Not me, that's for sure!
Featured on the 22 of February of 2010 in the Union Weekly.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Cinecult: The Proposition
Originally run on 30 November 2009 in the Union Weekly.
The Proposition (2005)
"Australia, what fresh hell is this?"
It’s probably telling that The Proposition is one of my favorite films, since it’s one of the most stark and depressing films that’s come out in the past decade. It’s also the single best western to come out since Unforgiven, which is strange considering the film was written and directed by Australians and takes place on the same continent. It is an unusual place for a setting, but like Sergio Leone’s comic book melodramas or Akira Kurosawa’s samurai-filled iterations, taking the western down under breathes life into the genre. It’s an odd choice, but it’s the kind of choice that keeps the western alive.
The director of the film is John Hillcoat, an Australian who recently released the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. He’s clearly a man who knows how to put together a good movie, but what elevates The Proposition above most other films is the screenplay written by musician-cum-novelist-cum-former-heroin-addict Nick Cave, who also handles the score with bandmate Warren Ellis (not to be confused with the comic writer of the same name). Cave, though an Australian exile living in England, has an excellent handle on the western and American writing, an influence that’s quite clear in both his lyrics and in his debut Southern gothic novel, And The Ass Saw an Angel.
The film takes place in the year 1880, back before Australian independence, racial tolerance, and dental hygiene. The Australia of The Proposition isn’t the place we laughed at in that one episode of The Simpsons. Instead of koalas and lame jokes about knives, this Australia is one that’s basically unknown to us and, as I understand it, unknown to even the Aussies. This land is a fly-filled hellhole rife with delusional government officials, psychopaths, wars with the natives, and miles and miles of dirt. If the entirety of the United Kingdom was shaken up, all of the loose pieces of trash and deritus would wind up in Hillcoat and Cave’s vision the Land Down Under. It’s in this topsy-turvy terminal that our protagonist, Irish immigrant Charlie Burns (Guy Pearce) finds himself caught up.
The opening of the film is rather telling. It begins with the police ambushing Charlie and his youngest brother, Mike, at a brothel in the middle of the desert stocked solely with Chinese prostitutes. It’s a loud, brutal fight and ends with the two Burns brothers captured by police. But they aren’t executed or sent to prison. Instead, police Captain Morris Stanley (Ray Winstone) offers them a proposition: If Charlie Burns kills his eldest brother, Arthur who is “an abomination,” by Christmas Day, Stanley will let Charlie and his younger brother go free, absolved of all of their crimes. If not, Mike will be put to death for the crimes of the two older brothers. From there, the movie unspools into an anarchic, bloody race against time across the sun scorched wilderness of Australia.
The eponymous proposition is about as Biblical (or maybe Faustian) of a pact as could ever be made, but unlike the Bible, there’s no moral to be found, there’s no lesson to be learned, and nothing seems to occur according to any divine purpose. Things just happen and they’re incredibly ugly when they do. The world of The Proposition is deeply flawed and demonstrates just how messy things can be when humans try to do the right thing. It’s an interesting inversion on the typical representation of the western as the forces of good battle the forces of evil, and it’s what makes this movie more than just a simple piece of genre.
The film is also chock-full of wonderful acting, including a performance by one of my favorite character actors of all time: John Hurt. Hurt plays Jellon Lamb, a verbose and sadistic bounty hunter, adventurer, and “man of no little education.” Hurt’s career has spanned about 50 years and he’s acted in projects ranging from fantastic fare like Hellboy and Alien to more serious dramas such as Midnight Express and The Elephant Man, as well as the other great western of the past two decades, Dead Man. With all of these films in mind, I’d be hard-pressed to find a movie where he’s more engaging than here. He’s creepy, threatening, and hilarious all wrapped into one man.
Now, while he is my favorite actor in the film, he’s really a part of a much larger ensemble of great actors. There’s the beautiful Emily Watson (Punch Drunk Love; Synecdoche, New York), as the delicate, but frustrated wife of Captain Stanley, as well as David Wenham (Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, 300) as the wonderfully named Eden Fletcher, the dandiest authoritarian that ever drifted into the Victorian Outback. Danny Huston (son of the great actor/director John Huston) is also great as the villainous older brother, Arthur, who is as vicious and frightening as he is charming, a difficult combination to pull off and is entirely appropriate for this film.
It’s a shame to know that The Proposition’s unrelenting grimness will keep a lot of people from seeing it and just as many from finishing it. Their loss, I suppose, because despite the film’s bleak treatment of humanity (and of Australia), there’s still a beauty to be found in all this. Hillcoat’s film shows that as wicked as we might become, there’s still redemption to be had, if only we can find it. There’s plenty more to be sussed out of the film, but if there’s anything more significant, I’d be hard-pressed to find it.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
An Op-Ed by Marion “Cobra” Cobra Cobretti
Originally run on 16 November 2009 for the Union Weekly's spoof issue, The Grunion.
It’s Not Easy Being a One Man Army
by Marion “Cobra” Cobra Cobretti
I know that whenever people see me in my ’55 Mercury, my slicked back hair, mirrored aviators, vanity plates, and my devil-may-care attitude, they think, “Oh, there’s a guy who I wish I could be. Thank the stars above that he’s out there cleaning the garbage off our streets. I wish I could be him, or, failing that, his on-again-off-again lover.”
Well, citizen, I’m here to tell you that being a one-man war against crime isn’t as easy as it looks.
