I just stumbled on a Swervedriver song I'd never heard before. It's "Flawed" from 1991, part of an EP I never had.
It's a good tune, has all the stuff I need from Swervie -- namely, a nice, chunky wash of electric guitars. I saw them play their reunion tour in 2008 at Metro, and it was so worth it. They're not dynamic onstage, but they play fully rocking music that just envelopes you. I really hope their reunion tour brought them enough $ucce$$ that they can sling out a new album. Since they never got their due in the 90s, my hope is that they can perhaps bring their own brand of rock to the 21st century, where they properly belong.
Also, as a bonus, here's a studio recording of "She's Beside Herself." Just glow and flow! Awoooooooo!
And one more, a trippy one for my favorite planet, "Mars."
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Drink: Thank You Kindly
Another one from the back of my brain. I can't vouch for it fully, as it's been years. I may need to conduct retesting of these, for mixological rigor...
Thank You Kindly
1 shot Cointreau
1 shot Campari
1 shot Amaretto
2 dashes of Bitters
1 slice of lemon
Pour into a Collins glass and serve over ice and stir a bit and garnish with a slice of lemon.
Thank You Kindly
1 shot Cointreau
1 shot Campari
1 shot Amaretto
2 dashes of Bitters
1 slice of lemon
Pour into a Collins glass and serve over ice and stir a bit and garnish with a slice of lemon.
Drink: Stinking Vicar
The Stinking Vicar was a drink recipe I made from around 2005, maybe 2006, in my first bloggy-blog, one of a half-dozen or more recipes I had there. Sadly, the original formulas are lost to time and space, since I immolated that blog in '06, but here is my rough memory of this one -- keep in mind that I'm drawing from memory, here...
Stinking Vicar
1 shot Cointreau
1 shot Triple Sec
1 bottle Chinotto
3 dashes Bitters
1 maraschino cherry
Pour Cointreau and Triple Sec in a Collins glass over ice. Then pour a bottle of Chinotto over it, and add Bitters. Gently stir. Garnish with a red maraschino cherry.
Stinking Vicar
1 shot Cointreau
1 shot Triple Sec
1 bottle Chinotto
3 dashes Bitters
1 maraschino cherry
Pour Cointreau and Triple Sec in a Collins glass over ice. Then pour a bottle of Chinotto over it, and add Bitters. Gently stir. Garnish with a red maraschino cherry.
Monday, May 3, 2010
Feet Under Me
I got my feet under me again, after the blues this afternoon. I sorted out a writing problem that I'd been wrestling with (that always leaves me feeling frustrated and talentless), so that improved my mood immeasurably.
Kick-splash, kick-splash.
Kick-splash, kick-splash.
Suckage
I'm really bummed out right now. Sigh. Just a lot on my plate (and I'm juggling the plate upon which it's all on, to boot). It's weird, because I'm less stressed day-to-day than I was even a couple of years ago, but I've got far more to wrestle with now than I did, too. I think it's because I know where I want to be, and what I want to do, but it's just incredibly difficult to get there, and so I get daunted and broody sometimes. It's like walking up to the ocean and looking at that matchless mass of wavy blue and thinking "No problem; I'm gonna swim right across it." And I've swum out far enough that there's no shore in sight, and I can feel a charlie horse in my calves and I'm thinking "Oh, shit. Now what am I gonna do?" The ocean doesn't care if you drown in it or not.
Against the depth and breadth of that incredible apathy, it's hard to reckon with the smallness of your will, the paucity of your dreams. And then I think of my little boys in that stormy water, looking at me from their little raft that is our shared world, thinking that I'm Superman, knowing that there's nothing their Daddy can't do, and I don't want to let them down. My little guys. I want to make the best world I possibly can for them. I won't fail them. I may fail myself, but I won't fail them. My little guys. They're my whole life; they're my everything.
I'm tearing up as I type this, just thinking of them. I told B1 and B2 this morning that I was going to make it all right -- that I needed time to sort it all out, but that I would make it better.
Sigh. Deep breath, kick-splash, kick-splash, kick-splash.
Against the depth and breadth of that incredible apathy, it's hard to reckon with the smallness of your will, the paucity of your dreams. And then I think of my little boys in that stormy water, looking at me from their little raft that is our shared world, thinking that I'm Superman, knowing that there's nothing their Daddy can't do, and I don't want to let them down. My little guys. I want to make the best world I possibly can for them. I won't fail them. I may fail myself, but I won't fail them. My little guys. They're my whole life; they're my everything.
