So, I was obnoxiously ignorant enough to start a blog called LP's on the Jukebox without actually owning a record player. Got one for Xmas.
At first last night the only one I had to put on was one I'd bought as a novelty at a thrift store in Joshua Tree, CA two years ago. It was some best of compilation from a Boston radio station, that I got because on the front for some inexplicable reason was a bear in a pair of shades and a bomber jacket playing a guitar made out of a Boston street map, the neck being Comm Ave. The cover was better than the content.
Then today, in a frenzy I bought three albums, all new, totally not adhering to the dregs and discovery ethic that I swear I will uphold from here on out, but COME on, how could I not ensure that now that I'd tested the bugger, that the first voice I should hear on my newwww medium would be someone worthy to be heard in that much accoladed fashion of vinyl.
I see Small Change. It's 22.99....can I really spend so much on an album? After all, wasn't the point of this to pick up second-hand copies, hear history in the cracks, see some scrawled happy birthday on the liner notes (that would hopefully lower the price.) This needs some pondering. Or rather, I need time to come up with the proper rationalization, as it turned out.
I snag Death out of the New section as well, then find the small bin marked Country. My fingers were crossed for Patsy Cline, and then my heart stops. Look who has his own special tab. Townes. Van. Zandt. Double album. 16.99. Live at the Old Quarter. Pancho and Lefty on the first side.
My fingers pick it up before I tell them to.
And yes, I have to go back and pick up Small Change. Townes, I love ya, but there is only one man that can fully test vinyl for me. And that is Tom fucking Waits.
So yeah. Vinyl is good. Analog. Shoulda known. Film looks better because of its literal nature and all its little imperfections. After all what you're hearing played back to you is the actual imprints that the sounds forced into an actual material, not the way that a computer interpreted those sounds.
Listened to the whole thing with mounting excitement as I do all the Xmas unpacking I was far too lazy to do the night before, and it builds until...
Smitten. I'm swooning, I'm actually swooning as I hear that match strike and the first velvety tones of that lonely saxophone on the beginning of Small Change. The man himself, he's whispering in my ear, and it's dirty, and it's warm, and I can even smell the whisky on his breath as he rasps that Small Change got rained on with his own .38.
Hang on, I must put on Side Two again. After all, at some point later tonight, I am due a shower, and my usual mediocre rendition of Invitation to the Blues is going to get a bit of an oomph to it.
Okay, I'm not trying to be political here. Well not entirely, but seriously, how the hell can the Republicans voting against or refusing to vote for the 9/11 Healthcare bill justify themselves at all.
And you know what? I did feel guilty about the fact that I was getting all outraged about something I heard about on a comedy show. I figured maybe it was being spun. I figured maybe if I saw it on some other network, it would be explained more rationally, so it wouldn't seem like total insanity. EXCEPT for everywhere I saw it on news.google it was talking about how Jon Stewart was the main force bringing up this fucking outrage because the networks are all asleep about it.
I'm not about to get on my high horse and bullshit about how I have some sort of longstanding commitment to 9/11 First Responders health issues, because other than when I see the posters on the subway asking you to call in if you've been having health problems due to, say inhaling massive amounts of toxic ash, hazardous materials and the ash that was once human beings, I don't honestly think about it on a daily basis.
But you know what? I haven't been part of a political party that did everything in its power without the slightest shred of shame to try to associate itself with these people's example to push its own agenda, to lead people into a war for crying out loud, and to duck all possible criticism for the consequences of these actions. I'm not in charge of whether or not this passes, and I'm not holding it up because I want to make sure that the richest two percent get to keep their goddamn tax cuts.
Like we haven't all seen an instance or two where a Republican in answer of a question about the war, or about civil liberties or even about the economy wraps themselves in 9-11 in order to avoid any serious questioning.
And all this time while Republicans were using the specter of this tragedy as a shield, the people who had actually been digging through the rubble, spending hundreds of man-hours putting their bodies, their organs, their lungs in the company of the harmful byproducts, of say, the combustion of a couple planes, a couple skyscrapers, and some thousands of human beings, started to, good lord, have health problems?
While these people were actually dying as a result of 9-11, the Republicans used this country's mourning of that day, and their fear that there would be another to run smears against anyone opposing them, and when this bill comes up, they're too busy defending people who totally don't need this kind of assistance. Not the way that people who are terminally ill from the effects of being at Ground Zero need to know that their families won't be left in debt because of hospital bills. Not the way that someone who may just be starting to be sick from it needs the reassurance that they won't be given the run around and will be given the respect and help that they deserve.
It would almost be appreciable as a perfectly fitting symbol of how these worms actually work, almost goddamn art or a joke, if it weren't so fucking tragic.
Just a few months ago, the right-wingers wanted us to get all up in arms about the possible horrors that would develop if a Muslim community center (That's right. It's not a mosque. It's a community center, freakin' deal with it.) was built near Ground Zero. The horror. The callousness. The disrespect that would pose to the NYFD and the NYPD.
Gee, well you've really got your priorities straight, dontcha?
Who needs a drink?
The only thing that will soothe me right now. This awesome band from Detroit in the 1975, just recently rediscovered. I guarantee that when you first hear it, you'll be like "goddamn, this existed BEFORE Hardcore?" And the first track I'm putting on Politicians In My Eyes. Yup. Some things don't change.
Having just been to Vegas and embarassingly ignorant of Rat Pack movies, I decided to watch the original Ocean’s Eleven. Throughout the movie, I found myself glad of the updates that the remake affords. Different social mores and all jokes should be taken with a grain of salt, I know, but hearing Dean Martin claim that what he wanted to do with his share of the money would be to repeal the 14th and 20th amendments and make slaves of the women made pretty clear what a different time 1960 was, especially as there’s nary a wince meant to be elicited by the fact that when he says it there’s a black guy in frame with him.
Admitted, the outfits and style are total class. I saw that photo of Lawford, Sinatra, Martin and Davis in various degrees of impeccable formal dress playing pool in more than one place in Nevada and it doesn’t lose it’s touch when in motion.
Admitted, the musical numbers are gorgeous.
Admitted, Dean Martin, constitutional aspirations aside, is an insanely charming human being, and more than a few of Sinatra and Lawford’s jokes hit the mark. Not to mention as someone who hadn’t really seen any of Sinatra's acting work, I instantly understood that he wasn’t a singer turned actor in any cynical meaning of the combination. Danny Ocean, proud and cold on the outside. But nothing cold about his loyal to his squadron, and or about his feelings about the fact that his marriage to the woman he loves isn’t salvageable. One hell of a solid package built up around a broken heart.
However, I’m a sucker for a clever hard-bitten line and an ensemble cast that is slightly more developed than “that old guy with the scar and the wife” and “some guy who works at a casino whose name I don’t know,” the whole way down the line to fill out the rest of the eleven that ain’t the Rat Pack.
Don’t think it wasn’t killing me as a perpetual pisser-on of remakes to know that I liked the remake more throughout most of a classic movie.
Then came the end. And it was perfect. A dozen times better than silhouettes in front of the Bellagio water show. I will say no more about it, but it’s simple and funny and pretty darn brave.
Least I thought so until my father cynically pointed out that *SPOILER* it was probably because of the Hollywood Code that *SPOILER* charming as they were, no way they would be allowed to keep that money because as criminals, they would not be allowed to have profited from their crime at the end of the movie.
