Marty Barrett: The Flight of the Mavervorl: July 2006

--7.28.2006--

Abominations

Hey gang! I have found this great website detailing in newsbits Man's offenses against God. Check it out!

Abominations

All this talk about God's wrath has made things hot around here. I am going to flag down an ice cream truck and get myself an Abomination Pop.

--7.25.2006--

I'm scared, Dave

Here is a 20-minute Flash distillation of 2001: A Space Odyssey. It seeks to explain the book and the movie in a way I hadn't considered before, positing that Man had grown dependent on tools for evolution and how those tools became a deadly barrier to further growth.

Huh. I thought it was about how minorities weren't allowed in space.

But I like the Flash-animated crib notes. Can a guide to Weekend at Bernie's be far behind?

Academic integrity and the quest for habitable food

I have always wanted to embezzle government funds and fake scientific research but I have never had the opportunity, and am resentful because I have some really good ideas.

Disgraced Seoul superstar scientist Hwang Woo-suk was at one point the darling of the South Korean media in a way that eggheads, aside from Einstein, have never enjoyed here.

It all began to unravel when his findings on stem-cell research were found to have been faked.

Now he says that he did not misuse government funds and that he had actually tried several times to clone a wooly mammoth.

This piqued my interest because I, too, have been experimenting with cloning, re-animating dead tissue, and creating a personal army out of odds and ends I find around the house (but mostly graveyards).

Particularly my love of fried clams has inspired my search to combine the DNA of a Block Island Quahog and the extinct mammoth to create the Clammoth, a five-ton meal that is not only the dinner but the place where the dinner is served.

Disgraced scientist says he tried to clone mammoth

I believe that the Habitatomeal is the next evolution in dining. Witness my early experiments in eating my way out of a beached whale that I also used as an apartment (1981) as well as the studio tauntaun I lived in/ate during my semester on Ice Planet Hoth.

--7.22.2006--

Next time won't you steal from me?

The Bastards.

Why is it only now, as I am entering my senescence, that I discover that "The ABCs" employs the same melody as "Twinkle, Twinkle (You) Little Star"?

I am bringing up ACI in a world of theft and decrepitude.

--7.20.2006--

Levon Landing

Because I am woefully behind any of the popular culture I have not myself created*, one of my favorite new songs is the two-year-old "Landed" by Ben Folds. I found a version with a string arrangement, different from the one I was familiar with, here on YouTube. The strings make it sound like the 35-year-old "Levon".

*this device is known as backhanded grandiosity

--7.19.2006--

Summer reading

My old high school now has a web presence and I found their summer reading list online.

I get the impression that all the titles are for extra credit, and students need to answer questions and parents or guardians are required to sign an affidavit assuring teachers that the books have been read.

Most of what I read is online these days, because I don't create time to read books. I uused to read a book a week on the subway, but I don't take subways anymore. I suppose I could check if there is a rickshaw service nearby.

I'd envy any kid reading these books for the first time (the asterisks indicate challenging reads):

Students entering 9th Grade:

Big Mouth, Ugly Girl, Joyce Carol Oates
* Frannie and Zooey, J.D. Salinger
* The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien
* How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents,
Julia Alvarez
* The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd
Summerland, Michael Chabon
When I was Puerto Rican, Esmerelda Santiago
Any novel by: Ann Brashares
Chris Crutcher
Chris Lynch
Walter Dean Myers (not Monster)
Tamora Pierce
Gary Paulsen

Students entering 10th Grade:

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay,
Michael Chabon
* Annie John, Jamaica Kincaid
A Northern Light, Jennifer Donnelly
The Color of Water, James McBride
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time,
Mark Haddon
Down These Mean Streets, Piri Thomas
* The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan
* Life of Pi, Yann Martel
The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold
My Jim, Nancy Rawles
Any novel by: Ray Bradbury
John Updike
Kurt Vonnegut

Students entering 11th Grade:

* Native Son, Richard Wright
The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver
* The Color Purple, Alice Walker
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven,
Sherman Alexie
On the Road, Jack Kerouac
* The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien
Their Eyes were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
* Any novel by: William Faulkner
F. Scott Fitzgerald
(except The Great Gatsby)

Students entering 12th Grade:

A Lesson Before Dying, Ernest Gaines
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
* Dubliners, James Joyce
The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood
Inn at Lake Devine, Eleanor Lipman
The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
* Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
No Great Mischief, Alistair McLeod
* A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving
* Sons and Lovers, D. H. Lawrence
Any mystery novel by P.D. James

I think the parenthetical exclusions might be for books that are to be read during the school year.

