by notesfromachair

A Twee Too Much

There are a few things I need to get off my chest.

I won’t be seeing the Jurassic Park reboot. I found the first one interminably dull after a short while and this was at a packed screening in cushy seats where other people were loving it.

My flat screen TVs, all of which are smart (certainly much smarter than me) have become the enemy. If I so much as graze one of their buttons in the wrong way I am left with nothing. No sound, no picture, snow or a frozen image. This can then only be remedied by calling one of five sources for help (all of whom I’ve bothered more times than I can remember) – a call which is even more embarrassing than admitting this problem publicly to all of you.

I’m tired of people who can’t carry a tune or barely can sing but seem to do so quite well because of modern technology, passing themselves off as musicians and singers – and convincing the record industry and downloading public this is so. You can’t croon or play if you are unable to achieve the effect without the help of heavy machinery.

Losing ones hair and figure is not fun nor is working out more than you ever did in your lifetime just to maintain status quo, health or to just look presentable enough to avoid scaring small children. On the other hand, cutting into your face or having fairly recent medical school graduates inject you with poisonous waste products from exotic animals so your skin can seem as taut as the sheets on a new recruit’s army cot seems even worse. And certainly more expensive.

Ronald Reagan was a TERRIBLE president and don’t let anyone reinventing history in the forthcoming election year try to tell you any different.

because a picture of Reagan would make me barf, enjoy this litter of puppies

This all started with a screening I attended of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl this weekend. No one likes a good cancer movie more than me, and certainly there isn’t a guy on the planet who gravitates more to an indie tearjerker – especially one that sold for near record millions at Sundance like such predecessors as Little Miss Sunshine – one of my all-time film festival (or any other kind of festival) favorites.

Now I hope all the filmmakers who made Earl go on to have long and happy careers (Note: They all inevitably will), not to mention most of the actors, who mostly did stellar work (Note #2: You can decide the muggers for yourself when/if you see it) and seem to have been enjoying themselves during filming. But if I have to watch one more hip, young, piece of cinema demographic filled with endless snide, deprecating dialogue bouncing off of colorful, macramé-like images shot through endless gradations of a fisheye/crooked/or skewed lens, I WILL just spend the rest of my life inside, watching my smart TVs, where I vow I WILL call one or more of you to figure out the problems with each and every one of them.

And just know by that time there will be many, many more.

It’s writer-director Wes Anderson time – meaning that’s what 100 minutes of Earl longs to give you via an unfresh and un-new visual and storytelling style– which in turn is unsurprising since WA’s frequent producer, Indian Paintbrush, distributes this one. Yup, it’s Quirky McQuirk-Quirk, Jr. with just a dash of sincere 60s/70s film homage and postmodern emotionless emotion thrown in.

And now I’m exhausted…

Question: If Odd is the New Norm then what is the New Odd? Would that be Mundane? It brings to mind the master originator of contemporary postmodern, David Lynch, and when he made The Straight Story in 1999, a pretty conventional tale of an older man crossing several states to visit his dying brother. The director publicly admitted that he had gone just as far as he could go with strange in his past so he decided the truly revolutionary strategy for him was to go plain. So just who will step up and assume the mantle of the then mid-career David Lynch? Anyone? Bueller?

Or perhaps let’s put it another way:

PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE — will someone make an impression out there doing PLAIN – which these days merely means unadorned and with a lack of tricks???

And not from this guy.. please

I knew the moment I saw Wes Anderson’s Rushmore 17 years ago and was left dazed and confused – something I have never been when watching a Richard Linklater film, by the way – that I was in trouble. But never did I dream that Mr. Anderson would be responsible for a commercial cottage industry of distanced, strange and bizarre just for strange’s sake.

This, of course, is how I also felt as a very, very young man when everyone was making such a fuss about National Lampoon’s Animal House, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Ghostbusters. I mean, they were fine, all fine – but the notion that they’d spawn endless sequels, reboots and their own cottage industries? Well, no wonder the president of Columbia Pictures didn’t hire me for that film development job in the 1980s – especially when I answered my personal favorite studio film of the previous year was Ordinary People. What an idiot I was. Though Ordinarily People could clearly be rebooted today – albeit with hand drawn animated inserts for the teary parts and with Mark Ruffalo and Parker Posey playing the parents of – the young new Miles Teller?

