Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in burlyprotector's LiveJournal:

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Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
5:13 pm	Tampa: where overgrown male children come to roost In the St. Petersburg/Tampa area, you can live in a duplex condominium, next to others just like it, for a paltry cost. Your hang-out spots are Hooters and strip joints and clubs whose proprietors allow cocaine on the premises yet make men take their hats off ("How you gonna cruise the ladies with that hat on, son?") If you have to describe your city of choice, you will probably preface every description with "Not quite." As in, not quite Miami Beach, no art deco backdrops, no visible gay millionaires or gay anything, no oceanside eateries with $75 bar tab minimums, no Cubans. Not quite Orlando with the fabrication of wonderlands and cosmopolitan meccas and all that other Epcot kitsch, nothing for children, really. And not quite podunk USA, no dilapidated houses, little crime, and people who may be poorly educated but not strikingly enough to be characterized as redneck. No accents, either. Maybe a trace of the slack-jawed drawl, but little else. No, St. Petersburg/Tampa is the epitome of "not quite." It's a walking, talking "not quite." When you live in Not Quite, Florida (or probably Not Quite, Anywhere), sex and drugs are easy. They come to you. What else do you do? Walking is unheard of. Bar hopping is really driving drunk as no one is sober here, no one would DARE be sober, or maybe you rely on some sort of erratic taxi service when you're so blind drunk you'd mistake an elderly woman for a green traffic light. Everyone in your apartment complex has screwed everyone else (heterosexually, of course), and when you and your neighbors happen to meet up when you're on your patio smoking and they're out walking their dog, the conversation--be it between married people of 45 or single drifters of 19--will mostly be boasting of the latest conquest. When your neighbor gets sick of the Hooters waitress he picked up who was cheating on her boyfriend who was cheating on her with some other Hooters waitress or the like, he passes her off to you. The only "work" you have to do, really, is maybe lure her to your house with the promise of cocaine or ecstasy. An extra bedroom might help. All of this, mind you, takes place when you're far past 31, regardless of whether you're a banker with a two-seater Corvette or Fiat or a waiter with negligible income; it doesn't matter, everyone is part of this complex world (as in, you all live in a cheap complex that would cost $19,000 in NYC. Casual sex is more expensive there, too). I experienced this to some extent from approximately 1 PM last Friday afternoon, after a sleepless 18-hour jaunt from NYC to Tampa to help my friend move, through 7 AM Sunday. His new roommate exists in this world, a world I may once have envied. And, watching some 4'2 stripper with buck teeth and gaunt cheekbones and a Linda-Blair-in-"The-Exorcist" set of eyes cajole and thrust and romp around a pole to the tune of Nickelback, as my wildest friend told me he was jealous of my relatively domesticated life of late, I did something unheard of. I grew up. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 6th, 2009
3:08 pm	Wow I have not posted in awhile On the subway yesterday (or maybe it was the other day--who the fuck cares?) a remarkable thing happened. Dozing next to me was a well-groomed Asian man of about 32, of average frame and stature, his body jutting out the way the bodies of sleeping people are prone to do, his head poked out just enough to lightly touch the intruding subway pole. In between him and me was a sliver of seat just spacious enough to accommodate maybe, you know, a very trim old lady or well-behaved child of 4-7. Yet in strolls a balding, smirking, hunched-over man of about 60, not obese but certainly with a wider frame than that of the Asian's, carrying one of those obnoxious umbrellas bearing some academic insignia, exhibiting a pride unfelt by most balding, hunched-over, pot-bellied men of about 60. He takes it upon himself to quite violently tap the Asian man awake (all while smirking pleasantly, mind you) and, upon the man's waking, urges him with a wave of the hand to scoot over towards the pole, to let him in between us, forcing the Asian man into a sort-of crushed sardine position. Visibly disgusted, yet too mild-mannered to start a ruckus, the Asian man stood up and resumed reading his book that he had been perusing before dosing. The older man (still fucking smirking) noticed this inevitable displacement and sort of gestured for the younger man to resume his seat, yet making no effort to close his wide baggy jeans-clad legs or consolidate his belongings, hence the Asian man could only say "No, it's OK." But it wasn't OK, not at all; the Asian guy wasn't even getting off at the next stop, and the not-quite-elderly-enough-to-pull-this-cock-of-the-walk-shit man just kept smirking. I'm not sure which individual I despised more, but I'd say it'd have to be the old man by a teasing stone's throw. That aside, I'm bored out of my fucking mind. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 1st, 2008
3:13 am	New Mexico, so far Got to Albuquerque 90 minutes late tonight; I'm here for a work-related conference. Went out to Burt's Tiki Lounge which I found through researching Albu night life but they did not have food so I went to a pizza joint. After eating I lost myself in the local arts mag, found out I missed Tilly and the Wall. The waitress said "Are you waiting on anything?" and I sorta thought she might be talking to me so I looked behind me towards the cash register and saw no one and, some nine seconds later, realized she was indeed talking to me but was standing directly to my right. I asked her what was up tonight and she recommended an upstairs type bar ("easy to miss" in her words) that had fabulous beers on tap but instead I went to Burt's Tiki to catch some godawful butt rock band...a Mexican man saunters in and orders a Bud, his first drink in three months, he claimed...he comes up to me and motions a lot and shakes my hand, but other than us exchanging basic mutual info (I'm from NYC, is it speedy there, yes, are you from NM, not originally but have been for 30 years) the conversation is completely unintelligible both because of his accent, his drunken slurring and the loud band. He had the scent of not awful cigarettes but seriously, I literally smiled and nodded for twenty minutes, and he kept taking these folded up creased photos of him with the governor and these other ones indicating he was a real estate attorney that had a "partnership" of sorts with the bar owner...and then i split, met three homeless folks (one a woman with no leg, and all three called me "bro") and the place the pizza waitress told me about was dead so I went to a place called Launchpad, they charged me $5 and some band with Irish sounding accents, no drums, just acoustic guitar, synth and some weird multicolored device that looked like that memory retention kids game Simon...and posters on the wall, the Shins opening for GUided by Voices circa 2001, Built to Spill three months before I saw them, for the first time, on 9/11, and I asked the bartender how to play there and he said it's easy to...I stroll up to the band, ask this screaming chanting clapping redhead girl where they are from, she says "Iceland," they finish and her and her friends yell "encore," i say, wow, people really love bands here, i'm from NYC, they don't there, she said, well yeah we're all musicians, i said i figured...i go back to the hotel...the cashier is a sniffing redhead with a domestic partner a geeky girl with a dog...and he talks about how the club I've just been to and will now dream of playing at left an oily rag on its premises that burnt up the neighboring Italian restaurant...oh has that damaged its reputation, I ask, no, he replies, the people in this town forgive/forget so easy...this place is full of idiots..we can't even get a domestic partnership here, the town is catholic it does not honor separations etc etc... all in all a good night. now i sleep to prep for interviewing medical imaging comps. bleh. (Comment on this)
