Blue Room

One of my more painfully memorable hotel moments came last year when I was working at the Belamar in Man-ha-ann Beach. It is a boutique style hotel, very cutting edge. Hell you can see most of the place in the video linked two posts ago.

There were a lot of smaller wedding ceremonies that took place there, and we always grew close to those involved. For five days, we would drive them around, learn about how they met, and try to give anything we could to make them feel better. Sure we were angling for tips, but this is one of the things I like about my job, I like talking to people. And when you talk to people who stay in hotels, it’s like making friends at summer camp, you may never see them again, but you are in the same location as them for a decent amount of time, and both parties lose any slow social inhibitions and become the kindest most outgoing face of their persona. Except for celebrities. They are assholes at hotels. Notes to anyone famous at a hotel. 1: Tip. Your presence ain’t that magical. We know you have the money. 2. You are not that cool up close (except for the girls from TaTu, the world stopped when they entered my old hotel). Mainly this is pointed at you Kevin Federline. Ya jackass.

But one night I was given the call to go up and help a pair of newlyweds. I walk in to see a man sitting in a chair with no clothes on, yet not naked. He had taken a cowboy hat and placed it over his junk.

He then began yelling at me to fix the radio. “I can’t fuck with out music,” I think, were his exact words. I tried to get the CD player to work. No dice. He then yells to just put on the radio to anything. I seriously considered switching to ESPN radio and walking out, but hey, the guy just got married. I decided to be nice. I am looking for channels when I start to feel him coming over towards me.

In the corner of my eye, I saw the cowboy hat still on the chair. I’d gage he was at full mast when I turned around. Thankfully I found some poppy music and he thanked me. And yet, he didn’t tip me. I don’t really squabble over money in these situations, but really that was worth at least 30 bucks of his money to me.

I hope one of the Robinson brothers commercials came on during an ad break. Followed by one of the Sit and Sleep commercials with Irvin the nasal Jewish accountant screaming “you’re killing me Larry!!!” That’d be fair play.

++++

So… music to fuck to.

Great topic. One that is in the right hands both blue and intellectual. Other times it’s saltier than a NBA player looking at his slew of groupies. Before he showered. (Who wants to sex Mutumbo?)

In practice, I am terrible at this because I am far too fascinated by music. I will stop conversation at work if I hear a song I like on a car radio 10 feet away.

I love dancing quietly to Frank Sinatra. I like singing it when flinging woo.

But not so much with the ambience. It has to be quiet yet effective, the mood of the music almost has to be secretive, it’s a whisper of music that is felt in basslines and soft singing. Rock, save prog, is almost always out. Rap is good, but R & B is better because the albums don’t have a crippling number of comical interludes. Good electronica is tops, if only because they are best as a background filter, like dance clubs.

But on to Rihanna. A young singer from one of the Caribbean Isles, she has already scored two big singles with “Pon de Replay” and “If it’s loving that you want.” I thought the former song was garbage. How many songs can possibly be made about being in a club and dancing? The second wasn’t bad, but meh, its more of the same old Isle music coming to American radio.

In the Isles music scene, beats are not sold exclusively, like they are in the states. There was a minor fiasco when Lil’ Jon sold the beat track that would eventually become Usher’s “Yeah” to both Usher and Petey Pablo for the song “Freek a leek.” I still can’t believe that was a hit, not because I despise Usher, but because when I heard it first, I thought it was a radio parody of crunk music. When the chorus of a song is “Yeah, Yeah, Yeah,” with out “She loves you” preceding it, I just don’t think that’s good writing. Even with the Beatles it’s a stretch for creativity. All I could think of when I heard the Usher song the first few times were the crash test dummies song “mmmm” and four non blondes “what’s going on.”

Anyway, Lil Jon came up with the bassline for Pablo’s song in a few days, and both went on to decent success. While on wonders what would happen if the two were switched, that’s what it is in the US music scene. In other parts of the world, beats are licensed out, but not exclusively. Pitbull and the pair of Puerto Rican twins (whose name escapes me) both had hits featuring the same backing track.

In the US, NAs will buy a track from Pharell for 3 million. Elsewhere, multiple singers engage in a who can top this mentality with famous beat tracks. Both are terrible ways to make music, and consequently represent the downfalls of both communism and consumerism.

However, Rihanna has a song out now laid upon a bass enthused version of Tainted Love. This is a song that has been remade three times prior to this version, and all were hits. Maybe it’s the beat, maybe it’s the warbling synth effects, maybe it’s the accuracy of the bass hits, but each version of the songs, Gloria Jones in 1964, Soft Cell in 1981, and Marilyn Manson in 2001, has been a decent hit.

Which always perturbed me, because it’s a creepy song when you look at the lyrics. It’s a song about feeling dirty after, and then fighting sexual addiction because it’s too dark and too weird. But I cannot deny the power of the beat. It’s something unique and it’s always alluring.

Which is why I kind of like Rihanna’s version. It taps into a vain of pure sexuality, one that removes the taint of the other versions, and thanks to the redubbing of the beat, the song feels both kinky and alive as a sexual anthem without any hang-ups. The beat of any version of the song is nigh sexually primordial, and this one taps it just right. It’s a song that is clean enough not to be gutter filthy, but risqué enough to tap the senses. Even with needless vocal overlays. That will be the legacy of Destiny's Child. They had to make it seem like 40 people are singing at once, sure Mariah really started this, but Beyonce had to make every song have at least 13 different vocal tracks. It's like listening to Rockestra, only more commercial, less talented and not even remotely as lame.

For comparisons, think Kylie Minogue, Amerie, and anything that is the exact opposite of Fall Out Boy.

But more so, the video for the song, is a first ballot entry into Furious Masturbation Theater’s Hall of Fame

I’m gonna to scrub my sins.

(continued...)

The company I keep

My outlook in life and my views have been determined, like everyone else through the lessons that have forced their way down my throat, and in most cases, by kicking my ass in the process.

You can’t drink that much booze without consequences.

You can’t win money in casinos. You can get ahead, but you can’t leave a winner. It’s just not in your mentality, Dave.

The only time a woman you aren’t sleeping with will tell you they like your long hair is in the days after you have cut it.

I could keep going…

You know what, I will.

Chastising a woman’s taste in music will NOT get you laid.

Chastising her best friend likely will. (I’m 4 for 4 on this one, and yet I still yell at girls who don’t like Springsteen, rather than post my abysmal record, I’ll just say I’m the Washington Generals with this tactic)

Whoever said you shouldn’t fuck you coworkers is an idiot. Productivity would skyrocket if people were forced to actually work in lieu of shame. (Drunken Hookup) Your work will also improve if you are trying to distract all attention to your work and away from the fresh “love stains” in the copy room.

Don’t drink the night before a promising job interview.

Look for a partner who shares your same interests. They will likely be less attractive and your sexual drive will diminish in the later years, but you will be happier. The thing is, doing this is going to be damn near impossible, and you will always look for the more attractive person regardless of whether or not they like The Simpson’s. Go for soul mate, not for the great lay. But this is a lost cause, it’s not going to happen. (This is probably why me and Lady Portland Rose Royce are very deep down secretly gay for each other, but will never act upon it)

Don’t write anything to someone of the opposite sex in your high school quotes (other than family). Just don’t. It never leads to anything. Just. Don’t. Do. It.

Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and a good thing never dies. (Thanks for the quote Andy)

Perhaps the most damaging thing that could have happened to me was being born in Indiana. It’s a great thing, and I love it all the same, but I am not going to lie, being born and raised there did inoperable damage to my world outlook. Now being born in NY would make me an asshole, being born in Florida would make me a sex crazed weirdo, and being born in LA, I would likely have died of a drug overdose.

