Monday, December 30, 2013

Overheard from Booth 3: Some Scraggly Old Guy Who Recites Walt Whitman, Loudly.

He says TODAY'S POEM IS IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN!








To You


 

 

Whoever you are, I fear you are walking the walks of dreams,

I fear these supposed realities are to melt from under your feet 

and hands, 

Even now your features, joys, speech, house, trade, manners, 

troubles, follies, costume, crimes, dissipate away from you,

Your true soul and body appear before me, 

They stand forth out of affairs, out of commerce, shops, work,

farms, clothes, the house, buying, selling, eating, drinking, suffering, dying. 

 

Whoever you are, now I place my hand upon you, that you be 

my poem, 

I whisper with my lips close to your ear, 

I have loved many women and men, but I love none better than 

you. 

 

O I have been dilatory and dumb, 

I should have made my way straight to you long ago, 

I should have blabb'd nothing but you, I should have chanted 

nothing but you. 

 

I will leave all and come and make the hymns of you, 

None has understood you, but I understand you, 

None has done justice to you, you have not done justice to 

yourself, 

None but has found you imperfect, I only find no imperfection in 

you, 

None but would subordinate you, I only am he who will never 

consent to subordinate you, 

I only am he who places over you no master, owner, better, 

God, beyond what waits intrinsically in yourself. 

 

Painters have painted their swarming groups and the centre- 

figure of all, 

From the head of the centre-figure spreading a nimbus of gold-

color'd light, 

But I paint myriads of heads, but paint no head without its 

nimbus of gold-color'd light, 

From my hand from the brain of every man and woman it 

streams, effulgently flowing forever. 

 

O I could sing such grandeurs and glories about you! 

You have not known what you are, you have slumber'd upon 

yourself all your life, 

Your eyelids have been the same as closed most of the time,

What you have done returns already in mockeries, 

(Your thrift, knowledge, prayers, if they do not return in 

mockeries, what is their return?) 

 

The mockeries are not you, 

Underneath them and within them I see you lurk, 

I pursue you where none else has pursued you, 

Silence, the desk, the flippant expression, the night, the 

accustom'd routine, if these conceal you from others or from yourself, they do not conceal you from me, 

The shaved face, the unsteady eye, the impure complexion, if 

these balk others they do not balk me, 

The pert apparel, the deform'd attitude, drunkenness, greed, 

premature death, all these I part aside. 

 

There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in 

you, 

There is no virtue, no beauty in man or woman, but as good is 

in you, 

No pluck, no endurance in others, but as good is in you, 

No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure waits for 

you. 

 

As for me, I give nothing to any one except I give the like 

carefully to you, 

I sing the songs of the glory of none, not God, sooner than I 

sing the songs of the glory of you. 

 

Whoever you are! claim your own at an hazard! 

These shows of the East and West are tame compared to you,

These immense meadows, these interminable rivers, you are 

immense and interminable as they, 

These furies, elements, storms, motions of Nature, throes of 

apparent dissolution, you are he or she who is master or mistress over them, 

Master or mistress in your own right over Nature, elements, 

pain, passion, dissolution. 

 

The hopples fall from your ankles, you find an unfailing 

sufficiency, 

Old or young, male or female, rude, low, rejected by the rest, 

whatever you are promulges itself, 

Through birth, life, death, burial, the means are provided, 

nothing is scanted, 

Through angers, losses, ambition, ignorance, ennui, what you 

are picks its way.
 
 


 

 

 

 

Overread at the Counter: "Manifest Destiny" by Cynthia Lowen

from Poem of the Day, sent daily by the Academy of American Poets


Manifest Destiny
by Cynthia Lowen
 
 
The god I'd left behind sent one last email 
before returning to his people. 
 
That summer was sixty-five degrees and fluorescent. 
I was working at a law firm. 
 
The logical mind thinks, 
You'll be paid for your suffering. 
 
Paradise is of this earth 
and it is yours, 
said the copy-machine. 
 
The impenetrable old growth of paper on my desk 
begged to be made 
irrelevant. 
 
When I took off my skirt-suit I felt like my mother, or myself
 
done pretending 
to be my mother. 
 
