Sloth, Maybe?

  On Sunday, February 26th, my wife indulged my fondest wish for the beginning of the moviegoing year.   We went to see the much ballyhooed Cocaine Bear . Now I have seen two films this year prior to Cocaine Bear.   There was the three hour epic Avatar: The Way of Water .   I went into the theater for that film with great trepidation.   I had had my fill of three hour epics since Avengers: End Game and wanted no more of it.   However, I had been surprised by how well James Cameron mapped out the flora, fauna, astronomy, and culture of the various tribes of Na’vi of the moon of Pandora.   It is a lower tier Middle Earth, but it had me ask questions of the clash of cultures and how our own local astronomy helped mold our cultures and psyches. Wait, was I talking about Cocaine Bear ?   One more digression. Todd Field’s film TÁR , the tale of the rise and fall of a fictitious musical conductor played by Cate Blanchett is another exploration into an e...

  It's been one year and seven days since my first blog involving a carpet and the long, winding history behind its design. Since then I've written about film, music, art, television, musicals, anime, cyborgs, artificial intelligence, quitting writing, resuming writing, meditation, contemplation, cogitation, good, evil, post-it notes... Oh, and Boba Fett.  I can't forget Boba Fett. You may have also checked out my other blog page, The Inanna-verse, which deals with everything involving my scripts, art, comedy, and YouTube videos dedicated to the Sumerian goddess.  I don't worship her.  I swear.  I don't worship anyone or anything.  Except perhaps my own overblown ego. I've even had my wife Susan write a few guest blogs.  There was one about the one season Cop Rock series and another about David Byrne's American Utopia on Broadway.  The last one had the most feedback on this page. Needless to say, I'm jealous of my wife. Oh, there is another a...

  When Suze and I first came to the Wellmont Theater at Montclair, NJ in 2018, it was to see industrial legends Ministry.  We were far to the left of the audience seats and well into the back, but we could still make out "Uncle Al" Jourgenson.  The man had so many piercings he looked like a Cenobite from the Hellraiser films.  We managed to get a lift from our longtime buddies Dom Manfredi and Kate Dervin.  While the ladies were on their best behavior, Dom and I had regressed into two eight year olds kicking each other in the ass and laughing as we drove and then walked to the Wellmont. Fast forward to May of 2022.  Suze and I hopped five trains and walked a mile to get to the MC Hotel in Montclair.  I grumbled that we would never do that again, as I have an irrational hatred of the NYC subway and NJ Transit (Well, maybe not totally irrational).  That weekend's attraction was The Alan Parsons Project, who are way on the opposite side of the genre...

I was a bit groggy when Susan and I set out to the Manhattan Center Grand Ballroom to see Mystery Science Theater 3000:  The Time Bubble Tour.   When we arrived, the ticket takers and security detail weren't very organized, which put me in a foul (but temporary) mood.  It was a ritual akin to going through airport security:  Metal detectors and plastic trays to put in your wallet, keys, and phone.  A woman ahead of me had to inform the security guard that she had a hip replacement.  Upon hearing that my mood went from foul to (temporarily) grim.  This woman was probably close to my age, and she had had a hip replacement.  Generation X is getting older, frailer, and already in need of spare parts. We boarded a spacious elevator with some of our fellow MSTies.  One woman was with her daughter and a friend discussing how her husband was off to see John Zorn do a live performance elsewhere in the city.  I am well familiar with Zorn's more n...

I remember seeing disaster-from-above films like Deep Impact and Armageddon in the nineties.   They follow the same formula:   A comet or asteroid the size of (enter large body of real estate here) is going to collide with the Earth in (enter sliver of time before doomsday here).   The wise leader of the free world takes the helm as a small crew of plucky scientists / astronauts / oil riggers that crack wise as they set a nuclear or seismic whatchamacallit on said asteroid of comet to fragment it or vaporize it.   They avoid total devastation by the skin of their teeth.   Swell of inspirational music by Aerosmith or some other schmaltzy 70s rock act and roll credits. In Don’t Look Up , I found myself laughing all the way to armageddon when I realized that the leader of the free world was asleep at the wheel.   Three scientists - heralds of doom - go unnoticed.   As for the general public, they bend where the winds of social media, algorithms, and tre...

Yes, autumn of 1990. I was 22, dropping out of my English major at Ohio State while trying to drop in with some ragtag group of artists and experimental musicians in the Short North of Columbus. I had just moved out of the Rat Hole apartment in the half-slum that was South Campus and back into the parental estate out west in Lincoln Village, where one of my sisters was also still living and watching the weeknight sitcoms and police and courtroom dramas...one of which was this rather oddball experiment called “Cop Rock”, a police drama like “Hill Street Blues”, but with songs and sometimes dancing. I can remember watching only one episode, and thanks to our 21st Century tech, I can track down when the specific episode aired, through the IMDb: Wednesday, November 21st, 1990. The day before Thanksgiving. All I remembered was a tragic scene where a small African American boy was lying dead on the ground, an innocent victim of a crossfire between street gangs. His mother and a group of wome...

In my stars I am above thee, but be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon 'em. Thy Fates open their hands. Let thy blood and spirit embrace them. - Malvolio, Twelfth Night, 2:5:7 Chris Smith, alias Peacemaker (John Cena), has greatness thrust upon him, but the  q uestion is:   Can he bear the weight of greatness? Now this may sound like a negative introduction to the HBOMax series Peacemaker , but I assure you it is a compliment to the series and the character around whom it is centered. You see, Peacemaker entertains the delusion that he is an All-American superhero, cut from the same cloth as Superman or Marvel’s Captain America.   Instead, this muscle bound, gun toting, government agent hides a vulnerable center of a whiny man child with a severe inferiority complex and the disdain of his extreme right-wing dad Auggie (Robert Patrick), who makes no reservations for calling his son a “pussy.” To begin w...

Image Source:  www.thugkitchen.com My darling wife Susan reads from the introduction of Thug Kitchen .  It will sear your virgin ears like a juicy pork chop. -JJB  

There are days when creativity flows from your fingers like a flooded riverbed.  Each finger is a tributary that leads to a snaking body of water that manifests itself in a keyboard (musical or typing), a brush, a chisel, a cello, ballet shoes, or even scanning the skies with a telescope in search for a new star. Then there are the days when that riverbed dries up.  You sit before the implement of your creativity with a blank stare.  Minutes, hours, days go by.  You know you should go for a walk, do some weight training, or at least meditate to clear your mind.  You return to your office or studio, and the riverbed is still barren. Your magnum opus refuses to come to fruition. Melancholia I, by Albrecht Dürer (Public Domain)  I find myself indulging in the least constructive vices to distract my mind from my writing and my art.  My most corrosive vice is YouTube. I will spend hours scrolling from one recommended video to another.  I will sometime...