07.30.06

GENE HACKMAN

Posted in Glögg Is Life. at 6:35 pm by Gregory

He’s in every film,

Sometimes wearing a towel;

And if it isn’t him,

You get Andie MacDowell

-Robyn “Deity” Hitchcock, “Gene Hackman”

The objective today was, in theory, simple: Get Kula Shaker.

No blessing of the sick, no feeding of the hungry, no adopting dozens of vaguely domesticated predators, nothing whatsoever to make myself (seem publicly to be) a better person. (Ostensibly…) I don’t even do mp3s much, thus no downloading. Kula Shaker has great album art (buzz off; I define an album as “a collection of songs” — the format is irrelevant), thus I wanted the real product, in particular their Summer Sun E.P.

People who live up around the North Sea tend to get very, very excited about The Sun. Me…I do not [I hate this new fad of constantly saying “not so much,” incidentally; it is the new “No worries (mate)”]; but since I’m stuck in a place that’s lousy with brain-blasting sunlight, I figured, okay, that’ll be the perfect soundtrack to this gruelling experience: At least it’ll sound good.

My quest took me into Hollywood. Hollywood is a place that has the dubious distinction of ratcheting up the crazy several notches above most other parts of L.A. County. In other words, if you think it sucks where you live (and you’re probably right), simply go into Hollywood — observe the tall men gradually converting themselves into “females” (or, as I might put it: “Earl…ba-DOING-DOING-DOING, you’ll be a woman, soon…”), note the grody old guy attempting to hawk 1962 nudie calendars out of his roach-infested garage, and waft in the sweet stench of millions of failed and failing dreams as the majority of The Hopeful become The Slaves (and learn to “love” it) — and suddenly, by comparison, your squat and its deafening surroundings seem almost inhabitable.

Almost.

I went into Amoeba (an enormous, mostly-used-and-thus-more-profitable media store, the owner of which his preferred cabbie told me lives in a very, very large house in the Hills) — and going in there feels very much like going into a buzzing hive in which the drones wear Ramones t-shirts — and I landed my catch. I like Kula Shaker. From hair-metal in the late ’80s to grunge in the early ’90s, I became so utterly turned off by contemporary pop music that I nearly ceased ingesting it altogether. Plus all the singers I really liked — Michael, Stuart, and especially Freddie — abruptly became dead. Many other talents that I really liked simply vanished for what seemed like years (because it was). I know this sounds odd (mock away), but to me it felt like a conspiracy to make me hate living in the pop-culture world. It worked. Shit Wave, you could call it — and it’s still out there. Meanwhile, I kinda liked Blur, sorta noticed Oasis, refused to let “college station” KCRW control my brain, and mostly felt painfully adrift and lonely. Why did most “singers” sound like they were puking up their intestines? Why were people giving them money to do this? Meanwhile, on the relentless, milquetoast end of the spectrum: Why didn’t anybody assassinate Dave and Hootie and Lenny? (It’s hardly a wonder that the pop music industry is bankrupt and now makes most of its money reselling its back-catalogue.) Me, I salvaged the decade by going to one heck of a lot of Robyn Hitchcock concerts. (If you didn’t go, you totally missed out.) Saw Zap Mama once, too, back when they seemed like a real group. Things like that. But mostly: Yuck, sick fish, throw it back.

Remember Swing: Redux? Jesus, what a retarded decade.

Kula Shaker are cool, though, and even though I’m hardly “current” for saying this, I now enjoy the comfort and security of having three of their albums to play. Well, two albums and this E.P. On CD. These were released during the ’90s, but miraculously they do not suck at all. It’s adventurous and imaginative pop music. Bless them.

The thing, though, is this: Why the hell am I writing in this thing again? Didn’t I say I would stop? Isn’t this hypocritical?

In reverse order: Yes; Yes; and Because — like the rock star who swears up and down that he/she Will Never Tour Again, That’s It, This Is Absolutely The Last Time, etc., I too can cool down and re-join what passes for humanity these years. I feel a terrible sense of doubt about the value of “blogging” (WHY are you reading this? You could be doing ANYTHING else! You could be making a log cabin out of popsicle sticks, or tweaking a nipple — the cab-driver’s,. your own, anybody’s!), however, as the format exists, and I have access to it, sometimes it ends up being the most appropriate place to deposit a few unruly thoughts. In my estimation, it’s a sad cyber-place, really (a bunch of overprivileged brats tapping on their computers to see Who Said What About Whom while the rest of the world carries on killing itself).

