Lisa: Don't forget ,Dad, tonight my class
is having an all-you-can-eat spaghetti dinner.
Homer: Mmm...spaghetti.
Mr. Burns: But Homer, tonight's our meeting
for Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands.
Homer: DOH! I hate having two heads!
treehouse of horror II episode 'the simpsons'
............................................................
Bobby wasn’t high like the night before,but he was using his hippy voice nonetheless, after we were drawn along in the crowd that swarmed out of a showing of Day of the Locusts, utterly shellshocked by the power of Cinema.
“Man, that is the sickest fuckin’ movie I have ever seen.” He has seen many movies at his Maine arthouse cinema, with my dear sister S. It is currently hosting the Maine International Film Festival, and if you deem yourself cool at all, get there tomorrow, if not sooner, for that is where the coolest people in Creation hang out.
Maine International Film Festival 15: 2012
I was amazed by his response. Of course he loved the movie, deemed it a masterpiece, but he added only this to his usually prolific film criticism (think of Ebert on medical mary jane): “Some movies you cahnt say a damn thing about….except it was the darkest fucking vision of humanity I have ever seen.”
He is 73, Massachusetts born & bred, and landed in my social worker sister S’s life about 15 yrs ago, after a stint in the Peace Corps in South Africa, drawing maps for native schools. He has considerable artistic skills. Verbal and visual.
Biggest fish in a small pond, he is, and prefers it that way. He will die leaving nothing to the world except rumors. Folk legends, maybe. I understand now how that type of thing is possible…
~
“At college, and perhaps for a year afterwards, they had believed in literature, had believed in Beauty and in personal expression as an absolute end. When they lost this belief, they lost everything.”
― Nathanael West, Miss Lonelyhearts
.................................................................
“Bob, you wanna leave no footprints, right?” I said, hyped up on coffee that morning.
I had remembered a conversation with him last year, where he said that.
‘’Yeaah, Jimmy, “ he said in that gentle brotherly avuncular paternalistic accent, “the Buddhists say…”
Etc. He’d said it last year. I suffered through it a second time, but this year enjoyed it. Didn’t want to jump in and tell him he was repetitive, or that I get it for fucksake. Nothing to prove anymore. I entertained visions of me as his acolyte of sorts: a monstrous thing indeed, just the thing, I thought , for the way things are. A turtle, I, slithering uncomfortably toward Nazareth.
So I am betraying this somewhat proud Luddite by immortalizing him…
Who cares. I am indifferent to his personal needs. I see a need for the world to discover my brother bobby.
Enough said.
As my father said.
~
(gossip: bobby sat right next to karen one time and was utterly starstruck cuz he had/has a huge crush on her)
My reaction to Day of the Locusts?
(1975 released by Paramount Pictures and directed by John Schlesinger.
The film starred William Atherton as Tod Hackett,Donald Sutherland as Homer Simpson,
Burgess Meredith as Harry Greener, and Karen Black as Faye Greener.”
Utterly brilliant in a way perhaps no longer possible.
Entertaining in a slapstick psychological-horror mode.
We are too numb to that.
I know i was. Am..
I could only weep at its artistic beauty....
~
Ok here is what happened. From my perspective…
~
Look, I knew it first was a novel by Nathaniel West, a great American writer whose career was cut short in an oddly perverse way: married in April 1940 , dead in a car crash with his new bride in December 1940.
I knew Bob had just read it. Just serendipity, he didn’t know the movie was gonna be shown…
~
This guy, West?
Auden said nice things about him.
“ W.H. Auden, … declared .. that West's novels were essentially "parables about a Kingdom of Hell whose ruler is not so much a Father of Lies as a Father of Wishes".
.............................
Indeed. Well said, WH.
The film ends in an apocalyptic fury of fire & a swarming murderous humanity carrying the dead or dying body of a , yes, ‘Homer Simpson’, while a Hollywood premiere event is being narrated on microphone & radio to the world…
( The Simpsons ) creator Matt Groening named his most famous character, Homer Simpson, said in several interviews given in 1990 he named the character after the Homer in this novel )
Homer killed a child by stomping her to death.
He, and our hero, Tod, a young Hollywood up & comer, had been stomped plenty good by Faye, aka Karen Black.
Male violence simmered to a boiling point in countless awful scenes: an attempted rape, a cock fight, and a mad jealous brawl among the lady’s suitors…this was a woman every man wanted, who wanted no particular man, if you follow my crude characterization. Karen Black…
The real Karen Black was two feet from me, a seventy something woman of anorexic frame, recovering from cancer, and as Bobby said, “loose of mind”. She was being honored, and had to do q & a’s after her movies. She was magnificent. She said, "filmmakers don't care the way they used to, and dont make you care. i mean , who cares if the guy..whats his name...is ok at the end of the Descendants?"
