Stardate 02142003
Valentine’s day. Whatever.
The Alternative Press Expo moved from Fort Mason to The Concourse Exhibition Center. The old location is being retrofitted, but that’s good, I’m told, because this years Expo was bigger than ever.
Yay for the Alternative Press.
Extreme Elvis was there helping his friend Alexis Barrera hawk CRACKED-OUT COMICS #1 featuring The King – Extreme Elvis. NONARKIE #2 by Chuck Belak-Berger has a character that looks just like Extreme E. Coincidence? I asked EE to sign the NONARKIE but instead he flowed me a CRACKED-OUT and signed it “Here is your free media copy of our comic book, you cheap bastard. Love, E Elvis.” Awww..
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Chuck B-B was sharing a table with Ivan Ehlers who drawded my picture while I was talking to them. Ivan does the comic EXCEEDINGLY SEX (e-mail jtbigplaya@aol.com for info). They asked me why I wanted to take a picture of them and I told them that I just liked their vibe. They represent to me everything APE is about, down to the “Free ABC- ALL MY CHILDREN trading cards with each purchase.” Ivan told me that he works at an elementary school and he snuck into the copy room to print his comic. By hook or by crook, man. Whatever it takes to get the shit out there. It turns out Chuck and Ivan occasionally read OFF THE RADAR. So I got free shit. Just for being rad. It’s not the soundest business model, but who is at APE to make money?
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There was another guy at the table and when I realized I didn’t bring my notepad in with me, I asked for a piece of a paper and a pen and the guy who is now just a happy face said to me, in a snide, condescending way, “What kind of journalist are you?” The kind wut stamps out your face with Photoshop for being an asshole. \/\/3r|)! I magically turned him into a network news anchor.
Oh, two good movies, that reminds me of: NETWORK and BRAZIL. I think I’m on the verge of having a PIPPI LONGSTOCKING film marathon chez moi. I found an essay a while back about how Pippi is the archetypal anarchist. Astrid Lindgren, who wrote the books, when later in life she became a strict Christian, she distanced herself from the Pippi books. I bet she felt a little bit like Victor Frankenstein. “Love me, Victor. I am your Creation. Looooove meeeeeeeee.” FRANKENSTEIN is one of my all-time favorite books ever. Ever.
I go to APE every year and even though the titles are always the same, I just love looking through the MUSEUM OF LOST WONDER guides – each guide is sheer genius. Something like ACME Home Library but more scientific. Lots of fanciful schemas and diagrams. I think of them as keys to unlock the hidden secrets of the universe within and without. THE MUSEUM OF LOST WONDER will open bold new vistas, forcing the gears in your mind to churn. Plus, they look really cool. And they’re cheap! Only 3 bucks a guide.
And I saw Ted Naifeh again. He was at SPOOKYCON and I meant to pimp his comic he’s doing for ONI PRESS, COURTNEY CRUMPING AND THE NIGHT THINGS. I also met the real Courtney Crumpin who looks nothing at all like the little scary girl in the comic.
I’ve been kind of a shut-in lately. I’ve been watching UNWRAPPED and TOP FIVE on THE FOOD NETWORK. UNWRAPPED is fun because it shows you how all your favorite crappy processed foods are made, making the food seem, well, appealing. In the episode that featured TastyCakes Donuts, the spokesperson rattled off the ingredients, one of which was “other liquids.” It doesn’t take much to read a label. “And now we are adding the flavor enhancers, colors, preservatives and a few other things that my buddy over at Dow convinced me to buy so poor people could have not just a nutritionally deficient diet, since they can only afford to buy mass-produced adulterated food (Cheaper in Bulk!) but also one loaded in saturated, hydrogenated fats; refined simple sugars, and lots and lots of chemicals. And my good buddy the senator who sits on the board of the drug company introduced us. We love each other almost as much as we hate you. But we love your money. Please, keep giving us your money.”
But it is a fun show to watch in the way that its fun to visit a factory and watch stuff get made. And it’s cute and lively. Little sparkly bunnies dancing around blowing pot smoke in your face.
TOP FIVE is just interesting in a mindless, socially relevant, gee-whiz kind of way. There should be one called, “Top five foods I wouldn’t eat if you paid me but I don’t mind pimping the shit out to you, cuz then massuh will give me my ration of salt pork.”
CNN is starting to feel like a big spin factory for the Military/Industrial Complex. The segment about the neat gadgets the CNN correspondent gets to use while in Iraq was so focused on the rock-and-roll aspect of the story that it lost perspective. This is not Rock And Roll. This is not Television.™ This is the world we live in. The actual stuff actually happening because, to and for actual people. There is nothing abstract or disconnected about it. It’s not fluff. It’s not entertainment.
