Ben Folds Five - Do It Anyway (new 2012 track)

  
Welcome back Ben, Robert and Darren!

Poem: ON THE PASSAGE OF NORTH CAROLINA AMENDMENT ONE

it's in the state charter now
everybody who's not cut out for
traditional marriage has to
hide in a closet
and pass for straight
and never ever ever ever
bother the people of North Carolina
unless you live in liberal areas
like Chapel Hill or Carrboro--
you know, those places
with know-it-all eggheads
who like activist judges
>
the closet's going to get bigger
and bigger just like the stateroom
in The Marx Brothers movie
A NIGHT AT THE OPERA
and eventually people will spill out
with the door off its hinges
>
then, the 61% will have to
put their moral values on a scale
and weigh what Jesus actually said
or didn't say in the Bible about LGBTs
versus all the hate that pastors
named (and not named) Graham
pump into them like IV drips
in an ancient hospital
where the windows are nailed shut
and painted black
to keep out the light.

Blogger Ned Merrill on the "Sunshine Noir" genre.

http://knifeinthehead.blogspot.com/2012/05/sunshine-noir.html

Good essay--plus original one sheet posters--on what Ned Merrill of the Obscure One-Sheet blog describes as the "Sunshine Noir" genre of 1980s films with baby boomers/yuppies as the principal characters.

Though it's not a well-known film today, I'd count Jeremy Paul Kagan's THE BIG FIX (1978) with Richard Dreyfuss as private eye Moses Wine (based on a character created by novelist/conservative commentator Roger Simon) as a precursor to "Sunshine Noir."

And Robert Towne's flawed but beautifully-shot-by-Conrad Hall TEQUILA SUNRISE (1988) with Mel Gibson, Kurt Russell and Michelle Pfeiffer serves as the genre's coda.

Recycled poetry observations from 2009--with updated thoughts.

I just looked at some old blog posts and stumbled across the one from early in 2009 where I took exception to a review that G. Murray Thomas wrote on Poetix.net of my chapbook "yellow tree red sky"--and in retrospect, I shouldn't have been surprised about some of his negativity since a few months earlier, I wrote a post discussing a not-positive Murray review of North Hollywood poet/host Radomir Luza's then-current chapbook.  And I should have been more aware (in the sense of SoCal poetry politics) at the time that criticizing a critic and then submitting a chapbook for his review might have consequences.

Here's the portion of my early 2009 post that still resonates with truth over three years later:
When I began going to open-mikes almost eleven years ago [now over fourteen years ago], there were coffeehouse and independent bookstore readings that made room for just about everything, like a variety show: "serious" literary poetry, traditional rhyme-and-meter verse, monologues, stand-up comedy, musicians, etc. etc [plus slam poets in open mike or as features]. And Murray seems to have cast his lot with the hosts and influential poets in LA/OC that seem to think that only "serious" poetry should be allowed with the other subsets I mentioned above actively and/or tacitly discouraged.

I remember a few years ago at the Moonday reading at Village Books in Pacific Palisades when, after reading on the open-mike, Holaday Mason (a well-known L.A. literary poet) performed her five minutes. The late Anne Silver (then a Moonday co-host) spent a minute or two copiously praising Holaday for her work--and, to me, the message was ultraclear; I was too depth-free and craft-poor for such a distinguished reading. I got Ms. Silver's message--and never returned to the reading again.

Time to say it again: for poetry to flourish--particularly at a time when there will be renewed jeers over the idea of the arts being essential in a near-Depression economy--a big tent needs to be pitched.

It's not to be expected that all poetry will be to the liking of everyone--tastemakers, professional/amateur poets or civilians who prefer merely to attend.

But at some point the "poetry community" needs to stop pushing the poetry-eugenics nonsense that poems should be nothing more than gilded creations engineered to be admired for their complexity and intricacy--sort of like building a scale model of the QUEEN MARY in a Sparkletts jug or (to steal a phrase from the late Robert Mitchum) construct a replica of the Taj Mahal from matchsticks.

Otherwise, there's going to be an increase in boring, arid, intended-more-to-impress-than-enlighten-or-even-stoop-to-entertain "craft-conscious" word art which will likely go unremembered a month from now--let alone a decade or even a century.

Re THE AVENGERS: Puzzlement over Samuel L. Jackson's negative review of film critic A.O. Scott

Superhero films are to the late 20th/early 21st Centuries what the Western was from roughly 1903 (THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY) to the mid-1970s (one could say that Don Siegel's THE SHOOTIST with John Wayne from 1976 was the epitaph for the traditional, non-revisionist cowboy film).

Nonetheless, A.O. "Tony" Scott, film critic for THE NEW YORK TIMES (probably best known for helping preside over the last days of relatively intelligent film reviewing on TV with the CHICAGO TRIBUNE's Michael Phillips), has tired of the superhero genre; although Scott had some mild praise for some aspects of Marvel's THE AVENGERS, the film's co-star Samuel L. Jackson overreacted in the manner of James Cameron howling at Kenneth Turan in 1998 over Turan's pan of TITANIC.

Noting the passage of fourteen years--James Cameron wrote a now-old-fashioned letter to the editor of THE LOS ANGELES TIMES (or at least its entertainment section Calendar), while Jackson used Twitter as his medium of disapproval.

Both Jackson and Scott have a right to their respective opinions. 

But I wonder why Samuel L. Jackson, who has had a long and generally successful film career (and, it's safe to say, made more than one film that A.O. Scott likely didn't care for), felt he needed to wave the "if you don't like my film, you suck as a critic and maybe you should do something else " banner in the Cameron style.

BEASTIE BOYS - INTERGALACTIC 2012 (JUX REMIX)

Varying opinions of trailer for THE EXPENDABLES 2.

Film critic Scott Mendelson weighing in on the just-released trailer for Sylvester Stallone's THE EXPENDABLES 2:
Mendelson's Memos: The Expendables 2 trailer looks fun, but will a sl...: This looks like more of the same, which is just fine by me.  The first film was just a little better than I expected, offering a fantasy ...

As for me, the trailer indicates that Stallone, in handing off direction to Simon West, has infused the film with the kind of tongue-in-cheek gonzo which West brought to Jerry Bruckheimer's CON AIR fifteen years ago.

Unlike Mendelson, I don't have problems with Arnold winking at the camera.

Casting an imaginary Judd Apatow SoCal poetry comedy.

Meant to be whimsical-spirited: Brendan Constantine-Paul Rudd Rick Lupert-Jay Baruchel Peggy Dobreer-Leslie Mann G. Murray Thomas-Loudon Wainwright III Raindog-Nick Nolte Bowerbird-Zach Galifianakis Larry Colker-Ron Rifkin Jim Doane-Will Ferrell Leigh White-Alison Brie Derrick Brown-Jim Parsons Laurel Ann Bogen-Kathy Bates Michael Datcher-Giancarlo Esposito Feel free to add actors and poetry personae to this list, but try to include as many people from the Apatow repertory as possible.