Now Playing: Beck: Everybody's gotta learn sometime..
Topic: My mind's attic

Let's see: I do have a considerable amount of annoying habits and traits; a surplus, many would agree. Which, of course, float more readily to the surface now that I am getting older. I know, I know: my recent obsession with the age thing is just one of them. Still, consider the mental problematic of a man who has physically aged along with everyone else, acquaintances, strangers and friends. Yet mentally a retardation of time set in at an early age. It has always been a deficit of a few years, which has now grown into more than a decade and half.

Thus we will be talking or debating or arguing or joking: and in the middle of it all someone nearly always does a double-take. As if they saw me for the first time, without the rosy spectacles words and phrases can impose on listeners. Suddenly they count the lines and the weigh the gray fringes on the side. Aided perhaps by a reference to a different era they are confronted with the blunt truth. Few mustered the nerve, yet some have blurted it out, arresting the small talk around us.

That discrepancy also drives memories and their erasure. Some of it, naturally, is simple self-preservation. Our minds can hold on to only so much After which something has to give. I don't know if our capacity is really shrinking, or if it simply that preoccupations are rising as years go by. I just wish memory would talk to more detailed directions from us. So that I can forget not only the woman in the middle distance, with her butterfly glasses and those legs sticking out from under my sweater. And maybe remember someone else's name and face from way, way back when; maybe even instead of the lady silently mouthing the lyrics of a song that seemed to make her amazingly happy yesterday, on the subway. She has been stuck in a corner of my meandering mind like a commercial jingle.

What am I to do with her?

Here we are, or are we here..?
Now Playing: Jacques Brel: Le Burgoise
Topic: Rambling Rumminations

Sometimes even the Gray Old Lady, The New York Times, gets it right: While reading the first half of this here article I actually fell for the intended pun. I went to the site covered by the article and followed the blog. It seemed plausible, for a while. Maybe because the cam used is real, even if most everything else is not.

A the article points out correctly: the web is full of false identities - just go to any "social site" like Friendster. Few of the participants in these largely unscientific experiments are willing to face their own realities. Like on Second Life or Backwash, hyper-realities are created on a whim. Of course, the avatars and assumed identities do tell a tale about their originators; the desires play a prominent role when these alter-egos are created. My own foray into these worlds always faltered on my insistence on trying to remain grounded in who I am - after all, it took nearly six decades just to figure that one out. And I still cannot be sure of myself since perceptions of others, acquaintances and strangers alike, will differ vastly in their descriptions of the "real me".

Like the young woman on the train today: I had just returned from a lengthy and tiring trip and surely looked a fright. We were alone in the car, and the nervousness of her jumpy imagination filled the space between us. Hiding behind my rather dark sunglasses I could see her fear; after all, this is New York, and this is the underground. The poor woman: when I left the train at my stop, a far worse looking individual entered by the other door.

Or maybe that is just my mistaken perception; maybe with him around staring at her long, lithe legs will make her feel comfortable, and more real than my trying not to look at her. Who knows?

London, July 7th, 2005
Now Playing: Nothing but silence..
Topic: Politics, as usual..

Doesn't anyone think it strange that the attacks in London took place not only at the beginning of the G8 meeting, but at a time when President Bush is clearly losing support for his failed war in Iraq? Or that every radical Muslim grouping, including the ultra-violent Hammas condemned the attacks as soon as the news hit the Arab world?

It is ever so convenient for the survivors, especially the those with political agendas that could be side-tracked or derailed by the new-found focus on Africa, to lay this on the doorstep of Al-Queda. The problem, however, remains that - as with September 11, 2001, nobody has claimed responsibility for it. Which in the past has always been the hallmark of terrorists the world over, and has been earmarked in every terrorist handbook as the primary propaganda tool after a "successful" attack.

I am not trying to spout some arcane conspiracy theory here; the days for that type of nonsense is over. Rather this attack, like Nine-Eleven in New York City, was the work of very desperate and heinous people. This was not a suicide mission by a small band of radicals but cold-blooded murder of innocents by highly sophisticated criminals. Criminal elements equipped with technology and access on a scale that would be hard to obtain by fundamentalist movements, especially in London. The United Kingdom has far tighter controls concerning weapons and explosives than the US, where any schoolboy can obtain an assault rifle without breaking into much of a sweat.

