You have failed me for the last time, Internet

I happened to catch the first half of the Andy Milonakis show, the newest "someone-else's-brainchild" co-opted by MTV, and apart from many of the skits which I found very humorous, I really, really enjoyed Andy's freestylesque theme song (sung, of course, by himself). MTV contends that they found this guy in New York just making these videos by himself in his apartment, and their sheer eccentricity drove them to giving the boy a show. Couple of things:

1) Andy Milonakis looks twelve. I don't know how old he is or, indeed, if he is subject to the same laws of time as we are.

2) You would not think, looking at him, that a person like that would be able to have an apartment on his own either through hitch of age, ability, or mental deficiency.

3) Milonakis. Greek. Excellent.

Anyway, like I was saying, I was really enamored with the theme song. Thing is, I could scarcely remember any of it past the first few lines, which I will now commit to digital paper.

"I got peas on my head, but don't call me pea-head,
Got bees on my head, but don't call me bee-head,
Bruce Lee's on my head, but don't call me a Lee-head,
Something, something, something, I gotta get my tree fed."

At which point, he feeds the tree, by pouring food into its pot. It's brilliant.

Actually, this isn't true. I couldn't even remember the "tree fed" line, my brother had to tell me that one, and we can't even remember the first part of it. This, of course, brings me to my major complaint about the whole experience which, with the third use of a colon in only one post, is this:

I was unable to find the full, complete lyrics to the Andy Milonakis show theme song on the whole of the Internet.

The show's been out for four days now, it's been repeated at least four times. By now, somewhere in this vast ether of bullshit, someone should have been able to transcribe the theme, word for word... but there was not one, not one person, who had done so.

Internet, I ask little of you, but when I want to learn the real words behind some bullshit rap theme and you refuse to assist me... well, that's just too much.

You are not the Internet anymore, Internet. From now on... you are merely... FOURTH COLON:

The internet.

Now find me those damn lyrics.

A dark day for our loyal readers.

Pull No Punches, No Holds Barred

To everyone who attended the L.A. Zoo this Saturday, June 25th, YOOL 2005:

NO MATTER WHAT BULLSHIT NOISE YOU'RE MAKING, BE IT HOOTING, SCREECHING, MEOWING, OR HOWLING, THE ANIMAL DOES NOT THINK YOU ARE ANOTHER ANIMAL AND IT WILL NOT REACT TO YOUR DUMB ASS.

THE ONLY REACTION YOU ARE LIKELY TO GET FROM SUCH BEHAVIOR IS MINE, WHICH WILL LARGELY CONSIST OF BLUNT TRAUMA TO THE BASE OF YOUR SKULL.

I swear to Batman... what the hell is wrong with people? The caterwauling at these poor creatures is bad enough, but I witnessed with mine own peepers a GROWN MAN hopping over a fence to retrieve some detritus that he might then throw it at an orangutan sitting as close as it possibly could to the fence. What, was the ape too close for you? Was he invading your space, and you want to assert your dominant status? Is the monkey a threat to you? ARE YOU A COMPLETE DICK?

Regardless of the humans that also happen to be at the zoo on full display (and really should be in motherfucking cages) it was a lovely time. I saw parts of a pangolin, and a tiger, and I saw sifakas, and a myriad of ca-poo-chins, which I'm sure at least one person who reads this damn thing will appreciate. It was even the "crested capuchin," which is known for its scenester fauxhawk haircut. Wow. What a fantastic day today has been. The zoo, the pool, some pizza... a little mock procreation... wonderful, wonderful time. I really couldn't ask for anything better than the Mrs. to make my life worth living, and I'm extremely lucky/blessed/thankful to have her. And once she reads this, I expect a full PLATTER of Rice Krispie Treats. On the double.

At practice yestermorn, the topic was brought up that many of the knights that have fought with us and have attempted to "teach" us how to fight (knight being anyone who kisses enough ass to earn a white belt from the then-current royals who, more often than not, have been friends with the advanced since childhood or some such guarantee of service like that) have brought up the concept of it being "cheesy" to take limbs, specifically arms, while fighting. Meaning this:

If I'm fighting a certain knight, and he sticks his arm way out in front of him while swinging at my head, attempting to kill me, he will think it is... ahem... "cheesy" for me to shoot my weapon out and quickly lop his arm off.

