Burning Out the Next Twelve Days

School is around the corner and I'm burning up the last few days.  What's in store for Better Live?

Well first, I'm planning a Stanley Kubrick movie marathon.  Won't be a mind-bender like the Lynchathon but should turn us deeply introspective.

The plan:
The Killing  (1956)
Dr. Strangelove  (1964)
2001: A Space Odyssey  (1968)
Eyes Wide Shut  (1999)

Spans his entire career (ignoring a couple movies before The Killing) and four different genres.  Genius-level inspiration- highly anticipated.


AU and D.C. will give me plenty to write about especially when I rejoin forces with the Tin Can Partier- Benjamin Miller.  I see only glory and fortune in the future.  Pretty similar to what I see in the mirror...

"I suppose if it was 9:45, I would think it is after midnight."

So here it is- the post on the David Lynch movie marathon.  What's that?  You weren't anxiously awaiting its arrival?  Hush your mouth, young one.

David Lynch is one of those crazy bastards that directs movies so intense he dares you to ridicule them.  Assuming, of course, you weren't lobotomized by the time the credits roll, and rendered able to only groan in anguish.  I approach these guys like a challenge, to see if I can beat them.

My friends and I watched, in this order-

Blue Velvet  (1986)

Mulholland Dr.  (2001)

Inland Empire  (2006)

Eraserhead  (1976)

Total play time: approx. 8.9 hours.

We didn't give much thought to the order before watching.  We started with Blue Velvet because my friend had already seen it.  As for the others... it was whichever downloaded first.  Turns out, we watched them in  the perfect order, from the most straightforward to the most abstract.  

Blue Velvet tells the story of a young man investigating the origins of an ear he found in a field.  He uncovers a terrible underworld of drugs, sex, and evil within the charm of his small town.  Starring Kyle MacLauchlan as Jeffrey Beaumont and Laura Dern as Sandy Williams.  Isabella Rossellini plays Dorothy Vallens, a singer mentally ensnared by Frank Booth, played by Dennis Hopper.  I'll say this here:  Dennis Hopper is the most effed up actor in a mainstream movie.  Take an early scene for example:  Jeffrey Beaumont is hiding in a closet, hid there by Dorothy Vallens.  Frank comes in to her apartment and begins what we can only assume to be a ritualistic rape, heavily breathing in a drug and crying out for his mommy, stuffing blue velvet in his mouth and Dorothy's.  My friends and I were terrified.  We were also dreading the rest of the night.  Would things get worse?

With Mulholland Dr., yes and no.  The tone of the movie was not so violent but started to feel more like a nightmare.  Hailed as Lynch's masterpiece, Mulholland Drive is a ceaseless avalanche of his thoughts and imagination.  I would try to give you a synopsis or a summary, but it's damn near impossible with a movie this abstract.  Basically, Naomi Watts goes to Hollywood, meets Laura Harring, they have some steamy lesbian sex, and before you know it no one is who you thought they were.  Or maybe they were all the same person.  Like I said, the tone is nightmarish.  I consulted Roger Ebert (hail the bastion of all things reel) to make some sense of the movie.  His advice?  

"This is a movie to surrender yourself to. If you require logic, see something else. "Mulholland Drive" works directly on the emotions, like music. Individual scenes play well by themselves, as they do in dreams, but they don't connect in a way that makes sense--again, like dreams."

So that's what I did.  I sat back and let the scenes and colors and sounds wash over me.  I feel stupefied.  I felt drugged.  But I did not feel happy.  Ebert called them dreams, but I still disagree.  Nightmares all the way.  One thing did make me happy and that was the arrival of this character:

That is Billy Ray Cyrus being an asshole, mullet and all.  WTF?

Midway through the marathon, the sun had set, dinner had been noshed on, and we were content in our seats once more.  Time for Inland Empire.

                                     

Key locations: I was on the right side of the television with my laptop open in front of me.  Lauren was directly across from me with a blanket.  Lydia was behind me clutching a pillow.  Tyler and Carolyn were far back into the room sharing a couch.  These are important details.

Inland Empire is the Arc de Triomphe of abstract film.  David Lynch calls upon Laura Dern's acting talents once more, to play an actress struggling against the temptation of her costar.  An actress playing an actress struggling against an actor playing an actor.  Inception, anyone?  

Laura Dern has come a long way since Velvet.

At first I was \=, then I was [=, then I was D-:<

That final picture is one of the many startling scenes from Inland Empire.  The plot barely kicks in before the crazy takes over.  Allegedly, the movie is the projection of her psyche, going completely apeshit because of her conflicted feelings for her co-star.  Whatever it is, it scared the bejeezus out of me and my friends.  I realized at one point I was hiding behind my laptop, clutching the top of my screen.  Lauren had the blanket at her nose and all I could see were the tips of her glasses.  Lydia was trembling under her pillow.  Tyler and Carolyn were petrified but safe because of their distance from the screen. 

