I’ll have a butterscotch sundae, I guess.

Had errands to run to help my mother and her friends with some church luncheon shenanigans in the morning, and a lot-lot-lot on my mind today, but the good news is it was a foggy-but-genial day for Grandma, which makes everything much better. She had a pretty gay time just watching traffic and neighborhood cats out the front window.

Paper doll set intended for framing by claudiavarosio on the etsy.

Margot: You probably don’t even know my middle name.
Royal: That’s a trick question; you don’t have one.
Margot: ‘Helen.’
Royal: That was my mother’s name.
Margot: I know it was.

Guess what I watched today? I’m not so sure it was the greatest move.

“Margot Tenenbaum” by Jopet on the deviantart.

Raleigh: You don’t love me any more, do you?
Margot: I do. Kind of? I can’t explain it right now.

Raleigh: Are you ever coming home?
Margot: Maybe not.
Raleigh: Well, I want to die.

“These days I seem to think…” bytoxicdecay on the deviantart.

Raleigh: You made a cuckold of me.
Margot: I know.
Raleigh: Many times over.
Margot: So sorry.

“Old Mink Coat” by Vitamin Bee on the deviantart.

Richie: You dropped some cigarettes.
Margot: Mm? Those aren’t mine.
Richie: Th — they just fell out of your pocket.

“Margot Tenenbaum II” by cielobell on the deviantart.

Ethel: How long have you been a smoker?
Margot: Twenty-two years.
Ethel: Well. I think you should quit.

“Margot Tenenbaum” by Brett Is a Girl on the redbubble.

Richie: I think I might be in love with Margot.
Royal: … Margot Tenenbaum?

“Margot Tenenbaum” by Tussilagon on the deviantart.

“I’ll have a butterscotch sundae, I guess.”

Liberated Negative Space o’ the day: Daily Batman — Shadow of the Bat edition

“You know that day you told me about, when Gotham would no longer need Batman? It’s coming. Harvey is that hero. He locked up half of the city’s criminals, and he did it without wearing a mask. Gotham needs a hero with a face.”

— The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008).

Or even …. two faces? What-what? Yeah. You let me know how that retirement plan works out, bud.

edit: “sidewalk around the corner from Sheridan College in Oakville (near toronto)” according to Jim in the comments, whose friend Matt liberated the space. Super-fat-bat-thanks!

Langston Hughes Month: Quiet Girl

I would liken you
To a night without stars
Were it not for your eyes.
I would liken you
To a sleep without dreams
Were it not for your songs.

–Langston Hughes, “Quiet Girl”

Daily Batman: Be a refuge to yourself

Words from the Buddha.

“Turn your back on it” by photographamy on the deviantart. please do check out her beautiful portfolio.

Advice from a patron saint: Jane Birkin 2nd or 3rd or 5th edition

I really need to create her own category. I don’t know why I haven’t done that yet. Read this while I work on that.

via rathausartprojects.

When I was at school I used to scream in trains, in those concertina things between the carriages. I used to try to be so good that sometimes I couldn’t bear it any more.

via univedder right here on the wordpress

It was when I turned down a project, because I thought I couldn’t be funny anymore, that my mother booted me in the ass and said, “You have to get out of this. Laugh and the world laughs with you. Cry — and you cry alone.”

Okay, she’s a category now.

PSA: Movie Moment — Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever

All right, that’s it. I’ve positively had it with all the growing sass and scuttlebutt I’ve been hearing over the last several years that the action flick Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever is “the worst” movie of all time or even, according to justly venerated Rotten Tomatoes, the worst movie in recent memory.

First of all, no one bashes a Lucy Liu movie on my watch — Freckles, would you please call a bitch? I got plans! — and second, there are way worse recent movies out there than Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever (and, yes, you may look forward to me referring to the title in full throughout this entry).

As two examples off the top of my head, I consider the recent film adaptation of comic legend Will Eisner’s The Spirit to be legless, personally devastating schlock with virtually unwatchable “acting,” while Shrek the 3rd was so shrill and crassly commercial that I believe my heart has been better warmed by Dr. Pepper ads.

