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Sunday, May 25, 2003

"To be honest, I thought it would be worse."
-The Pianist

i was having a little Holocaust film festival to punish my self for being insensitive before and i was hoping to see enough awful shit to shock myself back into a more sympathetic tone of voice. i won't give the whole list but you'll just have to trust me that i think i've rounded up ALL of these movies. of course, it didn't have the effect i thought it would. a couple things spring to mind:

in these films, imaginatation is being used to invent new and creative ways to kill. all survivors accounts have long been exhausted (mostly in books) and screenwriters have been filling in the gaps with their own versions of horrors for many years now. i'm thinking there's something kind of dishonest about showing elaborate executions in settings and situations designed for maximum impact. that's fine in a movie. but these are holocaust films, and there's an unwritten rule that, besides the instant Oscars, you must treat these not as a movies, but with the respect you'd give newsreel footage. why is that? these movies have long since moved past historical accuracy. they are drama inside a historical situation. but they are movies and should be judged as entertainment. i'm thinking all war movies start out this same way, with a quiet kind of awe when they were being viewed, but after a while they became cartoon revenge fantasies as ridiculous as any ficiton. my problem is not that holocaust film's are dishonest hollywood entertainment (well, maybe) but i quess my biggest problem is that they aren't entertaining enough. these filmmaker are taxing their brains to show us awful shit. they are inventing specific horrible scenes played out by actors for maximum emotion. there must be some fear in these filmmaker that, if they don't somehow top the last holocaust movie, they will be forgotten. are they afraid that someone will see their version of events and get annoyed that the horror was sacrificed in favor of a story and say, "that wasn't nasty enough, it was worse that that." Can they not stop themselves from one-upping the shocks? Audiences just nodding like they're at school, not listening and not recognizing it as exploitation and just mumbling, "yep, that's history." it's the same attitude that got Schindler's List on prime time TV uncut. concentration camp dicks flapping and bullets in the head for three hours on network television as if it was the ugly truth you had to see and not just stylish black and white violence desguised as a history lesson. the liberties taken with Oscar Schindler's actual story are so extensive that Raiders of the Lost Ark is closer to the facts of World War 2. so why not use that imagination that comes up with new ways to torture and kill all those muddy extras for a more interesting story? would it be so bad to invent some more uprisings? more people running or fighting back when they got shot instead of just lining up on the ground? hell, the A-Team invented a cannon that shot heads of lettuce in like 10 minutes. and look at all the potatoes in those movies! every kid can make a potato gun. i know that actual survivors have to be real sick of young men saying "what they'd do!" in that kind of situation but i'm afraid i'm no exception. and i think it's time that the concentration camp was an area that's fair game to demand more interesting fiction. these are movies, not memories.

think about all the war movies you've seen. like Braveheart, Windtalkers and We Are Soldiers, where there are scenes of brutality that were created simply to manipulate the audience in the same way you watch a Nascar race waiting for a wreck. for some reason people stopped demanding historical accuracy in war movies a long time ago. Holocaust movies are now doing the same thing and i think should be held accountable for their intent.

question: In The Pianist, was that execution where the german ran out of bullets, calmly reloaded, then shot the last man, saying something about Spielberg's similar scene in Schindler's List? where the slow hinge maker was spared by about twenty missfires from Fiennes luger? i wonder. speaking of pianos, how about that scene in Schindler's List where the man is shot hiding in the piano (music that turns into the score for the rest of the slaughter in the ghetto) or that little girl in the red dress? tell me those aren't perfect examples of stylish, exploitative cruelty in a movie desquised as "history." Holocaust movie have simply become genre films, just like cowboy movies, vampire movies or buddy-cop thrillers. people who watch these movies to feel noble as if they're suffering through a church sermon are fooling themselves. these movies all follow a simple formula and provoke and excite the audience with the killing and danger just like any car chase would.

i'd have to say though, after all the killing i could stomache: the movie The Grey Zone had the most impact. i think it is the best/worst of both worlds. the story follows the only documented uprising, and (you'll know it when it happens) the worst thing i could think of in a Holocaust movie. someone thought long and hard for that horrifying subplot and i hate to say it but it's fucking effective as hell. a girl doesn't die in the gas chamber and everything changes in the camp after that. i haven't been able to shake it what i saw in that movie, and that's after about ten of these movies so that's pretty impressive. should the writer/director be rewarded for his creative cruelty or condemned for exploitation? well, i think since this director is also the actor who was turned into a frog in O Brother Where Art Thou, and judging by his "oh shucks" attitude in his acting roles, i'm surprised he had these things on the brain. The Grey Zone, check it out. i can't recommend it as entertainment but it's got to be the last word in stylish suffering and the story is creative and incredibly involving. again, i hate to be that Monday-morning-quarterback who swears he'd fight back if he was in the same situation but fuck it, i'm gonna swear.

when i say "swear" i just mean i'd say the word "fuck"

::: david - 6:26 PM [+] :::
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"i see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes, i have to turn my head until my darkness goes..."
-Paint It Black

just watched Adaptation. i was warned against watching this by some and went in with expectations lowered. turned out i thoroughly enjoyed this flick. most of the complaints were calling it inside, self-indulgent etc. but i subscribe to Harlan Ellison's opinion on that whole "self-indulgent" accusation. his response (in his book Harlan Ellison's Watching) was that he was utterly sick of people labeling movies self-indulgent. he said that was the whole point of film, and art. he said it better (and with more profanity) but i remember thinking "fuck yeah! Ken Russell rocks! Eyeballs instead of nipples!" when i read that essay. i even went to buy Russell's Gothic.

anyway, this movie is about as self-indulgent as it gets and that's a good thing. some people seem to think Kaufman's self-loathing and contempt for his audience is some kind of act but i disagree. i think this movie was an excuse for him to embrace all those things his instincts tell him to avoid at all costs: the hit song for the credits, voice over narration, flashbacks, alligator attacks and, of course, the CAR CHASE! when these things happened on screen, it didn't feel mocked or that these conventions were being mocked, i was simply entertained baby! so maybe i'm a sucker. so what. that script "The 3" is worth the price of admission alone and when they talk about it in that film, everything is right with the world. i'm not ashamed to say that i would be first in line to see "The 3" if it actually exsisted. and i would complain about how there's "just no way the cop, the killer and the hostage could all be the same person" all the way home. hey, anyone notice Donald's description of the chase scene in his fake script? nature against technology or whatever? horse chasing the motorcycle? sounds like True Lies to me. maybe Kaufman is a closet Arnold fan. anyway, my only complaint with that film, the only thing that i felt was dishonest was this:

Kauman is telling the story of his miserable attempt to adapt The Orchid Thief into a movie. Adaptation is the story of the story of the story and the people that are fans of this film seem to think that this distancing (and inclusion) of himself from the story somehow means that it's essentially a "true" story. maybe there was no twin brother donald and no green Orchid/coke sniffing but it's accepted that Kaufman was miserable when he tried to adapt that book and this movie is the result. i mean, fuck, the only way this man could have looked more pathetic would be if shuffled around town with his pants bunched up at his ankles and wore one of those ballcaps with the clapping rubber hands. so it was torture eh? bullshit. i don't believe it.

i think that Kaufman was actually very excited about this idea and that there is another level of reality (uh oh, Matrix time) that would reveal a smiling Kaufman on the beach with a girl sitting on his face as he gleefully writes a script about himself miserably writing this script. that's the kind of insight we never get to see. i'm telling you, i can't prove it, but that motherfucker wrote this movie on the beach. it wasn't Barton Fink up in some dank motel. it was sunny out. like the end of Barton Fink. and there were girls around, and Being John Malkovich was coming out so he was smiling and he had the world by the ass. i can't prove it but i see that bastard on the beach.

so i guess my only problem was that it wasn't indulgent enough. You want indulgent? then check out some Cronenberg. and if I was handed free reign to write a movie that indulged whatever i was thinking? it wouldn't be a movie about making movies, even if it was a movie about a movie about making a movie, i can tell you that. i wouldn't be nearly as angst-ridden as i struggled to fill in the blanks. hell, i could fill 3 hours with five minutes of thoughts that i would have after my first step onto the beach, right after the first girl walked by with a book held so i couldn't read the cover, or maybe just a strange scratch on her knee.

::: david - 7:41 PM [+] :::
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"There was an auto ittying by and it had its radio on. . .and I viddied at once what to do."
-A Clockwork Orange



FICTION:



Flying (part 2)



Why isn’t driving a sport?

Steven’s car was slowing down. The muscle and bone was tight across the top of his foot. His toes fanned out, audibly popping free from the sweat that glued them together. His foot rose higher off the pedal and the numbers under his hand fell.

