Rachel's commission in 4 stages

In my previous post, I mentioned (through a bitter cloud of spittle) that I was an artist, and I closed by saying I would post the progressive stages of a recently commissioned painting.

A friend I work with was leaving town to return to the Bay area, and would trade me a painting for 2 50's style wing chairs if I painted something for her. When I asked her for a concept, she said she wanted two lovers coming at each other blah blah blah. I only had a few days to complete it from beginning to end, and had literally no time. Here is what I started with...



I immediately hated what was happening, in that I felt the space was too cluttered and I didn't have enough room to say what I wanted to say. I also suffered in a sense because I didn't really know her man that well, and wasn't into painting him into the picture at all. This is stupid because usually I can paint with all kinds of blind obstacles, but whatever... I wasn't into it.
So then I did this...



I still hated it. John pointed out that the right figure resembled Swamp Thing, which I could appreciate, but I still hated it.
So then I did this.



At this point, I only had several hours to finish the picture and so I called upon Blind Butcher partner, Mr. Cramer and together we finished the painting within a couple of hours- adding detail to the piece.
Here is the final picture.



Here is Rachel, several hours after we finished it, and a few hours before she was to return to San Francisco.



I hope to post more artwork in the future. It helps to have commissioned pieces to keep me on track as far as being productive, so if anyone out there wants something done... I'm all ears.

Don't You want to be an Artiste?

Today, The Chef came into work, and as usual everyone tightened their assholes and "focused" on the dainty duty at hand.
I didn't think it was going to be a particularly stressful service-- so I didn't wear a kerchief around my throat like a noose and I decided not to wrap bandages over my tattoos for fear of offending "Corporate". I knew there was some kind of "Riddle me this Peasant" bullshit steaming in the Chef's mash of a mental colander though, so I was prepared when he headed straight for my mise en place and started snacking with a thoughtful face.


After some minutes of him sampling my roasted beets (golden, red and candy) and after him tasting my frissee, my endive, my raddicio, my goat cheese, my maytag blue cheese, my perfect german soldier granny smiths, raspberry vinaigrette, my caesar dressing, my sherry vinaigrette, my champagne vinaigrette, my ancho cobb dressing, my rustic garlic croutons, my chili pepper tortilla strips, my candied hazelnuts and all of the other wonders I am under ward and weary to put forth under duress with the most prep work of anyone in house (his words to all) .... he pauses and says, (with no criticism of my food)...

"I thought you wanted to be an artist." or "Don't you want to be an artist." I am not sure which.

It took me about two seconds to turn and face him and say, " I am an artist." To which he responded with an "oh right" kind of pause and then said, "i mean, wouldn't you want to work in a gallery or something?"

I have been thinking about this absurdity since he brought it up. There was no time to put all of my thoughts together and out there for pick up, because like a lot of Chefs, you have about 5 seconds to discuss something not related to the Chef-- before his figurative wang drops and his eyes go cloudy like a dead cod out of water. He might actually walk right away as you are answering the most important question ever posed, but that's not the kind of business Chef need waste his time on. Just stay whimsical. Build your salads as tall as tossed architecture will allow and then go home.

Thought I wanted to be an artist? You mean like when I grow up? Because I am 35, you know. Maybe I confuse people with my youthful appearance and knack for taking things lightly and saying what's on my mind. Maybe all people notice is that I haven't filled my closet with the uniform of career moms everywhere. The Marshal Fields high school counselor look or the Marshall Fields high school counselor look. And the hair that women in their twenties and thirties opt for as a "professional look" is fucking dismal and it just shoots the life right out of them... or maybe all over their face-- like a jetstream of gratitude from corporate headquarters, topped with a bow that human resources rounded everyone up in the break-room to make, by promising a long overdue treat and finding out that the treat was human resources wasting your time as they took photos of people smiling to hang on the Happy Wall that hovers over broke ass fuckers as they eat during a forced lunch.

Was that a run on?

I asked the Chef why he asked me about being an artist and working in fine dining, and he said it was because someone had applied to be a server yesterday who wanted to be a nurse. He chuckled and told me the most hilarious and ingenius thing I had ever heard. "I mean, if you want to be a nurse... uh, duh... why don't you work in a hospital?"

Knowing I had no time to make any points at all before the body snatchers took him away from me again, I just said... Shit happens. Shit happens to all kinds of people all the fucking time all day long. Grandmothers are scrubbing walls in hotels while young hotshots shit the bed and laugh at the mess they leave in their wake... "Its job security, man." If my job was to clean up bodies of homicide victims... I would love it if someone could give me some job security by liquidating some of these boring one dimensional privileged bastards. Have a fucking heart for chrissake, and stop thinking you are so fucking great. Because, you're not great. You're not even a pimple on a man's ass.

