Archive for the 'Cineman' Category

Money Honey

Published May 22, 2013 Capital Crime , Cineman , Eros , Outer Limits , War On Terra Leave a Comment

This is one of those stories that is hilarious, in a projectile-vomit sort of way.

Apparently the nation’s banks have decided they are “too moral” to handle money earned by people involved in the adult entertainment business.

Chanel Preston knows not everyone approves of her chosen profession. That’s one of the risks that go with being one of the biggest stars in porn. But she love moneynever thought it would affect her ability to open a bank account.

Preston recently opened a business account with City National Bank in Los Angeles. When she went to deposit checks into the account days later, however, she was told it had been shut down, due to “compliance issues.”

She found the manager she had originally worked with and asked what had happened. The bank, she was told, was worried about the Webcam shows she had on her site and had revoked the account . . . .

Preston noted she [also] has been denied a loan because of her profession[.]

“[The loan officer] asked me ‘are you affiliated with the adult entertainment industry?’ When I said yes, she said ‘We will not give you a loan,’” she said.

At least one adult-entertainment figure has had enough of this bollocks, and is taking to the courts.

Earlier this week, Marc Greenberg, founder of the soft porn studio MRG Entertainment, filed suit against JPMorgan Chase in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleging the bank violated fair lending laws and its own policy for refusing to underwrite a loan for “moral reasons”.

Greenberg says he was approached by a representative of the bank about refinancing an existing loan. But once he started the process, he says he saw repeated delays for four months. That’s when he said he reached out to mr. potter says noa JPMorgan vice president for an explanation.

The vice president “was evasive in his response to plaintiff’s application status requests and finally informed plaintiff during a telephone conversation that plaintiff’s loan application was refused due to ‘moral reasons,’ because of JPMorgan’s disapproval of plaintiff’s former source of income and occupation as an owner of a television production company that produced television programs that dealt with the subject of human sexuality,” the complaint reads.

Greenberg’s attorneys claim they were told by the vice president that the application was denied because of the potential “reputational risk” to the firm.

Curiously, JPMorgan Chase, back when it was known simply as Chase, perceived no “moral reasons” or “reputational risk” that might prevent it from fondling money employed in Nazi Germany to kill and rob Jews.

Between 1936 and 1941, Chase and other US banks helped the Germans raise over $20 million in dollar exchange, netting over $1.2 million in commission—of which Chase pocketed a cool $500,000. That was a lot of money at the time. The fact that the German marks used to fund the operation came from Jews who had fled Nazi Germany didn’t seem to bother Chase—in fact they upped their business after Kristallnacht (the night Jews throughout Nazi Germany and Austria were systematically attacked by mobs in 1938). Chase also froze the accounts of French Jews in occupied France before the Nazis had even gotten around to asking them to.

furthur=>

Another World

Published May 10, 2013 Animal Matters , Cineman , Eros , Eternal Recurrence , Into The Light , La Musica , Sunday Services , Variations In B-Flat , What's Good 16 Comments

 

Just Another Sunday, Here At The Manor

Published May 5, 2013 Animal Matters , Cineman , Sunday Services 2 Comments

Many Mansions

Published March 31, 2013 Capital Crime , Cineman , Eternal Recurrence , Into The Light , Outer Limits , Variations In B-Flat 4 Comments

(This a piece that, since its first appearance here several years ago, has never really been able to figure out whether it’s for Christmas, or Easter. So now I generally reprint it in both seasons.)

* * *

In my Father’s house are many mansions.

—John 14:2

A couple years ago, in contemplating Santa and Jesus, the two began to get confused in my mind. Santa Claus, for reasons that have never really been explained, devotes each year to overseeing minute laborers who fashion gifts which he annually delivers, in a single night, to all deserving children the world over. Jesus Christ, for reasons that have been variously explained, roamed for a short time across a relatively minute plot of land, uttering gnomic wisdoms, then was seized and subjected to excruciating suffering, so that all, deserving and undeserving alike, might be gifted with salvation.

When a sprout, I was taught that while Santa’s labors never end—a yearly, year-long grind—Jesus’ was a one-shot gig. Wander around Palestine, ascend the cross, into the tomb, three days later out again, brief appearances before various friends and lovers, then up to heaven for a well-deserved eternal rest.

I no longer believe that. I believe that, as is set forth here, “Jesus Christ suffers from now until the end. On the cross. He goes on suffering. Until the death of the last human being.” That is the mystic meaning of his tale: he suffers with all beings suffering in the exile of existence. And we are called upon to do the same—to grow to empathy, so that thy neighbor truly is thyself, and suffering everywhere, for everyone, may be eased. With this meaning there is no need for the resurrection. All of us are him, doing the same work; our work, his work, never ends.

