Music Moment and Hot Man Bein’ Hot of the Day: The Song Remains the Same, Jim Carrey — “I Am the Walrus” edition

From the album In My Life, compiled by Sir George Martin, 1998, this is a shockingly good cover of the Beatles’ cryptic classic by a dude who holds a special place in my heart.

Jim Carrey — I Am the Walrus (Lennon/McCartney, 1967).

I do not care one whit about the Ace Ventura movies or Dumb and Dumber: I’ve never even seen them. That’s deliberately due to the fact that I really, really like everything else about Jim Carrey. I just think he’s an excellent, sensitive, even somewhat tragic human being. A real person.

Not long ago, someone started that old, “If you could have dinner with one person, living or dead–” question, and I immediately blurted out, “Jim Carrey!” Then I felt bad for not saying Jesus.

I guess I just want to see if I’m right about him. He seems like such a levelly cool guy.

Listen for Jim on both vox and keyboard in this cover.

I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.
See how they run like pigs from a gun, see how they fly.
I’m crying.

Sitting on a cornflake, waiting for the van to come.
Corporation tee-shirt, stupid bloody Tuesday.
Man, you been a naughty boy, you let your face grow long.
I am the eggman, they are the eggmen.
I am the walrus, goo goo g’joob.

Girls Like A Boy Who Plays Music.

Mister City Policeman sitting
Pretty little policemen in a row.
See how they fly like Lucy in the Sky, see how they run.
I’m crying, I’m crying.
I’m crying, I’m crying.

Yellow matter custard, dripping from a dead dog’s eye.
Crabalocker fishwife, pornographic priestess,
Boy, you been a naughty girl you let your knickers down.
I am the eggman, they are the eggmen.
I am the walrus, goo goo g’joob.

Sitting in an English garden waiting for the sun.
If the sun don’t come, you get a tan
From standing in the English rain.
I am the eggman, they are the eggmen.
I am the walrus, goo goo g’joob g’goo goo g’joob.

Expert textpert choking smokers,
Don’t you think the joker laughs at you?
See how they smile like pigs in a sty,
See how they snied.
I’m crying.

Semolina pilchard, climbing up the Eiffel Tower.
Elementary penguin singing Hari Krishna.
Man, you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allan Poe.
I am the eggman, they are the eggmen.
I am the walrus, goo goo g’joob g’goo goo g’joob.

Goo goo g’joob g’goo goo g’joob g’goo…

And finally —

— because it’s extremely true. (I do not number among the nameless hordes of diehard Titanic haters, I simply disagree with many of the characters’ choices.)

12 Days of Highly Tolerable Holiday Movies: Elf

Actually, I tolerate this movie at a rate of only medium, rather than “highly,” but I picked it over Gremlins because I had more to say about it, I’d seen it more recently, and I had found better screencaps. Plus there is Zooey Deschanel as a blonde. Singing. In the shower.

Elf (Jon Favreau, 2003).

After inadvertently wreaking havoc on the elf community due to his ungainly size, a man raised as an elf at the North Pole is sent to the U.S. in search of his true identity.

(the imdb)

Please answer the phone that way at least once this week. I plan to but, then, I almost always answer the phone weird, so I won’t have that element of surprise that you will. (My new favorite? Ask the person who’s calling you if they’re there instead of saying hello. Example: it comes up on caller I.D. as “Joe Brown.” Answer the phone, “Is Joe there? Can I speak with Joe Brown, please? Mr. Brown? You’re probably wondering why I’ve called …”)

That’s another thing. (sigh) Buddy, you should know that your father — he’s on the Naughty List.

Nooooo!

I remember thinking when this came out how odd it was that Jon Favreau directed it, but Buddy’s father Walter Hobbs, as interpreted by James Caan, is certainly what I would think of as a Favreauvian creation: a nasty, singleminded piece of work who needs the familiar but lonely high ground of distance from others, and congruent distance from the emotions intimacy might entail, above all else.

(Psst, it is Amy Sedaris. Woo-hoo!)

I think we should call security.

Good idea.

I like to whisper too!

Buddy is a nuisance to his own father not only because of his inconvenient bumblings, but also because he is a deviation from the norm. To confront a person who won’t let you push them away is to confront yourself, and people like Walter Hobbs seek to avoid that at all costs. I believe Favreau is a genius at whipping up these mean little slaves to the system, as an actor and as a director.

That said about a keen and critical eye for slaves to the system, the product placement in this film is almost beyond belief. One of the most blatant things I’ve seen since E.T. I do not count the scene in Wayne’s World II because they did that on purpose (albeit they got paid).

Zooey Deschanel: I don’t know about elves. I didn’t think much about elves because I was trying to think about the man in charge, the one that was going to bring me presents. I believed in Santa Claus until I was, like, 14. [I believed] if my parents think I do, then they’ll give me two sets of presents. And if Santa Claus really does exist, then he’ll appreciate my support.

