The other night, I was given whiskey as I taught.



(Actually, it was 20 year old scotch, but no one ever wrote a song called 'Scotch in a Jar', did they?)

Laird Barron (imago1) got talking on his blog about having a doppleganger, and it got me thinking about the times that's happened to me. It's strange when it happens, because I've always gotten the impression from people that I stick out in a crowd. Most of the time, I assume this is because of my unattainable beauty, but then people often feel the need to add how mean looking I am, or how intense, or something like that. Most of the time, I translate this into unattainable beauty, like I said.

Life: it's all about what you make the words mean.

Anyhow, it got me thinking about the times I've been mistaken for someone. There was once, about a decade back now, when I was standing in one of those corner bbq chicken and chips shops, and the guy behind the counter started talking to me about betting on the horses. I've never been into gambling--mostly because I'm terrible at it. Friends have told me that I'm a black hole of money when it comes to betting, and since I never have enough of it to go round, I never have much of an urge. In relation to betting on the horses, I've never done that once, not even on the popular Melbourne Cup, aka the Day Australia Gambles on the Ponies. But this guy, a big Romanian guy, if I remember right, talked to me as if I knew what the fuck happened in horse races, and after a while, he said something strange. He said, "Those tips you gave me worked out really well, mate," and I nodded, because I had been nodding throughout the conversation before, much to the amusement of Djae and Dee, but this one was a touch more specific, a bit more personal, and my interest was no longer polite, and a way to kill time. Instead, we were buddies. Mates. People who knew each other. And because of that, he asked me about my job, which I gathered was some kind of tradesman thing with boilers, another area I'm not qualified in; of course, at this stage, he was filling up my bag with extra food, and I thought if I said I wasn't who he thought I was, I'd lose that, so I said it was going fine.

I've had things like that happen occasionally. I'm sure I don't rate up there with the strangeness of Laird's, but what I do get, in addition, is the celebrity sightings and in particular, two:

The first of these has happened on and off for the last decade, easily, and also includes my one point in life where I could possibly have pretended to be famous to score a date with a cute girl. I didn't, mind, but this is mostly because I was caught off guard and it's, y'know, wrong. Also, I had no preparation time--I figure if you are going to pretend to be famous with a cute girl, you have to know the subject.

The subject you ask?

A man named Ugly Phil.



He's the white guy in the shirt I'd never wear.

Anyhow, I was in a record store when the girl approached me and asked if I was Ugly Phil. I laughed, and said no, and then she said, "It's not an insult, he's really not ugly."

However, in recent years, it is more likely that people will say to me, "Has anyone ever told you that you look like that guy from Mythbusters? You know, the one with the beret."



It's mainly kids who say it, and this probably reflects more on the Mythbuster audience and who I spent the majority of time with than anything else, but it's always strange to be told that. After all, I don't own a beret. Also, I have absolutely no science ability whatsoever, and if anyone asked me to disprove any kind of myth, I'd likely just have to make some new kind of one up, but make it sound realistic. I'm sure it'd take less effort, too.

However, I do admit, I am kind of envious over the handlebar mustache Jamie Hyneman has himself.

I bet he gets that a lot, though.

There are Artistic Licenses:



On the back, it lists the type of artist you can be--controversial, outsider, traditional, grant recipient--to your behaviour patterns, which includes anti-social, elitist, can't dress, and weird. In fact, except for unhygenic, I can cop to all of those, and now rate as ASCDDGEIBNW behavioural pattern. Which is helpful, because I always wanted a snappy acronym to justify my behaviour, just like those ADHD kids.

Link.

This link was provided by Sean Williams (seanwilliams).

About last year, I decided I could write Across the Seven Continents of the Underworld in a year, but life, it has demands, and I like to do things like start working for myself and writing comics. Five months after that deadline, I'm looking at six months, but not too much longer, I don't think, for I've gotten it all down in my head.