For those who are wedded to the resurrection, the advances in science and philosophy in my lifetime, in the understanding of the multiple dimensions and multiple worlds about us, too mean that his work never ends. For the planets, it is now known, are innumerable, and so are the dimensional variations of this one. And if salvation is indeed his calling, he will forever be busy as twelve bastards, for there are those who need saving, inhabiting every one.

furthur=>

I Send Greetings

Published March 23, 2013 Ala , Capital Crime , Cineman , Eros , Into The Light , La Musica , Ms. Ah-Ha , Outer Limits , Sunday Services , Variations In B-Flat 5 Comments

Science Men, they are always wanting to Know.

Which is a worthy pursuit.

Mostly.

Times are tough, these days, for Science Men. Because a lot of what a lot of Science Men want these days to Know, involves stuff the Science Men cannot see, or otherwise sense or easily detect. And/or that is, additionally, remote in space and/or time.

And so, they operate, most often, in the land of Guesstimate.

This can, and does, result in a lot of flipbook-rapid changing of opinions. As the Science Men seek to squint, ever finely, through a glass darkly. It also can, and does, result in bouts of belligerent bickering with one another.

This last is currently on display in the ongoing controversy over whether the Voyager 1 landingspacecraft has or has not left the local solar system. Some Science Men say it has; some Science Men say it hasn’t. But none of them really Know. Because Voyager 1 is out there some 123 AU from Earth. Where no Science Man has ever boldly gone before. Out there some 123 AU from Earth, Voyager either is or is not in the heliosphere. The heliosphere is a thing the Science Men think exists. Though they don’t really Know. Because they have never been there. And the boundaries of this heliosphere, these they don’t really Know, either.

But they sure have a lot of opinions.

To those of us who closely follow Science, the Science Men quarreling over the present position of Voyager 1 is amusing, in a “fighting in the captain’s tower” sort of way. To wit:

ezra pound and t. s. eliot
fighting in the captain’s tower
while calypso singers laugh at them
and fishermen hold flowers

This is because we, we wizened Science-followers, Know that the interstellar mission of the twin Voyager probes, has already been accomplished.

So it don’t really matter, now, wherever the things might be.

You see, each of these Voyager craft were touchingly dispatched with a “golden record” aboard, one that space bridgescontained pictures and sounds of Earth and its beings, and also directions on how to Get Here. It was hoped, by the humans, that some spacefaring strangers would happen upon one or more of these craft, spin the disc, and then come to visit.

It was so embarrassing. What was, and was not, included, on the “golden record.”

Because hide-your-head-in-shame knuckledragging ur-human retroverts succeeded in erasing from the disc accurate illustrations of the male and female human being.

They objected, these swamp-coolers, to the depiction of the reproductive organs, of male and female.

And so, these were eliminated.

The “golden record” thus went into the great wide open, showing only human “silhouettes.”

All the “naughty parts,” airbrushed out.

Leading any passing extraterrestrials to wonder: how the fuck do these humanoids reproduce? Since they lack the parts to fuck?

Fortunately, past the hang-your-head-in-shame knuckledragging ur-human retroverts, passed a recording, successfully placed on the “golden record,” of the Rolling Stones’ “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.”

That that alone, was sent out there into space, means the species shall survive.

For: ah—upon hearing this, would understand any passing extraterrestrial—I get it. One of those planets.

This, in fact, occurred. The interception of a Voyager. By an extraterrestrial race.

As set forth in the 1984 documentary film Starman.

There we learn that extraterrestrials scooped up Voyager 2, grooved to the pictures, words, and tunes contained therein, and then sent an ambassador to Earth . . . a being who, as soon as s/he entered the planet’s atmosphere, was promptly shot out of the sky by the yeehaws of ekpyrosis.

But extraterrestrials are not so easily extinguished.

The ambassador, abandoning the crippled craft, found nearby some stray human DNA, and so fashioned a temporary corporeal container. Of the young Jeff Bridges.

Not a bad choice.

The news clip below depicts the encounter of the newly incarnated Space Bridges with his first human, a female monikered Jenny Hayden.

Who, upon hearing the naked, and decidedly strange, Space Bridges, recite lines from the Voyager 2 “golden record,” loses consciousness.

Things get better.

Jenny Hayden assists the Space Bridges in traveling cross-country to the Barringer Crater in Arizona. This, it develops, is the traditional landing pad for the Space Bridges form of extraterrestrial (said pad, spacecraft descending, may be viewed in the image that inaugurates this here True Science story). There, at the Crater, the Space Bridges can hitch a ride back home.