Why isn’t driving a game?

He looked down the road and tried to guess where his car would finally stop. It the fading light he could see something curled up to the left of the white lines, right where an oncoming tire would hit.

Why isn’t driving enough of a reason to get in your car?

The car inched foward and Steven knew he wasn’t going to make it to that shape on the road. He opened the door and watched the black tar roll by under him. He turned his steering wheel slightly so the thing on the road could be reached from the driver’s seat. The road under him slowed even more and he saw an insect crawling along next to him, easily keeping pace with the vehicle. He wasn’t going to make it.

You know why driving ain’t a sport?

He slid his goot outside and felt the wind drying the webbing between his toes. He stepped on the road. The sun was down but the tar was still warm. He clenched his teeth and curled his foot for traction and walked the car forward. Several minutes later he was on top of the thing, leg aching, heel bleeding and sweat running down his nose.

There’s no ball when you drive. That’s why it can’t be a sport.

It wasn’t an animal. A short kick made a sound like wind chimes and he realized it was metal. Maybe something from a car?
Maybe something like a gall bladder to a car, something the car didn’t really need. Otherwise the car would still be here. Or dying near by.

Steven leaned out and looked to the vanishing point. Then he heard something rustle in the weeds and he quickly pulled his leg inside, banging his ankle in the process, and slammed the door shut. He pinched his eyes shut until the pain went away. He shook his head. Stopping in the middle of a road felt all wrong. He felt like a boy who was forced to piss himself on a long drive. Everything he’d ever learned about driving told him that he shouldn’t be stopped on the white lines. Everything he knew about the road was coaxing his foot back to the gas. To stop was a violation, not just of the law, a violation of a code. If someone saw him they would stare as if they’d seen a plane stopped cold in the sky.

Only nothing was coming. He rolled down his window and spit into the ditch and listened. No cars, no animals, nothing. He wanted to stay like that forever. A flash of movement caught his eye and he craned his neck outside. He remembered when he was a boy and he had tried to believe in “road pirates.” First it was just two words he thought he’d heard, later his young mind filled in the blanks. (road pirates, it just sounds right) He thought they’d run up alongside your car, or maybe they had their own black cars, and they’d jump on board with their swords flashing. Standing tall on your hood, a mouthful of bugs and gravel, ducking under the railroad barriers as Steven’s dad panicked and sped through the flashing lights to beat the train and shake him off. Pirates on cars. That was such a perfect thing for a boy to imagine. Like a scribble on a lunchbox of a dinosaur playing a guitar. Only it was a more natural fusion of fantasies.

He knew those antennas were for pirate flags.

Eventually his years of conditioning took over and Steven cranked the wheel hand over hand, stomped on the gas and headed for home. An hour later he was reluctantly climbing out and onto the driveway, high-stepping his way through the sharp rocks with his shoes in his hand and his ballcap in his teeth. He kicked his way through the door, savagely pulling his T-shirt over his head and struggling to get his head out like a man on the losing end of a hockey fight. He threw the tangle of shirt and shoes into the corner and spit his cap onto the floor.

"Fucking hot," he mumbled to no one.

Then he was tripping over James who was squatting behind the door, a newspaper spread out upside-down under his knees, pretending to read the sports page. The lights were off and the television was stuck between channels, soaking the room in a sickly green glow. James rustled the newspaper with his legs as he stood up smiling. He blinked as if he’d just noticed Steven there, he leaned forward arms behind his back. Steven scratched his neck and waited for the joke. Finally James held out his hand. They had never shaken hands in their three months as roommates, not even when they first met, so Steven just stared at his face waiting for the punchline. Then he looked down.

Three and a half dead flies were swinging from his knuckles.

Steven blinked and walked past him, grabbing his wet shirt from the corner and wringing the sweat out onto the floor. He held it up to the green screen, looking for anything crawling, then realized what he was doing and angrily threw it back down. James stepped up to him again, smiling and waiting for his handshake. Steven shook his head at him, the heavy sigh he blew from his nose spinning one of the flies around James’ fingers until it stuck in the dangle of dog hair and webbing that hung in the dead air between them.

"What were you doing, trying to catch spiders?"


-© 2003 david james keaton

::: david - 6:27 PM [+] :::
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"i never see no green monkey!"
-some comedian


watching Court TV today and they have that trial of the girl who wanted to start an Anarcy Club at her high school and they suspended her for three days. see that? they just said something about the principal saying to the newspapers that her shirt said "america burn" on it or some such bullshit. the actual T-shirts they held up in court said nothing like that. and it reminded me of a couple things. why isn't there a word that can be used when someone exaggerates something to make their point and, in the process, completely submarines all their credibility? is there a word? besides douchebag? i have two examples that make me seem like an insensitive fuck but i'm going to cite them anyway:

i was reading a book called "Nazi Doctors" and i was all ready for any atrocity they could throw at me. then something strange started happening, i was reading the survivors accounts and i started to doubt the specifics of some of the stories. there was talk about a crazed doctor swinging a baby by its leg and bashing its head in against the wall. and i'm thinking this person had started to exaggerate to make a point that had already been made 5 pages in. i didn't believe that the baby swinging had really happened. i started to believe that the woman had just searched her mind for the worst thing that she could think of. the equivalent of me saying, "i turned around and suddenly i was eating a bowl of snot instead of cornflakes..." i just doubted her. maybe even for her lack of imagination. it seemed impossible that i could get irritated with a holocaut survivor's account but it happened.

then i was reading Dworkin's book "In Harm's Way" about the dangers of porn. i'd heard she was a nut but i have a lot of porn lying around and i figured i'd give the other side a day in court. i wasn't 20 pages into that piece of shit when i stopped believing the rape victims' versions of events. they discribed slobbering satanic college rituals and fathers that sold their daughters to the adult movie circuit and i again i was thinking "bullshit, he made you get that tattoo of a heart on your ass too eh?" see, i already know that rape and Nazis are bad. but it takes a special kind of person to make me more irritated with the victim. it's the kind of person that can't help but to tell the worst story they can to make a bad story better. and to that type worse is better. i don't know.

it's getting more and more common these days, especially post 911, like with that principal saying the girl wanted "america to burn" when someone hears something they disagree with, or maybe something that makes them stop and think they might be getting angry but can't really come up with a good obvious reason in their heads, they take that something and stretch into this ridiculous statement or over the top horror story to get more people on their side. and that shit works because people are fucking lemmings and they love to get mad about only the most obvious shit. maybe because the person who tells the tale can't stand the idea of a debate? something like that. like that SARS news about it originating from Asians eating "a cat-like animal as a delicacy." has this really been proven? even if it is, it just seems a miracle to me that the reason behind this plague just happens to be this age-old insult about Asians eating cats. it's like the talk about AIDS starting from some African fucking a monkey. then the news back-peddled a bit and got purposfully vague and said that the disease was "spread" from a monkey (a green monkey at that) but still that kind of news is gleefully based along by excited idiots falling all over themselves in an effort to say something racist and get away with it. if you want to say something racist, i say just do it you gutless fucks. grow some fucking balls. i'm all over the place with this but that's what happens when i watch five minutes of the news. back to Grand Theft Auto Vice City, where there is no racial conflict and a man can live and let...hey, five black dude coming over to my car to talk. oops. hate crime.

::: david - 5:00 PM [+] :::
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“Stay off the moors. Stick to the roads. . .”
-An American Werewolf in London



THE CAR CHASE



Who was the first to do it? Someone somewhere slid over their hood, jumped into the driver’s seat and peeled out (Well, maybe not peeled out, since the first chase probably involved horses. Maybe a horse could peel out on wet grass though...) and then someone else followed them. It probably happened all over the world at the same time, just like the cave men who invented wheels. it wasn’t just one wheel, it was spontaneous wheels everywhere. And all they needed was four cave men to roll wheels out of their caves at the same time and they'd have a car. Then, someone invented movies...

The Best Car Chases of All Time:

1.) Ronin
last chase in the movie, silver sports cars going Mach 12. lot’s o’ traffic, a real sense of danger for the characters. Too bad the movie blows. Perfect chase though. No music for the first 2/3rds of it. Okay, maybe it should have stuck with no music the entire time. Still, this sequence is as close to perfection as a car chase in a movie has ever gotten.

2.) Mad Max
the first chase in the movie. two ugly yellow Fast-and-the-Furious-looking police “interceptors,” a motorcycle driven by a guy named Goose, and anyone named Goose ain’t gonna last long, all chasing "The Nightrider" into some construction. a great chase, a real sense of danger for the stuntmen. how many aussie day-workers were “killed or injured during the making of this film?” Rumor has it that they got paid in beer. the chase, and the movie, starts kind of lighthearted, then things quickly escalate into serious vehicular mayhem. a van, a camper and a baby all wander onto “Anarchie Road” at the wrong time.