I had a point, but will apparently have to return to make it. I will return later to post a painting recently commissioned and completed in its various stages. So, yes I am an artist, but I still have to have a job. I wish my job could be judging and dismissing all of the people in the world facing intense adversity in my fantastical dictatorial debut... but for now- I'll have to settle for making fancy salads for people who don't worry about paying rent, and never imagine that the hands which plated their stunning lunchbox are as calloused as my heart is driven.

HEY MOTHERFUCKERS

If you have entertained the thought of writing for this blog, then fucking do it. Not tomorrow. Right fucking now. I'm sick of your pathetic bullshit simpering cowardice, your fears that you aren't good enough, or the broken record cockswaddle you keep slathering all over yourself about how no one cares what you say anyway.

Do you want to write something? Do you have something that is itching to be let out? Anything at all?

Then get to fucking work.

I'm probably not your friend. I really don't have friends. I hate people. Ask anyone.

I'm vain. I need attention. I hate writing for my own gratification. If I wanted to amuse myself I'd jerk off in front of the mirror, again.

Shakespeare died centuries ago. You don't have to worry about him showing you up anymore. Just USE SOME WORDS AND SAY SOMETHING HONEST. EVERYTHING ELSE WILL FALL INTO PLACE.

It's not about respect, about glory, about honor, about anything that increases blood flow. It's about communicating.

Communicate.

Communicate, because if you don't, the people with nothing to say will do it for you.

The Return of the Witch

Have you had a chance to catch Suspiria yet? Heard of it? Suspiria is the horror film made by the practically infamous Italian director, Dario Argento. The first (and best) part of a trilogy that centers on the story of three evil witches. All of the things that make Argento the genius and the singular artist that he is is very much present in Suspiria. There is the bizarre, almost surreal performances that are both childishly amateurish in as much as they are virtually alien. Watching people act in Suspiria makes me feel as though I am watching a movie made by creatures who have studied our behavior and done the best they could with their limited knowledge: it's familiar but yet something entirely... other.

Then there's the whole issue with the lighting. Argento is a great believer in the power of lighting to create a mood. There is plenty of orchestrated, super saturated colored light soaking up the screen throughout Suspiria, and it's another example of one of Argento's more effective trademarks.

Anyone coming to Argento expecting anything close to dramatic weight ought to look elsewhere because in Argento's world, everyone is a caricature of an actual person and practically all the dialogue is like something written for a high school play, it's that bad. The thing is, in Argento's hands (at least in Suspiria, his masterpiece) this is yet another way in which Argento creates a world entirely his own, as compelling as it is creepy.

Capping off Suspiria is the absolutely genius soundtrack music of the band that effectively served as Argento's foil, Goblin. If you never took the opportunity to actually see the movie, you would still be almost forgiven if you went ahead and just bought the soundtrack. Goblin's music is both creepy and totally rocking at the same time. It's the kind of music you would kill for if you were to make your own atmospheric horror film.

The second installment in Argento's trilogy is called Inferno. Set in New York, Inferno, while a formidable film in its own right, is not quite the match of Suspiria. Sure, the building in which most of the action takes place is suitably creepy and menacing, and yes the lighting and mood is all set with skill. I guess it's just that this film doesn't have the balls that Suspiria had. It's pretty hard to flesh out a trilogy that begins with a near flawless classic. Having said that, Inferno is still a strong follow up and a worthy path towards the final entry in the bunch.

But here's where we run into the hitch. It would be decades until Argento actually got it together and finished his master work. Mother of Tears was released in 2007 much to the delight if not anxiety of his now legions of fans worldwide.

This fan would have been happier to keep wondering what could have been.

It's hard to imagine how it could have taken Argento literally thirty years to make this movie. Well, okay, it took about a year I suppose, but it took him thirty years to deliver the end to this story line, and you would think that in the interest of doing himself justice, he might go ahead and, uh, not use his daughter to play an American in Rome. Asia Argento does not have an American accent. What she has is an Italian accent with no hint of anything even remotely American in it. Her character's name is Sarah Mandy, and there is nothing Sarah Mandy-ish about Asia's accent. And, to top it off, it's totally irrelevant to have Asia's character come from the States in the first place. She could easily have been an Italian woman. This is an example of what happens when things go wrong with Argento.

Yes, the bold, unnatural primary colored lighting in on full display as is the exorbitant settings, and yes, the gore factor has been pushed to somewhere around twenty. I'll thrust my thumb up for that, but when it comes to the package as a whole, it takes no effort whatsoever to recognize how far Argento has fallen in being able to create something positive out of the tension of facing such consistently unusual elements on screen for so many years.

