Jul 31 2006
One Sentence Movie Reviews: "Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man" (2005)
Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man (2005): "What I said."
Kevin's Mailing List
Where, When, How Much, What Flavor.
Kevin's Mailing List
Where, When, How Much, What Flavor.
Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man (2005): "What I said."
Visions of Light (1992): "Whenever you feel that movies have nothing left to teach you, see this one."
When in San Francisco, the staff of Kevin Smokler.com highly recommends a trip to see Love, Janis at the Marines Memorial Theatre. Love Janis is a condensed autobiography of the life of Janis Joplin told in a bifurcation of letters she wrote home from San Francisco to her family in Port Arthur Texas and her songs. One actress does the singing, the other the acting. The show uses this duality to probe the difficulty Joplin had with reconciling her private self, (a lonely, proud, self-concious woman from a tiny Texas town) with the superstar she became while still in her early 20s, a conflict, the show whispered, that ultimately killed her.
While this commentator felt lonely and self-concious about his own age while sitting in a room of folk who experienced the 60s instead of hearing about in on classic rock radio, his intrepid companion reminded him that, to most of the audience, Joplin was a lasting memory of their youth. Just as he wouldn't want the audience peeing all over The Brat Pack and The Safety Dance, so should he not begrudge them their nostalgia. As she often does, the intrepid companion spoke wise.
The musicial itself is powerful, sweet and a rockin' good time. Recommended as a fine evening out whether Joplin is memory or history.
Love Janis is playing now at the Marines Memorial Theatre in Union Square in San Francisco.
A short list of my current projects. Also known as the remind-myself-I-have-a-job-even-though-I-work-in-jammies-and-eat-cereal-for-dinner-list.
1. Book proposal continues apace. Got some nice feedback from my agent this week.
2. An article for Fast Company which is turning out to be quite fun.
3. Book reviews for the LA Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. Much reading to be done on the plane out to Lollapalooza this week.
4. Piece for Dailysonic that will have to wait for my return home from Chicago.
5. Consulting for Mental Floss, The Idea Festival and a few private clients.
6. Going to a prom.
I have no good reason why but I love this version of The Safety Dance. Maybe because only one of them knows the lyrics.
"All great truths begin as blasphemies." --George Bernard Shaw (via The Writer's Almanac).
I did this commentary for KQED's Perspectives on the closing of several Bay Area independent bookstores. I think I sound like I have a head cold.
Anybody had these problems?
1. Mac Powerbook G4 (OS 10.4.7) that will not play sound out of its speakers and crashes any time it tries to download a windows media file
2. iMac G5. Also will not play sound when external speakers are plugged in.
Help a brutha out?
An interview with me on Thoughtcast (podcast about ideas and academics) that I gave last summer during my book tour has been posted. I haven't listened yet. How do I sound?
Dorothy Parker once remarked that Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald "looked as though they had just stepped out of the sun." (via The Writer's Almanac).
Reel Paradise (2005): "Is there anything more intoxicating for a movie lover than a movie about a movie lover visiting the ends of the earth to show free movies?"
"Fiction is the lie we use to tell the truth in order to learn from the world" --Dorothy Allison
Update: "Amanda" is a sham (via Susan Mernit).
Colors (1988): "Perhaps our favorite movies from 11th grade should stay there."
When I speak at writer's conferences, the most common question I get (besides "how do you get published/get an agent/get to be the person speaking at this writer's conference") is "how did you know you wanted to be a writer?"
A hard one. It's a little bit like asking "How did you know she was the one?" The simple, unhelpful answer is "I just knew." I don't get hired to be unhelpful so I usually answer with some long ramble of "Well I was working in Hollywood, then in museums and well, spend a lot of time in bookstores and eh, did I ever tell you about the 900th time I read Stuart Little?"
The real answer is this "I couldn't imagine doing anything else. Everytime I tried to come up with a different job, my excuse was the same. 'But then I wouldn't get to write.'"
We write because we must, because not doing it is like throwing a tarp over the sun. Until I heard this quote from Iris Murdoch on The Writer's Almanac, I didn't have the words to explain it. And now I do.
"Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck."
I'm commiting this to memory. And repeating it a ton.
An infrequent update of my various projects.
So I'm driving to the gym today and get stuck behind a powder blue Prius done up in full wedding regalia: Flowers, streamers, "Just Married" in shaving cream. So why is this a big bummer?
The car was wheels up on a truck, getting towed. What a way to begin a life together.
I've got a million things going on and really trying to concentrate on the proposal for book #2. Hopefully I'll have something for your blogging belly tomorrow.
I heard this quote today which should remind all writers why we do what we do and that we belong to something much larger than us and our work...
"All I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world." -E.B. White
(via The Writer's Almanac)
Avuncular: adj "indulgently kind"
Even Franklin's avuncular personality was tested when his nephew Oswald placed his uncle's Febrege Egg collection in the microwave to 'warm it up."