I'm tearing up as I type this, just thinking of them. I told B1 and B2 this morning that I was going to make it all right -- that I needed time to sort it all out, but that I would make it better.
Sigh. Deep breath, kick-splash, kick-splash, kick-splash.
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Updates
B1 is 4'6", weighs 70 lbs. B2 weighs 38 lbs. and is 3'6.5." I can (barely) hold aloft both of the boys at the same time!
I managed a bravura toe-stubbing performance this morning, nailing four of my left toes at one magical punting of a piece of furniture (not deliberately, naturally).
My boys still love Seamus and Shamrock, the twin shamrock sock puppets. I did those this morning and both of them just loved'em, were talking to them and playing with them, showing them things, feeding'em Legos and what-not. It's so cute how much they love those. The power of puppets cannot be denied!
I'm still working on the screenplay, driving myself crazy with that, trying to plot it out to perfection, getting it to fire off like a string of firecrackers. I had dreams about it last night, a good sign, like my subconscious working on it and all.
I managed a bravura toe-stubbing performance this morning, nailing four of my left toes at one magical punting of a piece of furniture (not deliberately, naturally).
My boys still love Seamus and Shamrock, the twin shamrock sock puppets. I did those this morning and both of them just loved'em, were talking to them and playing with them, showing them things, feeding'em Legos and what-not. It's so cute how much they love those. The power of puppets cannot be denied!
I'm still working on the screenplay, driving myself crazy with that, trying to plot it out to perfection, getting it to fire off like a string of firecrackers. I had dreams about it last night, a good sign, like my subconscious working on it and all.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Mayday
Happy May Day! First day of May, what can you say?
Big storms flew through here last night, but didn't linger -- Chicago-style, they just blasted through here and were gone in a jiffy.
Big storms flew through here last night, but didn't linger -- Chicago-style, they just blasted through here and were gone in a jiffy.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Unfocused
I'm fidgety and unfocused today. I don't know what it is. I'm just squirmy and scruffy and unsettled. I didn't shave most of this week, so it looks like I'm trying to grow a beard. That might be a funny thing to surprise my family with in July, when I take the boys to North Carolina.
This weekend has another soccer game for B1, and likely registering B2 for soccer in the fall. I persuaded Exene to let B1 not take a fourth season of soccer, as he could give a rat's ass about it, but B2 will be a natural for it, for sure. Exene has that Teutonic fitness mentality that makes me tired just to think of it. I imagine Hitlerian newsreels like this playing in her head when she contemplates athletics, and I try to insulate the boys from the worst of that impulse, telling B1 "It's okay if you don't want to do an activity. Don't just do it because you think you're supposed to; do it because you want to." Which, I'm sure Exene sees as me subverting her Master Plan for Die Kindern, but I'm really just wanting them to enjoy their childhoods -- I value unstructured time highly, think it's a vital component for kids. Lord knows when adulthood comes around, one finds the fuck structured out of one's life!
Anyway, I'm going to sew up the plot for the screenplay upon revision, make sure everything hits when it's supposed to, that it flows well, all that good stuff.
Beyond that, nothing planned. Weather permitting, I may take the boys biking. We'll see.
This weekend has another soccer game for B1, and likely registering B2 for soccer in the fall. I persuaded Exene to let B1 not take a fourth season of soccer, as he could give a rat's ass about it, but B2 will be a natural for it, for sure. Exene has that Teutonic fitness mentality that makes me tired just to think of it. I imagine Hitlerian newsreels like this playing in her head when she contemplates athletics, and I try to insulate the boys from the worst of that impulse, telling B1 "It's okay if you don't want to do an activity. Don't just do it because you think you're supposed to; do it because you want to." Which, I'm sure Exene sees as me subverting her Master Plan for Die Kindern, but I'm really just wanting them to enjoy their childhoods -- I value unstructured time highly, think it's a vital component for kids. Lord knows when adulthood comes around, one finds the fuck structured out of one's life!
Anyway, I'm going to sew up the plot for the screenplay upon revision, make sure everything hits when it's supposed to, that it flows well, all that good stuff.
Beyond that, nothing planned. Weather permitting, I may take the boys biking. We'll see.
Movie: Deadgirl
So, I watched "Deadgirl" last night, part of my recent horror movie filmfest of the past few days, and this one is, by far, the most horrific of the three I just saw. Like squirm-in-your-seat horrific, and also, perhaps, the most classically constructed as a horror story (in the sense of the supernatural leading to the fall of the characters).