I would argue that what makes Argento so great is the very same thing that threatens to destroy him when it all goes wrong. The idea of the trilogy is a brilliant one. The execution of Suspiria is such that it will forever hold a place in the history of film. The jilted performances and embarrassing dialogue hang around Mother of Tears like an anchor. The witch herself is so nonthreatening, and is basically used as an excuse to show off her naked breasts as if that is still somehow transgressive in this era. Has Argento ever seen the Internet? Hell, has he seen his daughter in any of her previous movies? The witch has about ten lines, shows no personality, isn't creepy, and looks like a magazine model from the 80s in a very bad way. He should have called her the Mother of Brut By Faberge or some such shit, that would have been more accurate. And just when we finally are let down with her on-screen presence, she is impaled, hilariously, by a giant object piercing the ground in an obviously phallic fashion. Nice.

Sadly, with the tremendously disappointing release of Mother of Tears, Dario Argento has shown himself to be something I never wanted to have to admit to myself: he is just like you and I, normal.

Jesus, what a terrible thing to say.

If Argento had worked as hard on amping up the menace, and spent less time having his daughter wander around Rome with nothing important to do, this could have been salvageable, but as it is, this movie was a huge mess from start to finish.

It's like George Lucas with Star Wars. I will never forgive him for all that Ewok bullshit at the end of Jedi. When it's time to go out, go out with a fucking bang, not dancing teddy bears.

I mean, yeah, Lucas went and shit all over the franchise by putting out three more turds to cap off the whole deal, but let's not get into that now or we might be up all night with that catastrophe.

Maybe it would be cool if Argento and Lucas teamed up to make a The Witches of Star Wars trilogy.

Let that sink in.

Lasers, tits, Darth Vader, primary colored lighting, light sabers, deep and shadowy shots of tall and ornate buildings at night, mind numbingly bad-ass space fighting, and a climactic showdown between Asia Argento and Carrie Fisher replete with cigarette burns, bad tattoos, light sabers, hair buns, track marks, and bottles of pills.

I'm so there.

Who needs a screenwriter? Gentlemen?

You know where to reach me, boys.

Swords & More I WANT THAT

conciousless

We are not committed to Excellence, because Excellence is a fucking joke. Look around you. I hate myself and there is no silver for trade in this tongue here. You should hate yourself too. Its the right thing to do.

Are you on time for the tasting? Have you insured that every friend you have cannot be disappointed by all of the scavenged flavors you have created and painfully laid out in slippery mirages on the edge of the table? Will your fancy place-mats look sad, ridiculous and pathetic when the sun whacks its head upon your table because the roof is gone, the ground beneath your precious feet is an abyss and the streets are full of people who could care less about your feast of cheap collectibles because they are dying to have a taste of their basic rights, and can barely stomach what it takes to swallow your bullshit--but they have no choice at all but to do so? I wish I was fighting for a man so noble. I'm not. Mankind hangs from her same jagged edge by her same pouty lip... See.. I fight for an underdog that I go on to smash the image of in the same breath.

If I can make it, so can they. It must be a scam to be so desperate. People stand on street corners with the same signs begging for money, and my eyeballs dance as much as the drivers of the cars I idle between. I know I am different. I argue how I am different. I am not different. I praise myself for being a fighter. I stake claims based on inverted ironies and not only am I not alone in waging my rights... I am unoriginal, uninspired and out of fucking touch. If I can make it, so can they. Indeed. What a joke to believe I am making it, as I sit idling.

We tell people who have lost everything, that they didn't have much to begin with, and destruction and chaos and loss of every shred of identity will be replaced by something cleaner and of a higher value. We want you to be better, because listening to the sad stories of what you have lost in this life is depressing. Depressing doesn't feel good. You don't feel good. You are on the way out. I know your beloved pet has died, I promise you will like the new one as soon as you get over the old one.

We are miserable, and you should be fucking miserable too.
Join us, because we'll never join you.

The Pilgrimage

A couple weeks ago, this corner of the Butcher's world took a little jaunt to the dank and musty wastelands of south Florida. If you know little of me beyond the scorn and spite that literally pours from these fingers whenever I can muster the will to do so in this little corner of the electronic underworld then perhaps it would behoove you to know this additional tidbit - I fucking detest Florida.

Maybe blaming a geographical location for you own personal demons is a bit unfair, but to me, Florida is one of those regions of the country that is shrouded in darkness and death. You know, like Louisiana.