What I think this essentially boils down to is, "Hey... no fair! I wanna win!" Knights will do anything in their power to keep from being beaten, so putting forth some non-existent unwritten law about not-killing-people-too-much is something of their stock-in-trade. They hate it when you figure out a way to kill them, especially if the trick involves exploiting something they've been doing for so long that they can't undo it right away. If they can't be allowed their clear shot at your head at full force, they don't want to be involved with you. Goodness knows they're not going to stick around while you pick them apart, rendering them almost completely helpless.

My basic modus operandi is this:

Kill everyone.

If I have to stand there taking you apart, peice by peice, so be it. I'm not held to any imaginary standards that stem from your fear of fighting. I will dismantle you until there are no more parts left on you that can cause me damage. And then, I will kill you. I will kill you SO HARD.

I've fallen behind again on my movie-responsibilities... namely the pledge I made to write a review for every movie I saw. Right now, I'm think I'm about four behind, so I'm going to try and catch the hell up, as falling behind a progressive commitment is a slippery slope I know all too well. Also, I think I've figure out how to put pictures on this dang ol' thingy... so if this post happens to end with an image of a pangolin, nature's perfect being, so be it. All things serve the beam, ka is a wheel, etcetera, etcetera.

See you in the BEEEEEOOOOOAAAAAAIIIIIITCH!



Damn, that's beautiful.

Anomaly

I'd like to be the first person to publicly come out against the use of the phrase "Whodunnit" in any other sense than in gritty detective crime novels. This is no longer to be used in order to describe the plot of a movie, a mysterious situation (which, more often than not, are less "murder" and more "who-took-the-stapler-from-the-mailroom" oriented) or, perhaps the greatest transgression, the title for a new story involving a serious crime investigation.

No more of this. Stop it. This is a phrase that should have gone to the shoulder of the "everyday conversation" highway a long time ago, but still is somehow managing to coast along in between traffic on two blown out tires with smoke pouring from under the hood and I hate it I HATE IT.

...

I have a theory. It concerns time-travel.

I have said this on numerous occasions, but the state that the world is in right now is unacceptable. Somewhere between the 1940's and now (possibly brought on by the realism and harship brought on by the Great Depression and the subsequent socio-emotional ripples it still causes to this day) we have lost something that made us the progressive, decidedly amazing creatures that humans are supposed to be. I'm not saying all people were amazing, not by a long shot. J.P. Morgan springs to mind when I try to think of someone from the Antevapidian who dedicated his life, in a high-profile manner, to something that ultimately didn't make a damn bit of differend in the greater human experience. Call it art, call it compassion, call it a need to live beyond staying alive, we no longer have what we had then, and something needs to be done to correct it.

But perhaps, later on, once we've worked past this rough patch, we'll be able to look back and see changes we could have made. See ways we could have done better. If only there were a way we could communicate with the past and let them know. Let them know their eventual fate and somehow influence their thinking to help us. If only there were some way.

For a long time we've known we can't have time travel, because if we could, certainly we would have had visitors from the future by now. I contend we already have.

I think the future is using the Internet to communicate with us.

It makes a lot of sense if you think about it. It started off as a noble endeavor, let's let the past know what they should be doing correctly by subtlely influencing them through the content and communication available through the Internet. It's almost complete anonymity, and the amount of actual people using the Internet protects the feeds from the future by leaving innumerable possible threads of idenitity to check before ever finding one that belonged to a non-person. And even if you did find a site or a person that was from the future... how would you even know? What could you do?

Soon, though, once the word got out of the plan, the J.P. Morgans of the future got hold of the technology and began using it to their own ends. Has it ever struck anyone as odd that there are seemingly limitless amounts of porn out there? You'd think you'd see only a few participants over and over again, but no! A seemingly infinite number of females exist! How is possible?! THE FUTURE, IS HOW.

