Air

I will not mock you, I will not trick you, I will not poison you, but I will serve you the best meal I can prepare for the life of me. I know what I know only for you to savor it.

Still looking for the meaning of life? Here it is!

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Still looking to resolve the financial crisis? We'll tell you what:
Shut down the markets for a couple of weeks and let everybody clear their heads. If a whole country (be it Belgium) could function impeccably for months without a government, surely the world will not end if we stop trading air for a while - and the talking heads stop airing their ignorance like a trophy.

We, for two, sold everything in time, and spent it all too. And we bought the best there is!

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Weekend, friends. Airing time. Time for music, time for Rainbows and Hope. Thanks to our coffee- and chocolate-loving friends, Bimmy, Obi-Sven, Frank, who took the time to respond to last week's quiz. It's not a school, so responding is enough. The correct answers have been posted, see comments!

Oh Nay! (The Passion Continued)

So that business took a while.

But here we are again, talking about MOVIES!!!!

Yeah, let’s say it once more lest we forget: Will Ferrell is a genius and we can’t imagine the world without him. Mr Burgundy, you have a MASSIVE e&*%#)n. A single plop!

Now, any idea as to what makes a good biographical movie? How about what makes ANY movie good: story, script, actors, direction… Or at least great images and music - look at Frida! What, that’s all? That’s why we haven’t written for so long? No, of course not! Read on!

If you want to make a biographical movie about somebody and are looking for a fool-proof recipe to avoid the documentary without voice-over effect, here’s an idea: let the story be told, felt, judged, by the right observer! That would be the secretary (Hitler), the doctor (Idi Amin), the secret rival (Salieri), what have you...

… the young lover who survived (Jackson Pollock), the admirer and husband’s lover who too killed herself (Sylvia Plath). We aren’t in the movie business, but we are in the FREE!! advice business. Yes, we urge you people to let the lover and the husband’s lover tell the story of Pollock and Plath – respectively. They already sound like excellent movies.

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And we’ve been sort of punished for our ramblings. As we were saying last week, we had ordered a Pollock reproduction for on the wall, an unmatched jungle … etc. and were expecting it to be delivered on Thursday by UPS. Thursday we decided to check the tracking number of the delivery. Turns out the package had been delivered already since days! The online receipt said: “Signed by: NAY”. Dysxelic though/as we are, we took that to mean that NOBODY had signed upon delivery and that the UPS had some nerve to hide their incompetence behind archaic expressions.

To cut a long story short, we now know that we have a neighbor called Nay. It was hard to trace his apartment, since it’s not on his name, but on the name of his sect. He tried to convert us, but we already have our sect.

As you know, we belong to an unholy disorder, we call ourselves Our Lady of Perpetual Astonishment.

Kind Mr Nay gave us our Pollock, despite our inconvertibility. But our new Pollock doesn’t fit in the living room, it’s too much. Ain’t that a bugger? No, it’s great! We needed something for above the drawer chest in the bedroom and this turns out to be perfect!

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And now, some brand new lyrics, from DIG!! LAZARUS, DIG!! that Roufa claims were stolen from him, and Mimi confirms that they sound familiar to her:

One day I’ll buy a factory & I’ll assemble y/

On a production line

I’d build a million of y/ baby
& every single one of them will be mine

I will fill the house w/ y/ stack y/ up

In every room/ we’ll have a real good time

Lie down here & be my girl.

The Good, the Evil, and the all-you-can-eat buffet

It is an endless story, apparently. It's a snake going after its own tail, a coin that you can go on and flip forever. So many people have been busting their brains and their research grants over it. Is being and doing good hereditary? Are we conditioned to it? Not all abused children grow up to rape somebody, right? Has Goodness evolved through natural selection? Do we have a choice? Free will? Is there a point in being or doing “Good”?

Is there Heaven and Hell?

Is there Heaven or Hell?

And so on.

Remarkably, there are myriads of people out there, lacking stories to tell, not to mention research grants or brains, or a pulpit for that matter, who are also fiddling with such questions. The Internet, for one, is littered with their agonizing banalities. We got lectured the other day by such an otherwise well-meaning fellow. He gave us the parameters. The genes and the environment. Religion. The parents. The lack thereof. One thing was clear, there is plenty of theory around, for fellows with time in their hands and no real problems.

What's a poor blogger to do?

Start with a disclaimer. Not everything is supposed to make sense. If you can't take it from us, take it from Wittgenstein.

Then an observation, in the form of a rhetorical question: could there be anybody out there, anybody who can read this at least, who has never heard of all this? The concept of Good and Evil? If you are not interested in all this, you are in all likelihood not interested in all this.

Then forget about research and brains. We have feelings too, you know.

And then cry for help, obviously! Get a couple of specialists! Their words are out there for grabs! That's what they are for!

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For the brain in agony, we have, quite predictably, some Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, from “As I sat sadly by her side”:

When will you ever learn?
[...]God does not care for your benevolence
Anymore than he cares for the lack of it in others
Nor does he care for you to sit
At windows in judgment of the world He created
While sorrows pile up around you
Ugly, useless and over-inflated

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For the spiritually troubled, we turn to the recent movie of Craig Brewer, Black Snake Moan. The good reverent R.L. is counseling the troubled nymphomaniac Rae, who has hit a tragic low after her dearly loved boyfriend Ronnie went away to join the army. There is something about heaven and redemption she does not understand. In fact, she finds it “fucking stupid”:

RAE:You can't hurt people... and then just say, I'm sorry, and then everything just gets washed away. Why would heaven want people like that. People who... do what they want and then... switch.

