Beaver, The

There was a time amidst the release of Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ (a great film), his infamous run-in with the law at a traffic stop and the ensuing phone misogyny he blathered at his ex-wife, when I thought about forgiving him (in the meaningless way a fan can exculpate) for his verbal transgressions. He is a celebrity and artist after all, blinded by a spotlight that none of us have to contend with on a daily basis (oh, the quotes the media would get from you if followed!) and, perhaps, deserved the benefit of the doubt.

Hell, I even liked most of Apocalypto despite my better nature.

Fuck him though, really. I drink to excess too, but I've never done anything as belligerently stupid as threaten my wife, badger a cop or practice Catholicism.

I have also voiced opinions derogatory to minorities and women in the past, but most of them stemmed from behavioral issues I felt were directly attributable to a horseshit stance or act caused by a misguided devotion to their ethnicity or gender which defied good taste, reasonableness or logic. Joe Lieberman, Rosie O'Donnell and Jesse Jackson come to mind per exemple. The LORDS OF FUCKITRY.

On the other side of the ideological aisle? You can actually witness it like a cattle auction. It is innate.

It should be mentioned, at this juncture, that I break white people's balls all the time, for behaving white. We have not the time nor energy to go into that cavalcade of wrong right now.

It also needs to be mentioned that I am a fucking bigot. Most of us, if not all, are. But, as Woody Allen so eloquently stereotyped Carol Kane in Annie Hall, fortunately, "For the left."

Gibson's outbursts had a feel of pure, fundamental hatred. Religion born. Deep-seated. Unwavering. There were too many instances. Too much publicity depicting it. A more careful bigot would have kept that shit in the vault. And Mel Gibson can afford a few vaults. And a driver, by the way. What millionaire drives their own fucking car? That's just asking for trouble. And a separate post.

Which is why it is very hard to see his movies nowadays without the poisoned feeling that you are watching a semi-repentant bigot try to make money off public apathy and forgetfulness, instead of a culture and fan base which believes he has atoned and changed.

The Beaver was very smart in starting to rebuild some cred-- small, personal, sympathetic, with a hint of Harvey built in. But they missed the nut. His character is delusional and crazy enough to talk to a puppet and saw off his own hand. He sleeps constantly, interacts with few, owns his own company and presides ignorantly over its failure. Yet, is without remorse.

Not a giant stretch.

That's probably where Mel Gibson is right now. Particularly if he felt his left hand was controlled, via Castor canadensis, by the ghost of Irving Thalberg or handcuffed by a fucking Kike cop.

More than a mediocre movie, The Beaver acts as director/star Jodie Foster's attempt at helping her once accepted friend find his audience footing again. I would argue that portraying him as a failing businessman, depressive figure and father who can only speak through a beaver puppet does little to alleviate the collective fear that he is, in real life, a floundering, deranged egoist of his own design.

But, I love Jodie. And by that I mean I am in love with Jodie, despite her predilection for the hand, fingers, fist, arm or tongue of women for her sexual satisfaction. Not Hinkley love, mind you. I just find her to be ethereal, talented and beautiful. With the exception of Nell and Flightplan, she has rarely disappointed me in her adult film life.

Her latest poses a bit of a problem for me, however. While The Beaver is certainly adult and high minded in its aspirations, it lacks the weirdness and scene-by-scene irony that a film like this should have. It pushes boundaries, but always pulls back into sentimentality or melodrama when the going gets strange. There is never humor where there should NOT be (a true sign of failed dark comedy) and it lulls into easy laughs and smarminess at the most obvious of times. The rest is a surprisingly pat telling of a family on the brink, with teen angst, troubled love, a cute child and a 1980s challenge/success montage firmly in place. It's American Beauty without the edge.

Jodie Foster as director/actor made a wonderful, small film in 1991 called Little Man Tate, which had many of these elements but stayed charmingly off-kilter throughout. I'm sure she was shooting for the same thing here, but the baggage was just too great and she unfortunately got lost in trying to save Mel's acting career along the way.

My nagging question was, amidst all of this suburban ennui, where was Ward Cleaver to soothe the Beaver's woes with his words of paternal wisdom? Or Wally, to punch him in the arm and call him a creep?

Interesting note: Gibson's voice for "The Beaver" puppet is a dead ringer for actor Ray Winstone. Also interesting is that his performance is very good. If done by anyone other than a recalcitrant, Catholic douchebag, it would have received more praise. Certainly from me.

I still don't like him. And, by that, I mean Australians. Dumb, criminal pig-fuckers, every last one of them.

Season of the Witch

Journey with me now, dear faithful, into history back. Before the dark hordes of Murdochian armies set siege upon this once fruitful paradise. Before the petulance, the strife, the hatred and the ignominy seized our characters and laid waste our beautiful, enlightened future. Return with me to the inception of the madness, during the years of the shadowy reign of St. Reagan the Incontinent. A time the ancients place somewhere in the decade of our lord, the 1980s.

There was a young man, a warrior/thespian, a forlorn hope against the blackness of cinematic and cultural despair.

The name Nicolas Cage was on the lips of every villager and liege not already given to misery and disheartenment.

And that name used to mean something in this land.

I will break with this silly, anachronistic parlance of medieval drivel (although the film I will now sort of review never offered that convenience) to state that I, dear god in his immutable heaven, watched the latest Nicolas Cage bubonic plague film, Season of the Witch.

The kid was good early. I would argue that no other young actor of the time (with the exception of Mickey Rourke or Crispin Glover) was stretching the boundaries of film acting quite like him. From Rumble Fish to Racing With the Moon to Birdy to Peggy Sue Got Married to Raising Arizona to Moonstruck to Vampire's Kiss and culminating with Wild at Heart in 1990, there was no single performer who showed a greater impetus to alter the landscape of American film in that desolate time of safe, no surprises cinema.  

I lost my appreciation for Nic Cage in the early '90s. Right around the time my pulmonary valve warned me to stop doing cocaine and the actor himself took a career turn so heinous and diabolical that it should have yellow crime tape cordoning it off.

It is truly difficult to conceive of a fall so sudden, so harsh and so against a promise of greatness and goodwill unless one turns to, oh, well, everyone knows the answer to that fucking analogy.

Yet, we'll be done with Barack Obama in another five years (perhaps one and a half if my candidacy takes flight), but there is seemingly no end in sight to the travesties and dashed hopes that Cage can still inflict upon us. Just imagine the elderly, saccharine pap that awaits as he ungracefully settles into old age. It's going to make On Golden Pond appear deep and edgy.

Now, before I start listing Cage's malfeasances, I would be remiss in not mentioning that I have sincerely liked him on few occasions in the past, oh, 18 years. Red Rock West, Leaving Las Vegas (in particular), Matchstick Men, Lord of War, and The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call - New Orleans (his sole return to the manic nutcase which made him so palatable) have been ballsy performances that gave us a glimpse of his former magic.