Monday, July 14th, 2008
9:22 am	Within ten years, everyone will travel by helicopter or donkey There it is. My prediction. Document this entry, mark my words, and if even an approximation of that speculation occurs, you owe me...somethin. In any event, my anticipation is that, donkeys and copters aside, the airline industry will be obsolete within ten years, maybe sooner. Or at least all but one merged entity of seven airlines will. Every month, the industry gets exponentially more fucked (apologies for my furious lack of trenchant prose, I just got off a fucking red-eye with a shouting, nattering flight attendant who cooed for the entire flight about babies and other things I don't care for about 20 feet from my wine-clogged head...more on that later). I've been privileged enough to be a financial reporter sort-of following the downfall. But it still makes little to no sense to me. Yes, fuel costs are rising, and yes airplane fuel is the costliest. But how do hordes of shitty family-owned trucking companies, in the wake of basically the same crisis, stay intact year after year with little to no policy changes, while airlines, which have consistently cut free food options, selected even worse movies than usual, and charged ridiculous fee after fee, shatter by the wayside? Admittedly, most of the companies being sold off or going bankrupt are cargo lines, which DOES make sense. The debt market is fucked which means the banks are fucked which means the mortgage industry is fucked which means people are not buying houses which means layers are not building them which means that shippers can't ship as many heavy items (though I believe most of those are shipped by rail and truck, anyway...I don't know). So I can see why cargo demand is shrinking. But so many people fly despite countless nerve-shattering, murder-inducing new policies that I just don't believe the truck company owners I interview when they say, in explanation of the airline industry's plight, "Well, I guess more people drive or stay at home." This seems like bullshit. Most sensible people, myself included, put up with the jaw-clenching, brain-atrophying madness of flying to avoid 17-38 hour Greyhound or Amtrak journeys. The growing popularity of sites like Expedia have sunk airline prices BELOW the costs of these longer journeys, so in all honesty, I wonder how Amtrak, in particular, has stayed intact. Yet somehow it has, and the airlines are all merging, cutting routes (Southwest only flies out of Islip in NY, for instance) or going to shit. Is it really all the fuel costs? Or more bargain flight deals? Or both? Or, has the airlines' maddening security policies, worsening schedule maintenance and increasingly rude staff really, actually, encouraged more people to stay at home? In light of my recent red-eye trip, I'm starting to think the latter explanation is true. You can cut costs all you want; it doesn't mean that passengers will put up with the worst treatment, will take the blame for a flight attendant's pissy mood. And anyway, the low airfare costs are being gradually offset by insane fees. I attempted to check my bookbag last night at the San Francisco airport. I asked the United agent to please mark the bag "fragile," as two bubble-wrapped bottles of Napa Valley wine were enclosed. She asked what was in there that was fragile, I replied "wine," and this stress-aged hangdog-faced bitch bitchily fired back "Ohh nooo way." No way. She actually said No Way. I mean, don't these people realize that, shitty as their job might be, they get to sleep in a big comfy bed that night while hordes of angry people, bitter that their vacations are over and they have to take red-eyes to work, don't exactly want to be told that there's "no way" they can get their expensive gifts home? There are a million better ways to explain that. And since I was already fuming by the time she explained that I needed to get the travel agency upstairs to box it for me (for $16 fucking extra) and then return to her station to check it, I looked like the asshole. The nebbishy little jerk working next to her backed her up, sneering "She's actually correct, that is the policy," as if it was her instructions, not her tone, that I was fuming about. So we're off to a great start. I box it, return, check the box, go to the security area, realize that there are fucking gels and liquids in my fucking bag, which I was originally going to fucking check anyway before I had to remove the wine and box it, and so I have to exit the security area and go back to the nebbish to check the bag. He tells me the airline is now charging $25 (!!) to check more than one bag. Not for carry-on, for fucking CHECKING. I am ready to piss in his fucking face, but instead I ask "What if I was going on a leave of absence and had like eight bags? You would charge me for each and every one of them?" and he said "If it's international, you'd get two check-ins for free and the rest would be charged, domestic, you get one," in a sneering, contemptuous tone that seemed to suggest this policy is sound and won't turn away airline passengers by the dozens. Anyway, the worst was behind me. But on the flight home, I had to contend with this bitchy flight attendant who just would not shut the fuck up, who was utterly oblivious to the hundreds of sleeping bodies twenty feet from her stupid petty little mouth. Stupid stupid STUPID fucking whore. And the passengers were in such a fatigued stupor no one thought to shut her up, we were all just amazed that the other flight attendants she was no doubt boring to death didn't do so themselves. And because of her I'm at work a bleary-eyed wreck. So I really just do not get the rudeness, the charges that serve to shoot the airline industry in the foot, not help it, the needless security procedures (my iPod tool kit that is basically an Exacto knife-lite can get on, but not my fucking conditioner??) that send everyone into a "I want to kill everyone in this airport but I can't so I think I'll just imagine I'm dead" funk. Ten years. I give it ten years to crumble entirely. I personally look forward to the re-emergence of the donkey. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, June 19th, 2008
