Kislingblog

A Thing I Done Gone and Drawn

2011-09-05T21:08:00.000-07:00

I figure it belongs here as much as anywhere else.

It's a take off of Moebius' Starwatcher picture (as seen here).

Looking at it now, I realize this could have been better. Oh well.

I really have no idea what I'm doing without Photoshop. Or a half-assed decent printer for that matter. Want to donate to my Kickstarter-- by which I mean give me a blank check and a run at the electronics section at Staples?

Cinecult: Blade Runner

2011-07-24T23:49:00.000-07:00

Originally run on May 10, 2010 in the Union Weekly.

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe."

About a year back, BBC film critic, Mark Kermode saying about Moon that “Good science fiction isn’t about technology or special effects, it’s about ideas.” Blade Runner isn’t just good science fiction, it’s great science fiction, and it’s one of the better movies about ideas that I can think of. While many treat Blade Runner as a meditation on life and all that, I see it as a movie about our society and just how screwed up we are. Beyond all of that is a film so wonderful, so iconic, that it is hard to imagine what a world without Blade Runner would look like.

Most of what is memorable about Blade Runner is probably down to the art design. Blade Runner was the third film of Ridley Scott (Alien, Gladiator, Robin Hood), who holds a BA in graphic design, and even then he demonstrates an eye for both designing a world and filming it. Much of the Los Angeles of 2019 was designed by legendary concept artist Syd Mead, who worked on films ranging from Star Trek to Tron. Both of these men’s visions (as well as an army of draftsmen, artists, and journeymen) combine to make a vision of the future that, at the time, was utterly unique.

Read the rest on page seven of the Union Weekly!

A New and Exciting Addition to the Kislingbury Dynasty

2011-02-15T18:11:00.000-08:00

This past December my former EIC (and constant friend) started a podcast called "White Guys, Square Glasses." I guess it's in the tradition of the Union, in that, it's a fatuous take on world events, politics, and pop culture that doesn't burden itself too severly with facts.

We're both pretty happy with how it's going and it's fun to get back into collaborations with friends, as well as to try our hand at something new.

You can listen to it here (or on iTunes) and you can read our blog here (or on Facebook).

It's exciting times.

Bushido: Way of the Broke Guy

2010-04-12T19:40:00.000-07:00

Originally run on 12 April 2010.

Bushido: Way of the Broke Guy
Working Five (+) Years Towards a Degree That Doesn't Get You Anywhere

A lot of things have been going down in my life lately, some good, some bad, some confusing. As a young man more or less locked away in his parents’ attic for twenty hours a day these things haven’t so much made me feel uneasy or jealous as they have highlighted the fact that, other than writing up saucy opinion pieces and watching Blade Runner on a loop, I’m not doing a whole lot with my life.

There’s an old saying, “Youth is wasted on the young,” which was probably first said by some horrible, old cunt, but it raises a good point. I’ve been tossing away months of these golden years doing nothing truly productive. Meanwhile, outside the wire of the Kislingbury compound, my friends are off getting married and being accepted to graduate school at USC, and I cannot get work as a dishwasher. It’s discouraging.

This started, like all disappointments, with applying for a job. Or trying to apply for one. I say “trying,” because the way people receive and reply applications nowadays is akin to flying a spaceship into a black hole or shouting down a garbage chute. It makes you feel stupid and you’ve got no idea if it’s working or not.

There was quite a number of jobs open at the restaurant, everything from the CEO to the disabled guy who hangs out in the bathroom and gives you a towel. I figured, hey, I’m at least as quick-witted as most slow people I know, I am a shoe-in for this job. I was wrong, so very wrong. Despite a follow up to a well named gentleman and seventh-graders command of the English language, I received no reply. I guess I was in that perfect sweet spot between being over-qualified for many jobs and under-qualified for the rest that employment experts call “Having a Bachelor’s in the Arts.”

The restaurant in question is Gyu-Kaku Japanese BBQ and it is going on my Enemies List, right between “God” and “Harrison, George” (two discs of B-sides and a jam session is not a triple album, George!). If it wasn’t for their $1.50 beers at happy hour, I’d firebomb the place. It’d probably get blamed on the shabu shabu grills that all the customers use, as well. The perfect crime.

Like anything in life, though, you’ve got to find something in it that you like, rather than waste your time complaining about what isn’t there. You’re always going to find things you’re lacking and, I don’t know about you, but I’m trying to get through season one of Deadwood and I simply do not have the time for that. So I decided to focus on jobs I am qualified for.

A brief overview of Craiglist’s LA chapter reveals that I’m perfect for quite a number of opportunities, most of which either involve managing blogs for law offices (I guess even the square community likes to post uncredited Terry Richardson photos on a tumblr) or picking up piles of dirt from somewhere near Sunland. There was also a job offer for a “courier,” which I’m fairly certain was just an offer to move weight across the San Gabriel Valley. I can’t say that I didn’t send the guy an e-mail, though.

The rest are mostly gay porn, but not the gay porn you’re thinking of, with the umbrellas and snappy musical numbers, this is the kind of gay porn that involves men having sex with each other. I mean, I guess I’ve done lots of things for money that I don’t like—cleaning, being kind to the elderly, and not stealing from the cash register spring to mind—but, I’m going to be honest with you, screwing a dude does very little for me. I don’t know how the ladies put up with that. On the plus side, it seems they’ll pay for your gas mileage. I put this in the “maybe” pile.

As far as the rest of the future goes, it’s really wide open, which is fairly terrifying. That’s the worst bit of it, the not knowing when things are going to get better, when they’re going to change, but at the same time, that’s also kind of the strange hope in all of this. I know things have to change, and when they do I’ll be there, waiting, because it’s not like I’ve got a job to fill the space.

Interview with Adam Carolla

2010-04-12T19:00:00.000-07:00

Originally run on 1 March 2010 at the Union Weekly.

Adam Carolla: Sorry, I’m eating pie.

Union Weekly: No, that’s fine. When did you figure out that you were going to be doing a podcast?

AC: Well, I didn’t really figure it out, that was Donny. He figured it out. “You should do a podcast.” When I figured out that I was going off the radio, I just told him, I didn’t ask him, what do you think I should do? He just said, “You should do a podcast.” And I was like, “How does that work?” “You just talk into this microphone, and record and throw it up the next day on the internet and see what happens.”

I’ve always looked at it as talking for free. It’s one of those things that you do. I guess it’s sort of like a porn star. You fuck for free, then you get paid to fuck, but this really was free to me. I really just always felt glad to get paid to talk, but what’s a nice evening? You go out with one of your buddies, who you really like, who’s smart and interesting and articulate and this guy’s got a good sense of humor and you go out and you sit at a restaurant, have a few beers, and you talk and it’s an enjoyable evening. Obviously, you’re not paying the guy, so to me, it’s just kind of an enjoyable evening. I just thought, let’s just do it and let’s see what happens. I don’t know if we’re going to do it every night or what’s going to happen. And we started [the podcast], but then you kind of get this weird little burden.

I was watching one of those biographies on, I think, Ben and Jerry. They started this little shop in Vermont making ice cream and the next thing you know people start lining up, and now what are you going to do? You can’t shut down. You can’t go, “Aw, no more ice cream for you,” ’cause there’s a line waiting outside the store. At a certain point for us, it was like, “Well, people want to hear it,” and you come out with a show on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and you can’t have a bunch of people on Thursday going—“What the fuck? I thought they were going to give us a show.” So, you get listeners and you get fans, and you start to get this somewhere between a burden and [being] indebted to. Somewhere between owing someone money and having them save your life.

UW: “Yeah, alright, I’ll take it.”

AC: Yeah, I guess we should not disappoint people. So, we started doing it and the next thing you know, we blinked our eyes and a year went by.

UW: It seems like so much longer and I mean that in a good way.

AC: [Eating pie] Yeah. I think it’s because the technology is so new. Like a year ago, everyone wasn’t podcasting and every TV show didn’t have a podcast. Now, it’s like, Lost: The Podcast. There wasn’t any of that stuff. There was a couple of shows on, like—

UW: NPR.

AC: Yeah, stuff like that. A couple of car shows and Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me and now there’s a million of them.

UW: By the way, last night I blew through two red left turn arrows.

AC: Mmm. Thank you.

UW: No, thank you. It’s great!

AC: It’s brilliant, isn’t it?

UW: It’s the best. It’s such a good feeling.

AC: It’s liberating.

Read the rest at the Union Weekly!

Liber Daemonica

2010-03-15T18:06:00.000-07:00

Originally run on Issue 6, Volume 66 on 8 March, 2010 in the Union Weekly.

