Bukowski on Success

"Things are very nice right now, and it's damn well time they should be. the health, the feelings, the flow is (are) still in good running order. my pre-training holds me in ultra good stead. carry on, rally forth, all that. shit, it's only the 8th round and I've got a good cornerman to patch up the cuts. rah rah rah. or have I finally gone nuts?"

-Charles Bukowski to John Martin, December 14th, 1975

If I were a Billionaire

Five things I would do if I were a billionaire
Klaus Varley

1. Install a "Warm-Hot" knob in the shower. I would turn on that knob, then add Hot or Cold at my whim. But mostly it wouldn't require adjustment. Because I take my showers at "Warm-Hot."

2. Leave $20 tips at my favorite inexpensive - but delicious - Chinese, Thai, and Mexican restaurants. I could leave more, but I don't want to be treated like a king - I just want people to know I appreciate good service.

3. Hire my friends to live in the same condo complex. Application for complex: Are you my friend? If "no," are you cool? If "yes," do you want to be friends?

4. Buy the coffee shop / stage across the street from my apartment. Turn it into a cool venue for stand-up and singer-songwriters. Record the performances, put it online, make people famous.

5. Have a personal trainer to wake me up every day and make me do yoga, swim, run on the beach, etc. (I suppose, I don't need a personal trainer to do this, I just need to not be so damn lazy.)

This is too much fun to not be continued...

-KV

Concert Going Ettiquette

I would like to take a break from discussing movies and cookbooks for a second to talk about a subject that is near and dear to my heart. I direct this post to all the jack-asses out there that don't seem to understand how the general admission works at a small venue concert. Let me enlighten you with a few rules.

First, you show up early. Maybe it's just my anal retentive side, but I feel like I should get there early for the closest spot to the stage. And while it doesn't make any sense to stand there for an hour waiting for the show to start, it makes even less sense to bum rush the damn stage ten minutes before the curtain goes up and get in my damn way. This is why I usually see fights break out when I get that close to the stage. Fortunately this time I was at a blues concert so the punk rockers, gang bangers, and biker men decided to stay home. With the usual suspects absent I just tolerated the idiots jumping in front of me. But I also did it for another reason: dancing.

When you are dancing in your predefined area of the floor, keep your hands and feet inside the imaginary box. Pretend you're a mime and stay there. I don't want some lady - who isn't all that attractive to begin with - throwing her hands in my face for the first half of the show.

Yes, I said "attractive." Let's face it: the amount of crap guys are willing to put up with from the girl standing in front of them is directly proportional to their attractiveness or, if they are a guy, the attractiveness of their girlfriend.

Every time I go to a concert I have to deal with one of these two problems. This last concert I dealt with them both which worked out pretty well. The guys who got in front of me had to deal with the lady throwing her arms in my face while I got to look at their girlfriend (not in a creepy way, just admiring the scenery). But I may not be so lucky in the future.

-LA


Though his analysis is amusing, both Parker and I must adamantly disagree with Langdon's attractiveness/annoyance principle. We take the exact opposite approach: the more attractive the person (guy or girl) is, the less breaks we cut them. Because hey, they've probably been getting by on their looks most of their lives. Consider it a type of affirmative action, but based on attractiveness instead of race. And reversed. Or something.

What I'm trying to say is that we're just trying to level the playing field. Seriously. -KV

Bukowski on Classical Music and Booze

"Bach was easy because he didn't have to carry around a lot of excess crap. anyhow, classical music and booze - taken together - have carried me through many a night when it seemed as if there were nothing else around. and maybe there wasn't."

-Charles Bukowski to Roth Wilkofsky, September 4th, 1975.

Owen Gleiberman Should Apologize for his Review of Let the Right One In

Owen Gleiberman Should Apologize for his Review of Let the Right One In
Klaus Varley

Unlike a lot of Owen Gleiberman haters out there, I LIKE Entertainment Weekly. It's one of the few magazines that lives up to its name on two levels: it's entertaining AND it's about entertainment. (And it comes every week...I suppose that's three levels.)

