This Sublime Dance

I got a request for an entry, so here goes:

I rented Crash last night, and while it was very moving in parts, and so clever in tying itself together, that's all it was. Moving and clever. Crash is a movie they made because someone had a lot of good small ideas that they couldn't individually make long enough. Its symbolic themes of detachment (we do love cars, but they don't rule our lives like pagan gods, hurtling us around in glass and plastic bubbles until we collide and pull out our book of racial epithets) were overwhelmed by the sense that in order for all these coincidences to happen there must be some divine reason behind it, but it's never expressed. The whole point seems to be that we're hopelessly alone down here and so we hurt others to feel real. It portrays LA to be this self-referential dogfight where everyone has a massive chip on their shoulder. And while I'm not naive enough to think there's no racism here, I can tell you it has never once affected me so profoundly in the three years I've lived here. Believe me, LA is tough, but try living someplace where everyone is the same...like Iowa...that's an assload freakier than LA any day. I'm as happy going to Reseda to eat carne asada with fifteen Mexicans as I am to drive through Beverly Hills, where the truly dangerous people live.

wessolo at 2:03:01 PM PST Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 4 comments: Show Recent | Add your own

When going on a date it is important to know where you're going first. That might sound simplistic, but occasionally you want to be impulsive and let the evening guide itself.

But sometimes when you get spontaneous and decide to try a new thing, you end up in a situation like I did last night: In a random Hollywood Boulevard Thai restaurant that looks like an elementary school cafeteria (think long tables and garish light), where the "waitresses" hover over you or return every eleven seconds to see if you've somehow managed to cull any useful information from the 45-page menu, and then when you do order, the food arrives before you've finished the word "noodle," as though they had you figured out the second you dropped the car in valet. And to top it off, the atmosphere of "order now eat now leave now" is given a generous boost by the two musicians they've hired to mutilate your favorite English-speaking artists, including the Beatles and Elvis Presley, of whom they have constructed a metal effigy that stands next to the Casio keyboard where some half-hidden geek tinkers like the piano is mysterious alien self-pleasure technology while his bandmate appears to be learning guitar on the job.

All in all it was a pretty good time. Oh blah dee oh blah dah...

wessolo at 10:08:40 AM PST Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 4 comments: Show Recent | Add your own

wessolo at 6:19:08 PM PST Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 0 comments: Add your own

Songs I could play on guitar on November 8, 2003:
...

Songs I could play on guitar on November 8, 2004:
1...sort of.

Songs I can play on guitar on November 8, 2005:
19.

It ain't much. But then, it ain't nothing.

wessolo at 12:36:43 AM PST Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 2 comments: Show Recent | Add your own

I have been hearing a lot lately from people that the recent string of natural disasters - the Indonesian tsunami, Katrina/Rita, and the southeast asian earthquake - is an omen signifying the end of the world. I'm not a student of eschatology, so I can't really comment on this idea. However, I do pay attention to a different sort of barometer that some people are convinced herald impending world ending:

The World Series.

In case you've forgotten, last year the Boston Red Sox ended a century of misery by winning the World Series for the first time since 1918. To the non-baseball fan that doesn't really mean much, but to the baseball gods and their devotees, the specific details of the win are certainly cause for some end-of-the-world jitters. I'll run down some of the more bizarre twists:

Last time the Red Sox won the World Series: 1918
Babe Ruth - who wore uniform number 3 -  was traded in 1920, beginning the "Curse."
Last time the Red Sox were in the World Series: 1986
Years from 1918 to 2004: 86
Years from 1986 to 2004: 18
Entering the ninth inning of Game Four, Boston RF Gabe Kapler and CF Johnny Damon stood next to each other in the outfield. Their numbers: 19 and 18.
Edgar Renteria of St. Louis - who beat the Red Sox in their second-to-last World Series in 1967 - was the final batter in the 2004 World Series. He wore uniform number 3.
Oh, and there was a total lunar eclipse the night they won.