A lot of pencil-pushing nerdlingers at Internal Affairs try to tell me that using explosive-tipped, armor piercing bullets in a mall to shoot a shop-lifter is incredibly dangerous, but I’ll tell you what’s more dangerous: Not shooting a shop-lifter in a crowded mall with bullets made to kill full grown elephants. That shop-lifter could have been Charles Manson or an NVA spy. I bet you feel stupid now, don’t you?
My chief is always getting on my case too, with a lot of nit-picking about “beating the mayor’s nephew with a tire iron” and “setting fire to the Reagan library.” What would he know about good police work? How was I to know that the low-life was picking up his grandmother from a retirement home. He was parked in a loading zone and that’s breaking the law. He should have had more respect for the statutes and amendments that make up this fine country, and nothing gets me more angry than punks with no respect. Except litter.
Not too long ago a serial killer was terrorizing Los Angeles, silently killing old folks in their sleep without leaving a trace of evidence. The morgue said it was a case of “natural deaths,” but you know what I say, I say that there’s nothing natural about death. And I have a PhD from the School of Hard Knocks, so yeah, I think I know a thing or medical science, so scramble that, you bunch of eggheads.
After about two days of investigating and twelve million dollars in damage, I finally solved the case. As it turns out it was a cult of Satanist biker communists. As I always say, “When in doubt, it’s a cult of Satanist biker communists.” That’s rule number two of the Cobra Playbook. Rule number one is “Always bring a toothbrush,” because proper hygiene is always a must.
What keeps me on the straight and narrow is my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s right, scum suckers, the king Cobra believes in a power higher than himself. “But Cobra,” you say from behind your plates of chili and your cum stained pants, “Religion is for the weak.” No! You’re weak, dirtbag! Nothing is more badass than God. He killed tons of Egyptians, one of the hardest groups of people on Earth to kill. He also made tigers, muscle cars, and me, the Cobra.
So the next time you see me throwing hand grenades from the back of a moving truck at black market pornographers, just remember that dealing out justice isn’t as glamorous as it looks.
It’s Not Easy Being a One Man Army
by Marion “Cobra” Cobra Cobretti
I know that whenever people see me in my ’55 Mercury, my slicked back hair, mirrored aviators, vanity plates, and my devil-may-care attitude, they think, “Oh, there’s a guy who I wish I could be. Thank the stars above that he’s out there cleaning the garbage off our streets. I wish I could be him, or, failing that, his on-again-off-again lover.”
Well, citizen, I’m here to tell you that being a one-man war against crime isn’t as easy as it looks.
A lot of pencil-pushing nerdlingers at Internal Affairs try to tell me that using explosive-tipped, armor piercing bullets in a mall to shoot a shop-lifter is incredibly dangerous, but I’ll tell you what’s more dangerous: Not shooting a shop-lifter in a crowded mall with bullets made to kill full grown elephants. That shop-lifter could have been Charles Manson or an NVA spy. I bet you feel stupid now, don’t you?
My chief is always getting on my case too, with a lot of nit-picking about “beating the mayor’s nephew with a tire iron” and “setting fire to the Reagan library.” What would he know about good police work? How was I to know that the low-life was picking up his grandmother from a retirement home. He was parked in a loading zone and that’s breaking the law. He should have had more respect for the statutes and amendments that make up this fine country, and nothing gets me more angry than punks with no respect. Except litter.
Not too long ago a serial killer was terrorizing Los Angeles, silently killing old folks in their sleep without leaving a trace of evidence. The morgue said it was a case of “natural deaths,” but you know what I say, I say that there’s nothing natural about death. And I have a PhD from the School of Hard Knocks, so yeah, I think I know a thing or medical science, so scramble that, you bunch of eggheads.
After about two days of investigating and twelve million dollars in damage, I finally solved the case. As it turns out it was a cult of Satanist biker communists. As I always say, “When in doubt, it’s a cult of Satanist biker communists.” That’s rule number two of the Cobra Playbook. Rule number one is “Always bring a toothbrush,” because proper hygiene is always a must.
What keeps me on the straight and narrow is my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s right, scum suckers, the king Cobra believes in a power higher than himself. “But Cobra,” you say from behind your plates of chili and your cum stained pants, “Religion is for the weak.” No! You’re weak, dirtbag! Nothing is more badass than God. He killed tons of Egyptians, one of the hardest groups of people on Earth to kill. He also made tigers, muscle cars, and me, the Cobra.
So the next time you see me throwing hand grenades from the back of a moving truck at black market pornographers, just remember that dealing out justice isn’t as glamorous as it looks.
LIBER MONSTERICUM
Originally run on 26 October 2009 for the Union Weekly.
LIBER MONSTERICUM
A People’s History of Monster Slaying
I want all of you to grab the nearest history book. Do it. You got one? Good. Now throw it out the window. Just toss that fucker. Why am telling you do to this? Well, it’s because your standard “history” books completely ignore large swathes of our past—the rad parts, mostly. Namely, the hidden history of man’s struggles with the wicked abominations that God deigned to put on this earth. Now, without further ado, here are four of our history’s greatest monster slayers.
SIEGFRIED
Dragon Slayer, Treasure Hunter, Cautionary Tale
WEAPON OF CHOICE
Spears, knives, and stabbing weapons.
HUNTING GROUNDS
The fetid hollows and squabbling city-states that were medieval Germany.
MOST FAMOUS KILL
Fafnir the Dragon, Bavarian banker.
MORTAL WEAKNESS
Gold! And lots of it!
FALLOUT
Cursed to be sung about for hours at a time by husky Italian women and proto-Nazis.