It was odd lusting after her screen image, marveling the raw feminine beast she unleashed therupon, and watching her squirming to get comfortable in the front row seats, sipping a water, hunched down, hidden ….
~
Bobby couldn’t be entreated to expand upon his initial reaction, which was almost unheard of! Bobby is the guy to come to , to find out if a film is worth seeing, or to hear pontificate in perfect Queen’s English (with an Irish twist, ay!) upon the merits of anything he saw. Or to argue with him: a fate worse than female emasculation, I gotta warn you, boys…this postmodern Thoreau is no boyo to fuck with in any way.
“He felt as though his heart were a bomb, a complicated bomb that would result in a simple explosion, wrecking the world without rocking it.”
― Nathanael West,~
“I suppose you love Thoreau, yah?” I baited him.
“Yes I do.”
“I prefer Emerson, as you know.”
He would chuckle, and say, “As you prefer Whitehead and I, Russell, yes? “
Such gentleness in this man when unencumbered by either male or female trickery . I have always tried to teach him, in my mean vulgar foolish young man way. Not the way to go, I learned….i got my balls handed respectfully crushed back , if I attempted. So this time I said, wtf, I suppose this old boy got a lot to teach me since he has read more than I could in three lifetimes…might as well feed off his head….
A moveable feast, this old fucker’s mind. Also his cooking. He knows how to cook good vegan stuff, shit so good that your stomach sits up and says, now that is the thing. Your bowels ? His food is granted safe passage.
So I played sideman.
Teased him plenty. He loves that best, that old lion. I wonder if he has ever been lovingly teased….?
~
“jimmy, Thoreau did, Emerson wrote about it.”
~
Yeah well Bob, I cannot go out and about in “disguise” as you say you like to. I got a new hat at the beginning of this adventure, a straw hat that Bobby said made me look as if I “raise sugar cane south of the border” or belongs on “a riverboat gambler”.
Then today my dear sister L. , who met S . halfway to ferry me home, bought me another hat.
I got two nice hats now, but disguise is just fucking impossible so why even try…
“But whether he was happy or not was hard to say. Probably he was neither, just as a plant is neither.”
― Nathanael West
...........................
re women, here is my adult attitude, for now.....
bob dylan:
"it was raining from the first /i was dying of thirst /so i came in here/but yer long time curse hurts/& whats worse is /
the pain in here"
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Comments
Nice teeth. Is that your new hat?
we will never know, unless by synchronicity it comes up,
and even then we gotta shrug and say, ''well, what a coincidence"
or "how meaningful" or "wow, shit man can you believe it?"
all is nestled safely in the chaos of karma.
we know now that chaos is a misnomer. there is no randomness
on the material level. subatomically is a Sea of twinkling possibility.
Subatomically maybe we got a parallel universe multiverse going.
as wm james might say, it aint a block universe,
in misunderstanding of hegel, who said,
history is a slaughterbench sure
but god dammit it means something..i dunno what..
i say, keep yer ear to the ground.
play it by ear.
play it straight if that is what is called for.
but create chaotic well ruled bubble universes if ya can
where as dylan said,
"i accept chaos, i dunno if it accepts me"
seems to have. he is rich and venerable and rich.
matt, i addressed that old beard's concerns above, so, as they say,
see above.
i cant see above anymore. above sinks into
my situation quite nicely
as i psychologically
mine or
shit out
the
past.
shit can smell sweet. like to a farmer.
lunatic bipolar who
dips into books
looking for whatever he needs to bolster his
1.ego (huge)
or
2.soul ( in common, yet unique, soul stuff,oversoul stuff per emerson)
or
3. spirit (that of which i am, and shall always be, even after i am not)
it is a cool tableau of talk, often, but sister S is there, alas
to shut us
down
good
and
hard.
why, i dunno. we eat. we sleep.
http://open.salon.com/blog/fernsy/2012/07/14/ihowl-_with_apologies_to_allan_ginsburg
The Simpsons, on the other hand, is a great show that pays many a homage to Hollywood. My favorite was the homage to "Psycho".
Karen Black - if you have never seen "Rhinoceros", you MUST! Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder and Karen black. Need I say more.
Your post, BTW, is like Locusts-I have to keep re-reading it to figure out what it is all about.
so to speak. he FERNSY, cannot lead a
young man wrong:
like
“Her sureness was based on the power to limit experience arbitrarily.”
i say: HIS TOO, g dammit. why not.
“Feeling is of the heart and nerves and the crudeness of its expression has nothing to do with its intensity.”
true. i am so crude right now i ought to be
flagged and found guilty of something
or another.
that is how men go thru life, by the way:
sentenced to death, hoping for
royal reprieve.
so what.
so f-ing what.
1. boo hoo i shall never be understood, deep down, and so why f-ing try. be an actor on the stage.