3.) The Driver
the last chase in the movie. Camero Vs. Red Pick-up Truck. Cat and mouse in a warehouse, with a very pleasing crunch when the mouse finally gets caught. What makes this chase so satisfying is the build up to it when the bad guys make the mistake of having the hero test drive one of their cars with them in the back seat. The nameless “driver” bashes the fuck out of their ride, scraping it against every sharp corner he can find. A beautiful punishing scene

4.) Mad Max II: The Road Warrior
the last chase when Max tries to drive a decoy truck full of sand through about fifty screaming apocalyptic nutjobs and their custom vehicles. bizarre muscle cars, dune buggies, harpoon equipped El Caminos, jet-powered forklifts all take their turn under Max’s eighteen wheels. Watch close for what happens to The Humungous’ two hostages when Max slams on the brakes. Oops. The death of Max’s ride ("the last of the V-8s”) is more tragic than when that tornado hit Little House on the Prairie and Charles lost his faith. Seriously though, this movie might be the most satisfying view of the future i’ve ever seen. i want to collect gasoline from car wrecks with cracked frisbees. i really do. Maybe someday...

5.) Bullitt
you know what chase. Mustang Vs. Dodge Challenger. Mustang wins. this chase has been overrated, then it was underrated. i put it at number five because it effectively blurred the line between reality and fiction when Steve McQueen clicks on his seatbeat and stabs the gas...then does all the driving. it's not really a movie anyone after that (kind of like when he slapped his wife/co-star in the face in The Getaway) sure, maybe he’s like Jackie Chan and he’s just a stuntman pretending to be an actor but we’re talking driving not fighting. fuck The Great Escape motorcycle jump, this was Steve’s defining moment.

6.) Mad Max III: Beyond Thunderdome
the last chase where Max doesn’t really drive a train full of kids to a dead-end escape through the desert. more bizarre dune-buggies ramming those metal wheels like moths to the flame though. maybe it was just the nostalgia of seeing desert + Max + wheels + Evil Village-People-looking-bad-guys and hoping that combination would still equal perfection. maybe it don’t. maybe he's not all that "mad" in this movie. maybe the “last of the V-8s” is being pulled by horses (say it ain’t so!) in the opening scene but it’s Mad Max so it’s guaranteed a spot on the list.

6 1/2.) Grand Theft Auto III
this part of the list is like the half floor in Being John Malkovich. this is where the Matrix Reloaded chase would be if it wasn’t disqualified for turning into a pussy-ass videogame. but then i thought about that and decided that Grand Theft Auto III gets the spot because you can take your chase into the park with a five-star wanted level and stand on that little island and shotgun police and FBI cars out of the sky when the computer sends them flying off the bridge above you by mistake. cars screaming over your head on fire while you just keep lighting them up. like my friend matt said when he saw that happen: “it’s like the end of the world.” see, this is the videogame that deserves the slot. Matrix Reloaded is just a videogame that you can’t play.

7.) The French Connection
Gene Hackman steals a car to chase the bad guy riding on the elevated train above him. he seems to be killing (or at least injuring) several innocent people during his pursuit. Hackman plays Popeye Doyle, the first of the Dirty Harry type cops and he does a fantastic job gritting his teeth and screaming and honking the horn. and that horn is like the baby crying in Eraserhead. the whole thing must have been very unnerving back in the 70s. a little tame these days but in today's movies you never get watch the cop shoot the bad guy in the back in frustration at the end of the chase.

8.) Raiders of the Lost Ark
No, it’s not called Indiana Jones and the...that more bullshit revisionist history from fucking Lucas. but you almost forgive him for the name change when you see that truck scene. good guy crawling all over that truck like a chimp. lots of Nazi slipping under the wheels, cheap shots from everyone. maybe it’s more like a fight scene that a chase scene but that truck is lovingly filmed and gives the scene lots of momentum. and this scene is right after what is arguably one of the greatest fist fights of all time: Jones against a big bald Nazi with the help of a propeller. what a sweet fucking brawl that was. those guys were throwing bombs. fist fights, that’s a list for another time.

9.) To Live and Die In L.A.
the chase about halfway through. when the 2 “good” guys screw up their scam to steal drug money from one group of criminals to buy counterfeit money from a bonkers Willam Defoe. turns out the deal they were ambushing was being staged by the authorities for a bust and our heroes have to drive the wrong way through traffic to escape. agents materialize around every corner as it starts to dawn on the them that they fucked up. at least it starts to dawn on one of them. the other one, William Peterson from Manhunter and CSI, keeps his head, happily flashing back to his recreational bungee jumping from the opening scene (the birth of extreme?) this man follows the most important rule of the road, he "don't lose his composure in a high speed chase,” just like Tom Waits said. of course he can’t follow the other rule; “One-Way Traffic.”

10.) The Hidden
the first chase in the movie. aliens are among us. and you’d never guess. until they start stealing Porches and Ferraris and rocking to bad heavy metal music while mowing down old people in wheelchairs. this is a great opening to a movie (right up there with The Last Boy Scout) where the crowd is shocked into a satisfying kind of stupor. movie starts with some crazed looking business man robbing a bank, tearing ass down sidewalks in a black Ferrari, nodding along with the music and grinning while plowing through police road blocks (with Twin Peaks’ Agent Cooper as the good alien, doing his spaced-out Agent Cooper thing two years early). the audience is as confused as the cops and for a while you think you’re strapping in for the greatest film of all time. It isn’t, but for a second you think it might be.

runners-up (runner-ups?):

11.) Goldeneye
Tank vs. Peugeot. bit of a mismatch. Bond, driving the tank, accidentally destroys St. Petersburg as a result. but don’t tell me those tiny foreign cars sprinkled all over those streets weren’t destined to be chewed under a tank tread. i think they were trying to say something profound about the end of an era with all the Russian monuments and historic symbols being destroyed.
and the message is clear: tanks fuck shit up.

12.) Terminator II: Judgment Day
Truck vs. Harley vs. mini-bike. i think the truck plowing through cars when the T-9000 first jumps on is better than the famous chase through the reservoir, but still lots of twisted metal. hate that kid though. the helicopter smashing into the Swat van later is sweet.

13.) The Blue Brothers
it’s a comedy so sometimes it’s easy to forget that this movie always seems to be on the brink of Carmageddon.

13 1/2.) Highlander
no one is really chasing him but the bad guy stealing the car and driving through pedestrians and oncoming traffic with a screaming passenger is just too much like Grand Theft Auto Vice City to ignore. the bad guy is also singing Tom Waits which then morphs into Queen. and Queen wrote the song “I’m In Love With My Car” so there’s some kind of synchronicity going on here that is bigger than all of us.

BONUS LISTS!

The Best Anti-Chase:

1.) Wages of Fear/Sorcerer
same movie done twice, thirty years apart. both excellent. trucks hauling nitro through the jungle at about 5 mph. the building-the-trucks scene in Sorceror to the tune of Tangerine Dream makes me want to build a truck to die in too. the original is a little Frenchified but both movies are twitchy/sweaty masterpieces

2.) Way of the Gun
when the two guys take turns sticking their feet out and walking their cars for some reason. not sure if it works but it’s got to be some kind of important milestone in car chases.

3.) Fargo
just when you think the chase is about to start, the taillights flicker in the distance and one of the cars is upside-down in the snow. tragic because of the young lives, and the chase, cut short in its prime. sniff. what's worse?

The Best Movies That Are Sort of One Big Chase But Don’t Really Contain A Single Good Chase:

1.) Two-Lane Blacktop
i know this movie is about a race because that’s what the nameless (goddamn i love nameless) characters said. but for some reason, i can’t remember ever seeing one. i remember some mumbling about tearing out the heater in the heroes car to make it faster, but i can't remember a race. i remember some tough talk from the rival driver, but no one seems to win. i can't even remember the cars. the slowest race/chase movie ever made. for some strange reason, against all of my instincts, one of my favorite movies.

2.) Vanishing Point
very symbolic. dude takes “speed” then decides to drive from Denver to San Francisco in fifteen hours for no good reason. he’s helped by a psychic DJ named Supersoul. true story. and guess what? another Dodge Challenger. problem with this movie is the fucker keeps stopping and getting out of his car. perfect ending though.

