WELL, I GUESS THAT DIDN'T WORK...
My cybergenerated superhero name was The Hungry Exhorter, which I quite like but Blogger seemed to balk at posting at. Ah well, so much for childish frivolity.
CRYPTIQUE -- Get my cape and mask out of the cleaners.
Wednesday, July 07, 2004
I’M EXCEEDINGLY TIRED OF CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS
Save me dear lord from those who pimp opinions to the rich and stupid. I am growing exceedingly bored with the mindlessly over-inflated prose and faux-alcoholism of the writer Christopher Hitchens. The man has to be called if only on his substandard drunk pose, the ease of which I know all too well. I guess it was inevitable that, with the Coulter genre mercifully sinking under the weight of its own implausibility, some former radical should figure to slime their way into becoming the up market Bill O’Reilly. Last week Hitchens excelled himself with a blast of absurdist pomposity against Michael Moore...
To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental... Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery.
Yeah right.
There’s an adapted saying round the old guard. “If you can remember Hitchens in the 1960s, you probably weren’t there.” I thus I only kinda recall seeing the fool as through an hallucination darkly, at parties at Jonathon Green’s house, busy being some kind of upper class Trot, accompanied by thick-ear Stalinist malchicks who probably wanted to hang me from a lamppost. I suppose I could go on at length, but, yet again, why the fuck bother? Go on picking up those cheques from Vanity Fair, boyo. But let’s not pretend any philosophy is being molded, except to flatter the demands of the market. Like just another dog act, son. And also consider that the tide may be turning. Michael Moore has a hit. Folks are responding. Nothing succeeds like success, and the transaction may be entering a new cycle. In times of transition, the flight from sell-out to has-been can be a short hop with no beverage service.
Cue Positively Fourth Street
MONKEY BUSINESS
I maybe bored with Hitchens, but some worthy primates are vexed and more than a little put out by being constantly compared to G.W. Bush. (Hit the link, it’s worth it for the smile.)
http://www.bushisnotachimp.org/
CRYPTIQUE – Seeing you makes me grateful I’m me.
Save me dear lord from those who pimp opinions to the rich and stupid. I am growing exceedingly bored with the mindlessly over-inflated prose and faux-alcoholism of the writer Christopher Hitchens. The man has to be called if only on his substandard drunk pose, the ease of which I know all too well. I guess it was inevitable that, with the Coulter genre mercifully sinking under the weight of its own implausibility, some former radical should figure to slime their way into becoming the up market Bill O’Reilly. Last week Hitchens excelled himself with a blast of absurdist pomposity against Michael Moore...
To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental... Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of "dissenting" bravery.
Yeah right.
There’s an adapted saying round the old guard. “If you can remember Hitchens in the 1960s, you probably weren’t there.” I thus I only kinda recall seeing the fool as through an hallucination darkly, at parties at Jonathon Green’s house, busy being some kind of upper class Trot, accompanied by thick-ear Stalinist malchicks who probably wanted to hang me from a lamppost. I suppose I could go on at length, but, yet again, why the fuck bother? Go on picking up those cheques from Vanity Fair, boyo. But let’s not pretend any philosophy is being molded, except to flatter the demands of the market. Like just another dog act, son. And also consider that the tide may be turning. Michael Moore has a hit. Folks are responding. Nothing succeeds like success, and the transaction may be entering a new cycle. In times of transition, the flight from sell-out to has-been can be a short hop with no beverage service.
Cue Positively Fourth Street
MONKEY BUSINESS
I maybe bored with Hitchens, but some worthy primates are vexed and more than a little put out by being constantly compared to G.W. Bush. (Hit the link, it’s worth it for the smile.)
http://www.bushisnotachimp.org/
CRYPTIQUE – Seeing you makes me grateful I’m me.
Monday, July 05, 2004
LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN (What’ve you got?)
So seemingly Marlon Brando couldn’t take another July 4 weekend. But his passing was sobering. For me, Brando was the first. Before James Dean and Elvis, before I’d heard of Allen Ginsberg, or Kerouac, Marlon cut the shape. He was, in every sense, the Godfather of 20th century hipster bohemia in the characters of Stanley Kowalski, Terry Moloy, Johnny the Wild One, and later Vito Corleone, Jor El, and Kurtz at the Heart of Darkness. All the others have gone before, and now Marlon is dead, it’s starting to feel lonely in the upper age bracket.
The tabloids are already rehashing his mess of a private life while smart-ass broadsheets harp on how, at the end, he became totally bored with the process of acting. My only indirect contact with the man was when we made the TV documentary Black Leather Jacket, and Marlon caused us no trouble whatsoever over the use of the image. That’s my only story.
FOOTNOTE
Maybe Marlon is well out of world where the CIA has banned Furbies – the stuffed toys that can repeat phrases – from the headquarters in Langley. Seemingly they pose too much of a security threat.
CRYPTIQUE – Grapes explode in the microwave.
So seemingly Marlon Brando couldn’t take another July 4 weekend. But his passing was sobering. For me, Brando was the first. Before James Dean and Elvis, before I’d heard of Allen Ginsberg, or Kerouac, Marlon cut the shape. He was, in every sense, the Godfather of 20th century hipster bohemia in the characters of Stanley Kowalski, Terry Moloy, Johnny the Wild One, and later Vito Corleone, Jor El, and Kurtz at the Heart of Darkness. All the others have gone before, and now Marlon is dead, it’s starting to feel lonely in the upper age bracket.
The tabloids are already rehashing his mess of a private life while smart-ass broadsheets harp on how, at the end, he became totally bored with the process of acting. My only indirect contact with the man was when we made the TV documentary Black Leather Jacket, and Marlon caused us no trouble whatsoever over the use of the image. That’s my only story.
FOOTNOTE
Maybe Marlon is well out of world where the CIA has banned Furbies – the stuffed toys that can repeat phrases – from the headquarters in Langley. Seemingly they pose too much of a security threat.
CRYPTIQUE – Grapes explode in the microwave.
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