Brought Up by Twinkies and Ass Whuppings

Gone Baby Gone is the movie No Country for Old Men wanted to be. Both adapted from well known novelists, both grounding their story in a uniquely American subculture with its own values, lingo, and tribal norms. Both trying to use the plot and story to make a larger point about the human condition.

NCFOM failed to make this point because the movie doesn't let you care about any of the characters. The Coen Brothers actually adopt the Western stoicism of their story. At the end, the only thing the audience can do is shrug, mutter something to their wives, and have bad dreams.

Gone Baby Gone succeeds because it does make you care. It turns its weaknesses into strengths. For example, the main characters are not sufficiently fleshed out. How does 31 year old Patrick Kenzie (Casey Affleck) have his own Private Dick business? And how does he do it without having once been "on the Force" like every other private eye since Philip Marlowe? (though his ignorance of police procedural plays a key role in the movie.) What is his relationship to Dorchester? Uppity outcast? Favorite Son? Did he really ever get out of there? And what exactly does his girlfriend and business partner Angie (Michelle Monaghan) bring to the table? Is she really from Dorchester with that pristine English? If so, how come nobody but one person remembahs her? Further, certain plot points remain a mystery, like who killed the informant that a cop lied about?

This is a deliberate move. The main characters are ciphers to invite the audience to identify with them, to become them, so that when these characters have to make a terrible choice, we have to make it too. Some plot points remained frayed and unexplained because it raises the stakes of the choice we as the audience are forced to make. Character motivations become clear without being acknowledged onscreen, further deepening the dilemma.

This movie asks the audience to think hard about what it means to be young, what it means to be old, what it means to be a parent, what it means when you must choose between protecting the law and protecting people, what it means to keep a promise, and, ultimately, adds layers to the cliche that asks, if you take the kid out of Dorchester, can you take the Dorchester out of the kid?

Let's Play "Name the Barrelhouse Reading Series"

Hey Smart People --

Barrelhouse is starting a reading series. In typical Barrelhouse fashion, that doesn't mean, you know, hey, you better get down to X place at X time or you'll miss X reading at the Barrelhouse Reading Series. That means we had a few too many Brooklyn Browns, we started kicking around ideas, we found out that a few of us had harbored a harebrained scheme to launch a reading series, we talked about it, then we kind of forgot about it for a few months.

That's where you come in, Blog People.

So what we know is this: this reading series will occur primarily in the Washington, DC area. At the same place every month. A bar. We don't know quite which one yet, but we're working on it. Each month, we'll invite a new literary magazine or school program or organization or anthology or whatever to be the featured group (at least two times a year, we'll hog the spotlight ourselves and get all Barrelhousey on your asses). So to recap what we know: DC, once a month, in a bar, with a special guest somethingorother each time.

What we don't know: the name, the schtick.

We need a good name for this thing. Something snappy. Something not stupid or academic or boring. Snappy, people!

Schtick: a lot of these reading series have a schtick -- you know, something else happening that says, "hey there, normal dude, this is a little more fun than the usual thing." For instance, DC's kickass poetry reading, Lolita and Gilda's Burlesque Poetry Hour. The questions: do we need a schtick? What should it be?

The one good idea we have is some kind of pub quiz kinda thing. Kind of makes sense, since a quiz lends itself to the pop culture thing.

Any other ideas out there?

No Country for Old....Umm...What Was I Talking About Again?

I just saw the Coen Brothers No Country for Old Men, and I have this to ask our BHouse Readers:

What does NCFOM bring to the "film noir genre/Coen Brothers oeurve" that Blood Simple and Fargo haven't already?

In my view: nothing.

Look, this a well shot, well acted, and mostly well constructed movie...but for what? The main villain is inhuman, the main character gets forgotton about, and Tommy Lee Jones is boring as hell. And the film clearly wants to make a larger moral point about our current situation, by setting it in the past, but what's the point?