It’s the real fuckin’ deal. To be fair, they sometimes allow an idea to develop for nearly a full minute before launching the next cycle of four-second soundbytes. Every commentator had a good laugh about how duct tape is flying off the shelf. My roomate was running around the house saying, “If we get chemically nuclearly biologically attacked I’m going to wrap the dog in duct tape. DUCT TAPE WILL SAVE US!” It made me think of the old duck and cover drills. If there’s a nuclear blast, what do you do kids? That’s right. Duck and Cover.
Of course, right after I wrote this, CNN runs a segment comparing the whole Duct tape advice to the old Duck and Cover drills. “People want to feel like they have some control over their environment.” So I imagine that millions made the same connection simultaneously, without discussing it with anyone. I guess I just have to admit that CNN does, throughout the course of a day, represent several sides of current issues.
God Bless all the frightened people who feel like this whole world thing is out of their control, though. I mean, if you don’t really understand what’s going on, an Orange Alert does seem like something to take seriously. But, it IS in our hands. We are all, each of us, everyday, in our small ways, helping to create this world. Since previous generations have got us here, it’s up to us to get us out. And the first thing I’m doing is firing everybody.
That and eschatological paranoia will get you nothing. Oh yes, IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD. My Christian friend is always trying to link up what’s happening in the world to the book of Revelations, a popular past-time for centuries now. Now, I wouldn’t be so put out by this if the people who are currently in charge of the government didn’t think that their primary reason for being in the lawmaking business was to make sure the anti-Christ never gains any foothold … in Congress I guess.
Another friend of mine says, “Well, don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.” Which is very good advice indeed.
I found a cute website that has developed a single alert system. CODE PINK! A Code Pink signifies extreme danger to all the values of nurturing, caring, and compassion that women and loving men have held. How cool is that? Some of the CODE PINK founders put on a lecture near where I live but I missed it. It’s supposed to be just for women, but there is a “men’s affinity group” so I think they would have let me in to hear about all the Code Pink goings-on. They went to Baghdad last week and gave pink balloons to Iraqi children, who all have no idea what the hell is going on.
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I will tell you how I became a more compassionate person now. I realized that everyone is only doing what they know how to do at that moment. As a species, we are still on a learning curve. I love analyzing history while envisioning the future. Looking into an as yet determined future based on the present and historical patterns used to make me depressed and gloomy. But now I’m just all about trying to embody the values I see as necessary for a peaceful world. My pledge for peace has gotten interesting. So far only 3 respondents, but I think they are representative of the millions others who are tired of living under the yoke of irrelevant social myths and destructive ways of being.
Peace Pledge
- I pledge to discover and minimize my traits that keep me from being in peace with everyone I deal with in my daily life.
- I pledge to masturbate instead of feeling hateful
- I pledge to let go of my pride and ego around truth so we can all get along
Do you want add your own pledge? E-mail me. thom@moviepoopshoot.com
DAREDEVIL opens this week. The Man is getting my money this week for that one. With X-MEN 2 and THE HULK coming this year as well, not to mention two MATRIX flicks and another LORD OF THE RINGS – if we manage to survive as a civilization for one more year, it will be a good year for movies. Movies that are watched drinking thousands of gallons of caramel colored sugar water and scarfing down bucketloads of artificially butter-flavored, hydrogenated oils. I noticed more organic food available at the Safeway – that vast clearing house for agribusiness and the chemical industry.
My wise friend Gigi, who I will quote just as often as she keeps flinging tasty one-liners at me, said, “Nobody has time to read a novel anymore. We are becoming a nation of label readers. You HAVE to become a label reader.”
That’s so true. You can’t trust corporate agriculture, or anything that is profit-driven. The bottom line is not the human being, you … it is shareholder value … the well-being of very few.
This world is so just so many levels of fucked up and if I’m the only one who breaks it down for you, then I’ve done my job.
FOOD NETWORK is my new window to the world. Everyone always smiles on TV. That’s a song lyric from the `80s, but I can’t remember which song. You know what I like about Martha Stewart? She always explains what’s happening even though she knows you are just watching the preparation of food just for entertainment. Like, if the guest chef just goes mad and starts pouring in ingredients and whipping and stirring and blending, Martha will say, “Now, that’s a quarter cup of sugar and you want to be sure to cream it with the butter very well. The French call that mublahblahblah. It’s a technique that originated in a Chevy Dealership in Wyoming when French Chef Jacques DuBlah broke down and had to fix his transmission.”