But being born in any one of those places would have at least given me an experience I didn’t have as a kid, a hometown team that won a championship. I have had two teams I deeply care about win championships in the last three years, (USC and the Red Sox) yet it’s not the same, partly because I haven’t loved those teams my whole life (I rooted for Northwestern in the 1996 Rose Bowl, for chrissakes), and partly because I won’t get to celebrate with my friends and family.

Being from Indiana, and much of the Midwest for that matter (namely Cleveland), is as much of a blessing for the life it gives you as it is a curse that renders impossible a life of full accomplishment. People and teams just can’t wind up on top from this state. I’ll list some:

Indiana Basketball 1992-93. #1 almost wire to wire, only to lose their star player (Alan Henderson) to an injury suffered in practice (not a game, not a tragic drunk motorcycle accident or something remotely cool). They lose in the tourney and don’t make the final four.

James Dean. Born in Indiana. Moved to LA, became the biggest movie star in the world and died before turning 25.

Indianapolis Colts 1995-1996: A complete underdog of a team that on paper had no shot at winning 6 games that was lead by a family man to the AFC championship only to be screwed by the refs, and yet the game still ended on a Hail Mary pass that was as close as a catch as humanly possible.

Steve McQueen: Born in Indiana. Moved to LA, and became the biggest movie star in the world only to die from a rare form of lung cancer (mesothelioma! The cancer from asbestos!) at 50. I mean, if Charlton Heston was from Indy, he’d have been shot by a young Dick Cheney at age 19.

Indiana Pacers: 1995, 1996, 1998, 1999. In each year, they were screwed by refs changing the game for big market teams.

Michael Jackson. Born in Indiana. Went to LA, became the biggest music star in the world only to go completely insane.

Chicago Cubs (the surrogate baseball team for the state of Indiana): Haven’t won a championship in 98 years (yet in 10 years, the Marlins have won two). And their crosstown team (the same ones who cheated in the World Series) won last year. And in all likelihood, I will die before they win. The last time they had a shot at winning, a fan caused them to lose. A fucking FAN! I was on joking suicide watch after that series, the next day when the Sox lost in the 11th to Aaron *Bleeepin* Boone, I was on real suicide watch. Me and my friend Peluso outlawed talking about the 2003 playoffs at work. We got so angry and so sad, the entire location went down with us.

Sidney Pollack: Born in Indiana and moved to LA and became one of the bigger directors of his time, only to win an Oscar for the worst film to win best picture (before Crash and after the Greatest Show on Earth) in a 35 year span, while his best film (Tootise) was ripped off by Robin Williams, and subsequently Tobias Funké, in Mrs. Doubtfire.

Indianapolis Colts (2005): the first team in 7 years to go 10-0. Came closer to going 16-0 than any team since the 1985 Bears. They get home field advantage, only to have the QB crap the bed for the first 51 minutes of the game. Just when all hope is lost, the game turns when the Pittsburg running back fumbles on the 1 yard line, to be picked up by a Colt (who was stabbed by his wife days before) and with a shot of running it back all the way is tackled by the other teams QUARTERBACK. They then set up a shot for a game tying field goal, only to have the most accurate kicker in history shank the kick by 20 yards to the right. Then to pour more salt in the wound, 3 weeks later the Steelers play their worst game of the year and yet still win the Super Bowl.

Maybe it’s me. If it is, I’ll take the blame for the premature ends/decline of the following things I love:

USC (2005)
Radiohead
Frank Sinatra
Tito Puente
Stanley Kubrick
Arrested Development
Newsradio


Before I get on with the remainder of this,

KHANNNNNNNNNNN>

In a single lifetime, I haven’t seen a trailer for a film so terrible.

Yet in spite of a championship, some of my most cherished memories come from Indiana teams.

I’ll give you a short rundown by team:

Colts: The Monday Night Comeback against the Tampa Bay Bucs (2003). The 1995 season up to the final game.

Pacers: Beating the Bulls in Jordan’s first game back from his retirement. Being the only team to beat the Bulls twice in their 72-10 season. Quick side note, look at the teams they lost to that year: boing I mean they lost to the Nuggets (37-45) Hornets (41-41), Bullets (39-43) and Toronto (21-61!!!!) At least the Pacers won 52. But the Raptors! They could have single digit losses if not for that turd of a game.

I’m sorry. Miller’s 25 point 4th quarter. Miller’s 8 points in 8.9 seconds (I still remember sitting in my friend Jimbo’s kitchen – not his huge living room with a 80 inch screen and sound system---because we couldn’t pull ourselves away even during timeouts) Game four of the 1998 East Championship. Game 5 of the 2001 series against the Nets, even though we lost, Miller took it to two overtimes single handedly.

And my favorite: the Memorial Day Miracle. From Pacers.com

Then came a Game 4, which ranks among the greatest finishes in NBA playoff history. The Pacers led 89-88 before Brian Shaw hit a 3-pointer with 13.3 seconds left. Miller responded with a 3-pointer to put Indiana ahead 92-90, but Hardaway tossed in an off-balance 3-pointer with Haywoode Workman’s hand in his face to give Orlando a 93-92 lead with 1.3 seconds remaining. After a timeout to set up one final play, Miller couldn’t get open, but inbounds passer Derrick McKey found Smits at the free throw line. The 7-4 center put a ball-fake on Orlando’s Tree Rollins and swished the game-winning jumper at the buzzer. The play, dubbed “the Memorial Day Miracle,” marked the fourth lead change in the final 13.3 seconds.

Cubs: Really there aren’t any big victories. Almost none. Even if there were, it doesn’t matter. Just watching the Cubs is a gift in itself. Wrigley Field is my Graceland, Mecca, and Penn Station (the sandwich place) rolled into one.

The only team that has won a championship in the 25 years I have been alive was the 1987 Indiana University Basketball team. It was one of the best games of all time, won 74-73 (and if you think I had to look that score up, you’re kidding yourself) on a last second jumper by Keith Smart. Sadly I was only 6 at the time and didn’t quite to get appreciate it. How young was I? I cried because they showed the other team after, and I was sad for them.

The best games I have ever seen are as follows:

10. The Miracle on Ice. It would be #1 with out a doubt, if I were alive at the time.
9. 1987 NCAA Tourney: Indiana 74, Syracuse 73.
8. Memorial Day Miracle (see above)
7. 2003 Fiesta Bowl Ohio State beats Miami in 2nd OT 31-24
6. Super Bowl XXXVI, Pats 21 Rams 18
5. Games 4, 5, 6, and 7 of the 2004 ALCS: Boston Comes Back from 0-3 to beat the Yankees and then move on to win. more here
4. See Below
3. Game 7 World Series. Diamondbacks 4, Yankees 3.
2. Duke 104, Kentucky 103
1. USC 34, Notre Dame 31 best day ever

#4 was the Duke vs. Indiana 1/8 match up in the second round of the 2002 NCAA tourney. Indiana was just supposed to lay down and let Duke repeat as champions. We not be able to win it all, but we will never be overlooked, not ever.

Anyway, Duke was cruising along and had a 17 point lead. All signs pointed to them winning. And they would have, except that the game was played in Lexington, Kentucky. This meant that with the exception of people from North Carolina who traveled for Duke, the crowd was filled with IU folks who traveled a mere hundred miles. Well there was one more exception, the people of Kentucky who were neither Duke or IU fans, and likely UK Wildcat fans.

A 17 point lead. With ten minutes to go. When I watched this game, the only TV service I had was the apartment complexes cable service which had 12 stations, six of which were the networks. The game was on CBS 2, which meant that it was a weak feed, and the picture kept going in and out. The LA coverage was showing a couple of other games, but not showing the Duke IU game, and so I was running back and forth from the computer and waiting 30 seconds to see if the score was improving.

