Dave J

Images

Updated! I decided having so many images hotlinked was a bad idea.

The Finalists:

Two hours ago I graduated from college. It feels really weird. I am watching Funny Ha Ha now, which is strangely comforting.

Snack pack

In the past week I have had the honor and joy of seeing/experiencing two things: Godard's complete Histoire(s) du Cinema uploaded on YouTube, which gives the whole project--already nearly impossible to completely translate--the grainy, crappy look of a fan-subbed bootleg, which I guess technically it was. Sometime I'll have to rewatch it with Jeff and he can explain all the French jokes. The second thing I experienced was Immemory by Chris Marker, because I had recently watched La Jetee and Sans Soleil, (freshly available on DVD) and remembered that as a person with a Mac I am one of the few people capable of enjoying the copy of Immemory we have at work.

What is Immemory? It's a trip through Marker's "memory," in that it is a interconnected series of pathways that explore facts, photographs, stories, etc. from his random thoughts that when observed on a whole scale should resemble some kind of pattern. MORE IMPORTANTLY IT IS A GIANT HYPERSTUDIO STACK.

YES. One of the geniuses of cinema has expressed himself with what we were forced to dick around with in middle school. I would love to compare Immemory to my masterpiece stacks about Jackson Pollack or the civil rights movement, but I got to admit Marker's got a better understanding of all those funky tricks like ghostwriters, hidden buttons etc. than I did.

This past weekend I also re-upped my Film Forum membership so that Monica and I might catch Melville's Le Doulos, which while not the best of his films by a long shot, certainly brings the woman-hating jokes with full gusto. At some point I am going to write a review for it on my new ILNT sub-space/portfolio wasteland.

Finally, yesterday Monica and I saw the new Harry Potter movie, which was amusing in that the bad guys all seemed to come straight out of the orgy in Eyes Wide Shut. If you don't know the costume I refer to, I'm sure "Eyes Wide Shut orgy scene" in Google Images will help you just fine. It was pretty good for a movie done by a dude who only did TV miniseries' previously, and reminded me how dark the series can get. Also I think the people of the world need to come together and firmly decide on a FAIR practice for seat saving at movie theaters. 'Cause honestly, one dude holding down a whole row for non-existent friends is retarded.

My thoughts are that either you get to save one seat for every one person of your party already in attendance, OR you can save however many seats you think you are capable of fighting for (i.e. if you are big and scary you can probably get away with it). But it seems like a social custom that is tolerated because everyone does it, and yet univerally reviled--we need some guidelines!

Now off to Creative Writing class, where we will workshop my amusing story of a man who discovers he has a superpower: abnormally sticky skin.

Bullshit

Is there anyone else here in this virtual building that doesn't think our leader is a murderous, petty, corporate-whoring thug at this point? (I mean leader in the larger sense; I gots no beef with Jeff.)

If so... Oh? What's this? Scooter Libby gets his sentence miraculously commuted by the President only a week before he was set to start an 18 month jail sentence for obstruction of justice, outright lying and probably a million things we don't know about, being that he is (or was) the right-hand man to the only man in the White House scarier than Bush? What a surprise. Oh, and the commutation can't be disputed by any court, attorney or anybody else in the country? Well that's just fucking great. I hope if I ever help a group of partisan thugs pull all sorts of dirty tricks to stay in absolute power I get a similar handjob. Hell, he'll probably get a full pardon in 2008 on his boss' way out the door.

Also, at some point we can have fun looking back and tallying up all the things that went wrong. It's a common thing you hear at the Union Square protests or on the internet amongst certain message board/listserv communities that we are living under the worst President in American history. I think the case at this point is no longer some idle 'radical' remark; I think the point can certainly be made.

Goddamn it Bush, now look what you made me do. You made me go all crazy sounding when I've always tried to keep my cards close. I didn't want to be one of "those liberals," although I must mention that for all its rhetorical issues, Michael Moore has hit another one out of the park with Sicko.

Yeah, that's all.

Oh.

P.S. There is little doubt Under Siege is the greatest Steven Segal film ever. Far above Out For a Kill or even Half Past Dead. He's a cook---COOKING UP TROUBLE! ... TROUBLE FOR THE BAD GUYS!