If plot descriptions of many of these books had been mailed home while I was in high school, I can guarantee I wouldn't have been allowed to read them. I've never read "When I Was Puerto Rican" but that would have been rejected outright.

"Whaddaya mean, 'when you were a Puerto Rican?'" my parents would say.

Heat

It is very hot here this week. Los Angeles has just broken a record for its own energy consumption. Add to the heat a humidity that is not usually present, and that makes California, for the first time since I moved here, uncomfortable.

I need only remind myself of my visit to Boston last June, what real urban humidity is, to stop my bitching.

Here is Jon Carroll's California love letter buried in a longer article about flag-burning that appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle:

In terms of landscape, living in California means never having to say you're sorry.
You like the mountains? We have those. Beaches? Leagues of 'em. Desert? We can do that. Urban living? Sure. Suburban living? We practically invented it. We have the rushing rivers of the Sierra and the nothing rivers of Los Angeles. We have Alturas and Yreka. We have Calexico and Pear Blossom. We have California City, which isn't even real; and we have Nevada City, which is. We have Death Valley and Live Nude Girls. Am I getting carried away? We have ferruginous hawks and lesser voles. We have pounding surf and pelicans and glaciers and cotton fields and vineyards and elk and the tallest sand dunes in North America. Did I mention redwood trees? We have those. Bridges? Man, don't get me started. We have Hollywood, which is the Hollywood of the West. We have Bishop and King's Canyon and so many darned saints you'll lose count. Was Barbara a saint? Apparently so.

--7.18.2006--

Dumb "shit"

I don't mind that George W. Bush cursed when he thought his voice wasn't being picked up. I do mind that he misused the word "irony".

Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon swore all the time. At least they were clever.

The last hope of his Presidency is that he isn't stupid in private, too.

Oh well.

Bush frustration sparks expletive (cnn.com)

--7.17.2006--

Priorities

I went to the set of a movie the other day in which the scene called for a drug deal to go awry.

"What's in the cocaine bags?" I asked the director.

"We can't tell you," he said, then told me some story about Al Pacino on a film set also not revealing what was in the cocaine bags.

I waited until he left the room.

"What's in the cocaine bags?" I asked the production assistant.

"Powdered sugar," she said, cleaning up the mess, "and we have to shoot this four more times today."

--7.14.2006--

9,999 Maniacs

Former 10,000 Maniacs frontwoman Natalie Merchant was not abducted and set adrift on an ice floe in the Weddell Sea by unreconstructed members of the East German Stasi, a spokesperson said, adding that an alternate headline for an obituary might be "Those Were Days" or "Hey Jack Kerouac: I'm Also Dead".

Merchant is still alive.

Western journalism seeks to manipulate passages of an artist's work when providing headlines for "milestone" stories, such as deaths, divorces, or beheadings, which also might lead to deaths.

Pink Floyd co-founder Syd Barrett's obituary was headed with "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" in several hundred different publications. Were Gordon Lightfoot to perish in a rare Canadian monsoon, his epitaph would surely read "Rainy Day Dead People".

Efforts to infect the Go-Gos with Dengue Fever to justify the headline "Vacation - What They Never Wanted" have been repeatedly thwarted; a spokesperson says the band rarely performs in tropical areas where Dengue-transmitting mosquitoes thrive.

Way up firm and dead

Michigan powerhouse, leader of the Silver Bullet Band, and Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Famer Bob Seger was not sucked into the vacuum of space from the Space Shuttle Discovery.

"Sweet 16 has not turned one with the cosmos," a weary spokesperson said.