Coming soon to a theater near you

By the way, I think Miles Teller is among the best of the best in Whiplash and The Spectacular Now. He might yet one day win an Oscar even though his older generational acting doppelganger, Michael Keaton, never has (Note: He should have this past year). I also believe Miley Cyrus is very talented, imaginative and not a flash-in-the-pan, Amy Winehouse was not for a moment ever overrated and that the pastiche conceits of American Horror Story works every bit as well in its way as do the broad and stylized comic turns of both Broad City and Girls do in theirs. (Note: Coincidentally, Me, Earl and the Dying Girl was written by American Horror Story alumn Alfonso Gomez-Rejon).

But sometimes it is the job of each of us, especially those who have no other platform to do so other than in an obscure personal blog, to rail against the popular – to call out what we perceive to be The Emperor’s New Clothes.

The gay community, not to mention any number of other un-American US citizens tried unsuccessfully to do this all through the Reagan years of the eighties – when during that president’s stewardship AIDS became a pandemic and tax cuts for the rich and corporate deregulation helped spawn the economic meltdown of the late 2000 naughts we are all still recovering from.

Yes, I am on a soapbox but how else do our collective voices forestall Jurassic Park 33 – which you all may think you want now but, trust me, your grandkids will be cursing you for. Those same kids will also likely be listening to the new 2100-age, as-of-yet unborn Sinatra singing live in each of their rooms through some kind of still undiscovered clone entertainment mechanism. And by the way, these kids will have all also adopted their own brands of voluntary male pattern baldness for their inevitably overweight selves because certainly by that time they won’t want to look like their grandparents – since at that point they will all be sporting perfect bodies without exercise and be tossing around their long luxurious manes of intact original hair thanks to some new, priceless and certainly voluntary (Note: Though we all know socially it won’t be, not really) medical option.

Welcome to the Twilight Zone

I’m not sure I’ll be around then – yet given the aforementioned advances there is a possibility I could at least still be carted about like an old embryo in a trendy Mason jar. However, I am 100% positive I still won’t get Rushmore, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl or Ronald Reagan.

Generation gap, my eye – the latter of which might actually be all that is left of me. If so, it will still be just as discerning as it ever was despite what the majority is saying.

This, as Martha Stewart says – and you know that SHE will definitely still be around then – is a good thing.

01.25.15

by notesfromachair

Balls

Who would have thought the word could conjure so many meanings. Certainly not a non-football fan like myself. But the point here isn’t the shock, outrage and banner headlines caused over the fact that 11 of the 12 footballs thrown by New England Patriots star/pinup/QB Tom Brady at his recent AFC championship game win were a full 2 lbs. under minimum ball weight requirements (10.5 lbs. per square inch vs. the minimum 12.5-13.5) – thus making them easier to grip, throw and catch– but why ANYONE AT ALL is surprised.

Amen, Chairy, amen.

Is there really someone out there who thinks business is fair? Or even, at the very least, consistently above board? And yes, football is foremost a business. The NFL is the most profitable of all American sports, generating in excess of $9 billion (that’s with a “B”) of revenue each year. And just because none of that money comes from me don’t think for one second I am going to back away from a story this good – or timely – especially when it involves or even owes to balls in any context.

But neither should you.

The meaning of this “scandal” has nothing to do with the size of Mr. Brady’s balls or whether he or his team is punished for playing with ones that are too small. After all, under NFL by-laws the recommended fine for altering ball size is just $25,000. Even if one were to multiply that by the 11 balls in question it would still only come to a mere $275,000. Percentage wise that would have about as much effect on the New England Patriots as the ticket you or I receive for parking our cars at an expired meter. Probably less.

Tom & Gisele’s LA mansion has a moat. #nuffsaid

Rather – the importance of this story is hero worship and how much we Americans can talk ourselves into believing in anything about the iconic people or institutions we truly admire. In order to topple said person or institution in that strata the proof has to be beyond rock solid – it needs to be both superhuman and have undeniable consequences for the world or aggrieved parties far beyond the specific incident – and in counterbalance to just how much we value the iconography of the culprit.

And even then there is no guarantee a certain percentage of minds will ever be changed in reference to said icon or those like-minded icons in the future who follow in said icon’s footsteps.

exhibit A

I haven’t mentioned Bill Cosby, Woody Allen, Roman Polanski, O.J. Simpson, Richard Nixon, Pete Rose, Wall Street, stock brokers, hedge funders, your local police, the legal system, your local realtor, or the entertainment industry in general or specific here, but feel free to fill in with a name, institution or particular system of your choice when appropriate. These are merely the ones who come to mind for me off the top of my head.

