the 1970s scifi gurus represented the most recent cultural interaction between east and west, and thus, a stride in evolution.

They all saw something, a glimpse into a possible future. Authors such as Philllip K. Dick, H.P. Lovecraft, Robert Anton Wilson, Thomas Pyncheon, Asimov and of course Hubbard where all given access to privy knowledge— whether through legit insanity and dreams, LSD and drug use, or backgrounds in government and military that exposed them to information, they all saw and knew something. Reacting to the previous generations of authors who were the brilliant products of East and West interactions under post-colonial Modernity, the scifi gurus of the 1970s wrote their own philosophies. Some, like Hubbard, were able to convince masses. But since the trend of establishing schools in the Eastern-style of education faded, (due to elitism), these neo-philosophers lost their academic audiences. When I AM LEGED by Richard Matheson was written the world was changing. 1977, the year it was written, was the year of Aquarius and the beginning of that age. The Earth’s poles began to shift. Hip Hop and Rock were emerging as eternal as our bodies learned to move anew. The art scene was bursting while socially, the Bronx was Burning. It was the Summer of Sam and the beginning of the end for most. For the first time, we had no prophets telling us what was going to happen…enter the era of great scifi guru. Unlike the previous era (1880’s-1950s) where metaphysical philosophies were abundant and often accepted as commonplace even having not read them, those who read scifi knew it was more, but those who didn’t had no idea. So if you really want to know what is going to happen, just read it. They all say the same thing through different stories. The end began back in 1977 and has been going on since. In 2009 something bad will happen as it all comes to a head. In 2012 a resolution will happen. As for translating these works into cinema, I think we need to evaluate “cinema prophecy”— how can cinema, like the other art forms, be used to signify the future? In order to do this, we must find a visual language that cinematically accomplishes this. The last film to accomplish cinematic prophecy was Star Wars— the last film to have truly changed the world. My friend Ana just saw Kurosawa’s RAN. She remarked how she knew Lucas had looked to Kurosawa and his films for inspiration, but she had no idea that he had made a shot for shot remake of RAN. Lucas relied on Kurosawa’s visual language to tell his prophecy and as Ana pointed out, the last film to truly change the world is clearly an interaction between East and West. Upon watching recent Asian films, particularly horror, it is obvious that this is the solution to creating cinema prophecy in our time.

2008-07-21T18:04:00.000-07:00

Hope can only endure for so long - to persevere one's peace of mind for so long - until it turns into despair, changes from boon to detriment. Hope without resolve of willpower is like man without woman - it lingers, fading into the night without consummation.

the collaborative

2008-07-21T17:17:00.000-07:00

Contextually and semantically the collective, although with the most virtuous intention is a bygone byproduct. The conflict lies not as much in its naive romantic idealism, but in its inherent oppressive property - that in a collective, there remains no individual. In theory, like anarchy, this sentimental anthropological homogenization courses unblemished. But not in application, not in the manifest esteem post-capitalism, not in nature.

Within collective, there remains an aimlessness, minds saturating into one, succinct mind - the misplaced glorification of the collective can be traced to the universal allure of Eastern spiritualism. Yet, don't be prejudiced in the longview alms of Western thinking because both are needed, necessary: dark and light, ying and yang. The collective may be the romantic end we're struggling and striving toward, but not the means to arrive. The collective forms as one without resolve, only contentment, to be. Beautiful in itself, the poetic, uniform mind being as one, but in the ultimate struggle, incorporeal and selflessly selfish. Surely, the East holds the gift of sage universalism, but the West holds equal parts - this baby a whole not a half. Collaboration is compromise, individual minds coming together, and although not submitting to oneness of mind, coming together as individuals with purpose - to birth, to conceive a design of oneness.

2008-07-20T19:45:00.000-07:00

We are not born sinner, we are made such. We are spurred into arrest. Yet, we can - and this is the journey to embodiment - strive to become creator, to be released from detention and imposition, understand the grand pattern and come to be our own author. And if this struggle, long and trying, is consummated, we have found the kingdom - our innermost self, the self whom bears wings.

manifesto of the new

2008-07-20T18:56:00.000-07:00

Aesthetics are dead. More concisely, they're on life support. The New will be the consummating movement. What a graced vision, what a fantasy realized when like previous eras all the great artists were chums, were sentient penners and painters in their intended innovation and motion. The Beats, The Dadaists, The Surrealists, Italian Neorealists, French New Wave, New Hollywood, Pop New Wave... man, my heart churns just grasping a conception of it, being in the company of peers, out to enable transition, like minds with like force.

But, with our movement it will not be distinguished by a radical or reactionary shift in aesthetic, or to be more precise, in aesthetic as device for expressing intent, subversively or idealistically. So, that is to say, with this movement the aesthetic, that pertaining to the sensory of visual prettiness (and to a lesser degree sentimentality), will not be the driving impetus for revolution. In our state of empty flash and hyper-sensory, where aesthetic has overtaken and disillusioned meaning, becoming meaningless unto itself, there is nothing left to counteract or reflex. Thus, the revelation of The New will provide absolutely nothing new at all. Why?

We are at a fusing nexus of motley, multiform, re-appropriating retro-cool where aesthetic has reached its stylistic climax - from conceptual black and white to the last remnants of postmodern marquee neon, to The New: humanity, incandescent. The New has all forms and isms at our disposal, we will be a movement conducted of any style and any form to enable and consummate our purpose. And therein lies the revelation of The New, the reinsertion of purpose, of meaning, of the answer and re-construction of "what is art?" What a fluid, potent combination: image and intent. What compelling call when the prettiness finds Truth and becomes Beauty! The New is compromise, collaboration and destiny manifest. Best believe.

elementary zen

2008-07-20T18:29:00.001-07:00

Siddharta will one day be the bedtime book I read to my children, Gotama Freeman and Franny Afrika Ta. The simple prose, that writing given to sage hymn and to be recited and shared aloud, has been lost in contemporary literature with the postmodern deconstruction of semantics - the cleverness and glutted prose killing the simple profundity, the ambitions for intellectual caste outshining universality. So, I divine that day when I will fatherly tuck my little bundles into bed, and settle beside them to read Siddharta.

dream log: one big family

2008-07-20T17:34:00.001-07:00

Incidentally, this dream log suffers from potential unrealized - that being because like a lazy bones I insouciantly put off jotting them down, and like a fugitive, the clarity of those dreams were paroled by the fleetings of memory. There were 3, all incandescently brilliant, and strangely with each transmission into the next dream, the intonations became more dark and severe - dark in the sense of how my dream realm draws: sheer, overwhelming resolve in apocalyptic tumult. I wish I could've indulged you in the latter 2, but we'll have to suffice with the one I recall, a domestic heart-warmer:

I'm throwing a house party, an enchanting, winning house party. The corridors and hallways of the house are infinite, they go on forever like sprawling portals. Everyone is here, and I can't recount most of the names or faces, but let's simply say everyone who has ever stamped himself in my memory, from Allen Ginsberg to my best bud in 3rd grade. And, of course, that one romantic meta-charmer whom always seems to pop here beautiful expression around even when she's far removed from my thoughts. She was there too, and we shared company, flirted, became close, and I felt we were meant to be coupled as one. As the night roared on, then lulled down to an end and my friends dispersed, the house became barren of what was just moments ago an infectious vitality. The portals receded and became immediate, the house dimmed and felt closeted. This manifestation most positively one derived from my current apartment situation, a vagabond living alone in a 4 bedroom.

As I drifted the emptied hallways, struck by a case of abandonment, a noise coming from downstairs rattles me. I hesitantly set out, arming myself with closest metal object, tip-toeing hesitantly to find out what the sound might be, milieu or menace. Standing in front of the glass sliding door, the noise declares itself, and as my attention turns toward it, a man emerges from the shadow of the computer room. I pounce back, startled, and reflex defensively. But, then, I notice behind him are also women and other men, and realize the tenderness exuding from all their eyes, and release my defenses.

Cluttered in that small space are about 25 of them, of various ages and backgrounds.
- How'd you get in?
- We were working the party and discreetly stuck around. We're part of the Painters' Union. We'll leave if you want. We're just looking for shelter.
- No! Stay until Friday. I have the place for 2 more weeks. Maybe if all goes splendid you can stay until then.

And so they stay. My only requisite is that they don't disturb my bathroom situation, meaning I ain't sharing my bathroom space. Their presence invigorates me, transforms the house into a home, and we become a family, a circus juggling one another's distinctions and learning to love them. And me, I am the guiding patriarch: warm, gentle, empathetic.

the dark light

2008-07-20T16:05:00.000-07:00

And people clapped beautifully. And we all understood, believed the same, even if for a spellbound moment. A glimmer of truth arose and spread its iridescent wings and encompassed us all in the dark auditorium, reminding us of sincere beauty, reclaiming it from the cryptic night - of what can be, what we will consummate. I thank from the bottom of my timeworn soul the Nolan brethren and all whom collaborated for The Dark Knight.

It is not too bold to declare this film, this exemplar of compromise, the most all-encompassing cinematic achievement of our history - so comely a message blazoned for the most embracing medium: the masses. The Dark Knight is "pitched at the divide between art and industry, poetry and entertainment", as Manohla Dargis (who has become to me the beacon of critical sanctity) annotates. This compromise, this consummation of the theatrical and sincere and of art and commodification encapsulates New Sincerity. Such the potential of Pop that it can enthrall and evoke, amuse and muse.

Furthermore, though tragic, I discover resplendent, purifying symbolism in the death of Heath Ledger, an artist lost before we were able to receive fully his alms. Beyond the exploration of primal moral complexities, The Dark Knight is the reflection, the symptomatic mirror, of an existence yearning to transition from the postmodern nihilism which broodingly afflicts it. The Joker, that projective figure of all damned postmodern indulgence, devices to triumphantly express to us, those seethed in caustic recklessness, that we are better than that, we are sheer potential ready to be noble. And more emphatically, revealing what we are not: chaotic, depraved, manufactured - this impediment something we were contrived and deceived into thinking. But, magnificently and humanly so, never believing.

As Batman himself espouses, and this not verbatim, Gotham needs a hero with a face, not a mask. Heath Ledger as The Joker embodies that last fancy of the antihero, of the masquerading figure which only desires glorification. In his last role, he became a martyr. For us, he died incarnating postmodernity, he died so that we could awaken truth in the symbolic manifest destiny of the film. As in art is in life, Heath's Joker symbolized the receding dark waves of postmodern excess and the coming tides of solace of New Sincerity. It was destined and it is to be willed!

The new artist will no longer be a veil, a face of many revolving mysteries. No, he will simply be - embracing his commodification, but not indulging it, endowing his real namesake, signifying wisdom over tact, purpose over advancement of personal celebrity.

weezy: dr. carter

2008-07-17T12:36:00.000-07:00

Intro (Lil Wayne & Nurse)]
Where's my coffee?
Good Morning Doctor Carter (Hey Sweetie)
Looks like its going to be a long day. (Ahh another one what we got?)
Your first patient (Yeah)
Is suffering from a lack of concept (Uh-Huh)
Originality (Ugh)
His flow is weak (Another one)
And he has no style (Ugh)
Whatcha got for um?

[Verse 1 (Lil Wayne)]
Ok.Let me put my gloves on and my scrubs on.
Dr.Carter to the rescue. Excuse me if I'm late,
But like a thief it takes time to be this great.
Ha! so just wait. Your style is a disgrace,
Your rhymes are fifth place and im just grace.
One, Uno, Ace and im tryin to make your heart beat like bass,
But your sweet like cake and i come to fix
Whatever you shall break. Where is your originality?
You are so fake so picture me like a gallery.
Capture What i say. All i need is one mic. All i need is one take.
Like hey, brighter then the sun ray got a pistols on the playground.
Watch the gunplay like.No kidding. No kids in the way,
But the kids do watch. Gotta Watch what we say. Gotta work everyday.
Gotta not be Cliche.
Gotta stand out like Andre 3K.
Gotta kick it kick it like the sensai.
You gotta have faith you gotta gotta wait wait..

[Verse 2 (Lil Wayne)]
Okay.
Respect is in the heart.
So thats where i'ma start.
And a lot of heart patients don't make it.
Now hey kids
Plural I graduated
Cause you could get through anything if Magic made it.
And that was called recycling
Or rereciting
Something cause you just like it
So you say it just like it.
Some say its biting
But i say its enlightning
Besides Dr. Kanye West is one of the brightest.
And Dr. Swizz can stitch your track up the tightest.
And Dr. Jeezy can fix your back up the nicest.
Authritist in my hand from writing.
But i'ma docter they don't understand my writing.
So i stop writing.
Now i'm like lighting.
And you ain't Fish Young so don't clash with the Titans.
Fast and exciting.
My Passion is Frighting.
Now let me put some more Vocab in your I.V.
Here take this Vicatin
Like it and love it
And confidence has no budget so pay me no mind i don't walk like i talk it cause i'm running
I don't do it cause i done it and i'm in the emergency punnet.

[Verse 3 (Lil Wayne)]
Swagger Tighter Then A Yeast Infection.
Fly Go Hard Like Geast Erection.
Fashion Patrol Police Detection.
I Stay Tight Like Chinese Connection.
I Stay Tight Like Pussy At Night.
Baby Don't Get Me Wrong I Could Do That Pussy Right.
But I'm Too Wrong To Write.
Too Fresh To Fight.
Too Paid To Freestyle.
Too Paid To Freestyle.
I Had To Say It Twice
Swagger So Nice.
And Don't Ask Me Shit Unless It Concern A Price.
And I Don't Rap Fast I Rap Slow.
Cause I Mean Every Letter In The Words In The Setence Of My Quotes.
Swagger Just Flow Sweeter Then Honey Oats.
That Swagger I Got It I Wear It Like A Coat.
Wait, As I Put The Light Down His Throat.
I Can Only See Flow.
His Blood Starting To Flow.
His Lungs Starting To Grow.
This One Starting To Show.
Strong Signs Of Life.
Wheres The Stiches Heres The Knife.
Smack His Face His Eyes Open.
I Reply With A Nice Welcome Back.
Hip Hop I Saved Your Life.

lynchian

2008-07-13T18:18:00.000-07:00

First off, man the 80s were full of nightmares. Such depravation, such deconstruction of the dream, such perversion of the romantic must have been daggers. And I can understand how the esteem suffered, how our breath of life was sucked from us during this tragically nihilistic era. But, you know, it was necessary, we effectually hardened. The naivete corrupted soon becomes sage learned.

Principally, I believe it's most opportune to avoid the cynical, culturally-debilitating habit of 'who's better, who's best'. This approach detrimental not only to the artisans in discussion, but to the audiences in reception. Of course, such subjectivity falls prey to fragility, but ambigiously or not, let's restrain such old-school debunking techniques to artist whom are not artist at all: manufactured empty flashers, meaningless aestheticians, and above all, work which does not inspire and evoke change in the human heart.

So, that being said, let's roll. Cronenberg and Lynch. Wait, another precursor before we trailblaze ahead: This may be a hurried observation seeing as I've experienced the entire Cronenberg catalogue, and have only experienced Lynch (during sporadic, sometimes unintelligible moments of my personal maturation where upon true understanding might've been hindered) through Elephant Man, Wild At Heart, Lost Highway, and Mulholland Drive. But, the following thesis accounts primarily using his seminal work, Blue Velvet, and in an effort for objectivity, I'll try keenly to compare early work with early work.

I prefer Cronenberg to Lynch. Until today, I've never been into Lynch, or the trendy, pretentious aura that surrounds him, not as much him as an artist, but the film-school pseudos that adore him - those that are titillated by attaching themself to any artifact seemingly abstract merely as compensation, to be snarky. This a generalization obviously not intended for all because I have a couple buddies that are up on Lynch whom are not at all this way. In actuality, they're similar to me: kinda perverse, kinda depraved. But, now, since watching Blue Velvet, although my preference hasn't wavered in regards to these auteurs, I now understand the Lynchian appeal.

I find Lynch and Cronenberg counterparts, almost in the same manner I see Almodovar and Cronenberg counterparts (except, Almodovar and Cronenberg are equivalents). On the metasurface, Cronenberg deals in the arena of body politics, the struggle between the flesh and the according evolution and perversion of higher intellect. But, more imperatively, his work, early and present, observe prophetically the perversion of the dream of reality, of a treacherous hyperreality unescaped, unconsummated.

