happy mayday!

 

beach poetics

 

the thing for me is a very drunken sleep on the beach

--rimbaud

sacramento [2025]

 

how could i, a native son, not see this movie.  it would seem my native burg been discovered by filmmakers!  i mean there have been flicks shot here in the past.  one of the more obscure of these pics is the emilio estevez/demi moore thriller wisdom [1986], directed by estevez, a 1980s revisionist bonnie & clyde kind of movie, where the final chase scene & penultimate scene were filmed in parts of sac, west sac, & american river college.  & how can we forget greta gerwig's love letter to her natal city, ladybird [2017], a film that shows in loving detail sacramento hotspots & neighborhoods.  even more so is the soon to be released paul thomas anderson pic starring leonardo dicaprio, one battle after another [2025], based on thomas pynchon's novel vineland, & partially shot right here in sac.  

so it would seem my hometown is getting some hollywood love.  for in this flick, co-written, directed & starring michael angarano as rickey has lost touch with his lifelong friend glenn played by michael cera.  both men are in their thirties.  glenn is about to become a father & suffers panic attacks in part because of the stressors of pending parenthood.  his partner, the luminous kristen stewart plays rosie, a woman eight months pregnant who is doing her damnedest to keep her own shit together.  

but first the movie starts with a meet cute between angarano's real life wife, maya erskine, who plays tallie while both were on the opposite sides of a river.  which river?  because it is supposed to be in sacramento & we have two rivers, the american & the sacramento.  part of the fun of watching a movie about your town is spotting locations based in town.  but i couldn't fathom which river it was.  maybe it was the sacramento river.  maybe a river down in SoCal.  at any rate, rickey & tallie meet, fall in love, have sex, & then we next find rickey, a year later, being well-meaning but bossy in a therapy group.  

the leader of the therapy group tells him that he needs to leave the group because rickey is way too overbearing.  next scene we find rickey in a tree in the backyard of glenn & rosie's house.  which is, as we are made to understand, something that rickey is wont to do.  but rickey & glenn have not seen each other in a few years.  glenn is reluctant to even acknowledge rickey's presence.  but rosie, needing a break from glenn's consistent neediness & stress, encourages glenn to make amends with rickey.

& that is the meat of the matter.  glenn is so tightly wound if you stuffed a chunk of coal up his ass he'd make you a diamond.  rickey is loose & carefree but something is off about him too.  soon they agree to a road trip.  a drive from l.a. to sacramento.  rosie is thrilled to have a weekend to herself.  glenn is barely keeping his shit together.  rickey's motives for the trip are unclear.

there are some lovely images of sac in this flick.  they drive across the tower bridge.  they spend the evening going to the bars on the r street corridor.  they meet two single women who own a gym where glenn & rickey wrestle in a boxing ring to get out some long pent-up aggression toward each other.  without giving too much away the reason for rickey's need to drive to sac are made evident with tallie appearing in the final third of this flick.  

even so, soon to be middle aged these are the stories of two men who are struggling with the heady responsibilities of life.  these are not bad men.  the women in this movie are its strong suit.  yet, this movie is not about these women's stories.  rather, this is the story of two elder millennials in crises of the things that make up adulthood.  like fatherhood; the largest theme of this pic.  this is, dare i kinda quote a disney flick, a story almost as old as time.  or at least, as old as the movies.  

still, i enjoyed the corralled wildness of this flick.  both rickey & glenn are flawed, goofy, but ultimately good men.  i think their women deserve better but hey who am i to judge.  because both stewart & erskine shined with the little they are given by the script.  the movie is lovingly photographed & like gerwig's love letter film to sac, there are some iconic sac stations such as gunther's ice cream shop, & even a couple of scenes were shot at a gas station that is no more than a stone's throw away from where your humble critic is now typing.  

you bet i enjoyed the humble eccentricities of this movie & its characters.  props to director & star of this pic michael angarano for titling his movie after my favorite city on this earth.  for sacramento is, in my humble opinion, one of the best cities, not that i've been to all the cities, but what the hell, cuz i love this place i call home, on our earth.

Gene Vincent & The Blue Caps - Be Bop A Lula

i will always love rock&roll!

going nuclear

in those days of cold war the phrase 'going nuclear' 

meant an escalation in anger in some situation 

in which the antagonist got so very mad 

all they could see was red 

but it was the days too of the cold war 

when the threat of nuclear annihilation 

was so much part of our discourse 

we would joke about what we would do 

[we being teenagers at the time 

we would pass around the pipe or the bong] 

if we got the final countdown 

the missiles were on their way 

it was a time of paranoia & heady themes 

that even the politicians were wary of 

even the graffiti written on that warehouse on skid row asked 

when will we drop the bomb 

while the radio played 'you dropped a bomb on me' 

by the gap band 

oh we went nuclear alright 

& followed it right down the red line

follow me for 

i am no one

i am no where

jackie chan poetics

 in re ouyang yu's 'found poetry'

poetry is everywhere & everything

much like duchamp's readymades 

that art can be made from anything

still & yet the motive moves into why

would you want to make art from a slice of toast

or your grandfather's carburetor

when more glad tidings can be made from the hallowed 

halls of literature 

but remember jackie chan's fighting technique 

a style of fighting when there was no

other choice & when he did 

it was with whatever was at hand

such as a lamp, table, or chair

a plastic water bottle 

even your grandfather's 

1958 chevrolet bel air

can be made a weapon or a tool 

or just something cool

in antipoetry be

found in the texts of social media

poetry books

movies & sex

for it be made as a human art

ordinary as a stone 

& just as hard

an essay on friday nite

i was sid vicious of the suburbs

but kind to all that i hated too

it was a goofy age of rage

skateboards & clove cigarettes

because there i stood 

as a pose without knowing

how to play my instrument

but what would it were

i could give two fucks

it was friday nite

the air of mystery

& me such a dumbshit!  

a role i was born to

it was just as well too

it all turned on a dime

me in pose with a snarl 

on my lips for all to see

if only i could keep from laughing 

my ass off 

in all its absurdity!