Shrewsbury, Vt

#destinybeta: Earth Girls Are Easy

China Rising

SHAREfactory™: BF4 -- Salty Dawg

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.

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.

Excavation

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

Spring

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.

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.

Metal Geer

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).

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!

Xbrick Is For Mommies

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

Cockalorum

This feller had all the makings of a Napoleon. He was God's own admiral of the public beach; whether he caught you smoking a cigarette, smuggling a few cans of beer, or a slip of sandwich wrap from you picnic caught the breeze, he noted all your failures, and demerits were counted up, if only in his walnut of a brain.

Boy

Jesse

the Omen

God and Devil Playlist

There is a just place to ramp up your righteousness with consideration of powers mystical and omnipotent, and that place is listening to bible music while in your truck, alone; the proclamations of a better kingdom, or damnation, riveting as they can be, are more believable when crooned from out of time by the voices of Southern Baptist crackers - their tinny voices justify the histrionics. I love Mahalia Jackson, but her voice carries the weight of a victimized people: her devil is external, her God she thanks for the place that waits on her ascension. This should work for me, but I end up worshipping her voice, not the depiction.
But consider the Louvin Brothers, the great great great all time singers of songs about booze and pussy referred to as sinning and regret; it's as if the masculine language of these songs, the apocalyptic imagery, self-involved as it is, holds higher power by the very fact the hicks crooning are basically talking about besting a bad hangover when they reference salvation: the God of the Louvin records is a disgusted old tea-totaler, the devil a whiskey trickster with an insatiable hard-on.

Yorker

Flurry

Kittery

Reach

Old Bones

Valentine

To the one I love: You'll never read this, but all the parts of me, the ill, the fine, are activated, live new life every day because of you.
To old loves: I was a poor boy with little to give but that what sold you in the beginning, but I remember every woman that I convinced otherwise, and once in awhile I play the scene where it could have been different.
To those who have lost: A mother, a wife, a lover -- I'll take a moment for you all, and I'll thank something I don't believe in that I have not yet faced such.
Love: Is a hard pair of hands digging in the dirt to pluck the last green, and carry it back to the house.

U Wernt Sad Enuf

The reason is you were not sad enough

To see my notes plucked out from under bed

And satchel'd up with all my other stuff

To cross the bridge and go out like you said

You thought the time was left to do goodbye

You thought hello might time and oft resume

When you returned to see our pretty sty

Was there space for you in that little room?

    Was time rid rough by your reflection?

     Do Tigers feed on nat selection?

                                                            30mar11

Cur

Story Dead of Age

It's not something to think of every day, but once a week? Yes. The best story I ever thought of, one I'm not good enough, or dedicated enough, (both of those likely), to write, once a week I think of.

To say 'the best story you ever came up with', one might think of a magic bullet theory, a tag line that explains 'It's Moby Dick on a bus!'

While that would be a great story, no, it isn't a lightning strike gimmick idea, it is a copse of sycamore fig, and every year the fields grow up around it, and every year they flood out, but the trees stand there in the same place. And once a week I pass by them, happy or sad or feeling nothing.

This blog is littered with the droppings.

The Poesies of Henrich Von Keza

Keza Keza from Moria left

With booze and weed, yet bereft

To the mountains, purple red and gold

In Freedom, New Hamshir, is their weed sold

Keza Keza like indian folk

o'the Res here in the wolk

The wolky wood has curse'd thee true

With desire for beer, dope, and screw 

Murk Tilders 1958 - 2014

Murk Tilders, perhaps the foremost concrete demoist of his generation, died early this morning from alleged complications of an alcoholic overdose. A close friend found him in a ditch beside the Prick and Pony Roadhouse off of Rt 4, in what the unnamed friend is quoted calling, "doin the Ira Hayes". 

