Made up words you may hear in a made up hospital.

1. Vabdocythe
2. Tetrogesic
3. Eptictractle
4. Frazplectography
5. Nambic

Doctor: Good day, Jerome. Please take a seat. I have just received the results from Frazplectography. I'm afraid I have bad news.
Jerome: It isn't....
Doctor: Unfortunately... yes. A Vabdocythe, just as I feared.
Jerome: Dear god. Is it... is it tetrogesic?
Doctor: Luckly, not yet. I should be able to remove it. Nurse, the Eptictractle.
Nurse. Yes doctor.
Jerome: Will this hurt?
Doctor: Just a pinch. If you'd like, I'll give you a Nambic.
Jerome: No. I think I want to tough this one out.
Doctor: There's a good soldier.

Summer Finally Arrives

Summer fun had been at a dismal low. It began with promise. Then I became one of the only four people on the planet who had anything bad to say about Iron Man. My problem with it were that it was painfully slow. So slow that when the action did kick in (which I admit, looked gorgeous) it was unable to shake me from my coma. The movie had basically been given an enormous handjob by critics and fans alike for simply containing character development, never you mind if the character development was interesting or well done. Superhero films sort of devolved into a retarded mutant stepson of the greater medium of film altogether. We don't cream our pants when a Kate Hudson/Matthew McConaughey picture contains character development and an intelligible storyline, we get excited about films when they're riveting, when they're outstanding. To give a movie slack for having a comic book as its source material is like just accepting it when the waiter brings you chicken Kiev instead of the Fillet Mignon that you ordered. Especially when you refuse to admit that the chicken Kiev is under cooked.

Then came Indiana Jones and The Longest Title Ever Created By George Lucas Who I Am Now Positive Has Lost Any Sense of What Film Making and Story Telling Actually Is. I didn't like that one too much either. In fact, it made me sad. Why does George keep murdering the things I love... I don't know.

But I don't want to talk about disappointments. That's a whole other post - I still have to get my thoughts on the production of Tommy I saw where the entire audience was wearing headphones. No, I'm going to talk about four nights in a row of excellence.

Friday 18th: Patton Oswalt at the Irvine Improv. This is the funniest man doing comedy. The way he grabed the audience by the throat and forced us to look deep into the insanity of our lives has not been done since Bill Hicks. With George Carlin recently gone, we need more comedians who are brains-funny not anus-funny, otherwise... Dane Cook, folks. Take a look at this commencement address Patton delivered a few weeks ago at his old high school.

Saturday 19th: Townland at Visualaid in Long Beach. Townland. First off $5 for admission and you get a free cd. These guys have nothing but class. This was my second Townland show and once again I felt that there was no better place to be in Los Angeles that night than sitting comfortably on a hay bale and drinking a Tecate. The music is beautiful, truly the finest in prairie pop - a term I think they coined, but what else are you going to call it? - Matt Gourley's lyrics are so sweet and playful that when they turn around and kick your ass you feel like you've been playing with a kitten that morphed into a rattler. You can hear the tunes on their myspace and also take a look at the dates of their pacific coastline tour.

Sunday 20th: The Dark Knight. Hey Iron Man, look character development. I don't know why no one has attempted this before, make a comic book film that occurs in the real world. Shoot it as if it were a film and not a joke. Let the horrific crimes perpetrated by the villains actually penetrate the audience and give the hero gravity. My expectations for this movie were enormous, the Dark Knight blew them away.

Monday 21st: I went to see Tim Hick's film The Aphrikan as part of the New York Independent Film and Video Festival. This 37 minute horror film was an actual horror film, something I haven't seen in theaters... well, ever. The kind of horror you can only find in the spiderwebby section of super-dense video stores, probably on VHS. I don't really know terribly much about horror, but I do know that The Aphrikan is what wussified Hollywood horror films dream they were in their most wonderful nightmares. There was no cheese, no cheap gimmicks, no remorse. Bravo Tim.

