Rewind in Peace

I see there's another trio of celebrity deaths. Eartha Kitt really was blackballed like Losey, Lardner, Faulk, Robertson, Kirsty McColl, Geer, Trumbo and so many sadly more. LBJ had more and deeper Hollywood connections than those pikers Bill and Hilary. I'd like to remind my reader(s) that Sir Harold Pinter was taken to visit Quentin Crisp back in the days when he, QC, kept company with hooligans and rough trade. Pinter describes this visit in the memorial Stately Homo and says it was the genesis of his first play, The Room.
The headline that saddened me most was the announcement that, for all intents and purposes, VHS was officially dead. The awkward poorly designed winner of the VHS vs. Betamax scuffle was now only a memory. Perhaps in ten years VHS collectors will pop up like eight-track tape aficionados. There's a boutique market for vinyl records, so who knows? I'm pouting over VHS not only because I own so goddamn many films-on-tape but because my most intense phase of movie viewing and film scribbling centered primarily around VHS. Home Vision, tape predecessor to the overrated Criterion Collection, had the best looking copies of Alphaville, Spirits of the Dead, L'Enfants du Paradis, Kwaidan, Peeping Tom, L'Avventura, Rules of the Game, Shock Corridor and more. The room seemed to expand when I manipulated the frame-by-frame advance button.
David Cronenberg was urging me to find out how long they waited to cut from the actor to the exploding head in Scanners. Hal Hartley assured me that it was quite all right to stare at Adrienne Shelly putting on her glasses to look at Martin Donovan, disappearing in the back of a police car in Trust. Even Polanski could look back to 1965 and that eerie flat in Repulsion.
Brian Eno was right. Tape is a plastic medium. Even prerecorded tape.
Now the obsolete DVDs are piling up, tidy and flat and crammed with "extras."

I creep over to the turntable on its stand and cue up the soundtrack of Absolute Beginners and hiss at the Luddite in the mirror.

Art Victim

Last week I went on vacation. Vacation, that sacred time of the American worker when sometimes, for a drunken instant, the place of return is forgotten. I didn't go to Key West or Portland or London for my vacation. I chose Baltimore,where it rained as much as it does in Portland for an entire week.
Instead of prowling the streets as is my wont when I visit Charm City, I went Christmas shopping at various downmarket locales ( no Saks thank you)and visited the Baltimore Museum of Art, home of the fabled Cone Sisters collection ( possibly the biggest private collection of Matisse, Picasso, the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists extant). The BMA was literally my downfall.
The current exhibit by Franz West is called To Build a House You Start with the Roof. A 25ft sculpture The Ego and the Id was created especially for the BMA show. This looping construction features seats or porches for the viewer to use for rest or for a new angle of this multicolored giant Slinky. I perched at different points on Ego and Id and, deciding I wanted to investigate the rest of the show, stepped off the rim of the two foot high platform and fell to the floor.

My mother always told me to put out my hands palms-out when I fell so's not to mar my face. My face won't stand much more damage, it's true, but neither will my operant left arm, which I knocked the bejesus out of. Since Thursday I've been wearing a brace on my left hand and avoiding strenuous use, like typing. At the emergency room I was told to avoid excessive use of my arm, which means I don't go back to work for a few more days.
Now that I'm back home perhaps the weather will improve.

p.s. The Franz West show is really a lot of fun especially for lounge lizards and sedentary types. I've never seen an interactive exhibition where the interaction consisted of sitting and gazing. Any ambulance chasers out there who have their search engines set on keywords like victim and injury please don't bother me.