3.) Smokey and the Bandit
good wrecks and some good crunches. Buford T. Justice's magically shrinking cop car is funny. but it's a comedy and it makes you long for the destruction that reached biblical proportions in The Blues Brothers.

4.) The Getaway/The Getaway (1993)
both versions have great moments when the movie stops cold so the hero can shotgun the shit out of a cop car. so satisfying they did it it twice. also in both versions the movies stop so the leading men can smack their co-stars/wives across the face. i think McQueen hits his wife twice though. and Baldwin gets hit back so i'm leaning towards the original. trivia note: written by Walter Hill, the man responsible for many an existential masterpiece, including number three on the big list, The Driver.

5.) Duel
cool evil oily truck, but it’s a made for TV movie.

6.) The Hitcher
lots of cops get killed by C. Thomas Howell and the bad guy from Blade Runner. or is the guy from Blade Runner just a figment of the kids imagination and he’s a one-man cop slaughterhouse? maybe like the dude in Fight Club!? actually no. i was hoping though.

7.) Joy Ride/Jeepers Creeper
both rip-off Duel for the opening third of these movies. and both do it better. too bad they (sigh) start getting off the road and out of the cars. hate when they do that. best double feature since the crazy rabbits in Donnie Darko and Sexy Beast.

8.) Death Race 2000
some cool goofy Autorama-looking rides. the creepiest thing is the strange opening credits and music. what the hell was that?

9.) North By Northwest
the first mindless action movie. no good chase to speak of but some excellent drunk driving.

Some Crazy Cars:

1.) The Car
big limousine looking thing with red-tinted windows. driven by THE DEVIL. huge impact on me as a child. i thought we were rooting for the Car until the end. the equivalent of the Black Sox scandal on my young mind.

2.) The Wraith
early Charlie Sheen classic. rips off High Planes Drifter (some called it High Planes Dragster or High Lanes Drifter, i call it the 80s) Audrey from Twin Peaks doing her Audrey thing two years early. Charlie comes back to life as a combination space-alien/Dodge Interceptor concept car. Jesus Chrysler another fucking Chrysler. at least it ain't a Challenger. The car/Charlie hunts down and kills the lamest gang since the home intruders in Weird Science. however, some very impressive fiery wrecks rolling down mountains.

3.) Christine
Stephen King and John Carpenter rip off The Car and do enough cool shit with the idea to be forgiven. the '58 Plymouth Fury pulsing and heaving and creaking to restore itself is almost orgasmic. Speaking of...

4.) Crash
these cars kill too, but that’s an accident. they really just want to fuck.

The Best Chases With Vehicles That Don’t Count:

1.) Ben-Hur
hear about the Roman transsexual? Ben Hur? get it? sorry. not since high school boys cranked Queen’s We Will Rock You before their football games have straight males been so excited and confused at the same time. you’ve all seen the chariot race by now right? how about that rowing scene though? That’s a chase scene, I think they were being chased but they weren’t allowed to look.

2.) Darkman
Darkman hanging off the helicopter bouncing and running off the tops of traffic still makes me smile.

3.) Abyss
decent little sub chase ending with the bad guy getting smashed from the water pressure like an empty beer can.

4.) Black Rain
nice little dirt-bike chase through that farm. ends with a solid fist fight that shows how American right hands and cheap shots can defeat that sneaky Kung-Fu any day.

5.) Face-Off
i’d kind of forgotten about the boat chase until i heard someone angrily describe it as “the director jerking off onto my face.” any chase that gets that kind of reaction has to be mentioned somewhere.

6.) Runaway Train
train with escaped convicts heading for a dead-end. lots of arguing. oddly touching ending.

7.) True Lies
the horse chasing the motorcycle through the hotel. and the two Harrier jets taking out the terrorists on that bridge.
Pilot: “will the nukes go off if we take out the bridge?” Schwartzenegger: “No.” then he turns and does this guilty shrug to Tom Arnold. funny shit. movie also has a loving kiss in front of a mushroom cloud.

8.) Hard Rain
the jet-ski chase through the flooded school. who wouldn't want to do that? there's a kind of madness to that scene that i think is great. any time you flood a house strange shit happens. Deep Blue Sea had sharks in and out of that flooded lab, opening doors, learning how to use ovens (i was waiting for a shark to get on a phone and try to sucker a pizza man) and Dagon has people reverting back down the evolutionary ladder and swimming through their homes. someone should make a movie called Hard Black Rain to cause even more confusion when i go to rent these movies.

9.) The Long Riders
blatant Wild Bunch rip-off when the James Gang rides out of town after their fucked up robbery. Slo-mo bullet wounds and backward bullet noises are impressive as hell though. that scene is better than most movies. especially this one.

there. the list may change as i remember more of them. for now i'm thinking it's done.

Coming soon: the greatest fist-fights of all time. again, computer bullshit is instantly disqualified. maybe that wire shit too.

::: david - 2:49 PM [+] :::
...

“It looks like an animal in there...”
-eXistenZ

i’m sitting watching some Cronenberg and i’m flashing back to when the first reviews of eXistenZ came out and i remember one mag saying “doomed to be overshadowed by the other two virtual reality movies this month, The Matrix and The 13th Floor...” and then i started thinking about how my friend steve would make fun of my love for that film (because i dragged him, and my girlfriend at the time, to Ann Arbor to see it and then ended up trying to defend it all the way home) and how he would make this mongoloid voice and mock the last line of the movie: “are we still in the game?”

so then it hits me, (“like a diamond bullet” as Col. Kurtz would say): that bullshit in Matrix Redux where Ted held up his hand and the robot sentinels collapsed and exploded? that part when Smith comes into “the real world” and is running around Zion in another body? the two parts of the movie where logic and rules that have already been established in the first movie are tossed out like they just ran out of shit to do? maybe they do serve a purpose. i’m thinking those scenes are in there because Zion and all those potato-sack clad dullards who thought they were unplugged are “still in the game.” they thinks it’s reality and they’re actually just in another layer of the Matrix. that’s why Smith can jump on in, because it’s just another level. maybe for the last one they'll show what reality really looks like.
i hope it’s a lot more interesting than Zion.

you know, i’m thinking the Matrix brothers watched 13th Floor and eXistenZ to check out the competition all those years ago and something stuck. just like the shit they ripped from the comic book The Invisibles. eXistenZ's multi game world may not the most original idea (especially from Cronenberg who gave us the first beta-tape-playing-stomach-vagina and "TV-Hand-Cock" (a shout out to my friend nick who coined that phrase during Videodrome) but still it’s nice to know that my favorite crazy Canadian is still having an impact. even if he doesn’t get credit for it. he probably wouldn't want credit anyway. but i do yo!

so what do i win? if i solved this shit do i get a cookie from that stupid Oracle bitch? how about a shiny new copy of Tron instead? the place where all these bad ideas really started.

greatest car chases of all time coming soon...i got the perfect quote for that day.

p.s. you know why eXistenZ is great? i should have said this to steve on the car ride back from Ann Arbor all those years ago: it's great because they dissect something in it. any movie with an autopsy is twice as good as a movie without one. The Thing (remake), Sleepy Hollow, Cat People (remake), Blade 2, Way of the Gun (wait, sorry she was giving birth), The Thing (i say it again because it felt like there was ten fucking autopsys in there), Tremors (sort of, they stop to study it a couple times and it has the same effect), Prophecy, Day of the Dead. all perfect. when you start taking apart something up there in the movie, it’s as if someone finally turned the light on behind the screen. suddenly you’re much more interested. an autopsy is kind of like a bloody internal narration. literally getting inside the characters. imagine an autopsy in, say, Hope Floats. see what i’m saying? makes it a whole different movie! Maybe that's where my problems with the Matrix movies come from. Matrix + No Autopsy = ZZZ. hey, here's an autopsy that you may have missed: Nightmare Before Christmas. remember where?

notice how "autopsy" has the word "auto" in it? that's no accident. tommorrow. cars. the list. working on it all night.

::: david - 10:46 PM [+] :::
...

