5.19.2015

Good Friday

In n mexico he saw navajo scourging themselves, their acompanadores dragging heavy crosses stitched from mesquite branches; these were followed by spaniards and the navajo women singing hymns. In a wagon sat death beckoning his penitentes to the churchyard where they would compete to be the chosen crucifixion, good friday.

4.03.2015

Hitch Ditch

Fully stocked with Sol beer, Nogales agave, dope weed, weedy dope, inhalers, rebreathers, merc coke, Marlboro reds, Sunny D singlets, organic pork cutlets, Spotify cued to a tight James Gang playlist by an avatar alleging herself a her-self named Juanita, Allen Copatit should have been more engaged with his weekend of tequila sunrises, but no, he was sober, and rabbit holed on YouTube watching Christopher Hitchens decimate true believers; first the rabbi, then the preacher, then the mullah -- there was a joke there somewhere, but for Hitch dead of cancer that only the mullah thinks God cached.

3.14.2015

Maysles Stones and GOAT

Albert Maysles died an old man recently. Is it ironic that documentary not only remains vital, but flourishes on Netflix and the like, whereas 'film', er, 'movies', feel like a limp refillable for the greater world, er, Asia?
Narrative is musical chairs. TV is literature, Video Games are movies, Internet is TV; movies? Movies are a fading but lucrative gimmick for the third world. Like Catholicism.
Maysles. Watched Gimme Shelter again, and seeing Richards/Jagger with Tina/Ike reminded me of an old fantasy booking. Suppose the two groups traded singers?
This is not a Jagger critique, but is Tina Turner fronting the Stones on Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main Street, the greatest fantasy draft rock band of all time?

6.23.2014

Shakespeare Is A Shit

A bit about Shylock from a Philip Roth book: a character speaks on the problem of Merchant of Venice, that it isn't anti-semitism merely, but that the GOAT writer set anti-Semitic thought like concrete with the language it has forever after used. One thousand writers since have seeded their works with the hating/blaming of Jews for the ills of state and planet; it is in some cases, (like TS Eliot), an obsession; comparatively, Shakespeare's work is more akin to the dated, (but horrible clever), jokes of a TV writer. Herein is the tragedy: Mein Kampf itself, with fervid true belief behind it, did less intellectual damage than did Shakespeare's lazy spitballing. 
Art is not like any other trade, in the words of a wrestling promoter: the champ ain't who wants it the most, the champ is who gets over.
For four hundred years intellectuals have argued, excused, and apologized for The Merchant of Venice, they do this for two reasons: the play is a work of genius that cannot be killed off by politics or morality; the work by the author is missing any logical through line of anti-semitism to build a case around. This is confounding: how could a twenty year career of writing contain what might only amount to three weeks worth of a specific type of bigotry? It's a puzzle that makes good critics veer into magical thinking. I've read published criticism devoted to this theory: 
You see, Merchant is not only not anti-Semitic, it is actually a defense of Jews, (by a man who never met a Jewish person), because Shakespeare is writing on a level of symbols and imagery so deep we mere peons can only scratch the surface of it; while no brain has yet cracked William's code, we assure you the code will show this whole play to be a satirical trap to out the true bigots. 
Uh huh. Basically Shakespeare's brain is alien technology, and while the writing is really fun to read, no one understands it to the deepest fathom where, were we able to troll, we would unlock the morality hidden under the cruelty. Treating Shakespeare's writing as a spell book of both white and black magic is fine, (and kind of fun), if you're an actor refusing to speak MacBeth's name, but silly if you're selling your expertise on history and literature.
I have a simpler explanation for Merchant, but it is darker than the above voodoo. Shakespeare isn't too deep for the reader to fully comprehend, he's too shallow. Shakespeare didn't spend one minute thinking about Jews; Jewishness had no impact on his life nor his thoughts; nor was Shakespeare much concerned with religion, politics, love, sex, monarchy, slavery, nature, murder, rape, heaven, hell, war, lust, the sun, the moon, or ghosts. He's just the guy who put the best words together about these things. His mind wasn't hassled by deep thinking on grave matters, deep thinking is unnecessary if a man's shallow thinking seduces and enslaves every subject he danced with. 
As was said about Brando when a biographer asked a witness on how the famed instructors Adler and Strassburg had trained him as an actor:  "Lee Strasburg claiming he taught Marlon how to act is like saying he taught a tiger how to walk in the jungle."
Ironic that Adler and Strassburg are the godparents of modern American acting, when every Pacino or Duvall who subscribed to their co-opted "method" did it because Brando supposedly did. I won't wind this analogy too tight, but look at the great method actors; compare how hard Pacino is working, then compare it to Brando's effortlessness.