And then it happened. With 10:30 left in the game.

Duke 59, IU 47. Duke 61, IU 52. Duke 61, IU 58. Duke 63, IU 62.

My heart was in my feet. I couldn’t take it any more. Was this actually happening. Mercifully, CBS realized this as well and decided to change all coverage over to the IU Duke game.

And so I got to watch the final moments. IU comes back. Duke goes on a run and goes up 70 to 64. IU would score the rest until a last 5 seconds almost turned into another Duke miracle.

In the end, IU holds on and…ecstasy.

I finally got to watch the game in full about a year later when ESPN classic showed it again.

Watching the full thing unravel I understood why IU won. They were not a better team. They were severely overmatched. Sure they had a will to win, but that wasn’t it.

It was the crowd.

IU was down by a dozen with under 11 minutes to go. They would have to make up more than a point a minute. As soon as the Hoosiers started to come back, the crowd begins to build into a roar. First it was the Hoosier faithful, shouting as loud as they can to will the team. But this wouldn’t have done it. This was a neutral site. The Indiana fans weren’t enough, and the crowd filled with Kentuckians still smarting from a 10 year pain turned, and switched sides, and did so loudly.

If you ever get a chance to, watch the game’s second half. Actually, the more enjoyable thing is just to listen to the game. You can hear the crowd’s swell grow with every passing minute. By the time IU goes up for the first time with 1:01 left, you can feel the shouting, even on a low volume. It wasn’t the teams that decided the game; it was the will of the crowd that slid fate in IU’s favor.

It was a classic David vs. Goliath game, and the whole place knew it. They were all wrapped up in one moment and wanted the little guy to win. And the crowd made it happened.

So why am I writing this today? Because 11 seed George Mason upset #1 seed and defending champ UConn and it’s pretty clear they are wearing glass slippers at this point.

All signs point to them losing to Florida, as the Gators have them outmatched in most departments. But the Patriots of George Mason have something that Florida doesn’t.

The game is played in Indianapolis. If you don’t think the collective will of a bunch of basketball loving Midwesterners are not going to give everything they have to help a little school topple a giant, go watch the Duke IU game. It’s going to be tough for team against George Mason, they won’t be facing 5 men, they’ll be facing 20,000 and 5.

The final score of the IU Duke game? 74-73, same as the score of the 1987 National Championship. You can’t make this stuff up. Indiana is built on basketball. It's in the water. But in this spring is something else eternal. Hope. We're full of it and waiting for chances to believe. George Mason, welcome to Indiana.

(continued...)

Goodbye to a night of the Templar

A year ago I stated that Indie 103.1 was one of the reasons I wouldn’t leave LA. This double as a completely true statement and one that clearly has ties to deeper creative longing.

I could physically leave LA, and it’s not like the only thing stopping me from doing so would be a radio station.

But a while back, I posted a long 3 part post about Rock and roll and the meanings of Punk, and the importance of Rock and Roll to the part of LA North of the 10 and East of the 405.

Anyway, Indie 103.1 was one of the best things about living in LA, because it was a channel that existed to promote art. It was a throwback to the era of Radio before corporations funded by right winger’s who attacked any form of art like they were DaDa artists (without being artists, and yes, I’m ripping off the onion here). Radio used to be a beacon of the new wave. Then it became a beacon of those who liked to hear fat, opinionated nutjobs speaking the terrible things you think about other people. It wen’t from nourishing teenage angst and melancholy by feeding listeners songs that made it easier to get through the day, connecting one to an escapist moment. About the time stations began playing “Mandatory Metallica at 9 P.M. every night (and featuring the same 7 songs year in and year out), most people just put in CD’s or turned to talk radio. Most studies on radio listening habits show that people aren’t changing stations because they are changing tastes, they are sick of the playlists that show the best profit margins with the least risk of losing more revenue.

It’s not a hard choice. Would you rather hear Republican Rhetoric to fuel your ire with immigrants, gay marriage, and terrorists (mind you on most Right leaning stations, they refer to these people as Muslims). Or perhaps you want to hear heavily argued facts about sports, for instance, “why Matt Leinart was a complete fool for returning to SC for one more year.” Maybe you wanted to hear the news. Or maybe, you wanted to hear a new CD.

Why not do this when the only other option is hearing:

Foo Fighters/ or Red Hot Chili Peppers every hour (Kroq)
PussyCat Dolls or Black Eyed Peas (KIIS, and I’d never thought I’d say this, I miss Rick Dees)
I’ll never lose my faith in You or Hollaback girl (Star 98.7)
Culo / Are you ready (Latino 96.3)
Hypnotize / G _unit all stars sing (Power 106)

And worst of all

Stairway to Heaven or Won’t get fooled again for the 500,000 time in your life.

Well, that’s not as bad as Jack FM, or as I think of it, the station with a playlist filled with your 55 year old Aunt’s favorite songs that were popular once. Remember the Safety Dance! Get ready to hear it 4 times a day! They’re wacky like that.

The only ones still listening to music radio were 14, and they just wanted to hear the new Britney Spears records, or hear the updates on American Idol (coincidentally by Ryan Seacrest, who IS ON THE SHOW!!!!). And since advertisers figured out these people have money to spend, that’s where all the music was aimed at.

Blame GE, blame Viacom, blame NewsCorp, blame Disney, blame Clear Channel. Blame corporations, who thanks to friends in the Bush admin have circumvented FCC legislation by slowly controlling every media outlet in every major city. When I worked in a film office, we tried to help launch a few music groups and directors by pushing their works to other people we knew and occasionally helping with financing.

The most crushing problem for a new band is that they don’t only need to raise a quarter of a million or more to simply make a video, they need at least that and likely more to get that video played. Even big stars like G – Unit make countless videos that never get played, simply because someone in an advertising office doesn’t think it’s going to play in some market, and they won’t put the money behind the video to push it to a hit. It’s almost a miracle when a new band makes it these days, because it takes an assembly line of No –men to all agree on marketability.

and just so you don't think I am making this up, here are Steve Jones and John Lydon talking about this (d/l the podcasts of these two, as well as the the Jeff Daniels, where he does a fantastic song called "get your tounge out of my mouth, i'm kissing you goodbye")

lotsa love

Side story time:

When I was at the Belamar Hotel (6-05 – 11-05) G-Unit shot a video there over a two day period. It was a very well funded video, and the hotel was over-run with all of the hallmarks of a big budget set, multiple equip trucks, 14 PA’s, groupies, etc. By the end two of the rooms were so damaged it took two weeks for them to be feasible again, guns had been bransished in threatening gestures, and Fifty Cent had used the weight room to get even bigger.

My personal highlight was hearing Tony Yayo, with no one of consequence at all around him shouting to the capacity of his lungs “G-G-G-G-G-G-G-GGGG-GGGG-GGGG-G-G-G-G-G-G-G- UUUUUU- NIT!” In all honesty, I probably left out a few syllables.

Anyway, I waited to see the video on MTV. I saw it once. While part of me likes the fact the video where I was shot, (this goes too for the Secret Machines video shot in front of the Century Plaza), I actually liked this video, and thought the song was actually pretty decent. Maybe it’s the hook, maybe it’s the slow ¾ West Coast beat and chorus, maybe it’s the “pussy as tight as an airplane bathroom” line, and even though the verses by Yayo and Buck could have been taken from any other song, the 50 cent part is pretty damn good for a rap single these days. If 50 had just bought this beat for himself, and didn’t feature anyone, he’d have one of his three biggest hits. Well, it’d still be better than anything off the Massacre, it already is with four rappers. In the end Dave gives it a thumbs up, but thinks it suffers from the “Why have one rapper when you can have bunches syndrome.”

