I'm Gonna Sit Write Down... Saturday, August 09, 2003

Please note the new e-mail address at left, below the links and things.

@ 10:08:00 PM, ,

Eric the Half a B

Thinking about Velocity Trap, the sci-fi heist movie I talked about earlier. A guy I used to know said people shouldn't remake good movies, they should take another crack at films that fell short but had a solid idea underneath. The example he used was Nuts, the Barbra Streisand vehicle, which I never saw, although I understand she is to die for.

I think VT falls into that category. A decent B-movie, but with a little effort it could've been a real classic (on the level of, say, the greatest B-movie of the '90s). But B movies, as I said earlier, seem to be dying out: You can't do something quick and dirty and clever anymore. Yadda yadda, corporate consolidation, cretinization, 1970s apogee.

This also got me thinking about great stuff that slips through the cracks (which was, ostensibly, the point of the original Wrong Turn Journal, although the stuff was mostly mine and it wasn't that great). So I wanted to throw out some notes from time to time about things I've been watching/reading/listening to lately that haven't gotten the attention they deserve...

Pete Townshend: Yes, yes, everybody knows Pete. But I think his solo stuff is something really special, really (as my friend Matt would say) transcendent. Really, the only bad album he's made is the rock opera The Iron Man, from the same kids' book as the movie Iron Giant, which I won't link to because I'm tired of doing it. His records have this wonderful intimate sound to them--I may be paraphrasing wrong, but a friend said that playing his stuff in the car was like riding with a good friend. He writes confessional songs, but not navel gazing (like Jewel or Mark Eitzel or whatever other delicate flower you can name); he's brutally honest about his shortcomings and dark patches, but writes so effortlessly, and sings so earnestly, you can't help but forgive him. He's like a buddy who keeps making a scene at your parties, but always calls the next day to apologize from the bottom of his heart. (And you kind of like watching him trash the place anyway.)

Intimate, soulful, literate, pretentious but laughing at himself. Everything he's done is worthwhile in its way, and much of it is brilliant. Dig in!

@ 10:03:00 PM, ,

Queens Atavism for the Day

High off a fresh haircut, glad I didn't spend fifty bucks at Footlights Records, and ambling over to the Virgin Megastore, I turned the corner and found myself in the middle of a bunch of Lyndon Larouche replicants. They didn't bother me, they didn't get in my face, they didn't even say anything particularly offensive; but when I passed by the guy at the door of Virgin who was handing out fliers, I told him, "Screw you. You're a mental patient."

Brender and Eddie would be proud!

@ 9:31:00 PM, ,

A Little Off the Top

Just returned from a haircut in the city. For inexplicable, Rain Man-nish reasons, I only go to one barber, an Italian gent across from The Strand. Today I found the shop full and a tiny old man reading through a stack of Maxims. Viva life!

Upon returning to Bayonne discovered the town smelled like a catbox: sharp and sour and vaguely vegetative, with a metallic tang perched on top like a tin roof. Am now comfortable, air-conditioned, full of crummy food, at peace with the world. It's very quiet sans wifey.

Reading a bunch of Evelyn Waugh. A while ago I read an essay "re-evaluating" "Brideshead Revisited," talking about it as a profound Catholic statement. So I read it on the way home from Montreal, watched part of the TV show, and enjoyed it immensely. Altho it has one of those endings that Means Something Spiritual but is more or less over my head. I think everybody ends up Catholic.

Proceeded to "Scoop," one of the funniest books I've ever read and certainly the best book about newspapers. (The two competitors are The Beast and The Brute.) Every sentence, literally, is this good:

“Why, once Jakes went out to cover a revolution in one of the Balkan capitals. He overslept in his carriage, woke up at the wrong station, didn’t know any different, got out, went straight to an hotel, and cabled off a thousand-word story about barricades in the streets, flaming churches, machine-guns answering the rattle of his typewriter as he wrote, a dead child, like a broken doll, spreadeagled in the deserted roadway below his window — you know.”

Moved on to "Black Mischief," an incredibly un-P.C., and incredibly hilarious, book on liberalism, Progress and Africa. Every sentence makes you laugh and makes you guilty about it; then the climax comes, deadly serious, and you literally feel numb. Unbelievable.

Now it's "Put Out More Flags," about the upper crust and Bohemian set at the start of WWII. Some great pointed observations, astoundingly good dialogue, hateful-but-intriguing characters. Great stuff!

Must do some other stuff. Will return later. Take care, be well.

@ 2:05:00 PM, ,

Those Were the Days

Now that I think of it, my mother used to have an audio tape of The Great Man's resignation speech: one of those old pink cassettes, and a recorder you could use to drive railway spikes.

Goodnight for real.

@ 12:25:00 AM, ,

The Grim King Will Always Lose

Before I go...just noticed the date. I remember asking an editor friend once if he could confirm the date of Nixon's resignation for a story I was working on. (I was too lazy to check.) He answered within seconds and added, "I'm surprised it's not a national holiday."

@ 12:19:00 AM, ,

"Bad Guys I Can Deal With--But Aliens Creep Me Out"

The above quote from a nifty little B movie, "Velocity Trap," passed on by a buddy who knows B movies like nobody's business. An original storyline, some solid performances, a little sci-fi kung-fu--what more do you want? On top of that, it's a heist movie. For those of you who have been following my performance-anxiety hand-wringing over the past few years, you'll know that the sci-fi heist concept is near and dear to my heart. Glad to see somebody pulling it off!