Hey there, junior acolytes! So, you’ve decided to engage in the ancient and atavistic art of demon summoning? Well, you’ve come to the right place. The Union Weekly has been summoning entities from the abyss since before you were even a look of abject fear in your father’s eye. Demons can aid you in everything from cheating on your taxes to making that girl at the yogurt shop who gave you the wrong number on purpose to make you feel like an idiot pay! Whatever the case is, the sky is the limit! Unless God is actually up there, in which case, He’s gonna be pissed!

1. CHANGE YOUR LOOK!
The first move of a nascent practitioner of the dark arts is to change your look. Toss those polo shirts and clerical robes in the garbage, you won’t be needing them in the exciting tomorrow of devil worship! Grow a goatee! Get questionable tattoos on your neck! Drive a motorcycle! Wear lots of weird, vaguely oriental jewelry! Drink Miller High Life! Just as long as you look like a three-way collision between a Russian Orthodox priest, a post-apocalypitic biker, and a Morlock, you’re set to draw monsters from the underworld!

2. SELECT THE RIGHT LITERATURE!
Many beginning sorcerers go for the obvious books on the dark arts like the Necronomicon, the Chronicle of the Yellow King, or The Fountainhead, but you should stick to the more basic books at this point in your career. Instead of buying a book bound with human flesh and written with blood, just buy Diabolry for Dummies. It’ll teach you everything, from how to perform a séance to changing blood into delicious sherbet! You’ll make a few bucks talking to dead people, plus you’ll be the belle of the next black sabbath you go to!

3. CHOOSE THE RIGHT DEMON!
There’re literally thousands of monstrosities inhabiting the horrific reaches of the outer dark, so finding the right demon for you is direly important! You don’t want to be an anorexic, baby-blood addict who binds Nurgle, Lord of Gluttony and Decay to his service, do you? That would be wacky! Sitcom wacky!

For example, these two unholy celebrities would be a dream for a beginning summoner!

PAZUZU
One of the greatest, all-star demons in history. As the god of Isuzus and of unnecessary sequels. So, he’s not only responsible for derailing John Boorman’s career into the sad parody of itself that it once was, but he is also the patron anti-saint of affordable Asian automobiles. Good for him.

KTULU
Although assailed by copyright lawyers and anti-Semetic dwarves, Ktulu has really made a comeback in the latter half of the 20th century. As Lord of Death Metal and Harbinger of Uncooked Seafood, Ktulu is a major player in the lives of countless ugly teenagers and Nordic countries. He’s bigger than lingonberries!

4. CHOOSE THE RIGHT SACRIFICE!
Let’s face the facts: No demon wants a realm filled with crappy sacrifices. Like anything else in the universe, they want their homes to be full of really cool shit. So, instead of sacrificing your broke-ass Doberman with back problems, try sacrificing a puppy. Or a kitty. Maybe even a pot belly pig. The cuter the better. Try dressing up your sacrifice with a funny hat or an ironic t-shirt (our favorite is the duck saying “I’m the boss!”). So, remember, a little less blobfish and a little more hamsters with hats! Animal sacrifice is a lost art, so help bring it back by doing it right!

5. MAKE BIG BUCKS!
That should be enough to send you well on your way to becoming a rich and successful conjurer of incubi. Of course, there’s some obvious downsides to becoming a full-blown wizard, like having to listen to more black metal than you might like or having to move out of your mom’s house or being constantly burned by holy water (it is a bigger problem than you might believe). You also might lose your soul in an incident that may or may not involve music. But that’s piddly crap, really. Just as long as you can get those blood stains out of the carpet, the world is yours to shape! (Just as long as you have the right spells or some Simple Green.)

Comics Are No Good For No One

2010-03-15T18:03:00.000-07:00

Originally run on Issue 6, Volume 66 of the Union Weekly on 8 March 2010.

Who reads comic anymore anyways?

2010-02-21T23:15:00.000-08:00

Not me, that's for sure!

Featured on the 22 of February of 2010 in the Union Weekly.

Cinecult: The Proposition

2010-02-21T20:45:00.000-08:00

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.

An Op-Ed by Marion “Cobra” Cobra Cobretti

2010-02-16T03:43:00.000-08:00

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.

LIBER MONSTERICUM

2010-02-16T03:21:00.001-08:00

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.

A Very Special Halloween Comic

2010-02-16T03:18:00.000-08:00

Originally run on 26 October 2009 for the Comics page of the Union Weekly.

Also Sprach Herzog

2010-02-09T21:25:00.000-08:00

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.

Omelettes: It's What's For Brunch

2010-02-09T21:23:00.001-08:00

Originally run on 19 October 2009 for the glorious Comics page!

Li'l EXPLOSION!!!

2010-02-09T21:20:00.000-08:00

Originally run on 12 October 2009 for the Literature page.

Send this comic back to hell!

2010-02-05T00:35:00.000-08:00

Originally run on 12 October 2009 for the Comics page of the Union Weekly!

Tasteful Comics About the Concept of Death

2010-02-05T00:25:00.000-08:00

Originally run on 5 October 2009 for the Comics page.

Cinecult: The Thin Red Line

2010-02-04T23:58:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-04T23:48:00.000-08:00

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.

Cover of the Union Weekly!

2010-02-02T18:18:00.001-08:00

Originally run on 28 September 2009. Colors by Clay Cooper.

Tales of Poltroonage

2010-02-02T00:44:00.000-08:00

Originally run on 21 September 2009 for the Comics page.

Hey! There's art here too!

Thirsty, Thirstier, and Thirstiest

2010-02-02T00:41:00.000-08:00

Originally run on 21 September 2009 for the Entertainment page.

More art found here!

Matrimony and Baby Making

2010-02-02T00:38:00.000-08:00

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

On Death

2010-02-02T00:36:00.000-08:00

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.

World's a Mess

2010-02-02T00:32:00.000-08:00

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.

A Political Comic for All!

2010-02-02T00:29:00.000-08:00

Originally run on 31 August 2009.

More art can be found here.

Cinecult: Miller's Crossing

2010-02-02T00:25:00.000-08:00

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!

2010-02-02T00:18:00.000-08:00

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.

Time Comic Time!

2010-02-02T00:12:00.000-08:00

Originally run on 11 May 2009.

More art can be found here.

KLOS Internship Material!

2010-02-01T23:57:00.001-08:00

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.

Comic Time!

2010-01-29T21:20:00.000-08:00

Time for a comic!
Originally run on 4 May 2009.

More art found here.

Cinecult: Princess Mononoke

2010-01-29T20:38:00.000-08:00

Originally run on 11 May 2009. Image by Google, clearly.

Japanese anime is a mixed bag, and for the most part it sits on the side of Japanese culture that’s full of methamphetamines and tentacle rape. There’s a lot of hay in that pile and very few needles. Cowboy Bebop is one of them, Ghost in the Shell is one of them, and the work of Studio Ghibli is one of them. Studio Ghibli is run by Hayao Miyazaki, the “Walt Disney of Japan.” In the past thirty years, he’s consistently produced and directed some of the best animation the island has to offer. The crown jewel of the studio is Princess Mononoke, which it’s safe to say is not only one of the best animated movies ever made, but it might just be one of the best films ever made.

The story of Princess Mononoke follows an exiled prince named Ashitaka (voiced by Billy Crudup in the dubbed version) who, after saving his village from a demon, contracts the same curse that drove the monster insane and, in time, will kill him as well. From there he encounters all of the shortcomings of the outside world: Samurai bandits, famine, disease, and human greed, incarnated in the form of Lady Eboshi (voiced by Minnie Driver) of Iron Town, a weapons manufacturer who will not stop until the entire forest is clear of the ancient gods that rule it. He also encounters the princess which gives the film its name (voiced by Claire Danes), who was raised by wolves and will stop at nothing to put an end to Lady Eboshi.

There’s a lot of room for Princess Mononoke to be a heavy-handed story about environmentalism, but Miyazaki doesn’t take the easy way out. Instead of casting judgment, he fleshes out his characters better than many live action films. At first appearance, Lady Eboshi comes off as callous and ignorant, but as the plot progresses it’s revealed that her ironworks contribute more to the world than burnt earth. Even the titular character isn’t guided by morally pure reasons, and is just as capable of savagery as her nemesis is.

