THE PEBBLE HAS BEEN SNATCHED FROM OUR HANDS
The Great David Carradine Dead at 72
JEAN-CLAUDE VAN DAMME, CRITICAL DARLING
The Mythopoiesis of JCVD
The white meat is on the run
and the dark meat is far too done
and the milkman left me a note yesterday
get out of this town by noon
you're coming on way too soon
and besides that we never liked you anyway.
-- "Sweet Revenge" by John Prine (with a nod to Hunter S. Thompson)
and the dark meat is far too done
and the milkman left me a note yesterday
get out of this town by noon
you're coming on way too soon
and besides that we never liked you anyway.
-- "Sweet Revenge" by John Prine (with a nod to Hunter S. Thompson)
Who'dathunk it, but the Muscles from Brussels has finally starred in a film that's been getting some good critical response. JCVD is an attempt to explore the heart and mind of Jean-Claude Varenberg, the man behind the dissipating Van Damme legend. Director and co-writer Mabrouk El Mechri might've called the film I'm Not There had the title not already been taken. It's a pomo-biopic trying for more versimiltude than Being John Malcovich, but any honesty in the film is more of an accidental byproduct of the essential cluelessness of its eponymous star than the result of actual introspection. 'Tis the the age of schadenfreude, and that's why I went to see this film. As Dostoevsky said, we love "the disgrace of the righteous man," only Van Damme ain't righteous, just famous. As he admits in the movie, he's just a commodity, who's benefited greatly from being so. The film asks us to care about the toy that starts feeling suffocated by its packaging. The resulting drama, however, comes closer to a VH1 special about a boy band member deciding he's a real artist. If you were crying along with Dave Mustaine in Some Kind of Monster or get choked up reguarly watching Oprah give shit away to bourgeois housewives, then JCVD might be something other than comedy relief. This is a date movie for WWE fans.
Last night I was mugged at gunpoint. The perpetrator not only made off with the $560.00 in cash that I was carrying (which I had intended to deposit today) but he knocked me down to the ground and kicked me hard enough that he left a nasty bruise in my ribs before he made his getaway on a magic, chocolate-colored Pegasus.
None of which is true, but it is a rather exciting way to begin this week’s blog entry, isn’t it? Except that, by lying to you, I have now risked alienating you emotionally, because you will now think twice about trusting what I tell you, even if it’s about how much I like that top you’re wearing and how to sets off the flecks of color in your shimmering eyes.
Speaking of violence and the romantic visage of your enduring beauty, I know some of you haven’t yet heeded my advice and investigated one of my most favorite balladeers of all time: Judee Sill.
Judee Sill conducts herself well.
Judee’s story is one of tragic darkness, from which sprung gorgeous and sage songwriting. She was the Billie Holiday of the “Laurel Canyon sound.”
Influenced more by Johann Sebastian Bach than her 1970’s rock ‘n’ blow contemporaries, methodical composition such as fugue-structure, and over-dubbing of her own voice into chorale-style, inform her heart-wrenched post-hymns.
Her father and brother both died when she was a child, and her mother re-married to Kenneth Muse, an animator for one of my least favorite cartoons of all time, Tom & Jerry. (I mean really, the way that mouse antagonizes that poor cat, who very naturally fights back – both by his nature as a felis catus and in defense of Jerry’s cruelty – only to be downtrodden every time. What kind of message does that send to children? BE A BULLY. That’s what it tells ‘em. And then poor, sensitive, fat kids like me get the brunt of it. And all I ever wanted was to love and be loved. Is that so wrong?!)
[Insert sound of Job sobbing here]
Judee left her dysfunctional home (I imagine her stepfather probably lured her head into a mouse-hole and bopped her face with a mallet) and hit the road for a life of free-wheeling druggery and armed robbery. She developed an addiction to that precocious li’l drug we call heroin. In order to pay for the habit, she prostituted herself (which almost certainly prepared her for a life as a professional musician).
MARKETING FORMULA FOR RAMBO BOX OFFICE SUCCESS
JESUS CHRIST + CHE GUEVARA + ANDY WARHOL = RAMBO
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+ 
= 
About a month ago when I first started seeing the poster (above) advertising the brand-new Sylvester Stallone Rambo movie, that opens in theaters today, my eyes were just drawn to its strong imagery.
I immediately thought to myself, Wow, what a really great poster, admiring its simple yet powerful, black-on-white stencil silhouette image of Rambo.
No clutter like most movie posters, just that burning image of our hero Rambo -- underneath the actor's last name spelled out in attention-grabbing bold red capital letters. Despite its basic retro simplicity, it was instantly memorable and for some reason seemed so subliminally familiar.
But how? Why? Well, about a week ago I think I figured it out when I read an interview with Tim Palen from the marketing department at Lions Gate (fhe company banking on the film being a big hit). He stated as a matter-of-fact that the poster, which had been very shrewdly designed for the marketplace, was a carefully structured combo of familiar icons.
"We called it Che Guevara crossed with Jesus Christ by way of Andy Warhol,” he told the New York Times, adding about the Rambo character, that, “In a way, he’s all of those.”
All data seems to indicate that this planet is going to be uninhabitable by 2012. Jack van Impe says it's a good thing. Jesus is going to take charge.
I, for one, don't plan on hanging around. I honestly heard that the Bush administration set aside billions of dollars for some project in Antarctica. I can't remember where I heard it or any specifics but my theory is that global warming will soon cause a major disaster. Sea levels will rise causing hordes of displaced, massive, occasionally cannibal Samoan and Maori populations to invade the continent-dwellers' homes- eating the skinny first and saving the chubby for last. The rich and powerful will retreat to the newly tropical Antarctica Maximum Security New Eden Colony like monks in the Dark Ages whilst those of us who've survived work the sand mines of the wastelands, occasionally fending off bands of marauders.
Halt! You have violated New Eden's borders. "Give us the sand and we may let you live!"
"Don't be scurred!"
I, for one, don't plan on hanging around. I honestly heard that the Bush administration set aside billions of dollars for some project in Antarctica. I can't remember where I heard it or any specifics but my theory is that global warming will soon cause a major disaster. Sea levels will rise causing hordes of displaced, massive, occasionally cannibal Samoan and Maori populations to invade the continent-dwellers' homes- eating the skinny first and saving the chubby for last. The rich and powerful will retreat to the newly tropical Antarctica Maximum Security New Eden Colony like monks in the Dark Ages whilst those of us who've survived work the sand mines of the wastelands, occasionally fending off bands of marauders.