I am the author of this blog. I live in Oklahoma with my beautiful wife and children. I teach at a university and, in spare moments, write fiction and essays. A collection of my stories will be published by Ravenna Press in 2009. Once upon a time, I edited, designed, and published The God Particle and co-edited the once notorious (now forgotten) BushWhackedUSA. Before that, I made rock music, short films, and a spectacle of myself. Now, well, now I make myself worry.
This is an informal (or, on a rare day, semi-formal) venue for thoughts on politics, satire, fiction, film and music, and for the ways those areas overlap and mingle. Academic concerns may creep in, but this blog is decidedly not intended as an expression of formal academic thought. Nor is this an attempt to launch my name and brand across the firmament of the blogosphere, with the hope of converting the blog into a money-generating advertising venue. Though I once might have aspired to that, I find the idea laughable now. Rather, I view this blog as an open notebook in which I journal my thoughts on a more or less daily basis. You’re invited to look over my shoulder.
Contact
To reach me, send an E-mail to my gmail account, with my full name before the "at" symbol--or simply post a comment on the blog.
My Short, Happy Life as an Auteur
I've decided to come out of the closet: I am a filmmaker. Or, at any rate, I once was. Between 1999 and 2002, I made a series of short films, starting with "My Mother Received a Wound"--which showed at a few film festivals and was (possibly still is) featured in the Moondance Festival's annual "best of" restrospective. The zenith (or nadir, perhaps) of my moviemaking days was surely MOCK, a 47-minute mockumentary film about a filmmaker who makes mockumentary films. If you're interested, you can watch MOCK and several other projects on my Youtube "channel": click here. Enjoy!
(By the way, there's another filmmaker with my name out there--and he lives in San Antonio, the city of my birth, no less--though he spells his first name with a k. I'm quite sure he wouldn't want anyone mistaking my work for his.)
Sometimes, when you little compassion into your day, you end up getting hurt. This beautiful song breaks my heart and leaves me in tears, and this performance is one of the best:
I think of my niece, Shayna, who killed herself this year. I think of all the boys I worked with when I taught special education. I think of the kids begging on the streets, and the old men, and the girls, and the women....
It's good to hurt, I suppose.
And there's this:
Breathing in, breathing out. Breathing in, breathing out. Breathing in, breathing out.
The video below is two or three albums old now, but NMA is still going strong. I downloaded the new album (Today is a Good Day), and after two listens I'm pretty sure it's the best New Model Army album since Thunder and Consolation. If you have ever loved this great band, you'll want to tune in again. Simply amazing, what they're doing now.
I'll post a full review on the blog later this week.
I'll resume blogging later this week. In the meantime, here's an acoustic rendition of the most underappreciated pop song of the past few years--The Guillemots' "Trains to Brazil":
It may be speculated that the widespread response to labeling all who oppose homosexuals "homophobic" may itself be driven by an irrational fear of those who oppose them, in which homosexuals imagine that most or all of those who oppose them are motivated by irrational fears, and wish to do them harm, and from which type of people they must be especially protected. Homophobia has also been stated to be the real cause of AIDS[24] Such fears may explain the perception that "the nuclear family is a microcosm of the fascist state...", [25] and similar attacks on heteronormativity. It has also been stated by preeminent pro homosexual psychotherapist, John J. McNeill, that "Interiorized self-hatred is the sin of gay people, and we must learn to see it that way."
HEY YOU! Person who stumbled on this blog while Googling the epitaph at the end of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five: MAY I RECOMMEND A BOOK YOU WILL LOVE?
I did. It is great.You should read it. You'd enjoy it. Plus, you'd be reading a book you enjoy.
Did I mention it's called EVERYTHING MATTERS! It's by Ron Currie Jr., whose first book--a collection of linked stories--won major awards? This is his second book. It's a novel. It's getting rave reviews in major newspapers.
And it's really, really, really good.
Let me add that I've read all of Kurt Vonnegut's earliest novels. They're good, but they don't compare to what Currie is doing at this stage in his career.
Here is someone's personal video, posted on Youtube, of New Model Army performing "Love Songs" (one of my favorites) at a German music festival this summer:
I've never fully understood it, but NMA is apparently very popular in Germany. Or, rather, I've never fully understood their lack of popularity in the rest of the world. Apparently the Germans get it. Oh how I'd love to see the band there someday--or anywhere, again.
And, for good measure, here's an NMA song I'm not familiar with--"Autumn":
Click here for NMA's 2009 North American tour dates, thus far.
Alice is the first mediocre Woody Allen movie of his later, faltering years, bringing an end to a solid run of good and great films that begins with Sleeper in 1973 and ends with Crimes and Misdemeanors in 1989 (though I'm sure I'd dislike 1987's second Allen movie, September, if I had the stomach for it now). It's also Mia Farrow's first outright awful performance in an Allen movie. I know some hate her work and most are indifferent to it. I've always been a fan, myself, but her performance in the title role here is embarrassing. There's a scene when she takes secret Chinese herbs that supposedly make her bold and seductive; instead, she comes off as utterly, pathetically goofy. I suspect she was imitating some schtick Woody asked her to give, a la his flirtation scene in Love and Death:
Consider yourself lucky I couldn't find a youtube clip of Farrow's Alice pulling those faces. It gives me shudders to think of it.