At its core, Princess Mononoke is a fantasy adventure (without all the lame elf bullshit) and the top-notch animation makes the action sequences as well executed as the plot. It’s safe to say that Princess Mononoke has the single raddest use of a bow and arrow in film. The understated voice work of the English version doesn’t suffer from the problems that many dubbed animes are afflicted with. The dubbing goes hand-in-hand with the top-notch translation by the venerable Neil Gaiman (The Sandman). Princess Mononoke is the perfect example of why across the board hatred of a medium is stupid, because the only thing you’re succeeding in doing is keeping amazing films like this away from you.

The Thin Red Line

2010-01-29T20:34:00.000-08:00

Originally run on 4 May 2009. Illustration by me.

A Review of The Thin Red Line by James Jones.

As war nerd, it was only a matter of time before I began to chew my way through the great American literature on World War II, and with that one of the most critically acclaimed novels to come out of that war: The Thin Red Line. Written by James Jones (who also penned From Here to Eternity) in 1962, the novel follows a hapless band of soldiers in C-For-Charlie as they attempt to clear Guadalcanal, the bloodiest island in the Pacific, of the Imperial Japanese forces. The book was later adapted twice into film, once in 1968 and a second time in 1998. From what I can tell, the second film contains the best passages of the book, without the immense amount of chaff that makes up Jones' novel.

This isn't a criticism of the book, exactly—it's unfair to compare one medium to the other-- but what works for the film is that it's much better paced. Jones' novel is a rambling affair with no obvious rhyme or reason. Presumably, this is Jones' point since in war there's no clear objectives, romanticism, or selfless courage— there's only trying to get through the day. In this way Jones has made a unique war novel, one that is completely detached from the popular myths of the Greatest Generation.

The soldiers of The Thin Red Line aren't John Waynes or Audie Murphys, they're frightened mortals who cuss, retreat, develop pointless grudges, and, occasionally try to have sex with each other. While Jones manages to avoid the sentimentality of WWII, he also makes every person, place, and thing in his book completely unlikable.

The story lacks a central narrator and the reader isn't chained to a single character. What this results in is a story without a spine. It doesn't have distinguishable characters; it doesn't have set pieces, or even character development (unless one gets shot). The Thin Red Line is so generalized that it's almost reductive. The reader isn't given enough time with any character to properly care about him and when he does learn something about a soldier he finds that he isn't just flawed, but the character is a downright, miserable bastard. With the exception of Sergeant Welsh (who reads like he fell out of Catch 22) there's little to be interested in, or to sympathize with. Jones might be trying to make a point about the loss of individuality that occurs in the military, but I'll be damned if I care.

The style is primarily expressed through the viewpoints of about a dozen or so different soldiers. The author never indicates when he shifts from one character's perspective or another, either. Even though this unanchored narrative is what causes most of The Thin Red Line's problems, it's also the most interesting thing about the book. As readers we're left to figure out if these men are liars, crazy, or actually bothering to tell the truth. Jones is one of a select few writers that can shift between several dozen characters' narratives and make it appear seamless. Note to aspiring writers: Steal from this man.

Interesting literary techniques aside, as a novel, it falls short. There is no story, there's just drudgery, and a lot of descriptions of terrain that I can't make any sense out of. The Thin Red Line is a well-constructed book that I'm glad I got out of the way, but there isn't much I can give a shit about in its 500 pages. If it came down to it, I'd rather watch the movie again and spend the rest of my day napping in peace.

The Limits of Control

2010-01-29T00:33:00.000-08:00

Originally run on 4 May 2009. Image by Google.

The Limits of Control is the latest from the patron saint of independent films, Jim Jarmusch (Dead Man, Broken Flowers), and watches like a throw-back to a Jean-Pierre Melville movie if he was really into Zen Buddhism. As with Jarmusch's Coffee and Cigarettes and to a lesser extent Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai, The Limits of Control follows an episodic structure, and has no real central plot. The plot is secondary to the characters that inhabit this world. The focus of the film is on a nameless, suit wearing gun-for-hire (who doesn't carry a gun) played by Isaach de Bankolé (the good African guy in this season's 24 and the ice cream man in Ghost Dog). The camera follows him as he travels from Spanish city to Spanish city, encountering various contacts who give him a coded message, along with a dose of unsolicited philosophical monologues.

Bankolé has the most screen time of the film, but it also includes roles from Tilda Swinton (Burn After Reading, Michael Clayton), Hiam Abbass (the mom from The Visitor), Gael García Bernal (Babel, The Science of Sleep), and the magnanimous John Hurt (who I would watch in absolutely anything). The movie also includes a beautiful actress by the name of Paz de la Huerta, who serves as a compromised version of the film noir sexpot. It's worth noting that she's naked for most of her scenes, and that she also has the only asymmetrical breasts I've ever seen in a movie (maybe the only ones in cinematic history). In a way, her lop-sided breasts serve as a metaphor for the structure of the film—they're compelling, but there's something slightly off that you can't quite put a name to immediately. The Limits of Control isn't bad, but it's very clearly different than most movies about stone-cold, international assassins.

There's a point where a film stops being mysterious and starts being obtuse. It's hard to tell which side The Limits of Control rests on. The plot isn't sparse, it's nearly threadbare, and this isn't helped by the Lone Man's stoicism. There's a brief glimpse at what the film might have been when Bill Murray briefly appears towards the finale. His appearance is wry and funny and carries a lot more energy than the previous hour and a half did. The scene also highlights what the rest of the film was lacking: Bill Murray being an unrepentant asshole. The characters that inhabit this world or their crazy theories are interesting, but they're spaced so far apart that they barely exist as anything more than overheard conversations at a coffee shop.

I know it's barely even May, but it's probably safe to say that The Limits of Control is going to be the coolest film in theaters this year. And much like cool people, Jarmusch's film is an enigma. It's unapproachable and, since it knows it's cool, doesn't feel the need to prove or explain anything. It can simply subsist off of the knowledge that it is cooler than most of the people on Earth, or, you know, filmgoers. Which is fine. Jim Jarmusch is a man who knows exactly what he's doing. He that isn't afraid of making challenging films, but with that said, he also probably knows that his movies aren't for everyone.

Bookvalache

2010-01-29T00:26:00.000-08:00

Originally run on 28 April 2009 for the Literature page.

Cinecult: Aguirre: The Wrath of God

2010-01-29T00:19:00.000-08:00

Originally run on 28 April 2009. Image via Google.

Aguirre: The Wrath of God was the sixth film directed by German auteur Werner Herzog and despite thirty years and three dozen more films, it might be his best. Aguirre could be seen as a thesis statement for the entirety of Herzog’s career, it’s the story about a single man driven to insanity and destruction by his power of will. What results is that despite its brooding, art-house posturing, Aguiree still manages to be a captivating adventure story.

The film begins in the Andes Mountains with the conquistador Gonzalo Pizarro’s quest for El Dorado, the legendary city of gold. After running short on supplies, manpower and morale, Pizarro sends one of his lieutenants, Pedro de Ursúa, along with an unbalanced soldier, Lope de Aguirre (Klaus Kinski), to try and scout the Amazon river. The foray into the Amazon is doomed from the start, and as time goes on the crew begins to succumb to the rigors of the Amazon forest. The axis of their demise isn’t the vicious, unseen natives, but rather, their comrade Aguirre, whose ambition eventually strips away his humanity.

Klaus Kinski is to Werner Herzog as Toshiro Mifune is to Akira Kurosawa, or as Ben Affleck is to Kevin Smith, I guess. Kinski is suited perfectly as the megalomaniacal conquistador, because like the character, he’s as bat-shit insane as the man he plays. The thespian’s raging tantrums are the things of legend (and the subject of at least two documentaries). His capriciousness eventually led to him threaten to leave the production, forcing Herzog (allegedly) to pull a gun on the star to keep him from departing (Herzog claims that this account is false—he claims that he only threatened to have Kinski shot and that he never pulled a piece himself). Wherever the truth lies, the actor isn’t in any position to judge, having shot the finger off of a crewmember during one of his tirades. Oddly enough, the two men worked together on another four movies, resulting in some of their most memorable work, Aguirre being the crown jewel of these endeavors.

Kinski aside, the story of Aguirre’s production was as plagued as that other great river-based epic, Apocalypse Now. The movie was shot on location in South America on a scant $370,000 budget and with a camera stolen from the University of Munich. On the DVD’s director commentary, Herzog details his trials on set with his signature brooding Teutonic monotone, and delivers one of the more edifying special features that I can recall (just You Tube his opinions on nature or the interview with Mark Kermode where he gets shot and carries on as though nothing happened).

