Lost Highway...Eh? An opera? No one told me (Though I'm too scared to go see it)

It's a brave thing...To make an opera from a David Lynch work...It is an amazingly brave thing to attempt to make Lost Highway into an opera...No operatic take on Rammstein though :(

(Robert Blake, I shudder just remembering how creepy he was in that film).

blog.allmusic.com/2008/6/13...the-opera/

What a F**king Day...Oakland wants to kill, kill, kill

I definitely feel like I am developing something akin to PTSD.

If you love animals too much, pass on by this posting...

First it was the 4 Saturdays in a row of end-of-school-year teenage-drinking parties that would usually end on the sour note of somebody shooting at somebody else (the final Saturday it occurred on last month I actually witnessed one dreadlocked youth chasing after another, wildly firing of rounds down the street).

Fortunately they are all idiots, haven't hit anybody or made any noticeable damage.

So it's been quiet the last two Saturday, but I still have a bit of dread as school is out, there are lot of loitering fellows outside various rental properties (love the fact I anticipate only trouble when observing more than one young man walking/hanging about the neighborhood on my way home or scooting the dog) with music blaring from home (or more often a car).

Today on my way to work I observed a van screech to a halt in the intersection in ahead and the driver get out to re-capture a pitbull that got out/fell out of the vehicle. He proceeded to kick, punch & curse the dog until both were back inside.

Lovely. I couldn't see the license plate numbers and I forgot to pull out my iPhone and record the scene to video. Of course, it might not be very safe to do that, peeps in my area are notoriously suspicious/paranoid.

Later in the evening, Michelle goes to sleep and I decide to make a quick run to the store to get more detergent and maybe a HDMI cable don't ask, ongoing Mac Mini Media Center project). As I step outside I observe a car passing on by, didn't take notice until I heard it back up with a whine, thump, and groaning sound. I finish locking up and go out to the street, I see that one of the neighborhood cats heading toward the dark shadows in a curious bark arched and tail-straight-up position (like about to fight another cat) I see other cats coming out and looking to a cat lying on its side. It has been just run-over and is quite dead. The poor thing was on the opposite side of the road from the car.

Again my reactions are too slow at times for this neighborhood. Car is long gone.

Sometimes its hard to remember that most individuals do have a basic goodness that wrestles with their baser impulses. In Oakland it's often lost in the noise.

(The reactions of the cats, it was like a weird silent wake...Eerie.)

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On a positive note, I watched the Pilot/Screener for the upcoming HBO series 'True Blood' based on the Soosie Stackhouse/Southern Vampires series of books by Charlaine Harris. I had low expectations, but the show was much better and closer to the first book/plot than I anticipated. The casting seems dead on for all the characters introduced in the pilot episode. Only mystery is how will the portrayal of Eric and Pam of Fangtasia Bar.

That and the very silly but fun ultra-low-budget 'The Middleman' help alleviate the depressed mode I was in.

Oakland, I bleh you.

Forget nasty ole religion talk...Let's talk Bug Sex...With Isabella Rossellini!

www.treehugger.com/files/20...ideos.php

“I was always fascinated by the infinite, strange and ‘scandalous’ ways that insects copulate.”
-- Isabella Rossellini

As a snail: "I can produce darts to inflict pain on my partner before mating...it turns me on."

Behind the scenes during the praying mantis shoot: "My mate is a cannibal...but that doesn't scare me. My sexual drive is the strongest...nothing stops me!"

As a male bee: "I would have many brothers, and we would do nothing, just waiting to have sex...A female! Ready to mate! I would fly after her, and mate her in flight!"

As a fly: "I have sex several times a day: any opportunity, any female."

No more needs to be said.

~ Gordon

It is 5AM...And you are listening to...Los Angeles

www.youtube.com/watch

This video/song evokes memories of driving the freeways of Los Angeles after hanging with Rydell at either his very strange abode, from the Zombie Zoo post getting-my-gothy-thang-off, having a early, early morning pastry at Canter's...Or all of the above...Late 1980's.

