It’s been a while since I watched this. I forgot how uncomfortably disturbing it was; the perfect metaphorical encapsulation of America’s insanity, then and now.
Everything sick and venal about America, the glorification of guns and violence, of racism and corruption.
It is America, in its most unsettled base.
Target: 1500 words
Written: 740 words, novel: Father Lightning
Read: Call For The Dead, John Le Carre
Comics: WildCats Adventures 1-2, WildC.A.T.S. 15-16
Music: Firestarter, The ProdigyI wish, but I don’t feel like I could ever open up to a therapist.
I like the show though.
Harrison Ford is one of my spirit animals (we share a birthday… Patrick Stewart as well, which is equally cool).
(Also Julius Caesar and Cheech, so you know, pretty good crew.)
Target: 1500 words
Written: 1421 words, novel: Father Lightning
Read: Call For The Dead, John Le Carre
Comics: WildC.A.T.S. 7-10
Music: Fire Water Burn, Bloodhound GangYou know how when your favourite artists love something, you kind of assume that because you’re into their work, you’d also be into the stuff that inspired them?
Like if Foo Fighters said they were into the Clash and the Ramones, I’d be like, I feel that, man.
That doesn’t always work. For example, I understand why Kurt Cobain would be into the Vaselines or David Bowie, but I will never understand the Meat Puppets.
The same, apparently, is true of Steve Aylett. I found him because multiple authors I was into said he was so good and groundbreaking and awesome.
Yeah.
I don’t get it.
The Crime Studio is an entire book, essentially written in the style of Luis telling his heist story in Ant-Man. And while that can be a funny bit over the course of a minute or three in a two hour movie, it’s annoying as fuck over a hundred and fifty pages (while simultaneously having the gall to slag Updike, Amis and Delillo – dude, you’re not better. This is college kid trying on an 80s movie punk persona and thinking he’s somehow managed the depth of James O’Barr, while really only succeeding in pretentious amateurishness posing as rebel pastiche. Who’s pretentious now, motherfucker? That’s right. Pastiche).
So, sorry, authors whose work I respect and adore. In this one, we don’t agree. Thumbs down.
Target: 1500 words
Written: 449 words, novel: Father Lightning
Read: The Crime Studio, Steven Aylett
Comics: Gen 13 v4 37-39, Team 7 v4 0
Music: Fight For Your Mind, Ben HarperI don’t know why.
I just do.
Target: 1500 words
Written: 1919 words, novel: Father Lightning
Read: The Legend Of Bagger Vance, Steven Pressfield
Comics: Gen 13 v4 29-32
Music: A Fight For What Is Right, Closet MonsterBut we watched the new Superman, and that was good, so there’s that.
Golf clap for me.
Target: 1500 words
Written: 328 words, novel: Father Lightning
Read: The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, Tom Wolfe
Comics: Gen 13 v3 10-13
Music: Fearless (Taylor's Version), Taylor Swift (no comment)My god, it’s a day off. No plans. A movie, at home.
Reading a book. Good heavens, whatever happened to insanity?
Oh right, it’s upstairs.
Target: 1500 words
Written: 2407 words, novel: Father Lightning
Read: The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby, Tom Wolfe
Comics: Gen 13 v3 6-9
Music: Fear Of Music, Talking HeadsIs Jonathan Franzen going to someday read this, and call every publisher out there to blackball me?
I’m sorry, Mr. Franzen.
I take it back. It was wonderful and not at all poorly structured and written with underdeveloped characters, meaningless storylines and a deeply unsatisfying ending that inspired apathy instead of thought or emotion.
Of course, this is what apathy looks like. He might even call it a win for provoking a reaction, but I’ll tell you – this is the same reaction I had after my old roommate dragged me to both Star Wars: The Phantom Menace and the first Fast & Furious movie.
I was livid with him.
We have such short lives – why waste it on bad art?
Target: 1500 words
Written: 1549 words, novel: Father Lightning
Read: The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison
Comics: Gen 13 v2 48-51
Music: Family Man, Black FlagLike, I don’t know you, Jonathan Franzen, so you could be a really nice guy. You could also be a complete dick.