The best, most advanced products are available, seemingly, only on the Internet (not too advanced, as J.P. Morgan IX wouldn't want anyone to become suspicious, it may affect sales), We recieve so much information through the Internet, enough indeed to suggest an overlying purpose piercing every aspect of it, and we spend so much of our time on the Internet that it seems to have been made the primary source for all, if any, influential media.

The question is this: Will someone stop me before I can post this? Is this one voice quiet enough that it will never be heard through the cacophony from posterity? Or has it simply never been found, truth lost within the beast that the hereafter itself created as a jungle of concealment, of obscurity. Perhaps, if they ever did find this, they simply could not find out who it was. Perhaps they don't want to stop me. Perhaps they don't think one voice will change anyone's mind.

Perhaps they know it won't.

Or perhaps... just maybe... while I'm typing this, there's a man outside my door. He's dressed in clothes that, at a glance, look normal enough, but on closer inspection seem sterile, almost mechanical. As if the fashion of today was somehow fed into a precision machine and churned out, not in the mass-production means of everyday life now, but the painstakingly specific characteristics of a made-to-order supercomputer. A suit of specification.

Perhaps he's waiting, the future being cloudy at best. Perhaps you can't know whether I will or will not click this final button. Perhaps my own uncertainty is known to him, and the chance that I might just become spooked at the whole prospect and delete the writing, nothing lost, is enough that he's waiting. Waiting with some ugly, shining thing is his hand that doesn't operate as we might assume it would. No lasers or plasma blasts, no bright flashes of light, no pulsing drone, just a quick click as a switch is flicked or a button is engaged, and a blood vessel explodes in my brain. Aneurisms happen all the time, no explanation. Perhaps this is why.

Perhaps they've already figured out who the two people who read this thing are. Perhaps they're prepared to let me post it, so long as they can keep tabs on us. Perhaps I'm never meant to be more than this, typing away at nothing in a mechanation of their own design, using it to chip away at an edifice too giant to comprehend and too indestructible to entertain the thought of destroying.

Or perhaps he's just waiting. Waiting outside. Waiting for me to get just too close to the button.

Waiting for my choice.

Of course, the one thing he didn't count on... the one thing he... coudln't... count on... was that

I'm faster than him!

Tell my cat I love her.

Quemado

Did anyone else think, as a child, that Mr. Tamborine Man and Mr. Bojangles were, if not the same man, at least related?

...

"Movietown, that bitch burned down!
Movietown, that bitch burned down!"

-My Brother, upon learning of Movietown's burning down

Such was the innocuous chant that would herald what would become the largest outbreak of aggresive arson seen in Orange County since the Great Burneration of 1904.

I first heard what would become the rallying mantra of my generation not in words, but in text on my cellular phone, my brother letting me know that Movietown, a video store that my friends and I had frequented since high school daze, along with an entire stretch of Anaheim strip mall, had burned to the ground as my friend watched from his roof across the street. Nothing but the facade of Movietown now stands, a charred reminder of the one peice of consumerism that held any sanctuary for us in our adolescence. Also, much porn was lost in the blaze.

Then, driving the Mrs. home one night, I viewed a second conflagration a good distance away from the freeway I was flying down. The flames must have been at least four stories tall, and the light the fire was giving off turned the smoke-stifled night sky the sooty black-orange of a hot almost-fall sunset. Driving back from her house, white smoke had started to rise and the flames were no longer visible, though a diminished glow was still visible. Strange this destruction-by-fire should happen so recently after the first.

Finally, we have a special exhibit at the Center opening for the summer, and we've all been running around like hootenannies trying to get it ready in time. I've spent a good deal of my own time out back painting a staircase and, let me tell you, the process of painting a staircase is a long and arduous one.

At any rate... I went to visit a friend of mine who had been relegated to the gulag of stair-painting, and he pointed out to me that, down the street (perilously close to a nearby city zoo, in fact) great plumes of smoke had begun to spew skyward, indicating yet another fire of considerable size, this one the very day after the previous. The effusion from this particular combustion looked unhealthily black, chemical in origin, and I deduced that, simply, that was how monkeys burn.

