02.29.08
Leap Day (2008 Update #…8?)
It’s basically Summer here again (drat!), and yet my mother, far away, is about to go outside and shovel some snow. That’s weird. That’s very, very weird.
Not looking forward to Summer. Not here, anyway. Trying to figure out how to be someplace where it isn’t unbearably hot and bright to the point that people lose their minds.
It brings me pleasure when it’s sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit outside and people around here shriek about how “freezing” it is. I smile at that. It is innocently bizarre.
But enough about the weather.
Regarding seasons, women are becoming significantly flirtier again, so the planet must be telling them that it’s almost time to get an embryo fertilised. (Whee.)
There’s no river nearby — not literally, anyway — but there are several extremely busy automotive routes. I stood beside one a couple of days ago, and beheld two different motorists both “rocking out” to the same song on (apparently — unless it was extremely weird synchronicity) the same radio station. It was that “Lithium” song (had to look it up) by that junkie who married the scumbag-wannabe and then blew out his own brains. Still a “hero” to many, apparently. The male human was rocking out a lot — but the female human was rocking out a whole lot more! It was pretty funny to watch — humans hopelessly stuck in traffic, alone, screaming out the mostly meaningless words of a dead guy who never made much of a point about anything.
Honestly, I felt a bit sorry for them.
Cut to yesterday — and I was going to call this post “Bob Dylan Sucks” (just for the counter-obnoxiousness of it; plus imagine the hate-mail!) — and a Boomer-aged woman calls up. Vague acquaintance. Usually, I have found, such people get in touch either when: A. They’re horny/bored (usually about the same thing); or B. They want you to buttress their stupid little worldview for a few minutes.
This seemed to be a combination of the two. I was busy and stressed, but she’s generally intelligent, so I played along for a few minutes.
Talk turned to movies, though — and although we have concurred that “Daniel Plainview” (the character; the performance) is a joke, other issues arose. I admitted that I chuckled at the stroke at the end of Diving Bell and…. Couldn’t help it; that was my honest response: It looked like somebody very aggressively playing at being retarded. Laughed. Wouldn’t laugh at a real victim or cripple. I was laughing at a moment of extemely amusingly bad acting.
That probably didn’t sit well with her (she’s already shown signs of getting very angry when somebody doesn’t agree with her completely — and she loved the movie).
I attempted to recommend Away From Her as a superior film in many ways; turns out her mother has Alzheimers.
Oops.
Of course, I was merely treating this like a conversation: I be honest; you be honest — and thus I didn’t realise until the abrupt end that I was bleeding points into the water. (Like I care.)
The end was pretty funny — which is why I mention it here.
Turns out she loved I’m Not There.
Oops!
Mind, this is a person who is part of that generation brainwashed into believing that if you don’t absolutely worship Bob “Dylan,” then there’s something wrong with you.
Whatever.
Whatever-whatever!
[Hilarious side-note: The actress -- as in the actress! -- is calling me right this very second. Ha! It's been months. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! No frickin' way. Say hi to voice-mail, multiple-millionaire-banger.]
Anyway, as I was under the impression that the Boomer woman and I were having an open and honest conversation, I courteously invited her to express her opinions on I’m Not There first — and I listened.
Then she asked for my opinion, and I admitted that the movie gave me a headache, which became progressively worse “until by the point that Richard Gere was riding around on that damned horse, tears of agony were running down my cheeks and I wanted to shoot myself.”
In standard Boomer fashion, this Boomer woman then immediately leapt to the defence of Bob “Dylan,” proclaiming her adoration for the film because it’s about his “mythology” and “that little black boy” and ya-daa, ya-dee…(etc.)
I said, look: Good on Todd Haynes for being creative (as such), but it really just wasn’t to my tastes. I was, however, very kind in conceding that Cate Blanchett’s turn as “Dylan” was, by far, the best (at least, the most accurate: if still rather pointless overall).
Then I discovered something Magical!
I discovered a way to make Boomers go away!
“Bob ‘Dylan’,” said I, “is an incredibly obnoxious vocalist. I know that a lot of people worship him — but really, he sounds like a bumblebee.”
I then proceeded — briefly, tastefully — to provide my rendition of “Dylan”-As-Bumblebee. (Which, for the record, brightens my day any time I do it.)
Within thirty seconds, Boomer woman was done and gone.
It was amusingly lame, too:
“Oh my god! I just looked at my watch ["watch"??? in 2008??? -Ed.] and I’ve gotta run!”
There was no reason given, but none was needed. I offered that we were just discussing film, no biggie, opinions are opinions –
–however, as someone who has written and published over half a million words of cinema criticism, I had forgotten a significant factor in the turbulent psyches of many human beings:
They want their opinions matched, parallelled, supported — coddled.
I had neglected to do that, so Boomer woman quickly fled.
Well, so much the better.
I think making fun of celebrities we don’t like is very enjoyable (if admittedly limited in scope).
On that topic, then: It has been announced that Madonna’s new album is called “Hard Candy,” with her publicist going on to explain that The Immaterial Girl will be “kicking our ass” (thus the “Hard”) but then “making us feel good” (thus the “Candy”).