Now get ready for some real mind games, 2005 version.

The Chicago White Sox are in the World Series this year.
The last time they were in the World Series was 1959, when they were beat by the Los Angeles Dodgers. (The last time my Dodgers won the World Series was in 1988, remember this.)
Prior to that the White Sox were last in a World Series in 1919, when "Shoeless" Joe Jackson and the Black Sox allegedly threw the World Series and were forever banned from baseball in 1920 (see Eight Men Out or Field of Dreams...just because they're freakin great movies). Thus began their World Series curse. 
They last won the Series in 1917. It has been 88 years since the last White Sox World Series win.

Tonight, October 17, 2005, the Houston Astros were one strike away from advancing to their first World Series ever, 45 years to the day that Houston was awarded a national league franchise at the Major League Baseball Owners meeting on October 17, 1960...held in Chicago. The name of the franchise: the Houston Colt 45's.
The last time the Astros were this close to the World Series was 1986, when they were beat by the New York Mets in the National League Championship Game...the same Mets that went on to beat the Red Sox in the World Series.
It seems fate was dealt a blow, though, because Albert Pujols hit a three run home run to win the game and send the series back to Busch Stadium in St. Louis - which is scheduled to be demolished as soon as the season is over. (The stadium, not St. Louis.)

And yet, maybe fate is just playing its own game.
The score of the Monday night football game: (Indianapolis) Colts 45 - (St. Louis) Rams  28.

In the game, Payton Manning (#18) connected with Marvin Harrison (#88) for their 86th touchdown, an NFL record.

And finally, the franchise that would eventually become the Chicago White Sox came into existence in 1893 in a little town called Sioux City, Iowa.

I came into existence in a slightly bigger Sioux City, Iowa in 1977. It only feels like a century since I've had a girl around to tell me I just wasted two hours of my life when the world might be ending.

After all, I did just meet a beautiful girl named Katrina.

wessolo at 10:47:58 PM PDT Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 3 comments: Show Recent | Add your own

Waiting in this little room
Vigil like to see you soon
My darling
Coffee cups and ticket stubs
Dot the landscape still because
I'm reaching
Lucid once but then
Losing sleep again

Butterflummies scrape my eye
Sing and work but wonder why
My baby
Galleries and golden milk
Mix CDs that might as well
Be empty
To what magic end
Do I still pretend?

Desert silver road
I am on my way
Desperately alone
Take me where you may
Decent hills to climb
Thoughtful sapphire sky
Breathe and live in time
Solitary high

Take of me a final pose
One from which my legend grows
My lovely
Bless you with stability
Oh but all the things I'll see
In risking
Nothing much to spend
Going round the bend
So to close this minuet
Shorter than a cigarette
In mourning
Someone has to say so long
Even though this pretty song
Just started
Still not seen the end
You'll steal my sleep again

Chorus


wessolo at 11:24:49 AM PDT Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 0 comments: Add your own

