Nature Wins Everytime

Superbowl came.

Super Tuesday got people talking.

But Nature got me spinning. And yet I barely heard much about it at all. Unacceptable.

Granted, I am hearing more and more about it now. But that just doesn’t seem right. It’s been far too overlooked. Havoc has been wrecked and nobody seems to care as long as they get their Britney-in-flux fix.

We need to change. Obama has that right. But we need to change more than we need a new White House stick figure. We need to tweak our paradigm some. Everything we see and select is corrupt if we are going to turn a blind eye on those going through disaster of such grand proportion.

For those not in the know…

Here is a brilliant article written out of the Times house.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/07/us/07tornado.html?ei=5065&en=5563bf218d261303&ex=1202965200&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print

Do me a favor and read. Let’s all turn away from the celeb shit on the tube and feast on stuff that matters. I am heeding my own advice this time.

Bush said he will be there Friday. We should protest and get somebody who can do something there — say — now!

7. February 2008

morning come

Battle is staved for a quick minute. Washing the roads with a fresh downpour.

Then again the same get-set-go ratrace. This is what we’ve become. Waiting for the guy in a tophat clenching a capgun and wondering when we might be able to sprint down a lane and not cross over. And do it triple rush.

I hear that the hour glass gets a fiew extra grains. Yippee. So lucky we are to get a tad more sunshine. Productive adn efficient we will become. Day people versus the night dwellers. This is the pains of our fight. What is it we are to do if we go against our conditioning. Homework can be done at school if so inclined and extra credit is something that we try and use as a bargaining chip when ‘tween two letters.

Who was that prodigy that took the SAT when she was only in seventh grade? I think she garnered a 1100. No shit.

I remember her disappointment. Oh the woe of scores and the scorn they breed.

Here’s a hundred with funny doodled eyes going up and down for ya…

Listen not about a punctual time to go to bed. Sleep when ready. Wake when so inclined. I tell you that this is our only way to prevent us programmed to a life that is working for another and not for ourselves.

If we woke for the right reasons and drifted for the same we could actually play a game with much more mastery and ease. Rather than fight the rip current, we can let it pull us without incident as we know to where we will arrive and not despair.

Sing a song in your head. Though not as good as the real it is just as fun.

Keep a pen nearby–never know when there is something that should be archived.

Listen and remember if you are without utencils

Say some words to yourself too. This will have a long shelf-life.

For now, I will close with a promise to do a better job on getting the stuff out there with more frequency. Even if I am the only reader–we can always pretend.

As dear ‘ol master CB said himself, “Don’t try.”

Onward…

28. October 2007

MOORE PROVOCATEUR THAN AUTEUR….

Saw his latest spectacle. The snickering cuts in post, the excess of juxtaposed images of suffering with the gluttonous extremes of the other side. “Sicko” is there for us to see and get a conversation started. Is it quality cinema? N.O.

What is Michael Moore? He is not a documentary filmmaker. That would establish him in company that I think are much more true to the genre than he will ever be. He is not really narrative nor fiction. So were do we categorize the simple man from Flint, Michigan who sticks it to the man again and again? I say he is making a film that is more a debate instigator than exploring a complete wholesome argument. And here’s why…

Unlike the many of sorts we tend to crucify in the media, there are some who hold sacred the practice called objectivity. Down the line you try and see each side and determine where things go from there. It’s certainly difficult to be objective all the time. And I would go further and say that it is not really true to the human condition to be down the center of the goal posts each and every go-around. There are always hooks, and shanks and everything in-between.

In “Sicko”, Moore slams you with human anecdotes who become our characters. He sort of force-feeds you for the first 10-15 minutes and then once you catch your breath you slow down and pull back the reins. But so much energy expunged— who really can get back into it?

But let’s say we can. You go to Europe, to Canada and Cuba to Los Angeles and back all to prove a point… the system is failing. No shit! But I should say that the ride is not without moments of fun. Some probably staged and taked more than once but nonetheless they back up his underlining point – the world has it up on the U.S. when it comes to taking care of their population old and young…

In the end, after we’ve taken our voyage to the far reaches and touched on tender emotions of 9/11, et al. we still come back to Moore sporting his Spartan baseball hat and leading his troops as the mouthpiece for those that cannot speak/breathe for themselves.

