could this be my favorite movie of 2018?
i was thinking is this an A or an A+ movie? whats so special about it?
because if it’s just a good movie, fine, but A+? it has to have some zing.
definitely some good lines, but zing? not really.
so solid A.
if theres one thing the Bible’s taught me is to give to beggars
today after food shopping at the Jon’s, this car pulls up as amber and i were pushing our cart in the dark parking lot
hey man sorry to bother you i just really need some food for my wife and kids you can write down the license plate of the car if you want
i asked for a moment. we finished rolling to my trunk. amber gave me two bucks and i gave it to the guy. all warm in his car.
and he rolled away.
a drive by begging.
but im glad it’s over. so much stress. not enough religion.
theres a bunch of stuff i gotta do.
one is get my car detailed. ive had it for years and maybe 1,000 people have been in it, and i need it properly cleaned out.
it’s gross even thinking about it.
next i need to be a better shoulder to cry on for amber. im always fixing problems she tells me and i need to be more of a listener.
it’s almost impossible for me not to try to fix things though. so it will be interesting to see if i can do it.
i also want to read more shakespeare. when dickens was acted out at church the other day, i was in awe of his use of words.
so what i wanna do with shakespeare is watch a play a week and read along on my ipad from one of the plays i can download from the LA Public Library.
i remember loving shakespeare in college, but let’s be real, that was a long time ago. id love to watch his top 30 plays by this time next year.
and i always say this but i want to blog more. this year produced the fewest amount of posts of any year of the busblog. i was super busy. i am super busy. but whatever thats a lame excuse.
kids in africa would love a blog. i will blog. they will be weirder than usual though because i think one reason i have slowed down is im nervous that people will think im weird if the weird stuff comes out
but two things: im not that weird, and people love weird. let em have it.
i have a long list of people i want to meet if i am fortunate enough to be invited to Heaven
cobain, hendrix, elvis, belushi
but i cant wait to ask Joseph, were you freaking out? you literally had one job and you sorta blew it.
you knew for a long while that your virgin wife was pregnant with the Son of God and in the eighth or ninth month you decide to journey to little ass Bethlehem to sign the census or pay taxes or something
even though the Son of God could probably solve whatever weird paperwork problem it would have caused if you had stayed
AT HOME
in Nazareth, but instead you wander, get to Bethlehem and cannot get a room to rent
even though your people are from there, dating all the way back to David
but theres no one around for a nice pregnant lady and her man?
and you can’t get a hotel motel or holiday inn to squeeze you in?
that pressure must have been incredible.
and what do you do when you say to yourself, ok, cool, mary, heres what we’re gonna do, you chill here next to this donkey and im gonna clean out this little shit shack here
and like animals we’re gonna do this right here under the stars
like was it that spiritual? or was it survival? was it her idea? was it that holy spirit that whispered in your ear at the beginning of all of this when you were gonna bail on her because you thought she had cheated on you?
who made it ok to deliver God
in the poop and piss mud of the stables – and then placed in the manger
manger, being of course the trough where the food is held so the animals can eat it. and what was the food for animals back then? all the left over grain and guts and god knows what
and slobber.
was that cool with you? did you feel like a loser? if i was a hippie would i feel different?
and it was cold. Israel ain’t Maui. It’s cold in the winter.
you must have huddled baby Jesus tight when you two and the donkey delivered Him into the world and slept through the night.
did you sleep? did the wise men wake you? could you sleep? that was Jesus. did you realize what you had there? was it obvious?
so many questions about what happened on this night, 2,018 years ago.
zero that have to do with Santa.
call me a purist but i havent heard one word about Jesus this Christmas
all these so called Christians, especially those on Twitter who have bios that say:
Bible, Family, MAGA
nobody’s talking about Jesus, the reason for the season. once a year there should be a good discussion about him
all the smartest minds: historians, poets, rabbis, preachers, priests, the pope. how come the only time we hear from the pope is when he is saying something punk rock? why isn’t there a limited series starring the pope and what he has to say about jesus like every three four years?
am i the only one in this for more than the presents.
poor amber was stressed because she didnt know what to get me i said socks, pajama pants, and something that you wanna wear about the house because i see you a lot more than i see me.
