Syndechoe, Go Lucky

Hello Dear Reader,

I want to compare two films I viewed recently--Syndechoe New York (SNY) and Happy Go Lucky (HGL).

I'm not going to spend anytime explaining the plot of the movies, for sake of brevity. I will just jump in with the assumption that my fictitious readers of my blog have seen the movies.

On the surface, these films have very little in common. One is a romp about an extremely jubilant personality who lifts herself and others out of the humdrum routine of life and treats every moment as one of adventure, whereas the other is about a man who wallows in self-misery and spends his life analyzing every inch of his being and his existensial suffering over mortality, loneliness, and the whole range of human emotions and cruel randomness of life.

The Universe's also seem different, as HGL is shot in a realistic way with a realistic backdrop, where SNY is as surreal as Bunuel with many elements (the house on fire, the diary etc.)

One film you leave with a smile on your face, the other you leave with a hole in your soul.

Strangely enough, I feel that the two films are of the same coin. I think they are, in fact, grounded in the same universe and are living in the same narrative. This is a cold and uncaring world with no discernible meaning. There is no abstract 'good' to help people through their daily struggles. Instead, randomness and loneliness are the true engines of this world. It is up to individual people to deal with the heart ache and the day-to-day grind of living the same monotonous routine until you die.

In HGL, the protagonist's quest is to bring happiness or laughter to everybody she meets. Sure, it's still a world where child abuse, racism and violence is lurking, but she stands up to this Universe with a smile and fights it. She fights by listening to the homeless, by being light with her friends, by making a broken down clerk smile, by being warm in a frigid, arbitrary world.

In SNY, there is still this world of cancer, loneliness, death, abuse, but here we have a protagonist that doesn't have the strength or know how to stand up to it. Smiling and laughing are not options for Hayden. Instead, he takes his pain, his lonely, his sickly health and puts it on a pedestal. He creates an identity through his loss and through the cruelty of the world around him, and still this isn't enough. He fervently analyzes his life and transfers his pain into art. The only problem is how this does not help him cope. If anything it exasperates his situation, as he has to live his painful moments over and over as his actor makes the same mistakes he just did. Is there any redemption? Not really. The speech by the priest which ends with "Fuck everybody" is as close to catharsis as we get, but there are little moments in the film where we see Hayden in quiet moments where he actually connects with somebody. These are very few, but they show glimpses of hope that life can be more than a soul tearing, quotidian routine of life. And it also examines the pain artists must go through to create something real.

The similarities are evident--both worlds are arbitrary, cold and meaningless; humans ultimately ascribe meaning to the life they are born into. This fundamental choice is what shapes the living narrative and experiences of all our individual worlds. It really is the only choice we have control over: how to act in an unkind world. Crucially, the scenes of joy in these films are ones where in understanding between people is reached and islands unite to form a continent of human warmth that is as important as it is ultimately fleeting.

politico mystico

Let's take another look at that cloudy orb that you call my ball and I call my invisible third eye, but that would insinuate that you couldn't see me conjure to life my unconscious thoughts, which are actually conscious and about to be hurled at you, like Kane hurled his snow globe on his death bed (floor) before his most famous and fictional death which brought us the best movie of the 20th century, which was the only full century of cinema, even though it wasn't really full since the first narrative full length film was shot after 1900. Without further ado, let's look into my glassy ball and see what the future will look like in less than two weeks!

Here goes: the polling will tighten a little bit. How much? I'd say Obama will enter the 4th with a 3-4% lead in terms of the poll of polls. What does this mean? Well, it means that McCain will need to get out the vote and suppress the vote (Diebold and old-fashioned racism at the polls, which we would like to think are anachronistic, but are timeless--instead of gold hazed days of the poll test, we have the house test, the ID test, the "Oh, I'm sorry you're house was foreclosed, but your ID still doesn't match the registration and where you are living now, negro). It is very possible that McCain and Diebold and the crazy people have enough power to tilt the scales in 2-3 states. This is why Gore and Kerry lost: there paths to the nomination lied in 3 states. These were Penn, Ohio and Florida. Nothing else was really contested. All Diebold had to do was cheat there way through Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004.