For the prosecution, I offer into evidence exhibits 191 through 207:

Amos & Andrew (1993)

Guarding Tess (1994)

Trapped in Paradise (1994)

The Rock (1996)

Con Air (1997)

Face/Off (1997)

Snake Eyes (1998)

Gone in Sixty Seconds (2000)

The Family Man (2000)

Captain Correlli's Mandolin (2001)

National Treasure (2004)

The Wicker Man (2006)

Ghost Rider (2007)

National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007)

Bangkok Dangerous (2008)

Knowing (2009)

Drive Angry (2011)

I will put that filmography up against the inhumanity of Pol Pot any day of the week.

So, why, with all this fame and money, selling out like a jailhouse snitch for some cigarettes, has Cage seldom produced, directed or starred in lower budgeted prestige projects? It would seem the absolute opportunity (and excuse) for this abysmal body of work. In 1999, even his old pal from Racing With the Moon, Sean Penn, claimed Nicolas was "no longer an actor".

I do not have the conceit to know why Cage does what he does. I am not in the world of international film stardom or tabloid personalities to have the mindset to understand what a whammy fame can put on a person's skull. But I am curious what it takes for a guy from a prestigious film family (the Coppolas) and a phenomenally daring approach to acting early on in one's career to turn it on its ass and start making what can only be described as absolute, appalling dreck; without a hint of irony, a knowing wink, or a clever, underlying plan.

Was I supposed to be reviewing Season of the Witch?

Okay. Here it is.

Very bad plague film. Filled with all the silly, melodramatic pauses you could imagine. Matched with endless sequences of swordplay and a CGI-crushing lack of imagination and context. Watch Black Death or Flesh + Blood instead and save yourself the unintended horror.

Public Speaking

"The Blind Art Collector and Other Stories"

As most males do in the formative years between the ages of 16 through 22, I began to concoct a mating theory in regard to the fairer sex that concerned itself primarily with the type of woman I imagined myself seeking for lifelong partnership. Being white, suburban, athletic of build, and devastatingly handsome, and that this was the late '70s and early '80s in America, I obviously gravitated to the nearest busty blond cheerleader type with long feathered hair whom I thought wouldn't prove herself to be a major pain in my ass (or an embarrassment at cocktail parties) for the duration of my charmed life. This was my ideal.

Heck, I masturbated to the Farrah Fawcett swimsuit poster so much I couldn't roll it into a tube any longer.

It was a sound wanting, storybook if you will, born of the idea at the time that while women's rights were indeed improving- a strong, testosterone-soaked American male still needed to essentially focus on aestheticism over practicality.

Trophy over depth.

Showiness over meaning.

Skin over soul.

The "blind art collector".

Then, as if ordained by forces beyond my control (TV and literature in this case), my amorous interests fell under the spell of two enchanting, ball-crushing Jewesses.

Raised as I was by a rather anti-Semitic father (hence my comfort with the term "Jewesses"), the idea that this little goy-boy could be so moved, so enrapt, with these cynical sirens of David became not only an antidote to my previously ill-formed worldview, but a nice dose of "fuck you" rebellion to the ethnic and cultural bubble in which I had been indoctrinated as a child.

The ladies of whom I speak were the comedian Sandra Bernhard and the author Fran Lebowitz.

My sexual interests turned to the secular Jewish women at university. As I spent those years in Florida, my search inevitably failed amidst the privileged JAPs from Miami and the remaining leftist, college cabal of insufferable neo-feminists and recalcitrant lesbians a la mode of the age. None of them were as urbane and biting as Fran and the rest had significantly more body hair than Sandra.  

Also, the romantic possibilities swirling in my gentile, well-endowed nether-regions dwindled when I found out that my two feminine idols both preferred the company of women in that regard.

My journey as a horny, intellectual male began to suck with a hitherto unseen suckiness.

But, true to my newfound predilections, my favorite women ever since have been mean-spirited, witty, elitist, ball-busting broads.

Most of my favorite men too, come to think of it.

Which is why I feel that asexuality and homosexuality are the only two choices if we are ever to improve this planet.

The breeders ruin everything.

I watched the recent Martin Scorsese documentary Public Speaking again the other evening and it solidified my position. The subject is author, wit, elitist raconteur Fran Lebowitz (my unrequited lover) who, through the film's 82 minutes, waxes on many subjects and cultural shifts over the past thirty years that have caused our society to plummet into the intellectual/societal/moral abyss that you now see before you. She refers to herself as the Willy Loman of literature, calling her infamous lack of output and extended writer's block as more of a "writer's blockade".

To review the film is silly. See it. It's a brilliant talking head handing out judgment, foresight, piercing reflections, repartee, and scathing critique to an audience either long dead (me!) or callously indifferent (me again!). The audience this film will never attain are the numbskulls who need it most. The people who still find the culture and society of contemporary 'Murca as A-OK.

Unlike the majority of my fellow citizens, I respect people who make me feel dumb. That is because I enjoy learning. And don't view people with more education than myself as threats to my tender existence.

A few highlights to whet the appetite.

Fran Lebowitz on:

Writers vs. other artists

"Writers have to know something."

Being correct

"I'm always right because I'm never fair."

Overuse of the term 'genius'

"You would be very lucky in your whole life if you saw the work of one genius."

Gay rights

"I'm stunned that the two greatest desires, apparently, of people involved in gay rights movements is marriage and gays in the military. Really?! I mean, to me it seems like these are the two most confining institutions on the planet- marriage and the military. Why would you be, like, beating down the doors to get in? Usually a fight for freedom is a fight for freedom. This is like the opposite. This is like a fight for slavery. I find it completely shocking. If it was on the ballot here I'd vote for it because I know people want it, but, personally, not me. Nor do I want to go in the army. I mean, people used to pretend to be gay to get out of going in the army."

James Baldwin

"I'm the only Jew in America whose first exposure to an intellectual was a black guy."

The gift of gab

"Talking, to me, is like having a trick thumb."

When asked if there was a difference between a female voice and a male voice in literature

"Even on the phone, there is a difference between a female voice and a male voice."

Contemporary literature

"There are too many books. The books are terrible. And this is because you have been taught to have self esteem."

When asked if she felt she was the modern day Dorothy Parker

"At this point in my life I'm happy to be considered the 'modern day' anything."

Creativity (re: slothfulness)

"It's very important, I think, for getting ideas or thinking of new things that comes from hanging around with other people. Talking, you know, that life. Sitting in the bars smoking cigarettes. That's the history of art."

Why Manhattan sucks now

"When a place is too expensive, only people with lots of money can live there. You cannot say an entire city of people with lots of money is fascinating."

New York City tourists

"Herds of hillbillies."