The beings of the Space Bridges, we learn, have, over the millennia, monitored humans, from time to time.

They are hardly the only race of extraterrestrials to so indulge. As the documentary film 2001: A Space Odyssey amply demonstrates.

Of course, in order for Jenny Hayden and the Space Bridges to reach the Crater, they must many times evade the yeehaws of ekpyrosis. Who desperately want to lay hands on the Space Bridges. So they can avidly yeehawkill and joyfully dissect him.

Because the yeehaws of ekpyrosis can never be happy, so long as they are not avidly killing, and joyfully dissecting, any and all people, places, and things.

Which is why extraterrestrial beings like the Space Bridges do not straight-forward contact the whole of humanity.

Before the Space Bridges goes home, he and Jenny Hayden engage in tender and loving, Real, sexual congress. Which, in the course of things, results in a child, representative of both species.

Such a thing is not all that uncommon. In fact, as we speak, the Huffington Post, also known as the Weekly World News of the intertubes, is canvassing for people willing to tell all about engaging in sexual relations with extraterrestrials. So far, it is said, there have been 15 respondents.

But all these people lie. Because humans, and extraterrestrials, who join in Desire, do not kiss and tell.

Those who Know the true-life documentary film Starman are aware that the Space Bridges arrives on this planet equipped with a number of silver balls, what it iswhat humans would consider more or less magical and/or transformational objects, which he may deploy, from the palm of his hand, if needful—and the need several times arises—to protect him, and his, or project him, and his, from the extreme and unnatural Danger and Weirdness that is this Earth.

I don’t suppose that it will come as a surprise, to anyone who has long been on this blog, and in anywise Aware, that I am not unfamiliar with these balls.

And that, as shown in the photo there above, I, from time to time, come to hold one, in the palm of my hand.

Now Hear This

Published March 2, 2013 Cineman , Johnny Law 11 Comments

It is in the nature of a “job” that sometimes They want you to do things you’d rather not do.

I try to avoid doing things I’d rather not do. Which is why I have never been known for making money.

At present I am employed in the law game. And occasionallyodor in the court the lawyers want me to go to court.

Now, going to court is one of those things I’d rather not do. Because it involves watching police officers testify as if they feared they’d be struck by lightning if they told the truth, prosecutors strutting around like they’re wearing swastika armbands, and judges leaping up from behind the bench to fawningly kneel to grovelingly offer their genitals, their brains, and their lips, to the prosecutors and the police.

There are enough nightmares in this world, without willingly offering oneself up to spectacles like that.

Recently one lawyer wanted me to go to a court where I would be subjected to a prosecutor who I swear has the number 666 carved into his forehead, and a police officer who has already “transferred” from two different local departments when his superiors wearied of the fact that his fingers would burst into flame if he even once inscribed an accurate police report.

I sent the lawyer the video clip below. Informing him that my sinuses were acting up. And that if he asked me—for whatever amount of money—to sit there and endure those swine, there was no doubt whatsoever that I would be compelled, there in the courtroom, to loudly and repeatedly emit the same sort of sounds as possessed Felix Unger.

I didn’t have to go.

Unstuck In Time

Published March 2, 2013 Cineman , Eternal Recurrence 5 Comments

Last night I started to watch Slaughterhouse-Five, which was a mistake, because after only about five minutes I realized that it was dreadful, and it was not going to get any better.

You know, kind of like what babies treedrealize, as soon as they’re born. And so they start crying.

I was inspired to revisit that flailing film because, like Billy Pilgrim, I too have become unstuck in time.

For instance, there is a Christmas tree, here in this Manor. Although it is now, um, March.

Not that this is really anything Abnormal, here in my life. At least since the arrival of my daughter. She was a great believer—and still is—in extended holidays. And so, with her about the house, it was not uncommon for a Christmas tree to stay up until Easter. And Easter eggs: well, once, I think, some of those hung around for, like, two years. Occasionally they would be withdrawn from the fridge and hidden around the premises, for her to find. In, like, September. Generally July, as I recall, was a big month for Christmas movies. For some reason this unnerved her mother. Who required many medicines, when she would hear the unmistakable strains of Holiday Inn or Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer, sounding out when the temperature was 110 degrees.

This particular Christmas tree, though: I’m starting to feel wary around it. It is so dry, I fear that some morning, when I walk by it, I may spontaneously combust.

I think it’s time for it to go out of the house. I do not want to be the man who gets in the newspaper because he perished in a house fire caused by his Christmas tree bursting into flame in, uh, June.