9:53 am	Gawd Whatever my boss' faults are, she has either fallen on the luck of ten leprechauns or become remarkably skilled at staffing. All of a sudden the goofballs have all left my company and along came all these wunderboys and girls (mostly girls), already outperforming me after only four or two or ONE month(s) on the job. I don't wish bad performance on anyone; I just ask that people take at least, like, six months to do better than me. And I know my own anguish with this, my own tendency to turn my competitive drives inward, is to blame, as is my indifference to the job; i COULD do better, if I wanted to, and I know I'm doing just fine as is, so why care? Really the only thing that gets to me is a situation like the following: today, I vented to a co-worker who has been here all of a month about the fact that the assistants of the CEOs I call always direct me to PR reps, some of whom eventually connect me back to the CEO, but most of whom just give the same bullshit company protocol of "Mr. So and So would not care to speak about blah blah." Whenever maddening things like these happen, I assure myself that this happens to everyone. But today, when I vented that I have started to complete these assistants' sentences ("You're gonna have to speak with..." "PR? Yep, yep"), the girl I was venting to said "I find that I am usually connected right to the exec after some time. In fact, the last PR girl I spoke with bullied the exec into speaking with me." I mean WHAT THE FUCK?! What am I doing so wrong, what kind of asshole do I sound like, to make these PR people treat me like shit while giving the golden treatment to a newbie? Is it just that girls' voices are sweeter (except the chain-smoking Long Island girls'?) Does my inner bitterness come through? Or what? So this brings me to a citation from a Simpsons' episode, the one where Marge works at the power plant with Homer. On the first day, Homer gives Marge all this very bad advice, like "If you ever screw up, always blame the guy that doesn't speak any English. Ah, Tibor. How many times have you saved my ass?" Then, when Smithers is showing Marge her office, he goes "I'd give you the key but that idiot Tibor lost the extra one." And finally, later on, Homer is sulking because Marge has been promoted ahead of him. When Marge asks him what's wrong he says "Awww...I'm used to seeing people promoted ahead of me. Lenny. Carl. Tibor. But never my own wife." Amen. Why does it have to be the new girl that I thought was so fun-loving and that would be my venting partner? Not that she's been exactly "promoted ahead," but she's so competitive and serious I think our days of work bonding are over. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, June 18th, 2008
3:46 pm	Down oozed the remains of a spider A small spider as big-ass as a small spider can be capriciously crawled up my laptop monitor last night. I went "whoa" like a man on a horse that isn't quite falling but bucks like it might, and then, with one fey bap, obliterated the fucking thing, liquidized it and its many assets. Gragenta ooze spilled down my screen like a possessed trickle of molasses. I cleaned it and went to sleep. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, May 1st, 2008
6:17 pm	I am the world's worst scalper I bought four tickets for Chris Rock's performance at MSG last night, priced at an embarrassingly high amount which I shall not disclose. Even though only two people were going with me, the guy selling them needed to get rid of all four of his, and I smugly thought that, if I sent an e-mail out to all 75 people in my Gmail contacts list, and all 350 people in my entire office building, surely, surely, someone would take the ticket. And if not them, SURELY some desperate fuck on Craig's List, as reportedly some tickets were being charged for up to $200 more than mine. (Expensive as these tickets were, they were priced at pretty much face value; that's MSG for you). Anyway, I turned out to be depressingly dead wrong; nobody wanted the ticket. And so, for about 95 of the dumbest minutes of my life, I tried to scalp them outside MSG. For awhile, the responses were polite "nos." Then I found someone who needed three tickets, not one. A "professional" scalper, upon hearing my lowball offer, counter-offered me $40; when I balked at his low-lowballing, he claimed that one ticket would be almost impossible to sell. Stupidly I did not listen to him and tried to sell to ANOTHER scalper, who offered me $25, and was significantly less friendly than the other one, rolling his eyes, turning his back on me upon hearing my offers, and making any and all existing sounds of contempt. Now it's 8 pm and the show is about to start. I stand by the main entrance and am met with more "nos" or people that need more than one ticket. I meet a guy who says he can't afford it but offers me comedy ticket stubs, which he proudly admits are "fakes." Clearly he was on heroin. Then I FINALLY met a lone idiot in need of a single ticket, someone with a Slavic accent of sorts who, after hearing my quote, said something to the effect of "Nah, nah, Ghost of Christmas Past, he promise me complimentary ticket." I said back: "You're never going to get that, man." And HE says, "I just want to see if Chris Rock shaved his head." Clearly he was on huffed lacquer. Muttering what hopefully translated into Slavic obscenities, the $40 hawkers nowhere in site, I glumly returned to the ultra low ballers and of course, they told me they could now only offer me $10 (!!!) because I'd waited until after the show started. I pleaded for $25, then $20, then walked away...and then they had a rare change of heart and offered me $15. Fifteen dollars. Not a single fucking soul in the city willing to see Chris Rock alone. Individual tickets were selling for as much as $175, and I'm selling one for far less than that, in a good section...and still I wind up with FIFTEEN fucking dollars. Infuriating. Mind-boggling. But a sober lesson learned. Coda: 20 minutes into the show, the fourth seat was still unoccupied. No sucker is gonna buy that for whatever those bozos are scalping, I thought, but if he does, I'll die of curiosity if I don't ask what he spent. Just then a jean-jacket wearing, hunched-over, red-haired, red-faced, red-eyed, tobacco-stinking mutt of a scoundrel eked past my friends and I and sat down. If he wasn't homeless, he was probably 1/8 of a class higher, and he kept getting up to get more booze and saying things like "I'll be doing this for the whole show." Miraculously intermission happened, and we watched him return (with more booze) to our area, walk PAST it, and get lost somewhere in the front of the arena. We could not. stop. laughing. Just before he finally made his way back, stinking even worse, we said "Let's not get into a conversation with this guy; let's ask what he spent when the show is over." But he left 15 minutes prior. Bummer. But I'm willing to bet those motherfuckers gave him the ticket for free, just to spite me even more. What a "Curb Your Enthusiasm" episode in the making. (Comment on this)
Monday, March 3rd, 2008
