EARTHQUAKE!

no, really.  about 15 minutes ago susanville, which is about 200 miles north of us, was hit with a 5.7  temblor.  we felt it here.  really damn peculiar feeling.  i was reading the new yorker at the dining room table.  my chair began to shake, sway actually.  i thought it was nick shaking my chair.  i looked behind me.  then anna who was sitting on the couch told nick to stop shaking the table!  we all leapt to our feet and said, earthquake!  we went outside.  our neighbor was on her porch and asked if that was an earthquake. we said, yes.  then we turned on the tv and the local news immediately cut in regular programming because of the temblor.  the feeling of an earthquake is kind of like the rocking of a ship at sea only that we are on land and the land does not normally move.  we are waiting for aftershocks.  there are usually aftershocks.  all in all we are just fine but a little excited and a tad weirded out. 

i was quite surprised to learn the death of ray manzarek yesterday.  he was 74.  he was, to me, without age.  i am a huge fan of the doors.  me and friends would spend our aimless youth driving the streets of our own california with the music of the doors as our soundtrack.  i loved how manzarek's keyboards would sound old, new and spooky like tracks to a film noir for the mind.  manzarek produced too the first two albums by x -- los angeles and wild gift -- and x repaid that gift with a fiery version of the doors' 'soul kitchen.'  manzarek's collaboration with poets like michael mcclure is also a well-known component of his art.  he seemed to me a nice man and a cool cat.  the world was better for him being in it.   

looking for seth on bush st

woke up against pieces of the dream
spent the day stitching them back together

it's the vastness of the places you said
don't worry when you are lost

every place becomes a home

dailies
for jean vengua

fortune smiles on you and tells you

i am the man-with-the-synthetic-brain

you are trapped within your skin

i've not perfected my imperfection

i tap the keys of my book

you stare from the mirror in greeting

the big drive-in screen of my skull

i just sit and do my practice

zen and the art of b-movies

malibu beach [1978]

summer time.  late '70s.  southern california.  the beach.  where else would you expect teens to hang out. . .the mall?  this turkey starts with the kids of malibu high [?] leaving their classrooms on the last day of school and going to the beach.  what happens next is. . .not much.  a bikini stealing dog -- you gotta have a little t&a because this is a late '70s exploitation flick, two boy drifting both figuratively and literally, a lifeguard and her friend, and a tattooed, heavily muscled juicehead called dugie who looks to be in his late 30s. 

perfect drive in fodder!  the boys meet said lifegaurd and her friend.  love ensues.  dugie becomes the sworn enemy of the boys and picks a fight every time their paths cross and their paths are always crossing.  the boys look, if not age appropriate as teens, at least in their 20s.  dugie, i'm not sure.  i don't know the actor who plays him but a quick search on imdb and i find that he was born stephen oliver in the year 1941.  he looks his age.  which begs the question.  what the fuck is this 30-something doing hanging at the beach with teenagers and doesn't he have a job?

still this pic is not a real a yawn-inducer.  i fell asleep only once and i don't think i missed anything.  i did make it to the very end with both eyes open.  i remember summer as being a long slough of dead time.  this movie is just like that.  the director, robert j. rosenthal, later helmed a true celluloid monstrosity, zapped! [1982], starring scott baio and willie aames.  he directs this flick with all the panache of a dog walker picking up the dog's poo. 

not to be unfair.  malibu beach does have it's charms.  i am fond of lazy, aimless, plot less summer movies.  perfect flicks for a night at the drive-ins.  what can i say.  i must have sand in my head.     

please allow me to direct your attention to the newest issue of galatea resurrects #20.  ms chatelaine, eileen tabios, has edited another humdinger, bumper, mother of a publication.  and to toot my own horn ms chatelaine reviewed an early chapbook of mine here [i couldn't finish reading it because i had tears of gratitude in my eyes!] and published a short essay of mine here.

eileen tabios is simply one of the best and most generous poet/blogger/editor/human being we are lucky to know in this world.  i say that with all humility and sincerity.  life's too short to say otherwise. 

do what i do.  say carpefuckingdiem.  and get your reading/writing on!     

silver streak [1976]

going to the sac 6 drive ins a couple weeks ago put in mind of certain movie memories at the drive-ins.  this is one of those flicks that i saw at the sac 6 drive in upon its release in 1976.  this is not really a great movie but it has brilliant comedic flashes with the pair of gene wilder and richard pryor as its leads.

this movie is a rather confused outing.  marketed as a comedy for most of the run-time the pic plays as a drama.  the comedy only hits the fore with the introduction of richard pryor as a small-time thief caught in the larger schemes of the bad guy played by patrick mcgoohan and gene wilder as the schmuck who witnesses a murder and wants to protect a woman, jill clayburgh, from the dastardly mcgoohan.

i remember the film fucked up on the first reel at the sac 6.  a man tried to hit up clayburgh and she dumps a highball down his trrousers.  it got a laugh from the surrounding cars.  then the film tripped up in the projector.  the projectionists had to start the film over.  i remember -- because it was funny the first time -- doubling up in laughter a second time when the scene of clayburgh, highball and drench trousers played again.

that's all i remember of that night's screening.  the rest of the movie plays on my mind's screen.  i've seen it hundreds of times on television.  pryor proved in this outing to be a singular brilliant comic actor.  without him and gene wilder's manic energy this film would be all but unwatchable.  there is not a lot of tension and drama in the script.

it is a large movie made for a large screen.  the 1970s were good like that.  filmmakers used tricks like CINEMASCOPE to get asses in theater seats.  it was the era of irwin allen's disaster movies with large production and even bigger casts.  spectacle was the game even if spectacle was bogged down by budget and limiting scripts. 

whatever the case i have a great affection for this movie.  the duo richard pryor and gene wilder was magic on the silver screen.  i remember the intermission shorts of the era at the sac 6, shorts that i'd love to see today for many of those intermission commercials were produced locally and i'm sure those films are stored in cans at the sac 6 today.  i hope soon that someone will preserve those intermission shorts and make them available to us who remember them and would cherish them. 

when the shit
goes down
it is
still just shit