SAINT PATRICK
Catholic Missionary, Crypto-Limey, Saint of Binge Drinking
WEAPON OF CHOICE
The word of God, harsh language.
HUNTING GROUNDS
Ireland or as it was known at the time “Snake-soaked Hell-Bog.”
MOST FAMOUS KILL
Cúchulainn, a midget he mistook for a leprechaun.
MORTAL WEAKNESS
His love of God, whiskey.
FALLOUT
Every year his deeds are celebrated by hooligans vomiting on Cinco de Mayo.
PETER WASHINGTON
Zombie Killer, SWAT Team Member, Not a Ghostbuster
WEAPON OF CHOICE
M16A1 assault rifle, friendship.
HUNTING GROUNDS
Shopping malls, anywhere people hang out.
MOST FAMOUS KILL
Roger, his best friend. Stone. Cold.
MORTAL WEAKNESS
Has a tendency to shoot his friends.
FALLOUT
Despite murdering every single one of his friends, he’s still ultimately doomed. DOOMED.
LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD
Little Girl, Wolf Murderer, Hiking Enthusiast
WEAPON OF CHOICE
Gumption, spunkiness, dry-cool wit.
HUNTING GROUNDS
Where old people sleep (but not libraries).
MOST FAMOUS KILL
Her grandma (that turned out to be a wolf).
MORTAL WEAKNESS
Completely incapable of distinguishing a wolf from a grandma.
FALLOUT
Nothing. Children are immune to the harshness of the real world.
534 While most of the Nordic countries were busy stealing the entirety of Europe from their lazy neighbors, Beowulf was getting real shit done. After arriving in Denmark he slays the beasty Grendel by ripping off the monster’s arm and beating him to death with it, leading to the single most metal thing to happen at that point in history. This also lead to any girl’s name starting with a “G” to look that much uglier.
1572 Japanese warlord and inventor of karaoke, Oda Nobunaga, destroys the last of the oni (or “ogre” for you baka-gaijin) through a combination of mirrors, windchimes, and crooked bridges. As it turns out oni are really, really bad at doing anything besides messing up how a room “flows.”
1882 German philosopher and syphilis enthusiast Friedrich Wilhelm “Willy” Nietzsche accidentally kills the Judeo-Christian diety YHWH (known as the “King of All Monsters”) with his declaration “God is dead.” His demise is highly exaggerated, the creator of the universe returned three days later with the proclamation, “Nope.” Having been proven a liar, Nietzsche is doomed to be quoted by obnoxious college students for all eternity.
1947 In an ironic twist fit for a pulp novel, former führer Adolf Hitler’s frozen head is eaten by a member of his secret Nazi zombie army somewhere. Good night, sweet prince.
SPECIAL INTERNET BONUS Here is a mummy.
LIBER MONSTERICUM
A People’s History of Monster Slaying
I want all of you to grab the nearest history book. Do it. You got one? Good. Now throw it out the window. Just toss that fucker. Why am telling you do to this? Well, it’s because your standard “history” books completely ignore large swathes of our past—the rad parts, mostly. Namely, the hidden history of man’s struggles with the wicked abominations that God deigned to put on this earth. Now, without further ado, here are four of our history’s greatest monster slayers.
SIEGFRIED
Dragon Slayer, Treasure Hunter, Cautionary Tale
WEAPON OF CHOICE
Spears, knives, and stabbing weapons.
HUNTING GROUNDS
The fetid hollows and squabbling city-states that were medieval Germany.
MOST FAMOUS KILL
Fafnir the Dragon, Bavarian banker.
MORTAL WEAKNESS
Gold! And lots of it!
FALLOUT
Cursed to be sung about for hours at a time by husky Italian women and proto-Nazis.
SAINT PATRICK
Catholic Missionary, Crypto-Limey, Saint of Binge Drinking
WEAPON OF CHOICE
The word of God, harsh language.
HUNTING GROUNDS
Ireland or as it was known at the time “Snake-soaked Hell-Bog.”
MOST FAMOUS KILL
Cúchulainn, a midget he mistook for a leprechaun.
MORTAL WEAKNESS
His love of God, whiskey.
FALLOUT
Every year his deeds are celebrated by hooligans vomiting on Cinco de Mayo.
PETER WASHINGTON
Zombie Killer, SWAT Team Member, Not a Ghostbuster
WEAPON OF CHOICE
M16A1 assault rifle, friendship.
HUNTING GROUNDS
Shopping malls, anywhere people hang out.
MOST FAMOUS KILL
Roger, his best friend. Stone. Cold.
MORTAL WEAKNESS
Has a tendency to shoot his friends.
FALLOUT
Despite murdering every single one of his friends, he’s still ultimately doomed. DOOMED.
LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD
Little Girl, Wolf Murderer, Hiking Enthusiast
WEAPON OF CHOICE
Gumption, spunkiness, dry-cool wit.
HUNTING GROUNDS
Where old people sleep (but not libraries).
MOST FAMOUS KILL
Her grandma (that turned out to be a wolf).
MORTAL WEAKNESS
Completely incapable of distinguishing a wolf from a grandma.
FALLOUT
Nothing. Children are immune to the harshness of the real world.
534 While most of the Nordic countries were busy stealing the entirety of Europe from their lazy neighbors, Beowulf was getting real shit done. After arriving in Denmark he slays the beasty Grendel by ripping off the monster’s arm and beating him to death with it, leading to the single most metal thing to happen at that point in history. This also lead to any girl’s name starting with a “G” to look that much uglier.