Being seen in Times Square

"Running into someone in Times Square is like, if you're a New Yorker, and you run into another New Yorker in Times Square, it's like running into someone at a gay bar in the '70s. I'm not really here... I'm doing research..."

Fame and Warhol's Superstars

"This is what happens when an inside joke gets into the water supply."

First visiting Warhol's 'Factory' (well after his shooting)

"I knocked. 'Who is it?', a voice asked. 'Valerie Solanas', I said. Andy opened the door."

The AIDS crisis

"They never talked about what audience was lost. They talked about what artists were lost. A very discerning audience, an audience with a high level of connoisseurship, is as important to the culture as artists."

Politics and culture

"Too much democracy in the culture. Not enough democracy in the society."

The difference between comedy and wit

"Niceness" 

The derogatory nature of the term 'elite' in America

"They don't mean 'rich'. Americans love rich people. They mean 'smart'."

Gender

"What a big piece of luck it is. Any white, gentile, straight man who is not President of the United States... failed."

Being foresighted

"Here's the problem with being ahead of your time. By the time everyone else gets around to it, you're bored."

Racism

"Racism is a fantasy of superiority."

Sexism

"Inequality of women will never end because it's biological."

Writing

"The history of writing is, the history of when people are actually writing, they do something bad to themselves at the same time. People used to drink. People smoked. While you're writing you're doing something bad to yourself. And that is to punish yourself for playing God."

My Darling, I'll hold your booth for you at the Waverly in hell.   

Battle: Los Angeles

It has been quite some time since I acquiesced to a severe cinematic beat down the likes of Battle: Los Angeles.

I usually prefer my masochism in the form of stiletto heels nearly piercing my scrotum. Then a sharp demand that I don a soiled diaper and crawl around on the floor. Followed by a steady stream of insulting profanity, so crude and demeaning, that it actually induces a minor stroke and puts into question whether or not I even possess testosterone in my bloodstream.

And, fuck, I willingly pay for that.

For Battle: Los Angeles is such a clumsy Hollywood attempt at ratcheting up xenophobia AND celebrating American militarism that I may be the only one left outside of the Pentagon to recognize (or care about) that fine line between shitty entertainment and propagandistic bellicosity. The rest of you seem morally fatigued- weary from the surging flow of new outrages, acts of murder and imperial hubris that are persistently being carried out in your name by your own government that you've simply put the sensory deprivation hood of creature comforts on and are making demands that people only speak to you in positive aphorisms or small talk. If only to avoid the reality that your country is behaving like a heavily armed frat boy, sloshed on Red Bull cocktails, out to prove his manhood at all costs.

The film (if it can actually be called that) meanders somewhere between "The few, the proud/army strong" recruitment spots and an FPS video game (with accompanying Call of Duty admonishments about the futility of war). Balanced with the dull hatchet dramatic nuance of every shitty John Wayne propaganda film from 1942's Flying Tigers to the shocking war pornography of The Green Berets in 1968.

The major coup here by the film's producers is that they (without a hint of irony) cast the American military in the role of defensive freedom fighters by having the enemy be nearly indestructible alien troops invading for purposes of... wait for it... resources. In this case water, not oil.

It takes exceedingly big balls, considering our warmongering efforts abroad over the past ten years, to make a vulgar indoctrination film that essentially portrays our forces as victimized underdogs in a home turf struggle for precious fluids against a mechanized invading army of drones and robotic warriors. It's as if the filmmakers simply passed on a metaphoric or alternate reality and decided on a thematic "opposite day". The ludicrousness was sort of like seeing Goebbels on Sean Hannity's Great American Panel segment as they discussed the essence of patriotism. Let us never speak of the linguistic twisting of "terrorist" vs. "freedom fighter" ever again. We are our worst enemy now.

Hell, maybe the Pentagon secretly financed this film all along.

But Battle: Los Angeles has a warm, human side as well. Anthropomorphized by Aaron Eckhart's chin and his back story of questionably leaving some fellow soldiers under his command to die on a battlefield in Iraq. He's requested his walking papers after a career in the service and is looking forward to his retirement when, all of sudden, the ghost of Danny Glover's Lethal Weapon character lunges out from behind a Humvee and warns him, "You're getting too old for this shit."

Then aliens rain down meteors off the coast of California and the rest, as they say, is history. Or, in this case, revisionist history for future generations of American youth to remember those awful, fateful years in the early 21st Century when Iraq, led by a monster named Saddam Hussein, cowardly attacked our shores with mighty air power and hordes of steel-plated, robot warriors and was miraculously beaten back into the sea. Which led to our reluctant crusades into darkest Arabia where we similarly defeated the industrialized mega-armies of the United Sultanates with our typical grit, determination and exceptionalism for freedom loving peoples everywhere.

And because it's what Israel wanted.

War porn.

Get it while it's hot.

Greatest Movie Ever Sold, The

I have always enjoyed the works of Morgan Spurlock. He seems to balance a lively social awareness with a goofy sense of humor that never falls into the trappings of the heavy-handed, holier-than-thou jeremiads of self-righteousness that plague the messages of many contemporary activists and oh-so-earnest do-gooders of the "save the planet" types. Those who miss the forest of monumentally looming global and cultural atrocities for the trees of pointing out such microcosmic injustices as the diminishing population of the Abbott Booby on Christmas Island or the difficulties of being a transgender in places like Kabul.

Yet, Spurlock has come under a lot of fire for the topics he chooses to highlight. The arguments invariably come down to the perceived obviousness of his targets. In his 2004 documentary Super Size Me, he went after the McDonalds Corporation and, vicariously, the entire fast food industry for essentially selling food products which, if eaten regularly, cause a myriad of health problems and societal ills. His detractors typically chastised his efforts by stating that, of course, if you eat McDonald's everyday you are going to get fat, sick or die- missing the point that this semi-poisonous garbage posing as food has been pushed onto the public (particularly the youth) like cheap crank to a speed freak. The ensuing obesity of the poor, the price influencing of certain commodities, the worker's rights abuses (both agriculturally and in the service industry), and the associated health care costs seem to pass right by these folk.

Nuance and the understanding of correlative issues have never been the strong suits of our nation.

Now, Spurlock is again taking shit for his latest project, The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, for pointing out the nefarious ways that advertising engulfs our every waking moment- specifically when embedded within our filmed entertainments.

Even The Onion, that brilliant satirical skewer of everything hypocritical and base in our culture, took a potshot at Spurlock in "The Tolerability Index" two weeks ago stating, "So far, he's taught us that fast food makes us fat and that advertising is everywhere. What obviousness will he reveal to us next?".

Well, how about that "Tolerability Index" author Amelie Gillette has apparently acquiesced to that ad meme, spending far too much of her fucking time watching mindless loops of vapid pop culture in search of a zinger, rotting her brain to the point that she can no longer distinguish relevant social commentary from the importance of Lady Gaga's toenail hue.