but what i want for christmas, truly, is to hear some good conversations about the son of God who came down to Earth, performed miracles, escaped into the desert, and then got killed in a terrible way only to return from the dead while his closest followers were running for their lives denying his greatness
to me thats something worthy of the twinkly lights
what if theres nothing you can do
what if its in your jeans and your shorts and socks and stinky sneakers
and the older you get the more likely it’s gonna happen
and all the romantic poets who died in their 30s avoided it for the most part but not you, its gonna get you?
i feel the same way about the Big One, it’s gonna happen. the earth is gonna shake.
your only hope is it happens when youre at Wrigley instead of in Malibu
your only way out is if youre in vegas with a big nasty redhead (amber wears wigs in vegas)
otherwise its dunzo cuz theres gonna be floods fire and famine
all the roads gonna be packed and people are gonna jump on the boats in the marina and try to escape
but the waves are gonna turn into tsunamis and is drowning the way you wanna go?
the only way to survive is to be in Paris
on top of old smokey
cuz theres nothing you can do
he couldn’t be more different than his twin sister.
he’ll poop in a dirty litter box. he’ll eat anything you put in front of you. he comes when you call. he speaks seven languages.
he also has a nervous habit of scratching on the back of his neck with his back feet. he wears a cone of shame so it can heal.
the wound was progressing. it was healing. it was growing hair. he probably only had a few more weeks until he could be free. but today he got out of the cone and scratched at it wildly and the bloody gash reappeared and now he’s in pain. from his own doing.
i have this magical aloe salve that i put on it, despite his objections. he knows he is to blame.
but sometimes you just gotta itch that scratch.
like the dirty dog you are.
i will watch any bio pic about any band any time.
i love music so much and music docs or retellings, especially if they utilize the actual tunes, will have me glued, so i am the wrong person to ask about the Freddy Mercury film because of course i loved it.
rami malek was perfect in every way possible. his accent, his moves, the way he arched his back, the way he posed
i grew up in an extremely homophobic town. if you were a teenage boy you could barely say you liked Journey without being called gay. And yet every long haired rocker had a Judas Priest shirt despite the fact that Rob Halford was never seen without a full leather daddy outfit.
Why were we surprised when he came out, likewise why was Queen of all bands allowed a pass?
Because sometimes the music is so good that the champion of the gayest guy in the room can sing it right to your face and all you see are heart emojis.
I’m still very curious why I never thought about Freddy’s sexuality while in high school. Could he have been more blatant? Whatever. Loved him then, love him more now.
My only gripe about the film was they glossed right over “Under Pressure” like it’s NBD that Queen had an unbelievable collaboration with David Bowie. As if that song wasn’t a huge hit for both of them. For Queen it was just their second #1 tune in the UK, for Bowie it was his third.
Originally Bowie came to the studio with Queen to sing background on a song that was never released. So while he was there they jammed and tried another song that failed. Later they met up again in Switzerland and jammed and you can hear via the scatting on “Under Pressure” how they were formulating the dynamic tune. It is epic not in length but in styles. Count how many changes happen in it: a gazillion. It goes from one song to another to another to another and returns to that beautiful Vanilla Ice riff.
How do you just toss that into a story about something else?
Whatever. Loved it. Give the dude an award because fuck man that could not have been easy to do.
im talking to people. lots of people. lots of freelancers. and here’s what they tell me one and all
don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
one of them was telling me about a particular Christmas, they had some money coming to them. each month they did the work, they filed their invoice and they got their money. except on this one Christmas
they would go to the mail box every day and every day it was everything except for that check. and they would do this or that to make sure their payments for their car and their apartment wouldn’t bounce, but that included all this stress. stress they never experienced before when they were working 9 to 5 and the direct deposit would arrive every two weeks like clockwork.
freelancers do not have such luxury. they never know when the checks will come.
one person told me, after that anxiety filled Christmas where they thought they would never be able to buy gifts and pay bills on time due to this late-coming check, they decided
im never going to find myself in a situation where one check made or broke my Christmas.
im a hard worker, this person said, working hard is not the problem. weird loyalties are the problem. patience is fine, but multiple checks flowing in to the mailbox is better.
Is beauty enough? Fine directing, gorgeous images. But what if the plot is so thin it doesn’t exist?
This movie reminds me of getting your car cleaned so well that you cant tell if you even have a windshield
but then you realize you’re driving through endless fields of corn.