2. shit! someone f-ing understands me! goddamn him or her or me. i hear voices telling me i am on unstable ground. i gotta elevate. i say, hey sure. i go along to get along. smile in the face of insanity as u climb the ethereal spiral staircase,
knowing yer acting gets put
in a reality show for all
to see, and still
you
better keep going...
on and on..endless play of shadows in plato's cave,
yet also unchained
and blind
as a bat
in the sun
we boys.
in multiple directions chasing something that is embedded
like the stone flanks of the sphinx
or the towers of easter island
or stonehenge..
rather hard to understand, yes, eh?
well it has to do with, uh, the movements of the Sun.
that is what.
also glad to convey some kind of meaning & importance to you,
however fleeting it may be. re reading it, i find it to be
well worth my effort, but i would hate like hell
to explain anything i wrote, unless i was
in a cool expansive mood, well loved
for now...like i am at this moment..
it is a love poem to bobby
and S. and L.
it is a thing they will never ever see... i hope...
i dont care anymore.
indifference? underrated.
the next whim takes me to its center, and i eat it and i
say, with dylan
"ok i have had enough /what else ya got to show me"
(it's alright ma, i'm only bleeding)
etc. blah blah and ha ha and always :)
honestly, the people you meet;
there is no end of material for the actor;
note: are you good tired?
revolving,
ume
i am beyond tired...i was up at 4.30 am for chrissakes.
i am now, what, 16 plus hours awake.
i usually prefer 16 hrs asleep.
that is my way. to dream .
i say, i am revolving so fast i am a bit dizzy,
like a blonde.
ha.
i wish no insult to blondes.
nor to wimmin. or even to animals.
like f-ing georgie puppy, who i gotta baby sit starting tomorrow.
for a week. ay.
he said, 'you still coming, uncle?"
i say, "of course. i love you"
he: "we shall see the limits of your love for dumb stupid beasts like me who gotta be walked while you are choking me."
i: "that is my situation, george.'
he: "how so?"
I: "i am weary of bone and sinew, old boy. i gotta rest up. i have no idea of my inadequacies until i dream them or a woman tells me them or my conscience does. "
him:"Oh ok. my sinews dont talk, but my momma does. so does new guy. i have a hint of a conscience, maybe. is that good?"
"nope we gotta destroy it ."
"will it hurt?"
"no it will be like shitting out yer momma's thong underwear."
"oops. "
"yeah we all know about that"
etc
to the east over Idaho but second to that
i've been thinking about you, wondering what piece
of writing you were coming back with from Maine
(i didn't catch the town). I hope alot develops.
There is material to be had in traveling. But don't
ask me for anything recent. I don't travel.
Anyway we are hemmed in by flash floods
and slides. Freaking thunderstorms!
Good with a jug.
from maine, a tempered piece.
tempered steel, or something close, maybe, i dunno.
the town of the festival is waterville, water ville.
a river is around not far away, as is colby college.
i am sorry to hear of yer ecological and existential distress.
if the latter applies, which i doubt.
ecologically we are in for some fun.
environmentally ? we are fucked hard and put away wet.
ha. oh . shut up.
idaho like maine is fulla mr potato heads i speculate
with no proof. i came back from maine with fire in the belly, yo!
no, not really. fire in the belly of the very brain, wherever that is.
limbic? i doubt it. i am not a lizard, and that is for sure.
mammalian? nah no warmth. just light without heat.
neo cortex i dunno. maybe
i am afire with the thought i am not a goddamn freak cuz
my sisters love me . nice, but not profitable. ay. i am a
capitalist.
(ume does)
well, now!
(curtain goes down on another sillyass day)
the ones ruunin' around in the wilderness;
no find at walden pond;
jesus move his stable
to Latah
you put him to bed Art,
com'n, you in bed already?
it's a party phone
there's certain obligations you know
no matter time of day
(landmark film: On The Beach)
ready for a poison twinkie?
i wouldn't, still more shots out there.
Homer and the whole Simpsons family, are like a next door neighbour to me. So, I am so glad for your travel, but for your title, I simply, can not believe, that this man, who said these and more, is gone..
" Homer: Bart, with $10,000 we’d be millionaires! We could buy all kinds of useful things like…love!
You know, the one with all the well meaning rules that don’t work out in real life, uh, Christianity.
I am not normally not a praying man, but if you're up there, please save me Superman.
Son, if you really want something in this life, you have to work for it. Now quiet! They're about to announce the lottery numbers.
Maybe, just once, someone will call me 'Sir' without adding, 'You're making a scene.'
Marge, don't discourage the boy! Weaseling out of things is important to learn. It's what separates us from the animals! Except the weasel.
When will I learn? The answer to life's problems aren't at the bottom of a bottle, they're on TV! .."