There are about 365,898 birds who hang around here waiting to feed on the squirrel mix I put out every morning. I’m thinking I’ll introduce the Christmas tree as a potential home-site for the ground-wanderers among them. They can nestle into the thing and from there laugh at the neighborhood cats.

Slaughterhouse-Five may be a piss-poor film, but, some 70 years on, the slaughterers are still with us.

With the news this morning comes word that an accounting of the number of Nazi-era death camps, labor camps, POW camps, forced-sex camps, black-hole ghettos, and the like, has reached a total that stuns even the researchers from the Holocaust Memorial Museum who are tabulating them. The total has now passed 42,500. And, like some death’s-head Energizer Bunny, is still going.

This basically means that during The Great Madness, sites where human beings were being deliberately extinguished and monstrously abused were more homeprevalent than today’s 7-Elevens.

But the Germans, they Didn’t Know.

They know today, though.

Which is why it was kind of embarrassing for fledgling Secretary of State John Kerry to last week select Berlin, of all places, to declaim that the American people “have a right to be stupid.”

“People have sometimes wondered about why our Supreme Court allows one group or another to march in a parade even though it’s the most provocative thing in the world and they carry signs that are an insult to one group or another.

“The reason is, that’s freedom, freedom of speech.”

Since Kerry delivered these remarks in Berlin, you think he might first have reflected upon the real-world consequences, that once upon a time played out there, of indulging that kind of “stupid.” Like, a steaming road of bones, stretching from one end of the European continent to the other.

The Germans, these days, know better. Which is why they’re moving to defund and ban a political party that would bring back the bad old days.

Once, they figure, is enough. Never again, uber alles.

“Somebody Had To Do It”

Published February 25, 2013 Cineman , Into The Light 6 Comments

Best Picture: 700,00 BCE—700,000 CE.

 

And They, Can See Ours

Published February 25, 2013 Ala , Cineman , Into The Light , Ms. Ah-Ha , Wyrds Leave a Comment

Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Picture: 1968.

Of course, the Academy bestowed but two of these awards.

But so what? They’re all Real.

Liveblogging Oscars Night – Updated with Results

Published February 24, 2013 Cineman , Into The Light 29 Comments

(this one writ by our Alexa)

Finally! I wait every year, not patiently, for the Academy Awards, and this is The Big Night.

Do you love movies as much as I do? I have only seen a couple of the movies nominated, but it’s fun to watch the celebs on the red carpet (their hairdos and even more, the hair-don’ts), the jewelry and pero Dios mio, the dresses!) who can resist the glamour, the decadence, and so much Shiny Stuff only once a year? Not me.

My aunt and I like to watch together. Our big activity in the winter months to see all the movies before the awards, but not this year. Yes, since you asked, we do make a big production of it, and wear our best dresses to eat appetizers and get blasted drinking a pitcher of Oscar’s Big Night (recipe below). This year, we can’t be together. My husband’s taste in movies trends toward car chases or paranormal activities . . so I’m hoping there are some Meese who like movies?


Seth McFarlane (best known for an animated series on dysfunctional families (Family Guy is allegedly a postmodern Simpsons with some South Park flavor in the mix) is the host of this year’s awards. I’m not a fan but he was pret-ty hilarious on Jimmy Fallon’s show, in a Puppy Predictions skit. (Okay, you got me. Jimmy as a host would have been amazing.) Without further adieu, here are our nominees.

Best Picture

  • Amour
  • Argo: WINNER
  • Beasts of the Southern Wild
  • Django Unchained
  • Les Misérables
  • Life of Pi
  • Lincoln
  • Silver Linings Playbook
  • Zero Dark ThirtyWho will win?

    Lincoln is the odds-on favorite, but I think Argo could be The Little Movie That Can.

    Who will win?
    I’ve only seen three (Argo, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Silver Linings Playbook. I don’t have a particular favorite in this category . . . and since it’s always the last award at the finale of 3+ hours of TV, I’ll be tipsy if I’m awake.

    Best Actor in a Leading Role

  • Bradley Cooper (Silver Linings Playbook)
  • Daniel Day-Lewis: WINNER! (Lincoln)
  • Hugh Jackman (Les Misérables )
  • Joaquin Phoenix (The Master)
  • Denzel Washington (Flight)Who will win?
    Daniel Day-Lewis.

    Who should win?
    Can I just say Denzel Washington was pitch-frickin’ perfect in Flight? What could have been a so-so couple of hours was an amazing roller coaster ride as Denzil crash-lands a commercial 737, becomes an instant hero, is stalked by the media, and cannot escape his inner demons and self-loathing, no matter how he tries.