I am at the stage now that I'm writing and cleaning up and rewriting as I go. It's not that surprising, since I rewrite a lot. I don't know what other writers are like when it comes to this, but I vomit words and ideas down, and then begin to shape it through a first draft, then a second, third, and so on until I'm happy with it. At times it strikes me as odd that I should spend so much time creating something that most people will spend a couple of days with at the most, but what can you do. Other times I wonder why my spelling doesn't improve, but I've grown immune to this, I think, to the point now that I can even ignore spelling in email. Still, an example of the changes I make is that, for the past hundred thousand words, I have been dutifully blacking out parts of a diary that forms the second narrative of the book. A fantastic idea, I thought: I'll black out all the parts that point to the villains, and have this be something that the main protagonist discovers on his path of killing people. I congratulated myself when I thought up this. Clearly, I was a genius. And what a self sacrificing genius I was, too, for I would be blacking out my own precious, precious words. Yes. Truly, an artist.

Yeah.

Well, it's helpful no one gives out artist licences, since I'd like have mine taken away from me now. The final quarter of the book, where the protagonist's brother dies--his is the diary in the novel, so it's not a spoiler, or any shit like that; the whole novel is about killing the men who killed your brother, after all--anyhow, at this stage, where all the plot strands are being tied together doesn't work at all if all the valuable plot points in the book are fucking blacked out, does it now? Heh. Bloody genius I am. "Yes, hi, I'd like to visibly hide all the plot strands from the reader, and let them figure it out for themselves. Could I include a map written in invisible ink?" Still, it's on par with the stuff I've written before, where I've gotten to the last quarter and I'm tying up everything and I realise that my moment of brilliance needs to be scrapped out. Oddly, I've done the blacked out text bit a couple of times now, and I guess I've got an urge to do the whole thing where you hide important information from the reader, but imply it through another means.

At any rate, I decided this morning that for a blog post I'd drop a section of the book in to give people a look. I've shown bits from the start of the book before, but I figured this time I'd pull something from the middle, just for kicks:

It was with no surprise, then, when the blurred, orange lights of a gazebo appeared in the dark and it became clear that Sara Mae was leading them towards it.

Closer, and Brady could see that the large gazebo sat on the edge of a ravine, but also that, on second glance, that it, in fact, went into the large divide of the land, the copper and brass and wooden walls attached to the rocky wall. He suspect that it went all the way to the bottom of the ravine, but he could not make it out properly due to the darkness; the light from his bike was no help at his distance, either. The lights from the house, tiny burning eyes, likewise, did not reach the bottom of the ravine, but rather stopped, half way down, as if the rest of the structure went to a place that light could exist in. Of the gazebo itself that clung, much like a hunched figure, to the ledge, it was as if it were light like the remains of a destroyed building, so did the lights within it seem to smolder. Yet, there was nothing to hint at a damaged frame, or to say that it had suffered from any kind of destruction, self inflicted or otherwise, and it to gave the impression of being nothing short of occupied.

Closer still, and Brady was able to make out the silhouette of a man, emerging from the door.

His presence did not surprise Sara Mae, who continued without pause; but for Brady, and for Cowan, who was ahead of him, it did, and both their bikes dropped a gear as they came upon the path leading up to the gazebo. Indeed, they paused, Cowan first, then Brady, and watched on idling bikes as Sara Mae stepped off her bike, and walked up to the man and hugged him. In response, Brady heard Cowan grunt, the sound a mirror for the one he did not voice, the sense of unknown he did not like about what was before him, but then he rode up the path, the shrinking distance stripping away the shadows of the man, to reveal him to be ten to fifteen years older than Brady. He was of about medium height, average in build but for a slight layer of fat to his entire body; upon that fat, however, and of most interest to Brady as he killed the engine, and kicked out his stand, was the neat and very traditional marks across his skin: the marks, in short, of a mortician. He even wore, the other man noted still, the traditional mortician's black pants, and with a dirty, grease stained white shirt wrinkled and untucked around him. Yet, there was something about him, and perhaps it was in the unshaven, messy haired face that he had, or in the way his faded blue eyes flicked from him to Cowan, casually, and without first glancing at their own marks, that spoke not of the latter mess, but of a calm, controlled quality that Brady first associated with morticians.

“Matt,” Sara Mae said, as he drew closer. “Robert. This is Jonathan Daniels.”

