POST BIRTHDAY POETRY REPORT & INFLAMMATORY OPINIONS
So yesterday was my 35th birthday, and last night I did a poetry reading at Snug Harbor in honor of this auspicious occasion. The turnout was good, I think they told me about 70 people? Which is not as good as in the old days, but pretty surprising considering I really only publicized it through Facebook and some light word-of-mouth. Plus a lot of the people I thought for sure would be there were not -- so double super flattering for the ones that did.
The last time I did this was in 97 or 98 or so, I can never remember. I had expected to be really out of practice and clumsy, but it may be that I was doing it wrong before, and so by being out of practice at doing it wrong, I did it right? You know? Either way, everything worked, people had a good time, laughed or clapped in the right places. But I did completely forget to thank Elizabeth Steinfels of Hong Kong Vintage, who with pretty much zero notice organized me a little kiddie desk and chair and a pulpit; not to mention carting all that there and back. So nice.
Anyway, lots of sweet stuff said by some of my favorite people, and it was a good night. I stayed up late talking with a pretty girl, and then true to form woke up at 8.30 this morning CLICK! and couldn't get back to sleep. Whoa, is this too much information? Sorry guys I'm still groggy and got paid last night to talk about myself, I guess the rush hasn't worn off yet.
A COUPLE OF THINGS I'VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT:
1) A week or two ago I saw INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS. Do you know this movie? Quentin Tarantino? I liked it, it was fun, there are parts of it that are pretty amazing.
BUT--the story was completely weird, filled with strange holes and dangling plotlines. SPOILERS BELOW--There are three or four stories going on, like in a lot of Tarantino's movies, but in this one they don't seem to really converge at all; at best they sort of get near each other briefly, like seeing the opposing lanes of a highway flit in and out of view. Characters are introduced and we get whole backstories and flashback sequences and all sorts of tidbits about them, and then they're promptly snuffed out, with no discernible consequence to the larger plot.
And the end, what was the deal with that? All the storylines converge in this theatre, and pretty much everybody dies? For no reason? I get it that war is hell and everything, and showing the gritty, seamy underbelly of things is part of Tarantino's schtick. But listen: if you're going to rewrite the end of World War II, the bloodiest conflict in mankind's history; if you get to rearrange everything just how you like it, including a completely gratuitous execution of Hitler, Goebbels, and the entire German High Command...
Well, you could make it make sense, couldn't you? Just saying. Soon I'll be starting my first longform narrative, and I'm thinking about storytelling a lot, so maybe I'm being hypercritical. And I did enjoy the movie, except for all the talking talking talking all the time, usually just before all the talkers kill each other and a new scene starts, where the new talkers try to figure out what the old talkers were talking about...
Oh, and the Mike Myers cameo completely pretty much ruined any chance of taking the thing seriously. There are plenty of old British dudes who wouldn't need thousands of dollars of makeup to fill that role in a way that didn't complete rob the movie of half its gravitas, its sense of being important--especially after the INCREDIBLE opening scene, just an amazing start to the movie.
2) Battlestar Galactica. More SPOILER ALERT: the spoiler is that this show sucks. Holy Cow, it's like a total breakdown, whoever's in charge is insane. How in the world did they make that little story take 4-5 seasons? Not to mention a couple of TV movie things thrown in there? Here's the story:
a) People make these Cylon robots, which rebel, evolve, and then rebel again, effectively destroying the human race except for a relatively small number of survivors.
b) Those survivors try to find a new home, because they get tired of flying around in a bunch of dingy spaceships pretty quick.
c) Some of the survivors are actually Cylons, but
d) It doesn't matter, because at the last minute Starbuck magically remembers the coordinates of "Earth" and they teleport there.
e) Oh, and everyone decides to get rid of all their technology, fly their spaceships into the sun, and walk off with bindles into the mountains.
You can argue some of that. A lot of people think the writing, acting, and music on the show were really great, really groundbreaking, exceptional stuff. I don't; I think it was terrible. I think the only thing worse than the acting was the ridiculous story. ESPECIALLY because it was obvious by the end that they just kind of wandered up to this point, and that the entire previous series was just a bunch of misdirection and plot reversals standing in for real drama. There should be a Battlestar Galactica drinking game, where each time there's a countdown--"okay we'll wait just ten more seconds and then we're outta here"--you take a drink. You would die of cirrhosis before you ever finished the series.
SO ANYWAY.
I think what I've REALLY been thinking about lately is the low standards we set for things -- I work in comics, and the same thing happens there. People will talk about a story being really true-to-life and gritty and all that, really "adult", but leave out the part where the star of the story wears a bodysuit and has a ring which lets him do anything he can imagine! Oh but it doesn't work on the color yellow.
Why do we accept things that aren't good? Or a better question, leaving out the subjective "good": why do we take our escapist fiction, our "fun" tv shows, and try to pretend that they're groundbreaking? Why not just be happy with our guilty pleasures and not worry about whether or not they're genius? It's like if the editors of America's Funniest Home Videos started trying to really get amazing with the cuts in their montages. Why not just accept that Green Lantern is just a fun little thing and leave it? Because if you look at BSG as a cool sci-fi show with a bunch of space battles and intergalactic intrigue, it's fine. But once you try to hang a bunch of spiritual mumbo-jumbo and karmic crapola on top of that framework, once you try to get heavy...
well I just don't think that framework is strong enough to support all that pathos. It's not that BSG--or Green Lantern, or whatever--shouldn't aspire to greatness. But they need better, stronger, more adult underpinnings if they want to throw all that heavy weight on the girders.
Hm, even as I type that I can see problems with that argument. But today is Labor Day, and yesterday was my birthday, and I'm already tired of talking about this. I think I'm just grumpy because The Wire is so amazing, so well-made, well-crafted, that most other things just seems shabby in comparison. One more season left!
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