On Thursday I became a homeowner! What a friggin process it was though. I’ll go into more detail with that in a further post. Right now I’m enjoying my current disaster area. I pulled out all the carpet, padding and tackboard stuff that evening, so the floors are a bit rough right now. The wallpaper is old and nicotine-stained, and the bathroom door won’t stay open, but the place is mine, finally. I had lots of help from a friend who is now a neighbor and a few others too. I’ve been enjoying beer on my front porch.

I’ve also dropped a shit-ton of money getting emergency needs this weekend. Tomorrow I hope to get my kitchen put away and the dryer vent hooked up. Then, pulling more staples. I know I’ve become my mother when stuff like that sounds fun. Except more beer is involved with me. Whee!

I have exactly 15 ft³ of books. Not all of them are pictured. I am worried that 15 ft³ is too few? I can build a sweet fort out of them though. I can’t figure out if I have too much crap or not. Packing things typically makes me run across stuff that makes me think WTF, but I seem to have rid myself of most of that detritus. I’m still gonna have a yard sale soon, or whatever.

Today I also determined that awkward is an awkword.

This post is too short for the image so here are a few extra words. Back to packing.

You know social networking has jumped the shark when your university creates its own social networking site. It is a bit primitive, but they’ve got a thing where you can add your own HTML snippets. Could be good, could be bad. If they don’t have it locked down, someone could send some serious virulence through it. I still prefer my MySpace. It has better music.

Thanks for the add, yo!

THIS POST CONTAINS A PICTURE OF AN EVISCERATED CORPSE, IF YOU DON’T WANT TO SEE IT, DON’T READ THIS POST.

A part of this viewing list: Criterion Collection Spine #184: Stanley Brakhage’s By Brakhage: an anthology.

I’d forgotten how good Stan Brakhage is at the avant-garde filmmaking gig. It has been 5 years since my brief obsession with avant-garde film; I should really get back into it. There is a lot of talk [linked below] about relational spectatorship, subjectivity, deconstruction and any number of other theories that attempt to parse out what Brakhage was trying to do with his numerous films. This collection of 26 works by Brakhage, and knowing a bit about the man from the supplementary commentary on the discs, leads me to believe that the fundamental goal of a Brakhage film is to be devoid of all subjectivity and objectivity; something merely exists to be shown. His paint-films seem to approximate synaesthesia, and while I can see some merit in the assertions that Brakhage wants his viewers to see light, I think there is a more general goal here; Brakhage wants us to see things that we take for granted, or never see in the first place. I like the man more than his films, which is saying a lot. He seemed like a man with a good heart and an earnestness about him that completely threw away any pretention. He wasn’t doing avant-garde stuff to be edgy, but because it suited him.

So watching a film like The Act of Seeing With One’s Own Eyes, that shows graphic visions of autopsies, is a chance to see a dead body before it is all maked-up for viewing. Sure we hear about death and dead bodies all the time and see them on TV, but how often do we actually get to see a dead body without all the fuss we put around it. The only thing that could be closer than this film is to actually go to a morgue. Dog Star Man is his earliest masterpiece, and is the visual representation of man’s place in the universe with a bit of our ultimate futility thrown in for good measure. This is the least happy of his films, in my opinion. Tons of footage of Brakhage running up a snowy mountain carrying an axe. Tough work, two forward one back, his determination becomes admirable, but his final failure hurts just as badly. Window Water Baby Moving is an amazing document of the birth of his first child, and I was rooting on Jane Brakhage and then baby Myrrena through the whole thing. It is quite graphic too, but like his autopsy film, how often does the average person get the chance to witness a birth?

The older he got, the more refined and experimental he became. The collaged detritus of Mothlight is beautiful, and it looks as if it were made of the stuff that you pull out of the ceiling lamp shade. The Wold Shadow is a horror film, or at least ridiculously creepy, and consists of shot of a woodland over various times and has Brakhage painting or tweaking the plate or the film in such a way that it looks as if there is something moving in the wood. He says it is his homage to the God in the Wood, and it certainly should be. Much of the rest consists of paint on film, each individual frame painted by Brakhage and many of them could be considered great abstract art; when they’re animated and modified, the effect is wholly engrossing. This is what synapse firing would look like. The Dante Quartet is probably the most easily accessible of the paint-films, and Black Ice the most evocative. There is a later film with his grandchildren that is statelier and more meditative, it seems more about analyzing time than light. All in all, this anthology was extremely enjoyable, and although I wouldn’t recommend watching the autopsy film over breakfast [as I did], of all the films that he made, that one affected me the most. We miss you, Stan.