    "VICTORY!" the headline declared, searing through the pre-dawn sky in sixty-foot tall red-gold capitals, momentarily turning the New York skyline into a life-size adventure movie poster. The Times Building lit up like a roman candle, more garish somehow for the 5 A.M. edition than the 4:45. Cuckoos coming out to shout and such.
    Like Rockettes peeling off the kick line, the letters of the headline flew away in a dramatic canon, segueing into breaking footage of General Nicholas Archuletta's personal shuttle touching down at Edwards and the dashing warlord emerging from the craft to the roar of a gathered audience. Smirking for the cameras.
     Ramona Lynn looked up from her soy latte at the blazing holographic show. "New York's Real Sunrise!" It was hard to argue, since night was more or less as bright and warm as day, Manhattan's imposing seawalls holding out the Atlantic, holding in the light and heat of two million people. Out past the length of her sippy cup she watched as Archuletta descended from the shuttle hatch immediately to a podium, over which a dense forest of virtual microphones jutted up at him, heliotropic reeds reaching for soundbite nourishment. There actually was no need for one microphone, much less a congress of them, as the General would certainly have an amplifier implant, but the podium gave the abundance of news orgs the appropriate real estate to flaunt their spiffy logos, which flickered around beneath his MacArthur mugging like fat fairies jostling for airspace.
       "The sixty year war for Vegan independence is over," Archuletta said, barely finishing his words before some marching band kicked in with Anchors Aweigh. Ramona giggled at the declaration. She pictured an entire society of vegans demanding to be given sovereignty separate from the awful carnivores, vegetarians, ovo-lactos, orgos, marties, or whatever other food factions had arisen. What a vicious but balanced war that would be.
       The band finished, Archuletta continued. "Humanity's two systems are again united. We received the wonderful news today from Allied Commander Jackson Shane. The unconditional surrender of the Vegan rebels was signed aboard the USS Obama orbiting Vega Prime on July 11, 2145. " The crowd bellowed its approval.
       Ramona found it interesting to consider that venerable old Commander Jack was probably the late Commander Jack by now, considering he was in his early seventies when he sent that message, unless of course he jumped on an earthbound ship and deLeoned himself. It also amused her that Archuletta called it a 'sixty year war,' when apparently the battle lasted less than two years, but the trip there had taken thirty-three. She couldn't help but wonder if perhaps sometime during the twenty-five years the victory message took in getting back to earth if maybe those Vegan rebels had decided to stir things up again, and the whole process would start over. Maybe the soldiers didn't right away get a chance to start back for home. Maybe some of them would never come home at all.
       Only time will tell, she thought.
       The crowd began to settle. Archuletta thrust out his chin and eyed the people down his regal nose, adopting a distinctly presidential somberness. This was his '72 election pitch, right here. He drew in a deep breath and continued. "We have also learned that in defeating the Vegans, our forces gained control of advanced starflight technology that had been in development there, superior even to our own. As a result, I am pleased to announce that the first troop carriers will be returning to Earth in less than a year, rather than the seven we had anticipated. Our troops will be home by the Holiday Season!"
       Ramona froze. Her heart thumped in her ears, drowning out the deafening roar of the crowd, which was now a real live throng of revelers pouring onto the balconies and mesas of Manhattan. She became dizzy, faint. She finally managed to ease her noodling legs down into a chair away from the balcony edge, but her body still felt cold and numb.
       Ben would be home by Christmas!

       *                               *                                *     

       Benjamin Dare was feeling lucky. Already he had been one of the lottery picks to hitcha ride back on the USS Iowa, the first ship retrofitted with the snappy Vegan drives that would push up to .9997 of c. He had woken up a few weeks ago, just as the Iowa spun down inside the orbit of Jupiter, emerging from hibernation fugue a perfectly healthy twenty-eight year-old veteran. Healthy at least until his brothers had made him pound fourteen Vegan tequila shots to celebrate. And now here he was, riding on a bullet train from Canaveral on his way across country back home to Los Angeles.
       It was good to be home. The searing whiteness of Vega seemed so sharp and sterile in comparison to the cheery yellow of earth's sun. Even though in his mind the trips had been instantaneous and the war itself had only taken about two years, he knew - could feel - that the sun was now almost sixty years older, as if his soul had aged right along with it though his body had not. It was not an unpleasant feeling, peaceful even, but he couldn't help feel a tinge of melancholy. You never know how much you miss home until you go back.
       He beamed like a moon. And she was waiting there! She could be woken a full six years early, maybe in time to spend the last years with and say goodbye to friends and family who had aged normally. He would love to be able to give that gift to her, after all she had sacrificed for him.
       He laughed out loud, drawing a stare from a grizzled vet sitting in the seat next to him with his pack on his lap. "Merry Christmas!" Ben said blithely. He was thinking of the little trick she and he had pulled on time and fate, letting their eight year difference in age lapse before she entered hibernation fugue. When she woke up, the two of them would only be two years apart! Now he wouldn't have to deal with the idiots giving him grief about falling for an eighteen year-old.
       The countryside flashed by outside the window, passing too quickly to be identifiable. In the distance he thought he could make out a familiar old highway running like a tattered ribbon through the Arizona desert, a road he had braved back before the war, driving cross country when people didn't drive cross town anymore. Maybe he could take her out here someday, even though she hated long trips in anything but first class. Who knows, though? Maybe in the eight years she had changed some, learned a few things that only experience could teach. Maybe she had stopped drinking so much coffee, or learned how to follow a road map, or detached herself from that godforsaken cell phone. He had secretly hoped the eight years would bring them closer together even though they were twenty-five light years apart. Then, with their comparative life experiences congruent, they could adventure off together. The deal was when they turned forty if they still were together, they would marry. He was ready for the challenge, ten years or ten times ten.
       Only time will tell, he thought.
       He looked up at the seatback in front of him, where one of the train's holographic wi-fi access points swirled gently in the form of the Galt Line logo. He swept his hand through it, skillfully surfed through to a hired car company, and reserved himself a ride to the hibernation unit in a black German luxury car.
       His heart began to beat wildly. Two years without her - and she had endured eight years without him! Not a word, a letter, a message. Yet he could feel her out there, close, dreaming, warm.
       I'll be home for Christmas!