The man held out his unmarked hand, which Cowan took first, then Brady. “Bit of a surprise,” he said, his voice easy, casual, a hint of a smile on his lips. “I wasn't expecting visitors.”

“I came to see my brother.”

Daniels—the name so close, Brady noted, to Daniel—nodded.

Sara Mae pushed through the door first, the others following behind. Inside, the smoldering light of the gazebo continued, casting the room in a soft, coppery light. Brady had been expecting to find a morticians chair, a tattoo gun, and rows of ink, but instead, he found a large, long work bench, in which mechanical devices lay across in neat, organised lines, their wiring and wires and sprockets laid out next to each other, the internal laid naked. On the bench was a clock, a fan, the engine of a bike—or a generator—and, lastly, a brass boned, very still body of a cat. Behind the bench was a long library of books, the titles of which, Brady noted in his glances, related to anatomy, to diseases, to mechanics, to philosophy, and to botany. A glance to the ceiling told him that even the space up there was used, with large baskets hanging from hooks—and containing what, he wondered—interspaced by copper bladed fans that, even now, spun slowly. It was there, while staring at them, that he realised that the gazebo, unlike so many others in Ailartsua, had electricity in it, and that the smoldering effect of the light was caused by this, and that, yes, on second glance, the object that he took to be an engine or a generator, was in fact the latter, but the putrid odour he associated with them was not there, just a faint chemical smell.

“You're not a mortician, are you?”

“Once,” Daniels replied. “Before I was transported.”

“You were transported?” There was disbelief in Cowan's voice when he spoke. “I never heard of a mortician being transported.”

In response, the older man merely smiled, and shrugged.

Ahead of him, Sara Mae had reached the end of the room, where, behind a set of copper gates, sat an elevator. However, while she pushed the gates back, Daniels turned, faced the two ex-convicts, and directed them down a short hallway, where, in the faint light, a pair of couches could be made out, a glass table between them. As he made his way to it, Brady glanced back, once, to see the girl step into the elevator: as she did, she offered him a tiny smile, a hesitant thing that, he thought, was the kind you gave before you did something you knew would be emotionally difficult.

“I doubt she'll be long,” Daniels said.

As the elevator began to descend in a rattle, Brady said, “She can be as long as she wants.”

In the room, the older man offered them drink, which they took, and he passed Brady an ashtray as he pulled out a cigarette. In response, Brady offered him a stick, which the man took, the ritual of ex-convicts.

“You been here a while, yeah?” Cowan's voice had a touch of jealousy in it which, Brady thought, he tried to mask by pulling out his own, cheap grey cigarettes. “Place like this just doesn't appear.”

“Takes some time,” the older man agreed, “and some money. I was transported ten years ago.”

“How long you get?”

He offered that easy, casual smile of his. “I was told not to come back.”

“You get a sentence?”

“Two years—I served about six months, before I was employed on the settlements around here.”

Brady blew out smoke. “You're a surgeon, aren't you?”

“I know the trade, yes.” Daniels saluted with his own cigarette. “But I'm trained as a mortician—the marks probably tell you that. The Morticians Council doesn't approve, however, when you start trying to combine the two. You record a life, they say, you don't make one.”

Back down the hallway, he heard the elevator shudder to a stop, returning. Quick. Much quicker than he thought it would be. The footsteps that he heard were not just a single pair, but two and, he realised, he wasn't surprised by that. Cowan, Brady could see, was; but for himself, he had begun to piece it together quickly, to realise that as he saw and heard more from Daniels, that Sara Mae had not traveled to a grave. She was not going to sit and talk to a little marker. There was no emotional bond to be had with a site. No. She had come to find her brother, her actual brother, who had died, who had killed himself, if her story was to be believed, and who this man had Returned. Had made a Return. Out here, in the heat, in the red dirt, beneath the red sky, and with the electricity he had made himself... and as the sound of gears, the growl of mechanics came close, as it drew behind him, then in front of him, Brady felt a faint smile cross his face. But. But as the smile began, as the thought of what this meant to him crossed his mind with it, it stopped, halted by the sight of the two figures before him, and off the tattered, exposed nature of the second, the Returned.