That said, it was certainly not a perfect movie, although it was a creative spin on the classic zombie movie narrative (and something I'd actually conceived in the 90s as a story idea, but something I never wrote, because it's just too fucking gross). I'll mention the problems I had with it first...
First, it was too long -- they needed to edit it more tightly. Fewer shots of protagonist Rickie biking around town aimlessly, less time dicking around (pun intended) in the abandoned mental institution. They could've probably trimmed a good 20 minutes off it without consequence.
Second, Rickie (played by Shiloh Fernandez -- there's a name for you) was miscast -- the actor playing him didn't at all convince me as the burnout/loser character he was supposed to be (especially when contrasted with Noah Segan's ghoulish "J.T." and Eric Podnar's dopey "Wheeler" -- those two were perfectly cast and believable in those roles). Fernandez might've come across as weird, but he just didn't fit the burnout/skater/outsider/freak-n-geek character we're supposed to believe he was playing.
Third, Rickie is far too passive of a character in the narrative -- way, way too many shots of him looking on in horror at the admittedly horrific goings-on, or scowling meaningfully at nothing, looking all Walking Wounded. Clearly he's got a lot on his mind, but the story doesn't really give him much to do -- he's perennially railroaded by his out-and-out psychopathic friend, J.T., and rather than really being active in the story, Rickie just coasts along.
I know why they did that -- they wanted Rickie to keep his hands somewhat clean, compared with the horrific hog wallow presented by J.T. and Wheeler. We're supposed to feel some level of sympathy for Rickie, who at least has a modicum of bystanderly compassion in the story, but his half-hearted and half-assed attempts at doing the right thing don't carry much resonance, and since he never really follows through, they are weak, at best. For a protagonist, he's very weak.
Especially when contrasted with J.T., who largely steals the show with his villainy. The wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time, as the primary villain in the movie, J.T. rides roughshod over the story as thoroughly as he does over the other characters -- and that's not a bad thing; it's fun to watch him be disgusting and horrible in a human trainwreck kind of way. Clearly Noah Segan was having a blast playing the flat-eyed teen psycho (oh, and I looked him up -- the actor's a Libra. I figured. Librans always have those doll's eyes).
Fourth, the love interest (sorta), JoAnn (played by Candice Accola), is weakly played in the story, so whatever she's supposed to represent to Rickie is lost by the weak characterization of her, so what ultimately happens to her is lessened -- she doesn't have far to fall, because she (and his relationship to Rickie) is only very barely fleshed out. Again, it doesn't convince or persuade beyond a "Oh, sure, what the fuck?" from the audience.
The plot is what the title says it is -- a couple of high school losers find a zombie chick restrained in an abandoned asylum and make her their sex toy/slave. That's it. And it's plenty fucking horrifying, and if they'd just tweaked the script a little here and there, they'd have really nailed it, I think. It does succeed in being incredibly disturbing, and while it may on the face of it appear to be anti-woman, I think it was more accurately anti-man (or anti-teen boy, anyway) -- because the women characters in the movie (including the zombie Deadgirl) are actually sympathetic, compared with the guy characters, who are all creeps and weirdos (with the exception of ineffectual Rickie, who just manages to wince emotionally now and again, and, at least up to a point, display some modicum of decency).
A few more revisions to tighten the story up, a more sharply-written script (better dialogue and characterizations) and a better-cast Rickie would, I think, have made it a canonical horror movie. As such, it emerges as a horrific movie with a lot of dark promise.
I would advise against seeing it if you are a horror movie tourist -- if you enjoy horror movies, you'll be ready for it (and still horrified), but if you're just a tourist, it'll freak you out for sure. I will say that the gore elements of it are understated, but the implications of what's going on are damned horrific.
That said, it was certainly not a perfect movie, although it was a creative spin on the classic zombie movie narrative (and something I'd actually conceived in the 90s as a story idea, but something I never wrote, because it's just too fucking gross). I'll mention the problems I had with it first...
First, it was too long -- they needed to edit it more tightly. Fewer shots of protagonist Rickie biking around town aimlessly, less time dicking around (pun intended) in the abandoned mental institution. They could've probably trimmed a good 20 minutes off it without consequence.
Second, Rickie (played by Shiloh Fernandez -- there's a name for you) was miscast -- the actor playing him didn't at all convince me as the burnout/loser character he was supposed to be (especially when contrasted with Noah Segan's ghoulish "J.T." and Eric Podnar's dopey "Wheeler" -- those two were perfectly cast and believable in those roles). Fernandez might've come across as weird, but he just didn't fit the burnout/skater/outsider/freak-n-geek character we're supposed to believe he was playing.