Werner Herzog has been criticized for plenty of things, such as letting his obsessions get the better of him (not unlike many of his subjects in his fiction and non-fiction films), but he can never be accused of being a boring filmmaker. He is one of the great names of art house cinema and belongs alongside other artsy luminaries such as Jim Jarmusch and David Lynch (who produced the German’s latest film). Aguirre is the perfect example of the raw enthusiasm that he has for creating films. For those who aren’t familiar with the more esoteric side of cinema, Aguirre: The Wrath of God is a great place to start.

FUTURA!

2010-01-29T00:14:00.000-08:00

Originally drawn for the Literature page on 20 April 2009.

The Trouble With Tunnel Vision

2010-01-29T00:07:00.000-08:00

Originally run on 13 April 2009. Art by me!

The Trouble With Tunnel Vision:
Donut Seem Strange

I don't know if it's something the air or if it's a change in the electro-magnetic fields or if it's just the heat, but this past week I have seen a lot of cleavage. Now, besides the obvious fact that it has gotten a bit warmer, I imagine that there's could be another motive to wearing a revealing top: To show what the Lord has blessed you with. For better or worse, this is an accepted aspect of human nature. People gawk. Now I don't say this just to write an opinion on boobs (I am pro-breasts) and I don't say this as I warning (but, heads up, men are scum). I say this because it's the perfect example of a a social contract, an unspoken one, one that our society requires to function. It's a delicate peace that if we ignore and peel back the layers nobody wins.

This brings me to donut shops. The 24 hour ones. There's Bartha's on Ximeno, there's the one by the Hole Mole which always seems to be full of perfect specimens of rambling tramps, and there's the one on 2nd Street across from Shorehouse which looks like it's either being built up or torn down. Now, I'm not saying that these are money laundering operations, but they're probably money laundering operations. There's also one two blocks west of where I live, where on a nightly basis a drug deal goes down.

Realistically, I draw 90% of my information on the drug trade from HBO TV shows so I might not be an expert. With that said I am pretty sure that when an Explorer with mirrored windows parks with its engine running at 2am in Long Beach, I am certain that it is for nefarious purposes. But, I ignore it, because it's easier to do that than to tip-off the narcos (my lease ends in two months, what do I care?). Are the drug deals and the donuts connected? Who knows. We should probably get a wire up, though.

Theses things we ignore for the sake of society isn't always titties and donuts, either, sometimes it's our parents. We tell ourselves that, despite them being alive during the 1960's, in no way did they ever learned how to pack a bowl and in no way did they ever engage in a menage a trois with a Finnish guy named Merja. We also tell ourselves that they still don't do this stuff, too.

If we accept these things as part of our canon, this leads to a whole slew of problems. We have to rethink how the very basics of our relationship with society works. It leads to chaos. We would start vomting and never stop, doors would kicked in, there'd be no donuts after a hard night of drinking, and no more plunging v-necks. These probably aren't the best examples of the lynch pins of civilization, but a lot of things like this require us looking the other way. The benefits of willful ignorance probably isn't the best moral to pull away from this story, but as I've been told from behind an empty stein time and time again: Admitting that you have a problem is the first step to recovery. So, maybe it isn't accepting these social contracts, but being aware of them and going from there. I say this with more than a mite of trepidation, though, because if we have low-neck lines taken away from us, that would be too heavy a burden for my soul to bear.

WHO WATCHES THE WATCHMEN?

2010-01-29T00:00:00.000-08:00

Originally run on 9 March 2009.

These Golden Years

2010-01-28T21:26:00.000-08:00

Originally run on 9 March 2009. Illustration by me!

These Golden Years:
I Would Finally Make My Father Proud. Finally.

Time travel is something of a concern of mine. I’ve discussed this before—December, I think it was. What, I’m repeating myself? I don’t have a single original thought in my head? Fuck you, I’m talking about time! This effects us all! And besides, nobody ever criticized Jesus for talking about fishing all the damn time. So stow your snide comments for three damn minutes. The only feasible scenario that I see would have to be in some kind of Time Cop-type situation where I witness a time-based crime and I’d have to be put into the Time-Witness Protection Program. In this case I think I get to choose when and where I go back in time. Right? Who cares? Point stands.

Many would choose the 1960’s, but these people are cowards and probably mentally infirm. The time I would go with—because I’m not a 17 year-old girl—is New York, 1975. It’s post-coke, pre-AIDS, you’ve got the emerging punk scene on the one hand and coke-addled David Bowie in the other. It’d be great. On weekdays I could watch Woody Allen movies (back when he was good) and on my weekends I could get coked up and kick Andy Warhol in the head. It’d be great. If I’m not busy on that day, I could even save Ian Curtis—John Lennon too. Why not? Eventually I’d have to live through the 80’s, but they really aren’t so bad. Sure you’ve got rat-tails and glam metal, but at least I get to vote for Reagan. Eff yeah.

I mentioned this last time, but my second choice would be to stop Hitler. And afterwards, I’d punch FDR right in his gold-bricking, socialism-loving ass. Right in it. I’d get away with it, because I figure I’ve got plenty of lee-way after solving the whole Lebensraum issue (German for: “We is cunts.” German is a strange language). While punching said president, I’d hold my other hand out, palm first, towards the nearest camera. I would do this so that years later my future dad (past dad?) could look at my picture in the encyclopedia and high five his past son (future son?) across time. Then I could take a photo of him high-fiving the book and take this whole thing to Escher-esque proportions of chicanery. This is what we call the “Elektra Complex.”

Just in case the Time Cops are reading this, these are the following times I will UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES travel to. This is non-negotiable. Let the fucking future criminals freeze me in carbonite or rape my fourth-dimensional sex organs with screwdrivers. I don’t care. Death would be a better alternative to these time zones.

No Civil War. It has long since been established that the Civil War is the lamest of all possible eras. It’s full of nothing but itchy clothing, twirling mustaches, and fervent assholes that think that the n-word is acceptable in polite conversation (but not mixed company, strangely). It’s also the nerdiest war of all time. Nerdier than ‘Nam, nerdier than WWII, and even nerdier than the Revolutionary War (which is pretty goddamn nerdy). Plus, the Civil War tapers right into the epoch of train nerds, and those poor souls are the untouchables of the nerd caste system.

No Napoleonic Europe either, because that’s basically just the Civil War but for British dorks. I’d probably get a whole lot less Dr. Who references, but it would come at the cost of having to look at the dentifrice-free zone that they call mouths-- those crooked, decaying punji pits that erupt out their tuber-white flesh. Ugh.

I don’t know—So, yeah, time travel. Know it, love it, live it. By the way, if anyone knows a safer way to time travel, that’d be grand. I’m not too keen on the idea of being a witness to a time-crime. I get this creepy sensation that it’d drive me insane. God knows the last thing the past needs is more crazy people.

Cinecult: COBRA

2010-01-28T21:12:00.000-08:00

Originally run on 2 March 2009. Image via Google.

Cinema is a wonderful thing. There’s such an incredible array of meaningful and exquisite films to watch. There’s the body of work of Akira Kurosawa and American titans like Orson Wells or Martin Scorsese and then there’s my favorite living directors, the Coen Brothers. And even though I like to play the cynic, I know that as many terrible fat-suit comedies or Michael Bay movies come out, I can always fall back on the past and draw a new experience from a great film by a great director. Cobra is not one of these films.

Cobra began as a failed pitch for Beverly Hills Cop and it only takes about thirty seconds of watching the film to figure out why a studio would pass on it. It’s an incoherent, hyper-macho mess of a movie. The world of Cobra is one where no two lines of dialogue ever relate to the other and where good police work means machine-gunning bikers from a truck.

What keeps Cobra from being just another campy action film is that it was very clearly the product of a lot of thought, effort and money. Despite this professional, sincere effort what results is a low-rent, madcap version of To Live In Die in LA. This might sound like a reason to not see the film, and it sort of is. While it’s true that Cobra won’t teach you about the human condition or the terrors of the modern world, it also won’t bore you. It’s a psychotically perfect action movie and there isn’t a single minute of it that isn’t a wonder to behold.

The film stars Sylvester Stallone (Rhinetone, Over the Top), who also penned the movie, as Detective Marion “Cobra” Cobretti who isn’t so much a character as a collection of tough guy clichés packed into a single Mary Sue and has no personality beyond his love for shooting scumbags. Opposite the Cobra is the “Nightslasher,” the world’s most unimaginatively named serial killer, who is played by Brian Thompson, better known as “The Scary Guy From the X-Files” and “The One Scary Punk That Terminator Kills (That Isn’t Bill Paxton).” If I follow the plot correctly the Nightslasher is some kind of an axe murderer, cultist, biker, terrorist person—maybe. The script never makes it clear just what the bad guys are about other than a few rambling speeches that sound like they were cribbed from Charles Manson’s grocery list. Brigette Nielson plays Ingrid, a model who witnesses a murder (in the middle of the street, no less). Action ensues as Cobra protects her from the Nightslasher’s army of Mötorhead aficionados.

