pump up the volume [1990]

a friend told me this movie is available on the HBO app.  with a very enthusiastic recommendation.  i've seen this flick on its first run in 1990 with an old girlfriend.  i remember the long-gone theater, a second run house called The Birdcage where admission was about a buck & a quarter.  & my memory is not so far fucked that i do remember most parts of the film.  

but i'd forgotten how thrilling this pic is.  the movie is directed by allan moyle & stars christain slater as a shy teen who is the new kid at his AZ high school.  feeling alienated & finding hypocrisy & corruption in all facets of our civilization slater creates the persona of Hard Harry Hard-On, a deviant with his own pirate radio station.  harry broadcasts every night at 10.  his taste in music is killer.  his speeches revivifying.

soon harry's a hit with all the rest of the kids at his school.  they record his broadcasts & trade the tapes.  no one knows his identity but one smart cookie, nora, played by the exquisite samantha mathis, puts the clues together & finds our shy hero.  soon the school authorities are searching for harry, the FCC & police are gunning for him, & the rest of the social deviants, meaning all the kids at his school are speaking up for themselves & giving the middle finger to authority.

this is a Gen X movie as identified by the societal malaise expressed by harry.  but hold on.  harry's speeches are culled from the poem 'Of' by the poet michael lally.  harry might feel that our social structures are worn out, his motto that is soon spray painted on his high school walls is So Be It.  but his speech on air creates meaning & connection to his listeners.  for the other piece of graffito is Talk Hard.  with poetry.  & honesty.

director moyle achieved a youth film that speaks to everyone who is young or was once young.  to use a poetics term moyle made a high energy construct that bounces in all directions but consistently leads to uplift & an example that our tools of communication, whether it be digital platforms or something considered a little old-fashioned like pirate radio, are also tools of goodness & kindness.  harry hard-on may sound like a sex crazed deviant but really he is a young person figuring out how to be a good human being as he takes us along & helps us figure it out too. 

grooving on a sunday afternoon

 

quote unquote

If it weren't for North California, I doubt if I'd want to live in this country.

--thom gunn [lettter to donald davie (the letters of thom gunn ed. by michael nott, august kleinzhaler and clive wilmer; faber & faber, 2021)]

it's friday nite & you wanna hear an '80s jam where the dudes are fine & poppin', & the chicks rule

walking to work on a street paved with poems

 

it's wednesday nite & i really need to hear a sweet jam

tell me about your world

it's like leatherface in silhouette at the sliding steel door just before he slams it shut

part of speech: no shit

know what i'm saying/no/what i'm saying/is no 

city at nite: early spring march

sleepy w/ the window open

80+ F today 

still doomscrolling the war on my phone 

the disrupted climate & the pandemic still at large

i hear the lifeflight helicopter make its approach to the hospital helipad

& behind that 

the oceanic waves of the freeway

the flyblown pitch of a speeding motorcycle 

sirens always sirens 

police & fire & security services

& later while my lids get heavy 

i hear the rustle of a raccoon & later an oppossom

on the porch eating the leftover cat food

to still get the news from poems

i look up jaan kaplinski

& read 'it was like this or a little bit different

it is like this or a little bit different'

this night is like every night

& a little bit different

the world is broken

happy st patrick's day!

quote unquote

i have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper & the old men & old women warmer in winter & happier in summer.  

--brendan behan

sláinte

fucking daylight savings

 

how i fell in love with our mutilated world

homage adam zagajewski & sam cooke

i was walking to work thinking of nothing but maybe what to have for dinner when i see cupid across the street stand out in his love armory among the tents of the homeless the favelas & those with their hand held out for coin in the midst of war crouch down draw in then let go his bow where his arrow bulls-eyed my heart that knocked me out & on my ass when i get up i'm ready for more

it's friday nite & i'm gonna rage against the machine

texas chainsaw massacre [2022]

when the world seems to be churning in shit, & the blues got ya knocked down but not out, it is time to go to the movies.  my movie-going is primarily streaming platforms &/or a DVD disinterred from my collection.  this direct sequel to the great tobe hooper classic dropped on Netflix last month.  

i'm a crusty old horror fan.  i've seen the 2003 remake directed by marcus nispel & starring jessica biel as the final girl.  i admired that production.  nispel captured a bit of the grit that hooper was so good at making in the classic 1974 original.

but this movie ain't it.  directed by david blue garcia [who replaced ryan & andy tohill because the producers weren't digging what the tohill bros were making] this sequel takes place 50 years after the horrors of the first movie in a ghost town called harlow deep in the dusty heart of texas.  a group of young entrepreneurs purchased the ghost town on the cheap & expect to sell the buildings off piece by piece to other young business men & women because in the phrase of another completely different movie, if you build it they will come.  

what happens is this.  the young people find an older lady played by alice krige, a caretaker in an orphanage.  she has one last boy she takes care of.  guess who might be her charge?  in no time, the caretaker croaks, leatherface makes a mask of krige's face, & shit gets fucked up.  garcia has an eye for details & creates a pretty mise en scene but fuck if the director can't make tension or develop characters.  i hated every single person.  including leatherface & i was rooting for him the entire time.  

the cliches of my beloved genre were so obvious in this production.  see a pool of filthy water & you know the penultimate scene will have the principles in it.  as soon as we meet the final girl she might as well have FINAL GIRL tattooed on her forehead.  oh, & sally hardesty, played by the late marilyn burns, the survivor & OG final girl of the first film, returns.  sally is played with steely nerve by olwen fouere.  she's been hunting leatherface all these years.  revenge! is the fore thought of the film but even that gets short shrift.  the movie even opens with sally preparing to get badass.  but garcia spends about five minutes on sally's revenge narrative.  & then drops it in the last reel like it was the repast of a secondary character's fever dream.

what the fuck.  garcia does get things pretty gooey.  if you like your movies wet, gushy & red this flick might do the trick.  if you want characters to root for you should stick with the original 1974 film, or the 2003 reboot.  i'd love to see the footage shot by the tohill bros.  it's reportedly so awful that the producers promptly fired the filmmakers & garcia had to reshoot the whole film from scratch.  but this is the improved version?  & if this the same leatherface that fucked up sally hardesty 50 years ago then our bogeyman would be in his 70s.  killing asshole twenty & thirty-somethings with a chainsaw is exhausting, taxing, physically demanding work.  even a demon would get winded!  but man! leatherface gives it the old college try.  

 

of human beauty

i didn't know i was a cat person until i met anna.  when we moved in together she brought ernie, a rescue cat from the lot at her work.  ernie was a beautiful goofball with fluffy black fur.  i thought he was enough.  but a short time later anna called me & said she's rescued another kitty.  i told her no.  it's not a good idea.  a new cat will disrupt our lives & piss off ernie.  but anna is a great lover of cats & brought the new kitty home.  i was dead set against the new addition.  but when anna showed me berta i immediately & deeply fell in love with her.  you can't explain love.  you only can express it.  berta grabbed my heart.  & i don't know why.  i was thinking about berta this morning as i walked to work.  i was thinking about that moment when anna introduced me to berta & i remembered that rush of love.  love at first sight.  love deep & penetrating.  it went something like this, no, i don't want to see her.  oh my!  what a pretty kitty!  why berta should be in my thoughts now.  she's been dead for over 20 years.  i don't know.  perhaps we never forget our first loves.  i can say that i loved berta with all my heart.  i love berta with all my heart.  & i learned that i am a cat person.  

it's friday nite & after a fucked couple of weeks i'm still working to get closer to fine