Critics of the Future

This is for the artist Everett Swinson of Norfolk,Va, who died in 1998 after several years fighting AIDS and continuing to make art and do community work until he literally could not move. Norfolk is like a very small galaxy with a mass of overlapping solar systems. When I lived there I spun in the peripheral orbit of a few of these systems, one being the Younger Artists Gang. Everett was one of the youngest and most accomplished. He had a sense of publicity that's necessary sometimes to get one's work noticed by the non-artistic world, the press, the evening news.
Every spring at the annual Ghent Arts Festival he was highly visible, doing some type of process or performance piece that usually necessitated his moving among the crowd. This guaranteed him a few seconds and sometimes even interview time on WAVY-TV and the other local stations. After Ghent moved out of the park at Stockley Gardens and went to Norfolk's Rouse monstrosity Waterside, Everett and some comrades organized an alternative arts event in Stockley Gardens, a protest against the glitzy new downtown Ghent Arts Festival.
Everett stood at one end of the park, near the entrance, holding a ream of multicolored paper. He disposed of it a sheet at a time, a fixed grin on his face. Halfway through the piece, a trio of tweenage boys arrived and paused on their skateboards.
" Shit man what's this?"
" I dunno, what's he doing?"
" We're gonna be late dude."
" Wait a second. I want to see .."
"See what, Jimmy?"
" This is weird man."
" Yeah it's weird."
" Come on you faggots. Let's get the hell out of here."
Later that evening I ran into Everett in a bar and complimented him on the success of the festival, showing him all the free Hare Krishna literature, including dietary advice, I'd
picked up. " Did you hear those kids?"
"You mean the ones who got scared and left?" He laughed. " The critics of the future."

The future isn't what it used to be

During the last fortyeight hours i have watched two popular movies from the Eighties that both fall under the soiled umbrella of noir. Angel Heart is probably the only Alan parker movie i genuinely like. On what looks like a modestish budget he creates a visually plausible Fifties America and a graphically clean hell. Mickey Rourke was once a fairly cute actor. Robert DeNiro was once able to play comedy in lower case. Charlotte Rampling excites as always in a small but integral role. CAUTION SPOILERS AHEAD. iF YOU CARE ABOUT SURPRISE DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER. Angel Heart is a demonic variant on the basic concept of Kenneth Fearing's The Big Clock and Derek Marlowe's A Dandy in Aspic with the difference that Rourke's hapless PI doesn't know that Mr. Cyphere ( DeNiro)has sent him in search of himself. Amgel Heart wears very well. I'd not have thought Parker capable of a film as modest and well realized as this.

Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, on the other hand, is a Big Deal, almost a white elephant, rereleased and rereleased innumerable times. ( The version I watched was sans voiceover. I didn't even notice its absence.)I don't usually care about the plausibility or consistency of scifi science but there's a basic error about the Replicants that must be addressed. They are not androids or robots. They are genetically engineered short action flesh and blood work machines,in other words, slaves. I think audiences were so dazzled by BR's justly celebrated rainy nighttown dystopic design of the future that they didn't listen to Fancher's script very closely.
I can't help wondering if BR would be a textbook movie if it had been shot on the early Eighties equivalent of an old Twilight Zone episode's budget so ehat we paid more attention to the words and less to the imagery. Ridley Scott is not a scifi or horror director, although he's helmed one classic in each genre. He's a hack of distinction who loses interest in a film somewhere between the last shot and the editing process. Alien, that derivative funhouse of a movie, holds together as a tale of the old dark starship and the nastiest monster yet imagined because of its superior acting ensemble and daring design. BR looks a bit rushed and hokey in comparison. Scott gets good work from his actors. Harrison Ford, that block of wood, is actually exciting in a way he would never be again. Sean Young, Darryl Hannah and Rutger Hauer as the angry trio of replicants are among the finest gang of misfits in movies.
So why doesn't it work any better?
In 1982 moviegoers were still turning up stoned out of their minds. Easily dazzled by the cheesiest eye candy, they were swept off their feet by Scott's superior set design and dank seamless vision of a sinus torturing future. Blade Runner will endure but it's an elaborate facade with a lot of insufficiently explored philosophical themes behind it. Give me Alien any day. Scary as hell with no axe to grind.