Third, Rickie is far too passive of a character in the narrative -- way, way too many shots of him looking on in horror at the admittedly horrific goings-on, or scowling meaningfully at nothing, looking all Walking Wounded. Clearly he's got a lot on his mind, but the story doesn't really give him much to do -- he's perennially railroaded by his out-and-out psychopathic friend, J.T., and rather than really being active in the story, Rickie just coasts along.
I know why they did that -- they wanted Rickie to keep his hands somewhat clean, compared with the horrific hog wallow presented by J.T. and Wheeler. We're supposed to feel some level of sympathy for Rickie, who at least has a modicum of bystanderly compassion in the story, but his half-hearted and half-assed attempts at doing the right thing don't carry much resonance, and since he never really follows through, they are weak, at best. For a protagonist, he's very weak.
Especially when contrasted with J.T., who largely steals the show with his villainy. The wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time, as the primary villain in the movie, J.T. rides roughshod over the story as thoroughly as he does over the other characters -- and that's not a bad thing; it's fun to watch him be disgusting and horrible in a human trainwreck kind of way. Clearly Noah Segan was having a blast playing the flat-eyed teen psycho (oh, and I looked him up -- the actor's a Libra. I figured. Librans always have those doll's eyes).
Fourth, the love interest (sorta), JoAnn (played by Candice Accola), is weakly played in the story, so whatever she's supposed to represent to Rickie is lost by the weak characterization of her, so what ultimately happens to her is lessened -- she doesn't have far to fall, because she (and his relationship to Rickie) is only very barely fleshed out. Again, it doesn't convince or persuade beyond a "Oh, sure, what the fuck?" from the audience.
The plot is what the title says it is -- a couple of high school losers find a zombie chick restrained in an abandoned asylum and make her their sex toy/slave. That's it. And it's plenty fucking horrifying, and if they'd just tweaked the script a little here and there, they'd have really nailed it, I think. It does succeed in being incredibly disturbing, and while it may on the face of it appear to be anti-woman, I think it was more accurately anti-man (or anti-teen boy, anyway) -- because the women characters in the movie (including the zombie Deadgirl) are actually sympathetic, compared with the guy characters, who are all creeps and weirdos (with the exception of ineffectual Rickie, who just manages to wince emotionally now and again, and, at least up to a point, display some modicum of decency).
A few more revisions to tighten the story up, a more sharply-written script (better dialogue and characterizations) and a better-cast Rickie would, I think, have made it a canonical horror movie. As such, it emerges as a horrific movie with a lot of dark promise.
I would advise against seeing it if you are a horror movie tourist -- if you enjoy horror movies, you'll be ready for it (and still horrified), but if you're just a tourist, it'll freak you out for sure. I will say that the gore elements of it are understated, but the implications of what's going on are damned horrific.
Today...
Well, well, well. Another April 30 is upon me. Such a fateful day. 120th day of the year, leaving us a tidy 245 days left in this year. What happened today in history, hmmm?
1789 – On the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York City, George Washington takes the oath of office to become the first elected President of the United States.
1927 – Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford become the first celebrities to leave their footprints in concrete at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood.
1933 – Willie Nelson, American musician
1943 – World War II: Operation Mincemeat: The submarine HMS Seraph surfaces in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Spain to deposit a dead man planted with false invasion plans and dressed as a British military intelligence officer.
1945 – World War II: Fuehrerbunker: Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun commit suicide after being married for one day. Soviet soldiers raise the Victory Banner over the Reichstag building.
1954 – Jane Campion, New Zealand film director
1956 – Lars von Trier, Danish film director
1975 – Fall of Saigon (or Liberation of Saigon from the Communist perspective): Communist forces gain control of Saigon. The Vietnam War formally ends with the unconditional surrender of South Vietnamese president Duong Van Minh.
1982 – Kirsten Dunst, American actress
1789 – On the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York City, George Washington takes the oath of office to become the first elected President of the United States.
1927 – Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford become the first celebrities to leave their footprints in concrete at Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood.
1933 – Willie Nelson, American musician
1943 – World War II: Operation Mincemeat: The submarine HMS Seraph surfaces in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Spain to deposit a dead man planted with false invasion plans and dressed as a British military intelligence officer.
1945 – World War II: Fuehrerbunker: Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun commit suicide after being married for one day. Soviet soldiers raise the Victory Banner over the Reichstag building.