Obama, due to trends in demographics, Republican unpopularity, inept McCainian campaiging, and his political brilliance (calmness) has been able to broaden the battlegrounds to include: CO, Nevada, NM, Iowa, NC, VA, WVA, as well as OH and FL. These are all tilting toward Mr. Black Guy (save WVA). We've seen how incompetently Palin (retarded) this campaign has been thus far. For them to steal 6-7 states through Dieboldian means would be brilliant. Unfortunately, there campaign is only smart in a rain man sort of way. They may be really good at one thing--scare tactics--but this Autistic intelligence is weakened in core things like strategy and coherence.

This is comparable to what my thoughts are of all the 9/11 conspiracy theorists who write about how our government may have been responsible. Really? The incompetents behind Katrina and Iraq couldn't mastermind shit. They are lacking in the coordination needed to organize that sort of terrible act, just like McCain couldn't rig an election for Trig's run for student council at his special school in 10 years.

I, like others, think that Ohio, FL and NC are not locks for Obama. That said, McCain will need to spend up many resources to win these three states, but will also need to defend MO, VA, CO, NV and pick up PA. There are too many leaks to plug up for this to work. I think a bad day for Obama will be 274 electoral votes and a good day will be 350 electoral votes. If he loses, it will be unprecedented. The only way for him to lose is if he eats Palin's baby on French television whilst praying toward Mecca.

Itinerant Walkers of the Night

I had a delightful evening yesterday that I want to share with you wonderful people. I was relaxing at the Hollywood metro stop after a wonderful evening with my friend, Andrew. I was by myself, underground, and waiting for Godot (the train). Suddenly a vaguely threatening black man came and sat next to me. I immersed myself in my Dickens (a book) and listened to the man talk to himself. I remember wishing that there were more people at the stop, so somebody could hear me scream (we weren't in outer space and I'm no Sigourney Weaver). Well, my prayers were answered when two young hipsters strolled down the stairs. I gave a glance of appreciation to my saviors, but saw that they could barely see. They were goosestepping around on some sort of drug and pretending they were in the military. Hmmmm. Another crazy guy came down the stairs and started up a conversation with me. He had unfortunately fallen victim to four strokes and his birthday was on Sunday. Afterwards, he unties his strikingly brand new shoes and starts screaming “WHOO!” That’s about the time I stop answering his probing questions. For half an hour these four characters and I circumambulate around each other, furtive glances, periphery imagery and head-on scent. And the only noise comes from conversations to one’s self, which sounds like somebody is listening to a walkmen with the volume to high, but you look close and see now walkmen, just lips barely moving, while teeth remain bared. When would the train come?

The train finally came and my Camusesque crisis was averted! Or was it?? I sat in the train next to a kindly old gentleman. The smiling type, looked almost like Joe Biden come to think of it. I settled down with my book and the knowledge that my strange night was over. Well, the train lurched to a start which catalyzed a reaction in this frail old man. He stood up and looked at me and all his other fellow passengers. Then, and I swear to you, he started laughing in the most demonic and frightening way I have ever heard. It was so terribly creepy. It was out of an old horror film, his smile stretched across his flexible face as the laughter continued until....WHAM. He started punching himself whilst laughing. WHAM! Still laughing, now watch him do an impromtu pole dance as he continues to punch himself. WHAM! Suddenly, the ghost of Jerry Garcia is spirited inside this old demon:"DRIVING THIS TRAIN, HIGH ON COCAINE!!" He bellows out at the top of his lungs. More punches and more terrible, odious laughter coming from his mouth, more crazy joyless grins, more dancing, more insanity. He stood tall, vacillating from side to side with the lurches of the train, on his self-made stage as he swung toward me with his crooked, huge grin and snapped back toward a passenger to my left who feigned sleep to keep him at bay, as if she could conjure up a nightmare to defeat this real mare, who was gaining momentum in his dances, in his laughter; I wondered when the chthonic energy would dissipate and end this madness. At the next stop, I ran off my car and into another compartment away from this strange Minotaur of the train. As soon, as I step into this car, I am greeted by a wild-eyed weirdo about my shirt.

"Are you from Wisconsin?"

Oh, God! I hear that he's from Madison and am asked about my partying and banal shit. Then he inexplicably brings up the steam tunnels in Madison.

"These tunnels run from Bascom Hill all the way to the girl's dorm. You can see their bathroom from there,” He winked, “I know. You can see everything from the tunnels. You enter near the Abraham Lincoln statue and exit in the ladies dorm." A giggle ejaculated from his very core, as a shudder simultaneously rose from mine.