Three hours later, we could finally breathe easy.  We had subjected ourselves to the most random assortment of nightmare imagery ever assembled this side of Holocaust documentaries.  The time?  Nearly midnight.  We were exhausted, but not because of the hour.

Last on our list was Eraserhead.  We started it, unsure of what we would encounter, but determined to finish the marathon.  Nearing the end, we were emotionally drained and jaded.  Nothing could freak us out, right?

Bzzzz, wrong!  Look, the tagline of the movie even says, "Be warned.  The nightmare has not gone away."  A prescient statement for his earliest movie of the bunch.  

Little in the movie made sense.  The guy on the movie poster is a scared man in an industrial nightmare (look, that word again!).  A mutant baby is thrust into his life, a temptress sucks him into a pool of metaphorical sex fluid, his head is turned into an eraser, and a woman with ovaries on her cheeks stomps on large, rubbery sperm.  Oh God.

If someone can explain this video to me, I would love to hear you try.  I need a good laugh.

And yet, for all the absurdity, I couldn't tear my eyes away.  Eraserhead was the shortest of the four films, but certainly the strangest and the most atmospheric.

At the end, I was scared silly, drained of energy, and ready to collapse.  One of the best ways to spend a day.  Or three days... or maybe it was all a dream...


Cheesy endings aside, here are a couple links.

A more emotional account of the marathon by Lauren Hank

My intense narrative written sometime during, but I don't remember doing it.

The list of David Lynch's works, in case you want to dive in for yourself.  Just be careful.

The Black Keys, Better Live? Stupid Question

I saw the Black Keys for the second time at Penn's Landing on Friday.  Definitely near the top on my list of favorite concerts.

First, the venue is amazing.  For those who haven't been to a show at the River Stage, put it on your to-do list.  It's an outdoor amphitheater with a small flat area in front of the stage.  I was one of the first people through the gate and planned on rushing up to the stage but my friend pointed out that standing a couple steps up was the best spot.  We were eye level with the band and still only 15 feet from the stage.  Brilliant.

The crowd, too, was very good.  Hipsters and young people (hipsters aren't people) filled out with some older folk rocking out with beer.  Our experience was almost ruined by a couple drunk assholes, but luckily they were too wasted to be truly obnoxious.  Overall, it seemed like everyone there was on the same wavelength, but that could be attributed to this guy:

Kurt Vile.  "Would it be curt to call this vile?" -- Ben Miller

Kurt Vile is a Philadelphia native and he was recruited to fill in for The Morning Benders to open.  It was him, an older guy with greasy hair, and a woman on harp.  The crowd was settling down, waiting for the Black Keys but possibly patient enough to sip a beer through the opener.  In other words, this guy had one chance.  He started finger picking his acoustic guitar.  Heavy reverb and delay masked any possible sense of melody.  The greasy guy started playing guitar; the noise just got more confused.  I could steal a few notes out of the cacophony from the harp.  

And then he sang.  

If I could type the onomatopoeia for yodeling into a kazoo, I would.  Instantly, everyone in the crowd started looking around to see if their neighbors were listening to the same thing.  What the hell?  Kurt kept on singing, his hair covering his face, most likely in shame.  Greasy guy wore sunglasses.  Harp lady was oblivious.  Pluck pluck she went, rocking out.

Every song sounded the same- off-key screaming and finger-picked guitar shoved down an endless hallway.  It's funny I said hipsters aren't people above, because I found that picture of him on this blog, Hipsters Eat For Free (but please, don't feed the hipsters.  It just encourages them).  I think 'Andrea' had a lobotomy before seeing Kurt Vile because she describes him thusly-

"You know how some people seem to have an aura around them? Kurt Vile is one of those people. Although not much taller than me, he seemed to loom like a giant over the crowd, his face rarely peeking out from a thick, messy mane of hair."

More like, he hid behind his hair and sort of mumbled at the microphone, encouraging the crowd to bond over their mutual hatred of all things Kurt Vile.  If you do read Andrea's blog, just keep in mind that anything she says is actually the complete opposite.

So... I spent most of this blog complaining about Kurt Vile instead of gushing about the Black Keys.  But there's not much I can say without sounding like any other fanboy.  They are one of the best musical acts touring right now and you have to see them live.  The guitarist, Dan Auerbach, adds so much to the show, so much that their studio albums are boring and cookie cutter by comparison.  Pat Carney plays the drums like an over-developed twelve-year old plays whack a mole.  And it's all amazing.  Here are a couple pictures.  Sorry for the fuzziness, I was too excited to focus on quality.

