ode to one good thing happening

>AHEM<
......

Shooting at the walls of heartache,
Bang, bang!
I am the Warrior!
A Golden State Warrior!
And heart to heart you'll win....
....if you survive......

Baron Davis also went to UCLA, my alma mater, that year WE WON IT ALL.
Also, I don't like that Dirk Nowitzki fellow. He has a macabre Germanic stare.

Just a few thoughts....

....on things that have not changed at all in the past few weeks.

- Creative writing is a wonderful, therapeutic, freeing thing.
- Mental health care in this country is really really bad. Thank you Ronald Reagan, et al.
- Mental health care, and for that matter all health care in this country, is so bad that guns shouldn't be sold at all. Why do we have a system for killing that is so much more effective, organized and user-friendly than our system for healing?
- Our educational system also has a few holes.
- Some terrible shit is going on all around. It is so sad, so many things lost.
- Dr. Phil does not know anything.
- We are in the middle of a pointless, revengeful war that only profits the already-rich and powerful, and kills everybody else.

Julie loves her Japanese dancers

Just in case anyone was worried that she might be selling out, it does appear that there will be people painted like
Butoh dancers in Julie Taymor's upcoming Beatles movie. Because that's the one thing that Cirque du Soleil forgot to include in their show. Still, this movie looks kind of awesome. I hope the Blue Meanies are in it.

Spider-Man: The Musical

Apparently there's going to be a Spider Man musical. Directed by Julie Taymor, with music by U2.

As a big geek in the areas of theater, comic books, and 80's rock, I don't even know how to feel about this. In theory, it should be awesome. Lucky me, I already have a copy of the script:

SPIDER-MAN: RATTLE & THWIP
***DO NOT DISTRIBUTE***

SCENE 1
Spider-Man hangs upside-down over a city skyline comprised of gargoyle shadow puppets and people in Noh masks.

SPIDER-MAN: I'm WIIIIIDE AWAAAKE. I'm WIIIIIIDE AWAAAAAKE. I'm not SLEEPING.

Bono enters, wearing a yellow and green jumpsuit. He portrays the Fly, one of Spider-Man's all-time lamest foes.

THE FLY: A man will rise! / A man will fall! / From the sheer face of evil villainry! / Like a fly on the wall!

Spidey and the Fly fight using capoeira. Spidey dispatches the Fly quickly. Harry Osborn / The Hobgoblin enters. Spidey spins a web, ensnaring him. Mary Jane Watson enters in traditional Chinese Opera costume. Both Spidey and Harry moon over her.

HARRY OSBORN: My hands are webbed / My body bruised, she's got me with / Nothing to win, and nothing left to lose....

Gwen Stacy enters, wearing traditional African head-dress.

SPIDER-MAN: I have run / I have crawled
I have scaled these city walls with my amazing ability to cling to vertical surfaces
Theeeeese vertical surfaces / Only to be with you....

Arachne, a mythological reference that has been cutely added to this production, enters:

ARACHNE: What you don't have you don't need it now
What you don't know you can sense it somehow with your weird tingly spider-sense power....

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: I know everything! EVERYTHING! It's a beautiful day!

HARRY / HOBGOBLIN: You've got to get yourself together... Nnrgggh....now you got stuck in a giant web created by a mutated human gland and you can't get out of it!

Doc Ock enters.

DOCTOR OCTOPUS: On your knees, boy!

Spider-Man unmasks so as to protect his loved ones. Peter Parker has a reflective moment:

PETER PARKER: So J. Jonah Jameson comes up to me
His face red like a rose on a thorn bush
Like all the colours of a royal flush
And he's peeling off those dollar bills
Slapping them down
One hundred, two hundred!
And I can see those fighter planes....

Aunt May enters and offers him a bowl of tapioca.

PETER PARKER: A spider-boy tries hard to be a spider-man / His aunt takes him by his hand
If he stops to think he starts to cry / Oh why?

AUNT MAY: If you web-swing away, web-swing away, web-swing away, web-swing away.....I will follow!

Peter puts the mask back on so as to escape his pestering loved ones.

SPIDER-MAN: You got to cry without weeping
Talk without speaking
Fight evil clones of yourself without raising your voice
You know I took the radiation
From the bite of a radioactive spider
Then I wall-crawled....out of here....

HARRY OSBORN / HOBGOBLIN: THE EDGE!

MARY JANE: I say....I want.... / diamonds on a ring of gold / your origin story to remain untold / a pimped-out black Lexus / and not to be killed by some crazy lizard-looking freak....

SPIDER-MAN: ....when all I want is YOU-HOOOOOO! All I want is YOU-OOOOOH!

The Venom / Black Alien Suit Symbiote Thing enters.

VENOM / SYMBIOTE: One life / But we're not the same / We get to carry each other, carry each other!

Spider-Man fights Venom, and Hobgoblin, and Doctor Octopus, and African poverty. Gwen Stacy paints herself blue and dances around.

VILLAINS: Spider-Man throws me just like a rubber ball / Oh oh oh, the Spider-Man!
He won't catch me or break my fall / Oh oh oh, the Spider-Man!

SPIDER-MAN: One man bombarded by cosmic rays
One man is Iron Fist
One man changed by a Gamma Bomb
One man betrayed with a kiss

BONO: For Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Human Torch and the Thing....sing!

ALL: In the naaaaame! Of Love! What more! In the name of Love!!!!!

SPIDER-MAN: Definitely could use a mouth-hole for the singing. Note to self: Mouth-hole.

CURTAIN.

doppelganger?

Charles, a dayshift dealer, says that this guy sounds like me.

