Walking out of Lindsey’s was never an easy endeavor. If you made it past Whalin’ Jack and his pool-stick-leg of a thousand-and-one origin stories you had to deal with Big Hurt’s grabby hands, and she didn’t earn the name Big Hurt for her gentleness; she was Swishpit’s tri-county, bare-knuckle, walnut smashing champion.
Tonight, however, I was prepared. I had Leslie poor Whalin’ Jack a shot of his favorite rum and serve it to him just as we were about to cross paths, and I distracted Big Hurt by pointing to the television and yelling LUMBERJACK TOURNAMENT. I felt slightly disingenuous for about three seconds but rejoiced when I opened the bar door and walked out with pain-free-soon-to-be-numb testicles.
With a sigh of relief and a cheerful buzz I travelled homeward down the pavement. Shortly thereafter I stumbled past a prostitute. Typically, I offer no interest in these women. While holding no qualms against their profession, being the mayor’s speech writer I didn’t care to be incidentally caught on a camera phone somewhere and splayed on a social website. I wasn’t one of the people in the spotlight but I was responsible in part for the upkeep of the mayor’s image, and me being caught pain-free-testicles-deep inside a streetwalker wasn’t the best way of honoring my duties. Especially if I wasn’t even shit-pants-hammered or wigging out on a bad batch of LSD; if I were to be caught sober or just slightly buzzed (as I was that evening) – not only was I going to be seen as a deviant, but a sociopathic deviant as well. No thank you.
After a couple of hours of rough sex and good weed behind closed curtains and depowered cell phones, I paid her and sent her away from my apartment, and then showered.
I wasn’t sure what had famished me more, the sex or the weed, but my stomach growled. The weed’s effects reminded me to get a blood test within the next few days. The fridge was nearly barren as I’d been avoiding the market during its pique busy hours. I preferred to shop early in the morning or late after hours to avoid crowds.
My stomach gargled again – blood test – and rejoiced I was to find a batch of apples in the crisper. I grabbed the peanut butter jar and proceeded to spread its contents on to the apple. I took a bight, embracing the crunchy, cold, creamy goodness of it all and as I was about to spread more peanut butter on to the ripe red fruit the ripe red bitten fruit turned to gold.
Timidly curious, but still hungry – blood test - I grabbed another apple from the bag, but after about a minute of passing it from hand to hand there was no transformation. I even spread peanut butter on it, but I wound up with only sticky hands and a stomach demanding more food – blood test. I bit into this latest apple, and that was the key. Instantly the partially consumed apple turned into gold. I bit into another new apple and the same reaction occurred, although momentarily I was disheartened because this most likely meant that I could no longer eat apples, and I enjoyed them quite a bit – sweet ones, sour ones, bitter ones, the ones we made into bongs at office parties, staff meetings, and speech writing sessions.
Sure enough, after a few days of testing out this bizarre gift of turning used apples into gold I discovered I was cut off from consuming a full apple as the gift didn’t apply to any other fruits or foods that I ate, but I was unsure if this gift was a permanent one. At night I walked past the block where I met the Magic Bearing Hooker, but I never saw her again and there were dozens of sleepless nights that were filled with questions, questions about why I was granted this unusual ability: What happened to that hooker? And did all hookers grant magic powers? Should I pick up the next one I happened upon? Although I didn’t want to be barred from eating any other food that I liked, so I decided to allow that last one to play out on its own.
What I did do, I amassed a small fortune quickly and quietly. I began selling these golden specimens as art pieces to the filthiest of the rich; even sold some of the bong-fashioned-apples to several empire established musicians and well known authors.
Despite having all of this money, I continued working for the mayor’s office. Life without purpose was far too boring for someone like me, but I was looking forward to disappearing from society. I never cared for any kind of spotlight, positive or negative, and thanks to a generous, magical hooker, my dream of anonymity was to come true. Thank you, Magical Hooker. Thank you, hookers everywhere.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Something new I learned this week – New Zealand is void of any reptiles. What I found to be even more than most interesting was the bullheaded fortitude of one of New Zealand’s most aggressive predators – the Longfin Eel, native to New Zealand and most recently introduced to the southern parts of Australia.
The Longfin Eel, I find to be, a remarkable animal. It can live in absolute darkness, bottom feeding in the deepest lake of New Zealand, Lake Hauroko, and still slither-swim its way towards the shallow ends of New Zealand lakes undeterred by the presence of other predators or even humans. These creatures can sense a blood within a 2-mile radius which makes them prospective eaters in concurrence with being omnivorous eaters.
There have been tales & factual accounts of these Longfin Eels feasting upon other eels and even human beings, and it is the way that these creatures feed on larger prey that excites me and forces me to respect them so much.
Longfin eels grow up to an average of five to six feet, there are records of as up to eight feet, which are rarer than most – but if they are to grow to such a size they require the proper nutrition, and that is unachievable by feeding off of bottom dwellers and herbivores. These eels are highly capable of feasting on larger victims, and it is their method that I found most intriguing.
A Longfin Eell has several rows of hundreds of back-curved teeth, which allow not only instant penetration beneath the flesh but also an instant snag – and since these creatures can swim backwards as equally as well as they do forwards, they are more than capable of dragging an unsuspecting meal through the water.
Once they have established their toothy grasp, the excitement begins. While pinching down on their meal’s flesh they violently rotate their bodies, much like a power drill, tearing chunks of meat from their captive, and don’t think that these eels are alone for too long because they travel in packs, and once blood hits anywhere near their dwellings – a swarm of Longfin Eels are soon gorging upon a newly made carcass.
It’s funny whom you meet close to midnight. I’m more accustomed to midnight and after, still working out the kinks for this stuff.
Proof that I am a force of nature: I returned from a walk around the trail betwixt eleven and half- past-midnight and lounged my homebound steps right into the company of an unknowing black cat.
I crossed its path.
The eyes widened, eyes as dark as its fur, and it sprinted towards the neighbors yard, leaping the fence right into their backyard where it provided their two Pit Bulls something to claw.
There is project I’ve been trying to get off the ground for a few years now, and by a few years I mean the last fifteen. However, work schedules, deadlines, and other more lucrative projects have kept me from delving deeper into this half-planned creation, but behind all of that is a single, nearest-to-perfect entity that has kept me from pulling the trigger.
Being a lifelong horror fan, I have been fascinated with the gothic arts. The finely detailed architecture suitable for death by impalement, the reality bending, orgy flexing mythology, and the depressing, rage inducing music that can make its listener cut themselves dozens of times over before fornicating with a bat in hopes of contracting rabies and herpes so as to leave a lasting message to both animals and people.