1954 – Jane Campion, New Zealand film director
1956 – Lars von Trier, Danish film director
1975 – Fall of Saigon (or Liberation of Saigon from the Communist perspective): Communist forces gain control of Saigon. The Vietnam War formally ends with the unconditional surrender of South Vietnamese president Duong Van Minh.
1982 – Kirsten Dunst, American actress
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Movie: The Fantastic Mr. Fox
I watched "The Fantastic Mr. Fox" at long last, and enjoyed it, almost despite it being a West Anderson movie. I say that because Anderson's made a career out of dishing out a certain type of ambiance in his works -- trying out-Salinger Salinger, is how I typically put it. Not so much with "Bottle Rocket," but from "Rushmore" onward, he ladles that kind of quirkily patrician kind of world that conjures up the Glass Family that so occupied Salinger. J.D. Salinger's taut style of writing certainly influenced me in the 90s, when I read most of his books, but to see it served up onscreen (albeit somewhat adulterated by way of Anderson) is, somehow, I don't know -- arch?
He must be a fun and/or indulgent director, as he has his usual band of actors who appear eager to work with him again and again (Tim Burton has that same quality).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spCknVcaSHg
Anyway, "...Fox" is fun and enjoyable because while you can't for a moment ignore that it's a Wes Anderson movie, the stop-motion and Roald Dahl source material for it renders it palatable and charming. For example, having George Clooney voice Mr. Fox might seem questionable, since the man is so busy being (or trying to be) Cary Grant Lite that he can't occupy any scene without derailing it -- but since it was just his voice, it lets the character of Mr. Fox come through more than it otherwise would have. Quite the opposite with Bill Murray as the Mr. Badger -- I love Bill Murray, but he kind of overwhelms his character a bit -- you can just SEE Murray in the character so much, which amuses me. Bill Murray is so Bill Murray that even as just a voice, he possesses anything he touches.
The plot of the movie pits the Foxes against three farmers, and it escalates through the course of the story (and, I think, drags a bit in the third act -- I found myself getting a bit fidgety, and being surprised that it's only 87 minutes long -- it felt a bit longer owing to that third act). But it's dryly funny and clever and cute and is a cool effort. My boys loved it and wanted to watch it again and again. I think Anderson was smart to avoid lapsing completely into self-parody with it -- the venue change let him do his thing without it appearing that he was doing his same old thing (and yet, yes, he was doing his same old thing, but I didn't care, because I enjoyed the movie a great deal). The power of stop-motion puppetry! Never, ever underestimate the power of puppets, where kids are concerned!
Oh, and I can instantly irk B1 just by imitating Mr. Fox's call-sign that he does (you can hear it at :04 in the trailer linked above). I do it and he says (in this admonishing, irritated tone) "Dadddddyy. Don't. Do. That!"
He must be a fun and/or indulgent director, as he has his usual band of actors who appear eager to work with him again and again (Tim Burton has that same quality).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spCknVcaSHg
Anyway, "...Fox" is fun and enjoyable because while you can't for a moment ignore that it's a Wes Anderson movie, the stop-motion and Roald Dahl source material for it renders it palatable and charming. For example, having George Clooney voice Mr. Fox might seem questionable, since the man is so busy being (or trying to be) Cary Grant Lite that he can't occupy any scene without derailing it -- but since it was just his voice, it lets the character of Mr. Fox come through more than it otherwise would have. Quite the opposite with Bill Murray as the Mr. Badger -- I love Bill Murray, but he kind of overwhelms his character a bit -- you can just SEE Murray in the character so much, which amuses me. Bill Murray is so Bill Murray that even as just a voice, he possesses anything he touches.
The plot of the movie pits the Foxes against three farmers, and it escalates through the course of the story (and, I think, drags a bit in the third act -- I found myself getting a bit fidgety, and being surprised that it's only 87 minutes long -- it felt a bit longer owing to that third act). But it's dryly funny and clever and cute and is a cool effort. My boys loved it and wanted to watch it again and again. I think Anderson was smart to avoid lapsing completely into self-parody with it -- the venue change let him do his thing without it appearing that he was doing his same old thing (and yet, yes, he was doing his same old thing, but I didn't care, because I enjoyed the movie a great deal). The power of stop-motion puppetry! Never, ever underestimate the power of puppets, where kids are concerned!
Oh, and I can instantly irk B1 just by imitating Mr. Fox's call-sign that he does (you can hear it at :04 in the trailer linked above). I do it and he says (in this admonishing, irritated tone) "Dadddddyy. Don't. Do. That!"
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