Sunday, November 30, 2014

Villa Illuminada

It took some work to get this picture.

I was thinking about this Jose Alfredo Jimenez song all day. "Si Nos Dejan"

 "If we leave,
we will want a lifetime,
if we leave,
we will live in a new world."

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

When The Music's Over

Oggy crouched on the sandy uplift above the nude beach pondering the cascading waves and ant colonies of the crumbling bluff, dual activities that could hold the mystery to life. The sun appeared to descend toward the sea; intuitively, the sun set, but science had proved the sun does not move, it is stationary in the universe, at least in the immediate solar system, and the Earth revolves and also orbits, a circle within a circle, possibly within an even larger circular revolution of the solar system among other systems, in relationship to a mysterious center, ever magnifying Man's misfortune. Intuition was incorrect...and this failure of perception was a topic that haunted Oggy's cold nights. What other propositions, he wondered, had his perception misled him on?  What other mistakes had his undeveloped ape senses made in favor of the easy answer, and a hard question?

"What have they done to the Earth? What have they done to our sister?"

Oggy heard this distant question, asked years earlier by Jim Morrison, recorded and reclaimed, preserved and inherited by the new generation. A stereo played a magnetic memory. Morrison's anger was honest in that stoned and newborn mind sense of the 1960s...and also naive, sadly perplexed, inaccurate, metaphorically imprecise...these accusations are enunciated so clearly that the presentation became as important as the message. Gone was Connie Francis, The Virginal Fleetwoods all dressed in white, bloodless black and white images, the grey and sepia, Johnny Horton, the major key marching eunuchs of the Eisenhower Autumn.

"Music is your only friend. Until the end."

Read between the lines of poetry, the butterfly's scream is as loud as the last ray of light from the sun shining on cypress branches in Freedom Park, the shadows push the homeless east against their will, back to the shelters of despair, the surplus bus lockers, the dirty newspaper alleys, storm drainage to the levee where the damp darkness absconds on distemper horseback, little paws leading back to the source of all misery....long cold nights in the forest, the lizards and banana slugs recoiling in cold blooded survival from the night. Moths fly to the flame but humans lack wings so sink into the  deep sleep. We would soar to the sun as well with rockets on our backs, to drink the heat and evaporate in the blinding gases of our glorious source.

"Cancel my subscription to the Resurrection"

LDS missionaries knocking on doors So trite, so flippant. The resurrection is not an invitation you can decline, it's not a magazine sold by priests

A driftwood beach fire was being extinguished as the nudists found their sandy peasant skirts and the ocean doused the blackened wood...smoke then spinning up the bluff to Oggy's creepy perch. Woodfire smoke was an assault on Oggy's sense, a primitive reminder of danger and warmth. Rabbits raised in captivity nevertheless cringe when they see the shadow of a raptor on the ground, though the shadow is a cardboard cutout the lab scientists use to prove their point. The rabbits have never seen a real hawk nor do they know what the claws would feel like in their neck, but they still hide. What genetic atom carries that information or is it intuitive...like the false orbit of Morrison's embattled earth?

These topics were the primary colors with which Oggy then mixed and blended searching for the unifying amalgam that would solve the torment he had inherited from Morrison like the Rabbit seeking shelter when fake raptor shadows danced on the lab floor...Oggy also bounced celestial checks when trying to renew his subscription to the apocalypse. He mixed the colors, he mixed on a mental palette because intuition suggested these were all unrelated, coinciding only in Oggy's troubled mind, but intuition was wrong; had not the sun proven intuition untrustworthy, wasn't there a mystery in the multi-colored array of these mystical topics? So, with distrust as his booster fuel, Oggy mixed the white woodsmoke with the dark brown of the cypress bark....alas too tender and vapor-clouded a result, intangible, caught by the foggy updraft. So he took the blue from the peasant dress worn by the woman climbing up the bluff with the yellow on the roller coaster car....resulting in a green found in small specks on the screaming butterfly wings...which was closer to the source of everything but exclusive, not a unity. The missing tint was a tone found on faded photos from 1963, grainy, torn, mixed with hounds tooth gabardine. A man on the beach wore a purple linen shirt and Oggy thought hatefully that he must be from San Jose, that loathsome city to the East, forever hidden in the shadows of the Santa Cruz mountains, spared the fog of the ocean, drinking the residue from the ion implanters, the safety laser locks, poisonous high tech soup, the...Oggy's concentration had slipped, his peace was shattered by that damn linen shirt. Oggy wondered why he couldn't wear a linen shirt and look good. Even a normal color, not even purple. But no, he'd never look as comfortable as the man on the nude beach partially hidden behind the white smoke from the extinguished fire. Did ants feel vanity? Did the roller coaster altitude undulate with the same regularity as Oggy's self-esteem? Were the waves correspondent or harmonious?