My mother was a resident of Florida in the waning years of her life. The southern Gulf Coast of Florida to be exact. She loved the place. She loved the beaches, the laid back lifestyle, and, uh, well, that's about it. Maybe love is too strong a word. Let's say that my mother enjoyed the life she semi-retired to once she hit the marshy cesspool of south Florida.

When she died two years ago she left behind no will, practically no estate, and a small insurance policy that took two years to clear probate court so that her funeral expenses could be paid off as well as some legal fees and a small bit leftover for her mountainous medical bills.

To her numerous medical creditors this amount ended up being a minute drop in the bucket as her legion of health woes easily ended up costing her a considerable fortune.

If it's possible to be relieved when the most important and loved person in your life dies, then that's a part of what I felt upon knowing her suffering was finally over.

With the estate out of the way this left the matter of dealing with the remainder of her personal belongings.

My mother bought the house she died in with a fifty-fifty split between herself and her closest friend. Therefore, all her things languished in the upstairs floor of their home awaiting the legal hurdles (as well as emotional ones) that stood in the way of closure.

When my brother called to let me know that it was time a hasty plan was devised and we were off within a couple of weeks.

Going through things that hadn't been touched since the day we left her home two years ago was a little emotional for me since my image of that moment in time was frozen on the week following her death. I would love to tell you how enlightened I am in my mature handling of loss, but returning to Florida put things in perspective.

I can handle her loss, but I will never be comfortable with it. She to me was a giant and the giant has fallen. That is a truth almost too big for me to realize.

Then again, I must, and maybe I already have and just don't know it yet.

We packed up our Penske truck in a whirlwind of ruthless decisions and calculated sensibility. And by the next afternoon the Unspeakable and I were on the road.

Our drive is somewhere around 19 or so hours, and in a 16 foot truck the gas mileage was criminally atrocious. I figured out that we were getting about 10 miles-per-gallon on the highway. I filled up about six times at sixty bucks a pop, so do the math. My credit card bill will eat me alive for months to come. Dying, as it turns out, is fucking expensive.

Nonetheless, long distance driving is easily one of my favorite things to do, and getting the opportunity to spend time going places with the Unspeakable is something I relish. One plus about the huge truck was that it was easy to drive and actually turned out to be rather comfortable as well.

Whenever I take long drives I always like to stop in cities along the way and waste time either eating or just snooping around. I love doing this.

So, our first stop? Tampa.

Tampa is the home of the Salvador Dali museum, and though we were too late to catch it open, I have been fortunate enough to visit the mus em before and it is fantastic. I can't recommend it enough. If you are ever driving through and have time, go there. I promise you won't be disappointed.

As a side note, I acquired a signed Dali lithoprint from my mother which now hangs proudly in my home as I write this.

Sure, he most likely had his minions not only draw and run off the print, he most-likely had them sign it as well, or so the rumor goes as it relates to the end of his career when the print was made.

Either way, it's awesome, so fuck you.

Anyway, in Tampa we ended up stopping at a Greyhound bus station in order to use their facilities. There was a hockey game going on downtown, so the traffic was fairly bad and lo and behold, there sat the station, resplendent in its decadent glory, terrifying toilets at the ready.

As we walked back to the truck we stupidly missed the chance to snap a photo of the actual fork that was laying in the middle of the road. That sort of shit is pure gold.

Back to it, we drove as far as we could stand it and then pulled off to find a hotel hours later in Tallahassee.

In all my trips through Florida, I have never stopped in Tallahassee, probably because it is a little ways from the highway, and also probably because I have pretty much always already made plans to crash in Mobile, Alabama a few hours further.

In the tank, and with our late start, Tallahassee it was.

Little did I realize, Tallahassee, the state capital, is also the home of Florida State University. Little did we realize - it was game night.

College towns go apeshit for game night. Okay, college towns go apeshit damn near any weekend night because being in college is often an excuse to abuse drugs and alcohol and thumb your nose at your parents by fucking anonymous fat people you will regret exposing your genitals to for the remainder of your life. Rebellion is a two-headed sword.

Since we were almost out of gas and had already wasted enough time trying to find an open Chevron station, we instead looked for a hotel. We found this ancient place on the strip just beyond the university. On the inside it was immediately apparent that the place had this sort of decaying southern haunted mansion vibe to it. There was a really old marble tile floor, and when I went to use the bathroom while we waited for this slow-assed old man to count his till for shift change, I sort of came across this bizarre second lobby covered up by an oddly placed couch to keep people like me from looking around too much.

I have absolutely no belief in the paranormal, mind you, but still, this would have been a great location for a ghost movie shoot.