So thats about it. Hopefully this string of goodness does not run out. I'm looking forward to three Radiohead shows in August, hopefully I'll find something to bridge the gap.

The Benevolent Fly Catcher

I've found that I'm spending an awfully large amount of time attempting to capture flies. I wouldn't go as far as saying my house is infested, I wouldn't even say that I have "a fly problem." There are three of them. Far as I know. I guess one of the main issues is the fact that I don't want to kill them. I have no problem with these flies being alive, you see, I'd just prefer them to be alive somewhere else. Strangely, I would not mind one bit if my cats saw it fit to kill the buggers, circle of life and everything, but they're pretty busy sleeping in the sun all day, occasionally taking a lazy swat whenever one of those tiny black dots chances to drift toward their paws...

So its up to me. I came to my non-violence stance by way of committing a grisly murder. I had been cleaning some mysterious gunk off my kitchen counter with Windex and some environmentally-friendly-stiff-as-a-board-not-particularly-absorbent paper towels, when a fly buzzed so close to my ear I began wondering what the LAPD helicopter was doing in my living room. It landed on the window directly in front of me, basically saying, " 'Scuse me, if it wouldn't be too much trouble, if you don't mind, that is, would you please MURDER ME?" I was more than happy to oblige. I have to admit that some kind of killer instinct took over, a remnant of my mammoth hunting days in some previous incarnation. Before I realized what I was doing, the Windex bottle was squirting bubbly streams of liquid on the fly. My fingers pulsed on the trigger. I was an assassin with no fear of repercussion, karmically or otherwise. The plague of conscience was creeping up on me, but if Jiminy Cricket showed up then I probably would have capped him too just to have one less witness. I picked the poisoned, paralysed fly off the window with another paper towel, went outside and deposited the carcass in the dumpster behind my building (which I think may be a breeding ground for flies).

I have since killed only one more, attempting to trap him in an empty can of black beans and set him free outside, I instead crushed the poor bastard with the side of the tin. I've caught and released two, they seemed happy to be back in the wide world, I felt good for giving them the chance. The other flies are wily. They seem to fear freedom. Perhaps my home is all they've ever known. Maybe they even love this place and feel that it is theirs. Regardless, they elude my bean can, and with each buzz that wakes me in strange, purple hours of the morning, my fingers itch once again for the trigger.

Exploding the Lady

there are wolves on the moon, too
howling at the earth

In Memory of Kurt Vonnegut

the quiet wraith figure you pass midnight on a highway as you’re driving south, crossland, out one jungle into another, he smiles back and waves and maybe you’re lucky enough to catch it. the juggler, the shepard, the king’s handyman, mocked, pushed aside, how they fell on their knees pressing their palms together, pressing through skin to bone on bone salvation, no more mystic floating spirits, but the true touch, fingering your main cables: the pulmonary artery, the spinal chord, seminal vesicle. watch his heart beat, age, stop, watch his glasses thicken, hair grow wilder in neglect. so it goes, so he said.
the human story, an ants story. a grain of sand. excruciating and simple. life is rotten, leaders lie, the good struggle and die, everyone is moved by kindness, everyone desires love, lives to laugh, but moves too quickly to really enjoy a cup of lemonade and a sunset. the complexity of a Charleston Chew is lost. so much for wine and cake and humility. so gone are lovers. so driven are we while our feet swell and heels ache from wearing pretty shoes…
a great man is dead and he’s left us everything he thought, all he learned in 84 years as a person in 14 novels, countless short stories and drafts. when you think of Kurt Vonnegut do you think of the man, weathered and humor filled jowls, beagle eyes and all or do you think of hundreds of pages, pounds and gallons of ink splashed insights, screaming V emblazoned book jackets lining your shelves, each one stained with his conciousness, a life experience purchasable in bookshops and airport kiosks, the man the flesh body, the man the paperback, one looses breath and blood flow the other gains speed.