Getting back into this album-- oh my GOD is it hot!

"There are blue shadows between people, there's a comfortable forest of legs."
-from Waltzing Matilda, "My Bodyguard", by Alice Notley

I'd have to say that Zodiac is one the best "Hollywood" films I've seen in a long time. It's just so meticulous. By far the best approximation of a period I've seen in a film. As for the chemistry between Mark Ruffalo's raspy bulldog cop and Jake Gyllenhall's boy scout with whiskers, it's maybe the lone weakpoint. Gyllenhall's earnestness just ain't as fun to watch as Ruffalo's slow boil. Robert Downey Jr plays a character who's exactly what you would expect a character played by Robert Downey Jr to be like- whimsical, cranky, jokey, flippant (as in flipping bird while leaving San Fransisco Chronicle copy room etc). But he hardly phones it in, and no one else does either in a cast that includes two of my favorite character actors, Elias Koteas and Philip Baker Hall. And there's also some of the best use of music in a film I've witnessed, especially in the murder scenes that are almost as well executed as HItchcock. And that opening song is by Three Dog Night? Does that I mean like them now? Oh well.

Fatables.

Shouldn't athletes just be allowed to do whatever drugs they want?

I know the arguement get's made that they're 'role models', but these 'role models' are already multi-multi-millionares living in a country where most of their fans will soon be looking at the concept of upward mobility as a quaint notion from the past.

Yesterday I was listening to 'Range Life', and this line just hit me like a gut punch, which it always does.

'school's out, what did you expect?'

This just somehow completely encapsulates life for me. And not just cause I'm not attending school. Maybe it's that the line's preceded by:

'but I've got absolutely no one, no one but myself to blame

don't worry, we're in no hurry'

Since Malkmus is saying 'but I've got absolutely no one, no one but myself to blame', the bridge of 'don't worry, we're in no hurry/ school's out, what did you expect?' could maybe be looked at as a response, maybe even like a Greek chorus of... no, no, I won't say slackers, but people who're somewhat drifting thru life. But then there's the response-within-a-response of 'school's out, what did you expect?'

The tone of the song ultimately seems like one of exasperation, 'if I could settle down, then I would settle down'.

Does anyone else like Freaks & Geeks? Wasn't the way it ended kind of lame? I mean c'mon, a Deadhead?!?

I think the posts on this blog fall into two categories, with some exceptions of course. One category is where I attempt to write a certain kind of prose, say in the area of poetics or criticism. And the other is usually a one-sentence explanation of why for whatever reason I'm just not up for an 'attempt'. Today I guess I was up for one of those attempts.

One of the most fascinating things to me about Clark Coolidge's work is the ark of his career. It's seems like one can divide it into roughly these phases: 1) in the late 60s, the early work, radically disjunctive, sort of word nuggets that form short jigsaw narratives like in Space, 2) in the early 70s, longer endlessly recombinatory works like in Polaroid, The Maintains and to somewhat of an ebbing-back-into-narrative-mode extent, Quartz Hearts, 3) in the late 70s, the more narrative Solution Passage, Mine: The One That Enters The Stories, 4)in the 80s, serial texts like At Egypt, and The Crystal Text. But it's also evident that as the work progresses, Coolidge is able to utelize all these various modes in more of an overlapping way. This 'career-ark' mutates to somewhat of an extent. On The Nameways Vol. 2, for example, utelizes disjunction, narrative and seriality. A Collected Coolidge, tho it would probably have to more than one volume, would go a long toward putting all this into focus.

I get hogtied in self-examination. You can definitely do that too much. But then I feel as tho I've let alot of people down, including myself. So now what, do I just write more poems? I mean I'm sitting here and I have a life. You're sitting there, and you have a life. But the thought tends to go something more like, "I'm sitting here, and you're over there working." I think work is important but I can never quite trust it. Last night I watched Manufacturing Consent again, and Chomsky said something like, "I just don't think people should have to rent themselves out in order to live." And then of course the response is always, "Ha ha, well yes Mr. Chomsky but you are a little naive about the world." Tom Wolfe in his fucking dandy suit endlessly placing everything in an imaginary context, and then still having the nerve to call what someone like Chomsky says 'patent nonsense'. So what is work? And where is this all going? And why do I feel like Sarah Jessica Parker, posting questions on my blog? I suppose I am naive. My left arm hurts.