1572 Japanese warlord and inventor of karaoke, Oda Nobunaga, destroys the last of the oni (or “ogre” for you baka-gaijin) through a combination of mirrors, windchimes, and crooked bridges. As it turns out oni are really, really bad at doing anything besides messing up how a room “flows.”
1882 German philosopher and syphilis enthusiast Friedrich Wilhelm “Willy” Nietzsche accidentally kills the Judeo-Christian diety YHWH (known as the “King of All Monsters”) with his declaration “God is dead.” His demise is highly exaggerated, the creator of the universe returned three days later with the proclamation, “Nope.” Having been proven a liar, Nietzsche is doomed to be quoted by obnoxious college students for all eternity.
1947 In an ironic twist fit for a pulp novel, former führer Adolf Hitler’s frozen head is eaten by a member of his secret Nazi zombie army somewhere. Good night, sweet prince.
SPECIAL INTERNET BONUS Here is a mummy.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Also Sprach Herzog
Originally run on 19 October 2009 for the Entertainment page.
Also Sprach Herzog: Fitzcarraldo, Being a Hornet, and Why School is a Waste of Time
The first Werner Herzog movie I ever saw was his documentary on the doomed naturalist Timothy Treadwell in the documentary Grizzly Man. I saw it on a lark with one of my friends and when I walked out, I walked out as a slightly different person. I didn’t know that documentaries could be this engaging, that there was people this crazy walking the earth, and that brooding German lecturing on the chaos inherent in nature made for good movies. Since then Herzog has become one of my favorite directors, so when I heard that there was a screening of his magnum opus Fitzcarraldo, followed up by a question and answer session with the director himself at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica, I jumped on the opportunity (after hunting up the nine dollars for admission). Watching what might be his best film, Fitzcarraldo, and listening to him speak, reaffirmed all of the reasons why I dig Herzog so goddamn much.
The production of Fitzcarraldo is probably every bit as legendary as the film itself (which is about an opera enthusiast, played by Klaus Kinski, who dreams up a scheme to move a steam ship up a mountain). It’s frought with disasters both man-made—such as the original lead actor leaving production half-way through the shoot—and those made by nature— such as a woodcutter who after being bitten in the foot by a snake, cut off his appendage with a chainsaw to keep the venom from spreading to the rest of his body. What results from all of this turmoil is a work of art that was entirely worth it. Even though parts of it are somewhat clunky (like the English dubbing) and the clearing of the woods and use of indigenous workers is morally questionable, it shines past all of this. Even the guy breathing through a tube two rows behind me couldn’t dim the experience. It also didn’t hurt that I was watching this movie for the first time on the big screen—the way the Lord Jesus Christ intended us to watch movies.
The real treat came after the movie concluded, when Herzog spoke about the film. He’s always a man worth listening to. Though he did repeat a few stories I’ve read enough times to feel like he’s told me himself (such as the story of an Indian chief asking him for permission to kill Klaus Kinski, Fitzcarraldo’s lead actor), he touched on a lot of subjects, such as how he believes that our society is “starving for discourse” or that, despite the trouble surrounding Fitzcarraldo, he said that “Any idiot could do it.” I think my favorite quote came when he talked about cinema vérité. He said that he didn’t want to be a fly on the wall,” observing a subject in its natural habitat, but rather, he wanted to be “the hornet that stings.”
Then Herzog capped off the evening by saying something that my parents have been saying for years, which is that my education is a waste of time. This comment came after the second fan of the night asked a question regarding parallels between his other South-American-adventure-film-on-a-river, Aguirre: The Wrath of God, and Fitzcarraldo. He blew off the question, probably half out of being tired of hearing the comparison for nearly thirty years, and mostly because he sees academia as an organization that “vivisects poetry” and that the people who pick apart films like this are “completely without human pathos.” Big talk for someone who stole a camera from the Munich Film School.
I have to disagree with Herzog’s blanket statement of film scholarship being bankrupt, but there’s a tinge of truth in his words. We don’t take in a work of art to tear it apart and poke at the insides, we do it to experience something outside of our normal lives. They show us something more delicate Herzog himself describes as the “ecstatic truth.” This is what film is supposed to do, and Herzog succeeds in this with Fitzcarraldo—even if movie dorks keep on asking him the same stupid film school questions over and over again.
So, while the questions weren’t quite up to snuff and my choice to go to college was assaulted by one of my heroes, I still had a full, worth-while evening because I didn’t feel like I wasted my time, because none of that junk can ever be as magnificent as seeing a ship sail up a mountain on the big screen. Werner Herzog is a guy that we could all probably learn something from. He’s a man driven to tell stories, no matter the hardship. Filmmaking is his vocation he lives up to every ounce of that potential.
Image stolen from Vice Magazine many moons ago.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Send this comic back to hell!
Originally run on 12 October 2009 for the Comics page of the Union Weekly!
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Cinecult: The Thin Red Line
Originally published on the Entertainment page on 28 September 2009.
If you’ve never heard the name Terrance Malick before, there’s probably a good reason. In the past forty years, directors like Clint Eastwood and Francis Ford Coppola, have been involved in dozens of movies, while Malick has only directed a grand total of four. Despite this, among critics and terminal film nerds (like myself), he’s regarded as one of the great auteurs of the age. His films Badlands and Days of Heaven are regarded as some of the best films ever made. Considering this pedigree, if you watch The Thin Red Line, it shouldn’t be hard to understand why he’s so well respected despite his slow gestation time.