He was not much taller than Sara Mae, but after that, there was no similarity between the two, for in Daniel Oktober, there was a body clothed in tatters: in ripped pants and shirt, and in ripped, decaying skin, so far gone that it revealed the copper and bronze bones of his arms and chest, the silver veins that crossed dirtily from each to each, the pumps and the gears that lurked in his chest in a massive display of complexity, a jigsaw he would never be able to decipher. And of his face—his face, with the original skin that he had once had—was a ruin, with decay having set in there to such an extent that it was all but an old child's tattered mask, with bright, artificial eyes staring out of his face.

“Though as you can see,” Daniels said, still casual though his voice was diminished beneath the machine growl of the boy, “I've never been interested in that rule.”

Of course, I hate everything about it, but that's part of the course at this stage of writing, too. 'cause hate means you're almost done.

After all, you never leave a thing while you're in love.

For when the Jesus Fish isn't subtle enough.

The day started pretty shit with some unsurprising news from Job #2, but I just got off the phone with a nice girl who saved me ten or so bucks on advertising by removing one word, so it's picking up.

From Timothy S. Miller (timothymiller):

"I was convicted of being Japanese. It was my only crime, and when found guilty, I was sentenced to Assimilation."

So begins Black Sheep, by Ben Peek, a dark dystopian journey into a world where segregation is perfected, and opposition--even in thought--results in the mind numbing horrific act of Assimiliation.

Isao Dazai, having recently immigrated to Asian-Sydney from Asian-Tokyo, finds himself in a world--once again--divided by race. Sydney is no different than Tokyo. Segregating Asians, Africans, and Caucasians into walled cities guarded by featureless Segregators, grave consequences result at even the thought of crossing cultural boundaries.

From the beginning, (not counting the fact that the first few lines of the book offer up his fate) we know that Isao is destined to buck the system.

While he is continually curious about the happenings in African or Caucasian-Sydney, his apathy and restlessness, even in his own Country (before immigrating to Asian-Sydney) speaks more of an existential angst, a discomfort in his own skin, than a true desire to search out alien culture. "...it was a well kept secret that I believed that I could live in any city, in any country, and feel the same ambivalence."

But we're not just talking about angst rising out of the uncertainty and discomfort of your own existence, we're talking angst that blooms and thrives in an environment where all of your actions are caught on surveillance cameras, your voice recorded, and dissidence rewarded with the stripping of your pigmentation--an erasure of sorts--placing you in environs eerily reminiscent of Nazi concentration camps.

While I was hoping for the dark brooding humor that plagues (in a good way) his blog, Peek's Black Sheep--while void of lightheartedness, (this is dystopian after all)--was impossible to put down.

Peek creates a sterile world where your name is your sickness, your Family is your enemy, individuality is prohibited, and nothing is ever what it seems.

It must be review week for me. I've noticed that these things tend to come in groups.

Anyhow, a while back, Miller told me that Black Sheep had ended up as the extra curricular reading in a course out in Texas, if I remember right. For a moment, I thought I should apologise to people, but then I realised that this meant people had to buy my book, and course marks were a suitable bribe. Since the book is pretty much dead, the idea of anyone buying it seems alien and obscure, I decided this was quite a good thing.

Link to Amazon, where you can buy it, review it, recommend it, do whatever with it.

I ripped this off Warren Ellis' blog, and man, it's pretty fucking cool. Nazis in space!

Here is a review of 'Black Betty'

“Black Betty,” [Lone Star Stories; Issue 23, October 1, 2007] by Ben Peek is a compelling and macabre adventure story set against the Caribbean pirate era. Although no date is specified within the piece, somewhere around 1665 would be my educated guess. The story involves a British warship and its crew commissioned from St. Lucia, a Caribbean island that changed hands between the British and the French myriad times, with the former controlling the island from 1663 to 1667, a time frame coincident with the height of the Caribbean piracy era.