They say Tommy Lee Jones is the "center" of the movie. From my standpoint he's virtually superfluous, whereas Woody Harrelson's character was completely superfluous. Tommy Lee's "investigations" are ineffective, and the movie glosses so quickly over his decision to start wearing a gun, while allowing him to pontificate seemingly hours on end, well, dang, it just don't make no sense to me.

It looked like this movie was going to focus on the "how"--for example, Moss's tracking down of the "last man standing" gave you a pretty good idea of how to track a man, while the gunfight between Chirgurh and Moss was very well done and detailed. But then we get no idea how Chigurh found Woody Harrelson, for example, or why he didn't head on down Mexico way to discharge Moss from the hospital his own self. Given that he already knew the Mexicans had a tracker and were hard on the case.

What else I find kind of laughable about Tommy Lee's pontificating, is that the Old West is a place known for its violence and wildness. Massacres of Native Americans, settlers, Mexicans, gunfights at or around corrals, cross-border excursions, hanging men for stealing horses, being stranded out in the desert and dying or getting snakebitten--the milieu of the movie is not some innocent Eden, but "a hard place for hard men".

Watching this movie makes me want to read Cormac McCarthy's book, in part because I want to make sure that the author of Blood Meridian and All the Pretty Horses is not THAT naive.

P.S. Does the coin flip thing seem a little weird, given Tommy Lee's coin-flipping role as Two-Face?

Spitzer!

I will admit to you, Barrelhouse blog readers, that I have followed the Spitzer affair with an avid (oh, all right – unhealthy) interest. A good old-fashioned home-state sex scandal! What's not to love?

But even more entertaining than the downfall of Spitzer at the brusque hands of the FBI and the lotioned hands of Ashley has been the preemptive strike strategy employed by the state’s new governor, David Paterson. It’s not that Paterson has nothing to hide; it’s that he is going to tell everyone everything.

No sooner had the microphone feedback died down at the swearing in than Paterson and his wife called a press conference to reassure a nervous constituency that, oh heavens, yes, they’d both had affairs. Long ones. Hot ones. With lots of dirty secret hotel room sex. Monday, Paterson promised a NY1 reporter that he had indeed enjoyed marijuana and cocaine in the past. No word yet if Mrs. P prefers psychedelics, but I’m sure she’ll be forthcoming.

My thinking is, besides providing hope for those of us who thought our political careers had died during the freshman year party we can’t quite remember that ended up in the room decorated with Bob Marley posters and dead glowsticks, Paterson is igniting a trend. Who will be the next public official to tell us what we’d rather not know? And what will they say? Is John McCain a furry? Does Nancy Pelosi enjoy very dirty, very sweaty kneesocks? Direct your theories to the comments. Do it for America.

Barrelhouse Invitational: What the fuck is this fucking thing?

Remember when you were younger, when stores would sometimes put a bunch of jellybeans or marbles or other smallish doodads in a big glass jar, set the jar on a counter or table in an area of the store where everyone (even children, or very short people) could get a good look at both the jar and its contents, and then next to the jar would be a little box, with a slit cut through the top, and a stack of tiny blank cards on which you were to write down a number, plus your name (of course) and a phone number where you could be reached (of course), and then if your guess was the closest to the actual number of jellybeans or marbles or other smallish doodads you'd win some sort of prize -- a gift certificate, perhaps, or a Swiss Army knife, or maybe just all the jellybeans or marbles or other doodads (sans the jar, unless the shop owner in question was a particularly generous shop owner, and not a miser, as most shop owners are)?

Well, today we're going to play a similar game. Except there's no glass jar, or jellybeans, or marbles, or other fancy doodads. There's just this ... thing (above), which was sitting, unattended, on a bench down the block from my house, at approximately 7:00 pm, Monday night, near a health-food store named Essene, which sells strange-smelling vegetarian dishes and wildly overpriced cookies.

The object of the game, the thing to write on your little slip of paper (i.e., the comments field of the blog), is: what the fuck is this fucking thing?