• Criterion Essay by Fred Camper
• Fred Camper’s Brakhage site
• Senses of Cinema on Brakhage
• Interview: Brakhage at Sixty
• Criterion Collection collection of links to essays on Brakhage
• Stan Brakhage on Ubu
• YouTube Madness
  • The Dante Quartet
  • Dog Star Man, Part 2
  • Desistfilm
  • The Garden of Earthly Delights
  • Delicacies of Molten Horror Synapse
  • Black Ice
  • Rage Net

Buying a house is ridiculously stressful. I’ve never had to jump through so many hoops, had so many balls to juggle and people and things and documents and who knows what to coordinate in my entire life. I’ve been on the ball the whole time, but waiting for other folks to catch up or follow through gets fairly annoying. I just had a scare because my real estate agent called me up and said I needed proof of residency from my landlord for the title agency. This is two days before closing, mind you, and my landlord is out of town for who knows how long. Turns out my banker had supplied them with the necessary information, but I’m still trying to get my insurance documents faxed over to him. He’s been moved around and promoted time and time again for the past few months so I’ve got 3 different phone numbers, two faxes and an email address that I don’t think he checks very often. Just give me my goddamn keys!

Hollowed, the body upon a table; no verbs for
the inanimate, a cicada shell.

And men in long coats have removed them;
peeled flesh - skull over face -
sawn through bone
cracking walnuts for the meat inside;

each soft and hidden part apprised;
the inside of your breast, the open boat
of your body sprayed clean of gristle;
blood pooling, numbered.

Those sullen limbs have
lost integrity to knife, hose,
microphone.

But who else holds the bodies of the dead;
thumbs the clayed flesh of your father;
that last and longest intimacy?

No better lover has had
such indifferent hands, no other
judge such objective compassion.

Look.
It demands only,
the act of seeing with one’s eyes.

I’ve been making lots of phone calls to various utilities and insurance companies lately and it appears that I’ve walked into some sort of Alterna-Earth where the automated phone services I’ve had to utilize and the operators at the end of the line are all eager to facilitate a swift and hassle-free transaction. This started when I called up Cleveland Public Power to tell them I was moving. The operator was so sincerely committed to providing good customer service that I felt that I had to compliment her at the end of the phone call. Dealing with the gas company wasn’t much better, but I didn’t have to be on hold for 45 minutes before being told that I would receive a phone call back at another time. Then I just called Progressive to cancel my auto insurance with them. I got a multi-policy discount by taking home and auto through the same company, and my auto insurance is about $100 cheaper a year because of that too, for the same coverage. Sorry Matt. Their customer service was amazing. No push-buttoning at all, I was connected immediately to a human who asked for my policy number right off. In less than two minutes the policy was canceled and I’d been informed that a refund would be credited to my credit card.

Hopefully the actual move will go as smoothly.

A part of this viewing list: Criterion Collection Spine #379: Kon Ichikawa’s The Burmese Harp.

The Burmese Harp seems less the anti-war film it is often billed as, and more of a post-war re-evaluation of Japanese nationalism. For practical purposes there are two characters in this film, the deserter Mizushima and the rest of his battalion. After the Japanese surrender, both characters find themselves bereft and in search of a new direction now that their ideology of Imperial Japan no longer exists. This loss is compounded by their expatriation in Burma and British captivity; they are orphaned in a foreign land and unable to return to their home for healing. Because of this it is not surprising that they cling to one another; when Mizushima goes missing after an attempt to save the lives of some stalwart Japanese holdouts, the rest of the battalion spends the film concerned with his discovering his whereabouts and then convincing him to come home with them.