The crux is that Super Size Me was no more about McDonalds' food making you fat than Michael Moore's Sicko was about what a great place Cuba would be to live because the health care is free. Everyone's missing the goddamn point.

I fear that if Upton Sinclair was muckraking in this day and age, he'd be called a whiny hack because everyone knows oil men are greedy misanthropes and slaughterhouses are gross and dangerous. What's your fucking point, Upton? Do you expect me to start taking public transit and stop eating meat? Get real.

The Greatest Movie Ever Sold is more clever and insightful than its derogators claim. So is Spurlock for that matter.

It is telling that when he is consulted by an ad agency in the film to define his "brand" (as a filmmaker, he is selling himself after all) that the firm labels him "mindful and playful". That is pretty much right on for Spurlock. While his message is one from a social conscience, he never gets too bogged down in moralizing at the expense of whimsy and irony.

The film's premise is that Spurlock will try to make a documentary on product placement ("branded entertainment" being the new nomenclature) by financing the entire project within those means. To the tune of around $1.5 million. This leads to a bevy of ethical choices. Will his message be overrun by the very commercialism it seeks to expose? Will the sponsors, needing assurances that their products and name will be shed in a good light, demand final cut approval? Can Spurlock hope to be funny and sly enough given these boundaries to even make this a viewable documentary? Does money intrinsically corrupt art? Have our viewing habits become so inured to advertising that it won't matter? Will Morgan lose his soul (and creative control) in the process?

Can I get a Diet Pepsi and some popcorn? That butter smell from the lobby is killing me and those soda ads before the feature made me so thirsty! And yes I am willing to take out a short term loan for some refreshments.

Spurlock soldiers on, filming the entire process. The movie being the making of the movie. He calls some 600 companies, eventually landing 22 who invest various amounts in the film. POM Wonderful was the big sugar daddy, laying out a cool million for above title marquee rights and the promise that every other beverage seen in the film would be blurred out. Spurlock (and many others in the action) are constantly seen sipping from or holding a POM. There is the uniquely shaped bottle sitting on almost every table, desk, and flat surface in the film. It becomes a beautiful running gag.

Interviews with notables such as Donald Trump, Ralph Nader, Noam Chomsky, Def Jam CEO Antonio Reid, and Rush Hour producer/director Brett Ratner give insight into our money obsessed culture and film industry. Spurlock also spends time with advertising execs and cutting edge industry insiders including a proponent of "neuromarketing" (a ringer for a Nazi two generations too late) who uses what I can only refer to as an ersatz "Ludovico technique" from A Clockwork Orange to measure brain responses to imagery using fear, craving, and sexual stimuli for variables during an MRI. Sort of a Mengele meets McLuhan on Madison Avenue creep out. At least the guy didn't hold a cigarette between his thumb and forefinger or wear an eye patch.

Another eye opener was a short diversion to São Paulo, Brazil, where the city government had placed a ban on all prominently displayed outdoor advertising in the city proper. Stangely enough, there was almost something ghostly about the results. Seeing an urban landscape stripped of vulgar advertising was vaguely similar to catching a glimpse of your hooker without makeup. The cover was always there and tacky, but you accepted it in lieu of the harsh reality of what you had done and the fear of what might lie underneath. If it's any consolation, a few of the people interviewed on the streets of São Paulo seemed to like the change and the selected vistas Spurlock chose to highlight looked pretty. I, for one, never want to see Times Square under the same experiment. Giuliani ridding it of the street preachers, homeless, and porn houses was bad enough. That gaudy shit-hole laid bare would be like a bucket of lye rubbed into your corneas.   

It was also quite fascinating that on the walls of nearly every promotional and advertising firm in Hollywood that Spurlock visited, the essential "face" of the industry gurus, there were posters of the worst movies and cinematic abominations that Hollywood has offered up in the past thirty years- displayed prominently like smiling, Down-Syndrome children at a Special Olympics rally. These assholes are proud of their crimes.   

The investors in this film, however, were wise. I actually wanted to try a bottle of POM after the show. I then discovered it was $5 for 16 ounces and decided on a pint of Harp instead.

That was actually the fun thing. The companies needn't have worried about image issues arising from the film. All the corporate principals were well represented (even likable) and showed above board negotiation practices and business ethics (I wonder what was cut?). It would have perhaps been more engaging to see those who turned Spurlock down or had him escorted from their buildings (he actually phoned McDonalds) but the sponsors- ranging from a shoe company to a chain of stop-n-shop gas stations to Ban deodorant to JetBlue to the Mane 'n Tail shampoo producers (a fun story)- were all along for the ride and, if not in on every joke or irony, seemed good sports and people worthy of my business.

Heck, Simone bought a bottle of Mane 'n Tail the very next day after brunch. I'll resist a bestiality gag here.

So, in the timeworn tradition of Hollywood deal making and its variant schemes to secure funding for a creative vision, Spurlock has shown us that dreams don't have to die as long as one is willing to concede a bit of them (or nearly all) to the almighty dollar. Hmm, maybe that is a little trite?

But to silence the critics, POM Wonderful Presents The Greatest Movie Ever Sold is not simply about the shallowness of Hollywood, we as a culture, or the suffocating prevalence of advertising in every aspect of our lives.

Or is it?

That story next, right after these brief words from our sponsor.

You can feed the commerce here on cadolphmoores.com by clicking the "Donate" button located on the top left border of this website.

Somewhere

While I could be very wrong about this, I believe Sophia Coppola's latest film Somewhere- a bit of celebrity introspection and navel-gazing minimalism about the emptiness of stardom- is actually a documentary on a week in the life of Mark Wahlberg. Or some actor I imagine is similar to Mark Wahlberg. Or an actor I hate as much as Mark Wahlberg.

Any way, I'd like to think his life is like this.

The film, it should be noted, does not star Mark Wahlberg, but a pretty good facsimile thereof. It's Stephen Dorff. The poor man's Mark Wahlberg. If there is such a thing. The indy, too cool for school, I'll never break out because I'm always posing as an asshole and scowl too much version of Mark Wahlberg. It's brilliant casting.

And it's a shitty film.

Because many moons ago, back in the second Golden Age of American cinema in the late 1960s and '70s, films like Somewhere were a dime a dozen. It mattered then, as we as an audience had not been inundated fully, sated like a trucker at an all-you-can-eat rib joint, to the existential malaise and inner sufferings of those poor, unfortunate chumps who get to show up on film sets for a living, ingest copious amounts of narcotics, fuck beautiful people, focus on right-brain issues, and spend their quiet time in soulful reflection knowing the adoration of millions await right outside the closed doors of their heavily secluded and well guarded compounds or hotels.

The argument is, according to Sophia Coppola, when every need or kink is provided for ahead of time or met on the spot, a person will likely fall into self-doubt or ennui.