                                                  

                                      

                                      

Theroux Examination

Note: I intended to write a blog comparing two of Paul Theroux’s books- The Great Railway Bazaar and Ghost Train To The Eastern Star using a scribbled junket of half-formed thoughts and sentences.  Unfortunately, I accidently returned the second book to the library with all of those notes inside.  Whoever checks out the book next will find themselves overwhelmed with thoughts, recommendations, revelations, and inside jokes, all of which were my planning stage for an long post.  I was annoyed, but writing from the top of my head proved to be a useful exercise, even if it is poorly executed journalism. 

And, believe it or not, the result is a much shorter piece.

If you missed it, I raved in short about Paul Theroux and his modernization of the travel novel a few posts back.  Basically, I loved his observations and wit and I truly liked Theroux, the perfect traveling companion.  He makes the reader feel as if they are both with him and alone, traveling in Theroux’s place.  Most importantly, he instilled a sense of magic (excuse the platitude) on traveling by train. 

In the second book, Ghost Train To The Eastern Star, Theroux retraces his route across Europe and Asia, thirty-three years later.  What a difference those decades made.  He is thirty-three years more wise, world-weary, bitter, self-important, and old.  Gone is the adventurous and open-minded man I traveled with in Railway Bazaar.  He begins Eastern Star by stating he dislikes most travel novels, which are simply recounts of visits to museums, artifacts, and notable places, with a hint of “mystery” and, most likely, invented characters encountered on the path.  Just a couple pages in and Theroux is getting on my nerves. 

He spends several paragraphs explaining how he lost his wife during his first four month journey and then several more on how he doesn’t wish to sound like one of those tired folk, “Back in my day…”.  To paraphrase some of his meta-discourse, he tells those rhetorical old people to shut up about times past and move into the future.

I pushed through the dreadful opening to get to the meat of the book.  Theroux is an excellent writer and I assumed Eastern Star would pick up and entertain.  Nay, dear reader.  Nay.  His trip out of London into France starts on a dreary and cloudy day and he pines for the lost days of charming travel.  He leans his head against the window and makes observations about changing times and changing scenery.  In no way did he avoid sounding like one of the rambling elderly that he slanders in the introduction.

Frankly, Theroux pissed me off.  He’s hypocritical, more sarcastic (in all the wrong ways), tired, and vastly self-important.  He instantly gives off the vibe that he wrote the book to show up the legion of travel writers who followed in his footsteps.  In his eyes, they are cheap imitations of himself, writing only to tap the cash flow of vicarious adventurers.  Oh, Theroux, how can we possibly live up to your expectations?  You set the bar so high! 

I confess that I did not finish the book, and I haven’t read any of his others.  Still, first impressions are half the battle.  If the author’s ethos makes me hate him or her, why should I finish the book? 

This also makes me wonder about the longevity of “seeing it live”.  Clearly, I won’t be writing this blog for thirty-three years, and maybe not even a fraction of that, but Theroux’s change from joyful observer to bitter traveler scares me. 

Life is a series of experiences, each event affects how future events are perceived, and not all of these situations are controlled.  This is an obvious statement but one that needs to be observed because it brings up an important question- what was it about Theroux’s chain of life experiences that changed him for the worse?  Case in point- had I embarked on the same trip as Theroux in Ghost Train To The Eastern Star, I would have seen an exciting new landscape and interesting characters, rather than a dreary landscape and poor people. 

Is it even possible to retain that sense of excitement for travel after spending a lifetime making a career of it?  Is this a case of too much of a good thing?  I wonder if this happens to all people who choose to make a normal life activity into a job.  Do racecar drivers dread the thought of driving home through traffic?  Do accountants hate balancing their own checkbooks even more than the average Joe?  I imagine chefs find the thought of cooking a family dinner to be a heinous chore.   I hate to imagine that this is the rule or even a common occurrence.  I plan to make a career of international service; God forbid I can’t enjoy a traveling retirement. 

And it may seem silly to worry about this now, before I’ve even started a career, but I hope that I can avoid becoming like Paul Theroux, a bitter old man with a massive ego (although I have one of those, too.  After all, I photoshopped myself consoling Leonardo DiCaprio on the movie poster for one this summer’s biggest blockbusters).  So, we’ll see what happens.  For now, I’ll just go with the flow, but it’s never a bad idea to look into the future.

Your Mind on David Lynch

I'm planning two posts about the affects of seeing it live, one about David Lynch and the other about the difference years can make.

The David Lynch post will tell the story about how I and four other impressionable young minds subjected ourselves to the madness lurking in David Lynch's cranium.  Who is he?  One of the most prolific, effed up directors to grace Hollywood.  He created dirty gems such as Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive.  And what was the level of subjection?  We watched four of his movies in a row, which is equivalent to an eleven hour nightmare.

In this post, I want to share with you my mental state near the end of the marathon.  The following day, I was closing out programs on my computer, and found a document open on Word.  I don't quite remember typing this out, and I'm a little impressed with it.  But DAMN.  Here we go:
...............