RBFF Last Day

God help me. I should stay away from the flea market section of the Festival tent.
I don't buy T shirts or that sort of bric a brac. No. I buy Hollywood - From Vietnam to Watergate by Robin Wood.
I saw two more films, the popular French thriller Tell No One which actually deserves the adjective Hitchcockian. To tell more would be spoiling it for you, dear reader(s).

The Lebanese Under The Bombs was more involving. Filmed ten days after the ceasefire ( Israeli bombing attacks continued)of the Thirty-three Days War. A frantic woman hires a reluctant cabbie to drive her to south Lebanon in search of her children. They meet repeated obstacles especially bombed out bridges. It's grim to think how much of this film's script was dictated by the ravaged landscape. The ending is bittersweet but totally bleak. I had just finished complaining that the selection had become too timid and almost PBS-ish on one of those surveys. Guess I spoke too soon.

Rehoboth Beach Film Festival

It always rains on Thursday, my usual day for festivities. This year I bought two film books ( an Andre Bazin collection, an issue of Screen) and saw two films. Newcastle is the locale and title of an Australian surfing picture starring a group of blond lookalike actors. The sole brunette plays a character called Faggot Boy. Jesse and his twin brother Fergus are stepsiblings to Victor, a married steelworker who used to be a surfing champion.
Separated from his wife and children, Victor's moved back home.
Jesse enters a competition and comes in third. Unfortunately he's not even recognised because there were only two prizes. Disgruntled, he agrees to going on a camping trip with Ferus and three of his surfing friends. Everything that happens on that trip is integral to the movie's outcome. I'll not spoil it for you. Although Newcastle's storyline is on par with S.E. Hinton or some other YA novelist, the acting, comedy and truly stoamach-churning underwater camera work makes you forget easily. In a Way Newcastle is the Australian Paranoid Park, with adults, without the alienation.

Let The Right One In has already won several prizes at genre and nongenre festivals. A lonely bullied twelve year old boy's new neighbor is first seen standing on a frozen jungle gym. She's a vampire. The town's recent spate of murders and disappearances are the work of Vampire Girl's seedy middlescent renfield. One of the film.s more memorable scenes is renfield's acid facial, administered to avoid identification. LTROI is not a fastpaced thriller. it's slow and moody but wonderfully paced. Every gotcha shock is totally logical and, as far as this grizzled horror fan's concerned, totally chilling.

The festival ends tonight.

Big Changes

A quote from Laurie Anderson adapted from Walter Benjamin:

He said History is an angel
being blown backward against the future
History is a pile of debris
the angel wants to go back
and fix things, to repair
the things that have been broken.

But there is a storm
blowing from paradise and
the storm keeps blowing
the angel backward into the future.
And this storm, this storm
is called Progress.

Tonight's the Night

My favorite holiday even though its marketing cycle ended two weeks ago. Once I donned costumes and cut the rug with a group of my peers. These days my celebration is quieter. In select company I watch a series of horror films. I've had Argento-Fulci-Bava night all week.
Today I dig out the monochrome classics ranging from James Whale and Val Lewton to Les Yeux sans Visage and Nadja.
I was excited when I found Fulci's The Black Cat for two bucks and set it aside to watch last night. All I'll say is that it's no Don't Torture a Duckling.
Please excuse my week's absence. A comment on Gus van Sant's Paranoid Park will be posted later today. happy halloween

Shame

I feel that I've let down the four people who glance in this blog's direction. First I promise smut and don't deliver. Yesterday I went to see Oliver Stone's W intending to review. Apparently my Jujyfruits were drugged. I fell asleep about half an hour into the movie and woke to see the costume design credits roll past.
However, the nearly half an hour that I saw didn't excite me much. Jeffrey Wright was as convincing as Colin Powell as he is in nearly every other character he's played. Toby Jones as Karl Rove had a grinning demonic quality that made me think he might be a good reason to try seeing W again. Josh Brolin seems too young even when aged for the camera. Ellen Burstyn is too sweet as Ma Bush. James Cromwell would have worked if this were a JFK style melodrama, which my wakeful companion assured me it wasn't.
Those are my recovered memories of W.