Cue that teeny, tiny violin.

How can one such as I sit idly by, concerning myself with the plight of the impoverished, hungry, exploited, and victimized, when the fear of George Hamilton's Santa Fe chicken sandwich and Mimosa pitcher not being delivered in a timely manner at brunch looms like the sword of Damocles over us all? Why are there not more films about his lassitude and suffering?

If you're going to do a lazy, indolent cinematic glimpse into the trappings of fame, at least make your subject interesting, tragic or seedy. Say, the final weeks of Paul Lynde's existence. Veronica Lake's descent into ignominy and obscurity. Or the actress from Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, whose body was just found in her apartment a few years after she expired. Dig into the forgotten and fallen stars that Hollywood has cast off like so much flotsam of former popularity. I could care less about the emotional languishing of the flavor-of-the-month crowd. Give me the struggles of the once dominant, laid low by callous fan indifference and bad career choices.   

With Lost in Translation, Coppola explored a far more empathetic theme of existential crisis. Bill Murray's character, while self-absorbed, showed signs of humanity, irony, humor and awareness. His sexless tryst with Scarlett Johannson moved his persona further into the realm of likeability. We realized he wasn't just some faltering ex-star huckstering in Japan to keep his flame of celebrity alive. He became an actual human being to us. And a relatively fun one.

Dorff's character has none of those attributes. He's shallow, vapid, empty, soulless and dull. Traits we are to assume that he always possessed. He's holed up in the Chateau Marmont, an exclusive old hotel in West Hollywood for reclusive debauchery and the sort of trendy introspection he desires. He hires strippers to pole dance (they bring their own collapsible poles!) while he's doped up from a drunken fall in the stairwell (the only action scene in the movie). He falls asleep during these shows, as well as in the middle of cunnilingus with one of his many arbitrary lovers. How that is ever possible I need to know. I've been fucked up a few times, but come on. The scent of sea mist is bracing.

He dawdles around, drinking Coronas at cafes and parties in the hotel, waiting for his PR manager to call to send him off on his next junket. He dutifully obliges. No groans, no comment, just a lethargic willingness to go along. His one shining possibility is that he will find a new connection to his estranged daughter (Elle Fanning) who has entered his life quite inexplicably. Something about the mother needing space and time. That trite scenario even ends up going nowhere. Although, I found that aspect to be the most rewarding of the entire film. Fanning is actually engaging.

The actor's Ferrari is a major exposition. Dorff drives it around incessantly and without purpose, which is a clue in the film's opening that it will suck and be symbolically retrograde and derivative. Proving my point, with Mel Gibson in mind also, that all famous people need to have a driver.

You can't care for this fuck. Sure, he's polite to service staff members, is never deliberately cruel to his daughter and has his star tantrum meter in check. All this stems from never being challenged about anything.

I realize that this is part of Coppola's point in that the man's spirituality and self is being eroded by the sheer convenience and lack of conflict in his life. But is that the stuff of fascinating drama or documentation?

Yes, apparently, for some fellow film critics who found this whole 98-minute, theme-less, emotionally inert atrocity some sort of bold experiment in bringing back the European art film of a bygone era.

If you need pretense on this level (which I do, it sustains me) then watch Vincent Gallo's equally impassive The Brown Bunny from 2003. At least you get an actual hardcore blowjob scene in that one from the always game Chloe Sevigny. And Gallo plays a motorcycle racer, not a fucking spoiled Hollywood actor.

Sounds to me like Sophia has been watching or hearing too much about Entourage and thought she'd give it the Antonioni treatment.

In Coppola's inability to provide one moment of interest or meaning and shoot for the tragic languidness of our put-upon entertainment multimillionaires, she at least spared us some faux bonding ritual between the shell and his daughter. Thank Christ for that unresolved thread. 

But that is the very point of why you should never make a movie about such an innocuous fuck.

Nobody cares.

Maybe that's why Stephen Dorff was the perfect choice for this role.

Nobody cares what Stephen Dorff does.

127 Hours

To me, mountain climbing and rock traversing are primarily the adventures of assholes who have yet to fully discover the pleasures of drink, weed, chronic masturbation and plotting revenge. I firmly hold to the belief that whatever ills befall these hubris driven thrill-seekers are not only well deserved, but strikingly just.

Which is why my viewing of 127 Hours this evening introduced a bit of an ironic, survivalist puzzler.

Shackled to a theater chair by only my right wrist, would I willingly gnaw my own appendage off mid-forearm to escape having to watch another Danny Boyle film?

The rhetorical answer was, thankfully, "no". After Slumdog Millionaire, I came alarmingly close.

127 Hours was not that bad. It had plenty of problems, but was nowhere near the realm of inducing self-mutilation.

I ended up more angry and frustrated with the main character than I did Boyle. The director tried very hard (albeit in an inappropriately stylized way) to tell the true story of this moron who goes rock climbing and canyoneering in the middle of nowhere, alone, with the most minimal of provisions and a reckless disregard for safety. That he was an actual mechanical engineer is still shocking to me. While it might explain his egomania and resourcefulness, I suggest that his alma-mater, Carnegie Mellon, begin a "common sense" studies minor for haughty adventurers. The prick was wearing headphones and blaring music while scaling dangerous terrain in severely uninhabited territory.

I immediately flashed back to the hippie pinhead of Into the Wild. At least that guy had an ideology about him. He was going off the grid. It was largely political and somewhat cool to say "fuck it all", live off the land, kill your own meat, gather nuts and berries and find some Waldonian peace in your isolation. The X-Games tool that this story revolves around was just a Phish-fan and climbing enthusiast with an energy drink mentality and a video camera. And, gaboing!, no cell phone.

Hence, my lack of sympathy. A coldness born toward "athletes" who, having likely failed at every organized sport humankind has to offer, trod their wimpy-ass selves out into the rough terrains of nature to prove their questionable manhood. And all because, busy with their BMXs and skateboards, they refused to learn how to properly throw or kick a ball.

NATURE IS NOT YOUR PLAYPEN!

It's unmanageable, treacherous, unforgiving, itchy and filled with animals and insects that see you only as an enemy or food.

It's a lot like sex, come to think of it.

So, despite these obvious perils, this genius wanders out and subsequently loses his ability to rub one out with two fists.

Briefly, he is rock climbing in an area known as Blue John Canyon (proving nothing good ever happens in Utah) and slips into a crevasse. A large rock follows his unplanned descent and wedges his right arm against the wall of the formation. He cannot wrench it free. In pain, his desperate situation is magnified by his lack of supplies and remoteness to any source of assistance. After calmly assessing his predicament, he begins to lose his shit. He turns on the video camera (we must document everything now in our post modern world) and, in a truly disturbing scene, he witnesses his own freak out on replay. This helps him collect himself and he starts to practically address his options. He rigs a suspension system with his ropes so that he does not fall while resting. He absorbs the scant sunlight (fifteen minutes per day) creeping into the hole to stay warm. He begins chipping at the stone with his multi-purpose implement. He sings, keeps an ongoing narrative and recalls past memories to remain sane in his isolation.

