Sometimes I think I’m such a hopeless romantic that my undying love of film, my belief that nothing could bring me more happiness than acting, expressing a story through myself, is all some subconscious, over-elaborate way to meet girls. Maybe I only love film because it makes the world not feel empty and hollow. When in fact so many filmmakers are just hopeless romantics themselves, painting surreal filmscapes of the way they wish the world were as well. Is the film industry just a cesspool of sadness? Just thousands of people trying to end their stories, and careers, and relationships, happily. The way life did not intend? Hollywood endings and Happily ever afters. Perhaps I’ll be thirty before I even realize I never had a social life. Maybe I’ll be rich and respected and famous and finally have women falling at my feet before I realize that after all this… they’re wrong girls. In love with an image. Then my only resource for love will be others entangled in the same career. Other actresses. And those relationships will never work because they will have been manufactured out of desperation and close proximity. Out of the inevitable togetherness created by a film set. And we will all long for someone normal. Long for the girl we never met in the bar we never went to. And then we’ll make a movie about it.

I’ve said that if Heath Ledger’s smile could be bought. If they could put it on my face, even with needles and knives, I’d do it. I’d lie in bed, eat through a straw. Moan and groan for two weeks while the scars of my superficiality healed. Every day staring in the mirror at my John Merrick-head, thinking I could see the bruises fading. That I was watching the swelling subside.

Just waiting for my leading man’s smile.

If the only price to pay is pain,
no pain no fucking gain,
right?

Well pain is physical, psychological. The cost of which only requires one’s willingness to suffer through it. But it is not monetary. Which is the other cost of “self-improvement.” The real reason more people aren’t carving their faces into new ones. Better ones.

Evidence of this can be seen, in the flesh, on ABC’s Extreme Makeover. Where average Joes and Janes offer themselves up as unfinished sculptures, neglected slabs of marble that some genetic artist abandoned pre-physical pinnacle. Where moms and dads and aunts and uncles are awarded the financial freedom to be eviscerated, and then sewn up smaller.

The appeal is apparent, if only slightly morally compromising. I mean…

Who hasn’t wanted to look like someone else at some point?

Who wouldn’t piss on Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, if it were fiscally plausible?

It’s what’s on the outside that counts.

In truth, beauty is actually bone deep. Through the skin, to where cheekbones are chiseled. Angles are added with plastic and screws.

What I saw, last night on MTV, spoke volumes about the self-confidence of America’s youth…

About eight months ago, Anthony shot into downtown Orlando for an interview with MTV. They were looking for documentary filmmakers to shoot their new show, I Want a Famous Face. Thankfully –sorry Tony- he didn’t get the job. If he had, he may have had to document for months on end, what I could hardly watch for half an hour.

Mike and Matt are twins from Arizona. Long wispy guys with good hair and bad acne. All the makings of outlet mall models with the right dermatologist. Somewhere however, my guess is TV, Movies, magazines, newspapers, commercials, billboards, posters-

-MTV-

-the bar of their physical goals, was raised far above being cosmetically confident with the face their parents gave them. And set at the acme of celebrity hunkdom, Brad Pitt.

You know how sometimes you’ll snip a picture out of a magazine and take it into the hairdresser and say, “Can you make my coif as a cute as Jennifer Anniston’s?”

Well imagine taking the box cover from Meet Joe Black to a man with a bone saw, asking if he can rebuild the skeletal structure of your goddam head.

These kids are 21 years old. Giddy to get their bones busted. Their faces rearranged. I watch them each tell the camera why Brad Pitt is so amazing. Because of his chin and his jaw line, his cheeks and his hair. Watch one doober explain that he is going for the Brad Pitt look from Meet Joe Black, and the other explain that he is hoping to look more like Brad from Legends of the Fall.

Again, are we talking hairstyles here? Because then I see the difference. The close-cropped cut in Joe Black, the long locks in Fall. But no, these kids are bouncing smiles about

facial

reconstruction

surgery.

About rhinoplasty, chin implants, cheeks implants, porcelain veneers.

And worse, are their disillusions about the link between looks and talent. A stubborn belief that once they’ve transformed, fame fortune and females is inevitable.

We’ve given young people something pretty unbelievable here.

One, a world saturated with unattainable beauty.

And two, a disgusting, financially crippling, physically invasive opportunity to nearly attain it. To get a little bit closer.

