February 4th, 2012 by Wil
I’m struck with a tinge of sadness upon hearing that actor Ben Gazzara, terrific in the underrated and largely ignored film “Happiness,” has died. And surprised by this bio nugget:
In 1965, he moved on to TV stardom in “Run for Your Life,” a drama about a workaholic lawyer who, diagnosed with a terminal illness, quits his job and embarks on a globe-trotting attempt to squeeze a lifetime of adventures into the one or two years he has left. He was twice nominated for Emmys during the show’s three-year run.
What a great idea for a show and I’m amazed someone got such a discomforting concept on television in 1965.
February 2nd, 2012 by Wil
Wealthy Fla. man adopts adult girlfriend as his daughter.
A wealthy polo club owner in Florida has legally adopted his longtime adult girlfriend as his daughter in a legal maneuver that critics say is an attempt to shield his assets ahead of a civil lawsuit over a deadly car crash, The Palm Beach Post reports.
Goodman, founder of the International Polo Club Palm Beach, legally adopted Laruso Hutchins, 42, as his daughter on Oct. 13 in Miami-Dade County, according to court documents, the Post reports.
…
In a previous ruling, Kelley said a trust set up for Goodman’s two minor children could not be considered as part of his financial worth if a jury awarded damages to the Wilsons. According to the adoption papers, Hutchins is immediately entitled to at least a third of the trust’s assets as his legal daughter since she is over the age of 35, the Post reports.
On the down side, he can now be arrested for molestation if he has sex with her.
January 31st, 2012 by Wil
I was having a discussion with my Dad today about what DNA is. He asked for a specific definition and I said, “D-Something Nucleic Acid.” But as I thought about it, that definition is almost meaningless to me. I don’t even know the D word, I don’t know what nucleic means (something about the nucleus of cells?) and I don’t really know what acid means since I think of it as something that burns up things (as in “flesh eating acid.”)
This got me thinking about what it means to really know information. Say someone wants to know what a flute is. You can say it’s a “metal cylindrical musical instrument played by blowing air into it.” That’s technically correct from a dictionary definitional viewpoint but do you really “know” what a flute is at that point? I think you probably need some understanding of the different sounds a flute can make, some understanding of the kind of music (Western Classical) it’s historically part of, perhaps knowledge that it plays a prominent role in the beginning parts of the children’s classical piece “Peter and the Wolf” and the fact that it’s a feminine instrument and that male flute players can be presumed to be homosexuals. (Of course, at that point I’m hinting at the phallic nature of flutes which gets into needing additional knowledge about penises, blowjobs, semen etc…)
At what point in this cornucopia of facts can we say we “know” what a flute is? Never, it’s an ever changing definition, ever fleeing our grasp.
January 29th, 2012 by Wil
As a kid, I was a big fan of Marvel Comics, as any self respecting kid should be. In those days, Bill Mantlo was a writer for a number of Marvel titles; he was perhaps best known as the creative force behind a toy-based comic series called The Micronauts drawn by my favorite comic artist, Mike Golden. (Mantlo also did some work on Spider-Man, The Hulk, ROM, Howard the Duck and an obscure favorite of mine, The Human Fly.) I was nosing around on the web (not looking at porn) and came across this report on the very tragic turn Mantlo’s life has taken. He left comics, became a lawyer (that’s not the tragic part) and suffered a devastating brain injury in a hit and run accident. He now sounds barely functional and his brother has had a aggravating battle with insurance companies while trying to maintain Bill’s health. Sad stuff.
Bill is gaunt, almost skeletally so. His skin is pale and pasty, the product of getting very little time outside. His short hair is lank and unwashed. His teeth are yellow and have not been properly cleaned in some time. He turns 60 on Nov. 9, 2011, but he looks more like 80.
The victim of a closed-head brain injury from nearly 20 years before, Bill cannot move from his wheelchair to his bed without help, nor can he feed himself, go to the bathroom or conduct any other kind of normal physical activity unaided. He can move his arms, but the fine motor control in his hands is very poor. He needs someone else to put his glasses on for him, and when he wants to take them off, he can only drag his hands across his face and let the glasses clatter to the floor.
A nice appendage to the article is this collection of comic covers of some of Mantlo’s work. It really reminds me how much I enjoyed comics back in the day.
January 28th, 2012 by Wil
Lately, a topic percolating in my mind has to do with the question of how to keep the creative embers burning. I have some sense, as I enter into my fourth decade, that this is becoming more difficult.
I’ve mentioned in the past how, when I was in the midst of the lethargy and dizziness brought about by my labyrinthitis type symptoms, I underwent something of a creative surge. I was depressed, fatigued, and constantly anxious, but I also composed what is without doubt the most sophisticated music I’ve ever written (soon to be available on my upcoming CD release) while also writing what I think is some of my best acid logic material. I had a sense of an increased ability to connect disparate properties found in both music and writing; in terms of writing, I had an ability to chase tangential ruminations down labyrinthine mental corridors to their fruition (I’m not sure what that means either, but I like how it’s phrased.)
Now, two or three years later, the fatigue, dizziness and anxiety are largely gone. But so is a certain creative spark.