Away at school - continued

Ed put a glass of booze in my hand and sat down on the sofa, nice and close. He looked like a finer version of Griff - sharper nose, cleaner hair, more intelligent expression. He picked up a little remote clickie. Bryan Ferry's The Bride Stripped Bare began to play.
" So tell me, Michael, how do you and little brother get along?"
Did he know about Griff and me? " He's .. a jock. I'm not."
Ed laughed. " I'm not either. Nobody in my family except him gives a hoot about sports. I mean, if you see Griff looking like his best friend died, you know, on the verge of tears, it's because his team lost or worse yet, one of his heroes was injured on the playing field. It's kinda gay don't you think?"
"Well, Griff's kind of gay in his own jockish .."
I was interrupted by Ed. He grabbed me by the shoulders and kissed me really hard. He wagged his tongue inside my mouth, sucking for a second like a vacuum cleaner.
" That's for being honest. Poor little Griffin. He reciprocates, you know. You just have to ask."
Dear reader, what was I to do? I go to escape Griff's advances and end up with his brother intent on having his way with me. What was I supposed to do?


OH MY GOD.

Away at school - continued

Somebody thumped at the door. We parted faster than two dogs under a pressure hose. Griff sat up and looked at me. " See who the hell it is." I pulled the covers over my shoulders and played possum.
"Hey asshole!" It was Josh, one of Griff's jock comrades. " Does sleeping beauty have notes for Pierson's class? I had to cut." You overslept, bushed after unsuccessfully trying to bring some girl to orgasm. " Wake his little ass up." He tried. God knows he tried.
"he's a little smartass."
" What'd he say?"
" I came in late the other night and I said don't worry mike it's Griff. Oh, he says, I thought you were Ronald Reagan."
I sat up in bed and said " He's fucked everybody else in the country. I thought it was my turn." When I thought for a sec, I was ready to lie down again so I wouldn't vomit. The idea of that dirty old man with his Grecian Formula'd hair bent over me made me shiver. "Wait a second"' I said. I leaped out of bed and went over to my desk. My Pierson notebook was on the top of the pile in my bulging knapsack. "Is this what you want sleepyhead?" I handed it to Josh. If he wasn't such a total asshole , I'd give him a moustache ride he wouldn't forget. he was a real redhead with beautiful transparent skin and green eyes. He had that demeanor that says I'm hung like Sea Biscuit and don't care who knows. Griff was well endowed but he acted like he was wearing the scarlet letter.

Push that dick up inside me. Never mind how much I cry and yell. Hammer my ass.


I called my parents the next day and asked if I could get a little apartment if I found a responsible roomie who they approved of. Then I called the University of Delaware student rag and placed an ad looking for a quiet nonsmoking gay male tired of the dormitory hurlyburly. On Saturday night I hitched to Newark's only gay bar. Wonderland was meant for the campus trade. There were some pretty advanced grad students hanging out.
Although I didn't even have a fake ID the doorman waved me in. We had an arrangement. When he went on break I joined him in his car, if i wasn't otherwise engaged. I walked into the bar. Everybody in the place was my dad's age. If I were a hustler I could have started a bidding war. The mens room door opened and a guy not over twenty=one walked out. He sat down at the bar. I went over and sat next him before one of the trolls could get at him.
" Looks like a daddy convention."
" Yeah it sure does. I'm Edward by the way. Call me Ed."
" Michael. I go to the school in ..."
" Yeah, my kid brother goes there. On an athletic scholarship. Griffin Fox."
" Yeah, I know Griff. He's my roommate."
" I never had the pleasure. We always had separate bedrooms."
" Lucky you."
I was flabbergasted. Griff's brother was gay. I mean he had to be or he wouldn't be in here, right?
" They don't still have that stupid curfew do they?"
" Not on weekends."
" Why don't we get out of here and go to my place for some drinks?" I jumped off the bar stool.
" Does that answer your question?"

