flying over london
» Thursday, May 31, 2007

Yet another entry over at Travels With Greg, my memoir of a six-week documentary shoot through darkest Europe (including darkest Belgium) in the fall of 2004. I was so young and handsome back then. Today's entry is day 2: flying over London. Everybody likes flying over London - it's cooler than hula hoops! - so I thought I'd write an installment about it.

Labels: travel

posted by the palinode | comments (1) | permalink | subscribe
  ·    ·    ·    ·    ·    ·    ·    ·   · 

eight things
» Friday, May 25, 2007

If there’s one thing that I do well, it’s grumble that no one ever tags me for a blog meme. I don’t grumble about it online, because then people will tag me for a blog meme, and if there’s one thing I hate, it’s blog memes. So I keep it to myself. But a couple of days ago, both Ozma of Blog and Knuckletoes tagged me for the same dance. I felt like a debutante with two handsome heirs fighting over me. They were wanting to know eight facts and/or habits about me. The truth is that I have no habits, and all facts about me have turned out to be lies, which have turned out to be lines of dialogue from early drafts of the script for Krull. Weird, I know – but true! But not true!

1. I often imagine the future as a gigantic iron gate with a huge padlock holding it shut and a sign that looks like an enormous post-it note saying 'Under Renovations - The future is CLOSED until further notice – Come back soon!' Of course, everyone knows that ‘under renovations’ is a euphemism for 'out of business'.



2. I love films, but my opinion of an entire two hour’s worth of movie can turn on a single exchange or ridiculous detail. There’s a moment in The Matrix, for example, that completely ruins the movie for me. It’s not Keanu Reeve’s posing, or the weird deification of hackers, or the lazy gloss over the basic premise of the film (human beings + ‘a form of fusion’ = efficient energy source?) but the following exchange:
   
   Neo: What are they?
   Trinity: Squiddies.
   Cypher: Armed sentinels designed for one thing.
   Dozer: Search and destroy.
   
   That’s two things. Matrix, I hate you.



3. Based on an old comic book I read as a kid, I used to sleep with a pillowcase or T-shirt laid over my head in case some tentacled monster came in the night to steal my brain. Apparently the monster had the moxie to get in my bedroom, but lacked the tenacity to defeat the Pillowcase Barrier. I quit the habit by the time I was 25 or so. Even though I hadn’t believed in the brain-stealing monster since I was eight, it was really hard to get to sleep at first.



4. In the real universe where we deserve to live, heat is not result of entropy but a prize given away on a popular game show. Everyone there is extremely cold and the ultimate prize on the show is to be toasty warm for an entire year. Most prize recipients are dismayed when they realize that they have to pay applicable taxes. Some have died from being mobbed for their heat.



5. What I’m thinking? Is that ‘gravity’ is a satanic pact between secular humanists and homosexuals to keep god-fearing folks from flying, as per the Lord’s intentions. Think about it this way – if we were not meant to fly, then why do we eat so many birds?



6. After the end of my last world tour, in which countless thousands of screaming fans offered me their bodies and their savings accounts, I looked in the mirror and discovered that I was Scott Stapp. It was the most devastating moment of my life. I scrubbed and scrubbed but couldn't get the Stapp off me.



7. My greatest fear is that I will turn into a conservative curmudgeon as I get older and that I will be unable to distinguish between the left-wing principles I hold dear and the overprivileged twits that espouse them.



8. Last night I joined forces with Torquil and Ynyr the Seer to find The Black Fortress and rescue my beloved Lyssa from the clutches of The Beast. Armed with my awesome weapon “The Glave,” I will free my home planet of Krull from The Beast and his army of Slayers and open up a Pontiac dealership* where the Black Fortress now stands.

I tag everyone who reads this and their grandchildren.


*The Pontiac dealership subplot of Krull, in which Prince Corwyn strives to find his identity through auto sales despite the wishes of his father King Turlord, did not make it to the screen. Critics have lamented this cut, calling Krull “the greatest auto dealership film never made”. In the first draft of Krull, which went by the working title “On The Lot,” The Black Fortress is already a Pontiac Dealership, and character of The Beast is Hal Snavely, a slick gladhanding salesman bent on ruining life for the good folks of Krulltown. Prince Corwyn is an employee named Jim Buick who foils Snavely's plans and gets the girl. For some reason there's still a King Turlord.