    Best Actress in a Leading Role

  • Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty)
  • Jennifer Lawrence: WINNER! (Silver Linings Playbook)
  • Emmanuelle Riva (Amour)
  • Quvenzhané Wallis (Beasts of the Southern Wild)
  • Naomi Watts (The Impossible)Who will win?
    This one’s a toss-up between Naomi Watts and Jennifer Lawrence.

    Who should win?
    If I admitted being a betting woman, my money’s on Jennifer Lawrence.

    Quvenzhané Wallis is the most adorable, irrepressible six-year-old sprite of all time, and I really liked Beasts the first time I watched it.

    Later on, it occurred to me that this is a film with some rather obvious stereotypes about poor black folks in Louisiana. An old theme in the history of literature, the tragic mulatto in this movie is a young child.

    Actually, she’s Hushpuppy to me, and yeah, she is The Man). Very bright future, if Hollywood can resist exploiting this precious, talented little sweetheart’s age and color.

    Best Actor in a Supporting Role

     

  • Alan Arkin (Argo)
  • Robert De Niro (Silver Linings Playbook)
  • Philip Seymour Hoffman (The Master)
  • Tommy Lee Jones (Lincoln)
  • Christoph Waltz: WINNER! 2 shots (Django UnchainedWho will win?
    Alan Arkin.

    Who should win?
    Alan Arkin. The Ben Affleck snub still stings.

    Best Actress in a Supporting Role

  • Amy Adams (The Master)
  • Sally Field (Lincoln)
  • Anne Hathaway: WINNER (Les Misérables)
  • Helen Hunt (The Sessions)
  • Jacki Weaver (Silver Linings Playbook)Who will win?
    I haven’t seen any of these.

    Who should win?
    What do you think?

    WHEN: 7 p.m. Eastern time.
    WHERE: ABC

Sparks

Published February 24, 2013 Cineman , Into The Light 1 Comment

There’s Love In This World

Published February 14, 2013 Cineman , Eros , Into The Light 6 Comments

Many Mansions

Published December 16, 2012 Capital Crime , Cineman , Eternal Recurrence , Into The Light , Outer Limits , Variations In B-Flat 1 Comment

(Something I reprint every now and again. Usually around this season. First appeared here. Seems a right day to print it again. For all the new little Christmas stars out of Connecticut. And everywhere else in this world. This universe. And all the others.)

* * *

In my Father’s house are many mansions.

—John 14:2

Christmastime again is here, and so be Santa, and so be Jesus.

A couple years ago, in contemplating Santa and Jesus, the two began to get confused in my mind. Santa Claus, for reasons that have never really been explained, devotes each year to overseeing minute laborers who fashion gifts which he annually delivers, in a single night, to all deserving children the world over. Jesus Christ, for reasons that have been variously explained, roamed for a short time across a relatively minute plot of land, uttering gnomic wisdoms, then was seized and subjected to excruciating suffering, so that all, deserving and undeserving alike, might be gifted with salvation.

When a sprout, I was taught that while Santa’s labors never end—a yearly, year-long grind—Jesus’ was a one-shot gig. Wander around Palestine, ascend the cross, into the tomb, three days later out again, brief appearances before various friends and lovers, then up to heaven for a well-deserved eternal rest.

I no longer believe that. I believe that, as is set forth here, “Jesus Christ suffers from now until the end. On the cross. He goes on suffering. Until the death of the last human being.” That is the mystic meaning of his tale: he suffers with all beings suffering in the exile of existence. And we are called upon to do the same—to grow to empathy, so that thy neighbor truly is thyself, and suffering everywhere, for everyone, may be eased. With this meaning there is no need for the resurrection. All of us are him, doing the same work; our work, his work, never ends.

For those who are wedded to the resurrection, the advances in science and philosophy in my lifetime, in the understanding of the multiple dimensions and multiple worlds about us, too mean that his work never ends. For the planets, it is now known, are innumerable, and so are the dimensional variations of this one. And if salvation is indeed his calling, he will forever be busy as twelve bastards, for there are those who need saving, inhabiting every one.

furthur=>

Take The A Train

Published December 13, 2012 Cineman , Eros , Into The Light 5 Comments

Last year round this time, while mooning about on YouTube, I discovered that a Criminal had posted therein the film Holiday Affair, and in its entirety.

This is of course Against All Laws.

But this Criminal had managed for some months to choo-choo goingcleverly evade the hapless Clem Kadiddlehopper II, the sadsack in charge, such as it is, of YouTube security.

Naturally I was compelled to share this joyous theft with red readers.

Here we are nearly a year later, and the thing is still up there.

Let us not wonder at the reasons why. Just enjoy, then, instead.