But browsing Meta-Critic I came across reviews of the Swedish vampire flick Let the Right One In (Langdon's review can be found here). Every professional critic listed on the site except one rated it above seventy - three gave it perfect scores of 100.

Over at Rotten Tomatoes, 25 of 26 top critics gave it a "Fresh" rating. It's overall rating: 98%.

Who was the only critic to rate it under 70 on Meta-Critic? Who was the only critic to give it a rotten tomato on the site of the same nomenclature?

Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly.

Now I'm all for critics standing on their own. But if a movie is well made, you're going to have to have your reasons. Owen's reasons? Well, I'll let him speak for himself.


EW.com
Movie Review - Let the Right One In
by Owen Gleiberman

According to the new school of cinematic dread — it kicked in over the last decade with J-horror films — a fright flick is eerier if it doesn't make sense. If random arty blood thrills are your cup of fear, perhaps you'll enjoy Let the Right One In, a Swedish head-scratcher that has a few creepy images but very little holding them together. A serial killer, who bleeds his victims in public places (Why? Who knows?), has a 12-year-old daughter who's a vampire. Who befriends the blond boy next door. Who skulks through the movie in a blank-faced torpor that will have you screaming...for something coherent to happen. C

Non-spoiler-but-if-you're-Owen-Gleiberman-this-might-seem-like-a-spoiler Alert: the "serial killer" bleeding his victims was getting blood for the girl so she didn't have to kill people. Damn man, he lives with a vampire, didn't you think that was an awfully big coincidence?

The blond boy doesn't skulk through the film - he gets beat up by bullies, has his life threatened.

I'm not even going to go into the question of whether or not that is his daughter. You definitely didn't get that.

How did Owen miss all this? Luckily for our readers out there, we recorded the events of the day on hidden camera (and microphone).

--
Film critic Owen Gleiberman sits at his desk playing Minesweeper. His editor knocks on his cubicle wall. Gleiberman quickly changes the screen to a review of Rachel Getting Married.

Editor of EW: Hey Owen, where's your review for that small indie-vampire movie?

Owen Gleiberman: You wanted that today?

Editor: Yeah, remember?

OG: But uh, no one is going to see that movie, do we really need to review it?

Editor: Unfortunately, yeah. It's apparently a big deal to Sweden, so they got his Swedish PR firm up our ass about it. You saw it, right?

OG: Of course.

Editor: Great. Just give me a couple hundred words by five. No big thing.

OG: It's four-thirty.

Editor: Like I said, no big thing.

OG: Cool.

Editor leaves.

Owen makes some calls. None of his friends or relatives has seen it.

FUCK! He thinks.

Owen gives a quick glance around the office then pops the DVD in his laptop, hits play 2x button.

Not fast enough. Fast forward - 4x.

The movie flies by.

His mind races. "Killing. Stylish. What are these kids talking about? No time to read the subtitles. Arty vampire movie. Violence. Whatever, no one is going to see this."

Owen types up his review and sends it over to his editor.

"Screw Sweden," he says as he packs up his things and heads out the door.

---

Alright, so I ran out of things for Owen to say...I mean, that's what our camera and microphone recorded him saying...

Regardless of the accuracy of the above scene, this is one of those times that a critic should bite the bullet and rewatch a well-reviewed movie. All the way through this time. On regular speed.

And then apologize to Sweden.

We all make mistakes. We all have deadlines. We'll forgive you, Owen.

But first you have apologize.

-KV

When I was young I knew everything

The thoughts come flooding back...with the music, with the rain, with...nothing at all, for no reason. Perfectly content in the present, nostalgia hits like a summer breeze. No, it feels more like a poorly written metaphor of a summer breeze: the description of the wind hits your eyes and you laugh - ha! Did he really write "nostalgia hits like a summer breeze?" No, he wrote about the metaphor.

Sure, sometimes I close my eyes and enjoy it (nostalgia). And sometimes I squint, trying to see where it came from, where it went.

And here it comes like a wave, like a summer breeze...woosh! Freshman year in college. -CL

That "intro" really belongs in the piece. -KV

Then put it there. -CL

I'm not the editor. -KV

What do you do? -CL

What does any of us do? -KV (Any italicized notes after this metaphysical statement will be deleted: the piece below is long enough, no need to test the patience of the reader with lengthy intros.)