"I hear a very gentle sound, very near yet very far."

The man in the purple linen shirt turned the music off. Waves plundered the shore like pirates on a blood rib. The distant lighthouse cast a gazing ray toward the approaching fog, before the long shadow cast by the drowning stars and that golden artificial ray was white like rabbit fur and friendly as a lab technician's coat fabric. Was the light turning around the peak or was the world revolving around the pure straight beam? These colors combined into the concrete aggregate found in the sewage drains, the interior of the bus lockers where Oggy's folk songbook lay with his socialist literature. There were similarities found everywhere and none of it was intuitive so Oggy embraced the trance. He could solve the puzzle of a thousand faces, the colors losing their turf to the darkness except for the periodic moment the lighthouse orbit favored them. The music was over but the music had now begun.

Saturday, November 22, 2014

Senor Oggy

"God, Glory, Gold" the motto of the Conquistador
The motto is a translation of "Dios, Gloria, Oro." And I think it's suitable.

The next craft project is a punch pin embroidery landscape of the history of the van to use as a dashboard cover. Good thing I'm retired or I couldn't enjoy my retirement. The main problem I see with using acrylic paint is that in 8 hours of direct sunlight the hood gets so hot that the paint begins to soften. I don't know if it's fully dry or if the heat will always soften the paint. It doesn't come off with water but I can feel it getting tacky in the sunlight. Maybe there's a clear coat transparent spray I can finish the hood off with. Or maybe I will leave it alone and let the elements have their way.

There's a jigsaw panoramic picture Ernesto put together in the first days of my Mexican journey in the van back in 2008/2009. That picture is in the heading montage at the top of the blog. I remember the van was called "Long Distance Voyager" after a Moody Blues Album but we were talking and I said, "Maybe El Conquistador is a better name." Ernesto put that in the panoramic photo he made and I knew it was the right name. Almost 6 years later I finally painted the name on the hood.

Screenshot Trivia


Movie?
This is a two part trivia question. First, the average people will get the right movie, but I want to give an additional $5 Oggy bucks for describing exactly why this particular screenshot is important to the movie. There are two important details that are not coincidences that they are in the shot. These were deliberate choices with symbolic meaning. What is the meaning.

Only this most recent viewing revealed to me how airtight this film is, everything is textbook, generic and totally awesome. Football games are not won primarily on trick plays....fundamentals win football games. Execute the fundamentals and you win. Maybe one score will be a trick play, but if you don't execute the fundamentals then one trick play score will not win the game, it'll merely get you on the scoreboard. This movie executes the fundamentals and that's why it wins. No trick plays. It was based on a book, which explains the plot, but the performances, editing, sound effects and what I consider a quadruple climax ending is why this is a historic movie and always enjoyable to watch.

Good luck.

Friday, November 21, 2014

Alcoholic Blues

I tried to rewrite this so it would be relevant to the current marijuana prohibition but I gave up. If anyone wants to send me some alternate lyrics I'll try to sing it. It's a novelty song with the music written by the brother of songwriting great Harry Von Tilzer, Albert.

Words by Edward Laska
Music by Albert Von Tilzer
1919
Key: F Major

Oggy The Conqueror

The first paint I used was something called Tempura Gauche. It was in the children's art section at Soriana Grocery Store and turns out to be cheap watercolor paint that wiped off easily with water.

Only the helmet remains
So I had to hunt for enamel paint, which is called esmalte in Spanish. And I could only find spray paint. What I ended up getting was the white and gold metallic acrylic craft paint. I love the gold metallic finish because it's the metaphoric color for the Conquistador's quest. While it's not as permanent as oil or enamel, acrylic at least dries water resistant and can be scraped off with a knife. The sun is rough on paint in the desert and the tropics so I'm curious how long before it fades, but it really doesn't matter because it's a small task to retouch with the paint as long as it doesn't dry out.