Why, with dwindling water, little food, exhaustion, impending madness, and gangrene setting in on his crushed arm, he did not consider hacking it off earlier when he had the strength is beyond me. That act must be done quickly, with a sharp knife and a clear head. There is no dawdling in amputation. We get attached to our limbs I guess. No pun intended.

One of the interesting aspects of the film is in the portrayal of the unforeseen horrors that arose from his circumstance.

I could certainly relate to the annoyances of keeping one's contact lenses moist, the rationing of food and water, ants discovering an immobile food source, harsh desert cold, the necessity in having to drink your own urine, the inability to masturbate (it did come up), the impracticality of urination and defecation, and, of course, looking down at your precious, mangled limb constantly and coming to the realization that you are going to have to hack the thing off (rather slowly and awkwardly) in order to save your life.

Boyle's approach is a little off key, using fancy visuals when the direct documentation of the event would have sufficed in elucidating the gravity and creepiness of it. There is also more product placement in this film than I have seen since Mac & Me. Producer/director Boyle, obviously aware that a 94 minute film starring, essentially, one person (James Franco) and set in primarily one locale would be box office poison (see Buried), decided to get his money up front with some of the most vulgar commercialism imaginable. I'm surprised there wasn't a Prius and a bottle of Excedrin PM just out of our protagonist's reach at the bottom of the canyon. And a helpful Anglo-accented gecko (who comes to him in delusional dreams) to tell him everything was going to be alright if he was properly insured.

Which is why Boyle (for many other reasons of flamboyancy as well) cannot be considered a good filmmaker. Shallow Grave, Trainspotting and 28 Days Later are distant memories.

Centuries ago in cinematic time.

Yet, the moral of this story, beyond mistrusting current hacks in the once-thriving British cinema, is - if you see a guy wandering out of the rock and desert of Utah, gripping a bloody stump and screaming for help, pull out your gun and drop him. It's probably not an educated engineer from Carnegie Mellon in need, but more likely a deranged Mormon in the fever throes of devoutness looking for his magical underwear, a stone in a hat, and another child to rape and enslave.

Nature is bestial. Act accordingly.

Black Swan

For the most part, my and Simone's artistic tastes blend magnificently. An underappreciated commonality that all would-be couples should investigate more thoroughly before agreeing to anything as absurd as devoting your entire life to another human.

Our music interests are highly compatible, the rare exceptions being my savage adoration toward Captain Beefheart, Zappa, Morrissey and some early country artists and her awkward, unfounded passions for the mediocre likes of Richie Havens and Alejandro Escovedo.

As for the written word, we have taken comfortably mutual corners. Me, in the realms of non-fiction and journalism and she in the flowery prose of fiction. We will occasionally venture into each other's territory on a suggestion from the other, but the lines are clearly and amicably drawn. We simply prefer different conduits for our literary feedings.

Our appreciation for painting, sculpture, and drawing is near identical, which makes jaunts to museums always the best of times.

With the cinema, we are again in absolute agreement on nearly everything. We laud the risk takers and scorn the predictable. We prefer the small to the grandiose, the understated to the obvious, the open end to the conveniently sewn up, and the knife to the bomb. I tend to lean more toward pretense and unreasonableness, but that is only because I am a far greater asshole and possess a more ludicrous sense of humor than she.

Which is why a film like Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan tears our house asunder and puts Simone and I at cinematic odds.

We both adhere to the "absolutely no talking until it's over" policy for anything we see together at the theater. But when those lights come up, watch out. Someone's gonna get an earful, depending on the divide and who actually chose what movie to see. It seldom happens, as our likes and dislikes- as I pointed out- are pretty well known at this point in our relationship.

Then along comes a film like Black Swan.

The schism could readily be seen as we left our seats. I muttered something underneath my breath to the effect of "masterpiece" and "misunderstood in its own time" and Simone responded with a continual Bronx cheer from the moment we left our seats, through the lobby, until we hit the cold Milwaukee street, leaving a trail of spittle and contempt so wide and toxic that the theater staff itself would have to separate it from the popcorn remnants and sticky residue and discard it using tongs, a bucket and some HAZMAT suits.

In the light of day, under the marquee, she shook her fists at the heavens and vengefully cried, "Aronofsky!!!" at the top of her lungs.

I kind of liked the picture show.

Of course, I had girded my cinematic loins for such nonsense through years of admiration for the absurdly pretentious films of Ken Russell throughout the 1970s and '80s and had formed an obliged emotional bulwark against such astonishingly doomed, bleak and arcane downers as Tree of the Wooden Clogs, The Bicycle Thief, Pelle the Conqueror and, frankly, most anything by Ingmar Bergman.

Black Swan is nowhere near any of those masterpieces, nor should it be considered as anything but a current attempt, by an ambitious hack, to capture the spirit of them. But its motivations are in the right place and it sporadically achieves some of the brilliance of its betters out of sheer audacity and having a pair of balls on it larger than Paul Bunyan's, spurred on by being a story primarily about the machinations of the female psyche as reflected through a lecherous male prism. The film is decidedly chauvinistic. There is no argument to that. But do women have to be such selfish, petty, crazy, condescending bitches in decrying that?

Oops.

Aronofsky is an acquired taste. He had a promising debut with Pi in 1998, a tight little black-and-white thriller having fun with Hassidism and numbers. Then came the overwrought mess that was Requiem for a Dream, salvaged, if at all, by a great performance from Ellen Burstyn. The bloated, overly ambitious The Fountain followed six years later and the one time wunderkind seemed to be flailing. His kinetic, gimmicky style (one imagines, adopted for the micro-attention-span youth) was corralled and 2008's The Wrestler put him back on the map with some inspired casting (Mickey Rourke) and a suitably grainy style. The script blew for the most part and one wonders whether Aronofsky, despite his unique flair, had a blind eye for drama and a tin ear for dialogue.

The same problems which plagued The Wrestler are apparent in Black Swan albeit not as prevalent- the desire for images over storytelling, incongruous genre shifts, heavy handed, often trite dramatic intrusions, and thematic tropes so fucking obvious that an elementary school music teacher helming a 5th grade production of Camelot would rise from their piano and shout, "Shut it down, we need to go another way."