This sent me reeling to try to prove other movies from the era where the charming crooks have gotten away with it at the end of the movie. I couldn’t come up with one, and I pretty much only watch movies from that era that involve some sort of crime. I guess that I consider the part where I like them as a victory of sorts and ignore the fact that at the end of the movie, anyone who’s done something wrong is dead, disgraced, or in jail even if they got there in glamourous fashion.
By way of settling this dispute, my father found it right there in wikipedia. “All criminal action had to be punished, and neither the crime nor the criminal could elicit sympathy from the audience”
My response “But Robert Mitchum had a career that whole time and he’s a total degenerate!”
Makes me wonder about this whole romantic fatalistic view of crime portrayed in movies so attractively still is the after effects of this. You watch Bonnie and Clyde, Dillinger, Jesse James, Butch Cassidy movies knowing how they’ll end up. Movies like Rififi, Night and The City, Out of the Past, The Killing, would they have packed the same punch if at the end, someone strolled off into the sunset with a bundle of dough?
And I’m not sure if it even comes across as a denunciation of crime, like “if they’d just been straight instead of crooks, then they wouldn’t be dead.” It comes across more like “even the best-laid, most faithfully executed plans isn’t going to stop you and your gang’s personal flaws and shit luck from putting you in the ground.” Christ, who can’t identify with that?
Not saying I don’t just totally LOVE post-code 1970s movies, but in a weird way how the code forced storytellers to portray life had such a beautifully opposite effect from what was intended that I’m a little grateful to it. C’mon, nowadays for every time code-less Hollywood provides you with a moment of honesty about sex or violence that you’re glad was allowed to be shown, there’s about 80 times you’re like “okay, there really wasn’t a reason to see that guy do a line of blow off a stripper’s ass and then shoot a guy in the face, I mean, he's not even a major character and it wasn't even surprising. Where's the art in that?”
So here's to fatalism, and the code that inadvertently made the bad guys all the more glorious.
We see our first snow on the way in to Salt Lake City, coming up from Arches National Park. Toss some idle snowballs at each other after we pull over at a visitors center of some kind to use the bathroom. Train whistles waft down from the hill above it.
Once we get into sight of the city, we turn off the iPod and start flipping through the radio. It's whole lot of talk, some country, some church, some Latino. "And the number one best thing about November..." Tumbleweed hits scan.
"No, put it back! I wanna hear the best thing about November."
She turns it back in time for us to hear "...family sweater night. Put on those sweaters and save on the heating bills. I'm Donnie Osmond for..." But we miss the rest because we're all cracking up. Family sweater night? What does that even mean?
I feel more of an East-Coaster than I ever do here. Hell, I didn't even know that living in one side of the country had a feeling.
But Salt Lake City will learn me about planning to spend a whole day in a city without making any concrete plans about what to do there. There's a mentality that I had based on places I'd been previous, of that in a city, there's something to see always, a main drag to walk down, a populated waterfront. Failing that, at least a museum of some kind. Even if I'm surrounded by mediocrity, some dusty spurs or a meteorite fragment might spark some interest. But Salt Lake City isn't made for the casual browser.
It's an entirely car-based city set up on a grid. No main drag to stroll down. No pockets of interesting sights created with the pedestrian in mind. Something always strikes me weird about planned cities like this. It lacks the element of the accidental.
A perusal of a guide given to me by a chatty fellow hostel-stayer doesn't shed that much more light on what to do. After I come back with it, Butterscotch says "new rule, no one goes anywhere alone. Otherwise, for all we know, you'll have come back converted."
"You're talking about it like we're in The Thing." I snort. I don't get corrected.
Not that we didn't try to ask locals what to see. As soon as we saw there was a coffee place next to the hostel called Mormon coffee, we knew where we were going to get our morning's fix. We ask our barista, a young lady with a nose ring, so hip, we assume, the must-sees of Salt Lake City.
"Oh you should go see Temple Square now that there's finally a snow down."
One of the first things that we saw upon driving into the city the night before were the huge spires of the Mormon temple at the center of town. Around it there are a couple of visitors centers, and plenty of people willing to explain to you the wonder of their church square. The visitors centers come in sort of handy, because as we find out from an old man watching a wedding party exit the Temple (featuring a heartbreakingly young-looking bride and groom) we aren't allowed in the church because we aren't Mormons.
Judging by the model of the temple we saw in the visitors center and the artwork inside there, we aren't exactly missing the Sistine Chapel. When you walk in there's a wall-length painting depicting scenes from a proper Mormon life, weddings, family dinners, deathbeds, cemetaries, playing with children, all that. When walking past it, I have to abruptly speed past to keep from breaking into nervous hysterical laughter when I hear the guide say, "I like this painting, because even though there's like sad stuff, people are happy too." As Tumbleweed puts it, never heard anyone older than about 7 talk like that.
Okay, this is going to sound shitty, I know, but when the tour guides walk up to us, big wide smiles on their faces, American flags on their chest, pleasantries cued up behind their lips, some part of my brain screams "pod people!"
Because I know that hidden beneath that smile, and that temple that looks like a Disneyfied version of a Gothic Cathedral is the church that was the major sponsor of Proposition 8, that wouldn't let black people in until 1978, claiming that they were descended from Noah's disgraced son Ham, and if we're going to be honest, only outlawed polygamy in order to gain admission to the United States. Hey, not that I'm necessarily defending it as a belief, but it's not entirely dignified to, after the dozenth time a country won't let you in due to your illegal practices, to suddenly look at your scriptures again and go "Well, looky here, guess we never said we had to practice polygamy after all."
Feel like it's a hell of a dilution from the Puritans you know? Traveling across an ocean because they felt persecuted by a church and state that didn't let them be as all fired strict as they wanted to be. On to a group traveling across a continent because they felt persecuted by a church and state that didn't let them have a couple of wives instead of just the one.
And I guess it's easier to see the faults of a church magnified once they actively run a government. And when they have a creepy statue garden in the middle of their city that has Joseph Smith's head on the body of a sphinx. Okay, that was kind of awesome.
After seeing a pretty awful movie. Catfish. Bleh. We decide to go bowling, then cook a dinner in the hostel. And we made Salt Lake City cool.
But before we did what we could to improve on it, we were driving around, not knowing what to do, past pawn shops, boarded store fronts and concrete mini-mall looking churches, this got voted our jam, so here it is.
Good lord, how did Utah manage to grab itself such a generous portion of the gorgeous landscapes that the American West had to offer. On the road before Monument Valley and in between that and Arches, there's not a stretch of natural landscape that isn't majestic.
No small wonder that the Mormons chose to settle in a place that when the sun shines in literal beams onto the rocky landscape, looks more than a little Old Testament.
Monument Valley was a place on the map to me, one of those "must-sees" of the Southwest. Of course I recognized it later as something that's a catch-all in any movie of that's about the free-spiritedness of the out west, that and a salacious scene in Preacher. Thing about it is, that it's so expansive that unlike other national monuments, there isn't a single iconic shot of it that can capture all of it, so I didn't feel like I could even recognize it. I wasn't prepared for how spacious and gorgeous it is.
Funny is this first band of explorers, that knew they were giving names that might stand as long as people were there to gaze at these things were as struck as simple as we were.
