pedestrian saga

Long after I flunk out of SLIFR U, Dennis assigns a movie quiz I manage to answer! Via Facebook (or How to Kill a Saturday Real Good):

Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen movies you’ve seen that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes. Tag fifteen friends, including me because I’m interested in seeing what movies my friends choose. (To do this, go to your Notes tab on your profile page, paste rules in a new note, cast your fifteen picks, and tag people in the note – upper right hand side.)

These films are truly the first fifteen that came to mind, and quickly (in less than five minutes, thanks, no doubt, to the two shots of espresso with breakfast). Subsequently organized by era and annotated. (more…)

My life according to David Byrne & Talking Heads. Em started it. On Facebook.

Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions. You can’t use the band I used. Try not to repeat a song title. It’s a lot harder than you think! Repost as “my life according to (band name).”

Pick Your Artist:
David Byrne & Talking Heads

Are you a male or female:
And She Was

Describe yourself:
The Lady Don’t Mind

How do you feel:
Fuzzy Freaky

Describe where you currently live:
Tiny Town

If you could go anywhere, where would you go:
Heaven

Your favorite form of transportation:
Dance on Vaseline

Your best friend is:
Girlfriend Is Better

You and your best friends:
Pirates
OR
Angels

What’s the weather like:
One Fine Day

If your life was a tv show, what would it be called:
Television Man

What is life to you:
Lifetime Piling Up

Your last relationship:
Uh-Oh, Love Comes to Town

Your fear:
Burning Down the House

What is the best advice you have to give:
Don’t Worry About the Government

Thought for the Day:
Finite=Alright

Harvey Milk never fails to reduce me to a huddled, sobbing lump, even when he’s Sean Penn. So this Gus Van Sant biopic on the slain gay rights activist was moving and effective, right? Eh, not so fast. Milk is very uneven, and really kind of unnecessary. (more…)

My name it is Sam Hall, Sam Hall
-English folk song, voiced by Johnny Cash in my head all evening

Hey, you want to play Ping-Pong?
-Sam Bell, in Moon

This afternoon I went over to the Darkside to watch Moon. Having heard 2001: A Space Odyssey meets The Twilight Zone, with the son of Ziggy Stardust at the helm, I was floating some pretty high expectations for this flick. It soared above and beyond.

Sam Rockwell plays Sam Bell, the lone employee posted to a corporate lunar mine (or is he?), just two weeks from completing his three-year contract and returning home (but will he?) The voice of Kevin Spacey plays the emoticon-happy space-station computer, GERTY, a fabulous send-up of HAL 9000 that I can’t believe they pulled off so well.

Moon has got itself some serious atmosphere. Poignant desolation and nostalgia. (I totally cried!) But also charming workplace humor and situation comedy. (I totally chuckled!) Did I mention mystery? It’s got that. Existential Ping-Pong, too. Ooh, plus stickin’ it to the Man!

The production design is gorgeous, and the sets chock full of fascinating details. It’s an outer space future that is gritty, industrial, retro, and utterly convincing. Okay, I want to go again now. But perhaps with a friend this time.

****

New York Times review
Trailer

It was with mixed feelings that I read reports of the inaugural SLIFR Night at the Drive-in with Sam Raimi’s Drag Me to Hell, held the last Saturday in May at the Mission Tiki in Montclair, California. There was, of course, intense longing to partake in such a unique cinematic celebration, alongside vicarious satisfaction for ringleader Dennis* who organized such an exquisite movie event, and veneration inspired by the magnitude of his success: an ozoner billing tailor-made to his sensibilities, plus the participation of not only the local hearse club (!) but also Variety film columnist Anne Thompson, who featured it prominently on her blog (!!). His brilliant one-sheet sheet-cake was, well, icing on the proverbial cake.**

Then there was a flush of aw-shucks embarrassment at seeing your humble narrator named among those Dennis wished had been able to attend, in such esteemed company as his lovely and wonderful wife Patty, BFF Bruce (fellow Animal House alum and a horror-comedy film star in his own right), and pal Don Mancini (no less than the creator of Chucky).

I confess to sulking awhile in June, overcome by regret for missing so much fun, until an extraordinary coincidence offered partial redemption. (more…)

ON A RECENT list of fifteen books I’ve read that will always stick with me, I included Stephen King’s Misery, not for its literary value, but for the vivid memories of the context in which I read it.