The film belongs to Natalie Portman. Her Best Actress Oscar was well deserved. I would have loved to see Jennifer Lawrence's performance in Winter's Bone take it, but fuck me, I'm a purist. Portman is commanding in her weakness. A confused practitioner of an art (ballet) that has kept her from living any sort of normal existence. She's a cutter (through scratching), a nail biter, a sexual repressive, an anorexic and mired in a disturbing state of arrested development (in her mid-20s she has a bed filled with stuffed animals). A girl never allowed maturity due to her constant drive for perfection and acceptance from others, especially her domineering stage mother, Barbara Hershey. Hershey's turn in this film and real-life cosmetic surgery can only be described as "severe". Once a naturally beautiful star and actress, her want of eternal youth both in and outside the film has created an interesting monster indeed. Her male doppelganger from the same era, Mickey Rourke, has achieved notoriety for similar on and off-screen eccentricities, curiously under the wing of Mr. Aronofsky. If you add Ellen Burstyn to the mix you'll notice the need of the director to use and abuse former elites of the prior film acting generation. Perhaps in forging the new with the destruction of the old? Patterns. Patterns. Hollywood patterns. Interesting.

Meryl Streep and Jon Voight as aged S&M swinging fetishists for his next project, I'm imagining.

Enough with the tangents.

As for the applauded Mila Kunis performance? I don't see it. Maybe if the lesbian scene was nude (what happened to actors giving their all?), but I always hear the voice of Meg from Family Guy whenever that mediocrity opens her mouth.

Aronofsky's visual style works here and is the primary storytelling device. The dialogue is thankfully meager, coming when it does in embarrassing attempts at already established exposition, including silly synopsis of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake for the Ignoranti and metaphorically challenged. His camera is dominant. Twirling, fluttering, angular, reflective, shaky, spinning and often capturing sleekness and physical beauty (the dancer's musculature and movement) in an otherwise ugly world of shallow competitiveness and damaged characters. He also loves to linger on discomfort and visceral, physical unpleasantness- the peeling of skin, the tearing of fingernails and toenails, the cracking of joints, and the stress on the human body, both emotionally and physically, not highlighted by most filmmakers today.

Sure, Aronofsky's a thematic retard. As subtle as a drunk Max Ernst in a bar full of Michelangelo enthusiasts. The whole film falls completely apart after the club scene (about 1:20 in) where the chicks trip ("roll") and engage in clothed (?) cunnilingus. But we're all a little tired by that point, having fed on the prior sustenance. No matter how galling and self-important it was. He's one of the few directors at least trying to reignite the flame of artistic cinema.

What it is, essentially, and what I could not get across to Simone, is that Black Swan is a rare film in the morass of current movie product that strives for beauty, ugliness and something more.

Art, maybe.

I'm sure of one thing. Tchaikovsky would either have approved or never stopped throwing up.

I know I had to hold Simone's hair from over the bowl when we got home.



Elizabeth Taylor (1932-2011)

You'll always be Martha to me.

Rush - Beyond the Lighted Stage

"Goddamn! This rock band has me all fired up about literature."

         - Sebastian Bach (Skid Row)

Like most misguided enthusiasms I clung to as a tender youth of fourteen - getting drunk in the woods off small bottles of Southern Comfort, aligning myself with the philosophy of Ayn Rand, smoking pot out of a makeshift pipe jury-rigged from a toilet paper tube and tinfoil, or believing I would one day marry Barbara Eden - I soon realized that I had to forsake those things if I was to avoid remaining a major asshole well into my adulthood.

My success at that is still being debated amongst my friends and enemies.

I remain, however, steadfast in my desire to fuck Barbara Eden.

Another of those youthful transgressions was my unabashed love of the Canadian power trio Rush.

It is in no way coincidental that their lyricist, drummer Neil Peart, was heavily influenced by Randroid misthink. The band's music and the vainglorious ramblings of that poison she-troll are directly geared toward the mindset of every pubescent jerkoff who thinks they're one day going to change the world through the sheer force of their self-indulgent insolence, untainted integrity and bullish devotion to avarice. Intellectual onanists with little regard for the messy, fucked up nature of how people, power and wealth should coexist.

This is how Libertarians are conceived. And, void of any real ideas, having painted themselves into an ideological corner, it's what the Republican miasma of confused and deranged shit-heels are embracing in their recrudescent running of this country.

Perhaps the "Jesus riding on a dinosaur while writing the Constitution", "white people don't run things anymore", and "the roads were built by Noah" angle is becoming a little taxing (forgive the pun) for the party. Why not grab onto the Randian ideal fully, no matter if your constituents are educated or not and forever refuse to read or interpret truths from any source but the bible or FOX News? Embrace the Canadian "Rush". Get Newt Gingrich to waltz out on stage to The Temples of Syrinx at the next CPAC convention. That'll get the house a rockin'. Have John Boehner explain the budget cuts fucking the poor through an interpretation of The Trees off of Hemispheres.

Let Mitt Romney admit - in front of god, man, his holy underwear and the used-car-salesman religion he clings to - that he first got laid by getting a chick high while making her listen to Closer to the Heart.

"Did you hear that?! Did you? 'Philosophers AND ploughmen! Each must know his part'. Give me a kiss, Baby. I'm gonna be President one day. No, no. Take a drink. That Mormon stuff is all bullshit. I am fucking ripped and Neil Peart is the greatest goddamn drummer of all time!!!"

The whole Canadian "problem" with the band could be explained away quite easily. Folly of youth sort of thing. Sons of Eastern European Holocaust survivors looking for a better life in the West. Blah, blah, blah. Get Breitbart to write up something positive for once. He's a fucking kike, right?  

But fuck politics. I'm "time capsuling" tonight. No, it's not a new designer drug. It's me, heading back into the embarrassing territory of my cultural youth by watching Rush: Beyond the Lighted Stage - as if that title alone doesn't send out piercing sirens of pretense and label me forever a son of prog-rock nonsense.

A monolith of shame not easily shaken.

But, damn me, I loved this band.

They got me through an awkward, flailing, self-doubting time of virginity and social discomfort. That is pretty much all you can ask from a rock and roll band.

I first found Rush in 1978 with the A Farewell to Kings album; grandiose pomposity masquerading as intellectual rock symphony for the budding narcissist that was I. I believe it was the FM airplay of Closer to the Heart (a rare, successful single for the band up to that point) that initially bent my ear. The album included a salute to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Kubla Khan in an eleven minute long bit of interminable ego called Xanadu and boasted a bloated, instrumentally smug ten minute song (to be continued in an 18 minute opening dirge on the next album Hemispheres) on the "B" side called Cygnus X-1. That monstrosity blended Greek mythology, science fiction, the bookish warrior mentality and a dusting of Nietzsche thrown in for good measure (much like today's Republican party platform). Needless to say, as a malleable teen seeking metaphysical enlightenment, I was hooked. I began reading Coleridge (a favorite to this day) and Nietzsche (actually comprehending it a few years later) and declared, with apologies to Van Halen and AC/DC, that Rush were my new gods.