(“Zooey Deschanel talks about Elf.” Rebecca Murray. 2003. About.com)

Make work your favorite. That’s your new “favorite.”

When the threads of this project were spun out of the distaff of Hollywood nothingness in 1993, Jim Carrey was originally attached to star as Buddy the Elf. I truly love the guy but I am pretty glad he didn’t get it. He’s got far too much pathos in his eyes and the film would have flopped. Will Ferrell gives Buddy an unblinking, irascible cheerfulness that you get the sense would not flag in the face of finding himself engulfed in flames, like a grip of Terminator robots grimly marching across the ocean floor in pursuit of John Connor. Oh, hey, marriage-made-in-heaven sequel idea? “Come wit’ me if yoo be-leaf in Santa!”

Now what can I get you for Christmas?

Don’t tell him what you want, he’s a liar.

Let the kid talk.

You disgust me! How can you live with yourself?

Just cool it, Zippy.

You sit on a throne of lies!

See? I told you Zooey Deschanel showers in this movie. She also eats top ramen. Tell a friend.

Yeah, pretty much. Where this film succeeds for me is in its treatment of the redemption of characters peripheral to Buddy the Elf: namely, his father, Walter, and Jovie, his would-be girlfriend. Grating as he is, if Buddy had changed to accept the new world in to which he thrusts himself, it would have been a cheap and deflating transformation à la Enchanted.*

To see people rise above themselves and protect a dumb, innocent guy is at least affirming. Buddy doesn’t have to change, because the world will always have burpy rays of sunshine: we need to change enough to take care of them, to share their optimism and deserve their devotion. I can hang with that.

Extra-tolerable bonus: Buddy’s supervisor at the North Pole is Peter Billingsley, of A Christmas Story. “You’re not a cotton-headed ninny-muggins, Buddy. You’re just … different.” Aw. Super-cool!

*Enchanted had nice music but, really, Giselle goes from being a full-throated maiden of the forest to Chi-ironing her hair and operating a dress shop in Manhattan. Conform, little girl! For all the posturing at positioning a new kind of feminist anti-hero that that script threw at us, in the end, it pandered to the same “princess-demographic” ideals it was purporting to rebel against. But, dang, that Amy Adams is cute as a button, yes?

Burroughs Month and Movie Millisecond: Respect silence

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michael Gondry, 2004.)

Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing.

(William S. Burroughs qtd. in Odier, Daniel. The Job: Interviews With William S. Burroughs. (Paris: Editions Pierre Belfond. 1969). Print.)

I really can’t stand it when people pester me about communication. It’s insecure and suggests that I’m some wild, changeable, untrustworthy person who the other party may turn to find is plotting some mutiny behind their back or necking with the bartender while their car is being stolen. I wish it could just be assumed that I am a solid human and that if I had anything new to report, I would. It’s so disrespectful to be unceasingly pressuring people to talk if they don’t feel like it or have requested time to think: the kind of person who fears silence, as Mr. Burroughs points out, is a self-involved control freak who is only waiting for their turn to start nattering on about their own problems again.

“What are you thinking? You’re so quiet.” Aren’t you thinking about me? I want to be talking. It tells me that the other person doesn’t give a shit about what I’m actually like, and I am just another in a long line of replaceable intimate nobodies to whom they confess everything, manipulate endlessly, and discard for someone more dramatic when they are bored of baring their soul to me. Like, screw that, you know? Thank god my friends get it and are like that themselves: we respect each other’s silences and alone times, and come together with love and boisterous support when the time is right, not when we demand it to be so. So much better. Why can’t we just marry our friends and family?

E.E. Cummings Month: “i like my body when it is with your”

I’ve had a lot of friends celebrating romantic occasions recently. This is for them, and for hope.

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite a new thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Gondry, 2004).

i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,

i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh . . . . And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you quite so new


(E.E. Cummings, “i like my body when it is with your.” Written for Elaine Thayer. They divorced in December of 1924. The poem was published Valentine’s Day, 1925.)

Jean Seberg, À bout de souffle/Breathless (Godard, 1960).

If you feel often like me then these Cummings love poems might make us lost ones a little lonely, but if I can glean a positive from it, they are written with such passion that you cannot help, with some surprise, hoping to find a fraction of that abandon and joy, whether again or for the first time. And believing such a thing is possible to find even after you’ve experienecd deep pain or felt yourself set always apart from the crowd of the easily popular, incomprehensible, “normal” socializing world, the idea that you might still connect with someone in a deep, resonantly real way, one that isn’t predicated on current conventions of date-marking-success like alcohol or knowing lines from an eighties sitcom, is something that is never bad. I think too that stripping away all the trappings that surround a date or relationship, and seeing how well the vibe between you stands up absent of distraction, mood-altering substances, and the intervention of entertainment technology is maybe a good idea, too.

