The Fugitive

Over 60 years old now, The Fugitive remains one of my all-tme favorite television shows. It starred David Janssen as Dr. Richard Kimble, a physician wrongly convicted of murdering his wife and sentenced to death. Kimble escaped from prison and went on the run, often frequently helping the people he was hiding amongst, all the while determined to find the real killer, a sinister one-armed man. Along the way, he was pursued by Lieutenant Gerard (played by Barry Morse), a dogged, humorless detective who was obsessed with returning Kimble to death row.

The plot was loosely borrowed from Victor Hugo’s classic 19th century French novel Les Misérables, with the Kimble character being the counterpart of Hugo’s fugitive Jean Valjean, and Lieutenant Gerard based on Hugo’s Frech police inspector Javert.

The Fugitive was both a critical and commercial success, winning four Primetime Emmy Awards and becoming one of the most popular television shows of the 1960s. It was a groundbreaking show that helped to shape the television landscape. It was one of the first shows to deal with serious issues in a realistic way, and it helped to raise awareness of important social issues, such as race relations, domestic violence, poverty, addiction, mental health, even the plight of migrant workers.

What made The Fugitive so great, though, was the lead actor David Janssen. Yes the scripts were generally above average, and they dealt with some interesting issues, but it was David Janssen‘s portrayal of Dr. Ruchard Kimble that really drew the viewer in. Jansen gave a fantastic performance as the fugitive. He brought a great deal of depth and nuance to the role, and he made Kimble a sympathetic and relatable character. Here was a character who lived the fine life, a rich, successful doctor who had come to take the blessings in his life, including his wife, for granted. But In a twist of fate worthy of Greek tragedy he is brought low, and must experience life again at its most humble, running from town to town, living in constant fear of being discovered, working menial jobs, associating with classes of people he had long since been isolated from. And, as his greatest curse, he becomes a man who must live completely alone in the world.

There have been a lot of books and movies about the last man on earth, some poor schmuck who is the only survivor of some kind of apocalyptic event and is left to wander a desolate landscape all by himself. Well that’s essentially the fate of David Janssen‘s character. He has to live as if he’s the last man on earth, even though he’s surrounded by the living. He can’t afford to let anyone know he is there. He can’t tell anybody who he is or what he’s up to for fear of being betrayed and/or captured. It’s a fantastic performance, Janssen is able to express the frustration, the stress, the tension of always having to look over his shoulder, always having to be careful of what he says. He gives a very subdued, subtle performance, he shrugs, sticks his hands in his pockets, hems and haws as he gives vague answers to questions, always glancing for the nearest exit.

Listen, anybody who has ever worked at a job knows that sooner or later at least one person, some workplace busybody is gonna try to butt into your life and figure out who you are. As the fugitive flees from town to town, he takes on countless odd jobs and temporary work, and invariably runs up against some workplace leech. It’s very tiring having to live while always hiding who you really are. David Jansen‘s character expresses that kind of fatigue very well, the fatigue of living contrary to your nature. Janssen’s Richard Kimble is the great world-weary representative of every one of us who has ever, for however brief or long, tried to live a secret life.

The Fugitive, a great, great show. You know over the years they’ve done different versions of the show, even a Harrison Ford movie, but what they’ve never tried and what would be much more interesting than trying to remake something that was already done almost perfectly, is if they did a movie which showed the fugitive trying to go back to living as Richard Kimble. How difficult would it be to try to go back and live your true life, after having lived a different life for so long? Perhaps you would have discovered that what you had thought your true life was wasn’t really true at all. . . maybe there were lies in that life, also? Would you pick them up again? Is everybody, at their core, a fugitive from their true self?

All I Need Is Love

All I Need Is Love, by Klaus Kinski. The most outrageous, manic, rude, and wildly entertaining autobiography I have ever read.  This thing is so nuts, it’s not even published anymore. You can only get used copies, at a very, very high price, from online booksellers. I got a copy from the library years ago and smartly xeroxed a copy for myself, as the library here has since taken the book out of circulation.

Published in 1986, it is a candid and outrageously lurid account of the German actor's life, from his childhood in Nazi Germany to his rise to fame in world cinema, culminating in his five epic collaborations with director Werner Herzog. 

Half frothing, bitter rant and half brutally honest confession, there's not a single dull page.  Kinski begins by recounting his Dickensian childhood in war-torn Germany, suffering from extreme poverty and a cold, abusive mother and a weak, pathetic father.

But it's Kinski's portrayal of his relationships with women that has earned this book's reputation for obscenity and its banishment.  All I Need Is Love would probably cause #MeToo girls to faint. He writes about his many affairs and marriages in graphic, insulting detail. Kinski would fornicate with whatever woman was handy, regardless of appearance, hygiene, age, weight, race, etc.  While there are occasional recollections of affection, Kinski's chief concern with women was biological, he had an insatiable need for the female's holes.   

Kinski also frankly discusses his drug use. He admits to using a variety of drugs, including cocaine, heroin, and LSD. He also writes about his experiences with mental illness, including depression and schizophrenia.

Also memorable is Kinski's unflattering assessment of the film industry, and, of course, his most famous director, Werner Herzog. There are numerous epic rants deriding the stupidity and artlessness of Herzog. Herzog dismisses much of Kinski's criticism of him as pure fabrication meant only to create a sensational best-seller.  Herzog's protests have led to much critical scrutiny of All I Need Is Love. Most critics side with Herzog, and accuse Kinski of exaggerating or fabricating many of the events of his life detailed in the book.

I choose to take Kinski at his word, but does it really matter whether or not All I Need Is Love is an honest account of Kinski's life? I am reminded of Antonin Artaud’s answer when some dull literary critic dared to ask him if his biography of Heliogabalus was *true.* Artaud answered “what does it matter? I have created something beautiful.” And that’s what we can say about Klaus KInski’s All I Need Is Love.

The Devils

The Devils: 54 years after its release, it's still one of the most controversial, extreme and bizarre films ever made. . .and would serve today as a worthy meditation on MAGA irrationality. 

