"Don't Let the Fuckers Get You Down"

Ahhh.... Youth!

As a friend of mine would say in our more reprehensible, unabashedly glorious moments gone-by. The energy and the enthusiasms of the (predominantly male, white) beliefs, efforts and disenchantments of the young american. The crackling, uncertain energy. The fierce desire and passionate longing - all-too-often manifest in form of self-tacking, wayward compassing, drifting hither and yon - that in a confessional sense resonate, at once tired and explosively novel, with each generation of the misunderstood; always in their own eyes. More contemporary shallowness than the unceasing voice of the dismissed longing of the voiceless? Unquestionably. Absolute freedom from responsibility turns only selfishly inward, as, I think, Jonathan Franzen writes. Resonance endures.

"Don't let the fuckers get you down!" Viggo Mortenson (Burroughs?) declares. And he is right. A worthy creed to be certain. The sparkling, the crackling energy of the film On the Road feels like Kerouac. Ginsberg too, perhaps. Energy, excitement, youthful enthusiasm: all worthy of celebration. The outcomes? The expenses to be paid for indiscretion? Surely just as necessary for their inclusion. Where does the end bring us after the night? This too is non-trivial. Journeys inward also are held accountable for the morning after.

Truthfully it could be argued that the message of Kerouac is only for the elite, for the comfortable. Selfish journeys of attempted disconnection from comfort. A particularly cynical interpretation for anyone's longings - nonetheless worthy of reflection. Yet such disparagings do not marginalize the reality of experience. Longings are felt across the spectrum of humanity, the reality of each is accountable only to the pilgrim along the way. Such a message speaks in contradiction. So, too, do our journeys.

"From Here On In I Rag Nobody"

Bang the Drum Slowly is a tale that grows in the telling. Much as the New York Mammoths become more invested in each other and come together around a common, albeit heart-breaking common experience, we too are drawn in to the world of Bruce, Henry and the team. From TEGWAR to Dutch's hot-tub visits, perhaps baseball, and the common experience of team, is best understood as a nexus of relationships - an ensemble of differences that is forced to constantly invent something new. An exercise in rhetoric.

The question I walked away with surrounds the combined experience of the dead march, as "The Streets of Laredo" or "The Cowboy's Lament" would put it, and that which brings men together. Do we think more (or less) of a group of men who gather around a teammate/friend/acquaintance only once his days are numbered? Through what prism do we view the subtle tragedy of the smile on Bruce's face? Do we see a man invested in his last days, fully free? Or, do we see only the young cowboy, desperately hoping to have is story told? The joy in camaraderie that he feels is evident - and saddening. That we know it cannot last; that such joy is finally felt - a pinnacle of effort in life's strivings - creates tragedy. Yet Bruce's smile is too an arrival; an event of co-creation. His final days, his enduring joy, could never have become without the composition of each man. Henry may defend Bruce and work to ensure the peace and strength of his last journey, but he cannot do it alone. Bruce's last days emerge from the better angels of those around him.

If we are to look for the core of Bang the Drum Slowly, it, too is an event of arrival. The core of the film is the passage between individuals; how we can, and do, co-create the world. The whole transcends the pieces, in the film, and life.

Thanks, Chief

All The President's Men: a moment:

“Once when I was reporting, Lyndon Johnson’s top guy gave me the word they were looking for a successor to J. Edgar Hoover. I wrote it and the day it appeared Johnson called a press conference and appointed Hoover head of the FBI for life. And when he was done, he turned to his top guy and the President said, ‘Call Ben Bradlee and tell him ‘fuck you.” 

The Man, himself.

Worshipping at the Altar of Disposable Income

There is a moment, toward the end of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, in which Jay stands outside of Daisy’s window, watching. Myrtle is dead – killed on the road by the very woman she conspires in cuckolding. Daisy and Tom have retreated inside, never to really emerge again. At least, not for Gatsby. Nick departs, Gatsby remains, watching, Fitzgerald tells us, over nothing.

It is no fantastic insight to offer the following: Baz Luhrmann is simply not the calibre of artist that F. Scott Fitzgerald was. Shock! Horror! Blasphemer! Alas, it’s true. And in the balance, his Gatsby suffers most by comparison. Luhrmann is simply not equal to the task of the nuance, the quiet moments in-between the raucous frivolity that make up the soul of The Great Gatsby. In the filling station, as Tom talks down Wilson, even the quiet moment of two desperate men feels like a crazy and confused wheeling, beyond normalcy and control. A riotous party of emotions. The lights shine, to illuminate, nothing.