Look at the couch.  It’s one of those couches without armrests, you know, the ones for laying down.  Fashionable from the 20’s, Gatsby-style.  Look again, it’s the piece your grandmother burdened on the family.  It’s where you had your first kiss.  There’s the cigarette burn from Aunt Tara.  Underneath, a foot pulls itself under.  It curls up. 

Now get closer.  The cracks between the cushions, separate them, push them apart with your finger tips.  Really dive in next, slide your hands down, palms facing out.  Inexorably, you push down, arms akimbo.  You’re afraid.  You touch something sticky.  You remember the foot.  It is disconnected, and you’re really looking down now, you know if you look up, look up at the wall, you will see the face of the man it belongs to.  You know he will be smiling, lips pulled back framing crooked teeth. 

Lost in these thoughts, you stop.  You’re in front of the couch again.  The foot is sticking out from under the couch.  Out from under the couch.  Why?  You slowly crouch down.  It’s an exercise to see how slowly you can move, not make noise.  So quiet you can hear the joints in your knees groaning.  The foot is always there.  What’s under that couch?  You slip onto your knees, and then onto your hands.  A noise behind you.  The foot?

You walk into the room and see an old couch, God, what a piece of trash.  Burns and stains.  You close the door, but you struggle against the warped frame.  The bolt slips into his housing.  Finished, straightforward, case closed.  Door closed.

“And that’s it.” 

“That’s it?”

“The whole dream.  Almost a nightmare, I guess.  You can’t tell me how you arrived or why, but you were in front of that couch in that house.”

“What does it mean?”

................

So yeah, I'll probably be doing another Lynch marathon in the future, and watch for when I finish my post.  It should explain everything.  And by everything I mean nothing.  

Because I Couldn't Put It Any Better Myself

In my last post, I referred to cloud computing and I realize I gave a less than satisfactory explanation.  Sorry!

This excellent article from the Opera portal explains everything in a handy dandy, non-techy style.  The author uses starting a small business as his example, and I'll be honest, who cares, but you get all the good details.

Oh and check out this girl's Tumblr- http://thisisappalling.tumblr.com/.  Love her style and her GIFs.

Cloudy with a chance of Photoshop

In today's post I want to share my excitement about some great new software.  Some of it I plan on using to make my blog more fun and engaging.  Fear not, luddites, this could be of use to you.

The first application I want to talk about is called CloudApp.  This great app (Mac only, sorry Windows users) allows you to quickly upload files from your computer to the cloud.  

First, what is the cloud?  I'm still trying to wrap my brain around the concept, but basically it allows for greater data sharing, faster data access and greater power for mobile technology.  Yes, I'm drooling right now.  This website has five great videos explaining the cloud.  I like to think about it this way:  many of those great apps for your iPhone or various Android powered phone use the cloud to overcome the limitations of your hardware.

Okay, before I stray into territory that I can't quite explain, I'll simply talk about CloudApp.  When you upload the file from your Mac to the cloud, it is backed up by Amazon's Simple Service Storage and saved multiple times, completely safe.  That's pretty cool.  Your file is also given a unique URL that you can copy and paste anywhere for other people to download.  For example, in iTunes I simply highlight the desired song, hit the hot key (for me it's Shift+Alt+Command+Up) and it immediately starts to upload.  A few seconds later I have a URL that I can paste on Facebook and the song is instantly available.  

Try this:  Four Hours in Washington.  Great song, by the way.

This is my personal screen.  I've only been messing around with it for a day, but it works just like I would expect it to.

It is also a really awesome way to create screen caps.  I simply hit Shift+Command+4, make my selection, and the picture is uploaded automatically.  Then I have a downloadable URL at my disposal.  Should make my job easier on here and make me more able to share music and ideas.

Next is a program everyone is familiar with- Photoshop.  But not only do I have Photoshop, but I also have the entire Adobe Create Suite 5.  Oh yes.  

Really, I don't have terribly much to say except that I can't use probably 90% of the power here.  I'll need to hop on some tutorials as soon as possible.  Especially for the new Photoshop, because I used to be fairly accomplished at CS4.  Maybe I'll learn to use Dreamweaver and finally eschew the crap that is Blogger.  C'mon Blogger, you are a tool for multimedia expression; learn to handle multiple media!  

                                       

This is what I see when I open my Applications folder.  Be very jealous.  And a little afraid.

Lastly, and this is something I'm very excited for... Starcraft II will be released July 27th.  

                                     

I want to stress how huge this is-  I was raised on the first Starcraft and have waited many long years for this one.  For those of you who don't know what Starcraft is, expect some updates in the next couple days and then a lengthy post once it's released.  I'll make it entertaining between all the glowing adjectives.  Maybe try out some videos, screen caps... I'll be holed up for a few days.