"Only an asshole gets himself killed over a car."
-Repo Man'

The Matrix car chase:

okay, i think it would be the best car chase ever (like everyone is swearing that it is), except i have to immediately disqualify it for use of computer effects. that's just so wrong to me. i take best car chases about as serious as my friends take their "best song" lists and there is NO reason to make a digital images of a car. OR a digital crash to wreck it. you can make a digital alien, you can make a digital spaceship, a digital ass fucking a television, but that's because they can't exist.

a car blowing up, or two trucks hitting head-on is something in a movie that you CAN do and SHOULD do whenever you can. and that's what i wanted to see. i could instantly tell when they'd switch to computer cars and trucks and it fucked up that scene. i know they were reaching for something new with the virtual camera stuff, and where that worked in, say, Panic Room, here it just made it easy to pick out the computer cars when the camera went through them. that means that those were not cars and those things that were not cars were in no danger of hitting the girl on the motorcycle. it's a fatal mistake to take danger out of the stunt. people never really separate themselves from the knowledge that there is a human being in danger when they were driving against traffic that day on the set, and that's what makes good car chases great. that and the actual destruction of vehicles. Matrix 2 drops the ball on both of these things.

and i really wanted to call that the greatest chase ever (Morpheus cutting that car with a sword was very impressive) but that's like saying the Phantom Menace podrace is the greatest race ever. it can't be. it's no Ben-Hur simply because it does not exist, therefore that shit just don't count. when the Matrix switched to cartoon cars, it was videogame time. no stuntmen were in danger, no metal and oil burning on the road after they yelled "cut." it's just a cheat. tommorrow i'm going to list the greatest car chases tonight because that's all i've been thinking about since i left that theater.

::: david - 2:40 PM [+] :::
...

"Born with lead in my foot and a steering wheel in my hand..."
-Mad Max

talking with my friend steve, who saw Matrix first and he warned me about some things. steve said, "Zion looked like the muppet celebration in "Return of the Jedi". And what's the deal with these guys only freeing the minds of black people? Holy Shit, us white males are in serious jeopardy." he also made a great point about the "matrix" itself. he asked, "why doesn't the computer go all funhouse mirror on Neo and rain fire and smack him in the head with the fucking moon when he's inside?" and he said, "if Neo can bring people back to life, why don't the rest of the crew punch him in the face for letting anyone die?"
good points all.

but he said the action made it worth the time, and that he read a review where the critic states that the car chase instantly became the best chase shown on film. i don't agree and i'll get to why later.

so i finally saw it and i told him that i agreed with all his problems with The new Matrix (no shit about how the computer should go bugfuck on Neo and make the world nuts. they should be like, "Ted sighted, sector 12, all buildings are now dinosaurs and it's raining pianos!") and there was a lot more stuff to get angry about.

yep the sweaty Cave Rave was real stupid. looked like a goddamn Britney Spears video. and you know why everyone is black or mixed in that movie? because the filmmakers think black people are cooler than white people. or they think kids think black people are cooler than white people. it's as simple as that.

and did anyone see a preview for a movie called "Equilibrium" before the movie? that movie came out on video about a week ago, and in my opinion, is better than Matrix Redux. it doesn't have the size of Matix (much smaller budget) and its plot is a blatant Fahrenheit 451 rip-off, and when it's not ripping off that, it's stealing from 1984. but the gunfights are fucking SWEET. and the killing and fighting is better than all the fights in the new Matrix. try to find it. it's got American Psycho as a guy who's trained to kill "sense criminals" who don't suppress their emotions. i know i know. but i'll take Equilibrium's silly plot over Matrix's dull fantasy speak any day. the first Matrix movie was a masterpiece of writing compared to the new one. all that "chosen one" Star Wars talk mixed with nonsense Star Trek computer gibberish (except when one dude pointed to some computer effect and said something like, "see that over there, it recycles water, and i have no idea how it works. guess what? neither do the fucking filmmakers. most telling moment in the movie) these character should just NOT be allowed to speak. at least Ted seems to still realize that.

Equilibrium. i'm telling you. more guns. more violence, a story with some feeling and hey! a clear-cut reachable goal! Matrix was going nowhere. who the fuck were those mafia guys? renegade programs? i don't think the writers even knew until the day they started filming. so why did they need keys again? to access those white hallways that were introduced in the same scene that tell us they need the keys?! what shitty fucking writing. and it looked like it was edited by a bunch of chimps. movie all jumping around, with you having to guess who was in the Matrix and why by the clothes they were wearing. the first movie was better in every way, except two scenes and i'll get to them in a second. and don't get me started on those stupid Wingnut, Dozer and Lugwrench names. and hey, was it just me or did it seem like Matrix 2 was a PG movie? tame as hell compared to the first movie where Ted was shooting innocent people through their newspapers.

okay, so that Ted-fights-100-Agent-Smiths was cool. At least, until they turned into video game cartoon people (and i kept thinking "uh, fly away asshole") but you know what? that fight meant nothing. just like all the fights. they honestly meant NOTHING. in the first one he kept getting better until became invincible. in this, he's back to having trouble fighting that cookie making fucks Katoesque bodyguard (and he was a program right? Ted should be able to punch him and make him turn into computer code right?) couldn't Ted fight one-handed while eating a sandwich at the end of the first movie? has he not been practicing? and why all those the plastic-looking computer Teds in that brawl? it took me right out of that fight. how can fillmmaker honestly believe that CGI effects are ever a good idea? like steve said, the sad thing is that we will still buy this shit when it comes out on DVD.

The car chase. the car chase next time because it's very emotional for me.

p.s. did you see the stuff at the end of the credits? scenes from Matrix Revolutions? final one-on-one fight with Smith on a bridge or something. i think he's the best character in the entire mess. maybe i just like when he says, "Mr. Anderson!"

::: david - 2:22 PM [+] :::
...

"He lost his mind today. He left it out back on the highway."
-Guns 'N Roses

"I was an insect who dreamed he was a man. Now the dream is over and the insect is awake."
-Brundlefly



FICTION:



Flying (part 1)



Bored enough to leash flies?

James was thinking of ways to kill time. Eat time. Beat time. Waste time. He thought maybe he would try tying a leash onto a fly.

Now that's fucking bored,he thought.

He’d trapped one fly in a shoe by quickly stuffing that shoe into a sock. He could still hear it looking for a way out. He had another fly crushed under that same shoe. He had another fly locked inside his fist and he could feel it wriggling around looking for some light and it made him a little sick. He knew it was spitting and shitting and pissing all over his fingers to be spiteful. And he had another fly, a big green one, stuck under a shot glass and staring right at him.

James pulled the longest hairs from a soiled dog-bowl he had resting on his knee, breathing through his mouth when he leaned over the gray water so he wouldn’t gag.

Dog hair has to be best, James thought. Even tougher than a cunt hair. Who said that? Grampa said that. When I was little. That day I cried ‘cause he picked up my dog by it’s back. He said that dog hairs were the toughest and quit crying that dog will be fine. Did he ever try to tie a knot with one of these though? Damn that bowl is ripe. . .

He gently hung ten of the long thick hairs across his other knee to dry. He tried to remember where he’d first heard about someone trying to leash flies. He wanted it to be him.

I know someone tried this once, when I was young, little boys do it for sport, he thought. Or did I read about it somewhere?

"No." James decided out loud. The thought of the fly-wrangling not being his idea was making him angry. "It was me. I can’t prove it by doing it. I know I’ve tried this once before. It’s almost impossible unless your fingers are rock steady. . ."

He reached for the first fly, pulling the shoe from the sock and covering the hole with his hand. He tried shaking the fly into a stupor so that it would crawl or fall out stunned. Nothing. He tried shaking as fast as he could, hoping it would panic and squirm for the sunlight creeping between his fingers. Still, he felt nothing and banged the shoe on the floor in frustration. The dog bowl sloshed and fell off his knee, splashing his ankle with foul gray water. Finally he could feel the fly trying to get out, tickling around the palm of his hand. Then there was a sharp bite or sting and he flinched and tried to shake the fly into oblivion. Eventually his arm got tired and he dropped the shoe to the floor. He leaned down to look inside and saw the fly sitting on the top of his hand, calmly rubbing two legs above it’s back. It hopped down three knuckles and flew away.

Bored enough to leash flies? Okay, maybe not. At least I’m bored enough to keep trying.

He turned the other shoe over and peeled the dead fly off the tread. He decided he needed some practice before he tried again with a live on. He glanced over at the fly under the shot glass and he saw it had stopped buzzing and bashing its head around looking for an opening. It was quiet and still, big green eyes against the glass. James was sure it was watching him. He pulled a dog hair off his knee and watched it snap and disintegrate between his fingers. He sighed and brushed all the stray hairs off his legs and went back down to the bowl for a wet one.

James curled up cross-legged on the wooden floor with a new hair and the dead fly. First he tried a knot on the wing. The wing crunched like a paper airplane under a bike tire and then popped off in his tiny lasso. James wondered if the fly under the glass could hear that wing tear loose. He thought the sound of the wing ripping would be deafening to a fly. He hunched over back over with another knot, nose brushing the hairs on the back of his sweaty hand. He tried the remaining wing, holding his breath and tightening it slower this time. He bit his tongue when it tore loose. He blew some sweat off his nose and leaned in with it again. The phone rang and he ignored it (little fuckers, crank-calling at a time like this) trying a leg until the dog hair snapped.