I don’t mean to shit on your work. Maybe I missed something. Maybe it somehow flew over my head.
The thing is, I have a really good bullshit detector. When someone’s full of it, I pick up on it pretty damn fast. I called Donald’s rise to fascism the day he rode down that fucking escalator.
So when I see pretentious bullshit being lauded as genius, I get a little pissed.
It’s not that you can’t be a little pretentious. Look at Chuck Palahniuk or Radiohead. The difference there is that they’ve infused depth and meaning and real heart and guts into their work. It’s not just an intellectual exercise to give the appearance of infinite genius, like modern art or Moulin Rouge.
There’s a reason I’ll take the Vandals over Rush any day. And I’m Canadian.
(Rush is bullshit – there’s like two good songs, the rest is show-offy prog rock borefests. Sorry, other Canadians. You’ve got shit taste. Fuckin’ Nickelback, for Pete’s sake).
Anyway, maybe I missed the heart and guts and fun and investment and meaning of this book. Maybe you had a real vision you were passionate about.
Unfortunately, it still comes across like a rough idea that you tried to flesh out in the middle of writing it, but couldn’t keep track and then realized a lot of shit didn’t matter, characters didn’t behave how you needed them to behave and rather than going back and editing to make it all work, you just got bored of it and said fuck it. You even put your lack of care and abandonment of the idea in the book.
You were the voting public, who barely turned up and didn’t give a shit.
So why should we?
Did I just crack the riddle of what people saw in it?
Five hundred pages of poorly written setup, just to give up?
This reminds me of the time I watched No Country For Old Men and it was all build up, and then just ended, abruptly, pointlessly, in a monstrous letdown.
And the Coen brothers I like.
Target: 1500 words
Written: 436 words, novel: Father Lightning
Read: The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison
Comics: Gen 13 v2 45-47, Gen 13: A Christmas Caper 1
Music: The Fallout, DefaultWhere I’ve been awake for roughly thirty-six hours, rented a van too big for the small European streets, and immediately scraped the back right passenger side on the ramp out of the airport parking lot, to which I thought, “thank goodness for insurance”, before being thrust into a five lane roundabout (with stoplights! In the middle!) outside the airport, and we could get out of Lisbon fast enough.
We are Algarve bound, and thankful for it. The scenery is lush and green, with the terrible rainfall they’ve gotten, and distracts us from the fact that everything north of Porto is without power, for the better part of a week.
It soon turns to Sergio Leone territory, before becoming the land of roundabouts, and the taste of a shitty Portuguese beer down by the water and its washed out beach.
There are statues made of washers which are surprising lifelife (and kinda sexy, which is probably a weird thing to admit), but still, pretty darn cool.
And cats. Lots of cats.
So, you know, good.
Target: 1500 words
Written: 3524 words, short story: Never Worked That Hard
Read: The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
Comics: Fables: The Wolf Among Us 40-43
Music: 39/Smooth, Green DayWeirdly, I ate super light yesterday, but did have a customary glass of red wine, as one does, on Sundays.
We drink red wine on Sundays, or so my father-in-law tells me.
He’s also a man who feeds his other daughter ice cream and Coke for dinner on a regular basis, so he’s not exactly the sommelier we look for.
But still, for some reason we do it (and I do love a good red), but it seems to have triggered a relapse from the night before’s horrid gastrointestinal adventures, and now, I sit, having lost another couple of hours of wondrous sleep.
Plus some weird fuckin’ dreams.
Weird fuckin’ dreams, man.
I liked the ones I had before the acid set in; The Last Showgirl apparently wormed its way into my subconscious in the forms of Song and Ship.
Sorry, honey. It was involuntary. I can’t be held responsible for what my unconscious mind dredges up.
Target: 1400 words
Written: 3315 words, comic: The Stuff 4
Read: Full Catastrophe Living, Jon Kabat-Zinn (we're livin' the full catastrophe, all right)
Comics: Fables 135-137, Fairest 21
Music: 20 Years Of Hell, Vol IV, Anti-Flag/One If By Land