Ken Russell’s shrieking, unhinged historical drama, based on Aldous Huxley's The Devils of Loudun, is a wild mix of torture horror, sexual perversion, and religious and political malfeasance. Set in 17th-century France, it's a nightmarish telling of the true story of Urbain Grandier, a priest accused of witchcraft by a group of nuns in the town of Loudun. With its unforgettable visual style, untethered depictions of religious hypocrisy, political corruption, and ax-blunt commentary on power and repression, The Devils challenges its audience in ways few films ever have.  

Oliver Reed, an under-rated, nearly forgotten limey actor, not as great as Richard Burton, but certainly better than or equal to Olivier, Caine, Finney, O'Toole, et al. delivers a masterpiece preening performance as the vain, arrogant, horny Father Grandier, a charismatic priest who tries to save his city's independence from the growing central authority of France's King Louis XIII, who appears just as stupid, bored, cruel, and a little bit more trans than our Donald Trump.  Louis, who is more devoted to *sport* (a decidedly peculiar form of hunting) than actually ruling (think Trump and golf), leaves the details of the land grab (think Trump and Greenland) to Cardinal Richelieu.

Reed's Grandier is a deeply flawed yet principled man who, despite his love of female flesh (every woman, including the nuns, in Loudun swoon over him), genuinely cares for his parishioners and fights against the destruction of his city’s autonomy.

Vanessa Redgrave plays Sister Jeanne, a hunchbacked nun who harbors an obsessive and unfulfilled carnal fixation on Grandier. When her repressed desires break out into a full-blown sexual hysteria, she accuses Grandier of witchcraft, setting off a chain of events that leads to his persecution and execution.

[I can't help but think Paula White would suffer from the same mania as Sister Jeanne, had not Trump allowed her to perform fellatio upon him.  And we can also imagine Trump has the same amused opinion of his evangelical followers' beliefs as Louis XIII had of the beliefs of his Church partners].

Ken Russell’s Grand Guignol direction (no idea is too far-fetched to indulge), combined with the still-mesmerizing über-Baroque and brutalist set designs of Derek Jarman, create an unsettling atmosphere that underscores the film’s themes of oppression and moral decay. The film’s surreal imagery, chaotic violent crowd scenes, and grotesque depictions of religious fervor, heightens the sense of hysteria and corruption within Loudun. 

Of course, the legendary scenes of mass sexual hysteria among the nuns, culminating in the possessed sisters engaging in frenzied orgiastic rituals, have cemented The Devils as one of the most shocking films in cinema history, even with its most depraved scenes left on the cutting room floor. 

But beyond all its provocative imagery, its hellish mix of lust, perversion and torture, The Devils, at its heart, is a searing critique of institutional power that resonates across the decades to our MAGA Age. It exposes the ways in which political and religious authorities manipulate public perception for their own ends. Richelieu and his enforcer, Father Barre, use the accusations against Grandier to justify the destruction of Loudun’s fortifications, consolidating their control over France, just as in our MAGA Age Trump and evangelical heretics use accusations against colored immigrants to justify their border walls, or accusations against the colored poor to justify land/material exploitation around the globe.

Most of today's somnolent audience will have little understanding of The Devils political allegory, but The Devils will certainly still shock-and-awe even the most hardened purveyor of perversion with its depictions of sexual hysteria and torture.  

The Devils faced extensive censorship upon release. Even today, a fully uncut version is not available. Despite this, The Devils remains one of cinema's most arresting, disturbing and provocative works, and a timeless reminder of the destructive power of weaponized religion.

Marthe: The Story Of A Whore

Marthe: The Story of a Whore, by Joris-Karl Huysmans.  Huysmans’ first novel is also one of the first to attempt a realistic or *naturalistic* examination of prostitution. A struggling young writer and his cabaret dancer/prostitute girlfriend try to survive the grinding poverty and overflowing vice of Paris lower class life.  Loosely based on Huysmans' own misadventures in the gutters of Paris, this novella is limited by its artificial dialogue and character psychology, and somewhat clumsy plotting, this uneven story of a whore doesn’t quite measure up to Huysmans’ later work. Indeed, one contemporary critic rightly asked ‘what good does it do us to witness the blossoming of this venereal flower?’ BUT. . .Huysmans’ unmatched descriptive powers are already on display. No novelist ever saw the grimy truth of reality better, or could translate it so vividly. He wrote descriptions like Van Gogh painted the Night Cafe. Here is his rendering of the whore’s slum:

A rusty door streaked blood-red and ochre yellow, a long dark corridor the walls of which oozed black drops like coffee, and a sinister staircase that creaked at every footstep and was impregnated with the foul stench of drains and the smell of the lavatories whose doors swung open in the slightest breeze.

Also present is Huysmans’ remarkably blunt and still 149 years after its publication avant-garde assessment of the essential hopelessness of cohabitation:

He also had to put up with the smell of her cooking, the heavy odour of wine in the sauces, sickening stench of onions fried in a pan, and look at bread crumbs all over the rugs and bits of cotton thread all over the furniture; the sitting room had been overturned from top to bottom. On cleaning days it was even worse. The ironing board had to be balanced across his desk and another table, and the washing had to be dried on a clothes-horse in the hall. The puddles of water on the parquet, the stale smell of lye, and the streaming laundry that left damp-stains on his brasswork and tarnished his mirrors, reduced him to despair.

Page after page of both of the lovers’ resentments, which, stewing in poverty, turn the wine of love sour. As an indictment of carnality, Marthe makes Huysmans later turn to catholicism/spiritualism seem inevitable. Despite its flawed presentation of the anatomy of a prostitute, of which there is no need to detail, the book predicts Huysmans’ eclipse of other *naturalists* because his chief concern is the individual, and not the collective. He understood ruin is personal, not political:

The daylight which filtered its gold-dust through the curtains showed him a face bruised by the depredations of the night, and a posture that revealed a whore who had been dragged through every gutter in the city.

Nudity

In the west, nudity is equated with freedom. Particularly for females. Females are *free* to dress in almost nothing. Clothing, as we learn in the history of Adam and Eve, originated as the result of sin. Therefore, to rebel against clothing is to proclaim oneself free from the law of sin and death. The nudist [undoubtedly stupidly, or, more politely, unconsciously] is thus telling God to go to Hell.

Redeem The Time

If I had to formulate a general mindset that would apply to the largest number of people on earth, it would be:

I don’t want to die, but I wish life was better.