He grunted and went fishing for another wet one. He held three long hairs up to the light to find a thick one. He tried another tiny leg, slipping the knot up past the joint. The loop closed tight on nothing when he pulled it away. He tried again and again. He couldn’t thread the needle.

“Have you ever been so bored that you’re flying?”

Someone asked him that question once and he didn’t know what it meant at the time. He couldn’t remember who said it, just that it seemed to James that it meant boredom was something good. Something that inspired good ideas when you closed your eyes. Now he knew it wasn’t. Maybe it was just something he’d heard when he was half-asleep, something whispered in his ear by those boys on the phone.

The drop of sweat ran down his nose, too fast to blow away, and it splashed down onto his cramping thumb. James exhaled, his concentration broken.

James guessed that a drop of sweat would be like a bullet to a fly.

He looked at what was left of the dead fly he was working on. It was more like a grub than a fly at this point. He looked for any tiny limbs that he been left in the tread of the shoe that could hold a knot and found none. He went for the head (What head? It’s all eyes!) carefully looping the knot and slipping the noose gently around the fly's neck. He sucked in a breath and fought to keep his fingers still. The head was in the hole. His eyes were wide as he slowly pulled the ends of the hair tighter. He felt like a boy watching a cat play with a balloon. Another bead of sweat dropped from an eyebrow and he blew it up into his hair before it could pick up escape speed down the slope of his nose.

He brought the fly up to his face, straightening his sore back while he squinted. It hung spinning in the air, successfully leashed to the hair. Twisting and untwisting, twisting and untwisting, twisting and. . . suddenly he couldn't help himself. He took the free ends of the dog hair and yanked them tight. The hair snapped and the head flew off over his shoulder.

Why the hell did I do that? Guess dogs’ hair just ain't strong enough. He laughed at himself as he stood up, stretching with a loud nobody's-home groan. Then he went back to the window to look for more flies. There's always more flies.

In the corner of the window was a spiderweb. He stopped and stared, letting the shot glasses rattle on the sill. Brainstorm. He gathered a handful of web and went back to the fly watching him from under the glass. He thought about smoking it with a match. Or shaking it senseless or dead. He looked down at his hand, slowly opening and closing his fingers, watching the web stretch and pull without breaking.

This, this I have done before, he thought with his mouth still moving around the words in his head. I swear I have. I just don't remember how.

James looked at the clock on the VCR. He never knew when Steven would get home. He thought he probably still had time for the surprise. The handshake or the wave. It would be so goddamn funny. James sitting there with a book or a movie, then suddenly a hello to Steven and his hand comes around from his back or out from under the book with flies circling around his fingertips like magic. Steven might think he trained them (hell, training flies might be easier than leashing them) or maybe he’d just think he was sculpting with dogshit all morning.

Who knows what he’d think. James just knew that Steven would be standing there, his brain searching for the answer. It would take a real close look for anyone to see that the flies were leashed to his fingers.

Maybe that would feel like flying.


- © 2003 david james keaton

::: david - 1:10 AM [+] :::
...

if you've ever had the problem of trying to decide whether to watch "Scanners" or "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn" then you might have this when you flipped between channels:

"Well, rigor hasn't set in, this didn't happen too long ago Jim."
click.
"Ephemoral was taken unknowingly by millions of pregnant women."
click.
"he put.....creatures in our bodies.... to control our minds...."
click.
"you rot my successes, you suck my joy. the program is ripe and must be stopped!"
click.
"he went wild, he....slit their throats...but he was late..."

holy shit. both movies are neck 'n neck. did Cronenberg write both of them? and they're not just weird on weird, it's like they're syncronized too, if you change the channel then wait for a line to make you smile. Then change the channel, watch something crawl in an ear or burst out an eyeball. Then change the channel...etc. This is kind of like when people get high and watch "The Wizard of Oz" while listening to Dark Side of the Moon" except with 5 times the body violations.

again, i have to say how BAD Amis' book "The Information" is for me to be reading. a good book, all about this guy's unreadable shitty novel and his jealousy over his friend's bestseller and i'm at a part where i know i'm supposed to laugh but i can't. Tull is happily describing his horrible book, "Untitled" to the first person that's showed an interest and i KNOW it's supposed to be funny:

("I was worried about the penultimate bridging passages. You know: where the figment narrator pretends to attempt that series of decoy refocusings...because the travesty is a counterfeit. Not that he's really a narrator. Reliable or otherwise. But he had to be a surrogate narrator if the sham refocusings were going to seem to work.")

the problem is, the whole time i'm thinking "hmmmmm i sort of tried to do that." or i start thinking like Gene Wilder in Young Frankenstein when he finds his insane grandfather's diaries:

"IT. COULD. WORK!"

thanks for the recommendation. why didn't she just give me some scissors to run with instead?

::: david - 3:56 PM [+] :::
...

"the bits of the book that I was still ripping away at, razrez razrez..."
-A Clockwork Orange


i'll work more on that driving story later. i'm hoping for at least nine thousand pages.

MOVIES:

went to see X-Men 2. one question: how can these guys be in any danger from water? uh, fly over it? freeze it? psychically move the plane instead of the river? teleport everyone out? fuck, Picard stops time twice in the movie. were his batteries dead? even the Wondertwins' monkey would have escaped that bullshit. but besides all that nonsense, there was the cool Wolverine stuff as expected. Wolverine is like a car chase in a movie, you can't fuck it up even if you try. i don't know what that means either.

tried to give myself some sort of theme night with videos. tried watching "Bound, "High Art" and "Freeway." had already seen Bound, but i was thinking of it as a psych-up for the Matrix sequel. you might think that lesbian action was the theme for the evening, but it was actually the fact that all three boxes were gold-colored that caught my eye. tomorrows's film festival will be; "Superfly," "Mandingo" and "Shaft's Big Score." guess why. because the boxes are all white. true story. anyway, "High Art" i turned off and watched the same girl in Pitch Black instead cause that's all i really wanted to watch. still love her attempt to kill the entire cast in the opening minutes. my kind of girl. "Bound" i thought i'd watch with the commentary on and, half way through, it cuts out during the first interesting story i sat up to listen to! Joey/Caesar was talking about how Bogart in "Treasure Sierra Madre" was his inspiration for the way tha-POP! then it goes silent. sound comes back about ten minutes later. i called my friend Matt who has the same dvd and he found the same problem. motherfuckers. he says they probably stepped on the cord during recording and he's probably right. i'm thinking all copies are like this (anyone?) cause who would want to tell a bunch of power-lunch eating hollywood types that they'd have to meet and lie and claim they "never watch their own movies" all over again. especially this bunch, since it sounded like three of them got there late anyway. Jennifer "Bride of Chucky" Tilly barely has a chance to mention her oscar nomination for "Bullets Over Broadway" twice in fifteen fucking minutes. she'd bet her Pulitzer on it if she has one. so i couldn't bring myself to keep watching a defective dvd and i turned on C-Span2 instead to listen to Gore Vidal's conspiracy theories from his book "Dreaming War: Blood for Oil." he compared 911 to Pearl Harbor saying "they" knew about it and let it happen as an excuse to rally the country into fighting. he has no proof of this, but he does have one thing in his corner:

this dude wrote Caligula! i don't know about you but anyone who has anything to do with Caligula (including the stunt cocks brought in for the porn inserts) will get the benefit of the doubt in any situation. i mean, fuck his "Dreaming War" book, this is a guy named Gore who might have been responsible for dreaming up that giant head-chopping machine. anyone remember it? rolled it into the arena where those people were buried up to their heads? looked like a huge satanic Zamboni? think about it. guy named Gore? he had no choice but to invent it. just like DJ Lethal! "That's what his mama named him!"

don't think i'm joking about Caligula. that movie is the shit ("the" in front of "shit" means gooooooood). it's like those dream sequences in Clockwork Orange with little Alex running amuck in Rome and whipping Jesus and eating grapes. admit it, didn't you really want to see THAT movie instead? you can. two words: Calig. Ula. that translates as "Roman Assfist"

::: david - 2:21 PM [+] :::
...

"I don't lose my composure in a high speed chase."
-Tom Waits


"The more you drive, the less intelligent you are."
-Repo Man


FICTION:



Driving



He saw everything at a red light.