Contrastly, in Lynch, we find emotion, a sprawling, romantic vision corrupted. In the Lynchian world, the reality has become the dream, and the dream has gone astray. His subversion expresses itself in the manufactured sentimentality of his tone, of the brooding satirical kitsch, of emotional paralysis. His brand of satirical kistch taking cinema over 20 years to transition pass. It's quite simple, Cronenberg is the intellect, the thinker. Lynch is the romantic, the feeler, and his childlike dreamery is one battling the perversion of his fantasy. Indeed, the artist is a product of their context, of their cultivation, and thus, Lynch is that of the American heart, of the naive poetry corrupted. Cronenberg is the more traditional European intellect, that naivete perhaps gone long ago. In technique and tone, Cronenberg's aesthetics are cold, voyeuristic, unpoetic. Both are necessary and both are appreciated, but I still prefer Cronenberg in this case, not only because of his elaboration of cause and effect, but bluntly for the reason he's more adept.

interpol: pace is the trick

2008-07-07T14:59:00.000-07:00

You can't hold it to tight
These matters of security
You don't have to be wound so tight
Smoking on the balcony
But it's that sleaze in a park
You women you have no self-control,
The angels remark outside
You were known for insatiable means
I don't know a thing

I've seen love, and I followed the speeding of starlight
I've seen love, and I followed the speeding of starswept night

Yeah pace is the trick

And to all the destruction in men
Well I see you as you take your pride
My lioness your defenses seem wise I cannot press
And detentions are demised, my lioness
Can't you hurt it some, think I hurt it

I've seen love, and I followed the speeding of starlight
I've seen love and I followed the speeding of starswept night

And now I select you, slow down I let you
See how I stun, see how I stun
And now I select you, slow down I let you
See how I stun, see how I stun

And to all the destruction in men
And to all the corruption in my hand
And now I select you, slow down I let you
See how I stun see how I stun [3x]
And now I select you, slow down I let you
I always follow the speeding of starswept night

You don't hold... candle. [x4]

agent zero promotes sustainability

2008-07-06T18:50:00.000-07:00

Agent Zero recently accepted a contract extension from the Washington Wizards for $111 milli, the team which he's spent the last 5 years, the place where's he's blossomed into one of franchise faces of the NBA. Initially, the Wiz offered Gilbert $127m. A few other suitors looking to lure him away from DC also offered up max contracts. But, in the end, the man took the the $111m. Why? Gilbert: "What can I do for my family with $127 million that I can't do with $111 million? This is in line with what I've been saying the whole time. You see players take max deals and they financially bind their teams. I don't wanna be one of those players and three years down the road your team is strapped and can't do anything about it."

Skeptics, I know you're hovering. The professional athlete makes too much... Here's what you would say, and as a precursor, I'm not saying I disagree, but here's your rebuttal:
A) Well, shit, when you're making that much money, what's $16 mill to him? Why not $50 mill?

B) The man's just doing this for publicity, for the promotion of his public image, for more ad space.

I say, so what?! His motives, who knows, except Agent Zero himself. But, Gil's not being insincere. Not saying he's being all sacrificial, either. The key is that the man did it, no matter what his motives, whether sincere, partially sincere, or outright phony. He said he'd return once Antawn Jamison was resigned, and carried out his word to the team. Sure, you could debate that he could've taken even more of a discount, but regardless, that $16 milli will help his team pursue a couple more valuable components. This existence of ours, one that has been dragged in the dirt by the predatory insatiability of hypercapitalism, is an existence that needs to find compromise between commercial demands and humanity. That's the bottom-line. And this, what Gilbert did, extraordinary or disingenious, is a step in the right direction, toward sustainability. Really, Gil has made the most business savvy decision of all - one that was forgotten in the get-rich-quick irony of hypercapitalism - investing in the future, building a sustainable presence. That in which you invest in will ultimately reward its benefactor threefold. The longview is simple: he knows that little discount will give management more opportunity to build a better team around him, keep his teammates, his friends, and in effect, from having a stronger unit, win more games, and thus, expand his own celebrity. Duh. Whether it's $16 mill or $5 g's or $1, it's enough. Make steps and soon they'll become strides.

Drop the gospel, Gil: "Your whole city is depending on you, wondering if you're going to make the right decision. I'm a franchise player and sometimes franchise players need to make franchise decisions."

horror for your soul power

2008-06-29T15:07:00.000-07:00

I proclaim this without exagerration: The Signal possesses (semantically deliberate, it POSSESSES) one of the most intensely and triumphantly frightening introductions in horror cinema history. In every cinematic facet, the first 30 minutes, or Transmission 1, are near flawless evocation of carnal horror.

The flick is segmented into 3 sections, or Transmissions, and each is composed and directed with variant and purposeful tone by three singular minds, with extraordinary results. The Signal, thus far, is the nearest to New Sincerity horror, in execution and purpose, I've yet to see. An apocalyptic narrative set in a city aptly named Terminus, The narrative follows a man searching for his love as the existence around him crumbles into primordial violence and irrationability stemming from a seductively-mysterious transmission coming from all forms of airwaves. Transmission 1 may be the hallmark of the 3 transmissions, filmed in a unsettlingly realist style, and works in the broader conceptual theme as Modernity - linear and at-your-door.

Transmission 2, however, derails the momentum that its predecessor builds by escaping into a satirical, sitcomesque tone. Though, in itself a letup, this segment is equally deliberate and vital to the film. It's not only necessary, but a sacrifice on the part of the craftsmen in favor of the greater meaning of their work. I applaud their nobbility even if the results sour the film's entertainment value. The surrealism of Transmission 2 is that of postmodernity - the detachment and satirization of the present danger, one of which we all know very well and one that still lingers in our collective consciousness.

In Transmission 3, the conflict of the film is fully realized: the abstraction of reality by aforementioned transmission, the perversion that has led us to unravel and in the process, lose our self-identity, our soul. This last trasmission an exemplary artifact in examining the artistic tenets of New Sincerity. Throughout, it weaves seamlessly, even deceivingly (but relative to postmodernity, with purposeful aim), between linearity and perceptional disorientation. Compositionally and tonally, it flows with naturalistic style, like the natural world, unsentimentalized, but at the same time, grounded and romantic.

The degrading transmission is not just that of media. No, it is that of meaningless aesthetics and nothingness. These are such perversions of our reality that corrupt our identity and the potential of our current reality. Before the film comes to a close, we are thrown a last deception, one that flashes forward and shows the two main characters successfully escaping from Terminus, alive and lovingly in each other's warm embrace. But we are jolted back into the blunt reality, that this was only a daydream. The woman lies still, numb, comatose, and the man desperately scrambles to save her from the sickeningly-convuluted transmission. The prior would be a cop-out, a submission to the transmission itself. For the ending would be sentimentalized and void of true repercussion, and thus, true redemption. Because in our current juncture, we may be there, but we are not yet. This struggle of ours is still fragilely open-ended. Will we find again our identity, muddled and masked behind all the hollow currents of transmission? Will we find our purpose, the art that is us?

The Signal ends, or rather begins, with the man sliding headphones onto the woman, seated, wrestled and suffocated by the transmission into a state of empty stagnation, and as a cover of Joy Division's "Atmosphere" fills her ears, a tear falls. Feeling, emotion, if even only a glimpse. Through all the barriers of transmission that have cheapend and robbed us of emotion and sincerity, she rediscovers such with the help of meaningful art.

heaven can wait

2008-06-18T13:18:00.000-07:00

"Heaven Can Wait"

As the headline on ESPN.com reads, The Boston Tea Party all smiles hoisting the organization's 17th NBA title trophy. A well-deserved victory.

Before the series began I already understood deep inside my romantic cognition that this year, 2008, was not meant to be. But, believing and willing is all you can do. Even though there lied an innate sense of inevitable loss, you must always maintain hope and support. What would we be without? See, 2008, the number eight, is the year that the genesis of change, turnover, and upheaval take motion. I knew this. This journey to the finals, if we would have won, would have been nothing short of a unlikely fairy tale. And this, the age of humanity, is no such fairy tale. It's more beautiful than that. We rode into the finals with athleticism and potential. We didn't have Bynum. Ariza was still rusty from his early-season injury. These two the defensive forces that were lacking in the finals against the more aggressive, hungrier team, the Celtics.

We often talk about how the Lakers, as the official channel of Los Angeles sports, has the potential to drastically influence the collective esteem of a city detached and superficial. And, during the finals, the crowd was called out, for what else, lack of passion. In that Game 5 win, they responded. In the end, it came down to desire and experience. Jordan, Sasha, Ronny, and the young tyke bench fell short this year, but assuredly, they're quick learners and next year will come sage. We are a fragile cause, a movement barely out of infancy and already thrust into young adulthood, and indicatively, sometimes when we fail, we do so catastrophically, as in last night. We don't hold grudges, but do the ultimate motivator, a chip on our stubborn shoulder.

So, this headline "Heaven Can Wait", means something so much more profound and symbolic than the cliche reference suggests. New Sincerity is the journey toward sincerity, heaven on earth. Scroll down and peep my other blogs for further elaboration. But, surely, it can wait. Not much longer, but it can wait. I'm patient, and in a year, in 2009, we will be ready to consummate change. The number 9 is brilliant, it is conception.

obstacle 3

2008-06-09T10:37:00.000-07:00

Leaving Boston, The Lakers are trailing 2-0, in a hole smaller than its appearance and inevitable in its presence. It ain't gonna be easy the ring sliding on Lakeshow fingers. Not this year. The moment of upheaval never is. The grotesque animal of past hegemonies, with malfeasance and stubborn, indignant disregard for its fateful reckoning, will fight till its inglorious demise. And the souls, lost, hesitant, or simply oblivious to the forthcoming waves of soul power, unwittingly or not, will aid those same oppressive institutions that have stolen and coerced their livelihood and repressed their soul power. Change always those bright-blooded few against the world. Old habits die hard.
So, it only makes sense that insofar this series hasn't been Celtics vs. Lakers, but Lakers vs. the world. Game 1 was sincerely a loss. The Celtics came out hungry, as expected when one's own fate lies waiting, and played mediocre. The Lakers played rattled, subpar and, although not without opportunities, deserved that Game 1 loss. It wasn't the few errand foul calls down the stretch that cost the Lakers victory, but the lack of execution. I have no qualms about that game, the bull will always come out charging. But, I also saw a Celtic club, for all its carnal hollering and testosterone and arrogance and intimidation, falls short of true confidence. I saw the facade up close, frail, insecure. A charade. The moments leading up to the Pierce injury saw moments of juvenile uncertainty in the eyes of supposed man-beast Kevin Garnett. All that fierce shouting, provocation, and redundant chest-pounding and head-knocking dissipating into cribbed fear.
"The Los Angeles Lakers should know by now not to expect any pity. The Lakers surely understand that they traded away their rights to sympathy, maybe permanently, when they shipped so little to Memphis and stole Pau Gasol...No one with a neutral interest in these NBA Finals is bound to feel sorry for the Zen Men. Or when they clinched a series-turning road win over the savvy Spurs on a non-call that the league later publicly acknowledged as erroneous," Marc Stein speaking reality, to be sure. But, let's apply some contextualizing. The Celtics didn't have the best offer on the table for KG, either. If not for McHale, KG could've easily been a Chi-Town phenomenon. Especially since Chicago offered up a better package of players. And, let's not be all revisionist about the Spurs series either. Those savvy Spurs until that awry 3-point attempt by Barry and uncalled foul, received the majority of the calls, similarly to the Celtics in this series.
I have no issue when a team I have love for loses deservingly, I only hate when the outcome arrives from unfairness. And Game 2 was an unfair night of inconsistent refereeing, no-calls, and overall, a game decided not by the players but by the zebras, the whistling herders that won't let the wild roam free. The first half was a joke, and I'll be the first to say when a foul isn't a foul or when there should or shouldn't have been a call. I live fair and I perceive fair. But, if it's getting called on one side, it should be the same on the other. The sheer amount of and-1's the Lakers were disparaged could have been sufficient enough to reverse the final score. As it were, symbolically, the Lakers lost, got knifed by the same way it all began, by a foul call. Down by 2, 104-102, the ghost call that sent Pierce to the line effectively ended the game. Only fitting.
The truth of the matter is the Lakers are the quicker, more athletic team, and for whatever disillusionment, perhaps that which constructs from appearance, the refs just don't believe this is true. I mean, KG looks so mean and dark, and screams and shoves his teammates. Gasol doesn't, he's soft. Let me tell ya, appearances are deceiving. So Pomo.

interpol: leif erikson

2008-06-07T10:56:00.000-07:00

She says It helps with the lights out
Her rabid glow is like braille to the night.
She swears I'm a slave to the details
But if your life is such a big joke, why should I care?

The clock is set for nine but you know you're gonna make it eight.
So that you two can take some time, teach each other to reciprocate.

She feels that my sentimental side should be held with kid gloves
But she doesn't know that I left my urge in the icebox
She swears I'm just prey to the female,
Well then hook me up and throw me, baby cakes, cuz I like to get hooked.

The clock is set for nine but you know you're gonna make it eight.
All the people that you've loved they're all bound to leave some keepsakes.
I've been swinging all the time, think it's time to learn your way.
I picture you and me together in the jungle it will be ok.

I'll bring you when my lifeboat sails through the night
That is supposing you don't sleep tonight

It's like learning a new language
Helps me catch up on my mime
If you don't bring up those lonely parts
This could be a good time
You come here to me.
We'll collect those lonely parts and set them down
You come here to me...

She says brief things, her love's a pony
My love's subliminal

mccain

2008-06-07T09:57:00.000-07:00

John McCain is just another political product of the postmodern hegemonic regime. To change, we must embrace change, for all its uncertainty, but more importantly, for all its potential. I'm currently residing in Montreal, Quebec, and even here, the sense of desperation and opportunity that this election entails is just as visceral. This moment, now, is not only American, it is a universal moment.

lakers vs. celtics = new sincerity vs. pomo

2008-06-04T11:39:00.001-07:00

So here we are, on the eve of a Lakers vs. Celtics NBA Finals, the two perennial forces that dominated the NBA airwaves throughout the 80s, the decade where the seeds of hypercapitalism were ever sown into the fabric of the industrial culture that have held us captive since, where the postmodern strangle we know now began its matriculation toward the vulnerable necks of our collective esteem. This series between legendary foes more than just basketball or sports, it's the symbolic culmination of the cyclical nature of transition, the final confrontation between a fading regime desperately pulling out all stops in a last-ditch effort to sustain its subliminal hegemony and the new, the fledgling movement finally prepared to come-of-age to reconstruct all the wrongs that have been wrong for so long. This is oppression, the masked illusion of contrived, postmodernity vs. change, the sincere journey toward empathy, embodiment, and the greatest beauty of all, Truth. This is a battle between being prisoners and thieves of time, and being with, finding the space in time. This, right here, this moment, is real.

This is destiny manifest. In sports and marketing are the two most succinct, indicative signifiers of where the collective esteem is moving, where it yearns to be. And this, Lakers vs. Celtics, is the most prime example. In my initial conceptions of New Sincerity, now 3 years ago, two colors always encapsulated what I felt, the potential I saw could be fulfilled: yellow and purple. The year the Lakers pushed the Suns to the brink of elimination was the same year I stumbled onto New Sincerity, the same year I found my path to lead. The following season when the team rocketed off to a supreme regular season start only to fall into disarray just as rapid and magnificently, I knew they were the reflective vessel for the fragile journey of New Sincerity, for the mountainous struggles and growing pains that lie in store for a baby asked to become a man to fight a beast with nothing behind its eyes, a beast that ingrained itself in us while we were lost in its spectacular spellbind. This, a rival more pervasive and unyielding than ever before, lifestyle.

When the Lakers lapsed that season, I knew we weren't yet ready. Nor was I, younger, naive, more stubbornly and uncompromisingly ideal. But, now, I am. We are. The Lakers of the 80s were Showtime. They were fluid, exciting, offensive, penetrating, a spectacle to watch. Like their floor general, they were Magic. Jerry West grew the components from within the organization, drafted and gave them opportunity to maturate and develop (this when it was easier, before free agency and quick-fixes). His motif was to not assemble sheer individual talent, but to find complementation, to concentrate individual personalities and skills in the ultimate mosaic, team chemistry, collaborative brilliance. The Lakers were the emblem of Los Angeles. Its personalities were diverse, effervescent, like movie characters. Their style was pure entertainment, fast, persuading, showy, Hollywood. The Celtics contrasted absolutely. Also homegrown, but the C's stormed with vicious, gritty intent, aggressive defense triggered by fiercely unadulterated hustle plays. Comparatively to the Lakers, there figures were stoic, hardened ones that rarely smiled. The Lakers thrived on talent and flow. The Celtics thrived on effort and rupture.