Life is such a fantastic improbability, and yet I don’t think we contemplate it enough in our day-to-day existence. There’s not a word in the English language to adequately describe the phenomenon of life. *Miracle* is probably the best choice we have.

So we have this unbelievable, unfathomable existence. And yet almost all activity in human history seems meaningless.

The world order that has developed over the course of history herds people into material pursuit. Most of our conscious time is spent, on the individual and collective level, in the pursuit of material gain.

Such a base occupation leads to all the individual manias, addictions, neuroses, anxieties, in short, all the psychological maladies that cripple the individual.

It makes sense. Why wouldn’t the grandeur of existence wasted on banality produce mental conflict and mental breakdown?

Eggheads estimate that 117 billion people have lived in the course of human history. How many of those lives weren’t squandered? John the Baptist, Jesus, a handful of artists. Of the great mass of the nameless and faceless, only those who positively engaged in parenting, which is surely a small number. What did the overwhelming majority of people who ever lived accomplish with their unbelievable, unfathomable existence? Nothing of value. They killed time.

The world order was the same 2000 years ago as it is today. The sheeple were the same 2000 years ago as they are today. Time killers. Life squanderers. Jesus was able to mesmerize the people because He showed them a different way, a way to redeem the time, a way to live a life of meaning. Jesus' way turned the world upside down for 300 years until the Archon influenced the power of the world, Constantine, to co-opt it.

Nobody has been able to match Jesus in the last 2000 years, because nobody has offered a new way, they only offer sub-cultures of the world order.

You cannot live in the world order, you can only die. To live you must do what Jesus said, turn your back on the world. You might die of starvation in a week, but at least you will die alive.

Find the way to redeem the time. Don’t die like the herd.

I Pledge Allegiance To Tesla

Can you imagine the mentality of the poor person who accepts the instruction from Trump and Pam Bondi and makes the well-being of Tesla his or her or their concern?

Elon Musk is robbing from tens of millions of the American poor, and yet, because Trump endorses him, the poor make the well-being of the billionaire a personal priority.

Such a person strikes me as awfully pathetic, with an almost unbelievably errant view of their own reality. They have the frame of reference of the penthouse class while living in a trailer park. They think the domestic terrorists are the righteous angry who overturn the Tesla charging stations, and not the filthy rich who steal even what little the poor have.

Though the issue is far more grave, it is easier to understand the misguided thinking of those Americans who support Israel’s mass murder of Palestinians. Americans have been bewitched by generations of heresy from false prophets, and their government has been thoroughly corrupted by the zionist donor class, whereas those American poor who now cherish Tesla have been duped by a couple of second rate carnies.

In any event, we pray for the success of the anti-Musk, anti-Tesla movement. We pray Musk’s wealth and influence evaporate.

In Dreams

We are yanked out of a darkness from God only knows where, and thrown into this life. . .

It takes years to overcome the trauma and accept the life sentence. . .

We remember almost nothing of the horror of earliest life, just fragments of misery. . .certain smells remind us how repulsive the stink of life once was, and how now we barely notice. . .

Shards of memories remain, images of *adults,* those who had assimilated, in acts of torment.

This trauma is easily verified by observing babies and toddlers. . .babies cry at life, while toddlers stare dumb at what fate has presented them.

Around the ages of four to six, the child begins the process of assimilation, and inflicts his or her own pain on the life near him or her, tearing the wings off flies, knocking down smaller children, kicking and flailing at parents.

Life becomes the day-to-day chore of endurance. . .

He who endures to the end shall be saved. . .

He who has faith in the Higher Power who set him here, he who has faith God shall wipe away all tears from his eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away, he who has faith, the same shall be saved.

The only mystery remains at the end of each day. . .

At the end of each Godforsaken day, as we rest from the labor of life, we are dropped into a pool of dreams. . .

Tranxiety

If a man can proclaim himself a Christian, then why not proclaim himself a female?

There is more authority for the man claiming trans than for the faith of Christ, since only Christ can definitively say who is His. . .

Also remember: we know not what the true male or female is, since we have only fallen males and females since Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Depression

As God decreased, mental illness increased. . .

Man tries to cure it today with chemistry, but chemistry is what set man down the tragic path to illness, mental and physical, when the fruit was eaten.  In fact, it is mental illness that manifests first: note the behaviors from Adam and Eve, particularly the neuroses provoked by nudity. . .

Chemistry cannot cast out chemistry. . .

A more effective approach would be to try to return the individual to an Edenic environment. . .after all, they were cast out of Eden and the environmental degradation further exacerbated their chemical degradation.

Depression, or the more poetic melancholia, is a collapse of the life impulse, the sufferer will yearn for death, due to self-punishment, failure to achieve, either the law or the self (guilt under law, failure of self, both are pure punishment), only Jesus can set the soul free from the law of sin and death. . .

Depression is the healthy, rational reaction of the fall of man to the chemical alteration of being human.  No one can deny that Adam and Eve were less human after the chemical castration of the Tree.  Thus all of modern medicine's attempts to treat depression by chemistry only follows Satan's path to chemically reduce man to an even further fallen state.

The Brown Jug

I was watching The Shining last night. It’s not one of Kubrick‘s better films, and I really don’t think it’s a horror movie, and am always surprised when I see it so highly rated as one of the greatest horror movies of all-time. It’s really more of a family melodrama and a cautionary tale of alcohol. But anyway, there's that scene where Wendy is walking down the hotel hallway and sees in one of the rooms a dude in a bear costume on his knees blowing another dude, and it reminded me of something from long, long ago. Something I hadn’t thought about in decades. Something my first wife told me. This was very, very early in the relationship, months before I stupidly agreed to marry her. I’ve always been very emotionally retarded, very immature, juvenile, a late bloomer, if I ever did bloom, I don’t know. But back then for sure I didn’t have a clue about life, had no idea we could attempt to manage it, or at least direct it towards some outcome that could redeem the time. In His sermon on the mount, Jesus rightfully advised take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. I certainly adhered to that teaching back in the day, but probably not in the correct fashion. For example, Jesus would probably think it’s OK for a person take some thought about who they were going to marry.