I never liked LA, hated that I had to drive seemingly for at least an hour to get to do anything/go anywhere (and worse yet, grow so inured to it that it's strange when I'd get back to the Bay Area), and the overwhelming scale of development. But driving the 10/210/405 after 2 am on a warm breezeless night, windows open, KROQ or my new wavey tapes blaring away.

Those are moments of near dharmic epiphany.

Visible Barbie Project

I wouldn't ever go/view to the other one with dead people.

I can read and view this with perfect sang froid.

www.trygve.com/visible_barbie.html

Muzak...It shouldn't amaze me anymore

So am being a pyrat and playing around with Vuze (Azureus P2P version 3.0 which features a media viewer fronter end to watch various 'sponsored' video clips) when I encounter a video for Nightwish's "Bless The Child"...Bleh! Symphonic Metal? What makes this so interesting to European audiences? It's not scary strange like the Death Metal of Scandinavia for which this seems to be Pat Boonish response...Nor is it amusingly bombastic like the Trans Siberian Express doing Christmas tunes with heavy power chords and traditional classical symphonies. It's just so...bland, vanilla yogurt, fake vanilla flavorings at best.

The band seems so earnest, like this is the rockinest tune ever. Don't even get started by mentioning it's pathetic sibling band Within Temptation. Brrr. I may loath much of the music on the radio played in the Bay Area, but this stuff couldn't even make it on any of the local stations, bad as they are these days. For some reason this music reminds me of the really cheesy pseudo-rock-jazzy numbers played in movies and tv shows from the late 60's to the late 70's when the producers didn't want to pay for any real bands.

Its just that there seems to be a market, an actual enthusiastic audience for this pablum.

Maybe I blame the band Europe and its flatulent epic, "The Final Countdown" and the big Europop contest which seems to produce horrifically bland performance after performance. Of course, if American Idol had its way, silly equivalently drecky stuff like Symphonic Metal/Rock may yet come to pass. I guess the closest equivalent may be the stupid 'Who Let The Dogs Out' type of crappy Hip-Hop, or maybe its the puerile Poppy Country Muzak of the post-Shania Twain era.

Be sure to view/listen to the antidote tunes below if you dare to watch Nightwish & Within Temptation numbers.

Nightwish (shudder!) www.youtube.com/watch

Within Temptation (this video is sooooo pretentious, and I cannot for the life of me understand how the band didn't see how silly and self-important they seem...Boy do they so ever not rock) www.youtube.com/watch

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Antidote:

Made from fan submitted videos...This is a wonderfully poignant version of 'Running Up The Hill' www.youtube.com/watch

(Is this my personal version of symphonic metal, angsty subdued melodramatic music? Like the version of "Mad World" by Gary Jules in the movie 'Donnie Darko')

I Am Legend killed my post Sol and Victus Mo Jo

Slowly recovering from the Dickens Fair slog...A Weekend Too Far! Blissful quiet Sol and Victus week with Michelle...And then:

Interrupted vacation for two days work for this week and next. Grey bleh day.

Watched a depressing not-great, not really even a good movie before going to bed (what was I thinking?). "I Am Legend."

Samantha the Dog was the only great performance, everyone else slogged through it (or was bad Computer Graphic (CG) performances).

"Children Of Men" I watched it around this same time last year, that was really dark and dystopian as "IAL"...But it was an amazing film in that it was so well crafted and pure in its unflinching look a the End of Days. There were long sequences of amazing performance, brilliant cinematography and seamless editing. I came out of the experience with the "Now THAT was a movie!" high. I'd experienced artistry, true craftsmanship.

"This Quiet Earth," a similarly bleak tale of maybe the last man alive (takes place in New Zealand after a US Navy experiment gone horribly wrong..,Netflix it today!), was also sooooo much better than the Will Smith channeling Tom-Hanks-castaway-beachball-crazy-dudeness. Looking for Mr. Oscar next year? Ain't gonna happen dude. Irritating would-be-sly references to "Omega Man" fall flat and merely suggest product placement gone seriously awry (Today Show repeats played repeatedly as entertainment? Shrek? Sheesh!))