So, tomorrow it consummates. In green, we have the Boston Celtics, the last remnants of postmodernity. We have an organization that exemplifying the postmodern symptom, mortgaged its future by quickly-fixing its team for immediate success. The future for the next 3 years max. We have a team built around superstars, a unit dependent on the individual talent of 3. We have a Celtics team again built around brute force, intimidation, arrogance, defense, postmodern fracture and rupture. A team, thus far in the playoffs, playing without sustainment, fiendish like patterns of instant-gratification, inconsistent. We have a Celtics team where Garnett, their leader, gets angrier when his team thrives.

In yellow and purple, the new sincerity of the Los Angeles Lakers. We have a team composed of young players given time to develop, to find understanding in each other and become a cohesive unit. A team that has found bond despite culture and language barriers. We have biracialism, bilingualism, true internalization. We have a leader in Kobe Bryant that has finally become the leader he always fell short of being. He has become the most beautiful kind of leader, one that trust his teammates, that understands when to be firm, when to be a consultive, when his team needs his talent to carry them. He's a leader that has a smile that sparkles with sincerity when his team thrives, when they live their potential. He was a boy that learned from his mistakes, from his stubbornness, from his mistrust to become a man. We have a team with a leader who understands everyone is needed, every individual strength pertinent, to be complete, to consummate this championship journey. Like the Lakers of old, they have the same stylistic strength, offense, fluidity, pure speed, athleticism and agility. But as they've shown this postseason, the possibilities are limitless for pure talent when defensive effort and grit are learned. Talent finding focus and effort, whew, now that's revelation. We have a team and a leader with common flaws, but together, collaboratively, they are flawless. We have a team in the thick of the most postmodern, contrived, hypercapitalistic city, and they've found sincerity. Is this a precursor, will the City of Angels finally transition from its factory of contrivance to true, angelic beauty? Will our existence finally transition from movie magic to embody and become magic ourselves? Are we ready to join Ronny in the dance, our dance?

I believe so.

dream log: bowie and jesus

2008-05-21T13:08:00.003-07:00

Probably my most viscerally enjoyable dream in recent memory. Historic. I had it in some Comfort INN in Amarillo, Texas on the first night of our journey through the American Midwest and into Montreal, Quebec.

The stage is set, the crowd awaiting Bowie under the starlight sky of an open field. He comes on, circa Diamond Dogs era, and the feeling's kinetic. Andy and I are close, if we wanted we could reach out pass a couple concert-goers and touch the stage. Bowie begins, and inexplicably, the crowd turns on him. A cup of water cuts through the air aimed in his direction. Then, another and the cups don't stop coming.

He falls to the floor, helpless. I hop on stage, Andy behind me, stepping in front and shielding him from the hostile collective. I look at him, my back rampaged by cups of water awry. He makes no attempt to meet my eyes, shattered in dejection. Intently, I say, "Bowie, have you heard of new sincerity?" It triggers something in him, he slowly raises his eyes.
I elaborate, "the age of humanity?"
He replies, spirit piqued "age of humanity?"
I see this and continue, "compromise."

His body guard rushes onto the stage. Bowie puts out his arms, and we help him to his feet. He's the Bowie we all love again, inspired. We ready for our escape. But, there's a problem, the stage is now elevated near the moon. I lean forward, look over the edge, and my knees go weak from vertigo. We all simply understand, unspoken, that the best plan is to jump, so I overcome my fear and take the long plunge.

The crowd, watching this transpire, is worried for us, or ashamed (they booed Bowie, man). We're falling, a long way down. So long it's slow and thinking has subsided to being. Andy, Bowie and his bodyguard land before me. As I near the ground, I sense doubt, this skepticism pervading from the crowd watching me below, telling me with their esteem I can't fly. There's this feeling in me that I can, as if it's always been there, just forgotten and built over. I believe, and it is, me flying given strength from an innate understanding. Something Robert relates in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance as Quality.

The crowd watches, all disbelief abstracted. Jealousy gone because they are up here with me, flying. This, a moment for all of us. I finally land, feet landing bare in the plush grass, and I see Bowie leaving with the help of his bodyguard.
"Watch out, they've got new sincerity" he says with that lovable British grin of his, talking to Jesus, who's apparently present in the crowd. Jesus steps out into sight, like hey man. I'm still perpetually smiling from my flight, "Jesus Christ!"
"Yeah?" he thinks I'm speaking to him. We laugh about it.

I've mentioned before, I experience my dreams very consciously and post-existentially, simultaneously experiencing the dream's emotion and weaving it. So, I'm laughing my ass off, the funnest dream ever. I hear Jake, a college buddy, "I don't know, it's good, but I don't know if I'd go see it, it's silly." I feel challenged, I can sense this raises some questions from the crowd and now they're caught in between.
"prophecy and comedy, what would this all be if it wasn't funny?" I reply. I can feel the collective esteem shift, agreeing with me. Jake, too.

hot chip: look after me

2008-04-15T10:43:00.000-07:00

Look after me and I will look after you
thats something we both forgot to do

I find it hard to see your face, du du de de hay
cannot remember it well enough, only the details such, then I see it in my head,
when I am with you its familiar and beautiful, and ?

As night comes in I know it better, seeing it clear again

Look after me and I will look after you
thats something we both forgot to do

'Cuz if I squint then I see your so, far from me, far from me
as if my miracle I see, the room I see ?

The words and images they come back to me, back to me
crystal clear in my head, but its behind the screen

Look after me and I will look after you
thats something we both forgot to do

Every time I see your face I break down and cry,
I see it in your family as they walk on by

Come back to me and I'll come back to you,
thats something we don't always do

masculine/feminine

2008-04-09T13:08:00.000-07:00

Part II of III triptych.

This, more than a trend. Change arising from humanity's most oppressed, this is a universal mode of redemption. Homosexuals were many of our greatest artists. LA, America. Africa. Women.

"...just as fundamentally man and woman are one, their problem must be one in essence. The soul in both is the same. The two live the same life, have the same feelings. Each is a complement of the other. The one cannot live without the other's active help.

But somehow or other man has dominated woman from ages past, and so woman has developed an inferiority complex. She has believed in the truth of man's interested teaching that she is inferior to him. But the seers among men have recognized her equal status."

Gospel spoken by Gandhi. Even with the deconstruction of gender identity, I feel it hardly arguable the fundamental dynamic between and with masculine/feminine. Everything has its place in our transits of change, in this ultimate struggle, and some are here to remind our forgetful minds of the universal nature eternally guiding us. Perhaps, the domestication of our most beloved counterparts, canine and feline, became to reiterate this woven truth in the universal fabric, this dynamic between masculine and feminine, of active and passive, of brute and persuasion, of two ones in eternal collaboration.

The oppression of her necessary to our journey. She can have multiple orgasms. If, perhaps, she began as the gender hegemony, would it not be conceivable, of no fault of her own, that woman and man would wholly succumb to the hedonism of sex? In this preoccupation where woman is boundless and man limited, less may have been achieved. Man became gender hegemony by brute physicality. While woman with her higher sensitivity and persuasion, may have hindered our transition from the physical to true spiritual embodiment.

And because of this, it may be that man became the most repressed, in the sexual act where man could not satiate the insatiable, where man was forced to maintain the facade of unwavering virility and strength. So, perhaps, man was destined to be the most tortured and repressed -- to create art, to enable transition. But, if we are to become what we are meant to be then we must meet as equals. This struggle needs us together, our mother's warm embrace.

"...who but woman, the mother of man, shows this [infinite capacity for suffering] in the largest measure? She shows it as she scarries the infant and feeds it during nine months and derives joy in the suffering involved. What can beat the suffering caused by the pangs of labour? But she forgets them in the joy of creation. Who again suffers daily so that her babe may wax from day to day? Let her transfer her love to the whole of humanity, let her forget that she ever was or can be the object of man's lust. And she will occupy her proud position by the side of man as his mother, maker and silent leader. It is given to her to teach the art of peace to the warring world thirsting for that nectar."

Gandhi.

game consouls

2008-04-08T21:52:00.001-07:00

Been experiencing nights lately where I wake up in the thick of night and am not able to return to sleep. It may be a sign, haven't had it like this since living at home early in college. Back then, it would be the same, wake up around 3 or 4am and have an undeniable energy that compelled me to my desk -- a visceral eagerness to write, to create. Somewhere along my path, I lost that. Maybe as I've developed a level of comfort and contentment with myself that once virile creative force has been blunted, no longer needing to be exorcised in the meridian of the night. And lately, this has been tugging at me. As my production has wained (even though my main projects have reached pinnacle realization) over the last year, I've wondered where that hunger went, where went that creative life-force that once seized me? Well, I feel it's knocking on my door again, and in this moment, there's no lock.

Last night, I did some successful writing for The Trail of Dead, then watched King of Kong: A Fistful of Dollars, which I heard celebrated reviews about. But I didn't expect the poignancy and universal narrative that the documentary so deftly delivered. Now, up front, I do understand the pattern authorship the documentary took to tell a cogent and entertaining narrative. So I realize the contextual disadvantage I have in the reality of it. But, this is about the reality of the situation becoming a channel, a platform for art to evidence a microcosm of universal Truth that gets abstracted and sensationalized from the everyday of us -- that this is a romantic movement, that there is self-fulfillment and redemption, and that people may lose sight in the spectacle of false prophets, but will always have the potential to recognize and open themselves to the goodness of a true son.

los angeles and america

2008-03-21T13:40:00.000-07:00

Part I of III blog triptych. This has been in draft since I began this. Was gonna elaborate in detail, but... Andy and I have an ongoing quip, (and even though Western academic has been equally necessary to our transition) each time we encounter a thick-worded philosophical text by a Western author, it's like "if this was written in the East, it would've been about a 1/4 as long" Besides, this has all been said, known, felt since us begun.

"The Day of Supreme Demise" as Ray Bradbury called it, has been ever mythologized in our history. And of course, in our commercial haste, sensationalized to be commodified. Like all historical record, history's dialog and its contextual process have been disconnected from our perception of it. Our abstraction of space from time has miscommunicated Judgment Day and The Apocalypse each as one, singular, spectacular event -- as a day that simply happens, without composition or moments.

As the Millennium neared, the religious right deemed it as The Moment of Judgment, and the collective esteem, religious or not, found similar interpretative incarnation of this happening. Whether it be an apathetic recognition of it, cataclysmic natural disaster, or the Y2k crash. But it was a moment in America that found us referential construction for the previously artistic and immaterial symbolism of Judgment Day, September 11th, 2001 or 9-11. More than politically and even in the semantics of its date, 9-11 was a tragic collective revelation, a 911 call to arms from a civilization slipping and torn. Yes, it occurred on the soil of America, but the reverberations of this event found our entire existence. It was the birth of a new sincerity -- from the most blamed, most guilty, most naive, most tortured, most liberated, most repressed, and most promising region, America. In the grand composition of an ironic existence striving to be sincere, it would only make sense that the impetus of our potential destiny be placed in the hands of the youngest country.

Make no mistake though, my heart belongs to a metaphorical Pangea. All signs point to that potential realization -- the advancements of mass communication and mass transit, the weakening of the Super Powers (at the very least in collective allegiance to country) spurred by a young generation cultivated in a more cultured, diverse social construction, enabled by hyper-media, immigration and dissatisfaction with the imperial conduct of their countries. And simply, a generation cultivated in a hyper-state of capitalism that wants more and new.

Why America? In simplicity, because in the place where the symptom is most pervasive, will rise minds that understand it most, and the deep resentment to resolve it. In him, the most flawed man, is our greatest potential. So, in this, it is Los Angeles as the seed. The City of Angels, the most epitomizing microcosm of America and this affliction. All the proponents of our transition toward a metaphorical Pangea are hinted in the makeup of Los Angeles -- a metropolitan so diverse. But in this, a place rootless and without a true voice. In Hollywood, the factory of affluence, beauty and magic. But in this, ultimate contrivance, gloss and vanity. Southern California, a place where substance has been substituted for personality and consequently, cool detachment and superficiality. We are young pups clambering for identity, compensating in a manifested state of artifice, and these moments, the fringe of hyperreality. So, the struggle and the transition is simple: can we, as characters in this grand narrative, humanize ourselves?

Truth lies in Judgment Day. We are in its days and moments now. Will we become the romantic existence we can be, or degrade into a pornographic film?

hot chip: no fit state

2008-03-20T02:51:00.000-07:00

Hot Chip performing "No Fit State" live at Glastonbury

dream log: outdoor ed

2008-03-20T01:25:00.001-07:00

It's been awhile...

Whenever a dream I have has moments inside a house there's always undertones of recurrence, an understanding between me and my dreamworld that this house is a composite of all the houses that have found place in my memory's universe -- houses I've lived in, I've been in, stayed in, seen and that have blended and blurred into various incarnations to form location in the dreams my memory chooses to orchestrate for the night. And so it always feels like I've already been there.

It's beautiful, the memory within our infinite mind, and so grandly revealing to us within this universe. Our memories are always present -- not always remembered, but never forgotten, drifting in the vast, shapeless, perpetuating space of our mind. In a way, these are ours only. Memories, we as individuals, uniquely experienced. Yet, they are also touched and influenced by all, shared in creation and cultivation. So abstract and indirect, they may seem chaotic and random. But, at night in our dreams, they leave, return, disappear, reemerge, and ultimately come together to author a pattern, a story and song of sometimes overwhelming feeling and truth. As in life.

I am with two friends, a couple, lounging on an expansive white couch. The ceilings are high. The rich, velvety carpet like Pacific sand between toes. In the background are wide stairs with oak railing and a landing. Politely, my friends sitting across me are romancing, enjoying each other. While I slouch into the cushion, sadly content about being the lovelorn 3rd wheel. Watching them, there's a rebellion in me, as if they questioned my ability to love, dared that this is my fate, to be without.

Then she walks in. In waking life, a college crush. Someone I still see, albeit on occasion -- strange and somewhat stinging how you can be in such close quarters with a person, but be so distant from their warmth. She approaches, as I look to my friends. This, my moment of redemption, to prove my heart's lonesome demons wrong. She sits, finding her place beside me on the couch, her soft limbs close enough for her knee to brush mine. And I feel open, comfortable. the charming man I naturally am finds expression. And it's easy love, as she gets up and invites me back to her room. I boldly smile goodbye to my friends, inside secretly relieved.

We are outside, it's the porch of a cabin. The scene reminds me of my faint memories of 6th grade outdoor ed in Arrowhead, bordello moonlight and the afterglow of snowfall. We stand still walking, and emotions run rapid -- some spoken, which I can't recall, most emoted. I hint I love her, guarded but still honest. And she returns the sentiment. The revelation I see in her eyes, that shared intimation, washes over me like soul power. This is it. This is REAL.

As we continue on through the scenes, the silhouette stars and trees become streetlights and concrete. A dilapidated boutique appears, and we go in. It looks even worse inside, splintered and vandalized. But, cool collectibles are shown off on the shelves. She sees a corridor leading to another room, and heads in, looking back and beckoning me to follow. As she disappears into the deep corridor, I'm still graced. I follow after her, but when reaching the corridor, she's gone. It's a darkly cavernous, suffocating passageway, and when I call for her only my echo responds. I'm worried. Did something happen to her? She wouldn't just leave me. So I wait, left there alone. She never returns. I mildly feel comforted that if something did happen to her she would return to me upon its resolution.

As the space of my dream elapses, she never does. Until I see her taking instruction in class, unscathed, fine. And she just glances at me.

michael clayton

2008-02-29T01:53:00.000-08:00

I'd just like to thank everyone involved with Michael Clayton.

cheap thrills leave me quickly

2008-02-25T23:36:00.000-08:00

Saw The Eye last night, the original version directed by The Pang Brothers, not the recent remake with Jessica Alba. I'm developing a feature horror screenplay titled The Trail of Dead and this 2002 Chinese import magnified some elements I want to address about contemporary horror.