There is a misconception that Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever was based on a videogame of the same name. Scratch that, reverse it. The videogame was based on the original script for the movie, but ended up being released ahead of the film, which had changed considerably over the course of production. A second, sequel videogame was based on the movie, with the events of the game more closely following the movie’s plot. So you can also take Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever off the “worst adaptation” lists.

A point in the film’s defense: Originally, the character of Agent Sever was male. Antonio Banderas, having been cast as Ecks, suggested during the Search for Sever that the studio consider reworking the character as a female. The part went to Lucy Liu. (Out of the park grand slam in my book — gracias, Sr. Banderas.) But here’s the thing: Ecks and Sever do not at any point have sex with each other. Oh, snap! A guns-blazing testerone-filled movie about professional cool-as-shit-spy-people where one of them is a girl and she actually does not get tumbled by the male! Amazing! And they said it could not be done. Booya! I find that fact impressive and surprisingly integritous, considering the cheese that oozes from most of the plotholes in Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever (I will never get tired of writing that full title out).

I will grant you, the dialogue can be bad, although I could say the same for the recent remake of Clash of the Titans, during which Special K and I began predicting, accurately, the next sullen thing Perseus would grumble to whoever he was arguing with at the time.* Particularly galling is a supposedly pensive “learning” moment near the end of the picture when someone says, accurately, of Sever, “She’s a killer,” and Agent Jeremiah Ecks responds severely, “No. She’s a mother.” Hope the families of the some fifty police officers that former-Agent Sever killed in the — surprise, surprise — gratuitously violent opening sequence agree that mom trumps cop.

And yes, it is pretty much shocking that it somehow got past everyone involved in this film’s production that the screenplay has placed operatives for the United States government, fully staffed with offices and everything, in Vancouver, Canada.

The cast is rounded out by some familiar faces, including Ray Park and Miguel Sandoval, pictured above, who do their best with the aforementioned holey script. Although I think even in that screencap Mr. Sandoval (Medium, Bottle Shock) looks kind of embarassed to be there. Talisa Soto is also on the screen, the best I can say for her presence. I would analogize her “performance” to the picture itself: great to look at, as long as you are not of a mood to go digging too deep, which why should you? So relax and enjoy All The Prettiness.

I remember struggling to make sense of this movie while watching it on the big screen (a difficulty I’ve acutely repeated several times over with each of the Pirates of the Caribbean pictures, but they make money so no one bashes them) and, at one point, being surprised it was still on and checking my watch to make sure I hadn’t lost time or something. But I have still reacted far, far more badly to other films, and in the end, having rewatched it here and there (never in toto, I don’t think), I find myself a Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever apologist. I don’t believe the movie tried to be more than what it was — 90 minutes of pretty people with big guns and bigger explosions — and so I don’t think it ought be judged too harshly.

As a final note, the director of this big-budget, technically-demanding action film was only around 27 at the time of its production and had only one other movie to his name. That name is Wych Kaosayananda. In 1998, he’d directed Fah, the most expensive Thai movie of all time, a gory, violent epic which bombed terribly. But it got Hollywood’s attention and in the halcyon days of 2002, he styled himself “Kaos” while shooting this film. Now that you know all that, can you see why it’s really no good to act like this movie was ever intended to be coherent? Just make an amused sad face and slide along!

Lastly, Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever. I just wanted to write it one more time. Thank you!






*e.g.: “Only a god could do what you’ve done.” “I’m not a god. I’m a man,” or some variation of exactly those words. He talked like that to everyone, for two hours. Perseus in the Clash of the Titans remake is a disrespectful and largely ungrateful shit with a chip the size of Crete on his shoulder.