The story is largely framed in the form of testimonial evidence in regard to an investigation being conducted by Lord Richard Lewis who is apparently the governor of the colony or some other high official. His inquiry is in regard to an affair concerning the mighty warship Meredith which he had outfitted for the benefit of Captain Andrew Lewis, his now déclassé son. The son had been disgraced due to an affair he had had with a black woman who apparently had been a practitioner of herbal and folk medicine. Lord Lewis had been scandalized by his son’s association and had hung Zaierra, the object of Andrew’s affections.

Upon learning of a connection between Zaierra and a legendary, now virtually mythical, pirate queen referred to as “Black Betty,” Lord Lewis ordered his son, by way of redemption, to hunt down both the pirate and her swift raiding ship—boasting distinctive black sails—of the same name. Black Betty is believed to have been a onetime runaway slave who had turned pirate as revenge; a revenge which has wreaked havoc upon the Caribbean for years. Myths abound about her including that she had made deals with the sea to gain immortality.

...

Throughout the story—thus far related as an inquiry before the ill-fated captain’s father—the reader is puzzled at certain inconsistencies within the testimonies given by the three witnesses and even more so by unanswered questions. How long had Lewis and his party remained on the island? Was it really the three days that Avery had maintained it had been?

If so, why hadn’t Blue and Belzar stated or implied such, nor Lewis within his letter? What would have been the purpose for such an extended visit when they had discovered Black Betty, the stated reason for their having been there, the first day? Had Captain Lewis actually so easily relinquished his father’s prize captive or her life as the pirate Belzar related?

Likewise, to this point the reader is uncertain if he or she is reading a straightforward and dark adventure story, or one of the supernatural. Nowhere is the word “voodoo,” for example, mentioned; yet the author skillfully weaves that thought within the reader’s perception with subtle allusions that are by no means conclusive. Mr. Peek paints a tense, ominous portrait on the steamy tropical canvas of his vivid imagination. The trepidation the author engenders within the reader’s psyche is palpable; the sheer ruthlessness of his drawn subjects, breathtaking.

Mr. Peek’s resolution of the story is one that is as masterful as it is startling and unforgettable. It is delivered by way of a testimony beyond the scope and authority of Lord Lewis’s investigation. It is an ending just vaguely reminiscent of that of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, though totally original and just as compelling. Mr. Peek adroitly leaves just enough to the reader’s imagination to render the piece thought-provoking, while sufficiently resolving riddles to avoid his story becoming a cipher in the reader’s mind.

If “Black Betty” is indicative of Mr. Peek’s work as a whole, then it is a point of wonder that his is not already a household name; or at least such within houses where residents actually read. Five stars out of five. Bravo!

Link.

This review has, I think, the weird honour of being--to the best of my knowledge--the most words dedicated to anything I have ever written. Usually, I'm not so up on pieces that tell me what was in the story, but I was strangely captivated by this one. For some reason, I kept wondering if I'd really written that, and why someone in Hollywood wasn't rushing to take an option on the piece, and give me millions of dollars. Not the usual experience I get while reading reviews, got to say.

Lucius Shepard's (lucius_t of theinferior4) review of Iron Man is the fun, cynic's knifing, and I can't disagree with it:

Tony Stark is every adolescent male’s wet dream: a billionaire genius gearhead who makes cool weapons, drives cars with names that end in i, and gets babe after ungettable babe, so many of them he can’t remember them a week later. Then one day after blowing up half a mountain range while demonstrating a powerful new missile in Afghanistan, he sees US soldiers shot to pieces by Stark Industries weapons and is captured by forces led by the menacing Raza (Faran Tahir, soon to be seen in Star Trek), who directs Stark to build missiles for him in the terrorists’ underground hide-out. Stark pretends to comply, but with the aid of a fellow captive he builds instead a prototype of the Iron Man armor and crashes out, returning to the States where he’s reunited with his Lamborghinis; his aide, Pepper Pots (Gwyneth Paltrow); and his partner in crime, Obadiah Stane (a bald, bearded, and slightly porcine Jeff Bridges). This sequence, culminating with Stark donning a sexier version of the Iron Man armor and returning to Afghanistan to wreak vengeance on Raza and put on display his newly developed conscience regarding the scummy nature of his business, is admittedly entertaining—you’re carried along by a mix of snappy one-liners and action, and given no time to think. But once Stark becomes a force for good and the real villain of the piece is “revealed,” the momentum of the picture begins to dissipate.