I know the photo is of dubious quality, but believe me when I tell you that a clearer photo would not at all help when it comes to the guessing. I can tell you the material of the thing is something akin to papier mache, though I confess I didn't touch it, for obvious reasons. I wish I could tell you whether this thing is in its original condition, or broken, or maimed, or not as it was intended, but, unfortunately, I cannot. I stared at it for a good long while, and still I have no idea.

I'm not sure how to crown a winner, since I don't, so to speak, actually know how many jellybeans or marbles or doodads are in the proverbial glass jar. All I know is that this thing, whatever the fuck it is, will surely haunt me in both my sleeping and waking hours.

So, Barrelhousers, what say you? What the fuck is this fucking thing?

Barrelhouse Reporter-at-Large

So as some of you well know, I'm a serious fucking magnet for barely famous, fairly pathetic celeb-reality television not-quite stars in LA. I haven't even lived here eight months and I've already spotted Mr. Boston from I Love New York (or his twin brother, but whatever), Hulk Hogan's wife and daughter (freaking with/dropping it like it's hot on two nasty guys at the W lounge--before the news even broke about the Hulkinator's divorce; I should have fucking recorded that one for TMC, man), one of the chicks from Rock of Love and, this week, the butch half of the cute dykish couple on Top Chef this season.

This has me thinking. What if, instead of just gawking at these particular freaks of nature, I just become some sort of Barrelhouse Reporter-at-Large and hit them up for powerful, newsworthy on-the-spot interviews? This would involve, I imagine, accosting said semi-celeb and making him/her/it answer two or three pre-determined questions I have on hand.

Now, because I'm the sort of person who is perfectly willing to make a fool of herself for her, umm, art, I'm happy for these questions to be as ridiculous as necessary to get the job done. They should be widely applicable, poignant, important queries that hit home and dig deep into the real, meaty issues. Yes. Barbara Walters type questions. Woodward and Bernstein style questions, even. Dare I dream it, maybe even "America's Next Top Model the Season They Had To Interview Janice Dickinson" worthy questions!

So? What should they be?


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DMX Weighs in on Barack

DMX gets all socially conscious in this snippet from an interview in XXL. Enjoy.

Are you following the presidential race?
Not at all.

You’re not? You know there’s a Black guy running, Barack Obama and then there’s Hillary Clinton.
His name is Barack?!

Barack Obama, yeah.
Barack?!

Barack.
What the fuck is a Barack?! Barack Obama. Where he from, Africa?

Yeah, his dad is from Kenya.
Barack Obama?

Yeah.
What the fuck?! That ain’t no fuckin’ name, yo. That ain’t that nigga’s name. You can’t be serious. Barack Obama. Get the fuck outta here.

You’re telling me you haven’t heard about him before.
I ain’t really paying much attention.

I mean, it’s pretty big if a Black…
Wow, Barack! The nigga’s name is Barack. Barack? Nigga named Barack Obama. What the fuck, man?! Is he serious? That ain’t his fuckin’ name. Ima tell this nigga when I see him, “Stop that bullshit. Stop that bullshit” [laughs] “That ain’t your fuckin’ name.” Your momma ain’t name you no damn Barack.

So you’re not following the race. You can’t vote right?
Nope.

How to Name Your Dog, Son, Kickass Male Ninja Warrior Characters, or Whatever You Please

Courtesy of my friend Jake, following is a list of characters played by Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Van Damme or Seagal:

Jericho Cane
John Kruger
Harry Tasker
John Kimble
Douglas Quaid/Hauser
Capt. Ivan Danko
Ben Richards
Dutch
John Matrix
Hercules
John Rambo
Jake Malloy
Joe Tanto
Robert Rath
Joseph Dredd
Ray Quick
John Spartan
Ray Tango
Frank Leone
Lincoln Hawk
Robert Hatch
Johnny Kovak
Machine Gun Joe Viterbo
Marion “Cobra” Cobretti
Ben Archer
Eddie Lomax
Alex/Chad Wagner
Kurt Sloane
Frank Dux
John Prince
Detective Jacob King
John Sands
Marshall Lawson
Jonathan Cold
Harlan Banks
Chris Cody
Travis Hunter
William Lansing
Jack Miller
Jake Hopper
Frank Glass
Jack Taggart
Lt. Jack Cole
Lt. Austin Travis
Casey Ryback
Forrest Taft
John Hatcher
Mason Storm

If I were you

I'd pack my bags and check into the No Tell Motel for at least the next week because the Barrelhouse Blog's own Jessica Piazza is the featured resident.

http://www.notellmotel.org/

Cowboys Love Fat Calves...