Everything he needed to know he could see from behind the wheel of his car. He didn't have to tilt his head, lean forward, or even squint his eyes. The girl? She didn't need to be in a car next to his for him to see everything. Actually, next to him would be harder, since he'd have to cock his head to look over and the mirrors would be all wrong. And he wouldn't be able to use his hands the way he needed to. It was best if the girl was in a car in front or behind. He could use his mirrors or hers. Not more than three feet from his bumper was the perfect distance. In the summer, the sun at seven o’clock was the perfect time. And the long red light.

All Steven needed was her eyes. Looking at his eyes. That was enough. Driving was almost enough, and a girl’s eyes made driving almost perfect. He was so relaxed nested in his car that before he even turned the key, his shoes were off. His feet worked the controls like a chimp. The pedals could have been a third their size down there, with extra buttons and switches and knobs, and his toes could have orchestrated it all like a mad scientist. Hell, he could have played a guitar under there. Speeding up or stopping fast was like squeezing warm sand with those toes
and he treated the controls with love. He never stomped on the gas or the clutch or the brake.

However, there really wasn't enough for his feet to do. Sometimes one of his feet would need to be on a pedal and instead it would get distracted and start trying to turn over a penny. This caused some trouble, especially during start-and-stop traffic jams and construction sites. Still, besides his toes getting bored, everything was perfect when he was in the car.

Well, maybe there were some other things that bothered him. He didn't like the way his hand covered up his view of the gauges when he had his knuckles across the top of the wheel. He wanted his hand there, needed his hand there, arm straight, elbow locked, only now he noticed that he couldn't see the RPMs in that position. He wanted to watch those numbers. They changed faster than the speedometer. And they were bigger. He could go up thousands, then down hundreds, then back up another thousand and still he was just squeezing his toes and cruising. Or seeing how far he could go in a straight line without turning the wheel. Or just jerking through a stop sign. Sometimes he wondered, if he could comfortably move his hand over and stop hiding those numbers, driving could be perfect.

Except for the trucks. That was another thing. When he was driving next to a silver tanker, watching the lines of the road scrolling along its hide, something strange happened. He would see the reflection of his car on the truck pinched and distorted into a hazy deformed streak. He would slide around behind the truck and look up to the back of the tank where the long silver tube came to a point and the distortions were the worst. He would follow the truck for miles, looking for his car at that angle, to see if he was as deformed as the road. He thought if he got close enough to that funhouse mirror, he would see extra fingers across his steering wheel. Or someone standing on his hood. Or an animal hanging off his grill. He’d stare for hours at the vanishing points on the ass-ends of those silver monsters and that’s when it would happen. It would take him a couple seconds to realize it. The car wasn't there. He wasn’t there. Every time it was a surprise, like he was a vampire who forgot until he looked up at the mirror while brushing his teeth. He’d pull back, curl his toes on the gas and run his car right up on its mud-flaps and still he was invisible. The road was still there in the truck’s reflection, spitting out a Morse code message of yellow dots and white dashes. He still wasn't there. He knew it had something to do with the curve of those metal tanks. He knew he was still there, squeezing the wheel until it creaked, driving behind those trucks forever, no matter what the road mirrors told
him. Still, it made him angry. Sometimes he flipped some vents and stabbed some buttons pretending they were missiles.

And he wondered if it would take a collision for him to prove he was there.

Besides those trucks? And his hand crawling up too high on the steering wheel? And his toes trying to flip coins? Driving was perfect. Of course, Steven couldn’t drive forever. Driving would be perfect if his body didn’t always betray him. After crunching all the ice away that he kept in a baseball cap between his legs every summer, he’d have to stop to piss. And stopping was the worst thing he could do. Getting out of the car. Now that was a betrayal. It was an insult to the road. He'd thought about pissing in the car several times and never could force himself to do it. Today was no exception. He crunched the last ice cube into warm water and swallowed. Then he wringed the water out of his baseball cap, screwed it tight onto his head, and stopped his car at the next gas station.

It turned out that the man he held the door for asked the clerk for the toilet key first. The man wore a yellow shirt that used to be white and even angrier than Steven. He stood there at the counter shaking his head, bringing a fist down hard enough to make the free pennies in the matchbox jump. The yellow man couldn't believe that this toilet key had to remain attached to an empty gallon milk jug.

"Just open the goddamn door," the yellow man snarled.

"You got the key," the clerk shrugged.

The man stormed off with the jug, banging the huge toilet anchor off the door in disgust.

Steven wiped his hands nervously on his gray shirt that used to be black and was just getting ready to ask if there was a girl's key, maybe with just a half-gallon or a pop can attached to it, when the man was suddenly back, slamming the gallon back onto the counter. The jug belched a spray of foul liquid out of the top when it hit and, even though Steven was more than five feet away, he could have swore he felt the heat coming off it. It was filled to the brim with piss. This yellow man was small, and still it seemed that he'd somehow delivered almost a full gallon of
urine in about thirty seconds. Then the small yellow man was out the door with a smile before the clerk could react, allowing his steaming jug of waste water to get the last word instead. Steven and the clerk just stared at it. After a few seconds, they finally looked up at each other.

“I need the key to the toilet too, dude," Steven said slowly.

"You got the key,” the clerk shrugged.

"Not a chance,” Steven said. “Cut that key loose, give me another one or something.”

"Can't do that."

"You're nuts. You want me to haul around a gallon of fucking piss?"

"No, you're nuts,” the clerk laughed. “If you think that he filled that whole gallon jug. No way. Sure he pissed some, to give it the color. No way a whole gallon though. He just pissed what he had in the tank, then filled the rest with water and shook it up real good to make the foam on top."

“You’re missing the fucking point, I don’t care if it’s three percent urine, nine percent saliva, six percent snot and eighty percent natural spring water, I don’t want to-”

“That’s only adds up to ninety-eight percent-”

Steven grabbed the key and stomped off. He couldn’t argue the math. As Steven walked around the building, emptying the jug into the gravel as he went, he heard the clerk still muttering inside.

“There’s just no way. No man could have done that much that fast. . .”

That was at sundown, his piss-stop recharged his batteries enough to risk a little more driving. And just when he thought there were enough distractions that day to screw his perfect drive beyond repair, he took a wrong turn and found himself on a one-lane road. He hated those, they were too small to maneuver with another car coming at him. Tagging roadkill with one wheel was impossible. And, of course, cars kept rolling into sight on the horizon like the teeth on a music box wheel fprever repeating the same song. The cars squeezed by him, fighting for room, tire-treads slipping off the tar and into the dirt, kicking up rooster-tails of dust and stones. He thought that maybe these other cars were trying to hit things too. Maybe they had that urge to feel that thump in their feet, to know what it felt like to run over an animal without the guilt of really killing one. His toes scissored angrily over the controls. It wasn’t fair that other cars were pushing him off the road. This was his home. He knew that any thump they would feel would
only be through shoes and not the skin of a bare foot.

Steven was forced to the side three times before he found two-lanes again. He couldn’t swerve for roadkill and had to let several dark-red somethings in the middle of that road slip silently between his wheels to keep his car out of the ditch. Lately it had been making him nervous when something disappeared under his car and between his wheels untouched. His mind wandered when there wasn’t any turns and he started to wonder if evolution might have given the roads an animal that had learned to curl up dead-center in the lane. Something that looked dead when it wasn’t moving. Something that looked like it had already been hit. Something with fur that looked like blood and legs that looked like guts and a tail that looked like a rope of intestine. Maybe even eyes on its back. Something with the speed to hook a claw on a muffler when a car passed over it. Something with the strength to climb down the exhaust pipes, creep up into the motor, and live in there forever. Every noise, shake or rumble he could feel in his toes, was an animal that had been playing possum, or been hiding under a possum, waiting on that spot in the road that his wheels always missed. If the engine coughed he would think of something scurrying under his feet, blowing the exhaust out of its nostrils and curling a long red tail around itself to get comfortable down there in the shadow of his body. He knew the idea was crazy and he couldn’t stop thinking about it. He even knew exactly where, when and why that seed got planted in his brain. Three things. It was always three things.

First, there were these two little boys who crank-called him some mornings and one time they whispered in his ear, "don’t fuck her when she’s red. . .’cause she ain't dead!" Twenty-four hours and he would have flushed that rhyme from his head completely.

Then the second thing happened that day, not that he was counting. Steven was on the road and the car vibrating under his hands, ass and feet just didn't feel right. Something was strangling his engine. He broke up a the long straight line he’d been working on and quickly took a detour and soon he was standing outside leaning on his raised hood with his uncle. They were looking to pull a branch out of the fan, or fix something that had snapped, or pour some fluid into a hole. However, when they did pop the hood, Steven got confused looking at the wires and works and his mind and eyes started to wander again. That's when he saw the explosion of scratches on the inside of the hood above their heads. Steven asked his uncle, "If the problem is over there, and the noise was coming from over there, then what the hell made all these marks up here?" His uncle looked up and stared for a while, then finally unwrapped a broken belt from the engine, also hooking a handful of rotten leaves to throw over his shoulder and into Steven’s face. They both bumped their heads on the hood standing back up.