The Thin Red Line, despite being nominated for Best Picture has since fallen by the way side. There’s some pretty good reasons for this. First off, this slow-paced, but elegant war film had the misfortune of coming out the same year as one of the biggest action movies of all time: Steven Spielburg’s Saving Private Ryan. Secondly, and probably more importantly, it’s a sprawling, self-indulgent mess. It’s often plodding and it’s covered in scars from being cut and re-cut (and despite this it’s still probably too long). It also doesn’t have one main character—or even a handful of main characters-- that the audience can hold on to. The James Jones novel that the movie is based off of has the same massive cast of characters, but at least the book gives names to the people in it. Roger Ebert describes the movie as “hallucinatory” and that’s about as good of a one word summation of this film as there could be. As we should all know, hallucinations aren’t for everybody.
Despite the rough spots in the movie, there’s still plenty of beauty to be gleaned from this film. The Thin Red Line follows one of the bloodiest battles in American history, which takes place on the South Pacific island of Guadalcanal. Malick pays just as much attention to the horrors of war as he does the beauty that these battles take place in, and that alone makes this movie an interesting anomolly in the genre.
The dialogue is also fairly wonderful. Admittedly, most of it has no place in a war film (Would a character being shot at really consider the morality of nature? Probably not.), but it can’t be denied that, in and of itself, the writing is beautiful. That’s what most of the film is like and that’s what makes me love it so much. It isn’t quite a visceral war film and it isn’t quite a poem. It doesn’t do either of these things perfectly, but the failure that results is probably more interesting than most movies.
The Thin Red Line isn’t all poetry, though. The action scenes are among the best I’ve ever seen. Unlike the rest of the film, which moves with the swiftness of dream, the action scenes are as tightly plotted and assembled. Combat has a frightening weight that few other movies ever seem to execute. Part of this is because the Japanese aren’t just enemy soldiers, they’re ghosts. They slink out of the forest without a sound, kill something and leave just as quietly. In Saving Private Ryan, the Germans were something we could understand, they were in tanks or behind machine guns. In this case, the enemy is a mystery. How are these men supposed to defeat the enemy if he’s nothing more than a muzzle flash two hundred yards away?
The Thin Red Line isn’t for everyone. As I’ve said, it isn’t perfect and it’s probably the one of the spottiest movies that I would consider “great.” But in between the rough spots are some truly beautiful pieces of film making. If only for these quiet moment Malick’s movie is worth giving a shot. Plus, the loud ones are pretty goddamn good, too.
Image via Google. As usual.
Artist Profile on Charles Addams
Originally run on the Culture page of the Union Weekly on 28 September 2009.
Charles Addams is a spectacular weirdo, the kind of weirdo we should all emulate ourselves after. Besides being an accomplished cartoonist, he also collected antique crossbows, used a little girl’s tombstone as a coffee table, and would conduct interviews with journalists while wearing a full suit of armor. While the majority of his antics were more than likely a persona he used to impress the public and whatever journalist that happened to be interviewing him. This bizarre aura makes perfect sense though, since he is the guy who came up with the Addams Family.
Besides spawning two live action series, a cartoon show, and two feature films, the Addams Family were featured in single panel cartoons that Charles drew for the New Yorker. His cartoons weren’t all of the family, the rest were one-shot jokes that looked not unlike a version of The Far Side written by Edgar Allen Poe.
Addams’ art is also featured on the cover of Ray Bradbury’s 2001 short story collection From The Dust Returned, a novel which features any equally strange, gothic family called the Elliots (the two men previously worked together, but eventually went their separate ways). Unfortunately, most of his work seems to be in various phases of being out of print, I can’t imagine having a childhood without pawing through books filled with his drawings. Then again, my dad did buy the house we live in because it looked like the Addams Family manor.
What might be the most interesting aspect of the comics is that they’re a looking glass into the past. The ‘40’s and ‘50’s is a time we usually associate with conservatism, xenophobia, and generally being no fun at all, but Charles Addams stands against this stereotype. He shows us that the past that was just as interested in bare breasts, shrunken heads, suicide, and psychopathic children as we are. Or at least I am.
If you’re a fan of cartoon art, laughter (and who isn’t? Jerks, probably), or if you want some sort of indie-goth credibility, the collections of his work are well worth hunting down. Charles Addams is an artist everyone should know about, because he’s the kind of weirdo we could all learn something from.
Art via Charles Addams, clearly.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Matrimony and Baby Making
Originally run on 21 September 2009 for the Opinions page.
Matrimony and Baby Making:
Why People Under 30 Shouldn't Get Married
I’ve noticed a recent, horrifying trend on the Facebooks and rumor-mills surrounding high school acquaintances of mine. I’ve noticed that far too many of them are getting married and having kids. It’s awful. I’m twenty-two and I’d like to consider myself fairly level-headed and I can’t even begin to comprehend marital vows or spawning a brood. I don’t get it any more than I get quantum physics or the mad scrawlings of a homeless man, written with his own filth. In every single case of these people getting married, their decisions seem to have two causes in common: Stupidity or religiosity. Or both.
I’m not here to harangue religion, though, that’s hardly any fun. I’m fairly certain that God doesn’t want any part in these marriages. He created the moon, the sky, and the seas, so why would he want to lower His batting average with marriages that are as certain to end with arbitration as it is certain that Oedipus is going to get ruddy with his mom? Maybe He’s just got a better sense of humor than I do. He did create the platypus. And the manatee. And the Irish. It’s a distinct possibility.