And the creatures of "I Am Legend"? Bad CG. Should have used people in makeup. Directors are trying to do too much with CG, just looks fake and silly. There's a reason that many shots in Lord of the Rings used puppets and models instead of all CG shots, blended reality makes the CG that much easier to accept.
There's no excuse for bad CG anymore, the technology is there, but the best use it only when necessary.

Movie also seemed a bit awkwardly edited, that there is about 15 minutes to a 1/2 hour of essential scenes missing, edited down to make it safe to squeeze in that extra showing or two at the theatre to maximize the first weekend haul before the word gets out on how lackluster a movie this is.

Then I crawl out of bed this morning, limp on off to work, arrive, fire up the browsers and find out about the horrible assassination of Ms. Bhutto news. Pakistan with nuclear weaponry. What a living nightmare to start out 2008.

(note: at work during lunch we started comparing Sci Fi movies using the Highlander II benchmark of total incredible crapitudinality. Example: XMEN 3, 7/8ths of a Highland II ranking. Spiderman 3, 7 /12ths to 8/12ths Highlander II rank. I Am Legend? 2/10ths a Highlander II. We also discussed the special reverse property Highland II has of corrupting and diminishing in the viewer's eyes of any previous films of a series (or closely related films). Highlander II contaminated the fond memories of the first film, making it suspect in our minds. XMEN 3 certainly had that Highlander II effect, totally destroying much of what was viewed as good in the first two movies, thus the 7/8ths a Highlander II. Ghostrider? Don't even get me started!).

Is there such a thing as TOO much Dickens on TV/Film?

I may have reached total saturation point for any sort of adaptation of many of the Dickens books...Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, Nicholas Nickleby, Great Expectations, David Copperfield, etc. Especially for the first two, enough already! Definitely need to give Charlie, and other currently popular writers like Jane Austen a much needed rest...No more Pride and Prejudice...Please! I beg you Ms. Beeb! I surrender already.

Once again British TV and WGBH have conspired to make another adaptation of Oliver Twist, this time with a rocking celticky score and a rough tough scrappy Oliver Twist who takes a lickin' but keeps on tickin'. Wasn't Roman Polanski's movie-version enough for this decade? I cannot find much of anything in the first two parts to really recommend this if you have seen all the rest of the film/tv versions.

Now if you haven't, you might really enjoy this version Oliver, it is visually quite interestingly staged in certain scenes, the performances of the actors are quite enjoyable (other than maybe the woman playing Nancy, but that's a thankless role usually). If only I hadn't seen at least 5 different versions already. As for the Christmas Carol...Who knows how many adaptations there are...Wasn't there one with the Fonz, taking place in the 1920's?

There are so many other works, great works of theater and literature that would be wonderful to see, for one I'd love to see the 18th cent play The Rivals again.

Anyways, time to sleep again. I have no idea when this production will be airing in the US, probably late next year...If they can fit it in between all the stuff being presented in 2008 for what Masterpiece Theater is calling The Year of Jane Austen.

Who Killed Spongebob Squarepants?

What I saw I that night I will NEVER FORGET for the rest of my days...









Or at least until the final weekend of the Dickens Fair.

Michelle & I went to the local all-night drug store in a post-Dickens-Weekend haze (soooooo busy, beeeg crowds, restless models and jangly masses of camera-phone wielding families rushing the Dark Garden windows). As she perused the hair products section for something to mount her Dick-Fair Hair (don't ask...It's a Victorian hairstyle thing) I heard a pop, a rustle and the saddest sound in the world...The slowly expiring remains of Spongebob in the main aisle.

Time stood still.

I thought I heard the mournful piano notes of the Bauhaus song, "Who Killed Mr. Moonlight." as the parents hustled their children away from the scene.

(Thanks be FSM I had my iPhone camera to capture it)

Mmm Soda!

I was started out on the delicious aluminum flavorings of TAB in the 70's (it was the only allowed soda in the house). Took until the soda machine appeared outside the Boy's locker room in High School in 1982 for my Coke addiction to finally take hold.

<I'm sure there is no linkage between diabetic fat preteens and soda consumption...None at all.>

Of course I think it was a dark day in America when the Dastards in the Corn Industrial Complex got all manufacturers of sweet products to switch over to corn syrup and away from the wholesome Big Daddy Sugar Cane.