We want poems that show us how much of the world?

For some reason I really want to listen to Phil Collins right now. The library is closing.

WHOAH!!!

Looking forward to appearing, sans glasses, in this film.

Ah... AH CRAP!!

John Coletti's wikipedia page.

Something that occured to me last night:

Would humans have domesticated animals if clothes hadn't been invented?

I mean, would you feel comfortable with a kitten your lap if you were naked?

Five Simpsons episodes and leftover shrimp fried rice. Eat out your hearts workaday types, or umm are they hiring there?

Some kind of weird sinus thing here, like I just squirted water out of my nose or something.

Today as I was crossing the Locust St bridge, I saw two DPW workers standing next to a red fire hydrant vomiting yellow water from it's mouth.

Crying while dialing the phone. Crying while drinking water. Crying near a zebra. Crying while smoking. Crying while quitting smoking. Crying while looking at candy. Crying while it's raining. Crying in a barn. Crying backchannel. Crying while sleeping.

WAH WAH WAH!

WAH WAH WAH!

etc.

Crying while eating a peanut butter sandwich means.... get help?

_____


Last night Calvin Johnson moved me and 40-50 others upto, and past the point of tears. He's one of the most incredible performers I've ever seen in my life. He did a capella versions of a couple songs, interpretive dancing while singing.

_____

The Trusty Knife are also amazing to me, whatever that phrase means. After spending most of my night upto that point feeling sorry for myself and passive-aggresively interacting with others, they started in on "Long Distance Song". I'd heard it, but this time I got this burning feeling while listening to it, that I am lying to myself, that I don't even have the ability to be truthful with myself, and that in fact we're all lying to ourselves.

Time for me to write about The Tiny, which I'm in, but never mind that. This is the only magazine I can think of where in every issue I like almost every piece at least a little. And Gina Myers and Gabriella Torres hit a home run by placing John Coletti's amazing work up front:

I miss you with tomatoes

over your eyes tattoed valentines

on your trachea zippering

each of my ungainly comments

Just about every Coletti masterwork blows my head off with a nonchalant cosmic whoosh. Detail woven with sensory perception, joined to a kind of emotional pull that's stitched into it so intricately you almost feel it on a subconscious level.

it's getting dark

in masculine wilderness

American Hydrant

little high, little low

Coletti's work never shys away from apparent obscurity, but the ink-blotter feel of the poem is always a product of devotion. A reader can feel as though they're in strange territory, but it is never unfreindly territory. Obliqueness need not be a cold thing, and one can see Malkmus, Ceravolo, Dickinson etc, for further proof.

C.J. Martin's poem here does a neat job of addressing the act of making art, without seperating art from life:

BUSHEL MECHANISM -
else than mechanical draft,
if to increase the between
(touch & thing):
this means drafts, chances.

I'm very allured by passages like this, which almost combine the sensiblities of Emily Dickinson and early Clark Coolidge. And The Tiny specializes in this kind of modern lyric steez.

Also great in this issue is work by Edmund Berrigan, Joseph Massey, Brenda Iijima, Andrea Baker, Dustin Williamson, many more. The Tiny is a contender. Dig it!

I watched Wild Style for the first time last night, and yes it was good. That time period, late 70s early 80s, also presented in Style Wars among other films, was a pretty major ferment of creativity. But you probably don't need me to tell you that. Wild Style can easily be forgiven for abruptly turning into a concert film at the end, since the music is so fucking inspiring. I keep thinking, even tho alot of poets have been listening to hip hop since the start, maybe poetry hasn't fully explored the possibilities of that culture. Or maybe in some way poetry shuns them, for not wanting to seem "performancey". After that we watched Wu Tang's "comeback concert" from a few years ago, which tho very sloppy, has some of the old flava. I always saw Wu Tang as one of few cases where the feeling of it being a throwback- certain bounce to the ounce, a large crew, tag team MCing- was a good thing. I think the music's aged better than groups like Jurrasic 5 to say the least. Not to mention how the old skoolness of it was balanced out by RZA's incredibly innovative production. And there's the very sad and heartwarming recurrence of Ghostface trying to cheer up ODB, who's literally slumped down on the side of the stage for most of it.