Why? Why so many legitimate fires so close on each other's heels. Why, so soon after I'd made the comment that we don't get enough real fires around here in Orange County, at least not in the city areas. Sure, once a year we're treated to the Santa Ana winds inspiring some socially-defunct firebug to set ablaze the grasslands, but I'm looking for some property damage. Odd that, not too long after I'd begun looking for it, I found it in an abundance I'd never before experienced, let alone seen in such a tight locus around my own home. I am convinced there is a serial arsonist of the supervillain caliber loose in Orange County, and I will do whatever I must.

In this case, it appears that I "must" start watching movies again (apart from Batman Begins, I've been shirking my duties) and that I "must" get my space movie filmed and ready for post before the summer ends. Before I'm out of time.

So... I suppose somebody else could take care of the whole "arsonist" thing.

Takers?

And yes, I meant Burneration, not Burnination. There is life outside pop culture, fuckers.

#2

Considering how it has become such a large part of my personality, I give a lot of thought to defecation. In specific, I have begun to give darling names to certain acts of excretion, particularly where these acts happen to take place (as, anyone can tell you, the location of perpetration influences the social and personal effects of the undertaking). It is in this spirit that I offer the following:

Taking a shit at work: "Drivin' the Carpool"

Taking a shit at school (college level): "Visiting the Dean"

Taking a shit at school (high school level): "Furthering My Education"

Taking a shit in college housing (dorms, apartments, etc.): "Cramming the Finals"

Taking a shit at a friend's house: "Disliking Your Company"

Taking a shit on your friend: "Hilarious"

Taking a shit in the ocean: "Makin' Carp"

Taking a shit in the pool: "Testing the Filter"

Taking a really big shit in the pool: "Makin' the Deep End Shallow"

Taking a shit in the woods: "Enraging the Bears"

Taking a shit in the woods (light snow): "Cloggin' the Toboggan"

Taking a shit at the beach (in bathroom): "Signaling Poseidon"

Taking a shit at the beach (in the sand): "Kittyin' Up/Kittyin' it Up"

Taking a shit on a loved one (sexual gratification): "Strengthening the Case for my Execution"

Taking a shit on a loved one (joke): "Hilarious"

Taking a shit in a government institution: "Letting the Terrorists Win"

Taking a shit on camera: "Chewing the Scenery"

Taking a shit in a park: " Soddin' "

Taking a shit on camera in a park: "The Blair Twitch"

Taking a shit in a portable receptacle (illness, road trip emergency, use for future prank): "Preparing for Winter"

Taking a shit as a result of a hilarious prank (laxatives... I suppose that's it): "Paying the Piper"

Taking a shit in the face of your musical heritage and all concept of art or expressive legitmacy: "Creed"

Taking a shit in thoughtful preparation (surgery, examination, anal sex, easy clean-up after suicide/expected imminent death): "The Gift of the Magi"

Taking a shit and having the water splash back onto you: "5's Across the Board"

Holding a shit in for the strangely pleasurable feeling (male): "Thermopylae"

Taking a shit at several locations progressively along a journey, perhaps after having eaten something that did not agree with you or simply as a result of impassioned pooping: "Painting the Town Corn"

And finally...

Taking a shit at your girlfriend's house early on in the relationship: "Death of a Salesman"

I'm very proud of myself.

How many did I just come up with? How many had I thought of before? The world may never know.

Everything You Ever Wanted to Hear About Tires

Has anyone ever realized that whenever the need arises to buy a new tire, especially when the purchase is necessitated by a blowout, it always ends up being extremely hot when you go to do it? It seems that every time I've ever had to drive to a tire store to get a new wheel for my conveyance, it's been uncomfortably hot outside. And I'm not talking about the friendly outdoors summer hot. I mean the inner-city, asphalt ground and black rubber heat vapor orange, burning hot. The kind that boils off tenament apartment buildings and sticks you to leather seats. Shitty, sweaty, baking hot. And I can't help but need to buy tires in that weather.