I understand that the scale of what Shakespeare's words have had on humanity when compared to how little he might have put into them can mystify; no wonder people need invent conspiracy theories as to the authorship -- they're terrified that this tiger could so effortlessly create their own thoughts with none if that fussy artistic suffering. While genius and phenom are easily tossed off signifiers, to encounter a talent that could read you as a mark, and then inscribe words to the soul he likely did not believe you possessed, words you would always remember, words he likely forgot once the box office was counted, feels like a transgression -- it takes gentle romantic Will, and reconstitutes the image of the man as a venal carny. Unfortunately, this speculation fits the evidence of his life, the country hick, the preoccupation with growing his wealth and status, the chameleon philosophy of his work, the evidence he was a mercenary pen. Critics have nervous breakdowns crafting conspiracies: Will was a front for the true writer, the Earl of Oxford; Will was a pen name for a consortium of poets to safely post their most dangerous ideas; William was a warlock -- any explanation but that Will was a mutant talent, and he used this gift with the haphazard immorality of a man doing the thing that comes easiest to him. No idea was too small, too foolish, nor too classless, despicable, that he refused it his words. The same gift that provided the world comfort in the heartbreak of losing a child, by death or irreparable mistake, (in Lear, Merchant, Juliet), safety to take part in the foolishness of romance, (be you a hormonal teenager like Romeo, or perhaps a bit past your prime as in the Sonnets), is the selfsame creator of cruel violence to please an audience who gets off on it; racism and misogyny for no reason but the fun of it; and no overriding ethic or morality but that ethics and morality is food for rubes and marks. Shakespeare's nihilism is a black hole beyond Nietzsche or Machiavelli. These two constructed life works on how meaningless morality is, Will just improv'd. But then that's the poison of pretty words: within every play is a viable path to be or not to be.

6.13.2014

Dragon Phelan 0.1

Ken K. 1950. Tok.
takes apart his toys.
histrionic disorder.
brilliant mind for engineering.
rebels against authority save for Nori O.
'W.S. sold for 100,000. I'll sell P.S. for 500.'
Macbeth.
Ahab.
No patience for suits.

4.24.2014

Excavation

If we dig up this parking lot, you know what we're gonna find? Another parking lot.

4.10.2014

Music Critic

Early on both Michael Jackson and Prince relied on vocal tics and gimmicks, these squeaks, yelps, and wails had a shelf life for both -- the difference is: at his worst Prince sounds like a ham actor playing Puck if Baz Luhrman envisioned A Midsummer Night's Dream; and Michael Jackson sounds like a child molester.

4.07.2014

Love Poem 1

The book says words
are the dead things in your heart

To my love:
Let me speak of old feasts
Of old loves I am far from
So can laugh at
dissect, dissertate,
Wither why, wonder if,
And close those books.

The day will never come
That I will do this with your book
The day will never come
When I will have the words
For you.

3.10.2014

The Geomancer

In the low he drew lines through the leaves that sceptered the moonlight as it came from over-down the canyon. From this glowing that looked like a prisoner's calendar he arithmeticed the count of days that would get us to the top, where the Captain promised a town of wonders - (likely a trough of rainwater guarded by tremorous natives).

3.08.2014

Chazz On Chazz

I asked Chazz why anyone would want to read his notes on the culture, flora, and fauna, of these small Maine towns; his answer was this, "Have you ever been standing in line at the Valero with your beer, cigarettes, and your scratchers, and overheard the dolt in front of you refer to a certain town as Limtucky?"
My answer was, "Never."
"Exactly.", Chazz said, "I'm like a cross between Italo Calvino and Emilio Estevez: I'll make'ya famous!"

The Man Who Changed Content

Hard to believe, what with all the dreams of an HBO Go freed from the cable conglomerate tether; of YouTube and Netflix and Hulu not as second run content providers, but the models of future media; that it is the last great carny wrestling promoter, (the peddler of content so belittled by mainstream media outlets that his television ratingings are less valued than other sports with less viewers), Vince McMahon who might have stuck the first dagger in Big Tv's entrammeled heart.
The WWE Network is ten bucks a month. It includes the monthly PPVs that did cost fifty. It includes the tape library of every major wrestling television programming in American history, on demand. It includes every WWE pay per view in history, on demand. It is wrestling Netflix, YouTube, and special event viewer, all in one, streamed via Apple, Playstation, Xbox, Roku, Internet TV, or computer. But not available on television in the old way. Vince is the first content provider to cut the throat of that longstanding middleman. Even as cable kills network, the creators kill them.
One wonders how much credit the carny will get once some Bill Maher or Will Ferrell tries the same thing. Certainly Vinnie Mac is not the guy the New York Times is looking to fete. Fuck'em. Just another dinosaur drowning in the swamp, that turd newspaper.
Progress, comrades!

3.06.2014

Schoolhouse

Devil Motel

the dark ones sing the day is bright
and make specious claims
that the Lamb is Light

while in the copse there is a manse
where the dead are props
for our nightly dance