Notes unheard, I say to hell with that shit.
That is 100% the exact opposite of what I want from entertainment and entertainers (don’t kick me at all, and only “make me feel good” if it’s true).
Madonna is cordially invited to go kick her own ass (or, in Kabbalah-ese: “arse”).
All the way back to suburban Michigan, kiddo.
Madonna: Your best song was “Like A Prayer” — and even that you totally stole from David Bowie’s “Underground.”
(Which was, in turn, stolen from the Gospel tradition — but at this point the argument becomes hazy.)
Speaking of the Gospel tradition:
“Dearly Beloved, We Are Gathered Here Today To Get Through This Thing Called…
…HIP-REPLACEMENT SURGERY.”
Yikes.
Lil’ Purple’s going to get some fake bones down there.
I have outgrown Prince’s shtick — but his great stuff is truly great, so here’s wishing him a quick lil’ purple recovery.
(Movie tie-in: One of his very best songs is from one of his movies almost everybody hated. Bet you can’t guess what it is.)
Oh, this post is becoming increasingly more vital by the second.
There are various reviews gestating in my review-gestator: Other Boleyn Girl, Spiderwick Chronicles, No Country and “Milkshake!” and stretching back through The Black Book and The New World and all sorts of things I’ve seen but upon which commented not — however, we’ll see. It’s still a tense time.
My splendid niece wrote recently, and responded quite thoughtfully to my correspondence of a couple months back — one of the primary topics of which was the importance of one’s life having a “core.”
Hers, she feels, has one at this time. She is younger, and the core may be somewhat makeshift — but one does what one can to fill ‘er up. (She does well.)
I have yet to respond beyond an interim message, for at this time — and for the past several years, frankly — I strongly feel that my life lacks a “core.” Family: Aloof. Partner: Nil. Career: Crashed. Neighbors: Noisy Nutcases (although my usually-wretchedly-stern landlord has finally conceded, even semi-sympathetically, that there may be a problem with them). Nonetheless: Sleep: Troubled (no problem getting there — but then it is always abruptly curtailed before I am adequately rested). Nest-Egg: None (toodles, female humans!) Local Pleasures: Mainly at night — I like to walk.
That’s about it.
No core.
See, I don’t feel like joining a religion, either; just not my thing.
(Movie Geeks may enjoy, however, that the other day — a full hour before the neighbors began their early morning screaming — I awoke in a panic, shaking and begging [albeit belatedly] for an answer: “My God! Why was 2046 so fucking boring?!?!?”)
(Does that count as a spiritual path?)
Anyway…
I never presumed, at this age, that the undefinable energies which make life worth living would be almost entirely absent. I say this not for the sake of melodrama (for, in life, I loathe melodrama — it’s a poison), but because it’s true: As an adult, I have had to intellectualise — to invent — reasons to keep living.
[Your Hate-Mail Here. {How Clever.}]
That’s a weird place to be, don’t you think?
I mean, some of it has to do with people in Southern California taking great pleasure in being total assholes. Not everybody, certainly, but there is a self-obsessed vibe here which can prove extremely draining.
Confronting that vibe on one’s own is very, very, very challenging.
[Which is why I didn't even consider taking that call a few minutes ago; good riddance to the insanity; I paid my dues to it for a solid, very draining year.]
I don’t wish pain or hurt on anyone — I really don’t (in addition to being horrible, it’s useless) — but for the sake of amusement, I rather wish that it were legal (and encouraged) if, when someone walks up and says, “Hi! I’m an actress!” you get to bitch-slap them as hard as you can with as many people watching as possible — and then the onlookers hold up numbers to rate your actress-slappin’ prowess.
That would be a slightly better world than this one.
(Mind: In theory. Some of us know the difference.)
Still, if I manage to get around to the Boleyn review, readers may discover that I’m being surprisingly kind to Scarlett Johansson. Nornally, with that mouth-breather problem of hers, I think she resembles a cross between a human and a barnyard animal — but she actually fit her role as Mary Boleyn rather well. T., as I recall, stated this — in which case I agree with him.
And more? Well, there isn’t a lot more at this time. It’s Leap Day in Leap Year, of course — but the human calendars being such arbitrary creations in the first place (don’t get all worked up over “2012″ incidentally — for just how exactly did the Mayans decide what “12 December” was — or, for that matter, “December” at all? Is “December” really the twelfth month in the Mayan calendar? How convenient!), it occurs to me that there’s nothing particularly special about this day.
It’s Friday, Fridays are kind of boring, it’s another week-end, and hundreds upon hundreds of them all blur together, and if we’re not very, very, very, very careful, we may end up with another (and potentially more lethal) war-monger as leader of this nation and the free world.
Please be careful about this. If my life ever gains a core, I’d be very sad to see it destroyed along with the rest of the world due to the wiles of extremely stupid men who mistakenly believe that fighting other human beings will ever (to borrow a phrase from Samuel Clemens) “break a chain or free a human soul” (it won’t).
Chanson du week-end: It’s by Sparks, and on the main page (but unlabelled because those guys are totally paranoid about I.P.)
counter