The only person in that script worth a damn is Andromeda, played excellently by Alexa Davalos; when the Kraken was right up in her face and she went limp in the chains I honest-to-god swooned and almost fainted, myself. Good, I might even actually say unmissable, stuff. For those couple minutes. The rest was pretty much filler and garbage. Also, it was not shot in 3-D despite being shown in 3-D in a lot of locales so here’s a tip from E: see C o T in regular projection as its director intended and spare yourself the studio’s shoddy rookery. You’re welcome!

Advice: Marilyn edition, “The few remaining earthbound stars”

I am involved in a freedom ride protesting the loss of the minority rights belonging to the few remaining earthbound stars. All we demanded was our right to twinkle.

(Telegram from Marilyn Monroe declining a party invitation from Bobby and Ethel Kennedy. June 13, 1962.)

You got to fight for your right to twinkle. It is difficult and discouraging and at times seems insurmountable, but in the end, you are raised up to the sky to shine forever. Please try to help each other out and let’s none of us lose heart.

Movie Moment: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Miloš Forman, 1975).

I wrote quite a while ago about how I had always responded very strongly to this movie, well before reading the book, but I recently rewatched it after having gone through the excruciating experience of being impelled to read the book all of a night in September (thanks to a loan from Jonohs), and it reminded me I’ve been collecting screencaps which I’d like to share.

Actually I have dozens more of these, but I think in this edition I want to keep the focus mainly on the question of Mac’s mental state and the conflict between McMurphy and Nurse Ratched.

“In one week, I can put a bug so far up her ass, she won’t know whether to shit or wind her wristwatch.”

(I’m pretty sure that all of these particular caps are via One Day, One Movie on the tumblr.)

Did You Know? One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was filmed on location at the State Mental Hospital in scenic Salem, Oregon. I’m not familiar with that particular monkeyhouse, but Ken Kesey was: he based the 1962 book, from which the movie was adapted, on his experiences working as an orderly there, during which time he participated in a study where he was given, among other hallucinogenic compounds, a friendly little fuckstorm of LSD and peyote. Yummy! Your tax dollars at work!

Nurse Ratched: If Mr. McMurphy doesn’t want to take his medication orally, I’m sure we can arrange that he can have it some other way. But I don’t think that he would like it.

McMurphy: [to Harding] You’d like it, wouldn’t you? Here, give it to me.

“Is that crazy enough for you? You want me to take a shit on the floor?”

“Hey, baby, where you from?” “I am from 1234 Asylum Street, Room 22.”

The original Oregon State Hospital for the Insane was established by J.C. Hawthorne in what was then East Portland, Oregon, (now the Hawthorne District). It was built in 1862, and the street on which it was built was renamed Asylum Street. Local residents protested about the name, however, and it was renamed Hawthorne after the hospital’s founder in 1888.

The street in Salem on which the current hospital is located, Center Street, was also originally named Asylum Avenue.

Heartwarming. I used to live very close to Hawthorne in Portland. Between you and me, the name change was unnecessary. There is just as much a cacophony of poverty, despair, madcap high spirits, compassionately helpless onlookers, and emotionless venture capitalists as the name “Asylum Street” suggests. An intersection of mixed purposes and emotions.

Droppin’ c-bombs. That Mac!

“Now they’re telling me I’m crazy because I don’t sit there like a goddamn vegetable. Doesn’t make a bit of sense to me. If that’s what being crazy is, then I’m senseless, out of it, gone-down-the-road, whacko — no more, no less, that’s it.”

I have basically scene by scene screencaps but I’ve always felt really strongly about this movie and I’m committed to hoping that everyone goes and watches it for themselves. No spoilers today.

The main difference between the [film and the book] is that the novel is narrated by Chief Bromden, and the reader knows straight away that he [no spoilers].

This was a major source of controversy in developing the screenplay, and eventually the reason why the author, Ken Kesey, was not the final writer. He felt as though the narration of a schizophrenic was an important aspect of the novel, because it produced a hallucinogenic perspective where the reader/viewer is not always sure exactly what is true. (the wiki)

That was my only criticism to Jonohs, I believe, when we discussed the differences between the book and its film adaptation, so now I’m feeling pretty unoriginal.

The end.

Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: It happens, “Pure insanity” edition

The Woodstock Festival. Bethel, NY. August 17, 1969.

This shot of some liberated negative tent space at Woodstock is up by way of foreshadowing today’s Movie Moment.

Wednesday Wednesday: Cover art edition

Portrait by Isabel Samaras, via Anton Khodakovsky on the Behance Network.

This is the Korean book cover for the late Stieg Larsson’s Män som hatar kvinnor (Men Who Hate Women) (2005). It is part of his Millenium crime trilogy, which has made him a posthumous internationally bestselling author.

The english-language translation was re-titled The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and came out in September of 2008. A trade paperback copy from my cousin Mary is sitting on the floor next to my bed in my To Read pile which I am grossly ignoring at present because I have other reading obligations to which I strictly stick at this time of year. But I plan to start it when I’ve got that all sewn up. Maybe I will figure out why Wednesday is wearing a necklace of multicultural doll heads in the portrait. (Or why the portrait is of Wednesday at all, even.) I’ll let you know.

Daily Batman: Doestoevsky edition

“Much unhappiness has come into the world because of bewilderment and things left unsaid.”

(“Introduction,” Critical Articles. 1895.)

“Batgirl – Oracle” by iamww on the deviantart.

“What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”

(Father Zossima, The Brothers Karamazov. 1880.)

Langston Hughes Month: Walkers With the Dawn

Being walkers with the dawn and morning,
Walkers with the sun and morning,
We are not afraid of night,
Nor days of gloom,
Nor darkness–
Being walkers with the sun and morning.

(Langston Hughes,”Walkers With the Dawn”)

Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: Alf wuz here

Alf wuz here.

Get it?

Langston Hughes month: “Helen Keller”

She,
In the dark,
Found light
Brighter than many ever see.

She,
Within herself,
Found loveliness,
Through the soul’s own mastery.

And now the world receives
From her dower:
The message of the strength
Of inner power.

(Langston Hughes, “Helen Keller.”)

I think it’s really beautiful and awesome that Mr. Hughes took the time to recognize in Helen Keller a kindred spirit and spare so many thoughts and special words for her. It is a testament to both their spirits.

Daily Batman: “Love — any love — reveals us in our nakedness” but we must resist the urge to translate that nakedness into nothingness

“One does not kill oneself for the love of a woman, but because love — any love — reveals us in our nakedness, in our misery, in our vulnerability, in our nothingness.”

(Caesare Pavese, one of the greatest Italian poets and literary minds of the 20th century, c. 1950, just before his death by suicide after his failed affair with American actress Constance Dowling.)

Love strips us painfully, pitifully bare, like some shorn sheep or a little boy who’s just got his first buzzcut: this awkward, naked truth is very accurate, but I’m actually so glad of the many types of love; Sgr. Pavese seems to find all of them disheartening, but, respectfully, I dissent. I have struggled a long time with the difficulty of confronting and revealing my feelings, but I now believe that it is possible to examine my own self and still manage not to fall in to complete despair. Without the love of my family and friends I could never have borne some of the hard hits my heart has taken, historically and up to the present. I wish with all my soul that Sgr. Pavese could have found that same solace, but I wish him all the best in the life he has now. RIP.

Mean Girls Monday: Talk nerdy to me, another Star Trek edition, by way of introducing Kevmo’s awesome new “Project: NerdTrek” blog

My grandmother is having a Bad Day so while she’s taking a nap I’m going to throw some stuff up really quick and then when she’s awake again, I’m afraid I will be definitely tied up.

A dear old friendoh who is a funny, clever, and all-around smashing good family man has started an intriguing and fun new blog called Project: NerdTrek over on the blogger. Kevin’s plan is to watch all the various Star Trek franchise viewing material in stardate order, hopefully squeezing in an episode a day. I look forward to keeping up with him and encourage my fellow nerds to follow, too! (I have also linked to him in the new and improved categorized blogroll on the right of the page.)

Oh, but he would, Mr. Spock.