Labels: krull matters, lists

posted by the palinode | comments (9) | permalink | subscribe
  ·    ·    ·    ·    ·    ·    ·    ·   · 

nearly out of the country
» Thursday, May 24, 2007

For those of you who like dynamic storytelling and are yourselves dynamic people, people who appreciate a certain dynamism in their lives, people who maybe work with dynamite, I've added another entry in the ongoing Travels With Greg series. In today's entry, I sit on a plane and eat at a crappy restaurant. If you think that's glamour gold, wait for the entry where I talk about eating pizza in Cannes with Mormons. That'll thresh your grain.

Labels: travel

posted by the palinode | comments (0) | permalink | subscribe
  ·    ·    ·    ·    ·    ·    ·    ·   · 

sweet nothing vs nothing sweet
» Tuesday, May 22, 2007

From the bitter dry dregs of the long office afternoon. An email thread between Palinode and Schmutzie to show how well-suited they are to handle desk jobs.

Palinode says:

I miss you.

More on this story as it develops.

*

Schmutzie says:

I think I just threw up a little bit. (wink)

Will I know of the arrival of your [Amazon] order by a ticket in our mailbox?

*

Yes, the ticket in the mailbox should do the trick. I'm not sure that it will be there, but the Amazon package tracker said that my order had arrived in the city and was "out for delivery," which I take to be something like "out for justice" or "out for blood".

You threw up a little bit? Wink? I'm a little lost. Please explain why my declaration of missing you provokes barf and contraction of your eye sphincter.

*

It was saccharine, and I'm a heartless bitch. NO, I thought it was sweet. My [untyped noun]* keeps seeping out.

I may step out for a nip if the books aren't in the mailbox.

*

Sounds good. If you're out when I get home I'll curl up in a ball, hold the uncomprehending cats against my chest and wail out "She's gone, kitties! She's gone!" in between sobs, until you return.

*

That's healthy. I should try that.

*

You can try it out wherever you are. If you're out for a walk, you can clutch garbage cans or shrubs. Rend your clothes, or maybe just scream out for succor. Sweet succor, from the gods.

*

Can I post this on the internet?**


*I really don't know what she meant to type here. There are so many many possibilities.

**Too late. Mwaha.

Labels: conversations

posted by the palinode | comments (6) | permalink | subscribe
  ·    ·    ·    ·    ·    ·    ·    ·   · 

the face
» Saturday, May 19, 2007

Lately I've been wondering about the face on my website.

It's just to the right of these words. Or in different circumstances, to the right and up. Way up.

That's my face. The one with the stubble and the severe expression. I'm starting to feel that it's too big. Not in real life, but on my site here. Why such a big ol' face for a weblog?

The problem is, it's looking directly at what I write with what I can only interpret as a disapproving glare. Why is my face such a harsh judge? Maybe I thought it would inspire me and push my writing to new levels. The truth is I'm scared to look at my blog now, with that face staring down my words. To compensate, I smile from my perpendicular vantage. But my parallel twin outlasts me.

One day I will replace that picture with something different, and then this entry will make no sense.

Labels: useless

posted by the palinode | comments (4) | permalink | subscribe
  ·    ·    ·    ·    ·    ·    ·    ·   · 

unlikely advice from dr. phil
» Friday, May 18, 2007

I want you to go on and vomit up that frittata into this cup. You shouldn’t be eating that Eurotrash food anyhow.

Don’t look at me. I’m not going to help you now. Only your feet can help you. Mumble your excuses to your feet. Or maybe that helpful spot way over in the back you keep staring at.

Do you know why you’re here today? Do you know why you’re here? ‘Cause I’m going to tell you. You’re here because, because you think I’m not a hologram. But when have I ever touched you? Think about it.

Go ahead and leave your children. Do it now. Put them in a shopping cart and leave them in the front yard if necessary. Throw in some of those little yoghurts with them, they’ll be fine. Just do what you gotta do. Do what feels right.

I want you to come over here right now and chew on my moustache. It’s full of nutrients and antidepressants.

I know you’ve been having troubles with your husband, right? Your family? And I promised last week that I would get you some help. Well you know what? Fuck you.