Not that I ever need to buy tires, in fact. On the whole, I tend to not give a flying fuck about any car that I possess, but occasionally said car will crap out on me in the form of a blown or deflated tire (albeit due, in most cases, to my aforementioned negligence) and I'll need to drive around in my lame automobile in a sweltering tarmac-and-concrete jungle.

Recently I was driving down the 55 with the Mrs. and I blew out my right rear tire to the extent that it ripped off of the rim and whipped up the body of the car around that area pretty good. Needless to say, having recently purchased this car in pristine condition, and this car having replaced my last truck which (I may have written on before) was totaled through the combination of a trip to the San Diego Zoo, Labor Day, and an asshole with no other way to enjoy life than to alter his perception and then find himself behind the wheel of a large automobile. Don't drink and drive, children. Not just because it's against the law, and not just because you may hurt yourself, or that you may hurt others. Because, if you drink and drive, and I find out, I will hurt you. I will hurt you so badly. If anyone else made that threat, maybe you wouldn't have anything to worry about, but trust me on this. I have recently realized that my life is somewhat inconsequential and, for the moment, largely without meaning, and I have absolutely no problem at all in throwing every aspect of mine toward the prospect of serving out delicious vengeance on those who, in some small way, have allied themselves with someone who would passively my life and the life of someone I love dearly into their hands.

Anyway.

So my tire blew out, it sucks. I managed to get off the road and not get hit. My catalytic converter got fucked up, and that cost me a pretty penny. I got two new tires, having realized the reason it probably blew up is because the fucking tires that came with the car are so fucking old that they're falling the fuck apart, and that's not the best part of my week. Bitch bitch, bitch bitch, lots of money I don't really want to spend. More complaining, why me, parking tickets, not fair. Blee blah blow... boop bahp beep... and so on.

It's a little scary when you think that your entire car, no matter what car you have, is really only in contact with the ground that it's flying over at upwards of 65 mph (95 if you're more like me) over a total surface area of little more than two square feet. It's the only part of the car that is actually in contact with the ground which, theoretically, you're trying to shorten your involvement with in your purchasing of a machine to get you across it faster. One must invest in tires, if only to ensure one's safety. This does not change the fact that I was quoted 740 for a set of four tires, and this does not change the fact that there is no way in Beelzebub's Western Hell that I am willing to give one man that much for four objects.

At least not for four objects that I'm going to be rolling around on the ground.

...

I don't know how similar this endeavor is to something like MySpace, and maybe it's only me that thinks this, but isn't MySpace the last vestige of people who have no chance at all of getting laid? It seems like the low watermark of the social development of humanity when there's nothing left to do but set up a picture of yourself (probably the one that paints you in a light you are not likely to find again in this life, let alone in normal operating daily existence), write some painfully witty and chamringly self-depricating "about me," and wait for the hot hot heinas to send you pictures of them? Hopefully with their underwear showing?! ON THE FLOOR?!

SWEET!

I don't know. People I've made fun of...

...spoken with...

...say they just want a place where they can keep in touch with their friends, but I think that's a little goofy. Most people just want the forum in which they can monologue unfettered and have their friends (along with any other hottyz what may be watching) read how much they should have a column in the New Yorker. Or the Post. Or, more accurately, Mad.

Anyway, I get a real "dwelling place of the socially inept" feel from the place. Like the Warhammer dens or like... I don't know... my house.

Go outside. Call someone. Just don't write a blog entry about how you did it, for Christ's sake.

Self-reflexive? Charmingly self-depricating? PROBABLY!

Pugilism

Along the same lines as my previous mini-essay on the cultural significance of films such as Goodfellas (and since it's a more recent and topically appropriate peice), I include here another little addition to my growing published excuses for making this thing to begin with. More film theory? MORE FILM THEORY!

...