The best example of someone who shouldn’t get married at this age is a fellow I went to high school with. His name was Chaz and he could easily be described as a guy that looked and acted like someone named Chaz. There was never a more perfect Chaz than this one. He had the kind of effulgent demeanor that caused many people to ask him if he was high. He never was, which was almost worse, because if you’re stoned, you can sober up, but there’s no amount of time that can keep you from being a desert of personality.
When we heard that he was expecting, my friends and I laughed it off as an insane rumor, drummed up by a sick mind. There was no way fate was cruel enough to let someone as un-ideal for parenthood like Chaz have a baby, much less the twins he was rumored to be expecting. I wouldn’t be comfortable letting a guy named Chaz hold my baby, much less actually have one. Well, as it turns out, he married the gal he knocked up and they’re on Facebook. The once funny rumor is now a chilling testament to human mistakes online.
I think there’s a few more guys from my high school class with bastards running around, but they’ve at least got the good taste to obscure any progeny they accidentally made. You’ve got to cover that up, brick it up in a wall, and burn the evidence, too. It’s one thing to ruin your life by not knowing proper pull-out procedures, but it’s quite another to dress your mistakes up and take portraits of them at Sears.
Children. Marriage. Ugh. No thanks, I’ve got shit to do this decade. Marriage and having babies can wait. Or it can at least wait until I’ve got my own and I stop caring about what people from my high school do with their lives
Matrimony and Baby Making:
Why People Under 30 Shouldn't Get Married
I’ve noticed a recent, horrifying trend on the Facebooks and rumor-mills surrounding high school acquaintances of mine. I’ve noticed that far too many of them are getting married and having kids. It’s awful. I’m twenty-two and I’d like to consider myself fairly level-headed and I can’t even begin to comprehend marital vows or spawning a brood. I don’t get it any more than I get quantum physics or the mad scrawlings of a homeless man, written with his own filth. In every single case of these people getting married, their decisions seem to have two causes in common: Stupidity or religiosity. Or both.
I’m not here to harangue religion, though, that’s hardly any fun. I’m fairly certain that God doesn’t want any part in these marriages. He created the moon, the sky, and the seas, so why would he want to lower His batting average with marriages that are as certain to end with arbitration as it is certain that Oedipus is going to get ruddy with his mom? Maybe He’s just got a better sense of humor than I do. He did create the platypus. And the manatee. And the Irish. It’s a distinct possibility.
The best example of someone who shouldn’t get married at this age is a fellow I went to high school with. His name was Chaz and he could easily be described as a guy that looked and acted like someone named Chaz. There was never a more perfect Chaz than this one. He had the kind of effulgent demeanor that caused many people to ask him if he was high. He never was, which was almost worse, because if you’re stoned, you can sober up, but there’s no amount of time that can keep you from being a desert of personality.
When we heard that he was expecting, my friends and I laughed it off as an insane rumor, drummed up by a sick mind. There was no way fate was cruel enough to let someone as un-ideal for parenthood like Chaz have a baby, much less the twins he was rumored to be expecting. I wouldn’t be comfortable letting a guy named Chaz hold my baby, much less actually have one. Well, as it turns out, he married the gal he knocked up and they’re on Facebook. The once funny rumor is now a chilling testament to human mistakes online.
I think there’s a few more guys from my high school class with bastards running around, but they’ve at least got the good taste to obscure any progeny they accidentally made. You’ve got to cover that up, brick it up in a wall, and burn the evidence, too. It’s one thing to ruin your life by not knowing proper pull-out procedures, but it’s quite another to dress your mistakes up and take portraits of them at Sears.
Children. Marriage. Ugh. No thanks, I’ve got shit to do this decade. Marriage and having babies can wait. Or it can at least wait until I’ve got my own and I stop caring about what people from my high school do with their lives
On Death
Originally run on 9 September 2009 for the Opinions page.
On Death: Not a Fan
How Loss Teaches Us What We Should Already Know
Death, I’m realizing, is the worst. It tears people up inside, it ruins their days, and it’s a complete mystery. Death, like most important things, can’t be understood until you actually experience it yourself. Even for the living, there’s no amount of prep work or training that can make sense of it. I’ve come to this conclusion, because last Thursday, my uncle died.
I can make a good omelette and I can out-score my parents in a game of Jeopardy, but when it comes to something as basically important as sending my cousins a condolence e-mail, I’m entirely out of my depth. This matters like so few things do. If I can’t write more than a couple of sentences to comfort someone how am I ever going to deal when death strikes closer or harder? The things the matter most in life, I seem to be least equipped for.
The past hasn’t prepared me for this situation, because I’ve never been so close to a death like this one. When my grandparents passed, it didn’t exactly come as a shock. My grandmother on my mom’s side was the first to die, but I was so young it barely even registered. She died in her sleep and, as I learned by hearing it over and over again in the weeks after, “That’s the way to go.”
When her husband died, it wasn’t exactly a horrific shock. He went out as most people only dream of. He was 92, sharp as a tack, he had a girlfriend, he traveled the world, and wasn’t haunted by any dark secrets. He was a good man who was survived by nine children and who knows how many grandchildren and great grandchildren.
Even the manner of his death could almost be considered gentle. He didn’t contract some disease that sucked him dry and robbed him of his mind like Alzheimer’s did my dad’s mother. When he died, he pulled his car in front of his house, put it in park, and died. The engine was still running when his neighbors found him. My grandpa on my dad’s side was even less of a shock: He died years before I was even born.