...

There’s a reason for that. People love these movies because they illuminate the myths of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Oh, please! They aren’t myths. They’re wish-fulfillment fantasies for fourteen-year-olds . . . and primitively mounted ones at that. Then again, maybe you’re right. It’s a desperate age we live in, with a devalued intellectual currency. Maybe these are all the myths we’ve got . . . or the only myth, because they all tell the same basic story and have the same underlying purpose, to make the real world go away.

Linked that last bit just for you, Grant (angriest), to inspire you on thesis of Superheroes as the 20th Century Myth, which I expect to be seeing and arguing with soon.

Link.

From the Fix comes a review of 2012 and 'David Bowie':

“David Bowie” by Ben Peek is a unique story told through a conversation between two friends as they debate on what to do with themselves in the few years before the end of the world in 2012. They’ve quit their mundane jobs. Why bother? So, what to do? Create art? Or music? Or some other lasting thing of beauty? But why bother if there will be no one to appreciate it? Perhaps do nothing? Wile away the last years on mindless pleasure? Or maybe even check out early and beat the rush before the madness sets in on the last living souls? And so they debate what to do. A truly disturbing, if minimalist, tale.

It seems the reviewer has misread the story (the world is not ending in it), but still, they liked it, and that's what counts, I suppose.

Link.

I do love those final lines.

From P (artbroken)

That's a nice camera. New?



Timely.



Give us a look?



Yeah, fuck you, pass it over.



...

Tell me you're not taking—





Are you looking at them now?



Well, we're in McDonalds at the International Airport.

Also, there's an old lady behind you.



Maybe she'll want to star in your next set.



From night shift manager to pornographer, huh?



I'm going to leave that camera in the hands of children, you know that, right?



...



...



Told you.



Well, she wanted to, but I said that'd be an invasion of your privacy.

When I said that, she offered me fifty bucks.



Totally.

By the way, you are aware of the fact that traveling with you for two weeks with a camera full of relationship porn is asking for trouble.

I mean—you know how this is going to end, right?



For two weeks?



Restraints? On a holiday?



Holiday's in another country are consequence free. Didn't you get the memo?



You've always been shockingly conservative on vacation, you know that, right?



Should I get t-shirt?



Why not?

Seriously, man, it's a holiday. I just spent two months grinding through HSC tutoring. My students, they're going to go to away to Schoolies and drink and fuck like there's no tomorrow. Outside the drinking, that sounds like the way to be to me.



Sounds good, that's what it sounds. Just kick back, have fun, and know that in two weeks, I got to be back here, broke.



Probably.

The children, you understand.



Maybe you should keep the photos for a resume, then?



Being a porn director?



I reckon there'd be a lot of cleaning.



What you and your girlfriend do in your spare time is none of my business.



The shiny upper middle class life, hey?



Maybe you should take photos of that?



Yeah. I reckon there's a whole market for it. Cute girls cleaning your house. Dusters, mops, but nothing hardcore. None of that—that sex with appliance shit you might be thinking of. I mean, maybe naked, but it'd be pure cleaning. Down on her knees, scrubbing a floor, up on a ladder, getting cobwebs out of the corner.

And the end—the cum shot of the whole thing, is a wide angled shot of a whole house in pure cleanliness.



We'd be millionaires.



Yeah, okay. Just let me say goodbye to the old lady behind you first. I feel that we've bonded today.

Apparently, Iron Man is the second coming. Interested in seeing Jesus once again, I went to see the flick with Cas.

