a morbid blast from the past

I just opened a bag I haven't looked in since 2004.

Contents:

a blood caked razor blade
and a small stack of Dennis Kucinich bumper stickers

it's really the job that's getting to me. not the day job, but the fun one. I feel inadequate, and I don't get to enjoy the one gig that pays me. there's a new boss, a partner who's been away tying up loose ends, who wants to "fix" everything that isn't wrong with the bar. he wants me to play acid jazz when all anyone wants to hear is AC/DC, Peter Bjorn and John, New Order, and Kanye. Who wants to hear acid jazz at some random bar on a Saturday night? Who wants to hear Royal Crown Revue? Who wants to hear Toto? Okay, I guess a lot of people want to hear Toto but I'm still going to hold it against him that he requested two songs by those fuckers (TWO!) before telling me how anybody could play 80s music and get the crowd going, but that that's not what he wanted for his bar. This was on a night when I had to go from Conway Twitty to the Descendants to keep everyone happy. It's not as fucking easy as it looks.

this is the type of guy who wears a big, jangly watch, and when I ask him the time, reaches for a cell phone.

it's not just that though. I'm living with my parents again. they have nice things and I don't want to become accustomed to them. My Mom used to be the one who annoyed me, or who I would piss off, but it's my Dad now and that's weird. We've always had a good repoire and I feel like more of a fuck up for pissing him off than I do for moving back in. He's disappointed. He's giving up on me. I can feel it/

I've got a new job, but I don't trust that I'll be able to keep it. It was so hard getting hired everywhere else and I tried so hard, that I'm worried that these guys will fire me no matter how well I do. I like it, but I haven't had time to write or practice spinning, and I don't know if this is what I should be doing.

I'm 25 and homeless and living better than I have in years. I'm 25 and regressing. I'm 25 and full of doubt. I'm 25 and opening another box.

This one is full of toys



Current Mood: ken burns, ken wong, and ken nordine
Currently Watching: The Brak Show

lab rat and real rat at the movies: the sequel

In which my pet rat Bukowski and I review the best of thrift store finds, six dollar Tuesdays, and free movies on demand. First installment can be found here

Tonight's feature: Men in Black II


ELR: I don't know if it's a guilty pleasure, a personal quirk, or just a case of me taking irony too far, but if there's one thing that I love, it's rap songs that recap a movie during the end credits. This was a staple back when executives still considered rap "the new thing" that the kids love. It wasn't in all movies and hardly ever anything serious, but every time one of those hype-machine movies, the type of movie that would come with it's own correlative Burger King cups came out, it was there. Unfortunately, this means that we were never treated to a Schindler's List edition of the Quad City DJ's "Come on Ride the Train", and Young MC never did "The Last of the Mohicans (Rap)", but we were treated to such gems as Partners in Krime's "Turtle Power" from the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Bobby Brown's "On Our Own" from Ghostbusters II, and a track from each of the Addams Family movies (MC Hammers "Addams Groove" and Tag Team's "Whoomp (The Addams Family) There it Is!", respectively). I can't say for certain, because I don't have the time to subject myself to dreck like Snow Day and Unaccompanied Minors these days, but I'm pretty sure that Will Smith put the nail in the coffin of the rap-that-recaps-the-film with "Black Suits Comin' (Nod Ya Head)" from Men in Black 2.

It makes sense that he tried, though, as his theme songs for Wild Wild West and the original Men in Black were bonafied, platinum hits, but a few years of hits like those, and tracks like "Gettin Jiggy Wit It" and "Welcome to Miami", which were embarassing to all but the whitest and drunkest of drunk white tourists only months after they'd been released, had made it so that people no longer thought of the man who penned "Parents Just Don't Understand" as a serious rapper anymore.

That's the main problem with Men in Black II. They repeated too much of what worked the first time around, almost always to ill effect, as if they market tested the ideas but not the final product.

"A talking pug? A bunch of horndog alien worms? Tony Shalhoub getting his head blown off? Put em all back in and triple their screentime, and if you can put a suit on the pug and get him to sing, do that too. Something catchy, maybe that 'Who let the dogs out?' track."

Even a throwaway joke from the end of the first film implying that Dennis Rodman was an alien got repeated, only this time they used star cameos to make the same gag with megastar pariahs Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jackson, and Martha Stewart. It's the same fucking thing that happened to Austin Powers, right down to the overt product placement. The thing is, neither one of those films were perfect to begin with, and didn't have a lot of slack to give up, quality wise, even if the alien eating the Quarter Pounder is a hot chick with her tits all pushed up in leather fetish gear.

Bukowski: It's almost embarassing to say this, and defend this movie, but you're totally wrong about Men in Black II. For goddamn sure it ain't a perfect movie, but it does have it's moments, and I'm willing to venture that it's not just some shit movie with a couple of good moments, but the perfect movie to watch on a Sunday afternoon, that just happens to be saddled with some of the worst, most groan inducing moments ever captured on celluloid. If you can get past those few glaring terrible terrible jokes, you'll see that.

Given the right role and paced out just right, Tommy Lee Jones is one of the finest and most underused, underutilized, underappreciated comedic actors we've got today, from Small Soldiers to Natural Born Killers, to probably that movie where he's a disgraced cop who has to coach a cheerleading squad or whatever. For some reason, the character he does as Agent K, a blaze country boy with a couple odd tics, plays really well off of Will Smith, who's at his best when he's playing an action hero version of the Fresh Prince of Bel Air.