Mostly, I’ve been fascinated with gargoyles, which is the basis for this project that has been hibernating in my long list of untouched/unfinished works. I have no qualms with telling a story that’s already been told because honestly, every possible story has been told – murder, love, greed, satire, comedy – they’ve all been done, just with different twists and alternate takes but deep down they’re all the same stories.
The reason, though, that I keep pushing this gargoyle tale to the backburner is because of Greg Weisman. Greg Weisman is the creator and writer of the animated series Gargoyles from Disney. He was also a writer and producer for the short-lived (and equally excellent) Spectacular Spiderman on the WB network.
I was fortunate enough to catch this show on its premiere one weekday afternoon and instantly I was a fan. The story was melodramatic, the characters were layered and complex, the animation was groundbreaking and breathtaking, and most importantly there were damn good stories being told - too damn good. I never attempted a gargoyles tale of my own until about five years after the show was cancelled and yet all I could still do was compare it to the excellence of Greg Weisman’s Gargoyles. Within the stories, which were very human, Weisman wove in all kinds of mythology from across the globe; from Shakespeare’s creations to Native American symbolic rituals to plain old urban legends, and he was able to make it all make sense and serve a purpose to forward the development of the story and its characters and to this day I still return to it for inspiration or to simply be entertained.
Gargoyles even stirred my current love/hate relationship with comic books as the story from the tv series was continued in a series written by Weisman and published by Slave Labor Graphics.
Last night, I began to explore the world in which my own gargoyle tale would be taking place. I know that any gargoyle epic will instantly and forever be compared to Greg Weisman’s Gargoyles. It set a standard for those of us that prefer working in this genre, and if anyone is to comment that my stories are similar to Greg Weisman’s own gargoyles mythology, I must say I am flattered.
Thank you, Greg Weisman. And damn you for being so good at what you do.
Chewing and chewing, sometimes it’s the next best thing to fornicating – not that the former doesn’t happen during the latter.
The past, I could care less about – I have no qualms, no quarrels, questions, nor quandaries about it. I lived it. I was there. It was boring then, needing to question it is boring now.
Sometimes it's best to not know. Sometimes control means detachment. Always, honor has consequences.
I sensed the soul of my brother prior to his conception. At first, I thought it was the toddler version of spit-up, and then it presented itself as bodily gas before revealing itself to be a singular mental ward associated with pure evil.
That was the night I chose to never sleep again.
The crib was never a place for sleeping, the house was never a place for living; the sun was never for seeing. The night is my fully armed hammock, offering endless comfort, neighborhood accessibility, and volatile projectile trajectory.
The old lady talked to herself. Occasionally the three of us shared a conversation, but we each had our own agendas. All of them ended in gunfire.
What the hell were we talking about outside? It was something significant; I think we even fit sports into the picture.
My Nuggets keep rooollin’. Hope the Spurs finally fixed the kinks in their Tejas Voodoo.
I don’t regret my upbringing. Its wickedness accentuates its awesomeness.
The doctor loves my insurance. Yet, it’s the best conversations I’ve had in a multitude of months.
Certain people get worried when they feel the wind between their teeth. Certain people think breathing is easier without teeth blocking all of that potential vacuuming space, could probably discombobulate a moth if you really tried.
In regards to social commentary and caring my interests are few, but time after time I find it necessary to be informed. Strangers seem to think I’m approachable, acquaintances feel like they know me; I feel the need to be informed, particularly for business situations.
I don’t care for small talk. I know there are decent folks in this world; it doesn’t mean I have to chit chat with them. I’m a conversationalist in an explorer’s sense. I like picking peoples’ brains, exchanging conflicting views while solidifying a guaranteed drunken experience, and whether it ends in bloodshed or not is irrelevant; how much fun we had that night as individuals with similar views, some conflicting opinions, and mouths that never go dry until the hangover kicks in. With small talk, the evening usually ends with the air raid alarm sounding while explosions bombard the city as I’m roaming throughout the catastrophic neighborhood with my hands dutifully throttling someone whom I’ve made my own personal squeaky toy. I still get a kick from watching their eyes bulge from their sockets whenever I forcefully squeeze.
Business is business.
Yet, to progress in this state of humanity one must be prepared for idle chatter. Slightly gone is the appreciation for courtesy silence. It’s the kind one can find now only while traveling on an elevator or perhaps a capacities-full escalator, even in a movie theater. Keep your conversations to yourselves, although being completely alone and still dictating a conversation will throw general onlookers off. The best part of it all though is that they’ll leave you alone, naturally because they think you’re one body away from being considered a mass murderer. In actuality, alienating the general public sometimes becomes an evolving art.
Politics, social media, forms of entertainment; just a few categories that I stay up to date on not because I care about these things but because I know people are going to want to discuss these things before I can seclude in my own private world where none of those things matter because they have no bearing on my survival or my loved ones’ survival, and rarely do socially conscientious subjects enlighten me in the ways of eliminating negativity because most of the societal seeds that have been planted were spawned from negativity, particularly on the internet – so much downtrodden personal aspects and wasted negativity located all over that technological whirlwind.
If only assisted suicide by Skype would begin trending; that’s when I’d be tempted to begin acquiring computer hacking skills. There’s an ornery moose in Wyoming that is well aware of my other hacking skills.
Lines get thinner, thicker, crooked; each one an intimate, painful crackling scream by the city, but humankind doesn’t feel it and wouldn’t recognize it until it shivered a bird fiercely enough causing it to shit on humankind’s car’s hood; and in better cases the windshield.
Those lines define relationships between us. It defines what is a friend, an associate, a confidante, the endlessly endearing acquaintance; a stranger, and a stalker.
Television is usually the last media on my mind, mind you I rarely watch it but the noise is priceless. I need noise, that’s why I keep a television. I have music, music instruments, headphones, things that are more dangerous when shattered, and things that purely go BOOM.
The neighbor-baby shrieked. It bellowed a handful’s more. One of the cars left the house, Neighbor Baby occasionally screeching now, but occasionally, harmoniously grunting. Silence settled for an impressive amount of time, even long enough for the missionary car to return home just in time for them to continue being a family – if they choose.
I never craved the taste of raw flesh until that Soilwork concert in Croatia. That entire summer I drowned my urges beneath my subconscious, but when she and I were out in that gigantic crowd; embracing the pulverizing energy on display I couldn’t help myself.
We danced, we grinded body-on-body, but when she turned to kiss me on the cheek goodnight I lunged for the back part of her neck, bit oh so delectably in and tore out her life. I gnawed on her beefy torso chunk, sucking down the bitter-tasting life-force while she slumped downward through my arms.
She stopped clawing at me once her head met my chest and her arms spiraled down my own like raindrops downside a windshield. For several minutes I stared at her lifeless body, and it no longer interested me. My attention could focus only on the jumping, breathing, heart-beating bodies that remained, which made my stomach churn; not because it hungered but rather because it was full, it was pleased.