Mizushima’s failure to convince the Japanese at Triangle Mountain to surrender, and their resulting destruction in his presence [and his wounding], are life-changing events. He is nursed by a Buddhist monk and convinced to rid himself of the past and take vows. Yet, for a man who has sworn to start anew, he has a torturous time coming to grips with this. On his journeys he repeatedly stumbles across the unburied and unmourned corpses of Japanese soldiers. The emotional toll this takes on him doesn’t reach its peak until he arrives in Mudon and watches the burial of a British soldier with full honor. Distraught, he heads back into the wilderness to bury his dead brothers at arms, by hand. This vaguely penitential purpose brings him great respect all over Burma; instead of inflicting suffering as a solider, he endures his own to ease that of others.

I’ve not yet mentioned the role that music plays in this film, and it is an important one. The battalion captain is a trained choirmaster and in the rough times in the Burmese jungle trains his men in the ways of choral singing. Mizushima plays the role of accompanist with his Burmese harp. The music throughout the film is outstanding, and it even saves the Japanese lives on the night of their surrender, as the tune they sing is well-known to the British. At the very beginning of the film, the captain says that the ease of singing is meant for times of suffering, and there seems to be a direct correlation between his battalion’s reasonableness and rationality in contemplating surrender and their love of music. The contrast to this is the resistant honor-unto-death attitude of the Japanese at Triangle Mountain. Thus, Mizushima’s spiritual journey contains a component of tension between these two attitudes as well.

In the end the battalion and Mizushima take inevitable separate paths toward the same goal. The battalion is eager to continue in its component lives back in Japan, and Mizushima is focused on putting to rest all of his dead comrades. Everyone is moving on and coming to terms with their new lives. Mizushima’s monastic life intersected the battalion’s in a way that made him truly seem dead to the past, a silent ghost, except for the music of the Burmese harp; a reminder that there are ties that bind between culture, distance, religion and even death. This is a beautiful, wretched movie, definitely the kind of film meant for the Criterion Collection.

• Criterion Essay by Tony Rayns.
• Stylus Magazine review.
• Strictly Film School review.
• Kon Ichikawa Interview Part 1; Part 2
• Rentaro Mikuni Interview Part 1; Part 2

A part of this viewing list: Criterion Collection Spine #380: Jules Dassin’s The Naked City.

Even without the ridiculously annoying narrator, The Naked City would still be a mediocre film. It is basically an episode of CSI without any of the technology. A police procedure film about the murder of a young model that takes place in New York. Not exactly original. Of course, this film is pretty old, and that is where its main value lies; as an artifact and historical example of what Hollywood was doing right after World War II. The film has a distinct beat, melodrama, investigation, humor, repeat; and its initial claim to be something of a documentary is laughable when you consider the carefully arranged sets, shots and soft-focus close ups of dames. And, of course, the film has Barry Fitzgerald, a character actor of such caliber that any film he’s in automatically becomes stereotypical [cf. The Quiet Man].

Despite the overbearing, smarmy narrator, and the leprechaun in the main role, the film continually disgraces itself by providing a completely predictable plot liberally sauced with compeltely transparent attempts at titillation [cf. the bare midriff of Halloran's wife]. Instead of suspense being created by having the viewer know that someone is lying but unable to tell who, the film exceeds itself in cunning by making it obvious that everyone is lying. Key breaks in the case always come when everything seems lost, and routine procedure always wins out over intuition. It is hard to make an exciting film when mundanity is the topic.

It also never ceases to amaze me that Hollywood rarely relies on obvious Gothamists to play the important parts. The film is littered with bit part wise-guy New Yorkers, but the main roles are played by an Irishman and a Midwesterner. This is a bit like how most national news anchors have a Midwestern accent, more appealing to everyone across the nation. But stupid. The film is groundbreaking for the fact that it did much of the shooting on location, instead of on a lot somewhere, and at the time this was probably a new and interesting technique. That’s definitely something that has been lost over the years and the film suffers for it. Anyway, it has been awhile since I’ve had the chance to really lay into a film. This felt good. The Naked City isn’t a bad film, and your time won’t be wasted in watching it, but you should probably multi-task while doing it.

