desert empire

Was there ever a human society that didn’t have a vent for its id? The Puritans maybe? But then they had their witches and tortures and executions. Are Vegas and waterboarding two sides of the same coin?

Saturday night went with Mark to help him clear stuff out of his apartment after the fire. Mark’s roommate’s room looked like a marshmallow that had fallen into a bonfire. Nothing he owned survived. Mark was luckier. His stuff was smoke-stained and there was some water damage, but the paintings his dad did came through, as did Mark’s journals. It was pretty sad going through his bookshelf. Looking at the poetry section, Mark kept saying “I know all these people,” almost marveling. Heavy black soot covered the spines. The esoteric titles were in bad shape, the collection of a lifetime. He seemed in denial at times – trying to save kitchen spices that were decades old, throwing charcoal-smelling clothes into trashbags for the storage unit – and at other times he was accepting, saying to himself “Fuck it...it doesn’t matter.”

Mostly he seemed appreciative of the help he’d received, and ready to move on.

If I ever get burned out and I take it with ten-percent of Mark’s grace, I’ll be happy.

dave says no to alabama

UPDATE: Dave says yes to Alabama.

fyi

Fast Payday Loans

the first rule of fight club

After dinner last night, on the street with Dave and Johanna:

Johanna: Hey E, I’ve been commenting on your website.

Dave: You have a website?

(Saved by Dave’s cellphone ringing.)

Close on: blue-collar guy chewing on an unlit cigar inside an art gallery.

Blue-collar guy speaking with disdain: My kid can paint better than this.

Pull back to reveal space filled with Botticellis, Titians, Raphaels, Caravaggios, and Poussins.

Cutaway to: Blue collar guy’s home, kid in the basement, paint palette in hand, putting finishing touch on Ascension of Christ canvas, rendered with impeccable linear perspective, dramatic chiaroscuro, and stunningly harmonious proportion.

fosse

All That Jazz is the greatest movie ever made. By a factor of ten.

The first I heard about the film was in an old Stanley Kubrick interview. Kubrick was asked what contemporary films he was watching and he said it was all worthless, with the exception of Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz. I rented what I assumed was a cheesy musical, worthy of five minutes’ suffering just to figure out what kind of prank Kubrick was pulling. The movie is instead a Felliniesque run through death-haunted kitsch, where final judgment on a man’s existence is passed by a disco-suited Ben Vereen. Last night I finally saw the film on the big screen and it was even more powerful than I remembered. If there’s something better than death-haunted kitsch, I don’t know what it is.