I stood at the edge 
of a New World. 
 
I stared up the long rocky coast.
 
Whichever way was something to bump against 
I pressed on in that direction. 
 
It was like a sickness. 
It was like the uncontrollable urge 
to eat dirt.
 
  
Copyright © 2013 by Cynthia Lowen. Used with permission of the author.

 

About This Poem 
"I've been exploring how the 19th century concept of manifest destiny--driving the westward expansion across North America in the 1800s--might play out in the context of a modern-day relationship. What frontiers in ourselves, our environments, and each other do we seek out and attempt to dominate? What motivates us to forge towards the unknown?"

--Cynthia Lowen 

Overread at Table 3: Talk to Me about Cinnamon


Don't you know how hard it is for me to talk to you?
the table between us, the space between the coffee and the croissants.
my fingers tracing the ridges of the bricks in the wall.
you, with your eyes on the black and white photograph of the Oregon coast,
you are lost in the somewhere faraway and inbetween
the silence is luminescent, it flavours our
many-rutted afternoons.

This morning I heard on the news new studies about cinnamon.
It can lower your standing bloodsugar.

It can save our lives.

Monday, December 23, 2013

Overread at Table 2: Upon Reading Lorine Niedecker's "In the Great Snowfall Before the Bomb"


Upon Reading, “In the Great Snowfall Before the Bomb”
-          For Lorine Niedecker

 
It is hard to believe that I can find myself
falling in lust with poets short-dead, but who
lived long lives, poets who were old by the year
I was born, but whose words, (written for
times when iron ruled commerce with a fist
so much stronger than the virtual e-commerce
that plagues us today)squeeze into my veins
and worm their way into my heart.

Ah! WhomI folling?
‘Tis not your words, dear lady, that
entice me so:it’s your
avi . . . what you would have called your
            stock photo . . .
your soft cheeks, your stout neck, your
thick lower lip that looks so much like my wife’s –
your heavy lidded eyes that gaze, with such
fiercely stoic intelligence, outward toward
the impenetrable dark.

Overheard at Booth 4: a husband's lament

Wow, you know, I would have thought that she would have thought, "Wow, that really hacked him off!  Maybe I shouldn't-a done that.  What could I do to fix things?" but nooooo, all I get is, "Are you for real?  Stop sulking!  It's not gonna work!  Go sleep in the garage if that's how you're gonna be!"

Friday, December 20, 2013

Remember (from a rather nihilist Christian!)


Remember

 

Remember who you serve – the great and living GOD.

Anything that happens to you is according to His will,

                and even if you lose your life, you will gain

                a glorious new existence in Heaven.

 

And hey, at the very least,

                you won’t have to worry about this world any more!!

 

 

Friday, December 6, 2013

CSN in 1991 the Acoustic Concert

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mjbq6K2ziDQ


So glad that the Z&T could accommodate such genius that night.   Special.


Overheard at Booth 4: Imported

So what she really said was "I really think I should be more important to you than anything else" but what I HEARD her say was "I really think I should be imported into Jewland where's the bus?"

So that's when I told her she was a filthy anti-Semite and to get out of my apartment before I called my mom who would come over and tear off her arms and beat her over the head with 'em.


Saturday, November 30, 2013

Overheard at Booth 4: Old Couple Over There

Samantha:  See that old couple over there?  Just coming in?

Rafael:  Yeah?

Samantha: They are soo sweet.  Look at that, the way they hold hands.   We should be like that.

Rafael:  Yeah, we should be like that.   You know I see couples like that and I wonder if people our age will ever get there.

Samantha:  Get there?  What do you mean, get there?

Rafael:  Get to that hand-holding stage.   We all want to get there, but we've got no clue what they had to do to get there, them holding each other's hand is for all the times they survived the down times, the screaming fights, the miserable silences, all the times his drinking got so bad he couldn't hold a job, the times she had affairs with co-workers or when her pill-popping got so bad she had to be hospitalized.   They survived the times when they fought about whether or not to bail their kid out of jail, or all the parties where he embarrassed her so bad she wound up in the bathroom crying all night long, all the times they wondered how they were going to pay their mortgage.   We don't have a clue what goes into getting to that stage, all we know is we want it, but I don't think we have the stamina to get there.