"Those ones look kind of like oven mitts." One of us observes at nightfall staring out from the parking lot of the hotel at the formations we later find out are the Mitten Buttes of Monument Valley
"See, how that one looks like an elephant? The trunk's right there and - " Snake Eyes points at a cluster at Arches National Park that once we have oriented where we are on the map, we realize is The Parade of Elephants.
I like to chalk it up to the Aw Shucks spirit that the American West inspires.
Just the other day, I watched The Searchers, maybe the reason that this park is as associated with the movie Western culture as much as it is. The doomed Edwards clan conveniently set up their homestead plunk in the middle of the Monument Valley, even though theoretically, they lived in Texas.
Always got a kick out of that when I was watching Westerns, how people picked the most picturesque vistas possible to look at while they eked out their living dirt farming. I was all cynical and shit about it until I actually went out there and got it set straight for me that really, it would be more challenging for them to find themselves an ugly view.
Ford ended up filming 7 movies here. There's a vista point named after him. Good movie and all that, under all the racism, but I got a real kick out of them "searching all across the West for five years" when everything looked like it was in Monument Valley, sometimes the front and back views of the same buttes.
Later that day we make a quick stop at the Hole N The Rock. There's a fourteen room house carved into this rock, due to the peculiar ingenuity of Albert Christensen. It took him over 12 years to complete home. Couldn't find anything on how long it took him to do his earnest shrine to FDR above the home. There's also a sweet little cove where the Albert and his wife Gladys were buried, next to a little angel statue.
Outside is all the kitschy things that one could possibly put in their yard, a general store, and a couple of cute pieces of car art.
But it's time to get on the road again, heading to Arches National Park for more mind-melting awesome. I think we wound up going at the perfect time of year to get a full variety of climates. At the Grand Canyon it was in the mid-sixties. Pleasant, but not too hot for all the tramping around we were doing. Drive a bit further up and there's that perfect study in contrasting setting. Stretching out at our feet, the petrified dunes. Sandy, dotted with vegetation here and there. Springing up from that red rock formations. And spanning out in the distance behind them, distant blue-gray mountains sprinkled with snow. Just looks too perfect to be real.
In the presence of all that beauty, it is only natural that we pranced around, taking dozens of photos and clambered up and and down anywhere we could get ourselves a foothold. On the way out, I looked up at some of the more strikingly huge formations and hope to myself that there is some expanse at the top that a human has never managed to set foot on. An idea that I'm sure can't be true, and I'm not sure why I'm hoping for it, considering that I, like anyone else here is a looky loo, here to be amazed by what I see without necessarily understanding it, but the thought stayed with me.
And on through a sudden mini snow-squall up to Salt Lake City.
Now that we're back in a gas-guzzler, might as well head onto America's most romanticized highway, or what's left of it. There's a lot of back-tracking needed and sudden dead-ends to deal with to stay on that fabled road.
The Twin Arrows attraction is literally just a detour off the highway. A jersey barrier has been constructed between it and the highway, so you can't even pull over and take pictures of the improbable sight of telephone pole sized arrows sticking out of the ground. The barrier hasn't stopped graffiti artists from scrawling anti-Obama slogans across the whitewash of the long-closed gas station that once reaped the benefits of the tourist attraction.
Fortunately Two Guns has a bit more going for it. Our first sign of it is off the highway, KAMP written across the roof of a red building. Near as I can tell it used to be some sort of combination camp-site, gas-station and tourist attraction. Not too far before it on the highway we passed by a stone building still advertising mountain lions after all these years.
There's a few skeletal buildings there when we pull off the highway. A gas station, a train-car or trailer looking building, a brick structure, a large red barn, and a small cinderblock structure that we later discover is next to a drained pool. Twin water-silo looking cylinders have the peeling remains of gunslinger murals that presumably gave the attraction its name. Everything is covered in tags, stencils and obscene drawings. Also, sometimes, bulletholes. I am delighted to find a couple of cartridges amidst the tumbleweeds.
There's still the grills and poles sticking out of the ground here and there. Once perhaps, they marked off the boundaries of different campsites, now all they do is pepper signs of civilization in the yellowed grass.
One of the websites I found, the author recalls having spent a night there in a tent in 1978, and finding it a fenced off ruin twenty years later. The highway we'd just gotten off, I-40 of killed Route 66 by degrees across the southwest for decades before 66 was decommissioned in 1985. With it went the reason for people to visit these quaint roadside attractions.
The ruins extended beyond just the immediate ones around the gutted gas-station. We find a few stone structures and a giant pit. Wonder if these are from further back, if these are ruins from when it was a stopover on an even earlier trail than Route 66. Ghost towns litter this desert. This sort of isolated and extreme life can't be easy, and if the incentive to be there dries up, I'd imagine it would only make sense to pack up quick and not look back.
There were even more ruins over the ridge, but it isn't the only thing on our itinerary for the day, so we too take our leave of Two Guns.
Flat Tire in Flagstaff. Sounds like the name of a song don't it? Or some kind of kinky euphemism. "I totally dug him but then he was all about having a Flat Tire in Flagstaff if you know what I mean."
I guess I saw it as more of the former because the whole time Butterscotch was changing, I was humming Tenth Avenue Freeze-out and substituting Flat Tire in Flagstaff for the lyrics. A cop walked by with a tip of the hat and says "that sucks." as we stand there at the curb with all our luggage strewn on the sidewalk in front of a diner. Snake-Eyes mutters "asshole" under her breath as soon as he's past us.
Flagstaff is a quaint looking town. Brick sidewalks. A shop-lined main drag where none of the buildings top 3 or four stories. Right down the street from us is the Hotel Monte Vista where we'd spent the night before.
A “haunted” hotel. Barbara Stanwyck suite. One of the walls was light blue velvet. Something is spattered on it. Lit mainly by a glass dangling light fixture. Out the window is a balcony that we couldn't figure out how to use, and the window facing us across the street had its blinds shut, and red light pulsing through the cracks.
Across the hall was supposedly the room where two prostitutes were murdered. John Wayne himself had sighted ghosts on the hall where we stayed. Perhaps adjacent to the Debbie Reynolds suite a couple of doors down. From a peek in when we went down for coffee, it was bright pink. Maybe a precautionary measure against bad spirits.
The key didn’t work at first. The desk clerk told us it was because sometimes when there’s ghosts in the room, they short out the electrical circuits. Truth? Or agenda
None of us slept terribly well, caused by ghosts or no, and the first thing we come across when trying to get going in the morning is the realization that one of our tires is a virtual pancake.
Once the donut is secured, it's on to the Flagstaff airport. Goodbye Blue Hybrid Nissan. Hello White Non-Hybrid Nissan. Least we get to see several cute little cub airplanes on our way back out.
Driving past signs for towns that list their founding dates, us Northeasterners chortle. These cities and towns weren’t even in existence when our towns were celebrating centennials, bicentennials, but their national monuments got us beat. They don't count their years of existence in the hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, or even bare millions.
Hundreds of millions of years of glacially slow change and construction stretch before you, etched in layers in the rock. It is older than those of us who can appreciate, but still not quite describe it. The entire recorded history of humanity started when this bastard was nearly the same as it is today. The Grand Canyon.