Anyway, as I say this was very, very early in our relationship, you know maybe third or fourth date or whatever you want to call it. We were dining in at Taco Bell, eating our tacos and burritos off of plastic trays. In hindsight, I imagine that she, being more mature and knowledgeable about how to conduct a relationship, viewed this as the ‘getting to know each other’ stage. Personally, I’ve never put much stock in that. I’d like to believe what I see is what I get, and if I like what I see I figure I’m gonna like what I get. But anyways, I guess she wanted me to know her, to understand her. So she told me the story about her last boyfriend. The story of the boyfriend whose antics prompted her to enter her lesbian phase, which she, at that point there in Taco Bell, was contemplating leaving for me. We hadn’t had sex at that point. She had been heterosexual until the events I’m about to relate which she related to me that night.

As I said I hadn’t thought of any of this in decades. Probably the last time I thought about it was 25 years or so ago, back when I thought I could salvage the monetary wreck of my life by becoming an author. I was trying to think of material that would make a good short story, and I remembered what my first ex-wife had told me. I never wrote the story because I couldn’t grasp the main character’s psychology, the main character being the last boyfriend of my first ex-wife before she began the lesbian phase of her life.

Anyway, here’s what she told me, and what I remembered for the first time in a long time after watching that scene in The Shining.

She and her boyfriend were living in a ground floor apartment on Oakland Avenue in Ann Arbor. That’s a pretty lively section of student housing on the University of Michigan campus. She had a job as a waitress at The Brown Jug, a popular bar/restaurant. If you happened to be on the Michigan campus back in the early 1990s, you know what kind of wait staff The Brown Jug had. Madonna wouldn’t have been able to get hired, too heavy, not pretty enough. Anyway, my ex-wife left work early that night because she had a migraine. As she was approaching the porch to her apartment house, she saw her front door open and an older male come out, like a late 50s or early 60s male, like even older than her dad. What the fuck? she thought. She couldn’t think of any reason for an old man to be coming out of her apartment.

She said she clearly remembered hoping there would be some benign explanation, but she felt nervous and sweaty as she was about to go in, the feeling of unease on top of her migraine making her feel terribly sick.

Each detail she observed as she stepped into the apartment hit her like a shock wave. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. No matter where she looked, it was like an assault. Everything revolting. Her boyfriend dumbly exclaiming your home?? as he, wearing a pair of pantyhose so small and tight they only reached up to his knees, scrambled off the couch.  A piece of feces dropping from his asshole to the floor. A homosexual orgy playing on the VCR/TV. A pair of her dirty panties that had been in the bedroom and was now laying on the floor. She looked back at her boyfriend. Pantyhose? Where did he get them? She didn’t even wear pantyhose. But there was one of her bras draped over her boyfriend’s chest. As he stumbled past her he stuttered got, got to go, go to bathroom and she saw several large gobs of semen, still wet, sliding down his belly. A little brown bottle on the floor by the sofa. The boyfriend coming out of the bathroom nude, with most but not all of the semen wiped off his stomach. The boyfriend rushing into the bedroom and pulling on a pair of sweatpants.  By now she was so sick, so stressed out she could barely stand up. She went into the bedroom and laid down.  The boyfriend tried to talk to her.  She told him to be quiet, her head was killing her, could he please just get the shit off the living room floor and let her sleep.

I said oh my God in a half laugh a couple times when she was recounting this incident, and I could see that this was off-putting, but I have never been one to pretend or try to react so-called ‘appropriately.’

Anyway, my first ex-wife said the boyfriend never admitted anything.  Ever.  An older male in the house?  No!  Homosexual pornography?  What?? No!  She broke up with him a day later.

A couple months later my ex-wife hooked up with Sharri who was also a waitress at The Brown Jug, and began her lesbian phase.  Sharri's brother worked with me at a store on the campus. One day Sharri and my ex-wife came in to see Sharri's brother. We all ended up at Pinball Pete's later that night. And that was the beginning of that.  My first ex-wife and I got married before she even graduated college. Ridiculous. Her family couldn’t stand me. For good reason, I guess. I was going nowhere. They probably wondered what she was even doing with me. But I have always been able to make girls laugh and I do whatever they say. That can carry you a long ways. 

Well, now that I think even more about the past, I don't always do what they say.  That was the beginning of the end for me and my first ex-wife, me not doing something she wanted, as that memory now comes back.  Shit comes full circle or whatever.  Maybe I'll write that up for tomorrow. 

For This He Is Shamed?

There’s a lot of crazy shit that goes on that most people seem to act surprised about when they find out.  Even people who are involved in crazy shit act surprised when other people involved in crazy shit get caught.

The story like the one pictured above, it’s easy to act superior and point a finger and laugh, Hell, that's usually how I react. But the older I get, the less inclined I am to do it, and when I do it, the malicious joy is much more short-lived.

Let’s be honest, people have very little self-control. And very little control of their desires. I mean, we have a degree of self-control, otherwise the *real world* would be live action PornHub.  But our minds are a beehive of aberrant thought that we can barely hold back, like a serial killer who satiates his blood lust and is able to maintain a relative control for a few weeks or months until the lust boils over again. Well, that’s how we all are with our own little manias. So this poor sucker in Minnesota got caught. And his discovery will upset his life and his family‘s life. He brought it on himself, yes. But haven’t we all?

I’ve written, in story form, some of the worst things I’ve done.  Written it either 100% truthful, or with exaggeration or diminishment, but always accurate enough to present personal failure. But the absolute worst things I have ever done, I leave that shame to rot in the cesspool of my memory. 

But it is interesting to me, all the things that we hide from shame. And yet the absolute worst, most horrible filthy degenerate deeds, such as the current Israeli carnage in Gaza, there’s no shame at all.  They are discussed very matter-of-factly, with no shock or surprise that it is taking place. What an insane world.

Given the fellow from Minnesota's political and personal profile, it's probably a good guess he is a zealous supporter of Israel. And he had no shame about that, nor brought any shame upon his family. But now that he is caught trying to fuck an imaginary girl, he is cast out.

This is the Age of Confused Ideas.  Nobody can correctly identify anything, from their own gender to genocide.

There is no authentic righteousness in the world. The world is an insane asylum.  Almost all human behavior is abnormal. Abnormal from what most people generally agree would be theoretical decent civilized human conduct. Why callest thou Me good? There is none good but one, that is, God.