My only hope is that these poor folks have not died in vain; that the men and women in the British Intelligence community will not follow the American example of ignoring their own findings; and that those investigators will be independent enough to resist the political pressure that is sure to oppose their search for the culprits behind this cowardly attack. Maybe this time we might actually learn the truth - instead of politically adjusted screams for yet another war!

The Fifth of the Fourth..
Now Playing: Aznavour: For me, formidable..
Topic: My mind's attic

The fireworks are over; the crowds, thick like the drifting smoke over the East River, disperse slowly. I am miles away, over in Brooklyn, but I know the picture: since now three years it is the same every Fourth of July, my fifth on this continent.

Unlike the preceding four years, I am doing much better now. There is less reason to complain, I am back in my metier. Well, almost at least. The air of the senseless drifter has grown thinner, it evaporates with the years. Still, home this is not, just like nowhere else has been home during these past six decades. A rootless, randomized existence someone called it recently; close enough a description, I concur.

And yet: the insidious canker called home-sickness still shows up on days like this. With no place to memorize, it calls for street corners or hilltops or beaches I once knew. The unwanted images creep in, displaying blurry silhouettes of people long scattered into other homes, safe from me and my inaccurate remembrances. Only one figure is clearly visible among the wavering cut-outs: sitting atop a make-shift stage table in an old, wooden house in Bangkok, wearing butterfly glasses and a long-lost sweater, she smiles at the camera with barely suppressed glee. For once she is the model, and - as it turned out - the best of them all, even if she never would have believed it.

No worries, tomorrow, or maybe the day after tomorrow, I'll be back. My grumpy old self still knows what it takes to survive: don't let the fantasies of yesteryear or of tomorrow sidetrack you from the only existence possible, the one which knows neither memories nor dreams.

War of the Worlds?
Now Playing: Supertramp - Breakfast in America
Topic: Grunts, rants, and others

It started off well enough: a "cosy" portrait of a typical, dysfunctional American family in Newark, NJ (never mind that the docks Cruise "works" at are in fact in Brooklyn). Two kids, a wise-ass, screaming Dakota Fanning, and a moronic teenage Justin Chatwin; one mom not old enough to have had them both; her new, SUV-equipped second husband, and the errant dad unable to cope with the kids for the weekend. It would have surely ended in disaster, except that daddy got lucky: the Martians intervened!

Right you are, you guessed it. I have gone, betrayed my instincts, and watched Steven Spielberg's "War of the Worlds". And to make a long story short: the special effects team could well earn an Oscar nomination for their untiring efforts trying to save what soon became a doomed movie. Everyone else involved in this abysmal venture, including Mr. Spielberg, should receive a two-year ban from the movie industry. Maybe then they will think before they "act" the next time around.

As I said, it really started off well enough. H.G. Wells' concept of the aliens has been splendidly updated; the introduction of the protagonists almost succeeded in making you forget all the negative propaganda that led most of tonight's visitors to the theater. And the first appearance of the Martians, whose ships were apparently buried beneath our world for eons, was a remarkable piece of digital special effects. But then the idiosyncrasies started to set in and from then on it was a downhill affair. Like: just after the magnetic storm caused by what appears at first to be 27 lightening strikes into the same spot knocks out all the cars, power supply, cellphones and even watches, Cruise & film family promptly find the only car still working. One that obviously never needs gas, despite being a van that at best of times only gets about fifteen miles per gallon.

It goes on like that. Mr. Cruise manages to knock out the huge alien ships with less than a handful of hand grenades. Ms. Fanning, naturally, never learns her lesson(s) and constantly wanders off, runs off, and is generally off, in a wide-eyed still reminiscent of the cheesy "bug-eye" postcards that Hallmark used to sell.

The nearly packed midnight audience mostly laughed throughout the movie. American theater crowds are strangely participative, and this one literally exploded with four-letter expletives when - with most of the Eastern Seaboard destroyed - the aliens miraculously missed the Boston neighborhood where the ex-wife, new hubby, and her parents appeared on a stoop, obviously unruffled by the world-wide catastrophic events.

In summation it is clear that Byron Haskin's 1953 version, starring Gene Berry and set in small town USA, was clearly more believable and better acted for a tenth of the cost. And that neither film even comes close to to Orson Wells' 1937 radio broadcast that cause real-life panic among the far less jaded listeners of the New Deal era.

Batman Ends..
Now Playing: U2: Sunday, Bloody Sunday
Topic: Grunts, rants, and others

With Batman there is always hope. Well, at least the hope that with this "Batman Begins" it all finally ends. Having just seen it I must conclude that even actors such as Michael Cain, Liam Neeson, and Morgan Friedman have a need to fill the coffers with easy loot now and then. Why else would they agree to sprout platitudes and other horrid script lines besides such shallow entities as Kate Holmes and Christian Bale?