Ed lived in one of Newark's old house apartments. Drafty, dark and smelly but preferable to a dorm. We climbed two flights of stairs. He went into the kitchen to make drinks. I flipped through his record collection. No Eagles or Rolling Stones, thank goodness. The complete work of the Smiths, a dimly familiar name, a couple Joe Jackson lps, Billy Bragg, Sinead O'Connor, lots of Roxy Music and Bryan Ferry.
" Come over here and get comfortable."

( untitled)

Avert my eyes
the light persists
need a name?
How about the year of copper fingers?

Lovliest of trees
your birds attacked
need a helmet?
How about this plumed number?

Thousands of eyes
see that look
How many know it
as your going down face?

Away at school

HURT. I want it to hurt when he puts it inside me. Even though he's smeared huge gobs of vaseline all over him and me I want it to hurt. Billy I want you to HURT


late October 1987
Billy came home from the electronics store all excited because he found a cheap compact disc player, as he calls it. Good. Now he won't use mine to play the goddamn Smyths or whatever they're called. He's in his little office-study room setting it up. Before the Smyths' faggy singer starts on about knowing how Joan of Arc felt I'll introduce myself and tell you where I am.
My name is Michael Simon Johnson. I'm eighteen and go to school at St. Sebastian's Academy in Possum Trot, Delaware. My family, actually the man and woman who claim to be my biological parents live in Indiana. They are freezing their puckered asses off as I write this. I'm lefthanded and smear my Pentel marks across the page. It's not important. Nobody ever reads this notebook except me. Billy doesn't even try to sneak a loook and he's practically my spouse. Queer huh?
I was an incorrigible delinquent who got in a lot of sex and drug related trouble
before my parents decided to send me to Sebastapol as we call it. I remember the look of relief on their faces after they talked to the counselor for Special Boys. No I'm not retarded. That's Seb's euphemism for discipline problems or possible discipline problems.
"Goody", I can hear Mrs. Johnson saying. "Now he can get caught while simultaneously smoking marijuana and getting his penis sucked without somebody calling us to come get him. Byeee Mike."

Billy was my second roommate. The first one, Griff, didn't work out. He was a big footballer boy with broad shoulders and halitosis. Whenever his stupid townie whore girlfriend wouldn't put out he would wake me up -can you believe the nerve? - and say "Hey Mike I need a handjob real bad". Then he'd grab my little frail hand and make me wrap my fingers around his ugly jock penis. The thing was really thick but only about five inches. The first time he presented it to me I laughed. He got pissed off and tried to hit me. I ducked and he punched and broke a ole in the wall. Then we both laughed. I gave him a blow job for being so funny.
I didn't mind helping Griff out once in a while. The three regular out school gay boys were really effeminate and stuck up. God only knows what Tweedle, Frankie and Chris did for sex. Maybe they have a three way. Ugh. Bigassed Tweedle sandwiched by emaciated Chris and adequately built Chris. But Griff got more and more demanding. Even though he was supposedly het, he started sleeping with me because " it's cold in this motherfucker Mike."
The last straw was when he tried to fuck me. I could have accused him of attempted rape and gotten him arrested and expelled but I really am trying to be corrigible.
One night last April he climbed into bed and whispered " Mike, it's Griff."
" Aw I thought you were Ronald Reagan." I sat up and reached for his stumplike boner. I was surprised to realize he had slipped a condom over his freaky tool. Oh no you're not. i don't care if you're wearing a whole box of rubbers. " Mike, I know what you're thinking but it's all right."
" I must have gone deaf all of a sudden."
" Why?"
" Because I didn't hear myself give you permission to stick your grotesque winkie up my butt."
" Aww Mike", he cooed in what I guess he thought was his sexy voice. Then he grabbed me and started jabbing at my behind with his love knocker. I tried to wriggle free but he just held me tighter, the son of a bitch, until I felt his dick slide between my butt cheeks, dangerously close to my little virgin hole. He grunted and pushed his body at me. Suddenly my rear end felt like it was tearing open.

