Snackbot

Here's a film I wrote:

http://d949495.u38.infinology.net/films/sp6/snackbot_hi.mov

Found in the back of my planner

I was going through my day planner for the first time in months, and in the back pages, the address book section, I found what seems to be a recollection of a dream. Though not at first, I vaguely remembered recording the dream. The dream itself is long gone, except for the water part, which sounds familiar. But anyway, I kind of like it. You can fill in the gaps.

Man has sex w/ cats
Has henchmen gather them
up for him. Several
groups of agents: Two cops,
guy in mask All in a
broken-down building. Ends
with water being drained
from the earth. Creepy
glasses guy diverted water
for himself.

Oh creepy glasses guy, that's so like you! What will you and the other several groups of agents be up to next?

Other choice finding: Seymour Hersh, the legendary godfather of modern magazine journalists, gave a talk recently on how the hell Kerry isn't going to win by a landslide considering Hersh and his colleagues busted him on a crime against humanity on a semi-weekly basis...

"I think one thing you have to face up to is the fact there are roughly 70
million people in America who do not believe in evolution - and those are Bush
supporters."

Catfish at the Cinema - Team America

I keep forgetting that high expectations are not things to be carried into a movie theater. Without them, I'm sure I'd have loved the new Parker/Stone flick. But the buildup, damn the buildup.
I was expecting biting political and social satire, minute-by-minute chuckles from various puppet sight-gags and even a couple moments of transcendence.
What I got was one hell of a premise, an absolute feat of creativity, but precious little else.
The sets and marionettes were spectacular and the simple fact they made the damn movie at all is incredible.
The film definitely had its moments (puppet sex and several clever turns of dialogue) but all in all couldn’t find much humor, or anything at all, beyond the crutch of the premise.
Attempting a send-up of bad movies by nature carries with it that certain danger of making an explicitly bad movie in the process. While Team America didn’t go quite to those depths, the Bruckheimer parody elements just weren’t any good. It’s not enough to say “Hey, check out how bad this is,” by doing nothing more than giving a bad scene as proof.
Call it the Saturday Night Live syndrome. Sure it’s funny for about a second when somebody’s doing a send up of George Bush or American Idol, but past the novelty the sketches just suck. There’s just nothing there.
I’m not calling Team America a bad film, it’s just too obvious.
It’s like Parker/Stone hoped the premise - a ridiculous puppet action movie with lots of bad words - could sustain the whole movie. It simply can’t.

Baseball, as good as it gets

Like no other season I can remember, this year’s playoffs have been packed with absolutely amazing games, and we haven’t even gotten to the Series yet.
Boston captured the back-door sweep with a thankfully low-stress 10-3 win over the Yankees.
How incredible is that? Back-to-back extra inning triumphs, then two grueling road victories, all while facing elimination?
David Ortiz swings between monster-defeating homers and a Gonzo bloop. Johnny Damon waits ‘til game 7, then decides he came to play. And Curt Shilling pulls a Willis Reed (more apt than Kirk Gibson here, because Gibby had just one at-bat, while Shilling threw 7 innngs), bleeding through his sock and gritting through his pain to shame the multi-millionaire club in pinstripes (to be fair, the Sox as well as every other baseball team is a club of multi-millionaires, but the Yanks just make so damn much more).
That seals it for me. I'm Red Sox all the way this year.
Of course, when a team consists entirely of scruffy, strange-looking guys, it's hard not to be a fan in the first place. It's hard to tell if Johnny Damon is a mountain man or a hippie, and Millar seems to grow facial hair as if in response to a cruel dare.
Player by player, the Yanks come out as these GQ wannabees, fresh from the pedicurist or hair salon, who hardly resemble ball players, while the Sox can't seem to bother shaving because they're spending so damn much time being scrappy.
Curt Shilling pulls the perfect Don Drysdale Unshaven Intimidation trick (hate either one if you want, but the first description I could possibly think of would simply be "competitor").
Monday’s extra-inning superfest took so damn long the extra innings alone nearly overlapped a top-notch pitcher’s duel in the N.L.
But forget about the Astros. I can't stand Jeff Kent because he looks more like a cop than any player in the game. A crooked cop.
As an enthusiastic hired gun Beltran gets my thumbs up and Biggio/Bagwell/Berkman are all great ballplayers, but I hate Houston. They should still have to play at Enron Park for accepting the damn dirty cash in the first place.
St. Louis is hard to hate cause their hitters are all as focused on defense as they are at the plate. Pre-playoffs I'd have loved a Cubs-Giants series in the N.L. Early playoffs I was hoping for Angels-Twins in the A.L.
Now that Boston has sealed it, here’s hoping for the Cardinals continue the home-victor trend in the N.L. and take game seven. And that ought to be a good Series.

Our favorite (impeached) Gov.

From today's news:

Ex-Gov. Mecham treated for dementia at veterans home ... 18 years too late.