• Criterion Essay by Luc Sante
• YouTube Clip 1, Clip 2

A part of this viewing list: Criterion Collection Spine #384: Shohei Imamura’s Vengeance is Mine.

This film was much more graphic than I expected it to be. It also has some great sex scenes. I’ll get into what I mean by great a bit later. The film is based around an actual Japanese serial killer whose early life and strict Catholic upbringing seem to be the main motives that drive him to his wildness. The Catholic aspects aren’t prominent, but are still quite important. Their uniquely Japanese exposition was a bit reminiscent of Shusaku Endo’s Silence, but that might be confirmation bias since those are the only two things I know about that are Japanese and Catholic. Basically what I mean by “uniquely Japanese exposition” is that their Catholicism is more Buddhist than in the West. This might seem obvious, but it is this combination that enables the serial killer Iwao Enokizu’s father to accept the suffering that he goes through so readily.

This acceptance, at least from the film’s point of view, is what gives Iwao an early rebelliousness to what he sees as his father’s cowardice. The film’s continuity continually shifts between the past, the further past and the present to construct a tale instead of the more documentary feel that a linear plot would have exhibited. Imamura seems to have been meticulous in his arrangements; we learn of Iwao’s criminal abilities over and over again before we finally see them inaction, yet they are still startling even then. Iwao’s monstrosity highlights the dark desires in all of the other characters as well. The result is the filmic equivalent of a mass Confession, all sins exposed, but with a bitter [Buddhist] lack of absolution. There are attempts at atonement, but no forgiveness.

The sex scenes are the best example of the dark desires, and the film is full of them. There are two particularly hot ones: the first between Iwao’s father and Iwao’s wife in a hot spring during the rain [they basically just grope each other before guilt overwhelms] and the second between Iwao and his last lover; he talks about his murders while they get it on, and that really turns on his lover. I say these scenes are hot because their obvious passions have a dangerous emotional gristle; a hint at the dark thing that sits next to each of their souls.

Iwao’s cruelty is so fundamental that even the tiny struggles of his good nature become twisted by cunning and malice. At times he improvises excellent haiku that are extremely surprising in their context. There are reaffirmations that he loves his mother throughout his criminal life, and at times he makes small gestures to a sick old woman who reminds him of her. But, he uses these gestures to get into the pants of the woman’s daughter, and muscles into their lives. It turns out that the old woman killed her husband many years ago, so she becomes an interesting mentor to Iwao. Through her questioning, we learn that Iwao hasn’t killed the person he wants to, and it is fairly easy to guess that this is his father. The foreshadowing and guilt-wearing resignation comes hard and fast toward the end of the film, for all parties. There is little, if anything, light about this film, but for those who like to take unflinching looks at their own weakness and where it could lead, it is a great resource.

• Criterion Essay by Michael Atkinson
• Movie Martyr Review
• Midnight Eye review
• DVD Times review [good stills]
• Jasper Sharp review
• Shohei Imamura interviewed about the film: Part 1, Part 2.

I think in the past I’ve thought that doing your best simply meant giving full effort to a task. That completely neglects the use of judgment in the process. Just following the first would mean that you would sprint a marathon, run as fast as possible the entire way; full effort, not much judgment. I probably need to start consciously exercising my judgment and integrating it into what I mean when I do my best.

During unending hours in the back of a conversion van and brief respites on land in Canada I read Chuck Klosterman’s Fargo Rock City. This book was recommended to me by Nate Scheible during a discussion outside of Parish Hall while waiting for a noise show to start and over a few Commodore Perry IPAs. He found out that I was a metal fan of old and recommended that I read it.

The book’s essence is how glam-metal [bands like Mötley Crüe, Poison and Cinderella] gave Chuck an entrance into the wide world outside of North Dakota. His point is, that no matter how derided glam-metal was, is and probably ever shall be, since it was an important part of the growth of a generation it shouldn’t be. Now, this wasn’t the kind of book I was hoping it would be. I hate glam-metal. To me there is nothing really metal about dudes with with flammable hair nancing about in spandex and singing about banging. That’s fine, but it’s not metal. I’m more of the Iron Maiden, Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Ozzy fan for first-gen metal and Pantera, Anthrax and others for second-gen. I hate nü-metal, [Korn, Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit] and technical-metal noodlers like Yngwie Malmsteen and Mastodon don’t do much for me either.