A guy I used to know who wrote about movies once said the problem with Hollywood is that it forgot how to make "cheap, smart trash"--Roger Corman movies, Steve McQueen movies, stuff like that. VT fits that bill. (Best in the past decade: "Deep Rising." Trust me.) My quibbles: I would've killed the first twenty minutes. Otherwise a swell rental.

My astonishing wife arrived upstate safely and picked up her parents' dogs at the sitter. There is apparently an instigator there, a puppy the size of her hand, named Bubble. Am currently listening to the Ass Ponys song "Ford Madox Ford." Bubble, Velocity Trap, Ford Madox Ford--renewed purpose. Life is wonderful. Bona notte.

@ 12:15:00 AM, ,

Stop the Presses Friday, August 08, 2003

A friend of mine just told me I use the word "astonishing" too much in the post below. Everybody's an editor!

Really, really signing off now. Tomorrow: Pants on Route 440! Anybody want to come?

@ 10:32:00 PM, ,

Bayonne Babies Say Goodnight

The headline on the AOL Welcome screen: "Too Much Democracy?" Great question! Look at this blog and answer for yourself.

Just back from a stroll. Starting a weekend without my astonishing wife, trying to figure out what to do with myself. Thinking about Bayonne, my hometown of the moment.



For the uninitiated, it's a peninsula off the coast of northern New Jersey. On one side is Newark Bay; on the other is New York Harbor (the Statue Liberty and lower Manhattan are a few miles north of us). At the southern tip, the Bayonne Bridge links us to Staten Island. At the other end, we melt into Jersey City.

It's an interesting spot. It's got layers. Go someplace like Hoboken, and you can see exactly what happened: The Yuppie neutron bomb hit, all the old ethnics vanished, and Bobos from NYC took over the buildings. There are some newish apartments and other facilities, but mostly you have brick townhouses, brownstones, factories, that kind of thing. In Bayonne, on the other hand, nobody ever moved out--the city is all two-and-three-family homes filled with generation after generation. Thus the loud leering guys in front of the Sicilian-American Social Club turn into the wiggers doing skateboard stunts off the stairs of St. Henry's.

Aesthetically, then, it's a mess. On the main drags you have some fine old brick homes, some fancy places with cupolas, some truly stunning churches and public buildings. On the other hand, the homes are a horror. They're scrunched together like somebody was trying to sneak them into a drive-in, and none of the styles match--big barny jobs right next to broad, flat-roofed shoeboxes; wood shingles next to vinyl siding, which looks like Wrigley gum stacked the long way.

The infrastructure isn't here either. Yuppies may drive out the soda shops and candy-cane barbers, but there are nights where I'd give my big toe for a Barnes & Noble or Tower Records or fruity health-food store. The windows on the main shopping drag are mostly soaped; those that aren't are full of boxes of Christmas ornaments or ratty underwear or Maximum Testosterol. We've got Robert's Coffee Shop, whose proprietor my astonishing wife insists has a crush on me, and the Magic Fountain ice cream stand, but it ain't much. I found a Greg Bear book in the Bayonne Book Trader once, but I still haven't read it.

I never "got" Bayonne, even though my astonishing wife has spent over a decade here, until a visiting friend said, "It's like an Edward Hopper painting!" From that perspective, I can almost parse it. Helping even more: This Web site devoted to the city. It's incongruously high-tech, so much so that I can't swipe the best photos, but there's an astonishing section of old, scanned postcards from the Teens to the Thirties. The place where I bought my bookcases used to be the Bayonne Democratic Club! (Take that, tax-and-spend-o-crats!) Among them are shots just footsteps--footsteps!--from my current home. We used to have a trolley, and folks in hats, and a yacht club someplace. My good buddy John informs me there was also a Bayonne Women's Pistol Club at one point, but I assume they've massacred each other by now.

Still, mixed feelings. Bayonne is very much like Queens, where I grew up (at least in the 1970s): blue collar, second- or third-generation immigrant ethnic population, small, appalling homes. Queens has turned into more of a melting pot over the years, but Bayonne remains Bayonne. There are more black and Spanish families, clustered up near the Jersey City line and down in public housing at the tip of the island; some Asian folks; some distressed-looking synagogues. But the overall demographic feels like it hasn't changed since the Forties. Interesting, hard to figure, hard to love but apparently hard to leave.

Anyhow, it's late and I miss my astonishing wife. Maybe another walk tomorrow. Until then, waiting for a signpost. G'night to Dr. Percy, wherever you are.

@ 9:19:00 PM, ,

Curious...

Nothing to say, but a venue to say it. Will have to figure a way out of this somehow.

@ 4:46:00 PM, ,

Bored Yet?

I almost am. I wish I had a strong opinion on something to put up here.

@ 4:03:00 PM, ,

I Am Curious (Jellyfish)

This blog template is horrible, but with any luck I'll fumfker around and find some code to make it look better. Stick with it! The content will be at least as colorful and glaring as the backdrop.

@ 3:32:00 PM, ,

A Bad Idea, Revisited

Explanations in order. I started this site about three years ago as a way to publish stories, essays, reviews and other writing that I thought would be useful and interesting and didn't have a home anywhere else. I found that I didn't have anything useful or interesting enough to put up here, and some of my stuff found a home elsewhere. But I still like to run off at the mouth, so here's another crack at Wrong Turn Journal, as an actual journal this time. Read if you like. Welcome!

@ 3:11:00 PM, ,

The Gathering Storm

A preliminary post. How terrifying. More to come later.

@ 3:01:00 PM, ,