I never looked into anyone else’s eyes in the crowd afterwards because I didn’t want to remember any potential dismemberments; I only wanted to taste them.
Success is earned. Quite true, success is indeed earned; yet, strangely enough, success must also be accepted – accepted by the individual, by society; by anyone capable of thinking.
I could plant a Cerebral Palsy patient to witness air hockey, and even that twisted cat would find one reason or another to say about a contestant, “This dude sucks.”
Millions of novels have been written, and there are more unread novels in the world than there are price-tagged ones. And while they may follow the path of a dying breed, they also follow a survivor’s path.
There are people in the real world that love to turn a page; written word will never die, it’ll just get digitized while continuing homogenization, paving the way for continued newness; but we'll still be bored, mainly because Destiny hasn't presented itself and Fate hasn't killed us. But we still choose to walk that numbered middle trail; the one that stretches from six o' clock to twelve-thirty, nine-fifteen to three-fortyfive, and two names for every six. Some people are addicted to it.
Success has more than two names. Success always beats the clock.
The coffee was bland enough for me to believe that no one has pissed in the pot yet; didn’t mean I was still disease-free. Keechy’s is a unique diner, but it’s centrally located in a city where progress had long since passed, and it has a bathroom where the sink is an extra urinal.
I popped a synaptic enhancer so I could make a call. It was cherry flavored this month. The appointment to see my bio-enhancement therapist was still on. I really didn’t need it but it’s required after every individual procedure. Even though the capabilities for engaging in bio-enhancement have been widely available for over a decade, people are still people and every one of them reacts differently.
Although, mostly everyone forgets that bio-enhancement began as an underground fetish movement in dank garages and rickety tool sheds all across the Northeast. But once Hollywood accepted it – yet another revolution was abused and sold for spare parts.
Surfed the expressway on my way home, relived the blurs.
I went looking for it this time.
I hadn't driven that way since after going mutually oral in the university parking lot with Shaileen.
I smoked a clove that day,
Drinking a coffee,
The bittersweet aromas lifted the elation; she was that damn good.
We blurred.
I was tired of driving,
It was time to surf again.
Surfing brings back blurs.
I had never experienced anything like that avalanche. Watching brothers dash their heads past the sheltered hut, losing their lives; all pointless.
Luckily, the rendezvous was buzzing a-plenty. We had taken the daily opportunity to invite every single, potentially lesbian female throughout the base to this shindig.
Making out with a Lieutenant isn’t everything it should be. Sometimes they’re better, even worse; but rarely are they dull; so I have only high-octane explosives to think about.
I didn’t feel like cheering for the Knicks. The Melo trade didn’t burn much because it became inevitable, but when I found out Chauncey Billups was going as well – DAMN.
Denver’s win was a proud one last night.
Bulls beat dem Heat. AROOH! Deng backed it up tonight.
Watched Big Willie’s Hancock – see what I did there – really enjoyed it.
Exchanged conversation with a recognized number, but oblivious to the name. I’d lost the number in a swimming pool during the summer.
YES, you are all numbers to me.
Picked up Dylan Dog Casefiles...the movie made me do it. It's Buffyd up, but I'm still watching it; am also wondering which story to read next. I'm non-fictioned out, could use some make-believe now.
Now leave, you smelly, meaty digits, got Regular Show to watch. Do not deny yourself the greatness of Regular Show....
Before instant gratification through mass media, internet, and downloading, there was the treacherous, dismal, forced association prison known as high school. Throughout these years I was blessed to be surrounded by some of the best friends I had ever known. We all took pleasure in different genres of music and respected everyone’s own personal musical abilities and all around intelligence, although some of us chose to shadow our skills and our smarts when an outsider disrupted our circle.
Another musical commonality we shared was our passion for the underground. The undiscovered, the unaired, and the unheard of bands of that time, and with this being the mid-nineties the stuff we preferred hearing was harder to find than a car phone.
One of the hardest records to find was Racer X’s Second Heat (and to a lesser extent,Extreme Live: Volume 1 of their two live albums).
The internet was about to boom in a few years but back then, one could only find these rare and precious gems through magazines, record stores, and other personal collectors who usually took out ads in the rock magazines.
On the easily available Extreme Live Volume 2 was a song called Heart of a Lion. That turned out to be a Judas Priest song that Racer X had covered, but Jimmy being the biggest Judas Priest freak was clueless as to which album this song existed. We searched every one of our known resources, mainly other collectors and more magazines, but we were without luck in finding the song but did discover an older Judas Priest album that Jimmy didn’t own – Rock & Rolla.
Hastily, Jimmy ordered the album, and while it was a good one, Heart of a Lion was nowhere to be found. We felt betrayed; we felt nearly raped and splayed for the entire world to stare and laugh at our hapless high school doinks.
Neither of us was sure if this song was even on Racer X’s Second Heat album, but it was our mission to find out. Racer X Had released only four albums at that time – two studios and two live albums.
Monthly, we scoured the rock and metal magazines in hopes of finding Second Heat in the back-catalogues sections, and monthly the ad that contained the album for purchase always read “SOLD OUT”, and whenever we tried ordering it through the record stores the clerk would tell us it was out of print.
Our disappointment wasn’t so enraged that we wanted to thrash the record store clerks because they were actually very cool individuals who usually praised us for listening outside of the norm, so we would enact our primal anger on our musical instruments because, quite frankly anyone could kick our asses back then.
On a fateful trip to San Antonio, or maybe Houston, or perhaps even Florida – Jimmy and I were two grumpy-go-happy teens wandering a mall that was bigger than the neighborhoods either of us lived in when inside a record store Jimmy cried the elated rocker’s cry – “Duuuude!!”
Racer X – Second Heat, Track 6: Heart of a Lion. And, that’s right; ON CASSETTE.
In accordance with our group’s unwritten law, the first one to find it was the one honored in buying it, unless they were broke; then usually all bets were off and it was first come first serve, but we were all typically broke anyway so the law usually stood firm. But Jimmy did have the funds on him and we both quickly rushed to counter for him to make the purchase.
But our mission was not yet over. As soon as Jimmy bought it we tore the packaging like vultures through a rotting vagabond’s corpse in an Australian desert. Jimmy opened the cassette case and flipped through the cassette jacket. The bi-lines informed us that Heart of a Lion was originally set for release on Judas Priest’s Defenders of the Faith album but remained unreleased. It was a thrilling dead end conclusion.