Seriously, a picture is not even worth a thousand words here, a picture isn't worth 5 seconds of actually being there and seeing it. It's immense. It's mindboggling. It's awe-inspiring. It makes you feel so very very small, and lifts you up at the same time.
Some of the rocks down near the bottom, just might have gotten there two billion years ago. That was a B there. Billion. I am a long time away from natural science textbooks, but a glance at the guides available at one of the visitors center, with their brackets pointing to different types of rock, and the different amounts of years suggested by each of these divisions...makes me look at geology in a whole different way.
For some reason, I always thought of it as a study of the properties of the minerals themselves, but I see it in such a bigger picture now. It's about mapping the history of our planet, and being as we have been there for such a small part of it, we can only pull together unspeaking clues to figure it out. The Grand Canyon, and a lot of the southwest it seems, offers clear markers by which we can measure the evolution, not of life, but of the globe it all exists upon.
Also, it's darn purty. We take the requisite dozens of pictures. Nothing sets off the majestic eternity of the vista of the Grand Canyon like capturing Butterscotch and Snake-Eyes having a slap-fight on a cliff-edge in front of it.
We hike down about an hour's worth, and the return journey takes what feels like twice that. I curse every extra unhealthy thing I've ever done, or at least I would if I had any breath. Not to worry though, the guide handed out at the visitors center declares that people fall over the side "surprisingly rarely." Not the most reassuring combination of adverbs I've ever seen.
By the time we get back to the top, sunset is dangerously close. As we racing down a winding road to get to a lookout point for sunset, I put on some Ennio Morricone. It seemed like the thing to do.
The Hoover Dam is a striking sight, to be sure. When it first looms into view, the dam jokes we are making ("I'm going to use the dam bathroom" "Let's take some dam pictures." "Where's the dam parking lot?") actually cease for a few minutes.
Tons upon tons of concrete wedged there between breathtaking gorges and clear blue-green water. Now with the added scenic value of the Hoover Dam bypass, arching across your vision, if you hadn't yet had enough reminder of the ability of people to create massive civil engineering projects with graceful curves in the middle of the desert. Named after Mike O'Callaghan and Pat Tillman...the plaque does NOT mention how the latter was killed by friendly fire.
The memorializations at the Dam are more thorough. The hundred-odd that died in the construction get a golden plaque of an Art-Deco looking Adonis rising up through the waves to hold his hands up, gesturing at the glory of sheafs of wheat. "They Died to Make the Desert Bloom." It is rather Soviet looking, the way that a lot of public works art from that era always look to me. A guide points out helpfully to his group "If you look closely, you can see drowned faces in the waves." Lovely.
It is pretty darn decorated bit of civil engineering. Humongous angels guard the flag pole, FDR stares down at you, daring you not to be impressed, and even the elevators get carvings. I'm a little fixated though on the star map below my feet. It's set so that without any other means of calculation, future generations, or extraterrestrials will be able to find the exact location of the pole star, and thus know the exact date that the dam was dedicated.
Hubris much?
It's not surprising to me that people out here would try to speak in the language of stars. Later that evening, it's our first night out in the real middle of nowhere, far from the lights of Vegas, and I see more stars than anywhere else I've ever been.
Not much more than a decade later, the honor of the shit that aliens would theoretically most be proud of that we did was changed over to our splitting the atom for weaponized purposes. Which occurred relatively close to here actually. They used to throw bomb detonation watching parties in Las Vegas.
In a little reminder of the interconnectedness that exists in history if you look close enough,
the town we were last in existed in part because of this public works projects. Las Vegas was hardly Sin City, more like Frowned-at Watering Hole until workers on this dam started daytripping up there to get their fill of gambling, drink and women while on break. The builders founded a more nearby city, Boulder City where the workers were supposed to stay, but to little effect. One wonders if any of the drowning faces the guide pointed out on the plaque had their fatal incaution brought on by a Las Vegas hangover. And nowadays, of course, Lost Wages has to power all that neon somehow.
A fitting introduction to the vast scenery we would soon be seeing, and how even the most ambitiously huge of structures can seem like anthills out there.
We felt so cowboyish that we even came up with the silly cowboy names I've been using for us this whole travelogue. Riding through the desert under a gigantic sky, in a Nissan instead of on a horse. Tumbleweed, Butterscotch, Snake-Eyes and me...Blitzen.
I make no pretenses. I know pretty much anyone reading this could tell that I am aware of Vegas’s most famous chronicler, if not an outright degenerate worshipper of the man. So yes, I made my stop at Circus Circus, and the Flamingo with reason. But I make no claims of taking this trip to discover the American Dream.
This is a journey into the Southwest, a place none of us had ever been before and knew quite what to expect from. But Snake-Eyes, Tumbleweed, Butterscotch, and me, Blitzen were more than ready to see what it was about.
When we land, Viva Las Vegas is piping in over the speakers before we’ve even taxiied to the gate. Judging by the canned music we hear all over the airport on our way to the rental car counter, early rock and roll is alive and well in Las Vegas.
I’m outside my hotel room and I’m looking at the New York skyline, but I’m in Las Vegas. But a confusing jumble of that familiar skyline. Consisting of only landmarks, all misplaced. And I don’t remember the roller coaster being there before. Plus the Statue of Liberty has moved uptown. It was inevitable, we all know. No one with that kind of class can persist so close to Staten Island.
All joking aside, you know every movie you’ve seen about Vegas, where you’ve shrugged and thought, no way it’s that garish, lurid, mindboggling, decadent and neon strange. I thought that too. Then I rode down the strip.
Here’s the best analogy I can come up with for it. It’s like if you showed a Martian a slew of technicolor movies and then you had them design Earth Capital based entirely on that. Slam the Eiffel Tower on top of a bastardized Louvre, after you’ve made them all out of movie-set grade bland construction materials. Pyramids? People had those right, and they make them out of glass. Throw one up over there. Earthlings drink beer and enjoy naked women right? So put up signs for beer that is cheap and naked women that you can find with the phone number provided. Humans enjoy circuses? Put up a huge clown.
Even analogies don't really do it though. Like a lot of scenery we caught sight of out West it has to be experienced in person to be fully processed.
The first night after that drive on the strip we stayed nested at the casino in our hotel which was "Featured in The Hangover." Took us some figuring to realize that meant the scene where they find the apartment of the stripper that one has accidentally married.
We learned a few important lessons that night. 1) Slots are almost fun if you understand how they work (something I never quite figured out in Atlantic City) and also most handy for the rest of our time in Vegas 2) With dollar drafts and dollar drinks you get what you paid for, and you paid for faintly flavored water that just might have the alcohol content of near beer if you're lucky.
But considering the time zone we're lagging in is three hours later than the one that the rest of Vegas is in, and that tomorrow is the day we plan to really crack this town, we have an early night. It's only 3 am when we hit the sheets.
A leisurely morning, a snack run for when we really gun out onto the road the next day, and we get to Las Vegas's New York, New York in the early afternoon, and stroll on past the Bellagio to Caesars Palace (it is called Caesars instead of Caesar's, because every guest should feel like a Caesar. Wow.)
But smack across the street is a bonafide landmark, The Flamingo. The Flamingo is one of the first casinos built on the Strip, and one of the first to put on classy airs instead of the Wild West themed joints on Fremont Street, the original gambling district of Las Vegas. It also began the decades-long tradition of mob money building up the Strip.