Best known for his slovenly work cracking old foundation mix loose from rebar at closed down Bonanza Steakhouses, the construction world is in a state of deep sorrow -- famed machine operator, Ike Speckle, (who worked with Tilders building the Biddeford Target), put out a statement last night, "When you lose someone as talented as Murk, it makes you question, well, just about everything. Maybe all those Heinekens are how he dealt with the amazing gifts he was burdened with."

Across the nation today mourning fans are coming to grips with the fact that Murk Tilders will never again mix two-stroke in with his non-methanol gas, and rip one last floor with his concrete saw.

Murk Tilders, American legend -- his pain nearly a teenth as meaningful as an above average actor's.

Lunch Lady Justiciar

Steakums for the lot of you.

Tater tots for some of you.

But Keith doesn't eat.

The Coca Narrative

1. The big game is over eight minutes in -- thus:

2. 11 drunk hillbillies still chafing over Duck Dynasty get their grandkids to troll the Coca Cola Facebook page -- thus: 

3. Vacuous pseudo-journalists, (who years ago drew their political straws, on both sides -- not out of belief, but for survival), take to the etherwaves, either condemning the ad or the protest .. (because these hacks have never had an interesting thought in their lives they became journalists), thus:

4. The good sweet kind thoughtful and most just progressives, (those not watching the big game so as to catch up on some NPR podcasts), nominate Coca-Cola for the Nobel Peace Prize -- for the bravery to market sugar-cancer at immigrants and gay roller skaters.

Grapple

Divine Nickers

" ..three kinds of players in the cutthroat world of competitive nicknaming: the hicks, those Appalachians of appellation; improvisers of a style likened to the rat-a-tat of a Thompson gun in their titling, men like West Apple Johnson and Saco Sam Miltfill, who ran the circuit for years, coining thousands of nicks still used today, and not one of them capable of writing their own Christian name; then are there the learn'd men, the university wits who took up the back alley game of nicking to test themselves in mastery of the true word of this young countryside -- men like Dr. Alex Messersniff, from a long line of linguists, and an acolyte of Theodius Cram, he took his skills to the nick competition; his books, his theories, he tested against the ingenuity of this cousin'd brethren of the hillside, and often beat them at their game.

-- The final grouping is but the one man: Norman Clay Church. In his own lifetime he was a mythology in the ginmills and opi-dens of the nicking underworld, for in his uncanny gift were the souls of men disrobed of self-serving accouterments. What's in a name indeed..." 

 

-- ELBERG WITHERSPOON 

EXCERPT: 

THE 1931 WORLD TOURNEY OF NAME GIVING --MANHATTAN, KANSAS

-- So it was Norman Clay Church returned to the tourney for the first time in seventeen seasons. Old now, pocked, smelling of whiskey sweat, still the young ones looked on his entrance into the hall with excitement: this man was better suited a painting on the wall than sit with them, and share beans and cigarettes, and drink with them. 

It came that a Mississippian called Tom Dunn approached him, made to publicly test Church in a pre-tourney spat. Here is how it has come down to us:

--"I say Norman, you look like the old canvas banners illustrated with your visage, but perhaps I am seduced to this thought by the smell of you - Old Hat! I call you, Yeasty Carnival Butter!"

-- The crowd of men went silent as senators to Caesar. It was something kin to decrying God. Tom Dunn, feeling the room near convulse, attacked on, "Your capillaceous and royal-hued nose shows your business in the last years -- a Bourbonic Plague, I name thee, Sir!"

-- Small laughter spoke out of the halo of men. Tom Dunn meant to kill the old man here before Norman could be a threat in the tournament that would soon begin, and where men would test themselves as to who could brand the other with the finest insult in the language; (even a washed up) Norman Clay Church was not a thing to feel sympathy for. Cheer him for what he was, and he might think himself it again, if for just a little while. 

"You, Norman, come to us, we as your children, my good man; but after all these years, you've come as but a sad shell spent in a shot awry -- I name thee Piss-skin of the Forest! A bullet of urine, missing every tree!"