I recall an article from Cannes (where the film premiered) where those in attendance stood up in ovation. Why? Do we feel that by cheering for this film we have become a force of resistance? That if we clap in the theatre (as many did in the one I sat in NYC) that we somehow can say we had our moment of sticking it to the man as well?

Here’s what’s what…
I do not dispute the message. It is a good one. We are being bamboozled by a system. Moore highlights the derivation of these and forces us to really lick our wounds because we let this happen. But here is another point. George Bush may be a deplorable leader. But he has funded a behemoth of work to take him on and it is nonstop. We profit off him and he just snickers and jigs it all up between trips to Texas (to keep his contrived drawl intact) and his landing in Washington where everybody is counting the days until he cedes the title to somebody who thinks hubris is not a euphemism for cowardice.

Moore is guilty of profiting off the slights and drastic slips by the many who are in the pole positions of power.

His message is not that springs forth a movement. Far from it. Outcry must seed from within and must come with an agenda that knows the origins and know the goals – albeit far-reaching but worthy of fighting nonetheless. We saw glimpses of it. We saw it in the streets before we invaded another poor country with rich resources far, far away. And now we have let ourselves become a muzzled generation because fear of safety, of wealth, of security — all ostensibly at-risk. Who wants to hinder Harvard schemes and caviar dreams?

We hesitate to question and can only vicariously put our fists up as the lights slowly brighten and our 90 minutes is up. I guess we can thank our man for this for canning a bunch of this this stuff and sharing it on a screen for the many to partake. But I would have done fine spending a day rocking out with the world to some faux-movement at LIVE Earth and felt that I was doing my job. It’s hip to be green. But everybody is pigy-backing off this to generate more profiting and getting into the new square with not-so-determined edges and ends.

Perhaps Moore’s next undertaking will be the environment. He will go to the Brazilian Rainforest to discuss how the nuts must be preserved to keep his favorite ice cream flavor in the frozen aisles and then it’s off to Antarctica where he will hijack a penguin from a zoo and let it be free. Cameras will roll, of course. What wul dbe the point otherwise! Then… Cue the lights. Add the standing ovation! Another statement. But a cinematic leap forward? Baby steps. Baby steps.

29. July 2007

Zodiac Attack

A couple weeks ago I forked out the steep price for two tickets to watch the crime drama — check that — the three-hours-and change flick — by a steady hand in the cinema game in David Fincher. His new opus is Zodiac. Now thy good reader, you may not realize but crime reporting is not such an easy thing. But let’s press pause on that for the moment.

Zodiac is set in San Francisco in the Seventies. Selecting a Donavan track as the first music choice and essentially the theme song to bookend the film works to a tee. Our hero is Jake Gyllenhaal who has lost that goth innocence he had when he was cast in the sci-fi-suburbia film Donnie Darko. He still is good, mind you. But he could use some retreat from slick pavements of Beverly Hills and get back to the gritty rough and tumble streets of Van Nuys. Somewhere out of the comfort zone.

The only character to really stand for something is played by Robert Downey Jr. who is a maverick of a reporter and would probably be cast out to dry in a loony bin during these straight pleated workplace setting days. But back then you could be a bit rogue, a bit uncouth and perhaps you had sway if you did. Of course, he goes too far with the sauce and falls from Pulitzer grace. Fast. The San Francisco Chronicle and other papers are part of the Zodiac’s plan to bring spotlight to his serial murders. He manipulates their pages and so the hunt begins. Who is this madman?

Gyllenhaal is that cartoonist-turned-novelist in a matter of the film’s evolution and Downey Jr. leaves the screen and so does the interest of the film.

But let’s get back to that price of the ticket and take a few scratches at crime reporting shall we? Firstly, a ticket for a film will run you upwards of 12 bucks. That’s without popcorn and watered down soft drink. Perhaps this is why Netflix and others are cornering the market on the movie watching experience. Mad expensive to afford to go to see a film. No more double features – and though quality is subjective, a precedent is certainly set. Minus the many films that garnered Best Picture awards from the Academy. Anybody who wants to make a case for Million Dollar Baby better seek a solid shrink first. I will shoot you down.