Samantha:  What makes you say that?   Why don't you think we have what it takes?

Rafael:  Because you're thinking about breaking up with me just because I won't go vegan!!


Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Overread at Booth 2: 2013-1126 slight fragment of a poem of the day

2013-1126

Whispers down the hall, you're
talking to photographs that decorate the wall,
dragging your fingertips along the wallpaper, you're

looking for your muse.

Overheard at Table 4: Reading Out Loud from "Notes from Underground Revisited"

14.2

The dumb fly superfly on the by and by and the heartfelt belief that something is made out of something else, you fools, oh you fools, don't you realise that everything that is made is made of itself and the symbolism escapes you.

The hands that create the pot do not create the pot.   The pot is created from the clay and the glaze.   The hands merely shape the plot.   I mean the pot.   No, I mean the plot.   The story.   The story is the pot, the story is itself.   It has always been there.

By there I mean the somethere, the somewhere, the over the rainbow.   The writer does not create a damn thing, the writer merely snatches the words from somethere over the rainbow, brings it down to the page or the computer screen or the breath of the words spewed from the writer's mouth.

It is the mouth of the stream.   That stream is called "unconscionable."



Friday, November 22, 2013

Overheard at Table 4: Exam Question


Yeah, I just finished my final, and there was this question on there that went like:

You manage a department of four employees. You have identified that Jerry has a high need for achievement. Martha has a high need for power, and Tom has a high need for affiliation. Susan scored high on the need for power and low on the need for affiliation.

Which of these employees is best suited suitable for handling your responsibilities when you are on vacation?


And I just blanked, I couldn't think of what the answer was from any of the stuff we'd learned, so I just put down:


None of them.  They’re all assholes.

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

November: 17


17.

 
Undulating waves of damage flow across these shores
and songs sing of imagined lovers we will never see no more,

radio show speaks of the mad queer poets who claim
the word “the” is the enemy of poetry.

Colorado propositions to secession, five counties
angry over restrictions to their rights to bear arms;

my arms are bare, no tattoos here,  nor any muscles, or hair,
my chesticles begin to sag with middle age donut flabs,

half a population, sick and dyring,  wanders aimlessly through dirt roads
among scattered cement stones of what used to be their homes,

we pride ourselves on our mutilation, by either needle or the pen,
the bile that flows out of us is that which we inhale again,

there is no consistency in literature, and no security in jazz,
both reveal the shattered glass mirror of these frail, lonely humans,

yet,

who are told,
... you are precious in my eyes ... and I love you.

(Isaiah 43:4)

 

 

Saturday, October 5, 2013

Overheard at Table 3: Happy Family

Guy:  I'm a good dad.  I teach my kids how to sing songs.

Buddy: You taught them how to sing "Happy Family"

Guy:  Yeah.  See?  Wholesome.

Buddy:  "Happy Family."  By the Ramones.

Guy: Yeah.  It's cultural.

Buddy:  Sittin here in Queens/Eatin refried beans/We're in all the magazines/gulpin' down thorazines.

Guy: The harmonies that my little preschoolers hit - it's almost magical!!

Overheard at Table 2: MBA

Man: Dude, I'm on this MBA track and my wife is always on my case about not spending time with her and the kids and this thing takes up most all my Saturdays and half my Sundays and runs into the evening as well and I'm just all the time thinking 'what good is getting an MBA if I won't have a wife and family to show it to when I graduate?'

Dude:  Well, as your best friend I think you need to try to carve out some time for your wife.   Now, speaking as your wife, I wanna say we'll be there for you when you graduate with your MBA, but you also need to carve out some more time for me and the kids!

Overheard at Table 1: Write Hard

Writer:  I write hard, I write fast, I write good, and I knock stuff out, so I've got no idea why nothing's taking.

Reader: Because you don't write STORY, you only write WORDS.

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Overheard at Table 2: Hair

Michael: and the hijab, I'm sorry man, but it just bugs me.

James: what's wrong with the hijab?

Michael:  well, I been thinking about it and I just don't like it.

James: so you're some sort of feminist liberator or you just have something against religious expression?