       *                               *                                *

       Ben somberly approached the suite where the staff of the hibernation fugue facility had queued up Ramona's unit. The caretakers had been enigmatically perplexed when he arrived requesting Ramona's early arousal. It wasn't against any protocols to wake her early, certainly not with his name as the primary custodian. And given the extraordinary circumstances of his return from war and the subsequent reunion at hand, he thought their slow and confused behavior was a bit direspectful, and frankly deserving of a chat with the manager.
       As he approached the ornate glass, chrome and velvet suite, however, he began to feel trepidatious himself. It wasn't the sleeping capsule - like something from an old fairy tale, with its slumbering princess carefully laid atop a bed strewn with flowers. It was just sliding into place on a bed of air in the middle of the room. He could see his princess there, or at least the figure of a woman resting peacefully. Everything seemed to be fine there.
       It was the unfamiliar young woman sitting beside the capsule that worried him.
       She turned as he entered the suite, freezing him. Her eyes sent a shudder through his body that was colder than any night in the Vegan barracks. Deep, brown, piercing. Like Ramona's. And her shoulders, slight like a bird. She smiled, warm as an Ohio blanket.
       "You're Ben."
       He nodded, looking from the girl to the sleeping beauty. It began to fall into place even in this first instant of questioning. His legs folded beneath him, and he somehow found a chair.
       The girl stood and came to his side, kneeling down next to him, and he suddenly felt his body catch up to his spirit.
       "Ramona Lynn?" he managed to say.
       "Ramona Graham."
       He looked up at her with a pitifully hopeful expression, thinking perhaps some mistake had been made, knowing it had not.
       "My grandmother," she continued.
       Ramona's beauty was untouchable, not that time hadn't tried. Her brown curls had gone gray, her cherubic cheeks sagged. She had filled out, then shrunk back again. Her shoulders were still slight, like a bird. But she was Ramona, he would have known it had he been blind and numb. Ben realized he had found his feet and was standing over Ramona, fingers making halos against the cold glass.
       "She waited six years - six years - and could have waited all sixty, from the way she talked about you," the girl said gently. "But in college, she met someone, my grandpa. She fought it, she did, I believe her, but a heart just can't go so long without..."
       "Without?"
       "Without sympathy."
       He pulled back from the capsule. Her body suddenly seemed to him like a monument more than a living person. This wasn't how the story ended, the romance he had written night after night on Vega considering the clamor of imminent death as the only other possible conclusion.
       Now the world was strange. The strong black rope of a desert highway had been shredded into a pebble-strewn path.
       "What do I do now?" he whispered.
       The girl took his hand in hers. She was so small, younger by years than he had left Ramona, yet he felt childlike in comparison. Just as he had felt next to her. There was a maturity in her that resembled the very thing he hoped would cultivate in young Ramona.
       "She has a place in Manhattan, it's beautiful, you could go there."
       He shook his head. "Manhattan. She thought she'd never leave California."
       The girl said nothing.
       "What's your name?"
       "Jacquelyn."
       His breath caught in his throat. "Who named you?" he stammered.
       "My mom I guess. Why?"
       He struggled to understand. "Where is your grandpa now?"
       "I don't know. She left him a long time before I was born."
       "Did she remarry?"
       "She never married him in the first place."
       Ben's heart jumped.
       "Why didn't she marry him?"
       "She preferred being alone."
       "That's why she's doing this now? She wants to be alone?"
       Jacquelyn looked surprised. "No. She's old now. You're so young."
       "That made no difference before, and it sure as hell makes no difference now."
       Ben turned and started toward the lobby
       "Wait!" Jacquelyn shouted. "Please don't go."
       "I'm not go - "
       He stopped. Something in the tone of her voice. He turned to Jacquelyn. "What happened to your mother and father?"
       The girl seemed taken aback. She hesitated, then said, "I don't know. Grandma never told me. I guess they left."
       "And Ramona raised you?"
       "Yes. From a baby."
       "So you have no one now."
       Jacquelyn shifted awkwardly, her bird shoulders collapsing as she wrapped her wings around herself and shrugged.
       "I have no way back to New York. I can do fine on my own there."
       "You didn't fly roundtrip?"
       "We didn't fly. Grandma drove me."
       Ben reeled. "She drove? From New York to L.A.?"
       Jacquelyn nodded.
       Ben stood silently, closing his eyes in thought. He opened them and looked at the sleeping capsule, at Ramona's peaceful expression. She might even be smiling, dreaming of the day when...
       He held out his hand to Jacquelyn.
       "Come on. We've got a long trip ahead of us."
      