These quieter, though more passionate, dear, and heart-breaking moments transcend the age within which the story unfolds. Risk and reward, life and death, the illusions we are held by, our inability to transcend ourselves – any story dealing with such recurrent tragedies of the human situation, and the human spirit, ring as contemporary and of immediate necessity. (A contradiction to what I have said: how different is our own time if the relationship between wealth and profligacy does not seem so foreign?) Luhrmann’s Gatsby beats us over the head with certain, simplified points. Yes, Leo, we understand, you think the past is repeatable. The film has selected certain aspects of Fitzgerald’s broader landscape and thrust them upon us. No nuance here. Yet, divorced from the wider pastiche, what remains is flat. Soulless. No, better said, of a different soul entirely. One less variegated and nuanced. Listen to me, the film seems to cry out. In its insistence that we understand, it dooms itself. Fitzgerald’s is a small story about us all. Luhrmann’s is a grand tale of no one.

Val Kilmer's Pony-tail: A Not So Subtle Inversion

There was some vague assertion that Heat was supposed to be a pretty good movie. I suppose it was. Is it wrong that I think that everything it did was done more successfully by The Departed? (I know, I know, The Departed is an America remake of Infernal Affairs.) You’re right, Michael Mann, sometimes the lives of good and bad are not that simple. Sometimes we are forced into dubious positions. Point taken.

Hermes Does Not Know My Friend.

Hermes, is not Pontius Pilate.

Ostensibly, he, therefore, does not know Pilate's friend, Biggus Dickus.


Nevertheless, Jason and the Argonauts is entirely enjoyable.

What Manner of God Could This Be?

The Ark of the Covenant is meant to represent the manifestation of the Lord’s own fealty to his people, Israel. In essence it is a sign that the great Destroyer, ruler of the desert, recognizes the special place of the Jews within creation and has come to dwell with them. So the Hebrews built the Temple of Solomon to house the Ark, thus providing an embodied, literal, sanctuary for their expressed relationship to God.

Turns out, as that great piece of history Raiders of the Lost Ark tells us, history and the (literal and figurative) sands of time, intervene. The Temple of Solomon was sacked, subsequently destroyed, and the Ark of the Covenant was lost. This much history – biblical or Spielburgian – seems to agree upon. That the Ark would be pursued requires no fanciful invention. Thus, it is really only the smallest flight of fancy to suppose a world (even if it is in an already past time) in which said Ark might be found. After many hijinks, brawls, chase-scenes, and devil-may-care, ruggedly handsome camera shots of Harrison Ford, this is exactly what happens. With the help of Karen Allen (whose attractiveness remains undiminished by the intervening years) snakes are avoided, death is cheated and traps are sprung, only to see our heroes shackled helplessly as the Nazis unleash what is certain to be a weapon of ultimate power.

As becomes face-meltingly obvious to the Furher’s henchmen, things don’t turn out so well. Han Solo and Katie (Animal House) escape back to Washington D.C. and, in what appears to be another sign of strange US military intelligence decision making, the Ark is put into storage with a bunch of other boxes (signifying what, exactly? That the US intelligence community has a vast store of divine weapons that it simply couldn’t be bothered to do anything with except properly catalog?).

The question thus posed: what sort of God is this? The evidence stands as such: the Lord is finally tamed to a relationship with Israel. He thus creates a symbol of their union that is so terrible to behold, simply looking upon it leads to an unspeakable death (perhaps worse). The wrath of Jehovah, at least to those not represented in his covenant, defies description. And yet, this same deity allows for his only manifestation on Earth to be buried for ages, uncovered only in a sort-of academic pissing contest, marched through the desert, only to be opened to wreak havoc upon those who gaze upon it. With these seeming unworthies out of the way, it is easily transported to some government storage crypt, where it will most likely be opened by some poor government functionary in years to come. The Lord is apparently unspeakably powerful and terrible, yet, plays no part in securing, moving, influencing, or dealing with his manifestation on Earth. He is at once destructive beyond comprehension and absent beyond question.  Is this the “small, soft voice” or the pillar of fire? If, as has been argued, he is both, then what a strange way to make decisions. What sort of priorities does this Lord/God have? What if his seeming absence is only meant to challenge the faithful? Are those who seek His manifestation thus rewarded with their own assured destruction? Is He suggesting that to seek him in this world is folly? Or, that to seek beyond the everyday for him brings a curse? Once again, oh Lord, your ways are mysterious. Such apparent contradiction seems to demand that we accept your presence/absence unquestionably; that you demand nothing less than fealty. So why does the adventurer and medium by which your manifestation is uncovered get the girl?