5:51 pm	Monologue from a real-life Las Vegas cab driver who escorted my friend and I from Mandalay Bay to our hotel Saturday night and whose craziness surpassed that of the Indian driver with whom, on the way to Newark years back, I had the following exchange: DRIVER: In India, I do everything bad. I do everything but rape girl, loot store, steal bike. ME: But you never killed anyone, did you? DRIVER: Yes my friend. When you push guy's face into concrete ten times, you think he's alive? But this guy was something else altogether. He apparently doubles as cab driver and strip club promoter, and once he finished trying to peddle us 3-for-1 drink vouchers, he launched into a rant that lasted the rest of the 15 minute ride, punctuated only by gasps from myself and "Haha, awww man!" exclamations from my friend. I'll print what I can remember, words not necessarily in order (read in the same voice as the hick neighbor character in "Office Space," and picture a 50-ish brawny dude in a Yankees jacket with graying muttonchops): "You guys are from New York, huh? So I bet you know what it's like when all the fucking cabbies are Mohammeds, dontcha? These guys will fuck you, man. I just had a whole group of kids, they told me they trusted me 'cause I don't fuck 'em, they had to deal with a whole bunch of Mohammeds and sand niggers or whatever the fuck...I tell you what, I'm gonna give you guys a slowed meter rate. If you were Chinese I'd run the fucking thing double, man...I just had a whole pack of Chinese and I totally took the long route, they didn't even know, man. Fucking Chinese man, I hate em. Get out of my country. They don't even know who the fucking Yankees are...my wife is always bugging me, like 'You're only doing these promotions so you can see tits and ass.' I said 'Damn straight, woman. Why do you think I married you twenty years ago? 'Cos twenty years ago you had big tits and a tight ass.' Nah, but she's a looker, man, we got four good-looking kids, two of 'em blonde, two redheads. Man, thank God for cellphones, 'cos without 'em that house phone would be ringing off the hook, they get hit on every second, man. One of 'em, I scared the shit out of her boyfriend. Good kid, but he called, I said 'Stay away from my daughter, motherfucker.' He stayed away from the house for weeks, until they were engaged, and when my daughter told me that, he showed up, I said you gotta be kidding me, what a wimp, so I answered the door holding a bat, you marry my daughter, I'll kill ya. He turned pale, man, what a wimp. I said dude, you're gonna be my son in law, let's go out, see some tits and ass. He said, you're a cool guy, I said what the fuck did you think I was? But now they're married, he's one of my best buddies, we go fishing together, he's an engineer, great guy...(we get stuck in traffic) We're gonna be in this for about eight minutes. LIFE IS FUCKING GOOD, HUH?! LIFE IS FUCKING GOOD! (very uncomfortable two minute silence until we drive past a strip joint) That place sucks, man. Nothing but skinny little bitches. I go in there, I thought all of them were underage. I paid one $300 to just serve me coffee and stay the fuck away, 'cos I was paranoid, man...(We pass a Chinese guy debating whether or not to cross the street on red) "Yeah that's right, buddy. Keep waiting, keep waiting. Heh heh. Look at that chink try to walk, man. They don't even know how to move their feet. They try to and just wobble...my wife always says "You're such a racist." I'm like "Hey, I like Tiger Woods. And you're the one that clutches your purse when ten black guys walk by." But I like Tiger, man, he's got the build of a black man, brains of a Chinaman... And so on. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, February 25th, 2008
12:36 am	Two disgusting Oscar snubs I can't sleep on, and more 1) Johnny Greenwood was not nominated for scoring 3/4 (let's not exclude Brahms) of "There Will Be Blood." (Yes I just learned this tonight watching the ceremony; I don't read pre-Oscar coverage). Although that is my favorite of the five Best Picture nominees, I still found it deeply flawed (more on that tomorrow) and I'd say that score is even more memorable than Daniel Day-Lewis' performance. Day-Lewis aside it more or less made the movie, and the Academy is disgusting, disgusting for selecting those sappy by-the-book musicians over Greenwood. It's even more insulting that that generic Vivaldi would-be that scored "Atonement" (?!) won the award. What the fuck?! Who remembered THAT score five minutes after the movie ended? 2) In the annual montage honoring Hollywood's latest dead, the last honoree was deservedly, albeit predictably, Heath Ledger. However, the Academy completely fucking overlooked Brad Renfro, three years Ledger's junior and, in my opinion, a much, much better actor, one whose constant brushes with the law (even at 11 he was troubled and his reputation is actually what won him his debut role in "The Client") should not overshadow his intensity and range. I find it truly reprehensible that some 92 year old nobody that scored "Rocky III" or whatever got mentioned but that a former movie star struck dead at 25 got the cold shoulder. The fact that Ledger's death completely upstaged his, or that Renfro's last big movie was in 2001, are no excuse. And while we're at it, here's a gripe on essentially the exact opposite tendency of the Academy, its lame antidote to past snubbery that has become an unfortunate pattern in recent years. This is the second year in a row that Hollywood has given the Best Picture award to directors long deprived of the statue they so deserve...even though the film in question, when compared to many, many superior past films in their repertoire, is relatively mediocre. Year after year Scorsese had to endure travesties like the Academy favoring "Dances With Wolves" over "Goodfellas" (yeah...which film is talked about more 18 years down the line? Which director's career is a crock now?) He watched "The Aviator" lose to "Million Dollar Baby," Eastwood's second triumph over Scorsese's big zero. So when does the Academy finally cave in and give the man his day in the sun? After "The Departed," a REMAKE which, in spite of its first two gripping hours, cops out with an idiotic slice and dice ending that turns characters we're invested in into chopped meat and, worse, asks us to buy baby-faced Leonardo DiCaprio as a thuggish Boston undercover cop...who can take Matt Damon!! So I was happy he won, but sad that he had to do so for a lesser achievement. Ditto for "No Country for Old Men." The Coen Bros won Best Screenplay for "Fargo" in 1996 but then lost to the fucking "English Patient" (again: which film is more remembered/quoted/ripped off 12 years later?) That film had the gritty violence and barren landscapes of "No Country," but it also had humor, a strong female lead, a moral center, a story with at least a few central characters you care about or who are at least redeeming, and, as I've said in other posts, the first sense of real warm-blooded caring from the filmmakers themselves towards their characters. "No Country" is a masterpiece, but only technically. It holds you in genuine suspense throughout, which is rare these days; it's dazzling to look at, simultaneously sweeping and claustrophobic, and has a truly unforgettable villain character with the creepiest weapon in movie history...but are these qualities enough to render the film itself great? The directors treat their cast like cartoon characters, a method that worked in "Raising Arizona" but not in a film this sprawling and serious. Like most filmmakers fascinated with cold-blooded murderers, they delight in killing off secondary characters in ghastly ways; but unlike even the darkest film noir veterans, they delight even more in tampering with film noir conventions. Much like in the "Departed," just when the audience is invested in a central character and might even call him a hero, or something like it, BAM! The guy is human fly spatter. And the only reaction to that, unless you equate all unpredictable plot twists (no matter how gratuitous and lame they are) with genius, is numbness. Or bewilderment. Or frustration that you have sat through such a scary, gripping set-up for such an anticlimax. "Fargo" broke many conventions but at least held on to the convention that a film must, at least in some ways, be made with an audience in mind, an audience that is hooked in to the world of the characters and is not just present for cheap, albeit unpredictable, thrills. If boneheaded action movies like "Armageddon" pulled something like that, it would be welcome. But with Scorsese and the Coen Bros, you except plot twists more potent, provoking a response more thoughtful than "Gee, I didn't see that one coming!" And that is my problem with "The Departed," "No Country" and, to a lesser extent, "There Will Be Blood"; in the latter case, the sudden burst of violence at the denouement leaves me frustrated and asking "That's it?!" but at least attempting to link the randomness to some meaning, some moral the film seemed to be peddling in its first two hours. With "The Departed" and "No Country" I am left with one or more of the following messages I already knew coming in; that there are no real "heroes," that self-sufficiency is more stubborn and less noble than it seems, that death is all-encompassing, that in the end we're all fly spatter. After so many more significant achievements, it's a shame the Coen Bros and Scorsese had to win on such simplistic fare, purely because they deserved to be awarded long before. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, February 21st, 2008
