that movie was fucking terrific. rarely is anything so ambiguous (at least for a while). it is actually unclear whether this guy is flat out evil or actually good. he's sneaky about getting things done. he straddles an evil world and lashes out in every direction. no good deed goes unpunished, hilariously. but since everything redounds on evil it's all good. BAD ASS MOVIE!
and the soundtrack is fucking fantastic, it's like some james bond shit, thumping and brass. kurosawa's got this really funny way of deploying sound, it might as well be slapstick fart noises tacked on. he'll just drop some music on for a few seconds, just for a single gesture. it's quite tacky, really, but since it's happening in a movie like this it's just adds to the unique glory. honestly what a fucking great thing. i loved this. i watched it with matt on the couch here eating popcorn. there's a lot of salt on the middle cushion and i've been trying to wipe it off but the couch is kind of salty now. i have to get to bed so that tomorrow isn't terrible
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Monday, May 7, 2012
the barbarian invasions
quebec! this movie is way less good than the decline of the american empire. there's one amazing shot at the beginning of the catholic nurse through the hall bringing the communion wafer. that was amazing. besides that there was cheap banter and a man reminiscing about sensual pleasures. there are token gestures to the misery caused by remy's spectacularly selfish sensuality but this movie is ultimately a mawkish toast to cuisses, bouches, etc. the bulgarian nurse's rubdown? get the fuck out of here.
it should be thrilling when middle aged women talk about administering hearty blowjobs, but not when the movie lacks the courage to pan over to the wife. it makes its argument about people and sex by setting up a puritan (capitalist capitalist capitalist!) straw man and then unleashing gorgeous women to make out with him. it's an easy movie, a cheap movie. the decline of the american empire absolutely astounded me, but maybe i really was that puritan straw man three years ago. i wonder if it'd still be something special.
i appreciated the little vignettes, i found that really elegant and appropriate.
it should be thrilling when middle aged women talk about administering hearty blowjobs, but not when the movie lacks the courage to pan over to the wife. it makes its argument about people and sex by setting up a puritan (capitalist capitalist capitalist!) straw man and then unleashing gorgeous women to make out with him. it's an easy movie, a cheap movie. the decline of the american empire absolutely astounded me, but maybe i really was that puritan straw man three years ago. i wonder if it'd still be something special.
i appreciated the little vignettes, i found that really elegant and appropriate.
Sunday, May 6, 2012
chairs
Why so many chairs? Why does every architect design one? Why is that the fundamental object in design? (it is, isn't it?) Enough with the chairs, enough with the sitting. There's got to be something else out there to design that isn't so guilty in the affliction of butts and backs everywhere, so complicit in offices.
What're these people striving for with all these chairs? Hopefully posture. Posture's kind of the one and only thing-- make chairs that are impossible to sit in if you aren't ramrod erect. I wonder if that's even possible though. I'm thinking of everyone in school, of finding so many ways to puddle and slink and wilt in a chair, worming down the back of it, their heads poking up less and less at an increasingly sharp angle from the rest of their body, seeking the place of least resistance, the 180. IDEA: put sandpaper or some such horrendously frictional thing on the seat of chairs. The difficulty, the energy required to not slip your butt forward and your torso down is the great difficulty.
What're these people striving for with all these chairs? Hopefully posture. Posture's kind of the one and only thing-- make chairs that are impossible to sit in if you aren't ramrod erect. I wonder if that's even possible though. I'm thinking of everyone in school, of finding so many ways to puddle and slink and wilt in a chair, worming down the back of it, their heads poking up less and less at an increasingly sharp angle from the rest of their body, seeking the place of least resistance, the 180. IDEA: put sandpaper or some such horrendously frictional thing on the seat of chairs. The difficulty, the energy required to not slip your butt forward and your torso down is the great difficulty.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
happy frank
SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN! That is an amazing story. I mean, that shit is extraordinary. And don't give it away for god's sake. don't fucking look up the movie. the movie's a normal-ass documentary except for some irritating extra effects. the point is the story, which is utterly stupefying, and spoiling it for someone would physically sicken me. it is such a fucking extraordinary thing. god, what a wonderful thing.
I biked home behind a bus and it was amazing. It cut me off but then I realized it cut off the wind, which was cold and biting, so I rode like 10 feet behind it all the way home. It was kind of a crazy experience because I could basically only see this white square in front of me. All the bumps were horrendously surprising. It was like an inverted version of wearing some cyber headgear standing in some boring ass room. It was conceptually FANTASTIC to have the street unfurling beneath you out of a white square with that unchanging Sleepy's advertisement. It was a clean air bus, I noted all the way home, and I was glad because those fumes woulda been a bit much, like reenacting those nightmare videos of small town kids running in the fog of a DDT truck. It was also exciting because I was a bit anxious about not plowing headlong into the square; I watched for the brake lights very carefully. it was pretty awesome. i am feeling very happy right now, i should say.