The Strip isn't technically in Las Vegas you know. That certainly helped its early years along, being in a jurisdiction gray area.
Bugsy Siegel and those he represented were flush with money the profitable sale of a downtown Vegas hotel, and after their buyout offer was turned down by the Rancho Las Vegas, one of the first on the Strip, they went in with Bill Wilkerson, a man trying and failing to build a luxury hotel in that area.
While the Flamingo was being built, the construction crews and suppliers bilked the inexperienced Bugsy for as much as they could, claiming post-wartime shortages. His investors assumed that meant he was skimming. After a disasterous first opening when the hotel section wasn't open, the hotel closed for months, then reopened to better returns. Wasn't enough to save Bugsy though, he got murdered in Beverly Hills in 1947. But the cocktail of luxury, crime and Hollywood glamour that the Flamingo offered attracted more people to the strip.
Viva Las Vegas and the original Ocean's 11 were filmed here. Hunter S. Thompson stayed here while crashing the District Attorney's conference on Drugs and writing Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I sip a dollar margarita and watch an impersonator whose dubbed himself Big Elvis. He's big alright.
A stop on over to the Casino Royale. The low-rollers joint. $3 Blackjack. $3 Craps. $1 drafts and margaritas that actually contain a fair amount of alcohol. We have at least 3 if not 4 rounds. Butterscotch wins 30 dollars at Black Jack. I lose 20 at a little bit of everything...black jack...roulette, and the trip favorite Spin to Win.
And from there it is a walk over to Circus Circus, one of my most anticipated spots. While flipping through my bible for this location that morning, I happened across "The Circus-Circus is what the whole hep world would be doing Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war. This is the sixth Reich."
The rotating bar in featured in Fear and Loathing is roped off, but still spinning, so I settle for having to play the rotating penny slots instead of getting a drink at the rotating bar. There are indeed circus acts upstairs on the midway, we see contortionists and magic tricks upstairs.
In the arcade room, there is air hockey and we win the whoopie cushion that is to become a constant companion. 2nd one. First one breaks instantly so the clerk gives us another. I had the broken one in my handbag for the rest of the trip for some reason.
On to the landmark that's been staring down at us the whole time. The Stratosphere. When we get up to the top, LasVegas stretches out before before us. Not as far as the eye can see though. There is abrupt black. That's because, as is easy to forget in this land of easy water and transplanted palm trees that we're right in the middle of the mountainous desert.
Also offered is bungee jumps off of this. Pay a wad to see the Strip hurtle up at you at incredible speed. People about to jump off it look like they're about to piss themselves.
On to the Sahara for dollar shots and buds and to grab a bite at the cafe. Steal a few shotglasses before finding out their souvenirs. Hear the karaoke that's going on, and people are so damn good they just must be ringers to draw people in, inspire them to buy up more liquid courage to go on themselves, or just inspire them to linger a little longer at the nearby craps table to catch the last few notes of I Will Survive.
These last few dollar shots, while more miniature, are not watered down. And with them being $1, their size is a problem cheaply solved. So the next few bits are kind of fuzzy. I remember getting an argument under the rail tracks outside that went something like this:
"Is that the monorail?"
"Nah, it's a rollercoaster."
"Bullshit, how many rails are there?"
"It goes in a circle, you ever see a monorail go in a - "
"HOW MANY RAILS ARE THERE?"
"One."
"So it's a monorail."
Walk down a more deserted section of the strip back towards the hotel. To the right of us, a derelict construction site. The high chain link fence above it is plastered with advertisements for the FontaineBleau. Coming soon in Fall 2009. Little off in the estimate there, fellas.
Snake Eyes sets off the whoopee cushion every few feet.
Emergency stocking surgery with a bottlecap outside a 7-11 at 2 am. Watching some unexplained fireworks in the distance, including a full on fireball. Sucking down MGDs. Desperately hunting bathrooms in department stores and casinos. Just miss the last Bellagio water show. Pee stop in the MGM Grand, and then crashlanding in our hotel beds and falling asleep.
Two weeks ago to the day, I was heading home from work. I had selected a few appropriate books for my looming road trip. I had roughly 5 hours of work left at my stinking job before ten days of straight up liberation through travel. All that was left to do was change the light bulb in my room so I could pack. Was aiming to arrange it so I didn't have to check a bag and this could make for a challenge even in a well-lit environment.
I was going to do it the night before so I could be all set to sit back and assemble playlists but when I got in from a few bon voyage drinks with my attorney and flicked on the lights, not a damn thing happened, and I wasn't about to change it tipsy at 1 am.
It's a good thing I hadn't tried then, though at least my roommate would have been there to lend a hand instead of a third of the way across the country.
So I grab a lightbulb and haul over my chair to underneath my globe light. Unscrewing it starts to turn difficult. Lefty Loosey, I'm sure of it, but I'm getting no give. Not to mention I'm not quite tall enough, even on my chair, for the angle to be anything but awkward. But I've done it before, it's just a matter of persistence, I think.
Then the light turns on.
I realize a few things in quick succession. First, this means that I don’t have to change the bulb. Second, this means that I was a fucking idiot to not turn off the lights when changing a bulb because remembering to do that is rule number one of not being a fucking idiot while changing a light bulb. This is because it stops you from faffing around with a live outlet as any elementary school child could tell you.
Third, I realized that the light fixture was no longer attached to the wall and would fall down immediately if I didn’t continue holding it up.
Which would be a pain in the ass to do anyway, as an awkward angle to continue holding my limbs but it gets more and more difficult with every passing minute as I become more and more aware that the temperature of the glass I’m holding up is increasing, as is my risk of electrocution.
The light switch is not anywhere near within reach.
So I’m trying to figure out how to get myself out of this, and am damn ready to give up on trying to screw it back in, a bastardized Owen Wilson quote is echoing in my head “I can’t fix this because I don’t have the tools! And even if I did have the tools, I don’t know if I can fix this!” Plus I know damn well that continuing to try to manipulate metal screw while the light is on is uncomfortable heatwise, and unwise electrically.
With bumbling silent caper film music tinkling in my head now, I start trying to hook the tote bag in my bed with my feet. After ten minutes and some serious leg and arm flexibility action I transfer the bag to my hand and hurl it at the light switch.
In the sole moment of grace in the whole thing, it actually works, and I’m plunged into darkness. Holy God! I think. I could totally shoot the oxygen tank in Jaws’s mouth.
My triumph lasts roughly two minutes as I realize that the fucking thing still isn’t going to screw in, even if I am, most likely erroneously, being more bold with my movements under the assumption that now that the light is off, I’m not going to taste copper and wake up on the floor a few hours later. Still, I give it the old college try, because fuck if I know what else to do.
I'm admitting now that I am unable to resolve this situation myself. I start grabbing at the corner of my jacket with my foot and dragging it towards me while trying to shut up the voice in my head insisting that my cell phone is absolutely in my bag.
Another six or seven minutes later, and I have my jacket and good lordy my cell phone was in my pocket.
I call my landlord and let him know I’m in a bit of a pickle. He shows up and starts knocking on the door which of course is locked. He tells me to let it fall. The disbelief is evident in his voice that I’ve been holding it up this long.
I let go of it and run to get the door.
No crash.