Cinderella Man

The most interesting thing about Ron Howard’s Cinderella Man, the painfully uplifting film about the life and struggles of boxer James J. Braddock, is the fact that a movie with Russell Crowe physically battling other men in a ring for the amusement and spectacle of a cheering, goading crowd actually ends up being less like Gladiator than Kingdom of Heaven.

Ron Howard, perhaps falling into the old filmmaker practice of choosing and sticking with a quintessential actor (and what would be wrong with that, if he did?), has decided to go with the Assailin’ Australian for the lead, and whatever you want to say about Russell, the man brings something to a role that has everybody cheering for him. Hell, even in Virtuosity I was more sympathetic towards his computer-program-cum-transubstantiated-psychopath than Denzel’s hero-generica. You want Russell to win. It really doesn’t matter what he’s doing. Captaining a ship? Fighting the German hordes? Going up against big tobacco? Please do well, Mr. Crowe. Please be our hope.

Ron Howard is also beginning to come into his own as a director. Sure, it can be said that he came into his own a long, long time ago, having headed up such canonical and widely popular and successful films as A Beautiful Mind, Apollo 13, Backdraft, and, to a lesser extent, Willow. But Howard’s real directing expertise, and his concept of creating a heartfelt, entertaining film is even beginning to betray him, and a personal style that borders on artistic outside of utility is undeniably beginning to form.

Ron has these wonderful little touches that, taken by themselves, seem meaningless and unimportant. Indeed, during the film, the thing that makes these moments just the opposite of inconsequential is the fact that you don’t notice them, you may never notice them in a thousand viewings of the film. But they are there, and if you do notice them, you start to form the picture in your mind of the true craftsman that he’s becoming. The example that springs readily to mind (as it is perhaps the most evident in this particular film) is the shot in Cinderella Man just before James’ fancy dinner scene in which the camera follows a waiter carrying a large, silver-domed serving tray out from the kitchen. The camera looks down on the reflective surface of the serving dish and we see the ceiling above and the doorway the waiter passes through faded into the reflected distance. What you don’t see, and what you may not even notice you’re supposed to be seeing, is the camera pointed directly into the polished silver.

Little technological and CG effect-oriented touches here and there add so much to Howard films, and people take the direction for granted. They never think that Opie’s really doing anything substantial on the screen, that he’s more of an actor’s director than an audience’s, but he has every bit the artistry of any other director on his level today, save for the fact that his particular artistry is subtle and seldom noticed.

I mean Howard’s. Ron Howard’s.


Hee.


Another addition Howard makes to his visuals is the not-quite-immediately-noticeable flashes of x-ray during some of the fight scenes. Occasionally, when someone is giving or receiving a damaging blow, an image will flash across the screen depicting, in medical specifics, the destruction being done upon impact. The first time we see this is when Braddock breaks his hand on the head of a another boxer where, for a moment so brief you scarcely realize you saw it, a bone schematic of hazy blue-against-white is flashed at the moment of collision and you are able to see the hand snap, even able to see a expressionistic piece of bone, perhaps just manifested pain, breaking away from the wrist and flying into the air. The same happens later, and more obviously, when Max Baer (the obvious and easily despicable villain of the film) is working on Braddock’s ribs, where it then flashes repeatedly to the cracked and shifting cage. Excellent little expressive affectations such as this are helping to truly shape Howard’s vision as a director, and is moving his stance in the artistic community from skilled craftsman to true artist.

And yet this is not the most important aspect of the film. Cinderella Man tells us a story; a story that, as a society separated from this experience by generations and a collective apathy toward our social history, we may never have learned or care to find out about in any other medium. Read about it? We don’t have the time and we don’t have the inclination to find out about a boxer during the depression, when there’s so much more happening nowadays (Survivor, The Jacko Trial, whether or not Paris Hilton currently has a cock in her mouth).