When I was young I knew everything
Charlie Luzon

Within minutes I was swimming in freedom. The freedom to do anything at any time. The freedom to take classes, read, stare at girls, learn, and talk, oh! talk. We stayed up all night just talking, didn't we? Later - talking and drinking. But first, just talking.

What the hell did we talk about? It was like junior high without the curfew. (What the hell did we talk about in junior high?)

Coincidentally, The Verve Pipe's song "The Freshman" came out the same year. Even TVP knew something was happening, even if we didn't know what it was.

In the tradition of the site that is more used to lists and pictures of boobies than anything else, here are five nostalgic moments from my freshman year in college that may or may not make any more sense to you than it does for me to be remembering these things over ten years later. For boobies, click the link above. (I'm sure you have already.)

1. Dorms - Co-ed dorms, Rieber Hall, Burning CDs, No Doubt, Netscape, WebCrawler, designated laundry times, a room across from the women's bathroom/showers. Did I mention co-ed dorms a.k.a. the best invention ever?

2. Band - Camp before it was a joke in American Pie, heat, sun, shirts off, at school a week early, empty dorms, every day, good musicians, cooler kids, dorkier kids, hot girls, christian girls, non-christian girls, would date a few of each. Or try to.

3. Philosophy - George Clooney-looking professor in front of a classroom of 400, a god-like figure save for the Clooney resemblence, stretching the mind, thinking about things I didn't know I could think about, no limits on mind, Christianity puts limits on mind, doesn't seem fair, just, faith begins to slip. Could I have stumbled upon the one truth in my small town? Or should I think about this more?

4. Santa Barbara - Drunk, for the first time, back and forth to drink and chase wildly after a girl or my idea of a girl. Teddy comes along at least once, not sure why. I see Kyle way more than I thought I ever would. Hiking and driving, and drunk in a beach town that parties endlessly; we're just passing through the party still goes on, and on, it still goes on, man, damn.

5. San Diego - Drunk, not the first time, in San Diego, Dan, his gf, SDSU. Another time, Tijuana, Persian girl from my dorm can't get back, we bribe American border patrol. $80 lighter we make it back, Teddy hooks up with Persian girl after (or before?). Longest. Night. Ever.

To be a freshman: the freedom, the friends, the dreams.

To not be a freshman: responsibilities, work, busy friends.

But also: real love, real life, and I wake up in my dreams.

Current nostalgia: We were only freshmen.

Nostalgia coming soon: We were only thirty-somethings.

Look for it.

-CL

Great Advice from Cook Books

Great Advice from Cook Books
Langdon Auger

After getting tired of boxed macaroni and cheese, I decided it was time to invest in a cookbook. So I trudged on down to the used book store and broke the bank for a one dollar cookbook written in 1963. "The New Good housekeeping Cookbook," edited by Dorothy B. Marsh, provides a wonderful time capsule of late 1950s-early 1960s dining etiquette and gender attitudes.

Under the heading "Family Weight Watching" it lists a series of Do's and Dont's that I think speak for them selves.

"Don't give up in despair over teen-age food habits--those of the fashion conscious young ladies who starve themselves, or those of either gender who eat the wrong foods in between and at meals, with gay abandon. Be firm with youngsters in the first group; remind them they are preparing for marriage and motherhood. A girl who enjoys being a girl, who looks like a girl and not like a clothes pole, stands the best chance of having a whirl." p. 77

This is either the cause of or the solution to the Olsen Twin's problems, I can't decide which.

Enemies of food

-LA

The Brilliance of Young MC, Classic Lyrics

They don't make 'em like they used to. Some classic Young MC lyrics to help guide you through your day. -KV

No cut-and-paste job, Klaus typed these lyrics out. We're not sure why either. -ed.