Or so says Bo "The Bandit" Darville as played by Burt Reynolds to Sally Field in response to her dancer's legs in the hillbilly classic, Smokey and the Bandit, which I watched last night.

This is not the first time I've seen this movie. Nay, the first time I saw this movie was when it came out. With my folks at the drive-in, actually. And if I remember correctly, we were sitting in lawn chairs in the back of the pick-up truck whilst drinking Shasta sodas (or perhaps they were even Kroger-brand knock offs of Shasta sody pops, which somehow makes the whole enterprise even redder-necked). I've probably seen it some 20 times since then.

Has this movie gotten its proper due in the history of cinema? Absolutely not. Listen kids, I was country when country wasn't cool, so I know these things. This movie has everything. It's got beer (bootleg Coors, to be exact). It's got Jackie Gleason as Sherrif Buford T. Justice, that foul-mouthed coon-dog of a Smokey. It's got Sally "You Really Like Me" Field, who we haven't heard much from in awhile but who was everywhere in the glorious 70s, wasn't she? It's got trucks, trucks, and more trucks ('member the whole 'Convoy Chic' of the same era? You had the Sam Peckinpah Kris Kristofferson / Ali McGraw vehicle (heh) Convoy which, believe it or not, AFTER the song "Convoy" and not the other way around, as well as the Red Sovine tear-jerkin' song "Teddy Bear" about the trucker and the fatherless, paraplegic little boy. And don't forget the Greg Evigan's BJ and the Bear (this was pre My Two Dads), in which, like Every Which Way But Loose, the lead character had himself a simian companion-- NB: Bear was a chimp while Clyde was an orangutan.) Best of all, Smokey and the Bandit had Jerry Reed. Who not only sang the theme tune, but who starred as Cledus Snow, Bandit's decidedly less handsome but equally law-snubbing partner in crime. And make no mistake, Bandit is handsome. A mustachioed 40-something Burt Reynolds in tight jeans and a cowboy hat driving fast? Hell, yes.



What a grin!

When I was a little girl, I had three Jerry Reed albums. I'm not kidding, either. He was my FAVORITE singer and musician. I would have had a Jerry Reed doll to play with but they didn't make them. Instead I had a Donny Osmond doll (never had a Ken for Barbie to play with). But I digress. The point I want to make is that Jerry Reed is NOT a one-hit wonder. In fact, he is a tremendously accomplished musician and songwriter and singer and is enormously respected in Nashville. I don't think he's ever gotten his proper due.

I love the scene where Snowman runs over the asshole bikers' hogs in the parking lot of one of the several "Choke N Puke"s they stop at in the course of the film. I love Bandit's almost Groucho Marx-y quips that pepper the movie's script, as is evinced in the aforementioned "calf" exchange:

Bandit: [commenting on Carrie's legs] Cowboys love fat calves.
Carrie: They're not fat!
Bandit: Well, they're bigger then mine.
Carrie: Do we really wanna talk about legs?
Bandit: Well, one of us wants to.
Carrie: Smart ass.

There's something so damn genuine about this movie. It's a Robin Hood tale, in spirit. Bandit's disregard for the law and "The Man" is actually quite uplifting to me. I feel like it has something to teach me, to remind me.

And us hillbilly types love our car chases.

But I don't have fat calves. Which might be why I never had a cowboy boyfriend.

My favorite Buford T. Justice quote from the film:

"Nothin' but pure and simple ole' fashioned communism. Happens every time one of those dancers start poontangin' around with those show folk fags."

Anyone been poontangin' around lately?