The video is much better, and I’m only partially saying that because two of the guys I worked with are in it.

Judge for yourself:



Anyway.

It seems like indie has started to go the way of K-roq. Filtering out interesting shows for people who don’t change the channel in hopes of giving people who roam the channels constantly something to link on before the change in 10 minutes again. (I’d try to make that more clear, but I don’t have an editor and I don’t care enough. It’s almost bedtime)

Indie 103.1 got rid of its great “Mighty Morning Show” hosted by Dicky Barrett of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. This was a dynamite morning show that both balanced the normal morning show routines (news, weather, and traffic –which we all know we don’t need) with great music, great guests in great spirit (Jeff Daniels, Quentin Tarantino, Devo), and a lack of any call ins by “President Bush” from the guy in the audio booth who does voices. Pretty much the morning show for anyone with good music taste and/or an IQ above 100. Of course it had to be cancelled.

Dicky says his peace

Of course the same Radio station only days before had a reunion of two of the Sex Pistols (Lydon and Jones) on air for two full hours.

This is the musical equivalent of Bush telling America he’s going to pull America out of Iraq and the Middle East, only to days later start “shock and aweing” Iran.

Bob Dylan said it best: we all gotta serve somebody.

(continued...)

Don’t fear the reaper

Time and death lay heavy for all men. They are as they were the year before.

Time may be a fragment of our imagination or a concept our minds can’t yet fully overcome, but as it is today, if your friend Justin takes a digital cam picture and then shows it to you, then your mind process the fact that this image is of a person younger than you.

While it doesn’t feel the effect now, it processes it just the same. And it puts a little bit of memory attached, so that maybe, if booze and/or drugs and/or emotional trauma haven’t destroyed the moment, you can think both of where you were then and the spot you sit in now.

And that’s how we grow up. All the more nostalgic and all the more filled with images to tie us to other places.

Maybe Oprah succeeds because some people (women and gay men) are able to surround any drab room with fabulous picture frames. Instead of having nothing to occupy our living rooms but log’s, a fireplace, and if you are lucky… a fire (think 1875) or a room filled with home videos, DVD’s of escapist adventures, and immediate views of the life you have lived.

You can watch Penn and Teller’s “Bullshit” if you want to read the facts behind the myths of aging creams, treatments, or processes. There isn’t a viable way to live beyond your given time. By living healthier, avoiding stress, and devoting considerable amounts of every day to staying in top shape one could theoretically add anywhere from 10 days to 25 years against the average. Odds are you will die in a hospital.

So too could you eat anything you wanted, do copious amounts of drugs, and fuck anything that moves, regardless of the HIV. Odds are your death will be in a last act thrill seeking, sobriety optional.

In the end, one dies because of combination of things, all of them variable on how you lived and none of them specifically related to in what shape you are in. If it’s your time, it’s your time. It could be god (unlikely) it could be destiny (see god) it could just be that your body was not in the shape it needed to be to survive the event that just killed it (we have a winner).

Whether one believes in a heaven above or something…logical, Christians, Neo-Cons, Jews, Muslims, Atheists, or suicide bombers all know that death is coming one way or another.

Yet I can’t think of a time when death was more feared than it ever has been. And I don’t mean on a basic level, a la D-day, when private Jones from Iowa with the swell gal at home waiting for him was sent to take either Dog, Sword, or Omaha beach, and Jones knew if he saw tomorrow he still had a 50% shot of dying on foreign soil.

I write in a decent amount about the scale of media overload in this world. I think we are more afraid of death now than ever because we are reminded at every instance what we will lose when we die.

200 years ago, at best, all anyone had to remember another person of were letters. Pieces of paper that were sure to rot over time.

Now, a person can’t live without living a digital imprint of their soul on myspace. I wonder if there is a link on the site for those who have died since being on the site.

You know what if this hasn’t’ happened already, I’m claiming credit. Call it Dave’sDeathDen.com .

I want a digital graveyard. I want a dead.myspace.com, forget my DWOM (drunk while on myspace) club, I want a resting place for digital souls of people. Not only for people I once knew (or people I called “friends” on the site, even though I only accepted half the girls cause they were hot), but for others as well. For the meth addicts, the drunk drivers, the HIV victims, and lastly those who died because of non-idiotic reasons.

If technology gives me anything, I hope I don’t have to go to a graveyard to cry over lost family members.

++++++

Terrorists and Islamic extremists had been killing everyone pre 2001. But after September we were terrified of dying that way.

As life becomes more technological it makes our lives all the easier and all the less realistic. Typing data for eight hours is not living, per se. The only thing dangerous about that kind of work is the location in relation to tectonic plates/ terrorist targets / tornado zones. In all reality the most dangerous part of the day is the drive home from work, when either you or the driver in another lane thinks about the next errand while changing lanes.

The song you by Joan Byez “you don’t’ know what it’s got (‘til it’s gone)” used to be a song about environmentalism. Then it was a metaphor for loss. Then it was about love. Remind you this was a song that started about nature and then ended up the theme song for a Hugh Grant movie (sung by a former Counting Crow).

++++

Never in our lives have we been reminded as frequently as we are about our own vitality, about what we have been given simply by being born.

We know more than any generation before us that we are going to die because of the nick-nacks we surround ourselves with, from pictures of those who we died before us to those who will pass after us.

It is one thing to hold onto an artifact of someone you loved, like a wedding band, love letters, or media. I myself will probably always hold onto to my bear Toliver, not because I feel like a kid, but because as far as I can rationale, this little stuffed toy represents closeness to my parents in a way nothing apart from seeing them can replicate.

It is another to create a photo log of the year of ones friends on myspace. Myspace is perhaps the most alluring and easiest drug to come along to a mass audience since weed. And just like Mary Jane it’s an entryway to worse and more addictive things. Myspace is the digital version of scrap-booking, and all it does is allow someone to add meaning in images instead of memories. It’s easy, it’s comforting, and maybe in the ends it’s a celebration of happiness, because if one really looks at their friend list of 85 people, they should know that 85 people are going to die. Or at least they should filter the possibility.

That dumb little bear represents my childhood and my parents. It is maybe one of three things of such importance in my life. It gets to the point where I can’t think about the fact I have had the bear for 23 years now.

But that bear is all I really have in my daily life to remind me of my childhood and my parents. Everything else is memory and pictures I keep out of site. They are like the rose bushes of Capt. Miller’s wife; I save those just for me. When I go, they, and all of their potency goes with me.

+++++

Where the hell is this going?

Well, it’s a post that includes two mp3’s about death.

The dylan song'is from his 1997 album, Time out Of Mind. It’s about growing old, dying slowly, and being left alone with nothing but your memories.

The Drive by trucker’s song is also the title of Archibald Montenegro’s Myspace page,

shut-up-and-get-on-the-plane'.

Off the epic Southern Rock Opera double album, it’s the southern rock non-redneck America has been waiting for since Duane Allman died. The song is a blending of a blue collar worker’s life and views tied together with the final moments on the ground for Lynyrd Skynrd.

I know that sounds needlessly complicated.

I’ll just give you the some of the opening verse of the song:

We’ve been this close to death before; we were just too drunk to know it.
Yes the price of being sober is being scared out of your mind...

Shut your mouth and get your ass on the plane.

For those of you not versed in Southern Rock folklore, a good majority of the band that made Free Bird and Sweet Home Alabama were killed in a plane crash, no doubt under a veil of FUI.

It’s the vocal equivalent of pouring gasoline on the stakes you are being burned upon. If you are forced with a death or death situation, you might as well end it on your terms.

We’re all dying, might as well do it on my terms.