Son of a bitch. The fucker just hangs there from the wall lower than it should be, true, but no shower of sparks and broken glass that I’d been getting sore muscles from preventing.
I get a kindly talking to about what a dumb thing that was to do and a promise that someone will be by to fix it tomorrow.
I feel like there is a metaphor or life lesson I’m supposed to take from this, other than that I’m kinda dumb. That though struggles I undertake against adversity may be comical, the troubles may be only in my mind. Or maybe just to always check things like if light switches are off to avoid hijinks.
But! Colorful inebriational travelogue coming soon! Road Trip 2010. The Dirty Desert. Or The Bell Curve. Depending on who you ask. And when I return, I flick on the lights and there's a shiny new globe light on my ceiling.
Subtitle: Is it wrong that I found the suggestion that a hep white kid did invent Chuck Berry instead of the other way around way more disturbing than all the near-incest?
You know, I was going to slide that in somewhere in the middle, but I am way too pre-occupied with it. I'm not sure I wouldn't have still been uncomfortable if he'd played Hound Dog or Shake Rattle and Roll. The idea that all that came out of Elvis rather than Chuck Berry would have seemed an insult too.
Not that I'm denigrating Presley or his effects, but let's face it, NASA agrees with me. Elvis's Ed Sullivan appearance might have been what introduced this world to Rock'n'Roll, but Johnny B Goode is what got sent up in the Voyager spacecraft. Just in case aliens heard President Carter's message, some Stravinsky and whale songs and went "Yes, but do they know how to party?" that question would damn well be answered.
So you know, it's almost a fitting tribute that he goes through all the best theatrics of rock and roll starting square from the Chuck Berry walk into the Jimi behind the head guitar solo, into The Who windmill into some Angus Young moves. Almost, that is, until it loops back around to Chuck Berry having actually stolen rock and roll from Marty McFly. Now once again, some hep young white kid listening to black music is responsible for rock and roll instead of the musicians who inspired him.
Don't get me started on civil rights movement being set into motion by some white kid's blithe suggestion to a black guy at a lunchroom that he should be mayor or something. Seriously, this was the 80s, couldn't anyone have vetted these things?
And yet. And yet. God I still fucking love this movie. I love that in the 80s they wore weirdness on their sleeve. Without being ironical about it. Without throwing up homages every ten or twenty seconds or whispering to the audience 'yes, we know we're being silly, so you can too, and not feel stupid for liking this.'
Crispin Glover as a romantic lead of sorts? What the hell were they thinking? Hindsight is 20-20 and all, but it seems all but impossible now to watch his performance and not see him as a man with barely a passing acquaintance with sanity. Which makes it all the more entertaining that we're all rooting for him the way we'd root for a Freddie Prinze Jr. back in my day.
It contains a completely earnest letter that starts off "Dear Dr. Brown, On the night I travel back in time at 1:30 AM, you will be shot by terrorists." Simple, straight to the point yet totally absurd.
It renews my love of the idea of telling people preposterous things while still acting deathly serious about it. Seriously, how fun would it be to tell every stranger you meet at a bar "I'm from the future."
Because the 80s were weird and they loved it. What scientific sense is there for a car to travel back in time when it goes 88 mph because it has a flux capacitor? I dunno, why is Jon Cusack being chased by a maniacal paperboy who just wants his two dollars? Ummm, because it's awesome that way?
Back to the original line of inquiry. Do I love this movie? I mean I didn't pay to go see it on the big screen to intellectualize it. I went to shriek with joy with a theater full of fans when Doc Brown tells Marty that when that baby hits 88 mph, you're gonna see some serious shit. (Sidebar, my friend pointed out that Doc Brown probably smoked more reefer than the rest of Hill Valley combined. I'm inclined to agree.) I went to burst into spontaneous applause when Biff hits that manure truck. I went to squirm and go Yeessshhh when Marty's mom tries to make out with him. I'm a cheeseball, dammit!
Which is why I'm all-fired disturbed about the fact that it just might be total Reaganist propaganda. After all it's about cinematizing history, basically, which is kind of what Reagan represented. Doc said it himself "Of course your president has to be an actor, he appears on television all the time" According to Wikipedia at least, Zemeckis is a Democrat, maybe that points to spoof?
Let me sum up the plot of Back to the Future in a trite overintellectual way, shall I? Your life in the present sucks because of mistakes your parents made and have gotten in the habit of continuing to make. So you go back in time and make them heroes based on what you know of the world now, and what you've seen in movies. This nearly destroys you, but in the end, because it's Hollywood, it succeeds, and your present is made better because you transformed the past into a cinematic ideal.
I mean, christ, look at their choice of eras, could it be more American? The good ol 50s, start of the American century. The future where technological advances dominate absolutely everything. And of course the Wild Wild West.
The founding of the country, fraught with ideas argued in newspaper editorials and not half the unity we're taught to believe? Of course not. The civil war? Cough...Hello? Slavery? Uncomfortable...cough. Pre-history? Giant mammoths or fierce dinosaurs? Dunno, did they speak English? Plus it's hard to have a skateboard chase if there's no pavement. Okay, so if my theory had solid legs, they could have chosen WWII, but still!
Nope, it's the beginning of the American century, the culmination of American genius and the frontier that gave us that can-do spirit in the first place. When things were simple. You looked to what was yours. You looked out for your fellow man. And your six-shooter was the law. Oh yes, I did read Gunfighter Nation in college.
And yet. And yet. I feel like with how fraught with peril each of these movies is once they start embarking on this cherry-picking of history, that maybe, just maybe, it's a warning and not just full-on "It's Morning in America" style Reaganite euphoria. But then again, maybe the movies are so good because it's Hollywood movies like they used to be.
To use an analogy that's been applied to nearly everything at this point, it's like Wile E. Coyote. Did old school adventure suspense Hollywood movies never have a plothole if you paid attention to every damn detail? Of course not. But because there was adventure, charm, excitement and characters you enjoyed spending time with (Cary Grant, I'm looking at you), you raced off that cliff. And it kept you going, not looking down, so you never noticed you were on nothing but thin air and momentum. Sure if you'll look down, you'll plummet to your doom, but that kind of pessimism sounds like a personal problem.
Here I am, at the Javits Center, completely baffled and bewildered. Competing in my head are my overwhelming excitement to be among the Batmans, and Nightwings and Spideys, and the persistent pounding that the last two or three beers I had last night left me with.
I'm disoriented enough as it is, and the crowd scene going on just gets me more so. In my head, I'm warbling 'Hungover again at Comic-Con, Searching for a damn schedule." The meter doesn't quite work. I know this.
But finally I get my hands on a schedule and map. I've missed The Science of Battlestar Galactica. I've missed Stan Lee (though I doubt I would have gotten in.) But there's plenty I'm still in time for.
For instance, the panel on The Thing prequel. Like any good nerd, I get two warring impulses upon hearing of a remake or a prequel. On the one hand there's a 'oh man, The Thing is awesome, seeing more of The Thing would be fucking awesome.' But on the other hand, there's the certain knowledge of, if a production company is deciding to do a remake, prequel or sequel, it is because they don't have a more original idea. And if they don't have the ability to come up with original idea, then maybe they should keep their filthy mitts off of material that was original. Diluting the legacy of great ideas down to weak dishwater.