Check Kevmo’s stuff out, and, in the meantime, please send vibes that my grandmother’s mind will — since I think it cannot at this point fully rethread itself — at least be set at ease by some well-earned rest.

Langston Hughes Month: “Fire-caught”

The gold moth did not love him
So, gorgeous, she flew away.
But the gray moth circled the flame
Until the break of day.
And then, with wings like a dead desire,
She fell, fire-caught, into the flame.

— “Fire-caught,” Langston Hughes.

Et tu, Jane?

Daily Batman: “We have only to follow the thread of the hero-path.”

Joseph Campbell, author of The Hero With A Thousand Faces, has this to say about the value of heroes and mythology to modern culture:

“… The logic, the heroes, and the deeds of myth survive in to modern times. In the absence of an effective general mythology, each of us has his private, unrecognized, rudimentary, yet secretly potent pantheon of dreams.” (2)

“We have not even to risk the adventure alone!; for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path.” (18)

Campbell, Joseph. The Hero With A Thousand Faces. 3rd ed. Novato: New World Library, 2008. Print.


Photographs by Daniel Van Flymen for Guapo magazine, “While Our Blood’s Still Young.” October 2009.

Talk nerdy to me: the Sator Square

via contrariwise, right here on the wordpress.

This is a tattoo on the arm of an Illustrated Man which is of a very ancient and hip little meme — the so-called Sator square.

Earliest records of the Sator Square date from Pompeii. M-m-much, much, much, much more (please read that in a combination of Ray D. Tutti from Baron Munchausen and an old school Max Headrome voice) than just your “standard” palindrome, the Sator Square reads the same backward, forward, in rows, and in columns, evinced by the above unfortunately irrevocable tat which can only be removed by expensive, skin-altering surgery, and below, in the defacement of a wall.

There are several translations of the playful-but-persistent square phrase, of which I will only reproduce the one I like best.

“The sower, Arepo, holds the wheels [of the world's machine] at work.”

Parantheses mine. I’m just suggesting the prospect of a wide definition from the standpoint of a popular metaphor, here, is all.

(ugh! lame, lame caption — unlike this one right here which cures cancer and enlarges penises — call me for your super-official and 10,000% legal prescription!)

There is no “Arepo” of any note who sows or does anything else in the mythology of any proposed countries of origin for this meme, so it’s been assumed since time out of mind that Arepo, like the “she” of “she sells seashells by the seashore,” is referred to in the phrases of the square only for the purposes of making the wordgame pleasing and symmetrical.

Scene.

edit: “It’s actually a tattoo on the lower left lumbar region of an Illustrated Woman.” Please do read the comment from Fafner for up-to-date fact-checks if you plan to re-blog. Accuracy is cool, good for the skin, and it brings good karma!*



*Karma sold separately — and use witch hazel to enhance good skin effects. But still!

Daily Batman: Poisonville’s Dinah Brand, of Red Harvest, edition

Excellent photographs are titled “Batwoman” and come from maanuuu on the deviantart. Words, by pulp king and detective fiction master Dashiell Hammett, come from Red Harvest, the only published, novel-length account of one of the Continental Op’s cases.

Hammett, Dashiell. Red Harvest. New York: Knopf, 1929. Print. (30).

The widely-imitated plot of the book — in which an initially disinterested outsider is called in to help settle accounts in a small town beset with the strife of several disparate groups in a power-struggle for control of the town’s assets, then manipulatively turns the groups upon one another while attempting to remain detached himself — has inspired, among other works, the films Blood Simple, Yojimbo, Last Man Standing, and A Fistful of Dollars.

via Mark Sutcliffe books.

My life will only be complete when the Coen brothers just plain make this movie, with a screenplay adapted directly from the book by, say, James Ellroy. Please. You guys, I will gladly help you with whatever — ad copywriting, finances, and even craft table shit. Make my dreams come true, Coen brothers.

I think every geek has a secret list of ultimate-collaborative-fantasy movies that have never been but ought be made. This one is mine.