( to be continued)

please please please

forgive me for not posting for three days, I was in Baltimore on a binge.

Last Days again - second sight3

I saw this two years ago and remembered a sort of different movie. LD is part of Van Sant's trilogy that includes the masterful Elephant and the annoying Gerry. Whether you like it or not, gossip hovers around this one's subject matter. Did a Courtney analogue get left out for legal reasons? Who on earth is Kim Gordon supposed to be, a management figure who wants to whisk Blake off to rehab or a supernatural being? In the bar scene it was a pleasure to see Harmony Korine, the most unjustly celebrated person in American cinema, as a Deadhead. But I must refrain from raving on about HK for now.
Van Sant must like annoying audiences. A friend of mine who didn't share my deep fondness for My Own Private Idaho said he liked the way the Shakespeare bits went on long enough to go pee or have a few puffs on a cig. I really wanted that Blake rehearsing scene to end. I have no problem with static camera. Most directors cut for no real reason anyway. But seven minutes of Michael Pitt's willoldhamesque mewing and feedback, visually obscured, was hard to endure.
I have to say that I liked Last Days. Some scenes are priceless, ex. the LDS twins. That shot of Blake walking down the street at 4am is one of the loveliest I've ever seen. All this leads me to ask why Lukas Haas, such a wholesome presence in Witness and the underrated Lady in White, has taken to playing queers and queer whores( Johns). Is he trying to tell us something or is it just that brave homoplaying actor thing again? I am so sick of that shit. You'd think buggery was like jumping out of an airplane.

Next time - Boys at School ( erotic fiction)

The Beast Within ( 1982, Phillipe Mora)

TBW is what I call a not great movie. It's not kitsch Ed Wood so bad it's hip to laugh at ( I don't have time for that sort of Misty 3k stuff anyway) but its far from a masterpiece. Some not great movies are perfect on their own terms. The Beast Within is ot perfect.
A recently married couple take a sloppy U-turn on a rural road and wind up in a ditch near a very dark wood. DH goes for help, leaving Wifey and dog behind. A cicada manster rapes and impregnates Wifey and kils the dog. Seventeen years later Michael, her only child, is unwell due to what Doc, the family's primary care provider, calls "growing pains." If it were only that simple. I won't give away the slowly unfurlimg and twisty storyline of TBW except to say that if you enjoy ancestral vengeance, grisly if dated makeup effects and, of course, cicadas, have a vada at The Beast Within.
Australian French transplant Mora has directed a variety of pictures from the true crime drama Death of a Soldier and the Dennis Hopper vehicle Mad Dog Morgan to the collage Swastsia and the adaptation of Whitley Strieber's memoir of outre visits and visiters Communion. Communion is seen as a train wreck by many but it's a favorite of mine. I used to be able to recite entire scenes. I was convinced that something
Michael Mann's adaptation of Thomas Harris' Red Dragon is very much an 80s movie. Mann's visual style, especially his celebrated fondness for architecture, is reigned in. We're posed a psychological question - how does a man nearly killed by his singular talents feel and behave when compelled to use them again? -enclosed in a sleek thriller about a pair of serial killers, a novice ( Tom Noonan) being advised by a fearsome king of killers Hannibal Lecktor ( Brian Cox). William Peterson looks like a retired twink rocker in this film.The look on his face during the dreaming-on-a-flight scene evokes an emotional vortex. Cox only has a few minutes screen time but his version of Lecktor is in way inferior to Anthony Hopkins' much showier characterization. he plays the flrsh munching trick cyclist as if he were a cat burglar waiting for the bail money to come through, not a man imprisoned for life. Joan Allen is warm as Reba the blind woman who befriends Noonan, fellates him after dinner( exquisite amour propre )and strokes a drugged tiger. I remember the reviews for this 1986 movie and cannot recall anyone noting the Blake pattern. Too obvious??