-- Here it was that Church, with the arthritic spiders that were his hands, rolled a smoke, lit it, and contemplated Tom Dunn, while all the rest waited his reply.

-- Norman said, "You have drempt this since you were a boy, Tom. But as I am old you thinks I am ripe. I am not so ripe. I am as sour and tough as an old cock o'the yard. Heed me, I will crow soon enough, and when I do, you will, in the auditory, relinquish your other senses to me: I will have you smell the fecal waters of the Nile; I will have you spy the trees of a Gaulic winter closing in on you; I will have you taste your own cold panic as it sweats inward and condensates on the roof of your mouth. You will feel your liver for the first time with this poison I have for you. Know this: I will name thee, Boy! You ladies loan, you wizard fart, you tankard of peppermilk; I name thee Tomcat Foldpants, for in this is the parallel of such a voracious nature as thou hath!  Your appetite hath made you womanly, and all around are you merited for a folder of other men's garments!"

Debt

opinions are desires.

she pushes her cart,

a lumbering colossi,

under the birds

falling from the sky.

the case is pocked 

from climbing stairs 

the way a heart can ossify 

from word counts, 

placards reposted, 

a pyramid scheme of passwords:

her first pet, her first love, 

a marriage she took part in once

a man who's initials

combined with her birthday

unlocks the debt on her visa card

opinions are desires, she unlocks her case.

every ordinary day polished 

every dullard serialized.  And no one stays.

What happened to boredom? she thinks.  

What happened to a man 

who looked for you in the same old place

what happened to not knowing things, 

and dollar bills for the maids.

DMF

being a dumb motherfucker is bliss

best of all, I don't know it, 

I reckon I won't own it neither.

Ugsome Albert

He treated life as if every sundown could be the rapture.

His prayers he carried with him as a warrant.

Grady

Book Club

Merciful Toad : The Urbert Finculper Story

"The true story of an American original born in Canada" -- Carlyle Feng (author of The Micklespurt Manor series)

"Awsom." -- Nw York Nwsday

"This counts as a blog post?" -- Taryn Robberpants (co-author of Cracking the Templar Code Buried Beneath the Papal Conspiracy Just Beyond the Dimension Where We Can Measure the Sound Waves of UFOs Who Were Templars)

"Where do you buy this book? Is it on Amazon? Uh oh, it's a self-published e-read... Fourteen pages, wow, and that's fourteen formatted for iPhone.. Look out, Proust.. I mean, did Urb Finculper die at birth?" -- That guy with a lot of opinions

"I stole this book. I like to be transgressive!" -- Not as naughty as she thinks verbal exhibitionist girl

"Definitive Finculper!" -- USA Today

"Ribbit." -- The ghost of Norman Mailer

January Issue

Freight Release

Francium is rare earth

FR Leavis was a goon

F Roosevelt was svelte 

in the Family Room

Acebook

Mulberry Fields

February 14 near Rockland, ME via mobile

Groovy Ronin

Arundel

MacAdams Gravel

the thin man down

in the gravel pit

his insides moored

by ready mix 

pushing snow

up off the pile

to load the trucks

that sand the town

in olden times

his namesakes would

macadamize

the roads to Ayr

last week the doctors

kedged his guts

he won't see

next aprils flood

Sig Freud, Hardware Store Employee

       

More Of H.H. Lime's Wisdom

"Clean white teeth come from chewing action and abrasiveness."

                                       -- Mr. H.H. Lime

The Quotable Mr. Lime

"Dikes make above ground tanks viable."

                                 -- Mr. Lime

Will's Dad, Glove Maker Recusant

William's daddy was a glover,

He'd hump the day tanning hide.