I was worried that it wouldn't be legible in the end but now I'm afraid it's too legible. I could scrape it off and put a smaller version on the side but this is the boldness suitable for the van. Right on the hood...no missing it. Every military checkpoint is going to have to comprehend a second Spanish Invasion in a 45 year old American van. If I'm going to name my van El Conquistador then that's about as bold as it gets. The Mexican Flag colors ultimately detracted from the simplicity I wanted...it was kind of a mixed message and also nationalistic. This is a simple statement.

I'm right around the 'A' in Aztec

I wonder if there's interest in a quest for the lost gold of Hernan Cortes while retracing his journey to Trujillo Honduras from Mexico City in a van called El Conquistador? It is the 490th Anniversary of his original trip.This is no small detail as I'm certain Cortes was in this exact valley, maybe this exact hotel room, since the pass between the two volcanoes I see out my window is called "Paso De Cortes" and he had a title 1st Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca, which is where I am right now. All these villages, Tochimilco, Huaquechula, Cholula, Atlixco, Puebla, Tianguismanalco, Tlaxcalancingo, etc. were populated in 1520, so Cortes undoubtedly passed this way to inspect future monastery sites and pillage the gold stores and seize female concubines. It looks like he visited La Paz in the Baja too so I only need to go to Cuba and Spain to retrace his entire adventure.

4 Years To Go

Now that Mexicans who have been in The United States for more than 5 years will not be deported I figure I only have to hide out on the beaches of Mexico for 4 more years and I'll be allowed to stay in Mexico. It's only fair. If the Federales question me I'll tell them that I'm the negotiating chip; Obama said, "Take Oggy, and we'll allow 5 million Mexicans to stay in America." I'll forge Obama's signature. I'm sure it will work.

It's a bittersweet announcement as I've met a number of people here who were either deported or voluntarily left The U.S. because they couldn't work legally, although they had lived there for 15 years. One guy graduated high school and college in N.Y., but because his parents brought him there when he was about 7 and weren't citizens he never got citizenship or a work permit so he decided to leave. Now that he is here he realizes that Obama's announcement actually applies to him, but he now has to return to the United States and pretend he never left. I try to argue that the only reason the economy up North is good is because it's based on unicorn tears and fairy farts. "None of the money exists," I insist. "It's all a fantasy." There are something like $20 Trillion reasons to avoid the United States but the general conclusion is that they would rather have $50 fake dollars in their pocket than $200 real pesos. I saw a poll that 1 in 3 Mexicans would emigrate to the U.S. but that doesn't fit my own experience in Mexico. No one I've met particularly wants to go to Chicago or San Antonio or El Paso. They talk about those places kind of like prospectors talked about The Yukon Territory in 1896. The desire to "Be American" couldn't be further from their thoughts. It's purely about exploiting a fantasy economy for their own short term gain since their country's economy is not as ripe since their sovereignty was destroyed by Eisenhower and Nixon.

It occurs to me that deporting about 10,000 business owners from America to Central America would probably do more good in the long run than any border reinforcement. Like, take Bill Gates or Rex Tillerson, and deport them to Honduras, the idea being to adapt the Spanish Colonization model, except with industrialists instead of missionaries. That's insane. Forget that idea.

This topic of immigration is awful because it is purely political, political boundaries drawn in the sand with swords, usually while bodies rot nearby...awful. Why is there not a large population of Canadians hiding in the shadows of St. Paul, Minnesota? Because American foreign policy did not deign to exploit Manitoba to the point of fracturing its sovereignty.
It's a divisive topic that, like homelessness and poverty, usually is misunderstood because the people debating the topic have never done any research on the topic. Oh, they might read a poll and visit a shelter a few times, shake some hands, wrap some turkeys to hand out...oh yes. But immigration is bigger and more complicated than a border and flags. Or maybe it's simple and I make it complicated. These words of documentation and legality and aliens are not the right words. I don't know what the right words are but I know we're debating the wrong topics. In fact, it appears to me that most people debating this topic have an investment in the debate itself, not even the conclusion. A politician actually has no motivation to find a solution because his or her career depends on the endless debate. Take Mitch McConnell for example. He's been a Senator since the Civil War ended and Kentucky was readmitted to the Union. That's a long time and there are no limits. Ted Kennedy was a Mass. Senator from 1962 to 2009. 47 Years! How many times can a guy debate in favor of Pro-Choice laws? I'm divided on term limits because I think politics is like Hollywood: the longer you remain there the more you understand it and by the time you are really skilled then you should be quarantined for the safety of humanity. Guys like Ted Kennedy or David Mamet would only wreck havoc if allowed to reenter civil society. I try to avoid political punditry because it's a sickness; in order to write good spin I have to believe I make a difference, and that's crazy...and if I don't think I make a difference the spin won't be good. Punditry is also reaching critical mass...the weight of pundits debating immigration is beginning to outweigh the actual immigrants. I'm sure pundits were more animated than those migrant workers Obama was directing his message of reform at. I was eating pork neck in mole at my favorite Comida Corrida restaurant when I heard the news on the Spanish station and I can say the reaction was not overwhelming. But the political pundits went berserk. Heck, some pundits devoted a whole ten minutes of their day to this topic.