Link of the Week

So, I'm a little behind on my blogging duties, and midterm grading got a sista down. However, I don't want to leave all you countless fans and readers hanging (it'll be anarchy, I tell you), so here's your one-day-late Link of the Week.

It involves monkeys, which proves it's infinitely worthwhile:

Behold the Trunk Monkey!


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The Real Housewives Are Depressing As Shit

Has anyone but me seen that new "Real Housewives of New York City" program? I don't have much to say about it, except that it seems kinda sucky. At least in the Orange County version, the people were ridiculous in a world that existed far, far away from any recognizable (to me) reality. But when they're in NYC, it makes them real people somehow, which makes the show kind of sad. Plus, it's obvious they're all trying way too hard to be socialites. I mean, if they were REAL socialites, they'd never go on the show, right?

In the first episode, each woman reveals that a) she lives on the Upper East Side (except for one woman who lives in Brooklyn -- Park Slope, presumably -- and another who DOES live on the Upper East Side, but totally wants to move to "like, a loft or something" because she's really just a "downtown girl" at heart), and b) they go to parties and benefits like it's their jobs.

Which is sadder than it is fabulous, because they really are working. At one point, one of the ladies (I haven't bothered learning any of their names) talks about how one gets "into society" -- by going to event after event and party after party and making donations to the right charities and getting to know the right people and while she's talking she has this scared and exhausted look in her eyes like she's been running on a treadmilll for five hours but she can't stop or even slow down below an eight-minute miles or THIS BUS WILL BLOW THE FUCK UP!!!!!!

It makes me happy for my own, simpler life, where I not only know I'm socially retarded, but pretty much revel in that fact. I'm pretty sure the kinds of parties and bars I go to will give me entree into only society -- the society of bums who drink Ripple on the sidewalk out front the Wawa. And that is totally cool with me.

For Movie Monday

In the film version of Barrelhouse (direct to DVD, most certainly), who would play YOU?

For No Particular Reason

Pictures of Funny Looking White Dudes

Are You a Fantastic Man?

I have something very important to ask you, perhaps the most important question a man will ever be asked in his life.

Are you...Fantastic?

Are you the kind of man that longs, not just for the starlet on your arm, but the multifarious skin creams and products that bejewel her boudoir, like the stars in the sky? When she is gone, off jetsetting, do you gather all her clothes into the middle of the room and burrow into them, nuzzling the velvets and silks and suckling at the teats of her blouse buttons and ruby rings? Do you bathe in her many fragrances? Do you sometimes wonder if you even need the starlet to experience such pleasure?

Why then, you are a Fantastic Man.

Mr. Koolhaas is a fantastic man. He has a cool house. Mr. Koolhaas has such a cool house, he changed his name to it. In German. What if he really is German? Well, that's fantastic. Do you struggle with being stylish outdoors, in the woods? Do you shop at REI or Hudson Outfitters, or even an Army Surplus Store? Well, then, you are not Fantastic. Not at all. Not like Andre here. Follow him into the dark forest...who knows what stylish sprites and hobgoblins you might encounter? What about your hair? Is it fantastic? How would you know to even begin cultivating a proper hair to scruffy beard ratio? And look at that intense longing in his eyes? What is he seeking out? Yes, I know. He longs to back right into that corner of soft spoken elegance.I bet that you are so, how do you say in English, UN-fantastic, that you would probably wrap a silk scarf around your head, to be mysterious in a Phantom of the Opera kind of way that also raises important questions about your gender, and end up strangling yourself. Maybe Mr. Murphy, the Bauhaus Prince of Darkness (is there any other kind?) can give you a few tips.Fantastic Man. By and for the Fantastic Man. Buy it now. Only 2 issues per year, for $41 American dollars. Buy it before you make Mr. Matadin pout.

Jessica, does this remind you of anyone?

My favorite FoL girl not counting New York.

"If you fall in the mud, you just might come back as a gorilla"

I've been trying to figure how best to sing the praises of the 2001 documentary "Mule Skinner Blues," but it's a movie that pretty well defies categorization. So how 'bout this: just see it already.