Michael: nah it ain't got nothing to do with feminism or religion or anything, I'm just a hair guy.

James:  you're a 'hair guy'.

Michael: yeah, I'm a hair guy.  I love women's hair, especially thick, flowing, cascading long waves of black hair.

James: I think I get it.

Michael:  yeah, and I know they got that hair.   I  KNOW  they got beautiful waterfalls of hair, and it just drives me NUTS that I can't see it!

James: you got a problem.  I don't even think they have a name for your problem, but you definitely got it.

Michael:  hey man.   I just love hair!

Friday, August 9, 2013

Overread at Table 4: The Ghosts of Our Senescence by MR


2013-0809

 

What are the ghosts that will haunt us in our senescence?

Will it be the lovers that we left on the table,
helpless and breathless?

Will it be the faces of the children that we left
standing on the platform at the train station?

Will it be the dogs that we put down
for no good reason?

Will it be the cackling faces of the
false gods we served in order to

accumulate the trinkets that glut the cardboard
boxes in the attics, only to be

fed into dumpsters on some hot summer afternoon
by our grandchildren, as their parents

drive us to a “nice place, a really nice place to rest”
somewhere beyond the end of suburbia?

Thursday, August 8, 2013

Overheard at Booth Two: Roald Dahl's "The Witches"

M: Loved that book.   As I was reading it I could just see it being made into a movie, like Mathilda, and I could see Angelica Houston playing the head witch.

R: It already is.

M: Already is what?

R: A movie.  Based on the book.  Came out about twenty or so years ago. 

M: And the head witch.

R: Angelica Houston.

M: No foolin!  They just stole my idea.

R: How can they steal an idea that you had just now and they had two decades ago?

M: Sometimes greatness just takes a little time to catch up with me.




Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Overread at Table 4: Billy Collins "Fishing on the Susquehanna in July"

Fishing on the Susquehanna in July

by Billy Collins

I have never been fishing on the Susquehanna
or on any river for that matter
to be perfectly honest.

Not in July or any month
have I had the pleasure--if it is a pleasure--
of fishing on the Susquehanna.

I am more likely to be found
in a quiet room like this one--
a painting of a woman on the wall,

a bowl of tangerines on the table--
trying to manufacture the sensation
of fishing on the Susquehanna.

There is little doubt
that others have been fishing
on the Susquehanna,

rowing upstream in a wooden boat,
sliding the oars under the water
then raising them to drip in the light.

But the nearest I have ever come to
fishing on the Susquehanna
was one afternoon in a museum in Philadelphia

when I balanced a little egg of time
in front of a painting
in which that river curled around a bend

under a blue cloud-ruffled sky,
dense trees along the banks,
and a fellow with a red bandanna

sitting in a small, green
flat-bottom boat
holding the thin whip of a pole.

That is something I am unlikely
ever to do, I remember
saying to myself and the person next to me.

Then I blinked and moved on
to other American scenes
of haystacks, water whitening over rocks,

even one of a brown hare
who seemed so wired with alertness
I imagined him springing right out of the frame.

Monday, August 5, 2013

Overheard at Table 1: Billyjoejimbob's Movie Roulette

Billy:  OK, movie time. 

Joe: Describe each movie in two lines or less.

Jim: Shouldn't that be "two lines or fewer"?

Bob: Fewer than two is only one.  Can't get much fewer.

Billy: Zero is fewer.  Two fewer, actually.

Joe: Semantics.  Let's git-er-done.

Jim: The Informant.

Bob: Matt Damon plays the geekiest whistleblower ever.

Billy: And only the spoiler saved the film.

Joe: Circle of Eight.

Jim: Even by B-movie standards, this ghost-filled stone walled apartment complex is sterile.

Bob: and what's with all the green lights?  And that one lesbian chick scene that had nothing to do with the plot at all?

Billy: Macbeth.

Joe: Which one?  There are tons!

Jim: The one with Sam Worthington.  Set in modern day street gang some such.

Bob: This movie is one you turn off ten minutes into the film, and you thank this movie for letting you know to turn it off, so you can better spend your time watching something better.

Billy: The History Boys.

Joe: I liked the dialogue, and the setting, and the lit references.