"I don't know, some animal, I guess."

“What!?!”

Steven spit out a black stem and stared at him in shock. His uncle frowned, then shook his head and went back to work. His uncle never looked back up at those scratches. And Steven couldn’t take his eyes off them. He couldn’t understand why his uncle wasn’t as horrified with that idea as he was. He imagined an animal that could crawl around in there and navigate through all the spots where the oil wouldn’t burn it. Shredding insulation and rubber wire for its nest, training the hairless grub-pink babies that hung from its stomach to avoid anything that was hot or
spinning. . .

His uncle slammed the hood shut and those thoughts were locked in tight ever since. Still, he figured there was no danger as long as nothing slipped between his tires untouched. As long as he avoided any more one-lane roads today, his drive should be perfect.

Third came the bus, nine miles later. Even though it was bright green instead of yellow and there wasn’t a name of a school on the side, he saw the children wiggling around inside and didn't think anything strange could be going on. He slipped in behind the bus hoping there would be some antics or arguing in the back seats he could watch. He liked to do that sometimes, at least until they noticed him.

He was lucky, there were three of them sitting back there.

Two boys and one girl, he thought. The perfect number and never a good combination. Could be worse though. Three boys. That would be the worst.

The two boys were waving furiously, showing off, making faces, mouths moving around silent insults as they challenged Steven to wave back. He didn't. He’d been a boy once, he knew a middle finger was the guarenteed response with the safety between vehicle. Steven concentrated on the girl instead. She waited until the boys’ faces got sore and gave up their taunts to offer Steven a smile and a small sincere wave with her tiny hand. When she did that, Steven had no choice. His reaction was instant and automatic.

The boys could have had equal power over my hands if they’d thrown me a football.

He found himself loosening his knuckles from their death-grip on the steering wheel. A quick glance under that hand told him that they were all going 6900 RMPs. He frowned. Something was wrong after all.

That’s too fast for a school bus. Green or yellow.

Then he was waving to the girl. Instantly her look changed and she quickly separated the two boys from whatever arm, leg or thumb wrestling match to twist them towards the glass and look. She was laughing and holding up some fingers in front of their faces and wiggling them victoriously. Steven suddenly understood that she’d won their game. They had been counting waves from strangers out the window to kill time. As if they’d run out of dead bugs on the glass to count and looked to the road as an afterthought. Neither wave, hers or Steven’s, meant anything at all. It was as if it had never happened. Steven’s hand went back to the wheel and squeezed until his knuckles were white again.

Did I say there were only three things that fucked up this drive? Steven thought. No, there was at least one more...

There was the boy on the overpass three turns after that. Steven only saw him for a second, just a blur of head and hands and feet outlined in the hole he was making in the fence. Steven blinked in shock, thinking for a split second that the boy was tearing through that fence to jump down onto his car. Then he was under the bridge and the boy was gone. He wiped the sweat from his eyes with his forearm. He closed his eyes as long as he dared to bring the image back. His foot came up off the controls and the car slowed to a crawl. He saw it again behind his eyelids. A boy furiously bending and twisting and kicking that metal fence to get through it. Arms and legs moving quick as hell. The boy seemed so fast and desperate that Steven had been sure he’d was squeezing through that hole just for him. He couldn’t believe a boy would want to jump onto a car.

Then the rock rebounded off his trunk and he sighed in relief. Just a boy throwing rocks.

Now he was at another red light and it was too hot to concentrate.

Too hot, he thought. Even for summer.

The last ice cube in his baseball cap had sank away into nothing and sweat was making his nose itch. There was a girl in front of him, actually she was in the car in front of him, he had to keep reminding himself of the difference, and he thought catching her eyes might be enough to salvage the drive.

He found the mirrors on her vehicle. . .

The ears. . .always locate the ears of the car first. . .then look through them.

. . .and Steven started to go down his checklist:

There was still enough light to see the outlines of her ears in the shadows. She turned her head to look down the cross-road and he saw a whiplash of a black pony-tail hanging out of a ballcap. He saw her small mouth and a flash of teeth in the driver's side mirror. Steven knew a trick. He turned his key to make his car bark in protest and she jerked her head the other way so he could see the straight line of her nose. Now the drive was perfect. She was perfect. Finally he looked deep inside her car to find her eyes in her rearview mirror. There was a problem.

She wasn’t there.

Steven forced himself to think rationally. He decided that her car must have been stopped at a strange angle to him and her mirror didn't seem to reflect anywhere near her head. Or maybe she bumped it swatting a fly or the windshield. He thought of the impossible silver trucks that refused to acknowledge him or his car on the road and he started to get angry.

He inched forward, one toe easing off the clutch, another toe rubbing the gas. Nothing, he still couldn’t see her eyes. He stabbed at the brake, clutch and gas like organ pedals, trying to rock the car hard enough for her to notice. Nothing. He tapped the horn with his elbow as if it was an accidental yawn-turned-grope at the movie theater. Still nothing. His car lurched again in frustration and he saw a flash of eyes. However these eyes were dead, refecting nothing and they wouldn’t connect with his own. He got angrier and wondered if her rearview mirror just had eyes
drawn onto it, to give drivers the same fake stare you’d find on the backs of caterpillars to confuse predators.

His naked toes fanned out over the pedals, one stopping to tickle the gas. Hesitating. Steven felt the toe swell as if it was holding it’s breath. Then he grunted and decided he’d waited long enough to see her. The car lunged and kissed her back bumper. The kiss wasn’t that hard. Only about ninety-nine RPMs.

After she tore off, Steven drove towards home leaning forward off his sticky driver’s seat, sweat running races down his back. He was out of ice and his damp baseball cap was now screwed tight onto his head. He was going straight home to watch a movie that he'd been saving for a day just like this. More sweat gathered between his shoulder blades, forming a stream and picking up speed down the crack of his ass. He thought back to when he was a little boy, when he was forced to sit in the backseat of his parents’ car, and he used to imagine he was swinging a
sword across the road, cutting destruction through the oncoming traffic.

He felt the numbers under his hand climbed as the car gathered speed. His left foot, the one that normally hovered over the brake and clutch, curled up and crawled under his seat to hide. He didn’t worry about animals under there anymore that day. His foot was as far away from the brake and clutch as it could be. It was if there was heat coming off two of the pedals and he wanted no part of them. Only the gas was safe. It seemed that the only problems that he encountered on the road were when he slowed down to look at something. The mirrors on the trucks, roadkill and oncomming traffic on a one-lane road, the boy crawling through the fence to throw a rock, that green school bus. Maybe he wouldn’t use those pedals anymore. Ever. His left foot felt comfortable curled up under him. It was as if he was home in front of the TV and not controlling two tons of metal. Maybe he’d just estimate exactly how much gas he’d need to coast to a stop instead. It had to be the brake. That’s where all his troubles began and ended. The urge to connect his problems on the road to some kind of catalyst was overwhelming.

Slowing down. That had to be it.

The only thing worse than slowing down would be stopping, he thought.

What happened when he stopped? He’s standing there with a jug of urine in his hand. Or he’s finding animals living under the hood of his car. Or he’s wasting time staring at a girl who wasn’t even there. Driving was the car. Nothing on the road should be involved. Even rolling the windows down could corrupt a drive. A bug flies in and everything is changed.

I read somewhere that 75% of all unexplained fatal car crashes are thought to be caused by stinging insects, or worse, some girl bumps her rearview mirror trying to swat a fly. . .

His tongue caught some salt dripping off his nose and his rolled his shoulderblades to try to scratch without taking his hands off the wheel.

Suddenly he knew that it wasn’t sweat on his back. It was bugs. Bugs that had evolved to live in a car forever and learned to roll straight down your shirt so that you'd think it was only perspiration and frustration while you drove in heavy traffic. Sweatbugs. Insects that would stay hidden on the tips of your tiny neck hairs when they rose up, then drop their eggs when your muscles relaxed and those hairs came down. They could live on your back, running and rolling around on your skin, surfing your sweat all the way down. Drinking your salt water when they needed to. Steven knew these strange new bugs would only live in cars.

Or is it 99% of all unexplained car crashes?

You can’t scratch your back behind the wheel so they could breed like mad on a driver. A driver could never kill one.

A driver’s hands and feet were always driving.



-© 2003 david james keaton

::: david - 2:12 AM [+] :::
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