Round about the summer of 1989, my siblings and I packed into the bench seat of a conversion van and headed west with Dad and Kara toward Denver, Aspen, and Grand Junction, for reunions with various families in the Colorado tribe of the paternal clan. Always one for themed reading (or maybe it was unplanned and serendipitous?), I brought Misery along for the ride through the Rocky Mountains, where the story unfolds. (more…)

Ah, there you are, baby boy.

New mama’s got a son in her eye
No clouds are in my changing sky
Each morning when I get up to rise
I’m livin’ in a dreamland

(Stills/Young)

Congratulations, Em and M!

Put the blame on meme: “Don’t take too long to think about it. [Yeah, right.] Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you, for whatever reasons. This isn’t your top 15 canon or even books you’d necessarily recommend, just books that have made their mark on you. First 15 you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. [Ha!] Tag some friends, including me.” All right, RFM.

Equipped with lousy reading recall, I might not handle an intelligent conversation on the content of these books. But most of them stick with me for secondary reasons, remembered for the context and environment in which they were read, or the intense emotional response they elicited. With the exception of Misery, I would drop everything to relive any of them. So, 15-ish, roughly in order read (titles linked to LibraryThing):

1. Hop on Pop and Green Eggs and Ham, by Dr. Seuss: Ah, reading as a contact sport or dramatic recitation.
2. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, by Robert C. O’Brien: Fell a little in love with Justin, was inconsolable for days after finishing it. Repeatedly.
3. Misery, by Stephen King: Cheap creeps relished around age 13 while the family van wound through the Colorado Rockies.
4. Black Boy, by Richard Wright: First half was assigned reading in junior English, but I couldn’t put it down, ignored my teacher during class to read ahead through the second half, and obsessed on RW a good while.
5. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by Hunter S. Thompson: Funny, angry, and insane, it channeled lots o’ fantastical high school angst.
6. Mildred Pierce, by James M. Cain: First brush with L.A. lit, an affair to remember.
7. A Good Man Is Hard to Find, by Flannery O’Connor: Uh, wow.
8. If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, by Italo Calvino (trans. William Weaver): Earnest, naive undergraduate discovers metafiction on a hot summer night.
9. A Concise Introduction to Syntactic Theory: The Government-Binding Approach, by Elizabeth Cowper: Favorite textbook ever! Generous portions of technical whup-ass served with creamy saccharine vending machine coffee in the charmingly stale Ballantine Hall student lounge.
10. Il sentiero dei nidi di ragno (The Path to the Spiders’ Nests), by Italo Calvino: First novel I read from cover to cover, painstakingly, in the original Italian. By the window overlooking Via Dal Lino.


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11. Catch-22, by Joseph Heller, and Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut: Beloved absurdist WWII satires of the hyphens and numbers! To crack either book is to risk hyperventilation.
12. Le città invisibili (Invisible Cities), by Italo Calvino (trans. William Weaver): The only academic paper I’ve really been proud of I wrote on this book. Spent a LOT of time with it. In grungy cafés along Bancroft Way.
13. Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water, by Marc Reisner: Wherein lieth the revelation that nonfiction about land development and water policy can be totally thrilling.
14. The Ticket Out, by Helen Knode: Perfect noir for a particular rut, living and loving and dying between Culver City and Los Feliz.
15. The Day of the Locust, by Nathanael West: Cockfights, midgets, degenerates, Los Angeles aflame…dig that scene!

Your 15? And maybe I’ll pick on some FB peeps.

Mad props to all the incredible moms in my life!

This is my strikingly beautiful sister serving Easter dinner. I remember when she was a baby, chillin’ with her, quite possibly the most peaceful moments I’ve ever experienced. She is going to be a mum soon.

Why did I want to see this film again? Someone must have dropped the “vampire” word, and I thought, “Why not? Will Smith¹ is a funny guy.” But as far as funny guys go, he’s more Keanu Reeves than Bill Murray—Eye rolls ‘r’ us when he tries to be serious.

The monsters in this movie are horrifying, as in, Egads! You spent how much money to generate such ridiculous, plastic baddies?

Half a star for the German shepherd’s riveting performance. [Sniffles] Excuse me while I hug my dog.

**1/2

¹Nothing but fond memories of the first dubbed Hollywood movie I saw in Bologna—Independence Day: Il giorno della riscossa. Will Smith opened his mouth, and the most beautiful Italian filled the cinema.