As I mentioned last year, my daughter, the well-known award-winning deviant, and I, are both keen appreciators of Christmas movies. Particularly old black-and-white Christmas movies. And one of the more obscure black-and-white holiday films of which we are fond, is this one: Holiday Affair, a 1947 effort featuring Janet Leigh, Robert Mitchum, Wendell Corey, and a toy train.

What I find most fascinating, in recent re-viewing, is the train. It opens the film, and also pretty much drives it. Towards the close of the thing, even some of the characters are beginning to notice, and then comment upon, how much this toy train is steering their lives. At film’s end the three principals unite, happy-ending time, on a full-size train, a New Year’s special, headed cross-country. Except the camera pulls back, and we learn that they are not on a full-size train at all. They are on that toy train, the one that opened and drove the story.

As they say: as above, so below. And vice versa.

Book ‘Em, Santo

Published December 8, 2012 Cineman , Eternal Recurrence , Oddbins 2 Comments

(The latest mutation of a seasonal favorite that previously appeared, with various different-one words, here and here.)

The frenzy to arrest people long ago veered completely out of control. And now, as we enter this holiday season, we learn that these days it is necessary to place in the pokey even people who but publicly deny the existence of Santa Claus.

And this didn’t even happen in America. It was the Canadians, who did this.

Seems that during a Kingston, Ontario Christmas parade, a man, seized by the need to speak truth to power, and fortified by alcohol, shocked the children assembled by volubly informing them that Santa Claus is just made-up shit.

Police promptly picked him up and heaved him into the hoosegow.

People at the annual Santa Claus parade reported that a man was moving through the crowd telling childrenReal “the truth” about Santa Claus, saying that he wasn’t real.

“It hits every officer,” [Kingston policeman Steve] Koopman told the Canadian National Post, “as most of us have children ourselves. Some people have been saying, ‘We didn’t know police arrested for telling the truth.’ Some of us may disagree with that. In all honesty, he was disturbing everyone there on the thoroughfare.

“He was disturbing the families, obviously disturbing the children. We felt it very necessary to take him off the street and think the charges were warranted,” Koopman explained.

Koopman noted that the person arrested had his hair gelled into two “horns,” making him look like the famous Grinch from the Christmas classic, How The Grinch Stole Christmas.

Probably we will next be subjected to stories in which the children assaulted by this horrific Grinch and his inconvenient truth, were all rounded up and clapped into camps, for intensive psychological counseling. As the years go by, we will recurrently learn that many of them, permanently crippled by this incident, all counseling and treatment having, alas, failed, ran utterly wild in lives of the most heinous crimes.

I mean, shit, it happened to me.

Though when I was told that Santa was a figment, no squad cars came roaring up to disgorge beefy men with big clubs, to grapple my dad into the back seat, and then screech him off to the jailhouse.

furthur=>

There Will Be Blood

Published December 8, 2012 Cineman , Oddbins 3 Comments

Back in the Olden Days, men regarded women as but sexual vessels: women were instruments with which men experienced sexual pleasure; whether women themselves got anything hot and juicy out of the experience, to men this mattered not.

Too, men wantonly roamed their pee-pees across the land, spewing seed in all and sundry. While a woman who shared her delta of venus with someone precogsother than her principal partner could expect to be consigned to a jail, morgue, or asylum.

That was then. This is now.

Now, if you are a man, and you fail to ensure that your woman scales the sexual heights, you may by that woman be attacked and beaten. And if you are a man, and your woman suspects that your Clenis may have gone a-roaming, you may by that woman be killed.

Last week a Manatee, Florida woman went maenad when her lover neglected to drag her over the rainbow. According to the police report:

[They] are boyfriend and girlfriend who live in the same home and are involved in a sexual relationship. According to a statement obtained from [the man], he and [the maenad] were involved in sexual intercourse. [He] then climaxed and [she] did not. At that time, she became upset and began hitting and scratching him, causing scratches near his eye and nose. He also stated that this is not the first time she has been physical with him, and that she has many issues from her past and that she “goes off” frequently.

This fellow could have saved himself a lot of trouble if he had simply heeded the wise advice imparted by those noted relationship therapists the Grateful Dead in their sex manual “Sugar Magnolia”:

she don’t come
and I don’t follow

Also last week, prosecutors revealed that a Pennsylvania woman accused of slaying her boyfriend last April did so because she “smelled sex” on him. The woman and the dead man had been lovers for eight weeks. When she suspected that his Clenis had been sampling other scents, it was necessary for her to retrieve her handgun and shoot him.

The other night I was watching Diner, Barry Levinson’s film about a group of Baltimore lads back in the Olden Days of 1959. These young men are entranced by, desire, do not understand, and are more than a little bit scarified by women. In their own personal lexicon, they refer to these women as “death.” It is possible that these boys were precogs.

