Song for the Week of 1/27/08

STARKWEATHER - "Machine Rhythm Confessional"



Flagellant prostrate in ritual abbeyance. Subservient: subservant. Subjugate will for another master. Slave beneath the yoke of enlightenment. Devotion blessed with ambivalence. Crash and clangor of piston chatter. Welcoming gears. Christendom's machinery. Ecstatic in misery. Scarlet woman. Magdalene sister. Proffer contrition for a guilt insatiate... Save your servant enemies have risen up against me*... Futilitarian. The eternal affliction. A subtle self destruction. Christus in absentia domine rex inferum. Eternal affliction...On hallowed ground bended knee. Praying your rosary Vigil for the unborn. Damned to be impure. Blessed holy trinity. Faith demoralizing. Ecstatic in misery. Crushed by machinery...Save your servant Enemies have risen up against me*...*Psalm 53

Double You, Tea F. vol. 18

We Are The Sprocekt Holes vol. 15

Romero’s DIARY, French frights at Lincoln Center

The Film Society of Lincoln Center has long been a showcase for the best off-Hollywood and international genre fare, and its annual Film Comment Selects series is once again delivering some gruesome goods. The latest edition, running February 15-28 at the Walter Reade Theater (65th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue), is screening three of this year’s most anticipated fright features: George A. Romero’s DIARY OF THE DEAD (just ahead of its scheduled general theatrical release February 15) and two shockers from France, Julien Maury and Alexandre Bustillo’s INSIDE and Xavier Gens’ FRONTIERE(S). Showtimes are:

DIARY: Thursday, February 14 at 10:30 p.m.
INSIDE: Sunday, February 24 at 9 p.m.; Tuesday, February 26 at 4 p.m.; Wednesday, February 27 at 6:30 p.m.
FRONTIERE(S): Friday, February 22 at 9 p.m.; Wednesday, February 27 at 2:15 p.m.

Michael Gingold/fangoria

A L'INTÉRIEUR aka Inside:


Frontières:

U.S.A.! U.S.A.! vol. 6

We Are the Sprocket Holes vol. 14

RAMBO: 9/10

there is graphic news reel footage of dead, dying, and mutilated people, some children. we cut to Burmese militants throwing land mines into a swamp. they load their captives out of a big jeep, hold guns to their heads, and force them to run across the water. One of the captives catches the land mine and erupts in a thick cloud of crimson viscera. the captives who make it to the other side of the swamp are than mowed down by machine guns, their bodies nearly shredded at the wounds.

that's the first 3 minutes of Sylvester Stallone's masterful RAMBO. RAMBO meets somewhere between Reaganomics Action Film and the Grand Guignol, forgoing much of the revisionist politics of previous installments ("We could've won Vietnam but you wouldn't let us!!"), instead going for the ripped-out throat, close up and in full view. It is more Grindhouse than Grindhouse.

The plot is simple; missionaries are taken hostage by the evil Burmese army. The US Embassy won't help them, so Rambo and a batch of mercenaries are sent in to retrieve them. now when i say "evil" i mean it. The Burmese of RAMBO are as cruel and sadistic a batch of villains you'll find this side of Hostel. they rape women, murder children, kill dogs, burn down entire villages with huge flame throwers, and much of it is shown in full detail. We even revisit the killing fields, seeing bloated, fly covered bodies strewn about the grounds, as if a wartime mortuary had thrown up.

Now what about the titular character? Well Rambo himself is a brick shithouse, with gattling guns mounted at each corner. His is a grizzled world weary loner. He doesn't speak much, so you won't find any big "nuthins is ovah!" speech here. Stallone seems to have allowed Rambo to let go of those things and just be more or less a force of nature, someone who murders because it's in his blood. It's what he does...it's what he's done for more than half his life. Make no mistake, Rambo is little more than a mass murderer, but he's chosen what some might say is "the right target".

I did find myself asking one question at the film's end; "How Does this man Sleep At Night?". A psychological evaluation of this character/film/audience is useless, though. This is not high art. This is not reality. Check your liberal guilt at the door and get lost in the piles of severed limbs, the avalanche of guts, and the showers of grenade instigated blood rains. The only way this film could have been more rad was if Rambo had to fight a giant shark in the third act, or an army of black bears who mind link with giant brown recluse spiders. But i'll settle for a few hundred bullet-related decapitations and some disemboweling.