But whatever. I’m back on here, for the moment, for three main reasons: 1. This software is kind of like being handed a gardening shovel: You dig a little shit, maybe a flower will grow; and 2. I’ve gotten back into the groove of realizing that it doesn’t matter doodley-squat what I write about, or when, or for whom, or whether the media mavens approve or not (Up. Theirs. Hard.); and 3. Something really funny happened today.

After my shopping experience in the hive, I decided that relieving my corporeal body of some liquid waste would be wise, and since the hive isn’t even courteous enough to provide a public lavatory for its many, many, many Ramone-drones, I opted to wander across the street to The Arclight Cinemas.

The Arclight Cinemas are an absolutely terrific place to rid yourself of liquid waste. Four stars, highly recommended. If you’re lucky and/or patient, you can even have your own private room in which to do this.

Anyway, as I strode out into the blinding glare with my Kula Shaker and a glorious Kinks maxi-single for a big buck-ninety-nine, I quickly became acutely aware of a phenomenon which literally ALWAYS occurs any time you suffer the misfortune of going into Hollywood, i.e.: The way in which you would like to go is BLOCKED.

Those stern-faced jerks in SECURITY shirts (in no other city in the whole world have I ever seen such employees take their jobs so deadly seriously) were standing there with their toned forearms menacingly crossed. Between them, signs: SIDEWALK CLOSED AT THEATER. A crowd of a few hundred people had gathered, hither, yon, across the street.

As the kids say these days: WTF?

I asked.

Movie premiere. At the “historical” (four decades old) Cineramadome. In the middle of a Sunday afternoon.

Barnyard. Yet another movie featuring extremely ugly computer-rendered animals farting on each other and whatever. Money. God-damned Hollywood.

The Autograph Hounds were out en force, with their binders and bags filled with pictures of celebrities. I asked: “Who’s in it?” Sam Elliott, came the hopped-up reply. And Kevin James!

I don’t have a damned clue who “Kevin James” is (nor do I care — although I find out as he eventually appears, and he’s shaped like a fireplug, dresses like a teenager, and has a very shapely Asian wife; thus, somebody’s getting paid), and suddenly I’m standing there with The Great Unwashed, trying to figure out why anyone would bake in that ugly heat for the priceless opportunity to catch a glimpse of Sam Elliott.

None of this has anything to do with my afternoon’s Secondary Objective, so I decide to find my way toward relief via a more circuitous route. As I turn to escape that particular burst of madness, the shouting begins:

“Andy! Andy! ANDEEEEE!!!”

Okay. Fine. I’ll look.

I return from around the corner and find myself face to face with Andie MacDowell. Mean-spirited security assholes flank her as she cheerfully signs photos of herself for men who will then turn around tonight and sell them online. (I wonder: Is there a 401K with that job? Dental?) To be fair, there are a few children present as well, but mostly it’s middle-aged guys dressed like children and brandishing Sharpies, plus a few women who make the best of Goodwill, and a couple of obvious Asian tourists wielding digital cameras. (Amazingly, I didn’t have mine with me, so you get to enjoy this vital treatise purely via verbiage.)

To be unfair (I could say nice things about her, but how original would that be?), I wasn’t particularly impressed with MacDowell. I realize that for years we have been sold her reputation as this total romantic sweetie, a real Actress To Adore and all that, and truth be told, at least she’s not as big a joke as Meg Ryan. She has an okay facial structure and large bleached teeth, but otherwise I found everything about her (including her hair and especially her cornball accent) to be totally mediocre, and if you stuck a Ramones shirt on her (Attention, Producers: If you do it before she hits 50, that’s guaranteed money in the bank!), I wouldn’t have noticed her in Amoeba even if she attempted to steal my Kinks record.

Someone in the crowd — gender difficult to determine — cries out: “I love you, Andie!” — to which the aging thoroughbred replies, “I love you, too!” (without looking up to see who it is).

