Is Ten Dollars Still Money?

When I go to see a movie on which I've worked or when I buy the DVD of that movie, should I feel good about supporting the endeavor on which I and my compatriots worked so hard or should I feel cheated because ours is one of the minority of industries that doesn't offer a discount to its employees when purchasing one of their own products?

Morning on Bald Mountain

From the summit of Stone Mountain one can clearly see the miasma of pollution that enshrouds Atlanta. A vomit colored ribbon hovers some fifteen hundred feet above the city, beginning, quite distinctly, above five points and continuing nearly fifteen miles into Sandy Springs.

I live only a mile from downtown Atlanta and the air is, by comparison to other metropolises, quite breathable, lacking the industrial city-stench so obvious in Manhattan, Chicago and London. Though, if I ever thought the air in the Phoenix city was clean, yesterday's hike divested me of that illusion.

A Breath in a High Wind.

If you want to be alone, the best time is between four and five a.m. on a Tuesday. All the night owls have gone to roost and all the morning folks (venomous creatures) are yet to stir. One can walk the long lengths of yellow lines on urban thoroughfares unmolested an unquestioned.

If you want to go unnoticed, the best time is between nine and ten a.m. on a Wednesday. Everyone you might wake has gone to their worthless sales of labor. Anyone you do wake can't care to care. The world that might give you credence has gone to ground and you're left with nothing but hard, hateful morning.

The Good, the Bad and the Fugly

I've been re-reading a number of the materials that I had first been through during film school, books, articles, reviews and academic analyses.

While much of it, probably a third, remains illuminating, most of it seems irrelevant when re-framed in the context of my professional rather than academic life. Moreover, the handful of books that have been most influential to me I discovered long after I had finished my time in university.

Mostly, I'm troubled by the critics', both academic and popular, hangups on the ephemeral ideals of 'good' versus 'bad' film making. This is a concept that I categorically reject. Film is simply too expansive, too complex, too collaborative and too polyglot a discipline for a work to simply be labeled 'good' or 'bad' or with any such attendant superlative of those words.

Evocative, boring, engaging, character driven, wordy, amateurish, frenetic, tightly composed, saccharine, anachronistic, confusing, artistically daring, intellectual, lyrical, depressing, low-brow, uneven, hackneyed, relevant, gut wrenching, colorful, languid, unique, senseless, entertaining, gory, ill-concieved and unwatchable: such words I will accept but 'good' and 'bad,' no.

Granted, in casual conversation, I'm fine with these words as a shorthand for 'I liked it / didn't like it (for any one of a myriad of reasons)' but critics and scholars, don't dare be so lazy.

The Only Show I Ever Really Watched.

I love The West Wing, love it, love it, love it.

Why do I love it?

Is it because it was nearly prescient in it's prediction of a minority president? Is it because it has some of the best acting in television history? Is it because, ideologically speaking, it's tantamount to liberal porn?

No, none of these things.

I love The West Wing because it is the only show I have ever watched to which I must pay active attention in order to keep up. It is the only program that engages my intellect at an aggressive pace. It is the only televisual hour that rises substantially above the fray of the vast wasteland.

Sadly, it's no longer on the air. I'll have to make due with DVD and Bravo.

Well, there is Jeopardy.

Coldplay Wrote a Song about a Tree on my Block

Yesterday I found myself sitting under a yellow tree. It's high autumn and this tiny tree, no more than fifteen feet high, trunk no thicker than a soda can, just an upright branch, was ablaze. As a small child, my bedroom was painted bright yellow but that color was dull, muted in retrospect. I've never before seen such a vibrant hue. It drew the eye from a block away, this radiant, electric, platonic yellow. Yellow had been, to my mind, a wimpy color but it is not so anylonger.

In the next few days, of course, the shade will darken, the leaves will fall to the ground and by this time next week that tree will be little more than a denuded twig but today, today it practically burned they eyes with its intensity. The neighboring trees with leaves of umber and vermilion must surely have been a jealous as trees can be.

More than the color of the tree though, I marvel at my own fascination. Why is it that we notice some things so distinctly on certain days when most of the world passes beneath our notice?

Smells Musty in Here

Due to a catastrophic computer failure, badassbard.com is down and will continue to be so for some time.

I've come back here to pontificate in the mean time.