11:21 am	My first scholarly reference--to myself I'm writing this entry to refer to past entries in essay format, an exciting new development! Two instances of late call to mind two past entries. One, the smell described as escaping from my tote bag and lingering in the air, but only at my workplace (See Weisberg, "Science Geeks Take Note," Mon, Oct. 29, 2007, Evening Edition, pps 12-14) has now found its way into my winter jacket. I can do no more or no less than ask WHAT THE FUCK? What object or device or PENCIL shared at alternating points by my coat and shoulder bag carries this Orwellian stench? And why, I must ask again, ONLY at work? (See Weisberg, ibid, pp. 15) Much like the tote bag, when it and its various pockets are opened, the jacket elicits no such aroma at home, girlfriend's home or coffee house. Seriously, send me a smell doctor. Two, the jokey review of White Lion's "Wait" (see Weisberg, "VERY Guilty Pleasures," Wed, Jan. 3, 2007, Morning Edition, pps-14-16, Hoffstra Press, 2007) which I posted to Amazon.com almost a year ago, has FINALLY gotten a legitimate response (I'm not counting the one from the embarrassingly devoted White Lion fan who merely corrected my statement that Vito Bratta, legendary Staten Island White Lion guitarist, is from Long Island). Amazingly, he took my point-by-point, obviously tongue-in-cheek analysis of the piece as serious. And although he said my tone reminded him of Dennis Miller's, he nonetheless told me to "lighten up" and "stop reading the dictionary and get out in the sun." Ah yes! The sun! Those searing rays would expunge the vocabulary and the need to dissect shitty hair metal right out of me! (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 29th, 2008
6:51 pm	Needless obstructions At the 23rd Street R/W subway stop where I disembark every morning to go to work, one of those obnoxious, scary, revolving steel bar exits await the throng of passengers. You know the kind, where, if any unfortunate souls should misstep/misalign themselves so that they are not perfectly in between each set of bars as they rapidly do-si-do around each other, they will suffer a blood-splattering, "Final Destination"-worthy death. The potential causes of self-mutilating mechanical murder are limitless. Caught between gears, their faces could be impaled on three or more of the bars and ripped from their torsos in alarmingly silent fashion, the subsequent bars knocking their suddenly motionless, decapitated frames out a foot before they collapse in a retinal fluid-strewn heap upon the stairwell. Or entire figure halves could be obliterated by the aftermath of the previously exiting passenger's overzealous (or perhaps just overly pissed off) maneuvering; the left body half, for instance, may jut out too quickly ahead of the right as the uncompromising bars, bloodthirsty with newly accelerated speed, careen into the left half with one fatal "Whoosh." Dazzled passengers will get to see the literal playing out of how the other half dies. A set of iPod headphones inadverdently arranged so that the wires are close to the neck could get tangled up in the bars and strangle the person, or maybe just behead him. Most outrageously, but perhaps most likely to happen, as I've seen the unfatal part of this equation unfold before my eyes, the passenger in question could step out too slowly from the whirring bars, which proceed to sideswipe, or get caught on, the passenger's heel. The force from the bars could in turn cause the passenger to trip, fall on another passenger, who falls on the stairs, where a razorblade lies, and the razorblade could fly up, hit a nearby telephone wire, which comes undone, electrocutes a foreman holding an electric knife, which flies down the stairs and systematically saws apart the passenger... Are your mornings this gruesome? Anyway, these thought-out "Faces of Death" scenarios are not the main point of this entry. Next to the revolving bars is a completely useless, seriously irritating "Emergency" exit, which a random passenger less law-abiding than I slams open almost every single morning, letting off a discordant siren alert. Nobody, at least on my watch, has ever been caught doing this, perhaps because there have never been cops present, or because the Metro Card booth is upstairs from this exit so there are no MTA workers to thwart the perpetrator. Either way, it is both safer and quicker than the legal, metal doors and there is absolutely no reason for its "Emergency Only" status. It amazes and repels me that nobody, not the MTA workers, not passengers like me who deal with this every day, have ever thought to suggest to the MTA that the emergency door be promoted to regular exit status, while the steel bar exit gets shut down...or appended with a sign that says "For Martyrs Only." (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, January 24th, 2008
9:31 am	Pick your teen idol to mourn Why am I the last to know about Brad Renfro's death? Or, rather, why was his death totally underreported while Heath gets vigils and two-hour tribute specials? Well, obviously Heath is in his prime, you know, a shocking end to a promising career and all that...it's very sad and it makes sense why someone who's been in and out of rehab, who hasn't been a "star" since 1996 might get overshadowed. But Renfro's story is sadder, I think. He was a has-been by 21 and dead by 25, three years younger than Ledger. I liked Ledger but he seemed to just coast through his pretty boy roles; he always seemed smug. Renfro had the gumption to take on a plethora of truly unlikable characters. Most chilling is his role in "Bully," Larry Clark's equally revered and loathed take on six Florida teens who murder a sadomasochistic friend of theirs, a friend who despite his twisted sensibilities is law-school prone and the most likely to succeed out of any of them. Renfro plays a violent, self-hating stoned surfer (who is oddly bigger than the murdered bully) who, unable to interpret the bully's abuse on his own terms, falls under the spell of his equally vapid girlfriend, a sort of coked-up Lady MacBeth. The movie is borderline teen porn, filled with absolutely needless shots of teenagers waking up, drinking soda and urinating...in the nude! All in the nude! Anyway the movie is kind of a joke, voyeurism disguised as self-serious docudrama, but Renfro always impressed me because his brooding never seemed forced. It was genuinely scary, and his behind-the-scenes passion for shooting up and stealing yachts and all sorts of other mischief only added to that aura. He will be missed. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008