From there on the narrative jumps from one ridiculous action scene to the next with no real story other than a few scenes where a nebbish bureaucrat who harangues Cobra about “law” and “order” and “fair trials” (boooooooring) and where Cobra proclaims his theories about the Nightslasher that seem to come out of a completely different movie. What makes this senseless garbage worth watching is when Cobra espouses his beliefs about cops having to circumvent the law in order to protect it or when he lists off meaningless statistics about crime in America, we’re actually supposed to sympathize with him. The film’s philosophy is the only thing crazier than Cobra’s ability to hit a criminal with every single bullet he fires.

Cobra is the perfect example of style outstripping substance and what an unrestrained ego with too much money looks like. Sure, you could watch The Seventh Seal or 4 Months, 3 Weeks or 2 Days, and you’d probably leave the experience a little wiser, but then again, sometimes you need a man like Stallone to come by and remind you just how spectacular cinema can be.

Glass + Cum = Broken Dreams

2010-01-26T21:31:00.000-08:00

Originally run on 23 February 2009. Image from Google.

A Rebuttal to "Orgasm Shatter the Glass Ceiling" by Rachel Rufrano, 2/17/09

In my many years of cracking safes and romancing ladies, I have learned a thing or two. One of these facts is that women are much like safes: They’re about three feet tall, weigh a couple hundred pounds, contain precious secrets that must be hidden from the world, and it takes a steady hand to get anything from it (them). What I am saying is that making a woman come is much the same as cracking a safe. I took umbrage with Rachel Rufrano’s article because of its over-simplification of (straight) human sexuality. But also because I’m pretty sure it was making fun of my cock (which doctors tell me is perfectly proportioned for a man of my height). Then again, I whenever I hear people laughing in public I think the same thing, so that might just be my problem.

First off, some women simply cannot have orgasms. Now, I can already hear the cynics clucking their tongues and scoffing “Maybe not with you,” but it’s a physiological fact, damnit! There is no amount of jaw Olympics, pleading or sitting on the drier that can play that card any differently. Yet, somehow, they still manage to get on with their lives and be healthy, contributing members of society. Many of these women also manage to have fulfilling sex lives despite this perceived disability. Believe me, I’ve been turned down by literally dozens of them. Human sexuality is complicated and frightening enough without fixating on one particular event that might not even happen. And another thing, as far as equal rights go, aren’t there more pressing issues to deal with besides climaxing. We can all agree on that one, right?

I think we can all agree that there’s nothing wrong with women pursuing the orgasm. I personally have benefited from taking part in this noble quest, but with that said, if coming is the only thing that defines a worthwhile sexual escapade (sexcapade) then you’re probably going to be mightily disappointed. Take me, for example. I’d love to own a Porsche, but it’s probably never going to happen. Does this keep me up at night? No. Do I go into every car and compare it with this pneumatic piece of German Engineering? No. What I do is appreciate the Honda Accord that the Lord has blessed me with and I try to be thankful for every experience I have with it (Ladies, if any of you would like to be compared to a medium-range Japanese automobile, drop me a line).

What I’m getting at here is that female sexuality terrifies me. Even more so than terrorism. I mean, vaginas—ew. And don’t even get me started about menstruation. Female genitalia are like a sick parody of a Giger painting, all those folds and tubes. Who has the time to figure all that out? Not me! If women figure out that we’re not the gate-keepers of their sexual fulfillment, what else can result but complete and total anarchy? And I won’t stand idly by while Miss Rufrano dismantles the very core of our society.

The Future of Books

2010-01-26T20:51:00.000-08:00

Originally run on 23 February 2009.

The Future of Books
Is All a Bunch of Cockamamie Bullshit

On the way back from a drunken rampage, NPR made me aware of this thing called a "Cell Phone Novel." The idea offended me on a personal level, so it only makes sense that it came from Japan—traditional home of the banzai charge, methamphetamines, and girls shitting sea life out of their asses for the sexual pleasure of people with no souls. Other than the silliness of reading a literary work on a device you typically use to find out “What’s up?” or “Where’s the party again?” there really isn’t anything inherently terrible about it, that is until the journalist started speculating about how the Cell Phone Novel might replace the book.

This, as you know is bullshit. Remember when HD-DVD and BluRay were duking it out over who would reign supreme in the high-defintion wars? (You probably don’t because you didn’t have a thousand dollars to throw at away at a new TV, a player and a new movie collection, you’re also probably not an unrepentant dork like myself). At the time there was a cadre of idiots who got together and sided with HD-DVD, because like VHS before it, it would include pornography in its library unlike BluRay (and the deceased Beta Max). These people turned out to be wrong for a number of reasons, but they represent a need in people predict the future despite basic logic disagreeing with them. NPR did this with their prediction Cell Phone Novel story—and, I imagine so did the inventors of smell-o-vision (which was discussed in another NPR story I overheard).

The shortfalls of prophesying can be expressed through one idea better than any other: Blue jeans. No matter how elaborate or well thought out a vision of the future is, everyone seems to leave out blue jeans. It’s all silver track-suits and clear, plastic rain coats. As though people would suddenly stop wearing one of the most popular and iconic pieces of clothing of all time and decide to look like robotic sex criminals. And what’s with the flying cars? Sure, they look way cooler than normal cars, but I don’t think, as a race, that we’re ever going to top the wheel any time soon. In the same way we’re not ever going to top the paper-back.

This glittering future we’re being sold is the result of some very skilled hucksters. Your post-humanism, your post-literary society, your singularity, and everything else can go suck on an egg. Jesus ain’t never coming and neither is that USB port in your head. Banking on either of those things happening in your life-time is just going to make you one disappointed SOB on his death bed.

I’m going to predict that there is never going to be that point in time where we get rid of all of our old crap and replace it with something new and shiny, either. Take Europe for example. There is still people living in three-hundred year old houses because the old buildings work just as well as the new ones. They didn’t tear everything down when we discovered plastic or the date had a few more zero’s than usual. A future without novels is a future without blue jeans.

Cinecult: Repo Man

2010-01-26T02:01:00.000-08:00

Originally run on 9 February 2009. Image from Google.

What I like most about this column is that I can go from praising a bona fide classic film like Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo to smaller, stranger cult movies like Death Race 2000. Repo Man is definitely one of those cult movies and it is just as worthy of your time as on the Criterion Collection.

Repo Man is the first feature length film of the writer/director Alex Cox (Syd & Nancy) and focuses on commissar of the capitalist world: The repossession agent. If you filch on your car payments, the repo man is the guy who, through a number of legally gray means, will steal your car away from you. The mad world of the repo man is perfect comedic fodder for Cox who turns out a film that’s as funny as it is crazy—and in a world where traffic cops are vaporized and men in biohazard suits routinely walk around downtown LA collecting dead homeless people.

The bulk of the plot follows punk rocker and amateur repo man Otto (Emilio Estevez), who, alongside his sleazeballs-in-arms, as he searches for a mysterious Chevy Malibu which is also being tracked down by the CIA, a bunch of alien cultists and a couple of “gypsy dildo punks” by the name of the Rodriguez Brothers. Estevez is serviceable in the lead role, but the supporting characters and their semi-coherent monologues are the heart of the film.

The most memorable of the repo men is the crank-addled sensei, Bud, played by the venerable Harry Dean Stanton (Alien, Escape From New York, Kelly’s Heroes, among a dozen other worthwhile films). Stanton is one of the great character actors of the past forty years, and when you look at him its something of a surprise that the man isn’t dead. In the words of director Alex Cox, Stanton has a unique face that inhabits the area somewhere between a cowboy and a cadaver. He’s always worth watching, regardless of the actual quality of the film. He carries large segments of the film with his twisting, violent diatribes about the code of the repo man.

For good reason, Repo Man is among the most quotable movies ever made (right next to Predator and The Big Lebowski). There isn’t a scene in the movie that doesn’t deliver either a laugh or something profound (or maybe just crazy). The film also weaves gritty violence with surreal coincidences together extremely well, in a way that I can only compare with Cox’s revisionist western, Walker. Repo Man is a wonderfully crass comedy that you and your buddies in good time should be able to quote right into the grave.

A Keffiyeh By Any Other Name

2010-01-26T01:54:00.000-08:00

Originally run on 9 February 2009. Image from Google, even though I wish I took it.