So basically, like every other metal fan, I’m a huge jackass about what I like.

Chuck’s book is good, although he mentions fly-fishing for walleye, which I think, while not impossible, is utterly ineffective. ANYWAY, there are digressions, tangents, anecdotes and the sorely desired lists and name-drops of random bands to dig for, but mixed in with all of this is some excellently penetrating commentary on both metal itself and its place within the zeitgeist of the 80s and 90s. These are the best parts. The most interesting parts of the book came at the end for me; when he got away from the hair and Axl Rose and started talking about what qualifies a band as metal, what bands are carrying on the metal torch [still, for him, in terms of glam] and how grunge killed it off.

He’s good at putting things in context, giving depth to what appears to be shallowness and rubbing his theories against possible criticisms to see what holds and what tears. He does some straw-manning, but hey, he’s a journalist. The book is often hilarious, as when he lists the kind of women each band likes to fuck, and geekily earnest, as when he lists his favorite metal albums and how much you’d have to pay him to never listen to it again.

One area I think he missed out on was talking about Euro-metal and its continuing massive popularity over there. That’s probably a completely different book though. If you’re even a slight fan of metal, or a fan of 80s glam or somewhat analytical discussions about Tawny Kitaen humping a Corvette, this is the book for you.

After 21 hours in a van with 4 old men this is what I look like. I’m finally back in Cleveland and despite the excellence of my trip, the city was a sight for sore eyes. I had 12 messages once I got cell reception back, most from my banker and realtor and each more frantic than the last. It is a simple matter of an addendum to the contract to best fit the mortgage, but apparently they weren’t listening when I told them I was going to be out of the country for 10 days. I wish I had one more day to relax before going back to work, but Sunday is filled with fishy laundry, mail piles, ironing, beard-bush-whacking and other organizational flotsam and jetsam. I think I’m going to have to blast Pantera just to keep the blood pumping enough for me to finish.

More pics here.

Day 7 and my trip is mostly at an end. We got up early and made one last jaunt to Lost Lake to get our limit in walleye. After returning to camp we had a long chore of packing and cleaning ahead of us before we could enjoy steak night. Now that it is over we have to get up in about 5 hours to hit the road home. The week has been good, the weather better than hoped for, and the time away from work refreshing. I even made an unexpected new friend who lives in Chicago which seems promising.

I’m not looking forward to diving back in to the stress of work and the final details of home-buying on Monday.

I got up around 5am today and went out with my cousin Luke to cast for pike before the old folks woke up. The night before I beat my Uncle Corbin by 72 points at bid Euchre. Overall, Luke and my boat had the best day, we came home with 3 walleye, one of which was Luke’s trophy, a 27-inch pike and a couple of fatass perch. I forgot to take a shower yesterday but managed one today before taking a nap while the pictures uploaded. I don’t think I’ll be going out to fish tonight, and since we’re so close to our limit, no one probably will. We’re having chicken teriyaki and pineapple upside down cake for dessert.

Best day yet, at Lost Lake. I caught another trophy walleye and we tied our boats together and ate lunch in the middle of the lake. We’re eating fish again tonight so that we can go out and fish more tomorrow. We’re sitting right at our limit for the next half hour or so, then we’ll be at about half-limit post-fish fry. We’re running low on alcohol, so we’re going to have to run into town tomorrow to get more. I think we’re either going to play Texas Hold’em or Euchre tonight after dinner. The Lost Lake trip is a long ride so we’re not going back out tonight.

Day 3 sucked. I didn’t catch a damn thing worth keeping. Today was almost as slow, but I caught a 24.5 inch, 4 pound trophy walleye, which made up for the drought. We’ve had some serious thunderstorms, too. Thunder and lightning rattle-cabining. My neck was ridiculously stiff yesterday, so Luke lent me a Vicodin and a muscle relaxer which made me limber enough to continues fishing. Thankfully I’m resistant to painkillers. We’re baking some walleye tonight and will be eating shortly. We’ll be back on the lake in a few hours. I’m a bit sunburned, and the game face in the photo is deliberately serious. Woo!