I am scared of death? Nah. I got over that three years ago, and I’ve been peacefully calm about it ever since (about death anyway, if I’m going, at least I had some good times). I’m scared of not living. I’m scared of never having enough stories to tell my kids or having them for that matter, but under that rationale lies the idea that maybe, just maybe, if I don’t have kids it was due to the fact that: A. I’ve been rendered infertile from years of videogames (god hope, because I don’t like condoms) and TV B. I wasn’t supposed to have kids.

But I have planned my funeral.

I am going to have an open bar.

I am going to pay at least two random women to come to the funeral and cry loudly about me leaving.

“OH DAVID. WHY GOD WHYYYYYYY! TAKE ME INSTEAD LORD.”

I’d like to be cleared of embalming fluid and have it replaced with explosives after the open casket.

My body will be dumped into the ocean after the open casket. (and I mean 1500 miles from any coast). I’d like to give some shark a rude awakening.

Ka-Blammo.

After my body turns into a funeral pyre, I hope everyone gets nice and drunk. Then the executor will put in a tape of songs I chose. From the Stone’s “You Can’t always get what you want” to The Boss’s “Born to Run” and “The Weight” by the Band.

It will be a five drink minimum.

In the end everyone should be hammered enough. A shark, hopefully one who was on the endangered list, will be belly up, and in the background, a lady in a black veil will be heard intermittently over “The End” off Abbey Road.

And I sure as hell am not going to allow cameras.

I want you to see my tombstone.

“Here lies David C. Turner. Born 1981. Died 2053. “My only regret is not living longer”

It’s not about knowing what you got until it’s gone, it’s about not celebrating the meaningless.

I’m getting on the plane and getting off myspace. (unless I’m kicked off, you can still use it to contact me, I’ll check it periodically)

Not immediately, that’s not my style.

I am going to go down in flames.

Expect nude pictures. Fear aggressive attacks on your character.

I’m sixteen again and back in my “bring them down to my level” phase.

The price of being sober is being scared out of you mind.

Noodle that one next time you look for the song that best captures your essence.

I’m getting on the plane, and getting on with my life.

I don’t want to be remembered by some picture stored on a hard drive owned by Rupert Murdoch (billionaire tyrant).

I hope you’ll remember me by something real.

(continued...)

Footnotes, gotta cut Footnotes

This is a set of footnotes in reverse order to the Kid A Fight Club thing that turned into a long digression worthy of a post.

If you want to read something long and decently interersting, read the post that follows. If you want something short, sweet, and sexy, stay here.

Before we get to them, I would like to note that the enjoyment I had writing these was far more than the post that spawned it (well everything past the punch for punch part) begs the question, if I enjoy writing out of character in contrast to writing normally, and then further enjoy thinking about it, I either need to retune my approach (which is happening, albeit slowly) or I have entered a new era of meta-solipsism. It’s the equivalent of masturbating to pictures of the girl you lost your virginity while listening to “Paradise by the Dashboard Light.” And I am going to stop thinking about this as I will spend four hours looking for the girl I lost mine to paste in the picture field of said Meatball song. (two meatball refrences!!!)

Two:

Frank Herbert’s Dune contains the best definition of true power I have ever come along: “He who has the power to destroy something, controls it absolutely.”

Until the next Einstein decides to create a fem-bot or Stepford female substitute instead of trying to cure lesser causes like “cancer” and “global warming,” women will always end up with the power over men.

Or the churches could unilaterally permit and promote prostitution, which would work just as well. The going rate would drop from 100 for a throw and a blow to about 25, and men would gain about 2 hours of productivity that were previously occupied by ogling the new girl fresh from ASU, figuring out schemes/scenarios or mustering up the courage to ask her on a date, and then finally surrendering to the futility and going to the bathroom to rub one out. I am mostly joking here, but the lingering truths are enough to consider it. The only thing stopping us are the fact that we as a human race would probably die out from a combination of STD’s, coke orgy overdoses and ultimately a crippling lack of reproduction. Well, this is the exact way to eliminate Los Angeles.

One:

So the obvious point is that I have become very disillusioned by living in LA and the women here. In thirty years, the odds of every woman in this town having a rap sheet like Julie Cooper (from the OC for all of those who don’t obsess over the once SO GOOD show):

Appeared nude on video (I’d wager this is closing on 15% of all women under 25 at this point and 40% of anyone over a 7)
Slept with a daughter’s best friend’s father
Slept with a daughter’s ex-boyfriend
Likely protracted
Married for money (more than once, odds dip to 35%)
Ruthlessly bitchy in upward moving style
When counting, the number keeps moving higher as the memory recalls “hazier” stretches
Hot. Plastic, to an extent, but still hot.

With Caleb dead, and Marissa sober-ish, you have to wonder why they are hooking her up with Dr. Roberts. You would say it would be repetitive, but I say the only way the show becomes so good again is if she gives Ryan an handjob in the back of an El Camino. Marissa would drama out of control. Hell, I’m exhausted from reading what I just wrote. It’s like the first season again.

That’s my prophetic vision. Well, that’s my educated and distraught about life view of how things will be with girls going wild.

But let me clarify this is not judgmental.

While I can’t believe that I struggled for years until I finally got head in high school, and now, kids of my similar upbringing are fucking in middle school. And with some of the chastity agreements some kids are signing, it’s entirely possible that someone born ten years after me is going to hear a phrase I would have to pay to hear.

“Fuck me in the ass, and then I’ll blow you. I am just not ready to go all the way yet.”

You’re GD right I am jealous. But seeing as I was born a male in 1981 and not 1991, I’ll never have that gay phase in high school. And I wouldn’t have EMO as my dominant musical selection. It’s a hell of a trade off:

Tons of Anal and head, but going to a Fall Out Boy concert instead every summer.

I think I’ll keep the three BJ’s I got in High School, going to Dave and getting shitcanned with my Hoosier friends.

But… it was a lot closer than I thought it was going to be. After considering whether I would trade Radiohead for Linkin Park and three more girls when I was 17 sealed it. I’ll stick with Radiohead. I like those memories more than I like thinking about former one night stands.

And I’m not kidding myself, the odds of me having a marriage ending affair with a Julie Cooper clone are a lot better than me winning on a lottery ticket tonight.

Hopefully I’ll have married a much younger version of her (or Hermione, as long as I am hoping I want to be married to Hermione Granger or the actress who plays her, both are equally appealing, and you know what, I want to be a Jedi as well. I would never ask for anything again if I got these two things) who joins in.

But I’ll probably be married to…

You know what I am going to end with the thought where I am banging Hermione while using a force choke on Julie Cooper. This blog has been way too negative lately.

(continued...)

fightin and Fight Club... this one gets really long

So Steaze, Marcus and I went to Dockwilder a few nights ago and got shitfaced. Probably the most fun I have had since I was having sex and the theme from the A team came up in my playlist.

(that’s right ladies, you can get great foreplay followed by average sex with TV nostalgia when you shack with Indiana!!)

You know it’s a good time when these two show up at home and they are already drunker than I am. That’s rare.

The only thing that may have been more surprising would be if we showed up with a lady in tow. Strike that, that is a long shot, but it’s not that shocking. The shock would be if there were ladies for the three of us that could tolerate us in combination. And if Lady Portland by way of Philly by way the Valley was with us, or teacher Miami, and captain waterfall were in tow, well, it’d be a lot like hell.

Anyway, I got drunk enough to get fightin’ drunk last night, at the point where I want to play punch for punch.

Mind you this never ends well.

The last few times I have played punch for punch:

Fall 2005. Marcus and I were partying and one thing lead to another. We gave each other longing gazes, and then eventually, we stood up, understood the unspoken sentiment in the air, and starting hitting each other. The worst mistake was when we wailed on the thighs of the other. Those really smarted the next day. And the day after that.