I biked home behind a bus and it was amazing. It cut me off but then I realized it cut off the wind, which was cold and biting, so I rode like 10 feet behind it all the way home. It was kind of a crazy experience because I could basically only see this white square in front of me. All the bumps were horrendously surprising. It was like an inverted version of wearing some cyber headgear standing in some boring ass room. It was conceptually FANTASTIC to have the street unfurling beneath you out of a white square with that unchanging Sleepy's advertisement. It was a clean air bus, I noted all the way home, and I was glad because those fumes woulda been a bit much, like reenacting those nightmare videos of small town kids running in the fog of a DDT truck. It was also exciting because I was a bit anxious about not plowing headlong into the square; I watched for the brake lights very carefully. it was pretty awesome. i am feeling very happy right now, i should say.
Anders Breivik is sane! Grant that dubious privilege to the far right, and to Breivik himself. He claimed in court today that if he was a bearded Muslim nobody'd doubt his sanity, and it's true. The hilarious part of this is that it's good for the far right for Breivik to be ruled insane because he's kind of a PR issue. It's much easier to continue to build anti immigrant, nationalist platforms without the terrorist rep. We should take Christian, right wing fanatics at their word; they're always lone crazy people to the media because if they weren't it'd imply terrifying things about a lot of the political movements in Europe these days. Believe him! Don't discredit his ideology!
Sunday, April 22, 2012
The Depressed Person
The david foster wallace thing called The Depressed Person is really fantastic because there's nothing to say to it. it's amazing because it's whole, because as with anything where you get the big picture all these insane things conspire to make a logical whole. A horrific childhood happened to this person and from that stemmed a universe of unimpeachable feelings about the world. Those feelings are totally crazy and ridiculously unhealthy, and yet there's really nothing to undermine any of it. The only thing I could imagine saying to them was "chill out." The rigor of the depression was staggering.
What flows naturally from that rigor, from a god's eye view of one person's personal hideousness, is sympathy. It's the sympathy of a confounded person, a sympathy born of the recognition that that person's thoughts are coherent and that since you can't figure out what you'd do in their place you're forced to respect their intractable misery. The big picture! Everything always makes sense!
What flows naturally from that rigor, from a god's eye view of one person's personal hideousness, is sympathy. It's the sympathy of a confounded person, a sympathy born of the recognition that that person's thoughts are coherent and that since you can't figure out what you'd do in their place you're forced to respect their intractable misery. The big picture! Everything always makes sense!
Friday, April 20, 2012
biking on the brooklyn bridge
Biking over the bike lane of the Brooklyn Bridge is ridiculously therapeutic. There is a line that divides the bridge into a pedestrian lane and a bike lane. This wouldn't matter much except that pedestrians frequently wander into the bike lane, which is great, because a person wrongfully crossing a line is like the original wrong. It's a metaphorical bonanza; it's a line in the sand; it's a wall of toys in a ferociously divided childhood bedroom. It arms you with an uncommon and pretty insane feeling of righteousness. It's the province of fanatics, of people who kill people, of people dangerously alive. It also feels fantastic. I feel that manic, glorious certitude when pedestrians cross the line.
When I started biking over the bridge I'd say "excuse me, sorry" when I came up behind pedestrians. It was no good; it was too long; it failed to express how bovine they are. I tripped over the awkward down-up transition from the "eh" to the "kskew" sound. I eventually settled on barking "heads up!" until one day this guy shot past me on toward a crowd of line-crossers squawking WWAAAYYYY DOOOO WWWWAYYY DOOO like a tropical bird car alarm, and he was so right. Words neuter animal passion.
None of this would work if I wasn't moving quickly, too quickly for people to catch up. Squawking like a tropical bird car alarm in and of itself is embarrassing. Stopping to berate tourists adorably happy to take photos (in which I fantasize about getting my blurred screaming hawk face) on the Brooklyn Bridge for their obliviousness would be evil, but when you're blowing past they're too slow-moving, dopey, and faceless to be anything other than a potential collision.
You're your own river on the bike on the bridge; it's all that Siddartha "everything changes everything is the same everything is one" shit when you blaze past. The freedom corresponds to the transience. I used to think and hate that there was no place no one could hear me scream in New York, and there isn't. But on the bike you kind of can. The air is always fresh when you make your own wind.
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