Not enough?

Okay, here's the basic plot synopsis: While shooting a music video near Jacksonville, a young director stumbles upon Beanie Andrew, who happens to own an old car the director thinks would be good for the shoot. Beanie is sort of like the unnoficial mayor of his trailer park, a trailer park filled with an assortment of characters one could only find in a North Florida trailer park. Beanie has always fancied himself an entertainer -- he does a little singing, a little dancing, he plays the kazoo (at one point he scoffs at the idea of the kazoo as a child's toy; "No child," he says. "Knows how to handle this complicated instrument.")

So, inspired by his small role in this small video, Beanie gets a camera and starts shooting footage of his neighbors that he sends, unsolicited, to the director, now back in NYC. At a certain point the director realizes Beanie might really have something -- a certain eye for detail, a way of drawing his neighbors out, making them sing or dance or confess their sins. But when he gets in touch, Beanie's got another surprise: he and a friend have written a horror script, and want to shoot it -- it's called "Turnabout is Fairplay," and centers on a dead musician who rises up out of the swamp as a gorilla.

As Beanie explains: "I've just always had this image in my head, this image of me coming up out of that mud in a gorilla mask."

Beanie's neighbors -- who star in both the documentary and Beanie's film -- include a down-on-his-luck alcoholic musician, a design school grad with a garage full of homemade costumes and her dead dog in a freezer (she's moving soon, and doesn't want to bury him until she gets to her new house), and a sci-fi writer who runs a cleaning business with his mail-order wife.

Yes, it's as weird as it sounds. But it's also not weird at all. The movie could so easily descend into cynicism -- look at the funny rednecks, ha ha -- but it refuses to make fun of its major players. Instead, it's tender and loving to all of them, as tender and loving as Beanie is to everyone he turns the camera on.

At one point, Beanie "interviews" some black shrimpers who -- like him -- have lost their livelihoods because of laws that limit the use of shrimp nets. He says "Now some people think certain folks ain't good people 'cause they poor, or 'cause the color of they skin, but we all know that ain't true, don't we?" Beanie is, in the end, the kind of guy who can't even comprehend racism, it so goes against his own spirit of generosity.

Maybe it's just homerism that makes me like this movie so much: it's like a big, happy rebuttal to every cheap "trailer trash" joke, to every movie with the stereotypical "southern" characters. For once the accents are real, the stories they tell are just as wonderful as the ones I grew up hearing, they're not dumb or bigoted or blindly religious. They're just awesome, and real.

It's the End of the World as We Know It, and I Feel Fine!

I have it on good, albeit only temporal, authority, that this Dr. Robert Hickman, Ms.D, was able to quit his day job because of his lucrative side practice in, well, let him tell you:

Rev. Bob Hickman uses his gifts of Clairvoyance, Clairaudience, Clairsentience, and Trance to bring to clients messages from the World of Spirit, also commonly known as the "Other Side."

Working with his trusty Spirit Guide, Fletcher, he will bring to you this "Other Side" perspective to help you find direction and solace on your journey through this life.

What is an Ms.D, btw? Does it have anything to do with Sunny D? Yes, I think it does.

And he's even on YouTube!

A Sad Day In BarrelhouseLand

Jeff Healey, Canadian blind-guy guitarist and star of Patrick Swayze vehicle Roadhouse, has died of cancer.

I don't mean to sound flip. I always dug Healey, partly because of Roadhouse, but also because he was a pretty awesome guitarist who probably deserved more recognition than he got.

The cancer that killed him was the same cancer that took his vision away as a child. He was 41.

Link of the Week

Here it is: Sunday again. And because I'm in that sort of mood, your link of the week is:

FAIL!

Within, you'll find myriad visual confirmations that people (and animals, and machines, and, yes, I'll say it again, people, lots and lots of people) are, indeed, retarded.

But the very least we can do is make their utter failures worthwhile by laughing at them over the interwebs.

Enjoy.


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