It wasn’t that way this time. We knew he was sick for a long time, but I didn’t know he had been this sick. He was only 63 years old, two years younger than my dad, a far cry from 92. The man who was married to my mom’s twin, who fathered three of my favorite cousins, who we watched Old School with at Thanksgiving is just gone. He’s gone and the most profound thing I can come up with is “You must feel like hell.”
I guess the most disconcerting thing about this is there’s no changing it. If you’re sick, you can get better. If your car breaks down, you fix it. If you’re in debt, you get a job. There’s a solution for all of these things, but not for death. With death, that’s it. There’s no solving this problem and that’s probably the scariest part of it. Not only is someone you love gone forever, but we’re suddenly made aware of our own mortality like no other event can make us. We can’t do anything except remember the good times we had with the departed. Thankfully, in this case are plenty. Of course that lesson, someone else taught me.
On Death: Not a Fan
How Loss Teaches Us What We Should Already Know
Death, I’m realizing, is the worst. It tears people up inside, it ruins their days, and it’s a complete mystery. Death, like most important things, can’t be understood until you actually experience it yourself. Even for the living, there’s no amount of prep work or training that can make sense of it. I’ve come to this conclusion, because last Thursday, my uncle died.
I can make a good omelette and I can out-score my parents in a game of Jeopardy, but when it comes to something as basically important as sending my cousins a condolence e-mail, I’m entirely out of my depth. This matters like so few things do. If I can’t write more than a couple of sentences to comfort someone how am I ever going to deal when death strikes closer or harder? The things the matter most in life, I seem to be least equipped for.
The past hasn’t prepared me for this situation, because I’ve never been so close to a death like this one. When my grandparents passed, it didn’t exactly come as a shock. My grandmother on my mom’s side was the first to die, but I was so young it barely even registered. She died in her sleep and, as I learned by hearing it over and over again in the weeks after, “That’s the way to go.”
When her husband died, it wasn’t exactly a horrific shock. He went out as most people only dream of. He was 92, sharp as a tack, he had a girlfriend, he traveled the world, and wasn’t haunted by any dark secrets. He was a good man who was survived by nine children and who knows how many grandchildren and great grandchildren.
Even the manner of his death could almost be considered gentle. He didn’t contract some disease that sucked him dry and robbed him of his mind like Alzheimer’s did my dad’s mother. When he died, he pulled his car in front of his house, put it in park, and died. The engine was still running when his neighbors found him. My grandpa on my dad’s side was even less of a shock: He died years before I was even born.
It wasn’t that way this time. We knew he was sick for a long time, but I didn’t know he had been this sick. He was only 63 years old, two years younger than my dad, a far cry from 92. The man who was married to my mom’s twin, who fathered three of my favorite cousins, who we watched Old School with at Thanksgiving is just gone. He’s gone and the most profound thing I can come up with is “You must feel like hell.”
I guess the most disconcerting thing about this is there’s no changing it. If you’re sick, you can get better. If your car breaks down, you fix it. If you’re in debt, you get a job. There’s a solution for all of these things, but not for death. With death, that’s it. There’s no solving this problem and that’s probably the scariest part of it. Not only is someone you love gone forever, but we’re suddenly made aware of our own mortality like no other event can make us. We can’t do anything except remember the good times we had with the departed. Thankfully, in this case are plenty. Of course that lesson, someone else taught me.
World's a Mess
Originally run on 9 September 2009 on the News page.
In Soviet Russia He Who Controls the Past Controls You!
Last week was the 70th Anniversary of the invasion of Poland by German forces and the start of the second world war. Russia’s president Dmitry Medvedev , never one to miss an opportunity to look like a villain from a John Milius movie, made a claim that Joseph “Uncle Joe” Stalin had nothing to do with the start of WWII.
While we’re certainly thankful to Stalin for throwing millions and millions of under trained, under armed peasants at the Nazi menace, we also recognize that he was a complete heel. Besides killing twenty-million of his own people via starvation, work camps, or executions in his spare time, he also secretly signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler that would allow the two of them to dissect Poland and a handful of other nations without harassment from the other.
Considering Russia’s history of mysteriously executing journalists who report on the government, crime, and big business (which are basically one and the same in the Big Freezy, as the locals call it) it’s a pretty disconcerting for an elected official to unapologetically deny the nature of reality. Also, even if Mr Medvedev is correct about “saving Europe,” the USSR also didn’t spend a lot of time after the war debating whether or not they should crush half of it under their boot heel for fifty years.
MERCENARY HOOOOOUSE!!!
Last week an independent watchdog group exposed private contractors working for a company called Armor Corp for hazing employees and other activities that one might describes as “lascivious.” But don’t just take the watchdog’s word for it, there’s a bunch of photos of these jerks. One is of a Mr. Clean looking guard wearing nothing but a lei and half-of a coconut pounding away at a mysterious red cup that probably isn’t full of buttermilk and guards eating potato chops out of each others’ asscracks (there has also been accusations of doing shots out of said asscracks). Oh, and also there was something about procuring hookers.
When you compare the stupid, confusingly homoerotic antics of the Frat Boys of Mercenary House to other private military corporations like Xe (formerly known as Blackwater International formerly known as SPECTRE) which has been accused of multiple counts of murder by the Iraqi government and sports connections to various right-wing and Christian supremacists organizations, the embassy guards’ actions seem, well tame.
All in all, they’re really just harmless pranksters (remember that time they accidentally killed that horse in the dean’s office?), harmless pranksters that makes us look like assholes in front of a country that’s only eight years away from stoning women to death for wearing blue jeans. So while ArmorCorp’s actions might have been careless, insensitive, and irresponsible, they don’t seem to have done anything more wrong than being dumber than hell in front of a camera and I’m sure more than a few of you can sympathize.