Katharine Hepburn, Woman of the Year (George Stevens, 1942).

Maybe it’s even vital and something you should do right out of the gate instead of triking along together parallel-playing in front of the television at being in touch when really you are still little materialistic children faking love for someone else in a thousand ways while you prevent yourself from really loving anyone by putting up these walls of text messages and reality shows you have to watch and social networking and earbuds and booze and — hey-hey-hey — blogging. We make ourselves alone even when we’re together, and then we can’t understand why we can’t form connections… I am totally depressing myself. This was supposed to be about hope and it still is. Maybe I’m just whittling away the non-reality of all the malarkey that’s kept my hope from fulfillment in the past.

Take-two Tuesday — Movie Moment and Advice: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

This post originally appeared on November 11, 2009. I’m getting to be in kind of a dark place but a few good things have happened (I’ll share the spoils of the cool email I got from Milo tomorrow) and I’m trying to stay in a positive frame of mind. When this post came up in a random search to find a worthy take-two entry, I decided it would be good for me to get uplifted.

I am not ready to go all the way in to this movie. I feel a tremendous amount about it and have a lot of memories tied too closely to it to possibly ever discuss it. But I had a few quotes and a small piece of advice associated with these pictures to share.

Clementine: Am I ugly?

Joel: Uh-uh.

Clementine: When I was a kid, I thought I was. I can’t believe I’m crying already. Sometimes I think people don’t understand how lonely it is to be a kid, like you don’t matter. So, I’m eight, and I have these toys, these dolls. My favorite is this ugly girl doll who I call Clementine, and I keep yelling at her, “You can’t be ugly! Be pretty!” It’s weird, like if I can transform her, I would magically change, too.

Joel: [kisses Clementine] You’re pretty.

Clementine: Don’t ever leave me.

Joel: You’re pretty… you’re pretty… pretty…

(Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Gondry, 2004.)

This off-set picture below was taken the day that they shot the scene where Clemmy stops the children from making fun of Joel in his memory and hustles him out of there: that is such a great moment. I have always fantasized about being able to do that for people I love, my dearest and best friends, to be able to go back in time to their saddest moments and ease their suffering, do something to take their pain away and help them see that things will get better. But it is not just my friends’ times of despair that I apply this mental exercise to. I do it for me, too.

Sometimes when I find myself haunted by a particularly painful memory, I honestly try to walk backward in my mind and picture a moment of great agony as clearly as I can, and I give my younger self a hug. I promise me it’s going to be okay. Try it. Maybe that’s how you got through it the first time, to begin with.

Am I just a big ol’ girl?

Movie Moment and Advice: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

I am not ready to go all the way in to this movie. But I had a few quotes and a small piece of advice associated with these pictures to share.

Clementine: Am I ugly?
Joel: Uh-uh.
Clementine: When I was a kid, I thought I was. I can’t believe I’m crying already. Sometimes I think people don’t understand how lonely it is to be a kid, like you don’t matter. So, I’m eight, and I have these toys, these dolls. My favorite is this ugly girl doll who I call Clementine, and I keep yelling at her, “You can’t be ugly! Be pretty!” It’s weird, like if I can transform her, I would magically change, too.
Joel: [kisses Clementine] You’re pretty.
Clementine: Don’t ever leave me.
Joel: You’re pretty… you’re pretty… pretty… — Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 2004.

This off-set picture was taken the day that they shot the scene where Clemmy stops the children from making fun of Joel in his memory and hustles him out of there: that is such a great moment. I have always fantasized about being able to do that for people I love, my dearest and best friends, to be able to go back in time to their saddest moments and ease their suffering, do something to take their pain away and help them see that things will get better. But it is not just my friends’ times of despair that I apply this mental exercise to. I do it for me, too.

Sometimes when I find myself haunted by a particularly painful memory, I honestly try to walk backward in my mind and picture a moment of great agony as clearly as I can, and I give my younger self a hug. I promise me it’s going to be okay. Try it. Maybe that’s how you got through it the first time, to begin with.

Am I just a big ol’ girl?

Daily Batman: Enter the Riddler

It’s a good thing you have a buddy in this one, Bruce Wayne, because Edward Nymga and Sugar would like to take you on a strange trip.

BRUCE
Mr. Nygma, you'll forgive me for
being rude. But what exactly is on
your mind?

EDWARD
Precisely. What's on all our minds?
Brainwaves. The future of Wayne
Enterprises is Brainwaves!

It's hard to imagine anyone more awkward. The effect is
painful. Folks stare, mouths wide.

(Yes, the stage directions actually say “It’s hard to imagine anyone more awkward.” Akiva Goldsman screenplays ftw!)

And for the haters who say that Batman Forever is the worst movie out of the Batman franchise films, I encourage you to re-watch Batman and Robin and see if you don’t change your mind.