As we march through the months of winter, I’m beginning to realize that the keffiyeh has become the Che Guevara t-shirt of the 21st Century. I say this because, lately it seems that the political connotations of the keffiyeh have been compromised. It’s gone from a political statement to a fashion statement. Like many problems our society is suffering from, I blame the hipsters.

If the keffiyeh was associated with one person, it’d probably be Yasser Arafat, who seems to never be without his black and white keffiyeh. Saudi males have their version of the scarf, the shemagh, which is typically red and white, giving it the distinct look of an Italian restaurant’s tablecloth. The British special forces have traditionally been rather fond of scarves as week. The specific incarnation of the keffiyeh that I’m talking about though are the black and white checkered ones—the ones specifically worn by those that wish to show solidarity with the Pro-Palestinian Movement.

My problem with politics the scarves ten to accompany, but rather with the fact that I think that most people don’t know that they have a political connotation at all. It’s probably safe to assume that most members of the MSA know what they represent, but I have my doubts about the girl across from me on the bus wearing the keffiyeh she bought from Urban Outfitters while reading In Touch. I have my doubts about her in the same way that I have my doubts about the stoner with his Che shirt.

I doubt that this many people on campus are politically enlightened about the Palestinian/Israeli situation. If that sounds like a dig, it isn’t meant to be. I read the newspaper on a regular basis and I can barely make heads or tales of that whole situation. It’s probably one of the more complex and ambiguous conflicts on the face of the earth. I mean, Iranian president Mahmoud Amadinejad isn’t even sure whether or not Israel exists.

What this whole Palestinian scarf thing reminds me of was a jerk in one of my film classes. I didn’t bother to learn his name and for the longest time I couldn’t even remember what he looked like. All I knew about the guy was that he would wear t-shirts emblazoned with the letters “IRA.” I wondered, was he a naïve second-generation Irish-American or did he actually support scumbags that sell heroin to children and shoot their countrymen at funerals?

When I think of this guy, I also realize that the Irish aren’t just a bunch of carbombing drunks. Obviously, Palestinians too are more than just a rabble of rocket-hurling fanatics. We shouldn’t let jerks with bombs ruin your scarves or pride for your heritage or anything else. You shouldn’t let know-it-all snobs like me ruin them for you either. With that said, be smart about what you wear, it can be just as much of a political statement as anything else. Be aware. I mean, hey, there’s no reason that you can’t both look sharp and learn something about the world, right?

An Open Letter to the Republican Party

2010-01-23T21:44:00.001-08:00

Originally run on 2 February 2009.

Dear Republican Party,

What happened to you, Republican Party? You used to be cool, man—Well, you were never cool, but at least you had something going for you. Smaller government and lower taxes, how can you screw up that formula? Not too long ago, you had the world in your hand—the Supreme Court, both Houses, and the Presidency—Now look at you. You’re the sick man of DC, and it’s high time you got your shit together.

I’m not here to rag on you, though. I was raised with my dad yelling at Clinton for most of my childhood—plus if he ever found out that I was trashing the party, I’d be out of a free meal ticket. The biggest reason that I’m not stooping to kick a man while he’s down is that America needs you guys. A healthy democracy requires a healthy competition. Without a serious competition we end up with Communist China or Soviet Russia or, more innocuously, six of the past eight years. America requires the other party, even if we don’t like them. Especially if we don’t like them, actually.

Your current incarnation is an intellectual and a spiritual dead-zone. On the one hand we’ve got professional scum like Ann Coulter, who wear their arrogance on their sleeve, like it’s a chevron for an elite force of loud-mouthed jerk-offs. Not to say that cockiness can’t be charming in small doses, Bill Mahr made an entire career out of this, but when he isn’t right at least he’s funny. The only service the current generation of conservative pundits supply is infuriation. They’re infuriating because they’re speaking about something that matters—our democracy—and they turn it into this hideous bitchfest that sucks in all forms of thought and rationality into the abyss.

Then there’s the granddaddy of whining Republican pundits: Rush Limbaugh, the creaking gastropod that he is. A man so edgy that he turned on McCain because of the fact that he hated Mexicans less than the other candidates. Campaigning against the best candidate the party has had in 20 years isn’t punk rock, it makes you a fat, petty asshole. Where’s William F. Buckley when you need him?

Oh, yeah. Spinning, no doubt.

The actual political wing of the party isn’t much healthier than the ideological one. Just look at the crop of runner ups in your camp last year. There was Giuliani, a man so inept that he managed to fumble being a hero on 9/11—a move only slightly less dumb that John Kerry being called a pussy for killing VC by a trust-fund baby. Then we have Mitt Romney (a known replicant) who is a believes in a religion that up until 1978 thought that the color of black people’s skin was a curse from God (a known space alien)—not that his religion is any of our business. Then we’ve got Mike Huckabee, who despite being something of a Bible-thumping nightmare, actually managed to be likable, if only because he never had a serious shot at turning the country into a theocracy he wants it to be (“All hail Presi-pope Huckabee III,” we’d all chant). This leaves us with Sarah Palin. Which one of you thought that was a good idea?

Obama beat you jerks for a lot of reasons: Exploiting the internet, being able to mobilize an entire generation of voters (and rake in their cash), and by sending out a message other than “Terrorists/Mexicans/Obama is going to kill you/steal your job/take your guns.” You lost because they were used to not having anyone to run against. You got complacent and sedentary and now here we are.

Honestly, when was the last time conservatism gave America anything to look up to? We need you to do this, not just for your own sake, but for our democracy’s sake. We need you out there making sure that Obama is doing the best job possible, because if we get a president that thinks his job is safe, we end up with Bush.

Four years, Republican Party, that’s all you need to turn yourself around. That’s how long it took for the Democrats to go from championing Yuppy Frankenstein and Droopy Dog to being spearheaded by a shiny, new racially progressive Messiah. That’s how long you have to purge the sycophants and hypocrites from your company and to actually forge something that is worth believing in. You brought this mess upon yourself and you’ve got every opportunity in the world to think your way out of it. Four years, plenty of time.

Yours Truly,
James Kislingbury, ESQ.

PS: Again, Sarah Palin, seriously? I mean, I love my mom too, but I’m not going to vote her into office.

Vampire Attack!

2010-01-23T21:41:00.000-08:00

Originally run 26 January 2009
Drawn for Jason Oppliger's article "The Bleeding Wound That is Sundance."

And Now, a Comic!

2010-01-23T21:35:00.001-08:00

Originally run on 1 December 2008.

I like drawing Nazis. It's a character flaw, I admit.

For Shortcut's Sakes

2010-01-23T02:50:00.001-08:00

I already have several scans and screen caps from the work I've done for both the Union Weekly at CSULB and for Citadel Broadasting (RIP) at KLOS. This includes both writing and drawing.

They can be found below:
WRITING!
DRAWING!

There will be more than a bit of overlap between those folders and this blog. Then again, redundancy never hurt anyone, right?

Right?

Battle of Algiers

2010-01-23T02:36:00.001-08:00

Originally run on 1 December 2008, under my column "Cinecult."

Everyone loves The Battle of Algiers—the Black Panthers, the Red Army, the IRA, Donald Rumsfeld— and for good reason. Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers is one of the best-made movies about the West clashing with the Middle East and of occupation forces clashing with an indigenous people fighting for independence. It’s a complex movie that’s as relevant today as it was in 1966—perhaps even more so.

The film begins in 1957, with a recently tortured Arab man being forced to lead French paratroopers to the hideout of several key revolutionaries. The soldiers surround the hideout and threaten four revolutionaries—a man, a teenage boy, a woman and a child—that they have a choice between surrendering or being blown off the face of the other. From there the movie shifts backwards to 1954 and chronicles the eponymous battle for Algeria’s independence and the French government’s attempts to quash the rebellion.

When I was watching the film, a friend of mine passed by and asked, “Is that real?” Pontecorvo’s film is shot in the style of a documentary or a newsreel, as a grainy, handheld affair almost completely devoid of romance or theatricality. Everything is filmed with the idea that the following events just happened to pass in front of the camera (the trailer to the film has a disclaimer explicitly telling the audience that, in fact, not a single frame of newsreel footage was used in the film). Not only do shots of the city streets and rooftops look realistic, so do the frequent scenes of torture and explosions. Pontecorvo knew that these kinds of things shouldn’t be cleaned up and sanitizing them completely would compromise the film’s integrity. If you can watch a scene where a man gets a car battery attached to his ears without feeling a tad bit squeamish, then the point is entirely lost. The Battle of Algiers doesn’t shy away from harrowing violence, even when you might like it to.