9:43 am	February is going to be deliciously packed. Mardi Gras and Vegas in the same month! And a "winter skills" trip sponsored by the Adirondack hiking club, not sure where. I have absolutely nothing witty to say; I came here wanting to say something, then forgot about it. Stupid 5-hour sleep schedule! I have GOT to discipline myself out of that. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, December 27th, 2007
3:12 pm	Off the subject of lists... ...but NOT off the subject of being pathetic, I'm still obsessed with the critically lambasted, self-destructive 1994-5 season of Saturday Night Live. I have pored over a five-page diatribe from then-cast member Janeane Garofalo (punctuated only by counter-diatribes from the writers that hated her) within "Live from New York: An Oral History of SNL"; a 200-page autobiographical account by then-cast member Jay Mohr; an ugly, 15-page behind-the-scenes article in New York Magazine published during that era; and countless bitter interviews with several related subjects on LexisNexis. Yet all this material has still not satiated my desire to know every last detail of just how misery-inducing that season was for all involved (excepting Chris Farley and Adam Sandler, who appeared in almost every skit, and Norm MacDonald and David Spade, who just didn't give a shit). Perhaps the reason for my obsession is because the season has nostalgic value for me. Despite the fact that it's considered one of the worst, it was the first season I was old enough to watch almost all of. I was 14 at the time and I remember laughing at most of Farley and Sandler's shtick (so did my father, actually), but I also found it eerie that, aside from the "Chanukkah Song," the material scored virtually no laughs from the audience. I remember whole skits going by without a single chuckle, and I remember that even the skits which didn't revolve around Farley bumping into something or swearing being dull and one-jokey. I remember that Mike Myers (barely around that season due to his frequent movie auditions out in Hollywood) didn't seem to be clicking with his co-stars the way he had with Phil Hartman and Dana Carvey. I always wondered what Garofalo, the Gen X Queen of Deadpan, was doing in a cast headed by Farley. I wondered the same about Michael McKean and Chris Elliott, both of whom seemed far too eccentric and nuanced for SNL. It was just such a weird chemistry, or lack thereof, to witness, and I always wondered what went on backstage, if they all hated each other. Mostly, though, I remember noticing how visibly miserable Janeane Garofalo looked. In one scene, she played Dorothy of "Wizard of Oz" and the only joke was that the Munchkins were yelling at her to go away, a fitting device given that the cast, as I later found out, didn't like real-life Garofalo. Understandably, she nearly broke down crying. If she performed with Farley, she would flinch or roll her eyes whenever he screamed in her face or the like. Was Garofalo basically a nice person bullied by fratty fellow cast members, or were they basically nice to her until she behaved condescendingly to them? Certainly the latter case seems to be evidenced by what's out there in the press. The most publicized first-hand dirt on that era comes from Garofalo, some of it published before she even arrived at the show. An uber-feminist, she called the male-dominated show "unwatchable" and bashed Sandler for his childish humor, in a Toronto Sun article printed the summer prior to her joining. She was met on her first day with the sight of everyone reading copies of the article. An incensed Sandler subsequently cursed her out and flipped her off. She objected to a boneheaded skit written for the first show by writer Fred Wolf, because a male character was attacked for screaming like a girl, which she found sexist. Although he agreed to cut the skit due to her complaint, Wolf hated her from that point forward. After a few more bitter testimonials, Garofalo was basically alienated from everyone--with the exception of equally jaded cast member Chris Elliott (he said later that he didn't like having to write his own skits for no additional pay and hence didn't, so he was usually cast in embarrassingly obvious roles, ie, the comically unattractive male stripper at a bachelorette party). Featured player Mohr, in his detailed book about his own frustrations and panic attacks endured while trying to become an SNL regular, expressed empathy but also annoyance at Garofalo's stance. And according to a Wikipedia account of the season, even the other two women in the cast, Ellen Cleghorne and Laura Kightlinger, banded against her--although there is no source for this info, so I still have no idea why. As a result of all this animosity, Garofalo seemed to be defending the show in some of the interviews given later in the season; the New York Magazine writer not-so-lightly accused her of being brainwashed into liking the humor...or else. But upon her mid-season departure and beyond, all accounts given by Garofalo were scathing. I think most of my questions about how the other cast members got along have been answered and the stories are unremarkable. What I'd really like to see more of is Sandler's perspective on the Garofalo situation, but he was--and still is--notoriously against giving interviews. A perspective from Cleghorne or Kightlinger would also shed more light on what essentially fascinates me the most about the whole period: the beginning of the end of self-pitying feminism. The mid-90s was the heyday of politically correct entertainment. Gay and lesbian characters gained acceptance in television and film, and with the growing popularity of edgy comediennes and female rock stars (many of them lesbian), it wasn't accepted anymore, as it was during the 80s hair metal era, to tell feminists to shut up and get laid. So Garofalo was something of a heroine to female teenagers then. But then she entered this 20 year-old institution, this crude, male Harvard alum-dominated universe in which Chris Farley calling women "bitch" and "whore" in every skit was freely accepted, and when she protested, she was met with animosity--EVEN FROM WOMEN. Apparently, SNL was--and IS and always will be--a roll-with-the-punches type of place, and the women that excelled there in later years--Molly Shannon, Ana Gasteyer--had to fight for themselves, fight to get their material on, earn respect. Indeed, looking back, Garofalo mostly trashed HERSELF--for being weak, for showing her inferiority to her counterparts--and praised Shannon for being stronger. So surely this paved the way for the current framework. Female comics that are successful right now--like Sarah Silverman--don't recoil from male obscenities; they dish out their own versions of it. And this is a method that Garofalo failed to embrace; she relied on the old-school, self-pitying, angry, self-righteous feminism, and SNL was the worst venue in which to practice that. This, clearly, was the weakness to Garofalo's arguments at the time: the show WAS sexist and adolescent, but instead of trying to fix a bad situation by waging a battle of wits, she just bitched that everyone was against her and cowered in a corner. And it didn't win her any respect. However, it is vital to keep in mind that some of these characterizations come from Garofalo's detractors, and perhaps paint an inaccurate picture. Garofalo admitted that her self-defeat