I love technology, but I don’t put my faith in it, and I don’t have too much fun with it; and while I do enjoy immediate knowledge at my fingertips and having the capabilities of locating any album that I choose to, technology will never replace the thrill of the hunt. There’s just something invigorating about the feeling of disappointment, the agony of a fruitless pursuit, and the excitement of browsing a room’s entertainment offerings and finally unearthing that lost treasure, that priceless gem that you know you will covet and cherish as a unique conversation piece.
I am currently perousing through my newly acquired Dagoba albums; a French metal-industrial-very damn heavy band introduced to me by a friend. They're definitely one of the better new headcrushers that I've heard in quite a long time, fusing the ambient electronics with the soul-stomping riffs while the vocals aren't the average, instant growl-to-melodic transition. The singer likes to experiemnt in between while basing the foundations of the vocal melody on either ends of the extreme.
I am also battling a virus that I probably brought on to myself during a four day "happy juice" binge. It crept up on me, and before I knew it I was 3 days into editing my book, 2 bottles down (not to mention the drinks consumed during the friendly outings in between), and 5 drawings done. I wondered why I stopped but then I recalled the chunk of meat inside my chest called a "heart" that was ready to explode. Even now with every hacking cough I feel my chest tighten, like it wants my chest cavity to develop fault lines.
The book I'm editing is still my Parrish character and his band of night club and noire misfits, but I'm ready to start working on my Drunken Monk concept. Maybe this last weekend was a subconscious soul searching tool, hoping to inspire ideas for the Drunken Monk story. And if it wasn't, too bad because that's what happened.
I remember when my sister came home. My parents didn’t seem to notice the everlasting change morphing the household, but I do. I remember that they no longer interrupted my sleep, no longer interfering with my dreams. I was always a quiet child, never giving them reason to assert their authority over me. Yet, two years later, there she was, crawling into the midst of the hallway, the young tiny treasure that eclipsed the older large ruin.
Her chubby hands emphatically slapped the worn wooden floor as if she was trying to launch herself into sprint with every progressing crawl, and there I stood, looking at her thirstily absorb her surroundings while I cupped dad’s bowling ball with both of my arms without anyone aware of my intentions, not even myself; I just knew that one object was heavier than the other.
I think about my death at least twice an hour. How will it happen? I’m not caught up so much as on the when because I could die before finishing this bloody piece. But still – I often think about:
• How will it happen?
• Will it be painful or subtle?
• Will I linger or will it be quick?
And most important of all:
• What song/album will I be listening to when it does finally happen?
I was exiting the expressway one evening on my way home from the university. I crossed the underpass where a truck chose to ignore the Stop sign and nearly plowed into me, but I – an actual driver and not a simple car steering oaf – was able to swerve out of the way and speed my way ahead of the fool.
During the incident I was listening to Our Lady Peace’s album “Healthy in Paranoid Times,” which was already one of my favorite albums from any band. Through the rest of the drive home all I could think about was that if that truck had hit me and I died, I would’ve died listening to this particular album.
That’s fucking awesome.
I think about all of the different forms of suicide I could perform. I have no intentions of killing myself, so I don’t mind thinking about all of the different methods; and, no, I’m not going to describe any of them either because they are all pure genius and reserved only for me or my characters.
Usually, I try to outdo myself with each new deadly episode. I don’t think it really matters how I go, just as long as the music is right.
The sky was as enlightened as the introduction to the Big Bang. Fireworks erupted everywhere and she kept her best known associates closely by.
The daughter didn’t want to speak to the mother – the uncle was too amused by the facts of it all to even really care about any of it, and everyone knew a cake was being delivered on Monday.
The sirens sounded but remained silent until there was someone appropriate enough to hear them – to interpret them – and inevitably, to damn them.
Every sentence begins with an idea and ends as a statement. Death makes a statement. Death remains an idea.
Meandering the city streets during their prime nocturnal heartbeats is a dangerous thing. Linkward knew this quite well, but his most solemn conscientious moments occurred only during these ruthless hours.
The hint of danger and human waste irked his senses throughout every block. To escape the sense-provoking swill, he would glance at the moon – the only celestial entity capable of being observed from the street floor. The city’s streetlights and blinking, neon temptation messengers were obliterated any chance of undisturbed, natural night sky.
The cats could see it though. They could see the sky better than any human ever hoped they could. The other things cats could sense, smell, see, and taste were the downtrodden souls in Linkward’s unkempt community.
During the previous week at the apartment complex, Linkward’s downstairs neighbor – Mr. Edgerow, the man with urine stains trickling down his front shirt that he attempted to pass off as careless coffee splashes had lost his job at the insurance agency, probably for frequently extending his lunch periods in order to get the elderly Yemen prostitute on Montrose avenue to piss on his chest while he chewed on his necktie and strangled his dick with dental floss.
Those nutritious facts made their way to the forefront of his social notoriety after he was found dead. Rather, when what was left of him was found, confirming his death. His former boss feigned concern for his mental well-being, but really hoped to ensure that Mr. Edgerow wasn’t planning any form of legal or illegal and violent retribution towards his office or remaining employees and potential clients.
When the police rigorously entered his home, dozens of cats fled from the apartment leaving behind only scraps of soggy flesh consumed up to the upper torso. His head was completely intact, aside from traces of cat fur draped across his thoughtless face.
The police found a suicide note in the kitchen, but he had planned to sexually asphyxiate himself to death. The cats sensed his despair – they got to him first.
Like everyone else, Linkward didn’t believe any of the stories about the man-eating cats, but after the scene witnessed by dozens of onlookers at the fate of Mr. Edgerow, now and again during his nightly perambulations through his industrial lover, Linkward would now look to the moon and then into the alleys, and occasionally he would find cats lingering within; sometimes feeding on something behind the cluttered mass of malodorous darkness, and Linkward knew that nothing in life was worth losing faith in yourself over because he had no interest in being consumed by soul-sniffing, moon-gazing cats.
I work. I'm not sure what it is I do exactly, but I know I get a paycheck for it. Sometimes I'm called to the forefront, but usually they need me in the background, behind the darkness; creating the shadows while quickening the pace.
Even the shadow-mover has off-days.
They found a used shell. Apparently, it had my fingerprints on it.
I tried recalling the night I loaded the cartridge but that was useful for only about forty-five seconds. The weather was supposed to be clear all night, meaning I should not have heard anything less than ten pounds scrawling over my rooftops. The spooky bastards they sent after me were at least one-hundred-and-fifty-plus.
They were all dead weight once me and mother nature were through with them.
Prancing across powerlines,
Listening to the signs of the times; forward is forward
Even when progress incidentally declines.
Losing velocity and devaluating property,
Hearing the heartbeat; feeling the pulse
Of My City...
My sweet city.
Discovered this afternoon that an old acquaintance passed away; I didn’t dig for details because I knew this person for several years and during the latter parts of our association, everyone that knew him could see him slipping deeper into bad health created by a life of self abuse.