The Monk

The Monk, by Matthew Lewis.  Supposedly one of the 18th century's great naughty novels, I read 20 pages while at work yesterday, it seems OK so far, even though the depravity hasn't started yet.

One annoying feature of the text is the voluminous notes.  18 pages worth.  Oxford University Press must realize the stupidity of the modern reader, but they also should know the modern reader ain't gonna turn to the back of the book to look up all this shit.  And really, is even the modern reader so stupid they couldn't figure out this one:

We need that annoying asterisk and explanatory note to figure out "relique" means "relic?"  

Anyway, the incest and all the other debaucheries need to start soon, or I'll have to jump a couple centuries to a Jim Thompson novel.

The Universe Corrects My Error

Yesterday I wrote an entry with the five best performances by an actress.  Immediately after I posted it I came across the story referenced in the picture above.  It was as if the universe were trying to correct an error.

The 1999 film Rosetta is a grim, depressing indictment of Western capitalism, a neo-realist picture of the economic vice the poor can never escape, choking their soul, crushing their dignity, leaving them even unable to afford enough gas to kill themselves.  17-year-old Émilie Dequenne plays Rosetta, a teenage girl living in a Belgian trailer park with her alcoholic tramp mother.  They fight, Rosetta tries to catch trout out of a nearby dirty river, believes a job is the key to life, betrays her only pseudo-friend to get a job, literally wallows in mud, and generally lives a completely soul-less existence chasing the work phantasm that Western capitalism has brainwashed the sheeple into thinking is the purpose of life.

Delivering a wonderfully naturalistic performance, Dequenne, with minimal dialogue, powerfully conveys the character's desperation and despair, she's a character both sympathetic and repulsive, a difficult balance to maintain while never seeming emotionally fake.  Crushed by poverty, her morality trampled by labor insecurity, Dequenne's Rosetta is the standard bearer for the Western underclass in its struggle to hold its last shred of dignity.  A performance not to be forgotten.

5 Best Performances By An Actress

I had an earlier entry in which I listed the ten best performances by actor.  It was difficult choosing the ten, there could have easily been thirty, forty, even fifty other performances just as worthy.  Not so for actresses.  It was a struggle coming up with even five.

Marina de Van, In My Skin: Her character forecast the total annihilation of identity in Western culture, so alienated by the electronic age, even gender is a mystery.  Perhaps the best performance of all-time, either by a male or female, the most convincing psychological breakdown ever presented on film.  When I see all the lost souls around me, without any authentic sense of self, I am reminded of de Van's character, who literally cannibalizes her own identity.

Ann Savage, Detour:  The wildest, most over-the-top femme fatale in all of Film Noir. She’s got dirty hair and a dirtier mouth and an even dirtier mind. All gas, no brakes in this madwoman's performance.

Brigitte Bardot, Contempt: We first see her as her husband's naked play thing, but as her contempt for her husband grows, she morphs from affectionate wife to silent antagonist.  Not regarded as a serious actress, she delivers here the most nuanced and compelling portrait of existential disillusionment in screen history.

Barbara Hershey, The Entity: Playing a victim of supernatural rape, she make this hard-to-believe story completely believable with her lacerating portrayal of both physical and psychological trauma.

Franka Potente, Run Lola Run: Physically demanding and emotionally resonant, her performance meets the demands of the script's breakneck pacing.  With a raw authenticity that makes her character's desperation seem real, she lifts the film from simple thriller to an existential meditation on destiny.

Honorable mention: Elizabeth Taylor, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Kristen Stewart, Love Lies Bleeding.

Rachel Corrie, Martyr

I first published this interview 21 years ago. It is 22 years now since Rachel Corrie was martyred. She was laughed at and mercilessly mocked, not only by the Israelis, which, as wicked as it was, one could understand, she was perceived by them to be helping their enemies, and in their religion they are not taught to love and pray for their enemies. But she received the same scorn from Americans. I have never understand the hate from Americans. Her own people hated her. They hated her and ridiculed her for the sin of sacrificing her soft American lifestyle to go and help people weaker than her. As far as I know she wasn’t a Christian, yet she was closer to the Kingdom of God than almost every self-proclaimed American Christian. And she was insulted for it. Every year that goes by, and never more so than the current moment when Rachel Corrie’s Palestinian friends are suffering in their worst hour, it becomes clear to all except the most dishonest souls that Rachel Corrie was on the right side, she did the work of the righteous, and those who dishonored her death are only worthy of shame.

I conducted an interview with a friend of Rachel Corrie. For those unfamiliar with Ms. Corrie and the events of 16 March 2003 here is a summary, recently written by Rachel's cousin Elizabeth Corrie:

On March 16, 2003, an Israeli soldier and his commander ran over Rachel with a nine-ton Caterpillar bulldozer while she stood - unarmed, clearly visible in her orange fluorescent jacket - protecting a Palestinian home slated for demolition by the Israeli army. The death of Rachel Corrie, and the response that her case has - and has not - received, reveal several disturbing, indeed immoral and criminal, truths.

First, Rachel died while attempting to prevent the demolition of a home, a common practice of the Israeli Army's collective punishment that has left more than 12,000 Palestinians homeless since the beginning of the second uprising in September 2000. This practice violates international law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Second, Rachel was run over by a Caterpillar bulldozer, manufactured in the United States and sent to Israel as part of the regular U.S. aid package to Israel, which amounts to $3 billion to $4 billion annually, all of it from U.S. taxpayers. The use of Caterpillar bulldozers to destroy civilian homes, not to mention to run over unarmed human rights activists, violates U.S. law, including the U.S. Arms Export Control Act, which prohibits the use of military aid against civilians.

Third, the self-acquittal of the Israeli army for Rachel's death and the resistance of the state of Israel to an independent investigation into this case reveals both the Sharon administration's unwillingness to take responsibility for the death of a U.S. citizen and the Bush administration's cowardice in allowing another nation to attack U.S. citizens with impunity.

The sickness of America is reflected very well in the shabby treatment of the Corrie death. The corporate media and the government swept the ugly crime under the rug. . .the fringe media that commented on the case did so mainly to mock the poor 23 year old girl. . .a true hero. . .a young woman who honorably represented her country. The reprobates who insulted the bravery of Corrie shamefully smeared the victim. . .they tried to shift the focus from Corrie's murder to Corrie's *treason*. . .and what were Corrie's great treasonous crimes? A photograph was discovered which showed Corrie burning a fake American flag at a protest rally, and she dared to play a female David to the zionist Goliath. For this, the reprobates reasoned, Corrie deserved to die. . .and to have the memory of her scorned.