I don’t think it’s simply that the creativity followed the disappearing anxiety of illness off into the sunset. I think getting older is part of it too. There’s a certain cliché, though no less true for being cliché, that the hunger, desire and ability to achieve artistic success tends to diminish with age (I’m aware of the numerous exceptions to this, but as a general rule, I think it does stand.)
However, at least in terms of guitar playing, I actually think I’m becoming more finessed a player, and am increasing my technical mastery of the instrument. This reminds me of players I used to see up in the Americana scene in Los Angeles — guys in their 40s, 50s and 60s who were absolute masters of the instrument. However, as I look back on it, I realized there was very little risk or experimentation in their playing. You didn’t have the sense they were particularly excited by what they were doing, you did have the sense that they were playing riffs and solos and ideas they had played 1000 times before. Now, there was a certain advantage to this repetition — they were capable of playing these parts very well, and the audience rightfully took pleasure at that. But you didn’t get the sense that this performer was playing all that differently than they had five years previous, or would be five years in the future. And there’s something dead about that to me.
One can theorize about the neurological or hormonal reasons for this. As people get older, maybe they experience a decrease in neurotransmitters or hormones that fuel creativity. It’s an interesting area of exploration, but not directly pertinent here.
So the question becomes, how does maintain one’s youthful hunger for experimentation? Perhaps by studying the exceptions to the rule — the Picassos, the Beethovens? Perhaps by forcing a steady diet of novel stimulus into one’s brain? Perhaps by consuming vast amounts of LSD and cocaine? I’m not sure.
As a somewhat ironic way to end this, I should note that I wrote a piece wrestling with many of these very same issues close to 10 years ago. So maybe it’s just all in my head.
January 27th, 2012 by Wil
One thing that has always interested me is the fact that movie directors, when pontificating on their work, will often discuss lesser characters, like the main villian’s third henchman, as if a lot of thought went into these characters. A director might say something like, “It was important to understand the motivation for Lightning Soldier Number 3. What was his motivation? I came up with a back story that he had been raised in a southern ghetto without a father figure and his life of crime had come naturally. I think [actor] Thomas Dobswell did and excellent job of bringing this to life in his 4.3 seconds of screen time.”
For a long time I was baffled by this. And, as a fiction writer, I was intimidated. Did I need to be developing a deep sense of character for my accessory players, many of whom come across as rather one dimensional anyway? Lately, I think the answer is no. Movie directors (and writers) are just being pretentious fuckwads on this subject.
January 24th, 2012 by Wil
This caught my eye: LA Times – Solar storm sends charged particles toward Earth
A massive explosion on the sun’s surface has triggered the largest solar radiation storm since 2005 and has unleashed a torrent of charged plasma particles toward Earth, though the threat to satellites, power grids and other high-tech hardware is believed to be manageable, scientists said.
…
Radiation from the explosion arrived at Earth within hours of the flash, said Doug Biesecker, a physicist with NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, Colo. A burst of charged plasma particles is expected to reach Earth by 6 a.m. Tuesday. That charged plasma is traveling uncommonly fast, making the 93-million-mile trip to Earth in about 34 hours, rather than taking two or more days, as is usually the case, Biesecker said.
The article is worth reading more for what it doesn’t say. No mention of the possibility that a massive solar plasma flare could cause the recently dead to rise from their graves and hunger for the flesh of the living. No concern about the great likelihood that solar plasma radiation will create giant sized insects who will travel the countryside searching for human victims whom they can literally pull apart with their pincher claws.
No mention of these very real possibilities.
And the media wonders why nobody trusts them anymore.
January 21st, 2012 by Wil
I had to take my Dad’s Mac in for repairs at the Apple Store. To do this, you have to take the computer to a section of the shop called the Genius Bar which is purportedly staffed by friendly Apple “geniuses” who know everything about computers. This is one of those situations where you are embarrassed for another person, in this case, the 20 something dork making 9.50$ an hour who has to refer to himself as a genius.
I’d love to go in there and yell, “So you’re some kind of genius? You want to tell me why my wife left me? 22 years of marriage down the shitter! Explain that Einstein!”
January 21st, 2012 by Wil
I was nosing around reading about animals with long lifespans and came across mention of George the lobster. George is a lobster (you might have guessed that) and was purportedly 140 years old when he was released in the wild a few years ago.
At first one feels a twinge of jealously towards George. After all, what could we do with our lives if we could live into our 14th decade? But I wonder if it would be all that great. Sure, George might have seen many things – the advent of the automobile, the freeing of American slaves, the birth of television – but what of the dissappointments, the heartbreaks? Eventually life takes its on a person’s (or lobster’s) psyche. There comes a point, I feel, when one can say, “I have lived enough.” Perhaps George has reached that point.
I bet he would be delicious.
January 19th, 2012 by Wil
I tend to agree with this guy that the new Van Halen single is a snoozer. However the video (viewable at the link) reminds me just how great David Lee Roth is as a front man. His lexicon of stage moves is a cornucopia of 20th century pop culture, from Charlie Chaplin to kitsch Hawaiiana to Disco. I’ve always dug his beatnik, half-spoken lyrics as well.