And then, I’ll watch the FOOD 911 and I’ll notice that the home cooks will be using short cuts and techniques that are uniquely Martha. ALL HAIL MARTHA! Martha should run for President. She’d totally win. And then we’d be all about making the perfect meringue rather than the perfect weapon of mass destruction. I love military spin. Martha is kind of like an evil dictator of entertaining. So that’s Bush-like. I wonder, do we love Bush Jr. or do we just love people who are like Bush Jr. to be in positions of power or are they the only ones who work so hard to get where they are, although Bush Jr. didn’t really have to do much other than show up sober on occasion and then let the Supreme Court illegally declare him the winner.
I know it’s better to just say, “Oh, well, we need to support the President.” But there is nothing in the constitution that says that once a president wins (or in this case, steals) an election, we all have to just step in line. Where were all the Republicans crying “rally around the President” when Clinton got caught with his pants down? So you see, This is America. My America. To quote Wendy Testeburger, “Fuck you Stan, fuck you in your ear.”
I have a theory, and I think it’s a good theory. All the wrong people are in charge. Incompetence reigns supreme. The lust for power usually surpasses the ability or the vision of those who strive towards dominance. What am I saying? That’s our whole society. Compete and Dominate. I’m not sure what kind of society that creates. I guess the one we have now.
I told my roommate if we get nuclearly chemically biologically weapon attacked, I’m going to run outside wearing a target marker, thus giving expression towards the impulse to suicide that seems to be inherent in the human species.
I wish I had answers for you. All I can do is examine the evidence and try to steer a course for the future. I don’t even think of this as a war, I think of it as a boardroom shake-up. Global business politics. There is no melodrama or clearly defined good and evil, in spite of the cartoonish approach of the government to pander to what they think is your ignorance. Working towards a more sophisticated America is one long-term solution we can start implement in the short-term. Read – get out of the mainstream press, develop an appreciation for other cultures. Learn about something you don’t already know about and don’t be afraid to ask the hard questions and get the difficult answers.
Twinkies and ABC aren’t going to save us from ourselves.
In other news: I started watching BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER and at the tail end of its last season, it’s got me hooked. Now that I’ve deferred actually living to experience a much more rarefied reality – network television, I’m glad there are a few unrealities that are interesting to pay attention to.
I’m just not much of a fan type. I can’t help it. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s just all about perspective. BUFFY also interests me because anything that creates community interests me. BUFFY has tied together the lives of its viewers and from what I hear, they spend a lot of time and energy on the Internet relating to each other through their common love of the show. And since I have deemed BUFFY to be not completely detrimental to the psychological well-being of our society, it doesn’t bother me that it is influencing people.
I mean, if they are going to watch, at least give them something else to grab on to besides emotional highs and lows. May as well give them something they can take back to their life as part of our shared humanity.
That sounds a lot like church. Maybe I should reformulate this whole thing. The First Church of Buffy … yes, that’s what I like about it. It’s like church.
I got a flyer about a play being put on in conjunction with the Celtic Arts Center in Studio City, California. I didn’t know there was any kind of non-TV culture in Studio Shitty. It’s called RUM AND VODKA by Conor McPherson. It looks like a one-man show performed by John O’Callaghan (through February 23) about an Irish drunk. I’m sure there must be something distinctive about it if the person who sent it to me, sent it to me, but I can’t go. So if anyone sees it, give me the 411.
And I saw Death By Death. They have a new CD they say is coming out sometime. I know, Death by who? Just a friend’s band. See. I can’t even be bothered to explore the world beyond my living room right now. Margaret Cho will be performing next month. I might get out of bed for that. What I like about Margaret Cho is that our personalities were forged in the same place and time, so she’s like a homegirl. Lost children raised by wild drag queens on 40-ouncers of Olde English 800 on the streets of San Francisco, circa … the mid `80s. Uh-huh. You know it. It’s your birthday. It’s your birthday. Woot!
Gus Van Sant’s GERRY, starring Casey Affleck and Matt Damon opens this weekend also. I was talking to Gus about the flick and he told me that Casey had some difficulty being the weaker character. GERRY is about two Gerrys who get lost in the desert. What follows is a metaphor for all inner and outer journeys, on one level, and about two guys trying to find their way back to their old life – the car, water, security, safety, on another. I would have to write a proper review to tease out all the rich subtleties.
Casey Affleck’s costume, that shirt with a star on it, is a copy of a shirt he had when he was a kid. He had six of the made for the film. “It was fun to have those two guys do it because they already know each other really well,” Van Sant said. The idea from the movie came from Matt Damon telling Van Sant about two guys who get lost in a desert in real life. One ends up killing the other. A friend of mine, Jason Kersten, spent most of last year working on the true-crime novel about the trial. GERRY only started with that story, it ended up as something that will no doubt be revisited by students of film and the humanities for years to come.
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