Seger recently woke one night to the sound of thunder, not God's voice asking if he had atoned for his sins, as previously reported.

Watch out, here I come (Lord)

The guy from Dead Or Alive is still on the eastward side of that conjunction, a spokeswoman said.

The guy, who did the songs "You Turn Me Round" and the remake of "Spirit in the Sky" continues to perform from his perch on the living hemisphere of the circle of life.

"I just got this job, and I really don't know enough about Dear Or Alive's music to quote from it in support of anything you might want to say about that guy," the spokeswoman continued.

Take the long way home

British band Supertramp did not hijack and crash a small plane in the Andes Tuesday, eating founder Rick Davies to survive.

Founded in 1969, the band had hits through the 80's, including "Dreamer", "The Logical Song", and "It's Raining Again".

They are still touring.

Don't nobody worry 'bout me

Kenny Loggins did not pass away this morning from an overdose of colonic irrigation.

"Listen to your own heart beating," a spokesman snapped.

Loggins, formerly of "Your Mama Don't Dance" hitmakers Loggins & Messina, achieved a string of solo successes in the 80's, most notably "Highway to the Danger Zone".

He is still alive.

--7.11.2006--

Float on a river forever and ever, Emily

Syd Barrett, founding member of Pink Floyd, died this weekend.

Prog rockers and psychedelics consider him a hero. He left the band in 1968 after the modest success of the album "Piper at the Gates of Dawn", and the band's 1975 record "Wish You Were Here" was written by Roger Waters in memory of his friend.

Barrett had checked out. After two solo albums, he puttered in his mother's garden in Cambridge, England, and was rarely seen. Reports had him living in her cellar. He rarely granted interviews after 1971. Cause of death has not been released.

He became the stereotype of the English rock star recluse. You can see characters based on him in films like Still Crazy and Velvet Goldmine.

Here is a good Barrett-stallker story from 2002.

--7.09.2006--

Stuck in Loti again

The Echo Park Lotus Festival was this weekend. If you know me, you know how devoted I am to my Hinduism and its sacred flowers, so how could I not go? Plus, there were churros.

Echo Park is one of my favorite L.A. neighborhoods. It reminds me of Jamaica Plain in Boston, except with palm trees instead of macrobiotic food (which gives Echo Park the edge), right down to a pond around which this weekend's festivities were based.

The lotuses were crammed in a water-lily ghetto at a corner of the lake. Ducks flitted hither and thither, along with very clean seagulls and a dragon boat here and there.

Echo Park Lake was where Jake Gittes got his snapshots of Hollis Mulwray in Chinatown.

--7.08.2006--

Bugs at the Bowl

I went to the Hollywood Bowl last night for the 17th annual "Bugs Bunny on Broadway" show, in which the L.A. Philharmonic (which in the 1940's was the orchestra for Warner Brothers' Animation department under Carl Stalling) backed up classic cartoons like "Rabbit of Seville" and "What's Opera, Doc?"

This show tours around the world using local orchestras. The founding conductor, George Daugherty, noted that the Bowl was the "home" of the orchestral Bugs Bunny "because Warner Brothers is right over the Cahuenga Pass".

When the animated Hollywood Bowl showed up in "Long-Haired Hare" ("Leopold!"), people applauded.

It was a hometown audience. The late director Chuck Jones' granddaughter was there, and several ovations were given to the memory of Jones, Mel Blanc, Carl Stalling, and Arthur Q. Bryan, the seldom-credited voice of Elmer Fudd.

Daugherty knew how to appeal to this crowd. He talked about how all the cartoons were drawn and painted by hand, 300 cels for every second of screen time. He peppered his introductions with local references. The crowd of about 16,000 ate it up.

It was hard not to think of politics. We stood and sang The Star-Spangled Banner with the L.A. Phil at the beginning of the show, underlining the fact that people who like subversive, educated fare - backed by classical music - wouldn't stick up their noses at singing the national anthem. Later, Daugherty asked the audience if anyone, "after last winter's unfortunate hunting incident", wondered if the Vice-President was Elmer Fudd.