R.L.:I'm gonna tell you somethin', and it's just gonna be between you and me.
I think folks carry on about heaven too much. Like it's some all-you-can-eat buffet up in the clouds. And folks just gonna do as they're told so they can eat what they want behind some pearly gates. I can go to Shoney's for that.

(R.L.):There's sin in my heart. There's evil in this world. But when I got no one... I talk to God. I ask for strength. I ask for forgiveness. Not for peace at the end of my days when there's no more life to live and no more good to do, but today. Right now.

(R.L.):What's your heaven? What gives you peace?

RAE:(struggling to speak through her tears): Ronnie.

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For the struggling humanist, we have the confetti of Kurt Vonnegut illustrating this post.

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We could go on forever. Because this is hot. It has been hot forever. Good and Evil, Love and Hate, Life and Death. As forever-hot issues go, we shall always keep in mind the following exchange between Blackadder and Lord Percy:

Percy: I intend to discover, this very afternoon, the secret of alchemy. The hidden art of turning base things into… gold.
Blackadder: I see. And the fact that this secret has eluded the most intelligent people since the dawn of time doesn't dampen your spirits?

Thank you for the Music

And for the coffee. And for the comedy. And for the beauty. And for hot showers. And for dijon. And for dogs. And for the Mediterranean. And for idiosyncratic arrangements of 26 phonetic symbols and ten Arabic numbers in horizontal lines on a page! Thank you for the roses.

In the spirit of the days – and since we're no artists, just two silly people -- let us make some suggestions for further reading:

For the beat and the bitter and the disgusted persons, William S. Burroughs' “A Thanksgiving Prayer”, as in:

Thanks for the Prohibition and the war against drugs.
Thanks for a country where nobody's allowed to mind their own business.

For the reborn, Alanis Morissette's "Thank U", as in:

the moment I let go of it
was the moment I got more than I could handle
thank you nothingness
thank you clarity
thank you thank you silence

For the irreparably thankless, some Johnny Cash - no, it's Egbert Austin Williams, actually: "Nobody", as in:

When Wintertime comes
With its snow and sleet
And me with hunger
And cold feet
Who says "Here's two bits, go and eat"?
Nobody

For the battered traveler of life, the bipolar, or the bad hangover, a mellow "New Morning" by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds seems fitting, as in:

Thank you for giving
this bright new morning
so steeped seemed the evening
in darkness and blood
there will be no sadness no sorrow
there'll be no road too narrow
there'll be a new day
and it's today
for us

Google them, YouTube them, what are you waiting for!

Great Blunders And Golden Bananas

We are still alive indeed, and we sincerely hope the same for you, dear readers.

More than three weeks on line and we realize that we have given only one Golden Banana through this blog, and that was in this post. We had great fun writing that! Since then, we have watched Sarko's awkward attempts to pat Bush on the back in front of the cameras – like Bush had done to him a couple of times (making him look like a shy and rather touchy self-conscious débutante, the height difference working against him) – and his love declarations to the US made on behalf of the French people. And he still has to push his reforms at home. We are really worried about his welfare. We shall spare him the Golden Banana. We will even give him a tip for free: Talk to Merkel instead! The American Century was Last Century!

We almost had another perfect Golden Banana candidate. We were watching the DVD of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, The road to God knows where (by Uli M. Schueppel). Touring America in black and white, with a really useless manager. That was before the Kylie Minogue duet. So Nick Cave is in LA and he's waiting to be interviewed for LA Weekly. What a disaster! This indie-llectual airhead enters, the lights are on but you're not home. Tries to make small talk. She even declares she has “a list of exciting questions” for him. We feel embarrassed in her place, but we don't blame her, she doesn't know better. And then the interview begins. Here is an excerpt:

Journalist (staring at her notes): Seems like there's interest in... I guess inspirational qualities... this kinda like... southern white trash kinda guy that goes... that kind of image of that kinda guy that so many songs are written about... seems like you have that kinda... sometimes that vein kinda comes up in different songs... some particular... just one of the things that you find interesting or...

NC: Well, yeah, I guess I do find that interesting.

Here she is, having the chance to interview the greatest poet anyone she ever knew will ever shake hands with, and this is what she comes up with. Again, this is a tragedy, not just a blunder. Sad. No Golden Banana.

Do you homework, do your homework, do your homework. That's what we say.

The next interview on the DVD looks more professional and we get to hear Nick's voice for a change:

NC: ... I'm not really comfortable with that sort of labeling, actually. I think these songs are written with a fair amount of disgust for things, yeah.

Journalist: Why's that?

NC: Because I'm a pretty disgusted person, really.

In short, we will sit on our Golden Bananas for now, no pun intended. And remember: If you too are a disgusted person, don't suppress it or feel guilty about it. It's healthy, harmless and can produce great art.

Happy Weekend!

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The contest is still going on, see previous post and comment therein. Tip: Start by trying to guess right Nick Cave's contribution.