The truth it, it's not a bad film, but that's about it. A brief run down of the plot will give you billionaire playboy genius Tony Stark is kidnapped in Afghanistan, takes shrapnel in his heart, and then, rigged up to a car battery, does his impression of Ned Kelly, before returning to America to announce that weapons manufacturing is bad, Stark Enterprises will stop this, and then proceeds to create an Iron Man suit to go and beat up bad guys. The film hints, for a moment, at a dialogue between America's relationship with weapons makers and supplying the world, but it's a hint made by the subject matter, and not the film, and any dialogue that could be established is dropped for cardboard villains and a man in a red and gold suit smacking them around. Which is fine, of course; but the moment someone tells you that this film has subtext, you're to beat them pipe. And outside that kind of statement, Iron Man does very little wrong: Downey is well cast as Tony Stark, Jeff Bridges does his best with the role of the villain that lacks reasoning--why after thirty years decide to kill Stark?--and Gwyneth Paltrow is in a role that seems to be beneath her, an admittance I find strange, given that I've never been a fan of her. Oh, and there's another insufferable cameo by Stan Lee, which I'd really just wish they'd stop doing.

So, what's the problem, then?

It's passion.

There's no passion in this film. There's nothing about it that says, "Iron Man had to be made." There's no love, no defiance, no need, which is something that I found with Batman Begins, and almost every other superhero film I've seen--in fact, perhaps every one, but I'm sure there's been one or two when I haven't thought that. For some of those films, however, what does it matter? No passion in X-Men 3? Good: it was shit from beginning to end. No passion in the Punisher? Heh. Yeah, could anyone make sense of that? But Iron Man, with its good actors and its sometimes interesting director? Why are they here. Why aren't they making a film that they feel something about, which they are engaged with, and which will translate, then, across the screen and to a viewing pleasure for me? Perhaps it's an odd complaint to make, but I don't want to see Downey as Tony Stark, or Jon Favreau directing such a film. Okay, granted, only Made is a difference for him, and it's not that much of a change, given that he apparently directed Zathura: A Space Adventure, but still, the man can make a decent film, and shows some ability, and this is my point. The script was mostly rubbish in terms of dialogue and plot, but so many are--but there's Bridges, doing his best while smoking a cigar, and all I can think is, 'Why are you here, man? You're too good for this."

I ask this, because there is a sense to the film of boredom, of everything being done by the numbers from everyone, and it being a thing you do for cash, to pass the time, to reach another point and because of that, the film feels like a waste.

Consider this: there is a point in the film when Tony Stark, brilliant, with an army of scientists and billions in cash, says that it is time to change, time to stop making weapons to fund other projects, to stop with weapons that kill and damage and take accountability, and Iron Man is akin to that statement. It hurts no one, true, but the argument is that such a film allows for tiny, interesting, engaging films to be made, or some such thing; but as much as making weapons in the film is a waste of talent and resources, despite their successful outcomes, this film is also a waste of its resources. In the time that this film was made, the people involved could have gotten together, gone with a project that meant something to them, and infused it with such passion and love that it, successful or not, it would have been a thousand times more engaging than this hollow, but polished affair that keeps a franchise alive.

That's what I think, but y'know, perhaps, just perhaps, I'm jaded and cynical, and perhaps the film just wasn't for me. Plenty of others are masturbating over it and maybe you ought listen to them.

Portishead released a third album and I had no idea until two hours ago.

Please, the next memo, can I be included?

In case you've never heard of Portishead, they're a British band who, in 1994, released the album, Dummy, which is probably most well known for the track 'Numb'. Djae introduced me to the band, and I just got drawn in by the sound of the band, which was dark, and smooth, and like you were lying beneath sky at night, watching it all move. I describe the album like this because it's been twelve years, and it's only upon occasion that my Ipod skips to one of the tracks, but this is the feel I get, the time that my instincts tell me it would be best to listen to the album and fully appreciate it. The vocals on the tracks were provided by Beth Gibbons, who in 2002, did an album with Rustin Man, and which I never heard, but I remember being told about, some time after the fact (by Jon (underdogautopsy), if I remember right); but part of thing that struck me about the band was Gibbons' voice, the reedy, fragile quality of it, as if it were straining to rise above the sounds produced by Geoff Barrow and Adrian Utley, and as if it had to pierce through you to do that. It was beautiful, of course, but that was never the fullness of it--if it had just been beautiful, I would, I think, have forgotten about it. But I could remember that voice, that music, and if the second album, the self titled Portishead was not as strong as the first, it wasn't a bad album, and had its highlights, way back in 1997.

