Stranger than Fiction: True Stories

Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories by Chuck Palahniuk

rating: 4 of 5 stars

[Page 220:] ...brinksmanship, the tendency to leave things until the last moment, to imbue them with more drama and stress and appear the hero by racing the clock.

"Where I was born," Georgia O'Keefe used to say, "and where and how I have lived is unimportant."

She said, "It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of any interest."

[Pages 156-157:] People who come to interview (Marilyn) Manson, his publicist asks that they not publish the fact that he stands whenever a woman enters or leaves the room. After his father was disabled with a back injury, Manson bought his parents a home in California and supports them. When checking into hotels, he uses the name "Patrick Bateman" the serial-killing character from Bret Ellis's novel American Psycho.

[Page 56:] As a white man, you can live your whole life never not fitting in. You never walk into a jewelry store that sees only your black skin. You never walk into a bar that sees only your boobs. To be Whitie is to be wallpaper...

[Pages 31-32:] ...Heidegger pointed out how human beings tend to look at the world as a standing stock of material, ready for us to use. As inventory to be processed into something more valuable...he called this world of raw natural resources bestand. It seems inevitable that people without access to natural bestand, such as oil wells or diamond mines, that they'd turn to the only inventory they do have—their lives.

Snowflake

Make your own at Make A Flake.

I usually work in a direction until I know how to do it, then I stop at the time that I am bored or understand — I use those words interchangeably; another appetite has formed. A lot of people try to think up ideas. I’m not one. I’d rather accept the irresistible possibilities of what I can’t ignore. — Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008)

Snow Portland

Today was the first snowfall, at all elevations, in and around Portland. Nothing better than a warm fireplace, hot toddies, and the ambient sound of cars spinning their tires and crashing into stationary objects to remind one of first snowfall treasures.

Meteor Showers

The Germinid Meteor showers should be in full streak tonight.

I wanted to do something that had no purpose. It didn't have to fit with anything else that I was doing. Something without rules. — Robert Rauschenberg (discussing his multi-media work: 1/4 mile or 2 furlong piece).

Uniquely absorbing

Don't start playing the Demo of Auditorium unless you've got some time to waste.

Jeffery Lewis Video

Sometimes something is just so good, the only thing to do is tell others. Thanks, Bobby!

I think maybe chance works better in a situation like music because music exists over a period of time, and you don't maintain constantly; you can't refer back from one area to another area. — Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008)

wholw

digital rendering by veach st glines — 2008

They think it was a gesture, a protest against abstract expressionism ... or just a pure act of destruction—vandalism ... but, it was poetry. — Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008; discussing his 1953 work: Erased De Kooning Drawing)

The Sacred Book of the Werewolf

The Sacred Book of the Werewolf by Victor Pelevin

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars

The world works in a mysterious and incomprehensible fashion. Wishing to protect frogs from children's cruelty, adults tell children not to crush them because that will make it rain - and the result is that it rains all summer because the children crush frogs one after another. And sometimes it happens that you try with all your might to explain the truth to someone else, and suddenly you understand it yourself. (pg 316)

...the American film The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen...gathered together all the supermen of the nineteenth century. (There is)...nothing original about it. An economy based on brokerage gives rise to a culture that prefers to resell images and concepts created by others rather than creating new ones. (pgs 11-12)

...if someone says something memorable to us, we almost always repeat it in conversation with other people, regardless of whether what was said was stupid or clever...mind is simply a tennis racket you can use to keep bouncing the conversation from one subject to another for as long as you like. We give people back the ideas and opinions that we have borrowed from them - reflecting them from another angle, giving them a different spin, sending them into a vertical climb.

Let me remark modestly that my simulated thought almost always turns out better than the original... Who serves all these shots? One of the people?...

I'll have to wait until I have a conversation on this subject with some intelligent person. Then we'll see which way I drive the ball. That's the way I've been discovering the truth... (pgs 136-137)

Portland OR — Reasons (#4)

Non-walmartization

A dozen rational reasons to enjoy living in Portland, Oregon: Number four.