Every reason to hate RAMBO is every reason to love RAMBO. this is not an exercise in sensitivity. This is not going to fill you with hope for mankind. Much like the heart-in-the-right-place-ite missionaries of the film, any idealist who witnesses this film will be left confused, shell shocked, and perhaps defeated. Not the most positive message i know, but this is no message picture. This is Nihilism with a bullet, followed by several thousand more bullets, a nuclear bomb, and more than a few arrows to the back of the head.

Nothing really is over.

Double You, Tea F. vol. 17

Double You, Tea F. vol. 16

Amy Winehouse Smoking Crack

Double You, Tea F. vol. 15

http://www.wftv.com/news/3643877/detail.html
STUART, Fla. -- A 480-pound Martin County woman has died after emergency workers tried to remove her from the couch where she had remained for about six years.

Gayle Laverne Grinds, 40, died Wednesday, after a failed six-hour effort to dislodge her from the couch in her home. Workers say the home was filthy, and Grinds was too large to get up from the couch to even use the bathroom.

Everyone going inside the home had to wear protective gear. The stench was so powerful they had to blast in fresh air.

A preliminary autopsy on the the four-foot, ten-inch woman lists the cause of death as "morbid obesity." But officials want to know more about the circumstances inside the home.

Investigators say Grinds lived with a man named Herman Thomas, who says he tried to take care of her the best he could. He has told them he tried repeatedly to get her up, but simply couldn't. No charges have been filed, but officials are looking into negligence issues.

Emergency workers had to remove some sliding glass doors and lift the couch, with Grinds still on it, to a trailer behind a pickup truck. Removing her from the couch would be too painful, since her body was grafted to the fabric. After years of staying put, her skin had literally become one with the sofa and had to be surgically removed.

She died at Martin Memorial Hospital South, still attached to the couch.

Neighbors say they had no idea Grinds lived at the duplex, though they had seen Thomas and some children outside.
Copyright 2008 by WFTV.com. The Associated Press contributed to this report. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed

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anyone remember What's Eating Gilbert Grape?

Just Needed to Share vol. 7

first time i've been up before noon in months.

I can't for the life think of why i'm getting up. what good it's going to do. maybe to make them happy. make them feel like they've accomplished something. that they've broken me. that i'm giving in to their ideals finally. that i'm being melodramatic on the internet over nothing. that i feel truly without a country....without a generation.

i can't relate to anyone. i'm not hip enough to be young and happy and too young to be old and bitter. i'm not normal enough for society and not crazy enough for the asylum. i'm to weird for the mainstream and not damaged enough for the "freaks". I replace one insecurity with another, one without a face. this isn't a girl that didn't love me back. this isn't a publisher that rejects my manuscript after a six month wait. this isn't an audience whose indifferent toward or downright hates the band. oh they're still squishing my brain matter between their fingers like silly putty, but this is...i don't know what this is. it's more vague. it's more frustrating. it's more debilitating creatively, as there isn't even a phantom to pine over/attack violently. this is an attack on all fronts. on my manhood. on my "talents". on my intellect. on my ideas. on my ideals. on my general worth...my relevance....my place in the world.

very little has changed. i still don't know what the fuck it is people want from me. what i have to do to make them give me at least a fucking chance. is it really something so trivial and superficial that i can't even notice it? is it really about hair and clothes and smiling through your fucking teeth? is it really about just nodding in agreement with everything they say? is it really about being a god damn house cat? I don't fucking know. 25 years old and i still do not fucking know.

Just needed to share.

Song for the Week of 1/20

CRANES - "Beautiful Friend"



i feel those days without end
when we used to be friends
those summer days were spent
in search of hope and happiness

we used to while away our days
in a beautiful haze
I guess I knew one day
that you'd be moving long away

you said go back to your dream
back to your wilderness
go back along the walk
maybe you'll find some happiness

I wept a thousand tears for you
for my love that came true
and soon i realized
i'd always dreamt it'd come to this

you know that time passes by
and that our lives have changed
but our love was special
our love was strange

in the ...
in time we depend
except when I think about the time
that we used to be friends

we were friends
we were friends

so go back to your dreams
back to your wilderness
go back along the walk
maybe you'll find some happiness

I wept a thousand tears for you
for my love that came true
and soon i realized
I'd always dreamt it'd come to this

Just Needed to Share vol. 6

I don't like talking to people.

perhaps that should be amended. I don't enjoy conversing with people who are just waiting with an answer to everything i say. People who meet my fears and anxieties with dismissive put-downs and veiled insults masked as "motivation". 25 years and they still don't understand.