Neither of these kids look like Brad Pitt now. They look like souped-up versions of their gaunt-damn selves. One looks like the lead singer from the Goo Goo Dolls, the other, the singer from The Calling.

Yet even in spite of their atypical hand-holding relationship, (twins are loopy) their misconceptions on celebrity success, and the corporal punishment they put themselves through. I find myself rooting for them.

When one of them asked a long time crush out on a date pre-surgery, MTV had their lens down Monica’s throat while she tried to politely let him down in front a million people. And, of course, they were there months later when the same girl was dripping over the new Frankenstein versions of Mike and Matt.

I’ve been there. I’ve had more acne than face. I still find magazine clippings in the folds of books, actors with big smiles. Muscles.

What bothers me here, is the leap frog over the obvious. The elephant on their face. The real reason they weren’t considered socially attractive.

The Zitsplosions!

As though acne is a missing arm you try not to stare at. And I’ve felt that too, like everyone is trying real hard to look straight into your eyes. Trying hard not wander to the minefield of your nose and cheeks and forehead. Your oily “T Zone.” It’s terrible. And it is the real confidence killer among adolescents. Among MTV’s target demographic. If I had seen these kids on TV when I was still at war with my skin it might have given me hope. Instead, in every on-camera moment post-surgery, Mike and Matt were lost under a veil of makeup. As though they were chronically just out of a photo shoot. Which tells me, tells piles of pimpled kids, that your bones are about as sacred as a stack of Lincoln Logs. They can be busted apart and rebuilt better. But zits, are the bubonic plague of youth.

Don’t mention them.

Don’t acknowledge them.

Do your best to hide them.

Nothing else can be done.

In all of this. In MTV’s “Documenting of a new craze,” it still feels as though the joke is on the Pitt twins. The photo shoot. The B-Roll of them calling around for acting lessons and auditions. And even worse, a terrible cold read in front of some professionals who had to let them down the same way Monica did. With MTV down their throats. Biting their tongues and smiling through lies. How do you tell a kid that you can’t nip and tuck talent? That their new faces come with the same old acting ability?

If it was confidence they sought they seemed to have found it. And until a cheek prosthetic comes loose or a chin is chipped off to hang somewhere in their skin, more power to them. We come to confidence however we can.

I can imagine Mike, or Matt, or shit- if the world is right maybe both of them together –will gore Ms. Monica’s insides. The girl who helped prove that it is what’s on the outside that counts. Who deserves to get DP’d by the Frankenstein Twins. They’ll hold hands while they mold her bones. Twist her around so they can stab her with their own. From all angles. In all holes. And then finally, it will all have been worth it.

Because who wouldn’t renovate their skeleton to fuck a cheerleader?

I just hope, for the sake of their sleep, their conscience, their souls. MTV wasn’t funding this disturbing new craze.

I think I'm going to change the title of my blog to I, Bificus!
. . .

So I did a fat lot of nothing today. And sitting here at the end of it I feel... a little bit fatter, and a little more knowledgeable on the captive care and breeding of King Cobras.

I learned that, if you want to convert your "Kings" to rat feeders --because King Cobras are ophiophagus, they're snake eaters-- you need only the following simple items.

3 cans of 9 Lives cat food
1 adult black racer snake
1 blender

Combine ingredients in blender, mix to a "soupy paste."

-bones and all.

Now that your snakeonnaise is complete, simply...

dip rats in it.
feed to King Cobra
save on feeder snakes!
(freeze paste for subsequent feedings.)

. . .

So my fat lot of nothing had a fat lot to do with the racist amount of white outside. In the trees, in the streets, all over my car.

It was sixty degrees yesterday, man.

. . .

I can’t pet Regan anymore.

Her hair is really coarse, like a pig’s. And you don’t pet no pig for yourself. You pat it, say “good pig,” but not like a girl’s hair you don’t pet it. Not like a soft kitten. Regan’s fur is as inviting as pine needles.

I pet her because she craves it. Not because it soothes me.

. . .

So another one has been eaten by the Langoliers. This is the second time in three days I didn't once leave the house. But I'll blame the snow and convince myself that all the research I did online for Snake Boy was productive.

And in fact it really was.

See. Already with the self-convincing.

. . .

oh yeah and my bed deflated.

Last night I had resolved to slog through The Tonight Show. To chuckle at some Headlines. To let Ben Affleck sell me on Jersey Girl. Even sat through some high school basketball team from some ESPN commercial. All to get to that last five minutes where the musical guest would be A Perfect Circle.