He was a good person, however, even good people have bad habits and he allowed those habits to control which avenues most of his life took. He was highly intelligent, gifted with a vivid imagination and a knack for entertainment which he never fully pursued. He and I shared parallel demons at one time, and I knew whatI needed to do to make a positive difference in my life, and I had hoped a light switch would click inside his brain, but he was set in his ways and if he did want to change he wasn’t going to do it willingly anytime soon.
When someone asked if I had heard about this person recently, I already knew what they were waiting to tell me – he had died.
Quite frankly, I’m not interested in the whens and hows. I’m just thankful that he is finally resting peacefully; without pain for the first time in what I am sure were several decades, no longerchased by demons. He was always kind, as generous as his means allowed him to be, and loved making people laugh. That is how I will remember him.
I had a friend named D. I hope I still have a friend named D.
She manipulated time and music. Previously, I thought she flexed her depth, but once time started swerving before mine own eyes – FTW – this one might hurt.
Every time we rode together, we always finished songs.
You feel those moments when you find that you are where you’re supposed to be, but the song’s not over.
Cruising with D, the songs lasted until the end; she made sure of it. She’s magic, she manipulates your patience; she’s the shit.
She’s D.
Monday, November 01, 2010
I hear tales of this DB. On El Dio de los Muertos, supposedly his strength equals his rage, and if he kicks a man's crotch both testicles end up in one sack.
He was no longer accustomed to awakening this way. The hangover threw him for a loop, but his past alcoholic instincts kicked in and he quickly scrounged around the kitchen cupboards for his sister's weed.
He found the pipe.
After placing it on the petri dish he resumed scrambling for the goods.
BAM. Right behind the foreign coffee, not the Maxwell House stuff; like she always did.
The terrace provided all the types of freedom available before she moved in. He loved his sister, but the trick she pulled to move herself into his apartment was a cunning feet worthy of either only Satan or Santa Claus - and he hated them both because each represented his father's fist against his face while his sister was abusively relinquished under holiday cheer.
He hated her too. But he loved her. She was his sister, and every time he saw her he could not help but think about all of those years when he was knocked around the house by their drunken father while their passive mother stood by and watched until she was born - then all three of them watched while the drunken father knocked his ass from room to room while their passive mother never said a word, never lifted a hand to protect him; never disinfected the cuts running crimson downside his body.
But it all came back in that sadistic evening. His greatest girlfriend told him to meet her there. The love of his life was expecting him to be there. He walked into that bar, only to see the love of his life kissing the ex-boyfriend of her life.
She saw him.
He walked out.
She ran after him.
He dipped into the soul of the only spirit that ever knew him. He dipped into the city's shadows. She ran right past him, calling his name. Maybe she was sorry, but he didn't care. He knew what he saw. He knew what he felt. It was dad's backfist all over again.
The moon tried hiding behind a blown over valley of saddened clouds, but the night was too young and in tune with the excitement of the city, so that astral speck of supposedly lifeless rock shined brightly upon that damned California city.
Detective Windsor Alvarez stubbed out his cigarette on the forehead of the lifeless bum passed out on crystal meth in the alley's corner entrance before making his way to the crime scene. He could smell the murderer from ten feet away, not because the bastard was near but because the douchebag had left that condescending scent behind.
After dressing his hands with the latex gloves, Detective Alvarez pressed his hands upon the descended driver's side window, peering his head through the opening, knowing that The Strawberry Slasher had struck again.
The alignement was different but the murdering premise was the same. The corpse was splayed out across the front seats. Its left arm had been thrown over the passenger's side seat. The killer wanted the visual to make more of an impact this time. The bastard was gaining confidence.
Downward, all along the chest and stomach area was where the victim had been sliced open, probably again with a razor, but this time the wounded area was surprisingly clean. Strawberry Slasher had cleaned up the slaughtered areas before implanting the freshly picked pseudofruits, outlining the trajectory of the brutal incisions. The fact that the killer had enough time to execute such a detailed scenario made Detective Alvarez hate the city even more. But not as much as he hated Florida. And not as much as he hated his first name.
Leave it to me. I just finished watching Lucio Fulci’s New York Ripper for better than a third time, yet the film still tantalizes me; quacking, gutting, and all.
I left the homegrown theater that was showing it, and upon entering my car, I immediately recognized the scent of strawberries, plunging me into an evolution of paranoia. I fashioned myself into my personal driving position.
Instantly, my meandering wonderments struck an anonymous diatribe amongst personalities – “THIS IS IT? THIS is how I’m going to die? I couldn’t be butchered by some inbred, chainsaw wielding psychopath; NO – I’m getting killed by the Strawberry Slasher?! - A deranged serial killer that kills victims while distributing a strawberry scent.
I’ve spent half of my life trying to convince my mother I’m NOT gay, and the other half trying to convince my friends that I was too busy to hang out, hoping that they would think I WAS gay and leave me alone, but here comes the Strawberry Slasher. This slayer doesn’t care about sexuality or situations. This one’s an impromptu killer. He or She hates everything and everyone while indulging in the finer scents of life.
I was really hoping for the garden tooled maniac; instead I got the pleasantly smelling black sheep psycho.
I awoke on the highway, sprinting past a drop-top BMW as the driver chatted on their cell phone. Instinctively, I knocked it from her grasp, flipping her off before the curse words had a chance to echo up to the blue sky.
What direction do echoes travel? Upwards I presume.
I was travelling forward, and that’s about all I knew. The previous night I had been working the door at The Firewall. I couldn’t recall anything out of the ordinary happening, but I couldn’t recall anything that happened after locking up the front, but as I gasped for breath I could feel a slight striding pain at the base of the knap of my neck; like someone had pierced it, probably injected me with something. Whatever was it had to have some ephedrine in it because my legs felt like badly worn semi-truck tires ready to blow out. My quads were pulverized, ready to snap; luckily my hamstrings were holding it together, and my dick was harder than a diamond.
Turning the mountain’s corner strained my body but there was nothing within me that suggested I should stop, because if I did I feared my heart would explode. The blood needed to keep rushing, I needed to keep running.
The wealthy widow, Violet Venable has lost her only son Sebastian. While vacationing in Europe with his cousin Catherine Holly, Sebastian was murdered. Catherine witnessed the entire ordeal and has since slipped into madness, uttering incoherent rants for which Violet requests her to be lobotomized. It is up to Dr. Cukrowicz to agree to the procedure, but first he hopes to help Catherine come to terms with exactly what it was she saw which will also uncover the secret that Violet hopes to keep hidden.