The Bungled And The Botched

Published December 1, 2012 Cineman , Into The Light 4 Comments

Another full-length treat. Terry Gilliam sees that, at root, no one, here, is that much more evolved, than any other. For, to even be here, all are of the bungled and the botched. The task, then, here, is to help one another. No matter if the task seems mad. Pursue it anyway. For in doing so, shall ye help, flow, all, into the great wide open. When Jack is only for Jack? He is for nothing. When Jack is for, against all that he is, for horses he is not sure he even hears? He is for All. Not least of which: Jack.

Whiskey River Take My Mind

Published December 1, 2012 Cineman , Wyrds 3 Comments 
Buffalo Bill's
defunct
        who used to
        ride a watersmooth-silver
                                  stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
                                                  Jesus
he was a handsome man
                      and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
now
Mister Death

                                                                     —ee cummings

More alcohol is consumed in this film than in any of his previous work, and one of the things the film embodies is that haze, that peculiar kind of edgelessness that alcohol induces and is in part consumed to induce. This is not to suggest that river flowPeckinpah drank deliberately to get this effect; more than likely the drinking itself produced it. It hardly matters, as Peckinpah tended to work closer to his instincts, intuitions, and feelings than almost any other director. The previous criticisms of pace and performance notwithstanding, the distended rhythms, the utter lethargy with which everyone moves, the slowness with which they speak, the swollen pauses, the faces that come wearily into focus before the replies, the overall sense of drifting, of languor, apathy, and melancholy—over the course of the film these gradually develop into a style and bring into focus a vision that is unique and almost nakedly expressive of Peckinpah’s condition and state of mind at this time in his life.

It is precisely this quality—that is, an embodiment in the very style of what it is like to be continuously drunk—that led Richard Burton, no stranger to the abuse of alcohol, to once tell Peckinpah that if he ever directed Under the Volcano, he, Burton, would play the part of the consul for nothing. Hearing this, a friend wrote Peckinpah: “It should be directed by someone who’s had that experience of having one aim for several weeks at a time—getting another drink, and who’s woke up one morning wondering why he’s still alive after a night in a cantina.”

—Paul Seydor, Peckinpah: The Western Films

 

Before Believing

Published November 28, 2012 Cineman , Into The Light , Wyrds 2 Comments

I’m not even sure anymore what I believe in. I once directed a Saroyan play in which one of the characters asked another if he would die for what he believed in. The guy answers, “No. I might be wrong.” That’s where I am.

—Sam Peckinpah

I’m Alive

Published November 23, 2012 Cineman , Into The Light 2 Comments

Another treat; another of the finest films ever made: Peter Weir’s Fearless. Based partially on the journey of United Airlines Flight 232: Dennis Fitch, who helped return that crippled craft to earth: “For the 30 minutes I was up there, I was the most alive I’ve ever been. That is the only way I can describe it to you.”

That Made It Right

Published November 22, 2012 Animal Matters , Capital Crime , Cineman , Into The Light , Johnny Law , Peasant Palate 10 Comments

(A slice and dice of several previous red Thanksgiving pieces, including those here and here.) 

One Thanksgiving I spent in jail. I was young, and therefore brash and rash, and so thought myself immortal, impervious. Didn’t think then, there in stir, about doing serious prison time, which is what I was facing. Just had to wait for the holiday weekend to pass, I figured, then the lawyer could tease the bail down to a Sane level. Which is what happened. The serious grinding over the prison time, that came later.

Thanksgiving was my third or fourth day in the place. I occupied alone a single-cell, which I belatedly learned was supposed to be a sort of punishment. I could smoke in there—can’t do that no more, in the jails in this state—and I could think and plan and wonder and reflect. There were tolerable volumes from the jail library with which I could pass the time. Nobody bothered me. I could talk to the folks—though yes I couldn’t see them—in the cells on either side of me. But I could choose not to, too.

This was 25 years or so ago, when they still fed you decently in the jails around here. And so on Thanksgiving they shoved through the bars a fair approximation of a traditional American Thanksgiving repast: turkey, mashed potatoes, rolls, cranberry sauce, yams, etc. I ate all of it. Yams I hadn’t much eaten before, and I haven’t eaten them since. But I had already discovered, there a monkey confined to a cage, that I’d eat just about anything the keepers slid my way. You do tend to get hungry, in every way, when your life is caged.