Image by Boris Vladmirski.
Cinecult: Miller's Crossing
Originally run on 31 August 2009.
The Coen brothers have been around for almost twenty-five years in the movie business, something that even as a fan, I can’t quite get my mind around. Twenty-five years. That’s practically an institution. They’ve written, directed, produced, and edited some great films in that span of time, from the award winning No Country For Old Men to the cult comedy, Raising Arizona. Over the years though, some of their movies have been overlooked. Just about everyone (at least everyone reading this paper) has seen The Big Lebowski and they they’ve at least heard of Fargo, but because they’ve been around for so long and produced such note-worthy films occasionally one of their movies will be fall between the cracks. Miller’s Crossing is one of those movies.
The Coen brothers’ films have always been about pining for the past. If it isn’t in the actual plot (like No Country For Old Men, which revolves around the sentiment that things aren’t what they used to be), then it’s in the style of the film (like with The Hudsucker Proxy, which is a throwback to the screwball comedies of the 1950’s). Miller’s Crossing is no exception, it’s a 1920’s gangster picture in the tradition of Howard Hawkes. If you don’t know or care who that is, I can assure you that it’s a movie chock full of punch throwing, double-crosses, and quaint accents of the quality that our modern, law-abiding society lacks. It’s also got some of the sharpest written dialogue that the two brothers have put to screen. It also doesn’t hurt that Miller’s Crossing has one of the best scenes of submachine-gunning in all of cinema history.
The actors are also worthy of the script, as well. From Gabriel Bryne (Satan from End of Days) as Tom, as the wise-cracking advisor of the Irish mob to Albert Finney as the distinguished, if impetuous Irish mob boss, the cast is dead-on perfect for their roles. Even John Turturro, who is at his most rat-like as a grifter, is still a guy you want to get out of this movie in one piece (almost). Admittedly, you wouldn’t want to hang out with any of these characters, but they’re exciting to watch.
Miller’s Crossing, despite being a movie about masculinity and crime, is also one of their most emotional movies. The last shot of the movie feels like being hit with a Mack truck three or four times. It’s devastating. Where characters like Scarface don’t have to live with their terrible decisions, Tom and his friends do. Even though, in the end, everyone gets what they want or what they deserve, nobody is any better off for it. You want all of the characters to be do make the right choices because they’re interesting, intelligent people, but they can’t ever be anything but miserable because then they’d stop being the person you fell in love with for ninety minutes.
The future is looking pretty bright for the brothers. They’ve got a low-key comedy coming out called A Serious Man and, even better, a new adaptation of the brutal western, True Grit, which I am preemptively declaring as my new favorite Coen brothers film. The past shows that they’ve always been top-notch filmmakers and Miller’s Crossing stands up as one of their best. Not bad for a third feature.
Image via the Googles.
College is Miserable and So Are You!
Originally run on 31 August 2009.
College is Miserable and So Are You!
I’ve got some bad news for you: You’re screwed. You decided to go to college and it’s going to be awful. I’m not alone in this belief, either. There’s plenty of people I know who had dismal experiences in their first year of college and after a brief perusal of the internet, I’ve found that about 30% of students drop out in their first two semesters. This should be enough proof that the first year of college is probably going to be the worst one. You’ll also learn quickly that all the terrible things you tried to leave behind you will haunt you like that kid you accidentally killed on that camping trip.
Obviously certain choices are simply out of your hands (especially if you’re on the parental dole or on a scholarship or something), but being happy, or at least avoiding misery, is something that is entirely up to you. So if things start going south, you have no one to blame but yourself. Now you’re legally an adult you can’t blame others for the mess you’re in. Unless you’re some kind of a criminal genius. You’re going to Long Beach, though, so I kind of doubt it.
I do have some good news for you: Right now you can start avoiding the traps that have snared so many others.
Welcome to the Beach.
The full article can be found here at the Union Weekly!
Special thanks to our Editor in Chief Joe Bryant for insisting that there be no touch-ups to his photo. He is a man who adheres to journalistic realism. We should all have so much integrity.
Monday, February 1, 2010
KLOS Internship Material!
This last semester (that's the Fall of '09 to be specific), I worked for Citadel Broadcasting, which, as I understand "the trade" owns our local classic rock station 95.5 KLOS.
Here are the following lists that I wrote up for them over the course of my internship:
* "Top Ten Scariest Movies"
* "Top 10 Serial Killers" (which was an article succesful enough to be syndicated across multiple Citadel stations nation wide. Also: I did not write the final entry on that list. That was the doing of someone else)
* "Bad Christmas Movies"
It also bears noting that even though they went bankrupt less than a week after I left there, I assure you, I had NOTHING to do with it.
I did steal a Sharpie pen with Tom Lykis' logo on it, though, and I refuse to feel guilty about that. You'll take this pen from my cold, dead hangs, Citadel Broadcasting.
Here are the following lists that I wrote up for them over the course of my internship:
* "Top Ten Scariest Movies"
* "Top 10 Serial Killers" (which was an article succesful enough to be syndicated across multiple Citadel stations nation wide. Also: I did not write the final entry on that list. That was the doing of someone else)
* "Bad Christmas Movies"
It also bears noting that even though they went bankrupt less than a week after I left there, I assure you, I had NOTHING to do with it.
I did steal a Sharpie pen with Tom Lykis' logo on it, though, and I refuse to feel guilty about that. You'll take this pen from my cold, dead hangs, Citadel Broadcasting.
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