Suddenly, Last Summer is originally a one-act play written by Tennessee Williams and is a monologue orated by Violet, so in order to turn this single person play into a full length feature film might seem tricky but director Joseph L. Mankiewicz and legendary screenplay writer Gore Vidal along with along with the original creator Tennessee Williams made the material transition from stage play to the silver screen in a smooth fashion, extending Dr. Cukrwicz’s involvement in the ordeal and expanding on Catherine’s character. The only issue that felt slightly forced was the growing romance between the Catherine and the doctor; it seemed out of place but Elizabeth Taylor was one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood back in 1959; I lost my breath a few times while watching this movie, so I’m sure Montgomery Clift didn’t object much.
As Violet, Katherine Hepburn turns in yet another memorable performance. Whenever she is onscreen she unleashes her talent upon the world and everyone else is just trying to keep up, even making everyone around her better actors. That year both Katherine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor were nominated for Best Actress at the Oscars for this film. Taylor does indeed shine as the emotionally vulnerable and mentally tortured Catherine while Montgomery Clift plays Dr. Cukrowicz with a granite-like expression as he acts powerfully with his mind and through his eyes throughout most of the film.
Suddenly, Last Summer is a powerful piece that keeps the mystery fresh, the tension high, and the audience engaged.
The knocking on the door turned into kicking AND knocking. I awoke from the last pleasant slumber I could recall only to walk from my room, past the living area of my apartment so I could open the door for my Uncle Phillip.
He limped in, taking his favorite seat; the one that faced the television so he could read the reflections in case anyone else entered the room. We shared a cup of tea at the table in the midst of the kitchen area, and by sharing I mean I poured a cup for both of us, but I knew he wouldn’t even take a second look at his offering.
“How are you?” Phillip asked.
“Fine,” I said.
“How’s Meredith?”
I was clueless on my answer. Uncle Phillip had been dead only a month, yet I didn’t have the guts (pardon the pun) to tell him that Aunt Sonjya was already dating; some chiropractic schmuck that lived out by the island. He’s actually pretty cool.
“She’s fine,” I said. “I think she’s come to terms with everything – she’s fine.”
“Good,” Uncle Phillip said as an earthworm dripped down his right cheek, pouring from beneath his right eyeball, biting on the last physical remnants of his rotting right cheek. He could smile, frown, or embrace apathy; either way, his teeth were going to show.
“She’s happy?” Uncle Phillip asked. It nearly broke my heart to answer him, considering how awesome of a couple him and Aunt Sonjya were, but I wasn’t about to lie to family.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Good,” was Uncle Phillips reply, but by the look on the rotting, sagging gray flesh of his brow and his sinking eyeballs; it was more than an admittance of being passed over – it was more like a relief because his greatest treasure was happy.
When I awoke the next morning I was still at my kitchen table. Apparently Uncle Phillip and I partook in a game that required tequila shots. I dragged my wishfully dead body to the front door. I opened it and peered into the hallway where I found muddy footprints departing from my apartment back to where dead bodies go and where memories of the dead blossom.
The Penguin Pool Murder & Murder on the Blakcboard
Directed by: George Archainbaud
Written by: Willis Goldbeck
Based on the novel by: Stuart Palmer
The Penguin Pool Murder explores the case of a murdered stockbroker whose body is discovered at the local zoo. Inspector Oscar Piper (James Gleason; Arsenic and Old Lace) is called in to solve the case but he doesn’t count on a wise-cracking school teacher, Hildegard Withers (Edna May Oliver; Drums along the Mohawk), becoming involved in the solving of the case.
Penguins are some of my favorite animals despite their grotesque lifestyles, but that joy took a backseat to the pairing up of Inspector Piper and Ms. Withers almost immediately after the two were paired together and started trading banter. Hildegard Withers was always one sarcastic step ahead of the oafish Inspector Piper, and it was wonderful to witness the evolution of women’s rights and steps to equality in American cinema.
These two would be paired again in Murder on the Blackboard when a local music teacher is found dead. I enjoyed this particular film just as much as it’s predecessor because the audience got a chance to see these characters evolve which is something I was personally not used to witnessing during Hollywood’s Golden Age. The dialogue was just as sharp as it was in The Penguin Pool Murder and it made me yearn for a modern interpretation of the Inspector Piper and Ms. Withers.
I don’t mean remakes, but the way Gleason paraded like the chauvinistic male did during the 1930’s only to be mentally and morally sideswiped by the independent and rambunctious Edna May Oliver was some of the most entertaining Hollywood products I have witnessed in quite some time, and their chemistry left me wanting more movies involving this madcap crime-solving duo.
Slithering strands of light protruded through the window. If they didn’t show him the path to exit his room then they would have served no purpose at all.
He leaned over and grabbed the last photograph they had ever taken together. It was a simple picture frame, but the memories inside of it were far more complex and much happier than anything else that had crossed his mind these last few weeks. The morbid scenarios that looped through his mind lately had nothing to do with that photo and had everything to do with finding new ways to stop breathing.
He had no intentions of killing himself. Death was just something he thought about every day, at least once every hour ever since he was a six years old when he saw his mother jump. There were times when the method was something amazing, like being flung wildly through a hurricane as he crash landed to earth strapped to a parachute, but what he focused on was the feeling. He knew that when he died his death would not be painless; it just wasn’t his type of luck and certainly not his style.
Her eyes were the most glamorous things he had ever seen. He missed being able to look into them every day. They were mysterious, gorgeous; they represented everything that he loved about her, and every time she blinked his heart skipped a beat, and now that she was gone his heart stopped beating all together.
He drew back the curtain, turning the illuminating slithers into blinding, enlightening piercings. There was a trail of unwashed dishes leading from his bed where he sat to the hallway where they first made love inside what was then their new house. They had barely handed the check over to the realtor and practically forced her out the door. They would have invited her to join but it had been a long day and neither of them had that kind of energy. It had been a long day, he remembered. Now, everyday was pathetically drawn out between the sunshine and the moon-rise, but he refused to die because he knew that if he died he wouldn’t be able to remember her anymore.
The stench of the piled corpses had seeped into the flavors of every meal we cooked. The dead-body-walls weren't so disturbing or distracting anymore. They were kind of useful to tell you the truth. If any of them shifted or even seemed out of place, the suspected incongruence served as a pleasant warning that the Rambling Nomads were returning.
The downside wasn’t that these drug-fueled mad bastards killed you, it was that they were so strung out on the expired psychiatric medication and bush league speed that they cooked in their camps they couldn’t shut up long enough to kill you. They’d beat you senseless, maybe dismember an appendage or two while blabbing nonsense about tax reforms, the first time they licked a snake's dick, or how many snowflakes it took to drown someone before the drug-crash started kicking in and they needed a new fix. Once they got it, they’d run a few dozen miles before they realized they were clueless about their new location, so they’d just set up a new camp. If some of them wound up alone, they’d just hook other travelers to their paltry narcotics.