To put the record straight, I’m okay with MacDowell’s existence, generally, and do not bazooka-vomit at her movies, however I may as well finish off this point gracelessly and state that, in person, she now looks like a very expensive, full-scale action figure of herself. Her skin has lost its elasticity and fits very snugly on her face and skull, creating a stretched, crinkly, translucent effect which reveals the veins in her temples and forehead — rather like a science-fiction monster or the women one encounters at The Ivy.

That’s what I noticed, anyway. One of the Hounds was going apeshit about her beauty, and I said (loudly enough for her to hear, although she probably didn’t) that Hugh Grant is significantly prettier than she is.

Hey, call ‘em as you see ‘em.

I wonder whom she blew to launch her career.

Oh, speaking of which, on the return-trip from enjoying the Arclight’s dazzling toilet facilities, I happened upon the same chunk of crowd, hooting and hollering for Courtney Cox, who is also in the movie. I am proud to say that I have never seen a full episode of Friends (another plague of the ’90s — why not just have friends?), and consider Ms. Cox irrelevant to a degree that makes MacDowell seem like Harriet Tubman.

Incidentally, today is the 59th birthday of that insane thing that accidentally became the “governor” of California. His daughter works in a clothing store. I wonder why.

Getting back to the narrative: In between, en route to Lavatory Heaven through the bowels of the Arclight’s parking structure (the word “labyrinthine” is not appropriate because the place isn’t, but it is the sort of word that some of my former “editors” would feel inclined to shove in there because they’d think it sounds “smart” — maybe they heard it once in a song or, like, something), I encountered eight grown men (or, at least, large boys) dressed as cows — males, as cows — complete with rubber udders (thank heaven for small graces) not affixed over their groins but rather over their no-doubt trendoid adamantine abs. All eight of the cows were wearing sunglasses. I passed them without comment, noted inside the cinema’s massive lobby a display-case featuring the red one-piece swim-suit used in the latest movie by “Woody” Allen Konigsberg (a boring red one-piece; wow, thanks; is the industry’s self-importance really that severely out of proportion with reality?), Took Care Of Business, and then examined the crowd from a couple different angles.

Several people in the crowd smelled really bad. A few appeared to be smeared with filth. Some looked like hip young couples who help bolster this city’s economy by showing up at things like this and at nightclubs in order to raise the hipness factor, incurring a few extortionate parking tickets throughout the evening, before going home to take drugs and have sex to make more people like themselves before hastily divorcing. Some of the tourists looked utterly thrilled to be allowed their little piece of hot cement on which to stand to observe this astonishing spectacle. A few limos pulled up, and rather than noticing who got out of them, I tried to estimate the limo budget put through the accounting office at Paramount. I also noticed that the majority of the males present were wearing baseball caps with things written on them. Backwards. I mean, they were wearing them backwards. The written things were going in a comprehensible, if hardly stylish, direction.

On my way back, I ran into the cows again (this time outside in the sun-blast; I asked which talent agency represents them, and one cow-guy brilliantly replied: “Are you saying that we don’t have talent?”), I had that moment of noting that I really don’t like Courtney Cox, and then I departed. I had lunch at a bustling cafe owned by Julie Newmar (nee Julia Newmeyer). Now there’s an actress. The cashier, whose name is Esperanza, was rude to me. The food was good, though, and Julie has a sun-bleached sign up on the wall, which firmly requests that guests not talk on their telephones whilst eating, that others may enjoy a few moments of something like tranquility (it’s a pleasant place) during their respective sessions of mashing up carbohydrates and proteins and plant material in an attempt to keep their bodies alive. Bless her for that; she’s a really cool person, actually. And she despises leaf-blowers with an explosive passion; I like that.

As for Gene Hackman — whatever. Who cares? Why care? Loud old obnoxious guy. Yelled a lot.

I wonder whom he blew to launch his career.

I only mention him because of Robyn’s joke-song (which, by astounding coincidence, was recorded in a club on the very same street as the cafe), and because that song segues well into my surprise encounter today. And here’s the true miracle of “living” in this corroded fishbowl called L.A.:

All I wanted to do was urinate, and instead I had to look at Andie MacDowell.

At least that’s amusing.

Otherwise, I really did not enjoy writing this.

There was something I passionately wanted to do this weekend, and couldn’t.

Oh well, one success:

CD-changer, meet Kula Shaker.

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