Haha!, Reconciliation Fantasy #9

Just once in my life, I’d like to be the one who gets called to, as I turn to leave. You know the trope:

Jason stares blank, dejected, then turns to walk away.

Narrator: “He just knows he has to let her go her own way.” (Some crap about birds flying free.)

Ingenue, probably played by Ione Skye: “Jason, wait. Don’t go.”

A tentative smile. A knowing glance. A rush to a warm embrace as it rains, though the sun breaks through in a montage of ther mutual happiness.

Cue Music: Tears for Fears
—

All I know is, I’ve been calling all my life, but I’ve never yet been called. Shitty.

Haiku #1

Betrayed, crushed, destroyed.
Haiku always so oblique?
Girl your bootie stank.

Soldier On

i have lost my job
it took so much work to get it
(wheeling and dealing)
i was so disappointed in it when I got it
later it became my shield because in spite of its unsuitability I was good at it
& i was going to school
& i was getting it done
& i was proud
but then one day something changed
everything became sinister
large things became giant and impenetrable
small things became confusing and too small to know
i don’t know what happened
but i kept soldiering on
& I kept my coals in the fire
& here it is years later
& I’m all worn out
I don’t look like I used to
and i damned sure don’t have the courage i once did
this one has seen too much of conflict and not enough of peace
but I’m still here dammit
still holding the remnants of that now useless shield
looking for all those things that are gentle
and all those things
which are sized just for me

Tiny Review, Terrible Movie: 2012

A great big dread-filled NOOOOOOOO !!!! to anyone thinking of watching 2012. I watched it due to the famous Cusack Sentimentality Quotient, which of course affects all people of my age group who watched One Crazy Summer back in the 80’s. And really, even though he didn’t do a bad job with his lines or anything, you can only polish a turd just so much.

It was just horrible: overly long, common-sense-challenged, & boring when it wasn’t absolutely overdramatic. It was your typical Roland Emmerich movie, turned up to 11. I see no further avenues of action for Mr Emmerich here, so perhaps simply for that reason alone weshould rejoice for the making of 2012.  Once you’ve done the end of the world as an action movie director… not much left to do, is there?

Interestingly, I discovered that one can only see so many hundreds of people die horribly before one just goes a little numb. But apparently one CAN ignore many hundreds of plot holes and still release a movie expecting it to succeed.  (And I believe it did do fairly well, so great job, way to lower the bar, Hollywood. And that is saying something, as the bar cannot get any lower without a shovel and a mighty patient ditch digger.)

I remember watching Independence Day at the theater when it came out, and it was the same experience, basically, only without Will Smith for charisma, Bill Pullman for gravitas, and Randy Quaid for comic relief. If anyone is thinking of watching it, I won’t say don’t bother, because what do I know, right?, but I will just remind you that you can never have those 150 minutes of your life back.

Tiny Review, Epic Movie: The Road

Well I just finished watching The Road.

It was bleak. A sad thing happened at the end and it made me cry. I mean, I’ve gotten teary-eyed at movies before but this was just an atrocious festival of woe.  I felt on the edge of some kind of horrible breakdown at one particular point.  So, it was emotionally very effective, in other words.

In the end, I feel better having watched it, there was a lot of great imagery (if your favorite color is grey, this is your movie) although, just like I felt when I read the book, the very end was just too much fairyland nonsense for me to buy. As much as I want to believe that things happened the way they did in the last five minutes, I just can’t get there.  I feel almost as if the ending was made the way it was just so people wouldn’t actually kill themselves over this book, I mean in really real life.

So, bleak, yes, but still worth watching, if one has the stomach for it.  I’m not sure everyone does.

My wife, who pretty much refuses by default to watch this movie (just as she refused to read the book on the grounds that it would probably kill her), has asked me before why I like this genre (post-apocalypse) and although it’s not something I’ve thought very much about, I guess I probably like it because it reminds me of the triviality of my own problems. So for those of us in the need for some perspective in trying times, The Road may be the movie of the year.

And also, Viggo Mortensen is my hero and if I were a woman, I would gladly have his children, apocalypse or no apocalypse.

How to Make REAL Art #1

I just realized for the maybe the thousandth time that I am a badass music making mofo.  And as a consequence of this fact, not only do all the ladies love to undress me with their oh so sexy eyes, but this music that I make makes me a true artist as well.

There are a  lot of things, of course, that makes this proposition so very very real to the world, but for me, the first thing that finally clinched the universal acknowledgment of my uncanny artistic eminence was the fact that I always give my songs impenetrable names.  For instance, I might write a song about my doggy who I love so very much.  Of course it is cute and only right to do so.  But then I will name it something esoteric like, “Scenes from the Lackawanna Six”.  (Sometimes I might even leave out the capital letters for extra credit, and, to heighten the sense of drama that I am epically conveying to you, awestruck listener. You’re welcome.)  The song won’t have anything to do with Lackawanna, nor will it involve terrorist plots.  It will be about my dog!  Do you see!  Do you?

Anyway, I made a new song tonight. Yes I did, but it is not ready yet, & even though I think I promised my many thousands of RSS readers that I would ALWAYS post every iteration of a song, I’m not going to do that this time.  Aren’t I scandalous?  Does this mischievous turn of mood not instantly put you in mind of a 60’s-era Van Morrison?  “Oh, go on, music man,”  you say.

Well you’ll just have to wait nonetheless.