I visualize immigration like the lunar tides; only fishermen can predict them with any accuracy and anyone calling a high tide "unfair" would be correctly considered an idiot. These are the same people who believe God made them run out of gas. The causality of immigration is so complicated that legislation to control it is about as effective as building a time machine. Labels like "illegal" are immaterial and say more about the pundit than they do about the pundit's opinion on the topic. It's an unenlightened perspective that persists to impede a resolution...and the only conclusion is probably going to be something like a lunar tide chart: a total surrender to a higher power followed by mature preparation.

Thursday, November 20, 2014

Working Class

I guess I lied when I said my TV writing career ended with my Simpson's script. I wrote a pilot for a sitcom I created called Working Class, in which a young man tries to locate his lost father, who is living and working on skid row in Los Angeles. Yeah, the executives at CBS were just rolling on the floor with laughter over that subject. Alas, my Good Times meets Glengarry Glen Ross was not produced. Let me tell you that the 4 years of research into this setting was pure torture. Here it is:

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

The Return of El Conquistador

This may not make the cut. Spanish helmet and Aztec eagle. I feel it's reclaiming power but it could be seen as putting a Red Sox "B" on a pinstripe uniform.  I'll probably remove the eagle.


I still feel the van will not become an art canvas, but it's time to permanently name it.


Carbon Paper under the tracing I made on the computer screen

Oggy tracing letters

I stopped when I realized I was using the wrong kind of paint.







.

Drink More Duff!

I made this Gif of one of my favorite Simpson's Episodes. Season 4/16. So funny! "Can't Get Enough Of That Wonderful Duff." It's a Duff commercial and demonstrates that Duff has the power to transform "feminists" into party girls. These parodies within parodies are the stuff that made Simpsons so popular. The vintage episodes are an onslaught of stabbing attacks on modern culture and what I see with modern episodes are limp references to our own habits that aren't even vilified. I wrote a Simpsons spec episode once but when I showed it to a Simpsons expert he tore the timeline and characterizations apart. The details of my script were all slightly wrong. And it didn't include any embedded parodies. Thus ended my television writer career.

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Sunday, November 16, 2014

Tochimilco

Coil springs spacers on the front.

Looks photoshopped, but it's real.

Aqueducts and a volcano

It's hard to describe how to find the bus to Tochimilco. There is no green door and no green bus. And they all park hidden away near a triangle that isn't easy to find. I went back and forth asking strangers where Tochimilco buses were. To make matters worse, there is a town called something like Tochimilcingo...and it's in the opposite direction of Tochimilco. The bus area is near the corner of 11 Poniente and 11 Sur.

This town was named after rabbits but I didn't see any.

Awesome door.

Another monastery I can't enter

Oggy Spoils Interstellar

Interstellar is a damn stupid movie. It doesn't even pass the Point Break test.* Did Christopher Nolan read the script? It's like someone watched a hundred Twilight Zone episodes in a row and then wrote the beginning and the end of a movie....and kind of scratched their ass for the middle 93 minutes. "Well, if we maintain a constant drone of strings in the soundtrack, like as loud as possible sustained constantly, strings always make people think something relevant is happening."

If I were writing a script analysis I would write this:
Plot Summary: Life on earth is endangered as it becomes impossible to grow crops....cut to humanity on a space station near Saturn. Yeah Humanity! The End.

