Resignation

It's been a while since I've mustered the will to write something new. Partly this is because I have no job, so this has been my outlet for "work," and I decided to give myself a vacation, so to speak, and partly I needed to wait for something to build up so I could write about it, lest I start to emulate Marcel Proust and begin to write about sleep, which I've often said is a self-indulgent, lazy topic of conversation that you can be sure that I will tune out. (No one gives a shit about your dreams, everybody--FYI.) I could have, and arguably have, forced my words in the past. However, I'm voluble by nature, so talking about minutiae has never been an issue. Even now, with neurological issues that threaten to stymie my tongue, I manage to eke out grumblings about idiots who TiVo shit like Two and a Half Men (have I mentioned how much I loathe that show?).

I've subsequently occupied my time by perusing The NY Review of Books and The New Yorker. I have subscriptions to those, along with Harper's, and, if you think those are pretentious, ESPN Magazine. I enjoy Bill Simmons's columns, as well as Anthony Lane's movie reviews. David Denby can be too priggish for me to stomach at times, along with various professors from Princeton who fecklessly try to convince me of Toni Morrison's aesthetic attributes. But I digress.

One thing I discovered--a little late, admittedly--is the great AMC show Breaking Bad. I've seen Mad Men, and I can't get into it. It comes off (to me, at least) like a vapid period-piece of the advertising world of the 1960s. Breaking Bad takes place in the present, but this is not why I find it so compelling and, uh, addictive. The writing is pitch-perfect and the storytelling is not cloying. It doesn't demand your attention, but you find yourself drawn to it. Bryan Cranston (the dad from Malcolm in the Middle, in case you didn't know) plays a high school chemistry teacher stricken with incurable, advanced cancer. He, along with a 20-something kid who guides the distribution of the crystal-meth that they produce and amass, deals the drug beneath the attentions of his wife (Anna Gunn, who played Mrs. Bullock on Deadwood, my favorite show of all time), son, and brother-in-law, who happens to be a DEA agent. I've reached the end of the ongoing run, and look forward to watching its resumption coming up on Sunday.

I was also grateful for the release of the recent documentary of the Canadian tour of The White Stripes, Under Great White Northern Lights. It has a distinct Eat the Document (the unreleased film about Bob Dylan's 1966 tour of England) feel, without the Dada-istic digressions or someone--like John Lennon did--needed to temper the acerbic frontman. Jack White is gentlemanly and gracious, even to the nursing home residents who have no idea who he is. And he brotherly-ly watches over and guides Meg, the other half of the duo whose emotional tenuousness and fragility necessitated their subsequent, and currently unbroken, hiatus. Decry the shenanigans and the apocryphal "brother-sister" thing all you want, but it's obvious that he cares about her. The gentle way that he consoles her by putting his arm around her after playing a tender "White Moon" on a piano shows that he empathizes with her. The seamless way that she intuitively follows his leads on guitar with her drums shows that she does, too.

R

Oscar Picks (The Hurt Locker: Better Than Avatar (But It'll Lose))

I've seen both The Hurt Locker and Avatar twice, so I feel qualified to make this distinction. So, for that matter, are Inglourious Basterds (I always have trouble with the title, because I can spell) and A Simple Man, although both have won Oscars before, and I haven't seen Precious yet, but I assume it's as good as I've heard (& thus also better than Avatar too).

It's not that I dislike James Cameron's movie, even if it was a bit long. I enjoyed it and its technological innovations. Plus, I'm someone who has Terminator 2 on DVD (after I had it on VHS), so I'm quite receptive to anything James Cameron. The most recent blockbuster was entertaining, but there's no way it's better than a handful of the others.

This year's obscenely bloated ten nominees for Best Picture are all good, I assume, but there are ten. This year has twice the amount of usual prospective winners because, I think, the Academy is trying, nostalgically, to resume the long list of nominees of early years. I'm pretty sure this will be a one-year trial. Anyways, here are my picks that almost certainly won't be very accurate. I'm sticking to a rigid "Here's Who Will Win" versus "Here's Who I Think Should Win" because nobody cares.

Best Picture: Avatar.

Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow (she and ex-husband Cameron might swap awards for Picture and Director, but I'm sticking with this, for now).

Best Actor: Jeff Bridges (he's due, which I understand is a foolish way to pick winners, but whatever--this isn't the Emmys).

Best Actress: Sandra Bullock (Meryl Streep is nominated every year, it seems, and Helen Mirren--although I love her--has also been nominated before and won in the past).

Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz (almost a lock--damn he was great in Inglourious Basterds).

Best Supporting Actress: Mo'Nique (I'm told this is almost as inevitable. Plus I really want to hear her thank God first and, I hope, point to the sky like P. Diddy).

Screenplay (Adapted): Precious (again, I'm told it's good).

Screenplay (Original): Quentin Tarantino (he already won this for Pulp Fiction when Forrest Gump took home that year's Best Picture honor, maddeningly).

The others, like the ones for Cinematography and Editing, will probably go to Avatar. It deserves something more, and will win other technical shit against the others. I hope I'm wrong.

R

--6/8. Not bad...

Sometimes I wonder, "Who am I?"

That question is the title of a recent, great Lou Reed song. It came up recently when I used the Shuffle function on my iPod. It briefly threw me into an inevitable ontological examination. Then I turned it off when I saw that Rocky IV was on, and wanted to hear Apollo Creed's trainer/coach tell Balboa to "hit the one in the middle."

It's not like I was on the verge of a great metaphysical breakthrough. A moral inventory always degenerates into a litany of bad things and regrets. And like the song popularized by Frank Sinatra, I reach the same conclusion: "I've had a few/But then again, too few to mention."

Every so often, I look back on my former self and marvel. It's not a stance that connotes impressiveness; rather, I'm more often incredulous. I can't believe what I said or did, and this most recent, focused example is no exception. A few years ago, I made the observation that past actions look ludicrous after a while, and I acknowledged that I would probably come to disavow my mindset then.

I did, of course. After a year or so, I now think about certain actions and behaviors and can't begin to validate them. It's possible that MS has sped up the time of my recognition/identification of such epochs, but I think it's more of a natural development of age. When you're a teenager, such a realization might embryonically make sense, but the import does not crystallize. "Yeah, yeah," you might say dismissively, but you don't really grasp the concept.

I scoffed and was mildly insulted when an ex-girlfriend's sister made this observation a while back. It was imperfect, and more aimed at someone's youth comparatively. She was 23 or so, and I was 21 or 22. In fact, the accusatory, judgmental tone should be faced inward. (It would have been nice to have had this rejoinder, but I felt besieged since I was younger by more than a year. Plus, I was only 21 or so, and such modes of thinking were elusive.)

Simple age isn't enough to assert one's superior maturity (which of course sounds condescending and pedagogical). Numerous idiots with whom I was in rehab had stunted their personal growth with drugs and alcohol. They were stuck in the mindset that they had whenever they began their destructive abuse of whatever their preferred substance was. (Unfortunately, this was very young for my dad, who always seemed like an immature teenager to me. Not just a teenager, mind you--an IMMATURE one, which sounds redundant but, I assure you, is not.)

I wouldn't even know what to call myself now: Mach 5? At this point, such temporal divisions are impossible to count. Obviously that's not true, because I'm still in my 20s. The truth is, I'm lazy and don't want to count. Plus it'd probably be imperfect.

I acknowledged before (not here, until now) that I am an unreliable, imperfect voice (anyone who's seen me karaoke might say "No shit."). Never, of course, has this seemed more true. I've clearly said it before, but now I mean it more emphatically than ever: don't listen to me.

But do.

R