Cinematic Segue: A very "Know Your Audience" Anomalous Blogg!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Uncle Mike is my biggest literary critic. The highest compliment he has ever given me (which was two years ago so it doesn't count) was, after a long-silence, "Well--it's pretty good for a human" (It was a 200 cigarette rushed out short-story about everyone's-favorite Yugoslavian refugee arteest, Jasna, titled WHERE ALL THE DREAM CHARACTERS DREAM, TOO)...Normally Mike always tells me one thing, "THE GENERAL POPULATION WON'T 'GET' IT!" At first it hurt my feelings but now I don't care. Time, like marriage, has a way of either attuning or abrading emotions. I once accumulated the gall to read one old blog entry to Mike (angels--about dear-olde-'dad'--note the 'add'-cronym,) and after the first paragraph Mike just chewed the piece up and spat it out--like it's sentences left a residual wheatgerm aftertaste on the top of his palate.

"Know your audience." He always tells me. "You've got to know your audience, and the general status quo won't be able to 'get' this.

This morning at brunch Mike shot out another "Know your audience" quip. The waitress at Denny's asked if we were ready to order and I simply requested another java refill and told her that we were 'musing' over the menu.

"Know your audience."

Over the word 'musing'!

I did manage to reel a few chuckles out of Mike anyoldway. I told Mike that since our house is intrinically (Know Your Audience) one big welcome matt for humanity, we were going to invite all the old, cantakerous (Know Your Audeince) Baha'is over to our living room, ingest copious (K.Y.A.) amounts of TANG (Know Your Decade) have an old fashion romping good time hootenanny (K. Y. D) and, at the moment when an almost universal oneness slivers throughout the spines of our guests, toast our sugary chalices and break out into a boisterous nasal-navigated carol of THOSE WERE THE DAYS compliments of Edith and Archie Bunker.


"Boy the way Glen Miller played,
songs that made the hit parade,
guys like us we had it made,
those were the days,

and you know where you were then,
girls were girls and men were men,
mister we could use a man
like Herbert Hoover again

didn't need no welfare states
everybody pulled his weight,
gee our old Lasalle ran great,
those were the days!"

Heavenly nostalgia. God I love that song! Reminds me of Saturday nights at Grandma's!!!!
-Now if I can only manage to dish Edith's keening soporano out from my skull. There, that's better.
***

All my friends who kick it with me on a fairly regular basis (which are few because I work such odd hours) are all too well aware that I'm not too much of a cinematic buff and that I would rather monopolize endless hours pecking out spasmodic storylines than finding myself engulfed in a tinted moive theatre watching endless reels of previews, padding my pockets in search of soemthing clean to swipe off the accumulating mounds of butter on my hands; looking around, wondering why some people. You can tell I don't date much, "I know what we can do tonight honey, after I cook you dinner let's work on our pending literary opuses--together!!!!" On the other hand, Uncle Mike, my roommate and sporadic savior usually sees at least two movies every weekend. I know, who would've thought. Half the time he falls asleep during the first half-hour. Since the library has been snapping their doors shut extremely early on Friday nights this summer, I've been escourting Uncle Mike on his weekly cinematic jaunt. Here's very terse single-sentences synopisis about the films I've seen, mostly with Uncle Mike, since May.


Van Helsing...........sucked.

Steppford Wives. ...........Everyone was dressed like that were attending the Republican National Convention. Didn't like it cause Nicole Kidman looks exactly like my ex-girlfriend Atalissa May ( replete with angular nose, nonchalant smirk and lowercase a-cup boobs, only Nicole is far less uppity than Atalissa is in real life).

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban..............Loved it. J.K. Rawling's is no J.R.R. Tolkein, but she's the impeccable J.K. Rawlings nonetheless. Just like her books make young kids want to grow up reading (and writing) books.... the movie rendetion nothing short of magical.

Farenheight 9-1-1..............Still haven't seen it but I landed a free ticket from the Green party.

Spiderman 2..................Did you hear that Kristen Dunst is single again? Ohmigod! She was Amy in Little Women ten years ago!!!! That would totally placate my hardcore crackerbarrel well-read Little Women fetish...oh, yeah, movie was amusing, but Doc. Octopuss's claws reminded me of something a third Reich surgeon would use to perform a colonoscopy.

King Arthur...........I would rather load up on insipid Prince Valiant comic strips and clean mideval stables than be coerced into sitting through KING ARTHUR again.....My dad's name was arthur, so I liked the title. lancelot looks like he could be peddeling Viagra in Sicily. Guinverre never gets naked; instead she turns into an extra from BRAVEHEART at the end.

I, Robot..................attack of the Crash Test Dummies, not the mmmmm...mmmm..mmm kind. That might have made the film more palatable, but not by much. We need more of Philip K. Dick's books made into movies...oh look, Richard Linklater who composed and directed BEFORE SUNSET is working on a script for A SCANNER DARKLY.

BOURNE IDENTITY..............Actually kind of liked it. The bulk of the flick is set in Germany which is genealogically soothing. Matt damon's girlfriend at the beginning reminded me a lot of my beloved blogging co-hort daniela, but damnit she died! ( Damon's girlfriend-not daniela...)

THE VILLAGE....................M. Night Shyamalan wrote this after spending Thanksging holiday at Lincoln's New Salem. Sort of like the Scarlet Letter meets PASSOVER. Beautifully rustic milieu which made me want to sell my book fast so I can move out in the country and brew coffee over a campfire while getting lost in lavender buccolic sunrises. Uncle Mike liked it but we both TOTALLY predicted the ending....Ron Howard's daughter sees unbroken dead people manifesting themselves in the crop circles.

That's it. BEFORE SUNSET FINALLY crawls into an INdependent theatre here in P-town this weekend! If you open the Arts section of the New York Times today you'll see an advertisement for BEFORE SUNSET boasting that it is 'THE HIGHEST RATED MOVIE OF THE SUMMER'....Indeed, it is, and they don't make movies like that anymore because they don't make people who want to feel real anymore. Almost makes me nostalgic...(sniff)...

People seemed to be content.
Fifty dollars paid the rent.
Freaks were in a circus tent.
Those were the days!

Take a little Sunday spin,
go to watch the Dodgers win.
Have yourself a dandy day
that cost you under a fin .

Hair was short and skirts were long.
Kate Smith really sold a song.
I don't know just what went wrong!
Those Were the Days!"