The Weekend after the 4th, 2005. The lake which my father’s lake house is on is also home to the largest fireworks distributor in the state of Indiana. The weekend after the 4th, he collects all of his unsold merch and brings it down to the lake and sets off a hell of a show. This brings to mind the SCTV show where Candy and Moranis would blow things up and then shout “that blowed up real good!!!” mentality of the Red States.

Anyway, they also have a mixer, which has a couple of traditions (traddies) that return every year. Me and my friends perving on underages; me and my friends ( I know it’s supposed to be my friends and I, but that ain’t happening in blog form) chanting free bird, and middle age women copping feels on us college boys.

That and people waving Confed flags. Just a surreal place for anyone.

So we go there this year, and this punk kid is trying to start shit. Let me emphasize the word kid couldn’t be older than 13, and was likely younger. Anyway, I tell him he (I think my drunken words were) “Ain’t shit and a wigger” but that I would let him hit me in the arm. And I let him hit me about 30 times. Each time shouting HARDER. HARDER, YOU PUSS! THAT ALL YOU GOT? DON’T GO CALLIN YO MAMMA, BECAUSE SHE’LL HIT HARDER THAN YOU!

My friends are by my side, telling me to stop. Or more specifically, for him to stop.

I didn’t sleep on my side for a long while.

MLK weekend 2002.

So flash back to 1993, I mean 2002. It was a three day weekend, which since we were in college, it was a four day weekend (woo hoo) and come Sunday we were so hungover, the only option was to get even more drunk, until we didn’t hurt anymore.

Two key moments. Lady Portland body slamming D- List Alyssa on D’a (now my) couch. This was only topped by the time I body slammed a girl and broke her arm. I know that is a phenomenal statement. The best part came the next day, when I learned that Long-Winded Larry was effectively cockblocked because she was in too much pain. I miss you some days Lo.

The t’other t’was when I challenged Lady Portland to punch for punch, and around punch thirteen, he either moved his shoulder slightly or I lost footing and changed the impact of the punch, changing the fulcrum of the action from the elbow to the wrist, which snapped it.

I have broken enough bones to know when I have caused a fracture. It’s a feeling like a buzz in the wrist you can’t fully define but one that is unmistakable. It hurts when you want to go to sleep, and it doesn’t sting unless you move it slightly. Since I was in college and thustly dead broke, I didn’t get it looked at by a “doctor.” So, just like my right leg, left arm, back of my head, and left ankle, it swells up when hurricanes are coming and Bush doesn’t pay attention.

What does this bring us to?

Another of my generation writings. (the link of the title is something I wrote five years ago)

Fight Club (1999) Directed by David Fincher.

Based on the cult book of the same name by Chuck Palahniuk, it was an edgy and unusual tale that was equally anti-consumerist and sadomasochistic about a male revolution of embracing masculinity and eschewing the corporate world that molds them into worker bees and consumption targets. The film’s final act and opening scene take place in the same situation. Edward Norton has a gun barrel in his mouth, held by Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) asking him for his last words. Norton’s character tells us that this is all happening now because he knows Tyler, and it’s all because of Marla Singer. But we’ll have to learn why and how this came to play later.

We see the narrator now being held in the massive male mammary set of Meatloaf, but we are cut away from there to make sense of the situation.

Norton plays the nameless and somewhat faceless narrator who is post-bachelorhood corporate man who suffers from insomnia seemingly connected to the drabness in his life. The character is an update of a character type, like Jack Lemmon in The Apartment; he goes to work and then comes home and watches TV, and slowly builds up a contentment about his life and can almost touch the glass ceiling of his career. The only difference between is that the protagonist in Fight Club is not married (or with children for that matter), which gives him a large source of disposable income and one of many “new” males in the world constituting the (d)evolving nature of the modern men, who is no longer pre-cast from birth to be the breadwinner and taught to be the strong silent type, but taught to be tolerant, sensitive, and that we no longer have (or necessarily able) to provide for a family of 1.5 children.

In a visually crafty scene, we see the narrator walking through his home, seeing the end result of hours of phone calls of him walking through his apartment, figuring out what accessories match his life best, which coffee table goes best with his mindset, the chi of the room, and match the numerous accessories he has accumulated. And he has slowly become nothing more than a consumer: “We used to read pornography. Now it was the Horchow Collection.” This is likely would be where and who he was until he died.

While one senses his contentment in living such a life, the underlying hollowness is palpable to the audience, and this void manifests its discontentment with insomnia for the narrator. Part of him wants to rebel to his cog nature:

Narrator: A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
Business woman on plane: Are there a lot of these kinds of accidents?
Narrator: You wouldn't believe.
Business woman on plane: Which car company do you work for?
Narrator: A major one.

but ultimately, his mindset is to stay the course, and when he goes to the hospital for a chemical solution, the doctor denies him any cheap exits. The narrators response is “Can’t you help me, I’m in pain here,” to which the doctor coyly responds “You want to see real pain, visit the guys in the testicular cancer group.” It’s a throw off, and while there is little driving reason why, the narrator decides to go.

Here we are brought back to Bob’s bitch boobs. The narrator allows himself to let go, and cries himself to sleep. His life is normal again, and the implied reason is that he is able to remember that people actually have lives, and that there is more to existence than work. And he becomes addicted to the groups. Going to as many as possible, and becoming warm to the new age healing that allows him to deal with his working existence by escaping in a sea of love and acceptance of people who are dying and in real pain.

Until Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter) comes along and gets off on the same trip that he does. Seeing someone in the same state of hypochondria manifested depression and escaping the same way makes him lose the escape because it forces him to accept the fact that this isn’t real, he is using this like a drug (a nice stab at the addiction that can spawn from AA style help groups) to liberate his mind from focusing on his reality.

He is once again aimless until he meets Tyler Durden, someone who changes his reality.
Before looking at the effect Durden has on the movie, I must comment on the effect of Pitt in this role. If this role went to an actor like, but not, Pitt, say Keanu, Will Smith, Brendan Fraser (in action mode), or going further back a Paul Newman, the movie would fail. The only other substitute I can think of would be George Clooney, which is in a 2006 mindset (possibly because they worked so well together in Oceans 11 as extensions of a similar character) and because he is at an iconic level most men would kill to be Clooney (some would want to get rid of his political stance).

But in 1999, Clooney wasn’t at the same level as Pitt was, and why the movie worked at the time is Pitt represents a level of male that is the pinnacle of desirable. Pitt’s looks are enough to make a woman swoon, his body is toned but not too macho, and his hair is simple, and it’s not an ordeal or at a level of follicle perfection like Elvis. Pitt looks seem almost effortlessly perfect; while some would surely ask for more in some departments, Pitt has an aura about him like his physical appearance is easy. I suppose this is why men reject him in romantic fare (Legends of the Fall, Meet Joe Black), yet find him agreeable when he plays interesting characters (Ocean’s 11, 12 Monkeys, Fight Club); when men watch him in the former, it’s a life we would like to attain; when our girls go wobbly kneed over him, it’s because we know he could swoop in at any minute and we’d look the frog. Needless to say, watching him in something like Seven Years in Tibet makes both genders hate the vessel.

On the other hand, Ed Norton is a perfect everyman, but just a little bit smarter. In his most memorable roles, he seems like he is an everyman who is motivated in one way further. As an actor, he always looks close to the same on a physical and emotional viewing level, but he his characters have a touch of stem cell personality; for every part he gets, the cells copy the inner motives and it shapes his performance. In his role as Larry Flynt’s lawyer, he looks like one of your friends who always succeeded but also carries a sense of fear when he meets people of larger stature. In Primal Fear, he was able to convey a sense of humanity even though the audience suspects he killed a Cardinal. Even in Rounders, he is able to play Worm as someone familiar; he looks like a friend anyone could have, and one forgives him because you get the feeling that, for a while in his growth, he was surrounded by too many bad people.