And though he couldn't read them

He bragged of his son's rimes

Will was true to faith, he'd claim

While squaring cow gut skin to wrist

He'd talk of Tyburn gallows

And note us of the naming lists:

In Stratford while the ladies pray

They mark the recusants in town,

In the shop his hanged gloves fray,

You'd think he'd touched their nightinggowns

Center town, they dragged him sweating

He cursed them all what done as him,

John was kenneled for his debts they claimed

The crows pecked his limbs? That was faith.                                                

                                                                                                     20may11

15jan14

revision focusing the imagery on John Shakespeare as alleged Catholic sympathizer. originally some wordplay mixed the JS theory with allusions to drugs and front businesses. original draft didn't mention WS or his writing past the opening line)

William Faulkner, Blogger

sometimes when you ain't slept, and you passin out on the couch listening to your iTunes, (when you half in dream the rock songs that had become trite from scoring truck commercials sound new again), you might recognize, when you take away the hype of marathon concerts, and judge purely on the recordings, Bob Seger is better than Bruce Springsteen, much better: Bruce sounds like a thoughtful man who wants the tincture of much whiskey drunk in his octaves; Bob sounds like Bob Seger -- the voice the Indians might ascribe to the outsider's drink of choice.

Socrates, Batting Coach

A spitball isn't unfair merely because you couldn't hit it.

Dat Yo Daddy

Lesser Devils

This the allotted night they return to earth, the holiday of the lesser devils!

For all the curs'ed dwellers, those that only barely made the cut into Hell: those who spit their gum on the ground, those who borrow pens and keep them; the public dispensers of milk farts; reality television producers, Jack Nicholson impersonators, and the expert recommenders of television shows two years too late because they just got Netflix.

Hellfire!

Semantics

'You're a fuckhead'

'I prefer iconoclast'

Sind

the last settlement before the desert.

a trapezoidal hill before a river where once families of fishermen lived in mud huts.

when gold washed up with the commotion of these fishermens' nets, 

the casteless out of the lower depths of Tapo Meru crossed the desert on the prospects of merchants' stories:
of stars shining in the mud, 
a constellation of gold chinks.

these were the ones who made bricks from the mud, and walls from the brick.

these were the ones who named the hill Sind and the river Ket.

These were the ones who traded gold dust, and succored the caravans halfway to Tapo Meru

the hill grew crowded with walls and smithy holes and whore stews, 
and the river a sewer.

it was this way until a year an invader army lit the river afire, and tore down the town

and by the winter had built a balustrade out of the bones of monsters, stodged up the Ket, and squatted there for one hundred years.

this exists in a library.

today the hill is what it always was.

an outcropping of limestone overlooking a lethargic brown wash south to the sea.

on the nights we rested there we shared our camp with other merchants bound for Tapo Meru.

they shared wine, and we held a contest of telling tales, the subject the ghosts just outside our fire.

(13)

Drunk Shakespeare

Tapo Meru

after days of nothing but hills of sand, the black trees appear on the horizon. 

they will always be the horizon. they are the highway of Tapo Meru.  an orchard of gargantua speared deep into the sand.

the Arboretum Infelix.

a day-traveling caravan cools in the shadows of these trees
and discovers the illusion.

they were made by men out of many smaller sycamore, 
hard as iron, that long ago had been fished from the northern dams,
and dragged to the desert by slaves.

like fingers clasped together, 
the trees were tied with the fibers of a well known river stalk 
that came with the wood from the north, 
from the rivers of the city -- retted cooked and plaited to make rope strong enough to hold the trees together.

of these trees taller than the eight towers of Tapo Meru, 
(one for each dead king),

not even the ageless inside the city can satisfactorily explain how they were stood.

And Change

For every historic revolution there is a nut who started it for the wrong reasons.

Chazz Amex

Cousin Chazz (@cousinchazz)
used my AMEX to buy a waterbed for my pet snakes. 

#IhaveanAMEX

Cousin Chazz (@cousinchazz)
used my AMEX to rent a Chrysler 300 because my girlfriend is a rapper. 