The Eye was a mediocre Hollywood popcorn horror at best (except in Cantonese). Andy, who somehow stumbled into theaters for the American remake and watched the original with me, determined that the remake was surprisingly, sadly more polished than its source artifact. I already had a sneaking suspicion... The Pang Brothers got their shot at the American pie with 2007's The Messengers and needless to say, underwhelmed. Their direction of the The Eye epitomizes the fundamental stylistic praxis that have corroded the appeal and potential of the horror genre in the scope of cinema -- praxis that are outdated manifestations of postmodern quick-fix American slasher flicks.

We're used to our horror being centered around loud, invasive noises contrived to jolt, abrupt editing technique and camera angles asunder to evoke pseudo discomfort and tension. We're so use to cheap thrills, fractions of seconds of underdeveloped scenes that make us jump, then immediately leave us... and then we breathe and the cycle repeats itself. Us waiting and fiending for the next pseudo scare. Us anticipating the next fix. I'm not implying that these postmodern adornments in horror cinema are wholly irrelevant, only that they're meant for supplement not primary emotive device -- the jump-out-of-your-seat scare similar to slapstick in comedy, meant as minor accompaniment in the grand genre orchestra.

It's an intriguing cultural dynamic the variations between Chinese, Japanese and Korean cinema -- especially in horror where J-Horror and K-Horror are at the genre's forefront, but not 'C-Horror'.

...If you've been following my conceptual dribbles then you've caught breath of my personal cinematic recalibration, meaning as aesthetic. Horror (along with Science Fiction, Fantasy, etc.) because it lives and derives its truth from a polarized state of human reality, finds exception. It requires aesthetic to help achieve its end.

gang of four: natural's not in it

2008-02-22T12:53:00.000-08:00

The problem of leisure
What to do for pleasure
Ideal love a new purchase
A market of the senses
Dream of the perfect life
Economic circumstances
The body is good business
Sell out, maintain the interest
Remember Lot's wife
Renounce all sin and vice
Dream of the perfect life
This heaven gives me migraine
The problem of leisure
What to do for pleasure

Coercion of the senses
We are not so gullible
Our great expectations
A future for the good
Fornication makes you happy
No escape from society
Natural is not in it
Your relations are of power
We all have good intentions
But all with strings attached

Repackaged sex your interest
Repackaged sex your interest
Repackaged sex your interest
Repackaged sex your interest
Repackaged sex your interest
Repackaged sex your interest

The problem of leisure
What to do for pleasure
Ideal love a new purchase
A market of the senses
Dream of the perfect life
Economic circumstances
The body is good business
Sell out, maintain the interest
Remember Lot's wife
Renounce all sin and vice
Dream of the perfect life
This heaven gives me migraine
This heaven gives me migraine
This heaven gives me migraine

meaning as aesthetic

2008-02-17T22:14:00.000-08:00

I was at Blockbuster earlier after work. Had 2 online DVDs to trade-in. My plan was swoop an Asian horror (either A Tale of Two Sisters, The Eye or One Missed Call) and something American lite. None of the above were available so I settled for Takashi Miike's Ichi the Killer. Couldn't decide on the 2nd flick, scanned the new release section twice over. Wayfaring through the weak Blockbuster drama section, I hear "Hannah Takes the Stairs now available exclusively at Blockbuster"... Woody Allen pops into my mind, but then it circles back to me. Hannah Takes the Stairs, the trailer had promise, and I remember being irked that Owen Gleiberman reduced it to "mumblecore" in his review (prefer Schwarzbaum). I added Greta Gerwig as a MySpace friend solely on the trailer's merits... somewhat off-tangent, but peep the trailer for Quiet City. Anyway, I scooped it and was on my way with Ichi the Killer and Hannah Takes the Stairs... which nutshells me quite simply.

Just finished Hannah Takes the Stairs. Watched it with my roommate and others. I was watching, they were multi-tasking. Essentially, the room's permeating sentiment was that it was dull and mediocre. And really, I understand their point of perspective, but this stylistic discontent with Hannah harps at a broader cultural detachment that I'm wrestling to find compromise with: meaning as aesthetic. As an anecdote, I'll just mention they were fresh off a mini-One Tree Hill marathon before I put on Hannah so... Getting slightly irritated with some of the subtle guffs I made the comparison between reality-TV like Real World (which I know they watch) and the movie. I understand I'm in the minority, and I also understand that this is problematic, but I'd rather see the average, mundane of people and our existence than the ugliest of people manipulated for entertainment. It signifies our detachment from reality, or maybe just the incongruence between what we expect from movies and what the channel truly has to give.

Contextually, these docu-feels are closest to French New Wave cinema, which is complimentary, but also, may be Hannah and the body of these grassroot docu-feels' (or mumblecore as Gleiberman suggests) fundamental creative arrest. In meaning as aesthetic, it seems to me that the compromise is music, the revelations that came with the MTV music video. Stimulating the organic with moderated contrivance. Finding that balance between rousing the artwork with musical soul and cheapening into a soulless 90 min. music video. Despite its shortcomings, in the romantic transition, Hannah Takes the Stairs is a noble work, and glimpses into our truth: that movie magic is us.

revival at the cinematheque

2008-02-17T17:52:00.000-08:00

Cinema needs a structural reformation -- in how it packages itself, in the way it presents itself to us. Seeing Grindhouse in theaters last year drafted a promising outline for this reformation of the cinema experience. But, as mentioned, Grindhouse, conceived by Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, is a rough draft and revisions still need be considered. In concept, Grindhouse is simply a remix -- recapturing and redressing the experience made popular by 60s and 70s movie houses that played B-movies and exploitation films as double and triple-features... mainly out of capital necessity.

The distinction is that Tarantino and Rodriguez (with the help of Eli Roth, Edgar Wright and Rob Zombie) personalized the entire cinematic experience. From the faux trailers to intermission to the actual pictures (Planet Terror and Death Proof), they created a thorough, blanketing cinematic atmosphere to immerse in. So, perhaps, the only modifications to the Grindhouse blueprint is its excessive run-time (191 minutes), and more broadly, that Grindhouse shouldn't be relegated to kitsch appeal and limited to only cineplexes. This can encompass all of cinema. There are already bargain double and triple-feature DVDs selling out there. Why not intentionalize the act, and not just randomly bundle together 3 abandoned, poorly-received popcorn flicks.

Again though, the 3 hrs. 11 min. run-time was exhausting. In this post-ADD era where the profile of short films have climbed and feature-lengths dip under the traditional 90 min. barrier with increasing regularity, even cinema flirting in the 2 hr. zone leans toward overdrawn. And this isn't meant to debase the epic 3 hour narratives, but constructing a concentrated cinematic experience centered around 2 feature-films each running around 45-60 min. in length would enable more efficient, mediated works of cinema and offer the audience a more economical and enveloping adventure complete with connective theme and adornments such as brief behind-the-scenes interviews, faux trailers, etc. ... and all in comfortable 1 hr. 45 minutes. But, the fulcrum relies on the collaboration of auteurs, at least in the onset. Inspired by Three...Extremes, where Fruit Chan, Chan-wook Park and Takashi Miike each offer up a 45 min. segment on the macabre, I imagined going to the cinema and experiencing a Sofia/Roman Coppola double-feature collaboration or a platform showcasing an upcoming auteur coupled with an established artist like P.T. Anderson. Or even embracing our "mash-up" construction, the double-feature could also be David Jacobson's Down in the Valley and Scorsese's Taxi Driver or Wes Anderson's Rushmore and Ashby's Harold and Maude, whatever the auteur sites as his/her fundamental inspiration for the piece.

...As a side note: America, we need to stand up and recognize our true artists -- we may be the only region that rather than celebrate our artists, makes the process more difficult for them.

2008-02-16T13:05:00.000-08:00

classy and classic... a faux interview with Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach off The Life Aquatic special features.

homage is the new spoof

2008-02-16T11:36:00.000-08:00

This blog's been a month delayed seeing as Meet The Spartans is essentially out of theaters.

The contemporary spoof is outdated, and a purely capitalistic detriment to the transition toward romantic movement. It was dug up in the late 90s with the Scary Movie franchise, which in itself was necessary to deconstruct the frivolous slasher films that also saw revival. But since, and reflected by the latter Scary Movies, the genre has promptly become archaic, especially in this collective post-millennium esteem. Fundamentally, how can it be a "spoof" if the spoof itself is more inane than the original materials it derives itself from? The term "stupid funny" inherently and tellingly postmodern.

Sure the argument could be made that its precursors Airplane!, Naked Gun, Hot Shots worked on the same premise, but the distinction is that the former had, or at least aspired for some cinematic validity. Analyze the current stock-crop of spoofs (i.e. Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans) and an effort for credible narrativization and overall production value is neglected. These, sadly products on an assembly line to get in, get your money and get the hell out.

These soulless products (Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans), which are mass-distributed by FOX and unconsciously shat out by Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg, are wholly founded in mean-spirited provocation, which again separates the former from the latter; the former lot of old-school spoofs exploiting haphazard mirth for its humor. But do we blame FOX for distributing this romantic degradation, or even the two douche bags, Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg? No. We, as a collective, must signify these movies as problematic. Because hypercapitalism has no ties to us. It'll just keep insatiably satiating itself.

There's already a compromise in place: kitsch cinema, as delineated by the Grindhouse features Deathproof and Planet Terror, Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, and James Gunn's Slither or even, Roth's Hostel. The homage is the new spoof. Cinema that is existentially satirical, but founded in genuine admiration of its root material.

2008-02-13T23:34:00.001-08:00

Unfortunately, I'll have to be taking a hiatus from this... takin Spanish 3 at Santa Monica. Last class to officially receive my BA, and I'll need to academically work my ass off like I've never before to pass. Last time I took Spanish 2 was 3 years ago, and retention... well, I didn't retain much, actually none.

So I'll be popping up in free moments to jot a blog, but sometimes obligations have to take the place of priorities. This brain has some heavy exertion coming its direction.

the (sunless) gleaners

2008-02-07T11:51:00.000-08:00

We've been beaten down so low. Exiled from the natural elements -- from the natural activity that invested in our body and soul, that let us be open under the moon and sun. It may have been hard work, but we were open. We had freedom. In the air of the open space, the work chains may have been, but they were looser. They let us breathe.

Now those chains imprison us before birth, our path held captive by the beast. Couped in boxes and ceilings and with our souls dimming under false lights, we've been beaten down so low that many of us have resigned. We tell ourselves and our young, that's the way things are. So deeply incarcerated by the assembly line that our time-worn minds are crippled even to comprehend existing without the seize of capitalism.

The machinic beast has rendered us into merely logic -- schools for GPAs and SATs to attend universities for GPAs and degrees, and all for a stable office job -- true intelligence disillusioned by commerce, and the search for knowledge and understanding lost in the pursuit.

Capitalism was an inevitable economic revelation, but there is a transition to be made past it, toward sustainment.

metric: poster of a girl

2008-02-06T00:14:00.000-08:00

Can't stand by myself
Hate to sleep alone
Surprises always help
So I take somebody home
To find out how I feel
Feel like just a baby
Portrait of a lady
Poster of a girl

Je sais que tu n'aimes pas ta réalité
Tu sais que tu n'aimes pas ta réalité
Tu sais que je n'aime pas ma réalité
Je sais que tu n'aimes pas ta réalité
Tu sais que je n'aime pas ma réalité
On ne peut pas fabriquer la vérité
Tu sais que tu n'aimes pas ta réalité
Je sais que tu n'aimes pas ta réalité

Satisfy myself
Avoid beginners
Who long to shut my mouth
Till I take one of them home
'Cause I know how it feels
Filling in the blanks
Looking on the bright side
When there is no bright side
Coming in your pants
For the off chance
With a...
poster of a girl
poster of a girl
poster of a girl
poster of a girl
poster of a girl
poster of... a girl
poster of a girl
poster of a girl

Je deteste dormir sans une présence
Les surprises semblent alléger ma solitude
Alors je ramène quelqu'un dans mon lit
Afin de découvrir comment je me sens
Comme un bébé
Portrait d'une femme
Affiche d'une fille
Portrait d'une femme
Affiche d'une fille

Me satisfaire
Eviter les novices
Ceux qui cherchent à me faire taire
Jusqu'à ce que je rentre avec l'un d'eux
Car je connais la sensation
De chercher le fil d'or
Et de ne jamais le trouver
Coming in your pants
Qui ne pense qu'à coucher avec une
fille d'affiche
Affiche d'une fille
Une fille d'affiche
Potrait d'une femme
Affiche d'une fille

Tu sais que tu n'aimes pas ta réalité
Je sais que tu n'aimes pas ta réalité
On ne peut pas fabriquer la vérité
Je sais que tu n'aimes pas ta réalité
Tu sais que tu n'aimes pas ta réalité

2008-02-05T10:02:00.000-08:00

SUPER TUESDAY, in motion toward a metaphorical Pangea.

when porn becomes sex

2008-02-04T14:04:00.000-08:00

Pornography, the commodification of sex and voyeurism, as old as trade itself. We can all agree that pornos are a cultural blemish. I mean, I can admit I watch porn, probably even considered an above-average consumer of it, so this isn't manifesting from some smug hypocrisy. This is self-reflexive.

One of the last remaining vices of mine is my porn habit. To be honest, I'm feeling kinda vulnerable airing this out. But, as myself a microcosm, how can I transition toward sincerity if I'm unwilling to wholly confide in my brothers and sisters? How can empathy be achieved if duplicity still arrests us?

Our root is reproduction, and thus, all of us are binded and founded in sex. The act of sex consummates reproduction, cycling change -- change, the universal foundation of life. The Orgasm is the elementary basis for hyper-reality, was one of my earliest postulations. The prevalence of sex is undeniable, and as the ultimate, the root, the perversification of sex was inescapable, but necessary. Hardcore porn represents this ultimate perversion, degrading us, as well as the act, to objects -- ravaging the humanity of intercourse and substituting it with glossed contrivance and emotional divorce.

To say the voyeuristic commodification of sex will dissipate anytime soon is idealistically naive. But, amateur porn signifies at least a potential movement toward the sincere celebration of sex, the flesh, and the temple of the body. Now, of course, amateur porn has been around the block as long as video porn has, but I'm referring more specifically to sites that are based around submission of amateur sex tapes (youporn, pornotube, etc.) Most of these networks are more preliminary glimpses into what can be, and are still inundated with professional smut, but are intriguing in that many of the videos are just couples experimenting, having fun and simply... having sex.

If we come to finally admit the real place of sex within our existence, porn will no longer be porn. We'll no longer need porn stars, or their fake breasts and disingenuous moans, or tacky high heels. The channel can simply become people having sex, some in a relationship, some in love, some just curious, but all in sincerity. When it just becomes sex, the celebration of love becomes possible.

2008-02-03T21:41:00.000-08:00

barack hillary 2008

make believe yourself

2008-02-03T20:21:00.000-08:00

If you peeped Meaning Over Aesthetic then you're up to notes with self-empowerment through self-commodification via new technology. We're all actors, all constructed, but with sincere expression we can passage behind the camera, behind the lens. And eventually, the eyes will become the lens, and reality will transcend... true cinema verite. There's magic in our eyes.

check out the trailers to Be Kind Rewind by Gondry and Son of Ranbow... or as Son of Ranbow's tagline says, "Make Believe, not war."

my dopelganger's name is sasquatch

2008-02-02T00:37:00.000-08:00

Got a friend who's really passionate about Sasquatch. He's got a Facebook group dedicated to it, seen every special on it, collected every web image available regarding it, etc. I wouldn't say I'm a believer of Sasquatch, but I wouldn't discount its reality either. Kinda have an agnostic approach toward the matter. But, I can formulate a very conceivable theory. Which in my mind, legitimizes that Sasquatch's existence is as plausible as that of any other species, that it has a real place in the universe.

Perhaps, Sasquatch followed the evolutionary path of nature. In contrast, humans deviated, and transitioned toward higher intellect and the development of the mind. Maybe sightings of Sasquatch have only been in disconcerted fragments is because it's coat has taken on chameleonic properties. This, maybe to survive as a predator, or maybe to survive from us. It's even conceivable that Sasquatch has superiorly evolved athleticism. For us, physical ability has become a supplementary attribute. In nature, it's a necessity. We put on shoes. Sasquatch stayed connected to the vibrations of the earth's surface, and thus, its feet continued dilation. Of course, this is a more literal theorization. My friend, Andy, developed a more meta inclination, believing that the evolutionary fork was that Sasquatch followed the path of magic, while we drafted reason.