But let us not to belabor the seamy religious/political implications of the slander of Rachel Corrie.  Better to remind readers of what the Lord Jesus Christ said:

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. . .

Of course, Rachel Corrie was not perfect. . .no one is. . .yet it is apparent she was an increasingly rare person of conviction. .. .and decided to follow her beliefs to their bitter end. For this, 7000 miles from her home, she was treated like a pile of garbage that needed to be cleared from the path of destruction.

Let it not be thus in America. . .so I emailed a young artist, Josh Simmons, who knew Rachel. . .let his memory of her be heard above the din of slander:

Question: How did you meet Rachel Corrie? What was it about her that you found attractive?

Josh Simmons: I met Rachel when I moved to Olympia, Wa. in the fall of 1997, I believe. She was attending Evergreen, and I lived right next to the school for a little while, so we'd go to the same parties, knew the same people and so on. She was a pretty girl, in a kinda off-kilter way, I've always liked girls who were attractive in a kinda strange way.....She was pretty wild back then, drinking a lot and running around naked and talking about how she was gonna save the world and write the great american novel and all this....

I'm sort of a grumpy bitch, so sometimes I find myself attracted to people who are really outgoing and exuberant and curious about a lot of things....Although I never much cared for her whole activism angle on things, or activists in general, I gotta say, she sure wasn't half-assed about it, and that I do admire. Even back then when she was running around half-crazed and just seemed like any young girl who didn't know what she wanted to do with her life, she was still volunteering her time and really involved with social issues, it seemed, I don't know, I was mostly just interested in her romantically.

Question: People who know of Corrie only through the events of her death might assume she was a *fanatic radical* who lived and breathed political activism 24 hours a day. . .can you recall any specific anecdotes that would soften this image? For example, did she have a Chris Cornell poster on her bedroom wall?

Josh Simmons: The thing about her though, this image people have of her as a fanatic or radical is just ridiculous. Couldn't be further from the truth. I mean she always had her beliefs and all, but she was just a funny, crazy girl when I knew her. We'd both make sick jokes and so on, she definitely wasn't some uptight nelly, preaching at people left and right for any supposed transgression. I think, although a lot of it did seem a little naive to me at the time, she ultimately had the right attitude about being an activist.

No Chris Cornell poster, she was into surrealist painters, and books like 100 Years of Solitude and Milan Kundera and some other purple prosed type stuff, most of which I don't really care for, but it beats reading romance novels or some shit. Anyway, I was pretty infatuated with the girl for a while, but she was just too scattered and running around kissing other boys and stuff, so I left town.

Question: No one acts out of a purely altruistic motivation. .. .do you have any idea why she would leave the comfort of the soft American life and go to Palestine to help those poor people? For example, did she read too many Joe Sacco comics?

Josh Simmons: She probably did read a few too many Joe Sacco comics, Noam Chomsky tracts, whatever....And even though she didn't have perhaps the most common sense in the world for heading over to a war zone, a skinny, strange white girl who grew up in a relatively sheltered, stable home and environment (I grew to hate Olympia and it's liberal misguided gay softness), what she did took balls, and I respect that. Whereas 95% of peoples will never do anything with their lives that requires a tenth of the courage it took to do what she did, she put herself at risk, and I like to think, at least, that she had a somewhat "meaningful" death, or an exciting one anyway!!

I don't really care for the whole martyr thing, and I don't mean to sound crass or glib, but while most folks are just gonna whither away living their safe little lives and get gobbled up by cancer and old age and liver disease and so on, Rachel got murdered by a bulldozer of the Israeli army. All politics and my personal attachment aside, I just find that really absurd. And kind of admirable.

Question: I am sure there are some who suspect Corrie of anti-Semitism. . .did you ever detect any trace of anti-Semitism in her?

Josh Simmons: Anti-semitism? Of course not, that's fucking ridiculous, just the sort of spin the media might put on it. I've read enough about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to see for myself why it's depicted certain ways and who it benefits to put it that way. I've read the Sacco comics, and I read an article in Reader's Digest recently wherein the Palestinians are depicted purely as the "enemy", the "other", "terrorists", with no agenda other than that they hate freedom and freedom-loving peoples, or some such other Luke Skywalker/Darth Vader fairy tale like the chimp who "runs" our country would have us believe.

Question: Corrie is mocked by some as naive, a stooge of terrorists. . .others revere her as a heroic, even saintly defender of the weak and oppressed. . .from what you know of Corrie, do you find one of these extreme views to be closer to the truth than the other?

Josh Simmons: The two extremes you mention, Rachel as a stooge of terrorists, and as a heroic defender of the weak and oppressed, both seem pretty far off to me....She was just a girl who had some ideas about how she felt people should be treated, and did her best to bring that about in the world. She came from something of a position of privilege, where she had the luxury to do that, but that beats acting completely selfish and disgusting, as people are wont to do, wouldn't you say?

Question: How did the news of her death affect you?

Josh Simmons: I learned of her death when a mutual friend's mother called to tell me, just completely in tears and broken up....at first I didn't know which Rachel she meant, I was sort of confused and had just woken up, so the whole thing was just pretty unpleasant. Of course I was pretty upset by it, but to be honest I hadn't spent too much time with the girl since I'd lived in Oly 5 or 6 years previous. We'd kept in touch though, and I'd see her maybe once a year or two, and had spent a week or so with her the summer of 2002. It was hard, but there was some distance there......

Thanks to Josh Simmons for putting a human face on the martyr Rachel Corrie. . .from Josh's words, we see a Rachel Corrie who obviously enjoyed life, had youthful exuberance. . .maybe an American wild child. . .yet she had the ability to empathize. . .as Josh wrote:

She was just a girl who had some ideas about how she felt people should be treated, and did her best to bring that about in the world. She came from something of a position of privilege, where she had the luxury to do that, but that beats acting completely selfish and disgusting, as people are wont to do, wouldn't you say?