#IhaveanAMEX

Cousin Chazz (@cousinchazz)
used my AMEX to purchase a box of styrofoam popcorn.  I'm going to mail real popcorn in it, and see if Nana can tell the difference. 
#IhaveanAMEX

Cousin Chazz (@cousinchazz)
used my AMEX to reconstitute the trust my Nana has in me via imagination air money. 
#IhaveanAMEX 

Cousin Chazz (@cousinchazz)
used my AMEX to buy Uncle Steve breakfast.  All he wanted was a liter of Mountain Dew.
#IhaveanAMEX #unclesteveisadrunk 

French Tickle

Gilles de Rais

would

kill the pets

Germany 20 Japan 85

HOF Waingro

1st nominee up for this blog's official Kinematograph Hall of Heroes, (the inaugural class of which will enter Movie Valhalla at the end of this year), is Waingro. 

In a movie with DeNiro, Kilmer, Danny Trejo, Jon Voight, Ashley Judd's world class booty, and Tone Loc, 1995 caper epic, Heat, should rightfully be remembered for Waingro; from the opening armored truck robbery, to the revenge tragedy endgame, Waingro is the irredescent algae in the night sea that is Heat; I realize that reference may be obscure: DeNiro tells Amy Brenneman about this glowing algae while they stand together on the porch of his empty house on the sea. 

And speaking of Judging Amy, Heat is a movie cast touchstone, only paralleled in American movies by pantheon behemoths like The Godfather, in that it either launched, Dennis Haysbert, Amy Brenneman, Diane Venora, Danny Trejo, William Finchtner; legitimized, Ashley Judd, Natalie Portman, Tom Sizemore; rebooted, Voight, Pacino; or reinterpreted a staggering number of actors' careers, as a result of Heat, DeNiro, at 52, began his new career as an action hero, something he's still cashing checks for at 70.

Heat is also populated with stunt-casting, rappers and punks like Tone Loc and Henry Rollins; the film geek mind melt that Tony Montana's two top detectives are Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs, and Bubba Gump.

Beyond these categories, you still have Hank Azaria, Jeremy Piven, Wes Studi, Xander Berkley, it never ends.

Heat set the course for a generation of working actors, it's cast has starred on twenty cable channels every night for 18 years. All but Gro.

No fan in referring to Heat speaks of Neil McCauley or Vincent Hanna, they say De Niro and Pacino. The same goes for the entire cast: Bubba Gump, the president from 24, Judging Amy, Machete, and on and on: Heat, unlike great movies, doesn't have characters, it has the answer bank to a movie trivia game, a DVR scheduled for Tuesday night on TBS, Netflix Drama rotation.

Heat is not a forgotten movie, the opening of the Dark Knight Rises is an homage, including stunt-casting William Finchtner as the mob's bank rep trying to get tough with the wrong clown: it happens that young Bill Finchtner also played lizard larceny victim Van Zant, he of the bearer bonds ripped from armored truck in Heat's legendary opening. 

The biggest hit of last year, Grand Theft Auto V, has so many Heat references, it's clear that the grittiest industrial areas of Rockstar's San Andreas are Michael Mann's L.A. 

So how can a film of some historical importance sport a cast of twenty known actors, where not one of those actors is best known for the film in question? Heat eighteen years later seems like a movie you'd invent in a dream state, where the actors from movies you've seen recently do a walk on -- it's Oz: "And you were there, and you, and you."

Heat could be great, (the universe Mann created seems more beautiful for every year of dumb heist movies that stacks atop it), were the cast not there to take you out of it -- it's like a bunch of reverse engineered cameos.

There is just the one character in Heat who is completely of the world he inhabits; his existence is why I don't finally shut the door on Heat being a great movie, (great as in pantheon -- here in one hundred years). The man who will forever stand under that overpass, at that taco stand, sitting at that Denny's booth, in that hotel luxuriating in that bathrobe before Travis Bickle puts the bullets in him, before Michael Corleone does the same to Travis Bickle. 