In any case, we as humans need to rediscover that glimpse of magic again.

results are in

2008-02-02T00:21:00.001-08:00

No go. But, I'm content with the outcome. Going in, I understood what kinda screenplay it was. It's not a writer's screenplay. It's a visual transliteration, or ...literal transvisualization? The script was only a means for myself, a map for a visual narrative so embedded in my conceptual mind that rhetorically fleshing it out seemed superfluous, and consequently more difficult. That doesn't bode particularly well for a screenwriting contest. The only thing that kinda wounds me is that I didn't make the list of quarter-finalists. That irks me a little. But, it never comes easy. And, All I Need still stands on its own as a beautiful time-capsule of early New Sincerity. I hope the winners are deserving, and take this opportunity to create art with purpose.

the rapture: whoo! alright - uh huh

2008-02-01T01:24:00.000-08:00

Oh, sun drenched French girls wont relate to
A frozen girl from the northern state
Dreamin about happy babies kicking ladies in the metro now

And the mirrors wont sing back to..
Chopping your air or you're choppin the line
But you lap that up and laugh back up and smile

Whoo! Alright, lets fall apart and the clock starts here and now
Tick tick tick tick tick tick, ow!

She said your allegory is far too blunt
I said this aint no laboratory, you're the cunt
She said I'm punching the distance, it doesnt rhyme
Or resonate brilliance in its time
But is it lyrical genius or crap rock poetry?
I say the linear drums more sin Patti Smith than me

Maybe the reason we're so uninspired
Cos we're hours late and the bodies are tired,
I think everybody here can agree
That the party aint wank cos the booze is free
No, free spirits aint setting no one's spirit free

Yeah, uh huh, I'm fallin apart and the clock starts here and now
Tick tick tick tick, ow
Wind it up now!

People don't dance no more, (what!)
They just stand there like this, (uh huh)
They cross their arms and stare you down and drink and moan and piss (that's right!)
People don't dance no more (uh huh)
They just stand there like this (yeah!)
They cross their arms and stare you down and drink and moan and piss (ok!)

People don't dance no more, (what!)
They just stand there like this, (that's right!)
They cross their arms and stare you down and drink and moan and piss (ok now!)
People don't dance no more
They just stand there like this
They cross their arms and stare you down and drink and moan and piss

Y'all ready girls? (uh huh, yeah)
Break!

I used to think life's a bitter pill but its a grand old time

the existential dancefloor

2008-02-01T00:06:00.000-08:00

We're seeing self-critical Pop on all channel fronts, but in music the dancefloor's speaking gospel. No doubt a byproduct of the same yearnings that surfaced in the cocaine 80s, electronic-based and synth-laced groups such as Ghostland Observatory, Hot Chip, and The Rapture are feeling the same as New Order, INXS, and Fine Young Cannibals, etc. They're feeling the hollow ends of vampiric nightlife in a hypercapitalist dementia. Except, 20 years intensified.

They're making songs to get dancey to, but at the same time asking: "why are we dancing?" The excess wearing them thin. Running us ragged. The slight reformulation is that these current groups are even more lyrically Pop than their predecessors. Keeping their resentment straightforward and simply read. But are we listening to the lyrics anymore? We should be.

Here are a few tracks that help you take a step back:

Daft Punk: Emotion
Ghostland Observatory: Sad Sad City
Hot Chip: Crap Kraft Dinner
Metric: Poster of a Girl
Moving Units: Anyone
The Rapture: The Devil

screenplay contest results

2008-01-31T20:38:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow's a potentially emblematic day for me. In either regard, actually. I entered a screenplay in the American Zoetrope screenwriting contest about 6 months ago, and the results are being released in about 3 hours. The top 10 get considered for repping, and the winner receives 5 g's and a possible development deal. I could use the skrilla, but I don't need. I'm taking it with a grain of salt. Whatever the outcome, it doesn't deter me. The struggle makes the man. The script I entered was All I Need, my first baby. I wrote it with a very minimalist prose. Tried to keep it concise. For several reasons, it took me about 3 years, on and off, to complete. First were the bouts with compulsive perfection, changing one word, then changing it again, losing an hour on finding the right word. Definitely problematic. I'm gradually coming to grips with that just now. The other thing is... well, I was writing a autobiographical coming-of-age narrative, while I was in the process of coming-of-age. I can see now why auteurs revisit, rather than record. Recording transformation is a draining exercise.

So, no matter tomorrow's result, my arms are open to whatever plan is revealed. It would be nice though. People that know me know I have a great affinity for the Coppolas. All I Need was centrally inspired by Sofia's Lost In Translation. Having the American Zoetrope banner on one of my projects would be dazzling.

ALL I NEED
wake up dreamer, everything's already here.
a collaboration written and directed by Erik Ta

sigourney weaver, future robot voice

2008-01-31T15:18:00.000-08:00

I've had this convo on various occasions with various friends, and the sentiment is always the same: Sigourney Weaver's narration completes Planet Earth. But the only version you can scoop at stores is the one with the British dude narrating. He's serviceable, but Sigourney... she's the Goobers to his peanut butter.

What's the appeal? Maybe its the the motherliness of her voice, a comforting balance of warmth and fortitude. She has the voice of what computers will sound like in the near future. ...like Sigourney Weaver. This becoming is very conceivable. But, it's interesting to me that the potential future compu-voice is the heroine of one of the most quintessential and influencing films of modern sci-fi, Alien.

the pornographic portal of youtube

2008-01-30T14:13:00.000-08:00

Had these vibes for quite some time. If you've perused my blog you might have picked up on my resentment toward Rupert Murdoch and his vast stranglehold on the channels of mass media. Maybe it's the naive idealist in me, but when it boils down to actively calling out names, I find myself caught in between a tentative intersection in my beliefs. I'm always hesitant to use specific rhetoric. War. Enemies. Weapons. To do so would simplify the complexities of our collective state. To those who understand me, you know that I am a man for simplicity. But, some circumstances are not so clear-cut. These circumstances we face are complex, and to polarize would only further fashion perpetuation. Is this a war? Are their enemies? A right and wrong?

To be sure, there are parties more responsible than others. But, we are all partners in this fault the same way we are all partners in the resolution, the redemption. There is no you or me, only us. Are these dangerous times in our existence? Yes. A war? Perhaps only in the mental sense. Ultimately, this is a struggle.

About a month ago, I spent a week in Albuquerque with friends. While there, we stumbled onto something on YouTube. Something that disturbed me on the most visceral level of comprehension. We were watching videos of live shows...Interpol...Rodrigo y Gabriela... While viewing, we switched to full-screen mode. Everyone is familiar that when a video ends on YouTube boxes of related videos pop up, uploads of other videos by the same or corresponding bands. But, in this moment, while in full-screen, that didn't happen. What happened was the entire screen transmorphed into a vast number of floating bubbles approximately thumbnail size. Most were related videos of the prior watched video. But, sprinkled among them were completely unrelated videos such as that infamous impostor Britney Spears YouTube video, Dave Matthews Band, and bubbles with images indiscernible. Keep in mind that these bubbles are thumbnail size, small. As you move the mouse, and say you skim a bubble, 20 more bubbles show up. Some related, but most becoming even less related to the video you began with. The interesting part is that the mouse arrow becomes less accurate in its motions. It begins going at a delayed, drunken speed.

As you skim past more and more bubbles, the amount expands, and the variety of videos becomes more abstracted. We see more bubbles with even less decipherable images until eventually nothing is related to the video you began with watching. As you continue navigating through, the thumbnail-sized bubbles keep multiplying and becoming less decipherable. Some look like amateur video logs, stupid videos of kids doing stunts, squirrels dancing, all the smut of the internet. But, as you continue skimming through them the indecipherable images increasingly become more sexually suggestive. The thing is that they are not indecipherable in the sense you have absolutely no idea what it is, but in the sense that they are built around the idea of suggestion. The bubbles are so small that you can't wholly make out what they are, but big enough for the image to suggest what it might be. Images that look like hot dogs that look like dicks, images that look like meatballs that look like scrotums, images that look like vaginas. When you click on them, they are not pornos in the traditional sense, but are closely sexual and explicit, fetishes, girl licking carrot, and most act as indirect filters to porno sites. If you keep on navigating, it eventually becomes that the universe of bubbles is entirely made up of smut, of the worst of the internet.

As it were, YouTube has created a software that has conceptually replicated the universe. Except, it has degraded it into a cheap game that always ends in perversion. There were a few things that carried significance to me on a strategic level, if I were in their shoes. Firstly, this feature only occurs when you go into full-screen mode, which is when you are most immersed in the site, in the world of YouTube. Secondly, if you have noticed, YouTube has regulated its upload time of videos. My friend's internet connection was high-speed broadband. Super-fast. At home, mine's the same. I remember only months ago that videos would completely upload in a matter of seconds. But now, if you realize, the red of the upload bar has a time-release mechanism controlling it. In addition, to enter this feature, you have to let the video play out. You can't just skip directly to the end. This is significant in a few ways. YouTube, like the Internet, is a portal, a universe in itself. Thus, if you are to control said universe, the ultimate method would be controlling Time. By slowing down the upload rate, this enables YouTube to dictate or at least extend your time on there. Thirdly, when I returned to LA and wanted to show my roommate, this application didn't show up. Thus, this may still be in its testing stages. Now, if it were me, I would test first in 'less-metropolitan' suburbs and cities because on a generalized level, the overall population are probably less keen to the such happenings. This is where I would work out kinks. I would also release it during specific time-slots, preferably during times when people are the least occupied, as to exploit boredom and maximize time-spent. Maybe during certain times in the middle of the night on weekends, or around lunch during workdays, etc. After this application was adequate, I would follow the same process upon expanding to larger cities. Or perhaps, not. Maybe simply target certain cities in certain regions of the world, as to not arouse suspicion. that's still a vastly significant demographic.

I believe that with the Internet we have created the new world, a new reality we were meant to create. This innovation is double-edged. In one aspect, it is a promising signification that existential understanding is mainstreaming. But, also, it scares me. It has conceptually replicated the Universe, and has completely turned it into a cheap game, an ends to perversion. You could lose hours, even minutes and seconds in this virtual trap, and as strong willed as you may think you are, those brief glimpses of smut will infiltrate you. Those Britney Spears impostor videos will find a place in some region of your mind. But, more concisely, it perpetuates the undercurrent of distrust between us, that everyone is stupid and ugly. Thus, our true mission and the greater struggle is making sure this world becomes a romance, and doesn't degrade into a porno.

Google is the cornerstone of the Internet, and Internet, as correlative with new technology, is the ultimate incarnation of hypercapitalism. It is the ultimate manifestation of this economic beast: machinic, unconscionable, devoid of emotion, and above all, inhumane. Is Google conspiring? Are they striving to enslave us all? Perhaps. Possible. But, as the Internet is the ultimate manifestation of capitalism and Google a part of it, the system is only acting as it was made to, without morality. It falls on us to point out and rectify such issues. To resist net neutrality, and fight to make this world a romantic universe, and not let it slip into a porno.

Epitomizing the irony of our existence, in the most fragile juncture in our existence, our greatest threat may also be our greatest, most redeeming ally.

arcade fire: antichrist television blues

2008-01-29T20:55:00.000-08:00

I don't wanna work in a building downtown
No I don't wanna work in a building downtown
I don't know what I'm gonna do
Cause the planes keep crashing always two by two
I don't wanna work in a building downtown
No I don't wanna see when the planes hit the ground

I don't wanna work in a building downtown
I don't wanna work in a building downtown
Parking their cars in the underground
Their voices when they scream, well they make no sound
I wanna see the cities rust
And the troublemakers riding on the back of the bus

Dear God, I'm a good Christian man
In your glory, I know you understand
That you gotta work hard and you gotta get paid
My girl's 13 but she don't act her age
She can sing like a bird in a cage
O Lord, if you could see her when she's up on that stage!

You know that I'm a God-fearing man
You know that I'm a God-fearing man
But I just gotta know if it's part of your plan
To seat my daughters there by your right hand
I know that you'll do what's right, Lord
For they are the lanterns and you are the light

Now I'm overcome
By the light of day
My lips are near but my heart is far away
Tell me what to say
I'll be your mouthpiece!

Into the light of a bridge that burns
As I drive from the city with the money that I earned
Into the black of a starless sky
I'm staring into nothing
and I'm asking you why
Lord, will you make her a star
So the world can see who you really are?

Little girl, you're old enough to understand
That you'll always be a stranger in a strange, strange land
The men are gonna come when you're fast asleep
So you better just stay close and hold onto me
If my little mocking bird don't sing
Then daddy won't buy her no diamond ring

Dear God, would you send me a child?
Oh! God, would you send me a child
Cause I wanna put it up on the TV screen
So the world can see what your true word means
Lord, would you send me a sign
Cause I just gotta know if I'm wasting my time!

Now I'm overcome
By the light of day
My lips are near but my heart is far away
Now the war is won
How come nothing tastes good?

You're such a sensitive child!
Oh! You're such a sensitive child!
I know you're tired but it's alright
I just need you to sing for me tonight
You're gonna have your day in the sun
You know God loves the sensitive ones

Oh! My little bird in a cage!
Oh! My little bird in a cage!
I need you to get up for me, up on that stage
And show the men that you're old for your age
Now ain't the time for fear
But if you don't take it, it'll disappear!

Oh! My little mocking bird sing!
Oh! My little mocking bird sing!
I need you to get up on that stage for me, honey
And show the men it's not about the money

Wanna hold a mirror up to the world
So that they can see themselves inside my little girl!

Do you know where I was at your age?
Any idea where I was at your age?
I was working downtown for the minimum wage
And I'm not gonna let you just throw it all away!
I'm through being cute, I'm through being nice
O tell me, Lord, am I the Antichrist?!

top prospects

2008-01-29T19:56:00.000-08:00

Leaf follows me around like he's a ghost. He tries to persuade me that when a person dies he doesn't take on the appearance at his exact moment of death. For example, he says, "Like if you get a chainsaw to the face... Not even." It's when you are your truest self right before you pass.

I ask him why he's still chillen around here. He shrugs, "I was too cool", but then admits, "I hadn't grown up yet. My truest self wasn't truly me yet". He's been given some more time to do so. But not too much. He compares himself to a rookie 1st round quarterback, "There's a game plan. I'm startin to understand my role. I'm almost there."

new sincerity

2008-01-29T13:20:00.000-08:00

here's another throwback treat, the very first proposition I chalked up on New Sincerity circa late-Fall 2005...

The New Sincerity is the cultural and philosophical movement that is taking root and follow postmodernism. It is an age of compromise that negotiates between the two significant movements prior to it, modernism and postmodernism.

Within modernism it was believed that through science the answers that we sought to find could be found. The Enlightenment gave emphasis to reason and the new wonders of scientific explanation. Nature was a hierarchical system that could be deciphered into a logical, linear structure. In this context, the Enlightenment and modernism was an era that empowered the rational human mind. We are beings that have an inherent tendency to problem solve, collect information, and delineate status structures. Modernism gave us the confidence that through the developments of science we could answer all questions and know concretely our place here. In this sense, we felt not only empowered, but as if we had divine purpose to answer these questions and improve society, modernize. The term 'modern' or 'modernity' is defined as having a conscious understanding of time as ever-shifting. Basically, it is an understanding of a past, present, and future. In modernism, our purpose was to gather the necessary information and knowledge in building toward Utopia. However, as reason and the powers of science became predominant, art was left vulnerable to questioning. What is art? How is it defined, constructed, scientifically criticized?