new approach - interruption

Since the last topic went over like a lead balloon I'll entertain you with my health problems. For about a week I've been walking around with both knees tightly wrapped in Ace bandages to help speed the healing from a falling-down-in-my-bedroom incident. The PA had given me a decent amount of a popular non-OTC analgesic, which I took in half doses. I was totally functional but painless. Today the medina ran out. I called my Primary Care Provider and asked for some more or something equivalent. Instead he prescribes a pill that induces mild nausea and the sensation of wearing a tight skull cap. It's ten minutes after ten here. Shortly I am leaving for the emergency room because my knees are killing me. If there's any exciting full moon syndrome type behavior at the ER I will give you a full report. My apologies to anyone waiting for Part 2 of Schoolboy Movies.
I won't let you down.

Good Morning Class

I originally meant to write about schoolboy movies, a favorite genre of mine, but I'll have to divide the post into two parts. Tonight, the easy part, a list of some of my favorite schoolboy movies. i've missed some notable ones, ex. Zero pour Conduite, A Separate Peace and Dead Poets Society.
1. The History Boys - Alan Bennett's hit play turned into a tender and very funny movie that's humane without being fuzzyminded.
2. The Devil's Backbone - Guillermo del Toro's Spanish Civil War ghost story that contains real if subtle scares.Great acting by Federico Luppi and Spain's answer to Agnes Moorehead, Marisa Paredes.
3. School Ties - Brendan Fraser is a Jewish athlete who goes to an ultraWASP prep school on a sports scholarship. Plenty of shower room nudity for those who care for such things and some well phrased social critique. ST is set in the 50s, the great age of problem pictures like
4.Tea and Sympathy - What's a sensitive straight boy who likes knitting and Grace Moore supposed to do to prove he's not,er, a swish?
5.If... they gave a revolution and all you had left was black and white film? Malcolm McDowell is terrific in Lindsay Anderson's tale of hair rebels and longing gazes at some noble pile that prepares boys for Life. I always recommend If... to anyone who's just seen the hugely inferior A Clockwork Orange and want more young Malcolm.
6.Au Revoir Mes Enfants - Louis Malle's classic story of the penalties of altruism and its importance.
7.Good Times / Bad Times - James Kirkwood's novel of murder and homosexual panic will make a great movie. Gore Vidal wrote a treatment back in the 70s. Nothing happened. The book is a great potboiler. The movie could be remarkable in the right hands.

Mister Thespian

I was recently asked to appear, unpaid, in a snippet of video that would be part of a local band's multimedia presentation. The camera has never been my true friend.
Appearing in heavy makeup as an alien-human hybrid in an unreleased ( unfinished, really) scifi epic had been my last prolonged exposure to the cruel eye. Because of regular work schedule conflicts, we usually filmed on weekends. The use of a variety of girlfriends, boyfriends, beauty school students and failed abstract expressionists as makeup artists did little to preserve the continuity of my strange appearance. Some Sundays I looked more human. On other weekends I favored my fictional mother's nonreptilian side. When the project fell victim to attrition and lack of interest, I felt relieved. No more munching cheng du dumplings while the two directors argued about a camera setup. No more doubling in an illfitting uniform as a frightened park ranger.
In a recent e mail from the bandleader he ungently commented on my forthcoming viseo debut. I replied that I had made no commitment. He said he would call Kevin Spacey. ( shrugs) At least I'm off the hook.

Clarification

Rereading the last post I noticed that I was incorrectly giving the impression that I am an escort, best in three states. I know the best rentboy in the tri-state area. He will accompany when I visit Portland. I hope any misunderstanding is now corrected. Unfortunately I am not qualified to be a sex worker.

Sunday leftovers #1

Perhaps my request at the end of my last post - my desire to see Morrissey anywhere at someone else's total expense - seemed, hmm, a bit cheeky. Here's what I can bring to the party: the services of the most diverse rentboy in the tristate region ( travel -yes), my own conversational pyrotechnics and other surprises and goodies which are better discussed off the net.