      *                               *                                *

       Ramona drew in a long, luxurious breath. She opened her eyes, momentarily confused by her surroundings. She was in a small room, all glass and metal and velvet. She stretched, the impulse taking time to reconnect from brain to nervous system, her muscles stiff but not weak. Fugue, hibernation fugue, she was in the facility, and it must be long enough now for him to have forgiven me. Ben! He wasn't far, she could feel it, as her soul wrapped around familiar pieces of the world while her body lagged behind.
       "Good morning momma," said a pretty voice next to her bed.
       She turned.  A pretty middle age woman roused from napping on a couch, her eyes wide with anticipation. Jackie. The name Ben always wanted. Her daughter, grown now, caught up to her. And -
        Ramona rubbed her eyes, clearing away the fog. She turned to look at the foot of the bed.
      A gray-haired old man smiled up at her, looking up from his book.
       "Good morning Ramona."
       She spoke in a hoarse whisper. Her ancient eyes swelled and spilled.
       "Good morning Ben."
       He closed his book, stood and walked to her side, knelt over, and kissed her gently on the forehead.
       "Wanna' get married?"

wessolo at 8:05:03 AM PDT Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 0 comments: Add your own

Nothing in the least bit exciting is happening.

But maybe that's a good thing. Navigating through a city full of drama-needy people freaking out about a two hour power outage makes one feel like perhaps we all need a vacation to someplace green and blue where things are preceded by the adjective "quaint." I suppose you can't blame people for being on edge when we're served up the most recent Jihad-by-camcorder the day after September 11th. But remember when that used to be just a day? It is still just a day. It's my dad's birthday, and my manager Dale's too.

Thus are we beaten. It's something like how men have been cowed by the chocolate, lingerie, and greeting card companies into having an entire year of doing little things out of true love rendered meaningless if they don't make February 14th their singular purpose for getting that Y chromosome. We expend precious time and energy and taxpayer dollars on building a superior military, on creating privacy-eroding government agencies, on overkill infrastructure bulk-ups under the guise of "homeland security," and some bozo cuts the wrong wire on September 12th and a city of fifteen million people is suddenly thrown into mild chaos because we can't be positive that a dirty nuke isn't right that moment being detonated in the Los Angeles harbor.