With postmodernism, our collective empowerment of the rational human mind was deflated by the discoveries of Einstein, Plack, and modern science. The feeling of divine purpose was blunted as many of the answers we thought we knew were invalidated. So, with this came a decentralizing reaction. Nature and our place within it are naturally chaotic and there are no concrete answers, only the illusion of such. This new perspective deemed that there were no true answers and thus, there is nothing that is true or sincere or real. Everything down to the last grain of an idea is constructed, contrived. In accordance, with this, if there is no Great Truth and we have no ultimate equation to solve, what is left to be done? We have no purpose, why should we care about the improving society when the concept of improvement itself is unreal? Everything is socially constructed, ideas of morality and values have no true definition, have no true place. Everything was still in question, but we had no answers, the search deemed futile. We became skeptical of, ourselves and each other, and because of our collective letdown, cynical. In modernism, we may have had foolish pride and ignorant arrogance, and in any case, when that pride is debased, cynicism and angst will surely manifest. In postmodernism, sarcasm and a sense of lofty intellectualism arose. We were too smart, or perhaps, too scared of feeling foolhardy again to search for true meaning or anything infinite, using instead sarcasm to veil ourselves from vulnerability.

This leads me to New Sincerity. As beings that strive for status (in the most broad sense), living in a condition of purposelessness, stagnation becomes quickly uncomfortable. We yearn for direction and purpose. we want meaning in our lives, and the mundane existence of not having such is something that wholly contradicts us. New Sincerity has its roots from the circumstances of 9-11. In this moment when our nation fell victim to a devastating reality, we united with a common empathy for one another. This is where the seeds of New Sincerity were truly bore, put into motion. We began our transition from an aggressive society to one more sensitive. In this way, New Sincerity grows from the depraving irrelevance of postmodern esteem, or lack thereof. Yet, it also understands that the righteousness of modernism and the emphasis on rational mind as sole guide was also problematic. Yes, perhaps we may never find true answers, but that doesn't mean searching is a lost cause. This is an age of compromise in which both of the previous movement's experiences are coalesced. It is a cautious optimism. It is our yearning for genuine meaning in our lives.

New Sincerity privileges non-ironic human expressions and concerns itself with reemphasizing the concept of beauty in consideration to social construction and aesthetics. I remember after 9-11 many pundits declared that it marked the end of sarcastic humor and in our everyday lives. This is slowly occurring. Many believed that the effects of the millennium would be reflected in Y2K, or technologically, but perhaps, it is 9-11 that is the precursor of Millennialism. Although we understand that there may not be a presiding God, we choose to find our own interpretation of spirituality. And, as religious institutions have gradually lost social credibility, we may yet find true spiritually through amalgamating the truths of all religions. Perhaps, destiny does not exist, but maybe there are forces at work to go along with the individual's will. God is in the individual, and this sense of destiny will guide us to a greater self. There are many factors that interacting and aiding this collective shift, but most important is mass media.

Throughout civilization, art has been the harbinger for social change. What is art? Simply, it is the human expression. The mass media is the channel that captures and disseminates this, and as such, it is the main catapult of the hegemony. Yes, I believe in good and evil, light and dark, and to a greater extent, I believe that this may be a moment in time that will surely exemplify that these two forces exist in unexplainable form. There are forces beyond our recognition, beyond our will that guides us. We are the chosen species among living organisms. We are the controllers of our time here.

I will try to focus my attention on the mass media to elaborate on New Sincerity. First of all, let me preface by saying I will continually reference matters in a biblical context. I am not one of religious background, and have no preferences. In fact, at the peak of my adolescence I was atheist and naively anti-religion. That being said, I will constantly use Judeo-Christian references only because I was raised in a Western culture that manifested such. In accordance with the Holy Trinity, I believe that the number 3 is a telling number, and within the patterns of time and reality, is a significant number in recognizing the context of our future. Thus, there is a three step process in explaining the transitions of our society: the inception, the conflict, and our ultimate redemption.

...I forget if it was Fellini or Gandhi that said it, but in any case, he said that although his perception and writings have changed, that if you return to any of his most early works, the roots are no less different.

The same goes for this piece, which I never quite finished. This reflected me, as well as an early stage in New Sincerity, and as should, I have gained experience and grown. Since I wrote this, the notion that New Sincerity is like the 'New Christianity' has arisen. Which I find now quite interesting on several levels. At its foundation, New Sincerity is the rebirth of faith. New Sincerity is the process, not the result, and as processes go, it is in constant fluctuation and evolution. In many of my past writings, I have correlated 'New Sincerity' with 'The Age of Humanity", but only recently have I realized that The Age of Humanity is the next transition and perhaps, the culminating embodiment.

education

2008-01-29T00:49:00.000-08:00

Institutions of education should be supplementary, not primary channels of knowledge. They should be premised on the foundation of actorship and the performing arts. What is more important than grasping social relationships, developing empathy?

With new media, people will seek out knowledge on their own. The key is such is becoming more entertaining. More contingent on perceptional empathy than evidential abstraction. More visual. First, however, we must as a culture collectively recognize and delineate popular cinema, music and visual media as very credible channels of education and understanding.

Further elaborating in regard to perceptional empathy, our education systems must focus on contextualizing -- on the experiences and circumstances of all the great voices we celebrate. We cannot merely focus on the results, or the unilluminating facts. To teach such so detachedly debases the potential inspiration and knowledge gained when learning about such strong souls.

We must learn people.

meaning over aesthetic

2008-01-26T18:40:00.000-08:00

Something has fascinated me recently. It's been fermenting for some time, but I'm coming to full realization of it. I want to create art that can be done by all. That we can all achieve if willing. As a cineaste, I've always had an affinity for aesthetics -- for production design, for costume design, for filmic texture. Cultivated in the post-MTV hyperreality, we all have a keenness for aesthetics and spectacle.

Since the emergence of digital video, my reservations about it have been consistently stubborn. It seemed so cold and unflattering compared to the warmness and romanticism of film, of which I'd prefer. But, if we're to embody the true romance of our lives, is not the ability to celebrate such through the least flattering visual medium a necessary step in our transition? We have reached a point where nearly everyone can construct great-looking aesthetics in cinema. With the influx of film-school grads and music-video directors, it's become commonplace. Yet, broadly, most lack narrative understanding -- many works stemming from this emotionally hollow and contrived. Furthermore, to achieve this look takes an amount of money and expertise many of us do not have access to, which promotes the privatization of art. If we are all to embody our artistry this can't be. I believe Cloverfield -in its cell phone/mini-cam reportage style- is a promising signification into this transition away from artistic segregation.

The accessibility of digital equipment has opened the possibility for us to all become artists. A thin line, to be sure, but we all have stories to tell. It's a matter of finding sincerity to tell them. As I mentioned, I strive to create art that any person has the capacity to achieve. The New will be my first foray into this. Pointing and shooting. Letting the expressive voice speak without aesthetic cloth, naked. Returning and elaborating on the French New Wave credo. Pop New Wave. Conscientious of aesthetics, but emphasizing and accentuating the story's dynamics. Instrumenting stylistic editing and music video sequencing because these are part of the next progression, but not relying on them. But most concisely, enabling all of us to embody the art that is us.

Here are a few quotes guiding me in the creation of The New:

"People who claim to pursue 'art for art's sake' are unable to make good their claim. There is a place for art in life, apart from the question - What is art? But art can only be a means to the end which we must all of us achieve. If however it becomes an end in itself, it enslaves and degrades humanity."

Gandhi

"Man is a tiny replica of the universe. If two things are naturally associated together in the human mind, which is an image of the 'mind' of the universe, this is evidence of a real connection between the two things in the universe."

Richard Cavendish

branding

2008-01-25T00:54:00.000-08:00

Advertisement may be the most telling precursor for the brimming sentiments of the collective esteem. It carries the capacity to project the unarticulated yearnings of the collective culture. This, because advertisement enables the most basic appeal of trade. It utilizes persuasion. How to sell you. How to scare you. How to entice you.

Along with the longings of the collective esteem, the context of persuasion is ever-changing. Advertisement always has to be a step ahead. In a way, it's the most conniving, disingenuous, and perverse art form. In another, it may be the most apt and championing. To persuade is to understand, to exploit a sense of empathy.

There has been a transformation in the ad world in recent years, especially in commercial advertising. As some of the more contemporary consumer powerhouses are commissioning their campaigns out to trendier ad houses, we see an influx in commercials being made as art. This corresponding with directors such as Roman Coppola, Spike Jonze and Gondry being open to the advertising medium. As a result, we see commercials that are more abstract expressionist pieces having little to do with the actual product. Take the iPOD campaigns for example, they have less to do with selling you the iPOD, and more with reminding you that it's Apple-made.

As the Scientologist call it (worked at ArcLight for a couple months), the smart companies aren't trying to force feed, but rather 'clock-building' -- branding themselves, sustaining for the future. Advertising is unavoidable. Everything can be commodofied. And everything is. Consumer branding is inevitable. Branding is inherent in us. Hello, my name is Erik Ta.

I'm attaching an exemplars below. The first example's of abstract branding. The latter was a commercial by Cisco for their "Human Network" campaign which uses hope, idealism, responsibility, and collectivism as its main appeals, but it's been removed.

the shins: sleeping lessons

2008-01-25T00:01:00.000-08:00

Go without,
'Til the need seeps in,
You're low anymore,
Collect your novel petals for the stem,

And glow,
Glow,
Melt and flow,
Eviscerate your fragile frame,
And spill it out in the ragged floor,
A thousand different versions of yourself,

And if the old guard still offend,
They got nothing left on which you depend,
So enlist every ounce,
Of your bright blood,
And off with their heads,

Jump from a book,
You're not obliged to swallow anything you despise,
See, those unrepenting buzzards want your life,
And they got no right,
As sure as you have eyes,
They got no right,

Just put yourself in my new shoes,
And see that I do what I do,
Because the old guard still offend,
We got nothing left on which we depend,
So we waste every ounce,
Of your bright blood,
And off with their heads,

Jump from a book,
And you're not obliged,
To swallow anything that you despise

paper tigers

2008-01-24T19:41:00.000-08:00

The Dream Team -- the first American Olympic team to be comprised of professional players, and the harbinger for the globalization of basketball. Jordan, Magic, Bird, Stockton-Malone, Sir Charles, Pippen, Clyde, The Adimiral, and Ewing... these were the faces of NBA basketball as the sport transitioned into the realm of hyper-driven media. The success of this ensemble on the court and as an international marketing force foreshadowed the "superstar" generation that emerged to prominence in the decade's latter half.

NBA GMs began building teams around individual talents, superiorly-skilled superstars such as Shaq and Iverson becoming branded faces for entire franchises. This trend continuing into the early millennium as flashy players such as Kobe, Starbury, Steve Francis, T-Mac, etc. gained stardom under the premise that one premier player could carry a team on his shoulders. Many of these branded-superstars had great individual success --incomparable stats, all-star appearances, endorsements-- yet most were unable to have collective success, to consistently lift their franchises to postseason glory. This mentality culminating in the disappointment of the U.S. Men's Team earlier in the decade. With a roster full of world-class talent, America seemed dismayingly frail, placing 6th in the '02 World Championships and finishing bronze in the '04 Olympics. Our best players seemed disinterested in committing to play in the name of our country. Symbolically, the U.S. with all its great talent, became only paper tigers, lacking passion, lacking a heartbeat. We had become a reflection of our economy.

But a transition is happening. Redemption is surfacing. We begin with Kobe, post-Shaq. In the seasons after Shaq was traded, the Lakers were merely mediocre. And Kobe, despite all his tools and talents as the most exciting player in the league, was unable to reverse his team's decline. But in recent years, there have been a few significations that hold great redeeming potential. First was Mike D'antoni. The Dream Team although composed of megastars like Jordan, Bird and Magic, played team basketball. Something lost in the And 1 cross-you-over late-90s. With the continuing internationalization of the NBA, especially with Euro-bred players. Mike D'antoni along with Steve Nash returned Euro-tempo team ball back to America, a basketball concept American to begin. D'antoni composed teams that played in collaboration and with beautiful fluidity. Teams where each player didn't need superior individual skill to thrive, only play within the team's system. The other signification was the unparalleled influx of talent that entered the league starting around LeBron and Melo's draft class. We are currently experiencing a golden age of talent in the NBA. The vastness of talent entering the league is breathtaking.

How is this influx, this golden age in talent significant? It allows franchises to actively build around the team concept. To build for the future. Again, take Kobe and the current Laker squad for example. Kobe is thriving more than ever because of his supporting cast. But more importantly, he is thriving because he believes in the cast around him. Yes, the season is still young, and the Lakeshow was in similar waters last year before degenerating, but the Lakers from last year to now are symbolic of New Sincerity. They are still young, inexperienced, fragile, but full of potential. They have composed this current team from within, letting players mature and develop within the system. Contrastly, look at the Miami Heat and those tragically dreadful Knickerbockers. Instant gratification is a hollow end.

Thus, the superstar generation has redemption in front of it. All the arrogance and false billings that dismantled them early in their careers can be points of reference for a generation with talent-to-no-end. The superstars were necessary to help guide this generation, to expound their experiences and mistakes.

Like Ronny, we're all in the dance.

heath ledger, aloha

2008-01-22T21:13:00.000-08:00

Actors like Heath Ledger only come around every so often. In an industry that publicizes and herds every quasi-talented pretty face into leading man status, Heath rejected starring in hokey, uninspired studio fare. He rejected being a studio cash cow.

He was not merely an actor, but an artist. A student of the craft. A breed in entertainment becoming more difficult to come by. He enabled opportunities for cinema by choosing audaciously diverse roles. He enabled cinematic works that were impassioned to challenge, to explore human expression. He helped to ensure that such works would continue being made. By spurning trite commercial fare, he made a principled choice. Not many in his position do.

He was in a class with Gael, Gosling, and Gordon-Levitt as one of the brightest actors of our generation. He was just barely getting roles tailored for him. Perhaps he coulda been one of the greats. One thing is certain, we've lost a soldier in the good fight.

Brad Renfro, you will be remembered as well. Thank you for The Cure.

moving units: anyone

2008-01-22T12:44:00.000-08:00

Somehow we survive
We don't even try
We don't like who we are but we pretend anyway
Because we're human as such
We long for someone to touch
A little death to escape a shallow grave with a face
Because we're

Anyone
Is there anybody out there
Is there anybody
Anyone
Is there anybody out there
Anyone
Is there anybody

Calling anybody (Is there anybody)

Somehow we collide
We don't even know why
We can't quite comprehend what makes us crawl in our skin
Because we're empty inside
We get no thrill from this life
Consumed by pillars of fire
Convicted by our desire to just find

Anyone
Is there anybody out there
Is there anybody
Anyone
Is there anybody out there
Anyone
Is there anybody

Anyone
Anyone
Calling anybody out there
Anyone (Is there anybody)

masterpieces

2008-01-21T19:20:00.000-08:00

Ambitious cinema provoking change. This blog was also derived from the overall reviewing of Aronofsky's The Fountain and the documentary The 11th Hour. There is an issue that needs to be reconstructed in art criticism, especially in cinema.

Overall, The Fountain received an average review grade of C+, 11th hour received a B-. For the 11th Hour, many reviewers and general moviegoers compared it to An Inconvenient Truth, discrediting it for its similarity to the latter. I understand as humans, we can only articulate what we have experienced. We can only reference.

In art criticism, this manifests in reviews that are many times misinterpretive of the work's true purpose. If you've read some of my earlier writing, I'm for critical review, but it needs to be recontextualized. What is not understood is that films such as The Fountain and 11th Hour are flawed as individual works (although I believe Aronofksy's The Fountain was a masterstroke). But, An Inconvenient Truth and 11th Hour are one in the same. They are for the same change, thus they are brother works, not segmented. Such films are many times invalidated for being too ambitious, for being existentially motivated. Yet I do not believe in art without passion, purpose or ambition. We must remember that these are not individual works, but are part of the Great Work.

As a side note, observe in Sunshine the photo of the Icarus 1 in comparison to the Icarus 2... The members of Icarus 1 wore Hawaii t-shirts and held up their national flags. In contrast, the Icarus 2 carried no such banners, the members clothed in Christmas frock.

an almost real reality-television

2008-01-21T17:20:00.000-08:00

The onslaught of reality television that emerged in the late 90s gave motion to the potential humanization of us on TV, the most currently accessible media outlet. In a median that has traditionally portrayed human expression in perhaps the most contrived, detached, exploitative, and glamorized polarization of all mass medians, the late 90s reality-TV boom was necessary in the transition toward accurate visual media humanizing, and from this, the possibility of true, sincere idealization.

Though still in a exploitative, and many times, mean-spirited sense, late 90s reality-TV showed a glimmer of sincerity -- of relatively unscripted people with real insecurities, flaws, and vulnerability. But, most importantly, it perpetuated our self-commodification and evidenced that we are truly all 'actors'.