Yes, I would say so. . .and let Josh’s words serve as a reminder, at least to the few who will stop and read, that this girl (not an angel, nor an example of perfection, but a flawed human being), used non-violent tactics to try to help those less fortunate than herself. . .and that, even though her charity was likely as imperfect as herself, she deserves to be remembered kindly for her noble ambitions. . .and not as garbage fit only for contempt.

Gaza Wear

I haven’t written anything about Palestine or Israel in a long time. It’s a hopeless situation. Israel is now operating without any decent restraint, totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct.

The immediate deaths, the slow deaths, the destruction of any sort of tolerable existence, the sheer human misery Israel is inflicting upon Palestinians is on such a scale as to be beyond comment.

The general indifference of the world is not surprising. If something doesn’t directly affect us, it’s easy to let it be.

The Western governments enable Israel’s crimes. They arm Israel, they financially support Israel. The Western governments have a significant share of the responsibility. Citizens of those countries are covered, in varying degrees, with shame.

Despite what religious and humanitarian groups proclaim about their regard for human life, human misery is accepted. A justification will always be found to excuse violence. Human beings have been slaughtered or exploited to a slow death throughout all of human history.

The acquisition of treasure is the motivating factor of human history, on the individual and collective level. For the love of money is the root of all evil. The selfish desire for an easier life than our neighbor is the origin of violence. The only way to break the cycle of violence is for people to adapt a system of belief that demands the rejection of the current world order, and the establishment of a new kingdom based upon a code with a central tenet of treating others as we would be treated.

Since there’s no such kingdom in this world, the only thing that will end the misery of the Palestinians is a supernatural act of violence which would require the Israelis to bandage themselves. An earthquake, an asteroid, etc.

Anyway, I wanted to make those comments acknowledging the human suffering of the Palestinians before moving on to something that otherwise might have seemed a little bit tone deaf or odd, or both.

I see pictures and videos on social media of the victims in Gaza, and one thing I have noticed over the years is the clothing of the children.

How would I describe the clothing?

Imagine the great cinema taskmaster Stanley Kubrick demanding his costume designer produce a wardrobe suitable for characters in a movie depicting children of extreme poverty and deprivation, and yet the apparel must also somehow dimly, bizarrely reflect their oppressors.

In picture after picture and video after video, we see the lamentable children of Palestine clad in dirty, cheap clothing adorned with fake Western athletics logos and designs, and English lettering.  These are not Arabic soccer jerseys, but bizarre imitations of Western sports jerseys.

Yes, in the midst of all the suffering, I wonder about these shirts.  Where are they manufactured?  Do Palestinians make them?  If so, do Palestinians have some fondness for Western sports they only have a vague knowledge of?  Or does the clothing come from some Western relief agency?  But who in the West would design a shirt that is both surreal and generic?  I mean, look at this:

Baseball Player.  College League.  Strike.  1982.

Huh?

It would represent nothing in the West, so what could it possibly mean in Gaza?  

A small, strange (to me, at least) detail in the midst of overwhelming human suffering.

PICK UP THAT SHIT!

It’s hard to imagine a human being can look more undignified, ridiculous, diminished than when they are stooping down to pick up their dog’s shit. Wearing a plastic glove they pick up their animal’s waste, carefully pack it in to a little plastic bag and the carry it home like it’s a precious memento from a golden outing.

Whenever I’m driving and I see somebody engaged thusly, I shout as loud as I can PICK UP THAT SHIT! I want them to know I’ve seen them. I have seen them with shit in their hand. I’ve seen them debased.

But maybe that’s the reason they do it? They want to be humiliated. Maybe they wish I’d stop my car, get out, and force them to eat the dog shit?  By submitting to my demand they eat shit, they feel relief from the stress of their daily responsibilities.  Or, because of some deep guilt or shame, they feel emotionally cleansed when humiliated.  Maybe the taboo of being humiliated by being forced to eat their dog's filth arouses them.  Or maybe they are some *big deal* in their daily life, and this temporary loss of ego gives them a sense of freedom. 

Whatever the reason, there are literally millions of Americans who engage in this bizarre, debasing ritual every day.

I have a cat.  I clean his litter box in private.  You ain't gonna see me scooping his piss clumps and shit logs in public like some proud half-a-sissy holding a plastic bag of dog shit while prancing around town like a zoophile Chuck Berry.  

10 Best Performances By An Actor

Marlon Brando, Last Tango In Paris: Of course, everybody loved it when he butt-fucked Maria Schneider, but my favorite scene is when he’s talking to his wife’s corpse.  He runs through the full range of human emotions: boredom, anger, disgust, confusion, amusement, sadness.  It's one of cinema's great monologues, even though it turns out his dramatic facial expressions were not the result of his acting method, but him merely looking for the cue cards.  

Richard Burton, Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?: Every man who’s ever been married can sympathize with and validate Burton's performance, played against his real life wife Elizabeth Taylor. You do your best for these ball busters, and it’s never good enough. They blame you for their failures. Their misery is your fault. You were the parasite that sucked the life out of them, and left them a malnourished, dying soul. They would’ve been the Queen of England if it wasn’t for you sabotaging their life. But, you stick with these ungrateful harpies, partly out of Christian charity, partly out of the inertia resulting from the knowledge another one wouldn't be any better.

Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler: A transcendent performance which enables us to champion the loser in ourselves. Sometimes we try to be better, of course it doesn’t work out, and the others, denying the loser in themselves, judge us.  Then, as Rourke's character does, we see the folly of our attempt, we repent of our feeble effort to live selflessly and we fully commit to being ourselves, for better or, more likely, worse. 
 
Jon Voight, Runaway Train: His nihilistic rant about the shit-eating lives of the working class, ending with the blunt revelation he could not look a boss in the eye because if he did he'd have to kill him, is a succinct condemnation of Western life.  Every second of Voight's performance is a cinematic validation of Rousseau's proverb: man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.  

Anthony Quinn, Requiem For A Heavyweight: The children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light. Completely capturing the character's imposing physicality and emotional vulnerability, Quinn's washed-up fighter is a heartbreaking child of light who has everything taken from him, including his dignity, by the children of this world.  Not one false note in the performance.  

Philippe Nahon, I Stand Alone: The Calvinist doctrine of the total depravity of man is on full display here in Nahon's portrayal of a man ground to existential dust in a diseased society.  As he becomes more and more detached from the world, Nahon's character's last remaining grip on reality and moral balance disintegrate in an explosion of rage and resentment.  Film's ultimate ugly every man.  