made the situation worse, but it was Fred Wolf who said that Garofalo "never spent an all-nighter" or fought hard to get her material on the air. In the same statement, Wolf also observed that "men are wildly more successful than women at SNL, but not by design; it's just genetic makeup." Which is quite possibly the most sexist statement uttered in all of "Live from New York," next to John Belushi's credo (revisited by a spurned Jane Curtin) that women aren't funny. How can a writer who genuinely thinks that men are innately funnier than women have a clear understanding of Garofalo's situation, her frustrations? How can he dismiss her attack that the show is a "men's club" as "total bullshit"? Clearly Garofalo was outspokenly unhappy, and perhaps her complaints were too extreme as a result. But I find it hard to believe that she NEVER wrote a sketch, or tried to get a high-concept skit on the air. How much or how little Garofalo tried to gel with the writers BEFORE concluding that the show was unfair to women is a subject that, aside from Wolf's analysis, is not ever discussed in the press. So I'm left to wonder if Garofalo really did just stand in a corner and insult everything and not even make an effort to impose her sophisticated humor on the show--or if she DID try, but was repeatedly shot down and forced to take a backseat to Farley and Sandler's antics. Either way, "life is a boy's club" feminism is officially dead. (Comment on this)
1:05 pm	Unfocused goals for 2008 No snickering allowed if you know that these include unfulfilled 2007 goals. 1) learn to drive. Not like I'm ever gonna drive in NYC, of course, but if my band is ever gonna tour the world in a beat-up van, the others will get annoyed with me for never helping out. I'm not, however, taking lessons in NYC, no way, no how. My Sinatra-esque theory six years ago of "if I learn to drive here, I can drive anywhere" was utterly foolish; all those seven inch-wide one-way streets lined with bikers and vegetable carts and assholes scared me off from taking any additional lessons since. If I learn, it will be in the empty plowed streets of Staten Island or Tarrytown or something. Despite my bitterness at having blown hundreds of dollars on lessons that only taught me my own futility, I have fondness for my first instructor, who gave me the immortal if incomprehensible quote: "You been laid recently, son? You get laid, you be mastering that parking brake!" 2) learn how to keep my feet on the floor continuously while sitting. I am 100% serious. I cannot do this. My feet are incapable of refraining from waltzing and sashaying and bending over one another to some non-existent beat, every two minutes or so. It's probably the same fidgeting gene that compelled my grandfather to rip up paper. He had drawers of paper, solely for ripping, when times got tough or boring. I need to amend this habit to in turn fix my stupid genetically messed up lower back, which I recently threw out for the second time in two years. This will probably be aided by sitting on a slanted (and inexplicably expensive) pillow that corrects posture. I also have to 2a)stop wearing my low-top sneakers because whenever I do the pain comes back...though that's not much of a goal (how will Sam stop wearing one pair of sneakers?!); 2b) do yoga or something to get the tension totally out of my stupid neck and shoulders, forever (have one free pass for an upcoming class, but need to pay for more); 2c) stick to exercise regiment for same purpose; 2d) eat better, more or less for same purpose. Less beer, less fries, less organic baked mesquite BBQ chips. See? It's all a domino effect: me eating better=me losing beer fat=better posture=better neck, shoulder and lower back conditions. 3) write more freelance 4) continually use every free second to promote the band. I have to remind myself how ridiculously bad the chances are that we'll "make it," or even become recognized by a small circle of assholes. But therein lies the irony; with that attitude, we sure as shit WON'T get anywhere, so I'm trying to try without caring if I fail because we probably WILL fail, but why not try to NOT fail? 5) check out the journalism "marketplace" to see if there's better chances for art journalists outside NYC. I'm giving the band a few years to get somewhere before I either ditch it for a more "established" band or focus fully on journalism. But I can't keep pretending I care about which companies get bought and which sold, which cancer drug will outcancer them all. I have to do something arts-related after I leave this place, for $$, and that will probably happen outside NYC, especially if Adina goes to law school (or knitting school) outside NYC. 6) pay off credit card debt. Mountains of it 7) write more music at home. Haven't written a song in four years. That's pathetic. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 20th, 2007
11:07 pm	For once, I agree with my nemesis After further reflection on the new Coen Bros. movie I saw last night, I'm afraid I'm still in the school of thought that "style over substance=unsatisfying." It's probably the first movie that's genuinely scared me in a long time, and craft-wise it's perfect. And it's really hard to do suspense right, so I give the Coens credit. But I'm left frustrated. The film is one hour and forty minutes of laconic men facing, fleeing or committing acts of horrible violence in gorgeous but desolate landscapes (a Coen familiarity) and about 20 minutes of empty speechifying on the inevitability of death and ongoing atrocity. Characters are introduced quickly, their connection to the plot only tenuously explained, and then they're dead, human fly spatter, often for comic effect. Fun to watch, terrifying, unpredictable, yes, but I didn't learn anything, and in trying to subvert both the standard morality play of "Fargo" and the mythmaking allegories of most Westerns, the Coens leave you with nothing. I mean really. Nothing. You wait for a point and it doesn't come and if there is one you knew it already. It is intriguing that the villain is pure, mechanical, Terminator-like evil while the "heroes" are really just stubborn and/or bumbling antiheroes, which gives the film its cold, sleek, "nothing is safe and nobody cares" edge. If it's about anything, I suppose it's about the futility of the concept of "self-sufficiency," that in the end we're all defeated. But again...knew that already. Did I have to come close to ten cardiac arrests to learn that again? Anyway, here is Stephen Hunter's review. He actually disliked the movie and I didn't, but our views, for once are similar. This concerns me, because a few passages ago I decried him as a hardboiled fraud, a nonwriter, wholly undeserving of the Pulitzer. Still, read this. The guy's got a solid point, idiot gun nut that he is. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/08/AR2007110802476.html (Comment on this)
Monday, October 29th, 2007