HOW THE FUCK DID THEY GET THE SPACE STATION OFF EARTH?

Oh, that's all hidden in the esoteric equations that are related to the mystery of quantum mechanics that a Lost in Time spaceman communicated to his daughter via Morse code on a watch. What?
Lost in Space and also lost in time. Both. Time and space. But he's saved magically because in this movie nothing changes.





Again, the problem with Time travel is that ANY IDIOT WOULD GO BACK FAR ENOUGH IN TIME TO DO SOME GOOD. This guy doesn't even technically go back in time, he's simply able to access the time he left...like that makes any sense.
Motherfucker! You are given a portal to all of time and what the fuck do you do except magically send binary messages to your daughter to allow her to compute how to defy gravity and propel a Spacecraft the size of a state off the planet....but you neglect to A) Solve the pressing problem of food and climate on Earth. B) Go back to a fucking time when you might be able to mitigate the climate problem. So dumb. So neglectful. Oh, but keep those droning incessant strings going hard core all the time like you want to make an homage to Stanley Kubrick but alas leaned heavily on quantum mechanics and pretty chins (McConaughey is gone from Earth for over 100 years yet fails to grow a beard).

If your script involves quantum mechanics that can not be explained in 180 minutes then maybe rethink your script. And if your "victory moment" is Humanity being forced to escape earth to live on a most certainly unsustainable gigantic space station (on which apparently no minorities were allowed) then please burn your script. You are telling me that a scientist can manufacture a space station big enough for all the survivors of earth (except minorities) and that space station can magically escape the Earth's gravity....and sail to Saturn....where humanity will thrive....BUT THE SAME SCIENTIST COULDN'T BUILD THE SAME ARTIFICIAL ENVIRONMENT ON EARTH?


That makes absolutely no sense. None. If the space station can support human life near Saturn then I'm pretty sure it can support life on Earth. Why Not LEAVE THE FUCKING SPACE STATION ON EARTH?

Oh, because then there would be no reason to send a pilot into a wormhole on a futile mission to find an alternate planet to populate....where he ultimately finds a time portal inside a black hole...and communicates to his daughter the secret to defying gravity....to lift the space ship off Earth even though that isn't necessary.

Have I mentioned that it is totally unnecessary to lift a space ship off earth if that space ship is itself a self-enclosed life support system that can support humanity? Why not bury the space station? Oh wait, IT IS ALREADY BURIED!

So, They could just invite humanity to populate the space station, set up their solar lamps and set up the barbecue. No, instead they blast off somehow (with some magical equation sent from a time portal in a black hole) and GO TO SATURN...where the days are something like 10 hours long. Never mind about any of the details of how to live on a space station. All of that is ignored. This is like a Sherlock Holmes episode where Holmes goes from scratching his head and smoking a pipe, wondering how to stop a crime, to nabbing the criminal at the last second. How does he do it? He winks at Watson, who nods sagely. The End. Wait, the whole point is Holmes revealing how he figured it out. Apparently Nolan isn't a big mystery fan because his denouement is completely absent. Oh, he think he has a climax when the space man communicates to his daughter, but that's technically not the climax because only the characters in the movie are privy to the mysteries of the universe. The audience is left as ignorant as they started, which means there is no catharsis, no climax, no resolution, no emotional investment, no denouement...FOR THE AUDIENCE.

What a dumb movie. Every modern film hangs so much importance on a hook. Sixth Sense did more harm than good to films because now every asshole who thinks they "have a good ending" can make a movie. Christ. You have a dumb movie if all you have is a good ending. And this isn't a good ending; the ending to Interstellar is simply baffling. It has the elements of interest but is essentially stupid, it doesn't pass the sniff test, it's irrelevant that this space man can communicate the mystery of quantum physics via an analog wrist watch from a time portal in a black hole. IRRELEVANT. The central question posed by the movie was previously asked by many good movies: "What is the meaning of life?"
That's a good question to ask. Ok, you have my attention. And then immediately lose my attention when you embark on insane voyages and betrayals and accidents and desperation and ultimately have all the physical aspects of the movie negated by sloppy handling of the science fiction genre. And because you realized this too late you opted for a sentimental hand job in the dirty movie theater that I didn't pay for and demonstrates you never pursued your original question. Oh, the meaning of life is that people are great! HAHAHAHA. Why don't you go fuck yourself if you think that? It's generic, tired, uncinematic, lazy. Where is my lap dance, you ticket whore? The movie is thought provoking but then the plot collapses when I think about it.