Even the delirious had enough awareness to understand that no one could survive this era completely alone.
The double doors guarded secrecy like dust settled on old things. There they were, like I had always seen them only with a slightly important difference, now one of them was slightly ajar. The darkness behind it may as well have been a waving finger, inviting me into the unknown. I knew the big guy was still after me but once the silent siren of the new darkness gestured me towards the forbidden room, I forgot about the chainsaw-wielding psychopath that could not have been more than one-hundred yards behind me when I first entered the house.
I pushed the door open, away from the beckoning emptiness and waited for the creaking to spoil my elusiveness, but the silence reflected the seriousness of this part of my trial, and being the greatest warrior meant honing the patience that came before that ever elusive moment of spiritual discovery, and I was always taught to stand up to fears – all kinds of fears – and horrors.
The room was carpeted gray; the whole identity of these quarters was completely opposite in tone to the ransacked, floor peeled kitchen area before it. There were chairs and plastic fern trees decorating two corners of the area. It was a polite waiting room made eerie only by the gloomy shade and the wicked chamber that partially illuminated my side of the window but was brightly lit on the other side.
There were no stairs, no doors, and no other windows that I could see, only a grungy tiled wall. In fact the whole enclosure resembled an Olympic sized, ill-kept swimming pool without any routes for escape. However, I had to press myself against the glass to see exactly where the water was, and it was well below the floor level of the house, embedded tightly into the earth, and at the bottom of this devious pool were humanoids – what exactly I could not tell. At first glance they looked like normal, full-grown humans curled up into fetal positions except instead of being spread out into single vials they were all gathered and grown in this one monstrous pool.
Olive is a social ghost at her California high school. She is never invited to parties and chooses to make up fake boyfriends to spend the weekend with and be dormant at home rather than spend time with her best friend Rhiannon, who badmouths her all the time and whose parents happen to be nudist hippies.
Suddenly, while Olive (Emma Stone) is being interrogated by Rhiannon (Aly Michalka) she utters the biggest lie of her young adulthood – she finally lost her virginity to her fake boyfriend. Through the split-second magic of texting and social websites, Olive has become one of the most popular women at her high school’s dating market. Olive does herself no favors when she begins accepting requests and gift cards from socially inept teenage boys who ask her to admit to having some type of sexual escapade with her. As she does this, her friendship with Rhiannon is fractured and Olive becomes the target of the overly zealous Christian school group led by her one-sided nemesis Marianne (Amanda Bynes) who wants her run out of town. So, Olive figures that if everyone thinks that she is such a whore, she’ll act like the greatest whore known throughout a state known for some of the best whores, both figuratively and literally. But then Olive learns that being thought of in such a light and being the most popular girl in school makes her lonelier and much more miserable than she ever could have been when she only had one friend.
Her only roads of hope are her charismatically liberal parents Rosemary (Patricia Clarkson) and Dill (Stanley Tucci), her eighth grade crush known to the school as Woodchuck Todd, her English teacher Mr. Griffith (Thomas Haden Church), and her own wits, which she is losing more and more of by the day.
I fell in love with Emma Stone’s character. She is the kind of female (especially teenage female) that Hollywood needs more of; she is intelligent, humorous, and does not need acceptance from any social clique other than her family and the friends she cares about, but she’s still a teenager and human, even though science still has yet to prove that teenagers are indeed human at all.
Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson portray the kinds of parents that any teenager could hope to have. They steal the scenes that they’re in. Thomas Haden Church continues his coolness as the untypical English teacher Mr. Griffith, and it was a sweet surprise to find out that Lisa Kudrow portrays his wife in the film and they’re characters become relevant to the story during the middle of the film.It was a treat seeing Amanda Bynes returning to an abnormal character, which is how she got her break into entertainment in the first place.
However, as witty and charming as Easy A begins, shortly past the halfway point the film becomes a bit disjointed and I found myself looking for laughs instead of being pummeled with them. There is a nice tribute to the late great John Hughes that Olive enacts but after that it seems like the movie is relying on pop culture references to deliver the jokes rather than the smart characters that had been created and established before. And every teenager in California appears to be thirty years old or older. I’m not sure if that is serious miscasting or too much time spent in the tanning bed.
Easy A is definitely a “chick flick,” in nearly every sense of the word, and that is definitely a good thing; especially when considering all of the social horrors teenagers, the girls especially, are forced to endure. Olive is a wonderful onscreen role model and even though the movie loses steam after the midway point it is a movie I would recommend to anyone, regardless of age and gender.
Set during Sweden’s medieval era, The Virgin Spring tells the tale of Tore, a prosperous farmer who has always done right by God and has raised his family to do the same, however the family is unaware that the adopted and pregnant daughter Ingeri secretly worships Odin the Norse God.
One morning, Tore asks his youngest daughter Karin to deliver prayer candles to the church. Mareta, Tore’s wife, asks Ingeri to accompany her foster sister. After the two set out on their journey, they come across a mill by a stream where they become separated after Ingeri chooses to converse with a one-eyed hermit. Karin chooses to continue down the road while Ingeri remains behind only to sense danger while inside the mill and runs in terror.
Karin meets three sheep herders, brothers, and accepts their company when she sits down for lunch. The two oldest turn on her; they rape and murder her, then steal her belongings. Unbeknownst to anyone else, Ingeri witnesses the entire ordeal.
Before Ingeri can return home, the three brothers coincidentally arrive at Tore’s farm seeking shelter for the evening. Tore welcomes them, but when one of them offers to sell Mareta one of Karin’s dresses, the man who chose to follow God’s will now seeks a father’s vengeance.
The cast is superb with Max Von Sydow as the emotional Tore and Birgitta Valberg as the stern but motherly Mareta. Gunnel Lindblom plays Ingeri, spending most of the film splattered with mud across her face, which matches her character’s disposition and is only multiplied by Lindblom’s constant scowling. Birgitta Pettersson does a smashing job as the ill-fated Karin as she is spry and lively as Karin is young and naïve.
For a film with such a disturbing plot it is beautifully rendered on film. Ingmar Bergman was at the top of his game while making this movie. The cinematography is as poetic as the themes behind the story – themes of religion, nihilism, and innocence. The script was written by Ula Isaakson, adapted from a 13th century Swedish ballad Tores dotter I Wange, while much of the imagery and subtext of the film was also inspired by an ancient Latin tale, The Three Living and the Three Dead. The Virgin Spring would later on inspire horror veteran Wes Craven to create his movie The Last House on the Left (1972).