The duality of the leading characters casting works because Pitt and Norton can play off each other in almost any situation, whether it’s being hetero life partners, people who want to kill each other one moment but will remain friends after the fight, and like Tyler suggests to his counterpart, this is what you want to be. Pitt acts and looks the part; he has a body. Norton brings his sympathetic presence to the movie, and one can look at him relate to his initial struggle. When compared to Tyler, the path of the narrator is cogent because of Norton, he looks suggestible.

And recaps aside, what the movie becomes is an examination of the extreme paths one would have to take to change not just your perception of the world (fight club) and the world itself (project mayhem).

The concepts of fight club, the lye treatment, and (while decidedly more violent) is transfigured Buddhism; not updated or modernized or even simplified for the masses, the concepts are all echoes of Buddhism, just a couple of the main rules of the faith that work with the movie. I don’t presume to say that Fincher, Palahniuk, Norton or Pitt are Buddhist or even intended to make the connection. But the idea that our consumer desires ultimately destroy us and cause more problems is the hallmark of the religion; one leads to Nirvana and Enlightenment, the other to enlightenment through anti-consumerism.

+++++++++

When Fight Club came out it was not a success. It had a very large turnout for males 14-30, but they were the only ones who contributed to the box office. The end gross was 37 million, and with a budget of 65 mil plus the advertising budget, it was a bomb. Or it was a bomb until the DVD receipts started to come in.

The movie set out to be revolutionary; it tried to challenge ideas, raise awareness, and re-invent cinematic techniques. The way it was processed and delivered carried out on this, and until the arrival of the Lord Of the Rings DVD’s, the Fight Club DVD was the most complete piece of what the film, the idea, and the production was all about. Even the packaging was completely new for a mass market DVD, complete with a second disc. Few laserdiscs were this comprehensive, yet Fight Club will likely be remembered as the first of a wave because the others were… laserdiscs.

Aside from the faire found on DVD’s today (behind the scenes, interview transcripts, deleted scenes, multiple commentaries), the set also includes a faux “catalog” of items from the film such as Tyler’s red leather jacket among other things.

For the two years after the DVD came out, the set was (and may still be) the benchmark for the (then) emerging technology. Even if one didn’t posses a complex speaker set up or flat screen TV, this was the first time a DVD became conversionary; it wasn’t just that one could see Fight Club; the package given was enough motivation to buy a $300 player, because it enhanced the experience. This was the first time a studio DVD felt like more than a movie. If it wasn’t a movie that was so intentionally different or of quality, like Criterion Collection’s DVD for The Rock, the effect would be lost and DVD’s may have just been another evolution of home theater, just armed with more bells and whistles for AV nuts. Fight Club was the first movie to deliver something new and in a way that buyers wanted this for every movie afterward.

++++++

I can think of few pieces that are both decisively favored / despised, and marked so along almost seemingly age decided lines.

I remember thinking that while it has flaws, Fight Club was a movie for the men of my generation. It spoke to a basic level to many of the people I lived with Freshman and Soph years of college (not just at USC, but around the country). And by basic, I mean immature, undecided, lacking motive for a big scheme, primitive, angry, despotic, and because there isn’t a word for it, a group of people who were “the least beleaguered of any racial group, yet felt like the world was theirs only to lose,” an idea that combines both the princess culture adorned on young women (born post Fem-Lib) and the teachings of shame put to the boys of this generation.

Fight Club came out in the same year as American Beauty, which even if it is flawed on a few levels, still carries the subtheme of subsumed masculinity, and the need for a liberating, remembrance/ recall of the things that define the Arctypes of masculinity we were raised on and then quickly told that were wrong.

I could get into the completely mangled and seemingly ill-fetched logic of the previous two paragraphs, but it would be a long digression. Whether it’s a true equilibrium of the sexes coming to fruition, or simply a shrinking of a need for a “male” figure in our society of single mothers and baby-mommas, the old role of the male is dwindling into extinction in common society, only reprised in action movie farces or clichés (look up the Chuck Norris Facts) or in dating technique (look up Tom Leykis) to gain upper hand before succumbing to marriage-hood.

Tyler Durden said it best:

‘We're a generation of men raised by women. I'm wondering if another woman is really the answer we need.” see these

This was as close as mankind ever came to having a response to Oprah. It was a world where we rejected the notion of Duvet covers, corporate greed, and establishing neighborhood fraternities. The fact that we would then beat the crap out of each other is equally intriguing and off-putting. In the end the hospital bills would have resulted in health care becoming too expensive and leaving the Fight Clubs to the super rich.

After the initial logic and liberation of a Fight Club in the movie, the film goes downhill, as it stops being revolutionary in both movies techniques, suggestions and flow all are ruined by the story’s decent into anarchy.

The films great reveal that Tyler is the narrator (or a figment of his insomnia), and it’s also the point where the film derails logically. The film goes to great lengths to both hide the secret, and reward upon the second viewing (the most clever being the sex scene), but there are a couple leaps of logic that deflate the believability. After the narrator finds out about project mayhem, yet can find little real detail, Tyler takes the narrator and two other “space monkeys” on a car trip in treacherous weather. After asking the narrator about his involvement and asks him if he is ready to die; Tyler crashes the car to test the length of the monkeys and the narrator. One asks why the passengers are not perplexed by one man having a Q&A with an imaginary figure, why Fincher shows the narrator exiting the wrecked car from the passenger side. The latter could be explained as a Red Herring technique, but the former still is implausible.

The impact of the films main twist is thematically sound, and upon scrutiny, it makes sense. But the need for further investigation is telling, because it validates the initial disbelief of the situation more than a film like the Sixth Sense, American Beauty (both 99) or The Usual Suspects. In those three, the second time allows the viewer to catch the pieces of the puzzle, and complete the piece. In Fight Club, fitting the pieces requires a bit of fudging to see the whole.

The shock of the film’s reveal ranks up there with some of the most potent, from Chinatown’s “Sister, daughter,” Godfather II’s “It was you Fredo…” or the climax of The Empire Strikes Back. Perhaps the reason it doesn’t resonate like those films, and maybe why critics initially panned the movie is because the film doesn’t end close to the revelation, it’s merely the end of the second (of 3) act. What follows - until the film comes full circle with the gun in the narrator’s mouth – feels like the third act to the film that followed the first act, but did not cohere with the second. The film changes genres from a movie about discovery to a mystery movie. Suddenly the protagonist has to figure out everything of the first two acts while the audience has been stripped of a throughline. It’s not that people are unable to accept a plot change; it’s that the move is so jarring not just in the secret, but that the film also moves from an idea of realization and petty crimes (Fight Club) it suggests an absolution of total annihilation of the consumer world as well. Both ideas fit, yet neither are done well enough to bridge the acts. Even the structure it built similar to Buhdism falls apart here, as the faith teaches “If the string is too loose it will not play, (the narrator pre-Tyler) if it is too tight it will break.” The film tries to hard, and for a bit, it breaks, and only partially re-mends.

Lost in all of this is Marla, who also adds to the viewing discontinuity. She has been absent for 20 or more minutes where the Narrator and Tyler forge new identities and expand their arcs, and suddenly she returns. Until the narrator calls her up and realizes who Tyler really is, she is thematically irrelevant.

When the credits roll, the world is just where Project Mayhem wanted it to be, and by extension the narrator has finally succumbed to his subconscious, and it’s at a place where he can finally accept Marla as himself, and not as Tyler.