Mostly the movie consists of really bad dialog, confounded by mediocre cinematography. Although not alone in the category of "Let's make money at all costs", it clearly is among its leading examples. Hollywood has been moaning a lot lately about lost ticket sales and dwindling audiences, especially when compared to previous years. The obvious answers - create better movies, check out what went right then as compared to what is wrong now - are seemingly not options for this generation of movie moguls. Instead, they grasp at straws and publicity stunts. Nothing new there, except perhaps the freneticism with which those old tools are reinvented. When it became clear the Mr. Spielberg's presence on War of the Worlds was not enough to save the film from the critics, Mr. Cruise quickly - and literally - jumped into the breach, creating enough public noise for both himself and his current sweetheart, Ms. Holmes. Obviously Hollywood's managers learned the Jolie-Pitt lesson quickly.

Clearly the movie summer will dwindle away without producing any real hits (in the old-fashioned sense of movie block busters). Until now only one category of movies has produced enough entertainment value to make going to the theaters an enjoyable experience: the animated features. Maybe the Hollywood big shots need to watch features like the recent Madagascar; maybe then they would learn that creating exiting and enjoyable content does not require stars jumping down everyone's throat (or sofa's, for that matter).

Cruise, Dakota, and other aliens..
Now Playing: Queen: Bohemian Rapsodie
Topic: Rambling Rumminations

When Orson Welles broadcasted his (almost) namesake's classic War of the Worlds on October 30th, 1938, he caused New Jersey residents to flee their homes en masse. Despite the inclusion of disclaimers, that it was all just fiction, the folks in New York's bracken backwaters actually believed the actor's rendition of Martians terrorizing the state.

Not to worry - it won't happen this time around. The only possibility of a stampede following Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg's version of the same story would come about as a result of simply too much bad acting. Mr. Cruise, paired up with another midget thespian, Dakota Fanning, has largely survived the last decade because of his undeniably good looks (at least where the face is concerned - there isn't much of a body!), and because there simply isn't much in terms of competition in the leading young men category these days.

Lately, however, his public antics about Ms. Holmes and the Scientologist Body-snatchers, are beginning to erode what ever goodwill his besotted fans have left. Who knows? Maybe this utterly forgettable mis-adaptation of a movie will be the start of a movie era without Cruise-control! My only regret would be: why hasn't this happened sooner.

Meanwhile, over in the Jolie Pitts of domestic violence-oriented movies, Mr. and Mrs. Smith duke it out in true American fashion: guns blazing! It could have been a lot worse. Although the movie owes its box office success more because of domestic dramas off the set, it wasn't half bad. The camp acting by both stars ensures that nobody but the densest imbecile from Wisconsin would take it as anything else than a farce. And as such it has a quite a few laughs, if you can overlook the regrettable inclusion of Vince Vaughn, who - unfortunately - did not get shot in the first scene of the movie.

Summertime, and the living is..
Now Playing: PR's Esquire Album: Sarah
Topic: Grunts, rants, and others

Sometimes, even a Methuselah like myself can still get distracted by a temporary image of perfection - and the ultimate destruction thereof. Naturally I am talking about a woman - what other type of perfection is there?

It happened today, on the F-Train, the orange line that wiggles from my working domus in Brooklyn to the relaxation (or aggravation) that is Manhattan. She wasn't young anymore; I would have probably not wasted any thought on one of those fleeting, pubescent phantoms that the current clothing trends impose on the general public. No, she was a woman of substance, most likely older than her nearly flawless skin allowed for. Skinny but superbly shapely legs, neatly folded in the old-fashioned, angled way. A tempered blue suit ensemble: medium length skirt following the Hedburn curvature, from her thighs to her hips; an open, untrimmed jacket continuing the travels to accentuate her certifiably perfectly rounded breasts covered by a nondescript, off-white cotton top closed around the neck.

The seemingly too young skin added a subtle glow to a face fringed by a deceptively straight-forward haircut of blonde and brunette streaks curving from a center part around the high cheek bones to her even chin. Not too much make-up to distract from the frosty blue eyes. Both the two worn briefcases and the intent with which those eyes followed some arcane article in the business section of the NY Times spoke of the Brooklyn Heights, or the again Yuppies' Park Slope section; destined for a mid-town office. As did the understated jewelry. My uncouth assessment of her may not spell perfection to any one but myself; it does not matter, because such distributive voyeur democracy is not my goal in telling this incident. Merely it preambles its ultimate destruction - at her own hands no less.