All this said, there is no reason for one to automatically condemn any or all of the above. We all – each and every one of us – benefit from time-to-time by having the “inside advantage” when we can. Okay, I suppose there are some exceptions but I find myself at a loss right now to think of one. Even Mother Theresa realized the value of good publicity for her cause. Not to mention the necessity of fundraising off of it.

The material just writes itself

Part of this reality has merely to do with human behavior. I don’t consider myself a cynic – just more of a realist. In other words, I don’t romanticize the acquisition of a lot of fame, money and public success because at a certain age, if you’re paying attention, you see all the pros and cons, ups and downs, moral and yes, immoral choices or passive participation – which is sort of the same thing – that goes into it.

I have no idea if Tom Brady is lying about his “balls” (Note: why couldn’t he just say footballs – was it a deflection of attention, aside from his 8000 mega-watt smile and perfect color gray sweatshirt on his perfectly filled out…oh, forget it). Or if Coach Bill Belichick is. Any more than if I really know for sure 100% just how much Richard Nixon knew of every single detail of the Watergate break-in, Bernie Madoff’s wife and sons got the full extent of what he was involved in, or if Bill Cosby, Woody Allen or Roman Polanski knew the entire breadth of the violations they were committing when they did. (Note: Though I do have my VERY STRONG opinions). Still, instinct tells me none of them were completely innocent and many of them are completely guilty. The question is how much, to what degree, and how severe their punishment should be. The one reaction no one under 35 is really entitled to in the lens of 2015 is sheer, unadulterated surprise.

Can we trust anyone that looks that good in a gray sweatshirt?

This IS how the world works. Change it, write about it, prosecute it but don’t get up on a soapbox to express SHOCK (Note: Or even feign mild taken aback).

There is a song lyric in Stephen Schwartz’s critically underrated yet mega successful musical Wicked where the phony Wizard of Oz sings to green witch Elphaba – the latter of whom serves as the moral compass in this real story of Oz and who dares to challenge the false political rhetoric the Wizard is feeding his people in order to keep them in line. As the song Wonderful goes and the Wizard sings:

There Are Precious Few At Ease

With Moral Ambiguities

So We Act As Though They Don’t Exist….

This was right after a conversation where, when Elphaba accuses him of lying to citizens of Oz in order to keep them happy, he retorts:

Elphaba, Where I Come From We Believe All Sorts Of Things That Aren’t True. We Call It History. **

(** Note: Though it is impossible to know, one might credit the musical’s book writer Winnie Holzman with that line, or perhaps even the writer of the original novel of Wicked – Gregory Maguire).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_c4JuzT_X5E

This musical, still running strong on Broadway after 12 years and in line to be the longest running Broadway show of all time at some point, is based on Maguire’s 1995 novel of the same name. On so many levels the show is about the Reagan era of the eighties (and beyond) – a time when Americans were mostly thumbing their nose at the homeless, embraced the idea that greed was good and ballyhooed trickle down economics. This mushroomed into a no-holds barred economic prosperity where everyone could buy a house, borrowing against anything they did or didn’t have because the ingenuity of Americans and the belief that their markets could sustain anything. At least, that was the narrative we lived to then that continued for several decades until the economy massively crashed. Never mind that the Reagan era eighties were also a time when the pandemic of AIDS had taken hold in America, most specifically in the gay community which saw mostly homosexual men dropping dead left and right with little help from the counterintuitive Morning in America speeches the American public bought lock, stock and 8000 mega-watt smile from Pres. Reagan. The lack of actions of that administration to aid the others in American culture was at full force and the gays, the homeless and soon – though they wouldn’t realize it until later – the middle class – were expendable. Forget same-sex marriage, we’re simply talking about survival – and in relation to what we were being sold it just wasn’t important back then – especially when it came to others.

Another Patriot in question

So as a gay guy in my late twenties at that time who managed to survive, my view of reality behind the rosy curtain has clearly been colored. Perhaps too much, though, I’m not so sure. I’d rather err on the side of skepticism and then be surprised when everything turns out better than I had hoped than buy into a fiction that doesn’t exist and will pollute the reality and ideals I – and all of you – live by both right now and in the future.

Perhaps you can see, then, why I am never shocked, surprised or even mildly roused when the elite in sports, politics, entertainment, business or any other of our top dogs are found to be taking liberties in order to attain or maintain their #1 status. The day we decide to take these transgressions a bit more seriously – both for those who commit them and with our own behavior – will be the time when perhaps my own mood will lighten towards Tom Brady and his balls. Though even then, probably only just a little. As I stated upfront, I’m not and never have been much of a football fan.

notes from a chair

Tag Archives: Ronald Reagan

A Twee Too Much

Balls