laudanum

i was watching 'night of the hunter' early this morning. though i did enjoy it, i was having trouble really immersing myself in the story--experiencing the film, so to speak, though i know that sounds kind of lame. what was preventing me from getting the most out of my viewing experience had nothing to do with the movie itself but with something i've been wrestling with lately--this feeling i have like i've devoured way too much culture. i'm only twenty-five and i feel like i've already consume way more sensory information than the average baby-boomer--more than i probably should have. my head is a mess of broken images and pseudo-intellectual terminology--sound bites and fragmented passages; scenes with no context, though they play out in my mind anyway, with great emotional resonance. basically: i feel like i've seen way too many movies, read way too many books and listened to way too many records--i have a lifetime's share of cultural trivia swirling around chaotically in my head and i'm starting to believe (though it may just be unfounded worrying) that i'm going to have some form of a breakdown wherein my brain's hard drive becomes overwhelmed and crashes. i've said this for a long time but i really do need to stop and reflect on everything i've experienced, taken in visually, intellectually, etc. i need to go back and watch movies i've already seen to refresh myself and learn again what made them so profound to me in the first place--not even profound--i need to watch them again because, in a way, they've defined me. sometimes it's subtle--it's the way an actor delivers a line that i remember or a particular scene set to the perfect song. but i feel like these things add up. even if i hate a movie or a book i've still spent time with it--i've still been affected by it. i'd be naive to dismiss something entirely because i didn't enjoy it. people aren't just little reflections of the things they like and only the things they like--also having an affect are the things we don't like--and it's these things, i believe, that have just as much influence on how we perceive the world. we learn what we don't like by measuring it against the things we do like and vice versa. i feel like i take this for granted. i need to refresh myself from time to time--remind myself of things i dislike in this world because they're just as instrumental in carving out my essential identity. if i could, i'd go back and watch every movie i've ever seen, re-read every book i've ever read, just because i feel like i've forgotten so much. i need to remind myself of my convictions (are convictions something you can forget?), rediscover the beauty in things i once found new and have since neglected if only because i'm a wanderer by nature--always in search of something new, never wanting to revisit old territory, though i know that it's in my best interest sometimes.

wip

every friday and sometimes for an hour here or there throughout the week (when he couldn't sleep or didn't have to work) he drove the thirty miles or so to the nearest guitar shop where he ostensibly went to look for new equipment, though his intentions were more than transparent to anyone who talked to him. what he really wanted (and what contributed significantly to his inability to sleep--the frequent bouts of excitement and anxiety) was to start a band. he'd been in bands before but not since he was a teenager. he was in a led zeppelin cover band throughout most of the latter half of high school and he liked to cite this as the one reason he got laid. he believed this with such absolute conviction, in fact, that he wondered if it ever would have happened otherwise--if today he'd still be a virgin had he decided not to play in a led zeppelin cover band. the truth was: he didn't (at the time) particularly even like led zeppelin. he did it because he was approached by a fellow student whom he envied, though he'd never admit it, for his popular standing with the lower caste of students--the kids who smoked cigarettes and never seemed to wash their hair. he also did it because it felt right--like an opportunity to finally prove his worth as a musician and by extension lap up all the glory that came with being in a rock n roll band.

he got a random phone call one evening. it was the summer before his junior year. he didn't have a lot of friends at the time but he had a close network of a few friends and that was enough to make him not feel like he'd somehow failed socially. it was after hanging out with these friends--they'd just been to a late-night drive-in screening of some big-name comedy that summer--that he received the call. the voice on the other line was unfamiliar--crisp and cool-sounding, unlike his friends, whose voices he could recognize by their characteristic awkwardness--the undulating speech patterns and voice-cracks; the way they enunciated poorly and spoke in broken sentences. this voice was different. it carried an air of distinction though he'd only as of yet heard it request his name.

this is he, he said.
hey. this is mark schroder. i'm in your bio class.
immediately, he was seized with an impulse to not sound dumb. this was mark schroder after all--king of the rejects; the one kid who would probably make a name for himself after high school.
listen: i have a proposition for you. me and some other guys--you know mike stawalski, right?--well, me, mike and some other guys were looking to start this band--like a led zeppelin cover band--and we were wondering--because i remember you saying something about playing drums--if you wanted to be our drummer?
he pulled the phone away briefly and tried to suppress a smile. his mom watched him in the other room and pantomimed the barely visible smile. he looked away irritated. a.) because it confirmed that he truly was smiling--a weakness as it indicated he was giddy and unable to control himself or act cool because mark schroder actually wanted anything to do with him and b.) because he wanted to remember this incident unlike how it was--with his mom in the other room smiling at him because she could easily detect just how difficult it was for him to suppress his excitement.
well, i'm no jon bonham, he said, finally, priding himself on managing to be so witty under such stressful circumstances (this was mark schroder he was talking to), to which there was no response on the other line--just dead silence, the opposite of the reaction he was anticipating from mark though he instantly understood--mark wasn't the type of guy who would laugh at such stupid banter. mark had sex regularly with at least three different girls and had pictures to prove it--the only reason he was talking to him, he decided, was because he needed someone to drum in his band. the last thing mark schroder wanted was a friend.
alright then, mark said, after an infinite pause. practice is friday. be there.
sure thing, he said, to the sound of a click on the other line, indicating that mark hadn't the time to piddle around with formal goodbyes or general telephone etiquette.

rant

one thing that irritates me about journalistic integrity as a concept is that not only is it bullshit but it demands in a way that is severely misguided that the journalist suppress their natural human reaction to an event--to put on this act of pretending to be neutral, which in and of itself is ridiculous since true objectivity is pretty much impossible. since when was it bad to have an opinion on something? why can't people (especially liberals) take a stand on an issue--defend their positions intelligently (or, hell, they don't even have to do that--conservatives don't seem to have any trouble presenting their argument as brazenly sensationalist as possible)? do people really need to hear the most neutral version of a news story involving actual human beings and human experiences?

this whole thing with james o'keefe infuriates me. not only is his so-called "scoop" completely sanctimonious (how hard would it be, really, to make a case that right wing newsgroups like fox news are slanted in their reporting? i mean, haven't they already done this with documentaries like outfoxed? isn't it more or less common knowledge that the right can get away with being horribly biased and not having to make apologies for it or make cowardly public good-faith gestures like firing their staff after these accusations are made because everyone knows that arguing with the right-wing is like talking to a stubborn two year-old?) but it pretends to expose this great truth--to uncover this scandal--that is sort of irrelevant. everything schiller said was true. the tea-party are a bunch of ass-backwards politically uninformed morons, abrasive and destructive and obtrusive in their supposed ideologies, which, on the whole, are really nothing more than xenophobia and racism and sexism dressed up in a gaudy suit of twisted morals and biblical half-truths. it's not that schiller indicted himself in any way that pointed to his left leanings. he just called a spade a spade. conservatives are racist. they are stupid. why should he or npr have to apologize? i mean, grow some fucking balls. jeezus.