Few people in the state's history have done any more to give Arizona a bad name, so it's no surprise Mr. Anti-MLK has a few screws loose.

Somewhere Over Kansas

I am living a year of irresponsibility in the Mr. Chair-like spirit. I saved up some money, quit my job and took to the road, relying on the kindness of others for room and sometimes board, when it’s on the table. My goal is to get a fledgling writing career onto its feet then into the air. So far I just feel guilty most of the time, and somewhat directionless. It’s only been two weeks though. I keep telling myself that I just need to let my body and mind adjust to this strange new lifestyle without places to be, times to be there and responsibilities in general, but I want to be adjusted now. I was cruising along in fifth gear, moving and shaking, albeit in a job I despised and slammed it into first and my transmission got left somewhere over Kansas.

My first stop is Glendale, Arizona with my father and stepmother. If you’ve never been to Glendale you aren’t missing much assuming, of course, that you’ve encountered strip malls full of restaurant and retail chains, golf shirts and white pickup trucks. So far, the things I miss most about Chicago, are the independent, family owned restaurants and shops and the CTA. But I don’t miss the weather. In Glendale I went swimming, out of doors, in October, and no, the pool was not heated. In Chicago, I’d be on clothing layer three by now.

The other thing that makes this area somewhat redeeming is the wash that runs through the town. There’s a bike trail that runs along it for miles and miles and I, thankfully, have a very nice bike at my disposal. A wash, in case you didn’t know, is a dry riverbed and a desert’s natural storm drain. It is lush (for a desert) and rich with wildlife (considering its in the middle of a metropolis). So far I have seen three species of lizard, a roadrunner, quail, and a jackrabbit. Catfish loaned me Desert Solitaire for inspirado, surprised I hadn’t already read it already. So far, so good. I have missed the desert. And Chili’s baby-back ribs.

Brand new, old-school

The short drive to work allowed me not even two songs on Social Distortion’s new “Sex, Love and Rock ‘n’ Roll,” but the immediate sensation was overwhelming: The album sounds like waking up. Not hungover or sick, but waking up feeling good, well-rested and fueled by a night of vibrant, fascinating dreams, more sensed than remembered, fleeting images buried just out of reach but undeniably buoyant.

This is certainly Mike Ness’ most consistently well-written album, ten tracks and nothing remotely resembling a stinker. He’s not writing any differently in than in the past, per se, with lyrics still rooted in an honest take on the days swinging between down-and-out and slightly-better. But the undeniable maturity that has crept into his life is what colored the lyrics - he’s never had the death of a best friend to write about before.
While the lyrics may reflect life through Ness’ older eyes, the music crunches, swings and growls like any great punk album, falling right in line with Social D’s long-honed signature sound.

It’s been a long wait, but while Ness indulged his roots on two solo albums (each outstanding at times) the new album is unmistakably Social D, fitting right in with the band’s best work, 1990’s self-titled, 1992’s “Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell” and 1996’s “White Light, White Heat, White Trash.”

It’s gruff, loud and wonderfully familiar.

When he sings “I’m the dreams you had walking down the railroad tracks,” my mind leaps into the song. I’ve never been walking down the railroad tracks, dreaming of a way out; but listening to Mike Ness, it’s not hard to dream about walking down the railroad tracks.
Ness leads off “Nickels and Dimes” (misspelled ‘Nickles’ in the liner notes) with a string of assertions, seemingly conventional tough-guy street boasts turned on their head: “I’m a vagabond king with a stolen crown / I’m a jailhouse poet, a genius, a fool.” The lines are purely rock ‘n’ roll, part of the history of Elvis and Dylan. Indeed the “stolen crown” echoes Don McLean’s description of rock’s great torch-passing, albeit unintentional, between Elvis and Dylan: “While the King was looking down, the jester stole his thorny crown.”

Ness might come close to being preachy (and sappy) if you don’t dig deeper than chorus lines like “Reach for the sky ‘cause tomorrow may never come,” “I believe in love now,” “You gotta live before you die” and “Angels wings gonna carry you away.”

But those quasi-platitudes are just touchstones; he’ll hook you with an enduring truth about the rough life, hard nights of boozin’ and fightin’, and then floor you with the wisdom hiding behind those experiences.

This is an album he could only write as a 42-year-old man, a punk on the other side of youth, a middle-aged street poet, tattooed by ink and years of perpetual edge-living.
The cover image is a shrine, a traditional Hispanic homage to the saints, complete with candles, flowers and santos. The religious implications are clear, but the santos are an “Orange County” electric guitar and 1950s-style microphone, symbols of the band’s roots more than their heyday. It’s a punk take on a traditional celebration of life; it’s a dedication to co-founder and best friend Dennis Danell, who died in 2000.

And it’s no surprise the backdrop resembles stage curtains more than a solemn cathedral tapestry.