Jim: But do we REALLY need another movie about how tough it is to be a closet homosexual teenager boy in 1980's Britain?

Bob: Sukiyaki Western Django

Billy:  I got this one in three words:   Sucky-yucky Worthless Junk-o.

Joe:  Niiiiice one!   OK:  Case 39

Jim: This one starts out wonderful - reallllllly twisted, especially with the girl in the oven scene.  True horror, but then . . .

Bob: ....then it shows you just how CG demons can turn a psychological thriller into a bucketful of cheese-whiz.

Billy: Twilight: Eclipse.

Joe: *silence*

Jim: er . . . .

Bob:  Better than New Moon?

Billy: That'll work.  Southland Tales

Joe: Did I watch that one late, because it seems like a dream . . . something about a near-future LA that's all destroyed?

Jim: Doesn't that describe the "here and now" LA?

Bob: Yeah, but they have futuristic styles, kinda like Timothy Leary envisioning the Rapture.

Billy: How about Carriers?

Joe: Like Andromeda Strain meets The Walking Dead.

Jim: Nightmare on Elm Street.  The remake.

Bob: Showing once and for all why remakes of any sort should be outlawed, and those who make them should be tarred, feathered, and run out of town for the talentless heathens that they are.

Billy: and that my friends, wraps up this episode of "Movie Roulette"

Joe: Tune in next time when we take on the entire Disney Ouvre!

Jim: Cartoons or Live Action?

Bob: Both.   And that includes the Pixars!


Sunday, August 4, 2013

Overheard at Booth 3: Who We Serve

"Reminds me of something that I read, everyone who drives in Houston will understand this, maybe not all over the country, but some of the other cities might get it as well, there was this guy and he was taking his son, about 6 or 7, on one of those take-your-kids-to-work days, and they were going down I-10, or maybe even 610, and it was packed tight to the rim, like usual, and the kid asks his dad "wow, dad, why are SO MANY CARS?"

And the dad pops off with "Well, son, we're all in service to the Almighty Dollar!"

And the kid comes back with, "So is that why the highway's empty on Sunday mornings when we go to church?"

Overheard at the Counter: Sucker Punch

Well, I thought this would be good, because I loved "Watchmen" and because my wife loves the washboard stomachs of the "Spartan Hotties" (her words, not mine!), I thought "Sucker Punch" would be just as good.   I mean, the ads made it look like it had great FX and it's written and directed by the same guy, and yeah, I'll admit, what guy wouldn't want to see girls in thigh high boots r stockings kicking butt with big guns and swords?

But man!  You're watching this film and you're thinking, "with all this money that they can throw into a movie and they can't buy a decent script?"  It's just sad! 

I mean, don't get me wrong, this is a beautiful movie, and I ain't just talking about the girls, the sets, the CG backgrounds, the lighting, it's all brilliant, and the idea is pretty good, too, you're floating in and out of stories, and you kinda know what the fantasy is, but sometimes the fantasy bleeds into the reality a bit, and that's cool, but overall, you're just left going, "OK, so now they're kicking robot butt." and you shrug your shoulders and wonder if you're playing Xbox rather than watching an actual movie.

I dunno, the best acting in the whole bit was David Carradine, and all his dialogue probably doesn't total more than two minutes of film time.

and by the way, girls, you can prance around in your undergarments all you want to, but Carla Gugino is hotter than all five of you combined.  Sorry, ladies!



Saturday, August 3, 2013

Overheard at Table 5: Attack on the Block

Lucky says,
Attack on the Block.

Verble, Niall, and John say,
Attack on the Block?

Lucky says,
Came out last year.  Inner city kids, Brixton, I think, become the unlikely heroes against an alien invasion.  What's cool is that these are gang kids, small time thugs, junkies, losers, the whole lot of 'em.  Yet the alien monsters falling out of the sky are killing them all off, and they have to figure out how to kill them,

Verble,
Sounds interesting.

Lucky,
You mentioned Shaun of the Dead, and not that I'd put it on the same level - since Shaun was gutbustoutloud laughter, this one is definitely close.  And it really has the twist by making the setting the projects.  The dialogue is hilarious, the only problem is getting through the accents.