8:10 am	Science geeks, take note Every morning when I get to work and open my shoulder bag (yes, I'm officially an adult; as of August, I finally started using the shoulder bag I bought months earlier; I was hesitant to kick that overgrown schoolboy LL Bean look), this mysterious stink rises out of it, some gassy offspring of the peanut, lead and soggy paper conglomerate that established itself over time. The bag's flimsy velcro straps are apparently enough to suffocate the stench, and when I undo them and open the flap the chemicals belch out for a few seconds before evaporating in the air. If this happened every time I opened my bag, at any location in any climate, and if the smell lingered, then the obvious answer would be that something unsavory is in there and I'd need to get rid of it (although it's a strange, almost ineffable smell, and therefore it would be hard to locate the exact source of it). But what makes this such a phenomenon is that the smell is only generated once a day, at the same place. Nothing odd happens when I open the bag at home, or when I open the bag a second or third time at work. It's just the first time I open it, and only at work. So I ask anyone that understands chemicals: why does this happen? Does the culmination of elements in my bag, while unremarkable on their own, somehow mix with the chemicals circulating through the air in my office, producing one quick stench storm, then subsiding, never to bother anyone again until the next morning's opening? I just don't get it. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, October 22nd, 2007
7:13 pm	I misused the word "milquetoast" now making that the seventh time I've misused a word in a published movie or music review (not to mention all the times I've fucked up words on here). It's really embarrassing, actually, as this is not just my friend's lame website, it's the website of a magazine that at least a few people read (The L Magazine) and if anyone who reads that thing saw the movie (which I doubt) they'll know I summed up the character as exactly the OPPOSITE of what he is. I called the character in question "a passive milquetoast," even though he dies by trying to break up a domestic dispute, hardly a milquetoasty feat. I thought that the word meant "saint," and what I was trying to convey was that the character is nothing short of a saint, but relatively passive (ie, he's a very loving father and husband, but he leaves all the authority up to his wife, and he doesn't really command his children that much; he can't get one of them, for instance, to get over a fear of swimming). So he's very loving but somewhat passive. But a milquetoast is someone that's stepped on, weak, absent of backbone. The other reviewers are calling the character "close to perfect," "prosperous," etc., because he's such a good father and provider. In trying to analyze another, more subtle layer of his personality, I just wound up sounding stupid. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, September 24th, 2007
3:53 pm	The most incongruous bathroom in the world is in our house. We should open a museum. I am moving next week and am really, really going to miss a lot of things. But most of all, the bathroom. I can't proceed any further with the bathroom description without stressing that we, the inhabitants, are slobs. And I mean this in the fondest, and not the least bit snarky or bitter, terms...after all, certain involved parties read this thing, and I am describing myself here as well. All four of us are slobs in our wonderfully different ways and, whoever takes the biggest share of blame for the damages, we have all enabled them in some way. In our short time at this apartment (I'm modernizing the Yom Kippur listing of sins here, beat your heart with your right hand upon each utterance, or when you see fit): we have drawn roaches, we have drawn mice, we have drawn assorted other undiscovered vermin phyla, we have forced bedbugs out of our mold-and-Japanese-tea-stained premises onto the stainless sheets of our Greek bigot landlady, we have watched a beige couch turn greyish-black and received a nicer one as a reward for our hard work from said landlady (though that will soon be black as well), we have cooked pasta and forgotten about it and fled from its foamy green remains in horror, we have thrown out trash cans in disgust yet ironically failed to replace them and have therefore been forced to use the laundry basket as a receptacle, we have eaten dark chocolates and hummus that don't belong to us and left plates of crust in their wake, we have watched plastic floor mats become bathmats and then reappear as floor mats, having picked up all obstructing tub and foot fauna in the meantime, we have smelled new smells, smells which cannot be described with simple words like "stench" or "smoky," smells that are a culmination of slow-dried, mildewy dress shirts, tangled socks, encased pillow mold, couch soot, chili crud, toilet vapor and the freon fumes that emanate when air conditioners are pressed against wide open windows and powered on. The phenomenon about all this is that most of the wreckage is subtle. Because we are not type-A slobs, you know, the ones that leave beer cans and porno mags all over the living room, if you enter our apartment, you won't see clutter; you'll smell it. You smell first, and then start to detect other things. And because the smell is not "bad" so much as "off," nobody's really been driven away from our place. Its unseemliness is only immediately apparent to extremely anal individuals like my landlady. This may be the case because we are not Motley Crue, or some other circa-early '80s rock stars willfully living in squalor and actively causing filth and liking it. We're far too modest for that. Our house is the embodiment of what happens when you do NOTHING. It's the embodiment of passive slobbishness. Which, I think, is far more interesting than anarchic slobbishness. But I digress. The bathroom. Throughout the entire house, there lies proof that despite our subpar house-tending skills, we are four very smart people. It's not an anomaly that four post graduates, especially four aspiring artists, would find a discussion comparing Kubrick to Jesus and all messiahs since more scintillating than washing the dishes. But the bathroom is a delicious (well maybe not DELICIOUS) web of inconsistencies, haughty pretension mingled with baseness at every corner. Erudite analyses of porn, both pro and anti, are piled on top of copies of the latest NY Post issue or Maxim's guide to picking up women (the most savage case of post-feminist female self-hatred I have ever seen, and worthy of skewering of the most savage kind). Adjacent to our cartoon frog shower curtain is an uber-adult vial of Danish talcum powder. But best of all, the hair products. Shrouding our rust-caked shelf are hundreds--i mean HUNDREDS--of hair products. Products that run the full gamut, from sexy Swiss names like "Les Cheveux Deliceux" to all-American crass labels like "GLUESPIKE." None of them are there for show. They are all used regularly. They are all undoubtedly part of the metrosexual kit, and yet, hiding any aura of metrosexual allure is that rust. Rust that no metrosexual would allow to build up. The bathroom, collectively built or neglected into its current layout, is the perfect metaphor for how our experience has been in this apartment. The joy, the tensions, the attitudinal hypocrisies...they're all there. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 29th, 2007
10:37 am	More cover ideas I really want to cover the third music option for NES Tetris. The first is just a techno take on the Nutcracker, the second a dumb Russian march. But the third music is dark, melodic, free of drums, just a synth bass and cold, sterile synth violin (or is it a clavichord), the perfect backdrop to equally sterile images of blocks hitting other blocks. Purely '80s. Dystopian, factory-driven '80s. Reagan drove computer programmers with now-archaic technology to program that music. If the Minibosses or Aphex Twin haven't hit that shit yet, I'm all over it like Reagan on Alzheimer's. (1 Comment |Comment on this)