Fight Club is a film of extremism. The creators did it in a way that in both content and delivery the audience knew it was different. 1999 felt like the first year of a new era of cinema. With movies like American Beauty, The Matrix, The Insider, The Sixth Sense, etc. it felt like a new wave was coming. Unfortunately, 2000 was one of the worst years ever for films, with Almost Famous being the one great film, and Traffic and Requiem for a Dream being the only films that were progressive cinematically (yet both were adapted from other sources). Yet, today Fight Club is the only film that still seems radical, both in its delivery and technique; it’s as fresh and prescient as it’s ever been.

Tyler Durden:

“I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars.

Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need.

We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars.

But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.”

Even after Iraq became the war, it still isn’t our war. It’s one of our fathers, one of a President, and one of a country angry about something and blaming someone else. We can either decide to stay the course or change for the better. The extreme is dangerous above all else, but it may be the only way to make the change needed. Taking the extreme end is one thing and could prove fatal; thinking about new paths would be the first step for what we could achieve. I believe we have it in us.

(continued...)

Link

The Triumphant Return of the...

I think these shirts pretty accurately describes the attitude of this
website.

The Triumphant Return of the...

(continued...)

An eye for an eye

An eye for an eye

Someone once said that if people live together long enough they began to look alike. asshole.

(continued...)

My generation, part one of .... Goldeneye

So I am still trying to figure out where I am going with this site. But to fair, no one seems to care either way and Steaze has been MIA for three months now.

So, I am going to combine two of the things I love the most into a long series.

Media

And My Generation.My generation:


I wrote about this in my post 2004 election post.

http://ineverlovedyou.blogspot.com/2004/11/as-we-move-to-and-too-as-well.html

For those people born somewhere between 1970 and 1986, there is a collection of individuals who were raised on some of the best media and in a culture that was relatively free of any real strife. Most of these people were not taught racism, sexism, or inequality. We were taught the idea of diversity. While this is a drain on some aspects of life, and certainly people will hate others as they grow older, the original teachings they got are going to lay solid, even if the mere act of going to work in a multicultural workplace can taint this belief, deep down we know that no one is any better. That’s something new. We may have differences and we may not initially like someone, but we know more so than any generation in ages that we are all created equal.

Somewhere between the facelessness of internet chatrooms and online play, we learn that, deep down we are all assholes. But we are assholes from the start. THAT’S the difference.

I believe in my generation. We will become a great generation, I have no doubt of it. Whether the world changes in 2013 or not, this generation is going to change everything. We are exposed to far too much knowledge and given the paths to make the difference. Even if we have a president trying to Big Brother the press, in the end, the reality catches up with them (evidence Clinton and Bush 43 with the video that shows he was CLEARLY INFORMED about Katrina).

I believe and I love my generation. The latter is due to knowledge. The former due to intuition.

Anyway, this is going to be a series of posts about what was us. The texts that shaped us as a collective, and the great works of our growth period.

With the exception of the posts about the Goonies and E.T. (and maybe a few others), this is about the period from 1993 until 2009, which about the time I will likely finish this whole thing (if I ever write more than three of these).

Each year will have anywhere from one to five entries.

It’s a list for all lists.

So let’s get to it.


Golden-Eye. N64. 1997.

To this date, I can’t remember why I bought this game. When I bought it, I heard it was a James Bond game for the 64, and I heard it was going to be OK.

The day I bought it, I also bought the Special Edition VHS set of the Star Wars Trilogy. Maybe why I bring this up is nothing more than memory, but it also seems like something of a kismet. At that time I had never spent as much time on one thing (other than school and other things of actual life) on Star Wars. I bought it because I thought it would be a cool game to play. I had mild expectations (mind you this was before the real boom of the net where everyone was shouting about new things 60/60/24).

So the end of this flashback comes to an end with this last recollection.

Me, Will, and Mike had been getting together the last weekends of the 97 summer to play Mario Kart 64. We were playing every Friday and Saturday before we went out. That night came and we were going to watch Star Wars, when we decided to play the multiplayer feature of Golden Eye.

We went to bed at 3 am.

We started at 6 pm.

There are few games that will ever cause a hush when you mention the title around people who play videogames. It’s something of a rare air that is like the reaction to art pieces in the canon to literati. They cause an awed silence, and if provoked, the people will give a long, unfocused diatribe about what they feel about the piece. It’s not quite a review, because it’s so gushing. It’s the critical response of having sex for the first time; it’s an experience you have so much joy, love, and sheer unprepared awe that when put into words, the spoken analysis is going to be both gushing and unfamiliar. You can try, but you can’t replicate the experience in words even with hyperbole.

I can think of few games that have done this.

The list:

Super Mario Brother 3: It’s all summed up with someone telling you “Mario can FLY. NOT ONLY THAT, he can become a frog.

Tetris: You can’t stop playing!

Grand Theft Auto 3: You can do ANYTHING. And playing it changed your temporary mindset so much that you kind of believed you could steal a car.

And finally:

Goldeneye: You are James Bond.

These games bring that hush. They evoke the same feeling of falling in love for the first time. You know you will be forever linked to something else.

I had an argument with a guy who designs games for a living. We talked about the best games of all time. We talked about Mario 3 and World, Super Metroid and Castelvainia SOTN, Final Fantasies 6 and 7 (I still love Tactics best of all), Tetris, River City Ransom, Halo, Doom, Tie Fighter, Metal Gear, and so on.

But we both agreed, if given a game, on the most modern of all systems, we’d like to have the ability to play Goldeneye for the first time again.

This was the first time that you ever played inside a 3-D world that was both intriguing and scary. You wanted to explore, yet you feared the next step.

A lot of elements that made the game so *awesome* were because they were revolutionary, but at the same token, it wasn’t just that it was something now available, it was that these paths were so enthralling.

I remember going through the 18 levels of the game, and beating the first major stages, only to be greeted with a new stage that was far more challenging than I thought.

Think of the levels.

The first level is outdoors, wide open and above ground. But it leads to the next level which starts in a Ventilator shaft. You spend the next few levels in a Communist Military Base until you escape via plane. After that, you take over a ship, fight in a missile silo, escape with a hostage in a Russian Library. And then you get to pilot a tank.

Granted this was all based off of a great action movie and one could discount the gameplay as simple recreation, but that would cheapen that initial reaction. This was the first game where you felt the joy as an active participant –vs. the passive viewer of a movie—of getting the chance to drive a tank in a city. You got to drive a tank, and you felt like you earned the right to do so.

The level designs are legendary. From the “Control” level which even in a rush couldn’t be done in less than 10 minutes (and each minute is still startlingly heart-pumping to this date) to the frigate level, filled with claustrophobic dread, or the Jungle level, where the camouflage of the enemies added a new level of gamer awareness.

I still could play this game today. I would play it more often if it wasn’t for a waning lust for higher technology. I want this game to look as good as it deserves to be. The single player portion of this game is nothing short of perfect. I want Rare to put this game on a next Gen system, and to make some slight adjustments.

But I have left out the best part of the game.

Multiplayer mode.

I won’t go into detail about the personal tales of my life with this game. I spent far too many hours to ever put into words.

And I am sure you have too.

I go back to the first night that I ever played this multiplayer.

There were multiplayer games like Madden, Bomberman, Tetris, Combat, and there were many primitive PC games that gave the live experience.

But all of them were dwarfed by Goldeneye. It was the four player function. It was the speed of one hit kills. It was the trash talking that could be brought to the players before online.

This was a uniting experience, one that was likely topped by later games and better technology.

But my closing thought is this:

What game can you remember that you tie so closely to your friends in this period.

Were there any levels better than Stack, or Facility, or Temple for multiplayer?

Was there ever a game you loved to play alone just as much as you loved to play it with friends?

What game ever let you play as a male icon?

Technology may top it, but few experiences will EVER amount to playing Goldeneye.

It's part of our growing up.

(continued...)