---Principal's Office--

So to my first class
I run and don't walk
All I hear is my sneakers
And the scratch of the chalk

And when I get to the room
I hear the teacher say
Mr. Young I'm happy
That you can join us today
...
Twelve o'clock comes
With mass hysteria
...
Forget class
I'ma shoot some ball
With the late pass
I got not trouble at all

But then the nurse walks up
And says "What'd'ya know?"
It's off to the Principal's Office you go

---Bust a Move---

This here's a jam for all the fellas
Try to do what those ladies tell us
Get shot down 'cause your overzealous
Play hard-to-get"
Females get jealous
...
You're looking for love in all the wrong places
No fine girls
Just ugly faces

From frustration
First inclination
Is to become a monk
And leave the situation

But every dark tunnel has a light of hope
So don't hang yourself
With a celibate rope
...
Some girls are sadistic
Materialistic
Looking for man
Makes them opportunistic

Their lying on the beach
Perpetrating a tan
So that a brother with money
Can be their man


---Got More Rymes---

I rock from Iowa to Idaho
Canada to Mexico
...
Because I got more rhymes than the other guys do
They're just a monkey
I'm the whole damn zoo
...
I don't use a book
I use a hefty bag (?)
Because they're just a string
I'm the American flag

---

Now you know.

-KV

More thoughts on the morning

Two things. One: the title makes this sound as if there is a piece called "thoughts on the morning" and this is the sequel, but that is not true. Two: This is more like a standard blog post than I'd like to admit. We try to rise above the blogosphere, but sometimes we fall back down. We're human too. -KV

The best time to go through a sketchy area of town is in the morning. Thugs don't choose their line of work because they have to get up early in the morning.

And why are most crimes committed by men, but we don't find it worthwhile to look for something inherently wrong with masculine behavior?

Did I say this was a blog? I meant "think piece."


He got the swag.

-KV

What Little Thinks

What Little Thinks
Klaus Varley

I moved in with my girlfriend this year. My girlfriend and her cat, Little, a housecat that we don't let outside the condo.

(Little isn't the cat's real name, but everyone has a pseudonym on this site, why not Little?)

Little is not a bright cat. I grew up with cats, so I can make this judgment.

Little is also scared of everything. It's as if she believes she is always narrowly escaping a harrowing situation, as if she's the feline James Bond.

Though it's hard to know exactly what she thinks, by observing her behavior a careful student of cats (I grew up with them, remember?) can assess from her actions her ideas. Here are a few things Little probably believes:

1. Walking across the bedroom floor triggers a door, inside of which rows and rows of cloth dangle curiously from a great height. However, some of this cloth is in convenient stacks, many good for laying upon, some even shaped like a cat bed. Could this be the bed cave, foretold in the scripture of ancient Friskies bags and prophesied by the orange one known only as Garfield?

2. If I sleep for too long in the bed cave, the opening to the bed cave closes for no apparent reason. No! My meows summon a god-like presence, its footsteps and voice rattling the floor. I flee without getting a good look at the figure, getting a safe distance between me, the cave, and the monster who rules it. The cave is a trap! I must warn the others!

3. I have in my possession a bowl that magically refills with dried food when I eat it down to the last four or five pieces. I call it the Endless Bowl of Life. I do not know where I got this magical bowl, but one does not question such miracles.

4. There is another one of my kind that lives on the "outside." I have heard him referred to as Sam. I call him "Same."

5. One day, I went into the other room and when I came back to my normal sitting space in the living room there was a cardboard bed. My first thought was that it looked cheap, and why would I need that when I was perfectly content to scratch on the carpet and the walls? But then a smell emanating from the bed hit me. I had to scratch it and rub my face in it and roll on it! God, what is that smell, give me more!!! This bed is the greatest!

5.5 After calming down, I discovered the substance is kept in a plastic bag and brought out only on special occasions. And it only comes when I'm on the bed. I will wait for it here.

Not so little, Little

-KV

More Disorganized Ideas

More Unorganized Ideas: An Article that is Really the Ideas from my Tiny Composition Book from 2007 Finally Transcribed Into Electronic Form, Hey, Get Off My Back I Need To Save These Ideas Somewhere
by Klaus Varley

-Hard to make eye contact in LA

-Homeless people with glasses. How do they afford a vision plan?

-Kids will grow up to be gamblers if they play too many board games.

-Useless signs - things already illegal: "No blocking intersection," "No guns, drugs in the mall."