Where I could revel at the other best voice in rock&roll, Mr. Maynard James Keenan.

So, fifty-five minutes in, the commercial break prior to the zenith, I plodded into the kitchen for some diet raspberry ginger ale. A harmless deviation from the plan, a simple quench of the cottonmouth. Two minutes, tops.

I ended up building two of the weirdest sandwiches I had ever made.

The bricks of which was a lot of spicy Italian Capicolla. A couple well-spread glops of marinated tomatoes and onions from a Tupperware of bruschetta topping. Lettuce, cheese, grilled onions, mustard, and a fifteen minute make & consumption time, which completely eclipsed the APC performance. Which made me sad.

Then Christian made me privy to Damien Rice’s Woman Like a Man e.p., and I could have slapped the skull out of his face for not bringing it to me sooner.

Listen to it listen to it listen to it.

Go! Now!

Arguably one of the best voices in Rock&Roll, Daniel Johns of Silverchair quietly wed arguably one of the most beautiful women alive. Natalie Imbruglia.

Fuck all ya'll, she's gorgeous.

Eat it up forever Danny boy.

Things I learned this evening on JEOPARDY

Barbie's kid sister is Krissy.

Richard Simmons has a line of dolls.

A misprint of the word ACME, meaning highest point gave us the word Acne.

Charles Perrault confused the word vair meaning fur
with the word verre, glass, in his translation of Cinderella.

November was originally named Blotmonath, for the month before winter when animals were slaughtered.

Milk Duds got their name from the disappointment that they could not be made perfectly round.

and finally,

Joe Pantoliano goes by the two-word nickname Joey Pants

I'm gonna call him that when I meet him next Wednesday.

'Sup Joey Pants?

-Watch Jeopardy.

At five this morning I took a piss holding a bag of reduced fat Cape Cod potato chips and a ham & cheese sandwich in my free hand.

Then I got toasted and watched the first five episodes of Friends Season 6. I feel so white loving that show so much. So cheesy and gay.

While Christian was making this post possible. -This post, brought to you by a $27 CompUSA modem that I bought specifically for Blogging.- While Christian was screwing around in the shell of this machine I learned that Jules Verne created the science-fiction genre.

That the calculations in his 1860's book From the Earth to the Moon were nearly dead-on with the ones NASA scientists would make a hundred years later. The speed it would take to propel us out of our own atmosphere. The size and weight of the command module. Even the splash down spot for the Apollo 11 astronauts was less than two miles from the spot Verne's astronauts slapped the water.

His creepy foresight even allowed him to predict that the first people on the moon would be Americans, and that it would be a feat brought on by a war.

Mr. Verne. You were truly bad-ass. I'm sorry your crazy nephew shot you in the leg.

Yesterday around one p.m. while Christian was busy getting his hair sliced off, I was across the street. Busy getting my drink on.

We had carpooled into Hastings for haircuts and instead of following Rachel and Christian into the salon I found myself in the River Roadhouse with George and Jim. With owner Mike, and barkeep Joanne. The river the roadhouse insinuates is The Hudson.

The Hudson River.

All thick and brown, like choppy chocolate milk. All the more awe-inspiring just because I knew the name. All of a hundred yards from me. Mike told me he was gearing up for fishing. That the stripers were going to be running soon and you could catch them on the way upriver to spawn, and again on their way back down. It made me think of my dad.

Mike is this big New York guy. I suppose I was bound to run into one of them sooner than later. The kind people just assume are police officers. Jim and I split three pitchers of Bud and I listened to them all reminisce. Listened to the stories that got them where they are. Joanne used to live in Tampa, Bradenton, all over Florida.

She won two hundred dollars on a boxed pick four that morning and bought me a shot.

I played Cutthroat with Jim and George. Whomped them the first game. Got my ass handed to me the second.

I was stumble-drunk. Watching pre-season baseball and trying to look cool. It was cozy, and nice to meet a couple Northerners who seemed genuine in their well-wishing.

The time Christian and Rachel made it across I was talking to some old guy. Can’t remember his face, or a word he said, but I’m completely conscious we talked for quite a while.

I just remember being happy that baseball was around the corner. Even if my team has been gutted. Even if it is a game played by humanoids now, instead of humans. I just love baseball.

I love Chinese Buffets as well.