Al Pacino, Scarface: Inspired a generation of rappers.

Erwin Leder, Angst: No actor ever worked harder, gave more blood, sweat and tears.  You'll be exhausted just from watching Leder's frantic physicality. His maniac's erratic movements, exaggerated facial expressions, wild-eyed stare and disturbed breathing will probably trigger panic attacks in today's anxiety-afflicted audience. 

Paul Newman, The Hustler: Could just as easily pick his performance in Cool Hand Luke, but this is a less showy, more psychologically ambiguous role, and he plays his flawed character with a restless energy that reveals his inner conflict.

Max von Sydow, The Exorcist: He was 44 years old when he played the 80 year old Father Merrin in a masterful performance, perfectly presenting the priest's physical frailty and spiritual power.

Dull As Dishwater Huysmans Biography

The Life of J.-K. Huysmans, by Robert Baldick.  This has a sterling reputation as one of the great literary biographies, and as Huysmans is one of my favorites, and one of the true greats, I was looking forward to reading it. Alas, it’s as dull as 19th century dishwater. It provides only a surface look at Huysmans’ life: on this day Huysmans and Theodore Hannon went to a whorehouse in Brussels, on this day Huysmans had dinner with Zola, Flaubert and Edmond de Goncourt, on this day Huysmans and Mallarme visit Villiers’ sick bed, on this day Huysmans attends a seance with Joseph-Antoine Boullan, on this day Huysmans visits Chartres, on this day Huysmans is depressed at Saint-Pierre de Solesmes. The biography completely lacks any psychological insight into the quirky author of the Grand Masterpiece of Decadent Weirdness, A Rebours. Particularly disappointing is how little attention is paid to Huysmans three decades long career as a government clerk. Please, this guy was a brilliant writer, and for thirty years he had to shuffle papers at a boring, soul-crushing job, and we get almost no information on this part of his life, and more importantly, what effect it had on his writing. Only the ten or so pages that recount Huysmans’ agonizing death from mouth/jaw cancer have any life. The rest of this book falls far short of its acclaim.

Crappy Fassbinder Biography

Fassbinder: The Life And Work Of A Provocative Genius, by Christian Braad Thomsen. Amazon promotes this as the revealing biography of this highly productive and radical director.  No.  About 40 of this book's 358 pages offer a superficial overview of the manic, profligate life of New German Cinema's greatest director, Rainer Werner Fassbinder.  The other 300+ pages are dry critical studies (heavily laced with dry psychological analyses) of Fassbinder's 40 feature films, 24 plays, two television serials, three short films, and four video productions.

Fassbinder died at age 37, and completed his remarkable body of work, as well as acting in a dozen films, in a whirlwind between 1967 and his death in 1982.  A homosexual-heavy bisexual, he also had numerous volatile marriages, affairs and work relationships, as well as heavy drug and alcohol use.

I was hoping this *biography* would get down into the Fassbinder gutter and wallow the reader in his filthy, grimy, often violent sexual relationships with many of his film's leading men, such as the Moroccan El Hedi ben Salem, Armin Meier, Kurt Raab, and the negro Günther Kaufmann. Meier and ben Salem both committed suicide.  But only pages 18-20 deal with this, and give only the most broad outline of Fassbinder's debauched love life.  I should have stopped reading right then and there, but I kept turning another 30 pages or so, then started skimming through the overly-academic analyses of the films, television shows and stage plays. 

Fassbinder's peers included Herzog and Wenders, and I always thought Fassbinder's films were better.  Had he been able to continuing working the last forty years, one can only imagine what other gems he would have added to the great The Bitter Tears Of Petra Von Kant, Ali: Fear Eats The Soul, Effi Briest, Chinese Roulette, The Marriage Of Maria Braun, Lola, Veronika Voss and the television series Berlin Alexanderplast.

Fassbinder had his own film language, somnolent pacing, flat, detached dialogue, set designs rich in symbolism, post-war German melodrama and social criticism. Fassbinder was one of the best at presenting losers on the big screen.  Unlike in Hollywood melodramas, Fassbinder's troubled characters, beat down by both circumstance and their own failings, didn't secure happy endings, but learned how to survive their morally bankrupt surroundings and themselves, or make peace with death.  When one contemplates Fassbinder's own untidy personal life, one can't help believe that he was able to sympathize and identify with his film's characters, and that is why they feel so authentic.

If this *biography* had offered more of the personal Fassbinder and less of the theoretical-critical, the reader would probably have an even deeper understanding and appreciation of his films.

Obsession

Obsession: I'd never heard of this 1949 British film noir (released in America under the title The Hidden Room) until stumbling across its grainy print on Tubi, and was pleasantly surprised by how entertaining it was. 

The film follows Dr. Clive Riordan (Robert Newton), a middle-aged London psychiatrist more interested in his model trains than his frisky younger wife, aptly named Storm (Sally Gray).  When the bookish doctor discovers he is being cuckolded yet again by Storm, he decides to put his model trains down and finally do something about it.  Storm is having an affair with a young American man, Bill Kronin (Phil Brown).  In an amusing running sidebar, the doctor's Gentleman's Club friends all lament America usurping Britain's role in the World Order.  Anyway, the doctor, a true egghead, devises a meticulous plan to murder the American bedding his itchy wife. He kidnaps the Yank and imprisons him in a hidden basement, keeping him alive while preparing to dispose of him in his intricately planned murder. Unfortunately, a Scotland Yard Superintendent (Naunton Wayne), who seems a Limey forerunner of Columbo, begins looking into the American's disappearance, and soon suspects the doctor may be up to no good.

I wasn't familiar with any of the four main actors, and if I've seen them in any other films, they made no lasting impression, but they all play their roles convincingly. In particular, Sally Gray is not as mousy as many of the Limey actresses of that era, and if she were in her prime today, she could easily play a South London chav girl.

Blacklisted Hollywood director Edward Dmytryk crossed the pond and crafted a fine crime film heavy on psychological tension with a villain driven by cold rationality rather than uncontrolled rage.  Released 76 years ago, this hidden gem of jealousy has definitely held up well and will keep the contemporary viewers' attention.