On crime reporting… I like that there is a chase. That the facts are sliced here and there. I like the repartee with my favorite of favorite actors in Mark Ruffalo who does a flawless inspector. But what is missing are the walls that a reporter faces. Not every angle always works. Not every door opens. Literally. Not every question is answered and certainly there is the essence of time which is perhaps the greatest handicap to any and all story runners. It’s a race to get the stuff and then somehow regurgitate it out on the typewriter or computer and get it to a higher-up to ye and nay as s/he see fit.

This film fails in a big way to show a bit of humility with the job. That there are days of nothing and there are cries of delirium should the re-creators stop and listen. The shrieks blare loudly stirring the ear canals if you take pause. But we never do. We continue our fast gait and forget about the sleeping ripples that may unearth what is lying beneath our nose the entire time.

I say begin at the beginning and let a little hubris come forth. I would have more respect for the filmmaker who is more visualist than storyman – to come to enigmas and fall short of a tidy and simple conclusion. Throwing a few elliptical peanuts at the audience at the end of ‘Where are they now?’ is not enough. Come the next go take a measuring tape and distance from the formula.

4. April 2007

Honey Is Not Trash

While waiting in line at an Upper East Side hospital café, I noticed an oversized Styrofoam cup containing packets of honey. And written on the side of the makeshift container was the declaration: Honey is Not Trash

Signs have such relevance to us despite our ignorance to heed them. I suppose it would be novel for most motorists to scurry down the avenues of Midtown Manhattan and NOT honk their horn thus adhering to the threatening signs that put the fear of an empty wallet into the pole position psyche. Nonetheless, if you are strolling by foot or pedicab you cannot miss the symphony of horns blowing at rush hour. It’s a beautiful thing and recalls one of my first times dabbing my foot into the big beneath of Gotham. Humor. You must never forget to laugh.

While moving only inches every 10 minutes, I looked up and beneath the loud cacophonous car tunes, there before me was the sign and the penalty for horn-blowing. Everything muted and there was nothing but chuckles.

And it goes back into what a sign actual means. On the exterior, we are always being hit with a message at one point whether official or not. Posters slicked on walls to entreat us into the theatres or odeon to catch some artist that will quickly love you and leave you. We pour our eyes over them. And forget the chance to see or hear the stories around us. Nobody cares anymore. No… Isolation Pods have taken over. Everybody steps to their own beats and each gawks at their mobile for the time or just sling it into the open because there is nothing else they can do when they walk on the side.

What happened to creativity? Not necessarily the internal kind but the eavesdropping on peoples’ quarrels, the nonsensical dude pushing the cart had his own retort. Back in Brooklyn a couple of years, our man — we’ll call him Sammy — decided that he would not walk on the sidewalk. Instead clad in a shower cap, Sammy pushed his mobile apartment on wheels into the middle of oncoming traffic and with the receiver of some disposed-of telephone carried on his own a conversation with the loose cord swinging from side to side. To whom he was chatting with remains a mystery. But to Sammy, he was mimicking the pool of antennae addicts who can never be at one place at one time and rarely manage to cling to some bit of sentience in that moment. They must be chatting with others and escape their place in time. Who really needs to know where you are? How crucial is it to pry about what you are doing – in all actuality you are ringing another person and talking about it. You know the answer before the question yet you still ask and hope fresh crops of responses are mined.

When technology begins to take us for a walk is the moment that we have heeled and stepped to the drumbeat that derives from the computer circuitry lined inside the gadget-of-the-moment that will attempt to serve as the genuine article but fall forever short.

Let us do proper justice and see the signs of our ruin. Though discreet in their presence acknowledging these subtle signifiers will invigorate the myopic decaying ways of our ever-increasingly servitudes. Pray for a rude awakening.

For once slipped into comatose there by no means is an anecdote to unrest.

24. February 2007