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8th of February 2010 18:56
Woke up with the same cold for the third day in a row and my voice was all gravelly and fantastic so I read the beginning of a story I've been working on. The audio is pretty crap, it was hard to get any volume. Then I woke up a bit more so just for contrast here's "To Brooklyn Bridge."
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3rd of February 2010 20:23
Saying: "Art is dead. Let's lock ourselves in this coffin and have sex." But the coffin is far too small to even have sex in.
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30th of January 2010 15:13
Up in the Air: It's taken me some extra time to write about this because it's a bit of a deceptive movie, not altogether in a good way. People in hard times go to see George Clooney movies (or whoever happens to play the charming, successful bachelor this time) because they too have dreamed of being detached and casual and extremely successful (because, in movies, money increases in inverse proportion to emotional investment just by rule of law). They then expect to see the successful, detached character gradually realize the hollowness of his successes and come back home to the pleasures of the everyman: wife, family, screaming children. Thereby fulfilling the dream and vindicating the reality in one neat, saccharine little package. Up in the Air follows the formula pretty well for most of the way, but since this is supposed to be an "Oscar(tm) Movie" and not a "Romantic Comedy," the floor predictably has to drop out from under the dream at some point. And so it does, and you'll see it coming. Then it ends, leaving us with the up-in-the-air feeling of the title. If this lack of resolution is intentional it's still incomplete: No one would dare to suggest that Bingham, who has a job and health and gobs and gobs of money, is as bad off as the parade of laid-off workers who go past him (and us). Family and home life is a lie, we are frequently told in the movie, but a comfortable, "substantial" one, while the other lie of career and success is cold and apt to abruptly collapse. This is what the ending wants us to feel, that this movie is a little "recession fable" to remind us that if you put all your eggs in the career basket you might never be able to come home again. Which would be convenient if the rest of the movie were about that. But it isn't. First of all we're told that family-life is as apt to abruptly collapse as career-life. And the only character that seems like they have it figured out is one who knows that career-life and the family-life are both lies, and so engages in a sort of doublethink to get through it. If we start to think this is a bit hollow it's no more hollow than the sad-sack confessions of the laid-off workers, with their "at least I have my wife, at least I have my kids" schmaltz. (You've always had those things, dammit. Was it ever enough?) So Up in the Air is more about how neither of the lies are enough, and anyone who thinks so is kidding themselves. Which clashes pretty heavily with what the fable-ish ending seemed to be saying, and makes me wish the movie had gone on a few more scenes so it could figure out what it was supposed to be about. The movie does leave you with the interesting question of what you will decide is important when you suddenly have nothing. The real answer to this question is "I have no idea." And I just wish the movie had the balls to be content with saying that.
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27th of January 2010 15:24
This song's been playing in my head for days and days. So here it is. On a borrowed ukulele. (the original)
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26th of January 2010 17:47
   
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