Well, I immediately went out and bought the rest of their catalog, including the recently released Hemispheres and became, for the next four years (ahem), an insufferably opinionated d-bag on all things Euterpean. How deep was this obnoxious faux intellectualism I strove for at the time? Let me just say I tried to use terms like "Euterpean" as a fourteen-year-old. How I was not destroyed for the greater good by an unsympathetic high school senior remains a mystery to this day.

Was I supposed to be talking about a movie or something? Oh yes, the documentary!

It was actually rather enjoyable. I'm not sure a casual observer of the Rush subculture would have more than a passing interest in it. But for those of us once steeped in the mythos and egomaniacal splendor of a band who wrote songs like By-Tor & the Snow Dog, I Think I'm Going Bald, The Fountain of Lamneth II: Didacts and Narpets, and La Villa Strangiato IV: A Lerxst in Wonderland, along with a host of other absurd ditties featuring the adolescent preoccupation with self that only Ayn Rand and her ersatz Ontarian mouthpiece foisted on generations of already spoiled and narcissistic North Americans, it's like manna from the gods of a nostalgic masturbatory heaven that checks IDs for intruding heretics at the door of Club Dork.

To be sure, Rush fandom has always been a boy's club, distinctly requiring a scrotum for full appreciation. A prejudice spawned by the consummate musicianship of the members (how many chicks really care about the nuance of playing triplets?), their lack of bad boy, rock and roll sexuality and their comic book, excuse me, "graphic novel" compositional themes. It's like the cult of Zappa without the titty jokes, satire or fun.

Beyond the Lighted Stage is, however, a rare glimpse into a band that remained eerily private throughout their career. It was fascinating to find them very down to earth and candid about the warts and sores. Geddy Lee in particular shows none of the contempt I perceived him having toward the audience and media during the band's salad days. Guitarist Alex Lifeson could be your neighbor who teaches at the local high school. Neil Peart? Well, let's just say a lot of the pretense and puzzling airs the band put on during the '70s and '80s can be directly attributed to his misanthropy (not necessarily a bad quality) and desire to be a private figure while pursuing a career in popular entertainment. His personal tragedy, losing a wife and daughter in a very short period of time, highlights this struggle of a reticent man eschewing (admirably) the spotlight of a public person.

These lyrics he penned for Limelight might help explain:

Cast in this unlikely role
Ill-equipped to act
With insufficient tact
One must put up barriers
To keep oneself intact

Living in a fish eye lens
Caught in the camera eye
I have no heart to lie
I can't pretend a stranger
Is a long-awaited friend

The film is filled with testimonials, like mine here only less embarrassed, from musicians such as Billy Corgan, Gene Simmons, Jack Black, Sebastian Bach, Kirk Hammett, Vinnie Paul, Taylor Hawkins and others. South Park creator Matt Stone (we should really hang out together, Dude!) even chimes in about the band's continuing snub from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Each, to a man, talk about their obsessive love and intense appreciation of the instrumental prowess of the members. And, of course, the impact the band had on ameliorating the pains of their disenfranchised, sexless youth.

Double Exposure!!!!!The Canadian power trio has, for me, been reduced to the nostalgic backburner of guilty pleasure. A time in my life viewed best as developmental, not distinct in building my weltanschauung. Ah, there's that pretense again! I had good fun arguing, amongst classmates and friend's siblings, the merits of this band and, in hindsight, I was not wholly full of shit. They were a good band. Did Geddy's vocals sound like the caterwauling of a sodomized infant strangling an effeminate parrot? Yes. Was the band as heavy-handed as a blacksmith wearing leaden gloves above an overwrought forge? Sure. Juvenile in their desire to seem cerebral? You bet. But the airwaves were poisoned by REO Speedwagon, Journey, Styx, Foreigner, Phil Collins and Kansas back then. So who's to say Rush wasn't the greatest band in the world at that time?

Actually, that would be my fellow classmates who, due to the influence of older hippie relatives, kept pushing for The Doors, The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young. All of whom I was a fan of, but, you know me, I had to take an adversarial stance. I argued that I would never tire of the music of Rush and that my detractor's cabal of retro bullshit would one day succumb to the progressive, professional musicians seeking a new sound. I think Robert Fripp made me say that. I'm not sure. I was often very high and impressionable to suggestions made from people who had worked with Brian Eno.

Regardless, if anyone can drum up an old high school yearbook of mine they will find a passage next to my photo quoting the "One likes to believe in the freedom of music" lyrics from The Spirit of Radio.

Eric Howes, Jeanne Funt, Larry Stamatel (sp?), if you're reading this (and if you are, why the fuck haven't you left a comment on the blog or sent money!) I owe you an apology. I continue to listen to all the groups you argued for. With the exception of the Grateful Dead. Why anyone ever found that fucking joke of a band listenable, I don't know. But, here it is... I apologize. You were right. I was wrong. And that needs to be said. Rush is collecting dust in my CD locker. The artists from the '60s you loved? Always on rotation at Castillo de Moores. You should have been a little friendlier to The Clash and The Ramones, but all is forgiven and I seek absolution.  

Unlike my cinematic taste, which was fully developed and impeccable by the age of sixteen, I have many dumb ghosts in my melody closet. Thin Lizzy, Peter Gabriel, post-Ozzy Sabbath, post-Sabbath Ozzy, Judas Priest, Blue Oyster Cult, Laurie Anderson, UFO, Aerosmith, Pat Travers, Eric Clapton, Spyro Gyra, The Neville Brothers, Bryan Adams, Bauhaus and Mojo Nixon, just to name a few.

The only filmic equivalent I can come up with to counterbalance this musical egregiousness is my shameless, unrepentant love for the movies of Ken Russell. The appreciation of some objets d'art born of the adolescent desire to separate oneself from the herd remain timeless and worthwhile. I'll put Lair of the White Worm, Gothic, Women in Love, The Devils and Crimes of Passion up against most movies past or present and watch them fly.  

The Rush documentary was all good fun though. For me, recounting the times of my frustrated suburban upbringing (I did have it cushy in hindsight), the film was like a reunion with an old friend, wherein you could laugh and relate to the same growing pains and changes in perception that the dogging folly of life hands you, year after year, on this semi-literate planet of fools. That's a good thing.

No regrets, ever. But, always, reflection.

That's a front row ticket, Bitches. Look at that fucking price!

Update on Thursday, February 17, 2011 at 12:12AM by C. Adolph Moores

Joy, oh readers! I have discovered original photos I took (as well as my ticket stub) at the 1981 show I attended. As soon as I scan them they will be yours to enjoy. They will also reveal the benefits of digital photographic technology as they are quite blurry to the human eye. 

Update on Sunday, February 20, 2011 at 2:45PM by C. Adolph Moores

I have embedded some of the photos I took at the show within the body of the post - including my actual ticket at the very bottom.