Last night in my driveway I glimpsed a dark unfurling lump rising from the ground. Friends, I'd witnessed an owl skedaddling with its prey. Seconds later I heard hootings in stereo, a duet in the trees. Perhaps my owl was boasting to a friend about the cat or possum he'd just snatched. I suppose it could have been an invitation to lunch, with a discussion of what the guest was expected to bring.

The terrible booty : Last Days dvd, Frank's Wild Years ( Tom Waits cd), old issues of After Dark and Playguy, one roll chocolate Necco wafers. I need to have a personal shopper who will whisper in my ear " My dear, is that really necessary?" I am of Scottish lineage mingled with Irish and English. In my case the Scottish thrift gene was omitted.

To anyone in Houston or Portland - if I appeared at your door unannounced would you invite me to stay for a few days or call the police? Thank you. Go and do good.

gallimaufry A

Listening to the Biden-Palin debate I was struck by Senator Joe's musical cadence, the way he turned part of one answer into a recitative with "George W. Bush" as a hook at the end. ( Does opera have hooks?) Wow it's Senator Balin vs Governor Elva Miller, I said to myself as the breeze came by.

After falling down in my bedroom and bruising both knees I thought nothing of it ( I fell down a lot last fall and winter) until the pain hit me yesterday after work. I hurried to the ER and was wheeled into the boo boo room, where you're seen by a physician's assistant, not a fullblown M.D. Reading the instructions for the hydrocodone- acetaminophin hybrid they gave me for pain, I was surprised by how much space was taken up warning against excessive acetaminophin ( Tylenol when it's at home) usage. Perhaps the innocuous buffer should be a controlled substance, not the opioid.

Some bloggists have wish lists. I don't have the nerve to do that.
However, I will gladly accompany anyone anywhere to see Morrissey. Watching him sing Hairdresser on Fire ( Oye Estaban Tour 1999) roused the mad fanboy in me. I don't care how dodgy or malodorous you are, as long as you foot the bill.

a book of the life

Who's going to write the first proper biography of William S. Burroughs? El Hombre Invisible died in 1997. Eleven years later there exists no classical biography. Ted Hughes and Victor Bockris both knew their subjects in private life. I don't have a problem with people who write about a living person talking to him/her. In Fred Kaplan's case, when writing his earnest respectable doorstop Gore Vidal, it was undoubtedly a legal necessity. ( I do have a problem with people writing bios of non-dead subjects but that's a different entry. Hello Mr. Hamilton.)

I've read part of an online extract by James Grauerholz, WSB's Boswell and Jeeves, of an investigation into what really happened in Mexico the day Joan Vollmer Burroughs was shot. Verrry interesting but True Crime not Biography. This entry may be in vain. Perhaps one of my readers - or both of them - will comment.
Who knows?

the point and the Pattern

It's only fair to tell you that this blog is mainly little squibs about movies I've seen and enjoyed or not enjoyed with the chance of some erotic stories if I can think of anything good. Although they're kind of repetitive, those stories that appear on Nifty.org and in Handjobs aren't exactly easy to write. They're as generically demanding as the old fashioned brandy and cigars in the library whodunit.

Rushmore revisited

Wes Anderson's second feature is the first film in his flash and filigree threesome. I don't want to call it a trilogy although there's plenty of overlap, even on the excellent songlists. Anderson has a fondness for hoary back catalogue Rolling Stones songs like "2000 Man" and "She Smiled Sweetly". Rushmore has as much of the joy of looking as any beloved Scorcese or Michael Powell movie, from the Wellesian shot of Brian Cox peering from a medeival Rushmore Academy window to the Arbuslike dance of masked boys leaping magically from behind trees to pelt Max Fischer with dining hall offal. Anderson's next films has imagery that made me gasp - and another superb chamber punk soundtrack ( the only song missing is Mark Kozelek's "Summer Dress" -- but the filigree is loaded to the point of maximum saturation. As for The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, I enjoyed listening but don't want to see it again.

season of the glitch

When I check my gmail account I learn that this fledgling blog is locked because it is a suspected spam blog. But I'm able to post. What the hell?