Show’s over, but I’m just going to sit here. I need you to take my wife’s hand and walk out with her. Take her back to the house. Pick up some tequila on the way. I’ll catch up later.

On second thought, let’s not do this.

Labels: scorn, tv

posted by the palinode | comments (3) | permalink | subscribe
  ·    ·    ·    ·    ·    ·    ·    ·   · 

a piece of news
» Sunday, May 13, 2007

As many of my readers will know by now, Schmutzie has been diagnosed with cervical cancer. She will be seeing an oncologist very soon and we will know better what we are dealing with at that point (so before you ask me anything, the answer is probably I Don't Know). Many of you have already expressed your sympathies and support, for which I thank you. If you could visit her site and wish her well, I'm sure she would appreciate it very much. Between my gimped-up back and her capricious cervix, we're the world's most tasteless sitcom waiting to happen.

People have asked me how we're doing with the news, and the answer is I Don't Know. I turn my eye inward and it's like a tv screen set to static. Schmutzie, to the best of my knowledge, is in the same state. I'm sure that at some point we'll look down and realize we're up to our necks in black water, but until then we're paddling along. The truth is that we're going through a number of reactions, and some of them are expected, while others are wildly inappropriate. In the meantime, I'd like to thank the people who've been supportive and generous. Especially the O'Hanlon's staff, who bought us free drinks on the day we found out. You can't buy that kind of love.

Labels: cancer

posted by the palinode | comments (12) | permalink | subscribe
  ·    ·    ·    ·    ·    ·    ·    ·   · 

chugging along
» Monday, May 07, 2007

Finally, after some pauses and surges, the fourth installment of Travels With Greg is up and running. Check it out as I finally get on the plane! It only took five thousand words to get there.

Labels: travel

posted by the palinode | comments (0) | permalink | subscribe
  ·    ·    ·    ·    ·    ·    ·    ·   · 

Ohhh Yeaaah
» Sunday, May 06, 2007

In grade four, the year after the old school had been torn down, we all started up in the brand new Chester Elementary School. In contrast to the high-ceilinged Victorian eminence - it even had a bell tower in my memory to call students to class, although that may be my imagination doing some setdec on my memory - this school was low, long and done up in greys and slates on the outside. The hallways were all cinderblock painted over in the usual institutional colours - those hideous pinks and greens that work equally well on criminals, lunatics and children. But all that was forgivable, because off the library there was an a/v room, which was no small thing for a rural elementary school in 1980.

The teachers never dreamed for one moment of giving us genuine access to the room, with its television monitors and mixing board and beta machines, topped off by a shiny video camera on a tripod (how the hell did our school afford all that?). We were, however, permitted to work on projects in strictly supervised conditions. Which meant that we couldn't touch anything. Ever. We could watch Mr. MacLean and another teacher touch things, which was fucking boffo, thank you very much.* Our participation extended to acting out ideas of what teachers thought would be funny and appropriate for nine and ten year olds.

To parents, there is nothing funnier than watching small children dress up and act out adult roles. For some reason, the human comedy is never more uproarious than when performed by homunculi in slightly oversize sport coats. Therefore our class got the opportunity to do a regular news broadcast on the doin's and transpirin's of Chester Elementary. We came up with news stories, conducted interviews, and acted out a genuine news broadcast every month or so. I was an anchorman. I came with a navy blazer and a clip-on tie.

Several of us wrote the scripts and played roles for the shows. There was Affable Bryce, Skipped-A-Grade Calvin, Filthy Mouthed Dwayne, No-Smell Jill, Literal Brian, Middle-Part Sheila, Kelly, Denise and a whole crop of others. In the free marketplace of ideas** it was hard for my ideas to get any play. My brain was addled from my habit of staying up late on Saturdays to watch SCTV, so my idea of funny was Neil Simon's Nutcracker Suite and Farm Film Report. It didn't translate too well from a hyperactive stuttering ten year old who forgot to provide backstory for his unsolicited spittle-flecked comedy. I didn't care about news, actualities, information, or any goings-on that had any relevance to anyone. I cared about introducing subplots involving out of control robots who terrorized the news studio.***

The student who came up with the most tasteless joke for the program was Non-Nerd Trevor, who decided that the news program needed a sponsor, and that the sponsor should be Jim Jones Brand Kool Aid. Since this was 1980-81 (the years before the internet, decent hair cuts and even Live Aid) and the Jonestown Massacre had happened in November 1978, it did not make the cut. We were admonished for being disrespectful but forgiven on account of the natural tendency of all children to mock the very notion of empathy. But I think that Trevor was the only one of us who even knew who Jim Jones was, or what the Kool Aid reference meant.