With the millennium, the initial onslaught of the late 90s reality boom inevitably lost momentum, inundated in a free-for-all of overexposure and over-programming. The shifting of post 9-11 sentiment effected the platform as well. The heavy reliance on reality shows that were sexy, controversial, and essentially marketed around bringing the worst out of people became generally less appealing. To survive, the reality-TV platform had to adapt. Outside of a few shows that became mainstays, the conceptual median of reality-TV had to be rethought and repackaged for longevity and growth-potential.

This led to reality-TV 2.0 -- the second wave of reality-TV, post 9-11. These shows centered on self-help, self-healing, self-empowerment through self-commodification, and most tellingly, empathy and redemption. Although now detrimental, American Idol was a genesis in this transition. Shows such as Supernanny, Wifeswap, Dancing with the Stars, and even the Extreme Makeover series, were marketed around the empowerment and celebration of individuals. Broadly speaking, the reality show landscape shifted from one that was built on novelty, game-playing, communal drama to one that centered around self-celebration and cultural and familial healing. This credo in programming, (for me) inspired by ABC, continued past the 'end' of each episode and into the real-life of the contestants. For example, Supernanny and Wifeswap. In many of these post-show updates, families have found varying degrees of integration and success after the show. Some families have reverted to their prior ways, some have lapsed, some have embraced their lessons, some somewhere in between, etc. This is paramount because 'program glossification' is abstracted. It shows that change is not sudden. It takes focus, perseverance, effort. It takes moments of failure to succeed. These shows embrace universals, modes of learning, positive domestic philosophies, and enable and encourage active change from within.

This overview is mainly focused on basic TV programming, which is still the most accessed median. Though, cable programming presently carries a large proportion of reality-TV that still rely on the older marketing platform, this dissolution and transition is evident in this median as well. We see that MTV/Viacom has been steadily declining in its ratings, as shows such as Real World, The Hills, Next, etc. no longer pull in viewers like they used to. On E!, most of the reality shows are concreted in irony, which is surely running its course in the cultural pop lexicon.

You may have picked up by now that I'm not a proponent of FOX, news and programming. I believe in destiny and the significations that momentarily reveal and enable destiny. This transition in reality-TV was made possible because of economics. Because hypercapitalism saw an opportunity to capitalize, to exploit, and simultaneously save money doing it. Change comes from negative as it does positive.

We may one day look back and depending on our collective state, guffaw, "their name was FOX... it was right there in front of us." When thinking of FOX, people usually relegate the issue to FOX NEWS, but that is only a microcosm. FOX is more problematic because of their entertainment programming. FOX capitalizes on our perversion, on postmodern cynicism and indolence, on sex, controversy, drama, deflating sarcasm, trusting no one, everyone is out for themselves, on being aggressive and defensive, on arbitrary labels of color, creed, religiosity. To juxtapose, ABC had Supernanny. FOX had Nanny 9-11, which if you watched steeply contrasted the prior in it's solicitude of self-righteous judgment and public shaming. FOX has Moment of Truth. It has Are you Smarter than a 5th Grader, which promotes the machinic, capitalist mentality that remembering and regurgitating historical facts and math equations equate to being 'intelligent'. Watching the NFC championship yesterday (which is the only exception in my boycotting of FOX), I saw something emblematic of what FOX stands for. For NFL and college football (sigh), when the telecast transitions back from commercial to the coverage of the game, on the lower left side there is a robot football player hopping around. Not a real football player. A piece of technology, a drone.

I don't have some sort of stubborn bias toward ABC over other media conglomerates. Who knows maybe somewhere later in our journey, ABC may become the detrimental network and FOX may become serviceable. And if so, I will boycott ABC. To conclude, we are at a juncture of slightly-past reality-TV 2.0, so what is the next progression? I feel CURRENT TV, as an entertainment news template, is on the right path.

2012

2008-01-18T13:08:00.000-08:00

ETA: Sometimes I'm not even sure if this isn't the apocalypse.
Erik: It's not. But it is judgment day.

Postmodern undercurrent, with its deconstruction of modernist idealism and de-emphasis on progress, future-building, has discombobulated our time-space perception. The concept of Present where we could mobilize change and positively effect tomorrow was dismantled and shelved. We were conditioned to never be, to never act, but instead, caught at two pendulous states: yearning for the past or fiending for the next. Instant gratification, as way of compensation for lack of future. Perhaps ADD just a broader reflection of generations cultivated in this space-time-confusion, a product of this strobe-light, postmodern symptom.

One day we will be gone from here. The earth is not binded to us, we are binded to her. The Apocalypse is not a singular cataclysmic event that will extinct us, and leave nature fated. Life will strive without us. The Apocalypse, as a concept, is not literal or political, but a metaphor. It is when the opportunity for us to become a romantic existence and embody our humanity is presented, but instead, we succumb and turn into a porno, a perversion. We will still be here physically, but our humanity will not - those apocalyptic narrative visions of us as drones, zombies metaphorically real.

Many of us understand that we are at a crossroads, but detach from it. The commercial beast perpetuating this disconnect, commodifying it to parody - inhumanly capitalizing on our possible degradation, as it only knows how. Michael Bay is developing 2012 into a blockbuster event. Not inconceivable to see "The end is near. Where will you be? Tune into FOX news for live, in-depth coverage." on billboards.

These are the most exigent moments in our existence. We need to embrace the responsibility we have to ourselves and each other, and understand that, as individuals, we must claim every thought, word, and action we make. Because in these moments our dependence on one another has never been more crucial, or beautiful.

bloc party: uniform

2008-01-16T21:14:00.000-08:00

There was a sense of disappointment as we sped away
Every town now just felt the same
The tear on my cheek just dried up; it wasn't there
All the young people looked the same

'Cause we're so handsome and we're so bored
So entertain us, tell me a joke
Make it long, make it last
Make it cruel, just make me laugh
We can't be hurt, we can't be hurt

Did you forget your blues on the weekend?
The internet will keep us together
MTV taught me how to sulk and love nothing
And how to grow my hair long

'Cause we're so handsome...

Why do you go picking fights that you'll lose?
So why do you go thinking thoughts that are above you?
'Cause I was brave, intelligent; I could have been a hero
No-one can be trusted under the age of fourteen
...my joy and pain is relative
I've gotten so good at lying to myself

Oh!
Well my pain and honour is used up
Oh! Oh! Oh!
My guns are rusted

So when're you gonna realise
Those are not your wrongs to right?
Have another life, have another...

I am a martyr, I just need a motive
I am a martyr, I just need a cause
I'm a believer, I just need a motive
I'm a believer, I just need a cause

We're finding it hard to be alone
We're finding it hard to break the mould
We're finding it hard to excite myself
We have nothing at all to say

Uniform

There was a sense of disappointment as we sped away
All the young people looked the same

of montreal: the past is a grotesque animal (acoustic)

2008-01-16T21:04:00.000-08:00

the past is a grotesque animal
and in its eyes you see
how completely wrong you can be..

the sun is out
it melts the snow that fell yesterday
makes you wonder
why it bothered
i fell in love
with the first cute girl that i met
who could appreciate Georges Bataille
standing at a Swedish festival
discussing "story of the eye"..

it's so embarassing to need someone like i do you
how can i explain?
i need you here
and not here too..
how can i explain
i need you here
and not here too

i'm flunking out, i'm flunking out
i'm gone, i'm just gone
but at least i author my own disaster
at least i author my own disaster
performance breakdown
and i don't wanna hear it
i'm just not available

things could be different
but they're not...
things could be different
but they're not

the mousey girl screams "violence, violence!"
she gets hysterical
cause they're both so mean
and it's my favorite scene
the cruelty's so predictable
makes you sad on the stage
though our love project has so much potential
but it's like we weren't made for this world
though i wouldn't really wanna meet someone who was

do i have to scream in your face?
i've been dodging lamps and vegetables
throw it all in my face
i don't care-
let's just have some fun
let's tear the shit apart
let's tear the fucking house apart

let's tear our fucking bodies apart,
let's just have some fun

somehow you've red-rovered
the Gestapo circling my heart
and nothing can defeat you
no death, no ugly world
you've lived so brightly
you've altered everything

i find myself
searching for old selves
while speeding forward
through the plateglass of maturing cells

i fed the unraveler
the paw hellion
but even apocolypse is fleeting
there's no death, no ugly world
sometimes i wonder if you're mythologizing me
like i do you
apologizing me like i do you

we want our film to be beautiful
not realistic
see me in the radiance of terror dreams
you can betray me
you can, you can betray me
teach me something wonderful
crown my head crown my head
with your lilting effects
project your fears onto me
i need to view them,
see there's nothing to them
i promise you there's nothing to them

i'm so touched by your goodness
you make me feel so criminal
how do you keep it together?
i'm all, all unraveled
but'cha know
no matter where we are
we're always touching by underground wires

i've explored you with the detachment
of an analyst
but most nights
we've raided the same kingdoms
and none of our secrets are physical
none of our secrets, are physical
none of our secrets, are physical now

brother sister partner lover

2008-01-15T22:48:00.000-08:00

Buddha, Jesus, Krishna, Muhammad, Moses, Zoroaster. These were messengers not because of his own talent, but because he recognized such in his fellow man. He saw the potential in his brother. Of what he is. Of what he can be. Which is the greatest gift of all.

Here's a Great Truth from the Bahá'í faith. Progressive Revelation.

Bahá'í notions of progressive religious revelation result in their accepting the validity of most of the world's religions, whose founders and central figures are seen as Manifestations of God. Religious history is interpreted as a series of dispensations, where each manifestation brings a somewhat broader and more advanced revelation, suited for the time and place in which it was expressed. Specific religious social teachings (e.g. the direction of prayer, or dietary restrictions) may be revoked by a subsequent manifestation so that a more appropriate requirement for the time and place may be established. Conversely, certain general principles are seen to be universal and consistent.

We are Infinity. Infinity is us. We are all each other's prophets. Some of us just haven't recognized it yet. But we will.

interpol: not even jail

2008-01-13T19:07:00.000-08:00

I'll lay down my glasses
I'll lay down in houses
If things come alive
I'll subtract pain by ounces
Yeah, I will start painting houses
If things come alive
I promise to commit no acts of violence
Be it physical or otherwise
If things come alive
I'll say it now
I'll say it now
Say it now
Oh I'll say it now
Cause I want it now

When personality is scar tissue
It travels south with this use
I'm subtle like a lion's cage
Such a cautious display
Remember take hold of your time here
Give some meanings to the means
To your end
Not even jail

We marshal in the days of longing
We tremble like anyone's children
And wink towards the fire
I am erring on this side of caution
Betraying no other symptom
But girl you shake it right
I will bounce you on the lap of silence
We will free love to the beats of science
And girl you shake it right
I'll say it now

Oh but all this to learn and your hair's so free
Can't you feel all the warmth of my sincerity
You make motion when you cry
You're making peoples lives feel less private
Don't take time away
You make motion when you cry
We all hold hands
Can we all hold hands
When we make new plans

I pretend like no one else
To try to control myself
I'm subtle like a lion's cage
Such a cautious display
Remember take hold of your time here
Give some meanings to the means
To your end
Not even jail

deadpan to pan the man

2008-01-13T17:31:00.000-08:00

There was this deceptive approximation of 'personality' that emerged and that was embellished by the postmodern construction. It was overzealous to please, to be clever, to stand out. A guise of artifice that masked us from being considered 'boring'. In recent years, springing from post 9-11 undercurrent, there's been a segue, a reaction into deadpan humor. To name drop: Apatow, Steve Carrell, Will Ferrell, and perhaps, a sign that deadpan has gone its course, Flight of the Condors , a show so indulgent in deadpan it's plain lazy (I do enjoy the music video segments though. The Bowie one was memorable).

Deadpan reflected post 9-11, dissensitized, drained, numb, and more tellingly, fed up with spiteful-sarcasm overload. Consider even the semiotics of the term itself. But deadpan is giving way to true sincerity, comedy giving way to its truer form, dramedy. It's made possible a transition to a sense of humor where we laugh at our own jokes, at the funny things we say and do. Not have be loud or obnoxious to have our jokes appreciated. To be confident in our distinct comedic senses. To laugh at each other for our silly behavioral moments and idiosyncrasies, and not try to trump them with sarcastic rebuttals. Which are cheap and bland anyways.

Steve Carell, at his best, is a pioneer toward the comedic sincere. Dan in Real Life glimpses into this potential. Unfortunately, the marketing, especially the trailers, were unable to showcase the subtlety, tenderness, and charm of the film.

Pan is alive. Peter that is. Consider the comedic giants that arose in the 80s (Chevy, Murray, Murphy), and those of today (Carell, Ferrell). The prior, smartasses. The latter, you might say, dumbasses, but more specifically, naive, mislead, filled with childlike wonderment waiting to escape from this postmodern construct of 'adult'. Recommendations: Forster-Helm's Stranger Than Fiction, McKay-Ferrell's Talladega Nights.

Pan is still alive. He never left.

like, so real

2008-01-13T01:06:00.000-08:00

We don't give a Fuck... Fuck that Shit... Fuck the world... I'm down... what's going down?... over-analyze... give me brain... give me dome... give me head...

These phrases manifested from the postmodern undercurrent, apathetic and cynical. When considering the state of the collective esteem, the semiotics of rhetorical construction are pressingly relevant. Semantics are vital.

There is no 'we' in 'don't give a fuck'.

Postmodern deconstruction diluted the signification and meaning of word. To name a few: artist, musician, music, art, talent, genius. These thrown around without consequence or responsibility by the commercial beast, exploited to the point where their significance becomes indistinguishable.

This being said, a rhetorical signification that we are transitioning, coming-of-age, is when superfluous tag-ons such as 'like' and 'so' are abstracted from our daily rhetorical expression. With postmodernism, it was no longer 'real'. It was 'like' real.

With sincerity, everything is, simply and profoundly.

2008-01-12T14:37:00.000-08:00

With the privatization of American governmental politic, the government is merely an accessory, a cloak for a greater concern. A scapegoat device the hegemony uses to shield itself. The most stressing matter is the conglomerate, but more specifically, those of mass media.

As art is the harbinger of social-constructional change -art essentially being human expression- mass media, which captures and transmits this expression, is therefore the primary influence of mass culture. It is the prime means for the hegemony to maintain its control, and the primary channel we need to focus on for change to truly occur.

the soliloquy of tree rollins

2008-01-12T13:03:00.000-08:00

Another flashback...

Before this generation he was Tree Rollins, a former player-coach for the Orlando Magic in the 90s.

But now, he is here, stripped from the lushness of Fall, naked. Soon to be dying in the middle of another remiss apartment complex. Boxed inside the concrete labyrinth.

His favorite film was Being There.

Before he moves on to his next being, he chooses to express his experiences as a tree to the algorithms of space. It is worth passing on. There where times he departed without passing anything on. But in this incarnation, he has finally learned, finally embodied his vessel.

"World!" he proclaims, "In the unmarked bookends, our fathers and mothers are our brothers and sisters. Our children. Our teachers. Our students. Our partners. Our lovers."

With that, his movement begins toward elsewhere in here. Leaving behind friends that he may not see as trees again, but knew he would see again. And in that next moment, it may be them saying goodbye. If so, he would reply, "Aloha!"

dream log: the train station

2008-01-11T21:11:00.000-08:00

I had this dream somewhere around 2 years ago, so contextually I was at a different stage than now. But since it was written down, might as well post it.

It begins with me getting caught stealing. In this case, trivial DVDs from a display in some bootleg LA electronics store. A female employee, Mexican, sees me, I get nervous and to cover my malpractice, I approach her, "I found these on the ground." I hand them to her, as she stares skeptically. I tell her I want to look at some camcorders, but she leaves. I know she's leaving to tell a superior about it. I panic inside, desperately trying to stay face. The manager walks over, and I can already sense he doesn't believe me either. I keep repeating my alibi, "I found them on the ground. This is ridiculous. I just wanna buy a video camera." The woman leaves to check the surveillance footage, and I know this is it. So, I confess honestly to the manager, "Look, I did take a couple DVDs from the display. I just wanted to burn Entourage." He smiles, "It's not a big deal. Let's go tell her."