Another good day of fishing, although the after-dinner fishing trip was less-manned due to scotch and thunderstorms. I only caught a mid-sized walleye, unfortunately, but my boat driving skills gave Corbin some nice catches. One of his friends caught a nice 34.5 inch Northern Pike that we released so someone else will have the chance to catch it in the future. My gumption helped my euchre team win one of the games and made Drunk Corbin [on the other team] go just a little crazy. Heh. The rain interfered with the satellite internet, which is why this update comes on the morning of Day 3. Time to eat some omelets.

The Junior Boys lasted 4 minutes until the first complaint, so I ended up riding with Luke in his new truck; much better for all parties involved. First day at the lake resulted in 8 keepers, although 6 would have been better, one walleye and one sauger were a bit undersized for my liking. We ate seven and froze one walleye. I caught the trifecta northern pike, walleye, perch. Nothing worth keeping but the fat little baitstealer. It is beautiful here, no stars blotted out by light pollution and quiet except for loons and beaver tail. Obviously, there is also unexpected WiFi in a place where the nearest radio station is Radio Winnipeg, which barely comes in on AM. Good night and good luck.

A part of this viewing list: Criterion Collection Spine #357: Carol Reed’s The Fallen Idol.

Carol Reed and Graham Greene, what a combo. I think a large part of the reason I don’t read much modern fiction is that Graham Greene’s work is so fully satisfying that I can’t fathom a reason to try anything else. Carol Reed as well, though much of his career was spent in labor making obscure locally-aimed pieces, managed, with Greene, to make films that are exactly as satisfying as a Greene book. The Fallen Idol, despite its film noir echoing title, is full of Reed’s characteristic finesse and Greene’s subtlety. It is a story about adult shame, lying, betrayal and immaturity seen through the eyes of a young boy, who is greatly changed through his apparently tangential interaction with the involved adult parties.

This angle allows a profound access to layers of falsity that permeate the adult world, a marked contrast to the boy Phile’s wide-eyed adsorption of the same. We observe his innocence disintegrate first-hand as a result of the selfish and petty love triangle whirling around him. The butler did it. Mr. Baines is Phile’s hero, regaling him with tales out of Africa and assisting him in small mischiefs. Mrs. Baines is Phile’s nemesis, a woman who has tasked herself as acting-mother while Phile’s real mother is in the hospital, but at the same time, a woman who has no idea how to relate to a child other than in terms of totalitarian control. When Baines enlists Phile to help him cover up the truth about his affair, the plot thickens at an alarming rate.

We learn that a person can be good with children but bad at everything else, we learn just how much adult behavior can affect a child who trusts the people in charge of him and we learn how offhandedly that trust can be betrayed. The ultimate moral of the story is that one should always tell the truth despite the consequences, this comes from the mouth of the harridan Mrs. Baines early in the film, but by the end has become almost completely empathetic. I should admit right here that I watched this film twice. The second time through there are clues littered throughout, both visual and verbal, that add a distinctly Hitchcockian feel to the film. Reed’s generous use of dutch-angle, restricted fields of view and certain emphatic shot framings [a slammed cafe door that makes a Closed sign sway in punctuation, and the above shot of an important open window] turn the psychological turmoil into environmental. This is a film that hits on all cylinders throughout.

• Criterion Essay by Geoffrey O’Brien.
• Screenonline review with posters and stills. Video clips too, but only for certain educational establishments.
• Film Forum page with audio of Geoffrey O’Brien talking about the film.

Post-game pandemonium. Coming back from Rafeeq’s; titties on top of Honda Civics on West 25th [they cease to be breasts and become titties when displayed as such] and Escalades blazing at the Lorain stop light. Streets filled with hoots and hollers. Rise up, motherfuckers. Rise. Up.

[Update: "two more honda civics were stolen in the hood last night..." I also forgot to mention that I made a halftime junior bacon cheeseburger run to Wendy's in about ten minutes, round trip.]

1 Cup Organic Cranberry Juice
3 Bananas
1/2# Strawberries
7 ice cubes
2 scoops protein powder

Gone in sixty seconds.