I gulp. I want to be off this ride to perdition. He also informs me that he was able to find a man who lived in the tunnels. The infamous 'Tunnel Bob.' That's when I stop talking to him. Luckily, he gets off in the next stop. Finally a normal ride...

...until a crazy, drugged up woman starts screaming for the doors to open and pounding to get outside the fast-moving train. Shrieks of horror emanating from her very being, as she hits the door as hard as the monster hit his face; for five minutes, I watch this scantily clad broad pounding the glass as the train went further and further into the bowels of LA. Finally, the train stops and she tears off into the night screaming as the doors fly open, pushed by their invisible master.

Luckily, this is my transfer point: Union Station. I just have to walk to the Gold Line and all we be well. I'll be home and able to get a good 6 hours of sleep for work. I find the platform strangely empty with a cold breeze whisping through and gently carrying old papers in a circular motion. I sit down on a bench and start reading my book. I notice that there is a bag of clothes on the other side of the bench and although I can’t smell it yet, I can still somehow detect its highly noisome qualities, scent unsmelled—urine and other fluids having played an atmospheric role in my journey thus far; and this soiled bag added to the mise-en-scene in my production. Piss at the Hollywood stop, piss on the train, piss at Union Station! I had heard the virtues of getting out in the city and seeing your fellow man on his quotidian routine, but here I could see no man. I could hear no voice. I could feel no touch. I could grasp no community nor sense any humanity. I could, however, smell piss. This scent wafting around in my cortex, functioning as a byproduct of the breathing, living and now dying night with only myself now for company. My book and I; me and the night, constant companions until the unsightly elements strike from above and attack from below. The feeling of fear, distaste, but never loneliness. Only while around the zombies of the night does that come into an unbalanced equation. Now, smell withstanding, I am good, I am fine, I am comfortable. Until a burly cop comes onto the platform and informs me that the last train just left and hurls me back to humans, back to the train station, back to the smell, the waste, the excrement, the drunkedness, the drugs, the incoherent babblings of the creatures in the city.

So now I'm stranded at 1 in the morning in a downtown train station. All the drunks and degenerates in LA are also here. Including a drunken drifter who looks strikingly similar to the late Patrick Schwayze (I know he's not dead; just dead to me). This man, strangely joyful, walks light as a nymph all around the sleeping room. Coos of an infant squirting out from behind his coiffed hair, as I try to sleep in the chairs, but the phrase "to sleep with one eye open" doesn't have much relevance. I felt uncomfortable with one eye open. I needed both, therefore no sleep for our lovely protagonist.

At 4 o'clock, a cold, nefarious replicant of the first cop informs me that the Gold Line is running. I, the itinerant walker of the night, am finally on my way home. I get into my car with two other misfits, both muttering to themselves, both pacing, both sweating, while I try to read. After four long stops I finally reach my friendly destination. And by friendly, I mean mildly terrifying. I had never walked back to my apartment this late (early?) and had to go through an abandoned playground to find my way back home. The road I took was winding as I glanced at the empty outdoor auditorium, which functions as the desiccated heart in this wizened body of a park. I got closer and closer to my destination, and could feel that everything would be alright. I would find my way home and this would all be some lovely story, some strange real life tale about my peripatetic wanderings. As I was thinking these thoughts, a strange color struck me from my periphery. A lonesome coyote that had wondered in from the desert was pattering across the field, right at me, fur so silver, tongue hanging out, trotting in that strange canine way where one foot out of four hits the ground, followed by another foot, and another and another until we repeat the process and create movement in a joyful yet careful way. The smile stretched on the creature's face reminded me of the Greek monster on the train, but also reminded me of a mirror. I knew that everything would be alright, as me and the coyote were just coming in from the bareness of the desert and although the night was long, it was also tender, yearning for contact of any kind, even a hand striking my face to feel numbness, at last.

The coyote was the fulcrum of my night and as we passed without exchanging words, I felt a surge of gratitude from my heart of hearts for this city I find myself so immersed in. Again, this decaying yet vibrant and mad city that is seeping through my pores after this mud bath of a night. I entered my sanctuary of a house with one ambivalent desire: to take a shower and wash the city off of me.