I asked my father about the Jonestown Massacre. He told me in a few terse sentences that a group of people had committed mass suicide under the influence of charismatic cult leader Jim Jones, and that the instrument of their death was a vat of cyanide-laced Kool Aid. And that was the sum of my knowledge to carry me through adolescence and beyond.

The other night I finally watched Stanley Nelson's documentary Jonestown: The Life and Death of the People's Temple, which told me far more about Jim Jones than I'd ever imagined. I didn't know that there were surviving People's Temple members, for instance. And I had had no idea of who Jones was, why the Temple was so successful in the sixties and seventies, and how the movement had progressed from a multiracial church with an emphasis on social action to a politically powerful cult that eventually set up a totalitarian utopia in the jungle. There are plenty of people who claim that the Jonestown documentary doesn't give you the whole story (for example, see the incredibly angry blog of Tom Kinsolving, in which Stanley Nelson is repeatedly excoriated for implying that the People's Temple was something other than an all-devouring murder machine from day one of its existence), but it gave me enough story to feel nauseated and horrified by the haywire explosion of death that marked its end.

Nelson tells the story almost exclusively through interviews with people who are connected with Jones and the Temple in some way - old neighbours, family, reporters and former Temple members. No narrator shows up with a grave voice to frame the events for us, and no expert is supplied to natter on about the psychology of cults. The effect is to give us a complex and multifaceted view of the People's Temple - a Pentecostal-style progressive church with an interracial mandate that also happened to be a brutal cult that used its influence to wield political power in Bay Area California.

Through the interviews, Nelson allows us to see all the qualities of the church that made it compelling to so many people. Jones didn't care if you were a young white middle-class college student or a black senior citizen - everyone was equal and welcome to take part in the Temple's extensive program of good works. But then, after you watch footage of a miraculous healing, with crowds screaming and crying and dancing as a crippled woman runs back and forth in renewed legs, you find out that the entire event is staged - and then all the unsavory details about Jones are released in a flood.

Beatings, ritual humiliations and sleeplessness, bizarre sexual manipulation and the entire bag of cult tricks were employed by Jones to keep his followers pliable. In Jonestown, speaker systems blasted out Jones' voice twenty-four hours a day. By the time the survivors of the mass suicide begin recounting the experience of having their families die frothing and convulsing in their arms, it's almost unbearable to watch. After 90 minutes of listening to these likeable and gregarious people, it's impossible to believe that they managed to survive the deaths of their friends and families and have any kind of life afterwards. Particularly when you consider that they probably participated in some of the beatings and humiliations that Jones encouraged as a means of group discipline.

Nobody joins a cult, says former Temple member Deborah Layton. Nobody joins something that they think is going to hurt them. I would argue that this idea applies to almost every ridiculous thing that people do. Nobody learns to drive so they can die in a whirlwind of metal and plastic and glass, but damned if that doesn't happen ridiculously often. Nobody goes into the hospital to catch strong-like-bull viruses, but catch them we do. And nobody buys paper products so that huge swaths of forest can be transformed into brutalized dead ground and rivers turned into a stinking froth of chemicals, but so it goes.

Ultimately, the film ends with another film's worth of questions to be answered. You never learn about the inner circle of the People's Temple. You never learn how the survivors managed to escape Jonestown and make their way back to the States. Also, you never find out how Jones became a monkey salesman in the 1950s. Seriously - the guy sold monkeys. Would you join a church run by an ex-monkey salesman?


*The a/v room also contained a mimeograph machine, which always smelled of that alcoholic purple ink. Once we used it for some project or other after receiving permission from a teacher. In mid-mimeograph Mr. MacLean strode in and lost it. Completely lost it on us, with this tight-lipped snappishness that betrayed a deep and violent petulance. We were so stunned at his anger that we didn't even leave. Instead we told him that a teacher had given us permission to use the machine. He snapped out "If the cops gave you permission would you speed?" He said it several times, probably because we continued to stand there and repeat ourselves. To a group of ten year olds, analogies involving traffic laws didn't really impress his point; for all we knew, cops were the arbiters of speed limits. We weren't so dumb as to think we could operate the video equipment without a teacher in the room, but the mimeograph didn't seem to fall into the same category. Some years later I realized that Mr. MacLean considered the a/v room as his area of expertise and authority, and that his anger had more to do with the teacher who had flouted his authority than with us. Now that I think about it, it seems pretty obvious, as is the case with so many teachers, that years of dealing with ten year olds had gnawed away like mad little beavers at his self-respect.