Ron Howard has made a film that tells the story of a man that we should know. We should know, we should be aware, we should find out in our lives about a man that lived once, a man that definitely did exist and lived this life, not because it’s a compelling story and will fill seats, not because it’s exciting and it’s the story of someone who raised the hopes of a nation. It’s the story of a man who took care of his family above all else, who never resorted to stealing, no matter how bad things got, and would gladly have his hand (and worse) broken just to provide for those that he loved. This is the story of a man who, after getting over a rough patch and making back some money, actually paid back the aid that the government had given him, a man who constantly risked himself in order to help those around him and, as simple and blunt as it may seem, did the right thing with every aspect of his life. If nothing else, this movie needs to be seen so that we as a people, as a community of the world, can know that someone like this existed. There were honestly good people, there was at least one, and this was his life.

Too often we assume a base layer of evil when dealing with other human beings, and too often we’re correct in our assumption. The fact of the matter is that if you wish to deal with a decent human being, you’re for the most part shit out of luck. This is our default setting when dealing with other people, when dealing with other travelers on this road of life, and we’re so scared to give anyone else a hand or the benefit of the doubt that, just maybe, this person or that person might just have an ounce of humanity in their bodies, a dash of common decency. Cinderella Man shows us a man that, at his heart, in his actions, and in all of his glory or humiliation, was a fundamentally decent person in every aspect. Ron Howard, in showing us his story, has not only achieved as a director, and helped levitate the whole of the film experience to a greater degree than I’m sure he ever thought he could with his collected works, but takes the place of Braddock for this generation. He gives us hope, in this film. He gives us reason to believe in people, reason to believe in effort and kindness, and, ultimately, reason to believe in life.

This is the true power of film, and this is the true power of film used as it should be. There are few examples these days as good as Cinderella Man to show us how much a film can lift us up. Luckily, just when you think film is down, people like Ron Howard can help it to come back swinging.

Assailin' Australian... I'm rarely so pleased with myself.

Wiseguy

Having recently returned from what I considered to be a well-deserved and much-needed vacation, I find myself questioning the nature of the vacation, and the actual motivation behind such undertakings.

Mostly, I find myself asking this because I am currently sitting on my ass watching the Computer Lab here at work because the main computer-dude is away... on vacation.

I guess my biggest question is this: Why the hell do you need a vacation from this? All I have to do is sit here and explore the internet. The machiens are all top-of-the-line, so there are rarely-if-ever any problems, and when there are they are, by and large, someone needing me to enter the password so they can log on. I've sat here for four hours so far just looking at different websites that I enjoy and, frightening consideration, I've run out of internet. I've goddamned run OUT of INTERNET. I even looked at a few of the less appropriate ones, O Risk-Taker me.

And I know this guy. It's not as if he's jet-setting off to Kuai for the week that he's off. He's going to sit at home and relax. Most likely, he'll do so ON THE INTERNET. Apart from being around all these people and, I suppose, the stress and pressure of reponsibility (but, again, I know the guy...) there really isn't any large categorical difference between what he'll be doing with his time off and what he would have been doing had he stuck around the office, except at home he isn't getting paid to slack off.

At any rate, like I say, it's a nice little set up. I have unchecked authority in here, and am allowed to impose my will on any and all visitors of the Lab. I can involve myself as little or as much in their lives as I please, and I have a high-speed internet connection as well (that none of the other computers have, as we became a little tired of the whole, "Don't look at porn sites, little Johnny," routine). And now it seems, as the time to close the Lab edges nearer, that, without having said a word, these people sense that their time is soon to be over, and they are slowly, one by one, filing out the door. Soon the place will be empty, I will be alone, and perhaps then I'll give the more-than-inappropriate sites a flying go.

Mostly, I think the concept of the vacation is the scheduling manifestation of the Greater Overlying Theory of American Laziness. GOTAL, as I've come to call it, affects every aspect of our life to a degree, but in the form of the "vacation," as it is made manifest in today's society, is some kind of hyper-distillation of that laziness. People who work 4 hours a day, twice a week, will come to work and drag-ass around, saying the entire time, "I don't want to be here, I don't want to be working," take their measly check at the end of the pay period and, in a couple of months, they'll ask for a weekend off. "I just need to unwind, man. I've been going full tilt, firing on all pistons. I need a break bad."

