Saturday, September 11, 2010

Abe Vigoda

Damnit, Abe Vigoda. I know I can't reasonably be mad at you for changing your musical sound in favor of one you enjoy more, but I kind of am anyway.


You replaced your wildly energetic, youthful sound with generic synths and boring drum machines. Drum machines! You keep getting these awesome drummers and you don't even let them play drums.

Oh well. Another young lover lost to these dance-infused dark ages. They don't stay young forever. At least Skeleton still exists, even if they don't want to admit it.

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Never Knows Best Issue 3

I found a book called When I Relax I Feel Guilty and a book about scuba diving at a garage sale and somehow found inspiration for issue 3 of my zine.

I am not usually this quick about finishing issues but I am unemployed and bored and kind of lonely, so I have a lot of free time.



I'm not sure when I will get them printed, but let me know if you want one and I will send you a copy when they are done. Same deal as before--if you want to donate some dollar bills to help pay for printing, I will gladly accept.

Love.

The Mirror

I have not had a normal Hollywood Blockbuster movie experience since moving to Portland. By no means is this a complaint.

First, it was The Room, where I was given plastic spoons to throw at the screen when I bought my movie ticket and the audience criticism was like a louder version of MST3K. This movie might actually be worse than Plan 9 from Outer Space which actually holds the title "Worst Movie Ever Made".


Next came, REPO! The Genetic Opera which seems to be a more modern alternative to The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The live actors for the movie even gave us new audience members a chance to be in the cast for the night by showing either our best fake death or orgasm. My slit throat, post-death muscle spasm routine couldn't compete with those willing to throw themselves off of the stage, so I got up, dusted myself off, and quietly re-took my seat.


I watched, largely confused, from the dark, back corner of the theater as the actors played their parts while the movie shone on the screen behind them.

(Note: Readers, stick with Rocky Horror. I don't think REPO is going to stick.)

Tonight was the third and only watchable movie thus far--The Mirror by Andrei Tarkovsky. Apparently the film I watched tonight was the only known 35mm print of this film in existence, so that was cool, and it was in surprisingly good condition.


The film was made in 1975, but if every movie made now looked like this one, I don't think I would ever walk out of a theater disappointed. The camera moved through environments like curious, human eyes (somewhat intentionally, I believe, seeing as how the film was autobiographical, and we were largely viewing scenes from Tarkovsky's life). The coloring was warm and soft like a vinyl record for the eyes.

The plot of the movie was everything I like about...well... everything I currently like--thoughts as words and images flowing onto a page with little filtering, cut and paste like sample-based music or a collage made from cutting up a stack of magazines. It weaved through fictionalized scenes of Tarkovsky's past, actual news reel war footage, and voice-overs of Tarkovsky's father reading some of his own poems.

What resulted from this style of editing was hard to follow, but try and imagine your own childhood, fill it out some more with all the thoughts and stories you ever had of your parents, and now try and include the world events that were occurring as you were gaining those young years. It is likely that, as you do this, you will remember a few memories out of order in the process of filling in all the blanks up until where you are right now.

How do you place those memories as they surface?