That being said. The Thing prequel...might not be totally a crime. Sure none of the actor's panel seemed the slightest bit as cool as Kurt Russell or Keith David, but the director and the producers knew the right answer to a bunch of the right questions. The most memorable aspect of the Carpenter movie? The paranoia and dread of the blood testing scene. Practical or CGI effects? Practical. How is it structured in relation to the Carpenter's? It is the Norwegian base, so half of the cast will be Norwegian, and the stuff that MacReady finds there will all be explained out, so it fits in snugly onto the beginning of the Carpenter film, ending with the dog running off into the snow, with the helicopter running after it.
Maybe, just maybe, it won't suck.
But, confession time, I was at the Thing prequel panel in order to get a good seat for the next panel. The Women of Battlestar Galactica with Tricia Helfer, Michelle Forbes, Nikki Clyne and most most MOST importantly, Katee Fuckin' Sackhoff.
I could go on for a whole blogpost about how awesome Starbuck is, and wouldn't be saying anything that hasn't been said before. But let's just leave it at, it was a lifechanger and a breath of fresh air to see a woman playing the vice-ridden loose cannon hotshot pilot. But not playing it as some hardass, but with giggles, shit-eating grins and the certain knowledge that she is not someone to be frakked with. Plus having her be an actress with some meat on her bones, who still gets plenty of play without dropping the tomboy act and obeying perfect female conventions. Unflippin' heard of.
In person, Katee Sackhoff does not disappoint and I was pleased to find out that Tricia Helfer was also a total badass. Listening to them banter with each other sounded so natural to my ears and I felt like I was eavesdropping on a barroom conversation between old friends.
On why they decided to learn to ride motorcycles. " Well, My husband and Katee's boyfriend both ride, and we got sick of riding bitch." "Not that there's anything wrong of riding on the back, I mean, you can wave at people, you can make sandwiches. You can drink because you're not really driving." "You texted me once when you were riding in back." "Yup" mimes texting "I'm riding bitch. It sucks."
On filming sex scenes. "To save money in editing, there was that time when I was filming that sex scene where I was with Lee, no wait, damn I don't remember character names anymore, but I was having sex with Gaius and fantasizing I was having sex with Lee, but they filmed it all at once, and you were in the corner, wagging your finger up at me. And it's like 'Alright, Jamie, that's enough, James, get on 'er.' And Tricia's there in the corner glowering at me. "
On fans saying strange things to her "Were you there when that woman came up to me and said she wanted to have my babies? I had to tell her that there was a basic biological problem with that." "That you're a woman." "No, because I was Starbuck. C'mon, if I had one, it would be HUGE." And she's saying this while wearing a miniskirt. Man, oh man, Katee Sackhoff was every bit as awesome as I was scared she wouldn't be.
Then out came Michelle Forbes and Nikki Clyne. Cally? I mean who gives a rat's ass, although it was funny to see the combination of horror and giggles inspired in the audience by her talking about trying to take her baby with her out of an airlock.
Michelle Forbes was an impressively intelligent woman who talked about BSG and The Wire and feminism and roles for women in TV and movies.
Gotta say, it jumped out at me, comics fans are a very racially diverse bunch. I guess being a passionate nerd knows no color. I saw a Black Robin, an Asian female Robin, a female Nightwing, and more Jokers and HarleyQuinns than you can shake a stick at. I was really hoping for a Black Captain America, but no dice.
The only other panel I made it to was "Do Zombies Dream of Undead Sheep?, made up of authors of various humor books on Zombies. The one that just made my list was "Feed" because the authoress is a fascinatingly hilarious and unapologetically morbid and nerdy human being. I wanna get proper fucked up with her and watch Night of the Creeps like woah while she tells me about how the virology is incorrect.
She bragged about being voted most likely to raise something horrible in a cornfield. As a child she came out of her room after reading a pile of EC comics "Mom, can I raise the dead?" "Sure." "Can I have knife?" "No." "Some scissors?" "No." "Can I have the baby?" "Sure."
One of my favorite spiels of hers was about how zombies are the universal healthcare of monsters "To be a vampire you have to drink their blood, and be in their thrall or whatnot, start hanging out near crypts or with pale people. To become a werewolf you have to be stupid enough to go walking out on the moors on a full moon 'oh honey, we live in a world with werewolves, I'm just going to take a stroll out on a full moon to the convenience store to get some Haagen Dasz, do you need anything?' but the zombies, they come to YOU! You don't have to do anything stupid or anything at all really but be there and be biteable. Zombies are the universal healthcare of monsters."
Other great moment, guy dressed up like Doctor Horrible gets to the front and asks "As part of my evil plans I wish to raise the army of the dead, how do you suggest I do this?"
Other woman on the panel "I just watched Dawn of the dead and the contrast of the green pale skin and the greasy red shiny innards and thought 'oh, how pretty.'"
One member of the panel suggests that the resurgence of zombies, and them turned into humorous subject matter is a sign of the death knell of the genre. He gets roundly poo-poohed by the rest of the panel and the audience. Virology lady says "Night of the Creeps 1982! That was funny but zombie movies kept happening for the next twenty-five years!"
Awesomely, this panel cured my hangover, but I was still feeling pretty dead, and when I accidentally went to the wrong venue to see my buddy play, I took it as a sign that I should get a full night's sleep, and went home.
On the juke? One cannot talk about so-called lowbrow art with pretension without thinking of the Ramones.
More than one person responded to my excitement at going to a pre-season Celtics-Nets game with shrugs and ticked off a list of the exact group of third-stringers I should be prepared to see. But my faith was rewarded.
Our seats were good to begin with but after we joined the throng of autograph seekers to see if anyone we knew was going to come out, and it became pretty evident that no one was coming along to grab their rightful seats, Miranda and I gave each other a furtive glance and took ourselves some seats. In the second row. Roughly 15 feet away from the starting lineup as they entered.
I do mean starters too. Ray-Ray, KG, The Truth, Rondo, Shaq, Delonte, Big Baby, Nate Robinson, all ran right in front of us as they headed to the court to warm up. It's the closest I've ever been to a bona-fide pro-basketball (albeit preseason) game and it lets you see a lot of things more clearly.
Some are related to size matters. Like Shaq's feet are probably bigger than my head. Like people like Delonte West, Rajon Rondo, and Nate Robinson look like midgets next to the likes of KG and Shaq. Even more so than on TV. Had to keep reminding myself that they tower over me, and they are not at all what most people would consider short men.
Good game, Nets won for a while, then we caught up sneakily but surely. But oh no, trouble holding onto the lead, traded threes and foul shots in the last few minutes, but courtesy of Nate Robinson nailing shots and drawing fouls we prevailed. Granted he was the only non third-stringer on the floor at the time, but I feel reassured.
The returning Delonte got plenty of baskets. I cannot look at that guy without thinking "He was driving down the highway on a motorcycle with a loaded rifle in a guitar case strapped to his back. He is the original road warrior. Hot damn" and getting a little flushed. Unfortunately he left towards the end of the game, looking a little bit pained, so I hope that's no issue.
The starters played a significant chunk of one quarter each half and looked great. Rondo went head band-less. Wonder why?
But the real fun person to watch was Paul Pierce. We were close enough to hear him swear when he got fouled, but other than that he was this playful childlike guy all game. When he wasn't playing, he just hung out, still on the court, back against the wall facing the court, slouched over like some teenager, but plainly still paying attention.