Nevertheless, we bailed on the place because the Unspeakable was getting a strong about-to-spend-too-much-money-on-a-roach-motel vibe about the place. She's more sensible than I am, so we split.

We couldn't sell our kingdom for an open restaurant beyond fast-food, so instead we settled on this inexplicable empty liquor store just off campus. The beer was reasonably priced and the selection was excellent.

We went back to the room where I promptly passed out after one beer as I was totally wrecked from driving all day. Nice.

In the morning, driving out, I realized that Tallahassee was actually an interesting looking place and so I hope to go back and snoop around some more if I ever return.

From there it was hours and hours of deep-south driving, following I-10 as it leads you ever westward.

Whenever I pass through Louisiana on my way home to Houston I make any excuse I can to stop in New Orleans even if it's for an hour. I still love that town, and I am sad to report that it is still as fucked as it was three years ago in many ways. Still, stopping there continues to be a pleasure for me and it was also an important moment for me to visit a place I loved with the person I love more than anyone. NOLA has a lot of significance for both of us as it is another in a long line of near-misses in the back history of our coming together. I split beignets with her, and then we had a beer at the House of Blues. There we sat in the building that housed the Nick Cave show ten years previous. We were both there, not knowing each other, having no clue that we would return in decade with the person we were always meant to be with.

Sometimes poignancy is just the best shit ever.

From there is was off to make the final stretch back to Houston. We got home at 2 AM, wiped out and glad to be home.

There is so much I could go into about my mother, about being in her world two years after her death, about how my life has changed since her death, but maybe I do that all damn day long already. Florida for me will always be the place that I will equate with decay, with finality, and with sadness. It's not fair, Florida is a huge state, and while we seem bent on erasing it, Florida is a place of great natural beauty. There is an interesting history of outsiders making their way in a place far from home, and I can always dig that. Many unusual people have adopted Florida over the years, and this too appeals to me. Still, getting out of there is often my main goal whenever I end up there.

Maybe in the next life my mother will retire to the Pacific Northwest, to a climate that is more conducive to the reality I romanticize in my warped mind.

Giving a big piece of my past to the Unspeakable was reason enough to go back to Florida. Respecting the end of my mother's life was another. I most-likely will not return again soon, and that is actually fine with me.

I love you, mom.

A Fleeting Ramble for Our Times

Our time on earth is now being likened to the Great Depression. That's greatly depressing.

 

The Great Depression was a long time ago. Our grandparents lived through it and then they had a big war and the most memorable years of their lives and lived into old age with a nice pension. The only sign of any lasting effect of the GD on my grandparents was an overall tendency to be cheap and, in the case of my paternal grandfather, a lifelong love of ketchup on white bread as a midnight snack.

Fortunately, or rather unfortunately, we folks hovering around the young age of 40 can look back in our own lives to a time almost as depressing as the Great Depression to get a taste of what we might be in for in the coming years. I'm talking about the Pre-Star Wars years, the early 1970's. Although, I suppose Recession is relative (just ask Cleveland, Ohio or Midland Odessa) so maybe you didn't experience this time the way I did. 

I was living in New York City - think Midnight Cowboy. Do you remember the tv commercial with the Native American crying because of all the litter? That's what I'm always reminded of, because it was true. NYC was filthy, even my little self could see that. The city had no beautification funds, folks were strapped. Executive financial packages looked like droppings compared to the coming decades. Everybody was broke and on top of that everybody, no matter their reasoning, thought the country was going to the dogs big time.

As a family, we took a break. Moved to the Middle East for a few years where things were quite different (and that's relative to me as a kid going from NYC to a small European enclave on a Arabian desert island). When I moved back to the states in the late 70's it was to the Rice University area right next to the Village. The Village was filthy - there were two porno movie houses, a Vietnamese drug-infested disco house and a Jack in the Box...I don't remember too much else. If you live in Houston, you know the Rice Village has come a long way (and maybe not quite in the direction you might want).

That was a long time ago and both NYC and Houston are remarkably cleaned up.

I know this is a superficial way to look at things but I don't mean to equate cleanliness with righteousness. I mean merely to equate the state of our public spaces to how we feel about our community. I mean to say that a direct correlation to our economy and our physical well-being and our harmony as citizens is not a given. You see, in the Seventies while the economy had a big effect on the trashing of our cities - it was also the Culture Wars. The nation was greatly divided and pissed off folks didn't mind demonstrating their disgust by tossing their fast food remnants out the car window. I mean that quite seriously.