Niall says,
Shucher gob, mate, wha fooo-gn accent youah oahn abow'? 

Lucky,
Yeah.  Like that.  But once you key in, you start picking up some great lines.



Overheard at Table Four: The Man with the Iron Fists


Verble:  Another movie I saw last night was

"Man with the Iron Fists"

Not as wholly terrible as "Savages," but the less said about this tripe, the better.

Oh yeah, more eyeballs flying across the screen.

I swear, the only flying eyeball that was ever cool in cinema was in "Evil Dead 2."   Everything else is just stupid.   That one was stupid-cool.

Overheard at Booth 1: "Weetzie Bat" by Francesca Lia Block


Just finished this book.  Thought it was written in 1988, and was thinking "This is pretty bold for 88 - especially with the AIDS epidemic in full swing."  But it shows a copyright 1998, which brought it down a notch for me - it didn't seem so bold anymore, somehow.

Basically, it's about a late teen girl whose best friend is gay, he finds a lover, she finds a lover, they live in a dead woman's house in LA and they live quite happily making independent movies.  Along the way she wants a baby, her lover does not, she sleeps with the two gay guys so that she can get pregnant.  He gets mad and leaves, eventually returns, and we find out he'd impregnated a witch who leaves her baby with them.

One big happy California family.

The book is sparse, as in zero adjectives.   Rather hallucinogenic style, almost as if she had read too much Beaudelaire in bad translation yet still wanted to write something with Bukowski-cool.  

But maybe I'm being too harsh.   I was thinking about it yesterday: I'm disappointed in the book because I cannot "see" the characters.   I do not know what she looks like, nor her gay friends Dirk and Duck, or her boyfriend, named My Secret Agent Lover Man (or Max).   Yet her father I can see.   He looks like Charlie Swan from Twilight.  Strange I know, but at least I have a visual.   There's a chapter in the book where Weetzie goes to see him in New York and he takes her around New York and he tells her he won't go back to LA because everything is fake there, it's all a façade. 

Then he dies.  Either because he's dying any way or just accidentally ODs, but he dies.   And when I was thinking about how "there goes the one actual clearly-defined character" I also then thought about what he'd said about LA, and then thought, "Maybe this is what Block is doing:  I feel no connection to the characters.  I cannot see them.  They don't feel real to me."

That is supposed to be a sign of bad writing, and maybe it is.  But what if she also meant to do that - keep the characters as nothing but cardboard cutouts.  If so, then she's brilliant.

All I know is this: however much I think the book is rather hazy, somehow I know it's going to stick with me for a long mile, playing at the back of my brain.   And that, my friends, is the standard by which I do judge good literature.



Overheard at Table 1: The Marc Pease Experience


The Marc Pease Experience is vaguely uncomfortable, but that's its brilliance.   Unfortunately, the discomfort leads it to be not as funny as it should have been, it's in that gray area, in which it is not quite a black comedy, but it is nowhere near being a straight up comedy.

The actors, however, are very well-suited to their roles:  Schwartzman as a 20 something who simply does not get that his dreams of being a professional singer are never going to materialize, and Stiller as the high school music teacher who is schtupping Schwartzman's 18 year old girlfriend (she's that girl from Twilight).  In fact, Stiller has just the right amount of sleaze and arrogance - shown how he avoids Schwartzman and his casual dismissal of the girl), yet in it is the touch of pathos.   How pathetic his own life is - as a rather talentless music teacher himself.

Personally, I would have liked to have seen more of the vocal group.   Schwartzman leads a quintet of singers - down from an octet, which they had when they graduated high school.   In the one or two scenes, there seemed to be some hints of some history there among the singers, their different expectations.   These are people who have been caught up in Marc Pease's dream so much that they have not yet gone on to start their own lives - they're too busy following his.   And he's living this pipe dream.  It is so sad.   I would have loved to have seen more of the vocal group, and their dynamic.

Still, Anna Kendrick is the only one who makes it out of this movie with her character unscathed, and possibly with the brightest future.  She tells off Stiller and Schwartzman, ultimately a gentleman, lets her go, so that she won't be tied down by his failure.