The film benefits greatly from the score by legendary composer Ennio Morricone (who is probably best known for the “Waa-Waa-Waaaaa” in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly). While Morricone does a solid job throughout the film, his talent really shines in a sequence where three Arab women prepare themselves to place time bombs in the city’s crowded French District. The score gallops along as they dye and straighten their hair, bluff their way through military checkpoints and place their deadly cargo inside of a café, an airport and a bar full of Europeans of every age and gender. His score intensifies the seconds as they tick along towards an inevitable carnage.

The bombing in turn escalates the conflict from a band of idealists taking on the government to a full-blown war against every European that calls this corner of North Africa home. The women’s three bombs rip through the crowded buildings, throwing bodies. It shows that this fight to liberate Algiers, while a righteous cause, can at the same time be a cruel and terrible thing. On the other side of the conflict are the French paratroopers, who wish to pacify Algiers by any and all means, including assassinations and enhanced interrogations (i.e., Torture). Though, in their attempt to bring order and civility to Algeria, they ironically anger the population into resisting their increasingly tenuous authority. In this world, war is portrayed as both more inhuman and less inhuman than we typically view it as. War in the world of The Battle of Algiers is a horrific and fanatical affair and it is often justified as such, but it can also simply become a mundane job with fallout and consequences.

To label The Battle of Algiers as a political film is to sell it short. Doing so would mean that half of its audience would be lost. And, while it very clearly is a movie about a political situation, it’s far more than that and it doesn’t suffer to the same sanctimonious trumpeting that Michael Moore (Farenheit 9/11, Sicko) and Oliver Stone (Platoon, W.) are known for. Even though history did side with the Algerian people, the film doesn’t take either side and leaves it to the audience to decide the exact meaning of what they just watched, like a moving Rorschach test. Regardless of where you fall on the aisle, you should be able to recognize a great story that’s well constructed on every level. The Battle of Algiers is, at its most simple, a film about the trials that a people go through for the sake of independence and self-determinism—something all Americans should be able to empathize with.

Image via Google. Naturally.

Putin the Best Foot Forward

2010-01-23T02:23:00.000-08:00

Originally written on 17 November under the nom de plume Julio Harkonnen. Image by the wonderful Clay Cooper.

May 21st

I’ve rarely ever been black bagged. Also, I’ve rarely ever been thrown into a car trunk by Russian spewing Special Forces. I must say that I really wouldn’t recommend it, either.

After several hours of bumpy roads, I was dragged out of a car and down a flight of concrete stairs. There, in a dingy basement, my eyes tried to adjust to the first light I had seen for hours. There, hunched over the carcass of what was once a white Siberian tiger was the man I was summoned to meet. He started separating the feline’s hide from its flesh as he whistled what sounded like “L’Internationale.” After a couple of seconds he stopped sawing and looked at me.

“Ah, you are journalist, yes?”

Yes?

“Come in for bro-grab.” Before I had an opportunity to meet him or dive out of the way, he was on me like an angry bear. He then released me and looked me over. “Yes, you will do.”

I wondered how hard it would be to get tiger blood out of flannel. It wouldn’t be the last unique question I’d ask on my travels.

That was how I met former Russian president Vladimir Putin.

***

What I found out in my first few hours with Vladimir was he was not much on shirts. At first I thought he was just really proud of his communism-forged abs, but after I while I discovered it was just a cover for a severe chaffing problem. He would stay half naked for most of our travels.

After a few awkward moments, he pulled from his Jordache jeans a piece of yellow, lined paper. He unfolded it on the table and cleared his throat. “I come to America.” He stopped right there and raised a single eyebrow at me. I considered agreeing with him that, yes, he did come to America, but then he went on. “For years I think to myself, ‘Vladi, these Yankees, they are not like us Russians, yes?’ [Yes] I think I want to—how you say—road trip. See what makes Yankees click. I want to see Real America.”

Through his vodka-laced voice and my heat stroke I could hear that he was serious, he wanted me to write about his—our—journey through the arteries of America. He had selected me—probably for my lack of a home security system and any close family ties—to chronicle this pilgrimage.

***

Vladimir took me by the arm outside. There in the waning daylight he showed me what he called “The Sturgeon,” a massive, red, convertible Cadillac. This was to be our ferry and Vladimir was to be the Virgil to my Dante. That is if I understood Wikipedia correctly.

May 24nd

We stopped at some nameless greasy spoon across from a Shell station. I’d been holding in a 64 oz. Mountain Dew since we started and Vladimir refused to stop because we were “good time making” (He then cackled and stomped on the accelerator). So when we finally did stop at a restaurant I had barely undone my button-fly before the call hit me. When I returned there was a slice of pie and a cup of coffee to greet me at our table. I told Vlad that I wasn’t hungry, but then he gave me that I-will-gulag-the-fuck-out-of-you look, so I took a bite out of my own sense of self-preservation.

I washed down the bite with a slug of black coffee and he started laughing.

“Ha! I poison your coffee make!” he said as he slapped his knee.

“Huh?” is all I could get out.

“Polonium!” Then he busted out even louder, making a diabetic amputee with a shirt that said ‘God Don’t Make Junk’ to turn around and stink-eye us. “Oh man, you should sees your face! I totally had gots your going!”

He’s said this at every single meal we’ve had together. I’m starting to think he’s not joking around.

May 28th

Vladimir has an entire collection of knives. I have no idea where he got these things from or why he has eighty-nine of them. The trunk is full of them. That and the mummified remains of a timber wolf.

He shrugged. “He looked at me.” He sniffed. “Once.”

May 30th

“I call it the Rasputin,” he says to me, pouring the Stoli through a funnel filled with ice into an Iron Man collector’s cup. He said this as if he was answering a question I never thought to ask. “Is three measures vodka.” He poured a little bit more. “And two measures vodka.” The bottle went dry and sailed out the window. “Is real man’s drink.”

I told him I could man the Sturgeon if he wanted to. He waved me off and said that I needed to “nut up” and that I was acting like “a Kazakh.” For some reason, I thought of Thanksgiving at my parents’ house.

June 4th

I couldn’t tell if it was the time we ran out of gas outside of Del Rio or the time he got high on mescaline and drove through a field of sheep, but something inside him changed. Right as I gave up on wondering what he was thinking, he spoke up. “I am grow blue-ball violent.” I was sure this was a collection of words that made sense to Vladimir, but to me the meaning was entirely lost. “I am in need of combat. I am need to see wolverine fight! But wheres?”

I had to admit I didn’t know where. Conflict was something I saved for hypothetical discussions I had with my boss or for the internet. So I couldn’t aid him in his quest for animal-bound violence. Not that I wanted to.

As we reached the top of a hill, he looked out to where the Earth met the sky. “We will goes to land of the Aztecs. We’s will journal to Mexico.” Sanity and reason, I would later find out, left us on that hill.

June 6th

What follows was written down after all was said and done. My notebook was lost when the Sturgeon lost a tire and burst into flames against an elm tree. When I regained consciousness, I found Vladimir standing over me smirking. It appeared, in the confusion, he had lost his shirt.

He nodded at me and winked. Without a word, miles from anywhere, we began to walk.

***

The black wilderness seemed to stretch for hundreds of miles in every direction and thousands of years into the past. It was as though we were in a land that man had never walked through before. Even Nature seemed to be absent from the earth we walked over. It was just us two and our footfalls.

Out of the moonless night Vladimir said, “I think I maybe get it. Maybe not what I cames for, but I know something.” He stopped and took up a handful of pebbles and sand. “I knows something.” He let the gravel fall from between his fingers.

Just then I saw it. Civilization. A glittering beacon out in the middle of this expanse of misery. We started running for it. Or I thought we did. Hours of Hell ended in a few seconds of sprinting (followed by ten minutes of breathless hobbling). I collapsed against the tin side of a truck stop. A bearded man that looked like Jerry Garcia spat a mouthful of tobacco a few inches from my foot. I told him that I needed to find a phone and that my friend Vladimir and I had an accident and we needed to call for help. The man just stared at me.

“Who’s Vladimir?”

I looked to my left and my right, but Vladimir was nowhere to be found. Sometime in my dash for salvation he had slipped away into the night. Maybe it had something to do with what he found out on that walk or maybe it had to do with the mushrooms he ate or maybe, just maybe Vladimir was the kind of man that needed to be lost in the shadow of the Earth.

[Editor’s Note: The writer could not be found for editorial purposes. Though, when his
apartment was checked on, it looked like he had packed and his suitcases were missing.]