The movie, both movies, use a great mix of slapstick, character driven comedy, and, parsed out in tiny doses here and there, some dark (or if not dark, at least off-putting) comedy. Take this quick line from David Cross :

"Hey do you guys want some mini pizzas. They're like little bagels with pizza stuff on em. My Mom makes em, and she'll put a little extra cheese on them, but she's got palsey so she really puts a lot of extra cheese on."

He says it real quick and quiet, like it might be an improv and it might be an afterthought or it might be him trying to sneak it past the editors. Of course it isn't, though. David Cross was brought back for this movie, after his bit part character got eaten by a giant bug in the first movie, and he's not the only Mr. Show alumni in the movie. I think that the makers of the film wanted to do a good matinee style movie, with sexy girls, a shit ton of special effects and as many aliens as they could cram into as many scenes as they could use them, and I think they wanted to make a dark comedy, at least a little, and they succeeded. I think you've gotta remember that you can fart a little bit more in a family comedy than what you could used to, but not much else has changed, and in fact G and PG and even PG-13 movies have gotten a lot tamer than they were in the seventies and eighties.

And all those jokes you mentioned? They look like add-ons, the result of hack script doctors brought on at the last minute, so that the producers could milk this thing for every easy laugh they could. It doesn't mean that the film can't be better than it's own jokes. Take this exchange, where Tommy Lee Jones, explains to the female lead that she's an alien, and will have to leave the planet to fulfill her destiny and blah blah blah:

Agent K: You know things before they happen.
Rosario Dawson: I'm a Libra.
Agent K: Ever notice that it rains a lot when you're sad?
Rosario: A lot of people get sad when it rains.
Agent K: Yeah, but with you, it rains, because you're sad.

I mean sure, it's not the deepest shit in the world, but we're talking genre here. Sci Fi fantasy with a PG-13 rating. Douglas Adams could've written it and, if you'd have bathed both the characters in the monochromatic blood of murdered prostitutes, so could Frank Miller. A few years back, some dude who was part super nerd and part true believer did what Hollywood, George Lucas, and a few hundred million dollars couldn't do: he edited himself a watchable version of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace If someone would just take the time to trim the fat off this movie, it would definitely be worth viewing more than once every five years.

So long as I can forget that any version of the film had an alien called Ballneck or something, whose balls were in his neck, and whom Tommy Lee dropped with a jumpkick to the neck. Then I just feel sad.







[currently listening to THE POLICE]

the dream journal of... A TWENTY FIVE YEAR OLD!

My cousin lives in a high rise in Lakeview. The type of place a supervillain, a Lex Luthor-type CEO supervillain would call home. Floor to ceiling windows overlook a steel mesh dinosaur on the edge of a cliff across the street. There's a door in the side of the dinosaur and stairs going up to the top and then down into the cliff. The stairs lead to a children's museum and the big lizard is full of them marching buddy system, two-by-two down below.

I don't have time to stay at Josh's. I have to go home and practice. I scratch two forks against the strings of an acoustic guitar to the tune of a Carla Bozulich song. I have to practice in the bathroom because the acoustics are best there, but it's crowded with my friend Joe in there doing something on his computer that completely blocks access to the sink. Not that I need the sink for what I'm doing, and not that I even understand how scratching forks against an acoustic guitar is going to help me do an impression of Johnny Marr and win the big air guitar competition, but it's something I have to do!

this dream provided more questions than answers





[currently listening to WORLD/INFERNO FRIENDSHIP SOCIETY]
...happy berfday to me

news of the week

God told Alan Keys to run for president again!

No matter how depressing the next year of presidential politics get, we'll at least have Alan Keys around to say all sorts of crazy gibberish. Finally, a Republican candidate with the balls to say that his gay daughter is doomed to burn eternally in Hell, compare Planned Parenthood to Auschwitz, and explain how Iraq was given to us as a gift from God.

By the way, I think that I agree with the sentiment of this animated .gif but it still cracks me up and looks crazy.








[currently listening to ED REC, VOL 2]

General Life Update

In one week, I will be twenty five.

In two weeks, I will have moved back in with my parents. to save money, try to make a go of it as a DJs

My pet rat Bukowski has lived longer than any other animal I've ever cared for. I'm a kickass rat Dad, but it is almost shocking what a terrible lizard owner I am.

I'm thinking about grad school.

While both delicious and cost effective, it was in no way a good idea to get a bag of samosas on Jarvis, a bag of pho on Argyle, and drink a tallboy of Bacardi Silver Mojito in the same day.

I've gained back more than half of the weight I lost when I was on Phentermine.

I'm working two jobs, spinning music at bars and lounges, and slanging barbecue at a chicken shack, but I might be losing some hours soon at the well-paying one, and I wouldn't be surprised if I got fired from the other one, which would suck because I've gotten really used to eating, drinking, and drinking soda for free.

I just got a laptop and a bunch of DJ equipment, but some of the used stuff is already broken. The computer is awesome, and has many shiny components, but the [function] button is a jerk and Vista is an asshole. My trike is totally fucked and a part of my camera is being held on with duct tape, but it's on warranty and as soon as I get a week where I don't need a camera, and can get it to the repair store in Evanston, that's where it's going. It's good to have soulseek again.

Ten years ago today I lost my virginity. Sarah thinks it's weird that I would know that, or think about it, or bring it up, but my guess is that 9 out of 10 dudes and a majority of chicks could give you the same info at the drop of a hat.

I'm working on my fifth zine. The working title is "Two Months as a Sex Toy Reviewer and a Decade of Taking it Up the Ass for the Man." It's A Zine About Work. I capitalized those words because I think they may follow the title, after a colon.

I think that's it.

[currently listening to JAI-ALAI SAVANT]