I'd forgotten how brilliant the cartoons were. The plump horse that Bugs as Brunhilde rides in "What's Opera, Doc?" drew cheers when it appeared.

It was fun listening to what appealed to the kids. Every instance of gender roles being subverted, like when Bugs kissed Elmer Fudd, danced in a tutu, or when Fudd showed up in a wedding dress, made the kids belly laugh.

To my great shame, there were two guys in front of me sporting the exact same Costco Hawaiian shirt I was wearing. Our big-box store shopping triumvirate was probably replicated throughout the facility, as arts patrons know that Costco means value.

My introduction to Wagner, Strauss, Rossini, Bizet, Rimsky-Korsakov and many other composers was due to Warner Brothers cartoons, but I've often wondered if classical music purists ever thought that this use of the music was lowbrow or distasteful.

Watching children respond to this music, and knowing how my own appreciation of pieces like "Ride of the Valkyries" was only made possible by "Kill the Wabbit", I thought that these cartoons did a great service to the composers.

I can listen to "Tannhauser" without thinking about the fat horse, but I don't like to.

Standard doble

Incumbent party candidate Felipe Calderon wins the Mexican presidential election by a statistically negligible margin and his opponent, Andres Obrador, demands a recount on suspicion of voting fraud, saying there will be rioting in the streets until justice is served.

Wow. Can someone teach this guy the Spanish word for complacency? Why can't we export some of that?

Don't get me wrong: I would have rioted for Al Gore and John Kerry, too, but I was still loopy from elective plastic surgeries. Plus, the heating element in the passenger seat of my solid gold Mercedes was only working sporadically. Then I forgot. It's so much easier with the Vicodin.

--7.07.2006--

These dudes should totally hire me

--7.06.2006--

Today's grave

I visited a film set today that was located in a cemetery in Whittier, just east of Los Angeles.

As there is a Forest Lawn franchise down the street from my house which uses various methods to attract future corpses, I spend a lot of time there, but today (of all days, exactly 14 years after my father was buried in Massachusetts) I saw a bone orchard that wasn't as rigorously art-directed as the Forest Lawn outfit.

In particular, the graves were very diverse. There were the traditional flat stones and crosses, but there were also new-fangled monuments with photographs etched into the stone. There were also more babies' graves than I have ever seen, some for children who hadn't lived a day. It might have also been that I hadn't registered that sort of thing before.

There was also this trendy item, resembling a small tree.

It was the first graveyard I've ever visited that was patrolled by an ice cream truck, or maybe two. I heard "Pop Goes the Weasel" for three hours straight. It was very peaceful.

It costs $2,400 a day to rent the cemetery and its chapel for filming. Members of a funeral procession and various mourners seemed surprised to see a 25-person production crew there.

"What happens if one of the family members of the person on whose grave your grip just placed his Gatorade comes by?"I asked the producer.

"We give him a cameo?" he replied.

--7.04.2006--

Lake Kreme Filling

It is as if my daughter is asking, "How come it has taken you so long to expose me to a pond full of morbidly obese children?"

--7.03.2006--

Jaws Begins

Recently I watched Open Water, which is an excellent date movie about a couple working through their problems while being menaced by sharks. I've since read reviews that said it was pointless and silly, but everyone in my small theatre was riveted.

My doomed neighbor Ian wondered if it had been pitched as Home Alone meets Jaws.

Speaking of Jaws, and when don't I, a quick shot of the identification cards of the Open Water couple reveals that her name is Susan Watkins and his name is David Kintner. (Chrissie) Watkins and (Alex) Kintner were the first two victims in Jaws.

This makes Open Water an excellent prequel to Jaws. Jaws, having acquired a taste for people named Watkins and Kintner, travels to Amity Island where he gets a second helping.

I picked up the DVD for $4.99 from Blockbuster, despite my moral reservations about that company's past support of Operation Rescue. $4.99 can't possibly buy a bag of blood to throw at an abortion doctor, can it? Can it??? Not human blood, anyway.

All the literature points to the inadvisability of having an abortion in shark-infested water, but I found it unsurprising that when that couple was in real jeopardy, no Operation Rescue boats showed up to save them.

Jaws Returns