We go down an elevator, exiting and passing through a dark, damp hotel room. A Mexican kid near my age rushes up, and starts badgering the man. I'm not sure about what. But I feel threatened by him. He might distract the manager, and this predicament won't get cleared up. The kid leaves. We continue into another room, even darker than the one before. A woman is having sex, only the dim glow of television images sheds any light. The surroundings change, becoming smaller and more claustrophobic. My eyes race trying to establish a sense of space. It's a squalid, dank bathroom, the types you see in Asian horror cinema. The woman having sex becomes an attractive, but disfigured Japanese girl. The manager looks to me, "do you want to have her?" And all his virtue disappears. I attempt to barter with him, saying I'll work 3 hours for him, scared of his possible underground operations and what he might do. Suddenly, we both sense an impending danger and the setting transmorphs into an elementary school that resembled one I went to. A masked man, unnervingly void of emotion, emerges and pursues us down the hall through the puzzle-like administration offices. Somewhere as I run for cover, sanctuary, my little brother appears, and I swoop him up, and keep running. He's heavy, but I would never leave him behind.

We soon make it to this terminal, a train station. We catch our breaths, a moment of peace. The people here seem unaware that anything has happened. But, we still have a sense that we're not completely safe yet. A fortune teller, diagnostician, calls us over to read our fortunes. He chooses to read my brother's fortune first, gathering that there lies a strong presence within him. I ask him to read mine. He responds, "there is nothing." I'm unconvinced, a little wounded, "Are you sure? Last year I was something." He looks again, and a curios glimmer strokes his eyes, "You are the Mingus." I'm confused what he means by this. He's not sure himself. I ask him what my brother and I are together. But, before he can answer, screams burst out, everyone scattering for their lives. Another creature coming to hunt us down. This one more vicious. We run until we find a room. This one with people sitting inside. It has an aura of homeliness. We barely make it in, squeezing through the fast-closing door. It feels safe here. the lock on the door seems strong, solid. As we enter, I feel an undeniable attraction overcome me, this celestial woman drawing me toward her. She is the Mother of these survivors, their guide. I sit down beside her and she talks to me, perhaps recognizing the spiritual strength I carry. The entire conversation is expressed, emoted, not articulated. I tell her about my transformation from aggressive to sensitive. Still bothered by my fortune I confide, "I don't understand how my little brother may possess more power than me, he's part of the Internet generation." She touches my soul with her eyes, smiling. Comfortingly as possible, she says, "the future may not be how you want it to be." I respond, stubbornly, arrogantly, yet also understanding this possibility, "then I'll make it be." She looks deeper into my eyes, protectively, "if you hold on too tightly to this ideal future, your walls will fall down." I tell her I'm willing to die alone. I'm willing to sacrifice that if its necessary. She strokes me, and the sincerity of her touch soothes all my feelings of anxiety and frustration. My tears, repressed for so long, all cathartically released. She embraces me, and in that moment I feel like I'm cared for, someone understands my torture, my loneliness, and that I am only a child trying to be a man. She kisses me with motherly caress, peering into me like she's never seen so much of this in a single entity - it's a moment of unrequited attraction, love.

my body is a temple

2008-01-11T19:53:00.000-08:00

As sports, similar to advertisement, is one of our most revealing precursors to our transition, the Steroid Era and subsequent fallout of the Mitchell investigation brings great promise to our direction. The "Chemical Era" is subsiding to the natural state. One that celebrates the body, untainted, and thriving because of it. The Steroid Era came about during the height of postmodern perversion, driven by hypercapitalism. Corrupting our bodies, betraying ourselves and our ability, and taking a cheap shortcut. Our figures and the resulting production becoming grossly exaggerated, distorting the human reality.

Yet, with this fallout, we will find that the body when believed in, can achieve even greater results. To be sincere with our bodies and our ability is the next progression, the truest progression. This move toward the temple of the body coincides with our culture's newfound and rising interest in exercise and health. Although spawning from a superficial, self-involved manifestation, the result will be Real. This deconstruction of the "false body" will trickle into the sphere of plastic surgery and any sort of chemically-based body enhancement. The natural, the sincere, is and always will be the most beautiful.

familia

2008-01-11T18:51:00.000-08:00

There are patterns and truths that are part of Nature's plan. The family is one. We aren't all afforded the benefit of that ancestral family structure, father and mother. I fortunately was, and even though there's an intrinsic truth to the dynamic balance of masculine/feminine in raising a complete child, families come in all variations - masculine/feminine no longer entailing male and female. Gender identity, the past. The concept that the physical act of sex consummates the concept of love plays a problematic role in this distortion of family and relationship. As is the concept of monogamy, or rather changeless monogamy. We can have multiple lovers throughout the course of our life. If we weren't bound by this sexual fallacy, many of us would experience the serendipity of having several soulmates in his or her lifetime.

Back to where I was, the family structure. This structure is Nature's aiding platform, its guiding hand in our personal journey to becoming who we are meant to become, to becoming real. As humans, we need reference points. We strive on association. This is how we construct and learn. When we are born, we have our family. For better or worse, our first reference to understanding what a human is. Family enables us to relate. It gives us that foundation to begin building and discovering our true self. As we mature into adulthood, we are able to unrelate, to be comfortable alone, to be comfortable in silence and at one with ourselves. Once this great work is achieved, we are at 2 - one and everything.

the new

2008-01-11T18:05:00.001-08:00

From Ratatouille:

In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and themselves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that in the grand scheme of things the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something. And that is in the discovery and defense of The New. The world is often unkind to new creations. The New needs friends... In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau's famous motto "Anyone can cook". But, I realize only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not anyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.

-Anton Ego, food critic

When I first saw Ratatouille in theaters, this quote stood out and I truly appreciated it. Then, I rented it on DVD to watch with my younger bro. This was about 2 months ago. At the time, I had again rediscovered Interpol's Turn On the Bright Lights, but on this go around the latter part of the album, especially The New. I was in the process of developing an abstract short film, a project definitively my most ambitious and sincere to date. I settled on naming the project The New because it so simply captured the essence. But I was still lost on it. I had all these fragmented concepts on the tip of my mind's tongue, but couldn't confidently grasp how to approach creating The New. But, in an moment when I only needed a glint of empathy to continue persevering, this quote from Ratatouille reiterated the struggle of "The New", and gave me that reassurance I needed. There has never been coincidence, only signification of destiny.

I still haven't begun constructing The New, but starting this blog was mainly for building and elaborating on concepts for it. So, in a way I have, and in a way "The New" has led me to this blog.

One last thing to chew on in regards to the quote, the contemporary saying, "everyone's a critic." -- which was derived sardonically, but is meant for sincerity.

arcade fire: my body is a cage

2008-01-11T17:51:00.000-08:00

My body is a cage that keeps me
From dancing with the one I love
But my mind holds the key

My body is a cage that keeps me
From dancing with the one I love
But my mind holds the key

I'm standing on a stage
Of fear and self-doubt
It's a hollow play
But they'll clap anyway

My body is a cage that keeps me
From dancing with the one I love
But my mind holds the key

You're standing next to me
My mind holds the key

I'm living in an age
That calls darkness light
Though my language is dead
Still the shapes fill my head

I'm living in an age
Whose name I don't know
Though the fear keeps me moving
Still my heart beats so slow

My body is a cage that keeps me
From dancing with the one I love
But my mind holds the key

You're standing next to me
My mind holds the key
My body is a

My body is a cage
We take what we're given
Just because you've forgotten
That don't mean you're forgiven

I'm living in an age
That screams my name at night
But when I get to the doorway
There's no one in sight

My body is a cage that keeps me
From dancing with the one I love
But my mind holds the key

You're standing next to me
My mind holds the key

Set my spirit free
Set my spirit free
Set my body free

weed cocaine mushrooms

2008-01-11T16:32:00.000-08:00

The 80s -the height of postmodern capitalism, and the impetus for hypercapitalism- conventionalized the concept of drugs merely being a retiring escapism, not a channel for spiritual growth and enlightenment. This misconstruction substantiated by the introduction of Cocaine into the mainstream drug sphere. If weed was the delicate naivete of the 60s, then Coke encapsulates the postmodern capitalist mentality and the subsequent segue into hypercapitalism. Of the primary drugs, it is the most existentially debilitating. You attempt to own Time on coke, perversing the concept of Space in the process. You become fiendish for more, abusive. Cocaine as vampiric as the economic system mirroring it. You speed through Time, but go nowhere, gain and learn nothing.

This abuse is problematic because in our lust we begin equating people to objects, objectifying rather than searching for the potentially transcendent. We render ourselves inanimate. A has a cigarette. B is fiending for a cigarette. B knows A has a cigarette, and wants to see him to get a cigarette. Thus, A becomes a cigarette. The person is no longer real, becoming a means to an endless end. We have them around or get close only for what they have. Addiction is the lowest form, lower than temptation. Completely hollow. I'm uncertain it's even manifested from a true human emotion. Even temptation and desire have passion compelling it.

Everything is necessary to the journey. Every drug, if derived from the Earth, serves a greater purpose. Why would it grow from the Earth, our Mother, if not? Marijuana initiated and enabled the process of existentialization. That said, I believe Marijuana has already played its part in our journey, and that it's now an inhibiting indulgence. Coke, which chemicalized Earth's intention, revealed to us how easily the absolute perversion of our existence can come.

So what is the drug of New Sincerity, of the Age of Humanity? Simple, the sober mind. But, we are not quite there yet, still fragilely in transition. And the enabling drug of this transition is shrooms. I don't mean this in the cheap, exploitative, and deintellectualized act of "trippin out" or "seeing crazy shit" or having reckless fun, or abusing it. If used with purpose, shrooms obliterate this constructed perversion of Time that ensnares us, humbling and liberating us with a beautifully ephemeral recollection of Space. Mushrooms are a part of the Earth not to habitually use, but to be there as a reminder - to remind us of magic, that the trees have a language, that the colors of fire are more vivid than TV screens, and that we all yearn to be friends.

dream log: living memory

2008-01-11T11:42:00.000-08:00

Strange, my most engrossing dreams come after retransmission - when I awake momentarily, but decide to reenter the dream state. I remember those. Probably because their still fresh in mind.

The realm of dreams is an indulgence I'm uncertain I need to bridle. I love living under the sheets. But the dreamworld keeps me too long, and it seduces hours from the real, waking life - a place where change needs me.

Most of my dreams channel 2 emotional narratives: romantic heartbreak and the disturbing macabre. Outside of a few very revelatory dreams, I'm not sure what dreams of mine are recurring. They all seem to posses pieces and elements and variate only slightly, all sharing the same root. Originality is an illusion in reality, so why not so in dreams where truth is more honest?

The world of my dreams has been existentialized for some time. The process of my dreams is cinematic in every sense. I am the auteur of my dreams, always having one foot in the experience and the other observing it. I am always conscious that I am in my dream's story - simultaneously, the puppet and the puppeteer. I'm not sure if it's always been that way, but I only vaguely remember when it wasn't, and I'm not sure even then if it wasn't, maybe just less so. I've gained an understanding of my dreams to influence them, manipulate them, but I don't actively try to. Surrendering to your dreams is just more interesting.

From an early age, I was plagued by very intense nightmares, night terrors. But, I don't recall the last one I've had. I no longer have them. The nearest thing to nightmares I have now are the ones where I lose my vision or hearing. Those ones so visceral and terribly affecting. But most of the dreams leaning toward the macabre I take on with an excited sense of adventure. These dreams usually typified by a binding theme: us as metaphorical vampire/zombie - insatiably lusting. On some, very rare occasions, however, the moments in the dream become a little too eerie, a little to ominously intense for me, and I decide to leave it, abort. I had one of those dreams this morning.

It's a difficult task to articulate certain dreams thoroughly. They live in such a carnivalesque world of reason. A world where the rhetorical carries less sway, and space-time has not been labeled. But I'll give it a go.

I'm living in some quaint, rural place. Stepping out onto the driveway of my one-story, brown-tiled, 60s-style house, I can see the mountain range in the distance. I feel younger, teenaged. The evening is fleeting into night, and a thick, almost paranormal, layer of mist begins to envelope the surrounding area. That same kind of blanketing mist as you might encounter on those certain late winter night drives home in Orange County. I enjoy those drives. They make the city-suburbs seem so mysteriously venturous, like the concrete hasn't quite sucked all the magic from the world yet. Then, the night becomes day, or rather, just is. And the mist has retreated back to the distant mountain range, but again making its descent toward us. I fixate on this picturesque view of the mist and the mountains. This image seeming so overglossed, the colors popping so baroquely like 60s musicals. It seemed so Frank Darabont a la his recent adaptation of Stephen King's The Mist (which I've only seen trailers of) - so overproduced and overstated. Intriguing how fractions of your waking life integrate into your dreamworld, even the most insignificant things. Every brushing piece a detail that develops your life vignette.

As I watch the mist maneuvering and descending closer, I can't turn away this distinct feeling that something is wrong, that that mist signifies something threatening. My dad, who's working on a domestic project in the garage (which is one of those old-school pull-out garages), is oblivious. I express to him this unsettling feeling I'm having, "this feels off, this feels like a Stephen King movie." His reaction gets lost in the dream's shuffle. Probably because he was apathetic about my cautionings. To transition into the interior house, the dream takes a break from the building suspense, and revisits one of my most constant dream-state sub-narratives:

I'm in bed, having a dream within my dream. In this "hyperdream", which ensuingly becomes the dream I make a overwhelmingly profound connection with a brunette-haired girl. But, this dream doesn't feel imagined or manifested. It feels as if this girl and this moment when I met her was a memory forgotten and now reclaimed and remembered. It feels that way, but I'm uncertain which is the case. When I wake from this hyperdream, I am still unsure in my dream if this girl really exists or is only a manifestation of my dreamworld. But, it feels so genuine and palpable not to be real. I try calling my friend, Nathan, to confirm if this event, this moment happened. But I can't get a hold of him. I try dialing several times with no luck. Finally I do, and he confirms her existence as a person, that she is not merely a beautiful concept that I drew up. I feel a refreshing relief hearing this reaffirmation. Then, I wake up.

I wake up, and inevitably I feel the letdown, as it's not the case. She's not yet a part of my life, a part of me. Yet, if the human mind can conceive it, then that is proof of its possibility.
"Man is a tiny replica of the Universe. If two things are naturally associated together in the human mind, which is the image of the 'mind' of the Universe, this is evidence of a real connection between the two things in the Universe."

-Cavendish '67, The Black Arts

So, I reenter my dreamworld, seeing if I can continue the dream, milk it a little more. I am in the house. Nathan is with me, and we are talking about that girl, that moment. At the same time, I am getting more and more uneasy about that unsettling feeling I had earlier. I go around the house making sure all the windows are shut and secure. I beckon my dad to close all the gates that hedge our house. He ignores the request. The texture of my dream's images becomes more bleak, more saturated. My mom is introduced to the dream, running around in a foul mood, trying to straighten up the house. Except, my aunt has substituted in the dream for my mom - an aunt I find too caught up in the cogs of The Machine. Her eyebrows overly-shaped and plucked to clown-like proportion. I try to warn her of the impending threat, but she's too busy making sure everything looks nice. Nathan and I here the scurry of 2 strangers in one of the rooms, and in our startled haste somehow a large ceiling bulb falls and shatters. My mom gets more angry. The strangers turn out to be 2 adolescent White girls, who are there and gone from the dream in a glimpse. This is the only symbolic confusion I have about this dream, what was their purpose? The tone continues to intensify, correlating with my mom's malcontent with the condition of the house. Pillow cases and blankets are eerily configured on the sofa by unknown hands. This spooks me, poltergeist-style. My mom sees this mess and becomes, not disturbed, but more irritated, "Where's your father? Why don't you ever blame anything on him?" There's 4 pictures magnetized on the fridge. One of me, my mom, and my dad. The fourth of a celebrity. She throws a dart at my dad's picture. I contest, "we're only supposed to throw those at the celebrities, not each other." She asks for my father. Another pillow heap has appeared on the sofa. She tosses it all aside. My dad, who has transformed into Iggy Pop, lies there. The space-time of the dream begins warping into a slow, drunken-like pace. Celebrities begin appearing around the house. Their faces and skin decaying and the soul behind their eyes vacant. They inescapably surround us. Hannah Montana circles me, looking like she was buried alive and has risen from her grave. I ask her name, and without life she mutters back, "Hannah Montana." This is when I decide to get the fuck out.