-Origins of adages are actually business principles, early Econ classes - "Bird in the hand is worth two in the field. How does that apply to mercantilism?"

-Cigarettes and lighters sold at gas stations. Fire near gasoline? And they sell more alcohol if that wasn't enough flammable liquid.

-Men are either detectives or warriors (no idea what this means, just reading off my notes)

-How can new rappers rap about mansions and Bentleys when you've never heard of the rapper? What was their prior occupation? Did they come from a wealthy family? Explanation needed in the lyrics.

-Same commercial twice in three minutes. Makes me hate the product. If I were a rival company, I would just make an identical commercial and buy the ad space right after my competitor. They would think it was a broadcasting error.

-When you're an adult you can still use the kids' toilet, the kids' water fountain, go on the kids' playground. Because what are they going to do?

-The next time someone says something mean to you, say, "That's no way to network." Then they might think you're someone important and apologize. If not, they will simply be confused, and that's a partial win.

-KV

Land of the Lost Review

Land of the Lost Review
Langdon Auger

Tonight Horace and I attended a sneak preview of the new Will Ferrell movie Land of the Lost. Despite unfinished special effects and soundtrack this movie was quite entertaining. Will Ferrell is able to do his shtick and this time he is joined by relative newcomer Danny McBride. (If you haven't seen his debut film The Footfist Way, rent it.)

Together the two bring a bit of fun to a horrible, fan-boy-infested show. There is something having to do with Sleestaks and some chimp thing named Chaka that gets old fast, but before you know it, Ferrell is running around in his underwear and having a good time. But I'm not quite sure what sport he was trying to spoof in this movie.

This was the first time I participated in a sneak preview where they take reviews. Horace and I were asked to stay behind and have a discussion of the film with about twenty other people. I follow films in production as a hobby and I know that this is the part where good movies get turned mediocre, so it was a little exciting to be there for it.

Sure enough they start asking questions and people start saying the best scenes were their least favorite. For instance, there was one scene where Anna Friel's character is misinterpreting Chaka's ape language and says he was expelled from his tribe for raping an apple. Turns out that wasn't the correct interpretation.

A girl at the screening says they shouldn't be making jokes like that in a movie and that rape is not something to be made fun of. First of all, as if it needed to be said, rape is absolutely wrong. Second of all, but he didn't actually rape anything. Third, it's funny scene because it is a rape of an apple. This is a victimless crime if i ever saw one. I doubt that the apple was really capable of resisting in the first place, or feeling one way or the other about the whole ordeal. And as for the blanket statement that something shouldn't be made fun of, well:

"I can prove to you rape is funny. Picture Porky Pig raping Elmer Fudd."- George Carlin

Then another woman chimed in and said how she shows the original television series to her fourth grade class and doesn't feel comfortable having them come to a movie with so much swearing and sexual innuendo.

Let's get something straight: kids are idiots and parents are panicky stupid morons (see Horace's post on a scary Duracell commercial). This is the reason why cool toys are taken off the shelf when some dope chokes himself. This is the reason we have zero tolerance policies in school that result in the valedictorian not graduating on time because of an aspirin in her purse. And finally (and most importantly) this is the reason we got rid of the dark Tim Burton Batmans and had to endure the cinematic fiasco of Joel Schumacher's technicolor cape and cowl. But Warner Brothers smarted up, told the four year olds and parents to go screw, put Christopher Nolan in charge, and made a Batman movie that was worth seeing.

But I digress. To be in a screening where this issue comes up was astonishing because I have seen so many movies with great potential crippled by an insistence on PG-13 ratings and family friendly fare. It would be so much better to make a more risky movie with sharp humor. The film will be more honest and true, and whatever box office you lose out on because of the children you will make up for in rentals when those kids get old enough to rent the movie on their own. Why is it that so many people still watch Animal House? Because they made their jokes and didn't apologize for it. Not that Land of the Lost is as good as Animal House, I'm just using it as an example.

But movie execs don't think this way, so i am dreading seeing the final product when it comes out on June 5th. Will it have the adult humor or will it be a bland, neutered piece designed to appeal to the largest and least specific market possible? I'm afraid I know the answer already.

-LA