But Farrow's empty performance is not the only problem here. Alice, herself, is the only semi-believable character. The rest are static. They're stereotypes: the wise Chinese herbalist, the rich gossip, the aggressive TV executive, the ne'er-do-well musician. Judy Davis is squandered in this, though she gives the only passable secondary performance. Even William Hurt is wasted as the stuffed shirt husband, despite his best efforts. That's because this movie lacks warmth and humanity. It's all flights of fantasy, dream visions, and cheesy special effects--A Christmas Carol for the uber-wealthy. We get none of the heart, none of the wit we've come to expect from Allen (and, for that matter, from Dickens), and dumb contrivances are apparently supposed to show us it's better to give your kids an experience of real life and real love than to raise them in some sanitized cocoon of wealth. I don't know, and don't care, what Allen wanted to say here.
I only finished watching Alice because back when it came out I thought it was all right. I don't remember why I felt that way. Of course, our Woody Allen comes back strong after this, with a few more good films (especially Husbands and Wives,Bullets Over Broadway, and Deconstructing Harry--the last of which works similarly to Alice but gets better every time I see it). Still, with Alice, we see the beginning of the end.
I'm not saying Allen is finished, but this is where he begins to lose his grip on what works--and what works is definitely not "whatever works." I need to watch Husbands and Wives again soon, to cleanse my palate.
(As an aside, I'm happy to note that Woody's next project is another movie set in London.)
The Kite Runner left me bawling, but for personal reasons that had little to do with the quality of the movie. You see, I lost a niece earlier this year, and the movie's protagonist has a chance to rescue a long lost relative of his. So, for me, the story hit home. Beyond that unhappy (if cathartic) coincidence, though--or perhaps because of it--I came away disappointed.
This is one of those movies that amounts to less than the sum of its parts. It's a sweeping, dramatic story, played out by an excellent cast and shot quite beautifully in most scenes. The story is very human, and it certainly does manage to evoke compassion for the people of Afghanistan in general and the two boys at the heart of the piece in particular. Yet the film turns on a couple of baffling decisions made by the main character (trying to avoid a spoiler here), and it lacks a comfortable intimacy with the boys. Somehow, too, the movie manages to show its big Hollywood budget at almost every delicate moment, usually with oddly timed crane shots and poorly done CGI effects. And significant chunks of the story take place in California. Those scenes sap the power out of the story.
I wanted much more. In fact, I probably wanted the impossible: a film made by and for Afghans. This is not that film.
(Posted this on Facebook, but it fits here too. By the way, Momus--whom I mentioned the other day, has made all of these MP3 files available for free via his website.)
Using only song titles from ONE ARTIST/BAND/COMPOSER, cleverly answer these questions. Pass your answers on to 4,962 people you like, 17 you dislike, and think fondly of me. You can't use the artist I used, not that you've ever heard of him. Try not to repeat a song title, because that would make this meme even more boring. It's a good way to waste half an hour! Repost as "My Life According To (Artist/Band/Composer Name)," or whatever. Or don't.
OK, OK, I get it. I've read of his greatness enough times now, and in comparison to other artists I love (Mark Hollis and David Sylvian, primarily, but also Momus and anyone else who's done Jacques Brel) that the time has come: I'm ready for Scott Walker. The obvious starting point, as far as I can tell, is the compilation 5 Easy Pieces, but I prefer to get to know an artist album by album rather than through an anthology. Chances are I won't enjoy his early works as much as the later ones. So, random Walker fan who fond your way to this blog, which is Scott Walker's best album?
Echo & the Bunnymen was, without question, my favorite band in high school. That, right there, should be enough to make you stop reading. Click away, quick! I won't mind. Hell, I won't even know.
So, granted, the fact that I'm writing about my favorite band from high school twenty-plus years on means I'm incapable of rational consideration of the band's music. Enough has been said elsewhere about the Bunnymen's trailblazing, its passion, its updating of sixties rock sounds, and its rollicking live performances. A couple of the old guys (singer Ian McCulloch and guitarist Will Sargeant) are still going strong--if by "going strong" I can mean "showing occasional flickers of the brilliance that once roared like a bonfire on their records." And I mean just that. They still call themselves "Echo & the Bunnymen," but without Les Pattinson on bass and Pete DeFrietas on drums, they'll never be half as good as they once were. McCulloch could help things along by singing like he gives a damn, but I'll save that rant for another day. You can hear clips from four of their newest songs ("Think I Need It Too," "Do You Know Who I Am?,"Proxy," and "Drivetime") at the band's official MySpace page. These come from their upcoming October release, The Fountain. None sounds particularly exciting, but it's hard to judge from snippets. I'll include the best song from their most recent album below, for good measure.
In any case, here's a B-side the Bunnymen tossed off in some studio in San Francisco while on tour supporting the Ocean Rain album. The song is "Angels and Devils." Rather than describe it, make pronouncements of its genius, or tell you what the song means to me, I'll say only this: The guitars on "Angels and Devils" are exactly the guitar sounds I'd make in my wildest art-rock-star dreams, if only I could play.
Here's a performance of "Angels and Devils" from 2001, when they made it a staple of their live shows:
And here's the original band, circa 1985, in a live-acoustic-on-camera performance of the still new single that was backed with "Angels and Devils," "Silver":