If you did anything, then I might agree with you, but every single day for you is a vacation, it's just a vacation that you happen to spend here while getting paid.

Now, as the forerunner of research into the theories and rationale of GOTAL, and as a self-confessed and diagnosed American Lazy Bastard myself, I feel I can say with a degree of safety that it is strange that I myself am slightly intolerant of laziness. Even today I find it hard to believe that the concept of slight lack-of-ethic is anathema to me, though it may be simply here, and now, or whenever it is that I happen to be doing something that I geniunely enjoy. Yes, then the laziness bothers me to a grand degree. We are, as a race and as a nation, not the industrious, career-oriented, goal-achieving cross-section that we were prophesied to be. Instead, we are a people who largely hope to get by with as much as we can get on as little work as possible. There are exceptions, but they are, in fact, exceptions, and the fact that they are exceptions proves the rule. We are all lazy shits, and we desperately need this time off, less we become irrevocably irritable lazy shits.

Aaaaaaand I hate you all.

...

I watched Goodfellas again last night (which I actually feel a little guilty about, considering I have three Netflix films backed up, I've had Tokyo Story for a week and I still haven't watched that, and I don't like watching films I've already seen that I don't really need to see again when there are so many films I haven't seen... if you follow me) and I just wanted to give it what brief immortality I could afforded by the Internet, as it deserves all I can give it, by saying that it truly is a remarkable film, and a lucid example of Scorcese's artistry at it's most soft-handed. What Scorcese put of himself into that film he did within folds of celluloid and turns of scenery like flour folded into dough, like flowers pressed between book pages.

The jarring freeze-frames, meant to jar, meant to displace, do so in a manner that falls into place like a child's peg-toy. After it happens, we can't imagine the freeze-frame being anywhere else and, indeed, can't imagine that part of the film without a freeze-frame, no matter how completely disorienting it succeeds in being. We begin to think that perhaps we even expected one to pop up, to give us a moment to consider, to take us out of ourselves if only for that instant.

The film is full of canonical wiseguy dialogue (two conversations in particular that pigeonholed Deniro and Pesci, the "Little Bit" and "How am I Funny" discourses respectively) and filmic pantheon scenes that are bread and butter to any cinematography/directing 101 professors, even those that haven' the slightest clue what the fuck they're doing (I'm looking at you, Evanow, you mushroom-shaped marketer). The long takes of the entrance to the club and the introduction of all the gangster friends (I'm gonna get the papers, get the papers... like you weren't thinking that right then) are so legendary in themselves that anyone who had seen the film almost certainly thought of those scenes the moment I mentioned the film, rather than was reminded of them once I'd listed their existence.

Tommy's execution, Henry's failed score and subsequent bust, Jimmy attempting to kill both Henry and his wife in such a roundabout manner, these are the things that have helped to carve the film heritage that is the modern American filmmaker's inheritance, and these are the things that make American film the most influential in modern and historical cinema.

Anyway, whetever it may mean coming from me, the film is fantastic. If you haven't seen it (and I honestly hate to say this, because I hate it when people say it to me unless asked) you should. There aren't a lot of films I would say this about. In fact, some of my favorite films I would not say this about, but this film is not only an important film for film's integrity, but it's a truly enjoyable film, and it's enjoyable for the right reasons. It's enjoyable for the reasons that all films shoudl be enjoyable, and you should see it so that, as a society, we can learn what a good film should be, what we should be enjoying about film, and how film can be something more than what most of the shit we watch today is.

How film can be so much more than Maid in motherfucking Manhattan.

I want to make films like this. I want films to be made like this. I want more films LIKE. THIS. If there are more movies like this that are widely enjoyable by a large audience, but still enjoyable because, at the end of the day, they're just plain good movies, perhaps we can retrain ourselves to like good films. Perhaps we can return to some kind of culture, some basic form of civilization. Not sophistication in the form of snobbery, but in the form of intelligence. In the form of distinction. In the form of self-respect. I would ask anyone out there to attempt such a transformation. I would ask us all to.

More and more, day after day, this is becoming my true life's work.