Waingro. HOF? Perheps. Perheps.

RIP Mr. Gro: that concussed, temporarily deaf armored truck guard was eyeballing you, I understand why you had to make a move. 

Maybe as a criminal Waingro was unfit for DeNiro's crew, but as a noir relic, he's the Maltese Falcon, greater than either DeNiro's dead man grimace, or Pacino's incessant bleating. Salud, Gro. I hope to see you in the Hall of Heroes come XMas '14.

Overwritten Sex Ghost

Everything. She was everything. And everything was amatorial. This is to say that everything, the list of every thing in the world, once she presented herself as not just a part of it, but It, was a spreadsheet of sex ideas, some hers, some yours she inspired. This kind of kitten is possible when the woman's soul is delitescent; unformatted; all those parts of her short-shrifted by her beauty, made of her person an inchoate halfling.

Merican Historie

The pilgrims built a church.

Then they built a tavern.

The States not coincidently 

are rife with superstition.

Al Muskrat Renames This Blog

1. unfinishedbullshit.blogspot.com
2. telephonepoles.blogspot.com
3. someonehasphotoapps.blogspot.com
4. thisdudeneedsaneditor.blogspot.com
5. ihavedogs.blogspot.com

Coadjutor's Report

The fastness of Cort, built out of the stone of the Fallen Mountain, at the peak of its sister mountain, Cran, was the hibernaculum of the old Boheinys, the squat ones who lead our own armies, our grand Pontifex, and the brother of the emperor, up into those mountains, and there, before the gates of Cort, trapped them. When Spring came, and we were able to climb, we sent two legions to the place. They found nothing. Not a spear. Not a deer carcus. Not a sign of camp made. The fortress was equally bereft. Wherever the Boheinys went, whether higher up the ridge, or, (through some illusory), into the mountain itself, five thousand of ours went with them.

XBrick One

Up until six months ago Microsoft had no problem bragging to advertisers that the Kinect camera was the next step in advertising; the machine was designed to feed ads to you, and then report your reactions to those ads. It's like how Facebook or Google advertise to you based on the data they have on you, that is if Google or Facebook had sold you a five hundred dollar machine, and also put your tv services, (those you already pay for, like Netflix and DirectTV), behind a new paywall of fifty dollars a year. The Kinect is the reason the machine is five hundred dollars; it is also the reason the Xbox One is underpowered compared to the competition's machine when it comes to running games. None of Microsoft's big games utilize the Kinect. So why would Microsoft force the Kinect onto every Xbox purchaser, (sort of like how Windows 8 has been forced on laptop purchasers)? To watch you watch ads. It might be understandable were Microsoft giving you the machine for free. They're not. I may be a rube, but I'm not a mark. The machine is an unfinished, underpowered dog. Don't do it.

Beer Garden

The Krauts are here

with their blonde hair

with Coca Cola

mixed in their beer

with borrowed stares

the Krauts are sour

their women fair

(13)

Chron Logy

Christ Mingle

Best reason for the agnostic to hang out with religious people: religious people don't revere Beyoncé Knowles; they don't consider Lady Gaga a higher power; their higher power might be suspect, but at least it's mythology -- when you mythologize celebrity you're a mark for evangelism worse than any hick. I read Beyoncé Knowles say her new album was a gift to her fans, funny how she wasn't giving it away.

The Night of

God comes down to Vienna. He takes the shape of a cross eyed boy. He hands out apples to passerby on the Kaertner Strasse. And he notes who thanks him.

New Yur

listening to genghi podcasts

watching after pups = not sleeping 

counting down to 14 

with a poker game from 8

because in this,

(what used to be the bedroom ),

there's a Sony 3 for company

the pups are here

this pup hothouse

while my poor shiny new Sony 4

is lonely in the next room

I want more Battlefield!!!!

In the New Year