**Ah ha. Ah hahahahahaaaa.

***The rebellious robot theme never made it into the news programs. I shoehorned the robot plot into a school assembly play in grade seven, to complete incomprehension from the audience. The robots had become suicidal vehicles that fell on the doomed young protagonists.

Labels: childhood, film, Jim Jones

posted by the palinode | comments (4) | permalink | subscribe
  ·    ·    ·    ·    ·    ·    ·    ·   · 

night people (second of two conversations)
» Wednesday, May 02, 2007

I repeat: an evening in bed with Palinode and Schmutzie. Entertainment, drinks, hummus, blood and ouns. Actually, no blood and ouns. Oscar the Cat leaps up on the bed, eyes wide and moony-round.

Oscar: Whuf.

Schmutzie: Oscar's worried about something. He's making that whuffing sound with his nostrils.

Oscar: Whuf.

Schmutzie: I think it's the open window. He's not used to the night sounds.

Palinode: It's Robert Palmer. He's back from the grave and he's standing outside our window, playing some choice hits.

Schmutzie: Robert Palmer is at The Grave?

Palinode: He was, but now he's back and he's got some choice hits for us.

Schmutzie: So he's come back to The Grave?.

Palinode: No, he's come back from the grave. He died. But he's outside our window now.

Schmutzie: Robert Palmer's dead?

Palinode: But his corpse has risen with a will to serve choice hits at the window.

Schmutzie: So he's at The Window?

Palinode: Night sounds.

Schmutzie: I have no idea what you're talking about.

Palinode: It's simple. The dead body of Robert Palmer has risen from his grave, and now he is outside at our window playing his choice hits, which are the night sounds that are making Oscar nervous.

Schmutzie: Oh. I thought The Grave and The Window were clubs in town and Robert Palmer was playing.

Oscar: Whuf, predictably.

Labels: cats, conversations, Robert Palmer's corpse

posted by the palinode | comments (4) | permalink | subscribe
  ·    ·    ·    ·    ·    ·    ·    ·   · 

mood swing (first of two conversations)
» 

An evening in bed with Palinode and Schmutzie (Yesssss! say the fans). Palinode pats Onion the Cat. A frown furrows his smooth rich face.

Palinode: Cat. Your back is wet without reason.

Onion: Meow or something.

Palinode: The cat's back is wet and there's no explanation.

Schmutzie: I spilled water on him when I came in.

Onion: Meow or something.

Palinode: Yeah. I remember now. You walked in and screamed "DRIED-OUT LITTLE BITCH!" and threw your glass of water all over him.

Schmutzie: I DID NOT!

Palinode: You had to go and pour yourself a new glass of water and everything.

Schmutzie: You're the worst liar in all time.

Onion: Meow.

Labels: cats, conversations

posted by the palinode | comments (2) | permalink | subscribe
  ·    ·    ·    ·    ·    ·    ·    ·   · 

this is just to say
» 

I saw Ultraviolet a whole long time ago, and it was atrocious, of course - and maybe I wrote something about it. But nothing compares to Mightygodking's hilarious x5 Ultraviolet review. What, you haven't clicked on the link yet? Stop reading this. That review could not exist without the endless space and infinite distribution of the internet. This is the kind of writing that the internet enables and encourages - sometimes to unfortunate result. But not this time.

This entry is dedicated to my friend Sven, who loves Ultraviolet so much that he frequently resorts to fist fights in defense of his beloved all-time favourite movie, which he claims "raises cinema to new heights... stunning". Either that or he hates it, the way I hate Superman IV and that evil robot that grew Dick Cheney in a tank.

Labels: film, preferences of sven, why an internet?

posted by the palinode | comments (2) | permalink | subscribe
  ·    ·    ·    ·    ·    ·    ·    ·   ·