The heart of humanity is displayed to be under examination, but when the movie is over all we got is a skin deep glamorized version of a NASA commercial. Interstellar is Christopher Nolan's answer to The Notebook. Schmaltz, cheese, sentimental garbage all highlighted with expensive special effects. Humanity lives on with cliche Dylan Thomas poems read to every White Christian American. I stopped counting American Flags after the tenth one. While every other culture on the planet strives to maintain balance, American culture apparently is determined to lay waste to the planet and then abandon it on the wings of fantasy. GREAT MESSAGE!

These apocalypse movies make little to no effort to answer the compelling issues that are regularly reinforced by current events. Interstellar makes no attempt at all to answer the question of who got left behind and if Humanity had learned any other lesson than the all important crap: "Fathers love their daughters." puke!

I want everyone to go to a production company in Hollywood and say, "I've got a good movie idea where a father learns that he loves his daughter." We could replace fossil fuel power with the energy generated by the laughter you will hear. Yet, somehow, Christopher Nolan made such a movie and needed $165 Million dollars to make it because it involved outer space. With that money you could buy everyone in America a birthday card with a cat wearing a colorful hat printed on it and get the same effect.
Happy Birthday. Life is great. Now give me $165 million.

The movie is not horrible to watch, I did finish watching it, (something I can't say about the atrociously generic/gratuitous Walk Among The Tombstones) but it collapsed under the slightest examination. Even as they were preparing to lift off in the little ship I was shouting at the screen like the guy later shouted at his daughter through a time portal worm hole anomaly, "Why don't you just move into the space station right now. If you can grow vegetables in space then start growing them right now! In the space station you have already built. HEY, MICHAEL CAINE! YOU ALREADY BUILT THE SPACE STATION. DON'T ASK McConaughey TO FLY OFF EARTH. THERE'S NO NEED. HAVE PEOPLE LIVE THERE IN THE SPACE STATION YOU ARE STANDING IN. WHY ARE YOUR CHANCES BETTER NEAR SATURN?"

I was waving my arms but Michael Caine ignored me. Too bad I didn't have a wrist watch so I could transmit in Morse code back in time to Christopher Nolan to tell him that 3/4 of the movie did not need to be filmed since the actors were already standing in the solution. He reached for the stars but grabbed a bucket of greasy popcorn.

"We used to be explorers and pioneers," says the hero, "Now we're a generation of [miserable, worthless] caretakers."
THAT'S A LINE THAT NORMALLY COMES FROM THE VILLAIN.

Furthermore, you guys failed as caretakers so don't break your neck sucking your own cock. A species gets what it deserves, and if NASA can mobilize the resources to escape Earth with a bunch of White Christian Americans then God Speed. And if they mobilize those resources by plundering the Earth and hastening the decline of the climate then they are villains, not heroes. The End doesn't justify the Means, despite Nolan's insistence, it just adds another hegemonic devourer of planets to the long list of selfish monsters who pursue their goals at the cost of life. My conclusion in these scenarios is always the same: humanity that plunders the planet and exploits other humans to survive is not worth survival. It's not moral. It is abhorrent. Leave me to die on the planet and you "heroes" can go to hell.

The movie tries feebly to be about "something bigger" but fails because it runs out of emotional originality about 8 minutes into the script. The whole film is unoriginal...except for the parts that have no relevance or are unexplained. And the very worst part of a movie like this is that it considers it a victory to abandon Earth for a space station near Saturn. "Because we survived"
And then the space man ultimately abandons the space station to go on a futile hunt for another space woman who is surely impossible to find. But he leaves because it's more important to try to find her than live without her. Well, that contradicts the whole point of helping the human race survive. Speaking of survival, why is the hero's daughter allowed to reproduce like a rabbit? Isn't there a limit on number of children in this perilous future or is she special because she is white?