The Virgin Spring is a work of art with a cast that honors the director’s intentions, and together they made a gorgeous film about the evils that corrupt and maim what is good in this world as they explore one of the most difficult subjects – what makes us human – and what happens to make a person good, to make a person evil, and what happens when that unpleasant moral shade of gray
Bree Osbourne (Felicity Huffman) is going through changes, significant changes. Bree Osbourne was once Stanley Chupak, but Bree never believed that she was meant to be a man. Now, Bree has been approved for gender reassignment surgery but before her therapist allows her to proceed with the operation Bree must resolve one last issue from Stanley’s past.
Bree receives a phone call from a New York jail from Toby Wilkins. Toby (Kevin Zegers; Wrong Turn) is looking for Stanley, his biological father. Toby needs someone to bail him out of jail and Stanley is his lone resource. His mother committed suicide and his stepfather wants nothing to do with him. Toby has kept himself alive by committing petty crimes and prostituting himself.
Bree travels to New York posing as a Christian social worker and bails out Toby and tells Toby that they will travel back to California so he can be reunited with his real father; meanwhile Toby has his own agenda as he is hoping to break into the adult film business. It is a road trip that neither of them will ever forget.
Transamerica was quite funny. I’m not sure if that was the intention, although there are plenty of intentionally funny moments but there is a lot of humor to be found in the developing relationship between Bree and Toby, especially since the two are meeting for the first time and discovering what kind of person the other one is tornado-like fashion. It made for a nice character piece.
Sunday, September 05, 2010
The world needs a twisted movie about the underground world of professional air hockey, w/a climax that has someone's guts getting sucked down the goal-vaccum.
When I first watched the fake Grindhouse trailers that Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez presented to us back in 2007 during their Grindhouse resurgence films, the only one that I thought really warranted its own film was Machete, and really it was for a single reason – to finally give Danny Trejo his due.
Here we are.
Machete is an ex-Federale. His family was murdered by one of Mexico’s top kingpins, Torrez (Steven Seagal), because Machete refused to be morally compromised. After being left for dead himself, Machete wound up in South Texas living as an illegal immigrant.
Through coincidence and bad luck Machete is picked up by a man named Booth (Jeff Fahey; Lawnmower Man, Body Parts). Booth tells Machete that he needs to kill Texas Senator McLaughlin (Robert De Niro). McLaughlin heavily favors strict regulations on immigration, which is what the public knows. What they are unaware of is that McLaughlin also funds a vigilante Minute Man operation that uses extreme force when they feel someone has crossed over illegally.
While Machete does not like the idea of killing anyone, the senator‘s stance on immigration and the amount of money offered to him alleviates most of the weight bearing down on his conscience.
It turns out to be a setup, and Machete is now on the run. His only help comes from ICE agent Sartana (Jessica Alba) and a taco truck vendor named Luz (Michelle Rodriguez), who might or might not be the leader of an underground immigrant revolutionary force known as The Network. They are all out to clear Machete’s name and expose Senator MacLaughlin.
Machete is another all-out tribute to Grindhouse cinema. The music is raw, the vibe is trashy; the film is even manipulated to look scratched and gritty. Danny Trejo plays it cool and dangerous. Jessica Alba and Michelle Rodriguez are perfect polar opposites in character, style, and approach. Cheech Marin’s few moments of screen-time are some of his best in quite a while. Lindsay Lohan looks like shit, but she seemed sober enough while filming a role that seemed tailor made for her. It was excellent to see Jeff Fahey back on screen. Don Johnson does too good of a job as a sociopathic, redneck vigilante, and Robert De Niro looked to be having the most fun out of anyone else. He finally acts as a character and not just Robert De Niro with or without an accent. And it’s funny listening to Steven Seagal cuss in Spanish.
The action scenes were well intended but not all of them came off looking good, which might have been intentional because the fight scenes in classic Grindhouse flicks weren’t award worthy pieces of action art either. Also, it doesn’t help that while Danny Trejo is in excellent physical shape he is sixty-six years old; and not Chuck Norris’ or Sylvester Stallone’s type of sixty-six years old. Danny Trejo is a man familiar with alcohol, cigars, and other heavy drug uses from past harder times in his personal life.
The movie also seemed too long for its own good. By the time the climax was finally in sight instead of saying, “cool,” I looked down and whispered a covert “thank you.” I wasn’t too keen on the political agenda in regards to illegal immigration but one also might understand that many of the original Grindhouse films like Combat Shock and Humanoids from the Deep were heavily layered with their own political views against Vietnam and the environment, respectively.
Then, there was the tidal wave of CGI blood. It served its purpose but took something away from my own personal experience. I’m just addicted to my carnal cinema servings of corn syrup, flour, and food coloring. I prefer CGI blood in video games or a very disturbing Pixar film.
Machete is a movie with serious views behind it but is not a movie that takes itself too seriously, which might help or hurt it for different people in the audience. The cast gels easily into Machete’s world, and there is no one else that could pull this role off other than Danny Trejo. Danny Trejo IS Machete.
Please Give is writer/director Nicole Holofcener’s third film. It focuses on a group of acquaintances in New York City intertwined by an elderly woman. Kate (Catherine Keener; Full Frontal, Death to Smoochy) is a bleeding heart; she is overly sympathetic to everyone else’s plights in life and it drives her family crazy. She is trying to save the world one homeless person at a time. It’s an ironic trait for to have considering she and her husband Alex (Oliver Platt; Frost/Nixon, Simon Birch) own and run a furniture shop which they keep stocked by buying deceased peoples’ furniture and selling them at a significantly higher price, and when they’re not occupied with store business, they are raising their fifteen-year old daughter Abby (Sarah Steele; Spanglish), whose biggest problems in life so far are bad acne and being disallowed to buy a two-hundred dollar pair of blue jeans.
The couple has been waiting for their next-door neighbor Andra, a loutish, soon to be ninety-one year old woman, to die so they can purchase her apartment to expand on their own. Andra is looked after by her granddaughter Rebecca (Rebecca Hall; The Prestige, Frost/Nixon) while the other granddaughter Mary (Amanda Peet; Saving Silverman, Identity) can’t seem to wait for the old hag to croak.
Alex and Kate invite Andra and her two granddaughters to their apartment to celebrate Andra’s birthday and suddenly their lives start becoming more and more intertwined with one another. Some of the experiences are good, others are bad, but all of them are challenging because each person is looking for someone or something new to lean on for emotional support.
Please Give is a somber tale about what happens when people and relationships grow old, and when something new and interesting enters your life, it is all about how you interpret the experience and how you react. The acting was fine. No one stood out over anyone else which was a good thing but there are spots in the movie where you might start checking for the time, but the movie is worth sitting through. There are some funny moments but no real laugh out loud scenarios. The humor paralleled the bleak but hopeful story.