Que sera, I say. We can't stop the reaper. Or even when we can we usually figure out some way to fuck that up too. New Orleans was established below sea-level two hundred fifty years ago, but Dennis Hastert, the Speaker of the goddamn House, believes that it had this disaster coming and that the city should be permanently abandoned. I wonder where Denny's successors will deliver similar pearls of wisdom from in a few decades when DC is under water as well when the fucking Greenland ice cap becomes the Chesapeake Sea? Perhaps the shortchanging of the New Orleans levees was seen as ultimately moot because no amount of levees will save the entire eastern seaboard from being swallowed by the Atlantic Ocean. However, the Kyoto Protocol is still bad for businesses, at least those that are far enough inland.

Que sera, definitely. I think there's a Chicken Little movie coming out pretty soon. As it's being made by Disney, I'm hesistant to suggest there's brilliant timing involved here, but don't let anyone tell you the sky isn't falling. Oh hell yeah it is. Thing is, no one that can do anything about it will, so the rest of us and our descendants have a couple of options:

Run around freaking out thinking every twist in the story is God or the boogey man coming for your American ass, or sit back and wait for the traffic to clear before cruising off to a nice, quiet, quaint place where you can create your own peace, and let the world spin down around you.

wessolo at 1:18:35 AM PDT Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 5 comments: Show Recent | Add your own

A still from Uncertainty.

wessolo at 2:08:10 AM PDT Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 6 comments: Show Recent | Add your own

After a rejuvenating return to the land of my origin and to the family that watches my steps with an unflinching love and pride that I hardly deserve, I am invigorated. I love Iowa, it will always be in my heart. I actually missed the smell of a farm. The roads are familiar and the culture is a treasured heirloom I would hope to pass to my kids.

But L.A. is my home. If I could, I would bring them all here: Friends and family and school buildings and back roads, and plop them down right next door so I could have the best of both worlds, my heart and my soul together. But I feel pretty good, knowing I'm in the right place.

I begin filming on Thursday for my short film Uncertainty. Today we did location scouting and found a perfect empty desert road out off the 60 Freeway near Indio. We had no idea where we were going to end up, but we aimed on faith and hit. Unfortunately for everyone not there, the film you won't see was the actual adventure finding the place. But I have no doubt that the film you will see will be damn near close as good. As Hinkley says, "Nothing in life happens dramatically until we tell the story."

I also finished another song:

AWAY

In another time woulda' left my land
Rode across a kingdom for your hand.
Singing odes to you to earn my bread.
The legend of your fairness widely spread.
And no woe, dragon, or foe would throw or slow me.

In another time woulda' left my shores
Sailed west round the Horn to be yours.
I would kiss the earth in a world anew
And name the nations after you.
And no gold or wealth untold would hold me from thee.

Ah ooo oo
So far away
All that I may
Endure is worth the wait.

Ah ooo oo
Though not today
When there's a way
I'll be there straight.

In a coming time I would cast out far
Comb the wastes of space for your star.
Ask a hundred moons, soak a thousand suns.
Then show you round them all, one by one.
And no throne of all realms known alone could postpone me.

Chorus

Hold me
Misfit ennui
Give me good lies
Internalize
My goodbyes

And to hold true
Give me courage to be a fool
It's how jumpers like me survive
Lonely learning to be alive
So that someday when I arrive

We won't be

Chorus

In the present time, if I had my way
I'd wake every morning to your face.

 

Separate thought:

If you had a camera that only took one photograph, but that photo was guaranteed to be the most beautiful, perfect picture you've ever seen, would you use it over a regular camera? What would you take a picture of?

wessolo at 12:54:29 AM PDT Permalink | Blog about this entry |  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this This entry has 7 comments: Show Recent | Add your own