The movie Contact is a good example of how this hybrid drama/scify movie should be approached. Go extremely light on the specifics of the science, give only what the audience needs to know, and save your best work for the drama. Interstellar did the exact opposite by going extremely heavy on the science part, inviting skeptics, and then using generic clips from a soap opera (hospital bedside farewells) for the drama. Terrible terrible. Speaking of time distortion, watching this 3 hour piece of shit felt like I spent 3 months on a vacant, oxygen-deprived planet populated by killed off T.V. actors rehearsing for Schmaltz King: The Musical.

Which is more important, love or survival? Nolan desperately tries to have it both ways...which is his worst mistake. You can't have it both ways, that's the whole fucking problem with the climate. Everyone wants easy phone calls, easy google searches, easy blowjob videos, easy this and that...and no one wants the consequences of lithium and diamonds and gold and colton mines and plastic blood on our hands and hurricanes and sea levels rising and fish all dying. Interstellar contradicts the whole environmental mess it's trying to celebrate.

Here are some official taglines:

Mankind was born on Earth. It was never meant to die here.
The end of Earth will not be the end of us.
Go further.
Mankind's next step will be our greatest. 

I submit my own tagline:  

Humanity destroyed a planet...and got away with it. We didn't change a fucking thing about ourselves. We just got on a space ship and magically started our petty wars in space. Nothing changes.

Only the droning strings in the soundtrack that rise to annoying volume for no reason bear any similarities to Kubrick's 2001. Everything else is a tired, shiny penny in the pocket of the same old asshole. Basically, if the same humans are on the space station then it's life expectancy will be about 6 years. So, big deal. Mankind survived for 6 more years and perished in space. No big surprise there. We're pretty clever but got what we deserved in the end. Interstellar doesn't pass the Nerd Test and it doesn't pass the Critic test and it doesn't pass the Point Break test. It sucked.

*Would I prefer to watch Point Break? Yes.

Friday, November 14, 2014

Font

 Horizontal Gradiant (too difficult)

No Gradient (easy)

Vertical Mexican Flag Gradient (easy)
Lost in Space and also lost in time. Both. Time and space. But he's saved magically because in this movie nothing changes.

Smooth Horizontal Mexican Flag (too difficult)

I'm gathering material to paint the name of the van on my van. It seems contradictory to use the Mexican flag colors on a word that sort of plundered the country that would become Mexico, but it's also a celebration of the culture and history and present. I've got the material for a simple Gold with white outline. I want to paint it on the hood in acrylic or enamel. I can always paint the colors of Guatemalan flag later but the problem is that the blue is the same color as the hood. When faced with a choice between two unconventional options I usually choose the most unconventional, which would be the Mexican flag.
Artistic Sample From Big Bend
 Image result for guatemalan flag   
I'd be lying if I said this wasn't motivated a little by my desire to avoid being kidnapped, tortured, burned, pulverized, stuffed in a trash bag and then thrown in a river.

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Anchors Aweigh



Chas. Zimmermann wrote it in 1906 and the lyrics are revised periodically.

This is in honor of American Veterans Day. The song is from the Naval academy and isn't an official Navy song. In fact, it's most closely associated with the Army/Navy football game and the lyrics I have in my sheet music are specifically for the football game. This has a melody range that is beyond my ability so I'll play the melody on the piano and let you imagine the words.

Who doesn't love Negro Spirituals?
Verse 1
Stand Navy down the field, sails set to the sky.
We'll never change our course, so Army you steer shy-y-y-y.
Roll up the score, Navy, Anchors Aweigh.
Sail Navy down the field and sink the Army, sink the Army Grey.


This edition printed in 1930.
 I was in the Merchant Marines back when my knees did not pop when I walked. It was in the oil field of the Gulf of Mexico and technically not a war zone but putting a Yankee vegetarian Hippie on a boat full of Louisiana Swampers is not much different than a war. Every day, every minute, was a fight for survival. We didn't sing this song but every night at 4am before the false dawn I would stand on the salty deck and vow to survive the day at whatever the cost.

Monday, November 10, 2014

Slim




Lost in Space and also lost in time. Both. Time and space. But he's saved magically because in this movie nothing changes.


I'd give my left hand to have his right hand. Slim Gaillard is featured in an S.F. scene of Kerouac's On The Road. Dean loves him sweating and smiling, the scene is like a descending meteor, everyone would die before their time. Many people are talented and many people are charming and when you put them together you end up with either Sammy Davis jr. or Slim Gaillard.
Creative Commons License
Man in the Van by Oggy Bleacher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.