The Inevitable…

I will at some point continue here perhaps, but at present my resources are being channeled into other writing projects and given I have an established thread elsewhere with around a thousand hits a week, working this one into anything like that strikes me, at present, as a good deal of work toward no particular purpose…time will tell.

Grief

I will walk with you down streets to
everything from everywhere,
sit through countless cups of coffee,
rise, descend unnumbered stairs
(what moved and moving everything in me, endures
the end of hope or want but stirs) to stumble
through the dying light and nothing more
and this is what the heart is for.

Thought for the day

Buddhism: it’s all fun and games until someone loses an “i”…

I’m a P (eeve’d) C (rummudgeon)

Internet Explorer cannot
Display the webpage

Most likely causes:

• The website is encountering problems.
• That “overtime” memo the tech boys just got.
• Today’s day has an ‘R’ in it.

What you can try:

• Check your Internet connection.
• Get out more, meet new people.
• Buy a Mac.

Movie Review

Across The Universe

Cross one of the greatest musical catalogs of all time with fine up and coming vocal/acting talent, mix in the turbulent 60s and a tale of discovery and young love and you should have all the elements necessary for an unbelievable love-story/musical. The problem is that as often as not that’s exactly what you get here.

On the surface, this is the tale of a young man named Jude who comes to America in search for his GI father and meets, by turns, a new best friend (a child of privilege fated for the rice fields of Viet Nam), the girl of his dreams (transformed by war and loss into a zealot) and the 60s counter culture revolution with all its highs and lows…emphasis on highs.

The cast is a fine set of mostly unknown, talented, and well voiced actors who move through the movie with the earnest zeal of the original flower children of Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar. This, oddly enough, is one of the films greater failings. What worked for those earlier productions now seems shallow and forced, partly because the people playing these characters are so completely out of their time and partly, I suspect, because there are some genies that simply can’t be put back in their bottle. We know too much, we’ve seen the ending of this morality play and cannot both suspend the normal disbelief required for a musical AND forget that whatever the promise of that era was it has been lost to us, irrevocably. The result is too often joyless for all its mania and we are left like adults being told a joke by a child who is unaware that we got the punch line before he began the telling.

Another difficulty in the production is that, unlike almost every other musical made in the history of musicals this one a series of songs in search of a connecting plot instead of the other way round. This is frequently the cause of hackneyed twists in the plotline or implausible, sudden and jarring shifts in the larger narrative perspective. Interestingly enough, this also provides us with one of the films few moments that actually works. Bono, perhaps more than a little worn/old for his part, enters the film as a California guru riding a pharmaceutical/magical mystery bus and takes our lovers on a trip, figuratively and literally. His version of I Am The Walrus is at once compelling and pointless, a perfect counterpoint to the faux intellectual rejection of structure that was a hallmark of the 60s. But once this moment ends both the lovers and the audience are left stranded and struggling toward the inevitable conclusion/song lying in wait for the movie’s end.

To get to that ending (our story so far): boy goes to America to meet father and meets friend and partner on a series of adventures. Boy also meets friend’s sister, a grieving and sweet victim of the Viet Nam war. Boy likes girl/likes boy. Friend is drafted while girl becomes increasingly involved in the protest movement and boy makes a living as a starving artist. Girl leaves boy for someone whose zeal matches her own and boy is arrested attempting to save girl from herself. Boy is sent packing by the authorities.

Now we’re all set for the movie’s ending, predictably offered to the tune of All You Need Is Love, wherein our boy is inexplicably allowed back into the country to find girl (who has coincidentally learned her lesson) with the assistance of friend who seems mostly effected by his war experiences in terms of hair and makeup…Too neatly tied together? I’m being kind. By the time our movie reaches its climax and the song its chorus the glaring wound of a problem for this film is in full relief: a truly great song wrapped in presentation that simultaneously fails to understand its heart or relate its hope.

All you need is love? Possibly, but that’s the one thing this movie cannot manufacture for all its pompous circumstance.

Thought for the day

Nihilism: it’s nothing to worry yourself over.

Mostly True News

Severed Foot Floats Ashore

VANCOUVER, British Columbia – Another severed human foot has been discovered washed ashore on Canada’s Pacific coast, but police are no closer to solving the gruesome mystery.

The foot, still wearing a shoe, was discovered on a small uninhabited island south of Vancouver in the Strait of Georgia and is the fourth discovered in the region in the past 10 months.

The previous cases all involved right feet still in sneakers, and each was found on a different island.

Police continue to comb local shores for additional clues, but as press liaison Lt. Commander George Haversham related, “Until we get a break of some sort we’ll continue to be stumped…as will some members of the public here in British Colombia, I presume.”

Mostly True News

Hold The Lettuce? Not On Their Watch.

NEW YORK – First the bad news: the Wall Street Burger Shoppe has raised its premium burger price from $150 to $175, assuring its continuing hold on the title of the Big Apple’s costliest burger, as determined by Pocket Change, an online newsletter about the most expensive things in New York City.

The good news? There’s no need to pony up for dessert as it comes with a sucker.

Mostly True News

Iranians Still Outraged by 300

Tehran, AP—The highly successful release on DVD of the hit movie 300 has re-angered many Iranians who feel it portrays them as the descendants of decadent, blood thirsty, evil people and by extension paints them with the same brush.

“The film depicts Iranians as demons…without feeling or humanity,” said Iran’s Cultural Adviser, Javad Shamghadri, “This [movie] is a slander against the peaceful Iranian peoples and one no human being could accept it as truth,” he concluded his remarks, adding, “Death to America. Death to Israel.”

Thought for the day

Tourette’s Syndrome: are you morally accountable if you sort of meant it anyway?