My perspective of women has always started at the shoes, slowly winding its way up to the crowning diadem of eyes and hair. I try to give all aspects equal time, unless some characteristic flaw aborts the undertaking early. Not today, not immediately at least. I enjoyed the bliss while it lasted, much like an art aficionado enjoys a long lost painting or sculpture by his or her favorite artist.

I doubt she noticed my observations; instead, a few moments before we rolled into 34th Street station, she folded her newspaper and presented the world with a full view of her face: beautiful jaws moving with the intensity of a maelstrom, now gaping open like the tunnels of the subway, now clenched in the horrible mastication of chewing gum.

Call me prissy, call me anything - but at that moment the reduction of her image to a mere New Yorker felt like a desecration, like Rembrandt pouring tar onto the Night Watch.

And then she was gone. As was the morning.

An old love returns..
Topic: My mind's attic

Twenty years is a long time, even for a life as varied as mine. Seeing an old flame after two decades again can be a shock to one's system, and this meeting - while expected, even planned - was no different. Obviously my age showed more than hers; she had gained a little weight, befitting for her years, but the former sleekness and near casual elegance was still there: when I held here it almost seemed as if time had never intervened.

Not surprisingly she had become more complex over the years. Her easy-going ways were gone, replaced by a desire to be everything to everybody. In that she simply had followed the times: they all did it, old and new, old flames as well as new loves. You simply have to accept it, come to terms with it, learn the new ways - as hard as it can be.

In that respect the Nikon D1X, however, seems to be in a class of her own. Then - twenty odd years ago - she was simply called the F2, a couple a dials crowning the trim, black body, and she snug into your hands as if she was just another appendage. Simplicity was the name of the game in those, demanding of everyone to know the rules and concepts from the ground up. Those who tried to short-cut their way into that partnership between you and the camera found nothing but frustration at the processing lab.

Nowadays, of course there is no lab, except perhaps for a handful of die-hard purists. Here and now, all you need is cash: the world of mega-pixels is your oyster. Shoot, discard, try again. Eventually even the most moronic amateur will get lucky, the glut of digital images bloating the Internet is ample proof of that.

Still, yesterday's reunion felt like the old days. Once we were reacquainted, once I had acknowledged her technical superiority, my Nikon and I quickly became an item again.

Some love affairs are simply destined to last forever.

Is it over? Yes?!
Now Playing: Pink Floyd: Dark Side of the Moon
Topic: Grunts, rants, and others

"To the Dark Side he has gone" - George Lucas that is. Judging by the ooh's and aah's the press has unilaterally showered on Master Lucas' final installment of the Star Wars series, I may well be the one dissenting voice. Not that I would be so presumptuous as to include my meagre efforts here with the mainstream opinion makers, but I find it somewhat disconcerting that my own take of the second (first?) trilogy is diametrically opposed of the public reviews. Am I really the only one who liked The Phantom Menace, and who thought Jar-Jar Binks was funny (and largely stole the movie from the, ahem, actors?

Maybe there is something to the New York Times' view that Star Wars was never about acting. But I cannot quite swallow that; just look at the original trilogy's line-up: Sir Alec Guinness, Harrison Ford, Peter Cushing, Carrie Fisher, and - yes - Mark Hamill. James Earl Jones (who definitely has gone over to the dark side of Verizon) voiced Lord Vader.

Then Lucas made us believe all the pyrotechnics because they were the thick icing on a cake of real human drama, enacted by thespians of considerable stature and a supporting cast of experts. Now he wants us to swallow the poor showing of actors by smothering them in fantastic layer after layer of computer pyrotechnics.

Granted, the visuals were all spectacular, in each and everyone of the six movies. But to watch Hayden Christensen drone out pomposity after pomposity, starring into the camera with about as much conviction as third grader doing his first school-play, that was simply too much. The other's are not much better. Ms. Portman has shown elsewhere that she can indeed act. Lumbered with an absolutely boorish script, none of the performers really stand a chance. Not even Ian McDiarmid as the Senator cum Emperor, and his is the fleshiest part of the lot. Only one character has remained true to the original: Yoda, as brought to life by the inimitable Frank Oz.

And yet, see it you must. If only to find closure after watching three decades of the slow murder of a good idea by its originator.