After Thanksgiving dinner the screws punched a video into the TV/VCR combo that sat on a low metal table rolled about on casters in the hall outside the cells occupied by we “serious felons.” I absolutely could not believe it: the film was The Black Stallion, one of my favorite movies, a tone poem completely about freedom, but one that I figured these cynical magpies in the “serious felon” row would hoot down and away, dismissing it as a “children’s flick.” How wrong I was. They, as it developed, had been on this row much longer than I; they had seen this film several times before, and they valued it. They got it as only people who don’t have it could get it.

Because it was Thanksgiving, that night we got a double feature. The second film was a ninja thing. As soon as it was punched in, we heard a groan from the guy in the cell to the far right.

“What bullshit,” he groused in his gravelly voice. “This is the one with the guy who takes more bullets and lives than even the guy in Scarface. What bullshit.”

And it was true. The ninja hero at one point was riddled with what looked like 20 or 30 bullets, mostly to the head and chest . . . but still, he kept on coming. As this nonsense approached its zenith, the guy in the cell at the far right kept muttering variations on “bullshit” and “check out this shit” and “no way.”

My unseen jailbird companion to my left at one point whispered to me: “That dude at the end, the reason why he’s pissed at this stupid shit: he’s in here on murder. He knows what it takes to kill a person. And it ain’t much.”

Several years later I spent Thanksgiving at Denny’s. I didn’t have to be there; I could have been other places, with other people. But Denny’s is where that Thanksgiving I chose to be. Even at the time, I knew that my Thanksgiving in Denny’s was worse than the Thanksgiving I’d spent in jail. Because then, in jail, somebody else had locked me up. But in dining at Denny’s, I had entered a jail of my own making.

Usually, these days, I don’t associate Thanksgiving with jail. But in 2010 it came back at me. Because the day before Thanksgiving, there in 2010, a jury out of Texas decided that Tom DeLay, former majority leader of the United States House of Representatives, had committed enough crimes to stash him away in a cage for the rest of his life.

furthur=>

We’ve Always Drowned Your Voice With Our Shouting

Published November 22, 2012 Cineman , Into The Light , Variations In B-Flat 12 Comments

A holiday treat. One of the finest films ever made. And with the Jim Sheridan/Terry George films In The Name Of The Father, Some Mother’s Son, and The Boxer, the complete filmic explication of the 20th Century version of “The Troubles.”

Days Of Heaven

Published November 18, 2012 Cineman , Eros , Oddbins , Variations In B-Flat 2 Comments

I been thinkin’ what to do with my future. I could be a mud doctor. Checkin’ out the earth underneath.

—Days of Heaven

There is something very restful about a cornfield. When I was a young sprout, I spent a lot of time in them. I would go in about three or four rows, and then lay down, to set about examining the world of the cornfield. Which is unlike the world anywhere else.

Another cool thing about a cornfield is that from there, three or four rows in, you can still see into the outer world. But it can’t see into you.

Eventually I’d go to sleep. Because there is something about a cornfield that acts on the corporeal container like that field of poppies in the Wizard of Oz.

I would also journey into cornfields with L—. There in the cornfield is where she and I taught each other night moves. We could see her house from where we were, three or four rows in, but her house couldn’t see us. This was good. Because if it had been able to, her father would have come rushing out, with many shotguns, and my head would have flown right off my body. He didn’t think his daughter should be learning about the heating properties of bodies. Certainly not with me.

But, you know, apparently, just like the Secret Service boys Say, there is, everywhere, Danger—even in cornfields.

This the lesson learned last Wednesday by a man who laid down to rest in a cornfield outside Billings, Montana, and woke up inside a harvesting combine.

Yellowstone County Sheriff’s Lt. Kent O’Donnell said the 57-year-old, whose name will not be released, was passing through town on the Greyhound bus from Washington, D.C. He was walking along the 4900 block of Grand Avenue when he decided to take a rest.

“He said that he stepped off the busy road and about three rows of corn into the field,” O’Donnell said. “He said he didn’t have intentions of sleeping, but fell asleep anyway.”

At about 1:15 p.m., the landowner drove a combine into the field to harvest corn. The farmer drove about 50 yards when the combine shuddered, O’Donnell said.

“The farmer thought he had driven over a fence post or an irrigation pipe, but once he turned the machine off, he could hear a man screaming,” he said.

The machine had caught the man’s clothing and sucked him into the cutter, O’Donnell said.

The man was successfully sucked back out of the combine, and treated for “non life-threatening injuries” at a nearby hospital. There are some deep lacerations, and these may require skin grafts.

“For this situation, the man is incredibly lucky to be alive,” O’Donnell said. “And that’s about all you can say about that.”

When you think about it, we’re all incredibly lucky to be alive. And that’s about all you can say about that.

When I Worked

May 2013
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