I remember iced tea and onion rings. I remember rice and pepper steak.

I remember collapsing on my air bed around four or five, and not getting up for four or five hours.

. . .

Saturday Night Live was live with Ben Affleck. He was fat and loveable. Looked like he was having a great time. All I kept thinking was that they were doing this RIGHT NOW, about forty minutes from my front door; and how cool a Saturday night that must be.

“Support Rodeo Injuries.”
--George Carlin

All dressed up. All Spy vs. Spy. All black and white. Finally all clean-shaven, the last of my Kissimmee scruff sitting in the bottom of the sink. All dress shirts and ties, belts and shiny shoes. All sexed up… to go to the Crown theater in South Norwalk to see Secret Window.

In our defense though the place was slammin. Wall to wall with some of the most mediocre 12-15 year old ass you can imagine. And you can imagine, given his recent blast of mainstream celebrity, which movie they were all shelling out nine bones to talk through.

Secret Window.

With J-J-J-Johnny makes-my-soft-thighs-quiver Depp.

There was this collective yelp, when the film faded up on a Close Up of his head. This harmonized squeal like his twenty-foot face was pushing through two-hundred hymens all around me, simultaneously.

Now there are brighter, quieter, less expensive places to gossip with your friends than a row of fixed, forward-facing nine-dollar-a-pop seats in a dark movie theater. I mean am I really the only one who considers before dropping nine whole dollars on something? I say, let’s see, is there any other way I can get what I want out of this without spending nine bucks on it? Oh wait, wait actually there is…

Stand outside
and gossip.
Sit in the park
and gossip.
Flip open your phone
and gossip.
Take a shower with your cheerleader friends
and gossip.


I swear to God I’m going to buy a row of old theater seats, stick em in the dim-lit garage and make freshman girls pay me to sit in them and FUCKING TALK. Watch them shift and squirm and find ways to spin their bodies to face each other; instead of just conversing in an environment that allows for such comforts. That doesn’t project massive reminders that Silence Is Golden. That has no ticket price.

But alas I fear my scheme won’t work. I imagine one reason they drop the nine to talk through a movie is so they can bug the piss out of the people who paid to watch a movie. That’s all I can figure.

So Secret Window was good.

It was nice to see Johnny in a popcorn thriller. Something smaller than the vast Caribbean but still equally dependent on his performance to make work. He got to play a relatively secluded character which meant, a lot of tics, a lot of tiny soliloquies. Which can easily seem forced and awkward, or really make an actor shine. Here, he shines, allowing the comic relief to come from him physically. From his obsessive compulsion, his jaw clicking, his under-the-breath line delivery.

The contrast, to the joy of watching Depp on screen, comes in the form of frighteningly surreal John Shooter. Played to perfection by John Turturro. The stark black frame, the big black hat, the almost endearing Mississippi drawl. His claim that, “You stole my story.” And that fair is fair, and right is right, and something must be done about it.

The thing about Stephen King heroes is that, they’re all writers. A profession probably difficult to relate to considering most people aren’t successful novelists who have a creepy secluded lake house to rack their brain in. With obvious echoes of Misery and The Dark Half, Secret Window is never graphic, never overtly violent. In fact, a contribution to the overall creepiness, comes in that you never really fear John Shooter will harm Mort Rainey. It’s a sense of dread detached from the protagonist, relying more on the things Shooter can do all in the span of one of Mort’s catnaps.

One could also draw similarities to another horror adaptation written and directed by David Koepp, Stir of Echoes, which relied heavily on Kevin Bacon to carry the film. I think in overall suspense, SW falls just short of this earlier effort which was adapted from a Richard Matheson novel.

However, I enjoyed the film immensely, if only more for the actors than the Shyamalanian twist. I appreciated the way the film still felt literary, how it was almost obvious it was sucked from the pages of a book. It seemed a story relying more on inner monologue and thick descriptions than action, and still its transfer to film never felt forced or lacking in conflict.

All in all an agreeable first film in Connecticut.


. . .


Nine million kids participate in Spelling Bees every year. So chances are some of you have been there. Have felt that. Have waited for your word, and cringed when it came.
Only 246 kids make it to the Scripps Howard in D.C., and only one wins. So chances are you’ve felt the sting of an “i” instead of an “e.,” of some silent letter; or been bamboozled by the twists of the English language.

So if so.

Or if not.

Rent Spellbound.

It is spellbinding.