I kind of agree. Makes me wish I had a cool motorcycle. And lived in Taiwan.

2007: First Quarter

Days passing , a long time,
a day wasted, waiting for
what could probably happen,
a safe distance to close
by itself, by yourself, besides you
there's nothing else to express.

What I say you know already
so slow or so what
fear of too quickly
something happening and if then
a new ruthless dream to dream about.

Can I wait this out
hypnotize myself with
a candle and snap
awake when the
feeling of flame subsides?

a time to speak out

I fear the Anna Nicole Smith crisis will tear this country apart. Through the Anna Nicole Smith crisis, my eyes have opened to a vast conspiracy of greed and corruption. Fox News, CNN, Access Hollywood all deserve equal credit for uncovering this network of lies. Only now are the true villains behind the suffering, like the doctor who prescribed her those drugs, being investigated for their evil-doings. I can't believe that so many people feel the need to terrorize this poor blonde woman's struggle for truth. I hope that we as a people can summon the strength to survive this crisis. But I don't know, it's looking pretty bad.

assorted self-promotional updates:

- This site is now also dommah.com.
- I have a couple poems in the latest issue of Beeswax magazine. Instead of pestering me to drive up to your house and try to slip them under your doorway late at night, you might try buying a copy. Lots of good lit and art in there.
- "Iphigenia" is nominated in several categories for the LA Weekly Theater Awards including the stuff I worked on (the multimedia installations, that is).
- Our movie "Target Audience 9.1" is now pretty much done. All rights are available, should you or someone you know wish to distribute it, mass-produce DVDs of it, sell the remake rights to Dreamworks, or whathaveyou. Here's a preliminary trailer.
- I recently finished a screenplay which contains not even one giant robot or alien. For me, it's an achievement.

Cut the Chatter, Red Two _or_ Communication Etiquettes

(CONT) I have this love/hate relationship with text messages, as I did with email when it first came out. But complaining that new forms of communication are somehow making things "worse" is such an Old-Fogey, Luddite thing to say. It's almost as bad as using the word, "Luddite." The new telecom is not in itself bad, it's merely a matter of how it's applied. Actually, with all the options, it can make traditional forms of communication more efficient and rewarding. If I were the Minister of All Communication on Earth, I would propose the following guidelines.

TEXT MESSAGES: Should be used when you are in a loud crowded environment (as I usually am) which will make attempts to talk on the phone fruitless. Can be used when you have a bad phone connection (as I usually do, you Cingular arseholes) for same reason. Absolutely should be used for little essential communications like (Are you free on such n such a date) or (What's the address), etc....where a proper conversation is not really necessary but some key bit of information has to get across. Hence, an ideal tool for the film production lifestyle, in which one is always too busy to speak or hear, but one always needs the address or the call time for something, preferably already written down within your phone. ALSO: you should be at least 100 yards away from the person.

CELL PHONE TALKING: This is the tricky one. I really believe that cell phones have destroyed any joy that was once found in phone conversations. Gone is the intimacy of knowing that both parties are in their homes, maybe curled up in bed, in a dark corner, talking out into to the ether. Now you never know if the person's driving, eating, looking for a hammer, out with their boyfriend/family, or whatnot. Cell phone talking usually feels like an interruption of your life, which it usually is; hence cell phone conversations have that quality where someone sounds like they're trying to get off the phone quickly, in order to Resume Their Day or Not Use Up Their Minutes. Or simply because it's too much work to hear the other person through the squawking and garbling that the Cingular arseholes pass off as "connection."
.....That said, cell phone talking is good for the convos that are a little more involved, but not Too involved. Since you are always struggling to hear the other person and/or at risk of losing them altogether, the practical thing is to get to the point very succinctly. I call people when I have a question and would like an answer that contains detail and nuance, two elements totally lacking from text messages. However, out of necessity, the convo becomes terse, efficient; it makes you realize how much blah-blah-blah you usually do when you're ramping up to say something.
....ALSO: Cell talk is great for finding out where people are. Unless you're in a club or a casino, in which case you should text.
....And that's pretty much all cell phones are good for, talking-wise. Most of my cell phone convos are shorter than the ringtone, or should be.

EMAIL: Email used to be the great passive-agressive way of contacting people without really contacting them, but now there are text messages for that. And, in light of the miserable quality of cells (above), email has been elevated to that medium in which you can actually express yourself, albeit one-way-only. Emails can be works of art involving pictures, music, the subtle poetry of language. However: since people do not read more than one sentence of any email that they did not themselves write, email will eventually be phased out as a form of communication, to be replaced with its more popular and exhibitionistic cousin, the Myspace Comment.
....Email used to be a good way to Get Things Done, but unfortunately the combination of the Spam Kings and the Spam Filters have sent that the way of the dodo.

LAND-LINE TALKING: This used to be a great thing (above, again) and now, well. A whole generation will never know the scandalous thrill of talking til late at night on the house phone, the other person's voice clear as Ma Bell, both of you a little afraid that the parents might pick up at any moment to check on you.

FACE-TO-FACE CONVERSATION: This is the one mode that has improved, I believe. With all the liabilties of the other methods, it seems there is a tacit understanding that personal contact is a richer experience, largely (but not solely) because there's always the underlying chance that you can jump the other person's bones. Because we now have the other methods to take care of the strictly practical ticky-tacky stuff, verbal interchange is now even riper for potential, because, whether the conversants realize it or not, it is something they have been missing for a long time.
....Still the preferred vehicle for: telling secrets, conducting important business, sizing up the other person, getting what you want, making friends, being decent.

MAIL: Should be eliminated, or at least limited to the functions of a) communicating from a tropical paradise or b) sending money.