It actually happens in Chicago all the time right now (and has as long as I've been here). Chicago is an incredibly filthy city. Inexplicably so really, but it is a cultural thing. A significant enough portion of the huge and soured poor urban population in this town, has no problem letting go of that chip bag wherever it might fall. This is just one outward sign of the problem as I see it.

Now you may worry about the GDP - the gross domestic product - and the stock market and the bottom line, your wallet. But I'm here to tell you that it's not a good indicator of our well being. The GDP includes everything made in this country and that means poorly constructed exurban houses that should never have been built in the first place, Viagra, Oil, and your doctor bills from the asthma or cancer you got living too close to the Oil refinery. That last thing is the biggest problem with the GDP, it includes our medical bills. That fact grossly conflates the importance of the GDP and should make you very leery of its usage in the media and elsewhere.

I'm talking about quality of life, the QOL. And I'm here to tell you that is where we need to watch out. But I think there is every reason to be optimistic about this because I think our QOLcan rise considerably while our petrol fueled GDP sinks. We need to worry about a great culture divide. We do not want that. And I give credit to both McCain and Obama - I think neither of them is fueling such a thing in a time when they surely could. I think they just might be reading the writing on the wall pretty good. Really I think the atmosphere might be good to see some real positive QOL changes.

Of course I've lived through ugliness before and that outcome is just as likely. For one thing, the price of oil is falling as we hit a recession. I don't necessarily see that as a good thing. The QOLchanges I look forward to have a "local" effect. Less jetting, less driving, more farming, more community outreach - the further we can take our dollars from oil the better but right now they go hand in hand.

Did You See My Movie?

M. Night Shyamalan is the kind of renaissance man that thinks the slightest flatulent bubble that escapes his nether portal is like manna from heaven. And this critique of an ego so massive in scale, so unyielding in its narcissistic glee is coming from someone who is in actuality a fairly substantial fan of his films.

I forget which one it was on, but on one of his DVDs, Shyamalan includes, as an extra, a brief homemade, straight from a camcorder horror short film.

Clearly the guy is so in love with himself that he is capable of including something this inside as something that the world at large will in some way be better off for seeing.

I get this impulse.

See, when I was a but a wee misanthropic whiner I took part in a short film of my own with the assistance of my father (who owned the camera, house, clothes, stereo, soft drinks and pillows involved), and my always game brother. It was the 80s and what we did in essence was a retelling of any generic episode of Miami Vice, a show which, at the time, was a huge hit.

I'm not claiming that our film was anything but the tripe that it essentially was, but I will claim that it was every bit the first film that Shyamalan had the stones to put on his DVD release.

When The Sixth Sense came out I dutifully watched it despite my fears that the combination of douchebag (Bruce Willis) and child actor (that gap-toothed assmunch whose name escapes me and isn't worth looking up) protagonist one-two punch would do little to help my fear that I would hate the film.

My worst fears confirmed, The Sixth Sense turned out, for me, to be one of the biggest let-downs in recent memory.

As a result of this, I was more than a little reluctant to spend any more of my life giving another imaginary "genius" any more of my time and money. This meant that I heartily avoided the release of Unbreakable, Shyamalan's nod to comics and superheroes.

In fact, the next project of his that I did end up watching was Signs, and this was only rented in a moment of weakness one evening at Blockbuster where I was trying desperately to avoid the endless rows of movies starring John Leguizamo and featuring a plot that revolves around zombies and hip-hop.

I realize that settling for Mel Gibson is a sorry state of affairs all the same, but I had read the reviews and I was up to the challenge. Plus, I like big-budget alien-invasion stuff, so I figured it might be worth a laugh if nothing else.

So this is the part where I try to explain why it was that I actually ended up enjoying a silly alien movie with a subplot about god and faith starring Mel Gibson instead of hanging myself during the opening scene.

I can't explain it actually.

The movie simply worked for me. I liked it. It wasn't great, but it sure as hell was no Sixth Sense. And, I kind of thought that Shyamalan did a fairly decent job of telling the story without giving off a vibe that I was supposed to run off and join a fucking church or some such shit.

I just dug it.

Then came a little movie called The Village. What a polarizing project this turned out to be! Most critics - and audiences for that matter - hated this movie. To me, the trailer looked fairly cool, though I must admit to being more than a little turned off by the idea of it starring Richie Cunningham's daughter, Bryce Dallas Howard.

Once it came out on DVD I rented it with pretty low expectations.

It was flawed, I can admit that. But nonetheless, I fucking loved that film. I loved the visual style, I loved the ridiculous premise, I loved the surprise ending which was so goofy that I should have sought out the director and personally killed him myself. Instead, I simply loved it.

By this time I was into it and ready to give Unbreakable a shot.