Hell in the Pacific

2010-01-23T00:48:00.000-08:00

Originally run on 10 November 2008 for my column "Cinecult.
Deep down in the heart of every urbane, liberal, too hip for westerns or war movies is a simple man who loves survival films. Everyone loves watching them, which would explain why zombie flicks have had such a renaissance as of late or why Survivor, after forty-million seasons, is still one of the biggest game shows on TV or why each of us is willing to shell out ten dollars to see Tom Hanks talk to a volleyball. We love survival stories and Hell in the Pacific is one of those great tales.

Hell in the Pacific takes place during WWII and centers around a shipwrecked American airman who washes up on a deserted island only to find that the island is already occupied by another stranded soldier—a Japanese one. Though, the main draw of the film isn’t the two men trying to survive or their clever plans to beat each other, the real reason to check it out is for Lee Marvin, (The Dirty Dozen, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance), Toshiro Mifune (The Seven Samurai, Grand Prix), and their respective beards.

Marvin is definitely one of the great faces in acting. He could tell you more about his character with one look from his grey, dog-tired face than most actors probably have in their entire oeuvre. Everything about the man is 100%, grade-A badass. If there ever were a man you wouldn’t want to fight a war against, it’d be him. Then, of course, there’s his rival, Mifune, who is always a delight. He’s a strong enough presence to convey what he’s saying despite his total lack of subtitling.

Hell in the Pacific is a rather brave movie in a few ways. It’s certainly entertaining to watch, but it’s a long way away from the spectacle that accompanies most other war films. Rather than the standard set pieces, their encounters resemble school boys bickering rather than a full-blown, drag-out fight. Though this isn’t a regular action movie, it’s a drama about two great actors—two of the manliest men ever to grace the screen—combating each other not for valor or country, but for a sack full of fresh water.

I’ve heard about movies starting without a finished script (Apocalypse Now, for example, went into production without one), but I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a film finishing without a finalized script. In this film, the whole narrative concludes suddenly with no reasoning as to why or how it ends. It would be like at the end of Star Wars, if some rebel walked in and said, “Oh yeah, the Death Star thing? It got blown up.” The End. Roll credits. It’s a black mark on an otherwise engrossing movie.

Beyond the questionable ending, Hell in the Pacific is a simple, but gripping drama. There’s no big fight scene, only a battle of wits and of attrition over a jungle-infested rock. From the acting to the score to the cinematography, it still delivers a solid, enjoyable experience and serves as an example of how a film can do so much with so little.

JOYCE V. SHAKESPEARE

2010-01-22T23:31:00.000-08:00

Originally run on 3 November 2008

This is currently mounted on the wall of a good friend of mine. And if you're wondering, I pronounce it Sheik-ah-speer, like all good gentlemen.

The Only Good Ganguro is a Dead Ganguro

2010-01-22T23:22:00.000-08:00

Originally run on 3 November 2008.

There’s a lot of pretty great stuff about Japan—ramen, Akira Kurosawa, ninja, robots and the elderly, but there’s also an ugly underside to the Land of the Rising Sun. No, I’m not talking about cheap anime, tentacle porn, the Rape of Nanking or one of the highest suicide rate in the industrialized world, I’m talking about some of the less obvious things that haunt the neon streets of old Yamato. Specifically, I’m talking about this horrible thing the kids have deemed the “ganguro.”

The origin of the word ganguro apparently comes from the Japanese word for “blackface,” so it’s good to know that racist stereotyping isn’t isolated to our half of the globe. The fashion consists of what I assume are color-blind female youths tanning their skin into Oompa-Loompa hues and bleaching their hair into nuclear whites. It is one of the uglier things I’ve seen people inflict on themselves and I’ve seen the BME Pain Olympics. Apparently this fashion was sort of developed as a direct challenge to traditional Japanese beauty, where women are supposed to be small, quiet and pale (Scientifically, it appears that ganguro style is as far away from the geisha as possible without segueing into another species). Luckily this questionable chic that started in the 90’s has been tapering off in popularity ever since the dawn of the new millennium. My guess is that one of these girls ended up looking in the mirror.

You could probably make an argument about me being some racist, misogynist imperialist, but come on—Look at these broads. Tell me with a straight face that there’s anything about that picture that could be considered a good idea. Unless, of course, you’re desperate for a Halloween costume.

Image from the foulest pits of hell and Google.

Screw the Medals, I'm Here for the Fashion

2010-01-22T23:16:00.000-08:00

Originally run on 3 September 2008.

The Olympics, if you hadn’t heard, happened over the summer. As spectacular as the record breaking feats of athleticism were, nothing was as amazing as the opening ceremonies. They not only demonstrated that China is leading the world in replicant technology, but it also showed that only about a third of the world can dress themselves.

I guess I should start with Saudi Arabia, which was a walking, talking sausage-fest. There wasn’t a single woman on the team. I’ve seen gay porns with less dudes involved, which is odd considering that possession of a limp-wrist is punishable by death over there. So way to go, Saudi Arabia! Leave it to you to make the Chinese government look like a drum circle at Haight and Ashbury.

Niger I couldn’t help but feel bad for. Their procession was literally only one man holding their flag. He had the body language of a kid called up to the front of the class to solve a math problem, except that the class is an audience of several hundred million. God speed, dude.

Italy, rakish as ever, proved that you can travel five-thousand miles, spend untold millions of dollars, and still look like you were scraped off the bottom of the Euro-dumpster. Seriously, cargo pants? Were zip-off jeans too formal?

By the way, who knew that there were so many screw-ball sounding island nations there out there? Islands like Kiribati. I didn’t know that Hannah-Barbara cartoons had Olympics teams. And Portugal? Who ever heard of a Portugal? That’s got to be bogus. But, I did get an idea for when I’m rich and crazy, like Richard Branson or Bono, I’d just buy a tiny island for the express purpose of having an Olympic team. Now that’s vanity!

Someone needs to tell the Netherlands that just because your national color is orange, doesn’t mean you need to cram it onto the outfit. They look like they bought their suits from an outlet mall that specializes in surplus costumes from The Prisoner. Ireland has green, but you didn’t see them sacrificing their dignity for the sake of nationalism. And was that a caveman the Dutch had in their procession? How progressive.

Britain didn’t look too bad. They could hold their heads up high with the knowledge that they’re the best tanned team in the whole stadium. A significant achievement considering that Margaret Thatcher stole the sun from them in the mid-eighties.
Germany looked like they were having fun, but as my grandpa said, “If there’s anything I learned from the war, it’s never to trust a smiling Kraut.” Which is odd because he served in Korea.

Us Yanks we looked dapper as all-get-out this year. The silly newsboy caps almost compromised the ensemble, but luckily they had those sharp navy blue blazers with them. With those things on, they look like friendly Marines, the kind that help old ladies across the street, not the kind that fly in at the speed of sound, turning stone age nations into Oliver Stone movies. I’m just glad they’re on our side.

It must have been embarrassing for the French to have the Americans kick your ass in the fashion department. Fashion, historically, just isn’t our thing. The Gauls look like they rolled out of bed and into a suit my grandpa rented. Half of them didn’t even button up their blazers. Trés brut. The ladies in the French crowd looked fairly cute with their berets and sashes, but that’s just because they get credit for looking like the most likely to have crazy, anonymous sex with you while drunk on butter and wine on a park bench. That could just be me, though.

Last, but not least, we’re left with China, who is one scarf short of being the largest assemblage of House Gryffindor alumni in world history. It’s a shame the losers on the team are going to be melted down into low-grade cattle feed and cheap automobiles. They knew the risks. Luckily they managed to pull off the neon red and yellow look, unlike Spain who looked like a bunch of refugees from a theme park I’d never want to visit.

The spectacle of the whole thing was really quite amazing. The massive procession of countries really opened my mind to just how different we can all be and still be, at our core, the same. It was almost enough for me to stop being afraid of the coming century of Sino-hegemony that will surely crush us all into dust. Almost.

Image from a google search of "Spain," "2008 Olympics," and "Utter shame."

WHAT IS THIS?

2010-01-22T18:29:00.001-08:00

Hi, I'm James Kislingbury.

I'm a film major at California State University Long Beach and a native to Pasadena, CA.

This is the blog in which I show off the various writings and drawings that I've done over the past two to four years. It's either this or go down to Kinko's with a flash drive full of 400 dpi scans and we all know that isn't happening in this economy.

You can reach me at the following two e-mail addresses:
penguin.incarnate@gmail.com
destroyallhumans@yahoo.com

What else goes on a portfolio?

Thanks for reading? I guess. I don't know. I don't know anything any more.

(Hire me.)

(Please.)