Earlier this week, the good people at Beach Blanket Babylon asked a bunch of Bay Area bloggers to come see the show as their guests. BBB publicist Charly Zukow had read about my exploits for the San Francisco International Film Festival and asked me if I might coordinate a similar effort for Beach Blanket. I agreed.
BBB is the longest running musicial revue in the world. Begun one early summer as a variety show in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco, it was supposed to run six weeks. That was 32 years ago. Beach Blanket has filled Club Fugazi on Green Street (renamed Beach Blanket Babylon Blvd.) Wednesday through Sunday since 1974.
What is it? Basically a giant stew of old rock n' roll songs, pop culture references, bad puns, playground innuendo and giant hats. Asking if it's "good" misses the point. Corny, exaggerated,and loveable, Beach Blanket is simply too content being what it is to criticize. Or dislike. Rationally thinking it through is like trying to explain the appeal of the wind. It's no longer in question. It's a force of nature.
BBB is produced by Jo Schuman Silver, the handpicked successor to creator Steve Silver, who died in 1995. Ms. Silver greeted us bloggers with her staff and crew, many of whom have been with the show 20 years or more. Her cast, after a long day of rehearsal and performance answered our questions, posed for pictures and welcomed this little invasion of citizen media ("The bloggers are coming!") with warmth and kindness.
Ms Silver: Oy, what an angel. Charly had said to me that there are few San Franciscans as nice as Jo which is where my nasty old skepticism creeped in. The women has success the size of an ocean, knows everyone in town and has her work given standing ovations 5 nights a week. How could it not go to her head?
It hasn't. Jo Schuman Silver is as sweet, as generous and as real as they come. She welcomed us all like family into her living room, eager to learn what we were all about, delighted to talk about the show, its history and how creator Steve Silver still inspires them all.
I drove home that night, through the quiet streets of my adopted home. Steve Silver had found a little spot here for the uncomplicated pursuit of zaniness and making people happy. Friends and loved ones carried on his vision both with respect and an eagerness to always stay current and learn. Us bloggers are part of a later era in this city's history, one of risk and self-expression fueled by technology and change. Perhaps before tonight I had thought we were part of two different San Franciscans, the freak-filled 60s and the microchipped 90s and onward. Being welcomed into the home of Beach Blanket Babylon made me feel like we were same city, where hard and fun were not mutually exclusive, where joy and silliness were taken seriously and where the williness to learn and grow from one other, instead of blindly defend our own version this "home on the hill" make San Francisco great.
Herb Caen once said "San Francisco isn't like it used to be and it never was." How right he was. This city, like myth, spreads, evolves, dies and is reborn. Its wonder is that even the constants--the bridges, the cable cars and yes, Beach Blanket Bablyon--both endure and live with us everyday. Under the eaves of their long history, there is room for each of us, room to be part of that history instead of swallowed by it.
I feel like I made a friend in Ms. Silver and her show tonight. I hope to see them all very soon. And though it may seem hoary to say, I thank Beach Blanket Babylon for reminding me, in the words of Tony Bennett why I live here.
"My love waits there in San Francisco
Above the blue and windy sea
When I come home to you, San Francisco
Your golden sun will shine for me"
Devil in a Blue Dress (1995): "Why is historical Los Angeles more interesting to the people making movies about it instead of the people living there?"
So we've been here before but...
Total Flag Count: 234.
Last Flag: On top of the post office, San Pablo, CA.
The Closing Song: (mp3)
"Washington's Day" by The Hooters
"Did you think I could ever forget
The night by the Arlington Flame?
In the silence I heard it
Through streets so deserted
You whispered and called me by name.
Did you think I could ever forget
That powerful look in your eye?
Where Lincoln stood strong there
You held me so long there that night
On the fourth of July."
Happy birthday, America. I love you even when you disappoint the hell out of me.
Good night.
Below is the last stanza of Francis Scott Key's poem "The Star Spangled Banner." It seems to be both celebrating war and pleading for peace. What an American sentiment that is and how appropriate for where we are now as a nation.
Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
(via The Writer's Almanac).
"No fist is big enough to hide the sky"
--African Proverb
What does this phrase mean to you? (via On the Media)
The Devil Wears Prada (2006): "Some people are just assholes and it's best not to reward them for it."
Because I'm now completely addicted to Consumating, an ostensible dating site but really an excuse out-clever yourself about 63 times a day. Ben Brown invented the thing like two years ago and sold it to CNET. I'd be jealous if I hadn't basically injected it into my veins already.
This just in: Stealing in the name of art is still stealing. (via Cinema Treasures).
Loquacity: adj. Very talkative.
From the Latin "loqux" which means "to speak"
Used in a sentence:
"Jerome's lack of loquacity at last night's dinner party had his date mistaking him for the china hutch."
A Chorus Line (1985): "One' spectacular closing number preceded by 90 minutes of unconnected song does not a movie make."
Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times edited by Kevin Smokler