Lo and behold, I loved the shit out of this one too. I love it when someone is able to make Bruce Willis be something more than the utter dickhouse that he obviously is. Terry Gilliam did it. Moonlighting did it to a certain extent, as did the Die Hard franchise (to a certain extent as well), and despite my almost total loathing of the man himself, Quentin Tarantino summoned magic from that withered husk of a man in Pulp Fiction.

Yeah there were obvious issues with Unbreakable: Sam Jackson's wig for starters. But overall? I thought it was great stuff.

And from there, the great downturn, the long day's journey into night.

First there was Lady in the Water.

Okay, okay, fine. I'll admit it. I liked that one too. But the cracks were beginning to become evident in the veneer. Something essential for me was being left out. The whole urban mythological allegory nonsense was too silly even for me. The pool to the magical otherworld concept was so outright retarded that I felt politically incorrect not liking it.

And this was the point at which I virtually told myself that Shyamamlan was a rocky road to travel as a fan. At his best he is not only willing to take the strengths of big-budget genre populism and make it somehow his own, but he is also capable of somehow conning the studio to allow him to make the movies the way he sees them in his mind without their interference. Unfortunately, at his worst he is tedious, pedantic, and outright childish (in a bad way) in his ability to tell a story. This makes you wonder why the studios would ever allow that much money to go into anyone's hands when this much silliness is at stake.

Audiences are not interested in art. They want cheap thrills, self-affirming twaddle, preachy moralistic fables with little actual depth, and lots of titty.

Shyamalan somehow is able to convince rich people to give him their money so that he can make whatever movie it is that he has decided to make with apparently few questions asked.

The reason this is a huge risk is exemplified in what may possibly be one of the worst films ever made in any genre: The Happening.

I like Mark Wahlberg. I know he's a cockeater, I know he has the intellect of a wheel of Swiss. But, I also happen to know that he can act given certain qualifications.

For one: He has to play tough guys. Any derivation from this rule will always end in disaster.

I know you think that in Boogie Nights he did a great job not being a tough guy, but think about it. He thought he was a tough guy in it. If he can tap his anger, he's in. Let him get all mushy for long and you have trouble. Look at Rock Star. When he is the arrogant, singular-minded rock singer he is a huge success, pulling off his performance as an overconfident everyman with ease. But at the end of the movie he gets all Kurt Cobain and croons his way back into Jennifer Aniston's heart. If it wasn't so funny I would issue a Fatwa against this sort of heavy-handed super-sincerity.

In the turd that is The Happening this fucking Wahlberg character goes and agrees to play a science teacher! No, I'm not kidding. The guy teaches high school science while wearing a sweater vest of all things.

And when he opens his mouth it's almost as though he may have become a castrato since his last screen appearance, so wussed out is his work in The Happening.

The story is idiotic.

Angry plants take the earth back by poisoning us into killing ourselves off.

Huh?

Is this meant as a joke, or are we actually so stupid as an audience now that large, populous audiences are somehow actually supposed to buy that the dialogue was written by anyone over the age of about seven?

It is easily that bad.

Easily.

And then there's the Johnny Legs factor.

Yup, you guessed it. That bucktoothed hack from every urban-zombie-hiphop-funfest is now inexplicably in another huge Hollywood production and is delivering yet another nearly forgettable and lackluster performance.

I dare you to watch The Happening and not feel deeply in your heart that were you to instead be seeing the Cramer version of Miami Vice, that not only would you be forced to acknowledge that Shyamalan is now almost completely culturally washed up, you would also have to recognize the wizardry and creative brio that goes into a Cramer production (okay, the only Cramer production), and in the process note that this guy, M. Night Shyamalan, has had his moment, and that it is now time to shove him into the forest and let the creatures do with him what they will.

Only then can we sleep in peace and view the world once again as our bitch and not as a delivery device for hacks.

Thar She Blows

With the election looming ever present a few short weeks in the near future, it appears as though it is once again up to us, the voting politic, to make a decision on the direction of the country for the next four years.

The thing is, and forgive this pathological intrusion, I find it hard to believe that what we the people actually want to happen has much to do with the actual agenda of whoever ends up winning.

This two-party system has such a stranglehold on the ideology of the American political monster that it is practically impossible for anyone outside of the immediate twofold system to have any substantial effect on the affairs of our country.

I am not going to sit here and claim to have anything near a comprehensive knowledge of the platform of either major candidate in this election, and I suspect that it isn't that important anyway.

What these people do, say, espouse, promote, defy, argue, and defend is more or less preordained by those that insure that the system is fed and nurtured to perpetuate itself and exclude the rest of us.

