It seems that we are looking for the next superlative. Not it seems.
And so, yes, there is this obsessive aspiration for someone who is better than the rest. But can’t we do better than all-time? There’s always Steve Martin’s bit, The Master All-Being of Time, Space and Dimension?
But less that. Obviously. The Essential? The Omni? The Fucking Fuck One? Or what about good old Prometheus. The Prom. Let’s bring it back to that.
“How are you doing?” Yeah, well, I have this thing with the night sweats and being unable to stop my brain and not knowing what the hell is going on with my life and thinking I’m just not where I should be. But aside from that, well, yeah, all is good.
No one wants to hear about it. I sure as hell don’t. Nobody does. Not even the Facebook algorithm. (They blocked my previous post about the Anti-Wilhelm Grunt, implying that I was suicidal. Got to think about that one.)
I knew a guy from Croatia named Milan who complained about everything.
“How are you doing, Milan?”
“Well, I’ve got the rash on my arm. And my knee is a little tight. And my digestion. Never been worse.”
I never asked him again. It’s just a pleasantry and we should just all get it together and move on. It’s a new day. We’re alive and the sun is shining. Even if it isn’t.
Post a lovely picture of food and talk about an exciting new series. And what about getting laid! There’s music and dreams and amazing new things to come. And what about getting laid?!?! Who cares if we all sound like cows in the field waiting to get slaughtered? Relax. Look on the cud side.
So, yeah, it’s okay to be down. It’s okay to talk about it. Just nobody will listen. Including me.
The Wilhelm Scream, a stock sound used over many years in Hollywood action films, became an insider joke for sound engineers because it was an exaggerated comical sound. It fit the genre because it was silly and fun.
I suggest a much more harrowing thing be done for the grunt. An involuntary sound, it is primal, a release of terror, pain or pleasure. I will suggest one for each category:
Stevie (John Savage) unleashes a ghastly, breathy grunt waiting in fear for his turn in Russian Roulette in Cimino’s The Deerhunter.
Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) panicked yet controlled release while piercing his hand in Scott’s Blade Runner haunts me to this day as does the death grunt of The Ugly (Lee Van Cleef) from Leone’s The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.
The pleasure grunt is a little more broad, but a simple porn grunt search might suffice. Perhaps try Tanner Mayes?
“Is there anything else I can help you with?”
“No, just the thing I already asked you.”
Communication companies are the worst at communication. Is that an irony, or laissez faire or another benchmark on our continual plummet?
On hold, callbacks, apps, pins, passwords, and the service rep who says, “How can I help?” when they mean “I don’t give a fuck.
Andrew Domink’s Blonde is a mostly dissatisfying film which chronicles most of MM’s iconic moments – the skirt flying up, taking drugs, rendezvous with JFK – all of which can make it tedious. The NC17 hype is silly as well, all because it seems of a brief shot of an erect penis. And while Ana de Armas’ commitment to the role is clear, she is exhausting to watch, pouting and crying at every turn. There are also very strange scenes of a talking fetus which really detracts from the film.
However, given all of this, I was struck by some lovelyshots from Cinematographer Chayse Irvin, especially MM’s final moments, over-exposed, drinking and drugging herself into oblivion. It was a long wait and perhaps even worth it.
Brett Morgen’s Moonage Daydream also suffers from an obsession with the iconic moments – Ziggy Stardust, Thin White Duke, et al – and is further hamstrung by a limited Bowie view of Bowie.
While the visuals are great and many of the song selections, there is nothing on David Bowie being David Bowie except one vague interview that barely touches on anything. It’s not like I was looking for a tabloid tell-all of the drugs and sex mania or even the ego-centrism and abandonment of Ronson and others. It’s just that completely ignoring this aspect of Bowie’s life renders the film, for all of its sound and vision, little more than a Look Video Magazine.
Lanny is a delivery driver and talks incessantly about cleaning the roads of debris to his girlfriend, Vera. He talks about all of the blown-out tires, the plastic and metal of every description, the roadkill in all their decaying stages, all of it dissolving into the pavement, grass and bushes, all of that needing to be cleaned, sorted and dumped.
He then talks about their apartment, how they need to clean the kitchen and cupboards, get everything in order. Vera takes the comments as an attack and tells him she is going away for the weekend. He throws her suitcase down the hallways. She screams at him and he hits her and leaves. He comes home to find her drowned in bath
Gustave Flaubert famously coined the term mot juste. The idea of finding the right word and avoiding synonyms to vary the language was famously seized upon by Ernest Hemingway in his autobiographic tale of boozing and writing in Paris, A Moveable Feast.
I always appreciated the idea and tended in that direction but have come to wonder if it is more so mot paresseux (lazy), just sticking in the word out of habit, rather than some kind of idealization. I still prefer the idea to Mot SAT, but it’s something to consider.
I’m always in a rush to get my characters in place so they can get to having a conversation about what’s on my mind. I don’t paper the walls.
I don’t allow them to find a spot, to gauge the room. In they come and away they go. I’ve got to work on that.
As a writer of science fiction, I have a bit of a problem. I don’t like science fiction. It’s not exactly that simple – well, it is – but it does make me feel a wee bit wonky at times, given my all-in investment into writing The Cx Trilogy.
The problem with the genre is an all-out investment in building worlds, which just boils down to made-up places (planets), odd-looking creatures and weird names.
The thing of it is that it’s just humans in masks, doing the things we do, talking as we do, interacting just the same. In other words, the Orcs, Darth Vadars and Dr. Dooms are identical to the villains of today, just that it’s playtime. This is not my science fiction. I want people being people, fictionalized, yes, but exactly as we are now.
My book, Anori, begins with Hurricane Sandy in New York City and goes from there, all the way to another planet. Some of the names might be odd – Och, Nico and Pax, for example – but they just signify the change that comes, which is not good, and thus the point of the fucking genre.
So, here’s to changing things. (And to blogging twice in one day, a first for me.)
I’ll tell you where the hell I’ve been! In some tech black hole where the server won’t let me log onto my blogsite, like I’m some kind of fucked-up psycho ranting on about crazy stuff. And even if I am, it’s my right to be like that, goddamn it.
And so, yes, I’m back, at a local watering hole (with wifi that doesn’t screen my flawed genius) sending out a sadly and recently scene from my Anori opus:
“I ever tell you about the Hooded Seal?”
“I know all about that one.”
“The Hooded Seal is born off the coast of your island, Newfoundland, and it has five days to suckle. Then it’s on its own.”
“It’s a tough world out there. We all know that.”
“Five days to figure out how to fish, or else it’s dead. Five days or you’re dead. You know how far it swims, Fitz?”
“Everything is a long way out there.”
“It swims across the Labrador Sea to Greenland, all of that, a thousand kilometers, following along the continental shelf. It eats tons of shrimp and squid.” Dee put on a kettle for tea. “Oh, and it can dive down to 120 meters and stay underwater for over an hour. That’s something, isn’t it?”
“The seals are better than us now?” He swigged from his pewter flask. “Is that what you’re on about? The dogs of the water? They know better and all that?”
“There are eighteen species of seal in the world, everywhere in the world, and they’ve evolved into what they are.” She stopped, expecting Apollo to be behind her and coil through her legs. “Do we care about any of this? I mean, they’re just seals. We eat them or club them or whatever.”
“You joined her animal group. You told me about that.”
“It’s not about protecting seals, Fitz. It’s not even about appreciating them. It’s just awareness, being aware. And we’re not.”
“Maybe we’re not up to such high demands, Deirdre.”
“Why can’t we be better?”
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