There are three Wal-Marts for 2.1 million residents of this city and its two dozen suburbs (the suburbs in Washington don't count because of reason number ten). There are some big-box stores (positioned near the Washington border, again see #10) and of course there are chain stores and chain restaurants and chain fast-food joints...my point is more about the gestalt of the consumer mindset (of which 'only 3 Wal-Marts' is merely the grabber).

The abundance and diversity of: green-grocers, vinyl record shops, cafe's, small businesses, independent stores, boutiques, art galleries, antique malls, vintage/retro-clothing stores, diners, used CD stores, non-franchise restaurants, et cetera — contrasted against the relative paucity of empty store fronts — indicates this consumer mindset is extremely vibrant. The nine-months-out-of-the-year, weekend-craft/art/food/music market is the flagship of this rare but fantastic mindset.

Every time I've moved, my work has changed radically. — Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008)

Review of the working copy: Public Enemies

Got invited to screen a big-budget film scheduled to be released next Spring. It was something I'd never done, so after IMDB'ing keywords on the invitation (1930's gangster film) and coming up with: Public Enemies, directed by Michael Mann, and starring more than a dozen well known actors and actresses (Johnny Depp is Dillinger, Christian Bale is Melvin Purvis), we hastily rsvp'd our acceptance of the invitation.

We arrive 1/2 hour before the time we were told to be there and stood in line for 90 minutes.

It took 30 more minutes to pack the 500+ of us into non-stadium theater seats that were uncomfortable in 1984.

Five more to explain the few things that were yet to be fixed in this working copy (the sound is not finished, some special effects are missing, the sky and colors are not 'punched up' yet, blah blah).

Two hours and fourty minutes later, I'm handed a sheet of paper with questions on it:

• What was the first thing you thought when the movie was over?
  Fuck, it's hot. I'm glad it's finally over, now all I have to do is get this stupid paper filled out.
• Did you know before watching this film that Dillinger was shot outside a theater in Chicago?
  Ahh, yeah, This is—like—the fifth movie to re-tread this same ground. But I'm sure there are some sixteen year old fans of Pirates of the Caribbean and The Dark Knight that will learn it next spring.
• At the beginning of the film did you know that Billy Crudup was J. Edgar Hoover?
  (This makes me think the director knew long before he began filming that Billy wasn't right for the role) I didn't know who he was until someone called him by name; why didn't you get Toby Jones?
• Rate the following list of actors and the roles they were playing; five is best, one is worst.
  Most got a three. Johnny was sadly, bad, and got a two (I think Robert Downey Jr. would have killed the role). Giovanni Rabisi (only in the film for ten minutes) got the only four.
• Would you recommend this film to your friends?
  Even if you chop an hour off of this huge turd, I doubt it.
• What did you think of the ending?
  Besides, "Yay it's finally here?' It was waaay muddled.
• What were the best things about the film?
  The settings and costumes were accurate and well staged, the shoot-outs and chase scenes were realistic, it hits all the "historically accurate" points that have already been hit before.
  
• What were the worst things?
  I saw two earring holes in Dillinger's left earlobe (make-up and continuity both get an F); Stephen Dorff, Leelee Sobieski, Emilie de Ravin, and Lili Taylor, were each in it for about two whole minutes (some didn't even have lines!)—what an amazing waste of talent. The script was awful-terrible: when placing words in people's mouths why not have them say interesting things?
  

Overall I know that Mr Mann is capable of some good films, like: The Insider, Heat, Manhunter, and Collateral. I also know he's directed some quasi-shite: Miami Vice, Ali and the Keep.

This may be enjoyed by younger viewers who have not seen Warren Oats' Dillinger (1973), or John Tirney's Dillinger (1945), because they adhere to the creed: "if it was made more than ten years ago it's not worth seeing," and they'll be satisfied with mediocre dialog and so-so acting.

There is little to no profanity (weirdly missing), not much blood (just a little), and no nudity in the film (the only sex scene is 15 seconds of Depp and Marion Cotillard, Dillinger's girlfriend, in bed clothed). This must have been intentional in order to get a PG13 rating; the target audience is high schoolers.

I will see it again in 2010, on DVD, because I'm interested to see how much polish that turd gets.

Michael Mann, Public Enemies, Film, Johnny Depp, Christian Bale