The most obvious example of this is the electoral college. Originally set up to protect the country from the ignorance of the general public, the electorates were created in order to undo the stupid mistakes of the actual people who ought to elect these clowns in the first place.

Look at the debates. The presidential debates are run by a private corporation run by guys who themselves were partisan leaders in the past. The debates were once run by the League of Women Voters, a non-partisan organization that did a fabulous job of keeping politics out of the debates in the interest of informing us in order that we might make a better-informed decision in the voting booths.

Now, the direction of the debates are controlled by both parties behind closed doors before the debates ever take place. Things like topics of discussion, limits on answer lengths, follow lengths and so-on are set, and any discussion of third-party candidates being added to the discussion are considered.

The only reason H. Ross Perot was allowed to participate when he did was because Clinton wanted the distraction in order to strengthen his own position.

The Palin/Biden Vice Presidential debate, while greatly entertaining, was little more than theater. It gave fuel to the media to chew on, and it allowed us to feel as though we were granted a window into the democratic process in such a way that we are led to believe we are part of it.

We practically aren't.

If you consider how hard McCain wants you to think Obama is the most liberal candidate in history, or how hard Obama wants you to think that he will somehow usher in an era of change when there is little to make anyone think anything real will actual improve when he is president, the whole prospect comes up a bit, well, goofy.

Who actually has a clue what the fuck is happening, as we speak, on Wall Street? Any idea what exactly has caused this nightmare and how to get out of it?

The mistakes made in the name of finance and investment and trading and funding and loans and insurance and mortgages and hedges are something that practically nobody really understands.

If you listen to people who make a living studying the markets, things are dire indeed. How did we get here, and what effect will it have on us?

The Congress got creeped out by the bailout bill but then folded when tax breaks were added for people like the makers of wooden toy arrows.

Huh?

Make any sense to you?

The party of free, untethered, unregulated markets, the party of keeping the Government out of business of American business went and sold the world of banking up the river.

Washington now has a large hand in the legal control over big banking. Does that make any sense to you?

It doesn't to me.

But back on planet earth, I know practically no one with any investments at all. Most of the people I know, including my father who is by no means poor, have no investments at all save perhaps for their house itself. I still make little to no money and struggle daily with bills, child support, gas, food, and so on. It's not like I am losing my shirt in the markets. I don't have one to lose.

So Mr. limit spending (McCain) has voted for the biggest financial bailout in history (over 800 billion dollars), but he wants you to know that he is a Maverick, and that he understands me.

Understands me? Come the fuck on.

And Obama wants me to know that he will usher in a new era of change in Washington, though he is unequivocal about his position against gay marriage. That alone is, for me, reason not to vote for him.

But here's the conundrum.

This election for me will boil down to the lesser of two evils, and while we might be talking about micro-measurements here, I am going to have to go with Obama.

The third parties have no chance whatsoever even though their views on the economy, the environment, gay rights, the war, and damn near everything else mesh more with what I want to happen in this country.

Obama has a chance. And he scares me that much less than McCain.

And then there's Palin...

God help us all.

Let's just say that I would take Biden over her. That's where she sits on my map.

No matter how closely you study Washington politics you will never even be granted the slightest glimpse into what actually happens up there.

Bill Hicks had it right. As he put it: "Shut up America and drink more beer."

Your government had your number long before you were born.

"Go back to sleep."

And, the sweetest of dreams.

The Panels, The Obelisk

How many more battles will be fought over nothing?
How many more days of uncertainty and of guilt and of lost purpose?
How much can I miss you and still keep it together in some hobbled, disheveled way?

What are the rewards for the job well done, for the life led along a narrow path, for a sense of something approaching a subtle shard of honor?

Does any victory come without a price, any goal come within reach without the anchor of loss or of pain?

We have faced down violence, anger, madness, illness, chaos, debt, doubt, turncoats, and outright cowardice and yet we are still standing.

Still standing, yes, but for what?

I know that look, the way he turns back to find me in the mess of humanity.
I know that sense of fear, of being alone and not being prepared.
I detest myself for ushering that in and having no antidote for the ugliness that comes with being.
I am a monster.
I am a fool.
I have spoiled the party as have the rest of us, to the one, who with oceanic arrogance dream of facing down the inevitable and spewing our souls into the next step with futile hopes of absolution.

Everything is predictable in its disarray.
All the punches come full-force, none are pulled, and all are right on the money.
We stand together, embraced, taking it all, and smiling...

And showing you how it's done because you have no idea who we are and what we stand for.

And you never will.

Keep it coming. The Chapel knows the truth, and we all know what the truth will do.