He threw a towel at Big Baby when Davis was jogging over to the side of the court after being fouled. Big Baby reacted with a puzzled look.
One of the most endearing things ever, Nate Robinson got hard fouled trying to dunk and Pierce got up and sprinted, SPRINTED over to help him up, in t-shirt, warm-up pants and all. Think the ref chided him for it. But he just walked back over with this wide grin.
After he was out the second half, he wound the gatorade towel into this really funny hood thing and tucked it into his t-shirt. KG followed suit. In one of the time out huddles they looked over at each other and then each adjusted theirs. While he was in that silly get up he was like throwing kicks over one of the coach's heads and shadowboxing and stuff. I can't wait to see the pictures that my friend took.
I love LOVE LOVE this team and I can't wait for this season to start.
So it is the Crystals, and songs about looovvvinnng bad boys. Because they may break my heart again at the end of the season, but darn it, it's gonna be so fun!
Just like Domino's back in college more than one New York City bar has realized that Two-for-Tuesday is an advertising slogan that sticks. Hence Thirsty Tuesday.
Stroll in to meet my attorney at a quarter to twelve for round one. Exchange weekends. His is punk shows, late nights and art exhibits. Gysin's Dream Machine.
I spent my weekend on the right side of the tracks and was in a proper Hamptons Beach house. This also involved a lot of drinking, but outside, wrapped up in a sweatshirt around a campfire, staring up at the stars.
On the occasions that I'm not at home in New York City, where the skyscrapers and the light pollution blot out all but a few, or back in Central Mass where the light pollution is little but the trees sure do cover up a lot, I marvel at how many stars you can see in the clear night sky. They come in freaking layers. Behind them, is that a cloud? Oh no, it's the Milky Way. With the ocean lapping at the rocks you sit on, and a campfire in front of you begging for marshmellows, it's the perfect environment for a scary story.
But I have no takers. Only one of our troop is left outside, and she's too stoned to find my scary story funny or interesting, only scary. Which is strange, because I'm too altered to tell it without breaking into laughter every few sentences at the scared look on her face.
"And so he turned back, and he was the last to see the rest of them alive. A few weeks later, they go searching. First they find the deserted tent, torn open from the inside. About a hundred feet away, they find..."
I look up from the flames. Bug eyed stare. She's whimpering. I crack up.
But all in all a damn relaxing weekend, even if I had to occasionally move a boat or chairs or pack sheets, I got paid in beer and by sleeping in a bonafide cabin.
Leaving Blackout Bar. It's too loud now, the outside deck is shut, the masses have come back inside, and I'm glaring at my attorney at least a little over his denunciation of the Clash. Joe Strummer Clash at least. He's a Mick fan, all about the pop songs, not so much with the social conscience anthems. Don't seem genuine to him, he says. As I'm in a Clash t-shirt and have ensured for legal purposes that he knows I'm supposed to have Strummer's "Silver and Gold" at my funeral, I'm not in agreement.
But where to go now?
"Tommy's?" I venture, and get myself the closing argument of my life.
The following is a paraphrase of my attorney's argument. I agree firmly with his points and conclusions.
"Tommy's is a commitment. Well, you go in, do your opening beer and a shot. Then it's over to a jukebox with the rest of that opening beer. You can put on one or two songs for a dollar. But for a slight price bump, you can get about 7 songs. To give yourself a bumper between the Audioslave or Journey or Nugent you hear now and the more that will be on later, you just gotta go with 7 if you got that many singles.
But oh no, there are more songs than you'd think on the jukebox in front of yours, and now your beer is gone, time for another.
Then a few songs later, your songs have come on, that first one, the one that'd leapt out at you comes blasting over the speakers. You whoop and take a healthy gulp, and all of a sudden, your beer's a little light. Time for another.
A few key songs later and you stumble into number six, that sad one that you wanted to hear in the first place. Which makes you have to have a shot to Townes or to Elliott or to whatever sad sack you put on, and you get a beer with it for a bargain. Then number seven is a rager, that you were planning to walk out on but then you're sitting there, and you still have 80% of your beer left. And you realize the song is almost over and you have beer left, and if you don't put something on, you'll be left with sports bloopers on the tube."
Midway to Franklin, I pull on his sleeve and go "Dammit, we have to go there don't we?" "YES!"
We blather on about the virtues of Tommy's Tavern, about how good it feels to fit in at an authentic dive bar. None of this faux hipster dive nonsense, but a real honest to god working class bar. About the chaos and the horror and the unpredictability, and then we are on that corner, I can taste the Schlitz. I offer to buy the first round, because I've gone and got myself thirsty again.
But we peer in. Three people including the bartender. Some fishing show on the TV. Otherwise empty. Best not inflict our expectations on the bar of people looking for a quiet drink and to see someone land a bass.
We go our separate ways, having had a good night, but not having to expect a hangover.
Man, David Cronenburg is a weird damn guy. It's strange seeing this take on psychic powers after being raised on the idea with X-Men cartoons. Instead of it being some tolerance allegory, it's just this movie drenched in paranoia and isolation and conspiracy.
Plus after that great opening display, I kept expecting the effect to repeat itself later in the movie which made me wince and go "Oh god no!" every time things got too intense and people started spasming. Also one of the greater villain introductions I've seen.
Patrick McGoohan? Even a badass as an old man. He acts circles around anyone else in the movie and I still can't shake the feeling that he had the special ops experience to out mind-game and wrestle anyone in his general vicinity.
Vanishing Point Sometimes watching a movie, you can tell the director is absolutely in love with someone in their movie, be it the lead actress, a city, or a political ideal. In Vanishing Point, Richard C Sarafian is no-holds barred, head over feet in love with the 1970 Dodge Challenger and the way it can rip across the beautiful vast American Southwest. Yes, this is a love story, and I ain't talking about the flashbacks that Kowalski has about his lost girlfriend. It's about having a great car you know how to drive and amazing scenery to drive through. And not letting the stinking MAN get in your way. The definition of journey over destination. Why does he need to get to San Francisco at 3 pm tomorrow? Who knows? Who cares? Next month, I might get a chance to stop off at the abandoned town that they used for the radio DJ set. Here's hoping!
The Fury Kind of a companion piece to Scanners in a way, but with a whole lot less batshit awesome. It tries to be more human, less alienating, but it kinda peters out towards the end.
But it's hard to top a foggy junkyard chase in 70s cars where a disguised Kirk Douglas is bossing around some brainless cops.
"If you see Childress, ask him about his arm." "What about his arm?" Kirk snarls "I killled it." and jets off in the car into the lake.
I was lead to believe there would be way more one-armed John Cassavetes. And that would have made things about a million times better because he's just pure hatred. I love it, he fits it so well. He used to be this sensually-faced movie star and age and hard living just cracked his face into a million lines of menace and hate. He walks around with his one arm in a fancy silk scarf, with a black leather glove and it seems conceivable at all times that he could just decide to have everyone in the room with him offed because they offend him with their total uselessness.
But he isn't in it nearly enough, and it descends into this "righteous father fighting to get back his son" thing with some weird "destiny that we should meet" type psychic girl thing that isn't quite as interesting.
Hell of an ending though. Dark. Almost makes the rest of it worth it.