And then...

Then, a live album, Roseland NYC Live, which was nothing special, a rehash of everything they'd done, and I thought that they had called it quits. New music came, new music went. I bought an Ipod and put all three albums on there, and later took of Roseland for the space. Mostly, I didn't think about the band.

But today, a third album. Third.

It sounds--

Well, so far, it sounds pretty fucking cool, and excuse me while I lose a portion of the day to it.

This actually a pretty good job of syncing Miss Piggy to Peaches' voice.

The other day I watched the Coen brothers' latest film, No Country for Old Men, which is based of the novel by Cormac McCarthy, and is a film that's gotten a lot of good things said about it. For many, it seemed, it was a return to form for the Coen brothers.

I suppose I'll come down to the line of disagreeing, but not because I think the film is bad, but rather because the end misses its thematic mark, and that sense of missing a mark has been my sense with the Coens for a while now. In case you've not heard about the film, it's centred around Llewelyn Moss, played by Josh Brolin, and whose problems begin when he comes across a drug deal gone bad. Amongst the dead and dying, he finds a suitcase full of money and takes it, making the one mistake of returning later to give water to a dying man, which ends up with him being found. Before you reach the film, you'll be sold on the fact that Tommy Lee Jones' character, Ed, is at the centre of the film, but he's not, really, and that's both the film's strength and flaw in its thematic conversation. No Country for Old Men has a thematic concern that is pretty much summed up in the title: that there is no place for old men in this new world, that they are being minimised by their fading physical attributes, and that in the fights that take place between young men, they are unable to compete. Lee's Ed, therefore, while intelligent and dogged in his unravelling of the drug deal, Llewelyn's place in it, and how dangerous Anton (played by Javier Barden) is, is never able to engage in the conflict of the book. Whenever Anton is given a confrontation that he must overcome, it is one that arises from Llewelyn, for he, unlike Ed, is his physical counter part, a man in a similar age bracket who can compete against him.

For the most part, that works fine. Brolin does a fine job as the down to earth, take no shit hunter/cowboy, though his conflict against Barden's killer is diminished somewhat by the fact that Anton is such a cartoon character that he's more unintentionally humouress than chilling. But still, the film isn't bad: the Coen's know how to put together a solid film, and the chase the two are engaged in is one that carries you through the film nicely. It is, however, with a quarter of the film left, and with Llewelyn's death, that the film falls back onto its thematic content to carry it, and it's there that the whole thing falls apart. It is at this stage that you realise that Jones' character really hasn't spent that much time on the screen, and that his top billing is somewhat unearned in terms of screen time; but the real problem is that by having him as such a diminished presence, when it comes time to give the film its weight and purpose, there's no resonance, because Ed is very much a periphery character, and his push in the final quarter to the centre of the film is an awkward one, and results in the introduction of a disable brother and retirement that feels as if it has come out of nowhere, and leaves the viewer feeling as if he or she missed a whole section of the film.

It's a question of weighting, in the end. For such a theme to be successful, then more time has to be spent with the character that it hinges on, and at the end of the film, where Ed describes the dream of his father--a strange moment where he seems to imply that he'd like nothing better if Dad could come back, hold him, read him a bedtime fable and tell him his important to the world--there's been no investment made by either the film makers or the audience for the theme to actually work.

The Herd's new song, from Peter Hollo, who is renting out his cello in the background:



I wasn't sure how I felt about it last night, but a couple of plays later, I quite like it, and it's nice to see Jane Tyrrell's vocals getting a strong use (at least, I hope it's Tyrrell--apologises if it's not).

The Herd's last album, The Sun Never Sets, was a really fine, intelligent thing that I dug a whole lot. Their previous albums were a mixed batch to me--I'd like a few tracks, hate others, and find the whole rather unsatisfying, but the third album seemed to see a change in the band, or so it seemed to me. The politics that found their way into the tracks were more mature, more interesting, and quite evocative when it came down to the language. With any luck, Summerland will be more of that.