I hate this. i hate the idea of having to subjugate my actions to other people's will only cause i lack the means to survive on my own. i hate having to report to people, especially at this stage in my life, only cause i lack the means to be completely on my own. i hate that too many people make up their minds based on surface noise without actually knowing a damn thing. i hate how hard it has been for me to turn this rage into something creative as of late. i've tried losing myself in the art of Zdzislaw Beksinski, the films of Richard Stanley, the music of Diamanda Galas...and while they are indeed more than adequate reflections of the images and words and sounds in my head, my own lack of output is stifling.

The idea of becoming part of a some bland office mechanism doesn't bother me. whatever "job" i get will not be who i am. It will be the means to the end and that's it. i know people don't understand that notion...that i refuse to be defined by my place of employment. i do not have that kind of mentality. it has only just dawned on me; I am an artist. I am a writer. I am a vocalist. They may not pay me a fucking thing, but that's my cross to bear. Status is not in my interest. These blogs and these lyrics are me. Clerical work is not me. It's just something to give me money so i can enable myself to be me again. so everyone will let me be and me be. I'm sorry if this seems foolish to you, or if you don't understand, but it's really not about you. don't be upset if you find i am dragging my feet through this process. if these hooves are lethargic in the sand, it is because i feel defeated. because i've made this inane quest for poorly defined office work the center of my being for low these many months. no more, though. no more of this. Your lack of identity is not going to be pushed on me anymore. I know who i am. i know what i am. Now start paying.

Just Needed to Share.

Just Needed to Share vol. 5

NP: Articles of Faith - Bad Attitude

Haven't done one of these sort of blogs in over a month. I've just been using this to showcase my copy/paste skills as of late. the truth is i have been having a hard time writing anything substantial since November.

I've been fretting about money/finding work now more than ever, seeing as how it's been a solid year since i graduated and not-a-god-damn-thing has come through in the ways of work. i'm doing my best to take solace in the fact that we are approaching a recession, yet i still can't help but feel like a failure.

I've got a birthday coming up. come Monday i'll be 25 years old. .

Just needed to share...

NP: Articles of Faith - Every Man for Himself

We Are the Sprocket Holes vol. the 13th part 88: Jason Tests Positive

the greatest movie that will never exist.

from Between Death and the Devil: the Unofficial Richard Stanley Website;

This screenplay is an undated draft of Hardware 2: Ground Zero, the unproduced sequel to Hardware.

The Mark-13's are in mass production. The US government is employing them to patrol the US-Mexican border and deal with illegal aliens. Shades returns to Earth after a series of space flight assignments. Feeling alone in the world, he decides to seek out Jill, who's now living in a hippie colony in Splendora, Texas. The colony consists of 'destructuralists', who beseech the human race to abandon all technology and re-unite with nature. As Shades and his newly-found companion, battle-scarred vet Lyle Maddox arrive to Splendora, they find Jill earnestly believing in the cause, but even she is oblivious to what ultimately lies beneath the peaceful colony. Something big enough to attract a phalanx of Mark-13 droids as well as a Mexican guerilla leader, who thinks he's channelling the spirit of Emilio Zapata...

If Ground Zero should be described with one word, the word would be 'epic'. After the first hour of people shuffling in and out and getting into Splendora, all bets are suddenly off. Stanley shifts gears dramatically at the mid-point of his 120-page script, gradually raising the adrenaline levels ten miles high. The last 20 pages might be over the top, if it weren't without the previous 40. Ground Zero goes out in a bang instead of a whimper, and along the way has grown into such proportions that there is only one suitable way out.

The script is a definite page-turner, but it's also violent, challenging, and ultimately, perhaps even too crazy for its own good. At the same time however, it could've been Richard Stanley's magnum opus, his coming to age as a filmmaker. Amidst the chaos, Stanley even takes the time to build upon and expand the lore established in his previous films, which is also something that might cause some head-scratching and confusion. Yet it's also very logical and even nostalgic to see a familiar face on the roadside.

And the storm thereafter...

NOTE: This is a new draft of Ground Zero, replacing the previous near 15-yeard old version.

d/l available here