Sweet, sad, tragic disaster we make of our lives sometimes.  That's what this movie shows so well.

Overheard at Booth 5: The Tomb

In Booth Five there is a husband and wife, listening to the conversation about movies between Verble and his clientele.

The husband says, "I'm gonna tell them about The Tomb"

The wife puts her hand on his hand and says, "No, you're not, honey."

He says, "But, why not?"

"Because the movie sucked, dear.  Don't embarrass us."

Overheard at Booth 3: Vampire Killers


Niall Carter calls out to Verble from Booth 3, which he is sharing with John Steppenwolf:  Hey, I've got one even worse for you - Vampire Killers!

Verble:  Saw that one too.   I'd say that's a cut above Savages.

Niall:  It's like the writer got Evil Dead 2 and Shawn of the Dead mixed up with every forgettable vampire movie ever made in the 80s. 

John Steppenwolf: At least it's set in England.  That was cool.

Verble:  And it had a couple of good lines.   But I'll admit, it was pretty weak, even by B-movie standards.

Niall: All I know is that the LBGT community should be outraged.   These guys claim they're out to rid of the world of "Lesbian Vampires" - what, they're not gonna kill "Straight" vampires too?   Aren't they going to be equal-opportunity vampire hunters.  

John: You're right.  To single out one group is a human rights violation.

Verble: Except that they're undead.  Are they even protected under human rights laws.













At this point, the Barista takes off her apron and says, "If this is where the conversation is going, I'm clocking out early for the day!"





After she heads toward the back, John Steppenwolf says, "I kind liked the vicar.  He was sorta cool."

Overheard at Table Two: Savages

Verble: Wife left yesterday with the kids to visit her sister in Santa Fe, and that means Verble gets to watch some action movies instead of ingesting a healthy diet of chick flicks, and what kind of monster do I have the grave misfortune to waste two hours of my life on?

Savages.

I should have known it would be a major turkey when I saw the two words: Oliver Stone.  I have NEVER, I repeated NEV-ER, liked an Oliver Stone film.   It's like he wants to be Martin Scorcese and Quinten Tarantino so bad it just hurts him.   But since I'm a sucker for Salma Hayek I gave it a try.

Crikey what a snoozer!  Two guys growing the "best weed" get involved in Mexican drug cartel, run by Salma, and there's kidnapping and mutilations and murder and blood spurting out of every orifice and eyeballs getting whipped out of eye sockets and it's just a useless bloody mess with no sense of style, no class.

If you want to see a good shoot-em-up with Benicio Del Toro, watch "Way of the Gun." That one has all the blood you can swallow, and with the added benefit of little things like "characters" and "dialogue."  The only good line in this movie is when Salma tells the blonde bimbo, "They obviously love each other more than they love you.   Otherwise they wouldn't share you."

But now that I've told you the best line, please spare yourself this incredible soupy mess of a movie.

Please!







Soundtrack to "Good Jakes"

Soundtrack to Good Jakes

Ingrid Michaelson - Soldier
Cristina Perri - Jar of Hearts
The Postal Service - There's Never Enough Time
Iron and Wine - Such Great Heights
Simple Minds - (Don't You) Forget About Me
Rogue Wave - Eyes
Whitley - More Than Life
Fountains of Wayne - Valley Winter Song
Gregory and the Hawk - A Wish
Death Cab for Cutie - My Mirror Speaks
Colin Hay - Waiting for my Real Life to Begin
Patti Griffin - Take It Down
Angus and Julia Stone - Hold On
Mazzy Star - Fade Into You
Midnight Choir - Mercy of Maria
The Walkabouts - Life Full of Holes
The Walkabouts - The Train Leaves at 8 (Mikis Theodakis)
The Walkabouts - Desierto
Angus and Julia Stone - Big Jet Plane
Sinéad O'Connor - The Last Day of Our Acquaintance
Angus and Julia Stone - Mango Tree


Monday, July 22, 2013

David Gilmour "Echoes" Acoustic Version

Abbey Road is just the code name I have for the big warehouse space I have out back.   You can imagine it's the real Abbey Road studios if you wish.  But I do thank David and Richard and the others for treating us to this song today!